#and fundamentally changed me as a person on a deep level! there’s a lot of things i used to like about myself that i don’t think i’m ever | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

linisiane · 7 months

Text

The Self-Aware Player of Harry Du Bois

It's fascinating to me to think about how satire is used as the 'touch grass' or 'be fucking for real' genre. Oftentimes it's making fun of tropes/conventions by humorously contrasting them with reality, which is exactly what Disco Elysium is doing with the RPG!

It goes hand in hand with the idea of RPGs as escapist power fantasy. RPGs are often thought of as the ultimate self-insert fantasy by its detractors or worst players, ahem looking at all those DND horror stories about entitled mangsty murderhobos.

One of the most infamous criticisms of Disco Elysium is its lackluster combat.

ID A screenshot of a random forum discussion post by dungeon master Zed Duke of Banville. It reads: "Disco Elysium has neither combat nor exploration, and therefore is missing two of the three fundamental components (or sets of components) that define the RPG genre." End ID

The game has essentially bordered off your ability to make Harry into a power fantasy murderhobo because you just are physically unable to equip an longsword or cuisse to murder your average citizen on the street of Martinaise.

But even on a less mangsty level, it subverts a lot of the basic expectations of RPGs.

Like the encounter with the racist lorry driver! You never get the ability or quest to change his mind, you only choose how you react to him.

Where other RPGs might let you act as the white savior or the white knight of chivalric romance, no questions asked, you're changing the minds of everybody who's wrong so we can all get along, Disco Elysium really makes you confront your ability to whiteknight, makes you confront if whiteknighting is even helpful, and why you wanted to whiteknight in the first place.

It’s part of the fun/humor experience of Disco Elysium that you at first expect to solve the world’s problems with a couple quests and lines of ‘good’ dialogue and then get socked in the faced with the fact that yeah, you can’t do much, you’re one person, what did you expect, asshole? Cuno doesn't fucking care!

By subverting our RPG expectations, it forces us to become more aware that these expectations even exist and how they fall short of reality. Yet, despite this subversion, the world of Disco Elysium feels so much realer to us.

ID a screenshot of Disco Elysium dialogue YOU - "Don't call it a dump, you've made it nice and cosy here." NOVELTY DICEMAKER - "Yeah." She stares out of the window, not really hearing your words. "Or maybe it's the entire world that's cursed? It's such a precarious place. Nothing ever works out the way you wanted." "That's why people like role-playing games. You can be whoever you want to be. You can try again. Still, there's something inherently violent even about dice rolls." "It's like every time you cast a die, something disappears. Some alternative ending, or an entirely different world...." She picks up a pair of dice from the table and examines them under the light. End ID

Like, Neha is highlighting this little meta element of how you can stack your Harry in any RPG to pursue a certain ending or situation, but the actual outcome is still influenced by a dice roll out of your control.

A lot of the satirical humor in Disco Elysium comes from the absurdity that you can do everything right or everything wrong, and the dice can still fuck it up or save it for you—not just for things like high-fantasy attacks, but mundane things like remembering your name.

The dice are, at their core, about how RPGs aren't just for the control fantasy, of winning high-fantasy battles, but also can represent life as it is, mundane and uncontrollable.

Similarly, Harry is clearly written—complete with all the 'lore' that this would entail—to couch his RPG protagonist nature in the real.

If RPG characters are blank slates? Let's give ours amnesia! Need fast travel?! Kim teases the 41st Precinct for constantly running everywhere by calling it the Jamrock Shuffle. He needs to have deep and intimate conversations with everyone, even when they're strangers? Yeah, that's so weird we gave him the name 'Human Can-Opener,' and everybody remarks on his uncanny manipulation skills.

It's commenting on difference between controlling an RPG avatar and navigating in a human body.

As Kurvits said: “In reality we do not have control, or complete control, of our minds. Just like our body, it is something that we give-not even commands wishes to, and we hope it's gonna do it. We hope it's not gonna break down, we hope it's not gonna rebel against us.”

In one type of RPG fantasy, we don't even question our total control and even assume the joy is from the control.

But in Disco Elysium, we lack control and find joy in it anyway. That is the fun of the game making us, the players, 'self-aware' about its RPG elements, and it especially resonates with anybody not able-bodied, anybody neurodivergent.

#disco elysium #metas #My thoughts #harry du bois #harrier du bois #human can-opener #jamrock shuffle #yeah so im reposting my meta because i worked really hard but i feel like it was too long for anybody to appreciate :')

335 notes · View notes

phoenixkaptain · 11 months

Text

Honestly I can’t help but find it a bit reductive the way some fans act like Luke Skywalker is only ever adorable and he’s never intimidating.

Pardon me for saying this, but how fucking rude! This man killed a rancor with all the odds against him. He didn’t kill Darth Vader, but he stood over Darth Vader’s fallen form, a position that he put Darth Vader in himself. He stared down at the collapsed body of the Emperor’s attack dog and he thought about killing him. He considered killing him. Luke’s death count is well over a million people. The blood of well over a million people stains his hands. You don’t think that’s the kind of thing that changes a person? You don’t think that’s the kind of thing that would change someone on a deep, fundamental level?

To his enemies, he’s a spectre, a myth, he’s like chasing smoke through the air. But, he’s a spectre to his allies, too. Nobody knows where Luke is, aside from maybe Leia, because Luke wanders. Whether you’re looking at the extended universe or the Disney universe, Luke spent a long time going to seemingly random places without telling anyone before he left.

Don’t you think that Luke would be terrifying, from either side? This man who destroyed the Death Star, and with it, one million people. This man who can vanish without a trace. This man who wanders the galaxy and smiles in the face of danger. This man who witnessed the death of Death himself, Darth Vader, the only person with a kill count higher than Luke’s. And this man watched him die, and reports vary on whether or not he was the one who killed him.

The Rebels must hold Luke on another level. They must view him as untouchable. They view him as a Jedi of old, but one of the Jedi of old who were more akin to gods than men. Who’s going to speak against a man who could silence you without raising a finger? Even if they know he won’t hurt them, don’t you think there’s always that trickle of fear in their hearts, sending a chill down their spines? Don’t you think there’s doubt? A voice that says, “First was the Death Star. Second was the Emperor. You could be next, but you wouldn’t even rank as above a worm on his list”?

And it goes without saying that he’s a monster to his enemies. He’s on the same level as a kraken to a sailor. They know that he would not hesitate to kill them. They know that being a foot soldier doesn’t mean they won’t die if they get in his way. He’s a man who can break out of traps that are thought to be impossible to break out of. He’s a man who can crumble death troopers like tin cans without strain. He’s a man who is not on the same level as these mortals, and how could they ever forget that?

It’s incredibly reductive of a complex and three dimensional character to act like he can’t be taken seriously. It’s reductive not to take him seriously. If you’re writing something with Luke in it, no matter what role you’re having him take on, you have to take him seriously! Because you have to take ALL of the characters you write seriously!

That doesn’t mean you can’t mock him. Of course, makingn fun of characters is how a lot of people show their love for the character. But you can’t act like Luke Skywalker always fails at being intimidating. That’s reductive to the character, but it’s also rather rude to Mark Hamill, isn’t it? You’re saying that a talented actor is bad at acting. Hamill took the role seriously, and you can feel that when you watch the movies. At the very least, grant him the distinction of being passable. His acting isn’t perfect, sure, but it’s not like Luke never comes across as intimidating!

I don’t know. It bothers me when people reduce the character down to just being cute. He is! He’s hot, I’ve had a crush on Mark Hamill specifically since I was like ten, Luke Skywalker wears clothes that are incredibly flattering despite the fact that they shouldn’t be so flattering and it’s very attractive and sometimes my heart flutters when I see him in his orange jumpsuit, but none. Of. That. Matters. Because you can’t just act like all people who are attractive can’t also be scary. You can’t just pretend that horror monster Luke Skywalker can’t be both intimidating and adorable.

It’s like enjoying Leia only for the way she looks in a bikini. You’re reducing a well-written character down to their looks. And you CAN like a character just for how they look! That isn’t morally wrong!! Thought crimes were made up by the church because they want all human beings to feel as sinful as the lying sons of bitches are themselves!!! If you like a character just because you find them cute or hot or whatever, that’s! Just! Fine!

But please try to remember that enjoying the way someone looks isn’t the only way to enjoy someone. This rule goes for reality and fiction both. And I know I’m coming across as such a weirdo, telling you how to think, but I’m not trying to tell you how to think. I’m trying to help you understand that I am shorter than Luke Skywalker and I have made grown men quake, so seeing a character be reduced to being “cute” fills me with irrational rage at least partially because of the misogeny I faced in my youth.

#star wars #luke skywalker #the inane ramblings of a madman #long post #this is what makes it difficult to enjoy luke content on here #some of you treat him #like he has no character traits #you treat him as a blank slate to put whatever you want on #that just isn’t the case #luke is a very well written and acted character #he is stubborn and he is decisive and he has defining traits #that people choose to leave out #but that make it so you’re no longer writing luke skywalker #you’re just writing an oc with the same name

159 notes · View notes

abnerkrill · 1 year

Text

Conservatism is baked into pro-fidelity adaptation arguments

Aka, what incorrect lessons the Percy Jackson and Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptations taught fandom, and why the Internet is mostly wrong about The Rings of Power.

I don't particularly like the film adaptations of Percy Jackson and Avatar: The Last Airbender, but it's not because they "changed things" (and it's certainly not for Annabeth's hair color.) They're bad films purely because they're bad films, lacking the original texts' (Riordan's books/the ATLA show) charm, personality, point of view, and humor. Crucially, they both lack the essentials of plot and characterization and contain ill-fitting humor, bombastic CGI, and appeals to "mainstream" popularity that didn't actually appeal to any kind of mainstream because audiences are slightly too sensible to fall for something that cheap.

But fandom as a whole, and a whole rash of individual fans, took the wrong lessons away from these failed adaptations. People started to complain solely about superficial changes made (Annabeth's hair, the poor/problematic ATLA casting) and came to the conclusion that if the adaptations were only more faithful to the source material, they would've made good movies. (Which is why Riordan and the ATLA showrunners now are so hellbent on proving their new takes will be faithful. Because the fans are feral and bloodthirsty about it.)

Which is wrong. Because films are films, not books/animated shows. The medium demands fundamental, structural modifications. Films have more compact run-times than books and animated shows, and different dramatic shapes. Films are made for a 1-sitting experience—for this type of heroic quest story, it's always a 3-act structure, play credits. The medium necessitates changes. (Since Percy Jackson/ATLA/ROP are TV shows, not films, I'll caveat that TV shows are structurally even more difficult. Not only do you need to balance season arcs and their dramatic shapes, you need sufficient dramatic push-and-pull on an episode-to-episode basis.) On this level, we can agree fidelity is, to some degree, a myth.

Going deeper, though, I argue that fidelity is not only a myth, but also an innately conservative argument that prioritizes "keeping things the same" at the expense of "making something actually good and worthwhile." Fidelity, of course, means faithfulness, but the only other place you commonly hear the word "fidelity" is in the context of marriage and relationships. Who needs to stay faithful? Husbands and... well, really, mostly wives, in the Christian cultural imagination. Why? Purity and sanctity, and freedom from sin, which sounds a lot like fandom purity culture and the Madonna/whore dichotomy transplanted into another realm. Yes, fandom has created a sanctity/sinning, Madonna/whore dichotomy for adaptations. On one hand are the Good and Pure Adaptations that do not stray from the Lord's course (the author's original text.) On the other hand we have The Very Sinful Whore Adaptations, like Rings of Power.

I know a lot of fans had a deep emotional whiplash to Rings of Power, I among them. I was hesitant because I don't trust large profit-driven corporations like Amazon and especially because I despise Bezos (and would support pirating all Amazon material, let's be real.) I was hesitant also because there was such immediate, widespread backlash to the costumes and casting and trailers, it was easy to jump on the bandwagon and nitpick details—backlash that took advantage of my vulnerable emotional state because of how much I care about Lord of the Rings. LOTR, both books and movies, was incredibly formative and important for me and my whole generation, and if it felt like this new adaptation would taint it—well, you weren't alone in thinking that.

(The ROP writers room, of course, operates independently from Bezos and corporate Amazon. But for those participating in the backlash, nevermind that there are hundreds and thousands of dedicated artists and artisans on the show! We hear Amazon, we have an instinctive response that makes us unable to conceive of the show as an artistic endeavor. Still: the writers and artists on ROP are just that, writers and artists. With Amazon's money, they hired some of the best people working in the industry, and from all accounts there wasn't all that much corporate interference. Or... at least about as much corporate interference that Peter Jackson and every other director and writer deals with.)

(Also pause to note that there was immense and similar backlash to the Peter Jackson films as there currently is to Rings of Power. Even think back to the Hobbit trilogy backlash not one decade ago. This is the exact same phenomenon, we just find ourselves on varying sides of the equation depending on our age and experience.)

I'm sorry to say that everyone who jumped on the ROP backlash bandwagon before the show was even released was manipulated and taken advantage of by alt-right, pro-culture-war trolls, tradcaths, and bad actors. I include myself among those duped by the toxic discourse, because as late as March of 2022 I was telling friends I didn't want to hear a single thing about the LOTR show, I was so mad at it already. Mind you that we'd barely had posters at the time, let alone any real information about the show. It was suspect and evil already in our minds.

How do I know it was trolls and not genuine, good-faith criticism driving the response? Firstly, because pop culture divisiveness is a well-known, extremely effective tool of Russian troll farms to further divide democratic nations. There's an excellent academic paper by Morten Bay at USC about how Russian trolls utilized trolls spreading conservative backlash to Star Wars: The Last Jedi to stoke political division. Guarantee you that ROP casting, Little Mermaid casting, Marvel casting, and every other liberal/conservative divide in pop culture has been used similarly by Russian troll farms to stoke American political division. It's not even up for debate—take a look at Bay's research to see the numbers. ROP is a great target for trolls because it's so important to so many people.

Second, conservative Catholic publications published many reviews and thinkpieces that are highly critical of the show. Imagine my surprise then when well-meaning liberals and progressives on Twitter and Tumblr were sharing these pop culture critiques and fully agreeing with them. Unfortunate times when your own baked-in, uninterrogated need for textual fidelity turns out to be a tradcath line of thinking.

Finally, you have only to look at Youtube and Instagram comments on anything ROP-related to see that the vast majority of anti-ROP vitriol is racist, sexist, and/or tradcath and otherwise fascist in nature. I've read a lot of comments because I lack self-control and the complaints really come in one of two flavors: fidelity arguments, and straight-up nasty racism. Or both. Unsurprisingly the two are married, because both types are yearning for an unpolluted, faithful, and ultimately conservative take on Tolkien.

I liked Rings of Power a lot once I actually watched it, though it took me two or three episodes to break through the unfortunate bandwagoning and negative conditioning I had internalized from social media responses. It's not entirely "faithful", which turns out to be a wonderful thing because there are things Tolkien never acknowledged that the show ought to. Like the degradation and dehumanization of the Uruk race. Or the potential for ostensibly noble Elves like Galadriel to dance on the edge of corruption because of her thirst for vengeance. Or (at least I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that they make good on the hints of this idea in Season 2 and beyond!) how Númenor's fall and destruction is an ultimate test of religious faith for the Faithful because how could Eru have allowed it? We could've had a Rings of Power that ignored those themes and subplots because they're not in Tolkien's texts, but it would've been a loss; they're the most compelling parts of the show.

Okay, I promise I'm leading towards a conclusion. It's this: misdirected Percy Jackson, ATLA, and Rings of Power complaints were born from fan culture transposing Christian purity culture onto adaptations, with extreme and emotionally-charged backlash against adaptations that aren't considered faithful. But adaptational fidelity is both an unrealistic goal and an inherently conservative one. Politically and artistically, progressives should be the first to want interesting, new, surprising, compelling interpretations of favorite texts. That's how new ideas and perspectives can proliferate, sparking conversation and ideas and more forward-thinking instead of stagnation and just repeating the same stories endlessly. (Funny how everyone complains about endless sequels and remakes, but the second adaptations make changes people also complain. Can't win!)

But fan attitudes are also revelatory in that they show how much fandom is only superficially progressive. Tolkien fans—even the most liberal—are desperately, slavishly loyal to the Catholic politics of a 20th century white male author (one who, let us never forget, said his Orcs looked like the ugliest Asians [author's disdainful paraphrase.] and the Romantic, Christian-y, black-and-white morality and aesthetics of Peter Jackson's films. ROP's girlboss Galadriel was a funny jokey meme, nevermind that most of the commentary is disgustingly misogynistic; even liberals don't like girlboss Galadriel because, I suppose, ethereal perfect queen Galadriel with an absolutely static character arc is a more compelling character to them? (Unsure why angry rageful Galadriel isn't a feminist favorite on this website—oh, except there's an obvious answer: people's progressive credentials are shallow and uninterrogated, and we don't like angry women who are in the wrong and need to change.)

And then there's Bronwyn, who I've seen criticized for not being a consistent character (as if she should only be a mom or only a leader or only a lover. I think it's realistic and very cool for her to contain multitudes.) Or Míriel, last queen of Númenor who's bound to die a tragic death—I swear it made me want to grind my teeth into dust when I read that this was bad and racist of the writers because she's a woman of color and her storyline involves her getting deposed and dying. As if it doesn't make complete, heart-wrenching sense for a women of color to desperately fight a losing battle against corrupt enemies. As if women of color don't also deserve to be tragic, noble heroines. I think it goes back to the fact that these women contain multitudes, an immense upgrade from Tolkien's women, who with the notable exception of Eowyn are pretty shallow characters.

I almost went and made a caveat here that it's okay for you to dislike the show if you want. Which, I guess, sure, I'm not making decisions for you. But I suspect that if people interrogated their dislike for ROP's Galadriel, Bronwyn, Arondir, Míriel, and other divisive characters, they might find that they're regurgitating what the tradcaths and trolls taught them to say, because the tradcaths and trolls have perfected the art of making you angry on the Internet. Who really benefits from LOTR remaining a 20th century relic of stagnant politics? Traditionalists who want Tolkien to remain pure, white, and Christian.

I do have two main criticisms of Rings of Power, which are the "The Elves will take your jobs!" line (dumb) and occasionally the pacing (needs work.) And other than the casting of Arondir, Bronwyn, Disa, Míriel, and other important characters with actors of color, it's not a particularly progressive narrative in and of itself. But the Internet backlash stems from the sad fact that while we were all happily ensconced in our safe, superficially progressive fandom spaces, we were all duped into the insidious conservative rhetoric that fidelity is good and ROP's a bad adaptation because it's faithless. Frankly, I'm all for faithlessness, provided it's faithlessness in outdated and harmful politics. Let's take back ground from the tradcaths and trolls, and not let them pre-ordain our decisions for us.

#rings of power #meta #trop

273 notes · View notes

iridiss · 1 year

Text

Returning to an old friend, my Cult of the Lamb x Night in the Woods crossover AU to expand on the concept of the relationships between the Bishops and their Witnesses. And also to finally give these characters proper designs! Under the cut is a helluva lot of writing elaborating on these 4’s history with their respective Bishops and their designs.

I’ve played around with the ideas of either having the Witnesses be anthropomorphic in their Eldritch Forms, matching the Follower designs and giving them the same level of autonomy as their minds possess, or to make them more beast-like, closer resembling Leshy/Heket/Shamura’s Eldritch Forms in their wildness, and closer resembling the animals they are. But in the end, I could tell that some characters, like Angus and Beatrice, would be better off beast-like, like a giant hulking bear made of trees and foliage and flowers that tries to crush you, or a crocodilian, Lovecraftian deep-sea “sea monster” that tries to snap you up from the watery depths, additionally as a small nod to the giant animals in Mae’s dreams (the bear and the crocodile.) But characters like Greggory and Lori especially would be more on the slightly anthropomorphic side in their Eldritch forms, with Gregg resembling a large and bloodied hound, and Lori being a mouse with too many eyes and too many slithering tails (as an additional reference to the Rat King or something Eldritch). Lori is still small, even smaller than Mae, but armors herself with a coat of spiders, who are a fundamental part of her attacking style. We’ve got an ancient Forest Lord, a brown bear that’s become one with the trees, a Bloodhound, a Lovecraftian sea monster from the dark Hadal Depths, and a rat that’s become one with the spiders in the attic.

As for their history with their Bishops, let me tell you a story of 4 parts.

——

The Gods were never kind to Angus.

Leshy’s rule was one of chaos, and Angus must’ve been the most orderly and logical person in the entire cult. Leshy believed in raw strength alone, and as a big brown bear, Angus guesses he had potential enough to be “worthy.” What a joke that was. He was the pawn of a child, breaking whatever Leshy threw a fit over. Being an incredibly prideful leader, Leshy made his own rule that none of his Witnesses could see better than him after Narinder’s betrayal robbed him of his eyes. So per Old Faith law, Angus’s sight was removed, completely. He learned to adapt to the viciousness of the wilderness, relying on his other senses to survive and keep himself in Leshy’s good graces. He grew more at home in the woods than he’d ever been before, he memorized how to make flower crowns and weave crafts out of grass. Over the decades, moss grew amongst his fur and dark branches from his head, with Camellia flowers woven into his fur. He may have been afraid of Leshy at first, when he was younger, but now he had grown to be nothing but tired. This was the way things were, this was the irrefutable demand of the universe and the beings that ruled his every breath. He was nothing more than a measly ant. There was no point in fighting it, when Leshy could strike him dead at a moments notice. “This is the way it must be,” he would say to his victims before their inevitable execution, “there is no other option.”

And then another option came in guns blazing, screaming and mowing down the Old Faith like a hurricane on acid. Almost overnight, Leshy was dead, Angus had been beaten, stripped of his power, and thrown into someplace new. Everything had changed.

At first this was every drop worth freaking out over, but…here, the night was serene, the mortals happy and oblivious of any harm, all the screaming had gone away. It was so quiet here.

The truth is, Angus was a gentle giant who’d much rather study the stars than go on bloody crusades. Mae’s new way took some getting used to, but it was worth it. He was cautious at first, not exactly cynical, but he would have been unsurprised the moment “a catch” manifested. He was slow to adjust, having lived his whole life still in one place. But in time, he realized the depths of the scars he bore from Leshy’s destructive rule, everything Leshy had done to him and forced him to do when all he cared for was soft flower petals and damp grass after summer rain. He had his quiet place now. He was finally free.

Helping him get through it, and understanding in his own unique way, was this little obnoxious coyote that Angus…vaguely remembered to be Heket’s Witness? He seemed sweet, sincere, fuzzy, a bit loud, but he understood. Maybe he’d be better off staying here for a while, with Mae, Gregg, all these happy little mortals, and whoever else comes along.

Greggory Lee had a purely militaristic bond with his General, the Goddess Heket. He was her best soldier, her hunting dog. He tracked down the heretics and runaways, and once he found them, he put an end to them, just as Heket commanded. Like a bloodhound to a rabbit, he was loyal. Except, Gregg will always be Gregg, so whenever he was under the impression that Heket was busy or not specifically watching him, he would go to town with whatever chaotic fun he wanted to have that day, consequences be damned. If she was all shout-y serious military business, then he was a wildfire let loose the second her grip loosened. And to a degree he was never fully aware of, his wild antics supported her empire with the sheer fear they instilled on the mortal civilians. At any time, War’s bloodhound could come raging through the village, pillaging whatever he thought was shiny or cool, blowing up whatever was combustible, setting fire to huts and ignorantly letting it spread, and if you opposed the Witness of War himself, you might just get eaten. The chaos was humbling. Gregg was never fully aware of the extent of the damage he caused, it was all good fun for him. That was the job, that was what he was made for, fun. He never quite saw their faces, just ran in, had a good laugh, and left. He was so bored, he might as well do something with his time.

It took a pretty extreme event in order to force him to see the full picture. His first ever doubts started to sink in during the great sheep extinction. The Old Faith had received a prophecy from Shamura: Death was coming. Their only hope to survive would be to kill every last sheep and ram on the continent. Only thing is, there was no way to make this not personal. To track down every last one, to get in their face, make eye contact, see their final moments, hear the screams up-close, feel the bodies go limp in the vulnerable snare of your own bloodied teeth. Becoming the very real version of a child’s worst nightmare, the bogey monster out to get them, was unavoidable. Gregg was…never quite the same, after that.

He was the first to fully and openly accept the death of the Old Faith, immediately embracing the new rule of—well, not exactly The One Who Waits, but Mae was pretty cool. He liked her. As a follower, Gregg is still a bit disaster-prone in the commune, occasionally setting things on fire on accident, but it always sends him into a panic that promptly cleans up whatever mess he makes. He’s a bit of a handful, but he’s incredibly loyal to Mae. He’s doing everything he can to be a good person now.

He had no bond with his Bishop. The only connection he had to the Old Faith was one he’d deeply regret for the rest of his life. Mae on the other hand, all she ever asked of him was to live happily and peacefully in a commune, she never asked him to massacre thousands of innocent souls for something as petty as a rule, or a God’s ego. Death to the Old Faith, he says. Why should he care?

Out of every Witness, Beatrice would have been with her God the longest. Her memories of a mortal childhood had grown fuzzy and distant. Beatrice devoted her whole life and future to Kallamar, giving up everything she had just for him. To her, devotion wasn’t something you did out of joy and love and reverence for your God, devotion was knowing how to survive. This was the way of life, and she would see to it that every last order was followed through with shining marks and perfection. And wherever Kallamar’s cowardice slacked, she would pick up the weight, she would carry his entire Kingdom on her two shoulders alone. This was survival, this was life, this was truth, this was wisdom, this was responsibility, this was reaching the top and staying the best of the best, the Queen of fear and order dictating the helm of an entire Empire crushed under her foot. When this was the brutal truth of reality and life, why would you waste time thinking about a happy merry-go-rainbows imaginary life, when you should be doing your job? She needed this. This was everything.

And then the Gods began to fall. Leshy had died. The ball had dropped. She didn’t know it was possible for a God to die, but sure, Leshy was of the weaker kingdoms. She should have seen it coming a mile away that the youngest runt of the Gods would eventually be snuffed out. But Mae kept going, and then Heket fell. The Goddess of War and Wrath, defeated.

Kallamar’s fears grew worse. The target fell on his back next, and Beatrice knew that sniveling coward couldn’t take the blow. She prepared herself to fight, her time had come, it was her throne to take. She was ready, but for some reason, she was trembling.

And then Kallamar was killed. The other shoe dropped.

Everything that Beatrice had been repressing for decades, maybe even centuries, came back to hit her in the face with a baseball bat. Mae had destroyed everything, and now the responsibility of bringing back the Old Faith and killing an unstoppable force had fallen on her shoulders, with everything else. The Land of the Old Faith was in crumbling disarray, and she desperately tried to fix it and put it back together in the 42 hours (or less) she had left to live. This was nothing more than a deranged little child, a single cat. She could beat her. She could fix it, she could fix everything—

She lost.

Something Beatrice was only able to realize after every last drop of responsibility withered away was just how exhausted she was. She was worn thin, hanging by a string that was tearing. When that string was finally cut, she could freefall, right into the comfort of a safe little idyllic, bright and merry, imaginary commune.

“What the fuck.” Was the first thing she said when she saw it.

You couldn’t just get rid of the Old Faith, you couldn’t just rewrite all of reality itself. Mae was only one woman, how could she possibly have stopped all this? But she did, and she had the insanity to keep going. What the absolute fuck. And worse yet, Mae had spared her life! She had the audacity to kill her captor and “set her free,” she had the audacity to break everything she’d ever known, thinking you could just let go?! This was unheard of!

But then again, Bea hadn’t taken a nap in decades. Actually, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever slept in the past century. She hadn’t ever experienced the peace and fun of dreaming. And now she had a schedule entirely of free time, whether she liked it or not. Beatrice…took a very long time to warm up to Mae. And it took even longer for the shock to fade, to stop feeling weird about this new, free place she was put in. Before Mae, she was overworked, slowly losing herself down the rabbit hole leading to a very dark place. And as time went on, she could finally see herself again, and as she looked at the other Witnesses playing in the grass and making gay little flower crowns, she realized what she could have become if she continued to silently, secretly fall apart. She…could be happy now. Maybe. She’d have to find out if that was even possible…

She also had to admit it was incredibly satisfying to see Narinder, the last God, doing janitorial work while she could sit back and sip on her pina colada made of Darkwood berries. If only she could have seen Kallamar finally do his job while she took a much-needed break.

Lori Meyers was a young, mortal mouse, always the outcast amongst her peers and village-mates. She preferred to keep to herself, hidden far away in the dark that was comfortable, that was predictable, that was beautiful. She found things like bugs, gore, guts, the night, horror—especially spiders, she loved spiders— she found them to be so cool, but for some reason, no one else did. And that made her the weird one. Growing up, all of these things that she was told by her peers deeply got to her, making her quick to become quite anxious before she’d ever share a cool looking bug with someone she liked, because it never turned out well. She wanted to be fine, isolated all by herself in her dimly-lit caves infested with spiders, earwigs and centipedes, she was the only person she ever needed—but even still, she always wanted to have someone to talk to. She would kill to have someone that would hear her talk about how centipedes and millipedes have these super epic pores that shoot out hydrogen cyanide gas that poisons their prey- or- or how cool and exceptional it is that jumping spiders have the brain power to effectively use the scientific method by constantly studying their environment and learning from their mistakes!

And like a miracle of the Gods, she did find someone.

Shamura and Lori likely had the most positive relationship out of all the Bishops and their Witnesses. Lori was scared of them at first—and that never truly goes away, when you’re dealing with a mighty Deity of the Old Faith. But when she spoke, they listened, and in response, they showed her new things to study. When she posed curiosity in unknown species of insect and creature, they would lift her up into the treetops with their colossal, claw-like legs and show her the truth. Shamura cultivated her mind, gave her all the resources and books she needed to learn and grow and become the true scholar her peers could never be. She learned fast, she had a quick wit, and a love for learning all that Shamura’s realm shined best in, and thus she quickly seated herself, obliviously, as the best heir to their throne.

An apprentice to follow in their shadow, a student for only the greatest of minds. The only thing is, she was so young…some way or another, she would have to grow up into a monster. A killer, an executioner, a judge. That would be where the doubt set in for Lori. She only wanted to learn, she never wanted things to come to this, but when not only your God but your closest friend gives you an order…

Lori was devastated with Shamura’s defeat. Her only ally was dead, she was alone again, and to make everything worse, she was the very last line of defense meant to stop Narinder from taking over the world. On one hand, she felt very small, and still very much a child, but on the other hand, she was full of rage and covered in millions of tiny spiders that could feel her grief as much as she. She still ended up losing, reluctantly succumbing to The Witness of Death and becoming a follower. She clung the most to Beatrice in the cult, as the best person who could understand her, but also as someone who tolerated her ramblings. It took her a while to warm up to Mae, and to fully understand the necessity of Shamura’s death. That would come with time and years of gradual reflection as she grew up in Mae’s cult.

The lesson that Lori would teach Mae about the Gods would be two things, one directly from Lori, and one indirectly from her. One would be how much Lori would challenge her faith in TOWW without ever truly dissenting, acting as a mirror for what TOWW’s horrors might look like. The other would be Mae looking at how Shamura kidnapped this child, isolated her from her family and parents, and raised her to be a murderer against her will, and how much indoctrination and manipulation goes into a cult just to make someone still fully believe in their leader even well after they’ve been seriously hurt by them. Lori was a more complicated case than Angus or even Gregg, but she still had her scars. And if Lori had been tricked by the Gods, had Mae been tricked as well? To what degree did TOWW suffer the same flaws as his siblings, to what degree was Mae a gullible child in the hands of a master manipulator, to what degree was this right? Was serving these Gods even worth it? What if she only did what she wanted? What if she just wanted to be happy? What if she was like all four witnesses before her, what if she threw her bat away and rejected this Old God’s offer? Sure, she was small, sure, she was an insect screaming against a mountain, but damn it, they only wanted to be happy. Mae, Angus, Gregg, Beatrice, Lori, all of them.

But this time, she could do something about it. She was the God-Killer. She could make it whatever she wanted, and Narinder would be a fool if He thought she wasn’t going down without a fight.

403 notes · View notes

gwyns · 2 months

Note

I remember a post by an E/riel pushing the theory of Elain being tied to Dusk Court and how she’s connected to the Prison. “Elain will restore the Prison/Dusk Court (with the help of Azriel)” “Elain will become High Lady/High Queen of Dusk”. They even said “Rhys said the Pegasuses hailed from the island the Prison is located on, and haven't been able to breed successfully ever since. If Elain restores the 8th court, that means more pegususes. So in conclusion... Give Elain a Pegasus” 🤡 ??? You know who is actually connected with Pegasus? Gwyn and the Valkyries.

I’m not trying to sound petty, but it’s like they’re trying to turn Elain into a warrior/Gwyn, when Elain isn’t one. I’m glad Elain isn’t a warrior. I like that she would rather garden and bake. I like warrior women, but I also like women who don’t want to wield a sword. Stop trying to make Elain something she’s not.

The same ones saying Elain will be High Lady/High Queen of Dusk Court with Azriel by her side were also the same ones that were fiercely defending that Elain belongs in the Night Court, because her sisters and friends are there. But now it’s different?😂🤡

After HOFAS was released I’ve seen E/riel’s do a lot of backtracking with their theories and now they’re trying to make Elain connected to Gwydion (and still believe Prison/Dusk is hers). Please, let Nesta have something of her own. It makes the most sense for Nesta to have Gwydion. She’s a warrior, has the eight-pointed star tattoo, is connected to the prison, and more connected to the Dread Trove. I think the Valkyries will rule over the Prison after reading a theory about it.

this is sooo funny lol they really do try and take everything from other characters and give it to elain when she already has her own things!!! she likes to garden and bake and has rare seer powers and is outright connected to the new main baddie and vassa through her visions!!!! all of that is cool as hell and they're still trying to find ways to make her more compatible with that bat. if you have to change the fundamentals of your supposed favorite character to make them work better with another character, maybe just maybe... and stay with me here... they're not that good of a match!!

oh silly anon (i swear i'm not trying to be patronizing i'm just trying to joke), don't you know that e/riels are always bullshitting their way through the fandom? one second elain should stay with her sisters, who clearly don't understand her on a deep level and who she doesn't have the best relationships with from what we've seen the past couple of book releases, but then the next she has to be the high lady of dusk! or the princess of the court of nightmares!! or the high queen!!! and all alongside azriel!!!!

i love when they backtrack, i can always get a good laugh out of it, they must have the memory of a goldfish. i fully agree with your last statement. the island the prison is on is for the valkyries, i believe that'll become their stronghold, and isn't it funny how truth teller's twin is in nesta, a valkyrie's, hands and she is also heavily connected to the prison? all this tells me personally is that az is likely the next mc and nesta will be at least somewhat involved in the plot

and guess what? if one valkyrie is involved, all of them will be. meaning gwynriel is looking more and more endgame every single day. i can see why they're upset 🥰

#hofas spoilers #cc3 spoilers #house of flame and shadow spoilers #crescent city spoilers #antielriel #anti e/riel #asks #anonymous

13 notes · View notes

endworldbroadcast · 23 days

Note

Do you have any advice for coping with schizoid personality disorder?

I think this is strongly contingent on what affects you, personally [ this is a generic observation to make, isn't it? ]. For example, loneliness and avolition didn't use to be an issue for me, it only became so after a specific period in my life that changed a lot of things about me. In present day I ascribe the most difficulties to existential angst first and foremost and to social difficulties + anhedonia/avolition tying for second.

With that said, this is what works for me more or less:

- Try to fight against the idea of being 'special' especially if it makes you think of others as stupid/inferior/dramatic/etc. I think this is incredibly difficult, and it's harder than it seems to balance this in a way where you're also being honest and acknowledging your own alienation and the way arbitrary (or even justified) societal expectations can take a lot out of you.

In my case, I try to resolve this by orienting myself specifically to a sort of 'vulnerability': many schizoids cannot acknowledge they are lonely or anxious or afraid, sometimes because it's shameful to do so but mostly because it doesn't feel 'true'. It doesn't look like 'normal' misery so it's easy to assume it's not 'misery' at all. Accepting one's own thoughts and emotions as real and accepting others have their own deep interiority even when they manifest in 'different' ways helps a lot with combatting the deep distaste for other people.

You might not necessarily learn to like others, but I think the 'angst' isn't as heavy when you recognise these internal experiences (both of yourself and others) as responses to a shared reality, instead of the feeling that other people live in 'reality' and you live (insofar that you 'live') in an inaccessible void.

Even if it's more for the sake of 'self-interest' and not necessarily altruistic, I find that fostering my distaste for people made me feel less tolerant of reality as a whole and more importantly critical of myself. If others are 'bad' then my misery must be evidence that I'm fundamentally worse. I think it's importance to recognise abject misery even without the need of someone to 'pin' it on.

- Find the thing about your identity that you think most people will find you detestable for and then hang out in spaces for that thing or meant to provide support for that thing. In my case it was being a paraphiliac. I think if you become accustomed to seeing the 'worst' parts about you accepted and people like you thriving, it becomes a little easier to accept that the rest of you can be accepted by others.

- Have something to do that your either enjoy or, if you're anhedonic, are able to deal with a reasonable level of visible 'results', such as developing a skill you are naturally inclined at or doing something 'meaningful' (like community service).

- Find a bunch of smaller things to set as goals/expectations for the future even if you're not 'stoked' about it. In my case I don't think I'll actually play Penny Blood when it comes out but I keep a mental footnote of it because the original developer's games were once meaningful for me.

I think the future is difficult to conceptualise in its vagueness and that can be disheartening. For me it helps to have real dates to look forward to instead of a vague 'The Future', even something like 'This game comes out in three months.'

Also, I'm a suicidal person and I find that it's easier for me to avoid suicide attempts by indefinitely 'delaying' it. So I do a lot of these 'I'll wait for [ event ] to happen first' to manage my feelings.

- If you have decent relationships, practice asking them for trivial things. For example I ask someone close to me to reblog commission posts. I think being able to ask for small favours helps fight against the 'love is litigation, relationships are obligations, there is no room for compromise' schema that ye schizoidism is built on. It may not be 'enough' to push a person to commit to anything 'more' or to ask for help when it 'actually matters' but it does help one inch closer to finding relationships at least a little 'meaningful'.

- Instead of trying to interact 'more' try to diversify the avenues in which you interact with others until you find one that works. Are you more comfortable online or in real life? One or one or in group settings? Do you like small talk or find it boring? Is there a specific type of person you want to talk to? etc.

While there are certainly schizoids who are winning the IDGAF war I really think that the average schizoid isn't repulsed per se by interaction but are more repulsed by emotions. Avenues to communicate with others where you have more control over your own boundaries and emotional disclosure are often more helpful.

- My standard for whether I think a relationship is 'good' is to ask myself whether I think I could 'come back' to this person. Whether it's a physical disappearance or something more abstract or mental [ eg I get a little silly with it and have a huge mental breakdown or whatever ], I assess whether this person would be more apt to focus on the 'leaving' or the 'coming back'. There are plenty of people I think that are nice or non-malicious but the personality they have is just that I know I will be 'punished' for 'leaving' [ Getting upset/'Why couldn't you just ask me for help/tell me this was happening?'/Centering their lack of 'obligation' even if I was not inferring they had one to begin with/Just straight up ignoring me because I was 'weird' instead of at least having the courtesy to tell me they can't/won't respond to me ].

To be realistic about my circumstances I know it's a lost cause to think there will be a point where I'll be Normal and Loveable enough to be beyond this type of reproach. Welcome to my dark twisted mind or whatever. All my failed relationships did not die with a lot of drama or fanfare but more a case of where I Lost It and couldn't 'come back', either because I was too ashamed of myself or the person clearly saw me different afterwards even if they wouldn't say it out loud. I find I can't sustain relationships around this people even when neither of us truly 'hurt' each other, and inversely I found there are cases where I have been able to forgive people for a lot/vice versa because the other person was very receptive of 'weirdness.'

[ I think the reason a lot of schizoids stick with childhood friends they had before their personality 'settled' is because those people tend to be more accepting of the schizoids 'checking out' and are quite cool/welcoming about the 'coming back' without much of a need to acknowledge/punish the 'leaving'. ]

- Try to find a system to do your chores/other self-maintenance duties, if not regularly then at least at some point. A lot of schizoids don't feel when they're 'down' but it's commonly observed that schizoids who are stuck in solitude do worse at self-maintenance and won't clean/do the laundry/bathe/eat/etc. as consistently.

In my case I try to do this by making it too inconvenient to ignore things otherwise. For example, I dump all my stuff on the bed so that if I don't clean eventually I can't sleep well (if I leave them on the floor I will never get shit done).

Self-maintenance through routine or some other external marker is helpful because it doesn't require you to depend on what could very well be an unreliable internal sense.

- Even if you're the type of schizoid highly susceptible to loneliness don't bother 'putting up' befriending' people you don't like. It's a waste of time. It's a good skill to practice civility and diplomacy, but faking a sense of 'closeness' is really troublesome.

I do encourage maintaining relationships for pragmatic purposes if not emotional ones as much as you are capable of.

- If you get jealous about 'normal' people like I do get out of whatever thing it is you're in/what you're looking at that's bothering you and try to entertain yourself with something you find more pleasant. This really sounds like 'common sense' but the number of times I find myself seething from seeing people online talk to each other and feeling envious of how other people have friends or some shit is embarrassing especially when I do something else and the frustration immediately dissipates. Like 'wtf was that all about? lol'

- God, this is the most unpleasant thing ever but sometimes even the most extreme of discomforts have no solution in material reality if the problem itself isn't in material reality. This is really what I think gets to me the most: I want to be able to do something to 'solve' my problems, doesn't matter what. I can convince myself of my competence and determination, that I could get rid of the upset that plagues me if I study it well enough, apply all the logic, that there is an action that will make it all stop.

The problem is a lot of my discomfort is existential, they're not 'happening' in real life in any material way. I can't do anything about it, and that uncertainty and helplessness makes me feel even more frantic and worse. It feels easier to accept, for me, that I'll fuck up and embarrass myself over and over than it is to think that misery just happens without someone or something to blame it on.

I talk about it a lot but this encourages not much more than the hyperreflexive tendency to want to take your own experiences, turn it into a tangible object and study it like a possession. It drives you into dissociation and it sort of makes you insane. Happier people aren't happy because they have the amazing sense of logic that allows them to make all the correct choices in solving their problems. They're happy because they embody their emotions and they don't have to stop and 'prove' their happiness is real every moment it happens. It just does. They just do.

- Anyway expecting a general state of 'happiness' is a lost cause. Happiness isn't a perpetual evaluation of one's circumstances, it's an emotion that happens sometimes and then fades away. Sometimes there isn't even happiness, just something more subtle like contentment or relief. Still, one can live like this.

Anyway, that's it. I do not actually think any of this is helpful or novel in retrospect but I already typed it out so lol

#d #schizoid tag #schizoposting #long post #I don't really give advice much these days so take this with a shrug #I Claim No Liability Over You Etc Etc

10 notes · View notes

rescue-ram · 3 months

Note

hawktrap, and if someone got there before me, beejhawk

(⁠◕⁠ᴗ⁠◕⁠✿⁠) TrapHawk ✨

Ship It

1. What made you ship it?

Waugh, the first MASH episode I remember seeing was Dr. Pierce and Mr. Hyde, and the funny-turns-touching caretaking instantly set off the little shippy bulb in my brain. I love best friend ships, I love the love and affection between them, I love that they're a paired set and the support they show, and I feel like there's a really special quality to their friendship that makes them feel Very Important to each other. Plus they have great chemistry.

2. What are your favorite things about the ship?

Kfksjsj low key got ahead of myself there. But the thing that keeps me hooked is how flexible they ss characters and their dynamic is. I feel like there's lots of angles you can take and lots of scenarios to explore while still keeping the characters in line with what we see in the show. I love that they're in sync 95% of the time, but those little gaps leave just enough room for drama or angst. I love that they're inveterate kinksters AND softboys who care for each other. They're just great.

3. Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

I mean there are certain common takes on both characters, especially Trapper, that make me cuckoo bananas rageful. The whole Trapper Abandoned Hawkeye and Broke His Heart thing 🔪🔪🔪 I will also die on the hill that Trapper Is Much Softer Than People Give Him Credit For and Hawkeye Is Much Stronger. Trying to think of how to phrase my gripes and opinions such that I don't come off as unnecessarily bitchy lol. But like, it is SO HARD to find stuff for these two that Works for me. I think they're more interesting and complex than they're given credit for.

Annnnd BeejHawk 🍵

Don't Ship It

1. Why don’t you ship it?

I feel like you articulated this at a deep level beautifully in your meta a few days ago lol. I mean fundamentally I am a Trapper Girl TM and TrapHawk is my One True Pairing, so this was always doomed to at best second tier "I like it fine" ship status tbh. But there's just too much friction in the relationship on screen, there's some genuine meanness and anger, they misunderstand each other at key points, and I don't see the chemistry between them. Being extremely petty and subjective for a second, I just don't like BJ as a character very much, I find him frequently mean and petty and annoying and unfunny. Hawkeye can do better.

2. What would have made you like it?

Augh. Okay, I think in a lot of BJHawk interactions that others read as shippy, I see an edgy clinginess that makes me Uncomfy. So BJ being less "repressed neurotic" and a little more ease in their relationship. Also the fundamental biggest barrier to BJHawk is BJ Loves His Wife and Child, and I don't want to like. Get rid of that aspect of his character because it's vital to him, y'know? But maybe more of Hawkeye corresponding with Peg and building up a friendship with her- it could even be comedic, where he's planning a surprise for BJ who's getting increasingly suspicious then is amused/embarrassed/fond when he figures it out, but just like a sense Hawkeye could be included in the family dynamic without being wildly unfair to Peg, or even just BJ being a little more liberated sexually such that it's easier to imagine them conducting an affair that doesn't IMMEDIATELY implode his marriage. I mean, BJ is the deuteragonist for 2/3 of the show, obviously I have thoughts on their dynamic and how it would change with a romantic or sexual element to it, but I frankly don't see Gay BJ at all, I don't see Bi BJ at all, he's sooooo heterosexual to me, so a more sexually ambiguous or chill BJ is necessary lol. Also more BJ taking care of Hawkeye, more buddy vibes and funny coziness! And like this is probably me ragging too much on BJ... IDK it's hard to say how Hawkeye would need to change, he's already trying to be a good friend given the circumstances... I mean, for my subjective ship tastes 90% of my personal turn offs come from BJ, so Hawkeye is not really the problem in this ship for me. I guess something that really bugs me about the BJHawk fic I've tried that turns me off the ship is Sad Sack Hawkeye, so maybe more content with spunky prankster Hawkeye and co-conspirator BJ, or a proactive seductive Hawkeye pursuing BJ, romancing him, making it more of a "I want this because I want you" than a "I'm clinging to this because I need you" thing, which isn't sexy to me.

3. Despite not shipping it, do you have anything positive to say about it?

Jfkdndkdn. Yeah, I guess. It's not like. A bad ship. I get it. They were The Pair for 8 seasons, they have many many moments to build a ship on, it's not without merit or something. They're friends who've been brought together in horrible circumstances, they go through a lot, they're close, there's some great scenes for them. I think you can get some interesting scenarios out of their dynamic, though my brain runs a little darker and angstier than shippy. But it is just so very much Not My Cup of Tea in either the show or in the fan works I've tried. Even fics that were otherwise interesting and well-written and in character, the BJHawk elements were pure 😬 to me. Truly truly "Your ship is not my ship and that's okay" situation.

#thank you for the ask 🦔#i think i got dangerously honest on my opinions here lol #me: (⁠ﾉ⁠◕⁠ヮ⁠◕⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠🏏*⁠.⁠✧ oh boy a shiny new bat! i can't wait to swing it at hornets nests kgkfkfkf

8 notes · View notes

quietwingsinthesky · 6 months

Text

something very tragic about how Dean’s worldview (ie that people are what they are rather than the product of what they do, that they cannot change being what they are, that what they do never matters if fundamentally, deep down, they are Bad because inevitably they will always backslide due to their nature) is one of the biggest things that prevents him from growing as a person. The infamous “I’m poison” speech is the obvious moment of it, where Dean doesn’t acknowledge that what he did to Sam was wrong, but instead decides that it’s what he is that’s wrong, that there’s no way for him to make good choices that will let the people around him love him and be safe.

This, like a lot of how he sees the world, is the product of hunting — it’s the only way he can keep doing his job without collapsing in on himself by considering that the monsters they’ve killed might have had a chance to become better if they’d had other options. They have to be Evil, they have to be the bad guys. (and Dean likes stories where the bad guy always loses at the end, there’s comfort in the simplicity of it.) Dean himself occupies a space of Good in relation to what he kills, but Bad in relation to other people. He’s carved out his own little space there so that he can alienate himself from everyone, put himself into a little box where he can never change and can only keep doing what he’s doing forever. Where he knows he will never be loved for long, so he can instead make the hard choices that keep other safe, and if they end up hating him for that, then they were always going to hate him anyway because he’s. poison. (ex. Sam & Gadreel situation, but also everything with Lisa & Ben.)

The problem is that people don’t actually work like this. He can rationalize away his own actions, he will always live in his box, but that’s a lot harder to do for other characters like Cas, Benny, Sam. How I wish they hadn’t deleted that scene where Benny confesses to Dean that he drank from a person because it would have made that whole situation infinitely more complex. Dean’s view of Benny is definitely that he’s Not Like Other Vampires: Benny doesn’t hurt people, Benny hunts vampires and the other monsters in Purgatory, Benny tries to assimilate into human life as best he can. That’s what allows Dean to move him from one category to the next, into someone who is Good, not a monster, not inherently evil, and therefore, someone Dean should be allowed to have a continuing relationship with no matter what Sam says and who Dean will not believe is killing people despite them having the bare minimum of evidence that he is that they’d normally use to hunt anything else. And then, if they’d just had that one scene proving to Dean that Benny’s not special, that when backed into a corner, yeah, he’ll do what he has to to survive, he needs to fucking eat. Idk. It would have been my favorite part of their whole arc tbh. Is remorse for his actions enough for Dean to keep him in his mind as a good person, or is it the willingness to sacrifice for Sam, or does having a close relationship with Benny give Dean the wiggle room to start questioning his worldview. Unfortunately, canonically, that scene doesn’t exist, so we don’t get to know lol.

I want to write out a whole thing for Cas, too, but honestly, it can mostly be summed up as Dean never really letting Cas into the category of Good, especially not post-s6, no matter what he does, because Dean always perceives himself on some level as needing to be able to shove Cas out in order to kill him if he goes bad again. He has. so many issues about that angel. Cas is on probationary good status with a caveat that says ‘Useful’ underneath, and the thing is that this is not something that stops Dean from seeing him as his best friend, either. He’s just Dean’s best friend that he might have to murder one day for everyone’s sakes. To me, anyway, and as the show goes on and Cas gets noticeably toothless regarding Dean’s decisions and judgement, I think he’s allowed further and further into that category.

But Sam is the really interesting one, cause I think Sam, in Dean’s head, is paradoxically in both. We can talk about Dean’s Sam-related Madonna-Whore complex another day, but what it comes down to is that Sam is always, will always, be capable of going bad and can easily be seduced into doing so and never makes the right decisions on his own, which would, for anything Dean hunts, be reason enough to put them down. But Sam is also Dean’s little brother and something to be protected, or maybe more accurately, preserved, like a butterfly pinned down with its wings spread and kept behind glass. Preserved at all costs, against Sam’s wishes and despite his protests, specifically when the cost of preserving him is something Sam has to pay. (A lot of the time when Sam does the same thing, sacrifices something to save Dean in the same way, the price isn’t something to Dean personally. It’s usually larger. It’s world-ending. Which is v interesting to me, narratively. Sam’s survival is at the cost of his autonomy where Dean’s survival reinforces his idea that he’s poisonous to the world around him, that his own life is what keeps causing all this horrible shit to keep happening to the world and to them.) So, in occupying both, the only thing Dean can do is try to keep as much control over Sam as possible to make sure he does not backslide into his inherently evil nature, and he does this because Sam will always be good, deep down, to him.

Does any of this make any fucking sense alsjdkfjfk. tl;dr: Everyone in Dean’s world has to be static on the scale of good and evil because if they weren’t, he’d be even more fucked up about all the monsters/people he has killed.

#spn #dean winchester

16 notes · View notes

golden-flute · 1 year

Text

Dragon Prince continues to amaze me

Why hello there! I’ve been AWOL on Tumblr for a hot minute, but I finished season 4 of Dragon Prince at like 4:30 a.m. and now have to break down my thoughts or I’ll explode. Sorry if it ends up kind of long and disjointed. Buckle up, buttercup! Spoilers, obvs.

First, Soren and Claudia’s Confrontation Deep Dive

So this is what has taken up most of my brain’s bandwidth since I watched episode 7. Soren is one of my top favorite characters (others include Amaya, Gren, Runaan, and Bait), so I’m totally invested in his growth. Claudia is also very high up on my favorites list and her negative character arc is so amazing to watch. I’m a sucker for complex character stories where not everything ends up tied into a perfect package. This sounds a little sadistic, but I love watching characters struggle and fight for every morsel of happiness they can get their hands on, especially when their desires conflict with each other’s. Just like Soren and Claudia!

I suspect that this is not going to be the only confrontation these two have with each other throughout the remaining seasons. By the end of their conversation in episode 7 of season 4, nothing had really changed, and I think a part of that is due to how Soren approached Claudia. He painted everything in broad strokes, saying that understood how she felt because he had been on “the wrong side,” implying that Claudia was still on the wrong side and, by proxy, a bad person. But he also wanted to make it clear that change was possible. She could still be saved, in a way.

Soren was being aboslutely genuine and heartfelt. He clearly loves Claudia or he wouldn’t have tried to talk to her at all. And from our perspective, he’s absolutely right in his convictions! He’s basically telling Claudia what we, the audience, have been saying for the last three years. But, as we know, Soren is not exactly a “words guy,” and his desperate attempts to make her see things the way he does fall short. Claudia isn’t in the headspace yet where she’s ready for the sort of self-reflection that Soren had already undergone.

Claudia is an incredibly complex person with different motives and world views than her brother, even before they grew apart. Soren, I think, is more comfortable with seeing the world in black and white, and that’s how he explained himself and his thoughts to Claudia. But if/when he speaks with her again, he will have to get on her level and take all of her thoughts, feelings, and motivations into account without talking down to her from a pedestal of righteousness (which is how I think how Claudia would have perceived the episode 7 conversation to be). Only then will Claudia be able to listen and not feel as though he’s trying to take advantage of her, or making her choose sides--something she clearly has an aversion to.

Which brings me to my other thought: I think Soren is going to have another crisis of conscience before the end of the final season. Maybe not as big as the one he had in season 3, because I think that moment fundamentally swayed his morals. But we still have three seasons to go, and I don’t think all of it will be filled with an unchanging, flower-child Soren, beautiful as he is. That wouldn’t necessarily be interesting, and I don’t think Aaron Ehasz would let such a fantastic character off the hook that easily, lol. I’d honestly be fine if Soren stayed in his pure boy form, because he’s so fun to watch.

Buuuut where he’s at right now reminds me a lot of Zuko in Avatar: The Last Airbender season 2, after he recovered from his illness. At that point, Zuko believed himself cured of any and all bad feelings ever, but it only took seeing Azula again to bring all the trauma back. I don’t think we’ll see as big of a change for Soren (after all, he’s already seen Viren--the primary source of his trauma--again), but there are still a lot of unresolved aspects of his life that need to be ironed out before he truly earns his peace. A big part of his future character changes will revolve around his relationships with Claudia and Viren.

All I really have to say at this point is that I’m so amazed and delighted by Soren as a character. At first, I sort of wrote him off as guy who filled the stereotypical, comical “dumb jock” role, but he’s so much more complex than that, and I really can’t wait to see how his story progresses, whether I’m right or wrong in my guesses.

Next, Soren and Viren

One of my main disappointments from season 4 was the lack of any sort of progression with Soren and Viren’s relationship. And I don’t mean that I expected them to resolve all their differences and decide to be bffs or anything. But... I didn’t expect to get... nothing. If the creators had kept the two separate for the entirety of the season, I would have honestly been fine with that. But they had them meet again, face-to-face, only to have no confrontation at all.

It felt really unsatisfying to go from the end of episode 7, where Soren had such a visceral reaction to learning about Viren’s resurrection, to the start of episode 9, where they’re just quietly walking side-by-side with no context for what happened in between those two moments. Did they talk? Did Soren shut down? Did Viren give him the silent treatment? Did Claudia keep them apart until they entered the Rex Igneous’s lair? We don’t know, all bets are off! And then afterward, Soren acted like it hadn’t happened. I just hope that they don’t just put any conversations in a comic or something, because I think it’s such an important part of Soren’s character. It would feel almost disrespectful to banish their relationship development to a different media format that not everyone may read/see.

I’m hoping this means the writers plan to have a little fun with the whole scenario in future seasons. Soren, Rayla, Callum, and possibly Ezran all have seen Viren alive now, which puts a huge target on Team Aaravos’ backs. Buuuuuut, if Viren kept mum during his and Soren’s reunion, there’s a chance Soren may think that Claudia was conjuring an illusory version, the way she did in season 3. Perhaps they may try to manipulate Soren into thinking it was an illusion to both put Team Ezran off their scent and diminish Soren’s reputation, just like when Viren threw Soren under the bus before about their murder-the-princes “misunderstanding.” At the very least, this sort of scenario would make for an interesting AU fanfic, lol.

I’m trying to keep myself open-minded about this particular issue. I think I feel a bit more rushed about it because I’m imagining the wait between seasons 3 and 4 and thinking of how long we’d have to wait to see anything more from father and son. But the creators have said in recent interviews that the three-year wait was an anomaly caused by the pandemic, and that they’ll be resuming a more regular schedule again. When I think about only having to wait 5-9 months for the next installment, my frustration about the lack of progress in this particular vein subsides a bit.

But still, it would have been nice to get a little more from those precious few Soren/Viren moments if they were going to bring them up at all this season.

Ezran’s Speech

I’m actually really surprised I haven’t seen more people talking about Ez’s speech in episode 3! But then again, after binging the entire season, so much had happened that I’d forgotten about it myself until I went back to watch a bit more carefully. But it was a really powerful moment.

Once again, I saw some ATLA parallels, but I figure if they’re deliberately putting them in anyway, I might as well call them out, lol. I got major Zuko vs. Azula Agni Kai vibes when watching Claudia and Ibis get into an absolutely gnarly fight while Corvus played the fantasy-cello. Something about string instruments playing over really bitter encounters really transforms the moment. It becomes sad rather than epic. Paired with Ezran’s speech about holding love and anger at the same time adds another layer to it as well.

The thing I found most interesting about Claudia and Ibis facing off is that these are two characters known for holding the prejudices that Ezran speaks about. In season 3, Ibis initially brushed Callum off for wanting to learn magic as a human. And even when Callum proved he knew the Sky Arcanum, Ibis told him to run. I think, given, time, he may have changed his tune, and perhaps he did. But from what we saw, he did carry some bias against humans. And then there’s Claudia, who hates so thoroughly that humans are looked down upon by elves and dragons. At first, I thought that might have been Aaravos’ influence on her, but as I re-watched a few key moments in previous seasons, I found a moment that she and Callum talk at the start of season 2, where she also voices similar opinions--that humans were born with nothing but that’s why Dark magic levels the playing field. I think Aaravos just fed that belief in her, but it already existed. Also the fact that Claudia is currently dating an elf! So, in a way, she is also holding her love and anger at the same time. I can imagine it gives her complicated feelings. Brings me back to Rayla calling Callum out for saying that she may be an elf, “but a good elf.”

To have these two particular characters who feel so strongly in their convictions fight while Ezran talks about old wounds just hit the mark. It was a really poignant, if not slightly heavy-handed moment. I don’t feel totally equipped or at rights to find the parallels in today’s world, but I felt them pretty hard during this scene. “Sobering” is a good word to describe it.

Other, less composed, out of order thoughts

Season 4 was very much a transitory season. It was setting up the final three seasons, so it’s understandable that we got more questions than answers this time around. I’m just glad we (hopefully) won’t have to wait another three years for the next season!

The animation was SUPER clean and beautiful this season! There were a few moments that really stood out to me, particularly in the way that Callum gesticulates. Tiny, subtle movements that they could easily leave out but don’t, such as him accidentally knocking his hand into the Tome of Translation when he asks Bait “now what?” Or rubs his face in frustration. Callum is just a jittery, hyper guy, and it’s especially noticeable when those quirks are suppressed by Aaravos’ possession of him. Callum is all about short, quick movements, but as Aaravos, he was slow, fluid, and confident. It was just the perfect amount of unsettling to watch and I loved it.

I love Zubeia so much. We’ve seen badass human moms, and a badass elf mom before, and now we can add badass dragon mom to the list. Honorable mention to the badass aunt!

Corvus is a musician, and I love it so much!

Terry has been adopted by the fandom and I am HERE. FOR. IT. Before the season came out, I saw exactly one (1) comment speculating that he was trans, and I’m so glad they confirmed it in the show! Especially since the comment pointed out that there’s very little representation for trans people who are actively in the transition process. I can’t speak for the trans community, but I feel like Terry could be much-welcomed representation in that regard.

I really love how pure Terry is. I feel like he sort of filled Soren’s vacant role in Claudia’s life as “her doof.” I’m willing to bet we’ll see a comic of Claudia’s travels in those two years, and their subsequent meeting. I’m curious how they found each other and discovered their attraction for one another.

Terry’s megane-shine picture in the credits gave me evil scientist vibes and I love it so much. His curiosity about creating mystery flubber out of Sir Sparklepuff’s chrysalis goo (a string of words as weird and random as the situation which prompted them) was really fun as well.

Viren is a lot of things, but he’s not transphobic. Yet another example of complex, layered characters. Even the “bad guys” can have decent qualities.

Trees to meet you is a thing, lol.

I’d never really shipped Soren with anyone before, but after watching his and Corvus’ interactions in episode 1, I would not be mad at their ship sailing if they felt so inclined. TBD.

More Gren and Amaya friendship! I love seeing those two together, they add years to my life.

Janai’s proposal actually made me cry, it was so cute. And their “two cakes” conversation was so tender and sweet.

The whole conflict between the Sunfire elves and humans in the camp could be an entirely other essay, but again, I don’t really feel equipped to write about it (also it’s like 1am now and my brain isn’t braining well enough to go in-depth about it). But I did notice the parallels with our own current societal problems, and appreciated that, in the end, the answer wasn’t to decide between right and wrong, but to find a way to learn and grow together. (But also that the offender had to show up for her actions and resolved to make things right--though it would have been nice to also see her apologize directly to the elf that she wronged and not just his leader).

Sir Sparklepuff is half creepy, half adorable, and half bizarre. And yes, I know that’s three halves. He gave me major Gollum vibes when he first crawled out of his chrysalis.

LIZARD IN A HAT.

I appreciated that Rex Igneous apologized to Zym when he realized he’d been talking shit about his late papa.

I also appreciated the dragon saber-rattling contest at the end. Again, Zubeia is awesome.

Soren spending half the season in floral pajamas was something I didn’t know I needed.

Also, Soren with the butterfly was pure and delightful. And also a great contrast to Viren and Claudia, who would have seen the butterfly as a means to gain magic. Soren saw the magic of its life, throwing him into sharp contrast with his family.

People have already spotted the parallels between How to Train Your Dragon and Soren befriending Squeaky, but I also KNOW in my heart that we’ll see fanart of Soren in the Chris Pratt Jurassic World pose, like he’s "taming” a bunch of widdle dragons/velociraptors, lol.

RIP Ibis. I talked shit about him a bit, but he really was a cool character.

I swing between being amused by the fart jokes and tired of them. Claudia’s season 1 “It wasn’t the hooooorse” still cracks me up to this day, but I may have to draw the line at “It smells SO good when he farts!”

Again, no Runaan, but RAYLA HAS THE COINS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

I really like that they kind of nerfed Viren in this season. He’s obviously recovering from actually being dead, and he’s also dealing with trauma over how he died. So few adults admit to having similar troubles, so it was neat to see an adult in a show display some vulnerability, even if he’s objectively an evil adult, haha.

I’ve seen some speculation about whether Rayla is actually fully Rayla or not. I’m kind of inclined to agree. Something about her is off. The best argument I saw for this hypothesis was someone pointing out that she argued NOT to defend Squeaky from the Earthblood elf guy, even when Soren was raring to jump in. Season 2 Rayla would have absolutely slapped the bejeezus out of season 4 Rayla for walking away from a dragon in need. Miss “It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s the right thing for ME to do” did not show up that night, and it’s... suspicious. Also the fact that she didn’t remember Ibis’s name? What changed? Signs point to Stella, with her... giant, unblinking eyes that give me Furby vibes, lol. Did she affect Rayla somehow? What happened to Rayla in those two years? She just showed up with no explanation. I think she is actually Rayla, at least physically, based on the fact that she also gave up chasing Viren and Claudia to save her parents and Runaan and also made a very heartfelt speech about how Runaan and Ethari were like fathers to her. That felt super genuine, so... I don’t know where the cutoff is for where the Rayla we know is and who we hung out with for most of season 4.

Soren recognizing the mirror and trying to offer Callum advice on his obsession with magic to avoid seeing him go the same way as Viren.

Also Soren suggesting to Claudia that the world might be better off without magic. I wonder if that’ll be foreshadowing for something?

I can’t believe this is so far down on my list, but Aaravos possessing Callum was SO intense! I actually gasped when Callum turned his head to show his blackened eyes. Aaravos knew exactly how to get to each of them, and I loved it. But then after Aaravos released Callum, it was KIND OF discussed a couple times, but it was just like they were talking about the weather or something. I don’t know... between this and dropping the ball on Soren’s reaction to Viren, this season kind of went wild when it came to following through on some of the most interesting talking points of the entire plot.

I’m surprised how little Aaravos showed up this season, especially since they rebranded it “Mystery of Aaravos.” At least we got a little of his sexy, sexy voice. Erik Dellums, you’ve done it again.

I’m SO excited to see what the creators have got planned for Callum. He was talking to Rayla about his concerns on whether he’s on a path to darkness. One thing I love about this series is that they also explore the concept of “too much of a good thing.” Like I said before, Soren is just too happy and pure for it to last three more seasons--I bet his beliefs will be challenged at some point and he’ll have to defend them. And I think Callum will face a similar challenge when it comes to his obsession with magic. I TOTALLY understand feeling like you can never do anything right and finding that one thing you’re good at and latching onto it. But then when it becomes your entire personality, you run the risk of narrowing your life path to just one, inevitable end. His greatest strength has also become his greatest weakness. I have a feeling that Callum will have to explore that concept a bit in later seasons, with the help of Aaravos, of course. I don’t think he’ll go Claudia-level darkness--he’s pretty self-aware of this potential danger--but I wonder if he’ll become a bit more morally gray as the series progresses. I’m here for it, if that’s the case! I love me some dark character development, after all.

God, how long is this list? I didn’t realize I had this much floating around in my head.

I adored the rock golems! Their designs were GORGEOUS! Did anyone else catch the Over the Garden Wall Easter Egg in the credits? My friends and I adore OtGW and try to watch it every year, and I got way too excited by that find, lol.

Zubeia and Soren’s friendship is so wholesome.

I wonder if we’ll ever see Soren and Claudia’s mom? IS SHE THE NEW URSA? ;P

I’m kind of glad that they backtracked on Callum and Rayla’s relationship. Watching two fifteen-year-olds admit their undying love for each other at the end of season 3 left me with kind of a bad taste in my mouth. That probably sounds a bit unfair, since I know there are plenty of high school sweethearts out there who become each other’s endgames, but... I guess it felt rushed. Season 1-3 covered the span of... what? A few weeks, maybe? A month, at most? In that time, Callum and Rayla went from mortal enemies, to strangers, to friends, to romantic interests. My guess is the writers did that so there would be some sort of closure in case they didn’t get renewed for more seasons, which is fine. But it always just felt off. So I’m glad that a) they backed off a bit this season and are working through a bump in their relationship, b) said relationship is still being worked on at the end of the season, and c) Rayla and Callum communicated their concerns with each other and respected each other’s boundaries. It makes it feel much more realistic and less cookie-cutter. And I’m glad they were renewed for all seven seasons so they don’t feel pressured to rush the relationship development again.

The Earthblood elf designs are so cool! I really love all the elf designs, but the Earthblood elves are really fun and different! Also Terry in activated Earthblood elf mode was so badass! More, more, more! ;P

YIP YIP!

Sad that we didn’t see a glowed-up Queen Anya!

Or Ellis and Ava. Or Lujanne. Didn’t she meet a human while she was on her prank war tangent?

I wonder how our favorite blind, narcoleptic ship captain, Villads-with-a-silent-D, is doing.

Congrats to the Associate Crow Lord on his promotion and his... um... excitement over rare Xadian birds, lol.

At the end of the day, Dragon Prince is a kids show, but I really appreciate that they don’t shy away from real-world issues. They offer a chance for us to view our world through the (more comfortable) lens of a fantasy world. We can see ourselves reflected in these characters, who are incredibly complex and three-dimensional. No one is fully good or fully evil, not Claudia or Viren, or Soren, Ez, or Zym. Maaaaybe Aaravos, lol. I love it when content geared towards kids recognizes that kids are a hell of a lot smarter than they’re given credit for and they don’t talk down to them or avoid covering more difficult subjects. It’s shows like this that will shape today’s kiddos in the same way that shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender shaped my generation.

Okay, I think I might actually be done.

If you’re still reading, you rock! What were some of your favorite part of Dragon Prince?

#the dragon prince #dragon prince #tdp #tdp spoilers #spoilers #soren #claudia #viren #callum #aaravos #rayla #amaya #gren #janai #zym #azymondias #zubeia #terry #terrestrius #runaan #corvus

142 notes · View notes

kiriona-apologist · 1 year

Note

🔥 For the Masquerade series

so this has....apparently become a hot take in the recent times but

i think that disliking the masquerade series for its tone is something that is perfectly acceptable, even if said person is in love with the locked tomb.

i've seen bits of this debate here and there, and while i understand where the baru defenders are coming from, i sympathize more with the locked tomb people (and not just because i love the locked tomb!)

i baru post a lot. i've answered an ask about baru where the person asked me to give a recommendation for it based on liking the locked tomb. i gave my honest opinion there, and in tags elsewhere: recommending these series next to each other without appropriately warning the reader about the darker tone, themes, and narrative of baru is not only rude, it's negligent.

while i understand that tone does not a book make, it is also vital to a narrative, and i believe that baru and tlt differ greatly in tone, and that should be disclosed from the outset.

i don't have the post saved (and if i did, i wouldn't want to specifically call someone out anyway) but i saw someone sarcastically saying that "of course tone is more important than the similarities on a narrative level" (not a direct quote), as if tlt and baru are really that similar on a narrative level.

these are, of course, my opinions but i don't think they're similar narratively unless you count the most basic premise of "queer protagonist against imperialism". here's the thing (at the risk of being wrong on the internet)

The locked tomb is not focused solely on the Empire at a systemic level until bits of the second book and more dominantly the third book. Are there elements early on? yes. are they in your face, immediately relevant or a key aspect of the narrative, especially on a first read through? no! Baru kicks off with it. tlt's empire is not graphically homophobic. Baru's is, and it is fundamental to both her character and pieces of the narrative.

They're similar in the chivalrous figure dying at the end of the first book, they're similar in the weird brain stuff, in some of the weird bits, but at a fundamental level, Muir and Dickinson are telling stories of empire in different ways at different levels. Baru hates the Empire from the outset, is constantly working against it while she's working for it. Harrow and Gideon are not like this from the outset, and because those are the central characters for the opening two books, not the BoE, not the other Lyctors, it does change the narrative. resistance to the mechanisms of empire in tlt is not the focus from the outset (but definitely becomes more important as the larger story unfolds and we move outside the bubble of the nine houses)!

I understand the urge to defend Baru when people from the locked tomb fandom do read it on recommendation of it being similar to tlt and end up disliking it for how dark it is. i understand wanting the narrative to be spread despite how graphic it is, partially because that is the reality for a lot of people. i wholly acknowledge i'm speaking from a place of privilege in terms of violent homophobia like baru faces and as an american in a world that has been colonized by america and other wealthy nations, so i cannot fully identify with baru as a protagonist or those who associate on a deep level with her. if you do, i'm not saying that's bad or that you shouldn't recommend the book! i do, but i do so always with the caveat that it's dark and graphic and that the narrative is heavily centered in this darkness.

i think the masquerade series is a valuable series, but i think recommending it to locked tomb enjoyers and expecting them to love it because they love the locked tomb (and especially the critique of colonization that muir is building) or hounding on locked tomb enjoyers for not liking baru because of how graphic and violent it is can be uncomfortable and potentially triggering for a lot of people. tone is not everything, but it is key to enjoyment, and questioning why books are lumped together the way they are can be beneficial.

i remember finishing tyrant and reading the author's note dickinson left, where they state they're not sure when they'll finish the fourth book because the series is draining to write. i remember sympathizing to that, because reading it is draining. i mowed through the locked tomb books in a matter of days. each baru book took me months. the depth of the locked tomb is there i'm not saying it isn't, but baru's is like a painfully gaping wound from the outset, where tlt keeps it hidden until near the end of the first book

i'll end here by saying that both of these series are dear to my heart, and both sit in my top five favorite series of all time. i understand the urge to defend baru, who feels like an underdog compared to the largely more popular tlt, i tend to do it all the time. i do think, though, the conversation surrounding these two series and how they relate to each other can be better and more productive, and generally more generative in discussions of current advertising practices of "book similar to x book, so you'll like book!"

#i'm so sorry anon you didn't ask for an essay #but i'm tired of seeing my two favorite fandoms fighting ya know #i think the gut punch reaction to defend baru at all costs can come at the expense of recognizing tone does matter when reading #and that disclaiming some of the triggering material is probably best practice when it comes to both of these tbh #anon #ask #the locked tomb #baru cormorant #the masquerade series #tlt #really praying this does not get me yelled at because i really do love both of these series and they've fundamentally changed me #for the better i think

31 notes · View notes

astolfofo · 11 months

Text

Dazai and chuuya relationship analysis that I apprently wrote in march and was rotting in my drafts ig. Enjoy this i guess. Or not if you don’t like hot takes. I don’t want my blog to get too too dead.

friendly reminder that this is my own opinion about things, and you’re welcome to disagree, but don’t be an asshole. please.

Okay. Here’s a (un)commonly written hot take. In my opinion, I don’t ship Chuuya and Dazai. Like honestly. I don’t think they’re in love with each other, and they actually do strongly dislike each other. Not enough to call it hate, but they don’t like each other. But they do have a different realtionship of hate that you could almost call, “friendship”. They’ve worked together, probably lived together, and obviously theres a fundamental respect for each other. But to call it love would be extreme.

Like, I’m being completely honest with you, if someone emotionally manipulated me to leave my friends, join the mafia, and I was forced to work with them for serveral years where they’d only be an annoying ass shit to me every day and use my skill every damn time to get something done? Man, I’d be fucking pissed. I’d hate them so much too. Also, to set a bomb under my car when they resign? Man. I wouldn’t even succumb to stalkholm syndrome from someone like that. Anyways I digress. Dazai and Chuuya don’t love each other, in my opinion, however, they still hold a weird friendship hateship thing for each other.

SO. Edit after reading stormbringer because this was sitting in my drafts since march. No, I still don’t think that Chuuya and Dazai love each other, but their realtionship is fucking complicated. It’s not love, but on the surface level it seems that way. and I think that’s where a lot of BSD viewers kinda fall short, because... BSD is not a black and white thing. It goes pretty deep if you want to dig. Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t ship or you should... you do whatever floats your boat. But the point I’m trying to make here, is that Dazai and Chuuya are basically like Asagiri (i think?) said, that they’re part of the same person. But they’re two very conflicting sides of the same person. It kinda goes to say almost, how you can fight and hate yourself, but without the other part of yourself you cannot live. Dazai and Chuuya are weak alone. Chuuya will die without Dazai, and Dazai cannot fight simply with his own ability. However when they work together, anything can be done.

Yes, indeed, Chuuya and Dazai do hate each other. I will forever stand by that statement. However, Chuuya is only alive thanks to Dazai for saving his life, and Dazai only found the will to live because of Chuuya. Despite this, they hate each other in a way that’s complicated, but I’ll try to explain it because I guess this is a dazai chuuya analysis post now (wow tumblr 2016 animecore ig)

Dazai and Chuuya are a part of each other. Initally, when they first met, they hated each other. However, there’s a lot of trauma in both of them, invidually, but also traumatic things they’ve went through together for two barely adult people. They’re entangled, but they still repel each other no matter what. They dislike each other because of their highly conflicting personalities, different methods of thinking, different approaches to issues, and different levels of sympathy for people.

No, it’s not an opposites attract case, you can tell how unwilling they are to see each other in that one episode. No amount of masking and acting will change that. But that’s why so many people enjoy the dynamic. Because it’s perfectly made so that it looks like your classic enemies to situationship to lovers where one bullies the other, but it’s really not like that. But it’s only because they hate each other that so many people like it. They’ll fight and “hate” each other, but they’ll also come to each other’s aid when it’s expected.

That’s what makes Dazai and Chuuya so special. They have a really strong bond together, born out of basically, mutral suffering in a sense and a strong dislike for each other. But they’ve become basically, two pieces of one body. One that needs the other, but will continually fight the other. Not because they’re falling in love with each other, no. But because they’re pieces that aren’t destined to fit perfectly together, nor will they ever, similar to an invidual that fights and hates himself all the time, but is whole. Without one side or the other, they will cease to exist.

#dazai #chuuya #dazai x chuuya #(please don't come at me please. its just my opinion)#bungo stray dogs #bsd dazai #bsd chuuya #chuuya nakahara #dazai osamu #bsd

17 notes · View notes

monstersinthecosmos · 1 year

Note

News that may interest you: asexual podcast duo The Ace Couple just released part 1 (of 2) of their AMC IWTV breakdown! I really like these podcasters’ style of media discussion in general—it’s detailed and analytic but also consistently funny and conversational—and I highly recommend this episode. Still just as excited for your written overview of asexuality in VC, whenever that happens :)

Oh wow, this is so cool! Thank you for sharing!

I listened to the episode and it really was a great critique of ways the show erased the asexuality, and I think it was also a really nice overview of the allosexual attitude I see in fandom a lot. Oddly enough, coming from a more casual/mainstream perspective and not like a DEEP FANDOM NERD IN THE TUMBLR TRENCHES perspective ahaha. Like they brought up reviews from gay men about how good the changes were and it kinda brushed upon some of the bullshit I’ve had to navigate by discussing this topic on Tumblr for years.

Something I think they summed up really well was the concept that the show changed the vampires from “broadly queer” to “explicitly gay” and that really nails it on the head I think.

At some point I do want to write some more posts about this, especially if I can reread the books this year I want to take time to like share and discuss some of the passages that are explicitly ace to me and build my case for the ace read. I’m guilty of bringing it up when it gets framed as an argument against acephobia and I apologize!!!!!!! We deserve to talk about this without having to disclaim that we deserve to be here or having to use it as a counter argument to acephobic garbage. Unfortunately, fandom has a great track record for leaving me ignorant comments or sending anons every time the topic comes up so I feel like I’m always defending it and not just enjoying it and giving it its own space. Sorry!!!!!!!

So to do that some more LMAO. (Sorry!)

I’ve said before like, I really do understand that the mainstream maybe needs the visual clues to understand the romance, but personally one of my huge complaints about the show is that there wasn’t actually a whole lot of intimacy and romance between them. Like, we see them fuck, but there’s barely any warmth between them. I went the whole season not really understanding what Louis saw in him. And I was confused what the show was trying to say, because while I understand that we can also see this as “Louis is not being truthful about their relationship” (aided by the one cute moment being Claudia’s POV and not from Louis himself), Daniel’s remark that Louis was describing Lestat as his soulmate really threw me. Like, I wasn’t getting that from the story they were showing us at all.

So like, could they have shown romance and intimacy without sex? Of course. They chose not to. I appreciate and understand that it’s a win to show gay sex on mainstream TV, but I personally found it underwhelming as a choice for this particular story/series. The main thesis here is ROMANCE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE SEX. YOU CAN SHOW ROMANCE IN WAYS THAT ARE NOT SEX.

I don’t buy the pushback about asexuality somehow sanitizing the romance; in fact, that’s a fucking ignorant thing to say. I’ve had more than one person try to level me with this argument and I’m just not buying it. And as much as I think the mainstream is like centuries away from understand/accepting asexuality, it’s such a fucking problem even within the queer community.

✨Asexuals are queer. The characters are not less queer if they are asexual.✨

This talking point always tells me that someone either doesn’t believe aces belong in the queer community, or it tells me that the person just has an extremely fundamental misunderstanding of what asexuality is and isn’t.

But it’s the same way the heteros read IWTV and didn’t realize it was queer; I often think that allos in fandom do the same by missing the ace read.

And like, I’ve said this 100 times. It’s murky enough that I don’t think it’s worth arguing to death; I understand there is a bit of wiggle room. But that also means that shutting DOWN ace reads is ignorant as hell and frankly it’s pretty fuckin rude.

Something the podcast brought up that I don’t think I’ve given enough credit to is the idea that like Anne Rice’s writing is so SENSUOUS like, we can all agree that her vampires get turned and suddenly EVERYTHING is so heightened, like, they wanna touch velvet and cry at music and stare at buttons. DON’T WE THINK THEY’D BE CRAZY ABOUT SEX TOO? IF THEY WERE ALLO?????????? Hmm. Especially coming from an erotica writer like if she wanted them to fuck they would've fucked. (((Insert side essay about guilt/pleasure/Catholicism/etc don't @ me I don't got time today)))

Dgkjas sigh anyway

I’d really like to talk soon about the symbolism of drinking blood equating to sex and how because it’s not literal, IT IS NOT LITERAL. And how that’s no different from ace people finding ways around intimacy that are also not literally sex. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately haha but again I don’t want to like, waste another ace post by wrapping it in discourse. We can have those conversations without having to defend our existence LOL. PUT A PIN IN THIS, REMIND ME TO BRING IT UP AT A LATER DATE AWAY FROM THE HATERS.

#asexual vc #vampire chronicles #vampire pajama party on amc

31 notes · View notes

idkhowtopickausername · 1 year

Note

Are you still doing the unpopular opinions meme? 🔥 Naruto leftist discourse (and a precision: since Naruto Tumblr is the home of Naruto fans criticizing the Shinobi System and the narrative and so a huge chunk of the critique of the show on here is centered on those aspects, do you think people sometimes go too far and take it too seriously or don't take it seriously enough, etc.)

Hi! Yeah I’m still doing the ask game!

Yeah I do think there are times I see people taking it too seriously and people not taking it seriously enough. I think it’s good and important to be able to see how the stuff the show frames positively re: the shinobi system is really fucked up and to be able to see that Sasuke’s perspective is fundamentally correct despite him being vilified, and to be able to see that the ideas of morality that are being presented are very hypocritical and at times pretty awful. And when people who are actively engaged in Naruto discourse on here choose to dismiss or make fun of that analysis it does bother me, because I know they’ve had it explained to them and still refuse to see it.

That being said when it comes to the fandom on Tumblr it matters much more to me that people understand the problems with the show’s messaging than that they like the same characters/ships as me, and while there’s some characters that I don’t really see the appeal of and somewhat distrust the opinions of most of their fans, and vice versa characters I love and distrust the opinions of people who dislike them, I care more that people generally understand why the show’s messaging around genocide and its condemnation of the use of violence to resist a violent system are bad. I think getting super vitriolic towards people based on their subjective feelings about characters or ships is a bit embarrassing to witness. And similarly getting really vitriolic over people like not taking things seriously enough because they ship [x] or whatever or have some minorly flawed take, and claiming that they’re inherently selfish and morally depraved or something because of that is like kind of absurd to me lol, like it’s genuinely not that deep.

Also when people compare in-universe events to actual real-life atrocities it’s taking it a bit too far imo. I also think that while there are definitely connections between people’s opinions on fiction and their politics, and fiction is inherently political, you can’t reliably extrapolate people’s irl politics from their opinions about Naruto like I know people who are definitely leftists who I think have mundanely bad naruto opinions bc they’ve just never thought that deeply about it until I talked to them, and I’ve run into a couple of people on here who were Sasuke stans but turned out to be politically conservative, like there’s no clear line you can draw and it’s a bit weird to think that way imo. Also when people like to claim that Sasuke stans are like using Naruto discourse as a substitute for political engagement it’s hilarious lol like why don’t you think people can have hobbies like talking about fiction they like and also be politically engaged irl, they’re not mutually exclusive.

I think the reason leftists are drawn to analyze Naruto this way is partly because it illustrates really well the hypocrisy of systems that are inherently violent but treat resistance towards the status quo as the only real form of violence, and also illustrates how a militarized profit-based system affects lots of characters in different ways on a personal level. And I think Sasuke does develop a (flawed but still powerful) revolutionary ideology over the course of the story, and he has a big pivotal role in the story, and that resonates with a lot of people, myself included. He’s also a really complex and sympathetic character imo who manages to both feel very real and human and grow and change in meaningful ways (e.g. not just be the mouthpiece for a certain political viewpoint) and also opposes the dominant system at the same time.

#ask

25 notes · View notes

palfriendpatine66 · 6 months

Note

Hello again! Hope you're having a good day)

Writing/characterization anon reporting for duty again.

Maybe you could elaborate on how you see Anakin, as well. It would be a great honor and a big help to hear your take.

I mean, I've read metas that spoke about the more human aspects of his character, the trauma and vulnerability, the search for justice and the fear of loss that drives his turn to the dark side.

Also, some interesting points can be made about his connection to the Force and role as the Chosen One from the perspective of how touching divinity and yet being mortal messes with human beings on a fundamental level.

But then there's also the whole business of him being a capable commander and General?

Basically, I'm scared of writing Ani as too cringefail, or veering too much into "no flaws all hero" territory.

Also, the Obi-Wan and Anakin comic confuses me greatly. I mean, the kid chooses to stay. He clearly sees something in being part of the Order at that point. I wonder what moment made him change his mind...

Thank you so so much for taking time to read this and for answering my other ask!

Good luck and have a good one, pal.

I have been thinking about this all day, and I’m not sure I’m going to come up with a great answer. I’m definitely not the expert on all things Anakin and writing him is still something I’m figuring out. But I’m willing to let you know my thoughts, for what they’re worth! (Keep in mind I also have spent a long series writing Anakin as a good dad, and granted I did my best with how that *could* have come to be in entirely different circumstances, we all know Anakin Skywalker was not good parenting material.)

I think I can get away with a lot writing Anakin in modern aus, when it’s able/necessary to disregard his sheer overwhelming power, and Palpatine’s literal evil influence. When we take those away, it’s a less complex, overwhelming character to work with. Then I can focus on conveying his main personality trait: intense.

I recently wrote this from the perspective of (slightly manipulative) serial killer Obi-Wan in a letter to not yet murder Anakin that I feel like sums it up:

You love as you do all things: fully, completely, and without reservation. Your pain cuts deep because your passion burned intensely. You deserve a lover that will delight in every part of you, Ani. You need someone who will love you just as intensely and as fully as you give yourself to them.

Whatever Anakin does is intense. His anger is rage, his love is passionate and possessive. He cares too much, his worries are all consuming.

In modern aus I generally pick one side of that to play out or else it’s *too* intense for most settings. Usually anxiety. But also impulsiveness/moved by passion. Possessive. Eager to please.

In universe though? The sky is the limit, especially as it plays out with his connection in the Force. I also think it’s really interesting to play around with what parts of Anakin are revealed to whom (who sees uncomfortable hints of darkness, who sees the need for control, who sees that a lot of his arrogant or reckless actions are because he has the sense of responsibility that he *has* to be the one to solve the problem or win the battles or else people die)

I don’t know if this helps at all. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

9 notes · View notes

hungeringheart · 10 months

Text

Inaugural Classpect Analysis Post: Witch of Life

Doing my own most recent one, Witch of Life, first, and then I'll probably work through more as they're requested or occur to me.

So, all right, let's get into it!

There beneath the willow tree

I learned a lot about the way of things

I learned that everything (the wind, the leaves)

Has breath inside

~ There Beneath (The Oh Hellos)

Witch of Life is a difficult one because it's one of the canon matchups - my patron troll is actually Vriska, but I'm classpect and ezodiacmates with Feferi, whatever that might or might not mean for me (it means I have an evil fuchsia blorbo, for one).

For the gentle reader it means that Feferi is a canonical example whom we now have to analyze as realized or not, and we will get to that (which is also my opinion about her realization or not). But first we have to find out what a witch is, and what Life means in Homestuck.

So our canon witches are Feferi, Jade and Damara. The wiki tells us all kinds of things about witches, but it's actually all fanon, so we should be careful about how we handle things. It is true that witches are an active (-) class, but here's the rationale behind the fanon definition.

So, the best the fandom has been able to glean from Jade warping space, Feferi healing others and mimicking their abilities, and Damara ... um ... well, Damara, is that all three of them had the basic ability and inclination to fuck around with their aspect. Damara spent her Time Fucking Around until she was required to Fuck Around with Time; Feferi fucked around with the course of life (her animals) and with her own and other lives (her position on the hemospectrum) and with biology itself (every shown manifestation of her Lifey Thing); Jade lived out her life just sort of fucking around with and in space in general (where she lived, what she did in-session, why her dream self was always awake).

Thus, we can assume that the fanon definition of a witch as "one who manipulates or changes their aspect, and their world through it" is fairly spot-on. We may also define it more idiosyncratically as "one who has and uses the power to fuck around". Do they have to find out? Well, maybe not all the time -- certainly not as Doom or Void players...

But let's continue on to considering Life, which is more complicated.

Clearly and obviously we know what Life usually symbolizes in video games, and we have our own preconceptions about it as an elemental force. But what does it mean in Homestuck, to SBURB's internal symbology? What sort of hero exactly is the lifekind (perchance)?

Sea Hitler, that's what kind. No, really, the only Life heroes we have are Her Imperious Condescension Meenah "Betty Crocker" Peixes, and her children (Feferi [biologically] and Jane [socially]). Sweet Baby Ray, what a lineup. I'd normally not even mention it on a blog like this, but in this specific context is it anything that I'm Jewish?

Fuckin eh. All right. Let's examine what it is that Fef, Meenah and Jane have in common as characters and in their arcs.

To refresh:

Meenah, Jane and Fef are all "heiresses" of some sort.

Meenah and Feferi are young members of a rare troll biocaste destined to rule their world (if one of them can kill the other for it). It seems like they have a lot of agency in their world, but they don't really - at every step of their existence, the powers that be make decisions that affect them in deep and fundamental ways. Their only objective in life is really to survive it, for all however many billion years they're given.

It's my personal headcanon that mother grubs have some level of control over the brood. It's stated in canon that the "ancestor" relationship is rooted in some kind of an appreciation of a person's most similar predecessor. The genetic relationships between ancestors and descendants are probably not always literal (a person can be the centuries-delayed biological offspring of their ancestor, a biological sibling created from the same genetic material, or in fact the offspring or clone of a direct ancestor of their social ancestor, or something else).

I think if they can hold gametes for potentially centuries, they can also probably sort the material and consciously select the blood caste of their young. This means that mother grubs have the ability to choose when a new fuchsia is born. Of course, it's not like there's a strongly enforced law against just killing the resulting grubs, and raspberry syrup has to come from somewhere -- and that too is an administrative choice, made either directly by jades or by jades at the behest of the reigning Empress.

The point here is that for an Alternian heiress her entire continued existence is a matter of public opinion and the whims of her predecessor and the machinery of state, going all the way down to her own mother (which some of the hivebent adjacent stuff seems to imply might be an elite jade who undergoes some sort of helmsmanlike second metamorphosis rather than just the naturally occurring royal jelly-induced gyne I expected, which would add a circular dimension to this that is ... oddly horrifying. in your own fanon you can do what i do and ignore it if you want).

Enmeshment in this multigenerational spidernest of trauma is a really miserable way to live -- you constantly have to struggle to prove that you're worthy, that you deserve to live, that you're good enough and strong enough to be deemed fit to exist. And considering who Meenah is as a result, it's no wonder that the Condesce (as Betty Crocker) passed the intergenerational trauma torch to Jane.

Since they all fulfill the same culture role (albeit adapted for the colonized Earth in one case) and are directly socially related (Feferi is Meenah's successor in one timeline, Jane in another) we can meaningfully talk about the impact of the same system on all of them -- and about how they reconciled themselves to it, and what they did to fight for their own survival and right to growth.

It's that fight that's essential to the Life aspect -- the struggle to live, to thrive, no matter what, against all imaginable odds. Vitality, vigour, the state of life, the persistence of life against scrutiny and pathologization. Rejuvenation, plenty, and the ability to exert your will in your own life. The constant striving-to-be of all that is, and the way of things, which is comprised by it.

For Meenah, a Thief of Life, her relationship to her aspect was opportunistic and desperate -- she took whatever she could for her own benefit, and was willing to take considerable risks to fuck around and find out. Fuck her predecessor, fuck the system and fuck the entire world -- all of it had done nothing of any worth for her (as a person, as a child), and she felt within rights to claw everything out of it in revenge. Ultimately her hatred of and refusal to be beholden to the Alternian system, selfish and maladjusted as she was, led her to abdicate, run away, and enmesh her friends in the game, sealing their fates and giving her accidental control over their stolen lives. In that control she was manipulative and callous, sowed hostility among her acquaintances in the probably traumatic belief that struggle would help them survive. That's how she made it this far, isn't it?

For Jane, her alternate-universe daughter-figure and a Maid, her relationship to her aspect was servile and self-essentializing. Adult Meenah's parenting philosophy (if you can call it that) was a mirror of her AU self's style of play, with the same obsession with winning and the same roots in a simple wish to be good enough to live, good enough at living, good enough at helping others live.

With that kind of mother figure, even at the distance that they had, and with her other parent being AU Dad, it's no wonder that Jane (a Maid of Life) turned out the way she did -- initially a pushover, reliant on others for agency, for healing and to flourish. How else was she supposed to survive and preserve that thing most sacred to a child, the sense that things are as they should be?

It may also be worth exploring that Jane was a member of a species where all of one sex has the ability to reproduce, to create life and to know that they did so -- and Meenah was not, and their relationship was at least partly contextualized by that. But we can talk about that in a different post; what about Feferi?

Now that we've established an archetypal relationship between two people defined by the struggle that typifies Life players, and begun to shed light on a relation of Life to cycles (of cellular repair, of bad choices, of maturing, of abuse -- "that's just life, you know"?), we can talk about what it means that one part of this cycle tried to break it.

Feferi went out of her way to be as sweet as possible and to save the most possible lives -- bending the rules of struggle was the way she chose to respond to the pressure and the social dynamic that damaged Meenah and severely affected Jane.

She had absolutely no clue what she was doing at any point, but I think that's what typifies the idea of the Witch of Life to me: somebody who tries to understand, tries to exist in the system into which they were introduced, but ultimately decides that the best thing they can do to win is not to play by the rules at all.

Early fandom tended to take the trolls' side regarding how adaptive was Feferi's relentless optimism and at least attempt to refuse to be a bad person. In text and probably internally, Feferi deals with a lot of pressure to be a certain way, and questioning of her motivations for acting otherwise. From a hopepunk point of view, and from the point of view that she's a victim of the same institutions as everyone else who refused to let all this make her cruel, we can examine the possibility that Fef really was doing the best she could, sincerely, at all times. Her existence was defined by struggle, albeit struggle that was different in kind from the rest of her society's struggle, and she didn't want to pass more suffering on to others. She wanted to flourish outside the "rules" of flourishing, which in her society said that it was inherently impossible and maybe even immoral to ensure flourishing for anyone else.

Now, is she phenomenally weird about it, does she not apprehend her own sociopolitical context contra those of her friends, and does she fail spectacularly? Sure, but she's also thirteen. At thirteen anybody's idea of saving the whales is going to be a little odd and disrespectful of the whales' agency - how much more so if they're a future absolute monarch (or human sacrifice) in a society that's totalitarian and soulless, and can only envision its opposite in a historical stifling paternalism?

I'm, apparently, a Witch of Life myself, and maybe that biases me a little bit, but I think that what all of this means about the classpect is that a Witch of Life is someone who aims to manipulate or change or at least reject the circumstances of struggle and flourishing, the "life" about which people say "that's life" for people.

I think it's actually quite a noble thing to strive for if you're an adult, who has finished coming of age -- but to replace a system, one needs to be able to envision and make something that works in its stead. Even works only provisionally -- but works. Feferi never fully realized her potential to do this for her society, although her SBURB powers developed well; it seems like a similar type of journey should take place for other Witches of Life as well, in which control over bodily integrity, cellular life and well-being evolves into control over circumstances and conditions for themselves and others. Life at the micro and macro scale, broadening perspective from cell to ecosystem.

The journey is not easy, and requires experience and the cultivation of a particular type of thinking about oneself and the world that takes a long time and lucky experiences to achieve -- no wonder that at least one person forced by a possibly sadistic space cancer game to rush through a Life-related development process became Sea Hitler.

Overview

Overall, Witch of Life is a very strong classpect potentially, with the ability to manipulate, alter or reframe life itself (life-force, biological matter and the abstract concept of flourishing) -- but the work required to realize oneself in it is something that we all struggle with, well past Feferi's age. Maybe that's why it was given to the single longest-living person in the cast?

A fully realized Witch of Life would have a developed sense of what to and what not to screw with, I think; they would be someone with a very strong sense of the way of things, and a very strong sense of what parts of it are truly essential. They would be able to bend their Aspect to their will, but also aware of the impact their will has on their Aspect, in a human carnivore's resolution of the enrichment paradox.

Was it Ursula Le Guin who once wrote that the more agency someone has, the more power someone has, the less they actually choose to do? The more choices are made, the fewer choices remain, until despite the fact that the world is open to you, there remains one "correct" way to go. I think this is probably something that Life players learn sooner than others -- but not in the way that Doom or Rage players do, where the focus is on the nature of inevitability or the application of zeal to do what you can do. For Life players, this process is underscored by a need to understand that while their own struggle is essential, everything else wants to live too, and there is no evil in that -- a shift from personal to system-focused thinking. Cell to ecosystem.

For Witches of Life, despite their ability to change their world, I think the real end goal on their journey in-game is coming to a place and time when they've struggled enough, meddled enough, done enough for the situation at hand, personally -- a literal journey through the life course and the different stages of involvement in the generational struggle, in miniature.

Oh, yeah, and they can sprout improbable vines from the ground and resurrect the recent dead, that's cool too.

#witch of life #classpect #homestuck #classpect analysis #homestuck fandom

7 notes · View notes