Also, just a little heads up for y'all: I will most likely not be very active on Tumblr today due to wanting to avoid any potential spoilers for the Mario movie before I see it later tonight.

Okay this is actually a partial reply to another post

but my reply got so long i think tumblr literally cant cope LMAO so (context the Amity park perception filter thread with @kaidatheghostdragon which i will edit a link into after posting (X) Edit: the context link is now attached)

Honestly they might not CRASH crash the economy but I honestly think they could do some serious damage. At the very least if Amity is going to start essentially printing USD with these cards to get infrastructure and the like set up the inflation within the town is going to go crazy and they might just need a new currency. I think it's also determined by how LARGE you consider Amity to be. As I've always seen it described as a small town I've always envisioned it to have a population of around 10,000 people. AS IT TURNS OUT the wiki describes it as 'Amity Park is depicted as a moderately large urban city, reminiscent of Chicago, San Francisco, and/or Philadelphia' WHICH IS WAY LARGER THAN I IMAGINED. I don't know SHIT about American cities or their layouts apart from the fact that Everything Is Squares and also apparently the junctions are death(? Apparently America doesn't have roundabouts??? Bro??? I don't know if that was a Simpsons gag but I think about it maybe half as often as I use roundabouts), BUT the point is that google says those cities are somewhere around 800,000 to 2.6 million.

Honestly I think those are weird numbers because those are enough of a range to not be at all considered the same size imo but we'll take Philadelphia as our base bc that's the one in the middle at 1.5 million. In "Amity Park's" population statistics (X) if you take everyone from 20-44 (we're pretending people under 20 can't get one bc apparently 13 year olds can get them with special permissions and that fills me with a special kind of anguish to have learned) but if you take everyone from 20-44 that population totals something like 613,028.

We'll give an error margin of 10% to account for people who are auto disqualified for whatever reason and between that error margin and the people I'm ignoring I think it's realistic to assume you could get 551,726 people credit cards. Unlimited ones? maybe not. But look me in the eyes and tell me if Sam Manson was told 'We can fix the public infrastructure that's damaging the environment and cause serious damage to predatory lending companies' She would not use her families wealth to be backing people as some kind of collateral/co-signer to get OBSCENLEY high credit cards SO FAST. That's to say nothing of if Tucker and the Other Nerds decide it's actually completely fine for them to hack into these companies and auto approve all these credit cards. Like the towns in dire straights so why not? It's unfortunately a pretty human tendency to see the people you care about in trouble and decide you're willing to throw literally anyone and everyone under the bus so I can see him/them doing it.

So. 551,726 people, with theoretically unlimited money to spend. CONSERVATIVELY if they racked up $500,000 USD on each card, the amount of money spent by Amity would end up being $275,863,000,000 or $275.8 BILLION Now the GDP of the USA is $25.44 Trillion, which looks like $25,440,000,000,000 so it's not a LOT in the grand scheme of things but it is just over 1%, I'm not going to pretend I know what that does economically to the entire USA but consider that Beer sales in the USA accounted for $106 billion in 2022, and that amity would potentially be generating nearly three times that. (X) I have just gone on a fucking TANGENT about the economy in this silly fun times thread of ours so I apologise I will try and sum up very quickly why I think they could spend so much so quickly. Philadelphia has a total of 37 hospitals. They built a new one sometime around 2021 to the tune of $1.6 billion (X) If Amity built a new hospital for liminality care and a few new ones Just Because They Realised They Can, say they build ten new hospitals, which is a VERY LARGE amount of new hospitals to build on workforce Alone, but they probably have tireless ghost workers who are probably obsessed with construction and regular living workers who want to be paid in the times before everyone had acclimated to the ghosts properly. Split among 551,726 people that's actually a fairly reasonable $28,999.90, which, hilariously, is actually just in and around the average limit to credit cards. So they wouldn't even need Sam or Tucker to mess with credit cards yet (X) Averages typically suck as a way of measuring stuff but this isn't a Real Life Government Project so I'm willing to call that acceptable. So if it's only $30k for ten hospitals why the hell am I citing a fat $500k each? Luxury Shit. A few luxury cars and some big name watches and you've blown through that $500k no problem. That's to say nothing of all the REST of the infrastructure that needs fixing - the roads, the schools, the libraries, the replacement materials for the transport system - hell building the APDC is going to probably be another billion dollar project if they want two portals large enough to get what is probably multilane traffic through in regards to transport. Sure the cars won't be useful for long maybe but that's just one example. Jewellery, coats - hell designer shoes and collector nonsense can go for STUPID amounts and as people who are desperate to outpace their neighbours in Cool Stuff They Own realise that their neighbours are capable of getting all the same crap they are? people are either going to stop caring or they're going to start buying some Really Obscure Shit. For the others who just wanted to buy pretty things? There's literally no reason to stop. Amity might have to limit the amount of crap people can get shipped in per week/impose serious shipping tariffs just to make sure the new FTL supply chain doesn't collapse because people are determined to get their new Cashmere and Mohair coats with Gold Embroidery or what the hell ever on next day delivery. Honestly in this scenario the cards over time thing probably doesn't matter because I'm pretty sure the Amity expenditure would DESTROY the lending company, which might then actually be the thing to get Amity rediscovered or maybe they space all these buildings out over time so they keep living the sweet life.

do you have any thoughts on luna and harry as a potential couple post-canon? i was reading your post on harry/ginny and i really loved your perspective on it, especially when you said your vision for harry post war was basically just lots and lots of big dogs (i LOVE that mental image and i agree it would be SO good for him!!) but i was wondering if you'd consider luna and harry to be a good match for each other? personally i have a sort of soft spot for the pairing because of how fond harry is of her in canon, and i think if anyone was going to understand and be unfazed by all the difficult trauma responses and long healing process he's going to be dealing with for years after the war, luna seems like a good fit :)

My love for Harry as a character is kind of unusual to me, considering I go pearl-diving for ships when I read things, and I fall in love with dynamics as a conduit to falling in love with characters. That said, I don't really ship him with anybody. I just genuinely adore That Weird Little Dude. Same with Ron; I'm just as pleased to see them with a range of people, because (A) I believe they're good partners and can have great relationships with many people (Ron Weasley get behind me they could never make me hate you Ron Weasley), but also (B) I don't see either of their canon relationships as Definitive. Some characters I ship together because I sincerely believe they are (non-deterministic) soulmates, in that they bring out parts of each other that make them the freshest, happiest, most interesting versions of themselves. With other characters, I'll look at a couple and go: "Huh. Could work!" and smack my giant rubber [APPROVED] stamp on it, then get back to work on my blorbos.

Luna and Harry are one of those couples for me. As I mentioned in that other post, I think Harry's primary requirement in a partner is someone who can treat him normally, i.e. will be generally chill about the Became Wizard Jesus Twice situation. Which is a big ask. Luna is uniquely capable of doing that because Luna is not normal at all, and so treats all things, extraordinary and ordinary both, as uniformly dazzling and delightful. I believe this is why Harry enjoys her so much in their friendship, because he gets to feel valued and treasured without feeling unusual or othered — a hard line to toe, and one even Ron and Hermione occasionally trip up on. He seems to like hanging out with her a great deal, and I think it says something sweet that he asks her to the Slug Club party instead of any of the girls in Gryffindor from his year, whom he'd ostensibly know better.

Luna is a bit of a cipher to me, I admit. We know she's the daughter of an eccentric and probably traumatized single father, raised without a mother; deeply lonely, because of how she's been ostracized for her beliefs and hobbies, and the victim of some degree of bullying for it; and yet full of a passionate, almost effortless wonder and joie de vivre. She's also intensely loving (cf. painting her friends' faces on her bedroom ceiling) and very hard to embarrass. She likes Harry for understandable reasons; they share most of those qualities (Harry's more sensitive to others' opinions, understandably so), and the only point where they diverge is their actual hobbies and interests. Harry seems pretty fond of her nonsense, and I bet she could sell him on crumple-horned snorkacks given some time — maybe if Hermione took a vacation to Switzerland and left them alone together.

In general, what I find sweet about the idea of these two is they're so chill. These are two people whose chief ambition is to hang out, enjoy their hobbies, and see some cool magical shit. Date night is so fucking easy for these two. Plus, Harry is a hothead a lot of the time, and Luna just... vibes. Literally never bothered. Insane levels of not fussed at all times. Very helpful for Harry, who has a bad tendency to bottle up his feelings and then blow up at the first person to sneeze at him. Conversely, I'd hope that Harry would age into the kind of genial, confident dude who would be able to rock up with a function where people were talking shit about Luna and be like :) My wife? You mean my wise and beautiful wife? Surely you are not talking about my wise and beautiful wife. :) instead of doing what he'd do from age 15-17, which is get mad and stomp around sulking. Which, again: teenager. Orphan. Non-stop trauma gauntlet from age 2-18. Excuses are made. But still. Would think it best if Luna's husband were not perhaps so keenly sensitive to gossip, for Luna's sake.

Anyway, these are just some dissembled thoughts. There's also something in there about Harry, boy under the staircase, falling in love with the magical world and ending up the Most Magical person, i.e., the person who took believing in magic to such an extreme that she imagines magic that doesn't exist yet. And Luna ends up with the one person who's inarguably stranger than she is.

looking back on everything that’s happened wrt james somerton, part of me has got to wonder what hbomb’s and his viewers’ *real* problem with him was. when you see stories like this, and maybe I’m just cynical having been on the internet for too long, most people who get cancelled like this are kind of weird in some way. or people just don’t like them.

idk if you’ve ever watched “the traitors” before, but often the people who get voted out early don’t make eye contact or are slightly a bit weird. and people make up all sorts of conspiracy theories about why they can’t trust them, and blah blah blah. but it’s actually just a kind of “ick” fundamentally. these stories can be that, or they can be a kind of professional jealousy, or they can be “who’s the most marginalized in the marginalized pile”, or they can be smurfette syndrome (“there’s only room for there to be one gay disney youtuber, and by god, it’s gonna be me”). and beyond all that, it’s fun to be part of a mob.

maybe this is just growing pains on my end realizing that I used to have that tendency and over-indexing in the other direction. I’m weirdly sympathetic to villains. but john ronson points this out in his book, that the internet never doles out the correct amount of punishment. all things considered, plagiarism is a misdemeanor. ripping off articles and YouTube videos is a sin, but it’s a venial sin. he may have harmed people, but he didn’t hurt people if that makes any sense.

there’s a very good piece by malcolm gladwell in the New Yorker archive from like 10 or 15 years ago about how he doesn’t personally believe plagiarism to be that big of a deal. it’s very interesting and basically the lynchpin of his argument is that there isn’t any copyright on ideas. it’s not about the ideas, it’s the execution. think of that scene in the social network when jesse eisenberg says to the fucked up looking winklewhatever twins, “if you were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook”

lot of this seems to be prefaced on the idea of people making money that they “don’t deserve”, which is a philosophical question beyond the scope of this post.

Kiara Headcanon

This is a headcanon that I came up with a while ago and I know it sounds a bit far fetched but hear me out.

I think Kiara has some form of lung issue.

First off people both within the movie and in the fandom comment on how loud her breathing is. Also she gets out of breath quite easily when trying to hunt (before the fire). Actually, speaking of the fire, this is weird but Kiara is the only TLK character to ever faint as a result of a fire. No other character is ever affected by a fire for more than two seconds not even when Simba is fighting against Scar (and that fire went on for ages) so the fact that Kiara actually fainted as a result of the fire shows that there is clearly something wrong with her lungs to begin with.

So on with the headcanon!!!

So when Kiara was born, she was born with a lung issue that made it difficult for her to breathe. The symptoms of this condition are shortness of breath, difficulty breathing (Which is why she breaths quite heavily) and a tendency to pass out if she overexerts herself. As a result Simba became overprotective over her. Simba is super anxious about Kiara's condition and he often takes her to Rafiki for checkups even when she doesn't need it at the time (Like say they're just vibing in Pride Rock and Kiara just clears her throat or something). He sends Timon and Pumbaa after her to monitor her condition at all times when he can't do that himself. Kiara doesn't want to be pitied or seen as weak because of her illness so she tries to prove herself to her dad and show that she is just as capable as Kion (Simba isn't protective over Kion because he's perfectly healthy). The reason why the cub at the end of the first movie looks different to Kiara is because for a brief moment Simba was considering skipping over Kiara and making Kion the King instead as he was worried about her health. Nala, Sarabi, Sarafina and the rest of the pride disagreed with this decision which caused Simba to change his mind and Kiara had her presentation from the movie weeks later. Also her lion asthma (I ran out of words, okay) is also the reason why she's so bad at hunting. Her heavy breathing makes it difficult for her to be stealthy when tracking animals (Kovu even acknowledges this at one point). Due to the sheer amount of fires this poor girl has been in, Kiara's lung condition actually kind of worsens by the time her first hunt rolls around which is why she was better at hunting in TLG and not TLK2.

And that's the headcanon!

(So I was joking about that whole 'lion asthma' thing but I googled it and apparently there really is a feline asthma that exists, its super rare in lions and only three lions in the world have that condition, so uuuuhhh.... Poor Kiara).

Sada Posting

I didn't include Sada on my scarvio headcanons because I didn't so here she gets her own post

Sada is hard to talk about because I’ve written about her in one of my general headcanons posts and I don’t want to retread old ground but I also feel the need to clarify that there are generally one of two ways that Sada posting can go.

Sada was burned in the past by Arven’s father, who left soon after his birth, so she was incredibly hesitant to reenter the dating scene. However, when she met you, having bumped into you by complete accident, she decided to take the risk in pursuing a relationship, and you saw no reason to turn her down.

And it’s great to have you around, as she loves you dearly, but you being in the picture, along with her darling son, only pushed her further over the edge, as she became even more determined to find paradise for her newly found family. All she wanted was the best for the both of you. With no one to keep her in check, she buried herself within mountains of research, never once stopping to consider the effects of that kind of behavior. To her, being away for the moment, even if it was hard on the two of you, was worth it in the long run.

It fell to you, as the person who she loved above all else, to confront her about her workaholic tendencies. You begged and pleaded with her in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, your words would get through to her, that she would realize and understand how her actions made you and, especially, her son feel. However, realistically speaking, Sada was likely already too far off the rails to listen to reason, but that’s angsty, and I’m not in too much of an angsty mood right now.

Instead, let’s focus on a Sada who actually listened to you, one that realized the amount of harm her actions caused and that it ultimately wasn’t worth it, because creating the perfect world for her family meant nothing if she was never around to begin with. And so, she begins to spend far less time in Area Zero, if not pulling out of the hell hole completely, and begins to focus on living with you and Arven in the moment.

For the most part, you’re a normal family. Just a mother, her son, her new wife, a weird prehistoric dog, and a regular dog. A perfectly average family not riddled with trauma and abandonment. Most of your days are spent looking after little Arven and his puppy, playing and taking care of him until Sada arrives home in the late evening, where she finds the two of you preparing dinner together. She always walks through the door, shouting out “I’m home!” while waiting for Arven to run up and tell her about the day the two of you had.

Her days off are always spent with the two of you. Should the weather allow it, you spend the whole day outside, roaming the wilderness. You have a picnic in a scenic locale, the two of you lounging on the blanket while Arven and Maschiff run around in the grass until he pulls you both up to come and play with him. Eventually, as all kids do, he tires himself out, signaling the end of the day. You pack up your belongings and begin the long walk home, Arven already asleep in Sada’s arms.

Every now and then, Clavell takes care of Arven for the night so the two of you can spend some time together. Sada isn’t the most romantic person in the world, but she is charismatic and incredibly bold. Due to often being recognized in public, she prefers to spend date nights inside, having a nice dinner with wine and cuddling on the couch, which quickly turns to making out as you both ignore the shitty movie playing in the background. Just normal parent things.

To most people’s surprise, Sada is a massive nerd. It should be expected, honestly, considering that she is a professor and has some massive accomplishments under her belt. She’s a huge history buff, and will effortlessly crush the expectations of others, perceiving her to be a suave individual, by rambling on about incredibly minute historical details for hours on end. She’s like Raifort in this regard, but in, like, a different flavor.

ALSO, she loves to ramble about her family. If she, for whatever reason, doesn’t feel like rambling about history to the people around her, she will instead ramble about you two, because have you seen her beautiful wife? Her incredibly talented culinary son? Oh, don’t worry, she has more than enough time to stay and chat for a while, and also has plenty of pictures to show, as well.

The above absolutely kills Arven, because Sada regularly drops by the Academy, giving her the perfect chance to talk to various staff about her family, which leads to many students overhearing these conversations. The boy already has to put up with people loudly simping over his moms, but now he has to deal with people teasing him about these conversations, as she often divulges details (and photos) from his formative years.

And I know this post is about Sada, but I can’t talk about Sada without talking about Arven. When you start dating the woman, she’ll introduce you to her son, and, at first, he’s pretty shy, hiding behind her legs and only peeking his head out occasionally to look at you. Overtime, he’ll get more comfortable around you, enough to not feel the urge to run away and hide when you look in his general direction.

Slight angst posting, when you first meet Arven, it’s when Sada’s still engrossed in Area Zero, meaning he spends most of the time on his own with Maschiff. Obviously, you can’t just leave the boy to fend for himself while Sada’s away, so you progressively spend more and more time with him, to the point that he sees you as more of a mom than his biological one. He was the reason you had to confront Sada about her behavior to begin with, as you could only take the young boy asking if it was his fault that mom was away for so long before breaking.

Anyways, just because I want to give Arven a better family life by bringing his mom back to normalcy and giving him a loving stepmom at  the same time doesn’t mean I won’t make him suffer. As stated, people simp over Sada and you, once they learn of your existence, of course. Poor thing has two milfs for parents, and he has to deal with people bringing it up constantly. Having both of your unconditional support is great, and getting to see Sada on a semi-regular basis while living at the Academy is nice and all, but he would sacrifice so much to escape simping hell, if only for a few moments.

Listen she’s just broken aND I CAN FIX HER

Hey lovely. So, I’m kinda embarrassed to ask this but I’ve seen a few posts about it. Do you think Louis is in a relationship with another guy (not Harry)? I’ve seen a few things now about Fin from Stone and the fact that he and Louis look quite comfy together. I don’t see it myself. They look like mates who support each other and for Louis is seems like business to me - when he meets him he seems to have his team with him - but just wondered what your take on it was. I feel like L has gone a long time now projecting his ‘single’ image which for someone as lovely as him seems kind of strange. I’d have thought someone would be snapping him up!

Sorry for the weird ask!!

Hiiiii don’t be embarrassed at all!!! It’s a topic floating around the solo Louies, solo harries, and larry fandom at the moment, so it’s natural to be curious about it. It’s a pretty annoying little theory though, and some larries have even been considering it to be true. So, anon, let’s have a look at this together, and as always, welcome to the show.

I’m gonna break this down a little bit so I’m not rambling and jumping all over the place.

1. No, i do not believe that Louis and Finn are together, nor have any romantic/sexual tendencies towards each other. I don’t believe that Louis is with anyone other than Harry. I am an unshakeable larry who will die on this hill hahhaa, but i will try and look at this as diplomatically as possible because it is actually causing a few waves and I’ve seen a fair bit about it from multiple parts of the fandom.

2. I don’t believe this is a stunt or seeding a solo coming out for Louis, which I’ve seen floating around. I don’t think he’d agree to that happening if it was with anyone other than Harry. And the Finn stuff doesn’t follow the same stunt timelines and PR ops that usually happen. So unless the V*nes team has had a massive shift in how they coordinate stunts and have agreed to even let Louis be a little fruity, would be a wild time. But as an industry standard, it’s not a stunt at all.

3. Louis’ body language has always been open, touchy, and basically doesn’t have many physical boundaries with the people he cares about. We’ve seen it with Liam, Niall, Zayn, Oli, other members of his band… and they’re all just his friends, right? He’s just naturally comfortable with that, always has been (except for the clear rigidness he has around stunts/women being touchy with him). His body language is different with Harry though, as we know. So I don’t think body language is a good argument for why people would think they’re together. There’s masterpost comparisons around that show his body language towards others and towards Harry explaining this all. But I’m sure you already know what I’m talking about!

4. On the topic of Oli… I think if there was a more general consensus of people finding him attractive (I’m not saying he’s not attractive, but there isn’t much hype from a majority of fans around his looks like there is Finn and Louis etc.), then these anti larry people would probably assume he’s actually dating Oli, you know what I mean? It’s like… solo Louies, who have been so against Harry and the concept of Larry… I’m seeing them be like “oh maybe Louis is queer, he’s probably dating Finn” and I’m like ????? So you have no problem accepting Louis May not be straight, but god forbid it’s with Harry. It’s such a contradiction, and they don’t even realise it.

5. So… on the topic previously on stunts and Louis’ singleness… we have to remember that BBG is still ongoing. That’s not ended, and it’s not shoved in our face as much anymore (apart from the feature in AOTV and the Christmas photos) and I think his deal is he’s not gonna have a stunt on top of that. Sure, he’s had some short lived gfs who he’s had a pap walk with, but I believe that was for him specifically to push away as far as possible from B and BBG so when it ended, he wasn’t still tied up to her and in the thick of it. I don’t imagine they’d do a long term stunt gf while that’s ongoing, because it’s overkill. His straight, party boy image is still there, but I think it’s settled a bit from what it was, and I think we’ll continue to see it settle a bit for when the coming out happens. So, yeah. That’s my take on why I don’t think he’s gonna have another long term stunt happening (I’ve made a longer post on this previously, but happy to expand more in an industry POV if you need). And someone had already snapped him up because he’s lovely, and that’s Harry!

Thanks for the chats anon. Youre always welcome in my inbox xx

Ask Game: Snatch adopts a young amnesiac Touya.

You know I used to have a rule about hitting people with the dad stick regarding Touya considering his fratricidal tendencies. And now you want me to give the guy who's top priorities are killing his dad and his sibling (s)... A new dad and sibling(s)...

Yeah sure why not. I'm a different person now. And Touya is too I guess.

1- Snatch finds a burnt child wandering around and hiding from people and after several hours, manages to coax him to the police office and try talk with a forensic interviewer. The boy utterly refuses to speak unless Snatch is in the room with him, which the interviewer says isn't uncommon in children.

2- what is less common is the kid not remembering anything. When asked his name, he says it's Dabi. The last thing he remembers is setting himself on fire and needing to get out. He felt like someone needed to find him. He isn't sure. Snatch and the interviewer suspect that Dabi was forced to use his quirk either in an abusive home or trafficker, and the amnesia is from mental trauma not physical. When a doctor looks over the burns to see how old some of them are at and his head, this seems to confirm his theory.

3- Dabi keeps breaking out of places and setting small fires on his way to hunt down Snatch every time he's placed in a different home. Eventually an officer tells Snatch he can either take the kid who imprinted on him like a duck, or the kid can end up getting raised in juvi. Snatch, a father himself, agrees to take him in.

4- Dabi has weird expectations and doesn't remember why, which frustrates him more. But when he acts like Snatch should be training him to be a hero, he's mad that Snatch starts talking about normal exercise stuff- until he realizes his new sibling(s) are all treated the same, and Snatch genuinely doesn't do quirk training, as hero schools will have the facilities for it. So he goes along with it. He also only tries to be disrespectful to his new mother once and is grounded from the computer for a week for it, though what actually dissuades him is hearing Snatch and his wife discuss it later that night, worrying more about what kind of people he was with and who else they hurt.

5- Snatch is careful about not discussing Dabi outside of the home or taking pictures, since they never could find out who hurt the kid. This is part of the reason why no one ever realizes that Snatch's new kid looks a lot like Endeavor's missing one.

2ha thoughts spoilers

I hate that stupid flower of hared! Not only does it throw the idea of redemption off a cliff! But it makes Mo Ran so much more less interesting. Mo Ran is presented from the start with the most screwed up Madonna/ whore complex. Or Whatever the Chinese idea of this is. 

He files Shi Mei as this kind of pure creature comparing him to the moon. He cann’t even feel attraction to his crush and spends more time lusting after Chu Wanning his rape victim from a previous time line. Who he focuses on in both a sexual manner and was implied to have sexually targeted due to viewing him as a terrible person who pretended to be pure. 

Then there’s Song who was killed after revealing she had a nasty streak by being boiled alive. Who Mo Ran never forgives for her transgression of bad mouthing Chu Wanning. 

 Rong Jiu who is assaulted, beaten and ruined in retaliation for betraying Mo Ran. Even though their interactions were purely transactional. Both whom Mo ran admitted to being drawn too because they reminded him of Shi Mei. They are cast aside when they no longer play into a fantasy no longer fit the idea of the boy in his head. 

Also the only people Ran Mo can bring himself to have sex with are a prostitute, His teacher who he see’s as bad and Song a Butterfly Beauty Feast. All three of these people are far enough from being people in Mo Ran’s eyes that he can bring himself to lust after them. 

this actually strengthens the Chu Wanning X Mo ran dynamic because Chu is the first person who Mo Ran’s view of gets shaken to its core. Mo Ran learns that Chu wanning has complicated reasons for the things he does. Even if those things might be harmful to some. He’s forced to see Chu as a complex person and even after he finds out Chu is in fact made of wood. 

Mo still see’s him as a person. In fact Chu is the only one who becomes real to him enough to shatter to barrier between love/sex and invoke feelings of both in Mo ran allowing him to actually be in love. Chu shatters his shallow view makes Mo Ran realize he was wrong to treat a person as a object for his pleasure. 

Except the flower reveals its a dam lie! 

Instead of an examination of the ideas/ culture and experiences that might teach a  guy  who to value and who to use for sex. And how those values lead to things like lack of respect for sexual consent. Which makes way too much sense considering the world Mo Ran grew up in. Which encourages the consumption of others. And the idea of how you can look past those ideas. 

He loved, respected and was attracted to Chu Wanning all along. Mo ran never had to learn to respect his sexual partners. He was only ever drawn to Shi Mei, Rong Jui because of the flower, he was just weird not because he had a tendency to dis value his sex partners for shallow reasons no it was because he’s not even drawn to girly men/ladies. (rolls eyes). 

Shi mei made Mo ran dismiss him as a perfect object. So him/Hau Binan being  angry or influenced by dealing with Mo Ran’s objectification of Shi Mei. Which are views expressed by both halves of Shi Mei in the text.  Isn’t allowed to affect Mo Ran in any way. Which is irritating since Shi mei whole deal is being part of a race that has been reduced to being treated as sub human. 

Since the story has decided that doesn’t matter. The fact that Ran Mo has been the client of an actual sex slave. Ran mo and his complicity in said abuse of older man despite his age. Lets just ignore that it wasn’t his fault it was the flower. 

In my opinion, that weakens Ran Mo as a character because he is never allowed to be complicit in his own negative, actions biases and even gets this special get out of jail free card. That reduces his character to nothing more then a victim of others actions. 

Yes Mo Ran still does the work to make up for certain past actions but his infractions which link to the theme of the novel about dehumanization  how it breeds monsters are completely ignored and outright dismissed. 

Let's talk about Loki! Under the cut for the sake of those who have not yet seen Episode 2.

OKay so to start with, overall this episode of Loki was a pleasant surprise. Loki himself got to be serious and powerful and I enjoyed that. He's finally had a chance to shine in his own series. The way he played with magic, especially with the shadows at the beginning, was absolutely stunning, and I'm glad we're finally diving into his magical abilities more. He had just the right amount of menace in his interactions with Brad, and the way he was softer and rather understanding when Mobius flipped out was a wonderful counterbalance. So far I'm liking this version of Loki where he's threatening to his opponents but genuinely caring towards his people, and I think whoever was in charge of writing him in this episode did an excellent job reinjecting some nuance and some authority into his character.

Mobius was a little weird at certain points; he's been an analyst for like a bajillion years or something so I think in-character he should've been able to handle reading the guidebook, but honestly he had a decent showing too. Using him as the levity...it's not a horrible decision if it's not going to become a recurring theme, because I don't want him to get dumbed-down, which he's not so far; his deducing that there was set-up was quite clever and I didn't see it coming. It worked in this episode partially because he was also doing some smart stuff, but also because it was offset by the bits of temper and vulnerability he displayed, which were both very well done in my opinion. It actually added another dimension to his character that I really like, and I think addressing that he's more afraid of "what if the life I was supposed to have is good?" than if it was bad is an interesting take, especially considering he seems to be in the camp of "it may be the life I was supposed to have, but it's not my life," because it's good for the show to be exploring those different avenues for the TVA workers, and because it makes Mobius a more unique person himself. I'm also kind of enjoying his little ruthless streak, ngl.

I like the dynamic Mobius and Loki have together right now. Them eating pie together and talking about Mobius's feelings was a lovely scene, and probably one of the most authentic we're going to see out of the entire season if I had to guess. They're working together very nicely; Mobius sort of letting Loki go off his leash with the magic at the beginning was neat, and I just adore the way their less-heroic tendencies are playing off of each other (such as in the Brad-in-the-box scene). I think that makes sense for them, and I'm not looking for these guys to be heroes of pristine reputation, or even heroes at all, just guys who are trying to hold what little they have left together, so it's really hitting the spot for what I expect of their personalities melding together.

(Also, I'm now pronouncing Casey and Ouroboros a ship, although I doubt I'm the first one. The idea of OB being a celebrity to this one guy, and only this one guy, is pure gold.)

I will say, there's still a little much of the MCU-brand hokeyness in the show for my taste. There doesn't need to be something to laugh at every couple of minutes (not that I'm really laughing, because I'm tired of that style of writing by this point). The story can stand on its own without the forced comedy, and if it can't, then the comedy is only going to annoy people further. This is kind of serious stuff, and although I'm not against having some lighter moments or some comedic relief, I could live with Loki actually taking itself more seriously. But, like I said, this episode did feel more genuine to me, so it's not all jokes and quipping.

I'm still not a fan of Sylvie. Her existence annoys me because the female-Loki premise is obnoxious, and she feels so much like every other female character out there she doesn't really have the personal qualities to redeem the premise. Also, I find Loki's obsession with her strange, as she's mostly only been a total bitch to him and clearly wants nothing to do with him. (Which in itself is weird; her acting all butthurt at him in this episode like he was the one who pushed her through a time-door or something was like...what the heck? If somebody can explain that to me, please do, because I feel like I've either missed or forgotten something that would make it make sense.) I find her "normal life" as an 80s McDonald's employee strange, also, because that's...that's not the kind of normal she would envision. Her "normal" should be something regular on Asgard, because she's not a human dreaming of a normal life, she's an Asgardian dreaming of a normal life, although I do understand that according to the rules of the game there's probably not an Asgard where a Loki is welcome...yet Lokis are shapeshifters, so she could sneak in one anyway. That's probably a little nitpicky, I can recognize that.

So, yeah. There we go. This episode of Loki actually raised my expectations for the rest of the season, which is a nice surprise for me. I didn't think I would enjoy any part of this show so much, because the first season really didn't have a moment like this where I went huh. this is pretty good. I hope this episode being so good isn't an anomaly, because I was a huge fan of Loki in Thor, Avengers, Dark World, Infinity War, and I want to be a fan of him again in this show. If the writing stays this good (or gets even better, perchance?) I may end up considering myself a convert.

I was smoking cannabis to deal with my sleep issues and I moved to a state where delta-8 is legal but I'm in the process of job searching so I'm not partaking until I get all of that sorted. In the meantime, my dreams have returned VIVIDLY and with a VENGEANCE. Also my audhd insomnia tendencies but when I do fall asleep I'm obviously sleeping well to get all of this intense REM action.

It definitely would make a good video game of some kind though. Just kind of weirded me out for a minute because I'm not used to it and it was very real in the moment. Someone had mentioned the type of pillows I got caused them to 'have very intense dreams' so I'm not sure if it has anything to do with that except for the power of suggestion; however, I'm thinking they are just actually comfortable and improving my quality of sleep which would allow me to also hit that REM stage harder so that's the only correlation I could see there.

Anyway... the dream...

The way it started was kind of Resident-evil-esque (the first one) in that me and my allies/compatriots/colleagues/friends(?) were all trapped in a building; however, it was very much an office building not a house. Dreams love to jump around of course so we're trapped and there are an even split of commando-esque guys and government agent type guys with guns trying to chase down and trap me and my party. Most of the doors are locked and so if you can get into certain places you can effectively hide from whoever is chasing you. This is where a narrative roughly starts to coalesce.

We jump to a basement like area that is like a warehouse. P.S. there is also an Alice in Wonderland like quality to the building where size and direction go wonky which is funny lore considering its already a dream but we get an in-dream explanation. The part where it becomes like a video game is that we've overcome obstacles and enemies to group up in the basement and there is conveniently a computer system that will print out credentials that will open doors and grant access to locked places, allegedly there is a way to the town through the warehouse. I want to say it was called Pleasant which directly correlates to something I was watching or playing already, but it might have been MST3K so what was pleasant I couldn't tell you since only certain ones stand out to me.

Anyway, the problem of course is that with the physics being bendable it wasn't guaranteed that the warehouse would actually take us to Pleasant. So we take the credentials and then it starts getting a little skippy again.

Myself and another ally are hiding in this very tight (squeezed in like sardines tight) space and either exit is blocked by either a commando or government agent type enemy guy. I think we got chased a little after leaving the warehouse and used the credentials to hide.

Then it kind of shifts and my ally is no longer hiding with me, the space is bigger and there are stairs and creepy pre-teen enters the situation. I... with suspicions... follow creepy kid and things take a mad-scientist zombie-like turn where he leads me down into another basement area with creepy/rotting body parts which exits into a morgue-like area where creepy kid starts sawing himself some mad experiment meat off of a torso, I think a torso even my dream-self was like, "nah we don't want to look at that," and so I turn around and flee and I think that's about when I wake up from my Silent Hill offshoot. I will also assume this has something to do with my DnD research since I'm about to run a campaign for my friend which towards the end will feature some stuff from Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft so I was reading through those modules and I can see where my imagine started running wild.

I kind of forgot that I used to do my best imagining before sleep and getting lost in a story was kind of how I'd pull it off so I guess I'm going to have to give myself some magical girl vibes or something to work with so I don't end up back in horror-land, but dang...that feeling of being in a cramped in space with your enemies right on the other side of the door that was pretty visceral.

written in my phone notes app not betaed not edited etc etc lol based on this post

there is *1* dirty joke in here but i think we can put on our big kid shoes and handle it yeah? we can agree teenagers are horny? if not then scroll past :)) kisses xx

It's a Saturday in January.

Mike likes Saturdays, mainly because Holly has dance practice on Saturdays, and his dad has work, and Nancy has homework - so, more or less, he has the house to himself.

Logistically speaking, he could invite Lucas or Dustin or maybe even Max over so he could have some company, but he doesn't really feel like it. He never really feels like it, nowadays, which he knows is cause for concern - but it just doesn't feel right anymore, hanging out with the Party with two missing.

So. Saturdays are for Mike and Mike only.

He has homework to do. Homework which he really should be doing considering he's bordering on getting a C in his algebra class, which he knows is unlike him. Instead, though, he's slumped across the La-Z-Boy (which is now vacant due to his father being at work), spooning Cheerios into his face and only half paying attention to whatever was showing on the television. He's kind of tired, even though he woke up fairly late. His eyes droop lazily. He thinks that, maybe, he'll just drift off - no one's here to stop him - when a knock sounds at the door.

Mike shoots up, nearly spilling milk onto the carpet as he does so. This is odd: it's rare someone comes to the Wheeler house unannounced, which is mostly due to his mother's adamant demands to keep the house clean when guests are over.

It could be Max; she has a tendency to walk into his house, grab food from his fridge, and then ask if he wants to play video games without missing a beat (hence why his mother has grown to have such a distaste for her). Or maybe it's Lucas, who lives next door and comes over sometimes for homework answers. It couldn't be Dustin, though, since he lives across town and has never seen 11 AM on a Saturday (he like sleeping in).

Maybe it's the mailman. Which is equally weird, considering he could've just left whatever package he had on the doorstep. Mike ambles over to the door, Cheerios still in hand and flannel pajama pants hanging off of his hip. He's wearing a faded Queen t-shirt that has definitely seen better days, but he figures it doesn't really matter. The person - whoever it is - probably won't be here for long and won't care if Mike looks utterly disheveled.

He swings the door open, and is immediately proven wrong.

It is not Max. Or Lucas. Or Dustin. Or, hell, even the mailman.

Mike has never seen this boy in his life, and, in that moment, he's kind of glad he hasn't.

He's a jock, for sure. Probably on the football team. His biceps are fairly defined through the long sleeved white shirt he's wearing. Actually, scratch that, his entire fucking body is basically protruding through his shirt, almost like he isn't even wearing one. He definitely has - what - Mike's eyes dart down to his stomach - a six pack. Definitely. Mike's heart does a weird palpitation, and he suddenly realizes it's getting hard for him to breathe.

Oh, God.

He looks like shit.

"Hello?" The boy waves a hand in front of Mike's face. "Uh - is Nancy here?"

Mike's eyes drift upwards - because, somehow, this boy is taller than him even though Mike knows he's nearing on 6 feet - and he's met by obnoxiously shiny brown eyes and sandy brown hair that's swept to the side, like - like this boy got all dressed up to come over here, and that triggers many fantasies in Mike's head that he'd prefer not to dwell upon-

"Hey. Kid." The boy snaps his fingers. He sounds annoyed, now. Mike should probably pay attention.

"I-" Mike croaks, because his tounge suddenly feels like sandpaper, "sorry, what?"

"Nancy. Is she your sister?"

Oh.

Oh. Of fucking course.

Mike had conveniently forgotten that Nancy had taken on a tutoring gig at her school. This was mostly due to the fact that, whenever Nancy had her tutees come over to the house, it was during weekdays - never weekends.

So this boy - this - this boy, this unbelievably jacked boy had showed up, unannounced at the Wheeler doorstep, and was now looking for his sister.

Let him inside let him inside let him inside let him-

"I'm Mike," Mike blurts, and he kind of wants to smack himself. "Nancy is. Um. Nancy is my sister. Are you-" the boy moves to lean against the doorframe, his bicep flexing as he does so, and Mike is thanking the stars above that he's wearing the loosest pair of pajama pants that he owns. His question comes out in a squeak. "....looking for her?"

No SHIT he's looking for her. He ASKED for her, you absolute dumba-

The boy squints. "I'm Alex." the boy extends a hand. Mike shakes it - his hand is cold to the touch. Mike hopes it's impossible to detect the heart palpitations he is currently experiencing. "And...yes, I am looking for - oh, thank God, there you are."

Mike feels his sister's hand shove him out of the doorframe, but he's still staring. He probably looks bug eyed. His Cheerios have gone completely soggy, but he can't bring himself to care. He backwards walks back towards the La-Z-Boy. If Alex is a magnet, then Mike's eyes must be made of pure iron.

"...so sorry Alex, that's just my little brother-"

Mike hears snippets of their conversation from where he has resituated himself on the couch. Nancy is probably going to yell at him for being "impolite" later.

He tries to turn his focus back to the TV - really, he does - but - Alex's voice is so soft, like caramel, and okay, what the fuck, Mike. You were totally weird.

Mike shifts, curling his knees up to his chest. Alex and Nancy have gone to the dining room to study for - was it an English test? Maybe.

Whatever.

Mike is beginning to rethink his philosophy about Saturdays.

actually we are both SO lucky because tumblr wouldnt let me send the ask initially—I had to copy an earlier version and try sending it to myself several times to figure out what the error was. so i DO have an earlier copy of the ask—it was less clean so I'll add more fun colors to make it less of a pain to read. ANYWAY, IT IS AS FOLLOWS:

"THE GEORGE EPISODE...sorry this is gonna be a long ask, I hope you don't mind! I love that ep for personal reasons that have almost nothing to do w/ the episode itself, which is, I agree, aside from the social message of "don't be a bigot" (AND TRAPPERS SINGINGGGG) kind of mid!

but. i was re-watching it recently. and the scene where George comes out and then Father Mulcahy interrupts w/ the football and Hawkeye does a really bad throw, kind of caught my attention oddly.

I know the main purpose of the interaction is to wrap up the scene nicely, give Hawkeye a way to bounce off of George asking Hawk not to tell anybody abt him being A Homosexual. but it also directly connects Hawkeyes Comedic Sports Failure to George's Homosexuality and w/ the way that lack of aptitude in sports is considered a Gay Thing especially back in the day, the little voice in my head that loves looking for meaning in stories said: "This is a purposeful connection the writers are drawing between Hawkeye and George"

and then the rest of my brain kicked up and kicked in and kicked down the door and said "take a breather, you transexual bisexual. not everything is about intentional queercoding." and i was like yeah. fine. whatever. fine. alright.

and while I do kinda believe bisexual reading of Hawkeye is inevitable to any viewer who has ever given thoughtful consideration to how one man might want to touch another man, calling it coding in this scene might be a pretty dramatic stretch. i can't argue with that. sure.

BUT. i was working on a sewing project later and needed something light and easy to listen to, and i poked at the MASHMatters podcast and found they had an interview with one of the writers of that very episode—Gary Markowitz. [ep 71 if u want it]

AND. i have three interesting things to tell u i learned from that.

1) ORIGINALLY the ending of the episode was not going to be "Frank was hiding something embarrassing in HIS past TOO! He paid for his degree!" (Markowitz did not like this ending because he was like "are we really going to say that being gay is something in your past you Should be ashamed of?") but instead. Frank was going to get drunk and admit that there was an older family friend with a tattoo he really. really admired when he was younger. Admired the guy's muscles. Maybe. Sure, maybe he wanted to be him, but maybe...maybe he wanted...Something Else.

Obviously...I mean. I don't think I'd consider that a Diversity Win.

Honestly? In this one weird case maybe I agree with the censors that blackmailing Frank about paying for the answers to the test was kind of better. Esp with the idea that "the most homophobic people are the homosexuals themselves" being a particularly shitty trope.

and I think the explicit confirmation that Frank himself might have some homosexual tendencies might have overshadowed the single-ep-character, George, and come right around to being a "well its ok to bully the annoying homosexuals" message. which would already be a horrible message in an era where I think homosexuality itself was cause for disgust and irritation for many people. but. well. anyway.

2) MARKOWITZ MENTIONED THE RADAR AND HENRY BIT.

Markowitz said they intentionally included the monthly checkup bit to illustrate how, in a situation such as this, men are often very intimate with each other, putting themselves in vulnerable situations with other men, touching other men, already.

Like, sure the rest of the episode maybe you (a homophobic 1970s audience) are freaking out about a man wants to touch other men intimately, but you're totally okay and unbothered about this corporal getting so up in his C.O.'s business that he can see a little nativity scene in his ear?

He said they wanted to make it clear that homophobia is a silly stance to take when men are touching men for all sorts of reasons all the time in a setting like the military. Like. It is just naturally a kind of homosocial homosexual homoplatonic environment just on account of how homogenous the gender variance of any given environment is.

and I was like. whoa. hey. that's a lot more thought than I gave the writers credit for, and that's on me! I really like that scene even more now!

3) Apparently, when Markowitz and his writing partner (John W. Regier) submitted this (their first script to get accepted) idea to the usual MASH writers nobody was Thrilled about it. Like, it was Fine but they were in a friendly competition with All In The Family to tackle social issues, and so they were like "FINEEEEE i GUESSSS we'll talk about THE GAY ISSUE. since All In The Family Hasn't yet. WHATEVER."

which doesn't surprise me in the least given the show itself as well as the time it was made in, but does disappoint me a little.

ANYWAY!!!!!!!

So I took all this stuff and brought it with me when I started thinking about all the other little scenes in there—like when George pauses when Frank mentions The Pink Scourge before Frank clarifies that he means communists.

OR when Henry gets his nails done by the nurse he's sweet on—and asks with an easy familiarity for the buffing treatment. How she calls his hands beautiful, and he says he got them from his mother.

OR OR OR. the one where Hawkeye is painting that nurse's toes, and she says "wow you're really good at this" and then Radar comes over and ALSO says hawkeye is really good at painting toenails. and that scene is RIGHT before he throws the football really badly. and how THAT is followed by Mulcahy getting tackled by a bunch of other soldiers, so it's just a writhing mass of olive drab, men's bodies against men's bodies against men's bodies.

Perhaps it wasn't just to wrap up the scene, but also used just very very subtly reinforce that in some ways, Hawkeye is less of the Red Blooded American Icon of Masculinity than this Gay Soldier, who is begging to be sent back to the front lines to serve his country, despite being assaulted by his own unit—and then. maybe. Maybe the American Ideal Of Masculinity, commonly tied to football, to being in the military, etc, is itself...a little...Hm. You Know. Like when Radar opens the door to the shower while Hawk + Trap are in there, and a crowd outside starts clapping. I think that transexual bisexual impulse is getting the best of me maybe. anyway.

ANYWAY i hope this ask was enjoyable for you you and i thank you for reading it! Your analytical posts about MASH always give me a lot to think about and I find myself wanting to return some of that enjoyment back to you! "

postscript: thank u so much for posting ur thoughts despite the tumblr mayhem, i am eating them!!! slurping them up like a carton of noodles. packaging the rest in a little tupperware to save for later!!

ah thank you for re-submitting it! i couldn't remembering enough of it to summarize your points and do them justice.

... very very subtly reinforce that in some ways, Hawkeye is less of the Red Blooded American Icon of Masculinity than this Gay Soldier, who is begging to be sent back to the front lines to serve his country, despite being assaulted by his own unit—and then. maybe. Maybe the American Ideal Of Masculinity, commonly tied to football, to being in the military, etc, is itself...a little...Hm. You Know

I do think this is what is textually happening in several episodes of MASH, including in George. @marley-manson articulated it very well in a post that i am unable to locate at this time, where she stated that Hawkeye's "hmm" moments are about gender expression. moments that hold him up as something other than "Red Blooded American Icon of Masculinity."

there's lots of examples of this from early MASH but my favourite is this one from Yankee Doodle Doctor. runner up: Frank at some point @ HawkTrap "you-! you... guys!" HawkTrap: "we are notttt~"

totally valid to see that as lending itself well to a trans Hawkeye headcanon (although Trapper is the one following when they dance, not Hawkeye - and big lug that he is, Trapper also manages to subvert trad masculinity in his own masc way... ), but I really like it as is too - there's more than one way to be a man. you don't have to buy what traditional masculinity is selling you. you can be a lover, rather than a fighter.

Umireread: Turn of the Golden Witch - Prologue

The following contains spoilers for the entirety of Umineko. Please do not read if you are yet to finish it.

It’s certainly bold of Umineko to go from “standard” difficulty in Episode 1 to “expert” in Episode 2. I’m not sure exactly what warrants such a dramatic change? If we’ve “solved” Episode 1, then we should be able to readily bat away the fantasy scenes it introduces away from Battler’s perspective. I suppose the culprit committing suicide before the end and the rule of Battler’s perspective being untrustworthy 30 minutes before his demise could be quick tricky to theorise around, but I’m not sure if they’re “expert” by themselves. I guess we’ll wait and see.

Both of these outfits are great, I kind of wish we got to see more alternative clothes for the cast. Shannon’s comparison is funny, since this probably would be the first time she’d seen an aquarium.

Oh we’re in George POV here… That’s interesting. I’m not entirely certain why this is the case? My initial thought was that omniscient narration might have been saved for only contents on the message bottles/forgeries, to represent the author, and that this was forced by us not being allowed to see Shannon’s POV as per Knox’s first, but I don’t think that’s the case on either fronts - I believe the Episode 1 Prologue was omniscient despite being outside the realm of forgeries, and we do get Shannon’s POV slightly later, so I’m actually not sure what the meaning is here. 

Given how much we’ve already delved into the themes of fantasy and reality, I’m surprised how long it’s taken us to find a comparison to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I suppose that one is a bit too obvious of a comparison to make, so I don’t mind it being absent thus far in favour of more original thoughts.

Hooting and hollering. Applause all round.

At this stage I’m still concerned about reading too much into it, but I can’t help but wonder if this line is a slight nod to Yasu’s gender dysphoria. As in, despite identifying as female, part of her is doubting that she has a “real” female body and is getting caught up over it.

As we saw in Episode 1, magic is when other people can engage in fantasy with you; where your mutual fabrication can shut out the truth. With a loved one, the prying eyes of others do not matter; your shared fantasy shuts them out. Love is magic.

I know George does have his fair share of fans and defenders, but it’s the stuff like this which really puts me off him. Even if it’s behind a layer of jest, his controlling tendencies are just way too uncomfortable for me. It’s like there’s a part of him which is indulging in the “master and servant” angle between him and Shannon, which is skeevy by itself, but thoroughly tainted once you consider Yasu’s insecurities and feelings about being seen as furniture. Would she be happy with George? …Maybe? But would she be able to heal? I don’t believe so.

Life can be beautiful when you reject the grey sea of reality and immerse yourself in the deep blue of fantasy.

I think it’s interesting to look at this and consider the implications of the relationship being a case of Yasu having immersed herself in a fantasy and then opting to bring it about to reality. Can reality hope to match the bliss found in fantasy? Can it only do so through magic? Does realising her daydream here inspire her to realise her thoughts regarding Battler and Beatrice?

George once again being a bit too weird for my liking. I wasn’t content to let Battler retreat behind the justification he had for fondling his relatives in Episode 1, I’m not content to let George retreat behind the facade of japery here. No matter how you spin it, an element of the true self always resides in the false self.

Yasu takes great effort to not let George feel her fake chest pressed against him, awkwardly diving in a way to give him her head and naught else. Fortunately our gentleman isn’t going to proceed to do a Battler and expose the whole situation.

I’ve said it before, but my main interpretation of the George and Shannon pairing isn’t that Yasu truly loves George, but that she likes the fantasy of the “ideal” relationship that heteronormativity has painted for her. It’s moments like this which make me feel more steadfast in that interpretation - if Yasu was truly happy to be with George, why would she not risk the truth to be revealed? Why was she happy to let Battler uncover her secret in Episode 1, but not the man she is on a date with here? I read that as the voice in the back of her head saying that she’s not really happy with this pairing. She’s just deluding herself into it. Once again, fantasy and reality are in opposition with one another.

Fantastic writing here where both Shannon and George agree that the sea is deep blue, only for the third party narration to call the sea grey. Hammers the point in perfectly, is honestly a little dry humour-esque, and overall further contributes to the broader concepts of fiction writing being able to strip away the meaningful emotions and complexities of the humans it claims to describe. Episode 2 is starting strong.

So yeah, we’ve seamlessly transitioned from George’s POV to Shannon’s. I suppose we need to revisit the earlier reference about how this should technically be a direct violation of Knox’s 1st, since we shouldn’t be able to follow the thoughts of the “culprit”. Of course, there’s a few catches here, any of which could be valid - we are pre-mystery, so Knox is not yet in effect; Shannon is not the culprit at this point, or we are specifically separating Yasu from Shannon for this purpose. I’m leaning towards it being the case of Knox’s 1st only being active during the mystery segments, since the main point of the rule is to stop the author from tricking the reader by giving a fake internal monologue. I mean, I suppose that is what’s happening here, but we’ve flipped our own chessboard 360 degrees so it’s best to acknowledge that it happened and just press on.

So there’s two things I’m taking away from the scene - first of all, the use of a mirror is an apt symbolic choice for dealing with Yasu’s self hatred. Is she able to accept herself? Can she be happy with the person she is now? The answer is no - she shatters the mirror, she shatters the reflection, she shatters the visage of the person she sees herself as at that moment. But, alongside this, I believe this moment is meant to be the moment that the explosives are tested. The point of no return - where Yasu is serenaded by the sweet song of vengeance, where the final step before confirming that the massacre can be arranged is completed, that the bombs that ensure her victory are still in working order. This was her last chance to back out from what must be done. But of course, it must be done.

Very complex thoughts here. The physical limitations placed upon her body are what render her as furniture; a being incapable of love. In a sense, being furniture is not to suffer, because a table does not yearn for the earthly pleasures it cannot possess; it knows its place. To suffer is human; but Yasu is to suffer grievously, as furniture attempting to become human. She dehumanises herself for what she lacks; but this very act of self hatred elevates her from furniture. By accepting this suffering, she necessarily becomes human. This is a concept that Umineko has a lot to say about, and I’m looking forward to digging into some of the future confrontational scenes between Yasu and Beatrice.

Yeah, I’m fully interpreting this as being the moment that the explosives are tested on the shrine. The thunder is the deafening cacophony of munitions ringing out.

Welcome back to Rokkenjima, everyone.

I'm just going to come right out and say it.

I'm pro-Isaac/Yohan.

I'm pro-Yohan being attracted to Gaon because he looks like Isaac.

I'm pro-whatever spicy, fucked up version of that relationship there is. Because guess what. It's actually okay if you think that Yohan's attraction to Isaac played some part in his attraction to Gaon.

Like.

It's okay to think that.

You're not going to burn in hell.

You're not romanticizing anything.

You're not promoting any kind of problematic relationship dynamic.

You're, at most, analyzing a deeply complex relationship structure. Something that writers have been doing for ages. Some of it may be considered taboo by most of society, but that doesn't mean you need to demonize yourself or anyone else for appreciating it, let alone simply speaking directly about it.

And if you actually get off on it, then hey, that's cool too. You do you.

There's a weird tendency within the fandom to kind of skirt around the issue. To not address it directly. But to not address it directly is missing the point, I think.

We can say the Isaac lookalike thing was a smokescreen for the hets all we want. And that might be all it is. But to simply disregard it as a means to pass the censorship issue is a little naive at this point. The writer made it an issue for a reason. Take away the lookalike thing, there's really nothing else about the story that would directly implicate it as an explicitly queer story. No more than it already is. Take away the lookalike thing, and not a whole lot else changes. That means the addition of the lookalike thing also does not make it less of a queer story.

So I can't keep believing the the writer used it as a way to throw off the censors or the general public.

I think the writer included it for a specific reason. And that specific reason doesn't detract anything from the queer relationship we all have been seeing.

With or without the Isaac lookalike plot, Yohan and Gaon's relationship remains essentially the same.

The lookalike thing was at the very most, an excuse to bring the two characters together. The lookalike thing was not meant to imply that Gaon was a stand-in for Isaac. It was not meant to imply Yohan only saw Gaon as a brother figure. It was literally, simply, an excuse for the two characters to meet and form a bond. And that bond was non-exclusive. That bond has no limitation. That bond transcended the familial, because Yohan himself had no sense of traditional family.

Someone recently made a point that Yohan grew up abandoned, grew up neglected, grew up abused, grew up without the same moral code that the majority of society grew up with that says "brother is not lover." This doesn't make Yohan bad. This doesn't make Yohan evil. This doesn't make Yohan anything other than a human who grew up in a completely different situation than the majority of society.

It's evident from the bond they form that Gaon was so much more to Yohan than a replacement for Isaac. To disagree with that is ignorant. If you disagree with that, there's a huge aspect of the story that's going directly over your head. I'm sorry. If you think Yohan is simply seeing Gaon as his dead brother then you're wildly missing the point.

I once brought up how strange it was for people to be so hung up on Gaon looking like Isaac, because in real life, that would never happen. Unless you're clinically delusional. Which Yohan never was assumed to be. He wasn't delusional enough to confuse Gaon with Isaac. Because no matter how much someone looks like someone you know at first, you immediately start identifying the differences. Sight, sound, smell, everything adds up and your brain simply cannot continue thinking one is the same as the other unless there are other issues going on.

And I'm still very much in support of that idea. But I am also in support of the flip side. Not that Yohan confuses Gaon as Isaac, but that Yohan had deeper feelings for Isaac than what was let on in the series.

Yohan is a deeply complex character, and the ways he maneuvered in society were so influenced by the environment in which he was raised. He was abused, and neglected, and only truly loved and paid attention to by one singular person in his entire life, and that was Isaac. And I'm sorry, but I cannot just disregard the depths of that relationship just so I can ignorantly ship Yohan with Gaon. All of them are connected and I think we need to actually start acknowledging that instead of putting blinders on out of fear of judgement.

Etymology: She-Ra

What’s good, it’s time for another foray into etymology, this time featuring the resident magical alter ego, She-Ra! As you may have seen from my Larry Ditillio/Lou Scheimer quotes, the actual etymology is pretty straightforward--She, plus Ra. So we’ll cover that first, then move into homophones and proposed alternative etymologies (largely by people who didn’t know about the actual one).

Section One: She

‘She’, of course, is a third person pronoun in English, here the feminine counterpart to the masculine ‘he’ of He-Man. I’m reasonably confident y’all are familiar with the idea of personal pronouns, given we’re on Tumblr, so we’re just gonna jump right in here.

From Middle English sche <ʃeː> (~’shay’), though it could be rendered scho and ȝho (both pronounced ~‘show’) before we killed the yogh. Luckily for us, in ȝho it’s just pronounced like ‘sh’. 

Don’t let the sch fool you, the c in sch was often silent in Middle English. How exactly we arrived at sche, though, is a matter of some debate. This paper summarizes most of the proposals, which has saved you all about eight paragraphs of me rambling about phonemes.

Regardless of its derivation, the vowel situation in ‘she’ is pretty weird--I’m assuming like half of you are familiar with the Great Vowel Shift, but for those that aren’t, the 15th to 18th centuries saw a.... well, great shift in vowels. It’s why so many of our words are spelled so fucked up; one day our long vowels just did an electric slide to the right & suddenly bite was pronounced like byte instead of beet. But one would expect the “e” in sche to unravel into an “o:”, not the “i:” sound we wound up with. It could be the influence of ‘he’, which would be convenient for us, looking at the word as a counterpart to the ‘He’ in He-Man, but historical phonology is a tricky beast. And it could just be an outlier--commonly used words have a tendency to mutate faster. 

I think that’s enough about vowels, though. Moving on!

Section Two: Ra

Ra. Good old Ra. God of the sun, the sky, order, kings. Ruler of all three realms, sky earth and underworld. Creator of all life (sometimes). Kind of a big deal.

Not to pat Larry Ditillio on the back too hard here but it was a great choice, phonetically and theologically. There’s even a precedence for using his name as half of a compound, as with Amun-Ra, the New Kingdom’s fusion with Amun. There’s his association with the falcon, shared in MOTU by the god Zoar (and the Sorceress), but he was also usually depicted with the head of a ram in the underworld. And I mean. Skeletor’s Havoc Staff is literally a ram skull, is all I’m saying. Like Ra is a pretty incredible option, here.

A little more Egyptology, because the coincidences don’t stop there. Ra had three daughters, and since this is appending Ra to “She” and they’re all--as the “eye of Ra”--sometimes considered feminine aspects of Ra, I think it’s relevant. And funny, because all three were depicted as cats at one point or another & Catra is right there.

Hathor was goddess of the sky, the sun, music, dance, joy, sexuality, beauty, love, motherhood, queenship, fate, foreign lands and goods, the afterlife, and more! This is a bonkers number of things to be god of, but I don’t think it was ever all at once. Most consistently, she was the embodiment of the Ancient Egyptian perception of femininity. As women’s role in society changed, so did Hathor’s role in the pantheon--for good or ill. 

Bastet & Sekhmet are a little more focused. Originally, they were both fearsome warriors, protectors of Egypt & specifically of the pharaoh, but over time Bastet became a gentler take on protection, often with a maternal slant as she became more associated with the house cat than the lion.

Sekhmet on the other hand was (and always would be) literally bloodthirsty. She could breathe fire, cause plagues, and almost destroyed the world once! But she was also a goddess of healing, called upon to ward off illness & injury, patron of healers and physicians alike. [holds up a picture of She-Ra] 🤌 It’s about the duality.

Alright, onto the etymology. ‘Ra’ is pretty straightforward, it’s just how we most commonly transliterate the rꜥ hieroglyphs (though he is often called Re) & Demotic script.

So there are three kinds of hieroglyph, right? Phonetic, like a letter in English, logographic, like a morpheme in written Chinese (which is typically logosyllabic but bear with me here), and determinative, to disambiguate meaning between homophones.

D21, the mouth, provides the ‘r’ sound, as a phonetic hieroglyph. As a logogram it could mean ‘to turn the other way’, but we’re just after the sound here.

D36, the forearm (palm upwards), gives us the ‘ ꜥ ‘, which is... okay, hieroglyphics were an abjad, right? There were no written vowels, you just spoke them. But ꜥ, ayin, was a voiced pharyngeal fricative, which is basically a semivowel (like the Y in English ‘yes’ or the W in ‘west’), which is why its use here can be spelled either ‘Ra’ or ‘Re’, because it’s not representing a distinct vowel sound. One of its descendants, ע, is usually rendered as a glottal stop in Modern Hebrew (or omitted entirely), but another descendant is the English letter O, through the Phoenician ayin. We can’t pronounce the ancient Egyptian ayin based on its derivatives, but we can take historical cues from them.

A glottal stop (like the break in uh-oh) is abrupt, right? Ayin is more like... a glide. A pause. When people make an “I don’t know” sound, that’s the sort of sound. This video is as close as most native English speakers will be able to approximate.

But I digress. We’re only halfway through! Those were the phonetic hieroglyphs, but there are other words pronounced rꜥ, so there are some logograms to help us narrow it down. Unsurprisingly, first is N5, the sun, followed by a Z1, (the numeral one), which indicates that the previous glyph is an ideogram--it’s like a one-character version of “←literally”. Now, by themselves those four glyphs could still just mean ‘the sun’, so to specify that it’s the god being spoken of, in come our determinatives.

This could be either C1, C2, C2A, C2B, or C2C. All depict a god wearing a sun-disk on his head. The C2s are all falcon-headed, and C1, while human, has an uraeus (the little rearing cobra you see on pharaohs’ headdresses and crowns) to emphasize divine authority. Some spellings outside the Unicode standard mix and match accessories, or omit the phonetic hieroglyphs entirely to rely solely on the determinatives. Generally, if you see a god with the sun on its head, it’s either Ra himself or invoking/referencing him (which was done frequently in pharaohs’ names).

Okay. Switching gears.

So hieroglyphs are kind of a bitch to write out, right? You don’t want to take the time to draw a whole little guy when you’re just making a list of supplies or something. So they invented this shit called hieratics that was basically cursive hieroglyphics, which eventually became the Demotic script! Ra was written G7-Z5-N5, (still rꜥ), or pꜣrꜥ (conventionally pronounced pa-re), with the pꜣ functioning as a demonstrative determiner to indicate that yes, they mean the god.

Section Three: Homophones

Those of you who have tried to google ‘She-Ra bible’ may be familiar with Sheera of Chronicles 1 7:24. Chronicles is the last book (split into 2 for Christian bible) of the Tanakh, wrapping up the Ketuvim with a genealogy and history of Judah & Israel. To oversimplify: David, Solomon, Babylonian exile, Cyrus the Great swoops in and lets everyone back in & okays the building of the Second Temple around 539 BCE. Only non-Jewish messiah in the Tanakh, and relevant here because the Ancient Greeks thought his name meant ‘Sun’, from Persian خور, ‘xʷaɾ‘. It’s also been translated as hero, humiliator of enemies, youth/young, and one who bestows care. It is almost certainly unrelated to C’yra (of D’riluth III), but the possibility remains until Scott answers my fucking email.

Anyway, Sheera/h. שארה‎ (שֶׁאֱרָ֔ה, with niqqud). That ה (funnily enough, named he) is a suffix indicating a singular feminine noun, which has been applied to שאר‎, sh-’-r (or sh-a-r, depending on how you render the aleph. I used an A in my post on Adora with אדור but it feels weird as a infix, especially given what I did with the ayin in section 2). Let’s take a look at its definitions:

Sha’ar means to remain, to be a remnant, and its derived nouns she’ar and she’erit mean remains, residue, etc. In the Tanakh it refers almost exclusively to survivors, people or things left behind when everyone/thing else has died, often violently. Noah & his passengers on the Ark after the flood, Lot & his daughters after Sodom and Gomorrah--did y’all know the town they went to after was called Zoar? The aforementioned falcon god in He-Man? It’s a coincidence but what the fuck. Naomi and her sons in Ruth 1:3, then just Naomi in 1:5. Oh, and she renamed herself Mara like ten lines after that. Shit like this just kept happening, I had to stop looking at examples bc it was freaking me out.

She’er, meanwhile, means flesh, both in terms of flesh for consumption & one’s flesh and blood. It can also mean physical power (Psalm 78:20), but I for one assumed that shit was metaphorical. On the other hand, who am I to deny another fun little parallel with our Princess of Power? A lot of people prefer this for the underlying meaning of Sheerah’s name, since she’s explicitly someone’s daughter & it could just be like “(singular feminine) kin”. But I think that’s boring (even if the prospect of like, “Fleshella” or some shit is both objectively hilarious and kind of in line with MOTU names) and a little unremarkable to name three cities for. Did I forget to mention they built three cities named after Sheerah? #girlboss

Last of the שאר is she’or, meaning leaven (the noun, not the verb). In Modern Hebrew it’s more often spelled שאור, with a waw added in to disambiguate the pronunciation.

Onto some other homonyms, bc that was technically just one!

Shir, an anglicization of شیر, Classical & Iranian Persian for ‘lion’, one of the plurals for which is شیرها‎ (šir-hâ), which admittedly is more like “sheer-ha” but say it out loud before you judge me for its inclusion here, huh? The singular’s also part of شیرزن‎ (širzan, “heroine”). 

There’s Macedonian and Serbo-Croation шира/šira , "must" (fermented/ing juice, not necessity).

Cira, which is Sicilian for “wax”.

شيرة and شْيَرَة, Hijazi and Gulf Arabic (respectively) for syrup, from Persian شیره‎. There’s a lot of Persian origins here huh. Shame Purrsia isn’t canon, could’ve had a field day. 

Okay one more in Hebrew. Shira/h, שירה, is poetry, verse, singing. In Modern Hebrew shir is a song and shirah is a poem, but that distinction didn’t always exist. The other derivatives of the שׁ-י-ר stem are all related to this. You’ll note that the second letter is a yodh, not an aleph as in the above שארה‎, whose stem was שאר. There’s like a 99% chance that Larry Ditillio’s niece Shirah’s name is derived from this.

Section Four: Shit I’ve Seen People Claim it Means

Most understandably, I’ve seen people claiming they just stuck an S on the rejected name “Hera” and broke it in two to mirror He-Man. So just to cover our bases, Ἥρα (Hera) is of uncertain derivation. Potentially a feminine form of ἥρως (hḗrōs) or related to ὥρα (hṓra)--the former being the ancestor of our word hero, in epics specifically heroes of the Trojan War, but generally humans or demigods venerated at local shrines. The latter refers primarily to time--hours, years, seasons--and youth. The youth reading is supported by the Roman name for her, Juno, which is also of uncertain derivation, but one of those likens it to iuvenis, young (like the juve in rejuvenate).

Asherah the ‘mother goddess’. I admit I wasn’t expecting this one. Asherah (the spelling I’ll be sticking to for consistency’s sake) was, admittedly, kind of a big deal in the ancient Levant. In the interest of not going full theology essay while I’m trying to talk about names, suffice to say she was the consort of the king of the gods (El, Elkunirsa, Yahweh, ‘Amm, Baal, etc.) in quite a few religions, some of which have dropped the polytheism thing & Asherah along with it. (The others are dead).

It’s written אשרה in Hebrew, so roughly ‘sh-r-’ if I’m sticking to my aleph conventions. She was also called Athirat in Ugaritic, an extinct Semitic language ( 𐎀𐎘𐎗𐎚, ʾAṯirat), though before 1200 BCE she was almost always referred to with her full title, 𐎗𐎁𐎚 𐎀𐎘𐎗𐎚 𐎊𐎎, rbt ʾṯrt ym. This is another abjad so we gotta adlib our vowels, but most people go with rabītu, for ‘lady’. The ym could refer either to her son, Yam, or the sea which he was the embodiment of, but the middle bit is tricky. It’s her name (that Athirat), but some people think it’s derived from the Ugaritic ʾaṯr for ‘to stride’, so her full title could be translated as Lady Athirat of the Sea, Lady who walks on Yam/the Sea Dragon/Tyre (the city). However, a more recent translation derives it from the root y-w-m, ‘day’, which would make her Lady Asherah of the Day/s (or even just Lady Day).

Another epithet was qnyt ʾilm ( 𐎖𐎐𐎊𐎚 𐎛𐎍𐎎), variously ‘creatress of the gods’ (page 58), used in the Baal Cycles recovered from Ugarit. Since it’s a port city, her association with the sea was emphasized, and in this version she had 70 sons (though the Hittites claim 77 or 88).

She’s also called ʾElat, 'goddess' (from El, as in names like Michael or Gabriel), and Qodeš, 'holiness', from q-d-š, which makes some people equate her with the Egyptian goddess Qetesh, which is pretty flimsy but funny here because guess who she’s associated with? (It’s Ra. She’s also sometimes depicted as a lion/with Hathor’s wig. It’s a small ancient world after all)

Asherah & her iconography are mentioned 40 times in the Tanakh, but that’s cut way down in most English translations, where ʾăšērâ was almost entirely translated as ἄλσος/ἄλση (grove/s) in Greek, except for Isaiah 17:8; 27:9, where it's δένδρα (trees) and 2 Chronicles 15:16; 24:18, where it's Ἀστάρτη--Astarte, a goddess of war, sexuality, royal power, healing, and hunting more associated with Ishtar than Asherah. Possible consort of Baal so almost certainly not actually Asherah. She did turn up in Egypt in the 18th dynasty as a daughter of either Ra or Ptah (Bastet’s consort), though, which is fun for me.

Asherah's very associated with trees though, so it does make sense they’d translate it to groves/trees. Found under trees in 1 Kings 14:23; 2 Kings 17:10, carved from wood by people 1 Kings 14:15, 2 Kings 16:3–4--there in reference to poles made for her worship, also called “asherah”. The Mishnah defines an asherah first as any tree under which there’s an idol, then specifically as any tree which is itself worshipped.

It lists associated plants: grapes, pomegranates, and walnut shells (invalid to eat or drink if from an asherah), and that myrtles, willows, and etrogs (but not dates?) were invalidated for Sukkot if from an asherah. I think the implication is pretty much any plant with a use can’t be utilized if it was an asherah, but there’s no like, description of what an asherah is or isn’t (except not allowed, which like, fair).

Regardless, to relate it to She-Ra is like... like you can’t just say that, man. The Da Vinci Code of fandom over here, except I’m personally upset about the false etymology instead of the disrespect to my boy Leonardo (da Vinci isn’t a name), and it pisses off every Abrahamic religion and like half of all neopagans. Are you happy? Now this whole section is blasphemous and heretical.

Let’s end this on a sillier note, shall we? It’s time to talk about questionable MOTUC decisions again.

No one sincerely suggested these for our world, but MOTUC established “the sword of He” as the ‘real name’ of He-Man’s sword, and it was later clarified that ‘He’ is the Ancient Trollan word for ‘power’... which, as you can imagine, led to a lot of confusion. It was never established if ‘Man’ is also Trollan, so the apparent translation is Power-Man (leading one forum user to jokingly ask if that made She-Ra ‘Iron-Fist’, after the Marvel duo). Naturally, people have speculated about possible translations for She-Ra, but the guy responsible for the Sword of He stuff left the company in 2014, so it’s likely to remain speculation.

Primarily people suggest ‘She’ might mean ‘protection’ or even ‘honor’, but very few people try to account for ‘Ra’. Most likely because it doesn’t mirror an English pronoun, so there’s little point in drawing parallels. The one and only theory I’ve seen is that it’s a feminine version of ‘Ro’, from He-Ro (a historical figure in MOTU), but it’s logically fraught, imo. Although frankly so is the Sword of He to begin with, so maybe I should just relax for once.

What do you think? What does She-Ra mean to you?