The Other Half of the Social Model of Disability

Lots of people in fandom are aware of the Social Model of Disability, which is a direct contrast to the Medical Model of Disability. Problem is, most of those people only understand half of the Social Model.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, the "in a nutshell" version is that the medical model views disability as something that is broken and which needs to be fixed, and little or no consideration is given beyond trying to cure it (and little or no consideration is given to the needs and wishes of the person who has it). The social model of disability, on the other hand, says that the thing that disables a person is the way society treats them. So, for example, if someone is paralyzed and can't walk, what disables them from going places is buildings that are not wheelchair accessible. (Or possibly not being able to afford the right type of wheelchair.) Inaccessible spaces and support equipment you can't afford are choices society makes, not a problem with the disabled person.

People then take this to mean that the only problem with disability is the society that surrounds it, and therefore in some utopian future where capitalism is no more and neither is ableism or any other form of bigotry, all problems disabled people have will be solved.

Except that what I've just described is not actually what the social model of disability says. Or, rather, it's only half of what the social model of disability says.

The actual social model of disability begins with a distinction between impairments and disabilities. Impairments are parts of the body/brain that are nonstandard: for example, ears that do not hear (deafness), organs that don't work right (e.g. diabetes), limbs that don't work (paralysis), brain chemistry that causes distress (e.g. anxiety, depression), the list goes on. The impairment may or may not cause distress to the person who has it, depending on the type of impairment (how much pain it causes, etc.) and whether it's a lifelong thing they accept as part of themselves or something newly acquired that radically changes their life and prevents them from doing things they want to do.

And then you have the things that disable us, which are the social factors like "is there an accessible entrance," as described above.

If we ever do get a utopian world where everyone with a disability gets the support they need and all of society is designed to include people with disabilities, that doesn't mean the impairments go away. Life would be so much better for people with impairments, and it's worth working towards, but some impairments simply suck and would continue to suck no matter what.

Take my autism. A world where autism was accepted and supported would make my life so much easier ... and yet even then, my trouble sleeping and my tendency to hyperfixate on things that trigger my anxiety would still make my life worse. I don't want to be cured of my autism! That would change who I am on a fundamental level, and I like myself. My dream is not of a world where I am not autistic, but a world in which I am not penalized for being autistic and have the help I need. And even in that world, my autism will still sometimes cause me distress.

There are some impairments--conditions that come with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, etc.--where pretty much everyone with that impairment agrees that the ultimate goal is a cure. But nobody knows how long a cure will take to find (years? decades? centuries?), whereas focusing on the social things disabling you can lead to improvement in your daily life right now.

In conclusion: the social model of disability is very valuable, and much superior to the medical model on a number of levels. But: please don't forget that the social model makes a distinction between disability and impairments, and even if we reach every goal and get rid of all the social factors that disable people, some impairments will be fine and cause no distress to the people who have them, some will be a mixed bag, and some will still be major problems for the people who have them.

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OFMD S2 Meta - Stede's Garbage Self-Worth with regards to Ed is still unresolved

(And I'm so hyped for this plotline)

H'ok! So of all the scenes in episodes 1-3 of OFMD S2, this is the one I've been most hyped to discuss but I've been putting it off a few days so people had at least a little time to watch the new eps.

Gifs are courtesy of @ratchet from this gifset:

Hoooo BOY this is such an interesting scene to unpack! Because to me there's at least 3 levels going on here.

What Lucius hears

What the audience "hears"

What Stede literally said

Thing is, I believe when Stede says, "I'm not ready to believe that," the tone that Lucius hears and that the audience is at least 50/50 expected to hear based on the sort of cadence of the scene is, "I'm not ready to believe that Ed's best days are behind him. I'm going to change that."

But I'm not convinced that's what Stede is saying, what Rhys Darby is portraying, or what is literally on the page.

Literally, on the page, Stede says he's not ready to believe that. And given that Stede is very neurodivergent coded, Rhys is self-confessed autistic, and I believe Rhys is bringing that to his portrayal of Stede, I think we really should look at literal words as written and not just run with they're implied to say. This could be read as a declaration that Stede refuses to accept a reality where Ed's best days are behind him or the literal reading: he still can't process that Ed Teach's time with Stede Bonnet was the best Ed's life is ever going to get.

I believe this is for multiple reasons:

Stede isn't going to throw off a lifetime of low self-esteem and bullying overnight just because he's realized he's in love. Especially when the manner of realizing it (end of S1) was hurting the person he loves pretty badly by abandoning him without a word. He's determined to fix his mistakes but each step of the journey is revealing just how big of a mistake it actually was. Not exactly the stuff of sudden self-confidence and positive self-image change.

It requires a full re-write in Stede's brain of every single assumption he had about his relationship with Ed before their separation. Stede in S1, to my eyes, very much saw himself as the junior partner in the relationship. He saw Ed as taking pity on him, to some extent. He felt blessed to have Ed there. It informed so much of their relationship and it especially informed him taking off when he thought his presence was an active burden on Ed. Basically, what Lucius is saying here attacks the very foundations of Stede's understanding of the happiest part of his life so far. To learn that Ed wasn't just the happiest part of his life, but that he, Stede Bonnet, was the happiest part of Ed's life? Whew. Fuck. Not good. Very not good.

Because it's really not good if he was the happiest part of Ed's life, that he so fundamentally misunderstood their dynamic because of his low self-esteem, that he ended the happiest period of Ed's life without warning, without a note, prematurely, and left Ed with the inescapable conclusion that Stede doesn't care about him.

I think worse, even worse, is that Stede has evidence that Lucius is right that he was the best part of Ed's life. But in S1, we're heavily in Stede's POV and Stede's POV of himself is that he's a joke, pathetic, garbage, lucky to have someone like Ed in his life. But Ed's literal actions, louder than words, are that he chose Stede. He gave up piracy for him. He stayed by him. He offered his life for Stede's. Stede wasn't ready to hear that then, he couldn't hear it over the sound of his own low self-esteem whispering poison in his ear, externalized by the Badmintons (both real and imagined). He took their words as fact, rather than Ed's actions as fact. Reexamining Ed's actions shows just how wrong they were. Just how wrong Stede was. And just how badly he hurt Ed because he didn't listen to Ed, the person he loves, over the voices of his own trauma, self-doubt, or of the Badmintons, people who literally hated Stede.

It's a lot. It's a lot for Stede to take in. He's not there yet. But I love that we've had it said aloud: this is a major plot point still. Stede's end-of-S1 glow-up didn't signal that he's self-confident now enough to realize he might be as good for Ed as Ed is for him. He's still grappling with that. It shatters him to even begin to realize this. They have to work through that still. Stede is ready to start listening but he still doesn't, can't literally can't, believe it just yet. It's just too big.

And I am absolutely salivating to see how the rest of the season deals with this thread.

Jason is my blorbo, my favorite, wretched, little guy and I love him so much. And I love all your posts about him! SO tired of people watering down his character, especially at the expense of other characters. Namely Dick and Tim. I know you're probably tired of talking about J so no hard feelings if you ignore this but I'd love to hear your thoughts and Dick and Jason's relationship. Past, present and where you'd like to see it go in the future. If anywhere. (Also your art is so, so good!! I especially love how you do faces and your coloring)

i actually really enjoy unpacking their relationship. it makes me think about that quote from diary of a wimpy kid - "you're my brother, but you'll never be my friend." idk how they should be written in the future because i think jason needs to be removed from gotham until he grows his personality back, but here's my thoughts on their brains -

from jason's end, there's so much resentment. a large part of his post-resurrection motivations come from the idea that bruce has dishonoured his memory and failed to grieve him, because bruce won't let him or anyone else kill the joker and therefore bruce doesn't love him. bruce rejects his manifesto for fixing gotham, bruce rejects his violence, bruce rejects his politics. would bruce have rejected dick if dick had done this? in jason's mind - no. dick grayson has shackled himself to bruce and is drowning with him. jason does not see that he has also chained himself to bruce and thrown away the key.

it's also worth mentioning that in outsiders 2003 and batman and robin 2009 (when written by winick), jason still fundamentally respects dick's abilities and experience. he think he's weak because he tries to suppress his anger, but i don't think jason would carry that same heavy, debilitating misery from seeing tim or cass or damian - people he was denied knowing by dying, and thus "replaced" by. jason, in some capacity, values dick as an ally. he trusts that dick, for all his flaws, is not a vengeful person (and i'll get to that).

there's a degree of what if there too - both dick and jason lived through a very specific period of bruce's life, which is the period before jason was killed. no one else (aside from babs and alfred) knows what that was like. no one else understands bruce, in that way. they have seen him before that grief in a way no one else who followed can. they're both poor kids brought into wealth. dick transcended into a legacy, and was then discarded. jason was, unconsciously, a tangible replacement for dick (and for robin), but died before bruce had the chance to leave him behind.

by comparison, we see dick reach out to jason, consistently. i'd say that unlike bruce, dick is a pragmatist. he frequently works with murderers. he ran the outsiders. he has, and will continue to, make calls that will questionably result in someone's death. to be clear, that is not the same thing as being a murderer - i think the guilt of that comes very close to killing him - but while he's an inherently optimistic person, i'd say he has realistic expectations for people's behaviour. it's what makes him so efficient as a tactician.

they're also very similar - they respond differently to anger, but they are both explosive. dick doesn't seek retribution on his own behalf, but he will lose control for the people he loves (which includes jason!). going to bat (haha) for jason, and jason then hurting the people he protects (tim, damian, the titans, etc), that's a line jason's crossed. dick won't ever stop swinging out to grab him, because he'll never let anyone fall, but that does not mean he'll be kind when they reach the ground

Pay Off

One way of analysing stories is by asking a question about a question. By which I mean "what question is this series answering about its plot".

For example, in the third Pirates of the Carribean film, the question is "has Jack Sparrow changed enough to give his life away?" And this isn't unique to the Pirates of the Carribean franchise, it's applicable to a ton of other stories as well. It's a question of whether or not the character development has happened, not just which side has stronger magic or bigger weapons or a better lawyer.

But if you were to apply that analytical framework to a season finale? Say, for example, The Battle for Bright Moon, the season one finale for She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. What question is that answering?

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD

In my reading of the first season of She-Ra, the series asks two questions, one focused on Adora and Catra's psychology, and the other on the rebellion as a whole. The story gives the audience the illusion that they are linked, but I'm not quite sure that they are.

A few months ago, over Discord, a user going by Emerald9D gave some insight that has been on my mind ever since:

season 1 is a lot of "ha-ha here's this happy little positive message" seasons 2 and 3 are like "oh god nobody internalized any of the lessons from the first season"

She-Ra is about breaking cycles, and one of the clever ways it does this is through its format. Each season of the series is a self-enclosed tragedy, with the exception that the last season manages to change direction at the last possible moment (season four does something interesting as well, but we'll get there when we get there). The stereotype of this is death and destruction, but it doesn't have to be.

She-Ra achieves a repeated tragedy through separating the war from the psychological story it is telling, letting victory be achieved in one side and not the other. Season One focuses on the character development of both Adora and Catra, but has it come crashing down on both of their heads in a carefully laid tapestry of misfortune. It could have easily worked out well, they could have all been friends, but the story didn't play out that way.

Catra's character progression in this season is actually the simplest she gets in the entire season, at face value. I despise the term "character arc" for reasons too complicated and petty to articulate here, but it is applicable with Catra in season one, mostly.

On a surface level, Catra's arc deals growth and failure. She rises out of the abuse from Shadow Weaver and strikes her away, she very nearly joins Adora in the rebellion, but then Light Hope happens. I already have a post about that episode but suffice to say here that it changes the trajectory.

This scene doesn't have Catra directly in it, but symbolises that trajectory shift so succinctly, and it is fundamentally about Catra. Adora reaches out for a hand to hold, and if the series had gone even slightly differently, Catra would be there. But she isn't because Light Hope tore the two apart. And now Adora's hand closes on empty space.

But, Catra doesn't regress in season one, not yet. Instead, the perspective shifts, and it is revealed that Catra has been developing in an unhealthy direction. She-Progresses past Shadow Weaver, but without any closure. She believes that her mother figure made her strong, and recognises the abuse for what it is, but she can't recognise any of her own behaviours that were instilled in her by her upbringing.

"I already made it a lot further than anyone thought I would."

Shadow Weaver taught Catra that she was a failure, and Catra's attempt to fix her own self-worth issues was to lash out and remove Shadow Weaver from the equation. But removing a knife from a wound doesn't heal it. It's a step, but there are others that might be helpful that Catra hasn't recognised.

Instead, Catra devotes herself to the war above her own mental health and assumes that will fix all of her problems. Hold on to this thought.

Adora has a hero complex, a psychological condition defined by PeopleSkillsDecoded.com as:

"a psychological construct which makes a person feel the need to save other people. This person has a strong tendency to seek people who desperately need help and to assist them, often sacrificing their own needs for these people."

Five By Five Takes has a video on Adora's psychology that goes into more depth than I can in a post about a single episode, so I highly recommend you watch it. In said video, the idea is proposed that Adora's heroic attributes are caused by her abusive upbringing, which reframes her actions here.

Adora thinks incredibly quickly, which is a character strength, but also a weakness. It means she is easily the quickest responder to almost any given situation, with one exception that I will get to. But Adora's speed also means that things get lost in translation. She sees someone in danger and thinks "I need to save them", and she sees a loss and thinks "I caused this".

Adora had so many chances to internalise the lessons of the series. Glimmer and Swiftwind explicitly tell her on separate occasions that she is important not because she is She-Ra, but because she is Adora, and people like Adora. But No Princess Left Behind throws her off balance, and in her weakened state, who sweeps in to push her in their own direction, but Light Hope.

"Light Hope said that I'd endanger my friends by coming back, and she was right"

Adora is convinced that she caused someone to die, and Light Hope agrees with her. All she has to do to save people is stop killing them. She just needs to let go, because she did kill Entrapta. It was her fault. Light Hope can help her.

Glimmer, Bow, and Swiftwind bring Adora away from the beacon and into the war. They try to dissuade Light Hope's words, but Adora has already thought through the situation. Now she is confused and trying to reconcile her perceptions. She doesn't understand unconditional kindness, so she is tempted to agree with Light Hope because that makes sense to her. But the kindness makes her feel good. There is a cognitive dissonance there.

So, Adora ignores the problem. Instead, she devotes herself to the war above her own mental health and assumes that will fix all of her problems.

That sounds familiar, who else is doing that? Oh, right, Catra. And remember the thinking quickly thing? I mentioned that there was one exception. There is one person who processes information faster than Adora, and that, once again, is Catra.

Adora and Catra are the same person with one primary difference, expectations. Everyone has thought the world of Adora and expected her to save them. Nobody cares about Catra.

Alright, they aren't the same person. Catra is a cat, Adora is a seven-foot-tall sword lady. But does that not play into this? She-Ra is just another purpose piled upon the rest, and Catra is treated as a pest, a stray cat that wandered in and is kept around because the child of the house likes it.

What this means is that Adora internalises everything as her fault, even failures that have nothing to do with her, and Catra internalises everything as someone else's fault, even her own achievements.

The season has been trying to teach the pair that this is a problem, but the events of the season only serve to reenforce them.

"Did you really think this was about you?"

Yes. Yes she did. And so did you, Catra. That's why you lured her away from the castle, that's why you are doing this. This is very much about Adora.

The season is a victory for the rebellion. The princesses do get together and win the day, and this is one of the benefits of separating character arcs from the overarching story. It means the characters can win a battle and lose themselves at the same time.

Deus Ex Machina.

The term means "god from the machine" and originated in Ancient Greek theatre, where heroes would often be saved by a literal god interposing themself into the story. This happens too many times in the Iliad and Odyssey to count and isn't a bad thing there. They are elements of the setting. You don't need to set up gravity in a modern story for it to kill someone, the audience understands that falling kills. Likewise, in Ancient Greece, the gods were understood to just exist. So, Hermes popping into save someone because he happened to be in the area isn't unheard of. This tangent isn't really the point of my blog, so if you want more information, Overly Sarcastic Productions has a video on the subject.

This isn't really a deus ex machina. It's more of a checkoff's gun, an element set up earlier on that pays off later. I feel the need to remind everyone that Entrapta dies less than a week in universe before the finale takes place. This means that the princess allegiance needs to recover, and the fact that they get up and come back to save Adora in time is a miracle. The season is about the coming together of the Princess Alliance, so it was hinging on them coming together at all.

As a side note, I feel it is important that Mermista was the first one to arrive, because of how emotionally distanced she is. This is a character who doesn't let herself care that much, but she is taking steps to remedy that. Also, the fact that the least caring person and the bard (the guy whose job is cheering people up) rock up to save Adora is pretty heartwarming.

But I brought up the concept of a Deus Ex Machina for a reason, and that is this: The trope has a habit of undercutting character arcs. For all my love of The Legend of Kora for example, the giant spirits at the end of season two feel like a Deus Ex Machina because they aren't really set up too much. You are free to like that element, but to me it felt flat. The Princess Alliance rescue is what happens when that undercutting is intentional.

Adora is so close to character development, but then someone does the end goal for her, and she is left thinking that all the character development was a waste of time. It's not true, but again, she thinks quickly, and things get lost in translation.

The first season of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power asks two questions. "Will Adora and Catra get over their flaws?" and "Will the Princess Aliance work out?"

The answer to one of those questions is a resounding yes. The other is more complicated and leans into the series as a whole's themes of tragic cycles.

Final Thoughts

I love this episode. Despite it being my least favourite finale of the bunch, that is more a testament to the skill behind the show itself than the flaws in this episode.

The idea over discord about internalisation framed my entire rewatch of this season, as it felt so naturally true, but I wanted to be able to point to why that was. Why did nobody learn anything from season one? And people did learn things, Glimmer and Angella got brought closer by the events of the series, and friendships definitely got made. But in terms of the core character drama, this season was very intentionally a failure.

Adora and Catra got so close but fell short at the end to catastrophic effect.

Next week, I am continuing on to season two and The Frozen Forest. We'll see how things go there.

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can you talk a bit more about the self destruction aspect of fight club?

Yeah sure!

Fight club hits this interesting destructive nexus of nihilism, anarchy, marxist alienation, anti consumerism, and male sociology.

Starting with the marxist alienation bit; the fundamental underpinning of the novel is essentially that the narrator's job and society has driven him insane. He is part of a machine that trades human lives for inconsequential profit. His job is supposed to be about protecting people but instead it's about damning them. All his coworkers seem fine with this. He is getting away with it. His company is getting away with it. He is firmly aware of just how much his job and other jobs like his are accepted and accomadated for. He has no control over himself as a cog in the system. He knows he cannot actually stop what's occuring. He would just be replaced. The company would get away with it in the end. Ford Pinto. Etc.

This is inherently distressing. People don't naturally wish to do that. He sees no fruit of his labor beyond enabling death.

This alienation is common, and consumerism is given as a balm for all the post-industrial foie gras in the making in industrialized countries. Don't worry, all that angst and discomfort can be solved by buying things. Buy things. It will make you feel better. Buy things. It'll make you a better person. Buy things. It's a measure of success.

Nevermind that you're a feedlot for corporate profit.

This, too, chafes at the end of the day. Frankly, it develops this hate for the world that is like this, and for him, being a part of it. He finds everything including himself repulsive.

He, quite literally, can't sleep at night because of how fucked all of it is.

So what do you do? Honestly. How can you change it? Can you change it? Is it worth trying to fix?

It all feels meaningless. It feels pointless. It feels cruel.

In the 90s especially, there was a huge nihilistic push. I think it's important to consider ideological shifts like these in the framework of "how does this benefit the ruling class?"

nihilism has two thoughts on it, rejection and acceptance of nietzschian affirmation of life. do you reject and turn away from the world for its atrocities? do you embrace its horrors?

Fight Club, like most things, has a bit of both. Reject the world. Embrace the ugliness. Stew in your own shit.

But still, you still know it's all going on. You want to kill that corpse you're all rotting under.

Your reaction to this omnipresent pain of society is in very large part influenced by society itself. And society says, I'm indestructable. The shadow of history leans too large. You can't escape me.

And society teaches men, embrace destruction. Violence, war. Your ability to hurt is what makes you strong, full people. Your ability to destroy outweighs your ability to create — if you create, it's so you have absolute power to destroy.

So with abject hopelessness and a profound lack of creation instilled by society, he turns to destruction. Of himself, of society, of the burden of history.

He finds himself prone to anarchism, because his rebellion is based in the destruction of now and before, not the creation of a better future.

Even though, at heart, this is all a protest of the cruelty of this society against people, he finds himself unable to hate. Misanthropy, the easy drug, the one you are led to because it makes you far less effective at enacting change in society.

And misanthropy says hating people and especially yourself is good. Great even. And the rest of your burgeoning philosophy says, destroy. Destroy the past. Destroy now. Destroy your future.

So he goes and goes, until Tyler isn't real and he's about to blow up a building to destroy the burden of history, or blow up building to destroy credit scores, and he's kinda doing that martyr thing. Because he doesn't really have anything to live for, his idea of a future is vague and unrealistic. Because he's doing this to destroy.

But he stops it all.

And with the book, he realizes that we arent all simmering sacks of shit, not snowflakes either. We just are.

Misanthropy was useless. Destruction was useless.

Anyway, in my opinion it's just a very good ride of how these thought processes can interlock and feed each other to render your rebellion and anguish useless. Most of us won't try to bomb buildings of course, but this sort of mentality is actually extremely common. You see it a lot in environmentalism and climate change talk, which makes it so interesting to me that it's in the book too a bit. Again, that burden of history, that longing for destruction of unwanted responsibility.

It's a cautionary tale of sorts. Honestly I consider one of the biggest 'morals' of fight club to be; reject misanthropy. Don't hate thy neighbor. Try to build something.

The narrator isn't a cautionary tale against feeling that alienation and anger at society. It's just about, don't let it push you into making it worse. Don't lose sight of wanting something better.

This is a bit of a rant about Henry and why I think he's mischaracterised a ton, I might make a similar thing about Vanessa (specifically her movie counterpart) in the future but for now I am too tired to write more of this. The TLDR version of this is that people tend to make conclusions of characters without reading in between the lines. You're always free to make up your own interpretations of characters, but you can almost never tell people the exacts unless heavily hinted at or explicitly said due to the mysterious and jumbled up nature of FNAF. Different interpretations are so fun to look at, but there is a difference between that and trying to force your points into canon when the evidence just isn't there.

Overall, Henry is no cinnamon roll based on the things he's done in the series. He's not perfect and that's what makes a character seem human. However, what annoys me about the "Henry is a fundamentally bad person who doesn't care about others" people (not the people who have their own interpretations or AUs, but the people who try and push and push it on others and/or claim that any other interpretation of him is wrong) is that the only big chunks of information we have about him come from Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator and the Silver Eyes Trilogy, both of which show him at his worst and not often at his best. The rest are crumbs that don't tell us heaps, only enough to map out a basic personality. In FFPS, he'd only just learnt recently that the souls of the children were possessing the animatronics, and he already decided he was going to dedicate the rest of his life to putting them to rest. He cut a bunch of corners because he was so racked up with guilt after this revelation; he was racing to the finish line of his own life. His methods became extreme and even a bit aggressive because he wasn't gonna be around if his plan failed. He burnt Michael because he was a loose end, a literal walking corpse, who is only still alive because he's trying to find his father and take him down. Since that had been crossed off the list, he saw it as okay, which yeah isn't cool, but if he asked Michael he would probably just shrug at him. The only other time we hear about him in the games is when we hear he's distancing himself from Fazbear Entertainment around FNAF 2, and for a few years as well, meaning he probably left sometime after the Missing Children's Incident. Besides the springlock suits, since he made them, you can't really figure out who was in charge of a large majority of Fazbear Entertainment's weird safety decisions because he was absent. Whether or not you think that was him is up to your interpretation. In the Silver Eyes, we get to know just a little bit about him from before the murders. He's caring, but distractible. He's friendly, but a recluse and deep down very lonely. He's intelligent and creative, but he's still very naïve and gets overwhelmed by his grief, pushing other people away including his own family to try and bring back what he lost, only losing more in the process. By the end of his life he had made a ton of horrible mistakes and decided he'd done permanent damage to himself that wasn't worth trying to fix. We learn that he was pretty okay before the murders, not perfect but he was trying, but his daughter's death and the subsequent Missing Children's Incident ruined that. So, in conclusion. Bad person? Good person? He's not truly either. He has good intentions from the beginning and is friendly, but he's reclusive and doesn't really speak up about things, only really focusing on what he loves. Unfortunately, he's also very fragile and is willing to go to extremes once the stakes are high and his mental state is broken. So, he's not perfect or "pure" by any means, but he's still an alright person who only really wanted to entertain people and live with his family. I think it's weird we never see him at his best. This is also one of the reasons why I think it'd be cool if we had more content surrounding Fredbear's Family Diner, I think it would clear up a lot of stuff, not just that, but also about the early days of the restaurant, how it got big, the dynamics in the Afton and Emily households, and how William Afton truly acted from the beginning.

I think Boston got a happy ending. He's getting a fresh start, and everything in the finale just felt like it was setting him up to leave for America with no regrets or loose ends.

He apologized for the things he did wrong, and pointedly did not apologize for the things he didn't do wrong. He's a messy boy and I love him for that, but he absolutely did some things worth apologizing for, so I'm not mad at the fact that the show let him apologize. He did everything he could to repair his relationships with his friends, and for the most part, he did repair them. Cheum is happy to welcome him back into the group. Ray is still protective of Mew, and is always going to side with Mew over Boston when forced to choose, but he doesn't seem to harbor any hard feelings of his own. His friendship with Mew is irreparably broken, and that's kind of ok with me. It's true to life; some relationships you can repair, and some you can't. But Boston did what he could. He doesn't have to hold onto guilt or wonder what would have happened if he reached out.

The friend group dynamic was never going to go back to what it was before, because Boston was leaving the whole continent. There was always going to be a shift. We were always going to end up with all of the others getting close and having experiences together without Boston there. But he fixed things enough that they're staying in touch.

And he and Nick broke up a bit earlier than they would have. But they would have broken up anyway. That relationship always had an expiration date. Boston set it up that way on purpose (I feel like knowing it had an ending was the only way he could give himself permission to even try for the first time, but that's probably a whole other post I could make). And he got to learn about himself. He likes romance; he can fall in love. It's just that romance and sex are two completely separate things for him. And he's moving to NYC! You know he's going to find some like minded people and figure himself out further, and find fulfilling relationships that work for him, now that he knows more about his wants and needs.

And it's so much better that Nick didn't follow him to New York. I cannot see that ending well. Because once Boston and Nick both learned enough about themselves to have an open and honest conversation about what they wanted in a relationship, it was clear that they loved each other AND they wanted fundamentally different things. Somehow a clean break for a reason other than the move to America feels better. They're not holding on or trying to stretch out the end so it hurts more or longer. They loved each other. It meant something. And it ended. The end doesn't make the rest matter less.

And Boston, a Boston who learned and grew from the events in this series, is planning to be totally out in America, away from his dad. No more hiding. No more worry about black mail. He's the person taking the photos and choosing to make them public as art.

Everything about the finale just felt like it was setting Boston up for a fresh start in the best and cleanest way possible. Repairing the ties that could be part of his support system, even across continents. Cutting ties that were only going to hold him back or hurt him worse. Letting him get things off his chest, so he could leave without regrets or what-ifs. I think this episode was so good to Boston.

anidala?

Married Life Meme

Send Me A Ship And I’ll Say Who:

This one's fun because I love them but so much of this is informed by their extreme childhood wealth discrepancy, and I like that. They match each other in personality and energy, but they're so.... I love them? I love this ship? None of this is 'one of these people is worse than the other,' it's just them being fundamentally different in a way that doesn't stop them from being a good couple, but does mean they have wildly distinct approaches to things.

leaves their dirty clothes on the floor: Padme. She? Rich person. If she leaves her clothes on the floor, a droid or a servant will pick it up. She pays them to do her laundry for a reason. Anakin? Raised by Obi-Wan Kenobi. There have been shouting matches about leaving towels on the bathroom floor. Anakin tosses his things in a hamper like a civilized working-class person. Every time he considers dropping it on the floor, Obi-Wan's voice asking 'did you ignore your mother asking you to be considerate of where you place your things the way you ignore me?' flashes through his head, and he tosses it in the hamper because Mom Would Be Disappointed If She Were Still Alive, and unlike murder, the dark side does not work its way into Anakin's head on the topic of dirty laundry.

forgets to run the dish washer: Again, Padme. Again, rich person. This is what Threepio is for! Anakin is baffled by this. Padme. Babe. It's one button.

pumps gas for the car: Anakin, because Padme's dresses are... seriously not worth risking a stain on.

drives when they’re going somewhere: Anakin will insist. Padme will... usually let him win. She starts putting her foot down and taking the wheel after the twins are born. The way Anakin flies is really, really not safe for the babies.

rearranges the furniture: They both do for different reasons. Padme's got interior design Thoughts And Opinions (which are... mostly tasteful), whereas Anakin gets caught up in mechanical engineering frenzies and needs room to work and create things and the couch was in the way.

falls asleep with the TV on: Anakin. He's exhausted more often than Padme is.

gets to use the bathroom first: Anakin, because he can shower in under five minutes. Ten including blow-drying his hair and the detach/reattach process for his arm. Padme... needs much longer.

decides the temperature for the ac/heater: Anakin. Padme sometimes wants to turn it down, but then she remembers tiny baby Ani being cold on the ship from Tatooine to Coruscant back when they first met, and she lets him get away with it. Anakin doesn't realize this is why; he's just glad that he doesn't have to wear five layers to bed, and that Padme is wearing her lightest nightgowns that he can just. Wow. What a gal.

sets up holiday decorations: Ehhh. Padme sort of makes a nod to doing so, and puts up a few things, but a lot of it is done by droids or staff, despite her saying things like 'Oh, I was planning to decorate today.' Anakin wants to Help and mostly does so by floating up things most people would need a ladder to do for.

leaves the lights on: Padme. Anakin has done 'navigate with a blindfold with only the Force to guide me' training, and sometimes forgets to turn the lights on. He's also, you know, a former slave from abject poverty, who likely had a lot of anxiety growing up about using too much energy, and earning Watto's ire for the energy bill. Padme just got sighed at, maybe a tired or annoyed lecture from her mom. By the time she was fourteen, she had droids.

uses the bathroom with the door open: Padme. She's actually been yelled at by handmaidens for locking the door in her apartment bathroom because of this one time she passed out from an injury in the shower and they needed to pick the lock to get at her.

fixes the plumbing (or calls the plumber): Anakin tries to fix the plumbing. Sometimes, like with the heater, this is fine. Sometimes, like with the sewage, it is not. Padme calls the plumber at hour three.

You know, among the many narrative parallels and contrasts between Keith and Lotor, one I've never heard anyone talk about is the obvious mirror of Lotor's situation with Narti and Keith's situation with Shiro/Kuron. And I won't ask for information about how that might (or might not, as the case may be) play out in LB, but I was rather curious about you take on the subject?

GOD don't even do this to me, I have //so many// feelings about this. Brace yourself my darlings.

So it would be really easy to sit here and say that these paralleled situations—Narti being used by Haggar to spy on & betray Lotor’s squad, and Kuron being controlled by Haggar to spy on & betray team Voltron—are virtually identical, and that the key difference comes in the form of how Lotor/Keith responded to this apparent betrayal by their close friend and confident, therefore fundamentally painting Lotor as the moral shadow to Keith's light... which I think is almost certainly what the vld writers were going for.

But personally? I believe it to be a lot more nuanced than that.

Because, yes, Lotor took the "kill first ask questions later" approach, whereas Keith fought for Shiro/Kuro to the very last, but despite how closely paralleled these scenarios were, the circumstances leading up to these two moments of revelation are simply not equal.

But let’s start with Keith.

[[ Keith: ”I don’t know what’s wrong, but I know we can fix this. Let me help you." ]]

This moment (s06ep05) in particular, taking place immediately after Haggar has instructed Kuron to lure Keith & the Black Lion away from her fleet, is crucial in highlighting the difference in circumstance for Keith vs Lotor; where Keith doesn’t know what’s happening, only that “Shiro” has seemingly betrayed Voltron—but, importantly, in a non-aggressive manner, engaging in only the minimal amount of combat necessary to liberate his quarry—Lotor rapidly and accurately assesses the situation to surmise that Narti has been (and will continue to be) used against him & his friends, and so is an active threat.

But look at this, look at Keith, look at him when faced with Shiro (who he must know isn’t quite his Shiro, by this point, considering they’re surrounded by a hundred clones), because he’s so calm and gentle and pateint and loving..

[[ Keith: “Shiro, I know you’re in there. You made a promise once. You told me you’d never give up on me.” ]]

[[ Shiro: “And I should have abandoned you just like your parents did. They saw that you were broken. Worthless. I should have seen it too.” ]]

[[ Keith: “I’m not leaving here without you.” // Shiro: “Actually, neither of us are leaving.” ]]

So this brings us to the first vitally important component that distinguishes Keith’s situation from Lotor’s: where our favourite paladin has only his own life at stake (and if you’ve watched the show you should know that Keith would choose Shiro over himself a thousand times over), Lotor has other people to consider and protect—not only his life, not even just the lives of his friends, but an entire Empire’s worth of people... but we’ll get to that in a minute.

First, allow me to break Lotor’s scene down.

[[ Lotor: "Transpose the dynamics and run that protocol again." [...] "You think you can fool me, witch? Destroy the bug." ]]

Immediately upon leaving high command and being cast aside once more by Zarkon (s04ep03), Lotor orders Narti to “run the protocol to search for trackers,” and, when she doesn't find anything, to "transpose the dynamics, and run that protocol again." This clearly demonstrates for us how intimately familiar Lotor is with Haggar’s tactics: he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was not letting him walk out of High Command without something in place to spy on him and track his movements. Despite Zarkon having clearly bought his “subservient son” act, Lotor is fully aware that Haggar isn’t so easily fooled, and his conviction in this is such that even when the initial scans showed nothing was amiss he didn’t hesitate before demanding that Narti run another, because his dealings with the Empire have never been so simple.

[[ Matt: "I've never seen troop mobilization on this scale before. [...] Lotor: "What's happening?" / Zethrid: "A galra fleet are attacking us!" / "Return fire!" / Zethrid: "Wait, there's another fleet... and another one! We can't hold them all off!" ]]

Then we have the situation in which Lotor clocks Narti’s “betrayal”. As noted by Matt, troop mobilization of the scale ordered by Zarkon against Lotor is unheard of, and of course Lotor—as someone who not only grew up in the Empire, but briefly commanded it—will have known full-well that the sheer quantity of Imperial fleets suddenly appearing on his doorstep (so soon after he was allowed to leave Imperial command without his father batting an eye) means that something significant changed. Zarkon is a man of action, Lotor knows this, so if his father had suspected anything when he was in the same damn room, he would have dealt with him then and there, but he didn’t, which means this is a new development: one that must have occurred in the brief period since Lotor left High Command.

[[ Acxa: "How did they find us?" / Zethrid: "We must have been tracked." ]]

So then we come to the scene in which Narti actually dies, in the immediate prelude to which you can virtually see Lotor’s mind ticking. Remember, he knows his father and Haggar with horrifying intimacy, meaning he’s fully aware that only the witch could have changed the Emperor's mind so quickly, the question is: how? As Zethrid says (see. above), they must have been tracked, it’s the only explanation for such a swift exacting response, but Lotor found Haggar’s tracker, which means she must have another, undetectable method of spying on him, which means—

Look at his face. Lotor isn’t one to be outwardly emotive, so this might come across as callous or cold, but at the very least we can agree that this is not the face of a man lashing out in a rage. He certainly isn’t reacting as if he believes Narti betrayed him of her own free will—that heartbreaking moment of horrified realisation belongs to Acxa (see. below)—no, in this moment Lotor’s actions are being driven by the same thing his entire character is built around: the Greater Good. Because killing Narti isn’t about cruelty, or revenge, or some sort of innate “evil” at the core of Lotor’s very being,,, killing Narti is about protecting his friends and the universe as a whole.

Crucially, the thing Keith had that Lotor didn’t, is time. Not in the grand scheme of things, true, but where Keith (in s06ep05) is clearly established as the pursuer rather than the pursued, for Lotor it is quite the opposite.

Hear me out; Lotor is surrounded by numerous Imperial Fleets (not individual ships, entire fleets, with more appearing every second) with the four people he trusts most in the universe. They can’t fight their way out of this, the odds are impossible. He is also in possession of the only thing that can rival voltron in terms of raw power—Sincline, though unfinished, has already displayed the potential to be better than the Lions, because it has an extra 10,000 years of knowledge and technological advancement behind its creation—and Lotor absolutely cannot allow it to fall into his father’s hands. His only viable option is to run, and run now, because their battle-cruiser is being torn apart and they’re out of time and if they all die here then everything he’s ever done in the name of building a brighter future has been for nothing, but- but they’re being tracked. And he realises, it’s Narti, it must be, because she was the only one with him when he went to face his father, and she’s a telepath of all things, and if they take her with them then they’ll never outrun the Empire but if they leave her behind... will she be tortured for information? Forced to use her unique abilities against them??

There are no good options for Lotor in this moment, and worse than that there’s no time to find any, so he does the only thing he can do and mercy-kills his friend (because she was his friend, and I believe that with every fibre of my being), before she can become a prisoner of war, or get the rest of their little misfit family killed... and it’s not even just Acxa, Ezor, Zethrid, & Lotor himself at risk because, again, Sincline rivals Voltron. If Zarkon gets his hands on it, that’s it, game over, not just for Lotor but for the whole damn universe.

[[ Acxa: "For Narti." ]]

But then s04ep05 happens, and we see that despite Lotor making the hard—impossible—call of sacrificing one friend to save three others, and immediately heading to Daibazaal in a last-ditch effort to penetrate the rift and provide enough quintessence energy that the Empire might be sustained without need for bloodshed (either slave colonies, the Komar, or the use of alteans) so that he might spare literal millions of lives,,,, the very friends he saved betray him.

And I want you to look at the moment when he wakes after being betrayed by Acxa, really look at it, because Lotor is shot by one of his most trusted confidents only to wake bound and afraid, and even then in this moment of pure disorientated panic, he only shows his true feelings for a second before composing himself. That’s what I mean when I say he plays his cards close to his chest, and that’s why I think judging how much he cared for Narti based on his expression (or lack thereof) upon killing her is completely unfair: if this is all the emotion he shows when in a situation entirly outside of his control, then of course he’d be more composed when actively making a decision... even if that decision was a horrible one.

Tldr; Keith had the luxury of both time and the security of risking “only” (I say, as if the concept isn’t heartbreaking) his own life for Shiro’s, whereas Lotor has neither of these things. The circumstances in which they are each faced with the betrayal of a close (quite possibly their closest) friend are not equal, and as such cannot fairly be used to cast judgement upon their respective moral characters.

There is something weird in Nate character arc

I love Nate and I like his relationship with Jade. I root for his happiness, I was Nate x Happiness way before season two, because I really relate at many of the mental struggles he faces.

But let me make clear a thing:

Relationships don't fix mental illness.

A new partner will not fix all the problems in your life.

A good relationship can help you, can support you through difficult time, but it won't magically fix you. You need to act, change your behaviour and fix yourself, because nobody will do it for you.

Nate needs to own his fucking mess, he needs to see through Rupert schemes and put his foot down. Because blocking his mistakes (with Ted, especially Ted) like he did during this episode won't help him, avoidance can work only for a short period of time, then it comes back and bite you in the ass.

Because everybody is growing and changing but him (and no, getting a girlfriend is not synonymous of a redemption arc, nor a healing process, especially if all his confidence is still tight with "getting a girl" and without a girl to "show off" he's worthless, which wasn't disproved yet and no, don't spit at your self reflection one time, while never addressing the root cause is not enough). He's risking of getting stuck in the past, in his old mentality, in a fake confidence not internal but tied to an external person (Jade).

Fight forward, isn't it? Get out of that box and live the moment, every moment is worth living, because you are worth it, whatever you succeeded or failed, you deserve happiness in your life.

That's what I think we should stride for Nate's arc.

It's nice that Nate got a girlfriend (I enjoy them because they are such opposite character and energy), but it'll come crushing and burning down if he doesn't understand why he was able to ask her out. It matters that he found the courage to ask her out for a date, but he matters regardless, even without this accomplishment.

Nobody defined Nate if not Nate himself. And I think Jade can help him realize it, but the relationship with her is not a magic cure (and to be absolutely critical I think they will have many communication problem if they don't learn how properly work things out before a real relationship, since Jade is not really an extroverted person and Nate is an anxious mess ready to misinterpret every ambiguous body language, I know it because I'm the same).

Getting a girl is not the redemption arc, is not the finale, it's barely a consequence of the first step in becoming a better person. I believe (eh, Ted Lasso, isn't it?) Nate is fundamentally a good person, he's a brilliant tactician, funny and sensible, but he's also deeply insecure and he broke the trust, and leash out to people who (truly) loved and trust him and we can say all we want to explain his reasoning (his past bullying, his daddy problems, the miscommunication), but it doesn't chance the fact he was wrong, it's not a justification.

Nate matters with Rupert, and without him (a lot more without him). With Ted's or his father's approval or without. (And already had Ted's, like this episode he went to see him play with his son, Ted already, for the most part, forgive him. Ted doesn't have to accept his apology, but Ted Lasso is Ted Lasso and do what Ted Lasso can do best: treating people with compassion, so he will without a second thought the moment he'll see Nate sincerely regrets).

But Nate does need to do it, though, he's redemption arc is tied with this apology. Because they say hurt people hurt people, and it may be true, but it's also bullshit. Even if your struggle with mental health, you have no right to hurt others.

To do this apology thought Nate needs to grow, needs to build his confidence and self esteem for himself, because he's action were mostly a counteract to a perceive rejection, he is not what twitter says about him, or Jade, or Ted, or his father, or Rupert.

The belief that you matter, you know? Regardless of what I do or don't archive.

Ted is going to forgive him, of course he is.

Skyward sword was the first game in my little chronological playthrough and it was the first time i played it, so i thought i'd do a little review

first, the good. the dungeons in this game are fantastic. easily some of the best in the series. they really force you to think ahead and think about the dungeon as an actual space and plan your way through it. there were more than a few times where i was stumped and had to use every tool available to me to figure my way through, which for me is a big plus.

I also think the sword combat was very well implemented (when it worked). by tying success in combat to precise movement instead of random slashing or just waiting to use an item, they can create truly challenging fights that i can't say most other zelda games have. ghirahim is the standout here, all 3 of his fights were fantastic

The story was overall fine, I liked it enough. Groose's arc was predictable but enjoyable. Ghirahim is an amazing villain, one of the best in a series that doesn't have too many standouts. Link and zelda's relationship was okay, they did try and flesh it out, although it wasn't nearly as involved as people led me to believe. They also damseled her again which I guess I should expect but still, not a fan. I thought fi's ending was pretty good for a character that's really just annoying up to that point. I like that she's ultimately been the companion of many successive links

Unfortunately that's kind of where the good times end. As good as the dungeons are, the overworld is very much not. There's only 3 real areas in this game, and while they are fairly large, the fact that you have to revist each multiple times really cuts down on the excitement of exploration. Not that you can explore much anyway, these areas are mostly hallways that funnel you towards your objective without a lot of choice. I don't mind linearity in games, but the railroading in this game is frustrating and the constant backtracking does not help

And this is made worse by the handholding, which really is as bad people said. so many times fi will just spoil a puzzle before you can even look at it. so many times she'll explain something to you that is very obvious, or was already explained to you. so many little things you have to do, dragged out, before you can get to big things. the game becomes a slog both because you have to constantly stop to get helped, and then doing what you need to do stops being fun and just becomes a chore.

finally, as much as i like the sword stuff, the rest of the motion controls are just painful. Flying sucks, skydiving sucks, swimming sucks, those tightropes are a nightmare, just using bombs is an ordeal, and that's before you get into the constant communication errors. for the last third of the game i ended up bringing in a kitchen chair and sitting 3 feet from the tv just so i'd stop getting errors, and it still happened!

ultimately, unless you're doing what i'm doing and playing them all, i can't recommend skyward sword to anyone. the genuinely good bits of game design are surrounded by frustration that affects the whole experience beginning to end. I'm aware that the remastered version fixes some of these issues, but quality of life updates can't truly change a game with flaws this fundamental. is it a "bad" game? no. is it worth 40 hours of your life? absolutely not

but enough about all that. we're done with skyward sword and we never have to go back. up next is the zelda game i love more dearly than any other: minish cap! easily my favorite of the series, it'll be a great followup for many reasons. I can't want to actually gush about a game instead of complaining, i'll start playing later today

hello! im always looking with respect at traditional astrologers, and the art feels super refreshing after years of thinking the only astrology there is is the popular stuff. im kind of interested in learning? but im also kind of unsure about how deterministic the aspects of it are?

one thing i enjoy about modern astrology is the ability to look at difficult houses and see the possibility of transformation within them. my 12th house north node and part of fortune are not things i consider curses. im overall hella fascinated by humans ability to evolve and heal. (though thats SO fucking rare even who people who try to. i know potential doesnt equal result) im thinking that traditional astrology might be the way it is because at the time people just truly had no way to become better in any way. if someone now is born poor they can work on my relationship with finances and eventually create a beautiful stable life for themselves, they can heal the relationship wounds caused by abusive families etc etc

what do you think? is it worth learning about traditional astrology if im going to have this type of approach?

Not all traditional astrologers are super deterministic. If you go to the medieval astrologers you'll see they were also dealing with magic, so they're examples of traditional astrologers who definitely weren't fully deterministic as well. I don't like determimism either and I've talked a little about this here. I'm more on a middle ground. A lot of the ancient hellenistic astrologers were stoics and believed in a very closed kind of fate, so they thought every little thing could be predicted, but this is not an inherent characteristic of the art, it was their own beliefs projected on it. Studying someone's techniques doesn't really require you to subscribe to their beliefs. A level of predictability also doesn't imply hard determinism. Otherwise all of us would be that, after all modern astrologers are also predicting by looking at the birth chart and telling what a person's life has been like.

Some idea of fate is still there in modern astrology even if the content on the internet will try to tell you it isn't, I believe some modern astrologers have too many contradictory beliefs because of this. And of course, it actually gets even more difficult to sell astrology and keep a following if you're going to tell people some disappointing stuff, so obviously modern evolutionary astrology is popular also because it's so "optimistic". And even if not done in bad faith, they're selling the idea that their service will be fundamental for you to get out of a bad situation, and that's a little scammy.

I don't believe your 12th house north node and part of fortune are curses either.* I myself have a 12th house Moon and north node, which is actually an eclipse, I have 5 out of 7 planets in bad houses that don't see the Asc, 2 of them also combust, everything in squares. The other 2 are Saturn, my malefic out of sect and Jupiter in fall in a cadent house ruling my finances. But still, considering the family I was born in, I'm in a very good situation compared to all of them. Despite difficulties, I'm one of the less than 1% of the brazillian population that is attending a public University (which is extremely competitive to get into, and they have the highest demand because of their quality), I have a high change of actually finishing it and not dropping out. And that poor eclipsed Moon in the 12th with a malefic fixed star and the north node is the one ruling my 9th house and holding this up for me. I've seriously never seen an uggliest chart than mine, so I could never be the kind of astrologer who looks at a 12th house planet and already imagines the worse case scenario. And I've actually seen charts that looked kinda okay, but they were charts of people with very troubling lives.

I don't agree that today in general people have more oportunities to get out of poverty, because meritocracy is a monstrous lie. Life is difficult, some lives are more difficult than others and some people have more of a feeling of control than others. And there's an issue if you're telling everyone that they can do anything they put their mind to, when context actually makes things impossible, if that's just wishful thinking and simply not true. This does put pressure and blame on people to tell them that if they haven't achieved something that's because they didn't do enough "work". Some things you can't change, sometimes there isn't even enough time to understand and try to change things, so all you can offer is an ear. But I do also have an issue with the deterministic idea that tells people there's no way around things, that they should accept things the way that they are because that's the destiny their soul chose or whatever.

But the point is that you will fry your brain over the issue of fate vs free will forever and no type of astrology you study will give you an answer. This is an ages old dilemma in philosophy and any astrologer who tells you they found the answer by themselves through astrology is just mistaken and probably being a little arrogant.

*Just an observation: the nodes aren't really all that important in "western" astrology, much less their house placement. Modern astrology puts a lot of importance on them after appropriating from Vedic and the way this is done is really not good.

this is so embarrassing <3 but would you happen to maybe possibly have a merlin (2008) fic rec list beloved mutual..... not nearly enough fic writers get it like my beloved mutuals do

i can assure you that is absolutely not even close to as embarrassing as it is to have devoured any and everything the merlin fanfiction world has to offer. i have read aus that you would not believe. i have been subjected to characterisations and headcanons that would make anyone else instantly close the tab. i have read authors with such a poor clumsy grasp of british slang i could weep from embarrassment. yet i persevered. for MONTHS. and here is what me (and beth <3) have managed to scrounge up after all of that. please use everything i've just said as context that we were NOT in our right minds reading these. proceed with caution

tributes - the! hunger! games! fic!!!! iconic legendary spectacular THEE revolutionary turnaround for the merlin fanfiction game and for the horrors generally. do NOT go in overhyped tho me and beth went in like haha what a cool weird au and then it caught us off-guard that it wasn't written terribly. also good for something longer and about much more than just merlin and arthur. it's fr like watching the show again for better and for worse. it's got camp whimsy it's got our main duo acting like complete freaks it's got this constant suffocating sense of inevitable tragedy... slayed!

history books forgot about us and in dreams - by the hunger games writer so u know it's actually written well!! don't read their other stuff tho just trust me. my memory of the first one isn't great but i remember feeling with both that finally FINALLY someone Got the finale like me + beth did. short but just rlly solid satisfying follow-ups to the show.

the court of avalon - freya + arthur best friendism in avalon realest shit ever said!!! makes me go fucking crazy fr. YES this has way too much magic lore bullshit to it and i don't careeee they're my friends.... and FINALLY a proper post-finale fic where they don't just freeze arthur in time for 1500 years...

to the point of fear - slay little mordred character study!!!!

the world i built for you - the disir fix-it!! smth i have always wanted due to being sooooo Normal about that episode (arthur's matrix. if u even care). not perfect but worth a read for sure!!

long title and also long title - i rlly like established relationship fics. sorry for being cringe and boring some crimes can never b forgiven etc.

like clouds in starlight widely spread - ok the rest of these i'm going to copy/paste from my list for beth sorry <3 but if i've already written a little deseription for each one why give myself more work yk. anyway: sad and wistful and A Lot as someone who was about to move out of my hometown when i read this. if i said it chapter two vibes. actually that doesn't mean anything ignore that. at one point arthur goes "are you trying to tell me something?" and merlin responds with, "i'm always trying to tell you something." which uh. he really is huh. it's whatever though.

fundamental imperfection - merlin and arthur as writers, gets their first meeting right (arguing and being dicks, then immediately becoming obsessed with each other). don't remember much else except the sequel is unfinished heavy angst and i cried like three times. don't read that (+ HIGHLY positively peer reviewed by beth. tell us a story about love!!!)

as long as we have we - i know you've read that fake marriage christmas fic which i love a lot (maybe it has problems but it's just so endearing...) and this is the same vibe. or well it's christmas and it's sweet so

(and said xmas fic: no matter how far away you roam <3)

tintagel - i don't know how i feel abt merlin and arthur in this but the parallels made to ygraine and nimueh are just too insanity inducing to ignore. my price is my life yours is to bear witness.... they wrote that in 2009!!!! insane

ok that's a lot + it's the best merlin ff has to offer. which is still not that great but. enjoy!! + b thankful you do not have to go into the hellscape that is the merlin ao3 tag...

kingdoms - i have no memory of this tbh but i wrote 'yeah.' underneath the bookmark so it's gotta have something

sorry edit one more I forgot - merlin and arthur are exes and arthur is just soooo weird and sad and repressed about it. also peer reviewed 🫶 (X) and also check out beth's merlin fanfiction recs tag if for some insane reason u want more. ok bye 🫂

Sometimes I like to scroll through the blog to review the # number one hits of my silly little skringos (in my opinion at least...half of them are probably post nobody remembers lol) and last night I happened to notice I really interesting theme of the characters trying to assign meaning to what has happened (and for a certain little seer, what he knows is going to happen)

The most popular example of this (also the most subtle? I don't think Zelda is direct about assigning meaning to her grief as the Hartells are imo) is Zelda's Prayer when she tells the made-up story about Rhoam bringing her springs to fix Terrako. She says it's a story she wishes she had for the slightest justification for things continuing on the way they are because if she had a story like that, it would prove that everything that she has done, her father has done, and everyone around her has done, has been out of love, something that is worthy of all of this pain. Zelda, however, ultimately resigns herself to the fact that, even if it was real, it would not make everything okay or worthwhile, there is no meaning to all of it.

(Also the scene where she vents to Urbosa about her frustrations with Link, she poignantly asks why Link had to lie to her, but it's not in the sense of "what was his reasons for keeping the master sword a secret" because she KNOWS that, but rather what does that mean about Link and what does it mean about her and their shared destiny and what was the purpose of it. Idk if this is even that relevant I just think it's a really good scene)

The next one I noticed was Larc in Roots Aren't Where the Birds Rest, he very bluntly says he does not know how to assign meaning to his malice in the way his brothers have and if he has not grown stronger or wiser from this pain, what has everything been for? Launo tells him that sometimes pain is simply painful and you can't assign some meaning to it, it means neither that it made you a better person nor that it's cosmic punishment from a fundamentally flawed person and that trying to assign meaning to everything will drive him crazy and just be content and Larc, against all odds, says he agrees with Launo, that there doesn't have to be a purpose for his suffering. (And then the most recent arcs might have undone all of this beautiful growth because what is there to be happy with if he has no family so....rip)

In what has been my favorite and most underrated arc, Astor and Mallory meet in Serenity's old house, and he...says something that is so unbelievably interesting to me.

"This is the best and only way, yes, yes. It has to be true. …Because if it’s not true, then my mother died of sickliness and grief out of never finding her runaway son. And that it’s my fault for any misery her other children experienced. If it’s not true, then that means you genuinely care, and will foolishly attempt to ruin this fragile, singular desire of mine. If that all isn’t true, then Elane, my truest and only friend, had honestly loved me. And if all those are truths, then it means you all just die to make the world a little more miserable, and nothing more. That there’s no meaning in it all. That there’s nothing of value to be found in that death and demise. And I can’t have that…Sacrifices have to be worth something."

To me, this is a man admitting that the entire reasoning for his actions is a ruse. Ganon had also been talking to Astor in the post I'm quoting and in previous scenes from this arc so... he listens to Ganon though he knows what he's saying is almost certainly wrong. And the reason he does that is that he has sacrificed the last 20 years of his life (a nice parallel to a certain queen doing the opposite) to serve Ganon to protect Mallory and if the world is not a horrible, cruel place like he has failed to convince himself of, it certainly will become one when the calamity comes and destroys everything as it is now. He is trying and failing miserably at giving his atrocities and what he has sacrificed a meaning. 

I could talk SO much more about the last scene because it's absolutely amazing to me but this is already 800 words and I don't want to clog your askbox more than I already have. I'm also sure there's more examples of this with other characters I just haven't noticed or perhaps I've arrive at the wrong conclusion about all of this but regardless...I think your writing is pretty neat :))

Please feel absolutely free to clog my inbox further in the future as you have honestly turned a rather mundane day for me into a great one. I’ve invested a lot of time into this story over the years and I’m truly happy to know that my details, ideas, and just general work put into it has coming across to you. I am certainly doomed to be trapped in a perpetual state of cringing at my old work as I always try to grow and improve, but there is always a touching solace and ease in knowing you enjoyed it, perceived and existed with it, in more than its fullest. I can only hope I can properly convey and return this same quiet emotion I have now when I call thanks to you my dear, dear, reader.

Best and worst motivations for both Peggy and Andre. And what you think their best and worst qualities are and why?

(oooh these are both such good questions, thank you!!

i think andre and peggy's best and worst motivations are the exact opposite of each other. andre is at his best when he does things for other people, and at his worst when he's selfish - but peggy is actually at her best when she puts herself first, and makes some of her worst decisions when she forgets to do that and prioritizes other people. neither andre nor peggy are fundamentally selfish or selfless, but andre is better to himself when he's caring about other people, and peggy is better to other people when she cares about herself.

i think andre's worst quality is his tendency toward downward spirals, aka, as soon as he makes one mistake or one thing starts going wrong for him, he freaks out and makes the problem a hundred times worse. andre could have fixed his mistake of leaving peggy in philadelphia with arnold when he first realized he messed up at the end of season 2!! but instead he gets paralyzed by regret and doubt, treats peggy's situation like it's already a lost cause and lets it keep getting worse, AND lets his ~emotional crisis~ drive him to mess around with philomena. i really don't think andre is a bad person or driven by bad motives in season 3 (he's still the same person underneath all the fuckups) but watching him is like holy shit dude, get a grip! he doesn't know how to handle setbacks (likely because up until this point, he's gotten through life pretty easily) and it's a huge problem.

i think peggy's worst qualities are her overconfidence and entitlement, especially in season 2. i think a lot of people misread peggy as naive, but to me, she's not naive at all. at no point was peggy being 'manipulated' by andre - she knew exactly what he was asking of her, and i think it does her character (as well as his) a disservice to assume she was 'blinded by her love for him' and fell for his tricks or whatever lol. peggy knew exactly what she signed up for, BUT her issue is that she signed up to turn arnold because she assumed, without a doubt, that it would WORK. peggy has lived her entire life being told constantly how beautiful she is, having guys fall all over themselves for her and being able to just wave away any suitor she doesn't feel like entertaining... and she is very confident in her own beauty and worth, so she of course feels entitled to these things! obviously andre is at fault here too for also vastly underestimating how pressuring arnold ends up being, but he had never even met him in person. but peggy meets arnold, sees exactly how he is, and decides to forge ahead with the plan anyway. she can't concede failure, especially social failure, and this is how she gets herself in too deep.)

Hi hi helloooo do you have more of this multiverse AU??? I read your snippet and loved it and I desperately need more! I love your work btw thanks for writing and sharing with us ❤️❤️❤️

I DO. Thank you so much!!!!!!

I've scribbled a fair amount for it, but like I said in the other snippet, I'm struggling mightily with what this story is and how to shape it. I know fundamentally what I want from it, but there are a lot of roadblocks. Right now I have a beginning, a few haphazard scenes with no context, some very vague ideas, and...profit????

One of my big hangups with it is whether or not I should break my golden rule and tell parts of it from Sam's POV, because this is a very different Sam, while still being Sam, if that makes any sense. And a chunk of what I have in mind would work really well from Sam's POV, and lose a little something if I don't use it. BUT. It's so important to me to not use his POV, which leaves me very conflicted.

ANYWAY, the general idea got sparked by a conversation the 'Yang crew has about the multiverse. One of my favorite ST:TNG episodes is Parallels, in which a ton of Enterprises from different multiverses wind up in the same universe - including one in which the Borg are winning, and one in which a Will Riker who failed to save Picard from the Borg gets to see him alive and well in another reality. So I did some what if thinking. What if Sam doesn't get resurrected by Lazarus? What if the reapers are winning? And what if a Sam from another universe - who never met Kaidan because there wasn't a Kaidan for him to meet - magics the Kaidan who never got him back into his universe, in which the reapers haven't made themselves known yet?

It sounded like a REALLY fun character study of Sam - what makes him Sam - and what changes about him when you change the major events of his life that shape him? While also being an opportunity to flip the script, and make Kaidan the enigmatic, closed off person that Sam has to figure out. With the underlying very sappy theme, "There was a universe in which Sam didn't have Kaidan, and one where Kaidan didn't have Sam, so the universe fixed it."

I am sure that is way more than what you wanted to know, so as a thanks for putting up with it, here's the snippet you requested:

~

Karin Chakwas lets out a shaky breath as the biofeeds stabilize and the patient’s breathing returns to normal. She takes a moment to let her own breathing return to normal. She glances over her shoulder at Sam, who still sits in his chair, staring at the hand now lying limp and loose under his.

It’s almost reassuring to know she isn’t the only one having a time of it.  

“Sam Shepard, I told you it was only a matter of time before I regretted the day you showed up in my clinic.”

“You did.” He tears his eyes away and slips his hand free, offering her a wan smile. “For what it’s worth…thank you. Hate to think about what would have happened if I brought him somewhere else.”

She worries her lip. You may still find out if we’re not careful. For years she’s turned a blind eye to the veritable parade of mishaps he’s brought through her clinic without asking why – the less she knows the better – but the ID on the genetic scanner won’t give her the luxury of feigned ignorance.

As it is, the fact she hasn’t already contacted the Alliance is going to put her in an uncomfortable position once they find out. But there are reasons you take leaps of faith, and one of those reasons is sitting in that chair.  

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” she says brightly. “I’ve listed him as a John Doe in the system for now, but it won’t be long before C-Sec starts asking questions.”

“And they won’t like the answers.” He rubs his nose with his hands, then props his chin on his fingertips. “I’ll get Garrus on it to buy us some time.”

A smile curves her lips. “Eventually, you may find Garrus’ limits when it comes to bending the rules.”

“Doubtful. And it sure as hell isn’t going to be today.”

“Sam,” she asks, because she has to. This time, she has to. “There have been no reports of weapons fire on the Presidium today. How—”

He smiles wryly. “How did someone who’s been dead over fifteen years wind up in your clinic with a bullet hole in his gut, ranting about the end of the world?”

“Well. I would have put it more delicately, but…yes.”