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sisterdivinium · 10 months

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It might appear somewhat essentialist at first if used to examine real, breathing human beings, but Carol Gilligan's "Images of relationship" can provide an interesting framework with which to understand certain facets of Warrior Nun. More so when coupled with David Hayter's comment on how the show's "women are always right and the men are always kind of screwing things up," for her article, dealing in systems of moral understanding, might point us towards the reasons behind this openly admitted narrative "bias".

In a nutshell, Gilligan observes the different strategies by which boys and girls seem to resolve moral dilemmas, deviating from traditional interpretation. This is because, Rosemarie Tong reminds us, "Gilligan challenged the Freudian notion that men have a well-developed sense of justice — a sense of morality — whereas women do not". By looking beyond these hurried and prejudiced conclusions of (male) researchers before her, she "argued instead that men and women have different conceptions of morality, each equally coherent and developed and equally valid". She bases this idea, then, on those resolution strategies that were found to consist of, for boys, a tendency to see the moral dilemma as "sort of like a math problem with humans", while the girls were more inclined to view it as "a narrative of relationships that extends over time" — so if boys seemed "logical" through their impersonal abstraction of a situation, invoking concepts similar to those of law and justice, the girls were more likely to follow a different, "personal" logic, through "an awareness of the connections between people", identifying "a web of relationships that is sustained by a process of communication".

Where this all intersects with Warrior Nun is that the male and female characters seemingly display these same propensities of moral judgment.

If we start with the men, we will quickly see that they are all caught up in their own abstract systems, prone to grand ideas and concepts while detached from the world and the valuable human bonds that make it up, just as Vincent sees the quest for a hypothetical "better world" as more important than the life of a very real, concrete woman he claims to love. Mr. Hayter himself, in the same interview conceded during the OCS Conclave of June 3rd, mentions how father Vincent and cardinal William are irresistibly attracted to the notion of power: "here's this guy who can do godlike things, so why wouldn't I follow him, you know? ... We gotta have some power ... that we bow down to or whatever". This is how he transmits a glimpse into these characters' psyches and we could safely argue that this behaviour and thought pattern extends to the rest of the men in the show, including Duretti, Kristian, Adriel and even Michael Salvius.

Whether these men mask their fascination with power through other words or not, theirs is a cause which easily calls for violence and a willingness to kill or die for it.

Earthly power inspires Francesco Duretti to have the current halo bearer killed if need be as he attempts to consolidate his bid on the Holy See; Kristian Schaefer would sacrifice the world as readily as he does his old acquaintance Duretti in the name of this power that lay entombed for a thousand years but communicated through the voice of a sick little boy; cardinal William Foster is inebriated with the idea of being a new god's right-hand man, so he brutally slaughters his colleagues to buy himself a place at Adriel's table, even if that means getting no more than his master's crumbs; father Vincent is so eager to find someone or something powerful enough to take the burden of "his darkness" from atop his shoulders that he convinces himself of there being divinity in the parlour tricks of a manipulator, killing a symbolic daughter in this trickster's name; Adriel would bleed humanity dry without a second thought all the while claiming to save it in draining its belief for the benefit of his own megalomania; finally, Michael subjects himself to the will and authority of Reya, whom he claims to be "unimaginably powerful".

Of course the women of Warrior Nun are mostly all ready to lay down their lives for their own cause as well, or else we wouldn't have their iconic motto of "in this life or the next", but the motivation behind it is what sets the men and the women wholly apart here. If the former are intoxicated by the concept of power, the latter are embedded in a family of sorts, in a dense network of relationships that they can identify with some ease, and which informs their decisions and actions more than just dogma or theory.

Most if not all of the female characters struggle between two different stances: one is an offshoot of the males' abstract organisation of the world, while the other is a more "hands-on", "organic" order; between "duty", or what is said to be their duty, and that which their own perception reveals, their "personal" logic by which the "self [is] delineated through connection", seeing one another as actual sisters instead of mere pieces upon the church's chess board. We see the dilemma take place within Beatrice, Camila, Lilith and Mother Superion, who are all faced with a choice of sticking to their place in a well-defined (artificial, abstract) structure or valuing instead the human connections all around them and that stand in opposition to this man-made categorisation of life.

And, one by one, they take the side of that one character who seems to have kept her lucidity and fidelity to her own understanding through it all: Mary.

Mary never lost sight of her priorities. Her focus on friends and sisters illustrates Gilligan's point rather well when she is the only one who insists on understanding what happened to Shannon all the while the OCS is made to concentrate its energies on the halo instead. Of course it blinds her to Vincent's betrayal, but that is his fault more than it is hers; her moral compass points at the right direction for the most part.

And, each at their turn, the nuns adopt (rediscover?) this same mode of thought. Beatrice's efficient, obedient soldier façade crumbles beneath the urgency of siding with Mary rather than following the arbitrary decision of some man invested with the power of an institution; Camila outright admits wanting to be kicked out of the church just so she can stay near to the people who represent her allegiance more than liturgy itself ever could; Lilith literally travels to hell and back to rejoin her sisters, regardless of how her subsequent mutations upset her loyalty later on; Mother Superion sheds her prominence within hierarchy, risking it all, by standing with "her girls". Even Ava, an outsider with no ties to the church but who so desperately wanted to "live", trades a vague, abstract notion of what "life" and "freedom" entail for the very definite, tangible reality of the family this group of women becomes for her.

Another outsider equally stuck between "bodiless" logic and the reality of human connection around her, Jillian Salvius, too, falters before choosing her side when faced with these two points of view: that of "pure" reasoning and that informed by the consciousness of surrounding relationships. Her quest for "knowledge" is not sufficiently strong so as to potentially sacrifice someone in her inner circle. Season one has her holding young Michael back from stepping into the machine she herself had created for this purpose when concern overrides calculation; season two gives us a powerful scene where she is tempted by Kristian into joining Adriel's ranks as he claims she is already a part of it all and dangles before her the forbidden fruit of the world's hidden laws, the elusive answers the scientist in her has always searched for. He tries to hook her in by simultaneously appealing to her intellectual interests as well as her understanding of the web of relationships when he claims she is another link in the chain that leads to Adriel...

And Jillian refuses him.

Kristian would never convince her of already being within this specific network of relationships because he was the one to rupture it first.

To these women, unlike the men, it's not about ideas — or, rather, about rationalisations, given how their interpretation of what is logical or reasonable is more than open to inquiry. To these women, it's not about loud, large but empty words vulnerable to tampering and shifting meanings; it's not about power.

It's about people.

Rosemarie Tong says "Gilligan believed that women's moral development takes her from an egocentric, or selfish position to an overly altruistic, or self-sacrificing position and, finally, to a self-with-others position in which her interests count as much as anyone else's" — and this seems to describe perfectly well the inner trajectory that these characters follow. We see traces of the selfish in Ava, Jillian and Lilith, as well as of the self-sacrificial in Beatrice or Suzanne, but they all appear to converge on this path towards constructing a "self-with-others" whereby they are all individuals inextricably tied to one another — and aware of it, acting accordingly. A sisterhood, a direct sisterhood that supersedes the very church structure which facilitated it to begin with.

Of course Warrior Nun is too intricately built to allow itself to be so smoothly explained; if Carol Gilligan provides a framework that helps us to identify what is so positive and deserving of attention in the female characters' attitudes as championed by one of the show's own writers, it also falls short on other points and her propositions can then be questioned by the show in turn.

We need but a few examples.

If Jillian Salvius values the significance of association with others more than she does a cold, distant overview of things (the latter being the stereotypical scientist attitude), then how is it that she seems so prepared to immolate Lilith at the altar of curiosity? One relationship takes precedence over the other, yes, and we cannot compare the love for a son to whatever affection or respect there is for anyone else, but the nature of Jillian's experimentation with Lilith, had it gone forward, is quite brutal even for the sake of a debilitated child. Jillian's stance is understandable, but this "self-with-others" thing isn't as clear-cut as we might think.

Lilith herself oscillates between those three positions of moral development described by Gilligan, going from selfish to "connected" by the end of season one, but ending season two in almost complete isolation, with only a hint towards her previous place in a web of sisters as she aids Beatrice in getting Ava to the ark... Shortly after having dug her claws into the warrior nun's flesh.

But perhaps Lilith is a more special case than we realise at first. Our early childhood experiences define much of our character, after all, and the words we use have a bearing on how we view and reconstruct the world in our discourse; Lilith's understanding of the relationships between people, of "family", probably doesn't reflect that of her sisters given the ill-treatment she must have received from her relatives. If one's primary web of relationships is so tainted, what model can it ultimately provide for later connections? Just as Ava's mistrust for nuns is justified by her previous, negative experiences at their hands, Lilith's experience with intimate or familial bonds surely affects her maturing sense of being linked to other people. If family is a positive value for Ava and Mary, for example, it cannot boast of the same meaning for Lilith, whose family is a source of stress and misunderstanding rather than a harbour of love.

The treatment she has received might have corrupted her grounds for moral judgment by communal lenses in a way Beatrice's rejection by her own parents did not, leaving Lilith adrift as long as she does not somehow attempt to re-signify what human connection ultimately means. To Lilith, as of yet, the web of relationships she necessarily belongs to mirrors the initial disposition she was brought up in, as a hierarchical structure where every link is tainted by the stench of power and domination — the OCS is a family much like her own... Where orders are given and meant to be obeyed.

We cannot know for certain what it is that she sees or feels after Adriel "unlocks" her wraith-vision, but there is something peculiar in how, reflecting this idea of abstract versus material views of the world we've been discussing, Lilith claims to see reality when she casts her eyes upon the nebulous demonic figures only few others can see. In her opposing traits are mixed, delivering a strange synthesis we cannot quite make out yet and making Lilith a hybrid both in body and in thought.

And while this fact alone seems to interrogate David Hayter's comment about how the women in the show tend to be correct, we can further complicate the statement by glancing at Reya.

There is frightfully little we know of her, but a lot of the information we do have is conflicting: Reya is unimaginably powerful, yet needs to manipulate two young people to do her bidding for her in fighting Adriel; her predictions are "meant to be" yet do not manifest in the way they were said to; she is described as some sort of benefactor by taking Michael in, but she sticks a bomb into his chest and the very sight of her sends him reeling; she is, as far as we know, a woman, yet she might very well be at odds with the other women we see in the show. How, then, are the women always right?

Perhaps they are so when following their conscience as guided by their understanding of community and sisterhood, when belonging to a network of relationships and acknowledging it. That would exclude a murderous sister Frances, a confused Lilith and a mysterious, distant Reya from the definition.

In this sense, then, even if the characters are not static or simple, even if they waver between the moral positions suggested by Gilligan and which do not seem all that definite to begin with, her text is still enlightening as relates to why the women are, "word of God", the moral touchstone of Warrior Nun.

Having been robbed of further development of the story and universe for the time being, however, precisely because of an abstracting, impersonal corporate logic that sees only numbers where there should be people and the wonderful effect this show has had on them, there is only so much we can conjecture on this subject...

#warrior nun #analysis and similar #exercises in observation #i should tag all of the characters since they're all more or less discussed but i am too lazy for that sorry #i can't explain why i took so long to write this it's been in my essay list forever. then the david hayter revelations hit #and i knew i had to finally write it strengthened by his words #it's fair to tell you i have about a trillion reservations about psychoanalysis and psychology and whatever #but you also know by now i'm a pragmatist. if the theory helps me explain something i will use it.#then again i suppose i should have read gilligan's entire book lol but my eyes wouldn't have survived #i had read her text in january of last year i think because it's in a collection of feminist texts i own in print #so yeah. grain of salt etc #i'm not sure i've properly exposed what i wanted to say but i've had enough of this text and i'm releasing it into the world lol

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pls-just-let-me-marry-yeung · 4 months

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!!! Omg OP this is so cute!!!

#This straight up made my day omg #look at my boy #His little smile and the little heart andnand agshsjsj #You guys do not understand how much I love Lee Yeung #That was so sweet of you OP thank you #I wish you happy holidays and a wonderful year #harvest town lee yeung #lee yeung #harvest town #Harvest town yeung #Tagging this properly because we need more content of lee yeung #Also hoping this makes someone day just as much as it made mine holy shit #That's how I see him looking at me when I'm visiting and he's outside and I have to go and he's all like 'Oh... Ok. Bye'. With that tiny #smile waving his hand the little heart next to him that no one can see but is there because he's so sweet #Sorry. I just.. have feelings about him. A lot #look at him!!!

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balaclava-marks · 2 years

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beach boys themed old man west coast road trip around the us gp

#f1 rpf #and there was only one bed!!!#i want to write a fic for this but i dont have the time so drawings only for now #the only thing im adamant on is that when they share the bed seb is in the middle because he kicks if he isn't held properly #also seb and dan are disgustingly cuddly. gordian knot of guy.#they hike yosemite and drive a california gt #also they go to big sur and it's misty and beautiful and they see seal elephants.#and they stay at cheap motels and almost get kicked out for doing cannonballs in the shitty motel pool #ok these were all my thoughts on old men road trip #you can tell i drew this some time ago from sebs hair length. back then i still had hope id get it written in time for usgp. haha.#idk if i need to tag this as f1 rpf but eh whatever better safe than sorry #my favorite throuple <3 theyre so special to me #oh also. btw. if anyone feels inspired to write. a fic. about sebdanlewis road trip. please.#and yes. they have matching heart sunglasses

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milkpansa-archive · 2 years

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PORSCHE PACHARA I Kinnporsche Ep 5

#kinnporsche #kinnporsche the series #kinnporche the series #porsche pachara #apo nattawin #zzarchive #i normally tag darlings but im going to think out loud a bit so ill spare you <3 if you do happen to see and read this. im so sorry sahjksdh #do ignore really. its late and idk what im saying anyway. maybe i;ll properly talk about this someday but this is just real fast real simple #so i dont forget #okay so. anyways. this took me so long. was very hard and weirdly confronting and cianshine if you happen to see this. i got through it!!!!#also had like three breakdowns but were ignoring that #anyways. onto the episode #when i first saw this ep it was so ridiculously confronting and jarring and i didnt know what to do with it all tbh. but making this set #really forced me to properly look at him so now i have even more thoughts #and the thing with this episode is #it is obviously very different from the first couple of eps and there is this clear shift in tone that is so deliberately put there #and its like this punch in the gut. this wake up call #and throughout this episode he just appears to be so so lost #he doesnt know what to do with these feelings. doesnt know what to properly make of them and you see it in literally everything he does #he is so obviously affected by it all but refuses to let it show because what good will it do #but then he also gets punished and then its not just him being lost #there is this clear sense of anger and betrayal #whats interesting about traumatic situations-idk what to call it so were going with that-is that its usually not just the actual situation #that fucks with you. it is the aftermath of it all that plays such a pivotal part in how you come out of it #and tbh i feel like that is vey much the case for porsche #because yes he is so confused about the whole situation. but then everything afterwards just leaves him with this clear sense of betrayal #and anger. and so he acts on those feelings. feelings he knows #but it just backfires and all he is left with is more hurt #but the second time theyre on his home ground and there is such a shift in power that was so necessary for this to work. but then they get #interrupted by dumbass men who go: boo time to die so that's the end of this i guess

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non-un-topo · 2 years

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Perferō turned a year old, so I’ve been having emotions.

(version with will-o the wisps under the cut)

#siggy draws #tog #nicolo di genova #tog fic #i'm genuinely sorry i talk about this fic so much omg. i'm very proud of it and did not at all expect people to like it as much as they did.#i think i was going through some rough stuff at the time. had the lowest self-esteem while writing it.#but some very wonderful friends still tell me how much they love it and ohh ;_; now it's one of the fics i'm most proud of.#like i wish i could write another fic along this vein but perfero is what it is already. <3 #at this point i just associate nicky with horror basically. love the melodrama <3 love putting him in spooky situations <3 #i have a playlist called fire and brimstone that has a few tracks i associate with this fic. but also just a general vibe.#like some folk metal. some nico (the singer not our nico lol). some patti smith.#highly recommend Traust and Anoana by Heilung. Also gave Ari's Song (and My Only Child) by Nico about 400 listens.#aaannnnnd The Northman soundtrack. it's all in the vibes okay #perfero #i'm too shy to tag this properly really #he should be covered in a LOT more mud but. you have to be able to see his face somehow.#like now that i'm really looking at it i don't think you can tell right away that he's muddy. dang it.

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bejeweledmp3 · 2 months

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i think. i think it's inevitable for the next chapter of totp to be longer than the bible. this is literally me warning y'all

#totp tag;#i keep trying to think of a break or a way to make it two chapters but there isn't one. thematically it's very tied together #and i need all three sections i'm sorry i do i just. it's gonna take a lil while and that's what makes me sad #because i start uni on the eleventh and just. yeah. time #but the chapter is also going to be the payoff of so many themes and arcs in the fic that i can't just not write it properly you know??#it's a comedown in many ways and i wish i was writing it right now so baddddd but i'm at work :-(((((#particularly the last section.... blood is going to run i fear #*woman who's afraid of writing dialogue and confrontation voice* the last most important section of my 50k word fic will be a verbal #disagreement. a fight even. i'll figure it out as i go #anyways i have to go into work now but if anyone wants to talk about totp trust me it's the only thing keeping me motivated #the only thing i ever want to talk about even #ok ok i'll go #talking tag;

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taikk0 · 1 year

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JUST SAYING ONCE I LEARN TO PRONOUNCE MY T'S PROPERLY ITS OVER FOR YOU BUTTNUGGETS

#IVE ALWAYS PRONOUNCED T'S WITH MY TONGUE AND I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FIX IT ITS BEEN THAT WAY FOR SO LONG #BUT ONE DAY. I WILL PRONOUNCE MY T'S SO GOOD YOULL THINK IM A WHITE PERSON #WHAT SUCKS TOO IS THAT IM BILINGUAL WHILE ENGLISH IS MY FIRST LANGUAGE I SPEAK TAGALOG MOST OF THE TIME BECAUSE OF MY ENVIRONMENT SO I-#-HAVE NO PROPER WAY OF PRACTICING IT BC FILIPINOS PRONOUNCE T'S DIFFERENTLY BC OF THE LANGUAGE AND UNLESS IM IN AN ENGLISH SPEAKING-#-SETTING THERES NO WAY IM GONNA BE ABLE TO PRACTICE CONSISTENTLY 💔💔#even worse i slur over my words all the time. i have a stutter. i have VERY frequent voice cracks and when i try to suppress them i sound-#-ver odd. PLUS ADHD #idk if adhd might be one of the causes or of it gets added to the pile but dude i actually need help 💀💀#but another problem is i dont think anyone would see the point in it #i communicate just fine its just that i have so much trouble communicating verbally (vocally?) in a way that isnt unnatural and in a way-#-that properly articulates what i want to say and how i say it. often i have so much trouble showing varied emotion to prove a point when-#-im referring or talking about something that isnt reactionary #LIKE DUDE WHY IS TALKING SO HARD 💔ALL PEOPLE CAN TALK WHY DO I HAVE TO SUFFER THROUGH ALL PF THIS THIS SUCKS #which might be why i prefer writing what i want to say bc unlike talking the way i speak has nothing to do with it. i get given time to-#-think. and with an adhd brain writing what you want to say is so much better because typing it out involves the conscious decision to-#-type it all out and it acts as a filter #BLEFGGGH SORRY I KEEP BLABBERING ON THIS WSS SUPPPSED TO BE A SILLY LITTLE POST IDK WHY I WENT HAM IN THE TAGS #anyways umm yeah i dont like talking. i like communicating and maybe socializing tho. but not talking. does that make sense???#there r also times where i straightup cant speak at all. i want to speak and i want to say things but my brain feels too busy or ig blank-#-but not empty and i cant form words or sentences and all i have are thoughts and feelings #anyways i think asl is neat and i want to learn it not just for my benefit but also for accessibility #also filipino sign language if im up for it #man there is something wrong w my brain 💀#mikyomix rambles #yeah this one was a true ramble but only in the tags

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thecherrygod · 1 year

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Robot hdb and mechanic/technician kim pt 2, more serious this time

@morphlingunderscore thank you for taking interest in this!!! originally i didn't have too many thoughts about it but.... Something shifted, and last night i couldn't stop thinking about it, sorry if it got a bit too long kdkdkgks i got more invested than i thought i would

Maybe he was made by Dora? As part of a prototype series of robots, i think hdb could be harrys model And maybe she even named harry just. Harry. Bc there was something about him, about how programming, that was faulty but made him special (the skills. They make him too human while not human enough) (also maybe part of his program knows he had a name but it got wiped too, and he is fixated on it, on having lost that. .... It could be kept as part of a letter in a compartment somewhere in his robotic body... Maybe even in his chest cavity... Maybe Kim finds it when having to fix something in there........ No concrete thoughts there, just a vague idea that I'm keeping here.)

At first this would be very interesting, getting herself attached to him (and i feel like it's also the thing that makes Kim so invested in him later down the line)

But. Things keep breaking, he has blackouts (maybe caused by overheating? Maybe the skills cause the overheating and/or short-circuiting?), He keeps messing up his tasks, and his system may not be fully capable of following the classic three laws of robotics all the way through. It gets exhausting, she has better projects to work on, others that can stop being prototypes, more worthy of time and resources, that will get recognition, and get her out of the place they're living in.

And so she leaves, and leaves her old lab and obsolete projects to gather dust never to be used again.

Kim, on the other hand, really just is a mechanic for the most part, but he can really work with any machine, and would know about programming and circuits and everything, having learned about this on his free time.

This interest starts properly after having moved from foster families a few times, and managing to get a mechanic to take him and teach him how it all works, getting his hands on an actual engine,tho hes always been interested even as a child, from what he could find in books.

He has his own garage now, and works on any machine you bring him, from cars to a microwave, anything that helps him pay the bills and allows him to work with things he enjoys. Also doing these kind of household appliance fixes makes him go out in search for any parts that he may need for his job, whatever's cheaper (por straight up free, of you know where to go)

I think that, like in canon, it's thanks to Kim that harry wakes up again. In this case maybe hes looking around for something and manages to shock harry in a way that his body starts right there and then? Idk too much about this kinda stuff and it's late. It could also be noise with enough vibration to make Harry's gears shift again. But as i said idk about machines I'm general nor if that makes sense/is possible)

The rest is basically this: harry helps Kim find parts, either that they can use on him or on other machines. He malfunctions more now bc both of the prevailing issues, the wipe out, and the passing of time, and Kim is willing to fix the parts he can, and understand the ones that seem to make no sense, and this, all this, new, can bring a change to Kim's monotonous life, spark something in him, also be confronted about some of his being stagnant by harry. Also the wipeout isn't a complete thing, this guy would realize Kim likes speedfreaks and would use himself as a radio to play it just to see him have a good time, for example. His skills still work with understanding humans (... Sometimes).

another way of doing this tho would be hay being made for the rcm (still Dora's creation imo). Faulty but good for all the same reasons + this robot will give you a ridiculous list of theories/keep track of evidence/of witnesses) alibis/the things that have no relation to the case you don't want him to remember but still does.

In this case one of his faults could also be in fact his memory, and it being faulty enough it had an almost full cleaning could be from people trying to delete info from it and failing. Or him doing it himself so he feels like he still has a reason for not being discarded by the rcm. And kim could still be part of the rcm but both as a mechanic and a detective, or just mechanic, or just detective on paper but with the knowledge

#my posts #disco elysium #harrykim #should get a name for the au so i can find it on my blog sldkcldkg #also!!! thank you for your interest!! and for thinking im funny lmao glad to know #... i am weak to speaking about harry and dora honestly it just captivatea me it feels important to add when i can kekvlehlw #also uhm. at the time of typing all this i didnt really see what i wrote in my own tags IFDKKSGKW something overtook me as i wrote this #so.. i hope this is kind of ehat you asked for!!!!#its the next day i added the rcm thing lmao #hdb #kim kitsuragi #dora ingerlund #also added more tags fkdkgks and the readmore bc it got a bit long oops i lovr them your honor #finally managed to proofread it also kdkgkw its 5 pm i wrote that at midnight sorry it took a while im still on a bus kgksvls #ok im poating it yet again thank you for your interest on this!!! i just think it can have a good potential #.... yeah!#... i still dont know if i proofread it properly lmao if something foesnt makes sense or anything please tell me #... or your ideas on this id love to ses other people's takes on it if anyone wants to kekgkehk #anyways!!!#you know what im editing out the readmore. look at my posts #robot hdb au #i think im gonna call it that #simple lmao #to find it in my blog later mostly

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always-a-joyful-note · 2 years

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I've done it. I finished Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. It's long. It's worth binging. It's...it's everything.

I'm....I...It....I can't articulate anything coherent right now so just...just have some emoji reactions and also memes that I generated during my reading of it.

My two biggest moods during the entire thing:

My second two biggest moods:

Memes (in order of creation):

Me right now?

See you in 3 to 5 business days to spam this blog with a long post because boy do I have thoughts and, yes, I will make it everyone's problem.

#they....they got him back right?#im gonna say yes cause it implies it #and...and....and.....IM SORRY I STILL CANT SAY ANYTHING PROPERLY IN THE TAGS #this book ruined me and if I was prone to crying i would have DROWNED in my tears #the next best thing i can do is lie on the floor contemplating my existence #/and they really did that didn't they...these TROLLS of authors/#but they managed to end it happily??? maybe a little vague but i do think it was made to be happy...#or at least hopeful to reflect the way all of these guys were holding onto HOPE all these years and it kept dokja alive #AHDHDHGEGEJDJDHUDHEYDUJEJ IM SUFFERING #and also...thank you to everyone who witnessed my reactions you are all beloved #and apologies to those who didn't follow me for this xD #fandom spamdom #note's nonsense #orv #omniscient reader's viewpoint #i am deceased destroyed devastated de -#and yes i also make references to...#bsd #vnc #in the nickel memes #edit: oh wow...memes have a lot of typos...you can tell i wasnt coherent when making them #orv spoilers

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sparring-spirals · 2 years

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Thoughts on the ending of the last episode?

Hmmm.

From an as-is, the scene exclusively by itself, exciting! Kind of hilarious, in the way that only Bell's Hells can be. And of course, we all love Kiki. (I have a tendency to use "we" when I just mean I, but this time I am absolutely bringing you all in with me. WE love Keyleth. 😌) Also the cast is having a fucking blast, and you can tell.

From a broader perspective, I had my reservations before about bringing Keyleth (or any VM member) directly in for rez- a lot of them fueled by personal preference and opinions about storytelling and narrative and like. Just my personal opinions on shared universes and callbacks. Those opinions still stand. This did not mean before, and still doesn't, that the story being told now is bad or worse in some form! It just might look a little different now. Bringing Keyleth and VM folks in, explicitly and as NPC characters, to directly handle or play a part in the resurrection of a main PC in this campaign, absolutely alters elements of the narrative that is potentially being pulled together, and so I'm like. Mentally calibrating for that.

Keyleth and other Vox Machina folks are going to be NPC's now, I think. Which is good, IMO, in part so that the other cast members can focus on playing their current characters and because. They are NPC's now, in all the ways that the story reflect and in prestige and because. Their campaign ended.

It also means that now, no matter which way we squeeze the lemon, Vox Machina as characters are now irreversibly intertwined with Bell's Hells. Whether the resurrection succeeds or fails, the connection is there, the problems and goals and hopes of the characters have a tie to each other (not to mention precedence, for how future problems might be addressed or solved, although that is obviously dependent on how Matt and co decide to handle it).

And the thing is, Vox Machina are NPC's now, but they were PC's before, and so that changes things. We know they are fully fleshed out characters with backstories and motivations and we want to honor that. Even if a person hasn't actually watched C1, there's still a bit of that drive there, to look at all these little actions and words and pin them up against a bright and brilliant and fleshed out backstory, to dive into reasons why and hopes and motivations. Because they're there, and we know about them, and we're inclined to care about them, root for them, wonder about them in a way we probably wouldn't, if they were just NPC's. Even beloved ones.

In a shared universe kind of situation, this is a plus. This is the benefit, that you love many things and you could get the joy of watching them intersect and grow. Grow together, even! Or at least interact, and then you get to speculate about these characters and things you love all over again.

I, very personally, don't prefer shared universes for this particular reason. I'm not the biggest fan of- idk how to phrase it. MCU style crossovers, I suppose? Which can often lean on things like referential weight, or end up with stories where there is hefty amount of "main cast" characters you're intended to root for and know about to really enjoy it.

I love stories that stand completely on their own, where you can drop in with no real context and watch these characters grow and interact and mess up and love each other and unstand and get the weight of all of it. I am an absolute sucker for those kinds of stories. Similarly to how so much of the M9's entire... shebang was independent of the previous campaign and characters, if impacted by ripples here and there.

I was hoping for the Bell's Hells, that they would get a chance to grow and tell a story fully and completely their own, with the space that independence provides to focus on each of them, as they are, without needing to actively share stage with the previous campaign characters. Tying in previous campaign members to key moments right in front of us (and not in backstory) makes that more difficult, and I'd argue even somewhat-frequent cameos leave us in a space where we are often thinking about prior stories and external characters. The Bells motivations are tangled and weighed, in a sense, against the motivations and thoughts and hopes of these other characters and past stories, and IMO, it leaves just a little less space for us to explore the Bells, as they are, in current space.

Its arguably not guaranteed that, cameos and touch points continue, but- like I said. Getting to bring folks back in, or refer to them is one of the benefits of a shared universe. The cast- and a lot of us! Love these characters. Why not, if we have them here and invested, now, right?

so. You know. I'm just kind of recalibrating a bit, just in case. I'm still enjoying the interactions, at face value, and crossovers are cool, and again, I love Keyleth. beloved. Thinking about how this impacts Vex and Percy and Keyleth or how Pike and Grog or Scanlan might get roped in is fun.

But I'm also takin some energy to adjust some personal expectations about where this brings us in the future, esp for the Bells especially. just in case.

#phew okay this got long but i have a Very Specific approach about all this and wanted to explain it properly #critical role #cr spoilers #c3e35 #spar speaks #ask away!#also im just going to say here that like. this is not intended to rain on anyones parade. OR be an invitation for discourse #or if you Really Hated This this is also not a place for you to like. complain extensively about it.#i really do think this is a thing of 'i was hoping for a particular kind of story and it might not steer in that direction'#'but i think i could still enjoy it. just gotta calibrate what im expecting'#so people coming in with a 'yeah this SUCKS and NO ONE WANTED IT' is.... not going to be appreciated #im just SUCH a sucker for stories that sit by themselves and you pull them apart and all these themes and tropes and familiarity fall out #and characters that you get to really and fully dig into in a way exclusively about them. good shit 👌👌👌#which could still happen! but probably itll look a little diff.#okay ill stop talking sorry #narrative meta #i guess #also seriously all this aside the comedy of VM meeting the Bell's Hells is gonna be hilarious. and tragic. and hilarious.#is this discourse? should i tag this as discourse? im hoping it doesnt count. but uh. jic i guess.#cr discourse #?#also i probably wont respond to a lot more asks about this or continue this line of discussion unless theres something i really wanna add #so just an fyi if people send in asks about this that i proooobably wont respond?

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