#fundamental with the assertion that its bad. also he pointed out that i talk like a freak. like a person with high intelligence. fuck u i

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

#weird day. really weird day #i couldnt sleep v well bc my brain was fucked up and i was prob dehydrated so im like extremely out of focus #i did go to the health and wellness center and am now back in therapy which is why my day was so fucking wild. like im too tired so im not #opperating correctly but it was real weird. like last time i got assessed by someone who basically sorted me to a therapist according to my #problems. this time i just kinda stumbled into a 1st session with someone and i dont kno how to feel abt how it went. it was odd #like we didnt go thru like an entire thing of like what r all ur problems? it was more i started talking abt things and he got stuck on #some specific things i said and we talked abt that. which im of 2 minds abt bc he did instantly latch onto the root of some of my issues #which is that i feel fucking dumb all the time bc my brain works a little different but it also wasnt helpful bc like theres a stereotypic #verson of my experience and then theres what i actually went thru and those things dont align in the way he was talking abt it. like i #think were were just talking past eachother a bit. like he wasn't exactly wrong but i do feel a bit like i walked in with an open wound and #and he decided the best course of action was to pat me on the head and tell me im v smart so i walked out still bleeding. but i dont think #its was all bad bc it got under my skin so much. i react like a cat thrown in a bath if u try to call me smart. like fuck off. yes ok im #smart. i have a certified document saying that i have above average intelligence. big fucking whoop. im too fucking dyslexic to do anything #right and my brain is constantly trying to strangle me to death. he called me a gifted kid. fuck u i was too fucking dyslexic to b a gifted #kid. stop talking abt the positive aspects of the compulsive way i live my life when its literally strangling me to death and i want it to #stop. acknowledge my pain old man. also i hate thst therapists hate the word weird. its not a bad word i like that word. i disagree #fundamental with the assertion that its bad. also he pointed out that i talk like a freak. like a person with high intelligence. fuck u i #like words. i will peel my own skin off if u call me smart one more time. lol i was so mad. i argued with him like the whole time. also he #mentioned horoscopes which was weird but whatever. we'll see how the next one goes. i told him to his face i i didnt kno if what we talked #abt was helpful. possibly the rudest ive ever been to a stranger lol. well see how the next session goes. at least it was interesting #god. im fucking so tired and wrung out. #unrelated

[anarkittyuwuuniverse]

"Why are people so interested in saying that something (and particularly something so hotly disputed as a life value) is true or right? Just what is a truth claim for? The ‘will to truth’, says Nietzsche, is one more drive with its own patterns of valuing, desiring and acting. Or, more precisely, there could well be a few ‘wills to truth’. For some truth-seekers ‘their “knowing” is creating, their creation is a legislation, their will to truth is – will to power’ (BGE 211). Here Nietzsche is talking about ‘philosophers’, but the same could hold for many scientists, priests, official historians, party leaders. In this case a truth claim is an assertion of authority over other humans, or maybe over the material world: ‘the entire apparatus of knowledge is an apparatus of abstraction and simplification – directed not at knowledge but at taking possession of things’ (WP 503). Or, conversely, the will to truth can be a way of giving up responsibility, by submitting to the authority of the experts. ‘[T]he less a person knows how to command, the more urgent is his desire for that which commands – and commands sternly, – a God, prince, caste, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience’ (GS347). This isn’t to say that seeking truth is always harmful. Like other drives, the will to truth exists in various assemblages and alliances, it can be harnessed by very different forces. Nietzsche’s point is not to hold truth as an absolute value. ‘No, this bad taste, this will to truth, to “truth at any price”, this youthful madness in the love of truth – have lost their charm for us.’ (Second edition preface to GS). The question, he says, is not whether a judgement is true or false, but to what extent it serves ‘life’ (BGE2, BGE4). And, for sure, sometimes claims to truth can work in the service of life. For example, one helpful thing a truth claim might do is to reveal something relevant to your projects for action. E.g., I point out a fact or mistake which shows that an action isn’t likely to have the outcome your thought, or that a project is inconsistent with what you desire. But note how these kinds of truth claims are only useful if we have a relatively stable starting point: I am not questioning your desired outcome, we can take that much as given, I’m just showing that this particular action isn’t going to get you there. In general, if I want to question one of your values or beliefs or practices, I can only do so at all effectively against a background of other overlapping values and beliefs and practices that we hold in common – or that, at least, are not currently in question. But if it’s just that we are starting from fundamentally different valuing perspectives, we just desire very different things, then these kinds of arguments have no purchase, we’ll only be talking at cross-purposes. Also: pointing out mistakes and inconsistencies generally only helps if we trust each other enough not to take criticism as an attack. Amongst comrades, it is possible to probe, examine, and critique. Amongst strangers, so-called critique or “polemic” is usually just macho posturing." -Nietzsche and Anarchy by Shahin

#anarchism #nietzsche #philosophy

[mokutone]

Idk if you’ve been asked this before but what are your thoughts on Kakashi continuing to call Yamato “Tenzo” after the name change? What are Kakashi’s motivations, how does Yamato feel about it?

ho ho! interesting question, i do love to talk about names and their meanings.

My thoughts: I like it.

Generally, I try to refer to Yamato by his different names depending on what age he is when I'm talking about him, but I generally use Yamato as the overall name, because thats the one he wears during he course of shippuden. But, when I am talking about him from ages 13-26, he is Tenzō. From ages 5ish-13, he is Kinoe, from birth-5ish, he is nameless.

Of all the names though, Tenzō is my favorite personally, because it has a very sentimental meaning, both in terms of the translation of the name, and in terms of its personal meaning to Tenzō (the name being a gift, freely given, by Yukimi (they saved each other! she considered him to be like her brother, even though she had lost her brother...he wanted to claim that. he wanted to be that!), and then later affirmed by Kakashi.

Now for Yamato:

I've seen Kakashi calling Yamato "Tenzō" compared to deadnaming before, but for me that really doesn't hold up emotionally? Tenzō has to be a very emotionally loaded name for him, but most of those emotions aren't bad at all—and, most importantly, Tenzo is THE NAME that he chose for himself. Kinoe was a designation, Yamato was an identity he was ordered to assume (even if he ended up loving it)

But Tenzō was the name which was so important to him that he went against Danzō to assert it as his identity. To me, it's really hard to argue that that's a deadname, I think.

If Yamato was another name he chose for himself, that would make more sense, but it wasn't. It was just another order, another identity imposed upon him for his use as a tool of Konoha.

If his character progression is meant to see Tenzō (a name loaded with his attempts to achieve autonomy and his own identity) as a dead name (something he no longer wants or sees himself in) meanwhile Yamato (a name assigned to him by the hokage) is supposed to be his True/Real/Living name...that's.

that's like really fucking sad, right?

that is like the most depressing arc I could ever imagine for Yamato, and while sure, you could argue it's His True Arc, that he does go down the path of seeing his attempts to own his own identity as childish and naiive, and that the only self he will ever have is one dictated by the hokage, that feels like. super grimdark to me! i'm not going to touch that.

Like, don't get me wrong, I view Yamato as a fundamentally trans character regardless of Kishimoto's motives in writing him, but if he has a deadname, I think that would have to be Kinoe.

That said, while I think both Yamato and Tenzō are both functional names for him, I think Tenzō is a name only used in private, or in private with Kakashi or Yūgao. The way I see it, he likes both names fairly well, but does not want Tenzō to be his public name because:

1) it is super loaded! That was a name only used for him with Yukimi, and his teammates in anbu. Imagine how wigged out you would feel if one of your coworkers started calling you by a nickname you got everyone to call you back in middle or high school. Like, maybe you still love that name, maybe it's still meaningful to you, but you don't want to hear your coworker say it! Let alone students! Good god!

2) It was also like. his anbu designation (because Yamato has never had a "proper" name, only titles and codenames). Gai may not have had much respect for anbu protocol, and perhaps at this point Kakashi doesn't either, but I think Yamato still does. Anbu information should probably be kept secret, I figure, especially if he still expects to go back into anbu after this "mission" is over.

Now for Kakashi:

reasons he might continue to call Yamato "Tenzō" all kind of orbit around one core gesture; expressing familiarity.

He calls Yamato "Yamato" sometimes, and generally (it seems to me at least) when speaking to him in close proximity to other people, so it's not like he's forgotten Yamato's current codename.

He also genuinely works well with and seems to enjoy being around Yamato, so he's not just being a dick.

I think there's a lot of interesting and valid reasons to HC for why Kakashi doe this. Like, you could say that, since it's implied they havent interacted pretty much at all since Kakashi was removed from anbu, u could posit that he's doing it as a kind of reassurance or validation of the friendship (like, "things have changed, i have changed, you have changed, but I still recognize you through the friendship we had in anbu").

u could also say that it's teasing between them. Yamato, refusing to deviate from respectful, if distancing titles such as Senpai, and Kakashi disrespecting official policy by using a codename that Should Not be used outside of anbu.

or maybe Kakashi thinks Tenzō, due to its emotional meaning and history, is the most important name he has called his friend, and so, when he can get away with it, will use it.

maybe all of the above! or something else entirely. who is to say.

#yamswers #surrealistnonsense #also yamato as a name raises some concerns for me that i don't super want to get into bc like. it could definitely just be #a linguistic misunderstanding on my part #but i can't honestly let go of because of kishimotos tendences as a storyteller #also. its worth wondering why yamato stubbornly refuses to drop the senpai honorific #even tho theyre the same rank now AND kakashi dislikes the formality of it #why do u think he does that hm...? #i just think its interesting. is all. #long post

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation"

The mainstream critique of Facebook is surprisingly compatible with Facebook’s own narrative about its products. FB critics say that the company’s machine learning and data-gathering slides disinformation past users’ critical faculties, poisoning their minds.

Meanwhile, Facebook itself tells advertisers that it can use data and machine learning to slide past users’ critical faculties, convincing them to buy stuff.

In other words, the mainline of Facebook critics start from the presumption that FB is a really good product and that advertisers are definitely getting their money’s worth when they shower billions on the company.

Which is weird, because these same critics (rightfully) point out that Facebook lies all the time, about everything. It would be bizarre if the only time FB was telling the truth was when it was boasting about how valuable its ad-tech is.

Facebook has a conflicted relationship with this critique. I’m sure they’d rather not be characterized as a brainwashing system that turns good people into monsters, but not when the choice is between “brainwashers” and “con-artists selling garbage to credulous ad execs.”

As FB investor and board member Peter Thiel puts it: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.” In other words, the important word in “evil genius” is “genius,” not “evil.”

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1440312271511568393

The accord of tech critics and techbros gives rise to a curious hybrid, aptly named by Maria Farrell: the Prodigal Techbro.

A prodigal techbro is a self-styled wizard of machine-learning/surveillance mind control who has see the error of his ways.

https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/23/story-ate-the-world-im-biting-back/

This high-tech sorcerer doesn’t disclaim his magical powers — rather, he pledges to use them for good, to fight the evil sorcerers who invented a mind-control ray to sell your nephew a fidget-spinner, then let Robert Mercer hijack it to turn your uncle into a Qanon racist.

There’s a great name for this critique, criticism that takes its subjects’ claims to genius at face value: criti-hype, coined by Lee Vinsel, describing a discourse that turns critics into “the professional concern trolls of technoculture.”

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

The thing is, Facebook really is terrible — but not because it uses machine learning to brainwash boomers into iodine-guzzling Qnuts. And likewise, there really is a problem with conspiratorial, racist, science-denying, epistemologically chaotic conspiratorialism.

Addressing that problem requires that we understand the direction of the causal arrow — that we understand whether Facebook is the cause or the effect of the crisis, and what role it plays.

“Facebook wizards turned boomers into orcs” is a comforting tale, in that it implies that we need merely to fix Facebook and the orcs will turn back into our cuddly grandparents and get their shots. The reality is a lot gnarlier and, sadly, less comforting.

There’s been a lot written about Facebook’s sell-job to advertisers, but less about the concern over “disinformation.” In a new, excellent longread for Harpers, Joe Bernstein makes the connection between the two:

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

Fundamentally: if we question whether Facebook ads work, we should also question whether the disinformation campaigns that run amok on the platform are any more effective.

Bernstein starts by reminding us of the ad industry’s one indisputable claim to persuasive powers: ad salespeople are really good at convincing ad buyers that ads work.

Think of department store magnate John Wanamaker’s lament that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Whoever convinced him that he was only wasting half his ad spend was a true virtuoso of the con.

As Tim Hwang documents brilliantly in his 2020 pamphlet “Subprime Attention Crisis,” ad-tech is even griftier than the traditional ad industry. Ad-tech companies charge advertisers for ads that are never served, or never rendered, or never seen.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

They rig ad auctions, fake their reach numbers, fake their conversions (they also lie to publishers about how much they’ve taken in for serving ads on their pages and short change them by millions).

Bernstein cites Hwang’s work, and says, essentially, shouldn’t this apply to “disinformation?”

If ads don’t work well, then maybe political ads don’t work well. And if regular ads are a swamp of fraudulently inflated reach numbers, wouldn’t that be true of political ads?

Bernstein talks about the history of ads as a political tool, starting with Eisenhower’s 1952 “Answers America” campaign, designed and executed at great expense by Madison Ave giants Ted Bates.

Hannah Arendt, whom no one can accuse of being soft on the consequences of propaganda, was skeptical of this kind of enterprise: “The psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.”

The ad industry ran an ambitious campaign to give scientific credibility to its products. As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1962, propagandists were engaged in “the increasing attempt to control its use, measure its results, define its effects.”

Appropriating the jargon of behavioral scientists let ad execs “assert audiences, like workers in a Taylorized workplace, need not be persuaded through reason, but could be trained through repetition to adopt the new consumption habits desired by the sellers.” -Zoe Sherman

These “scientific ads” had their own criti-hype attackers, like Vance “Hidden Persuaders” Packard, who admitted that “researchers were sometimes prone to oversell themselves — or in a sense to exploit the exploiters.”

Packard cites Yale’s John Dollard, a scientific ad consultant, who accused his colleagues of promising advertisers “a mild form of omnipotence,” which was “well received.”

Today’s scientific persuaders aren’t in a much better place than Dollard or Packard. Despite all the talk of political disinformation’s reach, a 2017 study found “sharing articles from fake news domains was a rare activity” affecting <10% of users.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586

So, how harmful is this? One study estimates “if one fake news article were about as persuasive as one TV campaign ad, the fake news in our database would have changed vote shares by an amount on the order of hundredths of a percentage point.”

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211

Now, all that said, American politics certainly feel and act differently today than in years previous. The key question: “is social media creating new types of people, or simply revealing long-obscured types of people to a segment of the public unaccustomed to seeing them?”

After all, American politics has always had its “paranoid style,” and the American right has always had a sizable tendency towards unhinged conspiratorialism, from the John Birch Society to Goldwater Republicans.

Social media may not be making more of these yahoos, but rather, making them visible to the wider world, and to each other, allowing them to make common cause and mobilize their adherents (say, to carry tiki torches through Charlottesville in Nazi cosplay).

If that’s true, then elite calls to “fight disinformation” are unlikely to do much, except possibly inflaming things. If “disinformation” is really people finding each other (not infecting each other) labelling their posts as “disinformation” won’t change their minds.

Worse, plans like the Biden admin’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lump 1/6 insurrectionists in with anti-pipeline activists, racial justice campaigners, and animal rights groups.

Whatever new powers we hand over to fight disinformation will be felt most by people without deep-pocketed backers who’ll foot the bill for crack lawyers.

Here’s the key to Bernstein’s argument: “One reason to grant Silicon Valley’s assumptions about our mechanistic persuadability is that it prevents us from thinking too hard about the role we play in taking up and believing the things we want to believe. It turns a huge question about the nature of democracy in the digital age — what if the people believe crazy things, and now everyone knows it? — into a technocratic negotiation between tech companies, media companies, think tanks, and universities.”

I want to “Yes, and” that.

My 2020 book How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism doesn’t dismiss the idea that conspiratorialism is on the rise, nor that tech companies are playing a key role in that rise — but without engaging in criti-hype.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

In my book, I propose that conspiratorialism isn’t a crisis of what people believe so much as how they arrive at their beliefs — it’s an “epistemological crisis.”

We live in a complex society plagued by high-stakes questions none of us can answer on our own.

Do vaccines work? Is oxycontin addictive? Should I wear a mask? Can we fight covid by sanitizing surfaces? Will distance ed make my kind an ignoramus? Should I fly in a 737 Max?

Even if you have the background to answer one of these questions, no one can answer all of them.

Instead, we have a process: neutral expert agencies use truth-seeking procedures to sort of competing claims, showing their work and recusing themselves when they have conflicts, and revising their conclusions in light of new evidence.

It’s pretty clear that this process is breaking down. As companies (led by the tech industry) merge with one another to form monopolies, they hijack their regulators and turn truth-seeking into an auction, where shareholder preferences trump evidence.

This perversion of truth has consequences — take the FDA’s willingness to accept the expensively manufactured evidence of Oxycontin’s safety, a corrupt act that kickstarted the opioid epidemic, which has killed 800,000 Americans to date.

If the best argument for vaccine safety and efficacy is “We used the same process and experts as pronounced judgement on Oxy” then it’s not unreasonable to be skeptical — especially if you’re still coping with the trauma of lost loved ones.

As Anna Merlan writes in her excellent Republic of Lies, conspiratorialism feeds on distrust and trauma, and we’ve got plenty of legitimate reasons to experience both.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

Tech was an early adopter of monopolistic tactics — the Apple ][+ went on sale the same year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail, and the industry’s growth tracked perfectly with the dismantling of antitrust enforcement over the past 40 years.

What’s more, while tech may not persuade people, it is indisputably good at finding them. If you’re an advertiser looking for people who recently looked at fridge reviews, tech finds them for you. If you’re a boomer looking for your old high school chums, it’ll do that too.

Seen in that light, “online radicalization” stops looking like the result of mind control, instead showing itself to be a kind of homecoming — finding the people who share your interests, a common online experience we can all relate to.

I found out about Bernstein’s article from the Techdirt podcast, where he had a fascinating discussion with host Mike Masnick.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210928/12593747652/techdirt-podcast-episode-299-misinformation-about-disinformation.shtml

Towards the end of that discussion, they talked about FB’s Project Amplify, in which the company tweaked its news algorithm to uprank positive stories about Facebook, including stories its own PR department wrote.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#zuckerveganism

Project Amplify is part of a larger, aggressive image-control effort by the company, which has included shuttering internal transparency portals, providing bad data to researchers, and suing independent auditors who tracked its promises.

I’d always assumed that this truth-suppression and wanton fraud was about hiding how bad the platform’s disinformation problem was.

But listening to Masnick and Bernstein, I suddenly realized there was another explanation.

Maybe Facebook’s aggressive suppression of accurate assessments of disinformation on its platform are driven by a desire to hide how expensive (and profitable) political advertising it depends on is pretty useless.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_(41793470192).jpg

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#pluralistic

[sillyguyhotline]

How YTTD Challenges Conventional Norms of Emotional Strength

Hello! I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how emotional vulnerability is present throughout YTTD’s characters, particularly how Nankidai contrasts more feminine coping mechanisms with more traditionally masculine coping mechanisms. I’ve touched on this topic before (albeit less directly) when I’ve discussed why I think Nao and Kanna are criminally underrated by the fandom, but I’ve never really talked about it in detail. However, when I was talking about the misogyny in Danganronpa last night, there was always a thought in the back of my mind that YTTD was different, fundamentally better in its portrayal of female characters and femininity as a whole. And as I thought about it more, I realized that the reason I think this way is because of how well it portrays and handles emotional vulnerability of its characters.

I think, first, that it’s most important to establish how emotional vulnerability in the context of gender is most commonly portrayed. Men are typically not allowed to show emotion or to cry, and their strength is determined by their lack of emotion. Conversely, the perception that women are the weaker gender is often characterized by their increased freedom to show emotion, and any “strong female character” is simply an excessively masculine woman who’s cruel and emotionless. In fact, the version of Reko we see as a doll, the Reko before Alice’s death, is actually a perfect example of the common “strong female character.” She barely cares about her brother, she’s rude, she exhibits little to no compassion, and she lashes out at the people around her. But this is not the Reko we know and love, and in fact it is the Reko whose cruelty is exhibited by her willingness to kill a version of herself. She isn’t introduced as a good character, she’s introduced as the person Reko no longer is, the person Reko has grown past, and that is a good thing.

I also find it very interesting that the two men who are physically the strongest (Keiji and Q-taro) and who assert themselves as the most masculine leaders from the beginning actually turn out to be some of the most weak and cowardly characters in the game. Q-taro has a lot of confidence in himself and his abilities; in Russian Roulette he is proud and boastful, claiming that he is strong and experienced enough to shoot the gun. However, in the first Main Game he is scared enough of dying that he nominates the children to be killed off so he doesn’t die, he has an ending where his cowardice gets the best of him and he sacrifices everyone else in order to escape, and in one of the endings to the arbitration room attraction he is too scared to push the button. His character arc doesn’t come about because he becomes stronger or more resilient, it comes about because he realizes that his life is not the only valuable one and that compassion to the rest of the group is crucial. Keiji, too, suffers from incredible emotional weakness. Though he is incredibly muscular and centers himself as one of the group’s leaders immediately, one of his biggest flaws is his inability to deal with his own emotions. Though he’s aware of how atrocious his actions have been, he’s far more willing to hide from his problems, avoid confrontation, and take advantage of his selfishness than he is to actually make steps towards change. And this undoubtedly a flaw of his! 

Then, on the other hand, you take the third “buff” character, but the one who doesn’t immediately aim to set himself up as a strong leader. While Keiji’s first goal is to take charge of the group and Q-taro’s first goal is to establish himself as the strong one, Alice is immediately set up as a coward. Sure, when we first meet him in the locker he’s sort of intimidating, but as soon as we interview him we realize that he’s sort of an idiot and doesn’t pose much of a threat. The interesting thing, though, is that Alice is really the most emotionally mature out of all of the buff men in the game. Like Keiji, he has committed a terrible crime and has come to terms with the consequences for what he’s done, but unlike Keiji, he’s willing to take actions and make reparations. He lets himself be a more compassionate person, becoming a protector over Kanna of sorts, and he never prioritizes his own well-being over that of the people he cares for. He is a fully-fledged, unapologetically emotional character who doesn’t try to bury his problems in the hopes that they won’t come back to haunt him. Out of all of the “strong” male characters, his approach to his issues is a rather feminine one, but it ends up being the one that cements him as a better person than the others.

Now, I set this up while talking about Keiji’s lack of emotional vulnerability, but I believe that one of the biggest components playing into it is how trust is such a huge factor in the game. And this begins to involve Shin, too. It becomes clear throughout the course of the game that one of the only reasons Sara has made it this far is because she harbors the ability to put her trust in others and because they put their trust in her. We see, then, that Shin becomes an enemy to the group because he refuses to trust any of them and mocks all of them for being so willing to trust the others. Our biggest point of contention with Keiji, as well, is when he refuses to share his Me-Tokens with us out of fear that we could learn something about his backstory. Both men have terrible experiences with vulnerability, and they loathe the prospect of putting their trust into anyone else for fear of what could happen with it. However… the game sets this up as a very bad thing. Lack of vulnerability turns Shin into a villain, and the only way that he manages to redeem himself is by utilizing his compassion for Kanna and sacrificing himself. Keiji, similarly, loses his credibility as a person because he refuses to be vulnerable, and his distrust of himself and avoidance of his problems are what make Midori’s attacks hit so hard in 3-1A. Our villain characters exist because they cannot trust anyone, because they cannot be vulnerable, and in the same way we see Sara turning into a villain as she loses her trust in the rest of the group.

To tie this all together, I think that this is why Nao and Kanna are undoubtedly the strongest characters in the game- because they are female characters who are allowed to show emotion, because they are allowed to show their trauma, and they’re allowed to grow past that. When we’re introduced to Nao, she’s already someone who appears very weak in a feminine sense, panicking and freaking out in response to the situation. Kanna is the same; her sister is dead, and this has left her as a weeping, emotional mess. Nao’s condition only gets worse as the game goes on; she loses the mentor who’s most important to her, and in a blind panic she ends up causing a lot of harm and concern to her fellow participants. In any other game, this would probably have been where the characters of these two would have stopped, or even how they would have ended. They’re women, they’re not supposed to be strong, they already have weak and emotional coping mechanisms for their problems. However, Nankidai lets the two of them grow past this point while still letting them retain their more emotional components. Nao lets herself retain her memory and affection for Mishima, but she makes the conscious decision to abandon the AI and work with Shin to combat the evil one. Kanna retains her friendship with Shin, but she does so carefully, displaying enough kindness to him to make him change his heart. Even when she tearfully pleads for Sara to let her die, it comes from a point of what she considers emotional wisdom and her own evaluation of her usefulness to the group. If she’s left alive, her character comes full-circle and she realizes that she does, in fact, have value to the group, which gives her the will to live on. Both of these women have well-developed character arcs that allow them to feel vulnerability and emotion. They become stronger and wiser people without fundamentally changing who they are, and their femininity doesn’t have to be compromised or belittled for them to become better people. Though they are physically the weakest characters and have some of the biggest low points of the game, they are in fact well-developed and emotionally mature. Their vulnerability is what gives them this opportunity, and it truly wraps together how well Nankidai portrays femininity and vulnerability in his story. 

#here i am #writing a gay little meta #enjoy #i thought about this to some degree #yttd #your turn to die #yttd meta #nao egokoro #kanna kizuchi #keiji shinogi #kimi ga shine #depressobean rambles

[immortalonus]

Where You Belong: Chapter 3

A/N: I hate this chapter so, so much. Unfortunately, I also couldn't find any way around it. If I got anything wrong, chances are I just missed it, so feel free to let me know.

Read on AO3 here.

“...Humans with ghost powers!? Crazy, right?” Valerie snorted, then paused.

“Or humans that turn into ghosts, or ghosts that—stay human when they die or whatever. The important thing is that there was a part of Ellie that was real. And if it hadn't been for Phantom, I'd have just left her there with Plasmius, to do whatever—to hurt—to—”

Valerie took a moment, struggling to admit out loud what she had already begun suspect for herself.

“—kill her. he was gonna murder a little girl, mama, and if Phantom hadn't convinced me she still had some human in her, if I hadn't listened to a ghost, I woulda let him.”

Phantom, if she hadn't listened to Phantom, specifically. It was a detail that still irritated her every time it came up.

The ghost boy had been so persistent, for so long in his charade of being a “good guy,” that most days, she simply tuned him out.

And truly, was that so wrong?

Up to that point, Everything Phantom had said in his own defense had been nothing more than talk. Oh, he said sorry, he said he felt bad about it, but at the end of the day, what had he done?

Ruined her fathers job and her life, then fled the scene like the criminal he was.

Stole for the hell of it and couldn't even be bothered to take the blame when he got caught.

(Valerie still had no idea why the ghost thought an “evil mind controlling clown guy,” was a reasonable excuse, at all, for anything.)

Who was always ready to fight, but never to help.

Never, not once, in all the wretched aftermath of the Grey's financial dissolutionment, had Phantom come to their aid. Not in the immediate events that came after, nor during the process of her father's dismissal, when he could well have stayed his expulsion simply by appearing, proving Damian Grey's assertions of spectral interference months before he would have been otherwise believed.

Not during the move from her childhood home to her current residence down in Elmerton. Too strapped to hire assistance, it had been down to Valerie, her father, and Fenton, who had taken his weekend off to help her move instead.

No haunting the creditors who dogged their every step, even now.

Hell, he couldn't even be bothered to tell the public that it was his fault her life was ruined! In private, yes, where he knew no one could hear. But never where it mattered, to whom it mattered, since that would require Phantom to actually give something up for once and admit what he did was wrong. Which he would never do, because Phantom, like all ghosts, was a fundamentally egotistical creature, right down to his very core.

No, Valerie had good reason to believe that she had Phantom all figured out: A showboating prig, full of hot air and false excuses, distinct from other ghosts only in his capacity to fool the masses into believing he was ever anything more.

Then Elle happened.

The ghost girl's mere existence had managed to throw Valerie's world into a whole new tailspin, leaving her reeling even as events conspired to yank more and more of her footing out from under her, teetering on the edge of her own understanding as all her convictions suffered blow after blow.

Living ghosts.

Ghostly humans.

Friends acting as enemies.

While enemies acted as friends.

“I woulda let him kill her.” She repeated, “Just like I let him kill—end—All those other ghosts I gave him, just handed 'em over for whatever freak experiments he had cooked up.”

Just like she had snuffed out who knew how many other specters during her own patrols.

How many of them were still alive in there, she wondered, underneath the ghost?

Her mother's brows seemed to furrow in response, worried, no doubt, over what exactly her daughter had done.

“I didn't mean it mama, it wasn't my fault! It was all Plasmius, you know Plasmius? That knockoff Nosferatu all the time picking fights with Phantom. He used me and he lied, and—“ Valerie licked her lips futilely seeking moisture from a mouth gone dry.

“He played human to do it.”

Valerie felt a flush of rage and shame wash over her at the words. She had been used all over again, played for a fool and manipulated just like her so-called “friends” had used her before, dangling control and importance in exchange for the very essence of her soul.

To learn that she had struck the same deal with a different kind of devil, that all her power was a tool in someone else's hands had curdled into an ache that rivaled the raw burn of a whole new betrayal.

Because unlike the A-listers she'd run with not too long ago, or even Phantom, who she'd always hated, Vlad Masters had been a man she'd seen fit to trust.

“Plasmius was Masters, and—God, they even share the same first name—My sponsor, the guy who gave me my first suit, trained me up, even kept me and daddy off the streets when things were at their worst. And me stupid enough to think it was 'cause he cared.”

A hard exclamation escaped her throat at the thought, to forceful for a scoff, too sharp for laughter.

No such thing indeed.

“Everyone's out for something. Masters—Plasmius, he was out for Phantom, and I was just the pawn that was supposed to get take him out.”

That's part of what scares me too. Why was Plasmius so dead set on Phantom? Why'd he sink so much money into taking him out? Why does Phantom hate him back?”

And it was peculiar, how much Phantom seemed to hate Plasmius. Valerie had thought for a long time that it was some kind of territory dispute, a conflict over a rare and valuable thin spot between realities. After years of chasing after Phantom, however, it became more and more clear that the ghost boy's resentment of Plasmius went beyond that of simple competition.

The mere mention of the vampiric specter was enough to turn Phantom tense and snippy, as though the mere thought of the other ghost irritated him, somehow. After witnessing the two up close, Valerie's suspicions had cemented into certainty: Phantom hated Plasmius, and he hated him personally.

“There's so much I don't know, and no one to tell me. Plasmius doesn't know that I know, and until I get out from under him, that's how it's gotta stay.”

How Valerie was supposed to get out from under Plasmius was another question entirely. Plasmius, in Vlad Master's guise, was the sole reason the Grey family had managed to keep on top of its debts for as long as they had. To make matters worse, he also provided most of the materials Valerie's suit consumed for its more elaborate systems and weaponry.

Even so, the temptation to throw it all away and smash Plasmius' smug face against her boot was a strong one, stayed only by the fear of what would happen to her father if she tried.

“Phantom went squirrelly on me too,” she said. “I thought maybe I could get something from him, since we never ended that truce. But in the end, he was still just a ghost.”

She hadn't wanted to go to Phantom, in those days between Elle's escape and her decision to plunge into the Zone, had felt too much like would be admitting something, somehow, to do so. Had it not been for the fact that Phantom was her sole and only choice, she was sure she would never have asked at all.

Once she'd made the decision to do it, he'd been easy enough to track down. She found him—where else?—but In the middle of a fight, duking it out at altitude with one of the countless animal ghosts that regularly made their way across the paltry excuse for a veil stretched across Amity Park.

The fight had been easy, the conversation that came after it, much less so.

How could someone be alive and dead at the same time? Were they alive and dead at once? all the time? Did they alternate at will? Were they born? Were they made? How many were there? A lot? How did she spot a human-ghost if she saw it? Was there a way to tell? Or did you have to guess?

Phantom had been the one to tell her that these human-ghost, ghost-human things could exist in the first place, which had lead her to expect, rather despite herself, that perhaps he could explain them, too.

So it was only natural, really, that in that moment precisely, he had chosen to clam up. He knew nothing of these miraculous hybrids, could find out nothing concerning them, and as to finding them, he had no clue at all. Nevermind that it had been he who had first told her such beings were possible in the first place, the ghost was a veritable well of ignorance, utterly unable to aid in her pursuits.

“Ghosts are narrow minded and selfish, they go round everywhere like they've got blinkers on both sides of their head. You stick an idea in front of their nose, and they grab it if they like it, and shove it away if they don't. They don't consider where you got the idea from, they don't think about why its there, they don't even goddamn care why you picked it up in the first place. All that matters is somethings blocking their little slice of the world, theirs, specifically, 'cause they wouldn't never consider any other kind.

That was Phantom's problem, he wanted a truce yeah, but his way, not mine. A truce for beating things up, not a truce for trusting and talking or or anything that might give trouble to him. That wasn't how he wanted it to work.

He was even worse with Elle. She's the only other one I could talk to—not counting you, ma—who could tell me anything about anything about what was going on!

And Elle, I couldn't track her down. When she said she had places to be, I thought she meant like Phantom when there wasn't anything fun for him to hit, not just gone! I tried tracking her, I did, but it didn't work. Either staying human hides her, or she's run too far to track.

Stupid Phantom wouldn't help me with that, neither. It was just 'oh she's fine,' this and 'why do you care' that, like I can't worry about a human girl wondering on her own without nobody to make sure she's even fed!”

Not only had he been absurdly reluctant to answer her questions, but even had the audacity to wonder if they were at all related to her continued association with Plasmius. It was an insult, beyond all doubt, as though he didn't know how little choice she had.

As though he wasn't the one who forced her into making it.

“I guess so far as he figured, if Elle wasn't being kidnapped, then she was fine. It didn't matter that she's a kid, or alone, or was stealing apples just to eat. She was strong enough to survive on her own and not melt, and that was good enough for him. He just sat there when she left, too, watching her scat like any other ghost."

Did he know how far she intended to run, or simply fail to understand why he should care?

"No matter how well he thinks he means, Phantom can't help the human parts of her. Just because she could beat any man that tried to take doesn't mean that she doesn't get—scared, or lonely, or—“ Valerie wriggled uncomfortably in her pallet of dust. “—Or that she doesn't need people. Phantom can't give that, and Plasmius is a sick piece of shit, so that left me. Just me. If I let that go, then Elle'd be alone for real.”

The worry in her mother's gaze didn't lighten, exactly, but it did shift, consternation giving way to curiosity mixed with a hearty topping of concern. It was easy to imagine the question she would have asked, if she could but speak.

“Then what is it do you think you're doing all the way out here, hm?”

Valerie sighed. This, at least, she had a clear answer for.

“I'm on a mission. There's this thing called the infini-map. Don't have all the details, but with a name like that?” She scoffed, “don't need 'em. Whatever it is, its good enough to send Plasmius into a fit just at the idea of laying claws on it.

If I could get something like that, imagine, I could find Elle in a heartbeat. No more lookin', no more running blind and hoping for luck. And when I find her, I could use it get out from under Masters thumb for good. Use it, sell it, whatever, with that thing, it would be easy. Me and daddy could be set for life.”

At the time, the idea had seemed brilliant. With her search for Elle stymied, and rental payments approaching their inevitable due, she had latched onto the idea of a Ghost Zone mission the instant her so-called benefactor had brought it up. It was a chance to bleed “Mister Masters” of a little more of his money, without actually having to tolerate his presence for any length of time. Even better, it presented an opportunity to do right by her father while staying far away from the quiet anger, the soft, dispirited sense of regret that had seemed to overtake him as jobs remained scarce, and Valerie continued to hunt.

Perhaps most selfishly, it was the opportunity for the Red Huntress to become what Valerie had had always wanted her to be: A free agent, no puppet masters, no expectations, just the world, and herself within in it.

It was one thing she truly did not regret, even now, lying in the dirt looking up at the memory of a memory ripped to tatters in her hands. Whatever else happened in this strange, wild place, it was her decision, her choice. She was finally in control.

Thinking of control, there was another reason why she wanted to speed up her search for the ghost girl.

“Elle's a good kid, but she <i>is</i> a kid, with a ghost in her she don't even know to fear. I'm not sure how long she can fight it like that without anyone to tell her what's going on. She needs someone who knows about ghosts,who can show her how to fight back, 'cause if she doesn't, I'm not sure how long she'll last until she ends up Plasmius."

“Or Phantom.”

It was an ugly theory, but explained a great deal. The identical looks, the raw antipathy towards Vlad, in particular, or how a full ghost could see himself as related, somehow, to a being that was something so much more.

All ghosts came from somewhere, and Valerie rather doubted Elle was truly Plasmius' only attempt at capturing a hybrid of his own.

“'Cause I think they're the same kinda thing. It explains why Plasmius wanted her so bad, and they change the same way, too. They go from being a ghost, ectosignitures and all, to being alive. Not some fake, but breathing, heartbeats, everything. There's something in them that's really, truly alive.

Plasmius and Elle, they're both alive," she whispered, "but only Elle's human, and I don't know how long that's gonna last.

I can't stay stupid about all this ghost shit, neither. There's so much they won't tell me, and Elle's my ticket to figuring it out. If I can find her in time, I could fix it. Bring her to the Fentons, maybe, take out the ghost before it gets too big, make cash, move out me and daddy and Elle all together. Either way, this is how I do it, right here, right now. This is my chance.”

No more being lead around like a particularly witless donkey for his carrot wielding master, no more suppressing every violent impulse that threatened to take her over any time she chanced to look “Mister Masters” in his insufferable face, no more long, interminable periods of her nose against a grindstone day after day, scraping her fingers bloody against poverty's wall in the way her father seemed convinced was better, somehow, for all the pain it so obviously caused him.

“I know it's risky, but it's worth it, it's gotta be. If I can get the infinimap, then I can fix everything, all at once. I won't owe nobody nothing, and I can start fixing things again, for everyone.”

And perhaps her mother agreed, as the shadow that had gathered against her brow seemed to ease, relaxing back into something more serene.

Valerie smiled, running her thumb over the place where her face once was, pointedly ignoring the sensation of absence in favor of the smiling visage still shining across her display.

“See, I knew you'd see it my way.” Valerie was pretty sure she'd had to have gotten her sense of adventure from somewhere, after all. “It's hard, but I'm fine. And when this is all done, it'll be more than fine, it'll be better.

Just you wait.”

Overlay image: Session end.

The memory of Theresa Grey vanished slowly, victim of her daughter's own reluctance to see her go. But vanish she did, sunshine grew pale and laughter faded, memory crushed into data and erased of meaning, and Valerie was once again alone.

She sighed, finally allowing herself to lower the photograph as she reached over for her other parcels, which she began collecting into a small bundle atop her chest.

Technically, she could reach over to put her mother with her boots and rations instead of the other way around, but found herself suddenly disinclined to do so. Without the stress of the day to keep her going, she found exhaustion pushing down at her very bones, keeping her pressed against the meager comfort of her body warmed hollow of dirt.

No, lifting herself up as little as possible seemed a very enticing proposition indeed.

She grabbed both her boots, then her gloves, peeled off to reveal the same skintight leather which coated the rest of her, the remains of her wallet, and a single, battered bag, too smooth for leather, too thick for silk: All supplies from her earlier run in with the thieving insect from before, pared down to those goods and supplies she could actually use.

She chose not to dwell on how few of them there were.

Her mother came last, placed gently at the head of the pile, where she could look it over one last time.

She should have done this sooner, she knew, perhaps even the moment she entered the Zone. Keeping the photograph on her physical person was too much of a risk, one born of foolish sentiment and thoughtless desire. She had just wanted so badly to keep one good thing with her, somewhere tangible and real, she'd disregarded the threat she put it in.

Because if there was one thing death was guaranteed to do, it was steal everything and everyone it thought was yours.

Valerie placed her hands over the small collection, reaching once again into the inorganic hum prickling ever at the edges of her mind.

Unit_1 selected (Gen_Storage:)

Report

Status: Stable (20% full)

Contents (See details)

Intake request:

Intake selected? (Y/N)

>Yes

Processing…

A flick of her mental fingers, and it was done. Boots, bag, and all turned into their own kind of mist, dissolving into the small pocket dimension that followed her always, shadows diffusing into the surrounding light, the weight of them dissipating until nothing but the memory of their pressure remained.

Valerie brushed her fingers over the space they left behind, a half smile tugged at the corners of her trembling lips.

“Goodnight, Ma,” She whispered. A grief like seaglass hung heavy on her heart, smoothed over edges cut no longer, though the heft of its sorrow lay leaden even yet.

“Sleep good now, you hear?”

No voice answered in response.

Valerie no longer expected it to.

Deep in the realm of the dead, a figure turned on its side, curled against itself on its small outcropping of stone. Legs up to its chest, arms clenched tight around its shoulders as it heaved, breath by mortal breath, seeking some moment of repose.

#Valerie Grey #Danny Phantom #Fanfiction #Where You Belong #Chapter 3 #Writing

[shihalyfie]

Daisuke’s characterization in V-Tamer is actually out of character

This is a post rather different from the usual content I do for this blog, and to be honest, I’m a bit hesitant about it, since it’s hard not to make it sound like some kind of scathingly critical negativity about the relevant chapter. It’s not intended that way -- V-Tamer’s crossover chapter with 02 lies firmly in “Bandai-commissioned spinoff” territory with what was most likely very little input from the anime staff, and with these kinds of things, right hand very rarely talks to left hand, and you see it in things like Tag Tamers having major contradictions with the anime despite how ostensibly important it is to 02′s story. Izawa and Yabuno were busy with V-Tamer production, and it’s very likely Toei and Bandai only provided them with very scant details of 02′s base premise (especially since the chapter itself doesn’t refer to any major 02 plot details besides XV-mon’s and Magnamon’s existence). I really do not blame them for not necessarily having thorough awareness of Daisuke and his character arc (especially since he himself is a rather deceptive character), and having to make a lot of assumptions while writing.

In the end, I decided to write this due to personal request from an acquaintance, who pointed out that there are a lot of people out there who like to claim things like "Daisuke got more character development in this single chapter than he did in 02 itself” (which is another manifestation of the constantly repeated fanbase mantra that Daisuke was lacking in that department when he really wasn’t). The thing is, this chapter’s interpretation of Daisuke is so far removed from the character he was even at the start of 02 that this “development” only works by artificially engineering a conflict that shouldn’t have even happened with Daisuke in the first place.

Again: This is not something meant to criticize this chapter as something bad (personally, I do think it’s rather entertaining in its own way) as much as, simply, out of character is still out of character, and I'm mainly just writing this in the hopes of making a case that this version of Daisuke should not be reflected back on the original series.

(Screenshots below are from the DH translation of V-Tamer, and PositronCannon’s 02 subs.)

The issue here is that the whole plot of the chapter itself is based on the idea that Daisuke is the kind of person who likes fighting for the sake of fighting, and has an impulsive urge to charge in aggressively to the point of even looking down on his friends for denying him. Certainly, on the surface, it does seem to match up with Daisuke still having difficulties adjusting to these new kids being his friends at the beginning of the series, and generally having an abrasive, rough-around-the-edges personality, but...

Ah.

The above screenshots are from 02 episode 7, which is a very early episode -- one that clearly takes place before Magnamon’s appearances in Hurricane Touchdown and 02 episode 20-21, and XV-mon’s appearance in 02 episode 22 -- and one that’s still part of Daisuke’s early bout of “shallow” episodes, in which he’s still instinctively lashing out at Takeru due to his perception of having something going on with Hikari. And while he does initially lash out at them for wanting to turn back, the moment everyone else makes a good case for them turning back (especially when their own Digimon run out of energy), he -- rather easily -- grits his teeth and actually calls the retreat himself.

On top of the fact that Daisuke is very capable of pulling back when he practically understands it’s necessary (even if he hates it), some important points need to be made about his behavior here: Daisuke does not push forward on fighting because he likes fighting and attacking things, but because he practically wants to see the Dark Tower destroyed (and the Dark Tower is causing problems for everyone everywhere right now). He hates the Kaiser, and wants to fight everyone under him, because he’s hurting others. Only one episode later, Daisuke vocalizes that he’s even okay with losing a soccer game as long as he gets to play someone who’s inspired kids all over the country and enjoy the match.

The other problem is that it actually implies that Daisuke would be able to do anything without his friends’ approval. Despite Daisuke’s ostensibly rough surface demeanor, he gets strung along easily. It is absurdly easy to shut him down or override his opinions just by being assertive enough. There’s a very good reason why he’s been described as “prevented from doing much in the first half”. Daisuke spends the first half of the series largely unable to make his own decisions because his friends keep making them for him, and part of his character development involves him becoming able to actually put his foot down and do what he wants when it’s something he cares about, which is something that very much does not set in until the second half.

In addition, the implication that Daisuke would be actively belligerent to the point of having the priority of “destroying enemies” instead of “helping others” is very contrary to the whole point of his character arc:

In 02 episode 20, the first time Daisuke does truly put his foot down against the wishes of the others in the group, it’s because seeing Chimeramon destroy so many things hurt him that badly that he hates sitting around and doing nothing. Again: Daisuke is a person who does things because he cares about and wants to protect others, not because he necessarily likes fighting. It’s also important that he makes this statement that he’ll go in “even alone” -- he does not look down on the others or show distaste for them for choosing to recuse, because they’re understandably exhausted, but simply says that he’s frustrated at the idea of giving up this one chance, and doesn’t want to squander it. (It’s also consistent with the way he treats the mortified Ken in 02 episode 48 -- he reminds him that Jogress won’t work if Ken’s not feeling up to it, and says that he’ll do it alone if he has to because something has to be done.)

And speaking of Ken, this trait of Daisuke’s is why that whole character arc of him reaching out to Ken works in the first place! Because, again, Daisuke hated the Kaiser because he was doing horrible things. The moment the Kaiser stopped doing horrible things, Daisuke didn’t feel up to kicking him while he was down, actually urged him to do the first thing he could do to make amends -- “go home” -- and ultimately chose to reach out to him because he thinks in terms of moving on and creating positive things, not for destruction for the sake of destruction. Because Ken seemed to not be hurting anyone anymore, and he’s actually doing something to help, so why not believe in him and let him help?

Again: with the exception of episode 48 (which is just reinforcing something from before), all of these episodes are before XV-mon’s first appearance in 02 episode 22. Daisuke had always been this kind of positive and supportive person from day one; those traits had just not been very easily visible because he was still trying to deal with his initial awkwardness and being rather rough around the edges, but they’re still traits he’d always fundamentally had.

The chapter continues with Daisuke actually looking down on his other friends and protesting angrily against them trying to pull him back. Beyond the fact that (as stated above) the anime’s portrayal of Daisuke would make him very unwilling to fight back against opposition at this point of the series, the idea he’d actually be condescending about his friends is a little...hmm. Because, again, in 02 episode 7:

Daisuke does momentarily lash out at Iori and Takeru in a moment of emotional compromise when he’s stressed over Hikari getting trapped in the Digital World, but he actually takes it back. Incredibly quickly. He apologizes to Iori, and decides to not let Takeru put the blame on himself, even though his emotionally-compromised moment had initially gotten him to instinctively try to pin it on him. (Which is important because, yes, even when Daisuke’s inclined to lash out at Takeru for his perceived existing relationship with Hikari and be jealous of him, he still cares about Takeru himself to the point he doesn’t want him to load himself with the guilt.)

Daisuke’s brashness is portrayed during this early part of 02 as him very, very badly needing validation. This means that going out of his way to push aside the people he calls friends would be the last thing he wants to do, because he actually wants their approval, and for them to like him, and therefore he’s willing to apologize quickly and try to make amends because he plays badly with actual confrontation.

While this line isn’t quite off, it does rather clash with the way Daisuke actually portrays himself, which is that he doesn’t really have this much of an ego. The literal translation of this line is that he calls himself “your cute little junior”, but even the more liberal translation used here doesn’t quite work with Daisuke’s character, since it’s not implied at any point that Daisuke thinks Taichi actually cares about him back the way he adores Taichi.

Again, Daisuke is an extremely deferential person who craves validation, and this is especially in the case of Taichi, who arguably is the one who creates the easiest mood shift in Daisuke for the early parts of the series. Whenever Taichi is nearby, Daisuke immediately becomes deferential and respects literally everything he does.

Observe Daisuke’s very resigned and very deferential facial expressions and attitude in 02 episodes 8 and 10, whenever it comes to Taichi (and note that the third screenshot here also comes from a situation where Daisuke wanted to advocate for pushing forward instead of retreating; it was that easy for Taichi to shut him down). For all it’s worth, Daisuke’s never really shown to have a lot of pride in himself (beyond the occasional joke), and it’s heavily implied that he sees Taichi as so amazing that he’s not even remotely in his league. That’s why it’s such a big deal that Daisuke puts his foot down and protests against what Taichi wants them to do in 02 episode 39, and it’s not even rudely or aggressively (he still uses polite Japanese!) as much as just firmly “I have a friend and I need to help him, I’m sorry.”

During the chapter, Daisuke claims that he doesn’t want to go back and meet his friends, because he doesn’t think they care about him, but, well, again: Daisuke is someone who craves approval. It’s somewhat understandable that he’d maybe have some degree of insecurity that they don’t like him as much as he wants them to, but the series by this point (remember, we’re talking episode 22, given XV-mon’s appearance) makes it very clear that Daisuke is well aware that his friends like him this much, and he has no real grudges against them.

This is one of the reasons it’s so important that 02 had so many scenes of the kids just...bantering in the computer room, or having tons of “free time off hours” that had nothing to do with Digimon fights, because although Daisuke is brash and rough around the edges, otherwise, the group of friends here get along perfectly fine. Once the stress of fighting is removed, these kids are part of each others’ social circle and love hanging out for the sake of hanging out, and even someone as dense as Daisuke should know very well that they do at least like him this much.

And, more importantly, whatever Daisuke might think about what his friends think of him, he himself likes them a lot. He cares about them a lot. Even all the way back in 02 episode 10 and 11, with Miyako and Takeru (whom he ostensibly banters and gets touchy with a lot), he still makes it clear he likes what Miyako’s doing and wants to check on her (without prompting), and later, when he gets in a fight with Takeru, he blames himself for not understanding Takeru’s feelings instead of feeling inclined to blame it on him. (In fact, this so-called hostility with Takeru is really overblown here, because there’s no reason Daisuke should think everyone takes Takeru’s side; when they did get in a fight in 02 episode 11, everyone was more concerned about getting them to calm down than they were about taking sides, because both of them did have a very reasonable position.)

And while Daisuke getting set off by the Takeru and Hikari issue might have been in-character at one point, it’s not for him at this point in the series, because 02 episode 22, the very episode that introduces XV-mon, has him take a completely different view of the situation:

Daisuke had already gotten over a lot of it by this point. The last time he shows any indication of Takeru and Hikari having ~something going on~ to the point he suspects Takeru of being an obstacle is all the way back in episode 17, which oh-so-coincidentally happens to be the same episode where he later learns about the truth of his seniors’ great adventure in 1999, and therefore receives the full context of why Takeru and Hikari knew each other beforehand (which they had been absolutely terrible at elucidating for 17 episodes). By the time we get to this epsode, Daisuke does not hold anything against Takeru himself, and he doesn’t even accuse them of having a thing, just moping that they “get along so well”. He’s not angry about it, he’s sad about it, and it’s heavily implied that he’s really just sad about being third-wheeled more than anything.

It’s also important to realize that this is long past the point where Daisuke would have shown any outright hostility towards Takeru at all. At worst, he maybe scoffs “do whatever you want!”, or ends up a little sad that they’re leaving him out, but he ends up putting this on himself more than he ever lashes out at others about it anymore. The grudge against Takeru had already gone long under the bridge, by this point Takeru is just a friend that he likes reasonably well and is sad to be third wheeled by, and it’s only 13 more episodes before he’ll stop bringing his crush on Hikari into the issue for the rest of the series.

And, remember, Daisuke has always been someone who does things “because other people are being hurt”. He’s not actually that selfish! Whenever people are really in trouble, he goes in to help them -- remember, back in 02 episode 8, he was crushed because Ken turned out to be the Kaiser, and someone indirectly trampling on the dreams of all the soccer-playing kids in the country. Had this been Daisuke from the anime, he probably would have immediately wanted to go back the moment he realized there are people in need and hurt left behind, regardless of his own feelings on his relationship with his friends.

The rest of the chapter is fairly on-the-nose, with Daisuke managing to create a “miracle” through the power of his feelings by remembering what it meant for Taichi to give him his goggles, and for managing to connect to his friends despite them being trapped, with Daisuke and Taichi eventually parting on good terms and Daisuke even getting the honor of doing the victory dance with him. This is why I want to emphasize (I’ll say this in bold) that I do not think this is a “bad” chapter just because it’s not compliant with Daisuke’s anime characterization. Given what the chapter sets out to accomplish, setting up a story of someone who feels neglected by his friends and eventually decides to reach out to them with his own feelings, it’s thematically solid and well-plotted out as a story, and the crossover and thought experiment of how Daisuke would react to an alternate version of Taichi is very entertaining. Plus, Izawa’s writing and Yabuno’s art is charming, and it’s lovely to see the 02 kids in this style.

It’s just, well, the entire premise of this chapter relies on a conflict generated by Daisuke being a character he is very much not. And, again, it’s not something that I can really criticize Izawa and Yabuno for; Daisuke’s quite the deceptive character, and it really doesn’t seem like Toei and Bandai gave them a lot to work with, especially since this chapter only works within a very narrow range of 02′s timeline, between 02 episodes 22 and 25, when V-mon can evolve to Adult but Ken hasn’t formally joined the team yet. (And in fact, I’d generally apply this sort of caveat to things relevant to Daisuke that come from the Bandai side instead of Toei side; too many things out there seem to only really be working with the base details of “Taichi’s junior who has a crush on Hikari” with no regard to the actual nuances of his character.) Personally, it seems that Izawa and Yabuno did their best with what they had to work with, and they even made it a fun chapter while they were at it! -- so I would simply say that it’s probably best to enjoy this chapter without thinking about the lack of canon compliance too hard, but also not to judge the actual anime version of Daisuke too much by this portrayal.

#digimon #digimon adventure v tamer 01 #digimon adventure 02 #motomiya daisuke #daisuke motomiya #shihameta

[whitehotharlots]

Privilege Theory is popular because it is conservative

Privilege theory, as a formal academic thing, has been around at least since 1989, when Peggy McIntosh published the now-seminal essay “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” Even within academic cultural studies, however, privilege theory was pretty niche until about a decade ago--it’s not what you’d call intellectually sound (McIntosh’s essay contains zero citations), and its limitations as an analytical frame are pretty obvious. I went through a cultural studies-heavy PhD program in the early twenty teens and I only heard it mentioned a handful of times. If you didn’t get a humanities degree, odds are it didn’t enter your purview until 2015 or thereabouts.

This poses an obvious question: how could an obscure and not particularly groundbreaking academic concept become so ubiquitous so quickly? How did such a niche (and, frankly, weird and alienating) understanding of racial relations become so de rigeur that companies that still utilize slave labor and still produce skin whitening cream are now all but mandated to release statements denouncing it? 

Simply put, the rapid ascent of privilege theory is due to the fact that privilege theory is fundamentally conservative. Not in cultural sense, no. But if we understand conservatism as an approach to politics that seeks first and foremost to maintain existing power structures, then privilege theory is the cultural studies equivalent of phrenology or Austrian economics. 

This realization poses a second, much darker question: how did a concept as regressive and unhelpful as privilege become the foundational worldview among people who style themselves as progressives, people whose basic self-understanding is grounded in a belief that they are working to address injustice? Let’s dig into this:

First, let’s go down a well-worn path and establish the worthlessness of privilege as an analytical lens. We’ll start with two basic observations: 1) on the whole, white people have an easier time existing within these United States than non-white people, and 2) systemic racism exists, at least to the extent that non-white people face hurdles that make it harder for them to achieve safety and material success.

I think a large majority of Americans would agree with both of these statements--somewhere in the ballpark of 80%, including many people you and I would agree are straight-up racists. They are obvious and undeniable, the equivalent to saying “politicians are corrupt” or “good things are good and bad things are bad.” Nothing about them is difficult or groundbreaking.

As simplistic as these statements may be, privilege theory attempts to make them the primary foreground of all understandings of social systems and human interaction. Hence the focus on an acknowledgement of privilege as the ends and means of social justice. We must keep admitting to privilege, keep announcing our awareness, again and again and again, vigilance is everything, there is nothing beyond awareness.

Of course, acknowledging the existence of inequities does nothing to actually address those inequities. Awareness can serve as an important (though not necessarily indispensable) precondition for change, but does not lead to change in and of itself. 

I’ve been saying this for years but the point still stands: those who advocate for privilege theory almost never articulate how awareness by itself will bring about change. Even in the most generous hypothetical situation, where all human interaction is prefaced by a formal enunciation of the raced-based power dynamics presently at play, this acknowledgement doesn’t actually change anything. There is never a Step Two. 

Now, some people have suggested Step Twos. But suggestions are usually ignored, and on the rare occasions they are addressed they are dismissed without fail, often on grounds that are incredibly specious and dishonest. To hit upon another well-worn point, let’s look at the presidential campaign of Bernie Sanders. The majority of Sanders’ liberal critics admit that the senator’s record on racial justice is impeccable, and that his platform would have done substantially more to materially address racial inequities than that being proffered by any of his opponents. That’s all agreed upon, yet we are told that none of that actually matters. 

Sanders dropped out of the race nearly 3 months ago, yet just this past week The New York Times published yet another hit piece explaining that while his policies would have benefitted black people, the fact that he strayed from arbitrarily invoked rhetorical standards meant he was just too problematic to support.  

The piece was written by Sidney Ember, a Wall Street hack who cites anonymous finance and health insurance lobbyists to argue that financial regulation is racist. Ember, like most other neoliberals, has been struggling to reconcile her vague support for recent protests with the fact that she is paid to lie about people who have tried to fix things. Now that people are forcefully demanding change, the Times have re-deployed her to explain why change is actually bad even though it’s good.  

How does one pivot from celebrating the fact that black people will not be receiving universal healthcare to mourning racially disproportionate COVID death rates? They equivocate. They lean even harder on rhetorical purity, dismissing a focus on policy as a priori blind to race. Bernie never said “white privilege.” Well, okay, he did, but he didn’t say it in the right tone or often enough, and that’s what the problem was. Citing Ember:

Yet amid a national movement for racial justice that took hold after high-profile killings of black men and women, there is also an acknowledgment among some progressives that their discussion of racism, including from their standard-bearer, did not seem to meet or anticipate the forcefulness of these protests.

Kimberlé Crenshaw, the legal scholar who pioneered the concept of intersectionality to describe how various forms of discrimination can overlap, said that Mr. Sanders struggled with the reality that talking forcefully about racial injustice has traditionally alienated white voters — especially the working-class white voters he was aiming to win over. But that is where thinking of class as a “colorblind experience” limits white progressives. “Class cannot help you see the specific contours of race disparity,” she said.

Many other institutions, she noted, have now gone further faster than the party that is the political base of most African-American voters. “You basically have a moment where every corporation worth its salt is saying something about structural racism and anti-blackness, and that stuff is even outdistancing what candidates in the Democratic Party were actually saying,” she said.

Crenshaw’s point here is that the empty, utterly immaterial statements of support coming from multinational corporations are more substantial and important than policy proposals that would have actually addressed racial inequities. This is astounding. A full throated embrace of entropy as praxis. 

Crenshaw started out the primary as a Warren supporter but threw her endorsement to Bernie once the race had narrowed to two viable candidates. This fact is not mentioned, nor does Ember feel the need to touch upon any of Biden’s dozens of rhetorical missteps regarding race (you might remember that he kicked off his presidential run with a rambling story about the time he toughed it out with a black ne'er do well named Corn Pop, or his more recent assertion that if you don’t vote for him, “you ain’t black.”). The statement here--not the implication: the direct and undeniable statement--is that tone and posturing are more important than material proposals, and that concerns regarding tone and posturing should only be raised in order to delegitimize those who have dared to proffer proposals that might actually change things for the better. 

The ascendence of privilege theory marks the triumph of selective indignation, the ruling class and their media lackeys having been granted the power to dismiss any and all proposals for material change according to standards that are too nonsensical to be enforced in any fair or consistent manner. The concept has immense utility for those who wish to perpetuate the status quo. And that, more than anything, is why it’s gotten so successful so quickly. But still… why have people fallen for something so obviously craven and regressive? Why are so few decent people able to summon even the smallest critique against it? 

We can answer this by taking a clear look at what privilege actually entails. And this is where things get really, really grim:

What are the material effects of privilege, at least as they are imagined by those who believe the concept to be something that must be sussed out and eradicated? A privileged person gets to live their life with the expectation that they will face no undue hurdles to success and fulfillment because of their identity markers, that they will not be subject to constant surveillance and/or made to suffer grave consequences for minor or arbitrary offenses, and that police will not be able to murder them at will. The effects of “privilege” are what we might have once called “freedom” or “dignity.” Until very recently, progressives regarded these effects not as problematic, but as a humane baseline, a standard that all decent people should fight to provide to all of our fellow citizens. 

Here we find the utility in the use of the specific term “privilege.” Similar to how austerity-minded politicians refer to social security as an “entitlement,” conflating dignity and privilege gives it the sense of something undeserved and unearned--things that no one, let alone members of racially advantaged groups, could expect for themselves unless they were blinded by selfishness and coddled by an insufficiently cruel social structure. The problem isn’t therefore that humans are being selectively brutalized. Brutality is the baseline, the natural order, the unavoidable constant that has not been engineered into our society but simply is what society is and will always be. The problem, instead, is that some people are being exempted from some forms of brutalization. The problem is that pain does not stretch far enough.

We are a nation that worships cruelty and authority. All Americans, regardless of gender or race, are united in being litigious tattletales who take joy in hurting one another, who will never run out of ways to rationalize their own cruelty even as they decry the cruelty of others. We are taught from birth that human life has no value, that material success is morally self-validating, and that those who suffer deserve to suffer. This is our real cultural brokenness: a deep, foundational hatred of one another and of ourselves. It transcends all identity markers. It stains us all. And it’s why we’ve all run headlong into a regressive and idiotic understanding of race at a time when we desperately need to unite and help one another. 

[sepublic]

You know, I've seen plenty of great ideas for Amphibia x TOH swaps, but there's one thing I haven't seen anyone point out yet. If Luz takes Anne's place and goes to Amphibia, then she gets something she's always wanted at the start of TOH: Being part of a prophecy.

           …That is, a VERY interesting concept, not gonna lie!

           The thing about Luz’s fundamental issues prior to meeting Eda was… She really had a problem with distinguishing fantasy from reality, learning to set the boundaries between the two, and fully respect said boundaries. She wasn’t malicious of course, but regardless…

           This is an interesting ask because we don’t know yet how the prophecy will unfold and be revealed within the show, or even its exact nature! But regardless, this is making me imagine Luz meeting the Plantars, and… Really, I can see Hop Pop’s more down-to-earth nature helping Luz learn to distinguish fantasy from reality, to an extent. Especially since Hop Pop himself is lowkey like Luz in that they’re very unorthodox heroes who don’t quite save the day the way they expected to; But their methods are –usually- valid. Such as Hop Pop accidentally inspiring a revolution among the Frogs, or that time he served as a martyr for those tiny frogs, with his mistreatment by the Hasslebacks being the final injustice that pushes them to fight back and defend themselves, without having to rely on any outsiders to do the work for them. Then there’s him projecting a Noir Film onto his search for Sal, to the point where he straight-up kills an innocent man…

           And, that’s making me imagine Luz and Hop Pop kind of bonding over this (not the murder though), especially with Hop Pop’s failed dreams of becoming an actor. I can see Luz being pretty sympathetic and a lot more involved in Hop Pop’s stint with Renee Frodgers, a lot more than Anne did- And considering we see her try out for Romeo and Juliet at one point, maybe she also has a taste for theater herself! Not to mention, all of this discussion of confusing fantasy with reality is just reminding me of Marcy… Specifically, the speculation of Marcy low-key seeing her time in Amphibia as more like a videogame with its tropes, to a potentially harmful extent as she might not treat this situation as a very real one with actual stakes and living, breathing people.

           Of course, the thing to remember is- Luz takes a lot of initiative in her own character development, too! She’s a receptive person and self-reflects. I feel like even if she never met Eda, it wouldn’t have been out of the question for Luz to still resolve her own issues… It’d have just been a much more difficult and tedious journey, especially if Luz had to go through that Reality Camp. But regardless, when you remember that Hop Pop also goes through similar character development, albeit more around the Season 2 timeframe… With Hop Pop making the conscious decision on his own to call out Renee on her thievery, without Anne nor any circumstances goading him into it, because he’s a very moral character at heart…

           Maybe Luz could have issues like Marcy. It’s worth considering if Andrias is manipulating and feeding into Marcy’s dreams. But regardless, I see Luz and Hop Pop working together, mutually, to get past their own issues, well before the prophecy is revealed- And we still don’t know when that’s going to happen! Maybe Luz and Hop Pop could be a duo reminiscent to Luz and King during Sense and Insensitivity. I can’t say for sure if Luz’s character development will be as potent by the prophecy’s reveal, as she is as of the Season Finale in HER show… I think Eda is ultimately a wiser character than Hop Pop, and characters like Willow and Amity serve as neat narrative contrasts/foils to Luz’s own antics. Though, I can imagine Luz getting caught up in shipping Sprig and Ivy, and possibly the fallout of this leading to a lesson or two…

           But in the end, as I said- Luz has a good heart, and she goes around to do the right thing, in the end. She’s like Hop Pop in that regard, and of course there’s also the existence of Sprig and Polly, not to mention what a fellow weirdo like One-Eyed Wally might have to say, here or there. I guess a lot of it depends on the exact context of how this prophecy is revealed, and how it even works… But I see Luz as being grounded by the more down-to-earth Wartwood, well before she gets to Newtopia. This does raise the interesting idea of her possibly backtracking on her character development, especially with Marcy’s influence and Andrias’ potential manipulations…

           And yet, I can see Luz still turning around to do the right in the end, just as Hop Pop did; Even when his dreams DID come true, and he became a renowned actor! I think Luz would come to the conclusion that even being ‘chosen’ by some divine force doesn’t really make her any better than anyone else… Not to mention that the people and world she’s saving is still very much its own thing, not beholden to her. So I see Luz accepting the mantle of being a hero, if only because she’s a good person and of course she’s not going to let something bad happen… And I can imagine the Plantars helping to gently nudge and remind Luz of her past lessons, to not get confused with fantasy and reality again. The prophecy would definitely be a twist antithetical and contradictory to Luz’s character development, given how she’s being transplanted into a different show with different themes, originally intended for a different protagonist…

           But, if Marcy is going to learn her lesson and get past her own issues –assuming those specific issues ARE a thing of course- then I can see Luz being a guiding light and force for her… Maybe the two mutually navigate past potential delusions together, who knows? I’ve speculated in the past how Luz would handle the revelation of having powerful magical heritage... How Luz would truly show off her character development by rejecting even this seemingly objective, tangible cosmic reason for her being special, and still asserting her equal standing with everyone else. Even when placed on top of the hierarchy, Luz rejects it, showing how much her lessons mean to her. I can see Andrias trying to set Luz up to agree with his hierarchy under that concept of divinely-ordained ‘specialness’, and how it’d all just tie into Luz working to abolish the caste system with Hop Pop.

           I can see it being a contrast to Sasha and Grime, who want to topple the current Newt Hierarchy… More than likely, so they can switch it around with Toads on the top. Not exactly the most helpful change, in the end… Luz decides that instead of reversing the roles, it’s best to just get rid of the roles entirely. It could play into a discussion of privilege, and it’d be interesting to see how Luz, Marcy, and Sasha would all bounce off of one another- Sasha low-key has her issues with dismissing the people of Amphibia, and once talked about ‘having fun’ there. Obviously her respect for Grime has changed this a lot… But there’s still that willingness to conquer what she fully recognizes now as an actual civilization of people. She would certainly take the revelation of a prophecy as full justification that she was never wrong about anything, and that Sasha is of course entitled to taking over Amphibia- Especially if Grime feeds into this both out of genuine support and his own desires.

           Then there’s that idea of Sasha and Grime enabling one another to be worse, even if they also still go through a little bit of positive character development… And as for Marcy and Andrias, I can’t quite say because the latter is still quite the enigma. Either way, Luz has to serve as a grounding force for the other girls with Hop Pop’s help… And really, it sounds like the set-up for total chaos, a battle royal, a complete free-for-all with every Amphibian and Human for themselves as they navigate one another amidst the backdrop of this prophecy. If we want to apply Luz’s motif and themes of being a guiding light for other characters in her own show, I can see her forcing Sasha and Marcy to confront the reality of what they’re doing… And I think interactions between her and Grime would be fascinating, as she’d be VERY much in favor of toppling the monarchy- But specifically to undo the hierarchy entirely, instead of switching it around to the Toads’ favor. If Sasha and Grime enable one another, perhaps Luz will have to act as a voice of reason and buffer between the two- And again, it depends on how Sasha and Grime’s character development goes.

           Overall, this sounds like QUITE the debacle, and I’m kind of fascinated, imagining how these different characters with different motifs, meant to be compatible with narrative parallels and contrasts, amidst the themes of their particular show; And how they’d adapt and fit into another show’s cast and themes! Anne taking Luz’s place in the Boiling Isles would be interesting, given how Anne has clearly internalized Sasha’s idea of ‘knowing what’s best for someone you care about’, and how this seems to be a recurring trend amongst people like Emira and Edric toward Amity, Lilith with Eda, etc. And, I guess I could go into a whole ‘nother discussion of how Eda has to help Anne recover from this low-key abuse and toxicity, and Anne having a similar moment of standing up to Sasha with those characters, possibly citing her own experiences… But, that’s probably a discussion for another time, I think. I guess it depends if I have the time and energy for it, and my cyclical focus aligns just right…

#the owl house #owl house #amphibia #the owl house luz #luz noceda #amphibia hop pop #hopediah plantar #speculation #meta #ask

[sweetrupturedlight]

This week on Sen Çal Kapımı

Serkan does his level best to show Eda he’s all in, while we say goodbye to some characters and side-eye a new one.

I’ve tried to reflect a little on this week’s episode, especially considering my knee-jerk reaction was very visceral and quite… unpleasant. Overall, this episode contained some incredibly cute, very flirty moments which remain - and always will remain - absolutely squee-worthy. The second kiss in the elevator that none of us saw coming certainly set the tone for a mainly comedic turn this week.

Serkan is on his mission to prove to Eda that he can be trusted, that he loves her and that he’s 100% invested. This is articulated as Serkan “changing” and becoming more of the person that Eda wants him to be. I’m not sure if the translation is what confuses issues somewhat here, but the show is commenting on whether someone changing to be with someone else - i.e. transforming themselves to become someone else’s ideal - is actually worth it. Or whether we should accept our loves ones the way they are.

This is an inherently complex issue. Should someone fundamentally change who they are for someone else? No. But there are ways to amend undesirable behaviours that create more harmony and peace in relationships - and in changing those behaviours, makes both persons in the relationship better. Eda grapples with whether her expectation of Serkan is realistic, or whether she should accept him as he is.

The important thing for me is that this change is something he is driving. While Eda has raised a mirror for him to reflect on, he admits and sees where he can become a better person. So I don’t think his change is “for Eda”. I see it as part of his growth journey.

What I also loved, however, was that Serkan articulated to both Engin and Eda that this change must come from both parties in a relationship. So Serkan himself cannot be doing all the heavy lifting. Eda too must meet him halfway. This is perhaps my first real criticism of the show thus far. We have invested heavily in Serkan’s development as a character, but the same care and consideration isn’t given to Eda. While the reveal of Serkan’s family secret certainly doesn’t mean they get to pick up where they left off, its context certainly highlights one fact: That Serkan loves Eda endlessly. And while withholding an important secret was a mistake, he never stopped loving her and is determined to prove it to her. 

What we’re left with, however, is Eda’s silly contract which at this point is such a moot plot point, I’m amused and frustrated in equal measures each time Eda mentions it. These two don’t need a contract. They need to have a conversation. And for some reason, the writers seem to be delaying basic communication in lieu of a silly little plot contrivance that is fast losing points for amusement. Eda’s insistence, this episode in particular, that they are no more than colleagues stings a little, especially since her very own actions belie this very assertion. “No personal talk”, “I’ll help if Serkan isn’t around”, etc. has become completely redundant, and yet this entire episode is filled with Eda making these empty assertions. She wouldn’t even have coffee with him at Art Life! Own your jealousy Eda, talk about your feelings.

All that said, I am encouraged by Eda’s reflection and her use of her friends as a sounding board. Ceren, in particular, is quite smart in her advice. Serkan is making an effort - consistently. Perhaps she too should meet him halfway.

The biggest bugbear of this episode is the introduction of the new Selin. Balca (henceforth simply B) is introduced as Eda’s choice - one driven by her own jealously and impulsivity - and a choice she has already come to regret. She doesn’t want other women around Serkan, but she doesn’t want to stake her claim either. I suspect that B’s role is to push her closer to the claiming and further from the denial she’s currently labouring under. B’s character seems in equal parts harmless and devious. What’s clear is that she has no concern for the very evident relationship between Serkan and Eda and is pushing her own agenda quite blatantly almost immediately. 

She is here to stir the pot - and of course, annoy the ever-loving f*** out of us - but in the grand scheme, she is a non-entity. Serkan declares his love at every opportunity he gets. B is not going to change that. What she is going to do, however, is make Eda start to work on her own insecurities and in essence, fight for Serkan and their relationship. Do I wish the writers found a less cliched way of getting us here? Of course. But we accept and manage the cards we are dealt with. Eda and Serkan are soulmates. So we just have to see how this helps them finally align.

Truly, besides the really bad editing this episode (with their shooting schedule, I know it’s amazing they can keep things coherent, to be honest) the biggest WTF moment for me was what I consider to be Serkan being moved like a convenient chess piece to set up the final scene. In context, Serkan letting B in - for pizza no less! - makes no sense, especially considering the fact that his instincts told him Eda was coming over. Any other time, I would have side-eyed it, but let it go. Him feeling strongly that Eda would surprise him makes the choice odd and strangely out of character from what took place earlier in the episode. Could the writers be alluding to the fact that he is changing, that he is enjoying carbs now (LOL), being more open to strangers etc.? Of course, but then perhaps the idea that he was expecting Eda should have been eradicated to make the choice of his invitation to B to have a meal with him less puzzling.

I’m hoping Eda doesn’t retreat as per usual and starts to fight for their relationship. The 1.23 fragman seems to indicate that Eda is on to B and will go about trying to show Serkan that this woman is interested in more than a professional relationship. That said, Serkan has eyes only for Eda. With love must come trust. Hopefully, we’re getting there.

Besides all that, next week looks cute, Serkan making more confessions of love and devotion and some comedic hijinks all ensue. Here’s to hoping Serkan finally gets a little measure of an emphatic I Love You too from Eda. The man’s tank will surely be running in empty soon.

Filed under other:

Ferit, Engin, Serkan (and Erdem) BROTP is everything I never wanted. More please.

Aydan’s absolute adoration for Eda continues to warm my very soul. I love their relationship.

Ayfer being gifted a story arc of her own? Yes.

Engin and Piril remain dry as dirt, but their romance has morphed into a type of cute.

Cerin and Ferit however, I officially stan.

GRANDMA NEXT WEEK!

#sen cal kapimi #sen çal kapımı #edser #serkan bolat #eda yildiz #naz rambles #sck spoilers

[bwprowl]

Me vs. The Mitchells vs. The Machines

The Mitchells vs. The Machines is a really cool movie. Seriously! It’s the Spider-Verse crew continuing to be at the top of their game, doing their damnedest to elevate and evolve 3D film animation in a way apart from the ongoing Disneyfied edge-sanding seen elsewhere. Several sequences, especially the final fight scene at the end, are absolutely jaw-dropping. A lot of the writing of the movie is also genuinely clever, with some cool tricks of weaving in Chekov’s Guns that you don’t even realize WERE Chekov’s Guns until they’re deployed, but then make perfect sense. And I also just have to say there’s something oddly heartening about a movie that does a lot to target Millenials in terms of nostalgia, but not so much via our shows and movies and music the way other project might go about, but specifically by tapping the internet meme culture of the early-00’s that’s so media-unique to that emergent generation. There’s some genuine heart visible in so many of the levels of how this thing was made that I can understand its touting as an instant classic and the waves of praise and popularity that have followed its release.

Unfortunately, I can’t so unilaterally praise this movie, mostly because I can NOT stop thinking about how poorly-implemented and mis-framed its central familial conflict is.

Oh yeah spoilers for this movie I guess

So I’ll need to detour at first and talk about A Goofy Movie, which isn’t much of an issue for me since I fucking love A Goofy Movie. And watching The Mitchells vs. The Machines my initial takeaway was a pleasant observation that someone had basically grafted A Goofy Movie to The World’s End, which could have made for an extremely fun time for me. A Goofy Movie, so it goes, centers on the conflict between a father and child trying to understand each other, spurred on by the father conscripting the child into an impromptu road-trip which the child initially resents but eventually leans into as a vehicle for understanding as the family members open up to each other and end with a greater appreciation for their familial bond as well as healthier, more open lines of communication. There are comical misunderstandings, dramatic misunderstandings, and escalating Wacky Adventures that keep the trip feeling suitably cinematic in scope. And as The Mitchells vs. The Machines continued on, I kept finding myself rounding back to that comparison and asking “Why am I not getting into this as much as I do A Goofy Movie?”

It turns out to be a point of motivation, actually. In A Goofy Movie, Goofy dragooning Max into the cross-country fishing trip is immediately borne out of his (however misinformed) desire to keep his son from going down a wrong, potentially delinquent or criminal path. Goofy has concerns about the lessened connection and communication with Max, sure, but that’s a symptom of his inability to communicate his actual worries about Max’s behavior to him, not the sum total of the problem he feels needs fixing. Goofy is under the impression there are genuine problems Max is going through, and while he’s got the actual particulars wrong, he’s not really that far off, since Max still IS the kind of kid to elaborately hijack a school function or make up extravagant lies to get attention from the girl he likes rather than just talking to her and asking her out like a normal human-dog-person. Goofy’s objective is firmly centered on helping Max for Max’s sake, and he’s only taking up a few weeks out of Max’s summer and causing him to miss a single party in order to do it.

I lay all that out so you can try to understand my headspace coming at critiquing The Mitchells vs. The Machines and negatively viewing its own take on a plot concept I ostensibly love by default. The problem, as said, is one of motivation. In The Mitchells, Rick’s dissatisfaction with his relationship with his daughter Katie is purely that: Dissatisfaction with their relationship. Katie herself is, by all accounts, doing spectacularly. She’s got a healthy relationship with friends and other family members, she’s gotten accepted into a prestigious film school, and her YouTube account seems to pull pretty keen numbers (With all the tech jokes in this movie it’s a wonder there’s never a riff on her shilling NordVPN or Raid Shadow Legends). The conflict between father and daughter is purely a case of them growing apart in her teen years demonstrably because Rick has no understanding of her current passions and makes no effort to do so, which leads to him having consistently questioned and doubted her ability to succeed in her field. The film frames the impromptu road-trip as his attempt to ‘fix’ the issues between them, but the only thing broken by the presentation of the story is Rick’s approach to parenting in the first place. He could easily have made Katie warm to him on the way out by replacing or paying for the laptop he broke and throwing her a subscription to her YouTube channel, but then the movie would be shorter and we wouldn’t be able to pretend the conflict was anything other than his own pursuit of self-centered actualization.

That’s the other issue, of course, the way The Mitchells vs. The Machines consistently rounds back to the point that Katie is somehow shouldering half the responsibility for the father/daughter communication breakdown. But as stated above, it really has hardly anything to do with her. Katie’s succeeding on her own terms, and the only outreach she would theoretically need to do to her dad would be to make HIM feel better, something he could do himself if he’d only actually pay attention to the cool videos she keeps trying to show him and not constantly deciding that HE knows that SHE will fail. It’s a fundamentally one-sided conflict from what we’re shown, and yet the other members of the Mitchell family continuously treat Katie like she needs to accommodate her father’s personal whims and not hurt his feelings despite the fact that he’s the one who went behind her back and canceled her flight, even forcing her to miss her first week of college (!) simply because he felt sorry for himself that they didn’t like the same things anymore. Again, Katie’s doing great, it’s Rick that decides to make his problem the entire family’s problem, and while I’m going to hesitate to refer to this behavior as out-and-out abusive, it is still absurdly selfish and pointedly poor parenting. 

The movie seems to nominally strive for balance in the conflict, not making it entirely Katie’s job to fix her dad’s hurt feelings, and indeed having a whole sequence where he realizes what a Big Jerk he’s been about not trying to understand or support her passions, and resolving to actually Make An Effort moving forward. The problem is that this is still framed as one half of the equation, as Katie supposedly gets to understand where her dad is coming from, which...makes her feel better about all the times he said she would fail and so she should rely on and appreciate him more? And the reason that’s a fundamental issue is annoying, because it means we have to talk about Rick’s Stupid Fucking Cabin.

Look, I hate doing this. I personally try very hard to keep in the mindset that stories are stories and things happen in them because they are stories. I am loathe to attempt picking apart the points of particular plot points, but the problem is that this Stupid Fucking Cabin is positioned as the heart of the humanity of the entire movie, yet it hinges on a sequence of decisions that no actual human being would ever come by. First off, do you have any idea how long it takes to BUILD a home like that, let alone as one guy apparently doing it himself? Rick spent the better part of his twenties building this big Fucking Stupid Cabin to fulfill his lifelong dream of ‘Living in the woods’, only for his wife to get pregnant once it was finished, leading to him just dropping like that? Was there no planning in this family? Was Katie an accident that Rick immediately was this endeared to? I mean, he totally seems like a pro-lifer. But then why do they need to sell the Stupid Fucking Cabin on account of a kid coming along? How were Rick and Linda planning on living out their lives there if not with resources that could support them as well as a kid or two? Rick could have just raised his kids in the woods in his Stupid Fucking Cabin and they would have stood a better chance at turning out like little duplicates of himself and his own interests like he clearly wanted. That’s to say nothing of this sequence of events being framed as a ‘failure’, despite that fact that Rick handily succeeded at what he set out to do, only to turn around and abandon the thing he succeeded at himself on seemingly the same sort of impulsive whim that leads to him dragging his whole family on a road trip because he doesn’t understand YouTube. There are motivating factors to these decisions he made that could inform the whole context of this supposedly tragic backstory, but we aren’t privy to anything resembling them, and the result is a plot point that seemingly only exists to make Katie (and the audience) feel bad for Rick in the third act of the movie.

The real answer is the ultimate assertion of this thing by the finale, that Katie should be ‘grateful’ to Rick for his ‘sacrifice’ of his dream that supposedly allowed her to be in the place she is now. Except Katie had no part in Rick’s bizarre impulsive choice to build a Stupid Fucking Cabin then sell it as soon as a kid popped out so he, I guess, could feel some sense of important familial contribution. That’s to say nothing of the point about parental figures who make grand, sweeping gestures nominally for the good of their kids, but are effectively and emotionally unavailable in the day-to-day engagements of their lives. Because unlike Goofy in A Goofy Movie, Rick isn’t actually doing what he’s doing for Katie’s sake. Her motivation for most of the movie is to move away from home and go to college, a completely normal-ass thing that children do. Any of Rick’s outreach or efforts to ‘fix’ relationships and situations are purely for the sake of his own hurt feelings, and the way Katie’s mother and brother consistently push her into going along with them only highlights the overt way this whole family’s problems are hung up on the insecurities of of this single stubborn jerk. But then, that’s my other major misgiving with The Mitchells vs. The Machines: Its expected exaltation of the default biological family as some hallowed unit for which it is a tragedy to fall into any degree of dysfunction. This is with pointed dismissal towards the idea of Found Family, seen as a distraction, an obstacle to Katie realizing who her TRUE people are, and coming around to a sense of fulfillment because she managed to massage her dad’s ego for long enough that he stopped being totally dismissive of the things that brought her joy. You see, Found Families are fun, but they aren’t REAL or SPECIAL because they already accept and appreciate you for who you are, unlike these people you’re biologically obligated to share living space with for 18+ years whom you have to forge bonds with through varying degrees of communication breakdowns and compromises in self-agency.

With all that in mind, it highlights some of the smaller issues in the movie’s setup as well. This is perhaps petty, but jeez was I annoyed with the film’s framing of The Mitchells as this ~craaaazy~ ~weeeeiiiird~ family which included such outlandish quirks as ‘Dad who doesn’t understand technology’ and ‘Young boy who really likes dinosaurs’. And the wishy-washy tone of the familial conflict is echoed in the ‘The Machines’ part of the plot, which mostly led to me sitting on edge throughout the whole film as I wondered how it was going to come down on the subject of those kids and their darn smartphones. It ultimately doesn’t go full anti-technology, which makes sense given how much of Katie’s character revolves around using the stuff, to say nothing of the predilections of the people who actually, uh, made this movie. But the most it can manage is a halfhearted “Maybe unregulated big tech bad?” which even then is undercut, mostly I assume because of the various big tech companies involved in producing and streaming this thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m overall glad it doesn’t go full "durr hburr technology is bad fire is scary and thomas edison was a witch", but a lack of any insight or ideas on that front means that the familial relationship element is the only conceptual element it really has to stand on, and I just spent over 1800 words breaking down why that fundamentally didn’t work!

It’s an aggravating situation, because lord did I want to love The Mitchells vs. The Machines. It’s gorgeous, it’s got some clever bits in the writing, and it can honestly sling a punchline like nobody’s business, there are some KILLER jokes in there. But it just became impossible all the way through the end for me to engage with the heart of the movie, its central connective conflict, on the terms it wanted me to. Now it’s admittedly possible that, perhaps like Rick Mitchell, that’s my problem. I’ve seen a lot of love for this movie from my peers, and it does make me question my own projections: I don’t want to get TOO personal on main, but I admit that it’s entirely possible that people who’ve enjoyed an actually functional fatherly relationship would better engage with the emotive connections this movie wants you to make. But even with that caveat, I was able to find my own way to resonate with the similar stakes of A Goofy Movie just thanks to the more effective way that one was framed, so if this one couldn’t hook me, maybe it was The Mitchells vs. The Machines’ fault after all.

#the mitchells vs the machines #the mitchells #movies #criticism #rant

[theredhairedmonkey]

A few people had some feedback for my meta on Claudia here. Instead of reblogging the meta over and over again, I’d rather address the arguments raised by @silverspetz​ here and @atreefullofstars​ here.

So... neither of these posts seem all that enthusiastic with either (1) my treatment of Dark Magic nor (2) my assessment of Claudia. I’ll do my best to break down both of these arguments as well as possible.

From @silverspetz​:

I don’t really believe in the “power corrupts” thing in the first place, but even if I did it wouldn’t change the fact that primal magic users also have elevated power and the only reason you can give for why dark magic would be more tempting is because it makes things “too” easy. If you were actually honest with this argument you would be insisting that the true evil is that magic exists at all and not just that dark magic is arbitrarily “too powerful”. 

Let's break down these forms of magic. For Primal Magic, in order to take full advantage of all that it can offer you, a mage has to have an arcanum (or an uber-rare Primal Stone). An arcanum requires a deep, fundamental understanding of the Primal Source, and far more so; there’s a reason only a rare few elves even become mages, and why even sky mages can’t automatically learn to grow mage wings. There’s a lot of internal mental discipline and legwork that’s involved--the reason why Lujanne can cast spells, but Runaan and Rayla can’t. While Callum is an exception, canonically it usually takes years if not decades to master this kind of magic.

Dark Magic doesn’t require any of this. If you have the materials and the incantation words, that’s enough. No deep understanding or internal channeling of magic is required. That’s what makes it so easy. And this is canon; this is what Aaron and Justin describe as the difference between Primal and Dark Magic when it comes to ease.

But being easy does not in of itself make Dark Magic bad. It’s why it’s tempting (Callum catches on to this, even when Viren and Claudia do not). The fact that there is no limit to what you can do with Dark Magic, combined with the fact that everything you could ever need or want could just be a single spell away is what makes this dangerous. Again, unlike Primal Magic, Dark Magic is characterized as unlimited power. That’s what makes this a toxic combination.

Primal Magic simply doesn’t operate this way. It’s a naturally occuring phenomenon that can be tapped into. There are limits as to what can be done; Primal Energy needs to be nearby, and many spells, such as aspiro and mage wings, are limited by what the mage can physically exert.

The Primal Mages that we’ve seen demonstrate a separate issue with Primal Magic, but I’ll talk about that below. 

Sure, it is nice that you at least admit that Xadia probably exiled humans to preserve the status quo, but you are still insisting that dark magic is the only kind with inherently corrupting influence and acting as if being born with an inherent power isn’t already playing life at easy mode. You don’t ask the question “how long before elves decide to do the easy thing instead of the right thing” even though they have already done far worse things than any dark mage on the show. It is all so very reminicent of all the arguments you hear from the majority whenever a minority tries to assert itself. “No, you can’t fight oppression your way, that’s wrong and bad. Do it on our terms”. The show’s thesis is basically that “reverse racism” is worse than actual racism, and the fandom largely agrees. You can save your “is dark magic too powerful” concerns until humanity as a whole has been given even a modicum of the power they actually deserve.

The show definitely doesn’t pull its punches when it comes to dragons and elves. Sol Regem quite nearly wipes out a city, while the ethnic cleansing of humans had been compared to the Trail of Tears by the show’s creators. And the thing is, there are issues with the way elven mages and dragons use their magic, even though that’s beyond the scope of my meta on Claudia. But just because a group is oppressed or marginalized doesn’t mean any attempt to gain, as you say, a “modicum of the power they actually deserve” is justified. In fact, that’s all very reminiscent of real-life formerly oppressed groups who either gained that “modicum of power” through exploiting others or taking advantage of their newfound power to settle the score with their former oppressors, which just perpetuates a cycle of hatred and violence...which kinda sounds like the point the first three seasons of the show was trying to push!

To your question “how long before elves decide to do the easy thing instead of the right thing,” we already have an answer. There is an elf who isn’t bothered by questions of doing the right thing.

Who only really cares about increasing his own power in the quickest way possible, regardless of who he harms, corrupts or kills along the way.

And it’s this guy:

In spite of mastering all six Primal Sources, he still turns to Dark Magic as a means to get what he wants. Which does give us the answer to your question--when an elven doesn’t care about the right thing, merely the easy thing, they too turn to Dark Magic. That’s the corrupting influence of this branch of magic. Aaravos should have had all the power he needed, but he wanted more.

And what does he do with his power once he has it? He eclipses the Sun Nexus, creating perpetual night over Lux Auera and quite possibly wiping out the city. That should drive home what “unlimited power” means with regard to Dark Magic--you can quite possibly destroy Primal Sources at will. You can’t do that with Primal Magic.

But Primal Mages, at least who we’ve seen, don’t particularly care to bolster their own power over the lives of others because, honestly, they’re kinda indifferent to them. And that’s their flaw--not power-lust, but apathy to the plight or struggles of people.

Keep in mind, they’re not unkind or callous toward others. Lujanne, for instance, is nice and will help Team Zym...when they ask her to. It’s why she simultaneously tells the group that “dark forces are pursuing you” while still being willing to show Callum around and letting the team drag their heals. Rayla was quite indignant at that (”I thought you were on my side!”). 

Or, she helps Ez get to Xadia because Soren asks her to, then wanders off to fuck around with other humans, while a war for the future of the world is fought. 

Ibis is similar--he suggests to Callum that the group simply leaves with Zym rather than make their stand, thus giving Viren the opportunity to gain power. He helps out in finding dragons to fight alongside them, but we never see him take part in the battle itself. Just like Lujanne, he helps the group with their goals but doesn’t engage directly with any threats.

The differences between Dark and Primal Mages are similar to the Sith and the Jedi in the Prequel Trilogy. The Sith are power-hungry, perhaps beginning their fall to the Dark Side out of a goal to protect their loved ones or a similar aim before being corrupted by their desire for power and domination. The Jedi, however, are “keepers of the peace,” and will get involved when that peace is disrupted...and turn a blind eye to slavery on worlds like Tatooine. They’ll preserve the status quo, but don’t do much else, which is why the Separatist Crisis was started in the first place; countless worlds were irate that the Republic, and by extension, the Jedi Council, ignored their problems and struggles.

Primal Mages are the Jedi in this situation. From what we could ascertain, they didn’t do much of anything to help the humans before they were desperate enough to turn to Dark Magic.  The fact that a human learning an arcanum was so surprising just shows how little anyone tried to help humanity before dismissing them as a lost cause. 

This is also why Callum is such a standout example of a mage. He rejects the temptation of Dark Magic while also deciding to stay and fight to defend Zym. He’s chosen who he wants to be, and he’s not going to make the same mistakes that mages from either camp have made.

Primal Magic has its flaws, but to say that Dark Magic and Primal Magic both represent power and share the same temptations misses the larger point.

As for Claudia supposedly being “selfish”, yeah, this is where you are absolutely being dishonest to demonize Claudia. Soren was not willing to accept his condition. It was blatantly obvious that he was just having a breakdown and trying to find silver-linings whereever he could. Even his first poem was basically him lamenting his new situation. And he was very obviously happy when Claudia fixed his spine. 

You would have a point had Claudia actually obtained Soren’s consent. The fact that she didn’t even bother to ask his permission violated his agency. Even after she was done, Soren never found out what it cost for him to be healed. 

All of this is extremely problematic. It’s not a small thing that medical practitioners seek out consent from their patients, even when the treatment is painless, simple, and safe. The autonomy that people have over their own bodies is of utmost importance, something that can’t be dismissed with a simple “Oh well he was unhappy anyway, he would have said yes if I asked.”

I think that, deep down, even now, Claudia is a good person. She thinks what she’s choosing to do with her magic is ultimately the right thing. It’s just that, in her mind, other people don’t get to choose.

 So forgive me if I think that meta about primal magic you plan to write is going to be a bunch of drivel that admits elves wen’t too far in commiting genocide but ultimately doesn’t see how being born with the power to crush armies might make you at least as tempted to solve all your problems with sheer force as the ability to turn chains into snakes.

Hopefully, the little that I wrote about Primal Magic assuaged your worries somewhat. There’s a lot more to write about this form of magic, most of which can’t fit here.

And it’s not like creatures with Primal Magic never use sheer force to try and solve their problems (that’s exactly what Sol Regem attempts to do). But when you look at what you can do with Primal Magic versus what you can do with Dark Magic, the former simply doesn’t compare. This isn’t an apples to apples comparison in terms of raw power.

For @atreefullofstars​:

And miss me with “dark magic is easy and dark mages don’t sacrifice anything so everything they do is selfish.” Yeah, characters in the show–the ones who already don’t like dark magic–have said that a few times. But what’s shown on screen is dark mages collapsing, falling ill, panting, and turning corpselike and clearly unhealthy from using it, when nothing like that happens to primal mages. What is “Claudia doesn’t lose anything other than a streak of black hair” supposed to mean? She didn’t make a magical trade, her hair color for Soren’s spine; if that were the case she wouldn’t have needed the deer. She did something so difficult, that put so much physical strain on her body, that it turned some of her hair white. When that happens in real life, there are physiological consequences way beyond hair color; the hair is just a clear visual representation of how badly that strained her body.

Lets set aside whether Dark Mages never sacrifice anything for their magic (Ziard, for instance, sacrificed his life to save Elarion; Callum fell into a coma). What I’m talking about is in this particular case--Claudia momentarily collapses from using a lot of Dark Magic...then proceeds to get back up again and is none the worse for wear in the next scene. That’s all I’m trying to say. Claudia does not “sacrifice her own well-being” to save her brother when there are no long-term side effects to her other than that one streak (it’s not from the physical strain either; stress-induced grayness doesn’t just come up in one spot and it certainly doesn’t friggin turn already black hair white!).

The streak isn’t supposed to visually represent the strain on her body that was clearly temporary. It visually represents how Dark Magic is slowly starting to change Claudia. One might say it’s corrupting her.

And if that just isn’t enough, if she should have to give up more because she’s supposedly being selfish, well, it’s still more than primal mages sacrifice. What did Callum sacrifice to save Rayla? What did it cost him, what did he lose? Is it selfish that he used his magic to rescue her from falling, because he loves her and doesn’t want his life to change by losing her? What did he give up when he cast Fulminus to selfishly override Ibis’s objections to teaching him? What did it cost him to cast Aspiro and blow Zym up into the air to block out the sun, saving him and Rayla? Every primal spell in the show is “selfish” when you view it through a lens determined to show it that way, and not one of them has a cost. Every good deed anyone has EVER done could be construed as selfish because it made them feel good to do it; even if it was difficult or uncomfortable, they were obviously still satisfying some other principle they value more and getting net benefit.

I think you’re missing the point if you think that the issue with Dark Magic is that it doesn’t come with enough personal sacrifice. Me arguing that Claudia didn’t sacrifice her well-being for Soren isn’t me arguing that she should have.

But as for whether primal mages are selfish...Callum quite nearly falls to his death in a long-shot attempt to save Rayla. And keep in mind, he isn’t trying to save an idea of her, or the portrait of a perfect relationship, or something that he simply desires for himself. He’s trying to save her. And unlike with Claudia, it doesn’t come at anyone else’s expense--just, potentially, himself. 

Before that, he puts himself between Zym/Rayla and scores of enhanced soldiers. He risks his life just to protect them. Before that, he crushes a moon opal to learn the truth about Rayla’s parents, so she can feel free to make her own choice (and this was the epitome of selflessness; he didn’t attempt to convince her to leave with them. If she wanted to stay, fight and die, Callum was willing to accept that. Think about that when you say that every primal spell in the show is somehow selfish).

And before that, he uses Fulminis to get Ibis’s attention so he could learn magic...so that he could protect Zym and his friends from Viren’s army. Throughout all of Season 3, Callum does magic primarily to help others and never just for himself. It doesn’t come at the expense of anyone else’s life or anyone’s agency. That’s the difference between Callum and Claudia--to reduce all of that to just “well any choice is selfish when you think about it” is just pure nihilism.

#claudia #dark magic #soren #callum #viren #ibis #lujanne #aaravos #the dragon prince #tdp #tdp meta #callum x claudia #primal magic #rayla #zym

[yukiwrites]

Many of Their Kind

Thank you for the support as always, @xpegasusuniverse! This is such an interesting topic, I got a bit carried away, heehee!

Summary: Seteth and Flayn were summoned to Askr after hearing all about it from Byleth. The older brother, overprotective as ever, would only allow his little sister to remain there once he was absolutely sure it would be safe, though Flayn couldn’t be happier to be able to meet new people, especially those with whom she and Seteth shared an unexpected bond with, the manaketes.

Commission info HERE and HERE!

______________________________

New Heroes from other worlds arrived practically daily on Askr, especially after the Summoner's Breidablik was magically enhanced during the recent skirmishes.

They amounted to the point that Kiran himself was unable to welcome and indulge them all until they were used to their day-to-day at the Order of Heroes, so the other people in charge also took it upon themselves to help the Heroes accommodate themselves as quickly as possible.

Anna, Sharena and Alfonse shared those duties mostly equally; the Crown Prince had his own royal duties to attend to, so he was more often than not too busy to help. Though since that was expected, Sharena and Anna didn't seem to mind the added task on their shoulders.

That particular morning, it was Anna's turn to walk the new heroes through the castle, though the newly arrived pair seemed to have other ideas in mind. 

Seteth and Flayn was how they had presented themselves, though Anna could swear she had seen their picture in the book depicting Fódlan's history under other aliases entirely.

The young woman looked around eagerly, ooh-ing and aaah-ing at every detail. "Look, Brother!" She nudged the tall man, pointing at this or that vase or decoration. "Even the architecture itself differs on its fundamentals! Everything here is so interesting!"

"Indeed." The green-haired man replied curtly, though warmly enough not to dismiss the girl's enthusiasm. "However, try not to attract much attention, Flayn, for we are still unaware of our role here as... 'Heroes'." He said the last word with contempt, though Anna could discern a large amount of worry in his tone, rather than disdain.

"Annnd here we have the, well, let's call it 'Administration Wing', for now. I don't think we ever gave it a name apart from 'Western Wing' now that I think about it." Anna concluded the hurried tour, simply going through the motions of doing so as her brain searched for the piece of information regarding those two that she was forgetting. "You seem to have more than a few questions, so I'll welcome you to my office so we can talk more leisurely."

"That would be ideal, Commander. I thank you." Seteth bobbed his head to the sides in compliance, nudging Flayn along the corridor towards Anna's study.

Once there, the man barely waited for Anna to take her seat behind the desk to ask. "I have heard from Professor Byleth that this world is very peculiar in its deepest roots."

"Yes?" Anna tilted her head in question.

"To speak bluntly, I have heard that a few of whom we've considered enemies in Fódlan are here as allies, instead. Namely, the," he glanced at Flayn with a painful expression, "Death Knight."

The young woman looked down in visible distress, digging her nails on her skirt. "You see, Commander, that man has attacked me on occasion and ever since then I- I have been terrified of him."

"It is as my sister says. How can I trust the integrity of an Order, otherworldly as it may be, that employs villains within their ranks? How do you maintain order within your own organization by having mutual enemies fighting on the same side of the battlefield?"

Anna took one index to her lips, looking up in thought. "That is a valid concern, good people," she said matter-of-factly, somehow seeming to remember something and jumping out of her seat to browser the bookshelf to her left. "However, unfounded. Every Hero summoned by Kiran's -- ah, he's our Summoner, I believe you met him immediately after crossing the portal to our world -- weapon is bound by the Pact of Non-aggression." She picked two or three volumes from the shelves, placing them on her desk as she sat back on her chair.

Flayn and Seteth exchanged curious glances, choosing to remain in silence to allow Anna to continue.

The Commander opened the first volume, its cover decorated in a pale silver. "You see, it's physically impossible for a Hero to harm another one within Askrian grounds. Well, even outside our borders -- as long as they were summoned by Breidablik, they're bound to this. We employ many, ah, unique characters from opposing sides of the same war, so we have heard no small amount of complaints on this matter. Yet, there has never been a case of a fight breaking out since their own bodies are subjugated by the Pact." She looked through a sentence or another, muttering a few ah-s of understanding. "There is also a potent, ancient magic protecting each and every one of you -- as long as you are under our command, you are under no peril of death."

"I would ask you to explain this further, Commander. How can one avoid death just by being in an unfamiliar world?"

Anna looked from the book to the duo, her mind finally clear on her suspicious. "You and your, ah... sister," she took a dignified pause to assert the two of them that she not only was aware of their most guarded secret but that she was willing to keep it so, "as any other Hero summoned to this world, are, let's say, a 'borrowed' power from your original world. We pluck you out of there to fight for us here, but this does not change at all your role nor your history back whence you came. For that to happen, the magic here protects you on an intimate level -- although you can be injured and forced to retreat the battlefield, no wounds you retain will be fatal. After all, your life -- or death -- only concerns your original world."

Seteth took one hand to his chin in thought as Flayn looked down at her own hands, pensive. "Most interesting," the man muttered, his interest piqued. "I would rather avoid sending my sister to battle altogether; she is a healer first and foremost, you see. Since you've just told us that the wounds aren't fatal..."

"Well, having field healers certainly helps with the progression of battle." Anna interrupted, knowing where Seteth wanted to take the conversation to. "But, of course, it'll ultimately depend on you whether you choose to fight for us or not. Kiran's weapon also has the power to server the, ah, 'heroic' bonds binding you to Askr -- meaning he can send you back home with a snap of his fingers, anytime you want."

Narrowing his eyes, the man took a moment to think, then sighed. "I see."

Feeling increasingly antsy, Flayn looked from Seteth to Anna. "Um, you are not planning to have Lord Kiran send me back on my own, are you, Brother? I will have no such thing, I say!"

"Flayn-"

"We are finally in a place where we can be ourselves, under no peril to our lives! And it is such a wonderful place! Have you not heard the curious songs of the birds or the different color of the sky once we crossed over? I simply must explore it all for myself! I am most too weary of being alone for so long, Brother! I beg you to say such thought of returning me alone has not crossed your mind!"

Seteth looked down in visible distress. "I would, dear Flayn, but it'd be a lie. I just worry for you so-"

"Well, worry no more, for our dear Commander Anna cleared all and any doubts you had regarding this world! Has she not?" Flayn got up with a bounce, her curls dancing over her shoulders. "It is time for us to make ourselves acquainted with the askrian ways of life, for as long as we are needed here." She curtsied elegantly to Anna before turning her back to the Commander, heading to the door. "I thank you for your time, Commander, however we must take our leave."

"Flayn!" Seteth scrambled on his feet, barely bowing to Anna before running after his sister. "Do not walk away like this, young lady! What poor manners!" He scolded as they walked through the door, leaving Anna to her books.

"There's still so much to happen with these two," she absent-mindedly caressed the silver book she had just read. "I hope their time here can help them enrich themselves for what's to come."

"Ah, the very air in here feels different in my lungs!" Flayn twirled around herself as she headed towards the garden, lured by the clear atmosphere. "Do you not feel it so, Brother?"

Panting, Seteth sighed loudly. "Flayn, just because this world might be safer than where we came from, it does not mean you can frolic around on your own! I beg you to always be with me whenever you want to take a walk... I fear for you, even if you are protected by this ancient magic of this place's."

Feeling rather bad for running like that, Flayn looked down, sheepish. "Forgive me, Brother. I know all you care about it my safety, but I assure you that I am more than capable of taking care of myself, especially in this unfamiliar world."

"It's precisely because this is an unfamiliar world that I worry even more-"

"Oh!" A surprised gasp came from beside them, right a bit ahead into the garden. "Are you two new Heroes? It's not always that we welcome more dragons into the fray!"

Flayn widened her eyes so much she felt they were bulging out. "D-dragons? W-whyever would you assume that about us, dear stranger?" She tried her best to act meek, stepping just a bit behind Seteth's shoulder.

The owner of the voice, a silver-haired, pointy-eared woman tilted her head in confusion. "Huh? Did I get it wrong? I can clearly feel it..."

Way more used to keeping his poker face, Seteth simply cleared his throat. "I'm afraid we haven't met yet, Lady...?"

"Ah, how boorish of me! I'm Corrin, nice to meet you!" She curtsied with the grace of a noble, despite wearing a strange-looking armor. "I can turn into a dragon, so that's why I assumed you two were the same. Something about your vibes..."

Flayn stared at Corrin's exposed ears, somehow wanting to do the same with her own. It's been so long since she felt the wind without fearing her hair going up! "I am Flayn, dear Corrin. Nice to meet you."

"Seteth. It's my pleasure."

Corrin smiled gleefully. "Can I ask where are you guys from? Ever since coming here, I've found so many shape-shifters from all over! I always thought I was alone in this, but finding other people that share this burden has made it lighter, somehow."

"Burden?" Flayn asked innocently, exchanging glances with Seteth.

"Oh, look at me babble! Sorry about that." She looked down in distress for half a second before shaking her head to do away with any negative thoughts. "I still have much to learn from those manaketes -- ah, that's how some of the other dragon shape-shifters call themselves in their worlds -- so it's no wonder I got you guys mixed up with actual shape-shifters."

"There are more? More people who can turn to beasts- to dragons? In this world and in many others?" Flayn stepped away from Seteth's protection, taking Corrin's hand in unabashed excitement.

"Why, yes! Do you want to meet them? They were going to teach me lots of stuff today just at that gazebo over there, in the middle of the garden."

"Oh, I would dearly love to meet them! They can impart much knowledge, can they not? I am eager to learn more and more!"

"Yes!" Corrin squeezed Flayn's hand, matching her excitement down to her giddy steps. "They as wise as they are old -- some of them are over 3,000 years old!"

"Three thous-" Seteth choked. Could these creatures be the exact same as the ones back in their own world? How did they manage to retain their draconic forms for so long? How fundamentally different were they from the children of the goddess, if there were any changes at all?

Even Seteth was getting excited about it, if he could be honest.

Once they arrived, however, Seteth couldn't help but scowl so deeply he even let out a 'that's it?' under his breath.

The 'ancient beings' waiting for them looked no older than children -- though their ears were immensely longer than Corrin's.

"I'm here, Nowi! Tiki and Fae, too! Good afternoon!" Corrin giggled as she pulled Flayn to the middle of the girls, who all welcomed them with excited bounces and hugs.

"You brought us another dragon friend!!" Nowi jumped in Flayn's arms, digging her face into the taller girl's chest. "This world is THE BEST, did you know? I struggled so much to find dragon friends back in Ylisse, but I just instantly found so many friends the moment I was summoned! IT'S THE BEST!" She giggled happily, twirling Flayn about.

"Well, you met me, though! The not-me, me." A young, green-haired girl -- Tiki -- smiled, also diving into the hug.

"Uh-huh, but that was wayyyy later. I was lonely for a long time, you know! A thousand years!"

Flayn gasped. "So it is true that you are all ancient beings-"

"I'm five!" Fae got on her tiptoes to pull Flayn's skirt. "Five hundred!"

"My, and your youth hasn't changed at all!" Flayn patted the little girl's head, truly already at home amidst these strangers -- they shared something akin to a bond that no one else but themselves had: the blood of immortals and their burdens.

“It warms the heart to see the young ones chatting so happily, doesn’t it?” Bantu said as though he had simply materialized beside Seteth.

“Gah-” The green-haired man flinched. “Since when-”

“Ohoho, I’ve been here the whole time, my lad.” Bantu smiled. “Let us have a seat, shall we? It fits us old men better to simply watch over the younger generation as they bloom on their own, don’t you agree?”

Seteth glanced at Flayn’s genuine smile, one he hadn’t seen in many an age. He allowed himself to smile as well, shaking his head slightly. “You are right. Let us converse over there, friendly stranger. I also have much to ask regarding your- no, our kind.”

#fire emblem heroes #fire emblem three houses #feh #fe 3h #spoilers #seteth #flayn #anna #my writings #yuki's commissions

[beeblackburn]

Pretender Reads A Little Hatred, Part I, Chapter One

It's time. Goes without saying spoilers ahead for the entirety of The First Law works beyond the keep reading. Read at your own risk.

PART I

"The age is running mad after innovation;

and all the business of the world

is to be done in a new way.”

—Dr Johnson

No joke? This quotes gave me chills as a declaration of authorial intent. I have a slightly more optimistic view of The First Law’s world, but even I knew the first trilogy’s intent was, beyond commenting on how much Abercrombie dug Lord of the Rings so much that he wrote a trilogy to show his... appreciation, to show that, as much as people want to change, they are helpless to actually commit by their pasts, being pieces and pawns to the old ways and grudges of Bayaz and Khalul’s “great” war of two old assholes fighting over grudges kept alive solely two great powers butting heads over wrongs long past. 

That human nature is fundamentally unchanging.

But, at the same time? Abercrombie’s throwing down a gauntlet with this quote. With the new flavor of fantasy he’s promising, the new generation of characters he has to usher in to spearhead that new age, he has to change. He cannot rehash the old stories. Cannot repeat the old patterns. Cannot force the old systems continuing to work, having grown rusty and creaky with age. History has to move forward. Meaning he has to pave the path to new ways. The question is, new way in what manner? New ways as in a social progress, positive change, a better world? Or new ways as in Bayaz changing from magic to money, and from spells to cannons, in order to assert the same small-minded ideal of might makes right with different tools? 

It’s a new age of madness, but with human nature being what it is? Abercrombie has shown that a little hatred goes a long way to lead us to stepping upon old roads left behind our parents, who they themselves trod on by their predecessors.

Chapter Title: Blessings and Curses Point-of-View: Rikke

“Rikke.”

She prised one eye open. A slit of stabbing, sickening brightness.

“Come back.”

She pushed the spit-wet dowel out of her mouth with her tongue and croaked the one word she could think of. “Fuck.”

Now isn’t that just a typical Abercrombie sentiment. Actually, what I want to focus on is how this opening is lean compared to The Blade Itself:

Logen plunged through the trees, bare feet slipping and sliding on the wet earth, the slush, the wet pine needles, breath rasping in his chest, blood thumping in his head. He stumbled and sprawled onto his side, nearly cut his chest open with his own axe, lay there panting, peering through the shadowy forest.

—The Blade Itself, The End

From Blessings and Curses, we already see a much apparent crispness of voice, short paragraphs broken apart, an unusual situation of a girl opening one eye and having to come back (come back from what?) There’s a surreal quality that Logen’s opening, as much as I like it as an introduction to The Blade Itself, can’t beat beyond the chapter title. Yet, to remind us it’s Abercrombie, someone has to say fuck. Because of course.

“There’s my girl!” Isern squatted beside her, necklace of runes and finger bones dangling, grinning that twisted grin that showed the hole in her teeth and offering no help at all.

HOLY FUCK IT’S CRUMMOCK’S SHIN-KICKER AAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

“I saw folk falling from a high tower. Dozens of ’em.” She winced at the thought of them hitting the ground. “I saw folk hanged. Rows of ’em.” Her gut cramped at the memory of swinging bodies, dangling feet. “I saw … a battle, maybe? Below a red hill.”

Isern sniffed. “This is the North. Takes no magic to see a battle coming. What else?”

“I saw Uffrith burning.” Rikke could almost smell the smoke still. She pressed her hand to her left eye. Felt hot. Burning hot.

“What else?”

“I saw a wolf eat the sun. Then a lion ate the wolf. Then a lamb ate the lion. Then an owl ate the lamb.”

“Must’ve been a real monster of an owl.”

“Or a tiny little lamb, I guess? What does it mean?”

So, full disclosure here: I did read the A Little Hatred blurb before reading, so I already knew we were getting something like this... but holy shit, we’re seriously getting a prophet? I’m going to talk my precise thoughts on this later, in full first impressions of Rikke as a character, but man, I usually hate prophecies and prophets, but with Abercrombie? Dude’s earned enough credit (specifically, everything to do with Grom-gil-Gorm’s prophecy in the Shattered Sea series) at my trust bank to get me to care. And I love how Rikke can still feel the sensory details of her visions, the costs of magic. Magic.

Also, am I a terrible person for, seeing the eats in the prophecy, immediately thinking Eaters? I probably am.

I’ll hold off on dissecting the prophecy at the chapter’s end. 

"Well, I can unveil two secrets right away.” Rikke groaned as she pushed herself up onto one elbow. “My head hurts and I shat myself.”

"That second one’s no secret, anyone with a nose is party to it.”

"Shitty Rikke, they’ll call me." She wrinkled her nose as she shifted. “And not for the first time.”

"Your problem is in caring what they call you.”

There’s definitely a very winning formula with how Rikke and Isern’s dynamic works: the young, soft-hearted naif butting and bouncing heads against the more world-weary, a touch twisted, experienced warrior. Rikke complains about how much the world will react to her, Isern tells her to suck it up because Rikke doesn’t have to care at all.

Also, not going to lie: part of why I love Rikke is that she shits herself during her visions and fits. It undercuts the mystique of magic with the unpleasant consequences, grounded in reality.

Isern tapped under her left eye. “You say cursed with fits, I say blessed with the Long Eye.”

So. First off, fun fact:

Crummock spun one of the wooden signs on his necklace round and around. “I can’t see her letting Bethod lose, and herself along with him, can you? A witch as clever as that one? There’s all kinds of magic she could mix. All kinds of blessings and curses. All kinds of ways that bitch could tilt the outcome, as though the chances weren’t tilted enough already.”

—Last Argument of Kings, Leaves on the Water

History echoes, doesn’t it? Another i-Phail, another user of the Long Eye, and a discussion about the blessings and curses of magic. The players are different, but the sentiments are similar enough to ripple from the past to the present.

Now, my first reaction to reading this part of the blurb was: WHOA WHOA WHOA, Caurib’s Long Eye from The First Law trilogy? OH MY GOD!!!!! Just more connective tissue to link this book from its past, the earliest roots of Abercrombie’s world-building, when he was still tinkering with what he wanted (long eye isn’t even capitalized in The First Law’s mention of it). It’s a nice reference for us long-time readers and a magical power for the new readers. 

Mind you, all I’m thinking is: was Caurib, every time she was decked out and being impossibly beautiful in the way Abercrombie wrote her... was she actually having fits and headaches and shitting for her visions? Because, wow, I can only imagine how frustrated she must’ve been having to make public appearances. I can just imagine her wishing everyone would fuck off so she could have headaches and shit in peace. Already makes me like Caurib a lot more now.

“Huh.” Rikke rolled onto her knees and her stomach kept on rolling and tickled her throat with sick. By the dead, she felt sore and squeezed out. Twice the pain of a night at the ale cup and none of the sweet memories. “Doesn’t feel like much of a blessing to me,” she muttered, once she’d risked a little burp and fought her guts to a draw.

I really do appreciate how much Abercrombie grounds and mixes a curse into magical “blessings.” I was really skeptical of putting in some last trace of magic in anyone, but Rikke’s right in it not being a blessing, and considering magic is on its last legs, there’s no way Bayaz won’t meet her later and clutch his monstrous hands on her Long Eye, teaching her finesse in exchange for getting to aim where it goes towards.

Another tool. Another weapon to kill his enemies.

"Might have to rope you in future, make sure you don’t crack your nut and end up a drooler like my brother Brait. At least he can keep his shit in, mind you.” 

HOW MANY SONS DID CRUMMOCK HAVE. THE FUCK!? I can’t even find a Brait anywhere except The Heroes and that was clearly not him. For one, he didn’t drool!

“My head still aches so bad I can feel it in my teeth.” Rikke wanted to shout but knew it’d hurt too much, so she had to whine it soft instead. “I need no more small discomforts.”

“Life is small discomforts, girl! They’re how you know you are alive.”

Another part of why I like Rikke so much is that, as a character starting out, she whines. A decent amount. She’s admittedly got some good reason to do so, but as the narrative points out and Isern especially, at least living means you get to whine about it and too much of it will only enable more discomfort, make the pain bigger. There’s intentional room to grow for Rikke and the fact that Abercrombie lets her be a bit of a whiner at the risk of alienating readers is a writer’s courage I always try to emulate. 

Character development’s has to start somewhere.

“Guess not. Just, in the songs, it’s a thing witches and magi and deep-wise folk used to see into the fog of what comes. Not a thing that makes idiots fall down and shit themselves.”

“In case you never noticed, bards have a habit of dressing things up. There is a fine living, d’you see, in songs about deep-wise witches, but in shitty idiots, less.”

Snrrrrrk. I got to love how Abercrombie shades lesser and classic fantasies. He does so well with it.

“And proving you have the Long Eye is no simple matter. You cannot force it open. You must coax it.” And Isern tickled Rikke under the chin and made her jerk away. “Take it up to the sacred places where the old stones stand so the moon might shine full upon it. But it’ll see what it sees when it chooses, even so.” 

Huh. Crummock made it clear that there was something special about the moon during his time in Last Argument of Kings. I assumed it was solely just him thinking the moon’s love made men more violent and strong, but did he think it could influence magic? Given his more singular focus on violence and his clear Bloody-Nine murderboner fanboying, I think Crummock was a lot more close-minded about how the moon can affect things. Isern’s a lot more flexible, by comparison.

(Also, are those sacred places that fortress Logen and Crummock and the rest had their last stand in the High Places? Crummock did say it was well loved of the moon...)

“War?”

“It’s when a fight gets so big almost no one comes out of it well.”

“I know what it bloody is.” Rikke had a spot of fear growing at the nape of her neck which she couldn’t shrug off however much she wriggled her shoulders. “But there’s been peace in the North all my lifetime.”

“My da used to say times of peace are when the wise prepare for violence.”

“Your da was mad as a bootful of dung.”

“And what does your da say? Few men so sane as the Dogman.”

Rikke wriggled her shoulders one more time, but nothing helped. “He says hope for the best and prepare for the worst.”

Isern’s first line is true, but also makes me think of all the Northmen who came into war, looking for glory and a Name, and came out dead or unable to stop killing, their bloody footsteps followed by fellow warriors with same dreams of glory and a Name, just younger. War chews up men and spits them out, dead or alive, no one living coming out without trauma and/or a score of dead friends.

Also, Dogman’s daughter, huh! Good on him for managing to raise a decent child in the Circle of the World, even if she has her share of flaws. Rikke certainly reminds me of a softer, more whinier Dogman, yet still decent.

Rikke blinked at her. ‘You can’t have been ten years old.’

‘Old enough to kill a man.’

‘What?’

‘Used to carry my da’s hammer, ’cause the smallest should take the heaviest load, but that day he was fighting with the hammer so I had his spear. This very one.’ Its butt tapped the rhythm of their walking on the path. ‘My da knocked a man down, and he was trying to get up, and I stabbed him right up the arse.’

‘With that spear?’ Rikke had come to think of it as just a stick Isern carried. A stick that happened to have a deerskin cover over one end. She didn’t like thinking there was a blade under there. Especially not one that had been up some poor bastard’s arse.

I love Abercrombie’s humor, especially given how actually rather depressing Isern’s age of killing was. It always serves to give levity to some heavy stuff in the story, preventing the darkness from choking most people whole. It’s the “poor bastard” part of that last line that brings the smile and laughter out.

“Girl, you have a ring through your nose.” 

“I am aware.” And Rikke stuck her tongue out and touched the tip to it. “It keeps me tethered.”

Hey, you want to know another part of why I really like Rikke? Nose rings are fucking cool. Gives her a distinct appearance and fashion.

Now if only other prophets had nose rings instead of cloaks and vague portents, I wouldn’t find them so bloody boring.

“You’ve a wolf on your shield,” she said.

“Stour Nightfall’s mark,” growled the big man, with a hint of pride, and Rikke saw he had a wolf on his shield, too, though his was scuffed almost back to the wood.

(Looks at his book) Well, shit! The cover’s actually relevant. I was eyeing the UK cover better, but now that this US/Can one has meaning, I can accept it.

Also, Stour Nightfall is the coolest fucking name. Can’t wait to meet him!

“Nightfall’s the greatest warrior since the Bloody-Nine!” piped up the young one. “He’s going to take back Angland and drive the Union out o’ the North!” 

(Arches an eyebrow) I don’t take issue with taking back Angland, there’s some valid enough history with Casamir that I don’t blame the North for it, but how did what I theorized to be Calder’s son become such a beef-cake? But really? Greatest warrior since the Bloody-Nine? I can’t help but think him a cut-price Bloody-Nine now.

“The Union?” And Rikke looked down at the wolf’s head badly daubed on his badly made shield. "A wolf ate the sun,” she whispered.

Thank you, Rikke, I studied English lit in high school. I can do my own analysis of symbolism and visions.

Rikke’s arrow stuck into his back, just under his shoulder blade.

Her turn to say, “Oh,” not sure whether she’d meant to let go the string or not.

A flash of metal and the old man’s head jolted, the blade of Isern’s spear catching him in the throat. He dropped his own spear, grabbed for her with clumsy fingers.

“Shush.” Isern slapped his hand away and ripped the blade free in a black gout.

The inexperienced child and hardened warrior dynamic continues with Rikke accidentally, not knowing if she meant to or not, dooming a boy to death and Isern, experienced hand at the black business, aims for the kill and gives her enemies no ground to gain leverage upon her. But, ultimately...

“You killed ’em.” Rikke felt all hot. There were some red speckles on her hand. The big one was lying on his face, shirt soaked dark.

“You killed this one,” said Isern. The lad knelt there, making these squeaky little gasps as he tried to reach around his back to the arrow shaft, though what he’d do if he got his fingertips to it, Rikke had no idea.

... no one’s hands in this world remain clean for too long.

“Then killing ’em was all o’ the one choices we had, eh? Your problem is you’re all heart.” And she stabbed Rikke in the tit with one bony finger.

“Ow!” Rikke took a step away, holding her arms across her chest. “That hurts, you know!”

“You’re all heart all over, so you feel every sting and buffet. You must make of your heart a stone.” And Isern thumped her ribs with a fist, the finger bones around her neck rattling. “Ruthlessness is a quality much loved o’ the moon.” As if to prove the point, she bent down and heaved the dead lad into the bushes. “A leader must be hard, so others don’t have to be.”

First off, I stabbed my own chest with my own finger just now to see how much it hurt. I can only imagine the increased discomfort with doing it to breasts.

Second off, to give my first impressions of Rikke... well, it’s funny. I once talked to a great friend of mine who we love to talk tropes and stories and fiction about and I told him I generally don’t gravitate to the rougher shit-talking tomboy and the prophet character tropes. To be quite frank, the former bores me on general lack of craft (everyone seems to think the trope itself constitutes a strong personality!) and the latter is just dry plot exposition on two legs generally, full of billowing cloaks and being fuck-useless 99% of the story.

Rikke might have been love at first sight for a few reasons.

The consequences of prophecy. I keep nailing this point, but I do for a reason: I have rarely seen a prophet actually endure physical ailments for their magical gifts, and the headaches, the fits, the burning hot eye, and the shitting? It helps ground Rikke’s struggles in less abstract details so we can sympathize better. We might not have had visions, but we’ve had headaches, hot eyes and shat before.

She’s got a personality! She’s rough, she gives as good verbally as she gets, but she’s also kind and not someone who goes for violence as a first resort. But, at the same time, she’s definitely got her flaws. She’s a whiner. There’s a touch of naivety and inexperience that shows when she talks how times were different when Dogman was fighting and Isern shuts that illusion down, there’s even a softness in her with how she said they should’ve given Stour’s thugs a chance.

Her partnership dynamic with Isern is really winning, allowing more of her personality to bounce off of Isern while having some sass of her own to snap back at Isern, allowing her to have a personality to bounce off of. It allows for development of both characters in a way that Abercrombie’s first attempt at having an early traveling pair in Malacus Quai and Logen can never match, given all the personality leaping off the screen.

The tonal difference. Rikke is a really decent kid dropped into the Circle of the World. In any other series, my eyes would glaze over in boredom. In here? There’s so much misery and depressing reality that happens in the Circle of the World, that it looks like it’ll be a treat to see how she’ll interacts with the older, hardened generation of characters and how much decency might touch upon them. And that only makes Isern’s advice to her all the more interesting. Because her being all heart is hardly Bayaz’s ideal tool and I get the sense that her turning her heart into stone won’t be a smooth ride.

The nose ring. I’m sorry if it makes me shallow, but that’s a cool design choice and love the tethered justification.

The morning mist was long faded and she could see all the way across the patchwork of new-planted fields to Uffrith, wedged in against the grey sea behind its grey wall. Where her father’s old hall stood with the scraggy garden out the back. Safe, boring Uffrith, where she’d been born and raised. Only it was burning, just the way she’d seen it, and a great column of dark smoke rolled up and smudged the sky, drifting out over the restless sea.

(winces) Well, that’s one part of the prophecy dealt with.

Isern wandered from the trees with her spear across her shoulders and a great smile across her face. ‘You know what this means?’

‘War?’ whispered Rikke, horrified.

“Aye, that.” Isern waved it away like it was a trifle. “But more to the matter, I was right!” And she clapped Rikke on the shoulder so hard she near knocked her down. “You do have the Long Eye!”

Hah! Somehow, Isern, I think she won’t take the blessing of that statement and only see the curse of it.

So! Theory-crafting on the prophecy itself!

The only tower I know of in the North was in the High Places, and given Isern’s with Rikke, I can imagine that’s certainly plausible. Either that or somewhere in the Union, given its towers, especially the Tower of Chains? 

The battle below a red hill will be one of our battle set-pieces. Definitely something like the Casualties chapter in The Heroes.

Uffrith already burnt, but it was the first thing to happen, so the people hanged from towers and the red hill battle are yet to happen.

“I saw a wolf eat the sun” Stour taking down the Union. 

“Then a lion ate the wolf” Leo taking down Stour, which I’d normally take as a sign I shouldn’t get invested because I already know the outcome... but given Grom-gil-Gorm’s prophecy twist, I think there’s plenty of ways this could easily turn twisted, especially with Black Calder about. 

“Then a lamb ate the lion” I heard a decent amount of people say they thought it’d be straight-up Lamb and, man, NO. The point of Red Country is that, deep down, Lamb was only pretending to be a lamb and was really a wolf in lambswool. Someone who genuinely is worthless... Orso, from the blurb, seems to fit the bill, given that Leo’s been hoping for help there.

“Then an owl ate the lamb.” Bayaz with Orso. Owls are symbolized as knowledge and Bayaz’s being the First of the Magi, feels right for that... and given that Orso is part of the royal family and how Bayaz “ate” Jezal, I can’t say him repeating it with Orso is implausible. My only worry is, how will this be new from Bayaz and Jezal’s deal?

PART I

Chapter One: Blessings and Curses Chapter Two: Where the Fight’s Hottest Chapter Three: Guilt Is a Luxury Chapter Four: Keeping Score Chapter Five:  A Little Public Hanging Chapter Six: The Breakers Chapter Seven: The Answer to Your Tears Chapter Eight: Young Heroes Chapter Nine: The Moment

#a little hatred #a little hatred spoilers #the age of madness #the first law #joe abercrombie #rikke #a little hatred part I

[ellelittlebitofcrazy]

Film Review: 5 Reasons why Netflix's Sex Education is Revolutionary for Filipino Teenagers

Netflix's Sex Education has caught a lot of viewers' attention in the Philippines ever since it aired last 2019. A British comedy-drama teen series which received an 8.3/10 in Rotten Tomatoes and IMBD and some nominations for online film and television awards during its release years.

I remember encouraging my younger sister to watch Sex Education on Netflix because I believed she would learn from it and that it is good for her to be educated. At first, I was doubtful of whether I should do it or not because to recommend this type of film-- especially for Filipino teenagers that grew up from conservative families-- feels the necessity for personal space when watching. Some tend to keep it personal when it comes to the things rarely talked about in the family. Unlike western adolescence, Asians are more traditional and timid when it comes to topics that are intimate. This is why a lot of Filipino teenagers and young adults struck their interests ever since Netflix aired the film. Some comments were, "Have you watched the new Netflix series?" A friend of mine said, "Grabe, episode 1 palang.." They were surprised about what happened only on the first episode. But, aside from the fact that the film shows lots of the sexy stuff and the typical high school love thing going on, there are some points I would like to share on how this particular series has the potential to change the outlook of this generation. That being said, here are 5 things why I think Sex Education is revolutionary, especially for Filipino teenagers.

Sex Education is informative in an entertaining way.

Watching the show eases the awkwardness that teenagers often feel when talking about taboo stuff. An example is when Jean Milburn, Otis' mother, who is a sex therapist and one of the main characters of the show, assured Otis' frequent masturbation as being normal during puberty. Another is the vagina shaming incident that ended with an unexpected low-key unity among females who, ironically, dislike each other.

When we want something to be normalized, we can use methods that divert our attention from the idea that is frowned-upon in order to transition its state to a more acceptable type. In that way, the things we don't usually talk about turns out to be all right when we can laugh about it. "Yeah, its very funny but it's also true"-- the fact does not change. Sex Education portrays what high school feels like for most teenagers and the transformation of an uncomfortable situation into a stereotype kind of feels right when watching the film.

It tackles issues that are rarely discussed in schools.

There are a lot of things you don't learn in school, Brenda, but sex education should be one of them. Many schools here in the Philippines still posses such poor practice. Moordale Secondary School represents those schools but despite that, the film exposes these faults into circumstances and provides solution to them. An example is the scene where Jean Milburn talks about chlamydia in school and how it can cause panic and propagate false information among students who lack knowledge with regards to Sexually Transmitted Diseases. I think that conducting lessons about STDs or Safe Sex in school is not enough. Teachers should determine how their students feel about it and how this information should be used to advocate awareness than fear or anxiety.

Schools are supposed to be a safe  and productive learning ground especially for pubescent individuals who are yet to discover a lot of things. It is good to acknowledge the importance of abstinence, but it does not take away the fact that the youth tend to act carelessly because they are on a part of their life where they are supposed to make mistakes. We would not want our relationships to end up like how the Moordale teachers Mr. Colin Hendricks and Ms. Emily Sanders-- who had dirty talking issues they can't even discuss-- handled it so the other ended up seeking advice from a student. It is not supposed to be that way! Talking about these things in school is healthy and is a fundamental element to consider for one's sexual awareness.

Sex Education depicts teenage reality about sexuality, circumstances, and problems.

Most Filipino teenagers, while growing up, either experienced how to deal with strict parents, bullies, or personal circumstances that eventually made them feel unsafe when it comes to asserting their themselves. Their sexuality, insecurities, and traumas were dramatically portrayed by the students in the series too. Knowing that Ola, Adam, and Eric too, felt differently and that it was okay feeling the same way they did when they finally realized their sexuality. Or when Olivia admitted her insecurities to her boyfriend and when Otis learned about his childhood trauma as the reason why he was having a difficulty in self-pleasure. With Maeve's family problems, and Aimee's emotional and physical security-- these scenes exhibit a sense of validation and understanding to the viewers.

We are now in the newest era where we have acknowledged our past and that it cannot hurt us anymore. We focused more on the things we did not learn or encounter before. The things our parents lacked teaching us. The things everyone forgot to tell us.

It shows the support that we get from our fellow teenagers 

During childhood, kids encounter a lot of bading jokes and terms from their friends. During high school, filipino kids often tease one person who acts differently, but this generation is not easily hindered by individuality; just like Eric and Otis' friendship. Just as how the girls comforted Aimee after her bus incident. The fact that the film pulled it off with Eric and Otis' friendship tells a whole lot of difference. I have to say this: No one gets us but us. Not our parents, not our teachers, our ates or kuyas. Not them, but those who feel the exact same way too. We draw our emotional support from our friends. We tell them our secrets and the things we struggle from. Sex Education showed us that no matter how differently we may be from others, may it be from different circles, different neighborhoods, we have that one thing in common: We are all feeling these things at the same moment of our lives. We can now see the diversity in each circle of friends. We have conquered our differences and used them to unify ourselves.

Teenagers today feel a sense of security when they open up to their friends and I think it should stay that way.

Sex Education teaches communication as an essential tool

This is what I personally admired most about this film. The amount of courage that every character had in revealing their views. Number one is Otis and his mother's relationship. I would not say it is sometimes out of line, I want to focus on the outcome of that situation. If you watch and notice every time he courses into an argument with his mom, he would consistently be honest about his sentiments, whether he felt mad, or he felt betrayed. Number two, Eric and his father having a deep conversation about being openly gay.  In one line Eric says, "Your fear doesn't help me, dad. It makes me weak." Number three, the season finale scene where Otis confronted his dad, Remi, about how he has never been there for him. It was probably the most intense and purest conversation a father and son could ever have. I cannot begin to imagine how brave it was for a parent admitting his mistakes to his child. Lastly, When Ola and Maeve finally ended their beef with each other and realize that women are supposed to have each others' backs.

These forms of conversations rarely happen to the youth in this country. Thus, they develop bad blood toward their family members, or grudge toward their friends. Communication is the healthiest form of understanding others. Something that this generation needs to improve. Some of us hide behind the fear of being wrong. For Jackson, the parental pressure. For Aimee--fear of not being heard. And for whatever reason, teenagers find it very hard to convey their emotions. The film's therapy sessions revolve around communicating such problems as it is the only way on how they could address them and just be done with it.

I hope this short review aids in understanding the change we need to be today. Our generation has come so far and I aspire for more growth. Cheers!

[tsaomengde]

Difficulty vs. Accessibility: Sekiro and Dragon Age

[cross-posting to several media platforms, so I explain the terminology more than would be called for on the subreddit. unmarked spoilers below the cut]

Since From Software’s Sekiro was released a few weeks ago, there has been a great deal of online hullabaloo about its lack of difficulty settings – well, they actually are there, but only in the sense that there are in-game options to make things harder rather than easier.  The centerpiece of the debate has been this article:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2019/03/28/sekiro-shadows-dies-twice-needs-to-respect-its-players-and-add-an-easy-mode/#362a8dc91639

Here’s the thing: in the past, I’ve said games should absolutely offer an easy mode, or ways to speed up progression, for those without the time/ability/inclination to play “as intended” – that is, to play the game the way the developers intended for it to be played.  But I’ve mainly had this conversation as regards games like Dragon Age and the newer Deus Exes, which have in fact included these difficulty options.

The crux of the argument about Dragon Age was a developer’s assertion that she would like to see a mode included where combat is either removed or automatically resolved.  She was, of course, sent the usual array of death threats and other excreta from the Twitter Brigade, mostly for the crime of being a woman on the Internet with an opinion, but those with an actual bone to pick said basically: “If you take the combat out of the game, there is no game left.  There is only a visual novel.”

The reason why I think difficulty settings, and indeed even a way to remove combat altogether, work/would work in Dragon Age is simple.  Visual novels are great!  Choose-your-own-adventure stories are fun!  The heart of the Dragon Age experience is interacting with your companions, exploring the world, learning the lore, making decisions that shape the way the story plays out, and so forth.  Do you drink from the Well of Knowledge yourself, or let your morally-ambiguous and rather-too-eager mage advisor do it?  Do you stand by while your friend’s mercenary company dies in pursuit of a larger political goal, or do you sacrifice the possibility of an alliance with a foreign power in deference to your friend’s well-being and feelings?  Absent the combat, these choices have weight.  They have consequences.  

The combat, frankly, is the tax you pay to get to experience these things.  I like Dragon Age combat just fine, particularly Inquisition’s, to the point where I��ve finished the game on Nightmare.  But to my wife, it’s precisely what I said it is: a tax you pay to get to the good bits.  On our joint playthroughs, she handles exploration and dialogue, I kill things.  She’s 100% capable of killing things just as efficiently as I am, but she doesn’t get the same joy from it.  If there were an option to remove the combat and just explore and hang out with your friends, she might be happy at the option to use it.

Here is why, in my estimation, the same argument doesn’t apply to Sekiro.

In Dragon Age, there are two kinds of entities: players, and enemies.  Players have a ton of abilities, specializations, equipment, weapons, they have skill combos they can do with their allies, etc.  Enemies are big walking chunks of hit points with the ability to make you die unless you use your abilities.  Most of the rules you need to follow, like stamina/mana management, cooldowns, positioning AoEs, trying to make your potion supply last from point A to point B, don’t apply to them.  They are there to get in your way and make you consume x% of your resources.  The combat gameplay does not inform the world, the lore, or the characters, beyond each party member being assigned a specialization that supposedly relates to their character (like Cassandra being given the Templar spec, which is… not accurate).  Your mages never have to worry about demonic possession, one of the main story elements driving class warfare in the setting, because that’s not the gameplay experience the devs are trying to sell you.

In Sekiro, you and your enemies are, by and large, the same.  You both have health and a Posture meter that gets closer to a guard break as you block more attacks.  You can both Deflect enemy attacks to inflict extra Posture damage and avoid taking it yourself.  While you have a wide array of skills and techniques, enemies do too.  Common enemies do not wander around with the goal of making you consume x% of your resources; they patrol specific routes, on the lookout, with the intent and capability of killing you stone dead if you screw up more than once or twice.

Combat gameplay absolutely informs the world, the lore, and the characters.  Sekiro can learn a multitude of special combat techniques, but unlike in Dragon Age, where the different abilities are just buttons you press to do different things for different kinds of damage or effects, these techniques have a presence in the world.  The Ashina-style Ichimonji, a powerful downward swing that restores your Posture, and the Ashina Cross, a sword-drawing technique, are both available to you and your enemies who practice Ashina swordsmanship.  You can counter enemy thrust attacks with a shinobi technique called the Mikiri Counter, where you step on an enemy blade as it’s thrust at you.  So when you fight your shinobi father Owl, who taught you everything you know, and you try a thrust attack on him… well, he hits you with his own Mikiri Counter.  He also knows your Chasing Slice follow-up attack to a shuriken throw, the Shadowfall thrust technique you can learn… the list goes on.

If the game wasn’t difficult, wasn’t punishing, if you could just tap R1 through every fight and occasionally dodge the really dangerous attacks, you wouldn’t recognize these things.  The difficulty of the game also encourages you to use stealth attacks, throw dirt in people’s eyes, kill from a distance with shuriken, use firecrackers to interrupt enemy attacks…  In other words, you are forced by the exigency of your situation to really adopt a shinobi mindset.  Once you really know the game, your moveset, and your tools, you can run into a crowd of three or four guys and come out on top, and it feels awesome, but not at first.  And even at the very end of the game, normal enemies are still totally capable of murdering you, to say nothing of the bosses, so you can never let your guard down.

So much of the story, the lore, of Sekiro, is communicated in this way, through your learned experiences and your struggles to master the systems of the world.  Watching someone play through the game is thrilling when they demonstrate skill, but it’s not the same as doing it yourself.  So the question is: how do you make such a difficult, tailored experience accessible?

I’ve thought a lot about it, and the answer I keep coming to is that you don’t.  You do everything you can to make it actually accessible – Sekiro already has completely remappable controls, multiple spoken language tracks for people who don’t want to or can’t deal with subtitles, adjustable gore levels – but at the end of the day, you can’t compromise the core of the experience.  I’ve read accounts from multiple people with disabilities on the Sekiro subreddit who, in point of fact, decry the call for “accessibility” and the use of the disabled community as a talking point.  They don’t want to be pandered to; they want to play the game as it was intended, same as everyone else, regardless of any additional complications.  Speaking as a person on the spectrum, if someone handed me a visual novel that had been tweaked to be more “accessible” to me, and they had tweaked it by taking out characters’ emotional ambiguity because we Aspies sure are bad with those Feelings, I would feel… well.  Not great, not at all!  I would rather play the actual visual novel and take the risk of not 100% grokking what was happening on the first run.

Another argument: at this point, we can all agree that Games Can Be Art.  Yes?  Good.  The purpose of art is to create emotion.  So we have to ask: what is the vehicle the art uses to deliver that emotion?  In Dragon Age, the vehicle is your interactions with the other characters, the choices you make, and the ways in which the story changes depending on those choices.  These elements are present in Sekiro, but a fundamental part of its vehicle is the experience of being in the world.  

Confronting Genichiro, the man who cut off your arm, in the middle of a lightning storm on top of a castle which you have spent the past hour scaling, fighting off enemy shinobi the entire way, and barely scraping out a victory by redirecting his own lightning attacks back at him – there is a raw edge of desperation that feeds back in to a tremendously powerful feeling of victory and satisfaction.  The analogous situation in Dragon Age, the big battle against Corypheus, does not create the same feelings because the situation is manufactured.  He supplies the battlefield, drops you into it, and then you have a little fight.  Your emotions about him and the situation come from the events leading up to it and their impact on you and your allies.  The cathartic element present in Sekiro is absent here, and the difference in the execution of gameplay-as-story is at the center of this contrast.

To sum up, the difficulty of Sekiro is directly tied to the player’s experiences in and understanding of the world, and thus it is an essential component of the game qua art.  Changing any element of it to make it less demanding and punishing would change the essence of the art form.  This is in contrast to Dragon Age, whose gameplay does not directly inform story and as a result can change the nature of that gameplay without compromising its essential player experience.

#sekiro #dragon age #difficulty #accessibility #long post #spoilers