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dadzawa-adopt-dabi · 3 years

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Soulmate gift

“C’mon pretty, birdie, just a small touch to see if you're worth any effort.” Dabi gives Hawks a sharp grin as he slowly removes the gloves the Hero has on. He won’t actually do it. Would never touch him and wait for that zig everyone speaks about.

He’s teasing the bird, blue eyes lit up with mirth. Just a bit of amusement colors Dabi’s voice as he teases Hawks. The idea really is laughable. Personally, he finds the idea of having a Soulmate hilarious. He doesn't have a soulmate or have time to waste finding one if he wants to achieve his own goals. The black haired Villain merely enjoys teasing the Hero like any other young adult their age would. Hawks flirts right back with Dabi which, once he got the idea that Hawks was about as serious as he was about it, was fine. The suggestions Hawks has, make a tumble in the sheets with him sound almost worth it. Keigo’s breath hitches and Dabi smirks up at him, glove about halfway off.

It’s mostly just fun to fuck with Hawks’ head and tease his exposed wrist while he makes up what they would do if they were. He won’t actually touch the Celebrity Hero. The possibility of them actually being soulmates, however slim, is not a chance Dabi is actually willing to take. Not with Hawks, not with anyone, ever. Having someone in his head, knowing what he’s feeling sounds like a nightmare to him. Most romantics don’t think about how easy it is to manipulate someone. When you know what causes someone to be scared or fearful, then what will make them forgive you. Again and again. Dabi’s seen enough soulmate stories to last his entire lifetime and from the way Hawks talks about his parents, he’s not the only one. He’s jolted back to the present when Hawks calls his bluff.

Hawks smirk has Dabi’s teasing expression falling, his half lidded eyes widening as Hawks firmly grasps his wrist. Right on the scar line pulling his glove the rest of the way off with his teeth. Golden eyes narrowed, burning bright with challenge as Dabi started to pull at Keigo’s grip. He was just teasing. There’s no need for this, it was a joke, he doesn't want to actually test it! Hawks was like him, never in a relationship and avoided touching coworkers. The Hero’s hand fluttered next to his before slotting their hands together. Dabi’s heart stops as he glances between their hands and Hawks face with panic. The grip was too firm to escape as his chest refused to expand again.

Hawks' brain flooded with Dabi’s overwhelming emotions. Pure fear, crashing through the bond to him. Strong and overwhelming as it barrels into him. Keigo is lost an overwhelming grip of panic and horror. Dabi yanked his hand back harshly, the determination to be free of Hawks hitting him like a sledgehammer to his heart as Dabi’s staples nearly pulled free from his skin.

Dabi tried to force his still chest to move, to breathe with his hand cradled close to his chest. Frozen and watching Hawks. Hawks is still in shock when he gathers himself enough to dive for the fire escape off their fucking roof. He doesn't give himself time to brace himself mentally as he throws himself into action, coat swirling and flapping behind him. He hears Hawks yell for him to wait over the rushing in his ears, or maybe it's felt instead through their new bond. The strong pull and glimmers of other emotions as he struggles to figure out how to slam the bond shut. Surprise loud and clear, the bond saturated in happiness and affection. Amusement and enough determination to make Dabi’s blood run cold. “You don’t understand Touya, I can’t leave him. You can’t feel how determined he is like I can. How much he wants to make this work and how much he wants to do better.” His mother tells him softly with a bruised face and arms.

The thought of what Hawks might glean from Dabi’s emotions pushes him to throw himself down the rickety stairs. Hitting pavement and pushing his fragile body faster. He finally manages to close the bond, feeling Hawks on the other end. It feels like the Hero knocking on a door Dabi forced closed. He presses himself against a wall as he sees the shadow of Hawks flying above, looking for him. Texting Kurogiri his coordinates as his chest heaves and he coughs with the painful rush of breathing fresh air too fast. He regrets wanting to tell that joke, he shouldn’t have been flirting with Hawks at all. He can’t even enjoy a decent fuck with a hot spy of Hero. Closing the bond won’t work forever, it’s going to snap open at some point when he’s too weak to fight the side effects.

His spiraling thoughts are broken by Kuroguri opening a portal directly next to him. He hastily steps through, the sound of Hawks calling for him following Dabi. Every nickname he had ever called Dabi graced the air as he disappeared. Kuroguri looked as he came in. Setting the glass down quickly when he saw Dabi’s shaking form stumble in with his hand cradled to his chest. “Dabi, are you hurt?” Sako stood up as Shigaraki paused his game.

“It’s just a scratch. He gave it to me by accident.” He shook his head. He couldn’t endanger them, he wouldn't. There isn't much he needs to pack. Everything fits in his pockets or is left behind. Later he heads outside ‘for a smoke’. He doesn't come back. Disappearing into the maze of alleyways like only he knows how to do, even a lifetime later. Even when he’s no longer the son of a famous Hero dying his hair in gas station bathrooms anymore. Some things don’t change. Like soulmates scaring the shit out of him and running away.

Dabi flinched at his phone ringing, the shrill sound setting off more waves of pain. It had been several days since the incident Hawks had thrown them into. Last he had been able to stand looking at his phone for news the pigeon had been unaffected. While Hawks was able to be a Hero unaffected Dabi was holed up in an abandoned apartment. A single studio room apartment. Easier for him to drag the ratty mattress into a corner of the room, where he can see all exits. Dabi knows he’s been forcing the soulbond closed for over a week at this point. Everything hurts and he can feel his heartbeat pulsing with the pain, stemming from his head and traveling down his spine through his limbs. He won’t be able to keep it closed forever. The strain is already too much. Eventually the bond will snap open. Hawks will find him, following their soulbond straight to him. “If I ever found my soulmate I’d never let them go. Whatever it took to keep them.” Hawks' smile is soft but Dabi’s skin crawls. Memories of sirens and screaming not to be taken from her soulmate hit him as he bears his teeth. “Awfully dark thought for a Hero birdy.” he comments as he blows a ring of cigarette smoke out into the cold night air. Beside him Hawks shivers. He doesn't tease the offer of a warmer body tonight. A stupid fucking Hero, he’d never have a moment of happiness again .

Like thinking about it caused it to happen, the bond slams open. One moment it was firmly shut. gentle knocks from the other side for a few days but Dabi kept it shut, the next moment he felt it slack. Then the bond snapping open letting him feel concern, pain and anger through the other end. Colored dots reminiscent of when he was younger and trying to stay up later to train drift in front of his eyes. The emotions grow stronger as Hawks starts following the bond to him. A direct string to Dabi that both of them could feel and understand.

There’s a new feeling of shame and anger through the bond, much stronger as Hawks arrives at the decrepit apartment building. Dabi shuffles and slams for the bond as his eyesight blinks in and out. He’s been through pain, half of his body is scars, he can force this away. He’s been through hell and back mentally, emotionally ,and physically enough times that pushes through this new pain to shut the bond. The bond remains closed again for exactly one more minute. Letting Dabi collapse back in his bed and tremble, exhausted as it springs back open. His phone rings with Hawks number again as he curls into himself. There’s nothing he can do now. He can only wait for Hawks to find him. It was worth the attempt to hide himself. He tried at least and he was able to lead Hawks away from the League.

The door to his room slams open with a growl of his name leaving Hawks voice. Dabi feels his stomach lurch at the sound. He’s supposed to be free of this. Not react to anger with becoming violently ill anymore, but he’s always had a weak stomach hasn’t he? He’s back where he started all over again. He presses a hand tightly over his mouth as he shakes. waiting for the pain to die down and his vision to return to normal. Hawks stalls in the doorway, backlit and shadowed he looks angier than Dabi has ever seen him. Once he sees Dabi, shaking and curled in the corner with open unseeing eyes, he firmly shuts the door. He wasn’t the one in pain, he wasn’t the one who had been holding the door closed for over a week. The Hero Commision had even prescribed medication designed for rejected soulmate bonds to him. “Just in case he changed his mind” and decided to continue his spy mission.

“So were you always just going to leave me there? Or is being attached to a Hero too much for you?” Hawks sneered down at him. “Real adult of you, running away from a challenge that you issued. Then hiding like some sort of child instead of just telling me all you had wanted was a quick fuck.”

He dropped the rest of the bags. Anger rolling in his stomach as he stares down at Dabi’s form. The place was disgusting and he was frustrated that his soulmate had been staying here. He could have been staying with the league if he wasn’t so determined to run away. Dabi had even been the one to start this, long looks and teasing touches as he left Hawks with blue balls after almost every meeting. Part of Hawks was sick of being good enough for a fantasy fuck or a one night stand. Dabi hadn’t even given him the chance to prove he could be whatever Dabi needed.

“We went from let’s fuck after weeks of you saying you wanted me, to you vanishing the second we had something solid!” he snaps at Dabi, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. His soulmate was someone who hated him and wouldn’t even give him the smallest chance to prove himself. He had the right to be a little bitter, considering he had spoken with Dabi about soulmates before. He’d made it clear he would bend over backwards for one, while Dabi had said they would have to be special.

“What do you - fuck you! you couldn’t even be nice for a day? Straight to it?” Dabi hissed as his vision cleared slowly. Squaring his shoulders against the ache covering his full body. It was just going to get worse, might as well jump with Hawks right into it. The dance of will they won’t they and no strings attached was over. The mischievous teasing that Dabi would never waste on a soulmate was over. Now he was trapped with a Hero who wanted sex right off the bat.

He didn’t react to the magnetic pull he could feel from Keigo. Cover him in his touch and hold him. Like Dabi had ever been thought of as worth anything by anyone.

“The fuck is wrong with you? You’re the one that decided it would be a oh-so-funny idea to fuck around Dabi and test it. The idea of fucking a top 10 Hero was okay but only if you got something out of it? Just a thrill for you?” Keigo growled at him, frustrated. Dabi flinched and let himself lay back down. Staring at the ceiling as his head pounded and Hawks got up, stomping around. his black heavy boots stopped on the edge of the bed.

Dabi looks blankly over at him. Seeing his face clearly for the first time since he walked in. The Hero looks angry, he feels angry. He wants to get it over with at this point. He’s stapled together, there’s not a whole lot Hawks can do to him that hasn’t already been done. Not knowing what he’s going to do causes Dabi to flinch and shiver in pain again.

“It’s different okay? A no strings attached roll in the sheets would have been perfect, you think I want to be stuck with a Hero? What are you going to do? Lock me up, keep me in your apartment like some fucked up broken housewife Hawks? I’m a Villain!” He snapped at him as he flipped him off. Dabi was a contradiction to Hawks. Curled into a protective ball away from him, but flipping him off and screaming at him at the same time.

“The hell are you talking about making you a housewife? I’m --” Hawks took a breath as he shook his head. The fear and pain his soulmate was radiating clouded his head and fed his own emotions. He’d waited this long for a soulmate and wouldn’t give Dabi up. He hadn't wasted the time Dabi had given them, he’d been researching and waiting for Dabi. Every second he wasn’t working he had been looking up the soulmate laws and a way to keep Dabi out of jail. He needed Dabi to trust him, enough to know if anything he found, if it would work. Hawks could work on that, coul earn his trust. If he knew how to do anything, it was how to put in enough work.

Dabi’s stomach growled again. As Dabi’s eyes darted away from him for a moment, a tinge of embarrassment and more anger came across the wide open bond. One problem at a time, food was an easy thing for him to solve, a decent way to earn Dabi’s trust seeing as they had eaten together before. A couple seconds fiddling with his phone and he had something easy to eat on the way. He'd been feeding Dabi before with their regular meetup’s so who knew how long it had been now since the villain ate.

“You're been feeling a lot of fear and anger. Did someone do something at some point? Did I do something?” He saw Dabi curling tighter into himself with every word he spoke. He hated seeing Dabi in pain, so many meetings turned into ‘use my first aid’ and ‘let's go out to eat.’ That was gone now. Hawks ripped a bottle of bond blockers out of his pocket. Relief and a feeling of resignation came across the bond instead of the happyness or gratitude he had been expecting. Still it was progress away from fear or anger. Until Hawks went to place it to Dabi’s outstretched hand. Resentment making everything feel bitter on both ends of the bond as anger came back with embarrassment on Dabi’s.

“Don’t think about it too hard asshole. Just take the damn pill. Shut me out again so we can talk about what you want to do with us. Since you didn’t want me.” He bit the last sentence out, letting how angry and bitter he was color his words. Shoving the bottle in Dabi’s trembling hands as he went to grab the delivered food. He came back in just in time to watch Dabi throw the pill bottle across the room. Looking at Hawks with wide eyes when he came back in. A tsunami of fear crashed across the bond as they stood frozen looking at each other.

“Don’t fucking come near me.” Dabi's rough voice scratched out at him. Keigo wonders if he has any good emotions at this point. If Dabi ever feels anything besides anger, fear and shame. Although, he is probably the one causing that. Sleeping with a Hero is different from being soulmates, and Dabi probably saw his talons that day up on the roof. He’s different behind the glitter and glam of being a Hero.

“It’s just bond blockers, Dabi. You don’t have to take them. It would just make talking a little easier if we’re not constantly picking apart our emotions.” Dabi doesn't respond as he grinds his jaw, Keigo can see the muscle jumping in it across the room, and refuses to answer as shame increases across the bond. Hawks has his own side shut, there’s no need for Dabi to know how desperate he is to make this work. How tired he is or frustrated.

“Shame? Really your ashamed of me? My hero status?” He picks the bottle up again, bringing it over and placing it in Dabi’s hands again. He stares with wanting eyes at the food before finally just opening the bottle and taking a blocker. It still makes Keigo feel sick to his stomach, to know Dabi’s needs are so easily met by him while Dabi looks like he’s preparing to give up a first born. Determination slides across and resignation, not a good combination as Hawks braces himself.

“Why don’t we talk about what you want for the food vs what i'm willing to give for it first Hero.” He sneers the word Hero. “Hand job. You don’t get to touch me and I'll give you a hand job.”

Hawks narrows his eyes and drops the arm with the outstretched food back close to his body, stunned. What has he done that would make Dabi think that he has to do anything for dinner? He’s never acted like this and the first time Dabi ever accepted an offer of dinner he’s flirted the entire time. Making Hawks choke on his own food with filthy innuendo’s.

He gets brought out of his thoughts at the feeling of a warm hand stroking his dick through his pants. Dabi kneeling in front of him and sending a truly poisonous glare up from in between his legs as he works open his pants. The bond still held open let him feel Dabi’s resentment and shame boiling over. Dabi lowers his eye lashes as he pulls Hawks pants and boxers down. A feeling that Keigo couldn’t describe as anything other than anguish greeted him when Dabi got an eyeful of him, still soft after the gentle rubbing Dabi had been giving him as Hawks was bombarded with Dabi’s emotions.

“If I’m so fucking ugly to you but you’re gunna demand shit from me anyways, then look away.” Dabi hissed and licked his palm. Hawks caught his hand as Dabi tried to continue the handjob.

“Counter deal hot stuff. Eat the food. Tell me why you thought I'd let you do something that makes you feel ashamed. Or when have I ever called you anything but good looking. Or charged you dinner.” He set the food down and shoved himself back into his pants. Press smile firmly plastered on his face, nothing wrong here it said. Dabi didn’t want him but was upset when he wasn’t turned on?

Dabi’s stomach rumbled and he snatched the bag up. Hawks had never jerked him around like that before, but that didn’t mean that he never would. He’d had food placed in front of his face and jerked away from him before. Hawks was even more likely to do it since they were soulmates and he had the ability to know when Dabi was angry at him now. When he was afraid and Hawks had the upper hand. His hands shook as he brought the food out of the bag and as he stole glances at Hawks. Who kept inching closer until Dabi was sick of him acting like he was some stray feral animal. If Hawks wanted a fuck then it was going to take more than this food, he’d laid out his offer already and Hawks had said he hadn’t wanted that from him.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” Dabi hissed at him as he finished one container, looking skeptically at the second one. He’d eaten it too fast, if he ate the second one he’d puke. He knew it but what was worse was feeling this concern from Hawks. Knowing that it would end eventually.

“Obviously I didn’t actually think we would be fucking soulmates. I ran off the second I could. So why the fuck did you come looking for someone who wants nothing to do with you?” He laid back against the wall, watching Hawks out of the corner of his eyes.

“I didn’t know why you ran off. Just that you were afraid and then angry when I got here.” Hawks tried not to continue watching him eat. Feeling that it made Dabi uncomfortable. “I’d just, I’d wanted to make sure you were okay. Not a lot of this is making sense frome my perspective Dabi, one minute you were down to fuck and challangeing me to do something about it. Then your running before I can even ask what I did wrong.”

“This has my name on it?” Dabi examined the pills Hawks had given him earlier. Glaring at him as his stomach settled and he relaxed further, letting the wall support more of his weight. His head still pounded as he squinted at Hawks. He didn’t really trust Hawks but his head hurt and there wasn’t anything that would stop the Hero from doing what he wanted anyways. He was stuck to the Hero now. “I don’t want a soulmate. Think I want to be stuck with some cocky bigshot Hero who won’t leave me alone?”

“Then maybe you should have said that.”Hawks bit out. It took a few seconds of them sitting there for Dabi to realize what had changed. Why his headache was nearly nonexistent instead of debilitating.

“What did you give me?” He hissed out and flexed his fingers, bringing them up in front of his face. Pulling at a staple and realizing that his pain had dulled there as well.

“Generic painkillers come with rejected soulbond medication. I’ve been taking it for the last week. Had to go tell my higher ups and get everything sorted out when you took off like a bat out of hell.” Hawks tucked his face into his collar so it was harder to get a read on his face. “Only my doctor knows who my soulmate is. I had him fill a prescription for you and we guessed basic things like weight and height. Pain tolerance and allergies, I know you don’t like fish but we just went with saying it was an allergy.”

Dabi slumped against the bed with the fight draining out of him again. Hawks had given him medication, food and hadn’t touched him yet. The bar was so low it had hit magma and melted years ago if Dabi was honest. He didn’t want to be honest. It was hard to be on guard when he felt taken care of like this. When he still felt a pull to Hawks and wanted to nap beside him for a post food nap.

“And I'm supposed to be grateful for this? Trying to earn my affection already or what?” Dabi meant to snap at Hawks. It came out as a soft question. His eyes fluttered shut when Keigo’s hand brushed his and it felt like every millimeter of skin that touched was warmed. Keigo linked their pinkies together and Dabi stared. It felt like too much and not enough while his throat felt tight. Why was seeing their hands linked enough to make his chest feel tight? Keigo softly stroked the back of his hand and he pulled it back. Curling on his side to face Hawks on the old mattress while tucking his hands back close to his chest.

“I don’t know. I’m just, I don’t think there’s a right answer to that for me Dabi. Just like there isn’t a right answer to what I’d wanted from this, from a soulmate all my life. Because I’m not the one that’s struggling and I’m not the one that matters right now. I fed you because you were hungry, I gave you medication because you needed it.” Keigo gave a half hearted shrug, carefully keeping his eyes trained on the same space of wall. Not letting his expression change even as he felt his face muscles want to crumble. Want to frown, want to do anything other than change from his practiced gently reassuring expression. “What do you want from this then? Not someone to fuck on the regular, I’m not exactly a step up socially or finacially for you. So what do you want from me?” Dabi asked quietly. Keigo got up, started getting his things together. Unable to deal with his soulmate being so close and completely unwilling to be with him.

“Come home with me?” He saw Dabi stiffen at his poor choice of words, worse yet Dabi looked like he was thinking about it before Hawks clarified himself. “Not for that. Just, Dabi just come home with me okay? Eat my food and bitch like normal. You can sleep in the spare room like normal.”

“What’s it going to cost me Hawks? I want to be told upfront, whatever the price is so I can weigh if it's worth being stuck together.” he rasped at him and started testing the strength in his arms. The slowly dulling pain as he tested to see if he would be able to get himself out of here.

“Is it really that far out of your mind that the guy who has been flirting with you and giving you my level best bedroom eyes for a month may have wanted to spend some time with you?” Hawks asked softly as he stood up and bent down to scoop Dabi’s too thin body into his arms.

Dabi didn’t answer, too busy checking and making sure the bond was still closed on his side. He felt no more pain coming from it and it seems the “door” was sealed shut. He slumped a little further into Hawks warmth despite himself, resting his head against Hawks chest.

Dabi is sitting on Hawks couch months later, trying to come up with a way to tell Shigaraki why he’s no longer okay with this. Why he was “eyefucking in front of my salad” according to Shigaraki with Hawks last week, but now he’s going out of his mind being with the hero in the same apartment. The glass door slides open mid sentence as he’s cussing his crusty fucking boss out and he feels his staples strain along his shoulders. The door is carefully shut and his hair stands on end, that’s never good. Hawks always greets him, always let’s him know he’s home. one panic attack had been enough for them both.

Feathers on fire and both of them shaking at the close call. Dabi scrambled back to press himself against the cupboards. He hadn’t meant to hurt him. Had burned his soulmate and fuck, he really was like enji wasn’t he? Keigo very carefully sat down to try and talk to him until Hawks walked away. Allowing Dabi to finally find some sembelance of calm and join Hawks on the sofa to watch some stupid animal planet documentary. Eyeing the burnt feathers as a reminder of why this was a bad idea.

The controlled quiet is unnerving and without thinking Dabi checks his side of the bond for any cracks as he digs his bare toes into the couch cushions and forces himself to relax.

“Hey, Hero shit, the fuck are you being so quite for?” They both pretend Dabi’s voice doesn't shake as he asks Keigo. Keigo doesn't look at him, evidently pretending he hasn't heard him at all as he shuffles past to his bathroom. Dabi hears a choked off sound before the shower starts up and almost instinctively he reaches for Keigo’s end of the bond. He pulls back quickly but it ends up being the first sign that something is wrong. It’s shut, or feels like it’s shut.

They had been born like this, then twisted and burned and torn until they had to work to fit their jagged edges together again, they way they already had been. A constant work in progress and neither would give it up for someone easier. What was something worth if you didn’t have to work for it? Nothing happens that night and eventually Keigo comes out and asks if he can sit next to Dabi. Dabi almost wants this to work out.

If Dabi pulls Hawks into his lap half way through a cooking show and Hawks lets him, neither bring it up. Hawks is tense in Dabi’s lap, Dabi is tense as he brings him over and they cuddle. They pretend to watch the show until they relax, Hawks growing heavy in Dabi’s arms. Waking up with cricks in their neck and legs tangled together. Hawks peacefully sleeping away some of the dark shadows under his eyes.

“Shit, didn’t mean to fall asleep on you last night.” Keigo gave a wide yawn and pressed his face closer into Dabi’s neck. Before his brain caught up with his body and he pulled away. Stuttering apologies with his hands fluttering around Dabi.

“Whatever, stop apologizing and get back here.” Dabi mutters, holding up the edge of the couch blanket. It’s far too easy to make Hawks call in and spend the day with him. He agreed immediately and it’s just a nice evening spent in front of the tv, pretending that they aren't soulmates. It twists something in Dabi’s gut, making him hesitate as he checks the bond. Are these Keigo’s emotions or his? But the bond is firmly shut. He heastites before leaving the bond shut on his end, if a little less pressure on it. Just in case Keigo opens his end, then he can check up on him.

The next time Dabi even thinks of the bond is a week later. When Shigaraki is asking if he can manage to come back to the base. If he wants to come back or if he’s unable to.

‘Of course I can, I’m not trapped here.’ he thinks right before his brain blue screens on him. He ends up telling Shigaraki he’s coming over tonight. He pauses dinner in the kitchen and rather than wait up for Keigo like usual, he puts his plate in the microwave.

He checks the bond on his end like always and this time, this time he stop’s pressing it shut. Leaving it to Keigo if he wants to force himself or try and open the bond before Keigo is ready. He hesitates in the middle of his room before he crawls under his own covers, he doesn't know what he had been expecting. Hawks feelings to hit him full force right away? He didn’t want that. Hawks wouldn’t want that either.

Eventually , Dabi gets curious and tries to open it on his end. He’s met with mild resistance that he shrugs off. It’s the only time he’s tried and maybe Hawks just doesn't want him around. Which is fine. It’s not like he wants the giant pigeon around either. He made his choice when he ran off in that panic, he doesn't regret it either. He slips out one night when Hawks is working late again. He hasn’t asked Hawks if he could go back to the league. He shouldn’t have to, Hawks may have put his spy gig on hold but this is more than a job for Dabi. These people are his friends. The only ones who get it. (The damn bird never seems to have a night at home and it’s even rarer that he wants to be around Dabi. He gets it, he wouldn’t want to be around himself either. Not after the shit show he caused over someone who didn’t even want him.)

He hates being away from them. Even when he left the base of his own violation to hide from Hawks. It’s nice to be home and even Toga clinging to him isn't enough to really annoy him. Dabi and the others have a long terse conversation about Hawks once they’ve had enough small talk. What he plans to do (nothing he can do) and how Hawks is treating him (Best Dabi could hope for. Ignored was better than anything else.)It vividly reminds him that Dabi cares for them, that they care back. One more Hero on their shitlist is something they would welcome without question if Dabi needed it. Not all Heroes are enji but Hawks doesn't seem to even be a person under the flimsy persona he wears. Except for late evenings and sobbing in the shower rarely.

“I’ll come see you guys when I can. He’s out a lot.” Dabi got up and headed for the door. Shigaraki paused his game and followed him, standing tensely beside the door frame with him.

“You don’t have to go back Dabi. We can protect you, you know. We can find a way to get you that medication and then it won’t be an issue.” He spoke much softer than when he had been leading the meeting. Talking as Dabi’s friend rather than just as his boss and leader of a group of ragtag Villains.

“I’m not willing to risk it. Not yet, he hasn’t done anything to me except stay at work and give me sad looks. He wasn’t what I expected from a soulmate either and he knows it.” Dabi shrugged in the pockets of his hoodie and looked outside. Expecting to see Hawks at any moment to check for him. He might still be sleeping at the office but Dabi had better leave before he had to be brought back. Hawks had let it slide the first time but who knows now? Dabi half wished Keigo wouldn’t be there, even if it left the entire point of going moot. He checked the bond again as he had been the entire time he was out. Still not open, he opened his side and found Keigo’s shut. No way to prepare himself if he couldn’t tell what Hawks was thinking.

“I’m checking on you in 2 days if I don’t hear back. Don’t want to lose you because you're too stubborn to let us help.” Shigaraki scowled at him but jerked his head to motion outside. Giving Dabi his cue to leave, but not before Shigaraki seemed to make a split second decision and pull him into a hug. “I’m a phone call away if you need some light dusting done and trash removed.”

Dabi’s eyes stung as he buried his face in Shigaraki’s shoulder. He could do this, he didn’t even actually think Keigo would notice if he was gone, let alone be mad. It was just the what if’s that always killed him. Nobody expects the worst from soulmates or Hero’s, that’s how they always got away with it.

It’s too quiet without Hawks trying and failing to be quiet around him. He glances up and around him as he walks, not focusing on the dirt in front of him as he searches the sky for Keigo. He’s not hovering around his usual buildings when he passes his patrol route either.

Dabi opens the door to the apartment, expecting to find Hawks in some sort of patronizing position ready to scold him for leaving the apartment. Instead he finds the hero in soft pajamas deliberately not looking away from the tv when he walks in. curled up in a tight ball in his armchair with his chin tucked on his knees. His knuckles are white, a stark contrast to the black as his own dye talons twisted in his sleep pants. The chair rocks as dabi enters and he looks at Keigo.

“You visit the league finally?” Hawks asks quietly with a painful sounding rasp to his throat. Dabi again goes to check Hawks mood through the bond, thrown off by the pang he feels at seeing Hawks so bothered by something.

“You hadn’t told me you would need me.” Dabi snaps out defensively as he stands in front of the TV and crosses his arms. Hawks barely even blinked and the hairs on the back of Dabi’s neck rose.

“You can come and go as often as you want Dabi, I never said you couldn’t leave. Just that I wanted to give you someplace that wasn’t that apartment you were squatting in when we found each other.” Hawks muttered softly before wiping at eyes Dabi was just realizing were red rimmed from tears. Feeling like he should follow Hawks, like Dabi wasn’t the one who had upset him in the first place.

“I’m sorry.” he mutters out as Hawks passes him and Keigo turns wide shocked eyes back to him.

“What? No. It’s my fault, I can't expect you to want to put up with me all the time when you never wanted a soulmate. They’re your friends and I'd never keep you from them.” he rubs the back of his head sheepishly and gives Dabi a bright grin. It’s a press worthy smile and it’s useless.

“I wouldn’t let you and I'm not sorry for going to see them, I mean the part where I obviously worried you. You're staying up all night waiting for me and a mess Kei.” Dabi shifted his weight to the other foot and he raised his head and met Hawks eyes. “Why is your side of the bond shut? I already know your angry with me, you”

Keigo’s shoulders jerked back and he flinched as Dabi reached for him.

“Don’t. I’m not sure our bond is weak enough to withstand us being physically close and still stay shut. You could accidentally force it open and, I'm. I’m a lot Dabi. You don’t have to deal with it. Being a Hero is a lot sometimes, on top of me just being fucked up.” He gave Dabi an unamused chuckle and Dabi grit his teeth. He could decide what he wanted all on his own.

He let Keigo leave with that plastered on reassuring smile and raised hands. Opening his own side of the bond again, ripping it open instead of poking around the mental space for once instead. There was nothing there, and Hawks had possibly just given him a reason why. Before, before they were soulmates Hawks had always looked surprised when Dabi flirted back. A faint trace of distress was felt through the bond, too faint to determine if it was anger or frustration or sadness or worry. Just that it wasn’t a nice feeling and as Dabi wrapped his mind around it and tugged, it was jerked away. No other emotions came across, no matter how faint or how long Dabi stayed up turning his assumptions over in his mind.

Over the next few days Dabi tried opening the bond whenever he was curious what Hawks was doing. When he was at work Hawks control slipped the most, letting sadness and this steel bone deep determination, often mixed with anger, escape in tendrils. He poked more at it,carefully keeping his own emotions to himself. everytime he poked at the bond’s fraying edges, as he now realized that’s what the tendrils were, would be yanked quickly away. Even when Keigo was supposed to be in the middle of a fight and distracted.

When Keigo was home they kept up the same thing they had been. With the acceptance of Dabi sometimes visiting the league. Once or twice they came over as well and Dabi found himself having a good time as they all cooked dinner and he set aside a spot for Keigo out of habit.

He ended up talking about his bond again, the league members who liked to go to bed early had already left and it was just him, Shuichi and Shigaraki left for the night. They left all the dishes in the sink and pulled out one of the untouched consoles Keigo owned to play a racing game. It was easier to talk without thinking too hard about how it must look to them while Dabi crashed and burned the virtual cars. Shuichi was the one who ended up saying that Dabi should talk to Keigo if he was concerned about him. Shigaraki begrudgingly pointed out that even if they could have the bond open, they would still need to talk about why they felt things in order to avoid misunderstandings, besides the dialogue was always the best part of side quests. Bested only by adding friends to the party. They fell asleep together between one game and the next and woke up with blankets draped around them, a pot of coffee left on. Dabi flushed and tucked away the note tacked to the fridge Keigo had left him, saying he was glad Dabi had friends over the night before and that he hoped he had slept well with a reminder to take his bond medication.

Dabi had set automatic reminders to Hawks burner phone, he might have been returning the favor. If the night Dabi had come home to find a dead eyed cried out Hawks sitting in front of a TV wasn’t so fresh in his mind still, he would have written it off as that. But it was and he’d frustratingly recounted that night to everyone last night as they raced on screen and Shuichi wrecked them both.

“The successful relationship rate for Hero’s is just above anthromophs. Apparently most can’t take the extra press and their significant others' lives being on the line.” Shuichi glanced back at Dabi and Shigaraki jostled his shoulder against the scaly shoulder.

Dabi snorted before turning his car too wide and crashing all 3 of them. Laughing when they tackled him in mock outrage.

Before Hawks would come back, if he wasn’t avoiding Dabi and working late again, Dabi showed them out the door. Settling himself on the couch while leaving an open spot for Keigo to come in and sit next to him. Always leaning against the other side first before he wound up laying in Dabi’s lap.

“You know that I didn't mind.” Dabi cut himself off with a frown and carded his fingers through Hawks hair. He didn’t want to lie to the bird. That would just create more problems later on. He had minded that Hawks was a hero. Just, not for the reasons Keigo thought. How to let Hawks know that he was allowed to feel things as well. That some part of Dabi was genuinely curious and wanted to help.

“Dabi you didn’t want a soulmate. You don’t trust me. There’s nothing else that can be done when I can't change who I am or that I enjoy being a hero. It’s a lot, I get it okay? I’ve done what I can to help you, my soulmate, now. That's all that I want.” Hawks snapped at him before shoving himself off the couch and disappearing into his room. Dabi stayed awake for longer than he should have, letting the tendrils of emotion Hawks evidently couldn’t contain drift and swirl around him. Not touching them this time as he knew that would end up with Hawks yanking them back. The sky is just starting to lighten, no longer the black of night and not yet the yellow of morning, when Dabi tiredly gets up and opens Keigo’s door. Yanking on the bond at the same time he flops into Keigo’s bed.

“I don’t know how to talk about this okay? Heroes, there are not good people. They think they're helping, it’s very rare that they actually do. My father was a Hero, he bought my mother from her parents and they ended up being soulmates. Domestic violence with Hero’s is also 60%. The ones that get reported and filed anyways. My mother is one of the ones who never pressed charges. She kept saying he wanted to change.” Dabi reached into the space between them and held out his hand.

“I don’t know what I wanted. I don’t know what you wanted out of a soulmate either. I like when we have movie nights though. And you try to steal all the popcorn. I like when we can just cook together and we both burn it.” Dabi yanked on Hawks side of the door again. Feeling it crack open enough for him to determine the plethora of feelings on the other side. Frustration, sadness and apprehension.

“I’m too much. I’m too loud, too hyper. You didn’t even want a soulmate, what are you going to do when I’m too much for you? When you regret this and find everything you thought was cute annoying or you find out how much i care? I’m creepy sometimes and I’m weird and I’m overbearing. What are you going to do then?” Hawks demanded of him with tears in his eyes as he placed his hand next to Dabi’s.

“I’m going to shut the bond. Or I’m going to take the medication for a few days until we can talk about why you're upset and I’m not heading for the worst case scenario. There’s going to be times I shut you out too. When I don't want you in my head, just as often as there are going to be times like today when I want to know what’s going on with you.” Dabi pulled on the bond again and this time Keigo’s opened. Meeting Dabi half way without him being in a state of panic or distress for the first time. Keigo interlaced their hands and Dabi pulled Hawks close to him as Hawks slowly let the tension from his day out.

They woke up in the same bed together with an open soulmate bond, despite the nightmares both had suffered on either end. Pushing surprise and nerves across to form the closest feeling to hope either of them had for their relationship.

@deyanirasan I'm sorry this took so long. i know i said it would be done around January/Febuary and i had some issues.

#gift fic #oneshot #thedarkonewrites #dabi bnha #dabihawks #lime #back to the citruis scale i went #keigo takami #bnha #mha #hawks

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villains4hire · 2 years

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Overhauled Rules

Aight. So my rules have been overhauled, but the link to my old unrevised rules is still in the link to google docs. This is my solution to not over clogging my page while also putting a picket-fence for certain types I don’t want plodding around here.

Revised Rules below if you want a peak, but I will say the unrevised rules are still there. I’m just being more blunt and straight to the point etc.

Follow these.

REQUIRED DISCLAIMERS. THIS BLOG IS 18+ ONLY, IF I SEE YOU’RE OPENLY NOT. YOU WILL BE BLOCKED IF I SEE YOU INTERACTING WITH THIS BLOG IN ANY WAY.

MY DETAILED RULES LINK. (THIS IS IF YOU WANT A MORE SPECIFIED, PRIOR RULES CUT I MADE TO SAVE TIME FOR ANYONE JUST READING THE BLOG. IT’S ONLY THERE STILL AS FOR THE MORE SPECIFIED DETAILS FOR THE WEIRDOES OUT THERE THAT DO MENTAL GYMNASTICS) Be sure to hover your mouse over urls, post links or ( ) words etc. As I do have links on this blog rule page.

MY PERMANENT STARTER/MEME CALL SFW

MY PERMANENT STARTER/MEME CALL NSFW

THESE PERMANENT CALLS ARE MUTUALS ONLY.

villains4hirebackup (My backup blog to send asks, you don’t need to follow that one)

MY DNI LIST, I don’t care if you follow or interact with this URL but they have proven over a year ago and to current times that they want to keep this going. They have given consent to me to begin with to post it, as they don’t care. But it has the following: alleged homophobia, alleged stalking, alleged harassment. This will probably be removed in a year or two but the posts kept, as I’m aware not everyone wants to see this. But I don’t get pushed around or let people harass me or my friends especially.

(Link to the post)

THEN THE PERSON INVOLVED FOR URLS.

monstersofallyourfearsreborn

monsters-of-all-your-fears

REGARDING THEMES AND INTENTIONS:

Alright, in summary: there will be nudity, gore, extreme violence, and some sexual content on this blog. Full blown smut will be on my sideblog. This used to be a villains only blog but I’ve expanded since then as I was getting bored. It’s a villains centric blog but with some of my favorites as well now. Some tags don’t make sense anymore but oh well.

REGARDING ABLEISM AND THE DEMONIZATION/SEXUALIZATION OF SOCIOPATHY AND PSYCHOPATHY. (IF YOU NEED FURTHER EXPLANATION, PM ME):

Don’t use sociopath, psychopath in a demonizing way around me on this blog. It’s pretty ableist to do.

REGARDING ABLEIST SEXUALIZATION: Don’t fetishize my yanderes or mentally ill people or those on different spectrums that’s not exactly autism, but more like on the ASPD spectrum.

REGARDING SMUT REQUESTS AND SEXUAL CONDUCT IN RPS:

Read my adult rule 11 carefully on how to get smut. My sideblog is open however in a link below where nsfw takes place. Asks, memes, and other questions to characters are acceptable to send to my sideblog. Keep in mind my characters are mostly trans women so don’t comment on their ‘pussy’ or lack of or you’ll get talked to privately and depending on how you react? You’ll either get forgiven, blocked or called out if you start acting transphobic. I don’t need an explicit apology, but don’t be weird about it, just don’t do it. REGARDING CHARACTER BIOS: Read character bios. I make it a requirement at this point as it only makes sense to me.

Do tag ‘parasyte squeak’ or ‘it’s all in your squeak’ if you find animal abuse, animal death, gore, rats or images of rats and or rat teeth or rat swarms triggering or don’t want to be spoiled for a fairly new game called Mad Rat Dead. Rat God will be tagged accordingly for triggers in rps, but there you go. Tag digestion tw from horror death if it’s ever relevant from a monster bad end. Tag wasteland monkey if you can’t handle abuse as well. A DISCLAIMER ON BLOCKING?: If I block you, that’s that, just stop trying to talk to me. If I do it without saying anything to after we’ve known each other pretty well? It probably wasn’t intentional, approach me if I openly considered you a friend privately. I tend to tell people if I’m cutting contact.

REGARDING TAGS AND DISCLAIMER OF TALKING IN TAGS:

Tags are taken care of in my system though not everything etc, you will not get certain things tagged on request. If it’s a problem, we don’t have to interact, but I don’t include certain topics for that very reason or avoid certain themes. You might see me tag certain things that are more specific to a character, but that’s an exception, don’t expect me to do it for you unless a post is marked ‘ask to tag’.

RULES:

1. Anon is enabled and only used for this: ooc questions, memes, ask for characters to answer ic or to breath the 4th wall when prompted. If it’s overly negative toward an rp partner on anon, I will IP block it whether intended ic or ooc. I don’t want to people on the spot. Also, if you harass me on anon? I might take the time to find out who you are to put on my public DNI list. Rule 4 applies to 1 as well. Also no magic anons.

2. Do not use racism, homophobia, transphobia or claim slurs that don’t belong to you on this blog. On that note: you will not refer to my characters as: traps, futa, new-half, shemale, tranny etc. Or other related slurs to what was mentioned prior. If I see you using these slurs? You will get blocked. On that note: DNI if you do pedophilia, rape, or incest fetishization in full blown rps. Mention is fine as not to erase victims however. See my specified rules if you use slurs like above or reclaim them even to see if you are apart of this DNI group.

3. I will not use a villain that will automatically attack your character or a character in general.

4. Don’t be disgusting in your writing for rps such as lowbrow toilet humor involving piss or scat etc. You will be blocked.

5. Don’t god-mod me, discuss with me if the character is going to fight or subvert my character’s intentions in a major way. Otherwise just silly stuff is usually fine. I’ll just ignore it or say something if I want it changed but it shouldn’t be a big deal.

6. I am not obligated to follow you or continue interacting with you. I won’t throw you away if you’re a good friend of mine, but if you keep doing something that isn’t changing after I say something? It could result in us not getting along. Granted, you are not obligated to me if we’ve only known each for a little while.

7. Do not pretend to be my friend for resources, merely ask for them. You will get IP blocked if you do this. You are free to request

8. I no longer do codes. I have memory issues.

9. Some villains I will not ship but I am pretty open to shipping. Just ask, I will say yeah or no.

10. Give me a proper DOB/Identification that’s heavily censored if you want actual smut rps. This includes: State ID, Birth Certificate, Library Card, Joining a Website Date. The age of an account you own and so on. You will not get smut.

You are however, allowed to follow my sideblog being @GOOPYSHANGOUT to only send memes, asks, or questions to my characters. And you’re expected to read the nsfw rp rules if you’re a newcomer that wants to rp with it, but it is highly encouraged you read them anyway if you’re heavily interested in it. Do not approach me for trans women characters and act really weird. It’s okay to request them however. Do not ask me to change their genitals when I have them established a certain way. Do not interact with this CHARACTER THIS WAY OR REFER TO HER THAT WAY.

11. Do not vaguepost people on here, please. Use a sideblog or otherwise or make it clear it’s someone not on here. It’s incredibly toxic and if it’s enough to where people can figure out it’s me you’re vague-posting about? I have found out in the past and it’s ruined any chance of someone reconnecting with me afterward when they approached me. I don’t tolerate getting smack-talked on main, vague posting or not, either come up to me or the person you’re mad at if it’s a mutual or vent privately where no one can see it. 12. I only do 3 to 8 sentence replies unless discussed for more. Replies that go past the length I’ve stated will be ignored. I put in a lot of energy and some get that more than others, especially if I know them on discord. One-liners are also fine however, but it’s primarily semi-para to single para.

If you’re interested? You can go to my mun page if you want to talk ooc to me. ->MUN PAGE<-

CREDIT: >CLICK HERE FOR CREDIT<

#ooc #long post #//They're the same basically #//Some rules have been deleted

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project-paranoia · 3 years

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Live Watch: S.C.I. Mystery Episode One

I enjoy camp because I've always enjoyed analysis and examination. I enjoy looking at something from all sides, testing it with my fingertips. When I was a child I would sit for hours just looking at something until I had it all held in my mind and I felt like I understood it. Camp necessitates that understanding the way that imitation and - good - parody requires it. To quote Susan Sontag - who articulated what camp is so well - Camp is "a sensibility that revels in artifice, stylisation, theatricalisation, irony, playfulness, and exaggeration rather than content." Because of this camp takes on head to head gender, sexuality, expectations, any sort of defined norm and sequins it up then shakes it down until understanding comes out. When understanding something there are three major ways to work your investigation - what it is, what it's imitation is - the close but not quite, and what it isn't. Camp handles all three, to quote again: "Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a 'lamp; not a woman, but a 'woman.'"

Why are we talking about camp? Because SCI Mystery is some of the best kind of camp outside of drag or screaming about wire hangers. It deals a lot with mental illness in a way that would destroy a serious show, but in this one "mental illness" is a metaphor for being marginalised and a way to talk about the mouse and cat in the room. This show is about being queer. About being gay loudly and quietly, about resisting specific labels and needing them, about the threat of a cure and the blessing of acceptance. All the messy realities of queer life as varied as queer people. Like Lil Nas X's Montero, you can appreciate the effort without being comfortable with it. While the show's allegory of mental illness when many queer people are still told they are ill is done well and there is reason to the choices and tone, things are said which can be hard to hear. Knowing they're there because they're hard to hear and have been heard doesn't help everyone.

With all that said, it's also a fun, silly bl drama. Don't let the analysis scare you off. While the information about camp can be something to be aware of, all this show requires to be enjoyed is a willingness to be amused and spooked in turns.

You know the drill, spoilers below!

* I have memorised the youku sound, I have a triggered response with it. Not all triggers are bad, this one reminds me of Guardian

* Welcome to episode one where we just leap in! But don't worry, one of them has a cute earring and they are colour coordinated.

* Watching from youtube the episode is 38 minutes long while most of the others are 45. Attach whatever emotion you want to that fact.

* The exposition is handily delivered by asking a question which tells us some things, thank you show, I appreciate it

* First episode and he's already giving his partner an in case I don't come back letter to be opened if he dies

* Wait for me!~ Go!~~

* Slow walk with dramatic music: 1 (don't make this a drinking game You Will Expire) this time with bonus almost looking back

* I've seen a similar shot on Hawaii Five O

* Don't explain what's happening, just knock everything over with a jump kick in some absolutely spotless white tennies

* Running with dramatic music with bonus looking back: Does it count? We have yet to hear back from the judges

* They leap into the water with an explosion behind them, we are less than 2 minutes in and I love that for them

* At first I thought the boats were making a big heart before I remembered that I am very silly and they are not doing that

* This one is going to be long

* I can see his pockets through his trousers, why are his trousers so thin?

* It's not kissing to dramatic music in the surf if it's CPR

* Each story line has its own intro and that's very sexy of them

* Slow walk/dramatic music: 2-6

* These people are totally goofy and and yet the Seriousness

* Two Weeks Ago!

* The police school bus has arrived to shoo away the crows circling around Dr. Zhan staring (dramatically) at the body

* Sport scar policeman dresses even more unprofessionally than Zhao Yunlan who at least looks like a detective who was jumped by so many criminals he just gave up wearing a suit and went for jeans. Chief Bai's clothes are so thin, I'm under constant anxiety someone is going to tear them off.

* Also several of the cast pictures on MyDramaList look like the pictures your auntie insists taking to send to your other aunties and I love that for them

* Triple axil spin from the victim, the judges are loving it - this is the camp I'm here for

* The dramatic slo mo and music budget for this show was so big, just as it should be

* He's mad because he's angy

* Master Psychiatrist can tell all about the killer from crouching by the body, it's a trope and this is one of the few places I like it because it serves the show instead of the show serving it

* When you're almost boyfriend is going away for reasons and it's not your decision but you can't go with him because of your job so you're just low key bitter about it

* "You can't control me"

* The pettiness between these two

* Professional women who worked hard to get where they are still are constantly obsessed with boys according to most cdramas

*The male posturing in those three second has accidentally circled back around to being gay in the way those bro shows accidentally do and I love that

* I live for this 80s-90s police chief perm

* The Pettiness

* I always tend to like doctor characters, I don't know why. Even when they aren't my favourites I like them.

* She's kind of adorable, I like her (I've seen a lot of this show and every time I say I like someone it ends badly ;-; )

* "the victems"

* If you love Creative English, this is the show for you!

* Chief Bai's crew is trying so hard to get them back together

* Dr. Zhan is so good at psychology he can tell what someone looks like from some tire tracks - this trope is used all the time in crime shows, but they push it a little farther in SCI and it really helps the viewer know what the rules for the show are

* The scene in the psychiatrist's office hearkens back to queer coded villains and the way they're treated in old black and white horror cinema - but done so artfully it's almost invisible. It's incredibly well done, and the awareness of tropes and types all throughout the series is tremendously successful as much as it's campy fun.

* There's also the trope of someone who manipulates someone into feeling like they've been "purified" and then weaponises them against the "filthy". And of course the fact that the killer's blade is a mirror - that he's killing in others what he sees in himself. This trope hasn't just been queer-coded but has been applied to any sort of physical or mental disorder. Thesis have been written about this trope and the anxiety attached to it. I can't write them better and this is long enough, it's just a small part of the excellent handling of the themes showing up in this genre and I wanted to point it out because it deserves appreciation for the skill and knowledge in the writing.

* The whole you need evidence vs you're saying psychoanalysis isn't trustworthy feels very much like a coded angry exes discussion

* I love the establishing shots, so good

* He kind of deserved that door to the face, what was he even doing

* Police violence in crime shows is supposed to be a release for the viewer, but many countries have issues with police violence so it hits wrong. Here it's far more performative in a way that at least has some awareness

* The weirdest phone call, you call someone to tell them something important and they say two things to you and hang up

* The tongue thing, why always the tongue thing?

* When a serial killer tries to compliment you by calling you a carnivore and you shut down the whole alpha male supposition by calling yourself a vegetarian

* At this point I've written almost fifteen hundred words and taken almost two hours to watch 23 minutes

* This is my life, these are my choices

* Dutch Angles

* You could make this conversation about being gay, I have had this conversation about homosexuality before

* Unfortunately while I had it I was on the bus trapped in a window seat

* The conversation didn't end with me saying something cool and everyone clapping

* They just got off the bus to go to work

* The banality of evil, yo

* Her shorts are Incredibly Short, good for her

* "arrest the perp behind my back" that's his job, broheim

* He doesn't ask why she checked behind their ears

* DUN dun dun!

* Slo mo file drop, and of course the file is blood stained and aged

* Chalk Art of Doom

* Chinese word play!

* Caught almost putting his coat over his crush, embarrassing XD

* Backstory!

* I love all the little character details, I could quote lines I think are funny all day but that would start getting silly

* Bai Yu Tong is marked as clean and having OCD but we don't see what's apparently a huge character trait at all other than the all white, do love that he's good at cooking

* Dr. Zhan: Brilliant! Genius! Cannot feed himself.

* Dr. Gong has indifference level 100% which is true and also I love that for him

* I love that Wang Shao part of the team because he's good at making friends, I love that for him

* Poor Zhao Fu: scared of ghosts and dumb and sweet? At least he has an 8 pack

* Jiang Lin is very tropey except the mention of her nearsightedness

* Ma Han's height 1.7m and legs 1.8m is hilarious and I love it

* I stopped recording the slo mo walks, but if you were drinking along with them you might be dead so I really appreciate you taking time out of your afterlife to continue reading. We appreciate all our ghost readers

* And that's the first episode! Thanks for making it to the end!

#SCI Mystery #SCI谜案集 #watchthrough #let's watch

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eldritchcatgirlgf · 3 years

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So about the "My Deepest Secret" Finale

Ok, look.

I just finished being reading the Webtoon "My Deepest Secret." If you don't know, it starts out as a game of cat and mouse between a law major, Ykhan Lee, and a murderer, with the main character, Emma, caught in-between because she's dating the murderer.

But as those who have read it know, in the Season Finale, Emma was actually the killer, suffering from some mental disorder - likely Dissociative Identity Disorder - with Elios being one of her alters.

A LOT of people have a problem with this twist.

Let me preface the rest of this by saying that, no, the author of the comic DID NOT represent DID properly. I've known people with DID, and they are not violent, and they are almost always aware of all alters. It's a mental illness/disorder that, unfortunately, has gained a bad reputation from its use as a story device in horror and thriller stories. Most people with DID - there are, of course, exceptions, just like humans - are not violent.

Is DID in this comic badly represented? Yes.

Does it villainize the disorder? 100%

Is it an overdone, cliche plot twist? Absolutely.

I absolutely agree that the story itself was fine the direction it was going before the Season Finale, and didn't need the twist. I agree that DID was misrepresented and not handled well in the slightest.

Now, that being said.

It saddens me that people are being so hard on the comic and it's creator, dropping the series because of the twist. Even knowing the twist, it doesn't change my enjoyment of the story. These characters are still the same characters we've come to love and/or hate - Elios might be the exception - and the story still has the potential to be just as gripping despite the cliche plot twist.

Even if the disorder is misrepresented, why should that change anyone's enjoyment of the story? Shouldn't we be capable of enjoying a story while being aware that this is not truly how such a mental disorder is in reality?

And even if not, the community should use this as a chance to teach the author where they went wrong, not condemn them so harshly and stop supporting something they've worked so hard on. The author made a mistake, and hopefully they can learn from it!

TL;DR: The author made a mistake that they'll hopefully learn from, and the community should be able to continue enjoying the comic while being aware that Disassociative Identity Disorder is being misrepresented, rather than producing such harsh backlash.

#my deepest secret #deepest secret #DID #disassociative identity disorder #its really not that bad #try to teach the author #not condemn them

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kogo-dogo · 4 years

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I looked at your favorite character top 5 thing and there's the one character you said was your ''problematic fave''. And I've heard of that game before because I saw somebody play it on Youtube once, I think the second one, and I was just curious about the character. Torque?? Because it seems like such a bad game and he didn't seem to have much personality but you seem very attacked so I was wondering if maybe it was worth looking into the series or something. I like old games.

I am so sorry that I said a week ago I’d answer this, Anon. I have so many thoughts about this probably-actually-one-dimensional character because I’ve had sixteen years to pick apart every scrap of info that exists about him. And overanalysis of fictional men is, at this point, my primary hobby.

First of all… eh. I won’t say to definitively not look into the series, but I would encourage you not look into the series. It’s one of those things that’s aged like an open bottle of two-buck chuck and I can tell you right now that it wouldn’t be as palatable in 2020 as it was in 2004. As much as I love Prison is Hell (the first game) and as much as I get what they were trying to do, they messed a lot of things up and it wouldn’t translate well to modern times. This is especially true for Ties That Bind. Oh my god, do NOT play Ties That Bind if you’re easily offended.

It’s fascinating to pick apart, though, even if it seems extremely basic on the surface level, and part of the reason I like Torque so much is because he’s a very interesting character to crack open and inspect. I know he probably Isn’t That Deep, but he’s interesting, figuring him out is a puzzle because of the way storytelling is carried out, and if he’d been handled better, would probably still be remembered beyond “quiet dude in a game Youtubers occasionally play on Halloween.” He’s really an unfortunate casualty of that era of gaming. It’s surprising he was handled with any dignity at all.

Spoilers are to follow, but it’s for the best. Now you don’t have to play the game.

First, a disclaimer: The Suffering games do work on a morality system, where you can get good or bad endings based on how you treat other people. The game is heavily designed to favor the good ending, and most people I’ve spoken to have agreed the good endings are likely canonical considering how much you’d miss while playing neutral/evil. So, we’re going with the “Good Aligned Torque is Canon” angle.

Okay. Now.

- Who is Torque?

This guy.

Torque is, in essence, what happens when you take every tired trope of a horror movie villain and flip it around on its head. He’s a severely mentally ill inmate convicted of murder (while it’s never outright stated what mental illnesses he has, it’s pretty obviously a mixture of DID and schizophrenia), he never speaks (at least not in the present; he does have scant dialogue in flashbacks in the second game; it amounts to maybe eight words total), and he is… freakishly strong. Beyond that, there’s very heavy evidence that he’s somehow supernaturally inclined.

The difference is that, instead of being presented as the villain, he’s the hero. He’s not just the hero, he’s basically one of the very few competent people in the games. Nobody treats him any different than they would anyone else, the game doesn’t go out of its way to underline that he’s some kind of “monster,” and even when the most monstrous of his alters presents itself (The Creature, who we’ll discuss later), people are just kind of like, “Oh, well that was different” and then move on with their lives.

He is a character who could very easily take the place of Jason Voorhees, and instead of being given a machete and told to kill everyone he comes across, he’s given a fire ax and a voice in his head that tells him to take care to think about how much other people are struggling and that maybe, being that he is probably stronger than them, he should put forth the effort to get them someplace safe.

- Okay, but, like… WHO is he? Character-wise?

If you want his backstory, it’s actually one of the best parts about him and one of the few things that Ties That Bind expands upon correctly. To summarize, he’s a victim of the state that fell through the cracks, pieced his life back together, and then ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

To be more long-winded: He was a troubled child with psychiatric problems who lost both of his parents in a car accident. With no living relatives beyond his parents, he was placed into the Garvey Children’s Home, where the conditions were less than ideal. A mixture of strain, trauma, loneliness, and desperation prompted his brain to divide up into three: himself, Blackmore, and The Creature. Then, left to navigate life and his own mental health on his own, he ended up falling in with some very bad crowds.

He became a drug dealer. He got in a lot of altercations. He was in and out of prison. This only stopped when he met his wife and became a family man, and began to consciously put forth the effort to right himself. He had two sons, had everything under control… and then ended up in prison again when the guy he used to work for on the streets hired a man to come pay him a visit at his friend’s bar and press every last one of his buttons until he snapped. He wound up in prison, his wife divorced him, and everyone assumed he’d end up back to his old tricks.

Except… he didn’t go back to being a drug dealer. He got a job at a gym instead. He stayed on the right track. He started reconciling with his ex-wife who, right before the events of the first game, moved back in with him.

This didn’t sit well with the men Torque used to run with, especially not the guy he used to work for… so a hit was ordered on him and his family. He wasn’t home when it was carried out. He walked in, found his wife and kids dead, and passed out in his apartment from the shock, where the police found him after receiving a tip.

He was bloody. He was disoriented. He was known to be a repeat offender. They pinned the whole thing on him and, after a very unfair trial, he was sentenced to death.

The first day he arrives in prison--located on scenic Carnate Island--the ground opens up and monsters begin sweeping over the land. Convenient.

- Wait, this bitch has alters?

Yeah. This… isn’t really a part of the game that’s handled well, but it’s interesting. There’s a lot of weirdness going on with Torque (remember that supernatural bend I mentioned?), and one of the two is… well, I’m not sure he’s an alter at all.

First, there’s Torque himself who is just a short-tempered, easily frustrated, but generally reasonable guy who really just wanted to keep his head above water. Secondly, there’s The Creature, a defense mechanism and literal monster that is incapable of communication and rears its head whenever he feels threatened. Physically threatened, generally, which resulted in The Creature being a bit violent. Torque has a pretty extensive arrest record and most of his arrests seem to revolve around “punched a guy at an inopportune time.”

Blackmore is more complicated, because he isn’t really clear. You see, there’s a snippet of dialogue in the second game and a lot of environmental storytelling that indicates that Torque is supernaturally gifted somehow (something he likely inherited from his mother), and that some of his mental illnesses are actually paranormal interference. Blackmore is the biggest gray area, because while he is presented as an alter, he… very much defies that.

He’s presented as a presence that Torque experiences externally and that only he can see (not really uncommon; Torque hallucinates pretty frequently throughout the game), but he also seems to be aware and consciously trying to control Torque. When that fails, he settles for trying to find a way to take over Torque’s body permanently. He’s capable of actually getting in physical altercations with Torque, but at the same time can hijack his body to do things he wouldn’t normally be able to do. He honestly smacks more of something Torque is possessed by instead of something his brain came up with itself, made all the more obvious by the fact that the final battle in the second game is literally Torque and Blackmore beating the everloving hell out of each other after Torque consciously realizes that nobody can perceive Blackmore but him.

But at the same time, that guy that Torque worked for that ordered the hit on his family? That’s Blackmore. There’s a lot of talk about how nobody has ever seen Blackmore (indicating he only communicated via writing or phone or what have you), and it’s all… very, very stupid. It’s one of those things in TTB that made me throw up my hands and go, “Well, sure. Okay. Let’s just do that, then. That makes perfect sense thanks.”

(I do not like most of Ties That Bind.)

- Okay, so he’s supernatural somehow?

Mm-hm. Again, it’s never explicitly stated, but heavily implied through some dialogue from my second favorite character in the game (DR. Q.L. KILLJOY, MOTHERFUCKER) and just the way the story plays out.

Carnate Island erupts with a bad case of monsters the second Torque sets foot on the island. A prologue you unlock after you beat the game once reveals that Torque actually hallucinated the first game’s end boss before he even saw it, indicating he has some precognitive abilities. The sentient spirits of both games know who Torque is and take a special interest in him, and plenty make allusions that they’re “more alike” than he thinks. Blackmore is very clearly paranormal in origin and seems to even be able to command the monsters in some way.

Hell, Dr. Killjoy even implies at the end of the first game that Torque is somehow making all of this happen and, only by tackling the root of his problems, can he make everything stop.

While there’s never been an active fandom for this game, I used to associate with a small group of fans, and there was actually a lot of discussion/disagreements about whether Torque actually had any form of psychosis or if maybe he had latent psychic abilities he couldn’t control. Seeing things all the time, causing things to accidentally happen that nobody would believe; it’d be easy to be chalked up with a disorder when there’s no way to know or prove what you’re experiencing is Real Shit.

- Why do you hate Ties That Bind so much?

Because of the way it improperly handles a bunch of mental health stuff that the first game wisely didn’t actually touch on much beyond acknowledging the fact that This Guy Are Sick.

Prison is Hell makes it very evident that Torque has psychiatric problems but never dwells on it overmuch. There’s even an entire chapter of the game that takes place in an old asylum with an early 1900s alienist ghost (DR. KILLJOY) trying to diagnose and “treat” Torque, and it still is mostly hinged on the horrors of old-timey treatment of mentally ill patients than anything about Torque. That and Dr. Killjoy’s misguided good intent (that dude deserves a whole essay of his own, to be honest).

Instead of hammering it home that he has Issues and deciding to talk too much about Issues, it just treats Torque like a human being. Your main goal is getting off the island and saving stragglers along the way, all of which react to Torque just the same way they would to anyone. COs will either be authoritative or condescending. Fellow inmates will be suspicious but more likely to work with him. Everyone is always gracious for his help, and nobody makes any odd remarks about anything weird he does (barring when The Creature shows up; then, they just remark on, “DUDE HOW IN THE FUCK?” because you find out, later on, that all they see is Torque getting in fist fights with things twice his size and winning).

Torque is just Torque. He just do what Torque do.

Ties That Bind then goes barreling into a bunch of tired tropes and tries to make a convoluted twist ending, and then there’s the whole matter of the secret underground organization that wants to capture Torque and have been working with Blackmore and you end up fighting a helicopter and some SWAT-looking motherfuckers and… they try so much harder to be edgy and gritty and it’s really fucking stupid.

The only good things you get out of it are some further snippets into Torque’s backstory (appreciated), the return of Dr. Q.L. Killjoy (always welcome), and a set of monsters known as Gorgers (they make purr-gle sounds when they eat and I love them).

Oh, and Consuela. She is mentioned in the first game and actually shows up in the second, and I can respect any woman who gets captured by an evil paramilitary organization and, immediately upon being rescued, takes the biggest gun she can find, looks you dead in the eye, and says, “I’m going to steal a fucking boat, drive it straight into a warzone, and rescue my goddamn husband. You with me or not?”

She is literally some female parallel to Torque and my headcanon is they are bros.

- Anything else?

Yeah. The soundtrack for the game is pretty awesome and ended up inspiring some other music in a couple of other video games of the time (Mortal Kombat: Armageddon immediately comes to mind). They actually rigged up some pretty cool contraptions to make unique sounds and ambience using shit like scrap metal and garbage, and the results are pretty fucking cool.

Favorites of mine are the boss themes for Hermes, and Dr. Killjoy, with Dr. Killjoy’s being my absolute favorite of all of them. The main theme of the game is pretty great, too, and is probably the most iconic of all of the songs on the OST. I’ve even heard it used in stuff where I doubt people knew what the hell The Suffering was, lol.

#i've been working on this off and on for a week #because i totally don't care too much about characters nobody else cares about #seems suiting to post it now on Halloween #considering he's a horror game character

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hellzyeahwebwielingessays · 4 years

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Super Heroes are a HUMAN power fantasy Part 2

Super Heroes are a HUMAN power fantasy Part 1

Master Post

There were several points a bit more tangentially connected to my arguments in part 1. As a result I decided to leave them until now and hit them up in bullet points.

These are arguments against the superhero genre chiefly perpetuated by the tryhard trinity of Osvaldo Oyola , J. Lamb and Noah Berlatsky.

On the topic of the genre portraying ‘might making right’, the truth is this is part of the ancient inspirational aspect of these figures and can be found in stories like Rama and Sita, Rama of course ultimately never giving up his quest to be reunited with his lover. Which was not a Western influenced story.

Yes the genre involves ‘punching as conflict resolution’. I’m sorry, but that is part and parcel of the genre and the wish fulfilment/fantasy/narrative entertainment value of the stories. If you DON’T like that then frankly it’s like complaining that a romance story involves kissing.

It has been claimed that a black hero wouldn’t punch someone but again, the genre is entirely about people with powers using them to help people by preserving their life. And if they have no other choice but to K.O. a mugger who’s going to stab someone then a black person, or any decent person, would/should do it. But examining the meaning and repercussions of that realistically given the fact that they aren’t white in a white society is something that could benefit the genre.

A common critique of the genre is that crime happens sometimes because of a racist system, therefore fighting crime innately supports racism. Look, obviously we should remove institutionalised racism from the law. At the end of the day though if someone of any race is committing a crime which HURTS people they should be stopped, the reasons which drove them to that should be taken into consideration, but Spider-Man shouldn’t NOT stop a mugger because they’ve been driven to do that through desperation. There is often no time for that and without being able to talk to or trust strangers he or other heroes need to act in the moment.

Superhero fiction on one level is childish, but on a deeper level they’re representative of universal truths and desires which are often boiled down to fairy tales or simple stories. The above shitheads also claims that superhero fiction is written and consumed by children, when the truth is that in the last 20-30 years the opposite has been more true. THAT is partially why sales have been dwindling over the years.

Superman’s values are innate to the heroic and altruistic desires and ideals ALL humanity has expressed throughout its history. They are not inherently ‘white’

Apparently superheroes are white constructs because they reinforce the ‘status quo’. To quote the Atlantic article (see part 1) again:

“What status quo do superheroes reinforce? These heroes fight because everyone is entitled to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The only fascists here are the supervillains who disagree.”

Also Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were created specifically to change the status quo of the fictional worlds they were created in. At the same time the entire Marvel pantheon were about changing the status quo of the genre by introducing people who were flawed and different and more human than the DC heroes

Superheroes, despite the assertions by the above fuckwits have at times interrogated the justice system. But generally their lack of interrogation is I think for the same reason their science is so wonky. They don’t know better. They just boil it down to the simplest terms. Muggings and villain threats abound. Hero prevents those. They don’t know enough to tackle something much deeper than that. This ties into the fundamentally flawed aspect of most critiques wherein they are looking to superheroes as intellectual pieces of academic and critical study when...that’s not what they are...at all…

One of the above douchebags once said:

An African American Superman, with kinky, close-cropped black hair, thick, half-reddened lips, high cheekbones, and wide nostrils all bathed in dark Lindt chocolate, resists White supremacist logic, negates Black inferiority mythology, and threatens the established order. Superman’s disconcerting physicality, tempered by his omnipresent cheerfulness calmed and invited White comic readers to imagine themselves as gaudy Caucasian perfection, the Anglo-Saxon ideal. Static in panel, without speech bubbles or thought balloons, Superman Black warps the absurdly developed skeletal striated muscle and eternal hopefulness fans rejoice into a clear and present danger to the American experiment, an unholy figure derived from Tea Party paranoia, Barack Obama’s calculation and Terry Crews’ musculature. Public Enemy’s prescience abounds – were Superman Black introduced on the game-changing Action Comics’ cover, White America would have yet another reason to fear a Black planet.

This entirely depends upon who is doing the perceiving. To someone of a different mindset a Black Superman could be just that. The same thing Superman is except he happens to have black skin.

Also, the author needs to take a major chill pill, Jesus Christ.

Here is another quote from one of them:

Only in White male power fantasies can people blessed with skin privilege and bodies carved from living marble wield heat vision or super speed or unbreakable claws against indigent criminals from broken homes who lack high school educations.

This is again grossly incorrect because the idea of individuals having superhuman abilities and using them to fight criminals predates American society, and if one accepts figures like the Hydra to be stand-ins for threats to human life then the superhumans have been fighting what the criminals represent for eons before the advent of American society. The criminals they use their abilities against are rarely stated to lack education or come from broken homes, but yes okay let’s say that they are that.

Having super humans go up against them and defeat them isn’t a white male power fantasy because their abilities are used to subdue and NOT kill. Injure perhaps but in real life sometimes force is sadly necessary and if someone is robbing a bank or holding a gun to someone in an alley it is justified no matter what skin colour anyone involved in is, or what society you find yourself in, for the perpetrator to be stopped in order to safeguard life. Just because the perp resorted to what they did due to social ills beyond their control, that doesn’t justify their actions at that moment. Stealing someone’s money or trying to murder them is never ever going to be acceptable no matter if we live in a white society or not.

Only in White male power fantasies would women display abundant porcelain cleavage or don starry microskirts to fight crime.

Yeah um, preeeeeeetty sure that actually that’s more of a male SEXUAL fantasy and less than a WHITE male POWER fantasy. That was never the topic of conversation.

Shuttle diplomacy or natural resource husbandry rarely bring metal-faced technological sorcerers to heel in superhero comics; superheroes often save planet Earth through fantastic violence judiciously applied.

Yeah, that’s part of the narrative FANTASY element of the genre that is intended to be escapist. Condemning it for being otherwise is asinine.

More than this, guess what, there are people whom Dr. Doom is a metaphorical stand-in for. And an awful lot of them legitimately can’t be negotiated with. I am of the belief that in the REAL world we should negotiate and use force when there is no other choice and even then only use what is necessary. But the Dr. Dooms and Lex Luthors of the comic book world represent grander themes of evil and social ills, whilst at the same time existing to challenge the heroes physically and mentally. They represent the unmovable types of evil that legitimately can only be dealt with via physical means.

This was the type of circular logic I talked about before. It is looking at the villains as stand ins for EVERY type of situation and therefore the super hero’s use of violence as ‘problematic’, when in reality the superheroes’ use of violence isn’t problematic because it is justified by the extreme circumstances they find themselves in.

Because those situations don’t exist in real life...like in World War II...which was literally about people using force in the face of failed negotiation to halt the advance of fascism…

I submit that the superheroic reflex to subdue evil with violence directly descends from Thucydides and Alexander, from Richard the Lionheart and Dwight Eisenhower.

Yeah...except it isn’t. Again...it came from the same place as Hercules and Sun Wukong, and those came from the natural human biological imperatives to survive.

Superheroic morality requires Western Civilization’s literary canon and political history to justify its callous disregard toward collateral damage. To be clear, superheroes routinely consider innocent noncombatants’ lives (if not their property) when they confront cosmic despots or sociopathic steroid abusers, but comics document the never-ending battle in colorful tomes largely sold after Nagasaki and My Lai, after the time when total ignorance of American military supremacy was vogue. When Wally West as the Flash pulls a hysterical single mother out of her overturned silver 2001 Honda Civic and carries her to safety from Apokoliptian cannons at breakneck speed, comic fans favorably regard his heroism; any dialogue from the frazzled thirty-something file clerk will remind readers how grateful she is to escape otherworldly horror with her life. Superhero comics don’t care about the destruction of this woman’s sole transport; when the gas tank explodes behind the Flash’s blurred strobe, this woman loses her credit cards, her driver’s license, her insurance documents, her six-year-old daughter’s vanilla birthday cake with its beloved artificially flavored strawberry icing. The comics don’t recognize the heroism of this brave woman’s seven-month struggle to rebuild her finances and maintain her identity following Darkseid’s incursion; all we know is for that poor woman, the Flash saved the day. He’s a superhero. Isn’t she grateful?”

Collateral damage and the disregard for it IS regarded. Hence the existence of Damage Control. Furthermore, that is AGAIN part of the escapism and fantasy element of it. THAT is the suspension of disbelief element of superheroes and taking it THAT realistically and criticising it for it is frankly just mean spirited and simply looking for an excuse to hate it.

Furthermore the reason the rescued woman isn’t focussed upon is because it’s not HER story. If you write a story about a protagonist THEY are your focus. Everything is for their benefit. That’s true of older non-white folktales as well.

And yeah readers are supposed to regard the Flash as heroic and the woman grateful because her kid’s birthday cake isn’t realistically as important as her life!!!!!!

This is criticising superhero fiction for being unrealistic even when it is being actively so The woman WOULD probably be grateful that she’s not fucking dead!

I wouldn’t mind seeing the survivors of something like this try to rebuild their lives. And superhero fiction has focussed upon that from time to time, but again...that’s not the point of the story. Criticising the genre fro this is like criticising Harry Potter for having the audacity to focus more upon Harry’s trauma in the wake of Cedric Diggory’s death than his parents’. Harry is the star. He gets the focus.

Superman is a White boy. Superheroes are White people. Superhero morality exacts the Melian Dialogue’s ‘might makes right’ overwhelming force realpolitik with every onomatopoetic Biff! Bam! Pow! gut punch and karate chop combo.

See what I’ve said before about how superheroes are not fascists and how force is often necessary

There exists no genetic propensity for group violence in the human genome. None.”

Er....yeah...there kinda is...that’s part of why wars happen.

racially-informed vigilantism.

This phrase in one of the articles itself sums up it’s own contradictions. Racially informed vigilantism is just one type of vigilantism, a type the superhero doesn’t subscribe to. A superhero would sooner join the likes of the Joker than the KKK style vigilantes and would be all too happy to apprehend them.

One of the articles seems to be conflating basically ALL criminals super heroes fight with people who’re labelled criminals due to racial profiling. Yes superheroes operate to an extent like police officers but you can’t truly complete the analogy whatsoever.

Few of them have legal sanction, which is partially why so many refrain from actually killing anyone as officer’s are allowed to do under certain circumstances. More than this when they take down criminals their methods are entirely different from regular cops. Apart from very loud and overt super villains who may or may not be on a rampage, most of the time when they tackle regular criminals it’s due to them either being informed of a crime that is going to happen (like a hijacking or something) or they literally see something happening whilst on patrol. They don’t profile people beyond what their super sensory abilities or logical observations tell them. Which is to say if someone is following someone else a little too closely then maybe, just maybe they are planning something. If their Spider-Sense or super hearing or something alerts them to something they will act.

Taking that, ignoring it, and then supplanting the superhero for a regular cop who would racially profile people and/or supplanting the criminals they tackle for racial minorities because those are the people who (stereotypically in the real world) would be targeted as criminals is very inappropriate. Not least of all since superhero comics obviously don’t present a wholesale realistic depiction of the real world so what they present isn’t entirely interchangeable with that. And what is more, erasure of minorities was so prevalent that overwhelming majority of all the criminals they ever encountered were themselves white, so again exchanging those for racial minorities who’re profiled as criminals is highly questionable.

It’s all just such a MASSIVE reach!

But I think the panels also work to point out that Miles himself “does not belong” in the superhero tradition. He, like most black and brown superhero characters in mainstream comics, is an outlier. In other words, people like Miles or Trayvon are unfortunately more likely to be victim of a “heroic” vigilante than to be one.

This is conflating the superhero vigilante with the majority of real world vigilantes who are overly violent (and frequently hard conservative) individuals who do take overly simplistic views of the law and use those to profile people. And it’s doing so whilst taking superheroes too literally, bringing their own personal interpretations to the mix and then overlaying them onto the superhero concept before finally accepting it as fact.

Police officers use violence against racially profiled people who exhibit unrest due to a societal system stacked against them. Well shit, Batman punches the Joker. It must be the same thing obviously!!!!!

Look. Without our stories, without the true nature and reality of who we are as people of color, nothing about fanboy and fangirl culture makes sense. What I mean by that is, if it wasn’t for race, X-Men doesn’t make sense; if it wasn’t for the history of breeding human beings through chattel slavery, Dune doesn’t make sense; if it wasn’t for the history of colonialism and imperialism, Star Wars doesn’t make sense; if it wasn’t for the extermination of so many indigenous nations, most of what we call “first contact” stories don’t make sense. Without us as the secret sauce, none of this works, and it is about time that we understand that we are the Force that holds the Star Wars universe together. We’re the Prime Directive that makes Star Trek possible. We are… in the Green Lantern Corps? We are the Oath. We are all of those things. Erased, and yet without us? We’re essential. This is an incredibly important project, because it puts front and center, not only a community that has long consumed and given power to these practices and consumer categories, but it’s a community without whose suffering and struggles, none of [these narratives] would make sense.

I agree with a lot of this but there are some problems with it.

a) X-Men makes sense also because they are a stand in for almost ALL marginalised groups. Racial minorities, disabled people, queer people etc.

b) Actually Star Wars makes complete sense with or without colonialism or imperialism, at least the kind which directly relates to the issues of racism. Imperialism, conquest, these are things which are much older than American society, dating back to even before Ancient Rome. It’s about freedom fundamentally and freedom is a desire shared by ALL human beings innately because at the end of the day we are animals who wish to be free and not caged. Being caged metaphorically within a tyranny is thus something we abhor

c) The Star Wars universe doesn’t begin and end with the story of imperialism. It’s about how Democracy can be turned into an dictatorship and how that has to be prevented, or re-addressed once it happens

When white comics readers claim that they did not need white characters to relate to and enjoy comics (as a way to argue against positive race-bending), that point to their love of Luke Cage or Spawn as evidence of their ability to enjoy characters across race, what they are failing to note is how black, Latin@, etc… identities in the superhero genre are framed by a system of white supremacy.

Again I don’t understand this one. I as a white reader can enjoy Luke Cage rescuing someone from a burning building because doing that is part of white supremacy????

It presumes a white power fantasy is inherently different to a black one. But the power fantasy element of the superhero relates to them having powers and using them to help others and defeat villains. A power fantasy by another race would still have that because it is inherent to the human power fantasy. Non-white power fantasies would logically have all that and more!

Much like Noah Berlatsky explains in his book Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-1948, part of what made Marston’s original Wonder Woman stories so wonderful, was his expectation that girls and boys would identify with the heroine, to value and idealize her compassionate strength and victory through submission, rather than through cyclical and ultimately futile fisticuffs of male dominion.

Many female readers enjoy the action scenes. Action scenes are good because it enables us to have a healthy outlet for aggression without taking it out into the real world. It is also NOT an inherently male dominion thing. Again this is THEIR projection. Fighting and violence is innate to human beings because we are animals biologically programmed towards it for the sake of survival. That goes for males and females. Furthermore far from fisticuffs just being about male ‘dominion’ the Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman comics were a reflection of impending war. A war that sadly required violence to be solved. That’s what the superhero typifies. Wish fulfilment action in situations where violence was (usually) a necessity. Diplomacy is good and should be our first resort. In life though sometimes things do come down to necessary violence.

There are many ways to craft a racial minority superhero, but if we consider racial authenticity as a foremost concern, today’s Hollywood is simply not prepared for that intellectual labor. The real diversity conundrum isn’t how to include the minority metahuman in the existing comic framework; that’s an art project, a casting decision solved by calling Michael B. Jordan’s agent. The real question is how to write that superhero in a way that moves the medium forward, past the Reaganomics antiheroes of Alan Moore and Frank Miller and past the hyper-emotive Silver Age redux of Geoff Johns and Brian Michael Bendis. Respectable, authentic diversity in superhero comics should redefine the nature of the meta-protagonist to his powers and his audience, with exhaustive attention to cultural detail. I’m not convinced that a Black superhero would wear tights. I strongly doubt that a Black superhero would solve conflicts with his fists. The Black superhero knows that his community watches him religiously, and that any false move will have public repercussions he cannot expect or control. If anything, the Black superhero template plays out on our nation’s cable news channels at all hours. President Barack Obama, with all his clipped vocal inflections and measured language and natural equivocation and faulty dealmaking and perfect family and limitless patience is the closest public figure to a Black superhero America has yet experienced, an international celebrity unthinkable before his ascent. Watching President Obama today, one feels expectation crush into his bones like a gravity well. No matter the political stimuli, Republicans oppose him. The concept of the Obama Presidency struck American conservatives like a Bernard Hopkins’ kidney punch, and in return, President Obama absorbs the vitriol of our coarse public debates more than any President to date (and progressives never tired of calling his predecessor a National Socialist). The agony and the ecstasy of Grant Park has given way for many Americans to the sobering fact that American authority, her global military supremacy and international economic primacy, is controlled and represented by a Black man. Disliked, hated, or worse, the Establishment is Black. I need the Black superhero in print and/or on-screen to reflect that paradigm shift. Superheroes in the popular imagination are Establishment figures; if the Black superhero I’m presented can’t interrogate what it means when the Establishment is Black, of what utility is her story?

A minority hero wouldn’t wear tights or punch people...why?

What do tights have to do with anything? As for solving problems with his fists this is conflating the threats superheroes face with ANY threat, when they are almost always situations which legitimately do require necessary physical force to resolve. If the black superhero patrols an area and sees someone about to stab someone else, yeah he should punch the stabber to save the innocent person if there is no time for anything else.

This is basically asking for the core foundation of superheroes (which transcends racial constructs and is innate to human wish fulfilment and mythic tradition) to be scrapped in favour of something else entirely. Barrack Obama isn’t a superhero. He is many, many things but what Mr. Lamb here is asking isn’t so much for a different template but for something just wholesale different. He doesn’t actually WANT a superhero story in the first place!

Super heroes aren’t establishment figures. Superheroes don’t uphold the law regardless. They uphold the law in so far as a greater need to safeguard innocent lives. Conflating them as inherently establishment figures ignores their origins and over literalises what they do.

At the same time the utility of their story is first and foremost as a story: to entertain and inspire.

It is inherently worthwhile for a little black kid to sit down and open up a comic book where someone who looks like them is being a good person, is helping people, is defending the weak. I agree that minority heroes shouldn’t just be white heroes who happen to have different skin colours. I think they need to reflect the realities of what it means to be black or Asian or Pakistani in white society is necessary and a superhero should do that and should have that inform how they interact with their powers. It doesn’t mean the whole genre needs to abandon what it fundamentally is or that those minority heroes should not do the things a superhero fundamentally do.

Ultimately, yeah these characters were created within a white context, but my point is fundamentally the same thing was created in non-white contexts as well throughout history.

Super Heroes are a HUMAN power fantasy Part 1

Master Post

#Osvaldo Oyola #Noah Berlatsky #Marvel #DC #DC Comics #Marvel Comics #Super Heroes #Superheroes #Wonder Woman #Robin Hood

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kannra21 · 5 years

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I saw a post that said that op is tired of horror movies where the enemy is a person with the mental illness and that they shouldn't be treated as such.

I agree, BUT there's that one video game called Until Dawn and my favorite was Josh, who had schizophrenia. He was also a villain in this game but God I loved him so much.

He was super sweet and he absolutely loved his twin sisters. His sisters died bc one of their pathetic excuses of friends wanted to embarrass her by recording her snogging with her crush, who btw was also a dick.

When she realized she ran away into the forest and her sister went after her. They never came back.

A year later Josh organized their meeting at the same place to catch up on the good old times but in reality, he prepared all the traps and scary stuff to revenge his sisters' deaths and made them run for their lives.

Josh was treated with wrong medication and he also stopped consuming what he was prescribed. Idiots thought he suffered from depression but they never managed to cure his psychosis. His hallucinations were bizarre. He was also in a life-threatening situation with his friend locked in the shed, he thought they had a sleepover and asked him if they could order a pizza.

As much as I laughed I felt so bad bc he wasn't aware of the seriousness of the situation bc the only scary things were those in his head and man I wanted to hug him so much and give him his freaking pills.

Let's ignore all the blood, chainsaws, pig heads, organs and sick puppets, he deserved to be happy. He lived for his sisters and they lived for him. Once they were gone he wanted to commit suicide and overdose with his drugs.

The person who deserved to die in this game is Michael Munroe and his stupid ass for playing all those girls into fighting each other over a loser.

As much as Josh made nasty comments, encouraged Chris to take Ashley into the "bone zone", he did it for fun. He always joked with girls and he was never rly serious with his stupid statements bc a) he has two sisters and b) he has that much decency. Bc if someone dared to touch his sisters he'd beat the hell out of them.

So we can conclude that Joshua Washington, a mentally-ill person, drinks respect women juice while Michael, a perfectly normal person, is a pig. I still can't believe he's labeled as a villain.

Josh is also the only character in the game that needs to die. I'll never get over this and I mean never.

#i love him #*ugly sob*#until dawn #joshua washington #josh

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goffilolo · 5 years

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Demise!Izuku as a Youtuber?

Yep! You heard me right. Demise server is a strange little land, full of strange little ideas, unfortunitely this one idea in particular wasn’t so little. So without further ado here’s all the shit we came up with in the server in regards to izuku as a youtuber within demise!au:

If Izuku was a YouTuber can you imagine the fucking chaos dumpster fire his channel would be

He's be like an edgy twink Jenna marbles(edited)

Doing Me time every damn day

bandit is jennas dogs

tenya is julien

He'd have weird ass videos like dipping bandits feet in red pet dye then putting a sign on him that says "you pet and you'll meet the last person who dared to"(edited)

And he's also make videos about him breaking into UA and interrupting classes and stuff

"hey gamers, today we're breaking into UA to see my boyfriend and read all of my friend's secret files"

And a video just of him filing Aizawa in weird places and at the end putting him on an inflatable mattress and watching him float away

He wakes up in Canada

They don't know how or why

He just attaches a go-pro to trash bandit and let's him run wild. He probably has a seriesJust letting him loose in weird places

DONT LET TRASH BANDIT EAT AIZAWA'S SLEEPING BAG AT 3AM | VERY SCARY"hey guys so today ill be doing the 'How many bottles of quil can i steal before i get caught by Tsukabitch' challange. feel free to make a video of your own!"

He probably dyes Bandit according to holidays and puts him as the profile picture. The kicker is, he only does it for holidays that his country doesn't celebrate

Like 4th of july

And Canada day

"Hewo soulless fuckers it is me your overlord, King of the soulless fuckers. Today I'll be going up to people in the streets and telling them that I killed God and Satan. But y'all know me, that's not enough. So I'll be asking them which one I killed first and if they get it wrong I take a shot of quil. The quil I'll be taking is the plain ol kind so don't worry your little marshmallow heads about it."

He only makes text posts in OwO speak this just makes me realise demise!izuku would make a great youtuber

He would twitch stream all the time doing the weirdest shit for hours on end

"what is up gamews! today i wiww be weviewing the new game cawwed life! i have been pwaying it fow about 16 yeaws now and i have to say it's pwetty bad my guys!"

I feel like he'd be absurdly popular and whenever someone mentions him and they look up the channel they are like "wth have I stumbled upon?!"

I'm just imagining what his front page would look like

The seasonal trash bandit profile picture, the banner would be a flaming hellscape with people he dislikes burning and trash bandit looming on low opacity in the background

(He made it so that only people who view it on TV get the full experience.)

He probably has his own segment on buzzfeed unsolved

Not talking

Its about him

The intro video would just be him staring into the camera while mixing together a horrible concoction of quil then downing it without breaking eye contact(edited)

His about section is written in 3 different types of code and it's all in owo if you manage to crack it

i love demise|!izuku as a youtube cryptid

Clown Speak and OwO speak mixed together

I feel like in the beginning Izuku was this obscure YouTuber that you only find out about if someone in the know tells you about it until a bigger YouTuber found him out on a deep dive video and just couldn't stop watching yes

i imagine once he gets big people from react channel would invite him to react to videos of people reacting to his videos

What if in one of his videos he started acting like his old self just to freak everyone out. He didn't say anything about it instead he talked about hero analysis with a bright smile and trail off into muttering a few times only to blush when he realized it. He have his hair in a ponytail with only bangs framing his face and some messy pieces falling out. Also her be wearing something plain but like old Izuku, maybe hero merch or something. The comment section was just people flipping out and shit

He never acknowledges the video after he made it

No matter how many comments he gets he acts like it doesn't exist

omg you know wha tthat would actually allign with the demise and canon swap places for a da

yand you know what that gives me a lot of feels

the millions of subscribers get to see the old izuku

Maybe after a milestone he would post a video he made in middle school of him analyzing a quirk in video format to make sure it wouldn't get destroyed

And he put a couple videos of younger him after it

But it starts being supporting Izuku

And his present and past self and stuff

PEOPLE MAKE FAN ART first Its all full of trash and memes

What if that picture of canon Izuku meeting demise Izuku was a fan art someone made of his old self meeting the new him

Kids from his class kinda Piecing together they really screwed up?Some even sending in apologies, perhaps

For mental health day I could see him posting a serious video about what he went through and his time in the mental hospital

And on national stop bullying day he would talk about his decade of abuse including the details of how the school and teachers fucked up and everything aboutbakugou

izuku using youtrube for shitposting and advocating

And for mothers day he features both Rei and Inko?

Endeavor exposure video

What if Rei helped edit or something?To help pass the time for her

Give her something to do

People love the mysterious editor

I feel like villains watch his content like maybe Dabi

rei and fuyumi sometimes make appearances

Dabi just shows up in the videos

Quickly become faves

I feel like Dabi would become a fan and start crying after seeing his mom happy in one of Izuku's videos

"...and this is rei, my hospital mom and this if fuyumi, her daughter so like my sister she helps me keep my shit together and sometimes gives me quil.."

dabi crying from seeing his mom happy in some lunatic's youtube videos

“...and this is shin, dont let the looks deceive you this man went to jail"

Shin comes in and covers the cameras a lot

FATHERS DAY IS A PICTURE OF TRASH BANDIT WITH HIS DADS VOICE SCRAMBLED OVER IT

“and this is the local florida woman and her alligator

WHAT IF BNHA VERSE HAD QUIRKLESS AWARENESS WEEKizuku would go ape shit during that week

"who needs a quirk when my dad gave me a gun!"

He would give axe sharpening tips

"Remember kids! Society won't help you, so you gotta help yourself!"

he would make 'how to cook videos' except it would only be quil combos

What if one day he just put quil in the ovenand pulled out a muffin

Remeber, don't try this at home kids." makes A horrifying quil combo "rememer never ever do this even if you have a quirk that allows it." downs the horror concoction

"so today were gonna do my boyriend does my makeup challange and since both me and tenya are dumb and know nothing i borrowed my mums makeup..."

It’s a given he’s gonna do makeup tutorials. The real question is would they be good or absolutely horrendous?

good or horrendous? Both

Amazing makeup at horrendous things? Hmmm interesting

“Hey guys today I’m turning myself into a real like eldrich abomination with the help of eyeliner and glitter!”

izuku has a whole playlist of videos dedicated to tenya and UA

theyre all jsut shitposty compilations of some footage when tenya isnt looking

Even tho it looks like he couldn't give a fuck he is very selective with which footage makes it online. He's very careful at how much is revealed and makes sure no students or secret identities would be in danger with his content

izuku isnt stupid...hes jsut having a good time

Sneaking into UA highschool by hiding in pro hero eraserhead's sleeping bag | NOT CLICKBAIT

Izuku would totally play carefree and childish games while just being Izuku

Like his animal crossing series

Fucking legendary on his channel in terms of gaming

izuku's sims lets play

it's like a 10 generation long telenovela lowkey based off the todoroki family

He has no straight sims, he recreated UA and class 1a in sims

the wedding of sim izuku and sim tenya is like the biggest party in the sim neighbourhood

He creates endeavor just to lock him in a room with 50 ovens

Omg his draw my life has got to be super depressing

He'd be super blunt and monotone during his whole draw my life going through all of the abuse and bullying that he went through because of his quirklessness and also his suicide attempt and all that jazz(edited)

izuku would paint on a potato

Izuku would make a get ready with me where he does something totally batshit crazy then ends it with "Ah. Yet another day in my life."

Izuku meets Marie Kondo

“Only keep what brings you joy”

“Well this gun from my father sure brings me joy”

Knifemaking videos but with axes

Izuku decided to do a wardrobe tour and like 4 things were bloodstained which he never addressed. The most popular comment was what happened, which of course he never answered.

Izuku does these new year (like all of the questions from last year) or milestone Q+A’s/AMA's which are basically people just asking a bunch of the things he wouldn't answer or address before. A lot of his viewers write down and timestamp when he does something and doesn't address it. If you don't you'll never hear an answer.

He has his boonk gang phrase which is probably like Bandit gang or some shit like that, which he shouts while breaking into places. UA dorm rooms, UA facility office, UA, Hero Agency’s, Endeavour's bedroom (Don't ask), etc.

He has a variety of videos where he does things from different communities. For example he has a few hair tutorial and following hair tutorial videos. Same for makeup.I feel like Izuku would also have some dresses and slutty Halloween costumes that be put on in a video all while looking like someone who just had finals and was studying for 4 days straight beforehand.

At like 4AM a thought hit Izuku to have Trash Bandit meet Kouta for the first time and learn what his sheep talks about and what he has to say. Needless to say he took his camera, went to UA, stormed the dorms, went up to the shy kid sheep in hand, looked him dead in the eye, and asked “What is my sheep saying.” bandit speaks and Kouta goes from confused and slightly scared to disgusted and horrified. What did Bandit say? Who the fuck knows…

Izuku loves analysis and while he doesn't do it for heroes anymore when he misses it too much sometimes he does it with tv shows or other things.

Idk what yet but Izuku is weirdly good at something and only showed it on camera once. (He's casually known to be a good artist) Whatever he's good at he did it once for a video and it's in one of the most popular compilation videos of him. 15 minutes of Izuku being a cinnamon roll.

Izuku has a shit ton of videos featuring the UA kids. He has some playlists dedicated to certain ones even if all you see is the back of their head.

Any proceeds Izuku manages to get (he is popular but he gets demonetized a lot) goes to different charities for the quirkless.

He made only 1 serious cooking video on his birthday, but instead of using a knife he used an axe.

He has a video called “My sharp things (tour)” where he just shows off all of his knives and axes and shit along with a massive pair of scissors he got Momo to make.

Izuku makes videos of himself destroying endeavor merch while staring at the camera.

#demise!au #bnha #youtuber!au #boku no hero academia #midoriya izuku #word vomit

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tyrantisterror · 5 years

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Oh Fuck I’m TV Troping: A Short & Incomplete List of Bad Girls

Since that whole post about Bad Girls and Compassionate Male Heroes kinda blew up and the discussion just... isn’t stopping, I’ve been thinking of this trope a lot and uh, I guess I’m gonna list a bunch of examples of it since I’ve kinda been doing it already and it’d be nice to have them all in one spot I guess. Gonna put a cut because even though I don’t want to make a huge list, I still think this is gonna be long.

4 Tried and True Bad Girls - the following fit the archetype as I roughly defined it here pretty much to the letter. Of course, the thing about archetypes and tropes is that you don’t have to hit every single detail to still “count,” but it’s good to have a baseline.

Jessie

A member of an international crime syndicate, a notorious thief, and a recurring antagonist for the hero, Jessie from Pokemon is an excellent example of the Bad Girl trope because if you remove female pronouns while describing her, she basically fits the stock Bad Boy traits to a T. Aggressive and arrogant? Check. Prone to violent outbursts? Check. Intensely jealous of people who seem to have it easier? Check. Hidden tender side and tragic backstory? Check. Also she’s one half of the greatest romantic couple ever portrayed in fiction - and her counterpart is a compassionate, sweet-natured guy to boot!

Ryoko

I’m not going to fill this up with anime examples (though I probably could - Bad Girls are much more common in Japanese media), but I couldn’t resist including Ryoko, because she’s not just a Bad Girl - she’s a PIRATE, which, if my grandma’s collection of romance novels was anything to go by, is an incredibly popular occupation for a Bad Boy to have! More than that, she’s a space pirate, the plunderer of countless worlds, wanted by the space police force and considered a villain of legendary power. More than that, she can wield store brand lightsabers, shoot lasers out of her hands, and even spent a good chunk of time as a mummy! Ryoko’s personality is pure Dashing Rogue, the Bad Boy Girl who’s definitely a scoundrel but, maybe, just maybe, the kind of scoundrel who’s got a good heart. She definitely pines for love and an amount of stability, though she doesn’t want to stop traveling the stars as a boozing adventurer who gets into the most ludicrous scrapes. Everything about Ryoko plays up the ideas of a Bad Boy romance with the flair for drama and fantasy that a space opera can provide, except the Bad Boy is a girl and the sweet ingenue heroine is a boy.

Ryoko is who you wish Jack Sparrow would be.

Faith

Faith was introduced as a second Slayer in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was the result of magical shenanigans that suddenly rendered the whole “there can only be one slayer at a time” rule kinda moot. Ok that’s an extremely abbreviated summary and it’s really more complicated than that but I can already feel the non-Buffy fans falling asleep so let’s stay focused.

Since Buffy is, y’know, the main character, Faith was brought on to be her foil - an example of what Buffy wasn’t, but possibly could become. And since BtVS was a horror dramedy, Faith wasn’t a GOOD alternative - she was, explicitly, Buffy’s dark counterpart, from her brunette hair to her heavy and darker makeup to her rad leather jacket and, as the show frequently said, “slutty” wardrobe. Faith was more violent, more sexual, and more apathetic to others than Buffy was, and holy fuck did the show just hate her for it. Almost every character in it treated her like shit, with her sexuality in particular being a sticking point for many of them.

Faith is particularly interesting because she differs from Buffy (and the female cast at large) in almost the exact same ways that the show’s main Bad Boys, Angel and Spike, differed from its male characters - more violent, more sexual, darker clothes, etc. But while Angel and Spike get a great deal of sympathy from the narrative, Faith... didn’t. I mean they kinda sorta gave her some eventually, but most of it played out in the spinoff Angel, and the other characters continued to hold a grudge against her. Faith isn’t just an good example of the Bad Girl trope - she’s an example of how the reaction to Bad Girls differs from the reaction to Bad Boys, despite them being almost exactly the same.

Vriska Serket

OH FUCK IT’S HOMESTUCK

Ok, everyone still hates Homestuck, so I won’t belabor this point, but Vriska Serket, who is infamously the most divisive character in the entire story, is absolutely a bad girl. Arrogant, ruthless, abrasive, with a tragic backstory, a desire for both compassion and redemption, and a truly ambitious schemer, she ticks so many boxes and OH SHIT SHE’S ALSO A PIRATE. Like Faith, Vriska was in a story that had a lot of examples of Bad Boys too, and while the fandom fucking HATES Vriska, her Bad Boy counterparts are nowhere near as divisive, with one of them being extremely popular despite being a clown who murders people. The other one explicitly wants to commit genocide, literally saying almost exactly that, and is also far more well liked. WHY IS THIS?

But enough of the homestucks! Let’s move onto some...

Borderline Bad Girls - these ladies don’t fit the trope quite as neatly, but I still think they capture the jist, or at least used it as a base before experimenting in different directions. They are, at the very least, closer to the Bad Girl archetype than its sibling tropes, the Badass Heroine and the Femme Fatale.

Jessica Jones

I’m just gonna talk about the Netflix incarnation of this character, as I have not read the comic books featuring Jessica Jones and thus cannot comment on them.

The only real strike against Jessica Jones is that she isn’t a supporting cast member, like pretty much all other Bad Girls are. She’s the protagonist, the titular main character. That’s a unique honor for a Bad Girl to have! Otherwise, she fits - hard drinking, abrasive, rude, surly as hell, but with a tender heart, a tragic backstory, and a desire for redemption. Hell she’s even wearing the Bad Girl leather jacket.

Morrigan

Ok, we’re straying a bit far here, but I’m going to try to make a case here. Morrigan’s rudeness and abrasiveness isn’t quite as bombastic as the standard take on the Bad Girl trope - she actually phrases things very politely and speaks very softly most of the time, and is generally cordial to people when they are cordial to her. It’s the content of what she says, rather than the way she says it, that sets most people off. There’s also an odd naivety to Morrigan’s interactions that isn’t immediately noticeable because her vocabulary is so, well, verbose. She doesn’t make the “ill tempered thug” impression most Bad Girls make when they’re first introduced - she instead comes off as very sophisticated yet oddly ignorant of the civilized world, which is a very different starting point for a Bad Girl.

BUT! Morrigan’s character arc follows the rough path of a Bad Girl. She verbalizes a lot of callous and cruel ideas about the world when you first meet her, giving the impression that she is some sort of sadistic monster. It’s done in a very different way than the standard Bad Boy/Bad Girl, but it has the same effect - you are led to think this girl is a Bad Person very early on. And yes, to some extent she is - but, just like any other Bad Boy/Bad Girl, her actions later on show that’s not all there is to her, that, even if she isn’t aware of it, there is a loving core to Morrigan - she wants to be good.

Like most Bad Boys/Bad Girls, it’s eventually revealed that Morrigan’s childhood situation was NOT GREAT, and that she has been the victim of abuse and some very bad parenting. A great deal of her wickedness isn’t inherent to her, but something she was indoctrinated into - and, in TRUE Bad Boy/Bad Girl fashion, love, especially romantic love, makes her doubt her view of the world. It begins to break apart, and she gradually learns, to her confusion, horror, and eventually, hope, that there is another way to live - a better, kinder way.

One might argue that Morrigan doesn’t fit the Bad Girl trope, but another villainous female archetype instead. For instance, one might say she is instead a Femme Fatale, since she dresses all sexy like and whatnot - but Morrigan doesn’t really seduce people all that often in the narrative. Early on in the first Dragon Age game you have an option to ask her to seduce a guard, and Morrigan not only reacts in disgust, but instead horrifies the guard into letting you by instead (because Morrigan is great). The only time she does seduce someone is specifically to keep the main characters from an otherwise inevitable death via a dark magic ritual - and yes it does feel ridiculous to type that out, but 1. it makes more sense in context and 2. I think the ridiculous circumstances of this seduction kinda illustrates why it’s not really a core character trait of hers, which is why she doesn’t fit the Femme Fatale mold. Likewise, while one could say she fits the idea of a Vain Sorceress... well, other than being pretty and using magic, Morrigian really doesn’t. She’s not motivated by preserving her youth, and doesn’t really seem to care much for traditional beauty standards at all if her conversation with Leliana is anything to go by (though she does meet them anyway because, well, Video Games). Morrigan doesn’t really fit any villainous female archetype perfectly, but if we accept her as a Bad Girl, she makes for a particularly interesting example.

Hexadecimal

Straying further! Like Morrigan, one might be tempted to put Hexadecimal in the Vain Sorceress or Femme Fatale archetypes instead, but again, like Morrigan, she really doesn’t act like either of those two despite being a sexy lady who uses magic for villainous ends. Instead she’s defined by being the sort of superhero/action adventure cartoon variety of “crazy,” which isn’t based on any real mental illness, but rather an excuse for her to cause a lot of mayhem for no real reason. Unlike most “crazy” villains, though, Hex’s insanity is treated with sympathy by the narrative and the main hero - while most people would be willing to write Hex off as someone they’d rather live without, Bob, the hero, continually tries to reason with her and help her overcome her madness.

Most people wrote her off as a lost cause, but the hero showed her compassion. There’s smackings of a Bad Boy in that.

As the show goes on, Bob’s compassion for Hexadecimal is repaid with her own affection, and she slowly turns from villain to hero out of a desire to not only keep Bob safe, but make sure he’s happy - and she comes to realize he can’t be happy without the people he loves. Hex becomes a truly tragic and noble character towards the end of the show, as she knows Bob will never reciprocate her romantic affections but still remains on his side anyway, even saving the lives of people who argued against saving her. A villain who seems like a frothing mad dog, only to be turned into a hero after the compassion of a hero makes them realize the value of human life? That’s is SUCH a Bad Boy arc. Hexadecimal may not fit some of the aesthetic trappings of the Bad Girl archetype, but her arc fits it perfectly.

Harley Quinn

When she was first introduced, Harley Quinn wasn’t a Bad Girl so much as she was, like, the perky love interest of a bad guy. She wasn’t given enough focus and agency in the narrative to really fit the Bad Girl archetype. However, in recent years she’s been retooled a bit to work independently of the character she was designed to orbit, and as a result she may be our second example of a Bad Girl protagonist. She’s a supervillain, or at least was, and was in league with one of the worst at that. She’s loud and aggressive in combat, has a big bombastic personality, and revels in living an anarchic lifestyle. But, as her solo series shows, she does have a good heart deep down, adopting stray dogs and helping out fellow weirdos who have been left behind by a world that doesn’t give a damn about them. Harley Quinn is and has always been defined by her desire to be loved, which is very much a Bad Girl sort of trait - especially since that desire often leads to her acting out, just as most Bad Boys and Bad Girls act out because, ultimately, they haven’t been shown enough love.

Plus a lot of her modern designs add a leather jacket, and it just seems that once a girl wears a leather jacket she has at least a 70% chance of being a Bad Girl.

Azula, Mai, and Ty Lee

I had no idea where to put these ladies and whether or not they fit this archetype, but I felt they had to be noted because they’re very well known examples of complicated female villains who don’t fit the Femme Fatale archetype at all, which in turn makes them feel like pretty good candidates for Bad Girl-dom. Azula probably fits the archetype the closest, though you don’t see her desire for compassion until VERY late in the series (where she is, sadly, too far gone to get her redemption). Mai comes in close second, though her sullen demeanor oddly fits the Badass Heroine a bit better. And then Ty Lee... Ty Lee... I mean she’s like an even sweeter and kinder Harley Quinn, she hardly even counts as a villain except she works with the bad guys... I don’t know what we do with Ty Lee, guys. Ty Lee’s just her own thing.

#Bad Girl

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blackandwhitemusician · 6 years

Text

On “Crime and Punishment”, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Bungou Stray Dogs

ft. Nikolai Gogol. LONG POST! Also spoilers for the novel/manga if you haven’t read it already/haven’t caught up yet.

Here are some thoughts I have on certain parallels between Crime and Punishment and Fyodor Dostoyevsky in real life and as portrayed in BSD, also some speculations as to how this book and the real Dostoyevsky might have inspired his BSD version.

First, on the real book itself (more like the English translation of the book):

The main character in Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov, killed an old woman he deemed as wicked and worthless. He was so shaken by the idea of murder that he spent an entire month tormenting himself over it, lost his gut during the actual murder, and proceeded to make himself fall ill from the mental torture. He thought he did it for money, but the more he looked into the event and into himself, the more he realized he just did it to prove that he could (my own interpretation).

“There is only one thing, one thing needful: one has only to dare! Then for the first time in my life an idea took shape in my mind which no one had ever thought of before me, no one! I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I… I wanted to have the daring… and I killed her.”

Raskolnikov also wrote an article on the psychology and mental state of a criminal, and what leads someone to commit a crime. Raskolnikov and another character, Porfiry, used these concepts to discuss a technique used by Porfiry to trap criminals into confessing, which the two of them referred to as a “cat and mouse” game.

Raskolnikov classified people into “ordinary” and “extraordinary”. According to him, the former follow and obey the law, while the latter transgress it. The former’s role is to follow and maintain the order, while the latter seeks to destroy the status quo and establish a new order. It follows that when a person of “extraordinary” conduct deems it necessary to commit a crime to achieve their objective, they can find the will to do it.

“The crimes of these men are of course relative and varied; for the most part they seek in very varied ways the destruction of the present for the sake of the better. But if such a one is forced for the sake of his idea to step over a corpse or wade through blood, he can, I maintain, find himself, in his conscience, a sanction for wading through blood.”

This does not mean, however, that people of “extraordinary” nature are exempt from feeling guilt. In fact, Raskolnikov recognized that if these individuals do in fact feel guilt from shedding blood, it would be their greatest punishment. The worst punishment for a criminal is not so much the prison as it is by way of their own conscience.

Yet, sometimes such a punishment is essential to make way for change. Raskolnikov compared these “extraordinary” individuals to the likes of Napoleon, who by social standards should be considered the worst criminals ever lived considering the amount of blood they shed, yet are revered as heroes for the change they ushered.

I immediately thought of this:

BSD Gogol’s character fits perfectly in the scheme of Crime and Punishment. The real Dostoyevsky also mentioned Gogol several times in Crime and Punishment, when discussing the topic of morality.

Whatever the objective of the BSD “Decay of Angels” is, I’m fairly certain it has to do with change - they are willing to commit evil to destroy the status quo and advance change. These “villains” are certainly not the usual kind of “evil cause I like it”, or “evil cause I am proudly anti-heroic figures”.

Going back to Crime and Punishment, there are a few other characters that I think are of relevance to the portrayal of BSD Fyodor Dostoyevsky:

Porfiry: an investigator, who was convinced Raskolnikov was the murderer in question, and went to almost extreme lengths to psycho him into confessing. He had a pretty sharp mind, and used the sadistic investigative method of trapping his “prey” by letting him roam freely in his natural habitat, which Porfiry believe would make the criminal lower his guard and eventually fall into the trap himself. Raskolnikov realized the trap, of course.

Svidrigailov: an extreme representation of a type of “extraordinary” man, he was portrayed as, to me, a nihilist and hedonist. Svidrigailov doesn’t seem to care about morality, and only wants to satisfy his own pleasures. Whether he harms others in the process is irrelevant to him. He can commit random acts of kindness because the spontaneity of that action gives him pleasure.

While I don’t see these characters as similar to Raskolnikov, they certainly brings out his character in various ways. Raskolnikov understood Porfiry’s investigative methods perfectly (I bet he basically thought “If it was me, that’s what I’d do”). Porfiry also recognized and acknowledged Raskolnikov’s intellectual depth and potential, and was interested in him intellectually. Svidrigailov, on the other hand, mirrors Raskolnikov’s own despair and cynicism, if only more pronounced in the extreme. One can say Svidrigailov is the embodiment of despair. He is totally amoral, and radically indifference to the feelings of others. His radical attitude could have been brought about by his realization and acceptance that evil is inherent in the world, and as such, evil and vice to him is only an “occupation of a sort”. His bleak outlook only serves to worsen his boredom with the world, and prompts him to seek pleasure for its own sake. He views eternity as “a bath house... black and grimy and spiders in every corner”, to which Raskolnikov responds in horror “Can it be you can imagine nothing juster and more comforting than that?”

Next, on the BSD portrayal of Fyodor:

Now there has been very little detail about his personal motivations, but I see BSD Fyodor as a combination of all three characters: Raskolnikov, Svidrigailov, and Porfiry, maybe more of Svidrigailov than the rest. BSD Fyodor is definitely among the “extraordinary” people Raskolnikov described, maybe even to the extreme. Of course, there is also the personality of the real Dostoyevsky.

Regarding killing people and messing up their families as a petty problem while looking for a happy chit chat about it with one of those he just messed up, that is as Svidrigailov as it gets. (I know Fyo was probably joking, but still)

It has been suggested time and time again that BSD Fyodor might have tired of, been disillusioned or discontent with the world as it is, and sought to correct it (while also having some entertainment along the way). He specifically has issues with special ability users, which still doesn’t stop him from killing normal people if they get entangled in the conflict. This motivation possibly stems from his hatred for his own ability, which seemed as destructive as it gets. Alternatively, BSD Fyodor might also see death as the ultimate freedom special ability users can be granted to be free from their “sins”, which refer to their abilities. As such, he took it upon himself to deliver them.

The constant mention of “freedom” of the will also strike me as a parallel to real Dostoyevsky’s discussion of freedom in Crime and Punishment.

“Anyone who is greatly daring is right in their eyes.”

“He who despises most things will be a lawgiver among them and he who dares most of all will be most in the right.”

In other words, if you act of your own free will, you are right. Anyone who wills it can transgress the law.

What really intrigued me is how BSD Fyodor saw himself as a divine figure delivering judgement for those he considers “sinners”. I doubt such a strong motivation came about just because he discovered his super human ability one day, which has been suggested as something to do with instant killing. I see a possibility of him having been alienated, ostracized and possibly imprisoned as a result of his ability and his intelligence, seeing how completely unfazed he was by the treatment he received in his prison cell at the Mafia base. His ability would have been dangerous on its own, but his intelligence makes him an even more dangerous individual. Another characteristic of him that interests me is the complete lack of guilt or remorse over his actions. If we assume this is a reference to Svidrigailov, it might have been a result of his mindset that evil is inherent in the world (which fits BSD Fyodor). If I have to guess, he would have been a child who never played with other kids, had no lessons in social etiquette and no guardian figure to teach him about the outside world, heavily religious, either avoided, feared or beaten up regularly, probably had no concept of remorse, probably had to fend for himself and used his intelligence to get the upper hand by gambling, manipulating or tricking others.

BSD Fyodor was probably regarded as a “demon” for as long as he lived. He probably also felt the suffocating imprisonment extended from his home life to the rest of society. He probably got tired and bored of interacting with others who just went on their normal lives complaining about their misfortunes, oblivious to everything else that happened around them. He probably never once saw himself as one of them.

It was also suggested in Crime and Punishment that through suffering and torturing himself with his conscience, Raskolnikov was able to still feel human (my own interpretation). Could it be that BSD Fyodor was past that stage of being human, since he doesn’t seem to be suffering from the weight of his crimes? Could that be the reason why he sees himself as the substitute for God?

Regarding BSD Fyodor’s ability

Not much has been mentioned in the manga, and even in Dead Apple all we got is something along the lines of “Fyodor and his ability are two sides of the same coin”. What strikes me is how Fyodor is portrayed to represent Crime, and his ability Punishment. This is all speculation, but I think his ability definitely has to do with delivering punishment for a crime (no shit!). But whose crime, and on what condition? Could it be that his ability only takes effect if the criminal repents and experiences remorse from their own crime?

Regarding BSD Dazai

Probably the most hotly discussed parallel in the fandom. Sure, Dazai and Fyodor have been described as being made of the same stuff from the start due to their intellect which is unparalleled by anyone else but these two, but they didn’t really strike me as similar until I encountered this line from Crime and Punishment.

“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

At first glance, this quote describes both Dazai and Fyodor very well. I have no question about Dazai having a “large intelligence and a deep heart”, and so he will continue to have “great sadness” in the form of alienation and loneliness (and self-hatred and guilt to an extent). Fyodor may have an equally great intelligence, but it is still unclear to me what lies in his heart. I think, he at least would have felt loneliness and the boredom of existence at some point, just like Dazai did. Their sharpness would have enabled them to sniff out the most obscure clues to the darkest intentions in people, which might have led them to regard human beings as foolish and utterly selfish creatures. The dangerous and unique nature of their abilities would have rendered them untouchable by others, further worsening their alienation.

“If God does not exist, then I will become God.”

What kind of experience would prompt someone to deliver such a line as that?

It sounds less like a divine sentence than a cry of disillusionment and cynicism to me, which is really... sad??

Other trivial stuff:

- The real Gogol was apparently a drama queen and a master of satire.

- The real Dostoyevsky was exiled in Siberia for reading banned works. He subsequently wrote “Notes from the House of the Dead” to describe this experience.

- The real Dostoyevsky frequently discussed the idea that man does not think rationally most of the time, and as such, man’s actions are not always predictable.

- In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov passionately loved Sonya, a destitute young woman whom he saw as his figure of salvation, and he once bowed to her because she represented “the sufferings of all humanity”.

- Svidrigailov was hinted to see the world as a dirty, meaningless playground in which he was the actor, and kept up his act until the end. When he decided to shoot himself after being rejected by the one woman he loved, he chose to do it in front of a complete stranger at the American embassy. His last words were “When you are asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America.”

Credits for screenshots go to @dazaiscans.

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allthefilmsiveseenforfree · 5 years

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Aquaman

My first film of 2019 and oh boy is it a doozy. Here’s the thing - I know it's gonna be bad when people keep telling me, "I can't wait for your review for this one." That does not inspire confidence in quality filmmaking because, I think we can all agree, the reviews are most beloved when I am being a petty bitch. So it’s time for 2018′s last big tentpole superhero adventure, DC’s solo Aquaman movie, starring Human Sex God Jason Momoa and Amber Heard doing shockingly bad Little Mermaid cosplay. See, Momoa plays Arthur Curry, the son of the queen of Atlantis and a mere mortal lighthouse keeper, so he has the heritage and the birthright to take the throne of Atlantis from his scheming brother (Patrick Wilson) and unite the land and the sea, if he wants to that is (he doesn’t.) There’s a lot going on here that could be wildly entertaining if handled right, so the real question is does this movie, ahem, sink or swim? Well...

It’s a tangled mess of yes and no, but honestly the problems DC has making a movie of the caliber we KNOW superhero movies are capable of sinks this whole ship. Call the Heartbreakers, cause I’m about to get Tom Petty up in this bitch.

Our story begins with a voiceover about the hero’s parents because that’s always a good sign. The Queen of Atlantis, Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) washes up on shore and enjoys some light Stockholm Syndrome with Tom, a lighthouse keeper in Maine (Temuera Morrison), leading to the birth of Arthur Curry, aka our main Aqua type Dude (Jason Momoa). Some Atlantisians - Atlantians? That just sounds like they’re from Atlanta. Some sea people come to forcibly take Nicole Kidman home after at least 2 years, like wow are these people bad at tracking their queen, but then suddenly they just know where she is? And she’s like “I have to go back, they will always find me” um well not for at least 2 years they won’t, ma’am. Anyway so she heads back into the sea and Tom is left to raise baby Arthur alone until he’s probably 8 or 9 and then the sea people’s vizier (Willem Defoe) comes to land and starts training Arthur how to do sea people stuff because he’s heir to the throne. But it’s pretty clear Nicole Kidman is no longer in Atlantis and he’s not allowed to see her...and everyone’s really mad at her for having a “half-breed” son with a land-dweller. So why is Willem Defoe here training him like a half-melted wax figurine of Mr. Miyagi? HANDWAVEY DISTRACTION so anyway, now Arthur’s all grown up doing Aquaman shit but like on the DL, cause he doesn’t want to be all obvious about it. His forced love interest Mera (Amber Heard) comes to Maine to tell him that his half-brother King Orm is planning a huge war against the land-dwellers in order to become Ocean Master and the only way to stop him is to find this Sacred Trident and take his rightful place as king. Honestly a bunch of other shit happens too but if you’re as hung up as I am on the Ocean Master thing, I think we can all agree we have enough info to proceed.

Some thoughts and also questions because this movie demands questions:

As I’m sure you can guess, the script is just....it’s just so bad. Within the first 15 minutes, we got to hear the following exchange - Nicole Kidman, crying and marveling at the wetness on her face: "Our tears are always taken by the sea." Tom: "Not here. Here we feel them." This is meant to be a scene in which a woman is leaving the love of her life and her infant child, presumably forever. And we got sea tears.

The gravity with which the phrases "ocean master" and "sacred trident" are spoken is just something I was not emotionally prepared to deal with. This makes it sound like I can’t handle Maguffins in comic book movies which I absolutely can! But it helps if they at least sound otherworldly or mysterious. Ocean Master sounds like a game of I Spy you made up at SeaWorld to get your little nephew Caydlen to stop trying to crawl into the touch tank.

Every location is SOMEWHERE IN THE ____ SEA. I understand that the ocean is vast and contains multitudes. But you can’t be any more specific than that? You can’t be any more specific than that ten times?

I like how, at one point, there is scientist on cable news talking about the existence of Atlantis, and he is being depicted as SO crazy that the audience is meant to think he's ridiculous when we literally know he's telling the truth. The conspiracy theories he’s touting are the exact thing that is going on in the movie, but he comes across as a fool because...we’re....meant to feel foolish? For believing in Atlantis? Does no one work in marketing at DC or Warner Brothers? I’m legitimately asking whose choice this was.

This is all coming across as very negative, so let’s focus on some good. 1) Jason Momoa. The man is basically a human god, so the casting is excellent - he’s funny, he’s disarming, he’s cool, he’s the bad boy you wanna take home to mom. He plays the part excellently and even manages to make some of the world’s clunkiest dialogue sound kind of ok.

2) Some sequences really, really work - the trench sequence was a particular fave, and I think speaks mostly to director James Wan’s horror movie street cred. It was visually rich, atmospheric, and terrifying.

That’s pretty much it for the positives.

Why the fuck is Dolph Lundgren here?

I don’t think I mentioned this above, but more movies need to have viziers.

There’s a literal octopus playing the drums during a fight to the death like the filmmakers expected us NOT to immediately mentally sing “Under the Sea”?? During the first climactic battle between our hero and his main nemesis??? Like what tone is this even going for? Is it supposed to be silly? It takes itself too seriously. Is it supposed to be a 60s era Saturday morning cartoon? There’s too much “the land-dwellers are poisoning our oceans and killing our people so we need to start a holy war” for that. Is it supposed to be a wayward manchild finds his raison d’etre origin story? Did you read the thing about the octopus.

And what the fuck is going on with this soundtrack. The crunchy NUH-NUH-NUHHH guitar chord every time Momoa tosses off a horrible one-liner in his first scene. The techno-battle music that’s aping the far superior Daft Punk soundtrack to Tron: Legacy during a high-speed foot chase in fucking SICILY. And then Pitbull shows up to perform the audio equivalent of a used condom found in the back of a 2003 Hummer, a bafflingly ill-conceived cover of Toto’s “Africa.” Do you know how bad a song has to be for it to be the worst cover of “Africa” in a year where WEEZER covered “Africa”???

I literally don’t even have time to get into the out-of-nowhere secondary villain, Black Manta, who could have had potential if he weren’t playing his scenes like he’s in a 1988 Steven Seagal movie. I’m all for “this is kinda stupid but I’m still having fun” movies. I genuinely enjoyed last year’s The Predator and The Hurricane Heist! But the only person who seems to be having any fun here is Momoa, and even then it’s amidst a bloated, overstuffed mess of a script. I’m not going to say I had a bad time watching this movie, but I certainly don’t think it’s for the reasons any of the filmmakers were intending.

#119in2019 #aquaman #aquaman review #jason momoa #amber heard #willem dafoe #patrick wilson #nicole kidman #temuera morrison #dolph lundgren #james wan #movie reviews #film reviews

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feministfataley · 6 years

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Dehumanising and Dangerous - Mental Illness in Video Games

Some of you may remember an article I posted a while back talking about the accurate depiction of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in Hitman (2016). I was discussing this with a friend and it got me thinking. The representation in Hitman is even better than first thought. Modern media – particularly more popularised media – is not kind to mental illness. We all know this. But in Hitman's case, the victim's OCD did not make him the evil doer. It's all too easy for lazy writers to paint mental illness as something that changes you from a mild mannered neurotypical into a violent neurodivergent monster much like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

There are just so many examples of this kind of villain. Farcry 3's Vaas did unspeakable things because he was “Criminally Insane”. The fact that Vaas was the game's poster boy as well did not do them any favours. Everyone knew his catchphrase “Insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting different results”. Silent Hill 2's villain had no definable motive other than insanity for making the protagonist run the Murder Gauntlet. Layers of Fear too, used insanity as a justification for the protagonist to cut his wife into pieces after her suicide to use in his “Magnum Opus”. Always seeking perfection but never achieving it.

Layers of Fear is not the only game to use mental illness to justify the player's actions either. The best example I can think of for this is, regrettably, one of my favourite games. Alice: Madness Returns uses a game mechanic called Hysteria, which sees you go berserk with extra damage buffs and increased damage resistance. This can be triggered when you reach a low health value. I know this sounds like a simple enrage technique but it is the name – Hysteria – that puts this into uncomfortable territory. It feels like a weaponised crisis state and that's upsetting. Alice is shown to have memory problems and PTSD from events in her childhood too so this further pushes Hysteria into the “Not Cool Bro” category.

Asylums are also far too prevalent as a set for a Horror game. Manhunt 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, The Evil Within 2, Outlast, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, The Inpatient... I could go on and on. They are always painted as horrifying places, places to be scared of rather than places of healing. Whereas it is certainly true that mental health treatment in the past was nothing short of barbaric it is certainly not the case now, and I fear that people still believe they're going to be strapped down in a straight jacket and have their brain zapped randomly without any anaesthetic.* It's just not the case. I feel like being set in an asylum also gives games a horror genre unnecessarily. For example, Town of Light. Town of Light was challenging, difficult to play through but not horrifying. I feel like the classification was entirely wrong in this case. To me, if you call Town of Light a horror game you need to call Life is Strange a horror as well. Both have terrifying scenes but only one is set in an asylum. I'll let you guess which one made me cry. The “aesthetic” of the creepy asylum is one that should be questioned, and it should be carefully thought about whether placing your game in such a place is necessary.

I have spent time in a mental hospital. 3 months. I have to say the anticipation of going in and remembering all the horror games I'd played, fearing violent fellow patients and inhumane treatment, was worse than my actual stay. The perception I got from playing those games made me so much more afraid to get the help I needed to at the time. I can guarantee that these perceptions of treatment facilities have caused other people who really needed the extra help to avoid these places out of fear too. You also fear yourself if you are diagnosed with a mental illness, perhaps this means you are “evil” too, and about to go on a violent rampage as soon as you get stressed? (You're not, btw.) There comes a point where we have to take responsibility for the media we put out into the world, and this is doubly true when it could affect vulnerable groups. Life is hard enough with a mental illness, don't make it harder for people to seek treatment. Be a bit more responsible. Indie titles are getting better at humanising mental health disorders – in particular Actual Sunlight and The Cat Lady which show accurate depictions of what living with depression and suicide attempts is like, we just need Triple A titles to catch up. It's time to stop selling us mentally ill villains. There are much better motivations out there.

*Electro-shock therapy is still practiced in mental health treatment, but the patient is sedated to avoid any pain, and is on the whole a lot more humane. The patient can also opt out of the procedure. It can be really effective in the treatment of certain disorders and is nothing to be scared of. Source: Personal Experience.

#gaming #mental health #representation #motives #villians #asylums #horror games #alice madness returns #farcry 3 #outlast

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intoxicatinginsanity · 7 years

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How not to be offensive this Halloween!

I keep seeing people complain about not knowing what's offensive and not offensive for Halloween anymore ( when I damn well know y'all do know but y'all just wanna make a slippery slope argument so you don't have to actually be respectful to other people)

So here's a list of awesome non-offensive Halloween costumes to choose from ( so y'all can stop making excuses). Showing you that omg!!! You totally have so many options to wear. And that omg what?!? Marginalized cultures and communities are like a few out of the thousands of costume ideas possible that we ask you to not wear! So why do something that harms oppressed groups when you can do something way more fun and creative and not hurt anyone in the process ( except maybe yourself, fuck hot glue)

Let's start!:

Horror Film/Tv characters ( Chucky, jigsaw, Michael Myers, Jason Vorhees, Ghostface, Leatherface, Pin-head, Samhain, Ash, Dr. Loomis, Hannibal Lecter, Dean and Sam Winchester, Vanessa Ives, ect.)

Fantasy film/tv characters examples ( Hobbits, Princess Buttercup,

Harry Potter, John snow, Galavant, Buffy, Jack Sparrow, Indiana Jones, etc)

Basic stuff like; Pirates, ghosts, vampires, werewolves,mermaids, witches( minus the big nose because that was anti-Jewish), a wizard, trolls, fairies, mummy's, a motherfucking dragon!

Sci-fi film/tv show characters examples: ( Doc Brown, Ripley, Spock, The Doctor, A Jedi, Men in Black, Bill and Ted, etc.)

Super Heros and Villans( Superman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Batman, The Scarecrow, The Joker, Harley Quinn, Thanos, Squirrel Girl, Misty Knight, Martin Manhunter, Gamora, Iron man, etc)

Inanimate objects: a tv, a toilet, spoon and fork, a cellphone, a game boy, a lamp ( possibly with a fishnet leg in high heels), a teapot, etc.

Professions; ( nurse, doctor, lawyer, firefighter, teacher, etc)

Animals ( there are so many comfy ass kigus available online of all different types of animals)

Most anime characters.

Legitimately anything fucking Tim Burton.

Okay so y'all want sexy costumes?

Aight I fucking got you fam!

Sexy-up legitimately anything in the above list, go ahead figure out how to be a sexy Hobbit. Be a sexy turtle (maybe even a ninja one) for all I care. You do you boo boo.

Sexy Cryptids yo. Haven't seen that yet. Make mothman sexy, fucking do it. I dare you.

Okay but what about Disney stuff? Can we do that?

Fuck yeah you can. Disney princesses, Disney princes, and Disney villains. Disney bounds. Fuck just Disney characters for the most part. Do it! Do almost all the Disney (Execpt for Pocahontas as the film is incredibly divisive and while there are many who are okay with it, there are still many who are not okay with it. And then many that aren't are still just as important as the many who are. And while Disneys film is a very loose account and portrayal she was still a real person and not a fictional character.(This is directed to non-natives.) )

Oh but aren't some of those Disney characters people of color?

Why yes thanks for asking. Some of them certainly are! But because this is in the fictional Disney universe and they are specifically for animated characters it's different.

Say you want to be

Tiana from the Disney film Princess and the Frog, that's extremely different than dressing up like a caricature of a black person.

Why?!? because you are specifically that one character as designed by Disney and for Disney that is only representing that character in Disney not anything else other than Disney's Princess and the Frog; as opposed to dressing as a culture and caricature of real human beings that are still alive and kicking and representing them in a negative way while appropriating precious things about their culture.

It's fine to dress up as fictional characters that aren't the same race as you, as long as you aren't changing your skintone to do it.

Now things you shouldn't dress up as:

Caricatures of Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos/Hispanics, Middle Easterners, Asians, The Romani, disabled people and LGBTQ (don't be a Trans person whatsoever).

No black face, yellow face, brown face ect. Don't fucking do it. Just don't.

Don't dress up as things that make fun of people with mental illnesses. That's hella lame and just not cool.

Don't dress up as things that make fun of people's body types ( aka don't buy fat people costumes)

Don't dress up from closed Religions. By that I mean shamans, witch doctors, Voodoo priestess or priest, etc. Close religions are religions that are only passed on and open to people of that culture and heritage. Things like Jesus, Nuns and Priests, Greek gods and goddesses, Egyptian gods and goddesses, are fine because they are open religions and their religions don't state that you can't have physical representation of said figures faces.

Wow look how small this list is in comparison to the first list of all the things you can dress up as without offending anyone. Amazing I know right?

Now if you still end up dressing up as any of the stuff that is extremely offensive after reading this. No excuses, you're just an uncreative asshole.

So instead of being disrespectful to others this Halloween, why not have fun while being excellent to each other instead!

#Halloween #cultural appropriation #black face #offensive halloween costumes #appropriate halloween costumes #be excellent to each other

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miragerules · 7 years

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Here is a really well written article about both Daenerys good and bad qualities. The authors of the article make a lot of great points about Daenerys as well as Jon.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for "Game of Thrones."

Daenerys Targaryen is, in many ways, one of the most appealing characters in HBO's "Game of Thrones." She's powerful and determined, and she inspires people to follow her again and again.

Now she's close to forming an alliance with Jon Snow, the other main hero of our tale. Together, they'll be a dragon-riding, direwolf-wielding duo who will slaughter the White Walkers and save Westeros. They could both perhaps be "The Prince That Was Promised," Azor Ahai reborn.

But would a writer like George R.R. Martin really let his series end so simply?

Some fans don't think so and point to a few troubling characteristics of Daenerys both on the show and in the books that could lead to her eventual turn toward a darker path.

Let's explore just why some people think Daenerys could become a villain.

Daenerys is a vengeance-seeker.

Throughout the series, Daenerys is convinced of her own moral compass. If she ever witnesses something she views as wrong — such as rape or slavery — she immediately attempts to put a stop to it and punish the wrongdoer.

This a noble trait, but seeing the world in black and white and believing she is the sole bringer of justice is one of Daenerys' downfalls.

We saw this early in the series when she saved a healer and maegi named Mirri Maz Duur, one of the Lhazareen women raped by the Dothraki, who had conquered their village. To Daenerys, saving Duur was an honorable thing to do, and she enlisted Duur to help heal Khal Drogo after he was injured.

Instead, Duur made Drogo's condition worse and killed Daenerys' son, Rhaego, when he was still in the womb using blood magic.

Daenerys doesn't understand why the woman turned on her when Daenerys had saved her. But Duur viewed it quite differently:

"Saved me? Three of those riders had already raped me before you saved me, girl. I saw my god's house burn, there where I had healed men and women beyond counting. In the streets I saw piles of heads: the head of the baker who makes my bread, the head a young boy that I had cured of fever just three moons past. So tell me again: Exactly what it was that you saved?"

Duur herself was seeking vengeance for the death of her people. In retaliation, Daenerys murdered Duur in Khal Drogo's funeral pyre and emerged with her three dragons.

Was the scene epic? Of course. But this wouldn't be the last time Daenerys murdered or harmed people who disagreed with her perception of what is right and wrong.

Another moment of Daenerys' vengeance gone awry is when the Great Masters crucify 163 slave children as mile markers on her way to Meereen as a way to intimidate her. When she sacks the city, Daenerys crucifies 163 Great Masters as a punishment.

In "A Storm of Swords," however, Daenerys begins to regret her actions, despite her initial sense of righteousness:

"She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood …

"It was just. It was. I did it for the children."

Daenerys, though she suppresses the thought, realizes some of the masters may not have been guilty of the death of these children. She tries to convince herself that she was right to take their lives.

And in season six, episode five, show watchers saw Daenerys murder the powerful khals in their straw hut. These weren't nice men — they spent a significant chunk of time insulting Daenerys and talking about how they intended to rape and kill her — but watching her burn them alive was still an unnerving moment for some viewers, especially because it looked like she took pleasure in watching them die.

Daenerys' rationalizations for all these events should give her fans pause. Murdering evil people may seem like the right thing to do, but what would happen if Daenerys' moral compass were ever skewed?

It wouldn't be the first time she burned people who disagreed with her, after all.

Dragons as nuclear weapons.

In "A Dance With Dragons," Daenerys compares her dragons to monsters:

"Mother of dragons, Daenerys thought. Mother of monsters. What have I unleashed upon the world? A queen I am, but my throne is made of burned bones, and it rests on quicksand. Without dragons, how could she hope to hold Meereen, much less win back Westeros? I am the blood of the dragon, she thought. If they are monsters, so am I."

This wild and changeable nature of dragons is directly tied to Daenerys. When she equates herself to a dragon, she means it: She can be just as destructive and changeable as her dragon children.

What's more, Martin has talked about ties between the dragons and nuclear weapons. Both are powerful to have but can easily lead to utter destruction.

"Dragons are the nuclear deterrent, and only Dany has them, which in some ways makes her the most powerful person in the world," Martin told Vulture in a 2014 interview. "But is that sufficient? These are the kind of issues I'm trying to explore. The United States right now has the ability to destroy the world with our nuclear arsenal, but that doesn't mean we can achieve specific geopolitical goals. Power is more subtle than that. You can have the power to destroy, but it doesn't give you the power to reform, or improve, or build."

We saw the full force of this when Daenerys attacked the Lannister army with Drogon. Director Matt Shakman chose to show the battle from Jaime and Bronn's perspective to bring the horrors of dragonfire into sharp relief.

"I wanted to tell the story of what it was like ... when war changes forever and a truly horrific weapon like napalm or an atom bomb is suddenly unleashed and what that does to the men on the ground," Shakman told Insider.

Daenerys is sitting with her finger on a red button that could take out all of Westeros. She may not want to destroy the kingdom, especially before she ever has the chance to rule there. But by virtue of wanting to conquer Westeros, she could be bringing more death and destruction into a country still ravaged by war.

There's a chance Daenerys could be viewed as a villain instead of the returning hero of House Targaryen.

Daenerys and the Mad King.

While Daenerys has remained fairly sane so far, the Targaryen dynasty has a history of mental illness, mainly because of intermarriage. Daenerys' father, King Aerys II, was called the Mad King because he became paranoid and started killing people and hiding wildfire around King's Landing.

Daenerys starts to worry about this possible "taint" in her blood, as do many other characters throughout the series. But it's not so much that Daenerys could go crazy — though that's certainly a possibility — as that she could follow in her father's footsteps by punishing those who disagree with her or whom she views as her enemies.

Tyrion warned her against this tactic at the end of season six, and the two reached a compromise where Daenerys instead burned just one of the slaver's ships and had Grey Worm execute two of the three slave masters.

Once she arrived in Westeros, Tyrion once again counseled Daenerys against immediately using the dragons to burn King's Landing or other cities, telling her she didn't want to be the "queen of the ashes."

But their alternate plans failed because of Tyrion's miscalculations of what Jaime and Cersei would do, and Daenerys got tired of sitting around and doing nothing. She rode Drogon into battle against the Lannister army and laid waste to their soldiers and loot. She didn't choose a select few leaders to punish — she went for everything in sight.

Granted, it was better than her flying to the Red Keep and attacking civilians, but it was still hard to 100% root for her in this moment.

Daenerys also had a tense conversation with Varys earlier in the seventh season. She made him promise to be straightforward with her about her potential failings as a leader, but she then vowed to burn him alive if he ever betrayed her.

If Daenerys goes too far in the "fire and blood" direction, she could end up repeating her father's mistakes — something that would end up costing her the throne, just like it ended up costing King Aerys both his kingdom and his life.

Jon Snow is the true hero.

A penchant for vengeance, a crazy father, and dragons do not together make Daenerys a villain. But let's compare Daenerys with another heroic character in the "Song of Ice and Fire" series: Jon Snow.

In the books and show, Jon is similar to Ned Stark. He's honorable, justice-minded, and takes no pleasure in killing. When he's forced to take a life, Jon makes sure he's the one to swing the sword, and he views it as a burden, not a pleasure.

For example, when he punished the brothers of the Night's Watch who stabbed him in season six, Jon took no joy in it. He listened to every man's last words before cutting the rope and watching them die. He did not look pleased by their deaths — unlike Daenerys, who smiled right before she watched the khals burn.

Jon also never asks for the responsibility heaped on his shoulders time and time again. Jon is forced to become the lord commander after Samwell Tarly submitted his name. He doesn't want to be the one to take care of the Wildlings, but he feels morally obligated to help them and therefore becomes their savior. He doesn't want to be the one to punish his brothers, even though they betrayed and murdered him, and yet he knows the responsibility falls to him.

And now, he's king in the north after rallying the Northern houses around him. But he didn't even want to do that — not until Sansa Stark convinced him it was the right thing to do.

Jon follows the traditional "reluctant hero" journey in many ways. He questions himself, he sometimes falls, and he picks himself back up.

It's not unlike what Dumbledore tells Harry in the "Harry Potter" film series: "It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited to power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well."

Jon never asks to be a leader; he's just the best man for the job. It's something Daenerys — with her Targaryen dynasty and ambitions — would never understand. When Jon and Daenerys meet for the first time, Daenerys tells him that all people enjoy what they're good at.

"I don't," Jon said.

He was likely referring to leading and killing, the two things he's been forced into since leaving Winterfell as a young man. Jon never sought out a royal title, but he's good at owning it. That factor might make him the one person best suited for the job.

What does this mean for the series?

There's also substantial evidence throughout the series that Daenerys will be a good ruler. She's intelligent, she tries to listen to her advisers, and she genuinely wants the people she rules to be happy. People like Missandei and Grey Worm follow Daenerys because they believe in her ability to change lives for the better.

And even with her possible flaws, Daenerys would ultimately be a much better ruler than Cersei or Joffrey Lannister, or even King Robert.

Still, there could be a complicated friction as Daenerys tries to claim the Iron Throne. Instead of being the hero she assumes she will be, Daenerys is likely to face opposition and bring destruction and death to the kingdom.

On the other hand, she possesses weapons that, while volatile, could be the key to defeating the White Walkers (at least on the show). We know that Valyrian steel and dragonglass — two things believed to be made with dragon fire — can kill the White Walkers, so it stands to reason that actua fire from actual dragons would do the trick, too.

So while she may not be greeted in Westeros as a hero, she and her dragons could fast become their only hope. Plus, a Jon and Daenerys romance might be brewing — even though their shared bloodline grosses some fans out. Perhaps his "ice" will temper her "fire," if you catch our drift.

In the end, only Martin knows what will happen, but Daenerys fans should buckle up. It could be a bumpy ride on her way to the Iron Throne.

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