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virghogh · 3 years

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NCT Dream Birth Charts x Hexaco Results Analysis pt. 1

recently NCT Dream were on a new reality show called Mental Training Camp where they are doing a variety of activities and all of their behavior and interactions are being analyzed by professional psychologists.

ofc my virgo sun mercury ass was thrilled and I had their birth charts pulled up the whole time to cross reference.

I wanted to share some of my personal thoughts on how the 2 might connect!

part 1 // part 2 // part 3

**key: in the hexaco charts the blue represents the Dreamies, the orange is an average result of 300 college students who took the same test**

Mark - “Workaholic Leader”

✨leo sun // aries moon // cancer mercury // virgo venus // scorpio mars✨

they described him as a workaholic leader but quickly added that if he’s not now, he has potential to be in the future, although it seemed they all agreed he has workaholic spirit now

this immediately made sense to me when you look at his chart i mean he’s being driven by a fire sun and moon and a scorpio mars (used to be ruled by mars) and virgo venus both of which are signs that have strong work ethics

the reason I like that they mentioned he could grow into it is because he’s still young and I agree that his placements could become more serious about work and life as he gets older, I think his leo sun/aries moon combo gives him very youthful energy but they’re still very driven signs

mark agreed that even throughout his trainee years when he was still very young, he was always practicing and was always called a workaholic. I see this in the intense drive, work ethic and perfectionism of virgo and scorpio but shining through with the warmth of his sun and moon

lets talk about this hexaco chart, what sticks out the most is Mark’s level of conscientiousness! (its so high like what even-) Conscientious people are careful, precise, detail oriented and in general care about doing their tasks well. I think this is directly connected to his scorpio mars! I always say that no matter what is in a chart, having a scorpio in big 6 will always have a strong influence and with a virgo venus, even though venus is considered a love planet it is also our value system, how we discern what is worthy and unworthy for us, and having virgo there makes him very practical. (as I mentioned though I think all of his placements together reflect a very driven person) (I also think mark is lucky to have a fire moon because if he had a water or earth I think his obsession and perfectionism of scorpio and virgo would make him d*pressed or too hard on himself)

his virgo venus could even be why when they did the bag check they saw he’s quite “frugal” or practical and minimalist in the things he carries around. When you think about Venus, I mentioned it’s our values it’s also our aesthetics and it rules Taurus a materialistic sign, having virgo there gives me the impression of someone who is practical with their belongings, as we saw.

We’ll see later in the post that there are a few Hexaco charts that I felt were a little unexpected but Marks imo was sooo spot on with his placements. With a fire sun and moon he’s very warm and open and has firey emotions. he’s not afraid to show them or be reactive and responsive (emotionality)! I think his honesty-humility reflects this too, he’s not too overly or underly honest, he’s just straightforward what you see is what you get and he answers in such a way too. His emotionality reflects the cancer mercury, the rashness of aries moon, and sensitivity of scorpio mars.

tdlr; the human embodiment of driven, focused and hard working when it comes to his craft, but he loves to have fun in his outside life, and is practical in his inside life <3 his hexaco and birth chart align nicely

Jeno - “A scholar who gets hurt easily”

✨taurus sun // sagittarius moon // aries mercury // aries venus // taurus mars✨

so right off the bat I’m very curious where the scholar part comes in ?? They didn’t really reference it again in that way but I’m assuming they mean he’s very diplomatic? Defcon rephrased it as “you get miffed but well-mannered”

a recurring comment was that he gets annoyed easily but doesn’t show it, I thought that was really funny because I feel like it reflects his aries influence well; being a little hot-headed but he has the patience of his taurus sun and mars to filter it :’)

they talked a lot about how he gets hurt easily and mark even shared a cute lil story that practically had me on the floor because i just think it shows his taurus sooooo much I’d really love to have his house placements one day I’m really curious where his taurus is

if you didn’t see the episode basically mark said one time Jeno was passing some seniors in a building and said hi but they didn’t say hi back ): and just ignored him. Mark said Jeno was really hurt by that and went on about it for a long time saying stuff like “I’m sure they saw me” )): but he never expressed/acted on that hurt. taurus is represented by the bull so they do have a fierce side to them but imo i think taurus can be a really gentle/relaxed sign too; taurus mars is a slow to be angry slow to react placement, and one of the things taurus is well-known for is being fixed, stubborn, holding grudges which explains why that moment hurt and he held on to it. Jeno even agreed he tends to hold in a lot of his feelings and remembers little things that hurt him for a long time!

speaking of his taurus... they had a whole baseball analogy for the group saying that Jeno is a strong catcher, you can have a good pitcher but without a strong catcher the team would fall apart. They also mentioned a lot about Jeno not being in the spotlight, he doesn’t stand out, but he silently strengthens the team. And if that isn’t the most taurus description you’ve ever heard.,,,

I’ve been talking about his taurus a lot but at one point they said Jeno has a strong perfectionist side but he’s also very flexible and it’s difficult to have both. I personally see this a lot in his Sag moon (mutable) in contrast to his taurus placements (fixed). Sag moon to me always seem happy go lucky, if emotions come they go quickly too, mutable gives him that flexibility because they just like when things can change freely. It’s ruled by jupiter and I feel a common theme with sag in big 6 is it’s easy for people to be drawn to their jupiter qualities. They give the same freedom they crave, they can be very easy going and positive. Similar to mark, I also think it helps Jeno to have this moon sign over another!

as for the hexaco, I’ll be honest the level of introvertness/shyness was a little surprising from an astrology stand point. When we see Jeno in all the NCT content I feel like it’s obvious he is on the shy side but if I was looking at only his chart, I don’t think I was expect it to be to the extent of the hexaco chart! (plss i need his birth time) in the same thread, his emotionality is really low and I can’t say I’m surprised from an astrology view😅 it��s not that he’s not compassionate or anything because he does care a lot about not upsetting people, but as we saw he is not very reactive and receptive emotionally ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ his openness is low too which fits what we’ve talked about above about his lack of reaction/expression of emotions, I feel like sag moons also don’t dwell especially with no water placements.

The honesty and humility makes a lot of sense to me because i feel like taurus, aries and sag(!) are very righteous signs too! They care about integrity, they certainly might have their own idea of what is truth,.. but whatever it is, they believe in it!

last note I want to make is on the whole “jeno isn’t funny” bit since they mentioned it. He said it hurt his ego when they first started the joke but it’s been going on for so long that I think he adapted to being able to take it as just that, a joke! It’s also funny to me that it started in the first place because earth signs are often called boring (it’s okay I’m an earth sign too lol) and I also have sag influence and I know people find me quite funny but I never try to be funny and it usually comes after my earth walls are down with close friends.

tdlr; doesn’t ask or need spot light, gets annoyed easily but it doesn’t last, when something does hurt he remembers, slow or unlikely to be reactive and responsive, positive, comfort creature, loyal🥺

Chenle - “Friendly Guardian”

✨Sagittarius sun // Aquarius moon // scorpio mercury // scorpio venus // aquarius mars✨

there is something about chenle’s personality that I’ve always loved, he comes off as very warm, care-free, curious, friendly, caring. I like the personality title they gave him because I think it sums him up well. The members had all laughed when they saw it and enthusiastically agreed. I also love his hexaco chart and think it reflects him really well, with most of it being just outside of the average :’) as far as how it reflects his birth chart, let’s get into it

I do want to disclaim that Chenle was born on the sag/scorpio cusp and to be a sag he would have had to be born after 3pm (!) but I think we would all agree he’s definitely a sagittarius sun anyways

Before this show when I watch nct dream content it always fascinated me how easy going chenle was in chaotic situations, he never seems too demanding or controlling, and sometimes i wondered if he was holding back for the cameras and was actually really frustrated but based off the hexaco it seems like he is actually just that agreeable, from looking at just his chart I don’t know if I would have guessed his agreeableness was that far. I know sag suns can be very easy going and aquarius is a more chilled sign but he has 2 aquarius and 2 scorpio placements they’re both fixed signs and quite like to be in control😅 (can we get a birth time pls)

One argument could be the combination of sag sun with aquarius moon, since we have to look at all of it together. it does give me the impression of someone more easy-going possibly because there is the comfort of confidence! I feel like sag sun/aqua moon + mars would give someone a high opinion of themself (go chenle). this combination could create someone who is easy going because they don’t dwell and aren’t emotionally fueled nor do they fret over people that are. I’d say easy-going or maybe even just cool headed? He’s always laughing things off too, showing he doesn’t take himself too seriously!

Speaking of taking things seriously, I think we can see this in the conscientious part of the hexaco, it was the lowest and I think it can be explained by what I mentioned above. It’s not that he isn’t driven or doesn’t work hard, he’s a full time idol they all work hard but I think it represents that work isn’t the focus of his life but rather people, connection, community, and just being happy is?

they talked about how Chenle is the type of person that you meet and already feel like you’re friends. He could be the youngest in the room and talk down to you and you wouldn’t even think twice. This is huuuuge aquarius energy! I remember one of the first things I learned about aquarius was that they make friends everywhere. They talk to a stranger on the street for directions and next thing you know they’re “friends”

I also want to add that they mention he’s friendly but he gives off “big brother vibes” i feel like we’ve all seen that in other nct content too and would agree. This is interesting to me because sag and aquarius is not the same kind of friendliness as we see with marks leo sun aries moon. Leo and aries are “younger” signs, whereas aquas and sagittarius are towards the end of the signs, they’re considered “mature” signs which I feel contributes to chenle’s “big brother” energy. He has that aqua/sag energy where he seems really sure of himself, and wise and people look up to that.

I want to talk about his scorpio placements real quick because even though I just made a case for how open and easy-going he is, I’m still confused about how the scorpio fits into all of this. scorpio isn’t known to be one to be super open, agreeable or extroverted. I personally see his scorpio come out a lot in his realtionships. you can tell he cares deeply for his members and yes his aqua makes him get along with everyone but I feel like with the dream members we see that scorpio possessiveness and jealousy come out more. Lastly, I do want to add a little mystery to this, although his openness is high and it’s clear he is a very authentic person,,.. I definitely would not call him an open book👀

Chenle wasn’t able to be in the recording of this show unfortunately so all we got was a brief description of his hexaco chart and we won’t get any further analyses ):

although I do agree that his hexaco chart reflects how he comes off in shows, I don’t think it completely reflects his chart so I’m going to say the house placements would help create a better picture!

tdlr; fun and realtionships are a priority, he’s comfortable and confident in himself and people are drawn to that, v friendly😌but he has secrets👀

feedback, thoughts and clarifying questions are always welcome!

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mariaiscrafting · 3 years

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can i ask why you dislike dream? im not being passive agressive or something lol i am genuinely curious

S’all good, kinda figured you weren’t being, and a lot of people have asked me this lol. There are so many reasons, and I’ve said this so many times already, but I’ll try to go over some of the main things I can remember:

1) Arrogance: kinda put me off how he’s always responded to criticism. Always kinda had an air of superiority about shit, and it never really bothered me on its own because I think lots of CCs are arrogant & I’m arrogant myself, but combined with all of the following, it became a reason for me to dislike him lol

2) Manipulation of his audience: look, I kinda always knew that CCs with huge fanbases, especially CCs who grow this quickly, have some kind of grasp of how to treat and foster their audience to their greatest advantage. I’ve always been wary of CCs that put on soft or nice personalities, especially since the whole Shane Dawson debacle. But with Dream, it’s been a whole other thing ever since his cheating response video, and I’ve never been able to see him in a good light in regard to how he responds to his fans, ever since. I went into it in a lot more detail back when I first watched the video, the day it dropped, but I’m too exhausted to scrounge that post up, so I’ll summarize: that video had a very specific strategy that he used to victimize himself and appeal to his fans’ compassion for him, and after rewatching the video for the third time that day, it felt gross and calculated to me. The way that he focuses very little on the actual mathematical part of his argument. The way he frames the issue of the mods having favoritism or bias. It was already proven on Reddit and throughout Twitter that the numbers the mods looked at were for good reason, and not because they just wanted to pick the numbers that made Dream look the worst, but that’s how he framed the argument. When I logged onto Twitter and Tumblr that day, there were thousands of fans who had latched onto what he said in the latter half of that video and coming to Dream’s defense, and that’s kinda when it hit me: this guy fucking knows what he’s doing, and he’s doing it well, and I really really dislike it. There’s about a hundred other ways he manipulates his audience, including not coming to people’s defenses when huge chunks of his audience attack them (even though the people had respectful and correct criticisms of him), defending stans so adamantly in the face of antis, and posting periodic alt tweets that help garner the illusion that he super cares about his fans; but, that cheating response video was the major red flag, for me.

3) Cheating & lying: as is likely no surprise to y’all, I think Dream cheated lmao. At first, I was ecstatic that he had actually made a detailed response video and put out a report with the help of an actual professional, but as I read up on his supposed statistical argument and dissected the parts of his argument that felt off to me, I realized maybe he had cheated. Talking to some STEM major friends of mine, who weren’t into MCYT but had obviously heard about the whole debacle because they like Twitter and Minecraft, kinda put the nail in the coffin for me. I’m not nearly smart enough or have a good enough memory to detail exactly why I think he cheated on this blog, right now, in April, but essentially: his main argument relied upon claiming mod bias, instead of a sound mathematical or statistical argument; there’s no way of proving that the world files he provided to the mods and in the open source weren’t altered; the statistical problems he points out (i.e., stopping effect) don’t actually skew the original mods’ model nearly as much as his supposed PhD guy would say; and the odds he comes up with might not be nearly as impossible as 1 in 7 trillion, but they still come up to around 1 in 100 million, which is still fucking ridiculous, considering that there are only, like, 120 million people in the world who play Minecraft. Not impossible, but laughable that he expects people to believe that. But... I guess they did, lmao. The thing that peeved me the most about the whole thing was the adamant lying lmao. When you look at the situation from the perspective of “dream cheated,” you realize just how fucked up all his Twitter responses, his adamance in streams and that video, and the general mood among his friends is... idk man, it’s just highly fucked.

4) Relationship with stans: look, there are significant numbers of his fans that take part in Twitter cancelling vendettas, who spread around information about other CCs and their fellow fans that is false and meant to villify them, etc., and he never fucking says anything. It really, really bothers me. There are too many instances to enumerate, but a few that have caught my eye were when Dream stans would attack Techno, prior to their battle and when a Native American woman politely explained why he shouldn’t use Native music, he responded and said he wouldn’t, but tons of stans continued to attack her in her replies for “being so harsh/mean.” Like, he knows that just one word from him will make his fandom follow his beck and call. All it would’ve taken was one fucking word. There are so many fucking people that have been harrassed off of social media platforms because of the hivemind that is dttwt, for christ’s sake.

5) Reddit posts: All of the above were reasons for me to mildly dislike the guy prior to the Reddit posts, but they weren’t really enough to make me stop posting about c!Dream or reblogging fanart or reading DNF fics or watching Manhunts. I kinda just clowned on the guy, answered the occasional ask about the cheating thing or something related, and left it at that. The Reddit posts not only pissed me off for their content, but for the lying, as well. Do you think I fucking cared about him cheating at speedrunning Minecraft, of all games? Fuck no. What I cared about was the adamant lying that went into the whole debacle. Kinda the same with the Reddit posts. I’m one to usually forgive creators who acknowledge past errors, obviously. It is creators who try to brush stuff off, or even worse, create an elaborate lie to cover up allegations, that put me off a fuck ton. This is the reason I could never be comfortable with watching Pewdipie after I realized all the shit he had brushed off, and it’s now the reason I can’t go back to watching Dream. There is so much evidence that points to guilt, including but not limited to: his first move when the slideshow dropped (before posting to Twitter) being deleting as many old Discord messages as he could, the contradiction between him at first denying the account was his at all then changing the story to say he shared it with a friend, the wording and phrasing in the political posts being almost identical to the non-political posts that were clearly him (i.e., the one that explains his demographics perfectly), and the timing of the political posts (some of them being posted mere minutes after posts that were verifiably him, like the picture of Patches to the cats subreddit). People can claim that he’s likely changed, and what this it matter, as long as politics don’t affect his work now, but I can’t believe this fundamental misunderstanding of why bigotry in entertainment matters. I’ve always had a problem with the adoration this fandom has for cishet white men, and the constant criticism of non-cishet, non-white, non-men, but this really feels like the final slap in the fucking face. It’s like everyone truly believes that it doesn’t matter, that his beliefs couldn’t have possibly affected the way he’s treated fellow CCs in his circles or any of the number of people that depend upon Dream, directly and indirectly, for employment/CC clout. It’s like everyone truly believes that political ideology has no effect on the way we perceive, treat, and behave around other people in literally any field, not just politics. I, just... Christ. I don’t really wanna unpack my emotions about this whole thing right now, so I won’t. I’ll just say: I dislike Trump supporters and ex-Trump supporters alike, I dislike conservatives who claim they’re centrists (every fucking guy my age does this, it’s infuriating and makes me want to bash my head into the nearest wall), I dislike people who levy their fans against criticism - even when it’s righteous - and I dislike people who lie about their past actions; Dream fits all those categories, so I dislike him.

#lol would it be okay if this were my last dream crit post? im very tired #i just... diont wanna talk about him anymore lol #dream critical #discourse #/neg #asks #Anonymous

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 3 years

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Why do you think Tomarry would work? I see a lot of people hating on it and the only response I ever see is that they come from similar backgrounds or people just like enemies to lovers. Also which horcrux do you think Harry would go best with (including Voldemort)

So, this is probably a more complicated question than you intended, but that’s because I live in bizarre head canon lands that few ever dare venture towards.

With that, let’s get started.

But What Do You Really Ship, Muffin?

First, it probably bears saying that I’m not really a Tomarry shipper. I know, I’ve written more than one Tomarry story, so if that’s not Tomarry what is? Well, remember that those Tomarry pairing tags are a filthy lie. October I committed the grievous sin of breaking up the Tomarry and throwing Tom at Harry’s mother. Lily and the Art of Being Sisyphus is barely a Harry Potter fic in any capacity, and while the ship is the driving force of the fic, it’s also this nebulous, distant, thing that really shows up only in strange side stories where I try to make people laugh. When Harry Met Tom is probably the closest that I take seriously, but I also intentionally subvert all your typical Tomarry tropes for my own enjoyment.

The only Tomarry story I’d say I’ve ever actually written is “The Burning Taste of Fire Whisky”. It’s a very popular story, sadly perhaps my most popular on Ao3, but I actually loathe it entirely.

A lot of the time I feel like I just happen to have a Tomarry shirt on and then I suddenly became a subject matter expert. If you want the Tomarry opinions from real Tomarry people, I’m probably not the best person to ask. In fact, if you want really any standard answer about Harry Potter anything, I’m not the best person to ask.

Now, I’m not just saying this to be a hipster but to sort of give some background for why I’m going to give the answer I’m going to give and why it’s going to be 100% different from everyone else’s and yes, sometimes, I do think I came from Mars.

Will the Real Tomarry Please Stand Up?

So with that, the bottom line is: taking canon as JKR intended, completely at face value, Tomarry doesn’t work at all. This is because JKR fully intends a very flat, one-dimensional, and frankly quite boring Tom Riddle. Tom Riddle’s evil, Tom Riddle was born evil, Tom Riddle was evil in the womb because of rape. He is completely and utterly irredeemable and understands nothing of love.

Well, that sort of sinks the ship right out of the harbor, doesn’t it? A Tom Riddle incapable of love is one incapable of growth, especially in a romantic focused story. If you try to write it you just get weird sociopathic whump porn where Tom probably whips Harry in a closet somewhere.

Added onto this we get that, despite what she put down on paper, Harry is supposed to be a straight man. That aside, he’s also a righteous man whose understanding of things like love and friendship mean he’d never sully himself with gross Tom Riddle. Ew, what are you people thinking?

Well, what if we take canon just mostly as JKR intended? What if we just look at the characters the way she actually wrote them versus what she was trying to do? Still no dice.

Tom might now be capable of love, be a far more engaging character who can go somewhere, and be pulled out of a pit of rage and despair by someone but that someone ain’t Harry.

First, while I firmly believe Harry is gay (gay, not bisexual, compare his descriptions of Cho/Ginny to Tom Riddle/Sirius Balck/Cedric Diggory/Charlie Weasley, that boy pants after Tom Riddle and Cho’s kiss is “wet”) he’s also a much worse person and much dumber character than JKR intended. It’s really the first that damns the pairing.

I have a whole giant post on how Harry’s a little yikes but the long and short of it is that while Harry thinks he understands friendship and love he’s also someone who will cut out his friends at a moment’s notice if he feels remotely slighted, uses and sacrifices them for his own ends, gleefully uses unforgiveable curses when given the opportunity, and is the kind of guy who would cut someone up in the bathroom, leave them to bleed to death, and only really feel bad about it when it seems he might get in trouble for it.

This Harry ending up even with a Tom who could potentially be redeemed would more likely lead to, well, weird psychopathic whump porn where Harry tortures Tom in his basement to make him pay for all the horrible things he’s done while Harry claims he’s the most moral person ever because his mother loved him.

So, yeah, no Tomarry for you.

But Wait, Didn’t You Say You Believed in Tomarry?

What I believe in are archetypes.

Remove what Harry’s supposed to be, remove what I think he actually is (one maladjusted, violent, dude with a whole lot of anger issues), let’s make Harry what perhaps JKR didn’t even know she wanted: one of those rare fundamentally good heroes who warps an entire story with the strength of their inner nobility.

Harry Potter is meant to be a story about love and friendship. Now, it’s not actually, and we sort of end with Harry being Jesus and none of us are sure why. Except that he apparently forgives Dumbledore and Snape for brainwashing him to be a kamikaze agent. They’re the bravest men he knows. But let’s pretend it actually is a story about love and friendship.

To me, the strongest story of love we could possibly have had in this world is the redemption of Tom Riddle. Here is a man who was supposed to have been irredeemable since birth, he has done many horrific and unforgiveable things, grew up in extreme hardship in a society that spits on everything he ever was, and is mired in bitterness, despair, and rage. Beneath all that, Tom Riddle has given up hope in the world and is now content to burn it down himself.

Harry, through the nobility of his spirit and integrity of his character, somehow managing to redeem Tom Riddle is not only a fascinating story but a very good one at its core. The fact that they are tied together by destiny as well as tragedy, that Harry houses a shard of Tom’s soul (and I do so love horcruxes), only makes it more so.

This is the kind of story that carries epics, and that is why I gravitate towards it.

Now, do I change Harry up to do so? Good god, yes. I wouldn’t say any Harry Potter I have written is anything close to the Harry we know from canon. Some are closer than others, but they always in some way deviate. That said, from what I’ve seen almost nobody writes the actual Harry we remember from canon, so this is a very standard practice I can get away with, without too many people calling foul.

Ultimately ending in tragedy or in the full redemption of Tom: either works with these base characterizations and the world is your oyster.

What About All Those Other Arguments?

I’m not going to get into this too much except that I wouldn’t argue Tomarry works for the reasons you list. At all.

On the similar backgrounds, the fact is Harry and Tom don’t have similar backgrounds, JKR just says they do because she likes that trope (and so do many of the readers).

Harry and Tom have dark hair, they both came from abusive homes, but that’s where the similarities start and end. Upon entering the wizarding world Harry is treated very very very differently from Tom Riddle.

Harry, grows up in this weird sort of pseudo poverty where he dresses in rags because the Dursley’s hate him but he never actually has to worry about money. When he gets to the wizarding world he can afford everything he wants. He can buy a new wand, he can buy new supplies, he can buy all the candy off the trolly cart. Money’s not an object to Harry, is barely even a concept.

Tom Riddle is presumably on scholarship and money is everything to him. He buys a new wand but likely all his clothes and books are second hand. He can’t buy whatever candy he wants, probably can’t afford gifts for his peers, Tom is very aware of the haves and have nots.

Harry similarly never has to worry about a career. He never gets that far, fearing for his life so much, but the fact is that Harry has enough money that he doesn’t actually need to work. More, who would turn down the great Harry Potter? He wants to be an auror, is afraid he might not qualify, but it’s not really desperate.

Tom Riddle is to the world an impoverished muggle born. He tries for the Defense position and is turned down mostly because Dumbledore threw shade. Dumbledore tries to make it seem like Tom desperately wanted to work in this weird shop in London’s magical back alley, but probably that was the only position Tom could get (everything Dumbledore ever says, especially in those pensieve lessons, must be taken with a large grain of salt). Everything else goes to friends, family, and purebloods.

Adding to this, Harry has this glowing reputation. Now, Harry might not like it, he might want to be just Harry but the fact is that everyone has heard of him and most people worship the ground he walks on. Doors are open to him everywhere. His first introduction to the wizarding world is from a man who loves him and gushes about Harry as a baby.

Tom Riddle is someone with a muggle last name, who comes from a muggle orphanage, in other words he is nobody from nowhere. (For reasons I won’t get into here I find it very doubtful Tom ever revealed he was the heir of Slytherin until he became Voldemort and let Tom Riddle fade into obscurity). His first introduction to the wizarding world is some asshole lighting all his stuff on fire because the matron talked shit about him.

Harry wants to stay at Hogwarts because the Dursleys are abusive. Yes, this is terrible, but Tom wants to stay because Nazis are bombing London and Dippet says, “So sorry, Tom, no exceptions. Enjoy those luffas!” Harry’s concerns are never treated with the same disdain.

To make a long story short, they do not have similar backgrounds, at all. To say they do is utterly laughable and not much better than saying “they both have dark hair, they have so much in common!”

They both came from abusive homes, yes, but even the nature of those homes were very different and when they went to Hogwarts they were worlds apart.

... So much for not getting into it, eh?

As for Enemies to Lovers, well, it’s a trope and people enjoy it but it’s not my jam. I could go into why, but I think I’ve said enough.

Which Horcrux Do You Think Harry Would Go Best With?

We see so little of the individual horcruxes I’m not sure I can really take a stab at this. I sort of just make up their personalities as it suits me every time I write them.

With that I suppose I’m partial to the one in Harry’s head? Given that he has a front row seat to Harry, has seen Voldemort’s tragic demise, I think he’s in the best position to end up with Harry in a meaningful manner.

Especially as, if you think about it, he could represent the very last of Tom Riddle’s humanity. The single shard of humanity that remained in him until the bitter end.

#ask #anon #tom riddle #harry potter #headcanons #tomarry #archetypes #redemption #enemies to lovers

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seoafin · 3 years

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tbh i dont expect post shibuya arc would be yuuji’s power development, but rather his character. i think part of the jjk goal is to break apart his original motivation and deconstruct it and show why it’s not a great idea (1)

when he says "proper death", it uses the kanji "正" and i think in this case its almost more accurate to phrase it as "righteous/upright death", or even "just death",, its an argument abt the legitimacy of a certain kind of death that has criteria which yuuji never really defines what exactly this is and the fact that he doesnt know and thus becomes uncertain gets spotlit in the small fry and reverse retribution arc and also during his entrance test with yaga,, imo this weakness is alluded to eventually to yaga he says "i'm not going to regret the way i live" but the thing that has always bothered me most abt what yuuji took from his grandfather's last words is that i think his grandpa also cursed him. the emphasis isn’t on proper life but proper DEATH

notably the term "proper death" is coined by yuuji. i dont believe his grandfather is the one who says this, yuuji says it for the first time when he fought curses in school that night. and this focus of proper death is part of what fuels yuujis image as a "good person"

i mean this is from megumi’s good person vs bad person pov. he’s directly compared to tsumiki; a good person is selfless, cares abt others, chooses to look at silver linings, thinks abt consequences. per his grandfather— a good person saves ppl if thanked, just bc they can

HOWEVER for grandfather, saving is a requirement. we dont know anything abt yuujis family history (yet) so we dont know what fuels this line of thought but what he's really saying is : "if u can save ppl, do it, even if it makes u feel lost - and u wont die alone" and thats some cold calculus! theres an implication of life debts being leveraged to keep ppl around u, thankful to u. that kind of expectation he (or anyone) has isn’t an ideal one : be good, and that goodness will return to u on ur deathbed. tbh,, it sounds like a binding vow mechanics imo

also,, potential death flag right in the first chapter. and yuuji IS a nice guy! but i think the narrative makes it clear that this kind of unsupported play at a rigid morality doesn’t work bc its fundamentally shallow and incompatible with shamans reality and his grandpa says "dont die alone",, and later we see on a chapter where gojou tells megumi that teamwork is great but "you'll always die alone" and "to die and then win, and dying victoriously are two different things". u wanna die without regrets, without cursing someone? die satisfying urself

while geto : "strong must protect the weak" the reason? "there is meaning" but why? shamans need to have some selfishness at their core to be successful. they have to think abt themselves, what drives them, to stand firm when they kill and watch others die in horrific, agonizing ways

yuuji's fixation is on death, not life. if he died after chp 1, or after shibuya, we dont know that it would do anything. sukuna could transfer all his power elsewhere, it could be pointless. not being able to save ppl and 'be good' does not give yuuji firm ground to grow (if his name is the same as knotweed plant gives any indication) and bc as megumi’s pov points out— good/bad are subjective and require some form of witness to be assessed. not necessarily self sustaining. i wouldnt even say that yuuji necessarily rly believes in proper death rather he’s following it bc its his grampa's last words

and so we see a lot of strong sorcerers being selfish,,, they know what they want and go after it, so they dont waver. they care, but very specifically, and so their good/bad balance is rly murky. dogma doesnt work,,, but personal conviction does

and like many ppl pointed out : yuuji isn’t the typical shonen protagonist mostly bc he lacks personal conviction that drives him toward a goal. usually, the series starts off with a character who has a goal—like becoming hokage, number 1 hero, wizard king, pirate king and with a stable sense of self and direction, the protag sets out to achieve that goal. yuuji’s different in the sense that his goal isn’t something he devised of his own; it’s sth he “inherited” : his grandfather’s will.

in his grandfather’s context, u aren’t saving or helping people for urself, but out of a fear of being alone, unneeded, unwanted or a burden. nothing abt proper death helps u think about how to live well, righteously. it STOPS thinking by providing something that looks like guidance

also, it’s a goal that’s more existential, and the criteria and steps towards getting to that goal isn’t clearly defined. which I think makes it difficult to track yuuji’s “development”/ “progress” especially if someone is just considering him as a typical shonen protag.

yuuji can’t possibly control the circumstances of people's death, and how they die. but "proper death" isn’t that flexible— u get it or u dont. the yuuji vs mahito fight is yuuji having to accept that he’s not that,,, "good person"

he also loathes, he rages, he kills. he fails to ensure "proper death". he fails to die, and when he thinks he shld die, he doesnt think abt whether or not he'll die alone. in a way its not surprising that he reversed position bc "proper death" is a concept with very lil teeth

and tbh,, i’m always doubting his “kindness” or being a “good person”, in part bc this evaluation is sth that is provided thru the perspective of megumi, who has a specific definition of a good person. yuuji says it himself too when given the choice to consume sukuna’s fingers and be a shaman, there’s no way he can tell himself he’s not at fault somehow.

so how much of his actions is actually coming from a selfish need to ease his own conscience? how much of it is all so that he won’t actually die alone? how much of it is actually altruistic? and whenever yuuji’s confronted with “big moments” where he has to choose, there’s always a callback to his grandfather’s will. which always makes me ask, how much of his sense of morality is his and his alone, not sth that’s attributable to his grandfather?

take away the grandfather’s will and what does yuuji actually have that informs his worldview? u can reason that u’re just an amalgamation of ur social experiences, but there’s always the key process of personal meaning-making which idk if yuuji has done, bc he never seems to express a personal conviction (except with regards to killing mahito and shibuya turning point),,, he’s also seems aware of this. like when he has his conversation with junpei. he understands that killing would be inevitable but he simultaneously refuses to engage with it?

he doesn’t want to introduce that kind of ambiguity in his life, pointing to a kind of self-reflexivity abt his own psychological/emotional immaturity (?)

(it’s simultaneously a mature and childish way of handling tension?) it’s a departure from typical shonen protags who have a somewhat foolhardy personality, clear abt where they’re coming from and can be reasonably predicted to act in specific ways. shonen protags typically arrive in the story fully-formed in the sense that their beliefs & attitudes are already set in stone, and even when confronted by conflicting ideologies, different points of view, the protag’s ethos doesn’t change,, even if they grow stronger, have low points, or experience conflict. they’re quite static in that sense

yuuji is like,,, a blank slate. we’re seeing the essential parts of his character develop in real time, which is rly exciting for me. ig I think of yuji more in terms of a bildungsroman than a shonen narrative? which also contributes to why I enjoy him a lot.

in a way this begs examination of yuuji,, his grandfather’s death is still hanging over him, he suddenly moved to a new city, maybe he's not really processing it all. he also ate the sukuna finger by himself. is he rly focusing on living in a way he wont regret?

and imho with deathbed curses,,, there’s a meta reflection abt the regrets of a previous generation or relationship being projected onto others and how heavy that can be. it’s like confirmation bias,,, someone’s told you, now you know, can’t unsee,,, that's the curse and the power of words

in a way too, i think his grandfather's explanation of proper death is also one that maps onto a simplified and mistaken way of thinking abt karma ,, where theres a transactional mindset in place: u do good to receive good, but that's not rly how it works

tldr : "proper death" doesnt serve yuuji well bc hes using it as a dogmatic mental crutch and he needs to dig into his self awareness to find a source of personal conviction that will make him want to live instead of die righteously.

and if mahito and death is a mirror for humans then,, what abt yuuji and life for humans?

it’s been hundred of thousands of years since the start of human life and ppl are still trying to cope with death thru a millions of way, but what abt life? no matter how pretty and bright a firefly might shine for a moment, it’s only when they blinked out that ppl might want to wait to see them light up again, if they even have the chance to do so

extra : i thought abt the 3 vengeful spirits and they were said to terrorize the capital in heian era like tenjin by heavy rain and lightning which could be categorize as a natural disaster (?) then it’d make sense why the curses especially like jogo (ie related to nature) would be powerful. ppl were so preoccupied fearing the onryos and their wrath and once they were sealed/ excorcise, the fear for nature would increase and then eventually manifest

unrelated but the concept of youth and the loss of it in jjk always reminds me of herman hesse’s demian, in particular this quote, “The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God's name is Abraxas."

(some) shamans have no choice but to either break the egg earlier than most or, break the egg in normal pace but never had the chance to actually fly to abraxas. i miss nanami sm,,, akutami...at least give me more flashback of him (and haibara) later on

also the tenjo tenge yuiga dokuson 🥴 lemme just organise my thoughts - 🐱 (end)

as always your thoughts are top tier. everything you said made me :DDDDD 😭

at the same time im not surprised yuji hasn’t come into his “own” beliefs yet tbh. he’s still a child!!! it’s normal for children to internalize the beliefs of their authority/guardian figures. i hope you’re right in that we get to see more of yuji himself + his thoughts and watch him grow into a character who actually knows what he wants in life, instead of going off of his grandfather’s last wishes. yuji is honestly so precious and while i usually despise the typical shounen MC I really adore yuji....

and i agree with you that yuji is unusually fixated with the “dying surrounded by people” part rather than the living and making sure you make the necessary connections so you don’t die alone part and it makes me. so sad. plus we’ve been shown time and time over again that yuji doesn’t value his life as much as he should. ugngnggngnnggnnjgkn

#hmghhh this is SO GOOD #you're SO right #once again akutami subverts tropes and makes us reevaluate EVERYTHING #HE'S A CHILD!!!#i say as if im not only a few years older than him...LOL #🐱 anon #😭😁😭😁

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arcticdementor · 3 years

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Other possible Holocausts: why pro-lifers are lying to us, and why thats a good thing

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Ive had a running argument over the past few years that the raw lack of anti-abortion terrorist action proves no one really thinks abortion is murder, ie. intentional 1st degree murder of a life equal to yours or mine.

Ive always gotten pushback to quote WillyWang:

The "revealed preference" of those that oppose abortion but don't firebomb clinics and kill doctors? It won't help, you'll be made an example of in the negative sense, and civilized norms are more important than a useless symbolic point. One clinic destroyed won't end abortion, after all.

From which this Effort-post got its Genesis:

Would you say the same about those who participated in the french resistance or Warsaw Ghetto rising to Nazi Germany?

Everyone of those claims applies there: they were likely to be made examples of, they were damaging civilized norms, and any given action had relatively little to no impact.

Yet the same people who insist abortion is murder, and thus that America is committing a holocaust, yet denounce any of the people who employed violence against abortion doctors or clinics, and can’t distance themselves fast enough from any call for violence... none of those people apply the same logic to the first holocaust. None of them say the frenchmen who bombed german police stations where dangerous terrorists who deserved their executions, none of them denounce the Warsaw ghetto rising as an attack on civilization.

…

If anti-abortion advocated genuinely believed a fetus was a equivalent human life to yours or mine or the little kids they see walk to school, and that this was an ongoing holocaust of American Children at a scale possibly 10x or more what was done to the jews... they wouldn’t need to come up with ad hoc reasons why they don’t resort to violence, their mind would be screaming at them to take bloody vengeance 24/7 in righteous outrage, demanding that oceans of blood and fire be unleashed that it might wash clean the horror, that nuclear fire would be be an acceptable emergency shut off to end such wanton and cruel slaughter... and if thinking through all the logic they concluded that no violence wouldn’t help and they must pursue some peaceful negotiation to stop the slaughter, then their minds recoil and call themselves cowards and the moment of coming to that conclusion would be an ongoing trauma they’d carry with them for the rest of their life, even if they knew they were 100% right. They would meet the “pro-choice” and barely be able to conceal their desire to see them dead or imprisoned... they would meet women who had had abortions and scream bloody murder at them and tell them they deserve the death penalty, the way many of the same people react when presented with women who’d murdered their children, but after their children had left the womb.

The people who were jailed for assassinating abortionists, or fire-bombing clinics would be folk heroes lionized in songs and crowd funded hagiographic documentaries and folk traditions, like John Brown, or John Wilkes Booth, or Louis Reil, or Saco and Vancety, or Huey Newton, or Malcolm X, or David Koresh, or Levoy Finecolm... or hell even just Jesse James, or Killdozer.

Americans abort on average 1 million plus babies a year... that means if abortion is murder and those are human lives, then the 50 years since Roe vs.Wade has been a worse crime than the holocaust, slavery, or the crimes of Stalin, and we’d have to consult a historian to see if they were worse than Mao (on a per capita basis, certainly)...

This would be the worse crime ever commited, the greatest mass slaughter ever perpetrated in human history, and 50 years later our society would remain committed to repeating it in the next 50 years.

If that does not demand violence, then nothing in human history ever has, no even defensive war has ever been justified, and only Jainists and Jehovah’s witnesses are morally acceptable actors. An extreme unexceedable pascifism we know the vast majority of anti-abortion advocates do not endorse, since they overwhelming supported or at-least did not conspicuously oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (over a mere 3000 Americans dead, and a less than a years abortions worth of Iraqis killed by Saddam) and continue to conspicuously “Support our troops” troops that exist to carry out violence, despite their moral commitments saying they can apparently never in human history be justified.

When i say this proves “Pro-lifers” clearly do not believe a fetus is an equal human life, thats me being incredibly charitable. That is me extending a overwhelming large olive branch, that is me expressing a stupendous care and concern and sympathy and brotherly love to rival the best 19th century dinner host, the dearest of friends, a benevolent older sibling, a lover, a parent, a mother who on hearing the taped confession of her son to serial murder, doesn’t hesitate once before screaming “you monsters you’ve drugged and tortured him! What threats have you made to my grandchild! He would only say such things to save his daughter’s life!”

My claiming they are full of shit and lying to themselves, to you, and to me, is an expression of love and faith in my fellow man which until now I did not realized I possessed nor was capable of...

Because if I merely took them at their word? If I believed that they believed what they say they believe? They would be monsters.

Lets play a game called “Other Possible Holocausts”. Approximately 800,000 babies where aborted this year.

Lets imagine the US government has just announced that crime has gotten to cumbersome and that over the next 3 years it plans to execute every single one of the 2.4 million people in US prisons jails and Jeuvenile detention centres.

Lets imagine that to reform education, the US resolves to kill the bottom 1% of all 80 million students in the country based on an age adjusted standardized test every year.

Lets imagine hatred of the obese takes off, and a policy is passed to resolve America’s 30% obesity rate by the mass instituting of bounties on hunting and killing the obese... that every year 800,000 to 1.5 million tags will be issued for a fee to allow the hunting of the obese in return for monetary rewards on successful hunts and getting to keep the carcasses for meat base animal foods and the manufacture of fuel, or fat based household products. These bounty hunters become known a “whalers”.

Lets imagine the US announces its done with African Americans... if the problem hasn’t been solved since 1619, its not going to be... and so they’re going to genocide all 40 million African Americans at a rate of 2% a year, for the next 50 years.

Lets imagine opposing extremists get in charge and decide the racists rednecks have to go, and so they’ll be forming death squads to roam the South, Appalachia, and the rust belt, with the objective of killing 800,000 poor whites a year, “until the problem is solved”... with many happily stating 50 years of this would be acceptable, while others state it’d be perfectly fine to renew it another 50 years after that.

…

These are all American lives, and according to pro-lifers of equal moral value to the babies aborted every day, no better, no worse.

By saying this and by saying violence is not and cannot be justified to resist it, they are saying that their reactions to any one of the above eventualities would be to continue to live their lives as they have lived the past 50 years.

I do not know how to respond to that. Even if Abortion is truly murder of an ensouled equal human life... The Pro-choicers committing the murders don’t think it is... hell the Nazis murdered 6 million jews and a further 5 million undesirables, but they didn’t think of them as human, they thought they were monstrous and “life unworthy of life”, like a burning man begging you to shoot him so he doesn’t suffer or hurt his fellows... a mercy in a way.

Pro-lifers on the other hand claim these are equal viable human lives of equal status to yours or mine or perhaps even greater.... They’re Children.

And their reaction to the greatest mass slaughter in human history, the reaction of almost half the electorate, who regularly talk about the need to resist tyrrany and defend the weak (as both left and right in the US do, in their way), their reaction is to vote every 4 years, and have it perhaps not even be the #1 issue if the economy seems bad, they have the opportunity to vote for the first black president, or the Orangeman says something crude about Mexicans... they won’t be single issue voters even when it comes to the greatest crime ever committed in human history?

I refuse to believe it. Even I, cynical as I am, have to believe we are not that far gone, and the age of men has not come crashing down... i would believe the US capable of such a crime, but to believe that a double digit percentage of Americans could look at that, recognize the victims as their fellow humans,recognize their state and society as committing mass murder of their neighbours, future friends, and relatives...to recognize that they have a moral imperative to act on this... and then just go “welp them’s the breaks, gotta be civilized” because 9 people in black robes said it wasn’t murder?

Holy fuck. No that is not how people work, that is not how humans behave, I cannot accept that, and leftists who spent the summer rioting in response to fewer than a thousand police killings of black men a year, who remember the civil rights and anti-war movements, who kinda vaguely recall that they’re supposed to remember Huey Newton, or Saco and Vanseti, or those Rossen...something people... who like to imagine they’d have been abolitionists in the 19th century. They’re right to call bullshit.

They’re right to call the pro-lifers liars who don’t believe their own messaging, and instead just want to control women’s bodies, after a lie like that to their face, they’re right to treat them with scorn.

…

Pro-life is rescuable as a sentiment and an activist movement...

But not while it claims a Holocaust is going on and somehow magically no violence could ever be justified to resist it, thus lining up all the arguments that will allow the next holocaust to be committed without resistance.

There have been a double digit, perhaps even a triple digit number of mass murders and genocides in the hundreds of thousands or millions of people, since the 20th century. America is enabling its ally Saudi Arabia to commit one against the Yemenis right fucking now.

We need to be very fucking clear about what it is justified to do to members of a regime that commits such a crime, and what it is definitely justified to do to the immediate perpetrators of the murder. And That we will back violent resistance to such a horrible crime by the state even if it serves only to make the resister a martyr we’ll praise, or it degrades “civilization” (what civilization could remain in such a regime?), or it ultimately has no effect (it is on the survivor to try harder)... The major members of the House of Saud deserve the Gallows under international law for what they’re doing in Yemen , as do their American attaches and core enablers... and if that comes from a Judge in the Hauge or from a convoy of irregulars in pickup trucks, or from lone assassins who manage to get through to them, It is justice, and i will praise it.

What we cannot do is pretend that genocides and mass slaughter on unconscionable scales are occurring and then come up with excuses for why we should do nothing and anyone who does resist is a criminal. Or else those excuses will be the ones that allow the next real genocide in the west or on US soil to actually happen.

If there is a genocide or democide or whatever you want to call mass slaughter. You must recognize the justice the violent resistance to it, even if you personally do not participate, or you must admit you were lying about there being such a crime... to say otherwise, to say a state can commit such a crime and still retain its right to your loyalty, to say a people up to and including its victims must obey such a thing, a creature made of bureaucracy that has set its sights on massacring humans by the thousands if not millions... it is to side against the human race in a war of extermination.

And as someone whose pro-choice as they come, I’d much rather, if the pro-lifers really believe its murder, I’d much rather they start a bloody civil war, than for it to become the norm that that is ethically acceptable.

#kulakrevolt #reddit #the motte #food for thought

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umbral-stigmata-unbound · 3 years

Text

Before the Dawn AU - Sephiroth (long post)

Music Theme Found Here

Basic AU Info from Profile:

Sephiroth is the only one of his kind--many a Dryad there have been, and some birthed forth from his home land, but none like him. He himself is bound to the Mother Crystal found within the Great Woods in the Forgotten City. For many years, he believed himself a pure being, created to protect his Mother and all that was pure and good that she created or reigned over in the City and at its edges. He knew she hated the weak, the powerless, just as much as she hated those greedy with power and arrogant with toxic ego. And so he hated them as well. For why would he not, if mother did? He protected the City, and roamed within it. But when the day came that a dark Vampire came strolling through, intent on clawing out one of the mothers resting within the crystal (as the form of two women seemed to rest within the great large crystals core), something in him changed. By nature and nurture, he was intent on fighting this Vampire off, but he spewed nonsense about being his true creator, and that his Mothers were useless and greedy wenches. Argument and battle ensued, and what few friends Sephiroth may have gained from the very small population of beings and descendants of Ancients (the original elvenesque people of the Forgotten City and keepers of the crystals and the pure energy of the woods), they tried to aid him, to reason with him. But this Vampire, Hojo, seemed to tear assunder the very fabric of the life the Dryad had lived--He tore too deep into the crystal, and into Sephiroth’s own belief of his existence, and both made Sephiroth susceptible to control….from the very one he trusted most, his great mother Jenova, who’s power had finally been freed enough by the damage to the crystal to reach him. From then on out, she used him like her very tool of will. A great many inhabitants of the City died at his hand, as holy fire wrought throughout it, only a few fae and ancient descendants escaping, seemingly by Sephiroths failure to seize them… Jenova would seek to continue using him as her own puppet, building his power, his strength, twisting him into a possible vessel if she could ever have him free her from the crystal without absolutely destroying it. But Jenova wasn’t the only one in the crystal--no, when Sephiroth was to be made, by Hojo and his mate, Lucrecia, using a shart of Jenova’s crystal, conflict grew between them all, jenova influencing them without their know, breeding Hojo’s greed further, and Lucrecia’s love for those innocents who did not deserve his cruel actions (both the vampire pawn Hojo intended to create, and the back up they saw their claimed son would be). During a confrontation, Lucrecia was stabbed by the shard, which Hojo still used, thinking the ordeal only gave it more power, unknowing of the fact that it had corrupted his mate. Throughout their time developing Sephiroth, she found herself twisted between a cruel darkness akin to Hojo’s, and her true heart shining through. She was almost consumed by that darkness, but escaped with what seemed to be a crystalized egg, holding a small toddler within, and she begged Jenova to make it right, to forgive her her sins in what she’d done to the crystal, and help her give Sephiroth a chance to live. Jenova took advantage of this plea, took Lucrecia into her crystal under the pretense it would prevent her corruption, which it did, but it also locked her away, and she took advantage of having her. Sephiroth was made a monster, by a corrupted Ancient locked away in the Great Crystal, meant to lock and purify her, but it could only bind her for so long. He was a nightmare upon the world, making victims of many beings, from werewolves, to vampires, to demons, to fae, to humans. It mattered not, so long as Jenova saw weakness that needed to be snuffed out. It seemed as if he would either end the world, or have to end himself. It was by the will of warriors that he was finally stopped, and the faint influence of the mother who sacrificed herself for his best chest, Lucrecia, that he found his end….and began again. He returned to the Forgotten City, forging from it’s waters anew, stronger, and wiser, and wearing his crimes and cruelty and truth like a weight upon his shoulders. He now wanders the world looking to purify crystals by a ritual taught to him by a tender ancient decadent girl from before his wreckage upon the City--he wanted to ensure Jenova’s reach would not continue, that she would be removed, never to harm anyone again (unbeknownst to him, his rebirth after defeat at the hands of a specific warrior would produce Jenova’s last attempt at presence, a Water Nymph in their combined visage). He is seen as a monster by most, and does not deny it, but he carries on, to make the world better from the damage he did to it. His natural form involves pale skin, very little clothing if any, minor horns sprouting backward from his bangs, discoloration of the skin around his, elongated nails, markings upon his skin that look like tattoos made to look like cracks in his skin, a few embedded crystals in certain patterns here and there over his upper body. He also has a feral form which involves glowing eyes, discoloured, iridescent skin, crystal embedded horns as opposed to his normal horns that look similar to dull and half dead branches of the trees of the Great Forest of the Forgotten City, a wing of Crystal and light, and slightly increased size. (timeline of his story is dependent entirely on what we as rp partners decide).

~ ~. ~

Name: Sephiroth, the Crystal Dryad, the Silver Fae, the Fae Curse.

Species: Crystal Dryad, only one of a species never seen before him. (Much like a Dryad of the forests and its soul tree, but he is bound to a Great Crystal of the old Ancients culture).

Role/Profession/Job: Originally protector of the Forgotten City of the Ancients, and indirect Knight of the Mother Crystal. Then, the will and hand of Corrupt Jenova bound in Crystal, he became a curse upon all. Now, he wanders alone to mend the world, to help it heal from the damage he caused.

Age: 30′s

Nature: As a Dryad, he is drawn to protect, care for, and stay near his connection source, and so he was very much a proud dweller of the Forgotten City and it’s forest. He mingled within the trees and smaller crystals, explored, tended to nature, and took down harmful beasts sent to taint the land. He was a peaceful being, but as he got older, he got restless and more protective, more intense, more closed off. He secluded himself. And then all connection and concern was twisted up and locked away inside him as intense loyalty turned into corrupt loyalty, leading him to harm others and lands beyond. But, his true nature is explorative, curious, intense and valiant, willing to fight as much as he is willing to stand by.

Personality: Curious, loyal, restraint with his empathy but yearning to reach it out to more in the world. He is a being seeking experiences but bound by loyalty for much of his life, and so he resigns himself to that existence and how it requires him to be, personally. But he begins to loose his free will, and control, and seemingly all chance at a free life to experience a great many things. In the throws of Jenova’s worst influence, he is cruel, angry, and seeking what he feels is vengeance and righteous cleansing. But it is not what he truly feels nor how he wished to live. When freedom comes once again, he finds himself experiencing the world with the weight of his crimes on his shoulders.

History: Unknown to him for a great many years, and still a bit of a mystery in the present, he was the result of a cultist covens experiments and their desires to make a powerful supernatural being under their will. It was a failure, of course, as they delved too deep into their desperation and used the power of a cruel locked soul to aid their work. Through the greedy pride of Hojo, the conflicted coerced efforts of Lucrecia, and the cells of another experiment as well as the cells of the crystal mother, a new being was forged. His crystal cocoon holding his toddler sized, beginning form was carried forth to Jenova by Lucrecia, who begged for salvation for her son. His formative years was full of wonder and pride and appreciation of his land, respect and bonding with the locals within the town, and curiosity of what was beyond. He always found himself coming back to rest at the foot of the Mother crystal, where he felt at home, cradled, watched over by Mother Jenova, glowing and beautiful, and Mother Lucrecia, gentle and soft. His teen and adult years grew with troubles and problems, and more responsibilities, but he sought to do right by all. But, without his awareness and willingness, he felt that desire shrinking and narrowing, and slowly the world seemed to become toxic, the cruelties endless and festering, and he found himself haunted by visions of a doomed, decaying future. And he found himself followed Mother Jenova’s pleas for him to cleanse lands of the cruelty waiting to ruin the world. His bloodshed began in his home, the Forgotten City, but it stretched beyond, for only a few years, before a few warriors and one in particular stood against him, breaking through some part of him (or was it the influence of Mother Lucrecia, or both?), and taking him down, freeing him from the fate of being a dark hand any longer. By will of the mother that loved him truly, he found himself reborn for a second chance, and so he has taken it, to make amends and find where he once was again.

Powers/Abilities:

Energy influence over some nature and weather. The darkness or light of his influence is dependent on his state of mind.

Crystal energy connection, manipulation, energy flow.

Crystal influence as a part of him, meaning he naturally influences shards as a part of himself, and sometimes they can grow into sort of guards or simple crystal sources embedded in his skin.

Super speed, strength, extra senses especially connected to the awareness of the planet.

Energy warping for various purposes, from light display, to energizing, to healing, to blasts or shields.

Feral Form Powers; specific attacks linked to his claws, increased crystalizing, flight due to the wing upon his back made of crystals and energy, stronger levels of all other influences, can tap into the energy of the planets crystals for devestating power, if he so chooses.

Fae magic and Ancient magic spells and treatments.

#Before the Dawn | AU Verse #Dryad Sephiroth #onewinged tragedy ~ Sephiroth #AU info post #paranormal fantasy au #advertising for Dryad Sephiroth #feel free to request!!#simply DM or send an ask and specify muse and that you're requesting Before the Dawn AU #mood board #my edit mood board #aethetic board

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asterekmess · 4 years

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1-11 Scott/Posey Stans always try to deflect criticism of the way Scott McCall is written in Teen Wolf by claiming that ANY attempt by a fan, a viewer, or a critic of holding Scott to a level of behavior that one would expect of a character who is a main and the self-proclaimed hero of the show is “racism”. Except that their accusations don’t make any sense whatsoever, because Scott’s canonical shitty actions and behavior don’t stem from his race (or canonical lack of thereof.)

Okay hun, this is a doozy, so I’m putting it under a Read More.

2-11 Scott McCall is mean. He’s mean to Stiles, he’s mean to Allison, he’s mean to Derek, he’s mean to Peter, he’s mean to Cora, he’s mean to Lydia, he’s mean to Jackson, he’s mean to Erica, he’s mean to Isaac, he’s mean to Malia, he’s mean to Malia, he’s mean to Kira, he’s mean to Liam, he’s mean to Chris, and he’s even mean to Theo (“You are barely even human!”) Scott McCall is deliberately rude to the Hales, Boyd, Ethan, Danny, Hayden, Jiang, Tierney, and Melissa.

3-11 Scott McCall deliberately USES, INSULTS, HUMILIATES and DEHUMANIZES people in ways that demonstrate that he is fully aware of what he’s doing. Scott McCall deliberately disregards other people’s needs in order to fulfill his own. Tyler Posey being half Mexican doesn’t change the fact that his fictional character Scott McCall is a whiny coward and an abusive piece of trash,

4-11 and that his so called ‘defense squad’ enjoys the power fantasy that Scott can be cruel, can lie, can assault, can lash out, can violate other people’s boundaries, bodily autonomy and consent, can commit premeditated murder, can break the law without impunity, can dehumanize, can gaslight and victim blame his friends to his heart’s content and no one should ever hold it against him

5-11 In both the production and in some Scott supremacist fanfics, there’s often the premise that people are evil and in the wrong if they call Scott out on his bullshit or hold his toxic behavior against him. Take Season 1. As much as the Scott McCall defense squad brigade love framing Stiles and Derek getting shit done and prioritizing people’s life over Scott’s jealous fits and temper tantrums as the height of depravity

6-11 Scott/Posey Stans consciously and steadfastly ignore all the cruel things that Scott says and does throughout the seasons, such as “How much Adderall have you had today?” OR “What are you trying to do?! I just made first line! I got a date with a girl who I can't believe wants to go out with me and everything in my life is perfect! Why are you trying to ruin it?!” OR “The hunters had a reason to slaughter your entire family and pack”

7-11 (As an aside, it’s amazing to me how Fanon rewrites Scott as this brilliant thinker and strategist and mastermind who is so much smarter and better than everyone else in every way even though Canon Scott spends the entirety of Teen Wolf doing absolutely nothing except get his ass handed to him by everyone, whining about wanting to be popular/get his dick wet/play lacrosse, screaming at his friends and girlfriends, being utterly useless when left to his own devices,

8-11 and planning to bite Stiles against his will because he doesn’t know what to do. But I digress.) Or take Season 5. In the rain argument in Lies of Omission (5x09), Scott McCall’s hypocritical, dehumanizing speech to Stiles is one of the meanest, cruelest, most disgusting manipulations I have ever seen a television character deliver to another television character they supposedly cared about. It’s victim blaming and gaslighting at its vilest.

9-11 And, of course, the Scott McCall defense squad focuses exclusively on the idea that Stiles didn’t behave “the right way” in that scene (AKA taking Scott’s bullshit without clapping back like Scott wanted and demanded), and cannot entertain for one moment the idea that Scott provoked that response by dehumanizing Stiles and by accusing Stiles of being a violent, dangerous, inhuman monster and serial killer based on Theo’s words alone.

10-11 After all, it’s part of their power fantasy. Scott being “abandoned” and “mistreated” by his “ungrateful” friends serves another type of fantasy: the poor oppressed martyr. It doesn’t matter why Scott is abandoned or who is leaving Scott, it’s all about Scott McCall’s right to own people and demand his friends’ love, friendship, loyalty, sympathy, forgiveness, obedience and devotion without having to account for his own abusive behavior.

11-11 And that’s Scott Stans’ point: Only Scott McCall Is Important and Damn Derek/Stiles/Liam/Other Teen Wolf character for having a life and motivations that don’t revolve around Scott! To them (and to Canon Scott), the pack exists not to serve all its members, but to serve and validate Scott McWhinyCall. Because, after all, that’s what antis want for themselves – validation in the face of shortcomings and bad behavior.

Wow, that was a lot of anger. Do you feel any better after venting that? I really hope so, it honestly looks p cathartic. Okay, I apologize in advance if I don’t come across as quite so passionate, I’m kinda bleh today and I already used up all my righteous fury in an earlier post, so I’ll do my best.

I honestly understand the worry about people disliking Scott as having racist motivations. As I said in another post, there aren’t a lot of Latino (wait, I read somewhere to use latine? Should I use that instead? I’ll use that, someone correct me if I’m wrong. The thing also said latinx was not great bc of pronunciation issues? I’m not educated enough on this. Halp, please.) Latine protagonist characters in popular television, especially for teen dramas like Teen Wolf. Intentional or not, written into the show or not, Scott is half-latine. His mother is a latine woman. We don’t see them speak spanish or take part in any specific cultural traditions, but that doesn’t make him white. Yes, his character was written for a white guy, but Tyler Posey is the one who got the part and we can’t strip him of his heritage just because the show originally meant for Scott to be white. My husband is almost always mistaken for white, even though he’s also half-latine, but that doesn’t make him any less latine. There’s little enough representation as it is, and if we start being picky about whether characters were ‘intended’ or ‘written’ as POC, everything will just fall to shit. Plus, as a white person, I have literally no rights to decide that Scott’s white. I’m cool with that. Would prefer to just stay in my lane, if I’m honest. With Scott established as being a POC, it’s totally reasonable for other POC and fans of Scott to be worried that those of us who don’t like him have that opinion because of either passive or active racism. There are a lot of occasions where Protags of Color were either liked less, or actively disliked for just being ‘not white.’ It also doesn’t help that Scott is one of very few “good” Characters of Color in TW (whether we agree or not, he is presented as a ‘good guy’). We have Boyd, who dies in 3A and doesn’t get much character developement in the meantime, and Kira, who sticks around for a while, then has to leave because of ‘losing control’ which is apparently a very common stereotype for POC, especially within Fantasy or Supernatural settings. Other than them, the other POC are either bad guys or just morally dubious. I’m not sure where Deaton falls on the scale either. I understand it being frustrating to some people for us to take one of the few “good’ characters and see him/describe him as a villain. It’s important for white people, and honestly, anyone not latine (because even POC can be racist against people who aren’t their race) to be self-aware and analyze the various reasons why we dislike Scott and make sure that we aren’t accidentally being passively racist. Just because we’re sure we aren’t, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t double check. And if we find we are, then it’s up to us to correct that mindset and educate ourselves. There is no shame in learning that you have not great habits or mindsets and working to fix them. That’s how growth works. It’s equally important that when we’re writing fic, we watch how we portray him and the other POC in the show. I’m not saying we can’t write Scott bashing fic. Fuck knows that I’ve written plenty of Bad Friend Scott McCall fic, and I don’t intend to stop. But we still need to be self-critical and make sure that we’re not writing Scott (or the others, please assume from here on out I’m saying Scott and the others) into racist stereotypes. We shouldn’t reduce him to just a “Yes” man, or make him constantly submissive, or constantly vicious and angry and mean for no reason. It’s one thing to write him as doing something bad or cruel and making it realistic for the story. It’s quite another to have him just randomly pop in to say “fuck you” and hit someone (I’m not referencing something specific here, I’m just saying dumb stuff). Honestly, I don’t know enough about this and I’m not really entitled to go into too much more detail. Instead, I’d recommend that even if you don’t think you’re hating Scott for racist reasons, still read This Post about racism in fandom/fanfic. When I read it, it was both reassuring and intimidating. I have anxiety, so I’m usually worried about doing things for ‘the wrong reason’ even when that’s not actually my reason for doing the thing. Reading this gave me a clearer view of my own thoughts, and it honestly made me feel a little more comfortable with my own mentality because it gave me a structure to think about and consider when I’m worried that I’m doing something racist. It’s worth the read. I’d also like to reiterate the suggestion on that post, to check out the blog Writing with Color, which is a great resource for writing Characters of Color. It doesn’t have as many resources for fanfiction writing and the grey area involved in writing characters that your reader already knows, but their ask box is closed at the moment, so maybe when it opens again someone’ll send in an ask about it (If I actually remember to, I’ll do it myself, but that’s unlikely, so if one of you feels so inspired, please do so and help a fic writer out!)

Now. I cannot speak for every single fan of TW who is anti-Scott in some way. Obviously not. But, I can speak for myself and for the experiences I’ve had within the fandom. My issues with Scott are many and complex and a lot of it is intrinsically connected to issues with the writing of the show in general and with the creators and the calls they made. In all the conversations that I’ve had with other fans, I’ve never seen anyone list Scott’s race as a problem. I’ve never seen anyone talk about how they wished he were more submissive or more obedient. Maybe that he would listen to actual adults once in a while, but not that he be unreasonably obedient of white characters. I’m not all-knowing on the subject of racist stereotypes, but nearly every complaint I’ve seen was based on details from the show and specific moments and dialogue, not just a general disgust with his existence. Furthermore, for all the anger I see directed at those of us that prefer Stiles, Derek, or even Peter, I’ve also never talked to anyone who liked those characters who wasn’t willing to admit that there were plenty of points in canon where they fucked up or did something wrong. Again, I don’t know everyone in fandom, so maybe there are people who won’t admit those things, but they aren’t in the majority.

I personally hate the way I see Scott treat people in the show. I hate the really vicious things he says and does and the chronic lack of self-awareness or growth. Even worse, the way the show excuses his behavior, be it intentional or not, has soured a lot of other parts of the show. The clearly impulsive moments that could easily be excused by him being a really stressed out teenager make me a lot more frustrated than they would, had I not known that he would never get better. That he would never stop saying things like that. I can’t even make myself enjoy the genuinely sweet moments with him and Allison or him and his mom, etc. I might hate that he left Stiles’ messages unanswered and skipped an entire day of school during a crisis to hang out with Allison, but I would’ve liked to enjoy their banter, the soft moments between them that are actually really nice. I can’t though, because so many other things about his character have ruined that for me.

It isn’t okay to attack people for disliking a character and throw around such charged words like “racist” and “abuse-apologist” or anything else. First off, this is fiction, and we all need to keep that in mind. These are not real people we’re talking about. Secondly, calling someone racist because they disagree with you (unless they are actively saying/doing something actually racist) isn’t okay and it isn’t an adult way to deal with things. Someone not liking a character doesn’t automatically make them racist. Someone happening to prefer a white character over a Character of Color doesn’t automatically make them racist. Sure, they might have passively racist motivations that even they don’t realize. But it is not up to strangers to come yell and call names without proof. There are plenty of reasons that have nothing to do with race (Not saying “i don’t see race.” I’m saying “Not About Race”) that I like Stiles over Scott, ranging from the fact that he’s physically more my type, to sharing a neurological condition with him, to just preferring Dylan O’Brien as an actor because he makes me fucking cry every time he cries on screen. What’s important is that we self analyze and check ourselves and our opinions to make sure that we aren’t falling into the racist habit of disliking Characters of Color for no real reason. But that isn’t something that other people can do for us, and it’s not their place to tell us what we think. Calling a stranger racist for saying they hate Scott’s behavior in the show doesn’t do anything for racial equality. It just makes people stop listening to the word ‘racist.’

There are times I seriously get frustrated with TW to the point of considering not watching anymore. Of closing my blog and stopping reading fanfic entirely because every single time I read a fic where Scott’s a ‘good guy’ or a ‘good alpha’ or where Derek is glad to be a beta again because he likes following Alpha Scott, I get squicked so badly I have to click out and just sit there for a second to settle. I can’t disentangle the things he does/says in the show from the fic.And I’ve written Good Friend Scott McCall fics. I have multiple wips where he’s either a decent person or he grows from being a dick to being a decent person. With my own work, I know that there’s an awareness to his behavior in the show and an active intent to rewrite/fix his behavior so that he is a nice person. With other people’s works, I don’t have a guarantee (unless it’s mentioned in tags or author’s notes, and I don’t expect people to have to explain themselves that way), and it personally makes me uncomfortable to read something when I don’t know if the writer actually sees Scott that way. It’s a personal preference, and one that I stick to pretty strictly.

Scott brings me no joy, and with him as the main character, I’ve come perilously close to cutting myself off from the most welcoming, loving fandom I’ve ever been a part of (except the Merlin fandom, but I don’t blame anyone who can’t compete with them. They’re fucking magical.). But I’m still here. I still love, if not the reality of the show, then all the potential I see in it when I watch. I love watching Derek and Stiles interact with each other and with the other side characters. I love seeing the glimpses of Boyd that we get, the tiny scenes of Erica, the snarky moments with Isaac. I even like Kira, though I haven’t seen a whole lot of the show where she’s in it/genuinely can’t remember it (I can’t even remember how far I’ve seen total, but I don’t think it was past S4, and I haven’t seen past S2 in months and months) and she spends most of her scenes with Scott, which just....kind of ruins the scenes for me.

That’s the glory of fandom though, of media in general. I don’t have to like Scott. I can love Derek and Stiles instead and I can choose not to read fics where Scott is a major player or an Alpha at all. I can read fics where Kira’s part of the pack without Scott ever getting involved, and see her interact with everyone else. Or fics where Boyd never dies and watch him bake or read or play lacrosse with the pack. I can curate my own experience, whether that means blocking tags or users or filtering fics, or just straight up skipping certain scenes/episodes of the show itself. I cope with my frustrations by coming on this blog and ranting about it. Yeah, this is a public space, but it’s also a space people choose to view. If they don’t like my opinions, they can block me or unfollow me or all of the above. They don’t have to read it, just like I don’t have to read any of their pro-scott stuff. I also read fic that does explore how Scott’s behavior is problematic and cruel sometimes. Fic that either erases him or turns him into the villain, I find fun and interesting and the relationship between him and Stiles cracking into pieces is something I find extremely cathartic, so I read it pretty much every chance I get (though, i’m so picky about fics I read, you’ve no idea). I also write fic. I write the most mushy, self-indulgent sterek fic and Stiles-centric fic and and Scott bashing fic that I can possibly write. It’s a joy and a therapy all its own. Fuck, I’m rewriting the entirety of canon for fuck’s sake and I’ve made so many changes that at this point I honestly have issues remembering what happens in the show, bc I rewrote the damn thing.

At the same time, Scott fans are gonna write their power fantasies. They’re gonna write anti-Stiles stuff and anti-Derek stuff, and whatever else tickles their fancy. They’re gonna make their own rant posts and gifsets. And to be quite honest, I don’t give a single flying fuck. I already have those tags filtered out on Ao3. I don’t follow any pro-scott tumblrs. That shit doesn’t show up for me most of the time, unless it’s not tagged properly, and even then I just click out, take a second, and move on.

No one is required to like or dislike specific characters, and it’s unfair of anyone to tell us otherwise. Fandom is built on choice. The choice to disagree with canon, or to re-envision it altogether, or to love it entirely. No one can take that away from you. So long as you aren’t hurting anybody, just keep doing you, friend. I’m here for you to vent to when it gets to be too much.

#personal #go for it #anti-scott mccall #meta ramblings #Anonymous #rant #much love #I didn't mean to sound so preachy #oops

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tanadrin · 4 years

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Like, I think I can handle people who merely disagree with me, even if they disagree with me in critical and fundamental ways; even if they hold political views I think are morally indefensible, but smug sanctimoniousness is much harder for me to put up with. Also, one virtue I appreciate in this little corner of tumblr is finding lots of people to follow who like to take ideas seriously, even if they disagree with them. If you link an article that fails to make its point, they’ll think about, and post about, why, and there’s a certain effort to overcome inferential gaps where they exist, in order to have a genuine exchange of ideas. One person who I really appreciate for this is @jadagul, who I think it’s safe to say I disagree with in pretty significant ways, but who I’ve always felt engages in discussions about politics in good faith.

Going to the trouble of reblogging something I post with “ugh, I gave up reading this because it’s full of strawmen,” with no elaboration, isn’t just engaging in bad faith, it’s pretty irritating. If you don’t to discuss it or engage with it, great! You don’t have to! If you do, more than “this is bad but I refuse to elaborate any further” is at best a non-contribution; at worse, an admission you can’t come up with any coherent arguments as to why something is wrong, you’re just annoyed that someone could Be Wrong on the Internet, and want to make that known.

And the specific irritation I have with reactionaries who spend their time going “oh you poor decadent, corrupt, sinful, wretches” on tumblr is that, hey, you’re in this mudpit with us, buddy! This is a website for weird porn and discussions of fucking dead chickens, don’t pretend like you’re somehow above it all. If you want a separate godly community go have the courage of your convictions and spend your day in the fields, and come home to a log cabin without wifi like the old-style Anabaptists still do. But sitting around tut-tutting while you pretend not to enjoy all the conveniences of modernity (and self-righteously passing judgement on everyone around you) just makes you a mean old church lady, not a warrior for the Christian faith.

I grew up Catholic, and I have known more than my share of people who are religious. The ones who impressed me–for whom religion seemed to be a force for good in their lives, at least so far as I knew them–have been people who are genuinely humble both in themselves and about the things they attach themselves to. Epistemically humble, too: the kind of people who, if you asked them, would tell you why they believed, what drew them to faith, but not claim that either they, or their religion, necessarily had all the answers. I don’t think their faith was weaker for it, either: I think they genuinely recognized that there are a lot of different paths by which people gain spiritual insight in life, and spiritual fulfillment, and one reason I probably considered myself Catholic longer than I would have otherwise is that I had experience with religious people who had very little of the doctrinal arrogance, or the dogmatic cruelty, of the institution they represented.

(The arrogant, judgemental, and self-righteous people of religion I have known have always been laypeople. There are probably plenty of people in religious orders who are assholes, and I reckon you probably get the same mix of asshole-to-non-asshole people as in the general population, but it’s been a funny fact of my life that more of the professional believers I have personally known have been open-minded, curious, and compassionate than the people who were, as it were, amateurs.)

So anybody who claims treating gay people like sinful perverts is a necessary consequence of their religious beliefs, or who thinks that the sign of this sick, sinful, fallen world is women having the same rights and social status as men, who thinks “decadence” or irreligiousness or gender-nonconformity are signs of moral failure of the individual or society or both, strikes me as someone who wants to believe these things regardless, not someone who was reluctantly led to these conclusions by religion and finds them heavy burdens to bear. They strike me as just another instantiation of the purse-lipped nose-in-the-air hypocrite, who has to feel better than other people to feel better in themselves, and would find a reason to do so regardless; religion just happens to be their current excuse.

#reposted below a cut because it's too ranty

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jadelotusflower · 4 years

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Robin Hood Rewatch: 1x08 Tattoo, What Tattoo?

aka Robin wants to do a war crime.

It’s been a while, but I’m back on my rewatch. This is actually one of my favourite episodes of the whole show, so get comfortable, this is a long one. Also, I welcome comments/discussion on any of these posts - I’m always up to talk Robin Hood!

Flashback time! 1191. Now, we’ve had the current date set as 1192 by earlier episodes and this is the story of How Robin Got His Scar - assuming that he must have spent some time convalescing before returning to England, he can’t have been back more than a year at the absolute most.

There’s no point talking about historical accuracy on this show - my approach is that any story ostensibly taking place in our history is that it’s an alternate universe, and this is an easy way to ignore when things don’t square with real events.

Robin fights with a broadsword in this scene, not his scimitar, and we never find out how/why he got the latter.

For plot reasons, Robin neatly slashes through Guy’s tattoo instead of cutting off his arm.

Okay, Richard’s birthday was 8 September. The attempted hanging in the first episode was 26 April, so it’s been less than five months? Actually, I think this works fine.

In an earlier episode I lamented that we never saw the bright green shirt again, but I was wrong, Robin’s wearing it under his hoodie and it had very frayed hems. I do think the show does a pretty good job of using costumes for the gang that actually look like they live in a forest and show significant wear and tear.

This is one of my favourite Marian’s costumes - it’s beautiful!

I never noticed before, but after Guy announces the engagement, Edward takes Marian’s hand and it’s very sweet.

The possessive way Guy holds up Marian’s hand to show off the ring is...yikes. And don’t the guests sound enthused!

Nobody ever brings up that it was Robin ignoring the signal because he just had to stick it to Guy and take the ring is the reason Djaq is captured, and they really should have. That said, I do like him being cheeky and kissing Marian’s hand before depriving her of the ring.

Guy could very easily have freed the dagger holding his sleeve with his other hand - but he wanted Robin to know it was he that almost killed him in the Holy Land. Just like Robin could have easily escaped, but instead waited for Guy in the forest - this confrontation has been brewing all season - so let’s get into it.

Guy starts with saying that the King has enemies because he wants peace, and “there will never be peace with the Turk.” So we assume that his motivations are with the warmongers - to scupper the peace talks with Saladin so the Crusade continues and Jerusalem is conquered. Which...doesn’t really make sense with what we know of Guy, that he would care about claiming the Holy Land, and this stance is actually contradicted later. It makes more sense that they would want to keep Richard in the Holy Land so Prince John can usurp his power while he’s away, and Guy can maintain his position. I think we can assume that is the case, and Guy is just deflecting/pushing Robin’s buttons with the war talk.

And of course, the confrontation is only ostensibly about Guy’s treason, secondly about dick swinging over Marian. Guy gets kicked in the face (for the second time this season!) and only stops his throat getting slit by the timely arrival of the gang.

Djaq is cool, calm and collected the entire episode, despite no doubt being reminded of her time in slavery.

“That’s what you taught us.” Robin told the gang all about the articles of the Geneva Convention, but like many a self-righteous superpower, thinks they doesn’t apply to him if a breach is “necessary.”

I jest, but Robin actually does stay his hand initially and listen to the gang. He does knock Guy out, but I don’t think we can hold that against him. Concussion Count: Guy (Total: Robin x 1, Guy x 1)

It’s kind of understandable that the gang are skeptical of Robin’s claims it was Guy who tried to kill the King - it can’t have gone unnoticed that Robin has war-related trauma, and just that morning a nightmare of that very event. It would seem convenient indeed that he suddenly claims he remembers Guy as the assassin, right after the engagement to Marian was announced.

I’ve said this before, but I really think it’s a strength of the show that it is prepared to Go There with Robin as a deeply flawed protagonist. Because the gang is 100% right, and he is 100% wrong - Djaq’s life should take precedence, and he is in no state of mind to be making life and death decisions.

Concussion Count: Guy and Robin (Total: Robin x 2, Guy x 2)

Confrontation Round 2 - ding ding!

Robin is straight up manipulative of Much to get himself untied and it hurts to see - there’s a real power differential to their relationship that Robin takes advantage of. Much knows more than anyone else how damaged Robin was by the war, he knows there’s this other, brutal, side of him that can triggered (”earlier...you were not yourself”), but he still loves his friend, he wants to believe in his promises, and he’s spent his life following Robin’s instructions and those habits die hard. He does try to do the right thing - he talks in a soothing voice (”you’ve had an upset” is so Soft), tries to get Robin to sit down and talk it through, but he is too far gone.

“I will kill you whether you talk or not.” Guy doesn’t believe him, and throws his earlier words back (“show me an argument ever settled with bloodshed”) but Robin is deep in his cold rage and when Much tries to intercede we get the heartbreaking “that is because you are also simple” which really, really hurts. Now, obviously we can explain Robin’s behaviour as a trauma response/ptsd episode, but not excuse it, because it really is a cruel thing to say, targeted to hurt Much the most and push him away, and all the “I did not mean it”s in the world doesn’t change that. It’s a disturbing pattern; that Robin will say something cruel in anger or frustration, then immediately take it back and say he didn’t mean it - but the thing is, a part of him did mean it, must mean it, because he said it - it may be a dark fleeting thought, those unkind things we all think sometimes, but Robin gives voice to them and causes hurt, and that can’t be undone.

Again, I give credit that this is a show that doesn’t always cast its hero in the best light - he does screw up, he does say the wrong thing, he does make poor decisions despite his good heart. Robin is such an interesting, complicated character - heroic but with another side to him, a capacity for cruelty and violence that most of the time he keeps in check, but every now and then he can’t stop it rising to the surface, can’t keep that dark side of himself contained, but can only try to push it back with regret.

He then shifts from trying to kill Guy to trying to torture him, and obviously it’s all very thinly veiled social commentary, but this was 2006, and as I’ve said in a previous post social commentary is why we retell stories like this.

As I said above, Guy contradicts his earlier reasoning with “what kind of king deserts his people to fight someone else’s war in a foreign land?” but I think this is more the fear talking, with that red-hot sword close to his face, trying to appeal to Robin’s kinder/protective nature. To which we get another yikes line from Robin - “if you were his people he was right to desert them.” I don’t think Robin believes this, he’s deflecting Guy’s very good point to try and justify torturing him.

But in the end, he can’t justify it, at least not without making it a fair fight. And it’s a good fight! Well acted and choreographed, visceral and emotionally intense - they way they get progressively sweatier and dirtier and more exhausted, the way the music shifts from the jaunty theme to silence to those haunting strings - one of the best sequences of the show, imo.

Guy continues to throw out arguments that I don’t think he holds himself, but rather what he thinks will appeal to Robin - “it’s not England’s war, it’s Rome’s” was the exact point Robin made in the first episode (”Is it our Holy War? Or is it Pope Gregory’s?”). When Robin rightly points out that Guy’s assassination attempt broke the ceasefire, and Guy responds that “there will always be war” and he wants a King that will fights for England’s gain, not the Pope’s. That, I think, is close to his true motivation.

We get confirmation that religious conviction is why Robin went on crusade, but that it was meeting those of other faiths and realising the Holy Land should be shared, not conquered, that turned his heart. This seems to be the primary cause of Robin’s trauma - that he fought in an unjust war, made under false pretenses, and that he was not a warrior for God, but a murderer. While Much is obviously also scarred from the war, I think he handles it better partly because it wasn’t his decision to go, he was just following Robin, and he didn’t have his faith and understanding of the world shattered like Robin did. Also, he’s selfless, he’s a caretaker, so I think he buries his own trauma deeper and it doesn’t bubble to the surface as much as Robin’s does but comes out in sadness rather than anger.

UTTER EXHAUSTION.

Guy’s taunts become more pointed - calling out Robin’s glory seeking and loss of status, then turn to Marian, and it seems his obsession with her (other than being The Only Noblewoman in Nottingham) is in part to have everything Robin once did - his lands, his title, and the woman to whom he was betrothed - especially taking into account the backstory of season 3. It’s rather gross the way he speaks of Marian (“do you think I won’t laugh every time...”) although I suppose you could argue that it was a targeted attack on Robin and not how he actually feels.

It’s interesting that at this point, Guy accepts that Marian is sympathetic to Robin and still has contact with her - he’s not entirely clueless.

Concussion Count: Guy (Total: Robin x 2, Guy x 3)

The scene between Robin and Marian is also very good - he does throw her “everything is a choice” back at her somewhat petulantly, but it shows that he listened to her, and took what she said to heart. Marian, like the gang, assumes the accusation against Guy is about her engagement, and they have two tense conversations at once (”you took his ring/you took his ring” is rather deft).

I feel for Marian here, because she’s in a bad situation forced into marriage with Guy, and it would be made so much worse if he’d done what Robin says. She’s trying to make the best of it.

Everyone’s reaction to “I like her/I think I love her” is priceless, and I will defer to this commentary on this excellent post. Also a shoutout to @angel-in-a-big-blue-box’s tags #I also love how marian's stepping back like 'I don't understand. Y'all just voice your feelings like that? #You don't passive-aggressively snark at each other?’ SO TRUE - neither can fathom actually being this direct - Robin snarks that “everything is a choice” about running off into the forest, when he means “choose me” but can’t say it.

Concussion Count: Robin (Total: Robin x 3, Guy x 3). Both of them about to develop CTE at this rate.

I’ve said it before, but for all his faults, Robin admits when he’s wrong.

Will’s awkward little “Djaq” and Allan’s grin and nod is so cute.

I would have liked a longer conversation between Robin and Djaq tbh, her “and you gave him up for me?” is perhaps a trifle too magnanimous of her, but it’s a nice little coda with the gang all sitting down together and forgiving Robin.

#robin hood bbc #robin hood rewatch #1x08 #tattoo what tattoo?

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tclinemarr · 4 years

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— && guests may mistake me as ( normani ), but really i am ( taline mar + cis female + she/her ) and my DOB is ( 12/26/1996 ). i am a ( dance teacher ) and would like to stay in suite ( 309 ). i won’t be much of a bother because i am ( idealistic & charismatic ), but i can also be ( domineering & scatter-brained ) at times. personally, i like to ( listen to podcasts, shop online & solve crossword puzzles ) when i have the time to relax, and my favorite snack is ( flamin’ hot cheetos ) to have in my suite. thank you for checking in! ( nessa, est, 21 ).

tw: mentions of anxiety.

hello, my babies! okay, i swear, this is the last muse i’m bringing in for y’all. the muse with fiona just didn’t click as i hoped it would so i decided to bring back a favorite muse of mine, taline! you’re a real og if you remember when i first played her. anyways, i literally can’t think of how to do an intro post, wowie, but below will have some info about her! if you wanna know more about her you can check out her pinterest board here or her full bio here! i’m always down to plot, so lmk if you’d like to plot and we can work something out!

as of right now, she is keeping herself focused on herself and uses her job as a dance teacher as a form of every day therapy. she’s been living in chicago for about two to three years so far. in her spare time, she helps tutor kids after school and likes to shop online. taline swears those are the only things keeping her sane.

let’s get a few things out of the way: taline is both distant and clingy at the same time. she doesn’t let a crap ton of people close to her but once she does, she can be draining. she texts about random things that she thinks her friends will enjoy. she asks how they are all the time. she wants to hang out and watch movies and cuddle a lot. she wants to cook for them and buy them things. she wants to share her favorite books with them. she wants to witness their shocked faces during the plot twists of her favorite movies. it isn’t uncommon for her to have to be told that someone needs a break from her for a few days. she tries not to take those times personally but the majority of the time after being pushed away for a breather, taline is unsure of what to do with herself and gets fretful and does massive amounts of work and dancing.

taline is frequently told that she could be a politician due to her diplomatic presence and strong-willed mindset. even so, she has much interest in politics as a profession, and takes it as a compliment and revels in the fact that people think so highly of her.

hardened by the unwanted advances and crass comments people would throw at her when she was younger, the brown-eyed beauty has perfected the art of appearing intimidating and serious. but the reality is that she has a fantastic sense of humor that can be cracked into by treating her the way everyone else didn’t – like a human being and not an object.

taline fits very well into the “femme fatale” trope and often receives comparisons to michaela pratt from htgawm for both her sophisticated sense of style and bold personality. somewhat of an uptight perfectionist, she has always followed the rules and is her own worst critic.

despite her demeanor, the young woman is extremely caring and always wants the people she cares about to be comfortable and happy. when she’s very close to a person, she can be very emotional expressive towards them. she doesn’t mind expressing her feelings and thoughts with someone she’s extremely close to. in fact, she finds it therapeutic. of course, this is something that comes over time when you’re her friend. she doesn’t get close to people very easily.

everything that she does is very methodical and thought out. she’s not afraid to flaunt her intelligence, nor is she afraid to intimidate people by shoving her systematic way of life in their face if it benefits her. taline is a very cut-throat type of person when it comes down to it, but it’s because she believes she deserves the best and will do anything to get it.

due to her own arrogance and intelligence, taline has an opinion on everything and a tendency to share those opinions when it’s not necessarily appropriate, which gets her in trouble frequently.

she no longer speaks to her father due to the fact that the pressure he put her under caused her to suffer from anxiety attacks. she’s currently looking for a good therapist since she’s still dealing with the impact of his words and the expectations he set for her.

she moved to chicago a few months after dropping out of the graduate program at vanderbilt university. she wanted a clean slate since she was always surrounded by the same people for the past few years. chicago seemed like a good idea to her and it would be an easy escape from hearing her father’s nagging.

currently, she is living at the malnati while teaching at the small dance studio she works at. she posts on youtube every other week and has recently gotten on the tiktok bandwagon. she moved to chicago because it reminded her a little bit of indianapolis and she needed a new place of scenery to reinvent herself. at the moment, there is no family in the picture as taline has been estranged from hers since she was twenty one for choosing to pursue her own dreams instead of trying to fit into the neat little box they’d carved for her. that has left a pretty big void in her life that she chose to ignore and then fill with dance.

to help her make a little money on the side, she has an onlyfans account. she enjoys showing herself off in lingerie. taline at night vs. taline during the day is such a difference that it will blow your mind.

plotting

at first glance, there isn’t very much to taline. she’s the girl who is impeccably dressed with a wide grin on her face and a childlike kindness that makes her embrace everyone she meets with open arms. she goes to great lengths to make sure that is all that people see; that she is recognized as the ex-rich girl who lucked into her own brand of success with her youtube channel. she genuinely adores people from all walks of life and takes great joy in getting to know them. honestly, taline is a combination of a really reliable friend and someone who frequently just disappears off the face for months at a time when she's focusing on her work. she's surprisingly introverted for the job she has and can be something of a hermit, but if a friend needs her she'll dust herself off and come out of her hole. she's an interesting person to have around and has stories for days, but can be a little self-involved and work-obsessed. she's also not great at talking about her feelings unless she's pissed off. she's a lot of fun, though, and loves to party.

i can see taline having a lot of friends but many of them not being particularly good ones. she's a very charismatic and outgoing person but also withdrawn in the sense that a lot of her friendships are very surface level. it takes a lot for her to decide to let someone get much closer but when she does, she's a good friend who will look out for the other person. she just has a tendency to put herself first because she doesn't feel like anyone else will do it for her, so she needs to do it herself. she also grew up feeling pretty lonely and i think part of the reason why she'd have so many superficial friends.

in conclusion: taline is someone with a kind heart who would give the shirt right off her back for anyone she deems a friend. she’s open-minded, loving, and incredibly forgiving when she wants to be. she definitely has her faults. she can be vain and self-involved and a little unreliable as she’s incredibly disorganized. it tends to be made up for with her genuinely good nature, how eager she is to please and how prone she is to spoiling her friends. overall, she's a good friend to have around when she decides to attach herself to you!

on the flip side, taline loves a good debate, and honestly, loves a good fight. she's full of opinions and refuses to believe that she could be wrong. losing an argument or debate is not in her vocab. she is argumentative and also quite moral/righteous. with that being said, there will also be people she rubs the wrong way. being a strong character and a person not afraid of confrontation, taline frequently ends up in situations where she antagonizes others. when she believes in something, she's very adamant about it and she will fight for it, even if she's not always in the right. she's very passionate and very outspoken and she tends to step on people's toes more often than not. she's also stubborn and doesn't easily see her own mistakes, so she's been known to keep holding onto her opinion even when it's been obviously wrong. get into a heavy conversation with her at your own peril, xo.

despite having a lot of acquaintances, i would like for her to have a circle of tight friends, people she is incredibly close with that she trusts implicitly. some she's known for a long time and some that maybe are newer but they feel its like they've known each other forever. just give this girl her pals, please!

she has plans to open her own studio in the near future, so anyone who be interested in aiding to her dream or who wants lessons or even just a place to practice could befriend her.

she is a hopeless romantic, through and through. she is something of a serial monogamist where she wants to be in a relationship because they help ease some of the insecurities she’s been battling with since she was disowned by her family. she tends to put all of that yearning for their approval into relationships with other people. she’s bisexual, and she’s interested in people who can make her laugh and feel comfortable. she likes the idea of having a partner in her life but she's also so independent and in her own world, so she hasn't ever been particularly good at dating. if we’re being honest, the only serious relationship she has ever been in was with moira sanchez back in college, and she’s still mending a broken heart from that.

she's very protective over her own feelings but equally tends to jump into things too fast and then back the hell out all of a sudden. if she does choose to be in a relationship, i think she’s quite picky with who she decides to do that with because she had a childhood of not receiving the love she needed and i think that shows in her approach to romantic relationships (ouch). i can't see her having loads of hookups since she does tend to project onto someone who shows her attention or affection. she falls hard for people, especially people she starts sleeping with. fwb or fuck buddy relationships often become complicated for her or they evolve into something that ultimately ends. she’s unlucky in love, to put it simple.

wanted plots

left brain, right brain. taline’s other half. the two couldn’t be more different regarding their behavior and interests, but they somehow make it work. they don’t fight often, either, even if they aren’t the same in the slightest. the one thing they have in common is how much they adore the other’s existence.

two best gal friends. -- like a troublesome trio. the three are always seen with at least one another. you can call them charlie’s angels, destiny’s child, or phoebe, rachel, and monica from friends. something that resembles the friendships of the bold type and someone great.

now we got bad blood. -- taline doesn’t have many enemies, but there is always someone out there in the world that will get on her nerves. this person makes her want to gouge her eyes out with a fork. right off the bat, these two bumped heads, arguing about petty things like favorite tv shows and favorite foods. perhaps it’s because they’re both natural born leaders and can’t seem to reach an agreement, or perhaps it’s because they remind each other a little too much of themselves. either way, nobody understands their dislike of one another.

the art of intimacy. -- she has never been one to indulge in senseless intimacy. actions where touches were detached from feelings. it’s not her -- that’s not taline. but sometimes, the feelings of fingertips on her skin, and the taste of lips, mixed with the rich moans and pleas for more, drives her to break her own rules. she can study them. learn notes about the way of intimacy and sex when you remove the feelings. true, she’s terrible at removing that and she proves time and time again that she can’t separate lust and love. maybe it wont end in disaster? maybe it’ll provide just the right muse.

almost lover. -- they probably had a thing at one point and she got too attached, they broke her heart, and she just can’t let it go.

#malnatiintro #malnatiooc #malnatism

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nicemom93 · 5 years

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In The Wreckage

Eight days. It’s been eight days since the horror of Season 4 dropped on us unexpectedly, messing up all of our plans to watch together, with personalized marshmallows (thanks, @jjmazzy) and Veronica-themed food. And while we all knew that we were going to lose someone, I don’t think anyone was ready for what we got, or how poorly it would be done.

What I also never expected was a season that made me:

1. Wish that we’d never clamored for more Veronica Mars after MKAT;

2. Wonder if I could actually still enjoy old VM canon, since what S4 did to Veronica and her story was so awful.

I came across a Hulu forum (again, thanks, @jjmazzy ) and wrote more than I’ve been able to write in the last 8 days, explaining my unhappiness and my hope that Rob Thomas is not allowed to bring any more Veronica Mars canon to life, but it may have been too long and the damn thing won’t post. So, I’m sharing here, under the cut, to at least get this off my chest.

Although it is inevitable that this show would have ended for good in 2007 without the steadfast support of its fans, I respect that a showrunner gets to run his show. He doesn’t have to cater to what has become disparagingly termed ‘fan service’. There are a couple of problems with that in the case of the Veronica Mars revival however.

After the unprecedented fan response to bringing Veronica and company back for a movie, the fandom continued to keep the attention on the desire for more canon content. Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell did an admirable job continuing to mention their own wishes just often enough to keep the fans’ interest piqued. Then, last summer, a month before the formal revival announcement, the teasing began…we’re close, so close, so very close…and the fandom responded as expected, shouting our desire for more VM content from every forum available. I cannot believe that this deliberate tease and the fandom response did not help make the deal with Hulu. “Look at our built-in audience! This is a sure-fire money-maker.” For the next 11 months, we were then spoon fed the pieces and parts of the story that anyone with a brain would know was going to keep the interest high. Kristen Bell even finally declared herself ‘Team Logan’ after years of frustratingly stating that do-nothing Piz was better for her beloved character than the boyfriend who always had her back and knew exactly what she needed. What a great day that was – seeing her finally admit what the rest of us have thought all along. We should have known it was a scam to keep us on the hook, but, boy, did it work. Hulu has probably never gotten as much free advertising from a fandom as it did for Veronica Mars.

But the show we got in S4, and what is being proposed for S5, are not what we were sold. In S4, Veronica became a shell of who she has been in the past. That might be understandable given all of the trauma in her life, but when last we saw her, she was working toward understanding what she wanted out of her life and was learning to make better choices. What in the world happened to her between the end of MKAT and S4? Nothing is mentioned, but for a character to have such a significant change in outlook and behavior between chapters of a story, there really should have been some explanation. There is no question that Veronica's always been...troubled and kinda difficult, but that was earned by the circumstances of her life, and the people who cared about her still managed to ground her to a certain extent, no matter how hard she was on them.

In S4, she's hateful to everyone who has loved her, except for her dad, who she mostly ignores. Her disdain over Wallace's life choices was hard to stomach. Her treatment of Weevil was so self-righteous and horrible that I truly hated her in that last interaction...you know, the one before he saved her ass in spite of how awful she was. And her treatment of Logan was appalling. She spent most of the original series looking down on teenaged Logan because he wasn't as focused and driven and put together as she thought he should be (newsflash - she wasn't all that either), but here she's looking down on him because he’s gotten too focused, driven, and put together. I get why she had trouble with the fact that she's still a mess and he's not any longer, but the way she taunted and undermined him did not make her a character I would like to see again. Now, a Veronica who understands her own dynamic, and is trying to improve herself, that would be interesting, but there is nothing in how S4 concluded that would cause her to make this change. She now has a reason to be a shell of her former self, with no hope for anything good to ever come from her life.

Since S4 aired, we’ve heard from Rob Thomas and Kristen Bell telling us this was the only way to keep the show going. They’ve even had poor Jason Dohring out trying to sell that message, in spite of the completely disrespectful way he was treated after helping keep fan interest in this show over the long term. Not just because of the abs, although that’s the typical argument from those who want to see a fifth season of Veronica beaten down once again. No, it’s because Logan Echolls has had the best arc of character development on this entire show, and on most other television shows as well. It is difficult to fathom why no one wanted to continue to take advantage of that.

However, this showrunner doesn’t think a married woman detective can be interesting. Rob Thomas has stated in interviews that he thinks Logan and Veronica in a perfect relationship would be boring. Umm, have you watched your own show, sir? That marriage is never going to be perfect. Watching them negotiate their new dynamic would be interesting to watch, but apparently not interesting, or maybe it's just not possible, for Mr. Thomas to write. He’s also stated that he needed Veronica to be the underdog again—that’s where she is best. I don’t disagree, but I’m not sure how more trauma piled on her translates to underdog. She’s always going to be the underdog because she takes up for the underdog. At least she used to. Her relationship status doesn’t change that.

Mr. Thomas’s consistent message following the show’s drop has been that he wants this to be a pure mystery show, and take out the teenage soap element. He could have done that easily by not regressing Veronica back to the maturity level of a teenager. That was the only obvious aspect of teen soap that I saw in S4 and he chose to wrote her like that. He also chose to throw in the completely unnecessary love triangle tease, a ridiculous soapy twist for a character who has never been a cheater, at a fundamental core level because of what she has seen, and who has been in a reasonably stable and loving relationship for five years. We’re also told that the horrific trauma she endures at the close of the finale is what will finally get her to heal. There is no valid writing that would make that true. Over the last fifteen years, Rob Thomas has piled trauma after trauma on this character, and none of them have caused her to heal. Here, in spite of her fears, she again chooses a life with the love of her life, establishing that she does still have some hope for a better life, even when she knows so much can go wrong, and she is rewarded for this growth by being dealt the worst blow possible. What about that set-up sounds like a reason to finally choose to heal?

Our final sight of Veronica is of her again running away from what’s left of her life, including any type of support system. Mr. Thomas indicates he sees the future of this show only as Veronica traveling and solving mysteries on her own on the road. He wants a pure mystery show, although he admits, very accurately, that he doesn't do mystery that well. He also accurately assesses that humor/banter is where he excels, but where in the story of a lonely, bitter widow with no one in her life are we to find that humor? V's repartee with Keith and Logan especially are where that is easiest to find, and Logan’s dead and Keith will maybe be on the other end of a phone call. Why would we wish this dark and hopeless world on a character that we’ve loved for years in spite of her flaws (and her creator’s). As a longtime, very immersed fan, I wish I could travel back in time and let the fandom know what it’s like at the end of this time stream. If I believe in Marvel Time Travel, that still leaves us in a shattered world that we unwittingly asked for, but maybe I could at least save other versions of me and my fandom friends from the heartbreak of a Veronica Mars revival. Canon ended just fine with MKAT. I can only hope that the Hulu Powers That Be don’t continue to allow Mr. Thomas to continue to inflict his vision of more trauma porn on Veronica Mars.

#veronica mars #season 4 spoilers

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missfay49 · 5 years

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Sanders Sides Theory – July 3, 2019-August 16, 2019

The last side will be Aggression. Please enjoy this short essay explaining why.

Looong post below the cut.

Premise:

Orange. The mythical last Side needed to complete the rainbow that is C!Thomas. According to color theory, orange signifies High Activity, Action, Impulse, and… Aggression. But many of the sides don’t neatly fit into any of the traditional color theories. While it would complete the rainbow, their color is not going to define their trait. So just toss that out right now.

I racked my brain to come up with another unspoken personality trait that could be considered shameful like Deceit and Remus, that C!Thomas could possibly have within him. I actually sat on this post for more than a month because the pieces didn’t fit. But now that I’ve started to see other posts about the last Side being Anger, in the context of standing up for oneself, (Righteous Fury) I think it makes sense. What is the literally opposite of how we view C!Thomas in these videos? Kind, sympathetic, accepting C!Thomas? Aggression and violence.

Examples of Violence or Aggression in the show:

AoVD – Roman slays a dragon-witch to protect an imaginary Valerie. Roman is considered to be acting par-for-the-course for killing the dragon-witch, and no one minds because he did it to defend someone.

AA - Login throws a keyboard at Thomas to make a point.

-Some kinds of violence are acceptable to society, like defeating ‘bad’ people. Or for science.

LNTAO – Logan screams and throws a crumpled paper at Roman, hitting him in the eye. This causes Patton and Roman to lead a full-on puppet-based theatrical production about why we need to express our feelings in healthy ways. (Logan had to hit him in the eye, for the sake of the idiom, “an eye for an eye”.) (Also, Logan had a feeling for once, and it was anger.)

EP – Virgil throws a rock at C!Thomas and hits him in the face, but immediately feels bad about it.

-Some kinds of violence are not acceptable.

(I’m leaving out the latest episode for a reason.)

The Sides have quietly been exploring and dealing with aggression the whole time. This is also why Virgil, as someone trying to reform themselves, seems to actually be afraid of the yet-unknown ‘other’ Side. He knows how bad something like that has the potential to be. With the last episode’s reveal of Remus, he seems resigned to the fact that all the Sides will eventually come out, and he can’t control or prepare for it as much as he thought he could. He’s scared.

Counter-Argument:

Let me stop you right there- if the other sides act out and are violent or aggressive sometimes, does that mean there needs to be a whole ‘nother side for it? Why isn’t that just something they do?

One Side exhibiting a trait from another Side is par for the course, of course. We were not officially introduced to Deceit until episode CLBG, but Virgil has been specifically reminding everyone not to lie since way back in AOVD, as well as several episodes that bring up instances of lying to ourselves, or denying reality: ANYOLTM, TDSOD, AOVD. Patton, Roman, and Logan have all been caught lying since early episodes, despite us not knowing Deceit existed. Therefore, the fact that many of them have acted aggressively in the past is a solid indicator that Aggression will be its own Side.

The Meat of the Argument – Suppression:

There are no light or dark sides, good or bad sides. There are only those sides that C!Thomas has, or has not, already accepted are a part of him.

Being nurturing, logical, and creative (to an extent) are all sides that have been encouraged in him, and most of us, from early childhood. Showing these traits is considered positive behavior, and conducive to functioning in society.

There are no light or dark sides.

Meanwhile, being duplicitous or selfish, creating things that seem too dark, or having paranoid thoughts are all often dismissed or considered to be unacceptable by large swaths of people, particularly when we’re young. As my own example, I went to a Christian pre-school in 1992-93 (I’m old, okay?). One day while finger-painting, I drew a large green snake attacking an airplane. Yeah, that’s right, I came up with “Snakes on a Plane”, and that’s why I included the date. Suck it, Hollywood.

That finger-painting was, and still is, the best depiction of an airplane I have ever produced. I can still picture it. I was so proud, I excitedly told my teacher exactly what was going on in the scene when she asked. She promptly took it away and threw it in the trash, because, “Violence is wrong.”

I cried. I hadn’t actually attacked a plane full of people, or created a real life violent snake. I’d only thought about it and drawn a picture. It was a compelling story for a five year old!

Suppressing ‘negative’ thoughts doesn’t help us. Every Side only wants what’s best for C!Thomas. Virgil wants to protect him. Deceit wants him to be successful. Remus wants C!Thomas to be free to express himself, without being limited by what society (or even his own wholesome viewers) might find acceptable.

Yet, we are taught to suppress these kinds of thoughts and ideas, to deny they even exist. But we know, because the series shows us, that even these ‘darker’ sides can be useful. How?

All things in moderation.

Moderation is the key. Focusing too much on any one facet hurts us, while working towards a balance helps us. Even our acceptable traits can hurt us when they’re taken to the extreme: Being too logical can lead to disregarding feelings and producing lower quality work, just for the sake of meeting a deadline. Being too fanciful can cause us to get lost in a daydream when we need to take care of our responsibilities. Being too protective of an ideal can make us blind to the way someone is trying to express themselves.

One by one, C!Thomas has shown how each Side can be helpful to him. And anxiety is the key, the linchpin. Feeling stress can be a way to alert us of possible dangers, societal faux-pas, and cause us to change course to ensure a positive outcome. This is the base human emotion, that for centuries has allowed us to conform, just a little, to stay in a group, and keep us from getting eaten by freakin’ wolves! Anxiety is accepted as useful.

Acceptance.

Heck, Remus was introduced and (more or less) accepted in a single (long) episode! I left out the examples of violence in his episode until now, because each and every one of them was ultimately accepted as just being a creative part of our brains that happens sometimes, unworthy of lingering on. They do not matter. It was immediately resolved that Remus simply can’t control or predict his imaginative outbursts, but would like to be accepted all the same because he doesn’t want C!Thomas to miss out on what could be a huge portion of his creative ability. He’s hurt by the fact he was rejected in the first place.

So, although Deceit has not yet been accepted per se, we can fully anticipate it, and the acceptance of any remaining unknown Sides, given enough time. And this pattern of acceptance will be their downfall.

Progression:

Why has it taken so long to get to this Side?

When the series first started, C!Thomas’s anxiety was high. He was just coming to accept it existed, let alone how to deal with it and turn it to his advantage. When you feel anxious all the time, it’s incredibly difficult to ever really feel confident in yourself or what you’re doing. We can’t stick up for ourselves if we don’t feel confident about ourselves in the first place.

Anxiety directly inhibits Confidence.

Exactly through the act of resolving his various Sides, the Sides become more and more confident, more valid. C!Thomas grows as a person and feels more comfortable with who he is and his path. His anxiety evolves and balances out, allowing him to feel more confident in his decision making.

The point is always to achieve balance, and accept what each Side brings to the table. And now we’re finally at the most recent video, in which we literally come to terms with the ability to have dark thoughts without them necessarily changing our behavior in real life. Confidence becomes okay. He believes in his ability to make choices that are just, like in the literal courtroom conclusion. C!Thomas MUST reach the point where he can accept that premise, because otherwise Aggression would never be palatable. Standing up for yourself would never be possible. He could never be confident if he was still worried about randomly committing violent acts against his will.

In this episode, we see the result of a Virgil that has slowly been growing more confident in his role and purpose, because he and Patton demand the group just “trust us”. But a confident Virgil is like a feedback loop into the speaker: the noise becomes stronger, more distorted, and more painful with each iteration. When he finds himself aligned with Remus unexpectedly, his feelings of confidence sink and his doubt skyrockets.

Prediction:

Not in the next episode, but definitely coming up, C!Thomas will experience an injustice from outside forces. There will be an increased level of anxiety, in which Virgil reaches an unbearable level, and C!Thomas wonders if aggressively pursuing his goals will cause him to lose his sense of self. He was wronged, but how far is he willing to go to right it? Can he handle that kind of social conflict?

C!Thomas doesn’t believe in violence, sure, but he can’t let this one go, not after everything else he’s given up so far. Roman deserves this. He will ultimately be manipulated into tabling his Anxiety, because he feels he deserves to be successful, and he can’t afford to let fear stop him now.

The Set Up:

With Anxiety out of the way, something changes in the others. They feel free, more confident. This time the choice was knowingly made to reject Virgil, instead of leaving everyone confused like it did in AA. And at least some of them can feel justified about it, because he was getting out of control. They’ll bring him back when it’s all over, they tell themselves. But with Patton’s help, C!Thomas still feels one last pang of doubt. Was it right to remove Virgil? At this, Logan will turn on him, reasoning that the entire point of EVERYTHING was to be successful, and “now that we’re here, you’re just going to throw it all away? For what?! To save face with someone who doesn’t even deserve it? To let some jerk decide what you’re capable of, for you? This could be- IS everything we’ve been working towards!” The set-up of him being the savior in DWIT, and feeling more confident in his status as “cool” and capable, will be his driving force. Even Roman is on-board with this, he wants the spotlight so badly! Logan’s voice will change. He’ll become unreasonable, emotional. And at that point it will become clear he’s not himself. He will hit the floor like the battery just died in his little robot puppet. And what rises up in his place? Well...

Aggression will appear without any fancy dress. He will be wearing a t-shirt, possibly with some orange, or some small, hard-to-see detail indicating his trait, but will otherwise look exactly like C!Thomas does in everyday life. This is the insidiousness of anger and violent thoughts; You can never tell, just by looking, who might act on them.

He will be an energetic, twitching mess of barely controlled excitement, looking for any outlet. He might display potential traits for an addictive personality. He will give clear instructions and expect to be listened to. “Do it. Do it, now- STOP TALKING AND D-!“

All of the increasingly extravagant costumes for each new side have just been a misdirect leading up to this exact moment; A face-to-face confrontation with the part of C!Thomas that he feels most ashamed of: actual pride in himself.

Why?

Why would it be hard for someone to be proud of themselves?

Already addressed in DWIT, pride is a ‘sin’. We convince ourselves not to feel it, because the ‘right’ thing to do is accept our lot in life, to believe we don’t even deserve what we have, let alone dare to reach for more. One of the greatest struggles we face in a world where we have access to a relentless stream of information, is reconciling our position compared to others. Every time we get a role in the play, are we taking from someone else? Maybe we didn’t really earn that opportunity. The act of pursuing anything non-critical to survival is juxtaposed by our sense of justice. We struggled, so we deserve something for our efforts.

People who have struggled hard to make something of themselves, only to find their path blocked by someone else, something outside of their control… they snap. They reach an invisible marker in their timeline where they can choose to either be someone that always gives in, gives to others, never chooses themselves… or they can choose to stand up. And who helps us stand up? Deceit. Because if we aren’t willing to stand up to that roadblock for ourselves, we rationalize that it will benefit others. How many more people will this roadblock prevent from creating something? From succeeding? This isn’t just about us anymore, it’s about justice for all who come after! It is righteous! It is good! It’s US versus THEM!

That’s why, when we need to reject civility, anxiety has to go…

Conclusion:

Accepting Deceit is the first step. None of this works if he’s still an outlier. With the help of Deceit, Aggression will forcibly coerce and overpower each Side in turn as they try to defend C!Thomas, insisting that he is the last, and greatest, piece of the puzzle needed to ensure C!Thomas’s success and well-being. He is self-serving and unabashedly honest about it. The contrast will even make Deceit look more appealing: “See?” He mocks the Sides as they’re defeated. “I just wanted to give you a calm, civil version of all…” waving a gloved hand, “-this. But you wouldn’t listen and, now, here we are...”

But you wouldn’t listen.

C!Thomas will continue the pattern of acceptance, because every Side has to have some good in them, right? If Deceit can be good, so can Aggression. He doesn’t understand why the other Sides are being so stubborn. They don’t know what it feels like to be rejected just for being themselves, not like Deceit and Virgil. Like him.

Leaving us with one last, unanswered question: Who will C!Thomas be once all the Sides are revealed?

But that’s just a theory- a Game Theo- ha, just kidding. If this turns out to be all wrong, well, it was a good mental exercise. Hope you enjoyed.

#patton #virgil #remus #violence #logan #roman #deceit #orange #sanders sides theory

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koalas-koalas-everywhere · 5 years

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About book!Aziraphale and his relationship to Heaven

Most of the meta I’ve read about it has it that the main difference between him and TV!Aziraphale is that he’s accepted the fact that he’s a bit of a bastard and that Heaven’s pretty rotten and it’s just a name for a side and I’m over here like “that’s?????? Not what I read at all”. If anything, TV!A is the one who keeps talking about opposite sides as the reason why he and Crowley can’t like each other and about his inability to disobey, while book!A is the one going on and on about angels and demons not even having free will and so being inevitably good and evil respectively. Yes, he’s more aware of the possibility for punishment than TV!A seems to be, mentioning Gomorrah when they find out Warlock’s not the Antichrist, but that just fits with the whole issue, which is that a part of him knows that everything’s not what he thinks he’s been told it is it seems to be, it’s just that he knows it on the same level that he knows Crowley has a spark of goodness in him and that still allows him to deny that knowledge in conversation until they’re literally about to die.

Here’s how I read it: is he more comfortable with, say, the concept* of killing an eleven year old? Yes, but, coupled with everything else he says, I think it has less to do with him being alright with his “bastardy” and recognizing Heaven and Hell are just sides than it has with him just being convinced that, as long as it’s an agent of Heaven doing it (including him), it’s alright (in the self-righteous hands, a gun lends weight to a moral argument).

Heaven as a cult (and no, I don’t know what Hell would be in this metaphor - a gang, maybe)

The thing is that you can’t look at his relationship with Heaven as just work, or even just family. As I mentioned in another post, I think it should be seen as a cult, which kinda mixes both work and family and adds religion and all that fun stuff: the other angels are the people he was born and belongs with, and their “home” is where he learned was raised (family); Heaven is the source of his “income” and Aziraphale relies on it “financially”, it also has a marked hierarchy (work); as a religious institution, it works with the belief that it knows what’s best and what will be rewarded in the end, in addition to having a knowledge of how the world works that isn’t obvious at first glance to anyone who doesn’t belong, and works primarily on faith (religion). When all of that combines, the “raising” part of the familial aspect becomes programming and indoctrination with the unquestioning faith of the religion, the faith of the religion becomes unquestionable obedience to your boss with the strict hierarchy and fear of ruin if you’re fired of the workplace, and the faith and desire to belong of the family and religion become an unhealthy attachment to your job.

I see book!Aziraphale as who was born and raised in a cult and then sent away to do missionary work, where he faced reality, went through some pretty severe cognitive dissonance and dealt with it by rationalizing and denying by turns. I think the “angels are naturally good and, in fact, incapable of being anything else, since we don’t have free will, so anything I do will be Right and Good” excuse saw its fair share of use. I see him as someone who’s comfortable being a bastard because he doesn’t believe that’s what he’s doing or that he’s even capable of it. It’s this denial which leads him to (somehow????) be convinced that if he tells Heaven where the Antichrist is, they’ll get rid of him (nothing too bad, since they’re Heaven, of course, which leads me to the question, what the fuck do you think would have been an appropriate response, Aziraphale, since you were willing to kill him for a good stretch there? And what would have been an exaggerated, unbecoming-of-your-idealized-Heaven response???), even though he starts off knowing that they want the war, because he cannot conceive of being against Heaven. Sortaaa... divergent? Yeah, alright, but always working towards the same goal. The Agreement might have been acceptable in his mind because the job is still getting done, and the temptations also would have happened anyway. (Besides, of course, the whole “I can’t do Bad” thing.”)

Not that I think he’s, like, a pure cinnamon roll who only does the things he does because he doesn’t know better uwu !!!11!1!1. I think a big reason why his indoctrination’s been able to hold all that time is pride in always being Right and the comfort of knowing you’re always Good, so you don’t have to think about how what you’re doing will affect other people. He is someone who wants to do good, but, as all of us know, even without the complication of what we’re told is good and what we feel is good being contradicting, sometimes life’s too complicated to be able to tell what’s the right course, and Aziraphale, who we were introduced to worrying about this very problem, takes the easy way out and believes that being Good is his very nature. As I said before, a part of him knew that what he believed was wrong, but it was a mind (what Heaven taught him) over matter (what he feels is right) conflict when there was another battle going on in “matter” between what he feels is right and what he wants for himself, which was to be in Heaven’s good graces and for everything to be easy and himself to be good.

Matter over program (and pride, and guilt, and comfort, and security, let’s just say he didn’t have it easy, mkay?)

This conflict is suggested In The Beginning, ““““coincidentally”””” also the last time we go into Aziraphale’s head until he has to make a choice between Heaven and Crowley, and he rationalizes choosing Heaven by convincing himself that they’ll do what he wants them to and stop the Apocalypse and that way he’ll get to go back to Crowley.** Aka, his POV is marked by instances where what he’s been told what he says clashes against what he feels and wants. The solution for his conflict comes with the Metatron stating in no uncertain terms that Heaven’s wishes and his own were irreconcilably at odds with each other... actually, I think this probably wasn’t the first time? Probably, I don’t and can’t know. But what this was, was probably the first time Aziraphale cared so much about what he’d have to give up that he thought it was worth it to not only cut ties with Heaven, but also to abandon his carefully constructed wall of denial and rationalization and indoctrination to accept thing as they are.

We can see it plainly with the televangelist. A lot of people point at that moment as proof of him being and ass and, like, I agree that that’s what he’s being, but only on account of the people who were honestly watching that channel to feel connected to their religion and find some peace and reassurance and got... Aziraphale. Here’s the thing, though. A thing that tends to get lost in these debates. This isn’t Aziraphale casually debating the Apocalypse over some tea and scones; this is the first time Aziraphale admits, maybe even accepts, that Heaven and Hell are just sides, after insisting on their inherent good and evil natures the whole book; this is Aziraphale in the wake of having his rose-coloured glasses torn from him, this is him after being forced, after all this time, to tear off his own glasses; this is him angry, and disillusioned, and betrayed, with, at and by both Heaven and himself. Hell, him reproaching the televangelist for taking comfort in the fact that the righteous people could just kick back and watch the show, secure in the knowledge that they’ll be fine, could very well fit a projection of everything he’d let slide, because Heaven would win the war and that was his “idea of a morally acceptable time.” (More on Aziraphale and his possible guilt in a bit.)

Again, this is not an admission Aziraphale makes lightly, like “awright, I guess it’s not quite like that, but shhhh, it’s our secret ;)”, it’s one he’s forced to face when the only other option is losing everything he holds dear.

(New thought I got while writing this: this is also the first time he admits that Heaven’s victory isn’t a sure thing, so not only does he abandon the security in his and Heaven’s righteousness, but also in that everything would at least turn out okay.)

What He Found (no, I didn’t watch the movie, this pun is as superficial as NG’s attempt to make Pepper into a person who “believes in peace” for the TV show)

But things turn out pretty alright for him. Not only does he get a happy ending, but in between being discorporated and the attempted fight against Satan, you can kinda see him get his moral compass sorted. If I may quote myself, it goes kinda like this:

“I’d say it’s why he’s so erratic at the end, and with the whole confidence/insecurity thing. At Heaven’s insistence on bringing about the Apocalypse, that clear collision of beliefs, he has the rug pulled from under him. That certainty comes from the fact that he believes, or can make himself believe, that Heaven and Angels are always right. The moment that’s proven to be untrue? Fuck you, I’m gonna possess people. Oh? You think you’re so righteous, huh? Talking about how you’ll be saved because you’re so Right, huh? Boy, do I have some news for you, you’re not even a decent person, I mean, really? Watching everyone else suffer from up high? (oh, shit, am I on tv?) [also notice that this is the first time, unless I’m forgetting something, that he acknowledges what Crowley’s been saying all along, that there’s no good vs evil, just sides] Fuck that, I’m gonna convince geriatrics to kill the Antichrist. Fuck it, I’m gonna make that guard disappear (…err…ignoring the pangs of guilt, gotta keep going…) Fuck it all, I’m gonna kill that eleven yeaghghgasdfh mayhaps not. But! You! Metatron! You feel so Righteous, huh? So Good? So Correct? So confident in your ability to understand the ineffable plan? Well I don’t, bitch.”

Everyone says that book!Aziraphale is smug and condescending and acts holier-than-thou and they’re right! That’s him! But that confidence comes from believing he literally can’t go wrong. It’s why he changes his mind about Adam: it’s all right and good to be ready to kill (or get someone to kill) a kid when you believe morality is always on your side, not... so much when you realize that everything you do, it’s for you to live with, and there’s no certainty that you were right.

Our last stand

And here’s my last argument for why I don’t think he “accepted” that he was a bastard before, and going back to the promised, if unasked for, topic: his guilt.

So. The Apocalypse has been averted. Time to go back home with the Enemy, return the favour to the sweet lady who gave him a ride over (and her young man). Suddenly, the smell of something burning. An earthquake. Satan’s coming for Crowley, at least, maybe Adam, too. There are other people at the airbase, though. So, Aziraphale decides to try to fight him, at least give everyone a chance to run. And there’s kindness and compassion in that decision, of course, but when he tries to convince Crowley, he also implies that they owe it to the humans, for messing around with them. He’s guilty. And I have trouble believing that someone who’d die for a bunch of people he’s just met and ask seemingly the only sentient being he has an affective attachment to to join him (which has connotations about both his committed nature and the extent of his guilt) would just... go through life, knowing he was screwing people over and fully accepting it. Knowing it in his heart of hearts but not feeling prepared for the consequences and so looking the other way? Yeah, sure. That’s him. That’s his arc: making the choice to actually look at things, and also face the fact that he’s been making the choice to close his eyes.

Book!Aziraphale’s faults and bastardy are more obvious than his TV counterpart’s, and maybe even greater, but it’s not because he’s accepted that side of himself or that all Heaven’s ever taught him is pure propaganda, but because he believes that propaganda a lot more (at least, superficially) and so is much more secure in his “good nature”.

*I’ve pointed it put multiple times and I still can’t emphasize it enough: while both of them hesitate, the one who decides not to kill Adam and wait and see while he’s talking to the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, who are supposed to bring it about on his command, is book!Aziraphale.

**In a way, choosing both of them, in contrast to TV!Aziraphale who, by telling no one the truth, chose neither. (He went straight to the manager.)

#Good Omens #Good Omens book #Gomens #GO #am I metaing yet?#meta #Aziraphale

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dailyaudiobible · 5 years

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09/16/2019 DAB Transcript

Isaiah 22:1-24:23, Galatians 2:17-3:9, Psalms 60:1-12, Proverbs 23:15-16

Today is the 16th day of the month of September. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian, and it is a joy to be here right now with you as we all just kind of come in around the global campfire, exhale, and, yeah, we’re moving into a new workweek, lots of stuff's gonna happen, but we have this time every day to just step away from it all and let God speak through his Word. So that's we’ll do. We’re reading from the New English Translation this week and we will continue our journey through the book of Isaiah today. Chapters 22 through 24.

Commentary:

Okay. So, what we’re reading as we read through the letter to the Galatians today brought us back some of the things that we were exploring as we journeyed through the letter to the Romans. But now we've got the benefit of a little bit of context. We’ve come some miles since then, so we’re beginning to get completely familiar with the struggle that was happening in the early church. And even in today's reading we can see pretty clearly…I mean…we can look at the apostle Paul and revere him, but we can see pretty clearly why he was hated so badly by the religious Jews and why this even spilled over into conflict between the Jewish people and the Gentile believers - so, like Hebrew believers in Jesus and Gentile believers in Jesus, which is the reason for this letter. So, Paul said something very, very famous today, very quoted, one of the most famous verses in the Bible. “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” And it’s famous because it succinctly declares our reality as believers and that’s what we’re living into. But why did he say that? Like, it's a pretty audacious thing…like…you don't just walk up to somebody and go, “hey, I've been crucified with Christ. I don't live anymore. Actually, I'm not living. This is Christ living in me.” Right? Like, is a pretty audacious thing to say. We say it all the time and it's famous and we understand it, but why did he say it? This is Paul's disassembly of the Mosaic law as a means to be justified before God. And that kind of language was the very thing that had so many people literally wanting Paul dead. So, we look around at the religious wars and theological debates and…that are happening today, and we realize, “oh, this kind of things been going on all along.” So, Paul's argument was that the law only could lead to death, right, that it could only reveal how you failed. So, there's a rule and you can obey that rule and obey that rule and obey that rule until you break that rule. But once you broke that rule you failed the law. And nobody had been able to just like live into the law and never break the law and therefore be able to declare themselves righteous before God outside of Jesus. So, the law shows your failures and condemns you. So, for Paul, the only…the only way to respond then was to die to the law so that he could find a way to actually live for God and this was accomplished by completely releasing, letting go of everything that he thought that he was, all that he was without Christ, to die to that, surrendering to the life of Christ within by faith. Now, like I seriously understand that this is kinda like Christianity 101. Like, these are fundamental things, but you gotta zoom back, like step away, or zoom up and get a birds eye view, just step back for a second from all of the tradition and all of the theology and all that you think that you know and just put yourself in the position of hearing Paul but not having been raised in this tradition, right? So, let’s say you’re a Hebrew person and your entire life you have been told to obey the Mosaic law. Like, that's the purpose of your life, it’s to try to obey the Mosaic law. This is how you will find right standing before God. And, so, you will go through all of the rituals and sacrifices and traditions so that you can…so that you can be right with God and have a sense of community. And somebody from your group…and this is Paul…like..so a pharisee…like a leading person in your group that teaches people comes along and says, “it's…it's different than this, we’re never gonna get there from here. None of us can fulfill the law.” And He’s simply speaking to a frustration that’s bubbling under the culture. Like, everybody knows that. And, so, Paul’s like, “we’re never gonna get there but somebody did, and that was Jesus, and you crucified him. You could…he was right in front of your face fulfilling the law right before your eyes and you killed him. But God raised him from the dead. And, so, now we don't have to obey the law anymore. We don’t have to do that stuff anymore. We’re dying to that because all it was ever intended to do was to show us that we couldn't live up to it. Its purpose was to show us that in our own strength we could only ever fail at becoming righteous before God. But then Jesus came and obeyed. The son of God came and died for the sins of the world. And now, if you are willing to let go of who you were and believe in Jesus then you will have fulfilled the law.” This is a bit of a tough sell for people who never heard this before. And, so…and because Paul had been a religious Pharisee, like he’s considered an apostate, like a heretic. And, so, the other religious leaders who are trying to live into and live up to this law, they think what he's saying is absolutely off the rails because, I mean, because Paul’s basically subverting a belief system that he was raised in and suggesting that it was replaced by a new covenant that could only be found in Jesus and this covenant wasn’t a covenant of judgment, but one of grace and faith rather than trying to obey a set of rules and regulations and traditions and customs, which…I mean…this unnerved the Hebrew people that are listening to Paul. You can only imagine how this would unnerve you. So, most of us…I mean…the Daily Audio Bible is a vast community around the world. Most of us would say that we are following Christ, we are Christian people, we are following Jesus. So, what…what would it take…like…who would that person have to be the come along and go like, “it's not the way you think it is, it's a completely different way.” I mean, who could sit down and actually have a rational conversation and explain this to you without you getting angry, unnerved, upset, upside down, calling all your friends, having these conversations, posting all this stuff on social media. Like, Paul was a lightning rod and he wasn't trying to invite people into a new religion. The bridge that was so hard for people to cross with Paul was that Paul was trying to say, “this has always been the Hebrew story. Like…like we just missed some key, really important factors. So, we’ve been living toward certain things and trying to use them in ways that they were never going to work. And, so God in His kindness, sent His Son to show us what life is supposed to look like and to reinterpret what is…what is become nothing more than a cage for us.” But that was a pretty, pretty, pretty far bridge for people to cross. And, so, the Gentiles had a much easier time of understanding this, whereas Jewish people…even Hebrew people who believed in Jesus, but believed they were to continue to practice what they had all always practiced as a Jewish person. They had a hard time wrapping their minds…like this is why the Jerusalem Council came to be. They had a hard time wrapping their minds around what my…what life might even look like without the law, because the Mosaic law was like the centerpiece of it all. It's their Bible, it's the Torah, it's how they're supposed to live. So, for Paul to kinda come along and say, “all that was supposed to do is to show you that you cannot achieve righteousness on your own.” Like, they had never lived any other way. And, so, this is a really hard thing for them to get their minds around or even how to live it. But Paul believed that Jesus had revealed this to him personally and that's what he said and that's why he wouldn't back down. God had done too many things to reveal this to him, too many Gentiles were receiving the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives with no…with no prior understanding whatsoever of the law, right? So, Paul could look at this and go, “God is doing something here and it's outside the law, it's happening, I'm witnessing it, I'm seeing it. So, the way to righteousness can’t be through the law. The law can’t have anything to do with it. These people have never even heard of the law.” And, so, that's why Paul's like…I'm…I'm quoting Paul here, “The only thing I want to learn from you is this, did you receive the Spirit by doing the works of the law, or by believing what you heard? Are you so foolish? Although you began with the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by human effort. Have you suffered so many things for nothing if indeed it was for nothing? Does God then give you the Spirit and work miracles among you by your doing the works of the law or by your believing what you heard?” Again…I mean…this is stuff…like we could take it as an encouragement. Like…we wouldn’t…we wouldn't take those words necessarily as some kind of confrontation because we believe. But…and…I mean…the reason that I'm spending so much time here right now is this...this is Paul's theological position, this is his argument, everything that he's talking about hinges on this. And for Paul to begin to unpack and unravel his own faith he had to go back to the beginning, not Moses but Abraham, which…which put people in theological dilemma when they began to argue against Paul in favor of the law because Abraham didn't have any law to believe in or obey either. There was nothing he was supposed to follow and obey to be made right with God. God viewed Abraham's faith and saw him as righteous because of it. And, so for Paul, he’s saying to his fellow Hebrew brothers and sisters and for that matter to all Gentiles, “look there is a way and does make sense. We forgot the plot. Like…we've been in this law thing for so long that we forgot that things were happening before God ever gave the law and people were being made righteousness before God because…because of their faith. And, so…and so there must be a way through faith to be made right with God instead of us trying to spend our whole lives trying to obey these rules that we cannot obey. There must be a way. And there is. It’s through Christ our Savior, who came here in plain sight and lived this out in front of us and we killed him.” So, for Paul, the religious leaders of which he was one had transformed the covenantal relationship God offered into a set of rules that controlled the people. And since everything boiled down to whether or not one was obeying the law than there was no freedom to be in any kind of relationship with God. The law was this constant reminder that they could never be righteous. So, we have plenty, plenty of ground to cover in the book of Galatians. But this gives us again, a good chance to get the back story to…to really live into what's really going on here when we read these letters and understand how unsettling and disruptive, and for that matter how massive the gospel of Jesus, the Good News is, and was.

Prayer:

Father, we invite You into that as we continue to make the journey through Your word this year. We invite Your Holy Spirit as we explore all these avenues all these little trails that we get to go down all the things we could talk about begin to understand in in our Bibles. So, as always, we invite Your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth, and we pray that expectantly, that's what You’ve promised You would do, and we open ourselves to You. In the same way that the apostle Paul was inviting his Hebrew brothers and sisters to set aside what they thought that they knew, we do the same and invite Your Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, its home base, and like I say every day, where you find out what’s going on around here because it’s where you find out what’s going on around here

So, the last couple of weeks we've had some new resources that we've finally been able to bring to the light of day, and that includes our new portable coffee solution. Our Windfarm brand of coffee and tea is something we’ve had going for well over a decade here, but we could never…I mean…we got the invitations for K-cups and all this kind of stuff but we could never find a way to keep coffee fresh because those solutions, they get stale really quick. And we finally found a portable solution where you can steep your coffee. And, so, the coffee's freshly roasted and then nitro sealed so it gets the oxygen out of the container and then slow the deterioration process down, which allows them to last a long time. And, yeah, we finally found what we were looking for on that. So, those are available in the Daily Audio Bible Shop in the coffee and tea section.

And we released the new Daily Audio Bible Journal 2.0 where we just tweaked some things on the bindings so it would lay better and tweaked the think a little bit and just dialed it in. So, those are available in the lifestyle section of the Daily Audio Bible shop along with all the writing paraphernalia, all of the Black Wing pencils. And it’s the stuff that I use every day.

But we also released the Global Campfire line last week and that…that is something really really excited about because I we wanted to create a logo that represented our community. We have a Daily Audio Bible logo. We use it all the time, obviously, and we wanted to create something that represented the community aspect of what we do. And, so, we did that. And, so, we’ve created a number of resources that are lifestyle in nature, things that you use and that you see and that bring a sense of connection.

For example, we created a Global Campfire commemorative coin. I don't know about you…like…I'm like a national…national Park card-carrying lover. So, like, I have an annual national Park pass and all this and I love to visit our national parks here in the United States because just they’re…they’re treasures of beauty. But when you go there, and you go to a ranger station or whatever there’s all kinds of stuff you can get but they have these little coins or pins or things like that that commemorate your visit. And I'm a sucker for that stuff. I have a whole bowl full of all the places that I've been with these little commemorative coins and pins and stuff. So, it’s like…I can't be the only one…I can’t be the only one in the world who loves this kind of thing, these reminders. And, so we created the Global Campfire commemorative coin for a couple of reasons. One for just that, as a…as a collectors thing…like a thing that you see and it reminds you, “I went through the Bible. I went through the Bible in community or…and I'm still going through the Bible in community.” But also, it’s just a touch point. It's the kind of thing that you can put in your pocket and it’s just a little bit bigger than…here in the United States…I can only speak of our currency…like I’ve got all kinds of currency from all over the world, but I don’t event know what it’s all called. But if you have like a quarter, like a quarter dollar here in the United States, you know, about the size of a quarter. And this is more like the size of, say, a half-dollar. So, it's easy to kinda carry around in your pocket. And whenever you reach in your pocket and you feel it, it reminds you, “I'm not talking alone. I’m not by myself. I’ve got brothers and sisters all over the world who are going through the same things I am just like the Bible says.” And it's a touch point when you…when you touch it or when you’re holding…holding it to pray, pray for the community or pray for your brothers and sisters that we pray for every day. So, it's a beautiful reminder and those are available in the Shop.

We printed Global Campfire postcards. We have always been in the habit as a community of leaving little business cards or postcards places all around the world…all around the world in all kinds of random places…wherever we go. And since we were launching this Global Campfire logo, we created these beautiful postcards, really eye-catching, really hefty…weighty…weighty…they’re like good postcards and they’re eye-catching. So, if you leave one sitting somewhere, it's gonna draw someone's eye to the Global Campfire but when they flip it over, they’ll see, “oh, this is the Daily Audio Bible and how to get it and how to listen.”

So, that's a couple of the other items in the Global Campfire line…I guess it’s line. I don’t know that we really have a line of products, but I guess we do now. And I wasn’t really thinking of it in that way, but these are the resources that we have identified. Like these things, we can carry with us, these things, they'll be constant reminders. And it seems like we constantly need to be reminded that we’re not alone because it doesn't matter how great of a time we have in the Scriptures or whatever. Life then comes rushing…the world comes rushing at us and…and asks us to give us its complete devotion, like we have to completely focus on all the different things that we’re doing and so very easily we forget. We forget that there's something greater, something bigger, something larger happening that we’re a part of and that is that we are the children of the most-high God, revealing His kingdom in this world. So, we’ve tried to create some reminders. And you can find them in the Daily Audio Bible Shop. There’s a whole section called Global Campfire. You can find all that there.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if the mission that we share in common to bring the spoken word of God and offer it to anyone who will listen to it anywhere on this planet any time of day or night no matter when it is and to build community around that rhythm, if that is meaningful to you then thank you for your partnership. There’s a link on the homepage at dailyaudiobible.com. If you’re using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996 Spring Hill Tennessee 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

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