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laurellerual · 1 year

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in agot arya mentions becoming a high Septon in *that* line, its been a while since I read the books so I don't remember a lot but do you think arya will end up having a big role in any faith (the seven or the old gods)? i can't remember if she thought about religion a lot or not

High septon Arya with some cool high priestess tarot symbolism

Good question. Arya is the only main character to be part of a religious order, and is not clearly falling into the 'chosen one' category. I expect that all the religions and respective magics that she has encountered will play a fundamental role in her future.

I don't see Arya in a role like the High Septon because I don't think she recognizes the Seven as her own gods. I would say that Arya believes in the Old Gods and the Many-Faced God, and that she recognizes the power of R'hllor.

I think that in the future Arya could find herself in the position of 'collaborator/lay member' of the FM order, perhaps fulfilling a similar role as Brusco and Izembaro, but it is only speculation.

Some random thoughts on religion in Arya's storyline not a meta:

Religions are a fairly recurring topic in her chapters, she is probably the character who has encountered most faiths, but her relationship with them is particular. She seems to be quite curious about religion, especially now that she's in Braavos and surrounded by the strangest temples.

One time, the girl remembered, the Sailor's Wife had walked her rounds with her and told her tales of the city's stranger gods. "That is the house of the Great Shepherd. Three-headed Trios has that tower with three turrets. The first head devours the dying, and the reborn emerge from the third. I don't know what the middle head's supposed to do. Those are the Stones of the Silent God, and there the entrance to the Patternmaker's Maze. Only those who learn to walk it properly will ever find their way to wisdom, the priests of the Pattern say. Beyond it, by the canal, that's the temple of Aquan the Red Bull. Every thirteenth day, his priests slit the throat of a pure white calf, and offer bowls of blood to beggars."

We know that she was raised in a mixed faith family. But while there is a septa to take care of her education I don't think the Stark children were born in the light of the Seven.

Arya never seems to refer to the religion of the Seven as her own. She defines the seven as "the southron god, the one with seven faces". She also never pray to them and she doesn't uses many common language expressions concerning them. But she often notices symbols or expressions related to the Seven that are used by the people around her. For example, in contrast, it's funny how often the Hound says "seven hells" or how often she hears "Mother have mercy".

But this religion can be useful to better understand the character from a thematic point of view, especially in her relationship with her mother. For example, it is interesting to see how Cat, for a moment, sees Arya in the warrior. Or how Arya could end up filling the role of Mercy for Merciless Mother.

This passage where Cat describes the Old gods as faceless particularly interesting in light of Arya's future, but also in light of Cat's future. In fact Lady Stoneheart's face ironically resembles the face of a weirwood.

Catelyn had been anointed with the seven oils and named in the rainbow of light that filled the sept of Riverrun. She was of the Faith, like her father and grandfather and his father of her before him. Her gods had names, and their faces were as familiar as the faces of her parents. Worship was a septon with a censer, the smell of incense, a seven-sided crystal alive with light, voices raised in song. The Tullys kept a godswood, as all the great houses did, but it was only a place to walk or read or lie in the sun. Worship was for the sept. For her sake, Ned had built a small sept where she might sing to the seven faces of god, but the blood of the First Men still flowed in the veins of the Starks, and his own gods were the old ones, the nameless, faceless gods of the greenwood they shared with the vanished children of the forest.

The Old gods have a much more obvious importance for Arya. This is the religion she prays to and the one she is immersed from narrative. Arya sees and crosses some of the most important places of this faith: High heart and the God's eye. The scene in the godswood of Harrenhal is fundamentally related to the theme of identity. I talked more about this here.

But the Old gods haven't an organized faith so I don't think it works to think of it as analogous to the faith of the Seven. I mean that there are no 'roles' to fill here. Bran's storyline could tell us more about this.

When Arya arrives in Braavos she sees a Sept, but she never goes there. Her thoughts go to the fact that this is a city without trees instead.

I think we need to keep an eye on the Many-Faced God and the Old gods because they're the deities that have the most thematic relevance in Arya's story right now. Somehow they represent the crossroads at which she is.

They are not my Seven. They were my mother's gods, and they let the Freys murder her at the Twins. She wondered whether she would find a godswood in Braavos, with a weirwood at its heart. Denyo might know, but she couldn't ask him. Salty was from Saltpans, and what would a girl from Saltpans know about the old gods of the north? The old gods are dead, she told herself, with Mother and Father and Robb and Bran and Rickon, all dead. A long time ago, she remembered her father saying that when the cold winds blow the lone wolf dies and the pack survives. He had it all backwards. Arya, the lone wolf, still lived, but the wolves of the pack had been taken and slain and skinned.

Perhaps when winter comes we will discover that this crossroads is not as marked as it might seem. I'm not the first person here to discuss how similar in their description Bloodraven's Cave and House of Black and White are. In particular there is a visual and thematic parallel in the use of weirwood, in the appearance of Bloodraven and the kindly man and in the type of meat that is served to Arya and Bran.

We must also take into consideration the religion of R'hllor which will become increasingly important in twow. Arya has encountered this before and is familiar with its power to resurrect the dead this way. This will certainly affect her opinion of Lady Stoneheart and Jon Snow. Also we've seen Melisandre's glamors and we know these are listed by the kindly man as one of the methods Arya will need to learn. Even the concept of blood magic seems somewhat akin to the methods of the FMs.

Another religion to keep an eye on for the future is that of the Moonsingers because, as was discussed around here a few days ago, we could see Arya frequent their temple. They are as old as the FM, among the founders of Braavos and seem to deal respectively with life and death.

"The Isle of the Gods is farther on. See? Six bridges down, on the right bank. That is the Temple of the Moonsingers." It was one of those that Arya had spied from the lagoon, a mighty mass of snow-white marble topped by a huge silvered dome whose milk glass windows showed all the phases of the moon. A pair of marble maidens flanked its gates, tall as the Sealords, supporting a crescent-shaped lintel.

This could become relevant in the next book when Arya gets her moonblood.

"It may be that the Many-Faced God has led you here to be His instrument, but when I look at you I see a child . . . and worse, a girl child. Many have served Him of Many Faces through the centuries, but only a few of His servants have been women. Women bring life into the world. We bring the gift of death. No one can do both."

Furthermore, the fact that Moonsinger and Wolf are practically synonymous is certainly... a choice.

"Snow," the moon murmured. The wolf made no answer. Snow crunched beneath his paws. The wind sighed through the trees. Far off, he could hear his packmates calling to him, like to like. They were hunting too. A wild rain lashed down upon his black brother as he tore at the flesh of an enormous goat, washing the blood from his side where the goat's long horn had raked him. In another place, his little sister lifted her head to sing to the moon, and a hundred small gray cousins broke off their hunt to sing with her. The hills were warmer where they were, and full of food. Many a night his sister's pack of him gorged on the flesh of sheep and cows and horses, the prey of men, and sometimes even on the flesh of man himself.

#asoiaf #arya stark #house stark #the old gods #the seven gods #the facelessmen #braavos

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welcometohell09 · 2 months

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I think a lot of the criticisms of Frozen Empire!Phoebe miss very crucial aspects of her character.

Phoebe does not see herself as a normal child, but simultaneously has little to no understanding of the sheer abnormality of her situation. Phoebe's inability to connect with other people (linked with her very strongly coded autism) is very much made apparent and highlighted in Afterlife. One thing that is interesting about this is how it relates to how she "found [her]self" (Callie's words) in the whole ghostbusting gig; it's very much her speciality, and lets her embrace her difference as something she's perfect for. Cut to three years later, and it's been her life since she was 12. She'd have some understanding of how it wasn't normal, but she wasn't normal, and in her mind she's so different from everyone else that makes sense her life would be different. Why would child endangerment matter if it was her? That exists to protect normal children. How was she a normal child, therefore why would she need that protection? etc. It's only exacerbated by the fact that Phoebe knows she's one of, if not the best one there; she's the most scientifically bright, she handles the danger like it's nothing, she's made it apart of her life and identity in a way the others haven't quite done. She's the perfect ghostbuster.

Phoebe, like any 15 year old, doesn't see how her age would make the fact that she's in danger a major issue; she just knows that she's the perfect ghostbuster, and that after a lifetime of feeling like her difference was a bad thing which drove people (like her bio father) away, there are a bunch of non-sciencey adults telling her she shouldn't do the one thing she finds solace in. She's been doing it since she was 12. Of course she's angry! Of course she's upset!

And as much as Callie and Gary express a desire for her to take more risks, they want her to do so in a way which is fundamentally 'normal': getting a tattoo, sneaking alcohol, etc. They want her to do that because doing that would mean Phoebe puts value in the 'normal' social scene of teenage life, which would mean making an effort to connect with people (which Phoebe does do, just not in a way that is recognisable to them).

But Phoebe doesn't value that type of rebellion; when she makes bad decisions, she does it with a particle accelerator in her hands. The mistakes she makes aren't 'normal' because the life that she leads isn't 'normal', which is something that both she and her parents don't fully recognise; her parents, because they were both raised (comparatively) normally and don't recognise the way Phoebe's ghostbusting lifestyle has altered her childhood and mentality, and Phoebe because she lacks the recognition of a 'normal' mistake.

Anyway. Just thoughts.

#phoebe spengler #frozen empire #this could be wrong but it's my thoughts on the matter

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moorishflower · 2 months

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Hey I wanna be really clear about something because I do occasionally reblog stuff wrt Palestine and its current occupation, so if you don't have any interest in politics (because this IS politics, this whole situation is very much NOT about religion) feel free to skip over

But I want to make it absolutely clear that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are not the same thing, and when I reblog things in support of Palestine I am not doing so because I think that Jews are evil. I'm studying Judaism. I'm trying to convert. I hope I'll be ready for that someday. So it is not Jews who've stolen land and killed locals and started a genocide. It is not even, to a certain extent, Israelis who've done this. The country of Israel, our modern understanding of it, was flawed from the beginning, built on colonized land that had been already occupied by the British Empire. It has since been taken over by a far-right extremist government who views the native tribes and people of Palestine as little more than animals, or worse than animals. And what's tragic is that this government is using Jews as their footsoldiers and their scapegoats and their pawns. Promising them a return to a homeland that has been gone for thousands of years. Promising peace and safety to a people who have been hurt and oppressed and murdered and driven out again and again. But you can't buy peace with blood. What Hamas did was horrific and is NOT to be celebrated. But what Israel is doing in response is worse.

Halacha tells us that we have the right to rodef, the right of the pursuer. The actual line is "You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor." In the Talmud, it's decided that "if someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill them first." It's the right to self-defense. What Israel is claiming is that Hamas is SUCH a threat that the deaths of more than 30,000 people, most of which are civilians, most of which are women and children, is justified under Talmudic law.

Right now, the estimate for Israeli casualties (including those killed at the Sukkot gathering) is around 1,139.

The estimate for Palestinian casualties is at least 30,000. Quite possibly more, as some 10,000 are missing. Professor Yagil Levy of the Tel Aviv University estimates that about 61% of that 30,000 is women, children, and the elderly (he places all men over the age of 18 in the "combatant" category and thus are not considered civilians, which is problematic in and of itself).

So where is the line drawn? The Talmud doesn't tell us. But I don't think that the tragic deaths of 1,139 people justifies the wanton and senseless murder of 18,000 women, children, and elderly.

What Israel is doing is horrifying, and it isn't to secure a Jewish homeland, and it isn't in the name of G-d, and it isn't for the continued existence of Jews. It is, plain and simple, an attempt to consolidate power. Netanyahu was (and still is) an extremely disliked Prime Minister. He has put himself into bed with whoever he thinks is most powerful and most likely to keep him in power, which is unfortunately a gaggle of right-wing extremists who are no different, fundamentally, from any other extremist, and who are using Judaism and Jews as a vehicle towards their own enrichment.

I guess what I'm saying here is that in a way, I feel sorry for the Israeli Jews who were told that Israel was the home they had always been promised, but were never told about the strings attached to it. And I wanted to make it absolutely clear that I will not hold with anyone who says that Jews, specifically, are to blame for Gaza, or any other antisemitic statements, because it is not a religious contention.

Oseh shalom bimromav hu ya'aseh shalom aleinu v'al kol yoshvei tevel. Palestine will be free and Jews will know peace again.

#palestine #israel #current events

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earthstellar · 7 months

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More Thoughts on Prowl in Earthspark

I think it would be fun if Prowl has a little bit of a tough time integrating with the Terran Team, which I talked about previously in another post

Like, if it starts out rough, understandable-- And then the "lesson" for the intended audience (kids) can be something along the lines of learning how to get along with others that may be different from yourself, how to integrate into a different culture by trying to make friends and being open to learning, how to meet people halfway when you might be personally hesitant, etc.

But I have some more thoughts...

Real World Concerns: ACAB Still Applies

Keeping in mind that Prowl's a cop and there are some real world implications of that which are even more highlighted as the Maltos are a non-white family who live in the USA, I can understand the concerns I've seen some people have about bringing a "tough cop" type of character into a show that has heavy emphasis on diversity and reflecting that diversity fairly realistically.

I've been wrongfully detained back when I was a teenager and was taken across a state border then had to sleep in a cell overnight thanks to the NYPD myself as a trans person, which happened only four weeks after my black partner at the time was harassed by a police officer when a cop straight up just walked into my dad's house with no warrant because apparently a black person and a trans person gardening together is "suspicious behaviour".

My dad's house is in Pennsylvania, which is where Earthspark takes place. Me and my loved ones have been harassed by cops that are quite literally the actual cops you'd see in Earthspark, in Witwicky. Same police department/region in Pennsylvania, given their proximity to actual Pennsylvanian locations in the show.

So I know these fears well and I understand-- Nobody has a good experience with the American police. Every interaction is terrifying, and those of us in any minority group are far more likely to have experiences like this having never committed any crime or wrongdoing at all. Seeing any cop, even a fictional one, can trigger some bad memories or prior trauma for a lot of us, and it might be hard for them to work around.

I'm thinking that's part of why they've changed his alt-mode, from what we can tell from the toy photos.

Earthspark Handles Real World Issues Fairly Well: Writing with Sensitivity

At the same time, the themes of the show are fundamentally family, friends, learning, growing, and teamwork, with some emphasis on developing emotional intelligence and social/cultural awareness.

It's important to remember that Prowl is a Cybertronian cop who took a cop car alt-mode back in the G1 days because it was simply what fit his own role best and made for the most effective cover while on Earth-- He may not be working with local human police forces, but if he is, we'll see how the show handles that.

I think it's notable that they've changed up Prowl's alt-mode design here, despite having shown him in his police vehicle alt-mode in the G1 flashback sequence. You don't see "POLICE" written across his doorwings, these days. They're not selling him as a "cop car toy" anymore, which I think most of us can agree is a good thing.

I think Prowl absolutely has a place in Earthspark, and it'll be interesting to see how they utilise his character-- For all we know, it'll be a totally unique take on the character unlike any specific prior iteration of him, which would also be interesting!

But I do think that they know they have to be careful with introducing a cop character. They've handled subjects like xenophobia in Earthspark very tactfully in a way that suits the intended audience of children, and hopefully they continue to use the same tact when interpreting Prowl's character for this same audience, given that he's a cop and there are implications to cop characters in general that are going to lead a lot of people to be a little less forgiving and a little more suspicious of him.

More Conjecture/Thinking Out Loud, Since All We Have is a Photo of a Toy At This Point

That having been said, almost no story can happen without a hero's journey in some shape or form, and it would be interesting to see Prowl have some initial difficulty dealing with the Terrans and humans in general (or something similar that might cause some level of conflict) to be resolved as time goes on.

It would be interesting if the show touches on Prowl being a cop and how American kids realistically react to that.

I was always taught to never speak to a cop and how to do so very carefully if I ever absolutely had to etc. when I was a kid, and I'm sure the Maltos have had that same conversation with their children. It's a safety issue; Unfortunately, most American kids get "the cop talk" pretty early.

Maybe Prowl shows up and Robby immediately grabs Mo to get her behind him and he tells his Terran siblings to "let him do the talking", since he's the oldest one and a little more aware of the risk that police officers can present. Since Mo is usually outgoing, and she might be more quiet here because she would understand the potential risk whenever cops are involved, the Terrans would take the hint and be wary of Prowl.

Or perhaps Prowl is introduced as an "enforcer" by Optimus, and when the kids ask what that means, Optimus translates it as "police officer", which might be what causes Robby and Mo to react a little negatively/suspiciously to Prowl. So it wouldn't be as immediate of a reaction, but once they find out he's a cop, they react appropriately-- With caution.

Which might serve to alienate him a bit, as he wouldn't understand why they were just outgoing and friendly and now they're suddenly not-- From Prowl's point of view, he might not fully understand their reaction.

If he'd been working on trying to investigate the bot fighting rings etc., then he'd be aware of the general public's xenophobia towards Cybertronians and how that can manifest as real violence, and might think the kids were being biased against him. Which might be worsened by the fact that to him, as far as he knows, they evidently don't like enforcers specifically-- Which may even lead him to overthink it, as he is technically designed to do in most continuities, and he might assume their anxiety around him comes from some kind of criminal history on their part.

This could be handled partially comedically, as the audience knows the kids are good and haven't done anything wrong (and this would also introduce Prowl's capabilities as an investigative officer while framing him as a "silly adult bewildered by kids just being kids" for the younger viewers)-- -But it needs to be treated respectfully and with reasonable seriousness as well.

This type of assumed guilt is often what leads to wrongful arrest, miscarriage of justice, and serious abuse from actual police. There is a real world body count for this exact kind of assumption, and these assumptions are often based in racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

And this is a kid's show, so I don't think they'll go too deep-- But I do think they'll address the "cop in the room" in some kind of way.

There could be some serious misunderstandings that go both ways, as the kids might then interpret any upset from Prowl as being inherently hostile.

It would take work to get them to trust him, and Prowl would need to come to understand why being an enforcer in this context is something that registers as a threat to the Maltos and by proxy the Terrans as well-- Who haven't had good experiences with authority figures either, given the whole GHOST situation.

And given that he might not start out too enthused about the situation altogether (we don't know how he might be coping with being forced to live on Earth), it might be interesting if they take this approach (or a similar one) to introducing Prowl.

Keeping in mind this is a show for kids, and you don't want kids to implicitly trust cops. In America especially, that's just not a safe lesson to teach.

So it would be hard for them to pull something like this off, in a way that both 1) solidifies that cops can't be safely trusted and also 2) Prowl is good not because he's a cop, but because his genuine interests are to protect and serve in his own way, and it's not just some kind of fake creed that he doesn't follow like every other cop.

But like I said, you can't teach kids that cops are good. So it'll be interesting to see how they handle his role as "enforcer".

He might be misguided sometimes, or he might need some fine-tuning, but Prowl shouldn't be directly malicious or intentionally mean to the kids. Maybe he's accidentally rude, or doesn't understand how he comes across to others (especially humans/the Terrans). Maybe he's having a hard time being on Earth, and it shows in his behaviour or demeanour.

But he can learn, and adapt as best he can over time. The show is about learning and growing with each other.

I Don't Think He'll Dislike the Kids Too Much: Teaching Time with Prowl

It'll be interesting to see how Prowl gets along with the kids, but I do think he eventually will, at least to some degree.

I don't think Prowl is a child-hater. I think he might need time to acclimate and socialise a little more effectively and understand a little more. And the kids might need the same, when it comes to Prowl.

I can't see him as being mean to them, not once he realises the Terrans are essentially sparklings and the human kids develop and grow on a totally different scale. We don't know what interactions Prowl might have with humans in general, or how experienced he is with younglings of any kind.

There might be a learning process, or Prowl might even take up helping to tutor the kids a bit-- He could help teach them investigative techniques, or logical problem solving, or how to evaluate complex situations (like calculating battle outcomes and assessing threats in the field-- a safety lesson as much as anything else). Things along those lines.

We've already seen the kids learn from various adults, so why not Prowl too?

I can see him wanting to protect them and do what he can to help them, but he might not be a super-involved parent-type, and that's totally fine.

He would likely make for a strict but effective teacher, using his skills of observation to notice when the kids need some extra assistance or would benefit from a different approach.

He might also struggle to teach at first; Maybe he attempts to treat it like an enforcer academy, which the kids might not respond well to. Bumblebee could provide some input to help Prowl adjust his approach, as he has the most experience with training them so far.

He Might Not Be a Cop at All

Maybe he's not an enforcer at all anymore, in this continuity.

Maybe he's struggling to find an identity for himself after realising the enforcement system on Cybertron was corrupt (as Megatron in Earthspark has given us some hints that the background setup to the war might be similar to IDW 1 in some regards), and after finding Earth's police are no better, he's at a loss for how to make himself useful.

He could possibly be working as a kind of private investigator, carrying out missions assigned to him by Optimus. He doesn't wear the GHOST badge, so it doesn't seem like he's been working with them somewhere this whole time.

Part of any irritation from him might be, essentially, an identity crisis. What does he do now, and how does he do it, with almost no resources and very few Cybertronians left to collaborate with? Does he even want to collaborate with anyone at all, at this point?

He might be more of a solo actor in Earthspark, off doing his own thing. With or without missions assigned from Optimus.

But he does still wear the Autobrand, which is interesting if this is the case.

More Disability Representation: Prowl is Essentially Neurodivergent With a Syncope Disorder

He might not be too good at socialising, but this shouldn't be taken as a sign of being a "mean cop"-- Prowl is canonically neurodivergent in some continuities (owing to his unique tactical/statistical processing, he is also prone to crashes), and any social problems he's depicted with are at least in part a result of his thought processes and perception of things being fundamentally different.

It would be interesting if they brought this aspect of his character back for this iteration of Prowl; Maybe he sees the Terrans for the first time and his processor struggles to understand what's going on and what they are at first, and it might trigger a crash.

Of course, the kids would react like how most kids do; Sort of panicked and worried that it's their fault somehow. Prowl could provide some situations that would be a good opportunity to teach kids a little more about disability and provide further representation for any neurodivergent kids watching the show, which would be great! And a "crash" could be comparable to anything from some types of seizures to syncope disorders to narcolepsy etc.-- Any health condition where fainting or collapse might occur.

We rarely see syncope etc. disorders portrayed in media, let alone kid shows, so it would be great to see in Earthspark as an opportunity for both inclusion for disabled audiences and education on disability for non-disabled audiences.

It would be interesting if a "crash" were portrayed somewhat realistically, no immediate recovery, maybe some dizziness, lingering fuel tank upset, maybe he even sustains some damage from falling over. It might take him a bit to fully reboot. He might regularly need to be a little more careful, to avoid processor loops or logic system issues that could lead to a crash.

Maybe he has a crash at a critical moment, and is out of commission for a battle or situation where he could have been helpful. If the kids are lukewarm towards him at this point, maybe seeing him laid out on a berth still recovering after they return from the fight would encourage them to step up and reassure him that he's not any less capable-- They would understand.

They've likely seen their mother struggle now and then on days where the phantom limb nerve pain is too much for her to go on that hike they had planned, or days where the prosthetic just isn't the vibe so she goes without and gets around the house a little differently on those days, or maybe even days where they see Dot looking at her prosthetic with a little sigh, and that's just how it is. Not every day is a feeling good day, some days the prosthetic just isn't wanted, some days the prosthetic is harder to put on than others. Disability is variable, and how people deal with disability fluctuates.

The kids would be good about understanding that Prowl has "those kind of days" too.

The show's not about Prowl-- There is an ensemble cast and plot/storylines to progress. But it would be a nice little scene if they want to do a one-off bit about this, that could also serve to show that Prowl, as hard-ass as he might come across, does actually have some vulnerabilities.

It could be the thing that encourages the kids to at least try to work with him, if they have any initial hesitancy-- Especially following their experiences with Robbie's illness previously.

If the kids might think Prowl's demeanour is a little off-putting because he's not as outwardly emotive, might be more literal than others, etc., maybe one of the other adult bots could help explain to them that Prowl's processor just works differently, and that he struggles with being social. The kids would likely be understanding of this, and it would be a nice parallel to teaching abled kids how to interact with autistic peers, while also making Prowl relatable to autistic kids watching the show.

(This would also provide a potential opportunity for a medic character to be introduced... I'm just saying. We all want Ratchet to show up, lmao.)

Earthspark is good about disability representation so far, and it would be nice to see that it's not just humans who can be disabled.

----

Anyway, yes, there's a lot of potential for Prowl in Earthspark, but it will have to be handled with tact, which I think the writers have proven themselves to be pretty capable of so far.

So, we'll see! We have no information right now aside from the toy photos, but the hype is real, and it will be interesting to see how they bring Prowl into the show and what, exactly, he'll be doing.

#tfe prowl #earthspark spoilers #long post #just thinkin'#tw police mention #tw police violence #tagging this stuff just in case #maccadams #maccadam #disability in media

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gettothestabbing · 2 months

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Relationship Doubts and Venting

For context, I've never had a long-term relationship before. I was technically 'with' a guy for two years, but after 6 dates our first month, I had to move, and so only saw him twice more in person after that. He insisted on EMAIL communcation only. So we essentially made no progress on actually getting to know each other.

So now, I've been with my current boyfriend for 5 months, and have known him for 6. We met on a dating app. We find each other very attractive, we're both conservative and want multiple children, we're both deadset on no sex before marriage, and we get along quite well. I enjoy being around him, and I've introduced him to my church and my coworkers on different occasions, starting from our first month together.

But on our last date, he started asking me questions about how my denomination handles weddings and what I would like my own wedding to be like. I was honest about what I liked, and finished by saying I wasn't ready to be engaged yet. But from things he's said, I have a feeling he's decided that I'm the one and is only waiting until I say something similar back to make it official.

That's so exciting, and flattering, and yet I know I'm not ready for it.

I still have a lot of concerns and unknowns about him. In no particular order, please enjoy all my concerns:

1: I still haven't met any of his family. We almost went bowling with his sister but she had a last-minute scheduling conflict. He's been living with his brother for several years, but he didn't even tell that brother about me yet. He says this brother is just very quiet and that they aren't close. But they've lived together for over 10 years, and my BF drives an hour EACH WAY to see me for every date. Where does the brother think he's going?

2: We never go to his area, partly because my work schedule is much less forgiving than his. This also means I've never seen his bedroom or home, including pictures. I've asked about this more than once, and he kinda dismisses it, saying it's just nicer to be in my area/house.

3: He's eight years older than me. I'm okay with the age gap in theory. In practice, we definitely grew up in very different eras and families. He's one of five kids, and I'm one of two sisters. I think he was harshly disciplined, and he indicated that he would physically discipline any children he has, though he added caveats restricting that discipline to certain behaviors from boys over the age of 15. But it still concerned me, because it wasn't coming from a place of "last resort" so much as from a place of "I got this so he would too."

Similarly, we don't agree on circumcision. His arguments for it consisted of "I was," "it's ugly otherwise," "he'll be bullied if he doesn't get it," and "there are some slight health benefits I think."

4: He was raised Catholic. I don't have an issue with Catholics generally, but I have known of several Catholic-CS couples who did not work out because of the vast denominational differences. I've also been personally warned by more than one CS woman of marrying a Catholic man, because they were prevented in their marriages from practicing their faith by their own Catholic husbands. TBF to my BF, he doesn't seem like he would be this kind of husband, but I don't know for sure because he doesn't seem to understand how different our beliefs actually are?

While my BF says he is looking for a new denomination, he's fundamentally incurious about other denominations, including my own. It seems like he is only looking to leave Catholicism because of political disaffection with Pope Francis and not because of an actual theological disagreement. He did Lent this year same as he ever did. He even admitted to not knowing the difference between Catholic and Protestant beliefs. He thought Peter wrote one of the Gospels (and he went to Catholic schools all his life).

It's just baffling to me that he isn't really interested in learning about different theologies and practices, while still claiming that he IS interested. It's words with no action following. I keep trying to show him stuff about my Bible study or my church. He's gone to a few services with me, but he never wants to talk about the content after. He just says the people there are nice.

Occasionally he makes jokes about wearing cult robes or bringing a goat to sacrifice to my church. This is because CS is often excluded from mainstream interfaith discussions and derided as a cult. Obviously, it's not a cult by any definition. I'm sensitive about this sort of joke, as not only do I truly hate cults like Scientology (for which we are also mistaken a lot unfortunately) and what they do to good people, but I was teased and bullied for my religion several times as a child and teenager.

5: Really, more than anything else, it's the incurious nature that concerns me. I'm not wealthy or an elite or anything, and never will be at my income level. But I do deeply value education, art, and learning. These are the things my family values too. I don't think I can be with someone permanently who doesn't value those things. I don't want to be overly pushy or self-centered either: it's not as if I want someone who only likes the stuff I like. But I don't want to only have small talk forever.

The few times we've had deeper discussions, he ends them as fast as possible, and his statements are rather vague and disconnected. While I wish we did agree on circumcision as an issue, I was more concerned with how poorly he defended his opinion, as well as how dismissive he was of my thoughts. I mean, I guess since I'm not a guy my opinion doesn't matter as much? But my arguments weren't about personal experience, but about empirical evidence and psychological studies. Idk. I regretted that conversation a lot; I got into lawyer-mode and was too blunt. For a few weeks afterward, he seemed like he was upset, but when I asked, he insisted he wasn't and that he didn't care. He also became more vulgar in our conversations after that. I had to ask him to scale it back.

None of these things individually are "dealbreakers". I'm not afraid of compromise and of us being our own people. But we do need to know some big things about each other and come to some important agreements before I would be ready to get engaged to him.

I'm hoping that when he meets my dad and stepmom next week, that will give me further insight. Good kissing and political agreement alone cannot a good marriage make.

#I'm not really looking for advice here though if you have some I'll try to take it well #I mostly needed to vent here because the person I usually vent to is busy rn with her own stuff #I may delete this in a day or two as well #pers com #I may be an overthinker but idc these are important issues #personal

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nofomogirl · 4 months

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Before the Beginning (part 1.3.)

Part 1.1. | Part 1.2. | Part 1.4. | Part 1.5. |

Part 2.1. | Part 2.2. | Part 2.3. |

The time has finally come for me to do something I've been both very excited about and terrified of ever since July - to analyze parts of Companion of Owls. Honestly, every scene in this minisode is so much, so dense and meaty and loaded, that I find it overwhelming.

But, as I've just said, the time has come.

The topic that interests us today - the fact that Crowley used to be an angel - is brought up in the courtyard of Job's children's house.

(...) A: I... I don't think... that is what God wants. C: Well... A: And I don't think you want it either. C: What do you know about what I want? A: I know you. C: You do not know me. A: I know the angel you were. C: The angel you knew is not me. A: Then... Then you tell me that you want to do this. You look me in the eye and tell me. C: I want to. I long to destroy the blameless children of blameless Job, just as I destroyed his blameless goats. A: Then God forgive you.

Oh dear, where do I even start?

Firstly, this exchange proves that Aziraphale has memories of Crowley from before the fall AND he's aware that the demon Crawley is that person he knew. We still don't know how much exactly Aziraphale remembers and knows, nevertheless, this is an important piece of the puzzle.

As to Crowley's response - it doesn't actually tell us as much. Unlike Aziraphale, Crowley is in a full bluff mode here and very keen to chase the angel away. Let's leave it for now.

Secondly - and for me this is really the crux of the scene - when referring to the demon's past angelic self, Azirhale uses the verb to know in the present tense (I know the angel), while Crowley says it in the past tense (the angel you knew). It's quite a big deal. It shows us that they perceive the object of that knowing - the object being pre-Fall Crowley - very differently. For Aziraphale, that person still exists, even though they're not an angel anymore. But Crowley speaks about this person the way you speak about dead people, closed chapters, and generally things with no significant connection to the present. He very clearly draws the line between his before and after while Aziraphale blurs it.

This is where things get complicated and I'm not sure how to present my thoughts in an orderly and comprehensible fashion...

God, this minisode is so much all at once!

Ok, let's start pulling at the thread about how Aziraphale was actually right about Crowley not wanting to hurt Job's kids.

The angel's own words suggest that he reached that conclusion based on what he knew about Crowley from before the Fall. He knew the angel who built the stars wouldn't do something like kill innocent children; he believed that the demon Crawley was still the same person as the angel who built the stars; therefore, he assumed that the demon Crawley would make the same decisions and act the same way and wouldn't kill innocent children. And he was correct.

What does that tell us?

Nothing definitive, actually. Because of course, it doesn't. It's Good Omens.

On the one hand, it may be a hint that Aziraphale does understand and see Crowley. Sure, the thesis of this whole sub-series (part 1 of the Before the Beginning series of posts) is that the Fall has fundamentally changed Crowley and that Aziraphale fails to realize just how deep that change goes. I still stand by it. But, true to the spirit of the show, it's not as black and white and clean-cut as it may seem at first glance. It's not as simple as Crowley understanding himself and Aziraphale being wrong.

Crowley is a trauma survivor and a lot of his behavior is coping mechanisms of various kinds. The way he separates himself from a past version of himself is certainly one of them. He is not objective and logical when it comes to the change he underwent. There are plenty of things about himself he doesn't understand because he's unable to calmly examine them. There are things he is in denial about. It's not exactly a stretch to think that he might actually NOT have changed as much as he insists he did, he simply finds it hard to identify with his past self. His before self. It's not exactly uncommon.

But on the other hand, how much did Aziraphale really understand?

Firstly, while he did correctly predict what Crowley would do, he didn't necessarily get why. He might have no clue what exact specific reasons made killing innocent children - just so God and Satan could settle a bet - so despicable for the demon. Because they might have been slightly, yet significantly different reasons than Aziraphale's.

Just look at the line Aziraphale throws Crowley's way while he's gorging on ox ribs and the demon lounges and drinks wine:

Come on, you're a little bit on our side!

Just because Crowley doesn't want kids hurt, Aziraphale jumps to the conclusion that his allegiance lies with Heaven in some way. Even though Heaven very clearly wants the kids hurt, so not the most logical conclusion...

It's quite evident the angel hasn't connected the dots as well as he thinks.

(By the way, we will get back to the dialogue that follows that line because it's just so... SO.)

Secondly, I suspect Aziraphale committed a serious logical fallacy here, which is reversing the entailment. His reasoning is that IF (A) the angel who built the stars wouldn't hurt children AND (B) the demon Crawley was the same person as the angel who built the stars THEN (C) the demon Crawley wouldn't hurt children. It is a logical statement. If A is true and B is true then indeed C must be true as well. Aziraphale either knows or simply believes A, believes B, and that leads him to the conclusion - C.

C turned out to be true.

I'm very much afraid that in the depth of his mind, Aziraphale has used it as proof that A and B, but especially B, are true as well. And this kind of reasoning is most definitely not correct.

If you have a statement like IF X IS TRUE THEN Y MUST ALSO BE TRUE it absolutely does not equal IF Y IS TRUE THAN X MUST ALSO BE TRUE. It just doesn't. Let's use an example. X = A brainrotten fan has bought a copy of Good Omens in an antique bookstore; Y = A brainrotten fan owns a copy of Goof Omens. If I know that you bought the book in an antique bookstore, I also know for sure you now own the book. However, if I only know that you own the book, I don't actually know if you bought it in an antique bookstore. You could have gotten it in dozens of different ways.

I'm hardly the first one to point out that the Job minisode shows us the seeds of a great many problems that bore fruit in the final fifteen. One of them is that Aziraphale's questionable belief that he understands Crowley really well gets validated and reinforced.

The worst thing is, that there weren't any chances to correct this mistake until it was too late.

During the events surrounding Job's trials, there was an unprecedented amount of soul-bearing between Aziraphale and Crowley. Well, objectively speaking the "bearing" was still just a few glimpses, nevertheless, it is more than we ever got to see on the show. Even the imminent Armageddon hadn't caused them to be so open and honest about their relationship with Heaven and Hell.

Ok, we're definitely not done with Companion of Owls yet, but I will stop here. See you in the next post.

#good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #crowley #aziraphale #before the beginning #post series #companion to owls

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iwritenarrativesandstuff · 1 year

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Here's a collection of Trigun Stampede thoughts and observations I had from someone who has only seen this series, since big long posts rarely go over well lol. I'm really intrigued to contrast with the manga later and see if I get similar takeaways... I'm eagerly willing to expand on any of these if anyone is interested but for now they will exist as loose point forms! Hopefully this is coherent!

Firstly: Vash my beloved... please be nicer to yourself... please... you are so kind...

Meryl and Knives are the lead active/driving forces of the show, in contrast to most everyone else's passivity and Vash's reactivity

Meryl's influence on Roberto over the course of the story - she actually has him taking a pretty firm stance later on (which is likely the opinion he held all along, he just buried it), which brings me to the next point-

Conrad and Knives claim to be looking to the future but ignore the present - Roberto dismisses this because those who won't even save a life in front of them in the present moment won't save anyone (this is more in keeping with what Vash does)

The juxtaposition between Conrad and Luida's methods are great and I hope we return to that in the next season

I love Meryl. This is not an observation or analysis it is merely a statement of fact. :)

I wonder if we'll get more Zazie and Meryl interactions. Zazie seems to find Meryl intriguing at the very least. I also just like Zazie and think this could be a really interesting dynamic.

I would also like to see more of Rem, hopefully outside of the biased recollections of Vash and Nai... I still don't feel like I know anything about her :(

Ideals in the service of people (Vash) vs people in the service of ideals (Knives)

Most of the children in the series literally age too quickly. There's a lot to examine there.

Given the attempts to create Independent-like humans by Conrad and the rapid aging of these children... is the serum created from Plants?

Vash 🤝 Me: "Wolfwood" 🥺 (I'm kidding, I'm kidding... mostly.)

Vash and Wolfwood are not fundamentally different, as they first appear to be, but are actually quite similar in their drives (protection of others at personal cost) - the difference in their perspectives comes down to the scope of what they swore to protect (with Wolfwood's being far more limited, thus there are outsiders) and propensity to hope (Vash will act on hope without solid proof, while Wolfwood needs the proof but will jump on it if he sees it - interesting for someone who is associated with religion and faith)

Wolfwood's version of mercy is an unfortunate form of projection (aka Legato is a fucking idiot for thinking removing Wolfwood's attachments would lead him to be solely devoted to Knives. my dude, I am pretty sure that attachment plus raw survival instinct is the only thing keeping him going)

Vash: allows himself to get shot and reveals his scars / Wolfwood: >:O !!! / also Wolfwood: repeatedly takes hits either shielding people or just plain not dodging when he 100% could / Me: 😐

I wish we'd gotten some breathing room in the series. That's my number one gripe about it. Specifically, I wanted a little more time with Wolfwood to get to know him in the present before we got into him having the worst life of his fucking life in the span of two episodes... I also wanted to see a little more of this world that Vash cares about so much! I understand the manga and 98 series do this a little better so I'm excited to see that. Meryl's arc was great though!

Loved the really clever way the flashbacks are done!!! Nai is barely focused on at first, then as his character is slowly revealed, he gets the camera focus and childish behaviours more and more!!!

Huge themes of autonomy and choice. I think they're actually more the point than the whole morality aspect. It's not as important that Vash be perfectly moral and right than it is that his philosophy allows people the chance to choose and change for themselves - Knives' doesn't grant anyone that choice, and in fact, he and the people under him actively remove free will (breaking Vash's mind, the experimentation on Rollo, Wolfwood and Livio, what he did to... the Plants... etc.)

Vash is genuinely angry at Nai in a way he doesn't seem to be with anyone else. I do think a part of him can't forgive what happened to Rem or the emotional strain that comes with watching someone you love repeatedly do horrible things. I don't know if humanity could hurt him the way Nai has. The worst part is that I don't think Nai fully comprehends how badly he has hurt Vash. He looked so confused and hurt when Vash trained the gun on him for the first time. The "ominous piano playing" probably isn't meant to be ominous at all, once we see they used to play that piece together. Nai's been playing it on loop for so long. He wants his brother to come home. :(

The twins treat each other like an extension of themselves for a lot of the story, which is somewhat ironic for a couple of Independents. Vash blames himself and seeks to atone for his brother's actions, Nai thinks any differing opinion his brother has is a result of corruption instead of him being his own person. That is why it is a triumph when Vash finally asserts his identity away from Knives in episode 12, declaring himself his own person. That is why it is a tragedy when Nai would rather let his old self die, figuratively and literally, than accept that.

Nai did not want Rem dead. I stand by this strongly. His anger at her is I believe in part to justify her death in his mind.

Nai wants to return to a time of safety more than anything (the higher dimension is like an "egg", the ship's dome around the two as children, the quietness of the tree, etc.).

Tesla 🤝 Livio: products of human experimentation who really ought to be dead but apparently... aren't??? I am putting them both in my pocket and running away

#had to write this all down before i started the manga... agh i am so behind...#anyways. please. please talk to me about trigun.#trigun #trigun stampede #tristamp #trigun meta #storyrambles #vash the stampede #meryl stryfe #nicholas d. wolfwood #roberto de niro #<- i cannot believe they actually named him that. dfhvbsdfhvb #millions knives

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justatalkingface · 1 year

Note

Hey! I've been reblogging some of your stuff and throwing my two cents in what I think. So I come here with a simple question...

What're your thoughts on Shota Aizawa?

Because for me, he's no different than the teachers in Aldera when it comes to handling Izuku. He's also a flatout hypocrite by getting onto All Might for favoring Izuku when he does the same with Hitoshi.

And I'm not even mentioning how he uses his trauma to justify his bs teaching ways

...Hahahahaha! So, you have no way of knowing this, but I've basically been preparing for this moment, to make this rant, for the longest time. More than probably any other character in this series, I've thought about Aizawa, tried to put into words what bugged me about him, scoured the internet for opinions to broaden my understanding, to find the right words. Quite a few posts have been yours, actually.

The short answer is that, simply, I hate him. Once I got past his Kakashi Aura from my first impression, I didn't like him, but fandom hype for Dadzawa, as well as the fact that usually comes with horrifying levels of bashing for people like All Might (ironically, perhaps the most unsung hero in the setting, seeing how few people seem to like his character) curdled it deep into loathing. Still, I'm going to be try to be objective as I talk.

The long answer is more complicated, and very, very long, but still overwhelmingly negative. For me, part of it is that Aizawa is easily the winner of the title of being The Favored Mouthpiece. This is a mixed blessing for him, to say the least; on the positive side, this fact has done a lot for his positive reception and total screen time, the the narrative bends over backwards to agree with what he says, time and time again. On the negative... for all that I'm aware that he's just lines on paper, on deeply visceral level I have sympathetic disgust for all the times he's been used like a puppet to parrot one agenda or another, and it muddles the water on who his character actually is. Honestly, it's been going on for so long, and it's still going on, I wonder if I should just... accept these random outbursts as part of his actual characterization.

At a fundamental level, I've had this question burning inside of me for a long time now: does this man even want to be a teacher? No, this is a serious question: he is effectively working two jobs, and managing it terribly (unlike every other UA teacher, who are all heroes for no apparent reason, and especially Present Mic who somehow has three jobs and still is full of energy. Does that man ever sleep?). He seems to hate the daylight. He seems to hate being clean. He seems to hate children. He hates, if not teaching, then teaching people that don't vibe on his level. He hates being on a schedule. He hates following authority. Really the only part of being teacher he does probably like is the actual paycheck.

So, again, why is he a teacher? I know he likes taking someone under his wing, but that use of a singular pronoun was very specific: he wants one person, one that fills whatever bizarre and unknown criteria, to teach (I'm still not sure what made him look at about five minutes of Shinso and say, 'This, this is the child I shall give all my skills, all my knowledge, and even my physics defying combat weapon.' Like, do they have to be his mini-me? Bear the soul of Grumpy Cat? I really don't know), an apprentice, not students plural. From what I gleaned from the Vigilante manga (which I should probably reread at some point), it's that desire, but misunderstood, combined with nostalgia, loneliness (his friends were already at UA) and peer pressure, that motivated him to start teaching at UA.

I don't really need to say it, but those are terrible reasons to become a teacher, and probably help explain why he's so bad at it.

Before I get into that, I want to address one thing: I've seen, online, that Aizawa's role as homeroom teacher is something completely different in Japan than it is for anywhere English speaking. So these various comments and what not say is, in Japan, these home room teachers aren't actually supposed to teach. They're supposed to be... something like councilors, I believe: they stay with the children and help guide them, and so on, and that's why he's a better teacher than we think he is. I've never actually seen anyone counter that argument, just agree, and I've had this response waiting for a long time now: when do you see Aizawa do that?

I know the Final Exam arc is supposed to show us that, yes, Aizawa is perceptive and does notice things about his students, and does care, but that's shit. His inner monologue tells us about Momo and her lack of self confidence. The implication of that, that he's only dealing with this now, means he's been sitting on this for... how long? However long he noticed that, I guess? So, from a time period ranging between the first day of class, and just before they prepared for the test, Aizawa noticed Momo had confidence issues and apparently did nothing until that test, probably because he wanted to be 'efficient' and deal with two things at once. Why do extra work and deal with a student's issues, when you can do it while they struggle to pass their final exams? Wow. A+ job there, teach.

On Shoto... just... just no. Come back to me, someone, anyone, when Aizawa even acknowledges that that mess is made out of red flags: the fact he doesn't use half of his goddamn Quirk until Izuku beats some self reflection into him. The fact he unsubtly hates his father. The fact he doesn't seem to know how to be a normal person. The burn scar on his face when he's heat resistant. Anything. Anything. I don't expect him to look at the kid and magically realized he's abused, but there's enough there that if he's a good teacher, or councilor, or whatever, he should probably be low key probing for information on his situation, see if there's something wrong in the most general of senses, because there's clearly something wrong there.

Literally anything about Izuku or Bakugou, though I'm putting a pin on discussing that mess until later.

See, the problem with saying that Aizawa is supposed to be the class's... councilor or something, instead of a teacher, brings up the fact that he's a shit councilor. Even if it's true (I'm not Japanese, I have no idea), this doesn't make his character better, this just brings up different problems instead.

Alright, so now that that's out of the way... now I need to point out that Aizawa is a Kakashi clone, and that's a good deal of the reason he's so popular; he rode off Naruto nostalgia. Let's list off how many traits he blatantly got from him. It's more than you think!

Aizawa is like Kakashi in that: he's a teacher that doesn't want to teach, his students include the Great Hope of the setting and his 'rival', he's traumatized from a friend dying when he was young, he deals with his heavy PTSD with unhealthy coping mechanisms, he has an eye based power that turns his eyes red, he loses an eye, he takes on an apprentice that reminds him of himself and gives him his signature technique/equipment, his dead best friend is alive, his dead best friend is the enemy, his dead best friend has been heavily experimented on, his dead best friend has warping powers, his friend group consists of people more cheerful than him who respect his skills, his best friend is overwhelmingly cheery in a way that balances with his low key behavior.

...When you list it out like this, it starts to get a little nuts, doesn't it? I wonder, sometimes, how much actual thought went into the character Eraserhead, and how much was Hori just... copying the copy ninja.

Here's the problem with that though, beyond the laziness of it all: Kakashi is a ninja. He is a mercenary, a child soldier, has killed more people than we have names for in all of MHA. He lives in a military village, under a military dictatorship, and is expected to kill. The teaching system he's part of is largely involuntary, though he avoids in in part because he's so good that everyone looks the other way when he ducks out of it. These students are also ten. There is just... just so much there, so much that is utterly alien to how MHA works, that putting a copy in is... flawed, to say the least.

That's why the Bell Test Quirk Apprehension Test is so bad: Hori put that in, as a blatant echo of Kakashi testing Team Seven, without thinking once of the differences in the setting.

He's in a school, and his job is being a teacher. His literal, actual ass job is to teach students (or 'help guide them', either way). This is something he chose to do, of his own volition. Kakashi trying to ditch his potential students is him trying to avoid an unwanted burden and him avoiding poking at this massive issues with teammates and responsible and everyone he knows and loves dying around him. And when he's forced to take some on? He tries his best to teach them, and he does: think about the first Battle of the End. The way Naruto and Sasuke fought each other. Think about how Naruto used to fight. Where did he learn to throw a punch like that? Kakashi. He may show up late, but the man did his work off screen.

Aizawa trying not to teach his students is literally a man too fucking lazy to do his own job. We all know Hori retconned it with 'he just wanted them to get a taste of death' via expulsion (which, apparently in Japanese culture is something that would set them back in their prospects for life) but it's so nonsensical that it's hard to take it seriously that he just... does this. Was planning to do this the first day, because they were excited about being heros, like that deserved a taste of death (They aren't in the military, you ass, they're in high school). Is allowed to do this. That he did this to an entire class for some reason but not Bakugou, when Bakugou exists.

Which means it's time to wade into the mess that is Aizawa and Izuku and Bakugou. Let's start with Bakugou, first, since I already started.

Blatantly, obviously, Bakugou has plot armor in how people react to him, or don't, as the case may be, and one of the worst victims of it is Eraserhead. The fact that Mr. 'Taste of death' and 'Expels entire classes' doesn't at least punt Bakugou into detention, or more likely a 'taste of death' to threaten the other students (because that's how you teach your class of high schoolers! By fear!), after he actively attacks Izuku, is just... mind boggling. The way he constantly refuses to acknowledge which of them is the aggressor, which of them is the first to throw a punch, which one is constantly threatening the other....

The obvious conclusion here is that Aizawa likes Bakugou, for whatever reason, but... I don't think it's true. The thing is if he liked Bakugou, you'd think he'd... spend time with him. Try and train him. Something. But no, by and by large he acts like Bakugou doesn't exist, right until Hori needs someone to compliment him for the readers, or someone to defend him after he does something bad, yet again, and then all of a sudden he's singing his praises. This is where the downsides of being The Favored Mouthpiece comes in: every time he's complimented Bakugou, every time he's said that this mess of a child is going to be a great hero, every time he cries desperately that he, 'Still needs to be Number One!' or whatever the hell that bullshit was? That was Hori. That was always Hori. Aizawa basically isn't allowed to exist near Bakugou without Hori running interference for him.

Izuku, on the other hand, is half the opposite, half Aizawa's own biases coming in. Part of it is Hori needs Izuku to feel stressed to pump up the tension, make cliffhangers, and get Jump selling; Izuku can't have a normal school life, he needs a heart pounding one. In most shonen school settings, this is easy to accomplish because they're generally hell holes that put their students in life and death situations on the regular, and live in hierarchies based off power levels. UA, though? It's a normal, or at least "normal" school, if exceptional, in the "real" world, plus some super powers. There are standards, is the thing; they can't and won't send their students off to maybe die because of they're a secret society or whatever. They have accountability (to some extent) to the general public, in other words.

So where does Izuku's cliffhanger filled school life come from? Well, Tomura and the Tomura-ettes, for one, but for all the other times... Hori turned to his teacher.

Let me say this again, because I want to emphasis this: part of the reason Aizawa exists as he does, is so that Izuku can feel threatened at school by his teacher. Why? Because Izuku's suffering sells.

Meanwhile, though Izuku does get pulled into Bakugou's plot armor sometimes, and suffers for it (more), but as a person and a character, I think Aizawa unironically disliked Izuku from the start. He grows out of it, to some extent, but....

Let's backtrack a second, back to the Quirk Test. Izuku, at this point, is ripped. Even without his Quirk, he was throwing around fridges and working all day and night to prep for UA. He was at the peak of realistic human fitness, instead of whatever increasing soft cap we have for heroes is.

Toru is invisible. Sure, she's in shape, since she passed the exam, but Izuku clearly focused on his body in a way most of the other students aren't, and she has no Quirk that'd help her pass the test (a test that, as many have pointed out, Aizawa would have failed). She's a nice girl, sure, but there's no way she could have out performed Izuku in raw physical ability, even before the ball throw which was one of the best of that category, and far beyond whatever she could have done.

Yet Izuku was the one at the bottom, not Toru. Why? Well, you could blame Hori, and that's technically true, but the thing is, unlike Bakugou, Aizawa acts like he doesn't like Izuku. He blames him for everything, he refuses to do anything as he breaks his bones constantly, he calls him Problem Child, and anyone who thinks that's affectionate, and that Izuku should as such, and that it's a cute little nickname needs to consider that through the lenses of Izuku's low self esteem, much less from a teacher who constantly threatens his students.

Aizawa sabotaged Izuku's scores. He did it because, you're right: he's just like the teachers at Aldera, if more restrained, and for different reasons. Not because Izuku is Quirkless (though he would if Izuku was, because the man honestly is Quirkist), but because he has the wrong Quirk. Because Izuku had the audacity to come to a school to learn about how to use his Quirk, instead of practicing it illegally, or inside his own house where, at that power level, one wrong move could accidently his house. Because he apparently didn't read the files that said Izuku got it a month ago, or didn't care. Or maybe it's just he looked at Izuku, and realized that having him learn to control that was just... too much work?

At the end of the day, which reason he did it doesn't even matter. What matters is he did. The same way he plays constant mind games with his students for shits and giggles, in ways that should undermine their faith in him, the same way he paired a bully with his victim so they could 'work it out', the same way he puts minimal effort into so much of the work he does, and it's why I loathe him as a teacher.

Aizawa is a good hero, but the moment Nezu let him into a school was a mistake.

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aimbutmiss · 4 months

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Saw this post of yours: https://www.tumblr.com/aimbutmiss/740229617026220032/maybe-this-is-just-me-projecting-on-buggy-because

and I have to say I love it sm?? yk what it makes me think of? The song I can’t help but wonder from epic the musical, where Telemachus and Odysseus (a father/son duo who haven’t seen each other in TWENTY years) finally meet again. And it’s like, giving Buggy and the ghost of Roger or smth.

https://youtu.be/gUAQvlCFm-g?si=4UJpB9jABhOMLMAI

First of all, thank you so much!! I'm glad you enjoyed it 😁 and oh boy this one's got a kick... You shouldn't have brought up greek mythology AND buggy like I won't shut up ever after this.

I actually cried listening to the song while thinking about Buggy and Roger. It just fits too well. I want to point out a few lyrics that I thought fit like a glove:

"for twenty years, I never could outgrow you" I think its safe to say that Roger's death in Loguetown affected Buggy on a fundamental level. No one could handle watching their father's neck get sliced live. Something like that could never not change you. From the 20+ years that have passed since then, at least part of Buggy is still that 16 year old standing in that crowd, crying. He never fully outgrew Loguetown, and for the record I don't think Shanks did either (I couldn't not bring him up I'm sorry) The main difference is that they experienced very different Loguetowns... Buggy still had hope that Roger would somehow dodge death like he always had, because unlike Shanks he didn't understand why Roger would willingly go to his own death. However, as the one who left, Buggy suffered a lot less after their fight. That's not to say it wasn't hard to leave, or he wasn't sad about it (he cried a lot as he ran away from Shanks) But Shanks suffered a different way, from the whiplash he had from seeing Roger die AND losing his best friend on top of each other. He only expected one of those, and we know which one that was.

"i can't help but wonder (...) if I have your strength in me." Buggy has always been a character with deep self esteem issues. A part of that certainly comes from having Roger's legacy behind him. Roger was strong and smart beyond words, and Buggy definitely felt insufficient, like he couldn't reach that ideal. That's why there's a deep rooted jealousy in him towards Shanks, because he sees so much of Roger in him. This also mirrors Odysseus and Telemachus perfectly, because the son never reached his father's level of intelligence and strength by the end of the Odyssey. However, it is implied that he is on his way there, getting better and better as the story progressed. We see this with Buggy too, with his amazing talent of failing upwards. (I have to say, I don't think all of it can be accidental. Buggy is actually quite clever in his own way) Roger's soul must be watching with pride, but not surprise. I have no doubt in my mind that Roger truly believed Buggy would make it big one day. The kind of trust only a parent could have in their children.

"used to say I'd capture wind and sky for you" Not much to say here but Roger would definitely say something like this. There's not a single thing that man wouldn't have done for his boys. I'm so normal about them haha 😅 ...Also more on the Roger and Odysseus parallels, there's just something so beautiful about a man who chooses his family over and over again, no matter how many good options keep presenting themselves. Like, nothing in the world could get in the way of him and his child no matter what. The similarity just hurts. And even though Roger couldn't live to do that for Ace, at least he experienced fatherhood with Shanks and Buggy.

#im sorry i brought up the shuggy breakup again #i cant help it #one piece #buggy d clown #buggy the clown #shuggy #red haired shanks #gol d. roger

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thatswhatsushesaid · 9 months

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13, 16, 21, and 24 (any fandom of your choice) for the ask game?

13. worst blorboficiation

oh it's wei wuxian in mdzs, no questions asked. while I blame cql for a lot of it, I also think that fans who prefer the novel canon have just conveniently forgotten that wei wuxian did in fact peel pieces off of wen sect cultivators and feed pieces of his enemies' bodies to ghost children. (go re-read his killing of wen chao; I don't have the book open in front of me right now.)

16. you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

lan furen 🤷‍♀️ I'm not gonna be a buzzkill or anything like that, and I think I've said I've read and enjoyed some lan furen xiyao fic in the past. I just don't understand (or quite frankly agree with) this trope being popularly viewed as a happy or desirable arrangement for either jin guangyao or lan xichen. I know I for sure have already written about why I don't think jgy would be satisfied being anyone's furen, but I don't think lxc would be happy either. it would smash too many buttons for him vis-a-vis his parents' marriage--that, and he would not be happy while jgy is unhappy.

21. part of canon you think is overhyped

besides the smutty parts of the extras? nie huaisang's revenge quest. maybe 'overhyped' isn't the right word, because there is a big part of me that remains mesmerized by nhs's transformation from whimsical and harmlessly selfish young master into a manipulative monster who destroys himself and all his remaining key relationships in pursuit of vengeance. I love that shit. what I don't love is the prevailing popular interpretation of his character and revenge quest in this fandom, which asserts that what he does is just and justifiable, or that he was only 'pretending' to let his sect languish and fail. because even if you're only letting your sect languish and fail as part of your commitment to the bit, you... still have to fundamentally fail in your obligations as sect leader to make that happen.

24. topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

literally anything to do with jin guangyao's relationship with mo xuanyu and qin su. no, homies, he was not down to fuck his siblings. can we please stop resurrecting this dead horse just to kick it some more. let that horse rest.

#asks answered #ask meme #he did crimes??? good for him 😌#let him have birds!! 🕊️

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gerrypleasedefaultme · 10 months

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As someone who personally believes in committing to the bit, I can tell you that people generalizing all women's sports as boring is such bullshit. And not just because obviously generalizing tends to lead to nowhere due to the fact that nuance is an important part of arguments but also because it's just plain misogyny.

People could argue that women's sports are boring because they don't play as hard and are less skilled than men, but here's a question: Why are we trying to compare women's sports to men's sports?

Even if anything about women being less skilled was true, it is fundamentally important to understand that most women's sports tend to play other women's teams or women in individual sports tend to play other women. They're not playing men.

Nobody's asking how skilled they are compared to men, which is the fatal flaw in that type of viewing. If you're constantly watching women's sports and asking why they aren't like men's sports, you're not going to enjoy them anyways.

More importantly, these women are playing at the highest level they possibly could be in their sport. Obviously there's varying difficulty depending on whether or not someone is playing for an olympic or national team, but these women are still playing at a high level and generally the highest level they could be playing.

Women playing in slams, women playing for their national team, and women winning gold medals are quite literally playing at the highest level they could possibly be playing.

Because here's the thing: Bringing this up will only serve as a reminder that it was never about skill but rather consistently viewing women's accomplishments as less because they are women.

Acting as if women who are professional athletes aren't skilled is ridiculous.

Generally, most people understand the type of skill and hard work you have to put in to be a professional athlete. Why would it be any different for women's sports? How could women put in the same amount of work and be less skilled? Because women supposedly don't have the same skill that men do?

Women are skilled. Women are skilled at what they do and the sports they play and trying to compare them to men is so ridiculous. Women currently hold more slam titles than men. Jackie Mitchell's contract was null and void after striking out two hall of famers.

Why are women less when historically women have always competed at just as high of a level?

Another argument I've heard is seeing women hurt in their sport makes people want to help them and ask, "Are you okay, sweetie?". While it is normal to be concerned when seeing anyone injured in any sport, it is important to remember that professional athletes are not children and do not need to be treated as such. If violence and serious injury is a problem in a sport and it becomes a recurring issue versus a one time thing, then it needs to be handled within the sport. It is not a reason to not watch women's sports.

If you won't watch women's sports for serious injury, then you can't watch any sports if you're worried about seeing serious injury. It's not to say it's not concerning to see someone seriously injured, it is to say that you can't make serious injury specific to women's sports and act as if you're fine seeing it in men's sports.

I think I may need to circle back to the beginning part of this post of committing to the bit: I believe you can become a fan of any sport if you are willing to root for one team hard enough.

I have never been a soccer fan. I didn't watch it growing up and I don't really know the rules. Am I going to root as hard as I can for my hometown when their game notification shows up on my phone? Yeah.

Am I going to root as hard as I can for the USA during this women's FIFA world cup because I'm American and know they're going for a three peat? Also yes.

It is easy to be a hometown fan. It is easy to be a fan of the underdog. It is even easy to be a fan of a team that wears your favorite colors.

To act as if it is difficult to be a fan of women's sports is bullshit and deeply misogynistic.

A lot of men's teams, simply for the fact that there are so many of them, suck. It is reality. It's not because men's sports are automatically bad or all men suck at the sport they're playing.

It's because there's just a lot of them and not every player you sign is going to be the next coming of whatever great player played for that sport or franchise. It is because not every team is going to be cohesive. It is because one or two great players do not make a great team. Nothing else.

But this logic doesn't seem to be applied to women's sports. If a women's team sucks, then they're not worth watching. If a women's team sucks, then they're not worth rooting for. If women suck at their sport, who cares anyways?

But some fans seem to have no problem rooting for their hometown men's team that sucks but will refuse to root for their hometown women's team that also sucks.

Another point people seem to like to bring up is the fact that people don't really watch men's gymnastics or don't want to. However, this is just a generally sexist remark as it plays on gender roles and assigns genders to specific sports instead of accepting the sport as it is. And the reality is if men's sports are more interesting, then all men's sports are more interesting. Not just some.

Calling women's sports boring or difficult to watch or acting as if women are boring is bullshit. Women's sports are interesting because it's a sport and sports are meant for entertainment.

#wta #wnba #pwhpa #phf #women's sports #tennis #hockey #nhl #this upsets me sm like what??#alex is a speech kid and it shows #long post

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you-usuratonkachi · 2 years

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about El's character arc and Mike's monologue

so i went back to rewatch the parts of the show that had Mike and El and El and Brenner, because I had noticed parallels between Mike and Brenner, and I wanted to single those scenes out to make sense of them. I might have gotten what they were trying to do with that...? Maybe. I'm not sure myself because the whole thing is kinda convulted, but hear me out.

The whole issue with Eleven this season is a fundamental insecurity: she does not feel like she's worth it without her powers. She doesn't know how to live as Jane. Not to mention she is having flashbacks/dreams about something she might have done in the past that she forgot.

So before Mike comes to California she's already feeling vulnerable.

She lies to Mike in her letters because she feels like she lost the only interesting part of herself (the part that she feels Mike likes her for) and she tries to make up for it by telling him that everything is fine and dandy and she has lots of fun and she's popular and everything she feels like he might like in a girl (who does not have powers).

When she strikes Angela, she triggers her own trauma.

It's her highest insecurity moment.

She's scared that she might have done something far worse than stricking Angela. Mike is already freaking out over a "small" cut, how would he react if he knew she had murdered children at Hawkins lab instead?

She was hanging onto the hope that none of it was true, that it was just some kind of nightmare, but seeing Mike take it so badly fueled her insecurities: she feels like a monster.

He says he "cares" for her, not love. Not like last season. Because she has no powers anymore? Because now she just strikes bullies in their faces? Because she is not able to make them pee their pants anymore? She's not cool anymore, she's just scary.

So when he says "you're a superhero" she does not believe him. Because she doesn't believe in herself either.

Was the issue truly stemming from Mike?

I think all considered he had a fair reaction. Kinda insensitive towards her feelings but fair. No matter how shitty Angela was, what El did was not cool either. So I know it's not a popular opinion and we all think Angela deserved it, but Mike has quite an adult reaction to it. Insensitive towards El's feelings, but fair. He basically calls her out for her bad behavior at the dinner table (albeit a bit passively aggressively... 😅).

It's not that Mike was scared of her, he was displeased with her behavior (plus the fact that she lied to him the whole time).

What she thinks she saw in him, it's what she saw in herself. She's projecting her insecurities.

(Now, while this is true, it doesn't change the fact that Mike couldn't say ILY when she needed it the most. Would it have solved the problem? Probably not, but perhaps she would have opened up to him about how she truly felt. But he couldn't say it anyway).

Later in the show, she starts training with Brenner and she has a whole conversation about Monsters and Superheros.

He says that people cannot be so easily defined and just by accepting the bad and the good we can become whole. To which she answers "what if I don't want to become whole?"

She does not want to accept the bad in herself, because she wants to be able to stay a superhero.

Later she learns that it wasn't her that killed the other kids in the lab and she realizes that the only reason why she opened the gate at all was because Brenner made her search for One. It wasn't her, it was him. So she rebels against him. Asks him if he even cared about the children.

He says he loved all of them. That he tried to help and understand Harry because...

So Brenner manipulated and abused her to get One back. So she would somehow open the gate. It was not her. It was him. He's the monster.

With this and by leaving Brenner behind, she finally feels like, after all, she might still be that superhero she wanted to be.

So yeah, rethinking the whole situation with El and Benner, I do feel like what Mike told her in the monologue was actually what she wanted to hear.

Because when she argues that she wants to go save her friends, Brenner tells her:

"you came to me broken, but you've learned how to walk again. but if you want to defeat one, you'll have to do more than walk. more than run. you will need to fly"

He's doubting that she can do that.

On the other hand, when Mike calls out to her as she fights Vecna, he says:

"you can fly, you can move mountains."

which is in direct contrast with what Brenner told her. So Brenner didn't believe she could do it. Mike did.

he ends it with "you're my superhero" which is what she wanted to be.

So, in truth, the monologue wasn't THAT bad. There is some sort of continuity with the storyline. While Mike did not evolve at all and told her exactly what he told her the first time (minus the ILY), El did change.

In that moment, coincidentally, it might have been exactly what she wanted to hear.

Except she loses. Max isn't saved (or I guess partially) nor Vecna truly defeated.

Brenner was right. She wasn't ready.

In the last ep, after the time skip, Will asks Mike if she talked to him at all. Mike says no, then corrects himself and says "a little" and right after that Mike and Will sit down and Mike tells him that she told him that Brenner was right, that she hadn't been ready.

So the parallels between Brenner and Mike are basically about one person who didn't believe in her and one person who did. Except the person who didn't believe turned out to be the one in the right.

So right now it doesn't really matter whether Mike loves her or not, the same way it did not matter whether Brenner loved them or not. At the end of the day, Brenner failed them all (which is why she does not acknowledge him as he dies). At the end of the day, whether she is Mike's superhero or not, she failed Max.

"There's more to life than stupid boys" because after all this wasn't about Mike. It was never about Mike. It was her trauma, her insecurities, her feelings projected onto Mike.

This said, while Mike's monologue perhaps had some kind of sense after all, it also failed in so many ways.

1. Yes El was projecting mostly, but the fact that Mike cannot name a single quality of hers that isn't her powers is also very true (bad writing? I guess even the writers forget that she's an actual person and not just their magic caster) so it's not surprising that between Brenner and Mike she doesn't feel like she has any worth without her powers

2. He still couldn't say ILY when she needed it the most and his excuse for it still sucked balls. Truly. Especially because he was never shown to be angsty about losing her for shit. He (the writers?) just pulled that out of his (their?) ass. Bad writing once again? Possible.

3. Mike quoted Will's confession and basically responded to it, thinking that was what she wanted to hear.

Everything else I can shrugg of as partial bad writing, but the parallel about "needing" after Will reminds Mike that he's the heart and therefore about his whole confession and therefore about the fact that El will always need him is not random. It was intentional. The whole thing hurting Will was intentional. They made it a point to show him throughout the monologue because his feelings are important for the plot, I assume.

So yes, I do believe that the monologue could say almost whatever because it wasn't supposed to work. The point of it all, it's that it failed. It's that by the time everything is done and is over, El realizes that it wasn't Mike, it was her all along. It's not Mike that has to believe in her. It's herself.

She has to find herself, accept herself as a whole, with or without powers. Believe that she's the superhero herself.

She doesn't need to hear that from Mike.

She does not need him.

This is where her arc is truly going. Her entire plotline it's about learning that she's sufficient. That she does not need to be validated or pushed by anyone else.

She did not need papa to love her. And she does not NEED Mike to love her either. She needs to love HERSELF.

This is what she's ultimately learning in this last part of the story.

Do you see where I'm going with this?

What she's learning and what Mike wants right now go in opposite directions (he wants her to need him). She's working on herself but he's suck in whatever his issue is. Either inferiority complex or internalized homophobia or general insecurities or all of the above.

What does this say about M*leven and where they are ending up? I'm not sure. It all depends on how Mike develops next season, truly. Will he be able to develop with her or will she ultimately decide that she's better being on her own as she finds herself?

Plus let's not forget that while everything might feel linear and orderly and very sensible written down like this, I have taken out one important piece from the picture, so that I could single out her journey, because that piece is not part of her journey, but is very much part of Mike's. And visually? It's been part of M*leven's journey throughout the season: Will.

After all, Brenner was still El's catalyst for her character development, while Mike was kind of collateral demage.

I think ultimately, Mike's catalyst will be Will (and viceversa). Because it kinda... always has been.

The writers made it a point to hammer Will in our heads throughout the season. Even if El's journey makes sense and so does M*leven, the visuals kept reminding us of Will over and over.

The monologue quoted Will's confession and this will have repercussions.

Lies were told and sooner or later the truth always finds ways to come out.

I think ultimately, Mike being sincere or not is still in question, because despite the whole narrative following through for his monologue, he just so happened to say what he thought she wanted to hear. And he thought so because 1. she said she wanted him to say ILY 2. she told him she was gonna be a superhero again 3. he believed what Will told him

The fact that he was only able to confess to her when she was on the verge of death? Still true. The fact that he thought that she wouldn't "like the truth"? Still true. The fact that he has behaving out of character with Will? Still true.

Even more than before, after analyzing the whole thing, I'm convinced that it's a mediocre confession because it was supposed to be.

Because ultimately what El learns from it, is that she thought she needed it, but she didn't.

#byler #eleven #jane hopper #i don't know what to tag exactly #so that I don't make people upset #but yeah #i think she's going through an amazing journey #I don't know whether Mike will be in it as a significant other at the end of it #it really all depends on Mike's character arc #will they finally show us HIS perspective next season?#there's so much that is up in the air with him #but if Will is gonna be center next season you bet everything you want that Mike is gonna be under the spotlight #'cause he's the heart #of course #his character arc is inherently connected with will's #I strongly believe that

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sundayswiththeilluminati · 1 year

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May we hear more about parallels between Rasputin and Oryx? I don't know enough to figure it out myself, but am thoroughly intrigued.

wELL.

Both Oryx and Rasputin began as small, fragile things only just holding on to existence, and bootstrapped themselves up into vast entities.

Both Oryx and Rasputin hold royal names - King and Tyrant, respectively - denoting autocratic power.

Both took that power for themselves from controlling authorities who didn’t want to yield it - Oryx by slaying Akka, Red by escaping Clovis.

Both are not interested in power for its own sake, but sought and held it in service of larger goals.

Both are concerned with the protection and survival of a species - Oryx by making the Hive sharp and worthy to exist, Rasputin by protecting humanity (sometimes from itself).

Both are beings of tremendous will and determination.

Both are looked to by their civilizations for guidance and strategy (Rasputin also has parallels to Mara Sov in this regard).

Both are, in a direct (Oryx) and upsettingly inverted (Rasputin) manner, living incarnations of Xivu Arath’s declaration, “this love is war.”

Despite their singular positions of power, both Oryx and Rasputin paradoxically draw their strength from their close relationships with others - Oryx from his sisters and his children, Rasputin from Ana, most likely Elsie, the other AI, and possibly the Seraphs as well.

Xivu Arath says of Oryx, “[He] teaches but he will not be taught,” which is also pretty true of Rasputin once he’d reached his “full” form.

For a time Rasputin also followed a philosophy of Darkness quite similar to Oryx, planning to survive until the end of the universe, to make himself part of the Final Shape, and nothing of any smaller scope was worth noticing.

Both have one sister who walks in strange places (Elsie, Savathun) and one sister bound to eternal war (Ana, Xivu Arath)

And both have idiot Punch Children for sons XD

The analogy does fall apart in a few places. Aurash is bound to the quest to understand. Oryx is the First Navigator, who has the map of death. Rasputin, while very, very smart, is oddly incurious. Maybe he thinks he already knows everything he needs to, or maybe when he does want to know something he doesn’t bother asking us losers about it, but while he often wants more data or evaluations of threats, weapons, etc., he doesn't seek out new stuff just for the novelty of it. Oryx is fundamentally aggressive, while Rasputin is built on defense. Oryx has his armaments and powers pretty much figured out, while Rasputin was always building something new; conversely Oryx’s primary weaponry is based around Darkness while Rasputin has a strange blank spot when it comes to paracausal powers (more on this whenever I finish the post about him and paracausality). Oryx has a bitchin’ Dreadnaught, while Rasputin...well...no one’s using it right now, are they...

#Destiny 2 #the Warmind Rasputin #Oryx the Taken King #seriously these parallels fascinate me #I think they're accidental #Oryx and Rasputin are just both Civilization Bosses and the rest followed from there #but they still fascinate me!#I will die on the hill that Rasputin is too big not to be paracausal #but the boy doesn't Believe In Himself #the mapping between Rasputin-Elsie-Ana and Oryx-Savathun-Xivu Arath blows my mind every time #output generated #this is the wager of existence

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