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fandoms-and-salt · 11 months

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The main problem with Ruby gillman movie is that it sends a message that "bigotry is actually justified and your racist grandparents are right". The second, closely related problem is it's villain.

Firstly, if we look at the film without the spoiler-y marketing, Chelsea/Neressa is written as a twist villain. Like Hans Frozen type twist villain, with little foreshadowing and those "sympathetic" scenes that actually don't amount to anything and might just as well be a lie. Even with the marketing, i think the movie still tricked people into thinking that Chelsea might be a misunderstood villain or have a redemption arc or what not. And twist villains could work well, usually if their turn to villainy makes sense with their preestablished goals and personality (eg. Disney's Atlantis). Or a liar villain could work well if the audience knows of their malicious plans, but the heroes stay in the dark (eg. Scar from Lion King). In general, if the twist or reveal makes the story/conflict less interesting and/or didn't have proper foreshadowing, viewers are bound to dislike it.

Secondly, Chelsea is our only mermaid. And she is, well, evil. It would have been better if we had other good mermaid characters, but she is the only one, which, coupled with Gramamah's generous description of mermaids, makes it seem like all mermaids are as evil as she is.

Thirdly, yes, stories for young children about pure good fighting pure evil are generally fine, it teaches them right and wrong, so they can later consume media with more complex lessons. But in those stories the good guys are usually the underdogs fighting an oppressive evil. In mermaid vs kraken conflict, it's actually mermaids who are at a disadvantage. Krakens are big rulers ("protectors") of the ocean with superpowers. The characters themselves admit that Granmamah is a warlord. Mermaids are small, weak and need a magic trident to even match the power of krakens. Their only "advantage" is being popular with humans, while krakens are feared and hated, but humans have no effect on the story or the conflict. If the story was that mermaids are actually more powerful rulers of the ocean, or the kraken family were the just rules but got conquered/overthrown by evil mermaids, or if both species were of equal power ruling their own parts of the ocean and mermaids decided to go and conquer the peaceful kraken kingdom. Then the good vs evil conflict would have looked less like "how dare these evil inferior minorities challenge the rule of our superior race".

Speaking of which. Ruby's first instinct, even after finding out that "mermaids are actually evil" from her granma, is to judge Chelsea as her own person and assume that mermaids can't be actually evil. Which is, you know, a pretty fair and mature response. When she hears that mermaids suffer from terrible conditions, she actively tries to fight what she sees as injustice. But what lesson does she learn? That she should never question her elders, since they do know better. The story is fighting for the status quo to stay the same, while Ruby is punished to trying to change and improve it.

That's all i can say for now. Other complaints i have are:

humans are virtually useless to the story (including the love interest, tho he had some cute moments), they are just damsels-in-distress and trophies for Ruby to save and get approval from. This movie just as well could happen all under the sea with some minor tweaks.

The human designs are weird and uncanny. Otherwise the visuals are fine.

Ruby's arc is kind of all over the place with her main arc being the classic "believe in yourself", which she mainly gains through hanging out with Chelsea. But isn't Chelsea supposed to be the villain who "leads Ruby astray" from being a good citizen who is not skipping school, lying to her mom or ignoring her friends and crush? Make it make sense, movie.

#for the record i don't really care for Chelsea/Ruby ship (especially after that reveal)#or Chelsea having a “misunderstood mean girl” redemption arc that fandoms obsess over for some reason #sapphic fishgirls would be nice but i care about a good story more #damn that's a long post #ruby gillman teenage kraken #chelsea van der zee #ruby gillman critical #i guess #lovin rambles

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kira-quartz · 1 month

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For the ask game: Carryshipping (you can do the individual pairings involved if u want), thiefshipping, irateshipping :>

Blarhgsjkhgkas sorry for the wait 😓 (And sorry the Carryshipping section is such a mess, 😂)

SEND ME A PAIRING

Carryshipping

Okay, so I didn't forget about your other ask; I've been trying to will myself into a state of feralness (turns out I can't do it on cue, 😅!), so I might as well do it here:

AAAAAAAA

MY GLORIOUS CANOE-TYPE THING

LOVE THESE CORNFLAKES

THEY ARE THE CUTE

THEY ARE A LARGE PERCENTAGE OF MY BRAIN

hfvlΩß˙b,jfuzgakuwfhzlgbakug;aoeyoliahliuhougkujdrstewtkuvcfsfm

Like, think about it. Puff, Buddy and Protect are all adorable ships on their own. You have the sweet, polite little nerd who loves all things creepy and the former gang member with a heart of gold who's terrified of the occult and also happens to be a nerd. You have the two lovable idiots who've been best friends for years, who know each other like they know themselves. You have the tough-looking guy who's actually a massive softie and the gentle, fragile-looking cornflake with all this hidden inner strength. So you put all three of them together and there's this whole sun, moon and Earth dynamic where their personalities complement each other in different ways and it just works!!!

Joey and Tristan would always be there for Ryo and remind him as many times as they need to that they want to be there for him - no more disappearing into the Isolation Pit for him if they can help it. I think he'd bring out their softer sides; partly because he's so heckin' adorable, but also because he wouldn't judge them for showing vulnerability.. In the past, they've both had problems with toxic masculinity and felt pressured to act tough, and while they've both come a long way by the time I usually imagine the Carryship setting sail, they probably still have some lingering Stuff. But Ryo's just... himself. I don't think he cares about whether or not he measures up to some made-up standard, and he wouldn't care if other people do either. I see him as a good, sympathetic listener - if anything's bothering them, they can talk to him about it, but he won't push them to talk if they're not ready. (You know how he spent most of the Téa vs. Mai Duel comforting Yugi? Yeah.) Based on some of his dialogue from his Duel Links event (and not just with Joey), I HC that he's really generous with compliments too. If he has something nice to say, he just says it, so there's this kind of funny, kind of interesting contrast between how sincerely he expresses his feelings for Joey and Tristan and how sweet they are to him, and how those two act towards each other: i.e. not too differently to how they did before they got together. They might be a bit more openly affectionate (mainly physically), but they're still Joey and Tristan, and they'll still bicker almost as much as always, 😂!

In between the bickering, Joey would be *vocal* about how much he loves them, and often cheesy as heck (Ryo finds it cute; Tristan "secretly" does too but covers it with a sprinkling of snark. Joey is not fooled in the slightest. Tristan doesn't really mean for him to be.) He's quick to cheer them up or offer encouragement when they're having a bad time, and I can see him encouraging Tristan to stand up to his dad about the factory situation and pursue his own dreams - they deserve to be happy and he'll fight anyone who says otherwise (not necessarily physically because he's matured since canon, but still!) He and Ryo would be so cute nerding out over games together, 🥰. He gets to enthusiastic about things (he threw himself right into that first Monster World session) and that would mean a lot to Ryo. (Tristan's willing to join in, but he's not as passionate about it as they are.) With his interest in model-building, I think he'd appreciate the work Ryo puts into his dioramas too. And they can both be Odd Cornflakes at times - Ryo might be the Weird One of the three, but Joey did call the original Duel Disk a "cup ramen thing", 🤣. I bet they'd occasionally wake Tristan up talking about whatever completely random thought popped into one of their heads at 2am, 😂.

Tristan will keep them grounded and be the voice of reason as usual... unless he's getting swept up in whatever Joey's doing, because let's face it, with these three, there *will* be moments when no one has the brain cell and it's just skittering around unattended. (Do brain cells skitter? Serious questions asked on my bloggo.) He's sometimes a bit confused by Ryo, but that doesn't bother him. He's accepted that there are some things he just won't get, so he's just going to concentrate on doing what he does best: loving and supporting Ryo unconditionally, as well as keeping a close eye on any occult stuff that's going on - *no one* needs to get possessed again. (Joey will watch from a safe distance, (read: "over Tristan's shoulder like when he found out that Shadi was a ghost", 😂), but no matter how terrified he is, he'll still be ready to take action if things start to go wrong.) If anything's wrong with either of them (and he always notices), he'll go out of his way to help, even if all he can do is listen, which happens more often than he'd like, especially with Ryo. It's not always easy, though, so they make sure to let him know they appreciate him, and be there for him when he needs it.

Overall: 200/10, can't believe no one named it before I did.

Thiefshipping

It's been a while since I've really thought about them, but this is probably my favourite ship for both of them, mostly because of the fandom's portrayals. None of these options really fit them for me, though? 😅 They're an entertaining mess. A pair of heckin disasters. XD

Irateshipping

Well, I haven't seen much art for it, but I like the idea of it! It'd be interesting to see how it happens, with the whole brainwashing thing and Joey's tendency to hold grudges. They'd definitely have to address that, 😅. (Oh, and about your reply to my ask: what exactly is a hamster-like death? 😂)

Thanks for asking!

#yugioh #carryshipping #ryo bakura #joey wheeler #tristan taylor #thiefshipping #marik ishtar #yami bakura #irateshipping #ygo #ryou bakura #katsuya jonouchi #hiroto honda #malik ishtar #answers

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random-thought-depository · 3 years

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Tangent from my last post: reading over this and thinking about it, I’ve pinpointed a disagreement that I think reveals a fundamental disagreement I have with the ideas I was responding to there.

Seph’s essay talks about liberal sexual consent practices as requiring a shift toward a more Culture A style of social interaction; requiring a willingness to actively assert your own interests instead of engaging in Culture B accommodationism. And that’s true, but I immediately recognized that it’s incomplete in a way that I think fundamentally distorts what’s happening, though it took me a while to think out exactly how. Saying “no” involves a degree of Culture A type assertiveness, but respecting that “no” and pro-actively making sure your partner is enjoying things involves an attentiveness to feelings, an accommodationism, and an attentiveness to maintaining harmony that’s more Culture B.

Like, if you drew up two columns, one labeled “Macho Republican Dad Boomerpost Stuff” and one labeled “Softy SJW Stuff,” and started sorting things into those columns by which group they’re more stereotypically associated with (bacon, guns, capitalism, Christianity, complaining about “cancel culture,” and calling people sissies as an insult into the Republican Dad column, tofu, queerness, feminism, socialism, veganism, accusing people of microaggressions, and being a Wiccan into the SJW column, etc.), I think liberal sexual norms placing a high premium on explicit consent would definitely stereotypically belong in the “SJW” column. And in this context I think that’s revealing.

I think what’s happening here is fundamentally orthogonal to Culture A vs. Culture B. I think, like a lot of left vs. right divides, it fundamentally comes down to hierarchy vs. egalitarianism. Liberal sexual norms emphasizing consent are a rejection of the pecking order method of simply resolving sexual conflicts of interests in favor of the person with more power, whether that power is social status, physical strength, emotional intelligence, or just being more willing to press for their interests. Culture A vs. Culture B is fundamentally orthogonal to what’s really going on here; trying to understanding this issue through that lens is at best like trying to understand the US Civil War through the lens of doctrinal disputes between different types of Christianity (you may get some genuine insights, but you’ve mistaken the fringes of the conflict for its core), and at worst like trying to understand the US Civil War through the lens of doctrinal disputes between Sunni and Shia Islam.

Actually I think the “trying to understand the US Civil War through the lens of Christian doctrine disputes” may be a good analogy, because I think this does tie back to the “the left/liberal side of the culture war is waging a war against Culture A” hypothesis in a way that reveals how that idea is not exactly wrong but misses an important dimension of what’s happening. I think what’s happening is that hierarchy is more explicit and explicitly enforced in Culture A, and therefore as society becomes less like a pecking order hierarchy tends to assume Culture B characteristics.

Culture A is where you find the human hierarchies that look the most like actual pecking orders, which are maintained by literal physical pecking. It’s where you find the openly brutal world of bosses screaming “the leads aren’t weak, you are!” into a cringing subordinate’s face, cops quietly taking an uncooperative suspect into a convenient alley and roughing him up a little to “teach him to respect our authority,” gangsters beating somebody up for being insufficiently deferential to them, some 6′3 250 pound guy in the grips of road rage punching some 5′7 150 pound guy in the face over a smashed bumper, teachers disciplining students by giving them hard blows on the palm with a ruler, a swaggering thug threatening a woman with physical violence because she had the effrontery to object to him groping her, and jocks having some fun inflicting casual physical abuse on the nerds in the locker room and on the playground. Hierarchies in Culture A are often maintained by physical violence and the threat thereof and put-downs and other explicit verbal bullying. When somebody in Culture A thinks you’ve gotten a bit above your station and wants to put your in your place, they’re likely to either actually use physical violence against you, explicitly threaten you with it, or explicitly insult you. Abuse in Culture A tends to look like our stereotypical picture of some swaggering thug openly terrorizing somebody who has some sort of vulnerability.

By contrast, hierarchies in Culture B tend to operate under more polite fictions of relative egalitarianism, cooperativeness, and non-violence. Enforcement of Culture B hierarchies tends to be less overtly violent. Culture B hierarchies are more likely to be covert and legible only to somebody with inside knowledge (e.g. you’ve ostensibly got a group of equals, but some are more equal than others because of advantages that mostly aren’t explicitly acknowledged). Culture B tends to have more of an ideal that coercive power can only be legitimately exercised for moral reasons, while Culture A tends to have more of a “master morality” culture where power is seen as worthy of respect in itself (Culture A is what gave us “Chad” and “alpha” as aspirational ideals), which is why bullying in Culture B tends to have a moralistic and fearmongering nature (see: Tumblr call-out posts) while bullying in Culture A tends to follow a more “master morality” logic of “our victim is weak and aesthetically displeasing to us, and that in itself makes them deserve punishment” - though much like “Culture A rewards strength and technical skills, Culture B rewards social skills and popularity” that’s a dichotomy that can easily be overplayed; most human hierarchies come with a hefty dose of community-minded moralism (even if the community is a pirate ship or criminal gang or something like that), and social skills and popularity are hugely important in almost any culture. Culture B is for people who wouldn’t dream of doing anything so barbaric as yelling at you or punching you because they’re mad at you; they’d complain to the human resources department who’d force you to spend a Friday evening listening to somebody lecture you about the need to “make our store a welcoming environment for our valued customers.”

An archetypal abusive Culture A authority figure is the macho thuggish “respect mah authoritay!” cop. An archetypal abusive Culture B authority figure is the gaslighty Nice Lady Therapist. The former is more-or-less open about the fact that he sees himself as above you in the pecking order and if you dispute that he’ll be delighted to enforce the pecking order in approximately the way chickens do it. The latter pretends to be your friend (and perhaps believes themselves to be that), and expends a great deal of effort tailoring their pecking order enforcement to not look like pecking order enforcement - significantly, they might like to be as openly brutal as the “respect mah authoritay!” cop is, but in strong Culture B that social strategy just doesn’t work; their social strategy represents a compromise with socially influential ideals of egalitarianism and non-violence, a tribute that vice pays to virtue (less charitably, it may simply reflect playing to different strengths and trying to minimize different weaknesses, e.g. the thuggish cop may have chosen that social strategy because he’s a physically powerful but not particularly socially intelligent Biff Tannen type, while the Nice Lady Therapist may have chosen that social strategy because she’s a socially intelligent and Machiavellian but physically feeble 4′10 woman).

In short, Culture B tends to both meaningfully soften the blows of pecking order enforcement and obfuscate them. It follows that as equalizing movements gain ground and explicit pecking order logic becomes more taboo, hierarchy will increasingly take on Culture B characteristics. In 1700, if you angered your boss in some petty interpersonal way he might have whipped you, which was his right as your master. Today, if you anger your boss in some petty interpersonal way she might think a little about how to get revenge on you in a way that doesn’t risk blowback if you take it up with the union, and then find some excuse to arrange for you to have to attend some mandatory HR remedial training that isn’t officially a punishment but let’s be real, totally is. Maybe in 2200 you won’t have a boss because you’ll work in an officially egalitarian syndicalist union, but there will be some union members who are “more equal than others” because of personal connections or charisma or some combination of both, and if you anger one of them in a petty interpersonal way they might through whisper networks arrange a quiet campaign to make sure the union votes against your requests for your favorite foods on the workplace lunch menu.

I guess I’m staking out a position as a hedging kind-of partisan of Culture B here. There’s a lot of talk about how Culture B gets an undeserved good reputation and can be just as unfair and cruel as Culture A but in a more insidious way, and I’m sympathetic to that and I think there’s a lot of truth to that, but, y’know, if I had to choose between pecking order enforcement that has to maintain a plausible veneer of being something else and just open undiluted sadistic pecking order enforcement, I think I’d prefer the former. I think even just adding in a requirement of hypocrisy improves things, because it forces pecking order enforcement to optimize for plausible deniability instead of sadism and effective tyranny. Admittedly, as somebody who finds this very relatable I have a strong personal bias here.

An illustrative personal anecdote: the usual stereotype of high school is that bullied kids (or at least bullied boys) suffer a lot of casual physical abuse, but I noticed that in my school there was a lot of verbal bullying but mercifully little physical abuse; the worst that was likely to happen in terms of physical violence was somebody tripping you up or throwing a box of kleenix at you or spitting their drink at you or something like that. I suspect the reason was that blatant physical violence was pretty much the only form of bullying the school administration would reliably punish (though they’d likely punish the victim right along with the perpetrator), and that’s why it usually wasn’t done. I suspect what happened is that stereotype of chronic casual physical abuse reflects what schools were like when the baby boomers were growing up (and boomers then wrote fiction etc. that reflected that experience that shaped the pop culture stereotype), but then anti-bullying reforms came along and by the late ‘90s and early ‘00s they’d achieved one great success: mostly eliminating that schoolyard culture of casual physical violence. And that was a very incomplete fix, just addressing the tip of the iceberg of the problem and probably often redirecting bullying into psychological abuse rather than actually reducing it... but, y’know, I’m really glad my middle and high school experience didn’t conform to that pop culture stereotype of the school dweeb getting regularly beaten up by four or six bigger kids. I had an awful time in middle and high school, but judging from pop culture stereotypes it could have been so much worse, and if suspensions for kids who punched other kids is what created that difference, then I’m profoundly grateful for that reform.

I think the left is kinda-sorta waging war on Culture A as a side-effect of its war on pecking order culture, in which high-status people enjoy the advantages of Culture A while low-status people labor under the disadvantages of Culture B. It’s not an accident that Culture A is associated with men and Culture B is associated with women. Accommodation (sometimes to the point of self-harm) is a survival strategy for low-status people in a social structure that resembles a pecking order; if you’re going to lose the fight, it often makes sense to pre-emptively accept a settlement that favors the interests of the stronger person (often to the extent of trying to anticipate the stronger person’s wants, performing even the brain work of figuring out their preferences for them). Competitiveness is a social strategy for upward mobility in a pecking order society or defense of a place near the top of the pecking order (it also has more pro-social functions so we probably want to keep it around in some form, but social competition is very much part of its function). Women tend to be reluctant to openly advocate for their personal interests because for much of history a woman openly advocating for her personal interests was likely to provoke status-guarding retaliation from men. Men tend to be reluctant to show vulnerability and see doing so as feminine because for much of history other men were likely to perceive a vulnerable man as an opportunity to increase their own social status by lowering the vulnerable man’s social status, and as a rule of thumb to lower a man’s social status was to give him a social status more like a woman’s. In the context of a pecking order society, a lot of Culture B makes sense as social strategies for people at the bottom of the pecking order with little realistic shot of escaping its lower levels, and a lot of Culture A makes sense as social strategies for people at the top of the pecking order and people at the bottom or middle of the pecking order who have a realistic shot at using high-risk high-reward social strategies to move up in the hierarchy. I think there’s some complicating factors around reproductive dynamics that explain why this is a gendered thing instead of just a class thing, but I won’t get into that here. So it makes sense that as society becomes less like a pecking order that process will involve shifts toward Culture A in some areas and shifts toward Culture B in other areas, because those cultures are probably both somewhat maladaptive in a more egalitarian social context.

A relevant example is that for much of history vigorously advocating their own sexual interests was often very risky for women, so Culture B primes women to pre-emptively accept a settlement that favors the man’s sexual interests, so liberal consent norms work better if women develop more assertiveness about their own interests, which looks kind of Culture A-ish. At the same time, women now have more leverage to effectively demand that men perform pro-social Culture B behaviors of accommodation, empathy, and consideration for the feelings and interests of others in the context of heterosexual sex.

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Tangential aside: I think thinking of hierarchy as the fundamental tension point of the left vs. right conflict illustrates a way that post I was responding to might be kind of too meta and you might get an illuminating perspective by stepping back from all that meta-level theorizing about fundamental epistemological differences and looking at the object level.

If you analyze left-wing “cancel culture” at the object level, what does it look like it’s trying to do? It seems to me that it’s trying to lower the social acceptability of what leftists perceive as defenses of hierarchy. Who are the stereotypical targets of campus “cancel culture”? They might be a “race realist” who’s very eager to tell you about how he thinks certain human groups have lower IQs or other congenital traits maladaptive to modern society and darkly hint about political implications. They might be a business libertarian economist who wants to stump for the gospel of the free market. They might be somebody who has a habit of delivering the academic equivalent of boomerposts about kids these days with their coddling and their trigger warnings and their genders. They might be some principled “free speech” type who seems to spend a lot of their energy white knighting for neo-Nazis and other far-right types. They might be somebody who you’d think would be relatively unobjectionable to leftists but who’s said something that can be uncharitably interpreted as bigoted at some point. Besides raw factionalism, the obvious common point is something that can be reasonably interpreted as a defense of hierarchy. The “race realist” at least implicitly says “some groups are smarter or otherwise better than others and may therefore be rightfully deserving of privilege.” The business libertarian economist at least implicitly says “if you’re poor because you can’t get a job or can’t get a job that pays well, that’s basically your problem and the system working as intended; a society with great inequalities of wealth and status may not be ideal but it’s at least better than all the realistic alternatives.” The academic boomerposter at least implicitly says “some people struggle in our education system because of personal emotional sensitivities; their weakness is their own problem and us more functional people have no obligation to accommodate it, if that harms them it may be regrettable but it’s basically the system working as it should to weed out those unfit for it.” The principled free speech proponent at least implicitly says “wanting to kill the Jews and re-enslave the blacks and have white Sharia should be a tolerated opinion in our society, at least insofar as it should not be legally persecuted, and I am willing to devote considerable efforts to defending that principle.” The basically unobjectionable liberal who happens to have a dodgy comment or three in their social media record at least implicitly says “I don’t think I should get too much blowback for once implying that [insert group of concern here] maybe deserves the jackboot to the face.”

And sure, you can dispute the fairness of such judgements, but the over-arching project outlined by these targets seems fairly obvious: to raise the social costs of what leftists perceive as defending pecking orders.

And, like, yeah, there’s some meta-level differences about the role of tolerance and debate too, but I suspect a lot of the disagreement is really more object-level, over how objectionable certain opinions actually are, e.g. a lot of the dispute over “cancelling” the business libertarian guy is probably going to be over 1) how objectionable defense of hierarchy actually is, 2) whether libertarian beliefs are actually defenses of hierarchy.

#people are complicated #my big ideas #leftism #culture #warning: long #cw: bullying #cw: violence #cw: rape #cw: bigotry #politics

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prince-of-elsinore · 3 years

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Sam and Dean: psychological analysis and headcanons

In response to this anon ask from the 66 SPN Questions:

6. Do you have any psychological headcanons (or canon interpretations) of the characters?

Anon, this is probably not what you asked for. But I started writing, and kept finding more I wanted to say, until I thought--why not just say it all? And by all, I don't actually mean all--this is by no means exhaustive. But it was a wonderful, self-indulgent opportunity to organize my thoughts on Sam and Dean's psychologies, and even find some new ideas as I was writing, and to put them out there so others can read and discuss. (Always happy to discuss any of this! Inbox is open.)

As a disclaimer, I know most of these thoughts are probably not original and may be retreads of many things fandom has been discussing for years. I'm not claiming to be breaking new ground here. Also, I sorta float backwards and forwards chronologically in my discussion--some parts pertain more to them when they're young, some to when they're older, and I don't always clarify which. Also, these are generalizations! I point out patterns I notice; that doesn't make them all hard and fast rules, because Sam and Dean are each human and complex!

Here's what you'll find below:

1. Core motivations 2. Happiness 3. Approval and secrets 4. Approval from authority figures 5. Need and attachment re: others 6. Sympathy and empathy 7. Walls—hiding vs. performing 8. Need and attachment re: each other 9. Ambitions and goals 10. Normality and monstrosity 11. Guilt and self-loathing 12. Autonomy and sacrifice 13. Personal identity 14. Concluding observation

1. Core motivations: Dean’s purpose is to protect Sam, obviously. Sam’s purpose, though a little less clear, is to save Dean. Sometimes it’s explicit, as in s3 and s9-10. But I think Sam also wants to save Dean, in general, from himself and from the life. It’s why he pushes against Dean’s obedience to their father. It’s why he tells him to get out and go to Lisa after he jumps in the Cage. At a certain point, I think Sam accepts he can’t “save” Dean without changing who he is, so he chooses to stick by him—because at least then he can make Dean happy.

2. Happiness: Dean’s happiness—or perhaps contentment is a better word—is knowing that Sam is safe and alive. Sam’s happiness is Dean being happy. In Sam’s world, things are good when Dean’s good. I think that, conversely, Dean wants Sam to be happy, and Sam wants Dean to be safe, but they both know and to an extent accept that those things are not within their control, so they focus on what they feel they can control.

3. Approval and secrets: They are each other’s north stars, guiding principles, in different ways. For Dean it’s “look out for Sammy,” for Sam it’s “what would my big brother think/do.” Dean doesn’t need Sam’s approval. Sure, he loves it when Sam admires him, but if he feels he needs to do something against Sam’s approval, he doubles down because approval from Sam is not the top priority. He’ll do what he thinks is right, especially to keep Sam safe, no matter what Sam thinks about it. Sam, on the other hand, does crave Dean’s approval and cares very much about his opinion. It doesn’t mean he won’t go against Dean (all the conflict of s1-5!), but it affects him differently. This leads to different kinds of secret-keeping: Sam goes behind Dean’s back to avoid his disapproval; Dean goes behind Sam’s back so that Sam doesn’t interfere with what he thinks needs to be done.

4. Approval from authority figures: Dean does crave approval from others—specifically, respected authority figures. The big one is obviously John. I think in a way it’s Mary, too, when she comes back. But it only applies as long as the person has his respect. Sam doesn’t crave approval from other authorities in the same way, perhaps because his primary authority figure growing up was Dean.

5. Need and attachment re: others: Sam is the only person Dean cannot live without, but he also makes outside connections of a friendly nature fairly easily. He’s the more socially outgoing brother who latches onto people like Gordon, gets friendly with Ash, and forges connections with Jo and Charlie, just to name a few (and Castiel at times—though their relationship is so inconsistent and often convenience-based I hesitate to include it in this category). Though Sam is Dean’s core need, I do think Dean thrives with other friendships. I’m not talking about found family, though I’m well aware of Dean’s tendency to call people “family” quite readily. Honestly, I think this is a manifestation of his craving for connection with others. Dean has an affectionate and playful nature, and let’s face it, Sam isn’t always super receptive to that—so naturally, Dean seeks out people who are. (I think this is also, in some cases, related to Dean’s craving for approval from others). Of course, none of those other relationships come close to the depth of his relationship with Sam, and when his relationship with Sam is at its best, I don’t think Dean really needs anything else to sustain him. But in reality, it can’t always be at its best.

Sam, on the other hand, doesn’t forge outside connections easily—but when he does, they tend to be deeper than Dean’s easy casual associations (even when Dean has real affection for someone, he tends to keep the tone of the relationship light). It’s pretty clear Sam was a loner kid, and I imagine it took him a while to find friends at Stanford, and even though he loved Jessica he still clearly kept many secrets. That’s the thing with Sam—he’s got walls. Dean’s got his own walls, but they’re different. Sam can seem emotionally open, but he protects his innermost self very carefully and rarely puts his emotions out there in a truly open way—even less than Dean does. I think this is a consistent personality trait for Sam, not one born of trauma (though perhaps exacerbated by it at times). In fact, it’s in later seasons that I see Sam finally, in rare moments, let down those walls, with Rowena and Jack. When he’s young, I think this was partially a coping mechanism he developed for hiding his desires/feelings, even from himself, because he was so unhappy with his life. It means that even though he’s an introspective guy, he’s not as self-aware as he thinks he is until he’s older and more mature. He’s very good at self-deception when he’s young, because as a thinker, he can convince himself of just about anything.

To circle back to attachment, what this means to me is that Sam, while he certainly appreciates close friendships and has a lot to offer those he cares about, doesn’t crave friends in the way that Dean does. I think he desires to be understood (this is a natural human need) but he’s much more comfortable with himself than Dean is, and is somewhat of a loner by nature. This means he’s also not (usually) going to be too affected by the status of his relationships with others. Dean is much more volatile and easily hurt by others (this is where Castiel is a great example).

6. Sympathy and empathy: On the surface, Sam appears to be the caring, sensitive brother, while Dean is brash and insensitive. This is a very incomplete picture, however. It mostly comes down to the difference between sympathy and empathy. Empathy is an involuntary response, whereas sympathy is something that a person chooses to express, though that doesn’t make it necessarily superficial—it also comes from an emotional place. Dean tends to be more empathetic, and Sam more sympathetic. Dean, despite his performative walls, is more easily affected on a visceral level by others’ emotions. He is more sensitive, more easily hurt or swayed to anger, and also more easily experiences empathy. This has nothing to do with what Dean thinks is right—it’s another involuntary emotion. He is sometimes moved to express this feeling, but he’s not generally concerned about appearing sympathetic. Sam, with his careful emotional walls, isn’t generally so viscerally affected by others, but he is kind. This is expressed as sympathy, because he cares about others’ feelings, and he wants to be good/morally right. On the one hand, it comes from an intellectual place—“it’s socially acceptable/morally right to express care for this person” (which Dean is less likely to care about)—and on the other, it is an emotional response—“I know what that feels like”—but a more regulated one than empathy, where one almost directly experiences another’s emotions.

7. Walls—hiding vs. performing: It’s interesting that both brothers have their own walls, which they construct as a form of self-preservation, but they have different levels of effectiveness in protecting themselves from outside influence. One difference might lie in what the walls were built in reaction to. Sam built his walls at a young age to separate himself from the outside world because, ironically, it was precisely what he desired, but was not allowed to have. He therefore consciously distanced himself from it, to dull the pain of not having it. The goal of those walls was to have something to hide behind, where he could remain generally unnoticed, so he could conceal his pain from outsiders and even from his family.

Dean took a little longer to build his walls—or at least to consciously do so. He already no doubt fashioned himself after his dad as a kid, and often put on a brave face—for Sam, for his father—when he was not feeling brave. He therefore became accustomed to performing at a young age, and performed many roles for both Sam’s and John’s benefit. He was unconsciously building walls with these performances, concealing his true feelings and desires. Later, I think this started to become more intentional, especially in relations with women/sex partners and especially after the Stanford split, as Dean realized how vulnerable to hurt his sensitive nature made him. It was much safer to perform all the time, and never let his real feelings show. For Dean, even more than Sam, I think he often lost sight of what those real feelings were behind the walls as he tried his best to be the performance he was putting on.

For a visual metaphor, I think of it this way: Sam is a boy at the center of a self-constructed labyrinth. He is almost always able to maintain control over how close people get (except when a few slip past his defenses, at which point he may be susceptible to manipulation). Despite all those elaborate passageways, though, there’s still Sam at the center. It’s lonely there, but he knows himself pretty well at least. Dean is a man in a mask who wants the mask to be his real face. He does everything he can to fuse himself and the mask together. They probably are fused at this point, so it would hurt to take the mask off. His memory of the face under the mask is hazy. He’s afraid, if he looks under the mask, he’ll hate what he sees. He’s lonely because no matter how close others get—and he lets them in close, can surround himself with people—none of them will ever see his true face. But he’s convinced himself it’s better this way, because if anyone saw his face, they’d hate it.

8. Need and attachment re: each other: Clearly, both brothers need each other. Sam’s need for Dean is different than Dean’s need for Sam, though. The way I see it, Dean’s need is one that requires reassurance. Perhaps it traces back to the concern about Sam instilled into him at a young age. I think it was strongly exacerbated by the Stanford split, when Dean realized his and Sam’s desires didn’t align. In Dean’s mind, Sam left once and can do it again—he’s always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sam, on the other hand, has always been able to rely on Dean as a rock, a constant in his life—to the point that, in a way, he takes it for granted when he’s younger. Not in a spoilt, ungrateful way, but in that way that we, as children, might take our parents for granted—they’re always going to be there, right? That’s why, on the few occasions where suddenly, Sam isn’t sure of Dean’s devotion, the rug is ripped out from under him and he’s completely adrift and distraught—seasons 4 and 8 come to mind. Sam needs to be the center of Dean’s universe. When he fears that that’s shifted, that Dean hates him or has chosen someone else over him, it turns Sam’s whole world upside down. For Dean, the fear is that Sam will leave, but it’s a constant, background worry. For Sam, the fear is that Dean will hate him, but since he can usually count on Dean to be obsessed with him, it only comes up now and again. Only Dean can truly hurt Sam, while Dean is vulnerable to hurt from others—though, as always, the deepest hurt can only come from Sam.

9. Ambitions and goals: Sam is the one with greater needs and ambitions outside the scope of their relationship. For Dean, if he’s got Sam and he’s got hunting, he’s content. His greatest accomplishments are taking care of Sam and saving people, and that’s all he needs. I see Sam as craving other sources of fulfillment, though—academic/lore study for its own sake (the pursuit of knowledge), and a leadership/mentorship role. I thought it was very fitting that Sam finds these in late seasons, with leading hunters against the BMOL, then leading the apocalypse AU hunters, then mentoring/nurturing Jack. Dean has always had (and needed) a mentor/leadership/nurturing role with Sam, but Sam also thrives when he’s able to step into that role for others.

10. Normality and monstrosity: I’m just going to link to this post rather than repeat myself.

11. Guilt and self-loathing: This is something they both struggle with and at times, are defined by, but it manifests differently. I think their Hell traumas exemplify their different brands of guilt: for Dean, it’s perpetrator’s guilt. He knows he did something terrible and feels he can never atone for his past actions. For Sam, it’s victim’s/survivor’s guilt. He may not have done anything wrong, but there’s a certain amount of self-blame, especially for perceived weakness. This is another theme for Sam; one of the main faults he sees in himself is weakness—too weak to save Dean from Hell for instance—and as a result tries to shoulder things alone (killing Lilith, Hallucifer, etc). Sam has a need to fix things, to prove to others and himself that he is capable. Dean, I think, sees his main fault as neediness, but really, it’s a deeply buried sense of innate worthlessness. He was taught from a young age that his brother’s life—not his own—was of the utmost value. He internalized that his life was only worthwhile if he could save others, and has trouble with the idea that he, himself, has value beyond what he can do for others.

12. Autonomy and sacrifice: The above leads Dean to have a very constrained sense of his own autonomy. In general, he values duty/loyalty to others over autonomy (although when it comes to cosmic beings, he’s all about free will—see this post if you want more thoughts on that, and Sam’s autonomy). Often, his desire to control others comes from a place of frustration when Dean feels they are neglecting duty/being selfish. I think partially duty towards others is really a deeply ingrained value for him, but there may also be some buried jealousy at play, in that Dean wishes he could act with more freedom, put himself first every once in a while, but doesn’t know how to. Sam tends to value autonomy over duty (this doesn’t mean he doesn’t believe in any sort of responsibility—he’s willing to sacrifice for the greater good, after all). This means he also tends to respect others’ autonomy, though we all know he can get plenty unhinged where his brother’s safety is concerned. The theme of Sam and autonomy has been talked to death so I’ll stop there, but you can click the link above if you want more.

13. Personal identity: One of Dean’s biggest struggles is with how much of his personal identity is received rather than self-determined. He is tasked with taking care of Sam and he is trained to be a hunter; these become the foundations of his identity. He says it himself: taking care of Sam is not just what he does but who he is. Then in season 3, his own subconscious mocks him for his lack of originality, styling himself and all he loves after his father, showing that this is a source of deep insecurity. This discomfort with himself contributes to his fear of being abandoned and left alone with himself. He doesn’t know who he is without Sam—or rather, is convinced he is nothing without Sam, which is why he fights so hard to keep him by his side. It also contributes to his general desire for friends, or better, family: people who won’t abandon him.

Later in the series, I think Dean has come to embrace his genuine self more. He’s nerdy and excitable and playful—and I don’t see this is as regression, but rather a healthy embracing of what makes him happy—not tastes inherited from his father. If it seems juvenile, it’s because it’s the first time in his life he’s allowed himself to express and explore these things. I think his relationship with hunting is also healthier; it’s no longer something he does because it’s the only thing that can give him worth. He does it because he believes it’s right and genuinely wants to help people. He has a more complete sense of self, and while it’s still totally tied up in Sam, he has gained some self-worth.

[I should note that basically everything I’ve written about Dean supports the headcanon that Dean has BPD—a headcanon I accepted after I realized this. For some more great writing on Dean and BPD, see this post by @venhedish.]

Sam has always known what he wanted for himself and rejected what was given to/allowed him. Wanting what he couldn’t have, from a young age, helped him develop an individual sense of self, not defined by others. I think it’s this difference in their sense of individual identity that leads some viewers to think that Dean loves Sam more than Sam loves Dean. He doesn’t, and losing Dean is just as huge a loss and a grief for Sam as losing Sam was for Dean. Dean is central to Sam’s life, and he can’t feel complete without him; however, his identity and every desire has never revolved as entirely around Dean as Dean’s has around him, so Sam has a foundational sense of self that even losing Dean can’t completely destroy. It’s what allows him to rebuild in grief and carry on (whereas I have no doubt Jensen’s right and Dean would waste away in the back of a pool hall without Sam). Dean’s central role in Sam’s life never disappears, though, and it is, in fact, what allows Sam to carry on; an effort to honor his brother’s memory, living in a way that would make him proud. There’s continuity in that for Sam; the craving for his brother’s approval and happiness never disappears. Seeking those things is what makes Sam happy, both in their domestic years together before Dean’s death and in the years after. They are both, after all, co-dependent!

14: Concluding observation: Sam and Dean have many similar issues, desires, and insecurities: the desire for a normal life, the fear of their own monstrosity, the desire for love and friendship, their need and love for each other, their desire for approval/to be admired, resentment at their childhood, the feeling of being impure and unworthy, the desire for freedom, issues with bodily autonomy. Sometimes these are seen as the purview of one brother or the other exclusively, but that’s almost never true when you consider canon as a whole. The difference is in how these things are internalized, sublimated, reflected, and expressed for each of them. It makes sense they would struggle with so many of the same things, because their lives are deeply intertwined and they are in the same boat most of the time.

#spn meta #sam meta #dean meta #sam and dean #winchester brothers #my meta #the brodependency #long post #spn

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mk-wizard · 3 years

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Rescue Bots vs. COVID-19: How would it go down?

Hello. This essay is to answer a question asked by the inquisitive @petrichornial who raised a question that would make for an interesting scenario that would definitely involve the Burns family and Rescue Bots.

Right off the bat, we know that the bots don’t need to worry about catching it because COVID-19 is a virus that only affects organic people not robotic organisms. However, they can still be carriers as the virus can latch onto them which would require lockdown, safety, distancing and sanitation protocols to apply to them as well to keep humans around them safe. As for the Burns family, Cody would be the one stuck at home while the rest of the family would be required to go out often because they are first responders. In fact, I think all of the kids would be under lockdown which means most communication between everyone would only be digital. The good part is that a lot of things in Griffin Rock are done by machines anyway, so some business and such would still go on, but for people like Huxley Prescott who is a reporter, coffee shop owners and such, their work would suffer immensely.

Though the main focus would be how people are affected socially in which case, the four bots plus some of the townspeople would represent the five categories/issues society faces during COVID-19.

Number one, you have Heatwave who stands for people who are in denial of how much danger COVID-19 poses and how much they openly resent the lockdown and all of the restrictions. He wants to be free to do what he wants and he sometimes shirks protocols like not washing as soon as he comes back, not keeping his distance and becoming stir crazy from being inside so often. He probably become very moody and hard to talk to snapping at everyone.

Number two, you have Blades who stands for the other extreme of people who are taking precautions too far to the point of paranoia and hysteria. He sees COVID-19 as this boogeyman who is going to come get him the instant he takes a foot outside, he would fear going out, he would be afraid to go near anyone even people who are not a danger and have trouble performing rescues because that involves touching or going near people. Blades would probably go as far as thinking he has it or someone around him does prompting him to panic even further.

Number three, you have Chase who stands for the people enforcing the lockdown and safety precautions to the point where he is being too severe. In an attempt to keep people safe, he is fueling the paranoia and actually angering the stir crazy people instead of handling things with a sympathetic touch and common sense. I can even picture a moment where he refuses to let Chief Burns out during a rescue as an attempt to keep him safe, but doesn’t realize that he is endangering the people on scene. I don’t say all this because Chase is bad. It is that he is very lawful and is paranoid, but in a different way from Blades. Chief Burns is an older man making him more vulnerable to COVID-19 and he just wants to protect him, but fails to realize that the virus doesn’t work that way and that Charlie made an oath to help people. I even imagine a moment where Chase forcefully “sanitizes” by spraying them with sanitizer and water anyone who is caught outside including people who are allowed to be out like truck drivers or delivery people. Maybe even the cat Mr. Pettipaws after saving him and even suggesting giving HIM a fine for being outside.

Number four, you have some people who are accepting the lockdown and such, and are at home, but they are becoming extremely complacent to the point of laziness and letting themselves go. People are becoming slovenly, the state of property is being let go, nobody is exercising and take out is at an all time high indicating that people are not eating right either. This raises concerns because while people may not wind up ill because of COVID-19, they will wind up ill because of self negligence and unhealthy lifestyles. Some characters will even wind up gaining weight or dressing like slobs. I can picture mayor Luskey being the guy who just sits around dressing like a slob and becoming fatter which also has a very negative impact on his marriage as his wife becomes disgusting by his laziness and listlessness.

Lastly, we have Boulder who represents the best of us trying to get through COVID-19 and he would be the star of this episode as he would also serve as the voice of reason especially at the end. Boulder is abiding by the rules, but he is being reasonable about it and while staying inside, he is making the most of his time by keeping up with his hobbies and even maintaining the HQ. He even helps Cody get around to taking up cleaning up his own space and even sorting out material things he never got around to before. Boulder would probably even encourage Cody to learn how to keep after himself and the importance of respecting your home. I can even picture this episode bringing in Ratchet as a special guest star since he is a doctor and can give medical advance to everyone, including the bots, for the physical and mental health.

In the end, it would be Boulder along with Cody and Dr. Greene who would bring the town back to its senses by ceasing to be extremes in any directions by reminding them that outbreaks have occurred before throughout history. Moreover, they would inspire the people to be mindful that surviving COVID-19 doesn’t mean anything if we can’t even survive ourselves and that we shouldn’t use the lockdown as an excuse to let ourselves go or cease being productive. This would bring also the other three bots to their senses and give them, especially Heatwave, new purpose by helping people maintain their properties since the bots cannot get sick. Also, Prescott would find new purpose by allowing people to send in how-to videos and other family videos to bring up spirits on his blog. Lastly, some people would even use this chance to at long last use the lockdown to get around to doing things they should have done a long time ago. In the case of mayor Luskey, he finally decides to get up from the couch and exercise alongside his wife hinting that he is on his way to getting in shape and patching things up with her.

As a bonus point, I imagine Doc Greene is using the lockdown to do more than just do experiments. Being the positive person he is, he wants to use the time to be productive so he is trying out all kinds of hobbies though some of them are not working out like singing where he is tone deaf, cooking though his food is worse than Dani’s, and he even attempts things like yoga and knitting. However, he has the right attitude in not sitting around doing nothing and he is still taking care of himself and his home. In the end, he does find a hobby that works for him especially when you consider what his wife does: botany.

And that is my take on how COVID-19 would go down in Rescue Bots. Of course, this is only how I imagine it. I am curious to hear what you think would happen.

Thanks for reading, have a great day and stay safe.

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sometimesrosy · 3 years

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There are a lot of popular female antiheroes though? Blair Waldorf, Amy Dunne, Santana Lopez, Madison Montgomery, Villanelle, Harley Quinn, etc. even Lexa... Characters that are introduced as "bad" are just more attractive and interesting in general, it's why Blair will always be infinitely more popular than Serena, or Katherine than Elena or Santana than Rachel

This is one of the things that I meant when I said there was more to talk about. I was specifically thinking of Villanelle, but I thought that would lead into a different discussion. Now this is just me thinking, not absolutes. I'm also talking about trends. There can be exceptions. Maybe we need to have a larger sample size to really analyze. That might be an interesting examination. What are the tropes and archetypes for females vs males, villains vs heroes vs whatever is in the middle?

Your list, in particular makes me wonder about something. How many of those "popular female antiheroes" are lesbian or bisexual?? Of the four that I know, it's all four. (I never watched TVD or any of the others.)

Don't you find that curious? Why the female antiheroes, murderers, tyrants, psychopaths and bullies are... queer? I'm not saying that cool characters shouldn't be queer. I'm asking WHY we create or read this type of character a queer?

And in the last post, before I didn't go into this, I actually had to wonder if part of this attractive toxic masculinity is about what women will submit themselves to?

Is part of this colonizing villainy about "taking" women? Whether they want to be taken or not? Seducing them?

I don't think this is a necessary component of relationships, m/f or wlw. And yet, I think it's something that we keep seeing. I don't know if it's an innocent thing, either. I don't know if the preference for toxic characters came first, or if the audience has been groomed to see a toxic murderer and read it as a romantic love interest. And this, as an abuse survivor, disturbs me. Whether a viewer identifies with the love interest or the romantic villain, are we creating a tolerance for a dynamic that certainly looks sexy, but irl has a damaging result not often seen on tv shows and movies?

I'm not telling anyone what to like. I'm not saying they SHOULDN'T like their fave mass murderer or bully. There are lots of reasons to ship what you ship or to be drawn to dark characters. And there's also a reason to explore the complex humanity of people we call villains. But I am saying there are things to question in this phenomenon that can have a negative affect on people irl.

I also have to disagree with you about characters that are bullies or murderers being more interesting than characters that are not. You may think they are ALWAYS more interesting, but I don't find it intriguing when a person who has suffered decides to spread that suffering around. I would rather see a story of a person who has suffered and then stands up to the abusers and stops the abuse and grows from the suffering.

You think "good" characters are simplistic and only villainous ones are interesting?

I think we're back to the whole "women aren't allowed to have flaws." Certainly Rachel was annoying. But then again, do we find a woman who is proud of herself always annoying? Yeah, we kind of do. While a man with an ego is considered attractive.

Maybe part of the problem we have is that most female characters, especially the ones who are "good," aren't allowed to have complex traits before we start to call them selfish and annoying and how we 'just don't like them." Or, like, when they are just like any other male hero, we call them Mary Sues. As in Rey vs Luke.

I know that fandom gets mad at me when I point out toxic traits in their romantic ships. I'm sorry. I just can't like that kind of relationship. And I am not going to consider them attractive or healthy, no matter what excuses people have for it.

I am personally sick and tired of people turning villains into heroes. You may not be, but I am and I have that right. All the fascination with people who lust for power, who hurt people, who kill or maim. Or for a less fantastical story, bully and abuse. To speak of Glee again. Yes, I could have empathy for Santana (the only none white character on your list I think?) and she did grow as time went on, I still thought she was a bully and I didn't care for how she treated Britney. I just don't think love or some minor sympathetic traits or a tragic backstory makes up for someone being a toxic abuser.

And yet, if you give a good guy or a woman or a POC a minor negative trait, they fall from grace. They become annoying or selfish or irredeemable. But without that complexity, you think they're boring. Maybe it's about CERTAIN negative traits. Like Clarke Griffin was constantly being called selfish for various flaws and mistakes, despite all her efforts to do the right thing, and sometimes failing. And was turned into the only human not worthy of heaven. Or Daenerys, who tried to free slaves and stop madmen and tyrants, and ended the story as a lunatic deserving to be killed by her love.

WHAT are the negative qualities a woman is allowed to have and still be seen as sympathetic?

#tbh i didn't want to go here with the last post because i thought people would get pissed off #i wish y'all would just let me NOT like abusive characters and talk about it on my own blog #you like them that's great. congrats. i hope you never find one of those in real life because it sucks #but now you have to argue with me about how abusers are just SO DAMN INTERESTING AND SEXY and you stan

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thesharondefenseleague · 3 years

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mlm imo werent sexualized to the degree that wlw were in most canon media mostly because of the male gaze. Gay and Lesbian relationships or moments got very limited representation. One was probably more sympathetic but also heart breaking like say brokeback mountain. One was explicit but depicted as grotesque or twisted or perverted or immoral in some way. And the last version was the titillating version. In western media because of the assumed straight male gaze lesbians making out to titlate guys was a common thing like say in Jennifer's body. The equivalent of that with guys wasnt really that common not in western media. Not that wlw couldn't like that content but it was made to be fanservice for men .

So thats what I kind of mean by wlw were sexualized at least in western media. This equivalent with mlm in fandom never really existed they never made out for girls to find hot in the same way. It was never marketed like oh look hot guys making out. Fandom did that but not canon.

As for comic book men being sexualized kind of. There is definitely the unrealistic beauty standards but theres that debate of was it for the purpose of titillating women? Or a result of toxic masculinity putting this unattainable unsustainable goal for men. Maybe both? But both in comics and the movies they are based on the posing and clothing and moments with women get made to clearly sexualize them . It especially ovbious with comics with them twisting their bodies so their boobs and butts are jutting out. Or like movie moments like Bruce landing in Natasha's clevage. Or angles where you are staring down a female character's shirt or she has a boob window for some contrived reason. Or just reasons to give full page spreads of them in skimpy clothing.

Its rare men get depicted like this or posed like this. And when they do it often stands out because its not the norm. It's something unique. Not true with men. Even in form fitting spandex they are often posed and framed to make to make them look powerful or intelligent or to reveal things about their character.

Again not that men never get sexualized or that fanservice is always bad. Or that its not a concern that men are having these terrible body image issues. But just that for women for the sexualization its so pervasive and constant was my point.

Its just as bad in wlw in canon as it is for women in relationships with men in canon when it comes to that sexualization but i hear so much more about the problems about the wlw ship than the mlw ship. Like to use DC as a example i hear so much about how people sexualized or mishandle harleyivy but compared to that i hear very little about batcat in comparison even though Catwoman is often just as sexualized in that ship.

As for misogyny in shipping wars yes it definetly exists and is a problem as is racism and homophobia. But my issue is mostly that the problem isnt because the main popular ships are mlm. But so often I see the argument framed that way.

Like shipping wars existed between m/w ships and still do today. And they are still often pretty misogynistic towards the woman in the other ship. I don't even have to look at other fandoms I remember Steggy vs Starton getting real ugly.

Mysogny in fandom doesn't uniquely pop up when mlm are the more popular ship. Its often just as bad in fandoms where m/w is the popular ship. But people just bring it up alot more they make it bout valuing the men over the women .

Well i mean that goes both ways you could say its homophobic for valuing the straight ship as better than the gay one or liking it more. But either way its stupid they dont care bout sexism or homophobia only that their ship is more popular.

Thats the sentiment of all ship wars the gender dynamics and racial make up change nothing. Nothing except the bullshit you use for the ship war.

The problem is that people are being homophobic and mysogynistic and racist not just in regards to fictional characters but towards real people just to win a ship war. It comes out so easily. Thats the problem imo.

Mysogny for example i think isnt discussed as much when its a m/w vs m/w ship war or drama because as both ships have women it can't be used to slander the other ship. But when its drama between fans of a m/m and m/w it comes out alot again not because anyone really cares but because now because one ship lacks a woman it can be used as fodder for what people actually care about. Tearing down the other ship.

Again not that mlm fandom doesnt have mysogny. They definetly do. But they aren't mysogynistic because they ship two guys together. Thats not proof they hate women. Having a ship with women isnt proof that you aren't sexist towards women. There might be homophobia in fandoms of mlm ships and mysogny in fandoms of m/w ships.

But in the drama between a m/w and m/m ships that doesn't get brought up because no one cares if that problem can't be used to show that someone only doesn't ship your ship if they are bigoted against it. Who cares about misogyny if your ship is two guys? Who cares about homophobia if your ship is straight?

No one because they cared about the popularity of their ship not the actual issues.

Gonna under under the cut for length again.

This is a lot to read so I'm gonna respond paragraph by paragraph and hope for the best in terms of comprehension.

When it comes to media made about the LGBTQ+ community, you have to keep in mind when it was made, who made it, and who was it made for. And that it's been shown that straight women have had the same reactions to mlm content as straight men to wlw content. QaF was dumbfounded to find that the majority of their audience was straight women when the show's sex scenes were 95% between two or more men and yet that's what they ran with because hey, it got the views. The views of mlm and wlw content in the mainstream media before then was minimized, despite how fucked a lot of the other content could be. If by "most canon media" being directed at the male gaze being summer blockbusters, and more specifically comic book movies, then sure. If we step out of that box, then not really. The film examples you chose are interesting because BB is portrayed exactly how the author of the original short story wrote it which was meant to be heartbreaking since it was a tragic dramatic piece while JB has a woman who wrote and another woman who directed it while purposefully trying to allow to actress to have a level of sexuality without exploiting her as past directors have (also neither of the main characters are lesbians - one is bi, the other I think is straight but maybe questioning?).

The sexualization of wlw in modern western media is definitely a thing. I mean, the first Iron Man film has stewardesses on the private jet pole dancing if I remember correctly. It took until 2016 to stop sexualizing Scarlett in every movie: the changing scene in IM2, the lowered zipper in A1, the ass shot in Cap 2, the boob faceplant in AoU (in your third paragraph, but mentioning it here anyway). It's a joke that you know when a man directs a wlw indie film during the sex scenes. But the mlm equivalent did exist alongside it, and it's what kicked off the century.

Comics and their movies were always for men. The male bodies are male wish fulfilment for their physical appearance. The women are male wish fulfilment for their dream girls. Funnily enough, one of the least sexualized women in comics I've ever read is Sharon. She's rarely, if ever, drawn to be sexualized for the audience. I'm not even sure she's even been in those swimsuit issues Marvel did years ago. And it shows heavily that Marvel struggles to know how to appeal to women without being aggressively in your face about it. The best example of them appealing without pandering is WV, and the worst is the group shots the Russos did in IW and Endgame, especially the latter.

But the men get those poses in the movies too. Thor bathed shirtless for no reason in TDW. There's a scene in Endgame dedicated to talking about Steve's ass. Pratt in GotG. Rudd in Ant-Man. Most actors are expected to look good shirtless and put themselves through intense shit to look that way. So do the women, but they aren't doing it to have the glamor shots of their muscles. And the MCU is not the only film franchise like this. Most, if not all, franchises with majority or entirely male leads expects them all to look like bodybuilders. And I'm gonna take back that it's just for the male audience, because these bodies are meant to appeal to women who are intended to thirst for these actors too. They think these bodies is what will bring women to the theaters.

None of this will change, as you say, that women's sexualization is "constant and pervasive". The film industry is just a part of the larger whole of media. Television and advertising have a treatment of women that's beyond whatever you or I say because there are decades worth of shit to go through that would take dozens of essays worth of writing to fully divulge beyond "please stop it's gross".

Now DC is a whole other ballgame. They're pretty infamous for their artists' sexualization of heroines and villainesses. Harley, Ivy, and Selina are definitely pretty bad, but when I remember what I've seen drawn of Kara, Kori, or sometimes Barbara... But outside of one artist, I think Harley and Ivy as a couple have been drawn tamely. Can't say the same for Selina, because they just can't not draw every part of her body even when she's fully clothed.

I think it's hard not to talk about fandom misogyny outside of m/m ships because of how often popular m/m shippers have rooted their shipping into misogyny. And even with m/f ship wars, a lot of the time the "faulted" character is always the woman when majority of the time it's the man who sucks. I don't get why everyone is fighting for who should kiss Steve because Steve sucks and they'd be better off without him. But because Steve is the object of affection for our fave, we have to fight off everyone else.

Don't look at other fandoms for m/f ship wars. We don't appreciate how tame we were, even at our worst. I'm serious, I've seen so much worse.

I think why the topic of misogyny comes up more with m/m ships is because they follow a similar principle of the male characters being more developed in canon and fanon so it's who people gravitate towards.

There is definitely layers of homophobia in fandom, but there's many versions of how we see it. Homophobes who won't ship anything that's not m/f. Homophobes who ship m/m but won't support IRL rights. People who love m/m but abhor f/f, and vice-versa. The shippers who use them for personal fodder. But the sexism is more prevalent than the homophobia. And the racism way more than both combined.

And it does cause a lot of ammo, and much of it severely unjustified, in ship wars. Literally the bullshit I've seen pulled out of thin air to accuse Sharon of not being worthy because someone said she's a racist for [they literally had no reason just called her one because we said Sam and Sharon are friends because they are] and other nonsense.

The real world repercussions of the homophobia, the sexism, and the racism in fandom... there's just so much. Like we are all still people, and yet we decide because we hide behind screens to be antagonistic, and use homophobic, sexist, and racist shit to attack each other over ships just because we want to paint the other person as crazy, I guess? If you can't see that there are no enemies in ship wars and that the other side is still people, maybe you need to sit out and log off. It's baffling how often it still happens to people. Then it's no longer about ships, it's about who is an asshole.

I will say that Steve and Peggy vs Steve and Sharon is probably the only m/f ship war I've seen where misogyny is talked about. Is, not was, because it still is. Both sides call the others misogynistic. I don't think either side is, but you can see in individuals. Those who tweeted at a certain actress that she was a slut for kissing her costar certainly are though.

You are right that shipping m/m isn't inherently sexist. But tearing down women in those ships to prop up m/m has made me stop shipping certain characters altogether. People, seriously, we don't have to justify why we like them! We can just like them! And other characters can still exist! It's never been that deep.

And you're right, the popularity of the ship helps people ignore any deeper issues within them and this is a power used to silence valid criticism if it pops up.

(I hope I answered everything well for you.)

~Mod R

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heymacy · 3 years

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what do you mean "one day" you write how mickey's the wild west outlaw archetype... write it now bitch!! (please i say this with love, i've been fascinated with that comparison- and agree with it- ever since i saw your tags!!)

bitch (affectionate) 👏🏼 and okay yes let’s get in to it! disclaimer: this is probably going to be long, i did study film in school for two and a half years before switching my major (which i deeply regret) and i study history now, so the pretentious film student vibes are probably gonna come out swinging and i apologize for that. full incoherent rambling below the cut!

so, the wild west outlaw archetype is one that most people are familiar with, since the "western” genre has existed for over a century in Hollywood. in fact, the first time someone described a film as a “western” was in 1912 in Motion Picture World Magazine, though the first acknowledged “western” film was made in 1899. these films are typically set in the late 1800s during the westward expansion in America (or as i like to call it, “white people stay displacing indigenous groups with their manifest destiny bullshit”). there are very clear and distinct archetypes present in this genre, as with most genres (one day i’ll talk about rom-com archetypes because i find them fascinating). traditionally, there are 8 archetypes aside from the “outlaw”:

The True Cowboy

The Gunslinger

The Gambler

The Preacher

The Doc

The Sheriff

The Drunk

The Tycoon

each of these character archetypes has unique characteristics and motivations. sometimes there are overlaps between archetypes, such as the The Drunk and The Gambler, or The Gunslinger and The Doc.

what’s unique about The Outlaw (we are now using capital letters, ooooo) is that they don’t fall in to any one category from the list above. rather, they embody a sense of resistance or pushback against expansion and modernization of western territories. to The Outlaw and his ragtag gang of ruffians, the west is an infinitely better place when the colonizers aren’t there (even though they themselves are colonizers - we love a solid sense of self awareness lol). because of this, they often go to great lengths to upset the balance of whatever little town they’re in, in hopes that the settlers will abandon their homesteading and return to the east, allowing for the outlaws to exist free of their inherent oppression (aka, we wanna do crime and these assholes won’t let us)

now let’s get in to shameless. at its core, it’s a show about family, poverty, struggle, and love. there are, however, MANY parallels between the running storylines in the series and the classic western film. gentrification is this century’s westward expansion, with the wealthy and the privileged moving their families to “unknown lands” (the Southside) to buy up property and transform the landscape in to something reminiscent of where they were raised. enter stage left, coffee shops and yoga studios, the modern day saloons and haberdasheries. someone is always stealing something, tagging something with spray paint, intimidating the transplants and upper middle class yuppies, all in an attempt to prevent their home (for The Outlaw, the real “wild” west is his home) from becoming a watered-down version of itself, rife with hipsters, this century’s colonizers in many ways.

using this logic, we could see the entirety of the Southside population, the locals at least, as The Outlaw, but i think that would be short-sighted, since the archetype of The Outlaw is centered around the disruption and destruction of the transforming cultural landscape (see: Mickey’s actions in season 5, his animosity towards Lip, who he saw for a long time as a fellow outlaw, for siding with the enemy and going off to college). not everyone on the Southside is going to have the same central motivation and trajectory as the TRUE outlaw. in fact, i would argue that the majority of the Southside is made up of Gunslingers, which do often overlap with The Outlaw in westerns, specifically ones from the 30s and 40s where The Outlaw is also the guy with the “fastest draw in the west”

now in western films, The Outlaw is almost always the antagonist, the character that gets in the way of the True Cowboy’s journey to self-fulfillment and happiness, and we’re supposed to hate him for it. we’re SUPPOSED to think he’s crass and violent and out of line and a stain on the fabric of society. rarely did westerns delve in to The Outlaw as a fully-fleshed out character. however, the rising popularity of “sympathetic outlaws”, aka outlaws we don’t think are entirely terrible or who have motivations behind their actions that we can empathize with (see: Bonnie and Clyde) has led Hollywood to produce films in which The Outlaw is a sympathetic character, not just a tool used to further the central character’s storyline. it’s a very similar phenomenon to the rise of villain/anti-hero popularity. i think we see this most ostentatiously in the Star Wars universe, with the “light side vs. dark side” debate and so many people meta-ing the hell out of characters like Anakin Skywalker, Ben Solo, and other characters that we’re SUPPOSED to dislike for their heinous actions but we just...don’t? at least not as much as we’re supposed to. of course there are exceptions to the rule, and people who just hate “bad” characters blindly (pea brain energy right there folks).

Mickey Milkovich is the perfect encapsulation of The Sympathetic Outlaw. he is an instantly interesting, compelling character with unique motivations. our first impression of him is when he and his brothers are on their way to the Kash and Grab to beat up Ian for “assaulting” Mandy - like our VERY FIRST impression of him is this dirty, dangerous little gremlin who steals from the shop owner and terrorizes the neighborhood. if shameless were a western, mickey and his brothers would be the “Terrifying Milkoviches”, known and feared throughout the land, riding in to town on their horses, stopping at the general store to steal bread and beer before pistol whipping the store owner (Kash) and tormenting the shop boy (Ian).

The Outlaw is, at his core, a character that is resistant to change, who uses fear and violence to get his way, and who is well-known but not well-liked. sound like anybody we know? yeah, i thought it might!

even though The Outlaw is often feared by locals, settlers, and indigenous folks alike, there is also a unique dynamic between The Outlaw and the townspeople they torment, and it usually appears in the townspeople vs. Big Oil conflict that is prevalent in MANY westerns throughout history. in comes Mr. Handlebar-Mustache-Bolo-Tie-Oil-Tycoon ready to rip his way through the little town in the west so he can build his railroad or drill for oil. the townsfolk are taught to believe that this man is doing so for the betterment of their livelihoods, allowing the town to grow and expand and be an “important spot on the map” for travelers. however, when The Tycoon’s presence disrupts their lifestyles and stability, as it always does, the townspeople very quickly become pretty okay with The Outlaw fucking up Mr. Handlebar-Mustache-Bolo-Tie-Oil-Tycoon’s day. there is this unspoken alliance between The Outlaw (Mickey) and the townspeople (the Southside), where they acknowledge the potential damage The Outlaw could rain down on their little homestead, but usually decide to risk it to prevent more significant damage from Mr. Mustache. thus, a tense but consistent alliance is often formed, giving way to the “Revisionist Western” genre, or modern westerns with primarily sympathetic outlaws.

when everything is said and done, The Outlaw is a symbol of resistance, resourcefulness, and realism. The Outlaw doesn’t like change, and he fights it at every turn. he is thrifty and skilled, which contributes to his fearsome reputation. he is highly realistic, and will often clash with more idealistic characters (see: “do you have anything resembling an imagination in that fuckin’ skull of yours?” “...no. i like facts. things that are real. shit i can hold. like a gun!” / 11x04)

ultimately, Mickey Milkovich is a modern retelling of the classic Outlaw archetype, feared by many but loved by viewers. he is highly critical of the upper classes, grounded in realism, and sympathetic in his plight. he goes up against “the man” like it’s in his fucking DNA, which is why we love him so much. we all love The Outlaw, whether we want to admit it or not. we may not condone all of their actions, but we recognize where their motivations come from and are able to empathize, which only strengthens our love of the wildly misunderstood shit-stirrer that is Outlaw Mickey.

#shameless meta #mickey meta #mickey x archetypes #mickey x the outlaw #shameless x westerns #anon #answered #mickey milkovich #shameless character analysis

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hourglasscinnarose · 5 years

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CLOWNS

Circus Clowns 1.) White Face What people normally think of when they hear the word "clown". White Face make up with Red/Black make-up over it. They're the ones that wear the ruffles and sometimes they wear a pointy hat. These guys are the "top banana", meaning that with other clowns, they're basically the main clown.

2.) Auguste/Red Clown They usually accompany White Face Clowns. These clowns are the ones who get stuff done to them [Pie in the face, squirted with water, sit in paint, ect.] These clowns start their make up with either red or flesh tones, then they go into outlining their eyes, mouths, and noses in Reds and Blacks. Their eyes and mouths are encircled with white beforehand. These clowns have the large plaids, long neck ties, big shoes, colorful polka dots and strips, and the big wigs.

3.) Character Character Clowns are clowns with a distinct character attached to them, like a firefighter, policemen, baker, ect. Their makeup is usually a slant on the human face, kind of like the Red Clown, though Character clowns may end up leaning more to White Clowns, themselves.

4.) Harlequin Though they used to be paired up with the Pierrot, they've been more so paired up with White Faced Clowns recently. [Hence why I'm putting them here instead of in the Pantomime section.] Harlequin Clowns are kind hearted, light hearted, nimble, and astute servants. [They usually end up pursing a love interest of some kind and are usually seen as more clever than the upper-people.] They sometimes are only there to make sure the plot flows rather than to make the plot, themselves. They usually wear colorful diamonds, squares, triangles, and, on occasion, things like stars and moons. Instead of makeup, they more so wear masks, though it's not unheard of seeing one with makeup rather than a mask.

Pantomime 1.) Mime Mimes act out stories without using their voice. Sometimes their stories are funny, other times they are very serious. They usually wear black tights and white face makeup, but contemporary mimes sometimes do not wear make up, just as they sometimes make small noises [like grunt] rather than staying completely silent. There's an entire other sub-genera centered around dance, but I don't believe they really "count" as being Mimes or even clowns.

2.) Pierrot A Pierrot is a sort of Sad Clown. These clowns only have white face with no other makeup, with loose shirt and wide buttons and big pants. Sometimes they'll wear a skull cap. Like Mimes, Pierrots tell stories, though they're often the butt of the jokes in comedies. Pierrots are sympathetic characters and are usually something the crowed can relate to.

Tramp Vs. Hobo [Though technically a type of character clown, they deserve their own spot.] 1.) Sad Tramp Tramps are clowns that are down on their luck. Things never seem to go well for them and they usually appear tattered and sometimes dirty, something against the rules of being a clown. [Other things include smoking as a clown, drinking as a clown, and cussing as a clown. Clowns are suppose to be clean and innocent.]

2.) Happy Hobo Hobos are in the exact same situation that Tramps are in, down on their luck, except they are much more optimistic about their situation. Their outfits will be almost identical to the Tramp Clowns: tattered, however their clothes will never really be dirty.

Other 1.) Rodeo Rodeo Clowns are clowns that work in bullfighting. It use to be [and in some, it still is this way, but] that protecting and comic relief were one in the same, but now a days, you'll usually find two Rodeo Clowns in the ring: one to protect the bullfighter if they are thrown off of if they get off the bull, and one to entertain the audience. These clowns put themselves in harms way quiet often to save the riders. They wear bright and lose cloths that is made to be easily torn away with protective gear underneath. They're usually speedy and agile. They also need to be able to read a bull's movement. [As a side note, most don't wear clown make up anymore, but some will.]

2.) Jester Jesters can do a variety of things and are usually personally hired for a family rather than act on stage or on the street. They can do anything, from story telling to juggling to physical comedy. But they're also very political, making political jokes and sometimes even acting on political movements. Some Jesters are used as icons in these moments. Jesters wear just about anything, though it's usually something like this:

3.) Pueblo/Sacred Clown These clowns aren't really to be put in a category, since they are literal clown spirits that people worship. They come from the Kachina regions are are practiced by the Pueblo Indians. These clowns are Jesters and Tricksters. There's an entire ritual dedicated to these spirits that happen during spring and winter. In order to be used in comedy, the clown's identity must be kept a secret. Instead of wearing face makeup, these clowns wear full body paint and a headdress. There's another variant called Mudheads, which use pinkish clay and wear cotton bags over their heads.

#Circus Clowns #Clowns #White Face #Red Clown #Auguste #Character Clowns #Harleqiun #Pantomime #Mime #Pierrot #Tramp Clown #Hobo Clown #Rodeo Clown #Jester #Pueblo Clown #Pueblo #Sacred Clown

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laughingpinecone · 4 years

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Yuletide letter

I am laughingpineapple on AO3

Hello dear author! I hope you’ll have fun with our match. Feel free to draw from general or fandom-specific likes, past letters, and/or follow your heart.

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic (when in doubt, tell me what’s happening to them five, ten, twenty years in the future!), hurt/comfort, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, tropey plots that are already close enough to characters/canon, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploring the ~deep lore, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played entirely straight, sensory details, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships), emphasis on inhuman traits of characters who were human once and have sort of shed it all behind

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, unrequested characters popping up.

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay!), canon retellings, consent issues, actual covid (fantasy plagues are okay)

Les Cités Obscures: any

This is a very general “please, anything in the style of canon, just maybe with less thoughtless sexism” request. I want to lose myself in these cities again, and in the strange lands that connect them. I’d be happy to follow any of the known characters and/or OCs, or eschew characters altogether and write about the cities themselves. What caught your imagination in Brüsel, Xhystos, Taxandria, Alaxis...? The history of some cool building that was only marginally featured in one of the stories? Or an OC city! If you’ve got a favourite European city that doesn’t already have its obscure counterpart, please tell me all about it! Go big, go wild! What strange and classically surrealist happenings take place within its walls? Or even... outside Europe... Nerding out about architecture is of course very welcome. I would also love to read a story based on any Schuiten illustration, contextualizing it as if it were part of this ‘verse. Here’s a bunch of them, for example!

Ghost Trick: Cabanela

You know.. him. Dazzlingly OTT, untiring, rock-solid self-esteem, loyal to a fault, following a rhythm of his own, flawless intuition until it fails and it all burns down… him. I just want to see more of him doing stuff! The way he’s chill and open toward new people (like Sissel and Missile in ch15) makes him perfect to throw at most other characters and see how they react to the sparkles… I’d love some focus on how ridiculous his aesthetic is, half Saturday Night Fever half hardboiled detective half bubbly preteen (for a total of 150%) and yet he makes it work. Or how ruthless he can be, possibly for the sake of the people he cares for. The quote “The intimacy of big parties”. Him and Alma in the new timeline bonding over knowing (once Jowd has spilled the beans) but not remembering that terrible timeline. Some tropey scenario on the job. Snark-offs with Pigeon Man, by which I mean PM snarks and it bounces off him like water off a spotless white goose’s back.

Ship-wise it’s only Cabanela/Jowd whenever it’s not infidelity, Cabanela/Alma in what-ifs also if it’s not infidelity and Cabanela/Alma/Jowd for me (and Lynne/Memry and Yomiel/fianSissel on the side). There are a bunch of shippy prompts in all my past letters - I would however reiterate here that Jowd. is. the worst tease. always. Like, just saying, but assume he’s pining big time and Jowd and Alma figure it out - they’d make a national sport out of excruciatingly protracted teasing.

Conversely, Cabanela/Lynne and Cabanela/Yomiel are NOTPs especially from Cabanela’s side. So while I appreciate the thick tension of a good Yomiel VS Cabanela confrontation like everyone and their cat, and also really appreciate a roughed-up Cabanela, and I do love Yomiel in his own right… I don’t want Cabanela being into it. Adrenaline junkie he may be but this hurts and his coat’s a mess and there’s no perfect winning scenario so he hates every second of it. (JOWD being super into Cabanela being roughed up is another matter altogether and he should probably mind his own business. ...incompatible kinks, truly tragic. they’ll have to find some other common ground. they’re smart, resourceful, playful fellows, I’m sure they’ll manage)

Kentucky Route Zero: Donald kentuckyroutezero

I love everyone in the cast, all acts and interludes, and I am extremely into all the themes this incredible work of art ended up exploring. Agreeing with the overall doom and gloom up to Act IV, I was blown away by Act V’s strong affirmation of the importance of the arts and of the bonds we make and of carving up spaces for ourselves in capitalism’s wake. Donald was, indeed, not a part of any of that. Even the final interlude updates us on Lula and mentions Joseph, but the big guy is nowhere to be seen. So, you know, there’s fanfiction! He’s so static, defeated. I am fascinated by the chain of metaphysical spaces that goes surface -> Zero -> Echo -> Dogwood and even within that framework, the hall of the mountain king is like a hopeless dead end. Dude’s terminally stuck. So - once again, in the spirit of transformative works, how could he get... you know... unstuck? Did Lula’s momentous appearance in Act III shake him? Having a functioning Xanadu again, perhaps? How could he interrogate that oracle, what recursive wonders would it show him? If he decides to leave, what does it feel to be on the surface again after so long, or on the river perhaps? Maybe he is forced to leave by the flood, if not this one, the next... Having him meet any other character would be amazing. Past or future time spent with Weaver... seeing Conway again, changed... programmer guy chatting up musician androids... did he know Carrington from his college days or was Carrington only a friend of Lula’s?

As for Lula herself and Joseph too: “Flipping through the pages, Conway is able to gather that it’s a story about three characters: Joseph, Donald, and Lula. It’s something like a tragic love triangle, but much more complex. Some kind of tangled, painfully concave love polygon.” 😔 I ship them as a full triad, if you can nudge them in that direction, good. But I’m very open to non-romantic resolutions as well, going past their messy feelings to find each other as friends after so many years maybe. Or... a start. idk.

I’d be interested in fic that leans on the game’s adjacent genres: wanna go full-on American Gothic? Dip into surrealism? Take a leaf from Twin Peaks with tulpa / split narratives to explore the characters’ issues? I’m also open to AUs, real or through Xanadu. This also feels like a good place to stress that I really, really like caves.

And now for something completely different: FAQ: The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense is in the tagset this year. I’d say that the crossover with the snake portion of Here and there along the Echo writes itself, but it would not be correct, as in fact I would like you to write it for me. Feel free to not feature Donald if you focus on this crossover instead!

Uru would be a fun crossover too, for Donald specifically. He’s very DRC-shaped in how he tilts at doomed projects which just so happen to be deep underground.

Pyre: Volfred Sandalwood

This is a Volfred solo, Volfred&literally anyone or Volfred/Tariq, /Oralech or /Tariq/Oralech request. I adore everyone in that Blackwagon+Dalbert+Celeste, so if you want to add a Nightwing or two to any prompt, please do! I also love all the Scribes and find Erisa a compelling tragic figure, while out of the other triumvirates, I’m “love to hate them” for Manley, Brighton, Udmildhe and Deluge and would not like to see them featured in sympathetic roles. fwiw I also enjoy Jodi/Celeste and Bertrude/Pamitha a lot!

I feel deeply for all of Pyre’s main themes - literacy, degrees of freedom, the fragile time that is the end of a historical cycle, nobodies rising up to the occasion, building a better society, and of course found family, “distance cannot separate our spirits” and all that jazz, and Volfred is squarely rooted at the center of all of them. I really really love everything he stands for, even if he’s overbearingly smug in standing for it. Just please tell me things about my fave. His relationship to the Scribes (as a historian, a some kind of vision, via *ae or once he’s a star himself)? A ‘forced vacay’ Downside ending where he looks at the Union from afar and keeps living in this strange transformational place? Life in a cramped Blackwagon that was meant for like 5 people tops and is currently eight Nightwings, a herald and an orb? Since he picked him for the job to begin with, does he respect and cherish Hedwyn as he dang well should? What does it feel like to try and Read a herald? Was he ever in danger, in the Commonwealth or in the Downside? What daring act of resistance did he and Bertrude pull off at some point in their past? It’d be cool if one of his old pamphlets came up at some point. Does he puff up as prime minister because he’s nervous, and who can see past his hyper-professionalism and lend a hand? Please roast him big time about the votes he assigns to the various Nightwings in his planner? What’s his attitude toward the flame’s purification (what with being a tree but mostly like, as a general concept. He did nothing wrong!) (well he definitely said some things wrong and sometimes oftentimes the ego jumps out, but his intentions did nothing wrong)? When did his calculating approach fail him? Something with Pamitha along the lines of that edit that goes “Can we talk, one ten to another?“/"I am an eleven, my girl, but continue”? Dude could easily be voted sexiest voice in the Downside - how much is he aware of it? Does he sing? I love how he bears his ‘reader’ brand proudly. And speaking of scars, I have to wonder, looking at Manley for comparison, if the shape of his head, with that massive crack, isn’t also due to injuries.

As a refrain from my general likes: emphatically yes xeno to both shippy interactions at all ratings and to gen explorations of what a Sap is like… I’d love to read all your headcanons.

Ship-wise, I enjoy him with Tariq as this kind of esoteric connection of minds, guarded words full of secret meanings, long contemplative walks together (is any external pov watching...?), Volfred’s Reader powers brushing against Tariq’s mind and getting weak in the knees at the starlit expanse he finds there, so unlike mortal thoughts. Tariq finds his individuality learning from him; Volfred presumably gets a transcendent glimpse of the Scribes. And I enjoy him with Oralech as pretty much the opposite of that, Oralech is so very mortal compared to him, such a precious, fleeting, burning life especially after his fall. Oralech’s idealism is very dear to me, it was their plan, their shared revolutionary spirit, I find it deeply moving. And I am very interested in seeing them rebuild their connection now that Oralech is back, changed, and in some ways he can learn to let go of his misconceptions and slowly open himself to Volfred’s love again, but in other ways that’s who he is now, with this deep-set anger, and what does it even feel to realize that you’re the symbol of the end of an era (the end of the Rites, the fading of the Scribes). I’m interested in both topside and downside endings for all of them, as long as they end up on the same side, the revolution was peaceful and they don’t angst too much about the side they ended in. Tariq can ‘find his way home’ in the near post-canon somehow or even be summoned again, as a different aspect of the same ‘moonlit vision’ that once inspired Soliam Murr.

Strandbeest: any

https://www.strandbeest.com/

I would just like words to go with these, please and thank you so very much. Worldbuild to your heart’s content! Specifically: I’m fascinated by the premise that the strandbeest are living creatures that evolve and adapt to their ecosystem. A world where life is just wind stomachs and sandy joints, and the tide that can catch you unaware. I would like a story that feels distinctly inorganic. The wonder that is the existence of these creatures. Their unique struggles. Weird and experimental if you like. With a mechanical focus, maybe?

I nominated four critters as a selection of the different cool things they can do - Percipiere Excelsus is huge and has the hammer mechanism, Suspendisse’s tail senses the hardness of the sand, Uminami is my fave caterpillar and the caterpillars overall feel like a new paradigm after a mass extinction event, Ader straight-up flies... but they’re all wonderful. If you want to focus on different strandbeest, please do!

Twin Peaks: Lucy Moran

Case fic but they don’t find out jack shit, someone disappears, David Bowie was there, it’s complicated. Fragmented, shifted, mirrored identities. New Lodge spaces. The risks of staring into the void for too long. Gentle illusions. Transcendence. The moon. Static buzzing. Any title from the s3 ethereal whooshing compilation used as a prompt, actually. Whatever goes on on Blue Pine mountain or the even more mysterious things that go on on White Tail mountain where exactly zero canon locations are found. Twin Peaks is all about the mystery to me, the awe of mystery and unknowability and the human drive to look beyond and the risks of getting a peek, and about shared consciousness and trauma taking physical form in an uncaring world. Go wild with the ethereal whooshing! But I also love the human warmth at the heart of it all, and sometimes it’s enough to anchor these characters and let them have a nice day. A fic entirely focused on some instance of coziness against the cold chaotic background of canon would be great too.

For Lucy specifically, a big draw for me is how canon (...s2 need not apply) empathizes with her way of processing the world. Not just Peaks, but On the Air’s protag who is basically a Lucy expy also gets the narrative completely on her side and that’s great. And I love how in s3, her focus on the small things around her is always echoed by bigger, climactic events beyond her horizon (bunnies / Jack Rabbit’s palace, chair order / Garland’s chair, her first scene talking about the two sheriffs / doubles everywhere...). It feels to me like some kind of off-kilter mindfulness and I love it. She’s also got a loving husband and an amazing son, which, in this economy and also this canon? Damn. The one functional family, imagine that. I am not interested in focus on family dynamics, but singularly, either Lucy/Andy or Lucy&Wally are great - in particular, I’m interested in how strange they are and yet they make it work. With the ruthless critique of traditional family structure that’s all over canon, maybe they make it work specifically because they’re not doing any of that. A bit like the Addams family... but... not goth...? Anyway. I’d love to see Lucy interact with and maybe strike a friendship with any character she’s never shared a scene with in canon! In the tagset, there’s Diane for some secretaries bonding, Audrey because??? why not?, Albert because it’d be an epic enemies to friends slowburn, some version of Laura in the future, if we’re feeling really daring maybe even some version of Coop in the future, still fragmented... or anyone you want! Outside the tagset I’d be curious about Hawk, Margaret and maybe Doris in particular, I think, and Phil, and Nadine and the Invitation to Love fandom in general (Frost says it still airs - did it get as weird as TP s3 did?), but if you have an idea with someone else, absolutely go for it!

Canon-specific DNWs: any singular Dreamer being the ‘source’ of canon, BOB (let alone Judy) being forever defeated in the finale, Judy being an active malevolent presence in the characters’ lives, clear explanations for canonical ambiguities, ‘Odessaverse’ being the reality layer, the Fireman’s House by the Sea being the White Lodge, whatever Twin Perfect’s on about, Cooper/Audrey, Cooper/Laura

#letter

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ninety6tears · 4 years

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More disorganized thoughts on Dublin Murders (eps 3-6)

(As before, lots of books-centric talk and speculation that may be spoilery.)

I feel like I should begin by giving Phelps a bit of credit in that it does seem clear enough, even in the changes from French, that she is an enthusiast and has probably read this series over and over aside from professionally. There are times when I smile because it’s so obvious she’s a fan, but then there are other moments...we’ll get there.

I feel like it’s always a little...bad or whatever to bag on child actors, but ugh, with the exceptions of some minor ones I just can’t with these miscast kids. I can’t with that cheesy decision to have Adam yelling and yelling when they find him in the woods (the nail-breaking catatonia was so much creepier, come on). This slightly deranged stuff with little Cassie and Lexie is another quick shortcut for the viewers who can’t piece together psychological implications for themselves--it’s that stuff that makes me wonder if relying on a lot of voiceover would have actually been more subtle. Yes, Cassie had an imaginary friend when she was little because she felt alone after her parents died, but that isn’t spelled out in a couple clauses like I just did, or like the series basically does in two minutes with a strangely emotionless scene they were so proud of we had to watch it twice just in case the ins and outs of her formative trauma wasn’t clear enough.

How depressing to think of a kid buried with their favorite color when kids change their minds about their favorite color every few months. That being said, my mom somehow always kept it straight! Something’s not right in that house, man.

The thing with McCabe being haunted about Knocknaree till his death and leaving crackers notes in the evidence is a little corny but I like it. And like, Rob saying it’s irrelevant but clearly being shaken to hear that...and Christ, that bit later on when he makes up a probable suicide for Adam Ryan...boy.

Oh my LORD can we talk about how Rob is so cold with his mom?? Cassie was more affectionate with her than he was. That scene is so sad, it’s perfect. And no shit, when she told Cassie she wasn’t a good liar, I scoffed at that...and then she told Rob and they both laughed about it <3 <3

It’s been commented on, but Rob has a key to her place? He comes over to wake her up with coffee, and he’s about to leap in his car and come to her after she sees Lexie’s body, because of course he would have (while Sam awkwardly tries to approach her over her shoulder, lolll). Their platonic intimacy, I just... <3<3<3

LOL @ O’Kelly reacting to Lexie the way more people probably would: “Are you all on ketamine?! Am I the only one looking at this?!!?”

“You get to know his tell.” That’s mean for my Cassie but

I gotta say, I’m less annoyed than I was when it happened but still annoyed that Rob and Cassie sleeping together happened with her emotions as the catalyst rather than his. Like it makes enough sense if you believe the whole complication was going to happen sooner or later, but it really backs away from the part of In The Woods where Rob is at his most absolutely naked vulnerability and is clearly capital ‘t’ Triggered and it might significantly compromise how sympathetic he can be, and what his development does with male trauma. At least they do make him cry later, and remembering witnessing the rape works as a stand-in for what brings that on, but it’s undeniably disappointing to not see him go through that raw breakdown with Cassie in a way that feels in multiple ways like a tragically brief lapse in his walls.

Sam? Goading Cassie into admitting she slept with Rob after they’d fallen out and then saying “Fuck you, I have to work with him”? More likely than you think. Nah, I don’t know, these two were practically incapable of being harsh with each other in the novel and it’s...unexpected. It’s interesting because it’s like here we are treating Sam’s idealization of Cassie as more obviously a Problem while it was more just an annoyance in The Likeness, but I don’t really see book!Sam having this level of breakdown like he hardcore has been in denial that Cassie has probably done some stuff she’s not proud of, so they’re very different in my mind.

HOLLY, though. Holly actually knows Cassie like in the fanfic I’d like to read. Frank’s cheesy Dad shirt! This is the shit that makes me feel that Phelps is a Fan. But like, what is her deal with The Likeness because she doesn’t seem to dive into the things that a lot of the fans love about that book at all? I know they’re short on time (because of who’s choice to condense these in one miniseries, I’d like to know) but there’s a reason the book takes its time with the prep of the operation. With this, we mostly get some cursory stuff about where the kitchenware goes and one bit with a videotape and like...I have no clue how Cassie thinks she knows what Lexie is like, and because of that weird-ass talk with Sam where she seems disconnected from reality about where she came from and Frank showing little concern about how to instruct her to do this and the totally anti-climactic way she arrives at Whitethorn House and they just SKIP TO THE NEXT MORNING like it’s all no big deal, it’s almost like we’re not supposed to care or even think about the central fulcrum of suspense and audaciousness that made the premise of the book so fucking good.

But that’s not even half the problem, because the Whitethorn characters are just kinda lost on this take. So far I either haven’t noticed or haven’t much liked the cast’s performances of them, their connections are simplified to who's banging or wanting to bang who right away, and there’s a sad shortage of actual non-awkward warmth before we get to those fissures of ugliness and resentment. And you know, the worst of it is that Cassie doesn’t give a fuck. She wants to nail one of them to the wall, she believes from the beginning one of them did it, and that’s a completely different story that doesn’t really need all this surreal gothic pomp which is already a lot to swallow in the same season as In The Woods. She and Frank are totally on the same wavelength and that’s fun to watch because sometimes that’s the fundamental note of their sense of intense history in the book too, but in The Likeness, Frank has this contempt for the residents that says more than he realizes about himself, and she has this desire to protect this strange family from the inevitable which says something about her and everything she’s been through, and that comes around in so many ways that I doubt they’re going to suddenly establish in the last couple episodes, unfortunately.

I will say though, while I figured that pulling these two relatively insulated high-concept stories together wouldn’t work and it doesn’t seem to be working, I am enjoying how much it emphasizes the thematic threads and imagery shared between them, even things like doubles/twins. Even though at least one of Rob’s hallucination sequences doesn’t land right for me, I love the visuals always emphasizing that insurmountable intrusion of the woods and the feral world, most literally realized in that horrifying car crash in slow motion. It makes me think of Scorcher’s “Wild stays out” bit--inevitably it doesn’t~~

And at the same time, Cassie leaving Rob to go under is a different way of approaching that pile of angst that I’m finding interesting and I look forward to seeing how they tie everything back in.

Though I did kinda like that one scene with O’Kelly, I have a big bone to pick with that “Mackey gets people killed” thing, because...no? Dead operatives don’t get “results.” You’re not a badass like Frank Mackey is supposed to be if you can’t pick the undercover types and teach your cops how to not get killed, because you get to that point by being good at not getting yourself killed. Mackey even says at one point in Faithful Place with some defensive pride that his moles don’t end up dead. Frank is shady and opportunistic and manipulative, but he is not a fucking idiot, and making him hold the bad-guy ball to just shrug about the gun in ordeI’r to remove--even more!--the emphasis on Cassie’s increasingly compromised and reckless decisions is not something I’m happy with (I’ll admit I’m not 100% sure about this, but she keeps it from him in the book, right?).

Hmm: “If anything happens to her I'll fucking kill you” vs. “Maddox is a survivor.”

Also: “She looks at Daniel the way Sam looked at you.” Aww, Frank, you bastard.

I forgot to say last time that Rob having a roommates-with-hate-sex-benefits thing with Heather is just...yeah, that could happen. But what was up with her not even noticing he looks like he needs an ambulance, lol

I stopped at quite a cliffhanger so I think I’ll just end this here.

#dublin murders #dublin murder squad #cassie maddox #frank mackey #rob reilly #rob ryan #tana french #Layla very occasionally liveblogs #yeah sorry I can't figure out how to do a cut on here anymore

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maleyanderecafe · 5 years

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Nuture Vs Nature Yanderes

This analysis was suggested by @stillnotjulie! If you guys have any other requests for analysis, please tell me and I’ll be happy to give an analysis. Anyways, this topic is a bit interesting since it goes into a moral debate that’s going on right now, so let’s see how it goes!

The debate between Nature and Nurture is basically this: are a person’s characteristics determined by Nature, meaning that you’re born with your traits and preferences, or are they determined by Nurture, meaning the conditions, people and area you’re raised in? Both sides have their respective points and proof that people have gathered. For instance, in the case of Nature, there have been documents of twins that have been raised apart that have similar characteristics, such as eating in similar ways or having the same dominant hand. In the case of Nurture, there are documentations of people who live in the same area having similar behaviors and preferences. Really, I think that both are a determining factor on how a person behaves, but the question really is how much each of them affect people. Perhaps one is more affected by how they were nurtured, while another person is more affected by their own preferences. It’s most likely something that differs from person to person. I’ll be writing each of these in reference to the yandere’s families, since this kind of argument is generally tied with family and environment.

The main thing about Nature based yanderes is that they are basically born with the traits of a yandere. Generally, this means that these characters are just born with the sense of obsessive or possessive behaviors or have an inclination to develop these behaviors. These kinds of yanderes I feel are usually the kinds that are in horror style stories, since usually these behaviors are either very sudden or something that they have felt for their entire lives. It’s also less sympathetic as there’s not necessarily a reason to why they feel this way: they could be extremely rich with a nice family or they could be poor with no family at all, and just be born with the traits of a yandere. However, that’s not to say that they can’t develop their feelings more with the environment around them. The difference is that a Nature based yandere would seek out things that would enforce this kind of lovesick behavior while Nurture based yanderes would gradually develop them by the influence around them. For instance, a yandere wants to love the girl next door and learns how to behave like a prince from fairytales that he reads. In this case, he is drawn to fairytales because he believes that it’s a way to get the girl next door to fall in love with him.

A way to write a nature based yandere is to have them be very different from their family counterparts, essentially making them the black sheep of the family. For instance, a very occultist obsessed, introverted yandere in a very cheery and outgoing family. Or a very cold and calculating family with a cheerful deredere style yandere. Basically, making it seem like the two aren’t related would make the nature part of the yandere fairly clear. The family, of course, might have different reactions to their yandere actions. One of them is shaking off the behavior as harmless or possibly just a phase. Usually the family is oblivious to the yandere’s true intentions or just doesn’t see any of it as a threat. The family might be very aware of the actions, but doesn’t see it as harmful or don’t find it necessarily bad or evil in their eyes. Another reaction is fear towards the yandere child, possibly trying to ignore them or trying not to get in the way of their actions. They might also attempt to change the subject whenever something that triggers the yandere comes up to avoid any conflict. Or, perhaps they just don’t have any interest in their yandere child’s love life. It could be that they live far away because they have a job or it could be that the parents don’t interfere with their yandere child’s life. It is also possible that the family itself are all very similar in personality, but the yandere has a different way of getting the person to love them. For instance, a kuudere like family, where most of the children tend to slowly get close to their loved ones and tend to act more distant, while the yandere might be more active in trying to be close to their loved ones.

The nature based yandere doesn’t necessarily have to be developed by birth, it can be something that naturally comes to them based on their current personality. Yanderes can develop lovesick feelings later in life, though usually because of their own set-in personalities. For instance, a yandere who wants to be the best in everything, studies, sports, socializing and then falls in love with someone. They then focus everything they have to woo the person they love, they try to be the best in studies, sports whatever to impress them and try to get as much information on them so that they can be the best lover that they could be, with stalking, pictures, etc. Basically, their current nature becomes twisted into a yandere like obsession, and would be influenced by what their personality was before. A cold person would probably be a very cold murderer if they fell into lovesickness. A more cheery person would attempt to maintain their social status so that they could get closer to their love interest and would know about anyone who would try to get close to them. Basically, they enhance the new love that they have by using their already established talents and behaviors. It could also just simply be a “snapping” moment, when a character finally becomes a yandere. For instance, a very paranoid boy that eventually snaps when he sees his love kissing someone else. The nature affects the way the character behaves and leads up to the snapping point.

Nurture yanderes on the other hand, are more heavily inspired by their environment. In a lot of cases, this kind of environment can be from how their parents raised them. If the family members themselves are yanderes, either from being a nature style yandere, or a nurtured yandere, like a generational one, both of these can influence how a nurture yandere can be created. I’ve already talked about both of these in other posts, so I won’t go over them again, but I will note that these are ways that a nurture yandere would eventually grow into an actual yandere.

However, it can be noted that it is also possible that a yandere can be nurtured by someone who isn’t a yandere. This can be either intentional or not intentional, so let’s start off with someone who is intentionally trying to turn a character into a yandere. Assuming that the person is some sort of parental figure, there might be a reason to why they would want to have their child become a yandere. Perhaps they have vengeance on a person and decide to use their own child to mess up their lives. It could also be a twisted view that they try to enforce on their child, or perhaps an experiment or maybe they just wanted to see if it was possible to create a yandere. This could probably end up with its own post, but basically there are ways to nurture a person into a yandere. It could be through pushing certain ideals into their minds, “mind breaking” in either physical trauma or emotional trauma, or it could be experimentation. If it were another person that caused this, such as the love interest, then it might be a bit different. It would most likely be similar to the story Been Reincarnated as this Game’s Villainess, I’ll Train the Main Capture Target , with a lot of cause to manipulation and swearing loyalty and things like that. Another way would probably be driving the would be yandere into the breaking point so that he would “snap” though that ends up being more of a tragedy than an actual doting yandere, and is a lot more temporary. Regardless, that’s one way that a nurtured yandere could be born, or I guess created would be a better word.

Though another way would be through unintentionally creating a yandere. This generally means that the yandere develop mortals based on what other people around him have shown. For instance, a mother who loses her husband and has to take care of her child. While she tries to keep it together for her child, she has a very melancholy atmosphere around the child and when talking about her husband. Thus the child slowly believes that if he ever falls in love, then he has to protect her to make sure nothing bad happens to his loved one because he doesn’t want to end up being sad like his mother. He might even reason that without someone to love, people will just be sad most of their life and that if they do lose them then they will be in that state forever. Thus, the child when he eventually falls in love, tries to lock his lover so that he can never be hurt. It doesn’t have to be morals either, it could be learned behavior through actions. For instance, the father is a paparazzi photographer and constantly goes out to take pictures of celebrities as a job. The son might associate taking pictures and following someone around as an action of “love” or “admiration” and might try that for someone that they like by climbing up trees and taking pictures even in situations where they probably shouldn’t have. The other way of doing so is with the “breaking point” that I mentioned a lot. If essentially you “train” the yandere to act a certain way, this could also occur. If the lover is prone to life-threatening accidents, then it would be understandable that the yandere would be more paranoid and would account for possible disasters that might happen.

Anyways, that’s my opinions on the matter. Thanks for the suggestion @stillnotjulie!

#male yandere #yandere boy #yandere #opinions #writing #analysis

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addictedtostorytelling · 4 years

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Hello ! I just saw your reblog of a daredevil gif and, do you have an head canon on wether or not Matt and Karen would have been back together and how , if the show had been renewed ? Thx !

hey, anon!

i will admit that few things in television baffle me as much as the way the defendersverse powers that be approach romantic pairings.

don’t get me wrong: i generally like the love stories told in this fictional universe.

i just also don’t know exactly what to make of them.

usually, even without possessing any foreknowledge as to how each individual ship will pan out, i can still be relatively certain as to whether or not a given story world “believes in great loves.”

but with the defendersverse, i’m not quite sure.

that so, my short answer here is: i don’t know whether or not karedevil would have gotten back together, had daredevil been renewed. on the one hand, i feel like they were kind of set up to be endgame from the beginning. but on the other hand, i feel like as the wider defendersverse developed, there were also other viable options introduced for the both of them.

ultimately, i think it would have come down to how the powers that be conceived of the story universe overall—and whether they were interested in telling structured, trope-compliant love stories or not.

more discussion if you click the “keep reading.”

___________

a big part of my uncertainty regarding how the defendersverse treats romances stems from the fact that its shows end mid-story, skewing my perspective of what’s there.

none of the shows has more than three seasons to their names, and all were cancelled abruptly, without really affording the writers a chance to implement final conclusions. they all suffer for having loose strings, never to be tied.

consequently, it’s hard to tell which broken-up ships of the defendersverse were actually broken-up for good and which ones were just at a midgame impasse and might have later reconciled, had they only been given more time and narrative space in which to do so.

however, another obstacle to making this determination is not in the circumstances but in the storytelling itself, as the defendersverse powers that be tended to be fairly indiscriminate in how they used romantic devices surrounding their ships, which means that a lot of the usual “midgame” vs. “endgame” signposts in this story world are blurred.

in the first seasons of both dd and jj, the defendersverse powers create deep and compelling romantic relationships for their respective main characters, playing to all kinds of familiar “this relationship has long-term significance” tropes.

you want the jaded female superhero who’s given up on both love and the world, who then meets a guy who’s both so good and so good for her that she has to reevaluate her priorities? check.

you want the male superhero who rescues the girl-next-door in body, only to have her rescue him in soul? check again.

there’s all sorts of smiles, talk of “before you, i never allowed myself to think about this kind of stuff,” heartfelt sacrifices, expressed vulnerabilities, etc., etc., etc.

in a story world that “believed in great loves,” no one who watched these seasons could be faulted for thinking that jessica jones would be endgame with luke cage and that matt murdock would be endgame with karen page.

the question, however, is, “is the defendersverse actually a story world that believes in great loves?”

in my mind, the evidence is ambiguous.

at most, the defendersverse powers only allow these relationships to progress for one or two seasons before dismantling them—but whether they mean to dismantle them temporarily or permanently is difficult to say.

the characters lead such complicated, dangerous, and ethically fraught existences that whatever happiness they experience in love is generally and perhaps unavoidably short-lived.

as secret identities are revealed, moral stances compromised, trauma experienced and assessed, and heroic stakes raised, their relationships inevitably crumble under the pressure.

this crumbling could perhaps speak to this fictional universe being one in which all loves come with an expiration date printed on them, with none being given special narrative priority over any of the others.

however, the crumbling could also be a story component.

maybe the writers planned these breakups, knowing full-well they were temporary and that eventually the couples would get back together in the long term. maybe they’re just a midgame detour en route to the final endgame.

so cut to the next leg in defendersverse development, when tptb reshuffle the pairings between their main properties, sending character a from show 1 to be with character b from show 2. the process then continues and multiplies as more properties are added to the ‘verse, with characters spinning off into new shows and coupling in new and increasingly intricate permutations with one another.

of course, the truly interesting thing is that once these reshufflings take place, the new relationships created often prove just as deep and compelling as the relationships which preceded them and are marked by just as many typical endgame signposts.

matt murdock is willing to die for elektra and very nearly does so.

karen page repeatedly throws caution to the wind to choose frank castle over public opinion, common sense, and even her own well-being.

there are indicators to suggest that these new pairings could be endgame, just as there were with the ones before them. there’s deep connection. there’s ride-or-die stuff. there’s cuteness. there’s even potentially destiny.

so, as a trope-savvy fan, one is left thinking, “well, okay, if the first pairing wasn’t endgame, then maybe the second one will be,” but then by the next season, the second pairing has often been dismantled much in the same way that the first one was previously.

a salient example here would be claire temple’s various relationships: in s1 of dd, her involvement with matt murdock ends because his vigilantism and masochism drives a wedge between them. after their falling out, she eventually starts dating luke cage. while she and luke are devoted to each other through much of lc s1 and the defenders miniseries, their relationship crumbles at the end of lc s2, when luke’s attitude toward “justice” prompts claire to ask him for “a break.” her second relationship within the defendersverse thus ends much in the same way that her first one did: with claire stepping back from her man because she finds his intense approach to heroism unhealthy.

by the point of cancellation, the net effect is that because all of these relationships have in some ways been treated as “sacred,” none of them feels sacred overall, or at least not definitively.

i can’t really look at them and say, “karedevil is the endgame; mattlektra is the midgame”—and especially not when elektra keeps miraculously resurrecting after she’s killed—because both ships have been set up in ways which suggest lasting significance.

i also can’t look to the comics as a cheat sheet, because while most of the relationships depicted in the defendersverse do have some basis in comic lore, the shows themselves don’t strictly adhere to that canon—and, in some cases, actively go against it.

in the new avengers comics, jessica jones and luke cage get married and have a daughter, but in the defendersverse, their relationship is pretty thoroughly trashed in the aftermath of jj s1.

still, where things get truly complicated is in the way that these various relationships interact with one another within the wider defendersverse.

if luke cage is jessica jones’s great love, but he is also claire temple’s great love, then someone is bound to lose out, right? and since the audience should in theory be sympathetic to all three characters, who are we supposed to be rooting for? likewise, if matt murdock ends up with karen page, then she can’t be with frank castle, you know? so does that mean matt has to be with elektra? but what if elektra dies (and for once stays dead)? then what?

the writers are playing “musical chairs” with their ships, but, as per the game, it would seem that someone is going to be left standing at the end.

so.

all of this discussion is a very long way for me to say that i genuinely have no idea what the defendersverse powers intended for romantic karedevil.

they are initially set up using many of the same tropes and storytelling techniques that would be used for an endgame pairing—but that framing only matters if the defendersverse is one where “endgame” is actually a legitimate thing that the writers are actively working toward.

it could be that matt and karen were meant to be a slow burn endgame, but the writers got cut-off midway through telling their story, before they could be romantically reconciled after their midgame falling out.

however, it could also be that, whether they were initially interested in creating a karedevil endgame or not, by s3 of dd, the writers had moved on from the possibility of romantic karedevil altogether, being more enticed to pair karen off with frank due to deborah ann woll’s unexpectedly good chemistry with jon bernthal.

of course, maybe endgame karedevil was never even on the table at all, either because it was always meant to be a midgame ship OR because this isn’t a fictional universe that is geared toward endgames, period.

“endgame” is a concept somewhat antithetical to how comic books work, as there’s always going to be another iteration and another series and another run, and the details will change, depending on who’s doing the writing and which universe the story takes place in; maybe the defendersverse was working on a similar model, where while matt murdock has history with many women, including claire temple, karen page, and elektra, he’ll never be tied one woman forever; his love life will always be a revolving door, depending on what suits the purposes of the story.

or maybe nothing had been decided yet, one way or another.

maybe the powers were more writing from season to season, keeping their options open, seeing what was available to them.

after all, there were a lot of moving parts in play across the wider ‘verse.

who’s to say what might have happened had some of the defenders shows been cancelled but not others? who’s to say what might have happened due to the changing availability of various actors?

prior to the cancellations, rosario dawson had decided to step down from playing claire, a decision which would have undoubtedly sent ripples across the entire defendersverse, romance-wise.

up until the point when netflix pulled the plug, all sorts of possibilities were still open. there were still so many ways the writers could have chosen to swing things.

as for my personal headcanon (regardless of writer intention or what might have been), i should preface my thoughts by saying that while i enjoy karedevil, they’re not my number #1 preferred ship for either matt or karen, so i would have been perfectly happy with them as a midgame romantic ship that eventually reverted back to a platonic baseline, as per the end of dd s3.

that said, i can definitely see a road that leads to them getting together in the end.

my thoughts are these:

by the end of dd s3, matt and karen are back to being friends again after having been “fallen out” for a long time. since s2, karen has known matt’s secret identity, but now matt likewise knows about karen’s past, meaning that, in a way, the playing field is level between them.

still, their relationship is somewhat fragile.

for the first time in their history, they’ve been honest with each other, and now neither one of them can “hide” in the ways that they used to. they’re both highly aware of this new vulnerability, and neither one of them wants to screw things up. they’re still sussing out what it will mean for them to work together again.

they don’t want to leave foggy caught in the middle of things like before.

so with that in mind, i see their romantic reconciliation as a slow burn process.

of course, they’ve always had a palpable connection, and that connection would be there from the start, even when they were working hard at “just being friends.”

gradually, that connection would grow stronger and more impossible to ignore.

there would be moments when they were working late nights together (after foggy had gone home to marci) when they’d stumble on a lead in their case and start talking excitedly, finishing each other’s thoughts, drawing closer and closer together, until suddenly they realized that there was only an inch of space between their faces and had to pull back, awkward and businesslike once more.

there’d be times when their clients would mistake them for a couple, and they’d laugh and try to brush it off but both be blushing too much to truly convince anyone that they were unaffected by the suggestion.

eventually, they’d start testing the waters—matt purposefully saying flirtatious things, karen touching matt more than she had reason to.

at some point, they’d have to broach the subject.

maybe matt would have taken to walking karen home after work, and one night, after a lot of laughter and arm-holding, she’d stop on the top stair and turn back to him and say, in that breathless, incisive way of hers, “i know you can hear how fast my heart is beating. is yours beating fast, too?”

but, of course, since their relationship doesn’t exist in a vacuum, matt would probably be on the trail of bullseye or some other villain by this point, and, inevitably, these other story factors would come into play.

i don’t know exactly how everything would go down, but my sense as a storyteller is that something would have to impede karedevil’s relationship; the path to reconciliation would, by necessity, have to be a long and wending one for them.

maybe for whatever reason they’d decide not to risk their friendship by pursuing a romance.

or maybe they would pursue a romance, only to have that relationship endangered by whatever villain they’re up against OR to have some of their past interpersonal issues resurface.

(for example, maybe as matt gets deeper and deeper into whatever case he’s working, he starts to emotionally shut karen out again, or maybe karen starts to distrust matt because he’s being evasive; etc.)

hell, maybe elektra turns up in hell’s kitchen, flipping their dynamic on its head.

after all, elektra’s body was never found after the destruction of midland circle, and karen has never gotten to talk to matt about finding elektra in his bed in s2; the potential for angst would be huge.

in any case, i imagine that things would deteriorate for a while—maybe to the point where, if they were already together, karedevil might once again break up.

but, ultimately, something would happen that would remind them of the depth of their feelings for each other—one of them would be hurt or captured or undergo another near-death experience; matt might end up fighting elektra to save karen; or karen might do something to help matt, even though they’d been on shaky ground before.

i don’t think karen would ever make matt give daredevil up completely—because she understands his thirst for justice and even his recklessness, to some degree, and she doesn’t begrudge him those parts of himself—but i think that in the end, matt would have to change; he’d have to become less self-loathing and not compartmentalize his feelings to the extent he always had before. he’d have to start to care more about his own life and well-being than he had in the past so that karen didn’t have to worry about him committing passive suicide via superherodom.

dying for a cause is one thing; dying just because you can and because you don’t value your own life enough to take self preserving actions is another.

karen would also have to learn to trust that matt and not to hide things from him. she’d have to learn to be truly emotionally intimate with him, which would be difficult for her at first, considering that she’s spent her whole adult life holding back important parts of her person.

(one of the interesting things about karedevil is that even though they have this deep, implicit understanding of each other, for most of their relationship, they’ve not really known each other, as both of them have been hiding significant secrets.)

i can see an endgame for them where matt is daredevil with karen’s help and blessing, and she provides him grounding and solace, while he proves to her that, despite her prior experiences, not everyone in her life is going to reject her and send her away; he knows her, and he knows her past, and he’s staying for as long as she wants him.

of course, in all fairness, i can also see many endings for these characters that don’t involve them being in a romantic relationship with each other; this is just one of the possibilities.

anyway,sorry i can’t give a more definitive answer, anon! thanks for the question.

#answered #anon #**#let's talk shop #my meta #meta: daredevil #daredevil #matt murdock #karen page #asks: daredevil

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itsclydebitches · 5 years

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Broadchurch is now on netflix. Just saw season 1. It was really good I plan to watch more but I'm wondering if it's either my own misinterpretation or the way that the show presents things. Over the entire season I found myself having no sympathy for Chloe, who just lost her brother, and instead felt sorry for Jack Marshall the shop owner. I don't condone Jack's past but I find it strange that he's the one I felt this way for over the victim's sister. Is it wrong that I felt this way about them?

[Season One Broadchurch spoilers below!]

No, I don’t think it’s wrong to feel sorry for him, especially since the show goes out of its way to present him as an outlier. That is, someone who legitimately loved and was loved by his wife as opposed to a “regular” pedophile. In the real world? I’m not standing for any of that crap. A grown man of 30-40 something should not be starting relationships with a 15yo, especially with the power dynamics between teacher and student. As said, we don’t condone that, but the story then does everything it can to “justify” that mistake: she really did love him back (he wasn’t grooming her, pressuring her, etc.), he did his jail time without complaint, they point out how laws are fallible (a 15 year and 11 month old is absolutely a minor, but one more month and she suddenly would have been mature enough for him?), he’s given the tragic backstory (a now wife and kid killed in a car accident), it’s revealed he loved the boys of the sea brigade appropriately (a man who truly fell for an individual too young for him, as opposed to a “real” pedophile), shown forgiveness by the one person most poised to hate him (Mark), and eventually driven to suicide. Broadchurch goes out of its way to paint Jack as human: You did what we consider a horrible thing in your past, but have done everything in your power to be a better man since. Your horrible thing does not extend past that specific situation and make you a danger to this community. Broadchurch is interested in human complexity and forgiveness. Granted, they’re doing it with a VERY touchy subject—especially when our murderer was also grooming Danny—but that’s part of the point. The show wants those hard hitting subjects. I’m obviously wary as fuck regarding pedophile characters, but in the specific realm of “Writing trying to convince Clyde that someone who had sex with a minor isn’t actually a black and white bad person,” Broadchurch did an excellent job. I felt sorry for Jack too.

As for how that all compares to Chloe, I’d guess that it’s a combination of personal stuff—people just naturally latch onto some characters over others, no easy explanation as to why—and how the show presents them both. As said, Broadchurch does everything it possibly can to make Jack sympathetic. Meanwhile Chloe, in my opinion, is only sympathetic because this horrible thing has happened to her. Otherwise her characterization revolves around how strong she is. Days after Danny’s murder she’s tracking these keywords on Twitter, fully prepared to deal with whatever new, horrible information might come her way. She’s powering through telling Ellie about the cocaine instead of trying to hide it. (Yes, there’s a bit of a white lie in there, but she doesn’t go full “What are you talking about?” like many teens would. There’s a level of maturity there unexpected for young characters on TV dramas). She’s starting the memorial for Danny on the beach. She’s dealing with reporters. She’s helping her mom out around the house. In the other two seasons you’ll see even more how she steps up within the family, calling people out on their shit, doing what needs to be done, remaining logical while everyone else is caught up in their emotions. As a minor character it happened quickly and mostly off screen, by Chloe is someone who really toughened up through tragedy. She went from trying to weasel her way out of school with a fake fever to calling out police officers on their ineptitude. She grew up and she grew up fast. Chloe comes across as less sympathetic because she’s not looking for sympathy. She absolutely still is, but it requires the viewer to take that extra step and think for themselves, “Goddamn. Things are a mess and Chloe is ignoring her own grief to pick up the pieces, even though as a child herself that shouldn’t be her responsibility. That’s horrible.” Aside from group shots wherein pretty much everyone is crying, Chloe’s grief is channeled into strong actions. It takes a bit more work to remember to sympathize with that; far easier to sympathize with the guy who the show is constantly reminding us is sympathetic: Chloe’s angry, grief-fueled outbursts vs. Jack sobbing over a newspaper.

#broadchurch #broadchurch spoilers #mymetas #Anonymous

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prince-of-elsinore · 3 years

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Some thoughts I just want to get out there on Dean Winchester's sexuality, John Winchester's parenting, and the politicization of fandom:

I've noticed that a few topics in fandom have become subject to "messaging culture," much in the way that real life issues become heavily politicized. Eventually certain statements end up being used and understood as shorthand for a much broader value system. In those cases, folks are listening to the "message" they hear with the words, rather than to the words themselves, which has the unfortunate effect of shutting down dialogue before it can begin, and dividing people into monolithic camps. Of course, to an extent messaging is inevitable and even useful, but an over-reliance on messaging kills variety and nuance of opinion. To illustrate with a very blatant example of messaging culture, take the phrases "Black Lives Matter" vs. "All Lives Matter." When we hear those phrases we don't hear the words themselves--we hear the message they carry and make assumptions about the speaker based on that. (Here is the article by philosopher Agnes Callard from which I got the phrase "messaging culture," and which uses the same example but goes into much more depth on the phenomenon.)

I noticed this in fandom when I realized that some things I was interested in discussing and exploring didn't line up with the way most fans talked about them, to the point that certain opinions would be practically taboo in certain circles. As it happens, these aren't even topics that I feel particularly strongly about, but they are things I wish I could discuss or make jokes about without feeling the need to put caveats and disclaimers in front of them.

One of the most obvious examples is Dean's sexuality. To generalize (please note this word! I am aware this is a generalization!), the assumption is that anyone who headcanons Dean as bi or even is interested in queer readings of him must ship Destiel. The reverse of this is that to be a true brothers fan, you must believe Dean is straight. I understand why the issue is so touchy, given the long history of this argument in fandom and the unfortunate fact that even Jensen has been dragged into it. I'm sympathetic to the urge to defend Dean's straightness, and I think in many contexts it's appropriate. But I find it frustrating that things have gotten to a point where any content putting the word "bi" or "straight" in proximity to Dean becomes loaded. It's almost impossible not to see an agenda.

For me personally, it's frustrating because while I believe Dean Winchester has probably never wanted to sleep with a man, I find his homosocial relationships fascinating and not without a tinge of the erotic. In terms of fanon, I like several ships involving him with other men. I think he might--just maybe--have had a crush on Dr. Sexy, not that he would ever admit it, maybe not even to himself. I also find categories like "bi" and "straight" limiting, and think sexuality tends to be much more elastic and nuanced in reality than the labels we like to give it. But the point is, sometimes I might like to make a joke about Dean being into guys, or to analyze his character with queer theory. This doesn't mean I think Jensen is homophobic, that I ship Destiel, or even that I headcanon Dean as "bi," precisely.

Another such topic is John's parenting. Here, the gross generalization is that those who are John-negative or believe he was abusive are Dean stans, usually of the Detiel-shipping, Sam-hating variety. Those who are John-positive are Bibros, Wincest shippers, and Sam stans, sometimes of the Dean-hating variety. I understand a bit less about how this fandom fault-line came about. Of course, abuse is always a sensitive topic, but this seems sensitive in a different way: posting any neutral or positive John content can be seen as an affront to Dean, or proof of shipping Wincest, and any content speculating about abuse might mean you're not a true bros fan, that you hate Sam, that you must ship Destiel.

Again, purely personally, I do not hate John Winchester. I also love Dean. I think John is a complex and flawed individual, and that the way he raised his sons messed up both of them, but especially Dean (because he internalized his father's lessons/values so thoroughly), pretty bad. I still find him sympathetic and interesting. I'm also interested, though, in discussions of the show's subtext in regards to abuse, including sexual abuse. I'm interested in fanon that portrays John as explicitly abusive. I'm interested in readings of Dean that see him as a survivor of abuse, both for the light they may shed on his canon character and for the fanon potential. I'm interested in open discussion about the way a father's failings and messy, imperfect love could damage his sons and shape the men they become. It doesn't mean I hate Dean or Sam (or John), and it certainly has nothing to do with how I feel about any ships.

This post is not a call-out aimed at anyone in particular. It's really not. It's just based on general observations and impressions from a lot of small moments. I also didn't write this in a defensive, victimized mindset. Like I said, I don't feel I really have a vested interest in how people view Dean's sexuality or John's parenting--they're just things I had some thoughts on and would like to be able to talk about with folks. But I didn't feel I could share those thoughts without a lot of contextualization and disclaimers, which is what led to this post. I don't have an agenda, except perhaps, if it's not too naive to hope, to create a little space for folks to share thoughts without fear of censure or assumptions being made about their other fandom opinions.

#spn fandom #spn fandom meta #spn meta #spn fandom wank #it's not really wank or at least it's not meant as such but jic #dean meta #john winchester meta #my meta #spn #abuse tw #csa tw

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