sorry but it drives me insane that a bunch of french men with the egos bigger than their tower and a whole lotta french pedophiles got together with the fuckin c i a and ivly league schools and. now. today. this. THIS is the state of the "liberal leftist" west. and you got "commies" who pretend to eat the manifesto for breakfast but who think "swerfs" exist. its like a really, really, really, Really bad joke which doesnt stop and which is real

I've never watched twin peaks but I'm really curious about your feminist reasons for not watching it if you'd care to share them.

Oh absolutely! it basically boils down to the whole Beautiful Dead White Girl trope being CENTRAL around the plot, and also the story having this weird loophole avoidance of the reality of a lot of cases like hers, which is that sexual violence is often perpetrated by friends and family. Of course, real cases also don't have wonky supernatural elements and purgatory and shit but I digress.

Laura Palmer has become a sort of patron saint of Beautiful Dead White Girls, especially when it comes to true crime (which is a whole different genre I have huge problems with but we can save that for another time.) Anyone who's familiar with Twin Peaks can tell you that Laura's absence is more of a character than Laura herself, and thats kind of the point. Audiences love women when they can't speak for themselves, when they're a dead and gone idea that can't object to voyeurism around the tragedy of their lives. They especially love white women with these circumstances because it plays into the hapless victim in need of protection trope which is like, instrumental in white supremacist narratives.

Like as a woman of color who lived in a majority black area, black and brown girls, and poor girls in general are far and away the most frequent victims of shit like this. Not to get too into it but there was a period during my high school career that there was genuinely a girl that got kidnapped walking home and no adults did shit. No warnings at the bell, no discussions with the girls at our school about safety, no acknowledgement that one of our classmates disappeared, nothing. I couldn't sleep for weeks. We had to like, stick together and look out for each other and it was awful and terrifying and it felt like nobody fucking cared.

But that's not the narrative people like. They ignore that shit when it happens to us, which is why it happens to us so much more. Nobody pays attention. We're not salacious and consumable like if it happened to a pretty rich white girl. And even then, why is the brutalization of those women so appealing that it's an entire genre?

It's so funny because I do also have a fascination with Laura Palmer as a cultural figure. She's such a poster girl of Haunting The Narrative that she's fully escaped the narrative and haunts reality. She's a frequent comparison in a lot of tragic real life cases, whether it's a shallow reference or an apt and thoughtful comment on how a victim's life is more complicated than people want to acknowledge.

I really don't want to engage in a narrative like that any further than I've been forced to by cultural osmosis. Even if it's a well crafted story, it's not one that I'm interested in because it has really strengthened a lot of tropes and cultural convictions that aren't only exhausting, but often directly harmful to real victims and their surviving families. Fuck Twin Peaks by Bikini Kill.mp3

Anyway, a lot of my thoughts about this are really well articulated in the book Dead Girls by Alice Bolin, which I HIGHLY recommend I'm obsessed with it. She has a really interesting dissection of how differently Americans approach mystery stories, fiction or nonfiction, and the sort of psychosexual aspects of how Dead Girl stories are told.

Hi, I was reading your post about Jason punching Dick in the face when Dick revealed he fake his death was bullshit ( which it was) and it reminded me of an issue/question that has bothered me for sometime.

Why did people believe Dick was actually dead?

I’m not the most avid comic reader so maybe I missed something but it was always weird to me that everyone just accepted this especially given how Bruce was acting or should I say wasn’t acting.

This is a man when his child died another child had to come along and told him sir you are being too violent and emotional you need supervision. When his other child died he went all over the universe to bring him back to life because he knew it was possible ( which was happening at the same time), so why didn’t anyone think it was weird he wasn’t doing that for Dick. Can you imagine Dick really dying that soon after Damian it would be injustice Batman Version. You are telling me that Tim, Jason or Barbara didn’t think it was weird that Bruce didn’t also bring Dick’s corpse to the bring Damian back to life mission or mention it to themselves. Like what more likely Dick dead and Bruce is handling it well or that he fake his death to do something stupid and Dangerous after his partner/brother/ little bit my son the feelings are complicated died after he was knocked out and woke up to his corpse.

Oh man, this is like, the entire nature of my beef?

(Slight derail just to emphasize the fact real quick that Dick DID actually die, he was just revived quickly, but like, the trauma of his death was very real and its not like anyone was clued into Luthor having a resurrection backdoor built into his literal murder of Dick in the actual moment of it happening. So Dick’s death wasn’t fake, and additionally, he didn’t have anything to do with like, telling people about it, because he was literally comatose in the cave and recovering while Bruce was telling people....by the time Dick woke up in the cave, we already know that Alfred at least had already been convinced by Bruce that Dick was dead, so I have a kneejerk need to pushback against the Dick faked his death narrative by reminding people wherever possible that Dick had no agency in the spreading of that narrative. 

It happened without him being involved, and the only actual contribution he ever made to it was just not revealing he was alive before Grayson #12, after Bruce like.....emotionally, mentally and physically badgered him into accepting that doing so would be directly harmful to his family and he didn’t want to be the reason more people died when like, people had just died because he ‘let’ himself be captured and interrogated by Power Woman’s Lasso of Submission, did he?

SORRY TO BE PEDANTIC, just wanted to start this off on a clarification, even though I know the aim of your ask was very much in tune with the rest of my response. A lot of people don’t read the actual comics, so like, I’m never gonna skip over an opportunity to emphasize that the shorthand people use to refer to Dick’s death and the year he was with Spyral, is like, literally just shorthand for describing it. Its not actually an accurate description of how all that went down and who had the most hand in it).

BUT ANYWAY. BACK TO THE MEAT OF THE BEEF.

Okay so like, not only was the entire family and Bruce himself giving Dick shit for his death and Spyral, like, PAINFULLY egregious because it was literal victim blaming in every possible sense of the word....

None of it made a LICK of sense with ANY of their characterizations, and they ONLY all accepted it on face value because the Plot Demanded It, and when you're like, no, as a reader I say The Plot Demanded It is not a good enough reason for me to be like well sure, that makes sense......looking at the characters ACTUAL actions at face value pretty much just makes them all look like assholes?

Like, Tim has never gracefully accepted anyone's death. Ever. This is core characterization for him. He will go to the ends of the earth for his loved ones and to bring them back, prove they're not dead, refuse to let death be the final verdict for them. He was tempted to use the Lazarus Pit to bring his parents back to life. He refused to accept Bruce was dead long before he had any proof whatsoever of that theory. He tried to clone his BFF/future-husband Kon in his fucking basement like, dude was two whole inches away from going Full Dark Side in his quest to bring back a lost loved one no matter WHAT the cost.....and then you've got Dick unmasked onscreen, killed offscreen, and Bruce then reporting to the rest of them with zero inflection 'oh Dick's dead now. Its very sad' and Tim's just like, sure. Sounds legit.

I mean?!?!

And you're SO RIGHT ABOUT THE DAMIAN THING! Bruce LITERALLY LITERALLY LITERALLY went BEYOND the ends of the Earth, like, he full on chartered a fucking space ship to fly his whole family out to APOKOLIPS to bring Damian back from the dead by going to EXTREME lengths.....WHILE everyone else thought Dick was dead....

And not a single person looked at Bruce and was like, okay, not that we're not down to do this for Damian because we miss Stabby Smurf something fierce ourselves, but.....what the fuck is UP with you dude? Why aren't you displaying ANY hint of this same kind of energy in regards to your eldest son that you said you watched die right in front of you?

Like....I don't know that we were actually ever told that Dick's coffin was empty or had a fake in it, but like....this family of detectives who refuse to accept death, defy death, COME BACK FROM THE DEAD....not a single one of them said like, okay, if I'm gonna like, ACCEPT accept that Dick is dead and gone for good, I need to at least just see him one last time? That's literally all it would have taken for someone to realize hey something's a little wonky here. Where's the dead body, Pops?

Since when has Jason ever missed an opportunity to prove Bruce is a) full of shit, b) acting like an emotionless robot and all his kids deserve better especially when they've just like....died, c) just factually incorrect and wrong and jumped to a conclusion before it was conclusively proved, d) lying like a liar or e) all of the above?

Nobody even ASKED if Dick's body could be put in a Lazarus Pit? Yeah, Jason wouldn't necessarily recommend it himself, given what it put him through, but actually fuck that, I take that back, because I'm NOT actually of the opinion that Jason full on hates his life and actively spends every second of every day wishing he hadn't been resurrected, even if it had come with a huge buffet of additional trauma and pain.

And that's kinda what's implied when people just take it for granted that he would never be on board with any scenario involving using a Lazarus Pit to bring Dick back, because it suggests that based even just on his own experiences and feelings, he honestly believes Dick would prefer being dead and not have ANY further opportunities to be with his loved ones, his friends, help save the damn world again at some future point.....that Jason, projecting based just off himself, legit feels Dick would rather be dead than have another shot at life even WITH the downsides of Lazarus Pit usage? Nope. Sorry, I don't buy it.

Speaking of not buying it.....you know what was missing from all those soliloquies the others monologued at Dick about how they felt and were hurt and just devastated by his death, to such a point they can't seem to muster a single shred of happiness that he's NOT dead still -

(seriously, Damian was the ONLY person in ALL THE LANDS OF EMOTION-HAVING who expressed ANY kind of positive reaction to having Dick back. We were so fucking cheated of like.....ANY opportunity to have the characters show just how much they valued him by just being fucking HAPPY he was alive, no matter what else was involved....and then most of fandom compounded that by for years being like mmmm, no, Dick didn't get yelled at enough by his family for what HE put THEM through. Needs more yelling. More punching too. Bad Dick. Bad. This is the only way you'll learn not to die and get shipped off on a mission that you don't want but at least is to protect your family after being beaten into it by your dad whilst victim blaming you for dying in the first place. WHEN WILL YOU LEARN TO THINK ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE AND THEIR FEELINGS FOR A CHANGE, DICK?!?)

- But like, BUT I DIGRESS aside....you know what was missing from all those monologues about how hard DICK'S death and ensuing year of basically exile from his loved ones was for EVERYONE BUT HIM?

We never got a single line of explanation as to what everyone else officially thinks even happened to him in the first place?

Like, did Bruce straight up just say oh bad news kids, your brother umm. Expired. Spontaneously. There's no one to blame, he just keeled over, its all very sad.

Is that how that went down?

You're telling me that the explanation of Dick's death didn't come with a single pointed finger at someone for this family of blame-happy vigilantes to like, BLAME for the loss of this brother they all mourned oh so much, they just couldn't help but blame him for all the hurt it caused them?

The family that in every other fic is like OBSESSED with avenging and being avenged and all things vengeful and even tangentially vengeance-y....like didn't ask for a single detail on whomst the fuck deprived us of our brother-having?

Where were the attempts on Luthor's life by Jason (who I mean, yeah I know it was in a previous continuity, but erasing that timeline doesn't erase my awareness of the time Dick killed Jason's murderer so like.....mmm, just saying, woulda been nice)....where was the rage directed at the Crime Syndicate and references to how seriously and personally the Batfam took making sure that they were PUNISHED for all this and would never be free to wreak havoc on their world or their family again? What did they tell Damian when he came back to life, and how are you going to tell me that this fraternal little ball of fury didn't aim himself like a cannonball at whomever the fuck had DARED take HIS Batman from him when Damian wasn't around to have his back?

Not only does everyone else's desire to be avenged start falling really flat the second you factor in hey maybe Dick feels "mmm what about MY avenging" sometimes, and why doesn't anyone ever care about doing that for him.....but also, y'know what REALLY sucks about the ONLY person we actually SEE being blamed for Dick's death and ensuing absence being like....Dick himself?

Not only were his family all super keen on making all of this HIS fault and HIM the bad guy because of how it made them all feeeeeeel (and meanwhile fuck his feelings, am I right Batfam hfaklshfklahfkla).....

They somehow found a way to justify prioritizing this OVER ever even getting around to blaming some villain for his death in the FIRST place, in the entire year or so they thought he was still dead!

Like, you couldn't come up with a single target in all that time, but Dick's back two seconds, and you don't even give him a chance to EXPLAIN before you're punching him, shutting him down with 'I expected better from you' and turning away with 'I don't want to hear it, why am I surprised Dick Grayson disappointed me again'?

afshklfhalfhalfhla

Make it make sense!

And like, it won't, cuz it doesn't, and it never will, and like I said at the top, the ONLY reason it all played out this way is because DC doesn't give a fuck about character development and deemed it necessary to go down this way for the sake of the plot (which was totes worth it, I mean, glad we sacrificed characters for this A+ plot which was clearly the greatest plot of all time and definitely justified every story choice made or not made around it loooool).

BUT.

BUT BUT BUT.

The problem isn't JUST that DC is stupid, even though that is an eternal mood and quite the problem.

Its that the SECOND large parts of fandom decided to play along with DC and just accept the story at face value, only add to it and play into it exactly as it happened in canon with no significant deviations, and like, heaping on the LITERAL abuse from Dick's siblings while ignoring the LITERAL abuse from his father....

THAT....is when all of this becomes relevant.

Because the second people decided TO engage with the reasoning DC gave for what Bruce did and how and what Dick did and how and just not mess with any of that and have it all play out exactly like that...

The second people are like, okay we're FINE with not just dismissing this story as OOC writing that doesn't make any sense, and actually VALIDATING it to various degrees by engaging with it as is....

That's when 'OOC writing' stops being an excuse or explanation for alllll of the above gaps in character logic and actions.

Because its like, when you had abundant chance to REJECT this story and say nope, this was bullshit from start to finish and I'm not here for it, when you were just as capable of transforming literally ANY aspect of this story you didn't like into something that made more sense to you....

And you chose not to.

That's.....accepting it as valid writing. You were like, okay, I'm game to just treat this as a thing that happened, just like they said that happened.

For the chance to give Dick shit for it, see. For the angst, see.

And that's when I'm like okay cool, so when engaging with this story as is and accepting it on face value and just delving into the characters as they were SHOWN interacting with and around these events......for the angst or whatever....

You guys just all decided en masse to just hop, skip and jump over allllllllll the opportunities for angst inherent in examining even ANY SINGLE ONE of the above lapses in judgment or hypocrisy on the parts of the characters (who don't get to be excused by OOC writing if you're not going to call the story an example of OOC writing, whoops).

And its just like, uh, what's up with that?

Hi! You're probably not going to like this ask, but before getting into it I'd just like to say that this isn't meant as Kamala hate or anything, and I don't really want to offend.

Having said that, wouldn't it make sense that we get to see how Kamala treated Anna after she came out? It's in all likelihood one of the things that's weighing on Anna the most.

Obviously Kamala had her valid reasons: her parents aren't as liberal as the Lightwoods, she believes (knows?) their love is conditional as she's adopted, she's not white and not being heterosexual could further any treatment she's suffered from being different... Her reasons have already been listed multiple times by multiple people. Kamala has the right to stay in the closet and fear coming out. And while that shouldn't be villianised, we can't forget that closeted people can harm those around them.

If Kamala had kept treating Anna like a good friend, rumour would've sparked, and even if it was denied, she'd have been harmed by merely associating with Anna. Especially with the life Anna began leading; she could have been labelled as one of Anna's 'conquests' by the Clave. That, as we've established, is detrimental for her safety.

But at the same time, it would create a breach between Anna and Kamala. And Anna had the right to be hurt by it and weary of it when Kamala said she wanted a relationship.

If we look at it from that perspective, Anna's actions (though inexcusable in how they treated Kamala --who was also at fault for not accepting a negative for four months) make sense. Kamala wasn't only a fling of a week*, but also the girl she lost her virginity with, who asked her to be her secret (until she married Charles, after which Anna's affections would be discarded), who hid her sexuality for two years and sat back while Anna suffered from homophobic commentary, and who now wants a relationship hidden from most of the people that know her.

Kamala shouldn't be forced to come out; but the harm that can do to the women she may engage with is reflective of what happens nowadays. I can mostly think of examples with gay men, so my apologies in advance. But how many women have seen their marriages ruined by their husband having affairs with men?

Creating characters that reflect a toxic part of the 'hidden' LGBT community shouldn't be seen as hating or villinifying. Thomas isn't out and he isn't labelled a villain by the narrative --because his actions don't harm anyone. The hate Alastair gets in-universe is because of his past as a bully, not because he's gay. Matthew's not fully out and he isn't villianised --like Thomas, because the decisions he makes to keep his sexuality hidden don't impact anyone negatively.

I'll even go as far as saying that not even the narrative villianises characters like Kamala and Charles. If it were, they'd be seen more like Grace in Chain of Gold. We'd see how Kamala's actions are affecting Anna's in more ways than anger (that in itself put the fandom against Anna), and the characters would note so. We wouldn't see scenes were Cordelia empathised with Charles, nor Matthew said he loved him.

Be it as it may, Kamala and Charles represent ugly parts of being closeted that can naturally occur when someone is in their position. LGBT people are human. Humans, when put into very difficult situations (and Charles risks his career; Kamala her safety), can make decisions that harm those around them. Consequently, the people they're harming have a right to feel, well, harmed in whatever range of ways --this goes mostly for Alastair, and very partly for Anna, whose treatment of Kamala was horrible.

Readers need to understand what is pushing these 'villianised' characters to harm (again, mostly for Alastair) the more prominent characters and go beyond how they are instantly depicted. Because these are complex characters based on complex real people influenced by very ugly realities we will move on from someday, but sadly not yet.

By the way, Charles and Kamala's situations aren't that similar beyond the closeted thing, but I crammed them together because of a post I saw you reblog.

Please understand I'm not justifying Charles's actions; that I understand the pain he's put Alastair through, and know that he shouldn't ever be near Alastair. Nor am I trying to justify Anna's actions nor hate on Kamala.

I'll just finish my pointless rant by adding that I do think cc has sensitivity readers. I think she asked a gay man to go through tec (I don't know if he still revised her other books, though), and know she asked POC's input when writing someone for their culture. I don't know much beyond that, but I doubt who revises her stuff is up to her. Wouldn't that be something the publisher is responsible for (honest question)?

*I've also noticed people using the argument that they didn't know each other long enough for Anna to harbour such ugly emotions towards Kamala, but Kamala also remembered Anna pretty deeply and is 'in love' with her. I just wanted to say that considering cc writes (fantastical) romance where someone can ask a woman they met two months ago marriage, stressing over time spaces doesn't make much sense. Just my take.

hi!!

alright, where do I start? probably would be best with stating that while I can analyse Kamala's situation with what I know/see/read about racism and discrimination and reasonably apply things I've read/heard from PoC to the discussion, as well as try to be as sensitive about it as possible, I'm still a white woman, so not a person that's best qualified to talk about this.

that being said - if someone wants to add something to this conversation, you're obviously more than welcome to, and if there's something in my answer that you don't agree with or find in some way insensitive or offensive - please don't hesitate to call me out on that.

back to your points though: (this turned into a whole ass essay, so under the cut)

I don't think Anna shouldn't be able to reminiscent on Kamala's behaviour/reaction to her coming out, or be hurt by it. what bothers me is the way CC talks about it - I can't remember the exact phrasing, but the post where she mentioned this suggested something along the lines of "you'll see how Kamala sided with the Clave and didn't defend Anna after her coming out", therefore putting the blame on Kamala and completely disregarding the fact that Kamala wasn't in position to do much at all. It suggest that their situation was "poor Anna being mistreated by Kamala". therefore I'm afraid Kamanna's main problem/conflict will remain to be portrayed as "Anna having to allow themselves to love again and forgive Kamala", while Anna's shortcomings - and Kamala's vulnerable position - are never discussed. I think it would be possible to acknowledge both Kamala's difficult situation and the possible hurt her behaviour caused Anna without being insensitive towards Kamala's character, but it would take a really skilled - and caring - author to do both of the perspectives justice. CC would have to find a balance between being aware of the racism/prejudice Kamala faced/ writing her with lots of awareness and empathy, and still allowing her to make mistakes and acknowledging them. As it is however, I'm under impression that she's just treating it as a plot device, a relationship drama.

I'd say no one expects characters of color to be written as flawless or never making mistakes, it's mostly the way these mistakes are written and what things these characters are judged/shamed/

And that's - at least in my understanding and opinion - where the problem is. it's that the narrative never even addresses Anna's faults, and portrays Kamala as the one that caused all - or most of - the pain, without ever even acknowledging her problems and background.

White characters in TLH make mistakes and fuck up - because they're human and they're absolutely allowed to - but the thing is, non-white characters aren't afforded that privilege. Anna's behaviour is never questioned - none of it, shaming Kamala for not being able to come out, dismissing her desire to be a mother, or any of the questionable things she did in ChoI. Same with Matthew, James, Thomas. Alastair and Kamala however? they're constantly viewed through their past mistakes, and forced to apologize for them over and over, forced to almost beg for forgiveness. Moreover, those past mistakes are used as a justification of all and any shitty behaviour the other characters exhibit towards them now, which is simply unfair and cruel. They're held to a much higher standard.

So I'd like to say that yes, Kamala was in the wrong to keep nagging Anna after numerous rejections, and she was in the wrong to not inform Anna about Charles prior to them having sex - but that doesn't give Anna a free pass to constantly mistreat Kamala. And let's be real, Anna isn't stupid - while at 17 she could be naive and uninformed, I can't imagine how after years of hanging out with the Downworlders and numerous affairs and being out and judged by the Clave she's still so ignorant about Kamala's situation. I definitely think she's allowed to be hurt, but to still not understand why Kamala did what she did? Anna isn't blaming her for not telling her about Charles earlier - which would be fair - but instead for refusing to engage in an outright romance with her. She's being ignorant - and consciously so, I think.

Overall, I think you're definitely right about how coming out - or staying closeted - can be messy and hurt people in the process, especially in unaccepting environments/time periods, and I've seen enough discourse online to know there will never be a verdict/stance on this that will satisfy everyone. I, for one, would really like to refrain from putting all the blame on a single person - but, at least the way I see it, CC is pointing fingers. maybe not directly, but she is. Kamala, Alastair and Charles have no friends or support systems, and the only people in the narrative that defend them are themselves (ok, Cordelia does defend Alastair from Charles, but not from shitty takes about him and his "sins"). Also, sorry, but I don't like how you say "hid her sexuality for two years and sat back while Anna experienced homophobic comments" - it sounds very much judgemental. Kamala had every right to do that? The fact that she slept with Anna doesn't means she owed her something, and certainly not coming out and most probably destroying her life, or even defending her at the - again - expense of her own reputation, or more possibly safety.

As for Charles - it's a different issue here, at least imo - I fear that it'll be implied that his refusing to come out will is his main "sin", and therefore not something he can be judged for, which ironically, will be villainizing, but mostly will mean his actual sins are dismissed. This is where the scene with Cordelia feeling a pang of sympathy for him comes into play, and it worries me. I've never hated Charles for not wanting to come out, but rather for, let's see - grooming Alastair, disregarding Alastair's needs and feelings, disrespecting his mother, being a sexist prick, being low-key far-right coded "make Shadowhunters great again" etc.

As for sensitivity readers - I'm no expert, so I don't think my input is worth much. From what I've gathered from multiple threads/discussions on twitter, tho it is probably consulted/approved by the publisher, many authors push for that - and authors less famous and "powerful" than her. I'm not a hater, but seeing fandoms' opinions on much of her rep, I think she could do better. Because if she does have sensitivity readers, then they don't seem to be doing a great job - maybe they're friends who don't wanna hurt her feelings? Or maybe she thinks a gay guy's feedback will be enough for any queer content - which, judging by the opinions I've seen from the fans, doesn't seem to be true.

Again, these are mostly my thoughts and I'm more than open to reading other opinions, because *sigh* I really don't know how to handle this.

Bottom line - I really really don't want to be hating on the characters in general, playing God in regards to judging the struggles of minorities, or even criticising the characters too harshly for being human, flawed etc. What my main issue is is how CC handles those complex and heavy topics.

I hope I make sense and this answer satisfies you somehow - I also hope someone better equipped to answer might wanna join this conversation.

* I desperately need a reread of TLH before I engage in any more conversations like this, but I didn't wanna leave you hanging. So yeah, I might be remembering things wrong. Again, let me know, I'm very much open to being corrected as well as to further discussion.

* I use she/her pronouns for Anna because that's what she uses in canon

I’m rewatching all my fave? english-centered period dramas in preparation for  new one coming out, twq, twp, tsp, the tudors, and I know we all love the tudor family here, but good lord was twp such a mess that I ended up actively hating every Tudor character in it. (which was kinda the point, imao) The twp show was based off phillipa gregory's books (that are even worse than the show) and they both shredded the characterizations of everyone in them to the point that they might as well be OCs based on historical figures. Literally the only reason I was able to make it through was because of the actors. jodie and jcls acting carried it at the best of times, and JCL is hot, so... and I’m so glad they got michelle fairley and essie davis as EW and MB, or else it would of been unwatchable.  I couldn’t really root for either lizzie or henry, because their characterizations and personalities were so inconstant and varied wildly from ep to ep, its like I was watching different people in each ep. nd that’s a big part of why I favored the York plotlines/characters more, at least most of them (except lizzie) stayed constant in their characterizations/motives (even if all they were consistent with was revenge against the tudors) And rooting for the tudors in general was hard too, since the show was bending backwards to make them all assholes. (JT gets a pass tho, he was just trying to raise his kid right) No one was really likable, you get a good moment with someone and then the next moment they’re doing something batshit, e.i, henry’s good for a while and then starts being a dick, (wtf was up with imply he slept with cathy gordon and him being such a bitch to lizzie out of the blue?) or you’re starting to sympathize with Margret Beaufort and then she kills another kid, which like, the decision to have her kill the two princes was a choice, and I won’t hesitate to say I enjoyed the drama it brought. Along those lines, the show is marginally enjoyable if you divorce it from the history its trying to retell and treat it as a game-of-thrones-bodice-ripper-drama, which was the intent of the author in the frst place, but whatever. That some of the best acting on the show came plots/situation that weren’t even real irl is wild, and that says a lot. henry’s talk with lizzie about her loving him, but not like she did w/rIII, and his depression-breakdown (never happened),  over his mother being a murderer and the whole thing with Richard Jr./percy warbeck was just juicy, later moments with lizzie and the bit when she talks to richard jr./pw in the tower and his laugh reminds her so much of her father? and then the execution scene? good shit.  A fave bit was henry sitting all despondent in his room remembering the killing of richardIII, and yes they did actually have richardIII buried alive in this show, jfc. It goes again to the bad characterization that ep 1 lizzie would have strangled him outright if she’d found that out, but lizzie in this ep would have been meh. Speaking of which, the short-lived friendship between richard jr./pw and teddy was extremely sweet, which made their executions all that more horrific. within the narrative of the show, R jr./pw seemed like he would have actually made an excellent king, he never seemed anything but kind and honorable, although adamant about his claim, and lizzie’s fear he would kill her children, which was  not unfounded of course, was also made mostly her entire basis for having him killed in the show, even though he was never presented as someone who would do that? make it make sense, or at least hint he would want to harm the kids after taking the throne, instead of showing him as incredibly nice. And in this show, with richard jr./pw being the actual richard, and mb having tried to kill him as a boy and framing richardIII for it, he’s more than justified in wanting the throne and justice. except that never happened irl, and the show has me rooting for a pretender instead of the certified monarchs, which are SUPPOSED TO BE THE “HEROES” OF THIS SHOW. and like, claimants to the throne are usually entitled fucks by nature, I don’t know why everyone hates richardjr./pw for being entitled, when every person who ever laid claim to a throne ever does so on the belief of entitlement to that throne?   And tell me how there was more chemistry between lizzie and faceless richard III in a four-second flashback than she and henry had in most scenes? I’m not saying that lizzie and henry didn’t have chemistry in the show, because they did, (at least the actors did) but once again, their inconsistent characterization marred a lot of scenes that would otherwise be amazing. Then the whole thing where henry r*ped her nd it was shown to be directly caused by her mentioning her relationship with richardIII? Messy, messy messy. after that, it was hard to “feel” lot of her and henry’s scenes even in better contexts. I ship lizzie/richardIII out of spite for that nasty-ass scene alone, because I can’t sit there and watch lizzie falling for her rapist. and then lizzie is vilified for her relationship with richardIII, yet the show implies that Margaret B is in love with her own brother, has lizze taunt her over it, and then present JT marrying/ MB her arranging his marriage as a tragedy for MB? Sir? Ma’am? Jasper Tudor straight up implying that his sister should get a fucking annulment so they can be together, and MB actually considering it gets a pass? more like margaret lannister. Then they bring up richarchIII as a gotcha to lizzie every other ep? someone inform henry that his beloved mother wants to fuck her brother, his beloved uncle and see if he keeps throwing rIII in lizzie’s face every five minutes. EYE. god, this show is bad, bad.  Don’t get me started on the burgundy plot. if you’re going to have the duchess start a war on a whim, at least imply she was possessed to do so by EW’s magic, or have the balls to make her stepdughter’s death actually the fault of the tudors. And poor fucking maggie. it was hard for her irl, but it’s intolerable for her within the show.   Sorry, this got long, I’m ranting at this point because holy hell ITS BAD. If you take it as a show that’s supposed to be about real life historical figures it’s a trash fire, but you really should just watch it as a story like bridgerton. makes it more tolerable.  You know you’ve lost it when a show that’s supposed to be about the unification of two great houses and the love story (not that it was reallly that great of a love story irl either, but that’s for another day) between the scions of those houses gives me hives and makes me wish the burgundy plot succeeded.   

i just saw the wildest post and the notes were even wilder so i have some Thoughts. 

i don’t want to antagonize anybody -- but listen y’all ,,, it’s not a moral failing to enjoy and be intrigued by a flawed character. it’s not a moral failing to explore things that are “problematic” from the safety of fiction. that’s kind of the whole point!

continued ramblings below the cut -->

yes, it’s important to be critical of harmful narratives, but acknowledging a character’s flaws and essentializing them are two different things. (and not just silly little quirks, like real, serious flaws with consequences)

in regards to Daniil Dankovsky’s Canonical Racism, it’s indisputably horrible. he’s wrong and he should absolutely face consequences for being a racist prick, but a significant part of the narrative of pathologic is about dealing with racism. pretty much every character, including other fan-favorites like Lara, are racist. like. at least a little bit. a huge chunk of Artemy’s arc is about confronting his own relationship with race. he can ALSO be horrifically racist to the Kin on purpose in order to take advantage of his ability to pass as white. but we like soft stories, so we disregard these timelines in favor of Big Dad Energy and heart-of-gold shenanigans. 

to definitively fill that role and prey on those doubts, Daniil ends up serving a narrative purpose. he’s a deliberate foil character who challenges Artemy’s values and mirrors his insecurities, and what’s more he’s a crucial figure for a lot of people’s experiences with the story of the game, especially for those who played patho 1 first. from Daniil’s perspective, and indeed from the player’s perspective when entering with the Bachelor’s route, the way he acts is completely reasonable. this weird creepy town is full of backwards liars who wanna waste your time until you die. the whole point of the game is for you to play as Danko, agree with his feelings, and then spend the Haruspex route feeling shame and laughing at how much of a fucking idiot he is. that’s the point. you’re supposed to laugh.

condemning anyone who likes him, even in a cheeky little “haha look at this fail doctor he is endeared to me but only because he’s an idiot” sort of way, is just... not fair? especially when taking into account that most of the relevant fan content (at least as far as i’ve seen) ends up directly confronting his bigotry as The pivot-point of conflict between him and Artemy, and the thing that must be corrected and compensated for before their relation can continue platonically or romantically. like. bruh. i would understand if this was something that people kept trying to minimize or act like it was alright, but literally zero people are doing that. everyone agrees that he’s a shithead. nobody’s making excuses for it or saying it’s OK.

I also love that this attitude is like “i dont like that people ship our beloved ~tyoma~ with a stinky little weenie rat man whom i hate” when there are CANON continuities in which Artemy is a straight-up psychopathic child-murdering organ trafficker. like. chill. he’s not our golden boy, he’s an entire adult who can decide what kind of dandy-ass manlet he wants to start a beautiful life with or whatever. there are worlds in which they are shitty enough to deserve each other, and there are worlds where both of them are working together to be better.

it’s 1000% alright and fair to not like the ship and not want anything to do with it, but to assign a blanket moral judgement and condescend to anyone who thinks differently is profoundly immature imo ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Long Kaz Rant I Told Myself I Wouldn’t Write, But Here We Are

This is probably an unpopular opinion. And I hope it doesn't come across as confrontational or anything because I don't mean it that way. But I've always been super confused by the way Kaz is accepted, basically across the entire fandom, as either morally gray or straight up villainous? He doesn’t really seem like either of those things to me. On a surface level, obviously there are things he’s done that are normally considered evil. He’s stolen, he’s killed, he threatened a child, he gouged out someone’s eye. And that’s all pretty bad, right? But it completely ignores the context given in the books. (More after the cut because this got too long...)

There’s a difference between doing something evil and doing something that’s shocking, “dark,” or difficult to watch.

Before I read the books, I heard fans discuss all the horrible things Kaz does. And the way people talk about him, I was expecting him to be… Feral Kaz – someone who delights in doing horrible things because he’s just so twisted and angry. The author herself even referred to him on her blog as being utterly despicable. Wow! This guy must really go out of his way to hurt innocent people, huh? So when I sat down to actually read it, I was so surprised. Most (if not all?) the killings were done on some level of self-defense. His “murder victims” were actual evil people trying to kill him or someone he loved. And the reason he threatened a child was because the only alternative was killing her – something he would never want to do. You know, because he’s not evil.

I don’t know if I just have very different definitions of these terms than most people? But to me, the idea of Kaz being “utterly despicable” should not even be on the table to begin with (Leigh Bardugo, you good?) and even the idea of him being “morally gray” is questionable.

When I think of a morally good character, I don’t think of someone who never does anything questionable or always perfectly makes the correct choices. I think of someone who is on a mission–either to protect the world, a loved one, or simply pursuing a personal goal–who at least tries to conduct his mission in a way that either does no harm to others, or (when that’s not possible) does as little harm as necessary to get the job done. 

Whereas, when I think of a villainous character, I think of someone who has no regard for others at all. Someone who either relishes in harming the innocent, or pays zero consideration to whether he harms innocents while pursuing his goals (which are usually, in themselves, harmful to innocent people). 

And finally, when I think of a morally gray character, I think of someone directly between these two. Someone who is a little bit evil, a little bit sadistic, but not entirely evil. He’s got a few good points too. Maybe he’s someone who keeps switching sides, unsure if he wants to be a hero or villain. Maybe he has hurt a lot of innocent people unnecessarily, but he joins in with the good guys for personal gain, and people don’t mind him there simply because he doesn’t interfere with the protagonist’s goals. Or maybe he’s the “Bad Cop” to someone else’s Good Cop: someone who uses more violence than is necessary, just for fun, but still helps the good side in some capacity, so everyone chooses to look past it.

Under these definitions, Kaz (to me) seems more like a good character. While pursuing his personal goals, he protects people he loves, and yes, he does do “dark” things. But he doesn’t relish in doing them (despite his reputation in-universe of being a chaotic sadist. His reputation is not accurate; he invented it for his own protection). He does them because he has to. If he can get the job done right without hurting anyone, that’s the route he’ll take. But that option isn’t always available. And he’s not the type to lie down and die just to avoid getting his hands dirty (nor should he, imo). 

Again, maybe I just have a different idea of what constitutes being morally gray. But I always thought it was meant to be a judgment on the choices you make when you actually HAVE a choice? A morally gray character has the choice to be good or evil, and they choose to do both (which one depending on how they feel that day). 

Whereas, if you do something “bad” because circumstances force you to do it–because you or someone you love will die otherwise–that’s pretty much the same as having a gun to your head. You’re not morally gray. You’re doing it under duress. It’s survival, not a reflection of where you stand on moral topics. Like, if you trap a vegan in a room with only a piece of meat, and you leave them there for days, weeks, that person doesn’t suddenly become a “fake vegan” if they eat that meat to avoid literally starving to death. You forced them to do it. When it comes to their moral beliefs, they would still be a vegan if they had the freedom to make that choice. You just put them in a situation where those choices aren’t available to them. Your lack of freedom in a situation shouldn’t define you.

The same can be said for placing a starving, homeless orphan boy alone in the dog-eat-dog world of Ketterdam. The option of being a sweet little law-abiding citizen is not available to him. So is it really fair to define him by something in which he had no choice?

I’ve come across so many GrishaVerse fans who, while sipping on their Starbucks in the comfort of their own home, go “Ugh, Kaz. He’s so DARK, so EVIL!” (Fun fact: while my mom was watching the show, she said Kaz is evil because “he seems to always have a plan.” Oh no! Not PLANS!)  “He must be some kind of monster to be able to do the things he does and still live with himself! I could NEVER do those things!” Well…you’ve never actually had to do those things? Your life has never depended on it? Idk, to me, it’s just a very privileged take. And I’m not trying to make this into a big social issue. It’s not like criticism against a fictional character is anywhere near the same level of importance as the issues marginalized people are facing in real life. I’m just saying, it’s very easy to condemn activity you’ve never been forced to engage in for your own survival.

One of the biggest reasons people have given me for why they think Kaz is evil is that he is “for himself.” Even the author said she thinks Kaz is worse than the Darkling (who, I’ve gotten the impression, she believes to be irredeemable) because the Darkling has communal goals (he wants to bring positive change for other people/the world at large) while Kaz’s goals are just personal (he wants to bring positive change for himself and only himself). And for one? It just isn’t true: many (if not most) of the things Kaz does is either for his Crows or for his late brother; he just disguises it with supposed self-interest for the sake of his reputation. And second? It’s…not actually wrong to have personal goals or to act in self-interest. Bettering your own life is a valid desire. It’s not the same as being selfish. Not everything you do has to be for other people.

(And, tbh, this is something Leigh Bardugo seems to have a problem with in general, not just in this scenario. I could write a whole separate rant about other characters that were demonized in-narrative for engaging in “too much” self-care, and how her unforgivingly black and white morality ruined the Shadow and Bone trilogy for me. Worst of all, she even seemed to imply recently that the only reason real-life antisemitism is wrong is because “the Jews didn’t fight back”? [Like, if they had met her criteria of “fighting back”, would that make antisemitism somewhat justified to her? What? Idek, but she should really clarify.] Basically, she seems to take “non-selfishness” to an extreme. I don’t know her personally, I don’t want to make assumptions, I don’t have anything personal against her, and I’m not trying to get her cancelled or anything, I promise. But please, when you read her books, please don’t accept all her ideas at face value, because there’s some Weird Shit™ in there sometimes.)

Anyway, another reason people say Kaz is bad or morally gray is that he wants revenge. “Revenge is a bad coping mechanism! You should want JUSTICE! Not REVENGE!” And again, this argument is wild to me. I mean, yes, there are situations–especially in real life, modern, western contexts–where revenge is a bad coping mechanism someone has developed, and transforming their anger into a desire for justice is a way for them to overcome that and express their anger in a healthier way. But that’s a very specific scenario. When we’re talking generally, the line between revenge and justice is a lot thinner than people think (and in some scenarios, there is no line at all). 

For example, real life victims and their families often say they can’t wait to see the perpetrator rot in prison, even wishing (sometimes even fantasizing) that the guy gets abused in prison by fellow inmates. For them, justice and revenge are wrapped up together in one big court-issued sentence. And while some people find that disturbing or take issue with it, it’s…generally considered valid outrage? This guy is evil and hurt them, so it’s okay for these people to want him to suffer. And most importantly, these people called the cops instead of taking matters into their own hands, therefore they’re Good, right? They’re good citizens who obey and rely on the established authority, therefore they are handling their anger in an Acceptable™ way?

But in the world of Ketterdam, if someone has victimized you, or is trying to kill you or someone you love, you can’t just call the fucking cops (and let’s be honest, looking at irl cops, it’s a questionable idea here too sometimes). If we’re analyzing Kaz’s outrage and how he handles it, we have to analyze it in the context of where he lives, not where we live. We have options in our lives that Kaz doesn’t have. So we have to ask, what are the most productive steps he could realistically take in his world?

I see activists and bloggers on websites like this, publicly fantasizing about gouging the eyes out of certain politicians and right-wing figureheads. And they would probably do it for real if they could. On Tumblr and Twitter, this is generally considered righteous anger. The politicians are evil, so it’s okay to hurt them, right? That’s how the logic goes, anyway (I know some will disagree, but it’s a common take here). Well, imagine if, instead of just being a bigot, one of these evil people personally stabbed–possibly killed–your girlfriend. And there were no cops to call, no news stations or social media to turn to, to show people what this guy did. No authority or community on your side. No way to ensure this guy faced consequences for his actions. There’s just you, your dying girlfriend, your helplessness, your anger. What would be the appropriate way to handle this situation, so you were acting out of justice instead of revenge? What does “justice” even mean in a world like that? It’s a world where either you hurt others or you lie down and just let others keep hurting those you love (which, in itself, would be evil). I can’t think of any “appropriate” response Kaz could take. Which, for better or worse, is probably why he just went for the eye. You probably would too in that context. Are you morally gray? I doubt it.

It’s really weird to me how people seem to hold Kaz to this high standard of absolute Moral Purity, but they don’t hold other characters to it. Like, was the dad on Taken being “feral” or “morally gray” when he told his daughter’s kidnapper that “I will find you and I will kill you” and then pursued him with fury? His motivations were personal and not communal. He was coming from a place of revenge, just as much as justice. But most people consider him a hero. He’s not controversial or “dark.” There are plenty of other heroes who do terrible things (sometimes to innocent people! Even when it’s not even necessary!) for the “greater good” or just because it’s convenient. People call them a “badass” and then turn around and say Kaz is just “bad.” Idk, it just seems really arbitrary the way people draw these lines.

If we’re expanding the definition of “morally gray” to include anyone who’s ever done anything questionable, made a mistake, been forced to do something they wouldn’t normally do, done something for personal reasons instead of for the world at large, or wanted revenge for something, then there literally are no heroes in fiction (except maybe a few cardboard cutouts) or in real life.

(Ironically, the most morally gray thing Kaz does, imo, is something most people don’t even have a problem with: the fact he runs a gambling house to “take money from pigeons.” And even that is really mild [no one is forcing the “pigeons” to gamble their money away]. But yeah, that’s one of the few instances I could think of where he actually hurt innocent people unnecessarily. That and the time, as a kid, where he stole candy from that other kid...and even that might be mostly-but-not-entirely excused by the fact he was starving to death. But yeah.)

-rubs my little hands together- okay time for some hot takes with gou now that it’s ended! enjoy my ramble lmao

okay my very first impression on the start of gou was... wowie this is... a little much on the gore factor. NOW, I KNOW, THIS IS HIGURASHI. but the first half of gou was much more... brutal, in my opinion. now we know it was due to direct contact with h-173 and the influence of eua and satoko but oogh. it was a lot and had made me very anxious with how the plotline was going to go. was it going to be just torture porn for funsies in a way similar to how a lot of kira and rei seemed to be with fanservice? was it going to just be a remake with some funky fresh murder and death?

but then the story picked up! and i gotta say, i really love it. higurashi has always been like... super awesome to me because of the lore, the story. anytime i recommend it to someone, i tell them that kai is a must, that it really explains everything and wraps it up in a very nice bow! and we got more of that! more story, more lore! more character development. 

NOW TIME FOR SOME HOT TAKES. satoko and rika are both flawed, but ultimately good characters. now, okay, i know satoko lately has been... mmm... not good? she’s been controlling, callous, and really evil. but i’ve stayed by the opinion that this is due to hurt and trauma, and that she’s still good, and the finale proved that.

everything she’s done so far, everything she’s been doing... none of it is real. it’s a game of stubbornness on her end - her goal, her perfect ending... when that’s achieved, no suffering will have happened. we’ve seen this already. rika submitted, rika finally understood, rika proved she understood, and what happened? takano apologized. the tragedy stopped in its tracks. no one went on a murder spree, everything was perfect. satoko thought she had won - no more harm had to continue. she’d let everyone live on happily, without the horrors that she’d induced earlier - because to her, nothing she did in any other loop was real.

satoko just wants everything to stay how it is. she wants her best friend to not change, she doesn’t want to lose her, she doesn’t want to lose anyone. she’s lost her parents, her brother, everyone in her life that was meant to support and care about her. she watched rika promise to stay by her side and break that promise, over and over again. we don’t know how many loops satoko went through trying to keep rika by her side! we don’t know how long it took, how many collective years of attempts there were. we saw everything in, what, a few episodes? for satoko it took years. five years after winning to get to st. lucia, two years to get to the breaking point, and repeat. at minimum, these loops had to be, what, about 21 years collectively? (assuming satoko did at least three full loops, which i’m pretty sure we’ve seen in the show?)

that’s a lot of trauma, of restless grind and tear on someone’s psyche. of course she’d do anything to make that stop. of course she’d grow resentful of rika and just want her to understand!

and for rika... i love rika, i have a lot of personal ties with her and the character. but she does fuck up here. rika has had to pretend for hundreds of years. she’s had to pretend she hasn’t watched her friends and family die, she’s had to pretend to survive. at st lucia she has to pretend to be someone she’s not to fit in. st lucia is bad for her - she may be happy, she may think it’s good and she’s free, but rika is a master of blending in, even if the people she’s blending in with are horrible. she stopped being a good friend to satoko since the very first winning loop.

i’m eager to see how the next season goes, i’m so excited to see how all of this plays out, but, truthfully? i think there is going to be a good end - for all of them. takano is going to remember, she is going to back down. the tragedies will stop on that front. rika and satoko are going to fight, i know this, but i think... they’ll reconcile. the true enemy is eua. a cruel goddess watching mortals maim each other for fun - she’s going to be the final boss, and i think rika and satoko are going to beat her. at least, i hope. 

the ending of the original series and kai... it was a good ending. it was a great ending for them! they broke free of the loops, hinamizawa syndrome was gone, it was good! satoko and rika are going to both find their way to their happy ending again - but this time, they’re going to compromise on it. kai taught us that miracles happen if everyone stands together. why would they take away that message in gou/sotsu? they aren’t.

two more points i’d like to make: teppei, i hate him, but i don’t think the ‘redemption arc’ he got was bad or put him in good light. no one looks at him and forgives him. they don’t forget what he did - the last thing that was shown before he left the screen was a memory of him harming her. a last reminder of what he did so people don’t become too sympathetic. he’s going to change, and that’s going to be good for satoko, but they don’t push a forgiveness narrative. i think the main point of that whole thing was to remind satoko that the path she’s going down is harming others. it’s a mirror to what she is doing to rika right now. now i’m not saying she’s an awful, horrid child abuser, i’m just saying that what she’s doing is wrong and that sometimes you need a reminder of that.

my last remaining thought right now is... okay first off they aren’t going to tie higurashi directly to umineko, BUT, there is, and always has been, similarities to the two.

satoko = lambdadelta. the witch of certainty. rika = bernkastel. the witch of miracles.

don’t you think, with their powers together, they’d be certain to have the miracle to have the ultimate good ending for everyone?

Do you think the DC fandom maybe, Infantilizes Tim a little too much? Like for a rich kid character who's main trauma for a long time was a getting left home alone too much there's an oddly amount of meta abt how much how much his parents hurt him~ compared to, y'know the two poor characters who grew up with physically abusive dad's+druggie mom's, or the two that were raised assassin cult's, etc

…well, yeah, I do kind of think that? His whole schtick for so long was being too old for his age in ways that didn’t sacrifice his jokey, relatable teenager energies. It’s weird how little of that we see anymore, sometimes.

And then DC broke him and discarded him and he’s sort of awkwardly hanging around getting reimagined as more woobie with every fan generation. It is weird!

But tbh I do get it. And I think the reason his parents’ failure of him and his vulnerability get played up so much, and Jason and Steph’s sufferings (while used a lot for things like motivation and context) not dwelt on quite so much in the same lugubrious style, are kind of the same reason.

Which is that canon didn’t commit to it. Jason and Steph’s experiences with bad parenting were foregrounded and retconned more dramatically awful several times. (There’s some definite classism in how that was approached imo, and I’m never budging on being mad about DC retconning out Catherine being sick and then ignoring her forever in all Jason characterization because a drug death invalidates a person ig, great message during the opioid crisis guys.)

They engaged and coped with it–Steph (and Cass, our #1 canon batfam parental abuse victim) pretty directly, Jason a little less so because of the dubious and fluctuating canon status of most of the content more specific than ‘poverty, homelessness, theft, parental drugs and crime in there somewhere,’ so most of his parent issues have been focused on Bruce. He sure has dug into them tho. 😂 Rarely well or productively, thanks DC, but it’s explicitly part of his character, is my point.

Whereas upper-middle-class Tim was always treated by the narrative as fortunate and unharmed by his experiences with his parents. Even though they were clearly behaving badly in several ways, and Tim showed signs of being harmed by it.

Tim outside of immediate moments of frustration always was of the opinion he was Fine, and Very Fortunate Actually.

Therefore a huge chunk of the numerous everyone who’s got parent-related mental and emotional harm, but has struggled to have that validated and hasn’t responded with a lot of anger toward the parent, identifies with Tim. The only one who’s never really lashed out at his parents for fucking up with him. The one who still needs it explored, because canon ultimately didn’t.

[editing post to put in a readmore because lol it’s long, post otherwise unchanged]

(Dick obviously didn’t ever have any Issues with the Graysons, but he Angry Teenagered at Bruce so hard it changed Bruce’s characterization permanently, rip.)

The things Jason, Steph, and Cass have been through are dramatic, obvious, and fit stereotypes because that’s what they’re based on.

That’s important content to have, but because it’s right out there in your face even people who identify with it quite a lot are less likely to feel the need to work all the way through it again in fanworks. That part’s there. It’s text.

(Well actually Jason having been physically abused kind of wasn’t? I think? It was mostly assumed on the basis of stereotyping and Jason’s not caring about the man much even as he felt possessive of information about his death, which is valid. I don’t actually know what’s up with Willis now, Lobdell did some weird shit that lacked emotional resonance or staying power because he’s Lobdell and has no soul.

Cass’ wandering years are also ludicrously underdeveloped. But very very few comics fans or writers can personally relate to being amazing child warriors with no grasp of language living feral under bridges. That part of her life is consistently represented in terms of absences, in terms of its deviation from the norm and the deficits of normality it left her with, which is typical but unfortunate.) 

-

The interesting things to do with these characters are often informed by the bad stuff in their childhoods, but there’s relatively rarely that much more to say about the fact that those things were bad. They know they’re bad. They’ve had a lot of on-panel rage about it, as discussed above. Steph and Cass both beat the shit out of their dads.

Jason is, in fandom especially, a sort of Platonic ideal of a kid who’s mad about his bad childhood and really bad at figuring out where to point that rage.

(Damian is a whole other kettle of fish, because he’s been lumbered by so many detailed retcons coming so fast no two people can seem to construct compatible models of what his early childhood was like, and even more because he’s still ‘a child’ enough that he’s necessarily in a different stage of processing than someone who’s officially only a few years older than him at this point, but still functionally 8 and also 20 years older, and whose parents are no longer in the picture to continue screwing up.

Also there’s no question that if he brings up an abusive thing the League did, he will be validated by his current environment about his realization that it was in fact bad. There’s a lot of fic on that theme! But it doesn’t have the same tone precisely because it is usually understood that that support will be there if he wants it. Realizing that his previous context contained things that were wrong keeps being made the focus of his arc.)

The badness of Tim’s childhood, on the other hand, was mainly in subtext. Even when we were clearly meant to understand Jack was fucking up, like when he canceled plans with Tim at the last minute to go on a date with Tim’s stepmother, or that infamous time he came to apologize for not being a great parent and got mad Tim was distracted by a crisis on TV so he flew into a rage and took the TV and smashed it and was like ‘that’ll teach you,’ it wasn’t leaned into.

The story didn’t treat Jack as a minor villain to be overcome but like a sort of environmental hazard of childhood, like homework, to be endured and coped with. Tim said things like ‘it’s fine’ and ‘at least he left the computer.’

(And like. It’s not about having a TV and computer in his room. It’s about not letting a child have boundaries, pointedly not respecting a child’s possessions, creating an emotionally insecure environment, punishing minor infractions in proportion to their momentary impact on your own ego, physically lashing out at a proxy for the child…)

Rather like Tom King later didn’t understand about the punching from Bruce, whoever did that story (probably Dixon? I don’t care enough to check) did not understand how serious a case of bad parenting that scene was. That is most definitely textbook abusive behavior. (It’s a hell of a lot more common abusive behavior than being a lame supervillain or shooting you when you screw up, and a lot more specific than ‘was a thug, might have hit me, dead now.’)

And Tim was never allowed to be mad at his parents about it. It was fine. He needed to be ignored so he had the freedom to be Robin. He deserved his dad being mad at him because he was keeping secrets. He complained too much, although objectively he did not.

The universe punished him for ‘complaining,’ more than once. We cut straight from him shunting aside his disappointment that his postcard from his parents was just to say they weren’t coming home yet after all with ‘if it will stop all the fights they’ve been having lately it’s more than fine’ to them getting kidnapped.

He agreed not to come on the rescue mission. His mom never made it home, and his dad was in a coma for a while. And then ultimately Jack died as a result of Tim’s decision to be Robin, immediately after finally deciding to accept it.

So Tim walks around feeling a huge burden of responsibility for his parents’ deaths, and completely unable to process any hurt they did him as real or valid, especially in comparison with the far more blatant awfulness other people have been through, and canon is clearly never going to address it. Or even acknowledge it properly.

Let me repeat that because it’s kind of my main point:

People are fixated on getting Tim’s emotional abuse validated because that’s an incredibly important step in recovering from emotional abuse, and it’s one canon consistently denied him.

How ‘bad’ things are ‘in comparison to’ problems other people have is a bad and unhealthy way to engage with trauma. Okay? That’s just a really harmful framework to apply to pain.

It’s also a way that both Tim and people with experiences similar to Tim’s are encouraged to engage with their own experiences, compounding the existing problems.

So. Not a form of relatable DC was ever actually aiming for when they tried so hard (and pretty effectively) to make him a relatable character as Robin, but an enduring one for a lot of fans.

-

So Tim’s childhood is a natural target for fanworks in a different way than the traumas that have been made explicit and taken seriously by the text. And then a lot of that got compounded by the way the introduction of Damian as Robin was handled, and the lack of resolution that got. And his current status as not quite having a place in the family anymore.

So between the level of projection encouraged by that context and how relatively difficult to access Tim’s Robin run has become ten years after the fact, this has led to a lot of fanworks on these themes that are based mostly on other fanworks, and stray further and further from the original content.

So at this point there’s an entire wing of Tim’s fandom wherein this side of him has expanded enormously, and he primarily exists to suffer, frequently in ways that 1) escalate to a point that is inarguably ‘valid’ and hard to dismiss and 2) set him up to rebound from it in whatever way the writer finds emotionally satisfying or useful–being ultimately cared for and reassured by people who value him (the most infantilizing option but like, popular for obvious reasons), or unveiling his brilliant scheme that was causing him to pretend to be passive in the face of mistreatment, or turning around and using his genius ninja skills to wrest power back from his abusers, or just laying down some sick burns about being treated fairly.

But not that many of the last one, because that’s mostly done with other batfam members.

Tim’s become a vehicle for a lot of vicarious coping that Steph and Jason just aren’t appropriate for, because they get angry and they get even. And those are stories that exist already, so there’s less scope for telling your own.

And because Jason’s reaction pattern is ultimately so masculine (i’ll make them all sorry! with my guns! blam blam!) while Tim’s is pretty gender-neutral, the demographics of fanfic mean that the bulk of the people using Tim vicariously in this manner are female-aligned, which has over time feminized this archetype of him a lot. Sometimes in ways I find really uncomfortable, like there’s a lot of forced pregnancy stuff which activates my panic buttons. x.x

But, ultimately, it’s fandom. People are going to do what they’re going to do, DC in their perpetual fail has hung Tim out to dry in narrative terms, and I’d rather the people who are using Tim for victimization narratives over the people who can’t dismiss or discredit him fast enough now that his position has been filled. 🤷‍♀️ What we gonna do? Fave’s in an awkward spot. DC hates us. This is the life in this comic book pit. XD

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Also if you’re the same anon who left me a callout about op of that weird Steph post in my inbox, or if you aren’t @ that person, 1) I refuse to get involved so I’m not answering that ask 2) those aren’t even particularly dramatic fandom crimes? That’s pretty normal? That’s just…Caring Too Much About Ships And Disagreeing With Me.

Do I also feel those opinions are kinda bad? Yeah. But I disagree with everyone about something. Chill.

(You don't have to respond to this) I just wanted to say I agree 100% with you. I think fans of any sport, fans of tv/movie actors & actresses, and any other celebrity fall into this trap of believing that every famous person is our friend. Like they tend not to care about unless it for publicity and even if they do actually care about important issues, they cant or wont speak up due to the chance of being outcasted. And on the fans side we do get way to invasive into celebrity private lives

I think there are plenty of famous people who do a lot of good work for marginalized communities and do show up as allies in meaningful, genuine ways, and we shouldn’t assume that all shows of activism are purely performative! But in general I agree with you here.

We need to remember that the NHL in particular is a notably conservative-cultured sports league in just about all aspects (including conservative as in “unwilling to try new things” lol). Just as importantly we need to remember that, as with any celebrity, the versions of these players we are talking about and being fans about are not real. They are by and large characters that are crafted (with varying degrees of finesse lol) by PR teams and managers and media, and beneath all that is a flawed human person who is capable of all the same mistakes and harms as any of us. They are fallible.

In engaging with them as characters, we are going to project a lot of our own values and beliefs into the blank spots of what we don’t know about them, which is a natural human thing to do. And that isn’t inherently harmful. I think we all want to believe that most people hold the same moral codes as we do until proven otherwise. But especially in a league where many players lean conservative, it’s important not to conflate that projection with somehow “knowing” that they’re “one of the good ones” without them every actually making that clear. You are setting yourself up for heartbreak that way.

I think it’s okay to be an enthusiastic fan of players as long as you on some level recognize the difference between the persona and the person. It’s similar to how a lot of RPF fandom operates on the premise of like, discussing a slightly alternate universe where we politely remove the players wives and families (who are typically not celebrities or public figures and thus did not consent to be involved in these narratives) from the picture in order to write about romances between the public characters of the players, with the implicit understanding that most of do not us believe what we’re writing is real in a conspiracy theory sense. The particular type of fandom we do here is a peculiar kind of multi-layered thing, where we both focus primarily in our works and discussions on those fictionalized personas, while also trying to hold the real people behind them to account to improve the fucked-up culture of this sport. Those two things have to be held in tension, with nuance and a constant need to make judgement calls.

Like, a good example of this two-layers fandom approach is how when I talk about/cheer on Ovi, I’m talking about the character that he is in hockey culture and the hockey narrative and in fanon, not the actual man who is married with children and gets chummy with dictators. I don’t actually think that Ovechkin and Bäckström are in love or that he’s even a person I would get along with or find tolerable in real life. I’m engaging with a character. I engage with pretty much all other NHL-ers the same.

With Ovi and the whole Putin+Trump thing, I don’t find it as necessary for me to personally address or consider as, say, Jamie Benn’s transphobia, because I don’t think the fact of whether I personally (via absolutely no financial support at all) enjoy the persona of a famous Russian hockey player is anywhere NEAR an influential factor in the power those dictators hold. We’re at like six degrees of separation at that point. My five posts a week from watching a pirated Caps stream are such a drop in the bucket in Ovi’s influence and Putin’s that it doesn’t even matter at all whether I do it or not. Putin will continue to be a dictator regardless of whether or not I post gifsets of this hockey player.

But I also recognize that there are times and situations when dealing just with the fictionalization of a player isn’t enough, when it is necessary to step back and make commentary and critique about the flawed human person underneath because they are in a position of visibility and power, and their actions have great influence.

Setting that Ovi example aside, I think there’s an important, nuanced difference when it comes to players who are unapologetically and unreformedly racist, homophobic, transphobic, violent, etc. Because those players are harming people, directly. I’m not talking about players who just support awful politicians, I’m talking about those who explicitly express harmful, bigoted personal opinions from their own platforms or enact direct harm on others personally. When they do this, they are making people less safe, they are making this sport less safe for fans and for other athletes. This cannot be separated from the fame and praise given to their fictionalized personas, because continuing to laud and support and cheer for them directly enables their ability to be in a position of power and influence where they can personally harm people, with actions or with words.

So again, it is important to understand that the version of your favourite player you engage with in the act of most fandom is not a real person, but a character. It is also important to make principled judgement calls, based on your own moral code, as to when is the point at which you can no longer justify promoting and/or financially supporting that character because it means feeding into the influence and ability to commit harms of the real person behind it all. You need to know where the lines between it all are, and where you personally draw a line in the sand you won’t cross. Making the hockey community safer and more welcoming should always be your first priority, because getting to not prioritize that and instead “focus on just having fun” is a privilege only afforded to those who are already safe here.

Support those figures in the league and the sport who choose to use their massively influential platform in this league to go to bat for marginalized people, because you’re right, there is a risk of backlash that comes with that choice, and we (as in the broader many-faceted community of hockey fans) should try to positively reward and reinforce them taking that risk if we want to see more of it! It’s an important part of making this sport something that everyone (except bigots and abusers) can be a part of.

But yeah, it isn’t healthy to pretend that you have a knowing personal relationship with these famous people, or to put responsibility/trust for your emotional well-being into their hands when they don’t even know they’ve been given it. Parasocial relationships like that can really fuck you up if you get sucked too deep into them. Understand that you don’t know these people, and be prepared in advance to make some difficult choices if you don’t like it when they show you who they really are.

(And feel free to grieve privately about the outlet or fun thing or favourite character you lose if you decide you cannot support them anymore. That feeling of betrayal is real for you, and it is okay to feel it and work through it as long as you understand that it might not always be appropriate to focus on doing so publicly (an example of it being inappropriate to focus publicly on your feelings would be a white fan lamenting how sad it is for you personally that your fav turned out to be racist).)

Take care, anon. 💜

can we talk about how the LGBT movement has changed in the past 15 years?

in the light of the events surrounding Chris chan, and people prioritizing pronouns over the rape of a woman with dementia, I think it displays just how... different things are.

i personally feel like it's been co-opted by the more loud and entitled mtfs/ males/penis-havers/whatever pc term exists for the XY chromosome'd, who go too far and aren't reasonably kept in check. I think terf no longer has meaning anymore because it's just become a word we use to silence anyone that disagrees with a trans woman. immediately you're going to call me a terf, I accept that, but please continue reading. I may suprise you. calling someone who's transgender a terf is kinda messed up anyway, and that's exactly why im writing this.

I also think that everyone else (allies, ftms, etc) have followed suit because they've written this messed up narrative that EvErYoNe iS VaLiD. except for trans penis-havers, bc they're the most oppressed and the most valid, actually, regardless of their experiences.

I never used to believe the above because it was always written off as terf shit, and ignoring it kinda benefitted me, but between seeing ftms getting bashed for refusing to follow new "TME" rules as if they aren't trans too, and seeing outrage around Chris chans pronouns, I think it's time to start saying things that may make people uncomfortable. innocent people are already getting hurt by this, and we need to do better. it's time to get uncomfortable.

I want to remind you that perception is both the relying factor, and also the downfall of newer lgbt theory. if my profile were mtf coded, maybe it currently is, you'd call me a self hating trans and I wouldn't be that big of a deal. terfs would probably target me.

if my profile was ftm coded, I would be absolutely skewered for daring to speak out about these issues, even though they do actually affect ftms disproportionately. terfs would try to convince me that being trans is a plague and a mental illness, and to just ~be a cis woman~!

and if assumed cis, I would 100% be assumed radfem terf, and everything I say would immediately be dismissed because of the genuine damage terfs have done. but terfs would still probably flock to this post and berate me for daring to validate trans people At All, because to them, being transgender is a mental illness akin to an eating disorder, and "giving in" to it is "self harm". clearly I don't believe that, so hopefully you'll give me at least some benefit of the doubt.

so, does my identity matter? i have a feeling you'll say yes, because it gives us a good idea of experiences I do and don't have expertise in, and thus room to talk about. but I refuse to directly identify what I actually am because I want the focus of any resulting conversation to be my message and not my self identification. if you read between the lines and figure it out that's just fine, but I would like to be heard first and foremost.

my profile is thus an attempt at being cis female coded, somewhat out of comfort, and that is likely what I'll be assumed to be due to the beliefs I am expressing, even though there is a substantial risk of getting misgendered and dismissed, no matter what my birth sex may actually be. i will give you a hint about my identity: I am transgender, on HRT and everything, and I have been personally affected by all of this. rest assured, this is well within my lane to speak about, and it does matter if you misgender me.

I want you to really think about that. before you respond, really think about if someone saying words on tumblr, talking about their OWN experiences and their take on recent history that applies to themself, really more worthy of being misgendered and harassed than... someone who said they transitioned so they could date lesbians, and then raped their own mother with dementia.

is that fair or just? or is this just a new way of letting people with penises do whatever they want? I personally think it's the latter. we need to hold people like Chris chan accountable without getting caught up on something as minor **in comparison** as misgendering and self identification. Is it sad and confusing that someone who self IDs as transgender became 1:1 with the most dangerous stereotypes that exist for trans women? Of course it is. But it doesn't mean that self identification is suddenly more important than a literal crime being committed.

I would normally dismiss it as a fluke or outright trolling if the evidence weren't so damning that this is in fact a real event that happened. If I hadn't seen this happen to other people, and if I didn't literally know another mtf person who used their dysphoria as an excuse for date rape on multiple occasions and never got any consequences for it.

It's not a one time thing, it's a developing problem that we need to stop before more people have their lives ruined. I can't even imagine how traumatizing and messed up it is for an FTM person to be date raped, by another transgender person no less. When I, an abuse survivor, told people of this MTFs red flags, people violently silenced me. People who didn't know I was trans called me a terf and transphobic. We, as a community, could've protected someone from getting date raped, and we didn't. Trans women can be awful, horrible fucking people, because they are people. Protecting them at all costs is wrong. Protecting them from transphobia is what we should be doing.

That being said, misgendering is still skeevy, and I haven't done anything like raped a disabled woman who is no longer able to consent, or date raped my own partner. if you give a shit about respecting my identity, please use they/them for me. if not, use visual perception and make assumptions that will most likely be incorrect, skew your own argument, and put me on the same level as a rapist, and arguably a fetishist. And I do need to remind you that calling someone transgender a rapist and a fetishist without evidence is still definitely classic transphobia, to the letter, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't do that.

as someone who is same sex attracted, I also want to bring this up as well.

in the US in the past 15 years, the movement as a whole pretty much went "YEAH BORN THIS WAY" with Lady Gaga, and then jumped ship to prioritize mostly mtfs at every angle. do mtfs need support? absolutely. but they don't need misguided toxic positivity, and that's what it's turned into.

it's gotten genuinely homophobic to the point where actually homosexual people are constantly being erased and demonized via "genital preferences are a fetish uwu", and vulva havers, especially the trans ones, are constantly being told to shut up about their experiences.

as much as you want to deny bioessentialism, its still very much well and alive with newer trans movement sentiments when we classify ftms as not worthy of speaking about their own issues with terms like "TME". it's also incredibly ignorant towards FTMs who pass, but dress feminine for comfort, and get mistaken for MTF, and treated like garbage because of it. They are not remotely exempt from misogyny, transphobia, or the intersection of the two, and it is not anyone's job to tell them they don't ever experience that when they do. Turning ftms and biological homosexuals into our enemies-- especially when the actual cause is transphobia and harmful gender stereotypes-- does nothing good or healthy for our movement.

Dont be mistaken, though, passing isn't the focus or end all be all here, it's the perception of others that ends up drastically effecting your experiences. There are words like misogyny that imply treatment via birth sex, however this too can be reliant on external perception. If an MTF individual either transitions very young, has an abundance of resources to transition, or just gets lucky and passes well, chances are she will experience a lot more misogyny than people may give credit to. inversely, someone who just started questioning yesterday, but lived as a male their whole life up until then, they genuinely cannot speak about misogyny with that much room because they simply haven't experienced it at an accurate enough angle or for enough time to understand it as a repeated and sociological force.

It works the other way as well, though; someone who's known that they're trans for a long time and haven't had the resources to transition, or do not or cannot pass in the eyes of society; these people suffer pain that we don't neccesarily have a word for yet, imo. It makes dysphoria worse and it makes living seem hopeless. And as a community, we deal with this is in a really messed up way by over-validating them instead of solving the core issue at hand. and people who suffer from this, but also acknowledge they can't claim what they haven't experienced, are left with nowhere to go.

And its important to acknowledge these things because they're integral to the over-encompassing trans experience. Instead of lying to everyone and telling everyone they pass/giving out unconditional positive regard, our focus should be making it so that it **doesn't matter if you pass**. that you're still worth respect and dignity if you're transgender, no matter what passing is or what it means to you, and no matter how you present. But also, if you do something awful, you still need to be held accountable, especially if you use yourself, your body, or your trans status to contribute to other axi of oppression.

Transphobia is a word that encompasses and addresses all of that, regardless of birth sex. "TME" shuts that down in favor of only letting MTF's speak. Which is still very bio-essentialist, and I can't help but feel like we've gone full circle.

Once upon a time you couldn't even get married if your partner had the same genitals as you. in the US, this was less than 7 years ago. and if you care about human rights activism, you know damn well that legal modification is not the end all be all. people who are genuinely homosexual are still oppressed, but the trans movement has started stepping on them to make ground we don't deserve. homosexuals are ok and valid. it's not a genital preference, and the prescence of trans people doesn't make conversion therapy sentiments ok, ever.

we've gone full circle, and it's not right.

I’ve been holding on to this one for a while because of sheer laziness, because I knew it would be long as fuck, but I continue to see people saying that Shadow Weaver was redeemed at the end, via one act of good before dying, and I don’t think that’s the case at all. I believe at the end she may have escaped.

Here’s my biggest take on SW, obvious as it is: she is primarily concerned with power and control at all times. It’s consistent through every bit of her story. She recognizes power in young people, Adora and Micah specifically, and seeks to control them. She’s nice to them, affectionate, at first. In her own super messed up way she cares about them. But never more than herself, her own desires and interests.

The common belief after the finale is that Shadow Weaver’s last act before the end was an attempt by the writing to give her a miniature redemption through death. And other people have said it but one of the purposes this actually serves is to show that despite all her efforts, SW never really controlled Adora and Catra, she never turned them into the things she wanted them to be, because they anchored each other. Adora and Catra crying over SW’s death isn’t to show that she was actually not so bad, it’s to show that in spite of everything, Adora and Catra still care about the life of others intrinsically.

Shadow Weaver knew this before her sacrifice. The fact that Adora could not continue on to the Heart without Catra was proof enough that she had lost control, if you could even argue that she ever truly had it. You might view SW’s decision to stop the beast and let them go as an acceptance of this fact, or that she simply did what had to be done to save the whole universe, or that she had a genuine desire to do one good thing in her life. But I’m going to argue for two different alternatives.

1. Shadow Weaver sacrificed her life here because she realized that she had no way out after this. She no longer had sway over Adora or Catra, and throughout the season, and some specific scenes in prior ones, both characters repeatedly call attention to SW’s abuse of them. They’ve reached a point in their journey where they’re both completely aware of her manipulation, her abuse, her two-sidedness. They never believe during this season that SW is a good person now, or that she repents for what she’s done. There’s a recognition that Shadow Weaver is helping the rebellion because she’s chosen to be on the side of the winners because that’s how she’ll guarantee her survival and maintain her control over the situation. She tried in the previous season to control Glimmer like she had the others, but Glimmer was too wise to actually trust SW, potentially because she knew what real love and loyalty was and recognized that that wasn’t what Shadow Weaver offered. In a genius turn, Glimmer uses Shadow Weaver rather than the other way around.

All attempts to guarantee her position after the war have failed. She has no control over Micah, Adora, Catra, or Glimmer. She can’t get Adora to the Heart without going back for Catra, so even if they somehow pull through without it she can’t claim herself a hero for her role in it. She is at the end of the road, she’s run out of tricks, and she makes a decision. She decides that dying in one last act of manipulation over the two girls she almost destroyed is her final way to secure her place in the narrative as a Hero. It’s about the legacy, it’s why she says “You’re welcome,” so they will be forced to believe she did it for them, and that would solidify her life as meaningful. It’s her last attempt to retain some of the power she craved, fought for, and stole throughout her life.

But I don’t think the writers actually intend for her to get what she wants here. Shadow Weaver is an interesting character, she has a lot of pull over events in the story, but there’s no sense that she’s beloved. Not by characters and not by writers. I’m eternally sorry to fall back on one of the most tired comparisons in the universe, but bear with me for a moment. In thinking about all of it, I noticed certain similarities between SW’s death and that of Severus Snape. One final moment before death that they want the child(ren) they abused to see that will justify everything. But that is where the similarity ends, and why I think it’s so different on the writing side of things. Snape’s death was intended by both author and narrative to excuse and forgive him for countless misdeeds. And over the years we’ve become far more critical of that. I don’t get the sense that the writers of She-Ra want us to forgive Shadow Weaver because she was oh so complex. I don’t think there’s a future catradora kid named “Shadow Hope Prime.” I think they wanted us to see this act of desperation for what it was: a last ditch attempt to retain control by a person that can’t care about anything but herself.

2. This is where we go straight into theorizing and headcanons so I’ll try to keep it shorter. My suggestion is this: Shadow Weaver did not die in her final scene, she made a grand escape.

At this point she has no friends, no allies, no one who believes she’s anything but dangerous. She has 4 people in positions of power she has personally and extravagantly harmed. She abused Catra and Adora throughout their lives, she manipulated Micah as a child and eventually sent him to Beast Island for at least 10 years, making him miss his daughter growing up, and never to see his wife again, and while SW never had the sway over Glimmer she did the others, she still was directly responsible for taking away her father, turning her mother into a, to be harsh, cowardly and ineffective leader for years, and indirectly responsible for the strife between Adora and Catra that took the war to new extremes.

Shadow Weaver has no one, and no options, and at that point in time the most likely outcome after it’s all over is prison, and she may not be lucky enough to be treated to Brightmoon’s cushy prison again.

You may ask at this point, Catra, Hordak, all the clones all get a redemption without threat of imprisonment, why not Shadow Weaver? And the answer is simple: Shadow Weaver has not redeemed herself in the eyes of the writers, viewers, or other characters. Catra saves Glimmer in an act of selflessness and love for Adora, and then becomes an instrumental help in saving Etheria. Not to mention Adora’s personal relationship with her and the recognition that they come from the same place and lived much of the same hardships. Hordak and the clones get a second chance because it is now known that they were all effectually mind-controlled and enslaved by Horde Prime, and their lives, as individuals with free choice and no strings holding them down, is only just starting. Not to mention Hordak and Wrong Hordak both have Entrapta on their side, and she’s a princess with her own kingdom and could just grant them asylum and bet the other princesses wouldn’t do anything about it lest they risk a civil war, but that doesn’t seem like a realistic issue for this new post-Horde planet anyway. The point is, the other antagonists from the show have made meaningful connections with other characters for the sake of them, not to be self-serving. Shadow Weaver continues to be manipulative up until the very end, no one will give her another chance at this point.

And she knows this. She’s a smart lady, and there’s a great big universe out there full of people that don’t know her. If Adora saves the day and the universe is saved all she has to do is get off planet, and if Adora fails they all die anyway, so why not have a go at it? My theory is that she uses her great big show of magic as a distraction and a disguise to make her escape. The world will believe she died, they may even celebrate her for her role in saving the universe, and she’ll be free.

You think there’s a hitch in this theory right? Because we see the room after she’s gone and all that’s left of her is her mask. Obviously she was completely destroyed, right?

But this specific scene reminded me of something else

If you’ve watched Teen Titans you know that the mask-wearing Slade was one of the major antagonists throughout the series, was also quite inclined to use and abuse powerful youths, and at the end was at the mercy of one (arguably two) of the children he had hurt. She kills him, he falls into lava, and the last thing we see of Slade is his mask. The next season picks up with Robin obsessed with the search for Slade, believing that he couldn’t really be gone that easily, and driven by this single remnant of him. Only to find out later that while Slade did die, he was resurrected and was once again back to be a massive asshole.

I think Shadow Weaver’s last scene does what it is meant to at first glance. Audience and characters believe she’s dead, which makes for a tidy ending, the death is non-explicit so kids don’t get too traumatized, but the ambiguity of it also means that if they wanted to, Shadow Weaver could return for a future installment in the series, be it comics, a movie, or another season. Whether those things are likely to be produced isn’t my interest in arguing here, it’s the possibility.

There’s still a lot of potential for Shadow Weaver to be used as the primary villain, and facing her again could be used any number of ways to shake up a domestic bliss the characters end up in, to have them, older, more mature, having spent time healing from how she hurt them, no longer be affected by her in the same ways. Or the complete opposite, they may still be affected by her, seeing her again could tear open old wounds, but in the end show that while hurt remains, they still carry on.

Alright, time for some pretentious sociological-esque rambling. This is gonna be long as hell (its 1822 words to be specific) and I don’t begrudge anyone for not having the patience to read my over-thought perspectives on a murder clown. CWs for: child abuse, 

I think a lot of things have to go wrong in someone’s life for them to decide to become a clown themed supervillain. A lot of people in Gotham have issues but they don’t become the Joker. I think that as a writer it’s an interesting topic to explore, and this is especially true for roleplaying where a character might be in different scenarios or universes. This isn’t some peer reviewed or researched essay, it’s more my own personal beliefs and perspectives as they affect my writing. I think villains, generally, reflect societal understandings or fears about the world around us. This is obviously going to mean villains shift a lot over time and the perspective of the writer. In my case, I’m a queer, fat, mentally ill (cluster B personality disorder specifically) woman-thing who holds some pretty socialist ideas and political perspectives. My educational background is in history and legal studies. This definitely impacts how I write this character, how I see crime and violence, and how my particular villains reflect my understandings of the society I live in. I want to get this stuff out of the way now so that my particular take on what a potential origin story of a version of the Joker could be makes more sense.

Additionally, these backstory factors I want to discuss aren’t meant to excuse someone’s behaviour, especially not the fucking Joker’s of all people. It’s merely meant to explain how a person (because as far as we know that’s all he is) could get to that point in a way that doesn’t blame only one factor or chalk it up to “this is just an evil person.” I don’t find that particularly compelling as a writer or an audience member, so I write villains differently. I also don’t find it to be particularly true in real life either. If you like that style of writing or see the Joker or other fictional villains in this way, that’s fine. I’m not here to convince anyone they’re wrong, especially not when it comes to people’s perspectives on the nature of evil or anything that lofty. Nobody has to agree with me, or even like my headcanons; they’re just here to express the very specific position I’m writing from. 

The first thing I wanna do is set up some terms. These aren’t academic or anything, but I want to use specific and consistent phrasing for this post. When it comes to the factors that screw up someone’s life significantly (and in some instances push people towards crime), I’ll split them into micro and macro factors. Micro factors are interpersonal and personal issues, so things like personality traits, personal beliefs, mental health, family history, where and how someone is raised, and individual relationships with the people around them. Macro factors are sociological and deal with systems of oppression, cultural or social trends/norms, political and legal restrictions and/or discrimination, etc. These two groups of factors interact, sometimes in a fashion that is causative and sometimes not, but they aren’t entirely separate and the line between what is a micro vs macro issue isn’t always fixed or clear.

We’ll start in and work out. For this character, the micro factors are what determine the specifics of his actions, demeanor, and aesthetic. I think the main reason he’s the Joker and not just some guy with a whole lot of issues is his world view combined with his personality. He has a very pessimistic worldview, one that is steeped in a very toxic form of individualism, cynicism, and misanthropy. His life experience tells him the world is a cold place where everyone is on their own. To him the world is not a moral place. He doesn’t think people in general have much value. He learned at a young age that his life had no value to others, and he has internalized that view and extrapolated it to the world at large; if his life didn’t matter and doesn’t matter, why would anyone else’s? This worldview, in the case of my specific Joker, comes from a childhood rife with abandonment, abuse, and marginalization. While I will say he is definitively queer (in terms fo gender expression and non conformity, and sexuality), I’m not terribly interested in giving specific diagnoses of any mental health issues. Those will be discussed more broadly and in terms of specific symptoms with relation to how they affect the Joker’s internal experience, and externalized behaviours.

His childhood was, to say the least, pretty fucked up. The details I do have for him are that he was surrendered at birth because his parents, for some reason, did not want to care for him or could not care for him; which it was, he isn’t sure. He grew up effectively orphaned, and ended up in the foster care system. He wasn’t very “adoptable”; he had behavioural issues, mostly violent behaviours towards authority figures and other children. He never exactly grew out of these either, and the older he got the harder it was to actually be adopted. His legal name was Baby Boy Doe for a number of years, but the name he would identify the most with is Jack. Eventually he took on the surname of one of his more stable foster families, becoming Jack Napier as far as the government was concerned. By the time he had that stability in his mid to late teens, however, most of the damage had already been done. In his younger years he was passed between foster families and government agencies, always a ward of the government, something that would follow him to his time in Arkham and Gotham’s city jails. Some of his foster families were decent, others were just okay, but some were physically and psychologically abusive. This abuse is part of what defines his worldview and causes him to see the world as inherently hostile and unjust. It also became one of the things that taught him that violence is how you solve problems, particularly when emotions run high. 

This was definitely a problem at school too; moving around a lot meant going to a lot of different schools. Always being the new student made him a target, and being poor, exhibiting increasingly apparent signs of some sort of mental illness or disorder, and being typically suspected as queer (even moreso as he got into high school) typically did more harm than good for him. He never got to stay anywhere long enough to form deep relationships, and even in the places where he did have more time to do that he often ended up isolated from his peers. He was often bullied, sometimes just verbally but often physically which got worse as he got older and was more easily read as queer. This is part of why he’s so good at combat and used to taking hits; he’s been doing it since he was a kid, and got a hell of a lot of practice at school. He would tend to group up with other kids like him, other outcasts or social rejects, which in some ways meant being around some pretty negative influences in terms of peers. A lot of his acquaintances were fine, but some were more... rebellious and ended up introducing Jack to things like drinking, smoking cigarettes, using recreational drugs, and most important to his backstory, to petty crimes like theft and vandalism, sometimes even physical fights. This is another micro factor in that maybe if he had different friends, or a different school experience individually, he might have avoided getting involved in criminal activities annd may have been able to avoid taking up the mantle of The Joker.

Then there’s how his adult life has reinforced these experiences and beliefs. Being institutionalized, dealing with police and jails, and losing what little support he had as a minor and foster child just reinforced his worldview and told him that being The Joker was the right thing to do, that he was correct in his actions and perspectives. Becoming The Joker was his birthday present to himself at age 18, how he ushered himself into adulthood, and I plan to make a post about that on its own. But the fact that he decided to determine this part of his identity so young means that this has defined how he sees himself as an adult. It’s one of the last micro factors (when in life he adopted this identity) that have gotten him so entrenched in his typical behaviours and self image.

As for macro factors, a lot of them have to do specifically with the failing of Gotham’s institutions. Someone like Bruce Wayne, for example, was also orphaned and also deals with trauma; the difference for the Joker is that he had no safety net to catch him when he fell (or rather, was dropped). Someone like Wayne could fall into the cushioning of wealth and the care of someone like Alfred, whereas the Joker (metaphorically) hit the pavement hard and alone. Someone like the Joker should never have become the Joker in the first place because the systems in place in Gotham should have seen every red flag and done something to intervene; this just didn’t happen for him, and not out of coincidence but because Gotham seems like a pretty corrupt place with a lot of systemic issues. Critically underfunded social services (healthcare, welfare, children & family services) that result in a lack of resources for the people who need them and critically underfunded schools that can’t offer extra curricular activities or solid educations that allow kids to stay occupied and develop life skills are probably the most directly influential macro factors that shaped Jack into someone who could resent people and the society around him so much that he’d lose all regard for it to the point of exacting violence against others. There’s also the reality of living in a violent culture, and in violent neighbourhoods exacerbated by poverty, poor policing or overpolicing, and being raised as a boy and then a young man with certain gendered expectations about violence but especially ideas/narratives that minimalize or excuse male violence (especially when it comes to bullying or violent peer-to-peer behaviour under the guise of ‘boys will be boys’). 

Beyond that, there’s the same basic prejudices and societal forces that affect so many people: classism, homphobia/queerphobia, (toxic) masculinity/masculine expectations, and ableism (specifically in regards to people who are mentally ill or otherwise neurodivergent) stand out as the primary factors. I’m touching on these broadly because if I were to talk about them all, they would probably need their own posts just to illustrate how they affect this character. But they definitely exist in Gotham if it’s anything like the real world, and I think it’s fair to extrapolate that these kinds of these exist in Gotham and would impact someone like The Joker with the background I’ve given him.

I have no idea how to end this so if you got this far, thank you for reading!

CW: this post is about oppression, and contains some specific examples of problematic things people say. No, like, graphic depictions of violence or sexual assault, but it’s possible that there’s something I should specifically mention but don’t think to. Mentions of terf ideology, ableism, sexism, Christian centrism, ace exclusionism, general microaggressions.

I want to address the idea that talking about less recognized forms of oppression (or maybe just suffering...but...eh, I’m going to assume oppression here and justify use of the term in another post, maybe) is connected to denying one’s privilege. I would like to argue that, while those can go together, they are intrinsically separate things.

1. Claiming oppresion one doesn’t actually have while denying privilege (what people tend to confuse talking about less recognized forms of oppression for): “Actually I’m not white, I’m one-sixteenth Cherokee...” “war on Christmas” “reverse racism” “straight pride” “this diversity stuff has gone too far”

2. Talking about forms of oppression (in particular less recognized forms of oppression) that one has while denying privilege one also has (“less recognized” of course depends on context): talking about “gifted kid” issues without talking about (or actively minimizing) other exceptionalities/neurodiversity, talking about having Aspergers while distancing oneself from people with more life-impairing expressions of autism, talking about more “acceptable” forms of mental illness while promoting harmful stereotypes about other mental illnesses, “drop the t” and ace exclusionism, making comparisons with more widely understood forms of oppression that implies we’ve “gotten over” those forms of oppression, such as “no one would ever use the n-word like that.”

3. Talking about less recognized forms of oppression and also acknowledging privilege: amplifying and centering voices of people with multiple marginalization, centering race and poverty in discussions about ableism, naming one’s privileges and acknowledging the limitations in perspectives arising from them, being cautions about othering “us” and “them” language, forming coalitions and advocating for justice for groups of people that you personally aren’t a part of.

(You’ll notice most of these don’t literally take the form of talking about one’s own privilege. Privilege can and should be acknowledged by things like amplifying other people’s voices and knowing when to stay in your lane, not just by “so I’m white...” etc.) (I think a lot of people don’t get this? Maybe this needs a separate post.)

4. Not talking about less understood forms of oppression while acknowledging privilege — or talking about forms of oppression that apply to other people and not talking about oppression as something that applies to you (I’m not saying this is bad, just that it happens! People aren’t necessarily comfortable talking about ways in which they personally are oppressed in personal terms! Often when people speak about ways in which they’re oppressed when it’s not immediately obvious, they’re pushing back against a lot of resistance not to): participating in a workshop on poverty without talking about one’s own current or past money struggles, talking about lgbtq+ rights in terms of “them” when the speaker is actually a member of the community, a white-passing POC letting other people assume they’re white in discussions of race, people with autism talking about autism without disclosing that they’re autistic. Likewise, talking about oppression of groups one isn’t a part of (or amplifying others’ voices) without making connections to ways in which you personally experience oppression, even when it might be appropriate to do so.

5. Not acknowledging one’s own oppression and also denying one’s own privilege: common as fuck actually. Complaining about “special snowflakes”. Complaining about PC language. Women loudly talking about how they don’t need feminism. “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps” narratives (usually both denying things like white and male privilege and minimizing/justifying classism at the same time.) Closeted queer people who publicly condemn being gay, trans, etc. Disabled people who support “overcoming disability” and “inspiration” narratives.

Get the picture? While people sometimes do both play up their own oppression, including forms of oppression that many people don’t recognize as such, while at the same time minimizing other people’s oppresion, these things have nothing to do with each other. Because unfortunately, minimizing or denying any given form of oppression is the cultural default! People have to unlearn a whole lot of things to be counter-oppressive on even one axis, let along multiple axes.

So if you think someone’s just making up a form of oppression that doesn’t exist, you might be right...but if you’re wrong you could be doing a lot of harm. If they’re minimizing or denying another form of oppression in the process, that is the issue, not whether something you don’t really understand is also a form of oppression or not.

And I mean: making up oppressions that don’t exist is a thing that happens and can cause harm (eg when Christians insist that doing their job is a violation of their freedom of religion when doing their job involves not being an asshole to same sex couples, or when Christians insist that it’s imperative that they be able to spend Christmas with their families during a pandemic while not making concessions for other faiths’ holidays) but in all cases it’s possible to point to someone who is directly being harmed. So, if you can’t see who’s being harmed, maybe be open to the possibility that you’re wrong.

(Or, rather, who I’m really writing this for: if you’re concerned because someone might not believe you if you speak openly about your oppression as you experience it, or someone’s actually giving you a hard time. That’s on them. You’re OK. They’re wrong.)

I keep coming back to how terfs justify (I would love to be able to honestly and accurately write this statement in the past tense) their transmisogyny by using the idea that women are oppressed, but being trans isn’t a real thing, let alone a thing people experience oppression over. Claiming that people are making up a form of oppression that doesn’t really exist can do tremendous amounts of harm. And everybody thinks their beliefs are correct. That’s what belief means. So going “yeah, but terfs are wrong” doesn’t fix things, because they don’t think they’re wrong and because you could be wrong about things that you’re sure you’re right about.

Reasons why your Billy hate is actually Toxic AF and personally offensive to me (a real life abuse survivor)

Here’s the thing. You don’t HAVE to like Billy. You don’t HAVE to like Harringrove. But keep your God Damn hate out of our tag. And here’s why.

Is Billy problematic AF? Yes. Is Billy racist? Yes. Was Billy (a literal child) ever given a chance to grow and do better? No.

Billy was continuously and horrifically abused. Billy was abandoned by his mother. Billy was uprooted as a teenager and dumped into a new school during his senior year. Billy had various traumas visited upon him and was under the influence of a messed up racist. And yes, I think that he got his racism from Neil because 9/10 times someone becomes racist because their parents are. Rarely have I seen someone from an open and non-racist family do a complete 180 into racism.

And no, Billy’s abuse does not EXCUSE his abhorrent behavior, but it does EXPLAIN it. Not to armchair diagnose a fictional character, but childhood loss of a beloved person can lead to things like depression, anxiety, and Borderline Personality Disorder. Billy’s mom, the only person who loved him, left him and gave him nothing but a phone call. Ongoing childhood abuse (like the kind done to him by Neil) can ALSO cause depression, anxiety, and in some cases, C-PTSD (hi it me). This does things like reduce your inhibitions, and make you take huge risks.

Even if Billy doesn’t have C-PTSD (my personal head canon) or BPD, there is NO DOUBT that his behavior is greatly affected by his abuse. He’s still living with Neil in s3. But there is good in Billy. There is good in this broken, twisted little boy. We see that the majority of his speech in the sauna is genuine. The mind flayer only takes over as he’s reaching for the shard (we know this because that’s when Will gets the heebie jeebies).

We are not trying to Stan a racist white boy. We are loving on a broken abuse victim. If he had lived, he might have had the opportunity to work on his racism, to fix his relationship with Max. But he didn’t. He was abused his whole life, taken over by a monster, and sacrificed himself to save a child he didn’t know. It’s a tragic story and we are allowed to feel that way about it.

Now I’m going to talk about me, literal childhood abuse victim. While I never intentionally engaged in racist behavior, I had some horrifically problematic views on my fellow women, and I engaged in hurtful and damaging behavior - drinking too much, running away, hurting my friends, ignoring those who loved me, self harm, and a lot of unpleasant and unsafe sex, to name a few. I love Billy because I see myself in Billy. And I hate Billy’s end because the narrative it pushes is that abuse victims are too damaged to recover.

Now, back to Billy’s problematic shit. READ A FANFIC SOME TIME. I highly recommend the Yourself or Someone Like You verse by halfempty on ao3. The first installment in particular does NOT shy away from Billy’s racism and very much deals with him having to confront it. While yes, there are plenty of fics that are just fluff or don’t deal with it directly, I’ve never met a Harringrover who DOESN’T acknowledge Billy’s racism and know that it has to be reckoned with at some point.

As for stanning a white gay boy, POC are woefully under represented in media - and Lucas and his family are the only non white characters in the show, and their characters are too young for me to want to write or read about (but I love Lucas and Max). You don’t know who I ship or like outside of ST, but in this case I’d blame the show’s lack of diversity over any genuine need from Billy fans to ‘Stan a white guy.’

Finally, who TF are all of you to shit on people for liking problematic characters? Dean Winchester (who I love) is a problematic arsehole - canonically! Loki (who I love) is a problematic arsehole - canonically! Mike is a problematic arsehole - canonically! Jonathan took PARTIALLY CLOTHED PICTURES OF NANCY WITHOUT HER CONSENT - CANONICALLY.

IT’S OKAY TO LIKE PROBLEMATIC CHARACTERS AS LONG AS YOU ACKNOWLEDGE THAT THEY’RE PROBLEMATIC.

Sorry if Billy’s particular brand of arseholery hit you the wrong way. But keep your hate the fuck out of the Harringrove and Billy Hargrove tags.

Annon-Guy: Finale - 1. Why was Richter surprised that Marta said "Courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality"? I know Richter learned it from Aster and taught Emil it, but still. 2. How come Marta and the others still care and look out for Ratatosk despite killing Aster? Marta still loves him because he's a part of Emil as they're the same person.

1. I figure Richter was surprised because he hadn’t expected the phrase to catch on or mean anything to Marta. For Richter, that was always something between him and Aster, and he only taught it to Emil because he thought it was something Emil needed to hear. I guess he didn’t expect it to be something meaningful to anyone except people like him, like Aster, like Emil.  2. I’m sure a lot of why everyone sticks with Emil is 1) The side of Ratatosk that IS Emil clearly feels bad about what he did to Aster and WANTS to be good, and Ratatosk, while he’s reluctant to outright say it because he’s a dope that doesn’t talk about feelings, also seems to feel bad even though he felt justified in attacking Aster at the time. 2) Emil and Ratatosk are a summon spirit, an entity necessary to the balance of the world, the closest tangible thing the world has to gods. There are people of many different religions who worship gods that did some pretty terrible things. So I’m sure part of it is some sort of “Emil/Ratatosk did something bad, but he’s necessary for the world to be healthy so we can’t blame him too much since we really need his help. But I’m sure the part the game wants us to focus on is that, on top of changing and wanting to be better and make amends for killing Aster, something he obviously regrets, the party, especially Marta, understands that part of the reason Ratatosk lashed out at all was because of what happened to his tree.  So it’s some combination of those factors. Kind of like I might forgive Richter for trying to stab Marta. From Richter’s perspective, he’s avenging Aster and preventing a minor deity from committing a genocide he is perfectly capable of enacting. Like, I want to punch Richter because “Dude this is not how you deal with trauma and if you have genuine concerns you should ASK FOR HELP and not try to do it on your own and/or manipulate people!” But I understand why he did what he did and I think if he worked hard afterward to make up for what he did, I could forgive his actions in the game. Similarly, if we understand Ratatosk’s perspective, how he's lashing out because he’s afraid, upset, in pain, and just wanted to be alone to grieve after he just woke up and some uppity mortals show up, don’t treat him with any respect, make demands, and then get in his face about how “actually, the creatures that killed your tree are very important” it gets easier to forgive the unforgivable. Killing Aster, also, was only one action. A crime of passion. What Richter did was a series of mistakes. He dug himself a hole and instead of asking for help he just kept fucking digging whereas Ratatosk, apart from being just a little too trigger happy and having a temper, really only did the one bad thing. Like, honestly, this entire game is a massive case of “people who were hurt tend to hurt other people.” Like, both of these boys need therapy and a hug but also some spanking because like... they clearly don’t know how to process trauma. So like, on the one hand, yes, both these boys deserve forgiveness and happiness and Emil unconditionally supporting Richter is definitely something Richter needs even if he doesn’t “deserve” it for everything he did in the Vanguard. Similarly, Marta’s unconditional support of Emil and Ratatosk is definitely something they both need even if Ratatosk might not deserve it for squishing Aster like a bug to make a point. On the other hand, both these boys have serious issues and as much as I like to “solve” Richter’s trauma by shipping him with Emil, Richter and Emil should, ideally, have some sort of therapy and prison sentence because like... they’re directly or indirectly responsible for people losing their lives and that not having a consequence, as much as I don’t WANT it to have consequences, is kind of shitty for the families people that died. If Brute and Marta are going to take responsibility, Richter and Emil/Ratatosk should too. Unless they all get freedom in which case unrealistic but it’s better than Brute doing jail time, Marta getting community service, Richter being stuck in the Ginnungagap for 1000 years/his whole life depending on how Ratatosk deals with Richter aging, and Emil doing whatever he ends up doing with Marta. Like, IDK, I feel like they all deserve happiness, despite what they did, but, like. That’s not how the justice system works so... IDK, the game does a REALLY good job of making EVERYONE the victim, and you just can’t help but woobify them because the circumstances they had life deal to them are just terrible and they didn’t deserve anything that happened to them. Ratatosk didn’t deserve to lose his tree, Richter didn’t deserve to lose Aster, Aster didn’t deserve to die while trying to help the world, Emil didn’t deserve to come into being to pay for Ratatosk’s mistakes, Marta didn’t deserve to be part of the Vanguard and watch her dad slowly go insane after she just lost her mom, Brute didn’t deserve to be manipulated into a militant organization’s leader. Everyone in the game got dealt a shitty hand in life and they all suffered because of it and because they suffered, they inevitably caused harm to others. IDK, if there are real gods in the Symphonia universe, not just the Spirits and not just “Martel” but, like, actual gods that influence the events on Aselia? They need to be slapped. “What if we just give these guys unresolved trauma on purpose?” is, like, great from a narrative’s perspective but it’s so fucking cruel and I’m still mad at the writers for hurting my boy Richter like they did and then continuing to hurt him in Rays. But I have to admit, I probably wouldn’t like Richter as much if he wasn’t damaged.