#short sighted and bad because engagement is what keeps people around btw

[pochapal]

You don't gotta answer this publicly, but what on earth happened/is happening RE: Dogpiling?

this is long but there’s a lot to cover and i don’t know how much information is pre-known going into this.

basically breadtuber sarah z made a 2 hour fandom postmortem video on homestuck. instead of being a genuine look into what made the comic and the fandom so massive and so relevant for so long, she kind of glosses over all that in the first thirty minutes, then spends the rest of the video discussing homestuck’s two major controversies in the least tactful way imaginable. 

the first one she talks about is the hiveswap development hell fiasco, which on paper is an interesting thing to bring up in relation to a lack of content contributing to fandom decline, but sarah’s primary source for all this is a pseudo-anonymous blog run by giovan_h, someone who is notorious for treating dangerous and baseless accusation as fact and for obsessively stalking current and former whatpumpkin staff members to obtain information for said blog. she supposedly tries to bring a balanced argument on what exactly happened in the three year dark period between hiveswap’s supposed release date and when act 1 actually came out by pitting ipgd’s tumblr post (the one that made the odd gentlemen embezzlement claims vis a vis king’s quest) against giovan’s blog (claiming through anonymous and unverified sources that hussie deliberately dicked around and failed to meet a single deadline, then broke contract terms by using the kickstarter money to commission the odd gentlemen to animate act 7 instead of working on hiveswap. there are a lot of other unsavoury claims about hussie and certain other wp members among these blog posts, but that’s the primary relevant gist). 

neither account can actually be verified (ipgd’s post claims their information is spotty because they’re talking around a pretty strict settlement nda and giovan’s sources and accounts are deliberately vague and unverifiable to “protect various parties from retaliation from hussie/wp”) but sarah ultimately comes down and says that she’s inclined to take giovan’s blog as more truthful for. reasons. this is obviously bad because within minutes of the video dropping several wp team members reveal sarah never once tried to get in contact with them, which has led to attacks on the team members because a lot of zealous people looking for an excuse to keep being mad at homestuck in the wake of hs^2′s semi-permanent hiatus were emboldened by a video essayist treating the ugliest speculation as hard fact. as of right now, the hiveswap kickstarter has released a statement clarifying the development situation as best they can (from what i’ve read it does point to them legally being unable to point to/discuss certain things) which has had all the impact of dropping a match onto an oil spill. the anti homestuck zealots firmly believe every word of that post to be bullshit and are accusing the wp team of covering for hussie and his super heinous evil crimes (keep in mind we are still not privy to the internal workings of wp because why the fuck would we be) so the wp team in turn are putting these people on blast for this dangerous harassment (it doesn’t need to be said that as a professional being publicly accused of covering up fraud is a very bad thing) and then as a counter counter response the angry fans are now accusing the wp staff of abusing their power to direct mass harassment towards specific individuals (this amounting to people getting into wp members’ private discord servers and publicly posting mean things they have said about giovan et al which imo only serves to bolster the stalking claims) and the whole thing went very ugly very fast.

the second controversy that sarah brings up is everything involved in post canon homestuck (epilogues, pesterquest, hs^2). here she reverts to more of a passively pro-fandom stance, asserting time and time again how horrible and evil the epilogues and everything else were because of how they took the characters and stories everyone knows and loves and warped them into something unrecognisably terrible, that post-canon homestuck was universally reviled. in a very bad and awkward placement of information she then segues into a kind of hand-wavey discussion of the intense backlash towards certain post-canon trans interpretations (of vriska, june, and roxy) in a very I Am A Cis Woman So I’m Not Qualified To Make Any Statements Here Other Than Transphobes Fuck Off <3 But Also This Is Indicative Of A Growing Fandom Resentment way, which honestly begs the question of why she needed to include this at all. another bad thing here is how she super glosses over the “controversies” surrounding “the advocates for june egbert” and “the writer for vriska’s pesterquest route” - she is obviously referring to former creative director kate here (she kind of confirms this on twitter by saying she didn’t want to mention kate by name in order to not stir up further drama which uh... yeah) and the inexcusably terrible chain of events which led to every single out trans woman working on homestuck to resign to protect themselves from further mass harassment and dogpiling from the fandom.

she instead, for some reason decides to focus on how post-canon homestuck has been a total commercial and creative failure, that homestuck^2 basically shouldn’t have even happened after the fandom’s distaste for the epilogues and that it was not only controversial but also was a low quality mess everyone agreed sucked. she then goes on to compare the hs^2 team to the wp hiveswap dev team, and passively applies the same giovan-esque assertions to the internal workings of hs^2, kind of but not really implying the reasons given for the shutting down of hs^2 were bullshit. this is super bad for the fact that the post canon homestuck team is the most openly marginalised group of people working for hs is in an official capacity, and we have seen time and time again what drawing undue, speculative negative attention towards these people has done. again, reminder sarah did not reach out to a single person who worked/is working on homestuck for what is essentially a drama video disguised as a fandom postmortem. the upshot here is that her post-canon section served to embolden yet another wp-hostile section of the fanbase - those who adamantly believe that only the fandom itself can create worthwhile homestuck projects, and that all writers are evil people who want their queer fans dead (only a partial exaggeration) and produce spite projects which are driven by the steadfast belief that their work is inherently superior to official content by virtue of their fan status. among this group were a lot of people who latched onto any accusation against a team member as fuel to push them out of “ruining” such a beloved franchise so sarah’s video serves as proof that all the hs^2 writers were morally corrupt monsters ruining a fandom space that was meant for minors and queer people (this is all very anti/anti-anti carousel of bullshit nonsense that i have no time for) and thus they’re confident to once again tear down the remaining public facing staff members, ignoring how all this crusade has done so far is drive a handful of trans women and people of colour off of official homestuck projects for their own safety.

then she ends the video with a “oh btw this video is proudly sponsored by audible <3″ bit and it’s just. beyond unbelievably awfully stupid that she deliberately reignited this aggression which has caused untold material harm on marginalised people (that happened less than a year ago!!!) just for the sake of quick clicks and ad revenue. she consolidated the most dogshit takes as fact within the general fandom consensus, sided with some of the worst people to engage with homestuck, potentially detonated the last shreds of stability of this independent marginalised media project, and wrapped it all up with a sponsorship from an amazon subsidiary company of all fucking things. this is obviously a case of an incredibly short sighted decision to cash in on a very complicated and unwieldy fandom history but still the potential consequences here are unfathomable.

#extrarabbitsauce #didn't intend on this being public but i saved as draft and now my only choice is to publicly post this. whatever #got called a terf for liking homestuck^2 whatever pigshit this post potentially attracts will be nothing

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, once.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Seven (30.43% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Sixteen.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

Significantly flawed, and well-known in fandom for it. Unpopular opinion? I still think it’s better than the first Avengers film.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Natasha and Laura pass in a single-line trade. It’s sooo close to not counting.

Female characters:

Natasha Romanoff.

Wanda Maximoff.

Maria Hill.

Helen Cho.

Peggy Carter.

Laura Barton.

FRIDAY.

Male characters:

Tony Stark.

Steve Rogers.

JARVIS.

Thor.

Clint Barton.

Strucker.

Pietro Maximoff.

Bruce Banner.

Ultron.

Sam Wilson.

James Rhodes.

Ulysses Klaue.

Heimdall.

Nick Fury.

Erik Selvig.

Vision.

OTHER NOTES:

Everyone talking about Strucker like we already know who he is...

The “Shit!”/”Language!” gag was funnier before they hung a lantern on it. Not least because it takes almost a full minute before Tony harks back to it (fifty seconds, actually. I checked). If you’re gonna make a Thing out of it, you gotta follow up immediately, not after fifty seconds of cutting around to different character intros and action shots and a whole lot of other dialogue. 

Urrgghh, ok, I’m going to break my standing rule about not discussing source material, because we gotta acknowledge the colossal wrongness of re-writing the Maximoff twins - canonically Jewish Romani - as willing volunteers in a Nazi science experiment. It gets worse the more you think about it. There are a few things about this movie which generated significant negative outcry, and this incredibly offensive decision is one of them.

Tony and Thor fighting over who has a better girlfriend does have a certain charm to it. If you’re gonna have a testosterone-off, it might as well be about how great your partner is.

I got a zero out of ten on this out-of-nowhere forced romance crap with Natasha and Bruce. We’ll come back to this later.

“I will be reinstituting Prima Nocta,” Tony declares, as he prepares to lift Thor’s hammer and thereby theoretically take charge of the Nine Realms. Primae noctis (believed to in fact be a myth) refers to a supposed Dark-Ages law that granted lords the ‘right’ to take the virginity of any newlywed peasant woman who lived on their land. So, this is a wonderful little rape joke from Tony (or, y’know, not so little, since primae noctis in reality would make Tony a serial rapist). Ha ha ha ha. Hilarious. Good one.

I’m really mad about the parts here that are total garbage, because mostly, the revels sequence has a nice low-key quality to it, good solid team dynamics. 

I can’t fucking believe that they played the ‘and then Bruce falls with his face in Natasha’s cleavage!’ gag. I cannot believe it. Is this a disgusting frat-boy comedy from the nineties?

Honestly, Tony, just shut up and admit that you KNEW from the get-go that it was wrong to try and make Ultron happen (that is why you kept it secret from everyone else to begin with); don’t try to defend the decision now that you’ve got a ‘murderbot’ on your hands. Take responsibility for a bad choice instead of talking shit about how you had to and everyone else is just too short-sighted, damn it! 

Andy Serkis is delightful.

The Iron Man/Hulk fight absolutely KILLS the momentum of this film. It goes for way the fuck too long (eight minutes) and has no narrative significance at all. Pro tip for action scenes: they should always be driving the story somewhere. You can pull off eighty minutes of action so long as your plot is advancing alongside/within it.

Also, Iron Man causes a huge amount of additional damage during this fight, in the service of the aforementioned pointless action. His efforts to minimise Hulk’s effects are extremely poor, and calling in his relief organisation to clean up after the fact does not negate that. 

Gotta love that throwing a wife and kids at Hawkeye at the same time as we suddenly start pushing this Natasha/Bruce thing. That’s not transparent at all. I also understand this to be a major deviation from Clint’s identity in the comics, and very unpopular with fans for that reason, but regardless; reinventing him as a family man to reset the romantic blather after baiting fans with the possibility of Clint/Natasha in the first Avengers movie is such a shitty move. I was not invested in the ship myself and would have loved to have them reinforce the just-friends relationship between Hawkeye and Black Widow, because there are not enough platonic friendships between compatible men and women in fiction, but 'they’re not interested in each other because they’re busy with someone else!’ is a weak reinforcement indeed. Less forced romances, and definitely less token wifey who exists for no other Goddamn reason at all. This comes out of nowhere, and not in a clever-surprise kind of way.

“You still think you’re the only monster on the team?” Natasha says, after telling Bruce about her sterilisation. This earned a HUGE backlash, and for good reason - despite all arguments about how what Natasha meant was that her being raised to be an assassin makes her a monster, the direct implication of her words as they are phrased and as the discussion is structured is that her inability to have children makes her monstrous, and that’s deeply offensive. It’s also completely in keeping with a narrative which is often played out against women, in which their value as people is attributed directly to their ability to produce offspring, so it’s not even like this outrageous implication of monstrosity - the corruption of what it means to be female! - is that unusual. It’s awful, but not unusual. Add on the fact that 1) Natasha’s nightmare-flashes specifically foregrounded her sterilisation over all other details of her training, supporting the idea that she believes that it’s what makes her irredeemable (instead of, y’know, all the murdering and stuff), and 2) this is Joss Whedon’s work and he is OBSESSED with highlighting the womanhood of his female characters and treating it like their defining trait while also variously punishing them for it, and you’ve got every reason to interpret this terrible fucking line as exactly the heinous thing it (presumably, unwittingly) seems to be. 

Steve ripping a log in half with his bare hands is the funniest thing in this whole movie.

Thor’s brief side-adventure with Erik Selvig is pretty out-of-place. He just...goes for a swim in a convenient magic pond that Selvig chances to know about. Seems normal.

Ultron is full of such boring, empty rhetoric. Reminds me of Loki in The Avengers, with all that sound-and-fury. 

I love Paul Bettany.

Man, they sure do find Natasha instantly. It’s almost like making a damsel-in-distress of her who needs to be rescued by the team was completely meaningless...

Breaking my no-BTS rule (since I already have done for this movie at this point) because it’s well-known how Joss Whedon ordered Elizabeth Olsen not to show exertion or ‘ugly emotion’ on her face in this film, because God forbid she compromise her attractiveness by being human. Joss Whedon is not human; he’s fucking trash. 

The final fight sure does just, y’know, get to a point where it ends. They really did not ratchet up the tension over the course of the Sokovia conflict, it just goes along until it stops (also, they say Sokovia is a country, but then they never call the city anything else, it’s just Sokovia. Is the city conveniently named after the country (very confusing), or is it a city-country, like The Vatican? I kinda assume it’s option three, which is that no one bothered to care because it’s just some fake European placeholder anyway and we’re not supposed to notice such a dumb oversight).

“I was born yesterday.” This is the best quip in this whole thinks-it-is-way-wittier-than-it-is movie.

Helen Cho deserved better than to be a prop rapidly dismissed and then just trotted past at the end for an ‘oh, she survived, btw’. 

Back when I reviewed the first Avengers movie, I said that I considered that film to be heavily overrated, so maybe it’s not such a surprise that I actually like this one better. The two primary problems I had with that first film were the overly simplistic plot, and the fact that most of the characters were OOC compared to previous films, and this movie does do better on both scores, so I feel more engaged by it, and less annoyed. That said...this movie has still got a lot of problems, and those include iffy characterisation and a plot with various holes, nonsensical complications, and conveniently ignored or smoothed-down dynamics. When I say I like this movie better than the first one, I mean just that: I like this better. That does not mean I am here to sing its praises. 

The tacked-on romance is part of the problem - for Clint as well as Natasha (but especially for Natasha). After Hawkeye was so heavily under-used in the first film (and his slightly-ambiguous relationship with Black Widow was the only human element that made him a character instead of a prop), Age of Ultron attempts to compensate by giving Clint a personal life, in the form of a magically-appearing heavily-pregnant wife and a pair of nameless children. The function of this family appears to be 1) to give Clint a reason to not be interested in Natasha, and 2) to ‘humanise’ him by giving him something to fight for and get home to, because we all know nothing legitimises a character quite like some otherwise-irrelevant dependents. Want a man to seem lovable and important? Give him a pregnant wife. That’s what women are for, anyway, right? To enhance a man’s story? In this case, to provide a man whose purpose in the story has been contested with insta-personality, because ‘he’s secretly a family man, ooh, twist!’ is way better than having to spend time on giving him something to do in the plot that is actually meaningful in some way. Great logic. Makes Hawkeye super dynamic, right? 

Natasha, unsurprisingly, is hit much, much harder. As the only female avenger and one of only two prominent female characters in a cast which has seven-to-nine male characters of equal or greater importance/screen time (YMMV on whether or not you think Fury and Vision count for that list), the pressure is already on for Natasha to be served up a quality narrative, because if she doesn’t get one, well...she doesn’t have six-to-eight alternative characters to pull the weight for her gender. The best solve for this problem would be to avoid the ‘Token Woman’ cliche in the first place, but since we missed that boat...not having the personal story of your only primary female character revolve completely around her womanhood and her catering to heteronormative expectations of a love interest would have been a good choice. This weird, forced, chemistry-free thing with Bruce Banner? Was the worst thing they could have used to define Natasha’s presence in the film. It sticks out like a sore thumb every time they have an awkward interaction, and it leads in to that atrocious ‘monstrous infertility’ element (though that particular egregious mistake could have been included with or without a romantic blunder, it...probably wouldn’t be, and we’d all be the better off). Even the Hulk-whisperer part of the relationship - while not awful on its own with all the unnecessary romance and Unresolved Sexual Not-Tension removed - serves to highlight Natasha’s female-ness by making her the soft maternal figure for the team, because God forbid one of the other male members of the team be asked to ASMR-speak to the Hulk while delicately caressing his hand. If Natasha’s presence in the first Avengers film leaned too heavily on her gender identity as a defining trait (and it did), this movie doesn’t fix that problem at all: it doubles down on it. 

The good news for most of the excess of male characters is, they by-and-large don’t feel as OOC as they did in the first film. The boorish romantic entanglement aside, Bruce Banner is still a naturalistic character highlight (all credit to Mark Ruffalo, who probably doesn’t know how to turn in a bad performance in the first place), and Thor’s dialogue is way less ridiculous this time ‘round, so he lands a lot closer to his personality from previous films simply by virtue of sounding like the same guy (unfortunately, the plot does not have the faintest idea what it wants to do with him as a character). Steve Rogers is still being written as if being Captain America is his character, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of his identity, albeit one which conveniently allows him to behave in a stereotypical self-righteously bland manner, thus avoiding the need for any nuance in his perspective or actions. This borderline fanfic-flamer ‘Captain America is my least favourite character so I’m going to write him as a boring stick-in-the-mud and then hopefully no one else will like him either!’ approach doesn’t grate quite as badly as it did in the first Avengers, and it can’t cancel out the innate level-headed charm of Chris Evans, so as disappointing as the bias is, it’s still a better balance here than it was last time. The one character who is not so flatteringly handled, however? Also happens to be the one who was arguably handled best last time, and unfortunately, he’s the one who is essentially treated as the ‘lead’. 

The big problem for Tony Stark is that this movie is not interested in digging in to the pathos of any character, it’s all-flash-no-substance on that front, and Tony really, really needed a less heavy-handed slathering of ‘afraid of what might come (feat. messiah complex)’ to motivate his actions and reactions in this film, because without any exploration he’s basically just a billionaire kid playing with matches. If this were an Iron Man film (either the first or third one, anyway), we’d get into some tasty deconstruction of Tony’s mental state and confront his hubris, etc, and - crucially, most crucial of all, it’s a mainstay of all his past stories in the MCU - Tony would own up to his mistakes, listen to the advice of those around him, and take contrite steps toward fixing the problem not just in the direct sense of ‘beating the bad guy’, but also in the personal and emotional sense of working on his own flaws and making amends with the people he hurt along the way. This movie offers none of that. To begin with, Tony’s ‘I know best and I will not be taking any questions’ approach to creating Ultron feels like a significant step backwards in his character development so far (Iron Man 3 was specifically about addressing his PTSD and associated tumultuous emotions surrounding the fear of imminent alien invasion, so his reactionary and secretive behaviour in this film feels particularly out-of-touch with a mental reality Tony has been explicitly working on for the past couple of years); Tony is actively aware that it’s a bad call and thus hides it from the other Avengers until it’s too late, and then he’s bizarrely unrepentant about his mistake. Worst of all, he actually attempts to repeat that mistake, only worse, late in the film (the fact that his idiotic ‘mad scientist’ pep talk actually convinces Bruce to help him again is the weakest character moment for Bruce outside of the aforementioned romance crap). The plot rewards Tony’s second, far worse mistake, in the creation of Vision, who turns out to be ‘worthy of wielding Thor’s Hammer’ and whatnot and conveniently provides every necessary skill to defeat Ultron in a deus ex machina so overt you could use it as a textbook example, so even though Tony had absolutely no way of knowing that he’d get a good result this time and almost every reason to believe he’d just compound the existing problem, his reckless disregard for the literal safety of the planet is treated like a good thing because it happens to work out this time, and they just kinda sweep under the rug the fact that Tony is playing God (and being uncharacteristically stupid and selfish about it - in other films, Tony is normally only reckless with his own safety, and it’s when his actions spill out into unintended consequences for others that he realises the error of his ways and cues up a positive learning curve; it’s what makes him palatable). At the end of the film, once Ultron is gone and Tony has thrown some dispassionate wads of cash into ‘relief efforts’, he strolls and quips and eventually drives off into the sunset in his expensive car, with nary a mention of, I dunno, maybe a little guilty conscience? Maybe a hint of having learned a valuable lesson? The closest he gets is just suggesting that it might be time he retires from Avenging, but neither he nor anyone else lets on that there’s a need for serious self-reflection. The Tony Stark in this movie is the nightmarish male-fantasy version of the character, the playboy with the cool tech and no limits who does whatever he wants and then...literally rides off into the sunset in the end, no muss, no fuss. He’s kinda like a complete reversion to his original self, pre-Iron Man, frittering money around and designing weapons of mass destruction while convincing himself he’s bringing peace to the world one explosion at a time, but that Tony has no business here, seven years of character development down the track.

While we’re talking iffy characterisation, we should also segue into plot, and that’s something we can do easily enough by looking at our villain, Ultron. Calling Ultron an actual character feels...ambitious. He’s a CGI robot full of empty rhetoric and, you guessed it, more of those quips that this movie has in place of any meaningful dialogue. I’d call him self-fellating, but he ain’t got nothing to fellate, so instead he just blathers a lot in a manner that sounds vaguely poetically intelligent but is, upon a moment’s consideration, just vapid nonsense (much like Loki in the first Avengers, as noted above, but at least Loki had the benefit of a flesh-and-blood actor delivering his lines with conviction; James Spader does solid work as the voice of Ultron, but trying to make a CGI robot who spouts a school-kid’s attempt at edgy philosophy sound like a genuine menace is an uphill battle). Speaking of genuine menace, I assume the reason the film is called Age of Ultron is because A Couple of Days of Ultron Causing Disturbances in a Handful of Specific Locations was too much. For all the big talk (and there is..so much), Ultron doesn’t get up to all that much trouble, most notably in the sense that he apparently has his code all over the internet and yet he doesn’t bother stirring up a single ounce of chaos with that ungodly power. Why bother including this as an element of the character if it achieves zero story? Is it purely to make Ultron seem ~unstoppable~ because he keeps downloading into new robots? Because it didn’t really land, y’all. They try to play it like a big victory for the good guys when Vision burns Ultron out of the ‘net, but in context it’s meaningless because he didn’t do anything while he was there. Pretty much everything about Ultron was all talk, little to no action - even a whole bunch of the trouble he did cause happened off-screen, with Maria Hill just popping in to let us know that ‘there are reports of metal men stealing shit’. Cheers, cool. And you know, Ultron makes a song and dance about how he’s going to save the world by ‘ending the Avengers’, but then he...does not pursue that at all. He tries to make himself a pretty body, the Avengers thwart him, and then he enacts a doomsday machine to destroy all life on Earth. Like every other aspect of the character, the whole ‘end the Avengers’ schtick is just white noise, there’s no meaning in it. Ultron is just a same-old-same ‘What if Artificial Intelligence wants to WIPE US OUT?!’ cliche, and maybe that’s what he was in the comics too, I don’t know, but it’s the job of the film to tell that story in a dynamic way, and they had two and a half hours to do it. And yet.

There should be more to this than a nondescript placeholder villain concept and a series of action set pieces that just kinda happen until they stop. At least the first Avengers had some variety in each of its action sequences, using the location and the different skills and weapons of its antagonists, whereas this one is just ‘there are robots and the good guys punched and shot them until they were all broken, the end’. Even making the city fly in the end doesn’t actually make it interesting, not least because the characters spend most of their time running around the (weirdly, perfectly stable) streets not having to deal with any consequences of being up in the air anyway, and the doomsday device is too nebulous to ratchet up any real tension about figuring out how to deal with it. The conflicts with the Maximoff twins have at least some spark of life in them, but the characters themselves are treated to an over-simplified and very contrived narrative arc that uses what they do and what they know more as plot devices than as details of actual people’s lives, leading to a cheap death for Pietro so that Wanda will be distracted enough to abandon the big ol’ doomsday button, and it’s just all so convenient. There’s no heart in any of it, and it makes the moments that try to have heart all the more embarrassing and out-of-place (don’t even get me started on what a prescribed attempt at tugging the heart-strings it is to have Hawkeye name his magnificently well-timed newborn after Pietro, because DAMN). When I said I liked this movie better than the first Avengers, I meant just that: I like this better. That’s not to suggest that it is significantly better in any sense, because it isn’t, and I can’t even argue that this one has a better story, because honestly, it doesn’t. The first film made more sense, it was just less interesting to watch, and the things about it that were contrived were contrived in different ways. The first film was weaker and more irritating on character, and character is always the most important part of a story for me, so as annoyed as I am by the major character blunders in Age of Ultron, I’m still not as annoyed as I was after The Avengers. That is damning with the faintest of praise; this is just not a particularly good movie, it makes a poor use of its cast at the best of times, delivers a sub-par action extravaganza, and the script is not half as witty as it gleefully convinces itself that it is. It comes as no surprise, I’m sure, that I am very glad a certain writer/director departed the franchise after disappointing everyone with this outing. I say I like this better than the first Avengers, but gee, it’s a close call.

#Avengers: Age of Ultron #Marvel Cinematic Universe #Bechdel Test #female representation #MCU #Age of Ultron #Avengers

[velvet-tread]

so revisiting octavia blake (especially after what we’ve seen of her in s5e06 tonight)... what’s your understanding of octavia blake, in relation to bloodreina and also as one of the most disliked characters in the fandom?

 TW – there follows some discussion of abuse so if that is one of your sensitivities, I wish you well and recommend caution with what follows. Are you asking if I still stan Octavia now she’s Blodreina? Because the answer to that is complicated but basically yes. For clarity: stanning, to me, doesn’t involve nailing my colours to the mast and then contorting myself into ever more unlikely shapes to justify every single thing my fave has ever done. It’s possible to love and emphathise with a character, while also acknowledging the terrible things they’ve done or are. Maybe I don’t need to tell you this, but maybe others need to hear it: don’t let ANYONE shame you for loving Octavia. And by that I mean if someone tries, just tune them tf out. They don’t get it, they never will. They aren’t worth your time and energy. Let that truth set you free. So yeah, I still love Octavia, with all her flaws and her sharp edges. I can’t love Blodreina, but while Blodreina is certainly Octavia, Octavia is not Blodreina. Blodreina is the very worst of Octavia. Spoiled, demanding, hard, judgemental, imperious, unyielding, cold, unempathetic and very, very violent. She is the culmination of the story of a non-person, disempowered and locked up under the floor, coming into being and being handed a sword. And power. So much power. She is a product of necessity. She is an amalgamation of Jaha’s lessons, Indra and Kane’s guidance, Kara’s support and Gaia’s teachings. She has a god complex which, imo, can only go the way of Mount Weather. By which I mean it will probably consume everything in its path before blowing to smithereens and taking at least one of our faves down with it. But while Blodreina is certainly real, let’s not get carried away with OCTAVIA IS REVEALED AS FOR THE MONSTER SHE’S BEEN ALL ALONG. Deep breaths everyone, and maybe a sip of water. Blodreina is a persona who enables Octavia to carry out the most monstrous of deeds (hi Jaha!) and live with it. Has Octavia drunk the Blodreina Koolaid? Most certainly. But Octavia embracing her worst is not the same has Octavia being the worst. Also see: Bellamy season 1 and season 3a. Would you look at that A PARALLEL WE LOVE PARALLELS. Blodreina serves a purpose for Octavia-of-the-butterflies too. Because this show is this show and we are never more than a few monologues away from “love is weakness”, Blodreina is also a protective casing that locks away Octavia’s grief, her pain and her misery, her loneliness and self-loathing, along with her vulnerability and empathy. It seems super obvious to me that Octavia’s personal journey this season, apart from trying and presumably failing to keep Wonkru intact, will be about disassociating herself from Blodreina. And that, probably, won’t come without falling spectacularly from grace and facing her pain, and reckoning with the things she’s done. Also see: Bellamy seasons 1-4. Huh. What happens when the exoskeleton crumbles? What’s underneath? What will Octavia-who-washed-Lincoln’s-wounds, come to think about Blodreina and the things she’s done in the name of her people? How will she confront the agony of being Octavia Blake, naked, piteous and vulnerable, the girl under the floor who was denied existence?

I want these things for Octavia. I want the narrative to subject her to the most abject moral scrutiny because that is what you should want for the characters you love. It’s what makes them interesting. It’s what makes them matter. ALSO SEE BELLAMY FOREVER. Now I’ve been in this fandom long enough not to expect many others to see it this way. We are balls deep in moral monochrome here in the Bellarke fandom, and while that gives me pause for a sip of tea and a short prayer to the patron saints of patience, it’s not a situation that anyone can change, least of all me. And why would I? People are free to engage with the show how they want, as long as they stay in their lane.

And look, I get why some people can’t see past some of her sins. I, too, have characters that I dislike with varying degrees of rationality. But objectively, Octavia’s level of moral turpitude is at about the same level as any of the main characters. That’s just a fact. People’s personal preferences, while as valid as any other preference, are just that: subjective opinions. Where I start to sip my tea and raise my eyes to the heavens is when people start presenting their subjective opinions as objective FUCK YOU AND YOUR INBOX truth and thanks but no. It seems to be fanon lore now that Octavia is unempathetic and…it just makes no sense. This is the girl who was filled with wonder at Earth, who refused to let Jasper die even when everyone in camp wanted him to. She saw the humanity in Lincoln when Bellamy, Clarke and Raven could not. She saw the humanity in humanity when all anyone wanted to do was kill each other until they burned in Praimfaya. Wonkru exists because Octavia inspired them with her faith in them. The only way it begins to make sense is when you consider Octavia’s actions through the prism of Bellamy’s experience – which 8/10 is how the BC fandom at least views the show. (Also valid btw. I also project onto my faves! Bellamy among them! But see above for subjective opinion vs objective fact.) With Bellamy, the lack of empathy is real. Octavia, or at least the Octavia of seasons 1-4 high key struggled to see Bellamy as a fully realised person with desires and feelings of his own. But, while this sucks for Bellamy, from Octavia’s perspective it is entirely understandable. No matter how young Bellamy seems to us, to Octavia he is her parent figure. How many of the people on here haven’t put their parents through hell from time to time? I shouldn’t have to point out the bleeding obvious here, which is that teenagers who care deeply about animal welfare, trans rights, LGBTQA+ rights, poverty and climate change can also go through phases of being absolutely fucking awful to their parents. Often, that’s because in our world, teens are subjected to an unholy amount of pressure with which they struggle to cope, and the overspill of that hurt lands on the people responsible for them. It doesn’t make them bad people. And, yes, that can, occasionally, tip over into emotional and, more rarely, physical abuse but we don’t usually call it that. We call that “teenagers being fucking awful” and I am 100% sure that this is the context the writers room is working from. Do I think it’s acceptable, or justified? Hell no. But it’s important to take these narrative threads in the context of the real-world understanding of the people who develop them. This show isn’t created in a vacuum. Now work the scenario I outlined above into a post-apocalyptic landscape with 2x traumatised victims of systemic injustice, one of whom was locked up by the other because of that injustice. Yeah. What is so interesting to me is that the blind spot Octavia has wrt Bellamy – the blind spot that denied him access to the empathy she showed everyone else - has come into play again now she’s Blodreina, but in a different way. After 6 years of having everyone kowtow to her, and after vowing not to love, suddenly Octavia is making concession after concession for her brother at huge personal risk to herself.  It might not seem like that to us, or to Bellamy (and legit! I get why, from Bellamy’s POV), but to Octavia it must seem like she’s trying SO HARD to give him what he wants within the framework of what she thinks is achievable. Consider love is weakness. Consider that she throws herself into his arms on sight, in full view of all of her people. Consider being the arbiter of life and death for 6 years. Now consider Bellamy asking her to trust him. She does and is rewarded with a sonic blast. Bellamy delivers her an ultimatum about Echo, and she concedes. She fucking concedes! When has she ever willingly conceded on anything and ESPECIALLY NOW SHE HOLDS THE POWER OF AN EMPEROR? It’s fairly obvious from the Blake siblings sparring session that Bellamy was the symbolic winner. He got through to her. Octavia NEVER forgives. But she offers Echo – the woman whose sins Octavia will never forget - a way out. When Echo and Bellamy refuse, does she banish Echo? She could do. She’s Blodreina. She’s used to doing whatever the fuck she wants. But, no. She accepts the alternative, and even helps Echo on her way. Yes, it’s brutal and Blodreina-y and serves a double purpose but still, she helps her. She’s not doing that for Echo.  She’s doing it for Bellamy. No, she’s not doing it with a winning smile and a cuddle, but that’s not Blodreina’s style. She tries to thank him for saving them, in the only way she knows how. She reaches out, and he lashes out with cold anger. And perhaps it’s deserved. No, it’s definitely deserved, but GODDAMMIT that was a “you’re dead to me” level of cruelty. Can I just roll back a second and talk about how co-dependent the Blake sibs are? Cool. A friend (I can’t remember who, sorry) once said that Bellamy and Octavia carried their cage back down to Earth with them. And for seasons 1-4 that is absolutely what happened. They are spectacularly co-dependent. Bellamy depends on her to give him purpose, and a direction and reason to live. Octavia depends on him to absorb the overspill of her hurt, to push against, to take the blame for all of the ills in her life. It sucks for them both, and they’re TRAPPED, so terribly trapped, and neither is the other’s jailer but neither can walk away either. And just, what strikes me about the interactions we saw in the sneak peek for 507 is that maybe, FINALLY, Bellamy has broken free of their co-dependent relationship.  He may not even realise it yet, but he has completely re-centred his world around Spacekru now. And I think, that if push comes to shove, he will prioritise Spacekru above Octavia, even if it hurts them both.  It doesn’t mean he loves Octavia any less, but after 6 years of love and support and peace and quiet, Bellamy has broken out of the cage. Bellamy is free. Excuse me while I cry tears of joy. But Octavia isn’t free. Octavia hasn’t had 6 years of peace and support and love. Octavia’s life has been marked by trauma from the moment of her birth, and the trauma hasn’t let up for a single goddamned second it just keeps coming and coming and coming until all she has is her walls and an alter-ego and the hope that she can keep Wonkru together and her brother by her side. Believe me when I say that Octavia is still very much trapped inside the cage which Bellamy has now vacated. IT IS ALL VERY HEARTBREAKING OKAY. IT HURTS. So yes, I still love Octavia and I am ready to see her again when Blodreina falls.

#rach answers #octavia blake #Bellamy Blake #the blake siblings #Octavia positivity #pro Octavia blake

[blue-pincushion]

TAGGED BY: @intolerablestrength woah thanks so much!!! O: TAGGING: oh shit here we go ! @team-phantom / @greendrums69 , @crimsonxblur , @1110-01111011 , @diamondintherouge / @wishesareeternal , @mercenaries-for-hire , @terminalvelocityau (pick your fave muse rn!) , @rothotnik , @fishing-purple-cat , @blunderbots , @birdboyofbabylon !

[ throwing this under a read more because it got long OOPS ]

—    BASICS.

▸     IS    YOUR    MUSE    TALL    /    SHORT    /    AVERAGE ? SHORT. hes literally 3′3 he’s the size of a hecking toddler but that’s what you get for being a mobian hedgehog lmfao. by mobian standards i’d say he’s probably average i guess? some mobians are way bigger and some are smaller than him it kinda varies from species to species. by mobian hedgehog standards i’d say he’s probably still average, maybe a little bit taller than the average hedgehog but yeah lmao

▸      ARE    THEY    OKAY    WITH    THEIR    HEIGHT ? it doesn’t really bother him that much until he’s forced to be compared to humans tbh like, especially when it comes to height restrictions for certain human contraptions such as a roller coaster designed for humans that he’s too small to ride honestly that shit ticks him off so much LET HIM RIDE IT DAMN IT

▸      WHAT’S    THEIR    HAIR    LIKE ? long, pointy, and blue. LOL no but for real his fur texture is short and soft, a little fuzzy in some places, although where it nears his back his hair becomes very tough and pointy and it’s hard to see where his fur ends and his quills begin since the color makes them blend together so much. if you look closely you can see all the individual quills he’s got, they kinda just grow a certain way that makes them clump together in those spikes you see on his head and back. they can still be styled though although it’s not the most comfortable experience

▸     DO    THEY    SPEND    A    LOT    OF    TIME    ON    THEIR    HAIR     /    GROOMING ? the most grooming sonic does is a quick shower, scrub down with some soap, and maybe brush some knots out of his fur if it’s bugging him. he’s absolutely the worst with remembering to groom his quills though and Tails has had to pluck loose ones out of Sonic many times before because it was driving the hedgehog nuts

sonic doesn’t really style his quills, they just are naturally spiked that way

▸      DOES   YOUR   MUSE   CARE   ABOUT   THEIR   APPEARANCE   /   WHAT    OTHERS    THINK ? not really! he’s confident in his looks so he doesn’t really worry much, although admittedly he’s a lil insecure about the very thin patch of fur on his tummy where you see that tan circle because he’s got OTHER male hedgehog friends who’ve got floof. how come he didn’t inherent his dad’s floof?? :c not cool

does he care about what others think about his appearance? nope he gets constant validation all the time from adoring fans who consider him to be a dream boat so honestly he’s not worried. he’s got his own style and is comfortable with it

—    PREFERENCES.

▸     INDOORS    OR    OUTDOORS ? 

outdoors absolutely. this is sonic the freakin hedgehog come ON man. there’s no room to run inside! there’s no fresh air! no open space! where’s he gonna get his adventure fix if he’s just stuck inside all day? booooo!

▸     RAIN    OR    SUNSHINE ?   both! while sonic very much enjoys the sun and finding a warm patch of sunlight to nap in, rain is also one of his favorite types of weather too. while he may be afraid of deep water, any other forms of experiencing water is lovely and the rain is really refreshing to run and splash in ▸     FOREST    OR    BEACH ?   okay sonic admittedly loves the beach and grew up with one literally a 2 minute walk away from his house but since there’s not much really to do besides look at how pretty the beach is he’ll have to go with forests. more stuff to explore and what not tbh. ▸     PRECIOUS    METALS    OR    GEMS ?   Gems for sure. he’s had a lot of fun playing with precious gems 👀 ▸     FLOWERS    OR    PERFUMES ? Oh for sure flowers, Sonic’s a huge flower and nature enthusiast and he enjoys the natural floral scents that they produce, plus they’re very pretty! ▸     PERSONALITY    OR    APPEARANCE ?   Personality hands down. if the person just LOOKS nice but has no personality then whats the point ??  ▸     BEING    ALONE    OR    BEING    IN    A    CROWD ?   it kinda depends. sonic doesn’t mind being in the presence of a lot of people but he’d prefer if he didn’t have all their attention and wasn’t lost in the throng of it. he’d rather be off to the side where he can do his own thing but still enjoy the presence of others. he’s a weird extrovert like that LOL ▸     ORDER    OR    ANARCHY ?   While he understands that order is important and it’s good for people to have moral structure in their lives, sometimes he just can’t do with the rules set in stone. sonic may be a good guy but in his mind sometimes being the good guy means you gotta break the rules  ▸     PAINFUL    TRUTHS    OR    WHITE    LIES ?  It... depends, honestly. is the painful truth about him or someone/something else? is he the one lying or is he the one being lied to?

sonic has a really bad habit with compulsively lying about his own well being so that others don’t worry about him, but when others lie to him about something (if it’s a really important something, not like minor stuff--- minor stuff he can let slide) then he Can’t Stand That. Which makes him a pretty huge hypocrite for hating white lies from other people but in his mind’s eye he puts other people first before him because he’s so darn selfless so it’s not really a big deal he’s sacrificing his well being for other’s right? he’s saving lives and making people happy right ?

anyway as far as the painful truth goes, as long as it doesn’t revolve around his personal feelings then he can manage it. i guess he prefers the painful truth in that sense, considering he’s carefully optimistic 

▸     SCIENCE    OR    MAGIC ?   ....eh. honestly he’s seen it all. at this point sonic just kinda  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ whatever man i can turn golden and super powerful with these magical rocks?? i can fight literal time gods with the rest of time space & reality crumbling around me and then re-set an entire timeline?? my brother can build a machine that can pinpoint my vital signature when i’m stuck in some weird void dimension??? aight. sounds fair. ▸     PEACE    OR    CONFLICT ?   Peace tbh, although after a while it does get a little boring if there’s no conflict for him to resolve--- being the hero he is. ▸     NIGHT    OR    DAY ?  

Either’s fine tbh, he doesn’t really have a preference. although sometimes night makes him feel a little on edge thanks to sonic unleashed ▸     DUSK    OR    DAWN ? 

he’s kinda indifferent about either, and isn’t really a fan of paying attention to the sun’s movements around these times of the day anyway bc it brings back unpleasant memories. thanks sonic unleashed

▸     WARMTH    OR    COLD  ? 

warmth pls he has short fur and was born on a tropical island, being cold sucks

▸     MANY   ACQUAINTANCES    OR    A    FEW    CLOSE    FRIENDS ? 

both ? sonic has a few close friends and many acquaintances tbh.

▸     READING    OR    PLAYING    A    GAME ?  

PLAYING A GAME ABSOLUTELY. reading just doesn’t cut it for this hedgehog’s overactive brain he needs something he can physically engage in somehow and while he may enjoy a good story he has to be receiving it in a way that keeps his attention and if he’s just stuck sitting there and staring at a page he will lose focus pretty quick.

—    QUESTIONNAIRE.

▸      WHAT    ARE    SOME    OF    YOUR    MUSE’S    BAD    HABITS ? -lying (about his well being) and hiding when he is hurt emotionally/physically -letting his selfless nature take control to the point where it’s damaging his own health -isolating himself with his problems so other people don’t have to deal with it -running away from situations when he can’t understand his feelings -making impulsive decisions that he doesn’t always think through  

▸      HAS    YOUR    MUSE    LOST    ANYONE    CLOSE    TO    THEM ?      HOW    HAS    IT    AFFECTED    THEM ? sonic’s first experience with losing a loved one was his own father, who unfortunately died saving sonic’s life from drowning in a tsunami. it was what  really kick started a lot of what you see in the blue hedgehog today, tbh. his drive to help and save others, his resolve over accepting that bad things happen and you can’t always control that no matter what you do... you can thank his mom for that btw. she helped sway him away from completely internalizing this event and taught him some very important life lessons.

since then Sonic has been no stranger to loss but he’s gotten good at handling it over the years, seeing as he’s had to say goodbye to many people in his life. it still hurts, though. he will do everything in his power to not lose those people who hold that place in his heart

▸      WHAT    ARE    SOME    FOND    MEMORIES    YOUR    MUSE    HAS ?  

flying in his grandpa’s plane for the first time, it was the coolest thing he’d ever experienced in his life at the time. 

another time would be soaring above the city tops of grand metropolis with his teammates (in sonic heroes), like honestly traveling as that trio for a while was such a thrill and he sometimes misses those days

▸     IS    IT    EASY    FOR    YOUR    MUSE    TO    KILL ? ....not really, no. sonic really doesn’t like killing and will do just about anything to avoid doing it unless it really, really comes down to the only option he has. and let me tell you, sonic takes no pride in being responsible for the death of someone else, no matter who that person is.

▸      WHAT’S    IT    LIKE    WHEN    YOUR    MUSE    BREAKS    DOWN ?

oh boy.

sonic’s breakdowns are honestly really subtle, and that’s because they’re a slow process that consists of him cracking and crumbling and then trying to hold it together and build himself back up because he can’t afford to break down and then cracking and crumbling again but never really allowing himself to have that moment where he actually snaps and falls apart.

the signs you’ll want to look out for will be him avoiding people way more often than usual, becoming irritable and his temper flaring up, exhaustion from lack of getting amounts proper sleep, he pretty much starts to self destruct a little bit and it’s not a pretty sight. it’s why he especially tries to avoid people when he gets like this because he doesn’t want them to see whats actually going on.

▸      IS    YOUR    MUSE    CAPABLE    OF    TRUSTING    SOMEONE    WITH    THEIR    LIFE ? there’s lots of people he’d trust with his life tbh

▸      WHAT’S    YOUR    MUSE    LIKE    WHEN    THEY’RE    IN    LOVE ?

,,,, man.

ok, sonic is such a huge sap and he hates it LOL. he’ll suddenly catch himself thinking all wistfully about the person he’s in love with and will be like “really?? right in front of my salad??” LMAO it’s just in his nature to be cheesy and sappy and do sweet things for the person of his affections because that’s exactly how his dad was but at the same time he’ll mentally take a second to point out how lame it is and he embarrasses himself over it ashdfkd

besides that, though, sonic is a real big sweet heart, and he’ll really want to try to express to that person how much he loves them but he’d also fear this whole romantic side of him coming out will interfere with his love of adventure. the idea of committing himself to one specific person in a way that makes them feel like his whole world to him is a bit scary to sonic, because he knows that he can’t really afford that when he’s out here saving lives and going on adventures. how could he possibly have the time for that, anyway? can this person keep up with him? would he be willing to slow down for that person? it just begs so many different questions and forces sonic to face possible changes to his entire way of living and it freaks him out a little bit.

which is why he tends to avoid romantic topics in general, and also why when he gets a crush on someone he goes straight into panic mode LOL. he’d honestly rather stay friends with the person and quietly adore them in his own time, maybe by sending them gifts or dropping by their place on occasion, DEFINITELY, AT LEAST making an effort to spend a little bit more time with that person than anyone else. 

#{ tagged. } 🌀 #{ headcanons. } i just only have a steadfast heart of gold! 🌀 #// i was shocked to see how similar my muse is to your's ! they seem like they'd get along! #// thanks so much for the tag btw!!!

[isroselalondebisexual]

*hesitantly slides my trollswapped kids for you to analyze* Rose Peixes (I thought Rose with a horrorterror for a mom figure would be a neat concept), Dave Ampora, John Vantas, Jade Megido

Rose Peixes! Queen of Alternia, with a shot for the throne, a giant huge large big thousand-tentacled lusus for a mom. Gl'bgolyb is a lusus that makes demands of her charge, but we know from Feferi that she also does engage with her child frequently. Feferi spoke with her lusus, and learned about the encroaching destruction of the universe from her, and then was also able to speak with other horror terrors, which were more vast and horrifying than their emissary, and make friends with them AND gain a boon, so what I can glean from that is that Gl’bgolyb, despite having relatively high demand, was also pretty warm and loving as far as lususes go. Maybe not an authoritative parenting style all across, because she did make high demands and there WAS threat of real and devastating consequences, but not all parents are perfect. Anyway, Rose, raised with all the power in the world, and a lusus that loved her but required some pretty tasking stuff from her with threat of killing her friends if she didn’t cooperate, would result in Rose being a very, very driven person, I think. The throne is hers to seize, if she can fight for it, Alternia is hers to govern, and Rose is not someone to half-ass things. She would be privileged, as anyone from that station would be, and maybe not fully understand the social order on account of being very young still, plus she would be socialized with Alternia’s definition of “fairness,” but I think she would be more concerned with personal achievement than doing stuff like Trizza tbh. She’s relentless, driven, always clawing for bigger, better, harder, faster, someone with a ravenous pursuit of excellence, someone who is dissatisfied with herself unless her idea of perfection is achieved. Rose Peixes and Azula from Avatar would probably be pretty similar tbeh. She’s here to WIN. As Seer of Life, Rose would be the one to foresee the “onward march of positive progress.” That’s pulled straight from the extended zodiac page, btw. Hussie tells us that Life players are “concerned with the betterment of themselves and those around them,” so Rose is all about seeing the way things can be improved, interested in using her sight to propel things forward, make them better, refine them, take the future by the horns and drive it in the direction of progress. Yes, she’s spoiled and privileged, and yes, she needs to learn that her own definition of progress might not always match with other’s, but Rose likes to learn and is quick to adapt to new information, so I have full confidence that Rose Peixes, Seer of Life, would be a harbinger of that which is good.

Dave Ampora, hmmmm. Well, his attention seeking ways are going nowhere. Dave gets raised at the top of the spectrum, full royalty, with only one person in all the world who outranks him by blood, and he just so happens to be childhood best friends/moirails with her. Definitely still a hipster, definitely still takes photographs of weird deep-sea shit and scenic ocean views, absolutely looks up to and adores his ancestor a lot, creating an ideal image of him in his brain that he tries to pursue. Living in the wrecked ship of his ancestor instead of an actual hive is also a very hipster thing to do sooooo. Probably doesn’t like it when people tell him that ancestors aren’t real, or that his was lame. Rose is probably the one telling him how lame his ancestor was tbeh. Dave VERY likely wouldn’t want to help Rose with feeding Gl’bgolyb, that doesn’t strike me as something Dave would want to do, or that Rose would need help with, so he’s more focused on the emotional and caretaking elements of their moirallegiance. Primarily: Rose go the fuck to sleep it’s 3 in the afternoon the sun’s been up for hours I don’t care if you haven’t gotten it “just right” yet you’re never gonna get it “just right” because you’re a fucking perfectionist now get inside your goddamned ‘coon you absolute madwoman or so help me god I’ll swim down there and dunk you in that pile of slime myshellf! Needs constant validation for himself, which on one hand, that’s fine, on the other, he doesn’t ever want to confront when he’s been the one to make a mistake, or that he’s the one who’s overstepped, and that’s something he has to work on and work through, as someone born into immense wealth and power. As Knight of Hope, his task is as the group cheerleader, sort of. He’s the one protecting and sustaining everyone’s ability to look up, look forward, he’s the one that helps and allows Rose to pursue that better future, he’s the one giving John the emotional support and assurance that yes, John is valued and loved and definitely one of the group and not an outsider, Dave is the one to offer Jade support when she thinks the world is resting squarely on her own shoulders and help her keep her cheery disposition, even when life looks hard. He is an odd mix of deeply empathetic and loving, but also selfish at times, and too certain of his own rightness.

John Vantas has a screechy dad and mutant blood, which means he’s really, really good at laughing off conflict. If someone is mad at him, it doesn’t really touch him, which, on one hand, is good for conflict deescalation because it means he’s never sending off the signals that would lead to a back and forth of conflict getting worse and worse and worse. On the other, it can make having serious conversations with him an ABSOLUTE nightmare, because John isn’t taking them SERIOUSLY and he needs to LISTEN! Probably also has a very fatalistic sense of humor, as a way of coping with the fact that he could die at pretty much literally any second. “Whoops, almost got hit by a bus, ahaha, should’ve moved into that street a little faster ;B” *minor inconvenience happens* “Guess I’ll die.” It doesn’t help that Alternia is really violent and unsafe just, like, in general. Every goddamned troll has PTSD and I will stand by that. But humor is John’s coping mechanism, as well as just, he’s a dude who likes a laugh. He’s here for a good time, not a long time. Since he’s a mutant, he defines himself in society primarily based on who he’s friends with! With the Heiress and a fishprince as his good friends, plus his dear sweet darling burgundy moirail, that makes him… relatively well off, actually? He’s not sure how this is happening, but he does know that he loves Rose Dave and Jade so so so so much and ngl I think flush DaveJohn and pitch, playfully-competitive “i’m a bigger little shit than you are” JohnRose would be… excellent… I ship everything y’all I don’t know what you’re expecting of me. He puts a LOT of stock in his relationships with his friends, which unfortunately means that he gets very depressed if he’s left alone for too long. He’s an extrovert with a blood mutation that makes it so he can’t actually GO OUT and engage in activities for fear of revealing his blood color. How does he deal with it? More fatalistic humor. Hahaha… he’s so lonely… haha… At least Jade knows, that’s probably an immense comfort, and when Dave and Rose find out Dave’s immediate assurances that they still love him and this doesn��t change anything would do wonders for John’s outlook on life, as is Dave’s role. As Heir of Blood, I mentioned this already but John places a LOT of his identity in his bonds with others. In many ways, his quest is learning how to balance that with constructing a personal identity. He’s a lowblood, offspectrum mutant on Alternia, that doesn’t allow for a lot of individual value to be placed on himself, so that’s something he’s got to learn and grow away from, but at the same time, his friends are his anchors, what keeps him sane and happy and healthy, so it’s important too for him to grow alongside them, entwined with them, part of their group, part of the whole, part of the community that is no longer stacked unfairly against him. It’s a balance, but he’ll find it.

Jade Megido, raised by a kangaram, low socioeconomic status but magic powers that can break mountains. Nothing can possibly go wrong with this. She’s pretty relentlessly positive, angry at the society that labels her as “lesser” but with a sort of learned helplessness about her that makes her think there’s nothing truly to be done to fight back against it. So fuck the system altogether then! She’s here for a good time, not a long time, her lifespan is short and that’s provided she can even make it that long! So she’s gonna go PET BARKBEASTS and DO SCIENCE and EXPLORE THOSE COOL RUINS NEAR HER HIVE and visit her moirail who she loves dearly. She doesn’t have any of the funding necessary to get the parts and chemicals that she needs on her own, but luckily for her Dave is a people pleaser and vastly wealthy and also flush with her moirail so she can pester him for favors. She fears neither god nor death, pass her some fucking robot parts. A real “Fuckit” mentality, I think, but here to have a good time! Still deeply compassionate as a person, and still lying about how sucky her situation truly is, to her friends and also to herself. She likes to think of herself as just making the most of a bad situation but really she’s just avoiding confronting the fact that Alternia really, really SUCKS for warmbloods and there’s nothing she, one single person, can do in the face of the vastness of it all. As Witch of Time, she is confronted with her own corpse again and again and again, forcing her to look at the fact that life isn’t fair and doesn’t care about her, that she’s mortal, that death comes for them all. But as Witch, she is given the opportunity to CHANGE things. She’s handed the ability to make a difference, to grab the Game and make it do as she tells it to. And so she must first confront her own mortality, and then step forward and change it, she must learn confidence and drive. She cannot just ignore or lie about her problems, she must fix them, and that is where her growth lies. This has some immediate backlash of making Jade think, once she realizes that change lies in her hands, that she is responsible for everything, and that the tables have been flipped entirely and she stands alone as the sole savior of their group. But Rose is there with her sight, and Dave is there with encouragement and compassion, and John is always there to help her, listen to her, talk with her, and Jade is not alone in this. As always, their success lies in all of their strengths working together, and they are triumphant as a team.

#Rose Lalonde #Dave Strider #John Egbert #Jade Harley #Rose Peixes #Dave Ampora #John Vantas #Jade Megido #Dave #moirail #John #Jade #JadeRose #JohnRose #DaveJohn #JohnDave #i still don't know which one of those is the ship name #Homestuck #homestuck meta #trollswap #analysis #trollstuck #answers

[casualarsonist]

Homefront: The Revolution review

Homefront: The Revolution is an ambitious FPS marred by its fraught development cycle. I was quite kind in a first-impressions review I did for this game, encouraging people to buy it for the insanely good sale price of £9, and whilst having played through and completed the game and its DLC ultimately leaves me with positive feelings on the whole, my recommendation is quite conditional.

H:TR is a semi-open world FPS about a silly alternate history in which North Korea invades the USA. NK led the digital tech boom in the 70s and dominated the US market with their technology. In the present day the US economy is failing and the country is globally disliked after numerous Middle Eastern wars, and after defaulting on a debt to NK they are invaded. The world is apparently okay with this, as it is performed under the facade of humanitarian aid, but NK's methods of control and suppression are brutal, and you begin the game finding yourself part of a revolutionary uprising to take back Philadelphia.

You are Ethan Brady, and in the base game are afflicted with a malady known as 'badly realised silent protagonist’. Sadly, your quality of life is heavily impacted as you immediately find yourself in numerous dire situations that could be easily sorted out if you could just find it within you to speak, but it’s not to be. What starts as an awkward and inappropriate use of the trope becomes full-on meta towards the end when at one point you operate a literal camera, which is ironic given that for the greater part of the game, a camera is all you are, despite the writer's best intentions to portray you as an active part of any given cutscene.

Your general goal is to liberate zones of KPA incursion, and you'll find yourself in one of two types of areas as the story progresses. Red zones are restricted to the public and the KPA will fire on sight. The red zones can be cleared by conquering numerous 'strike points' that free a small area of KPA troops and establish revolution forces. Your revolutionaries then dot the free zones, coming to your aid when you recruit them in a drop-in-drop-out system. Recruiting them is easy and you feel powerful when you have a clutch of soldiers at your side, although once you figure out how to take a strike point out on your own, you fellow soldiers may become an afterthought. Once you’ve cleared the entire zone, a mission will trigger that will drive you into a yellow zone - an inhabited area in which the KPA won’t shoot on sight, but set off an alarm and you’ll have to hide in order to escape their aggression. You’ll complete missions here whilst rallying the public behind you until they’re ready to revolt, after which you can begin liberating the zone as before. Liberating the zones is fun, but it is most of what you’ll be doing in the game. There’s a definite sense of repetition to the gameplay that may set in, however clever level design and nicely sculpted landscapes help to mitigate some of that feeling. The world appears meticulously designed, giving you a great freedom of movement and choice in tackling your objective. 

Initially the KPA feel rather intelligent in a broader sense, in that if you fire an unsilenced weapon they will come from off-screen to investigate, and if you set off an alarm they relentlessly track you whilst you are engaging in open fire, however upon closer inspection I noticed numerous AI quirks and bugs in which enemies stood still, failed to notice my presence, ignored the fact that they were being pelted with bullets, or simply froze in place.

It’s worth mentioning though that the combat is a lot of fun. The way the KPA are designed to attack on sight in the red zones (but you can escape by fleeing or eliminating all witnesses), and be on guard the yellow zones (but any kind of open aggression will trigger an alarm that will bring incessant enemy troops), allows for lots of hit-and-run guerrilla-style attacks, and oftentimes you will start a fight confident only to have something tiny and unexpected go wrong and you find yourself fleeing for your life. The flow of combat feels quite dynamic and it rarely feels like there is no way to change your situation should you be fighting against the odds, and although the checkpoint save system can be, at times, extremely frustrating, it doesn’t hurt to know that if you screw up and die, you’re going to be inconvenienced in terms of your real time, which gives the pitched battles a sense of immediate stakes.

However, when we talk about AI, or graphics, or story,  or any one of half a dozen topics, we come to a consistent theme permeating H:TR as a whole – a tug of war between elements that sell you, and elements that expose the game as a daft and sometimes broken affair. The standalone base game is not something that I would recommend for full retail price, as the AI problems and awkward silent protagonist are, sadly, the tip of the iceberg. There are many aspects of the game that are very buggy.

It’s worth keeping in mind before you buy that H:TR’s development process was a nightmare. The IP belonged to THQ and was to be developed by Crytek UK before THQ went out of business. Crytek bought the rights and then came into financial problems of their own, transferring the rights to the Deep Silver’s parent company before the game was finally handled by Dambuster, a studio comprised of members of the original Crytek UK. It was a mess, and caused massive problems for the developers both practically and mentally, as noted by the touching thank you message at the end of the credits. However, this doesn’t change the fact that my experience was marred start-to-finish by constant and imposing graphical glitches, specifically one in which a portion of the screen would turn a certain colour, usually black, which would then creep to obscure my entire view. This could often be stopped by moving the camera elsewhere, but would often happen in cutscenes in which I had no control over the camera and it would black-out everything on screen. I also noticed instances of bad dialogue pacing in which the sound files don’t kick in until 10 seconds after the last line is uttered, leaving all the characters on screen standing around in silence like idiots and wasting my time, as well as missing ambient sounds that eat away at immersion and expose the behind-the-scenes technical troubles. You may not have all these issues – I noticed that even though my frame rate was solid on High settings, it was very taxing on my GPU, and other, better rigs might not have such problems, but it’s still worth noting that you may notice some glaring technical issues during play.

Thus, had it been just the base game that I played (and I started writing this review before playing the DLC, after which I began a rewrite), I wouldn’t recommend it without a heavy discount, simply for the pervasiveness of the technical problems I experienced. However, the DLC goes a long way to correcting and even redeeming the issues experienced in the main game. There are 3 DLC packs – Voice of the Revolution, a 1 hour long prologue in which you play as Walker (a somewhat central NPC in the main game) immediately before the events of the game; Aftermath, a couple of hours following the end of the main game in which you play as Ethan (now with a voice!) sent on a rescue mission; and Beyond The Walls, another couple of hours playing as Ethan, and the true finale of the game.

Content-wise, the DLC rights some of the wrongs in the base game. Ethan is a likable character when he’s allowed a personality. There’s one jibe about how he was better liked when he kept his mouth shut, but I found it easy to connect with him and start caring for him, even in the mere 3-4 hours you spend getting to hear him. The narrative is much more directed in the DLC, and this, paired with Ethan being voiced, means the DLC hits its emotional mark a lot better. VOTR is really short and carries a ‘Metro’ vibe as you battle raiders in the subways, and in terms of overall worth is neither here nor there. It’s nice to take a spin in the boots of a rather central main-game character, but it’s really quite short. Aftermath is a decent bit of fun, although again amounting to little more than a single mission. Its greatest achievement is in going some way towards establishing an emotional connection to two of the main characters that was all but lacking up until this point. BTW is the best bit of DLC in my opinion, and takes you out of the city into the sparsely patrolled countryside. There’s a pitched battle towards the end that really feels like a genuine struggle, the stakes feel high, and the ending left me genuinely emotional. The technical problems still appeared in the DLC, but being shorter and more directed, I didn’t feel the content was hindered quite so much by them, relatively speaking. Because the levels are more linear, they allow for a greater motivation in your actions and the pacing is tightly controlled. Had the main game itself involved a greater amount of these directed sections, perhaps there would have been a better sense of pacing and less of a feeling of repetition.

So after playing the DLC, my final opinion of H:TR as a whole changed wildly. Obviously, the developers had a hell of a time even getting it off the ground, and for all that is flawed about the main game, it can’t be said that it’s not highly ambitious in many important ways. But be aware that there are bugs, and while the bugs remain, I cannot recommend the main game alone for anything other than a heavy discount. Get it with the DLC, however, (it cost me £9 all up in a great sale) and I’d call that a steal. I’d still not recommend it for the full price tag, but even if the discount were half that, I’d say that it’d still be worth it.

7/10

Good 

#homefront #the #revolution #video #game #review #dambuster #deep #silver #thq