#like yeah yeah morally-gray-at-best guy and literally evil guy sure

[ladyseidr]

my favorite part of the william and henry dynamic aside from The Horrors is just them infodumping abt tech @ each other for hours

#☽—— ⸢ ooc ⸥ #f n a f / #.tbd. #like yeah yeah morally-gray-at-best guy and literally evil guy sure #but i think the fact that my like Default Meeting for them is literally surrounded by a vibe of #'you seem completely obsessive over this topic in a way that goes beyond normal. i like your energy' is so funny to me #this isn't even a shipping post this is just Ah The Dynamic!!! #unironically i do enjoy the will & henry dynamic being like. Somebody Finally Gets Me & i don't mean just abt tech #like putting aside the obvious horrible things abt william & looking at it when the dynamic was healthier #they both see brilliance in one another & that's new?? like they look past the quirks/differences or even /like/ them #henry's always been viewed as different in a negative way #and for my will at least he like. had a whole childhood of feeling like some Weirdo Freak with no friends #it's like yeah how DO you accept that your best friend is a murderer & literally killed your daughter #when he's all you have left and accepted you as you are? #( that's not a moral statement btw FKHADLASDJ explanations don't equal excuses and all that ) #this is just a roundabout way of shaking my henry at everybody. come get some Drama and Angst. #( also hi yeah i'm alive lmao ) #child death mention tw #murder mention tw

[kitkatopinions]

The biggest instances of hypocrisy in RWBY mostly have to do with characters getting mad at Ozpin for something they themselves do (and sometimes they're really irrational about blaming Oz anyway) and it's funny that it feels like the RWBY writers just haven't even realized they're doing it.

Jaune: "How dare Oz involve Pyrrha in his war without telling her all the details, she's dead because of him and not because of any choice she made!" Also Jaune: "Yeah, let's try to recruit everyone in the world to the war with Salem via video message without telling them all the details and also I will kill Penny for the Maiden Powers because 'it's her choice.'"

The entirety of RWBYJNROQ: "How dare Ozpin keep secrets, give half truths, and not tell us everything!" Also the entirety of RWBYJNROQ: *Proceed to keep secrets, give half truths, and not tell everyone everything.*

Raven: "Ozpin keeps secrets, prioritizes what he wants, and also uses people for their powers." Also Raven: *Doesn't tell anyone what happened with Summer, barely does anything to help people and even works with Cinder and Salem out of selfishness and cowardice, and it's heavily implied that she took in and befriended the last spring maiden only to murder her for her power so Raven could have it herself plus essentially uses Vernal as a human shield while keeping her Maiden powers a secret.*

Hazel: "Ozpin's attempt to teach willing specialists how to fight Grimm resulted in my sister choosing to try to learn and then dying on the field of battle, therefore he's evil and monstrous and deserves death and torture and I'm going to blame him for her death. How dare he-" *checks notes* "Try to stop the Grimm from killing innocent people indiscriminately by asking for willing participants who don't get their hunter licenses until age twenty one to learn to fight them to defend said innocent people?" Also Hazel: *Literally kills tons of people and wants to kill a child and tortures a child on screen while working for the murderous woman actively attacking cities full of helpless innocent children who also partially controls the very monsters that killed his sister in the first place.*

Like, the show is entirely unconcerned with checking any of this hypocrisy either despite the fact that outside of Ruby and maybe Oscar who regretted keeping secrets (and Ruby regretted more than keeping secrets) Ozpin is the only one who ever seems apologetic or uncertain about the things he does. It's only ever Ozpin who is treated as bad for doing... anything that isn't one hundred percent perfect and flawless, no matter if his back is to a wall and no matter how uncertain or unhappy he seems in his choices. Then there's Raven and Hazel over here acting superior and totally sure of themselves and yet they're the ones who pretty much go unchallenged. Like I said, it's like they don't even realize they're doing it, like they wanted their 'morally gray mentor' story, forgot to actually include it in a convincing way, and then just do not actually give a damn about the morals and lessons involved so they write the rest of the story as if it doesn't matter at all. RWBY is like this in a lot of ways, where you have to actively pretend that the rest of the story didn't happen in order to enjoy moments that contradict it (whether morally or just through story beats.) But the Oz thing is just so frustrating because it's like.... Okay, so I'm not supposed to have any sympathy for the cursed abuse victim out here doing his best and acting heartbroken while in extremely bad lose-lose conditions, but I'm supposed to have all the sympathy in the world for the screaming murderer electrocuting teenage girls and trying to murder children while victim-blaming the guy he's trying to kill for all his own actions.... And the reason for why I'm supposed to be angry at Oz is because he was attempting to help the world in sometimes flawed ways with the weight of the world on his shoulders? But I'm supposed to have no problems at all with like, Jaune or Yang because they're trying to help the world in sometimes flawed ways?

Once again, RWBY as a show has no actual real morals to follow and zero consistency.

#rwde #pro ozpin

[enigma2meagain]

Stream of Thought RWBY: Why is it when it comes to “Morally Complex”villains...

That they and their fans always seem to lean so heavily towards needing to mass murdering/committing genocide while proclaiming what they do is “for the greater good”? Why is it then that when it comes to “moral complexity”, they seem to downright STRUGGLE with the idea of smaller scale morally complicated decisions having just as much validity as the bigger scale ones?

I apologize if the post below seems a bit of a jumbled mess; I kinda just wrote whatever was in my brain in relation to the OP,and it was more just pulling whatever incoherent-but-kind-of-relevant thoughts I had together. Not entirely sure it really answers the question, but more me wondering about something that I couldn’t help but question:

Original Post:

Original Question: Is RWBY Black and White in It’s Material?

The WF/ Faunus Plot is a big part of feeling simplified into a good V BAD, a problem of mine is 80-90% of it is through Blake’s prospective.

V8 Ironwood more of an option but Ch 10 and afterwards really felt cartoonish bad guy.

And a lot of stuff feels like you’re on team RWBY or wrong. (Have there been any arguments stating otherwise? Actually asking here)

My thoughts:

The problem I have with this is that there's an ugly insinuation that being "morally gray" means that we're supposed to act like people like Ironwood and Adam are supposed to be taken at face value as doing something "for the greater good", which almost always seems to translate to "murder a fuckton of people and then rationalize it afterwards".

It's frankly an irritating and horribly myopic aspect that I've noticed the more I thought about it of RWBY fandom (or in general a lot of fandoms)'s incredibly narrow perception of what constitutes as "morally gray".

Like seriously:

Why is it that so often, the only kind of thing we consider "morally gray" always involves someone committing genocide or mass murder and then being treated like they're just acting "for the greater good", when anyone who even remotely pays attention to the context and details of their actions realizes how full of shit they really are?

That they did have other options available, but they didn't want to take those other options because it was ultimately always about their own arrogance/pride/narcissism/inflexibility?

Arthas Menethil, MCU Thanos, Ironwood... it's fucking annoying as piss.

What's also pretty telling is just how often these same kinds of people oftentimes fail to consider, care or notice gray moral actions that DON'T involve mass murder, or quite frankly actively ignore any sort of nuance in the characters (usually the protagonists) they are so quick to judge as being "black and white morality" unless it happens to fall into the above category, or is something they just conveniently choose to say is "hypocritical" because they have this weird double standard where they want the protagonists to be more "interesting", yet lose their shit if those characters have any sort of nuance outside of being whatever shallow two-dimensional stereotype they assume the character is and also will only be.

Ruby's (and her teams') final plan for the fall of Atlas is morally gray because she had to basically sacrifice 2 physical locations to save as many of their inhabitants as possible because the two jackasses Salem and Ironwood literally destroyed every alternative they had until all they had left was the best of a bunch of really bad solutions, yet people are quick to pounce on them and act like they're the villains while lauding Ironwood as being "in the right" despite him being nothing but a colossal fuckup, who was ALWAYS IN CHARACTER despite the accusations of being "cartoonishly evil" because people only care about the version of the character they created in their head instead of the character he actually is.

Hell, long before that, Yang and Blake deciding to tell Robyn Hill about the Tower plan is morally gray because it meant risking going behind a (seemingly benevolent) dictator's back to help try to bring a freedom fighter over to their side to help the long term plan of re-establishing global communication, and in particular because it's also going against Yang's own morals/her own irritation of keeping secrets since now she's having to do the same against Ironwood.

I could go on and on about this, but frankly what I've gleaned from my own observations is that people have an incredibly narrow and myopic perspective on what constitutes as "morally gray", to the point that they just simply refuse acknowledge the nuances of any decisions that doesn't literally involve someone being allowed to commit blatantly evil actions while using the excuse of "for the greater good" to rationalize and justify it.

I don’t really have an answer for the Adam part of this yet, since this was very much just a stream of thoughts I had that I basically cobbled together, but...yeah.

#rwby ironwood #for the greater good #for the greater good villains #very quick and messy post because I was kinda irritated when I originally wrote this #gray morality rwby #gray morality #rwby #rwby volume 8 #rwby v8 #rwby vol8 #rwby vol 8 #rwby v7 #rwby volume 7 #rwby thoughts #rwby fall of atlas #rwby ruby #rwby question

[itsclydebitches]

Godddddd I'm so upset that I dislike yen this much, doing main quests in skellige and Freyas ppl were doing stuff and she again disrespected other cultures with Geraly being against, "I may be inhumanly beautiful" I know she's meant to be confident but wowww. She's not confident and worried for Ciri she just comes off arrogant and selfish and vain. Like, fuck.

The ultimate mood, anon. My Witcher fandom life would be so much easier if I enjoyed Yen ... but I just do not lol. Remember how I mentioned that things were going to get even worse than her stealing and using a potentially dangerous artifact? Yeeeaah. She also resurrects Ciri's friend to torture him for information, all while destroying another sacred garden to get the power to do it! It's not even a "She's so evil and I love it 😏" situation for me because the game tries so hard to convince us that she's still The Best. Geralt's sexy soulmate, Ciri's adoring mother, the baddest bitch around who gets things done and does it with an effortless confidence... all while ignoring how horrific her actions and attitude are. Oh sure, other characters speak ill of her at times, but considering how much Geralt is written to adore her, no matter what you choose, that's all undermined. I love morally gray/evil characters, but I've never enjoyed them when the text refuses to appropriately acknowledge that side of them. Nothing is more frustrating to me than a story that frames disliking a character as the unambiguously wrong thing to do, especially when the text is piling up reasons to dislike them and, as a result, ignoring or shrugging them off their actions as not that bad. Yen is a rather extreme example of that for me. Despite her attitude, her choices, and other characters outright going, "Why do you like her?" the story as a whole works under the assumption that it's correct to like her anyway because Geralt loves her. And he loves her for... reasons.

They do meet before the wish, but only just. Major "The Last Wish" spoilers in this paragraph, so feel free to skip. Basically, Geralt and Dandelion run into trouble with a djinn, he goes to Yen for help since she's a sorceress (first time meeting her), he instantly falls for her because she's gorgeous and such (there's an elf there who is also madly in love with Yen. Men just... fall for her, instinctually), she heals Dandelion, Geralt agrees to pay her, but Yen has already decided on the payment she wants. She takes control of Geralt's mind and forces him to attack the town to seek revenge on those who have insulted her, resulting in him waking up in prison awaiting execution for "his" crimes. Meanwhile, Yen has gone after the djinn for herself because power/trying to regain her ability to have a kid. Geralt escapes, finds her failing to master the djinn (an attempt which btw has endangered the whole town) and despite what she's done to him, Geralt tries to get Yen to escape with him. She refuses, set on capturing the djinn even though it's obvious she can't. So as a last resort he uses the final wish to bind their fates together, saving Yen from the djinn in the process. Aaaaaand then they have sex.

So yeah, their rocky relationship is one of the main reasons why I can't enjoy Yen. For some their tumultuous history is evidence of realism, for me it's evidence that they're not actually very compatible and they're only together because a) that's the fantasy trope: protagonist men get together with the hot sorceress and b) because the magic is literally ensuring that they can't escape one another. I mean, canonically their fates are tied together by magic and canonically they spend about 20 years swinging between passionate love and fearsome fights... but there's supposedly no connection between these two things? No chance at all that they keep coming together because magic is drawing them rather than because they actually want/should be together? I wrote a meta a while back about the short story where they meet, which includes a present day scene where Geralt is criticized by another character — Nenneke — for running out on Yen. Thing is, he tries to explain that he left because she was "too possessive" and this is... flat out ignored. By both Nenneke and the fandom. There's a strong trend of ignoring Geralt's words in favor of a pro-Yen interpretation of events. He says he left because she was too possessive and she treated him like ____ — he's not allowed to finish the sentence and say what she treated him like because Nenneke interrupts him, saying she doesn't care about his version of events. Major yikes imo! She turns a claim of being possessive into Geralt not being man enough to stick around. The fandom likewise turns this into a case of Geralt getting cold feet and running out because he's a bastard who hates commitment. Likewise, Nenneke and the fandom claim Geralt is trying to get Yen money as a way of appeasing his guilt for leaving, he claims he's doing it simply because he still cares for her — even if he doesn't want to be with her — and knows she needs it. Geralt's words are frequently dismissed, in the same way others characters' opinions of Yen are dismissed. Any mark against her is treated as either a lie, or a convoluted claim that they don't really know her... never mind that an understanding of why she may act this way doesn't excuse the behavior itself. (Plus, the whole "Yen had a horrible upbringing, so of course she struggles being kind" perspective always fell flat to me when so many, including witchers, had horrendous upbringings too. The whole point is this world is a mess and most everyone suffers). It's supposedly true love, yet if someone came up to me and went, "I magically tied my fate to this woman to keep her from getting herself killed and we've spent the last couple decades having what many would term a rocky relationship, to put it kindly. I left once because she was too controlling. She once cheated on me. I likewise hooked up with others during our frequent breakups. A mutual friend used magic to get me to have sex with her — also while my lover and I were broken up — and though I view it as a dumb decision I'm happy to forgive her for, my lover is ready to commit murder because again: possessive. A lot of the time we're only a family because of our daughter. I once thought she'd horrifically betrayed us both. She didn't, but it says something that I was so ready to believe it, huh? Hmm? Permanently separated? Of course not! I love her. We're destined to be together after all :)" I'd be like, "Uh... you sure about that, dude?"

Not that Geralt doesn't make his fair share of mistakes in the relationship — he absolutely does — but I don't think it helps his case that he's immature in other ways and, frankly, that he's a very strong, badass witcher. It's easy to turn the hints we get about their relationship into a simplistic "emotionally naive man can't give the poor woman the commitment she wants" situation. Given Geralt's status as the badass fighter of the tale, it's likewise easy to dismiss his admissions of her being "possessive" and his general discomfort. He's the man. He's the witcher. If he's making any claims about how Yen isn't treating him well, they must be excuses, or exaggerations, because real men, especially physically powerful men, would do something about that — a something that's not sneaking out in the middle of the night. A lot of people read Geralt leaving as the ultimate proof that he's an immature bastard who doesn't deserve her. I read him leaving and think, "What were you trying to get away from? What was going on that made you think you could only leave by sneaking out without a word?" To me, that doesn't read as someone who felt safe, comfortable, and respected enough to do anything but slip away and try to wash his hands of things. And I'm not just pulling this "Geralt is at least somewhat afraid of Yen and isn't comfortable establishing boundaries with her" reading out of my ass. When Yen wants Geralt to kill the golden dragon for her and he refuses, saying he doesn't care anymore, his thoughts are:

He expected the worst: a cascade of flames, flashes of lightning, blows raining down on his face, insults and curses. There was nothing. He saw, with astonishment, only the subtle trembling of her lips. Yennefer turned around slowly. Geralt regretted his words.

And everyone is like, "See! Yen has improved so much. Geralt nearly made her cry, but she's supposed to be the bad guy here?" Meanwhile, I'm going, "Uh... anyone want to unpack why he expects fire, lightning, insults, curses, and blows to his face for telling her no? Why he's astonished that she wouldn't use her magic against him? Anyone think that Yen refraining from attacking Geralt when he refuses to murder on her command is a pretty low bar? No? Just me?"

Geralt and Yen's relationship makes me uncomfortable and a great deal of that discomfort derives from how much of the Witcher fandom shrugs off the fictional warning signs. I mean, I post primarily about RWBY. We watched a man in that show try to sneak away with his kids when his villainous wife planned to use them for a eugenics plan... and the fandom still blames him for that, refusing to admit that he was in an abusive relationship. Because that doesn't happen to men, right? I'm not saying it's the same for Geralt and Yen, simply because they are written to be soulmates. An abusive relationship was, quite obviously, never the authorial intent. However, I am saying that the a "This isn't a healthy relationship" reading is there, it exists as an interpretation, and both the story and fandom's tendency to dismiss it is something that hasn't helped me enjoy Yen's status as an otherwise well written, complex character. Their equality supposedly stems in part because they're both so flawed, yet each time I see a list of Geralt's supposedly equal faults they're... lacking imo. "Geralt bound himself to Yen without her consent." Yeah, to save her from dying from the djinn she was trying to enslave, after she refused to leave, while her actions threatened a whole town. "Geralt ran off without a word." Mmm hmm, anyone care about why? And my personal favorite is a scene you may not have gotten to yet (or may not get depending on your choices), but suffice to say, Yen is supposedly justified in physically attacking Geralt if he dares to challenge her in any way. That's the main takeaway across the fandom: If Yen is pissed off, you must have done something to deserve it which, in the relationship deliberately written to be "stormy," is something that sets all the alarm bells in my head off. Honestly, it kinda makes my skin crawl to go, "Geralt didn't deserve that" and get responses back of, "Yeah he did because he [insert basic human action here]." The Witcher world is hard and cruel, absolutely, but that doesn't mean I personally enjoy seeing an equally messed up relationship presented as something that's enviable in its flaws. "That's actually true love because the magically bound man who often expresses discomfort with his lover, written by a male author with a very iffy perspective on women, says it's true love." Crazy theory here, but... maybe it's not?

Idk, lots of rambling on my end tonight! For me, Geralt/Yen reads as something rather tragic which, in a canon that unironically upholds the relationship, and in a Yen-adoring fandom, doesn't make enjoying her character any easier. I keep coming back to Witcher 3, the comics, the show, even the books going, "Maybe I'll like her this time?" but nope, still trying lol.

#witcher #mymetas

[firelxdykatara]

P1: The rwby fandom is being really weird about that scene with ironwood shooting slate huh? Cause it’s like you said: he doesn’t have a history of reacting violently to situations up until the very end of v7. Actually i remember ironwood being the one to stop winter from killing? (idk if she actually had the intent to kill but her blade was at his neck) Qrow in a fit of rage. And now you’re telling me Winter is terrified and shocked by ironwood killing slate. Idk i guess you could argue that

P2: that what ironwood did was a cold-blooded execution but still WHY? That still isn’t in-character for him from what we’ve seen so far. Maybe crwby realized that being afraid of salem doesn’t make james paranoid bc she’s a real threat so they decided to make james see threats everywhere. Threats that he desperately and “robotically”  tries to eliminate. This would solve some problems with the writing while creating a whole lot of other problems that i don’t even want to get into

Honestly, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.

For whatever reason, the writers/showrunners (is there a meaningful difference for a show like RWBY? genuine question, I’m not sure how the production is structured) decided they needed another villain. I’m not sure why, since they have a whole slew of villains and more than enough obstacles to throw at the heroes by keeping Ironwood as a morally grey ally with an opposing viewpoint, meaning he could very well have become an antagonist without getting yeeted over the moral event horizon on a rocketship. But whatever the reason (his heart or his shoes wait wrong show), they wanted to add to their cast of card-carrying evil villains, and picked Ironwood, and by extension anyone following him.

Rather than setting this up volumes in advance, though--for instance, by showing him reacting irrationally, with unnecessary violence, and these reactions getting more extreme despite not having concrete evidence that Salem was acting--what they did was have Ironwood act as a rational, reasonable man, who had to make some very tough choices. He never reacted with unwarranted aggression to any situation before volume 7--again, his ‘I’d have you shot’ comment was delivered with sarcasm in a moment of irritation, but there was no heat behind it, and he certainly wasn’t threatening to actually shoot Qrow--and he had very concrete reasons to set up the embargo and close Atlas’ borders.

He knew about Salem--he knew everything the heroes know, except the fact that she is immortal and can’t be destroyed, a secret which Ruby chose to keep and which, in the long run, did more harm than good (and yet none of them reflected on why Ozpin might have been keeping that secret in the first place, but I digress)--and he knew that her agents were acting in Remnant. He knew they were behind the Fall of Beacon, and he knew they all remained at large. Not a single one of the instigators of Beacon’s fall was captured in the aftermath. For all he knew, Atlas, the greatest remaining bastion of military strength and the only kingdom that might have a chance at defending against her if she chose to make her move (which he had every reason to believe she soon would, since this was the first time in centuries that she had acted directly to anyone’s knowledge), was going to be their next target. While global communications were down, he had no way of getting fast and reliable information from the other kingdoms. He could not risk spreading his forces too thin in an attempt to protect them without that knowledge--which is why his focus was on Amity Arena.

Get global comms back up and running, talk to the other kingdoms, warn them about Salem, and then they might have a chance. This was a plan, by the way, that team RWBY was all for, even though it meant that he would be setting up the entire world to fail because they knew Salem couldn’t be defeated. Ruby encouraged him to keep diverting resources from Mantle to finish the tower as quickly as he could. No one so much as mentioned the fact that if he did, and he told the world about Salem, they would be gearing up for a fight team RWBY&Co knew they would not be able to win.

Not until after James told the people of Atlas about Salem--again, without the crucial knowledge that she was immortal and they could not fight her.

So, notably, the entirety of volume 7 we see James Ironwood reacting reasonably, and rationally, to very real threats. We know Salem is a threat, we know the world is in danger--shit, we know Atlas is in danger, because Watts and Tyrian are there causing chaos. We see him take in the news that Salem is immortal much more calmly than I think the situation warranted--I would not have blamed him for exploding then, because the fact is that they didn’t give him this critical information until after it was nearly too late to act on it. And now he had an entire kingdom of people who likewise are laboring under the false belief that they have a chance against Salem, that she can be defeated, if they stick together. Which the protagonists know to be false, because if that were the case, then Jinn would have said as much to Oz when he asked how she could be destroyed.

(Which doesn’t mean that RWBY won’t pull some sort of ‘actually she only said Oz couldn’t, because he didn’t have the ability to unite the world [even though that’s bs], so team RWBY can kill her with the power of friendship actually’ ending out of a hat, but still, when it comes to characterization, we have to go by what the characters know and what they might reasonably believe based on the information they have--not meta knowledge we have as an audience because we’re genre savvy and can see the writing on the wall.)

None of his behavior throughout volume 7 indicated that he was on the verge of a complete mental break with reality that would lead him to start shooting people, including a child containing the soul of his best friend, in cold blood let and right. But I suspect that the crew was relying on the fandom having decided that James must be a bad guy, because he’s a military leader and military = bad, and the Ace Ops are effectively cops and cops = bad (even though if we’re going to call the Ace Ops cops, then we need to be calling all huntsmen cops, including Weiss, who performed a legal arrest on screen; if huntsmen have the authority to act as law enforcement officials, they are cops, period), and since they are already mostly bad, performing (and condoning, since there were six witnesses, four of them armed with auras, who just stood there and looked at each other after watching Ironwood gun a defenseless man down) cold-blooded murder is just the next logical step. Of course James would just murder a guy standing in between him and power, he’s a military leader, they’re all evil!

Nevermind the fact that Salem is literally right there, and if ever there was a situation that called for martial law to be legally enacted for the continued safety and protection of the kingdom (there’s a reason martial law exists, and there are reasons it can be justifiably enacted and enforced!!!!!) this is it.

Anyway.... yeah. I am unsurprised by the general fandom reaction--nevertheless, I’m disappointed by it. And I hope for the day in some nebulous future where the very idea of nuance and gray morality doesn’t just make a majority of them break out in hives.

#rwby #rwby meta #james ironwood #rwby v8 #rwby spoilers #rwby critical #rwby salt #asked #Anonymous

[wellhalesbells]

as i no longer sleep (apparently), let’s do this awesome thing @yodas-yo-yo tagged me on!!  thank you!!

Rules: Tag 9 people who you want to know better/catch up with and then answer these questions.

3 SHIPS

i’m going with not necessarily my all-time favorite ships but the ones i’ve been reading like crazy lately

stiles and derek, as i’m sure we’re all well aware.  those’re my boys.  the dynamic they have just cannot be beat; it’s all shades of gray and built rather than plopped down without foundation.  derek, who has been betrayed and abandoned and is neglected at every turn by every other character in this universe, and stiles, who - importantly - doesn’t have pity for him but pragmatism: ‘you’re a useful dude, and so i am going to use you regardless of how everyone else would just like to write you off.’  it’s not an immediate, ‘ah, you’re perfect for each other,’ moment, it’s kind of a, ‘shit, dude, that is not a guy you should use because he’s suffered that too many times already and this is bad.’  but only through that does it become less about using derek and more about relying on each other, trusting each other’s judgments, and being the first call rather than the last.  i’m so emotionally tied to it because it’s freaking earned and no one is... pure.  stiles’ motives aren’t pure, derek’s actions aren’t pure, no one is a one-dimensional hero who can abide by a concept as infantile as good vs evil, they’re more real because of it and i’m more attached to them because of it.

okay, weirdly, lately..... clark and lex (and after i was just talking about one-dimensional good vs evil characters, lol), preferably with the smallville backstory of once being besties.  it’s just like the best of the best when it comes to tropes that do it for me.  they’re baked in and, unless it’s an au, unavoidable.  epic pining, best friends turned enemies turned lovers (or some variation thereof), a betrayed character (love when that’s lex and it’s post-belle reve), a morally gray manipulative genius who if they are depicted as not having ulterior motives is considered WILDLY out of character, a fucking canonical son made from both their dna, parallel universes in canon, not to mention there’s sex pollen in canon as well with red kryptonite in the mix.  (there’s nothing better than fics where clark is dosed so he’ll finally kill lex luthor only to fuck him practically down to his soul instead.)  i never even finished smallville and while i was always a fan of the ship, it was sort of more of a ‘ships in the night’ kind of ship, like: oh yeah, i know you *waves as you cross my dash* and nothing more.  then i read (and read and re-read and read some more) reconcilable differences and.... there is not enough fic for them out there, friends.  there just isn’t, and i’m sad.

merlin and arthur from bbc merlin.  again, i really like what’s often baked into this pairing: a scenario that comes up with some regularity is a betrayed or banished!merlin and arthur realizing too late what merlin means to him and having to go after him and prove himself.  i live for that shit, okay?  i live for the character who seemingly has everything realizing they have nothing without this other person (especially if said person is often mistreated or sidelined in canon - thank you, fix-it fanon!!!!).  i never was big into merlin fanfic UNTIL ao3 came up with the ‘exclude’ part of the search function.  i don’t want modern merlin pretty much ever and somehow that fandom is about 50% modern aus????  so i never read fic for it because it was so hard to find what i was looking for.  literally the day i saw the exclude option, i started reading merthur fanfic.  i wish there were more percival/merlin fics (i am SO FUCKING INTO size difference lately and i do noooot have a pair that i LOVE that has that, some that i casually read like jaskier/geralt but none that i can’t live without yet and i NEED IT), especially ones featuring a jealous arthur that endgames into merthur but that’s, er, a bit specific?  haha, and i have less than zero desire to write for either this fandom or the one above it sadly.

LAST SONG I LISTENED TO

clairo - sofia, i love how hard my radio station is fangirling over clairo, she has such a nostalgia-inducing sound for me.

CURRENTLY WATCHING

okay, well, i actually just finished the shows i was watching: prodigal son, which was like a less avant garde, less horny, less gay, less people-eating version of hannibal.  instead of a guy who was too unstable to qualify to be an actual fbi agent and who has a loose relationship with reality and mental health, and maybe also a darker side, and a cannibal who definitely does, both of whom badly want to bang each other, it’s a serial killer father who has a darker side and a guy who was fired from the fbi for being too unstable, who maybe has one of his own, in addition to a loose relationship with reality and mental health.  i mostly enjoyed it.  i really liked the actors, the morbid and understated humor was hilarious (seriously, some of those one liners, both the delivery by the actors and the offhandedness inherent to them were just perfection), but.... they fridged the love interest (very VERY predictably) and they’re clearly shoving together the only unattached (”normal”) vagina and penis on the show because HETERONORMATIVITY!!!!!  (i expect more of you, greg berlanti, tsk.)  i’m hoping for more edrisa in the future because she is a fucking GEM (and it’s just SO NICE to see lane on my screen again!!!!), more jessica who might have the best sense of self and humor in the whole dang show, more michael sheen (because i just love the man in anything and everything), and about that finale (even though i saw it coming WELL in advance) i’ll just say: AINSLEY, MY GIRLLLLLLLL!!!!

the other i finished was the crown, season four.  this show never really wows me tbh.  i watch it mostly for a) the performances and b) my mom and dad, who love it immensely and love to talk about it with me.  if not for them i could easily zone out for an entire episode without even realizing it, with all the quietness and sweeping landscape shots, there’s just nothing grabby in there for me.  it’s very uppercrust british, y’know?  haha.  where a comment about your lilac drapes is really a dig about how you’re bringing down the entire commonwealth, which i love to read but watching?  it doesn’t really pull me in.  the high point of this season for me was gillian anderson’s portrayal of margaret thatcher, just the way she would contort her face was amazing to me, and the episode with fagan because hey, i totally knew about that already (which never happens, lol) and i love that actor from preacher and it was just really well-written and acted.  but, overall, pretty much i spent the whole season wanting a violent and bloody and embarrassing death to befall charles, that entitled and cruel little piss-ant, while knowing it wasn’t going to happen.  it’s one of those shows i watch where i’m glad i watched it, but i won’t remember any details about it in a week’s time.

and as for what i soon will be currently watching: i’m starting the great tomorrow!

okay, tagging: @livthelion, @ohlookagaydraco, @grimmypuff, @clotpolesonly, @midnightisquiet, @urban-barbarian, @callunavulgari, @hrast-ika and @i-sveikata!!

#meme answers #meme #uh oh i've found the keyboard again

[kogo-dogo]

I looked at your favorite character top 5 thing and there's the one character you said was your ''problematic fave''. And I've heard of that game before because I saw somebody play it on Youtube once, I think the second one, and I was just curious about the character. Torque?? Because it seems like such a bad game and he didn't seem to have much personality but you seem very attacked so I was wondering if maybe it was worth looking into the series or something. I like old games.

I am so sorry that I said a week ago I’d answer this, Anon. I have so many thoughts about this probably-actually-one-dimensional character because I’ve had sixteen years to pick apart every scrap of info that exists about him. And overanalysis of fictional men is, at this point, my primary hobby.

First of all… eh. I won’t say to definitively not look into the series, but I would encourage you not look into the series. It’s one of those things that’s aged like an open bottle of two-buck chuck and I can tell you right now that it wouldn’t be as palatable in 2020 as it was in 2004. As much as I love Prison is Hell (the first game) and as much as I get what they were trying to do, they messed a lot of things up and it wouldn’t translate well to modern times. This is especially true for Ties That Bind. Oh my god, do NOT play Ties That Bind if you’re easily offended.

It’s fascinating to pick apart, though, even if it seems extremely basic on the surface level, and part of the reason I like Torque so much is because he’s a very interesting character to crack open and inspect. I know he probably Isn’t That Deep, but he’s interesting, figuring him out is a puzzle because of the way storytelling is carried out, and if he’d been handled better, would probably still be remembered beyond “quiet dude in a game Youtubers occasionally play on Halloween.” He’s really an unfortunate casualty of that era of gaming. It’s surprising he was handled with any dignity at all.

Spoilers are to follow, but it’s for the best. Now you don’t have to play the game.

First, a disclaimer: The Suffering games do work on a morality system, where you can get good or bad endings based on how you treat other people. The game is heavily designed to favor the good ending, and most people I’ve spoken to have agreed the good endings are likely canonical considering how much you’d miss while playing neutral/evil. So, we’re going with the “Good Aligned Torque is Canon” angle.

Okay. Now.

- Who is Torque? 

This guy.

Torque is, in essence, what happens when you take every tired trope of a horror movie villain and flip it around on its head. He’s a severely mentally ill inmate convicted of murder (while it’s never outright stated what mental illnesses he has, it’s pretty obviously a mixture of DID and schizophrenia), he never speaks (at least not in the present; he does have scant dialogue in flashbacks in the second game; it amounts to maybe eight words total), and he is… freakishly strong. Beyond that, there’s very heavy evidence that he’s somehow supernaturally inclined. 

The difference is that, instead of being presented as the villain, he’s the hero. He’s not just the hero, he’s basically one of the very few competent people in the games. Nobody treats him any different than they would anyone else, the game doesn’t go out of its way to underline that he’s some kind of “monster,” and even when the most monstrous of his alters presents itself (The Creature, who we’ll discuss later), people are just kind of like, “Oh, well that was different” and then move on with their lives.

He is a character who could very easily take the place of Jason Voorhees, and instead of being given a machete and told to kill everyone he comes across, he’s given a fire ax and a voice in his head that tells him to take care to think about how much other people are struggling and that maybe, being that he is probably stronger than them, he should put forth the effort to get them someplace safe. 

- Okay, but, like… WHO is he? Character-wise?

If you want his backstory, it’s actually one of the best parts about him and one of the few things that Ties That Bind expands upon correctly. To summarize, he’s a victim of the state that fell through the cracks, pieced his life back together, and then ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

To be more long-winded: He was a troubled child with psychiatric problems who lost both of his parents in a car accident. With no living relatives beyond his parents, he was placed into the Garvey Children’s Home, where the conditions were less than ideal. A mixture of strain, trauma, loneliness, and desperation prompted his brain to divide up into three: himself, Blackmore, and The Creature. Then, left to navigate life and his own mental health on his own, he ended up falling in with some very bad crowds.

He became a drug dealer. He got in a lot of altercations. He was in and out of prison. This only stopped when he met his wife and became a family man, and began to consciously put forth the effort to right himself. He had two sons, had everything under control… and then ended up in prison again when the guy he used to work for on the streets hired a man to come pay him a visit at his friend’s bar and press every last one of his buttons until he snapped. He wound up in prison, his wife divorced him, and everyone assumed he’d end up back to his old tricks.

Except… he didn’t go back to being a drug dealer. He got a job at a gym instead. He stayed on the right track. He started reconciling with his ex-wife who, right before the events of the first game, moved back in with him. 

This didn’t sit well with the men Torque used to run with, especially not the guy he used to work for… so a hit was ordered on him and his family. He wasn’t home when it was carried out. He walked in, found his wife and kids dead, and passed out in his apartment from the shock, where the police found him after receiving a tip.

He was bloody. He was disoriented. He was known to be a repeat offender. They pinned the whole thing on him and, after a very unfair trial, he was sentenced to death.

The first day he arrives in prison--located on scenic Carnate Island--the ground opens up and monsters begin sweeping over the land. Convenient.

- Wait, this bitch has alters?

Yeah. This… isn’t really a part of the game that’s handled well, but it’s interesting. There’s a lot of weirdness going on with Torque (remember that supernatural bend I mentioned?), and one of the two is… well, I’m not sure he’s an alter at all.

First, there’s Torque himself who is just a short-tempered, easily frustrated, but generally reasonable guy who really just wanted to keep his head above water. Secondly, there’s The Creature, a defense mechanism and literal monster that is incapable of communication and rears its head whenever he feels threatened. Physically threatened, generally, which resulted in The Creature being a bit violent. Torque has a pretty extensive arrest record and most of his arrests seem to revolve around “punched a guy at an inopportune time.”

Blackmore is more complicated, because he isn’t really clear. You see, there’s a snippet of dialogue in the second game and a lot of environmental storytelling that indicates that Torque is supernaturally gifted somehow (something he likely inherited from his mother), and that some of his mental illnesses are actually paranormal interference. Blackmore is the biggest gray area, because while he is presented as an alter, he… very much defies that. 

He’s presented as a presence that Torque experiences externally and that only he can see (not really uncommon; Torque hallucinates pretty frequently throughout the game), but he also seems to be aware and consciously trying to control Torque. When that fails, he settles for trying to find a way to take over Torque’s body permanently. He’s capable of actually getting in physical altercations with Torque, but at the same time can hijack his body to do things he wouldn’t normally be able to do. He honestly smacks more of something Torque is possessed by instead of something his brain came up with itself, made all the more obvious by the fact that the final battle in the second game is literally Torque and Blackmore beating the everloving hell out of each other after Torque consciously realizes that nobody can perceive Blackmore but him.

But at the same time, that guy that Torque worked for that ordered the hit on his family? That’s Blackmore. There’s a lot of talk about how nobody has ever seen Blackmore (indicating he only communicated via writing or phone or what have you), and it’s all… very, very stupid. It’s one of those things in TTB that made me throw up my hands and go, “Well, sure. Okay. Let’s just do that, then. That makes perfect sense thanks.”

(I do not like most of Ties That Bind.)

- Okay, so he’s supernatural somehow?

Mm-hm. Again, it’s never explicitly stated, but heavily implied through some dialogue from my second favorite character in the game (DR. Q.L. KILLJOY, MOTHERFUCKER) and just the way the story plays out. 

Carnate Island erupts with a bad case of monsters the second Torque sets foot on the island. A prologue you unlock after you beat the game once reveals that Torque actually hallucinated the first game’s end boss before he even saw it, indicating he has some precognitive abilities. The sentient spirits of both games know who Torque is and take a special interest in him, and plenty make allusions that they’re “more alike” than he thinks. Blackmore is very clearly paranormal in origin and seems to even be able to command the monsters in some way. 

Hell, Dr. Killjoy even implies at the end of the first game that Torque is somehow making all of this happen and, only by tackling the root of his problems, can he make everything stop.

While there’s never been an active fandom for this game, I used to associate with a small group of fans, and there was actually a lot of discussion/disagreements about whether Torque actually had any form of psychosis or if maybe he had latent psychic abilities he couldn’t control. Seeing things all the time, causing things to accidentally happen that nobody would believe; it’d be easy to be chalked up with a disorder when there’s no way to know or prove what you’re experiencing is Real Shit.

- Why do you hate Ties That Bind so much?

Because of the way it improperly handles a bunch of mental health stuff that the first game wisely didn’t actually touch on much beyond acknowledging the fact that This Guy Are Sick.

Prison is Hell makes it very evident that Torque has psychiatric problems but never dwells on it overmuch. There’s even an entire chapter of the game that takes place in an old asylum with an early 1900s alienist ghost (DR. KILLJOY) trying to diagnose and “treat” Torque, and it still is mostly hinged on the horrors of old-timey treatment of mentally ill patients than anything about Torque. That and Dr. Killjoy’s misguided good intent (that dude deserves a whole essay of his own, to be honest).

Instead of hammering it home that he has Issues and deciding to talk too much about Issues, it just treats Torque like a human being. Your main goal is getting off the island and saving stragglers along the way, all of which react to Torque just the same way they would to anyone. COs will either be authoritative or condescending. Fellow inmates will be suspicious but more likely to work with him. Everyone is always gracious for his help, and nobody makes any odd remarks about anything weird he does (barring when The Creature shows up; then, they just remark on, “DUDE HOW IN THE FUCK?” because you find out, later on, that all they see is Torque getting in fist fights with things twice his size and winning).

Torque is just Torque. He just do what Torque do.

Ties That Bind then goes barreling into a bunch of tired tropes and tries to make a convoluted twist ending, and then there’s the whole matter of the secret underground organization that wants to capture Torque and have been working with Blackmore and you end up fighting a helicopter and some SWAT-looking motherfuckers and… they try so much harder to be edgy and gritty and it’s really fucking stupid.

The only good things you get out of it are some further snippets into Torque’s backstory (appreciated), the return of Dr. Q.L. Killjoy (always welcome), and a set of monsters known as Gorgers (they make purr-gle sounds when they eat and I love them).

Oh, and Consuela. She is mentioned in the first game and actually shows up in the second, and I can respect any woman who gets captured by an evil paramilitary organization and, immediately upon being rescued, takes the biggest gun she can find, looks you dead in the eye, and says, “I’m going to steal a fucking boat, drive it straight into a warzone, and rescue my goddamn husband. You with me or not?”

She is literally some female parallel to Torque and my headcanon is they are bros.

- Anything else?

Yeah. The soundtrack for the game is pretty awesome and ended up inspiring some other music in a couple of other video games of the time (Mortal Kombat: Armageddon immediately comes to mind). They actually rigged up some pretty cool contraptions to make unique sounds and ambience using shit like scrap metal and garbage, and the results are pretty fucking cool.

Favorites of mine are the boss themes for Hermes, and Dr. Killjoy, with Dr. Killjoy’s being my absolute favorite of all of them. The main theme of the game is pretty great, too, and is probably the most iconic of all of the songs on the OST. I’ve even heard it used in stuff where I doubt people knew what the hell The Suffering was, lol.

#i've been working on this off and on for a week #because i totally don't care too much about characters nobody else cares about #seems suiting to post it now on Halloween #considering he's a horror game character

[ordinaryfander]

The new video sure was something, uh

So, as usual I'm here to brag about the newest video. This time, I'm going to analyze "Dealing with INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS", and it's a long analysis/theory, so be patient with me.

This will majorly center around Remus and "the Others", so beware! (I'm so happy I don't have to call them Dark Sides anymore, it was never fair)

I wrote many points to consider, and each one will take quite a bit. With that, let's begin!

1) So:

[ 1) Remus: Who he is, what he does, why he's there ]

I think we can all agree that his debut was a surprise, especially because most of us were expecting the "Green Side" to be associated with something like Envy, or Greed, since dark green is sometimes associated with money.

However, we got Remus, aka Intrusive Thoughts, which I think is, in my opinion, the best option they could face.

So: he is Thomas' nasty thoughts, the evil, twisted fantasies, and he keeps Thomas' awake at night with dark ideas, he gives him the worst thoughts to deal with, things Thomas is deeply troubled to think of, because as Logan said, his catholic beliefs instilled in him that thought is the precursor of action.

Remus is there, and why is he there?

The fun thing is: I don't think he's there to be "useful". Later I'll explain where I think his Character Arc is going to go, but Remus really doesn't have any reason to be there except that intrusive thoughts are something absolutely everyone deals with. You all have to consider that, even if those are Thomas' Sides, they're also everyone's Sides. We all have Logic, Creativity, Morality, Anxiety, and we all lie (I'll return to that).

And this traits help us live with eveyday life?

But intrusive thoughts? They just majorly upset us, and worsen our view of ourselves, but we all still have them.

However, I'm really happy with this choice, because Thomas is starting to really show what I've been screaming since Deceit's debut: things are not black and white, and he is NOT a completely good person, because NO ONE is, not 100%. We can act like good people and sincerely mean to do good, but we're still gonna have dark, horrible thoughts. And, as Thomas' said, that's ok. Those thoughts don't make you a bad person if you don't act on them, but you should consider a therapist/psychiatrist if they bother you too much. There's no shame in that, too: please, reach out for help, if needed.

[ 2) Remus' relationships with: Roman, Deceit, and Virgil ]

- Remus' relationship with Roman

At 35:50, it's officially and definitely confirmed that Remus and Roman are brothers, probably even twins.

A moment after the Duke disappears, Roman says "I don't like him".

Thomas goes, at Roman: "So, you have a brother?"

And Roman clearly is uncomfortable with it: "Yeah... It's a little like looking into a fun-house mirror. But instead of a giant head, or, like, long legs or a tiny torso... It shows you everything you don't want to be."

Thomas answers: "That doesn't sound like a very funny house"

And Roman: "Yeah... Uhh, whatever, y'know-? (...)"

Roman and Remus obviously don't get along, but we understood that the moment Remus knocked out Roman with that weapon I don't know the name of (sorry rip, don't focus on this :'))

Roman considers himself a dashing Disney Prince, a knight in shining armor, an example of bravery and justice, while Remus is pure chaotic evil. He doesn't care what other people think and his idea of fun and fantasy is twisted, and he isn't afraid of Roman and his sword in the slightest. They're opposites.

Unluckily we didn't get much brotherly interactions or interactions at all, so there's no much to say, but those two have a whole damn lot to work through.

The question that many have been asking is: do Roman and Remus share a room?

The answer is: I honestly don't know. It would be a complete and utter mess that Roman would hate to have to share. Time will tell.

- Remus' relationship with Deceit

We haven't even seen them interacting on screen, but we already know so damn much about it.

WAY BACK in "Can LYING Be Good?", this was said about Deceit:

Roman: "If you really don't want to know something, he (Deceit) can keep our moutjs shut."

And Logan immediately goes "You don't want to believe it. That's where his (Deceit's) power comes from. Things that you want to believe. Things that you wish were true. And things that you wish weren't."

And later:

Deceit is able to shut up the Sides, but he's also able to hide them. That's what he did with Remus, he kept him locked away.

I've always been rooting for morally gray/sympathetic Deceit, but I'll try to stay neutral on this: though, I really believe that Deceit was trying to protect Thomas.

Remus is... A lot, to say the least. He's pure chaos, and isn't useful or helpful (for now) and doesn't even care to be. Deceit, on the other side, really cares about Thomas, and he showed that in many ways: he just cares about Thomas in his own way. Missing the callback of SVS still hurts Thomas after all this time, and I already explained why Deceit tried his best to do what was good for Thomas in court (https://ordinaryfander.tumblr.com/post/183871155711/thomas-shouldve-gone-to-do-the-callback-he).

I also said, tho, that in SVS Deceit was frustrated to no end because the other Sides weren't listening to him.

Look how confused he is at Patton's words.

You know why? Because Thomas thinks what he says. Thomas lies, and Deceit is there to prove it.

But they didn't listen to Deceit, but Deceit isn't like Virgil: Virgil waited lots of episodes to be listened to until he finally ducked out.

Deceit straight up released Thomas' worst thoughts because Thomas had to face in the most hard way that he is n o t a completely honest person. Deceit just got really pissed and went: "You know what? I'm useful, you need me and I'll prove it."

And he just did that. He straight up released Remus, Thomas' worst thoughts, on them. Deceit is the only one who could do that, and you know why he did?

Remus: "Thomas, speaking of knowledge; recently a snake offered me a morsel from the tree of knowledge. He said you're wanting to be more honest and be direct dealing with your issues, no longer will you deceive yourself about the ugliness within you, me!"

Deceit smacked in the face Thomas with Remus, so Thomas could get the point. I think he did. "If you don't want to lie to yourself, at least face who you really are"

About Remus and Deceit alone...

I don't think Deceit really likes Remus. Deceit is kinda goofy, but he's also sophisticated, charming, a silver-tongue. Remus is a stinky garbage man.

Deceit wants to protect Thomas' reputation, Remus would destroy it. Probably Remus likes Deceit (I think he likes everyone, he doesn't care), but Deceit doesn't really reciprocate the feeling. I could surely be proven wrong, those are just my points.

- Remus' relationship with Virgil

Boy oh boy.

Well, the video already said what I could'be said: Virgil dislikes Remus, he doesn't trust him, but he's also not as scared of him anymore like he used to be.

Virgil, at Remus (32:27): "I thought you were some... Horrible illness. Now I can see that you're just a common cold, a mild inconvenience that's gone before you know it."

And Remus looks at him like this:

That's not a evil look. He's soft, almost proud.

He isn't even offended. He just goes "Eheh, you tickle me, emo."

And Virgil has one blink-and-you-miss-it-moment when he genuinely smiles.

I think he did somehow used to like (platonically y'all) Remus, even if he was scared of him. They were still... Friends, maybe, at some point. Deceit and Virgil never had such a kind-of-sweet moment, even if just a few seconds long, and even if the Duke and Virgil still are not likely to get along in general and for the time being. The Duke's phrase about Old Times wasn't a welcomed one by Virgil.

I don't wanna dig in too much else, we already know that Virgil doesn't still trust the Duke. That was just some looks I noticed that stuck with me.

Also, I won't ignore the fragment revelead his name and said: "Of course (I told you, Thomas), I would never hide anything to you." And it cuts right off to Virgil. Eh. Busted.

- How Will His Character Arc Go?

That one is the most important question.

Everyone is gonna believe what they will, but I don't think he'll get... Sympathetic, even? He's just pure chaos.

Maybe his Arc will entangle with a Roman new one, maybe his Arc will entangle with Deceit's. I do hope that Thomas and co. will now value Deceit better, he really isn't that bad... At least, not compared to Remus.

Deceit shut up Logan guys, but Remus straight up murdered him. Even if they can't literally die, y'all really can't close a whole eye on that.

So I just think he's gonna stay around and do mischief, but will surely get some sort of development related to other characters. I'm almost sure he won't get a Solo Arc, surely not for now. However, I'm pretty sure they'll get back to talk how to manage him, and how he can become more useful.

- Conclusions and predictions for the next video

Honestly, sorry this was messier than my normal analysis/theory posts, but I don't fully know how to take Remus yet.

Y'all see, the moment I knew Deceit I made my mind up: he's morally gray, he has a purpose, he has to get credit for it.

Remus confused me in every possible way. He's chaos. I'm sure we won't see him in the next video, but I predict maybe Deceit will be in it, just to look how good of a job he's done.

And that's pretty much it. I hope you all have a good time :>

#ts spoilers #sanders sides spoilers #sanders sides #thomas sanders #sanders sides theory #sanders sides theories #sanders sides deceit #ts deceit #sanders sides virgil #virgil sanders #sanders sides patton #patton sanders #morality sanders #sanders sides logan #logan sanders #logic sanders #sanders sides roman #roman sanders #creativity sanders #sanders sides remus #remus sanders #the duke

[jcmorrigan]

Notes from a Racecar Bed

The F/O? Giovanni Potage from Epithet Erased. The S/I? Rachel Scribere - mundie, writer of much fanfiction, independent contractor supervillainous minion who has also given up on adulting. (Most of those things apply to me IRL!) I’m only YT-current, not VRV-current, and it’s been four episodes, so I’m well aware this ship could get sunk at any time. I’m just having fun while I can. AU where I have a more “normal” job based on real-life events but do evil on the side. This ficlet features some sensuality (though no overt sexuality), discussion of illegal activities I only do in my fantasies and would never do IRL, and a blatant admission of how many ASMR videos I have watched, because cringe culture is now dead on my blog.

***

         Like so many nights before, sitting on the racecar bed, me with my legs crossed, him curled behind me. So lucky he likes to spoil his favorite minion, I thought.

           Though given who we were, it wasn’t a sexual tantalization. No, he’d found the weak spots in my shoulders. His fingers would dig into them for less than a minute and I would be like a collapsing water balloon.

           “ – and then she fuckin’ waves me over, even though I’m helping that other guy,” I rant, “and I have to just up and abandon the dude and walk over to see what she wants, and it turns out her card doesn’t have enough money on it, surprise surprise, but oh noooooo she can’t possibly believe that, but I’ve got this guy waiting, so I go bug my manager, and she’s trying to tell me she’s on the phone, but I see this lady about to EXPLODE so I tell her that this CAN-NOT-WAIT, and long story short, that’s why this Saturday, I really need to get some cash the good old-fashioned illegal way.”

           “What, like tricking a gas station clerk into leaving his station for just long enough that you can get behind the counter and steal an entire pack of scratch lottery?”

           “…That was incredibly specific, Gio.”

           His left hand kept massaging my shoulder; his right disappeared, and I could hear the nightstand drawer opening. “Prepare yourself,” he teased. “You’re about to tell me I’m the best boyfriend-slash-boss you could ever have in three…two…”

           A pack of scratch lottery, thicker than a deck of cards, was tossed rather unceremoniously onto the blanket in front of me.

           “Oh my GOD!” You’d think that would have been a scream of dismay and horror, but I’d lost my morals a long time ago. I picked the pack up with glee. “You even got the crosswords!”

           “I know how much you love a good puzzle.”

           “This is so gonna help me pass the time at my car appointment.”

           I could feel him wincing as his right hand returned to my shoulder. “Just don’t, y’know, bring the whole thing to the dealership. Because if they see you with that – well, I learned that the HARD way.”

           “Yeah, I bet you – “ I realized what didn’t add up. “Dealership? You drive a fucking Vespa.”

           “WHICH YOU CAN GET AT DEALERSHIPS!”

           “Fair point. Anyway, I’ll just sneak like five into my book.”

           He ended it the way he always did – halting slowly, then dragging both palms down my back. I shivered, and I knew he noticed. “No offense, but I think my thumbs are gonna fall off.”

           “I thought that was longer than usual.” I then stopped to ponder it. “…Have I ever tried on you?”

           “Wait, what?”

           “Have I ever tried massaging YOUR shoulders?”

           I could hear a snicker from behind. “You know, that actually sounds amazing and quite well-deserved on my part.”

           “Well, then let’s switch places, dork.”

           First, I turned about to look up into his eyes, their gold flecks reflecting off the irises. God, I could call my eyes “the color of ocean at twilight” in parody fanfic 365 days out of the year and that wouldn’t change the fact that they were the dullest possible mix of blue-green-gray. And his eyes…they always sparkled.

           His lips curled into a sly smile, his fangs peeking out beneath his upper lip. “Are you lost in my eyes again? I must say, I can’t blame you.”

           I flushed, turning away instinctively. His hand beneath my chin, turning my gaze back up to meet his, changed that.

           “Uh…hi?” I said rather nervously. Still wondering how this happened. How I could have been with someone for this long, nestled into him atop a racecar bed with his hands on my shoulders for half an hour, and still get so anxious about him.

           “You know, Composer…” He was now smirking broadly. “Your eyes are the color of this one sapphire necklace I stole once. But also kinda mixed with the color of the worst bruise I’ve ever gotten. And man, was I proud of that bruise. And that necklace. Actually, I’m pretty sure I got those on the same day…the point is, they’re beautiful. Your eyes, I mean.” He pinched the hinge of my glasses, pushing them closer to my face.

           Part of me I kept wanting gone but he obviously didn’t.

           “Thank you,” I practically choked. “They’re…nothing compared to yours.”

           “Well, mine are the best, but yours are a really close SECOND best!”

           Now I was the one practically laughing. “Just switch with me.”

           As we crawled around each other, I couldn’t help but admire his frame – I always did. Just something about his slender lankiness that made my heart speed up. Even sitting, he was taller than me, just by a bit, but enough that I felt dwarfed. Now I was faced with his shoulders, and above that, the fluffy fringes of his cotton-candy hair.

           A lump rose in my throat; I was almost too nervous to start. After all, there was a very decent chance I sucked at this. I just tried to remember how I wanted it done; do unto others. I lay hands on him, beginning to work. “So tell me,” I urged, “what minor nuisances pissed you off today?”

           “Well, I almost had to change Car Crash’s name to Vespa Crash.”

           “Ouch.”

           “Then there was the person with the whole ‘Anvil’ Epithet. Whose Epithet is ANVIL? I was lucky to get ou – I mean I was lucky to get a way better Epithet than that. I mean, Soup is better than ANVIL, right? But I was always going to get out of there with – “

           He gave a sudden, sharp intake of breath, and my hands froze. I had just remembered how much I enjoyed when he dug into the very hollows of my shoulders, that all-too-often tense spot leading up to my neck, and had been attempting to mimic that. Probably a bad idea. “Did that hurt?” I asked softly.

           To my surprise, he replied, “That…did the exact opposite of hurt. Keep doing it?”

           “…Yeah. Okay. Sure.”

           As I resumed, I found myself compelled to ask: “So, did that, like, turn you ON or – “

           “Of course not, but this might be the closest I can get.”

           “Well, you know you can always promote yourself to demi at this point and I won’t even be mad.” I gave my left hand a break to flick at the ends of his hair. “I won’t be able to help you with any of it, but – “

           “That’s not in your contract, Composer. Don’t even worry about it.”

           “Duly noted, Boss.”

           I had been better at mimicry than I had expected. He was practically melting back toward me, his shoulder-flesh sinking beneath my hands. That was when I got a rather devilish idea. “You know…I may or may not have a few other tricks up my sleeve.”

           “Oh, yeah? Well, play them on me and let’s see how well I withstand them.”

           “You know the sheer volume of ASMR videos I watch, right?” This room being one of the few places I could bring that up and know I wouldn’t be mocked for it. Same way he could wear pink tie-dye pajamas and not hear any shittalk from me. “I’ve learned things. Things you wouldn’t believe.”

           “Come on. I’ll believe anything from you, Composer.”

           “Then don’t say you weren’t warned.”

           I let his shoulders alone, sliding my right hand up into his bubblegum-pink hair. Struck once again by how ridiculously soft it was. He seriously put time into it. I started off in the traditional method – just working the skin of the scalp, same way as the shoulders.

           “Seriously?” he taunted. “I mean, sure, it’s good, but this is just level-one stuff. Even I could – “

           That little devil took over, and I changed tactics, using the gentlest of pressures to scratch through his hair with my fingernails.

           “…Now thaaaaat’s more like level three.”

           “I finally get to spoil you for once,” I said cheekily.

           “Well, outside of the general gratification that automatically comes with recruiting you as an independent-contractor minion.”

           “You’re sweet.”

           “Yeah, well, that’s our secret, remember?”

           “What secret?”

           “About me be – “ He got it then. “I mean. Yeah. Right. I didn’t say anything. You don’t know what I’m talking about.”

           He then flinched and gave a light “Yeep!”. I’d changed tactics yet again – lightly grabbing the roots of his hair and giving a mild tug.

           “Did that hurt?” I asked, a new wave of anxiety suddenly washing over me.

           When he warbled “No,” I could hear that it wasn’t the tone of someone in pain – it was the tone of someone who wanted more of that. So I dealt more out, lightly pulling locks on the left, the right, near the front, near the back of his head.

           “I really did underestimate you on this front,” he admitted. “You know now you have to do this more often.”

           “You keep doing my shoulders and it’ll be an even trade.”

           “This is actually…really, REALLY relaxing…I could almost just…”

           It was gentle yet sudden, him falling back onto me, pinning me to the headboard. The back of his head was nestled onto my right shoulder, nuzzling close to my own face.

           “What,” I teased, “you’re falling asleep already?”

           He didn’t answer. Just snuggled a little closer back to me, like I was some sort of body pillow. That was when I realized he actually had fallen asleep on me – quite literally.

           “Gio!” I hissed, poking his shoulder. “Giovanni! Wake up!” Though I didn’t say it quite as loud as I could have. “I can’t sleep pinned up like this!”

           He wasn’t moving, sound asleep.

           Great.

           I contemplated just shifting his position, laying him down properly or just scooting out from behind him. However, that ran the risk of a rude awakening, and…I just couldn’t. He was twice as adorable asleep as usual, and considering that average, that’s a pretty amazing statistic.

           So I decided to try and make the best of it. Sure, I was pinned up against the seat of a faux car, but I had once bragged that I could fall asleep anywhere. (The airplane proved me wrong when I had no idea how to recline the seat, of course. Not a good sign in this case.) I tossed my glasses lightly to the nightstand and shut my eyes, attempting to make myself comfortable pinned between a crime boss and a hard place.

           Strangely enough, it eventually actually worked, somewhat. I could finally feel that state just before sleep when none of your thoughts seem to make sense, turning into a frieze of colors that make up surreal images as the opening act for dreams.

           However, I was just awake enough to be aware of a few things, if not so much to respond to them. One was of a weight being lifted off my chest and shoulder. The sound of a soft curse. A pair of hands gently locking over my forearms, and suddenly, things weren’t so vertical and solid anymore – perpendicular, much softer. (The mattress. I figured that out the next morning when I woke up in the usual position.) A muttering of words that I’m pretty sure were “There we are…nice and cozy.” Then, eventually, the pressure of a second body beside mine, clinging on like I was a life raft in the sea of somnolence, the only thing keeping us both afloat in the dream-realm.

#selfship #i'm at soup!

[realitachifacts]

Well that’s actually funny you said that because I was originally going to ask your thoughts on the whole Sasuke/Itachi dynamic. Like if you felt that Itachi knew he was going to be brought back after his first death to guide Sasuke etc. And if he planned on Sasuke changing his mind about Konoha...but then I thought maybe you didn’t want to get into the whole discussion so my question shifted haha

yessss okay. no don’t worry i LOVE answering character analysis stuff because (serious) writing is like My Thing so…

TL;DR:

“Thoughts on the Itachi & Sasuke dynamic?” As with most things in Naruto I like what it could have been, not what it actually was.

“Did Itachi know he was going to be brought back after his first death to guide Sasuke?” No.

“Did he plan on Sasuke changing his mind about Konoha?” I’m gonna assume you mean about planning to destroy it instead of return after Itachi’s death. In which case, no.

detailed explanations under the cut.

to answer your initial question, i don’t think that itachi knew he was going to be brought back after his first death. i mean, primarily, how would he know, and additionally, if he did, he would have worked it into his master plan for sasuke. during their final battle together at the hideout, it was relatively evident that itachi had been planning every single thing he did in advance; the only thing sasuke did that seemed to even remotely surprise him was breaking his tsukuyomi/genjutsu. itachi’s primary goal for sasuke was to have him return to the village, and although his characterization is inconsistent due to just straight up bad writing, i still think this was the most feasible desire of itachi’s for an outcome. i want to get into a hypothetical post-resurrection plan of his but i actually haven’t really gotten to edo tensei itachi yet and only know about the tail end of it up to his final apology. i’m almost there though so i might elaborate on this (and might have a changed opinion) when i do.

secondarily, i don’t think he planned on sasuke wanting to destroy konoha at all. however, i don’t think he would have particularly cared. in terms of priorities, it has always been sasuke, then the village, then anything else. i think by his resurrection he’s witnessed sasuke’s potential and seems to give him more mental autonomy and views him with more equality than through a patriarchal-fraternal lens (again like… this is from what i’ve seen of it). if it was possible that he could have stopped sasuke in a way that didn’t kill him (clearly mere harm isn’t a concern) and saved the village, he would have done it, but he’s even canonically threatened to leak village secrets if sasuke was threatened in any way, so his little brother held high priority above konoha. if sasuke was being seen more on an equal level, and stated he felt wronged by the village and was going to attack it, with itachi having no possible way of stopping him without him ending up dead, itachi probably would’ve helped. he isn’t a particularly vengeful person, especially considering he was never afflicted by the curse of hatred. causing injury, pain, or death to another individual was done by itachi on a cost-benefit analysis, with a purported preference for avoiding injury; as with most characteristics stated that one of the characters has, it is not backed strongly by any canon evidence besides severe amounts of retcon that heavily conflict with existing source material. but that’s a whole other rant lmao.

finally, i really really liked the connection the two of them had as children. i wish itachi could’ve lived instead of dying of not useful to the plot anymore let’s give sasuke more emotional pain disease. i wish itachi could’ve become hokage. it’s pretty obvious that a forehead tap and a few words isn’t anywhere close to reconciliation (huh, that might be a hereditary pattern) or even a hug, and a redemption arc mainly given via word of mouth is… agh, not great. i think sasuke’s healing would progressed faster and further if itachi stayed around, since the sort of closure he would need is so different than what, say, naruto would need. itachi’s existence would have to be prolonged. plus i wanted him to live longer in general lmao, and they really could’ve saved his character in more than just a how he is in canon way; what i mean by that is they could have made him more consistent and fleshed out his motives so that he’s both more sympathetic and human- although i find him to be a highly sympathetic character, i also have a personal habit of falling for the “good guy all along”/seeing the best in everyone narrative, which i try to remove myself from when doing source analysis. for anyone more critical of media this… is a very good example of how not to try to make a villain likable. i think they each could’ve learned from each other and gained so much by itachi living. because the writing itself seems to intrinsically categorize the characters as “good” or “evil” and act as if suddenly you can move from one box to another and gain or lose audience sympathy. i mean, it’s a shonen, sure, so these concepts are simplified. but this becomes highly difficult with characters like itachi, who it is literally incapable to just move into a good box and make compelling unless there was actual foreshadowing up until that point. it’s why so many people have issues with things like talk-no-jutsu; suddenly making a character who’s done horrible things “good” doesn’t make them good, it makes them morally gray at best, and trying to shove them cleanly into “good” categorization is messy and it doesn’t feel right. umm i’m getting really off-topic here.

yeah! hope i answered at least some of your questions. thank you for asking!!

#ask #anon #ooc

[terramythos]

Now that I am finally through the 12 book odyssey that was catching up/rereading the October Daye series here's a post of my general thoughts. (ADVANCED spoilers. Like I don’t hold anything back, lol). 

A. Just for fun, my favorite books tended to be the ones where shit (especially Lore Shit) went down in a Really Big Way. My top 5 for that...  

1. The Winter Long (#8). I don’t think you can beat this one in sheer fuckery. Two MAJOR twists that basically change everything up to this point in the series, and they’re both dropped pretty casually. One, Simon Torquill is maybe not as evil as previously thought? and is also Toby’s step-dad? Whoops? And number two-- fucking EVENING, the fucking throwaway character killed in book one-- isn’t even dead AND she’s a fucking Firstborn and also a total piece of shit. God. It was a ride re-reading book one because there are so many hints (my favorite line: “no one knew her true face” YEAH OCTOBER, YOU SURE AREN’T WRONG). I pointed it out but even the Shakespeare quotes of books 1 and 8 foreshadow this shit. That in particular was 999-level fuckery. 

2. The Brightest Fell (#11). I was not expecting this book to gut punch me so hard. Like, everything goes to shit, obviously, and the consequences of that stretch well into the next book. But then to give Simon a genuine redemption arc, to invest in that so emotionally, and somehow find a way to end it in a WORSE way than him just dying? That stuck with me. I was so fucking upset I just couldn’t do anything of value for like a day. So that’s how you know it’s good I guess! :D 

3. An Artificial Night (#3). God what do you even say about this one. It’s where shit really starts getting real for the whole series. It’s creepy and more fantastical than the first few books and you learn more about The Firstborn and what they’re capable of. There’s a lot that’s just viscerally traumatic too. Literal children being twisted into horrific monsters. And if I’m right, I think the whole series is going to loop back to this one in a big way. There are so many... mentions and (dare I say) hints dropping even now about Blind Michael.  

4. One Salt Sea (#5). I mean, a lot of stuff happens in this one that ultimately ties into book 12, but a really major character gets killed off, Rayseline is taken out of commission, the Undersea gets introduced, and you learn what the hell is up with the Selkies. I really truly believe the epilogue chapter of this one is some of the best writing in the series, it’s so well put together and has such great beats. Idk like it was a tossup between this one and Ashes of Honor (#7), but while the latter had some of my favorite bits I think this one had a lot more. 

5. Night and Silence (#12). Maybe it’s cause it’s the most recent one and the most fresh in my mind, but DAMN. Kinda like The Winter Long this one had two big twists, and while they weren’t as major they really defined the book. The whole Janet thing I really and truly did not see coming and has some BIG implications for everything we know. Amandine’s a changeling! What the fuck! Gillian being very decisively rewritten into the series (and turned into a Selkie) was ALSO not something I saw coming in any way, shape, or form. This one really fired me up wondering where things are going next. 

B. I mentioned it but GOD the Simon thing made me so viscerally upset! I don’t think I’ve run into a series that approached a redemption arc that way. You take a character who’s pretty much evil, then start making it way more gray. Was he a bad guy? Yeah... but he had a reasonable motive. Is he still a bad guy? Yeah kinda, but he seems to genuinely want to change, and actually assists the heroes without ulterior motive. OK, so then he comes  back a few books later as the deuteragonist and gets a whole lot of character development, and he starts to improve. You even get a concrete indicator that the horrible shit that corrupted him is going away. And then, when he ultimately reaches his goals? He’s forced to give it all away, to turn back into the monster he’d been, in order to do the right thing. Fucking unreal. I’m fully aware this is to make the whole “finding Oberon” stakes more personal but it hurt, man! 

C. My vampire crack theory is pretty much dead, so rest in peace, that.

D. OK so what is with the month names? Seriously. You can explain it away a little bit with the whole “fae like to honor people but don’t like to reuse names” shit but there’s absolutely no way it’s that simple. They’re all female characters who are related, however slightly, to the Torquills. I made that observation pre-book 8, but dismissed it because Toby wasn’t technically related to them. ONLY AS OF BOOK 8 SHE IS, SO CHECKMATE. THERE’S SOMETHING HAPPENING, DAMN IT. Anyway I like making lists, so... 

1. January -- January O’Leary, She’s September’s daughter, and she gets killed off in book 2. This might be enough for me to dismiss the month name thing except the epilogue of 11 brings her Back to Fucking Life, so honestly all bets are off imo, she was absolutely brought back for a reason. 

2. February -- no one.. yet. 

3. March -- no one.. yet. 

4. April -- April O’Leary, January’s adopted daughter. She’s a cyber-Dryad and we see her perspective briefly when January gets resurrected. I’m not sure what else to say about her in relation to this? 

5. May -- May Daye, October’s blood clone (basically). I mean, her whole existence is pretty weird. You could make the argument her name is just a coincidence (she was once a night haunt named Mai), but there’s absolutely no way I’m buying that. 

6. June -- no one.. yet. 

7. July -- Gillian Marks-Daye. October’s daughter. I mean. I was going to say “no one”, but she just got decisively re-written into the series. “Gillian” is the feminine form of “Julius”. I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to be the dark-horse contender for this slot. No way that’s a coincidence. 

8. August -- August...Torquill? She’s Simon’s biological daughter and Toby’s half-sister, so.... She was ALSO introduced pretty late, unlike most of these entries, so I am still convinced this is A Thing. 

9. September -- September Torquill. She’s Simon and Sylvester’s sister. Also like, decisively dead I think. She hasn’t shown up in the main series (only mentioned), but I think she shows up more in the short stories? I don’t know enough about her to say much. 

10. October -- October “Toby” Daye. Like. That’s the name of the series. She’s the main protagonist, dawg. She’s Simon’s step-daughter. What more do you want from me. 

11. November -- no one.. yet. 

12. December -- no one.. yet. 

E. So where is the series going? Obviously next book is about The Luidaeg finally calling in the Selkies’ blood debt or whatever, which we knew was coming for a long time. But #12 just made that way more personal with the whole Gillian thing. I have no idea what’s going to happen with that. Beyond that? There are some loose ends here and there, but the big thing is Oberon coming back. That’s pretty much a given. If I’m right, I think the consequences of Book 3 are going to start showing soon, but idk if it will be in relation to that or not. I’m sure she can come up with way more to put into the series (maybe a book around Toby and Tybalt getting married? SOMETHING THAT EXPLAINS THE MONTH NAMES???), but that’s all that’s really evident to me. 

F. So, the characters. They’re probably my favorite bit of the series. The Luidaeg and Tybalt are undoubtedly my faves, but I’ve really enjoyed seeing how Toby, Quentin, and May have grown over the course of the series. I know I mentioned this previously, but I really like how the series’ initial allies end up... not being allies, so much-- whether by getting killed off or severely disappointing Toby. Sylvester, Evening, Luna, Lily, and Connor all pretty much disappear or greatly alter their role in the story. 

Yet the main cast, the “found family” the series focuses on? Pretty much none of them started out even liking each other that much. Quentin is a snotty noble kid, Tybalt is straight up an antagonist who HATES Toby, The Luidaeg is just plain terrifying, and May is some bizarre doppleganger that (seems to) randomly show up. Yet over time they’ve forged into such a strong and really likeable crew. Idk, it really gives me the feeling that it’s not just FOUND family, but EARNED family, and I really like that. 

G. While we’re discussing characters, I want to talk about The Luidaeg in particular. 

I think she’s probably one of my favorite characters of all time. That’s a high bar but she is just so damn INTERESTING. Morally gray for sure, but not in a traditional way. 

Like, she clearly has her own agenda. She’s probably the oldest character in the series, and she’s fucking terrifying. People use her name to warn their kids at night. We see samples of her powers and the things she knows, and she’s basically a walking eldritch horror. A great deal of the series is her calling in and collecting debts from the main characters so she can use them for one purpose or another. She’s the fucking sea witch. Right? 

Except... the series humanizes her so much. She is clearly kind and compassionate and does her best to hide it. While she initially intimidates the main characters, Toby gradually realizes she’s lonely and seems to enjoy their company. Every single bit of her backstory you get adds more context to her behavior. She’s protective of children because hers were slaughtered like animals. She speaks in riddles because there are so many things she’s forbidden to say. She asks for terrible prices because she HAS to help anyone who will ask her to, and there are certain things she doesn’t want to do (and often, it’s because said things would harm others). This is also why she’s so standoffish and avoidant of others-- because they take advantage of her. Despite all the horrible shit that’s happened to her, she still does her best to be kind and do the right thing. And her ultimate goal, I feel, must be a good one. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me. 

There’s more. A lot of what she does is clearly calculated to achieve a particular result. She mostly shows kindness to certain members of the main cast (Toby and Quentin in particular) and very few others. It’s always interesting to see how she interacts with other characters, because it closely mirrors her initial behavior. Yet even then you see little things, like how she took in Poppy as an apprentice. One of the few times you get her perspective, it’s when she realizes Amandine is abusing and literally killing child!October, and you see how horrified she is, enough that she steps in and puts a stop to it. Does she have a use for Toby down the line? Yeah, obviously, but it doesn’t mean she didn’t do the right thing for the right reasons. I suppose it’s possible she’s just manipulating everyone, but the stories like that and her blood memories make me feel otherwise. Also, the amount of human profanity she uses is pretty funny, since so few characters use it. 

Honestly this may seem like an odd comparison but she reminds me of Akane from Zero Escape. She’s playing the long con, and a lot of what she does seems strange and mysterious until you get more context. And she clearly has some ultimate goal she’s working toward (probably something to do with finding Oberon), but we won’t really know what that means until it happens. It’s probably going to be an emotional rollercoaster. 

There’s more to her than that, but I find it hard to articulate. I just really like her! Pretty much every scene she shows up in is interesting, because she has intriguing lore, dialogue, or insights. She’s almost certainly a big focus in the next book and I don’t know if that means I’ll love her or hate her at the end, lol. 

H. Much shorter note, but Toby/Tybalt? How DARE you make me care about a M/F ship THIS MUCH. They’re just so good. The ultimate slow burn Enemies to Grudging Allies to Friends to Lovers. It’s such a ride and a treat to read. Their early interactions are fucking hilarious on a reread. And I find myself caring so much about what happens to them. 

I. I think this is my last point, but I REALLY appreciated the LGBT rep in the series. There’s obvious stuff like “all the fae are bi unless stated otherwise”, but there’s a really good amount of overt rep. May’s a lesbian, Madden’s gay, Quentin’s bi, and no one bats an eye. It’s AWESOME. Also, making Walther (a certified badass and cool character) a trans man was just wonderful. The fact that he goes on right after the reveal to do one of the biggest Lore things (curing motherfucking elf-shot) is the best. I really like Walther and we need more characters like him. 

I’m probably missing SOMETHING, but idk. These were my main thoughts on the series as a whole. I’m interested to see where things go. 

[kote-the-inn-keeper]

*LOUD SIGH* Here we go again, having to explain characters to people. This time instead of Kote vs Kvothe issue, here we go with Bast.

Bast is a morally gray character. 

Do I have to say more? I guess so, because people like to just push that aside along with almost everything else about him. For one, he’s not white. So knock that shit off right now while drawing him because dusky isn’t white. Thanks, I’m tired of seeing white washed poc in such a small fandom. 

Anyway, Bast isn’t human. So jot that down. He is fae. Canonly. Explicitly said several times and even is referred to as fae on more than one occasion, which should be more than enough of an indication that while he does appear human, he is not. He uses magic to hide his goat like legs because of obvious reasons. No human would look at a fae with goat legs and be cool with that. People would freak out and lose their minds.

On that note, glamour is not mind control. I don’t know where people came across that idea, but in the Kingkiller universe, glamour is not some mind control. It’s to hide the true nature of things. It’s used to hide in plain sight and walk among humans in a more casual manner so that he can be with Kote -- for whatever reason we don’t have too clearly yet other than a student. Bast hiding in plain sight isn’t what I have seen and heard the fandom doing in recent -- painting him as a predator. I literally have no idea where that idea came from.

Now, on that note, and the note Bast is fae, there are different moral standings. I am not denying Bast has never done dubious things and done things to HUMAN MORALS is negative, but there is a very high chance that he didn’t know. I’m no defending any actions he may have taken -- so fucking jot that down -- but there is reason behind it. Such actions were not taken because he is ‘just like that’ or ‘he is evil and horrible’, they were taken because he understands the world and morals on a different standard. We damn well know fae and humans have different outlooks on life, along with how the perceive the world and take actions. We see that with [an extreme case] Felurian. Humans are dispensable, things to play with for a bit then toss away. Humans are strange and curious things, but boring and dull to a point as well. It’s the way they were raised apart from the human world that has been growing slowly under their own society. 

Bast did things dubious to the human realm, without the understanding previously as to how or why they were dubious to humans. Now, if you don’t think for a SECOND that Kote didn’t stop Bast from talking about such, or found out something he did and told him to “knock it the fuck off”, then you really are trying to demonize the shit out of Bast. If you really think Kote didn’t grab Bast and go “Hey, that’s not something humans do because of reason reason and reason” or “Moron, fuck off with that shit that’s gross to human standards idgaf what you did at home not here” then you are ignoring Kote’s character as well. You’re saying that he more than likely saw these actions or heard Bast talking about them and didn’t care. Which wouldn’t happen for shit. 

So whatever dubious acts were taken while he was partaking in previous to being told or understanding HUMAN MORALS is not excused, but has an understanding curve. 

r/pe tw after this point due to people saying such in his character. 2 paragraphs.

As for the people who have been saying Bast r*pes people, are you out of your mind? If you look back to the part of the books where Kvothe saves the two girls from being abducted, where one of the girls was clearly r*ped, do you really think Pat would ever glorify such actions? Or write a character who did / does such in a good light? The people he wrote that stole this girls were not written as good people. Were not written as sympathetic or characters that should be even remembered or mentioned. [A side note, but related to this, you sick fucks who ship Kote/Kvothe and Bast but have that ‘Kvothe is Bast’s dad’ headcanon need to knock that inc*st shit off, on top of such stupid headcanon literally not being canon since Bast has a canon father -- it’s in his title for fucks sake.]

There is no way in hell Pat would write a character in a good light who has r*pe people. Watching people bathe and undress is gross and creepy, but it’s not m*lestation or r*pe. It’s a perverted action that is frowned down upon because it’s gross as hell. Something that maybe Bast didn’t understand at first cause he goes off fae morals before learning human morals. There is no way in hell that even to the day we come into the story that Bast does not know how to go with human morals and at least abide them. Him flirting is not “mind r*pe”, what the fucking hell; where did that even come from? What bullshit hell bubble did that idea come from???

I’ve also seen complaints about him “not caring about people” and “just killing people”. Uh, yeah. So, again. Morals. Morally gray. On top of that, people can’t know about Kote and his location, so in some manner it could be linked to him ridding of literal possible dangers to follow. Again, he is fae. Humans are expendable and mean nothing compared to their long lives. Why are you all throwing a fit about him killing people anyway? Kvothe has literally murdered a whole camp of people; one of which he stabbed the living shit out of. He set another kid on fire in an alley way. He’s killed people too -- so where’s the screaming about that? I don’t see people screaming and crying over all the morally gray shit Kvothe / Kote has done in his life. None. At all. None of his ego and being one of those guys around others and Denna “I’m best for her” / “I know her better than you” / etc.

Bast is morally gray. He doesn’t have a clear alignment, or a clear code of being. He has obviously changed through time, I am more than sure about that, and is more bendable to human morals codes. But what he did previously was because he didn’t know. It’s NOT EXCUSED. It’s NOT DEFENDED. But it has a reason behind it and not some poc fae being ‘evil’ and ‘using people’ or ‘r*peing humans’.  

edit: It’s like liking Elodin. Don’t erase and ignore the things these two characters have done just to like them. You can like characters even if they aren’t 100% good people. You can enjoy characters who aren’t 100% perfect and pure and yadda yadda. You just can’t erase their actions. You just can’t ignore and excuse bad things they have done. Don’t baby them. Look at what they did and say “holy fuck that’s terrible what is wrong with you???” and continue to enjoy their character.

#ooc #mun humming #kingkiller #bast #yelling about people #being dumb again #ugh #rape mention #molestation tw #incest mention #very berif but its int there #ALL trigggering words are *'ed #cause im not a fuckign heathen

[buscemifan]

here’s some zestiria thoughts

you’re free to disagree, this is just my opinion

i dont like this game. heres a few reasons why

I have at least ten hours on my playthrough and it STILL does not feel like the game actually started. I can’t even pinpoint why. I feel like I’m just going through the tutorial exposition. and due to the nature of the game and having so much of your journey hidden from you, it feels like that feeling won’t ever go away.

Alisha leaves. Actually all of the characters should leave except for Alisha. Her fighting style was fun and I loved her come back Alisha

The lore is so boring. Most of the other tales games have wonderfully vast universes that manage to incorporate social commentary into amazing worlds (symphonia with separation of church and state/racism, vesperia with corrupt govenrments, Abyss with the individuality of a person and human life, etc.) but from what I can tell Zestiria is pure lore. 

its not even good lore?? like. you’re the sheperd. remove the evil please. where’s the gray morality? every other tales game makes you think about this decision may be good for me, but not for someone else, but not zestiria. why is it so perfect? the only person who cares about the hellions being purified or whatever is the Bad Guy, so. who cares. definitely not me

speaking of that, the whole game is set up within the first two hours and then that’s it! you’re off! have fun being the world’s errand boy! sorey goes around and does a series of convoluted sidequests that are so forgettable and “point A to point B” i can’t but feel like i’m checking stuff off of the world’s most mundane to-do list. plus lailah keeping information from you just kind of feels like if your mom was telling you to do a bunch of chores for a surprise, but never tells you what the surprise is.

you cannot have a world that vast with lore so deep and then make the plot so streamlined. I don’t need a star on a map that’s 5 feet in front of me when you told me to go 5 feet forward.

what the heck is mikleo’s personality?? maybe this is just the fandom but I interpreted mikleo as a snarky and immature boy that holds sorey in a high regard and is willing to make sacrifices for him and only him. but there’s like 18 different mikleos floating around. whatever makes your ship sail, I guess. personally, i think he’s rather boring, but he’s pretty, so it’s fine, right?

oh yeah can the normin shut the heck up. they ain’t cute. stop tryna make me like them bamco

why do they not explain the lore more. I understand that I keep hammering this and maybe it’s better in Berseria (I don't know, i haven’t played it) but if Zestiria wants to be respected as a standalone game, then it needs to act like it. seraphim physics are NEVER explained. they’re invisible, but do they have mass? can you bump into them? why can they carry visible people with no repercussions? are all the clothes they wear invisible, or only when they’re on their bodies? can they change clothes? WHAT ARE THE RULES

i’ve been trying to beat around this bush but. it’s not fun. games gotta be fun. otherwise just make it a movie or smth. the gameplay is a snooze, the battles are clunky and awkward (if you’re gonna replicate the graces style, don’t give it that style without giving it the speed). the most fun I’ve had playing this game are in the accessories screen

The field banter is cute and all, but there isn’t enough to make it fun. You hear the same conversations a million times.

malevolence is so, so dumb. people make bad decisions, people are evil. don’t blame it on some weird purple space dust. it’s just human nature. have sorey try to purify a person and his behavior not change. have sorey struggle to understand how can still be evil, I purified him? sorey living with seraphim and trying to understand how a human could do such horrible things; they had so much going for this game and they wasted it ALL and I’m pissed

please tell me why I should care about Rose. like the game clearly couldn’t decide if they wanted the cool & collected assassin or genki happy girl or quirky hipster girl and tried to make her all three. i don’t care for any of her except her introduction, when she’s all “I could kill you if I wanted.” That was the best Rose. bring her back

i literally don’t care about any of the cast, sans Alisha and maybe Zaveid. Sorey is great but he’s a pretty boring protag and everyone else either annoys me in one way or another or just wasn’t a good character in the first place. maybe they just weren’t the right cast for the game?? i’m not sure. but i dont care

the game looks gorgeous but it moves so awkardly

also the whole “no speech bubbles” thing was great in theory but it misplaces the player’s priorities. older games were better in that respect because voice acting would indicate an important scene, and newer older games were the best because you’d get non voiced speech bubbles, then voiced speech bubbles, then voiced captions at the bottom. it helped you differentiate what was important! with zestiria, every scene treats itself like it’s the most important scene in the whole game, and I’m not sure what information is actually relevant to the plot

anyway that’s my thoughts. kudos to you if you actually like this game, glad you could get enjoyment out of something I couldn’t

#thoughts #zestiria tag #thats for me i dont want to put hate in the tag

[spitfcre-a]

♕        SHIPPING INFO.

WHAT IS YOUR OTP FOR YOUR CHARACTER?: i used to have a few really great ships for sawyer but now those writers have moved on from rp so i'm just down to one, but tbh its still the best. @tcughguy being basically the love of sawyer's life ?? like i don't think anyone has brought sawyer out of her shell so much like tim does, he just accepts her when she never thought anyone could do that completely, so yeah, they're end game and she's basically gonna spend the rest of her life with him. and since i'm having something of a rewrite of sawyer's relationships prior to tim, since i still used to keep those old relationships as 'canon', sawyer's romantic history before tim is something of a clean slate. i have a few headcanons for relationships sawyer could have had, or a wishlist of sorts for shipping, so i'm looking forward to getting some more ships.

WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO WRITE WHEN IT COMES TO SHIPPING?: since i'm starting a new with sawyer's ships aside from the one with tim, i'm pretty open to writing most things. i like the big romantic ships with plenty of drama, but not necessarily drama caused between the two people. life just tends to shaft sawyer so often the drama kind of creates itself. i like realistic ships tho, bc honestly sawyer needs the kind of guy who can both keep up with her but also bring her down a peg when she needs it, so i like a rounded ship where they love each other, support each other and ground each other too. sawyer having a reputation as a monster fucker is important to me so i'm all here for inter-species shipping, ships with age gaps, angsty ships, fluffy ships, long term and short term ships, random ass dates and sawyer just sleeping around. i'm also down for shipping with canons and ocs. the only things i won't ship are those concerning underage relationships, incest or abusive relationships. 

HOW LARGE DOES THE AGE GAP HAVE TO BE TO MAKE IT UNCOMFORTABLE?: sawyer has a bit of a thing for older men, it's probably down to her daddy issues, but i wouldn't recommend telling her that's the case. she's always had a crush on da/vid bo/wie and ma/rk ham/ill pretty much from day one, and still does btw. i think she's just always kinda dated older men ?? she doesn't often date people who are close to her in age but she's had the odd exception here and there. she doesn't particularly go after people who are older than her or dismisses those the same age as her, she just has something of a weakness for mature guys. she really just goes for the person she's attracted to and / or has a connection with, so dating someone older than her just doesn't phase her at all.

ARE YOU SELECTIVE WHEN SHIPPING?: i can be selective but only because sawyer has to have chemistry with the other muse. i'm always open to talk about things, always. if i know the writer well and know their style of writing i'm happy planning a ship, that's totally fine. but i have to see the chemistry or the potential for it. i've mentioned that sawyer has something of a weakness for supernatural muses and / or bad boys, an accent always help too, but i will say that i wouldn't pair sawyer with a straight up bad guy. the morally gray are fine, but completely evil with no redeeming features just doesn't do it for it, infact its a major turn off for her. so you wouldn't see me shipping her with lets say someone like lucifer or crowley. she would literally rather die.

HOW FAR DO STEAMY MOMENTS HAVE TO GO BEFORE THEY ARE CONSIDERED NS/FW?: this is kind of a weird one bc i've never actually gotten to write smut before. i'm not sure how good at it i would be, so for safety i usually just tend to cut to black or only write smut situations in meme responses. i wouldn't be against writing smut, since sawyer has an active sex drive and had a pretty bad phase of having one night stands all the time so it stands to reason that i could write smut for her and it not be out of character. however i would have to really trust the person i was writing with. i would have to have known them for a long time both in and out of rp, but i wouldn't object to no smut writing ever if i felt comfortable enough.

WHO ARE THE OTHER CHARACTERS YOU SHIP YOUR CHARACTER WITH?: as stated before tim & sawyer are my forever otp. some honourable mentions would be gavin miller and gabe fletcher written by the wonderful dee over @bondsforged. and clay from @crcss. in terms of canon characters from supernatural i'd be happy shipping sawyer with the following, but its by no means going to be forced on anyone writing those characters, i'm just saying i'd be open to it, castiel, gabriel, kevin tran, cole trenton, benny lafitte and gunner lawless. i'd also be down for ships outside of supernatural and into other fandoms, just come ask me about it. generally speaking i would ship sawyer with humans, vampires, witches, werewolves, shifters, etc. i'd also love to have a ship with a musician or singer like sawyer is bc then they can write songs and perform them together. or just give her a guy who's gonna love her tbh.

DOES ONE HAVE TO ASK TO SHIP WITH YOU?: i think at some point where there's gonna be a conversation of "we both ship this right ? cool " with anyone i write with, whether we've been writing for a while or not, so i'd say that i would encourage that conversation at any time bc then i can get on board !!

HOW OFTEN DO YOU LIKE TO SHIP?: tbh i'm always down for shipping like all the time ??

ARE YOU SHIP OBSESSED OR SHIP MORE-OR-LESS?: if we ship our characters together then it's just standard that i'm gonna yell @ you about it at some point. so i think it's obsessive in a good way if you wanna use that word ?? ships aren't like the be all and end all of writing for me but i'm a big fan of shipping so i'm always down for it ngl.

ARE YOU MULTISHIP?: i'm multiship for sure. i love giving sawyer a really rich romantic history over the years, but i'm down for ships happening in alternate universes or altered timelines. 

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE SHIP IN YOUR CURRENT FANDOM?: tim & sawyer for sure ❤️

FINALLY, HOW DOES ONE SHIP WITH YOU?: have great chemistry between my muse and yours, come yell @ me about it all hours of the day and you're good to go !

TAGGED BY:  stole from @vicebuilt TAGGING:  anyone who wants to !

#｡･ﾟﾟ･ headcanon.

[lobster-mobster-aq]

Why The Flash was so Rage Inducing

Read the article here, or below the cut.

There’s this show on CW call The Flash. Perhaps you’ve heard of it, perhaps you haven’t. Long story short just google it if you’re unfamiliar with it. If you are familiar with it but haven’t watched it, there will be major spoils ahead.

Some of you may remember a few weeks ago when I made a post about no longer being a completionist and how my anger towards The Flash was a huge part on my journey to getting there. I used to love that show. First season, it was one of the best superhero shows out there. If you only counted the live actions ones it was in the top five, there were even people who had it in their top one.

But after season one The Flash was fond of doing something weird. Each season ended with something rage inducing.  Season two saw Barry Allen go into the past and save his mother, which for character development reasons shot Barry Allen’s character arc trajectory to hell and retroactively made the end of season one far less impacting. And in the following season did they deal with the consequences of that decisions? Did they handle Barry Allen’s decision by growing him as a character and carefully create a plot that grew from such a game changing decision?

Nope. In episode one of season three he just goes back in time…again…and changes things…again, so we’re back were we started from pretty much. Only now there are small and little changes so that Barry Allan can melodramatically feel bad about himself. There were so many other ways they could have had the “time travel has made everything is slightly different” cliché, other than turn what had been the emotional drive of the first season into a convenient plot device. Because that is what the turned the death of Nora Allen into. A plot device.  

Then there was season three. All season the show was leading up to the death of Iris, (yeah, the relationship with Iris and Barry is a whole nother thing that is very polarizing about this show), and how do they over come that? Turns out it wasn’t Iris who was fated to die, it was a new character that everyone loved. Now, I’m sure there would have been people who would have been sad at Iris’s death. Not everyone didn’t like her much as a character and hated her relationship with Barry. And truth be told I wasn’t that angry that Iris didn’t die, I’m mad that how they saved her was killing off someone else. And the motivation of the person who died? Well, Iris is an important person, and I’m not, so I’ll die in her place. And it was stupid. If you wanted to save Iris, then save Iris. If you wanted and emotional death, then kill Iris. Don’t just put a different character in her place. “Oh, but we’ll get a different Harrison so it’s not like he’s actually dying,” is what it felt like the writers were saying. It was cheep, it was not clever. The nature of HR is that that actor can come back as a different Harrison since that’s kind of his character’s shtick. It made it feel like the writers chose him to kill off because that didn’t mess with anyone’s contracts. It felt lazy, cheep, and was a let down that that was the pay off on a season’s worth of build up.

And then we get to season four. The season that pissed me off so much that I stopped watching the show.

So, season four. Short summary. DeVoe is a super smart guy, wants to make everyone stupid so we can restart society without it being awful this time around. Somehow doing this involves making a bunch of new metas and then collecting their powers by taking over their bodies…which also kills them off. There’s that one episode where our new character Ralph, who is one of the metas that DeVoe wants to kill, is all like, “I think we should kill DeVoe, because he’s kind of a bad dude, who’s killing a lot of other people.” Barry is all like, “No, we are not killers.” Okay, nice narrative. I’ve seen it a lot so most times I don’t like this plot. Mostly because it’s done so often it tends to feel lazy and half assed. That’s it’s just something the writer does because…eh, plot I guess, main character good person I guess. Well, the end of this episode sees Ralph, immediately after witnessing DeVoe murder someone, finally being brought to the side of Barry Allen, as Ralph choses to die by DeVoe’s hand instead of defending himself by killing DeVoe. In the moment as Ralph is dying, Barry is just…standing there watching it happen. Barry, being the brave hero he is, says something along the lines of “Oh, you saved me Ralphy boy-o buddy.” And Ralph says something like, “even though there was never any real build up to my sudden change of heart, no Barry Allen, you saved me.” And then Ralph’s body is completely taken over by DeVoe and Ralph dies.

A bit annoying, but fine. It is a kid’s show…I think? The main character has to be virtuous and good. A few episodes later it even looks like Barry’s feeling guilt for his choices. Oh, that’s actually interesting. Make him feel uncertain about his decisions. I like that. After all, Ralph’s decision to let himself die instead of defending himself was directly based off of Barry’s constant emotional manipulation. Barry pretty much said, “Ralph, if you kill an evil megalomaniac who has already murdered several of our kind, you’re basically Hitler.” Even if it doesn’t change Barry’s mind it still is a realistic character arc that deals with the fact that sometimes sticking to your morals can be hard and have unfortunate consequences….

No never mind, Barry was guilty because he felt like he didn’t train Ralph good enough. “I was a bad teacher, that’s why Ralph died.”

Okay, stupid.

Then we get to the climax. Oh, the climax. A piece of writing so bad, and so disrespectful to the entire plot, everything building up to it, and the motivations of the main characters, it was the first piece of media I actually rage quit.

So Barry goes into DeVoe’s mind, because reasons, stop DeVoe, mind chair thing, it’s complicated I’m not going to explain everything here. Just know that Barry Allen the Flash was somehow in DeVoe’s mind, which was in Ralph’s body, (Ralph’s body was the last one he had to collect. See, the bodies where suffering brain damage after DeVoe moved into them because the brains were like, we don’t like being super smart. Well, Ralphs body was special because it was elastic, so didn’t suffer brain damage like the other bodies and…look, just look up a summary.) Barry’s chilling in DeVoe’s mind and what is this! It turns out the person who’s body DeVoe takes was doesn’t die right away, but kind of hangs around in memories as if they were sets until DeVoe moved into the next body. Ralph is there, creepily watching DeVoe’s back story. This makes Barry Allen think of something.

The amazingly awesome plan that Barry comes up with. The clever idea where they defeat the smartest man alive?

They kill him!

Yep. The plan is to help Ralph take over his body again, which will eradicate DeVoe’s mind, so DeVoe basically dies…

Look, if you’re main character is going to make such a big deal about how killing anyone in any context makes you Hitler, don’t have his solution to saving the day be killing someone. I know Barry had found that DeVoe had killed the “good part of himself” (one would think that DeVoe being a megalomaniac serial killer would have been your first clue instead of having to see a mental representation of that but whatever), and that Ralph taking his body back is on a different part of the gray scale of ethics than shooting someone full of holes but…you’re clever plan was literally, “Well, let’s just kill they guy.”

This  could have worked if Barry had show doubts about his decision to not kill. If he had regretted letting Ralph die instead of killing DeVoe off sooner. Or felt like there was room for some morally gray stuff between murder is bad and murder is okay. If Barry had even questioned his decision to kill DeVoe and had to struggle on that plan and eventually only decided on it because he couldn’t bare to see Ralph die again, it still would have worked.

BUT NONE OF THAT HAPPENED!

The way it all went down made Barry Allen look like a tool. Like he wasn’t actually a good person who felt that killing people was wrong. But rather that he was an egotist who wanted to look like the perfect hero, who was just going through the motions so he could impress everyone with what a good hero he was. “Perfect heroes don’t kill so…yeah, I’m going to be legalistic about how we should never ever kill…until a situation pops up that I don’t realize is basically murder because it isn’t 100% clear that it is murder.”

Or the writers stopped caring about decent characterization

I didn’t quit the show because I was mad at the decision to kill of DeVoe, and I didn’t quit the show because Barry was one of those, “We must never, ever kill” characters. In a vacuum, either of those things would have been fine. The whole situation felt…cheep. In the first season of The Flash, and most of the second season, it felt like the writers actually cared about making sure the characters were consistent. That there were good arcs for the characters. The whole, Barry kills DeVoe thing after making a big deal about how murder makes you Hitler was just the straw (albeit quite a large straw) that broke the camel’s back. The show had stopped caring about being good a couple seasons back, and had defaulted to a place that felt like the writers were saying, “Well, it’s only a kid’s show after all.” I didn’t even mention all the other small stupid things. The overdependence on the speed force, the excessive use of time travel and alternate dimensions (not that I mind time travel and alternate dimensions, but pretty much any piece of media that introduces those things that didn’t start out with those things means that the writer(s) have run out of ideas. And if you watched The Flash you know that they were using those two gimmicks more and more as time when on,) the fact that every single “normal” character was getting superpowers.

Looking back, it’s kind of sad to say but The Flash peaked in season one. Season two was pretty close to being just as good, and at the time I couldn’t recognize the beginning of the fall. At first the cheep lazy aspects of the plot weren’t quite so obvious. Not to say there wasn’t anything good in the following seasons, there’s quite a bit of good. It’s just you have to wade through a lot of rage inducing crap too.

#the flash #cw the flash #superheros #hottake #de #clifford devoe #alexquillian #alexquillianblog

[spynotebook]

Greetings, general public whom I serve! “Postal Apocalypse,” io9's mail column, has returned for a second week in a row, so I’ve got a pretty hot streak going on. I’ll try to keep it up! Meanwhile, you’ve got questions about Civil War II, Rogue One, The Winds of Winter, the next Indiana Jones movie, and more. Coincidentally, I have answers.

The Assassination of Carol Danvers by the Knuckleknob, Marvel Comics

Jason M.:

Dear Postman of the future, I need you to tell me about the future by answering a question about...seeing the future.

Ignoring a lot of the secondary reasons most people hated Civil War II, the biggest area of discontent was how people hated the “character assassination” of Captain Marvel due to her outrageous support of Minority Reporting situations via Ulysses. One thing that shocked me is how literally every post, article, comment, and tweet I read said that anyone who would try to fight crimes that haven’t happened yet is horrible and wrong.

And yet...let’s say that something of this scale was all real. Like, a week from now a 50-story guy in a purple dress and the universe’s most fascinating hat showed up to LITERALLY EAT OUR PLANET. Or someone in an Eastern European country who studied science in the US before a horrible accident invented a time machine and was going back in time rewrite the US out of existence. If these types of planetary extinction events were possible (or even the casual cases of powered beings stomping down the street on a daily basis killing or injuring hundreds), wouldn’t you want, nay, demand that we use future-profiling it to stop crimes/events before they happen?

I think Civil War II’s biggest mistake was assuming that people would think of it in real-world terms, not comic-world terms. If some visions of the future could stop a gray dude who bedazzled an oven mitt from killing half the universe, sign me up.

I get what you’re saying, but the real problem is that Marvel was the one thinking about it in “real-world” terms. Had Ulysses’ visions been contained to preventing giant natural disasters like Galactus (and yes, although he is a big dude who wears purple, he has no more intent to do evil than an earthquake does) and/or stopping the biggest, most thoroughly evil supervillains’ plans, things probably would have been fine. Ulysses’ power would basically be a smoke alarm for trouble and evil—detect smoke, stop it before something catches fire. Who could argue with that?

No one, which is why Marvel had to exacerbate the problem so it could have its superheroes punching each other again. The issue had to be morally gray so that Carol and Tony could argue about it, which, as everyone has noticed, basically turned into the plot of Minority Report. So the argument became not just about using Ulysses’ visions to prevent disasters or thwart supervillains’ plans, Captain Marvel used it to imprison people for crimes they hadn’t even thought of committing yet, and that’s messed up.

Let’s go back to the Doctor Doom example: Based on Doom’s long history of being evil, yeah, he probably would eventually build a time machine and attempt to erase the US. But if until he starts actively trying to make the time machine, he has technically not committed a crime—well, not that crime. You would be punishing him for a crime he didn’t commit.

To be fair, Doctor Doom is a poor example, as are most comic book supervillains. They’ve all been evil for decades, so it’s harder to argue that they haven’t already earned life sentences. So imprisoning them for the many crimes they have committed, and their long history of evil, to predict their future behavior is a bit more understandable.

But of course, that’s also not what Captain Marvel was doing. She was imprisoning anyone Ulysses saw committing a crime, regardless of who that person was. She was arresting US citizens, not only without a trial, but again without them having done anything wrong (see above). Best example: Miles Morales, who she wanted to arrest after that vision of him killing Captain America several months in the future. Miles Morales has been a hero 100 percent of the time he’s operated as Ultimate Spider-Man. He’s never done anything like that before, and it’s clear that he had no intention or designs to do it. He was shocked and appalled by the vision as anyone else. But Carol was willing to imprison Miles on the mere possibility he would eventually murder Cap.

This isn’t just morally wrong, it’s stupid. Even if Ulysses’ visions were always 100 percent, inexorably correct—spoiler alert, they aren’t—they don’t give any context about the event. So, as crazy as it sounds, when Miles kills Captain America in the future, there could be some mitigating circumstances—circumstances like, oh, I don’t know, Captain America having been Cosmic Cube-ed into a Hydra agent. All she saw was a vision—nothing else. No motivations, no reasons, no explanations. And she just assumed Miles was guilty anyway.

There’s another reason why this is both idiotic and insidious: Carol assumes that Captain America’s murder is inevitable unless she imprisons Miles. But that makes no sense. Either Cap’s death is certain, in which case imprisoning Miles clearly won’t work because he’ll somehow have to get out in order to kill Cap, or—if the future isn’t certain and Cap’s death can be prevented—then the future can be changed by anything, not just arresting heroes who have done nothing wrong and are not even thinking about doing anything wrong. Either anything is possible or nothing is.

(Also? If everything is inevitable, then no one is really guilty of anything because there is no free will and we’re all locked into fixed loops where everything we do is unavoidable, and thus it’s not our fault.)

So… yeah. Marvel’s the one who made this weird. They love having their heroes fight each other, but it hasn’t figured out a way to gave them do it without turning one of them into a de facto supervillain themselves (exactly like Iron Man was in Civil War I). And for everyone who had been so excited about Carol’s pretty recent resurgence as Captain Marvel and one of Marvel’s biggest heroes, it was equally aggravating and heartbreaking to see her become so, so awful.

Words Are Wind

John W.:

Where do you stand on the debate about whether GRRM owes his fans updates on the status to The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring? I use to be on the side of the “he’s not our bitch” argument but now I’ve switched sides. I definitely think he owes us some kind of update, as to the frequency that’s up for debate, but let’s face it he’s rich and famous because people are reading his books, watching the HBO show, and buying all the ancillary products (merchandise, Dunk & Egg books). He should throw us a bone. What say you?

Let me ask you a question in return: What benefit does him giving an update give to him or us? If he makes it his date, he doesn’t win any prizes. If he doesn’t make it, fans lose their minds and freak out at him.

As a writer, I can tell you that some days I just can’t write. (That’s a softball for you guys.) Some days I can churn out the words, and some days they just don’t come at all. And I mainly write silly and/or mean-spirited stuff for the internet, not a massive fantasy epic with hundreds of characters and centuries of backstory that is also one of the most popular book series in the world.

He doesn’t know when the book will be finished until it’s finished. Yes, he has more facts than the rest of us—how many chapters he’s done, for instance—but it’s still just a guess, because he probably doesn’t know for sure how many chapters The Winds of Winter will be. Some authors can meticulously plan out their stories and stick to it like a machine, but that’s not GRRM, and it’s one of the reasons A Song of Ice and Fire is so good. He won’t know if an Arya storyline is one chapter or three until he sits down and writes it, but when it’s/they are done, it/they will be what’s best for the story.

If you want a guess, I can give you one with almost as much certainty as GRRM: April 2018. Meanwhile, you know who wants The Winds of Winter to be finished even more than you do? George R.R. Martin.

En Rogue

Confused Rebel:

Dear Mr. Postman,

Thanks to the generosity of friends, I was able to see Rogue One recently. Surprisingly, the film was enjoyable even with the stereotype of having an Asian character know martial arts.

But I have to wonder about the uses of the Death Star during the film. One shot was used to take out a city resting atop a mine of the crystals that powered light sabers. Wouldn’t that shot have caused a chain reaction that would have vaporized the entire planet? The second shot hit the planet where the Imperial Archives were stored. Wouldn’t that destruction have crippled the Empire by wiping out important records?

With such questionable bits of destruction, why is it that Grand Moff Tarkin still managed to have a job controlling the Death Star in “A New Hope?”

Kyber crystals don’t store energy, they focus it and amplify it. For lightsabers, they’re what keep the laser from just shooting lasers like blasters; for the Death Star it increases the power of its laser to the point where it can destroy planets. It’s not a power source unto itself, and it’s not explosive. So when the Death Star destroyed Jedha City, it didn’t blow up anymore than it would have without the crystals.

We don’t know much about the Imperial data center on Scarif, but think of it this way: even the loss of a million research and military projects wouldn’t mess up the Empire’s infrastructure. It would massively screw up things in development, but in terms of the day-to-day tyranny, the Empire would keep on chugging. Plus, we know that Tarkin deemed it better to destroy the research center than let the rebels get away with the Death Star plans, which is proof in itself that the Empire considered it at least somewhat expendable.

As for Grand Moff Tarkin, there is 100 percent no doubt that he blamed literally everything that went wrong on director Krennic, who was too dead to defend himself. Had Krennic done his duty and stopped the rebels on Scarif, why, Tarkin wouldn’t have needed to destroy the planet at all!

Flash Facts

Silver Age Fanboy:

Dear Mr. Postman, it’s been fun seeing Flash bring back D.C. villains ranging from Captain Cold to the Bug-Eyed Bandit. But two classic Flash villains, Captain Boomerang and Abra Kadabra, have not crossed paths (I don’t think) with Barry and the Super STARs. Is the problem that visually they’re too silly to work in the world of The Flash? Or is there some other problem I’m not aware of?

Captain Boomerang actually has appeared in the Arrowverse. Not on The Flash, weirdly, but in Arrow season three, during the first Flash/Arrow crossover. I had also totally forgotten until James Whitbrook reminded me like an hour before this went up.

But nothing is too silly to be on The Flash TV series, and I thank Grodd for it. The Golden Glider, the Pied Piper, Weather Wizard, the Turtle, Tar Pit, King Shark, Rainbow Raider… hell, the show even did the Bug-Eyed Bandit. Captain Boomerang and Abra Kadabra are deadly serious compared to some of those guys. (Also, given Barry’s incessant time-travel shenanigans, the fact that Kadabra is a magician from the 64th century makes him practically a gimme for the show.)

The only thing that’s stopped Captain Boomerang from returning to the DC/CW was the Suicide Squad movie, but since WB cleared Arrow’s version of Deadshot to return for an episode (albeit as a hallucination by Diggle) and for Harley Quinn and Killer Croc to appear on Gotham, I can’t imagine why Captain Boomerang would be the one character WB desperately needs to keep their hands on.

Indiana Jonesin’

Mike F.:

Will the next Indiana Jones movie be any good or is Harrison Ford just too old to pull it off? What are the chances it gets made even with Ford, Spielberg, and David Koepp attached? I know it will make money but is Ford too in love with the franchise to see the hieroglyphics on the wall that this probably shouldn’t be made or it will tarnish the brand further? What are the odds they introduce his successor and thoughts on who it might be?

If Harrison Ford was willing to be Han Solo again, he should almost certainly be willing to go back to Indiana Jones, a franchise he actually likes. (To be fair, age may have softened him on Star Wars.) But between the fact that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull tried to introduce a successor in Shia LaBeouf, King of the Monkeys, and failed, and the fact that Ford is now likely prohibitively old at age 74… well, I’m sure Spielberg and Ford are game, and we know David Koepp is currently writing the script, but I don’t see them all pulling it off before Ford becomes prohibitively old. Or at least too old to do much more than make a cameo, at which point the movie’s not about Indiana Jones at all, but the new guy.

Here’s what I predict will happen: The Han Solo movie will come out in 2018, do great, and Disney will take it as a sign that the public is willing to accept new actors playing beloved Harrison Ford characters. They will recast the part, allowing for a script that doesn’t need to accommodate Ford himself with all the action-adventure audiences want from an Indiana Jones movie.

Which is fine with me. Seeing old Indiana Jones in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull depressed me. Sure, a lot of things in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull depressed me, but that was definitely one of them.

Kingspin

Santiago:

Postman, why does everyone praise Vincent D’Onofrio’s performance as Kingpin on Daredevil? I think he’s a great actor but for me, he was the weakest part of the show. The way he talked with that forced accent, or whatever that was, really stood out terribly. I agree that Kingpin as a character was good since they got to really flesh him out, but why did he have to speak like that? Am I the only one that thought he was terrible? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

Well, you may be taking crazy pills, because D’Onofrio doesn’t have an accent in Daredevil. He’s enunciating things weirdly, but that’s something he does a lot when he’s playing deeper, more serious roles. He did it in every episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, for instance.

I don’t think it’s bad at all, but I would describe it as a slightly ominous quarter-Shatner. In fact, I believe it works for the moody, prone-to-fits-of-random-rage Wilson Fisk very well.

Don’t Hate the Leia, Hate the Game

Chris:

After our heroes escape the Death Star in Episode IV, Leia casually notes that the Empire “let us escape” because “they’re tracking us.” Yet she does nothing about it! She didn’t check for a tracking beacon on the Falcon’s hull, or try to swap ships, or even go to a different planet. Instead she led the Death Star directly to the rebel base after personally witnessing its destructive power. So the question is, did Leia do this on purpose in order to lure the Empire in close for a knockout blow, or is she just lazy, or is this just a plotting oversight by GL?

I may be feeling extra-protective of Leia right now for obvious reasons, but here’s how I figure it: The Death Star had just destroyed an entire planet. Getting the plans to the Rebel base on Yavin as soon as possible was more important than keeping the base hidden, because the Rebels needed the plans as soon as possible to figure out how to destroy the Death Star as soon as possible.

Also? Leading the Death Star to Yavin keeps the Empire’s attention on the Rebels and not blasting random planets, killing millions of innocent lives while hunting the Alliance. It was risky to be sure, but between risking the Rebel base versus risking innocents, well, for Leia that was no question at all. Unlike the disturbingly less moral rebels of Rogue One, who are surprisingly okay with killing allies just in case they pose a problem, Leia is all integrity, all the time.

Game Movie Over

Josh N.:

First off, I keep getting more and more excited about the new Logan film. It seems like a worthy send off for Jackman, as opposed to a lame origin with Origins. I’ve seen the plot compared to the excellent game The Last of Us, based strictly on the trailers of course. Do you think that’s a fair comparison (obviously no one had claws in the video game), and do you think more movies could look to games for inspiration? I know the state of straight adaptations is kind of a bust.

It’s a fair comparison—badass adult and child take a journey through a near-future semi-apocalypse—but it’s not like The Last of Us pioneered that particular pairing. It’s a long-used trope, accurately titled “Badass and Child Duo” over at TV Tropes, with oodles of entries, which arguably started with the Japanese Lone Wolf and Cub manga (and subsequent movies). In that, wrongfully-disgraced-samurai-turned-assassin Ogami Itto travels with his incredibly young son Daigoro, in a wooden baby carriage also filled with deadly weapons.

As to your other question, I think that most of the time, video games are looking to other movies and TV shows for their own inspiration, which means movie don’t need to scour them for ideas. Also, I’m no longer sure that a “good” video game movie is even possible anymore—but that is a question someone will have to ask me next week.

Have a nerdy question? Need advice? Want a mystery or argument solved? Email them to [email protected]! I’m trying to answer a lot of questions each week to make up for the hiatus, so I need a lot of questions sent to me each week, too. Remember, no question too difficult or dumb! Probably!

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