i follow pjo tags that im usually fine seeing on my dash and i keep seeing people posting about some Discourse thats popped up again since the comic con card photo things came out about leah and like. i guess i curated my dash well because im seeing literally none of that

So I once saw a post talking about reading comprehension and how different people read a story, how many only tend to look at the surface levels with stories and like characters who they agree with morally and honestly it got me thinking about the Star Wars Prequels because

The biggest disagreement I have had with people is whether or not the Jedi were the heroes or not of the story and whether you think they are the heroes or not is very dependent on how you read the story

Star Wars is a rather interesting case of conflicting writing ideas, especially in the clone wars TV show, because the writers both wanted to keep the complexity and moral ambiguity of the Prequels (which was still more black and white in its approach than it should have been), and wanted to have the main characters be easily morally accessible to kids

So you ended up in a situation where the surface level story elements, like the framing of the characters, only ever portrays the main characters as good or bad, black or white, never grey (except for Anakin when he is sliding into the dark side) but the more you look at the wider world in the story and consider the actions our "heroes" take the more morally questionable they appear

So whether you choose to look beyond the surface or not and whether you choose to remember its place in the overarching story makes a big difference in how you morally understand the events of the Clone Wars

Ultimately the Prequels are a tragedy, they are the tragic fall of one Anakin Skywalker to the dark side and everyone agrees on that it is the story of Anakin's fall, what they disagree on is whether the tragedy is about how a child was twisted into a killer or whether the tragedy is in the destruction of the Jedi and the disagreement very clearly comes from which media's portrayal you choose to believe in

Because in the Prequels we watch this young kid get treated with disdain and have to abandon the only person who has always bee there for him and then he starts getting groomed by Palpatine, come back to him in the second film as a teenager struggling with his powers and get told not to act on his foresight leading directly to the death of his mother then get thrown into a war he is not prepared for all whilst Palpatine continues to groom him, then come back to him in the third film where he gets another prophetic vision chooses not to go to the Jedi about it because at this point he is having to hide it to protect the only relationship he cares about and instead goes to Palpatine whose grooming had been successful and who promises to help him

His downfall in the Prequels appears to be a result of the twisted character he grew into as a result of these external forces, both the Jedi's messed up approach to emotions, Palpatine's grooming and the result of the trauma he has had to endure, the tragedy is a result of factors not Anakin's burden to bear alone

Plus, we are actively seeing the fall of the Jedi and the Republic throughout this as both institutions separately make concessions they should never have made, such as choosing to use the clone army and electing a dictator

It's a complex picture, one in which no one walks away looking good

And yes there is definitely a lack of complexity being fleshed out, with the Jedi being a lot more morally reprehensible than people want to acknowledge, but it's always clear that no one is completely good, everyone makes mistakes in the story that leads to it's tragic conclusion

By contrast, the Clone Wars does not want that moral complexity, it still has the elements that make the story morally complex (including the ones the Prequels didn't look deep enough at), such as the use of the Clone Troopers, the characterisation of the Jedi, the Jedi code and council, the Republic becoming more and more corrupt as well as the question of why are we waging a war against people who just wanted to leave the Republic

Except know the Jedi and Republic are good guys and the Separatists are bad

Yoda talks to the Clones and gives them words of wisdom, as if they aren't slaves he is forcing to fight for him, the Jedi appear less aloof and more in touch with the world around them, Obi Wan especially appears less attached to the Jedi Order, they're clearly fighting to defend invaded planets and war is clearly the only option available to them, yet we don't longer on why they are using slave labour, we don't linger on why the peace keepers are resorting to violence and we don't linger on the psychological effects on throwing Padawans into war

And we get to not linger in the moral questionableness of it all because the bad guys are so clearly bad (also a problem with the movies, the Separatists do not have anywhere near as much moral standing as they should), Dooku is controlling the Separatists and he is obviously a Sith so bad, we rarely if ever meet people on the Separatists side who are actually moral equals to the Jedi and when we do they are either being kept in the dark by Dooku or weak-willed and coerced into becoming Separatists, the Separatists are mostly shown invading planets and robbing the planets of its resources and people rather than asking the planet to leave the Republic because there are very visible issues with the way the Republic is running things now

We have characters framed as black and white so people who choose to buy into the framing think everything in Star Wars is black and white

But the people who don't, the people who question the Jedi

It's like pulling on a stray string in a sweater, everything unravels

It goes from okay well that's a bit of a questionable thing for the "good guys" to do to Oh my gods, they're so abusive, they were setting up themselves up for emotionally repressed assholes who think they have a right to make decisions on the galaxy's behalf and have the power to fight armies, it's a wonder it didn't happen sooner

And it's honestly really interesting to see the dichotomy of opinions brought about by looking at the framing of events Vs considering the event itself

Hi! I hope this doesn’t come off as rude, but I think the point people were trying to make about the nudity, is while there’s nothing wrong with the meshes existing and being used for realism, it does unfortunately appeal to a certain audience, and sharing that sort of cc is a bit irresponsible as it can and will be used by those awful people. Not saying that should dictate what you make and share! Just that people’s worries about it come from a genuine place of concern.

Hello. In this regard, I can say that people who were abused in childhood approached me and they supported me. They do not see anything wrong with this, and at the same time they do not advocate pedophilia. It's just.. in their understanding there is nothing spoiled, like those people who immediately reacted sharply. If you are thinking that you can do something indecent with this ss - this speaks of your promiscuity. Let's face it, criminals will always find a way and it won't be a game at all. This will be the real world. When you commit this kind of crime, you do not think that someone prompted you to do it. Most likely you think that you want certain actions right now. It's all. So the problems that accusers have inflated are sitting in their heads. I did not even show the whole world a picture of where the genitals would flash. There are no intimate preview pictures or other screenshots. I think that it is not necessary to obsessively defend those who do not need protection, because such activity reaches hysteria. Most rapists don't even know about this kind of content in some abstract game, they act in real life and they don't care about it. Instead of blaming the creators if you are an ardent defender of someone's rights, go and help people who are in trouble. This content was not created to support pedophilia. If you did not know, people living in tribes walk completely naked, decorated with different leaves and beads. Nobody there talks about pedophilia, it is broadcast on TV. Of course, you build boundaries for yourself, but you should not blame someone for his personal choice. This is going beyond the personal boundaries of a person, this is a kind of infringement. I believe that we should not be ashamed of our body, as well as the bodies of strangers, but this does not mean that we should go without clothes. It's just that people here react as if this content involves Sims walking in negligee on the streets of the city. People who commit such crimes will even love the content of ordinary clothes for children, because they are bright and beautiful. Do you understand what I mean? I've also seen a mod that adds teenage breasts to a child and that's okay because that's how it happens in life. But I did not see an attack towards the author who did it. Everyone liked it. Although, based on your logic, this is also a call to action. Let's talk about what any content related to children will look like a call to action in one sense or another. Because the percentage of this action is always there. And coming up with a crime involving children's content is as easy as shelling pears. I was so hoping that someone would use these bodies as a basis for their clothes, and not scream, splashing saliva that this is pedophilia. Why doesn't anyone swear at screenshots of naked sims in the feed? I often see it even uncensored with a strong sexual context and it looks like pornography. But no one complains and everyone downloads, although pornography is prohibited. Are these double standards? Or is everyone downloading to jerk off rather than play okay with this thing? Well, the problem is the people, not the creators. It is the annon's who have assigned me some kind of labels and titles since the time I appear here, although not a single label is true and does not carry arguments and grounds. Anyone who saw something obscene in the content should think about why he saw it, although the creator broadcast something different. With the same success, you can forbid looking at Greek paintings depicting naked people, considering them obscene, although this is art, it is work. How about baptizing babies and bathing them in holy water? Is everyone around you pedophiles and perverts? This I mean that you need to learn to look from a different angle, and not elevate to the absolute. You will say that pedophilia flourished in Greece and the churches are full of perverted clergy. And I will say yes, but not all of them are. And I repeat that if a person wants to commit a crime, he will find how to do it even without these default bodies.

My hopes for WWE & AEW in 2021 and things I hope changes  for WWE and AEW in 2021

Hopes

WWE

Roman Reigns stays dominant and reigns supreme as the Tribal Chief

Keith Lee wins the Royal Rumble,  joins The Hurt Business and brings the WWE Champion to the Hurt Business

Naomi returns and joins The Hurt Business and dethrones Asuka to take home the gold

The Hurt Business DOMINATES Raw

Bianca Belair wins the Royal Rumble and dethrones Sasha Banks at Wrestlemania

The Riott Squad win the Women’s Tag Team Champions

Unify the men’s Tag Team Championships 

Unveil a new Title and give us WWE’s very first Television Championship. It should be styled similar to the NWA and WCW’s TV belts, but on the sideplates it should include USA and Fox on the plates. Shelton Benjamin or Ricochet should be the TV Championship 

Big E reigns supreme as Intercontinental Champion and finally gets to face Roman for the Universal Championship at Wrestlemania 38

Rhea Ripley gets called up and goes to Smackdown

Mercedes Martinez dethrones Io Shirai and becomes NXT Women’s Champion

Karrion Kross reclaims the NXT Championship

Anyone but Johnny Sameface as NXT North American Champion

Queen Of The Ring. The amount of female talent available on Raw, SmackDown, NXT and NXT UK is quite something. It's clear that this is the richest women's division in WWE history. They really should do something with all those workers. The 'Mae Young Classic' tourneys have been fine, but people would trip over themselves to see a fully-fledged 'Queen Of The Ring' epic staged across multiple nights. If booked correctly, this tournament could help establish a new contender for top titles. If she isn't Champion by then(though she should be) the perfect person to become Queen Of The Ring would be Bianca Belair! Bianca Belair would have unparalleled credibility for her 'StrongEST, FastEST, ToughEST' mantra if she whipped a bevy of skilled workers to become the first 'Queen'. WWE could also get creative by linking the event in with Charlotte Flair's nickname and spinning off into a feud between her and the winner afterwards.

Form Full-Time Female Tag-Teams and keep them around. The Women’s Tag Team DIvision is a mess. Keep creating makeshift Tag Teams and breaking up established tag teams and your tag team division is dead. The current champs and their predecessors haven't even been "proper" full-time duos - Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler were shoved together awkwardly in the summer, and they've since been replaced by the unlikely Asuka and Charlotte Flair combo. This cannot be allowed to continue. It's damning that WWE don't have more fully-formed pairings ready to go. The Riott Squad are perhaps the only actual twosome who are presented as a tight-knit collective weekly. Other than that, who is there? Considering the belts have been around for a few years now, that's unacceptable. The IIconics split, so did Sasha Banks and Bayley, and the scene is littered by 'odd couple' tandems like Mandy Rose and Dana Brooke, Lacey Evans and Peyton Royce, and Billie Kay teaming with the likes of Natalya or Tamina when it suits.

Ensure NXT is treated like a proper third brand rather than a quasi-development league for Raw and SmackDown. NXT has been on USA Network for over a year now, but it's still very much behind both Raw and SmackDown as a priority. Need proof? Look at the way Keith Lee was handled when he was "called up" after SummerSlam 2020. The former NXT Champ had to start all over again, and he's had several teething problems on Monday nights. It'd be nice to see WWE move away from positioning NXT as a 'feeder' for the other two shows. Changing someone's gimmick when they leave makes the brand look less-than, and there's simply no need for that anymore; NXT should be an equal to Raw and SmackDown, not a development league. Sadly, it still comes across as that. Lee's stop/start plight and the (mis)fortunes of others like Aleister Black and Ricochet should be a lesson to WWE. Some workers are better off rocking the black and yellow, not the red or blue.

AEW

Darby Allin becomes AEW World Heavyweight Champion

Adam Page costs Kenny the title and Page gets revenge and DESTROYS Kenny

MJF destroys the inner circle from within and when Jericho realizes what just happened, that’s when MJF and Wardlow destroys Jericho

Which is when we get a Sammy Guevara babyface turn and we get MJF vs Sammy

Arn Anderson turns on Cody

AEW’s Four Horsemen is formed. MJF, Shawn Spears and FTR with Tully and Arn managing as the JJ DIllon mouthpieces

Darby Allin and MJF feud for the title

The Women’s Division is improved. The girls get more time to shine on Dynamite. Your champion actually appears(shocking, I know) and build feuds and stories for your women’s division. There’s still some time to do what’s right for your women’s division, but the only thing that remains to be seen, does the powers that be of AEW even care?

Get a new title design for the Women’s Championship. It looks like a toy for a child. It’s plastic, not gold.  It should be as big and beautifully designed as the men’s titles. It should be as big as the NWA’s title or even the WWE’s title. The title is symbolic as to how AEW treats it’s own women’s division and that needs to change with a fresh new design.

Sign Thunder Rosa. It may not fix everything with the women’s division, but it gives you your needed star power. Tony Khan should be begging on his hands and knees to sign Thunder Rosa in 2021 after her time with the NWA is up, his women’s division is getting their asses kicked by what his EVP refers to as a “developmental brand”

If you can’t sign Thunder Rosa. My solution is Push Anna Jay and  Britt Baker as the top face and heel of the women’s division and either of them dethrone Shida.

Changes

WWE

Leave whatever that monstrosity of a creative team they have for RAW is. Let the Wrestlers dictate what they want their characters to be. Ditch the scripted promos. Let promos feel organic and real. Let the wrestlers be characters who feel real and genuine. Get rid of a “Creative” that isn't creative and let the wrestlers be creative and let them be free of terrible creative.

Get rid of the Gimmick PPV. WWE has ruined gimmick matches by turning them into themed PPVs. none of these matches are organic or special anymore. The matches themselves are great but are booked to fit a theme of a pay-per-view, when they should be used organically at the height of feuds. no one cares about the name of PPVs, so i don’t understand why WWE does this. the only one that actually works is MITB, because it makes sense as storylines reset after Mania.

Scrap the Brand Warfare/Brand Supremacy. WWE should scrap the tired brand warfare format at Survivor Series and move away from Raw vs. SmackDown completely. Booking around a calendar has become company law in WWE over the past decade or so. Perhaps McMahon always formatted things this way really, but it's more glaring now that gimmick bouts like Elimination Chamber, Hell In A Cell and Money In The Bank have their own pay-per-views. Survivor Series, with it's played out Raw vs. SmackDown vibes, also needs a rethink. "Brand warfare" is boring now, and it has been for several years. Although 2020's event was fun, it's nonetheless true that the month-long build to Survivors feels like a repetitive slog fans are forced to sit through every November. Hopefully, 2021 will change that. It is possible to book traditional elimination bouts without some sort of false show loyalty - WWE did this almost every single year until the first brand split in 2002. Their over-reliance on Raw vs. SmackDown is plain lazy. Survivor Series should be revolved around great rivalries between stables/factions. It’s really not that hard. Or at the very least if there IS a Smackdown vs Raw themed Survivor Series, at least add a damn reward. Give the brand a head start in the Rumble,, give the winners of the match number one contenders for their brand’s respective titles or ANYTHING better than just “brand supremacy lol”

Get rid of the 24/7 title. It has run it’s course. R-Truth is funny, but even he can’t make it work anymore.

Stop. Breaking. Up. Tag Teams. Stop killing your Tag Team Division. For the love of god just stop!

Cut Akira Tozawa’s ninja bullshit. It’s not funny, it’s annoying

Kill Retribution. It’s complete garbage. It has been consistently terrible ever since Retribution began. Mustafa Ali cannot save Retribution, he’s trying but no one can save it. 

Stop the 50/50 booking

Stop rewarding Nia Jax, the living botch machine for injuring her fellow wrestlers

Stop pushing Lars Sullivan. Absolutely no one wants him. 

They should cut raw to 2 hours because 3 hours is unbearable

Stop the overreliance of part time wrestlers. I don’t want to see Goldberg being pushed at the expense of today’s talent and I don’t want to see Goldberg period. I don’t want to see Brock Lesnar return at the expense of today’s talent. I don’t want to see Legends return. Push your current fucking wrestlers and make stars. You idiots!

Do not rush Becky Lynch back to the ring, she just had a baby. I read the reports that Vince wants Becky back by Wrestlemania. That is a terrible decision

Stop killing pushes because Vince changed his mind

Enough with “creative has nothing for you” if your “creative” has nothing for a certain wrestler, then they are not creative. Either let the wrestlers appear on the show or release them if you don’t want them anymore, it’s simple as that.

Do. Not. Put. The. Title. On. Goldberg. Goldberg should not have beaten Bray Wyatt's 'Fiend' for the Universal Title at Super ShowDown in February - that was a huge mistake, one that set Bray back and felt totally unnecessary. In 2021, WWE should outright avoid any temptation to repeat the trick and give ol' Billy another go-around with one of the top titles. If anything, Goldberg's only purpose should be to play victim for a quick Roman Reigns squash. Get through that elusive match then turn Bill into a company ambassador. He doesn't need to pretend it's still 1998 all these years on.

AEW

Leave the overabundance of spots just for the sake of spots and enough with the false finishes. Jim Ross was right, like it or not, the spots for the sake of spots and the false finishes need to end. This is my major problem with AEW and why I can’t stand The Elite in general. Everyone just needs to  get their shit in. Everything looks fake. No one can look strong or credible and we have to see garbage Indy wrestlers and the spot monkeys make everything look fake and phony. The champions never look credible and everyone is on the level of job guys. This needs to change

Stop leaving your Women’s Champion off the show. It is downright insulting how dirty they are doing Hikaru Shida. She deserves as much time to shine as the other champions deserve.

Stop putting the NWA Women’s Champion as more of a priority than your own Women’s Champion

Enough with Brandi. Why is the women’s division given absolutely 0 screentime and barely anytime to develop their stories, but Brandi is ALWAYS THERE! Everything has to be about her. When a feud between Cody and Shaq was close to happening, of course it had to be about her. She’s turned heel/face as much time as the Big Show. I’ve grown tired of Brandi Rhodes. Stop shoving that attention whore down our throats. WE GET IT! You wanna be Stephanie so bad!

Enough with Cody’s big dramatic midlife crisis entrances. We get it, you wanna be Triple H SO BAD!

Stop the petty bullshit shots at WWE. It was fun at first, but it’s getting annoying. This is Eric Bischoff giving away the results and “That’ll put butts in the seats” level of petty bullshit. AEW had the fucking nerve to tweet a fan’s post saying they did a better tribute for Brodie Lee than WWE. HE JUST DIED! AND YOU ARE MAKING IT ABOUT YOUR FUCKING RIVALRY? GROW THE FUCK UP!

BETTY GRABLE

December 18, 1916

Elizabeth Ruth Grable was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of three children. Nicknamed ‘Betty’ as a child, she was pressured by her mother to become a performer. She was entered in multiple beauty contests, many of which she won or for which she achieved considerable attention.

A 12-year-old Grable and her mother traveled to Hollywood in 1929, hoping to achieve stardom.  To get her daughter jobs, Lillian Grable lied about her daughter's age, claiming she was 15. That same year, she made her uncredited film debut as a chorus girl in the all-star revue Happy Days (1929).

In 1930, at age 13, Grable (under the pseudonym Frances Dean) became one of the original Goldwyn Girls, along with Ann Sothern, Lucille Ball and Paulette Goddard. Grable appeared with Lucille Ball in the short A Night at the Biltmore Bowl (1935), Old Man Rhythm (1935), and Follow the Fleet (1936). 

In late 1939, Betty Grable dated Desi Arnaz when the two were concurrently appearing on Broadway; him in Too Many Girls and her in Du Barry Was a Lady.  Coincidentally, Lucille Ball did the 1943 film of Du Barry, taking the lead from Ethel Merman. Grable’s role was re-written and she was not part of the film. 

Throughout her career, Grable was a celebrated sex symbol. Her bathing suit poster made her the number-one pin-up girl of World War II. Grable's legs were insured by her studio for $1 million as a publicity stunt. 

"I became a star for two reasons, and I'm standing on them." ~ Betty Grable

On an October 1948 episode of Lucille Ball’s radio series “My Favorite Husband” Liz Cugat (Lucy) wonders aloud: “What’s Betty Grable got that I haven’t got?” 

Although she began doing television in 1953 on variety and talk programs, her first scripted program was an episode of “Star Stage” titled “Cleopatra Collins”. Grable played an ex-Miss America. She quickly followed-up by playing Lily Garland in “Twentieth Century” for “Ford Star Jubilee”, an adaptation of the 1932 play about movie stars on a train.  

On a November 15, 1954 episode of “I Love Lucy,” Betty Grable’s name is mentioned by Lucy Ricardo as one of the many Hollywood stars she is looking forward to meeting should Ricky get the role of Don Juan.  

Once in Hollywood, Lucy gets to see Betty Grable’s Beverly Hills home in “The Tour” (ILL S4;E30) in May 1955. The driver (Benny Rubin) describes the home as a ‘ranch style’. 

A few months later, just before returning home from Hollywood, Lucy and Ethel visit the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and see Betty Grable’s leg imprint in a slab of cement.   

ETHEL: “What are you doing?” LUCY: “Comparing my leg to Betty Grable’s.” ETHEL: “Oh, it looks identical.” LUCY: “Oh, to you and me maybe, but I doubt it would fool Harry James.”

On February 15, 1943, Grable did indeed leave her leg print and signature in wet cement for the forecourt. 

Her final scripted role on TV was playing herself in “Lucy Wins A Racehorse”, an installment of “The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour” on “Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse”. It was filmed in December 1957 and aired on February 3, 1958. 

The episode’s theme grew from the James’ and Arnaz’s shared love of horses and horse-racing. 

In it, Grable appears with her second husband, bandleader Harry James, who she married in 1943 and with whom she had two children. The couple divorced in 1965.  She had first married actor Jackie Coogan, but their relationship lasted only a three years (1937-1940). 

Grable and James do a full out musical performance in the Ricardo living room titled “The Bayamo” in which Grable shows off her legendary legs and James plays his iconic trumpet. 

“She was everything to him. It was always Lucy, Lucy, Lucy. She was his life.” ~ Betty Grable, about Desi Arnaz

In the 1969 Dinah Shore TV special “Like Hep!” Betty Grable’s name is dropped in the title song sung by Dinah, Lucy, and Diana Ross.  That’s hep!  

Grable’s name was also mentioned in the February 1971 “Here’s Lucy” episode “Lucy and Carol Burnett aka The Hollywood Unemployment Follies” (TLS S3;E22). During the episode they ogle a wardrobe rack conspicuously labeled COSTUMES WORN BY BETTY GRABLE AND ALICE FAYE. Faye and Grable did two films together, Tin Pan Alley (1940) and Four Jills in a Jeep (1944).

In a November 1971 episode of “Here’s Lucy” Dan Dailey dictates a letter to Betty James and Lucy Carter correctly guesses that he is writing to Betty Grable, who did four films with Dailey.  

Betty Grable died at age 56 of lung cancer on July 2, 1973 in Santa Monica, California.

“Out of No Where” Harry/Ginny Claim Debunked

So, I usually do not feed into the argument that Harry and Ginny’s relationship came out of nowhere claim because first of all, I’ve always seen it as a misadvised, unjustified argument that stemmed from what the movies presented. However, since I’m quarantined in my house and I’m a social psychologist in training, I questioned whether or not there was a way to quantify Ginny Weasley and Harry Potter’s relationship to find whether or not this “out of nowhere” claim is justified. 

To develop my hypothesis, I did a literature review from social psychology academic, empirical studies on infatuation, relationships, and love in both teenage samples and young adult samples. From that review, I found a popular theory in infatuation which states that what we deem as “crushes” develop at an exponential rate (an example depicted below). 

Think of the x-axis (horizontal line) as the time passed. Think of the y-axis (vertical line) as the number of times a person thought of the person/item of interest. The red line is what we’re interested in. In the exponential graph below, as time passes, the rate of growth in number of thoughts increased “exponentially.” So in a way, think of the corner of the red line as the point in which the subject has identified that they have a crush on the person of interest. After that crush has been identified, the number of thoughts related to that person increases substantially due to the addictiveness and fascination associated with infatuation. Of course this makes sense when we think about our obsession with the Harry Potter franchise. The more we realized we loved it, the more we thought about it. (Or I assume you’ve had this experience being that you’ve read this post to this point).

Hypothesis and Measurement:

So how does this relate to Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley? My hypothesis was that Harry’s crush on Ginny would develop in a similar pattern throughout the six books leading up to their first kiss. To test this, I quantified Harry and Ginny’s relationship through the number of pages the word “Ginny” appeared in the books. Now hear me out: the books for the most part are told from Harry’s point of view (although written in third person) with exceptions in chapters such as the first chapter in the Goblet of Fire, and first chapter in the Half Blood Prince. Therefore, every time the word “Ginny” is mentioned reflects the number of times Harry acknowledges Ginny’s presence in the situation/setting. The number of times Ginny’s name appears can also relate to the strength of her association (or friendship) with Harry, which in my belief is vital in the understanding of Harry and Ginny’s relationship development. 

Limitations of the measurement that should be considered before we discuss the results: (1) since I’m using the number of PAGES that Ginny is mentioned, this number could be different from book to book depending on year of printing, size of the book, size of the font, etc, (2) “Ms. Weasley” or “Ron’s sister” and similar references were not counted, and (3) I used pages because I thought using the number of times Ginny’s name appeared was influenced by dialogue/relevance to the scene. Obviously Ginny’s name will appear more in scenes that she is the focal point of (aka Chamber of Secrets) which is hard to compare with in books where she is not the focal point (like in Prisoner of Azkaban). I hoped by standardizing the number to the number of pages, we’d get a more comparable number that we can use to analyze between book to book.

Results

The following graphic shows the results:

So, was my hypothesis supported? It’s hard to tell. 

Ginny Weasley was mentioned on three pages in the first book which makes sense; they hadn’t met, and she was only seen on platform 9 3/4 in the beginning and the end of the book.

In the Chamber of Secrets, she was the focal point of the climax of the story so obviously she would appear in more pages. Interestingly enough, “Ginny” was mentioned on 25 pages before she was taken to the Chamber at the end of the book.

Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire makes sense because she was not an intricate part of the plots of those books. She is also in the year below Harry so she was not in class with him and therefore is not in many settings where she would just be off-handedly mentioned as being present.

The Order of the Phoenix is the surprising finding. Her name was present on more pages in the fifth book than it was in the actual book where Harry confesses his infatuation for her. This is the portion that really throws the wrench in my hypothesis. However, after thinking about it more, it makes sense, and here’s why. Have you ever watched tv and noticed that the same commercial is on at every commercial break? This is purposeful because of the repetitive exposure effect; the more you see something, the more likely you are to be inclined to purchase that item. There’s a similar effect in infatuation research; the more positive experiences you have with a person, the more you are likely to develop positive feelings for that person (either friendship-related or romance-related feelings). Therefore, it makes sense that Harry would develop some sort of relationship with Ginny when she’s present in his life that many times in a year (127 times). Is it positive? For the most part, his experiences with Ginny in the fifth book are positive in that his experiences with her, even if they are negative in nature like in the Ministry, they are not negative between Ginny and Harry. 

Now why is she mentioned fewer times in the sixth book? After re-scanning through the book, there are many more scenes in which Harry is looking at Voldemort’s memories with Dumbledore which take up a lot of the book. That makes sense, of course, because that is the main point of the book. Ginny is still mentioned on 1/6 of the pages in the sixth book. While in the Order of the Phoenix, Ginny is mentioned on 1/8 of the pages in the book (it’s 200 pages longer than the Half Blood Prince).

Now, in terms of plot, what would dictate the reason behind why there is such a spike in Ginny’s presence during the fifth book? How about this:

“Hermione told me to get on with life, maybe go out with some other people, relax a bit around you, because I never used to be able to talk if you were in the room, remember? And she thought you might take a bit more notice if I was a bit more--myself.” (Pg 647 in Half Blood Prince)

Although never explicitly stated, it can be inferred that this conversation happened in the summer before Order of the Phoenix when Hermione and Ginny were rooming together at 12 Grimmauld Place. After that, Ginny made the effort to relax a bit more and show Harry that she has relaxed more around him. This means that she would have more positive, comfortable experiences with Harry which Harry might take more notice in. 

In addition, it’s important to note that there are a lot of moments that are left out of the books. Obviously, JK Rowling wouldn’t include every single day of the school year; that would make the books incredibly long and cause the books to lose their focus. This means that moments like the exploding snaps game Harry and Ginny had together after the chamber which we learned about in Cursed Child, or the enjoyable afternoons in the sixth book, were not present to include in these results. Also, more mundane events where interactions between these characters could have occurred, such as daily meals where nothing of importance to the plot happens, were also left out because how many times do you really want to read about Harry’s breakfast habits? These events could also show how many more occurrences Harry and Ginny had together and would change how these results appear.

In conclusion, Harry and Ginny’s relationship development makes sense when viewing it from a social psychology stance. Their relationship did not occur out of nowhere, in fact it makes sense that their relationship would develop in the way that it did when analyzing the number of events Harry and Ginny experience together pre-infatuation. In other words, his infatuation developed because of how much time he spent with Ginny in his fifth year. This of course does not even touch on the attractive qualities within each of them that make them compatible in the first place.

Continue arguing all you like about the development of Harry and Ginny’s relationship, but to me, it was done realistically and with common sense when it comes to driving the main plot of the story. I’m logging off and will not discuss this anymore. (I know I didn’t cite the social psychology studies but it’s tumblr and I really don’t feel like doing that right now)

Life Will Change, Chapter 1

Summary: A New City, A strange guardian, and a persistent virus on his phone. Enzan’s first day of probation was going wonderfully.

Fandom: Rockman.exe/Persona 5 Fusion

Word Count:  2267

Ao3 

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter

April 16th, 2016

Afternoon

Tokyo was huge, and stepping off the train into Shibuya Station, Enzan was almost overwhelmed immediately by the crowd. It was far different from the smaller town his father’s company was set in. Getting out of the station was hard enough, but he had to navigate his way to the next of the trains he needed to catch.

One more stop, Enzan assured himself, digging out his phone to check on the directions to his new residence one more time. Next stop, Yogen. His new home for the next year, or until someone arbitrarily decided that he broke his probation and that he needed to go off to jail, or until his father decided there was an actual use for a ‘family disgrace’ back home. (A small part of him, deep and smothered under a veneer of indifference, was really wanting to spend the full year here.)

At least there was peace in the crowds he was navigating. It was loud sure, but that’s all it really was. No one cared that he walked among them, no one knew who he was in the hustle of Shibuya Station. No media, no reporters so far in his face he couldn’t breath, begging for an interview from the tarnished golden child. No looks of pity from Weslyn, or disparaging ones from his father that he got, no matter how hard Enzan tried to appease him. It was all absent here, and would continue to be, as long as he kept his head down. 

He planned to, he really did. He never was one to cause trouble anyways.

In the moment that it took Enzan to check his phone and get lost in thought, his phone screen flashed a weird red, spreading across the screen and the world. It was the briefest of flashes, even taking the hyper attentive Enzan a moment to realize anything had changed. 

 ‘The Change’ showed itself as a shadow. Just the whisp of a figure with flowing hair and a katana. What…? He blinked and the imposing figure was gone. He looked around, seeing if anyone else had noticed the strange figure in the sky. No one was acting any different. 

(Enzan discarded his initial thought, that somehow it was common enough it wasn’t worth acknowledging. That it wasn’t worth looking at. But that was stupid and his life wasn’t a cartoon. Even if this all felt like it was straight out of one.)

With the figure gone, Enzan could look back down at his phone, and saw that the figure in the sky wasn’t the only thing that the flash had left him. A strange app, one with a red background and a black eye imposed on it had appeared on his home screen. There was no name.

A virus…. First I was hallucinating and now this.Wondering what sketchy site he had wandered onto, Enzan touched his finger to it to uninstall it. And away it went. Not that it would ever be that easy with a virus, but… Who knows?

He’d have to do a proper maintenance of his phone later. It was one of the few possessions he brought with him, and he’d like to keep it in good condition. It was only all to relieving when he finally found his next train, and was able to get away from the strangeness of Shibuya.

=================

Finally, Enzan had made his way to Yogen, and now he was tasked with finding the dwelling of his caretaker for the year, one Eguchi Meijin. Supposedly, according to what Weslyn told him as she saw him off, Meijin was an acquaintance of hers, who worked in the field of computers. “You’ll like him.” Weslyn assured him over and over as she had driven him to the train station.

Enzan would have to trust his secretary’s judgement. (Well, she wasn’t his secretary anymore, but…)

As he made his way through the streets, murmurs of a train accident drifted up around him. It was one of many similar incidents that had been plaguing Tokyo and the surrounding area in recent times. Just what he wanted to hear, that his new mode of transport was now once again dangerous. He’d have to get used to the idea.(He still couldn’t help but look forward to the freedom that this was going to afford him. Once he found the one who held the keys to his cell, and dictated whether he could be free.) The house was easy enough to find, if not a tad out of the way, in a back alley. The nameplate reading ‘Eguchi’ stood out, and with a  deep breath Enzan rung the door bell. This man was well respected, in both what Weslyn said, and what he had managed to research on the train. What kind of person could he be, to have willingly taken in a convict?

The young man adjusted his bag and corrected his posture as the door opened. Regardless of whoever was awaiting him, he would present himself with Ijuuin professionalism. He would make a good impression. After all, you had to be respectful to get anywhere in a deal, business or social.

The door swung open to reveal a disheveled but grinning man, brown haired man. “You must be Enzan-kun, yeah? I’ve been expecting you!”

 “Yes, that is me.” He said with a bow. “Thank you for taking me in, Eguchi-san. I am Ijuuin Enzan.”

The man waved it off with a laugh, opening the door wider so his newest charge could come in. “Please, just Meijin will be fine. Eguchi-san is far, far too formal.” Enzan blinked, not expecting someone like that to greet him, but he kept his poker face as stable as possible otherwise. He didn’t want Meijin to get the wrong impression of him so quickly.

The inside of the house was fairly tidy, but it was clearly lived in. There was also almost an uncomfortable amount of figures decorating the main room for a full grown man. A few comic books were stashed neatly on the entertainment stand underneath the TV. Scattered across the coffee table appeared to research notes of some kind and a laptop, alongside a coffee, as any researcher needed. It was… warm, almost. Warm and Welcoming. Not at all what Enzan was expecting from someone who was willing to take in a teenager with a tarnished record. 

He had to remind himself not to be so suspicious, that not everyone had an ulterior motive. This was someone Weslyn knew; they couldn’t be all bad.Unfortunately, it was just in his nature.

 “While I’d love to get to know you more, you’ve had a long journey, haven’t you?” Meijin was still all cheer, gesturing for Enzan to follow him. “I presume you’ll want to see your room?” 

“Yes please. I would appreciate that.” He held himself stiffly as he followed. His clothes and basic belongings would be sent ahead, and thus should have arrived before him. He would have to trust what he was told was the case. Smaller personal affects, such as his laptop or pictures of his mother were in his travel bag. 

(He practically had to steal those pictures. Add picture theft to his laundry list of crimes at this point.)

To say he was shocked as to the room Meijin offered him was an understatement. It was a room on the upper floor that looked like no one had been in there months. The downstairs living room had suggested that maybe his new host wasn’t the most organized…

“I apologize, this was sprung on me on short notice.” The scientist had the decency to look abashed at the state of the room. “I kind of… used it as storage. But there’s a bed in there, and your things are in there. Somewhere.” He chuckled, embarrassed. “You’ll have to clean up in here yourself as you see fit.” Enzan legitimately couldn’t tell if this was supposed to be a test of character or not.

“Most of it is stuff I don’t really need. So if you can organize this, you can use whatever you find for yourself.” Meijin continued. “Don’t destroy the house and you’ll have just about complete freedom.”

Complete freedom, huh…? “Thank you Egu- Meijin. I really do appreciate it.” Enzan bowed his head again. “I will make the best of it.” Meijin nodded, with a satisfied grin. “Go and get comfortable, Enzan-kun. Be prepared. We’ll have to go check out your school tomorrow. And we all know how fun that is.” Apparently, not all that fun as a normal teenager, and not improved by being rich. And that was all when he didn’t have a record.

Meijin left Enzan to his own devices, and that meant Enzan had work to get to.At least it was something to take his mind off things. To not think about hallucinations in Shibuya, or train wrecks, or of the disapproval of everyone that’s ever mattered to him…

He was glad to have the work to do. Eventually, he freed himself up a desk, and neatened up a shelf enough to have some free space. Some of the stuff he couldn’t use could be folded up and tucked against a wall. And after a few hours of hard work, he had himself an almost livable room.

That was his. With no standards he had to abide by. It felt almost unreal.

He could enjoy it more when he wasn’t tired. He took a shower and climbed into his new bed, and slid under the covers, taking only a minute to check his phone before he went to sleep. The strange app from earlier was back. With a frown, he dragged it to uninstall again before putting the phone down to go to sleep. 

He didn’t notice the strange feeling settling over him…

=============

The world Enzan awoke to was not Meijin’s house, and not the room he was gifted.Instead of plaster above his head, it was concrete, and it didn’t take long to realize that his clothing had changed from  his clean and comfortable day clothes to the out of place prison clothes. And his wrists were bound with… chains. What drugs was he on? He didn’t usually have such strange dreams.

“I’m pleased to see you have awakened.” The person who greeted him was a young girl, with a silvery hair that was long enough to reach her waist, clipped out of her face with big pink butterfly clips. Behind her was a man, same silver hair, except that it spiked out, almost enough to poke someone if Enzan entertained the whimsy. The girl carried a clipboard, and the man a baton.

“Please, step up to the bars, and meet our master. He’s been waiting for you.” The girl stood in front of the bars until Enzan managed to drag his feet to the cell door. And he did mean drag; his ankle was weighed down by a steel ball. Talk about a bad dream… The girl and her companion stepped aside, revealing an old man with a creepy grin and an unusually long nose. Enzan couldn’t help pinching himself, just to make see if this wasn’t a weird dream. He hadn’t dreamt going to Tokyo, had he? “I am Igor. Welcome to my velvet room.” Geez, definitely dreaming. If he looked around, he was going to see a pink rabbit jump out of the unnervingly detailed jail cell toilet. And everything was going to explode into obnoxious sparkles and he’ll awake and merely regret that he didn’t sleep enough. “ ‘Velvet Room?’ “ The name brought to mind old English novels, but Enzan’s head wasn’t clear enough to bring forth any more information on the matter. “How’d I get here?” “I do not recommend questioning our master, Inmate.” The girl with the butterfly clips was staring straight at him. “It is by his grace you have been given a chance.” “Iris, our newest guest has had a long day. It is okay that he is confused.” Iris bowed her head. “I am sorry. I stepped out of line.” She stepped back towards her companion, who had barely moved during this exchange. He raised his hand and placed it on Iris’s shoulder. “As I was saying. I run this prison, and shall be guiding you through fate’s game. You will also be guided by Iris and Colonel, who have graciously agreed to oversee your rehabilitation.” In response, Iris bowed, and the new dubbed Colonel nodded.“Fate’s game? This certainly doesn’t feel like a game.” Enzan stated, furrowing his brows.

“What you should concern yourself with, prisoner, is surviving the game that fate has laid out for you.” Igor leaned his chin on his hands. With a balding head and a creepy, too wide grin, the whole set up gave Enzan shivers down his spine.

“Please stop talking in circles and get to the point.”

“Dear Prisoner, if you continue down your path as you are, you will only meet lonliness, and loneliness in turn becomes your destruction.”

...Sure, Enzan wasn’t social, but he couldn’t imagine that would destroy him. What kind of nonsense was this dream trying to feed him?

Why was he taking a dream seriously anyways,? This was clearly a weird dream. It had to be...

“Please take his words to heart, Inmate.” Iris said, voice soft, checking something on her clipboard before looking up to Enzan. “It is important that you do your best, to avoid destruction. The consequences for not doing so are dire.”

“You may awaken, now prisoner. Many more long days await.”

ET: Elementary Boss on Why Sherlock and Joan Deserved a Superhero Ending

"We're certainly hinting that there are adventures ahead, but people who watched the show and cared about Sherlock and Joan can turn off their TVs on Thursday night knowing that the most important story we told, which is the relationship between Sherlock and Joan, is going to continue. That's always going to be moving forward. That's not going to end."

ET: It must be bittersweet saying goodbye to Elementary. What was your approach for the final episode in wrapping up Sherlock and Joan's story?

Rob Doherty: As you recall, we thought season six was our last season and it meant telling a lot of our stories in a certain way. Season seven was an opportunity to know that the end was coming, to go into a season and look ahead and try to build everything piece by piece. We had to talk a lot about the 13th episode before we could talk about the first. We knew that there were elements from canon that we wanted to utilize. Specifically, we looked at two stories in particular, "The Final Problem" and "The Ins and Outs," that we borrowed liberally.

In canon, Sherlock did drop off the map for three years. He was thought to be dead. His Watson was in the dark on that front. That felt too cruel to do to our Watson and it also felt inappropriate. I think she would've known better. We knew we wanted a three-year window where they were separated and changing, making new choices and then bringing them back together so each could do a bit of self-analysis. Who were they apart and who might they be now that they are together again?

It's very clear from the three-year time jump that a lot has changed for both Sherlock and Joan. Joan has a young son, Arthur, now. Why was it important for her to accomplish one of her main goals of having a family?

It was a story that we started in season six and it's a story we would've told a different way if we had known at the time that it was potentially the final season. When it did look like the end for us, that was something that we had to move away from -- not abandon completely, but pin it, for lack of a better term. Season seven was a great opportunity to revisit it and hopefully, punctuate it. It was important a year ago and it was important this year because it just felt so true to who Joan is. Becoming a parent seemed like a very natural progression for her. Despite the dangers that come with her job and despite living with an addict in recovery, we felt she could be an incredible parent. With just 13 episodes in season seven, it didn't feel like something we could start at the top. Odin Reichenbach took up a lot of real estate and so it became, in our eyes, more appropriate to return to Joan after three years and find out she has Arthur in her life in the finale.

It was surprising to learn that Joan had been diagnosed with cancer, something she chose to hide from Sherlock when he returns. Why did you make the decision to have her go through a major health struggle in the final episode?

We've seen their lives in danger on multiple occasions over the course of the series, but more often than not, they are threatened by criminals and villains. Not many of us are stalked by guilds of assassins. I liked telling a story about a real-life threat to one of the partners. We all worry about getting sick or we all worry about a loved one getting sick, and so many people go through it, fight it and come back from it. Sherlock and Joan are, in their own ways, superheroes. It was interesting to put them in a situation where they're dealing with a much more grounded threat.

Joan reluctantly telling Sherlock that she's sick also seemed to be the main catalyst for Sherlock's decision to ultimately stay in New York. Was that actually the case?

Even with three years of separation, I wanted them back together again. I wanted them to ride off into the sunset together. I didn't want fans to come out of the final episode feeling like they thought, "It's good we've been apart. Our lives are better for having been apart." The problem is, for each character, they worry that they're putting the other in a bad position. Joan doesn't want to tell Sherlock's she's sick because it appears to her that his life is going great. And when Sherlock looks at Joan, he sees the same thing. He sees someone who has drive. But, when someone's sick, all of that falls away. No one has to be polite at that point. It brings them both right back down to earth. It clears the decks. Especially for Sherlock, he sees what's really important, understanding that his partner, his greatest friend and virtual family member needs help. It doesn't matter what else is going on in his life. He's going to step away from it to help her.

Sherlock says he relapsed during his time away and that, like Joan, he was secretly struggling. Was it important to highlight that these two were better together?

As far as Sherlock relapsing, we never wanted to suggest that it was because Joan wasn't there. She's not his heroin-proof vest, for lack of a better term. He relapsed when they were together, he relapsed when they were apart. It was more than anything, us being true to the disease of addiction. And yet, I think it was important that it happened because it informed his concerns about staying with Joan. Potentially doing it now that Joan has a child in the house, Sherlock just can't wrap his head around that possibility. He doesn't want to expose her son to any of that baggage that he carries.

Was Sherlock always going to stay, even if Joan wasn't sick?

That's a great question. The short answer is yes, they would have gone their separate ways again if the captain hadn't shared Joan's secret with Sherlock,. Each would have returned to their lives, not because it's what they truly wanted. The way I always looked at it was, they're thinking about each other. Now, Sherlock is about to leave New York because he thinks Joan is better off without him. Joan is going to keep her secret to herself because she doesn't want to disrupt what appears to be success and happiness on his part. Of course, that's not the least bit true and it takes someone who knows them as well as they know themselves to shed appropriate light on the situation, which is, Joan is ill and could use help. Gregson is the one who can look down and see the truth of the situation. Gregson knows each one is not being entirely honest with the other and he knows it's because of good intentions, but also, he knows the veil has to fall away. Sherlock has to know what's going on and he has to make a decision that factors that unfortunate truth in.

You also did another one-year time jump in the finale and I was worried for a second that it was Joan in the casket, so you did your job there. But it's Moriarty's death Sherlock is mourning, even though he believes she's not actually dead. Are you leaving that as a mystery?

I don't have it in me to leave it a mystery. I guarantee you Moriarty's alive. We'll never see it, but Sherlock absolutely goes back and digs up that grave and finds an empty casket. The intention was for that to be the takeaway. My hope was that people would, when they think about all stories we're not going to tell, those stories will include lots of Moriarty. Sherlock and Joan should be going into this future with her as an adversary.

Did you try to get Natalie Dormer back for one last appearance as Moriarty?

As a staff, we talked about it very briefly at the beginning of the season and ultimately, the concern was we would be telling a last story about three people and not two. Nothing is more important, at the end of the day, than Sherlock and Joan's relationship and yet Moriarty carries so much history that in a weird way, it felt like she would distract from the ending Sherlock and Joan really deserve.

Earlier this year, I asked you about Lucy's blonde hair. In the series finale, we see her character, after the one-year time jump, rocking a short black bob of a wig. How much thought did you put in Joan's post-cancer remission look?

I wanted her appearance to speak for itself and remind everyone that she has spent a year fighting cancer, she had experienced hair loss and she fought through it. The wig helps tell that story a little bit. What was amazing to me was how good it looked. Very early in the series, we had Lucy in a wig, when we were showing a flashback to another part of her life and it's one of my great regrets over the course of the series, so I was a little nervous. I was like, "Oh, man, I hope this wig is better." But the team in New York found something perfect.

When did you know you wanted the final image of Elementary to be Sherlock and Joan walking into Captain Bell's office and asking to be consultants again?

The final image is probably something we didn't settle on until we were actually breaking the episode. I don't think it's something I had in my head for a long time, unlike season six where we thought, if this is the end, we wanted to see them walking down the street in London. Knowing this would be a story set in New York, at the brownstone and the 11th precinct, those sets take over. The only real question was which space would be the last one? While I'm extremely partial to the brownstone, the story dictated a final beat at the precinct.

Looking back at the last seven seasons, are there any lingering stories you wish you could have had time to tell or could have told?

One thing I would have liked to have done is seeing more of Moriarty. Over the course of the series there were bigger, more serialized stories we wanted to tell about her, Sherlock and Joan. But we made the grave mistake of hiring an outrageously talented and very in-demand actress for the role. Natalie has had an incredible seven years. Every success had been much deserved and yet, it made it hard for our calendars to jive with hers. We love the character. We love Natalie. Selfishly, it would've been so much fun to have a little more time with her over the course of the series.

Joan becoming a parent was really a story I thought would begin and end in season six. It was something I felt we could serialize in the course of a year; circumstances changed and we had to put it to the side. But one notion I was really intrigued by is the very unique living situation that would have resulted for Sherlock and Joan. It would've been interesting to have a kid in the house for a season, not just to see how good Joan is at being a mom, but to show that Sherlock can do this too. I wanted to see what it would do to the living situation and I thought it would have been fun to see him try to be helpful in his own way. He would have had a lot of plans for Joan's kid.

You talked about how you saw this season as a "blessing." I'm curious if where Bell, Gregson, Joan and Sherlock ultimately end up is where you originally envisioned the characters' final chapters would be when you first started on this journey?

More than anything, I wanted everyone at peace in the end. I'm sure peace could be made that separating Sherlock and Joan would be more dramatic than killing someone off. It might've made a bigger splash. But as we got into it, it just felt right to settle everyone, to show how they've changed and to put them in good places as the series came to a conclusion. We're certainly hinting that there are adventures ahead, but people who watched the show and cared about Sherlock and Joan can turn off their TVs on Thursday night knowing that the most important story we told, which is the relationship between Sherlock and Joan, is going to continue. That's always going to be moving forward. That's not going to end. Creatively, I get it when [showrunners want to shake things up]. Sometimes, it makes all the sense in the world but other times, it just leaves the audience cold and I wanted a happier ending.

At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if 10 years down the line an Elementary revival comes to fruition.

Hey, I'll take it! That sounds great to me.

Television ships

So I'm wading in again into those murky waters and TV ships, plus when fans go too far on hate, particularly towards opposing fans or the actors/actresses in the roles.

The longer a show (or movie franchise) runs, the chances that a fan fight breaking out increase.

Every long standing fandoms over more years than I care to think about, in which I’ve been invested, had its ups and downs. 

The earlier ones (as my age dictates), weren’t fought online, but via the printed word or face to face. 

Hell yes, I’m that old. 

Anyway - years ago, this all was from media articles, monthly newsletters sent via snail mail, to fan clubs (often fan clubs with no formal running beyond an occasional meet up in a pub locally), and phone calls that were via landlines that were fixtures you were stuck with in one spot and couldn’t move beyond the cord length! So in other words, from nineteen hundred and frozen to death and the Stone Age of fandom. 

Occasionally it could get heated at the pub where a fan meeting might’ve been arranged, and a few drinks imbibed. I don’t ever remember fisticuffs being thrown, but raised voices weren’t an uncommon sight. 

Sadly today more hate towards cast on Supergirl went out. That people simply seem unable to recognise or understand that just because someone plays a certain role, it absolutely gives no-one the right to attack them personally over it. It is vile.

How does the love at the heart of fandom become something so caustic? 

It’s usually a ton of different reasons, but leaving out the full whys and wherefores this could happen, when new cast and storylines appear - especially when older cast or storylines have been dropped - it fractures the cracking even more between fans. 

Faint lines become cracks. Cracks become chasms.

The new versions of what’s on screen can often seem to be nothing more than attacks on what or who came before them, so by extension, is an attack on the fans who loved them. 

An actor or actress might get asked a question asking them about a specific aspect of their character and possibly those around them. They have the right to respond on how they might see something occurring. That doesn't mean it would happen or is planned.

If they're being asked in regards a known aspect of their role, again it isn't on them if you don't agree. They are merely playing that part.

This is on the show as a whole.

Note I say the show - this is an important distinction. 

If things do change that you don't agree with, don't attack those involved or even other fans (as often also starts to occur), if you disagree with something so much.

However, even previously staunch fans might well now watch for completely different reasons to what drew them into the show to begin with. 

It doesn’t mean there are other staunch fans who should move on or agree with a direction a show might take. You are just as valid in what you want. 

These two points of view are equally authentic. 

In regards LGBTQ+ representation; as difficult as it is to palate for a lot of people, there are also other reasons why those aspects might shift, or not emerge at all, regardless of how much fan support there might be.

We’ve (husband & myself) been around long enough to know what poor and good representation looks like. Heck, good representation is still nigh on impossible to find.  

But consider this. 

Representation is also more than just one group and there are some (like transgender people or gay men or POC) who’ve had even less. They deserve more, and sometimes that starting point is horribly bad. By horribly bad, I mean nothing has come before them.

We’ve also been around long enough to know it isn’t black and white. It isn’t linear.

Just like coming out, you constantly have to do it. That sometimes means taking what is the worst outcome, but using it to steadily push for the better ones. It sometimes means you might have to take that step backwards to move forwards. 

It can also feel unsavoury to do that. 

It is an exhausting situation, to constantly push for better representation. 

This is a process. Occasionally that process will force steps back - but as long as the overall push forward is bigger than that, it will carry on. 

So take on board what others see as great or groundbreaking representation. As in the case of Nicole Maines.

We were at the one fan meet and greet with Nicole, and it was pleasing to hear how much she talks with those producing the storylines, how they also talk to GLAAD. 

There is a lot that resonates for us in Nia’s story as a transgender woman. A lot my husband wishes he could’ve seen as a child growing up, not in his early 50’s. 

Think about that. 

For all the complaints might be that there isn’t good enough representation, it’s taken until someone is in their 50’s to get even a fraction of what you might have seen. 

At the end of this, if you don’t agree, and your opinion makes you say something that is intentionally hurtful (directly or indirectly to a person or group of people), it's a bad thing.

If you read comments, and immediately believe it’s an attack on you and your love for something or someone, when there is absolutely nothing to hint otherwise, even if you believe wholeheartedly it’s an attack - for a good example Twitter - and subtext or subtweeting, when in truth on any other given day it could merely be nothing more than a generic comment. 

If you always feel targeted, if you always look at the worst outcome or reasons behind things, it’s leads to those feelings becoming your normal. 

So - Distrust, feeling targeted. In themselves, they are something everyone feels at some stage. If though it’s a constant state for you - that is not normal. 

Also make sure when you do read something, you are reading it correctly. 

Too many have jumped on a poster over a post or comment, and are twisting or misrepresenting what was said.

Be absolutely sure you’re not putting your own bias into things, when if you read more carefully you’d see it wasn’t what was said at all. 

It’s why I also try to never respond to anything as a knee jerk reaction, because I always try to be sure that a) I’m reading something accurately, and b) my own bias isn’t tainting what I might perceive or how I might reply.

I’m also always open to talk to someone calmly, and I will always listen to differing points of view. 

That doesn’t mean I will accept being dictated to. 

If anything, I always ask does this need to be replied or spoken about at all? 

Stop.

Pause.

Ask yourself these things.

We all have a duty of how we behave.

It is not cool or clever to be vicious over it, if you decide on all out attack, in the words of Chyler; it makes you a jerk! 

Scroll past the posts. Do not engage. Do not be that jerk. 

Misgendering, or in the case of my husband, misgendering and being talked about as ‘that thing’ is transphobic. Azie has faced similar language or attacks that have been outright racist in nature. Nicole has faced transphobic abuse constantly online. If you agree with anyone who posts those things, or are someone who posts them, that doesn’t put you in the jerk territory, but the utter asshole territory. This is the one area of intolerance I have with people. Bigotry of any kind is deplorable. 

Be ready to back up stuff with proof if you can. Don’t just repeat others, rinse and repeat. Know what you say is true, and accept you might be asked to prove it - and if you can show that proof, do so. Don’t be offended if you are asked. Not everyone will have witnessed events as they happen. 

People don’t always think to grab a screencap of things when emotions run high, and sometimes tweets get deleted for various reasons. That doesn’t mean it’s demonstratively untrue - but be aware you should always try to discuss with accuracy. 

Finally for this post at least.

Try to be more kind.

Try to accept we are all different and we all have differing journeys. 

Try not to hate.

Don’t be that asshole.

Bandersnatch (Black Mirror) Megapost

Now loading... A *very* sizeable post with a lot to get through - here I am going to talk about the five “main” endings, the Easter eggs, why constructing a traditional flowchart for this game is technically a bit of a vain effort, how it’s probably best to link everything up in a guide - and the implications this story has regarding *us*.

Chapter 1: The Endings

So, we basically have five “main” endings. I say “main” because... well, we’ll get back to it on ending number five. 

Ending One Description: The first of which is what I call the “How It Was Meant To Go” - and getting this one is quite simple. All you need to do is accept the proposal Stefan’s given by the Boss to make Bandersnatch with a in-house team. Satpal shows up and then Colin tells Stefan as he’s leaving “Sorry mate, wrong path.” We then jump forward five months to find that Bandersnatch was rushed in production, cut down and done badly because of it being a team effort and it gets a 0/5 review.

We loop back around to that decision again but this time, Colin thinks he’s met Stefan before and Stefan knows the memory error with Colin’s game when it happens. And we come back to the decision. (Refusal again will give a similar scene btw where Stefan accepts and Colin tells him it was the wrong choice again - but Satpal doesn’t enter and we just... end. 

Ending One Analysis: So this first ending is rather simple. But the key to it for me lies rather simply in the fact that it can be done... without doing anything at all. If you left your remote/controller/mouse/finger wherever it is and don’t make any choices, this is where you end up. In essence, the universe just runs as it should and we don’t play god over Stefan’s life at all. I know it might be a little difficult to get what I’m on about here but consider that Stefan makes a remark to Dr. Haynes not too long after you take the refuse path, that he wanted to accept the offer and he doesn’t know what made him refuse. We did. This is more clearly pressed upon if you get to the point in your path where Stefan realises something is dictating his life and asks for a sign. We directly throw him a sign - if you’re super direct, that sign happens to be the most direct interaction we could possibly make with him. Telling him that he’s on Netflix in the 21st century for our entertainment and we’re controlling his life.

So, as I say, Ending One is where we don’t have an impact and thus things play out in the universe as they should. Bandersnatch is finished, it gets a 0/5 and Stefan resolves to try again. Ironically, if you just sit back and don’t take the option of making a choice (because, remember, us even making a choice is in itself a choice), though all the game does terribly - this is arguably the best outcome for Stefan. And all because we listened to the exact advice the trailer gave us with its music choice: “Relax. Don’t do it.”

Ending Two: If you go straight to Dr. Haynes (rather than going after Colin) and take your pills when you get home, you get what I call the “” ending. Stefan takes the pills, we jump forward five months to find that Bandersnatch got completed by Stefan but due to his pills, it comes across flat after the midway point and only gets a 2.5/5 rating.

Ending Two Analysis: Not a lot to say here - but it’s worth noting that the review dude on the TV mentions that if the creator had second chances, they should go back and do this game all over again but differently. Keep that in mind for later. It’s worth noting that if you take Stefan off the path that the universe was “meant” to take and then leave it to its own devices (and Stefan to his own choices) again, not making choices for him - then you’ll end up at this one. Almost as if the universe was trying to course correct itself...

Ending Three: “Stefan Jumps.” explanatory how we get here... We jump forward four months, and find that due to Stefan’s accidental death, the game seems to have been speedily finished by someone else.

Ending Three Analysis: We get no rating this time but TV review guy does say the game is bad. He also mentions that it seems abrupt, jarring, bleak, creepy... Almost a perfect way to describe the ending - since it then just ends.

Ending Four: “The P.A.C.S. Ending”. In this one, we unlock Stefan’s dad’s safe with the password “PAC” (obtained by crossing over paths from following Colin to visiting Dr. Haynes... we’ll come by to the implications of such things later.) and find to our surprise that Stefan’s entire life is part of a conspiratorial program, not only well documented but also manufactured with the trauma of his mother’s death being totally falsified. Dad wakes up, refuses to speak and in his rage, Stefan hits him with somethi--- Oh wait, it’s a dream. Just a dream... But then it goes off the rails, quickly plunging us into the choice where we give Stefan a sign that he’s being controlled. Instead of Netflix, we now have the choice of P.A.C.S. - taking that option leads Stefan to kill his dad with the ashtray in a rage about the apparent conspiracy. Stefan then picks up the phone to phone Dr. Haynes - and we have to enter her number. Entering it correctly means that Stefan outright says to Hayne’s receptionist that he’s killed his dad. As he’s burying his dad, we hear distinct sirens and then cut to a review of Bandersnatch. The game is given a 2/5 rating and we discover that Stefan has been charged with killing his dad and locked up in jail.

Ending Four Analysis: It’s safe to say that P.A.C.S. didn’t actually exist outside of Stefan’s head and it’s his life paralleling Jerome F Davies’ obsession with conspiracy theories and delusions. But... what nobody seems to be really talking about is - we did that. Again. Leaving aside all the choices up to and including the safe, we make the P.A.C.S. sign appear and fuel Stefan’s dream-induced paranoia. In this ending, we in a way become Stefan’s delusion. (Oh, and don’t be surprised if you didn’t get this ending with your choices, or only part of it - again we’re coming to all that...)

Ending Five: “Time Rewritten” - now I’ll be honest, I did all these endings in one straight through run. Which made for a REALLY messy time in both my head and the game. Particularly with Colin... But anyway, for this one, I had to make Stefan pick up the family photo after having followed Colin and heard him say that mirrors let you travel through time. Stefan then seems to head through a mirror in the bathroom back in time to when he was a kid. And discovers that his dad took the teddy away from Stefan and locked it away in his room. He wakes up, I take him through the Netflix sign again. [During this, I led into what I’ll be addressing in a minute as Ending Four-B.] And take Stefan back to the locked room, this time entering the password “TOY”. Stefan unlocks the safe and finds his teddy within... And then it takes an odd turn. Stefan turns to find a younger dad - and then suddenly he is a child again. The younger dad relents and lets young Stefan put the teddy back under his bed. After doing so, suddenly older Stefan is looking at young Stefan sleeping. We cut back to young Stefan on the day Mum leaves... This time, he finds the teddy but his Mum is still running late. She’s gonna have to catch the next train - the one that leads to her demise - and we have to make the decision for young Stefan on whether to go or not. Of course, yes is my choice here - for though it’s a tragedy, it’s the last of these paths to take - we get young Stefan and Mum on the train, cut to black, and then see that older Stefan has died in Dr. Haynes’ office. We then get shown a TV screen and the credits come rolling in, whether we like it or not. And there’s what seems almost a tune playing but we’ll get back to that because if you’re a ZX Spectrum fan like myself, you know where that’s headed.

Ending Five Analysis: Alright, now there’s debate to be had here. Did Stefan really walk through a mirror and change time, undoing his own existence in the present, rendering himself dead on the spot? Did he slip away into a divergent reality and leave his original one behind? Or did he, in reliving the trauma with Dr. Haynes, live too far into it and died? Well, my opinion is that the last of those three is true. (Although, this conclusion is a little shot in the foot for me personally because I never discussed the death of Stefan’s mum with Dr. Haynes ever. Unless you try to make the conclusion that the entirety of my personal run through this game even from Stefan getting up at the very start of it was all in his reliving). Time to come clean about something I’ve been hinting through this post. Delusions. Almost all of the endings involve delusions. But, you’ll have to wait until the end of this chapter before I bring all of that together.

Ending Four-B: “Cut!” - having taken Stefan down the Netflix path and into a fight with Dr. Haynes, I told him to jump through the window. He runs to the window but it doesn’t open - and then we hear something shout CUT! The view pulls out to reveal that Stefan is in a studio, and that - in a very meta move - all of this is just a production being made (for TV, for film... for Netflix?) and that trying to jump out of the window isn’t in the script. Stefan is then addressed as Mike and it seems to be the case that he has fallen a little too much into character. The studio assistant, worried with his insistence that he is Stefan, rushes off to find a medic. And that’s the end of that.

Ending Four-B Analysis: Firstly, I put this with Ending Four because it’s down a similar path, and once again we become Stefan... sorry, Mike’s delusion. And this led me to an interesting thought about this universe where we’ve taken control of a delusional actor - is the alternative for taking the Netflix sign, which is having the fight with Dr. Haynes (as “scripted”) and being dragged off just a part of this universe’s production? In that instance, is the delusional then our own that this world is a reality when - surprise, surprise, it’s a Netflix production (and presumably, in that universe, also a Black Mirror episode)? Secondly, as an aside, the only option presented to me after this ending for a rewind was “Get Rabbit From Dad”...

Well, there you go, five “main” endings (and a bit) and an awful lot for me to explain...

Except... Ending Six. What I Believe Is The True “Main” Ending.

So we lead Stefan back to the sign, give him the Diverging Paths sign (or call it Whitebear, if thus inclined.), make him kill Dad, and make him chop up the body. Then, the Boss and Colin discuss the fact that Stefan is late with his work - Colin convinces him to leave Stefan be for another day. And what happens here on, well, happens. It’s worth noting the reluctance and pain Stefan has carrying out the order we gave him to chop up his Dad. But then, it’s contrasted by the lack of emotion he shows in Dr. Haynes’ office. Perhaps he’s taken that JFD documentary to heart about believing that if all paths occur, and there is no free will - then why care? Why feel guilt on behalf of what seems to be destiny? And honestly, I can’t blame Stefan... Because he doesn’t have free will here, we’re throwing decisions at him and he’s along for the ride. We made him kill his dad. We made him chop him up. 

And herein lies our delusion. That in making these choices for him, we have a choice. Because we really don’t - we’re in a Bandersnatch of our own (if you’re a CYOA fan then you might’ve sensed this coming...) and honestly, we should’ve known from the start. We’re the ones that selected the option Black Mirror: Bandersnatch on Netflix and hit play, after all. Just as Stefan has pulled back from making an infinity of paths and left enough complexity to make it seem so. I mean, I’ll be blunt here even though I’ve yet to discuss it in depth in Chapter Two - technically, there is no way that any one human being is getting through every possible path/universe. To us, it may as well be infinite. And yet, it’s all just an illusion of free will.

Endings Two and Three all push us, the player, bluntly into going back into this warren of choices - to try again. Pushing us further on. Ending Four is more subtle, toying with us by giving us a tragic ending for Stefan so we feel inclined to go again and do better for him (and in my case, straight up offers up a path to Ending Five, and what seems a more hopeful ending until you get into it.) Ending One is even there if you decide to take the choice to not make any choices, to not interfere at all. Leaving the universe on course - but of course, this is our game and trap so it tells us not so subtly to try again as well.

And Ending Five leads us to ending with... A delusion. There’s the crux of the matter.

Ending One is our delusion that we can game the system by not getting involved.

Ending Two is Stefan’s (and our) delusion that if we play by the nicest choices and rules of life, it’s all going to turn out happily.

Ending Three is Stefan’s delusion (spurred on by the acid? by Colin’s way of thinking? by both?) that if infinite worlds are out there and free will is an illusion then what does it matter if he jumps?

Ending Four is where Stefan becomes delusional as a result of us and ends up locked up. We are the delusion. Four-B is where Stefan himself, as a person, is the delusion.

Ending Five is either the delusion of a man who relived his trauma too deeply or the delusion of us in thinking that when the paths were all clear and we had what seemed like a final end, that it would be happy. (Or none of the above, if you really want to go analysing this one differently.)

And Ending Six is our delusion. “And now, they’ve only got the illusion of free will but really, I decide the ending.”

In a few short seconds, we realise that we have been the Stefan of Charlie Brooker and co. - being led towards this ending that is out of our hands now. Despite all the paths and other endings you take, you’re likely to end up back here. 

And as Stefan says about how he thinks Bandersnatch led to a happy ending, and we see him in his room, with his computer - and walls covered in paths; trying to make sense of the maze he’s playing... well, I think you can piece together the parallels between him and us.

And then we’re landed with the fact that he’s kept his dad’s head. And the 5/5 review we’ve been looking for all game finally comes, but then it turns out even that comes at a price. We’ve driven Stefan insane, certainly - and we’ve tainted the happiness of a moment we were striving for. And there’s a final delusion for us - the delusion that whatever choices were out there for us to make, we could get an ending where everyone lives, Stefan is happy, the game gets 5/5 and all is well. But we can’t. No matter what Stefan does, he can’t divert from the path we choose and no matter what we do, we can’t divert from the path Charlie Brooker chose.

Colin’s daughter takes up the mantle of her father, inspired by having found Stefan’s work, just as Stefan was inspired by having found Jerome F Davies’. (She even has Jerome’s book as well!) And one more time, we fall into the meta hole as it’s revealed that she’s creating her game for TVs and smart devices under Netflix. Her game is the Bandersnatch we’re playing. 

As a parting shot, Charlie Brooker brings himself into the web the one we can without completely shattering what remains of the fourth wall. Pearl represents him, trapped in the same madness, trying to put this game together. We are given our final choice - and either way, it’s a moot choice. Both destroy Bandersnatch. Both cause the screen to cut out - did we just erase Bandersnatch? Does it matter, given that our choice or even abstaining meant nothing in the end?

And I suppose you have to feel sympathy for Charlie Brooker, because the pain Stefan felt and the pain we felt - he’s no stranger to it.

And we’re left with one question now that the game is gone: What about real life?

Chapter 2: Why A Flowchart Won’t Ever Cut It (Technically)

TO BE ADDED SOON

Chapter 3: So Many Easter Eggs

TO BE ADDED SOON

Chapter 4: The Best Way To Document Every Piece Of Bandersnatch

TO BE ADDED SOON

Chapter 5: Us

TO BE ADDED SOON

[Note: this post originally appeared in this thread. Owning to Tumblr’s inability to update reblogs with edits because it is a hellsite programmed by a secretive cell of former Stasi operatives to avenge the fall of East Germany, it has thus been re-edited and reformatted here for your reading pleasure.] JK Rowling’s wizards are the most useless, lazy, incapable dumbfucks in the history of fiction. The average Muggle? You take away their technology and they would be able to complete the basic tasks of feeding and clothing themselves without shitting on the floor. If a wizard ever lost their magic in Harry Potter, though, they would die. They’d be dead in three days. They’re garbage and I hate that I’ve come to hate Harry Potter - a series I once loved - because an author inexplicably hailed for her world-building is daily revealed to be appallingly bad at it. I realize this is a really dumb thing to be this angry about but I’ve been told for years what a great world-builder J.K. Rowling is, and that was not even true when the books were coming out. The Time Turner ruined all of Harry Potter forever, not because it offers easy time travel you can hold in your hand (although it does), not because you ask ‘why don’t they just use the time turner’ with every subsequent scenario forever (although you do), but because it was an enormous, flashing red light warning everyone that the series was going to attempt to make the transition from Fairy Tale Logic to Serious Fiction logic and fail. Badly. Really, really badly. I still think Harry Potter & The Philosopher’s Stone is an almost perfect book: a distillation of decades of boarding school genre fiction combined with magic, friendship, and wonder. It is a book that owes as much to Enid Blyton and L.M. Boston as it does to C.S. Lewis or T.H. White and other authors with two first initials. Its sense of place is magisterial, from the frumpy, soul-crushing suburban sadness of Privet Drive to the ephemeral curio-shop wonderland of Diagon Alley to Hogwarts itself, a bastion of astonishment, homeliness, and delight. What it isn’t is the sort of framework on which you can support the horror that is the torture and murder of Charity Burbage in front of her colleague Severus Snape, who could not rescue her because he could not break his deep cover as a spy against Wizard Hitler 2. Long-running series can experience changes of tone and complexity. This is neither something laudable nor worth reviling; it’s a neutral phenomenon. Sometimes series do it well: Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising and Terry Pratchett’s Discworld are both series that by-and-large end with books focused on far more complex issues than their earlier entries. TV series do this too: contrast the early episodes of Steven Universe or Adventure Time with episodes from later seasons. With Adventure Time, for example, trying jumping from the pilot to Remember You and see how hard you get tonal whiplash) Lois McMaster Bujold sublime space opera The Vorkosigan Saga doesn’t just change tones but also genre: space adventure, murder mystery, political thriller, goofy regency romance, comedy of errors, heist movie, schizoid identity crisis - on and on. The latest entry in the series has almost no plot to speak of, but is instead a musing on age, gender roles, grieving the loss of a lover, and the hope of new life. Some series, however, manage the transition poorly, largely because the initial tone cannot be harmonized with the later tone (Mass Effect jumps immediately to mind). But Harry Potter has more than just a problem of its tone getting darker: its trying to have darker events fit in the same world in which people can walk around with names like ‘Mundungus,’ the Hogwarts school song can be a nonsense poem, and the Philosopher’s Stone was defended with a series of video game puzzles. In a world in which the villain openly tortures somebody to death, the Philosopher’s Stone shouldn’t have any whimisical bullshit about its magical defences: it should have trip mines in the floor and an enchanted statue with a gun, because Voldermort isn’t a guy you confound with drinking potions and flying keys. You should just kill him. The charming fairy world of wonder of HP & The Philosopher’s Stone has room for a love potion. The later books, in which it is revealed that Voldemort was essentially born from rape, is not place where Ron Weasley can hand-out a book to Harry called Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches without seeming like a predator in the making. The cradle that is The Philosopher’s Stone cannot hold a beastly baby like Deathly Hallows any more than Grindlewald pontificating about the superiority of wizards can sit comfortably in a universe in which wizards took until the 18th century to accept the outhouse! Not that fascist ravings are inherently logical; but even non-fascists in Harry Potter never act like wizards are anything other than 100% better than muggles at all times. They can’t, because if the series were ever to do that it would have to acknowledge that the two worlds are different: neither better, just different. Instead - well, as Ron once bitched, magic makes coffee perfect every time, so it’s not clear how muggles stand being alive and don’t just roll-over and die from the hellacious half-life that is living with imperfect coffee. This has nothing to do with irony, a suggestion that ‘oh Grindewald talks a big game about wizardly superiority but wizards didn’t use toilets and cal themselves goofy names like Flumpus MacFludgeon: Rowling is using dramatic ironic to lampshade how wizard supremacy lacks self-awareness. No: this is about a world that is silly being asked to host a genocidal dictator and his crimes. It’s like those tedious ‘grimdark’ AUs that always show up in bad fanfiction by authors attempting to be serious: what if the Sesame Street gang had to deal with ICE, what if Po started haemoraging while hanging-out with Laa-Laa, what if Peppa Pig learned that she was adopted and her real parents were brutally murdered as part of gang war because they were heroin dealers and so on. (The best skewering of this edgelord comedy is still probably either Andrew Hussie’s Muppet Babies/Saw comic or any encounters the Shortpacked staff ever had with the Transformers: Buckets of Blood guy.) In Harry Potter, Rowling built a wonderful little fantasy world that ran happily on the logic of fairy tales and fairy stories, and then decided she was never going to be taken seriously as an author unless she introduced Hitler to the equation. And it never works for her. It’s not like it couldn’t have worked. The Lord of the Rings is famously a very different book from The Hobbit. It did, in fact, introduce Hitler into a little fantasy world but Tolkien made it work by abandoning huge portions of the Hobbit’s tone, style, and structure: he wrote a completely different book.  Frodo isn’t scarfing-down Bertie Bott’s Every Flavoured Beans on the slopes of  Mount Doom. The moment, say, Cedric Diggory lay dead in Harry’s arms, we needed to never meet Mundungus Fletcher ever again, or Weasley’s Gooftacular Prank Nonsense, or Ron getting Harry a book about love spells. All the very least that needed to go away, at least until the very end, because Rowling is not an author with the skill to keep the silly and the sublime on the same page. That’s fine in and of itself: all artistic people have strengths and weakness, nobody is skilled at every element of creation. J.M. Barrie was very good at writing a book about an eternal child, but a bit crap at writing a biography about his mother. Arthur Sullivan spent his life quietly seething no one wanted to listen to Ivanhoe instead of The Mikado. There’s a reason Jerry Lewis never released The Day the Clown Cried.  Virginia Wolfe is a great writer, but that doesn’t mean she would have written a great run on She-Hulk. [Although now that I’ve said it I can’t think of anything I want to read more.] There’s a great bit in the Lord of Rings after the Shire has been scoured of Saruman where the Hobbits essentially open-up their larders and allow people to have fun again; there’s also a nice bit slightly earlier where Great King Aragorn puts on his old Strider clothes just so he can be his D&D character again: when series change tone, unless you’re really good at walking on a knife’s edge, the quieter, gentler, lighter world isn’t gone forever, but it does have to go away for a while: which means its time to tamp-down on the people with silly names and personalities - like Slughorn, who slips into book six like the second-coming of the vain and silly Lockhart, even though that’s the book where Dumbledore dies.

Rowling keeps trying to makes her old tone fit with her new world without having to pull a Tolkien and actually write differently, which produces moment after moment of tonal whiplash in which the latest Potter-related movie literally involves referencing the holocaust but she also drops some fun trivia about wizards shitting on the floor like animals. (You could describe the entirety of the first Fantastic Beasts film as Tonal Whiplash: The Motion Picture. I’d say that’s an essay for another day but I do not want to have to watch that movie again.)

It needs to be said that a primary reason these tone shifts ‘don’t work’ for Harry Potter is that the logic of a fairy tale is different than the logic of a mundane story. The logic of a fairy tale tends to be self contained: it doesn’t have a smart ass running around asking questions like ‘why’ because there is no why; a thing is the way it is because it is the way it is. Fairies steal babies on the third Sunday of every month, and nobody in the story asks ‘well what about in countries that use different calendars, and what about the shift from Julian to the Gregorian calendar that skipped eleven days?’ because such a pedantic question has no substance in a fairy-tale world. The Clever Child might question what the fairies need with babies, but she’s not about to break-down the week-to-week investment metrics on the Fairyland Infant Exchange. It’s not that one cannot critique or bring critical thinking to fairy stories; it’s that in a fairy story you don’t ask how the sewer system works because it’s not pertinent to what the story is trying to convey. It’s being the guy at the book club who is mad nobody wants to discuss his theories on the music of Rush: its not that the theories are bad, it’s that in this time and place they are of limited relevance. Harry Potter, however, does not belong to to the world of fairy stories, but to the legacy of Tolkienesque fantasy - the world of

  In The Hobbit nobody would ever ask if Hobbiton had sewers - it’s not important, and if you ask those kind of questions expecting there to be a serious answer of grave import you’re being a twit. Lord of the Rings, though? Not only is it a valid question, but Tolkien probably wrote a paper explaining the etymology of the Westron word for ‘sewer’ and how sewers were first invented by Shítlívær the Noldor as a way of helping the Blessed Isles cope with all the crap that tumbled out of Fëanor’s mouth.

The world of The Hobbit is one you could enter and expect to quickly find yourself on an adventure. The world of The Lord of The Rings is one you could enter, walk-about, and study without anyone ever exepecting you to solve some sort of regionally-disturbing social problem: in short, it wants you to be invested in the existence of its world in a different way than The Hobbit. Even then, although The Lord of the Rings is more grounded than The Hobbit, it is not so grounded that it doesn’t leave room for mystery, and questions that refute Wittgenstein’s assertion that all questions must be answerable. Tolkien loved to create complex worlds, but there was stuff he knew wasn’t worth elaborating on. It’s really his fans and authorial heirs who developed the somewhat worrying belief that a good worldbuilder has to have an answer to literally every question or else didn’t think their world through. (This has killed more potentially good books than bad cover art ever has.)

The Lord of the Rings leaves room for The Undiscovered Country. Harry Potter wants too… but can’t. Firstly, Rowling obviously understands the need for what we might call poetic mystery - like the gateway in the somewhat unsubtly name Department of Mysteries - but she also wants you to know how wizards pooped three hundred years ago. You get the feeling she knows exactly how and why that gate works, and what it is, but she withheld the knowledge because she likes mystery’s aesthetic more than she ascribes to any idea that an author might have lacunæ in the knowledge of their own work. That is, she would never put something into her work that she didn’t have an answer for - for her there is no undiscovered country that exists beyond the knowledge of even the author; she is an omniscient deity. Not for her is C.S. Lewis’ insistence that for her characters: All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before. Rowling knows exactly what happens to every one of them from the moment they were born to the moment the rot in the ground and the day-to-day schedules of their lives in heaven. Secondly - and far more of an issue - is that Harry Potter becomes a world that invites you to pick up each part of its structure and think about it, because the author has - with loving care - built that entire world for you to interact with. A place for everything, and everything its place. Except JK Rowling is a lazy thinker who never, ever considers the consequences of anything she says. Nagini is actually an Asian woman cursed to live as a snake, wizards used to magically disappear their shit from wherever they just stood and shat it out, Hermione Granger can have a time travel device to attended a bunch of classes but Harry can’t grab one off a nearby shelf and go back fifteen minutes and save his godfather, and nor a few years later can the Minister for Magic’s protection detail keep them on hand to go back half an hour and tell their past selves ‘Hey Voldemort is about to walk in here and kill y’all thought you ought to know.’ No author can work-out every aspect of every element in their works - that’s impossible, and why ARGs are solved by the internet hivemind in half a day even though they took a far smaller group of minds months to devise. But Rowling is intellectually lazy - she adds the holocaust to her Magic Fun Land without sparing a single moment to think that idea through. She then gets defensive when confronted by the suggestion that her worldbuilding might have been shallow. Hey your American wizard houses seem a bit racist also America doesn’t really use the house system in its schools - and her response was to lash out and not listen.  Rowling tried to move Potter from a fairy logic world with its own rules into our world with our rules and our history but she doesn’t know our history very well, or even our rules, so she tells us wizards shat on the floor until the 18th century while the rest of us sit around going ‘but humans have never done that as social groups - even in horrible slums and facility-free prison cells humans create a designated place for taking a shit even if it’s just ‘that corner over there.’ We don’t just drop pants and go whenever!” This is because, as a worldbuilder, J.K. Rowling is actually kind of rubbish.

Mafia AU Part 7

It was a complete change in the atmosphere as the removal men seemed to have the idea of eyes focused on the floor instead of the actual manor. Nobunaga was pouting like a child at the decision I had made since Shingen had now gone through the effort to clean out one of the spare rooms instead of leaving me in the pretty gilded cage. Though I had all of the furniture required, I didn't really fancy leaving all of my clothes with the likes of Mitsuhide and Masamune about, and I knew that something scanty would end up being sent to Shingen on purpose as an aggravator.

The agreement was that I was now technically a free agent. Either of the parties were allowed to hire me for evenings. My only other option was to slap both Nobunaga and Shingen and tell them that I was my own person and they couldn't dictate my life or I would disappear. I was also the best person to use as an intermediary between the two bosses and could be used if necessary for messages and meetings.

Hideyoshi was feeling more than a little clingy, he kept hugging and fussing over me. He was 'fixing' my hair constantly before a cough from Shingen brought the attention to the fact that the van was loaded now.

"I need to go," I laughed, kissing my brother on the cheek and slipping out from his grasp.

"Are you sure we can't tempt you into changing your mind now, Kitten?" Masa was trying the pout now before I patted him on the cheek with a grin.

"No, you can't, plus you'd make Hideyoshi blow a gasket," I reminded the one-eyed man, shaking my head in mock disappointment.

"I hate to cut things short," Shingen physically interjected himself, his arm purposefully around my waist and pulling my body against his. "But unfortunately, I do have clients to attend to this afternoon, and I would hate to be late."

"So leave her here," Oda scoffed like a child.

"Everyone stop it," I scolded. "I know you all have my number because Mitsuhide insisted on setting my phone up," I rolled my eyes at the computer specialist. He was lurking at the corner of the room as usual, and a trademark smirk was my only response. "So you can all get hold of me as you like and it's not like I'm disappearing."

"We'll always have a space for you, so don't feel like you need to stay there if you aren't comfortable," my brother was in his element at times as mother hen.

"I'll be fine, I'm a big girl now," I grinned, and gave him one last hug before turning to leave.

Shingen was pleased with himself as we got in the car. The movers had been eager to leave the site, it was like being around a group of alpha males ready to tear each other apart at any moment.

Shingen was chuckling to himself as the movers were looking nervous and eager to get out of the job. "Will you stop baiting them?" I lightly scolded, as he opened the car door for me. "Come on, we have things to do today."

My new engagement ring had appeared the previous night over a dinner that Shingen had suspiciously kept from me. It was a flawless diamond taking centre stage in a 'princess' cut, I had a feeling that was done on purpose, with diamonds lining up the sides. It was strange to know that the diamond was so perfect because Takeda had the money to spend on it without thinking. My ring finger had felt so exposed without a ring on it, and the new one didn't feel as out of place as the original, my head was tilted down, and I couldn't help but smile at it as Shingen pulled up back outside the manor to direct the movers as to which room my things were going.

All of my furniture had been moved up into my new room, despite comments regarding that I should be sharing with Shingen. Yuki had taken to trying to embarrass his 'boss', without any success as then my clothes were being moved in.

"I need my own space for them," I smiled at the now flustered male as Shingen chuckled. "And I get the feeling that it's only going to grow."

"Indeed," Takeda decided that I had been away from him physically for long enough, and draped his arm over my shoulders. "I can't have my princess being photographed in the same thing twice," he beamed, and kissed my forehead, sending both Yukimura and me into a dark blush.

The en-suite was also a considerable size bigger as well, so at least I could have baths when I wanted to instead of just needing to shower all the time.

"We have that interview tomorrow, addressing all the rumours and things," Shingen was pulling a face before looking at my wardrobe.

"I have things that haven't been photographed," I said, putting my hand on his bicep to get a better look in my wardrobe.

"Always wanting to be practical instead of spending all my money," Takeda was amused by something before a phone call distracted him as the movers were being paid off by Yuki.

I glanced up at the room. It was done in various tones of green, including a new massive bed that Shingen had insisted on, which could easily fit in all of the boys now. It was airy than the cage, since there weren't any bars on the windows, and it was off the ground floor. My teddy was delicately displayed in the middle of the pillow cluster on the bed as I made the decision to kick my shoes off and drop onto the mattress.

It was quiet, and my exhaustion was kicking in, I just needed to rest my eye for a few minutes was all I told myself.

Shingen was still chuckling to himself as my makeup was being touched up when we reached the TV studio. I had slept through until an alarm went off to tell Shingen we needed to get up and moving, and he had 'helpfully' synced it with my room. I gave him a dead-eye look, and the makeup artist was smiling to herself before stepping back to check her work was adequate.

It was a popular daytime chat show host, a very gossipy kind from what I knew, but it would get us on the radar very swiftly at least. The plan was to get as much exposure as quickly as possible. Normally, we wouldn't have entertained the idea, but this was one of the best ways to get talked about.

Shingen insisted on my left hand being available to show the new engagement ring off as we waited in the right wing before walking on.

"And I am pleased to announce our main guests for the show today, the much talked about glamour couple, Shingen and Natsuki," the talk up made my eyes widen before Takeda's lessons about a public face kicked in. It was just another discussion, I had a part to act for them.

The questions were the same. The plastic woman wanted to know how we met since it was never disclosed in any interviews and then how he had gone from playboy to engaged it seemed overnight. Then the inevitable about the gunfights and my disappearance.

The studio was plunged into darkness.

"Please don't move, it does get boring," a tone struck down from the rafters before the emergency lighting kicked in. And then a spotlight was focused on Shingen and I. "You always did like to talk yourself up Shingen. No one has been able to properly investigate your fiancée and her connection to one of the biggest mobsters that terrorise this city?"

The temperature dropped several degrees, and the focus was on me now. I had to keep a straight face and keep my breathing steady. Getting emotional would only add to Kennyo's side of the argument.

The electricity came back fully, and then the man who had been chasing me in the coffee shop was now stood behind the host. His face was twisted with fury, an unmatched hate that had manifested itself deep inside.

"Kennyo-" Shingen began before a gun was then pressed to my temple.

"Welcome back, we apologise for the unexpected interruption, but it's time to uncover some truths about this engagement," Kennyo was making the host read from a prompt, a gun poking into her back. One of his goons were stood to the side of me with giant boards, very old school but then with any attempt, I made to move my head had the gun poked into my skull harder. "Natsuki Toyotomi, the little sister of Nobunaga Oda's right-hand man, Hideyoshi, and often previously seen with the mobster Lord at galas and events-"

They didn't get to finish. Somehow without communication, both of us had flung ourselves at the goons. I had thrown my body over the arm of the couch and straight into the idiot's stomach as I heard more of a kerfuffle going on from the opposite side of the sofa. Kennyo had whipped his gun up from the host, who then took advantage of the distraction and flung herself off the stage. The cameras were all still rolling of course, and all three of us were still hooked up to microphones.

Kenshin was storming through the back from what I could hear, and then a smoke bomb exploded just behind me.

It was the best cover I could get, the goon that had been on my tail now had the strangest and most nimble opponent to face. I flung myself against the emergency exit, setting off all the alarm bells and startling the audience out of their daze.

The world was thrown into chaos. People were everywhere, and the police had barricaded the studio as I was faced with guns and uniforms.

"She's good!" A voice barked, and then I was encased in a warm set of arms.

"You're okay, I've got you," my brother was fighting his own tears as I couldn't stop mine. His arms were tight around me and rubbing my back while he was walking me back to the barricade of officers.

Hideyoshi wouldn't let me go. I was wrapped in a blanket by the paramedics and a brief check over before I was instructed to stay put in the back of the ambulance. He was holding my hand before he could sit next to me and put his arm around me, trying to soothe me as my hysterics finally kicked in about what I had just gone through, and that I had by all accounts abandoned my fiancé in a mess.

"Natsuki!" Shingen had burst past all of the staff and ignored the shouts about him needing a check and threw himself into the ambulance.

I didn't even hesitate to fling my arms around him, needing to make sure he was real. "I'm sorry," I hiccuped, burying my head into the crook of his shoulder. "I just left you-" I sobbed.

"You did everything right," my fiancé soothed, stroking my head and kissing my forehead as his hands rubbed my back. "You got out of there, alive and unhurt. That's the best thing you can do for me. I knew you were safe, I could focus," he murmured.

I could hear the press clamouring for access against the police presence. It had been on live television before the reporters were all distracted by the sight of Kennyo being dragged out in handcuffs to the car and left us space by the ambulances to breathe. Some water was found, and I managed to get a pocket mirror off one of the ambulance crew, so I could at least be seen without any makeup on rather than with mascara streaks down my cheeks. Yuki was trying to get the car around without attracting too much attention was the official instruction.

But the press noticed Shingen's car without much help.

"Mr Takeda! Are you really engaged to a member of a gang?" I heard and internally winced at the savagery of the pushing.

"Hideyoshi Toyotomi was seen with Natsuki, what is their relationship?" Another microphone was heading for us.

"Is Natsuki pregnant with your child like the reports are saying?" It was like being descended on by mosquitos.

"Is it just a sham engagement?!"

That appeared to be the last straw. Shingen paused just outside the open car door and gently held my chin to look him in the eyes. He was so confident that I knew he was up to something before his lips were keenly and hotly dominating mine. His arms snaked around my waist and pulled me flush against him as I was holding onto his blazer while the press got their photos.

I was still trying to catch my breath once I had gotten in the car. I could suddenly understand why women fell for him at such a drop of the hat with the passion that had been balled up into that kiss.

"Was that really necessary?" Yuki broke the silence after pulling away.

"Well, needed to give them a show and shut them all up," Shingen laughed as he pulled me against his chest. "That went about as far from a plan as I've had in a while, I was thinking I would get rusty."

Shingen failed to notice the quietness from Natsuki on the journey home until Yuki made the comment that she must have been exhausted. He was surprised to see that she was fast asleep on his shoulder, and chuckled lightly. Once they pulled up to the mansion, Sanada was able to carry the small female in his arms as Shingen shook his head.

"Your room boss?" The shorter man asked.

"No, hers, it's better that she wakes up somewhere familiar, instead of surrounded by all my swords and dazzling smile," he grinned.

"It's a miracle she puts up with you," Yukimura sighed.

my thoughts on Arrow 7x04

Wooooo....what a heck of an episode! Let me just share with you my thoughts... Now, a refresher: these are pretty much stream of consciousness. I type these down as I’m watching live. So if they seem a little disjointed... that’d be why. But I thought you’d enjoy my IN THE MOMENT thoughts. 😉

Dr. Jerry Parker seems like a reasonable guy. But…. appearances can be deceiving.

Oh god a psychiatric evaluation. It’s like Oliver’s worst nightmare come to life.

This guy’s asking some uncomfy questions. Oliver needs to figure out how to play this game.

Listen Dr. Parker, we handled this whole “you’re a murderer” thing  back in s5. I have the DVDs, I can show you.

OH NO YOU DO NOT USE HIS FAMILY AGAINST HIM.

I’m okay with Felicity turning torturer. Just for the record. That could be some juicy story.

I appreciate what Rene is trying to warn her about… and it’s something she should consider. But also, I sorta want her to do it so we can unpack the angsty goodness.

And Felicity’s not wrong either. Getting Diaz is a priority.

I just super appreciate these two working together.

UGH STAR CITY IS STILL A FUCKING DUMP HEAP!?! WTF EVEN. Does nothing help?!?

oooh new coordinates! EXCITING. Where is Felicity.

Mayor Pollard. who the heck is Mayor Pollard. I want Mayor Queen back.

THINGS WERE BETTER OFF WITH THE VIGILANTES. Hear hear!

but also, didn’t y’all haters vote for the anti vigilante legislation? COME ON GUYS.

Oooh Faux GA to the rescue! I really hope that’s Emiko.

At least Mayor Pollard is a woman. YAY WOMEN RISE.

Smoke inhalation is no joke. Just ask Jack Pearson.

Dig the ARGUS Bitch is unamusing. I want my boy to wake up to the truth soonish.

Rene, you’re busy with Felicity and Silencer. Why spread yourself thin—? Ahhhh forget it. Do whatcha do.

Dinah’s hair is so pretty in this episode. I have hair envy. Her and the ATF Bitch from Sons of Anarchy have the best hair on TV.

So have they fed him at all? Cuz not feeding him is kinda… not cool?

Okay I don’t like Dr. Parker anymore.

AGAIN WE DID THIS IN SEASON FIVE.

Is this the first time are learning the other guy in the boat is his dad’s bodyguard and his name is Hackett?

OKAY MAN. WE DID THIS IN SEASON FIVE. DO I HAVE TO KEEP SAYING IT.

Oliver, don’t listen to this jerk. We did this with Adrian Chase already. This is well trod territory.

Oooh I like this scene. Felicity with the Truth Tea AND the Sass! MY BAE!

I love love love her rubbing her (earned) degree in her face. Did BS even go to college? How can her fans even excuse this?

Okay cuz Rene is busy with Zoe and the fire bug, we have Felicity going to Siren for help? Bahhhhhhh.

GAs voice is so unnaturally deepened. It’s gotta be a woman. IT’S EMIKO.

Dude, Dinah is arresting Rene? WOAH. We are in the upside down.

ARE YOU FEEDING HIM YOU DIRTBAGS?!?!

Dr. Parker, you go too far. You are a bad man. GOOD DAY.

Oh you do not bring up William like that. He’s a good man. HE’S A GOOD MAN. DAMN YOU.

Can you not? He doesn’t need to re-formed. He’s fine the way he is. LEAVE HIM ALONE.

“Go to hell.” THATS MY BOY!

WHAT. WAIT. WHATS THE MACHINE?!?!

This feels like Felicity bringing in a bad guy to do her dirty work (read: torture) for her. I’m okay with that. Proceed.

Dinah, you need to not … do all this. Don’t be such a cop. Honestly, you and Dig are doing the same thing and it’s MADDENING.

Dig, I’m not sure how much wisdom you can impart seeing as how you’re making the SAME MISTAKES.

ARE YOU CHANGING YOUR MIND DIG?! PLEASE SAY YES.

Okay so this is not so bad. Keep going Dig. Get out of ARGUS, to start!

SMOAK TECH SMOAK TECH SMOAK TECH SMOAK TECH

Honestly I am not getting anything else cuz I’m spazing over SMOAK TECH

Whoooooooo what??!?!?!

Ohhhh Dinah. FUTURE DINAH. WTF DINAH?

Okay, present day Dinah is finally coming to her senses. WHEW.

Felicity has gone VICIOUS. “I don’t have anything left to lose.” Oh baby. You need a hug.

Curious… Siren warning Felicity not to go down the vengeance path like she did is kinda… weird. But it makes sense.

I like her referencing Felicity’s “big brain”.

Dude, future Star City is like a dystopia on crack. Where are my babies!!!

Oh this machine looks like a bad thing. Let’s not.

What.. is this guy doing. What… noooo you cannot change his memories. THIS IS A WRONG THING.

Well that’s painful. Let’s not go down that particular path shall we?

Are you trying to tell him to KILL HIMSELF?! What the hell, Dr. Parker. I hate you!

I could not possibly care less about the fire starter bad guy and Rene and Dinah. Sorry not sorry. Too much other shit happening.

Dinah is giving Zoe a BC pin? WHAT ARE YOU SAYING, SHOW?!

I hate this fucking doctor. He’s the worst.

LOL Okay so that was all a ploy. There’s my smart bae.

EARTH TWO FELICITY RUNS AN EMPIRE!! YASSS QUEEEEEEEEN. YAS MY RUTHLESS QUEEN.

Roy how dare you doubt Felicity. She’s the smart one here.

OLDER ZOE. SHES HAWT. VIGILANTE RESISTANCE. RENE WONT GO TO STAR CITY.

Felicity is doing all of it. She’s the mastermind! MUAHAHHAA

DINAH WE DONT BUY IT. ITS A RUSE. Honestly, cmon you guys, you’re gonna have to do better than that.

Okay look guys. I’m not worried. I’m not even adjacent to worried. Because even if she’s dead, it’s not like that’s happening next week in the present day. Not even next year. William sees Felicity and Oliver again in the present day. He told us as much when he told Old!Roy that this was tech Felicity had shown him.... tech that hasn’t been invented yet. Plus I absolutely believe Felicity will get pregnant this season and that the child will need to be born sometime... timing dictates that must happen in s8. 

Here’s the thing. I’m okay with her dying in the future. I know that probably sounds sacrilegious, but bear with me: everyone dies some day. If Felicity dies in two years, ten years, twenty years, thirty years... it makes no difference to me. Personally, I believe the flash forwards are more about setting up the next generation of crime fighters, not as much about our current heroes. 

Do I want our current heroes, the reasons I’m watching this show, to get to have some happy times? OF COURSE. And I believe they will get them. But I’m not gonna be too pressed if something tragic happens at some point. Felicity’s impact is felt. We heard it all over this episode tonight. SMOAK TECH. AN EMPIRE ON EARTH TWO. Her children (William and, I’m assuming, Maya) will be the piece of her that carries on her work. So that’s fine. I’m good with it. 

But that’s just me. Your mileage may very. 

Graduating High School.. Nine Months Pregnant?

20 Pop Culture Stereotypes We Must Debunk (Because    They’re Fucking Stupid)

1.   Race determines class

“White people were equated with richness and land” (Williams, pg. 431). Who’s to say you can’t be a person of color and also be loaded?! Sure, the Real Housewives have women of color who are ~loaded~, but the majority of shows depict non-white individuals and families as poor. Have you ever seen the TV show Everybody Hates Chris? The whole show is about a poor, African American family living in Brooklyn, NY—constantly worrying about money. Their father, Julius, is even so tight on money that he kept a picture of himself in his own wallet to keep as a reminder to not spend money. Shows like this may be hilarious, but continual negative portrayal of race and class hurts those who are included in the stereotype.

2.   Race determines education level

“Members of society are judged, and succeed or fail, measured against the characteristics that are held by those privileged (Wildman & Davis, pg. 111).” Why do we put less pressure on some people to go to college, and others are just assumed they’ll go, or maybe it’s assumed they’ll never even finish high school? How can we look at a 16-year-old black high school student and compare them to a white 16-year-old student, and think that we have enough information to label one of them as academically frivolous, and one as a failure?

3.   Race determines actions

Being white will never make you an angel, being a person of color will never make you dangerous. The media constantly portrays black people to carry guns, Middle Eastern people to be terrorists, and white people to be trashy, yet, more responsible with guns…? However, according to Chris Wilson with Time, mass shootings from the past 35 years were overwhelmingly white, male shooters. So why do we allow the media to make it look as if the white man is innocent in shows and movies, when in reality they’re the ones who are dangerous?  

4.   Race determines where you live

Similar to race determining your class, race also doesn’t dictate where someone lives. For example, in the show Shameless, a white family is actually living in the poor, “ghetto” area of town that they refer to as the South Side. However, back to Everybody Hates Chris as I mentioned prior, TV loves to show people of color living in shitty places as if it’s normal. We can’t let the world tell us you must live within constraint or restriction because of your skin; it’s 2018—love thy [literal] neighbor, dammit.

5.   Class determines your future, or lack-there-of

“Everyone knows that money brings privilege” (Wildman and Davis, pg. 111). Sure, it can. I won’t pretend that money doesn’t make it easier to afford things such as college. People act like student loans don’t exist, that grants don’t exist, FAFSA (even though they suck, but it’s whatever), loans, etc. do.not.exist.But these are excuses. Millions of students who are set up for failure because they can’t afford college or because their parent’s don’t have the money, but that doesn’t stop them.

6.   Class determines your likelihood to end up an addict

Face it—TV either depicts drug/alcohol addicts as either extremely poor, or extremely rich. No one ever seems to care about a middle-class addict. What’s worse though, assuming that being rich or poor increases your likelihood to be an addict, or by not paying as much attention to addicts who are neither of these classes. The rich have money to blow on, well, blow…. and the poor just somehow are expected to be more likely to hang out with the wrong crowd, try a drug once, and then do everything and anything they can in order to get money to keep on getting the drug—none of this is something that we should stereotype.

7.   Class determines the likelihood you’ll get pregnant at a young age

Your class and status don’t determine when you have sex and if you’re using protection, your decision to have sex without protection or situations of birth control failure are how you get pregnant at a young age (I’m leaving out situations of rape from this so I don’t write a novel). According to studies done by the US National Library of Medicine, socioeconomic status doesn’t determine the age you get pregnant at, but may determine to different pregnancy and birth complications due to lack of money to afford things such as healthcare, diapers, medicine, etc.

8.   Being feminine means you’re gay

“The new man is non-sexist, believes in gender equality and relates to women as human beings” (Milestone and Meyer, pg. 116). Apparently, the ‘new man’ is seen as a gay man to many. What even is femininity? A guy isn’t gay for wearing pink, giving a shit about how he looks, having female friends, or for his hobbies—I personally appreciate a man who takes care of his appearance, shows his feelings, ya know, showers and stuff. Kidding—I promise I have higher standards than a guy just showering. But anyways, what I’m trying to say is that none of these surface-level features give anyindication that a man is gay. And if he is, who even cares?!

9.   Being masculine means you’re a lesbian

*See #8*

Kidding, but really. Stop judging people based on how they look, dress, act, whatever. 

10.Gay people are promiscuous

First off, not your business. Second, you can just as easily say something dumb like that girls in sororities are sluts (trust me, I was in one and I got this comment a handful of times). I don’t even know how this stereotype came about, but I know that my gay friends joke about it al the time. If your gay friends make a joke about it, cool, it’s funny to talk about his “dick appointment”, but it’s different between a good friend making a statement, and you being an assumptive asshole.

11.Gay people have HIV aids

Every commercial I’ve ever seen on TV about medical treatment for HIV only show gay couples. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, gay and bisexual males are more susceptible to getting HIV because they tend to have anal sex, sometimes unprotected, which then puts them at serious risk. Sorry not sorry, but these commercials can’t just pretend straight couples don’t have unprotected anal sex. HIV doesn’t discriminate, so neither should we.

12.Gay people can’t have children

I don’t even know where to begin with this one. How do women who can’t conceive have children? Adoption, IVF, surrogate—there’s tons of options, and these are options for gay couples as well.

13.Gay people can’t be religious

There’s this notion that gay people must not believe in God because some people believe that homosexuality is a sin—even though God definitely says to love thy neighbor and that he loves all of his children, aka all of us. Shows such as Modern Familyare great examples of this. A gay couple, Cam and his husband Mitchell, attend church and even take their adopted daughter, Lily, with them. Sure they live in California where there’s more acceptance, but the fact that the show even displays this is great for ending this stereotype by showing it as normalized.  

14.Teen moms won’t graduate

I talk about Shamelessand Teen Moma lot, but hey, they’re perfect examples for a lot of these stereotypes. Shamelesssupports this stereotype by showing a 15 year old named Debbie who gets pregnant and drops out of high school. !!!BUT!!! Debbie eventually gets her GED and becomes a certified welder. Hell yeah. Teen Mom, which is a reality show, rarely shows teens graduating or getting any type of certification to better their education. Girls who are in similar situations may see this and be like “well shit, if they didn’t finish school and they’re fine, I’m not finishing either!”— then the girl and her baby daddy end up relying on their parents for everything. I graduated with a girl who was nine months pregnant, literally about to pop, and now she’s a young mom, yes, but she got to go on and attend college and is almost finished with her degree. By supporting pregnant teens and giving them the push they need, they can attempt to better their future and give their baby a great life (not that it won’t be great without education, but you know what I mean).

15.Teen pregnancy is easy & fun

If you’ve seen Teen Mom, you know that teen pregnancy isn’t easy. Yes, the show does glorify it sometimes by being like “oh, get pregnant at 16, you’ll get on TV!!!!” but they also show the raw, uncut scenes of the girls and couples hardcore struggling. Imagine missing class, missing prom, missing fun experiences you could be having with your friends when you’re not even twenty years old. Imagine the judgment by friends, family, and strangers because they assume you weren’t being careful. There’s a lot more to being a teen mom than being on TV and picking out cute baby clothes—don’t let TV and the media make you think you should get pregnant for fun.

16.Teen parents = unfit parents

I’ll be honest, this is a stereotype that I’ve believed for a long time. Teens are young, haven’t experienced life yet, aren’t fully educated, and aren’t always very mature—so why would they make good parents? Good question. Answer: no one is ever ~ready~ for their first kid. If you’ve never had children before, you’re in the same position as everybody else who has also never had kids. It doesn’t matter if you’ve babysat for years or if you have a college degree, having your first child isn’t something anyone can fully prepare for. You can have money, buy the best diapers, whatever, but you’ll still be learning how to care for the baby day by day no matter what age you are.

17.Trans people are confused

“you’re confused”

“it’s a phase”

“you’re just gay.”

-all quoted from a dumb ass, probably

For this, let’s go back to Linda Alcoff’s “The Problem Of Speaking For Others”. You don’t know how someone realized they weren’t the gender assigned to them at birth. You don’t know how they feel in their own skin every day. You don’t know the hardships and troubles and braveryit took for them to come to terms with being trans and be open about it to others. If you speak for them and try to say “oh, she’s confused” or “he’ll grow out of it”, all you’re doing is demeaning them, belittling them, and you’re lying to yourself and to them. Being trans isn’t easy. Support your trans friends or coworkers or whoever, and let them know that they’re always welcome in your life as they are.

18.Trans people are drag kings/queens

Similar to the last stereotype, being trans isn’t something you dress up in for fun and then change out of later. Anyone can dress in drag, not just transgender people. As Janet Mock discussed in Redefining Realness, drag can empower people and make them feel pretty and good about themselves. However, it doesn’t make you trans just because you partake in drag.

19.Trans people are predators

“Can you be guaranteed to find a public bathroom that is safe and equipped for you to use? (Taylor, pg. 296). Think about it—there’s a higher chance of a trans person being assaulted by someone because of who they are than a cisgender person being attacked in a bathroom by someone who’s trans. As much as I hate to get into this—I’ll be brief. No, trans people aren’t creeps. No, they’re not lying about their identity. No, they do not want to use the female restroom for ANY other reason aside from beingfemale.

20.Being who you are is easy

“We tend to forget the thousands of minute decisions that consciously construct the artificial world that has been created” (Smith, pg. 128). Though this quote is about movies, it’s true for real life. We make decisions every day that can drastically alter our lives. The thing is, we make these decisions in order to please others; we make choices that define us once we think about how it impacts others, what they’ll think, and what the worst-case scenario of these decisions may be. This is where it becomes difficult to be who you are. It’s hard to be yourself when you’re worried about what other people think more than you worry about yourself and your happiness. Put yourself first, worry about yourself, and make yourself proud—fuck everything else.

                                                Citations

Alcoff, Linda. “The Problem of Speaking for Others.” Cultural Critique, no. 20, 1991, p. 10.,       doi:10.2307/1354221.    

Bornstein, Kate, and Evin Taylor. Gender Outlaw: on Men, Women, and the Rest of Us. Vintage   Books, 2016.

“HIV and Gay and Bisexual Men Understanding HIV/AIDS.” National Institutes of Health, U.S.   Department of Health and Human Services, 5 Apr. 2018, aidsinfo.nih.gov/understanding-          hiv-aids/fact-sheets/25/81/hiv-and-gay-and-bisexual-men.

“Making Systems of Privilege Visible.” Making Systems of Privilege Visible, by Stephanie M Wildman and Adrienne D Davis, p. 111.  

Milestone, Katie, and Anneke Meyer. Gender and Popular Culture. Polity, 2012.

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The age and coordination of your child will dictate

　　You may be very influenced to proceed your motorcycle purchase a secret, especially if you 're purchasing a motorcycle for a child's birthday or other holiday. Nonetheless, if you plan to do this, you need to hear to your child's view on motorcycles before you buy one. It can be hard to figure out which motorcycle he or she wishes without coming up right away and saying "what motorcycle do you want?" but it can be done. You know your youngster very well, and you should at least have some ideas as to what he or she likes as far as colours and such goes. When you first consider the big selection of youngster's motorcycles, you may be a little overwhelmed. There are a lot of them, and they appear to come in many different patterns and colours. But you can narrow down your choice down pretty quickly. Are you purchasing for a male child or a female child? Some little girls' motorcycles China Custom electrical bicycle battery suppliers are actually designed differently. Many of these motorcycles are pinkish or have streamers on the handles, a basket on forepart, and other female child oriented adds on. 

Male childs' motorcycles broadly speaking do n't include a basket on the front end, and some have a bar or two in different places. Overall, nevertheless, there's no actual functional difference between boys and female childs motorcycles. Any female child can ride a motorcycle constructed for a male child and vice versa if they want to. You also require to know if your child desires any sort of cartoon character on his her motorcycle. Today's motorcycles frequently include some icon or reference to popular TV characters. If your youngster perfectly enjoys one special show, buying him her a motorcycle with that show's character can be a outstanding move. Nonetheless, just be cautioned that child's interests shift quickly. You may purchase him her a motorcycle with his her current favourite character on it, but in just a few little several weeks, that character may have been replaced. 

The age and coordination of your child will dictate whether or not the motorcycle requires stabilizers or a tricycle. Besides children under the age of five commonly have difficulty with utilizing handle bar mounted breaks. Unlike grownup motorcycles, motorcycle sizes for kids are based on the diameter of the wheel and not seat tallness and frame size. The chart below should help you contract your lookup, but it's worth trying your child on a few variances in motorcycle stores or those of friends before doing the buy. One significant factor is the brakes, with coaster brakes tending to be easier for younger childs but they get less common as the motorcycles get bigger. Whenever you 've set the look and size of the motorcycle, it's time to think about what kind of motorcycle your child requires. If he or she is going to be riding out in the countryside or on unpaved routes, you 're going to need to take a motorcycle with more rugged, chunkier tires with a deeper tread that will hold up to a lot of misuse. If, on the other hand, he or she will be riding more in town, you can go with thinner tires. It genuinely depends on where you believe your child will be riding the most. If you want to stray on the side of caution, go with the thicker tires. They will do exactly fine on paved streets, but the thin tires wo n't fare so good on dirt or gravel.