#he is the /embodiment/ of all things terror. in the end good or bad means nothing to him | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

araminakilla · 1 year

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Regarding Death Wolf...

Hear me out (NO, it's not the kind you are thinking)

We know Death has a job, right? To collect souls and most likely release them to the afterlife.

And for this job, he has to be there when somebody is about to die, as demostrated with him being there moments before Puss' eight death.

Supposing he is THE Death and he has been doing this since the beginning of time (or at least when there were enough stories of the Grim Reaper to adquire a physical form) that means he has seen a lot, A LOT of awful things.

Murders, suicides, massacres, death of infants, people who didn't deserve to die alone, animal cruelty, some other heavy stuff I won't mention here, etc etc etc.

And we thought "man, how is he able to cope with all of that? That job has to be utter torture for someone."

Probably many of you could think that he is able to do that because he is Death, and he was "born" with that purpose and only him can reap souls perfectly.

But while he is a force of nature, he also WAS a force of nature. Let me explain it well: He adquired a personality enough to be angry, excited, frustrated, amazed, happy, among other emotions.

While he has supernatural power and is most likely the most powerful being in the Shrek Franchise (or in Dreamworks as many say) he is also a PERSON.

Someone with a code of honor, morals, opinions, beliefs, etc.

Returning to the question "How can he bear all of that?" taking into account he is no longer an inevitable force, but a character of his own.

The answer is something you may relate to, and that is: Creativity and escapism.

To be the embodiment of Death, the guy is a very creative fella.

First of all, his design. I heard many people saying here and in Twitter that his design is something they would come up in their edgy, teen years of drawing their first fursona.

Guess what? They are right, the wolf form is someone's fursona. It's DEATH'S fursona. He clearly came up with this badass, piercing canine form to blend with the Fairy Tale Land assuming the form of the "Big Bad Wolf". He most likely had other forms he designed over the centuries and was able to present as them like if he were on a role play game in the living world.

His sickles? The weapon of choice with the little crossed cats on it to have a bigger effect of terror for Puss? Those who can become knuckles and join to create a scythe? Those are his creation, probably after thinking it for a while and writing all of those functions on a paper.

The way he presents himself? In the bar? The coins in his eyes as a "watching you" sign while being a cool reference to the Ferryman of souls? He transforming Perrito's forest into the background of a skull? The chilling reveal at the Cave of Lost Souls? The fire ring? It was all him.

As for the escapism part...

When the world becomes too heavy to deal with as real life issues tend to make us feel bad, depressed, angry... we tend to escape it somewhere. And in our time the common place would be the internet as in webpages or comics, stories, etc.

But what has to do with Death Wolf you may ask?

Well, while he would NEVER be able to escape his job entirely, he can have moments where he can enjoy a good hunt of people who don't appreciate life, like the whole plot of the Puss in Boots sequel could demostrate.

He managed to have a little time outside his eternal routine to chase an arrogant cat who took life for granted. He enjoyed it, it was thrilling, it was exciting.

It was a way to escape a monotonous, grim "life", if just for a short moment.

So, when the chase ended as his prey no longer feared him and now was ready to fight for his last life, the wolf retreats, happy for Puss' character development but resigned because he once again had to return to "The Eternal Duty"

And that's not even counting all the times Jack "I'm dead inside" Horner had to interrupt Lobo's hunt and remind him of his job even in his "spare time"

Death knew the chase had to end eventually, but he didn't want it to end.

He didn't want to return to his own world

And if we look at Death like that, then he is probably one of the most relatable characters Dreamworks has ever make.

In the Shrek Franchise:

Monsters can be loved

Princesses don't have to fit the perfect standards of beauty

Handsome guys can be possesive jerks

Love at first sight doesn't work like one would think

Happily ever afters had to be built and not just obtain them with magic

And Death is the most creative and "full of life" being in the world

Because he would absolutely go crazy with his life/work if he wasn't.

Because in a world of Kings, Poets and Soldiers, he's the Supreme King

And he's also a perky goth but none of you are ready for that conversation.

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denkineptune · 3 years

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mha date headcanons- boys and girls :))

♡ request: “i love ur blog already, ur writing is so good!!! im so excited to see the content u’ll be posting !! :D since ur taking requests, how abt some date headcanons for the mha boys (or girls if u want!) ?” - @dianangels

♡ thank you for letting me write girls aaa i chose to do some as first date hc. it was kinda hard to keep jirou’s gn because i wanted to reference wlw stereotypes but i succeeded in gender-neutral because i want everyone to be able to enjoy

♡ dedicating part of this to @anxious-botanist because she’s the one who inspired the momo cuddles hehe sorry it took so long

♡ fic details: headcanons, fluff, gender-neutral reader, 2nd pov

characters: kaminari, amajiki, jirou, ashido, yaoyorozu

kaminari- arcade

↠AR C ADE DA T E

↠you hear me??? arcade!! date!! ideal man, right here, someone claim him immediately or else i will be forced to take ownership

↠he’s super laid back and chill, pretty childish at heart. he only means the best, though, so i think an arcade is exactly what he would go for when taking you on a date! he doesn’t have a lot of money but still wants you to go home with something to remember the date by

↠he buys like $50 worth of tokens and splits it between the two of you, making sure that he tells you which games give the most tickets, because he’s definitely been here enough times to remember

↠his favorite game is either crossy roads or the big bass wheel- he loves crossy roads because of how cute the style is, but also there is impending stress and levels of d o o m as you progress further. big bass wheel is basically just gambling, and i think he’s yumeko jabami.

↠he hacks games to make you win sometimes,, his quirk is bascially designed to do this. it’s like he was born just to take you out on this arcade date. he uses his quirk to short circuit the game and trick the computer into giving you hundreds of tickets

↠he just wants to make you happy and see you smile!! there’s not a feeling quite like succeeding at something as silly as an arcade game, but there’s a certain pride to it that he loves seeing on your face.

↠kaminari only does it a few times, since he knows that you should be earning your prizes ((not that you know when he does it, he’s really cheeky about it))

↠playyyy multiplayers with him! he loves DDR (dance dance revolution)- you do multiple rounds and are equally exhausted by the end of it akdflad you may not be good, and tbh neither is denki, but you still have fun, which is what matters

↠he also loves taking photobooth pictures, he puts on the most horrendous filters and does the dumbest poses, but it’s so adorable. he does the typical one smile, one “serious”, one silly face, one kith > <

↠kami gets cocky,,, it’s just how he is,, he gets overly confident whether or not he’s been on a winstreak

“heyy, y/n! look at my speedrun on this, i’m getting so many tickets, i’ll be able to get a house by the end of it!”

↠and then he CAN’T because he doesn’t get the jackpot eghgdhgeh

↠by the end of the day, you’ve spent hours at the arcade, laughing and screaming with denki as you terrorize the small children. yes, he’s that kind of guy

↠by “terrorize”, i don’t mean like a bully, but he’s unintentionally intimidating kids with his pockets overflowing with ticket chains, a crazed look on his face as he goes absolutely ham on the shooting games

↠there’s electricity coming off of him, kids sometimes have to dodge it when passing by

↠so anyways, by the end of the date, you’re basically being kicked out of the arcade, because, as kami puts it,

“we were here when it opened and i’ll be damned if we’re not here when it closes,”

↠between the two of you, you’ve aquired tens of thousands of tickets??? the employees probably hate y’all, they had to count those beasts of ticket rolls you’ve accumulated during the 10 hours the arcade was open

↠exactly 62,069 tickets (69 go brrr- kaminari’s brain), and you can basically buy the arcade with that currency

↠but here’s the thing: he lets you spend all of it. you heard me, all. of. it. he just wants to see you happy, and the best way he can think of to get a final glorious memory of your smile is to let you spend the tickets as you see fit, this generosity just to see you glowing as you walk out of the building, arms chock full of amazing junk

↠but of course, you’d feel bad if you spent all of it, especially since he was the one who took you out, so you offered him the half of the tickets that were won

“denki, you won most of these with your amAzINg gaming skills, it’s only fair you get to have something too,”

“my prize will be seeing you- your- your-- aw fuck, i forgot the line, it’ll come back to me, just give me a minute.”

↠he tried to be smooth and it failed, but you chuckled at the attempt, so all around, he considered it a success

↠denki gets a lot of dumb things that will probably end up being thrown away soon, but he also gets you a very soft bat stuffed animal that you should treasure and keep forever

amajiki- a walk and picnic in a japanese garden

↠tamaki is very shy, very socially anxious. he’s the kind to wait for people to leave a section of a store before he goes there, purposely do his errands in the early morning to limit social interaction, and find any excuse to leave a situation. which, tbh, isn’t that all of us?

↠let’s be honest here, if it wasn’t y’alls first date, he’d probably not go anywhere. as long as he’s with you, he doesn’t really care for anything too fancy

↠but he’s convinced himself that he needs to do something reasonably big for your first date to make sure you don’t regret your decision to go out with him. so instead of deciding to stay in, he goes somewhere that’s only slightly anxious for him, but where he still feels comfortable

↠so he’s decided on a japanese tsukiyama garden! these places are beautiful by design, not cheap but not too expensive, and people are obligated by rules to be quiet and keep their hands to themselves

↠nobody goes to a garden to socialize, in fact, i’d argue most people go just to look around, rest, and clear their heads. there’s usually not any screaming children, no quirk usage, no villains, it’s a little safe haven.

↠bonus: there’s butterflies :))

↠it’s so peaceful, and he gets to focus on you instead of whatever loud noise is making him anxious

↠he brings a picnic basket filled with all your favorite foods, and his! he makes a show out of displaying what he can manifest with different snacks, making a point to eat edible seeds so he can produce flowers for you 🥺🥺🥺

↠you walk around the garden for a few hours, marveling at the decor and how well-maintained everything is. there’s a koi pond, hanging wisteria trees, and multiple gazebos that create a really comfortable and calm environment

↠speaking of koi ponds, amajiki offers to buy you food so you can feed the fish! you stand on a bridge above the pond, sharing the container with him. the sMILE on his face when he watches you throw the food is so pure i’m-

↠he’s the walking embodiment of “uwu”- his face is so calm and his eyes are shining and he can feel his heart swelling with love i am GOING to cry my eyes out

↠but honestly, he wishes he could stay in this moment forever- you’re happy, he’s happy, and it feels like you two are the only people in the universe. right now, he doesn’t have to worry about school, villain attacks, his future, or anything that makes him anxious; all that he can see right now is how beautiful and at peace you look. he took you out today, and you’re enjoying yourself. this is one of the few things that makes him confident: knowing that he’s able to make you happy

↠tamaki is silently celebrating; you’ve had a good time and he didn’t freak out, so it’s the best possible scenario!

ashido- rollerskating! ((look at her she’s adorable the smile n the eyes aaa))

↠mina is a very energetic and bubbly person, its quite obvious if you’ve spent any amount of time around her

↠for your first date with her, she’d already have a location in mind!!

↠the atmosphere of rollerskating rinks is so electric, she can’t help but feel happy there, and she wants to experience that lovely feeling with you, too :))

↠you enter the rink, and mina is already borderline bouncing off the walls alskdfj

↠whether or not you’ve ever skated before, ashido is super cautious with you- multiple times she’s fallen on her butt while learning how to skate, so unless you’re a pro, she’s watching your every move to make sure you don’t get hurt

“y/n! please be careful- you’re not getting hurt on my watch!”

↠she jabs a thumb in her direction proudly, with the cutest bigass grin on her face awh 🥺🥺🥺she’s really enthusiastic about sharing one of her passions with you

“try to balance, alright? don’t put too much weight on your heel or toes, because then you’ll fall on your butt. here, take my hand and i’ll help you! hey, there you go, you’re doing great!”

↠she pays for everything and will WRESTLE you if you try to disagree aldkfa if you’re the type of person to pay for everything as well, y’all are going to have to fight; mina will not give up

↠ashido comes here a lot, so she’s friendly with all the employees, she has the uncanny ability to make friends wherever she goes ((i mean she’s friends with bakugou,, if she can do that,, she can do anything))

↠she takes one of your hands and backs onto the rink, watching for anyone behind her. once you’re balanced properly, she shows you how to move your feet so that the two of you are in sync

↠skating isn’t super hard to figure out, it’s mostly intuitive, so you’ll get the hang of it quite quickly!! maybe you’re not too fast, but it’s still fun, so it doesn’t matter

↠while you’re moving with care, making sure to focus on your footwork, mina will definitely take the chance to show off her skating skills! she’s moving like crazy, weaving around other people and nearly toppling them over but shh she’s trying to impress you and if i’m being honest??? she’s really fucking good aldkdf

↠it’s obvious that she loves this hobby, and the fact that she likes you enough to share it with you on your first date is so adorable aaaa

↠mina’s really agile- you don’t know if that’s all the hero training or just something that comes naturally, but the way she moves makes skating look like the easiest goddamn thing in the world-

↠she’s such a romantic, she’s definitely put in a request for the dj to play your favorite song, no matter if it fits the mood or not

↠heavy rock? sure!! as long as you’re having fun, who cares about what other people think? super vulgar rap?? w h y n o t ? !

↠she just has that extroverted, positive, charming energy that’s infectious

↠you can’t help but feel at ease around her, she’s a genuinely a great person, and what you think the epitome of a hero is

↠all ashido really wants here is to have fun with you- i mean she really likes you, and hopes that she’ll get to go on another date w/ you, so she’s doing everything in her power to woo u

↠and you’d be lying if you said it wasn’t working 🥺👉👈

jirou- hanging out in her room

↠kyouka jirou, being the more introverted person she is, wouldn’t really want to go somewhere super public, like mina would

↠i also believe that she’d want to be friends (or at least acquaintances) with you before asking you on a date- she’s easily annoyed by people, so i think that she’d need to be comfortable around you if she was to be romantically interested

↠and you’ve ticked all these boxes! you understand her sarcastic, blunt personality, and find it pretty amusing. beyond all that, she’s kind and caring, and deep down, she aspires to be a hero for all the right reasons. who wouldn’t love her for that?

↠so for your first date with kyouka, i think she’d want to be somewhere quiet and intimate with you. she wouldn’t want any interruptions ((specifically from jammingyay, who enjoys butting his head in other peoples’ business))

↠the most comfortable place for her would be her room, since it’s really just an extension of her personality, and since you’re quite close, she’d be okay with letting you in her private space. she trusts you.

↠just two guys bein dudes 🤠 ((if you’re a girl, it’s just sappho and her friend--))

↠music is one of the biggest things in jirou’s life, and i think she’d want to share it with you. that is, if you’d let her :)) she has dozens of different instruments, so if you want to attempt to learn something, she’d be totally down!!

↠please show her what kind of music you’re into! no matter what it is, she’ll listen to it. she wants to get to know what kind of person you are when you’re not around other people, and music is a great way to do that. even if you don’t have the same taste as her, she wouldn’t mind, since a) she’ll listen to pretty much anything, she’s not picky; and b) it’s something that you’re showing her, and that’s enough to make her happy

↠she’s not a very formal person, so i think she’d just want to talk to you and hang out. i’d think kyouka would be more of a fan of a gradual relationship, one that starts from friends and slowly evolves into more. and yes, as you can probably tell, i am a sucker for mutual pining and friends-to-lovers tropes-- im a simple hoe 😌

↠she’s super fun to hang out with!! her sense of humor is really snarky, she also enjoys talking shit about people she doesn’t like. if you’re not into that, she’s able to carry on conversation really well. there’s not a moment of awkward silence between you

↠jirou actually really likes talking shit about people hsahsh- as long as it’s someone that’s been mean in some way. she won’t say anything bad about someone who hasn’t done anything to deserve it. but if you’ve wronged her in some way, boy, do you have it COMING

↠by the end of it, i just know your cheeks hurt from laughing

↠she’s just a really fun person to be around, she may not be the most bubbly person ever, but she’s super easy-going and cool ((jirou bias incoming ekejke))

↠i do think she’d try to sneak some kind of affection if she thinks you’d reciprocate- if you’re really getting along well, she might snake her hand into yours when you’re sitting on the bed, laughing

↠honestly you might not even notice until she stops, because your hand feels empty and cold without her like your heart aa

↠if she’s really into you?? might get a smol peck on the cheek 👉👈 please try to get a smol peck on the cheek, it’s very cute and she gets so flustered

↠she goes up to you as you’re about to leave her room, grabs your shoulder, turns you around, and gives you an adorable if not slightly aggressive smooch

↠then she reFUSES to acknowledge what she just did akdfld- she turns away, beet red, and is completely silent

↠meanwhile you’re probably laughing your ass off because wow she’s so cute

↠kudos if you give one back to her, baby is on the verge of exploding ejkdjf

↠her heart just can’t handle what you’re doing to her

↠and despite what her appearance is, her heart is doing backflips- she’s whipped <33

momo: tea and c u d d l e s

↠she’s a very fancy person, obviously. yaoyorozu wants only the best for everyone she loves, and that, of course, includes you! she loves showing affection through giving things to others. her family status only magnifies this aspect of her personality, as being born into wealth gives her the means to spoil you rotten

↠and even though she’s bougie as all hell, she also somehow maintains an elegant and simple air about her. it’s impressive, really. it’s not like she tries to flex her money, it’s just a part of her life, and she enjoys using her privilege well

↠that being said, what’s more elegant and mature than going for tea? it’s a lovely pastime that momo would love to include you in!

↠lowkey,, she’s a whole sugar momma dfkdjla im not even joking- she doesn’t try to be, but virtually everything she does shows how rich she is

↠you arrive at the tea room, and by god is it fancy. there’s multiple chandeliers suspended from the ceiling, which is decorated with classic renaissance-style paintings. all the tables are set with white cloth, plates made of pure fine china, flowers and woven baskets set everywhere to create a cottagecore-like setting. the air about it is so sophisticated, from the patrons (wait is that a celebrity-) to the decorations

↠your face is kinda just,,, 😮,, because what in the world did momo get you into??

“momo, you’re so sweet, and this place is lovely, but don’t you think this is a bit much? not that i don’t absolutely appreciate it, it’s just that this seems really expensive, and i don’t want you to have to spend that much for just one date.”

↠she just chuckles, saying that it was “really nothing” (???? MISS GIRL???)

“don’t worry, y/n, this isn’t too much! i want to have fun today, and this place is so nice! let’s just find a table, alright?”

↠like, hunney, you’re so kind, but this is a LOT

↠but if you say so....

↠she looks at you with the most enthusiastic, wholesome eyes, and soon you’re following her like a puppy towards your table. the waiter sits you down, and leaves, giving you a moment to glaze over the menu to find a drink

↠and there’s so many types of teas, at least 30 on this page alone. you hadn’t even heard of half of these drinks, how would you know if you’d like them?

↠yaomomo seemed to notice your puzzlement, and said that you could get a pot of something simple, like jasmine green or earl grey, and she would get something fancier that you could try. why not?

↠a few minutes later, you’ve already adjusted to the sophisticated and intimidating environment, focusing only on the girl across from you, and how her eyes glittered with happiness

↠she orders a few normal tea foods, like scones with jam, lemon curd, and devonshire cream, and finger sandwiches. the fanciest thing she buys, though, is a blooming tea that arrives in a clear pot. it has an open flower inside of it, which is what the tea is infused with. it’s nearly 16,100 yen for one pot, though, and while you protest its expense, momo reassures you that it’s no problem (you just learned not to say anything about money, as it wouldn’t stop yaoyorozu from spoiling you)

↠ngl, it’s so fun to pretend to be fancy for a few hours at a tea room !! you acted as if you were a member of high society, using stereotypes to exaggerate your actions. it made some people only slightly irritated, but hey, it got a laugh out of a pretty girl, so who’s the real winner?

↠yaomomo taught you some classy etiquette that you should definitely use, it makes her so happy to think that you’re learning about new things while still enjoying your time with her

↠she makes really good conversation!! her intellect seeps through everything she says, anyone who talks to her would be able to tell that she’s extremely well-spoken and mature. momo is modest, and deflects a lot of the compliments you try to give her, so if you try to display your admiration for her, you’d probably need to be very specific about it. she doesn’t have the best self-image when it comes to her heroism and field work. spoken affection sometimes doesn’t get through to her, but you know what does? physical affection!

↠she loves cuddles, and will regularly take you back to her house after a date to cuddle in her bed. her mattress is legendary, and it’s comfortable as hell. there’s an abundance of pillows and the bed isn’t too soft or too firm, and it’s always somehow an amazing temperature???? mattresses are investments, and this was definitely a good one

↠momo loves the intimacy and trust of holding you, it allows her to escape from overthinking and only focus on you, her beautiful partner. she doesn’t care if she’s the big or little spoon, but her favorite kind of cuddling is when you’re on your back and she’s curled into your side, head tucked under your chin and hand on your chest

↠she can do this for hours, please let her. she feels safe with you, confident, because you’re choosing to spend time with her in this quiet moment instead of being off somewhere else.

↠in conclusion,,, 💕women 💕

-denkineptune

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back2themax · 3 years

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Ranting about The Shining(1980) as a adaptation-

So let me say this first. I don’t think it’s a bad movie, hell is great at what it is trying to be! It is good, purely from a horror movie standpoint. As a adaptation of the book? It is absolutely shit.

What the movie succeeds in-

I’m going to start with being nice. So I used to love this film a whole lot more before I actually read the book. As there is some fantastic elements to it. The score, the sound itself is fantastic and greatly adds to that unnerving feeling you get. Especially when it comes to the high pitched buzz used for the shine itself. The camera work! The shots in this film are great, very atmospheric. It also helps in giving that cabin fever feel, everything in the hotel is so huge compared to the torrences and yet you still feel like your confided to a small space. Now, Jack Nickerson is not a good Jack Torrance BUT he is good as a crazy man.... it feels like he would work better as the embodiment of the hotel itself then the father.

Severe loss of character-

The movie pacifically ruins Jack and Dick. there is no benefit to wendy or Danny either but it isn’t as severe a drop in quality from the complex characters in the book.

Jack-

So the movie makes It so so unclear what’s actually happening to this man. In the book, Jack is the recovering alcoholic father who had recently lost his job at a rather good school. He has sworn off drinking after two key events. Breaking his sons arm years ago , and the drunken night drove. In the book it is clear who and what Jack is. It is clear how much he truly loves his wife and son, how much he has been trying to rebuild Long lost trust and save the family by taking this job. He is a intelligent f man with a weakness the hotel can exploit. His decent is slow but typically he can be talked back to reality by his wife or by their son. The hotel slowly chips away his sanity by using his trama and addiction against him so that it can completely take him over in the final act, Jack Torrance is gone.

In the movie the hotel barely has to shove him and this man walks willingly into its arms. There’s no struggle,no real coaxing or conflict, the hotel does and he believes. Hell! He doesn’t even go to check on his son seeing the bruising on his neck! He doesn’t even seam concerned! While Jack in the book does indeed get pissy as this could completely ruin him AND THE FAMILY- he always puts Danny first. Danny is another thing. The boy adores his father, he’s a daddy’s boy. He loves this man so deeply, and yet we don’t get that. Even normal he seams terrified of the man! Not to mention in the book Jack is- a actual father like hello he’s actually present.

There is two moments they give with him that I actually like, that give him actual charecter

1- When Wendy brings him breakfast the one day it’s actually kind of a cute moment.

2- when he had the nightmare about hurting them, and actual expresses terror over hurting his family

Jack is such a complex and interesting charecter that you can both feel sorry for and angry at the same time... the movie strips all of this away from him and makes him this temper tantrum buffoon.

Dick-

Part of me wondered why the movie would even bring him back at all. They turned him into a plot device purely to get the other snowcat. In the book he holds a much larger role, becoming good friends with Danny and explaining a whole lot more about the shine and expressing where he shouldn’t go. In the late half he is a huge reason in why Wendy’s even alive! See in the book it’s not just a chase scene, they actually get hurt! Wendy is barely able to shamble, Half of dicks body is ruined and poor Danny is freezing. He plays such a huge role and is almost a secondary father figure to Danny. To just kill him is a insult.

Wendy-

So besides her hair not being blond and her robe not being pink there’s mainly minor changes with her. I think she was actually done the best out of everyone. However they did make her a lot more whiney then in the book... but I actually think this is more playing off Jack’s warped perspective! As she’s nothing but caring and loving and frankly worried for the two boys in her life. Honestly Wendy is always perfect smh. I honestly think Shelly is the perfect Wendy, if the script would have been better I would have loved her even more.

Danny? Danny is a cardboard cut out. Really didn’t give this kid a thing did you.

Weird changes-

There’s a great amount of plot points and symbolism lost to the movie. Especially with the Whasps. Which is a MAJOR event, one of the first things that begins to unravel everything. Not to mention how they carry a theme though the rest of the book. Also the sort of reflection of the worst things from your parents. Jack sharing things and taking on the mannerisms of his abusive father when possessed, Wendy sharing traits with her horrible mother, Danny reflecting both his parents at times.

Hedge animals to a hedge maze? Which ends up doing very little.

217 becomes 237 with added unnessasary bad Jack

The Grady girls and the blood elevator??(the dog man part is actually in the book, no I’m not kidding)

Etc

Just over all it’s a massive headache I don’t mean to be one of those “the book is better” people but the book is better

#80s movies #the shining #the shining 1980 #jack torrance #wendy torrance #danny torrance #dick hallorann #stephan king

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kakitysax · 3 years

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Okay so I just watched the first Frozen movie with my youngest sister because we’re both home sick? And. We STAN this whole thing being a mental health allegory???

Like, this movie is deeply relatable and like, resonant? To me. Specifically. Both of my younger sisters can attest to how scary and mean I was before I got help, and the sister closest to me in age (actually, the sister who has the same age gap with me that Anna has with Elsa) DEEPLY relates to Anna’s struggle to reach her older sister.

But what I actually want to talk about is the symbolism. Below the cut. This will literally destroy your dash, be warned.

Elsa’s ice powers represent something about herself - about her MIND - she feels the need to repress. That could be any number of things. Neurodivergence, emotion in general, maybe a personality disorder. Elsa doesn’t necessarily HAVE any of these things. The point is that the viewers might, and whatever this unnamed thing is, it can be both beautiful and harmful.

Her parents don’t understand, and unwittingly teach Elsa to be afraid of herself.

As a result, Elsa starts to LOSE CONTROL OF HER POWERS. By teaching Elsa that this thing about her is something to be repressed, she becomes less and less able to ACTUALLY control them.

This increases her sense of isolation from other people, and she develops MAJOR anxiety and depression as a result. I mean, just look at the separation anxiety she felt when her parents had to leave.

“Do you have to go?”

Elsa is 18 here - terrified of herself and completely reliant on her parents to protect her and everyone around her from her powers.

ALRIGHT let’s skip the boring stuff

Blah blah blah, Anna’s lonely too, she needs love, falls in love too quickly, is desparate to marry Hans because she thinks this is the only day she’ll be able to form actual connections with other people...

All that stuff is really important, but what I want to talk about is the frozen kingdom that Elsa creates.

Overcome by feelings of freedom and joy, Elsa finally begins to regain control of the creative part of her powers, and one of the first things she creates is Olaf.

For everyone’s annoyance at Let It Go, it’s actually an amazing sequence and I relate to it a lot.

But what I find to be a BETTER reflection of the journey through Elsa’s psyche is Anna and Kristoff’s journey up the North Mountain.

I say “Journey,” but there’s really only three environments I want to talk about.

This is where Kristoff and Anna meet Olaf - a frozen wonderland of weeping willows. As they walk through it, Anna says “I never knew that Winter could be so beautiful.”

That line got me. Anna doesn’t actually know her sister. She likes a version of Elsa that exists in her head - a 13-year-old altered memory of a perfect older sister. But Elsa isn’t the warm fuzzy friend that Anna idealizes - she’s always been dignified, composed, and wonderfully creative - loving, yes, but in a cool kind of way. Anna expects Elsa to be a goofy playmate, and writes off the “wintery” parts of her as something bad, just like Elsa does. But walking through this wonderland, she sees a different aspect of the same Elsa - the good parts of the REAL Elsa. And THIS, fittingly, is where she meets Olaf.

Now something I noticed this time around is that during this scene, Olaf consistently looks towards Anna.

“I like warm hugs,” he says, turning to her, and he asks her for her name first.

He then relies on ANNA to tell him the names of Kristoff and Sven.

Elsa made Olaf for Anna. And because of this, Olaf is the EMBODIMENT of Elsa’s childhood love for her sister.

This is why he always goes back to Anna. This is why it didn’t count as an act of true love when Olaf was willing to melt for her, and why he is able to tell Anna what love is. Olaf’s love for Anna is Elsa’s love for Anna. Olaf IS love.

“Some people are worth melting for.”

Olaf loves summer. Thawing. Melting things. And it’s because, as we learn later in the movie, LOVE is the secret to melting Elsa’s ice, and breaking down her barriers.

Right okay back to environments.

The NEXT icy place they come across is THIS bitch

A hillside full of icy spikes that point towards whoever approaches. Another wall between Elsa and the people trying to reach her. Elsa consistently uses outward-pointing spikes to keep other people away.

Finally, they reach the CENTER of Elsa’s psyche: a palace made of ice.

Elsa’s ice palace is the culmination of Elsa’s creative powers, a reflection of her own mind.

But what’s really, REALLY interesting, is that like ice, it’s reflective. And after her conversation with Anna, the castle starts to change.

Immediately after hurting Anna, darkness spreads rapidly down the castle walls. The darkness is reminiscent of the fragile “dark ice” like the kind you would find on a fragile frozen pond. The ice is becoming less stable.

And later, when we see Elsa trying to regain control of herself, the color of the walls has changed completely to reflect her fear.

The spikes reappear, this time pointing inward - towards HERSELF.

Elsa’s mind is no longer a safe place for Elsa herself to be - and holy SHIT do I relate.

The last thing I want to talk about is the blizzard at the end of the movie.

Elsa is back in Arendelle, the very place she’s been trying to avoid the whole movie - the place she’s afraid of destroying with her powers. The whiteout is Elsa’s terror, furious and opaque. It’s BLINDING, not only to herself, but to everyone around her.

But the second Hans tells Elsa that Anna is dead

Everything Stops.

The wind stops, the storm receeds, snowflakes freeze in thin air. The world stops moving. Elsa stops feeling.

Hans drew his sword pretty loudly. But Elsa doesn’t care. She believes herself to be a monster, and no longer cares if she lives or dies.

This is basically the end of what I want to talk about, but I can’t exactly leave it here, so.

Anna saves Elsa, sacrificing herself in the truest form of love.

She does the Big Freezy thing and turns into an epic ice sculpture, which Elsa then wraps in what is likely the world’s most uncomfortable hug.

And then, starting from the heart first, Anna unfreezes.

The secret to Elsa’s powers is revealed to be love, not fear. And, sealing my love for Elsa with a fucking kiss, Elsa IMMEDIATELY latches on. She’s been searching for an answer for this for her entire life, and is able to apply the one she finds INSTANTLY. She lets her love for Arendelle and everyone around her reshape her mind into a place of safety and wonder.

Everyone lives happily ever after, my sister cries, I nod stoically because I’m almost incapable of genuine emotion, Elsa is the most relatable Disney Princess and I adore her forever.

I know that none of this is a hot take but I really wanted to ramble about it anyway. This is a really good movie. Friendly reminder that just because something is mainstream doesn’t mean that it sucks. One time I was talking about how much I related to Elsa and Dad said that I was “a demographic.” Like. Okay? What’s the fucking issue with that? So Disney created a story that can resonate with a wide group of people, what’s the shame in being one of the people it touches? The real issue here is that so many young people can relate to repression and mental illness, like, what the fuck?

Anyway, thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. Join me next time (never) while I talk about the equally relatable Frozen Two’s arc of delving deeper into the knowledge of what you’ve repressed, Elsa’s obvious aromanticism, and the fact that the Trolls are evil masterminds who have deeply wronged both of the first movie’s male protagonists.

#karkles stop #disney frozen #frozen #frozen elsa #elsa analysis #frozen analysis #just saying stuff that's been said before #don't mind me

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linkspooky · 3 years

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hi, do you have any thoughts on itadori and mahito? specifically why mahito tell him that they are the same?

A. Yuji and Mahito is the Same...

Except they’re not. Not really. Yuji saves people without thinking, and Mahito kills people without thinking but there’s a clearly a difference between saving people and killing people. One of them is a whole lot less murdery. Rather than saying that they’re exactly the same, I think the narrative is setting up the idea that they are supposed opposites who have uncanny similarities to each other.

"I will say at once that both courses lead to the same result: the “uncanny” is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar."

The uncanny is the psychological experience of something as strangely familiar, rather than simply mysterious. Described as Freud omething that is both at the same time resembling a human, and clearly not human. The term comes from his 1919 essay Das Unheimliche, which explores the eeriness of dolls and waxworks. Why are humans creeped out by something that resembles them?

Freud offers his hypothesis about the uncanny: it something we have forgotten or repressed that is now coming to light against our will. The uncanny unsettles us because it reminds us of ourselves. The uncanny is a concept used repeatedly in psyhological horror, the concept of the doppelganger, dolls, mirrored images things which are human and remind us of ourselves can also subconsciously remind us of the fear of ourselves, so Freud says.

1. Baby Boy, Baby.

Mahito is, specifically the fear that humans have for each other. In that way he embodies the uncanny perfectly. He even looks uncanny. He’s the most human looking of the curses, but at the same time he looks like a stitched up Frankenstein’s Monster. There are many ways his behaviors are just plain wrong and contradict each other, he can talk with other humans, he’s polite, well mannered, always smiling, and then he can kill someone and laugh it off like it’s nothing. Mahito resembles a human, but his every single action is there to remind us that he is inhuman.

Mahito is also the mirror to humanity. Reflections are, things that appear human but are not. Reflections in the mirror look exactly like you, but they’re two dimmensional shallow images and they don’t move of their own accord. Reflections are another brand of doppelgangers. However at the same time, a mirror doesn’t lie, it just reflects. A mirror is just showing what is looking into it.

There’s a story by HP. Lovecraft. (Wow, first Freud and now HP Lovecraft, I’m sorry for citing all of these terrible, terrible men), called the Outsider. A human who is locked away in a castle its entire life finally escapes, and tries to join a party of other people they see from the outside window, only to see them all run off in terror. The last line of the story, after seeing a horrible monster, the monster realizes it was just looking at a mirrored surface and he himself was the monster that everyone was running from. The fear the story preys upon is the fear of oneself, and the fear of the ugliness in oneself that the mirror might show.

For although nepenthe has calmed me, I know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men. This I have known ever since I stretched out my fingers to the abomination within that great gilded frame; stretched out my fingers and touched a cold and unyielding surface of polished glass.

Mahito is a mirror that reflects Yuji, but only his bad traits. Mahito reminds Yuji of everything he dislikes about himself. Which is why Yuji sees Mahito as an enemy he can’t step forward without killing. So, what is this great similarity between them? I think the main one is that they’re both children.

Part of the foiling in the Young Fish and Reverse Punisment arc is that both Mahito, and Yuji are people that Nanami identifies as children. A cursed spirit who is still learning to be a cursed spirit, a child who is still learning to be a sorcerer.

Early on the arc makes it pretty clear how much Yuji loathes being seen as a child. It’s not that he thinks he deserves special treatment, it’s that Yuji hates powerlessness, he hates the lack of agency, he hates not being able to choose. He doesn’t like being strong enough, because that means he’s not in control of the situation, and he has no choice but to watch as his friends get hurt. Yuji nearly killed Megumi the last time he was powerless and gets things get out of control. Yuji hates being weak like a child, and not being able to be weak like a child, and the result of this is Yuji turns into a pretty self loathing person.

Yuji’s mistakes usually have big consequences. He lets Mahito get near Junpei, because he forgot about Nanami’s careful instructions to watch out and run away if he saw a cursed spirit with a patchwork face. It makes sense that Yuji would forget that in the moment, he’s just a child, it’s forgivable but Yuji never forgives himself for those mistakes. That’s where his self loathing comes from.

It’s the same when Yuji lets Sukuna rampage on Shibuya. It’s not Yuji’s direct fault, however it’s his mistake in losing the fight that enabled Sukuna to rampage so Yuji takes responsiblity and takes all the blame on his shoulders. The way Yuji sees it, it’s his fault for being weak in the moment, he hates his weak naive self, he hates how much he still acts like a child.

Yuji’s response to this however is to not think. To try to shut out those feelings of self loathing, to keep moving, to keep fighting, to fgiht against them so he doesn’t have to feel that way.

2. Evil.

Mahito is the uncanny foil to Yuji, Yuji doesn’t want to recognize anything at all about himself in Mahito, because Mahito embodies everything Yuji doesn’t like about himself.

Mahito’s written to be the foil to Yuji in all the ways that deeply unsettles him. Yuji is always thinking about what a natural death means, whereas Mahito is always killing people in the most unnatural and unnerving ways possible, warping them until they no longer look human.

Yuji is a strong and brave shonen hero, who is even willing to lay his life down for others. In fact he always agrees to risk his life a little bit too easily, like he’s just waiting for a cause to martyr himself on. Yuji is willing at almost any moment to die in the line of duty, Mahito is a coward who always runs away from his life and not only that a proud coward at that. Mahito considers his cowardice and his craftiness a good thing.

However, as Nanami says at the end of Reverse Fish and Young Punishment people don’t exist in these simple black and white categories. Junpei wasn’t just an innocent suffering victim, he also went Carrie and tried to burn the whole school down in addition to the people who bullied him. He tried to hurt Yuji, just for getting in the way.

Yuji sees people in categories of good and evil, but people don’t exist in those categories. Which is why Mahito is there to make him question himself. The uncanny similarity, because Yuji can act like Mahito without even realizing it. Not because Yuji is a good or bad person, but because he’s a collection of good and bad traits. Yuji is extremely caring person, but he also gets angry when people get hurt. Yuji is a very loving person to others, but also deeply self loathing.

Yuji wants to believe he’s selfless and good, and to an extent he is, but then he looks in the mirror and sees a monster, he sees Mahito who is so openly self involved and uncaring and he’s scared am I like that?

Yuji is someone who can become violent, angry, and obsessed with destroying someone too. At the moment killing a curse and killing a person aren’t really the same thing. However, there are two dangerous qualities about Yuji. One, he’s a foil to Geto. Geto is also, a rule abiding good boy, who just tried his best to save everyone around him. However, his definition of “everyone” changed.

That’s the comparison they’re making with Yuji when Mahito says “You kill curses without thinking.” Curses are becoming more and more human like. There’s Choso who is literally a human half breed, who like isn’t really responsible for his existence. It’s bad of course that Choso kills humans, he’s willing to kill innocents for his own survival, but he’s also like... a fetus who was kept in a jar for a hundred years. The boundary line between curses and humans are blurring, and at the same time Yuji once again sees the world in strict and rigid black and whites.

And Yuji’s response to this is usually “I don’t want to think about it.” Yuji wants to reject Mahito, his uncanny reflection in the mirror, and all the unnerving similarities between them. And it’s not really hating Mahito but loathing himself. Yuji hates himself, and wants to reject the possibility he can be in any way like Mahito because then that what he fears about himself might have been true all along. Yuji is, desperately self loathing, and also desperately trying to avoid having to look at himself.

And it’s once again because Yuji himself can’t fit into his own black and white definitions of good and evil. Yuji can’t forgive himself for his mistakes. Yuji just decides to accept, because he let Sukuna rampage, because he made that mistake he’s responsible for it, he’s a murderer now. Mahito isn’t really Yuji, but he’s a good reflection of how Yuji sees himself, and he also shows us why Yuji is so dead set on helping people. Because if he doesn’t move forward. If he doesn’t help people. Then he’s just a murderer. If he can’t save people, then why is he even alive?

#Anonymous #itadori yuji #yuji itadori #mahito #jjk meta #metasks #jujutsu kaisen theory #jujutsu kaisen meta #jujutsu kaisen daily #jujutsu kaisen #jjk daily #jjk theory #yuji mahito

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liunaticfringe · 3 years

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(via Lucy Liu's Independent Woman - Interview Magazine)

There have been many great sidekick pairings in the history of modern literature. Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer, Phileas Fogg and Jean Passepartout, Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet…the list goes on. Yet, it seems there has never been a delightfully tumultuous relationship that comes close to echoing the one embodied by rogue detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful friend and assistant Dr. John Watson. Written in the form of short stories by Arthur Conan Doyle between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the opium-den loving Holmes would terrorize London with his intellectual, astute, and stubborn prowess, with Dr. Watson providing medical expertise and chronicling their entertaining exploits along the way.

Doyle’s works have now long been entered into the public domain, with many film and television adaptions cropping up every few years. Still, when CBS announced in 2012 that it would be turning Doyle’s works into an hour-long crime-drama series titled Elementary, it elicited an unusually high response—this was mostly due to the news that a woman would, in fact, be portraying Watson. Her name would be Joan, not John. And she’s now a fallen from grace surgeon-turned-sober companion and private detective, forfeiting her “Dr.” title in the process. The woman chosen to take on this exciting, contemporary role of Joan Watson was none other than seasoned actress Lucy Liu.

Liu, who’s best known for her roles as a fierce and ill-mannered lawyer in Ally McBeal, an ass-kicking “angel” in the rebooted Charlie’s Angels, and an equally ass-kicking bad girl in the Kill Bill series, certainly provides the yin to the yang of Jonny Lee Miller’s gritty portrayal of Holmes. Elementary chronicles the duo’s relationship as they consult for the NYPD on various criminal cases while living in a shared brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. Initially starting off in Season One as a substance-free friend to the fresh-out-of-rehab Holmes with a keen interest in solving crimes, Watson quickly transformed into a sharp and observant right-hand woman who now clearly has the aptitude to work on her own. And it appears she’ll be doing just that—the end of Season Two left viewers witnessing Watson’s decision to move out of the brownstone and start a new career as a solo private detective, seemingly fed-up with Holmes’ erratic behavior.

The warm and delightful Liu recently called up Interview from her home in New York City to discuss Elementary’s upcoming third season.

DEVON IVIE: Were you on set today?

LUCY LIU: I was running around like a maniac, yeah. It’s beautiful today, it started getting a little bit cooler again. But of course I’ve been bitten by the two mosquitos that are still alive in New York City.

IVIE: I know you were recently at New York Comic Con. How was it?

LIU: It was amazing. It’s such a spectator place. Not only do you get super fans, but you also get people who are curious and inventive and imaginative. It’s fun.

IVIE: Did you run into any cosplayers dressed as Joan Watson?

LIU: Oh, no, I don’t know about that. That’s funny! We did a panel with a huge audience so I couldn’t really see if anyone was wearing anything specific, but it’s an excuse for kids and adults to get dressed up and just be crazy. You know you’ve made it when you have super-fans out there.

IVIE: When you first read the scripts for Elementary, what was it that attracted you to the role of Joan?

LIU: I liked the fact that it was going to be about [Joan and Sherlock’s] relationship and their friendship, and bringing that into modern times. And I thought it was wonderful to change up the gender.

IVIE: Did you immerse yourself in Arthur Conan Doyle’s work as preparation at all?

LIU: I did, I did! I started reading the short stories. I never read them before so it was a really great excuse to read them. I can’t believe it was written so long ago, because it’s so current. The characters are so colorful, which is why I think there are so many incarnations of Watson and Holmes.

IVIE: Do you have a favorite story? I love “A Scandal in Bohemia.”

LIU: There were some pretty amazing stories. The one that stood out to me, which was a Watson story that I got to know him a little more through, was “The Hound of the Baskervilles.” He really is on his own in that. Of course it turns out that Holmes has been there all along, but it’s interesting looking into his interior.

IVIE: Yeah, the entirety of “The Hound of the Baskervilles” is narrated just by Watson. And his diary and letters, too.

LIU: Yeah, I think it’s really cool. We started incorporating that into the show, too, the letters and journals.

IVIE: Has this detective genre always appealed to you? Did you grow up watching or reading detective whodunits?

LIU: I remember more of the old school Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys sort of thing. I also grew up with the Scooby-Doo mysteries. Remember when the villain would go, “I would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for you rascal-y kids!” Those were the kind of the things I immersed myself in. I have to say that my mother has always been a huge fan of Columbo and Murder, She Wrote, so this show was her dream come true. I don’t think she totally understood what was going on with Ally McBeal. [laughs]

IVIE: I’ve enjoyed witnessing Joan’s evolution throughout the course of the show, starting off as a sober companion and eventually ending up as a trusty sidekick and confidant to Sherlock. What can we expect from Joan in Season Three?

LIU: When you see them in the third season, you see some friction between the two characters. Joan is now on her own, she has her own detective agency, has a boyfriend, and has been without Sherlock for eight months. She’s got her own apartment, she’s settled, and he shows back up. I think she’s a little bit hurt by what happened and how their relationship and partnership ended, which was basically his decision and his choice, and he left it all in one little note for her. I think she felt that their relationship was much deeper than that, and that he was dismissive in the way that he handled that.

IVIE: How would you define the relationship between Joan and Sherlock?

LIU: I think that it’s a really positive and good relationship, overall. They really have a good chemistry together, work really hard together, and understand each other. They acknowledge each other and respect each other, which is a really important way to have a friendship. And they can learn from each other, you know? She’s very curious about him and I think he sees that she’s a very smart person—that’s vital for him in having respect for someone, having them be intelligent and thinking for themselves.

IVIE: Do you see any of Joan in yourself?

LIU: I do to a certain degree. She’s a lot more measured and patient, for sure. She’s a very curious person, which I think I am, and I think she isn’t afraid of change. She was a doctor, and then became a sober companion, and then jumped off and became a detective. I think sometimes it’s good to make big leaps.

IVIE: You’ve probably been asked this question many times, but do you think a romance between Joan and Sherlock could ever fittingly happen?

LIU: It’s a question that’s often asked and I think it’s really up to the executives. Rob Doherty, the creator [of Elementary] really feels incredibly strongly about keeping their relationship platonic. He has already taken great strides to keep the relationship as clean as possible according to the literature, but he has also changed so much of it by changing the gender of Watson. To have them have a romantic involvement would turn the whole thing upside-down in a way that might really jump the line. [Doherty] felt really strongly about it and I think that’s the one thing he really wants to stay true to.

IVIE: I totally agree. Even on the BBC’s Sherlock, there are campaigns to get Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock and Martin Freeman’s Watson to become romantically involved. It’s like, enough already, no!

LIU: No way, that’s so weird! People do have that level of friendship oftentimes, but it doesn’t mean it’s physical. I think that everyone just assumes because there’s chemistry the next thing should be happening. I would vote “no” for a romance. I think for sure the creator would vote no on that, too.

IVIE: I’ve talked to both women and men who watch Elementary, and they all consistently mention how well dressed and fashionable Joan is. Do you collaborate with the wardrobe department on styling decisions at all?

LIU: That’s awesome. Yes, I collaborate with Rebecca [Hofherr], who’s the costume designer, who’s wonderful. She’s very easy to work with. One thing we try to maintain about Joan and her style is that she’s a bit wrinkled, you know what I mean? Sometimes it looks like things are really put together, but we always want to make sure things aren’t too tight and are comfortable, kind of like she throws things together. We don’t want it to seem so business-y, so we go away from suits. Chic, but not corporate. Also just to make her seem like her outfits aren’t so put-together all the time. But I’m glad that people really seem to like it, it’s a relief! We don’t splurge a lot on the show, we try to do cheaper things, like things Joan would wear a lot. She wears the same white jacket and shoes frequently.

IVIE: Will we be seeing more of the infamous Clyde the Turtle in the upcoming season?

LIU: Clyde will indeed be in it again. We have to share custody of Clyde.

IVIE: Is it true that Clyde is actually two tortoises? Pulling a Mary Kate and Ashley in Full House on us?

LIU: Yes. It’s just like having twins on a show. Just in case one is crying and screaming and passed out or something.

IVIE: You made your directorial debut for an episode of Elementary last season [“Paint It Black”]. Do you have plans to direct an episode again soon?

LIU: That was so exciting. I’ll be directing another episode again very shortly in December, so you’ll be seeing it in a month and a half.

IVIE: Where did your interest in directing come from?

LIU: I guess I was curious about it. Having been in this business for a while, you kind of see and get a glimpse of everything doing film and television. I think it seemed like a natural progression to go into directing, and I hope to explore more of it, because it’s very exciting and a really good way to collide all the things that you’ve known and experienced in the business and put them all into one.

IVIE: Is there an ideal guest star that you’d like to see on the show in the upcoming season?

LIU: I would love to see Mycroft come back. I really think there was a wonderful tension for Mycroft and Sherlock as well as the triangle that occurred when Joan became involved with him. There’s something very deep about that relationship, and I also think that Rhys Ifans is a fantastic actor. He commands the screen, but off-screen he’s incredibly lovely. A real treat to have on the show.

IVIE: I remember the first few episodes that I saw Rhys in, I was like, where have I seen this guy before? So I looked at his Wikipedia page and it became obvious: he was the crazy guy from Notting Hill!

LIU: Yes, the roommate! So good! Everything he does, he just kills it, no matter the role.

IVIE: And it’s always good to have some MI6 action on the show, which Mycroft provided. Some international flair.

LIU: [laughs] International flair, exactly, some added spice. Just throw some spy stuff in there to throw people off their game. You just don’t expect it, you know? It came out of nowhere.

IVIE: That whole three-episode arc at the end of the second season…

LIU: That was awesome. I was lucky enough to direct one of those episodes, which is more narrative in tone. It’s more fun in some ways, too.

IVIE: You’ve done a range of acting work for both television and film. Do you now find yourself preferring one to the other?

LIU: I love both of them equally. The lack of predictability with television is something that’s constantly changing what your perception of who you think your character is. Suddenly I have a father that’s schizophrenic, or I discovered something else, or I have a relationship with Mycroft. The things that pop up and change the game for you and always keep you on your toes. The wonderful thing about film is that you have something that has a beginning, middle, and end, and you have a concrete amount of time to shoot it. And the process of that can be longer, like editing and advertising and testing the movie, so it’s very different. Television you just continue going, no matter what’s happening outside of your world. You get lost in that vortex a little bit.

IVIE: It’s interesting that America is now embracing the “mini-series” format that has already been so heavily utilized overseas, where there are a set amount of short episodes, and that’s it. In a way, it’s kind of like a cinematic experience.

LIU: I like that, too. It allows you to have a freedom of creativity and at the same time you don’t feel like you have to be contracted to something for that long; you’re really working on a piece of art. And then you’re done and you move on, or it comes back, like Downton Abbey. You don’t know. Those things become little masterpieces. The thing about television is that you see a range of actors now that you may not have seen five years ago even, 10 years ago absolutely not, and I think now there’s no wrong about doing television. There’s no definitive category for what kind of department you fall into anymore.

IVIE: What’s a fun, secret fact about your costar Jonny Lee Miller?

LIU: A fun fact about Jonny Lee Miller is that he oftentimes does handstands on a wall before he does a take, sometimes with pushups, to get blood to his brain and get him geared up for a long monologue that he may have. He stays there, hangs a little bit, and then turns around and does the scene. Most of the time in the brownstone more than anywhere else. He’s in full costume and everything. That’s trivia!

IVIE: I wish I could do wall-handstands by myself.

LIU: Oh my god, I need someone to push my legs up and then hold me there. I’m a cheat!

ELEMENTARY PREMIERES THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30 ON CBS.

#Lucy Liu #Interview #2014 #comic con #jlm #mycroft #wardrobe #directing #third season #joanlock

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cant-blink · 3 years

Text

Half-Life, Ch. 8

Summary: The final chapter of the story. Ghidorah is in a fight to the death to decide his ultimate fate. Can he finally be free from Gigan’s terror, or will he fall to mind-control once more?

There’s nothing much that he loved more than a good fight, and seeing the golden dragon across from him was bringing back memories of his old life, back when he was with his Masters.

He remembered seeing this dragon for the first time, with the sole purpose of subduing him to be brought into Nebulan captivity. He remembered the thrill in his chest as he went to make his first strike. He remembered the burning sensation in that same chest when the hydra retaliated with a Gravity Beam point-blank. Gigan has never fought an opponent with such a wild lust for blood and death, and to this day, it remained the greatest battle he’s ever engaged in.

This moment, however, threatened to dethrone that. Because so much more was on the line here, and Gigan knew that there was to be no holding back for either of them. What’s worse, he was in no condition for a drawn-out fight and this could very well be his last stand. But perhaps...

His eye was still fastened on Ghidorah’s middle head. Perhaps he can sneak a strike as his first blow, end it fast and easy. He certainly had the means to pull it off, a technique that Ghidorah was unaware of as far as he knew. He's never displayed it in front of him, so he would have the element of surprise on his side. But such a move would take a large portion of his energy; even at full strength, it was not something he could do with reckless abandon. In a crucial state like he is in now, it was certainly not something he can afford to screw up...

The silence between them was thickened, as Ghidorah opened those three jaws slowly and deliberately. As if testing to see what Gigan would do. Now or never, here goes nothing!

Gathering his energy, he took a split-second to tell his system where he wished to go before lunging forward to lessen the distance. He saw the lightning erupt from Ghidorah’s jaws just as Gigan’s body deteriorated. Not a split-second later, he reappeared behind the dragon, and he wasted no time lunging for him with his claw raised...

And he connected with the wrong head, as Ghidorah’s necks flailed wildly and one of them got in the way of his attack. Although the dragon was clearly taken by surprise, he recovered quickly and his tails slammed into him, knocking him aside.

He fell back to the ground, luckily on his feet but he was inwardly cursing himself. That was a complete waste of his energy and now he had to be even more conservative about how he spent it. It’s okay, it’s alright. He can settle on good ol’ fashion claw-to-tooth combat. Something he knew Ghidorah was no fan of.

But getting close enough won’t be easy as the Gravity Beams were relentless, blasting the air and ground around him in erratic hard-to-predict fashion. The very embodiment of chaos, this dragon, and he loved him for it. Too bad it had to come down to this.

Seeing he won’t be getting closer without getting hit, he shot a Cluster Beam towards the hydra, the red laser colliding with a Gravity Beam to result in an explosion. The cloud of dust whipped from them, blocking the view; normally, Gigan would switch to his thermal vision, but he knew this was pointless against Ghidorah’s cold hide. Instead, he’s forced to go in blind, lunging forward and managing to connect a blade across Ghidorah’s chest.

A snarl erupted from the recoiling dragon, who responded by fanning his wings and flapping them strongly. A powerful gust blew away the dust and began pushing Gigan back. But he kept his footing, leaning against the hurricane-force winds and leaving furrows in the ground. Such power in those sails, he LOVED it! His own sails flattened against his back to help reduce catching this wind, and his claws swung down to stab into the earth.

Ghidorah did not relent and only began flapping faster and harder.

He was blown back far enough and still secured against the increased gale, Gigan shot another laser at the dragon. It was weaker than the last few blasts, as his energy reserves were getting low, and it didn’t make as big an explosion on impact as last time. But it was enough to stop the dragon, and those six eyes glaring towards him seemed to glow through the smoke.

Trying to keep his breaths steady and discreet, Gigan stood back up, his claws crossing in front of him defensively. But the dragon doesn’t push his assault further, yet, and they found themselves in another stand-off.

“Sure you want to keep going with this, Ghiddy?”

No sooner did he say that than the dragon shoots another trio of Gravity Beams directly at him without the wild flailing, and he jumped back out of the way. With a focused blow like that, it seemed like Ghidorah really did not like being called ‘Ghiddy’. Well, he should’ve thought of that before calling him ‘half-life’. He lets out a chuckle at the childishness of it all, trying to ignore the pain slowly starting to creep through the adrenaline.

“You haven’t even seen half of what I can do, babe,” Gigan continued, only somewhat bluffing to buy time to re-coop the energy lost. “It’s not too late to run.”

Ghidorah still doesn’t respond verbally, as he lets loose another round of Gravity Beams directly for him and Gigan jumps into flight to avoid it once more. So damn predictable. But what he didn’t expect was a massive chunk of rock rising from the site of impact, far larger than the boulders Ghidorah had lifted before. It was far too big to get out of the way of, and his visor widened as the wyvern swung it towards him. He grunted at the impact and, knowing the hydra’s intention to crush him under it, managed to salvage enough of his energy to blast it to smithereens just as it almost hits the ground. He’s still subject to its momentum though and he grunted again as his back hits the earth. Fuck, that was way too close but at least he wasn’t flattened.

Power at 10%, his system flashed onto his visor. Retreat to the mothership now. But he had no time to reprimand his system that there was no mothership to retreat to. No, Ghidorah has leapt and those talons dig into his arms and shoulder pads, keeping him pinned onto the ground.

At once, he lifted his tail to stab into him, but alas, he was painfully reminded that his stinger was gone. Really, any movement from his tail brought unbearable shocks of pain through his system. Fuck. He glared up at the dragon; he didn’t have enough energy for another laser blast, and he could see the Gravity Beams building up in those throats.

But he wasn’t out yet, and he opened his own beak and flames erupted from his throat. He knew it wouldn’t do much in way of damage as he really only used this on weaker creatures and their flammable structures. Nonetheless, it served its purpose to startle the dragon and he felt Ghidorah’s weight shift back off one of his arms. He took advantage to swing at the hydra with his freed claw, stabbing into the scales of Ghidorah’s side.

A shriek escaped those throats and the dragon jolted back off of him completely.

The flames escaping his beak petered out, and he pushed himself back up. The two locked eyes and Gigan can see small embers fading off from Ghidorah’s manes. As he expected, the flames did little to actually hurt the dragon.

On the contrary, he took notice that his own vision has grown dimmer, as the generator ran low on the energy needed to keep his mechanical parts functional. This wasn’t good; he needed to stall again lest he starts fighting blind.

Unfortunately, Ghidorah has made it clear that he was not going to entertain another conversation with him. He really should run; both his system and his own organic instincts screamed at him to flee, but instead, he took the offensive and lunged forward recklessly. In response, Ghidorah rose his middle head higher and his two side heads slammed into him.

Dammit...

He was getting slower and the pain was really starting to take its toll, and hearing the snickering from the hydra, he knew Ghidorah was taking notice.

RETREAT! RETREAT! RETREAT! His system flashed onto his visor. Fuckin’- If it would stop wasting energy telling him to run, maybe his weapons wouldn’t take so long to get back online! Or how about using that energy to bring his vision back to normal, that would be great!!

But neither his instincts nor his system were backing down, and after another moment of a stand-off, Gigan lunged forward once more...

... before he leapt up last minute to avoid a Gravity Beam and kicked Ghidorah in his chest, forcing him down onto his back. He leapt off again before any retaliation could be made, his flight-devices activating to let him fly upwards into the clouds.

He knew Ghidorah will never let him get away, but perhaps he can stay hidden in the disorientating haze long enough to recuperate.

Then round two can begin.

The second the half-life flew off of him was the second Ghidorah knew he was winning. Damn coward always tried to run when things turned bad and expecting him to stick around to finish this to the end was apparently too much to ask. Unfortunately for this pathetic excuse for a kaiju, Ghidorah wasn’t one to let things go so easily.

Righting himself, he glared up towards the retreating cyborg and he shot a Gravity Beam. The half-life glanced back and weaved off to the side to avoid it before disappearing into the clouds. Very well, then. His wings fan open and he takes flight after him.

If the half-life thought he can escape, he was even more stupid than Ghidorah gave him credit for. He will chase him to the very ends of the universe if he had to!

Entering the pink cloud of space dust, he lets out a few more Gravity Beams at the half-life’s silhouette, one of them managing to strike one of those sails and causing him to drop a bit. He was flying slower than usual, Ghidorah noted. Normally, both their top speeds were the same; he knew that from past experience when trying to escape the cyborg’s attention in vain. But here, the half-life was so weak that the dragon was actually starting to catch up to him.

A smirk grew on all three of his mouths, his wings giving one last downstroke and his talons rushed forward.

His prey must’ve felt the rush of air and spun around with a shriek, a claw swiping for him and his buzzsaw going off. Ghidorah pulled up at the last second to avoid getting struck and the half-life veered off to try and lose him in the thickest parts of the cloud.

Did he not realize that Ghidorah didn’t need to see him to know exactly where he is? His tainted life-force was faint, but it was still there for his crests to sense.

The impulse to toy with this creature was strong, but he resisted it. The stakes were too high for such games.

Instead, he dove straight towards the cyborg’s life-signature, claws at the ready and wings folded to reduce his own presence. This time, contact was made as his talons latched onto those sails, and his jaws surged forward to tear the membranes. The half-life gave a surprised cry and Ghidorah’s momentum and weight brought them back down to the ground at reckless speeds. The impact was brutal, and it was satisfying feeling the creature’s body take the brunt of it beneath his feet.

He gave the half-life no time to recover as, still latched onto his opponent’s back, the dragon gave a powerful downstroke of his wings to lift them up... before smashing him back onto the ground under his full weight. He did this again, and again, each time getting another ever-weakening cry from the cyborg. He can see more blood escaping the half-life’s mouth, and felt each labored breath the creature struggled to take. He does this one more time before finally stopping, his victim now completely limp.

Stepping off from the cyborg, he glared down at the half-life. That visor was dim and giving the creature a kick onto his back, there was no response. Unconscious again. His impulse to continue the torture was strong, but once more, he disregarded it. He really should end this here and now while he has the chance; he wasn’t keen on finding out whatever other ‘tricks’ this cyborg had up his sleeve.

His left head lowered to grab the creature’s neck, his right head soon following. If he gathers all his energy, he should be able to blast this creature’s head from his body, ending this whole thing once and for all. But as he starts building the energy in his throat, the half-life suddenly gave a jolt out of nowhere and Ghidorah felt a terrible pain in his middle neck.

He knew immediately what happened.

The half-life was only feigning unconsciousness and in a last desperate bid, has stabbed a claw up into his neck. So deep it was that energy from his Gravity Beam escaped from the wound, causing even more pain and damage to vulnerable flesh. It was too late to bring that energy back into its organ, try as he might.

“I’m so sorry,” he heard this strained whisper from the half-life. He felt the creature’s legs and tail wrap around him to bring their bodies together before more horrific pain coursed through him. The chest-saw has gone off, ripping through his scales and flesh and going down to the bone. In retaliation, his two heads that were fastened to the creature’s neck let loose with every ounce of EVERYTHING the dragon had.

The half-life couldn’t even scream.

The buzzsaw came to a halt and in that same split second, something shot out from the creature’s chest and sliced through the remainder of the middle head’s neck.

An explosion resulted from the two Gravity Beams meeting in the center of the half-life’s neck, causing the hydra to release his hold and stumble back. A huge cloud of dust whipped up around the two combatants, and it took time for it to clear and reveal the results of that exchange.

The half-life’s head has been blasted right off, and the now-two-headed Ghidorah felt his heart lift with elation as he watched the creature stumble forward clumsily. One step, two, before he fell to his knees, then onto his side to the ground. The body twitched, claws raking the ground and metallic silver blood spilling out from the remains of his neck. The buzzsaw went off one more time before slowing to a stop.

The rest of the half-life’s body followed suit and fell still. His life-force was so faint to begin with that Ghidorah couldn’t tell if his crests even rewarded him for the kill.

Didn’t matter. The sheer joy coursing through him, knowing he was finally free, was enough to make up for it, and to mask the pain for a blissful moment, before...

His vision began to darken on the edges and his legs felt weak. He fell to his own knees but despite knowing his fate, he lets out a cackling laugh in his remaining two heads.

The half-life was dead; he’s done it! Even at the cost of his own life, his last few moments spent in freedom was well worth it.

But it wasn’t over yet.

Whatever it was that shot out of the half-life’s chest had boomeranged back; he heard them before he felt them, slicing through the base of one wing where membrane met scales and causing it to sag limp to the ground. Still Ghidorah kept laughing wildly, even as his other wing is almost severed in the same fashion. The pain continued as more of his flesh is sliced into before it finally stops in his chest. Looking down, he saw there were razor disks now embedded in his body. To the bitter end, the creature still had surprises.

But despite all of this, the sight of his disemboweled belly, and the loss of his wings, the maniacal cackling from the dragon persisted, only softening as Ghidorah’s twitching blood-covered body finally collapsed to the ground.

A few more chuckles escaped him before fading into silence. His glassy eyes remained locked on the body of the half-life, both their growing puddles of blood meeting between them.

The pain has numbed, and the feeling of irrational happiness overtook him. He recognized this, and he doesn’t fight it as his muscles relaxed. As his vision went black and his crests gave him that massive dose of blissful euphoria for the final time, familiar words played in his mind.

Your name is Ghidorah. You were created to be the ultimate weapon.

The Universe is a terrifying place. It’s filled with violent races that seek to destroy those who only wish to live in peace. You will be the savior that fights for those innocents, that cleanses the universe of those dark forces.

You will make it safer, for all of us.

Safer. He finally understood now.

Every race that dared to use him for their nefarious deeds, extinct by his own vengeful claws.

The half-life, the most despicable creature he’s ever had the misfortune of knowing, dead.

His own life drawing to a close, Ghidorah can rest in peace knowing that he’s succeeded.

#ghidorah #king ghidorah #gigan #godzilla #gigadorah #The End #super anxious of this but so happy i finished a story for once!#i'mma miss writing this #but prepare for more side-stories of these two!! :D

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frost-guardian · 3 years

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I think the thing about the new Cruella movie is that we have to view her as a separate entity to the OG Cruella. The OG Cruella straight up is just that bitch that wants to kill puppies and loves fur and is just THAT awful.

This Cruella I don't believe by the end of the movie would ever probably kill 101 puppies for a fur coat. Her backstory was so unironically characteristic of a Disney movie. Of course her mom gets killed and that's what spurns her. Honey, everyones mom gets killed. It's Disney. You fit the cookie cutter trope Disney will never break from.

Her new story is kind of like Maleficent.

OG Maleficent is the MISTRESS of all EVIL. She's a badass and frightening and can turn in to a freaking dragon. She shows off her power and terrorizes a kingdom because King Stefan threw a party, didn't invite her, and pissed off the Fae.

But the Maleficent remake....she doesn't really DO anything evil. They call her the mistress of all evil but is she tho? It doesn't really show that the fae people really suffer under her care. They're just cut off. And instead we got a newly spun tale about found family that really holds up, and is genuinely enjoyable. They twist the ending to make found love the truest love and that's great. No Maleficent isn't the evil baddie we know and love, but they gave us a new spin. Which honestly, is refreshing when we're still getting remakes that are just word for word carbon copies that are so cringe and everyone hates them.

So I took Cruella as something new. They took the basic idea of Cruella, and spun it into something new (albeit still trophy and a little cringe. I mean killed by dalmatians?? Really?? XD)

Honestly the only person that definitively IS CRUELLA in the movie is the Baroness, and maybe the story would have been more successful if they would have called the movie Anita and put her in Cruellas part, put Cruella in the baronesses part, and showed Anita taking down her friend Cruella cuz they're both fashion designers and there's no room for cruelty and hate. It also I think would have been a better representation of the gay community rallying behind someone who was inherently good and doing it for good reasons about self love when the fashion world tells you to hate yourself. Fight back against the people who tell you u cant dress the way you want and live your best life. Seeing everyone rally with someone else rather than a genetic trait afluenza woman.

The movie still was enjoyable and I love the costume designs. They could have done better, but I still enjoyed myself when I looked at it as a new character rather than embodying the OG, like they did with Maleficent. Disney I think is too cowardly to give us a genuinely EVIL BACKSTORY for a villain. Like...even Jafars got watered down to being like Aladdin once and just made bad choices. He wasn't evil for the sake of just being evil. I don't know if they'll ever give us just a movie about A VILLAIN.

#cruella #disney cruella #disney+#101 dalmations #disney #cruella de vil

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hamliet · 4 years

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Pain, Fear, Death, and God: Fyodor and Gogol as Two Halves of Kirillov

God is the pain of the fear of death. Whoever conquers pain and fear will himself become God.

-Alexei Kirillov, Demons

So remember how when I first read Bungou Stray Dogs I started screeching incoherently and turned those screeches into a somewhat-coherent meta on how Fyodor in BSD was modeled after Alexei Kirillov from Dostoyesvky’s Demons?

Well, here’s the follow up.

As I said in my previous meta, Demons is (tied with Crime and Punishment) my favorite novel of all time, and Alexei Kirillov is my very favorite character of all time, in any fictional medium, ever. He’s a walking bundle of paradoxes, existential angst and stunning compassion. But Demons is not necessarily a popular novel by Dostoyevsky standards and so Kirillov, despite being written about by literary critics and Camus, is somewhat obscure. That Asagiri is so clearly inspired by his character is shocking and thrilling for me; I’m pinching myself.

The tl;dr version of Kirillov is that his whole schtick is that he wants to kill himself to prove that he is free and thereby can escape. It’s far more nuanced and complex, as I’ll go into, but essentially both Gogol and Fyodor��s philosophies and goals reflect this.

Gogol does not want to kill Fyodor because he hates Fyodor; rather, it’s because Gogol and Fyodor are two halves of a whole. They are a paradox together, embodying Kirillov’s complexity. Like Kirillov, they are suicidal, because killing one of them is like killing themselves. To achieve their goals, they both need to die.

Fyodor reminds Gogol that he is human and can connect; therefore, Gogol wants to kill him to assert his free will, as he views connections as a cage. Similarly, while we haven’t gotten much insight into Fyodor’s thoughts on Gogol, I think it’s highly likely Fyodor allowed Gogol to kill himself (he thought) because he clings to his beliefs at the expense of his (very much there) empathy, and it’s better for his goals if people who provoke his empathy die. Basically: Fyodor allowed Gogol to “die” not because he doesn’t care about him, but because he does.

For a brief background: Demons itself is an allegory about how people who become consumed by their ideas become possessed by said ideas; thus, they become devils or demons. The actual title of the novel, Бесы, is difficult to translate, hence why it has three different titles in English: The Possessed, The Devils, and Demons. The word “Бесы” in Russian refers to the ones doing the possessing, which is why the latter two are generally considered to be more accurate translations of the title. In particular, the novel demonstrates the tragic consequences of Russian nihilism and singles out moral nihilism. (It’s also looked to as a rather eerie novel, because almost everything it wrote about happening in a--then fictional--political revolution is exactly what happened in Russia a few decades later.)

As I wrote in my previous meta, Fyodor, like Kirillov, is “consumed” by his ideas, something Kirillov laments in Demons. Fyodor’s consumption with his ideals means that he is willing to sacrifice everything for his goals. Gogol, too, shares this trait.

Where they differ is in motivations for their respective plans, motives they share with Kirillov. Kirillov’s master plan is to commit suicide for two reasons: firstly, that he has free will and will thereby inspire society to live freely, and secondly, because he sees life as nonsensically painful and thereby not worth living. The first reflects Gogol’s personal aims, and the second Fyodor’s.

Let’s discuss Kirillov and Fyodor first. Kirillov believes that mankind invented God (keep in mind the context this was written in; God=Russian Orthodox Christianity) to go on living because of the absurdity of life.

Listen: this man was the highest on all the earth, he constituted what it was to live for. Without this man the whole planet with everything on it is--madness only. There has not been one like Him before or since, not ever, even to the point of miracle. This is the miracle, that there has not been and never will be such a one. And if so, if the laws of nature did not pity even This One, did not pity even their own miracle, but made Him, too, live amidst a lie and die for a lie, then the whole planet is a lie, and stands upon a lie and a stupid mockery. Then the very laws of the planet are a lie and a devil's vaudeville. Why live then, answer me, if you're a man.”

Fyodor's disgust for the world and determination to save it from the sin of abilities reflects this same attitude. Life is wrong, so it should cease to exist. Abilities are wrong, so everyone with one should cease to exist. The reason is, most likely, strongly based in how painful Fyodor’s ability has been for him.

Kirillov laments:

“God is necessary and so must exist… But I know He doesn’t and can’t… Surely you must understand that a man with two such ideas can’t go on living?”

...

“If there is no God, then I am God.”

If Kirillov is god, then he is the ultimate master of his fate. Kirillov is very aware of his own limits, and so he thinks this absurd and life pointless.

That conversation continues (Kirillov’s responses are bolded):

“There, I could never understand that point of yours: why are you God?”

“If God exists, all is His will and from His will I cannot escape. If not, it’s all my will and I am bound to show self-will.”

“Self-will? But why are you bound?”

“Because all will has become mine. Can it be that no one in the whole planet, after making an end of God and believing in his own will, will dare to express his self-will on the most vital point? It’s like a beggar inheriting a fortune and being afraid of it and not daring to approach the bag of gold, thinking himself too weak to own it. I want to manifest my self-will. I may be the only one, but I’ll do it.”

This very much reflects Gogol: killing his high moral power (connection and empathy) through the man who identifies himself as a god (Fyodor) to prove his independence and freedom.

But we’ve kind of already seen where this ends:

Gogol you’ve literally shown yourself terrified of dying (which Kirillov is as well). I know Gogol was likely acting in this scene, but given the themes of BSD and Gogol’s character, plus the fact that he did, in fact, choose not to die, I think this is likely somewhat reflective of his true feelings.

But again, Kirillov asserts:

“I am awfully unhappy, for I’m awfully afraid. Terror is the curse of man.… But I will assert my will, I am bound to believe that I don’t believe. I will begin and will make an end of it and open the door, and will save. That’s the only thing that will save mankind and will re-create the next generation physically; for with his present physical nature man can’t get on without his former God, I believe. For three years I’ve been seeking for the attribute of my godhead and I’ve found it; the attribute of my godhead is self-will! That’s all I can do to prove in the highest point my independence and my new terrible freedom. For it is very terrible. I am killing myself to prove my independence and my new terrible freedom.”

As Gogol outlined, what disrupted his plans was Fyodor’s empathy for him, and his empathy for Fyodor. Their connection literally saved his life (hence I kind of doubt their connection will kill them in the end). He cannot die without killing that connection.

Two things almost disrupt Kirillov’s plans. Firstly, and chiefly, it’s his empathy for others. Kirillov is noted to be a character who is extremely kind, good with children, and unafraid to risk himself to help others. When Kirillov finds out his friend betrayed him and is planning to use Kirillov’s suicide to get away with the murder of a third friend, Kirillov is horrified. He refuses to go through with his suicide at first, screaming in horror that his friend is dead and that he unwittingly enabled his killer to end his life. When he does ultimately go through with it, he states that it is because “I want to kill myself now: all are scoundrels.” He goes through with it because his human connections are failing.

Even the novel’s most villainous character concludes “I agree” when Kirillov is called “good.” Kirillov will stop at nothing to help his friends, and he believes all people are good and will become good if they are just told they are. However, the tragic irony of this scene is that the person speaking to Kirillov--Nikolai Stavrogin--is very much a literary example of a psychopath. (Those of you who follow me know I don’t use that word lightly.) However, Stavrogin does not want to be this way; he wants to feel, he wants to be bothered by the terrible sins he’s committed. What he’s asking Kirillov, essentially, is to understand this and call him wrong for what he did, which absolutely no one does in the novel:

“Everything’s good.”

“Everything?”

“Everything. Man is unhappy because he doesn’t know he’s happy. It’s only that. That’s all, that’s all! If anyone finds out he’ll become happy at once...

“And if anyone dies of hunger, and if anyone insults and outrages the little girl, is that good?”

“Yes! ...They’re bad because they don’t know they’re good. When they find out, they won’t outrage a little girl. They’ll find out that they’re good and they’ll all become good, every one of them.”

“Here you’ve found it out, so have you become good then?”

“I am good.”

“That I agree with, though,” Stavrogin muttered, frowning.

“He who teaches that all are good will end the world.”

“He who taught it was crucified.”

“He will come, and his name will be the man-god.”

“The god-man?”

“The man-god. That’s the difference.”

Stavrogin’s examples are based on things he’s done. Kirillov isn’t aware of these deeds, but he does know his friend’s mind better than most of their other friends. The problem is that Kirillov refuses to truly act on this empathy, to accept that men can be scoundrels and good, because he wants what he believes (that all are good) to be so. Kirillov’s too consumed with his desire to end the world (hello Fyodor) to save mankind via proving himself free to actually use his empathy to help his friends. In fact, the murderer points out to Kirillov that if he’d focused more on his friend, he might have been able to prevent the murder.

A similar attitude is reflected in Fyodor’s desire to destroy ability-users (i.e. end the world) and in his interactions with people. He doesn’t put his empathy into forming actual connections, and those he has he deliberately does not invest in (such as when he kills the kid in his introductory chapter). He kills ability users paradoxically because he cares about them and about other people. I wrote about it a bit in this meta here:

Fyodor... lives very much in a world of black and white. He makes Goncharov happy all the time, unable to experience pain or negative emotions. He believes all ability users are a sin and should be destroyed. He’s an idealist in a lot of ways, believing in absolutes (which is also a hallmark of a childish perspective...). he wants to... force every single ability user to feel his pain (that their abilities are a sin) by wiping them out. In short, Fyodor wants empathy despite refusing to listen to the feelings of others. (He understands their feelings; he just chooses to emphasize his pain over theirs.)

Unlike Kirillov, however, whose last scene is renowned as “the most harrowing in all of literature” (I can’t even describe it; it has to be read) I think there’s pretty good reason to hope that Fyodor and Gogol will not end up taking each other out. Because the thing about Kirillov, the reason his character resonates so much with me, is the second reason his plans are almost disrupted: it’s how desperately he wants to live. He just wants to know that his life matters. The way Kirillov expresses these desires is absurd in a lot of ways and certainly hyperbolic, but it’s a desire reflected in most of BSD’s characters, and in, well, a lot of us in real life, too.

Empathy and genuine human connection are the greatest powers in BSD’s world, as we saw recently through Atsushi getting the location of the page from empathizing with Sigma by telling him what he most wanted to know: that he mattered.

Sigma now knows, to an extent, that he matters. At least, he’s been told as much.

Gogol states that Sigma is key to his plans succeeding: Sigma’s ability can tell him Fyodor’s ability, which will enable Gogol to kill Fyodor. Except... Sigma’s ability might just work in an way that cultivates empathy post-connection with Atsushi. If Sigma can trust that he matters, despite having been created by the page and having been abused and subjected to all manner of lies and exploitation, he might be key to Fyodor and Gogol’s conflict resolution rather than to them actually killing each other.

Fyodor matters despite having an ability that seems to make him unable to touch people--because he can touch people with his empathy. (His empathy is, of course, literally what draws Gogol to want to kill him.) Fyodor’s empathy with Gogol has already physically saved Gogol.

Gogol matters even if he is understood by someone, because empathy is a strength and not a weakness. Someone understanding him doesn’t make him matter less, and being bound by feelings isn’t actually a bad thing. His connection with Fyodor has already saved his life.

Both Fyodor and Gogol have now saved Sigma at some point. Sigma’s design, of course, is literally split with two different colored halves of his hair, indicating that the artist likely means to symbolize the clash of two halves (see: Q, who represents how soukoku (Dazai and Chuuya) are two halves of a whole in terms of their best and worst traits). However, they exist in one person, and Sigma seems reasonably stable for someone with his situation.

Additionally, Fyodor and Gogol both are also somewhat modeled after Rodion Raskolnikov, the protagonist of Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, whose name literally means “split” in Russian. (Actually, Kirillov is very much a more internal, tragic version of Raskolnikov.) Like Kirillov, Raskolnikov is a paradox embodied: he’s stunningly empathetic and kind (rushing into a burning building to save orphans), but his philosophy is that it’s fine for him to kill others because he’s a “Napoleon” (special figure; “man-god,” to use Kirillov’s term).

But what is split is ultimately made whole in Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov meditates on the raising of Lazarus from the dead and essentially resurrects himself, redeems himself.

I highly doubt Gogol and Fyodor’s story will end with them dead because:

It’s BSD and nobody stays dead unless you’re Oda or a red shirt;

Gogol and Sigma have already served us fake-out deaths, so it’s a lot to ask your audience to buy another death from the same character (killing Fyodor is essentially Gogol killing himself);

them surviving and having Fitzgerald-esque redemption arcs very much fits with the themes of Dostoyevsky’s works and specifically with the book after which Fyodor’s ability is named;

resurrection seems to be a motif with everything involving Fyodor, from Cannibalism to this current arc.

#bsd meta #fyogol #bsd 79 #bungou stray dogs meta #fyodor dostoyevsky #nikolai gogol #alexei kirillov #demons #nikolai stavrogin #bsd sigma #sigma #atsushi nakajima #bsd theory

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transhawks · 4 years

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See, Hawks brings a particular uncomfortable philosophical fact into high definition. Your good and your evil (your help and your harm? Words are hard) don’t cancel each other out. The bird has saved lives. He’s efficient and careful and undoubtedly there are families that are still together because of him. But he’s treated people like things, and killed in cold blood. Both are true. Neither cancels out the other. He wholly embodies the best and worst of absolute determination.

I think this is the thing where we also have to acknowledge the good doesn’t matter if it enables the bad. I know that sounds really harsh but like...let’s apply this same argument (and I hate comparing them because in no way do I think Hawks, despite the awful murders, is on his level of this) to Enji.

Enji’s had a career with the most resolved cases. We know he’s a workaholic. He’s probably kept lots of people safe, even if we do know from details in the manga he goes ‘overboard’ in arrests and probably has a track record of something akin to excessive force (and likely, a death). But twenty five years of a mostly stellar and prolific record of resolving incidents doesn’t mean shit when Endeavor used his position in society to make sure he got away with coercing a woman into a marriage, forcing her to bear him children, terrorizing her and children repeatedly for decades, and then institutionalizing her and continuing to neglect and abuse those children.

And this is where power comes in; Endeavor’s record as a hero means he got away and will continue to get away with this sort of thing. He did it for the sake of heroism. So, what does that mean? Let’s go back to Hawks; because the society around them means that what Hawks did removed from context is okay. Because the reality is, most people will see Twice and see someone who deserved death, as we can tell by the reactions to 267 and also just by Tokoyami’s initial reaction - Hawks will get the immediate benefit of the doubt simply because he’s a hero. Hawks will be sympathized over Twice first. Hawks will be presumed to be still good. Because this a world that values heroes over other people, even and especially the people hurt because of that heroism.

And I do think there’s something good in Hawks, deep down, far more than Enji, but what does that mean in the end, with Twice dead and a society that’s fine with that?

The thing is that we have to stop looking at Endeavor and Hawks as individuals and acknowledge the good and the bad are reinforced and allowed to happen because they are part of and serve an institution that’s wrong. It’s not just ‘some’ bad apples or people who make bad decisions; it’s the entirety of hero society. Twice was killed preemptively to uphold a system where children are used as soldiers and give benefits of doubt to the murderers of men fleeing, rather than to the murdered.

Just to briefly segue to real life; when marginalized people make criticisms of law enforcement, there’s always a vein of counter-argument about how ‘police keep us all safe’’, that excludes the aforementioned groups so often. But Law Enforcement is designed to protect certain groups and incentivizes penalizing people. So, what is there for the people excluded from being safe?

So, again, to Twice’s line, “Only the virtuous” are saved. Hence they’ll get the benefit of the doubt of being human enough to save and keep safe, and the goodness of heroes will never extend to the people who supposedly need it most.

Shouldn’t that mean that system is inherently wrong then?

Endeavor and Hawks embody the worst of heroism, victory and sacrifice, and of course there’s complications but overall, it’s the system and institutions that they reflect most of all because they’re meant to make people like Twice and the League. People don’t slip through the cracks; the society made holes. And Hawks chose to uphold that.

#asks #meta #bnha

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i-believe-in-soriku · 4 years

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Essay Part 1: Riku’s Journey

Riku is undeniably the character who has experienced the greatest evolution throughout the series.

His journey begins in Destiny Islands, when he was just a little kid who wanted to live adventures with his best friend, Sora.

Riku: When we grow up, let's get off this island. We'll go on real adventures, not this kid stuff!

That's that will of discovering the world, and the fact that he was really close to his friend Sora, that lead him to make a promise:

Terra: Is there some reason you're interested in the outside world?

Riku: Yeah. I wanna be strong one day. Like that kid who left. He went to the outside world - I bet he's really strong now. I know it's out there somewhere - the strength that I need.

Terra: Strength for what?

Riku: To protect the things that matter. You know, like my friends.

Riku had a very strong friendship with Sora. The two of them used to fight with wooden swords, explore the islands, and watch the stars together. But then, Kairi came to the Islands and became part of their life. Years passed and their friendship became stronger - but somehow something was missing.

That's when Kingdom Hearts happens. At this time, Riku wanted to explore the other worlds, feeling trapped on Destiny Islands - will he had already expressed ten years before. Riku was jealous of Sora, and probably of Kairi and Sora's growing proximity. Riku felt lonely, as we can see during the game. These dark feelings caused him to be manipulated by Maleficent, and to turn to darkness.

There are also other reasons: he wanted to see the world - which he already wanted as a five years old kid-, he wanted to become stronger in order to protect his friends - even if he did it the wrong way, he didn't forget that goal, as proved by this scene:

Riku: So, Kairi's like a lifeless puppet now?

Maleficent: Precisely.

Riku: And her heart was...

Maleficent: Taken by the Heartless, no doubt.

Riku: Tell me! What can I do?

Maleficent, as the evil witch she is, manipulated him strengthening his feelings of loneliness, jealousy and betrayal.

Maleficent: You see? It's just as I told you. While you toiled away trying to find your dear friend, he quite simply replaced you with some new companions. Evidently, he values them far more than he does you. You're better off without that wretched boy. Now, think no more of him, and come with me. I'll help you find what you're searching for.

Ansem, on his side, pretended he knew the way to make him stronger, as Riku was jealous of Sora's strength...

Ansem: The heart that is strong and true shall win the Keyblade.

Riku: What? You're saying my heart's weaker than his?

Ansem: For that instant, it was. However, you can become stronger. You should not fear in stepping through the door to darkness. It held no terror for you. Plunger deeper into the darkness and your heart will grow even stronger.

Riku: What should I do?

Ansem: It's really quite simple. Open yourself to the darkness. That is all. Let your heart, your being, become darkness itself.

... but he used him as a puppet to achieve his goals. The way he asked advices to bad people shows how lost that boy was. However, Riku finished by regain control of himself, and at the end of the game, decided to help Mickey close the Door to Darkness, even if it meant being somehow left behind - a beautiful act of redemption.

But that's only the begining of his story. In Chain of Memories, we follow Riku who has to fight his own darkness, embodied by Ansem (and also Repliku who mocks his fear of darkness). At first, Riku totaly rejects the darkness inside of him, afraid that it might overpower him once again.

Riku: All you have been talking about is the darkness. I can only assume you wanna pull me back in... so you can play Puppet Master.

And he doesn't want to hurt people like he did.

But we can see that he's becoming more and more mature, because this game is also about how Riku began to accept the part of darkness inside him as a strength (and I think Mickey helped him to do that). That's what makes him choose the way to Dawn.

Riku: What are you making me choose now?

DiZ: Between the road to light - and the road to darkness.

Riku: Neither suits me. I'm taking the middle road.

DiZ: Do you mean the twilight road to nightfall?

Riku: No. It's the road to dawn.

During 358/2 Days, Riku's will is to make sure that his best friend sleeps in peace - actually, he wants him to recover his memories and wake up. He teams up with Mickey and DiZ/Ansem the Wise to do so. In this game, Riku embraces the darkness in his heart while fighting Roxas...

Riku: I have to release the power in my heart- the dark power that I've been holding back. Even... if it changes me forever.

...a sacrifice made even though he's aware he may not find his own body anymore - which illustrates how Riku has finally accepted that darkness isn't 100% evil. We can also see that he's no longer bitter towards others: he's not even angry against Sora's Nobodies for keeping him away from his friend - just sad.

Xion: So, do you hate me for taking your friend away?

Riku: Nah. I guess... I'm just sad.

Still, in KH2, Riku is ashamed by his appearence and hides himself from Sora, even though he keeps on protecting him at distance. When they finally meet again, he tells this shame calling himself "a castaway from the darkness":

Riku: I'm no one---just a castaway from the darkness.

But he recovers his true self.

KH2 insists on the fact that despite a clear maturation, Riku still has doubts and still feel a little bit lonely. Sora points at:

Sora: Riku... C'mon, man! Why did you try to do so much on your own?You got friends...like us!

He still needs his friends to reassure him and accept him, and still thinks he can't get rid of his own darkness - his shame is still here:

Sora: You're coming back with us, right?

Riku: I had given in to the darkness.

Sora: Riku!

Riku: How'm I gonna face everyone?

Dream Drop Distance is a turning point to Riku's character. During the game, it is underlined that Riku is holding back some stuff inside of him, by four characters including himself.

Riku (to Quasi): Are you sure that's what's stopping you? Because I think something else is holding you back. Ask your heart, Quasimodo. [...] Wish I could take my own advice.

And:

Quasimodo: Master Frollo--he made me live inside the bell tower, but the real walls were the ones I built around my heart. You helped me see that, Riku.

Riku: I was...speaking from...personal experience.

Phoebus: I'd say you still keep a lot locked inside.

He also admits that he feels like his darkness will always follow him:

Riku: I gave in to the darkness once. And ever since, it's chased me around in one form or another.

But the end of the game proves that Riku has achieved a balance (a confidence that we can see in KH3).

Indeed, during the last parts of 3D, Riku is shown as a being of exception, whom heart has light and darkness in balance...

YMX: I don't know how you did it, but you really have found a way to trap darkness inside your heart

...balance which enables him to protect Sora, becoming his Dream Eater - he is able to change his very NATURE and didn't even noticed it.

Riku finally obtains the title of Keyblade Master showing that he is worthy of wielding a Keyblade - which he seemed to doubt at the beginning of the game:

Riku: My Keyblade--it just sort of...popped into my hand when I needed it most.

He has learned how to open his heart throughout his adventures, which can be seen in KH3.

In KH3 his new goals are to save Aqua and, with the others, fight the Seekers of Darkness. During the road, Mickey helps him to realize that he finally has the strenght he was aiming at since the very beginning: to protect the one person that matters.

Riku: I'm in control now. Maybe it's because you're with me this time.

Mickey: It's not me. I think it's because you've finally found inside you that special strength to protect what matters.

And the game lets no doubt: this person is Sora. He sacrifices himself to protect his friend against the Demon Tide in the Keyblade Graveyard.

This is a very brief summary of everything Riku did, but that's enought to come to a conclusion. If you have read carefully, you should have noticed that I didn't spoke about Sora that much. Because, even if Sora is actually what matters the most to Riku, the main reason why he did all those things, Sora is not what defines Riku.

Riku has a developpement that shows that he has to fight his own demons, overcomes his doubts and searches the strenght to protect who he cares about. He has other relationships than his (wonderful) relationship with Sora: for example, his friendship with Mickey.

He faced many things with the King and they share a special bond, just as Sora's with Donald and Goofy. He also shares a link with Terra and somehow Aqua, even though it's not developped that much.

Regarding of those elements, it is completely unfair to say that Riku isn't well written or too much written around Sora. Riku is interesting, relatable and touching, and I hope that he's going to have a good treatment in the future of the series. Watching the end of KH3 and Re:Mind, there's no doubt about the fact that he has an important role to play.

I want to close this part saying that Riku also has a personality. He's determined, selfless, mature, of good advice, a little bit sassy. Riku, even if he has doubts, can be now considered as confident. He is empathetic, cares about others, knows how to confort his friends, especially Sora. There are other important points - like the fact he's smart ~ but I think those are the main elements.

Intro • Part 2

#kh #kingdom hearts #riku #riku kh #kh riku #riku kingdom hearts #kingdom hearts riku #character analysis #essay #analysis #kh analysis #kingdom hearts analysis #my essay #first essay #character growth #writing #my thoughts #thoughts

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chameleonspell · 3 years

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some random iriel words i found

[I just found this in my drafts, must have been there a few years, as I don’t remember anything about it. From context, I gather it’s answers I wrote to some sort of horror-themed OC question meme. I used to do a lot of these for character development when I was writing HTDC, but rarely posted them in case I ended up wanting to use the content in the fic. Might as well post it now? I have no idea if anyone else likes reading this stuff, but lmk if you do, I no doubt have a ton more somewhere...]

They have a premonition that something terrible will happen to them. How do they handle the situation?

Iriel would carry on as normal, because he has anxiety, so that's a normal Loredas, tbh. Perhaps some breathing exercises, or carefully modulated Calm spells. If, however, the premonition is specific and prophetic-sounding enough to convince him it results from an external source and not his own brain, then that's a whole different nest of scribs. Because that means that someone is fucking with him, probably a Daedra, and Iriel has well-documented reservations about the trustworthiness of such things. What situation are they REALLY trying to engineer, and why?

Do they have a fear of the unknown and things they can’t explain?

Not nearly as much as some people. Iriel has enough known-fears to contend with that something being unknown gives it rather an advantage, at times. Besides, he's a scholar. Unknown things are inherently interesting, because then you can research them, and test hypotheses! Sometimes to the point of almost contracting vampirism, because you can't resist touching weird-looking corpses.

What is the most disturbing thing they’ve ever seen?

I had to think about this one, because pitching Iriel through Morrowind involved subjecting him to a lot of disturbing things. Sixth House stuff is obviously designed to be body-horror nightmarish, and Ire's particular terror of skeletons meant that ancestral tombs were always going to be a trial. In terms of character turning points, though, I'm gonna say Rotheran was the worst thing he'd ever seen, the most upsetting. Because it wasn't just the slavery, or the sadistic games, or the Daedra worship, or the illusion-magic mind control (though that was all bad enough!). It was the dark things about himself, about his psychology and attitude to other people, that he believed he saw magnified and reflected there, triggering a spiral into self-loathing and despair, and the events of the next several chapters! Which... sounds really depressing, but was ultimately useful, in a gotta-lance-the-poison-filled-abscess-before-you-can-clean-and-heal-it kind of way.

What would they do if they witnessed an alien ship crash landing?

I like how this sort of question highlights the differences of the TES setting. Cosmology, f'rinstance, is rather a different affair. Space travel is occasionally a thing in the lore, but their "space" isn't the same as ours. The appearance of strange crafts from out of the air filled with unidentifiable creatures wouldn't imply "aliens!!!" to someone from Tamriel, but probably something more like: "oh shit what have the Telvanni made NOW?" or "please no more portals spewing horrors from another Daedric realm-o'-the-week, i am so very tired."

If they were a ghost, what methods would they use to haunt someone?

"If". lol. Iriel spends a fair amount of HTDC baaaaasically turning into a ghost, yeah? Insubstantial, invisible, losing all grasp on the material realm. And yet, he utterly fails to use his powers to prank people! Shani and Bodu agree that this is a tragic waste of ghostly powers.

Actually, this is another one where TES sensibilities might differ from ours. In Tamriel, ghosts are a well-documented spiritual phenomenon - the result of a lapse in burial rites, or, in the case of Dunmer, the successful product of them. Haunted houses tend to be places full of actual screaming spectres, rather than strange, poltergeist activity. Floating objects and suchlike would be more readily explained by a mage's mischievous telekinesis than the restless dead.

Anyway, to return to your question, a house haunted by Iriel is largely identical to one in which he is actually living. Either way, you may see little hard evidence of his presence, yet sometimes experience odd, herbal smells; indistinct, yet melancholic apparitions in the corner of your eye, and soft sighs just on the edge of hearing. You may also find your books mysteriously disappearing, and reappearing with the pages tea-stained and dog-eared.

How much would they have to be offered to live in a haunted house for a month?

"Let me get this straight. You're offering me an empty house... yes, fine, there are ghosts, but no real people... an empty house that everyone else is frightened to go near, so I'd have complete peace and quiet-- yes, yes, apart from the ghosts, I mean-- ...and I can do whatever I like there, and... let me be absolutely clear about this... YOU want to pay ME?"

("Hmm? Oh yes, it's been fine. Honestly, the dead are far less trouble than people think, especially the non-embodied kind. Simple wards and charms will do adequately if you want to keep them contained, but really, a little attention is all most of them want. They like it when I sing to them, actually. I did get one dreadful screamer, and had to spend a night traipsing around the cellar, scrabbling in the dirt until I found where the poor thing had been buried, but ever since I got the gravedigger to move him somewhere more comfortable, he's been a total sweetheart. Which is more than you can say for dogs or babies or Bosmer housemates, honestly.")

Could they stay calm lost in the woods all night by themselves?

It's funny... I'm sure Iriel's pa used to take him camping in the woods as a kid, and I'm sure Ire spent the entire time freaking out about weird noises, and generally having an unhappy, stressful time. And yet, upon being released from prison as an adult, he immediately vanished into the woods, and voluntarily spent multiple days and nights alone out there. (Three reasons: fear of civilisation, dissociation and drugs.)

After that, even once the drugs wore off, he'd become accustomed to wild places, and grown to feel safer there than in cities, where the dangers around him were harder to predict and quantify. Iriel is, in some ways, very unimaginative. His mind will create possible scenarios based on his experiences, but it won't invent implausible monsters from nothing, and he finds darkness comforting, rather than a source of horror. The woods at night are a good deal more peaceful and friendly than many other places he's spent time.

#oc memes #question memes

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jackoshadows · 4 years

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One of the reasons for why I love Jon Snow in the books is because I find him to be the character who adheres closest to values I find admirable. IMO, Character traits like being broad-minded, intelligent and loyal tend to be more attractive in a character rather than than say good looks or good manners. Jon is selfless and honorable - to a certain extent. He can be pragmatic and bend the rules if necessary.

Jon Snow stands out as the only leader/main character in the series whose central narrative theme is about unifying people against a common threat. This is underscored by GRRM sending him off to the wall at the start of the books and Jeor Mormont telling Jon Snow:

When dead men coming hunting in the night, do you think it matters who sits on the Iron Throne - Jon Snow, AGoT

With this in mind, we see Jon continually grow as a character from book one to book five gradually killing the boy to let the man be born.

When we first see him at the wall, he’s a bit of a privileged brat and offended by the other recruits. But after Donal Nye sets him straight, he uses his education and knowledge to help the other kids in the NW. Jon grew up otherizing the Wildlings and saw them as people to be kept on the other side of the wall. He then spends a lot of time with them and comes to see them as human beings same as him and the rest of Westeros. He wants his childhood desire of being Lord of Winterfell, but understands that he swore an oath to the NW and his job is to defend the realm.

There are two quotes that embody Jon Snow best in the books:

‘You know nothing, Jon Snow’ – First used by Ygritte to educate Jon Snow on his ignorance about Wildlings and then later used by Lord Commander Jon Snow to remind himself that he still has a lot to learn even as a leader of men. A take on Socrates ‘I know that I know nothing’ – a humble acknowledgment that even the best leaders are not experts but human beings who can mistakes.

‘We look up at the same stars and see such different things’ - Jon is able to understand that two people can see the same thing and have such different opinions and that their opinions are colored by their upbringing and situation. As someone who has to unite people against a common threat, this is an important understanding that Jon has earned – this could be why he is a damn good negotiator in the books, earning praise from even Stannis.

Jon is able to acknowledge these important little lessons because he is at heart a fundamentally good person. We see this in how he treats characters who are disadvantaged and mistreated by Westeros society. These are not big moments but small character relationships that highlight how Jon Snow often stands out in thinking differently to a majority of Westeros.

Jon Snow as a child comforting Arya when she comes crying to him about being a possible bastard because of her looks. Imagine how much this would have hurt? But he loves Arya enough to put aside his own hurt feelings to reassure her.

Once he gets to know Tyrion personally and differentiates him from the rest of the Lannisters, Jon is quickly able to see past appearances and Westerosi prejudices and considers Tyrion a friend:

He ran back to the common hall , where he found Tyrion Lannister just finishing his meal. He grabbed the little man under the arms, hoisted him up in the air, and spun him around in a circle. “Bran is going to live!” he whooped. - Jon, AGoT

Asks Tyrion to comfort and help Bran in whatever way possible. This is in contrast to Robb’s immediate dislike and distrust of Tyrion. Jon judges a person based on their actions.

“Thank you, my lord of Lannister.” He pulled off his glove and offered his bare hand. “Friend.”

Tyrion found himself oddly touched. “Most of my kin are bastards,” he said with a wry smile, “but you’re the first I’ve had to friend.” - Tyrion, AGoT

Realizes how Sam Tarly is ill equipped to fight, figures out what Sam is best suited to do, talks to Maester Aemon about it and arranges for Sam to work for the Maester instead.

Appoints Satin Flowers, a former male prostitute from OldTown as his steward despite opposition from his bigoted department heads. And he does this, because once again, he judges based on a person’s actions and skills, rather than on the labels society places on them

“My Lord, the boy’s a whore...a...dare I say... a painted catamite from the brothels of Old Town”

“What he was in Oldtown is none of our concern. He’s quick to learn and very clever. The other recruits started out despising him, but he won them over and made friends of them all. He’s fearless in a fight and can even read and write after a fashion. He should be capable of fetching me my meals and saddling my horse, don’t you think?”

“Most like,” said Bowen Marsh, stony-faced, “but the men do not like it. Traditionally the lord commander’s squires are lads of good birth being groomed for command. Does my lord believe the men of the Night’s Watch would ever follow a whore into battle?”

Jon’s temper flashed. “They have followed worse. The Old Bear left a few cautionary notes about certain of the men, for his successor. We have a cook at the Shadow Tower who was fond of raping septas. He burned a seven-pointed star into his flesh for every one he claimed. His left arm is stars from wrist to elbow, and stars mark his calves as well. At Eastwatch we have a man who set his father’s house afire and barred the door. His entire family burned to death, all nine. Whatever Satin may have done in Oldtown, he is our brother now, and he will be my squire.”

Jon appoints Leathers of the Freefolk as his Master-at-arms once again, against objections from the likes of Cellador and Bowen

Bowen: Is it true that you mean to replace Emmett with this savage Leathers as our master-at-arms? That is an office most oft reserved for knights, or rangers at the least.

Jon: Leathers is savage. I can attest to that. I've tried him in the practice yard. He's as dangerous with a stone axe as most knights are with castle-forged steel. I grant you, he is not as patient as I'd like, and some of the boys are terrified of him ... but that's not all for the bad. One day they'll find themselves in a real fight, and a certain familiarity with terror will serve them well

The Freefolk women: Jon sees them as capable and equal in all ways to the men. He sends Val off all alone to find Tormund. He garrisons Long Barrow fully with Spearwives, entrusting them to defend that castle and the wall.

And we find that Jon is hungry for knowledge, and in his spare time he learns the Old Tongue from Leathers so that he can communicate with the giant Wun-Wun. He is always reading the books Maester Aemon left him, conducting science experiments on wights and even thinks of building a green house on the Gift to grow food. Once again, Jon acknowledges the importance of learning that he picked up from characters like Aemon, Sam and Tyrion.

I have a realistic grasp of my own strengths and weaknesses. My mind is my weapon. My brother has his sword, King Robert has his warhammer, and I have my mind.. and a mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” Tyrion tapped the leather cover of the book. “That’s why I read so much, Jon Snow.” - Tyrion, AGoT

There’s a reason for why Jon’s so good at what he does. Look at the people from whom he learns – Ned Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jeor Mormont, Donal Noye, Qhorin Half-hand, Maester Aemon, Samwell Tarly, Mance Raydar, Stannis Baratheon etc. Every one of these men gives him a tidbit of information that he ends up using in the books.

Jon is very astute and has a deep understanding of the way the North and people in general work:

"The free folk despise kneelers," he had warned Stannis. "Let them keep their pride, and they will love you better." Soon or late, however, Tormund Giantsbane would assault the Wall again, and when that hour came Jon wondered whose side Stannis's new-made subjects would choose. You can give them land and mercy, but the free folk choose their own kings. - Jon, ADwD

Early on he advises Stannis to go with the Umbers instead of the Karstarks. Later we see his advice hold true as the Karstarks betray Stannis while Mors Crowfood allies with him. He also advises Stannis to approach Manderly – a decision that once again works out right. He explains to Stannis in clear detail how to approach the mountain clans for help

“And they will fight for me, you believe?”

“If you ask them.”

“Why should I beg for what is owed me?”

“Ask, I said, not beg.” Jon pulled back his hand. “It is no good sending messages. Your Grace will need to go to them yourself. Eat their bread and salt, drink their ale, listen to their pipers, praise the beauty of their daughters and the courage of their sons, and you’ll have their swords. The clans have not seen a king since Torrhen Stark bent his knee. Your coming does them honor. Command them to fight for you, and they will look at one another and say, ‘Who is this man? He is no king of mine.’ ”

In a way, it makes sense that Jon tries to see the humanity of people, tries to teach them, weeds out talent and designates based on merit and skillset – he works with the lowest of the lowest. He’s the military head of a group of outlaws, murderers, rapists, bigots, smallfolk with no education or access to education. He has to be able to see beyond labels to get this ragtag bunch ready to face an apocalyptic threat.

Contrast this Jon Snow to Jaime Lannister in AFfC who hangs some outlaws in the Riverlands and then proudly calls himself ‘Goldenhand the Just’ for meting out ‘justice’, failing to even acknowledge that those hungry outlaws were created by his war – a war that started because of his incestuous adultery.

To conclude, Jon Snow ending an 8000 year old feud between the north and the freefolk, bringing them over to this side of the wall, including them in the realms of men, making real alliances between old Northern houses and the freefolk epitomizes what Jon Snow stands for as a character in the books.

There’s a reason for why GRRM describes Jon Snow thus:

Jon Snow is the truest character--I like his sense of realism and the way he copes with his bastardy.

#Jon Snow #ASoIaF #A Song of Ice and Fire

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sunandrainfic · 4 years

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Meta Talk: FF7 Remake and Ethical Complexity

(WARNING: Spoilers for the whole Remake below.)

Okay, so there’s a cool thing they’ve done within the remake that I really really like, and I have to talk about it.

In OG FF7, there were selfish people, and there were bad people, and eventually there were also good people, and that was the story. Selfish people did selfish things, bad people did bad things, and good people did good things. You could be selfish and do good and bad things, but you couldn’t be good and do bad things. If you did bad things and you were a good person, it was because you were being manipulated by bad people. (And yes, it’s heavily implied Shinra helps blow up Mako Reactor 1 in the original, too.)

In the Remake, good people are as capable of doing bad things as bad people.

Rude specifically addresses this in the scene we’re introduced to him. Aerith tries to stop Cloud from fighting him by saying: “He’s not a bad person.” Rude agrees. “No, I’m not bad,” he says. “But sometimes I have to do bad things.”

That could describe Cloud himself: we know he’s a good guy, that his harsh and tough demeanor is an act of self-defense. He cares much more than he lets on, and he’s fighting to save the world. But in the Remake, we also see him nonchalantly going for the kill multiple times, only to have others stop him. He’s a good guy. But he’s capable of bad things.

One of the reasons FF7 took so long to get remade, I’m sure, is the fact that our heroes are terrorists. In 1997, ‘terrorist’ landed differently. Now, we’ve lived through two decades of Al-Qaeda, of ISIS, of an uptick in white supremacist attacks and a “War on Terror.” We live in a world where ‘terrorist’ means bombing churches and marathons, shooting up concerts and restaurants and clubs and garlic festivals. It means the disruption of everyday life to your average citizen. ‘Terrorist’ carries emotional baggage for the individual in today’s world that it didn’t in 1997.

And the game developers embrace this. The first thing we have to do after blowing up Mako Reactor 1 is walk through the fallout of our actions. The game intentionally forces us to face the consequences of our actions. Cloud, Barret, and the crew have to wrestle with the fact that their actions have directly hurt others -- “My friend worked there,” one bystander says as you pass them. People scream and cry. Kids hide in corners. Emergency workers try to save the injured. The gang seems shaken and moved by the damage they’ve wrought -- because they’re good people.

But they still decide to blow up another reactor. They still decide to turn off the sun lamps to Sector Four and continue their fight against Shinra using moves from a terrorist playbook. They’re doing this because they care about the Planet, and they care about the future. But no matter how noble the goal, their actions in reaching it are questionable. Square hammers this home with Tifa, who’s there to keep us in ethical perspective, to constantly remind us of what we’re complicit in. We are actively hurting people, Tifa reminds us. Our decisions are actively hurting people.

The same thing happens on the other side. We meet guards who recognize Cloud, who used to be friends with him, or who clearly are “just doing their jobs.” They’re not just mooks to be slain, their people.

Then there’s Rude and Reno, who wrestle with their orders from Tseng and Shinra to attack the Sector 7 pillar. Reeve protests and begs for President Shinra to “reconsider” dropping the Sector 7 plate. The soldiers guarding the gate are horrified at the plate drop. In another story, their uncomfortability with this horrific act would denote they’re good people. And yet Rude and Reno still drop the plate. Reeve does nothing to sabotage this or stop it from happening. These people aren’t ‘evil’ the way President Shinra, Hojo, Hollander, and Sephiroth are written to be. They aren’t heartless.

They are still committing evil acts.

“They were my bombs,” Jessie says, and she’s right. “We did this,” Tifa says, and she’s right. AVALANCHE decided to poke a sleeping dragon when they bombed Mako Reactor 1, and their continued terrorism paved the way for Shinra to capitalize on the chaos they were intentionally wreaking to whip up fervor for another war with Wutai. The Sector 7 plate drop is the end of Act Two in this game because it’s a thematic culmination of the story the game has been telling, a karmic retribution for the direction our main characters choose to take.

This reaches a bit of a muddled head with Sephiroth at the end (muddled because the whole ‘destiny’ thing kind of thematically strays from the rest of the story, but we’re ignoring that thematic beat for the purposes of this meta.)

Sephiroth does what Barret threatens to do when faced with the opportunity: he kills President Shinra. Even after the President is killed, Barret makes it no secret that he plans to kill Rufus Shinra, too. “End the family here and now.” On top of all that, Sephiroth claims to have the same noble goal our group of good guys do: he’s doing everything to “save the planet.”

When we fight Sephiroth -- and, again, forget the destiny thing for a minute -- we’re fighting a manifestation of ourselves. Sephiroth is everything AVALANCHE has to rid themselves of if they want to truly save the world: the living embodiment of their justification for hurting others.

This is what the game teaches. Just because you are a good person does not mean you’re incapable of doing bad things. You don’t have to be evil to do evil. You just have to decide to do evil.

The Remake takes the themes of the original and heightens them, and I love it so much for doing so.

#ff7 remake #cloud strife #tifa lockhart #barret wallace #avalanche #sephiroth #reno #rude #turks #shinra #ethical complexity

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impalementation · 4 years

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“Darkness! And horror of darkness. Unfolding, restless, visitant, sped by an ill wind in haste.” -Xander, 1.09 The Puppet Show

“No, I'm not saying she craned her neck. We are talking full-on Exorcist twist.” -Buffy, 1.04 Teacher’s Pet

“Oh, okay, th-this is nice... and scary.” -Willow, 1.01 Welcome to the Hellmouth

“Scary! I'll tell you something, though. There are a lot scarier things than you. And I'm one of them.” -Buffy, 1.10 Nightmares

buffy season one imagery: horror

[commentary below the cut]

Every season of Buffy makes use of the horror aesthetic. It’s part of the show’s DNA. But season one is dense with the visual language of horror to a degree that really sets it apart from the other seasons, even the gothic season two. @blorgon-schmorgon rightly pointed out the way that the season transforms the high school setting into a place of shadowy danger, much like season seven transforms Buffy’s home into a haunted, unsafe house. But I think that season one’s use of horror imagery goes beyond the high school setting, too.

I’d argue that season one is in conversation with horror as a genre. The Master’s candle-lit cavern is a vampire movie staple. Natalie French twisting her head around is right out of The Exorcist. That shot of the vampires shuffling across campus in Prophecy Girl is taken straight out Night of the Living Dead, and other zombie movies. When Willow, Jenny, and Cordelia scream at them, it could be a scene from any number of teenage screamfests. In fact, Prophecy Girl is practically a cornucopia of horror tropes: Cordelia parking with a boy, the gore of the mangled jocks, the Master’s campy Come To Me gesturing. The creeping hell-vines remind me of movies like The Thing or even Little Shop of Horrors. Which means that when Buffy beats the Master and his various associates by the end of the episode, she’s also “beaten” the tropes of horror on a meta level.

That might sound pretentious, but we know that the origin of the show was literally the idea of turning the traditional horror victim into the hero. From the Welcome to the Hellmouth commentary:

WHEDON: In the credits, where it starts out with this scary organ and then devolves instantly into rock and roll, which is basically trying to tell people exactly what the show is in the credits. Which is, here’s a girl who has no patience for a horror movie. Who is not going to be the victim, who is not going to be in the scary-organ horror movie. She’s going to bring her own youth and rocking attitude to it. - [ x ]

With that quote in mind, I think it makes a lot of sense to see season one’s horror aesthetic as a bunch more church organs that Buffy--and the show, by extension--doesn’t have patience for. In Welcome to the Hellmouth, Angel stalks Buffy to an alley in a horror movie way, and then Buffy leaps down and tackles him. In the very first scene of the show, you think you know how this cliche horror tableau is going to go, and then Darla turns it around. In The Puppet Show the creepy horror movie puppet turns out to be a demon fighter. In Nightmares, Xander punches the clown that scares him, and the perfunctory way he does it (“I feel good! I feel liberated!”) could be seen as both a play on the resolution of It as well as the show giving the finger to the scary clown trope. In Prophecy Girl, it seems meaningful to me that Buffy is so afraid of the Master and her death. That grotesque old horror villain is scaring her. But because Buffy is brave enough to face that fear, she is able to be reborn from the trope of the helpless virgin sacrifice into a person who is no longer impressed by horror. “Oh look, a bad guy,” “What can I say? I flunked the written,” “You have fruit punch mouth,” “Save the hypnosis crap for the tourists,” “I may be dead, but I’m still pretty. Which is more than I can say for you.” Even if Buffy is still scared, she no longer lets these villains have power over her.

To connect things to season seven again, I think it’s telling that seven also has a pronounced horror aesthetic, both with regards to the high school (the dark basement) and Buffy’s house, and also just in general. Those scenes of the Bringers chasing the potential Slayers are very horror, as is the Sluggoth and Anya’s mutilated frat boys. And of course, everything in Dawn’s part of Conversations With Dead People. Seven is full of deep shadows and chiaroscuros to a degree that hadn’t really been seen since season two. But these aesthetic choices make a lot of sense when you keep in mind that seven claims it’s going “back to the beginning,” and that the beginning of Buffy was its commentary on horror as a genre. Season seven’s emphasis on girls being chased by horror movie terrors connects directly to the subversion of the slasher victim that Buffy originally embodied all the way back in Welcome to the Hellmouth, and continued to embody thereafter. By returning to visual and narrative horror tropes, and once again overcoming them, seven completes the arch that season one started.

#season one imagery series #s1 #s7

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viktorfm · 4 years

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(MAXENCE DANET-FAUVEL, NONBINARY) - Have you seen VIKTOR SAMUELS? VIKTOR is in HIS/THEIR SENIOR year. The VISUAL ARTS MAJOR is 24 years old & is a CAPRICORN. People say HE/THEY are OBSERVANT, INGENIOUS, RETICENT and DEPENDENT. Rumors say they’re a member of KINCAID. I heard from the gossip blog that THEY'RE HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH THEIR THERAPIST. (JAMES. 21. EST. THEY/THEM.)

dont. look at me. i know. anyways if it wasnt obvs i abandoned cupid (n darrow) in order 2 bring the two ocs tht he ws inspired by n ws a combination of bt. theyre better as different ppl methinks.

DEATH, HEAVY GRIEF, OVERDOSE / DRUG ADDICTION, HOSPITALIZATION, HYPERSEXUALITY, RELIGION MENTIONS TW

aesthetic.

old tvs and their static, worn tapes, horror movie screams, spilled ink, a sculptor’s hands, clay-stained, chicken scratch handwriting, messy notes, messy hair, scoffs and eye-rolls, bruised knuckles, sore throats, funeral homes and a crying preacher, shattered ceramics, knife fights, high ledges, vertically-striped pants, red lights, the moon shrouded in clouds, cigarette butts, graveyards and half-empty wine bottles, sitting there for hours and talking to nothing, about nothing, a god complex, gold rings adorning both hands, barbwire baseball bats, having never played baseball in your life, deep eyebags and broken mirrors, a permanent chip on one’s shoulder, yearning, longing, wishing.

basics.

full name: viktor phillip samuels

nickname(s): icky vicky :/

b.o.d. - january 2nd, 1996

label(s): the black hole, the crepehanger, the impious, the opaque, the tempest, etc.

height: 6′1″

hometown: preaker, vermont

sexuality: pansexual uwu

stats

favorite song: disorder, joy division / it’s getting faster, moving faster / now it’s getting out of hand / on the tenth floor, down the back stairs / it’s a no man’s land / lights are flashing, cars are crashing / getting frequent now / i’ve got the spirit, lose the feeling / let it out somehow

background.

born to mama and papa (preacher) samuels in preaker, vermont - fifteen minutes after his twin sister, tatiana samuels. years later, rosa samuels joined the gang.

was an awkward, quiet kid growing up, he didn’t interact well with others and preferred being left alone to dig up worms and draw on the walls of their childhood home. the only exception was his twin, really.

as he got older he grew out of this, but instead became like … sort of an asshole? maybe to compensate for years of childhood awkwardness. he’s the sort of person who will bite the hand that feeds him & developed into a full time nuisance by middle school, unlike tatiana who was much more subtle about her conniving manners.

always has been a fan of ‘darker’ materials. grim & creepy morbid shit. probably the biggest tim burton fan, ever since he was a kid … not a good look for a preacher’s son, but he never really felt ‘in’ with the rest of his family to begin with. classic black sheep syndrome.

drew disturbing pictures as a kid that probably prompted one or two or five phone calls home to assure everything was fine.

just really had a knack for art at a young age, from drawing to painting to playing with clay. it’s always been his thing and probably is the only thing he’s good at.

being twins with tatiana was hard. they were near opposite besides both being quite mean-spirited. tatiana handled being in public better, left a better image behind - but viktor had talent, more than she did. they loved each other deeply - y’know, those unbreakable twin bonds as cliche as it sounds - but found each other as competition for their parents’ attention. a rivalry for affection.

in high school is when viktor really started to act out. it started extreme, like losing his virginity in their church and vandalism around the neighborhoods. faked being possessed in the middle of sunday service & almost had an exorcism performed on him.

his only redeemable trait was like … just his sheer talent in the arts. was in a 3d art ap course and specialized in sculptures. he could pretty much create anything he wanted with enough dedication.

because he was the problem child, the one who deserved to be disciplined for all his antics, tatiana could sneak away and get away with whatever she wanted much easier. on the bright-side, for her, i guess.

not a very motivated person - wasn’t planning on going to college, much less going to yates but his parents literally wrote & sent his college application for him because they weren’t going to house a deadbeat but had too much heart to kick him out onto the streets. cool!

he’s actually pretty smart but he just doesn’t apply himself. has a minor in english because he didn’t care for an extra course-load, but he’s good at writing & analyzing literature. is going to use it to write and illustrate his own series of children books with a style similar to tim burton’s. not for the kids, but because he likes to leave a trail of terror in whatever he does.

has been experimenting with himself since high school but college is where he really had started to crack down on himself. was out as pansexual & nonbinary by his sophomore year of college just … not to his parents, who don’t really need to know.

if you asked him if he believed in twins having a psychic connection with each other - he’d tell you he wouldn’t know. it felt believable at times, but sometimes he had no idea what was going on inside of tatiana’as head. on the other hand - viktor had always felt oddly transparent to her, like she knew all of his moves before he did. the only person who could predict him accurately.

( tw death, grief, overdose / hospitalization beyond this point )

when tatiana disappeared, viktor knew something was up. it was a twist in his gut, pure instinct that something wasn’t right. and it wasn’t right - and when she was proclaimed missing, they couldn’t find her.

and when tatiana died - viktor knew. it felt wrong, something cut so severely in him he could pinpoint her death to the second. he didn’t know how, or why, but he knew it. knew it before anybody else had.

afterwards he went on a sort of bender. he’d begun to struggle with a mild drug addiction late senior year of high school / early college, but he was managing it up until this point.

his mental health had also sunk to an all-time low, when it’d never been great to begin with. (manic & depressive episodes. once fixated on a sculpting project for six months and then knocked it off the table and destroyed it as soon as he finished it for no apparent reason.)

tatiana’s body wasn’t found immediately, and when it was … viktor went off the rails. ended up overdosing & being hospitalized. spent six months in & out of psychiatric care after that.

came back to yates to finish his senior year because … for the reasons above, he hadn’t been able to complete it. just wants to get his credits and get out of here.

is still dealing with a lot of trauma & grief - causes him to spiral and be unpredictable in regards of his mental health. he stopped taking his medication, so. :/ some days are alright, other days are pretty bad.

personality & facts.

the human embodiment of a gremlin that was fed after midnight. a goblin, if you will. one of those cats with a narrow head and really big ears … that’s them!

a big horror & halloween enthusiast. loves the old campy horror movies & probably has an abundance of masks from different movies. dresses like a grimy millennial beetlejuice more than they should because they just … love those black & white vertical-striped pants.

can appreciate the ~urban legends~ at yates and likes to feed into the fear that surrounds them. is probably the cause of a few ‘anomalies’ and ‘paranormal sightings’ because they’re just … a jerk.

fashion alternates between e-boy (they would be tiktok famous if they were 17 & didn’t think that a majorly minor based app was weird.), millennial beetlejuice, and goth in a crop top & sweatpants. big fan of crop tops and a big fan of sweatpants.

they can be really fucking mean? petty, aggressive, a major instigator. will literally spit in your face for little to no reason, you could just look at them the wrong way. the kind of person who will stick their gum into someone else’s hair. other than that? they’re like … sort of okay. they’re not always mean, just a dick about 90% of the time lmao

like okay yeah they’ll call someone a stinky bitch for no reason except they feel like it and believes it. it’s fine, they’re fine, we’re fine.

despite the fact that they’re probably getting into a fight whenever, considers themself to be a lover and not a fighter but that’a primarily because they fuck a lot. uses it as a coping mechanism, like they’re this big fancy carnival show that’s like ‘come one, come all! fuck the dead girl’s twin brother!’ and it’s … a lot. might have a problem with hypsersexuality but they’re not fully aware of it.

the preacher’s whore son, basically :)

pansexual & nonbinary, switches between he & they pronouns often and without a pattern, but they have such a fragile grip on their identity that you could call them ‘dog-faced bitch’ and they’d turn around like. sup.

vastly impulsive … like i said, they destroy their own creations for the fun of it. spends all their money on useless shit, will cheat on someone because they feel like it & likes the thrill, screams into the night sky frequently like a cat in heat.

will also spend months creating useless shit for no reason too. spent six of them sculpting a hollowed out tree the size of them & then took a sledgehammer to it.

they’re very super dramatic. would play the organ at church when nobody was looking after them and service was about to start. would just churn out these super haunting, creepy melodies like they were phantom of the opera. would do the same exact thing at home on their keyboard with the pipe organ setting whenever they got grounded until their parents took it away hbdsjfngkh

will absolutely not talk about their ‘time away’ because it’s not anyone’s business, not even their own younger sister. still refuses to talk about tatiana’s death, or their mental health, or their addiction (fallen back into it but it hasn’t gotten severe … yet :/), or anything involving their own emotions.

will just change the topic abruptly, no warning. asks about the jonas brothers instead and they fucking hate the jonas brothers.

that being said they’re absolutely not over tatiana’s death & it’s to the point of obsession over it. like there’s some kind of secret that needs to be uncovered, even though there just. isn’t. tatiana was their rock and they were pretty much dependent on her. kept them grounded. could control them when nobody else could, got into their head easier than others. it’s sort of like rosa lost two siblings that day because viktor hasn’t been the same since.

emotionally unavailable while also crying twice a day. cries during their brawls but still wins. is stony-faced when they tell you they cheated on you with your much hotter best friend.

will tell you straight up what they want from you, no bullshit & no beating around the bush. just blunt. if they want to fuck, nothing else, then that’s it. if they feel deviation or developing feelings then they’ll ghost in less than a second. is awful like that but feels no shame.

but also emotional as shit and it’s confusing. will cry on a whim and then flip you off if you try to console them or ask them what’s up. will bite you.

they go to therapy but they just fuck around and wastes their therapists’ time … also is fucking their therapist, but that’s neither here nor there. so they’re not really getting the help they need.

likes to be intimidating but not … with their body or anything because they’re a twig but uses their love & knowledge of horror and creepy shit to their advantage. has an abundance of fake blood. has channeled the energy of jack nicholson and used it on tatiana’s boyfriends before (also is a big fan of sfx makeup & has dabbled in it)

probably chases kids around with a chainsaw without the chain on halloween every year.

generally never doing good, both mental health wise & morally. would probably steal candy from a baby for funsies.

i don’t know if there’s a good to them somewhere deep down, but they don’t see any issues with themself either. nothing really breaks through to them anymore because the only person who ever made them stop and think about their actions was tatiana, and well, y’know. :/

an introverted reclusive type who doesn’t like most people or going out, but does so anyway if it means a quick high & a cheap thrill.

pretty observant and likes to analyze people even though they’re often like … partially wrong. judgmental because they like to make people feel bad, not because they’re a righteous mighty person. because they’re not. so like, a hypocrite!

wanted connections.

religious trauma? oh worm ;; three cheers fr <3 guilt <3 anyways uh. just people tht viktor hs known thru the church in some way even tho hes a fkn. freak now. maybe even family friends.

the horror of our love :/ ;; hmm. any romance tht cld b toxic i think this cld fit. just rly a bad fit. viktor doesnt rly know hw to love so nothing rly lasts bt. maybe they try n try n nothing works bt they keep trying. cld also just be anything unrequited.

little fkn gremlins ;; theyre all evil n mean. bt theyre all friends. <3

you are nothing ;; uuh. enemy plots. spicy enemies. rly bad enemies. rivals. they r brutal towards each other bcos nothing viktor does is ever soft.

fuck u dont pity me ;; uh. people who try to get close to viktor n he just. bites at them. he’s like no. bc he assumes ppl who r kind in response 2 his vileness r. theres smth wrong w them. n it might hv to do with pity. n he hates pity.

ugh. locals x ;; ppl who also grew up around preaker, vermont. the samuels r <3 well known folks n the uh. hm. the murder is an ongoing case. so they cld know abt it <3

dont tell anybody x ;; this is for soft plots. i dont know much about soft plots but.

maybe i am part of the problem ;; the problem is chlamydiagate. this is a hook-ups connection. fwbs n one night stands. ppl viktor hs brutally ghosted. he doesnt acknowledge their existence outside of these events, perhaps.

dont u just wna go apeshit ;; this is where viktor becomes a bad influence.

bt uh. anything. pelase

#yatesintro #death tw #grief tw #murder tw #addiction tw #drug abuse tw #hospitalization tw #overdose tw #hypersexuality mention #religion mention #zooweemama

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