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feathersandblue · 3 years

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Dean Winchester, Character Death, and Frodo’s Return to the Shire

This will be a LOOONG post that has been stuck in my head for a while in bits and pieces - about Dean’s death, what it was and what it wasn’t, and incidentally, the Lord of the Rings has found its way in here too.

It’s pretty clear that Dabb always meant for Dean to die.

And while I strongly disagree with that, on so many levels, I think it might have been more palatable if framed in a different way, and so I’ve been trying to figure out what the ending might have looked like in a world that wasn’t quite as shitty as ours. Still shitty, but marginally less so.

Dean is notoriously bad at letting bad things happen if he can prevent them. I find it difficult to believe that Dean would ever quit hunting entirely, and for as long as he kept hunting, the danger of dying would always be present. It’s not unrealistic at all for him to die on a routine hunt. Life is unpredictable; life as a hunter, even more so. I understand that the writers might want to make that point. And it might have been valid if – and that’s the real problem – Dean’s death hadn’t otherwise been devoid of meaning.

The thing about character death – any sort of character death – is that it needs to have purpose.

And there are different ways that it can have purpose, but it depends on what sort of character we’re talking about.

Minor, often unnamed characters – the redshirts in every narrative – die to illustrate injustice or to highlight evil. Their death is a catalyst or a consequence of the events as they unfold, part of the conflict the heros have to solve. An army led into battle by a tyrant. Refugees in a camp dying of malnutrition. Murder victims of a serial killer. In all these cases, death fuels the plot but has little meaning beyond that.

There are minor characters whose death both fuels the plot and gives the hero a more personal motive to act. Supernatural is full of these. Mary and Jessica burning at the ceiling; Charlie dumped in a bathtub. Minor characters can have their own arcs, but ultimately their deaths are only important for the impact they have on the main characters.

The death of a protagonist is markedly different. Protagonists need to have agency even in death to maintain their status.

Their death has to be the reflection of their character development up to that point but it also has to tell us something about them that we did not already know – show us how they make a final decision or draw a final conclusion that marks the end of an inner conflict – which is what all storytelling is about. Character death has to serve a purpose to have meaning, and for a protagonist, the purpose must be personal.

And If it fails to do that, then that’s either a sign that we’re no longer dealing with a protagonist, or that something weng very, very wrong in the writers’ room. There is no inherent value in tragedy. In storytelling, tragedy is justified when it achieves something, otherwise, it’s just capriciousness.

Buffy’s death at the end of season 5 of BTVS is a classic example for the death of a protagonist. Harry’s decision to go and face Voldemort in the forbidden forest, even though it doesn’t ultimately kill him, is another. When Sam jumps into the abyss in Swan Song, that is his heroic sacrifice, but if he’d permanently died in season 2, that would have been bizarre and nonsensical because it was entirely beyond his control – it did not reflect his decisions, gave him no agency, and reduced him from a protagonist to a side character. In that moment, his death was something that happened to Dean. It worked because his death didn’t stick – he regained his agency after resurrection. But as an ending to his hero’s journey, it would have been singularly unsatisfying.

Dean is our protagonist, and he has been for 15 seasons. What does his death tell us about him that we didn’t know – what decisions did he make, what inner struggle got resolved, what meaning did his death have for him, personally, and then, in extension, for us?

The problem is that the finale, as is so often the case in Supernatural, tells two stories at once.

Whe the episode starts, it appears that Dean moves on with his life just fine, a well-adjusted model citizen. He’s ready to get a job, seems to be moderately happy. He even has dog. The decision to keep hunting is his, and death just accidentally happens, which of course is not unrealistic in his line of work. On the forefront, his death is brought about by the fact that he exercises free will. It tells us that he is a hunter and will always be one, that he keeps protecting people because that’s just who he is.

None of that, however, is new. It is just more of the same. All of Dean’s decisions in the finale tell us nothing about him that we did not already know. He’s trying to move on from the death of the people closest to him, as he’s always done. He chooses the hamster wheel, as he has always done. He follows in his father’s footsteps, as he has always done.

As he gets impaled, he has no choices left to make. There is no agency in his death, no inner struggle. His death furthers neither his character development nor the plot. That Dean simply accepts his death is as unsurprising as the fact that his final moments are spent reassuring Sam and telling him that he has to keep fighting.

The conclusion? Dean ceases to be a protagonist.

He dies not as the hero of his story. His death just happens to him.

After Sam and Dean had presumably freed themselves from the constraints of Chuck’s narrative, the final episode should have emphasized their agency, their freedom of choice, through change. But in the end, it only led them both to making the same choices as always, the unsurprising ones. And even the choices that did indicate a change (like Dean’s job application) were not shown to bear fruits.

What meaning does free will have when it doesn’t change the outcome? All the finale does is tell a bleak story about humanity and how we are incapable of making meaningful, consequential changes in our lives.

It’s almost like Lucifer is talking to us all the way from the Endverse of 5.04: “Whatever you do, you will always end up here. Whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up – here.”

Devastating as that is, there is another interpretation of the finale that is arguably worse, a different reading strongly suggested by both text and subtext.

Dean, as mentioned before, is trying to move on with his life but ultimately fails. The situation is different from the way he behaved when he lost Cas and Mary in season 13 where he was outright suicidal – his desperation is more quiet but also more profound. He seems determined to honor Cas’ and Jack’s sacrifice. But determination is not enough. Dean only goes through the motions, and it shows. He clings to the dog in the morning; the dog sticks to him closely throughout the day as dogs tend to do when they feel that their owner is in distress, almost like a therapy dog. His room looks messy, he makes an attempt to fix it but then abandons it as it requires too muh effort. Ultimately, he can’t be bothered. There are alcohol bottles standing around, a sign that he’s drinking, though not as heavily as in the past. All the while, he sems very laid-back, presumably relaxed and at peace and coping well with the loss but also weirdly detached.

When Sam mentions Cas and Jack at the pie festival, he says, “Yeah, I’m thinking about them too. You know that pain’s not going to go away. Right? But if we don’t keep living, then all that … sacrifice is gonna be for nothing.”

He feels an obligation. And he’s trying. It’s just not working very well.

He barely reacts when Sams pies him in the face.

When impaled on the rebar, Dean actively prevents Sam from calling for help. He tells Sam not to bring him back. And in the end, he asks Sam to tell him it’s okay to go. Which isn’t something he would do if he was simply dying – it strongly indicates that he wants to be allowed to die.

Prompting the conclusion that Dean is giving up on life the first opportunity he gets, not even knowing whether he’ll end up in heaven.

In this reading, Dean does have a little bit of agency. He makes a decision, sort of. His death marks the resolution of an inner struggle: He gives up.

He dies as a protagonist.

In the worst way possible.

In all honesty, I can’t decide which interpretation I hate more.

But what could the writers have done differently, if Dean was meant to die all along?

Back when the SPN finale had freshly aired, I was describing it like this:

Imagine that the One Ring is destroyed. But Merry died in the battle and Pippin went missing and was never found again. Frodo and Sam return to the Shire; Pippin and Merry are mentioned once in passing. Upon their arrival, Frodo is attacked by Wormtongue and slowly bleeds out over the span of thirty pages. Sam marries someone else than Rosie; Rosie is never mentioned again. Somehow, both Frodo and Sam are teleported to Valinor, where we are told that the real fun begins.

At the time, I only used this as an example to illustrate what a mess the finale had been. But in the weeks that have passed since, then, I’ve started thinking about the LOTR comparison some more, and it got me thinking about Dean’s death in a different way.

And it has everything to do with the difference between running from and walking toward.

As mentioned before, it’s not unrealistic that Dean would die on a random hunt. Would the Dean Winchester we know ever stop hunting? Maybe. We might want him to. Then again, would be still be Dean Winchester if he did? We know that Dean can’t help but feel responsible. He is someone who is incapable of staying hands-off.

Dean, as we see him in the finale, is trying to honor Cas’s and Jack’s memory by living, although he’s not very good at it – not outright suicidal but worn-out. Exhausted. And still he makes the decisions to keep hunting because he can do nothing else.

When Frodo and Sam returned to the Shire in LOTR, they had earned their happy ending. But Frodo, who had carried such a heavy burden that he was permanently altered by it, could no longer find happiness in Middleearth, and ultimately decided to depart for Valinor along with Gandalf and Bilbo with the promise of later being reunited with Sam. The journey had changed both of them, but it had changed Frodo to a greater degree, his responsibility had been greater, the weight on his shoulders heavier.

And I started to wonder whether the intention had initially been to show Dean in much the same state – and to frame his death as a decision to move on, the same way that LOTR has Frodo move on to the West.

Imagine the following: Cas is pulled into the Empty. His happiness and love change the Empty; he merges with it or otherwise changes it so that it’s now a more demon-friendly environment. Everyone there is at peace. Cas, in whatever form, moves on to Heaven – or maybe his soul does as it’s now mostly human.

Dean goes on a hunt and dies. Jack, or some other entity, shows up where you would expect the curiously absent reaper in order to give him a choice. Learning that Cas is in Heaven, and knowing that he will never be able to stop hunting if he remains on earth, Dean makes the conscious decision to move on. For the first time, Dean prioritizes his own happiness over his perceived duty. His death is no longer suicide by proxy, and neither is its sole purpose to illustrate the inherent meaningless of free will by turning him into a hamster-by-choice. Instead, it becomes a decision because he’s given back agency. He resolves an inner conflict and there’s even a final bit of character development as he breaks the chain of mutual co-dependency that ties him to Sam and allows himself to be with Cas. He remains a protagonist throughout the end.

And because he acknowledges his love for Cas and decides to be with him, he no longer just runs from, he walks toward.

The parallels to The Lord of the Rings get even more obvious when you take Sam into the equation because much like Samwise, Sam remains on earth in order to have a life that, for him, still holds meaning and the chance of happiness – whereas Dean can no longer be happy on earth as long as Cas isn’t there.

To be completely clear: I’d still think that such an ending would suck because it puts too much emphasis on an afterlife, and it would still send the message that characters like Dean could only find peace in death, and unless some adjustments were made to Sam’s arc as well, the ending would still suck for him.

But seeing as SPN plays in a universe where an afterlife exists, I could probably learn to live with Dean’s death if it had any sort of meaning, for him, besides dying and waiting for Sam to arrive, if it allowed for that final bit of character development. If he got to choose.

While I’ll never be able to see the finale that we actually got as anything but a complete atrocity.

#spn #supernatural #meta #dean winchester #destiel

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skybird13 · 4 years

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Why I Think Fair Game Works

So we’re coming up on the midway point in this mini RWBY vol. 7 hiatus, and I have a serious addiction to Fair Game. With no more canon content coming out for another week (😭), I thought I’d provide some self-indulgent rambling in-depth analysis as to exactly why I think Qrow and Clover work so well together. I’ll be pulling off of what we have in the show so far (because I tend to base my ships off of canon context), but I’ll also be making some reasonable assumptions regarding Clover’s character since we don’t have a whole lot on him yet.

[Note: I’m not really trying to sway anyone with this post, so if you don’t agree or don’t like FG, feel free to scroll right on by and have a nice day. I’m all for discourse but that’s not the point of this particular post. Make your own and invite me to engage and we can have a convo.)

That being said, and without further ado, here are my top reasons for being Fair Game trash. Be forewarned, this is loooong. Damn thing turned into a dissertation.

Reason #1: Clover is a source of stability

One of the biggest criticisms I’ve seen aimed at Fair Game (aside from the more inane ones, which I will not dignify with an acknowledgment on this post) is that Qrow hates specialists. And people are right. It’s one of the first insights we get into his character in his volume 3 debut episode, right after the fact that he’s an alcoholic. I completely agree that if these two men had met in volume 3 or even 4, there is no way they would have gotten along. Clover is a soldier. A military man. He goes by the book and, in his mind, there’s not a lot of wiggle room when it comes to doing things the right way (see: his conversation with Robyn). He would have driven volume 3 Qrow up the wall, and not in a sexy way.

But the fact is, Qrow has been through a hell of a lot since then. He lost Ozpin twice (once to death and once to the lies Oz himself told), lost his way and sense of purpose because of it, almost died on multiple occasions, fell into deep emotional darkness, came under the influence of the Apathy, and had to finally acknowledge his own depression and poor coping mechanisms, or lack thereof, as a result. Shit like that changes you in deep and fundamental ways and, while I would have loved for a bit more in-show focus on this transition, I think RT gave us enough to infer the rest.

Thanks mostly to Ruby, Qrow is finally in a place where he is trying to heal for the first time since we’ve known him. He started the show as an impulsive– albeit manipulative and brilliant (see: him baiting Winter into a fight)– alcoholic who had no problem whatsoever with getting under people’s skin. The only relationships he really seemed to value were the ones he had with his nieces and with Ozpin, and everyone else could take a flying leap. Now I can’t deny that there was a certain charm to that. It’s one of the reasons I think he became such a fan favorite so rapidly; a lot of us can relate to that desire to not give a shit. But the underlying implications of that type of behavior are, I believe, pretty damn dark and serve as the earliest signs of Qrow’s depression and emotional isolation. Consider: his only functional relationships were with people who were incapable of really knowing him on a deeply personal level. Oz couldn’t because he was the one to give Qrow a purpose, thereby establishing a certain power imbalance in their relationship, no matter how close they were (I love Oz despite his mistakes before anyone comes after me for that statement and have nothing against Oz x Qrow, these are just my thoughts). And Ruby and Yang couldn’t, and still can’t, because they’re his damn nieces and being the adult in a relationship with kids means you maintain a certain distance between them and any insecurities or struggles you might have. Anything else is just not okay. He bungled that in volume 6 but he has clearly been trying to re-establish that supportive adult role in volume 7, which is amazing all by itself.

This brings us to Qrow’s emotional and mental state at the start of volume 7. Again, he’s in a place where he’s trying to heal. I don’t know how many people can relate, but that place is friggin’ terrifying because it’s the place where you have to stop lying to yourself about your problems and commit to dealing with them. But it also comes with a weird level of mental… stillness? Peace isn’t the right word, but when you’re not constantly fighting yourself anymore, you are able to breathe a little and that’s worth a lot to someone who has been trying to suffocate themselves for most of their lives. I think this has a lot to do with his shift in outlook. He’s less antagonistic because it no longer serves to feed the self-loathing monster inside him. Or rather, he’s trying to make sure he doesn’t feed it. The fact that he comes into Mantle, gets arrested for doing his job, and doesn’t immediately get in James’s face, or Winter’s for that matter, attests to the fact that he has changed. Qrow isn’t the one to call James out on the embargo or the state of things in Mantle. Instead, he steps into a role that we have never seen him in: the gentle voice of reason. He points out that James doesn’t need an entire military presence to build and launch the communications tower, and when James reveals his plans to tell the world about Salem, Qrow doesn’t outright disagree or go after him for it (as he certainly would have in earlier volumes). He simply points out that Oz spent every lifetime he had keeping that secret and then lets James explain his reasoning (flawed as it might be).

In short, all that outward anger he displayed in earlier volumes was most likely a manifestation of the self-hate storm he had brewing inside. Now that he’s decided to try to move away from that, he’s different. Of course he is. It would be completely unreasonable to expect otherwise.

Enter Clover Ebi. By sheer virtue of being who he is, Clover provides a source of stability for Qrow that he both sorely needs and has severely lacked up to this point in his life. Healing is an internal and independent process for the most part, and Qrow is going to have to sort out his issues on his own, but having someone in your life during that process who is solid is invaluable. And so far, Clover has been nothing but solid. He has been the one to pull Qrow back from bad old habits (self-deprecation and self-hate regarding his semblance). He’s been the one to take Qrow’s semblance in stride and even to get him to joke about the whole concept of having luck, good or bad, for a semblance. And so far? He’s done all of this with absolutely no strings attached. He’s not like Oz, who needed Qrow to be functional enough to carry out his spying missions, and he’s not like Ruby or Yang, who reasonably need Qrow to be solid for them because he’s their uncle. Clover is the first person who doesn’t need anything from Qrow, and so he is able to offer the type of emotional support that Qrow has never received from anyone else. They’re not even official battle partners, despite them being paired quite a bit. The lack of strings, of ulterior motives, of complicated and messy ties, and even of familial bonds, means that Clover can be the solid one. He can be a safe place where Qrow can fall apart and put himself back together if he needs to, because nothing is going to cave in if he does. Qrow won’t be putting too much weight on his nieces or on someone who relies on him for information and support. He can lean on Clover without having to worry about any repercussions.

Reason #2: Qrow is a source of disruption

Now for the fun flipside of my first point. While Clover provides a source of stability for Qrow, Qrow has the very real potential to provide a much-needed source of disruption for Clover, thereby balancing out what we have gotten of their relationship dynamic so far.

Being a military man, stringent structure and unconditional loyalty to his superiors are likely major aspects of Clover’s character. We have enough in the show so far to assume that’s accurate about him even if it hasn’t been blatantly stated.

Clover carries out his orders without fail, to the point of arresting a bunch of kids and Qrow in Mantle for operating outside of official parameters. His conversation with Robyn is also extremely telling. He doesn’t have a problem with what she wants; he has a problem with how she’s trying to get it. He doesn’t believe that the ends justify the means and, in that same vein, probably also believes that institutions are there for good reason. He is the epitome of lawful good.

Qrow, on the other hand, has never operated within official parameters. He was a spy, for god’s sake, and therefore is intimately familiar with the inherent grayness of the world. He’s not someone who is going to see things in black and white, and because of this, he could offer a sort of push back against Clover’s blind loyalty to Ironwood.

Not only is Qrow not in the military, and therefore not bound by its restrictions and dictates, but he has known James for a long time. He, more than anyone, is in the perfect position to call James out on his crap, and he’s probably the one with the best chance of actually getting through to him. Not with the same aggression and vehemence he displayed in volume 3, but with more of a tough-love approach. I fully expect this to happen at some point (and will be very sad if it doesn’t. I like James and want him to snap out of all this).

So how does this relate to Clover? Well, it forces him to acknowledge that, military or not, always trusting that the people above you are doing the right thing or the best thing is never a good way to go. He would have to step back and re-evaluate his general approach to life, which is the core of character growth. Clover never questions authority (that we’ve seen) whereas Qrow’s existence has always been in stark contrast to it. If anyone is going to act as a catalyst for Clover’s potential evolution from strict military man to a more free-thinking, free-acting individual, it’s going to be Qrow. And I think the pieces are set-up for that exact thing to happen.

Obviously, we’ll have to wait and see where CRWBY takes this one (if they take it anywhere) but the potential for growth from Clover is there because Qrow has come into his life. One of the best things couples can do is challenge each other, and these two are primed to do exactly that.

Reason #3: Opposites attract for a reason

We’ve all heard the phrase, right? Opposites attract. Sometimes I think this statement falls victim to a lot of misunderstandings so let me clarify what I mean by this. I don’t mean their chosen routes in life (rogue and spy vs. structured military man), or their semblances, or even their different combat styles. I’m talking about the complementary nature of their personalities.

Qrow has always been a bit impulsive. It’s been established that he sometimes doesn’t fully think things through, or if he does, he doesn’t care about the consequences and is willing to deal with them (see: his battle with Winter again). Don’t get me wrong. The guy is brilliant. He baits Winter knowing it will give him the opportunity to pick a fight with James as well and call him on his shit. But I’m pretty sure he also does this knowing full well that’s all he’s going to get: a fight. He’s not going to convince James not to bring the full Atlas military presence in for the Vytal Festival by shouting at him. He knows this and does it anyway. In his fight with Tyrian, you can see more than one instance where he’s planning his moves so his semblance has the chance to work on his opponent, but it’s at the risk of his own safety as well (see: the roof stunt). There are plenty of other examples throughout the show. Qrow runs off instinct and momentum.

Clover, on the other hand, strikes me as someone who exercises a bit more caution in his life. He thinks through a situation before he steps into it and overall just seems a little slower to take action. This is true in combat situations, as the whole mine mission was meticulously planned out beforehand. You can also see this approach mirrored in the way the Ace Ops work on the whole. Vine and Elm definitely don’t rush in when they encounter Grimm in the mine, and while Marrow and Harriet might be a bit faster to go after the main target, they don’t do it without a fully formed plan. It’s not foolproof, obviously. Marrow does cut off that piece of Dust with no one there (that he knows of) to catch it, but the point is still valid.

This tendency to go slow and feel his way is also true in Clover’s personal life. In the truck scene, you can see him watching Qrow while he talks, gauging his reactions, trying to find the best way to reach him. Nothing he says is mere chitchat. It’s all meant to pull Qrow into a conversation, which Clover tries to keep focused on Qrow himself. His opener might be Ruby but he ditches that line of thought as soon as Qrow gives him the opening to do so and shifts his attention to where he really wants it to be: getting to know Qrow.

Then you also have Qrow’s penchant for falling into dark mental places balanced against Clover’s good mood and playfulness; Qrow’s willingness to be a little more open with his emotions and Clover’s tight emotional control; the fact that Qrow feels things fully and deeply while I suspect that Clover might have emotional walls he hasn’t learned how to lower yet; Clover’s ability to follow orders and Qrow’s ability to question. And that’s all out of only 3-ish minutes of total interaction between them so far. I think as the volume goes, we’ll only get more insight on the ways in which they balance and round each other out.

Reason #4: Shared semblances

So this has been the biggest kicker for people so far, and I’ve seen it as a point both in favor of and against FG. Some people theorize that Clover’s semblance might have some balancing effect on Qrow’s, making it much safer for Clover to be around him than it is for others. Others think that it might be more of a trade-off: good luck part of the time and bad luck the other part (I’m in favor of this). And yet others seem to see Clover’s semblance as a negative thing for Qrow, somehow dampening his own semblance or countering it to the point that it’s mentally or emotionally detrimental for him. I personally don’t quite see the logic behind this given what we’ve seen so far, but I’ll just make my point and get out of this debate because the truth is that we still don’t quite know how their semblances function together.

What we do know is that they are two sides of the same coin, and as such, are not nearly as far apart as they might have seemed at first. They both carry around luck semblances, which I assume is pretty damn rare. Almost every other semblance we have seen has existed more in the practical realm (Yang’s damage absorption, Blake’s shadow self, Weiss’s glyphs, Ruby’s rose petal thing, Marrow’s ability to slow time, Tyrian’s ability to rip through Aura, etc. etc. etc.) And then we have these two who operate in the realm of chance, something intangible and completely unpredictable. They are fairly unique in the RWBY-verse in this sense, and uniqueness usually breeds a certain degree of separation.

A ton of theories are floating around about how Clover’s semblance has affected him throughout his life. I’ve posited a few myself. We obviously have no idea what the canon backstory for Clover is, and while I do think it’s pretty safe to assume that while Qrow has dealt with ostracization because of his semblance, Clover might have experience with some sort of idolization or even over-reliance (which can be damaging in its own right) because of his, there isn’t a whole lot we can speculate on without more information.

So where does that leave us? With the scene depicted above. Regardless of how their semblances might play off each other or what these two have suffered (or enjoyed) as a result of them, one thing is certain: they understand one another. Qrow may not know what it’s like to be able to draw good luck to himself, but he knows what it’s like when his semblance does work in his favor and screws over an opponent. Clover, by the same token, probably doesn’t understand what it’s like having to constantly watch out for misfortune, but he most likely does know what it’s like to have his semblance flip on him and give the edge to his opponent. Additionally, them both having such similar semblances means that learning to look for signs of each other’s being at work won’t be much of a stretch for them. They would be able to adapt pretty fast to working together. Note, I’m assuming their semblances function in the same way and that Clover has no more control over his than Qrow does because it just makes narrative sense.

This puts them in the unique position of being together in their semblances, even if they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum. Qrow has not exhibited any jealousy or bitterness towards Clover because of his semblance, and Clover sure as hell hasn’t put any distance between them out of concern for Qrow’s semblance. They get each other, and after only half a season, they have developed a level of comfort with one another that already allows them to joke about it. An inside joke that no one else could possibly understand. And that is some powerful shit for two people who have potentially (one person we know for certain has) been isolated in one way or another because of their semblances throughout their lives.

Reason #5: Clover is new

Okay, if anyone partial to a different Qrow ship has somehow made it through this monster of a post, you might want to skip this bit. Because I’m going to make an argument for why bringing in a new character to be Qrow’s love interest is actually a good idea. This is not to hate on I//ronqrow or S//nowbird or any other popular Qrow ship, but it might annoy the shit out of you so… fair warning. I’ll keep it brief, though.

I think Qrow getting involved with someone who he has no past connection to would be insanely good for him. When it comes to James or Winter or, really, anyone else who knew him before this volume, there is a lot of baggage there. And I mean a lot. At this point in his life, Qrow is dealing with enough of his own internal shit that throwing external interpersonal baggage on top of that probably wouldn’t help him in any way. Sometimes, you just need to start over somewhere (especially when you’re trying to pick up the pieces of yourself and figure out how they go together), and Clover offers Qrow the perfect opportunity to do that. There are no preconceptions that Qrow has to deal with, nothing he has to make up for or prove. Clover won’t be hovering over him anticipating a relapse or using his past behavior to interpret his current actions, or wondering why he’s changed, or holding things against him. He can figure out who he is now without the pressures of who he was hanging around his neck. And that, like so many other things these two have going for them, is unbelievably powerful.

Reason #6: They already have the nonverbal thing down

This one is more for funsies than anything, but come on. They’re already communicating non-verbally?

It took me a while to pinpoint that expression on Clover’s face but I finally got it: his brows don’t lower in annoyance or anger. They furrow: the universal sign of concern. What exactly he’s worried about, I’m not completely sure. It could be any number of things at this point, from a hint that he’s not totally supportive of this particular order he’s getting (bringing Robyn into custody) to a concern that he and Qrow might be approaching a clash point (not so far, though if Qrow is going to be the disruptive force Clover needs, that point is probably coming). Either way, this look speaks volumes. I’m just not entirely certain how to read it yet.

But in the interest of keeping up on the analysis, note his answer to James. It’s not a “yes sir” or a “whatever you say, sir”. He says “we’ll figure it out”. Qrow looks at him and only then does Clover shoot him that sideways glance thing. Is he making it clear that he means to include Qrow in this? That he wants Qrow’s help? That he knows they’re all in a crap situation but the Amity project is stalled and they need to try something so they should at least try this? They’re communicating something here and just because I don’t know what it is yet doesn’t mean this is any less significant in terms of their relationship. This kind of thing only happens when you click with someone and these two definitely click.

Bonus: They’re just so damn cute together

If you made it through that nonsense, congratulations! Have some Fair Game goodness as a reward. These two are adorable together and you will never convince me otherwise:

#fair game #qrow branwen #clover ebi #lucky charms #fairgame #rwby7 #rwby #holy shit this became a thing #it's seriously a behemoth of a post #enter at your own risk #cute pictures at the end #analysis #maybe a little too much #i don't care this was fun #took me all afternoon but whatever #enjoy!!!

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wren-rambles · 3 years

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No messy. No fussy. Just Missy.

Here it is, the long awaited character analysis of Missy a.k.a. ‘the Master’. For reference I will be using information from sources outside the show! Such as ‘The Missy Chronicles’ and detailing’s of the audio stories.

I know this has been a long time coming, but it's here now!

First off, it is impossible to isolate Missy from the Master because they are the same with some physical differences as well as some minor personality differences. So, I must start off with the fact that In general the Master (as a whole) only ever does things that suits their needs and their purposes, or that simply will entertain them. Therefore, there are no differences between Missy and other Master’s OTHER than 1. she identifies as she, 2. she is calmer, more poise if you will.

In the very beginning of Missy’s incarnation, she awoke on a Mondasian Cyber-ship with no recollection of why/how she got there.

What’s in a name?

One of the first things the Master does after a regeneration is go the the Scoundrels (a gentlemen’s club for evil doers such as them-self). At this point Missy hasn’t picked a name for herself, so she is nameless). Upon going to and taking her usual seat, she is met with sexism and thrown out of the club. Of course this makes her angry, so she goes on a journey of revenge. On this journey she meets a woman called Saffron (a freed slave from Southern America during the 1700s); it is here in which Missy picks her name. In conversation with Saffron, Missy mentions she was called ‘Master’ and Saffron says “You’re all masters here [...] even the mistresses,” which piques Missy’s interest and gives rise to her calling herself ‘Missy’ (short for Mistress). Missy recruits Saffron and uses her to help aid her in her revenge à la Master style. She goes on to kill every member of the club. The members she didn’t kill she brought back in time and sold into slavery after releasing some slaves so that she could replace them. (So, yes she freed slaves but we aren’t sure what she actually did with them and there’s almost no way they would have been safe if simply released).

Missy commits the acts of revenge against those who have wronged her. Nothing that could be considered ‘good’ can be equated as good due to her malicious motivations behind them.

Dealings with Gallifrey

Missy’s TARDIS is broken! the Eye of Harmony (EoH) has been shut down, locked by Gallifrey, only to be turned on if she does their bidding. So, Missy is recruited by the General and accompanied by Yayani to sneak into the Kyme institute to stop them from using a creature that has been engineered with “time-and-space-travel capability” and with this type of creature it could cause problems throughout time and space. Disrupt the balance, paradoxes, etc. This creature was also born/created to be pregnant so it had the instinct to survive. After some manipulation of Yayani based on her past and hatred for Rassilon (she tried to kill him -> forced to work for him) she is coerced into killing the Doctor who created this creature. Then as expected Missy releases the creature (not for good reason, sorry) and replaces the Eye of Harmony in her TARDIS with it. She imprisons the creature to power her TARDIS, she is no longer reliant on Gallifrey, and to send a message she kills Yayani via Tissue Compression Eliminator and sending her body to Gallifrey and a message ‘Not your puppet’

The many complexities of Missy

Clara: Initially she manipulated her into calling the 11th Doctor and caused them to meet. Then she places an ad in the paper to keep them together after 11s regeneration into 12. She does this to create the Gallifreyan Hybrid of myth out of the both of them. Missy kills Danny Pink by running him over with a milk float.

Lucy Saxon: Missy tells her that she must shoot Harold Saxon, but keeps the information that Lucy will die to herself. She also requests that the matrix slices Harold had acquired be given to her now for her purposes.

With these slices she creates the Nether sphere where the undying minds go. (3W) The reality altered the minds and removed emotions. Missy uses these to fill Cyber coverted bodies. She creates her army of cyber men and plans on converting all the soon to be dead humans into Cybermen. To prove a point she turns control over the army to the Doctor, she wanted him to take control and use the army to prove that their similarities. Much to her dismay he turns control over to Danny who orders the Cybermen to destroy themselves. Plan foiled, Missy fakes her death in order to escape.

Missy even tries to manipulate children into furthering her causes and schemes to gain power. (’Teddy Sparkles Must Die’) This doesn’t go to plan.

Bottom line is that Missy is very smart calculated and complicated. She manipulates things through time to suit her needs or future needs. There is a constant struggle for power.

Moving on, Missy is put on trial for her crimes and sentenced to death. The Doctor was chosen to carry out the execution, but he faked her execution and decided to put her in a vault instead to guard her body. His goal was for her to realize her wrongdoings and become good. After a long time Missy ends up shedding a tear for all those she had killed/hurt, she also claims that she regrets her actions.

As a test the Doctor has Missy perform maintenance on the TARDIS while he is away. She waits for him. This is 12s cause to free her from the vault. He decides he can trust her. They each contemplate whether or not they can be friends again.

The thing is, the Master and even Missy are no strangers to playing the long game. It’s questionable whether or not her change is really genuine.

Then we come to Missy’s end.

As a test, 12 sends Missy on a test mission to see if she really has changed. She is ill prepared and under her watch Bill is shot and carried off to floor 1056. Missy and 12 went to said floor together. 12 leaves Missy to gather information and she learns the ship is Mondasian. Missy ends up going along with ‘Razor’ (Simm!master) only to eventually claim she was playing him. She quickly admits that she is unsure of her allegiance.

The Doctor tries to convince Simm!master to help him save the people because it is the right thing to do but he doesn’t then in private with Missy, she reveals that she wanted to stand with him and help him but couldn’t. The she leaves with Simm! As they were about to leave Missy stabs Simm! forcing his regeneration into her. Missy reveals to him that she planned on siding with the Doctor which angers him.

By now it’s apparent that she has changed. She leaves to help the Doctor, but it ends up killing her. Simm! shoots Missy. Thus Missy dies. She dies and the Doctor believes she always went back on her change, but really she was just too late.

Missy tries to change for the better. She ultimately wants to stand with the Doctor, finally they end up on par with each other. level ground, standing side by side finally. But she’s too late.

The Master is just to disgusted with the idea of standing with the Doctor on his moral high ground. It’s about bringing him down, not climbing them-self up.

Sidenote: Missy through a complicated event become the Lumiat! Another incarnation who claims to be good as a result of the Doctor’s teaching/influence. She herself tries to be a good influence on Missy. This version foils may of Missy’s plans but ends up having to regenerate because Missy got bored of her. It is after this that we assume that Dhawan!Master comes about.

So, what does this all mean? Is Missy good? Well, no, she is still at the core the Master who is inherently bad. Is the Master capable of change? That really depends on which Master you are talking about. Missy, yes. Simm! no. Dhawan, I also believe no. A calmer more poise Master, yes.

The most tragic of all, is that Missy (and the Lumiat) is a moot point. The Master always goes back to being evil. Dhawan is proof of this, regardless of Missy’s learned lessons or changes they are always meant to go back, their need for power is too strong not to.

This is NOT an ultimate conclusion, this is based on the information we have been given thus far in the Master’s/Missy's history!

#doctor who #the master #missy #12th doctor #dw #dhawan!master #gomez!master #clara oswald

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letapollojusticesayfuck · 3 years

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💎⛰️🎢☀️📜✏️⭐📣🔦 for currents & 💡 for the scurvy fic. i need to know.

sparrow that’s. so many. (but you’re asking me to talk about currents and I am always looking for a reason to talk about currents so. Thank You)

(also, obvious spoilers under the cut for undeniable you (the currents pulling me onward so. if you care about that you might want to read the fic first)

💎- What was your favorite part?

I’d probably say...the beginning of chapter 7? Where it’s immediately post-trial and Klavier and Apollo are just so tired and at loose ends and they go and sit on the courthouse steps and talk. I basically wrote the entire fic in order to write the last 4 chapters--the emotional aftermath of the trial, but I had to write the trial first so it would have context.

⛰️- What was the hardest part?

Figuring out the whole Gramarye Siblings situation, for sure. Because--the thing is that canon isn’t entirely cohesive on who did what when. I did a ton of research by perusing the wiki and taking notes on Jove, Thalassa, Magnifi, etc--and then I kind of just decided that if there was no coherent canon timeline, then I didn’t need to stick to it--and made as much of it up as I felt was necessary.

🎢- Were there any scenes you were nervous about? For audience reception or otherwise?

With every single courtroom scene, I was worried that it would be super boring or wouldn’t live up to the games or that all of the arguments I used would be Wrong and Bad? also this isn’t unique to currents but every single time I write a kissing scene I worry that it’s going to be bad

☀️- Was there symbolism/motifs you worked in?

A little? If anything, I was trying to emphasize the symbolism and Themes that I felt the canon games after AA4 didn’t utilize at all--like, I deliberately used Apollo flying across the ocean after hearing about Klavier as a parallel with Edgeworth flying across the ocean when he heard something happened with Phoenix, and obviously the “POV defense attorney defends rival prosecutor” is a deliberate parallel with 1-4. I guess Klavier’s hair might be a bit of a motif but that’s mostly because I think it’s pretty and less of a deliberate choice lmao

📜-Do you want to write something like this again in the future?

Depends! I would maybe write another casefic if I had a really good concept for one, sometime In The Future (because they are So Annoying to plan)--but as for multichaptered fics, I definitely want to write another one sometime. I just need to have a Good Idea and the motivation to stick with it--currents was written mainly out of spite at the dropped plot threads from AA4 and my determination to resolve a bunch of them and also further my Klapollo Agenda.

✏️-Would you go back and change anything if you could?

At the moment, I don’t think I would--but if you asked me again in a year or so, I probably would change things. I still want to write a series of oneshots in the currents universe--stuff focusing on characters we didn’t see enough of, like Trucy and Phoenix; and Kristoph pre-fic; and Phoenix and Miles; and Klavier and Apollo after everything

⭐- What’s a scene/paragraph you’re proud of?

“We can’t dwell too much on that part. But one more thing—if they planted the nail polish back then, and the powder in the mortar and pestle—how could they be sure you wouldn’t...accidentally…”

Apollo trails off, but they both know how that sentence ends. Klavier shudders.

“I almost never use that thing, anyway—it was a housewarming gift, and I’ve only ever been ambitious enough to grind my own spices about twice. Otherwise, it’s just easier to use the stuff in jars. I guess they must have known that, somehow? Either that, or...it didn’t matter if…”

“So, they’re someone who either wanted you to be found guilty for a murder you didn’t commit, or didn’t mind if you were poisoned by accident—and who probably works for that dogsitting company,” Apollo murmurs, pulling out his planner and jotting down a few notes. On the other side of the glass, Klavier sighs, tilting his head so that his fringe obscures his eyes.

“I wonder...if they’d gotten me, accidentally...would they still have killed Kris? Or would they have been satisfied with just me?”

The question is nearly inaudible, but Apollo looks up sharply, staring at Klavier.

“You think they killed him just because...it would hurt you?”

Klavier shifts, meeting Apollo’s eyes. “What would be the point, otherwise? Vengeance? Apollo, who’s left alive that would need to enact revenge on him? He was already on death row—what does this accomplish, besides hurting me?”

As much as Apollo tries, he can’t come up with an answer.

I don’t know if I can think of too many specific scenes I’m proud of--but I really do like this one, because I think it shows Apollo’s pragmatic side--trying to solve the murder mystery, pushing his emotions aside when he can--while illustrating Klavier’s attitude of “usually I would brush this off but we both know this premise is a little wonky and this isn’t adding up.”

...that might not have made sense, I’m not always the best at analyzing my own writing. I just throw words at the page and what happens, happens.

📣-What was the best piece of encouragement you got?

It’s cheesy, but everyone who commented on each chapter was an invaluable source of encouragement? like, the absolute best feeling in the world was posting a new chapter and then seeing all the comment notifications come in, and spending the rest of the day replying. I’d written 6 chapters before I posted the prologue, but having people give me their reactions to each chapter really was the most important thing that made me keep going <3

🔦-Did you learn anything while writing it? About yourself? Writing?

I learned a lot about How To Write A Murder-Mystery--first and foremost, that it involves so much planning. And I maybe had to spoil the ending of AA6 entirely for myself--fun fact, I still haven’t finished the game, I’m stuck on Trial Day 1 of the Maya case (because I’m Tired, okay?). About writing and myself--I learned that I definitely need a deadline, and that using external “word count goal” tools is pretty essential for me if I want to write anything longer than a oneshot.

For The Scurvy Fic:

💡-What was the motivation behind the story?

okay SO. There was a conversation going on in a Klapollo discord server. Somehow we ended up talking about Klavier and/or Apollo being cheapskates. I think I mentioned something about Klavier surviving entirely on ramen noodles because they’re cheap? and then it devolved into a conversation about how they’d totally get scurvy if they did that. And I started thinking about how Klavier and Apollo are inherently pretty competitive, and how they’d totally just get into a stupid bet and be so stubborn that they wouldn’t back down, because they have to Prove A Point, even if they get scurvy from their awful diet of Whatever’s The Cheapest. And then...Scurvy Fic Happened. (along with the Other scurvy fics, because there’s Three of them!! I was just the only person who went with the obvious title).

Thank you for the ask!! Hope this was...enlightening??

#ask #asks #thank you!!#ask game #aa currents #exitcorners

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hellsbellschime · 4 years

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Given the immense popularity of the Harry Potter series, it's clear why every character in the franchise would develop it's own unique fanbase that is drawn to that particular person for a set of particular reasons. But one of the most curious phenomenons within the world of Harry Potter is the enduring and intense popularity of one of the most unappealing characters in the series, Draco Malfoy. In a world populated with exceptional wizards, epic heroes, and genocidal villains, why does this arrogant schoolyard bully hold so much sway with so many Harry Potter fans?

The prevailing theory of the book's author is that Tom Felton is the reason why so many fangirls and fanboys are mistakenly believing that this bad boy has a heart of gold buried underneath that steely gaze and designer suit. But it doesn't seem wildly unfair to say that the author's ability to get a good read on her audience is... not great, and that seems like a vast oversimplification of Draco as a character and the audience's reaction towards him. But if it's not because of his pretty pretty face, what exactly is it that makes Draco so intriguing to so many people? After all, the amount of attention that he gets within the books is actually pretty minimal, and the screen time that he gets is even stingier, so what is there to even get intrigued by?

Harry Potter is a series that is exceptionally skilled at creating dramatic tension within it's storyline, but that is exceptionally bad at creating dramatic tension within it's character developments. Literally every major character within the story has a pretty firmly established personality that is only refined and directed towards whatever North star is guiding them. Although the stakes are constantly being raised and the risks are getting greater, every character has always known what they had to do and why they had to do it. With only one significant and glaring exception to that rule. Draco Malfoy.

From the moment the audience meets Draco it's clear that he is intended to be a foil for Harry, and throughout the entire series he truly does embody everything that Harry is not. He's arrogant, exclusionary, rude, entitled, and lacking in empathy. He's weak in every way that Harry is strong, he's cruel in every way that Harry is kind, and everything about his character coding is bad in contrast to Harry's good. Harry is the prime example of Gryffindor's heroism and innate goodness, while Draco is the prime example of Slytherin's elitism and cruelty. Draco was raised within a family that suffered greatly at the defeat of Voldemort, at least relatively speaking, and Harry Potter was the one who defeated him. In a philosophical sense, it's clear that Draco is meant to be Harry's inverse, but on a more practical level, Draco should also be inherently unappealing because he's just a bully, and people don't like bullies. So, why is it that so many people like him? Well, because in certain ways Draco is the easiest character to relate to.

Many of the main characters in the series make a lot of mistakes throughout the course of the story, but they seem to stick within a certain subset of mistakes that make them seem so heroic that they almost feel disconnected from normal humanity. Characters like Harry, Hermione, and Ron make mistakes based on faulty logic or mistakes that are driven by emotional reactions that they don't think through, but they don't really ever make ethical mistakes. They're good people who do good things with good intentions, and if anything ever goes wrong it's not because they've done anything morally wrong.

Draco on the other hand, makes many ethical mistakes. He's raised by selfish and cruel people who spend his entire life telling him how superior he is, so he's very distinctly lacking in his ability to empathize and relate to others. And honestly, regardless of how anyone was raised, that lack of self-reflection and inability to understand how we can affect others is something that most people can relate to, especially when they're younger. Most people understand how it feels to make a moral mistake because of some kind of ethical or psychological immaturity, and that makes it easier for everyone to relate to Draco.

And why is it that Draco is lacking this traditional moral compass? Well, because of the way that he was raised. His parents obviously loved and doted on him, but they quite literally raised him to believe in ideologies that are objectively morally wrong. From the moment he was born he was indoctrinated to very bigoted views, and because of the privilege he grew up in and his lack of contact with any other ways of thinking, he never had any reason to question those views. And that's yet another aspect of his character that is extremely easy for a lot of people to relate to. More often than not, children are raised and taught ideas and ideologies that they ultimately realize they might not agree with, even if their parents raised them to believe that those ideas were objective truth.

What makes Draco such an interesting character is that for the vast majority of his character arc he had an extremely limited and unempathetic viewpoint, but his later actions and behaviors clearly indicate that he had an innate sense of morality. Draco behaves in such an arrogant and demeaning way because he doesn't think of the way that he's been raised as a point of view, he sees it as reality, so having other students like Harry or Hermione challenge that elicits an extremely negative response from him. But once the most brutal aspects of the ideologies that his parents raised him with become his reality, it's clear that it inspires an almost immediate change within him.

Because Draco has an innate sense of morality and that morality is now coming into conflict with his entire familial structure and belief system, that conflict starts tearing him apart. And honestly, while conflict is not a prerequisite for a character to be interesting, creating character conflict and tension that needs to be resolved will always inspire intrigue and interest in an audience. Easy isn't often interesting, and in a fictional world where every character's motivations are well defined from start to finish, even if those motivations weren't revealed until the end of the series, it's easy to see why Draco stuck out in the crowd.

It's clear that almost immediately after becoming a Death Eater, Draco's sense of what he should do is thrown into disarray. And of course, why wouldn't it be? A lot of Draco's fans seem to refer to him as the boy who had no choice, but that actually doesn't seem like a very accurate representation of Draco's status by the end of the series. On the contrary, it seems like he is the only character with choices. It's just that all of his options are terrible ones.

When we see most of the other characters, there is never any question of what they should do or will do. While what they must do or will try to do is very difficult to actually accomplish, it's never a very difficult choice for them to make. They can either fight for their friends and loved ones, or let wizard Hitler overtake the world. For many of them, the only options are to either fight Voldemort or die. But the decisions that Draco has to make are actually far more complex.

As the audience, we all know that Draco doing the right thing would mean rebelling against the Death Eaters, joining the good guys, and not killing Dumbledore. But if anyone were asked a hypothetical question about killing someone they barely knew, or possibly letting their family die or getting themselves killed, it's clearly not an easy answer. In fact, many people would choose to let a near stranger die in the place of someone they loved. Draco's character arc is compelling both because he is forced into an insanely difficult choice, and because he is arguably the most ill equipped character to handle this kind of decision. His internal moral compass is something he has literally just discovered, and he now has to make the most difficult choice that any of the characters have had to make in the series.

And what muddies the water even further is that while the immorality of murder is a moral absolute, Draco's relative life experience is entirely diametrically opposed to the experiences of any of the other main characters. The heroes of the story understand that the Malfoys, the Death Eaters, and Dark Wizards at large are the "bad guys," and by extension the audience understands that as well. But in Draco's world, those are the people who have given him all of the love, acceptance, and admiration that he's ever experienced. And on the flip side, the "good guys" of the story have only ever offered him dismissal, derision, and rejection.

So, even if Draco is having a crisis of conscience, he could possibly lose everything that has meaning to him and gain nothing in return. And compounding that pressure even further, he's never had any guidance or role modeling that would show him how to stand up against someone else, let alone someone as terrifying as Voldemort. For the vast majority of the characters in the series, regardless of where they land on the moral spectrum, the choices laid out before them are so drastically one sided that they're not really choices at all. But for Draco, there are legitimate options, all of which could end in cataclysmic disaster for him.

The Harry Potter saga is the story of it's titular hero defeating the most evil wizard who ever lived, so it operates on a pretty srong dyad of good vs. evil. But, reality rarely lays things out that clearly. Everyone likes to envision themselves as the hero of their own story, but the truth is that everyone understands how it feels to experience difficulty in deciding what's right or wrong. Seeing characters who's experiences mirror our own is immediately appealing, and it explains why so many people are drawn to a character like Draco. And that's not the only thing that makes him relatable.

While Draco spends most of the series trying to capitalize on his famous name, he's actually a pretty exceptionally skilled wizard and seems to be an excellent student, at least good enough to be made a school prefect. And while his overall position within the storyline does seem to indicate that he's popular, at least in Slytherin, it doesn't seem like very many people actually like Draco for Draco or recognize that he's good at anything. People either love him or hate him purely based on the assumptions that they make about him, many of which don't reflect his inner persona. And that's a feeling that almost everyone in the world can understand on some level. Everyone wants to feel seen, and everyone knows how it feels to work hard at something and feel like that work is unrecognized. Everyone fears rejection, so even if Draco's overly defensive posturing is unappealing, the emotion that exists behind it speaks to the heart of many Harry Potter fans.

Draco was never going to be the hero of this story. But what he did get to be was something that is much more morally and thematically relevant to the audience at large. No, he didn't get the redemption arc that many of his fans may have been hoping for, but the end result of his character may have been something much better.

Draco did eventually grow, change, and evolve as a person. But what makes his ultimate about face even more interesting is that he did it despite the fact that there was really nothing in it for him. He didn't do anything because he wanted the world to see him as a hero for once, or because he wanted to be liked, or even because he just wanted to show up Harry Potter. He did it because he genuinely reflected on his own behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs, and he decided that he no longer agreed with what he thought before.

Self-reflection is one of the deepest and most profound experiences that a person can go through, but it can be extremely painful, difficult, and it isn't necessarily all that rewarding either. So the fact that a character like Malfoy made that choice and came out the other side of it as a better person is actually pretty inspiring. Deciding to be a better person just because you want to be, not because there is something to be gained from it, is an incredibly powerful message. And beyond that, the thought that someone who started off where Malfoy did would actually make that choice, even when he has a lot to potentially lose because of it, makes his character even more dynamic and complex. It's something that speaks to so many people on such a fundamental level because it demonstrates that just because mistakes have been made in the past, that doesn't mean they need to be repeated, and one doesn't have to be born good in order to become good.

Draco Malfoy obviously wasn't a character who was created with the intention of gaining many fans, but the intention behind the character is irrelevant. Draco is an incredibly flawed individual who goes through some very serious growing pains, and who often doesn't make the right decisions. But in a fictional world filled with characters who's development seems to travel from point A to point B with nary a bump in the road, it's easy to see why the snobby rich kid with the famous name became such a fan favorite.

#draco malfoy #hp #harry potter #draco malfoy meta #hp meta #draco malfoy videos #my videos

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reylo-musings · 4 years

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Vessels of the Force

I know I’ve been quiet, but I do want to speak candidly.

I take great issue with the implications of our characters’ connection to the Force in The Rise of Skywalker. Am I a Ben Solo stan who is still salty that my boy faded into nothingness without a hint of respect for his character growth? Yeah, yeah I am. But more so than that, I am a person trying to navigate a world that seems to be trying to trip me up at every turn and I’m desperate to cultivate some kind of personal guide for that journey of mine. Star Wars, and the idea of the Force, up until this disaster of a film, were large parts of that guide. Now, it feels as hollow and cheap as a dollar store chocolate easter bunny.

Something that I saw as complex and rich in meaning, teeming with so many glimmering facets to explore and understand and containing the strength to hold up under whatever pressures the world would throw at it - a true diamond in the rough - turned out to be nothing more than a large sugar crystal. Sure it had a bit of sparkle and it was sweet for a bit, but under the heat and pressure of the world, it melted and burned to ash because it wasn’t strong enough on its own and no one was paying close enough attention to care for it.

But, to continue speaking candidly, I couldn't care less about this disaster of a film, and the poor light it is shining on my beautiful Force diamond. For me, it’s the literal embodiment of “Canon? What canon?” and I couldn’t be more pleased with that choice for myself.

If I were to pinpoint my exact issue with the film and its interpretation of the Force, it would be centered around the idea of living beings as mines of the Force and not vessels of the Force. Rey’s line “I just transferred a bit of life. Force Energy from me to him” is not the inherent issue. This concept of Force transference is good even, but the further implication that going “all in” and transferring your entire stock of Force Energy to something else necessitates that you just vanish from existence. #BenSoloDeservedBetter

As beings in the universe, we are not Force mines to be exploited and emptied. Our value does not diminish over time as parts of the Force are chipped away from us, either to be willingly given or forcibly taken. We are not an ore mine that will eventually unearth its last ounce of value and then just exist as an empty hole for the rest of eternity. We are living vessels of life, and that life is ever changing inside us. Some days we will feel that the world is demanding so much of that life and we will constantly give it out and feel we are getting nothing in return. Other days, we will feel so full of life that it seems we will burst from it, but the vessel will amazingly always accommodate more.

Our value is not tied to the quantity or quality of the vessel’s contents, rather our value is constant. No matter how much the energy inside us may feel depleted or heavy or sick, our worth will always be the same.

A large issue with the idea that our worth is tied to a finite amount of energy inside us is that all acts of selflessness, where energy is freely given, are actually acts of martyrdom. Rey transferring Force Energy from her to a wounded creature is no longer about providing an act of service to a life in need, it’s about choosing to chip away at her own life force in a way that, if done enough times, would actually be her demise. A system that is based on a unsustainable minable energy breeds selfishness and fear, where a user will hesitate to help others out of fear that their last value will be striped away and they will vanish.

The Force is not meant to be seen as a landfill of energy. As life passes from one being to the next, that energy is renewed, not left to rot and decay. The Force lesson from TLJ highlighted this in such a perfect way.

Luke Skywalker : What do you see? Rey : The island. Life. Death and decay, that feeds new life. Warmth. Cold. Peace. Violence. Luke Skywalker : And between it all? Rey : Balance and energy. A force. Luke Skywalker : And inside you? Rey : Inside me, that same force.

Sometimes, the Force is like trail mix. All of the parts of it were cultivated together to provide energy and to feed you, but there’s almost always a part that you don’t like as much as the rest. Maybe it's the raisins you don’t like. Maybe you’re just straight up allergic to peanuts (and probably shouldn’t eat the rest, cause like, peanut dust…but try to stick with my analogy here). Maybe the texture of cashews has always just weirded you out slightly. The reality is, if everyone on earth felt exactly the same about trail mix, there would never be a part of it you wouldn’t like. Manufacturers would see that everyone on earth hated raisins and would stop putting them in their trail mixes, but of course some people love raisins, and think they’re the best part of the whole mix.

Are they wrong for loving raisins? No.

Are you wrong for hating raisins? Also no.

Not everyone has to love and eat the trail mix the same way to gain energy from it. A trail mix is a trail “mix” because of its variety. It requires that there be separate and individual pieces brought together to work with one another towards a common goal (the goal of tastiness and hiking energy!). No part is more “right” or “wrong” or “special” than any other part. The Force is not one kind of energy. It contains varied facets that reflect different colors depending on the angle of the light you’re holding it up to. To you, the raisins could be your dark side; the slightly bitter and uncomfortable feeling that gets stuck in the back of your teeth. Or maybe the m&ms are your dark side; the indulgent feeling that has just the right coating of saltiness to be satisfying and motivate you to keep going in the 100 degree heat. Neither is “right” or “wrong”, you just use those energies in unique ways to yourself and your experience.

Say you’re out on the trail with your partner, and you’ve each got one snack box of trail mix. You hate raisins and they hate cashews. You could probably survive the hike just by picking through the contents of your own box and leaving all the things you don’t want at the bottom, and your partner could do the same. But now it’s getting late in the afternoon, and your box is empty of all the things you want and you’re running out of energy. So you offer your near empty snack box of unwanted raisins to your partner, and they give you their unwanted cashews. Now you each have more energy to complete the hike, and your snack boxes are empty and ready to be refilled with new yummy life-giving foods.

As soon as your snack boxes were emptied - the contents having been taken and used by those who desired them most - the box did not cease to be useful, but rather is ready to be filled once again. As vessels, cycling through and giving away the life inside us is not a sacrifice, rather a necessary progression to prepare for new life-giving energy.

There is a distinction to clarify on the idea of beings as vessels of the Force. The reality is that not everything is meant to be kept in a vessel. Vessels are intended for the binary cycle of cultivation and implementation of energies and substances. Vessels are not intended for storage and containment of other living things. A child with the best intentions, who finds a wounded bird in the woods and places it in a closed box for safekeeping, will always end up with a dead bird. A vessel is not intended to sustain a separate living being inside it, as that being requires its own interaction with various energies to survive. Vessels are also not meant as containment units. A fire cannot be saved in a vessel and used later. The fire will use up and exhaust all the energy inside the vessel, and then eventually it will exhaust itself as well. This is where the territory of “beings living inside other beings” doesn’t hold up.

“Kill me, and my spirit will pass into you”

No. Just. No.

Can energy be transferred? Sure. If you pour a glass of water into an already half-filled hydro flask, now you have a hydro flask that is filled with more water. But the individual molecules from the glass of water are no different from the ones that were already inside the bottle. They all mix together and are just “water”. Even if the water you poured in was nasty old moldy water, it’s still just a collection of molecules that contain energy. Nothing is binding all the “old” water molecules together in one part of the bottle. There isn’t anything that is binding just those pieces of water to the inside of the vessel permanently. If the user wants to be rid of that energy, it can be transferred back to the universe and renewed an infinite number of times. A being cannot be contained and continue to live within another living vessel, it just doesn’t work that way.

So how does this all relate to the guide I’m hoping to cultivate for my insane life? It’s about finding a better understanding of my Depression. It’s about welcoming good energy when I feel others sending it my way. It’s about recognizing that in moments I feel empty, my value is not lessened because my energy is depleted. It’s about knowing that even if I feel I only contain one last ounce of energy, if I give it to someone else who needs it more, it will not be my demise. It’s about knowing that energy can be found, transferred, and renewed inside me from every source in the universe. Conversely, that also means that every source has the ability to take away that energy from me, and teaches me to be mindful of the parts of my life that needlessly deplete that energy. It’s about understanding that if energy was given to a source that didn’t appreciate it, that transference was not a was not a waste of my time. All energy given away will be renewed in the universe and I will be ready to accept new energy into myself.

To me, yes, “The Force” is real. Some days the Force is God. Some days it is the heat from the sun and the wind in the trees and the song of the rainfall. And some days, it is just the breath in my lungs and the beat of my heart. What that energy is for you may be something completely different, but find that energy and let it propel you throughout this crazy journey we call life.

#I dont know what to tag this #Its just been on my mind for literally months since seeing TROS

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yoursummerfrost · 4 years

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Hogwarts House Sorting: Lucifer Characters

After hemming and hawing for weeks, I finally decided to commit to making this character analysis. I’ll be using the @sortinghatchats system of house sorting because I really love how much nuance it allows for!

You can find excellent explanations of the system on their blog, but a brief explanation for the un-initiated: Primary houses explain WHY a person does things. Secondary houses explain HOW they do them. Frequently, people may model another house, meaning they borrow that system or approach, but will fall back on their “true” house when the chips are down. Additionally, people can lose touch with their house(s) in a process called burning/falling/petrifying/stripping. Without further ado, here we go! Sortings under the cut. [Spoilers through Season 4].

LUCIFER MORNINGSTAR. I’ll start with Lucifer’s secondary, which I think is more straightforward. Our chaotic Devil is a Slytherin secondary through-and-through. He’s at his best when he’s improvising by charming other people, waltzing into a drug dealers’ home base, or paying off a traffic cop. While he can look like a charging Gryffindor or a favor-dealing Hufflepuff, these are ultimately tools that Lucifer uses to be a more effective Slytherin.

At first glance, Luci looks like a Slytherin primary, too. However, I actually think our titular Devil is a burned Hufflepuff primary who resorted to modelling Slytherin when he Fell. In fact, Luci’s character arc over the course of the show is to un-burn, a journey that starts even before he meets Chloe in the pilot. Hufflepuff and Slytherin primaries are both loyalist; the main difference between them is in the scope of their loyalty. Slytherin primaries prioritize a smaller circle of people whom they have decided to prioritize. In contrast, Hufflepuffs believe in the innate value of people, and seek to prioritize people based on need or a sense of what is fair–in Lucifer’s case, this revolves around the basic right to free will.

Hufflepuffs tend to burn when the world has treated them so unfairly that they end up believing that caring about everyone is an impossible goal. Facing this rejection, they narrow their circles and start to prioritize looking out just for themselves, or a few loved ones. This often comes with a sense of shame: if the Hufflepuff were a better person, they could be kind to everyone (and remember, being kind doesn’t mean being nice). Lucifer is constantly asking himself this question. Is he a monster? Can he be a good person? In the pilot, his first interaction with Amenadiel includes asking, “Do you think I’m evil because I was born that way, or because dear old Dad decided I was?”

At the beginning of the series, Lucifer mostly looks out for himself and, to a lesser extent, Maze. However, even in the pilot, we see glimpses of his inherent sense of justice and compassion for humanity. His interactions with Delilah (and his reaction to her death) set the stage, and his work with the LAPD–beyond his fascination with Chloe–continues the trend. Linda says it best when she tells him, “I think you’re starting to enjoy seeking justice for the good ones.” He only punishes people who have betrayed his innate sense of what is kind and fair–people who hurt other people–and he detests when someone takes away another person’s choice.

This isn’t to say that Slytherins can’t have this innate sense of fairness and compassion; it’s that a Slytherin would still put their “own people” first when the chips are down, and feel good about that decision. A Hufflepuff would feel like they’ve done the right thing when they put the collective good first. When Luci gives Marlotte her own universe at the end of season 2, he’s prioritizing the good of the world–and God and all his siblings in Heaven, estranged they may be–above keeping someone he loves very dearly: his mom. It’s a pretty significant character moment that this is the moral act which gives him his wings back.

Similarly, Lucifer’s pivotal decision at the end of season 4 also shows his Hufflepuff primary. He makes a huge personal sacrifice by going back to rule Hell, and hurts Chloe and his other loved ones to do it too. At the end of the day, Luci wants to do what’s best for humanity, even if it’s at cost to his inner circle. The flip side of this is the very Slytherin decision he makes at the end of season 3 which triggers the reappearance of his Devil face: killing Cain. Lucifer has killed exactly two people, both for the Slytherin motivation of protecting Chloe. Now, we can argue that Luci’s Slytherin model actually served him pretty well here, and the show generally wants us to support Luci after these difficult choices. But the key is in his reaction, which is an intense level of guilt uncharacteristic of someone who genuinely believes that the ends justify the means when it comes to protecting the people they love.

For our true Slytherin primaries, we need to look no further than the occasional murder-buddies, Maze and Dan.

MAZIKEEN SMITH. Maze is a classic Slytherin primary through and through, and she petrifies over the course of season 3. Her Slytherin primary clashes with Lucifer’s Hufflepuff primary as he slowly un-burns; she can’t understand why he cares so much about humans and why he would change for them. It also explains why she’s so betrayed by his refusal to take her back to Hell: For Slytherin Maze, Lucifer refusing to prioritize her must mean that he cares about her less. For Hufflepuff Lucifer, he has to consider the good of the system–and taking Maze back to Hell could endanger everyone else by angering his father. Plus, it would break up the family!

At the beginning, Maze’s circle consists of herself and Lucifer, and she’s willing to go to any length to protect him–including almost killing Chloe and siding with Amenadiel to bring Lucifer home. While her stance on humanity ends up changing, it’s primarily because she finds some humans that she happens to like–Trixie and Linda, first and foremost, though she adopts more as the series goes on. She tells Chloe, “I’m glad I didn’t kill you,” not because she suddenly decides murder is inherently bad, but because she ends up looking at Chloe and thinking, ‘This one is mine.’

Maze petrifies when she slowly loses everyone in her circle besides herself. This starts by Linda and Amenadiel lying to her and spirals out of control when Lucifer refuses to take her back to Hell. “None of you deserve me,” she tells him, and suddenly finds herself with no one to protect but herself. However, Maze un-petrifies at the end of the season; the first step is when Amenadiel shows her compassion, but she ultimately finds her place again when she rushes to save Linda from the bluffed threat from Cain.

Maze is a Gryffindor secondary. She’s at her best when she charges head (and knife) first into situations. However, she also has a Ravenclaw model that, similarly to Lucifer, she uses to make her a more effective Gryffindor. Maze collects weapons and fighting styles in a very Ravenclaw-fashion so that she can be the best possible torturer and bounty-hunter, but when trouble arrives, she’s not going to stop and make a plan–she’s going to kick trouble’s ass.

DAN ESPINOZA gets along with Maze so well because they’re both Slytherin primaries. Dan’s willingness to feed Warden Perry to the mob–and his lack of remorse afterwards–because Perry is a scumbag who hurt someone he cares about is clear evidence of his primary. He also knows exactly where to look for a little backup in Maze, who’s always down to offer him the means to his end. At his “Detective Douchiest,” Dan is leveraging his Slytherin primary to justify his bad behavior. He’s loyal to himself, after all, and throws himself into his work to avoid being attached to anyone else. However, Dan’s primary is also a strength. It makes him fiercely loyal and dependable to the people he loves–willing to do whatever it takes to protect them, or get them the revenge they don’t believe in getting for themselves.

Speaking of throwing himself into work: Dan is a Hufflepuff secondary. He’s a hard-working detective who keeps his head down–which makes him clash with his Gryffindor ex-wife, Chloe, who would rather make loud, controversial decisions in the name of justice–and puts in steady hours to chip away at his goals. When he’s in a good place, he puts a similar work ethic into the people he loves. When he’s in a bad one, he hides behind his work and detaches from the “human” side of his secondary.

CHLOE DECKER. Like I just mentioned, Chloe is a Gryffindor primary who desperately wants to pretend that she’s a Ravenclaw. Her Ravenclaw model–attributing morality to the legal system, carefully considering the facts when making decisions–can serve her well, and she falls back on it when she’s trying to wrangle Lucifer’s Slytherin antics. However, Chloe’s real strength has always been following her gut–occasionally to the point of self-righteousness. This also explains her base moral conflict with Dan, who both prioritizes people over ideals. A similar conflict could exist with Lucifer, but Luci is constantly encouraging Chloe to trust her instincts–he values her true primary more than her model. She has an innate sense of right and wrong that she has to fight very hard to overcome, and things normally go worse for her when she does.

I’m talking about the clusterfuck that was early season 4, obviously. Chloe sees Lucifer’s Devil face at the end of season 3 and is faced with a reality that her Ravenclaw model was stubbornly refusing to accommodate; she has a gut reaction of fear that tells her to run away. This initial need for space wasn’t actually the issue. I think that, if Chloe had met anyone besides Father Kinley, things would’ve been just fine. But when she meets Kinley in Rome, Chloe is manipulated into ignoring her Gryffindor instincts. Her heart is telling her to trust Lucifer–that he’s a good person who she loves. However, Kinley manipulates Chloe into trusting an external source of morality instead: his twisted brand of Catholic pedagogy. What restores Chloe’s conscience is tossing out everything Kinley tries to tell her and realigning with what she feels, which is love for Lucifer.

Chloe is also a Gryffindor secondary, although her Ravenclaw secondary model is more useful and stable than her primary model. Like Maze, she borrows the thoughtful planning and skill-collecting of a Ravenclaw. Chloe tackles cases by examining every angle, carefully interrogating suspects, and weighing the pros and cons of every solution. I would hazard a guess that most of her colleagues assume that Ravenclaw!Chloe is all there is–especially because she seems so much more sensible that her reckless partner. But if we dig deeper, Chloe is more than happy to charge into situations with a stubbornness and bravery that’s nearly unmatched. When push comes to shove, Chloe will take a psychologist on a date rather than wait for special permission to speak to a suspect, leverage Lucifer’s impulsivity to shake down perps, and stand between Lucifer and Cain’s henchmen while daring them to shoot.

AMENADIEL. Our resident solider of God is a little harder to pin down than most of the others for me, primarily because I really want to know more about his time in Heaven before the series started. Amenadiel reads either like a Ravenclaw or Gryffindor primary, though I lean towards a stripped Gryffindor. This is complicated by the fact that Amenadiel was stripped long before he realizes it during season 2. Stripped Gryffindors learn that they can’t trust their own moral compass and have to find a new system to follow instead. I think this happened to Amenadiel when he was still living in the Silver City, perhaps around the time Lucifer Fell, if not before.

Amenadiel functions by being his father’s loyal solider–by doing exactly what he’s told, because it’s supposed to be the right thing. He labels his brother as selfish, reckless, and evil despite harboring a clear love for him at the same time. This cognitive dissonance exists because someone else taught Amenadiel that he should believe those things about Lucifer. He survives in Heaven by falling in line–essentially adapting his father’s party line, like a Ravenclaw would. The issue is that a Ravenclaw would be satisfied with adapting such a system, and would not struggle as much to revise this system later if they found it inadequate.

In contrast, Amenadiel is constantly struggling to figure out what’s right. He’s horrified by his own behavior during season 1, causing him to Fall from angelhood and lose his wings and powers, but can’t seem to re-orient himself. He tries on different hats–first being like Lucifer, then following their mom instead of their dad, and finally trying to follow their dad again–but nothing ever feels right. Amenadiel’s greatest comfort is found in the realization that angels self-actualize. Once this realization comes, Amenadiel learns to trust himself again and regains his wings once and for all.

Amenadiel splits himself between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw secondaries and somehow manages to fail at both. (I say this with love). This is mostly because, I think, his Gryffindor primary is so stripped that his HOW is too detached from a WHY that makes internal sense–this leaves him ineffective and lost. Looking at season 4, though, I think Amenadiel is a Ravenclaw who models a Gryff secondary. While he’s still up for a Gryffindor-esque charge into the fight, Amenadiel approaches Linda’s pregnancy and impending fatherhood with a desire to learn as much as he can and make a better world for his son.

LINDA MARTIN is a Ravenclaw primary who briefly falls when she sees Lucifer’s Devil face, then promptly picks up herself back up and builds a new moral system for herself. It takes her about a week and she’s fairly satisfied with the result, even when her emotional and physical fears flare back up and she has to baby-proof her ceiling. Pre-fall, Linda believed in a system of compassion and warm skepticism, which made her an excellent therapist. She liked to think she might be reincarnated as a chameleon. She enjoyed the process of questioning the world. During her fall, Linda found her current system incapable of accommodating the simultaneously massive and personal scale of Divinity–and post-fall, she builds a new system that largely looks the same as before but, as Amenadiel helpfully points out, contains “different questions.”

With Linda, we’ve finally found a straightforward Ravenclaw secondary, no modelling to be found. Linda likes to plan for trouble, and she flounders when that opportunity is taken away from her. She’s constantly trying to remind people that she’s not that kind of doctor, and while she lets herself get swept up into Lucifer’s schemes–like breaking God out of a psychiatric hospital–she’s never comfortable in that kind of situation and the decisions she makes impulsively don’t tend to work out well for her (see: the resulting interrogation from the ethics review board).

ELLA LOPEZ is another “double” house, and our second Hufflepuff primary. While many people who have a strong religious faith can be seen as Ravenclaw primaries, Ella’s connection to her faith is driven by her innate love for humanity. She believes that people–including the Devil, who she says gets a bad rap–are basically good and deserve love and kindness. After Charlotte’s death, we see that Ella’s response is not to lose faith in her approach to life like a Ravenclaw might–instead, she resents a God who she thought shared her Hufflepuff morals and clearly doesn’t, if such senseless bad things can happen to good people.

Her Hufflepuff secondary is a fairly classic kind, combining cheerful work with an interpersonal warmth that endears people to her. Ella’s natural charisma is a sweet, understated variety that makes even Azrael, the Angel of Death, want to look out for her. While Ella rarely leverages this consciously–and her lack of desire to do so feeds into her charm–there are multiple points in the series where people casually go to bat for her. Two prime examples are when Charlotte tells off Pierce in an immensely satisfying fashion and when Lucifer scares Ella’s brother straight.

CHARLOTTE RICHARDS. Oh, dearest Charlotte. So much of her time is spent in a existential crisis that she’s another hard one to pin down. but I think she’s a Slytherin primary. When Charlotte finds out about the Devil of it all, she doesn’t run like Chloe, and she doesn’t have to reconstruct her view of the world like Linda does. Instead, Charlotte struggles to understand how to be a “good” Slytherin. Pre-trip to Hell, it’s implied that Charlotte lived fairly selfishly, extending her Slytherin circle to herself, her clients, and perhaps her children. Post-Hell, Charlotte is rocked to her core by the realization that she was not living free of guilt.

Now, some could argue that this means Charlotte isn’t actually a Slytherin. However, Slytherins aren’t free from other aspects of morality just because their first priority will always be their chosen people. Charlotte prioritized protecting criminals who she knew did terrible things, and she put herself first to an extent that many people would feel guilty about, even though most would agree that it’s good to put yourself first sometimes. When she’s trying to become a “good” person, Charlotte initially tries to give up her Slytherin ideals entirely. She quits her job and joins the DA’s office, trying to more like the cheerful Hufflepuff Ella.

This ultimately fails; it simply isn’t her. But Charlotte finds success–and a tragic redemption–when she learns that there’s more than one way to be a Slytherin. She turns some of her Slytherin loyalty outwards, towards victims and survivors of domestic abuse as well as new loved ones–Dan, Ella, and Amenadiel. She’s willing to go to great lengths to protect the people in her circle, which is still a very Slytherin motivation, but one that she feels much more at peace with in the end.

As for Charlotte’s secondary? Look, anyone who steals a dude’s motorcycle while cheerfully informing him, “Don’t worry, it’s for God!” is probably a Gryffindor. I don’t make the rules here.

MARLOTTE. The thing about being a Hufflepuff primary is that people matter, but not everyone has the same definition of “person.” At first glance, the Divine Goddess might look like a Slytherin primary. However, I argue that she actually values all “people” equally, it’s just that she considers Celestials to be people, and humanity to be both too foreign and simple to matter. (This logic is, by the way, the same reasons Hufflepuffs are no less capable of racism, homophobia, etc. than anyone else).

Goddess’s primary goal is to reunite her family, sans God, and she’s willing to roast a bunch of humans on the Santa Monica Pier to do it. Humans are fundamentally expendable–except for her “favorite human,” Dan, who essentially gets a loophole when she spends enough time with him and stops seeing him as “other.” But Goddess doesn’t consider any Celestial to be expendable. She’s not willing to harm Luci and Amenadiel, even when she realizes that they were planning to betray her. She doesn’t value herself more than she values her children, and she doesn’t play favorites. If she did, she might be content to try and stay on Earth, or to wage a war in which some of her children (i.e., the ones who didn’t side with her) died. If Goddess were a Slytherin, it would be possible to “kick” people out of her circle, like Maze does when she petrifies. Instead, Goddess’s natural state is essentially inclusive, much like her son, Lucifer–they just have a pretty substantial conflict over who gets included.

Goddess is a determined Ravenclaw secondary. When she needs to make things better with Lucifer, she learns how to make “cheesy noodles.” She throws herself whole-heartedly into learning how to live as Charlotte Richards–including reading every legal book every, apparently. While she’s certainly cunning like many Slytherin secondaries, Goddess actually doesn’t function very well without a plan. Things fall apart for her pretty quickly when she runs out of time in her body and has to make decisions off the cuff. Unlike Lucifer, who works best when he’s under pressure, she needs time to set up her course of action.

EVE is another difficult one to sort because so much of her characterization is about not knowing how she is. This makes her primary fairly obscured, and I hope we’ll see more of her in season 5 so I can revisit this sorting. For now, I’m going with a Gryffindor primary. Eve is motivated by doing what feels good–whether it’s leaving Heaven because she’s tired of being someone’s wife or convincing her boyfriend to punish people. She has an instinctive solution to every problem–even when logic says, ‘Hey, maybe don’t release demons from Hell?’ because she knows how things should be–and that’s with her and Lucifer together.

The reason she clashes with Lucifer is that while Eve’s primary is about ideals, Lucifer’s primary is about people–whether he’s operating on his Slytherin model or his true Hufflepuff primary. Lucifer cares a whole lot about other people’s desires–including Eve’s–but he doesn’t care that much about his own if they hurt other people. Interestingly, Chloe and Lucifer have this same idealist vs. humanist conflict; Eve and Chloe just have very different flavors of Gryffindor morality, and it turns out that Chloe’s ideals match up with Lucifer’s Hufflepuff values more of the time. Furthermore, Chloe comes to accept Lucifer’s Hufflepuff-ness in a way that Eve doesn’t. Chloe actually prefers Luci as a Puff–her Gryffindor righteousness says that they should protect other people, which is the same thing Lucifer wants to do.

Much like Ella, Eve uses a Hufflepuff secondary to build connections with other people that she can depend on. However, Eve leverages those connections on a much more conscious level than Ella ever does–in fact, it’s essentially the first thing that Eve ever does, both in her life and in the series. She starts by connecting herself to Adam, trying to be the perfect wife. Then, she leaves Heaven and seeks out Lucifer, relying on him to help her accomplish her goals. After getting dumped, Eve jumps to Maze instead. She’s a particularly effective Hufflepuff because of her Slytherin model, which allows her to adapt to whatever the other person needs her to be (see: the entirety of “Super Bad Boyfriend.”) You could make the argument that Eve is actually just a Slytherin secondary, since the “chameleon” aspect is so central to how she functions. However, Eve has a level of discomfort with her constant mask-wearing that a Slytherin secondary probably wouldn’t. In fact, deciding to part ways with her Slytherin model and figure out who she is represents Eve’s big character moment at the very end of the season.

MARCUS PIERCE/CAIN. I saved Cain for last because (in my opinion) he’s the closest thing to a pure antagonist that we have on the show, but frankly even that’s debatable [EDIT I FORGOT KINLEY EXISTED LMAO]. Anyways, Cain is a Slytherin primary who has been petrified for so long that he’s ready for a hard-out on the whole immortality thing. The only person in his circle is himself–we see, mostly in flashbacks, that this is because he’s tired of the pain that comes with losing people he loves. Cain only wants to live again once he adds Chloe to his circle and she reminds him what it feels like to have people to live for.

The neat and/or horrifying thing about Cain is that he’s a fantastic example of a truly insidious Hufflepuff secondary. His entire Sinnerman persona revolves around crafting a network of people and resources he can depend on. When Luci and friends put his back against the wall after the death of Charlotte, Cain doesn’t resort to charging, improvising, or leveraging his own skills. Instead, he calls up a bunch of people who owe him favors and are too terrified to betray him, and they do all the dirty work for him. It actually very nearly works, too.

#lucifer #lucifer netflix #sortinghatchats #i have like........so many more feelings but this got so long #but like i have endless thoughts about how different character dynamics are impacted by their houses #idk maybe ill make a sequel to this post with my thoughts on those?#we'll see #I wrote a thing

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expertmakodriver · 4 years

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30 Day Mass Effect Challenge: Day 5

5. Favorite character?

Surprising (hopefully) not a soul: Garry Vakary himself

(Disclaimer: I’m going to be talking about him in the context of the first two games while disregarding the third. Also, while Femshep technically is my favorite character, I already made a post about her, so I’m making this section about Garrus.)

Strap in, folks, because this is going to be a long post.

When I first encountered Garrus, I immediately felt a connection to him since he seemed like one of the few people on the Citadel who actually gave a shit about stopping Saren. Despite being a C-Sec officer bound by red tape, he proved that he was a man of action by leaving all of the bureaucracy behind and getting some real work done with Shepard and the Normandy crew. Since turians and humans had a few remnants of tension between them as a result of the Relay 314 Incident/First Contact War, which was still somewhat recent, it was nice to see another turian, besides Nihlus, act civilly towards a human.

Garrus was so eager to step up and take action against Saren; of course I let him aboard the Normandy. His struggle and Shepard’s struggle with politics are very similar; they both don’t like being told what to do by clueless politicians/higher-ups who try to prevent them from solving problems. This comes into play when Garrus and Shepard begin conversing more and more on the Normandy. I’ve always felt that Garrus’s interactions were a bit more profound than those of any other crew member; they don’t just talk to each other, but exchange opinions and feedback and really try to understand each other. They eventually develop a sort of mentor-protégé relationship to the point where Shepard really has a deep effect on Garrus in terms of his way of viewing the world. I had Shepard lead Garrus down the Renegade path while enforcing a few Paragon ideas (such as being cautious of the thin moral line that any Spectre walks as someone with nearly unlimited power in Citadel space), and I still do to this day.

I’ve always found it funny that Garrus is always super respectful to Shepard despite being a bit of a jerk to pretty much everyone else. Seeing him thank the commander at the end of the game for letting him in on the action and teaching him some valuable lessons was heartwarming, too. It made me kind of sad to think that he would go back to C-Sec after the war with Saren and Soverign was over, especially since he seemed to be so miserable there, but it was nice to know that he would follow Shepard’s lead and train to be a Spectre later on.

Fast forward to Mass Effect 2, and I was so upset when The Illusive Man said that Garrus had disappeared a few months after the Normandy was destroyed. I kept wondering what had happened to him and if he would ever appear in the game again, but when I took a closer look at Archangel’s dossier and noticed the line “omni-tool expert and noted sniper” on it, I became very suspicious despite not wanting to get my hopes up.

Throughout Archangel’s recruitment mission, I kept worrying. Hearing the mercs talk about how Archangel had been cornered and put through hell for the past few days didn’t sit well with me. I think that was the one point at which I hoped that Archangel wasn’t Garrus, because I didn’t want to imagine Garrus going through all of that on his own. When I saw that Archangel had blue armor, I knew for sure it was him. Taking off his helmet and revealing his identity to Shepard made me so happy that I wasn’t at all bothered by how little I was surprised. I wasn’t entirely relieved, though, because Garrus was still in immediate danger. Seeing him so tired and damaged was rough; he was fairly different from the enthusiastic C-Sec officer that I had brought with me on every mission in the previous game. Even though he was exhausted and didn’t exactly have sufficient energy to physically display his emotion, you could tell just how happy he was to see Shepard alive and kicking. “Yeah I shot at you, Shepard. I wanted to get you moving so you could come get my ass out of here.”

When Shepard was forced to leave his side to close the shutters in the base’s lower level, I was in full panic mode. I didn’t trust Jacob or Miranda enough to leave them alone with him. Then when Garrus was nearly killed by the rocket that blew half of his face off, I literally had to pause the game and calm myself down because of how pissed I was. Of course I was distraught at the sight of his motionless body bleeding out on the ground, but I was also upset with the possibility that the game would give me a surprise reunion with my favorite character just to kill him off so quickly. I was, for the second time, overjoyed when I saw that he was alive a few moments later, but hearing him gasping for breath and choking on his own blood with Shepard, who is almost always composed and level-headed, freaking out while trying to help him was heart-wrenching.

Then, right after I see Shepard looking very nervous and upset as Jacob explains the extent of Garrus’s injuries to her back on the Normandy, the smug bastard himself walks out of surgery and just casually waltzes up to Shepard like, “It’s only a flesh wound, I’ve had worse” and I literally thanked BioWare out loud for not killing Garrus. Shepard’s look of absolute relief and joy when she saw that he was okay was very touching, as was the fact that Garrus expresses that he’s more worried about Shepard than himself even though he nearly died a few hours ago. Garrus was so eager to fight alongside Shepard again that he put himself right to work at the Main Battery, and that really demonstrated how much trust he had in Shepard and her motives though I wish there was an option to have Shepard tell Garrus to focus on relaxing and getting some rest. Poor guy just went through hell and already wants to bury himself in calibrations.

While Shepard and Garrus were catching up later on, Shepard was so gentle with Garrus while she asked him about his team and what he had been doing while she was gone, and I could see how broken he was by the death of his team and the betrayal of his former teammate. I felt bad for him. When he asked Shepard to help him find Sidonis a few hours of gameplay later, I knew it was because he wanted the moral support - he wanted Shepard to be there with him while he sought closure with Sidonis (regardless of how he gets it).

Seeing Shepard and Garrus so synchronized while they tracked down Harkin and obtained information about Sidonis was great. They seem more like partners than mentor and student, and that was exactly what the writers were going for.

When it came to allowing or preventing Sidonis’s death, I let Garrus shoot him, and I continue to do so during every playthrough. There are three main reasons for this, the first being that I felt that Shepard shouldn’t be involved in the situation as both a separate party and a non-turian. Turians have their own culture and deal with responsibility and leadership a bit differently than humans do; they pride themselves on taking ownership over their choices and putting the safety and interests of the whole before the individual. Sidonis broke both of these cardinal rules. Garrus, as both a turian and the leader of the group who Sidonis had betrayed, felt obligated to serve justice to Sidonis, another turian, and that is inherently something that Shepard cannot fully understand as a human. It wouldn’t feel right to let Shepard deny Garrus the right to deal with Sidonis in the way that he saw fit.

The second reason is that Sidonis was more than just a coward; he had the opportunity to warn Garrus of the trap set by the mercs for his squad, but he didn’t. Garrus says that he learned through some old contacts that Sidonis “booked transport off of Omega just before the attack” and disappeared. He didn’t even try to make things right with Garrus by confronting him afterwards and apologizing. This is why I’m not bothered by Garrus wanting to kill Sidonis. If I felt that Garrus was being too destructive or going too far, I would have had Shepard steer him back in the right direction. He kept himself in check well enough (like when he didn’t kill Harkin).

And finally, the third reason: If Shepard came back to the Normandy one day and found that everyone - Garrus, Joker, Mordin, Tali, etc - had been slowly and painfully killed by an enemy group because, say, Jacob had been captured and sold Shepard out (and didn’t even try to warn Shepard or stop the attack), you know damn well that most, if not all, players would bring the fury of hell onto him.

Now for the juicy part: Garrus’s romance. When I was innocently exploring Garrus’s dialogue options after his loyalty mission and stumbled across the “We could ease stress together” line, I lost my freaking mind. The game is going to let Shepard sleep with Garrus? Is this for real? I didn’t immediately realize that “easing tension” would turn into “making love and wordlessly declaring mutual feelings for each other”, so I was a little disappointed at first, but I was willing to take what I could get. Garrus was so flustered by Shepard’s proposition, to the point where he seems like he wasn’t expecting her to be interested in him at all, and seeing badass vigilante, merc leader, and hero of Omega turn into a shy softy around her was cute.

Through further dialogue, Garrus began to hint that he had feelings for Shepard, and ugh it was so endearing. He made subtle remarks about wanting more than just “blowing off steam” with her without making his feelings obvious, probably because he didn’t want to chase her away with his heart, and when I combined this with the fact that despite these feelings, which he has had for who knows how long now (maybe even the first game?), he isn’t the one to make the first move, I realized that Garrus was probably too afraid of approaching Shepard with any sort of interest that he had in her because he didn’t want to be rejected and/or feared ruining their relationship. That was the final straw for me: I was super attached to his character at this point. The little dork wanted to watch porn to learn how to properly satisfy a human woman and thought that playing shitty club music was a good idea. The nerd. The doofus. I love him.

I’m just going to admit it: the first time I saw his romance scene with Shepard right before the Omega 4 Relay, I went from laughing as he awkwardly played techno music and tried to woo Shep with his bad flirting skills to tearing up as he confessed to her that he wanted their time together to be special and that he wanted to do things right. Notice how this is different from something he said previously about how if their romantic rendezvous goes south due to species incompatibility, fighting the Collectors would be “a welcome distraction” and wouldn’t be a big deal. Oh, no. It would be a big deal. Garrus wants to give Shepard the best final moment of peace he can before they take on the Collector base, and when Shepard shut him up and they touched foreheads (which I suppose is like the turian equivalent of a kiss given that turians don’t have lips to kiss with) I just lost my mind. I cried and I’m not ashamed to say it. It takes a lot to make me cry, since I’m not easily moved, but seeing Garrus and Shepard so happy in such a tender moment was too much for me. My two favorite characters enjoying peace and joy that they deserve. Beautiful.

The suicide mission - I have all my upgrades, all loyalty missions complete, and I’m still freaking out about who is going to die and who is going to survive. I made the right choices in terms of who I assigned to what, but even with Garrus at Shepard’s side the whole time, I was again in full panic mode. I had like three separate heart attacks thinking that Garrus was about to be killed. I was literally shouting in horror as this happened:

Everything worked out in the end, though. The whole crew survived, the base was destroyed, and Shepard got to snuggle with Garrus in her cabin afterwards. I was very, very happy.

So yeah, Garrus having such a profound character and being not just a likable badass but also Shepard’s most loyal companion is why I love him so much. Evidently, this is also why he’s one of the most, if not the most, popular characters from Mass Effect. Archangel owns all of our asses.

#mass effect #30dayMEchallenge #day5 #tl;dr garrus is best boy #me1 #me2 #femshep #shakarian

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sparklyjojos · 4 years

Text

CARNIVAL recaps [5/13]

Today’s recap: Nemu in pursuit of brains, the Doctor (no, no that one), and the youngest detective possible.

NINE

21 Sept 1996 — 27 Sept 1996

MACHU PICCHU

After the Empire State Building is blown up, big newspapers of the world publish a long letter from RISE to the world. RISE claims they already control the governments. They encourage people to lose their common sense and morals, as only those following their instincts will survive in this “kill or get killed” world. People shouldn’t avert their eyes from how cruel and repulsive they inherently are, but instead contribute to the Crime Olympics—which isn’t just violence for violence’s sake, but a revolution to eradicate “the Beasts”. Every crime in the Olympics should have a proper motive. Criminals who are caught or give themselves up to the police shall be compensated for their trouble. Only those who “believe in their own sense of judgement” will be saved. The only criminals here are those who deny their own crimes. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Even since the JDC explosion, the world’s crime rate and death toll has soared high in what was dubbed the Crime Olympics Phenomenon. UN’s official numbers say that four million people die every single day.

On September 21st, exactly 401 people are found dead in the famous Machu Picchu. It looks like people in the vicinity suddenly stopped what they were doing, stripped naked where they stood, gathered in Machu Picchu, and dropped dead from unexplained heart failure. The seventh skull of the Billion Killer is found at the scene.

On September 24th, Tsukumo Nemu investigates the scene assisted by a translator Pacha Palermo [remember her for much, much later]. Pacha’s father who had been working closely with the president became one of the Billion Killer’s victims.

Nemu remembers the case of the poisoned waiter that she, Jounosuke and Hikimiya got tangled into in Paris. It turned out later that the man hadn’t actually died from poison, but from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Further investigation revealed the presence of several no-brand “corned beef” cans containing human brain tissue in the man’s apartment. The waiter had visited Peru about two weeks before death, so it was concluded that he could have gotten those cans there. Nemu was asked by Dokuson to investigate the matter, and coincidentally arrived in Peru on the same day that the Billion Killer just happened to attack Machu Picchu.

(Speaking of Dokuson, he sure changed things in JDC. First, he introduced a merit system of payment instead of a steady monthly paycheck and announced that whoever didn’t do their job would be kicked out. Second, the detectives now had more freedom in choosing cases and could count on JDC to cover all costs involved. Third, the entrance exam was replaced by a normal interview process, resulting in a flood of new detectives. Fourth, instead of using their old Blue ID Cards, everyone would be given a shiny new IDID (International Detective ID) issued by DOLL to allow swift entry and proceedings in foreign countries.)

Pacha Palermo says that her father’s secretary Luca, who vanished “after those four hundred people were killed in Machu Picchu”, had kept in contact with suspicious Russian men. Nemu’s fuzzy reasoning tells her that something’s off here. She calls Jounosuke (who’s currently bored out of his mind recuperating in his house in Japan), and by consulting his language proficiency learns that Pacha has been mistranslating things on purpose to hide a lot of things from Nemu.

Pacha admits that Luca manipulated her father into getting some highly suspicious corned beef cans and used this fact to blackmail Pacha. Nemu notices that Pacha always says that there were “four hundred” victims in Macchu Picchu instead of four hundred and one. While it’s a nitpick, it’s a bit weird for Pacha to leave out a person, considering her father was one of the victims—almost as if she doesn’t count him as a Billion Killer victim. Nemu theorizes that it was Pacha who killed her father, or perhaps just directed him to go to Machu Picchu while knowing that mass murder would happen, but there’s no clear proof.

Either way, Nemu learns what she came to Peru for: the cans had been sourced from Moscow. She decides to fly to Russia to investigate further.

On the plane she reads the recently released Cosmic by Seiryoin Ryusui, which feels a little strange considering she took part in the case described in it. (The “all characters are fictional” disclaimer at the end is just weird in that context.) JDC is concerned by the book mentioning the Geneijo case, which is considered an L-crime and therefore the public shouldn’t be able to know anything about it. What’s more, this Seiryoin guy already announced that his second novel Joker that would come out in January would describe the Geneijo case in detail. Nobody knows who Seiryoin is—the common theory about him being Minase Nagisa (Dakushoin Ryusui’s twin sister) based on writing style similarity is apparently wrong.

Before Nemu can resume her investigation, she gets surprising news from Dokuson: Yaiba Somahito, the First Group’s leader, has kidnapped a boy from the hospital, run away from Japan with him, and is now moving towards Moscow on the Trans-Siberian Express. Dokuson orders Nemu to meet Yaiba halfway through Russia and put a stop to his madness.

TEN

28 Sept 1996 — 04 Oct 1996

EIFFEL TOWER

The Sanctuary docks at an invisible tower by the name of Tow Dreamer, a grand construction made of orichalcum just like the Billion Killer skulls. From there one can access the main headquarters of RISE, the Moonbow Palace.

White Rook, a.k.a. the Doctor, walks through the dark Moonbow Palace. As always he’s dressed in white and wears a mask—every other executive has a uniform in a different color and never shows their face, so they don’t know the others’ identities. White meets up with Black Rook—the Master—and together they ride the elevator to the top of Tow Dreamer to return to the Sanctuary.

White says that Alive is spreading nicely and it’ll be a while until someone finds an effective vaccine. RISE already has one, of course. They shouldn’t need it as long as they don’t come in contact with Godust, the substance containing the virus.

White and Black enter a place in the Sanctuary called the Cosmic Room to talk with “Mein Fuhrer”. [Seriously, you’re not very slick with the naming.]

The Cosmic Room is dark with many tiny lights spread throughout, so being in it feels like floating in starry space. On a magnetically levitating chair sits the leader Rudolf Strauss, dressed in silver, their face hidden under a realistic mask of a cow [or a bull or an ox, the Japanese word used can mean all these], which brings to mind the Minotaur of Greek mythos. RS speaks through a voice changer, so it’s impossible to guess their gender or age.

The three speak vaguely about “the genius pregnant woman”, wondering if she can become a threat to RISE. RS thinks they won’t have a problem. They already know the future will bring their victory, and now just have to patiently move the game pieces along. RS states that thanks to the Billion Killer, the Beasts shall be eradicated and the era of Gods will begin.

On September 28th, three Dots are sent to Paris to oversee the new Billion Killer case. They mention a case in Moscow in which a murderer thought to be the serial killer Amur Tiger replaced all mannequins in the GUM department store with headless bodies. One of the Dots gets heated and makes a bold comment about how the murderer may have aimed to find and kill a person who had a cow head [clearly taking a jab at RS here], and gets his head promptly blown up.

At exactly 1 PM, the top part of the Eiffel Tower is first cut off like with a knife, then sent flying by several explosions. Yet another skull of the Billion Killer is found at the scene.

Black Rook watches the show from Dragon’s Center, the control room where servants called Machines work with the Sanctuary’s computer and navigation system. Everything is going as planned. The Sanctuary moves towards the Billion Killer’s next target in Russia.

Black looks at another screen, which shows a secret live feed of Ryuuguu Jounosuke.

ELEVEN

19 Oct 1996 — 25 Oct 1996

NIAGARA FALLS

It’s been ten weeks into the Crime Olympics and the death toll has reached 280 million. We’re up to ten Billion Killer attacks with the latest ones in France, Russia, and Great Britain. Ten detective organizations have been blown up; at this point every remaining detective group just evacuates the entire staff near 1 PM on Saturdays, which lets them avoid casualties.

After the case in Russia, the Sanctuary headed to Japan to investigate the “genius pregnant woman”—Hanto Maimu, the former secretary of Ajiro Souji. It seems that the current leader of JDC Yuiga Dokuson is also interested in that certain ability of hers, as he came all the way to the hospital to visit her.

White Rook has been spying on Maimu by pretending to be her new doctor, “Shindou Masato” (this name of course being fake), so he was there when Dokuson visited. He seems impressed by the power of Dokuson’s presence and his ability to manipulate others with words (a bit reminiscent of Black Rook’s way with words), and thinks that if Dokuson joined RISE, he would have surely become the right hand of the leader, as they would certainly match in terms of charisma, blah blah blah, waxing poetics about Dokuson for two pages. [Well, now I know why I saw ship art of these two.]

From what White knows, Maimu has awakened a strange ability on August 10th, the day of the Billion Killer’s first case, that also happened to be her 28th birthday. Maimu was sad about the attack on JDC, but not at all surprised, since she had had a feeling that it happened, as if she subconsciously knew about the explosion as soon as it took place. Her strange feelings kept coming before every subsequent Billion Killer case, each time coming true. Since she always got these vague feelings at exactly 1 PM on Saturday in Japan time, in practice it meant she was predicting the future—1 PM didn’t happen for the majority of the world yet.

It’s estimated that Maimu will give birth around October 25th, in just a week. It’s strange that Maimu’s husband, a bank employee called Tanna Sazen and referred to simply as Danna (lit. “husband”), hasn’t shown up even once since last week, as if he vanished.

Before he was White Rook, the Doctor had been called Endou Naoto. Thinking about names, he remembers what Maimu wants to name her child: Hanto Kuraimu—Crime Hunt. [That’s the most metal name I’ve ever seen, but also means she wants to name her child Crime. Why. Also, there’s an entire part about how this pun doesn’t really work because in Japanese you put the family name first, though in modern times some families westernize their names and put family name last, see Christmas Mizuno as an example.]

White finds it strange that Maimu and Danna apparently thought of only one name, despite her being pregnant with two children. Are they going to call the second kid some variation of the first’s name? Are they going to split it in two somehow? Who knows.

Anyway, White contacts another RISE’s executive Yellow Bishop and learns that Danna’s whereabouts are still unknown, though he seems to be escaping towards Canada. Apparently Danna’s important to understanding just what Maimu’s newly awakened ability really is. Yellow has already mobilized his Dogs to chase him.

Dogs (not to be confused with Dots) are RISE’s spies who spend their entire lives undercover pretending to be normal members of society. (There are also Mice, human test subjects, and Machines, who work under Black to keep the Sanctuary moving, but we’re not going to talk about them now.) Danna is one of the Dogs. It’s not clear how, but he somehow learned about the Billion Killer’s plans and recently run away from his post.

White suspects there might be a secret connection between Yellow and Danna, but it’s hard to guess when he doesn’t even know what Yellow Bishop’s true identity is. Yellow always wears a mask and is quite talented in voice mimicry, so talking with him doesn’t help much.

Tanna Sazen / Danna married Maimu four years ago, technically on orders to try and pull information on JDC from her, but in a lucky turn of events he genuinely fell in love with her. Time passed. Maimu awoke her new ability of prediction. Danna suspected this ability was his fault, somehow originating from his knowledge of RISE’s secret plans, and so he fled.

Right now Danna is in Banff, Alberta, where he once cooperated with a fellow Dog, an Indigenous man living near the lake Minnewanka. Danna hopes his friend can help him hide from RISE. Unfortunately, this turns out not to be the case, and Danna has to flee from his should-be-friends trying to capture him and give him over to RISE. In the end Danna is forced to jump from a cliff into Bow Lake, a dangerous fall no ordinary person should survive.

The pursuers are only able to find Danna’s artificial eye and broken glasses in the lake, but when they report that they haven’t found the body to Yellow, he seems satisfied and orders them to stop the search.

Maimu makes a mistake in predicting the eleventh Billion Killer case. Her feelings tell her that people will vanish at the Victoria Lake in Canada, but something even stranger happens. A giant submarine suddenly surfaces on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, completely empty save for yet another Billion Killer skull. It seems to be the same Robo-Ship that vanished inside the Bermuda Triangle six weeks prior, but without its crew.

Maimu is taking a walk around the hospital when she’s beckoned over by a man wearing a black suit and made to answer a phone. The one calling appears to be the long-missing Ajiro Souji, who assures her that he’s safe and sound, but can’t go around showing his face just yet. Ajiro hints as to where Maimu can find information about her new ability, and ends the call by asking her to wait patiently and believe in his return.

The hint turns out to be… a paragraph in Cosmic, in which the narration makes a stray remark about how one day Maimu’s child would be a “fetus detective” and later an “infant detective”. [So all those times when Seiryoin does what seems like horrendous writing, all those “they couldn’t yet know that X would happen years later”? INTENTIONAL. God, I love metafiction.]

In other words, the one with a strange predictive ability isn’t Maimu; it’s her yet unborn child. That’s why the latest prediction was off—it’s so close to term that little Kuraimu is their own independent person by now and their connection with Maimu has weakened.

Maimu is lost as to how this ability works exactly, but from what Ajiro said, the child had somehow, in some way, inherited the knowledge about RISE’s plans in the form of genetic information from their father Danna, and was instinctively able to tap into it.

Maimu gives birth on October 31st, but contrary to what White said earlier, only one child is born—a baby girl detective already on a “crime hunt”—as if the other has simply vanished.

[>>>NEXT PART>>>]

#sparkly reads carnival #maijo and jdc stuff

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jahaanofmenaphos · 4 years

Photo

Art by the awesome @tommieglenn!

Of Gods and Men Summary:

When the gods returned to Gielinor, their minds were only on one thing: the Stone of Jas, a powerful elder artefact in the hands of Sliske, a devious Mahjarrat who stole it for his own ends and entertainment. He claims to want to incite another god wars, but are his ulterior motives more sinister than that? And can the World Guardian, Jahaan, escape from under Sliske’s shadow?

Read the full work here:

ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN

FANFICTION.NET

TUMBLR CHAPTER INDEX

QUEST 09: OUR SPIRITS, KINDRED

QUEST SUMMARY:

When Ariane is kidnapped and the signs point to Sliske, Jahaan is forced to confront the Mahjarrat once again. But this time, things take a turn for the twisted, and Jahaan uncovers the truth behind Sliske’s obsession with him. Can Jahaan survive Sliske’s games? After all, broken bones heal faster than a broken mind…

CHAPTER 4: SLISKE’S SECRETS

Climbing over the broken rock fragments led Jahaan to a small corridor, two wooden doors on either side and one right at the end. Taking a random guess, Jahaan went from the one furthest away. Fortunately for him, it wasn’t just a broom closet or a wardrobe.

No, it looked like Jahaan had hit the jackpot here.

“Whoa…” Jahaan breathed, taking in the cluttered room. Blackboards, potions, globes, drawings, books and manic scribblings…

This must be Sliske’s laboratory…

The blackboard had equations that Jahaan couldn’t even begin to understand; he recognised a handful of letters and numbers in the common alphabet, but mixed in them seemingly randomly were rune graphics, ancient scripture, and dozens of symbols that meant nothing to Jahaan. The majority were scribbled roughly in white chalk, half crossed out with increasing passion as the board became more and more crowded the further down Sliske wrote.

The blackboard next to it was a little more structured and simplified with a Vitruvian Man drawing in the style of a Mahjarrat taking up the majority of the space. From various points on the body, arrows were protruding, such as from the chest and forehead crystals, though their labels were written in an unfamiliar tongue. It didn’t even look Infernal. From the rough mess of harsh consonants, Jahaan guessed it could be Freneskaen.

Behind a red velvet curtain stood an oak bookshelf, packed to the brim with countless novels, manuscripts, textbooks and research papers. Tracing his fingers along the spines, Jahaan stopped at one that was jutting out of the shelf, unable to squeeze back neatly into its place due to just how many books were stacked there. Jahaan gathered it had been read and returned to its place rather recently, and so he slid it from its position and examined the cover.

‘The Divine Delusion’, by Oreb, Magister of House Charron.

Intrigued, Jahaan opened it up to a creased page and began to read…

The human soul is a tricky construct, more comprised of emotion than quantifiable elements. Yet it is most assuredly a real, measurable thing. This I have demonstrated several times in my experiments.

There are various scholars that would argue that the strength of the soul is measured by one's devotion to a deity. That the worship of and adherence to the tenets of a powerful being of divine classification makes one's soul inherently more enriched and robust. I believe that this theory is naught but the prattle of clergy and the dogmatic response of those who themselves live their lives according to the whims of a god. Instead I propose that the soul has little actual relationship with the divine and is perhaps something entirely other. My extensive research suggests that the health and strength of one's soul comes from action and inspiration. It is my firm belief that the strongest souls belong to those who have made the most out of their lives, who have experienced everything that the world has to offer and braved the greatest of challenges.

Furthermore, I posit that the soul is perhaps more closely linked to biology than theology, though certainly it falls outside the practice of conventional medicine. Elves have discovered the medical process of ‘organ transplants’, where the healthy organ of one being - usually deceased - is transferred into the body of another, replacing an organ that has stopped functioning. As you’d expect, there are certain conditions that have to be met for a transplant to work. So far, no successful transplant has occurred between different species or races. Therefore, a gnome could not donate, say, a kidney to a human. It’s all to do with proportions; the human body would simply not take it. Then there’s also the problem of compatibility, as the process is helped greatly if the two people are genetically identical or similar, so using relatives reduces the risk that the new body will reject the donated organ or, worse, attack it, thinking it is foreign.

The same applies for soul transplants. If this process is to ever be done successfully, I believe the two participants have to be compatible in many ways, but whether that is some tangible compatibility, such as identical blood types, or something more abstract, like similar personalities, I cannot say with certainty. However, considering the soul is an essence instead of a tangible organ, there is nothing to say souls couldn't, theoretically, transfer between species. To serve what purpose, I cannot fathom.

Then there comes the issue of extraction. From the little practical experimentation I have been able to undertake, I can hypothesise that a soul is much more malleable during periods of volatile emotions. For example, if a person is calm, their soul is stable within them. However, if a person is angry, hateful or distressed, their grip on their soul weakens, and thus is prone to outside forces. Therefore, if a soul is to be extracted from a living subject against their will, then placing them under conditions of extreme stress increases the likelihood of success. Of course, like anything ethereal, the process would be much simpler if the soul was given freely rather than taken by force. Some of these conditions might then be mitigated.

My research, for obvious reasons, has not been allowed to spread outside these four walls, and with such secrecy comes limited funds, and less than willing participants.

In conclusion, I believe that the soul, like the flesh, can be both harmed, healed and indeed extracted. Therefore, if one could find a compatible host, it could conceivably be possible to transfer the soul of one being into another. As for what effects this could have, I cannot say.

I must continue my research...

The last paragraph was underlined feverously.

Jahaan next turned his attention to Sliske’s desk. A notebook stood out for the block writing on the cover, black and ominous, with a slight spike to the edging of the letters:

‘Death at Sea’, by Praefectus Praetorio Sliske

When Jahaan opened it up, he saw that it was handwritten by Sliske. Fortunately Jahaan’s Infernal language studies hadn’t relented in his downtime, and thus he was able to understand most of what was being written. The longer, more scientific words he sometimes had to guess at, thankful for their similarities in many ways to the Common Tongue.

The notebook seemed to be used by Sliske to jot down ideas for a play. The opening section dealt with possible characters and a rough plot involving a sailor who witnesses a murder so terrible that it renders him mute. However, after a few dozen pages, it devolved into backstage gossip, excerpts from secret police files on the proposed actors, and tirades against the increasingly complicated plot.

After a short gap, the entries resumed, in a journal format.

It seems art may be imitating life! I had a chance encounter with Nabor this evening, which may hold the key to my current plot difficulties. It seems that he has received a new inmate to his little asylum, specifically a member of our navy, who has been struck insensible by some terrible injuries. I was almost bored to tears by the conversation - Nabor always was one of the dullest of the Mahjarrat - until that little nugget of information popped up. I may pay the place a visit tomorrow; an official inspection. That will pass a bit of time. Maybe seeing a wretch in a similar condition to the one I have been writing about will add a little realism to the scenes?

Well that didn't help.

My visit to the asylum has raised more questions than it answered. Nabor was almost fawningly open with his records, and it seems there is little to fear from his charges. I doubt many of them are capable of subversion at this point. Some are barely able to feed themselves.

I eventually requested to see the sailor in question. Nabor took me to a chamber held apart from the others, and I inquired if the patient was dangerous. He replied that it was more for his own protection. The human was known to shout things that disturbed the other patients, agitating them greatly. Nabor claimed that no matter what he tried, the lunatic would not do anything but babble piteously, occasionally howling and braying in ways most unsettling.

When I approached the cell, I found the human inside lying on a pallet of straw. I noticed that he was not bound, but was in a filthy condition and missing his left leg and right foot. On seeing me, he crawled on his belly across the flagstones and pulled himself up using the bars. His eyes were wild and hollow, darting like a cornered animal until they finally settled upon my own. Their darkness was captivating; I felt as if I was looking inside the shell of a man, someone beyond humanity and, simultaneously, so far below it.

Then, he spoke. “I know you.”

His thick accent betrayed his breeding. The words were growled, the venom masked only by his increased shivering. After assuring him that we had never met before, repeatedly I might add, as he was rather insistent, I asked him where it was he thought we had met.

“The afterlife,” he replied wistfully, like he was recalling a fond memory.

Clearly the man was delusional, but he was admittedly a fascinating specimen. So, I wanted to entertain his ramblings further, and explained that I could not go to an afterlife.

“You have,” he insisted. Again, the past tense was used. “You will, once you take His soul. His soul is your key. Death is not the end, it is only the beginning!”

Inquiring as to who this ‘Him’ was only seemed to horrify the patient. What he said next was… unusual. I cannot get the words out of my mind, nor the intensity with which he spoke them.

“You don’t remember?! He was no more god than man, and no more man than god. He could not save us all! He only saved YOU!”

Growing frustrated, I insisted he name the man he was referring to.

Once he did, he wouldn’t stop, repeating it over and over again with increasing volume and desperation. “Jahaan Alsiyad-Abut! Jahaan Alsiyad-Abut! Jahaan Alsiyad-Abut!”

Soon, there arose a hooting and wailing from the nearby cells. The inmates on this level began banging the bars, screaming and otherwise displaying their afflictions in a chorus of suffering, obviously agitated by the man’s disturbance. The pathetic human fell to the floor, weeping. As Nabor called for his orderlies to restore order, I returned to my office. Who is this ‘Jahaan Alsiyad-Abut’, and why is he so important to this crazed man? It seems my play will have to wait until I have answered these mysteries.

I returned to the asylum to speak with Nabor and the sailor, only to find out that the latter was dead. There were no marks upon the body, and nobody was seen to enter or leave the cell. Curious.

As for this Jahaan Alsiyad-Abut character, I have sent out agents to locate them, but no-one on record in the empire seems to go by that name. From the sounds of it, it likely originates from the Kharidian Lands. I shall have to widen my search net of agents if I am to follow up on this little enigma...

The majority of pages after that entry were blank aside from a single entry containing Jahaan’s date of birth. As it was in the Common Tongue, Jahaan deduced it must have been written a lot more recently. Below the date of birth were the words:

Jahaan Alsiyad-Abut? Really? Is this the key at last? I must watch and see...

Utterly freaked out, Jahaan closed the notebook in a hurry, backing away as if it was going to explode after reading. He darted his eyes around him, half-wanting someone to be there to confirm that, yes, he did just read that. With his curiosity giving him a crazed adrenaline rush, Jahaan hurriedly returned to examining the rest of the laboratory.

Potions and chemicals cluttered the shelves, residing in bottles and vials of various shapes and sizes, a technicolour cocktail recipe. Some sat atop piles of books, others held down documents. Most of their labels, if they had any, were faded from the passage of time, and Jahaan wasn’t about to taste test them to find out what they were.

Another small notebook on the tabletop caught Jahaan’s eye, perhaps from the beautiful aquamarine quill feather resting on top of it, starkly contrasting the black cover of the journal. Opening it up, Jahaan noted the handwriting was identical to that scrawled upon the blackboards, therefore it must have been written by Sliske. It too was in the Common Tongue.

Curiosity getting the better of him once more, he began to read...

I have changed the world. I have taken the status quo and I have smashed it to pieces and scattered the shards across Gielinor. The Staff - the Siphon - was practically gifted to me. The dragonkin, weak and pathetic, trapped in my little shadow web... and then the Staff was mine. It was so simple, almost laughably so, that I can barely consider it an achievement.

I have changed the world. I have used the Siphon to slay one of the most powerful beings to ever walk Gielinor. The great Guthix, felled by my hand, by my whim… by my destiny.

Guthix, in his dying breath, created something new. The World Guardian, they have come to be called. The breadcrumb trail I left for Jahaan worked far better than I could have ever imagined.

“So he engineered all this?” Jahaan muttered dryly to himself, taking a deep breath.

At this point, the idea that Sliske had played a part in some events in his life no longer came as a surprise. He did, however, ponder just how far this particular ‘breadcrumb trail’ reached back to.

Did he influence Sir Tiffy? Commander Denulth?

The following pages remarked upon the return of the gods, including derisive commentary about the Battle of Lumbridge and Armadyl’s slaying of Bandos. After that, Jahaan realised that several pages were missing, clearly torn out for some reason. A lot of the notebook became largely incomprehensible, with various strange diagrams doodled about the place. Most of the writing had been crossed out heavily.

Jahaan flicked through what remained, trying to find something he could decipher.

Then, right near the end, one last entry...

The time has come. I had hoped to resolve this without resorting to force, but he has left me no choice. Our agreement was abandoned by his reckless temperament. It would have been so much easier if he’d just played along. I could have had his soul, and he could have had eternal youth - a wight in my service, by my side...

Perhaps I have gotten too… close. I might even start to miss him. But not for long. The way that mortal lives, he would be dead within the next twenty years anyway.

Fortunately, it seems as though we are more similar than I could have ever hoped. Just a few tweaks here and there, a nudge in the right direction, and he’ll be perfectly... compatible. I’ve researched this for too long to give up now. I’m so close. Too many test subjects have failed, countless souls shattered in my efforts. So here I am, pinning my last hope on the deranged ramblings of a madman.

I have a plan. It might work, it might be the solution to my problem. I have most of the pieces right here and the rest I can easily obtain with only the slightest bit of subterfuge.

Yes it will work.

It has to...

After returning the notebook to its place on the desk, one last thing caught Jahaan’s eye.

In the centre of the dark wooden floor, a mystic diagram had been painted in purple and white, glowing brightly, like light itself was luminating from the etchings. The outer circumference was comprised of two purple circles, while inside white and purple triangles mirrored one another. Right at the centre was another bright white circle drawn in runes of the ancient magicks. Above it, floating around head height, a cluster of fizzing energy correlating into a globe shape.

When Jahaan approached it, he could feel his bones tingling from the magic it emitted.

Against his better judgement, he had the strongest urge to reach out and touch it…

The world around him was foggy and clouded, like he was seeing everything through a bowl of misty water. However, he could make out Sliske close to his vantage point, clutching onto the Staff of Armadyl and facing a large sphere that pulsed and crackled with energy.

The Stone of Jas.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Sliske remarked, wistfully.

“What is”

“Beauty?”

That mysterious voice was unfamiliar to Jahaan. It was hollow, yet deep. Impassive, yet commanding. Inhuman, certainly, but like no race Jahaan had ever encountered. The voice echoed and faded, swishing through his mind like calm waves on the shore.

Jahaan couldn’t be sure if it was even real. Perhaps it was a conjuring of his imagination?

However, that theory died when Sliske turned towards Jahaan’s vantage point and replied to its question, “Beauty… ahhh, beauty is what makes the world bearable. Without it, life is grey and empty. Beauty evokes pure emotion, and true beauty can bring empires to ruin or inspire the most evil men to heroic deeds.”

“Irrelevant,” the voice stated, unwavering in its dull conviction.

Sighing, Sliske replied, “Yes… I suppose you think it is.”

Turning back to face the Stone, Sliske continued, “Thank you for the tip-off about this delightful thing by the way. I would never have found it on my own. It never occurred to me that the Staff could be used in such a fashion.”

“The Siphon”

“Has many uses”

“Yes, and the look on that dragonkin's face was hilarious! To think, those fools just cast the Stone away, hoping that no-one would find it. They must have known it couldn’t be hidden forever. Something like this… it wants to be found. It needs a user, false or otherwise.”

The voice did not seem to care for Sliske’s poetic ramblings, instead directly asking,

“Will this”

“Bring them?”

Sliske grinned. “Oh yes, very much so. The siren song of the Stone will bring all of the gods together. It will be a gathering like no other, a monumental occasion that everyone will yearn to observe.”

“Pointless words”

“Make it happen”

Narrowing his eyes, Sliske bit his tongue to keep the sharpness from his voice. “Yes, of course. I live to serve…”

When the world rippled back into reality, Jahaan fought to get the echoed voice of the mysterious being out of his mind. It seemed to seep through him like ink, cloying and domineering. It was only once he realised just how long he’d been that he snapped himself back into focus.

Just as he was about to leave, however, he saw something glint underneath a pile of messed up papers. Pushing the papers to one side, Jahaan uncovered an ornate letter opener, its handle delicately carved out of elder logs. The blade was thin and fragile, probably made out of nothing better than light steel. Such a weapon wouldn’t be able to pierce through Sliske’s armoured robes - heck, it probably couldn’t even stab through his thick skin - but the edge was sharp; if he could slice somewhere delicate, or perhaps use it on one of the Barrows Brothers at the right time…

These thoughts were enough to convince Jahaan to tuck the blade into the back of his belt, rolling his shirt over it to conceal its presence.

DISCLAIMER:

As Of Gods and Men is a reimagining, retelling and reworking of the Sixth Age, a LOT of dialogue/characters/plotlines/etc. are pulled right from the game itself, and this belongs to Jagex.

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#sliske #kindred spirits

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touchmycoat · 5 years

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book reflections: Confessions by Minato Kanae

Confessions

The heart of this book deals with revenge. It's a familiar theme: when a heinous crime has been committed, are criminal justice procedures ever enough? To what degree is revenge, personally exacted, justified?

Confessions complicates this question by throwing the spikes of tension between children and adults.

Children are such a fascinating subject of study—not to go too far into it, but “childhood” is very much a socially constructed phenomenon (my formative understanding of this is Kathryn Bond Stockton's The Queer Child, which narrates a history of adults-depicting-children, and the values and anxieties that reveals). Confessions asks the question, “what happens when children commit heinous crimes?”

The book begins with a monologue by middle school teacher Moriguchi on the last day of the semester. What first seems like philosophical rambling lays out a multi-layered social phenomenon.

Layer one: social inclination to believe that children are always the victim, never the perpetrator. This is outlined in the story about the teacher who was called out by a female middle school student seemingly in need of help one night, then accused of sexual assault. The student later confessed it was because she wanted revenge—the teacher had scolded her for chatting during class. The teacher was forced to reveal, under these circumstances, that she's trans, and that she had no designs on the student in question (which is certainly a narrative choice to think further about—the quickness of the anecdote and the inherent logic it's meant to convey, that simply by proving herself a woman, the teacher convinced her coworkers that she's exonerated of all suspicion. At least trans identity isn't being inherently linked with deviance?). The teacher was still fired, and the school instituted a new policy that should students ever call teachers for help after school, only male teachers can go to male students, female teachers to female students, etc.

(The narrative, in its determination to gesture to the incapability of institutions to fulfill human needs, uses this as the ignition point for Naoki's unhappiness with Moriguchi.)

Layer two: children receive public anonymity in the court of law, meaning punishment is dealt in secret, and presumably, they can return to society afterwards carrying none of their criminal history. This is outlined in the “Lunacy” case, where a young girl kills her own family with cyanide, after conducting a series of experiments on what poison was most effective. The case got plenty of sensationalist press coverage, but where is the girl now, Moriguchi asks. Has she gotten her punishment? Was justice ever exacted?

Layer three: sensationalist press coverages without embedded moral value only teach children the outliers. At worst, it teaches children that this is the way to get attention (which is precisely what Shuya and Mizuki took from the Lunacy case). Moral outrage loses ground to morbid fascination, becoming worse than an empty gesture; like the teacher who replaces Moriguchi, posturing as some beacon of moral justice is merely for self-satisfaction.

Maybe, more accurately, the book wants to know, “how do you punish a child?” Some, like Moriguchi's not-husband, like Moriguchi insinuates the juvenile criminal justice system to be, answer, “you don't.” Children are products of their environment, so the ones who should be punished are the teachers (as posited by the “Lunacy” case and the chemistry teacher who got all the public blame for giving the child access to cyanide). Alternatively, children are still learning and growing. Moriguchi's not-husband was quite the problem child himself, but he turned things around and became the most truly moral figure of this entire book. He believes in the capacity for change in children.

But Moriguchi doesn't care much about that. Shuya and Naoki plotted to and killed her four-year-old daughter. She wants revenge.

What makes her fascinating as the central figure of this book is her clarity of mind. She isn't someone who's lost herself to vengeance; she systematically identifies the flaws (or what she thinks of as flaws) in the juvenile criminal justice system and then chooses her own revenge. On one hand we have the empathetic response to a mother losing her child, and the willingness to let a fictional character play out, for emotional catharsis, something we might not necessarily endorse in real life. On the other hand we have the unease of her turning this calculatedness toward children: Boy A and Boy B, middle school students.

(Cue comparative cinema studies of the 2010 Confessions film and 2007's Boy A. Oh, apparently Boy A is based off of a novel as well?)

Oh, and then she does take her revenge. She says she's laced Boy A and Boy B's milk cartons with HIV-infected blood.

And now, in what is the true brilliance of the book, Confessions starts to give us other perspectives. We get Mizuki the perfect student, who is first victimized by the hoard of angry classmates (and it's such a consistent literary and real life theme I guess, the cruelty of a mass of children). We get a peak into her questionability in a somewhat tender moment though: why does she just have a poison-testing kit lying around? In this section, we also get a protagonistic portrayal of Shuya; it's not that we doubt Moriguchi's version of the psychopathic-child-inventor Shuya, but now he's the martyr (as per the title of the section). He quietly suffers the bullying of the class, tells Mizuki his negative blood test, and becomes “genuinely” happy at Mizuki's compliments, saying all he's ever wanted was that acknowledgement.

Mizuki also bares her teeth against the new teacher, accusing him of being the cause of Naoki's mother's murder. At this point, it was almost narratively heroic, after we've suffered the annoyance (through her perspective) of the self-important teacher. But afterwards, in Shuya's section, we hear her confess to wanting to poison that teacher for “ruining Naoki's life.” She's killed by Shuya before we hear more, but might that have played out? How much do we fear the mental criminality of children?

We also get Naoki's sister and mother's perspective. We get a doting mother insistent on the innocence of her child, making excuse after excuse for Naoki, even when Naoki's fully confessed to throwing Moriguchi's daughter into the pool. How much responsibility does a parent have toward her child? Does she hold ultimate faith in him, stand staunchly at his side in support of him? Does she do right by the society (and in theory by her kid) by turning in her own child? We were meant to be annoyed by her cruel insistence to blame everyone but her son, but we see in Naoki's section right after that his sanity relied so much on this idea that his mother unconditionally loves him. He believes that, once he's gone to jail for his crimes, he can do his time, reform and return to society as long as his mother is there to love and support him.

Of course, that's when his mother decides to kill both him and herself—a murder-suicide for her failure as a mother.

(It really does haunt me, thinking about Naoki and his stymied possibilities. He killed Moriguchi's daughter in a moment of callous spite, motivated by a desire for revenge against Shuya's dismissal of his overtures of friendship. He lived in such a tortured state for a long time, a child grappling with the terror of impending death by himself, terrified of infecting those who love him. His instincts, when he emerged into the real world again, was to weaponize his “infected” blood. Yet he ended up on such a hopeful incline—mother's love with save me. All this happens as his mother spirals downwards, coming to terms with her own child's monstrosity. The book seeds Naoki's redemption, but takes the sprout away before we can see whether or not it carries infection.)

Finally, we get Shuya's story. I fully bought into it, as I was expected to. The book gestures multiple times at his ability to pen a convincing narrative of innocence. Or at least, a narrative of the anti-hero. He walks us through his absolute love for his mother, the engineering genius. She gave up her career for him, but then turned that dissatisfaction into abuse. Abuse turned back to gestures of love when she was found out, divorced, and forced to move away, and Shuya held deeply on to his faith that he will be reunited with her again. The desire of a child for his mother's love motivated the murder of Moriguchi's daughter, the planting of a bomb at the school festival. It ended up killing Mizuki as well.

Moriguchi bookends this tale, tying up loose threads. Yes she absolutely put the blood in their milk, but it was her not-husband that swapped out the infected cartons. Yes, she wanted to destroy Shuya and Naoki's lives; it won't bring her joy and it won't bring her daughter back, but nonetheless she wants her vengeance on the two boys. The possibility that she was only scaring Naoki and Shuya, that she threatened to but never did anything actually immoral, is completely swept away. She tells Shuya she visited his mother and told her all of his crimes. Baiting Shuya with what his mother said, she instead tells him that the bomb he planted had been deconstructed at the school and reconstructed in his mother's lab instead. Making the bomb and detonating it had both been Shuya's choice.

Shuya had killed her daughter. Now she's killed his mother.

(But did she? I have no doubt she did, but this book doesn't deal in absolutes.)

So—what are we left with? A psychopathic child inventor-slash-murderer motivated by a desire for maternal love? A girl who admired another murderous young murderess and wanted a turn of her own with poisons, murdered before she could prove herself either way? A cruel and reactionary accomplice who came to the conclusion that he had done something wrong but that he could repent? A mother who refused her son's criminality until the very last moment, and believed they were both beyond salvation? Another mother who took justice into her own hands by ruining the lives of two young boys who killed her daughter in cold blood?

...Is there such a thing as cold blood in this novel? Every “cold” act was done with passionate motive: Shuya wanted to prove himself to his mother, Naoki wanted to prove himself better than Shuya, Moriguchi wanted to give her daughter proper vengeance. HIV is the symbol here of criminality, first given, then saved from, then weaponized by both boys. There's so much, with the blood! Naoki coming to terms with the infection he didn't have made it possible for him to confess the truth, to start himself on the path toward salvation (even if it only lasted a few pages). Shuya embracing the infection right away because if he were dying his mother would surely come back; losing that possibility of death led to him befriending, then of course in the end murdering Mizuki.

Shuya plotted the murder of Moriguchi's daughter, but wasn't actually responsible for the cause of death. Naoki was the accomplice, but at the last moment, made the choice to actually extinguish her daughter's life. This murky twist of motion and motive (Kathryn Bond Stockton!) would prevent them from getting the full punishment of homicide in a juvenile criminal justice court, as Moriguchi explained. Now, because of the blood, they've both committed an inarguable murder with their own hands. Naoki loses his mother and his entire world order that revolved around her unconditional love for him. Shuya's murderous inventions are never allowed to succeed, and he never gets to “prove” his genius, until it was used to kill his own mother, the one person he wanted acknowledge from and to live with. The punishments are incredibly cruel—but are they justified?

#kanae minato #confessions #confessions (2010)#this is really an insane book lmfao #i loved every construction of it and could probably #spend a lot more time constructing an academic essay bout it #comparisons of it to gone girl are fucking right #the same complicated treatment of women and criminality #but this one is a lot more haunting tbh cause it deals with children #in such a full and complicatedly emotional way #spoilers

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i-will-physically-fight-you · 5 years

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I just gotta be real for a hot second.

Warnings: discussions of suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety

2015 remains a pinnacle year for me. I have a lot of good memories associated with it, and it’s around that time I started hearing about this certain band. A single of theirs hit mainstream and suddenly they’re the talk of the town. My natural inclination when encountering something popular is to turn my nose up at it. If it’s popular it’s overrated. You know what’s popular? Music. For most of my middle school and high school years, I didn’t get what was the big deal about music. Why was everyone obsessed about it, and specifically boy bands? So I mainly ignored the hype.

And by “mainly” I mean the curiosity got the better of me one day so I searched some of their songs on Youtube. It was...different than anything I’ve ever encountered. It was abrasive, eccentric, bizarre, take your pick. I tried to love them but I couldn’t even though I resonated with the lyrics. And I’ve never been one to try to fit with the crowd. Like I said, I went against the crowd. So aside discovering a song of theirs in an amv and loving it, I ignored them for about three years.

But then last year my sister kept playing one of their songs on the ukulele and I...liked it. So I sought them out again on my own terms. I slowly fell in love with their music. It helped they released an album in the autumn. My sister loves them and it became a bridge between the two of us. We don’t have many of those.

But again, super causal. It wasn’t until the new year hit and my mental health sunk like a tank. I’ve been struggling with depression and anxiety since the start of middle school. It’s sad to think roughly half of my life has been consumed by it. But living with it after awhile, you begin to learn the ebbs and flow of it. But this? This was a whole another type of monster.

I wish I could time travel back to the start of this year and tell past me, “Honey, you got a big storm coming for you. I know it’ll seem that it’ll never get better. But I promise things they will and I’ll be holding onto you.”

I would have days where I would just bawl for three or four hours straight. The slightest thing would make me cry. When I wasn’t crying, I was an unemotional husk of a person.

I would be thoroughly convinced my friends and family were going to be extremely angry at me for minuscule things. I would experience moments of intense panic, where my heart raced to the speed of my careening thoughts and I was so cold that no amount of layers or blankets would warm me up.

I remember a day a moment like this happened, where I ended up taking a nap in this state for two hours, woke up exhausted beyond belief and then showed up to work having to pretend that yes, I’m a functioning human being who is not falling apart, no siree.

I could barely muster up the motivation to write, and when I did it was mostly heavy and dark. Floating With the Sunset and Guiding Lights come to mind, especially when I realized I was unconsciously struggling with the very same thing as the characters were; suicide ideation.

What I mean by that is I was so convinced that my life had no purpose or meaning--that I was never going to amount to anything, so why bother? Why bother living if it involved this level of mental torment that I was going through? And of course, the small detached unemotional part of me knew this was wrong. I always had a fear of dying--so all I could think of was how living was going to be a prison sentence because I was too chicken to actually do the thing.

Not to mention, my one remaining brain cell knew my family and friends would be devastated by my death, never mind I didn’t know even know how to go about the whole dying thing. Just realizing I was even contemplating such a thing terrified me.

I knew this was the sort of thing you should tell people about but the idea of admitting it to someone was even more terrifying than the thought of it because oh god, what will they think? If there is one thing you must know about me, is that I fear disappointing people and I felt like I would be disappointing a good number of people by admitting that not-living sounded like a good option at the time.

Heck, I could barely admit to myself that was happening in this journal entry in January, before it went even further downhill:

“Rest assured I have not the stomach to actually do anything. I’m too afraid of what lies in the Undiscovered Country to travel to it. That’s why the answer to that daunting question is: “No, of course not.”

Still, who hasn’t thought of traveling to the land where no traveler has whence returned? Even if it wasn’t a serious consideration, I think all humans have the thought at some point in their lives. Maybe not—after all I am just but a human who has no idea what goes in the minds of her fellow humans. But I think it’s a good possibility.

Humans are inherently curious creatures; really it should be “Curiosity killed the human” rather the cat. I think we’re curious enough to wonder what would happen if we did travel to that country earlier than “planned.”

But aside from the stray intrusive thought, I have not dared to go further down that dark path. This is for several reasons. One because of that fear. But another because I have seen the aftermath of when someone takes a trip to the Undiscovered Country. It has not yet been anyone super close to me and yet the devastation hits me at full force despite it. But I also had interaction with a few people in the last couple years, of how I impacted their life without even knowing it.

You never know how small of an interaction can change another person’s life forever. You never know and I think it’s a shame a lot of times those stories don’t get shared until after someone has already left. I think it can be important those stories are shared with the person—it can help them recognize that they are more important than they possibly realize.”

A small part of me thought that my life would be over at the end of May. Not that I planned on causing that to happen by my own hands. Just that some comic force might decide to put me out of my misery by then. You could say I’m a bit elated to be alive right now, because I didn’t expect to get this far.

What this have to do with music again? I’m glad you asked. Remember that band that spiked in popularity in 2015 that I ignored for three years and then reluctantly started listening and enjoying their music? Yes, well if I resonated with the lyrics in 2015, then those lyrics could’ve been lifted verbatim from my pages out of my journal in 2019.

This music was like a light in the darkness. It unashamedly discussed heavy topics like depression and suicide and I needed that. In our society, those topics are seldom openly discussed to the point it feels almost shameful to admit to such a struggle. But these songs openly screamed about them, they were brutally honest about the struggle. What’s more, they advocated to keep on living and I needed that. I needed that so much.

I knew the band was visiting my area sometime this summer and I thought, I can live until then. I can make it until then.

Sometime mid-May, the storm broke. The sun came out and Mr. Blue Sky started blaring from the heavens. I think it was because several outside factors that were putting a strain on my mental health had gone away around then along with events I feared would go horribly wrong...did not go horribly wrong. In fact, they went well all things considered. I’ve still gone through days riddled with anxiety and depression since then, but nothing as dark and grim as those days had been.

I don’t want to want to die anymore. It’s weird to think only two months ago, I craved such a thing. I want to live so much, you guys have no idea. Of course the future still terrifies me. But that’s a reassuring fear, one I hold like a security blanket because it’s been a part of me for so long I know how to deal with it.

I started a handwritten journal where I record the day’s events and end each entry with the positive highlights of the day. Of course I haven’t done it in a solid week, but it’s done wonders for my mental health. I’ve been seeing a therapist and that has helped a little. I’ve started reaching out and trying to maintain friendships in real life. To those online friends that have stayed with me and even reached out in concern about my vague distressing tumblr posts, you helped me so much and I am grateful for our correspondences.

I made a post about debating whether or not I should see a favorite band and in the end, well...it feels like the right decision. I’m fulfilling a promise to myself back then. It feels like the act of seeing this band is like the closing chapter of the book. Not the final book, mind you, but a book in like a seventy-something series, if everything pans out of course.

As to those who might be still struggling, deep in the throes of such darkness and torment: It’ll get better.

I know that’s like the most cliche thing to say and I sure didn’t believe it back then. But it’s true. It was true for me and it’s true for many others.

Also don’t be like me, be brave enough to speak to someone about what you’re dealing with. You aren’t alone as you think are. Yes, no one will ever know what’s it like to struggle with your demons, nobody will think what you think, but they might’ve fought battles similar to the one that’s currently raging inside your brain. They might know what it’s like to wander through such darkness. Even if they haven’t, they can still support and love you through it regardless.

Lastly, you have worth, you have importance, you have meaning and if everyone tells you otherwise (including your own thoughts) don’t you dare listen to them for a second. Remember, you are loved beyond belief, don’t ever doubt that <3

#kat talks #suicide tw #depression tw #anxiety tw

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killthebxy-archive · 6 years

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1. being bastard born in Westeros

let me start with a simple but crucial point: Westeros is a medieval society --- which means it is traditional and built on strong patriarchal foundations, for the most part. Westeros is a racist, sexist, ableist society. and, in Westeros, and especially among the highborn, it is very rare that you will marry for love. if you are highborn, you will marry someone of similar status based on some benefit that this alliance will bring to your parents/ family/ house. if you’re lucky, you will eventually learn to love your spouse, but that is not a requirement --- what is expected of you is to have strong sons (preferably, that the firstborn is a boy) and beautiful daughters to continue your legacy. and you are expected to fulfill this goal together with the lord husband/ lady wife so carefully picked for you.

what does being bastard born mean? simply put, it means your parents are not married. it means either you were conceived before your parents got married (either to each other or to another person), or that you were conceived through adultery (consensual or not). and, let’s be real, six of the seven kingdoms, Dorne being the exception, do not regard illegitimate children in a positive light. being bastard born, based on what i wrote before, means you were born from lust and/or from betrayal, and this, in this society, immediately implies you have bad blood. it immediately implies that a baby still in the mother’s womb is already expected to grow up to be wanton, treacherous, cunning, ambitious.

this may not seem obvious but, in a way, being a highborn bastard is more difficult than being a lowborn one. one the one hand, it is rare that the illegitimate child of a big (or even smaller) House of Westeros will be allowed to live with their family, or even to be acknowledged at all. for example, out of all the bastards Robert Baratheon fathered, only Edric Storm and Mya Stone are directly linked to his name. Ned Stark is a rare exception in this case, for raising Jon Snow as his own son. note: for the purpose of this meta, i am assuming what we know from book canon up until the end of ADWD: Jon is the child of Ned and an unknown woman. i will speak of Rhaegar Targaryen further on, but this is the assumption of this whole piece of text.

for this reason, highborn bastards are also seen as a much bigger threat. why? because it is common belief that they will try and steal what belongs to the legitimate children by birthright. again, because they are seen as inherently envious and treacherous. GRRM provides some tales throughout the books, of bloodshed between half-siblings for the sake of power, and Ramsay Snow/ Bolton emerges as prime example of such --- stopping at nothing to earn himself a legitimate name, first, and then the ruling of House Bolton + Winterfell.

2. Jon Snow as a bastard child

no surprises, everything i just mentioned is valid in Jon’s case. Catelyn Stark herself worries that Jon will be a threat to her children, and, for example, argues with Robb when it is his will to make Jon the new King in the North, should Robb himself fall in battle. and this is important to mention for two motives. one, because Cat doesn’t despise Jon for his personality or character traits or any possible flaws --- she despises him for the symbol he is. and we are presented with evidence that she resents herself for being this way, for being unable to love a motherless child, but the very negative connotation of Jon’s birth and everything it entails make it impossible for her to treat him differently. and it doesn’t help that Jon is always described as the spitting image of Ned Stark (or the Starks in general), while her own legitimate children (Arya being the exception) have 100% the Tully looks.

and, before i get to the second motive, let me point this out. have you wondered why Jon hates to be called Lord Snow, once he arrives at Castle Black? it may seem odd, because, objectively, it is a respectful title --- Jon is technically highborn, and Snow is his last name. however, the negative stigma of being bastard born is, exactly, why this title is both used and taken as mockery. because a bastard has no right to inherit anything --- therefore, has no right to be a lord unless legitimized. treating Jon as Lord Snow is actually incredibly cruel, because it is both throwing on his face something he can never have (i.e., Lord), and, at the same time, the reason for it (i.e., Snow, the name given to the bastards of the North). and this is so prevalent that it keeps happening even after Jon is elected to be lord commander, as we can clearly see in the discourse of Janos Slynt and Godry Farring, for example. even Ramsay, after becoming a Bolton, is still often described/ regarded under the light of his birth. being bastard born is something that accompanies you for life, almost always in a negative manner, and there is very little (if anything) you can do to distance your own identity from it. for the most part and for most people in Westeros, you don’t exist as Jon Snow --- you exist as Ned Stark’s bastard.

3. internalization of the stigma

everything above brings me to the core of this meta: the impact that being bastard born has on Jon’s identity/ personality/ psychological functioning. and, to start this, i could pick half a hundred quotes from Jon’s chapters, but i’ll pick one that particularly speaks to me:

they still think me a turncloak. that was a bitter draft to drink, but Jon could not blame them. he was a bastard, after all. everyone knew that bastards were wanton and treacherous by nature, having been born of lust and deceit.

A Storm of Swords --- Blood and Gold, pp.171

this isn’t anyone talking about Jon; this isn’t Alliser Thorne of Janos Slynt or Cregan Karstark calling him the bastard son of a traitor --- this is Jon speaking of himself. this is Jon describing himself as a bastard and everything it entails, to the point where he cannot even bring himself to blame others for mistrusting him --- because it is to be expected, because it is his own fault for being bastard born. this isn’t the first time in the books such an appreciation is found, we can already see similar introspection in the first half of the first book. Jon has entirely internalized the stigma of being bastard born. now, from the ever-helpful Wikipedia:

social stigma: disapproval of (or discontent with) a person based on socially characteristic grounds that are perceived, and serve to distinguish them, from other members of a society.

internalization: involves the integration of attitudes, values, standards and the opinions of others into one's own identity or sense of self.

basically, what this means is that Jon sees himself, whilst a bastard, the same way society does. it means that he was taught what being bastard born means (all the negative connotations i wrote before), and he’s accepted this as being true in regards to himself. he seems himself as different, for being bastard born, and he sees himself as lesser. and this doesn’t happen at Castle Black, where he starts being mocked as Lord Snow. this has started before he was even born, because he’s not seen as a baby but as the proof that even the honorable Eddard Stark once screwed up, and this continued throughout his childhood and early teen years, when he was raised and educated like the rest of Ned’s children but, at the same time, was ever made to know his place and that he was different --- that he was below them. for example, how he’s not allowed to sit at the dais together with his family when King Robert’s court visits Winterfell, because such a thing could cause offense to the royal family. as curiosity, reminder that, in the books, this is exactly the reason Jon gives to Mance Rayder to convince him that he was a desertor: did you see where i was sitting, Mance?

what is this impact on Jon’s functioning then? first and foremost, it means he tends to see himself in a negative regard. during his first chapters, like when he firstly arrives at Castle Black, he tries to externalize this burden. he’s cocky and he’s immature and he acts on his short temper and makes every other new recruit hate him. why? because he so much wants to prove (to them, to Benjen Stark, to the Night’s Watch as a whole, to himself) that he’s better than everyone else --- that he’s better than his symbol as a bastard, that he’s better than what everyone expects of him. we don’t really get a chapter where Jon tells Benjen (or anyone) why he wants to take the black --- by the time they talk, Jon has already made up his mind. therefore, this bit is a headcanon on my part, but i don’t think i’m wrong in assuming that Jon wanted to join the Night’s Watch because he didn’t have anything else left for his future. he’d never have a right to Winterfell, and the most he could ever hope to inherit was, maybe, some little keep somewhere in the North, and to defend it under Robb’s name. the Watch gave him at least an opportunity to rise above his bastard status, and, when he arrives there and keeps being treated the same, that’s when he snaps and starts literally bullying everyone else for it.

Donal Noye has a crucial role in Jon’s change, and he is also the underlying tone of the whole kill the boy and let the man be born --- but this is subject for another meta, and i will not touch it here. basically, once he starts treating the Night’s Watch as his new family/ home, Jon’s negative regard of himself slowly and gradually stops being directed to the outside, and starts being directed to the inside --- to his own self. this becomes exponential after Ygritte’s death (which he blames himself for, not exactly for being bastard born, but he still does and this adds up), and even more so after he’s elected lord commander. and, as i like to say, when you look at AGOT Jon and ADWD Jon, you see two different persons. lord commander Jon forces himself to be guarded and isolated, for the sake of better leading his men, and he suffers a lot with insecurities and self-doubt --- because, let’s be real, he’s a 16 year old boy suddenly charged with responsibility to guide nineteen castles and all the men and women inhabiting them. we often see Jon wondering what Ned would have done in his stead, and even more often we see him worrying if he’s making the right decision --- but having to push through, anyway, because winter is almost upon them and he doesn’t have time to sulk.

and what does being bastard born have to do with this? it is, exactly, the fact that Jon, simply put, believes he’s a bad person because he’s a bastard --- and how he’s come from trying to fight against it, literally fight, to accepting it and letting it subconsciously become his default mode of functioning. Jon is a perfectionist and very, very hardworking, because he knows there’s no other way for him to be. let it be known that both Jon and i love Robb beyond any words, but Robb is the heir --- whenever Robb makes a mistake, that’s okay because everyone knows he’s honorable and righteous like his father, so it’s human to make mistakes. when Jon Snow makes a mistake, it is because of his bad blood and because he’s the bastard son of a traitor, and what else could you expect. this is why none of the Stark children can ever understand what being a Snow entails, even Arya who ever fought for the sake of her brother being treated as an equal. Jon lives on the edge, constantly, and he’s well aware he’s got no room to make mistakes.

this is why he’s always so sullen, this is why he takes apparently harmless jokes very personally, this is why he has a hard time believing in praise offered to him. because his entire identity is built on being inherently less than most others, even before his birth, which leads him to always having to push his limits and be perfect --- being good isn’t enough for him, he cannot allow himself the luxury of making a bad decision --- and this is tenfold when he’s in a position of leadership, be it as lord commander or, in show canon, King in the North. which, non-surprisingly, is extremely tiring and always has him under tension. and this is also why he tends to draw to himself the guilt over matters that aren’t even directly under his control, and why his biggest fear is the fear of failure. because, all his life, Jon Snow wanted to be Jon Stark --- wanted to prove to his father, and then to everyone else, that he was more than a negative symbol, and worthy of his/their trust and acknowledgment. failing, even something as silly as sending a raven during the night when he was supposed to send it during the morning, means he’s not worthy of his father’s name; it means that the world is right, and that he’s no more than his bad blood. needless to say, all of this is why Jon is so adamantly against fathering bastards of his own --- because he would never want a son/daughter to have to carry the burden he’s carried for his entire life.

as a conclusion, this is also why, in this blog, the annulment of Rhaegar’s and Elia’s marriage will never be accepted. it goes without saying that Elia deserved so much better, but the point of this meta is that being bastard born is the foundation of Jon’s identity, and it has impacted his story and functioning in ways that cannot be erased. suddenly making him Aegon Targaryen 2.0. for the sake of sitting his fine ass on the Iron Throne does NOT change his past and does NOT change who he is. therefore, in my personal portrayal of Jon Snow, even in purely show-based threads and despite what season 8 may throw at us, he will always be bastard born --- Ned’s bastard or Rhaegar’s bastard, it makes no difference. because the Jon i love and write doesn’t need to be of legitimate blood to matter and to be valid, nor will i ever completely erase and disregard the circumstances that made/ make him who he is.

#long post #𝚖𝚎𝚝𝚊 𝚝𝚊𝚐 ❄️ᵗʰᵉ ᶜʳᵒʷ ᶤˢ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵃᵛᵉᶰˢ ᵖᵒᵒʳ ᶜᵒᵘˢᶤᶰ #i finally wrote this #and now i can go cry in the corner over how much i love this boy

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Injustice Beat Zack Snyder’s Justice League to the Punch

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The release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a moment that belongs to the fans who petitioned for years to not just see a more definitive version of 2017’s Justice League but director Zack Snyder‘s complete vision for a Justice League film.

While the discourse over the quality of that vision will wage on, our own critic suggests that Snyder doesn’t quite achieve his goals for a Justice League film much less the idea of a live-action Justice League film so good that it somehow becomes hard to imagine that idea ever being done better. Perhaps some of those shortcomings can be attributed to the unique nature of his cut’s development and release, but there’s still a feeling that Snyder is chasing something he may not have the chance to catch.

What’s remarkable about his pursuit, though, is that in a strange way, we may have already seen an earlier and better version of many of Snyder’s ideas in NetherRealm Studios’ Injustice series, an incredible DC fighting game franchise that features epic superhero storytelling worthy of the big screen.

The idea that a fighting game series could surpass two cuts of a live-action Justice League film will probably sound like an exaggeration to some. Yet, the most shocking thing about the Injustice series isn’t the quality of the games, it’s the way that they superbly handled so many of the exact ideas that Snyder tried to emphasize in his three DCEU movies.

Injustice Shows a Batman/Superman Conflict Done Well

In spite of his better efforts, Zack Snyder struggles to effectively showcase a Batman/Superman conflict that is compelling for reasons beyond the prestige and power of the characters. Snyder’s Batman vs. Superman fights often come across as little more than a couple of alpha males posturing over the idea that the town just ain’t big enough for the two of them.

Injustice takes a different approach. By focusing on the idea that Batman and Superman are separated by their abilities to live with tragedy (especially after the death of Lois Lane), and their radically different philosophies regarding how to use their powers, Injustice forges a far more complicated relationship between DC’s two giants.

The Batman and Superman of Injustice 2 see different paths to similar goals. They don’t want to battle each other to prove who is best, and their inevitable battle is treated as the tragic results of all other options failing.

Injustice Effectively Portrays a Morally Ambiguous Superman

While Snyder’s portrayal of Batman tends to draw more heat, his take on Superman has been the subject of debate. He seems to be more interested in showing Superman as a figure who struggles to repress his godlike powers rather than as a beacon of hope for humanity. As a result, Snyder’s Superman more often comes across as a particularly large wrecking ball with a sour disposition. It’s not inherently wrong to portray a more morally ambiguous Superman; Snyder’s films just haven’t handled that approach especially well.

The Injustice series features a far more interesting take on the Man of Steel. The Superman we find in Injustice still believes in being a hero, but a series of tragic events convince him that the best thing he can do for Earth is to be its unflinching mighty protector.

It’s a believable enough evolution of Superman’s mythology that becomes much darker once you see the tyrannical methods Superman is willing to employ in the name of “protection” and “justice.” He still believes himself to be a hero through it all, and the true tragedy is how we still very much want him to be that hero even as we question how far gone he is…and how far we’d go to preserve the idea of him we’ve crafted in our minds.

Injustice Balances a Huge Roster of DC Characters and Their Motivations

Both versions of the Justice League film have their ups and downs, but one problem each shares is a struggle to effectively manage the various team members and showcase them in ways that feel like they’re both getting their own stories and contributing to the larger plot. Snyder’s version is largely superior in that pursuit, but his four-hour epic still sees major characters disappear for long stretches of time and sometimes feel frustratingly interchangeable.

Injustice 2 is far from perfect when it comes to balancing all of its characters, but the game generally does a better job of managing its many heroes than Snyder’s superhero films. In a game that includes everyone from Batman and Superman to Swamp Thing and Blue Beetle, nearly every hero, villain, and major DC character is given a moment to shine as well a role in the greater narrative at play. Even when Injustice 2 becomes almost too much to keep up with, it usually finds a way to pull us back in by leaning into primary characters and storylines.

Injustice’s Villains Feel Like Properly Developed Characters

Despite Snyder’s attempts to improve Justice League’s villains, the film’s big bads — Steppenwolf and Darkseid at the forefront — rarely rise above simply being big and bad. They’re appropriate enough threats given the power levels of the heroes they’re up against, but they add little to the narrative beyond being the centerpiece for the inevitable big battle. They rarely rise above that “charging bull” description Alfred uses at one point.

This is one area where the Injustice series feels like the clearly better version of what Snyder is trying to accomplish. The first game sees The Joker and Lex Luthor (among others) mastermind a convincing plot designed to destroy the Justice League from within, while the second game employs Brainiac as the biggest new villain in a game certainly not lacking in them. The latter example is closer to the kind of bad guys that Snyder employs, but in Brainiac, we get a galactic level threat whose motivations are tied to the consequences of the hero’s actions and whose own actions genuinely left us wondering what would remain of the world that was left behind.

Injustice Successfully Sells the Theme of Unity Better Than the Justice League Films

Both cuts of Justice League film really try to sell the importance of these heroes coming together. The problem is that idea rarely goes beyond the “Megazord” philosophy which states that the only way to beat Rita Repula’s engorged creation is to join forces for the ultimate show of strength. There are few attempts to really emphasize the value and complexity of coming together, and what little efforts are made are drowned out by the spectacle.

The Injustice series handles the heroes ultimate coming together a little more effectively by showing us how the pursuit of unity is a constant battle. Even when Superman and Batman put their philosophical differences aside for a time to battle an exterior threat, there’s the lingering implication that the only thing that keeps them together is a threat that has the chance to destroy the world before they can play out their own conflict.

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Justice League treats the idea of uniting together as little more than another example of the “getting the band together” trope. In Injustice, we see how such alliances are constantly tested and how our heroes must continuously battle threats from the inside and out to remain truly united.

Injustice’s Dark Tone Is Complemented by Effective Moments of Levity

Snyder’s DCEU superhero films aren’t devoid of humor, but so much of the humor of those films feels like the result of a realization that there hasn’t been a joke in a while so someone better put one in there. We’ve seen what happens when someone tries too hard to turn a superhero film into a comedy, but that general lack of levity in Snyder’s recent efforts means that heavy moments sometimes don’t land as well as they should because there is so little to measure them against.

The Injustice games, meanwhile, are about as dark as DC storytelling can get. They deal with death, grief, corruption, and the loss of hope. Yet, they still find room for little moments of humor or lighthearted observations that aren’t just genuinely funny but feel appropriate for their characters and the situation.

When Robin says to Batman, “So you won’t kill, but you’re fine with traumatic brain injuries,” in Injustice 2, it’s both a great joke and a sly way of showing Robin feels that Batman is being a bit hypocritical by not seeing Superman’s point of view. There are too few instances of that kind of humor in the Snyder films.

Justice League’s Fights Effectively Help Tell a Story

If the Injustice games were little more than a tournament fighter-style title, they would likely still be respected for their rosters, customization options, and mostly solid mechanics. Of course, the Injustice games go a step further by telling truly epic story.

What’s really impressive are the ways that the game splices those tournament fighter matches into the narrative. It’s not always perfect (how many times do you have to beat up Bane?), but the way that the games utilize those fights as the culmination of major plot points helps sell the importance of the narrative moments as well as what is at stake during what would otherwise be fairly standard single-player fighting game matches.

By comparison, Snyder sometimes struggles to really sell the story during large action sequences just as one of his weak points as a filmmaker is finding the “action” and intrigue in extended dialogue sequences. Action and storytelling in those films sometimes feel like separate blocks rather than two ideas that should flow together.

Injustice Builds Off and Improves What Came Before

DC films do not need to be like MCU films to succeed, but the lack of a cohesive DCEU structure has certainly hurt previous DC films and Snyder’s work in particular. While Snyder tries to tie Man of Steel, Batman vs. Superman, and Justice League together, there are very few instances where those movies truly benefit from their association with each other.

Injustice is an example of how the DCEU could have utilized more unified storytelling in its own way. By balancing sometimes maddening multiverse shenanigans, Injustice 2 picks up the best threads that its predecessor left dangling while also honoring that game’s story as a standalone experience that doesn’t demand a “next chapter” to work.

At the same time, Injustice 2 could easily be enjoyed as a standalone experience but works best when you’ve taken the time to familiarize yourself with the larger stories in play. It’s the kind of serialized storytelling that Snyder tries to utilize from time to time but ultimately falls short of properly mastering.

The Injustice Series Utilizes the Best of Video Games and Filmmaking

While Snyder has stated that some of his works are inspired by video games (he even said at one point that he would reward himself for making progress on Man of Steel by playing Call of Duty which…certainly fits), that comparison is more often brought up as a criticism by those trying to categorize his works as all style and no substance.

That’s a criticism that often undermines the fantastic storytelling of so many video games, but it becomes a bit more valid when you consider that Snyder’s real problem may be that he struggles to find that balance between spectacle and story that the best AAA games often achieve.

Again, you can’t say that Injustice is perfect in this pursuit, but there is something undeniably impressive about how it combines the best of game design with what we typically call “Hollywood filmmaking.” One minute, you’re customizing your gear and learning new combos in Injustice 2, and the next sees you swept off your feet by stunning cinematic sequences that advance the story through strong dialogue, exceptional cinematic design, and incredible visuals.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Snyder has succeeded in the past in terms of utilizing more video-game-like visuals and design concepts, but with his DC superhero films, he often struggles to blend film and video games in the ways that have come to define the Injustice series.

The post Injustice Beat Zack Snyder’s Justice League to the Punch appeared first on Den of Geek.

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kingdomofthelogos · 4 years

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Sensational Idolatry

Read Jude 1:1-4

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Evil will come and break into your life, for its desire is always for you. It comes, not always through grand fanfare with clear declarations of its presence, but often in small subtle ways that creep into your house that it might infect and pervert that which is good, true, and natural. The devil and his demons are not happy to remain in hell, they want to be in your house with you. Hell is wrought with joy when households are twisted and contorted by the wiles of sin. Even the house of God is desired by their licentious appetite, and we may even find ourselves twisting the house of God according to our carnal desires if we are not careful.

Just as there are two ways, the Way of Life and the way of death, Jude illuminates for us two modes of personal character. One is that of mercy, peace, and love abundance. The second is that of hungry licentiousness, the craven life of sensual corruption. Jude, who was one of Christ’s Twelve Apostles, aspires for the faithful to achieve an abundance of mercy, peace, and Christlike love. Moreover, he knows this cannot happen without conflict with the wicked, for sin is always crouching near. Jude understands that victory is found through heavy battle against chaos while nobly standing in the joyous truth of Christ.

Jude opens his letter in declaration of the contrast between the sheep and wolves in sheep's clothing. Furthermore, there is a cosmic nature to the conflict between the two. It is no mere accident that intruders have crept in; and, it is a constant theme in fallen creation that we must stand against enemies within.

One of the great problems bringing chaos into the world is the fact that people sensationalize God. This sin is devastating, and it is more than a mere footnote in Scripture. This is a mode of thinking which begins in a corrupt understanding of God, and then pours over into all areas of life.

Jude is correct in his precise diagnosis of sensationalism. There is a real and serious problem in that people will shift their God designed senses and emotions out of their proper place and run them up a Tower of Babel to occupy the throne of Heaven. This is both an act of idolatry and tyranny, and it produces a vile rot. Despite the fact that this sin takes place in the arena of the senses, it will quickly overrun everything in life.

Jude's diagnosis is that this sin is phonographic; and, as with all pornography, people indulge a heightened moment of intense satisfaction, but then they lose interest quickly once they've satisfied the flickering itch. There is a reason why pornography makes up such a significant portion of the internet, it is both highly desirable and highly disposable. It is a pathway of ever increasing desire coupled to ever diminishing fulfillment. Moreover, it leads one to a point where they can feel nothing at all, and therefore lose any real ability to use their bodies as God intended. This sad tyranny produces small, temporary satisfactions while rejecting enduring happiness. This same mechanism of rot frequently happens to our faith and every aspect of our lives. Jude is in fact correct, people do turn faith into pornography, and hence the need for ever changing worship to satiate our ever changing appetite.

Once God is sensationalized, so then will be everything else. People will start to question the presence of the Holy Spirit based on whether or not they felt the "movement." They start to question the legitimacy of their family's love based on whether or not they are getting the form of attention they desire. They will question the motive of their neighbor based on how an interaction made them feel. Ideas start to be weighed out as whether or not they are inoffensive and politically correct, whether they are nice or mean. Nothing in life will be taken seriously for its deeper meaning, for truth itself becomes a sensation.

The problem with sensations is not that they are inherently sinful, for God made all things good, but because they can be so fully contained within our person that we start to think our own feelings and sensations dictate what is and what is not. This is the idolatry of feelings. It is the Tower of Babel made complete, where our emotional and hormonal systems make their way to the throne of heaven and decide what is and what is not good.

This is a huge problem in our modern age. Information, news, and interactions with one another is almost entirely designed to be sensational. We like click bait news, where a sensational headline catches our eye, so we snatch up the story and read through the scandal only to forget about it moments later. Never is the question asked of whether or not something is true, and if it is true, then we must do something about. Instead we ask about biases and angles, if something is traditional or modern, if it is what the experts say, how it makes us look, if it is what is popular and what advances a cause. We pleasure ourselves with conversations on social justice without the slightest idea of what is true, but only select ideas of what is felt. Anything is asked but the question of truth. The idolatry of sensation creates a world where we hold no one accountable for anything, and instead we forget that truth and action actually matter.

The idolatry of sensation is so wretched because it moves the question of truth into the arena of chaos, an arena where there is no standard other than a person's desire for emotional satisfaction. Moreover, it causes us to forget that our thoughts of whether or not we felt the Holy Spirit may have less to do with the Holy Presence and more to do with the person that cut us off on the highway, the breakfast that got a little burnt, or even the dreams we had last night whose emotions lingered on long after we forgot the exact story in the dream. The tyranny of sensationalism is that it lacks any standard other than the self, and only values what the self feels in a given moment. It produces a world were none can think clearly.

But this is not how God designed us to live. Truth is larger than any of us, and even our senses are creations of God that we might have joy while navigate life with Him. Jude's argument is not that the senses are bad, but he knows how dislocated senses can corrupt the true joys of God's design. Pornography gives an ever diminishing small satisfaction in replacement of the large satisfaction of marriage. All sensationally tyranny does this. It replaces the true happiness, the joy unspeakable and full of glory, with a joy that deserves no words and is full of nothing.

Specifically, this is an intense but small satisfaction that a person becomes immediately bored with after they have reached the emotional climax; then, after hitting that climax they discard the material quickly for it serves no further purpose. Later when the itch returns, they will seek out licentious material again, but this time looking for new material, for the previous has lost its novelty and can never quite give the same feeling. This happens with our faith, and these are not my words but Scripture's. We need a new song, a new style of education, a new interpretation, new names and new words, and so forth and so on.

When this infects the church, it creates rot in the heart of believers who are always looking for how God might satisfy their whims without ever a consideration of how they might serve Him. It replaces true joy with discardable garbage, things to be forgotten in a moment because they never really brought fulfillment in the first place.

Now, this does indicate that music and other emotional stirring forces are always sinful, for they are creations of God. All creations of God can draw us to Him, from the logic of mathematical algorithms to the majesties found in both mountains and musical harmony. What we must do to avoid error, is to ask ourselves why we do things. Do we sing out of motivation to God, even if doing so fails to give us a vivid sensation? Or do we sing to satisfy the self? These are serious issues, but this message is not chiefly critique on worship styles. Our entire society has been sensationalized to the point that the public sphere has almost no meaning at all.

Proverbs 18:27 reminds us that the one who first states a case seems right, until the other comes and cross-examines. Truth, and even the presence of God, is not determined by opinion or awareness. Often, we think one thing is the case, only to realize we were wrong.

Christ tells us how people will know we are His by how we love one another with Christlike love, not by how we feel about the matter. The Scriptures also tell us that there will be dark valleys, moments when we feel as if we are cut off from the light. It is in these moments that we feel as if God's hand has withdrawn. But, God looks upon His creatures and commands endurance, that at a minimum we carry on through the perceived loneliness of the valley of the shadow of death and at least draw interest on a single talent while we await the return of the Master. That at a minimum, we produce some small fruit out of motivated service to Him even as we think Him to be distant.

God created the sensations, not hell. Sin's power is not to invent new desires, but to have us take the natural desires and pleasures and indulge them in ways, times, and degrees that are the farthest removed from what gives real satisfaction. CS Lewis shared with us a letter from Screwtape, a demon in hell, who revelled in how happy the father below is for you to trade your soul to hell for absolutely nothing in return. Not only is it a certain way for hell to acquire you, but the devil also considers it good style. The senses must be in their proper place, as God designed them, and that is where they give us the most satisfaction.

Now that we have distinctly identified this sensual idolatry, let us consider the hope of God's truth. There is evangelism in standing against this tyranny. People are liberated when they live and walk in the truth, and the senses bring far more joy in their natural forms than when used as slaves to the sensual idols of small satisfaction.

Do not think that Jude's aspiration to mercy, peace and love comes without a fight. Salvation in Christ did not come without a fight. Tyrannical idols are always around us, and we do well to stand firmly against them. The pathway to mercy, peace, and love is found through combat against sensual idols. Truth and beauty belong to God, and if we are going to enjoy them, then we must fight for them. Do not think that liberty and mercy come without conflict; therefore, let us stand firm with Christ as conquerors against the world.

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