#the radical kindness in this show is the best fucking thing I’ve ever seen actually
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When it comes to Loser Baby, I feel so especially moved. Angel sits there depressed, frustrated because while he wants to get better, he also needs his escape from this life. He blames himself for everything as we see in Poison (“the worst part of this hell is I can only blame myself.”)
Then Husk begins the song, but instead of dreaming for a better day, Husk tells him that yes, Angel did fuck up. But that doesn’t mean shit to him or anyone else in the hotel.
Just because it’s Angel’s “fault” doesn’t mean he isn’t worthy of love. It doesn’t mean he deserves the way people treat him. And It doesn’t mean that he will be met with judgement when he opens up to his friends. He doesn’t need to be a perfect person to be worthy of his life.
By owning it, he’s removing the shame from the equation. The situation sucks, but whether it was his mistake or not, he can live for tomorrow knowing he’s not alone.
#hazbin hotel#huskerdust#husk#Angel dust#the radical kindness in this show is the best fucking thing I’ve ever seen actually#thots4thoughts
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Book Drop Boy (Twice x Reader)
✧ pairing: library student worker!Twice x afab!student!Reader
✧ word count: 9.9k
✧ ao3 mirror
✧ warnings: college au/no quirks, maladaptive daydreaming (twice), twice is chaotic af, commits library related crimes, use of the term sweetheart a few times, smut, vaginal fingering/sex, doggy style, afab terms, no pronouns for reader, gratuitous swearing this is potentially the softest thing I've ever written, like she's pretty tame idk what Twice does to me
✧ summary: In which Twice learns that sometimes dreams do come true, except those dreams are just the maladaptive fantasies of a broke library receptionist and, while sexy, also involve more fraud than he expected.
✧ a/n: Hey y'all, this is set in the same universe as my shiggy college piece, but you don't need to have read that. There are some fun little easter eggs though if you have tho. This is like the most tame thing I've ever written and it's way longer than it was meant to be but oh well. Anyway, Twice deserves some love. Enjoy <3
Logically, Jin was aware you probably had no idea who the fuck he was.
But that really didn’t have any effect on the wildly intricate fantasy life he had created for the two of you during his long shifts behind the library reception desk. That, in fact, was the only reason he hadn’t up and quit just to save himself the embarrassment of another loud outburst in the middle of the most silent place on campus.
What was truly more shocking was the fact that none of those said outburst had gotten his ass kicked straight out the door.
But he held out.
If only for you.
Late nights or lazy afternoons you were always in the campus library—studying he assumed or…
'Studying,' because a lot of the time he noticed you’d show up with a drink from the cafe a few blocks down, set out a line of colored pens and not touch a single one of them for hours, content to stare blankly at the chipped desktop. And even that Jin was more than happy to watch.
He did a lot of watching.
Mostly because he wasn’t permitted to leave the desk unattended unless there were piling up returned books which needed to be replaced quickly.
So instead, he pretended to be busy scrolling through something on his old as hell monitor—which was conveniently set up directly across from the comfy chair/desk combo you always managed to grab—and he indulged in day dreams where you’d bring him a coffee from the cafe when you came in and set it on his desk, maybe kiss him on the cheek, maybe loiter by his workstation and play with his hair and—
Yeah.
It was a lot.
But you were always in that chair, always working or pretending to work and you never seemed to notice the uninterrupted hours of staring Jin did, so what was the harm?
If you never knew, you’d never get creeped out—cause it was creepy, he knew that, oh fuckin' boy did he know it was real goddamn weird.
He just couldn’t seem to give it up. Especially when the conditions presented perfectly for some good uninterrupted, totally not stalker-y at all, fantasizing.
Sometimes he thought you might have some mundane superpower that let you always snatch that perfect seat right across from his computer, and made it so the library was just cool enough that he’d get to watch you shrug on that cute extra sweatshirt you always brought. So he could catch a glimpse of some skin—in a totally normal and not invasive way—when your arms went over your head. So he could imagine it was his ratty old sweaters you were wearing just so you could smell him on you and god he really wanted to get close enough to smell you—was that too weird? No. Yes? No.
Not at all.
But the best part, the part that really convinced him on those awful days when he really just could not be bothered to drag himself out of bed and walk the couple blocks to campus just to sit in awful silence alone, in his head alone with the fucking thoughts that made him want to rip his hair out—
What made it worth it was those times every few weeks when your classes would get new assigned readings. Because then you’d have to check out new textbooks, since you were one of those geniuses that had figured out the library kept a ton of those books in stock. Of course you were, cause you were fucking perfect.
And when you had to check out new books, you had to come to reception.
Jin got to watch as your lovely figure moved through the stacks like you were ballroom dancing along the halls of faded, sea-green shelves, almost floating over the linoleum trying to find just the right volume in the right addition before anyone else beat you to it.
It was one of the most gorgeous things he’d ever seen.
Spinner would call him a fucking simp if he ever dared to uttered any of that out loud, but it didn’t matter.
If it was you, he’d simp for fucking life.
And then, you’d walk that fucking glorious ass over to his desk and plop the books down, smiling—cause you were polite like that, so fucking perfect he couldn’t hardly believe it sometimes—and asking how his day was while he checked you out in every sense of the phrase.
In a completely platonic and not freaky way.
So Jin kept coming to work, to that god awful job he really hated and which hated him just as vehemently. He clocked in every day and waited patiently like a fucking puppy counting the hours till its workaholic owner arrived home, ears perking up when you walked through the door and flashed your ID to the attendant.
If only for that.
He’d put up with his boss’ complaints and the weird stares he got when the thoughts just wouldn’t stay in his head anymore and he had to start talking to himself to fill the silence.
If only for that.
Those few hours when he could lose himself in the fake inner life where you were waiting for him when his shift let out, waiting to gather him, tired and understimulated, into your arms. Where you’d sneak into the back room with him just to chat and lace your fingers with his and maybe sit that fucking wonderful ass up on the tables so he could stand in between your thighs and you’d pull him down to—
Yeah.
That was enough.
***
It wasn’t until Tuesday when he had to come in again that week, and he already knew it was gonna suck balls.
Friday he’d gotten another round of complaints from some stuck up fucking business students—it was always the fucking business majors with those silver spoons so far up their asses—snitching to his boss that he’s been ‘disruptive’ and ‘disturbing’ during his last shift.
“Not my fucking fault,” he muttered under his breath, kicking a rock along the side walk he’d picked up two blocks before. “Yes it is. No it’s not!”
Jin groaned and tugged at his hair, wishing he’d brought a Tylenol or something to curb the headache that was already sticking it’s ugly ass claws into his temples. He really, really heavily contemplated just ditching, calling in sick or some shit. Technically he was a student worker, so they had to work with his DRS accommodation and he was actually having a bad fucking time.
But one of his friends had already texted to ask if he’d try and reserve them that sweet ass study room on the third floor and Jin wasn’t really looking to disappoint anyone else this week. Besides, it was fun to abuse his minuscule power. Fun to go corrupt for once. Fight the system and all that.
He liked to think you’d be proud of him for it, based on the kinds of texts you checked out at least.
So, he dragged his sad ass back to the looming library looking far too much like a prison than was necessary and clocked in. Actually, the first thing he did was check the chair—your chair and nobody else’s chair, he might actually make a fucking scene if somebody ever did steal it—and his face visibly fell when you were not occupying it.
It was a bit early, Jin supposed as he paused briefly when he noticed the can of Monster and rando vending machine chips sitting next to it by the reception computer. The sticky note slapped to the top read 'For your troubles' in familiar handwriting and that pulled a bit of a smile from him as he quickly rearranged the scheduling of study room sign ups so the fancy third floor room would be free for the rest of the night.
Then Jin sat, staring at the study room schedules for a moment, feeling his eyes softly glaze over until a hand slapped down on the raised lip of the reception desk.
“Hey bro,” Spinner greeted him with a wild smile and a flurry of bright pink hair.
Jin had to blink a few extra times to get his vision to clear. When it did he saw, horrifyingly, that he’d been staring at the fucking blank screen for two hours without moving.
Why was it that his head was either deadly quiet, devoid of even a single errant thought or so loud as fucking shit at all times that he couldn’t physically keep the thoughts in?
“Hey, dude, what’s up?” Jin asked, running a hand through his unruly hair.
“Aren’t you supposed to like shush me or something?”
Spinner chuckled a bit at his own god awful joke and Jin couldn’t find it in himself to be annoyed, too glad for the company.
“I mean,” he shrugged, popping the can of Monster and ignoring the dirty looks he got for the sound. “I would if I was, uh, good at my job.”
“Which I’ve heard you definitely are not,” Spinner wrapped his fingers over the lip of the desk and leaned back on his heels, swaying side to side idly.
“You’re just figuring that out now?”
Jin didn’t bother watching while Spinner nearly tripped over himself fidgeting as he spun to stand at the little gate that corralled Jin inside like livestock. He was too busy glancing over to check you hadn’t slipped in while his brain had taken a trip to the astral plane without him.
“No, I been knew, but my sources tell me you’ve gone off the rails my friend,” long legs stepped over the wooden partition until the only friend he had who was quite possibly more annoying than Jin himself was sat on the counter next to his computer. “Finally been radicalized have you?”
Jin huffed and sipped his Monster, “Guess it fuckin’ took me long enough.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” Spinner was messing about with the stacks of multicolored sticky notes littered across the desk before glancing up to wink at Jin. “So what can I get you to do for me in exchange for free food?”
“Now I really am gonna fucking shush you,” Jin smashed his finger against Spinners grin only to get a hand covered in spit for his trouble.
“Right, right,” Spinner held his hands up in defeat, “can’t have you cheating on your sweetheart.”
“Not my—yes I’m in a committed fictional relationship thank you very much—ugh!”
Jin could feel the heads shooting up from laptop screens and textbooks to stick daggers in his back with their angry stares. Spinner at least had the good sense to look a little fucking guilty for egging him on.
“Sorry bro, I had to shoot my shot ya know?” a hand disappeared into the mop of bubblegum locks in apology.
“It’s fine…” Jin trailed off, mumbling and blushing more than a little profusely as he turned to check the book drop box. “Not like I’m ever gonna fuckin’ shoot mine anyway.”
“Oh we are not gonna have that kinda of shit discussion,” Spinner’s hand shot out and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders, spinning Jin in his chair. “On god bro, we’re gonna get you a date one of these days.”
Jin didn’t dignify that kind of lie with a response.
Spinner once again, had the good sense to not push the envelope any farther.
“And in the meantime, you can come to the League meeting tonight!”
“Your gaming club thing?”
“Yeah, it’s Smash night and we need to fill a space sooooo…”
Jin knew Spinner and his roommate—the same friend who he’d gone study room rogue for—had started a gaming club their freshman year. Spinner had been trying to strong arm him into attending ever since. To, as he put it, ‘socialize,’ and ‘make new friends.’ All things which Jin was patently horrible at and avoided like the plague.
Needless to say, he’d refused every time.
It wasn’t just the whole being alone with like two people he kinda knew in a room full of strangers. Games themselves were just a lot for him. The flashing colors and the loud noises made his head—which was already so fucking full all the time and he really needed to keep any extra scrap of space for extra random facts he picked up about you and your future married life together—get a bit misaligned.
They just weren’t his jam most of the time.
“I’m good, thanks for the offer though,” Jin twisted out of Spinner’s grasp and craned his head to check your seat again.
Still empty.
He sighed.
Spinner continued to ramble and Jin continued to only half listen. It wasn’t as pleasant to day dream when you weren’t there for the added visual aesthetic. And he was trying to not be a dick and ignore the one friend he had managed to keep around over the years. But it was hard when his mind had a mind of its own.
Wow.
Meta.
“Jin?”
The voice—deep and dark in such a dramatically ominous way it might have been funny if it didn’t belong to his permanently disgruntled supervisor—interrupted his already derailing train of thought.
“Oh, uh, hello sir,” Jin stuttered, turning to find Kurogiri leaning against the reception desk with one arm, turning only slightly to accommodate Spinner’s form bolting over the gate and out the library doors.
He did manage to throw a fading, “See ya later, bro” over his shoulder before he disappeared around the corner.
Yeah thanks for the warning, bro.
“Aren’t you supposed to be reshelving the books from the drop box?” Kurogiri sighed, perpetually disappointed in a way that had Jin’s face burning and shame bubbling up in his throat.
He hated this job. He was objectively terrible at it, and so usually he wouldn’t give that much of a shit at not doing it well. Kurogiri just had some type of vibe—like daddy but not in the sexy way Spinner always joked about—that made it really, really upsetting to let him down.
Father figure? Yeah that's what it was called.
“Right, yeah um, sorry,” Jin nodded quickly and leapt from his chair, only mildly bruising his knee on the desk as he reached to empty the book drop.
Another incorporeal sigh was the only acknowledgement he received as he loaded the cart with wheels louder than Jin on a particularly bad day and rolled the pile of books back to the stacks. He paused once more, just before the sea green shelving units swallowed him up, to sneak another futile peak at your chair. But it still sat empty—empty and lonely with no you and cold without your body pressed against the worn upholstery.
Jin felt a chill too, a slow tingling thing that worked its way up from the base of his spine. It drove him deeper into the walls of books, away from the empty spaces.
It was harder to look.
Harder to be reminded of what he did not have.
Of what he’d never have cause he was too much of a goddamn pussy to ever just fucking talk to you—
But then what if he did? What if he did talk to you? What would happen then?
Those were the types of questions he tried to avoid when crafting your intricate, fictional lives together. Precisely because they were the easiest to answer.
You’d realize within the first five minutes or so of conversation—if Jin could even make it that far without embarrassing himself—that he was just a generic brand weirdo that all your pretty, normal, aesthetically pleasing friends would warn you to stay away from and because you were also pretty and normal and not a fucking idiot, you’d have the common sense to listen.
He’d lose you in the blink of an eye.
Your chair would sit cold and empty forever and the imaginary garden he’d been planting for you to come imaginarily home too would wilt and die like all the other happy thoughts in his head.
It was quite the conundrum and one Jin was not keen to solve soon.
Not that things ever really went his way. Cause problems could only be avoided for so long before all that time spent ignoring them came back to bite him full on the ass.
Which, apparently, came this time in the form of what had to be quiet, muffled sobbing drifting in between the shelves from the back hallway.
It was dark here in this section of the building—free of most windows so as not to cause any sunning damage to the books—and Jin had seen more than enough horror movies to know that it was a horrendous idea to follow the ominous crying sounds coming from the bowls of this old as fuck building. But even as he made up his mind to ignore it, the hand currently working one of the returns back into its proper place dropped the book to his cart as his feet slowly turned to face the corridor.
He looked around skeptically for a second, not entirely certain his poor brain hadn’t simply malfunctioned again, as it was wont to do, and fabricated the sound entirely. But as he peaked out from between the stacks, and down the dimly lit hall, he heard it again.
Echoey and soft in the wide, empty space it—was definitely coming from the hall and it was definitely a person.
Jin caught himself moving without ever meaning too, the books laying forgotten as he crept towards the source of the noise and paused just before leaving the stacks entirely. This hall was full of small alcoves built into the centuries old walls and led to the lesser used storage portions of the library that only the janitorial staff and the university librarians ever entered. He really didn’t want to stumble across someone from the special collections department bawling over a damaged or lost manuscript.
But his wayward feet pushed him forward, too sympathetic for his own good. He found himself shuffling down the abandoned hall, peering into each small dip in the walls to find the source of his distraction.
And when he did, Jin was—for once in his life—thankful for his lack of self-preservation instincts.
And cursed his blatant lack in interpersonal skills.
Because it was you.
You curled with your knees to your chest and your head in your hands, shoulders shaking, as you cried into your palms.
The universe had handed him maybe the only golden opportunity he would ever get on right on a platter.
But Jin didn’t have a fucking clue what do with it.
And there certainly wasn’t much time to formulate a game plan as his nervous breathing and sudden intake of breath upon discovering his imaginary lover sniffling right in front of him, had certainly alerted you to his presence.
Your head shot up in an instant, knocking dully against the stone wall with a thud.
“Shit,” you cursed and hands flying up to cover the area as Jin jumped on the spot at your outburst.
“Are you okay?” he asked lamely as you glanced over at him, eyes red and wet and so fucking sad oh fucking god, widening as you realized you’d been caught.
“Huh? Ye—oh uh, yes,” your words came out jumbled, legs unfolding quickly to push yourself off the bench and hands wiping furiously at your eyes. “I’m fine, sorry.”
“You sure about that?”
Jin cringed visibly and frowned at the way you deflated under his stare. God the first fucking time he actually talks to you and he already made an ass of himself.
Spinner’s roommate was such a liar, it really fucking sucked to be right sometimes.
“I mean,” you crumpled back down onto the ledge and Jin took a careful step closer, “no, but yes. Like I’m definitely having a breakdown in the back of the fucking library but I don’t wanna, uh, bother you with that. So, yeah I’m good.”
“You can bother me,” he replied way too fucking quickly.
But he couldn’t really be embarrassed about it. Your voice was just so captivating, and you weren’t talking to him in that raised pitch anymore like you usually did—the way everyone does when they’re trying to be surface level and polite. No this was your voice how you sounded when you were relaxing with your friends or making breakfast in the morning or talking to yourself in the shower (he liked to think you did that, or sang maybe as you worked the soap into your skin, one of the two but he always imagined you filled silences with how fucking pretty you were).
“No, really. That would be weird, right?”
Jin grimaced as you fixed him with a watery yet suspicious stare.
Yeah it was weird.
Everything he did concerning you was weird, objectively. He was definitely being over-familiar and too eager, especially considering you didn’t fucking know him.
But he knew you.
Jin felt like he’d known you for all months he’d spent pretending to be by your side.
And you were crying and he had to do something.
“I mean, yeah I guess,” he mumbled, taking a risk and plopped down on the opposite end of the alcove and resting his head on the wall. “But not any weirder than having a breakdown in the employees only section of the library building on a Tuesday.”
You kept staring blankly for a few moments before the most miraculous thing happened.
Jin had to physically stop his jaw from hitting the floor when the quiet giggle bubbled up from your chest and spilled out into the hall, warm enough to melt even the freezing linoleum floor.
“Yeah, you’ve got a point,” your voice cracked a bit as a few more tears slid like pearls down your cheeks.
“My name’s Jin,” he said, shocked stupid both by your laugh and the apparent success of his comforting methods.
“Oh, hi, well I guess I don’t have to call you book drop boy anymore,” you rubbed at your face again and tucked your legs back into your chest, though it looked a bit more relaxed this time.
Not so trying-desperately-to-fade-out-of-existence.
“You called me that?” Jin asked, brain still functioning at half capacity, only shocked at the fact that he existed as a concept in your head enough to have a name and realizing a bit too late how accusatory he must have sounded. “Shit, I mean it’s totally fine I just didn’t think you, uh, well I mean, like, knew about me I guess?”
You finally smiled and his brain power cut out another fourth at being personally graced by the expression this close up.
“Yeah, you always check me out—fuck sorry not that you check me out, just you scan my books and I just called you ‘book drop boy’ in my head cause I never got a chance to ask for your name but I have it now so that’s cool….”
Your head dropped back down to your knees as you groaned and Jin suddenly felt a lot less nervous than he had a few seconds ago.
You were weird too.
For so long you’d existed on this pedestal thousands of feet in the air, and now you were stepping down from the heavens and onto earth. Not in a bad way! Just, Jin had never really stopped to think that you might be a person too.
Well.
No, he knew you were a person, just he never thought you might get flustered and ramble and be nervous in front of him.
Cause he was a fucking train wreck—the bar was so goddamn low.
It was almost as comforting as your smile.
“Oh, yeah sorry I’m not the best at customer service if you couldn’t tell,” he sighed and ran a hand through his wild hair.
You looked back up with a wry grin, “I don’t know, I’d say you’re going above and beyond right now.”
And you were funny.
He was gonna fucking combust.
“Ha, yeah, I try,” he trailed off for a moment before glancing back at your curled in your corner, fuck he could just imagine sitting behind you, your head on his chest while you—”So uh, did you wanna talk about it or…?”
“Uh, yeah,” you picked idly at the grouting of the stone and mumbled, “I guess it’s not so weird if we’re on a first-name basis.
And that was how Jin discovered that you’d been hiding in the back of the library bawling your eyes out for hours—since even before his shift started. Apparently you’d gotten here extra early, even skipped a class, to snag some super specific required text for your final thesis and right before you got to the shelf some jackass swooped in, effectively hit and running with the only copy of that book on campus.
The book in questions was one of the newer additions that had special added footnotes you needed for your paper and was a whopping 500 fucking dollars to rent from every other place online. You couldn’t afford it, and honestly what fucking student could? But you needed it to complete the paper or you’d fail and Jin very much understood the need for a good breakdown after a catastrophe like that.
“Damn, that’s uh, fucking awful,” he frowned on your behalf as your head hit the wall a second time in frustration.
“Yeah so, I’m like royally fucked either way. Now I just gotta decide which hole I’m taking it in I guess,” you groaned.
Jin’s eyebrows raised at your choice of words but they were apt, he supposed. People really do get comfortable with each other pretty quick when bonding over shared institutional rage.
“Well,” he began, wringing his hands nervously at what he was about to suggest. “You might be in luck cause I’ve recently decided to abuse my library powers for good and I maybe, possibly, could try and see if there’s some strings I can pull?”
You perked up a bit, looking at him incredulously.
Jin felt comfortably full under your stare.
“Seriously?”
The word was soft and it bounced off the walls just as much as it did the inside of his skull.
Swapping study rooms to help a friend out was one thing. But falsifying checkout dates for someone he barely knew—had essentially married in his maladaptive fantasies—could get him fired.
He hated this job but he needed it.
Were you worth the risk?
Of course, he found himself thinking without hesitation.
You were everything.
“Yeah, sure,” he nodded, any lingering uncertainty washing away at the way you looked at him through your lashes. “I wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t mean it.”
“Are you always this nice?”
Jin didn’t answer right away. He was too caught up in how you’d leaned forward on your hands across the bench, peering like he was some exotic animal or a stray cat in the parking lot—all soft wonderment with fingers curling like they ached to grab hold and rescue him from this parchment scented monotony.
“Not always…”
“Should I feel special then?”
If his face wasn’t red before, it was now. Red and blistering under the summer campfire heat that radiated off you—woodsy and warm and so painfully familiar like an old friend’s hand.
“...I guess you—fucking definitely, ” he quite nearly shouted the last bit, startled by his own volume and already mortified at the outburst but then you chuckled again from beside him.
He turned to see you standing and offering a hand which he gladly too if only to feel the weight of your palm against his.
“Well, you’ll have to let me pay you back then.”
“Oh, no you don’t actually—”
You held a hand up and the words turned to ash on his tongue in an instant, mouth glued shut by your gesture.
“Coffee on me or something, there’s a nice cafe a few blocks from here,” you dropped your hand and your eyes were clear now, no sign of the previous afternoon sobbing alone in the hallway. Jin felt a surge in his chest knowing he was the one who did that. “You gotta pass off the contraband anyway, and I don’t think it would be that great of an idea to do it here.”
God you were fucking perfect.
“Can’t argue with that.”
***
Jin was sweating profusely as he snuck past the library attendant, totally inconspicuous and not not all looking like he was doing a single thing wrong in the slightest.
Yeah they definitely didn’t suspect a thing.
The process of fraud was actually a lot less complicated of an undertaking that Jin had expected. All he had to do was search up the book, find the student that had stolen the success of his sweetheart’s educational career and flag his account. They’d get an automated message about the flag, instructing them to return any borrowed items or they’d be forced to pay fines while the account was examined.
Technically he needed administrator credentials to report student accounts, but luckily Kurogiri had his login info written on a sticky note hidden on the back of the monitor. All in all it was a pretty easy job.
The whole thing had taken only a matter of days, in which time you had returned to the library only twice—the first to get confirmation on the success of Jin’s newest descent into low level crime which had set his heart thundering in his chest as you bent conspiratorially over his desk, your face just inches from his.
The second time, Jin had horrifically been absent from his desk, however he was met with possibly the most wonderful sight of his life upon returning from the labyrinth of shelves.
On one of the hundreds of post-it note pads that littered the library reception area, there were scribbles that he was sure hadn’t been there before. He almost tossed it, but upon closer inspection, you’d written your number there and signed just below it. In the cutest fucking handwriting he’d ever seen—cute not for any stylistic reason, but it simply felt that way just by virtue of it being yours—was written the digits and “-for book drop boy”
The noise he made reading that turned more than a dozen heads and almost got him fired there on the spot before any of his indiscretions were even discovered, but he couldn’t find it in himself to regret it.
So, nerve wrackingly, Jin texted you as he nearly sprinted home from his shift after that piece of shit asshole who made you cry had trudged angrily in and dropped off his ‘stolen’ book.
— HEY IT’S JIN!
— from the library
— shit sorry that wasn’t meant to be in caps
— n e way….
— I’ve intercepted the ~package~ so whenever you’re ready for the hand off, I’m good
Most perfect fucking human being to…
Oh my god thank you so much!!!—
Is tomorrow at like 5ish good for you?—
Also send me your order—
so we don’t have to do that awkward waiting in line for drinks bit—
Holy fuck you multi-texted too! Spinner would roll over in his fucking grave, he hated when Jin did that. But there was always so much to say and he could never think of it all at the same time. Plus, you wanted to save him from that god awful silence where you both stand in line next but he can’t talk cause he has keep repeating his order in his head over and over or he’ll blank when he gets to the register so it’s just this painful weird glancing back and forth—
Ugh, maybe all the shit about manifestation that girl who always loaned him exacto knives in his sculpting class always talked about was real.
Cause there was no way you weren’t just heaven-sent, handcrafted especially for him and all his general brand of weird.
The hours which usually flew by without Jin’s notice dragged all that night. He was so full of excess energy that made his hand shake and his thoughts race, not sure what to do with themselves now that they didn’t need to fantasize about you.
He decided to use all that extra motivation to vacuum the kitchen at 4:30 in the morning, much to his roommates' chagrin. She liked to get a nice solid eight hours every night and constantly reminded Jin of this, trying to sell him on that sleepy time tea before bed, though he really hated the smell of camomile.
Magne may lose out on some of her beauty sleep—not that she needed it and Jin would tell her that constantly, even if he did have some patently horrible judgment most of the time so he wasn’t really the best at offering reassurance—but the kitchen would be clean when she woke up so win-win really.
When she did wake up—wandering out of her room looking effortlessly put together in a way Jin could never hope to emulate—she sat at the table, sipping her tea and appraising him worriedly.
Jin was still in his jeans from the day before, hair spiking in every direction but down, and chewing his nails nervously despite losing most of them to the hour or two of early morning floor scrubbing.
“Babe,” she shook her head slowly, “take a breath.”
“Yeah okay,” he sighed and inhaled deeply, letting himself slide off the couch cushions and to the newly sparkling floors on the exhale.
“There, now wanna share what the hell is going on?”
He glanced up at her from the hardwood and groaned as she looked back down, brows furrowed over her glasses.
“Huhh, okay. So that absolute work of art from the library is meeting me for coffee later cause I have trade over this book I sort of stole, it’s a long story, and I don’t know if it’s a date—it sounds like a date, cause that’s where people go for dates and shit—but it might just be to pay me back for stealing the book. And if it is I’ve only ever been on that one date before which was with fucking Spinner like two years ago so—”
Magne held up a hand to quiet Jin before the speed of his words tied his tongue in physical knots. She looked contemplative, taking another soft sip of tea and nodding her head for a moment getting up to crouch on the floor by his head.
“You think too much for your own good, but never about the right things,” she mumbled, smoothing some of the hair from his face. “Does it really matter if this is a date or not?”
Jin blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Well,” she chuckled in that way people do when kids ask them obvious questions—kindly, appreciative of the curiosity, “either way you cut it, you’ll be spending time with this person you like, yeah?”
“Mhm,” he hummed and sat up to face her as she stood.
“A date is just hanging out with a special name anyway,” Magne’s hands were firm but gentle as she hoisted Jin off the floor and onto his feet. “You’ll be fine.”
His shoulders slumped both in mild relief and dejection that he’d waisted so much precious time he could have been preparing possible topics of conversation or strategies to ask you out for real date on worrying over how this first time would go.
How did Magne always fucking know all this stuff?
Other people were such a mystery to him.
To be fair, though, Jin was a mystery to himself most of the time as well.
“Thanks, sorry for not saying anything about it earlier,” he sniffed as she smiled and pinched his cheek way fucking harder than necessary.
“It’s alright, I’m only a little insulted you waited until now to tell me about this massive crush you’ve developed.”
“Yeah it’s got its own gravitational pull at this point.”
Magne laughed at that and Jin felt the room lighten.
“I do expect details when you get back though,” she said pointedly, finishing her tea wandering back to her room to grab her bag. “Spinner asked me, very begrudgingly might I add, to fill in at another of his club tournament things tonight so I’ll be out late.”
“Really? I didn’t think you liked that stuff.”
Jin shuffled over to her doorway and peaked into the neat little space. Magne was rummaging through the meticulously organized closet and frowning as she answered.
“I do, Spinner just doesn’t agree with my battle strategies,” she huffed. “My alignment is far too ‘chaotic’ and ‘recklessly violent’ for his tastes apparently.”
“Oh, yeah that makes sense,” Jin laughed this time just envisioning the two of them stuck on a team. “Well have fun with that.”
“Yeah well,” she brushed by him into the hall, keys jangling as she went and calling over her shoulder. “Text me how it goes, and wear that new button up you got last week, it looks good on you!”
***
Much to Jin’s surprise and delight, Magne was right.
He was fine.
He was fine.
Fine was a bit subjective—as he was most certainly still highkey panicking on main as he got out of his last class and walked the short few blocks to the cafe on campus—but regardless he was perfectly okay.
Of course that all went right out the fucking window in the split second between him walking in and you already staring at the door as he entered. Your eyes widened just a bit and this smile broke out slowly across your cheeks when you waved him over and it was like suddenly every single creepy as hell day dream had just become reality.
It was a little overwhelming to say the least.
His heart may have actually stopped in his chest for a bit and he did contemplate the possibility that Kurogiri might have actually discovered his little plot, murdered him in cold blood and stuffed his body in the records room. This might all just be the afterlife, but that would mean that Jin had gone to some kind of heaven which didn’t really add up with his current tract record.
But it was fine.
Because you were really fucking easy to talk to.
Like, really fucking easy.
It was sorta strange actually, how you seemed to know all this shit he was into before he even really mentioned it.
After you traded off the goods, you both sat in the big comfy couches upstairs in the loft and you listened to him info dump, inevitably getting lost down innumerable unrelated tangents. You managed to keep up well enough though and not question the winding conversation.
“Damn,” he said, sipping at the last dregs left behind in his cup. “How do you know about all this stuff?”
“Uh,” you paused then, looking maybe just a bit sheepishly into your own drink. “I may or may not have spent a considerable amount of time eavesdropping into your conversations while you’re on shift.”
He saw flashes at that moment—dial up sounds going off between his ears.
Jin.exe has stopped working.
“...What?”
You grimaced and hid your face in your hands for a moment, “I know it sounds really creepy, my friends just sorta made a, um, game out of it? They tease me a lot about going to study at the library just cause of the cute guy that works there, so we all kinda stalk you a little bit just—wow this is sounding exponentially worse and worse every second.”
He gaped a bit despite himself as you cringed visibly and Jin tried to discreetly pinch his thigh to make sure this really wasn’t some sort of cruel, cruel fever dream.
“You think I’m cute…?”
He blinked once and your eyes shot up to meet his, a pained, half smile caught between your teeth. “I mean, yeah. I kinda thought I was being a bit obvious, sorry.”
“What no, holy fuck,” he spluttered, face on fire and legs bouncing restlessly against the couch across from you. “Don’t apologize, I have a, uh, staring habit too I guess.”
“I know,” you rubbed at the back of your neck and Jin didn’t think it was possible for you to be anymore endearing. “I’ve noticed, that’s like the whole reason I insisted on buying you a drink.”
“So wait is this a date?”
Jin wished almost immediately that he hadn’t asked, because Magne was right, it super didn’t matter but fucking shit on a stick he really wanted it to be a date!!!!
“Yeah,” you nodded. “If you’d like that.”
“Yes!—ah, I mean, uh yeah mhm,” Jin choked on his spit with enthusiasm, but it did earn him a concerned shoulder pat so he’d take the win.
It also afforded him the opportunity to walk you home after hours chatting until the streets were lit by burnt orange lamps and the cafe was closing. You didn’t live all that far from him actually and when you stopped to point out your door, the two of you were overcome by that telltale, charged silence.
Filled with potential.
Like a gas stove waiting for a spark to go up in flames.
It was you that struck the match.
“So, um, I promise I don’t just, uh, do this with everyone but, do you wanna maybe come inside,” you let your hand trail down his arm and slip into his palm, “I don’t feel like you’ve been properly compensated for saving my ass.”
Jin’s mouth was watering at the thought. He nodded slowly, eyes like saucers as you pulled him up your steps and through the door which shut promptly behind him.
Your place was nice in the sense that it fit you. He wasn’t really paying all that much attention to his surroundings as you locked the door and squeezed his hand in yours, leading him towards the end of the entrance hall.
When he stepped through to your bedroom, you toed off your shoes and he did the same, staring nervously and waiting for you to show him what exactly you meant by ‘further compensation.’
It was exactly what he’d hoped.
You approached him, still in the doorway, and stepped close so your chests brushed together. It was soft, the way you looked at him, sort of fuzzy around the edges while your hands trailed down his arms to place his palms at your waist.
It wasn’t like Jin hadn’t done this before—he totally had and definitely remembered all of it and wasn’t shit faced at all nope—but it hadn’t really mattered before. He knew in theory that he should take the lead, be a gentleman and make the first move and holy fucking god he was dying over there with the desire to finally live out his months and months of fantasies
But what if he did it wrong?
What if he ruined it now when he was so close to the finish line?
He’d never fucking forgive himself for it, and he could goddamn hear Magne in his head.
“You think too much for your own good.”
And he did, and he was right now, cause the room was only dimly lit by the street light streaming in through the window and you were reaching out to loop your arms behind his neck.
Should he lean down now?
Tilt left or right?
What if he clacked your teeth together?
What if—
Your lips were soft and hot against his, rubbing at the stubble on his chin before pressing close in that precious, puzzle-piece way human bodies fit together. He didn’t do much thinking after that.
His hands were too busy digging into the flesh of your hips separated by way to many fucking layers of fabric, and he couldn’t quite stop himself from indulging just a bit. Jin sucked gently at your lower lip, knees going weak at the glorious fucking sound you made in the back of your throat as he licked over the taught skin and tugged it between his teeth.
He could feel you smiling into his mouth, sharing breath and raking your fingers through the hair at the base of his neck. Jin groaned and you—fucking cheeky little bastard—slipped your tongue right past his lips and licked at the back of his fucking teeth like a popsicle in July.
Your hands in his hair hard tugged and his breath was coming faster, lips gliding against yours as the room turned to steam around him.
Through the haze he clung to the few remaining seconds of clarity.
Jin pulled away for one painful second to mumble against your lips.“You meant have sex, right?”
“Yeah,” your voice was barely more than a whisper, but you nodded frantically and rolled your hips against his.
“Ohh fuck, ‘kay good, thank god.”
For once Jin had nothing more to add.
And you weren't exactly willing to give him back his tongue long enough for any interruptions anyway.
***
“Holy fucking shit, look at you,” Jin gasped into your ear.
Both of your clothes had been discarded long ago, and he had your bare back to his chest while he sat propped against the headboard with your legs hooked on either side of his knees. It didn’t afford him the best view, but he got your head resting on his shoulder and pretty moans spilling right into his ear.
He didn’t need to see your pussy anyway.
The slick pouring out of your pretty fucking hole and coating his fingers as he pumped two of them into you was more than enough. His other hand wandered in the lovely expanse of space between your chest and your waist, running softly over the skin and pausing to pinch and roll your nipples just to hear you whine.
His cock was so fucking hard, trapped between your ass and his stomach, twitching every time you thrust your hips to meet the movement of his wrist.
“Jin, fuck please-”
You used his name every time you begged him for more and it was really going to his head.
“You’re so goddamn perfect, I’m gonna fucking ruin you,” he groaned and sunk his fingers deeper into your soaking cunt while his mouth dropped to your neck and sucked hard to mark you lovely skin.
He licked at the indents of his teeth, tasting your sweat on his tongue that tangled with yours again as your hand reached for his cheek and pulled him in. It was less of a kiss and more of a sloppy forming of your mouths that left you connected by a silvery string of spit that flashed in the low light. Jin sighed at the sight, rutting his hips against the cleft of your ass.
Your thighs twitched where they were spread and your hips lifted off the mattress to meet the languid thrusts of his fingers that curled up on every push in to hear the hitch in your breath.
He took pity on you and brought his other hand down to rub circles on your clit, listening for the telltale whimpers and the way your nails dug into his arm to find the perfect rhythm.
“I don’t really—mm, there fuck—feel like I’m paying you back right now,” you mumbled nipping your own trail of stepping stone bruises onto his throat as he picked up the pace and held steady on that sweet bundle of nerves.
“Are you fucking serious?”
He didn’t really mean to full on growl at you then, but just the thought that you’d really believe he wasn’t about to fucking drown in ecstasy just from watching you get off—just from touching, speaking, being in anyway acknowledged by you at all. Jin nudged your head to the side and bit down harshly into the crook of your neck, shuddering as you moaned and arched against his chest.
In any other scenario, he could never really find the right balance between too many words and not enough. The sheer volume of thoughts and interjections that raced like cars reaching the end of rush hour traffic made the formulation of any coherent conversation impossible, but now—
Now with your body so pliant in his hands, so willing and sweet and wanting him.
Wanting him.
What a concept.
He needed you to understand, to know how fucking over the moon, sunshine bright you had him burning.
And for once, he finally had the words to do it.
After all, he’d had months to prepare.
It was surprisingly easy to change your positions, to pull away from you for just a moment so he could roll and cage you on your hands and knees under him, ass in the air nestled against his cock.
“You really don’t think I’m getting anything out of this?” he groaned into you ear, rocking his length against you both for emphasis and because it felt so fucking good.
“Ah, well ya know,” your voice was so wrecked he was desperate to find out how much it would take for you to lose it entirely. “When you put it like that—mmh—I just feel bad you’re doing all the work. ”
You had this cheeky fucking grin on your face when you rocked forward so back so his cock slipped down to your dripping lips. The heat of your cunt was mesmerizing and it took a fuck ton of self control Jin was unaware he possessed to not ram straight into you right then.
“Yeah cause I’ve wanted to for fucking months goddamn it’s driving me insane.”
“What?”
Now that he’d started, Jin couldn’t find it in himself to stop. His hands dug hard into your hips, rocking so the tip of his dick caught your clit and you shivered below him, hot skin sliding with the motion of your bodies.
“It’s all I think about whenever I see you,” he was shaking when his hand reached down to grip himself, spreading your folds and soaking his length in your slick. “When you come in to work I just fucking lose myself thinking about how bad I want you to be mine, my pretty fucking thing to bring me coffee while I work and let me fuck you in the backroom.”
You whimpered under him, face pressed into the mattress as he draped himself over you, chest to back with his breath ghosting over your ear.
“Literal hours I just sit there at that awful fucking job and I only keep coming cause of you, cause I can watch you sit all cute in your chair and watch the way your cheeks squish up when you put your face in your hands and imagine they’re my hands and I’m about to spit in your fucking mouth so you remember who you belong too.”
“I—” you were nearly choking on the drool that soaked through your sheets as Jin lined himself up with your pretty little hole, pressing just the tip into your heat. “I didn’t think you ever—nggh, shit—noticed much about me.”
The corners of his eyes burned as sweat dripped down his forehead, he had to hold back a sob as he sheathed another inch into those perfect walls.
“Notice you? You’re all I fucking think about,” he pressed his lips softly against your shoulder, hands running from your chest to your sides as you took his cock and every word that slipped from his lips without complaint. “I could take such good care of you. I just fucking know it, just please, let me take care of you?”
“Fuck Jin,” your voice was closer to a sob than anything else but he needs you screaming. “You don’t really have to convince me—”
His patience had run out long ago, not even willing to let you finish before he’d sunk in to the hilt, spearing you on his cock with one final thrust. You ass was flush with his hips and his balls hung heavy and tight against the back of your thighs. The strangled little cry that worked its way out of your throat had gooseflesh erupting across his arms where he held you to him.
Jin couldn’t really be sure—it wasn’t like his brain was all that functional on a day to day basis and it most certainly was not now—but your walls clenching around him and that addictive warm, wet feeling milking his cock was on a whole other level than any fuck he’d ever had before.
There was something about the curve of your back against his chest, and the way you seemed to suck him in, drawing his length back in just seconds after he’d pulled out. Some about the feeling of your chest in his hands, of the sweat on your skin that he licked off in a long strip up your spine. Like you really were made for him. As though all those months spent in dream land, concocting your pretend lives together had spilled over into reality, molding you into the perfect shape to take him deep and hard and cry while you came on his cock just like he knew you were meant to.
“Oh, fuck yeah, gonna make you feel so good, I promise,” he mumbled, forehead pressed to the nape of your neck as his hips drew back and he sunk into you over and over again.
He needed you to moan louder, needed your neighbors on the other side of every wall to hear what he did to you, how he fucked you dumb on his cock and made you drunk with the pleasure of it—slutty and perfect and better than any fantasy he could ever concoct.
The room was filled completely with the wet slap of your bodies—his balls tightening up just at the squelch of you taking him—leaving only enough space for your cries and his grunting, no room left for any bitter doubt to creep in and ruin the sweetness in the air.
He could feel the surge growing in his stomach, the tensing in his thighs as his hips stuttered, but he needed you to cum first. Wanted to tip over the edge to the feeling of you spasming around him, so he let a hand slip from your hip to your folds. Jin only paused for a moment to run a finger around your stretched hole, feeling himself plunging into you, before drifting back up to your swollen clit and working the sensitive bud.
The mattress creaked and rocked along as Jin increased his pace, shifting his hips until his tip knocked against something that had your hands fisting in the sheets and your tongue lolling out in between cries of his name.
You didn’t give him much a warning, not that he minded really. Just a muffled shout with your head smashed into the pillows and the tightening of your walls surrounding him before he felt your whole body wracked with tremors so hard he had to wrap both arms around your middle and hold you while he rammed into you.
Jin wasn’t really keeping track of the filth that was pouring from his lips as he brought himself closer to release. A lot of encouragement, that you were taking him so well, cumming so pretty for him, mixed with a lot of thanks—for letting him have this, have you, for not casting him aside like everyone else always inevitably did.
He did have the clarity to drag one arm up and link your fingers together, pressing hard into the bed while blood pounded in his ears and his hips stuttered in their relentless rhythm. When Jin did finally cum, it was a strangely silent affair, all the words and sound that usually roared inside him dying on his lips as his cock spilled milky release deep inside you and your walls fluttered at the fullness.
And then it was as though every muscle in his body changed physical states.
Boneless, he collapsed onto you with a little huff. You didn’t even complain, just squeezed his hand tighter in yours and hummed at the weight of him.
“Well I think that was a, um,” you panted while he nuzzled his face deeper into your neck, “pretty equivalent exchange yeah?”
“I don’t know,” Jin kissed and nipped at the sweet skin of your shoulder, “I think you might have over paid a bit.”
You laughed, the joyous movement of your chest jostled him from your back and had his soft cock slipping from you in a gush of combined release. “I doubt that very much, I didn’t know I’d be getting to take your fucking load as part of the deal.”
“Shit,” he felt his heart seize in his chest, raising up on his elbows to look down as you turned to him. “I’m sorry, I should have asked.”
Your hand came up to stroke his cheek, clammy but welcome. He sat up enough so you could lay on your back and pull him back down to your chest amidst the sweat and cum slicked sheets.
“Don’t worry about it, I would have asked you to anyway,” you kissed the baby frizz at his hairline and if Jin hadn’t already melted into a puddle, then he certainly was now. “If I’d been able to talk at all.”
“Ha, yeah….”
A short silence descended in your dark bedroom. The noise of cars and the occasional shout filtered in through the window, but there was no other sound than your evening breaths. Jin tried not to ruin the peace while he had it.
It was such a rare commodity.
But he couldn’t say he mourned the quiet when you finally spoke.
“Did you wanna stay the night?” you asked in that soft way he always envisioned you would.
Soft so he’d know it was just a courtesy.
That you didn’t want him to leave.
“Uh, yeah, yes I would,” he stumbled over the words a bit, trying not to sound too eager but wanting you to know he would work a thousands shifts at the reception desk if it meant you held him for just a second longer.
“Good,” you sighed.
He felt you scoot down the bed and flopped onto his back so you could settle your head on his chest and drape an arm across his stomach. After another few minutes he felt you go limp at his side, soft and relaxed as you slipped away into dreams.
But though his muscles ached and his eyes felt heavy, Jin resisted the call to sleep.
He didn’t need to now.
You were here, in the flesh, and he could study you intently while his eyes were open.
No need for his brain to conjure up scattered images of you.
Because he had you now, tucked safely under his arm for him to keep and hold and fuck and love the way he wanted.
So there was no more need for sleep.
And no need for dreams.
#twice x reader#twice x you#jin bubaigawara x reader#bee writes#bnha fanfiction#college au#library!twice x student!reader#twice mha#bee.writes
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Ah, I do see your points, anon. I'm not going to post all your asks publicly because if you really feel that unsafe, it's probably best not to have a bigass chunk of your text for people to analyze and try to guess your identity from. I think one of the best points you made is about how close to home it hits when the non-fave is not only your fave but is similar to you in some way like demographic. You're not wrong for having those emotions. I do wonder if they make it hard to see how some other people feel similarly embattled on other axes.
TBH, I think one of the big problems here is that the large aggregate patterns you're talking about are racist, but most individual fics and fans are not really the problem. It's hard to know how to talk about this or who to tell to "fix" it when we're looking at free, hobbyist art.
A lot of people's tastes are certainly formed by shitty society, but once they're formed, they don't change fast if at all. Asking someone to rewrite their libido is a big ask, yet tumblr does it all the time as though it's as simple as snapping your fingers.
This leaves me with the sense that a lot of tumblr is... like... the political lesbians of porn fic or something: desire is not real, only choosing based on logic and politics. Or maybe people are so asexual that they just don't understand the lizard brain's "YES!" at some porn things and complete indifference to others?
I don't think it's great if great swaths of people feel like bottom!Nicky is super hot and top!Nicky fundamentally isn't, but I also don't think they can necessarily just turn it off like flipping a switch.
(If someone reading this doesn't like their current tastes and wants to attempt to alter them, I do think it's possible. What you should do is line up a large slate of media that prominently features characters of the ethnicity or whatever that you don't find hot/interesting. These should be leads whose emotional development drives the plot and is supposed to be central to the audience's enjoyment of the media. Watch/read/etc. this media all the time. All. The. Time. Try out many pieces because you won't like every character or every show, and we're looking for genuine enjoyment, not the fandom equivalent of a pity fuck. Spend enough time on this, and your unconscious sense of who's hot and interesting will eventually shift somewhat. This is a project you should expect to take a few years.)
But I digress.
The one tweet thing is a very toxic pattern. If TOG fandom is doing that, guys, please try to be more conscious of holding the actors of color to a higher standard (or the women or whomever). I know this often comes from a place of paying more attention to our own and wanting to set a good standard, but the effect is that minorities can't fuck up ever while white dudes get infinite passes.
Okay, on to the fic thing... Gotta say, my instant reaction to that description is "Ooh!"--as it would be for the same scenario with the characters reversed. (Ships who start out trying to kill each other are my favorite! x1000 if they're resurrecting style immortals and they literally do.) I can see how it would feel like slamming into a brick wall if you aren't kinky in just the right way and you didn't know it was coming though.
Part of why I react so strongly to a lot of discourse that runs along these lines is that I am a naturally extremely kinky person. It's not so much about what I do (which as a deeply lazy person in a long distance relationship is essentially nothing), but it's absolutely how I'm wired.
And I can tell you that my quotidian experience in fandom is sharing something I don't even realize is a big deal only to have someone I like, respect, and trust react in horror and tell me that it's triggering and awful and should not be allowed in fandom spaces because it makes "people" unsafe. It's such an instant, kneejerk reaction they don't even realize I was sharing it because it spoke to the very core of me. Lesson learned, friend. Lesson learned.
That sounds a bit off topic, I know, but bear with me: The point of that anecdote is that it's pretty common for me to get people trying to raise my awareness of things I have already thought deeply about while denying my essential humanity and not even realizing. As a kinky person who likes to make my fave the top (and generally a conflicted sadist), this constant request to explain and justify is exhausting.
I doubt most of the top!Joe fans have this precise problem simply because people who make their fave the top are much less common in fandom than people who make their fave the bottom, but I see a similar pattern with fans who are just fundamentally wired for rape fantasies (one of the most common fantasies that exists) vs. fans who just don't get rape fantasies at all. Or substitute your BDSM/kinky/messed up fantasy trope of choice. Covertly radical feminist attitudes towards kink and power are on the rise in fandom, and as a naturally kinky person, boy do I notice it!
I know that it feels like crucial activism to share these insights about why the ratio of top!Joe is hurtful, and the pain you feel is real. But it's also the case that it's a big ask to want people to listen. (Not me. Obviously, I routinely choose to engage with discourse. I mean overall.) The reason for that is that you're only seeing a fraction of what they do or who they are, and you don't know how many previous people they've listened to how many previous times. It's a very different situation from someone whose job is making some major TV series or movie or something. That person does, in my opinion, owe you some amount of listening.
Now, I'm not saying no top Joe fan was ever a jerk. I'll bet they were. There's a tendency to be rude and to publicly air your schadenfreude when you feel like everyone has been yelling at you. What I am saying is that a lot of the problem here boils down to conflicting needs, and that means there isn't a good solution. It's a situation where people are genuinely hurt, but I don't necessarily agree that other people have harmed them.
I like that you did an actual count of the explicit fics, btw. It's good to look at the real numbers. I see too little of that in these situations. My off the cuff reaction is that 2/3 to 1/3 is not a bad ratio at all compared to many fandoms, but yeah, it definitely shows a strong trend, and that can be painful. (I have a fandom where I think there's maybe like 1 bottom so-and-so fic in the entire zine era fandom. One. It's pretty extreme.)
I guess my thinking here overall is: What is the practical solution? What are we hoping to gain? What is reasonable to ask of people?
And it can't be "Well, if they would just listen..." That's just a sneaky way of saying "If you haven't done it my way, it's because you haven't listened to me yet."
So the question I would ask of people is this:
What does a non-racist fic where Joe tops look like?
What does a non-racist sex pollen, dubcon, or even noncon fic where Joe tops look like?
And if you say the latter is impossible... well... sadists exist everywhere in the world. So do doms. So do people who prefer to top in a purely physical sense. People with rape fantasies where they're the rapist exist (people who are not actually rapists, I mean). None of this is restricted to any one group. We can't categorically say fic like that about Joe is coming from a place of racism without denying the fundamental humanity of kinky MENA people who'd want to make Joe like themselves or like their ideal partner. (Yes, I agree this won't be the majority of fic writers writing top!Joe, but this is a place to start for figuring out what the better version would look like.)
IDK, maybe you're that kinkster yourself, but your asks gave me the vibe that you don't really get the drive towards those darker kinds of fics and what might be motivating it besides stereotypes and shittiness.
If we can answer these kinds of questions, we can better critique the way people write what they write without telling them all of their taste is bad and they should just stop writing. Even if we think the latter is true, it isn't going to get us anywhere. Figuring out how to make Joe more multidimensional in the fic they already want to write or finding very specific wording that should be avoided might actually work.
Beyond that, the actions I think are productive would be running prompt fests, exchanges, or other events for bottom!Joe or for top!Joe where he's the main character and the fics are required to be from his POV. Themed collections and recs lists are great. (I've seen a bit of this going around in TOG fandom in the past, and that's an excellent approach! Keep it up!) Positive actions tend to work better here. Make more of what you want. Promote what you want to see.
I don't mean this in some fluffy magical thinking way: you aren't going to change that ratio radically just by the power of positivity. But I've seen this kind of thing play out in many, many fandoms, and going after the people who write what you don't like, even in a well-intentioned effort to educate and even in a polite, kind way doesn't do much. A few people feel guilty. A few feel defensive. A lot ignore you. The overall fic doesn't change. It's not a good use of your limited time and energy.
I'm off to look up that fic to see what I think of it in practice, but I'm going to post this before tumblr manages to eat it.
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Five years ago, the women on this site who treated me like trash over loving Labyrinth and shipping Jareth/Sarah were almost always obliviously consuming Radfem propaganda, or were out and out Radfems/Terfs themselves.
They were the types of people who casually threw the word “pedophile” around against grown women who shipped an adult Sarah with Jareth, aka literally one of the most popular ships for women in fandom for 30 years.
Pretty much invariably, these women had serious sex-negative anxieties, which included a severe paranoia about any and all kink and fetish, and porn in general. I saw a lot of shocking, fear-mongering propaganda surrounding sexual expression. Pretty much invariably, their method of approach involved immediate personal shock-value attacks on anyone they perceived to be “bad.”
Today, you can look at the way some people react to other popular so-called “problematic” ships and recognize the same toxic, fear-mongering rhetoric coming from women who consider themselves regular, trans-inclusive feminists. Sometimes it even manifests in the words of very well-meaning people (including myself here), who feel the need to talk about specific issues that pertain to their own experiences of trauma and oppression.
The people who shit on Labyrinth often seem to not really be able to comprehend that the Goblin King, like the film itself, is canonically a representation of a teen girl’s psyche, a soup of fears and anxieties and desires and dreams. He’s not a literal human adult preying on a literal child, and to read the film that way seriously undermines the entire point of the film.
When I (and people of many fandoms) say “This is fiction, calm down,” I’m not just saying it’s not real so it cant hurt you and you can’t criticize me. I’m trying to call attention to what fiction actually is - artistic representations of feelings and experiences. The Goblin King is Sarah’s fiction. Therefore, he can be anything she or any woman who identifies with her wants him to be, including her lover when she’s grown and ready for such a thing.
I once took an alarming dive into Beetlejuice fandom to see what content was there (the cartoon was a favorite when I was little). Chillingly, what you’ll find is an extremely wounded fanbase, with a sharp divide between the older women who had long been shipping BJ/Lydia because of their love for the cartoon series (and whom were previously the vast majority of the Beetlejuice fandom), and a massive amount of young people riding the wave of the musical fad who had decided that the entire old school Beetlejuice fandom was populated by literal pedophiles.
I saw death threats. Suicide baiting. Constant, constant toxic discourse. It did not matter how the BJ/Lydia fandom dealt with any particular issues that would exist in their ship, in fact I’m certain that the people abusing them cared very little to even consider if they were trying to handle it at all. The only thing that mattered was that they were disgusting subhuman scum asking for abuse. If you have at any time reblogged recent Beetlejuice fan art or content from fans of the musical, you have more than likely been engaging positively with the content of someone participating in toxic fandom behavior.
Nobody is really sticking up for them, either, as far as I saw. It’s really hard to imagine how painful it must be to have such a large group of people explode into into your relatively private fandom space to tell you that you are evil, vile, and deserve constant abuse, and also you are no longer allowed into the fandom space to engage in it’s content. But I think there’s something very alarming indeed about this happening specifically to the BJ fandom, and I’ll explain why.
The pop-culture characterization of Beetlejuice, which is heavily influenced by the cartoon series to be clear, has always in my mind been a vaguely ageless being who matches with the psychological maturity of whatever age Lydia is supposed to be. He’s more or less like an imaginary friend, a manifestation of Lydia’s psyche. In fact, I would argue that i think most of us who grew up with the cartoon or it’s subsequent merchandizing before the musical ever existed probably internalized the idea as BJ and Lydia as this ageless, salt-and-pepper-shaker couple beloved by the goth community, similar to Gomez and Morticia. In each version of canon he may be a creepy ghost in the literal sense, but any adult who is capable of identifying literary tropes (even just subconciously) would read cartoon!BJ as an artistic representation of a socially awkward outcast girl’s inner world. Lydia’s darker dispositions and interests, which alienate her from most others, are freely accepted and embraced by her spooky magical friend. BJ/Lydia in the cartoon were depicted as best friends, but to my memory there was always an underlying sense that they had secret feelings for each other, which I identified easily even as a small child. In fact, their dynamic and behavior perfectly reflected the psychological development of the show’s target demographic. They are best friends who get into adventures and learning experiences together, who have delicate feelings for each other but lack any true adult romantic/sexual understanding to acknowledge those feelings, let alone pursue them.
Though I haven’t seen the Musical yet, I’ve read the wiki and I would argue that it embodies this exact same concept even more so for it’s own version of the characters, in that Beetlejuice specifically exists to help Lydia process her mother’s death.
This is not a complicated thing to recognize and comprehend whatsoever. In fact, it looks downright blatant. It’s also a clear indicator of what BJ/Lydia means to the women who have long loved it. It was a story about a spooky wierd girl being loved and accepted and understood for who she was, and it gave them a sense of solidarity. It makes perfect sense why those women would stick with those characters, and create a safe little space for themselves to and imagine their beloved characters growing and having adult lives and experiencing adult drama, in just the same ways that the women of the Labyrinth fandom do. That’s all these women were doing. And now, they can’t do it without facing intense verbal violence. That safe space is poisoned now.
Having grown up with the cartoon as one of my favorites and been around goth subculture stuff for decades, I was actually shocked and squicked at the original Beetlejuice film’s narrative once I actually saw it, because it was extremely divorced from what these two characters had evolved into for goth subculture and what they meant to me. It’s not telling the same story, and is in fact about the Maitland's specifically. In pretty much exactly the same way two different versions of Little Red Riding Hood can be extremely different from each other, the film is a different animal. While I imagine that the film version has been at the heart of a lot of this confused fear-mongering around all other versions of the characters, I would no more judge different adaptations of these characters any more than I would condemn a version of Little Red in which Red and the Wolf are best friends or lovers just because the very first iteration of LRRH was about protecting yourself from predators.
I would even argue that the people who have engaged in Anti-shipper behavior over BJ/Lydia are in intense denial over the fact that BJ being interested in Lydia, either as blatant predatory behavior a la the film or on a peer level as in the cartoon (and musical?) is an inextricable part of canon. Beetlejuice was always attracted to Lydia, and it was not always cute or amusing. Beetlejuice was not always a beloved buddy character, an in fact was originally written as a gross scumbag. That’s just what he was. Even people engaging with him now by writing OC girlfriends for him (as stand-ins for the salt-and-pepper-shaker space Lydia used to take up, because obviously that was part of the core fun of the characters), or just loving him as a character, are erasing parts of his character’s history in order to do so. They are actively refusing to be held responsible for being fans of new version of him despite the fact that he engaged in overt predatory behavior in the original film. In fact, I would venture to say that they are actively erasing the fact that Musical Beetliejuice tried to marry a teenager and as far as I’m aware, seemed to like the idea (because he’s probably a fucking figment of her imagination but go off I guess). The only reason they can have a version of this character who could be perceived as “buddy” material is because...the cartoon had an impact on our pop cultural perception of what the character and his dynamic with Lydia is.
We can have a version of the Big Bad Wolf who’s a creepy monster. We can have a version who’s sweet and lovable. We can have a version that lives in the middle. We can have a version who’s a hybrid between Red and the Wolf (a la Ruby in OUAT). All of these things can exist in the same world, and can even be loved for different reasons by the same people.
I’ve been using Beetlejuice as an example here because it’s kind of perfect for my overall point regarding the toxic ideologies in fandom right now across many different spaces, including ones for progressive and queer media, and how much so many people don’t recognize how deeply they’ve been radicalized into literalist and sex-negative radfem rhetoric, to the point where we aren’t allowed to have difficult, messy explorations of imperfect, flawed humans, and that art is never going to be 100% pure and without flaw in it’s ability to convey what it wants to convey.
This includes the rhetoric I’ve seen across the board, from She-Ra to A:TLA to Star Wars to Lovecraft Country. We don’t talk about the inherent malleable, subjective, or charmingly imperfect nature of fiction any more. Transformation and reclamation are myths in this space. Everything is in rigid categories. It is seemingly very difficult for some of these people to engage with anything that is not able to be clearly labeled as one thing or another (see the inherent transphobic and biphobic elements of the most intense rhetoric). They destroy anything they cannot filter through their ideology. When women act in a way that breaks from their narrative of womanhood (like...not having a vagina), then those women must be condemned instead of understood. Anything that challenges them or makes them uncomfortable is a mortal sin. There is an extraordinary level of both hypocrisy and repressive denial that is underlying the behavior I’m seeing now. Much like toxic Christian conservatism, these people often are discovered engaging in the same behaviors and interests that they condemn behind closed doors (or just out of sheer cognitive dissonance). As an example, one of the people who talked shit to me about Labyrinth was a huge fan of Kill La Kill, which to my knowledge was an anime about a teenage girl in like, superpowered lingere (hence why I stayed the fuck away from that shit myself). Indeed, they even allow themselves plenty of leeway for behavior far worse than they condemn others for, and create support systems for the worst of their own abusers.
Quite frankly, I’m tired. Instead of talking about theoretical problematic shit, we need to start talking about quantifiable harm. Because as far as I can tell, the most real, immediate, and quantifiable harm done because of anybody’s favorite ships or pieces of media seems to consistently be the kind that’s done to the people who experience verbal violence and abuse and manipulation and suicide baiting and death threats from the people who have a problem.
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*SFW* Wildflowers (Bakugou)
He hadn’t shown it, but he was very angry with you.
An inordinate amount, yet there wasn’t room to do much about it without looking insane.
Your quirk wasn’t something he didn’t notice, it was manipulative and sneaky.
The quirk was certainly notable in that he’d never heard of it before that point, someone producing pheromones to influence the people around them accordingly was a powerful thing to have on your side.
But for someone who was trying to become a hero, you had a seriously sadistic sense of humor.
He didn’t notice it at first but now it was becoming a problem.
Obviously, you were toying with him.
The reason? He couldn’t say, there wasn’t any discernible gain beyond embarrassing him.
Maybe that was the end goal then - keep him from his top performance by distracting him.
In the span of two months he’d gone from refusing to memorize any names, to knowing your schedule like the back of his hand, and that was a major problem.
It was an unintentional side effect, he wanted to be sure of wherever you were so he could try to prepare himself for your fuckery.
He spent a lot of time trying to recall if he’d known you in the past, why you would torture him like this.
Though he never dredged up anything meaningful, at no point before UA had you even attended the same school as him.
At first it was a light annoyance, something he could dismiss as initial nerves brought on by someone who could have power over him.
But it was getting unmanageable, he was wasting his time thinking about your dumbass when he was supposed to be focusing on his studies or counting the number of pushups he was doing.
You can’t be worth all this stress and attention, he knows there has to be an outside source.
Why on earth would he feel this way otherwise?
Somehow you’ve managed to become his greatest annoyance but also the one person he never minds being around.
Somehow, pft, it was obvious that you’ve been using your quirk to keep him from being a threat, keep him away from being better than you by softening him up.
The worst part of it all was your own passiveness.
You acted like you didn’t even know him while doing this to him, rarely looking in his direction and never speaking to him unless spoken too.
He was losing control of his own thoughts, getting visibly upset whenever Kaminari said a single thing about you.
For his own sake he just chalked that talk up to Kaminaris delusional teenage antics, as if you’d ever give that freak the time of day.
Why did he care? Why should he care? He never felt anything in that degree when Kaminari picked anyone else, what makes you so radically different?
Things were getting messy for him, blurry and confusing, too many questions piling up that had only one answer.
You were ruining his mind with your stupid quirk.
It’s your own fault! You’ve infested his soul at this point, rewiring him to brainwash him into doing whatever you ask.
Today was the last straw, he can’t take this anymore!
Every day he just waits for you to ask him for whatever you’re building up too, knowing in his heart that you’re about to take advantage of what you’ve been planting within him.
He’ll be damned if you turn him into a cowering sidekick.
The moment he knew for sure you’d be in your dorm, he made a plan.
Well, ‘plan’ being the surge of adrenaline that filled him at the prospect of tiptoeing around you for the rest of his time at UA, potentially even once he became a pro.
He decided he’d confront you, make you stop, and everything would go back to normal.
After this he could finally resume his climb to #1 without your claws pulling him down.
It’s that thought he repeats to himself like a mantra as he speed walks over and kicks the door of your room wide open.
You yelp and nearly jump off your bed, the combination of being scared like that and seeing the boy responsible nearly ejecting your soul out of your body.
“I’m sick and tired of your fuckin’ bullshit!”
He stomps inside, kicking the door a second time to close it.
You stifle the urge to scream, scrambling away until your back hits the wall, hands up as you try to defuse the situation.
“Wait, wait! Hey now w-whatever you think I did, I swear I didn’t, if you’ll let me-”
“Shut the fuck up! There’s no hypothetical here, you’re fucking with me for fun and if you don’t stop it right now I’m gonna kill you!”, he curls his lip up, sparks lighting up in his palms as he tries to force a confession out of you.
“... What?”
You’re completely lost, letting your confusion show as your shoulders drop.
“Don’t you ‘what’ me! Keep playing ignorant and see where that gets you!”, he raises his voice up another notch, taking a step forward.
“I’m not an idiot like the rest of those extras, I see what you’re doing! You really think someone as smart as me wouldn’t notice!?”
“I never said you were an idiot! But I swear to god I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
You spout anxiously, pulling your knees into your chest, feeling fully cornered.
He just rolls his eyes, closing the gap between him and the edge of your bed.
“Oh so now you act all pathetic when I call you out on it to try and get me to feel bad? It isn’t gonna work! I-!”
When he inhales he catches onto the smell in the air, eyebrows knitting together as he feels an instant calming effect from it.
“... The fuck?”
“That’s my quirk, that’s what it smells like when I want someone to calm down,” you shakily explain, still holding your hands out like you’re going to have to push him away, sending out as much relaxation pheromones as physically possible.
His shoulders roll back and he stops making his standard ugly expression, face zeroed out in a way you’ve only seen once or twice when he gets invested in something enough to forget he’s around others.
It’s cute, but right now it's more of a sign he’s no longer about to throttle you.
“Yeah this is familiar in a way, when we’re in training I think. Guess I never noticed it could be pretty. Usually I’m just pissed that you’re trying to beat me.”
For once he’s using an inside voice, which feels oddly personal since you’ve only heard him screaming. It almost seems like whispering in comparison.
“So you can choose to make it scented? Masking it so people don’t see it coming is smart. But it’s not so smart now since I know what you’re doing.”
“Mask it? I kinda can’t, the point is that people breathe it in, if they can’t smell it then it doesn’t really work. I really do mean it when I say I have no clue what you think I’m ‘up to’.”
You begin to ease off the output, not wanting to knock him out, which you’ve accidentally done before.
“No you have to be, it doesn't make any sense otherwise. You’re doing something or I wouldn’t be feeling this way. Don’t bother lying to me, I’ve already caught you.”
He’s still passive but he crosses his arms over his chest, tilting his head.
You give an exasperated huff, “Feeling what way!”
“It’s so fuckin out there that I’m surprised you don’t use this tactic more in training. It’s totally obvious that you’re doing something to make it so I’m the only one who can smell your stink. You’re manipulating me, otherwise there’s no way in hell I’d be so dopey around you. Why the fuck else would I notice whenever you’re gone? Feel compelled to return your pens that you always drop since you’re such a klutz?”, he speaks as if it’s common fact, rolling his eyes as he continues, “You rope me in daily with these little details that you heighten by using your quirk, and then it’s like you have no idea who I am. Since you’re so comfortable living in my head, you should’ve seen this coming.”
That's much more than you expected him to say, a light pink dusting across the bridge of your nose at the confession he has unintentionally given you.
“I-I can’t remember a single time you’ve done that,” is all you can think to say.
He clicks his tongue against his teeth, lolling his head from side to side as he formulates a response.
“It’s just like when return all the shit you drop but you pretend to not notice, and you’re doing the same thing right now. It was confusing at first but now I’m just getting irritated that you keep playing dumb. Stop working your dumb stinky magic to turn me into your lackey, get someone else to do your dirty work if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“Bakugou I’ve never done that to you, I wouldn’t!”, you stammer for a half second, making a judgement call on how you should handle this, and deciding to come clean.
“I actually… I really like you…. I-I respect your work ethic, how strong you are, confident as well, I wanted to gain your attention through the right ways!”
You sit up on your knees and make eye contact with him, trying your best to convey how much you mean what you’re saying.
“If I wanted you drooling on my shoes then you would be, but everyone around me would be doing the same, my quirk isn’t selective like that. But I wanted to get noticed by you more than I wanted to chance annoying you as a first impression… I really wanted to have a reason to approach someone like you first.”
“Well that’s a stupid way to go about it. I can’t afford to have these kinds of distractions so if anything you put a lot of effort into just, wasting my time.”
He’s nearly hesitating on some words.
But he pulls himself together, staring you down for a moment.
“So I’m done with this. I’m not doing this anymore, I’m done playing games.”
You can’t understand the logic here.
He comes barging into your room, demanding you stop making him like you against his will, and when he finds out it’s organic plus you feel the same way, he somehow manages to reject you?
It stings, a lot.
“Yes or no.”, he sternly interrupts your quickly spiraling thoughts.
“Yes or no..?”
Flat out confused for the millionth time, you blink a few times, pulling back the tears that threatened to spill over at his initial rejection.
“I’m not asking again.”, he curtly spits out.
“But what are you asking yes or no for?”
You squint at him, unsure and waiting for him to say something along the lines of ‘Yes to dying or no to living’.
“Are we dating or not! Yes or no goddamnit!”
He’s blushing brighter than you at this point, eyes pointed to various places in your room where you aren’t, shifting in place uncomfortably.
Suddenly it dawns on you.
Even after hearing your returned confession he doesn’t think you’ll say yes.
“Yes, Bakugou, of course.”, you say with a warm smile, reaching forward to hold his hand.
His sigh of relief as he relaxes his posture strikes you as intensely adorable, though your heart skips a beat when he shoots you a smirk.
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
#bakugou katuski x reader#sfw#bakugou katsuki#gender neutral reader#gn reader#bakugou fluff#mha fluff#fluff#a03 fic
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On Pokemon Difficulty Hacks
When romhacking Pokemon first got big, you saw many an attempt to make proper fresh experiences and truly new games. Naranja, Quartz, Ruby Destiny and the like. The ambitious attempts of people who didn’t know just how much effort would be required to finish anything remotely resembling a finished product, though in fairness. Romhackers didn’t have teams, usually, maybe a couple helpers for spriting or beta testers, but the majority of people just wouldn’t have the time, energy, or lasting ambition to make something like that work.
In this era, where tools were limited but popularity was growing, it was perhaps unsurprising that many other hackers went for the “386” style of hack. Because, frankly, one of the first things someone is going to think of when it comes to making a Pokemon fangame is “what if you could catch all the Pokemon in one game?”. And from there, the train of thought naturally continues- if the player isn’t as restricted in teambuilding as the usual Regional Pokedex system makes them, why not have that for the NPCs as well? And while I’m at it, the games are usually really easy, and everyone playing them is going to be an enfranchised Pokemon fan, so why not pump up the difficulty a bit? Hence, the difficulty hack was born.
I suspect you can attribute much of the root of this to one man- Drayano, easily one of the most well-known romhackers around. The creator of Sacred Gold/Storm Silver, Fire Red Omega, Blaze Black/Volt White (and BBVW2), and of course, Renegade Platinum. I don’t well enough know if Dray popularized this kind of hack or just followed an existing trend, but (with the exception of FRO) the versions he created ended up being, and probably still are today, the definitive difficulty romhacks for their respective original titles. They weren’t just difficult, but they had a level of effort put into tuning their difficulty that most were unable to replicate- especially considering how difficult DS hacking was at the time and especially in Renegade Platinum.
Dray’s hacks were the only real hacks of their kind that I can think of getting major attention. They’re difficult but fair, making for a good gameplay experience, and thereby a good watching experience as youtubers, let’s players, and streamers flock to do playthroughs and catch ‘em alls and Nuzlockes. The nature of this kind of project means that only one version is really going to stand tall- sure, you could play Bloody Diamond or Obsidian, but why would you when you could just play Renegade Platinum? I will acknowledge that Obsidian was possibly the best Platinum hack before RenPlat, but its age is showing. The only exception I can think of is Fire Red Omega- owing to Gen 3 hacking being significantly easier and better explored, it had competitors, such as Yet Another Fire Red Hack by DoesntKnowHowToPlay or Fire Red Advanced by Z-nogyroP, among many others.
For the record, I have no doubt that with DS hacking becoming easier and better understood, SGSS, BBVW, and even RenPlat will be replaced in time. Possibly even soon- the scene got much bigger last year on account of breakthroughs and also people being stuck inside.
I would have thought, in 2021, that difficulty hacks would likely have died out, that they would have been replaced as resources such as disassembly/decompilation and the CFRU make more complex projects significantly easier. I was, surprisingly, wrong, though the nature of the games has changed a lot. Previous hacks in this discussion served as more difficult versions of existing games, with more freedom in teambuilding and some added features. But the modern “difficulty hack” is another beast entirely. The two I’d like to highlight in particular are Radical Red and the Kaizo games.
RadRed is the culmination of the aforementioned CFRU (Complete Firered Upgrade), a demonstration of its capabilities in porting both the entire 2021 catalogue of Pokemon into a game from 2004, but in showing the advances in AI and modern Pokemon mechanics (with refinement) to push the limits of how hard a Pokemon game could be. Every major fight plays like a competitive match, with the average playthrough necessitating frequent team rebuilding, and dedicated EV training and IV breeding. Radical Red (aside from basically stealing the best name I could ever use for a Romhack) is extremely difficult, requiring both a tactical mind and a bottomless well of Pokemon knowledge to play well.
The Kaizo games, by one Sinister Hooded Figure, are difficult in a different way entirely. Blue and Crystal Kaizo are actually getting older by this point, both of them releasing in 2014, but 2017’s Emerald Kaizo is the one that is getting the most buzz as of late. The Kaizo games (named for Kaizo Mario World) are crushingly difficult, built to be Nuzlocked and make you suffer doing it. An accelerated level curve, NPCs featuring legendary Pokemon that you have no access to (including Blue Kaizo giving your Rival a Mew from the very first battle), and the earlier games having extensive edits to maps necessitating fighting every battle, churning through dozens of Wilds in extended endurance segments, and fighting bosses and accessing resources in extremely inopportune ways. Emerald Kaizo has less of this but adds difficulty in the form of expert-level AI and the game forcing you into loads and loads of treacherous double battles. In addition, while Radical Red adds future additions and competitive-style gameplay, the Kaizo games lean into their rage game roots, with many a trainer using high-variance moves or items like the Quick Claw. A Critical Hit is problematic in a normal game, in Kaizo they’re ruinous. RadRed is the culmination of the years of Fire Red development, while Kaizo presents vanilla mechanics pounding you as hard as possible.
It may come as some surprise that I’m actually not a huge fan of either of these.
As much as I love difficulty, the experiences these games present just fall on the level of unfun for me. Grinding is boring, and they often necessitate that, and I’m not a huge fan of every single opponent being a significant enough threat that I need to pay serious attention in every single battle. It’s frustrating, because I want to like them, but they’re just too much.
But these games remain popular, and I think a large reason for that is simply because watching other people play them is quite entertaining. Streamers and Youtubers have flocked to these games, challenging their might, and often failing to conquer them. They’re an experience best had while slightly removed, it appears- the approachability barrier broached by having a proxy.
I’m sure people exist that are superfans of this kind of hack. I know they do, since I’ve seen folks who’ve done multiple playthroughs of Radical Red, and those who’ve stuck it out to actually complete a Nuzlocke of each and every Kaizo game. But they aren’t for me, and that’s okay. I am not surprised that these hacks continue to stay popular, and I expect them to continue and stay relevant as long as Pokemon Romhacking continues. With that in mind, I think I’d prefer more Dray-style hacks at this point.
You can find all of Dray’s hacks on his Drive here. Radical Red can be found at this link, and here’s Blue, Crystal, and Emerald Kaizo. And….fuck it here’s YAFRH and Fire Red Advanced, they’re both classics at this point.
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CW for discussion of suicide
- She's the crazy ex-girlfriend
- What? No, I'm not.
- She's the crazy ex-girlfriend
- That's a sexist term!
- She's the crazy ex-girlfriend
- Can you guys stop singing for just a second?
- She's so broken insiiiiiide!
- The situation's a lot more nuanced than that!
There’s the essay! You get it now. JK.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the culmination of Rachel Bloom’s YouTube channel (and the song “Fuck Me, Ray Bradbury” in particular where she combined her lifelong obsession with musical theatre and sketch comedy and Aline Brosh McKenna stumbling onto Bloom’s channel one night while having an idea for a television show that subverted the tropes in scripts she’d been writing like The Devil Wears Prada and 27 Dresses.
The show begins with a flashback to teenage Rebecca Bunch (played by Bloom) at summer camp performing in South Pacific. She leaves summer camp gushing about the performance, holding hands with the guy she spent all summer with, Josh Chan. He says it was fun for the time, but it’s time to get back to real life. We flash forward to the present in New York, Rebecca’s world muted in greys and blues with clothing as conservative as her hair.
She’s become a top tier lawyer, a career that she doesn’t enjoy but was pushed into by her overprotective, controlling mother. She’s just found out she’s being promoted to junior partner, and that’s just objectively, on paper fantastic, right?! ...So why isn’t she happy? She goes out onto the streets in the midst of a panic attack, spilling her pills all over the ground, and suddenly sees an ad for butter asking, “When was the last time you were truly happy?” A literal arrow and beam of sunlight then point to none other than Josh Chan. She strikes up a conversation with him where he tells her he’s been trying to make it in New York but doesn’t like it, so he’s moving back to his hometown, West Covina, California, where everyone is just...happy.
The word echoes in her mind, and she absorbs it like a pill. She decides to break free of the hold others have had over her life and turns down the promotion of her mother’s dreams. I didn’t realize the show was a musical when I started it, and it’s at this point that Rebecca is breaking out into its first song, “West Covina”. It’s a parody of the extravagant, classic Broadway numbers filled with a children’s marching band whose funding gets cut, locals joining Rebecca in synchronized song and dance, and finishing with her being lifted into the sky while sitting on a giant pretzel. This was the moment I realized there was something special here.
With this introduction, the stage has been set for the premise of the show. Each season was planned with an overall theme. Season one is all about denial, season two is about being obsessed with love and losing yourself in it, season three is about the spiral and hitting rock bottom, and season four is about renewal and starting from scratch. You can see this from how the theme songs change every year, each being the musical thesis for that season.
We start the show with a bunch of cliché characters: the crazy ex-girlfriend; her quirky sidekick; the hot love interest; his bitchy girlfriend; and his sarcastic best friend who’s clearly a much better match for the heroine. The magic of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is that no one in West Covina is the sum of their tropes. As Rachel says herself, “People aren’t badly written, people are made of specificities.”
The show is revolutionary for the authenticity with which it explores various topics but for the sake of this piece, we’ll discuss mental health, gender, Jewish identity, and sexuality. All topics that Bloom has dug into in her previous works but none better than here.
Simply from the title, many may be put off, but this is a story that has always been about deconstructing stereotypes. Rather than being called The Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, where the story would be from an outsider’s perspective, this story is from that woman’s point of view because the point isn’t to demonize Rebecca, it’s to understand her. Even if you hate her for all the awful things she’s doing.
The musical numbers are shown to be in Rebecca’s imagination, and she tells us they’re how she processes the world, but as she starts healing in the final season, she isn’t the lead singer so often anymore and other characters get to have their own problems and starring roles. When she does have a song, it’s because she’s backsliding into her former patterns.
While a lot of media will have characters that seem to have some sort of vague disorder, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend goes a step further and actually diagnoses Rebecca with Borderline Personality Disorder, while giving her an earnest, soaring anthem. She’s excited and relieved to finally have words for what’s plagued her whole life.
When diagnosing Rebecca, the show’s team consulted with doctors and psychiatrists to give her a proper diagnosis that ended up resonating with many who share it. BPD is a demonized and misunderstood disorder, and I’ve heard that for many, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the first honest and kind depiction they’ve seen of it in media. Where the taboo of mental illness often leads people to not get any help, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend says there is freedom and healing in identifying and sharing these parts of yourself with others.
Media often uses suicide for comedy or romanticizes it, but Crazy Ex-Girlfriend explored what’s going through someone’s mind to reach that bottomless pit. Its climactic episode is written by Jack Dolgen (Bloom’s long-time musical collaborator, co-songwriter and writer for the show) who’s dealt with suicidal ideation. Many misunderstood suicide as the person simply wanting to die for no reason, but Rebecca tells her best friend, “I didn’t even want to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. It’s like I was out of stories to tell myself that things would be okay.”
Bloom has never shied away from heavy topics. The show discusses in song the horrors of what women do to their bodies and self-esteem to conform to beauty standards, the contradiction of girl power songs that tell you to “Put Yourself First” but make sure you look good for men while doing it, and the importance of women bonding over how terrible straight men are are near and dear to her heart. This is a show that centers marginalized women, pokes fun at the misogyny they go through, and ultimately tells us the love story we thought was going to happen wasn’t between a woman and some guy but between her and her best friend.
I probably haven’t watched enough Jewish TV or film, but to me, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the most unapologetic and relatable Jewish portrayal I’ve seen overall. From Rebecca’s relationship with her toxic, controlling mother (if anyone ever wants to know what my mother’s like, I send them “Where’s the Bathroom”) to Patti Lupone’s Rabbi Shari answering a Rebecca that doesn’t believe in God, “Always questioning! That is the true spirit of the Jewish people,” the Jewish voices behind the show are clear.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend continues to challenge our perceptions when a middle-aged man with an ex-wife and daughter realizes he’s bisexual and comes out in a Huey Lewis saxophone reverie. The hyper-feminine mean girl breaks up with her boyfriend and realizes the reason she was so obsessed with getting him to commit to her is the same reason she’s so scared to have female friends. She was suffering under the weight of compulsory heterosexuality, but thanks to Rebecca, she eventually finds love and friendship with women.
This thread is woven throughout the show. Many of the characters tell Rebecca when she’s at her lowest of how their lives would’ve never changed for the better if it wasn’t for her. She was a tornado that blew through West Covina, but instead of leaving destruction in her wake, she blew apart their façades, forcing true introspection into what made them happy too.
Rebecca’s story is that of a woman who felt hopeless, who felt no love or happiness in her life, when that’s all she’s ever wanted. She tried desperately to fill that void through validation from her parents and random men, things romantic comedies had taught her matter most but came up empty. She tried on a multitude of identities through the musical numbers in her mind, seeing herself as the hero and villain of the story, and eventually realized she’s neither because life doesn’t make narrative sense.
It takes her a long time but eventually she sees that all the things she thought would solve her problems can’t actually bring her happiness. What does is the real family she finds in West Covina, the town she moved to on a whim, and finally having agency over herself to use her own voice and tell her story through music.
The first words spoken by Rebecca are, “When I sang my solo, I felt, like, a really palpable connection with the audience.” Her last words are, “This is a song I wrote.” This connection with the audience that brought her such joy is something she finally gets when she gets to perform her story not to us, the TV audience, but to her loved ones in West Covina. Rebecca (and Rachel) always felt like an outcast, West Covina (and creating the show) showed her how cathartic it is to find others who understand you.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the prologue to Rebecca’s life and the radical story of someone getting better. She didn’t need to change her entire being to find acceptance and happiness, she needed to embrace herself and accept love and help from others who truly cared for her. Community is what she always needed and community is what ultimately saved her.
*
P.S. If you have Spotify... I also process life through music, so I made some playlists related to the show because what better way to express my deep affection for it than through song?
CXG parodies, references, and is inspired by a lot of music from all kinds of genres, musicals, and musicians. Same goes for the videos themselves. I gathered all of them into one giant playlist along with the show’s songs.
A Rebecca Bunch mix that goes through her character arc from season 1 to 4.
I’m shamelessly a fan of Greg x Rebecca, so this is a mega mix of themselves and their relationship throughout the show.
*
I’m in a TV group where we wrote essays on our favorite shows of the 2010s, so here is mine on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, I realized I forgot to ever post it. Also wrote one for Schitt’s Creek.
#crazy ex girlfriend#crazyexedit#cxg#ceg#crazy ex gf#writing#mine#mental illness#bpd#mental health#spotify#music#playlist#essay#*
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(Casey Here!)
As much D&D as I play, you'd imagine I would eventually get around to illustrating some of their most iconic monsters! Which is to say, the ones that I personally find the most iconic. Which is to say, the ones I memorized when I was reading my dad's monster manual at age nine.
Purple worm - Sandworms never go out of style. I've seen a lot of rad designs for this bugger over the editions, but I favor the slightly less reptilian older takes for this particular critter. It's kinda basic, but sometimes that's what you want. It's like a shark or a crocodile: Just flat out unchanged across the ages.
Hook horror - I've heard it rumored that Gygax used a small Gigan figure to represent this monster. I can't verify that, but it definitely sounds right. Hook horrors are one of the very first things you meet when you play around in the caves, and they kind of remind me of the Father Deep monsters of the Hork Bajir homeworld that way.
Mind flayer - Mind flayers! Basically, take all of your Dracula conventions and dip them in a fresh coat of Lovecraft. There's that old "decadent aristocratic upper caste system who literally eats the poor, but still somehow comes across as less evil than the actual real life 1%" setup that will never stop being relevant. Though personally, I see mind flayers as the first alternative for folks who want to play that monster-who-feels-the-urge-to-eat-their-friends-but-refuses-to-do-it shtick but don't want to deal with vampire baggage. You know, the furry option! ... Slimy? Rubbery? Do we have a word for anthro-cephalopods? I'm only a casual furry.
Gelatinous cube - I'm not apologizing for giving this one a slot.
Froghemoth - So, back when I participated in my very first long-term campaign, I played a druid. You've met Talia before. Naturally, I was chomping at the bit for the day I finally got to turn her into a froghemoth, and celebrated the day my wish was finally granted and she was allowed to chug human-supremacist-cultists like popcorn.
Yeah, okay, the froghemoth is one of the classic vore-monsters. But it's a charming design in its own right. Kind of a freaky Hanna Barbara critter, like you'd see Space Ghost fighting. No matter how many artists draw it, they can never shake that inherent goofiness that third edition tried so hard to purge. I would probably cram them somewhere onto Fronterra if I was sure they were public domain. As is, I'm 99% certain that this is what Visser Three turned into when he ate Elfangor.
Tarrasque - D&D's original kaiju! Kind of just takes the name and nothing else when it comes to its mythological origins, but I don't mind. The Tarrasque is that endgame "let's test the players" final boss monster... Or at least it's supposed to be. My DM reskinned it for our final Pathfinder session, and one of the PCs still nearly killed it in a single turn. Also, he let Talia turn into one, so maybe Pathfinder is just bullshit?
Regardless, the Tarrasque has one of those simple, iconic designs. I've heard rumors it was based on the concept art for Fallout's deathclaws, and like the Gigan-figure, I can't verify this in any way. With its reptilian features, twin horns, spiny carapace and grabby fingies, it has an undeniable lizardlike quality that I can't help but find charming. Kinda feels like a more refined version of Zilla? Though for an insatiable eating machine, I notice a lot of artists give it very little belly to work with. Come on, this guy eats entire cities! Give him somewhere to put it!
Rust monster - An icon of icons, the rust monster! Drawing its origin from a bizarre Chinese "dinosaur" toy, later designs have made it more insectoid in appearance, but never feeling QUITE like anything Earthly. It's the four limbs. Between the four limbs and the tail, it's hard to tell if it's an arthropod mimicking a vertebrate or the other way around. I'm pretty sure this is part of what inspired my ossaderm creatures for Fronterra.
Also, Ryla can turn into one in our campaign. I have no shortage of havoc to wreak when the opportunity comes.
Behir - Dragons in D&D are kind of... extra. Godlike beings, paragons of whatever personality trait they represent. Whenever there's something uber powerful in D&D, it gets compared to dragons. It makes them kind of unapproachable.
Behirs provide all the essentials of a dragon - Serpentine body, scaly skin, horns, sapience, breath weapon, taste for human flesh - wrapped up in a smaller, weirder, IMO cooler package. You know, your Lambton Worms. A lot easier to port in and out of adventures, a lot less of an event when they show up, but still a formidable force in their own right. I like the behir. The behir knows how to taunt me just the right amount.
Bulette - Another Chinese "dinosaur" figure monster, the bulette is actually another one I associate with Talia. Whenever we faced a problem that didn't have a glaringly and immediately obvious solution, she would turn into a bulette, whether it was for beating up robots, digging through obstacles, trampling smurfs, navigating labyrinths, distracting slashers with cute dog tricks... it was kind of her signature form.
But shenanigans aside, the bulette is just an excellent monster. While the "land shark" shtick may be common, there's a lot more going on with the bulette's design. It's rumored to be a mad wizard's creation, as he combined a snapping turtle with an armadillo and mixed in a helping of demon blood to taste. Personally, I always considered that to be a neat little rumor to flesh out the world, but never assumed it to be true. The bulette just feels too naturalistic for that. Like some kind of protomammal or crocodylomorph, or weird triassic monstrosity. Magic and demons and dragons and so on DO affect the ecosystem. I always figured the bulette was just something that evolved to compete in this new biosphere.
Owlbear - This one, on the other hand, I fully believe the "mad wizard was bored" explanation. Another chinasaur critter, the owlbear is frequently made fun of. What makes it scarier than a regular bear? It can't fly, so why have owl parts at all? Why trade fangs for a beak in what is at best a latural move?
Well, first of all, fuck you, owls are creepy motherfuckers, and that alone is enough to justify it. But secondly, that's part of its charm. Besides some improved vision, the owl DOESN'T make it more dangerous. What makes the owlbear dangerous is that it's an insane, Frankensteinian monstrosity roaming uncontrolled through the wilderness! It doesn't need weaponry, its sheer temperament is enough to make it a worthy opponent. Sure, the practical threat might not be hugely above that of a bear, but storytelling isn't about numbers. Any asshole can go outside and get eaten by a bear. The owlbear is part of this world. The owlbear is a reminder of what magic can do. Someone somewhere actually made this thing, for whatever reason, and now the world is irrevocably changed because of it. Owlbears go beyond practicality. They bring the lore!
Also, bears don't have very good eyesight, so the big owl eyes probably make them better hunters.
Flumph - Is that a Japanese-style martian? Do we just have aliens in D&D? Dear lord, I love them!
Okay, the flumph has got a sizable hatedom. And that hatedom can eat my ass, because the flumph is precious and perfect just the way it is!
Flumphs are designed as a sort of sidekick-type creature. They're not very good fighters, but they bring knowledge and lore to the table. Whether they're aliens from some far off star, seeking your aid to prevent catastrophe, or psionic natives of the Underdark eager to bask in your positivity and hopefully stick it to the tyrants they're forced to share real estate with. My group generally treats them as straight up aliens, benevolent but strange. Course, we're all pretty strange, so we get along just fine.
Otyugh - Okay so, the aberration creature type implies that this is something from another world that doesn't belong. And yet otyughs, which are aberrations, are an essential part of this world's ecosystem?
Okay, I can buy the idea that an alien organism adapted to our world and is now a key part of it. Fronterra's got a TON of that. It just feels like after a point, the otyugh would be considered a beast?
Otyughs are great. Every ecosystem needs a decomposer, and every fantasy story needs at least one dive into the sewers. Otyughs provide both, and are intelligent enough to keep the plot moving if it hits a snag. There's always going to be garbage, refuse, carrion, decay, things that need to be broken down and processed.
Carrion crawler - The carrion crawler is pretty similar to the otyugh in that it's technically not considered a beast, and therefor must have its origins elsewhere, but feels so integrated into the ecosystem that it just feels like it belongs. They usually can't talk, so they're not just reskinned otyughs, but I still consider them pretty essential. Otyughs find a singular spot where waste is dumped and shovel it down at their leisure, while carrion crawlers skulk through the tunnels, actively seeking their food.
The crawler got one of the most radical redesigns on the transition from second to third edition, but I can't really choose a single favorite. The oldschool tentacle-faced cutworm looks like it could be a real animal, while the googly-eyed Halloween decoration feels like it could be from another world, merely having set up shop here. Could there name apply to two wholly different creatures?
If so, then I'm not sure which one mine would be considered. I kinda mashed them together into something that doesn't quite feel like either. But I like it for what it is. Maybe I'll sneak it onto Fronterra.
Aboleth - Tentacled, telepathic sea creatures who turn humans into slimy minions, who remember everything their race has ever seen, and who are always plotting something behind the scenes. Yeah, the aboleths really crank up the Lovecraft elements. Actually, between the mind flayers, the flumphs and the aboleths, even the most oldschool D&D covered quite a few essential Lovecraftian bases. The flayers are your corrupt yet still recognizable humanoids who can be considered truly evil, the flumphs are benevolent-yet-bizarre guardians who know more than you, and the aboleths are the truly unknowable, sinister intellects.
The fact that they can barely function on land honestly only adds to that, IMO. They're inherently difficult for a party to reach, and they offer some nice underwater adventure seeds. Not enough adventures go underwater. There's this perception that the ocean is bad for storytelling because so many writers lack the creativity to make it work. I wanna run an underwater adventure now.
Beholder - Icon of icons! THE D&D monster! The beholder! Paranoid, jumpy, always five steps ahead and twenty steps perpendicular! Beholds are fun in just about every way. Between their wacky, diverse designs, their elaborate lairs, their eccentric personalities, their bizarre powers, you're never gonna run out of fun with beholders.
Remorhaz - It's always been a thing that bothered me with environment-based monsters. Why does the ice monster who lives in the cold use ice as a weapon? Aren't most of the things it encounters going to be resistant to the cold? Sure, a cone of cold will still kill a polar bear, but a lot of the monsters in the tundra are outright immune to cold. A while dragon's not going to get much use out of its breath weapon fighting frost worms and frost giants.
That's one reason the remorhaz sticks out to be. We have an icy tundra beast whose insides are a scorching furnace, which it can intensify and weaponize as it sees fit. Which also conveniently explains why its design - a sort of cobra-esque centipede - invokes warm-weather creatures, despite its icy environment. It's a nice subversion of the usual tropes, plus it's just a memorable, cool looking critter to begin with.
On a smaller note, the remorhaz feels like a good loophole for Ryla's "no cold weather morphs" rule. Turning into something elementally affiliated with ice is no good, but a non-magical monster that survives the cold by superheating its insides? That seems perfectly viable to me!
#RiftWitch#My art#D&D#DND#Dungeons & Dragons#D&D monsters#Purple worm#hook horror#mind flayer#illithid#bulette#froghemoth#tarrasque#rust monster#behir#owlbear#flumph#carrion crawler#aboleth#beholder#remorhaz
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Thoughts on Love, Victor Season 1
PSA: If you think that you might be gay, don’t get a girl emotionally invested! Please!
Ya know, at first when I thought about what I was going to write about this show, I thought that I should split the writings into the first half/last half of the show. Now I’m thinking “screw it”, if only because if I was going to go that route I should have stopped, parsed through my feelings about the first 5 episodes, and written those thoughts before proceeding with the next half. That, of course, did not happen, so to prevent the back half of the season’s events from miring the first half, I’ll just write about the whole shebang. There’s probably a joke about that word somewhere, I’ll try not to make it.
Anyways, let’s start by saying that on the whole, I really liked this show. It was not as good as Sex Education season 1, yet in my opinion waaaay better than HSMTMTS season 1. Most of the characters were likable and felt developed enough, it moved at a nice pace, and you can tell that a lot of heart went into this. Perhaps because we all watched this in a day, it felt like a 5 hour movie rather than a 10 episode tv show.
Additionally, I of course like the Latinx representation. The intersectionality of the Latinx community and the LGBTQ+ community has been presented on at least five TV shows to my knowledge: Ugly Betty, One Day at a Time, Diary of a Future President, The Baker and the Beauty, and now Love, Victor. Let’s keep it up!
As for the premise of the show itself, I *love* that this show acknowledges that Simon’s journey, at least at his house, was leaps and bounds easier than many other people’s. Victor’s parents are more conservative and religious, and they don’t have their shit together, so this is not the best environment to drop that bombshell in (which is why it was so incredible when Victor decides to do it anyway). Simon and Victor’s DM’s being a framing device for the show was a great way to tie the universe together.
The hook of Love, Simon was that you know all those cheesy and cliche rom-coms that straight people have gotten since the dawn of time? Well LGBT people deserve those stories too! Love, Victor is sort of presented with that same thesis in mind, which is why watching these episodes felt like different things I’ve seen before all over. The whole season ironically feels like Alex Strangelove: The TV Show, right down to the often cringy relationship with the girl, the openly gay love interest who conflicts our protagonist, and the goofball friend who chases after a girl who is seemingly out of his league.
Mia’s character felt a lot like Laila from All-American, being a black girl who is ordained as the hottest girl at school (which I feel like is a title only given in fictional schools), who also has a missing mother and problems with her rich dad. Pilar, on the other hand, feels like Casey from Atypical, in that she is openly rebellious in large part because of her mother’s infidelity.
Victor’s story this season sure was something to watch. The biggest question for me was, just how much sympathy should he be given? The world is inherently unfair to Victor. None of us should have to go through the agony and anxiety that so often comes with being in the closet and coming out. But for Victor to have visited those problems on Mia, who is going through things herself? That makes him pretty morally gray.
But he was still finding himself! But he loves Mia, just not like that! I get it, which is why he should have cut things off as soon as he got back from New York, no he should have cut things off when she asked him if there was “anything else” in her bedroom, no he should have cut things off when he literally felt like he and Benji were the only two people in the room at the concert, no he really shouldn’t have done this to begin with.
The line between Victor finding himself and him deceiving Mia is the conflict of the show, but the moment for me when I was like “Damn, Victor” was after he intentionally derailed Mia’s shebang-ing that she planned, he found the gall to lie to Benji and plan a seduction! That is why the season finale was so glorious. Because yes, while the world is unfair to Victor, he’s being unfair to the people around him.
I have made it a point not to read other people’s opinions extensively so as not to bias my own thoughts, but is Felix everybody else’s favorite? Felix’s character and arc was great. He was a supportive friend yet still felt like he had a story and stakes of his own, something which some TV shows get right (Sex Ed) and some TV shows get various shades of wrong (Jamie Johnson, Andi Mack). I like that he knew his worth and cut things off with Lake, and I like that she realized that her happiness with him should take priority over what others think of her.
I was soooo sympathetic to Mia. Her world is being turned upside down at home. Clearly, she has not even processed her mother being out of her life, and now her Dad is “replacing” her Mom while the baby is also “replacing” her! In Mia’s eyes, at least. Mia just needs to know that she is loved and appreciated. Which she *thought* of all people she’d be able to get from her boyfriend. Shucks.
As for the rest of Victor’s family, I also thought the parents’ storyline was pretty interesting yet unfortunate. Armando just can’t come around to trusting Isabel, which I actually kind of understand. Isabel, meanwhile, is being prevented from doing the thing she loves to do, which sucks especially because she’s in a radically new environment. Adrian is of course great, protect him at all costs. Pilar’s seemingly permanent mode of “angsty” is completely justified, as her friends back in TX are moving on just fine without her, she’s having trouble opening up and fitting in, and her family is WYLIN.
Some things that didn’t go so well for me was Andrew’s character, who feels like he’s just there to obstruct at any given moment. Y'all knew that when Victor and Benji were having that convo in the bathroom, someone was in the stall and someone was Andrew. Also, my guy, how are you not even somewhat aware that you are a total douchecanoe? I liked Benji, but Venji didn’t quite work for me because of all of the cheatation that it took to get there. Benji was pissed and ready to stay away from Victor permanently after the [attempted seduction], but once his relationship was over he was completely fine with putting his tongue down Mia’s boyfriend’s throat.
Overall, I really enjoyed this show. Some of these teen dramas I’m admittedly only watching for the LGBT content, so to have that be at the forefront of a show for once was amazing. The conflict was realistic if frustrating, and to me most of the characters seemed fully realized. Thankfully, the show didn’t even feel too “spin-offy” even with Nick Robinson being all over it.
In any given multi-season serialized show, the trajectory of the show goes one of two ways: the first season puts your feet on the ground of the series, and then later seasons go above and beyond with the storytelling (The Office, Breaking Bad, Bojack Horseman, Jamie Johnson) OR the first season is pretty great TV, and the following seasons fail to live up to its glory (The Good Place, Dear White People, really most every Netflix show ever). Which category Love, Victor ends up in is something to look forward to. Where do we go from here now that Victor is taking his first steps out of the closet?
Stray thoughts from the episodes:
The soundtrack on the whole, was not my cup of tea. I still liked a couple of songs, so that means somebody out there liked more of them.
I completely forgot Natasha Rothwell was in Love, Simon. More of her! More of Ali Wong! More of Beth Littleford! They were all great.
So Roger got his ass beat by Armando, and he still wants to get back with her?? Roger is reckless, man.
Speaking of reckless, Victor’s closet skills completely fell apart towards the end there. Assume somebody’s always watching!
Lake’s mother is a trip.
Good for the family for standing up to the grandparents.
Oh my god, Simon and Bram. Those guys are mine, and now they’re growing up and moving to the Big Gay City. They’ve come a long way.
Speaking of the Big Gay City, we were in Atlanta for a season and got *0* acknowledgement of the vibrant gay community there. More things to look forward to.
Was anybody else singing Selena along with Isabel? That is my favorite Selena song!
By rule of Felix being a male and Pilar being a female close in age, I immediately thought they were going to be a thing. The writers didn’t pull that thread too much...
That moment at the end there when we all thought Victor was going to hold off on his announcement only for him to go “fuck it” and say it anyways? And then he got to exhale? Perfect. chef’s kiss
What with June being Pride month, the SCOTUS ruling a couple of days ago, this entire show premiering today, and Delliot things going down in less than 24 hours, this will likely be the gayest week of the year. I suggest we all enjoy it.
Stay Peachy!
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The Good Place season four full review
How many episodes pass the Bechdel test?
92.3% (twelve of thirteen).
What is the average percentage per episode of female characters with names and lines?
50.67%
How many episodes have a cast that is at least 40% female?
Twelve, eight of which are at least 50%, and two of those are 60%+.
How many episodes have a cast that is less than 20% female?
Zero.
How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?
Twenty-six. Thirteen who appeared in more than one episode, five who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.
How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?
Twenty-three. Thirteen who appeared in more than one episode, six who appeared in at least half the episodes, and two who appeared in every episode.
Positive Content Status:
Solid as it’s ever been; though this season did exhibit the one and only time in this show that I ever felt they had a truly bad take on things, altogether it is not really diminished in its feel-good quality (average rating of 3.07).
General Season Quality:
Spotty. As with all other seasons after the first one, it doesn’t really know what it wants to do, let alone how to get there. It’s at its best when it is just settling down and telling its story with close character focus instead of being in a hurry to get nowhere in particular, and while it gets almost tedious towards the end, it finishes with unusual aplomb.
MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) under the cut:
As per usual, I’m not going to linger too long on this one, because final-season reviews always end up intersecting with full-series discussions to a significant degree, since both conversations are about culminations and endings. What I am going to talk about here - relevant to the full series, but most notable for this season - is the issue of drama for drama’s sake, ever-increasing stakes, and not actually planning out your fucking plot in advance. I’m referring (mostly) to the utter ridiculousness of the centrepiece of this season, the ‘delete the Earth’ thing.
All of these things have been discussed before, and we know the basics: drama for drama’s sake is cheap and empty, you can only increase the stakes in something if your audience is invested, plot requires cohesion in order to matter and make sense. These things all feed into one another, since nonsensical plot creates empty dramatic spectacles in which there are no genuine stakes because the plot doesn’t matter, etc, etc, and the ‘delete the Earth’ distraction really encapsulates all of it: we the audience aren’t foolish enough to think the whole world is about to be wiped out, so the stakes are too high to be believable, and even if the world WAS wiped out, it wouldn’t matter to the characters because they’re already dead and there are no fundamental ties to the material world which will be missed by a bunch of souls that aren’t around to miss them anymore anyway. The idea of the Earth being rebooted is way too hypothetical to have any impact as plot; the drama has no emotional value because it has no connections, and the ever-escalating stakes game has gone too far, and become as empty as it is ludicrous.
And then there is - as discussed in the relevant episodes - the fact that the show got so caught up in the escalating-stakes game, and so disconnected from the idea of an overarching plot, that the whole conclusion to the experiment which prompted ‘reboot Earth’ as a solution had...little if anything really to do with the problem that seeded the experiment in the first place. This is the thing that really, truly baffled me; how do you, as a creator, lose sight of your own story to such an egregious degree? How little idea must you have of the story you’re trying to bring to a close, that you could end up throwing in a Final Hurdle that is not only this ridiculous, but also this irrelevant? Honestly, I can’t offer an explanation. This is in no way the worst show I’ve ever seen, but this particular element is one of the most colossal narrative blunders I have ever heard of.
I will float one theory though, which doesn’t really explain how the writers forgot the intention of the experiment but does, perhaps, relate to how their discussions on where to take the plot may have ended up so severely diverted: it’s about ‘The Answer’. As I said in the relevant episode post, I don’t think that the audience (by and large, there are always outliers) truly expected the show to come up with a Single Immutable Truth About The Universe, and I feel as though the writers backed themselves into a corner all of their own making in order to avoid providing such an answer. The result seems to have been an effort to focus in on individualism above all else, and in doing so, the narrative allowed systemic criticisms to fall to the wayside. Moral concerns in the real world are rendered meaningless when you’re going to go off to a specially-tailored afterlife that’ll teach you how to be Good Now, allowing endless time and space for blunders and no ultimate consequences, and so none of the ethical concepts the show had toyed with matter anymore. Evils of Capitalism? Who cares! The swamp of inter-generational poverty (and all related conversations about privilege)? Shut up, Jason! Literally nothing matters anymore, you can come into the afterlife having suffered or made others to suffer all kinds of privations and disadvantages and cruelties, and we don’t care about questioning circumstances, we’ve got a handy-dandy twelve-step program for your soul! I’m, ah, a little cynical about it. In hand-waving the fact that the Afterlife Points System failed to account for a changing world and the difficulties it presents, the show also kinda shrugged off moral living in favour of nihilism (’never mind, we’ll fix it later’) in order to avoid letting any serious criticisms of real-world social or economic structures colour its final statements. Again, I wasn’t expecting them to lay out a plan for how to solve all the moral ills of the real world, but I also was not expecting this weak avoidance which kinda begs the question: if you had nothing to say about morality, why did you start the conversation in the first place? It’s not like any of the ideological concepts they had brought up were too radical for them to use to make a point, instead of just a noncommittal reference. Anyway. My point is this: I think the creative team had so little vision of where they wanted this show to end up, they scared themselves out of their own plot. The rest, is full-series talk.
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Do you have any headcanons about how the Polycule helps alter downworld relations? Like obviously it’s not just them, but having high-ranking/leading downworlders all loving/trusting each other is bound to make a difference. Although I hate the whole vampire/werewolf rivalry in the show, I like to hc the tension as stemming from 1. The Clave being a dick and working to separate oppressed communities and 2. The fact that immortality/mortality really makes a difference in POV.
YEAAAA BOIII
i mean i completely agree about the vampire/werewolf thing (i mean i just answered an ask about that and stuff so u know). like i don’t hate it in concept but i hate the execution, it could have been great and shown us a lot about how white/shadowhunter supremacy works to alienate different oppressed communities and this make organizing and fighting back harder or even inviable, but nooo of course they had to go with naturalizing the whole thing because god forbid there’s good lore and metaphor
anyway! i do think that the polycule does a lot to change that, not even (just) because of their relationship, but because, they, like... truly believe in bringing their communities together and making them stronger, and are all actively working to do that as leaders. it’s part of what even got their relationships started, really - the fact that they had all been working together to bring their communities closer, and halfway through they realized, oh shit i might actually love them
but getting into more detail!
i have already talked many times about how i think that after the whole jonathan fiasco, seelies would have wanted to radically change their external policies, because, well..... it clearly was only working against them and their own rights and needs, including those to leave the realm, interact with other species (that’s part of their nature! they’re one with all beings, how can they be isolated from them??) and just general freedom, you know? and it didn’t even help them keep physically safe, much to the contrary. the world almost ended and they wouldn’t have been kept safe
and whether or not u hc meliorn as the new seelie queen or as keeping their position as a kind of.... ambassador in this realm, they’re extremely valuable, because they’re one of the few seelies who actually know about the non-seelie cultures, customs, political relations and etc. since most seelies were kept away in their realms, they don’t know where to start, and meliorn has very valuable knowledge, plus again, they’re very loyal to the seelie realm and want to see them thriving
so meliorn definitely works to get the seelies to build meaningful relationships with other downworlder communities. it helps that they already know magnus, raphael, maia, and luke, all important people in that sense. i’ve talked a little bit about how i think their attempts to get closer would go - offering tokens of alliance to other downworlders, teaching warlocks about the workings of their own magic and their knowledge on the forces of nature and ley lines, just generally trying to pick their interest and build something together
i definitely think that seelies would consider education the way to go here - they are the keepers of knowledge after all, so that’s definitely something extremely important in their culture. a treasure if you will. and they know how teaching, exploring, learning and creating can bring people together, help them understand each other, and form meaningful alliances. after all, building knowledge together means that a part of how you think is inherently tied to the other’s culture, and that makes alienating, stereotyping or turning people against each other a lot harder
i say “building knowledge” because i know “keepers of knowledge” kind of implies that knowledge is... a kind of substance, that exists, that can be contained. but really knowledge is ever chaging, it is constantly creating and recreating itself as we create new languages and tools to describe, understand and think of the world around us. and we’re always creating new things too, new technologies, new concepts, new machines, new spells (in sh lore), new laws and societal organizations and ways to help each other.... the world is ever changing and so is the way we think about it. and seelies know that too; they might be immortal, but they’re not static, because the world isn’t either. that’s also why i think that being locked away from other realms was particularly violent towards them - they were being forced into a state of unchangeness that goes against their very nature, that alienates them from their own core
anyway! sorry for nerding out about science and the nature of knowledge. what i’m trying to say here is that for seelies, knowing other cultures and getting educated, educating, and just thinking are extremely precious and valuable. so i definitely think that through things like, i don’t know, creating magical schools where them and warlocks can share their different knowledges and way of using magic, sharing their own conceptualization of the world and listening to others’, trying to create new things together, is a powerful way to build alliances, know each other, and make each other stronger. you know? so in that sense they basically bet on education as a way to bring communities closer, and raise new people with a new mindset who see things differently, in a less... prejudiced, i guess? way
i feel like warlocks are the ones who have the best relationship with the other downworlder communities - possibly because they are needed by all of them - so magnus would be the one who would have the least work to do here dauhdsauhd i mean not that he’s part of the polycule but you know. he kind of acts as consultant to all of them, and sometimes, warlock territory can be some kind of neutral ground for other downworlders to discuss and negotiate, knowing that they’re all welcome and that they aren’t at risk because all shadowhunters are there. pack and clan territories are no-nos and the seelie realm is still adjusting to some quite radical changes, not to mention can be a little unsettling because many people have simply never been there. so i think warlock spaces can become very important territories for other downworlder leaders to meet, build strategies and share
we’ve also seen a little bit on how saia helped build a new paradigm for vampire/werewolves relationships in canon, how their bet was on building communal spaces and communities, you know? like places where they could all coexist and meet, like Taki’s. with raphael into the mix, that’s just. a very promising territory
with raphael in it it means that Taki’s is officially co-run by werewolves and vampires, which in itself makes it feel a little safer - like, vampires might not be as willing to go to taki’s before because it was a werewolf place, even if it wasn’t really, you know? but with raphael there it most definitely isn’t, and that helps them feel a little more comfortable, more willing to go and also to be open and meet new people instead of keeping to their usual circles
also! there’s the very specific situation within the NY clan. we see in sh canon how seelies are a society, warlocks are a community, and werewolf packs are a family, but the NYC clan is not like that at all. it seems like they like each other (mostly) but they’re scattered, they’re not really an unit, or a community
this is definitely because of camille - decades of having a clan leader who did her very damn best to keep other vampires oppressed under her rule and dependant on her meant letting their ways of mutual support dwindle, their relationships fail, and their existence be centered on the dependency they have on her. so once raphael becomes clan leader, he has a lot to do, and the first step is to rebuild the NY clan itself
which. i’ve mentioned in passing in many asks, i know! but i just love the idea of raphael slowly turning the clan into a community, into family, again. getting rid of all the ridiculous cold-feeling, unwelcoming decoration and creating a big, attractive communal space, with less harsh lightning, more colors, more places to sit, games, fucking TV, books. spaces where they can be together and share and create and just chill, you know? the interior design of camille’s clan was extremely hostile, it was built for people to be kept away and segregated in their little spaces, not together, and i’m absolutely sure this was intentional. so raphael takes important steps in the opposite direction: making the place welcoming, lively, theirs
it’s not just the place, either. once the war is over and they finally have the chance to breathe, raphael also changes radically the way things are run. instead of a highly centralized leadership, he starts discussing decisions with the whole clan, putting it to a vote. soon his work is way less making decisions and way more organizing their routine so they’re able to make them, together. soon everyone is participating in decisions. soon they’re making sure everyone’s needs are being met
soon they are building their own supporting spaces for vampires battling addiction (since that’s a huge problem for them for many reasons), soon they are getting closer to warlock scholars/therapists and such that can help them with these issues, building alliances in that sense too, where they can help each other with their communitie’s needs. soon they’re getting pets because why the hell not? (cats in particular love raphael) and every stray has a home in the clan because well. they are all strays, lost and found there. life is a lot better, and happier, and once the clan is strong enough to get back on its feet and empower vampires again, then he starts working on getting closer to other downworlders, especially the werewolves
which is how we get to taki’s because again! i’m a slut. look, raphael is a great cook and he’s good at organizing stuff and he understands food in a visceral way that means he also understands what taki’s is all about - he understands that food is community, it’s culture, it’s bringing people together. he’s probably the person who best understands the concept of taki’s the way maia does, a place to bring people together, a place to build a new future. just by hearing about it, he immediately gets what maia’s idea with taki’s is, and just by hearing raphael talk about food, she immediately knows that raphael is perfect to help her. so they get to it
but taki’s is just, well, one thing. i mean it’s a very important thing that they both worked extremely hard on and that brought amazing fruits that they never truly expected. it becomes a safe space, a hangout place, a place for people to meet others and to seek help when needed and to discuss politics and downworlder relations, all in one. the tables are big and communal and the place is messy in the best possible way, with everyone mingling, talking, getting to know each other without being overwhelming. and it’s great, and maia and raphael are extremely proud of the work they’ve done there, and sometimes they kind of just lie back and look at what they have created and it’s like. wow. and they smile at each other and raphael kisses her hand and says “it’s all because of you, bella” and she smiles so brightly at him and laces their fingers together and-
back to politics. yes. community building. i can do this. i can not be a whore for maiaphael for one second. i believe in myself
anyway they also make it a frequent thing to just like, meet? and create a vampires-werewolves alliance that doesn’t just spam NYC, but all their allied clans/packs and tries to bring them all together in other places, too. it’s a long work, but they slowly make a lot of progress and help bring their communities together as a whole and end the whole dumbass rivalry thing. they push back against shadowhunters and the specific laws and mechanisms they created to pit them against each other, they kind of create a common political agenda that highlights all the things that they have in common, because there are many. and it’s just. wow. incredible? like they get so much done and make such a big difference and aaa
and i mean obviously like you said that’s not just them. all the downworlder communities are really working the best they can to become stronger and closer together (warlocks play a very important part in this too, not just serving as neutral ground but actively trying to start groups like that in different regions, bringing representants from the places where alliances like this have worked to help make them in different places with different contexts, etc) and it’s an amazing team work and im just wow so proud of them i love them. but they definitely work a lot, very actively, to make this happen, too (and magnus as well, and the rest of their people) and it’s just :’) incredible. and yeah i mean their relationship is also iconic in a lot of ways, which also helps because damn, if two vampires, a werewolf and a seelie can be in a four-way relationship and be so clearly happy and thriving and achieving so much stuff together, what happens if all the downworlders unite? and i just duaihdsiahda love that for them
#i actually quite like this answer i hope its satisfying to u diahdsaiu#ask#anonymous#sh#shadowhunters#lore#meta#The Polycule™#maia roberts#raphael santiago#simon lewis#meliorn#saia#maiaphael#saiaphaeliorn#maphael#magnus bane#q#seelies#warlocks#vampires#werewolves#downworlder relations
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I’ve been quiet.
I realize this. I’ve become painfully aware of my lack of voice in regards to activism or hot takes on the news. For the duration of June I stuck to activists posts and news, which has never been a thing I’m super vocal about on this page. I just happened to move my content over at either the exact right time to facilitate the shift of content, or the exact wrong time to keep to my regular scheduled programming running. Either way, I’m not sorry. Nor do I expect I’ll be able to keep my mouth (or rather my keyboard) shut long when things feel overwhelmingly outrageous in the real world.
My intent going into the month was to back off a little on the political posts and take back the “safe space” I have here for cultivated fun in what is usually a very chaotic day to day life. I would continue the activism but perhaps less so on here. That’s not to say I wouldn’t actively be doing other things. I’m not yielding my support by any means. I had intended to take this month to mostly focus my support of the BLM community through prioritizing putting my money where my mouth was failing to find words. Shifting from broad political posts about the injustices to instead turning it towards better educating myself, actually getting through the large stack of books I intend to get through, prioritizing purchasing items from black owned businesses where it makes sense to, donating to the charities and organizations that I can. This is the quiet work that is also necessary for good allyship. But then I found myself wrestling with the growing feeling that quiet can lead to appearance that whatever I was presenting in June was instead a performative allyship.
That’s hardly the case at all.
At the end of June I made a joke about trying to mentally prepare myself for whatever July 2020 had in store for us. I was not prepared.
I met the reality of July 2020 four days later, like so many of us, and I was not even close to prepared for what was coming and I froze in the wake of it. I was not prepared to watch snippets of the Orange Man’s speech at Rushmore. The speech, that without even dicing his words was a hate speech. It was a proclamation, of sorts, against the citizens who were, and are still are, actively protesting for the BLM movement throughout the country. It was a formal declaration of “us vs them” in a way he has not actually done before. The intent is always there, his supporters will forever deny it, but it is. His own history shows he has always been a racist. That this man cares more for tributes, than the people he is meant to govern. Meanwhile, Native protesters were yelled at, by Trump supporters, to “go back to where they came from.” In the wake of this speech and the juxtaposition of it being given on stolen lands while the people who see them as sacred were accosted... I found very little to be proud of on July 4th.
By the time I processed that moment, we had sped straight into ICE declaring that they would not extend the rule allowing foreign students to continue their education here because of the mandate against online learning. This rule makes sense, if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic. But we are.
Everything about this decision was cruel and xenophobic. It didn’t make sense economically, considering how much money Universities get in tuition from their foreign students. It didn’t make sense logistically, when so many students wouldn’t be able to get back home. Our immigration centers are already a fucking mess, but that’s a deep dive for another time. All it was, was an attempt to strong arm schools into accepting the administration's stance that Covid-19 is fully under control and that everything should go back to normal. It is the same reason they are threatening to cut funding for public educational institutions if they do not open completely in the fall. Yeah, kids at school is a far more ideal scenario than online classes, but not at the risk of their or their teachers' lives. The schools see that. The administration doesn’t. They don’t care. They simply want to force their narrative in whatever way they can.
Upon a lawsuit, they walked back their proclamation of denying foreign students their education but, from what I have seen, there are still a lot of things up in the air. From accounts I’ve read on reddit the administration may choose to apply the former ruling to first year students who may have invested in a future they now won’t get. They may deny foreigners the right to apply to after graduation work programs that formerly they were allowed to be in provided they had the right visas. If they did this they will claim it is to provide american’s the best chance at new work first. America first is ringing through this whole thing, and millions are left wondering how this is all going to actually pan out.
Let me reiterate now the fact that we are still in the middle of a pandemic. This is a fact. A fact that the administration wants to deny till every last one of us has encountered this illness personally. The Orange Man is actively swatting Fauci away like he is nothing more than an annoying fly. He doesn’t like the “doom and gloom” truth of this virus so he denies it. He is actively pushing to block new money for further testing and tracing for the CDC because he doesn’t “like the numbers”. The CDC no longer has control of collecting patient data to help track covid-19. Something that has been used so that people in authoritative positions can make adequate decisions in regards to the virus. Less information will lead to more spread. Florida is now the new epicenter and the sunbelt, as a whole, looks bad. Things are not good and we’re still fighting with fellow citizens who don’t want to wear a mask. A simple act to help protect others is a political stance. I don’t understand it, and I’m not going to pretend or even try to. It’s not a hoax. The virus is real and it is deadly. Even those that recover from it have had lasting damage to their lungs among other side effects.
But I digress, instead I will now get to the reason that brought me to this very long political monologue: in Portland, Federal agents fired tear gas on protesters after declaring it a riot. This is not the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last. Allegedly, these federal agents are part of the customs and border protection agency, and they also took protesters up into unmarked vans and detained them. Citizens who are executing their right to protest were kidnapped by federal agents. Think about that. This is why the declaration of ANTIFA being a terrorist group was a bad omen. They are not a membership based organization, they don’t have meetings, they just kind of are... and that fact alone can be exploited. Anyone can potentially be dubbed ANTIFA if a federal agent deems them acting radically in the eyes of this administration.
This is the roots of fascism in America. It is masquerading as nationalism and to some degree that's legitimate but the effects of those beliefs are becoming a thin facade for the other.
It’s almost undeniable at this point. This is the reason I started with the beginning of this month because between the hate speech, the stances that support racism, the xenophobic decisions, the active statement that there is no problem with the virus, and now kidnapping citizens are all part of a fascist playbook. Speaking out against a dictatorship is a death sentence. But a dictatorship is anti-American. If you believe in the idyllic America we were taught exists. I am not sure that America has ever fully existed.... but maybe somewhere she does, but, oh, is she flawed… but that’s okay because admitting to those flaws can lead to growth. Owning all of our past will lead to growth. But denial, denial leads us down a path to losing ourselves.
My boyfriend is right, I’m a fighter. I will get up and I will fight even if there are tears in my eyes. But that doesn’t mean I am not tired. I find myself so heartbroken over the events of the last two months that I fail to have words to express the effect of keeping my eyes open to the world actually has on me. One thing I have figured out is despite what the president says, I don’t hate my country. I am part of the left, yes, but I love it. I can say that because I wouldn’t be so upset about all that is going on if I didn’t. I realize there are fellow citizens who wholeheartedly disagree with me, and they would also claim they love the country, but to me their fear of change says more about them than they realize. They don’t want to accept ugly truths and grow. It’s an oversimplification but here we are. Everything is so polarized. We are divided. I’ve said this before but I’m not sure something isn’t going to break spectacularly before November, during, or shortly after. Regardless, a new normal is being forged and I do not accept it. I will not accept it. I will fight it, and I hope whoever takes the time to read this ridiculously long post will too.
#politics#activism#july 2020#trump#blm#protests#portland#ice#4th of july#democracy#hot take news#fascism#autocracy#democracy failing
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~guess who's thinking about caleb again~
i haven't watched the latest ep yet, waiting for it to go up on youtube, but i've seen a couple scenes around and i know i'm gonna have a whole other post to write when i get context on those, so might as well put this up now
bc i was going back and watching the confrontation with the scourger in episode 70, and i'm really fascinated by the line "she is me if i had turned out to be me"?
bc like... liam does a really good job of playing this character dealing with incredible trauma and the after effects of abuse and radicalization, but the other narrative that caleb thoroughly embodies is that of the prodigy, the gifted child. and that's one thing that doesn't even need a great evil to cause, just a few genuinely well meaning people who think they know the kind of person you'll turn out to be
kids like that, aren't raised to believe skill is something you work at. they're raised to believe skill is something you are. either you're innately talented, or you're not, it's not something you control. but if you are talented (and i use that word specifically here to mean "showing signs of being good at the things society values"), then that's something you're praised for, typically the only thing you're praised for, and you know, kids like being praised, they like feeling special and important and valued. and sooner or later it kind of becomes your whole identity, because that's all you've ever been told you are. and as you grow you're continually held to that standard and not really given any room to make a mistake, because once you do it means you've failed, and you can't fail, so you must not be you anymore. and if you're not you, you're not anyone, so how can you expect to have value?
it shouldn't really be a surprise therefore, that kids like that become incredibly easy to manipulate, and in the case of caleb and the other vollstreckers, to radicalize. you've been held to arbitrary standards your whole life, adding more means nothing to you. you've been raised to believe that your worth is based on how well you achieve, specifically how well you achieve compared to others, and that's a measure decided by your teacher. you have an innate sense of superiority for being better than everyone else, because this is the place you've been raised to believe you deserve, but it's also the place that one misstep will have it taken from you.
those kids wouldn't have complained, because that would make them failures, secretly unworthy. abuse gets by without a word because it's now a competition to see who can put up with the most shit without breaking, to see who's stronger. being hurt is a point of pride, having residuum shoved into your arms is a good thing, because it makes you special, and important, and it reminds you you're not a failure. it makes you stronger. as long as you keep enduring it, you still have value.
and then it goes deeper still, because this makes kids who at their core are scared. scared of messing up. scared that one step out of line will be the end of everything they've ever known. scared of their own emotions, ashamed of having them. scared of being anything but what they're told to be. absolute trust in their teacher, not because he's worthy of it, but because they have no choice. at this point, they believe all this too. so why wouldn't they trust him? he's the one making them stronger, he's the one keeping them perfect.
he's also the one with the ability to take all that away, but that wouldn't happen to them, that's for the other people, the failures. the failures deserve it.
and if he gives them a list of people he says are traitors to the empire and deserve to die, they believe it. and they need some kind of control in their life, some outlet for every emotion they're not allowed to feel, and anger and pain make pretty good ones in a pinch.
which brings us to caleb. and the way he talks about who he used to be.
because on one hand, caleb has detatched himself a little from that line of thinking. it's been a long time since he was truly immersed in it. he realised ikithon had faked his memories and all of it was a lie, and he lost his trust in ikithon, in the cerberus assembly, in the empire.
he actually lost his trust in everything, because he didn't have trust in anything else. jester asks him if he still believes in what trent was preaching and he tells her he doesn't believe in anything anymore. he knows enough to know it all was wrong, but there was nothing left to fill in the gap, so he's just getting by the best he can and trying to figure it out.
but his identity, his sense of self, is still tied up with that boy who was on the fast track to becoming one of the assembly one day. look at how he talks about what happened, he doesn't say he got away from it, he says "i failed". caleb doesn't want to go back to the assembly, but his ideal self is still there. who he believes he is, is still there.
"if i had turned out to be me"
he does not in any way identify with the person he is right now. he doesn't even really see it as a person, because identity was always linked with achievement, with the empire. he's surviving, but he's not real.
and i think that's one of the reasons he has such a hard time detaching himself from who he was back then, what he did. why he believes without a doubt he is a bad person. why he's always the first to put himself down when nott says he's on his way to being something great. the main reason is of course that it was a hugely terrible and deeply traumatizing thing, but aside from that, all of this, everything he's done since he killed his parents, it's an afterthought. bren aldric ermendrud was a prodigy, caleb widogast is a failure and worth nothing.
bren aldric ermendrud was an evil person who murdered his entire family. caleb widogast can't forgive that, because caleb widogast has no value compared to the person he could have been. caleb widogast is a nice lie you tell people to make them feel better about a situation they can't fix. caleb widogast is a fairytale.
but caleb widogast is starting to be things. caleb widogast is a fighter, was a pirate, is a protector, is a revolutionary. caleb widogast has friends, and they're all traitors to the empire but he finds he doesn't care as much anymore, not like bren would.
bren's still in there, still disappointed over everything caleb's doing, still horrifically ashamed. still replaying the moment everything changed over and over in his head. but it's been a while since it paralysed him. it's gonna take caleb a while yet before he even realises he's still holding himself to those standards, and a hell of a lot longer to forgive himself, but i think when he does come to the realisation that he has worth as caleb, that'll be the first step
(and he'll always have scars, mental and physical, those are unavoidable, he's been through too much and done too much. but hopefully his friends can help him heal)
(and fuck i'm excited to see this further confrontation with the person who is a mirror of caleb's past future in all the worst ways)
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QUARANTINE MOVIES PART FOUR
It’s wild to watch any movie knowing that none will be made for the foreseeable future, and that the whole collective experience of filmgoing might be dead. I tend to have a certain sad, scared lonely feeling when I contemplate the future at night, and while I attempt to put off by watching movies, it only partly works. Now, more than ever, movies are a larger part of my processing of the world than the ongoing conversations I have with friends.
Smithereens (1982) dir. Susan Seidelman
There is something particularly powerful about movies where people run around, socializing. These things are pretty resonant with my youth, but “youth” in this broad sense that just means “the before times,” because if there’s anything quarantine is bringing home it’s the importance of a form of adulthood based around domestic partnerships with someone you like and having “real jobs” that can translate to telecommuting. Of course, socializing of the sort no longer allowed is really useful, and shouldn’t be written off as youthful frivolity. Smithereens is not a particularly romantic movie: While it might be famous for being “punk” in a “cool” way, documenting young New York nightlife in a way where David Wojnarowicz’s band 3 Teens Kill 4 is on a club’s marquee, it’s really about young people as these sort of upwardly-mobile opportunists with no real talent trying to exploit one another for a mixture of sex and social clout, and ignoring those who are not actively useful to them. It’s a useful document of people being shitty where the appeal now is how cool they look, and it’s interesting to watch in this moment where I’m worried that the whole idea of community will be lost very soon, in a way we won’t even be able to articulate. We’ll all be scrambling for jobs and security but everything will be further hollowed out, and we’ll be left with an even more vicious and dog-eat-dog citizenry. So a movie like this has nostalgic appealing, but by depicting the seeds of what will only become more widespread problems, it avoids feeling dated or idealistic.
Gloria (1980) dir. John Cassavetes
Oh shit this movie rules! I was under the impression I disliked Cassavetes, based on the others I had seen, and watching the first twenty-odd minutes reminded me of why: Sort of circular conversations, involving a lot of people being upset with one another. But this ends up feeling more like a movie, and less like a play. Once Gena Rowlands kills a carful of people I was completely on board. She’s great in this, playing opposite a child, who is also amazing in it, tons of dialogue that should be quotable: “You’re not my mother, my mother was beautiful” being but one amazing bit of poetry. Both extremely cute and extremely badass from moment to moment, the parts of this movie are in tension with one another where it also feels like it’s going from strength to strength, and ever scene, every moment, is great. Incredible music, and also great documentation of a world that doesn’t exist anymore, of telephone booths, smoking sections, and places that’ll develop photos for you. Highest possible recommendation.
The Naked City (1948) dir. Jules Dassin
Seemingly the first movie to be shot on location throughout New York, rather than studio backlots, and it milks the city for all its worth, shifting frequently from one location to another, introducing to new characters. Initially guided by omniscient narration but quickly focusing to become a police procedural. I knew Dassin from Rififi but this feels more exciting, I would gladly watch movies bite the techniques from this every few decades, though Gloria does a good job of moving through the streets of New York in a less-contrived way. There was a Naked City TV show ten years later, shot on location and focusing on a police precinct.
Near Dark (1987) dir. Kathryn Bigelow
I consider this Kathryn Bigelow’s best movie, but circumstances have not led me to watch it as many times as I’ve seen Point Break, so the memories I’ve retained of it were kind of inaccurate: Specifically, the thing I thought of as the climax, the part at the hotel where light is getting shot through the blankets taped up to cover windows, happens like halfway through. Screenwriter Eric Red wrote this at the same time as he wrote The Hitcher, and that’s another one that just GOES, moving from one scene to another where they all have this climactic intensity constantly but the scale is shifting of what you’re invested in? The Hitcher is a nightmare and this is more of an action movie. People point out this movie has a bunch of the cast from Aliens but I didn’t realize there’s a shot where Aliens is actually on the marquee of a theater. I also wonder if this whole horror/action/western/but with vampires thing was an inspiration to Garth Ennis? I kinda feel like the pacing I find so powerful could not really be sustained over the length of an extended comic run.
Hero (1992) dir. Stephen Frears
Dustin Hoffman plays a criminal schlub, doing a weird voice. It’s almost like he was told that the role was written for Sylvester Stallone, but Stallone’s insistence on getting a writing credit on every movie he acts in complicated the premise in a weird way, so Hoffman just attempts a Stallone impression. One of his few redeeming characteristics is he’s a loving father, but that isn’t why he’ll remind you of your dad. Maybe most men are just Dustin Hoffman doing impersonations of Sylvester Stallone! From 1992, so Hoffman’s I guess in a post-Rain-Man mode, but the film also feels very early nineties in its commentary on television news turning stories into celebrities, and an analysis of the problems with professional cynicism that seem very much of their time. It’s not like a more sophisticated critique has found its way into any mainstream film I can think of, we’ve just stopped thinking about these issues, as they’ve become much worse. Joan Cusack’s good as his Hoffman’s ex-wife, and Susie Cusack’s good as his lawyer. I would like to see Susie Cusack in more things! Geena Davis plays a television reporter, Andy Garcia plays a decent guy who is a contrast to Hoffman, there’s also small roles for the likes of Stephen Tobolowsky and Tom Arnold, really placing this in a moment of time.
The Age Of Innocence (1993) dir. Martin Scorsese
I didn’t like this one, for all the obvious reasons: I don’t like costume dramas about rich people, and I don’t like Daniel Day-Lewis. It’s an Edith Wharton adaptation, all about a world of well-mannered old money with very rigidly defined rules of behavior. Michelle Pfeiffer plays the true love Day-Lewis is kept from by the mores of the day, and part of her romantic appeal is she’s able to see through the rituals and make fun of them, while Winona Ryder fully buys into them, and thus reaps the benefits. Everything is repressed, all behavior is affect, this is of course the point but very much not my thing. There’s also a lot of a narrator reading the text of the book while the camerawork fades between lavishly composed image, while the cinematography probably looked great on a big screen I would still be very anxious about getting to the storytelling.
Experiment In Terror (1962) dir. Blake Edwards
This one starts off super-intensely, with a home invasion scene, the sense of horror in this is palpable but the fear is just used as this blackmail structure for some noir stuff? It straggles the genre line pretty well, feeling weird because of this horror energy of sheer creeping malevolence defines it. This is also considerably longer than most of the other film noir I’ve watched recently, because those moments extend and take away from the sense of a building plot, to instead feel like they might derail it. Lee Remick is the lead, and she is this terrified victim, which makes the film more interesting than if it were focused on the cop played by Glenn Ford. The main character’s younger sister gets kidnapped at one point, it gets creepy. The climax occurs at a end of a crowded baseball game, and there’s shots that I assume were done via helicopter, which seems like it would’ve upped the budget considerably.
The Harder They Fall (1956) dir. Mark Robson
Humphrey Bogart stars as a former sports writer, working to drum up publicity for a fresh-off-the-boat boxer who does not know how to fight, but is naively participating in fixed matches, for the economic benefit of the mob. While the boxer is being exploited and making no money, despite his celebrity; Bogart is being well-compensated to sell out his conscience and he is very good at playing a dude in moral conflict with himself, struggling to do the decent thing. While this isn’t the best boxing movie, or the best Bogart, it’s still pretty good.
The Devil And Miss Jones (1941) dir. Sam Wood
Heard about this one in the context of it having good politics. It’s about a rich guy who goes undercover at a department store hoping to bust the union only to realize that the guy organizing the union is supremely decent and the middle manager should get fired. It has some scenes that feel like they might play for “cringe comedy” but also are just so fucked up? One where the rich dude is forcing shoes onto the feet of little girl who is crying saying “I don’t like it! I don’t like it!” feels way too much like a pervert’s fetish for me to be comfortable with. The female lead is played by Jean Arthur, who is very good at playing a genuine, kind, and idealistic person. I am very grateful she dates the union organizer and the old rich dude’s love interest is someone age-appropriate. Interesting to see a pro-union movie from a time when unions were popular, so it functions as populist entertainment while Sorry To Bother You gestures at being radical propaganda for self-congratulation’s sake.
Human Desire (1954) dir. Fritz Lang
Another noir from Lang, with the same leads as The Big Heat. This one made me worried about age-inappropriate relationships too, as it begins with a dude being back from war, moving in with his friends, and their daughter having “become a woman” while he was away. Luckily the title refers to a desire he ends up feeling for a married woman who as an accomplice to a murder committed by her abusive husband. Glenn Ford stars in this one, and he has this very boring morally upstanding male lead quality that makes these well-made movies feel generic. This thing is happening to me watching movies where I get kind of hung up on how no one ever explains themselves or their feelings: I don’t think they should, I think the whole thing of watching a movie where you watch it thinking like “Why don’t you just tell her you love her??” is interesting because… a writer doesn’t need the characters to explain their feelings to each other if the viewers understand them, these feelings are the most obvious things and so can go unspoken, and so you would really only have them say these things if they were lying or being manipulative? But maybe in more modern movies people really do state their motivations because screenwriters are dumber now? I don’t know.
Fail Safe (1964) dir. Sidney Lumet
I have talked about this movie a lot since watching it, and in a way that doesn’t even mention that the opening is amazing, and the title and credits sequence are all-time greats. Instead I mention that Henry Fonda’s performance seems to have inspired David Lynch’s performance of Gordon Cole, and how the weird, fucked up nightmarish ending doesn’t really change the fact that watching it in 2020 it feels like a sort of pornography of competence when contrasted against our own reality. The whole movie is about an accident that leads to a U.S. military plane flying to Moscow to drop a nuke, and everyone (except for the pilots) realizing this is a mistake and trying to avert global nuclear war. The ending is pretty astounding in its darkness. Walter Matthau plays a guy whose role is to argue for the pragmatic value of mass death, but the moral calculus that ends up being embraced is far beyond the nihilistic death drive he advocates for. Mutually assured destruction is such a motherfucker of a concept. I am really hung up on the idea that unilateral nuclear disarmament never became a thing really set a precedent for how political parties in this country will never unilaterally dismantle their propaganda machines. 24-hour news is a nightmare, not really on a par with nuclear weapons, but similarly something that should be illegal, but for the calculations made. We would be a different country if we were willing to make these kinds of sacrifices but we really are not.
The Deadly Affair (1967) dir. Sidney Lumet
James Mason stars in this John Le Carre adaptation. He plays a spy whose wife is cheating on him, with another spy. None of the twists in this are unforeseen, in fact, the title alone explains a bunch, but the title is also so generic you might forget what the movie is called while you’re watching it. James Mason is good in it, although it’s weird that he’s playing a likable guy who sort of doesn’t seem to understand why everyone can’t get along or be honest adults with one another considering his work in the intelligence community. Another solid Sidney Lumet movie.
Three Days Of The Condor (1975) dir. Sydney Pollack
This movie does a very good job of not explaining things up front, and then portioning out understanding as it goes on. The movie begins with Robert Redford getting his office getting shot up, and we eventually learn he works for the CIA, but he cannot rely on them for his protection. It doesn’t introduce the female lead, played by Faye Dunaway, until like halfway through the movie, when our hero takes her hostage. Redford can’t really explain the situation to her, and just sort of acts like a psychopath, but they are able to have a quasi-romantic relationship where she trusts him because he’s played by Robert Redford, who is in some ways the seventies’ answer to Glenn Ford. The movie star aspect allows him to sell his agreeability, although he’s also supposed to be something of a nerd, a guy whose job is just to read books and analyze the information. Max Von Sydow plays the villain.
The Third Shadow Warrior (1963) dir. Umetsugu Inoue
Watched this because it’s made by the dude who made Black Lizard, it’s a samurai thing about a warrior who employs body doubles. It follows one such body double, overshadowed by the man whose existence he supports, at the expense of his own individuality or happiness. Interesting enough, feels like it occupies the solid middle of samurai movies- Something sort of common to stuff on Criterion is something that doesn’t blow you away but it is definitely a “real movie” at the very least.
La Cienaga, (2001) dir. Lucrecia Martel
That said, you kind of do need to be careful with newer Criterion channel stuff, because some things feel more like they’re just trying to engage with an art house history in order to earn their place in the canon. This movie isn’t bad, but I do feel like the reason it’s interesting stems from a context the film itself has nothing to do with: After Martel made Zama (2017), there was talk of her being asked by Marvel to do a Black Widow movie, which is insane. The studio also volunteered to handle the action for her, which she said she would actually be interested in learning how to do herself, but she had no interest in working with Marvel. Let Lucrecia Martel make a big-budget action movie without corporate properties you cowards! This movie is pretty difficult to follow, with no clear narrative thread, a lot of characters, weird pacing, etc. There’s moments of poetry or tension but this is one of those things that’s just beyond my preferences enough to remind me of a certain aesthetic conservatism I possess. I didn’t finish Zama, though I had read the book. It’s honestly tough to imagine Martel making a movie with straightforward plot that can easily be followed, it doesn’t seem to be what she’s interested in, even in terms of editing a movie so that you have a sense of where scenes stand in relation to one another in time. Many scenes still maintain a sense of beauty or mystery but at there’s no velocity. She’s closer to Apichatpong Weerasethakul or Carlos Reygadas or Bi Gan, to name three people whose names I absolutely had to Google because I couldn’t think of them off the top of my head.
All these movies are streaming on The Criterion Channel, if you want me to recommend things on other streaming services, please DM me your login information.
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A friend of mine was tolerating my drunken fangirling last weekend, patiently agreeing that yes, it is the cutest thing ever when Stephen Colbert turns around to hit on his off-camera wife every time he fucks up a line in his monologue. And yeah, I keep watching that because he's being comfortingly sane/angry right now, but also because it feels like representation, in a weird sort of way.
Colbert is, in many respects, what a lot of people would think of as the quintessential American: A straight, white, Christian man, married with kids, on a lifelong career path that has earned him substantial material wealth. Left to his own devices, he dresses like the dadliest dad who ever dadded. He's expressed some ambivalence about the knowledge that at least some of his media clout comes from this. On the one hand, he is perhaps not the best person to speak to the lived experience of institutional disadvantage; on the other, there are a lot of straight white Christian men in America who just don't feel the need to listen to anyone who isn't a straight white Christian man in America, and there's a lot he can do to redirect that.
But he's also just generally unconventional. Not just off-the-wall comedy. Like, personally not what you would expect from someone who teaches Sunday school, and looks more and more like Ward Cleaver's goofy little brother with every passing year.
About six months into his Late Show gig, the guests started getting it into their heads that the host could be kissed. I'm a little surprised it took them that long; I'm not at all surprised that it was started by Helen Mirren, always a lady with a fine sense of shenanigans. Sally Field went for it with more gusto the next day. Jeff Daniels managed to be more restrained.
Colbert generally ignores it when he accidentally touches off a tempest in a Twitter feed, but this time he opted to make a few remarks about what he termed "an eventful week for my face". In them, he makes it very clear that he did check in with his wife, and he is Definitely Allowed To Do That. He personally thought everything was fine, and in fact was going to take the opportunity to be smug, because holy shit you guys, Helen Mirren.
I will note that "she's cool with it" here does not appear to be a euphemism for "I fucked up and she forgave me". It means "she says it's fine if I make out with Spider-Man in front of a live studio audience". I expect he did actually double check, because that's what a reasonable adult would do, but I also expect that they hashed this out in the general case like thirty years ago. One, Colbert has been kissing his friends, on the lips or otherwise, for as long as I can find him on video. Sometimes for the sake of a joke, sometimes to make a point, and sometimes because they've just won an Emmy and he feels like it. And two, Mirren got a second kiss at the end of that interview, one that he started. Which seems like a thing he wouldn't have done if he were already afraid he'd be sleeping on the couch that night.
Colbert has not said a word about it since. And no one has asked him.
Another thing nobody ever mentions is how Colbert is one of the few straight male actors whom I've ever seen pull off a transparent closet joke without being derogatory. He's actually done it twice, as long-running gags on two separate series: The "secret gay affair" variant playing opposite Paul Dinello on Strangers With Candy, and the "strangely romantic-looking friendship" one with Jon Stewart on The Colbert Report (spilling over onto The Daily Show, The Late Show, and at this point probably his actual life). There's a lot about the specific writing and general sensibilities of both shows that contributes to that, but much of what sells it is that Colbert looks completely, genuinely comfortable with those performances. I imagine it helped that both times he was working with someone he was close to in real life, but also he just seems to be fine with sharing personal space in a way that straight men are typically not.
Colbert can get pretty grabby-hands with his favorite people off stage, too. He's shared various snapshots from Second City over the years. There's a bunch in some the "Stephen Has A Story" segments from LSSC. If there's another human being in the photo with him, he's probably trying to cuddle them. It's continued through the decades. I'm pretty sure when he does a bit with Jon Stewart the stage crew just puts down one spike for the both of them. They made it maybe a year, year and a half into doing The Daily Show together before they were poking at each other and stealing props right out of the other one's bin behind the desk. Colbert is so un-self-conscious about it that most people treat it as invisible.
I couldn't say for sure when he decided that he was free to loll all over people he liked, but my bet is probably at Second City, where he credits Dinello and Amy Sedaris with breaking him of an unfortunate tendency to take himself, and everything else, way too seriously. I don't know what he was like prior, because touring with Second City is essentially when his public career started. Nothing before that is really any of my business; hunting anything down would make me feel damned creepy.
And, again, nobody has ever asked him. He does seem to be aware that he is not always adhering to social expectation here, but also that if he acts casual, everyone else will just assume it's not really a thing. On the odd occasion when Colbert does feel like making a point about other men not having cooties, he has to bring it up himself.
None of the above is beyond-the-pale weird, but it's the kind of thing that you wouldn't normally guess of a devoutly-religious middle-aged straight dude. A lot of it is stuff that men are still under a lot of pressure not to do, like show feelings that aren't pride or rage, or be physically affectionate with people who aren't your partner/children. It's more suggestive of someone who believes that the relationships in your life -- with your friends, your family, your society, and even your God -- are very much what you say they are, and not what other people say they should be.
The greatest significance of this, I think, is not necessarily that he's been behaving this way for as long as he's been a public performer, or even that he's behaving this way at this particular point in human history. It's that he's behaving this way at this particular point in his life.
Colbert is in his mid~late 50s. From the point of view of someone in their late teens to early twenties, still trying to figure out how the fuck humans are supposed to work, he's the Old Guy. Stuff the Old Guy does isn't radical innovation. It's the boring standard. And the boring standard that Colbert is setting is that negotiating something that works and makes you happy is more important than being "normal" or "respectable". You communicate with your spouse like you're both functional adults. You tell the people you love that you love them and don't think twice about who can hear you.
These are things I've been ranting about for most of my life. People don't do them enough. Judging from the advice columns of the world, emotional negotiation is a skill very few people have bothered to develop. I do kind of wish someone would ask Colbert about it directly, because I'm curious, and talking about it is always beneficial, but that's secondary. I really just like seeing someone else demonstrate it in public.
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Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider #4 Thoughts
The very, very, very end of Spider-Geddon and...a surprisingly great issue!
Covering this comic is very strange for me because I’m coming at it from two places mentally speaking.
Firstly I’m jumping into the fourth and final tie in issue to an event comic having not read the prior three issues.
Secondly I’m jumping into Spider-Gwen, a series I abandoned long ago, back in volume 2 issue #10 to be precise, which was published over 2 years before this issue was. It also had an entirely different writer/artist team back then.
Frankly I picked this up purely because I knew Mayday and some RYV characters were going to be in it. In that regard the issue was rather pointless, they cameo and do little else.
However I’m actually glad I bothered with the comic all the same. I was expecting this to be fluff and filler at best. An insufferable worshipping of Gwen Stacy, as so many comics (including Spider-Gwen itself) was when Spider-Gwen got big back in 2014-2016.
To my delight that wasn’t the case.
I admit to being rather lost with some plot points such as Gwen having a symbiote (this was brought up in Spider-Geddon #2 but it was unexplained there too) and how exactly Gwen can transverse dimensions.
However the rest of the issue was mostly good. Now I read Secret Wars: Spider-Verse, Web Warriors and Spider-Geddon #0-5 but I didn’t read any other Spider-Gwen or Ghost Spider issues so to me Gwen’s sense of loss over Noir and Spidey-UK felt rather unearned and cheap. It wasn’t that I didn’t think she’s be upset over losing a comrade but the deep sense of loss and words towards little habits within their respective relationships didn’t ring true to me. However that may have come up in issues I didn’t read so I’m willing to be corrected on that.
But based upon my reading Gwen feeling as sad as she did was a bit of a stretch. I also felt the milking of Spidey-UK’s death from a reader point of view was questionable because...did anyone honestly love that character? Spider-Man Noir I can understand, he has a fanbase (and this issue hammered home how asinine a decision it was to kill him back at the start of this event) but Billy Braddock? Who cares really? He was used for some cheap pathos in Web Warriors and that was about it. Now that being said I did love the idea behind him being buried in Lady Spider’s dimension as she was English (although if memory serves that was never confirmed outright, she may have simply lived in 1800s New York). I did wonder where the Hell Lady Spider was throughout this event though.
The addressing of Noir’s death though was much more necessary and as stupid as it was to kill him I do give Marvel credit for having an issue which addresses that. His fans deserved at least that much, particularly I think the Noir/Felicia shippers who are undoubtedly out there. I also very much appreciated how May, MJ and Felicia had different reactions to his death respectively.
Another great thing was that the general addressing of grief, sadness and death in the issue felt respectful. It felt real even though as I said the specifics of Gwen’s relationship with Noir and Spidey-UK didn’t quite ring true. It’s like it would’ve been perfect dialogue and execution if used for another character’s death. A small detail I especially liked in this regard was Gwen’s drumming as a coping mechanism. One of my major complaints in Latour’s issues was how Gwen’s hobbies and passions were underused and underdeveloped. She was a drummer but that didn’t factor that much into the stories I read. So to see McGuire embrace that is as welcome as Miles’ artistic talents in ITSV.
Now I admit, those of you who recall my thoughts on Latour’s Spider-Gwen book might be calling me a hypocrite here. Because another of my frequent complaints was how doom and gloom and glum Gwen typically was in that series from the outset, yet here I’m praising that.
I think the distinction is this. Latour came out the gate defining Gwen as grieving and guilt ridden, reeling from a tragedy that happened an undisclosed amount of time ago (but still making with the yuks and gags). Not only was this tonal whiplash but it also was a shitty way to set up a new ongoing series. It began world building for Gwen in media-res of extenuating circumstances and circumstances which were incredibly derivative of Peter Parker.
Where McGuire succeeds in this issue is by having not only a distinctly different tragedy but also the benefit of this occurring both after Gwen’s world has been built up and in the aftermath of a huge event. It’s totally realistic and earned that there would be a mourning for fallen warriors after a war. It’d be disrespectful for that not to be the case; in fact it’s kind of disrespectful that that mourning happens in a tie-in issue not the main book!
By having this issue actually deal with the aftermath it re-contextualizes the prior issues of the event. Spider-Geddon as a whole was definitely a bloated poorly written inconsistent mess. But this issue as a coda treats it with the weight the main book never had. There is an emotional realism to the story even though we are dealing with something as wacky as inter-dimensional travel and totem vampires.
This emotional realism is pulled off so well you even feel a little something for Karn’s death, you even feel bad he died alone and so violently even though again, no one is a fan of that character. No one gives a shit about him.
Part of this realism comes from McGuire from this one issue apparently being an inherently better writer than Latour ever was, at least for Spider-Gwen. Latour in all this works I’ve read emphasises style, and wants you to ‘watch’ the story unfold rather than feel like you are right there with the characters. You can ‘see’ Spider-gwen is upset but McGuire takes you inside her head and writes her grief from the inside out. Latour might’ve used internal narration but he rarely pulled this off, probably because he was too busy making a clown show on the side with stupid ass Spider-Ham cameos, wacky humour about the Bodega Bandit or building up Evil Daredevil instead of you know, the ACTUAL main character.
His Spider-Gwen work felt a lot like watching things sort of just happened rather than experiencing things unfolding like in this issue.
What further enhances this story is the deliberate or accidental metatext behind the story. No I am not talking about how Stan Lee had recently died when the issue came out, though that did make me tear up thinking about it.
Gwen has been rebranded Ghost Spider (though her recap page doesn’t quite admit that weirdly) and this is an issue about Gwen dealing with ghosts, dealing with death, spreading the grim news as a reluctant messenger of death. That angle just works in this issue and if embraced would work brilliantly as a new element to the character to latch onto. In no small part because, as the issue itself acknowledges, Gwen Stacy’s legacy is inherently linked to death.
That might be admittedly a radical departure from the punk rock youth vibe the series began with, but not only was that rather squandered by Latour (with bullshit like Hipster Electro and Hipster Kraven the Hunter, go fuck yourself seriously!) but at the end of the day that vibe is perhaps rather...shallow...for an ongoing character...??????
Other elements of the issue I liked was the artwork. It’s not much like what Rodriguez was going, which was I admit very distinct and gave Spider-Gwen’s series a unique identity. But this art is still lovely and works very well for the subject matter. What is particularly nice was the different period outfits Gwen adopted as she made her travels through the multiverse. Also, though this isn’t strictly ‘art’ per se, the word balloons at Karn’s funeral have a cool moment where everyone speaks a salute to Karn and the combined word balloons look like a spider. That was just a cool touch.
My final note is that McGuire has one of the best Peter Parker moments I’ve seen in a long time, and considering the quality of Spencer’s run that is not damning with faint praise (as it would’ve been just over a year ago). In the scene Spider-Gwen and 616 Peter discuss Gwen needing some time off and Gwen asks if that is selfish. On the one hand this is a little bit derivative of Peter Parker, King of Guilt and Responsibility. On the other hand I guess most heroes would ask this of themselves. Peter Parker surprisingly gives a very mature answer.
Now this answer is very much in character and logical for Peter, but it’s also something too often writers neglect in favour of writing Peter in a repetitive manner that renders him a caricature. Peter acknowledges it is selfish but that that is not wrong, He says the world will always need saving but the heroes get to pick their battles and have to sometimes rest, that indeed they deserve it.
Though a mere moment in a story not about him McGuire writes a Peter Parker who truly feels like a mature adult, that feels like the Peter who is truly the sum of his experiences.
Were this teenage or college aged Peter he wouldn’t have been likely to say that. If it was friggin Slott’s Peter Parker definitely not (even though he’d have still gone to play with Miles in the park rather than do his actual job). But a Peter Parker who’s insanely experienced and knows his limits? Yes absolutely he’d know he’s entitled to down time and more importantly needs it. It’s demonstrative of how guilt is present in his character and yet is not the defining trait. Responsibility is, and there is a responsibility to himself. Spidey-UK even echoes such a sentiment earlier in the story.
So with all that said I must admit this issue was a tremendous triumph from where I’m standing, I’d recommend you read it and would go so far as to call it the best issue of Spider-Gwen I’ve ever read sans her debut.
Does it change my feelings for Spider-Geddon as a whole?
No, it still sucked and was still pointless beyond resurrecting MC2 Peter (which in my book makes it worth it, sorry Spidey Noir fans, I’m sure he’ll be back eventually) but this last issue took it out on an unquestionable high note.
#Spider-Geddon#Spider-Gwen#Ghost Spider#Gwen Stacy#Spider-Man#Jason Latour#Robbi Rodriguez#Seanan McGuire#Peter Parker#Spider-Man Noir#Dan Slott#Nick Spencer#Lady Spider#May Parker
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