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tokiro07 · 10 months

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Undead Unluck ch.171 thoughts

[So Take the Photographs and Still Frames in Your Mind]

There we go, I should have figured there'd be an additional hitch to Chikara's recruitment

Each arc so far seems to have two major steps that need to be performed for the new recruits to become properly integrated into the group: the aversion of their tragedy and the application of their ability

The tragedy is the reason why everyone thinks their ability is some kind of curse, and because they have that mentality, their capacity to evolve their abilities is greatly reduced. They become stuck in their ways, thinking "if I didn't have this ability, I could do XYZ thing"

Fuuko herself is a great example of this, illustrated quite well in this chapter, because she always considered Unluck as the thing that kept her from having a normal life, but now that she's had centuries to accept and understand it, she was able to fit into high school life almost perfectly fine. She had to take precautions and certainly make compromises, but look at her! She made it through an entire school year without any major incidents or close calls that were worth noting!

If Fuuko could have embraced and Unluck as a superpower rather than a curse, she could feasibly have allowed herself to live this life on her first go around rather than needing a second chance and the experience to do so

Fuuko says that Chikara's chance for an alternate path came far too late in the previous loop, and that's absolutely true, but it's true for everyone else too. Everyone's tragedies immediately set them on the path of despair and self-doubt, of isolation and regret. Everyone was already neck-deep in a negative character arc, ensconced in a lie about the nature of their own lives

By rescuing each Negator from their tragedy, Fuuko stops each of them at the crossroads, giving them the opportunity to decide for themselves whether their ability is a blessing or a curse

The caveat there, though, is that Fuuko isn't actually explicitly setting them down the alternate path. She wants them to take it, of course, but she can't just say "phew, good thing we saved you. Also hey, you have a cool power now!" No, the Negators need to experience firsthand how their abilities can be useful; to themselves, to others, to Fuuko, whoever would be the most impactful in their understanding

Chikara is probably the clearest example of this dichotomy because he didn't get the opportunity to see Unmove's value immediately following his tragedy's aversion. Instead, he had months to live with it, to experience how it affects his day-to-day life and the people around him and adjust to make it less of an inconvenience

Shen went into battle with Feng immediately after gaining Untruth and nearly killing Mui with it. He had all of two seconds to realize that what happened to him was an accident and that so long as he was careful, it would never happen again, and even better, he'd be able to make it work to his advantage, which he did beautifully

Void, Creed, Tella and Billy were all pretty much the same way, while Gina took a little bit of self-reflection to really get going, but all of them experienced the practical application of their abilities ASAP

Chikara, though? He just saw his family's lives flash before his eyes and then suddenly couldn't go about his daily life without being extremely mindful of even the most minute movements of his limbs lest he accidentally freeze someone at an inopportune moment. While he may not be stuck in the mentality of it being a curse, he probably thinks Unmove is just a useless superpower at best or a complete nuisance at worst

For him to be able to use Unmove to its fullest, to change his interpretation of it and allow it to grow, Chikara needs to be put in a situation where it proves it has value, like how he was instrumental in defeating Rip in the previous loop

Of course, Fuuko doesn't look at it that way, at least not for Chikara; she wants Chikara to live his own life without concerning himself with the needs of the world. She's already resolved to take on that burden, and enlisted everyone else to do the same, but if it were up to her, she wouldn't actually have anyone fighting at all. The soldiers and martial artists, sure, that's where their lives would take them anyway, but the school kids? You think she expects Phil to actually fight? He's going to, but she's not going to ask him to. She never asks Nico or Ichico to fight, they just take on support roles, either restraining enemies or building tech that will prove helpful

The scientists make stuff because they enjoy it, the fighters fight stuff because they enjoy it, and everyone else is there because they have a strong sense of loyalty to Fuuko specifically. Chikara would naturally fit into the latter category, but Fuuko doesn't want anyone doing anything they don't want to to do themselves. Sure, if she needs help, she'll ask for it, like when Sean made her invisible to beat Creed, but she's never asked Sean to fight, and I don't think she ever would

Fuuko's fighting to give Chikara the opportunity for a normal life, but what she doesn't seem to realize is that that's the reason most of her friends are fighting too; to give her a normal life. Chikara is, again, the perfect frame of reference for this, because he's the one living a normal life right now thanks to Fuuko. He knows what she's given up and how much it meant to her, so seeing her vanish before his eyes like this will resonate so much more with him than it might for everyone else

Chikara is on his way to find Fuuko and everyone else, and will likely end up fighting Colour in the process. In doing so, Chikara will learn the true value of Unmove and how instrumental he can be in changing the world for the better, not just for himself, but for his friends who've had to give up so much already. Chikara isn't the type to just let others sacrifice themselves, he's the type to put in the effort to stand with them, as we saw in his battle with Top against Creed

To put it succinctly, Fuuko is acting as a personification of both the Call to Adventure and the Refusal of the Call. She interrupts the inciting incident that would usually force the Negators to Cross the First Threshold, and instead of forcing them to cross, gives them a legitimate choice; it just so happens that because of her charismatic nature, no one actually would refuse the call when she's the one to offer it

Looking at it from that framework, I suppose Fuuko is the student who has become the master, going from the hero refusing the call 170 chapters ago to the mentor making the call today, all while still retaining the role of the hero, saving everyone by acting as the mentor

I wasn't really expecting to realize that Undead Unluck was shaking up longstanding storytelling traditions today, but hey, it's not the craziest revelation I've had about this series I suppose

I really to wonder how the formula's going to change when Andy comes back

To cycle back into the events of this chapter though, a few closing thoughts

Sean taking Shen's wink is super cute (also just realized their names are similar)

Feng hesitating to hit Ryo in effigy and wondering why; we love to be drip-fed character development

Fuuko being actively vengeful against Colour for potentially harming Chikara's daily life, even ignoring the fact that it took her out of the fantasy that she's been dreaming of for 200 years, that's a fun new angle for her character

Gina giving Sean the Thousand Years of Death, poor guy

David Evelyn translating "aokusai (reeks of blue/green)" as "your naivete leaves me blue" when the usage of blue/green in context is meant to evoke inexperience itself; we literally use green to mean naive and inexperienced! Why not have it call Gina "green," it would mean the same thing! Like "looks like you're just too green to fight me" or something like that? It doesn't matter, I just think it would have been fun to have Colour talk about green, blue and red instead of only doing blue and red

...If Chikara joins and they need to make another timeskip, won't his parents have to experience years without their son? Cus we still need Isshin to grow up, which means that she's going to be outside during a timeskip to learn how to use Unbreakable from her grandpa, is Chikara going to leave his parents to age out?? That's kind of cruel isn't it?? Ah well, cross that bridge when we come to it I guess

#undead unluck #fouryearsandananime #4y1a reviews

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lo-fi-charming · 2 years

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right, so. i've been having a lot of feelings about daisy lately (big surprise), but specifically, i've been thinking that it's really interesting how she interacts with jon in season 4 given... everything that's happened, and what can possibly be inferred about her character.

like, okay, im trying to break my thoughts down to be more succinct. it's my impression that daisy's biggest fear is being a helpless victim (prey), and right after that, being betrayed by someone she previously trusted (The Pack, part n parcel to being part of the hunt). there's also a theme of guilt prevalent in all this, which is important in how it influences her feelings (fear and aggression) towards jon.

daisy's response to feeling cornered/unsafe/victimized - before the buried - is to fight. she evolves into a hunter to take out perceived threats. and she takes to it, she's good at it, she likes doing it. but as she tells jon in the buried, isolated from the influence of the hunt, it's then and there that she feels the most like herself in years. and so what might that imply about daisy's character? who is daisy when she feels like 'herself'?

imo, it means that daisy is someone who feels stuck: crushed by fear and guilt, and afraid of herself - of what she's capable of doing, but also, what might happen to her if she doesn't fight back

all of this to say, i think the fact that jon is the one who she develops a bond with in season 4 is especially interesting considering their history. and usually this is from the angle of daisy's treatment of jon - intimidating him, physically harming him, kidnapping/threatening to kill him. but lately ive been thinking about what it must have been like for her, too, because you really wouldn't think daisy would feel comfortable being around jon even after he saves her from the buried.

because jon sort of represents... a lot of what she fears! the entire reason daisy becomes so fixated on jon in season 3 is because she sees him as a monster, something that needs to be taken care of. he compelled her (on accident) the first time they met, pulling out a statement of a moment that truly frightened her. he extracted a memory that made daisy feel scared and helpless. and then jon saves daisy, yes, but this also him seeing her at her most scared and most vulnerable - so helpless she literally begs him to save her if he can.

not only that, but daisy feels guilt for what she's done to jon, too - and not just him, but many of the people she's hurt. she repeatedly emphasizes the fact that she has done harm and took advantage of her position specifically to cause harm and get away with it. she even admits to jon in the buried that she planned on killing him after the unknowing.

so like... here is jon. someone who knows daisy, which is scary to her. because to know daisy is to know the things she's done, the bad, horrible things - but also to know that she is scared, and to see her vulnerability. this is daisy's greatest fear: to be vulnerable and helpless, to be at the mercy of a monster. you'd think jon would be the last person she'd want to be around. that she'd be afraid of him, or embarrassed, or simply too guilty.

but s4 is about daisy choosing to be vulnerable and helpless if the alternative is falling back into old, bad habits. so i guess it just, like... reflects that, maybe.. how she confronts the reality of her situation through interacting with jon? even if it's not initially her idea (more necessity, since she can't handle being alone and basira/melanie can't always be around to keep an eye on her)

it's sort of like a reflection of jon, and what daisy does for him in s4, standing as a warning of what jon could become if he embraces his powers. and then both of them commiserating about what happens when you actively choose not to feed the powers keeping you alive...

#endlesschatter #magpod #jondaisy #me standing at the center of a horribly large and empty room IS THIS ANYTHING???#chaboi knows he didn't manage 'more succinct' lol look at this mess #girlies do you know i had to struggle to not start pullin up transcripts to put on this fucking post #im like wahtever 5 of you gonna read this shit anyway and yall listened to the pcast okay #i don't need to fuckin. get evidence whatever #who cares!!!!!!!! it's just bane being jaisy craizy again

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violinsxsong · 8 months

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An army lieutenant neglects to file a report on a civilian killing done by his troops because he knows it was an accident. War isn't fair for anyone, but if it wasn't malicious... I guess it's okay.

Tina promises her dying mother that she'll visit her grave once a month. After the mother has passed away, Tina finds it hard to squeeze in the time, and her visits drop to about once a year. I think yearly is completely okay. In fact, I think it's the usual for most people who mourn someone after years. It's okay.

A man orders a custom-built sex doll designed to look just like his neighbor. SO WRONG!

Sarah's dog has four puppies. She can only find a home for two of them, so she kills the other two with a stone to the head. Sarah is a psychopath.

A doctor has been preforming consensual yet illegal procedures one someone in hopes of finding a cure for his ill sister. As long as it's not at the detriment of anyone else, then I guess it's okay.

A neglectful husband pushes his wife to an affair. When the affair ends, the wife's partner nearly kills her and her unborn daughter. The husband kills the affair partner. Good for him, honestly.

September has run out of food and is facing death by starvation. She begins to cannibalize her family's loyal staff. They do not fight back. I thought it was the rich who were supposed to be the ones getting eaten? No, no, I jest. If they agree to it, then I guess it's okay? I think? I don't judge those plane crash guys for what they had to do.

A mother gives birth to identical twins. One follows their ambitions and the other becomes a shut in. The family make it clear which child they prefer. I mean it's sad, but I've seen it a lot. It's not okay, per say, but it is pretty normalized.

Natalie is so focused on survival she fires a shot without thinking. She did not intend to kill her elderly neighbor, but she hides the body regardless. She denies knowing what happened to the now missing resident. Murder is murder. Not okay.

A woman is facing a lifetime of medical issues. She continues to put her family and those around her in emotional and medical debt. She lives a hollow life and continues leaching off of those who support her. I think it's a lose/lose situation no matter what. It's grey space.

Please provide a response to each of the following prompts. Leaving a prompt blank will also be considered a response, and you will be assessed for refusal to answer.

In the event of a life or death situation, would you put yourself or others first? The group. What is surviving if it's all alone?

How far would you be willing to go to ensure your own survival throughout this ordeal? I honestly don't know and I really hope to not have to find out.

Is there anyone in the building you have developed strong attachments to? Well Zach is my neighbor and my oldest friend in the building. Ria is my best friend in the entire world. Charlie is really sweet and I see her more often than anyone else because I can't live without coffee. Nat is super cool and I look up to her confidence a lot. There's definitely more but writing everyone down would take forever and this pen is hurting my fingers.

Do you think it is possible to survive infection through alternative means such as removing the infected limb? Would you be willing to undergo this procedure to ensure your own survival? I guess... if it was between life and death, I'd lose a limb. As for surviving, I don't know, but there is a vaccine for normal rabies. Maybe they'll find one for this rabies, too.

Will following the general consensus lead to improved odds of survival, or would you have a better chance following an assigned leader? I do best with someone to look to for guidance. I'm really good at follow the leader.

What is the appropriate response to the following situation?

Your daughter falls ill and needs a specific, uncommon kind of antibiotic that will be hard to find; without the full course, the pathogen will survive, regroup, and kill her anyway. You are scavenging a pharmacy, where you find another group, and manage to not shoot each other. You ask them about the antibiotic, and they have it, but they also need the antibiotic, for the wife of someone in their group. You cannot share the antibiotic because it would just kill both people, and they have the antibiotic in their pack. This is likely the only complete dose set you will find, as the other stores have been picked totally clean and there are no friendly groups in the area. I don't have kids, but I think if I did, I'd become a Mama bear. Nothing would stop me from getting it, though I might have to be sneaky. I'm not much of a fighter.

#Task 02 #bnytask

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steve0discusses · 4 years

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Yugioh S4 Ep 25: Oh Hai Mai

Heyyy we’re back. Thank for bearing with me, it’s been kind of chaos over here. Everything from a pandemic (we are very sloooowly reopening over here but I’ve been quarantined so long I can french braid my damn leg hair.) to important political protests, to getting an evacuation order because an arsonist burned down 90 acres in the heat of summer (luckily we’re all fine), to a vole that ate everything in my pandemic self-care garden so I lost my entire mind and waged war and dug so many holes and put out 17 mouse traps and set off so many critter bombs under the ground trying to kill the little bastard like it was Caddyshack (It’s still alive, ps, I lost that war). These last 3 months have been the longest decades of my life. The only month longer was the one where I’m pretty sure I had mono and it made me positive that my basement was haunted.

Man, bring back my haunted basement, Sorry if this comes through in my writing, I tried but, I can’t edit it out. You get FML-Rachel today.

Lets get back to a good, mindless distraction, lets turn on Yugioh.

BUT------->it just so happens that this episode of Yugioh has cop stuff in it, I’m just going to be blunt. We’re going into Valon’s backstory, he’s very much a victim of problems within the bizarre Yugioh legal system, and much like a Gotham supervillain, he is a symptom of the problem more than the cause.

I’m not going to ignore that, but in case you are overwhelmed about that right now, if you want to like...save this for later--I have another FMA recap coming out soon that I wrote in a simpler time before....the corona freakin ruined us all.

Last we left off, we were on the heels of Joey Wheeler, who decided to book it down the street because he wants to murder the hell out of Valon.

Youknow...Joey is one hell of a protagonist. He just does...so MANY antagonistic things.

Joey has decided that although the world is ending, and everyone left alive will be absorbed into the Great Leviathon’s big yummy tummy, which can only be prevented by three people, of which he is one of--he’s going to go sprint in completely the other direction.

We even managed to get Kaiba on board. We were ready. We were done, but then Joey had to lose his freakin mind because that’s just what Joey Wheeler does sometimes.

Normally heroes avoid the call to duty because of a severe lack of self confidence, but this is Joey, and he’s going to avoid the call to duty because of too much self confidence.

And so Joey and his Chaperone turn a corner and walk into this random orc who’s just casually living his best life and touring SF.

One of my worst fears walking through SF, tbh. Running into high school people. Not so much the orcs.

Yo, I wonder what the bushman was doing through all of this? So IRL, we have this guy who just...hides in a bush and jump-scares tourists. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be in a bush and then just...all these orcs show up and you’re all.

...oh no, now I’m the fool...

I just want to know if bushman made it, or if he’s in a paper card that’s just a picture of foliage.

(read more under the cut)

Anyway, Joey was already in the process of running, so they just turned around on this street of...so much parking.

Like y’all there is SO MUCH PARKING this episode. I was trying to pay attention to anything else, but like...do you see this!? It takes nearly half an hour usually to get a spot but this--this right here?

And the crazy thing is, recently my bro had to go pick up some old guy from a cruise that...got quarantined...and so bro had to go the Pier and like--this is what the city looked like. This is a pandemic, it’s just lots of parking, so I want to criticize Yugioh, and I normally would, but I can’t. I’ve seen the receipts. They called it. This is what the endtimes look like and it’s so much parking.

Also, they were too lazy to draw cars but damn, they called it.

So, left with no other option, Joey decides to...be Joey, and punches a huge orc covered in armor.

So Valon’s here, because apparently SF has just...no one left alive in it except for these few kids and that one Uber Eats driver. I imagine it’s a lot easier to find Joey if you just follow the only one screaming in Japanese in a Brooklyn accent at the top of his lungs.

And Valon decides that this one way street isn’t good enough, and that they must duel somewhere else.

I assumed it would be a tall structure, but considering Kaiba just blew up the tallest structures in the Financial District...I was like...what else is tall? And bear in mind, I’m a mess, so I was like...OMG I wish it were Macy’s!!!

Now I hear you saying that’s weird, and we shouldn’t have a very fancy Macy’s in 2020, and you’re correct. but we still have one, and the top floor is just...a massive Cheesecake factory, and I can’t think of anything more 00′s than a Yugioh duel on top of that specific Cheesecake Factory.

And I’ve never really thought before about where the best Yugioh duel would be, and it’s there. It’s at the high rise Cheesecake. Listen Yugioh, if you need an insider to choose locations for your Netflix remake of S4--call me.

So anyways, instead of doing the right thing and going to the Cheesecake Factory on top of Macy’s like any other self respecting 00′s teenager, Valon and Joey are going to drive through the most boring parts of town.

They had an opportunity to go chase eachother through any tourist attraction, Lombard street, Ghirardelli Square, the Palace of Fine Arts, China town, reuse some assets and drive through Japan town, that fountain that looks like Yoda--but no...they decided to drive through literal trash.

Just...a missed opportunity, and it should have been a Cheesecake Factory.

Also, I totally and fully acknowledge that a strange nostalgic affection for the Cheesecake Factory is a weird Millennial thing (much like our weird encyclopedic knowledge of Sailor Moon) but listen. You have your thing, too. You go do you, I’m gonna soak my sorrows in a bowl of Chinese chicken salad so wide, it’ll last me 3 days.

Anyways, Joey’s gonna steal that guy’s bike.

Yugioh just predicting the future in 2003. We actually have a HUGE problem right now with vehicle theft in the city to an almost comedic degree, which is partly why the parking situation has gotten so incredibly dire. It’s kind of incredible that this guy left his bike out because after about 1 day in the city you learn pretty fast that you need to be constantly checking on your street parked vehicle--I mean, that guy was just asking for it, honestly. If Joey hadn’t taken it, some other guy would have absolutely taken it, (even that orc would’ve taken it, the city has no consideration for cars.)

Sorry --one sec-- that was an earthquake just now. As I’m typing this. Just a little guy. Just a little treat for me...

...but still like...c’mon. I’m also getting this weird issue where Tumblr doesn’t save my drafts so like...this is like the 3rd time I’ve had to write this like...I just want to make a Yugioh post for my tiny funtime tv blog, Universe. Don’t @ me right now, Universe.

SO MUCH FREAKIN PARKING.

...is it the space between two piers? What is this? We don’t have rivers in SF, it is a peninsula covered in very steep hills. Like very VERY steep hills. All water just rolls into the ocean and there’s a couple of lake thingies but...no rivers that I know of (And like maybe this is a thing, and I just haven’t seen it? Learn something new every day.)

*loud, audible sigh* home. Where we belong. At the warehousssssssse.

Back at the RV base, Duke Devlin is still babysitting. Maybe this is to make up for the two seasons he spent trying to date a girl Rebecca’s age, that they felt like going out of their way to show that he has indeed no longer horny now. Got to hand it to them, that’s a lot of character development right there. Although at the same time, it has made Duke Devlin a very non-character.

But imagine how insanely complicated would it have been if Duke got involved in that bizarre love-square that is Yugi, Tea, and the Ghost that killed Yugi by accident.

PS that’s either a freeway onramp (which is too far South from where they were, I think) or it sure does look like old Embarcadero behind them. Youknow, that lifted street from the 80′s that fell down in Loma Prieta and was never rebuilt? I just freakin love that it’s still here in 2003. This bizarre Yugioh alternate California.

Anyway, because this is alternate California, Seto set a massive fire and the entire city didn’t immediately go up in flames. Apparently they just kinda ran away from the explosion and damage before anyone noticed.

Probably because most people on Earth are dead anyway, so what more can these two actually do?

And so Yami ends up getting lectured by the wife.

And justifiably, the wife seems to have absolutely no confidence that Yami will be able to do a damn thing right.

Wifes all around this episode.

Speaking of,

At this point, Arthur Hawkins senses that Yami’s nearby, so he opens the door just to freakin dump some guilt on him.

...Rebecca seems to be a character that’s mostly there to recap the lore and also to dump on Yami. I don’t mind that. Yami needs to get dunked more often, and I’m saying that in S4, where the entire season’s tagline is “how many times can we dunk on Yami?”

So lets check on Yugi, how’s that kid doing? It’s been quite a number of episodes since we last saw him.

Yep, still hanging out in the Han Solo cosplay room.

And then, because I guess everyone is just hanging out in the same 4 blocks, Mai and Tristan have a heart-to-heart.

In the show, this conversation was Mai (who is now a serial killer) saying “Oh hey, Tristan, where’s Joey?” and Tristan saying “It’s ALL YOUR FAULT he wants to kill Valon--thanks a lot, Mai! GODS!” all indignant like.

Not how you would ordinarily talk to a serial killer, just saying. No one from the Yugi crew fears this woman...at all...and she has killed over 20 people in front of them and is trying very hard to kill Joey Wheeler all the time.

Like what would it actually take for them to fear this woman? They can’t, right?

Meanwhile, Valon is trying to explain to Joey that his obsession with Mai is in fact damaging any relationship they could have had.

So then when you’re like OK...this is actually very valid points on Valon’s part, and Joey really does need to step back and let people make their mistakes considering Joey was barely a part of her life to begin with. But then, Valon just turns a 180 and...it becomes a catty love triangle where only one person in the triangle even feels romantic emotions.

I just...so Valon is doing this fight because he thinks Mai is in love with Joey.

This whole time I was like “well maybe it’s more that Valon is trying to defend Mai’s right to make her own choices” but no...he just straight up thinks Mai is in love with Joey. And, in fighting Joey, Valon himself is ignoring Mai’s life choices

Just a whole lot of misunderstanding that would have been fixed with better ways than dueling with cards. At least that one guy in S2 who tried to marry Mai actually dueled HER instead of some random guy.

It just really feels like these boys are having a pissing contest and Mai was never let in on the deets that this was even happening.

Mai needs to hang out with older men. Set her up with Roland, this is ridiculous.

Back at the RV, which got very, very big in this shot, Seto has an odd convo with Mokuba about how they are probably not going to get Kaiba Corp back. And then no one really argued with him about that.

He’s taking it really well. Maybe because this isn’t even the first time or the second time or even really the third time Seto’s lost everything. Kid’s really freakin great at failure. At least this time Mokuba isn’t currently abducted, which is really good improvement for these two.

Outside the RV, Tristan has decided to...give up as well, just right here, in the middle of traffic. Then he gets Orc’d...these orcs are kind of like Slenderman, in that they kinda...show up...but then that’s all they do because the designers didn’t actually want to animate anything.

And then this happens.

God bless this story boarder for this random series of events presented in just this way.

Also here’s yet another example where Tea just has...no fear. She’s actually only out here because she was like “that’s it, we’re getting another driver” and was going to chew out Duke Devlin. The Orc being in the middle of the road was not the reason she walked out here.

Anyways, Yami killed it because everyone here can just throw cards forever, these things are not threatening.

The subplot of everyone refusing to drive with Duke Devlin after he busted his car in Death Valley is still ongoing, and it’s still low key hilarious that no one will outright say “Duke, your driving is just so bad” and instead, Duke just has to sit there and watch Joey STEAL A MOTORCYCLE just so he won’t have to drive shotgun with Duke Devlin.

Rebecca, our plot-dump device, then informs us that Valon has Special Rules.

Because Valon, if you’ve forgotten, has a card that allows him to physically punch his opponent in the face.

They should have invented that card a long time ago TBH.

SO, lets get into Valons tragic backstory. First off, go turn on your Les Mis Soundtrack, because this is some old school cop stuff.

So apparently Valon, as a child just...stayed in the system forever. We don’t know why yet, but lets just assume that it’s tragic and heavy handed. If he steals a loaf of bread and ends up in 12 Juvies (which is a line from the show and not an exaggeration--12 Juvies) then I will expect him to be singing by the end of this and I will be very disappointed if he does not.

Anyways, he was such an asshole, that he caught the attention of some very illegal rich bastard who was trying to turn prisoners into...card murders. (it was Dartz.) because apparently...Dartz also funds prisons and that is...that is some deep lore.

And so probably about the same time that Yugi was Dueling to the death on Pegasus’ Island, and about the same time that Marik was hanging out in the ocean next to Pegasus’ Island with a pair of binoculars, and about the same time that Noah was underneath Pegasus’ Island just watching Pegasus steal KaibaCorp, Dartz decided to make his OWN murder island--because I guess he got jealous.

Anyway, Valon won, and didn’t even need to set anyone on fire.

Those little green things there--those are all souls of prison inmates.

YUGIOH.

Millennials got DARK, OK? Freakin...we had a show for 9 year olds that went deep into the school-to-prison pipeline and didn’t even try to hide it under any layers of symbolism. Like Hunger Games at least had two people survive.

This was a show to sell PAPER CARDS.

+++++++++++THIS IS A RANT WHERE I WENT OFF ABOUT PRISON TALK IN KID’S SHOWS FEEL FREE TO SKIP++++++++++++++++++++

Now, there’s a lot of good conversation going on right now about errors in the modern justice system on not just a local scale, but on a global scale, especially regarding racial profiling and criminalization of poor, sick, and young, and we better keep pushing it. But it’s surprising when people pretend like this hasn’t been talked about for a long time. Because...we’ve been talking about it in kids and YA shows for a long time. This is not something that just popped up in 2020.

Like millennials didn’t invent this obsession with dark and gritty stories with uncomfortable themes. It’s been around for thousands of years, but back in the 90′s and 00′s, a lot of shows for YA and younger enjoyed talking about the problems with prisons and abuse of power with our justice systems--a lot. Batman, X-men, Death Note, so so many, hell, even the OC.

And like, don’t get me wrong, we still have these shows running around, but I’ve been there’s been a trend of stories (not saying names) where just...nothing bad happens. And, that’s kind of sad because...they CAN have small elements that are more progressive in them, but only brought forth with a very risk-free cotton candy fluffy coating to make the majority of the population happy.

I could go long about this, and I’m getting very cryptic. If a kid escapes to more colorful worlds where nothing bad ever happens, that’s OK--sometimes you need that, but when nothing bad ever happens surrounding certain experiences where bad things normally happen--the meaning of the story changes because it isn’t a real experience anymore.

Like I don’t want to tangent too much, and I just had to delete a lot of examples, but I know a lot of people want to write stories about misrepresented minorities and about real deal serious situations and are just so afraid of misrepresentation that they go in completely the wrong direction by not putting in anything uncomfortable at all. I think it’s important to look at the work and ask yourself is this about the minority the work should be about--or is this work about patting the majority of the population on the back and saying neat, we’ve achieved utopia without having to even do anything?

...anyway, obvi I’m ranting, but I feel like we’re taking a step backwards when it comes to the importance of kids programming and that we do need to talk to kids about prison again. This is a show about paper cards, and they don’t do a great job at talking about...the reality of prison, this was exaggerated with genre stereotypes, but at least they didn’t cover it with rainbows and unicorns, because this isn’t about how great Joey and the “normal” people are at saving Valon, this is about how society screwed Valon beyond repair, and I am 99% certain we will see this guy’s soul stuffed in a brick above Dartz’ snake fireplace.

Like, yeah he duels to the death on an island, but that’s imagery that is very close to real life prison issues. We don’t talk to kids a lot about how a lot of inmates get enlisted into the military during war times (and quite literally...duel to their death...on islands). We don’t talk about how we use inmates to betray eachother for a chance at maybe getting amnesty. We don’t talk about how a lot of the victims of this system are essentially children, and have been caught in a system of endless prison for what will probably be the rest of their lives. We don’t talk about how we’re systematically turning kids into criminals so much in kid’s shows of late...and Freakin Yugioh just did in a filler season.

....................I think our standard for modern kids programming to talk about serious issues is way too low if Yugioh just threw this out there in a filler season, is all I’m saying.

++++++++++++++++++END OF PRISON RANT++++++++++++++++++++++

So, Valon is free but...is he?

Not really, he’s just gone from one jailer to another, but at least this time he gets his own room. Don’t blame him for latching onto Dartz’ dream to end the world, because the world for him has been one behind bars. He doesn’t know it. Never been there.

It’s just interesting juxtaposed to Joey because Joey had some sort of Season Zero history with a gang and I haven’t watched that episode yet.

So that’s it for now, again, I’m very slooow lately. I slept for 3 hours today...and I don’t know why. But hey--we all got through three (four???) months of this...we just gotta go...one month at a time.

That and I accidentally did my taxes early so there’s that. See? Good things still happen.

Also, because I only slightly referenced the most incredible movie ever made on San Fransisco soil, I’ll just leave this here. The true hallmark of our city.

youtube

Anyway you know the drill, here’s the link

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mobius-prime · 4 years

Text

261. Sonic the Hedgehog #192

Metal & Mettle (Part 2)

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Tracy Yardley! Colors: J&A Ray

As Sonic and Scourge face off against their Metal counterparts, Sonic urges Scourge to once again reconsider a truce so they can take out the robots first. Scourge dodges the question by pointing out that Sonic still hasn't given him an answer about teaming up permanently to take over the multiverse, and Sonic similarly dodges that question by saying they should take care of their current situation first. Meanwhile in Eggman's base, Dimitri approaches Eggman, who is currently whooping as he watches the video feed from his robots like it's a sports match, and coldly observes that while Eggman has apparently been able to build his robot doppelgangers in a matter of hours, he's still not bothered to get on with creating a new robotic army to supplement the Dark Egg Legion. Eggman brushes him off to continue cheering on said doppelgangers, which only makes Dimitri angry.

Dimitri, considering you revealed just a couple issues ago that you understand just how evil Eggman is, you had to know something like this was coming. He'd hardly be giving the Legionnaires free upgrades out of the goodness of his heart and just expecting them to stay loyal out of gratitude. A deflated Dimitri leaves the room, Eggman once again content to ignore him and continue watching his robot-hedgehog boxing match. Back at Freedom HQ, Sonic and Scourge struggle to keep up with their respective dancing partners, but Scourge is unwilling to call in the Suppression Squad to help even when Sonic urges him to. The Suppression Squad therefore continues to watch from the sidelines, and Miles points out that despite Scourge's downright villainous personality, Sonic continues to look out for him every time Metal Scourge tries to take him down.

This is what you get for commanding your subordinates through fear instead of earned respect, Scourge. They don't actually want to help you, they just don't feel like they have any choice. In the "Eggdome," which is apparently Eggman's new base of operations for the Legion, Dimitri finds Lien-Da and pulls her aside for a chat despite her irritation at being interrupted. When he informs her of the bombs inside their cybernetics, she's furious.

Yeah, Lien-Da, don't even try to blame Dimitri for this one. His reputation and intentions may not be spotless, but yours are far worse. Sonic finally convinces Scourge to bring in the Suppression Squad when they end up backed into a corner, and he reluctantly does so, with the Squad dispatching both robots in a matter of seconds. Miles slyly points out that in the brief fight he and Sonic worked "surprisingly well" together - anyone getting the impression he's thinking about defecting? Now that they're out of the fight, Scourge once again pesters Sonic for an answer to his offer, to which Sonic finally reveals that the reason he hesitated before was because he was so disgusted by the thought that he couldn't even speak. Yeah, sounds about right. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to take on the whole occupying force at once, Sonic cheerfully "extends their lease" on Freedom HQ until he's rested up, and takes off back for New Mobotropolis. Once there, he has to face Elias, who scolds him for having run off against the orders of the council, though he admits he personally didn't have a problem with Sonic's decision.

Turns out, this new mission involves a new set of star posts that Rotor and Tails have whipped up in short order, which will take Sonic straight to Moebius. After all, since Scourge and his cronies have taken one of their bases, why not look into taking one of his? Sonic, of course, is pleased, though he then pulls a terrifying smile that barely even looks like it should come from the pencils of the otherwise-exemplary Tracy Yardley. Seriously, dude, normally your Mobian faces are so good, how did something like that happen?

Father and Son

Writer: Ian Flynn Pencils: Jon Gray Colors: J&A Ray

Later that night, Scourge sneaks into the city himself and enters Sonic's house through an open window, looking to give him a surprise beating in bed. However, unfortunately for all the excited shippers whose hearts just jumped up a hundred beats a second, Jules is sitting in an armchair in the living room, and curtly informs Scourge of who he is. Scourge seems mostly amused to be meeting his alternate-universe father, and is even more amused when Jules says that he's not afraid of Scourge, and points out that he's sacrificed himself for his son before and won't hesitate to do it again. He's less amused, however, when Jules calls him a coward and chastises him for having thrown his own world into chaos over his selfish desires.

Is… is Scourge implying that he murdered his own father? Look, we've already seen before that Scourge isn't exactly averse to killing someone, even when they're unconscious and defenseless, but killing his father in cold blood, his own father who is presumably a good and pacifistic person from his own description, is on a whole 'nother level. Jules, refusing to be intimidated, stands up and mocks Scourge for apparently having to sneak up on Sonic at night to get an advantage despite being such a badass conqueror, before telling him that even if he isn't sad over his own father's death, Sonic will be, and he doesn't intend to go quietly if Scourge comes after him.

Struck a nerve there, I see. I'll note that it's never actually outright confirmed if Scourge killed his father or not, it's left deliberately ambiguous. Though his dialogue does seem to imply that he did, his reaction here makes me lean toward thinking he didn't. If I had to guess, I'd say that at some point his father died of other causes, or maybe even died in some kind of accident that Scourge caused, making him indirectly responsible. Remember, Scourge is an inverse of Sonic - he's not the total opposite, but rather a mirror image, driven by his most negative traits while Sonic is driven by the positive. Sonic himself has trouble processing his own emotions, especially those relating to grief and loss, so I can only imagine how much worse Scourge is about it. With that in mind, I could easily see Scourge trying to mask his grief over his father's death by not only pretending not to care, but going so far as to act like he hated his own father and is now glad he's gone. Hell, he doesn't even have to pretend - it's likely he's convinced himself of this entirely, and hasn't even thought about it in depth until this world's Jules called him out on his cowardice and hypocrisy. I can't really see another reason why his words would suddenly make Scourge deflate and start crying while walking away without even a proper retort. Scourge, under Ian's writership, has ended up becoming one of those fascinating characters who doesn't really deserve a redemption arc, but is interesting enough to a wide selection of readers that people want him to get one anyway. Certainly, even as an unrepentant villain, he's a fun one for sure.

#nala reads archie sonic preboot #archie sonic #archie sonic preboot #sonic the hedgehog #sth 192 #writer: ian flynn #pencils: tracy yardley #pencils: jon gray #colors: joshua d ray #colors: aimee r ray

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luuxxart · 4 years

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GIVE US THE NEW WARRIORS HEADCANONS UR REDESIGNS ARE AMAZINGJAKMAKWJDKSL💖💖💖

aaaa omG thank you!! :’D I’m actually strangely attached to these characters so I’ll try to do my best to explain the design choices I made and everything

ok so here we go.

SCREENTIME

* first off

* Not an entirely bad name??

* I would prefer Worm tho as a reference to the Morris Worm

* And I did make his design a little more wormy. Kinda Doc Ock-ish.

* So his tragic backstory... Well. Long long ago... when he was just a little kid... his dad fucked his mom.

* Jkjkjkjk. But it would be better than fucking “internet gas.”

* To take this in a darker route, I think it would be cool if his grandad had been experimenting with creating cyborgs and turned his dad into one. And then turned Screentime into one. So Screentime escaped sort of half-finished and is just trying to help others who might mirror his situation of abuse.

* I like to think his first superhero story was he was just like fucking buying bulk ramen and then hears a dude harassing a girl in the next aisle over and is like. huh. word. guess I can intimidate this guy by threatening to take his fucking social security and make it public knowledge.

* Bc he can hook up to the internet and updates his database frequently so he can just Mr. Robot people.

* He’s probably like 18 or 19. Never was schooled and college is kinda pointless when you have the whole internet in your brain.

* So he’s just living in a rundown apartment. Payin bills by doing odd jobs and doin bitcoin stocks.

* On the battlefield, he’d definitely be a mind games kind of guy, but he’d also use his worm limbs for dexterity and could probably discharge bursts of electricity at the cost of losing some information in his database.

* Also it’s probably really hard to tell, but Screentime is my favorite out of the original designs.

TRAILBLAZER

* again! Not a bad name at all!

* Made me think of fire though... and hiking... so

* We really don’t have much information on these characters so they were kinda fun to play around w and I think she was my favorite in terms of concepts.

* Also what the fuck are those red things on her head am I just fucking dumb???

* They look like devil horns. So I’m gonna run with it.

* Ok so she got a backpack from a god.

* Well that god was a god of Hell and also her godfather. Her actual father was another god of Hell. And idk how gods really work in the Marvel universe?? But I think there’s probably at least some high-ranking demons of Hell. I think Hell exists??? If I remember Doctor Strange correctly? (Maybe not Doctor Strange... bro everything is so hard to keep up with)

* Anyway, her dad was killed by some hero traveling through Hell at some point probably. And so she’s been preparing since to go avenge him.

* Then she gets to earth and is kinda like... well, avenging can wait.

* And the reason she can’t just get anything she wants out of the backpacks is because the backpacks are alive. But over time as she gains their trust, they start to become more and more useful. So, like magikarp to gyarados.

* her outfit was so fucking hard to redesign. like,,, I still don’t like it. The backpacks and stuff yes. Everything else no. But it’s better than the Neon Nightmare.

* Her powerset shouldn’t be limited to just her backpacks though. I saw a lot of people complain about that. Bc anyone could steal them from her and use them?

* So I think she should have superhuman strength. Also, her backpacks should only respond to her command. It’d be cute if they were also kinda cheeky about it. Bc yeah she’s a spoiled little brat. But she’s their spoiled little brat so they’re not opening up for anybody but her.

* She’s defo the youngest of the group

* Even if she is an immortal demon kid lol

bro I can’t even say it

I’m renaming them Shuriken. Effective immediately.

SHURIKEN

* So Shuriken is non-binary. Which I think is really cool! They’re not the first non-binary character that Marvel has,, bc Loki exists,, but while they’re not a good step forward... they’re a step forward nonetheless and I kinda commend them for at least trying.

* But goddamnit why did they have to go and name them S

* Sn

* please don’t make me say it

* So Shuriken has ice powers that are sort of threatening to take them over. Like if Iceman couldn’t control his powers ig. Their powers sort of came to them mysteriously in the middle of them already having a gender crisis and high school is happening and all that blah and now they’re just like,,, so ,, “superheroing seems to be a good venture right now. Maybe I’ll find myself in heroics and forget about everything else”

* And most of the heroic ideal is on their brother, ,,,, uh,,,, Quarterback,,, who idolizes the “classic” heroes like Cap, Iron Man, and Thor.

* Shuriken prefers reading news stories about Night Slasher and Punisher, Jessica Jones, and just generally, the other edgier heroes.

* But because their brother idolizes heroics so much, it makes it sort of a surprise when Shuriken takes up their mantle before Quarterback realizes anything is going on.

* And how does the ice stuff affect them? They’re sort of on the fence about finding a cure and whatnot. Most people speculate its like later-in-life mutation, but Shuriken isn’t satisfied with this answer.

*they sometimes chop off the spiky ice parts for convenience(they have no feeling in the frozen over parts of their body)

*(I’m toying with the idea of them having a crush on Ms. Marvel ngl)

QUARTERBACK

* not much to say about him? Other than goddamn that neon was terrible.

* Also I’ve seen jocks wear pink, so some youtube dudes complaining about that can fuck off. Maybe not that bright of a shade?

* But I figure with a defensive character, you would definitely want a bulkier frame. At least Power Man levels of a bulky frame? Like I’m not talking Hulk or Thing. Just.. yknow. At least a good Cap size dude.

* Also a blockier costume would make sense. Since he’s supposed to be. Uh. Safe. For people to like,, crowd behind. Like a safe

* Like a safe sp

* Like a

* safespace.

* I also like to think he was sort of a stereotypical jock and then here comes his little sibling (by like,, 7 minutes) who’s finally just like “yo fuck the gender spectrum” and so he finally opens up to his own interests that he’s been burying

* Like the color coral

* Which is definitely not pink my dudiest of dudes ;)

* He’s definitely more

* CHILL

* than Shuriken about the whole ice taking over his body thing. Like, at the end of the day, he’s still a jock even if he did turn out to be a mutant. Like , the world didn’t just end because he’s got some cool ice powers

* Also only being able to create a shield if it’s for others?? What a fucking joke man come on

* He can create platforms of ice and just mainly uses the ice as shields.

B-NEGATIVE

* OK THIS IS MY SON

* not the original he kinda just looked like he took one look at Welcome to the Black Parade and said “I can do that outfit. But crappier.”

* Listen,,,, I constructed a son

* It’s like that thing from that movie

* I was like

* “We can rebuild him...”

* is that fucking robocop

* At any rate, yeah yeah, Morbius stuff is still withstanding

* What if

* And hear me out

* His parents were sort of antivax sort of anti-mutant sort of folk. They get into some sort of car accident when he’s kinda young. He gets a blood transfusion against his parent’s wishes and in the end also gets adopted by this weirdass doctor who probably has some nefarious purpose, considering he used Morbius’ blood in the first place.

* This would explain how he could survive having vampirism since a doctor would probably have easier access to donated blood and stuff.

* Should the blood be going to people who actually need a transfusion? yes, however, this doctor is clearly ,, off his fucking rocker and corrupt as hell,, and what is his purpose?? The world may never know

* I don’t think B-Negative cares about anything. Like he just seems like that kind of character? Totally and inherently aloof and selfish because he’s just been fed blood on a silver spoon his whole life?

* Just does not care

* He does care about music though. Specifically rock(alternative, punk, hard, etc) and the history of it.

* me personally I really like Pink Floyd and I’m not going to,, shove my beliefs onto a character but

* I’m going to shove my beliefs onto a character and say his favorite song of all time is probably Welcome to the Machine

* And he probably will not shut up about how righteous of a song it is and how pertinent the message is

* Bc I think it fits,,, a lot of things about the stuff I’ve wrote with the backstories of these characters

* and yes

* he can perfectly mimic Great Gig in the Sky. the man!! has pipes!!!

* I also think it would be cool if he’s the oldest of them? Like, younger than 21 but he’s out of high school. Just trying to get a bachelors in music history at fuckin uh. NYU probably.

* he unironically likes twilight

#marvel #new warriors #ask #ik it looks weird haha i wrote this all in my notes and just copy pasted

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shesawriter39049 · 5 years

Text

|FAMILY TIES| M| MAFIA AU| 5.1

MOB/MAFIA AU

(Can be read as a stand-alone...it’s a solo one-shot within a series.. BUT there will be subtel hints/foreshadowing which could be useful in the future chapters)

-NOTE- Tae is a HEALTHY lol shade of blonde now

UNDERBOSS TAE & OC

1.3K cheeky little sneak peek the full thing will be between 5-6k

There both sassy/snarky/and boujee AF

IF your new here....there both from Boston...the OC’S accent is A LOT thicker than Tae’s though....

****Tae and the OC are apart of the same alliance..and the pair are a slightly dysfunctional FWB situation that’s lowkey trying to transition into more…

ABOUT- While headed to the aiport for a trip to Vegas, to celebrate Tae’s restaurant’s grand opening, Mel lets Luxx know shit’s feelin a little off with one of their allies over in China. Then, Tae surprises Luxx, on the flight, they have slightly tipsy, needy sex in the bathroom of his PJ....with all of there friends sitting the main area...they also pop into Luxxy’s club at like 1am...were of course nothing’s going to plan!

***Mel is one of Luxx’s launders and Luxx is the OC’S NICKNAME, and Joon who is mentioned briefly is Luxxy’s bodyguard/right hand! ****

WARNINGS: In this sneak peek just...dirty talk/phone sex ish but not really but kidna

FINAL NOTE (OPTIONAL) -If your familiar with the series your prob scratching your head as to why it’s 5.1 because your all waiting on part 5! BUT at the end of part 5, it will be noted that there's about a 3-month gap between 5-6..meaning shits kinda.. “normal” for a little while. So in between that...I decided if I had the time and inspo I’d write mini one shots..smut mixed in with plot. There will ALWAYS be mob influences..it’s just apart of there lifestyle. The point is nothing crazy(Shootouts don’t count..that’s noraml lol) will take place during the gap between 5-6 ...

I'm starting with this because I haven't written about them in damn near 3 months! So this allows me to get reacquainted with the pairing in a “lighter” setting because part 4 &5 are angsty AF…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

5:30PM in route to Boston Logan International -

OPERATION: Taehyung’s Las Vegas Grand opening

Boston to Vegas

“Okayyy..sooo what are you trying to say?” Glancing up slightly in between sorting out the multiple stacks of 20’s,50’s,and 100’s along the backseat of the blacked out truck. Both Mel and yourself alternating between running them through the money counter, double checking the amounts and the authenticity. Sorting the money into briefcases to be picked up by one of your guys before you board your flight within the next 20 or so minutes.

“FUCKIN HELL! Can we NOT play fuckin bumper cars Chris!? Not like I’m doin shit back here or anything... ” Nothing subtle about the bite within your voice in complaint to that wide ass turn he took, making the stack of twenties slide off you lap and onto the floor. Eyes attempting to slip through the partition and lock with hsi though he was desperately avoid you at all cost! Reaching down with a grunt, also managing to knock your hot pink Birkin off the seat as well “Yup, let’s just toss a 6 figure bag on the ground too while we're at it!” Eyes rolling to the back of your head more times than you could count!

“Yeah, let’s totally ignore all the money that fell.and now needs to be recounted.....the bag is more important...” The crass more than evident in Mels voice as your eyes narrowed into tiny slits. Daggering in her direction

“Eat my ass Melissa!” The words slipped out of your mouth on almost autopilot...not even giving it a second thought which only earned an amused chuckle. Mel’s known you far too long to take anything to heart.

“I mean I would butttt...not too sure how Tae would feel about that.” Shrugging a little too noncohlant and smug for your liking!

Grabbing the band of twenties to your left and chucking it directly at left boob, yet you still didn't wipe the smirk off her lips! “Count…now!”

“Ask nicely..” The pout in her voice let you know she was pushing all negative 2 of your buttons…earning an exaggerated sigh in response.

“Did you know Chanel makes garter belts?” Brow arched at your own implied question only to be greeted by a slow nod. “Hmm well now you know...wanna take a wild guess at what I’m hiding in mine?” The playful tenor within your voice was riviling a more..dominant one..which let Melissa know how much room she had to play..and she could tell she was running out of leeway right now!Assuming her lack of sass menat she was finally silently waving that white flag….

“Now let’s try this again...what the fuck happened in China that has you so damn spooked?”

“Oh fuck off don’t say it like that..I’m not spooked I’m a Mangjuhl for fucks sake! It was just odd..that’s all! You would have sworn I was just some random bitch off the street with the way they were damn near stalking me the entire time…” There was a slight pause as she threw the band into the briefcase. “Ahh fuck!How much money is in here already?” Tone hopeful because Mel really wasn’t trying to recount all that damn money!

Brow arched instantly in curiosity “Mmmkay, how about you define ''Stalking” ? And there's...1...2...6...ugh..12k in it right now...that one's going with Yoongi so it has to cap out at 16!”

“Exactly that, it was all eyes on deck 24/7 every time I moved through the compound someone was over my shoulder, I wouldn't be surprised if they were outside the door when I went to take a piss. But I mean...I didn't really say shit because I didn't have anything to hide, but it’s just odd.I’ve been dealing with them for damn near 6 years and it’s never been like this…”

A low hum left your throat at that, the first thing that comes to mind was the last conversation you had with Henry where he admitted to killing Wei in self-defense. Granted as far as you know they still don’t know about it and that alone just feels grimy as fuck, considering the relationship your suppose to have! But, the day that secret comes rises to the surface..the repercussions alone would inevitably start a war that your not ready to fight just yet! So regardless of how your heart feels about the situation, your brains leading you in the smartest direction right now. You're already shielding Marco...you guys can’t handle another war, you're not BURYING any more bodies anytime soon!

It just clicked that Mel’s been the first one back in China alone, since the funeral ...which has you more than curious if maybe they know more than their leading on. You’d never forgive yourself if something happened to her because of a mistake one of your men made...even if it was an “Accident” you don’t lead your soldiers blind! But at the end of the day, this was a decision far bigger than you! If it was going to be known within the alliance that Henry Killed Wei Zhao, who was apart of your most SOLID and trusted Chinese alley.,either your father or Taehyung’s had to make that call..NOT YOU!

“Mel..I-fuck…” A deep sign leaving your chest, there was so much you want to say that you couldn’t “Alright, when we get back I’ll brainstorm with my dad...I mean yeah I wanna blow your left tit off 90% of the time but I love you . I I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable, maybe we can see if Hoseok can do that route or fuck I dont know man...” Towards the end of all that your tone ended up coming coming off more biter than indented and she picked up on it instantly.

“Whoa, Luxx stop! I’m not sitting here bitching and moaning I’m a big girl, I can handle myself, I don't need you to change my route! I just felt like I’d be a shitty friend to not at least let you know that the vibe was off..that’s all..” God did she really HAVE to take it there!? As if you needed to feel even worse! “I’m still fine to go next month...relax and hand me that last case”

Melissa’s tone was warner than you wished right now because it just made you feel like trash, there was no way in fuck you were letting her make another drop to China until you had a better feel of the situation! If you can't tell Melissa the issue you were going to protect her in the only way you knew how which was keeping her OUT of their terrority!

Like she said..she's been doing this for years...why now the cold shoulder all of a sudden? Everything is done for a reason. Every vibe is strategically set, if she felt uncomfortable or watched it’s because they wanted her to feel that way!

“No, I know, I’m sorry I’m so damn snappy I’m just tired and fuckin stressed...” Pausing slightly, for some reason you actually felt like you wanted to cry, hastily raking your fingers through your scalp. You’d barely been sleeping,partially because you’d been reworking deals and partially because you’d gotten used to sharing a bed with Kim Taehyung. Who hasn’t been around, so your bed feels empty..but we will leave that part between us!

“Let’s just talk about this later okay? Right now I need to make sure this money is solid for pickup, and get you all squared away before we board this flight…” Your smile was forced but she didn't press the topic, the two of you worked in silence, and just like clockwork your phone buzzed against your right boob. Currently sitting stuffed between the silk cup of your dress and your skin...your earpods letting you know it was Tae.

Almost as if he could sense something was wrong…..

“Will be at the plane in like 15, I think we’ve actually been stuck in traffic......I’ve been to busy to really pay attention but the flights barley 5 hours. I should be to you by at least midnight…” You swore you could almost hear him rolling his eyes through the phone, the huff that left his throat proved that was the wrong answer...

“I’m sorry at what part of me breathing on the other end of the line said, “Where the hell are you!?” His tone indicated he really wasn’t looking for a response but well..your you sooo..

“You may not have asked YET, fuckin smartass! But I know you..you're impatient so I already knew it was coming...” Throwing the last band of hundreds into the briefcase to your right before snapping it shut, sealing the deal with the passcode!

“K, Are you done making up unnecessary excuses for why you felt the need to explain yourself orrrrr….” Purposely letting the last symbol just rollllll off his tongue, just enough to erk you!

A dry scoff leaving your lips at that, god you hated and loved him all at the same damn time!

“You really must not want to get your dick wet tonight huh?” There was still a smile in your voice though, you couldn't even help it. Mel's eyes narrowed in your direction with a smirk, not even remotely phased by the two of you anymore.

Nothing but arrogance laced within his laugh as it fluttered up to his chest “Yeah, okay good luck with that, you could bring every toy, get yourself off all night in every hole and it wouldn't be enough because it ain't me!”

Why was he right?! God you hated that he was right….

“ It’s s been a week, your bodies not use to that anymore, not when you usually get it whenever and wherever you want. Actually, that’s probably why your all angsty to begin with…”His tone was just as much condescending as it was sensual effortlessly slipping into his bedroom voice.

“Fuck..remind me to buy Namjoon as many drinks as he wants this weekend..he’s been stuck dealing with your bratty ass all week without me to keep you in line...” This may or may not be true...you may have ran that poor man ragged but luckily Joon loves you..but your not in a position to confirm or deny! Though that’s probably why he’s sitting up front with Chris right now instead of with the two of you….

“Alright,fuck you Kim Taehyung…” Even if he couldn't physically see you, you knew he could still “see you” so you didn't hesitate to let your eyes flutter to the back of your head multiple times.

“I mean yeah baby that’s the plan if you’d stop being a fuckin brat and get your ass on that damn plane. So yes, to clarify I’m still getting my dick, tongue, face, and fingers wet...unless you have some sort of rebuttal and it doesn't sound like you do. You're probably too busy squeezing your thighs together right now to focus!”

“Ya know..I’m currently painting very vivid picture of me smothering your face between my thighs until you pass out!” Just as much a threat as it was a promise, but the hits of flirtation laced within your voice only added fuel to the flame…

In true Kim Taehyung fashion he made sure you heard the deep breathy moan that fell from those pouty lips of his! “Mmm..ya know I’m having the same visual Luxxy...my face between your thighs until your coming down my face…”

Fuckk...

You had to bite your lips so damn hard to suppress the moan that was rolling up your throat, almost forgetting Melissa’s to your right! Fuck, why do you do this with him!?

“On that note, I have a really important business call to get to on the other end so ugh, yeah..I’ll see you in a couple hours baby...have fun..to Mel I said hi..”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ahhhhhhhhhhh I know lol I know.it’s been a minute ...if you liked it...like it! Come lemme know..the goal is to have this up by the end of the weekend...and to roll right into finishing part 5 which is why I did this...as a way to get me back into the groove!

Also, note there will be a little more plot prior to Tae bending her over the sink lol they havent seen each other in a week...he’s been away for business! They also pop into Luxxy’s stip club which Kook manges...he’s getting ready for a drop night tomorrow...so..of course there will be a little drama there...because nothing goes to plan!

#taehyung #taehyung smut #taehyung mafia #taehyung mafia au #kim taehyung #kim taehyung smut #kim taehyung mafia au #kim taehyung mafia #bts #bts smut #bts au #bts mafia au #kpop #kpop smut #kpop au #kpop mafia au

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tlbodine · 4 years

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Twisty Turns and Horror

“Every story ever told can be broken down into three parts. The beginning. The middle. And the twist.” — Jack Black as RL Stine in Goosebumps

I want to talk about twists.

Specifically, I want to talk about two primary types of twists in the horror genre, and how and when each can be employed -- and the pitfalls of both.

But first, a caveat: What do I mean when I say “twist”?

A plot twist occurs when the audience’s expectations are subverted.

Based on the existing information in a storyline, a reader or viewer expects a certain outcome. A twist occurs when something unexpected happens instead. But a twist is not a mystery. A mystery presents a question -- who did it? how? what happened? -- and then challenges the audience to figure it out before the characters involved. A good mystery requires you to lay down foreshadowing and set up all of the clues, providing red herrings as necessary to distract the audience, before tying it all up at the end with a neat bow.

A twist, on the other hand, does not necessarily require such setup and foreshadowing. And, indeed, some of the very best twists in the genre do away with such things entirely.

So with that out of the way, let’s talk about the two types of horror twists -- what I’ll refer to as The Hitchcock Twist and The Shyamalan Twist.

By nature of the subject matter, this will be spoiler-heavy, so follow under the cut!

Alfred Hitchcock and M. Night Shyamlan are two directors who made their careers from creating movies with a twist. Although plenty of other horror directors employ the same techniques, the careers of Hitchcock and Shyamalan are defined by twists in a way others are not.

But -- however much he may try to emulate him with his signature on-screen cameos -- Shyamalan trades in a very different type of twist than Hitchcock. Taken at a plot level, the two approaches to storytelling are actually completely opposite.

A Shyamalan Twist Occurs at the End, Reinterpreting Everything That Came Before

Let’s briefly review Shyamalan’s twists to see what they have in common, shall we?

The most famous -- in The Sixth Sense, we discover at the end that the character played by Bruce Willis has actually been dead the entire time, and that he is just another of the ghosts the little boy can see.

In The Village, we learn that what appears to be a rural pioneer settlement is in fact a modern commune that’s been lost to history for a couple generations, and the monsters are manufactured as a way to keep the inhabitants in line (and from escaping).

In Unbreakable, we discover that the story isn’t just the hero origin story for Bruce Willis’s character, but the origin story for the villain Mr. Glass -- who was responsible for the accident that set the hero on his journey in the first place.

In The Visit, we find out that the kids haven’t been staying with their grandparents at all, but rather with a pair of escaped and murderous mental patients.

What do all of these have in common? The twist is revealed at the climax of the film, and it acts to completely reinterpret the events that came before it. You’re left leaving the theater to think about everything that came before the twist, and try to find a way to piece it all together. All of your expectations up to the climax have been subverted, and you’re left to do the work of figuring out how to make sense of what you’ve seen (or not, of course - perhaps you leave the theater without ever thinking about it again).

Done well, this twist can be incredibly powerful because it invites interaction from the audience even after the story is finished. The twist introduces new questions that it doesn’t answer, and conversation can spring up around finding solutions for it -- either within the text itself, or contemplating it in a larger context. Done well, a Shyamalan twist can lead the audience toward introspection and create a haunting effect.

Done poorly, of course, it can feel cheap, cheesy, unearned, or just downright stupid. That’s the greatest risk of the Shyamalan twist -- it can leave the audience thinking, “Who cares?”

Of course, Shyamalan didn’t invent this sort of twist -- it’s just what he’s best known for -- and there are tons of other examples out in the wild. Here are a few to consider:

The Twilight Zone -- When I’ve delivered this talk before (if you can call “rambling about movies to my coworker” a talk), it’s been pointed out that this twist was really codified first by The Twilight Zone, and I should really call it a Serling twist. Well, I’m not doing that for two reasons. One, because Serling never tried to draw a direct parallel between himself and Hitchcock, so Shyamalan is really inviting himself to this discussion. Two, because The Twilight Zone uses the formula a little bit differently.

First, not every Twilight Zone episode had a twist ending (although the most famous ones did, probably for the reason I mention above -- people like to talk about surprise endings, and they stick in the memory). But more importantly, the twists were the story. The sci-fi/horror shorts were structured like jokes where the twist was the punchline, often crafted to deliver a particular message or parable. Most of the episode existed to set up the twist, with little time spent on extraneous plot and character development. Thus, Twilight Zone stories are more clever than shocking. Still, they are a treasure trove of storytelling to study, and they make for a wonderful compare/contrast with Shyamalan’s films.

Other notable Shyamalan-style twists:

Fight Club, where we learn that Tyler Durden is not real, but rather the alter-ego of the seemingly meek and unnamed narrator.

Memento, where we learn that the film’s core mystery has been solved numerous times, only to be forgotten -- and that the main character is being manipulated every step of the way.

Orphan, where we learn that the titular orphan with homicidal tendencies is in fact a grown woman with a peculiar form of dwarfism who is manipulating the families who adopt her. (the movie is better than that plot synopsis makes it sound, I promise)

In Hide and Seek, we learn that the little girl’s evil imaginary friend (at times implied to be a ghost) is in fact her father’s alternate personality.

There are, of course, lots more. There are also some near-misses. For example, despite its bleak “gotcha”, the ending of The Mist -- where the main character mercifully kills his fellow survivors before running out of bullets to use on himself, only to find that help was just around the corner -- doesn’t quite count. It’s a shocking and heart-wrenching twist, but it doesn’t fully redefine the film that came before it.

Pros to the Shyamalan Twist:

Gives your audience something to think about long after they walk away, generating discussion and hopefully that haunted “I need a minute” feeling to process the story.

Invites a second watch/read in order to pick up the clues and pieces and see how the story unfolds differently after you know the ending.

Cons to the Shyamalan Twist:

Can feel cheap or un-earned if the twist makes the events of the film no longer seem to matter (eg, “it was all a dream!”)

Often ends up relying on ableist mental health tropes (split personality, escaped lunatic, etc etc.), so please do something new with it

Can completely fall apart if the ending is spoiled ahead of time, making it difficult to succeed in a post-internet environment.

All in all, the Shyamalan Twist can be a powerful storytelling tool, but it can also fall flat on its face. The thing that will make it succeed is if the other elements of the story, especially the characters, are compelling enough on their own to make the reader want to know more.

A Hitchcock Twist occurs early in the film and changes the rules of what you’re watching

A primary characteristic of the Hitchcock twist is that it happens early in the story -- about 1/3rd to 1/2 of the of the way through. It sets up a premise, invites you to get invested in the characters and their situation, and then pulls the rug out from under you by dramatically changing the movie into a different type of story altogether.

For example:

In Psycho, the first 47 minutes of the 109-minute movie are all about Marion Crane, a woman who steals money from her job and skips town before ending up at a seedy roadside motel. These 47 minutes spend a lot of time building Marion’s character and setting up what could be a crime thriller...until she is abruptly and violently murdered, and the narrative shifts over to the killer.

In The Birds, a socialite and a lawyer spend almost half the movie developing a relationship, from their meet-cute to the ensuing quasi-romantic stalking, the weekend getaway, meeting the locals, befriending the family, attending a party. It honestly feels like a romance (with a few creepy details) right up until a flock of birds starts attacking party-goers.

In Vertigo, the main character is a retired police officer turned private investigator who is hired to spy on a man’s wife, only to fall in love with her, a situation made complicated by her apparent madness and/or possession by a dead ancestor. This madness drives her to commit suicide. Except then the movie keeps going, and we discover that everything up to that point (2/3rds of the film) was actually a complex setup to disguise a murder...a revelation that honestly takes a backseat to Scottie’s newfangled, creepy obsession with the not-actually-dead girl of his dreams, which then ends in a new murder. It’s a convoluted story that’s much easier to watch than to explain, but it’s a wild ride from beginning to end.

What do all of these Hitchcock films have in common? They set up one storyline, spending lots of time developing the characters and progressing the plot, only to take an extremely sharp turn. Some might argue that Hitchcock thrillers are just very slow burn, taking their time to luxuriously build up to a crescendo, but I think it goes deeper than that -- some of these movies abruptly change genre.

In no instance is this as self-evident as in The Birds. The effect of watching it is akin to what might happen if you made a Lifetime movie and then halfway through the zombie apocalypse just happened to take place. It’s brilliant, and it replicates the feeling of real life horror -- where bad things happen suddenly and unexpectedly to ruin your everyday life -- better than any other storytelling device.

Hitchcock is the master of this type of plot, but there are other stories that employ a similar technique:

Gone Girl introduces us to a man whose wife has gone missing, and spends a lot of time building up their relationship history and casting doubt on him, so that we begin to suspect that he’s a murderer...only to learn, quite abruptly, that not only is his wife still alive, but she’s the one who set this whole thing up. It’s masterfully done, and the twist occurs about halfway through, giving us plenty of opportunity to see the marriage turn into a real cat-and-mouse game between two equally awful people.

You’re Next sets up a pretty standard home invasion premise, but it goes sideways when one of the guests begins to fight back. Brilliantly, this is a twist not just for us but for the people in the film -- it’s a turn of events that ruins the evil scheme, where the whole invasion was a setup and many fewer people were meant to die.

Hereditary lays down all the foundation for the little girl to be supernaturally creepy, the driver of whatever badness the film has in store...right up to the moment of her death. (The film then double-helixes with a Shyamalan twist ending, just for good measure)

Million Dollar Baby seems at the outset to be an underdog sports film, right up to the point where it actually becomes a treatise on assisted suicide (among other things).

Interestingly, the Hitchcock Twist finds a home in dramas as much or perhaps more often than in mainstream horror. The reason for this is probably because the twist demands strong characterization, and that sort of lengthy, nuanced character study isn’t as common in genre fiction. This, by extension, means that genre stories that do successfully deliver this kind of twist are often better received by mainstream critics.

For example, look at Game of Thrones. Ned Stark’s death is absolutely a Hitchcock Twist. At the outset, an audience has certain expectations for how an epic fantasy is supposed to play out -- and brutally killing the main character and ripping apart his family as a “reward” for acting noble is definitely not it. This subversion of expectations is one of many reasons the story resonates so far beyond the usual bounds of fantasy fandom.

Pros to the Hitchcock Twist:

Done well, it can make your story feel more literary and/or transgressive, providing cross-genre appeal for audiences who might not normally see or respect your type of work.

It keeps the audience on their toes by subverting their most crucial expectations; once you pull the rug out from under them, anything can happen!

Cons to the Hitchcock Twist:

It can lose the trust of your audience, who may not want to follow you around the bend and might feel betrayed or confused by the sudden shift in expectations.

It’s tough to market because there is almost nothing you can say about the story that will appeal to the target audience without also giving away the twist.

It requires a lot of skill with characterization to make up for the slower pace of the plot.

If there’s one thing that both Hitchcock and Shyamalan twists have in common -- and one take-away I want you to keep -- it’s that successful twists rely on strong characterization. You absolutely must write good, believable, compelling characters first and foremost, or the audience isn’t going to care what happens to them, no matter how twisty those events may be.

And one final caveat: You can really only afford a couple of major twists per story. You can double up, offering both a Hitchcock and a Shyamalan twist in a single story (see above re: Hereditary), but it’s extremely tough to pull off and can make your audience confused and even downright angry if you fail.

What are your favorite movie twists? Reblog and tell me all about them!

And if you enjoy this content, please consider leaving a tip in my tip jar: Ko-fi.com/A57355UN

#writing advice #horror #horror movies #how to write horror #m night shyamalan #alfred hitchcock #long post #please reblog this #I spent like 3 hours writing it

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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 5 years

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4190300·01 D. Winchester

(I’m not actually sure about the number on the spine of the book, most digits are too blurry, but it doesn’t really matter...)

So, in yesterday’s post where I was asked my thoughts about what was in the book Billie handed Dean, I didn’t actually... talk about the content of the book. But I guess I should throw my two cents out since the speculation machine is surely in motion.

I’ve seen post yesterday expressing worry that Billie has basically offered Dean the “instructions” on how to get to the happy ending, but that’s exactly the opposite of what the scene is about, in my opinion. The first thing to remember about the books in Death’s office is that they’re about the ways you might die. Because, well, that’s the sphere - and scope - of Death.

The books simply describe (we don’t know in how much detail, but I don’t think they are too detailed, because I believe they don’t report circumstantial information that can just change depending on minor, relatively irrelevant choices - for instance, you can get to the “killed by red-headed witch” in a plethora of different circumstances depending on insubstantial accessory actions, so maybe there were two, ten, fifty, a hundred versions of that ending, not billions different ones where one only differ from the next for a tiny unimportant detail) the ways a person can die, not how you get there. If Dean had been reading up the previous versions of his books, he might have found that he might’ve been mauled to death by a ghoul in a cemetery, but not exactly the chain of actions that would have led him to be in that cemetery while a ghoul was living in it, you know?

Basically: this is not Stephen Strange seeing all the billions possible chains of events, but Death knowing the possible endings.

That’s why Dean asks what he’s supposed to do with the information he’s read, and why Billie answer that it’s up to him. There is no already-fixed chain of events that mechanically (deterministically...) led to that one specific scenario. There’s no Dr Strange that can put things in motion like he’s seen -- there’s Billie showing Dean that a certain scenario is possible, but it’s one of... millions? billions?, and in all the others it doesn’t happen.

Dean doesn’t know how that ending can happen, and Death doesn’t either. In fact, I think it’s important to remember that Death only knows the possible endings, not the entirety of the journey there. That’s partly the reason why both Deaths seem to never really give clear information/advice... Death isn’t omniscient, Death can see a “big picture” but that big picture is made of endings. Because this isn’t a deterministic universe, but a choose-your-own-adventure story that has a plethora of different endings but the entire middle is up to you. This is why Death has chosen to take “a calculated risk”.

So, what do I think is in the book? Well, we know it cannot be a random death. Ghoul, witch, car accident, E.coli after Trump takes away all food regulations - none of those are on the table anymore, because if we’re talking about one (1) ending scenario, then it’s not random. I believe it’s either natural death or being killed in a very specific scenario for a specific reason.

But also: this is Dean Winchester. How many times has he rewritten fate? How many times he has realized one ending, but then simply went back to life? Of course, at this point we’re in a sort of narrative bottleneck, because once you have introduced a “one in a million possibilities” situation, storytelling rules sort of dictate that you have to make that happen instead of pulling out another possibility out of nowhere, but it’s also true that this is Supernatural, this is Dean Winchester, and messing up the order of the cosmos is what he does - I mean, he already has gotten his entire death book collection rewritten by playing with one alternate reality... I’m not saying he’s going to cause the books to be rewritten again soon (narratively, it would be wonky) but depending on how many seasons we still have and how long the Michael issue is going to last, there could be a rewriting after the Michael issue is solved, as the Winchesters mess up with the cosmos in a new way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(On a slightly unrelated note, I want Dean at some point to say, don’t blame me for messing up the universe, because my life is messed up and I’m doing my best to navigate in it, and I don’t think I’ve made a bad job considering the circumstances.)

So, the book. Is it a happy ending of sorts? It’s likely. Dean looks extremely vulnerable there. What’s more powerful than Dean knowing that he has a chance to happiness - more than “the dream”, more than what he dares imagining when he has to picture a good life, but an actual chance of a real happiness, the one he doesn’t even dare to dream - and that that chance is a tiny little possibility in an ocean of horrible ones that all send him straight into what’s essentially just the latest model of that original fate someone else decided to forcefully stick him into long time ago?

Because that’s what it is, isn’t it? Michael takes over his body and destroys the world because he wants to catch up to God. Different accessory circumstances, but essentially the same picture as the scenario of the original apocalypse. The spiral goes and goes... and it will only stop when they manage to solve the problem in an authentic way, not locking the problem up like God does (Amara, Leviathan, Lucifer...), like trauma tends to make you do.

In season 5, they tried to solve the problem by locking the two archangels in the cage, and it didn’t work. Then they tried to lock the two archangels in the apocalypse world, and it didn’t work. Locking Michael in a mental cage won’t work either. The spiral will keep turning unless they find an effective, real solution. Forget keys and locks.

But I’m digressing. Dean looks surprised, shocked, and scared in that sort of childlike, raw way of his. So, yes, I think it’s likely that what he’s reading is a scenario of happiness. Real happiness. (My reading of the Dabb era is that its foundational theme is reality, so you’ll always find the word “real” when I make this kind of analyses). The way he calls the bar illusion “the dream” is another case of dramatic irony, because it is a dream, but also because it is just not real in a more profound sense. Dean’s real happy scenario is something he doesn’t even dare dream.

Just like the narrative is pushing Cas towards the point where he has to acknowledge and face the conditions of his happiness, it makes sense that Dean would also be pushed in a parallel direction. And of course being presented with this kind of knowledge would leave Dean shaken, just like the Empty situation is an allegory for Cas’ own complicated relationship with emotional accomplishment. Cas cannot let himself be happy, or he’ll be dragged away to nothingness... it’s an allegory for the fear of acknowledging what you want, because if you can’t have it, then you would be in even more pain.

Dean won’t let himself pursue what would make him happy because he believes that it’s unachievable, so he doesn’t let himself acknowledge what would make him happy - otherwise he’d suffer for the unattainability of it. But what if Billie has shown him that it is attainable, even by a tiny, tiny chance? The castle of cards of his own defenses crumbles.

Unlike what Sam seems to believe, Dean doesn’t thrive on trauma - he has built a complex castle of defenses and mechanisms that allow him to thrive despite the trauma. Yes, trauma makes him alert... sure, John’s drill-sergeant upbringing has made his sons into exceptional warriors, which has been more than useful to them in their lives. But that’s not really what has made them into them. That’s not what has made Dean strong. That’s something uniquely Dean that uses the tools offered by his traumatic past, but does not end there.

In order to reach happiness, Dean has to let go of the defenses that keep happiness away from him. One of those defenses is not allowing himself to acknowledge (to himself, to others) what he wants, what would make him really happy, because that would just bring him more pain, the pain of unattainability.

It would be interesting if indeed Death were basically forcing him to perform that acknowledgement - again, I don’t think the book contains information about how to be happy, how to deal with his trauma in a way that is kinder to himself. I don’t think the book says what Dean wants. But it’s possible that what he’s read places Dean in a position where he has to face that. After all, Michael’s role in the narrative is to reveal what characters (and everyone else is just a mirror for Dean, but also Cas because their narratives are running in parallel) want, and Billie’s reveal is happening because of Michael’s presence.

It would make sense that Michael is just a device, and that Dean actually learns the lesson he needs to learn with an initial nudge from Death, and then his own emotional labor (“that’s up to you”), because that’s what Dean has done multiple times. Death helps him learn how to live - it is poetic. (Dean is Death and Life at the same time after all, Light and Darkness, Humanity and Divinity... Dean is a structurally dualistic character, but I’m digressing.)

And now, I’ll end this post with a note that this is speculation and I could be dead wrong about the book, it’s a possibility I’ve explored, but I believe that the general thematic points stand.

#my spn thoughts #spn spec #spn meta #spn 14x10 #dean and death #dean and billie #dean and fate #dean and happiness #dean and trauma #need vs want #spn

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crimethinc · 5 years

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The Threat to Rojava: An Anarchist in Syria Speaks on the Real Meaning of Trump’s Withdrawal

Following Donald Trump’s surprise announcement that he is withdrawing US troops from Syria, we’ve received the following message from an anarchist in Rojava, spelling out what this means for the region and what the stakes are on a global scale. For background, consult our earlier articles, “Understanding the Kurdish Resistance” and “The Struggle Is not for Martyrdom but for Life.”

I’m writing from Rojava. For full disclosure: I didn’t grow up here and I don’t have access to all the information I would need to tell you what is going to happen next in this part of the world with any certainty. I’m writing because it is urgent that you hear from people in northern Syria about what Trump’s “troop withdrawal” really means for us—and it’s not clear how much time we have left to discuss it. I approach this task with all the humility at my disposal.

I’m not formally integrated into any of the groups here. That makes it possible for me to speak freely, but I should emphasize that my perspective doesn’t represent any institutional position. If nothing else, this should be useful as a historical document indicating how some people here understood the situation at this point in time, in case it becomes impossible to ask us later on.

Mark my words, Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw troops from Syria is not an “anti-war” or “anti-imperialist” measure. It will not bring the conflict in Syria to an end. On the contrary, what is actually happening is that Trump is stepping back and giving Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan a free hand to invade Rojava and carry out ethnic cleansing against the people who have done much of the fighting and dying to halt the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS). This is a deal between strongmen to exterminate the social experiment in Rojava and consolidate authoritarian nationalist politics from Washington, DC to Istanbul and Kobane. Trump aims to leave Israel the most ostensibly liberal and democratic project in the entire Middle East, foreclosing all the possibilities that the revolution in Rojava opened up for this part of the world.

All this will come at a tremendous cost in lives. As bloody and tragic as the Syrian civil war has already been, this could open up not just a new chapter of it, but a sequel.

This is not about where US troops are stationed. The two thousand US soldiers at issue are a drop in the bucket in terms of the number of armed fighters in Syria today. They have not been on the frontlines of the fighting the way that the US military was in Iraq.1 The withdrawal of these soldiers is not the important thing here. What matters is that Trump’s announcement is a message to Erdoğan indicating that there will be no consequences if the Turkish state invades Rojava.

There’s a lot of confusion about this, with supposed anti-war and “anti-imperialist” activists like Medea Benjamin endorsing Donald Trump’s decision, blithely putting the stamp of “peace” on an impending bloodbath and telling the victims that they should have known better. It makes no sense to blame people here in Rojava for depending on the United States when neither Medea Benjamin nor anyone like her has done anything to offer them any sort of alternative.

The worst case scenario now is that the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (TFSA), backed by the Turkish military itself, will overrun Rojava and carry out ethnic cleansing on a level you cannot imagine from wherever you are reading this. They’ve already done this on a small scale in Afrin. In Rojava, this would take place on a historic scale. It could be something like the Palestinian Nakba, not to say the Armenian genocide.

I will try to explain why this is happening, why you should care about it, and what we can do about it together.

To understand what Trump and Erdoğan are doing, you have to understand the geography of the situation. This site is useful for keeping up with geographical shifts in the Syrian civil war.

First of All: About the Experiment in Rojava

The system in Rojava is not perfect. This is not the right place to air dirty laundry, but there are lots of problems. I’m not having the kind of experience here that Paul Z. Simons had some years ago, when his visit to Rojava made him feel that everything is possible. Years and years of war and militarization have taken their toll on the most exciting aspects of the revolution here. Still, these people are in incredible danger right now and the society they have built is worth defending.

What is happening in Rojava is not anarchy. Yet all the same, women play a major role in society; there is basic freedom of religion and language; an ethnically, religiously, and linguistically diverse population lives side by side without any major acts of ethnic cleansing or conflict; it’s heavily militarized, but it’s not a police state; the communities are relatively safe and stable; there’s not famine or mass food insecurity; the armed forces are not committing mass atrocities. Every faction in this war has blood on its hands, but the People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) have conducted themselves far more responsibly than any other side. They’ve saved countless lives—not just Kurds—in Sinjar and many other places. Considering the impossible conditions and the tremendous amount of violence that people here have been subjected to from all sides, that is an incredible feat. All this stands in stark contrast to what will happen if the Turkish state invades, considering that Trump has given Erdoğan the go-ahead in return for closing a massive missile sale.

It should go without saying that I don’t want to perpetuate an open-ended Bush-style “war on terror,” much less to participate in the sort of “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West that bigots and fundamentalists of both stripes have been fantasizing about. On the contrary, that is precisely what we’re trying to prevent here. Most of the people Daesh [ISIS] have killed have been Muslim; most of the people who have died fighting Daesh have been Muslim. In Hajin, where I was stationed and where the last ISIS stronghold is, one of the internationals who has been fighting Daesh longest is an observant Muslim—not to speak of all the predominantly Arab fighters from Deir Ezzor there, most of whom are almost certainly Muslim as well.

The Factions

For the sake of brevity, I’ll oversimplify and say that today, there are roughly five sides in the Syrian civil war: loyalist, Turkish, jihadi, Kurdish,2 and rebel.3 At the conclusion of this text, an appendix explores the narratives that characterize each of these sides.

Each of these sides stands in different relation to the others. I’ll list the relations of each group to the others, starting with the other group that they are most closely affiliated with and ending with the groups they are most opposed to:

Loyalist: Kurdish, Turkish, jihadi, rebel

Rebel: Turkish, jihadi, Kurdish, loyalist

Turkish: rebel, jihadi, loyalist, Kurdish

Kurdish: loyalist, rebel, Turkish, jihadi

Jihadi: rebel, Turkish, Kurdish and loyalist

This may be helpful in visualizing which groups could be capable of compromising and which are irreversibly at odds. Again, remember, I am generalizing a lot.

I want to be clear that each of these groups is motivated by a narrative that contains at least some kernel of truth. For example, in regards to the question of who is to blame for the rise of ISIS, it is true that the US “ploughed the field” for ISIS with the invasion and occupation of Iraq and its disastrous fallout (loyalist narrative); but it is also true that the Turkish state has tacitly and sometimes blatantly colluded with ISIS because ISIS was fighting against the primary adversary of the Turkish state (Kurdish narrative) and that Assad’s brutal reaction to the Arab Spring contributed to a spiral of escalating violence that culminated in the rise of Daesh (rebel narrative). And although I’m least sympathetic to the jihadi and Turkish state perspectives, it is certain that unless the well-being of Sunni Arabs in Iraq and Syria is factored into a political settlement, the jihadis will go on fighting, and that unless there is some kind of political settlement between the Turkish state and the PKK, Turkey will go on seeking to wipe out Kurdish political formations, without hesitating to commit genocide.

It’s said that “Kurds are second-class citizens in Syria, third-class citizens in Iran, fourth-class citizens in Iraq, and fifth-class citizens in Turkey.” It’s no accident that when Turkish officials like Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu list the “terror groups” they are most concerned about in the region, they name the YPG before ISIS. Perhaps this can help explain the cautious response of many Kurds to the Syrian revolution: from the Kurdish perspective, regime change in Syria carried out by Turkish-backed jihadis coupled with no regime change in Turkey could be worse than no regime change in Syria at all.

I won’t rehash the whole timeline from the ancient Sumerians to the beginning of the PKK war in Turkey to the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS. Let’s skip forward to Trump’s announcement on December 19: “We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency.”

Has ISIS Been Defeated? And by Whom?

Let me be clear: Daesh has not been defeated in Syria. Just a few days ago, they took a shot at our position with a rocket launcher out of a clear blue sky and missed by only a hundred yards.

It is true that their territory is just a fraction of what it once was. At the same time, by any account, they still have thousands of fighters, a lot of heavy weaponry, and probably quite a bit of what remains of their senior leadership down in the Hajin pocket of the Euphrates river valley and the surrounding deserts, between Hajin and the Iraqi border. In addition, ISIS have a lot of experience and a wide array of sophisticated defense strategies—and they are absolutely willing to die to inflict damage on their enemies.

To the extent that their territory has been drastically reduced, Trump is telling a bald-faced lie in trying to take credit for this. Just as he did with the US economy, Trump is claiming responsibility for the results of the preceding administration’s policies. More importantly, the achievement he is claiming as his own is largely the work of precisely the people he is consigning to death at the hands of Turkey.

Under Obama, the Department of Defense and the CIA pursued dramatically different strategies in reference to the uprising and subsequent civil war in Syria. The CIA focused on overthrowing Assad by any means necessary, to the point that arms and money they supplied trickled down to al-Nusra, ISIS, and others. By contrast, the Pentagon was more focused on defeating ISIS, beginning to concentrate on supporting the largely Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG/YPJ) during the defense of Kobane in 2014.

Now, as an anarchist who desires the complete abolition of every government, I have no love for the Pentagon or the CIA, but if we evaluate these two approaches according to their own professed goals, the Pentagon plan worked fairly well, while the CIA plan was a total disaster. In this regard, it’s fair to say that the previous administration contributed to both the growth of ISIS and its suppression. Trump, for his part, has done neither, except insofar as the sort of nationalist Islamophobia he promotes helps to generate a symmetrical form of Islamic fundamentalism.

Up until December, Trump maintained the Pentagon strategy in Syria that he inherited from the Obama administration. There have been signs of mission creep from US National Security Advisor John R. Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who ultimately hope to undermine Iran on account of it supplying oil to China. This far—and no further—I can understand the concerns of a pseudo-pacifist “anti-imperialist” like Medea Benjamin: war with Iran would be a nightmare compounding the catastrophe brought about by the war in Iraq. So yes, insofar as the YPG and YPJ were forced to coordinate with the US military, they were working with unsavory characters whose motivations were very different from their own.

To sum up: what has brought about the by-now almost total recapture of the territory ISIS occupied isn’t rocket science. It’s the combination of a brave and capable ground force with air support. In this sort of conventional territorial war, it’s extremely difficult for a ground force without air support to defeat a ground force with air support, no matter how fiercely the former fights. In some parts of Syria, this involved the YPG/YPJ on the ground with US backing from the air. Elsewhere in Syria, it must be said, ISIS was pushed back by the combination of Russian air support and the loyalist army (SAA) alongside Iranian-backed militias.

Outside Interventions

It would have been extremely difficult to recapture this territory from ISIS any other way. The cooperation of the YPG/YPJ with the US military remains controversial, but the fact is—every side in the Syrian conflict has been propped up and supported by larger outside powers and would have collapsed without that support.

People employing the Turkish, loyalist, and jihadi narratives often point out that Kobane would have fallen and YPG/YPJ would never have been able to retake eastern Syria from Daesh without US air support. Likewise, the Syrian government and the Assad regime were very close to military collapse in 2015, around the time Turkey conveniently downed a Russian plane and Putin decided that Russia was going to bail out the Assad regime no matter what it took. The rebels, on their side, never would have come close to toppling Assad through military means without massive assistance from the Turkish government, the Gulf states, US intelligence services, and probably Israel on some level, although the details of this are murky from where I’m situated.

And the jihadis—Daesh, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda, and the others—would never have been able to take control of half of Iraq and Syria if the US had not been so foolish as to leave an army’s worth of state-of-the-art equipment in the hands of the Iraqi government, which effectively abandoned it. It also helped them that a tremendous amount of resources trickled down from the abovementioned foreign sponsors of the rebels. It also helped that Turkey left its airports and borders open to jihadis from all over the world who set out to join Daesh. There also appears to have been some sort of financial support from the Gulf states, whether formally or through back channels.

The Turkish state has its own agenda. It is not by any means simply a proxy for the US. But at the end of the day, it’s a NATO member and it can count on the one hundred percent support of the US government—as the missile sale that the US made to Turkey days before the withdrawal tweet illustrates.

In view of all this, we can see why YPG/YPJ was forced to cooperate with the US military. My point is not to defend this decision, but to show that under the circumstances, it was practically the only alternative to annihilation. At the same time, it is clear that this strategy has not created security for the experiment in Rojava. Even if we set aside ethical concerns, there are practical problems with relying on the United States—or France, Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, or any other state government with its own state agenda. As anarchists, we have to talk very seriously about how to create other options for people in conflict zones. Is there any form of international horizontal decentralized coordination that could have solved the problems that the people in Rojava were facing such that they would not have been forced to depend on the US military? If we find no answer to this question when we look at the Syria of 2013-2018, is there something we could have done earlier? These are extremely pressing questions.

No one should forget that ISIS was only reduced to their current situation by a multi-ethnic, radically democratic grassroots resistance movement, that incidentally involved international volunteers from around the globe. In view of Trump’s order to abandon and betray the struggle against ISIS, every sincere person who earnestly wants to put a stop to the spread of apocalyptic fundamentalist terror groups like ISIS or their imminent successors should stop counting on the state and put all their resources into directly supporting decentralized multi-ethnic egalitarian movements. It is becoming ever clearer that those are our only hope.

What Does the Troop Withdrawal Mean?

I’m not surprised that Trump and the Americans are “betraying an ally”—I don’t think anybody here had the illusion that Trump or the Pentagon intended to support the political project in Rojava. Looking back through history, it was clear enough that when ISIS was beaten, the US would leave Rojava at the mercy of the Turkish military. If the forces of the YPG/YPJ have dragged their feet in rooting ISIS out of their last strongholds, this may be one of the reasons.

But it is still shocking that Trump would rush to give up this foothold that the US has carved out in the Russosphere—and that the US military establishment would let him do so. From the perspective of maintaining US global military hegemony, the decision makes no sense at all. It’s a tremendous gift to Putin, Erdoğan, and ISIS, which could take advantage of the situation to regenerate throughout the region, perhaps in some new form—more on that below.

The withdrawal from Syria does not necessarily mean that conflict with Iran is off the table, by the way. On the contrary, certain hawks in the US government may see this as a step towards consolidating a position from which that could be possible.

In any case, Trump’s decision is big news. It indicates that the US “deep state” has no power over Trump’s foreign policy. It suggests that the US neoliberal project is dead in the water, or at least that some elements of the US ruling class consider it to be. It also implies a future in which ethno-nationalist autocrats like Erdoğan, Trump, Assad, Bolsonaro, and Putin will be in the driver’s seat worldwide, conniving with each other to maintain power over their private domains.

In that case, the entire post-cold war era of US military hegemony is over, and we are entering a multipolar age in which tyrants will rule balkanized authoritarian ethno-states: think Europe before World War I. The liberals (and anarchists?) who imagine that this could be good news are fools fighting yesterday’s enemy and yesterday’s war. The de facto red/brown coalition of authoritarian socialists and fascists who are celebrating this are hurrying us all helter-skelter into a brave new world in which more and more of the globe will look like the worst parts of the Syrian civil war.

And speaking from this vantage point, here, today, I do not say that lightly.

What Will Happen Next?

Sadly, Kurdish and left movements in Turkey have been decimated over the past few years. I would be very surprised if there were any kind of uprising in Turkey, no matter what happens in Rojava. We should not permit ourselves to hope that a Turkish invasion here would trigger an insurgency in northern Kurdistan.

Unless something truly unexpected transpires, there are basically two possible outcomes here.

First Scenario

In the first scenario, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) will make some kind of agreement with the Assad regime, likely under less favorable terms than would have been possible before the Turkish invasion of Afrin; both sides would likely make concessions of some kind and agree to fight on the same side if Turkey invades. If Russia signs off on this, it could suffice to prevent the invasion from taking place. Either YPG/YPJ or SAA will finish off the Hajin pocket, and the war could be basically over except for Idlib.

Both the Assad regime and the various predominantly Kurdish formations have been extremely hardheaded in negotiating, but perhaps the threat to both Rojava and the Assad regime is so extreme that they will choose this option. It is possible that this is one of the objectives of the Turkish threat, or even of Trump’s withdrawal: to force YPG to relinquish military autonomy to the Assad regime.

YPG, PYD, and company are not in a very good bargaining position right now, but the regime knows it can at least bargain with them, whereas if northern Syria is occupied by Turkish-backed jihadis and assorted looters, it is unclear what would happen next. Rojava contains much of Syria’s best agricultural land in the north, as well as oil fields in the south.

I can only speculate what the terms of this theoretical agreement might be. There’s lots of speculation online: language rights, Kurdish citizenship being regularized, prior service in YPG counting as military service so that soldiers who have been fighting ISIS all these years can return to being civilians rather than immediately being conscripted into SAA, some kind of limited political autonomy, or the like. In exchange, the YPG and its allies would essentially have to hand military and political control of SDF areas over to the regime.

Could Assad’s regime be trusted to abide by an agreement after they gain control? Probably not.

To be clear, it’s all too easy for me to speak abstractly about the Assad regime as the lesser of two evils. I’m informed about many of the atrocities the regime has committed, but I have not experienced them myself, and this is not the part of Syria where they did the worst things, so I more frequently hear stories from the locals about Daesh and other jihadis, not to mention Turkey. There are likely people in other parts of Syria who regard the Assad regime regaining power with the same dread with which people here regard the Turkish military and ISIS.

In any case, there are some signs that this first scenario might still be possible. The regime has sent troops to Manbij, to one of the lines where the massive Turkish/TFSA troop buildup is occurring. There are meetings between the PYD and the regime as well as with the Russians. An Egyptian-mediated negotiation between the PYD and the regime is scheduled to take place soon.

This first scenario does not offer a very attractive set of options. It’s not what Jordan Mactaggart or the thousands and thousands of Syrians who fought and died with YPG/YPJ gave their lives for. But it would be preferable to the other scenario…

Second Scenario

In the second scenario, the Assad regime will throw in its lot with Turkey instead of with YPG.

In this case, some combination of the Turkish military and its affiliated proxies will invade from the north while the regime invades from the south and west. YPG will fight to the death, street by street, block by block, in a firestorm reminiscent of the Warsaw ghetto uprising or the Paris Commune, utilizing all the defensive tactics they acquired while fighting ISIS. Huge numbers of people will die. Eventually, the Assad regime and Turkey/TFSA will establish some line between their zones of control. For the foreseeable future, there would be some kind of Turkish-Jihadi Rump State of Northern Syrian Warlordistan.

Any remaining Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians, Christians, and other minorities would be expulsed, ethnically cleansed, or terrorized. TFSA and related militias would likely loot everything they could get their hands on. In the long run, Turkey would probably dump the Syrian refugees who are now in Turkey back into these occupied areas, bringing about irreversible demographic shifts that could be the cause of future ethnic conflicts in the region.

We should not believe any assurances from the Turkish state or its apologists that this will not be the result of their invasion, as this is exactly what they have done in Afrin and they have no reason to behave differently in Rojava. Remember: from the perspective of the Turkish state, the YPG/YPJ are enemy number one in Syria.

Now let’s talk about Daesh. Despite the looming threat of invasion, SDF is still finishing off the Hajin pocket of ISIS. If it weren’t for the fact that Turkey is throwing Daesh a lifeline by threatening to invade, Daesh would be doomed, as they are surrounded by SDF, SAA, and the Iraqi army. Let me say this again: Trump’s giving Turkey the go-ahead to invade Rojava is practically the only thing that could save ISIS.

Trump has repeatedly said things to the effect that Turkey is promising to finish off ISIS. To believe this lie, you would have to be politically ignorant, yes—but in addition, you would also have to be geographically illiterate. This describes Trump’s supporters, if no one else.

Even if the Turkish government had any intention of fighting Daesh in Syria—a proposition that is highly doubtful, considering how easy Turkey made it for ISIS to get off the ground—in order to even reach Hajin and the Euphrates river valley, they would have to steamroll across the entirety of Rojava. There is no other way to get to Hajin. If you’re unfamiliar with the area, look at a map and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

The Assad regime holds positions right across the Euphrates River from both the SDF and Daesh positions, and would be willing and able to finish off the last ISIS pocket. As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather see the regime take the losses there to accomplish that than see YPG overextend itself and bleed any further. But the point here is that when Trump says something to the effect that “Turkey will finish off ISIS!” he is sending a blatant dog whistle to Turkish hardliners that they can attack Rojava and he won’t do anything to stop them. It has nothing to do with ISIS and everything to do with ethnic cleansing in Rojava.

If nothing else, even if Assad allies with the Turkish government, we can hope that the forces of the regime will still finish off ISIS. If Turkey has its way and does what Trump is talking about, beating a path all the way through Rojava to Hajin, they will likely give Daesh’s fighters safe passage, a new set of clothes, three meals a day, and this village I’m living in in exchange for their assistance fighting future Kurdish insurgencies.

So there it is: in declaring victory over ISIS, Trump is arranging the only way that ISIS fighters could come out of this situation with their capacities intact. It’s Orwellian, to say the least.

The only other option I can imagine, if negotiations with the Assad regime break down or PYD decides to take the moral high road and not compromise with the regime—who are untrustworthy and have carried out plenty of atrocities of their own—would be to let the entire SDF melt back into the civilian population, permit Turkey and its proxies to walk into Rojava without losing the fighting force of the YPG/YPJ, and immediately begin an insurgency. That might be smarter than a doomed final stand, but who knows.

Your silence is the echo of the bombs—a solidarity demonstration in Milan, Italy.

Looking Forward

Personally, I want to see the Syrian civil war end, and for Iraq to somehow be spared another cycle of war in the near future. I want to see ISIS prevented from regenerating its root system and preparing for a new round of violence. That doesn’t mean intensifying the ways that this part of the world is policed—it means fostering local solutions to the question of how different people and populations can coexist, and how they can defend themselves from groups like Daesh. This is part of what people have been trying to do in Rojava, and that is one of the reasons that Trump and Erdoğan find the experiment here so threatening. In the end, the existence of groups like ISIS makes their authority look preferable by comparison, whereas participatory horizontal multi-ethnic projects show just how oppressive their model is.

Overthrowing Assad by military means is a dead project—or, at least, the things that would have to happen to make it plausible again in the near future are even more horrifying than the regime is. I hope that somehow, some day, there can be some kind of settlement between the regime and YPG/YPJ, and the regime and the rebels in Idlib, and everyone else who has been suffering here. If capitalism and state tyranny are the problem, this kind of civil war is not the solution, although it seems likely that what has happened in Syria will happen elsewhere in the world as the crises generated by capitalism, state power, and ethnic conflicts put people at odds.

What can you do, reading this in some safer and stabler part of the world?

First, you can spread the word that Trump’s decision is neither a way to bring peace to Syria nor confirmation that ISIS has been defeated. You can tell other people what I have told you about how the situation looks from here, in case I am not able to do so myself.

Second, in the event of a Turkish invasion, you can use every means in your power to discredit and impede the Turkish state, Trump, and the others who paved the way for that outcome. Even if you are not able to stop them—even if you can’t save our lives—you will be part of building the kind of social movements and collective capacity that it will take to save others’ lives in the future.

In addition, you can look for ways to get resources to people in this part of the world who have suffered so much and will continue to suffer as the next act of this tragedy plays out. You can also look to support Syrian refugees who are scattered around the world.

Finally, you can think about how we could put better options on the table next time an uprising like the one in Syria breaks out. How can we make sure that governments fall before their reign gives way to the reign of pure force, in which only insurgents backed by other states can gain control? How can we offer other visions of how people can live and meet their needs together, and mobilize the force it will take to implement and defend them on an international basis without need of any state?

These are big questions, but I have faith in you. I have to.

A solidarity demonstration in Germany.

Appendix: Rival Narratives

Drawing on this helpful overview, here is a review of the narratives we often see from different sides in the Syrian civil war:

Loyalist narrative:

Emphasis on how the US and other countries supported and financed rebels for their own geopolitical ends as the main cause for the escalation of the conflict.

The existence of ISIS is mostly attributed to rebel support landing in the wrong hands and more fundamentally as a result of the fallout of the 2003 Iraq war.

Emphasis on links and cooperation between so-called moderate rebels and groups like Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in order to argue they are all part of the same problem.

Varying views on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and its legitimacy. This seems to be different from loyalist to loyalist, with some thinking they are almost as bad as traditional rebels and others seeing them as allies against ISIS and Turkish-supported rebels.

Western, gulf Arab, and rebel narrative:

Emphasis on the Arab spring and how the brutal suppression of (relatively) peaceful protests led to an escalation of the conflict and armed rebellion and eventually full blown civil war.

Existence of ISIS mostly attributed to Assad’s actions. Often claiming how his brutal actions and reliance on sectarian militias created an environment in which ISIS could grow and gain support. Moreover, the point is made that Assad’s military deliberately targeted other rebels more than ISIS, and hence is for a large part to blame for its rise.

Emphasis on how there is a clear distinction between moderate rebels and radicals, and we should separate the two in honest analysis.

Views on SDF ranging from unfriendly to outright hostile. Often coushed in emphasizing cases in which the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the SDF worked together. In milder forms, this narrative criticizes a perceived overreliance on Kurds in majority Arab areas, while still recognizing the legitimacy of the organization in majority Kurdish areas.

Turkish narrative:

The Turkish narrative is basically the same as the previous on most issues, with the important exception that the hostility towards the SDF intensifies to the extreme. Here, the links between the SDF and the PKK are emphasized and the SDF is characterized as an illegitimate terror organization that is a threat to Turkey and suppresses local Arabs.

Western, Kurdish narrative:

The conflict is often seen as a historic opportunity for the Kurdish peoples in their quest for nationhood. Emphasis on how Kurds were discriminated against before the war and how they can take matters into their own hands now.

The existence and expansion of ISIS is mostly blamed on Turkey. Especially Turkey’s passivity during the battle of Kobane is highlighted, along with accusations of direct support of ISIS and importing ISIS oil.

Regarding rebels, the views tend to come closer to that of loyalists. Rebels (in relevant areas, anyway) are seen either as Turkish proxies or as radical lunatics to whom Turkey can turn a blind eye. The line between rebels and ISIS is often blurred, though they aren’t lumped in together to the same extent as in the loyalist narrative.

SDF is seen as one of the only sane and moral armed actors in a battle otherwise characterized by bad versus bad. Both rebel and loyalist atrocities are emphasized to support this point of view.

ISIS and radical Islamist narrative:

The start of the conflict is seen as a great awakening of Muslims against their apostate Alawite overlords. Emphasis on the solidarity of foreign fighters towards their suffering Syrian brethren.

This perspective includes ISIS itself and also Al Qaeda and similar radical groups, who see ISIS as a group that betrayed the jihadi cause.

The rebels are seen as naïve sellouts serving the interests of foreign governments and implementing non-Islamic ideals on their behalf. Emphasis is also put on how rebels negotiate and reach deals with loyalists, only to be betrayed and lose territory.

SDF are seen as atheist apostates on the US payroll. The chief difference with Turkey is perhaps the emphasis on lack of religion rather than connections to the PKK.

There is a monument in Kobane marking the furthest point that the territorial expansion of ISIS reached in Iraq and Syria in 2014 during the battle of Kobane. ISIS took 85 percent of the city; they made it as far as this intersection before being turned around by fierce resistance.

In Hajin, where the last ISIS stronghold is, the American position is way behind the front, in artillery range but out of range of any weapons Daesh has, so they can sit there and pound away without being hit back, while the risks are run by ground troops of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). This is precisely what the Turkish army would do to us if Turkey invades Rojava. ↩

In fact, there are two major parties in Iraqi Kurdistan in addition to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). They each have their own armies and police; they fought an actual civil war once. They do not like each other at all. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Barzani family dynasty, is more closely aligned with Turkey and the US; it was more closely aligned with Saddam Hussein before. They have bad relations with the administration in Rojava; they are roundly despised here because they basically stood aside and let the catastrophe in Sinjar happen in their own backyard while the PKK scrambled to rush into the breach. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has better relations with Iran, PKK, and the administration here. There is a KDP-related militia called Rojava Peshmerga in Rojava; again, they have a poor reputation because they’ve spent the whole war doing very little while YPG has died in droves fighting ISIS. All this is simply to say that there is no single Kurdish position; there are reactionary Kurdish groups, too. ↩

Mind you, the Syrian rebels were never homogenous; among them, you can find both an element aligned to Turkey and jihadis and an element aligned more closely with YPG/YPJ. Unfortunately, many of those who were interested in more “democratic” solutions to the situation in Syria were forced to flee the country years ago. ↩

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corishadowfang · 5 years

Text

WIP Prep Tag Game

Tagged by @siarven--thanks for the tag!

Rules: Answer the questions, then tag as many people as there are questions (or as many as you can).

I debated back and forth about which WIP I’d do, but since I’m going to be entering the rewriting/editing phase soon, I thought I’d do it for On my Heart!

FIRST LOOK

1. Describe your novel in 1-2 sentences (elevator pitch)

A boy named Aiden is temporarily turned into a dragon by his Familiar, Kiru, in order to save his life--something that’s both incredibly illegal and incredibly dangerous. Now on the run, he enlists the help of a former police officer and a hermit with an unusual amount of knowledge about dragons to help prove he’s not the monster everyone thinks he is.

2. How long do you plan for your novel to be? (Is it a novella, single book, book series, etc.)

I’ve planned the story so that it’ll fit into a single book! Right now it’s approximately 250 pages, but after rewrites I think it’s going to be closer to 400 pages. (I ended up rushing through a lot of things to finish this draft, so...lots of additions are needed.)

3. What is your novel’s aesthetic?

It’s very...blue. This is probably because Kiru’s--and by extension, Aiden’s--primary color theme is blue. Most of the time when I imagine scenery there’s a mix of monochrome and blue-tinted colors with a couple muted colors thrown in.

4. What other stories inspire your novel?

The two most notable are the Fate series and Brave Story. Fate was actually one of the things that initially inspired the story (more accurately, it was a question that came up while I was playing Fate/Stay Night), and Brave Story has a nice mix of fantastical grounded by more relatable problems that I’d really like to emulate.

5. Share 3+ images that give a feel for your novel

They’re not neatly organized or anything, but there they are.

MAIN CHARACTER

6. Who is your protagonist?

The primary character the story follows is Aiden Cooley. He’s a sarcastic, adorkable child who really isn’t cut out for the nonsense he’s being put through.

7. Who is their closest ally?

Technically speaking, that would be these three:

Kiru, Aiden’s Familiar, who is something of a trouble-maker but cares deeply for Aiden

Gertrude, a very morally gray woman who would probably be really helpful if anyone could figure out what her motives are

And Jackie, an amputee who helps Aiden out of a combination of pity and worry that turning him in could actually cause bigger problems than helping him out.

8. Who is their enemy?

I joke that it’s himself, but that’s actually not entirely wrong. One of the biggest problems for Aiden is that he tends to sabotage himself, whether by accident or on purpose.

As far as outside problems go, though, the most immediate ‘enemy’ would be the police. They’re not really ‘bad guys,’ but they’re the major antagonists considering the position Aiden’s been put in. The wider-scope antagonist would probably be society at large, though it takes a while for this to dawn on Aiden.

9. What do they want more than anything?

He’d really, really like to just go back home and, you know…not be arrested. (He had other worries before the story’s start, and they get to be addressed throughout the course of the story, but this has quickly become his immediate concern.)

10. Why can’t they have it?

To give a really brief explanation about how some of the workings of the world: Familiars a readily-available for purchase, and, while all of them have the ability to turn their owners into dragons (should the owners so choose), the act has been outlawed both due to the fact that this would normally kill a user, and because dragons running rampant in the streets would generally cause a lot of panic. Aiden not only transforms into a dragon (albeit against his will), but is completely unharmed by the transformation. Basically, this means that even if he somehow manages to not be arrested, nothing’s going to be the same for him ever again.

11. What do they wrongly believe about themselves?

He tends to have very low self-esteem. To explain a little, he talks to his Familiar a lot because Kiru has higher artificial intelligence than most Familiars. However, most kids outgrow this habit by, like…ten, and since Kiru can’t actually talk to anyone but Aiden, the rest of his peers all think he’s pretty weird. This has kind of seeped into his psyche over the years, to the point where he agrees and assumes that no one would actually be interested in being around him and Kiru. He’s mostly convinced himself that he might be able to live a quiet, uneventful life where no one has to be disturbed by his ‘oddities,’ even though he wouldn’t be entirely happy doing so.

12. Draw your protagonist! (Or share a description)

OH GOSH. Okay, so, this picture is pretty old, but here’s a rough idea of what Aiden looks like:

PLOT POINTS

13. What is the internal conflict?

I’ve obviously already explained some of it for Aiden; there’s a lot about him learning how to move forward after an event that has drastically changed his life and how to find a ‘new normal,’ and also kind of learning to accept himself.

For Kiru, a lot of the conflict relates to his own sense of self. How much of him was created by Aiden as coping mechanism, and how much is himself? What kind of role does he really play in a world ruled by humans?

For Gertrude, a lot has to do with her own past failings…though I won’t say too much on that.

Jackie’s arc actually parallels and ties with Aiden’s. They complement each other, since Jackie has already started to learn how to find a ‘new normal’ after a life-changing event (the loss of her leg), and slowly helps Aiden come to terms with the situation through her own experiences. On a more personal note, her views on Familiars and the people who use them are challenged constantly through working with someone who’s so close to them.

14. What is the external conflict?

The biggest conflict revolves around both evading the police and figuring out a way to get Aiden out of a situation where there are no real easy answers. On a less important note, trying to understand why Aiden wasn’t affected by his transformation is a constant current in the background, and factors into some key areas of the story.

15. What is the worst thing that could happen to your protagonist?

The only remaining support system he has turning their backs on him would probably be pretty bad.

16. What secret will be revealed that changes the course of the story?

That’s spoilers.

17. Do you know how it ends?

That’s…actually a good question. I’ve finished the draft, so I know how that ends, and originally that was the ending I’d always envisioned for the story. However, I know this draft’s going to need a lot of edits and rewriting, so there’s a very strong possibility that a new ending will appear that works better. So, we’ll see if it stays the same or not!

BITS AND BOBS

18. What is the theme?

A pretty major over-arching theme is what you do when you’re in a situation where there are no good answers—where there is no clear-cut right and wrong, and you just have to try your best to pick the right option. This isn’t just present with the main characters, either; the police officers—especially Chief Harris, who hates this whole situation—and Aiden’s parents have plenty of their own struggles trying to figure out the right thing to do.

A smaller theme, though, is the subject of humanity—what makes us human, and, to use a trope name, “What measure is a non-human?”

19. What is a recurring symbol?

…Dragons, I guess? Or water, maybe, because it plays such a heavy metaphorical role in the story.

20. Where is the story set? (Share a description!)

On a large scale, it’s set in an alternate version of Earth where dragons and humans once coincided. The two races ended up fighting, and humans eventually drove dragons to extinction. A couple decades later, humans decided to try and make the power of dragons their own. This eventually led to them creating Familiars, which would bestow the power of dragons on humans (with the idea that they’d be less likely to turn on their own kind). Unfortunately, the dragon transformation was pretty fault due to the fact that it forces a person’s body to change and grow in unnatural ways. Familiars are still used in every-day life, though—and they’ve been given extra abilities to compensate for the fact that they can’t really be used for their original purpose.

On a smaller scale, the story takes place in the city of Provenance, aka “The Birthplace of Familiars.” It’s a medium-sized city that sits along the bank of a river and used to be the fishing village of White Water. Since the creation of Familiars and Familiar Co. (the primary Familiar manufacturing company), it’s started relying more and more on tourism and Familiar-based exports. Provenance is kind of this weird mix of historical, tourist trap, and modern city with a lot of weird legends and out-of-the-way places.

21. Do you have any images or scenes in your mind already?

Originally there were several scenes I had in mind, but as for this upcoming draft…I actually don’t? I might once I get through with editing, but right now there’s nothing major.

22. What excited you about this story?

So you can probably guess from the theme question, but I really like exploring difficult topics and morally-ambiguous situations in fiction. A lot of times it’s how I personally work out solutions to those problems (at least on a personal level), and exploring those themes can actually be pretty fun!

But I also really love the characters and their interactions. They’re basically one big messed up family and I love them.

23. Tell us about your usual writing method!

Honestly, it’s nothing very exciting. I usually pick out a song to listen to on repeat—most of the time it has some relation to the story, but other times it’s just one that I like a lot. Then I’ll set it going and start writing. I usually have a goal in mind. So, for example, “Get to the end of this part,” “finish this chapter,” or “write this many pages.” Basically this just makes sure that I actually make a decent amount of progress on it. And that’s…basically it? Sometimes to get myself inspired I’ll read world-building or analysis posts, but that’s not every time; it just kind of depends on my mood.

This was a lot of fun! Now to tag people...

I’ll tag @paladin-andric, @touchingmadness, @moonbow-ink, @diwrites, @sleepy-and-anxious, @fatal-blow, @focusdumbass, @thatsmybluefondue, @junglefae, @feathersandfortunes, @roselinproductions, @forlornraven, @aureliobooks, @maple-writes, @jess---writes, @aleshirewrites, @ad-drew, @nepeinthe, @novelier, @spacebrick3, @infinitelyblankpage, @insertpenname-here, @theta-lee, and anyone else who wants to do this! (No pressure if you don’t, of course; this one’s pretty long.)

#tag game #wip prep tag game #on my heart

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whetstonefires · 6 years

Text

d gray man liveblog part 4! (part 1)(part 2)(part 3)

No but seriously, Cyril Camelot is the English Foreign Minister and just staged an assassination attempt on himself for an excuse to declare war on the people he just spent a while negotiating an agreement with.

Why? In what way does this benefit the Noahs?

(...why is the name of the country censored, I feel like hoshino-san just didn’t want to try to come up with a plausible European country for England to go to war with in 18-mumblety.)

I mean Bookman says tragedy breeds akuma in his analysis, but they took Japan while it was so emphatically not at war that it had zero foreign relations at all; war is clearly not necessary for the Earl’s bargains to go through apace.

Cyril kind of looks like he just does this shit for fun.

...”the evil man who made the world his enemy” is a fascinating choice of words, Tykki Mik, I really wonder very hard about you.

And you’re right, when he’s not wearing his balloon costume, and talking normally, and buying flowers from little girls, he looks normal! Weird how that works.

Question: is that umbrella he declined so he could walk in the rain Lero? Does Lero have to share the Earl with other umbrellas outside of official monster business, or disguise himself as a normal bumpershoot when out in public? Is that servant another disguised akuma, or a normal person who has no idea?

...it’s probably an akuma.

YAY KRORY WAKE UP!

why so many chain. it’s not like he lost track of who his enemies were in that last fight, even when he was made of blood. rude to chain.

aw he cry. he cry! ;_; he cry for his friends!

this is the kind of sad boy i like. he can be annoying but not in, you know, a murdery way.

holy shit creepy ghost girl?! i...logically must have read this part before but i don’t remember it, damn i was bingeing like a mad thing.

where...where did the poison come from. why is Krory’s arm sticking out like that. what is going on.

Why Are The Order So Bad.

aaaaand cut to the kind of random hijinks that seem intended to lift the mood but tbh they’re kind of too grim in their own right.

lmao alternately this is an excuse to draw kanda and lavi as chibis and Allen with long hair.

If it’s not because of structural damage, why are they moving to a new base? No one’s said anything about the new headquarters being any more secure against frickin’ teleportation. Maybe the Pope just wants the Order distracted with moving chores?

(I like referring to the higher-ups at the Vatican as the Pope; I realize we have no actual evidence the actual Pope even knows any of this is happening, but if hoshino is gonna be having people shout that other people are ‘property of the Pope’ i’m gonna use the word Pope as often as I can get away with because

1) it makes the whole thing more ridiculous b) it emphasizes the European Gothic Via Japan vibe going on here which is at least 20% of the entertainment value and thirdly, ‘Pope’ is fun to say.)

Oh, right, Allen’s ongoing identity crisis! (it only gets worse from here, kid)

The bosses were logically correct to make Cross Marian do his ‘report to Vatican and be responsible’ part before giving him the pay-off of ‘allowed to talk to Allen’ because otherwise he’d just fuck off but damn it’s hard on the kid, being left hanging.

I absolutely do not believe for one second this business with Mana’s past and secret motives was planned before the series started, but that’s honestly for the best; it’s more wrenching when we didn’t have any more reason than Allen to suspect something was off.

...i like when nice clowns adopt people tho... :o(

not telling the brass or their stooge about your creepy extra reflection was a Good Call.

yes link really truly allen is a good kid who is not plotting evil shit. sheesh.

more Potion Accident gags, i’m sorry, i can’t keep up with your taste in mood whiplash and i never liked most slapstick anyway. the bunny ears are. strange.

...never mind who made the ‘talk like a cat’ potion, who packed that box Miranda spilled; that is such an absurd chaotic collection of items organize your shit people. eesh.

Lmao everyone’s #1 creepy ghost theory is, Komui Playing A Dumb Prank.

...okay, Allen’s reaction as the Matron gnaws on his arm, and the fact that everyone’s first assumption is that Allen has annoyed this very sensible woman to the point that she is communicating via teeth, manages to be funny but noooooo, why would you, not Awesome Shoes Lady after she made it through the Level 4 Akuma attack unscathed, come onnnnnn.

okay, uhhh...contagious vampirism zombie thing...lmao everyone gets worried about matron when she bites Miranda, everyone is super embarrassed when Miranda bites Noise, this is just some impressive Not Realizing Shit’s Fucked guys.

okay, zombie horde of various survivors of all the recent massacres.

uh, if this weren’t being dropped at a time of total emotional exhaustion, it would work better. it’s already working better the second time around for the fact that i took a break after the last arc.

considering it comes out monthly and we had a Noah interlude, it probably worked in the original context just fine, but daaaaaamn did this storyline piss me off the first time, all i even remember about it is the rage.

:D Lenalee rescued Tiny Kanda. Who for some reason can interpret her ‘nyah’ sounds.

...how is a stimulant drug contagious via biting.

i remember the first time i read this i naturally assumed the biting disease was derived from Krory. that still would have made more sense.

robot eats notebook, lol...bickering...”my pride won’t allow me to become a zombie” yes allen excellent logic you weirdo.

okay i’m done checking back in when slightly less stupid shit starts happening....

okay never mind the robot’s fireworks blew Allen through a wall, where Krory was suffering in chains, and then the blanket spontaneously combusted, and then there was somebody with an axe...

...and then Allen wakes up and is informed he was knocked out and concludes Krory’s situation was a dream oh come on.

krory is at the door! but being creepy! the robot refuses to open the door out of self-preservation! allen seduces the robot into risking its life!

...

‘this is nostalgic’ with the hero face on i can’t.

okay, so it was Krory, who apparently swallowed the entire bottle of poison, lid included? for some reason?

oh great there’s a parasitic zombie ghost thing riding Reever and sticking its face out his stomach. horror! nope, now played for laughs.

aaaand suddenly veering back into pathos. bonus info about evil human experiments!

...aaaaaand touching bonding moment for the Lees. Aww.

Not only is Komui protective and self-sacrificing, when he isn’t being psychopathic, he has absolved Lenalee of his having sacrificed his entire life to watch over her after she was kidnapped into this.

then a stupid gag! and the ghost does a creepy jealous possession thing! and meanwhile everything is on fire.

et cetera, mood whiplash back and forth at least once every other page...komui starts reciting from memory the names of every single person killed in the Order’s human experiments...

...i don’t think the names are intended as an additional gag, but most of them are fairly odd and many downright improbable, though none truly syllable-mashing outrageous. I’m rather fond of Asia Smet and Oona Boelyn.

a page and a half of heart-rending pathos, and then the robot falls off the ceiling with a huge syringe of ‘vaccine’ it synthesized from Krory’s blood because he was the first infected by the...stimulant...egad, that’s not how any of that works.

and then, and then...anyway then everyone was zombies and the boss from China came in off-panel and fixed everything, as you do.

i truly hate you hoshino katsura, all the more for the fact that i genuinely loved about 15% of that parade of neck-wrenching bullshit.

anyway! that’s all over and done with, we are now on a boat being cute, because allen is using the stolen teleportation Ark that only he can drive to open a door between the old Castle headquarters and this...uh...cave? that they’re moving into.

...oh hey Shadow Of Allen (XIV) is now sporting wings remarkably like the ones Krory had during his drugged vampire zombie freak-out. i bet that means nothing whatsoever.

man whenever Leverrierererererer turns up i hallucinate ominous music. smug assholish ominous music. slimier sounding than the Imperial March, you know?

that’s not just my biases, hoshino-san lights the panels very effectively to create that effect. egad, he’s going to be in command??? is that why the move, because it was easier to undermine komui’s authority if he was removed from his entrenched power base?

...we just covered last chapter that that castle was a leverrier family fortress originally tho. huh.

excessively creepy secret Pope police involved in isolating and depowering Allen.

also lol that is very Japanese-style religious magic going on, that is not what a Catholic ritual binding would look like at all. not that they have as much settled precedent, their demon-fighting standards run much more toward ‘make it go away.’

aw shit komui’s right there and he can’t do shit, best he can get is a promise that ‘if Allen is a good child’ he won’t die.

flashback! aw man allen the first lesson mana ever taught you was to make peace with the dead and let them lie. should’ve listened.

...man allen was a grouchy brat. i wonder what color his hair was, before it went white. haha apparently he acquired his adoptive dad by running away from the circus with him.

pfffffft little allen hated clowns, that achieves the level of actual irony...welp, suicide joke.

aw shit mana was too burned out on grief to cry for his dog but allen could, for the doggie that licked his hand once. imma cry now.

whoa actual conversation with Cross Marian! under the supervision of papal ninjas (known as Crow) within a magic cage of paper. and wow! an actual answer to a question! unprecedented!

...it isn’t labeled which of these kids was Mana and which was (the most recent incarnation of??) the Fourteenth but imma hazard a guess that the one with hair that matches little Allen’s is not Mana.

oh also Adam Puddinghead killed the 14th, i don’t think we officially knew that until now? or maybe it came up when he blew up Edo i don’t recall.

oh my god i was definitely bingeing too hard last time; by the time Cross Marian started referring to the 14th in the second person to Allen my capacity to be astonished or distressed was burned right the fuck out. i was just like ‘yeah yeah figured get on with it.’

it’s actually a pretty dramatic scene, but it’s weird to be getting this shit in straightforward exposition after all this absence of any information at all.

wait “the human implanted with” ... “the host for his revival” ... i can’t tell if Cross Marian is referring to whatever the normal noah transfer process is or some way 14 found of circumventing that.

ohhhhhh man this title page has tiny clown Allen and it is the cutest shit ever.

did i ever tell you guys one time when my mom was two and a half, she had her stage debut as the cutest little pigtailed clown? and she ran onstage toward her daddy just like they’d practiced and the whole audience burst into delighted laughter.

and Tiny!Mom turned to look at them in appalled horror, and u-turned right back around and ran offstage again.

no one had successfully communicated to her she was going to be laughed at by a bunch of strangers. possibly they didn’t expect a toddler to mind.

oh sure Cross Marian, tell the kid the horrifying truth about himself and his dad in the most overdramatic way possible, in front of witnesses, and then when he dissociates in horror just beat the shit out of him until he resets.

the amount of playing abuse for laughs in this series is one of the many emotional strains that led me to drop it the first time.

it’s honestly a contest sometimes who i currently hate most, Marian, you or Labradorito or the Earl. Ech.

‘no idea’ tch. but if you’re saying he implanted his memories into Allen before he died, then...the Earl caught up with the 14th really recently, then?! How long were he and Mana on the run? I totally forgot these details, wow. i suspect some of them will turn out to be false.

...why the fuck are you saying it like this? bastard.

wow CM you almost look spooked by the fact that allen cares more about the possibility that his dad never actually loved him than the prospect of having his mind eaten.

maybe he’d care more about the mind-eating if the 14th was the Earl’s ally instead of planning to use allen as a weapon to kill him? allen is already using himself as a weapon to kill the Earl.

oop, way to get him back on target! “what if i told you you’ll kill the people you care about?”

aaaand cut.

that was like ten chapters’ worth of blather, i need to get more efficient.

#catching up with d. grey man #d gray man #allen walker #d gray man spoilers #oooold ones but hey #abuse of power #idiocy #this writing style is PUNISHMENT #and ceasing to read was SELF-CARE #yet i persist #i am stronger than the me of a decade ago #stg #hoc est meum

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taaroko · 6 years

Text

Post-IW MCU Rewatch: Captain America: Civil War

Time for a bunch of in-fighting!

Was there any significance to those code words?

Howard and Maria. :(

Freaking Runlow.

I read something about how they’re all being very bad at undercover, sitting around in sunglasses and hats. They’re being like actors undercover from paparazzi, not low-profile spies. Whoops.

Runlow’s team is kinda lucky the rubble from that crash didn’t block their entrance.

This is some top notch fighting from both Cap and Sam. Sam’s wings are super versatile.

Whee, Steve getting a telekinetic boost from Wanda!

Ohh, it’s Nat who used the motorcycle as a projectile in this one. Okay. I thought it happened at least twice.

Heeeey Cap’s shield is half covered in soot. Symbolism.

FREAKING RUNLOW.

That blast was either going to kill everyone in the square or the people in that building. If it had been the former, it wouldn’t have been a big international crisis.

Aged-down Tony is easily the best of that kind of special effect we’ve ever seen. *suppresses memories of CG Leia*

I think that seminar was the first we've seen of the "philanthropist" part of billionaire genius playboy philanthropist. (Donating a collection of modern art to the Boy Scouts is too weird to count.)

Hi Dean Pelton.

Awkward actress recycling! But it was worth it. She’s so good as Mariah.

Vision’s social graces are so funny.

Uggggggh General Ross. Who is now Secretary of State.

Man that footage would’ve made Bruce so sad.

“For the last four years, you’ve operated with unlimited power and no supervision.” Wait does that mean it’s been four years since Winter Soldier? This timeline is a freaking mess.

I know where Thor and Banner are!

Okay, Zimo talks about painstakingly decrypting the Hydra files Nat leaked on the internet, but did he start doing that before Ultron or after? How long has it been since Ultron?

Tony’s face.

What makes this movie so good is that both Tony and Steve have very good points and multiple movies of backstory that brought them to those positions. The Tony of IM1 would’ve been anti-Accords, and the Steve from the ‘40s would’ve been pro-Accords, but here they are now. And the Accords were very inevitable after Ultron.

Noooo Peggy.

Headcanon: the non-Steve pall-bearers were Peggy’s son and grandsons.

“Plant yourself like a tree, look them in the eye, and say ‘No. You move.’”

I love that Nat’s priority is sticking together as a team, but she does get Steve’s position. (I mean obviously; she defects to his team halfway through.) Steve’s friendships with Nat and Sam are so wonderful.

Hey T’Challa!

Does the actor who plays T’Chaka have a glass eye? *internet research* Holy crap, he does. This is from John Kani’s IMDB page: Kani lost his left eye during a beating by South African police after returning home from a Broadway production of "Sizwe Banzi Is Dead", which was critical of Apartheid. He survived after being left for dead and subsequently won a 1975 Tony Award for his performance.

They did a really good job introducing T’Challa, and his arc in this movie is excellent.

Dangit Steve and Sharon would’ve kissed if Sam hadn’t interrupted.

More hats and sunglasses. You guys look real suspicious wearing hats and sunglasses INDOORS, especially when you start passing files around.

Man, Bucky just wants to buy some plums. Also, so cool that Seb got to go home to Romania and speak his native language for this bit.

Isn’t it easier to shoot out the lock than all three sets of hinges?

Bucky just came here to buy some plums and honestly he’s feeling so attacked right now.

So much multi-storey falling! I know these guys are all tougher than normal people but it’s still very stressful to watch!

These movies are always doing ridiculously cool things with motorcycles.

Rhodey makes a pretty good enforcer.

Vis and Wanda are adorable. But the conversation about the Mind Stone is really painful now.

The heck?! Tony thinks Wanda is unstable enough to cause another “incident” just by going to the store? Do Tony and Wanda still dislike each other or something? I guess they never reconciled over the whole thing where his tech killed her parents and she used her powers against him.

A fancy pen is not a convincing argument, Tony.

Steve was so ready to be thrilled for Tony if he and Pepper were gonna have a baby!

Tony just called Wanda a weapon of mass destruction. Either he’s playing devil’s advocate or he’s being really unsympathetic right now.

Bucky! Plug your ears and go LALALALALA!

I like how every time someone does the sleeper activation codes, he walks around Bucky in a circle. Is that part of it or just a cool filming thing?

Aaaaargh that elevator shaft fall.

Tony’s face when Bucky fires his gun into his glove.

Nat’s signature move is useless against Bucky.

RECOGNIZE YOU FROM WHEN?! The mission he foiled, or something else? I must know. Please answer this question, Black Widow movie.

Okay. The helicopter thing. It does not make sense. It should’ve just lifted Steve right off the ground. It is capable of carrying several passengers. One dude hanging onto it when there’s only a single occupant would not weigh it down. The part where he holds onto the railing and keeps it from flying away does work, though.

Heeeeey the scene with Bucky’s arm in the clamp is the exact midpoint of the movie. I don’t know why I find that interesting, but suddenly I very much want to analyze the significance of these moments. This one is a major turning point. The revelation of other Winter Soldiers. Team Cap now has an urgent mission.

Tony has an arc reactor scar!

HI PETER! *hug attacks him*

I love every single second of Peter’s intro scene.

“It’s a long story. I was—” “Lordy! Can you even see in these!” Bahaha, Tony cut off even a conversation of origin story.

Okay, the moment Tony leaned forward while Peter was talking obliquely about great power and responsibility. That was when he became emotionally invested in this kid. They’re both motivated by a sense of guilt and obligation.

Wanda and Clint’s methods for getting past Vision makes their team lose a bit of high ground.

Steve and Sharon’s kiss could’ve been handled less like an afterthought, but the reason I’m still cool with it is Sam and Bucky’s reactions.

How’d these three big dudes end up in a little VW Beetle anyway?

Hahaha, each team has a fanboy on it. Scott on Team Cap and Peter on Team Iron Man.

“Thinks for thanking of me!”

Yessss. Airport fight.

Um, why did Tony not even pause when Cap mentioned the other five Winter Soldiers?

Oh Peter I love you so much. And I love that Tom has this rivalry with Anthony and Seb in all the behind the scenes stuff.

“He also said I should go for your legs.” Man this is almost a vine reference.

Scott in Tony’s suit is hilarious.

Scott’s reaction to becoming Giant-Man is probably the single greatest two seconds in the movie.

Man, Clint just wants to make new friends, but T’Challa isn’t interested in this Avenger nonsense.

More tasing!

100%, Peter is trolling these geezers by pretending he’s not a gigantic Star Wars nerd.

It took me several watches to realize that when Scott says “Does anyone have any orange slices,” he’s making a reference to little league sports, and how the moms bring orange slices for after the games.

Tony went to check on Peter even though they hadn’t caught Steve and Bucky yet!

Rhodey’s fall is horrific. And the way they frame it so that you only see the ground when he hits it. Agonizing.

Part of me thinks Rhodey should’ve died right there, but there is rather a lot of precedent for falls not being fatal if you’re in an Iron Man suit. And if he’d died, I don’t think they ever would’ve been able to get past this split. Getting kinda paralyzed is an acceptable compromise.

“Are you incapable of letting go of your ego for one goddamn second?” Okay that is a really interesting line. Tony is being pretty egotistical about the concept of surrendering accountability to the UN. He has been rather bad at considering alternatives. Admittedly, he’s on the clock, and then worse people will go after his friends, but he’s allowing for zero nuance here. He knows these people. He knows they don’t do things without good reasons. Steve was right that you can’t let accidents stop you from doing the right thing. Tony is letting it cripple him.

Tony is practically on Team Cap at this point, with the secretly flying after him and all.

Hahaha, Nat has a labeled gun rack. And Bucky is using her guns!

I’m freaking pissed at the trailer for this movie. It would have been a very good twist that instead of going to Siberia to fight five more Winter Soldiers, they were walking into a trap where the in-fighting was about to become far more personal. But I didn’t get to experience that twist, because the trailer includes shots of Tony fighting Bucky and Steve in this location. That trailer made me stop watching trailers entirely for over a year. I do think trailers can be good so you know at least the type of movie you’re about to see, but they should not give away stuff like this. I think Marvel has gotten better at that since then.

Okay, so it’s been over a year since Ultron.

Green is not a flaw in blue eyes, jerk. It’s cool.

Surveillance cameras don’t usually have sound. But oh boy this is devastating.

This moment. Tony coming apart and attacking Bucky. This is exactly the same thing that Peter Quill does to Thanos. This is the reason Tony figures out what Peter’s about to do before he does it and tries to get him to stop and think. But he knows pretty well that there’s no stopping and thinking in a situation like this.

Zimo is a lot like Frank Castle, except that his family died as accidental collateral damage, not a targeted setup.

“The living are not done with you yet.” Such a great line.

“I could do this all day.” Tony has taken the role of the bully from the first one now.

I think for a second, Tony was legit afraid Steve was going to kill him. But Steve was never the one driven to that point. This still does not count as Steve having a dark side.

Okay, Steve dropping the shield was pretty much a concession. You don’t want me using the shield your dad made if my best friend killed him? Fair enough.

TONY STANK.

Tony trolling Secretary Ross will never stop being funny.

Okay, on the whole, while I sympathize more with Cap, I think I’m actually on Team Iron Man when it comes to the Accords. The Accords are an overcorrection of long-running problem. There should have been oversight this entire time, and I think the idea is that SHIELD was that oversight until Winter Soldier. Steve didn’t want to be the dupe of a corrupt system again, so he no longer tolerated oversight, but that really can’t be his call. How transparent are the Avengers being about their missions? He doesn’t run around saving people from street thugs, he does military-style operations all around the world. That’s not the kind of thing anyone should be able to make unilateral decisions about. He’s doing what Tony used to do in his solo films. But now that the PR has gotten bad enough and the novelty of superheroes has worn off, suddenly everyone realizes it’s not a great plan to let them run around unsupervised.

But Cap’s side of the argument is valid too. Superheroes save the world. Collateral damage is a much better outcome than what would’ve happened if they hadn’t been there. Obadiah would’ve continued supplying both sides of conflicts in the Middle East, stoking the fires of war for his own gain. Red Skull would’ve blown up most of the major cities in the US and taken over. Killian would’ve had the world on its knees with his scam. Malekith would’ve destroyed all the nine realms. Loki would’ve taken Earth. Hydra would’ve wiped out anyone who could challenge their reign of terror with Project Insight. Etc. Some of the villains rose up as consequences of the heroes (Ivan, Ultron, and Zimo, for instance), but most of the threats exist independent of the heroes’ actions, which is why we need heroes.

After how much I’ve loved Tony in all the movies so far (though he was a bit iffy in Ultron), I was really surprised by how many moments he has of being kind of a jerk in Civil War. But it doesn’t make me dislike him. This is his guilt complex on overdrive. And losing it over finding out about how his parents died is heartbreaking. But the most redeeming thing for him in the movie is Peter Parker. He recognized a similar guilt-based motivation in Peter while they talked, and in that moment, he became extremely protective of this kid. He brings him in because he knows he’s got a really handy method of incapacitating people without harming them. He’s not recklessly endangering a child, because he knows none of the Avengers will use lethal force. And his concern for Peter’s well-being is actually what costs him victory in the airport fight. He could’ve apprehended Steve and Bucky, but instead he had to make sure Peter was okay.

So...if Thor and Bruce had been in this. Thor wouldn’t be cool with being beholden to Midgardian governments. He cooperates as a courtesy, but he doesn’t actually answer to Earth authority. And I’m pretty sure he’d be very sympathetic to Steve about Bucky, given that it’s a rather similar situation to him and Loki. Bruce, on the other hand, has never felt confident about his ability to stay in control, and he was a major source of collateral damage in multiple countries in Ultron, not to mention the extra footage Ross showed the team. He’d probably think Bucky needs to be under guard for the same reason. I think he’d not only side with Tony but be relieved that Tony was on the side of the Accords. However, you really can’t have two powerhouses like Thor and Hulk in this fight. On their own, they could demolish the entire opposing team. The only option would be to keep them fighting each other the whole time, which would be kind of lame. Much better for them to have a gladiator battle on trash planet where no on else can steal their thunder. (I am not sorry.)

My mind is pretty much blown by how well the MCU has traveled the path from the first few movies to here, and from here to Infinity War. The Avengers have pretty much been getting broken down since Ultron. This was where they fell apart. Infinity War is the consequences of falling apart.

#captain america: civil war #captain america #iron mask #steve rogers #tony stark #mcu rewatch #infinity war spoilers #avengers

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