maybe it’s because i dont have access to the fire sides and so am possibly missing some context here, but i don’t super understand what people are talking about when they say Brennan has been trying to convince us Steel is this super loving mother (figure) to Suvi. Like he’s def never been like “Steel, my secret plot twist villian- whoops I mean mommy dearest enters the scene hahaha.” I feel like one of the things Brennan is incredibly good at is presenting characters. Allowing characters to flow through him and just exist. And with Steel, yes she’s encouraged Suvi, been playful with her, and has been open emotionally with her, but that doesn’t negate any of the natural ways Steel is, at the very least, suspicious.
im listening to the podcast from jump (on spotify, so no side stories, though i was able to listen to the children’s tale once via a friend when i listened to the podcast the first time. sort of irrelevant here since i dont remember it with exact detail, but just showing i have some of that context) and even in episode 1, Steel’s role in the citadel and description are enough to give pause. Her alignment to the citadel are immediately in opposition to the character journey Suvi will take (if you assume, i suppose in a meta sense, episode 53 Suvi is where Aabria was always heading)
But even if you don’t think too deeply about her role, her words are also duel edged (pun intended). At this point, we’ve reeled from the “one day you’re going to see what i can do…” but literally right before that she muses on what peace might mean, she goes on about duty meeting the thing one wants to do. it’s better you listen to the whole quote, i’m not gonna type it out here, but it comes across as very wise and honorbound. her point about owning the things you have to do as things you want to do, alignment. it’s all well and good but it also sounds like The Justification Machine. Episode one, yall.
In that same episode when she pulls Suvi aside before sending her off to Grandma Wren she essentially says “remember, we’re in the world, not of the world.” Liiiiiike hello? ring ring sound the fundamentalist alarms!
My younger sibling has this saying that’s always stuck with me. “People tell on themselves.” The magic of Brennan’s story telling isnt so much in him leaving hints (personally, I think when he really wants a player to latch onto something, he’s particularly heavy handed), it’s in the autonomy Brennan gives his characters. It’s how, in his words but paraphrasing a bit, the ego falls away and he lets his character inhabit him. People always tell on themselves. Steel and all the set dressing around her have been telling on her since day one. Steel loves Suvi, prizes and cherishes her, and AND well before episode 53 Steel shouldn’t have been trusted.
i just rewatched ‘the woman who fell to earth’ a couple of days ago for the first time since it aired back in 2018 and the more i think about it, the more i like it.
thirteen is the only doctor for whom i feel a tangible, rose-tinted nostalgia. she wasn’t my first doctor, but she was the first doctor i watched live, the first doctor that i spent an actual extended period of time with over the episode rollout. her intro episode has middling parts (as can be expected with most episodes of Who) but there’s also so much good that i really want to highlight.
first of all, there are some really great character dynamics set up here. much more interesting than i remember, tbh. ryan is a guy who loves mechanics but is stuck in a warehouse job he hates, a guy who obviously wants to connect to people, a guy who by the end of the episode has lost both his mother and grandmother in the space of a couple of years and the step-grandfather he didn’t really want is all he has left (minus his absent father). that’s interesting.
yaz has a keen sense of justice and this raw, intense yearning to help people, to do something worthwhile, something more - the way she has chosen to express that is through law enforcement, but it’s not quite giving her the satisfaction she wants. that’s interesting.
graham’s experience with cancer means that he constantly feels like he’s living on borrowed time. meeting grace gave him purpose, gave him family, gave him the will to fight when he fought it was all but over, but now grace is gone. he and ryan aren’t related, but they’re family, and now they’ve got to figure out how to care for each other without the very lynchpin that brought them together. once again with feeling: interesting!
“i’m just a traveller. sometimes i see things that need fixing. i do what i can.” i like that they circle back to the ‘just some guy’ portrayal of the doctor here, both because it’s the one i’m partial to and because it feeds particularly well into the whole ‘the doctor is an unreliable narrator’ aspect, especially in the wake of the increased deification in the moffat era. it's a nice set up, even if it gets completely overhauled circa series 12/13. in fact, having thirteen keep this as a persistent attitude throughout the Timeless Child of it all could have been really effective re: her reticence with her companions and refusal to address or deal with her past.
the scene where thirteen builds her sonic screwdriver might be one of my favourite sequences in nuwho. i love that it’s a hybrid of alien tech and sheffield steel. i also love that they highlight the ‘mad inventor’ side of the doctor here (her teleportation circuit is based around a microwave?) and wish that they had carried it forward more. it would have been the perfect basis for her to bond with ryan over. jodie also pulls off the humour of the episode well, considering the significant shift from moffat dialogue.
i enjoy thirteen's outfit: the vibrancy of it as mirroring her childish excitability, but also as another part of the mask - if i dress all colourful then maybe i can ignore/outrun/masquerade my great capacity for darkness! etc etc. the shopping trip with yaz and ryan is a bit shoe-horned in at the end but it's cute that she finds it in a charity shop. (back in 2018 i bought a t-shirt with a couple of stripes across the chest solely because it remotely resembled the one she wore lol. nerd from a young age, me.) jodie also looks soo hot in capaldi's outfit though so a spin on the traditional suit would also have been appreciated.
some miscellaneous points: i like that she tells Karl off (“you had no right to do that”) right after saving him. i like that she gets it wrong at first and makes it clear that she’s working on the fly. she’s following her instinct, and that instinct is to help people. doctor who has been beautiful before but the cinematography takes such a huge step this era. “it’s been a long time since i bought women’s clothes” i am choosing to believe this is about river thank you and good night.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you are Celestia, the Second Throne of the Heavens. You have usurped the throne from the Primordial One, laid waste to the civilisation of the Seelies, and now hold dominion over the mortal realm of Teyvat.
Say, too, that you are in the process of carving the world into seven nations, implementing a system of Gnoses wielded by seven Archons, in order to (error: speculation out of scope for this post).
And suppose—to run with the voxel-pixel motifs associated with you, Celestia—that your mind(s) are inhuman, that your neurology and biology are alien to this world, that you look at mortals and terrestrial "gods" alike and see only the mysterious cognition of jellyfish and ant colonies (metaphorically).
Allogenes are, in part, a mechanism for getting 'better' Archons. You intend to allocate Visions to those with the potential to achieve Godhood (presumably Archonhood).
You don't have a grasp on mortal (or demigod or god or etc.) psychology, not nearly enough to run a job interview for a farmhand, let alone an Archon.
How do you do it?
(N.B. For simplicity, I'll be treating Celestia as a singular entity with consistent goals: maybe a hive mind, maybe a collection of seraphim all aligned on the same purpose, whatever. Also let's drop the second-person hypothetical now that we're below the cut.)
Well, the groundwork had been laid: the Archon War was a pretty good start. A vicious free-for-all between all terrestrial powers, resulting in seven clear winners? The War was a well-optimised mechanism for selecting something. (Whatever Celestia's goal was in having seven Archons+Gnoses, we can assume that the War's selection process comports with that goal.)
Now, recall, we're assuming that the hearts and minds of Teyvat are like black boxes. It's easy to comprehend the actions of nations in aggregate, but to inspect, say, Mao Xiangling and conclude that she has the potential to achieve Godhood, that she's worth allocating one of their bounded(?) supply of Visions towards? How do you do that without understanding human desire (or yokai desire or wind-spirit desire, etc.)?
Can a brainwave scan tell you that? Can analysis of the neurochemical mix in a little vertebrate alien's brain tell you, at any given moment, that this person is a candidate for Godhood?
Well, the convenient thing is, you're not analysing vertebrate alien brains from scratch.
You have access to seven entire brains of Archon War winners.
You can't be sure what goes on in the Archons' minds either, but they're structurally far more similar to the mortals' minds than to your own.
So what if you just... compared them?
Imagine "what makes somebody a suitable Archon?" as a question, and these seven Archons are all different but seemingly good answers. Celestia can look at the Archons' minds. How do these minds work? How do the Archons think?
(a pilgrimage[...]; a battle ¶ is the noblest and most eminent in ¶ someday, they will blow towards a brighter future ¶ a very, very long dream[...] the dancing circle ¶ you shoulder the grievances of the world ¶ this is the trust[...] betray it, and you have tainted ¶ my ideals have no stains)
...and once Celestia understood the shape that Archons contort their minds into at the height of their power, it's not too hard an exercise to look out for mortals doing the same.
Moments of self-certain unchangeability. Moments of resistance and defiance. Moments of unwavering idealism. And so on.
And really, how else could Celestia find Vision wielders, if not by searching for people who, for just a moment in time, resemble an Archon?
(❤️❤️ with thanks to @eujean for their recent Visions theory posts, which inspired me to write this up. There's more to say but I think this gives the general idea of this maybe-not-crack headcanon)
Side note: I titled this post "Archons as Vibe Checks" following Peli Grietzer's fascinating account (link) of computational models coincidentally encoding vibes, or aesthetics, or the impression that a gestalt leaves (where a gestalt, approximately, is a collection of things which collectively have more 'meaning' than the sum of its parts).
Side side note: a quick self-plug for Seven Prayers to Seven Archons, which builds upon this theory with 45 standalone Vision stories.
I think a lot about infrastructure and the built environment. And I frequently find myself humming “...we build no mighty towers...” (I used it as the working title for a relevant report but, understandably, my colleagues told me to stop being weird).
It jars on me that the next line is “our homes are built of stone” though. Stone houses are generally a sign that people are doing quite well for themselves economically, or were at some point. Poor people in the past had houses of flammable wood, or more recently sheet metal or other cheap materials that offer poor insulation. We don’t have much information on the state of Zaun’s housing stock, and there are signs the undercity was once more prosperous and populated (eg the cannery and arcade are abandoned, the water tower is dilapidated to the point that Cait and Vi can make it collapse by themselves). Zaun is beautiful, stylish architecture in a state of alluring decay, but are we meant to see it as a place once rich and now fallen?
Obviously it’s just a song, even in-universe it doesn’t have to be literal. Many songs just use words that sound good. Also the Doylist explanation for ‘why is Zaun’s architecture obviously not cheap’ is that nobody wants to look at crappy architecture however stunningly animated.
From the LoL backstory (which frequently does not cohere with Arcane canon), Oshra Va’Zaun, the port city preceding the twin cities, was very different before a hubristic act of magic or tech made the part that is now the undercity sink, but that was hundreds of years ago, no? Buildings around today would have to have survived the sinking. But maybe they did. Maybe the bridge song is a song of “we used to be equals, our houses are still the same, please help us now we are poor”.
To me, that changes the flavour of the Piltover-Zaun exploitation relationship slightly, even if it doesn’t change the present situation for any of the people involved. People are not the history of the place they live, and a hundred years is more than enough to make a new status quo. And to be fair, I don’t think all Zaun’s problems are due to Piltover - clearly the chembarons are only out for themselves and Silco is, at best, thinking of high-level economic prosperity with some hope it will trickle down (”Free trade. Access to the hexgates”). Caitlyn’s probably right in diagnosing the problems of the undercity as both exploitation by its past and present leadership, and Piltover leadership not caring and making it actively worse by sending in Enforcers to administer brutality without justice. Anyway. I like the layers of it, y’know. Even if I may have made them up. It feels very real and not black and white. While generally I think Silco’s right and the undercity would be better off with sovereignty, it’s also quite possible that Zaun messed itself up before and would mess up again, which is what most revolutions unfortunately do.
I know APWH is based off the Lindbergh baby but have you ever heard of the John Robinson case? He was a serial killer and he took one of his victims daughters and forged papers to get her adopted by his brother, so she was raised as his niece. Idk just made me think of that
Okay, so I am so sorry- this ask has been sitting in my drafts for FOREVER because i accidentally wrote a long ass essay for u and I apologize.
I hadn't heard of the case previously. I'm reading about it now, though, and it's absolutely horrifying and really says a lot about how the societal systems in the US (and lack of any kind of financial safety net) create opportunities for crimes like this to happen.
When I started writing APWH, it was with the intention of basing it off of the Lindbergh kidnapping, but with several big differences (namely, Ned and Catelyn, unlike Charles Lindbergh and his wife, aren't fucking EUGENICISTS). I think my views on crime, the legal system, investigations, and on the true-crime-industrial-complex and how it helps shape our perception of what 'crime' is and who 'criminals' are, have really shifted a lot since I began the story, though. True crime is sort of a sticky moral area, i think, and the genre says a lot about who we value as a society and who we demonize, and who is worth protecting- and i'm going to try not to stay on my lil soapbox for too long bc it would be too easy to write a hundred pages about this and no one wants that. True crime is like, a moral panic pipeline in a lot of ways, I think, we can easily get into fearmongering territory, and often, the people most at risk of being victims of a crime are often those who receive the least attention and empathy.
Anyways, I think I've really kind of gotten away from the initial premise I intended to write, which was kind of true crime heavy, and it's more interesting to just explore the myriad of ways, large and small, that this event has affected the Stark family and everyone around them. But as i'm reading about this case you've mentioned, it really highlights the difference between narrative fiction and reality. I accidentally wrote a whole bunch of stuff on my soapbox below the cut by accident, so many opinions on the case and on criminal justice and legal reform in the US below.
(More on my feelings about the Robinson case and the true-crime-industrial-complex and how APWH is fundamentally very unrealistic below the cut if anyone cares).
I just keep thinking about the fact that Robinson really took advantage of people- particularly women who were in extremely vulnerable positions in society- which i think says more about the gaps in our society we allow people to fall through and how implementing policy changes on a broad level would be a more effective way to prevent people like Robinson from doing harm to others than policing and prosecution are. (I can't speak for other countries, but these last few years have really emphasized how fundamentally immoral and wrong the US legal system is, because allowing someone to get away with murder in broad daylight is an example of the system working as intended). The child he effectively stole and sold was found by Robinson after he met her mother at a women's shelter in Kansas City and promised that he would help her find housing and a means to provide for her daughter. I mean, imagine if we devoted the resources to helping victims of domestic violence get out of abusive relationships, instead of leaving them the choice of potentially facing homelessness or having to risk your own well-being on the off chance that a guy you meet, who promises to help take care of you and your child, isn't going to take advantage of your situation and murder you so that he can sell your infant daughter to people who are open to the idea of adopting a kid outside of the legal system because the system hasn't worked for them. Several times, Robinson's crimes take advantage of the disarray that the American health care system is in, and another one of his victims moved to live with him because he offered to help her find work, and pay her daughter's expensive medical bills. One of his victims was a Polish immigrant. He was extremely good at finding vulnerable people, and taking advantage of that vulnerability. Articles about Robinson really emphasize his membership on BDSM websites, but I think it's far more telling that the majority of his murders allowed him to benefit financially from pension checks, alimony checks, etc. He didn't start by killing people- he started by embezzling and defrauding people and then killing them for financial gain- but the whole 'Slavemaster' narrative is far more marketable, and so that's how he's referred to.
I mean, also, we know that he started harming women in 1984, and the police didn't really do anything about those crimes until 1999 (they did lock him up for a little while for mild financial fraud and parole violations, though). But police incompetence, police inability to act on violence towards vulnerable women like this- it's really the center of every case like this that you look at. Ted Bundy didn't keep getting away with murder because he was some brilliant genius- he got away with it because people were dismissive of the idea that women could be missing, and because the police didn't do their jobs. Police literally got dozens of calls from Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbors about the smells coming from his apartment, and one of his victims ESCAPED and tried to talk to the police, but they did nothing- partially because the victim was already incapacitated beyond the point of speech, but also because Dahmer lived in a Black neighborhood, and was primarily targeting gay men of color. Police incompetence is at the center of every so-called 'criminal mastermind' or serial killer case.
Anyways, what happened is absolutely awful, although i'll be completely clear in that I don't particularly think AT ALL that increased policing or 'tough on crime' policies would have stopped this from happening- better societal safety nets may have made it harder for him to find victims, though. That being said, though he is on death row, I am fervently against the death penalty in every conceivable way, because it's barbaric, it's expensive, and it solves nothing except helping tough-on-crime politicians get reelected for the umpteenth time. (Literally angrily shaking my fist at Lee Atwater's grave for that whole concept).
And above all, I really hope that the girl raised as his niece (I'm not using her name here because honestly she's probably had more media exposure than she ever wanted and I won't add to that scrutiny), is doing alright now, and that she's found some measure of happiness or contentment or peace. I hope she's allowed to stay as anonymous as she wants, and that she's allowed to control her own narrative going forward, and that her favorite snack food at the grocery store is on sale this week when she goes shopping. I hope she's given the resources to survive and thrive where her mother was deprived of those options, and that she's able to access whatever therapy or medical care that she wants or needs.
One of the most unrealistic things in APWH is the sheer amount of resources that Sansa and the Starks have access to, after everything that's happened. Ideally, every individual who wanted or needed therapy would be able to afford a therapist like Sansa has, but we aren't there yet, so we're gonna have to drag the country to that point, kicking and screaming the entire way.
Over the holiday I read...a lot of princess diaries. Dude these kind of slap, ngl
Princess in Love (#3)
Princess in Waiting (#4)
Princess in Pink (#5)
I love Mia. I relate so much with Mia, my teenage self sees a lot of myself in her (for good and bad). I don't think this is intentional on the part of Meg Cabot, but I like how Mia is sometimes an unlikeable protag? It makes her feel really human and flawed in a way I enjoy.
As an adult who taught high school (I'm closer in age to Mia's mom than Mia at this point), I observed a self centered and egotistical cruelty that teenage girls can possess at their worst in my students, Mia and Lilly.
Examples such as:
Mia's transphobic comments on her neighbor Ronnie come to mind from #3 (she was being a fairly good ally and not misgendering her until she learned Ronnie had a bf -- then the cis shit woman REALLY came out...)
Mia's casual fatphobia of Lilly being "chunky"
Lilly's picketing of a local convenience store owned by Asian Americans for being "anti white" 😬
However, a big question is if this is geared toward children, if that nuance of "these are bad things that assholes do" will be picked up on?
Meg Cabot says she's released 20 anniversary editions of these (ouch the old it hurts) which has "light edits but not modernized to be set in the present" (my paraphrase from her blog).
I wonder if some of the casual "isms and phobias" that we now all find blech is removed. Haven't looked into it though.
Also, another interesting fact, there are all of these novellas that are set in-between books in the middle of the series. I'll save you the headache now: You cannot get Project Princess (4.5) in an ebook (legally or otherwise) but she basically recaps it in 5.
Looks like the rest are available in ebook form. Also Meg Cabot is still writing stuff for PD on her blog, setting some stuff in Genovia during COVID.
Hi, hello, I have a proposal. Neurodivergent Logan, more specifically, ADHD and maybe OCD. See, ADHD isn’t all “oh I can’t sit still! :(((”, it’s more like, “there are five essays I need to do, and three are due tomorrow but I haven’t started any because I don’t know where to begin,” among other things. ADHD comes in three different categories, but it’s best described as a grab-bag of traits. The most common three are Inattentive, Hyperactive, and a combination of the two.
The reason I say Logan may also have OCD is because OCD also is usually a buy-one-get-one-free thing with ADHD. Also, as someone who has both of these
disorders, I am pretty good at seeing the signs.
1. Logan can get ‘angry’ pretty fast, which I see as when he gets a bit overstimulation
Reasoning for this is us neurodivergent folk can get this way pretty easily if you know what makes us feel out of control. Logan gets angry and often raises his voice because he wants to regain control over his feelings. See, we feel emotions differently. We feel them way more deeply, and express them differently than our neurotypical counterparts. That’s why we often make others upset, and we usually don’t know why. We get so worried about hurting others, that sometimes we get hypersensitive to emotions. Especially our own, because we don’t know how to control them, so many of us just bottle them up. Then, when we get angry or riled up, our filter starts to break and we say things that we don’t mean, as we see in DWIT when Logan gets riled up and says to Virgil, “No, you’re just para- ...expressing an unhealthy amount of concern. Thank you for being on guard.” We see that he can catch himself, but sometimes the words come out faster and harsher than we can
control.
2. He often doesn’t get social cues
This is a big one. People who are neurodivergent learn pretty early that we’re different, and that we can’t decipher when someone is telling a joke. So what we do is just be logical and take everything seriously. Though we can’t really control the “taking things seriously” part, it’s a trait many of us have. We don’t pick up on tones or jokes, so some of us often feel left out. But let me tell you a secret, some of us can pick up on some tones and jokes. I certainly don’t speak for all neurodivergent people, but I can personally say that I consciously choose to play the part of ‘super logical and smart person who is oblivious’ because I don’t know what would happen if I stopped. You see Logan actively trying to pick up on things, and succeeding in some cases.
3. Harsh/strong emotions
This is something that I think is one of the traits Logan has the most. You see it all the time, his anger is fast and fiery, his happiness is bursts of light. Though because they’re so strong, we often get scared of them. So we bottle them up because some of us don’t know how to deal with them. Though this, ironically, makes them stronger.
4. Hyperfixations and interests!
It’s time to talk about this one, folks! Hyperfixations are, if you didn’t know, a thing/place/food/media that we fixate on and only do/talk about that thing. Interests, on the other hand, are the things we’re passionate about, but not like hyperfixations. Hyperfixations are bright, blinding, overpowering. You can’t do anything but that. Interests are like campfires, they’re still bright, that is true, but not as much and they last much longer. For Logan, his main interest is science. He loves it, but it’s not overpowering. He loves to talk about it, he loves when people listen. Though, many people find how we talk obsessively over things “annoying”. This brings us to our next point;
5. “You’re too loud!” or “you’re too boring!”
Hoooo-boy, I’m pretty sure all neurodivergent people know what I’m talking about. This one hurts, because we want nothing more than to be listened to and understood. We usually get told that ‘we’re too much’ or ‘too boring’ because of how we talk, or our mannerisms. Some of us, Logan in this case, try to be more interesting by learning things that would make us less boring. We see this one with Logan, with his flashcards of slang words. Since we often don’t get social cues (see above) the ones who do this can mispronounce and/or use them in the wrong context. But this is a fine line, you see. We don’t want to be a joke. Many of us have/are jokes to our peers because of how gosh darn DIFFERENT we are! You can see the predicament we’re in, can’t you? We want to be relatable, but because of our tendency to not get social situations we get made fun of. We hate getting made fun of.
Wow, this was a long one! But can you see why I think Logan is neurodivergent? His emotions are harsh, he’s passionate about science, and how he doesn’t get social cues. Now, there are many more things I could talk about, but I don’t want to write this and then not have people acknowledge this. This was supposed to be about how Logan is neurodivergent, but it ended up being an essay on neurodivergence. Well, hope you liked this mess! I sure loved writing it!
TL;DR: neurodivergent person tries to explain why Logan is neurodivergent, ends up writing an essay instead
I believe Zane is autistic. I know what you’re thinking “Raointean, he’s a robot! Robots don’t have brains so they can’t be autistic.” I say you’re wrong. Maybe he was modeled on Julien or maybe it’s a robotic quirk. Who knows? The fact remains that he shows several symptoms, pretty much all of them presented to us in season 1 episode 2.
He really doesn’t pick up on social cues like in the dinner scene where they’re all throwing food at eachother.
His thought process is very different from a neurotypical person’s. For him, following the bird because it danced, was a completely logical step.
He’s often off in his own little world. At the beginning of the episode when all the ninja are training, Zane is meditating. All of a sudden, he gets up and starts fighting and getting in everybody’s way.
From this evidence, I have drawn the conclusion that Zane is on the autism spectrum.
