#I am not at all writing a characters death from their perspective

[dirtytransmasc]

the little warrior (spider fic)

What if spider sacrificed himself for jake? what if his family was forced to watch him die? what would spider see in his afterlife?

based off of this post

mother/father is ronal and tonowari, mom/dad is zdog and quaritch. It just feels right in my soul. I didn't beta this, I tried, got bored, and y'all are gonna just have to be ok with that. more notes at the end. 

The shock of spider taking a bullet for jake was enough to stop the entire battlefield in its tracks. Think hector and patrolcus; the RDA had messed with spider a few times before and each time they learned only one thing came form messing with spider, and that was carnage. Spider was the heart and soul of the little platoon, he held it all together, bringing once enemies into one family. They knew that touching a hair on his head would get them all killed, but killing him? They knew to start saying their prayers. The intent was to kill jake, collapse the unit; whether it happened then and there or shortly after the fact, it hadn’t mattered to them. But now there was little hope any of them would make it out of there alive. 

The first to react was Ao’nung, his instinct to protect his baby brother cutting through the shock and hazy disbelief. He has to push past jake to get to his brother before he hits the ground, screaming, curses and prayers alike, all the while. He knows spider knew what he was doing, saw his face ease as he saw jake turn around unscathed, he hated it, hated how selfless his brother was, wanted to scream at him for being so stupid (he never dropped his grudge with jake, it had been months since spider became his brother, but he would never forget what led up to it). But as the fear and adrenaline catch up with spider, his face freezing up as he registered the pain, he can't help but pull him closer and slowly to the ground, trying to ignore the sharp smell of blood, his brother's blood. It’s ok, it’s ok, mama will fix it, I promise she’ll make it better. He frantically hummed an answer, clinging to him as pain blossomed in his chest like a crude burn.

Their parents and sister are quick to follow - a war-seasoned chief, a tsahik, and a healer in training - all 3 trying to stay calm for their son and brother, but its hard when the light and life is so quickly draining from his face. 

he tries to talk to them but between the pain and the blood pooling in his lungs, he can't get anything out. he seeks his mother's hand and his father's touch, but he can't ask for it and his strength is waning so he can't reach for it either. All he can do is listen to his mother's cries, and  focus on his sister's hands on his legs or his father's big hands on his chest. he knows his brother's holding his head up, he tries desperately to keep his eyes open, to follow his coaxing, even if he would much rather settle into the warmth of his hands and let sleep take him. But he knows it would upset him if he went without a fight, that it would break his parents hearts.

His mother is be praying desperately, unable to pull herself way from her child, but her mind too clouded with grief to do much else. Same with his sister though she was attempting to apply what her mother had taught her. His father and brother could only focus on the blood, all the blood, pouring from his chest and his mouth and nose; that and the tears they couldn't wipe because of the mask he so desperately needed. He felt his father trying to keep pressure on the wound but the bleeding went deeper then he could have any effect on, and ao'nung was trying to keep spider airway open so he didn't drown on the blood pooling in his mouth. It hurt. He wanted it to end.

spider can see from just behind his mother, jake and neytiri in each others embrace watching with distant eye as he suffers the same fate as neteyam. it made him feel sorta guilty, but if jake was alive, the battle would live on, and his family had a chance at peace. 

more faces, voices rather, join the scene. he hears his dad, hears reyzi screaming, but she doesn't grow closer. quaritch was struggling to hold her back, begging through his own tears for her to calm, that she could see him, she just needed to be calm for her brother. ravi and ro'eyk are standing next to their adoptive dad, ravi leaning into his arm, seemingly numb, though his anger is boiling him alive, and he's one wrong move away from ripping his skin off and using it to strangle his brothers killer to death. ro'eyk is similar to his brother, the craze in his eyes multiplying by the second as he is forced to watch his baby brother bleed out.

its quaritch who approaches his greiving family first, tapping tonowari's shoulder, their eyes meeting. 

he's too far gone - both of their respective glances say, though neither can voice it. "there's no exit wound, the bleeding is in his lungs," tonowari says quietly, trying to avoid the children's ears "the bleeding is slow, but the damage is done. it won't be quick, but he won't make it back to camp either…" 

quaritch nods, he couldn’t think about how much time his boy had left, or more so, how little. he kneels next to his son, the siblings gathering at his sides. Reyzi takes her brother’s hand, trying to smile when he weakly squeezes back; Ravi nudges against ao’nung, the two had grown close, helping the other boy shift their brother to lay between them; ro’eyk clings close to his dad, one hand holding onto him, the other on spiders leg. 

The sounds are so intense, people speaking, crying, praying, begging. everyone’s moving around him, people are moving him, someones putting pressure on the wound and it hurts like hell. 

his eyes float around; first to his dad, he’s crying, fingers fiddling with the braid behind his ear, miles had put in himself, the beads he carved by hands, spider never took it out. then to his brother’s, seeing his 2 big brothers embracing eachother, ao’nung hiding his face into the crook of ravi’s neck, both boys desperately trying to stay strong, ro’eyk eyes were analyzing him, trying to find a solution, because he was never one to back down. Then it was his mother and father that he looked to, the pain in his mothers eyes as she prayed to Eywa, as she held onto his body as if to hold him there; he’d never seen his father so distraught, like all his strength and was gone, his face no longer holding a sense of calm, there was only pain and anger now. His sisters both held a sense of rage, one he was very familiar with, reyzi wasn’t afriad to turn her anger on the world, but tsireya? He can’t think of a time he’s ever seen her truly angry, let alone filled with wrath, and he feels sorry that his death will introduce to such a horrible feeling. he tries to focus on jake and neytiri, but end up falling on the sully kids, more tears forming in his eyes; he was leaving them again, he was leaving lo’ak alone, kiri without her person, tuk with one less big brother, again. his breaths come fast and he starts to shake as sobs force their way out of his broken body realizes they’re all here, they’re all going to watch him die. 

he's scared, he feels so alone, despite being surrounded by people, because his vision is going and he can barely feel or hear a thing. he just wants to be held, he doesn't care about the wound anymore, he just wants someone to make the cold and pain go away. 

he must have made some sort of noise, a sign of discomfort because the aching stopped; whoever had been putting pressure on the wound let up a little, then his dad is talking to him, leaning over him to speak into his ear, I love you, he says gently, trying to hide the shake in his voice, I love you so much, and spider wants to say it back, he wants to cling to his dad and beg him to make it stop, but he can only stare up at him, weakly nod his head, let the tears fall down his cheeks. He hates this, he hates it so much. 

He closes his eyes for just a second, trying to ease the tired ache in them, but then he hears his mother shriek, feels her hands on his face, my son, she cries over and over again, great mother please, please do not take him. He feels his gut churn as he remembers what neytiri had said the day she lost neteyam. He watches his father try to comfort her, but he knows it would be no use, nothing quells the pain of a mother’s grief. 

He tries to speak again, but chokes, and his chest burns with something awful, he feels his brothers tense beneath him, sobs coming from the younger of the two. He wants to tell her that its ok, to bring her comfort like she has for him the last few months, anything to bring her any amount of ease. Shhh, my child, it’s ok, don’t speak, his father comforts, not even attempting to hide his pain, only focusing on easing his child. Spider tries to not be angry, tries not to scream at the situation; he’s dying and he can’t even say goodbye to his family, can’t talk to them, his body won’t let him, they won’t let him try, it’s not fair. 

There’s movement at his side, his dad is leaving, he doesn’t want him to go. His eyes track him as he scoots behind his brothers, both like his sons in one way or another, wrapping an arm around both of them, ro’eyk joining there little group hug. Reyzi stays where she is, holding his hand, and the gap left by his dad and brother is filled by his mom, 2 of the strongest woman he has ever known embracing eachother like life lines. He’s really happy to see her, he just wishes she wasn’t crying. 

She doesn’t hesitate from kissing the top of his head, pressing her forehead against the mask, the gap between their faces made by the glass lets him see the anguish on her face. How’s my strong boy doing, she says, trying to smile, lighten the mood, despite the pain it causes her. He’d say he’s right as rain, just like she did, but he knew he couldn’t, didn’t think it was worth trying. So he did his best to push into her, to make his need for her comfort known, pulling a sob from his lips as he strained to be closer. She peppered any skin she could get to with kisses, knowing she couldn’t hug him or hold him as she wanted, not without hurting him even more. I’m so sorry, my little soldier, I’m so so sorry, she says to him, as she tries to figure ouu where to put her hands, settling them against the sides of his face. He doesn’t want her to be sorry, his choice is what got him here, her being there wouldn’t have stopped him. 

He hears ikran, assumes the other recoms had spotted the vigil from the skies. He’s pretty sure he heard his mom say something about them letting her go to her boy while they handled the remaining RDA soldiers who hadn’t given up. He saw all of them, all their ikran too, that was good, that meant his family was ok, all of them, that was good. 

Mansk and lyle had gotten close to the sully kids, lo’ak in particular, as kiri was more often too busy her own world to pay them any mind, and neytiri kept tuk close to her, so spider wasn’t surprised when he saw his brother break from jakes hold, running into mansk’s side, accepting lyles arm to hold onto as well. Kiri followed, now that she knew she could in fact wander from her parents grasp without getting pulled back, though she went to zdog instead of following her brother, sitting opposite to reyzi. Hey monkey boy, he wished she said it like she aways did, not in the sad defeated voice that she had. though one thing was the same as always, she had her hand over his heart; she said he was na’vi in his heart, that his body didn’t matter, that to eywa, he would be her child just as much as she and their siblings and the rest of their family were. 

The thought brought him comfort, that he would be with eywa soon, with the people his family had lost over the years. He didn’t want to trade out one for the other, and he definitely didn’t want to think about his family joining him, but there was some amount of peace easing his heart to calm, his breath to come a little slower. Part of him knew that shock was taking hold of him, but chose to let it happen rather then fight it, the calm eased his pain, the lack fo fear let his muscles relax. 

He could tell people were shifting again, which meant more goodbyes, more words he couldn’t understand, more tears. He thinks its jake at his side now, neytiri behind him, tuk somewhere in the mix (he can hear her voice, though he can’t see her). I’m so sorry kid, shouldn’t have been you, you should have let it happen… none of this should have happened… I’m sorry I didn’t apologize sooner. Hearing jake apologize was weird, he never expected one, part of him wanted to keep thinking he didn’t deserve one, cause it was easier to forget what his life used to be like, then to dwell on it. Then tuk was hugging his neck before he could even form a reaction to what jake had said, forcing him to change his chain of thought to her; she shouldn’t be here, not on a battlefield, not watching another brother die, he wanted to push her off, tell her to run and keeping running till she was free of the smoke and rubble. I don’t want yout to go, you already left once, why are you leaving again? She asks, and he has no answer. Why was she still here? 

Someone pulled her away and lo’ak took her place, he looked conflicted, and spider knew why; he didn’t want to regret his last words. Lo’ak was haunted by what he said to neteyam, he didn’t want to suffer that again. I see you, all of you, spider. You will always be my brother, always have been, and no matter what, there was never a moment I didn’t love you, even when I was angry and even if I didn’t act like it, I always love you Spi. even if it was hard, he hung onto every word, he could do that for his brother, after everything, he could do him the decency. He tried to quirk his lips up into a smile, hoping lo’ak would find comfort in it, but lo’ak only started to cry harder, hovering over him, why did you do that, you skawng, though he was probably attempting to scold him, there was no anger in his voice. 

Eventually his brother pulled away, squeezing his shoulder before he rejoined the recoms who were both silently mourning and keep watch over the vigil. they didn’t do goodbyes, so he wasn’t surprised or even disappointed, he almost liked it better this way. He knew they mourned him, knew they would die to avenge him, he didn’t need them to go out of there way to do something that would only bring him more pain. He doesn’t even think he would be able to understand them had they tried.

His last few moments are hazy, his pulse in his ears, and the tears in his eyes so thick he can just barely make out the beginning of eclipse. He knew he was in his father’s arms, he wasn’t talking, not words at least, spider almost thinks he might be humming; it's a song sung to mighty warriors when they fall, as a way to tell them they can rest, that war is over. He knows his mother is next to her mate, sleep now, my little miracle, she's crying, he can barely tell what she's saying, you were the greatest gift I could ever be given, thank you, for being my son, for every moment we shared. his eyes burned, she was thankful for him, when he should be thankful for her, it wasn't right. he was slipping, thinking about his mama took his  away from his focus on staying awake, and suddenly his dad was talking, I'll take care of her spi, don't worry, you go on now, everything will be alright here, his dad comforts, knowing spider is more worried about her than himself. his dad was across from his mother, the both of them holding his hands, their own hands over lapping. He knows zdog is next to him, whispering I love you, over and over again. 

his brother’s were at his head, he could feel someone tucked into his neck, another pressing their head against his, I love you, I love you so much my brother, don't- (you have have to let him go) I… I'm gonna miss you, I'm gonna miss you so much, ao'nung he thinks, then Ravi, then ao'nung again. Ravi was taking care of the younger boy. good, he thinks, his brothers won't be alone. His sisters are gathered at his feet, collapsing in on one another; reyzi’s stiff upright posture and cold, thousand yard stare sticking out eerily amongst his hazy recollection. Kiri looked… peaceful wasn't the right word, she looked like she accepted it, she had tsireya and tuk pulled into her sides, Reyzi was behind her, accepting no comfort; he was sure that if he could get his eyes to focus he would see her wringing her hands, pulling her fingers until they hurt. he wished she would be able to move on, he knew it wasn't possible, it wouldn't be possible for her or her brother's, no matter how well they were holding themselves in the moment. Lo'ak was pacing the stretch of land that acted as an opening to the aclove, he was cursing, punching at the rubble, he didn't deserve this, not again. 

he saw the recoms standing gaurd as well, someone was trying to keep Lo'ak from the rubble, earning a sharp jab to the ribs, which was redirected into in awkward hug of sorts, but he couldn't tell who it was anymore. 

he couldn't tell who anyone was, his vision had faded to much. he whimpered, felt the burn in his chest as a result. he felt like he was sinking away, like when you have the bad dream of falling into the abyss. he was scared, he was so scared, he didn't want to die. he tried to grip onto something, but he's not even sure he was moving, but he felt his bubble get tighter, he tired to remember be wasn't alone. 

the last thing he remembered was a choked cry, probably his mother, and then nothing.

then Neytiri, smiling at him sadly amidst of bright white. no, no it wasn't Neytiri… it was Neteyam, his big-little brother - spider was technically older him, by a little over a year, but aged slower, hense earning him the title of little- big brother and Neteyam the opposite - standing a few feet away from him. 

"I didn't expect to see you so soon." Neteyam talks in a way that is much older and much wiser then his age lets on, more so then he did in life. he keeps his smile, but his voice and eyes let on his sadness. 

"neither did I," spider makes no attempts to move or interact more than he needs to, not until he knows this ain't a trick of his dying mind

"why did you do it, you could have let dad take the hit, he had a better at surviving it," 

"I wasn't letting another person get shot in front of me." 

"It wasn’t your fault brother,” neteyam stepped forward, placing a hand on spiders cheek, wiping a tear he didn’t know was there. 

“Am I really dead?” he asks, wanting to accept that this was really the end, he needed this to be the end, because he couldn’t stay standing much longer. 

“Yes… I’m sor-” Neteyam tensed at the question, 

“No, no thats… that’s good, was just worried… worried I wasn’t gone yet and that my mind would start playing tricks on me.” he closed the gap, leaning into the taller figure, he was tired, he was so tired. “Please, ‘teyam, please tell me this is real.”

He felt himself being pulled down, surrounded in a ligth warmth, almost like a blanket of sand warmed by the light of the sun. he kept his eyes closed, unsure if he wanted to see the space around him, if he wanted to know what would be there. He just clung tight to his big-little brother and prayed The Great Mother showed him mercy. 

“Its’s real, I promise you it’s real, open your eyes.” 

When he did, because he trusted his brother, he was home, he was on a familiar beach, the beach his father would take him to, it was on the far side of the village, a place only really known by the chief and his family. 

“What is this place, spi, it’s the place The Great Mother thinks you should rest, tell me about it.”

“This is where tonowari told me I was his son… it was the family beach in a way… its where me and ao’nung would train and tsireya taught me the stories of our people, where mother taught me to heal. This is my home.” he was too caught up in the relief to think about how neteyam may feel about him considering someone else family. 

“You deserved more time with them, they were good to you,” he spoke softly, tracing his finges in the sand, “you were meant to be theirs, but that doesn’t change the fact that we’re brothers. It’s ok spider, I’m happy that you were happy with them, you deserved that.”

“You saw?” 

“Everything, had to watch over you and my other skawng brother, ao’nung too, make sure you didn’t get into to much trouble; though it doesn’t seem I kept that from happening… I watched you all, you did good brother.” 

His stomach dropped. He knows, he knows what he did, why wasn’t he angry.

“I saved him… why aren’t you angry?” 

“Because you were right. You felt the good in him, you saved him, and then let him pick his path. You saved him, all of them, preserved life; thats the way of eywa. By saving him, you brought them all together… and evne if you didn’t, even if he didn’t change, he was your dad spi, he did better then our- my dad… you had every right to want to save him. I can’t judge you for that.” 

This felt wrong, something wasn’t right, there was no way this was going to be this easy. 

“I… I don’t understand.” 

“You will, it takes time.”

“Time?” 

“Eywa will show you what you need to know to find peace, sometimes you need to see what happens first. You were bound to kiri for a reason, you were bound to tonowari and ronal for a reaosn, you were bound to the recoms for a reason. She will show you, it just takes time.” 

Neteyam was holding him by the shoulders now, pulling him into a hug once more. Spider thinks he was crying. “You don’t understand yet, but I am so proud of you spider.”

That’s when spider cracked, he couldn’t do it anymore, he couldn’t stay strong. He crumbled in his brother’s arms, letting him hol all his pieces together. He falls apart into the sand, as his brother moves away from him.

“I have to go now, so do you,” his brother says distantly, spider only catching a glimpse of him before he disappears. 

Before he can even call out for him, he hears another voice, one much more ethereal, layered and consisting of many tones; “you have places to be, my child.”

“What?” he searches the beach for a source, but comes up with nothing. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am,” the voice shifts, sounding almost like his mother

“Mother?” 

“The Mother of mothers I suppose,” the voice was closer to what it had been before, though it kept its feminine pitch

“Eywa.” his voice was more a whisper then anything else, unsure of what should have been obvious. 

“Yes, my child,” a woman appeared, emerging from the forest that surrounded the beach, she looked like his mother, which made some sense. She could look like anything, different to each person, so of course she would take the form of the woman he loved and trusted the most in his life. 

“Where am I going?”

“You ask too many questions, always have,” she smiled, an airiness to her voice, almost like a laugh, “what do our people believe?” 

Oh. “Every person is born twice,” 

“That’s right little one,” the deity came closer, her ‘hand’ caressing his cheek.

He felt his heart begin to race, how that was possible considering he was dead, he didn’t know and didn’t care. He didn’t want to go, he wanted to stay with his family, with neteyam. He wanted to find the other’s, kiri’s mom, his mother’s spirit sisters, his ancestors; human, omatikaya, and metkayina alike. He’s so tired and just wants to stay here, just for a little.

“Don’t worry my child, you,” she points to his head, his mind, “will stay here, your soul,” she points to his chest, “will be reborn. You will rest, but your fire, courage, and loyalty will be given back to the world. You were born to be a great warrior, it is ingrained in you, and you fight for me and all of pandora with all of yourself and all of your strength. You will be sent back to finish what you began, to the end of the war. You will protect you’re family, and you will have my guidance to do so, that I promise.”

He was confused, unsure of how the whole ‘born twice’ thing worked logistically, but he knew better to argue with a mother, let alone The Mother. So he suppressed his weariness, his longing for his family, and accepting Eywa’s task. Little warrior, gift of Eywa. what were once terms of endearment now had meaning.

“Yes, Great Mother,”

“Your mother taught well, she is a good tsahik, her and your father, even the lost spirits that make up your dad, you call him and your mom,” hearing the Na’vi goddess use english words was so unnerving, and he found himself grinning a little harder then he should, and she grinned back in response, “they prepared you well, very well.”

“They did, I am forever greatful for them”

“Of course you are, you are a grateful child, your heart is larger then most, its what a great warrior, the respect you have for the enemy, even when you feel such immense hatred. It is what lead you to save him, what lead your siblings to him, what turned the tides of this battle. It is what made you protect the Toruk Makto, despite the battle he put you through so young. It is you’re heart that will live on…are you ready?” her words were so motherly, it sounded like a story he would hear from his mother, except it was no story, not yet, it was his life. 

“I think,” he was honest with her, he had no idea what was going to happen, and therefore could not honestly tell her if he was afraid or not.

“When your soul is sent back to your family, finding a place to be reborn where it is needed most, you will join your ancestors; you will watch with them, both your living family and your ancestors, you will learn to be a guide as they are and when your soul has returned to you, living its second life, you will be a guide as well. Do you understand my child?” she explained with care.

So that’s what his brother meant, he will see in time, learn what he most learn, be show what he must be shown. He would watch the remainder of his family’s lives, watch the war, watch the effects of his actions play out. He would watch his soul live on, finishing what he began. He would learn from his ancestors, everything he needed to know. Maybe he would learn from his Mother as well, he couldn’t assume this was the last he would be seeing of her. He felt ease wash over him, his Mother embracing him fully now. 

“You will be reborn to her, that I promise. Good luck little warrior.”

And with that the figure disappeared, he felt something leave him, more then just Eywa’s presence, and suddenly he was alone, still on the secluded beach. He had a feeling he had a lot to figure out, and that the tulkun calls in the distance were the calls of his first teacher, Roa.  

~~~

So a few things. The only people I’m sorry for right now are fictional. chest wounds under the right circumstances can be slow inevitable death sentences; I milked that for every ounce of angst I could (his death took at least 10-15 minutes of agony just for a little perspective for him and his family; they couldn’t do anything so they just had to watch him fade). Finally, the only explanation for why the siblings don’t go hog wild immediately (this explanation is for all of 3 people, you know who you are/pos) is because their civility is directly linked to spider. If they don’t stay calm, there will be no stopping them, and they didn’t want spider to see that; basically, the only way they stopped themselves from going ballistic, was to go numb, practically comatose, which will fuel their anger later.

I kept the dialogue limited to put the reader in spider perspective, he’s so out of it he can really only hear what's being said when he’s putting effort into it. Just because the dialogue isn’t mentioned doesn’t mean its happening, which is my nice way of saying; he’s being talked to the whole time, he just isn’t “hearing” it. This is the same for character focus, he’s only really able to pay attention to the activity around him, so characters are only really mentioned when they are actively interacting with him/are the main point of his focus. angst via writing style is my favorite flavor of angst I toiled with the ending of this for like 3 days, I don't love it love it, but I'm content with it. I have complicated feelings for how the spirit world works in canon (as far as we know) and how I want it to work, so we're just gonna take the mess that I created and enjoy it. also eywa is based on my interpretation of our world's 'true mother' who takes many forms and names in different mythologies; think, fun mom, who's crunchy in the cool fun way. like will drive her kid to the ER at 2 in the morning for running a fever, but will also slather them in essential oils the entire way there. is the cool mom that everyone loves and always wants to hang out with. like I didn't want her to seem overly untouchable, so I made her have a mild sense of humor. so enjoy that

#I nearly lost my mind writing this #I am not at all writing a characters death from their perspective #which considering how much angst I write is like hella surprising #avatar 2 #spider socorro #avatar the way of water #miles socorro #miles spider socorro #quaritch #avatar spider #spider avatar #spellman siblings #hi'i'tsyil te fkew'weopx tonowari'itan #spider tonowari'itan #ronal #tonowari #ao'nung #tsireya #kiri sully #lo'ak sully #neteyam sully #tuk sully #sully family #jake sully #neytiri #recom squad #corporal wainfleet #recom wainfleet #lyle wainfleet #prager

[the-joy-of-knowledge]

Becoming an Intelligent Woman

My Dears,

There is no greater goal than being a fine woman who is intelligent, kind, and elegant. As much as we all want to be described with these adjectives, it takes a great amount of discipline to get there. It is very doable only if you are ready to put in the work.

Here are steps you can add to your routine in the next 4 weeks that will make you 1% more intelligent than you were before. This is a process that should become a habit not a goal. It is long term, however, I want you to devote just 4 weeks into doing these steps first and recognize the changes that follow.

Watch documentaries: This is the easiest step, we all have access to Youtube. Youtube has a great number of content on art, history, technology, food, science etc that will increase your knowledge and pique your curiosity. I really did not know much about world history especially from the perspective of World war 1 & 2, the roaring 20s, Age of Enlightenment, Jazz era, monarchies etc but with several channels dedicated to breaking down history into easily digestible forms. I have in the last 4 weeks immersed myself into these documentaries. Here are a few I watched:

The fall of monarchies

The Entire History of United Kingdom

The Eight Ages of Greece

World War 1

World War 2

The Roaring '20s

The Cuisine of the Enlightenment

2. Read Classics: I recommend starting with short classics so that you do not get easily discouraged. Try to make reading easy and interesting especially if you struggle with finishing a book. Why classics? You see, if you never went to an exclusive private school in Europe or America with well crafted syllabus that emphasized philosophy, history, art, and literary classics, you might want to know what is felt like and for me this was a strong reason. Asides that, there is so much wisdom and knowledge available in these books. In these books, you gain insights to the authors mind, the historical context of the era, the ingenuity of the author, the hidden messages, and the cultural impact of these books. Most importantly, you develop your personal philosophy from the stories and lessons you have accumulated from the lives of the characters in the books you read. Here are classics to get you started:

Animal Farm by George Orwell

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Candide by Voltaire

Paradise lost by John Milton

3. Study the lives of people who inspire you: I dedicate one month to each person that fascinates me. I read their biography (date of birth, background, death, influences, work, style, education, personal life) For this month, I decided to study Frank Lloyd Wright because I was fascinated by the Guggenheim Museum in New York. I began to read about his influence in American Architecture (Organic architecture, Prairie School, Usonian style), his tumultuous personal life, his difficult relationship with his mentor (Louis Sullivan), his most iconic works etc. By the end of the year I would have learned the ins and outs of people I am inspired by through books and documentaries. Here are other people I plan to learn more about:

Winston Churchill

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

Ada Lovelace

Benjamin Franklin

Helen Keller

John Nash

Isabella Stewart Gardner

Caroline Herrera

Ernest Hemingway

Catherine the Great

Ann Lowe

My dears, I hope you enjoyed this read. I cannot wait to write more on my journey to becoming a fine woman. I urge you to do this for four weeks and see what changes you notice. Make sure to write as well, it is important to document your progress.

Cheers to a very prosperous 2024!

#fine woman #growth #self love #self development #mindfulness #education #classy #beauty #self help #self care #interiors #self discipline #self worth #emotional intelligence #intellectual #intelligent #interesting #booklover #bookworm #booklr #educateyourself #get motivated #self improvement

[asgardian--angels]

Izzy Discourse Masterpost

Hey all, given the amount of awful splintering and wank happening in ofmd fandom rn regarding Izzy's death, including the flat-out immature and unacceptable harassment of David Jenkins and Co, I wanted to just make this one all-encompassing post to address the various grievances and complaints I've seen (almost entirely on Twitter). If I've missed anything, please feel free to add on. I'm putting most of this under a read-more for length.

Please be aware, I say all of this as an Izzy fan. I've loved his character since season 1, and while I was sad to see him go, I completely understand and support David & Co's reasons for concluding his arc, and I think it was done respectfully in a way fitting to his character. So let's break down some of the takes I've seen. I am not referencing specific posts or people here, I just want to address the general themes that I keep seeing about why some people are upset.

Izzy's death served no narrative purpose.

Look, this is one that I'm sure fans will debate for the rest of the hiatus. It's completely within your right to disagree with this writing choice, but Izzy's death did serve a narrative purpose in the story that David Jenkins is telling - and he has spoken to this end in several interviews already. I can only summarize here, and fans may find other perspectives in time as well. What we need to remember is that Our Flag Means Death is, at the end of the day, Ed and Stede's love story. That has been made abundantly, explicitly clear. The show has been fantastic at fleshing out the other supporting characters, but that's what they are - supporting characters. They often have their own subplots but ultimately the narrative seeks to move Ed and Stede's story forward and they are tools to spur Ed and Stede's growth or mirror their struggles. Izzy has been a wonderfully complex, multifaceted character but we must remember that all characters are vessels through which stories are told, lessons are imparted, and metaphors are established. He's not a real person who 'deserves' any particular fate. David said he's always intended for Izzy to die at the end of his arc.

Firstly, Izzy (now canonically, through his own dying words) represents part of Blackbeard. He enabled and encouraged Ed's darker side, they were mutually toxic forces to each other. Ed is attempting to cope with and move on from this phase of his life, and like Stede in season 1, set out a free man, unshackled by expectations and loose ends of those he's hurt and been hurt by (though we realize this is an ongoing process that takes time). This lovely gifset sums it up nicely, with Izzy being the Mary parallel, and making s2 mirror s1. Blackbeard is both Ed and Izzy; Ed cannot be free of Blackbeard while Izzy is in his life, and when Izzy is gone he will never truly be Blackbeard again. They are each other's rotting leg!! Yet, they love each other - and David has said that for Ed, this has developed into a mentor and father relationship, and where Ed has previously despised his father figures (his actual father, Hornigold) he does not want to lose Izzy. This time, Izzy brings out Ed, not Blackbeard - and that's where we get the callback to 'there he is', bringing their impact on each other full circle, freeing Ed, getting approval of sorts that he never had, to be soft, to be loved (and there are parallels to Zheng and Auntie here as well that others have made) from that force that drove him to stay in line all this time. David has said in multiple interviews now that he was going for the idea of the mentor/father figure dying and the hero living on and trying to do justice to them.

From Izzy's side, Izzy cannot be free while Edward remains either (Mary cannot find peace while Stede remains). The scar never truly healed, the leg will always be a reminder. At this point the argument becomes 'yes, but why did he have to die? Why not just sail off with the crew of the Revenge?' David has stated that he feels they've done everything they can with, and for, Izzy; he's come leagues from season 1, he's found community, he's found hope, he's found new parts of himself, and he's made good memories. He's found worth outside of what he can be to others. That's more than most pirates could hope for. Where would his character go from there, when the Golden Age of Piracy he belongs to has burned to the ground? Would he stay around and whittle on the Revenge? If he were a real person, yes, that would be lovely, and he'd deserve all the quiet peaceful happiness in the world. But as I explain several points below, he's not interested in being a captain. He's not up for the hard physical labor of regular crew, and he's extremely overqualified for that besides. He has served his narrative purpose, and symbolically, to enter a new age, everything must go. He's connected to the old age of piracy, to the Republic of Pirates, that is now demolished. To him, fighting for what he believes in, for the family he's found, bringing down an army of British twats in the process, is how he should go. It's a pirate's death, and as Izzy's said, he's a pirate - unlike Blackbeard who's succeeding in breaking away from piracy, Izzy never wanted to stop being a pirate, throughout his arc. To me, that's why Izzy remains trapped in the narrative, trapped in history, whereas Ed and Stede will escape history. They leave piracy, and canon, behind, while Izzy was content to remain a pirate and face a pirate's fate.

Burying him on land, right next to Ed and Stede's beach house, shows that his sacrifice was not in vain - they start this new life together, thanks to Izzy's mentorship, his role in their lives that sometimes for worse, sometimes for better, made their love what it was and made their breakaway possible. The new age is built on the foundations of the old age, and is stronger for it.

As we're well aware by now, David tweeted that there's no version of ofmd without Izzy. Whether that's literal or not, symbolically it's true. Izzy's arc of growth affected everyone on the Revenge. Jim fondly remembered fighting for a time when life meant something on that ship; the crew helped give Izzy new meaning in life, and he helped them in return. When he dies, they mourn and have a funeral; that wouldn't have happened under Blackbeard's watch in episode 2. His life meant something to them. He influenced Ed and Stede immensely, and they will take that with them. As David's said, they're all a family, and Izzy was a part of that family, and his loss unites them and brings them closer to continue to fight for that family they've built. It's a tragic, sudden death of someone they've all grown to care for, and that steels their reserve to keep the torch lit. They literally sail off into the sunset to hunt down Ricky to avenge Izzy; he will always be a part of this show. And, of course, with the brief appearance of seagull Buttons, the door is left open for anything.

If this was The Izzy Show, then sure, we'd be content to see him simply engaged in shenanigans every episode. But the plot, and therefore the characters, need to keep moving forward, and Izzy got his growth and development. He got what he needed for his character to have closure, and he served his symbolic narrative purpose in Ed's (and Stede's) story. You may have your own ideas and perspectives, and that's great - that's what fandom is for. But we cannot say his death was pointless when David Jenkins and the writers clearly had a well-defined motive for pushing the narrative in this direction. I actually think the narrative around Ed and Izzy is the most well-developed in the entire show. I for one am so happy we got such an interesting and complex character, and had the brilliant Con O'Neill to portray him.

Izzy's growth & healing arc was rendered pointless by his death.

As this post so eloquently puts it, it's pretty bleak to have the outlook that taking steps to heal and find meaning in life is worthless if it's later lost. Seeking happiness and self-actualization is worthwhile for its own sake; no one knows what's down the road, and we all die eventually. Find meaning in life now. Would you rather have had Izzy not miss with his bullet in ep2? He was given the chance to experience joy, freedom, and hope for the first time in potentially a long time, and when he died he did so with those happy memories. As mentioned, Izzy's death was decided long beforehand given the narrative, and the point of storytelling is to make you feel emotions. We were given impetus to connect and relate to Izzy's character through his process of healing, so when he did die, we felt it keenly. That's how stories work actually! We felt what Ed felt. It moved us. It's not a bad thing that Izzy's arc made him more likeable to fans before his death. It's not a bad thing to lose a beloved character - guess what, it happens constantly in stories - and it's not bad to grieve over it either, but to say that it made his journey pointless is just not true. People saying that Con must be upset that they snatched his character away from him after getting to develop him so much - again I say, would you rather him have died in ep 2 before he had the chance to grow? Or how about in s1, when the crew tried to mutiny? How'd you feel when Stede killed him in his dream, in the very first scene of the season? I think Con's probably glad for the opportunity to have explored this character so much in season 2. Ask him if he thinks it was pointless.

Killing off Izzy was bad for queer rep/burying your gays/"Izzy was the queer heart of the show"

I'm putting 'bury your gays' on the top shelf so people can't use it when it doesn't actually apply. Most of the main cast of characters in this show are queer, and it's a show about pirates with a good amount of violence. Ergo, chances are a queer character will die in the course of Things Happening In Stories. Izzy didn't die because he was queer, and he wasn't the token queer rep. Please turn your attention to the boatloads (literally) of queer characters that are happy and thriving (how about the LuPete wedding immediately afterwards??). As for Izzy being the "queer heart of the show," this is literally the Ed and Stede show. You know, the two queer leads whose queer love the show revolves around, per David Jenkins himself. I'm glad folks connected with and derived joy from Izzy's growth and especially his performance in Calypso's birthday, but he is not the main character of the show. The queer heart of the show is in fact, the entire show, all of their characters and the community & found family they create aboard the Revenge. Not to mention the fan community as well. Izzy was never carrying the show's representation on his back, and frankly that's an absurdly wild take to have (esp when he spent most of s1 actively working against the main queer relationships in the show, attempting to maintain the oppressive status quo of pirate society).

It was bad and irresponsible to have a suicidal character die

Are we forgetting the entire first half of the season where Ed, who was suicidal, kept trying to passively kill himself because he felt he was an unlovable monster, only to be shown that he is in fact loved unconditionally and it gives him the strength to fight for life and triumph against his own self-doubt? The show has spent quite a lot of effort telling viewers that despite feeling damaged or broken you are worthy of love and that you are loved even if it may be hard to see it when you're in a bad place. That you don't need to be fully healed to deserve love and care, and that love and support will help you along your journey. It's incredibly wild to disregard this major plot point and fundamental message of s2 to try and spin this the opposite way for Izzy's character.

Secondly, where are people getting 'Izzy is suicidal' from? Are we going back all the way to episode 2, when he's at his lowest point and fails at his suicide attempt, only to be figuratively reborn after removing the metaphorical rotten leg? By the time of the finale he's shown to be in a good place, thanks to the arc of healing and growth he's gotten, through the support of the Revenge crew and his 'breakup' with Blackbeard allowing him to find his own way in life, realizing he doesn't need a purpose to have value and enjoying his time on the Revenge and the bonds he's made with Stede and the crew. He is, in the words of Ivan, "the most open and available I've ever seen him" by the finale. To take episode 2 as evidence he's suicidal is to erase his whole season of growth, which is an ironic thing to do in the context of these arguments. There's no canon evidence Izzy Hands was suicidal post-'Fun and Games'.

As for 'irresponsible,' once again I say, David Jenkins is not your therapist, he's not 'Dad,' and has no responsibility to tell his story any other way than he intended to tell it. Please find media that gives you what you want or need, and if the death of a fictional character causes you this much distress please seek help. I mean this kindly but seriously.

Killing off Izzy was ableist/bad for disability rep.

I point once again to the rest of the characters, several of which are disabled in varied ways. There are literally multiple other amputee characters specifically. It's not good storytelling to wholly avoid killing off any character that is disabled/queer/poc/female or [insert marginalized group here], especially when a) it makes sense narratively, and b) there's plenty of representation of these groups in the media in question. The answer isn't making such characters invincible and immortal, it's increasing the number of these characters in shows so it's not devastating when some do die in the course of natural storytelling.

OFMD was my comfort show/safe space show, now it's ruined for me

I am not trying to be insensitive here when I say that's a problem that is yours and nobody else's. David Jenkins created this show with a three-season vision and a story in mind, and he is telling that story to the best of his ability the way he wants to. It's already been said that he and the crew did not anticipate the fandom becoming as large and passionate as it has. The plot of the show was never intended to be 'fan service,' and it's ironic that there were people complaining this season that there's been too many fanservice tropes, up until David and the rest of the writers room made a narrative decision they did not like, then the complaints changed to not coddling the fans enough.

We as viewers can derive joy from this show, it can be a comfort to us, it can be important to us. But it was not designed specifically for that purpose, therefore it cannot fail in that respect. We do not have the right to harass writers for not steering the ship in the direction we want - it's their work of art, and we can choose to either come along for the ride or not. It's rare to see creators actually given the chance to tell their story the way they intend (budget cuts aside), so let him do that. He should not cater to fans, or cave and change the story to appease us. Respect his right to create his art, and remember you have the right to create your own. That's what fanfiction is for - write fix-its to your heart's content, but keep these realms separate. David Jenkins and Co hold zero, and I mean zero, responsibility to you. He could not please everyone no matter what he did, it would be fruitless to try, and it would certainly compromise the quality of the story he set out to tell.

You are absolutely allowed to dislike choices made in any show. Curate your media experience. If this show no longer brings you joy, stop watching. But it was never David's purpose nor responsibility to juggle the mental health of millions of fans. Trying to put that on him will only make him less enthusiastic about interacting with fans or continuing to make this show. This isn't rocket science. You're responsible for yourself, not this guy you call 'Dad' that you've developed a parasocial-therapist relationship with.

Izzy should have become captain of the Revenge.

Really?? Firstly, we did actually get that already in s1. He was tyrannical and the crew mutinied. But even if you think 'well after his character arc he'd be better suited to it,' it goes against the point of this arc. He's found value in not having a distinct role or purpose on the ship, decoupling his worth from the job he's expected to perform. He's found his place amongst the crew, not commanding it. There's no narrative reason to put him in charge when he's expressed no further interest in slotting himself back into a role full of pressure and expectations.

Con O'Neill was only told halfway through filming, it's cruel to just kill off the character he loves so much.

Guys, he's an actor. More than that, an actor with a theater background. I think he's used to characters dying. You don't need to look out for him. Con and David spoke one on one about it at length so they were on the same page, and David even said that Con took it well. I'm sure Con had input, just as other members of the cast have influenced their characters' stories, costumes, backstories, etc. Do you really think David Jenkins hurt Con's feelings or something? The writers (remember, it's not just David, it's a whole team of hard-working people coming up with these ideas) gave Con such a chance to shine this season, really developing Izzy beyond what he was given in s1 and letting Con show off his full acting range. Why are you only focusing on the destination rather than the journey? Sure, Con's probably sad to see Izzy go, but please do not project your distress onto him or try and accuse David & Co of being 'cruel' to their cast. That's really ridiculous. It's constantly evident how close they all are.

More importantly, do you actually, seriously think that Con O'Neill would want fans to harass each other or the writers over his character? The man who preaches being kind above all? There is no better way to make an actor uncomfortable about a show and its fanbase than to start treating fictional characters like they're more important than real people. He would not want you to bully people over Izzy Hands, and it's mind-boggling that some of you have convinced yourself otherwise.

Lastly, I just want to talk about the fact that some people are holding OFMD to absurdly high expectations.

Our Flag Means Death has been a pioneer series for its diverse representation, earnest storytelling, and themes of hope, community, and love. It's fine to discuss aspects of the show with a critical eye, but so much of the discourse has truly felt like folks are trying to find fault in a show that is leagues ahead of the average tv series that we still enjoy. How many fan favorites are killed off all the time? How many plotlines are scrapped, or drawn out without closure, or contradicted the very next season? How many shows are indifferent or actively hostile towards their fanbase? How many have any queer characters, or actually do bury them? The bar's so low, and OFMD has risen above to give us so much. Some are holding the show to astronomical expectations, waiting for it to fall from the pedestal it's been placed on. If something you don't like happens in the show, it's not suddenly ruined or demoted to being ~just as bad as those other shows~. Give them some breathing room, have some perspective on how progressive the show is, and that perfection is impossible, especially meeting every single viewer's idea of it. This is basically a repeat of the recent Good Omens drama, with an absurd number of people harassing Neil Gaiman for breaking up Aziraphale and Crowley and leaving the second of three acts on a very predictable cliffhanger. Let stories be told, let them unfold as they may, and you are free to leave anytime. It's so wonderful that more queer love stories are becoming popular and even mainstream, but let's not shoot ourselves in the foot by tearing them down when they don't go exactly the way you want it, which often seems to mean no drama, no character deaths, and therefore no conflict or even plot!

Just, please be civil human beings, and while this seems to be a difficult thing for so many fandoms to do, just keep your fan opinions in the fan space. Never bring your grievances to the writers, never bully them and persecute them for telling a story that you opted into viewing. That's something that goes entirely against everything this show, and this cast and crew, have imparted onto us - the importance of kindness, support, community, and love. I'll say it again because it bears repeating: the fate of a fictional character is never more important than how you treat real people. Just be kind in real life, which includes the internet. Thanks.

Now please, let's work together to ensure we get a season 3. There's so much more story to be told, and if you want to see Izzy back, whether that's as flashbacks, as a ghost haunting the inn, or in the gravy basket, we'll need more episodes! #RenewAsACrew

#our flag means death #ofmd #ofmd s2 #ofmd s2 spoilers #and after this i will speak of it no more ok #now once we're all calmed down i am really looking forward to meta about izzy's role in the narrative #i truly think izzy's one of the most well written characters on not just this show but on tv lately in general #suicide mention tw #I tried to put a read more under the first bullet point but tumblr's formatting basically deleted it #by automatically overriding it with an Expand #so sorry about the length and such

[kouyou-arc-when]

ON DAZAI AND EMPATHY: A character study Before you read: Obviously diagnosing any character in fiction seriously is a fool’s errand, but I am a fool, so let’s just do this for amusement. The main thing I desire is to discuss is the extent to which Dazai is capable of various types of empathy, as well as how that influences the way he sees and interacts with others. It will be chaotic and all over the place because I just sat down and wrote this in a fit. Let me explain some factors in analyzing Osamu: The author's intention is clearly to make Dazai's internal world a mystery. Since we don't have enough information, all we can do is hypothesize based on external elements. Generally, across all novels, the only time we’ve seen anything of Dazai’s perspective is in “The Day I picked up Dazai” (Beast continuity) – where he “saves” Oda and tortures that random dude. We don’t hear his thoughts narrated from first-person perspective, unlike many of the other novels.

Now, the crux of the issue. For years, it’s been discussed whether Dazai is a “sociopath”. If we disregard that sociopathy is a very loaded term that can mean a lot of things depending on which specialist you consult, at the very least, Dazai does strike me as someone with a unique expression of empathy, who could qualify for Anti-social personality disorder or a related condition. I will abandon the idea that Dazai is a sociopath, and use actual concepts that have legitimacy within this post. Whether Dazai could qualify for ASPD or any other disorder is something I've seen discussed for many years within the fandom. I'll try to analyze how these concepts could apply to him. In regards to mental health and Kafka (since it is a contentious matter) and the validity of any of this: I understand that a lot of people are resistant to the idea that any of the characters could have conditions more complex than depression, anxiety, and PTSD. This is my counterpoint. I have noticed that Asagiri emulates a lot of characteristics commonly attributed to “geniuses”, without confirming or potentially even intending to write these characters as having a specific condition.

A great example is Ranpo – who will read as autistic to any decent mental health professional (Untold Origins). Did Asagiri intentionally sit down and say “I am going to write an autistic character”? Maybe not. However, the “genius” stereotype is profoundly connected to visions of autism, even if people aren’t aware of it. Take people like Sherlock, House and L from Death Note – they’re commonly believed to be autistic by fans. All of these characters borrow from the same group of traits, that just happens to correspond with a certain condition - savants have always been popular in fiction. It's been known that the favorite type of character for Asagiri is the “prodigy” type, and he has used geniuses across fiction for inspiration of most notable intelligent characters within BSD. For Ranpo it was Sherlock, for Fyodor it was Joker from the Dark Knight (a classic sociopath), for Dazai it was Patrick from The Mentalist.

What I’m trying to say is, you can see various personality disorders connected to the portrayal of these geniuses, and even without confirming their state, it is clear they are either intentionally or unintentionally coded to be that way. Extremely intelligent characters not being able to read social cues, lacking empathy, disregarding rules etc. is something we commonly see in fiction. Basically, a lot of people don’t even know that these stereotypes are based on certain personality types, disorders, and illnesses. It’s sort of like drawing a character and dyeing their hair a certain shade of blue that you don’t know the particular name of: it doesn’t change the fact that you used that color, and the fact it has a name. Most authors are not mental health experts anyways, so they may not be entirely aware of every detail of the psychological framework they write the character to possess. They also may not write it consistently, as they're mostly emulating stereotypes. I mention Ranpo and autism because a character can embody traits of a stereotype without the author even necessarily having the intention to do so, however, to anyone who knows a thing or two, it is clear Ranpo is on the spectrum. If Ranpo were to express a few traits that go against this, it would not necessarily take away from the large-scale portrayal he is meant to exude: an autistic coded genius.

Why am I saying this? It is entirely possible for the author to write Dazai as a person with anti-social personality disorder, to “code” him in that way, but to not be entirely aware of how an individual with ASPD realistically tends to act.  Because he may be emulating a certain "stereotype" of a genius, he may also end up emulating specific psychological states, without making them entirely consistent in a realistic way. Writing the way individuals with ASPD tend to deal with empathy can be extremely difficult for anyone. It's easy to emulate a sociopath on a superficial level, but beyond that, it gets more challenging. How would a person with limited empathy act when they're hurting someone? That is an easier idea to handle. But how will they act in a friendly relationship? This is where it gets tricky. That is likely why someone like Dazai can never be consistently compatible with a very specific disorder: but, he can come very close. Besides, concepts such as anxiety and depression are pretty well-known, but more niche mental health conditions are not as well understood. So, BSD Osamu was written with specific attention to mental health issues because the author himself was someone who spoke heavily on the topic. I’ve read a lot of real-life Dazai Osamu, with special attention to No Longer Human (the main inspiration for BSD Dazai was Yozo) – and neither RL Dazai nor Yozo gave me the impression they could qualify for ASPD at all.

I know BSD Dazai is the opposite of the RL author in so many ways, but I guess it’s relevant to mention this because we know so little of BSD Dazai’s internal working processes, and Asagiri's main inspiration can tell us a lot about the intentions behind Dazai's portrayal. Generally, an intention or idea behind a character can give a lot of clues to us - more than anything, I am under the impression some of the main ideas behind Dazai's creation was that: 1) He doesn't feel like he belongs among humans 2) He has mental health issues However, we have difficulty defining the exact source of why all of this is in more realistic terms.

Naturally, since Dazai, an extremely socially intelligent person, sees himself as "othered", it is logical to assume he is not capable of fulfilling some emotional function most people can in a successful enough way. If he were just mentally ill in more typical ways (only depression), I theorize he wouldn't feel that "othered". He specifically is not meant to feel human. Obviously, his extreme intelligence is one of the things that isolates him, but the question is what else?

We are led to believe Dazai "sees" something the rest of us don't, and that is one of the reasons he wants to die. However, there is something more to it, as I believe it to be. We have two characters who are as intelligent as Dazai: Fyodor and Ranpo, and neither of them is suicidal, as far as we know. I believe Dazai "feels" a certain way, and then finds a way to logically justify it. Due to his intelligence, he likely falls into a complex loop which leads him to existential nihilism: but you usually don't end up in a place like that if you tend to feel alright in the first place, regardless of how smart you may be. While Dazai is certainly isolated due to his extreme intelligence, most of the people who made an impact on him are nowhere near him in that respect. In fact, I'd argue Dazai isn't even looking for someone equally intelligent to him, unlike Fyodor (this would take another post to explain).

The man who means the world to him, Oda, is more emotionally intelligent and full of common sense, but definitely not his cognitive equal. You can tell a lot about a person depending on what they value: and due to this I believe that Dazai's main issues relate to emotional matters. He primarily feels isolated due to his emotional state, and his intelligence pushes the problem further. Otherwise, he would treasure people like Ranpo and Fyodor over guys like Oda and Atsushi: he's looking for something to ease his emotional pain. Dazai doesn't seek out raw intellectual stimulation as much as comfort/excitement. This post will be an analysis of how Dazai compares to the "average" psychologically and some of the reasons he may feel so othered. Basically, my theory is that the feeling of being "othered" comes from his emotional profile, as much as it comes from his intellectual capacity. Those two take equal parts in his psyche.

Why would Dazai feel so emotionally "othered"? I believe it may have to deal with a specific personality disorder or condition, and mainly how he experiences empathy. One of the possibilities is ASPD. Anyways, let’s look into common ASPD symptoms, and then we'll look into common behavioral patterns the character shows. Dazai is equal amounts portrayed seriously and in a “jokey” way, but his worst traits and moments are usually described without humor. To preface: Keep in mind that you can have any or all of these traits without it qualifying you for a certain disorder. It is the extent to which you show it that makes a person, like Dazai, out of the norm.

1. Repeatedly breaking the law: This one goes without saying, he was in the Mob as Young as 15, and seemingly a violent criminal even before that age. To differentiate him from other members of the Mafia, it is stated by tons of people throughout the story that Dazai was practically born for this job.

Oda in Dark Era:

He was openly murderous before the age of 15, according to both The Day I picked up Dazai and Fifteen:

Dazai and Oda interacting in TDIPUD When talking to Kyouka, it seems that he has an “interesting relationship” with murder as a whole:

One thing is for sure, Dazai is much calmer, calculated, and more Machiavellian than most criminals in BSD, and this all started at an extremely young age. Many people kill when they're young, but they're not this casual about it.  The age at which he was this cold about would be of diagnostic significance.

2. Lack of remorse: Everything mentioned above, it is clear that Dazai has an even more complicated relationship with guilt and empathy. I’m pretty sure anyone in real life would consider him out of the norm, as it’s explicitly stated Dazai doesn’t feel remorse for all sorts of things he does, but there are some hints he is either ashamed of the way he is, or regrets his nature, but accepts it. What is particularly significant here is how young Dazai is when he shows a marked level of these traits. A key event that stuck with me is from the Dragon Head event in Mayoi (from my understanding it was written by Asagiri), where Shibusawa mentions Dazai will regret something (to me it sounded like he meant that killing Shibusawa will end poorly for Osamu). However, Dazai’s reaction was interesting – it was like he was almost amused that anyone would believe Dazai “could” feel regret for anything.

Mayoi Later down the timeline it’s quite questionable whether Dazai feels regret for some of his actions because he hides his feelings like a snake hides its legs, but there are implications he is somewhat remorseful if you read between the lines. More on that later. Dazai has changed compared to his past self, but to talk about that, and the extent to which he has changed would take a whole other post.

More on his lack of remorse, In “The Heartless Cur” Dazai is very young when he gets some randos from the Mafia killed in front of Akutagawa, yet his main emotions are amusement and boredom. This is not the “typical” emotional range of most people, even practiced criminals. For example, Chuuya kills people just like Dazai, but his reactions to it are entirely different.  

from The Heartless Cur Murder tends to not be the preferred or first solution Chuuya goes for: there is an expected amount of hesitance if you read into Chuuya. He put a bomb below Chuuya’s and sabotaged Ango’s car without much bother. I’d say even if you do see It as a “means to an end”, the way he did it was really cold. Usually, when people of all kinds do bad things, they have remorse and empathy they need to suppress, but with Dazai we don't see much of that. It's like he can just "do it'. He’s also really great at torture, in Side B at age 15-16, he already describes himself as a “specialist”. This is also touched upon when he speaks to Kouyou:

No matter how "grey" a character is, torture is a very specific process that takes a particular psychological profile to pull off. To be a "specialist" at it, you definitely need to possess dented empathy. Lack of remorse and empathy does not mean a person is going to be a criminal at all - it simply opens the opportunity that they may get lost in those waters more easily compared to the average person.

3. Repeatedly being deceitful I’m pretty sure we don’t have to cover this one. Yozo, the character he was loosely based on, is a big liar, and commonly uses “clowning” to distract from his real personality. Even the real Dazai Osamu wrote extensively about the concept of “lying”.   There is a lot to talk about Dazai and “masking”, and I’ll get to that in the second half of the post. Generally, Dazai lies a lot, one can’t even be sure what his personality really is. He lies by omission, manipulates, and intentionally deceives people without any issues. There are so many quotes about this that I’d probably reach the image limit right there if I wanted to reference them all. 4. Being impulsive or incapable of planning ahead Does not apply

5. Has difficulty sustaining long-term relationships: Dazai is famously a hoe. From “All women are his type” (and it seems he has zero issues getting together with any woman, young, old or even taken) to being known as “the enemy of all women” (said by Chuuya), it’s clear he is very promiscuous. Wan is in the gray area of canon, but in one of the earlier chapters he has so many love letters by different women that Atsushi burns them all. Kunikida said he hits on any woman he sees in the Entrance exam novel, which is further supported by random Wan! Chapters, silly crossovers, and everything else (literally anything female).

Not only that, but Dazai sounds like a consistently manipulative and toxic romantic partner. In an Otomedia interview, written by Asagiri, Dazai’s real type was basically something like: “Any woman is fine, because he is confident he can shape her to suit his tastes” which shows a remarkable lack of care for the personhood and individuality of his partner.

When answered what he’d do if his partner cheated or betrayed him, his answer was even more concerning. Depending on the translation, it goes something like: “He has not been cheated on, but he has cheated on others” or “he set up women to cheat on him/betray him” where both are a lot, just in different ways.

Either he is compulsively unfaithful, putting all above together, or he plays mindgames with his partners. He’s also told Kunikida that: “And from my experience, it takes only a smile and some kindness to get a woman swooning over you when she's fallen on hard times” painting an image of someone who takes advantage of people’s weaknesses to get what he wants.

Regardless, it’s clear he is very manipulative and likely emotionally abusive. I won’t even touch upon his obsession with double suicide. There’s also the fact that he seems to use sex to get what he wants – insert scene where he fucks the nurse to get his phone back.

Other than that, Dazai appears to be rather solitary. Ango and Oda are said to be “the only ones close to him” because they respected said loneliness. Even in ADA, Dazai seems to be professionally close to people, but very few people seem to know him on a personal level. I’d say he keeps people at a distance intentionally – before it was violently, later it is by being avoidant. For as much of a womanizer he is, there was that early comic where he spent Valentine’s Day drinking at Lupin “with Oda”, instead of going out with any particular person. I think this demonstrates how emotionally distant he is from all the people he interacts with

6. Being irritable and aggressive:

Dazai is not particularly aggressive, nor irritable, but he has moments where he slips. Tbh, reading back, it says a lot about Dazai’s character who he gets angry at and why. It’s important to say that when Higuchi calls him out on “Hollowing out the hearts of his opponents” in incredibly brutal ways, Dazai replies that he thinks “Sadism is just a method, and how it’s boring”.

Akutagawa is the receiver of a lot of his violence to a disproportionate degree. He beats up Akutagawa beyond what could ever be “just training”. There’s something that ticks him off about Akutagawa, which is interesting, since Dazai tends to not react this way to anyone who doesn’t touch him “intimately” in some way. A lot of people justify Dazai’s physical abuse by saying it is “training”, but it stood out to me how he kicks Akutagawa in the stomach even the first time he meets him in “Beast”, when Akutagawa is just an extremely traumatized and deprived kid he refuses to recruit. There is not much utility to that kick, to me. It felt personal.

Another example of him expressing anger is when people “called him foolish for wanting to die” – clearly he did not take it well since all of those people ended up dead. This is from “The Day I picked up Dazai” when Oda tells him he is a fool for wanting to die.

Other times Dazai expressed rage was in relation to Ango and Oda, particularly anything that related to Oda’s wellbeing.

He snaps at his subordinates when they tell him he shouldn’t be friends with someone “of such low status”, and the only time we really hear Dazai say he hates someone is when he’s torturing one of the guys who put Oda in trouble in the Beast timeline of “The day I picked up Dazai”. Obviously, he is resentful towards Ango and incapable of forgiving him. “Dead Apple” guidebook touches on it.

“Though they were once good buddies who used to drink together, to Dazai, Ango is one of the persons who caused the death of Odasaku. He still holds that resentment up to now, and is unable to forgive. Ango also seems to feel Dazai’s silent wrath towards him.”

Harukawa has said to pay attention to how cloudy the eyes of a character are to accurately interpret their psychological state. I don't think there are many times Dazai's eyes are drawn in such an extreme way - there is no "light" she talks about here. His eyes are pure black when he talks to Mori during the Guild arc.

He also agrees with Fyodor on “Malice being the best fruit that God Bestowed upon Mankind”

There is also this with Jouno:

Basically, Dazai rarely gets angry, insults don’t work on him (as he tells Chuuya), nor does beating him up, but when he does get irritated he flies off the handle and has no issue crossing any normal boundaries.

That detail is what stands out to me – usually, people have a line they won’t cross when getting mad, but for Dazai it’s like most moral lines disappear. Imo, his anger is for social standards over disproportionate in how far he’ll go and how he'll act on it– he usually has a clear intention to harm the individual he's mad about. In comparison, Chuuya is someone who gets angry more than Dazai, but Chuuya clearly has a line he won’t cross. There is also no pointed sadism in his reactions. Dazai will likely do almost anything.

Basically, it's not how much Dazai gets angry, but the way he gets mad that sticks out to me. Most importantly, Dazai only ever gets enraged if it concerns something very personal and intimate: Oda and his death, his suicide attempts etc. At this point, for me, It’s safe to say that if Dazai gets extremely angry, it means the topic affects him on a deep level (a hint to whatever Is happening between him and Akutagawa, I could talk a lot about that). 

More on Dazai’s unpredictable and violent nature:

Stormbringer I think there is a valid argument in seeing Dazai’s aggression as just a tool he uses to keep others at bay, something to hold over people and control them – but even then, it shows a marked disinterest in social norms people usually respect.

7.Having a reckless disregard for their safety or the safety of others This one builds upon all the others. However, it’s always been interesting to me how it’s clear something flies over Dazai’s head when it comes to regularly empathizing with others.

This is often seen with Chuuya. In my opinion, most of the bullying Dazai gives Chuuya is not motivated out of rage, but rather some form of spite. He goes at length to Rimbaud about planning Chuuya’s murder in “15”, then he also lets Chuuya be tortured in “Stormbringer”.

I am under the impression he sees these moments as “amusing” and doesn’t fully emotionally understand why this is something bad, even if he does on a rational level. I’ll say that Dazai did seem to show some rage whenever anyone hurt him physically in the past (seems likely to be a hint to a traumatic past), which Chuuya did when they met, but I don’t get the impression he is generally angry with Chuuya, it’s more like he just enjoys fucking with him. Ironically, for how rarely Dazai gets angry, it seems he reserves his rage/irritation exclusively for people and things he cares about, so Dazai being specifically irritated at Chuuya is just a sign of how much the guy gets to him.

If Dazai were angry at Chuuya, it is in character that he would try to hurt him a lot more than he does. However, I'd say Dazai has a blurry space for what's ok between "keeping someone purely safe" and "deeply hurting them". There is some lack of emotional empathy there - to him, it is more amusing than anything to see someone he finds interesting struggle.

Dazai sees boundaries differently. He’ll put people into danger or through discomfort without worrying much, especially if he’s sure they’re going to walk and live after it, but sometimes not even that. (there’s so many examples of it). I’d say it’s not that Dazai doesn’t care, he just cares about people differently compared to what we’re used to socially.

Regarding personal safety, it’s pretty obvious: he’s a suicide maniac, but even more, he also puts himself in harm’s way all the time without any anxiety present. Examples are when he provokes that sniper in Dark Era (when Oda gets angry at him and wants to punch him), knows he is going to get shot by Fyodor, but lets himself get hurt anyway. When he “dies” in 55 minutes, he seems “lightly” surprised, but there’s no strong reaction to it.  To me, it seems that the only physical harm he dislikes is pain he suffers from another person (when he doesn’t plan it). Dazai apparently doesn’t feel much “anxiety” – I remember many different times when he comments on another character’s timidness or meekness, seeing it as something unusual.

8. Behave irresponsibly and show disregard for normal social behaviour He’s extremely eccentric, and even Ranpo says he doesn’t get him. Dazai asks women to commit suicide the moment he meets them, and often attempts suicide around people even if it distresses them (Entrance exam).

While I think he made this excuse in Dark Era to Taneda because he didn’t want to work with Ango, I do believe he believes what he said: “You’d lose your job if I did that.” Dazai wryly smirked. “I don’t like places with lots of rules.” Not being able to accept conventional rules is very often a telltale sign of a personality disorder. Clearly, Dazai fits many of the criteria necessary for having ASPD, so let’s look at some other details that are common for people with ASPD.

Masking: In psychology and sociology, masking is the process in which an individual camouflages their natural personality or behavior to conform to social pressures. Masking is common with many disorders, such as autism, ASPD etc. I am pretty sure it’s canon Dazai masks – on a BSD exhibit, the key element Asagiri wanted to talk about in Dazai’s personality was related to this.  

“When I describe Dazai to the staff, there is a phrase that I always use, “an unworldly being with a mental age of two thousand years.” Dazai has far surpassed the mental dimension that human can reach, thus no-one can even tell if the emotions he shows are the real things or not.

There are rare moments when that Dazai shows his very “human” side. That is when he talks to another superhuman who is on the same level with him. The other is when he talks about his old friend who has passed. This is the scene when Kyouka wondered “Maybe I’m, after all, just a murderer at heart.” and refused to be saved. And Dazai’s reaction to that. When he said “Don’t give me any of that!” here, he really meant it. That was an outburst from Dazai, as a 22-year-old boy, in this scene.” Light novels often describe his smile as fake, mask-like, and I could probably find 20 panels where Harukawa clearly drew him to intentionally seem like a fake smiler. From “15” to “Entrance exam”, Dazai often drops his mask, and then goes back to acting silly just to make the other person relax. He does this with everyone, Mori, Kunikida, Atsushi, etc. Chuuya also mentions that Dazai’s “happy-go-lucky” personality in ADA is something new, and he believes it doesn’t fit him.

Kunikida says this in the Entrance Exam: "For someone so full of eccentricities, there is something about his behavior that makes it seem as if he has an unobstructed view of the world. I don’t know exactly why, but all his emotions strike me as an act to some degree. Is he just playing dumb? Could there be more to him than he’s letting on, lurking behind his ambiguous mannerisms?"

More than anything, Dazai himself says that Oda was the person closest to seeing his “real” personality. That pretty much confirms he keeps his real self hidden away. I’d say that there are several possibilities to why this is: He hides it because he dislikes being vulnerable, he doesn’t know how to act “normal”, people are unable to understand him, so masking makes it easier for him to communicate with others…there’s a lot of theorizing I could do here.

Dazai also tends to have interesting thoughts about personalities as a concept.

You’ll commonly see Dazai say something serious, followed by a severe reaction of the other character, ending with Dazai changing his demeanor and saying “just kidding” to lighten the air.

Manipulation: Dazai is extremely Machiavellian – he is prone to manipulating everyone around him, regardless of how much they care about him or not. He manipulated Chuuya into joining the mafia, he does the same with Akutagawa even today: Here we have him preying on Aku's insecurities to sabotage his self-confidence

He seems to be able to cut off his emotions from any situation, seeing people in a raw, factual sense.

There are several moments throughout the novels where Dazai talks about people as if they’re purely resources or pawns. An example of this in Dead Apple (where Chuuya gets angry because he doesn't respect people or show enough sympathy)

The way he speaks of Atsushi, when asked what he thinks of him in a guidebook, is something like “developing as expected”. Especially in the original, it sounds extremely factual, mechanical, and cold. To me, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about Atsushi, he’s just the type to compartmentalize his emotions in opposition to his thinking. This is very common for a few personality disorders and mental health conditions: the capacity to totally cut off your emotions from the equation.  Obviously, many people are capable of doing this to one extent or another, but the amount to which he does it is what makes it significant.

Lack of traditional empathy: Personally, I think everything comes down to this. Dazai's experiences with empathy are one of the main themes of his character arc. I believe one of the things that makes him feel othered is his lack of emotional empathy.

People with ASPD tend to have issues experiencing what a lot of people consider “typical” empathy – however, ASPD is also on a large spectrum, so experiences certainly vary. Keep in mind that "lack of empathy" is common for all sorts of disorders, but since ASPD seems to be one of the most popular choices for Dazai, I decided to start there.

Before we continue, there are 2 types of empathy: Cognitive empathy is the ability to recognize and understand someone’s feelings and experiences and imagine yourself in those scenarios. Emotional empathy is experiencing shared emotions with someone or feeling emotions as though the experience is your own.

People with ASPD can commonly do the first type easily, and struggle with the second one. It does not mean they cannot experience emotional empathy, it’s just rarer for them to feel it. In my opinion, Dazai heavily relies on Cognitive empathy compared to Emotional empathy.

You can see often that he seems to not entirely understand “why” something is wrong on a personal level, but he can logically see it. This is a running theme, and you can commonly see that Dazai doesn’t fully understand “normal”.

“15” Asagiri seems to be writing Dazai as someone who has gone “beyond the human dimension” in his skills and intelligence, so other people can’t fully understand him, but I think this goes both ways. Dazai has lost touch with what’s the standard human experience.

One of the times Chuuya specifically calls out Dazai for not "acting human-like" is when he's not expressing empathy and respect. It is clear that Dazai's lack of empathy is one of the aspects which make others see him as "inhuman".

There is another situation with Kunikida  during the Azure Messenger arc where Dazai seems to apologize for not getting something “is normal”, it slips by you very easily. It is framed as a joke, and it can be read as him making fun of Kuni, but Kunikida asks himself why Dazai apologized. It does read a bit unusually.

To me it seems like Dazai doesn’t fully emotionally understand other people, so when his mask slips you can see that he struggles a ton with getting what’s exactly “typical”.

Because Dazai is extremely intelligent, he masks in order to fit into society, and he does it successfully since he can intellectually understand most social and emotional functions and processes. However, he slips up like everyone does. This is why he got along with Oda well – since Oda just let him act like himself without having ulterior motives. Dazai didn’t have to “mask”. He didn't see Dazai as "just anyone", but he also realized Dazai was human. Basically, to Oda Dazai was a kid that had empathy issues, but he was struggling much like everyone else.

Personally, I feel like Dazai doesn’t feel entirely “human” because he doesn’t feel “emotional empathy” on the same level as other people, and this is one of the key issues of the character (as it's clearly stated in the Dead Apple manga, where Dazai does seem a bit upset by Chuuya's reaction)

. The reason he felt “seen” by Oda is because Oda fully recognized this and still believed Dazai could do “good”. In our society, it is common for people to think that "empathy" and "sympathy" are conditions for being a good person, but it isn't so simple. The possible complexity of Dazai's moral state is why I find the character so interesting - a person without traditional empathy choosing to be good is really fascinating. (more on this later).

Boredom and general emptiness: “Boredom” is an extremely common complaint for people with ASPD – in fact, intense, non-standard boredom, along with other symptoms such as atypical experience with empathy, is one of the easiest ways to recognize ASPD. A “numbed” emotional state is common for people with ASPD, and due to their different emotional range and inability to connect with others in a more typical fashion, they are prone to “boredom” and seeking out extreme experiences.

Alcoholism/Substance abuse is common for people with ASPD, and it’s pretty much canon Dazai drinks a lot (alcohol is even in his likes). Aside from that, Dazai often cites boredom as one of the main reasons he wants to die, and I remember so many instances where he complains about it in bizarre circumstances. This is common for people with ASPD: depression/suicidality is comorbid, and I have heard people with ASPD mention they wanted their life to end once they no longer have enough stimulation. Dazai is often stated to be “bored”, or look bored even when extremely horrifying things are happening (people dying around him/telling their life stories..).  An example with Mori where he talks about wishing to die (from 15):

Another really funny thing, a lot of people with ASPD I have seen tend to dislike “dogs”. Obviously, this hatred comes from the real life Dazai being scared of them and thinking they can attack at any moment, but it’s a funny coincidence. They tend to dislike dogs for an entirely different reason than Dazai does, to be fair.

How Dazai seems to see himself and morals in general

Generally, to me it seems like Dazai is not entirely happy with his nature. He admires Oda and doesn’t understand why he wouldn’t use his talents to rise up in ranks within the Mafia, simply because that is logical to Dazai – perhaps it is that difference between them that he enjoys so much. He is frequently attracted to displays of empathy:

Examples: 1. Ango documenting the deaths of people within the mafia even if it’s “just a waste of money” 2. Almost everything Atsushi and Oda do

He often describes altruism as “interesting”. I am also under the impression that Dazai has a tendency to project his nature onto others, which we can gather from his “Evil expects evil from others” quote to Mori. Furthermore, he sadly remarks in Dark Era that he is “a man despised by righteousness”. so I feel like there is something up here, some sort of guilt, distaste or shame.

This tells me:

a)Dazai sees himself as “evil”

b)He is constantly assuming the worst in others or is prepared for the worst

Another thing this tells me is that Dazai is someone who is likely extremely wary of people’s intentions. This is a ubiquitous theme all across BSD, especially when we see him as a kid. Osamu tends to be skeptical of everyone and everything, as if he’s waiting for people to betray or fuck him over at any corner. In TDIPUD, he keeps getting upset that he can't figure out Oda, since it makes no sense for him to be so charitable for absolutely no reason. Oda said “good and evil are the same to you” – personally I interpret this as Dazai being largely amoral rather than immoral.  Whether Dazai can be described as “good”, “evil” or “neutral” largely depends on your view of ethics. Just because someone lacks traditional empathy, it doesn't mean they are necessarily sadistic or bad at all. Immoral and Amoral are two words that sound similar but have different meanings. Immoral is an adjective that describes “something against pre-established morals, ethics, or standard societal practices.” Amoral, on the other hand, is an adjective that describes “something or someone completely lacking morals.” In common society, if you’re not “good”, you are often automatically “evil”. Basically, a person who has "no morals" is just as bad as a person who has cruel beliefs, but those two fundamentally differ. However, in a technical, utilitarian fashion – this is often seen to be true. More or less, “good” is the neutral state, and the more you step away from it, the more “evil” you are perceived to be. The more moral conventions you break, the more "evil" you are, regardless of your intentions. The results of the actions matter more than the source and motivations. In the end, a person is dead, regardless of why you killed them or how you felt about it. The reasons why people do conventionally moral things can be all over the place too - people aren't always kind because they have sympathy. When I hear “evil and good are the same to you”, it sounds like Dazai has no need for either, meaning, yes, he has no inherent need to do good, but no need for bad, he is simply not opposed to either of them. Regardless of what he's doing, he feels the same way. They're both tools to satisfy particular needs. Many people read this and say "aha, so if he sees no difference between the two, that means he is evil", but I think the truth is in the middle. I always say that to estimate Dazai's moral framework, you need to judge him outside of normal conventions. Basically, his starting point in making decisions is different. He begins his process likely by thinking "what will this bring me?" Most of his “evil” is not out of pure sadism, it’s just that he feels no need to stop himself due to moral conventions, he mostly cares about practical results. This is opposed to Kunikida who cares about ideals and morals in a vacuum and pursues them in their most idealized version (and it's well known Asagiri writes duos as opposites). Entrance exam as a novel was about how idealism can lead people to ruin when it's unrealistic.

He’s naturally immune to socialized pressure that forms the moral frameworks of most people on an emotional level. All of this is very common for ASPD, and a few other conditions. The more I see Dazai talk about how he sees the concept of personality, murder, morality – the more I am convinced his ethical framework is focused on results rather than the inherent morality of said actions. Example: He's going to lie to you to make you happy, even though "lying is bad". There is no inherent value in staying honest if it makes an individual miserable in the long run, even though society sees frankness as a virtue. That way, most actions are “open” for Dazai to undertake, he has no qualms most people have against them, since he doesn’t have socialized morals. A lot of the time, we only see certain things as "unconditionally bad" because we've been socialized to see them that way, even if it's not necessarily logical. He simply lacks socialized morals, leading to a tendency to be amoral. Everything is a means to an end, every action is alright if it's a tool that has more pros than cons. Oda's death was a useful character arc, since it led Dazai to taking Oda's moral framework as his own. He doesn't believe he is better than others, nor does he enjoy hurting random people, he doesn't kill or rob randos to get something and believes he is justified in it. Things of that type would make him “immoral”. Most of Dazai’s evil actions seem utilitarian, rather than committed for the pure act of pleasure or cruelty. When I say “amoral”, I mean this from Dazai’s point of view. Since he has no “moral boundaries”, all actions are open for him to undertake. He can go as far as he wants to any extreme largely depending on his subjective worldview and feelings (as seen in Beast, where he breaks all sorts of ethical codes of being "a good man" so Oda could get a decent life). However, since he is aware that there is a fight between good and bad in every person, and that evil tends to win out compared to the good, under enough pressure, he admires people who selflessly continue to be kind. That is why Oda, a highly moral person even beyond what is logical (his insistence to not kill even if it harms him) is the opposite that pushed him to change. Ulterior motives tend to be something Dazai is worried about in people, perhaps because he is possibly projecting all he is, or can be, on others. He describes Oda specifically as:

"a man who has no ulterior motive". Oda is obviously being a good person partially out of self-interest ("people live to save themselves"), but this self-interest is not destructive. I think for Dazai, it was difficult to find people who didn't have an ulterior motive that was ultimately hurtful, and he projected that onto everyone. Oda acting in his self-interest was ultimately beneficial to everyone. All in all, while Dazai does admire Oda's morals - I think a lot of this appreciation comes from an intimate and subjective place, where he feels comforted someone like Oda even existed. Continuing Oda's work is likely an extension of this as well. Keep in mind, any person has the right to see Dazai's actions as bad, as they often are. I am more speaking of Dazai's internal mental framework. Conclusion: Dazai has no inherent need to do good or bad, for the most part. He just goes as far as he needs to to satisfy his emotional needs.

Oda saved Dazai’s life in the day I picked up Dazai, and listened to him, but expected nothing in return. I feel that Oda saw this struggle within Dazai, and the way “good and evil don’t mean much to him” due to his disorder, but recognized that Dazai perhaps didn’t want to be this way.

Since Oda saw Dazai’s “irregular” nature, and still believed he could be a good person, Dazai was touched and decided to change his life. I believe Dazai had some distaste for himself, regardless of his lack of empathy, he could recognize what he was doing was not entirely right. As Asagiri mentioned, Oda told him exactly what he needed to hear, and the fact that these words were so life-changing to Dazai tells us a lot about what he had on his mind.  In my opinion, to see who Dazai is, you need to follow exactly which words got to him.

In my opinion, it likely meant a lot that a person he actually admired wanted to be in his life, especially a person he considered so kind like Oda. He often says that Oda is “the most interesting person he knows”. Imo, this is because “empathy” is one of the things Dazai doesn’t fully understand. He had to learn it. Since he understands human nature so well, cognitive empathy comes easy to him, but he still fucks up sometimes.

Here, I also feel like he is talking about himself – he sees himself in Kyouka. It doesn’t come naturally to Dazai to be “good”, but he is trying his best, that is his ideal now. (Asagiri said this was one of Dazai's rare human moments). For that reason, I think Dazai admires empathetic people and tends to dislike those who are naturally violent, or even choose to be violent out of sadism.

On the BSD exhibit, Asagiri said Atsushi was "an empathy user", and how that is the key to his character. During one interview, the author mentioned that Dazai keeps testing Kunikida's ideals, but Osamu secretly hopes that Doppo will prove to be right, and Dazai wrong. This to me paints a picture of someone who hopes that "good" is worth it, at least from an intellectual point of view. When talking with Fyodor, he seems to admire people who live emotionally, thinking god doesn't prefer perfection, logic and harmony.

"The ones who actually make the world run Are those who scream in the storm of uncertainty and run with flowing blood"

Dazai seems to reject the idea that him and Fyodor and better because they are more calculating and cold - like I mentioned earlier in this god-forsaken post, this to me says Dazai believes empathetic and emotional people are better than him.

"I've come to see it many times, his gimmicks are the accidental and illogical that's a weakness two of us have in common" He suffers because he is not like them, and that contributes to him feeling "othered".

Negative emotions and Akutagawa

My guess is that one of the reasons Dazai has so many issues with Akutagawa is because he is projecting his own issues with his lack of empathy onto him. This makes him relate to Akutagawa, but also dislike him beyond how he usually treats people. Akutagawa questions why Dazai's acts of violence are justified, while Osamu is judging Akutagawa: to me it sounds that Dazai sees his actions as at least partly justified because they are "logical" and utilitarian. He puts a difference between him and Aku, as if Dazai's natural instinct is not to mindlessly hurt others. However, it's interesting he needs to draw this line.

I believe Dazai sees a lot of the hurt he enacts on others as either "justified" or subconsciously defensive. "If I don't hurt others, they will hurt me", and he uses this against all kinds of people to keep them in control. In the Dark Era novel, Dazai speaks of Akutagawa like this:

“When I first saw him over in the slums, I was horrified. His talents are extraordinary, and his skill is extremely destructive. Plus, he’s stubborn. If I’d left him to his own devices, he would’ve ended up a slave to his own powers until he destroyed himself.” Interestingly, Dazai was "horrified" at what Akutagawa was capable of, where most things don't seem to exactly phase him. I think something about Aku's capacity for violence even scares him, and he "lashes" out in response to control him.

Later on Oda calls out Dazai's thinking indirectly in Beast, saying that hurting Aku is still bad no matter why he did it. (more on this in the next section) However, it’s very clear he cares for Akutagawa in “Chopsticks and a Spoon”, so I do feel like he’s likely aware of it. In fact, that story contains one of the gentlest expressions Dazai has pointed at anyone, so I think he partially sees Akutagawa as "innocent" in nature, and more like a wounded animal. I'll likely write a post about it. Since Dazai has expressed some lament or even shame regarding him being a person "hated by righteousness", I do think he is a bit ashamed of who he is. This part is a theory: When talking about "No Longer Human", Asagiri mentioned that he felt the book was about "embarrassment". Since Dazai is canonically famously based on Yozo to some extent, I feel that we can guess that Osamu likely does feel some shame - the question is about what. The rare times we see BSD Dazai express something similar to shame is when talking about his moral nature (when he beat up Akutagawa in Dark Era), but it's a "blink and you'll miss it" type of thing. Yozo and RL Dazai's relationship with his father was one of the cornerstones of his work (NLH even ends with him mentioning how he would have been alright if he had a better relationship with his father). Within the book, Yozo feels all sorts of things which make him feel "inhuman", but he is terrified about being open about it due to his strict father who sees him as somewhat strange. Since the theme of "fatherhood" was lightly touched upon when Atsushi's orphanage director died, I do think this is potentially a sore spot for BSD Dazai too. My guess is that Dazai likely had a poor relationship with his father figure, who saw him as "strange" or "inhuman" due to the way he acted: leading BSD Dazai to feel shame over his nature. Perhaps one of the things that made his father see Dazai as inhuman was his lack of typical ethics and empathy. Osamu internalized this - and ended up becoming a criminal at a very young age, perhaps in an attempt to confirm what hurt him, seeing himself as someone who could mostly do bad (which could be one of the reasons he wanted to die so young). Perhaps Oda making a way for him to "act good" was life-changing because of that too - it targeted a specific wound. All of this is speculation, but Dazai did mention that "self-pity leads you to living a life that is an endless nightmare". My guess is he was talking about himself there: and his own experiences with shame. To extend this: I think one of the reasons Dazai is so harsh on Akutagawa is because he is possibly projecting his relationship with his father onto Aku. Akutagawa is violent and troubled, and Dazai was shamed for the same thing. (but it would take a lot of time to work through this theory, so moving on..)

Dazai exhibiting empathy However, Dazai does show empathy for Oda, and a lot of it. I’d go as far as to say that he over-empathizes with Oda, while he underempathizes with everyone else. His relationships with the people closest to him tend to be why some people think he may have BPD. Especially due to devaluation and the "favorite person" concept. For someone with this type of BPD relationship, a “favorite person” is someone they rely on for comfort, happiness, and validation. A FP is a person who someone with BPD relies heavily on for emotional support, seeks attention and validation from, and looks up to or idealizes. For Dazai, this is Oda. On the other hand, In the context of BPD, “devaluation” refers to a psychological defense mechanism or coping strategy that individuals with BPD may employ in their interpersonal relationships. Devaluation involves a shift in the person’s perception of others, where they view someone they previously idealized or held in high regard as unworthy, flawed, or worthless. They become unworthy of their affection and praise. The person with BPD may engage in behaviors such as intense criticism, verbal attacks, withdrawal, or even cutting off contact with the person they have devalued. These actions are often driven by the individual’s fear of rejection, abandonment, or a desire to protect themselves from potential hurt or disappointment. For Dazai, the clearest example of this is Ango. However, a person can exhibit the "favorite person" and project the phenomenon of devaluation without having BPD. In my opinion, Dazai does show heightened polarity in his feelings toward others, but I am not sure if BPD would be my choice for him. It's very difficult to say, as many conditions mask as BPD, and Dazai's expression of empathy is unique.

Dazai idealizes Oda, and deeply sees his pain as his own, while he always frames Akutagawa in a negative light, even though he is likely one of the people Dazai cares about the most (next to Oda, Chuuya, Ango, Atsushi, especially according to Beast). Another example of his heightened negative emotions are Ango, and Chuuya to a much lesser extent. My guess is that Dazai doesn’t deal with caring about people well, especially when they are any sort of “threat”: which is why he tries to “bully” them down. The reason he goes easier on Chuuya than Akutagawa is because he feels Chuuya is in his nature more sympathetic.

In my opinion, the moment Dazai warmed up to Chuuya was when he realized that The Sheep were pushing Chuuya around: he was no “King of the sheep”, he was acting out of empathy and care. Since Chuuya is so powerful, it was likely admirable to Dazai that he didn’t abuse his abilities for self-gain. This is when he decided to isolate Chuuya from the Sheep: and I think the reason above is specifically why

I'd say Dazai is likely "spikey" to anyone he cares about but has less confidence they won't hurt him. There are two camps of people: 1. Atsushi, Oda, Kunikida, Sigma (generally upright, meek, moral at the end of the day) 2. Chuuya, Akutagawa, and lastly Ango (people who are aggressive, challenging, and need to be put down in Dazai's eyes).

He cares about both camps (Sigma is debatable, I spoke of the type of personality Dazai seems to deal with easily in his case), but he likely feels "less safe" with the second type. Mori could potentially go into the second camp - there is some respect and resentment there at the same time. He even talks about this with Kunikida in Entrance exam.

"“I guess. But you, Kunikida, I’ve got a good idea of who you are now, so nothing you do will ever surprise me. I mean, compared with me, you’re just a simple man with a simple mind, after all.”

See? You wear your heart on your sleeve. You don’t hide how you’re really feeling. It’s nice. You know what else is nice? Just knowing that you’re going to be worrying later to yourself, ‘Am I really that simple?’”

“Why, you—”

But I refrain from arguing. Whatever my response, he’s just going to end up telling me, “I knew you’d say that.”

I suppose that being around Kunikida comforts him since he is predictable, yet kind. On the other hand, someone like Chuuya excites him, because he is wild and challenging enough, but is still a good person when it comes down to it. Basically, Dazai is hypervigilant of pain.

Akutagawa is “off the chain” in comparison to all of them. I am under the impression that Dazai can care about people without treating them well at all, and 2 of the people who are at the top of his list (Chuuya and Aku) are people he “seems” to dislike (In Chuuya’s case rather openly in his profile).

It appears that the more “intense” and “unpolished” parts of Dazai’s personality are strictly reserved for people he cares about, but he is extremely selective about who he shows emotional empathy to as it’s such a rare experience for him. He may capable of "cutting off" empathy to protect himself emotionally. It is quite clear some aspects of empathy miss him broadly in Beast, when he appears shocked that Oda would react so strongly to endangering Akutagawa since “it’s all supposed to end well if he survives”. That sentence itself is totally tone-deaf, yet Dazai is acting as if Oda is supposed to take that normally. It’s quite clear that Dazai doesn’t treat Atsushi all that well in Beast either, as he exploits his fears for Atsushi to be totally obedient to him.

I really like this moment, because it demonstrates that even if Dazai does have some point regarding Akutagawa and the way he goes about things, the way he has treated him is still too much – and Dazai can’t exactly convince Oda, a decent person, why this is ever justifiable under any circumstances. There is an aspect of regular empathy that misses Dazai – it doesn’t cross his mind why his actions are inherently bad. Perhaps it is possible that Dazai was treated with little to no empathy growing up, so he accepted that as a model for acceptable behavior. A lot of the time, cruel actions don't seem to even register to him as bad, in an almost innocent way. It's like it doesn't cross his mind that stuff is out of the ordinary. When talking to Oda about this, he was described as "childlike".

However, Dazai shows a lot of extreme emotional empathy for Oda, which tends to be rare for people with ASPD (obviously, all traits of it are on a spectrum).

Dazai clearly feels as if he himself is being beaten when Oda suffers. Furthermore, “Beast” shows that he is willing to endanger multiple people he cares about so Oda could live and write his book. In his words “the me from other worlds doesn’t care about the world” – showing that even though he may “care” about people, it’s really hard for him to fully emotionally connect with others.

This leads him to severe feelings of loneliness and isolation, but it’s quite clear Oda is the exception to this.

Dazai has multiple anxiety attacks when meeting with Oda in Beast and TIPUD:

“I see.” Oda says after he gives it a moment of thought. “I’ll do so then. That is very kind of you. You are a good guy.”

Dazai’s expression becomes distorted.

He opens his mouth, and closes it again, as if he can no longer breathe.

If he tells him everything now, maybe things will go back to how they were. The two of them will go to the bar together and have a toast. Just like that night.

“Odasa…”

Just as Dazai is about to say that name, a train passes by. The express train passing through that station cuts through the silence of the night, right next to where Dazai and Oda is."

and obviously the whole showdown at the bar. Earlier, Oda mentions that Dazai looks like he is about to cry:

 An interesting part here is that Dazai gets shocked that Oda would even consider that Dazai could hurt him:

It almost sounds absurd that Dazai, who is known for scheming even against people he likes, would be that surprised someone would expect this from him. This, to me, shows that Dazai does have that underdeveloped, childish emotional side to himself, where he doesn’t understand everything he does. It’s quite logical why Oda, or anyone else, would be consistently doubtful of Dazai, yet he is so used to not caring about anyone, that when he does feel things he is remarkably unpolished and just as illogical as anyone else. I’d say his heart is like a knife that went blunt from lack of use. Since he has no experience dealing with people he feels strongly about, it always comes across very messy – and Asagiri himself often describes him as childish at his most vulnerable.

Furthermore, the lyrics of the song for Beast have these words to say: “Loving you to death won’t kill me Because I don’t love this world enough” And in the Beast novel, he mentions all he has to give to the world is love. I think we can certainly see that Dazai is not emotionless.

To me it seems like Dazai is capable of selective emotional empathy. I feel like one of the reasons Oda was “the one” Dazai attached himself to the most, is because Oda was a struggling man who was also depressed (rather clear the more you read), but he was empathetic and accepted Dazai for who he was.

Him and Dazai had difficulties in common (the guy was a killer as a kid too), yet Oda did his best to be a good person – that is one of the reasons, as Asagiri mentions, why he had an “outburst” when Kyouka implied former killers can’t be good people. Oda was a good person in his eyes, and his role model of “empathy”: someone he wished to emulate. I am pretty sure that Oda became the blueprint for the moral compass he strives towards.

Most importantly, Oda didn’t really judge Dazai when he showed his lack of empathy, while he remained firm in what he believed in.

“Odasaku is the type of person who will never lecture anyone. Because he does not consider himself a superior person who can teach and guide others. However, it doesn’t mean that he has nothing he wants to say. The sentiments that he couldn’t convey in these two scenes were finally delivered to Dazai in the last scene through the words “Become a good person.” Very meaningful scenes when read as a set.”

is how Asagiri described Oda during the exhibit. As Asagiri says, one of the reasons he didn’t tell Dazai anything when he provoked the sniper was his modesty. Since Oda didn’t look down on him, yet showed concern and fully understood Dazai wasn’t just a struggling depressed kid, but someone with serious issues who also happened to be a child – Dazai grew to deeply care for him. Oda didn't shame him, likely avoiding Dazai's hypervigilant sensor for pain.

Selective empathy is common for many disorders – and Dazai, after not feeling “seen” his whole life, ended up making a true connection with Oda. I guess, in that sense – Oda was the one who really reached Dazai’s heart, and since he was the only one who came that close, all of Dazai’s emotional empathy is reserved for him.

In my opinion, the reason Dazai was so difficult to “get to” was that even people who had good intentions toward him never truly saw him.

To see Dazai as a depressed woobie who just needs to be saved is to idealize him – which wouldn’t exactly help him. They’re talking about a version of him that doesn’t exist. If the only way he could be seen as worthwhile was someone seeing him as more “traditionally good” than he truly is, it’s not going to work. He needs to be seen for exactly who he is, and still given a chance to be better.

Likewise, it had to be someone who wasn’t helping him in order to get something from him. I would say that one of the main reasons why Dazai got so attached to Oda was because his friend had no reason to save him, he gave him space, and didn’t even force himself into Dazai’s life.

It was purely altruistic, and for Dazai, who expects the worst from others and seems to fear people’s intentions, this was perfect. One of the main aspects of Dazai's character is his anxious-avoidant attachment style, where he is likely so afraid of potential pain, he pushes others away, or punishes anyone he cares about who might hurt him preemptively. A lot of this is not impulsive, but calculated, which is why he feels a natural resistance to Akutagawa (but relates to him and cares all the more because of it). He understands the self-destructive nature of Akutagawa.

"If I’d left him to his own devices, he would’ve ended up a slave to his own powers until he destroyed himself.”" I believe Dazai likely allows himself to fully empathize with Oda because he feels only Oda is "safe" in this world. The fact that Oda is dead and gone perhaps makes caring for him even safer, as his image of Oda will never change.

Conclusion: I'd say Dazai is someone who is probably extremely traumatized, with a specific emotional profile that doesn't allow him to experience empathy like normal people do - and this is one of the defining traits of the character for me. He is able to isolate himself from normal social pressures and boundaries - and because of this and his extreme intellect, he feels like an alien in this world. A lot of his struggle likely deals with the fact that he dislikes the hurtful person he is, but has difficulty seeing why he should be better - all while he has a distaste for sadism, cruelty and senseless violence in others. In my opinion, a lot of his own cruelty is "reactive": he acts "evil" because he expects the same from others ("evil expects evil from others), and decides he wants to beat them to the punch. He is comforted when he is in the presence of altruistic and empathetic people, because he doesn't have to be what he dislikes (as "enemy" evil will always make him react since he is threatened). In the end, he rationally sees that cruelty is negative, but he still feels it is an effective tool. If Dazai weren't this way, he wouldn't consistently choose empathetic people for his company throughout the story, while acting callous himself most of the time.

A lot of things Dazai does to me feel like he is avoiding hurt, or attempting to "control the pain" he gets in his life. Notably, Dazai mostly lets himself get "bullied" by people he sees as innocent and simple like Kunikida, since "Kunikida will never surprise him" - he knows that Doppo won't cross the line. Ironically, he famously says he "dislikes physical pain", but often gets himself into physically dangerous scenarios.

It's like he doesn't mind pain if he's the one in control (when Fyodor let the sniper shoot him, when that dude from Mimic shot him point blank). Avoidance of pain and control are other keys to Dazai's character. In that sense, I think Dazai was possibly traumatized and learned to almost completely disassociate from empathy early in his life. There are so many theories I could think of here that we'd get nowhere.

It is clear that Dazai is capable of extreme emotional empathy due to his relationship with Oda, and it's possible he doesn't allow himself to feel it in most scenarios due to his avoidant nature regarding pain. However, whatever the reason behind it, it is clear he doesn't feel a ton of emotional empathy in his day-to-day life, and this disassociation from empathy has crafted him into a person who doesn't fully understand "normal humans".

That is why he sees them as fascinating after Oda dies - he reaches Dazai's heart and opens him up to the idea that not all people are unempathetic and cruel - meaning Dazai doesn't always have to be on guard. Does Dazai have ASPD, or is his lack of empathy a result of other things: PTSD, CPTSD, is he perhaps autistic? I can't say for sure, as it could be so many things. Personally, anyone could make an argument for any of these in my eyes. Above, I mostly analyzed his displays of empathy and tried to study which emotional patterns he appears to follow. I think Dazai's character arc has a lot of worth specifically because we see someone for whom emotional empathy may not be natural trying to be good. It's a unique ethical dilemma, and that's one of the reasons I feel in love with the series. Since it isn't natural for him, his efforts mean a lot, and the struggle feels real and genuine.

Thank you all for reading if you made it this far <3 I've taken a lot of posts and translations I've gathered over the years, and I am sure I won't be able to thank everyone, but, I'd like to show appreciation for popopretty, aja154ever and many others for sharing info from exhibitions, databooks and so. Have a nice day !

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bungo stray dogs #dazai #dazai osamu #osamu dazai #osamu #oda sakunosuke #bsd dazai #theory

[ineffable-endearments]

The Crow Road by Iain Banks

I finished The Crow Road and had a little time to think about it. I'll put my thoughts under a Keep Reading in case anyone is trying to avoid spoilers.

As I speculated before, I think it's likely that The Crow Road is more related to Good Omens in philosophy than in plot. I mean, it's not that the plots necessarily have nothing in common, and we could be very surprised in the end of course, but now that I've read the whole book, its philosophical commonalities with GO are both apparent and kind of inspiring. Also, if I were a writer, I'd be more interested in dropping hints about what themes are important than telegraphing my whole plot ahead of time.

So here, I will describe the book and point out themes that I believe may reappear in Good Omens 3.

This is a long post. If you read it, make a cup of [beverage of choice].

Update on 4/20/2024: I made a second post: The Crow Road and Good Omens: Further-Out Thoughts

Below are mentions of suicide, death/murder, and sexual acts.

The Crow Road centers around a character named Prentice McHoan, a university student in Scotland who starts to sort out his complicated relationship with his complicated family as he explores the mystery of his uncle Rory's disappearance. Although the book is mostly from Prentice's perspective, the narration jumps around in time with the McHoan family. There are quite a lot of important characters to keep track of; the bare-bones summary I put below doesn't even include some of the important ones. I wanted to make the summary even shorter and simpler than this, but the truth is that this book is not short or simple, and if I made the summary any simpler, it might be downright misleading.

There are at least three major cultural aspects of The Crow Road that I am inexperienced with: the overall culture in the 1950s-1980s (I was born in 1988, so of course wasn't here for the relevant decades), the international experience of the Gulf War (again, born in 1988), and the history and culture of Scotland itself (I'm USAmerican with only reading as a source). As a result, I'm sure there are important dimensions to the book that I've missed. If someone has a different perspective taking some of these things into account, I'd love to know about it.

Also, keep in mind, there is a great deal of descriptive writing in this book. There are a lot of pages about the geography of Scotland, and about Prentice as a kid, and about Prentice's father and uncles hanging out together in their youth, and about various family incidents, and about Prentice spending time with his brothers and friends. At first, these passages seem to just make things more confusing, and in my head, I accused them of being "filler." But they definitely serve a purpose. They're a way of showing and not telling the characters' attitudes and relationships to each other. More importantly, because we get to actually live these experiences with the characters, they are what give all the plot points below their deeper emotional impacts. In other words, the everyday experiences give the plot its deeper meaning. They resonate with one of the core themes in the novel: that our experiences in life, rather than any supposed existence after death, are what matters.

The Crow Road's story is like this:

Prentice is rather directionless in life, and he seems to have trouble investing any energy in his own future as he moons over his unrequited feelings for an idealized young woman named Verity. Soon, Verity ends up in a romance with Prentice's brother, Lewis, and Prentice feels that Lewis "stole" her from him. Prentice has also become estranged from his father, Kenneth, over spirituality. Prentice believes there has to be something more after death because he feels it would be incredibly unfair if people didn't get anything other than this one life; Kenneth is not only a passionate atheist, but is offended by the notion of an afterlife.

Prentice's uncle Hamish, Kenneth's brother, has always been religious, although his religion involves a number of bizarre and offbeat ideas of his own, with inspiration from more traditional Christian notions. Prentice is not really sure about this ideology, but he's willing to talk to Hamish about it and even participates during Hamish's prayers, whereas Kenneth is openly scornful of Hamish's beliefs. Hamish interprets this as Prentice being on "his side."

Prentice has a few opportunities to go back and talk to his father, and is begged to do so by his mom, Mary, with whom his relationship is still good. Mary doesn't want either of the men to give up their inner ideas about the universe; she just wants them to agree to disagree and move on as a family. Prentice says he will visit, but he just keeps putting it off and off and off.

Prentice acquires a folder containing some of his missing uncle Rory's notes in the process of hooking up with Rory's former girlfriend, Janice Rae, who seems to have taken a shine to Prentice because he reminds her of Rory. Using the contents of the folder, Prentice wants to piece together the great literary work that Rory left unfinished, which Rory titled Crow Road; however, it becomes apparent that Rory didn't turn his concepts into anything substantial and only had a bunch of disconnected notes and ideas. He hadn't even decided whether Crow Road would be a novel, a play, or something else. The few bits of Rory's poetry for Crow Road read are bleak and depressing.

Prentice also spends a lot of time with a young woman named Ash. They've been good friends since childhood and seem to have a somewhat flirtatious dynamic now, but they aren't in a romantic relationship; mostly, they drink and hang out together. Ash tells Prentice bluntly to get his life back on track when she finds out he's failing at school, avoiding his family, and engaging in shoplifting. She is a voice of reason, and when Prentice insists to her that he's just a failure, she reminds him that actually, he's just a kid.

Prentice's efforts to figure out Rory's story or location stagnate, and he continues to fail at school and avoid his father. He then receives word that Kenneth was killed while debating faith with Hamish. In fact, Kenneth dies after a fall from a church lightning rod, which he was climbing in an act of defiance against Hamish's philosophy when it was struck by lightning; Hamish is convinced that Kenneth had incurred God's wrath. Ash is there for support when Prentice finds out about the death.

With Ash's help, Prentice returns to his hometown again to help manage Kenneth's affairs. Prentice speaks with a very shaken Hamish, who is handling Kenneth's death with extreme drama and making it all about his own feelings. Hamish tells Prentice that Kenneth was jealous that Prentice shared more in common with Hamish's faith than with Kenneth's lack of faith. However, this isn't really true, and as he contemplates his father's death, Prentice begins to internalize one of the last things Hamish reported that Kenneth had argued: "All the gods are false. Faith itself is idolatry."

As the chapters go on, Prentice is compelled by some of the meaningful items related to Rory that he discovers in his father's belongings. He gains a renewed sense of purpose trying to solve the mystery of where Rory went and what happened to him. Among the interesting items are an ancient computer disk of Rory's that Prentice can't access with any equipment he can find; Ash uses her connections in the US and Canada to find a computer expert who can finally open the files on it. This takes quite a while, since the disk has to be mailed and Ash's connection is investigating the disk only in his free time.

Prentice also discovers that his feelings for Verity have changed. He no longer feels angry with Lewis for "stealing her." At first, Prentice's narration describes this as his feelings "cooling" as a result of the trauma of losing his father, but interestingly, this soon means Prentice gets to know Verity as a sister-in-law without getting caught up in jealous romantic feelings. Verity gets along well with the family, and Prentice is actually happy to discover that she and Lewis have a baby on the way. Prentice's relationship with Lewis improves greatly as well, partly because he is no longer jealous and partly because he realizes he does not want to lose Lewis, too.

Ash's connection who was looking at Rory's computer disk comes through and sends the printed contents of the files to Prentice. The files reveal to him that Rory likely knew Prentice's uncle, Fergus, murdered his wife by unbuckling her seat belt and crashing their car. Rory had written out a fictional version of events and considered using it in Crow Road. I'm not clear on exactly how certain Rory was about Fergus's crime, or whether Rory would have intentionally reported Ferg, or whether Rory even had enough proof to publicly accuse Ferg of murder, but people would likely have connected the dots in Rory's work and become suspicious of Ferg. For this reason, Prentice believes Ferg murdered Rory as well.

Prentice confronts Ferg. He doesn't get a confession and leaves Ferg's home with no concrete proof of anything; Ferg denies it all. But Prentice is soon physically assaulted in the night, and it seems Ferg was almost certainly the culprit, because he hadn't been home that same night, and he had injuries (probably from being fought off) the next day. A day or two later, Ferg's body is found unconscious in the cockpit of a plane, which crashes into the ocean. It's uncertain whether this was a suicide, but Prentice suspects it was. Rory's body is then soon recovered from the bottom of a waterway near Prentice's home, where Ferg had sunk it years ago.

As the mysteries are solved, Prentice realizes his feelings for Ash are romantic love. However, it's too late, he thinks, because Ash is about to take a job in Canada, where she may or may not stay. Prentice also hesitates to approach her because he's embarrassed about his previous behavior, venting all his angst about Verity and his father. He isn't sure she would even want to be in a relationship with him after that. But the very night before Ash leaves, she kisses Prentice on the cheek, which leads to a deeper kiss. They finally connect, have sex, and confess their mutual feelings. Ash still goes to her job in Canada, but says she'll come back when Prentice is done with his studies that summer.

The relationship's future is somewhat uncertain because something could come up while Ash is in Canada, but Prentice is hopeful. The book ends with Prentice getting ready to graduate with his grades on track as a history scholar, fully renouncing his belief in an afterlife while he acknowledges the inherent importance of our experiences in our lives now, and enjoying his time with Lewis and Verity and his other family members.

What's the point of all these hundreds of pages?

Well, look at all of the above; there's definitely more than one point. But the main point I took away is that we get this one life, with our loved ones in this world here and now, and this is where we make our meanings. There is no other meaning, but that doesn't mean there's no meaning at all. It means the meaning is here.

It's not death that gives life its meaning. It's the things we do while alive that give life its deeper meaning.

The Crow Road is described (on Wikipedia) as a Bildungsroman, a story focusing on the moral and philosophical growth and change of its main character as they transition from childhood to adulthood ("coming-of-age novel" is a similar term that is interchangeable, but more vague and not necessarily focused on morality/philosophy). And, indeed, all of the plots ultimately tie into Prentice's changed philosophy.

After his argument with Kenneth, Prentice feels childish and humiliated, and as a result, he refuses to go back home, which leads to a spiral of shame and depression. Kenneth dies and Prentice realizes it's too late to repair the relationship, which also leads him to realize it's what we do in life that matters, and that therefore, his father's argument was correct after all.

At the end of the novel, Prentice outright describes his new philosophy. However, I can't recall one specific passage where Prentice describes the process of how he changed his mind (if anyone else can remember something I missed, do let me know). There is, however, a moment when his narration indicates that Hamish seems less disturbed by his own part in the incident that led to Kenneth's death and more disturbed by the notion that his beliefs might actually be true: there might actually be an angry, vengeful God. In other words, Hamish's philosophy is selfish at its core.

My interpretation is that when his father died, Prentice realized three things: how utterly self-serving Hamish's devout faith is, how Kenneth's untimely death proves the importance of working things out now rather than in an imaginary afterlife, and how much profound meaning Kenneth had left behind despite having no faith at all. After these realizations, a determined belief in an afterlife no longer makes our lives here more profound like Prentice once thought it did.

Also, it's worth noting that this incident changes Prentice's idea of partnership, too. He loses interest in this distant, idealized woman he's been after. In love as in the rest of life, Prentice lets go of his ideals, and in doing so, he makes room for true meaning, both in a sincere familial, platonic connection with Verity and a sincere intimate, romantic connection with Ash.

But what about the sex scene?!

Yes, indeed, at the tail end of the story, Prentice and Ash have sex and admit they want to be in a relationship together. Prentice's narration describes them sleeping together and having intercourse not just once, but many times, including some slow and relaxed couplings during which they flex the muscles in their private parts to spell out "I.L.Y." and "I.L.Y.T." to each other in Morse code. This is relevant because earlier, they had been surprised and delighted to discover that they both knew Morse code; it isn't a detail that came from nowhere.

I didn't get the impression that this scene was trying to be especially titillating to the reader. It was mostly just a list of stuff the characters did together. I felt the point was that they were still anxious about being emotionally honest, a little desperate to convey their feelings without having to speak them out loud, and awkward in a way that made it obvious that their primary concern was the feelings, not the sexual performance. They cared about each other, but they weren't trying to be impressive or put on a show; contrast this with previous scenes where Prentice would act like a clown in front of Ash to diffuse his own anxiety. I've always thought that being able to have awkward sex and still enjoy it is a good sign.

Okay, so what does this all have to do with Good Omens?

Here's where I have to get especially interpretive. I'm doing my best, but of course, not everyone reading this will have the same perspective on Good Omens, the Final Fifteen especially. I believe similar themes are going to resonate between The Crow Road and Good Omens regardless of our particular interpretations of the characters' behavior and motivations, but I suppose it could hit differently for some people.

The TL;DR: I see similar themes between The Crow Road and Good Omens in:

The importance of mortal life on Earth

Meaning (or purpose) as something that we create as we live, not something that is handed to us by a supreme being

Sincere connection and love/passion (for people, causes, arts, life's work, etc) as a type of meaning/purpose

Relationships as reflections of philosophy

The dual nature of humanity

Life on Earth as the important part of existence is a core theme in Good Omens, and has been since the very beginning. We all already know Adam chose to preserve the world as it already is because he figured this out, and we all already know Aziraphale and Crowley have been shaped for the better by their experiences on Earth. But Good Omens isn't done with this theme by a long shot. I think this is the most important thematic commonality Good Omens will have with The Crow Road. Closely related is the notion that we create our meanings as we live, rather than having them handed to us. Isn't this, in a way, what Aziraphale struggles with in A Companion to Owls? He's been given this meaning, this identity, that doesn't fit him. But does he have anything else to be? Not yet.

Partnerships as a parallel to the characters' philosophical development also resonates as a commonality that The Crow Road may have with Good Omens. Prentice's obsession with Verity goes away when he starts to embrace the importance of life on Earth and makes room for his sincere relationship with Ash. Note their names: "Verity" is truth, an ideal Prentice's father instills in him; "Ashley" means "dweller in the ash tree meadow" in Anglo-Saxon, according to Wikipedia, and "ash" is one of the things people return to after death. Prentice literally trades his high ideals for life on Earth. We see in Aziraphale a similar tug-o'-war between Heaven's distant ideals and Crowley's Earthly pleasures, so I can see a similar process potentially playing out for him.

I don't particularly recall a ton of thematic exploration of free will in The Crow Road. However, there is a glimmer of something there: Prentice feels excessively controlled by Kenneth's desire to pass down his beliefs, and part of the reason Prentice is so resistant to change is simply his frustration with feeling censored and not being taken seriously. As the reader, I do get the feeling that while Prentice is immature, Kenneth made major mistakes in handling their conflict, too. And Kenneth's mistakes come from trying to dictate Prentice's thoughts. There is likely some crossover with Good Omens in the sense that I'm pretty sure both stories are going to take the position that people need to be allowed to make mistakes, and to do things that one perceives as mistakes, without getting written off as "stupid" or "bad" or otherwise "unworthy."

Suffice it to say that the human characters in Good Omens will also certainly play into these themes, but it's hard to write about them when we don't know much about them except that one of them is almost certainly the reincarnation of Jesus. This also makes me suspect perhaps the human cast will be 100% entirely all-new, or mostly new, symbolic of how Aziraphale and Crowley have immersed themselves in the ever-evolving, ever-changing world of life on Earth. Alternatively, if we encounter human characters again from Season 1 or 2, perhaps the ways they've grown and changed will be highlighted. For example, even in real-world time, Adam and Warlock have already, as of the time I'm writing this, gone through at least one entire life stage (from 11 in 2019 to 16 in 2024). They'll be legal adults in a couple of years, and if there's a significant time skip, they could be much older. If characters from Season 1 do reappear and themes from The Crow Road are prominent, I would expect either some key scenes highlighting contrasts and changes from their younger selves or for stagnation and growth to be a central part of their plot.

The more I write, the more I just interpret everything in circles. Hopefully this post has at least given you a decent idea of what The Crow Road is like and how it may relate to Good Omens.

I'll end this post with a quotation that feels relevant:

Telling us straight or through his stories, my father taught us that there was, generally, a fire at the core of things, and that change was the only constant, and that we – like everybody else – were both the most important people in the universe, and utterly without significance, depending, and that individuals mattered before their institutions, and that people were people, much the same everywhere, and when they appeared to do things that were stupid or evil, often you hadn’t been told the whole story, but that sometimes people did behave badly, usually because some idea had taken hold of them and given them an excuse to regard other people as expendable (or bad), and that was part of who we were too, as a species, and it wasn’t always possible to know that you were right and they were wrong, but the important thing was to keep trying to find out, and always to face the truth. Because truth mattered. Iain Banks, The Crow Road

#good omens #the crow road #good omens book club #go3 speculation #s3 speculation #good omens 2 spoilers #go s2 spoilers

[mistydeyes]

𝔀𝓮𝓵𝓬𝓸𝓶𝓮 𝓽𝓸 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓶𝓪𝓼𝓽𝓮𝓻𝓵𝓲𝓼𝓽!

click me for asks + requests :)

2k celebration! submit an au/prompt from the list now until halloween :)

requests: open! i am in uni tho so it takes me about 1-2 weeks to answer!

pairings status: closed atm!

rules for requests - i love when you send things 💌

note - message me or comment on any one of my works if you want to be added to a tag list :)

I usually post on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays

izzie's fic recommendations - updated daily!

some things about me :)

the basics: 21, she/her, from the us :)

i'm a second year pharmacy student! also minoring in justice, law, and society

along with writing, i also intern at a perfume company and work at as a pharmacy intern

so naturally my pharmacist series is my absolute favorite to write and research!

𝓶𝔀𝓲𝓲 𝓬𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓮𝓷𝓽 - the full masterlist

don't know where to start? here's a few readers' favorites :) ❤️ - izzie’s favorites

💌 if you want to peek at all of my writings

S E R I E S

"your prescription is ready for pick-up" - 141 x pharmacist!reader

all of my works and our pharmacist reader

a panacea❤️ - 141 meets the cure to all their ailments

sick day visit - you prided yourself on never getting sick but the day has finally come. as you’re resting in your quarters, a certain group pays you a visit :)

fake hypochondriac ghost x reader (sequel to “a panacea”) - ghost goes to extreme lengths to see his favorite pharmacist

pain-killer fueled thoughts price x reader (sequel to “a panacea”) - price landed himself in the medic tent and his pain killers are making him tell the pharmacist his feelings.

keep your weapons hot and bodies hotter (18+) - stripper!141 x fem!reader (codename: Phoenix)❤️

hunk-o-mania 141 edition - feast your eyes on Delilah's Den's newest male dancers

playboy bunny phoenix edition - an unforeseen guest complicates the mission, now you have to get ready to act as the distraction on stage

the joys of civilian life - 141 x civilian!fem!reader

opposite occupations - while on leave, the boys each meet a civilian that makes their time deployed and defending their country worth it

family moments - 141 x fem!reader

little moments and little voices - precious moments you spend in your home with your husband and children :)

oh, darling, don’t you ever grow up - your husband leaves this world too early and now you have to pick up the pieces with your children

secrets and pointed fingers (requested!)❤️ - simon "ghost" riley

behind locked doors - when the 141 thinks you're the mole, they make sure to extract the information in whatever way possible

empty apologies and avoiding glances - when you return back to base, everything is far from normal

half empty glasses and unchanging perspectives - you try to run away from the trauma at the pub but with a glass in hand, simon finds you

O N E - S H O T S

odd hobbies - 141 x reader everyone has their own hobbies, yours are just unique to 141’s perspective

butterfly effect - 141 x fem!reader they say "a butterfly flaps its wings in the amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of europe." what once was a silly quote now has implications as one action leads to your death.

opposite of a meet cute❤️ - 141 x civilian!reader most people have a cute story as to how they met their significant other but yours is a little more eccentric

V I S U A L S + R A N D O M

random things in pockets and bags❤️ SERIES - what does the 141 carry on them when they’re on leave?

pt i- kyle “gaz” garrick

pt ii - simon "ghost" riley

pt iii - johnny "soap" mactavish

pt iv - john price

E X P L A I N S my series of explaining the various timeline's of the games and characters

simon "ghost" riley's backstory

which modern warfare game should i play first?

some writings from the inbox

medication mixup - the medic unknowingly prescribing you a penicillin has disastrous results due to your allergy

141’s dossier - see what the dossiers laswell gets at the end of mw 2019 looks like! + template

ghost’s doppelgänger - how does the 141 and los vaqueros react to you joining the team? their reactions are even better when you share an uncanny resemblance with ghost

running mascara - 141 x fem!reader harsh words are said and you try your best to run away from the cause. however, everyone needs to face the issue eventually and now the 141 is left to pick up the pieces. initially part of my 1k celebration but i added a sequel as it was highly requested! PART I and PART II

mw2 x reader - my ongoing series of pairing y'all up and writing a short lil blurb about how you met and your relationship

izzie’s 1K celebration! - closed now :) but feel free to look and see some of the prompts + how i answered them

𝓪𝓮𝓼𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓽𝓲𝓬 𝔀𝓸𝓻𝓴𝓼

#tag list #masterlist

[septembercfawkes]

How to Write Stakes that Aren't Life vs. Death

Writing strong stakes is critical for any story. But a question that often comes up for newer writers is, "How do I create stakes other than life vs. death?" Or essentially, "How do I write stakes that aren't life or death, yet are still effective?"

"Stakes" refer to what your character has to lose, what is at risk in the story. And obviously, potentially losing one's life, is a pretty big risk.

To address the questions, let's first look at why life vs. death stakes are so effective. 

I know, it sounds obvious, like common sense even, and you may be rolling your eyes. 

But understanding why they almost always work, will help you see how to create other similar stakes.

The thing about death is, it has a finality to it that almost nothing else has. 

No one can come back from the dead.

That's it.

Death is the end of the road.

Done.

Gone.

Game over.

. . . Except that unlike "Game over," you can't restart the game.

In storytelling, this is one of the main reasons many of us want to grab life vs. death stakes. Everyone reading the book innately understands this. Death is final, you can't come back from that. It's a "point of no return." It can't be undone.

Great stakes will create a similar effect. 

It's not literally life or death. But to some degree, there exists a figurative life-or-death situation.

For example, in The Office, after Michael accidentally hits Meredith with his car, he organizes a fun run on her behalf. Michael is driven by the desire to be liked by others. And after he hits Meredith, people don't like him. (I am simplifying the actual story just a bit.) With the fun run, he's hoping to redeem himself. He wants to be liked (or even admired) by others. To Michael, that hinges on his success with the fun run. If it's a success, people will like him again. If it's a failure, they won't (or they will dislike him even more).

There are seemingly only two outcomes: Success = liked. Failure = (forever) disliked.

From Michael's perspective, he can't have both.

Whichever path the fun run takes, the other path "dies." 

You can't go back in time and change the outcome of the fun run. 

It's final. 

End of the road. 

Done. 

Gone.

The situation also, to some degree, feels like figurative life or death to Michael. He's driven to be liked, and that makes him feel alive. If he's disliked, it feels like "death." It mars him psychologically, and he feels like he can't come back from that. It feels like the end of the road.

The Office is not a high-stakes story (which is one of the reasons I'm using it), but it still has effective stakes that convey why what's happening (the fun run) matters (liked vs. disliked), which is something all good stakes do.

This example also shows two components related to crafting effective stakes: plot and character.

Let's dig a bit deeper into each.

One of Two Paths Forward

If you've been following me for a while, you may know that I like to define stakes as potential consequences. It's what could happen, if a condition is met. As such, any stake should be able to fit into an "If . . . then . . ." sentence.

If the fun run is a success, then Michael will be liked.

If the fun run is a failure, then Michael will be disliked.

Others may argue the stake is only what is at risk in the story--and that's fair.

But notice when we lay out potential consequences, they convey (directly or indirectly) what is at risk. In the example sentences above, we see that Michael's popularity (or the lack thereof) is what is at risk.

Potential consequences convey what will happen if a specific outcome is reached. And this lays out at least two possible paths forward.

If X happens, then Y happens.

Which also implies, if X doesn't happen, then Y doesn't happen.

Or, we may be more specific and say, if X doesn't happen, then Z happens.

In any case, by laying out the potential consequences, we lay out two paths forward.

I like to imagine it as laying down railroad tracks, which shows the paths the train could go. 

But notice the train can't travel down two paths at the same time.

It's an either-or situation.

That's what we want to set up in our stories, when it comes to stakes.

Covering every aspect of this topic is beyond the scope of this article, but at the basic level, it works like this.

The character has a goal (of which there are three types). Something opposes that goal (antagonist). And this creates conflict, which escalates.

There should be consequences tied to getting or not getting the goal.

If the character gets the goal, Y happens.

For example, if Harry successfully stops Voldemort from getting the Sorcerer's Stone, the Wizarding World will be saved.

If the character doesn't get the goal, then Z happens.

For example, if Harry fails to stop Voldemort from getting the Sorcerer's Stone, then Voldemort will return to power and the Wizarding World won't be saved.

These are potential consequences that the writer should convey before, or at least near the start of, the conflict.

Notice they also convey what's at risk (the Wizarding World's safety).

So these are the pathways the story could go.

But we can only travel down one.

We can't go two directions at once.

This creates a sense of either-or, similar to life or death. (Although admittedly, in my example, if Voldemort returns to power, there will eventually be death involved, but, generally speaking . . . )

This will also create a sense of finality, in the same way death does.

Figuratively speaking, the path we don't travel on "dies," because it is no longer an option. We can't go back and get on that train track. We've passed it. (We now have to deal with the consequences.)

When we hit an outcome--a condition--the pathway is selected.

Harry successfully stops Voldemort, so the Wizarding World is saved.

Harry successfully stopping Voldemort is also a turning point (a.k.a. a plot turn). It turns the direction of the story, it turns the story onto the path we laid out (since its condition was met).

With this, I like to think of the turning point as being the track that switches the direction of the train.

This switch also creates what some in the community call a "point of no return." (We can't go back and go down a different path. It's done. We are on a different trajectory now. (And yes, I am simplifying a bit.))

Stakes don't literally have to be life or death. But you need to set them up so that the pathways the story could go, look like either-or pathways. You need to set them up, so that outcomes can't be easily, foreseeably undone.

So let's look at a less dramatic example.

Your character needs to deliver an invitation to a royal wedding (goal). This isn't a life-or-death situation. In fact, it arguably sounds a little boring.

But when we tie potential consequences to it, not only does it become more interesting, but whether or not the character successfully does this, matters, because it changes the path, the trajectory of the story.

So, maybe we say . . . 

If Melinda successfully delivers the invitation, then she'll be able to go to the royal wedding as well, which is where she'll have the chance to meet her hero.

I would need to communicate more contextual info to make this more effective. I would need to explain more about the stakes. Let's say her aunt said she'd take Melinda as her +1, if Melinda does this task for her (because the aunt really doesn't want to, because she has some high-priority things she needs to get done). Melinda's hero is from another continent, and she'll likely never have the opportunity to meet this person again. We could build it out more, so that she wants to get feedback on a project from her hero, and doing that could change Melinda's career path for the better.

We could even make her vocational situation more dire. If her current project isn't a success, then she'll be doomed to work for her father as his secretary (which she'd hate).

Now a lot hinges on successfully delivering this invitation.

If she successfully delivers the invitation, then Melinda can go to the wedding and get feedback from her hero, which will result in her not having to work for her father.

If she fails to deliver the invitation, not only will she not get to meet her hero at the wedding, but she'll have to work a job she can't stand.

Two paths forward.

She can't travel down both.

Now, we give her a lot of obstacles (antagonists) in the way of her delivering this invitation, so we have conflict (which should escalate).

Whether or not she delivers the invitation, is a turning point, because it turns the direction of the story, it turns her pathway. (Simplistically speaking, I could get more complex.) It's in some sense "a point of no return."

You can make almost any goal work, even a boring one, if you tie proper stakes to it.

The goal to survive (life vs. death stakes) is innately immediately effective, because we already understand it holds a "point of no return." If you die, you don't come back from that. There will also eventually be a point where, if you reach your goal, you won't be at risk of dying (at least, simplistically speaking, you won't die right at that moment.) 

For other situations, you often need to build out and explain the stakes, for them to feel meaningful. You may need to provide contextual information, and you may need to walk the potential consequences out further so the audience understands everything that is at risk.

Let's talk about this from a character angle though . . . 

Putting the Right Thing at Risk

One of the reasons the fun run Office example works, is because the writers put at risk what Michael cares about most: being liked. It's what motivates the majority of his actions on the show. It's what drives him. It's the want that he holds closest to his heart, his deepest personal desire.

Because it matters so much to him, the personal risk feels greater.

Michael feels, on some level, he will "die" psychologically, if he isn't liked or admired. (Which is also why he feels he will "die" if he is alone. (Even if he, himself, isn't fully conscious of either of these points.))

When the character cares about something that deeply, whether or not the character gets it, matters more.

Main characters should have at least one major want that drives them--something they want desperately, something they keep close to their hearts and deep in their psyches. It's often their most defining motivator. Michael wants to be liked. Harry wants to be where he belongs and is loved (the Wizarding World). Katniss wants to survive. Barbie wants to maintain a perfect life. Luke wants to become something great. Shrek wants to be alone so he can avoid judgment. 

When we put any of those at risk, it raises the stakes.

. . . Because the characters not getting their deepest, heartfelt desires, has big personal ramifications on their psyches.

If what matters most to Shrek in his world is to be alone, and other fairytale creatures are being sent to his swamp, then the potential consequences are threatening what he holds most dear to his heart. Life as he knows it will figuratively "die" if he doesn't put a stop to it. (Of course, in order to complete his character arc, he has to be willing to let that part of him "die" so he can become something greater, someone more "whole.") It feels figuratively like "life or death" to him.

Ironically, putting the character's deepest desire at risk, can often be more effective than life or death stakes, because if you handled this right, you made sure to give the character a want that he will do almost anything to try to fulfill--even risk death for. Harry is willing to risk death to save the place where he is loved. Barbie is willing to risk death (well, at least her "life") in the real world to get her perfect life back. Luke is willing to risk death to become or be part of something great. Shrek is willing to risk death to get his swamp back (facing a dragon). 

Recently I saw another great example of this while rewatching The Umbrella Academy. Hazel and Cha Cha kidnap Klaus and torture and threaten to kill him (to try to get information from him). But the torture and threats have no effect on him. In fact, Klaus gets off on it. Hazel and Cha Cha are at a loss as to how to break him.

While this is going on, Klaus eventually comes down from a drug-induced high. His superpower is that he can see and talk to the dead, but he hates that he has this ability--in fact, he's been traumatized by it (in a literal "ghost" story). It's actually the reason he's a drug addict to begin with. When he's high, he can't see or hear ghosts. Avoiding them is his deepest desire.

Torture and death don't break Klaus. What breaks Klaus is being unable to get away from the ghosts. It's only when Hazel discovers his stash of drugs and starts destroying it, that Klaus gets desperate. Not only are the drugs expensive (and he's broke), but worse, without them, Klaus has to face his greatest fear. He has to be surrounded by the dead. This is the exact opposite of his deepest desire.

In fact, to Klaus, this is something worse than death.

Some things are worse than death. And often, those things include your character's deepest desire, the want he holds closest to his heart.

Now sometimes, those things may overlap (like with Katniss being driven to survive), but most of the time, they will be different things. If you think about yourself, there are probably some things you would risk death for. Your first thought is probably your loved ones, and that is another risk you could consider for your characters, but I also bet, if we took that away as an option, you could think of a few other things, like a belief or way of life. Something you would uphold or defend when it's threatened. Something that would get you to do what you wouldn't ordinarily do, if it was at risk.

From there we create pathways again. Barbie can choose to risk the real world to get her perfect life back, or she can choose to remain in Barbieland and have her perfect life continue to deteriorate. She can't have both. Klaus can give up any information he has to try to save his remaining drugs, or he can resist and suffer a plague of ghosts. Shrek can let the fairytale creatures "kill off" his way of life, or he can go on a quest that could get rid of them.

This is still simplistically speaking, but the point is, you've put what the character cares deeply about at risk, and have laid out two paths forward, and the character can only choose one. She can't go in two directions at once.

Stakes don't literally need to be life vs. death to be effective, and in fact, as I've pointed out, some things are worse than death. One of those things is whatever the character wants most.

The idea is to lay out potential consequences--different pathways that appear as either-or trajectories. Either the story goes down path Y or it goes down path Z. The character then has to deal with the consequences of the path; she can't travel in reverse. She can try to diminish or compensate for the consequences (if they are undesirable), but she can't go back and change the track her train is on.

For most stakes that aren't life vs. death, you will need to convey to the audience what those potential pathways are, because they won't be built in like they are for life-or-death situations. One way to do this, is to literally write "If . . . then . . . " sentences into the story ("If X happens, then Y happens"), but you can convey them indirectly as well. The point is that you do communicate them to the audience, because if you don't, the audience won't see or feel the stakes, and so they won't be effective. And in that case, they will never be as impactful as life vs. death stakes.

Also, if you're interested in learning more about my take on stakes, I'm teaching a class on it at the Storymakers conference this May (virtual tickets are available for those who can't attend in person). I also get more into stakes (and plot) in my online writing course, The Triarchy Method (though the course is currently full, I'll offer it again in the future, so I still wanted to mention it. 😉).

Happy Writing!

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing tips and tricks #writing tips #Let's Write #Writing Help

[apostatehamster]

Oh no! Another person's 2 cents on the OFMD finale situation!

Yes, because unfortunately my mind still hasn't settled and is in a state of disbelief over what happened, and I am trying to unravel all of this to make sense of it. Written from the perspective of a sad Izzy fan, so if you do not care to read about that or are simply tired of reading these mind pieces... well don't. And do not bother interacting.

I want to preface this by saying, I do believe Writers should be writing the story they think is right. It is impossible to please everyone so I prefer Author's sticking to their vision rather than bending to the loudest (in most cases, read: displeased) voices of the audience. However, I also think people are entitled to voice their displeasure over writing decisions in a constructive way. I don't condone hate towards authors, actors or anyone involved in the making of the show and if you feel angry enough to send hate or threats, take a walk and calm down instead of being a jerk. That being said, I watched many shows with decisions I did not agree on and few made me as angry & sad as this one, hence me trying to dismantle why.

False marketing, expectations and broken promises

Frankly I hadn't seen much advertising about the show before, most of it was fandom activity that praised the show as feelgood and comfort, with good queer representation. I got into it pretty late, so I can't tell what the show itself presented itself as, but to me it seemed like they fully embraced that image and encouraged the show to be perceived as such. It's a rom-com after all, many laughters and sappy feelings. A safe space-ship for outcasts, so to speak. We expected drama but also making-up and possibly more shenanigans. What we did not expect, was a rather prominently featured character dying as one got used to happening from other shows.

OFMD promised to be different, or at least that was my and many others' impression, and then it turned that around in the last 10 minutes of the finale. But more about that and tonal shifts later.

What baffled me most were the interviews hailing in at the start of season two. I've read articles about how season 2 was leaning into the Ed/Izzy/Stede triangle with David Jenkins saying these three "are on an arc together that’s pretty inseparable". I mean we had Izzy being called a jilted lover before, and in addition to Ed & Stede's love declaration, we also had Izzy declare he had love for Ed, and Ed as well saying He loved him, best he could. There was a lot of love, but it was complicated, and the article gave hope that this season would sort this out.

But after the finale, we got interviews that declared Izzy was a father/mentor figure to Ed, which is such a weird claim that is absolutely unfounded in the way the characters interacted with each other, as well as the fact that Izzy's death apparently was something planned from the beginning as an ending to his arc. And well, I find that death separates characters quite definitely.

I am not saying that Steddyhands was promised to us, gods no, but we were definitely given a chance at it happening, when in fact, the ending had already been written as the complete opposite.

Reception and cognitive dissonance

Every person is different and thus has different feelings and opinions. I've seen Izzy fans hating the finale obviously, I've seen Izzy fans who said they liked it. I've also seen people who weren't explicitly Izzy fans say, they did not like the finale, so really, opinions can go any way.

However what baffled me is Jenkins feeling he delivered a truly happy end. Personally, I've never watched a character die and thought "This makes me happy." I especially would never describe a character struggling through hardship, just to ultimately die as happy or beautiful. I can only imagine that the focus was on Ed and Stede, when a happy ending was mentioned, but Jenkins kept pointing out in the interviews, how Izzy was his favorite, which gave hope for a happy ending for Izzy as well. As much as I enjoy seeing my favorites go through hardships, I also prefer to keep them around by not dying. I especially do not build my favorite up to be a well fleshed out character with growth, just to reduce them back to a plot device for the main character.

I know this is all based upon the interviews, and less on the show, but when I read "And what's the most interesting thing we can do with Con[...]?" my answer definitely wouldn't have been "kill his character off". Con O'Neill does a great job at playing emotional scenes, but we already had him act his heart out in the first three episodes. A last hurrah wasn't needed.

I am also trying to put myself in David Jenkins' shoes here, because I think he truly expected the last episode to be a happy ending, and a gift, just to be proven differently. I just wonder what went wrong, how one can read the room so completely wrong.

It wasn't malicious, but the fact that it was apparently meant to be a genuine attempt at offering a happy end makes it even worse.

Tonal shifts and established in-Show laws

It's an understatement to say that the tone of season 2 was decidedly more dramatic. To the point where I questioned myself if this was still allowed to be called a comedy show. I would have described season 1 as mostly slice-of-life, little adventures between the crew and the captains. People got hanged, fingers severed, people got stabbed, but you never felt the threat of actual death hanging over anyone's head, because everything was kept humorous. (Speaking of the non-baddies here. Calico Jack got a cannon ball to the head but with plausible deniability of his death & (apparently) an interview saying he could be brought back, if needed)

Enter season 2, which starts off with murder attempts, major wounds and a suicide attempt. Nothing was played off as a joke, and for that I am grateful because that would have been in poor taste, but the tone was noticeably different and darker. But it still wasn't 'realistic' by any standard. With no real doctor on board, Izzy should have died from his wounds and comatose Edward would have wasted away in the hidden cabin. Everyone came out (fucked up but) relatively fine.

The show goes back to the humorous tone with Anne & Mary who enjoy a good backstabbing and poisoning. We had our crew surrounded by death and a curse in the next episode, but there was any fear of them coming to harm, obviously. The crew gets boarded and tortured by Ned and his crew after that, but they are able to take it out and come away unscathed (some wounds aside). Oh no! Stede challenges Zheng Yi to a duel! Which we know means no one is allowed to interfere, until one of the duelants dies. But it's fine, Zheng Yi is just playing with her food. But watch out, a Cannonball flies towards Zheng Yi's head! Ah but she is fine, she escaped. The Swede pulled a Rasputin and got immune to poison without him even noticing! Look, even Auntie survived the explosion, badly wounded but she lives. Oh no! Izzy gets shot! But it's his left side, we established no vital organs are there. Roach and Stede are already on their way to get bandage- Wait they are back with no bandages, and Izzy he-

Oh, wait. He...died?

When watching season 2 I legitimately considered Izzy dying as an end result, because I am used to my favorite characters dying, frankly. But then I dismissed that thought because OFMD has proven again and again, that people do not die. Heck, Lucius was considered dead in the season 1 finale and he came back, albeit traumatized. But he lived to tell the tale.

Season 2 finale made it a point to leave no room for doubt that Izzy did indeed die. They dug him a grave, and they panned to his grave at the end to remind you, he is definitely dead. So, why did Izzy have to die in a world where our favorites can survive about anything? "Pirates die, that's just pirate life", okay but why was he specifically singled out to be the only pirate dying? In comparison to everyone else, it feels unjust, and it feels cruel towards the fans who felt safe in the knowledge that this was the one show where none of their favorites would die. And it feels like such a betrayal of the fans’ trust, who had hoped this show would do better.

I've seen a take along the lines of "Nowadays people expect the stories to be written explicitly for them, and then they get upset when it doesn't happen" and that take pissed me off enough to write this down. This isn't a case of entitled fans asking to change the story to be exactly what they want to be, there is fanfiction for that. No, this is fans upset that their favorite character got singled out by the narrative to be the one exception to the no dying rule. And I use the narrative loosely, because there was no ramification to the death that couldn't also have been established by the character staying alive and giving advice, so the death didn't even feel purposeful. And for a show that always stresses the "Talk it through as a crew" point, they did not care much for choosing talking it through as a solution.

I also heartily disagree that Izzy's arc was over and had no more stories to tell. I mean the guy followed Edward around for decades, I would have loved to hear more about their past.

I would have especially loved to hear more about their future, as two people who learned to let go of Blackbeard and became their own people again. Where exactly did the idea of that even come from, I don't know.

Pacing and Confusing decisions in the Final episode and the build-up into nothing

(Rambling alert!) 

Personally I didn't feel any pacing issues until episode 6. While I generally liked the episode, it felt crammed with both set-up of the baddie, fun-times, then appearance of baddie (and disappearance) and return to fun-times. The episode ended and I was literally perplexed that it was over, like we basically ran through that episode. But episode 8 took the cake.

Now I am well aware they had to cut corners, and the strike didn't make it easier either, and I wish we could have seen the result without these factors. But we got what we got now, and I have to judge based upon that, but I really would know how the final cut decision came to be.

I did like the beginning with Ed chilling as a fisherman, but in hindsight I wished they had cut that part a bit shorter to give more room for the final parts. We get a lot of Ricky dicking around the pirate republic, showing Jackie reluctantly bringing them drinks. Later on she finally decides to poison him. Why she didn't do so earlier, I have no idea, unless the show is trying to tell me The Swede had to build up enough poison tolerance within one episode to withstand the poison attempt, which would be ridiculous. Why the Swede was held as an emotional hostage, I don't know either. I don't want him dead but Jackie has many other husbands, the Swede being singled out was more to hurt the viewers than for Jackie imho.

We have Zheng Yi suffering through Stede's presence. Our queen is suffering through the loss of her whole crew and her aunt, while Stede unsympathetically offers that being a failure gets easier. I expected more compassion from a guy who treasures his own crew and also enjoyed the hospitality of Zheng Yi's ship, but okay. Being a dick for the sake of comedy, I suppose. "Thing's have a way of working out. At least for me" And Zheng Yi proves Stede right by killing the soldiers, and Stede claims that went just as planned. I am not sure what happened to the Stede who successfully avoided being backstabbed in episode 5 and defended his crew in episode 6 and actually seemed competent, just to go back to an ignorant fool, but hm.

Fisherman Ed returns, thinks Stede in danger, and recovers his leathers that somehow are still in the same place, after mindlessly killing everyone in his way. Whatever happened to not wanting to be a monster and not killing and running away from that, it doesn't matter anymore. The flashback of pop-pop tells him he needs to go back to what he is good at, and I guess... this is it??? The Kraken rises from the sea again. Will there be consequences for Ed's emotional state after that? Well, no. Not really. Or not in this season anyway.

Okay Ricky invites Izzy to a drink, he's quite obviously a Izzy fanboy. For what reason he took him out of prison, I don't know. He later says "Sad, I wanted to let you live", implying he had plans for Izzy. What those plans were, we will never know, Ricky never tells us. Izzy talks about what piracy means to him. "It's not about getting what you want" and I don't know if he means pirates generally robbing ships to get treasure, or of himself being perceived as a mastermind or being a captain, because he never inclined he wanted either. So, what a weird thing for him to say. "It's about belonging to something when the world has told you, you're nothing" is a beautiful line that makes me wish we had gotten at least some backstory to Izzy. Then we're shown a picture of the crew from season 1.... with Izzy in the background, quite obviously not belonging (yet). What an odd choice to cut into. You could have used something from season 2 that showed him actually belonging

Ed finds one of Stede's love letters, it's cute, but I am not sure why we needed that to somehow reinforce that Ed loves him. We already saw him worry for Stede and literally revert to his Blackbeard persona to set out and save him. He also didn't leave because he didn't love Stede or doubted Stede's love for Ed, but because he needed to find himself first to make it work. It's not a long scene but it took a bit of the momentum of the Kraken rising from the water from me.

Ed and Stede see each other again and we have a callback to the episode one opener. Which was also the moment where I slowly realized, death was in the cards for Izzy because that dream sequence meant his death. But no, this is OFMD, it'll be fine...

We're back in the cell, and our mates are trying to escape. Auntie is there! Very much alive, despite having been on an exploding ship. Who brought her there?? When was she brought there?? How long has she been there and why did no one bother to check the cloaked figure in the corner? NEVERMIND, Auntie is here and alive I suppose. Bleeding out and we've got no supplies to treat her, but she will walk it off just fine.

Captain trio congratulate themselves on beating a bunch of soldiers. Honestly impressive, outnumbered as they were. Mh, maybe they should get back to the crew tho...?

Auntie realizing she was harsh on Zheng Yi and admitting maybe she needs a different approach. I am seeing a parallel to Izzy later admitting his approach was wrong too. Except (and excuse the bitterness) Auntie gets to continue to "mentor" Zheng Yi.

We get a weird hard cut from "I don't do soft" to the talk between Izzy and Ricky. I really thought the talk had been talked, but some more insults get thrown at Ricky, and the deus ex machina happens as all prisoners are freed from prison, the captain trio arrives and all soldiers die of poisoning. Personally this was the moment where I had to slow blink in disbelief, because everything was happening so fast.

Stede talks about how they need a plan, and how a royal hostage could prove valuable. Another hard cut "SO, that's the plan". We do not hear the plan. We just gather from the following montage that it has to do with dressing up as English soldiers. We get a montage of everyone preparing for battle and dressing up, looking cool in slow motion. And, they did look hella cool, but there was so much buildup for them dressing up for the plan...without knowing what the plan even IS.

And then the plan apparently is.... just Izzy holding Ricky hostage? And the rest waits around and sees how it plays out? And they're just trusting Ricky to go along with their plan and say what they want him to say? Why was Izzy the one who had to hold Ricky hostage? The one person with a visible wooden leg? Not sure if peg-legs are an established pirate thing in this world, but the British seem to think so, because they look down at it. Why did no one check that Ricky had no weapons on him beforehand? And most importantly, where the fuck was Stede during this suicide plan? He is the one who planned it, yet he was nowhere around the group with Ricky, nor did he fight any Soldiers. He only reappears when everyone is running away. What the hell!! Where'd he fuck off to. Again, all this epic plan build up, for the barely existing plan to go up in shambles within 5 seconds, and then they all run. At this point they could have just left Ricky at the Inn and attempted to walk to the ship safely in disguise without ever drawing attention to the soldiers, and they would have had as much chance.

Ed asks Izzy if he is okay and I raise an eyebrow, A) because we as the viewers barely saw him get hit and B) Ed hasn't cared much about Izzy after Stede returns. But okay, we're stumbling back to the ship, surprisingly no one else gets shot.

Izzy is bleeding out on the ship, Stede and Roach run off to get bandages. "Bonnet is in charge, oh great I am fucked" is a true statement, considering Stede was in charge with the plan already and got Izzy to here. Later you hear footsteps approaching offscreen, which I guess were Stede and Roach. They just appear again, with no bandages and no comment. I don't want to get into detail how much I despise Izzy's parting words, and the message they send out, but Izzy throughout this season proved he wanted to live and got ready for living again, just to end up saying he wants to go here, and it's just so utterly wrong. This scene was presented as someone who was healed and now got to die amongst his loved ones, but he was not healed. He practically still believed he deserved what he got, and he died believing Ed did not need him and thus he was unnecessary. If he truly was healed, he would fight to live, if not for himself and his new found family, then for Ed who he still loves, but no. Okay maybe I did want to go into detail, but anyway, many have said it better than me already.

The crew who bonded with Izzy over the whole season stands mutely in the background, leaving the stage to Ed, who has barely cared about Izzy all season. Out of nothing I am supposed to believe Izzy means something to him, after Ed shot him down, discarded of him, happily mentioned to Frenchie that "But most importantly, no more Izzy" like Izzy had been the bane of his existence, the guy he didn't even have the balls to approach first to apologize but instead mocked Izzy when Izzy himself finally broke their silence, I am supposed to believe that Edward suddenly realizes Izzy's worth and that he deserves to be the one grieving, not leaving any space to the crew? I don't think so.

All season I was waiting for them to make up again, patiently, full of hope, but the remaining episodes got less and less. And I held out hope for them to bond over talks and teamwork, remembering how well they worked together before it turned sour, acknowledging that they could do better if they tried, but instead we got this. This is supposed to help Edward move on as Not Blackbeard, but Izzy had already encouraged Ed to not be Blackbeard, yet Ed came back deciding on his own to don his leather outfit again. This is such a back and forth, it's frustrating. They could have accomplished growth without a death, but I've already talked about that.

Also Izzy telling Ed has family now, because the crew loves him. Ed bonded exactly with one person outside of Stede, and that was Fang, who was once Blackbeard's crew anyway. Other than that Ed only hung back and did not give a shit about what the crew was doing, but sure they love him after the non-pology. Where were the scenes to back this claim up, it was utter nonsense.

Okay, we get a burial. No one says a thing, no one's got to say a thing about their unicorn. Everyone leaves, and "That's that then". Stede talks about Izzy, like he hasn't personally bonded with Izzy over the last episodes and like he was simply a guy Ed dragged along (the way season 1 Stede would have felt). Also, no acknowledgement that Stede's plan was what got Izzy killed whatsoever, no remorse.

Aye no time to be sad, we got a wedding now! It lasts less than a minute screen time, and I am still recovering from the emotional impact of a death scene + burial, maybe give me a minute so I can feel happy for LuPete? No? okay.

Stede and Ed decide to build an Inn, nothing either of them has experience in. Also the "family" Izzy promised Ed is sailing away, so that was for nothing as well. What happened to Stede wanting to be a pirate? What happened to Ed returning to being a pirate, because it's what he's good at? What exactly made them change opinions to leave their crew behind and start this? *lame hand gesture at Izzy's grave* This?? I am usually good at looking for clues and details and figuring stuff out in between the lines, but I am left clueless as to what inspired this.

I am 100% sure there were missing scenes that could have helped soften the blow of the death at least, but like this the episode feels jarringly badly patched together. There is no visible impact to the death that would explain the necessity to the narrative (and yes, we are in a story, not real life. Plot points happen because they bring the narrative along, and it didn't here) With everything established beforehand, it felt like the death got shoehorned in, simply because someone said "I want this character to be dead at the end of the season", and then a story was somehow built around this.

And of course people are upset about this, when I watched I thought it was a joke and I was waiting for the little wink telling me it's not what it seems. The theme I gathered from this season was "belonging", and to see the guy accepting that he belonged and deserved to be loved to be left behind and denied a chance to continue with the crew where he BELONGS, because he's dead and gone, is a very stupid choice.

The season had many unexplained and unresolved things that I chose to overlook because the show was still ongoing and I had hoped they would all work out in the end, but they didn't and this sours the whole experience.

Fandom

This has less to do with me unraveling the happenings of the show, but whatever.

I joined very late, a few weeks before season 2 aired. I was however vaguely aware that Izzy was controversial to the fandom and that fans got hate mail for liking the character who "broke the main couple apart". So going into the new season as someone who utterly loved Izzy in season 1, I was skeptical lol

But it was a nice experience. Season 2 showed parts of Izzy that I had already seen but in a way that made it clear to everyone that this guy has Emotional Layers TM and is capable of more than just being the guy throwing a hissy fit. Everyone could sympathize with him, people enjoyed seeing him, and I legit loved going through the tags of the gifsets and reading all the reactions.

Generally I loved seeing the reactions after every new episode, seeing how fandom came together to talk over what happened, and over what they enjoyed. I had expected a very split fandom but it seemed season 2 was somewhat gluing it together. Izzy was finally an "accepted" character and thus it was "okay" now to love him, now that he wasn't trying to break Ed/Stede apart either. The show was feeding fans too, I felt like I feasted every episode up until the finale happened.

And /then/ the finale happened and the illusion went away.

Up to then I thought this was a season for the Izzy fans, with the opener episode showing how ridiculous the take of "Izzy has to die for Ed/Stede to be happy" was in a mocking dream episode, I thought that was David Jenkins acknowledging the hate that has been sent in the direction of Izzy & his fans, and how it's Not That Easy. And then he proved Izzy was more than that.

And then he killed Izzy off, so Ed/Stede could be happy and we've come full circle again.

Of course Izzy fans were upset, because it felt like a final fuck you after a season full of promises that it would be okay, and of course people were voicing their displeasure and sadness over it. Some people were downright grieving the character, and I can tell you I Am People. I went through the 5 stages of grief, through bargaining and anger directly after the finale, sadness the whole day after, crying over it because it felt so unjust to me. And maybe these reactions seem extreme to you, but that does not mean that people aren't feeling awful about the finale, that it truly hurt them. And you do not get to mock people for feeling in pain. What do you gain from that? If you liked the finale, fine, everyone is different, but allow the people who were shaken by it to express their emotions. Processing emotions takes time, and as a part of this I wrote a goddamn essay to make peace. The least you could do is not be a dick.

Parting thoughts are that the final episode was both a product of unfortunate cuts in screen time, and a writer who didn't expect the effect it would have on the audience.

I am not hating on David Jenkins, I loved every other episode of the season and eagerly anticipated the next one, but I am so incredibly sad that one botched finale broke my trust into the show, soured my love for the previous episodes with the knowledge of what it all built up to, and left the fandom back in shambles.

So long, and be kind to each other.

#ofmd s2 #ofmd season 2 spoilers #izzy hands #ofmd meta #That was the longest I've ever typed. But also at least I feel more content now #You actually do have my respect if you went through this #and to everyone still struggling with sadness: i feel you #ofmd critical

[teyamsatan]

Illicit Affairs | Chapter VIII: My Tears Ricochet

Pairing: Neteyam x Human/Avatar!Reader

Chapter I Chapter II Chapter III Chapter IV Chapter V Chapter VI Chapter VII Chapter IX Chapter X

Synopsis: All secrets are revealed and both you and Neteyam have to live with the consequences of your actions.

Warnings: pure angst, mentions of death, mental illness, addiction, self-injury, limited mentions of Y/N, did i mention angst, angst and more angst?

Word Count: 10,3k words (the first couple chapters were 3k, how did we get here??!)

A/N: This chapter killed me a little inside. I cried multiple times writing it, so I guess fair warning. I wanted really badly to build strong, round characters who had flaws and strengths and strong reasoning for acting a certain way/doing certain things. I wanted to write this story from both character's perspective, so it is clear that in life, each person will think they are right, that their reasoning was the correct one, when in reality, we are all a little right and a little wrong in everything we do, and it is always worth trying to see things from the other's perspective. We are coming towards the end of this first series, so I hope you enjoy this chapter and the rest of this journey. As always, thank you so much for everyone who engaged with it, I loved reading ALL of your comments and replies, they really make my day.

(Also, I feel like I am playing my own little game of "how many Taylor Swift and OG Avatar lyrics/quotes/references I can reasonably fit in a story without it being obnoxious" and I can't tell if I'm winning or not.)

I didn't have it in myself to go with grace Cause when I'd fight, you used to tell me I was brave And if I'm dead to you, why are you at the wake? Cursing my name, wishing I stayed Look at how my tears ricochet

You registered the girl asking you if you were alright, but you couldn’t see in front of you, the entire room spinning like the inside of a mirrorball. You felt your body rise from where it was sat next to Neteyam’s, and shakily made your way out. Neteyam’s mate. Neteyam’s mate was next to you, asking you if you need help. It all got too much, and you lunged your body forwards and threw up on the ground next to your tent. You were panting, trying to somehow get a grasp on your mind and push the hurt aside, enough so you can see and hear the world around you.

“I’m fine. Thank you.” you manage to blurt out weakly.

You heard more commotion, and faintly made out Jake’s voice and his arm on your shoulder, trying to bring you back to them.

“Neteyam, what the hell happened?”

You didn’t hear Neteyam speak. He was quiet and you were glad. You didn’t want to hear his voice, not now, and not for the rest of your life.

The world came back to focus eventually, and you spit aggressively trying to get rid of the taste of acid in your mouth. You removed Jake’s hand from your back, and left. The thought of speaking or even looking at any of them was too much to bear. You ran, harder than you ever had before, back to where you just came from, the Ikran nest in the village. You immediately recognised your own, beautiful, gold and white, pure, unlike the rest of this world. Neyn (light colours, shades of white)… fitting name, you thought. You made the tsaheylu quickly, and without a second thought, took off.

FIVE STAGES OF GRIEF STAGE III: DEPRESSION

You had no thoughts as you flew above the forest and made your way towards the general direction of the Hallelujah mountains. You realised you didn’t know where you were going, you didn’t know how you were going to find your way back, but it didn’t matter. Were you even going to ever return? There were no tears, no sadness, just emptiness. The pieces of your heart broke so finely they turned into dust, blown away in the wind of the night. Eventually you found the mountains, easy enough to spot, even in the darkness, the fluorescent flora marking the territory with an easy-to-see glow. You flew like this, for enough time that your lungs were running out of breath and your skin felt battered by the wind, but you kept going. You felt so free, so weightless. There was a calmness to your thoughts that you haven’t felt in years, probably since your mother died.

You saw a distant mountain that looked brighter than the others, and you made your way to it and were amazed to find a little cave in it, bright and colourful, a little piece of heaven on a planet that was heaven in and of itself. Neyn landed softly on the edge of the mountain and you dismounted effortlessly and approached her head, giving her pets on her neck, to which she cooed gently. She was the only friend you had, you realise. You were all alone.

“Neteyam, what happened?”

Neteyam was dragged in the tent by his dad, who was fuming. No matter what feelings his dad was feeling, they couldn’t compare to Neteyam’s anguish and terror. Why the hell was she there? She just had to wait another couple of hours and this would have never happened.

“She was patching my wound up when Tiongli came in the tent, announcing to the world she is my mate. Said mother told her about my injury.”

“Don’t you dare blame this on your mother, boy.” the Sully patriarch’s nose was flared, eyes looking at him intensely with anger and disappointment. Neteyam’s eyes filled with tears, and he felt his heart hurting so much like the gash was there instead of his arm.

“I was going to tell her tonight, dad. After dinner. I was going to tell her everything, and I was going to ask her to be my mate. I was going to come to you both and ask you to undo the engagement. I understand that a year and a half ago I gave up on her, I did it for a reason, I thought there was no future for us, and that we were hurting each other. But things have changed. She has changed. She’s going to be one of the people soon and I want her to be mine.”

“Neteyam, you can’t undo the engagement. You have known Tiongli your whole life, her family’s been expecting this since you were both young. You gave your word before Eywa, son.”

“I love her, dad. Do you understand that? I have loved her all of my life. It killed me having to leave, it killed me knowing there was no future, because she was human. But she’s not just human anymore. I was willing to go through with this for the sake of the village, for the sake of the family and the future, but if there is any chance I can have the love of my life by my side, instead, I will cling on to it for dear life. Mother was betrothed to uncle Tsu’tey, and she gave that up for you. It was done before Eywa, and she didn’t care. Because she loved you and she knew that was enough. She gave up being Tsahik, her birth right, so she can have you. I will not give up on her, dad. Mother wouldn’t have given up on you.”

“I have to find her. I have to make this right.”

You were sprawled on your back, feeling goosebumps form along your limbs from the cold grass. You were staring at the sky, noticing the bright stars you now knew were actually bright death sentences, each of them beautiful and devastating. Will you even still be alive when they come? Will everything you have gone through these few months matter? Will everything you have gone through in this life matter? All the pain, and the hurt, and the grief, just so you can die at 18 from a virus. The universe was cruel, you thought. It was a fitting end, though. Meaningless and daft, like your entire life was. Born on a planet you were not made to be able to survive on, your real planet a long-forsaken dream you will never experience for yourself, surrounded by nature that could kill you in an instant. Alone, never fitting anywhere, orphaned by human diseases: cancer and greed. Left to fend for yourself when you were just ten, learning to navigate a life that only seemed to want to clobber you to the ground whenever you thought you finally could stand up again.

There was no light at the end of the tunnel, not anymore. You wanted to fight for something, for the chance at life, or at retribution, or at love. You were dying and Neteyam killed whatever hope remained in you. They all did. Norm, Max, Jake, Neytiri, Lo’ak, Kiri, Spider, all accomplices, all aware, all willing to lie to your face for weeks with no remorse. You thought you were good at spotting liars, now you just knew how little you knew about everything.

The pain in your soul mirrored the one in your body, as you felt the morphine wearing off and your human body struggling to keep the mind steady for the link. You had to bear it, because this pain was more manageable than the one you knew waited for you in your human form, when you would be alone in a dark room with only your nightmares to keep you company.

With a sigh and a peer up at the sky, you hoped whatever comes after death was better than the hell you’ve lived in the majority of this life.

Neteyam waited the whole night in your tent, waited for you to come back, becoming increasingly worried as the hours passed and you didn’t show. He wanted to go and look for you, but knew that as soon as you got on your ikran, the chances of finding you were thin. He would go to the lab as soon as dawn broke, but for now, he was praying that you would just burst through the tent opening so he can talk you down.

He fucked up, badly. He cringed at the thought of how much he seemed to not be able to get anything right when it comes to you. Everything he did or didn’t do ended up hurting you more, the only thing he didn’t want, the only thing in the world he continuously tried to avoid.

He was consoled by the fact that he would have a lifetime to make it up to you. He will not give up trying, no matter how long, no matter how hard, he was determined to win you back and keep you, forever.

As you made it back to your human body in the early hours of the morning, you regretted waiting so long, as your body was in indescribable agony, the likes with which you didn’t know was possible for the human body to ever experience. Your heart was beating a mile a minute, you were sweating bullets and every bone and muscle in your body throbbed with enough intensity to make it almost impossible for you to get up from the pod. Everyone must be asleep at this hour, you thought. You had to make it to your bed, you had to get at least a couple of hours of rest if you were going to live to see another day. As if you were taking the Iknimaya again, you made your way form the lab to the medical ward and injected another dose of the morphine in your system. There was no going back now, you were too far down the rabbit hole to stop and why put yourself through more unnecessary pain when this will all be over in a few days anyway?

You crashed in your room for a few hours and quickly made your way back to the pod before anyone else was there to talk to. You started the linkpod by yourself and got in without hesitation.

Waking up in your Avatar body was a strange experience, as you were still in the Hallelujah mountains where you fell asleep last night. Neyn did not leave you, you noted, and she was peacefully resting next to you, cooing softly in her sleep.

“Hey, beautiful girl. Time to go back. It would be useful if you knew the way.” you pet her gently, trying not to disturb her. She woke up and pushed her snoot in your chest, and you felt it swell for this animal that you had an unbreakable bond with; you were grateful you had done the Iknimaya and at least gained a life companion from that horrible day.

As suspected, Neyn knew where to take you, and in about an hour you made it back to the village. You dreaded it, dreaded the inevitable interaction, but you knew you had to go back at some point and inform them of your whereabouts.

It was still early, so the village wasn’t quite bustling with energy yet. You quietly made it back to your tent, which you found empty. You grabbed your bow and arrows, knife and gun and a couple extra magazines. You didn’t know if you were going to be back. As you were making your way out, your head bumped into a large, muscular chest.

Fuck.

“Where the hell were you all night, kid? None of us slept a wink last night worrying.”

“Out.”

“What the hell do you mean out? Out where? You leave without telling, you don’t come back the whole night, do you have a fucking death wish?”

You laughed at the irony of his words. He caught your arm as you were walking away and pulled you back forcefully so you can face him.

“You are not going anywhere.”

“Let go.” Jake raised a brow at your words. He was not used to being spoken this way, you realise.

“How long?”

His grasp on you loosened, and his gaze softened when you peered up at him through eyelashes to which tears clung.

“How long has this been going on?”

“Kid…”

“How fucking long, Jake?”

He let go of your arm at your curse, which had never been directed at him before.

“Watch your tone, kid.”

“You made me feel like shit for learning to shoot guns without you. It made you feel bad, right? Knowing I purposefully left you out of something you could have been useful at, something we could have bonded over? I hurt you, by pushing you and Neytiri away for so many years, and I am sorry for that, but you have never, in your life, tried to understand me. So you gave me shit about something you didn’t understand, and I hurt so much inside at the thought of all I gave away by my reluctance to trust, to love, to let people in. So I changed. I let you in. I was here, everyday, acting like a perfect little daughter for you, the daughter I knew you wanted. Strong, capable, skilled. I let Neytiri in. I started calling her mum in my dreams, and although the guilt for my own mother gnawed at my insides silently, I was also relived, to finally have a family again, or for the first time.

You made me love you and break down these carefully constructed walls so you can be comfortable and sleep well at night for not breaking your promise my mum, and then you fucking stabbed me in the back.

I trusted you, Jake. You fucking lied to my face for months. Every time I asked where Neteyam was at dinners and you told me he was practicing, every day you plotted to get me out of the village as early morning as humanly possible and get me back after everyone else was fast asleep, I knew it in my heart you were lying, but you were all so good at it, I thought I was going crazy. But no, it was all a carefully planned ruse to not find out you made me come here and be part of the people just to watch the man I love belong to someone else without even a chance to decide for myself how to feel about it.”

The fight brought out the rest of the Sully family out of their tent, and they were all watching you now, concern and sadness displayed across their beautiful faces.

“You all lied to me. Looked me in the fucking eyes and lied to me, every day, multiple times a day. You were supposed to be my family.

The humans are coming. I will be here. I will stand and fight, you know I will. I will be your little soldier, and be who you made me into.

But I want to make this perfectly clear. As far as I am concerned, you and I, we are done. I am done.” You looked at every Sully one last time, and left.

You were no longer delightfully numb, but burning with anger and earth-shattering sorrow as you stalked away from the village, leaving everything behind. Your eyes were blurry with endless tears, mourning this life and this family that you managed to gain and lose within the span of a few weeks, reeling from the wounds within your heart that never had a chance to mend before being opened again, over and over. You didn’t want to go back to the lab, knowing Neteyam was most likely looking for you there. You couldn’t go to the clearing for the same reason. You had no home anymore, no place in this world, once again. You could only think of one place to go, one place where no one would ever look for you.

Your knees were shaking furiously as you walked, and you were scared of another flashback that you would have to ride out by yourself, but it never came. You just walked, crying and panting from all the pain the last 24 hours brought, and eventually you made it to a place you never thought you would ever see again. The clearing looked peaceful, with rays of light penetrating through tree branches, creating Mandalas on the ground that you found yourself tracing with your eyes.

In the corner, lay a decrepit exo suit, and you made your way to it, settling on the ground next to it. You knew now this exo suit belonged to your dad, and you removed some vines that grew on top of his name, Gideon Barlowe. A beautiful name, you thought, and your mind wandered to the past, a past way before you were even born, and wondered what your grandparents did back on Earth. Did they encourage their son to leave his own planet in pursuit of planetary colonisation, monetary gain and murderous acts? Did they know? Did he know? Was he like that his whole life, or did he start off fighting the good fight, and was corrupted by the jagged and monstrous lifestyle? You wondered if this was what he has always dreamt of doing, or he had secret dreams of being a painter, or a gardener. Did he play guitar, too? You snored sometimes, did you get that from him? You had so many questions for this man you shared half your DNA with, but have never met. For the man that died on a planet far away from home, alone, with no one to mourn him.

Was that going to be you? Would Neteyam remember you in 20 years, when he would tell stories about his childhood to his kids, when he remembered the good old times? Would you get a Na’vi send off? Or were you going to be buried somewhere in the forest, for someone to stumble upon in a distant future you would no longer be a part of?

Sobbing uncontrollably, you heard yourself speak in between wails. “Why am I here? Great Mother, please tell me there is more to this life, there is more to life than this, because I cannot do this anymore. I am so tired. I have tried to keep going my whole life, even when I wanted nothing more than to cease to exist, blissfully collapse in an ether where I didn’t have to feel anything anymore. I kept going because I wanted to make my mum proud, I wanted to honour the body and life she has given me. I am trying so hard, but I am really fucking tired.”

A little past eclipse, you arrived at the lab, and used the keycard you remembered to bring with you. You hoped Neteyam would be gone by now, in case he was trying to find you here. You made your way through the hub and into your bedroom, which looked tiny in your Avatar body. You realise how uncomfortable it must have been for him to be here so often, then cursed your brain for making you think about such things. Your Avatar body needed a bed, so you walked slowly to where the other Avatar bodies usually were laid to rest for the night. There should be an empty space where your mum or Grace used to sleep. It didn’t take long for you to wake up back in the linkpod, as with most nights recently, you were barely able to maintain the neurolink by the time evening came.

Max was waiting for you. “Neteyam came by. He’s been looking for you, said you left the village yesterday and didn’t come back. He was worried sick.”

You didn’t answer him, as you slowly got out of the pod and tried to steady your feet on the ground, harder than it seemed when the entire room was spinning around you.

“What happened?”

“The mate you all hid from me for weeks came announcing herself in my tent as we were just about to kiss.”

“Any other questions?”

You didn’t wait for a response before you made your way out of the room, stalking towards the medical ward.

As you retired to your room for the night, you noted the morphine was not working as well as used to anymore. You sat on the bed, looking at the arm that was getting blue at the amount of needle holes it had, and you knew then you didn’t have much time left. Maybe a couple of days. A couple more days of this. And then it would finally be over. You gave it a fair shot, this life thing. You couldn’t say you felt particularly sad at the thought of it ending. You pressed play on your vintage record player and let yourself sleep.

“Even on my worst day, did I deserve, babe, all the hell you gave me?

'Cause I loved you, I swear I loved you, til my dying day”

You spent the next 2 days in a haze, drugged out of your mind, waking up before eclipse and leaving to your dad’s grave and sleeping in the woods until the night, barely able to make it on your own two feet. Even in your human body, Neyn recognised you, and stood by you, which gave you some peace of mind. You made sure to bring her fruits from the lab, and she cooed warmly as she settled next to you.

When you made your way back that night, Norm was waiting.

“Where the hell have you been? Everyone’s been looking for you for 3 fucking days.”

You removed your oxygen mask and made your way to the room, where he followed you. You were in so much pain you couldn’t see straight.

“I am talking to you!” he took you by your arm and spun you around. The motion made you instantly sick, and you struggled to keep down the fruits you shared with your ikran.

“Let go of me, Norm.” you had no strength in your body anymore, so it took you awhile to shake him off.

“You look like shit. What did you do?”

You managed to make it to the bathroom, where you shut the door behind you and got in the shower. Fortunately, for you or him, you couldn’t tell, Norm was gone when you came out.

The next morning, you woke up desperately searching for pain relief and didn’t know if you were going to be able to make it to the ward before your knees would collapse on themselves. You were shaking and dizzy, out of your mind with agony and walking to the bathroom felt like the most intensive workout you have ever done. You peered up at yourself in the mirror and were scared at the eyes watching you, rabid and wild, like an injured animal waiting to lash out. It was too much for you to bear, and before you could even think or rationalise, you felt your fingers curl into a fist and make contact with the cold glass of the mirror, shattering in dozens of pieces, and it made you weirdly happy to have a visual representation of how your soul felt. The instant pain of the all the wounds the smash caused also gave you a weird sense of euphoria, and you realised it was taking away from the pain in the rest of the body, which was only able to focus on one agonising sensation at a time. This felt like a kiss by comparison, and you knew then you could go on a little longer, you could continue with the rest of the day.

Norm came bursting through the door at the loud crash.

“What the hell happened? Are you okay?”

You came out of your bathroom, blood dripping all over the floor as you made your way to the bed, sitting down on it.

“Leave, Norm.”

“What?”

“Leave.”

“What the hell has gotten into you recently. you are rude and brash, and you hurt people’s feelings with no remorse. This isn’t you.”

“What the hell do you know about me, Norm?” you say, laughing bitterly.

“Ace, stop.”

“You don’t know anything, Norm.” you kept going, the fury and hurt getting the best of you, once again, your need to destroy everything in your path as a way to cope with your own heartbreak winning by a landslide.     

“Did you know I have needed pills to sleep and to live a normal day-to-day life since I was 13? I have been slowly depleting our sleeping pill and benzodiazepines inventory and replacing it with multivitamin pills I found in one of the drawers. I mean thank God none of you suffer from anxiety or panic disorder or need help sleeping cause I would have been busted so long ago.”

You laughed mockingly at his shocked face, jaw so close the floor now you could trip on it on your way out.

“Did you know I am about a week and a half away from dying after I accidentally smashed a vial of infected blood and got it in my mouth?”

You stand corrected, you think now his jaw was close enough to the floor to trip on it.

“Did you know I have upgraded from a pill addiction to a full blown opioid addiction in order to not collapse on the floor in excruciating pain because of the way this virus is eating at my insides? Yeah, yeah, that’s right. We’re almost out of a whole vial of morphine after I injected it in my veins every day for a while now.”

He had no words. “That’s about right.”

“I do know one thing you do know, though. You know that Neteyam had his mate announcement ceremony that day I took off. You were there to see the two love birds announce their love and pledge their commitment to each other the one day I was not there. And that’s why you were acting shifty. You know about that. And somehow you forgot to tell me, every day, for weeks. How does that work out, Norm, hmm?”

“I felt so bad for snapping at you a couple of days ago. I felt like a horrible fucking person for hurting your feelings. I should have been watching my back, instead.”

You got up from your bed and started walking towards the door.

“If I were you I would not linger in a room with poisoned blood dripping on the floor for too long.”

You found some paper towels at the side of your bed and wrapped them around your bleeding, pained hand, and with that, you left.

After you upped the morphine you usually took, you went to the lab and prepped a hood for some more experiments. Work was a good way to get your mind off things, to mindlessly do something that had a purpose other than driving you to the brink of insanity.

You heard a loud banging noise coming from the entrance, and you had a sneaking suspicion you knew who it was. You heard Norm open the door.

“Is she here?”

“Yeah, but Neteyam, I think you should go. She’s not in a good place, and I really don’t think doing this will end well for either of you.”

“I don’t care, I have to talk to her, I have been looking for her for 3 fucking days.”

You heard the door to the lab slide open and hissed at the man you knew would be trying to come in, realising hissing in a human body doesn’t have nearly the same effect.

“Get the fuck out, Neteyam. This is a sterile room.”

“I don’t fucking care about the room, Atan. Where the fuck have you been? Please come out so we can talk.”

You threw your head back and laughed, really laughed.

“You really are delusional if you think there is any way in heaven and hell I would want to hear anything you have got to say. The time for talking was a couple months ago, Neteyam. The time for talking was the first day I got my Avatar body, where in addendum to telling me you own my ass now, you could have also sprinkled in the fact your are now mated with someone else.”

“I am not mated with anyone, for fuck’s sake. Just come out so we can talk, please. I will explain everything, please!”

You stopped what you were doing and looked at him, for the first time since that day. He looked exhausted, anguished. Deep purple bags under his eyes, that were burning red where the whites should be. He has been crying. Good, you thought. He looked panicked and miserable and desperate for you to give him the time of day, for you to allow him to explain the unexplainable.

You sighed and your heart constricted in pain. Neteyam will not be happy until there was nothing left of you, until he took everything from you. At the same time, you were curious, morbidly curious as to what has actually happened, what led to this moment. You knew he loved you. You knew that much, but it didn’t seem to matter in this moment, as he broke your heart for what felt like the thousandth time in your short life.

“Go to the clearing, I’ll come when I’m ready.”

You half considered just leaving him there to wait, abandoning him just he did to you. You finished splitting your cells and treating them, and in about an hour, you went into the linkpod and took your Avatar for a walk in the woods. You reached the clearing shortly, as it was close enough that even child you could do it without getting too far away from the building.

You saw him standing there, his back turned to you and his legs submerged in the river that was rushing violently downstream. It was a cold day, and rain was trickling down your body like shivers from a kiss. There was tension in the air, and you knew a storm was coming. You could practically feel the charge in the atmosphere, and were expecting thunder to start any minute now, ready to mirror the agony in your soul.

“I’m here.”

He didn’t speak for a while. Just stood looking at the river, deep in thought.

“So many of our moments throughout the years happened here. Remember when I taught you to swim in the river? Now, in retrospective, that was a bad idea since the water kept taking you away, to the point I had to wait at the end so I could catch you in my arms, like you were a baby.”

You winced at the memory.  You thought you could do this. You felt numb in that lab, numb on the way here, but as soon as your eyes focused on him, tears starting pooling in your eyes and pain overtook your body, that you tried to counteract by wrapping your arms tightly around yourself. He’s caused you so much hurt, so much grief in the years he’s known you. But he was also at the forefront of most of your happiest memories. You could fill endless manuscripts with the beauty of his love, that shone so brightly over you your whole life. He was the light in all the darkness and you honestly didn’t think you would have survived this journey without him.

That is why this hurt so much, why your body was convulsing on itself in insurmountable grief. And also why you owed him this much. Owed him this conversation, and the right to explain his point of view, that you were still unfamiliar with.

“I remember. I remember even at the time, thinking this was a good metaphor for our relationship. Life kept sweeping me off my feet, but you were always there to catch me, before it could take me away. I had so much faith in you back then, you were a fact of life, like the eclipse. You were the one person in this world I thought would never hurt me.”

“Fuck, Y/N, all I did before I left is hurt you.”

“What are you talking about?” You were confused at the turn this conversation took. What did he mean? You couldn’t recall a single time Neteyam hurt you before you left. Sure, you would fight and bicker sometimes, but it was a normal part of any relationship, you thought. And he always made it up to you, would always come to the lab and sit with you with flowers he collected or trinkets he found in the woods, always holding you and kissing your forehead to make sure you were over it before he had to leave. Fighting with him was ironically one of your favourite things, because you knew the aftermath was the closest you ever felt to being in heaven.

“I almost fucking killed you. Or have you forgotten? Have you forgotten how I manipulated you into getting on top of an ikran when you were just a 13 year old human and almost watched you die? Have you forgotten I took you to the woods and raced you to your dad’s remains? I was a walking magnet for disasters in your life and I was tired, so fucking tired of watching your life fall apart all around me. I had to watch you learn to walk again, limp because of my actions, for years. I had to pull you out of flashbacks and nightmares you developed because of ME. You were always fine in the woods with Lo’ak or Kiri, but everything bad that has happened to you happened around me.”

He was crying, panting and angry, at himself or you or the universe, you couldn’t tell.

“I thought that if I left, you would be ok. I just wanted to protect you. My whole life, all I have wanted was for you to be ok. But it seems no matter what I do, I keep fucking up.”

You had no words to speak as you lay there, listening to him letting you in to a secret you have spent so many months agonising over. The reason for his departure haunted you for a year and a half, even when you refused to think about him, about it, it was there, constantly emerging from the depths of your subconsciousness, taunting you in your dreams. Why? Why? Why?

Because he wanted to protect you?

You didn’t have time to process all of this new information, before he continued.

“The night you found your dad, I was shaken to my core, in a way I have never truly been before. I was so heartbroken, for you and for myself, for knowing this will haunt you for the rest of your life. I went home and mother found me, and told me that maybe I can’t help you in the way I’ve always wanted. That maybe it’s better for you that I remove myself for a while and leave you room to breathe and heal. So I did. It took me a long time to get the strength to do it. Every time I thought today is the day, I would see you and you would smile at me, and we would sit on your bed and you would read to me or play me songs or just be there, just you and me, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. You were everything to me, my light in all the darkness.

A year later, you sang me the song and you were smiling at me singing it, and I knew you were confessing feelings we have both felt for years and couldn’t say out loud. And I knew that if I stayed, whatever we had would escalate past the point of no return. If I stayed, that would be it. And that’s when I decided. I thought I was doing us both a favour. I knew it would hurt you, just as much as it hurt me, but I thought the pain would subside in time.”

You were crying now, you realised, tears falling silently and effortlessly down your face, with no intention to ever stop, instantly washed away by the pouring rain. There were no sounds, no sobs or wails, or panted breaths, just the sounds of rain and hopeless, soft cries and muffled sniffles, for the man in front of you, for all that you have lost, for the past you shared and the future that you would never have.

He got up from where he stood and turned around to face you. He walked towards you until he was so close to you could feel his breath on your face. His stare made goosebumps appear on your entire body, so earnest and desperate, so full of intensity for the words he was trying to convey to you.

“It didn’t.” He said, at the same time you thought the same words in your mind.

“A few years ago, mother and father told me I would one day have to find a mate. They knew and I knew it was expected of me, but I always put it off, so they eventually dropped it. I learnt later they both knew about us, so they didn’t push me into anything until they felt I was ready. A few months after they realised I decided to leave, they started bringing it up again. I didn’t want to hear it, but they said it was time, as I had refused for years longer than what was acceptable in the clan. I met with so many girls, all from good families, all healers in training, all wrong. Beautiful girls, smart girls, skilled healers and singers, and it was like looking at the grey walls of your lab. I felt nothing, I felt sick just thinking about it, like just the thought would be betraying the memory of our bond. Eventually, I told them they can decide. Grandma can decide whatever she thinks is best, and, as Tsahik, I would listen to her voice and wisdom, and do my duty to the clan. She chose Tiongli. I knew her growing up, and we were friendly, so I tried to make an effort. I would go to her tent, and she would show me her training sometimes, I would let her heal my wounds and imagined it was your hands touching me instead. I visited her family and paid my respects, and had dinner with them whenever they invited me. I hoped in time, I could learn to care for her, to lessen the distaste in my mouth whenever my family or the clan talked about the future, about the ceremony, about the life I was supposed to lead that I hated even the thought of.

And then, one day, my dad sent me to get Lo’ak from the lab. I was so scared of knowing I would have to see you again. It had been so long, and so many feelings gnawed at me on the walk there, terror and anxiety, guilt and longing. But then I saw you, and there was only one feeling: love. Like no time had passed at all. I knew then I was going to love you for the rest of my life, and that will never change. That was my fact of life, my eclipse.”

He slowly took your face in his hands, and his thumb was caressing your cheek trying to wipe the tears and raindrops that were falling mercilessly. You saw his face slowly getting closer to yours, and you knew you should pull away, you should remove yourself from his grasp before the kiss was going to remove the last ounce of happiness from you. You knew what you had to do, knew that no matter what information or answers or justifications he would give you today, they wouldn’t matter. You should pull away, because there is no future, no hope. But you couldn’t. You didn’t know what waited for you in the afterlife, but if there was any chance you would have your memories, you wanted this kiss to haunt you forever, to remind you of the life you left behind.

His lips touched yours so gently, it felt like a whisper. Like a hug, tender and warm, it was so different than your first kiss. Tears were still running down your face as your lips moved, entangled with his and begging for more. Your hands went to his chest, to his neck, to his back, just touching him, trying to memorise his body, this feeling. You wanted so much more, you wanted to be his, you wanted to feel him, you wanted him to own you, like he did your heart, which has been his your entire life and will still be his after your death.

You were a mess of wet tangled limbs and panted breaths by the end, and eventually, he broke the kiss to look at you through teary eyes.

“I love you, I will always love you. I am so sorry.”

“I love you, too.”

“But this doesn’t change anything, Neteyam.”

“Thank you, for finally telling me why you left. For giving me some closure for something that has plagued me for so long, it became a constant part of my nightmares. Thank you for having my best interest at heart; it couldn’t have been easy to leave, if you didn’t want to, it took a strong heart to do something that hurt you for what you thought was the lesser evil. But it doesn’t change anything.”

“You left me. You broke me. And you never gave me a chance to make my own decisions. To figure out for myself what was the path forward. I have NEVER blamed you for my misfortunes. The ikran ride is still a beautiful memory to me. You made it a beautiful memory. If it weren’t for your quick thinking, we probably would have both died at the hands of Toruk. You saved my life, Neteyam. You carried me home and stayed with me while I was having surgery, you stayed with me after, while I recovered. You pulled me out of the worst panic attack I have ever had when I found my dad, and you rode out so many of my flashbacks, I have lost count. You weren’t the cause or the common denominator of these events, I was. I am the one plagued by misfortune and hurt and death. Not you. And if you tell me you had to leave to save your own peace of mind, I would respect that. I don’t know anyone in this world who can take this, take me and all the shit that follows me everywhere I go. I don’t blame you.

But if you tell me that you did this for me, that I can’t accept. I didn’t ask for any of this. You gave me no choice, and no say in this relationship, in our shared life. You just left. I deserved better than that. And I deserved better than to find out about a mate after months of lies and manipulation and deceit. I don’t care. I don’t care if you are going to say that you didn’t want it, or you were going to undo it, or that you’ve always loved me and never her. I don’t care. You lied to me, you manipulated me. You accused me of fucking your brother as you were promised to another woman that you hid from me for months. I do blame you for that, and I will never be able to forgive you.”

“Please, Atan…I will tell her no. I will tell her -.” he was sobbing now, his hands still on your face, pleading.

“No.” you slowly took his hands in yours and removed them from your face.

“I think you should do it, Neteyam. She is a good girl, she will make a good Tsahik, and a good mate. Your mother was right, there is no future here - there never was. I love you, so much. But I think you have broken my heart one too many times. I am done.”

You turned your back and walked away from him and the life that was lost - forever.

You were completely soaked when you arrived in the lab, and you went straight to the Avatar laying room and cried. Cried until it felt like no more tears could possibly come out of you. You cried yourself to sleep and then cried in the pod, on the way to your bedroom, and in bed until your human body eventually collapsed from exhaustion. You cried in your dreams, in which Neteyam was kissing you and touching you, doing all the things you were silently begging him to in your mind just a few hours ago.

Eventually, nightfall came, and you had to get up to do the rest of your experiments and top up your analgesic. Ironically enough, you were making real progress on your work. You found a combination therapy that was showing incredible potential in slowing the virus down. It wasn’t enough to stop and eradicate it, but it was enough to give people more time and hopefully give the scientists more time to find a cure. It wouldn’t help you, but maybe you could still help others.

At some paint through the night, as you were making up some reagents, Norm bursts through the door holding a bunch of equipment and some pills, you realise. He puts them down on the bench behind you and speaks.

“Right, stop whatever you are doing, right now.”

“I am in the middle of something.”

“I don’t fucking care. Stop, now.”

You were taken aback at his words and attitude. Norm never got mad, or lost his composure. He was so most well balanced person you knew.

You put the pipette gun down and turned around to face him.

“I still need to adjust the pH on this.”

He ignored you while he prepared the myriad of little gadgets he brought with him. He motioned for you to take off your lab coat, and you rolled your eyes in annoyance, but did as you were told regardless. You were too tired to argue anymore.

He raised the sleeves of your top until they couldn’t go any further up your arm and put a blood pressure monitor on you. You felt tension as its sleeve tightened around you painfully, but eventually it gave out with a puff, and you heard beeping as the machine finished its reading. You looked to your right where the monitor lay, and saw red lights flashing, letting Norm know your blood pressure and pulse were dangerously low. His eyes widened slightly at the sight, but he held his composure, removing the gadget from around your arm and putting it away. He then read your oxygen levels, which you saw were constantly dabbling between 89 and 90%. Not good, you thought. No wonder you could barely breathe anymore. Norm cursed silently under his breath, trying to not let you see him, but if there was one thing you were good at, it’s reading people. Well, you thought you were, at least.

“Did you do any tests on your blood? How is your complete blood count looking?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Why the fuck not, Ace? It’s not like you don’t know how to do it.”

He was angry, really angry. You’ve never seen Norm this angry, you’ve never seen Norm acting this way towards you.

You just shrugged. With a huff of annoyance, he took your arm and prepared a needle and syringe to collect some blood. He gulped and you could see tears forming in his eyes when he looked at the violet bruises and needle holes that were plastered along the length of your brachial vein.

“Just didn’t get around to it.”

“You didn’t - Are you fucking kidding me right now?”

“What medicine have you been taking? Did you take the Relenta, or the combination therapy we have been working on?”

“Neither.”

You swear you saw Norm’s entire body enter a catatonic state and he turned so red you were worried he was going to release steam out of his ears.

“You have been sick for a month and did not take anything, none of the treatments we have been working on?”

You couldn’t look him in the eye anymore, finding comfort in the pattern of the tiles on the floor.

“I can’t believe you. I didn’t peg you for someone who would just throw their life away meaninglessly. Your mum had to die because we didn’t have a way to treat her illness, and here we are, with a solution that YOU came up with for your own illness, and you will just not even try?”

You were quiet, not really having a way to rebut his questions.

“Fine. We will start you on the combination treatment tonight and take it from there. There’s other things we haven’t tried yet and I’m sure -“

“NO.”

“I’m not asking you. I’m not letting you fucking die.”

“Why must you always fucking try to fix everything, Norm? Some things can’t be fixed. I don’t want the fucking pills. I am done. I want this to be done.”

“So you’ll just die? Is that what you’re saying? You want to die, and not even fucking TRY to see if there is more to this life. Goddamn it, Y/N. I thought having the Avatar would help you realise life is worth living, there’s beauty in this world beyond the walls of this lab. You got your first kill, you did the Iknimaya, you’re going to become one of the people. Don’t you want to see what your future holds? Don’t you want to live to see yourself grow up? Fall in love, start a family. There are more guys in this world than just Neteyam.”

You gave Norm a dirty look and got out of the lab.

Neteyam felt his whole body reel after your conversation. It didn’t change anything, he thought bitterly. He thought explaining it to you, allowing to see that he had good reasons for his actions would allow you to forgive him, to at least allow him the opportunity to make it up to you through time. You left, just like he had so long ago, but there was a finality to you that he didn’t feel then. Back then, he always had hope that a miracle would still be possible, one in which you got an Avatar, healed and loved him, forever. He wanted to love you forever, but his apology and explanations were not enough.

He lost you, again.

He spent the night flying on his Ikran, just flying and letting the rain soak his thoughts and hurt away. He just wanted to disappear. He wanted the rain to melt his bones until there was nothing left of him but the memory of happier times.

In the early hours of the morning, he made it back to the village, trying to hide his cried out eyes and calamitous grief. He was dreading having to talk to his parents, to explain to them what happened, to have to go through with Tiongli and this future he didn’t want and will have to suffer through for the rest of his life. He didn’t have time to worry about it too much though, because, as he managed to get to the tent’s entrance, he heard Norm’s voice and his dad’s, intertwined with his grandma’s voice rising above them.

“It won’t work. Eywa will not allow her to come back.”

“Why not? She has taken her Iknimaya, she has completed her kills, she has spent her entire life in the village’s service, trying to help the best way she knew how. If she doesn’t deserve this, who does?”

“It’s not that she doesn’t deserve it. It’s that she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want this, Norm. The Great Mother will not transfer the conscience of someone with no future.”

“But maybe if this happened, she will realise that she wants to live. Once she’s rid herself of her weak body, of this disease, maybe she will -“

“The Great Mother’s word is final. She will die, because she wants to die.”

Mo’at’s voice rang in his ears so hard he thought his eardrums would pop.

She doesn’t want it.

She will die.

What were they talking about? Who would die?

No… it couldn’t be. No, the Great Mother wouldn’t be so cruel.

He didn’t wait to hear the rest of the conversation, running as fast as his feet could carry him back to the lab. He reached soon enough, he was faster than most other people in the village, and started knocking on the door of the lab with all his might.

“Y/N, OPEN UP, I KNOW YOU ARE IN THERE!”

Eventually, Max came to the door, through which Neteyam burst without consideration for the tiny human next to him.

“She’s not in, Neteyam. She left before any of us had a chance to say anything.”

“Was she in her Avatar body?”

“No, the body is in the den where they sleep.”

He didn’t bother thanking the man, as he turned on his heel and started running again. She was there, had to be.

It was still raining, the clouds relentless as they released drops that poured gently down his face and body, and Neteyam thought the Great mother was crying, mourning the love being washed away like a pebble in the river of the clearing, just like he was.

You were there, of course you were. A current shocked Neteyam at the sight of you. This was the first time he has seen your human body in months, and he found it hard to reconcile the image of you he has known all his life with this current one. You were incredibly thin, so thin, whereas a few months ago he could trace your muscles, he could now trace your bones. You were pale, almost ashen, and the hair that he once spent so long admiring was now brittle and dull, obvious even as it was, wet and clinging to your back. You looked lifeless. He felt a lump form in his throat and tears pool in his eyes that were still not dry from all the pain this day has brought.

You didn’t notice him yet, your human ears much less sensitive than your Avatar, so you were just sitting on the riverbank with your chin resting on your knees, which were brought to your chest and your arms wrapped tightly around them. You were looking at the water, and it was like you weren’t actually there. You were in your own world, far from here, from this hurt.

“I was going to ask if it was true, what I heard Norm talk about in the tent today, but I think you’ve answered my question.”

Neteyam saw you flinch, and it felt like even that brought your weak frame pain. You were trembling when you looked at him, and your face made his own drop in shock. Your beautiful features, the blush in your cheeks, the glimmer in your eye, the pink of your lips, your animated expressions or raised eyebrows, were all gone. Your eyes looked glossed over and numb, your face looked ghostly and sunken, and Neteyam swore he could trace every blood vessel on your forehead and neck. The sight of you made whatever happiness or hope he had left dissolve and trickle down his bones, until it reached the ground where it was eventually buried, never to be seen again.

“I didn’t think I could make myself any clearer, Neteyam.”

“tell me it isn’t true. Tell me he’s lying; he’s making it up.”

“What part?”

“All of it.” Neteyam was angry now, trying to contain the temper rising in his chest.

“Tell me you’re not dying.”

“Norm has a big fucking mouth.”

“Can you for once in your fucking life just answer a question? This is fucking serious!”

You winced at his words, then struggled to get up, but did eventually and fully face him. The state of you hit him like bullets, piercing and scraping at his every organ, leaving bleeding wounds behind.

“It’s true”.

Crack, crack, crack. 

“When?”

“The night you gave me the guitar. I was so busy being in love with you I forgot to put the proper protection on, and I smashed a bottle of infected blood. It got in my mouth, in my nose.”

“I thought you were working on a cure.”

“Haven’t found it yet.”

“But you said you have something that kind of works, something to give people more time.”

“I’m human, it doesn’t work that way for us.”

“So, you’ve tried.”

You weren’t looking at him anymore, just staring at the ground in front of you, somewhere next to Neteyam’s feet.

“Tell me you have fucking tried.”

It thundered aggressively as Neteyam said that, and he saw you once again tremble at the loud sound. You have never been a jumpy person. You were the bravest person he knew. You were the strongest person he knew. It was unspeakable having to watch you now, sitting meekly in front of him, when just a few days ago you took the Iknimaya, taking the climb to the toughest tests known to the Omatikaya, doing it like it was nothing, just another day for you. To know that this is what was hiding underneath, this is what you hid from all of them, made him both impossibly miserable and strikingly enraged at the same time.

“TELL ME YOU HAVE TRIED.”

“NO, OKAY?? NO, I HAVEN’T FUCKING TRIED.” You were sobbing now, your tears washed away by the rain and wind as soon as they fell down your cheeks.

“Why?”

“Because I am tired. I want this to end.”

“I thought you were happy. I thought you were better. You seemed better in the Avatar.”

“I was better… in the Avatar. Because that wasn’t my life. That was just a beautiful dream, while my life was the never-ending nightmare. It was easy to pretend in that body. It was easy to be the version of myself everybody wanted me to be. But I have to live with the real me every night. And I don’t want to do it anymore.” The more you cried, the more Neteyam’s blood boiled in his veins.

“That’s such fucking bullshit.”

“You know what I think?”

“I think dying is fucking easy. It’s your easy way out.”

You looked up at his much larger frame incredulously, and he saw how your mood was starting to mirror his own.

“What did you just say? You think this is fucking easy for me?”

“Yes, I think it is. I think all you’ve done since your mum has died is take the easy way out. Put everything and everyone in your little bottom desk drawer, keeping everyone at a distance. Do you know how much mother and father suffered every time you refused to come out, to come to the village? My mother cried herself to sleep at the thought of you alone in that lab, at the thought that you preferred that soulless, empty place to her, to us. Did you know that?

You have not once opened that drawer, not once dealt with anything. All you do is numb yourself down, pretend you are fine and the issues you have suffered through do not exist. Well guess fucking what, Atan? They exist. And until you deal with that pain and let it pass over you and through you, you will always take the easy way out.

You have made me feel like the worst person in the world, for leaving, for lying to you. But what the fuck have you done, huh? You lied to me about dying, for weeks! About dying! What, was I supposed to find you dead one day and that was it? That was what I deserved from you, after all the blood, sweat and tears I gave you? You said I took your choice away. You wouldn’t have even given me a choice to say goodbye to the love of my life before you fucking died!

I left you for a year because I wanted to protect you, you are leaving permanently because you refuse to fucking deal with the pain and hurt I know you feel deep down inside. You had a choice. You could have come to the many people who love you, love you unconditionally, and told us, and let us in, and let us help you. You could have gotten help, taken the pills, fight your damn hardest to make this work, to find a cure, for the life your mum gave you, the life she would have to watch you throw away. You have a choice now. To want to live, to want to fight through this and come out the other side a new, better person. To let me love you, let people love you. To do the consciousness transfer and be with me, and be happy, forever. And you’re choosing this.

You are a coward.”

Neteyam turned on his heel and walked away, before he got a chance to see you collapse on the ground, giving your last few breaths in the place he used to imagine both of your children laying in his arms peacefully while you sang them to sleep.

Tag list (I hope I didn't miss anyone, thank you so much for asking to be tagged &lt;3): @nuhteyam @eywas-heir @fanboyluvr @mashiromochi @puffb4ll @sassy-persona @simp4ff @mommyneytiri @inomoikawa @jackiehollanderr @jaysarchiv3 @meivap @dakotali @hlhl99 @eskamybeloved @erenjaegerwifee @winchestertitties

#neteyam #neteyam x human!reader #neteyam x reader #neteyam fanfic #neteyam reader #neteyam sully #avatar #avatar twow #avatar fanfic #neteyam x avatar!reader #neteyam sully fanfiction #neteyam angst #awow #awow neteyam #loak reader #avatar loak

[velvet-vox]

The complete and utter alienation of Tai Lung.

First thing first: I am not a Tai Lung defender so consider this an unbiased post.

So, Kung Fu Panda color theory is pretty much well known across all of the fandom, and it's obvious even from an outside perspective.

Po and the heroes are yellow/gold

Then Lord Shen's red

Kai's and Oogway's green

And finally Tai Lung colour is blue

(Also Chameleon is also yellow but this ain't about her).

And this is the one I want to touch upon in this post.

You see this graphic?

These are the three primary colours /yellow, cyan and magenta/ that come together to form the main secondary colours /blue, red, green/.

If you are in the fandom, or you just simply pay attention, you'll also know that:

Tai Lung's backstory has ties with Shifu.

Lord Shen's backstory has ties with Po.

General Kai's backstory has ties with Oogway.

But Kai backstory doesn't just simply have ties to Oogway like we were simply led to believe at large, but it also has ties with Po, because of his ties with the panda village and its effect on Oogway's reformation.

And with that, as you might have noticed, both Kai and Shen have, according to the chart, the colour yellow as a part of their secondary colour scheme.

With Shen in particular it goes a step further in that Po has red as a complimentary colour to yellow in some scenes.

Shen is also the least isolated of the villains (mental state doesn't count); always surrounded by his goons who he's going to use to conquer China and the Soothsayer, Shen is only truly alone at the end of the movie on the boat scene where he's just been defeated.

And Kai, despite the fact that he doesn't have goons that can bounce off his dialogue, is also never truly alone whenever we see him; he was a warlord leader of a huge army, he now has a jade zombie army and he often speaks to the Oogway amulet and narrates him whatever is happening, and, like Shen, he only becomes alone during his death scene.

They do tend to isolate themselves from others of their own volition...... but Tai Lung?

He has absolutely nothing. Nobody. Never had.

Returning to the colour wheel, his main colour is blue and he has ties with Shifu's backstory who, after the first movie, loses relevance for the rest of the movies. And blue itself is a pretty alien colour in the entire series (extended material included), it doesn't have any ties with yellow, much like Tai Lung doesn't have any personal ties with Po despite being in opposition, and Tai Lung itself doesn't interact much with the setting besides being a looming threat.

And it all ties back to his isolation and how it probably tied back to his turn to the dark side.

From the glimpses that we see of his childhood, Tai Lung doesn't interact with anyone else aside from Shifu and possibly Oogway, and I'm pretty confident in saying that he probably lived a sheltered life in the Jade palace. A childhood like that can inflict serious damage on a person's mental health in the long run as you don't have anyone who you can confront your experiences with, and it clearly carried on into adulthood, better explaining his fit of rage after being denied the dragon scroll.

Sadly, his loneliness carried on for the 20 years that he spent in jail. And after he escapes, he tries to claim back the dragon scroll by himself since he doesn't have an army or ways to gain allies, so he just carries on with nobody to support him and then he dies of a lonely, gruesome death that reflects on the way he lived.

The franchise itself then continues to portray Tai Lung less as a character and more as a figure of power in Po's journey, completely and utterly dehumanising him in every possible and conceivable way.

Ok, I must admit, maybe I gained a brand new appreciation for Tai Lung while writing this.

#kung fu panda #kung fu panda 2 #kung fu panda 3 #kung fu panda 4 #color theory #kung fu panda po #kung fu panda shifu #kung fu panda oogway #kung fu panda tai lung #kung fu panda lord shen #kung fu panda kai #kung fu panda soothsayer #character analysis #essay #kfp #villain

[friendly-stardust]

If you had the chance to change something about the dance of the dragons (TV show or book), what would it be? For example, how a character dies, which team a house is on,or an entire character personally. How would you change it to make the story better, in your opinion?♥️🖤💙💚

Thanks for the ask anon and sorry that it took me this long to reply. This is a tricky one and this can be long.

House of the Dragon is a complete mess and a mediocrity of a show on every level, except for the acting. The writing is at an abysmal level, and I am convinced that it only got the interest and the rating it got thanks to the fact that it is under GoT's umbrella. And the fact that the showrunners/writers decided to be ungrateful and to insult the very show thanks to which their shitty fanfiction is even relevant, tells me everything I need to know about the arrogance and the ignorance existing behind this travesty of a show. The showrunners/writers seem to have completely misunderstood the themes of The Dance dealing mainly with class stratification, the corruptible nature of power, the consequences of blind ambition, and the pitfalls of unchecked privilege, reducing it all to a dumbed-down and pandering fanfiction in which tokenism, outdated and bigoted caricatures, and banal depiction of sexual assault are used casually as tropes, while pretending to write a 'feminist' or a 'progressive’ show. So, for House of the Dragon, EVERYTHING is to be changed.

Rhaenyra should have never been written as the main protagonist: From Episode one, we already have a failure in our hand with the writing as the showrunners decided to solely use Rhaenyra as our main protagonist in a show that is supposed to depict a severe and ineluctable succession crisis at the top of the Kingdom, resulting in the splintering and in the factionalism of the ruling family. Because, at the heart of this story, this IS the main thematic of the Dance - the civil war that will be tearing the ruling family at the head of the Realm apart and, consequently, the Realm itself apart (except for Dorne which was not yet part of the Seven Kingdom). We should have had different POVs to illustrate the deep divide that have been festering within the Targaryen clan itself and POVs from some of the closest families around them helping them rule. So, if it was me writing this, the POVs would have been: • Alicent - for the Hightowers POV, to see things through her lends and because of the important role she will have as a Queen in the future and as the head of one of the factions. • Rhaenyra - She will be the heir, one of the main claimants to the throne, and the head of the other main faction. • Daemon - self-explanatory. Playing his own partition/having his own ambition and need to be in power. • Corlys - to have a POV for the Velaryons and to highlight their side of the story and their narrative as a clan close to power. I would have made the Velaryons more politically savvy and Corlys primarily working with the sole perspective of preserving and consolidating the Velaryons' place of power/closeness to the Throne. As a whole, the Velaryons and Corlys' allegiance will clearly and only be for the Velaryon's name and clan. I would also use that POV to illustrate the Velaryons tinge of resentment towards Viserys and towards the dismissive way House Targaryen have treated them since Aemon's death. • Criston - POV of a lower-class man of Dornish descent getting into the heart of power and having to navigates its difficulties with his set of believes and morals, and how being in the middle of all this impacts his decisions and his ambition for the ascension of House Cole to a more prominent social status.

Using Season 1 as a set-up Season and not rush with catastrophic and mismanaged times skips: Season one should have really been a set-up season, taking the time to really put the foundations into place, while having enough belief in the story to give it the time needed to develop naturally. I believe that it is important to pose the base that the fracture in the clan Targaryen and with the Velaryons have been created since Aemon Targaryen's death which, according to me, is truly the start of this whole succession crisis. The Dance is just the poorly managed resultant of the whole process, seeping through several generations of resentment and hatred for one another. This will also completely negate all the stupid arguments I have seen online of 'if Viserys had married Laena, all this will not have happened'. This is because the show writers have failed the only-show fans who have no clues that the Velaryons have already threatened war during the whole Rhaenys vs Viserys ordeal. It would also emphasise the reason why it was important for Viserys to not shun the Velaryons and to keep a close alliance with them and would explain the reason why Vaemond became that adamant and not too keen on letting Rhaenyra's bastard usurp their ancestral throne. If only the Velaryons were taken seriously by the writers and not solely used as tokens and brownie points to prop-up Saint Rhaenyra?

Being aware of tokenism, bigotry and of anachronistic representations: This show seems to have been written by people who appear completely oblivious to how careful they should have been with how to manage negative stereotypes.

Avoiding Tokenism: From a standpoint of a Black woman like myself, the way the Velaryons were written was quite insulting. The showrunners/writers seem completely oblivious to how bad it looked to have the only House cast as Black being completely subservient, usurped and abused by their white-coded Targaryen counterparts, with no protest from most of them. The only one of them who protested – Vaemond - was villainised by the narrative and was made to say a misogynistic slur to justify his murder in open court. Murder which has no further consequence in the narrative. These showrunners/writers seem to not understand the racial implications that this casting choice creates in this world and seem completely ignorant to how to organically integrate that change into the narration and how to prevent stereotyping those race-swapped characters, so to not reduce the Velaryons to mere tokens. As a result, the writing made the Velaryons act like complete idiots devoid of any sense of pragmatism, strategic mindset, or political intellect, in a world that literally demands those characteristics of the people playing the game of throne. And the way Rhaenyra’s relationship to them was written also reeks of racist undertones. Overall, the way the Velaryons were written just demonstrates the ignorance and the shallowness we have behind this show and highlights the fact that the race-swapping was only made for aesthetic purposes and for some veneer of visual racial diversity.

And the best example to illustrate that vile treatments of the Velaryons is the way Laena and her daughters were written - not that Laenor or Corlys or Vaemond were spared either - but the treatment inflicted onto those female characters, now made WoC, represent better the showrunners/writer’s deep misogynoir, to which I am sure, they are completely oblivious. Laena's role and arc in the source material was completely butchered and diminished, by rewriting and reducing a feminine, beloved and desired (in her marriage to Daemon) woman - seduced and brazenly wanted by Daemon as his wife in F&B - into some teenager seducing the grown man Daemon, all while he only had eyes for the White girl Rhaenyra, actively feeding into the stereotypes about girls of colour growing up faster, having to be needy and desperate for men attention, and having to seek out male attention to be noticed. I mean, as if Laena was not beautiful enough for a man to notice her without her having to throw herself at him? But it doesn't stop there. They managed to erase her relationship with Rhaenyra, reducing it all to some repulsive scenario of pitting two women against each other for a man, the complete opposite of what happened in the source material, in addition of making Laena the ‘other woman’, the lesser desired one, and the unwanted wife, in her relationship with Daemon. And let not forget the trauma-porn inflicted on her WoC body in that violent and traumatic death, which is a complete bastardisation of an invented only-show concept of “a woman dying a dragon rider death” - whatever that means. Apparently, once Laena became mixed-race in the show, she became some thirsty, miserable, completely isolated woman, willing to go along with only being good enough as a second choice to her white husband, and dies violently by suicide instead of the beloved and cherished woman full of strength and humanity we have in her white woman depiction from F&B. The same abhorrent treatment was inflicted onto Baela and Rhaena, both written as some wallpapers and empty headed mute dolls with no layered personalities and no real wants of their owns, just willing to go along with anything, even to their own detriment (this includes Rhaenyra’s bastards sons taking precedent over them for Driftmark), as long as it favors and bolsters the causes and the ambition of Rhaenyra - the woman their father married just few weeks after their mother's funeral.

Avoiding Bigoted depictions:

a) Some of the tokenism arguments can also be applied to the showrunners/writers’ decision to depict Ser Criston Cole as a brown man of Dornish descent, which already comes with its own in-world racial undertones, while being very hell-bent on portraying his character as an emotional, thuggish, and resentment-driven character, who got his positions as hand-me-downs from two white women, instead of the intelligent, calculated man, always in control of his emotions, and above all, driven by ambition, and who got to the highest position of knighthood in Westeros by the merits of his own competence, as he was described as in his White-coded version in F&B. This illustrates once more the showrunners/writers’ incapability of understanding the tokenistic nature of their racial representation. Also, maybe unaware, and oblivious to their own bigotry on display in what they were implying here, the showrunners/writers went with the problematic trope of the savage, misogynist, and violent brown man for this character. And the fact that they decided to deliberately frame this brown man as some misogynist and vindictive man, unreasonable and unjustified in his anger towards his sexual predator when he is the victim of sexual assault in that “Rhaenyra’s sexual empowerment” episode, just disgusts me. As if his feelings and the shame he felt from the whole ordeal the next day, as a person, was to be dismissed or worst, mocked. The optics of the showrunners narratively dismissing his trauma while they have decided to change his race in the show, just highlights once more the racist undertone we have in the writing of some of the characters in this show. It also illustrates how out of touch the people behind this show are when it comes to representing power and racial dynamisms in a sensible way.

b) Larys Strong is the first disabled character we see on screen with his clubfoot and someone in the writing room though that it was a great idea to then transform him into some deviant sexual predator who gets off by fetishizing FEET. You cannot make this up! The showrunners/writers also butchered his character by making him the confirmed and sole murderer of his father and brother, when in the books, 3 other characters, Corlys, Viserys and Daemon, were also plausible culprits for that crime - but they are all Team Black so better whitewash them all and put it all on the disabled and only Team Green character that was also under suspicions for this murder. And all to see Alicent’s feet, ladies, and gentlemen! Instead of the enigmatic, calculated, and ambitious character we have depicted in F&B, the showrunners/writers made Larys Strong into some outdated caricature and despicable representation of a disabled character, embodiment of all of the devious and negative traits, by equating being disabled with being devious in morality and mentally. It is just a vile way to represent disabled characters, quite akin to the way they were viewed in medieval times as bearer of bad intentions/evilness, which also confirms the ableism and the hollow activism we have behind the scenes of this show.

Avoiding anachronistic representations:

a) Equating Alicent to a 'Woman for Trump' - a misogynist and reductive slur used within a very 21st century USA political discourse - while portraying a woman supposed to be within a setting mirroring medieval Europe, just shows the lack of culture, and of historical knowledge we have in this writers’ room.

b) Anachronistic girl boss characterisation: Rhaenys is written as a vessel to peddle nonsensical 21st century notions of White feminism, a hollow wannabe and anachronistic girl boss, spouting anachronistic speeches, while the show completely removed any agencies from most female characters, and took strong female characters from the original story and turned them into some victims of situations, none of their own doing of course, who constantly cry and are afraid of making any decisions, all while most of their negative traits are given to the male characters, absolute monsters and responsible for all woes that afflict the female characters. Also, Rhaenyra is whitewashed into some girl boss and some absurd notion of a ‘modern politician’ - modern in which historical period, no one knows – who spouts drivels like ‘when I am queen, I will make a new order’, to brazenly pander to Daenerys’ fanbase, when both women are nothing alike, except for the fact that both are Targaryen women.

4. Follow the source material and not thematically rewrite the Dance:

No Aegon I prophecy or dream. Maintain the Targaryens as the ruthless colonialists they are instead of trying to justify their reason to brutally colonise a whole continent. As a person from the African continent, this is not the kind of rhetoric I would like to see peddle, justifying colonisation in the name of some superior purpose.

No white stag apparition coming to anoint our Saint Disneyesque Girlboss Rhaenyra to rule. This is insulting to the intellect of people who want to see complex storytelling.

Completely rewrite the dreadful Episode 9 and make it as close as possible to the book’s depiction of the Green Council.

No Girlboss moment for Rhaenys, murdering hundreds of peasants and ruining Aegon’s coronation.

Erasing that bullshit about Alicent confusing Viserys last words and make the Green reason to crown Aegon and Helaena based on tradition and precedents, as in F&B, and not based on some feeble concept such as the King’s word. We are not in an Absolute Monarchy here, but the uncultured idiots we have behind this show don’t even know the difference.

Not erasing fat women representation with Rhaenyra and Helaena when you claim to be such ‘feminist’ and ‘inclusive’ show. Where is the inclusion of different female body shapes? Or are they not worthy of representation? Instead, we have one of your showrunners (the incompetent Sara Hess) using fatphobic language to make it seem like it is weird for a woman’s body to evolve after several pregnancies.

Showing women on the Green side (Alicent or Helaena) going through their pregnancies and giving birth.

Not erasing Helaena in her own coronation.

Not infantilising Helaena and making her a side character in some other characters story (Aegon, Jace).

Showing the Green kids with their dragons in Season 1. As it was portrayed in HotD, most casual viewers don’t realise that in real Targaryen fashion, those kids should have their dragons around them in most official displays (side eyeing the whole dragon pit debacle here).

Where is Sunfyre and a clear view of Dreamfyre?

Making Vhagar roar when Aemond eye was slashed.

Making one of the adult correct Baela’s and Rhaena’s wrong assumption that Aemond stole Vhagar. Why did the incompetent showrunners/writers even insinuate that foolishness in the first place without having one of the adults rectify the Dragon lore? We all know that it was to paint Aemond as the villain in this situation.

Making it more evident that Rhaenyra meant torture when she said, ‘sharply questioned’.

Why was Daeron and Maelor absent?

Not making the Dragon/owner bond murkier with that shitty and useless singing session from Daemon in Episode 10, when it is canon that one rider cannot have 2 dragons at the same time to ride. Surely Daemon, as verse into Valyrian lore as they proclaim him to be, should be aware of that. This is just confusing the casual viewers.

Using Mushroom's accounts for both the Greens and the Blacks – if I am using them at all.

Not erasing Mysaria’s miscarriage as it is part of her characterisation.

Not claiming to wanting to make a 50/50 adaptation when BTS the showrunner Ryan Condal is using gobbledygook such as ‘they made Aegon usurps his sister Rhaenyra’s throne’, when, by all Westerosi tradition and precedents, Aegon could not usurp what is already lawfully his as the first-born son of the King.

For the book version of the Dance, I don’t have much to change to be honest:

I would have significantly toned down the Daemon’s fest.

I would have made the Velaryon more neutral or playing both sides, with a strategic splitting of the House to support both sides.

I would have made some of the Houses change team, like for example, making the Royces in the Vale side with the Greens, splitting the allegiances in the Vale, to better illustrate how profoundly divided the whole Realm becomes with the war of succession.

The Redwynes (which I would have made the maternal side of Alicent) and most of the Reach would have sided with the Greens.

I would have betrothed Daeron to one of the other powerful Houses in the Reach.

No Wolf Hour.

No army pulled out of nowhere in the Riverlands after Aemond reduces them to crisp. Instead, some part of the Vale army would make the bulk of it.

Finally, no Jaehaera death. That was just petty and quite stupid writing from GRRM with no logical justification as to why she needed to die. No need for the “most sexy 6 years old” to ever exist in the story.

Jaehaera and Aegon III will have their children, who mostly have no real impact on the Targaryen line anyways, apart from Daena the Defiant who gave birth to House Blackfyre.

#ask #fire and blood #asoiaf #house of the dragon #anti hotd #hotd critical #bad writing #lazy writing #team alicent #pro team green #ser criston cole #alicent hightower #pro aegon ii targaryen #aegon ii targaryen #house velaryon #laena velaryon #larys strong #ableism #shallow activism

[bettyfrommars]

hi loves

a wee announcement/bit of reflection below the cut

nothing heavy, just some thoughts & updates

First of all, I want to say I love this fandom so much. Truly I do. It has carried me though possibly the hardest, loneliest year of my life (and this ol' girl has been though some dark times). I've made friendships here that I hope to cherish for the rest of my life.

I came into fanfiction in October of last year, after not writing anything substantial for almost a decade. My dear friend at the time said she was looking for a specific Eddie Munson story, so I wrote it for her. I wrote it in first person because I didn't even understand how "reader perspective" was a thing, that's how wet behind the ears I was to this world. My friend, on the other hand, is a well-versed fic reader, and I distinctly remember messaging her like, "okay, what the hell is a Y/N??"

I spent that entire dark, cold winter writing and passing it to her in parts like notes in a classroom. The rush of getting back to something I loved so deeply after so much time away turned me into a monster. I lived and breathed that story. We sent endless messages back and forth every day about what each character would do next, imagining ourselves in that world, with Eddie. We made playlists, we cried. We screamed and giggled and kicked our feet when they finally kissed. We mourned the loss when it ended and moped around a bit before going back to read it all over again. Some 40k words and four months later I realized, holy shit, I think I write fanfiction now?

In a way, fanfiction saved my life. It brought me back to a part of myself I had buried, a part of me that worried it might never see the light of day again. It came crawling out of the ground, gasping for air like, "you better stretch your fingers bitch because I have a lot to say."

In April, I started posting here when the fandom was notably beginning to wane, but I was happy to see there were so many still going hard for our man. I kinda creeped in, like a little scuttling crab, and was grateful to find that a handful of you embraced me.

Long story short, I am NOT leaving, not at all. I know the tone is there, but that is not what this is, lmao. I will hopefully keep this blog for as long as you will have me. I plan to finish writing I'm on Fire and Death Becomes Us, as well as maybe another bit for gargoyle!Eddie, and nightmare!Eddie, but the other series I've started (or planned to start) will stay on hiatus for a while, possibly forever. I will continue to post blurbs and hc's and whatnot, but I won't be committing to any new series or long fics.

My masterlists will remain intact for the time being for those who want to enjoy what is there. That being said, The Nightmare Factory and Stop the World and Melt with You, might be taken down in the future only because I plan to re-work them into original stories. I have a second non-fandom blog in the works that is dedicated to monsters, nightmares, and magic realism, and I will let those who are interested know about it when the time comes.

Mostly, I wanted to let you know that, even if you notice some changes, I will continue to persist with "My 2 Joe's" delulu era, possibly until the earth swallows me up. I am no longer taking requests, but my asks will always be open for thots, blurbs, obsessions, etc. You know how much I love hearing from you.

That's all really. Perhaps this is simply one of those "end of year" thought dumps, but I also wanted to say a heartfelt Thank You to those who continue to support me, enjoy my work, and share it. My Ride or Die monsterfuckers and biker Eddie enthusiasts. My nightmare Eddie dreamers, my Twilight Zone Eddie pineapple heads. My gargoyle Eddie romantics who cheer on our Stone Boy, and my Hybrid Steve lovers who leave their windows open at night. My True Blood friends who appreciate a vampire Eddie who is nothing like Bill Compton. My darlings, my fellow rebel rousers and misfits, my friends.

This is a very symbiotic relationship, and I could not/would not do this without you ❤️

#Betty thoughts #delulu for life

[in-g-major]

ATLA Unpacked: Kataang is Reactive, not Constructive (Part 1)

In my last rewatch of ATLA, I came to a conclusion about something that's bothered me since I first watched the finale in 2008. After *the kiss* which closes out the entire show, I've been of the opinion that Kataang was an absolute failure, on multiple levels. Over the years I've held that position through multiple rewatches and the perspectives of many other intelligent, passionate fans. However, why it fails is something I've thought more deeply about over the years. There are the implications of a romance with a very lopsided balance of emotional labor, and issues of one party's consent (Katara's) being violated without an apology. Those are serious problems and valid criticisms, but here I'm going to be examining how Kataang fails because of its position within ATLA's story. As a disclaimer, I am not invoking Zutara in this analysis. For most of my time as an ATLA fan I abstained from the shipping wars beyond an occasional comment, and I only became pro-Zutara within the last year after taking on the responsibility of writing about these characters again. Alright, here goes! Reactive vs Constructive? When I say Kataang is a reactive force, I mean that it disturbs the flow and direction of the narrative (the implicit and explicit messages a story is projecting to the audience) by contradicting and clashing with other things we're presented with. A constructive force, on the other hand, is something which shapes the narrative towards an internally sound and satisfying conclusion. To explain what I mean, I'll be going through the show in episode order. No Kataang in sight yet (B1:E1 - B1:E13) A commonly cited argument in favor of Kataang is that it was part of ATLA from the beginning and the show was building towards it all along. This argument doesn't hold up simply because of how many episodes go by before there are any implications of romantic interest between Aang and Katara. The closest thing to romantic subtext is the way Katara appears to Aang after she frees him from the iceberg. (B1:E1)

By itself this doesn't suggest anything particularly romantic, especially since Katara is the first person Aang sees after a very traumatic experience. Later on he tells Appa "I liked her too" (B1:E2), but that's pretty nonspecific. After this we get exactly zero text or subtext until we're over two-thirds of the way into Book 1. Now a romance between two characters doesn't have to be developed from the very beginning of the story to make sense. However, things get messier for Kataang from here, so hold on tight. The Dashing, Dark-Haired Boys in Katara's life (B1:E6 - B1:E10) In my last rewatch I really took notice of how we see Katara's dynamics with no less than THREE dark-haired boys her age or older in the span of five episodes. First, there's Haru (B1:E6), with whom she builds a very sweet friendship that has some romantic possibilities. They bond over the struggles of losing their parents to the Fire Nation, and he's the first person who empathizes with her feelings about the death of her mother.

Katara: I lost my mother in a Fire Nation raid. This necklace is all I have left of her. Haru: It's not enough, is it? Katara: No. (Disclaimer: Harutara was my OG ATLA ship) Next, there's Zuko (B1:E9), at this point her enemy and the one who finds her mother's necklace after she loses it at the end of B1:E6. Their parallels so far have revolved around the longing they project onto Aang and learning to master their elements. Here, in their first one-on-one interaction, a further connection is established through Katara's mother's necklace. Exactly why this is significant for Zuko isn't clear yet, but it pays off wonderfully later on.

Zuko: Tell me where [Aang] is, and I won't hurt you or your brother. Katara: Go jump in the river! Zuko: Try to understand. I need to capture him to restore something I've lost: my honor. Perhaps in exchange, I can restore something you've lost. (That first image is the perfect snapshot of how hilariously awkward this exchange actually is. Zuko's only cool when he's not trying to be) Finally, there's Jet (B1:E10), Katara's first crush. She's wooed by his good looks and guerilla tactics against the Fire Nation, then spends most of the episode smitten with him. Jet empathizes with her mother's death when she brings it up, but he also tricks her into doing something she would never have agreed to with full knowledge of his plans. When she confronts him about it, he tries manipulating her with what she told him about her mother, and she truly turns on him when she thinks he's killed Sokka. It's the first time Katara has had her trust violated, and it's a painful experience.

Katara: Jet, why? Jet: Katara, you would too if you just stopped to think. Think about what the Fire Nation did to your mother. We can't let them do that to anyone else ever again. Katara: This isn't the answer! Jet: I want you to understand me, Katara. I thought your brother would understand, but... Katara: Where's Sokka?... I can't believe I trusted you. You lied to me! You're sick, and I trusted you!

(Just putting those images together had me slightly teary. Poor Katara.) What these character dynamics have in common is that they're all constructive. They contribute to Katara's story without contradicting each other. Her feelings and agency are clearly emphasized, and all three boys exist as their own independent characters while simultaneously being part of her journey. Keep that in mind as we venture into our first real Kataang episode. Related Meta & Additional Reading - Katara's Romantic Agency by starlight-bread-blog

#atla meta #katara #katara defense squad #katara deserved better #anti kataang #g major writes #g major meta

[yggdraseed]

Women in Jujutsu Kaisen

Let’s get this out of the way first: if you’re reading this because you enjoy reading posts by people who hate Jujutsu Kaisen, you’re going to be disappointed. I actually like Jujutsu Kaisen a lot, I have a lot of positive things to say about it, and I’m going to be explaining my reasoning here. You should probably move on if you want trash talk. But if you have a negative view point that you’re nevertheless willing to reevaluate or recontextualize by looking at things from a new perspective, please read on.

A lot has been said about how women are written in Jujutsu Kaisen. A lot of good, and a lot of bad. I think a lot of the bad comes from how Jujutsu Kaisen was praised so early on for how it’s women were written, only for people to either not see it or have their expectations not be met due to events in Shibuya and the Culling Games. However, while I try to respect diversity of opinion, I feel like a lot of people aren’t really grasping why the way GeGe Akutami writes women was lauded. I think a people have lots of different ideas of what makes for a well-written female character, and don’t find what they’re looking for in Jujutsu Kaisen, thus they get angry and they post online about how GeGe Akutamisogyny isn’t going to beat “the allegations.”

I’ve never liked the justifications put forth for that argument. There’s a lot of subtext to how the female cast of Jujutsu Kaisen are written that can’t fit neatly into the simple world of page and panel counts or win-loss ratios. And, fortunately, there are tools for feminist literary analysis that I am going to employ in what will hopefully be a short trilogy of posts, starting here.

When I see people criticizing how women are written in Jujutsu Kaisen, I usually only see them using one point of interest: the outcome of a fight. If a female character doesn’t win a fight, then some people in the audience take that to mean that GeGe Akutami hates that character, hates women, and doesn’t want them to succeed — or some variation of that, perhaps less extreme.

This is a product of Jujutsu Kaisen being a Shonen, and thus being on the radar of Shonen fans who — let’s be honest — are not known widely for consuming anime or manga outside of the Shonen demographic. Shonen is heavily focused on conflict and competition as storytelling, it’s why the term “battle shonen” is used so prevalently. And Jujutsu Kaisen doesn’t try to deny its own Shonen heritage: it uses fights for storytelling all the time, sometimes even more than other Shonen seem to do.

I think this might also be a cultural thing. Anime and manga are written very differently from Western movies or comic books, with very different cultural background and different artistic sensibilities. However, that’s a topic that I’ll unpack another time, maybe not even in Part 2 or 3 of this post.

Point is, we need to step back and get some perspective. People who use the losses or deaths among the female cast as evidence that GeGe hates women, or sees women as inferior, or has some sort of passive, culturally-inherited sexism in their worldview are suffering from tunnel vision. You need to look at the story as a whole sometimes, not just the one subject in question.

Go back to the Goodwill Event, and the fight between Nobara and Momo. Their whole conversation is a huge part of why Jujutsu Kaisen was praised early on for how Akutami writes women, and I think the subtext of it really went over some people’s heads. It did mine, the first time around: to me, it just felt like a competent, if tired “girl power” moment for Nobara. But as I invested more time and thought into reading the series, and as I learned more since first viewing that scene, I started to realize what I wasn’t seeing in that scene.

Momo shares something in common with all of the Kyoto Students, Todo and Miwa being the exception. In addition to seemingly coming from a more-or-less established sorcerer pedigree, Momo shares the general pessimism that hangs over the Kyoto Students like a dark cloud. There’s this very morosely Japanese sense of “woe is me, but there’s nothing to be done” about Momo, Mai, Noritoshi, and Mechamaru, in one sense or another. These four are people who will complain about a problem, then just sit while it washes over them and batters them like a wave. They just accept the unfair hand they’re dealt in life, and while they don’t like it, they treat it as something no one can overcome. Furthermore, on some level, I think these four don’t necessarily want to overcome the misfortunes and injustices they face.

See, Momo pours her heart out at length about how hard it is being a woman and being a sorcerer. And the way she talks about it is a very different critique of society than you’d see in a lot of Shonen. She talks about how women are expected to be perfect: beautiful, graceful, exquisite, the model of femininity, while also keeping up with the macho “might makes right” sensibilities that dominate sorcery. In her words, “men have to be strong, women have to be perfect.”

This isn’t something that’s just being plucked out of thin air, this is a criticism of the girlboss culture that arose through the 2000s and 2010s up to now. Women are expected to battle sexism alone, in their own lives, by being exceptional: rather than reforming cultural structures that put women at a disadvantage to men, girlboss culture says women just need to always wear perfect makeup, always be fashionable, always work 2.5 times harder than men, and find time to raise children and have a side-hustle at the same time. Instead of fixing the problem, it’s telling women, “Just work harder. Just be better.” As if women haven’t been having to work harder for nothing in return for the past 50 years, holding down jobs that they have to go above and beyond to prove themselves in as compared to male coworkers for whom the job might as well be a guarantee by comparison, having a ceiling put on their promotion while men who didn’t put in as much work get to move up the company ladder, and frequently having to juggle having a child and taking care of housework in addition to the expectations of jobs that often don’t afford maternity leave. And then, on top of all of that, the expectation is then foisted on to have the time and energy to perfectly craft your hair, makeup, and outfit for the day, and if you miss a single step of the whole stupid dance, you’re seen as an underachiever. That’s girlboss culture, and that’s what Momo is indirectly criticizing when she laments the contradictory and unfair expectations women in the sorcery world have to uphold. They need to fight just as hard as the men, while wearing skirts and not getting a single scar on that pretty face.

(Just as an aside, I love the way this conversation comes about. Momo and Mai are pretty close to each other, to the point that it sometimes feels like nobody else in the Kyoto school likes or respects Mai like Momo does. And Momo targets Nobara with this whole speech because of the friction between Mai and Nobara, and because she wants to stand up for Mai. I like that element of both solidarity and conflict between women, about being a woman, and I’ve always gotten sapphic vibes from Momo and Mai, so I’m glad that she’s the one giving this whole speech and why she’s doing it. But I digress.)

And the thing is, she’s not wrong. Neither Nobara nor the story as an overall entity refutes anything she says. However, Nobara points out something else about Momo that she shares in common with the other Kyoto Students who were raised to be sorcerers: the way she treats her whole life like a job. Momo has internalized the culture she despises, and instead of trying to rebel, she just accepts all of it as “the way the world works.” She soldiers on, just as Noritoshi soldiers on with his family’s expectations, Mai soldiers on with her pain and feeling of being abanoned, and Mechamaru soldiers on with the isolation, unfairness, and general misery that comes with his Heavenly Pact. Soldiering on, as if soldiering on has inherent value when it leads nowhere and accomplishes nothing. Never addressing the problem, or trying to find a way around it; simply rolling that boulder up the hill, grumbling all the way. She and the other Kyoto Students have this sense of treating their own misfortune as a badge of honor. To them, they’re justified and validated because they have experienced more than their fair share of suffering. They’re always eager to flaunt the crosses they have to bear.

Momo treats being a woman as a curse. Funny how that ties into the rest of the narrative, huh?

For Nobara, being a woman is not some great burden she has to live with. Being a woman in general and being Nobara Kugisaki in particular is something she revels in, and it’s just the fault of everyone else if they think otherwise.

Let’s talk about Nobara, and let’s not reduce her to her death scene. When we meet Nobara, she’s immersing herself in the Tokyo way of life after moving from the countryside to the big city. She encounters a sleazy talent agency recruiter who’s pestering women on the street with his hand-rubbing, obviously nefarious ways… only for Nobara to stop him, turn him around, and say, “What about me?” He gets intimidated, tries to run, and she drags him back. From her perspective, he should be happy to have her, and the fact he isn’t means he’s ignorant of her beauty and wit and needs to be corrected. If he won’t convert to Kugisakism, then her charms are wasted on him, and he’s doomed to the dim world that is Nobaralessness. When she meets Yuji and Megumi, she introduces herself with a line that’s translated into English as, “I’m the only woman in your group.” But from what I’ve been able to gather, her line in Japanese is, “I’m the red mark.” The phrase “red mark” can mean “the one who’s different from the others” — like the one girl in a group of boys — or it can mean “the one who stands out.” So you can also read it as her saying, “I’m the stand-out of the group.” Nobara Kugisaki, everybody.

If you want to talk about how literary circles analyze how women are writing, let’s leave the topics of fight outcomes and feats to one side. One thing you immediately look for is motivation. What’s motivating a character? This is important for how female characters are written, and especially in Shonen, which revolves so much around characters with some goal or belief that the story pursues through fights and other forms of adversity.

Now poorly-written women will tend to be motivated by men. They’ll be attracted to a man, or trying to support or protect a man, or trying to find a man. This by itself isn’t a death sentence for a woman’s characterization, but it is a red flag. It’s also not as if women have to never interact with or think about men to be well-written. It’s not an on-off switch, a bad writing-good writing switch. It’s a meter, like Mahoraga steadily adapting to a technique. Just a little bit is fine, and can be even turned into good writing in capable hands. But if it becomes too prevalent and is never examined, then you get a situation where a story’s women are not permitted lives outside of being in a male character’s orbit.

How do we gauge this? Well, there are lots of ways, but one of the more well-known and simple techniques is the Bechdel test. The name is derived from Alison Bechdel, feminist author who penned such classics as Dykes to Watch Out For. Bechdel proposed a simple litmus test for how to tell an author’s seriousness about writing women, and it goes like this: 1.) Look for scenes where women talk to each other. 2.) In those scenes, check for how often they’re talking about things besides male characters.

This isn’t the only way to tell if women are written well or not, and some will say it isn’t even the best way, but it’s a good foot in the door to get us thinking about what divides well-written female characters from poorly-written female characters. I’m not going to go back and scan through the whole manga just yet, but let’s look at some examples.

— The aforementioned conversation between Nobara and Momo, where the two pit their different view of what it means to be a woman and a sorcerer against one another. — Maki and Nobara talking to each other after the encounter with Mai and Todo. Curious by meeting Maki’s sister, Nobara talks to Maki a bit about their upbringing. Having gained more insights into Maki’s past and personality, Nobara leans on her and tells her how much she respects her. — Miwa and Mai discussing the upcoming Goodwill Event in a flashback. Mai tells Miwa that Maki is weak, which leaves Miwa unprepared for their fight. — Maki and Mai arguing and coming to terms with what drove them apart. Mai just wanted a peaceful life with Maki, but Maki couldn’t be happy and authentic with herself if she just left things the way they were. She was forced to choose between herself and Mai, and Maki chose herself, knowing that Mai would suffer and that she’d shoulder some of the guilt for that.

This indicates that GeGe found it important to divorce the identities of the female characters from male characters. And this holds true in what drives and motivates the female cast.

Nobara is motivated by her own goals. She hates the countryside, and she loves the city; becoming a sorcerer is a way she can make a lot of money, live in the city, and pursue the kind of lifestyle she values. She wants to be a true blue Tokyoite, wearing trendy clothes and eating crepes and taking selfies by the statue of Hachiko outside Shibuya Station. She’s not doing this to avenge her dead brother, she’s not doing this to find her father, she’s not searching for a strong man to sire strong children — yuck. Nobara has aesthetic values and strongly held beliefs, and becoming a sorcerer lets her pursue those values and beliefs.

And if you really want to analyze the action side of Jujutsu Kaisen as an indicator for how GeGe feels about female characters, consider how Nobara takes to sorcery like a fish to water. Both Megumi and Yuji have their own internal dilemmas with being a sorcerer, but not Nobara. In a series where mindset is so important, Nobara has the mindset. Uro describes the model sorcerer as having “no concern for others and an overwhelming sense of self.” There is no one with a more overwhelming sense of self than Nobara. She’s loud, opinionated, loves to argue, flaunts herself, and demands other people give her more than what they think she’s due. She’s narcissistic, but that faith in herself makes her mentally strong.

She lacks experience, but even then, she learns and grows rapidly through the series. Due to running out of nails to fend off cursed spirits during the first stretch of Fearsome Womb chapters, she invents Hairpin as a way to reuse nails she’s already launched and embedded in a surface. She manages to land a Black Flash during the tag team fight with Yuji, and it’s her oppressive use of Resonance on Eso and Kechizu that turns the tides — a tactic which required her to hammer nails into her own arm. She takes it on the chin and gets her brain rattled around in her skull during the fight with Haruta, but even while borderline unconscious and suffering from a concussion, she forces herself to keep him talking in hopes Nitta can escape and manages to get to her feet and keep fighting despite the total disorientation and inability to summon her strength. While she didn’t win the fight, she showed more fighting spirit than half of the male cast tends to, and I find it kind of gross that people will ignore all of that and mock someone who kept fighting against the odds. That’s like laughing at Mumen Rider when he’s hopelessly trying to fight Sea King even as his body is breaking. I don’t exactly see what about either case is so funny or worthy of ridicule.

Even in the showdown with Mahito, people always fixate on how she dies, but never consider what led to it. She crosses paths with Mahito, and even knowing from Yuji what he’s capable of, she goes in — partially because he hurt Yuji, her friend, and she wants to make him suffer for it. And her technique turns out to be a worst case scenario for Mahito. She’s hammering his clone with Resonance and sending the blowback to the original while he’s fighting Yuji, dividing his attention and weakening him. Her only mistake was chasing him down, and even then, this isn’t the story punishing her. It’s the story being consistent with who Nobara is. She’s got a dangerous enemy on the ropes, her pride is bruised after the fight with Haruta, and she has a chance to get vengeance on someone who’s hurt her friend while helping said friend in the process. If she hadn’t followed Mahito into the subway, then she wouldn’t be Nobara Kugisaki.

And in her final moments, Nobara achieves something that’s considered to be out of reach of most sorcerers. She dies content, with a smile on her face. Nobara may not have realized her potential to be a great sorcerer, but she got what she, personally, wanted. Sorcery was a means to an end, and she got to live the Tokyo life and meet interesting people that she considers her friends. She got to fill out that finite number of seats in her life, and even meet a few people who pulled up a chair when she didn’t expect it. In her words, “It wasn’t so bad.” Nobody else but Toji and Gojo have gotten to die this satisfied — Toji because Megumi had grown up free of the Zen’in curse, Gojo because he was authentic to himself right to the end and left it all on the field. Nobara was authentic to herself right to the end, and that’s worthy of high praise. If she is definitely dead and not coming back, then she managed to accomplish what it was she wanted before dying. Not many get that luxury in Jujutsu Kaisen. It hurts because I liked her and admired her and appreciate the way she was written, and her dying doesn’t make the value of her character disappear from the story entirely. It’s the character’s death, it’s everything that led to that death and what that death means to them and to those who are left behind. And if it’s manga that explore death, nobody does it better than GeGe Akutami.

Lots of people will point to an interview where GeGe said that Nobara was not originally considered part of the cast, and they’ll use that as evidence that secretly, GeGe’s a big stupid misogynist who hates women and likes killing them in stories and blah blah blah blah blah. You know, first of all, I doubt that the editor held a gun to GeGe’s head and said “Put in a female main character or die.” Secondly, if GeGe really didn’t care, Nobara would just be a two-dimensional copy of Sakura who dies in the first arc or two. GeGe would not have put in the effort to set her apart from other female leads, or given her so many stand-out moments, or given her such an interesting motivation and world view. In short, if GeGe didn’t want to write a female character, they’d do what Kishimoto did: write Sakura. But that comparison is a can of worms I’ll need to pry open another time.

To sum up for the time being, no, GeGe Akutami does not hate women. Losing a fight does not make a female character worthless, and does not indicate a disdain for them on the part of the author. I don’t know about you, but I don’t read Shonen just to see who punches harder. I want to see characters be challenged, sometimes fail, learn, grow, and overcome adversity — and it wouldn’t be adversity if all the characters I like win and survive easily. I love Kashimo and will continue to love Kashimo, and Kashimo being super ultra dead doesn’t change that.

Look out for Part 2, in which I’m going to unpack some really contentious stuff when it comes to challenges and female characters in Jujutsu Kaisen. We’re gonna talk about the concept of screen time, we’re gonna talk about subtext, we’re gonna talk about great expectations and the great unexpected in Jujutsu Kaisen, and we’re gonna talk more in-depth about the narrative outside the narrative of Jujutsu Kaisen in a vacuum. If your sense for danger is giving you a bad feeling about this, then it should be: we’re talking about that. Switch on your Anti-Gravity System, it’s going to get messy.

#jujutsu kaisen #literary analysis #analysis #jjk analysis #feminism #feminist literature #feminist literary analysis #nobara kugisaki #maki zenin #akutami gege

[littlecello]

Lazarus: An Autopsy

So. I just got back home, and though I have to get up at stupid o'clock for work tomorrow morning, I am sitting down at my computer to give you all as much of a detailed write-up of the table read as I can. Please bear in mind these are my and Fern's opinions personal opinions, so if you disagree with anything said here, that's totally fine! This is all coming from the perspective of people who have been in the fandom since 2012 and 2009 respectively, and both of us love the show very dearly.

Now, without further ado - here is a summary and discussion of the table-read of the pilot episode of Lazarus. The detailed write-up is under the cut, but I want to share this shaky train-doodle I banged out on the way home to give shape to my own feelings:

Set Up

This was a dramatic table-read, meaning actors were sat on stage, taking the roles of the main and side characters, plus one narrator who read out the scene-set ups in the script. This was a complete reading of the pilot-episode as it would have aired on TV, complete with songs playing over the speakers as they appeared in the show (off the top of my head - Another Brick In The Wall, Somewhere Over The Rainbow (Ukulele Version), Life on Mars (yes they went there), Merry Christmas Everybody, and several more). It's important to note that this was not performed by the original actors; rather, they brought in a troupe of actors associated with the BFI, called the BFI Players. Unfortunately they aren't credited on the BFI website and there were no printed programme notes, so I can't tell you their names. Notably, though, Ashley Pharoah (co-writer of LoM) was present; after the table-read, there was a short-ish Q&A session.

Lazarus Pilot: A Summary

We start in 2024, with a car chase. Sam Tyler, now DCI of Internal Affairs of Greater Manchester Police, is hot on the pursuit of a Constable who we later learn has raped multiple women while on duty. Notably, Sam is driving exactly the way Gene would, ignoring regulations, nearly running over pedestrians and a cyclist. Sam apprehends the PC on the campus of Manchester University, which is filmed by the assembled students of the lecture that's been interrupted (a quote from the script: "heteronormative queer trans students") - that video subsequently goes viral as another example of police violence. It's clear that the PC is guilty of his crime, but he's let off, and most of CID pretty much turns against Sam. Sam's DI, incidentally, is biromantic and asexual, which is also turned into a joke with Sam making some acephobic remarks.

The next day, Sam finds the rapist PC dead - hanging from a lamppost as though he's died by suicide. CCTV reveals that about an hour before his death, a car idled in front of his home, and the PC had hurled abuse at said car. The driver cannot be seen. That same car is seen at a carehome in Didsbury, idling there just like it did in front of that house... and that car is also confronted, by none other than a geriatric Gene Hunt.

Here is where we start to realise that this Sam is different. It seems he never went back to 1973. He never had that accident, he never met Gene Hunt - he is, however, married to Annie Cartwright (only until half of the episode though, at which point she says they need to get a divorce). A lot of anachronisms going on here, but those will get explained a little later in the episode. Sam also starts having visions - first of a Space Hopper that keeps passing him by, later Clangers from the Planet of the Clangers appear to him. He keeps remembering lines we've heard in Life on Mars ("I never stitched anyone up who didn't deserve it", "If you can feel things you are alive, but it's when you can't feel things that you know you aren't alive", etc). Eventually, he goes to visit Gene in the care home and invites him for a drive, to see if that will jog any memories.

Gene, however, has other ideas - he eventually forces Sam to stop by the roadside, insisting "I'm going back! I'm going BACK!" The two start arguing, and then it devolves into a physical fight, which pushes them into the road... at which point, they are both his by a car. A red Audi Quattro, in fact, and just as everything fades to black, we see someone with white cowboy boots and a white leather jacket get out of the car...

1977. Sam wakes up utterly hungover in the Cortina, next to Gene who's driving. These are their 70s selves. They get to the station, where they find out that they've both been suspended due to Gene assaulting the Superintendent ("I didn't assault him, I strategically placed him... in a bin."). The department has been disbanded and taken over by none other than Derek Litton. Sam and Gene leave, with Sam driving home... to his wife Annie. On his way, he realises that he must have dreamt about 2024, and obviously doesn't understand what is going on. He talks to Annie about it, who becomes upset that he's starting to talk about all the future stuff again. It becomes clear that the case that Sam was investigating in 2024 (the dead rapist PC) is mirrored in 1977. And, crucially, near the end of the episode we realise that Gene also has memories of what we saw happen in 2024... and just at the end, when Annie is on her own, she suddenly sees the video footage mentioned at the very top (the fight at the MU) playing on the TV, and realises that Sam was telling the truth.

The Good

Let me start with the really enjoyable part of this afternoon - the actors who performed the script for us. They all did a brilliant job, especially Sam's actor. I'm pretty sure he must have studied up on John Simm's performance, because he got Sam's tone and cadence so closely to the original that I could really believe he was the character. The production was done well too, with the songs being played over the speaker system; plus, the narrator was absolutely brilliant at setting the scene, reading the descriptive bits of the script with loads of character and humour. The other actors were great too (Litton got a fantastic impression). The only one I wasn't convinced by was Gene's actor, because he gave his Manc accent a very theatric drawl that sometimes made him sound like a pirate. Definitely didn't come close to Philip Glenister's brilliant delivery of his lines.

Speaking of lines, there were some genuinely funny jokes in this. The whole scene with Litton was hilarious, and some of the modern-day jokes landed quite well too (Sam's DI pulls an "ok boomer" on him, to which he responds "that's Gen X I'll have you know").

And of course, I have to mention that it was SO LOVELY to meet a bunch of you in person!!!! It was lovely to chat, and thank you especially to @bisexualroger and friends who came and said hello, you genuinely made my day 🥹 The Bad

Sigh. Buckle up.

This table-reading really cemented for me what I've been saying for several years: The writing in Life on Mars is very mediocre. What made the show so amazing and special was the fact that the crew and actors took that material and elevated it to the heights we know and love. If you take that away... All of its shortcomings become very glaring.

This was even more obvious with Lazarus. Although we have to remember that this was a pilot, which means it was basically a sales pitch to studios and as such they tried to cram as much exciting stuff into it as possible, on the whole it just came across as very confused and embarrassingly self-referential. The characters often (but not always) came across as caricatures of themselves. The script often pointed out the race/ethnicity of characters in ways that felt very unnecessary and strange (more on that later). Most of the dialogue that took place in 2024 was incredibly stilted (again, more on that in a little bit). Most crucially, although it's clear that Lazarus was trying to bring Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes together to tie them up in a neat little bow, it just felt far too all over the place, even for a set-up episode (Lazarus as a whole was planned to be two series with 6 episodes each, like LoM). The Ugly

Basically, this show was supposed to be commentary on the present-day commentary between the public and the police... written from the perspective of two Old White Men(tm) with an unhealthy amount of nostalgia for the past who seem to think of the police as literal guardian angel, which is why they made Gene an actual angel (this is confirmed by what Ashley told us the ending of Lazarus would have been, which I will write up tomorrow because this would be too much for this post).

So, what does that mean in practice? It means that everything that was set in 2024 was an absolute shitshow. There were jokes about "wokeness" in every scene - things such as gender identities, diversity, ethnic food, vegan food, recycling, climate activism and more were only ever played for laughs, with a clear emphasis that everything was better in the "good old days". Especially all the jokes about gender and sexuality made me so angry, seeing as the fandom who has kept the show alive for the last 10 years is overwhelmingly queer.

Worse than that, this show would have been absolutely choc-full of copaganda. We already learn in the pilot that the entire philosophy is that "bad cops" are simply "rotten apples" that need to be removed from the force, which can only happen from the inside (this is Sam's role as DCI of Internal Affairs). And also, the public are just way too mean to cops, for no reason whatsoever - this is very literally shown in a scene in 2024 where a male PC touches a drunk woman's arm in sympathy and she yells at him "DON'T TOUCH ME", whereas in a mirrored scene in 1977 we see a PC giving a woman advice, who seems to be extremely grateful for it and even squeezes his hand for it. Which, if you know ANYTHING about what was going in Manchester at the time, in the wake of the Yorkshire Ripper and the associated police failings, is laughable at best, and an insult at worst.

Furthermore, during the Q&A, Ashley Pharoah unintentionally told on himself and Matthew Graham. I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said that when they both realised during the watchalong on twitter back in 2021 there still were a lot of fans of the show, that's when they felt compelled to properly give Lazarus a go. It very much came across as him saying "we loved the attention and wanted more of it, oh and also we thought we had something to say about the state of affairs regarding the police". Which, as I have laid out above, frankly is a sick joke. After everything that's happened - the protests in 2020, the way police forces in the whole country handled the Sarah Everard case, the fact that the current Chief Superintendent of GMP is an old conservative guy - the fact that Matt and Ash had the audacity to shop a show like Lazarus around to be picked up for TV is... astonishing. The confidence of white men, eh?

In Conclusion

Both Fern and I are very, extremely glad that Lazarus was not, and never will be made into a TV show. We are very glad that we get to keep Sam, Gene, Annie and all the others as they are. And we are also very glad that we went to this table-read, since we can now stop wondering what could have been. It's done and dusted. And, funnily enough, this has invigorated my fandom fire for LoM. I now want to create art of the characters I've come to know and love, to reinforce who they are to me. They are our characters now, Ashley and Matt. You don't get to play with them anymore. You don't get to twist them and put them through the wringer.

Tl;Dr

#Life on Mars #Lazarus #drawing lark #cello rambles #uhh I don't know what else to tag #I don't want to start fandom drama but I also wanted to give my personal opinion #off to bed I go now

[isildur-apologist]

You don’t hate Amazon you hate the Silmarillion: a genuine review of Rings of Power

It’s no secret that overall I liked RoP. I watched it with my roommate who gets very hyped about stuff like that and it made for a really exciting viewing experience, instead of the more bitter perspective I might have taken if I watched it alone. But, I also know there are some real faults with the show, I never thought it was perfect and know it’s not on par with the the LOTR movies and I never expected it to be. But, the fault for that is not on Amazon.

(I want to note that I am not defending Amazon. I hate Amazon. Jeff Bezos can catch this guillotine. I am, however, defending the creative team behind the show, which is how I will refer to them from here on out, I only called it Amazon to grab your attention. )

Here’s my point though, almost every (valid) critique I see of this show isn’t a problem with decisions the creative team made, it’s an inherent problem in any adaptation of the Silmarillion (and associated works but I’m just going to refer to the Silmarillion for brevity’s sake).

The Silmarillion, as full and detailed as it is, is a shit story. The events of the second age do not fit neatly into a clean story structure the way LOTR does because it’s not supposed to. The Silmarillion isn’t a story, it’s a history, and history is never narratively satisfying. Tolkien (Jirt, not talking about Christopher here) didn’t publish the Silmarillion in his lifetime, he only even published LOTR and the hobbit, everything else attributed to him was published after his death. He had no intent of making the other works anything other than a comprehensive history of the world he made for documentation’s sake, never with intent to publish. He didn’t even compile all the writings, Christopher did.

Because if this, the Silmarillion is really hard to adapt for a number of reasons:

1. Elves aren’t good main characters.

Elves aren’t supposed to be relatable characters, they’re aloof and static and inherently non-relatable (There are exceptions but they’re usually not regular elves. Elrond is half elven, Legolas is very young). Humans and hobbits are the relatable characters through which we view the world, because they can have human flaws and conflicts, which makes for a very human story. To make elves the main characters you need to make them interesting characters, and elves aren’t supposed to have human flaws, and so you either stay faithful and they don’t feel relatably human, or you change their to be more human and it feels disingenuous to what we know elves to be like. It’s a lose lose.

2. Middle earth is not supposed to be pretty.

A huge part of LOTR is realizing every place they visit is either the ruins of a past, much larger civilization, or a city that is a fraction of what it used to be (Gondor in lotr is NOTHING compared to what it was in the early 3rd age, or Arnor and definitely not Númenor, Rivendell is a pebble compared to Lindon and Eregion, we only ever see Khazad-dûm as a decrepit tomb instead of the most prosperous mine in all of middle earth is once was). This juxtaposition is integral to the main themes of lotr and is imperative to the story jirt was trying to tell. A story set in the 2nd age cannot have these ruins because IT IS THE RUINS. It cannot “feel like lotr” because it is what will make lotr lotr.

3. Characters (individuals) are of little importance in the Silmarillion.

As important as Elendil and Isildur (and even Anárion) are to the plot of literally the entire 3rd age, we know little about their own narratives. They are names for the people that did these important actions and that’s it. Again, the Silmarillion is a history, it’s not going to say what Elendil and Isildur’s relationship was like in excruciating detail or what Isildur wanted to do with his life before sailing to middle-earth and becoming a king. You have to write these characters a good story if you’re adapting the Silmarillion and sometimes there isn’t space to write a compelling journey in the space Tolkien left. Because they don’t have a character, any character you give them will seem “out of character” to many people.

Basically my point is that before you go and say “well this is weird or I didn’t like this choice” think about what the creative team had to create to make an interesting show out of a story not designed to be told. Sometimes they didn’t make the perfect decision, but if you were tasked with adapting something unadaptable do you think you would do it perfectly?

#rings of power #the rings of power #rings of power review #lotr #tolkien #silmarillion #galadriel #elrond #gil galad #celebrimbor #arondir #numenor #elendilf #oops I meant #elendil #isildur #durin iv #lord of the rings #lotr rop