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isalisewrites · 4 days

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A Deep Dive into JKR's Terrible, Amateur Writing - Part One

Welcome to my new series, where I will prove to you, dear reader, that J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series and resident Twitter TERF, is actually a very, very poor writer.

And when I say 'poor writer,' I'm talking about her prose, her sentence structure, and her scenes. I am not going to discuss anything about the HP world nor the plots of the books.

This is all about the nitty gritty in the craft of writing itself.

Disclaimer for all readers: I'm going to sound very confident in my posts. I'm going to be working under the assumption that I'm a better writer than JKR. Because I am. My apologies if this rubs you the wrong way. You're just witnessing two and half decades of experience with the intensity from a neurodivergent who is hyperfocused on her special interest. I didn't just learn how to create stories; I learned the craft of writing to a minutia of details.

After years of being beaten down by others, I will no longer tolerate that.

I will be using my writing to compare with hers to make some of my points. Some of what I say in these posts could be considered stylistic choices. However, in my humble opinion, most of this is a difference of skill, which can be learned. Yes, everything I'm going to teach and cover in this series can be learned. There's no 'talent' here. You can learn how to become a better writer right here and now. You only have to understand the craft of writing and sentence structure to better improve your prose and scenes.

I don't have fame and money.

I don't need them to teach you how to write better than JKR.

You're free to disagree with my stances about this and about everything I cover, of course. But if you're a writer, you might gain some insight from this post and I sincerely hope you are enriched by my efforts in this. I spent quite a few hours on this post. Helping others become a better writer than JKR is one of the greatest contributions I can give to society.

Thus, take what resonates and leave what doesn't.

I have stated before: JKR's writing is bloated in the wrong places, underwritten in others, and the prose is poor. These problems show up in all of her HP books.

Buckle up, my writing friends. Grab a snack. Hydrate. Let's begin.

Class is in session.

In this post, we're going to dissect a page from HP4.

There's so much wrong with this page and the three pages of this scene overall. So much to go over. Bullet points I'll cover from this page:

Disconnected Dialogue Lines

The Great Sin of Adverbs

Too much fucking dialogue!

Wrong focus altogether in this scene

Out of POV writing

First point. This is a huge ongoing issue I see in all of the HP books. There are a lot of disconnected dialogue lines, which become confusing over time. This could be an issue of the publisher, but it's still a problem. In the middle of this page, we have:

Sirius hesitated. "I've been hearing some very strange things," he said slowly.

Wait, wait, wait. Who said this? Listen, I know. I know it's Sirius. However, this is an improper placement on the page and can become confusing because Harry also goes by he/him pronouns and he's also in this scene. While the dialogue here suggests Sirius is talking, it could easily be misinterpreted if there were other characters or if he said something that Harry could've just as easily said.

To make this dialogue more clear for the reader, it should go as follows:

Sirius hesitated. "I've been hearing some very strange things," he said slowly.

Second point. JKR is an adverb sinner, a criminal. Jail. "Do not pass go; do not collect $200." Arrest her for these blatant crimes, please, for the love of god.

Look, I love adverbs. They're great. Don't fucking listen to anyone who outright demonizes them (including your huffy, uppity literature professors). Adverbs are the seasonings of writing. You season your food; you also need to season your writing when the case asks for it.

However...

Adverbs should always be used sparingly when connected to dialogue tags. The setting in this scene is: Harry is in the Gryffindor Common Room at night crouched in front of the fireplace where Sirius is in the fire in a floo call. I read through the whole scene, though I've only shown one page here.

Harry says a line of dialogue 'slowly' three times and Sirius says a line of dialogue 'slowly' two times.

The same adverb 'slowly' is used FIVE FUCKING TIMES IN THREE PAGES.

I want to scream, not gonna lie here. Set this adverb on fire!

What does this adverb do for us in this conversation? What is so important that we have to be told that five lines of dialogue were said slowly? What do they contribute? Spoiler alert: nothing. What are their facial expressions? Harry is 14. He's exhausted since it's well after 1am or so and he's burdened with the new knowledge of dragons for the first task. He's kneeling in front of a very hot fireplace. There's fire fumes and smoke, potentially. Is he fidgeting? Is he yawning? Rubbing his eyes? Bouncing a leg? Is he picking at the carpet or rug?

Harry is a tired, burdened child.

Show me this!

Now I'm not saying that you can't use adverbs in your dialogue tags. There's a huge difference between "he said softly" and "he whispered." It's about balancing the moment when an adverb says just enough versus an adverb replacing well needed scene enrichment. Let's compare this with a section from my HP time travel fanfiction, Terrible, But Great, Chapter Thirty.

Dumbledore nodded at Monty, pocketing his wand. “Mr. Potter.” “Lo, Professor,” said Monty, pout gone, but still a watchful light in his gaze. “Is there a problem?” asked Dumbledore in a mild tone. Ice slipped in between Tom’s ribs, piercing his flesh. Monty tilted his head. “No, sir.” Oh, but Tom knew better. He could see through that innocent facade. The man could’ve been a Slytherin for how much he was cataloguing every little detail, from Tom’s appearance, to the content of the selected books, and to the supplies of ink, quill, and parchment scattered on the surface of the table. Tom masked the raw, whirling feelings in his chest with a well practiced blank, emotionless expression. He willed himself to hide. “Nothing at all, sir,” said Tom lightly. “Young Mr. Potter was regaling me about his friendship with Miss Malfoy.” Monty glanced at Tom, brows furrowing. Those blue eyes were piercing, filled with suspicion. “Was he now?” Dumbledore said; though his tone was still without direct accusation, Tom could hear the hint of it. “Then, may I ask, why a silencing charm was necessary for such a benign conversation?” Tom wet his lips. His throat was dry. “I thought it wise to avoid disturbing others in the library.” “I am awfully loud,” said Monty with a sage nod. “Ah. A noble intent. However, it is not an appropriate use of magic in the library,” said Dumbledore, his gaze firm as it bore down on Tom. “Ten points from Slytherin. I think it’d be wise to take your studies to your common room, Mr. Riddle.” “Yes, sir,” whispered Tom.

I only used "said Tom lightly" once in this section to show Tom attempting to be unaffected by Dumbledore's interference. I did not dialogue dump information in giant chunks. I did utilized actions tags versus adverbs, like Monty tilting his head or Tom licking his lips. I suspect that if JKR had written this scene, she'd have used lines like:

"No, sir," said Monty curiously.

"I thought it wise to avoid disturbing others in the library," said Tom nervously.

The adverbs that JKR's uses add nothing to her scenes. They're just thrown into them without a thought. Did she even reread this scene after she wrote it? I cringe in agony if I use an uncommon word more than three or four times in an entire 4,000 to 7,000 word chapter, let alone the same adverb five times in three pages. Good grief.

There are two other adverbs used in this page, hastily and bitterly. Hastily does nothing for the scene and is connected to another issue, but I'll go over that in the end. However, bitterly is one of the adverbs I'd keep. It gives us a glimpse into Harry's feelings here. We need more of this, but we got nothing.

Thus, the overuse of adverbs in JKR's dialogue detracts and steals so much from the scene.

Third point: there's too much dialogue and no description whatsoever. Again, the adverbs are a pathetic attempt to give us something, but they're thrown in there without a damn forethought. We're missing the crackle of the fire and the smell of it. We're missing Sirius' facial expressions. We're missing Harry moving around on the floor, fidgeting, yawning, rubbing his eyes, feeling the heat of the fire, bouncing his legs, picking at the rug, something, anything, etc.

The dialogue is bloated with a terribly boring conversation. It's just endless dialogue with nothing else. No, it's awful. Welcome to the fourth bullet point. This scene focuses on the entirely wrong point. This scene is 100% a plot device and it's terribly done as well. It's three pages about Karkaroff being a Death Eater--oh no he might be trying to kill you, Harry, aaaaaa--and something about Bertha Jorkins being near Voldemort's last location. Meh. Who cares. Somebody has been trying to kill Harry in every book thus far. This isn't a new development, sweetie.

We been done know this, okay? Come on.

This is a stilted, unnatural conversation between Harry and Sirius. It's not realistic. It's not normal. Telling Harry about the Karkaroff's past is boring and does nothing for him. One line, maybe two, for Sirius to say, "Hey, keep an eye out for Karkaroff. He's an old Death Eater." Done. End of Karkaroff information. And cut Bertha Jorkins out altogether. I'm sorry, but why the hell are we talking about a dead woman to a 14 year old kid whose biggest problem at the moment is dealing with a jealous friend, school ostracization, and a giant fire breathing lizard???

These points are important to the plot, but they're not important to Harry.

The plot isn't important. No, it's not.

Harry is the POV character.

Harry is the single most important aspect in every scene and should be treated as such.

The plot should weave around Harry, slowly revealing itself to both Harry and the reader. Harry should not be the weaver of the plot. He should not be used in plot devices.

Do you know what part of the conversation was summarized in the prose between Harry and Sirius in a single paragraph versus the three pages about Karkaroff?

Harry talking about how no one believes him about not putting his name in the Goblet of Fire. About the school hating him. About Ron, about his betrayal and his jealousy. About Rita Skeeter. About seeing the dragons as the first task. These are all important to Harry. These all are causing pain to Harry's heart right now. Somebody give this child a hug, please.

We missed out on exploring Harry's feelings here. The author skips the MOST important part of the conversation, what could've been a deeply emotional, either positive or negative, conversation between Harry and Sirius.

Oh, this scene could've been so good. It could've been amazing. There are so many paths that could've been explored here, too.

We could've had a callous Sirius, who doesn't notice Harry's state of being, and just goes on and on about nothing of importance where Harry clams up. Or we've could've had a comforting Sirius, who attempts to give Harry some actual advice about his friendship with Ron. We could've seen Harry opening up in his body language, connecting with this parental figure in his life. We could've heard a story of Sirius' time as a kid at school with Harry's father and the marauders.

We were robbed of an important moment between Harry and Sirius.

Instead, the author puts the focus on the red herring 'foreshadowing' of Karkaroff. What a waste. She's trying to put suspicion on him, rather than Moody/Barty Crouch Jr., the real Death Eater in disguise. Again, who cares. It's not about them. It's about Harry and how his experiences are affecting him. It's about how he reacts to them.

This scene is a waste of time and paper. It's empty of emotion and movement/flow. It's just there for a set up and it's glaringly obvious during a second read of the book.

When I say, "The writing is bloated and underwritten at the same time." this is what I mean. We're focusing on the wrong things here.

Fifth point. JKR breaks the POV character with the following line:

"--and reading between the lines of that Skeeter woman's article last month, Moody was attacked the night before he started at Hogwarts. Yes, I know she says it was another false alarm," Sirius said hastily, seeing Harry about to speak, "but...

Harry is the POV character. Sirius 'seeing Harry about to speak' should NOT be occurring in the prose whatsoever. To fix this with the bare minimum of effort for this poorly written dialogue line:

"--and reading between the lines of that Skeeter woman's article last month, Moody was attacked the night before he started at Hogwarts--" Harry opened his mouth to interject, but Sirius said hastily, "Yes, I know she says it was another false alarm, but..."

I wouldn't write these lines like this, by the way. I just don't want to rewrite this. It's a poor paragraph overall, but this is an example of returning the POV back to Harry. Sirius isn't 'seeing' anything anymore. Harry is doing an action and Sirius reacts to his action.

Breaking POV is a rule that can be occasionally broken, but should be done so with intent and purpose. I'm pretty confident when I say that JKR probably had no idea that this was a mistake on her part in the prose.

All right then.

We have come to an end of Part One in this series. We have dissected a single page and a single scene in JKR's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The page in question is 333 should you wish to look it up and study the scene yourself.

More to follow because I have lots of pages to go over. This will definitely be series, ah dear.

And so, please do the world the greatest of favors and write better than J.K. Rowling. I promise, it's not that hard once you see the differences.

Until next time.

Isa

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prickly-paprikash · 8 days

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Feels like the beef is over. Possible Kendrick album drop on the horizon. He even went and lifted copyright claims over any video that uses his four diss tracks since him and his team knew the fire they started over the weekend and that this would go a long way in helping out reactors, edit channels, dissection channels and more.

With the (likely) end of this feud, investigations need to begin. If Kendrick has proper receipts over his allegations, it needs to see the light of day and I hope it's soon. Rap disses is one thing—these are predator accusations that need to be met with the proper gravity. Given his relations with Baka and the stories in Toronto cropping up of his activities, I feel at the very least confident that there will be things Drake needs to address. And address them soon.

But I also want to discuss the (possible) last diss. The Heart Part 6.

A pathetic attempt to steal a title from Kendrick's own series of singles "The Heart Parts I-V". Songs that Kendrick has utilized to give introspection regarding the industry, his masculinity, depression, his savior complex and so much more. And Drake uses that title for what exactly?

Not a brutal response. Not a catchy summer bop.

He sounds defeated. His lyrics are incoherent, going from saying he planted that false information, to also saying that those who planted it are clowns and fakes. He dismisses and ridicules Kendrick's "Mother, I Sober" song, a story about Kendrick being harassed and SA. Except, as I have since corrected myself over thanks to others on here, that the entire song is him saying the assault never happened and no one believes him. So not only did Drake contradict his claims in one song, he showed his illiteracy.

And Kendrick doesn't respond like he does with Family Matters. When Drake dropped FM, Kendrick immediately invalidated an entire seven minute track by dropping his own response, a haunting meet the grahams, within thirty minutes. A malicious dissection and mock therapy session between him and every member of the Grahams, including Drake's alleged hidden daughter. And finishes the blow by dropping Not Like Us in less than a day, a certified summer hit that has already been played over and over again across the world. When Drake stans accused him of making boring, sleep-causing disses because they were too deep and complex, Kendrick dropped all pretense and released a song produced by DJ Mustard himself to bluntly call Drake and his posse predators while making everyone, including Drake's own base, to dance to the beat.

And we return to Drake's last response. More dislikes than likes. Boring. Lacking the pettiness and replayability that previous disses possessed. A sad, final attempt at a defense and Kendrick doesn't seem to bother responding.

Instead, it seems he leaves it up to the public now. Let them do the rest of the work.

I have to ask one final time.

What made Drake think it was a smart idea to go bar for bar in a lyrical war against a man who won a Pulitzer and has more than three times the amount of Grammy's he does?

RIP Drake, I guess. Didn't realize your entire legacy would be destroyed on a club beat. Ironic, actually.

#kendrick lamar #drake #music #hip hop #the beef seems to be over #a decade long cold war ended on a hot day with the hottest summer beat #poetic really

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genericpuff · 10 months

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The LO TV show isn't happening, and here's why.

Now, before I begin, courtesy to /u/Princess_Space_Goose because they're one of the driving forces behind these observations concerning stuff in the entertainment sector and they were the first ones to make a comprehensive post about it over on reddit shortly after we got into it in the Discord and compiled everything we knew. But I also REALLY wanna talk about this and I'm surprised to see I haven't yet. They've covered reddit, so I'm covering Tumblr LMAO

Disclaimer: Long post ahead. Much of what I say below is speculation but there's a lot of damning evidence to support it. Take it with grains of salt.

Rachel has vague-posted about the show a couple times over the past few years, but very sparingly so, always stating that it's "in the works" without anything to actually show for it. This would have been fine back in 2020 or even 2021 (the pandemic did bring a lot of television/movie development to a crawl) but we're over halfway through 2023 now.

So where's the show? Who's running it? What is it gonna look like? Which streaming service is it going to be hosted on?

We literally do not know any definitive answers to these questions because nothing has been revealed and at this point in the game, that's basically a death sentence. LO has been on a noticeable decline in stats over the past year, while we obviously can't access the backend numbers (and neither can Rachel as far as I know because WT guards them with an iron fist which is a whole other topic for discussion) it's still very clear by the comic's rating slowly but surely dropping and the like count average lowering (obv the like count isn't indicative of view count but if the ratio has remained the same, that means if the like count lowers, the viewership is likely lowering too). There's also been certain behavior from WT over the past year that hints at the comic not doing well, such as its VERY aggressive ad campaigning which often undercuts other series on the platform that are far better than LO and deserve the spotlight, but lose it anyways because WT just wants to keep its golden goose on life support even after its heart has stopped beating.

So the fact that we don't know the answers to these questions still after 4 years is NOT good. We don't know anything and while that was excusable 3 years ago, at this point, it's more indicative of the project being at a standstill or dropped completely, and what we dug up and discussed in the ULO Discord (and what was later posted to reddit) proves it with some very telling information dissected from LinkedIn and other sources.

So far, the only people we know connected to this project are Rachel Smythe (the creator of LO) and Stephanie K Smith (the appointed showrunner). Showrunners are the lifeblood of television series, remember this. Here's a little bit about her:

Lore Olympus still doesn't have a network, this means it has no definitive spot to air, which is not good at this point, because the network is what primarily funds these projects. Think of "Netflix shows" - they're not necessarily made by Netflix, they're made by studios that Netflix funds and as such they're given the Netflix branding because Netflix is their proprietary distribution network and benefactor. So LO has no network or streaming service funding its production. All of her other credited works have affiliated networks/distributors, but LO doesn't.

"But what about Jim Henson Company?" Jim Henson Company bought the rights to LO in 2019 to produce it, that doesn't necessarily mean they were onboard to fund the entire project. Again, these studios need networks to back them, not just for monetary purposes, but with the promise that their project will have a place to go when it's finished, whether it's Netflix, HBO, etc. Think of it like a movie theater - the movie theaters aren't the ones making the movies, but they have deals with the studios to air those movies with the agreement that both sides will be making money.

Jim Henson Company is a production studio, not a network. Not only that, but they're primarily for-hire for puppetry/animatronic projects, they're not the same kind of studio as, say, Laika, or Disney, or Warner Bros. Much of their work is done on the backend, creating animatronics and puppets for kids' productions, monster movies, etc. Currently they're working as the animatronic designers for Five Nights at Freddy's, but that movie isn't a JHC movie, it's a Blumhouse production, which has hired JHC to create animatronics for them.

So, the fact that they were the ones to buy out LO for production rights is... very odd. Because for starters, they don't tend to buy out production rights like major studios, they're typically for hire, but they're also not an animation studio. Any animation projects they've worked on were for concept art and design, such as Word Party, but the folks at JHC primarily specialize in conceptualization and practical effects. That's their whole shtick, it's what they're selling, it's what they get hired for.

That's all early stuff though, stuff we've been speculating on for ages. What came to light recently that spurred on this whole essay was discovering this one section on Stephanie K's LinkedIn:

There are a couple things we can glean from this. First, we know this has to be LO even if it isn't being named, because LO is the only one that was bought by JHC.

This also confirms that LO did end up with a distribution network, specifically HBO Max.

But it also confirms that Stephanie K Smith, the showrunner, is no longer on the project, either due to willingly quitting or being removed. According to the time stamps, she left in April of this year.

This is especially not good because without a showrunner, there's no leader. Showrunners are essential to these projects. So without a showrunner, and without any sort of announcement of a replacement, LO's television show is a ship without a captain, a car without a driver, a Hell's Kitchen without a Gordon Ramsay.

There's mention of an "animated presentation" but as mentioned in that reddit post above, that's not necessarily a pilot, it's more likely it was this. Which can't even really be called "animation", it's just video editing, rigging and tweening, but I digress.

There's a lot more in that reddit thread that dives into some of the details of Stephanie K's stuff, including the HBO Max affiliation and how that potentially connects to the Sydney Sweeney trailer, but ultimately, all of these breadcrumbs add up to one of two things:

LO's television show is in severe development hell which it likely will not come out of for quite some time, especially right now with both the writer's strike and streaming services gutting their animation connections.

LO's show isn't happening at all but with LO's numbers declining and its audience growing more fed up with the series (look no further than the comments on Instagram about LO's recent Eisner win, people are PISSED) Rachel and WT are trying to do as much damage control as possible by dangling a carrot in front of the audience they have left in the hopes that they'll stick around long enough on the promise of a TV show happening to keep siphoning cash and views. After all, there are two things many readers are still sticking around for - the SA plotline, and the TV show, and both of those things are being unnecessarily dragged out in the vaguest way possible with no real resolution in sight.

Neither of these are good, but I think what's even more telling is that, since that post was made on reddit, Rachel has attended SDCC and taken part in a new interview from Girl Wonder Podcast, and when asked about the show, all she had to say was this:

"Um, it’s been really interesting. It’s been educational for me. So, what I—what has been done so far is beautiful. Like, if I could share it, I would. But I can’t. Because it’s very naughty."

IDK if the "naughty" bit is referring to the show or just her revealing info about it, but the fact that NOTHING was shown at SDCC is just. Y'all, I'm sorry, but the show is not happening. If you're gonna show off previews for television ANYWHERE, it's SDCC. It's like the E3 of comics and entertainment media. So the fact that she's STILL VAGUE-POSTING ABOUT IT EVEN AT A MAJOR EVENT WHERE IT'S COMMONPLACE TO REVEAL TRAILERS AND PREVIEWS OF NEW PROJECTS, like... it's just not happening. Jim Henson Company bought the rights to produce LO as a TV show in the summer of 2019. Since then, we haven't seen a SHRED of news, if you google "Lore Olympus TV show" it'll still be the same 2-3 articles from 2019 talking about JHC buying the rights and that's it. If you do further sleuthing, all you'll find is Rachel saying "yeah it's still happening but I can't say anything!" which means fucking nothing at this point. The only 'hope' I have left is that they'll announce it at NYCC which has Rachel in a top billing spot in its advertising, but I'm really not holding my breath at this point.

Animated productions take a while, sure, but LO wasn't the only comic bought for TV production in that late 2010's/early 2020's era. Heartstopper was bought in 2019, and it made it to Netflix by April 2022. And it was live action, a medium SEVERELY affected by the pandemic, unlike animation, which wasn't affected as much because a lot of animation development can be done from home. What did affect the animation sector was streaming services like Netflix gutting their connections to animation studios and putting animated projects on the chopping block... which also doesn't bode well for LO.

It's 2023 now and we still don't even have anything beyond those initial announcement articles and Rachel making empty promises. It's not happening. Don't fall for the "it's coming soon but I can't say anything" nonsense. It's far less genuine now than it was 3 years ago and it has nothing to support those claims that it's actually in development, and ironically far more to support mere speculation that she's lying or doing damage control.

And, if it actually is happening, on a shred of belief in that being a possibility, then it sure as shit isn't being marketed well. Knowing how to build hype in a product is an entire course of knowledge. Marvel is practically the king of building hype, they're why people sit until the very end of the credits now in the hopes of seeing an after-credit scene, even in movies that aren't made by them. LO's numbers are bleeding right now, so to not show anything at even the major events like SDCC is a blatant misfire. Almost like there isn't anything to show in the first place.

You can take all of this evidence as you will. Some of it you may dismiss as "overthinking" or whatever have you. And a lot of it is speculation based on the crumbs we've picked up along the way.

But let me pose you this as a final thought: how can it be a good sign when everything being asked about the show, by fans and critics alike, comes down to "Is the show still happening?"

The best time to reveal proof of the LO television show was 3 years ago. The second best time is now.

#lore olympus critical #lo critical #antiloreolympus #anti lore olympus #long post #analysis post #essay post

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slamdunkhcs · 11 months

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Hello!!! Just wanted to say I love all your posts and dissections on the characters, I'm getting a lottt of sd brain rot and hopefully I can start writing for it soon!! Thank you for keeping the Fandom alive <3

ps. Top 3 characters?

Thank you so much, it makes me really happy hearing this. I haven’t been very active for a while but i will try responding to more requests. I’m not good at ranking characters but i will list out some of my favorites and why i like them

my favorite slam dunk characters

ayako

Okay I haven’t made many posts with her included (which im gonna do 😂) but I LOVE Ayako

She’s very beautiful and i think in a way that’s unconventional compared to many mangas. Curly haired female characters are really uncommon in manga, so seeing a girl like ayako was really surprising. I think her features overall make her look really realistic. Like she looks morrocan or dominican, and the fact that she’s portrayed to be canonically beautiful makes it so that her features are portrayed in a positive light

Also she’s literally the backbone of the team? Part of why Miyagi stayed for hs basketball was because she encouraged the team so well. She’s been there since before the team was good, like how akagi and kogure were. And throughout the series, she gave the boys ALOT of support. Like girl was literally the one who taught Sakuragi the basics??

sawakita

If you don’t alr know, I love this boy sm. Like that’s my man right there

Sawakita is also very different from other sports manga rivals. I mean he gets made fun of by his own team, mf cries SM. He has fangirls and I think he treats them well (shown by how he wore a t shirt one of them gifted).

He’s not a bad person either, he even helped Rukawa up when he fell down. He was very encouraging towards his teammates too when he was benched. DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS PARENTS?? He’s so respectful to them, boy was out there thanking them for everything when he was drunk on a plane. Plus from his backstory, i think it shows he really loves his dad. Some yall mfs could never LMAOOO

I think his dynamic with Rukawa and Sakuragi too. He was funny asl with Sakuragi. And I like that Sawakita was part of what pushed Rukawa to improving as a player (as well as Sendoh). ALL THAT AND HES GOOD LOOKING???

kiyota

He grew on me BIG time

Mf is funny asl?? Like his interactions with Sakuragi, especially when they went on that trip together?? I just know that mf is the class clown. I feel like he’s hella popular too because of how goofy he is

I feel like he’d treat a girl mad good too. Like he would be the type to make his gf’s sides hurt from laughing LMAO. And i think hed be really sweet and talk about his girl to everybody and get her gifts. He’d love me lets be fr

I like that he’s chaotic too. LIKE he gives me black airforce menace energy

sendoh

This boy is so cute and sweet i just know it

I like that he was a chill rival too. Like he was just so down to earth, he wasn’t an asshole to NOBODY (except maybe the fish). He aint insulted nobody, not rukawa, not sakuragi. He just minded his business and played basketball

His appearance had a big glow up through the series too. People like rukawa were always drawn as good looking ecen in the beginning but sendoh was drawn to be ugly?? Like he did NOT look good. But towards the end of the series, dude was honestly stunning asl. Like he needs to put me on to whoever threaded his eyebrows

Honestly he seems like such a chill person to be friends with?? He seems so open minded, i fr cant see him as the type to judge anybody or treat anybody badly. I think at his school everyone likes him for how down to earth he is (and his looks LOLLL)

Also, I really like Miyagi, Minami, Mitsui, Maki, Fukuda, Rukawa, and Haruko too, I’m not sure ill do a pt 2 tho

#slam dunk #スラムダンク #headcanon #slam dunk anime #anime and manga #kiyota #nobunaga kiyota #ayako #ayako slam dunk #slam dunk manga #favorite #favorite characters #eiji sawakita #sawakita eiji #eiji #akira sendoh #sendoh akira #sendoh #blog

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vendettasfanfictioning · 6 months

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Sam-coded: Analyzing the parallels between Destiel and Sam's arcs with his love interests.

PART 1: JESSICA MOORE

FOREWORD & DISCLAIMER

With a fan community as enormous as Supernatural's, it is fair to assume that most, if not everything, stated here has already been pointed out or dissected multiple times before—especially considering the long span of time that the show has aired and the three years thereafter. The goal of this post is not to claim these ideas as my own but rather to compile and expand on them.

I also want to add that regarding Jessica, specifically, the canon facts about her are incredibly limited what with her only "real" appearance being at the Pilot episode (though she is referenced and alluded to in multiple episodes all throughout).

That said, she had a critical role in shaping Sam's goals, with emphasis on earlier seasons' Sam's development so it felt fitting to start this series off with her.

There are many instances that the fandom has pointed out cinematic parallels between Sam and Jessica & Dean and Castiel. In this post, I would be elaborating on all of the key points I have found, namely: 1. The scripted meeting, 2. Grieving a lover, and other random findings.

1. IN THE BEGINNING (WITH REGARDS TO GOD'S PLAN)

To start, both Sam/Jess and Dean/Cas were fated to meet to serve a higher narrative purpose.

Frankly, I think that is fucking beautiful, but not only that; it can be argued that, if we were to speculate that Sam met Jessica right after he ran away from Dean and John, then Jessica and Castiel did the same thing. They pulled their respective Winchester brother out of hell/a dark place. (That may just be me talking out of my ass, but it's such a poetic concept, isn't it?)

Most importantly though, both parties were doomed by the narrative, but in polar opposite ways.

(Screenshots taken from 5x20)

Sam was destined to love and then lose Jessica for two reasons: to start the story, and to make Sam go down the "dark" path i.e. adjacent to Lucifer, demon blood, evil. Their story was scripted from the get-go, even before Supernatural decided to go metatextual with God.

(Screenshots taken from 15x17)

On the other hand, Dean and Castiel were never meant to be anything more. God himself says that Castiel was supposed to continue obeying heaven, do what he was told, and it is one of (if not the one) that completely separated the Supernatural storyline from any of Chuck's other drafts.

(GIFs from 15x18 and 15x19)

Furthermore, Castiel's love for Dean and Dean's loss of him marks the end of the story and makes Dean defy the role that God made for him. Admittedly, it's a flawed parallel, as Dean has already moved on from being Michael's Sword and the Righteous Man. To that, I say it only further proves the point; their unscripted "profound bond" directly opposed God's word. It was what should have broken the cycle.

And still, both ended in tragedy. It's just that one was written to end that way and the other wrote itself.

2. THE WINCHESTER BROTHERS ON GRIEF

(GIFs are from 1x01 and 12x23)

This segment can't start any other way than with these iconic shots of the Winchesters holding their brother back from running towards the love of their life (as the lover, in question, dies/walks to their death). These shots are the very reason I started this whole analysis, and they speak for themselves.

Even their clothes are inverted here, because Sam and Dean are experiencing the exact same thing. The grief, pain, and helplessness that comes with losing a partner.

(While compiling these, I stumbled upon the eerie realization that the shots attached above and the ones below have swapped color palettes in a way? Granted, that may just be some editing thing. Technology and video quality aside though, you can't deny that the vibrance of the fire vs. the bleakness of Apocalypse World juxtapose aesthetically well with the shots below. Just another one of those, "is it intentional or did Supernatural just run out of options from the sheer breadth of it?")

(Screenshots taken from 1x05 and 8x07)

This parallel in particular is what makes me believe that Supernatural either has amazing writing or just a terrible retention for continuity and reflection. Because, again, Sam and Dean are going through the same damn thing here: guilt. Specifically, the guilt of their lover's death—how both had reasons to believe they could've prevented it.

Also, these are cinematically shot the same way: Jessica and Castiel by the road, a deadpan stare at the Impala as the brothers drive by, then disappearing from sight at a second glance. How else are we to take this other than Dean grieving a lover the same way Sam grieved for his girlfriend? Did they just forget this scene from 1x05 when they filmed 8x07? (Most likely, yeah, but that doesn't disprove its contribution to the narrative.)

The premise is also similar, damningly so, the only notable difference being the formatting, with season 1's monster-of-the-week almost-standalones and season 8's continuous, over-arcing conflict with hell and the tablets.

(Screenshots taken from 1x05 and 8x07)

At the very core, though, is Sam and Dean with their, "I could have—" statements. Sam had visions about Jessica dying, he could have warned her. Dean had Castiel right there at the portal to exit Purgatory, he could have pulled him out. It is that guilt they must carry around and that burden they must bear.

(Screenshots taken from 1x05 and 8x07)

They even give one another the same damn pep talk. Dean saw that Jessica's death was slowly killing Sam, the same way Sam saw that Dean's return from Purgatory without Castiel was tearing Dean apart.

(Screenshots taken from 1x05 and 8x07)

Lastly, here are the verbal acknowledgements of their grief. Because hey, who am I to try to explain subtext and nonverbatim connections.

2.1. TO BE JOHN WINCHESTER'S SON

In this segment, I would like to point out two of the instances that Sam and Dean accepted being compared to John Winchester, both in regards to losing Jessica and Castiel respectively.

(Screenshots taken from 1x20)

Again, this is what the story was all about. Sam and John could or at least find solidarity in this, as was intended for the plot. (They even mirror God and Lucifer here, which is an entirely different can of worms I am not opening today.)

Keep in mind, Sam's always hated how John raised them, but it is evident that he found some comfort with John given their undeniably specific situations.

(Screenshots taken from 13x04 I talked a little more about this arc here)

Sam openly calls Dean out on his John-esque behavior; an irony in itself given that the brothers have long since established that Sam was the one who resembled John the most whereas Dean was always, "yes, sir!" until the very end.

In this very same arc, there is a concerning increase Dean's alcohol consumption—and the use of alcohol as a coping mechanism in itself, rather than the leisurely treat it recurringly was in the show—which are telling signs for the headspace Dean was in.

They both lashed out in John Winchester ways they've internalized over the years growing up. Sam went down the path of self-destructive revenge-seeking, while Dean lashed out by rejecting being a father role to Jack, becoming the "drill sergeant," instead. These traits were what hurt them as children and were the crux of John's grief over Mary's murder. Round and round the cycle goes.

2.2. TO BE LUCIFER'S VICTIM

(GIFs from 5x03 (a) and (b))

Again, another iconic parallel considering Lucifer's go-to trick to getting what he wants was to pose as the person his victims want the most. Another example of this exact same scenario is when Lucifer appears to rock star Vince Vicente as his dead girlfriend (and Vince ended up saying yes.)

In the earlier seasons, the most obvious choice for Sam was of course Jessica, as Lucifer was desperate to get ahold of Sam as a vessel. That was narratively sound, right? Even though 5 seasons (so about 5 years in canon) have passed since Jessica died, Sam hadn't forgotten her and she remained his greatest weakness.

(GIFs from 15x19)

Then on the flip side, during a time the story's well past the Script and God's most definitely free-styling, Lucifer appears again—and it is on God's orders. The devil chose Dean's weakness (Castiel) to blindside him, so Dean ends up running on emotions instead of questioning it.

This happened right after the episode Castiel confessed, and before the episode that Should Not Be Named... That also speaks for itself, doesn't it? Insane, absolute insanity to me.

3. MISCELLANEOUS: SYMBOLISMS & OTHER COINCIDENCES

(Screenshots taken from 1x01 and 14x12)

This is where I might be reaching, but it's a small observation I noticed while bingeing the Pilot episode. Of course, at the time, production likely didn't even put much thought into Jessica's costume, but it's a funny thing to point out all the same. (I screamed a little about Cas' healer motifs here in comparison to Cesar/Jesse if you're interested.)

(Screenshots taken from 1x01 and 10x09)

They both have the same Look when their boyfriend is talking down on himself, I can't even make this shit up.

+ I'm so frickin' tired I cannot look for screenshots anymore but Jessica's cookies plus Castiel's "you don't understand, I need pie," moment in the convenience store resonate with me.

+ Might edit and add more to this later, for now I sleepge.

REFERENCES

1x01: Pilot 1x05: Bloody Mary 1x20: Dead Man's Blood 5x03: Free to be You and Me 5x20: The Devil You Know 8x07: A Little Slice of Kevin 10x09: The Things We Left Behind 12x23: All Along the Watchtower 13x04: The Big Empty 14x12: Prophet and Loss 15x17: Unity 15x18: Despair 15x19: Inherit the Earth

UP NEXT: SARAH BLAKE

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prettyboykatsuki · 1 year

Text

the itoshi brothers (and how bluelock handles betrayal as character motivation)

✦ or why i don't think sae hates rin afterall.

✦ a / n ; this absurdly long and absurdly extensive. my bad. also sorry if this is obvious to some people, sometimes it takes me a few reads fdfksj

i want to preface this by saying - i'm not really very invested in the itoshi brothers. or at least i wasn't originally. the character im usually most taken with is isagi, but i've sort of been wanting to dissect sae because i can't fully wrap my head around his character. and when i want to understand a character, i usually end up going through a re-read of their chapters and arcs - to get a feel for them and all.

sorry for the thick paragraph, but tl;dr this is the first time im really analyzing these two so if this is obvious to everyone else please ignore me asjdskjds

anyway. the analysis.

there's two things that need to be examined when taking a look at the itoshi brothers. the first being their relationship before sae took off to spain, the second being how bluelock sets up concepts like betrayal for the sake of improvement.

firstly - i think we need to address saes character on a base level. sae is shown to be relatively detached in general. whereas rin has forever been more of sensitive character - sae is critical and level-headed. i suspect this is partially accredited to his role as older brother.

but you'll notice that sae is significantly more gentle to rin. he's a good older brother, both encouraing rin to do well and play soccer with him. even if he lacks that sort of finesse with teammates.

from the beginning, rin idolizes his older brothers character. every goal he has is in some way relating to pleasing or impressing sae. it's not unusual for him to do as a younger brother, especially one who was obviously doted on by rin. it's very clear that rin loves his brother deeply and feels a need to earn his favor nearly always.

there's this conversation they have in ch.124 that really drew me to this conclusion and sort of shifted my perspective on this relationship. i had always figure that sae had experienced something in spain that we, the audience don't know. it's very bluelock for characters to change drastically due to some crushing defeat (case and point kunigami)

but i hadn't take into consideration what that event would've changed in these twos relationship where maybe i should've. the thing is that sae is always concerned about how rin will fare without him.

in this chapter, sae asks rin what he thinks about or considers with playing soccer and rin responds with something along the lines of - he's not really thinking. he uses instinct and has confidence his brothers passes to him. sae is of course critical of this.

aside from the very obvious affection that this two share - sae goes onto tell rin that he's going off to spain soon. he once again, encourages rin to do his best and not fall behind while he's gone. rin responds with of course, and promises to become best in japan while sae goes onto become best in the world.

from there, we see rins life as he continues to grow up while his brother is in spain for several years. rin is shown to feel a little bit lonely, but keeps his promise of dedicating his entire life to football. not only is he a good team-player, he spends his free time practicing alone because he has full faith in the promise that he made with sae when they were young.

whats noticeable to me is the way rin describes playing without sae as constricting or inconvenient. the sport doesn't quite feel the same without sae around, but rin continues to practice because he values his relationship to his brother.

it's coming directly off of a win that sae returns home and sees rin practicing, and it's here i had a realization about the nature of their relationship and their driving force.

and it's here where i really put together what the actual consequence of saes spain trip was.

but before i get to that, i want to touch on the way bluelock as a series handles the concept of failure and motivation. because there are two seperate instances where a character has some sort of major event happen to them - whether that be a kind of betrayal or a massive failure and that drives their character to improve farther.

the first one being kunigami and his transformation as the hyena. the second and imo - the more important one, the relationship between reo and nagi.

to keep it brief - nagi essentially 'betrays' reo by choosing to go with isagi and separate himself from reo in order to improve. while nagi doesn't entirely understand it as a betrayal (because he still considers reo a close friend) it is indeed a crushing moment for reo - who makes it his goal and his ego to be a player that nagi can play with.

in laymans terms - it's betrayal of a pairing that provides character development and is often used to highlight the intense bonds between two people. to be motivated by someone instead of something can only speak to how much you value that person, and want to play with them, right?

and that's where i want to pick up with rin and sae.

there are so many details about this scene to nitpick. so many things i want to shed light on because i just find it so interesting when i look carefully. sae returns home while rin is practicing on the field, and rin is incredibly excited to see his brother.

but it's obvious both to us as the audience and to rin that sae has changed somehow.

you can just tell that sae looks exhausted, where as rin has the same same expression as he did four years ago.

there are so many things in this panel that i think are worth analyzing. the fact that rin notices that sae has lost weight as a marker of just how much sae has changed. what he's been through.

and more specifically what sae says in order to summarize his experiences in spain.

"turns out the world is huge. there're players way better than me out there. i..i've changed my dream."

now, my understanding of japanese is none so i can't compare this to the raws. but i want to discuss the phrasing here with a little more nuance - specifically, i want to talk about the way sae has phrased the sentence.

you'll notice that sae does not say "my dream has changed". he instead says "i've changed my dream." and i think this is a testament to what happened to him in the fours years he was abroad. sae wants it to seem like its a choice he's made, if only to convince rin that he's fine with it. it's obvious that sae likely experienced whats very common for characters in bluelock - which is the mortifying realization that he was practically nothing in comparison to his peers.

we know what the means for sae as individual, in that he was deeply discouraged by what he understood as reality. but what does that mean for sae as an older brother? particularly an older brother who dotes on his younger brother.

rin is very against the idea of sae playing as a midfielder, and tells sae to his face that he doesn't want to see sae like this. he recognizes that saes change is actually stemming from a sense of defeat, and is against the idea of sae giving up his dream. and you can see in saes expression that he's saddened at rins reaction - thought he might've predicted it to some extent.

he's insistent on the fact rin doesn't understand, but hearing rin say "you're not the same brother i shared a dream with...!" causes the façade to crack momentarily. in the minute that sae is covered in shadow, we see his approach to rin changing.

and i think it's here i realized what the sudden attitude change was about.

sae goes onto to challenge rin to a one on one duel. he tells rin, that if you're able to win against me here then ill continue to believe in that dream. he absolutely crushes rin in the match, and when that match is over - rin finally confesses it outright.

its this moment where it all finally clicked for me that saes response here was entirely intentional. and the reason i know that to be true, and that the way he talks to rin here is insincere is because of the way he hesitates.

we get an entire panel where sae simply stares at rin and is silent. this isn't a gut reaction. we intentionally get to see the briefest moment where sae is hesitating to say all of this cruel shit to rin. because he knows rin will never stop idolizing sae or hoping for that dream.

and you'll notice the way he's using this moment to drill something in rins head for later on. he says something explicitly i want to talk to about

"don't use me as your reason to play football ever again."

its this moment that confirms it for me. this, on top of the fact we don't get to see saes expression when he says the last part. he's turned away from rin entirely - when he had been facing rin for most of this conversation.

that's the thing, though. sae to some extent, is familiar with the cruelty that soccer on the international level has to offer. in the early part of the manga, you see him have a similar reaction to bluelock and egoism as a concept. sae is intrigued by it and supports its core tenets to some extent, because he's seen professional soccer at its most brutal.

when you think about it, what reason does sae have to be so intentionally cruel to rin about not wanting to play football? if he was really so indifferent to rin, what reason would there be to crush him to that extent? wouldn't the appropriate response be just that, indifference?

sae's disposition is never naturally cruel. but his whims and feelings adjust based on input. he plays soccer and thinks very heavily about his moves. so if his experiences is telling him that he is no longer fit to be a striker, then what does that make of the promise he made to the younger brother he adored.

all of that to say, i think sae wants rin to become a striker and wants to continue playing soccer with rin. but he believes that if rin remains attached to him the way he is - he will never reach his full potentional. and in order to bring that full potential out - he's willing to be the catalyst and subsequently the villain rins story.

i think all of it, and the intentional salt in the wound is a mechanism for rins development which sae achieves by the end of u20 almost.

#bllk manga spoilers #bluelock manga spoilers #bluelock meta #bllk meta #fang.bllkmeta #fang.meta #aristotle.txt #IVE SPENT TWO HOURS COMPILING THIS IM ASHAMED?#SORRY I JUST HAD LIKE. SUCH AN EPIPHANY ABOUT THESE TWO AND IM LIKE OUT OF MY MIND #LIKE HOLYYYY SHIT YOU KNOW?#I HAD NEVER REALLY PROCESSED THEM BEFORE #BUT WOW. LIKE WOW YOU KNOW

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marengogo · 1 year

Text

7 Nation Army - Part 3: And the Oscar goes to …

Listening to album FACE - by Jimin ON REPEAT

[Music is a very big part of my life and I’m MOSTLY INCAPABLE of writing without music, so I just thought I'd share what I am listening to while writing this]

–🐺–🐺–🐺–

FACE by Jimin is a movie.

Before the pre-release of Set Me Free pt. 2, when I tried to guess what the theme of the album could have been from the information that we had, I perceived this alluring masterpiece as an opera, but, my dear ladies, gentlemen and enbies; I was wrong. This album is a movie and my filmmaker heart is all over the place in excitement to this realisation. As always, anything I write is my opinion, that being said, please allow me to introduce and dissect this elegant Psychological-Thriller named FACE.

Director: JIMIN

Writer: JIMIN

Starring: JIMIN

Taglines: Amazing Face, how sweet the pouring sound.

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Certificate: 16 - Profanity, Alcohol

The typical structure of a Psychological-Thriller usually has the movie/series start at some point which is a tiny bit earlier/forward than the current timeline so as to give you a imagery that will be very contrasting with the flashback/flashforward which will immediately follow, which will properly set the tone for the actual main part movie, which provides with all the issues and challenges of the main character. Towards the end we finally reach the actual current timeline, which in thrillers tends to be a situation worse than the beginning of the story. From here we would go to the conclusion where one of two things can happen; either it ends in tragedy or the character is able to find victory. Every once in a while depending on the story there might be a hopeful filler, and depending on where it is placed in the storyline, it affect the plot differently.

A bit before/after current timeline: Face-off

The circus-like music starts, giving us immediate context. When used as a metaphor the circus, or any circus-like imagery, almost always is indicative of the opposite of anything that is genuine. All the makeup, the constantly smiling, happy and funny entertainer, basically; we are in a farce. From here on the beat becomes a distorted and distant reproduction of the farce. A distant sound represents disassociation within the context. So for a moment, the protagonist is separating from their reality for a particular reason.

In this case, Jimin has had it and is finally confronting/facing someone or something that has hurt him deeply. Following the lyrics, at this point, we’ve just started the movie, so we have no clue what is going on. However, we do understand that there is indeed an antagonist. Nothing we can do for now, all we have to do is to proceed within the plot:

🎵It's a beautiful night (Beautiful night)

I think you found me

Tonight, I don't wanna be sober (Sober)

Pour it up, it's all fucking over🎶

So what exactly has happened between our protagonist and this mystery antagonist?

Flashback/Flashforward: Interlude : Dive

The beginning of this track sounds like the typical time-wrap as you either fast forward or rewind. Usually, psychological thrillers go backwards, so rewinding we go, all the way to October 15, 2022 at the Yet to Come concert in Busan:

"Wow, everyone, I really missed you a lot.

We get to meet like this.

Everyone, this is Jimin."

The absence of vocals shows how this track isn’t an interpretation of any sort of feelings or thought, but simply a display of truths of the time; there is NO farce here, only facts. This is 2022 and the pandemic has been over. Jimin should finally be able to meet with ARMY freely and life is seemingly going back to normal. Yet, at the very end we hear the sound of something pouring. Thanks to Face-off, we can deduce that it is some kind of liquor.

Hence, even though everything is supposed to be “back to normal”, something seems to have stuck with him, Jimin seems to be carrying some baggage he acquired during lockdown, something amongst perhaps many things he quite can’t seem to get rid of / set free from. This is the life he has now been used to; this is his Jimin’s new reality.

What does Jimin's new reality look like?

Main part/plot: Like Crazy

It’s a blur but it feels amazing, and it beats having to feel everything that he has been feeling thus far. Even though it is not eternal, because it will come to an end, he knows very well, but he doesn’t care, he needs “that fix”, so if it is just for a night, then the night will have to do:

🎵Baby don’t think about it

There’s not a bad thing here tonight

Baby, it’s okay to leave

Just stay for today🎶

When your poison of choice is alcohol, you are not going to have a trip or experience sensations you never had; alcohol is not that sophisticated. What it does though, very quickly and quite efficiently, is blocking inhibitions. When you are relaxed, and in a friendly environment, the body follows actions, like in a chain reaction and starts thinking happy thoughts, relieving joyful memories and just having a jolly good time really.

For the sake and sole purpose of the plot of this movie, we are not going to mention how, at the same time, while drunk, functioning as a regular human being, is out of the question, as self-consciousness isn’t the only thing that is gone, any sort of control, sane judgement and more are also out the window 😬😬😬 …

Through the voices at the beginning of the song and the actual MV, this track adds more clues as to who the soon to become antagonist might be. There is a male voice and a female voice in the song. There is Jimin and a young woman mirroring Jimin’s movements in the MV. Jimin knows her; she is him. He always has a great time with her, she knows him very well, afterall she is him. So while he is spending this night incapacitated, he is just going to follow her lead and live on happily, while stopping time temporarily as long as they can.

🎵My reflection in the mirror

I’m going crazy endlessly

I’m feeling so alive, wasting time🎶

But what happens the following morning? What happens that one morning when you realise that “that fix” isn’t worth anything anymore.

Actual current timeline: Alone

The track begins with the sound of an alarm, which isn’t simply indicating morning, but also setting the story back to the present time. Jimin’s actual reality. He has now woken up into that one morning where he is more sober than sober. That one morning when the hangover isn’t as uncomfortable as his realisations. That one morning where the risk of a failing liver isn’t as scary as the reality he is having to face.

So there he is, face to face with the mess he willingly created amidst the inevitably bad situation he was shoved into. Him like everyone else. Yet, unlike most of everyone else, he fell badly. Finally, he has come to terms with the fact that he’s mentally hit rock-bottom mentally. And because misery loves company, any other bad/uncomfortable feeling/situation he had been successfully avoiding joined, merrily (perhaps all his identities, his sense of worth, his sense of loneliness, etc).

This is the heaviest part of the movie. The part where the protagonist is weak and where everything seems, and at times truly is against them. This is the part where the protagonist is at their most vulnerable. This is the point of the plot where, we would all be ending up at, no matter how anyone has interpreted the whole storyline (some may have associated it FACE with other issues, such as lovers, friendships, family, substance abuse, etc …).

In my opinion, this track, on the timeline, is right before Face-off. In an actually movie, we’d have a collage which would mix Face-off with everything that has happened thus far:

[Face-off lyrics connected with other tracks]

🎵All right

I guess the blame is on me

Look at how I look right now 🎶 - Interlude : Dive

🎵Break it down

Break it down

This is the story of ordinary me

Get it out

Everyone shout like crazy yeah yeah🎶 - Like Crazy

🎵Gave you all the money

Gave you all my heart

Your Masquerade party

I was fucking drunk

The damned days of the past

Are now over too🎶 - Alone

So … will our protagonist win his battle against all their antagonists?

Conclusion: Set Me Free Pt.2

The ominous sound of a choir, followed by glorious trumpets; Jimin is ready for his final battle and he is sounding, and looking, hella victorious. He hasn’t forgotten all his struggles. He acknowledges the battles he’s won, and the ones he's lost, which allowed him to get to where he is firmly standing right now. He hears the haters, sees the obstacles and acknowledges his shortcomings. At the same time he’s found a new resolution, developed a tougher skin and embraced all his faces. But above all, he’s realised that if he wasn’t gonna set himself free, who the hell was gonna do that for him? And so he did.

🎵Look at me now

You can mock me but I won’t stop

Going crazy so I don’t go crazy

Put your hands up for the past me

Now set me free,

Set me free x 12🎶

Park Jimin, all his selves, is finally free. Free.

Roll the credit.

Hopeful Filler: Letter

At the end of the credits of any good movie MUST have an after credit scene, which usually serves to introduce a possible sequel or to add something to the way the actual movie ended. HOWEVER, as I do want to have a post just for this track, I shall end this here.

… And now, it is with great honour and palpitation that I stand here, amongst a jury of my peers, in order to present the award for best, exquisitely unexpected, but rather awaited masterpiece, of the year.

And the nominees are:

… AND THE WINNER IS: Park Jimin in FACE.

And that's all from me, now I'll go and keep relaxing some. Also, can't wait to hear from Jimin during his live on the 29th!

As always, very respectfully yours,

Marengo.

#Artemini #Face by Jimin #BTS 7 Nation ARMY #Park Jimin

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adarkrainbow · 6 months

Text

A brief talk about Fables and LGBT

When it comes to works dealing with oe re-creating fairy tales, I always like to take a look at any possible LGBT representation. After all, fairytales became such a monolithic symbol of a heterosexual world with no place for queer people that taking a look at non "orthodox" orientations is always one of the easiest but also deepest subversions of the genre. (There's a whole thing to say about the very strong queerness of literary fairytales from madame de Murat and the knight of Mailly to Andersen and Oscar Wilde, but we'll keep this for later - let us focus on the "popular opinion" and "random Joe or Joane" knowledge that "fairytales are for heteros only").

As such, I had to take a look at the LGBT representations in the comic book "Fables". Being one of the big names and great example of fairytale media, building an entire franchise on reinventing fairytales into a modern fantasy and marking the first American entries into the urban-fantasy fairytale world... And it is very interesting because in recent years "Fables" has come under heavy criticism precisely because of a lack of LGBT representation. You have this numerous series, that spawned numerous spin-offs, and co-existed with other great Vertigo titles filled with queerness (Neil Gaiman's Sandman to take an example)... And yet all people remember of it are "heteros everywhere". Is it true? Is Fables truly as queer-unfriendly as we recall?

This post originally began last year as a catalogue of all the queer characters in Fables... But I stopped halfway, realizing I was exhausting myself by just dissecting every little part of the comic. Not that I do not enjoy it - but I have better things to do on my free time. So instead of making a full and exhaustive list of every mention of non-hetero things, I will rather make some broad and general observations based on my knowledge and reading of this franchise.

If we look at the main series, we can only confirm this popular opinion: homosexual characters are neither primary nor secondary - they are tertiary at most. The only character I remember to have been truly confirmed as homosexual was Moss Waterhouse from "Jack Be Nimble". A very cool character - an intelligent, ambitious, charismatic, slightly morally ambiguous Black, gay and Jewish man who knows he is every minority the old world hates and doesn't hesitate to use it as a weapon, and ultimately gets the fame, the wealth and the power. A very cool character... that lasts a few issues and disappears completely. Beyond that... What do we have? Rose-Red says she had "experiences" with women before - but it is a detail thrown hastily in a dialogue of "Animal Farm", and it is unclear if she is truly bisexual, simply "experimented" in her past, or purposefully had lesbian relationships in her conscious and intense effort to break all the social taboos of the Fables community... I did notice a hairdresser that seems to be a "gay hairdresser" stereotype in "The Sons of the Empire", but after that, the series is a desert.

So, while Bill Willingham recognizes gay people exist, he clearly doesn't want to focus on them or talk about gayness in his plots. In fact, he seems to have been thinking more about them in the beginning of his comic (all the mentions above are from the first third or so of the series), before completely focusing on something else. There is not a refusal of depicting homosexuals, no, there is simply no desire to focus on them or push them forward or tell stories about them (except for Moss Waterhouse, who is a focus-character and one of the main characters of the Jack Be Nimble arc - but a tertiary character in Fables as a whole). [Note: I am only looking at here through the lense of inside the comic, but it doesn't help that Willingham is in real-life an openly Christian and old-fashioned author with some... specific ideas that do not really fit with modern sensibilities, resulting in some of the series' primary controversies, like the handling of abortion.]

HOWEVER! To say Fables is not a gay comic FRANCHISE would be a big mistake. Because while the main series is a desert with one oasis, the spin-offs are BURSTING with gay characters! Well, it isn't a Pride Parade still, but we have prominent, important, front-stage homosexual characters, and gay romances are part of the plots and character growths!

"Fairest" is probably the most gay of all the spin-offs : in "The Hidden Kingdom", Rapunzel is confirmed to be bisexual and a key part of the plot is her romance with a female kitsune. In "The Return of the Maharaja" Prince Charming is revealed to be bisexual and Nathoo (of The Jungle Book) to be gay. And in "Clamour for Glamour" Mary is in an homosexual relationship too... Not only are homosexual relationships openly depicted and primary characters confirmed as queer, but the topic of accepting these relationships is also heavily talked about - from Rapunzel facing the rejecting of a feudal Japan moral system, to Nathoo being afraid of his own feelings and Charming having to explain to him they are normal. What is especially interesting about "Fairest" is that the series seems to go at counter-flow against the main series. For example, Prince Charming is confirmed to be bisexual and to have loved at least a man before... But if I recall well, in the beginning of "Fables" Charming made clear he was NOT into guys, only girls. Another case could be brought up - Crispin, whose "gay-coding" was massively amplified in "Of Men and Mice" - in fact, it is very obviously and strongly suggested by the story that Crispin and the Huntsman are more than friends, given how the Huntsman rushes by his side and refuses to leave his hospital bed after the explosion... It is not openly said, leading to Wikipedia articles to go with the usual routine of "They're just good friends", but the way it is framed and having this "very strong same-sex devotional friendship" sandwiched between openly gay romances, it all VERY strongly implies some homoromantic feelings...

Another spin-off that deserves a good place on this list, but that is not well known (because A- it is the last of the spin-offs and B- it got cancelled due to low sales) is "Everafter", which explicitely confirms that Connor Wolf, one of the children of Snow and Bigsby, is not just homosexual, not just bisexual, but PANSEXUAL thanks to his extensive shapeshifting abilities allowing him to turn into all kinds of sexes, genders and species. And this isn't just told to us by dialogue, but also explicitely proven and shown by having Connor enter an homosexual relationship with one of his male colleagues, Tom Swift (from the Tom Swift novels).

So, what made this "queer boom" in the spin-offs? Was it because Willingham was less present, if not completely absent, allowing other voices to write and speak? Was it because it was "side-stories" that could be split from the "main stuff", and thus there could be more experiments? Was it because these series were made and written in the late 2000s and early 2010s rather than the late 90s, and so these subjcts were more on people's minds? Probably a mix of all that - after all, one thing well known is that the spin-offs were places of free experiments and competitive alternatives, resulting in contradicting plotlines that made the series semi-canons compared to Willingham's main continuity (see the dual Sleeping Beauty origin backstory).

The Fables franchise is not "anti-gay", far from it - I do hold the idea that fairytales are an inherently queer genre and so every work dealing with them for too long ends up showing queer themes at one point or another - even though it is true that the Fables SERIES is very, if not almost exclusively, heterosexual-driven. But the very open and normalized homosexuality, bisexuality and pansexuality of the spin-offs help balance this in the scope of a franchise.

Now, you might say: "Hey, you spoke of queerness at the beginning of your post, but now you're all rambling about sexualities! Where's the transgenders at?". And believe me, it was deliberate! Here is the thing - when it comes to trans folks, Fables becomes a whole other lot of complex topic. I do not know what Willingham's personal opinions of trans people are, and it doesn't really matter here because am looking at the actual created work as it can be received from someone with no knowledge of the author. Here's the thing: while the Fables main series is a desert of gayness, it develops a very strong transgender esotericism through focus on specific fairytale topics, reversal of fairytale tropes, and discussion of motifs that truly work as gender-breaking occultism. This is why anyone who reads some arcs of the main series can easily believe Willingham is trans-friendly (again I don't know if he actually IS, and from the rumors I vaguely heard, he might not be fully okay with trans people, but his work speaks a different language). If Willingham truly is against trans people, than this proves my point above: anyone dealing too much or for too long with fairytales in their work will grow queer-messages and queer-themes, that they want it or not.

On one side, you have numerous shapeshifters in this story who explicitely keep altering and changing their appearances and identities, which brings forward questions of "living into two worlds" (like the cubs, halfway between humans and wolves) or having to choose one identity other another. When this gets mingled with inhuman, cosmic entities and personified natural powers this results to some very interesting gender issues - most famous being the North Wind case. When there is talks of the North Wind getting an heir among his grandchildren, there is a whole discussion about how the North Wind will always be King of the North and of Winter... even if the new North Wind is a girl. Which, as the North Wind attendants say, lets the heir choose if they want to become male to match the title, or stay female while being called "King" - because ultimately the North Wind, being a seasonal and weather power, is above and beyond these gender considerations, and mostly uses them as attributes and titles more than anything of real substance.

On the other side, the topic of names is truly fascinating... Fables being iconic characters of popular stories, feeding off their fame and celebrity to gain power, means that they are deeply attached to their names, that their names are their essence and their being, and that these same names will keep haunting them. And yet... in the second half of the comic, we have numerous characters changing their names. Changes that not only mark deep personal growths and dvelopments, but also are accepted by others and change the perceptions of who the character is. When Flycatcher stops being a low janitor in deny, and decides to become a brave, powerful, messianic king, he returns to his original name of "Ambrose". Similarly, Frau Totenkinder when returning to her true self, abandoning the nicknames and disguises, gains a new identity so that the other Fables do not recognize her and mistake her for another person. And of course, there is how Stinky - who got a name he hated, not by choice - becomes Brock Blueheart, though this is here meant to be more of a religious allegory than anything else. But still - for anyone aware of his transgenderism works, to see this importance and focus on the power of names, of names as defining an identity, and of the changing of names to change who you are... It is hard not to see some trans motifs in the second part of the Fables comics.

But even more relevant, even more obvious, even more trans-coded, was the story of Rodney and June. This arc was the definitive proof that no matter what Willingham's personal opinions might be, Fables was a trans-friendly comic, even if maybe against the author's own intentions, or by accident. [Or again, purposefully if Willingham turns out to be cool with transgenders people, I don't know the guy]. Rodney and June, wood-soldiers, born out of trees, made of wood, part of an entire elite nation and civilization of wooden people... Are fascinated by people of flesh, dream of becoming flesh people, even if others see them as weird freaks and advise them to "keep all this hidden" not to compromise their reputation ; and their story is fully developed and fleshed out (no pun intended) from awkward and failed attempts at imitating and understanding the behavior of flesh-people (things like eating or kissing), to them openly and bravely undergoing a quest to demand that their creator grants their wish of becoming people of flesh, and be recognized as such by the empire they live in... When you read this story, it seems massively obvious that this is a barely-veiled plot for anyone dealing with identity issues and trying to change who they currently are to be true to who they want to be - and more importantly who they feel they have to be. You can't do more trans than that - from the whole "don't tell, keep it hidden" behavior of the awkward friends around you to the secret experiments and roleplayings in the privacy of the bedroom...

In conclusion: Next time someone says Fables is homophobic, point out to them that the comics themselves are not. The main series might not have prominent gay stories or characters, but it has some very strong transgender motifs and characters (accidental or not, they're here, they're queer and people have to deal with it) ; while the spin-offs are bursting with unashamed gay romances and explicit lesbian sex. It is definitively not the greatest franchise when it comes to gay representation, but it cannot be said it isn't a queer comic in its whole.

#fables #fables comic #queerness #gayness #transgender #analysis #queerness in fairytales #transgenderism in fairytales #fables spin offs

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livgr3 · 1 month

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Roundtable: Glee (2009-2015)

Oh dear. Where to even begin....

What we now know and love (or hate) as Glee began as a screenplay for a feature film of the same name by Ian Brennan. The screenplay then circulated to working TV writers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, and the three soon began writing a full television season based on Brennan's original screenplay. The series was very quickly picked up by FOX, following the success of another musical-themed program: American Idol.

So has been said about Glee in retrospect, from recent TikToks dissecting problematic moments in the show to a docuseries addressing speculations of dissent among castmates. While this has been interesting fodder to engage with online, I do feel that we have reached a collective memory of Glee that has strayed from the original tone and intention of the show. This is also thanks to the complete diversion the show took in its later seasons after new writers were hired and the show tried to keep up with its own rapidly growing popularity.

Glee’s initial charm was similar to the central appeal of American Idol: a glimmer of hope in a time of economic hardship through an underdog story. Underneath its surface-level wackiness and off-kilter dialogue, Glee was intended to be a tongue-in-cheek satire; a "postmodern musical" in the words of Ryan Murphy. Based in Ohio, its characters grapple with the ongoing economic recession and try to find hope and resilience in their downtrodden circumstances through the imaginative powers of the songs they sing. The show’s humor and central conflicts in its first season are largely derived from disputes from the “big guys” punching down on the “little guys.” In fact, the rivalry between optimistic Glee Club instructor Will Schuester and absolutely unhinged cheer coach Sue Sylvester can be read alongside the country’s broader economic battles.

The mention of these two crucial characters brings me to an analysis of the show in conversation with the arguments of Robynn Stillwell in her work “Dual-Focus Strategy in a Serial Narrative: Smash, Nashville, and the Television Musical Series.” For this analysis I will refer to the first and last episodes of Glee’s first season, titled “Pilot” and “Jouney to Regionals,” respectively, pulling some contextual elements from episodes in-between if needed.

Dual-Focus Narrative

A defining stylistic feature of an episode of Glee is its introductory monologue, in which a character provides a voiceover of their unique, hilarious perspectives on the events of the episode to come. Throughout the episode, other characters might also provide a voiceover monologue with contradictory opinions, or introduce the episode’s B-plot. It is through these little snippets of each character’s perspective that the show manages its large ensemble cast and creates an advanced version of Stillwell’s described “dual-focus” narrative, with a different dual pairing each episode. This ability to navigate the complex relationships between many characters is something that is unique to Glee’s episodic format, and likely could not be achieved in its fullest in a film or stage musical.

While the show’s “Pilot” sets up the central romances between Finn & Rachel and Will & Emma, these romantic pairings do not completely comprise the “dual-focus” of the episode. Instead, we are given voiceover sequences from Will Schuester, Rachel, and Finn such that the show is dually-focused on the lives of adults versus teenagers in a middle-American high school during the economic recession. In this way, Glee pokes fun at the triviality of high school popularity while also likening these struggles to the conflicts among the adult characters, such as budget cuts to faculty but an increased budget for athletics and Sue’s cheer team. In other words, the concept of an "underdog" is timeless and not age-specific. Through its strange satirical lens, Glee celebrates youth and is reliant on the notion of second-chances, evident though the name Will Schuester gives to his new Glee Club: New Directions.

Inevitable Couplings

In my opinion, the pilot of Glee has an absolutely top-tier set up for its romantic interests, the jock Finn Wolfhard and the geeky theater girl Rachel Berry. The show takes advantage of its musical framework, two characters are set up as opposites through their first ever songs before they even interact in the episode.

To audition for Will’s New Directions, Rachel sings “On My Own,” a musical theater song from Lesa Miserables. She introduces her song with a chipper, contrived introduction and her audition is polished with a clear, classically trained voice. Moments later, Finn’s voice is heard in a much less formal manner, as Will hears him singing in the shower (not even gonna touch that one). His voice is free and imperfect, singing a classic rock song he adored as a child. Through these musical scenes, Rachel and Finn are contrasted in every way, from their personalities to their apparent levels of vocal training to their style of song. The show relies on our instincts to assume that opposites attract without any lines explicitly hinting at the romance with these two characters, so when the two sing together in “Don’t Stop Believing” at the end of the episode (which literally made me cry), their voices complement one another well and there is palpable chemistry as the characters dance together gleefully.

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I would also be remiss if I did not mention “Klaine,” the iconic romance between Kurt and Blaine that begins in season two. The show sets this romance up in a very similar way, as Kurt admires Blaine’s suave confidence in an accepting environment which contrasts the homophobic environment Kurt experiences at McKinley High. They are, again, musically opposite, as Blaine often sings pop songs with an entire Glee club of boys while Kurt often sings musical theater ballads alone. Still, these opposites are not as apparent as Finn and Rachel’s, and the show now expects us to anticipate a romance based heavily on the fact that these are the only two gay male characters in the show thus far. While this romance was quite groundbreaking for its time, the show was still able to maintain its mainstream popularity by applying heteronormative frameworks onto queer characters, much like the Western musical frameworks we discussed last week.

Musical Fantasies

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Music is the heart of Glee, adding texture to an otherwise dull environment. As the show progresses musical numbers take many adventurous forms, with numbers outside the diegesis that replicate famous music videos to conversations through song that blur the lines of diegesis.

Even with all the flashiest numbers, I think nothing embodies the escapist quality of music in Glee more than its backstage numbers, where we watch the characters perform as their true selves. At the end of the Pilot, the original six Glee Club members perform “Don’t Stop Believin’” on their own after news of Mr. Schue’s departure from the position. Their singing and dancing is free and uninhibited as much of the secondary characters watch. Most importantly, the number inspires a lurking Mr. Schue to change his mind and continue instructing the club. Music functions within the narrative as a site of hope for characters in unfortunate situations.

Through this, the show also epitomizes its sense of neoliberal progressivism, ultimately suggesting that we can all come together and sing away our differences.

#oxyfilmmusical #@theuncannyprofessoro #televisionmusical #Youtube

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m1ckeyb3rry · 9 months

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Pomegranate Ink: XI

Series Synopsis: Unable to heal but willing to fight, with a fiancé in Kyoto and a last name that looms over everything you do, you accept an offer to study at Tokyo Jujutsu Tech. What you did not know was that your salvation and your ruination alike would soon join you at the school, neatly wrapped in the form of a boy followed by death.

Chapter Synopsis: In wake of your recent recommendation and newfound ability to heal, you have to make a choice that does not necessarily please everyone around you.

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Yuta Okkotsu × Female Reader

Chapter Word Count: 5.8k

Content Warnings: angst, misogyny, naoya zenin, forbidden relationships, canon-typical violence, character death, original characters included

A/N: consider this an epilogue to jjk vol 0

“So you’re giving up fighting, right?”

You stared at your phone in confusion, brow furrowed. What your father was saying made no sense; you had expected his first words when you told him of your feat to be congratulatory, to be awed of your prowess. But he was dull and clinical, speaking with a detached tone, as if you were less a daughter and more a fascinating test subject.

“Uh, what?” you said. “No way! I just got recommended for Grade 1 sorcerer status! Why would I give all of that up?”

“I’ve been doing research into our family’s line, ever since you proved to be so utterly unable to heal even a scratch. It’s your dependence on Dissection that’s bringing you down.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you said

“Dissection is a crutch of sorts. You shouldn’t need to see your patient’s weak spots in order to heal them — the overwhelming strength of Composition will heal any weaknesses, both those you are aware of and those you are not. Dissection is used at first, by lesser members of the clan, in order to acquaint oneself with the anatomy of a human. But when was the last time you saw me using it? I don’t. I haven’t used it in years.”

“I’m not really sure what you mean,” you said. “I thought you’d be happy for me. I brought somebody back to life!”

“And I’m not quite certain how you did that. You’re not listening to what I’m saying, Y/N — your cursed energy is being wasted on your technique. You can’t heal while you fight, and you can’t fight while you heal. The only way that you reviving Okkotsu makes sense is if you tapped into some greater reserve of cursed energy that was not yours to begin with.”

So your victory was not exactly your own. You resolved to speak to Gojo about this as soon as you could, so that you could figure out what you had drawn upon. You had a sense that he knew, or at least had his suspicions.

“I have to make a choice, then? But Kaito said I was the first sorcerer to have an equal aptitude for fighting and healing,” you said with a frown.

“Firstly, Kaito’s always been full of shit, so why would you believe him? Secondly, he’s right, but that’s a dramatic way of saying it. It’s true that you have an equal aptitude for fighting and healing, which is exceedingly rare — do you see Shoko Ieri on the battlefield? Me? Conversely, do you see Kento Nanami or Utahime Iori healing anyone? No. But that doesn’t mean you get to have both.”

“I really have to pick?” you said in horror as you began to understand what your father was trying to stress to you.

“It shouldn’t be a choice, but theoretically, yes. If you continue to use Dissection, your ability to use Composition will be weakened, and if you learn to use Composition to its fullest extent, you will no longer be able to use Dissection in a way that will be helpful for fights.”

You remembered the pain of healing, the blood dripping from your nose, the choking sensation. And then you remembered the rush of fighting, the adrenaline. Healing was a funeral march, dragging you to a slow, inevitable death. Fighting made you alive; it was the essence of your being, at the very core of who you were.

“It’s not permanent, right? Composition won’t go away or anything if I don’t use it for a while,” you said.

“No, it’ll always be a part of you, but —”

“Then I fight,” you said decisively. “I will fight and become a true Grade 1 sorcerer. I will continue to train with Gojo. If ever a day comes where I can no longer fight, then I will become a healer, but until that day, I will fight with everything I have.”

“You are making a selfish choice, Y/N. You have great potential with Composition, and there are so few healers in this world, while there is no dearth of fighters.”

“Let me be selfish for once, then,” you said, pinching the bridge of your nose to ward off the coming headache.

“How can you willingly turn away from the power to save your friends?”

“I will save them by creating a world where there is nothing that will hurt them. This conversation is over; I am to be a sorcerer proper, and you cannot stop me, not now, not ever. I will fight,” you said.

“What will Noritoshi say?”

“Nothing, I expect. He has been in support of me fighting from the start. Besides, now that it’s been proven I can use the Reverse Cursed Technique, isn’t my value to the Kamo clan far greater? It doesn’t matter if I am ugly or scarred or broken, any heirs I bear will likely possess the same aptitude as I do. They won’t care if I fight or heal,” you said. Your father sighed in frustration but allowed you the argument, knowing you were right.

“There is nothing I can do to change your mind?”

“As I threatened once before, I will run away to live with Gojo if you try,” you said.

“Very well. I will see you once the school year ends.”

“Very well. Farewell, father,” you said.

“Wait.”

“What?” you said impatiently. “I have to go talk to Gojo.”

“Congratulations on your recommendations. I…am proud of you. You will truly be a shining example of what it means to be a sorcerer, if that is the path you must take.”

“Thank you,” you said, taken aback at the praise. You weren’t sure if you had ever heard your father praise you before. You didn’t know how genuine it was, but it was praise all the same, and some childish part of you wished for more.

“Farewell, Y/N.”

The line went silent, and you slipped your cellphone into your pocket, frowning pensively at the latest development.

The way your father told it, nothing had changed at all. You had healed Yuta, but that was a one-time thing, and if you wanted to continue to be the perfect L/N girl, then you’d have to give up fighting.

Fighting. You remembered what Tullia had asked you once, en route to Gojo’s favorite bakery, which you two had needed to save from a Grade 2 curse.

“Is anything in your life your own?”

You had needed to pause and think about it back then. It seemed so long ago, when only two things belonged to you for sure, when your choices were made by others and your destiny depended upon the whims of a group of ‘stuffy old men’ — the ever-so-kind name that Maki and Tullia used to refer to the higher ups.

“My needles. My friendship with Maki. Those are mine.”

Giving up fighting meant giving up both of those. What use did a healer have for cursed needles, meant to puncture and kill? What use did the perfect heir of the L/Ns have for the failure of the Zenins? For better or worse, if you became a healer the way your father wanted you to, you would fit seamlessly into the role allotted to you by your superiors. Yet all that meant was a loss of everything you had tried to do and become, a loss of your newfound individuality, your sense of self, your friendships, and your strength.

“It stands to reason, actually,” Gojo said, motioning for you to sit, which you did so without hesitating, “What your father is saying has merit to it. There’s a reason you’re the first L/N to fight, and there’s a reason most normal sorcerers never obtain the skill to heal.”

“Do you think I’m making the right choice?” you said. He shrugged.

“Nah. Any sane person would want to learn how to heal. Who’d want to keep risking their life, day after day, when they could be safe and helping on the sidelines?” he said.

“I could never let my friends fight my battles for me! I’ve spent too long locked away on the sidelines,” you snapped at him.

“Well, nobody ever said jujutsu sorcerers are sane,” he said.

“Huh?” you said.

“Look, Y/N, it’s a choice that nobody can make for you. If you want to fight, then fight to the bitter end. If you want to heal, then there will be no shortage of patients for you to work on, not in times such as these,” he said.

“So you think it’s okay for me to choose to fight?” you pressed.

“I think it’s okay for you to choose to fight,” he affirmed. “I think it’s more than okay. You told me once, and I think you were right in saying it, that healing is akin to a war. You’re not going to escape pain, no matter the path you take. It’s just what you’re capable of bearing that matters.”

“Alright, then. As long as I have your support,” you said.

“You do,” he said. “Always. You’re clever, and what kind of teacher wants to give up a talented student? You don’t have to be able to heal just to make an impact in this world, and anyways, as your father said, you’re not giving it up for good. If there ever comes a time that you put down your needles forever and take up the role of healer, then I’m certain Shoko will be grateful for the help.”

“Speaking of healing, what about the rest of it? Why was I able to bring back Yuta while using Dissection? To hear my father tell it, it should’ve been impossible,” you said. Gojo hummed in thought.

“Nobody can know for sure, but I have some theories. Would you like to hear?” he said.

“Obviously, or I wouldn’t have asked,” you said. He laughed.

“Okay, okay, that’s fair enough. My first idea is that Rika lent you her cursed energy somehow, boosting your Reverse Cursed Technique enough to fully heal Yuta with Composition despite the fact that it should’ve been severely weakened. My second is that you only shocked Yuta’s system, in the sense that you didn’t heal him so much as annoy him into waking up, whereupon he was able to heal himself due to his prowess with the Reverse Cursed Technique,” he said.

“How would Rika lend me her cursed energy?” you said.

“I don’t know. That’s why it’s just a theory. There’s too many gaps in our understanding that, in all honesty, probably won’t ever be filled. My final hypothesis is the most outlandish, but it’s based on what I heard you and Yuta talking about, right after he woke up again,” he said.

“I wish you would’ve forgotten about that,” you said, subconsciously fidgeting with the ring that rested on your finger — not your engagement ring from Noritoshi but the one that Yuta had put on you. “It’s embarrassing that you had to hear. And also really, really, really weird.”

“Still, it was informative to say the least. I’m sure you’ve heard the story of the Y/N from the Heian period and how she was brought back to life after helping seal Sukuna,” he said.

“Yes, of course, that’s the story that convinced me to try healing Yuta,” you said.

“That makes it simpler. Did you think that you loved him enough to bring him back?” he said. You averted your eyes.

“Dunno. I mean, I don’t have any beliefs in love being some magical tool or anything. All I knew was that Yuta loved me and the others enough to die saving us and the school, and I loved him too much to let him go without at least attempting to do something about it,” you said.

“Love’s a powerful curse,” Gojo said. “Powerful enough that the cursed energy from it might’ve been enough to temporarily boost your reserves.”

“Powerful enough that I could’ve been powerful enough, for a little bit, to bring Yuta back to life,” you said dully. “That’s the corniest shit I’ve ever heard.”

“It is pretty cheesy,” Gojo admitted. “The truth’s probably somewhere in the middle, as it often is. Maybe some combination of your heightened emotions and Rika’s energy were enough to force Yuta’s heart into beating just enough that he could heal himself. Maybe it was something else entirely. Like I said, we’ll never know.”

“No point in dwelling on it, I suppose. He’s alive, and that’s all that matters,” you said with a sigh. “It’s not like I’ll be healing very many people moving forwards.”

“Right on,” Gojo said. “Just focus on completing your missions so that you can become a Grade 1 sorcerer in full!”

“That’s the plan,” you said with a firm nod, “Though a bit of a break first would be nice. We were all thinking of having a party, actually, I believe Toge and Panda will take care of the cake. Maybe Maki, Tullia, and I can buy some decorations, and Yuta can…uh, I don’t know, Yuta can clean or something? That doesn’t really make much sense, though, I’ll have to coordinate with the others so we can split up into more balanced teams.”

Gojo sniffed, and so quickly you almost didn’t see it, pulled down his sunglasses to wipe away a tear from his eyes. You frowned, but he shook his head before you could inquire why he was crying.

“Here,” he said, voice choking as he held out his hand. “Take this.”

“Your credit card?” you said, eyes wide as you stared at the glimmering, sapphire-colored metal. He nodded.

“Yeah. I’m…I’m really glad that the six of you are friends, you know that? I hope you always stay that way,” he said.

“Okay,” you said. “Can I buy whatever I want with this?”

“Go ahead,” he said.

“No way,” you breathed.

“Just save me some cake,” he said.

“Sure thing!” you said, completely reevaluating the party. With Gojo as your sponsor, you could go seriously all-out now!

To your further surprise, he leaned over and squeezed you in a hug. “You’re a good kid.”

“What do you want from me?” you wheezed out, unused to the copious amounts of affection.

“Nothing, nothing. Megumi hates hugs, so I have to make do with you, since you’re the only one who won’t deck me when I try,” he said.

“I see,” you said warily. “You’re not going to follow this up with what I think you are, are you?”

He ignored you and beamed. “But who knows? Maybe Megumi will let you hug him! Only one way to find out!”

“There it is,” you said, pocketing Gojo’s card and rolling your eyes. “Later, Gojo. Thanks for the credit card!”

“Anytime!” he said.

“Really?” you said. He paused and thought about this.

“Maybe not,” he said.

“Fair enough,” you said.

You dashed down the hallways in search of your fellow classmates. Luckily, they were all together, Panda hiding behind Yuta while Maki glared at him, Toge sleeping on the couch, and Tullia making popcorn.

“Y/N!” Maki said when she noticed your arrival. “Help me!”

“With what?” you said.

“She’s trying to force me into the bath!” Panda wailed. You turned to Yuta, who gave you a lopsided grin, rubbing the back of his neck.

“I think he smells fine,” he said.

“You’re just another gross guy defending your kind! Don’t take his word for it, Y/N!” Maki said furiously.

“I’ll be the judge of things,” you said, crossing the room to where Panda was cowering and leaning in to sniff his fur delicately.

“What’s the verdict?” Tullia said, tossing a handful of popcorn into her mouth and then scowling when it went everywhere but into her mouth.

“He’s clean, really, his coat just needs to be brushed out, and maybe a little bit of perfume would do him good, too. A fully-fledged bath would be unnecessary, though,” you said.

“Ha!” Panda said. “Wait, what?”

“Ha! Go brush yourself!” Maki said victoriously.

“No!” he said.

“Panda, I’m not letting you make cake for our super fancy party with unbrushed fur,” you said.

“Nobody wants that mangy, ratty coat near their desserts,” Maki said.

“I don’t know if I’d call it mangy or ratty, but I agree that this party deserves the best,” you said.

“And how exactly are we going to afford that? We’re a bunch of broke students,” Tullia said. You whipped out Gojo’s credit card, holding it up to the light.

“Gojo gave me full permission to use this!” you said.

“You’re joking,” Maki said.

“We probably shouldn’t take advantage of his kindness, though, right?” Yuta said worriedly. All of you, bar the still-unconscious Toge, began to laugh.

“Gojo’s loaded, and also he’s so annoying that I have no qualms about spending his money,” Maki said.

“He did say we could buy whatever we wanted with it,” you said.

“Don’t be a spoilsport, Yuta,” Tullia said.

“It’s party time!” Panda cheered.

“Only if you brush yourself,” Maki said. He exhaled so heavily that his entire body seemed to deflate.

“Okay,” he said, evidently deciding that making the sacrifice for the party was worth it.

“We need to split up into highly specialized teams,” you said, mentally drawing up a diagram for yourself, “Toge and Panda are doing cake, of course.”

“Naturally,” Tullia said.

“That leaves the four of us. Two will have to clean, and someone will have to come shopping with me,” you said.

“I’ll go shopping!” Yuta said immediately. Tullia and Maki exchanged looks, snickering very obviously, which made Yuta turn a bright red. You discreetly pinched Tullia’s upper arm, which did not do much to shut her up.

“That’s perfect, then. And if this place isn’t spotless by the time we’re back, there will be consequences,” you said.

“Like what?” Tullia said.

“I’ll tell Gojo you want to get with Megumi,” you said, jabbing a finger at her. She gasped in horror.

“You wouldn’t!” she said.

“I would,” you said. “And Maki, I’ll tell Principal Yaga you volunteered to be his secretary for the rest of the year.”

“You’re an awful person,” Maki said.

“Better get cleaning!” you sang, blowing her a kiss. “Come on, Yuta. Let’s get going; Panda, brush yourself off, wake Toge up, and get baking.”

“On it, boss!” Panda said with a salute.

“Sheesh, a girl gets recommended for grade 1 sorcerer status one time and suddenly thinks she’s better than everyone!” Tullia said.

“I know! You’d think she’d beaten Sukuna himself, the way she’s swaggering around here like she owns the place!” Maki said.

“Oh, shove a sock in it, you two,” you said.

“Whatever you say, wise and powerful Y/N,” Tullia said with a bow.

“We are but your weak underlings,” Maki said as the two of them dissolved in a fit of giggles. You grabbed a broom and threw it at them. Maki dodged, but Tullia did not, and the handle whacked into her skull. This time, it was you who burst into laughter, grabbing Yuta’s hand and dragging him out after you before either of them could retaliate.

“How are we going to get into the city?” Yuta said.

“We could ask Ijichi to take us?” you said.

“That’s a good idea,” he nodded.

But the managers were all too busy to deal with frivolous errands such as taking you to go shopping for a party, leaving you standing in the parking lot, stumped. Rows upon rows of shiny cars stared you in the face, and a wicked plan formed in your mind.

“Let’s steal one,” you said.

“We’ll get in so much trouble if we’re caught! Also, neither of us knows how to drive!” Yuta said.

“How hard can it be? Come on, it’s either that or we walk,” you said.

“Fine, but you’ll be the one behind the wheel,” he said nervously. “I’ll crash the car for sure.”

“Got it. I’ll look up the basics on my phone,” you said, skimming over an article on how to drive a car while Yuta did his seatbelt and then reached over to buckle yours for you while you were distracted.

“I can’t believe we’re hijacking a car,” he said.

“It’s so cool, right?” you said.

“No! What if Gojo finds out?” he said.

“He’d probably be proud of us,” you said. Yuta considered this.

“I guess you’re not wrong about that,” he said. Putting away your phone, you took a deep breath and started the car. The engine purred to life without a hitch, and you allowed a tentative smile to break out on your face before you put the car into reverse and stepped on the gas.

The car shot backwards, and Yuta screamed shrilly as you slammed on the brake pedal, jerking to a stop and then switching the car into drive. Spinning the wheel, you careened out of the parking lot, narrowly avoiding the curb and the welcome sign.

“Oh my god,” Yuta said as you accelerated around the curves of the country roads near the school, “We’re going to die!”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing!” you shouted gleefully, pushing the car faster. Yuta shrieked as you shot onto the highway, weaving around other cars and barely dodging trucks.

“Slow down!” he said.

“No way!” you said. “This is fun!”

You felt like you could do anything now. You had defied your father. You had stolen a car. You had Gojo’s credit card in your pocket. You were going to have a party, and you were going to continue to fight. You were a sorcerer, a future grade 1 sorcerer, and you didn’t care that the only knowledge you had on driving came from a Wikipedia article. You had Yuta at your side, and the both of you were so alive that nothing else mattered.

The tires screeched as you pulled into the grocery store parking lot and somehow fit the car into the furthest spot you could find. Putting it back into park and shutting off the engine, you took a moment to catch your breath.

“That was awful,” Yuta said, clutching his chest. “I’m more scared of your driving than I was of Geto.”

“Are you kidding? That was awesome!” you said. “And you’re rude to say that.”

“Look, I think you almost killed me on the highway at least thirty times! That’s more times than Geto managed to!” he said, breathing heavily

“But we didn’t die,” you pointed out.

“Divine intervention,” he muttered. You poked him in the cheek.

“Just admit I’m not an awful driver,” you said.

“You are!” he said.

“Like you could do better!” you said.

“Just because I’m probably worse doesn’t make you good!” he argued, getting out of the car and opening the door for you, extending a hand to help you out. You took it and did not let go, even once you had slammed your door shut and locked the car behind you.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re just jealous. Don’t be jealous, Yuta, I can teach you,” you said, swinging your linked hands between the two of you, letting yourself have this precious one moment of being with him openly before you let go.

“No thanks,” he scoffed. “What do we need to buy?”

“Appetizers, probably. Decorations. Plates and napkins and plastic cutlery and all of that. A colorful tablecloth? It’s just going to be the six of us, so we don’t need to go all out,” you said.

“That store looks promising,” he said. You squinted at the building he was pointing at and then nodded.

“Yeah, you’re right. Let’s go! We should try to get done before Maki and Tullia have the chance to finish cleaning,” you said.

“You’re horrible,” he said affectionately.

“I’m a monster of their making,” you said. “If they don’t like it, well, they can’t complain. It’s their fault I’m like this.”

“I think you were always like this, they’re just the ones that made you come out of your shell,” he said.

“And isn’t that what I just said?” you teased.

“Not exactly,” he said. “But I’ll give it to you.”

“Thank you, Yuta, you’re very generous,” you said dryly.

“Anything for you, Y/N,” he said. You bit your lip in thought, suddenly remembering something.

“Say, I know this is kind of random, but since we’re alone and there’s no chance of anyone overhearing…what are we to each other, Yuta?” you said. He was silent for a second, mulling the question over.

“I don’t know,” he said finally, not looking at you but straight ahead when he did. “I’m sorry, but I don’t. You’re engaged to somebody else.”

“Yeah,” you said.

“Yeah. But you love me,” he continued.

“Yeah,” you said again.

“And I — I —” he broke off. “You know how I feel. But I can’t say it, because whenever I say it to people, something bad happens to them. Maybe I’m just being superstitious, but I won’t curse you with my feelings.”

“Okay,” you said, even though it would’ve been so nice to hear him say it out loud. But they were just words; like he said, you knew how he felt.

“So where does that leave us? We can’t be boyfriend and girlfriend. We can’t go on dates when there’s a chance we could get caught. We can’t be with one another in public; maybe we can’t be with one another at all. But I don’t want to be with anyone else, Y/N, nobody but you,” he said.

“I’ll become an outcast before I leave you,” you promised, “I’ll leave jujutsu society forever if that’s what it takes, but I won’t leave you. If you’ll have me.”

His eyes softened, and he turned to look at you. In the light, the poison-blue looked far more grey, but it was a pretty shade of the color. You would drown in his irises happily.

“If I’ll have you? That’s a stupid question. I’m still confused about the fact that you want me, really. If it comes down to it, we’ll be outcasts together,” he said.

The rings on both of your fingers glinted in the sun as you interlocked your pinky finger with his in an oath. Your ring from Noritoshi and his from Rika were reminders of your pasts, and the ones your mother had given you, the ones you had exchanged with one another, were promises of the future.

Whether triumphant sorcerers or pariahs from society, you could be assured that Yuta would remain by your side no matter what. And you had faith that Maki, Tullia, Toge, and Panda would not abandon you, either, but they faded into an afterthought at the moment. It was you and Yuta against the world, you and him and nobody else. So you gave into temptation and kissed him in the parking lot, nothing more than a brush of your lips against his own before you could be seen, but it sealed the deal more than any kind of wedding vows ever could.

“You guys took forever,” Tullia said with a yawn when you and Yuta walked in, the muscles in his arms flexing under the weight of the boxes and bags you were making him carry.

“We’ve been done for ages,” Maki said.

“Toge and Panda?” you said.

“Putting on the finishing touches with the icing. Seriously, though, why were you gone for so long?” Maki said.

“Y/N’s an awful driver,” Yuta said by way of explanation, setting down the stuff you had bought with a thud. “Enough said.”

“No, not enough said. What happened?” Maki said.

“She almost killed six pedestrians, enormous trucks almost flattened us twice, and that’s not even the worst of it!” he said.

“Then what’s the worst of it?” Tullia said. You and Yuta shuddered before deciding not to bring up the Incident.

“Never mind,” you said. “We made it back in one piece, and with the stuff we needed for this party! So let’s focus on the bright side, okay?”

“Okay,” Maki said dubiously. “As long as you’re both alright.”

“We will be,” Yuta said.

“Just get all of this set up,” you said, not wanting to dwell on it any longer. The four of you were efficient to the max, moving with the speed that was to be expected from those in your profession. You chatted, mostly about smaller things, though one big conversation came about, and this was when you brought up the choice you had made.

“Tullia, be careful, you’re going to break your finger,” Maki said in exasperation when Tullia almost slammed a chair leg into her pinky. Tullia waved her off.

“Don’t worry about it! Y/N can heal now, she’s got me covered,” she said. You snorted.

“I wouldn’t count on that. In terms of healing…I have no healing,” you said.

“What do you mean?” she said indignantly, freezing in place and giving you a betrayed look.

“Exactly what I said. I can’t heal, not while I continue to use my inherited technique. I don’t have enough cursed energy to continually use both Dissection and Composition, so I had to make a choice between which one I want to focus on, and I’m…I’m a jujutsu sorcerer, not a healer. I know it makes me a terrible person, especially when people with the capabilities to heal are so rare, but I just can’t do it. I can’t give up the one thing I have for myself,” you said. They all considered this.

“I don’t care whether you fight or heal,” Yuta said, “As long as you’re safe. That’s the only thing I’m concerned about.”

“I’d be pretty upset, losing my favorite training partner,” Maki said. This was her small, secret way of saying she was happy with what you chose, her way of saying she’d have missed you otherwise.

“I’m glad that you’re finally making your own decisions. If anyone’s got the right to be selfish after everything, it’s you. And besides, Yuta has a Reverse Cursed Technique too, doesn’t he? I guess I’ll just make sure to be around him if I get hurt instead,” Tullia said.

Yuta nodded. “It’ll be good practice for sure. Although, if you get hurt doing something stupid, I’ll laugh at you first.”

“When is Tullia not doing something stupid?” you said rhetorically.

“She’s got a point,” Maki said.

“I guess I’ll be laughing a lot,” Yuta said.

“As long as you still heal me eventually,” Tullia said, not even arguing with the assessment she knew to be true.

You all moved on quickly, and you were thankful. It felt like there was a great weight lifted off of your shoulders now, as if there had previously been a heavy fog on your mind that had suddenly vanished.

It was okay that you were choosing your own happiness. It was okay that you could not heal. It was okay that you were in love with Yuta. All of these things could be true, all of these things were true, and you would still always have your classmates and your teacher. Gojo, Tullia, Maki, Panda, Yuta, and Toge — even in a nightmarish world like the one you lived in, you could count on them.

“Hey,” Tullia muttered to you, later that night, once the party was over and the others were passed out from an overconsumption of cake, “I was being serious earlier, you know that?”

“About what?” you said, nearly about to fall asleep yourself.

“About everything. The whole choosing to fight thing and all of that. Ever since I’ve met you, it’s like you’ve just been doing what you’re told and bearing it as best as you can. I don’t care if it means one less healer in the world; if you can escape your last name and assigned role through it, then who are we to begrudge you for it?” she said.

“Do you really mean it?” you said.

“’Course I do. Maybe it makes you a shitty person, but look at it this way — you’re never going to top bringing someone back to life, so why try? You’ve already hit your peak as a healer. Focus on becoming a better sorcerer; there’s still room for improvement there,” she said. You blinked at her in amazement.

“You’re right about that,” you said.

“I’m so smart,” she giggled, not waiting for you to respond before lying on the carpet, hugging a pillow and curling up next to Panda, who functioned as a heat source that was quite comfortable to fall asleep next to. She was out within minutes, and you smiled affectionately before deciding to follow her example.

Yuta was on the couch and, because you knew that everyone at the school was already pretty much aware of your relationship with him, you had no misgivings about dropping down next to him and resting your cheek against his chest.

He was warm, though perhaps not as warm as Panda, and he did not wake up when you settled beside him. But you did not want him to wake up, so this was fine. You allowed his heartbeat to lull you to sleep, and whether the steady rhythm was Rika’s doing or yours or his own, you found it did not matter. As long as it kept going. As long as he was alive. The rest you could deal with, as long as you had him.

Maybe you would never heal again, but in bringing Yuta back, you had already done all of the healing you would ever need to. By chance or fate, the circumstances had aligned perfectly, so that you were able to bring him back, so that you were able to draw upon the healing power of your family for that exact one event. But in the end, you were also descended from Y/N, the woman who had fought so hard that she had helped seal Sukuna even as she was dying from the knife he had twisted in her. You were never meant to live a life away from the blood of the battlefield; your mother had ensured that when she chose your name.

Nothing had changed since you had come here, a scared girl unable to heal but willing to fight. Yet everything had changed, because now you were unwilling to heal, able to fight, and braver than you could have imagined. And you had friends now, people who loved you, and there was a true future for you as a Grade 1 sorcerer, as long as you could prove yourself worthy of it.

That was what you dreamt of — not love or happiness or peace but rather of strength and power. You dreamt of the day that you were confirmed as a Grade 1 sorcerer, of the day that you could look your father in the eye and tell him that you were worth more than he thought you were, worth more than him.

And it — it was a foolish dream, but as the moon inched across the sky, you dreamt of a future where you were the head of your clan, a future where all of jujutsu society listened to you.

In your sleep, you smiled.

#yuuta x reader #yuuta x you #yuuta x y/n #canon au #reader insert #pomegranate ink #m1ckeyb3rry writes

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bonni · 5 months

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Hi, this is probably blasphemy here, but… I’ve been trying to get through Revolutionary Girl Utena since 2022. Should I even bother ? It’s worth noting that I’m notoriously bad at binging any sort of show, takes me a while to get through almost anything, but 6 years and 26 episodes is definitely higher than average.

Honestly, I totally get it. There are certainly shows I have done this with, more than I would like to admit (little secret: sometimes when I say that I finished an anime, I am lying, and I really watched half of it and absorbed the plot of the second half through Tumblr Osmosis). Generally, my cheat for not being able to finish anime is to just give up and read the manga, but this doesn't work for Utena, because the manga is very different from the anime (and objectively worse).

In terms of actually getting through the series as a first-time watcher, a lot of people argue that the series starts to pick up in the Black Rose arc (starting with episode 13), but I actually did not enjoy that arc on my first watch, I much preferred it on my second watch because I was able to recognize the things that it does to set up the later plot. Without that context, the Black Rose arc can feel like a slog. On my first watch, I didn't get really into the plot until the end of the Black Rose arc, around episode 22. After that, everything starts to fall into place, and the last 15 episodes of the series are a fucking whirlwind amassing in the greatest finale an anime has ever had. And of course, if you decide to rewatch the series (which you should do after a few months! it has incredible rewatch value due to the huge amount of symbolism and foreshadowing it utilizes) you will find the Student Council arc and the Black Rose arc a lot more interesting. But that's a long way to go before you start to feel like you're actually getting something out of the series, especially if you're bad at watching anime. So, it is worth it? Unequivocally, yes.

I feel no shame in making the claim that Utena is one of, if not the, greatest animated series ever produced. No other series before or since has done what it does, and I believe that no other series ever will. It is Ikuhara's magnum opus, and you could dedicate your entire life to dissecting its themes and inspirations and never run out of shit to say about it. Finishing the series is just the beginning of your journey; Utena has a rich community of meta-analysts who have dedicated thousands of hours to doing exactly that, and part of the joy of finishing the series is being able to dive head-first into some of the greatest anime essays ever written. Most people agree that the best place to start is with The Palace Perspective, and while I don't agree with all of the opinions presented here, it is undeniably an incredible series of essays with a lot to offer.

TL;DR, if there's any series in the world that worth putting in the effort to finish watching, it's Utena. Although if you haven't already familiarized yourself with the triggering content of the series, you can find a full trigger guide here.

#mail #revolutionary girl utena #rgu meta #<- this is my tag for meta-analysis which you can also check out when you finish the series! see you on the other side my friend

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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youtube

Watch the American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 now: https://youtu.be/bWiW4Rp8vF0?feature=shared

The American Climate Leadership Awards 2024 broadcast recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by active climate leaders. Watch to find out which finalist received the $50,000 grand prize! Hosted by Vanessa Hauc and featuring Bill McKibben and Katharine Hayhoe!

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faerywhimsy · 8 months

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Vamptember Day 24 -FREE DAY

I am a huge fan of book to TV adaptations, so much so that a portion of my Honours thesis was actually dedicated to that particular portion of media.

The Hunger Games books and movies offer a perfect example of so much of what I love about it; a series of books that are from a limited 1st person perspective, then expanded out into a series of not just three but four movies to make room for perspectives that are hinted at within the books, yet given no explicit voice given the nature of the perspective choice.

But even a faithful adaptations can turn sour is when enough of the central themes of a story get overturned over the course of a longer running series. I’m thinking Game of Thrones here. That first season was almost a play by play of the first novel. Things like the Red- and Purple Weddings later occurred more or less as expected, though timelines of surrounding events were fudged. There were some really cool graphics made on this topic back in the day.

And then... well, we got the last 3 seasons, didn't we? What a disappointment (sorry Jacob, you're an actor capable of doing things that are very subtle, but that show let you down).

Reimaginings can likewise be good or bad, but they have built into them a bit more leeway. Where these usually turn sour is around the time they fully abandon the source material. This is mostly your ‘loosely inspired by’ stuff. It’s putting a name on the door that’s generated to sell tickets. I’m trying to think of a good example of this, but the stuff I haven’t liked doesn’t tend to stick in my head because I’ve usually moved on by then. At their strongest, reimaginings bring well thought out and updated content to a fandom.

BBC's reimagining in Sherlock was innovative when they brought Conan Doyal's characters into the modern day. They succeeded in doing that because what they kept sacred, at least to begin with, was the relationships between the characters and the overarching themes that came from that. By doing only those two things, they were able to reinvent satisfying ways to touch on the main plot points of the original stories.

That team also, sadly, offered a cautionary tale of what happens when such a project deviates too far from its source material.

The reimagining in AMC's Interview with the Vampire is far more ambitious and therefore complex in what it proposes, with an equal half of its story existing in a space that will be close to what was written in the books. I genuinely hope they end up succeeding with their ambition. Part of that is that it's not pretending to be any sort of directly faithful adaptation.

The first hint? The entire premise of S1: It’s 2022 and Louis invites Daniel for a second interview. That just didn't occur in the books.

This one change brings the story straight into the modern day, which is easily arguable as something needed for a series that released its first book in 1976. While I love a nostalgic- or period piece as much as the next person, I’m not disappointed by this.

This is the kind of change that’s a deal breaker. It stands to give new watchers the introduction they need into the world at the same time as giving something entirely unexpected to old fans. In other words, it’s narrative gold to someone like me.

The reasons I love it are completely different to what draws me to a straight like for like with added scenes adaptation as outlined above in Hunger Games. By changing the timeline and beginning straight out of the gate, it means that you can change everything.

And, god, they do.

Okay, obviously not everything. Character names, places, even dates on their own aren’t enough to hold the narrative cohesion of a reimagining if it doesn’t hold tight enough to the central themes of the source material to maintain that the original plot points still make sense to come to pass. WHICH S1 DOES.

I have so much interest in dissecting how they’ve so far kept hold of (most of) the themes and yet, in only 7 episodes, have already told a story with so many different details. And, if I’m gonna be totally honest, TVC is perfectly primed for exactly this kind of adaptation simply because, as a collection, these books have never been consistent (thank you, Anne for this dubious and ongoing gift).

There has been a single possible inconsistency with themes that did give me some cause for concern, but it’s also not the one that most people seem concerned by. So, let’s get into the analysis!

Armand:

I’m beginning with this character, because a supercut on YouTube I finally got around to watching made me realise we got a total of 15 minutes of Assad on screen in the 7 episodes of S1, and less than 5 of those are of him in the named character. So it’s an easy place to start.

Obviously, there is little difference that can be pointed to in those fewer than 5 minutes other than the differences in physical appearance than described (17 y/o, red hair, brown eyes) in the books, and that’s what I’ve seen a lot of discourse on thus far. That, and what on earth this Louis had on him to convince him it was a great play to pretend to be Rashid in front of Daniel. (He is a theatre kid, I guess…)

There is however a short detail in The Vampire Armand after Armand goes into the sun, however, that briefly describes his eyes as being orange (maybe amber?) as he starts to heal, and therefore the choice on making Assad’s eyes this colour in the series becomes an interesting detail to me.

Also, let’s be honest – if you’re gonna make the creative choice to have both Sam and Jacob in these luminescent contacts, but leave Assad’s natural throughout… well, I mean, what is being said on that side of the coin if that’s the choice being made?

On the side of details they kept AND CHANGED at the same time, my favourite for this character continues to be the below image that shows the physical resemblance between one Assad Zaman and, yes, a different Botticelli painting than any referenced in the books, but ultimately a Botticelli painting all the same. We're good to go!

Louis:

I don’t really want to focus too long on the obvious differences between Louis the slave owner (books) and Louis the pimp (series) except to say they are there. As are Louis’ signature green eyes.

However, that is where the resemblance ends. And I’m not just talking about physical.

In Louis’ case, the biggest difference I clocked and remarked in DMs up till now that—as a fanfic writer of both books and series fandom—Louis’ was the voice that consistently gave me most trouble to move between. I literally could not convincingly write him in any series fic at the same time as I was writing my mammoth long fic How They Get to Trinity Gate.

And it was not the fact that Louis was white in the books that tripped me up.

Another big thing is the change to when Louis and Lestat meet. This changes things for Lestat's character a bit as well, but I think it's more clear at this point the ways in which Lestat being set up as that much stronger and older than Louis on first meeting has had an impact on their story. Armand will be that much older than Louis as well, but what's a difference of a handful of decades when Armand already was that much older than Louis canonically?

As a linguist, I remain most fascinated by the dialogue changes that have been given to Louis’ character, particularly in historic New Orleans scenes. When reading Interview With the Vampire, there’s not a great deal of difference to the voice of Louis in the present vs the past that he gives to the boy interviewer. In the series, however? The difference in character from past to present is as unavoidable as it is riveting. To me, that alone offers so many details about who Louis is as a person, the disparity between Louis and a Lestat who obviously still gets to keep his book canon French accent.

In terms of how these changes effected the story as Louis relates it to Daniel, however? I mean, for the most part, the Louis I watched was equally convincing as he hit the main plot points his character needed to hit to stay true to the source material. That makes it a successful update to me!

Daniel:

Daniel is a laugh, both in the books and in the series. But, though the series has held on to the aspect of his sense of humour from the books, that humour is depicted in a completely different way.

Self deprecating, for the most part, or actually laugh out loud funny is what we see of Daniel in the books. Occasionally his anger gets the better of him, but for the most part he’s more docile—or possibly just as drunk—as many of us would be in similar circumstances. Apart from, say, when he’s calling Armand an immortal idiot.

The humour we get from Daniel in the series, though? That’s cutting. Yes, aimed to slice others up, especially when he’s deflecting from himself, but also the stuff that's made to cut through bullshit.

He’s had another 50 years to hone it, and none of them were lost to madness or absence from himself. No, this Daniel has been present every year of the 69 that have been given to him, and it shows. His wit has grown up with him, because he has grown up in a way he never got to in the books.

Something else to consider, however, is the fact that this Daniel is half David.

Actually, it's more than half. We got less of Daniel in S1 than we got of Armand. When I say this, I mean the only parts from the book canon we've got were in a couple of flashback scenes and the recording Eric listens to, then plays in Dubai in Episode 1. Only Luke Brandon Field has so far shown me anything close to a faithful version of Daniel, and I've no doubt this actor is destined to continue to follow that trajectory throughout future seasons.

That leaves me with wondering who we've got in the present from Eric? And that's David Talbot who, it turns out, is another canonical interviewer within The Vampire Chronicles. You may remember him as the guy who interviewed Armand, a version of which we're also set to see in S2.

David, when we first see him in Queen of the Damned, is someone interested in vampires not as puff portraiture but as a reality. He’s an older man coming to acceptance he’s near the end of his life and career. And he does not want to be made into a vampire.

Louis: A still hand, time to watch your daughters marry. Daniel: And divorce. And die.

Sound familiar?

Let me explain something of what I suspect went into this decision behind the scenes: The character of Daniel is underdeveloped in the books to say the least, something I’ve written about already during Vamptember. There was never going to be enough of the book character of Daniel in AMC's version to satisfy every book reader. Anne simply didn't give us enough of him, and fandom remains wildly divided in how to interpret him.

By contrast, David was a character readers got far too much of because of Anne's attempt to shoe horn us into a different romantic interest for Lestat. He's just not as popular. Imagine for a second the reception if the early promotional material had named Eric as playing 'David' instead of 'Daniel'? It's a marketing mislead, and one that's paid off.

When setting up the core "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf"-esque central cast, the creative team over at AMC did something very clever, I think. They pulled over characteristics of another underdeveloped character from the same canon in order to flesh their version of Daniel out. We'll almost certainly see a body swap, and that's where the David, and Eric's, part of the story will end.

In conclusion, I will absolutely eat my hat if we see someone called David Talbot walking around in this series ever ever. And, when it comes to the eventual plot line of making Daniel a vampire, they've set up three good options in front of them (and another example where we old fans have no way to expect WHICH WAY IT WILL GO):

He'll be coerced into it (David, canonically by Lestat, but in this universe almost certainly Armand)

He'll change his mind and demand it again (Daniel in true Devil's Minion style)

He'll almost die and someone will have to turn him (Daniel, yes, but also Jesse)

Two of these methods of becoming a vampire from the early books canonically turn a Talamasca character, and I definitely have some on-a-tangent theories there, given the presence of Talamasca characters already in Mayfair Witches.

The only thing they’ll need to change from the books here is Armand being Daniel/David’s foil, instead of Lestat. And, look, they’ve already positioned Louis right there as the love of his life in the face of the love triangle that’s sure to follow in the series, as in the books.

Fareed (bonus):

This is further to my passing body swap comment in the last section, but I really wanted to add:

Why include this minor character front and centre as early as S1? Why then have him explicitly say he is not there not once but three separate times as part of his only dialogue?

Fareed: That is not my voice. And I'm not here. [...] I am not here. [...] I'm not here. [...] Pleasure never meeting you, Mr. Molloy.

Is this not explicitly designed to have the same effect as telling a person not to imagine a pink elephant? Not to mention, it's as meta as fuck. That's Schrödinger's Vampire right here.

So why do these things if not to bring to the front of people's minds not only that the entire of Anne Rice's canon is free game in this reimagining? But that Fareed in particular is a character who's the first of his kind in the Chronicles; a scientist who can and does invent a clone?

A clone that might just end up looking very much like Luke Brandon Field?

Why, also, spend so much time and promotional material on another actor we see for about the same short space of time within S1? Minute for minute, I reckon we get about the same amount of screen time here with Gopal Divan as we do with Luke.

That, and they both happen to appear for the first time in Episode 6. Just saying.

In terms of canon deviation, if there was a physical description of Fareed in the books, I honestly don't remember it. He was just one of Anne's many, many characters that were a) created to function as a plot point, and b) forgotten beyond the original purpose he was created for.

As long as they manage to keep Fareed interested in the vampiric sciences, I honestly don't see there being any problems.

Lestat:

Saving the best till last, am I right?

Lestat is Lestat is Lestat, isn’t he? The blond hair. The blue eyes. The arrogant swagger. Both the father’s anger matched with the uncontrollable laughter raging within him at all times. Completely out of control. Hedonistic, definitely to a fault. A Byronic hero in the package of an immoral vampire.

I hated Lestat and, when I read the books as a teenager, it was despite him.

I was ready to go into the series doing the same. The stories, the themes, the history, the characters (minus Lestat). There is so much richness to love in the world of the books, despite so much of it being told by Lestat. And there was no doubt we were gonna get less of The Lestat Show in a show that’s not told from his PoV and has three other main characters vying equally for that attention.

I will amend this statement now to acknowledge he does get less obnoxious by the time we hit the final trilogy, which were obviously not out when I’d made the judgement call of despising him. (Hell, Tales of the Body Thief wasn’t yet out…)

In Lestat's case, the changes that have been made aren't so much of appearance or characterisation, so much as moments. And I understand why. Lestat is iconic and, in many ways, impossible to change in any meaningful way because of it. So the choice of changing moments here and there becomes the perfect way to cast a new spin on Lestat's character.

ESPECIALLY when you have Armand right there behind Louis the whole time, almost certainly controlling the narrative.

Obviously, there was That Scene in Episode 5. That particular scene is one that never happened in any of the books. But Lestat’s aggressions, micro and otherwise, are a well known particularly in early canon, and Louis is certainly not exempt from them.

Nor is Claudia. And who among us haven’t put up with less when it’s aimed towards a person we love than what we’ll put up with aimed to ourselves?

Despite it not following an actual canon event, it held intact location, characters and central themes all together – the summation of most important aspects when we have an adaptation and hope it will continue to hit the major canon plot points in its reimagining.

We saw Lestat, Louis and Claudia all moving towards an event we all knew was coming, and what ended up being the climax of S1.

What I don't see being talked about anywhere near so much is the beginning of Episode 3, as Louis begins to commit himself to becoming a nuisance to the feline life of New Orleans.

Lestat: Say we come upon a murderer planting a flowerbed, thinking only of flowers. How long do we wait before his bloody deeds reveal themselves? Louis: As long as it takes. Lestat: You haven’t thought this through, Louis.

The charitable view, of course, is that Lestat is just not wanting, in this moment, to encourage anything Louis wants to say. If so, it would hardly be the only time Lestat shuts Louis down. Louis says he doesn’t want to feed on humans anymore so Lestat’s immediate response is to push as hard in the opposite direction. I would be satisfied with that.

Equally, I would be satisfied if, come S3, Lestat is revealed to remember this conversation completely differently. It would make sense. Of COURSE Lestat wants to feed on the evil doer and only the evil doer. What else are monsters like them supposed do? This would speak perfectly to their being many things in The Vampire Lestat that are different once Lestat takes the reigns of the books and supposed pen name.

The more I think about it, the more I won't be terribly surprised if they decide on one of these—or even a secret third option (Armand, I'm looking at you)—being the way this moment washes out later. The repercussions of deviating from Lestat only feeding from the evil doer are far too detrimental to the canon they seem intent to create.

Basically, their Lestat holding fast to this opinion for any longer than this scene would leave them struggling to hit more than one major plot point in future seasons.

Anyone who's read the books knows Lestat has already come across Marius before he meets Louis. He's heard Marius’ treatise on only eating the evil doer, and understands why his mentor holds to that tenant. Likewise, Lestat has prior to that come across Armand—something that has all but been confirmed for the series, again in the S2 trailer—and, after meeting both fledgling and maker, Lestat is able to pull together for himself an ethical stance he will take into the rest of his immortal life.

Lestat doesn't have to figure out what his code is gonna be, or whether he's gonna have one, like he way that's depicted for Louis in Episodes 2-3. This ethical stance informs him and carries through from there to the time in the future where Lestat’s made Prince of all vampires.

We'd have a very different looking future seasons ahead of us if Lestat were to abandon that code. It would make Episode 5 look tame.

But Sam knows those books. Rolin knows those books.

I love these monsters. As unreliable as Anne was with her famous lack of editing, this was something even she never flipped back and forth on. And a bunch of monsters with a code is still what we are seeing in S1 just from the fact that Daniel has survived this far into the interview in 2022.

They were and continue to be monsters, her characters, but they aren't that monstrous. There's a line for these serial murders. Honour among the thieves of mortal life.

That’s what makes them so enduringly interesting in all the variations we see for them.

@vamptember

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heliads · 6 months

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everything is blue • conrisa space au • Chapter Thirteen: And Suddenly I Was a Lilac Sky

Risa Ward escaped a shuttle destined for her certain, painful death. Connor Lassiter ran away from home before it was too late. Lev Calder was kidnapped. All of them were supposed to be dissected for parts, used to advance a declining galaxy, but as of right now, all of them are whole. Life will not stay the same way forever.

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Connor doesn’t think he’s felt this big of a sense of relief since he first arrived at the Graveyard. It makes no sense by all accounts. Connor is still adrift in the midst of the galaxy with nothing to save him except a fabricated grounds license. Worse, he knows exactly who’s hunting him, and that Dorian Heartland will let nothing get in between himself and the chase. Even time.

Still, a crushing burden has just been lifted from his shoulders. Now Connor can breathe properly for the first time in a very long time, and it’s all to do with Risa. She’s already insisted on walking around the ship so she can analyze the supplies they have and how long until they run out. She also organized their medical equipment and came up with several ways they can save their own lives should something happen. Stars, it’s like being reborn. At last, at long last, Connor doesn’t have to do this alone anymore. They’ve only been apart for a few short days, but Connor never wants to do it again.

She catches him looking too closely at her while she’s going through a catalog of ship power supplies. “What?” She asks, blushing slightly.

Connor feels his cheeks heat up in sympathy. “Nothing,” he says a little too hastily, “It’s just. Well. It’s nice to see you again.”

When he dares to risk a glance towards her again, Connor is pleased to find her smiling at him. “It’s good to see you again too, Connor,” she tells him.

He lets the easy silence lull him into a state of peace. This is what he’s missed most of all, more even than their long extended conversations. The quiet moments are worth just as much as the loud ones. Connor can let go of everything when he’s with her. More than he should, maybe, but he can’t help it. It’s a gut instinct, a core reflex.

He might have to start guarding himself against it, because Connor has just allowed his brow to clear of tension for the first time since the Graveyard exploded when Risa lays her trap. Slowly, sweetly, she turns to him and asks, “What’s wrong with your arm?”

Instantly, Connor freezes. He tries to play it off like nothing, but he can tell from the sharp glint in Risa’s eyes that she’s been onto him since the very beginning. Connor had tried to hide the evidence of the arm that is not his, keeping the sleeves of his jacket on at all times and forever pivoting to keep his left side turned towards her instead, but of course she would have seen through him from the moment they were reunited. He would be pleased that she knows him so well were it not for the fact that he really doesn’t want her to know this one thing.

“Nothing,” he says as calmly as he can, “Banged it up a little when I was running from the Juvey-cops, but it’s not a big deal.”

Risa arches her brow. “Really? You’d better let me take a look, then.”

She reaches towards his right arm, and Connor practically knocks over his chair from how quickly he yanks the limb away. Risa eyes him questioningly, and there’s no hiding the slow spread of hurt into her expression. Great, now she thinks he doesn’t like her anymore.

“I don’t want to trouble you,” Connor says weakly. “It’s fine, honestly.”

“Connor?” Risa’s voice is both hesitant and firm all at once. “Show me.”

He meets her gaze for one traitorous moment longer, then gives in and slowly pulls the jacket off. The arm that is not Connor’s is exposed, the lines and shading on the shark tattoo even more sickening and gray in the fluorescent lighting of the ship.

Risa recoils. It’s a small movement, and she’s obviously trying to control it, but the damage is done. This is what Connor feared the most, even more than the two of them never reuniting– that he would finally find her again and she would hate him. Connor has the arm of someone who tried to hurt her, who used her as a tool to get to him. Whenever Risa looks at him, she will always see Roland first, Connor second. There will never be a Connor that does not contain some part of a twisted third party.

Risa leans back towards him again. “When did this happen?”

Connor can’t stop his voice from shaking when he thinks about it. “On the Graveyard. When the engines exploded, our arms spliced.”

Risa tilts her head to the side, considering this. “Huh. I didn’t know that was a real thing outside of folk stories.”

“Neither did I,” Connor murmurs, and they both stare at the proof of the thing on Connor’s body. “I tried to get them to fix it,” he adds hurriedly when the silence becomes too much, “When they pulled me out, that is. I asked them to put my arm back on and they wouldn’t do it. I tried, though. I don’t want this.”

The hand on Connor’s wrong right arm clenches traitorously. Both he and Risa stare at it in vague disgust, but when Risa speaks, her tone isn’t cruel or cold at all, but warm and forgiving and Risa, still Risa, always Risa. Even when Connor isn’t Connor, she’s still her.

“This doesn’t matter to me,” she tells him clearly. “I know who you are, Connor. Regardless of the arm. Roland wouldn’t have flown across the galaxy to find me. Your arm might be different, but here–” she touches the side of his temple– “And here–” a trembling hand right over his heart– “It’s still you. That’s what I care about.”

To prove her point, she drops her hand to tap twice against his right forearm, just like they used to do back in the shallow darkness of Cleaver’s ship, just as they have done all this time. Connor smiles weakly back at her, and he does not tell her that it doesn’t feel the same. This arm does not understand the history of the two taps, and it never will.

Connor manages to pull himself out of melancholia by returning to more pressing matters at hand. He’d gotten so caught up in the euphoria of having Risa back that he almost forgot just how he got there, and what promises he made in exchange for this ship, this grounds license, this second chance. Bam and the others back there in the synth-lion’s den would certainly make good on their threat to cut off his grounds license if Connor didn’t rescue the Deadmen at some harvest colony, so he’s got to get to them sooner rather than later. Besides, Connor owes it to Hayden and the rest of his friends to break them out. No AWOL deserves to be distributed.

Connor spent some time on the flight over to Molokai going over the nav and info systems on the ship. He’d managed to pick a good piece of spacecraft to steal, but again, that’s all thanks to his new identity as Elvis Mullard. He’s been able to glean some information on where the distributes of the Graveyard are being kept, but the location isn’t set in stone. Once he finds it out, though, Connor will have to launch an attack to rescue dozens of distributes from a harvest colony designed as a stronghold against assaults exactly like this one. It’ll be a suicide mission, but he’s already sworn to do it. Nothing more to it.

He hadn’t–

He hasn’t told Risa this yet. He kind of feels like he needs to dole out the terrible things he’s done one by one so she doesn’t hate him right off the bat. First, he reveals that he’s got the arm of someone who once plotted to kill them both. Then, he tells her that they’re not going to get to hide away on some deserted planet but head towards a harvest colony instead, the last place either of them want to be. Finally, he admits that the odds he’ll ever make it out alive are slim to none.

Truth be told, he was kind of hoping that he would never have to say all this to Risa, that he could keep this required task hidden from her until he suddenly traipsed up to the ship with a hundred or two distributes in tow, but that’s impossible. All secrets must come out eventually. Risa has a way of finding out the very thing that Connor wants to keep hidden; after all, she’s done it once today, what’s to stop her from digging a little further? If he wants to keep her around, he’ll have to stop hiding things.

Besides, especially if this plan goes south as it surely must, Connor’s going to need to teach Risa the ropes of his newly borrowed spacecraft. Someone’s going to have to fly this ship away from the harvest camp if Connor can’t. Someone’s going to have to have a plan for what to do with liberated Deadmen, especially since the entirety of the Juvenile Authority will be tailing her as soon as they catch wind of what Connor is doing. Risa has always been the responsible one, and suns, he hates to make her do this, but he has no choice. He can’t let his friends get dismembered in a colony where nobody even remembers their name. Not after they kept him hidden from the wrath of the worlds for a year.

Connor is going over activity logs of large shipping cruisers broadcasting Juvenile Authority codes when Risa catches up to him. She slides into a seat next to him, casting a dubious glance towards the holodeck in front of him.

“I knew you were a star jockey, Connor, but even I didn’t think you passed all of your free time looking at ships,” she comments wryly.

Connor forces a smile. “Oh, you know me. Just can’t get enough of them,” he mumbles. Worst part is, despite the sarcasm, it’s actually kind of true. Connor may constantly be flown from one potential death to another, but it’s fascinating to see all of the different kinds of spacecraft up close.

Even when he was breaking into the shipyard with his new grounds license, certain that one bad move would result in him getting dragged back to Dorian Heartland and his freakish patchwork body, he couldn’t help but stare in awe at every different type of shuttle and cruiser locked inside. Unlike the crappy transport depot back on his home planet in OH-10, the amount of wealth on Heartland’s chosen meeting location had been dripping from every available surface. Chrome bedecked every spare inch of those ships, the walls were polished and gleaming, and the engines were strong enough to power a dozen Graveyards for centuries. Stars, he would have loved to spend hours in there, just going over the details of every vessel.

However, getting to Risa had been the top priority, so he’d hurried accordingly. Now, in his chosen getaway ship, Connor has the time to admire both the ships and her, so he does as he pleases.

Risa cracks a grin. “Don’t I know it. Would you like to tell me how you got your hands on this particular ship?”

When Connor remains silent, she sighs and continues on. “Connor, I’m not trying to interrogate you, I just want to know if you’re alright. I know there’s a lot you’re not telling me, but I want to help. I mean, stars, if you didn’t want me you could have just left me on Molokai, right? Let me in. Please.”

Connor’s eyes widen in alarm, and he reaches forward to wrap his hands around hers. He doesn’t miss the way she flinches slightly when Roland’s palm reaches her first, but he also notices how she holds onto that hand even stronger, as if to remind him that she’ll try so long as he does, too. “That’s not true, Risa. I have always wanted you.”

He can’t find the words to argue it fully. He needs Risa like he needs no other. When he was running for his life from Heartland and his men, he was thinking about how much he wanted to see her again. When he was landing on a mysterious planet that looked one strong wind away from falling to pieces, the only thing on his mind was getting to her. When he first saw her running towards him down a desolate alleyway, every thought in his mind had gone blank. It’s Risa and him. Him and Risa forever.

One of her lips quirks up. “Always? Even when I was sneaking onto your stolen ship?”

Connor actually laughs. “Even then. I just didn’t know it yet.”

He knows now. He knows more than he could ever begin to tell her.

She smiles at him for real this time. It makes his heart flip in his chest. Risa capitalizes on his momentary loss of speech to press her advantage. “Then you know to trust me with this. Tell me, Connor. Tell me everything.”

And, despite every neuron in his brain screaming at him otherwise, Connor gives in. He tells her about watching her escape pod disappear into the brilliant blackness of space, of running to the engine room to hide. He tells her about his final confrontation with Roland. He speaks of the explosion, how everything became nothing, and then how he woke up again on a strange planet. He whispers of Dorian Heartland, how there’s finally a face to the faceless governmental entity bent on hunting them down. He tells her about the group of AWOLs he’d met in the bowels of that glittering city, how they gave him a fake grounds license. He talks about sneaking into the shipyard, selecting one of his own, and flying to her.

The telling of it feels as if it must take years. At the end of it, Risa leans back in her seat. She’s quiet for a while, and Connor can’t tell if that’s good or bad. At last, she looks slowly up at him, and asks in crisp and clipped syllables: “What exactly did you promise them? The kids who gave you the license.”

“I don’t want to tell you,” Connor admits.

Risa sighs. “I know.”

They hang there for a moment, suspended in a silence neither of them truly want to break. At last, Risa decides to spare him. “Tell me about the ship,” she says suddenly. “You would have picked this one with a lot of specifics in mind. It’s far bigger than both of us need. Why?”

He senses her angling towards the truth, but this particular diversion works perfectly. “Well, I had to consider several,” he begins, “A lot goes into picking the perfect ship, you know.”

Risa smiles again, indulging him. “Go on.”

Easy to please, Connor does as told. “I couldn’t check out all of the interiors while I was in the shipyard, obviously, but I had time to look around. I chose this one because it had good space and because it had the perfect balance of armor and speed. More than that, it’s a Shadowstar, and one of 909s from that tactical class a few years back. They’re infamous for their camouflage. Excellent for hiding.”

He and Risa exchange significant glances. “Hiding,” she notes. “Not a military ship?”

Connor shakes his head. Although it had been tempting to look at some of the heavily armored warships in there, Connor knew that picking his ship was sort of like picking his fate. He can’t send AWOLs into a battle in good conscience. They’re not generals, they’re just teenagers.

“We can’t fight it,” he says abruptly, “Distribution. Fuck, we’re kids. This is bigger than the galaxy. What can we do?”

“Nothing,” Risa murmurs.

Connor nods, a little too quick, a few too many times. He’s been thinking about this a lot, that much is obvious. Judging by the determined set of Risa’s jaw, he’s not the only one. “Nothing,” he repeats. “The only thing we can do is survive. If we wanted to fight it, we could only ever do something small.”

A realization is dawning on Risa now, an understanding of just why Connor might be doing what he is. “Something small like, for instance, signing us up to crew a spacecraft? One that might get in the path of Juvey-cops hunting AWOLs? One that could be rescuing kids sentenced for distribution, especially if they had friends in technologically savvy places who just happened to bump into you while you were running from Dorian Heartland?”

Connor meets her gaze at last. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”

Risa draws in a breath, sharp and flighty. “Connor, that’s practically suicide. You can’t do that.”

“I can and I will,” he says grimly. “I made a promise. They’ll revoke my grounds license if I don’t keep up my end of the bargain. Besides, I can’t just leave them there. They got Hayden, Risa. They have all of your friends from the medbay. In what world can we just abandon them to their distribution? I know what I have to do, even without the threat of my fake grounds license. I’m going to find the harvest colony where they’ve got the Deadmen and I’m going to break them out. You’ll stay on board to get the ship away, and if you have to, you’ll leave without me. Promise me.”

Risa nods at last, tilting her head up defiantly to meet his gaze. “I promise I’ll let you do this. For our friends.”

Connor’s hands lock up by his sides. “Thank you.”

“I’m not done yet,” Risa continues. “I also promise that I’ll be going with you. There’s no way in sunfire I’m staying on the ship. If you’re going into the colony, I’ll be right by your side.”

Connor shakes his head. “Absolutely not. One of us has to make it out alive.”

Risa, however, is just as obstinate as him. It would be wonderful were it not for the fact that they’re both arguing over Risa’s life. “Both of us or none of us. I’m not leaving you again, Connor. We’re a team.”

“We’re a team,” he whispers faintly. Although he knows he should probably insist that Risa stay behind, some knot of stress releases itself in his chest when he learns that Risa will be with him when they break in. Despite all of his bravado and show, Connor doesn’t want to die alone. At least he will have Risa at the end of it all. Before they do it, though, he should probably tell her that he lov–

She smiles back at him, and even that thought is quickly washed away. “We’re a team,” she repeats.

Risa is far more skilled at research than Connor, and with her help, they’re able to stumble upon a few potential locations for the harvest colony with their friends. They were deliberating between two of them for a while, but then they found a radio transmission talking about a mass distribution and that sealed the deal. The colony is a long way away, and even with hyperspace travel it’ll take them a few days to reach it. That gives them plenty of time.

Connor changes the navigation system to target their new location, then ambles through the ship, testing systems, committing each and every inch of the place to memory. He’s only going to have so much time while all of this is his, after all, he might as well enjoy it.

In order to conserve energy, they have to occasionally slow down from hyperspace travel, using the time between jumps to fly at a regular rate. Although it adds time onto their voyage, it also gives Connor a chance to admire the sights around them. They never get close enough to any planet to risk interacting with the atmosphere, but Connor still watches with awe as they soar past fiery moons that seem more inferno than stable land, massive gas giants that swirl with multi hued storms, and massive city-planets with every surface coated in the blinking lights of a bustling planet-wide metropolis. There is so much more to the galaxy than he could have ever imagined. It would take a hundred lifetimes to explore it all. Somewhere in the secret part of his heart that still hasn’t learned to give up hope, Connor imagines that he might eventually be the one to do it.

At one point, Risa has to interrupt his reverie to ask his help with a mechanical issue. One of the viewing decks on the upper floor has lost gravity controls for some reason. Connor heads up to check it out, but even then, he’s unable to contain his awe. From the moment he pushes his way into the viewing deck, Connor floats, weightless, in a bay of securiglass windows. All around him is shifting, swirling blue, the navy and cerulean and aquamarine of a thousand cosmos.

From somewhere behind him, Risa laughs, probably at the look on his face. “You’ve seen space every day for the last year, Connor,” she teases him, “Surely it got old at some point, right?”

“Never,” he swears. “Look at all of this. I mean, wherever the Graveyard was, we never had this much color. It was all black and white, which was cool too, but this is something else.”

Stars, it’s stunning. Especially with the loss of gravity, it’s like swimming in a massive starsea. Curls of blue and purple nebulae erupt just outside the windows. The light reflects on Connor’s skin, his hands. With the tint, he almost believes that both arms are the same, that he is whole again.

“I mean,” he says quietly, half trailing off into his own head, “Just look at it, Risa. Everything is blue. It’s all so different. It’s all ours.”

Risa had been giggling, but she sobers up now, looking at him like somehow Connor is more impressive than any manner of stars. He pushes off of a nearby window so he can float back to her. For a moment, he’s almost afraid he’ll miss her and have to re adjust, and then they collide. Risa clings onto him by instinct, not wanting to lose contact with him again, but then the pressure fades and they just float there together, suspended by the weightlessness of their own chamber, surrounded by starlight.

“Promise me we can have this again,” she whispers suddenly, “Even after the harvest camp. Promise me we’ll come back and we can just be us again.”

He can’t promise something like that, neither of them can. They both know the risks of this. “I promise,” he says anyway.

She grins up at him. “You won’t let the rush of ordering around all those grateful distributes go to your head?”

Connor chuckles. “Absolutely not. I’ll make Hayden take over. That sort of thing wasn’t meant for me.”

“That surprises me,” Risa hums. “I thought you’d make a good leader. All those kids looked up to you back in the Graveyard, you know that.”

He sighs. “That was just because of the Akron AWOL rumors. They were hoping I’d do something crazy, but I only ever got that nickname because I panicked.”

His mind can’t help but flinch back to memories of Starkey watching him with hungry eyes wherever he went. No, he hopes that never happens again.

“I don’t want this, you know,” he says offhandedly, “I never did. I mean, I used to dream all the time of being on a ship of my own, but never once did I actually want to be captain.”

Risa’s gaze is soft and non-judgmental. “What did you want to be, then?”

“A mechanic,” he says, and laughs so he doesn’t have to look at her anymore. “My dad was one. Every week he’d get shipped up to some frigate or spaceport that needed repairs. He used to tell us all these stories about the crazy systems they had in those things.” Connor’s father had stopped telling those stories a while back, at least while Connor was in the room. He probably should have taken that as a sign.

“Anyway,” he continues hurriedly, clearing his throat, “I always liked the sound of that, I guess. I never wanted to just commute from ground to space, though. Staying on a ship for a longer time seemed pretty cool. It would just be me and the sky. I’d fix things, I’d hang with my crew. Everything would go according to plan.”

He has to physically stop himself from rambling any longer. Despite Connor’s best attempts at seeming like he didn’t have a care in the world back before he kicked-AWOL, he’d dreamed about that sort of life all the time. It was easier than wondering if his parents would ever get disappointed in him enough to actually sign an Unwind order. It was easier than thinking about the fact that they finally did.

Risa doesn’t seem perturbed by this. Instead, she hums in agreement under her breath. “I’d like it if things could go according to plan. And I’d especially like it if I could just spend time with friends without anyone interfering.”

Connor barks out a harsh, almost painful laugh. “Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

“Maybe,” Risa admits, “but we can see about that. We might have time for crazy once we’re eighteen.”

Connor goes silent. Worse things have happened in his life than getting his hopes up for something that’s probably never going to happen. He reaches over and takes Risa’s hand. She lets him. In their hollow of the ship, two teenagers linger in relative peace and quiet, and for once, the universe lets them be happy.

a/n posted ten minutes before midnight still counts as posting on time if i only specify the chapter release date 🤩

unwind tag list: @reinekes-fox, @sirofreak, @locke-writes

all tags list: @wordsarelife

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crof-fwf · 8 months

Text

What the….?! and this alucín?

Okay, I can't blame anyone for looking for content on the "fun social network". However, the comments of a certain person have caught my attention. And it wasn't until my curiosity have rewarded me with something that really left me with "My honest reaction". And this was My honest reaction:

And specifically, this was the "compilation" of posts that prompted me (in these moments) to simply share my thoughts on his comments. NOTE: It seems confirmed that the user is probably CanonSeeker [yeah, "Ese loco del centro de la ciudad"] so the "exposure" to his twitter profile can be useful for Content Creators or simply fans who want to avoid him. So do not think about debating with him since it would be in vain,and in addition to wanting to talk about his comments.

Now yes, to the posts that I want to dissect

First the antecedent

"Everytime somebody triest to "FIX" RWBY" ?

Here he expresses himself on how the "Fanworks" of the "Fix Fic" category are based on misrepresenting every aspect of the canon.

Although here I will say that I have no references regarding "Fix Fic" in general beyond Celtic Phoenix's "Fixing RWBY".

I start about how he falls into the "generalization" that he gives to the "Fix Fic". And my comment is about how prejudiced he is when talking about said FanWorks.

Although, it may be that before I fell into this fandom there was a time when this type of FanWorks abounded but coming to sin the same or worse errors than those of the series or simply wanting to be pretentious.

But even so, it is not about invalidating that at the end of the day a "Fix Fic" can be considered a fic where the author has to be committed to fixing aspects of it without having to separate so much from the canon, being like a challenge for the author.

And now let's get to the subject.

This user has commented on suggestions to consider for a "Fixing RWBY" and here is the "short" list of suggestions that Dori/CanonSeeker has shared...

My quickest and most sincere reaction:

It is an exaggeration to consider this list as very long, but it is the specifications shown that are "eye-catching". So well lets see line by line the list. My points are mainly focused on the "Fix Fic" section. In which, from my perspective, a "Fix Fic" tries to stay within the events of the canonical series, while at the same time deciding to rewrite elements that were not satisfactory within the canonical execution or additionally add elements that do not try to unbalance of the canon. So, let´s begin:

"Try to focus on the female protagonists." "jaune is a side character. " "Do not make a cis white male have more of a role than them."

For a "Fix Fic" section it is somewhat understandable to keep what would be the main cast, but still it would not be bad to have to explore other characters (and yes, also include the male ones).

"Do not have a straight white male shame them for their actions."

I don't know what he mean by "shame". But if he mention it as a form of "consequence" for the cast for non-positive actions. I don't know what to say, that the team is can be "shame" by any character that doesn't fall into that category… and in case we take it into account I doubt that's the answer, because imagine if other characters [outside this "category"] "shame" the cast, and Doris/Seeker gets angry anyway, it only makes it more ironic.

"No straightwashing. " "keep bumbleby canon."

At this point I don't know what it means, since let's say that the "Fic Fix" is in charge of "fixing"… this "Ship", either due to the lack of growth, moments, or rewriting the "conveniences" of its development.

At this point I can't find a purpose for it because… "A Fix Fic" would not seek to carry out that type of "washing"

"And NO Fanservice. "

Short: If it turns out that he was always Seeker, then this would be… laughable.

But in no short: I think that such situations would not be necessary for a "Fix Fic"…

Don't make evil men "morally grey"

Here I have a question for my estemeed…. If there can be gray morality in the male antagonists or not?

And the answer: Honestly, it's ironic to settle for "cartoon" for the male antagonists but both the fandom and the series want to take it upon themselves to give depth to the female antagonists…

Don't have jaune or adam date anyone in team rwby.

Okay, and I ask again: Is a romnace necessary for a RWBY Fix Fic? And I want to apply this in general. Because if you are going to make a "Ship" in a "Fix Fic"... it would be with too much care and detail

Ruby is to be idealistic, and it shouldn't be a character flaw.

Doesn't the fact that a character has no mistakes make her a "Mary Sue"? and even more so for the fact that he wants Ruby to be idealized.

Yang is not a party girl, not alcoholic, and not a slacker.

From a "Fic Fix" point of view, ok, it's well aimed to NOT downgrade a character to be a "party girl, alcoholic, and a slacker."

BUT : ) , they can simply be aspects or defects so that there is a challenge or a purpose to overcome, but not reduce the character to what was mentioned

(But ironically to reduce it to half a Ship, there they are quiet)

Adam taurus is irredeemably evil. So is torchwick.

… I don't have anything relevant to comment except for the fact that you can make an "irredeemable" character, BUT : ) the same is how it is written / handled…

One (Adam) being able to offer more crumbs and (Roman) the other would be a "enough but I wouldn't complain if there were more"

Don't call it a rewrite or a fixit fanfic. Call it an AU. A fan AU.

In short: Depending on the story you write, as well as the one you want to "tell" is what would classify the "Fanfic" as an AU or "Fic Fix". As I said, the "Fic Fix" in the end would enter the category of FanFic but its purpose would be a more ambitious one. (in the sense of giving yourself as a challenge to "improve" the deficient aspects of a series)

That will show your respect to the show and its writers. And showing CRWBY writers Miles and Kerry that respect will cause others to give your work a chance.

And the only salvageable thing at this point is basically: "The impression", honestly you would cause a lot of distrust to most of the fandom by being "rude" with the CRWBY, but hey, it's not like it's not a guarantee that the fandom will give a chance to a "Fic Fix" for the same reason that the fandom is also very "defensive" when it comes to aspects of the series, to such a degree of humiliating or harassing the author because "he had ideas that could hurt the canon" . A good impression does not guarantee a positive reception from the fandom to your "fix fic".

And to give a quick conclusion: Apparently the "Fixed" version or idealized for Doris/CanonSeeker is the "over exaggerated" representation (or flanderization) of what RWBY is... And last: I know that I argue when it is a "Fic Fix", and in the case of an "AU" I will only tell you that: Have fun as you also have fun when structuring and making your AU story.

Now to "Mimir".

#CROF: Quick Thought #CROF #rwde

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