#they just serve to make the character even more the paragon of virtue which again is just unrealistic

[thecoverblog]

Gene Colan Saves Daredevil, Pedal to the Devil #2

The Man Without Fear, or a Consistent Artist Halfway through his introductory run of Daredevil, Stan Lee faced two looming threats, artistic consistency and painful mediocrity. For the entire preceding run of the series, Lee had been unable to nail down long term artists. This resulted in a cycle of the book coming to a screeching halt just as it is picking up speed. The chemistry and collaboration between writer and artist never seemed to truly click, with the slight exception of John Romita Sr. However even Romita’s run would be quite short at the end of the day compared to Lee himself. Despite the rotating bullpen of artists, the book always looked good and the art was never distracting or particularly lacking. Being passable actually highlighted the main issue facing The Man Without Fear, his identity.

As outlined in the previous post for this series, there is a certain amount of crossover between Daredevil and Spider-Man design wise, with their bright red costumes and contraptions to swing across the city. Add on top that Matt Murdock doesn’t have flashy powers, and throw in some truly generic villains, and you have a recipe for the blandest superhero comic around, especially with Spidey on sale at the same time. The saving grace of the first half of Lee’s run is the melodramatic plots and character beats which essentially bookend each issue.

Nearly two years in though, something seems to click and the book makes some big changes. First and foremost, Gene Colan is brought in on pencils for the remainder of Lee’s run, barring the final issue, which is forgivably given to Barry Smith. Colan’s work will elevate the book from an amusing bit of entertainment history into a more digestible modern experience. Next to the artistic jump, the stories will actually revert, almost re playing the hits.

The plots bring back older villains, and puts the characters into positions where their development retreads, but does so with much more intention and room to breathe. It is as though the story takes a step back and realizes that it’s going to be much more long running than the creator’s initially predicted, and as a result attempts to flesh out the ideas that have already been presented. This rehashing may seem tedious to some, but the overall package is so much more enjoyable, it arguably turns the book around for the better.

Karen, Matt, and Foggy

The cast of Daredevil stays relatively consistent as the series extends past year two, despite the character’s frequent assertions and attempts to the contrary. Each of the main trio makes their own bold exit from the central law office, for varying durations and to differing degrees of dramatic success. The messy law office thrives off spontaneous decisions and some deep traumas.

There’s not a lot of personality deviation from their introduction, each keeping a facade of the mild mannered office worker, while sharing more petty and self serving thoughts with the reader. Instead of sweeping changes Lee opts to run back each of the characters and hit their best beats again and more thoroughly. The relationship between Matt and Karen, Foggy and Daredevil, or any of the cast’s career pursuits are mirrors of the previous storylines, but with more vibrant art and extended time.

This approach makes sense if the title and company was gaining lots of readers back on the publication date. There’s a good chance Lee and company had no idea which of Marvel’s characters would last for decades as opposed to months, so they would lead with their best foot forward. It does sap a bit of energy from the story’s momentum once the parallels become clear, but the extra development time elevates the neat aspects of the first portion of the run into genuinely captivating ideas.

The group is flawed and weird and petty and perfect. The three are all far from paragons of virtue, with a hundred things for which each one of them could be criticized. Their worse actions though are always clearly fueled by insecurities and personal woes, in a way that keeps the reader betting on these losing dogs. As the readthrough progresses hopefully there will be some long term shifts in the dynamics of the main group, as there will definitely be tonal changes for the entire book.

Mike Murdock, the True Daredevil

The most enjoyable story beat that Lee hammers home through his run is the third alter ego of Matt Murdock and Daredevil, that of his own twin brother Mike. With a completely flipped, extroverted personality, Mike does and says everything that Matt doesn’t. He zings Foggy and treats Karen with both open admiration and misogyny, which he otherwise would hold back. The interactions with Mike are consistently funny, and become quite distinct when conceptualizing just how broken a man has to be to deceive his two closest friends into thinking he is his own twin brother.

Matt, who is secretly Mike, who is secretly Daredevil, who is secretly blind, who secretly is also… Thor? The idea of a secret identity is explored rigorously by this series, and in many ways finds the limits of the concept. The book sees just about every combination of fake outs and surprise reveals between alter egos and costume swaps. Unfortunately superhero comics will fail to recognize tired tropes in perpetuity, making the entire concept feel a little like something that’s been seen before. However nothing out stays its welcome in regards to Mike, and the sheer absurdity of making an alternate personality such a prominent aspect of the story is an effective hook.

Beauty in Simplicity

For this run of Daredevil there is a distinct setup of a status quo vs unexpected interruption dynamic. Essentially the issue to issue plot revolves around the three person law office, vigilante and all, facing a threat that will upset their established everyday routine. Whether it’s a maniacal villain trying to murder Daredevil or a job opportunity for Karen, the obstacles facing the characters tend to be surprises that put the protagonist on the back foot. There is no overarching goal to the series or the hero, and they are both placed in positions where they are reacting as opposed to pursuing a specific end.

The organization of the story saps a lot of the narrative drama, as it is clear that most things will return to normal quite quickly, if there is even substantive change to begin with. However what it does establish is a reusable base, one that the creative team can use to create a consistent and long running comic. The tone and main cast become relatable and thorough as they are continually explored.

Each arc lasts only a few issues and generally starts with the simple premise of a vigilante and his law office. Quickly the convulsions of the series are added, with the heroes being as messy as the villains, and then all is right and finished with a bow at the end, and the good guy winning. The repetition makes binge reading a bit of a slog, but would have worked well for continually drawing in new readers or as a weekly pick up. The interactions are witty, the plots are bonkers, and the main drag for the series is it does not feel fresh.

Get Your Words Outta My Comic

The nearly twenty five issues of idling story are almost entirely saved by the work of the series' new artist Gene Colan. The step up in consistency and quality are an equal testament to improved comic making and maintaining a primary artist, as well as to the talent of Colan. When the plot is less than engaging, the propelling force of the book really falls to the art. In the case of Colan’s run he rises to the occasion, and brings Lee up with him. The longtime writer may be at the peak of his dialogue powers in this run, writing smart wit and snark more than obtuse unnecessary descriptions.

The fact may be that Colan’s vibrant and clear illustrations simply did not necessitate any of the extraneous bubbles explaining what the art is meant to be. Equally true could be that the quality of the work was lessened when crammed with too many words and white spaces. Either way an improvement in art direction and a more focused writing style proved to be a recipe to fix the more prevalent drawbacks of the earlier issues.

The best example from this batch of stories is when Daredevil faces the Jester. Much like the other recent arcs, the formula is a weird and specifically themed villain has shown up to fight Daredevil and be defeated over three or four issues. The Jester is actually one of the longer arcs and the story is a pure slog when revisited today when clown villains are among the most played out tropes in the medium.

The Jester saga is completely worth reading for the art alone. Colan decides to play with the panels in ways that are unique for the relatively tame title, and heavily utilizes full pages of art. The dynamism from the integration of these techniques infuse the series with a little more heart, and sparks a bit of interest. Together with the panel to panel quality and the longevity of the artist on the series, this becomes a clear leader in the title’s early runs. Issue forty nine is the last for Colan but only for a bit, as he will return to collaborate with new staple writer Roy Thomas in just a few issues.

Closing Arguments

With the well established creators Stan Lee and Gene Colan both firing on all cylinders, Daredevil becomes a comic that can stand against the test of time. The stories are dated, and by modern standards even the art may be considered simple. The dialogue and early forms of dynamism make all the difference, and present a package that is a lot of fun even from a contemporary view. It’s not necessarily a great binge, and substantively isn’t the deepest comic around, but with a little patience the book becomes simple, pure hijinks and melodrama.

Enjoyable at the peak and forgettable at the lowest points, issue fifty of Daredevil sees Lee’s run come to a close. Unceremoniously departing in the middle of an arc, Lee will transition into an editor role and hand the writing duties over to Roy Thomas. As iconic as his style has proven to be, it feels like the right time for a change in creative direction. Seemingly Lee had drained himself of any more Daredevil stories, but had laid the groundwork that would facilitate the ideas and work of other writers for decades.

Citation Station

The Cover Original Article

Daredevil, Issues 25-50

25-50 written by Stan Lee

25-49 art by Gene Colan

50 art by Barry Smith

Daredevil #33, Art By Gene Colan

#comics #books #comics review #daredevil #marvel comics #marvel #review

[daz4i]

Hey, idk if it's something you talked about before, but what is your opinion on the unused Goro Akechi Mementos request? It is very interesting to me, especially in a way that it parallels Akechi's own story 🤔 "Not everyone has the luxury of becoming heroes of their own story" felt... personal I would say?

The whole request was about how a victim is not always an innocent person ("It was astounding to see you all so ready to accept the victim as some blameless paragon of virtue") which does fit Akechi's narrative. In some way it brings up a concept of "ideal victim" and how in many ways victims won't fit its narrow criteria.

Also I wonder if you think Akechi knew all details of that specific case before passing it on to Akiren & other Phantom Thieves like Makoto accused him of?

AH SORRY FOR THE LATE REPLY AND THANK YOU FOR THE ASK!!!!!!!!

i agree with makoto lol i def think he knew all the details ahead of time and planned the whole thing to be extra passive agressive, idk if it's bc it's more of a fan translation (or at least i think the version i saw was??) that makes things feel Fake or if it all feels very orchastrated on purpose to make you figure it out, but it works either way heh, it's very in character for him tbh

i think it's a really interesting side quest! i wish there was a chance to play through it in the game, tho i understand why it was cut out (too many steps to actually have the time to do during just third sem. maybe earlier in the game, but then it wouldn't work with goro giving it so that's a bit of a problem). maybe it'll be remade into a canonical manga or smth?? that could be cool tbh

the goro parallels are so sexy the whole topic of ideal victim really hits hard not just with goro tbh, i think it's a bit true about everyone on the team, in a way, because they also serve as parallels to goro. they all know that if they didn't have each other they could've very easily ended up like him, they could've become these "unideal" victims too (heck, even in-game, i think they all have a moment of guilt for not acting out earlier, but i especially remember it to be true about ryuji, ann, and yusuke, so especially those three would probably be hit the hardest with that whole story)

i like how it once again brings the morality of the thieves' actions into question, the way that the third semester already does, but this time it approached it from the different, more focused direction of the victim and who is "worth" saving

it makes not just the thieves think deeply and squirm in guilt, but the players too. the entire game you're told that evil people deserve this punishment/change for the sake of their victims, and this just scrambles it all up and makes you question if that's actually true and reminds you that things aren't as black or white as they may seem (which plays nicely into royal's generally more mature vibes and messages, i'd say)

tldr: it's good :) wish it was in the game but get why it wasn't. oh well

#long post #aklsjfdkhg i didn't really say much that you haven't said either sorry abt that ^^''

[oof-big-oof]

ACOTAR and Setups Part II: Tamlin and Rhysand

SPOILERS: ACOTAR series (and Macbeth too ig)

Part 1: Feyre

In "Macbeth", Macbeth and Banquo are narrative foils to each other. While Banquo is loyal to the king and uses language of growth and imagery of nature when he speaks, the traitor Macbeth's words are full of references to destruction, fire, and unholy happenings. Foils are not just good ways to explore character traits, but also excellent for setting up conflicts and exploring the thematic concerns of the world.

I think it's safe to say Tamlin and Rhysand are foils. They have opposing imagery (spring, flowers and sun for Tamlin, winter, snow and night for Rhysand) and always stand in opposition to each other when it comes to Feyre's narrative, switching in and out of being the "bad guy" and the "good guy". But the way this is handled is .... eh.

I'm going to look at shifts in Feyre, Tamlin and Rhys that work of this foil - and try to look for when and how they were set up.

1. Feyre's shift - TW: discussions of abuse, mental health issues

In the first book, Tamlin is a source of protection and love for Feyre. But by the second book, Feyre is not only struggling with her PTSD but has begun to realise that life at the Spring Court as a dolled up accessory might not be for her. By the end of the book, she has found her place in the Night Court - by Rhysand's side. And honestly? Go girl! Go live up to your potential!

The problem arises with how this is done - that is, Sarah J Mass never does the brunt work of showing us why Feyre cares. It is plausible she is motivated by a desire to protect the human lands, but we never actually see that. There isn't a moment where she realises she needs to work for a greater good, or a moment she realises that she needs to protect those more vulnerable than her - instead, the narrative has her tolerating abuse until she finally has had enough.

Which is great. I have got to admit that I really like the explicit rejection of a happily ever after storyline for Feyre because it took away her agency. But we get this radical shift in character motivation from wanting to be protected and comfortable with those she loves to desiring agency and understanding of herself in two lines:

"The girl who had needed to be protected and who had craved stability and comfort... she had died Under the Mountain"

and

"I didn't know how to go back to those things. To being docile"

hhhhhh. I mean - if you have to say it that explicitly, you're already doing something wrong. But also, why? We never see Feyre struggling with herself in her new body, and wondering why she does not want the same things as she did when she was a human, never see an impetus point for when her desires shifted.

But honestly? I don't mind Feyre's arc. I think it's a bit confused and lacks clarity or intent, and as a result, it is harder to root for her because you don't quite know what she wants, but I think it's still quite good. Where I really have problems are with Tamlin ad Rhys.

2. Tamlin - TW: discussions of abuse, mental health issues

I am not a fan of Tamlin's arc. You could argue that it is part of the thematic message of the series: that things are not as they seem. Tamlin is the wolf to the savour to the abuser, Rhysand is the "most beautiful man " Feyre had ever seen to Amarantha's monster to Feyre's eventual mate. But - the constant twists are unnecessary, more importantly, they and have little to no foreshadowing and just seem like retcons- making it seem as if they are there to keep the audience guessing rather than genuine plot progressions. This becomes even more obvious when the series abandons its core theme of "appearance vs reality" altogether, and as a result loses a lot of its cohesion: a direct consequence of having a bad setup.

His reason for doing the abusive things he does is conveyed to us in two lines, in the same monologue that Feyre's motivation is:

"Tamlin had gotten his powers back, had become whole again - become that protector and provider he wished to be"

Sure. He was much more powerful than Feyre when they first met, so I am having a hard time buying it is the return of the powers that his making him act this way. We know that his actions come from a genuine desire to protect Feyre - this is the guy that was willing to sacrifice his life multiple times and the future of his entire court to keep her safe. The only justification we have left then for the way he acts is that his PTSD, borne out of the trauma and torture he underwent and watched Feyre undergo changed him in some way.

This is why the endless villainizing of Tamlin makes me really uncomfortable. While it is true that the abused can become the abuser, and figuring out how to help them while protecting yourself is something that absolutely needs to be discussed and explored - the way it is done with Tamlin is horrendous because he is never given a chance to heal. Instead, he is thrown from plot point to plot point, an eternal punching bag for the Inner Circle and others to seem morally superior in front of.

And his treatment of Feyre is just weird. If he's so concerned about her safety - why does he not wake up when she has nightmares? Is he instead trying to pretend like everything is okay - if so why does he give Feyre an escort of guards? If his core motivation is protecting Feyre at all costs - why does he lash out at her?? And the text really tries to tell us how to feel about him in this regard, but it doesn't do it very well. For example, take the scene where Tamlin says "There is no such thing as a High Lady". Feyre a second before expressed her desire not to take on any responsibility, and Tamlin responded with this - and the text really makes us want to hate him for it, but all you can see is a person who is perhaps not the best at reading subtext trying his best.

In conclusion - Tamlin's shift to the villain of the narrative is hamhanded and underexplained, making it hard to genuinely hate him, and further confusing the narrative.

3. Rhys the foil gets the girl - TW: discussions of abuse, sexual assault mental health issues

Rhysand in the first book is interesting - he clearly has a heart and a soft spot for Feyre but is also a schemer with dubious motives that drugs and sexually harasses Feyre. There are places in the set up where we understand he cares - but never where we can begin to see he might be a genuine paragon of virtue.

And I will address this more in my post on ACOMAF, but the point I am trying to make here is: we are told through the constantly opposing imagery that Rhys and Tamlin are wolds apart - but never actually given examples of how. Rhys is said to be different from Tamlin because he respects Feyre's choice - but he drugs her in a bunch of weird scenes (that serve no clear narrative purpose by the way - like what was he trying to achieve? why he couldn't he just let Feyre in on that part of the plan?) and withholds information from her about life-threatening situations. Rhys is said to pull less rank - but we multiple times see others defer to him, especially in later books, and never actually see rank being enforced in Tamlin's court with his treatment of Lucien (many times described as his partner, and openly questioning him) and later Ianthe. Rhys is said to have less archaic laws in opposition to Tamlin's Tithe - but he abandons the Court of Nightmares to the monsters who rule it, and never takes serious actions against the Illyrian people who clip of women's wings, and a lot of Tamlin's idea of racial superiority and general superiority just come completely out of left field in the middle of ACOMAF.

Both of them are problematic - it's just that the text tells us to root for one, without actually showing us how one is better, or setting up any clear ideological difference between them. And that cheapens Feyre's character shift and lessen the efficacy of the foil - turning it into Feyre hopping from one lover to the other with little to no character consistency and no nuanced exploration of the theme of the series or trauma.

#tamlin #rhysand #feyre #anti rhysand #anti feyre #tamlin deserved better #critique #anti sjm #anti acotar #anti acomaf #god adding tags exhausting #anti sarah j mass

[rpmemesbyarat]

Much has been said about how any virtue can be a flaw. Loving too much, being too loyal, being too determined, being too brave, all of these can get your character in trouble or lead them to cause harm to others. But what about the reverse? What about flaws being virtues? A traditionally “bad” trait that could be a good one? Tiffany Aching from “The Wee Free Men” and its sequels by Sir Terry Pratchett and Lyra “SilverTongue” Belacqua from the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, are wonderful examples of this. Tiffany is selfish, and Lyra is a liar. This is not merely my interpreation, this is in the text. The narrative expicitlty refers to them as such. And it is NOT treated as a bad thing, but as a strength. Tiffany’s selfishness is what fuels her to fight and protect her land from The Queen: “ “All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany's Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours!  Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!” Tiffany is a hero not because it is “the right thing” but because how dare somebody touch HER things, and IT WORKS FANTASTICALLY. It could easily have been framed as love---which it also is---but I love that Pratchett went with having it be explicitly a selfish, possessive love, and TEXTUALLY having it be so. If he had written Tiffany as a selfish possessive brat without REALIZING it, I would have hated it, as I hate protagonists who are presented as good and pure by the narrative when they’re actually selfish assholes, which happens a lot---but when you give me a flawed protagonist with veyr atypical traits for a hero and the narrative is CONSCIOUS of that and EMBRACES it, I adore it! And it makes sense---of course someone who is selfish, especially a child, is going to stand up against Hell itself (or worse, The Queen) if anyone tries to lay a FINGER on THEIR toys. Similarly, Lyra is a liar. She lies. The novel does not sugarcoat this or dress it up by saying oh she just has a fanciful imagination---no, Lyra just straight-up lies like a lot of kids do. At first, she just uses it for the things kids typically will, like getting attention or messing with other kids. But as the novel goes on and Lyra’s life becomes much more dangerous, she turns it into a means of survival, using subterfuge against far more powerful foes in order to best them and escape. Rather than the story teaching her a moral lesson about the value of honesty, it instead puts her in situations where her talent for deception is a positive, and rewards her for it. And again, as with Tiffany, the text is quite aware of this; Lyra is referred to as a liar and even takes pride in it. And it serves her well. And when you really think about it---these aren’t necessarily bad lessons. Some selfishness is good and is healthy, and it is absolutely not only okay but often NECESSARY to lie in order to escape bad situations and people who would do you harm. Any abuse victim can tell you that, and I really like how these stories not only don’t treat these traits as inherently flawed, but show situations where being selfish or being a liar is in fact what is BEST for you---and that’s ESPECIALLY a good message for young girls, who probably won’t ever find themselves in the fantastic situations that Lyra and Tiffany did, but may one day need to be okay with being “selfish” or lying in order to save themselves. On an interesting note, Lyra and Tiffany are both little girls. It’s rare enough to see adult female protagonists who are allowed any sort of real flaw besides a fiery temper and sardonic wit (almost required of the Strong Female Protagonist these days, to the point it’s getting kind of predictable/cliche) but children are typically considered the paragon of purity and goodness, incapable of nasty things like lies or selfishness. .  .which I’m sure is gut-bustingly hilarious to anyone who has spent five minutes with a child, but in fiction that’s often treat as the case, and it makes the pair of them doubly refreshing and memorable protagonists for me. So, not only don’t be afraid to give your protagonist truly unflattering flaws--not just “she’s insecure about herself” or “he cares too much” but nasty flaws someone else could actually DISLIKE about them---don’t be afraid to find ways they can work to your character’s advantage either!

#writeblr #writing #writing tips #character tips #oc tips #character flaws #flaws

[hunnybadgerv]

About Distractions | Mass Effect | Guardians in the Darkness

Summary: Nyx tests her welcome in Kaidan’s apartment during leave, but it pays off in spades with a brilliantly concocted method of distraction.

a/n: Inspired by one of the prompts from this list 50 Types of Kisses Prompts. “#34 Kisses that start on their fingers and run up their arm, eventually ending on their lips” requested by @theoriginalladya, While she left the choice of characters up to me, I couldn’t resist some additional cuteness for these two. Yep, I’m totally playing favorites.

Link to AO3

About Distractions

Nyx Shepard never really ascribed to the whole quiet morning thing. Growing up on Alliance vessels and stations, she was used to a certain kind of hurried pace accompanied with more than a little noise, a bit of a rush as everyone scurried about to grab breakfast, start their work or their routines, and get ready for the day. For once, the commander herself found she didn’t have anywhere to dash off to; there weren’t serving hours she had to be conscious of for Kaidan’s kitchen. No duty station waited for her relief; no PT officer would come breathing down her neck for her absence. She just poured a large mug of coffee, which was really all she ever needed to start any day on a high note.

Apparently, that heady aroma was all it took to pull Kaidan out of his slumber, too. Because she had barely sweetened her cup when he appeared in the kitchen doorway wearing a sleepy smile in search of a cup of his own. Stepping up behind her as she savored her first sip, he pressed a soft kiss on the cap of her shoulder, mumbling something that resembled good morning. Turning quickly, she pressed a kiss to his warm skin and sneaked away as he reached past her to open the cabinet.

By the time he realized that she as confiscated his coffee mug, Nyx was at the door. She leaned against the doorjamb and grinned at him over the edge of the huge steaming mug. Without a word, she winked at him and ducked out, headed for the sofa. She harbored no illusions that the distance would save her from a reprisal. If she were lucky though, it might be too early for a proper counterblow. Even so, a nervous little chuckle crept into her throat as she shuffled across the room and stole his corner of the sofa, too—just for good measure.

One lazy sip later, Kaidan leaned in the doorway of the kitchen staring at her—with his cup, in his spot. Nyx wasn’t precisely sure how to read that look he shot her yet. It was a new one; one she’d only seen in the past few days since leave officially started. But she figured it didn’t bode well. The stalemate continued, neither looking away, as they sipped at their coffee, her from his mug and him from a far smaller innocuous-looking plain white one that probably started its life in a diner by the looks of it.

Her nerves prickled; the corners of her mouth lifting higher as each silent minute ticked by. She was sure he was thinking something, planning something. Even so, he didn’t move. Kaidan just stared, and it made her pulse race.

When she shifted and grabbed the datapad off the end table, he finally moved. A vibration of her omnitool told her she had a message flagged important, which meant leave be damned it was something she needed to view in a timely manner. Further distraction to keep her attention pulled from where it probably should be. Out of the corner of her eye, she clocked Kaidan’s approach and set the mug on the table behind her—keeping herself between it and its rightful owner, as if that would keep the pilfered vessel, and its precious contents, safe.

She shifted her hand to pull up the message as Kaidan draped himself across the majority of the sofa.

“I think we might have to go out and get you one of your own,” Kaidan suggested, blinking up at her with those inviting amber eyes.

“What makes you think that would stop me from just stealing yours anyway?” Nyx challenged, biting her bottom lip.

“Oh!” He looked up at her like he was shocked to learn about this trait. “And here I’d heard that the great Commander Shepard was a paragon of virtue. Fighting for all that was right and just in the universe.”

Her brow raised and she gave him an incredulous look. “You shouldn’t believe everything you read, Lieutenant.” She pressed a quick kiss to his forehead before returning her attention to the message waiting for her.

Nyx felt him shift before she heard the sound of ceramic on glass. Her sharp gaze snapped toward him as his lips brushed the top of her knee. She gave him a sweet little smile and pressed her fingers through his sleep tousled hair. Her attention was rapt, Kaidan was even beautiful all disheveled like that, maybe more so. Her fingers traced his jaw and he caught her hand, bringing it to his lips as he stared up at her. Damn, he’s distracting, she thought.

The intensity of his gaze didn’t waver, and she couldn’t bring herself to look away either, message be damned. His lips inched up the length of her index finger, kissing every knuckle and eventually teasing up to her wrist. Only then did his amber gaze lower; he rotated her hand and pressed his lips into the center of her palm. Languidly, he made his way to the inside of her wrist, sucking gently at her pulse point. Her heart raced under his thorough attention.

How did he expect her to be able to read anything when he was doing that? She wondered wordlessly. When the angles allowed it, Kaidan’s gaze found hers again, though hers never wavered. Except for the way he moved her arm this way and that, the commander sat entirely still and completely entranced.

When he reached her shoulder, Kaidan skated his fingertips across her collarbone then his palm caressed her neck. Nyx hummed in approval, while her heartbeat thudded through her veins. His thumb caught her jaw and shifted her head as his lips approached her neck. It was her weakness—he’d discovered it fast. A violent shiver wracked her body when his lips grazed that spot where her neck and shoulder met. Anticipation thrummed through her body, electric tingles that sang through her nerves.

Nyx could feel his smile against her skin and the hum in his chest reverberated through her only exacerbating the goosebumps his kisses raised across her skin. Her pulse raced beneath his teeth which teased at the thin skin an inch above that spot. Another inch and he sucked sharply making her flesh throb against his tongue. Like putty in his hands, she couldn’t think of anything beyond the sensations he sparked in her. She sighed by the time he took her earlobe between his lips.

“Kaidan,” she breathed quietly.

All she got in reply was a curious hum. His mouth, otherwise occupied, refused to be deterred from its purpose.

“You are my favorite distraction,” she answered. Another hum, this one sounded more pleased than curious. “I really need you to kiss me.”

His head turned barely a degree and his mouth pressed against the corner of her jaw.

“Cold,” she directed.

He chuckled and moved markedly, dropping another kiss into the divot at the base of her throat.

“Colder.”

Kaidan tipped her chin upward and opened his mouth against her throat over her larynx and dragged his teeth across it lightly, the same way she did to him more than once.

“Warmer,” she breathed softly. A shiver radiated through her once more and her hand tightened on the arm of the sofa.

The tip of his nose skimmed the underside of her jaw, a kiss landing on the point of her chin.

“Warmer,” she encouraged again, laying the datapad back on the table without even a glance. It clattered raucously before landing on the floor. She’d worry about that later.

Nyx brushed her hand over Kaidan’s stubbly cheek, debating whether to lunge for his lips or wait. Her blue eyes studied his in a patient moment. She wasn’t sure if the electricity she felt was just her own desire or something more, but it left her breath shaking. As he eased toward her, his eyes closed almost as gently as the way his mouth brushed against hers.

Warmer, she thought.

As if he’d heard it anyway, the kiss deepened in tender lazy increments. Her fingers traced over his neck; she needed to touch him, but didn’t want to interfere with whatever he planned.

They had nowhere to be but right here. No responsibilities looming. They could spend their morning idly focused on nothing but the softness of one another’s lips against the other’s skin. And Shepard could find no reason to argue if that was Alenko’s plan; it seemed 100% sound to her as she held him close and savored every slow second of it.

“Best distraction ever,” she mused between leisurely deep kisses.

“Glad you approve,” he replied before he slipped his tongue into her mouth.

#Badger Scribbles #Mass Effect Fanfiction #Nyx Shepard #Kaidan Alenko #Shenko #Mass Effect #Fluff #Lazy Mornings #Cuddles #Nyx is a thief #Not to be trusted

[flying-elliska]

S5 Review pt 2 : the Bad

So in my last meta I listed a lot of reasons to like this season...but then why did it not (at least to me) all add up together ?  Looking back, I can think of so many clips that I thought were incredible. But looking back at the season in general, I just feel a big ‘meh’ and it’s sort of puzzling - why exactly ?  Here is where I thought the season could have been a lot better :

I loathe love triangles : I hate the trope in itself. Is S5 the worst example of it ever ? No, it served somewhat of a thematic purpose and the resolution was interesting. But I can’t help it, when I feel a love triangle coming on, I generally disconnect emotionally because I have been annoyed to hell and back by it before - one big offender being Skam France s4, in which the love triangle/quadrangle marked the beginning of the season going down in flames, with it overshadowing everything else and making the characters behave in completely obnoxious and puzzling ways. S5 isn’t quite as bad, it feels more respectful of the characters, but I find it weird that the writers chose a love triangle again on the heels of the reception of s4. 

The problem with this trope is not ‘oh we don’t want drama ever’ it’s just so bloody annoying, so trite and overused. It rests on centuries of sexist tropes : either a wishy washy girl in the middle who doesn’t know what’s good for her/her own heart ; or two girls competing for a man’s attentions. It often ends in the fandom villifying the women involved no matter the shape of the triangle, comparing them against each other, which definitely happened this time (Twitter was just so annoying this season), and this whole ‘team x’ thing gives me hives, as the assumption that this is what young women viewers care most about. 

Also it generally involves the characters showing that they have very little self respect, letting themselves be walked over, bad communication, implications about what the ‘better woman/man’ should be like, cheating, etc...it’s very rarely fun or interesting to watch because we’ve seen it a thousand times before in teenage soap operas. Again, the s5 ending avoided the total trainwreck but this is a show you watch in real time, and for weeks I was afraid it was going to be absolutely terrible, and it ruined a big part of my experience of the season. When they introduced Noée I started being scared, and when it became clear Arthur was developing feelings for her, I basically noped out emotionally. I started following it in a much more detached manner, I wasn’t looking forward to the clips anymore, I stopped writing meta so much. And it sucks. I wanted to love the season. But this was just not a ride I really wanted to be on. 

Alexia (and Noee) deserved better : I love Alexia and developing her character is one of the best things Skam France ever did. In OG, the character of Chris, if interesting, is just continually reduced to the ‘funny fat friend’ persona and it really sucks. So giving Alexia a real personality, making her bisexual, giving her more of a role in s3, making her a dancer and a singer was really cool. I’m bi myself and I spent most of my high school struggling with my weight and if I’d had a character like her, who radiates self-acceptance, it would have meant so much to me. I was really stoked for her to have more of a role in s5 - only to spend most of the season feeling really sad for her. It was just...not fun. I so wish she could have had her own season and her own story that didn’t revolve around a dude she was so supportive of and still ended up treating her like shit. 

Also, real talk : when is a curvy girl actually a love interest without it being shown as funny or not good enough ? Especially of the main character ? Almost never. Coline might have lost some weight, but she’s still written as a curvy girl this season and it’s an important part of the character. So for her to have this particular role this season - the girl that isn’t romanticized, that doesn’t get to have the cute and thrilling moments, that is just sort of there and patient and understanding as if she couldn’t get anything better, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Sure the end of the season did her more justice but god it took so long and in the meantime, it just felt...very ill considered and careless. 

In the same way, I wanted to love Noée, I thought she was amazing, but because of her role in the plot I just felt this instinctive defiance towards her character. It would have been so cool to have her in a friend role, or even a love interest outside of the triangle or I don’t know like...have someone else fall in love with her. Also, I just did not understand why she loved Arthur ? Like she just met the dude a few times, and he’s mostly been a total asshole to her, who makes very little efforts to communicate with her...I get she could get attracted to him but love ??? The moment where she tells him ‘I love you’ felt demeaning to her, like the moment in OG where Noora falls after running after William. It’s like, Arthur has just been an enormous asshole to her, and she pushes herself to do something she’s never been comfortable with in the first place ? Why ? This show romanticizes teenage boys being assholes and girls being desperate way too much. 

The Skam dilemma, love vs politics and “Let’s all just be nice.” : There is a reoccuring problem accross all Skams, starting with the OG : they bring up very political topics, usually in the beginning of the season, and then they...don’t really do anything with them. In the OG, Noora’s feminism is really just window-dressing and we see her bend over backwards to accomodate this super toxic asshole into her life. And we see Sana’s struggles as a Muslim in Norwegian society, but then love drama takes over, and it’s waved away with an insulting ‘everyone should just communicate more’ ending. Skamfr s4 made it even worse, by making the girl squad a lot more overtly racist, never having them make a big gesture for Imane, putting her in a position to apologize, and never showing that the girl squad had an idea of where they messed up or real growth. It was insanely frustrating, especially since the beginning of the season was so good at showing all the little micro-agressions. In the end it felt like all the racism was just there to motivate Imane’s breakdown for plot reasons and not to actually say something. S5 never stoops quite that low, but there was a bit of a similar dynamic at hand here. Instead of the boys actually have a real conversation after their fight, most of the denouement of the show was consecrated to talking about the love drama. It was, again, as if the focus of the show was on the wrong things, and it robs you of the catharsis you’re expecting. As if they used the love drama for a metaphor for the actual issues, have it do all the emotional heavy lifting, and in so doing bypass having to adress the actual problem. There is this weird ideas that the audience of the show - teenagers and young women, mostly, in the end care the most about the love stuff and that everything else has to take a backseat and...this feels neither a good message to send, nor realistic to me. I like it when shows about teenagers decenter love and show the real complexity of their characters’ lives without making them paragons of virtue or wokeness - Derry Girls is a brilliant example of that. Skam, and Skam France in particular, feel a bit immature still compared to those, punching below their weight for shows that pride themselves on their social impact. 

Hit with the idiot stick : Speaking of underwhelming resolutions - yes, the boy squad messing up with Arthur, I found relevant and realistic. But...did they really even adress it ? I was really hoping for the boys to have more of a conversation, for Arthur to open up to them about what he went through, about his father, to tell them that they should have asked him/listened to him more, etc...and I know ‘teenage boys’ or whatever but ...aren’t they trying to change those stereotypes too ? Like when Arthur went to see Basile, they must have had a conversation, why the fuck did we not see it ? That’s the emotional bond I cared most about ! And we just had a hug ...underwhelming tbh. Same Arthur talking with Lucas but then it was just about their love lives ? Or when they came to the hospital, again, it was just about the love drama ? God it really sucked out the oxygen out of the season. The resolutions of those things just being hugs or speeches or handholding at the end felt hollow, and a lot less powerful than they could have been. And again, there has to be a tolerance for messiness, but I found the boys so incredibly dumb at several points in the season. Especially them being like ‘oh cheating isn’t so bad’ after they found out that Arthur’s dad was cheating on his wife ? Like why the fuck did they take Patrick’s side ? What kind of lack of empathy ? It would feel a lot more coherent for teenage boys to be furious at the destruction of a friend’s family, not talk like cynical 50 yr olds who just divorced for the fifth time. It felt so unrealistic and stupid and just meant for Arthur to finally clue in to the idea that cheating and lying is bad maybe, himself first without external clues from characters that really should have known better by now. Especially Yann and Lucas advising Arthur to keep his mouth shut after what happened in s1 like...did whoever write this read the previous seasons of the show ? There were just too many times where the boy squad felt out of character and mandated to be idiots just for plot reasons, and it felt...very crudely drawn. Disappointing, because the beginning of the season was awesome. But again, Skam France failed in delivering real growth for their friend group. At times, it even felt like character regression. Them holding hands at the end of the season made me emo but damn it could have been so much more.

Also some plot twists - the car crash in particular, just felt dumb and unnecessary, seriously. 

A too distant main : In the end, like I said before, my main issue is that I didn’t feel as connected to Arthur as I wanted to. I mean, the cheating bit was just very unrelatable to me, after how they showed how supportive Alexia was and how she supposedly made him happy like...why. But maybe that’s just me. Regardless - in the first few episodes he felt distant in an interesting way, because it made sense for his character to be so walled off. But...I felt like his self discovery was way too blurred with the ‘oh I like Noee’ part to the point where it ended up being obscured. I would have loved more clips on his own, maybe something more about him questioning his path in life, whether he truly wants to do medecine. And like apparently he liked fine arts ? Then, why didn’t we see anything about that ? Did he paint the x-men painting ??? That feels so relevant, why the fuck didn’t we see that ? Also why didn’t we see him take those LSF classes with Camille and actually make an effort this time ? Having almost all of his realization moments tied to Noee was just...the manic pixie dream girl trope. That’s what it’s called, when you use a quirky female character as a device for the emotional development of the male one. It’s...not flattering tbh. And then that farm episode - it was funny but for a week I felt like I completely lost touch with Arthur’s POV ? I’m really not sure that was the right choice. All in all, there were just not enough introspective, small, intimate clips for it to really feel like Skam, and that’s a shame tbh. I recognize a lot of myself in Arthur, and Robin acted his heart out to make him relatable, but because of the writing, there were way too many times where I was reluctant and puzzled instead of in it. I saw several people saying it was too much tell and not enough show and I think that’s very on point. I feel like a lot of Arthur’s actual character development happened behind the scenes in moments where we didn’t see it.  

Yeah...I think as a conclusion most of my issues are tied back to the preponderance of the love triangle. The season wasn’t bad but god it could have been so excellent if they hadn’t gone that route, and this swerve from greatness is just sooooooo frustrating. I don’t think it’s enough to condemn the whole season but...

Next up : some things I’m just very ??? about and a general conclusion. 

Bonus bitching round, fandom edition : oh my god, I don’t get into this often but...the fandom was so bloody annoying this season. Starting with the people sending death threats over a tv show (like...what the fuck) or thinking them being nasty assholes is somehow for the greater good (???), from people that don’t want anyone to use even 1 analysis capacity (especially on Twitter) and go beyond praising everything on the show, or the people either villifying Alexia and Noee and indulging in that ‘team’ crap, to the people that shoot down every single detail of the show without discernment or accuse the creators of being ableist sexist garbage or maltreating their actors ... And then you have the other remake stans coming to pollute the tags talking about how we were all stupid for liking the show in the first place. Like...seriously, what is up with you people. I really loved the block button this season, damn. 

#skam france #skamfr s5 #my meta #arthur broussard #skam france meta

[cavaliant]

Time to actually articulate my issues with the Fandom FE wiki’s Reinhardt page ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ This is like...obviously coloured by my own interpretation of the game so pls don’t kill me lmao. All bolding is mine.

(Also, disclaimer: since I don’t feel like deciphering the original script rn, this is based off Serenes, as well as this LP, with all the possible lost-in-translation things they may entail.)

“A paragon of professionalism and honor among Friege's knights, Reinhardt is an honorable leader who understands the horrors of war.”

Does he understand the horrors of ripping countless children away from their families to sacrifice to a dark god tho??? Like. It’s entirely possible that he was helping Ishtar free the children in secret since he was so close to her. But it’s also possible he was in the dark and/or turning a blind eye. We don’t know because it’s never confirmed either way onscreen; all we DO know is that when Olwen brings up the child hunts being deplorable all he does is say he doesn’t want to lose his only sister. He doesn’t endorse them, but he doesn’t condemn them in that convo either. It’s even lampshaded ingame:

Regardless of whether he endorses it or not, he isn’t really...confirmed to be doing much about it onscreen either, unlike other characters from Friege such as Ishtar, Olwen, Fred, Amalda, etc. So...not really sure on that honour bit for now ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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“He holds immense respect and love for his sister Olwen, with his own doubt only serving to improve his impression of her despite her siding with the enemy, with him observing that she has chosen the path of good.”

OH YEAH SURE giving her a sword to kill you with and basically encouraging your YOUNGER SISTER to murder you (he doesn’t even fight back) but ALSO not bothering to tell anyone else on his side to like you know...maybe look out for his little sis out there...maybe like...don’t kill her...totally fine...much love, very respect, wow.

-----

“In spite of his common sense, Reinhardt, similarly to Camus, loves his motherland to the point where he will disregard what he may believe is the right path, in favor of continuing to serve his friend Ishtar, and his motherland of Friege, until his dying breath.”

1) What common sense. I dunno man he seemed pretty desperate to get his sister back to the side of the motherland despite his “common sense” telling him it ain’t right.

2) It’s possible to say he’s too loyal to Friege to join you but he never really...gives much indication that he’s doing this for his country specifically. I know it may be a product of not getting the time to give a massive speech about his undying love for his country or something but from the way he talks I always got the impression he was doing it more for Ishtar (who happens to be part of Friege) and, after she sends him away, because he didn’t know what to do next. 

Like if Ishtar defected from Friege, I’m 100% certain Reinhardt would have defected too instead of telling his sister to murder him (which isn’t at ALL helpful to his supposed goals of serving Ishtar and/or respecting his sis).

-----

“He even regrets fighting against Leif's army, requesting forgiveness when he enters combat against them.”

When you fight Reinhardt in Chapter 22 he says, “This was meant to be… Forgive me…”. His sword version in FEH also states, "Leif is the enemy. However, being here—another place, another time—may allow me to tread another path."

Since the quote from the wiki focuses on his Thracia lines, I’ll focus on those as well. It’s possible for his request for forgiveness to be made out of genuine regret. However...going “sorry please forgive me” and then killing people doesn’t!!! Excuse you!!! From what you did!!! Does he do anything afterwards to make up for it? No!!! Beyond the sword he gives to Olwen, he doesn’t do shit about his “fate” of fighting his sister and the Liberation Army.

Maybe he really felt sorry and caught between a rock and a hard place! But at the same time, it also seems like he’s dodging responsibility for his actions. “Meant to be”, my ass. Was it just the “whims of fate” that led him here? No! Ishtar made her choices, and Olwen did the same. And he chooses to remain as he is, unwilling to betray Ishtar but unwilling to stain his own hands with his sister’s blood (though he’s certainly willing to kill her comrades, guess it was just meant to be!).

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“He holds immense respect for Ishtar (out of appreciation for her skill with thunder magic) as well as Saias (for his tactical prowess), and it is revealed that he has seen the former as more than a friend. It is never known how he feels about Julius beyond the typical jealousy, due to his code of honor preventing him from objecting Julius's order to separate him from Ishtar.”

MAYBE he’s feeling a bit resentful of Julius for separating him from his mistress, but what he actually says is:

Rinehart: “Yes, she has, but I chose to stay because I’m worried about my sister. Besides…Lady Ishstar has no need for me any more.”

Cyas: “She told you that herself?”

Rinehart: “Yes. She said that since she is with Lord Yurius, there is no need for me to worry about her…”

And then the subject turns to Olwen. So sure! Maybe there’s some salt and jealousy simmering there under the surface. Maybe he hates Julius for sending him away from the side of the person he’s been serving faithfully ever since she was young. You could take these lines that way. You could also just as easily not. You could just as easily take it as him just being gloomy and lost now that he’s suddenly been tossed out of a position he’s presumably held for years now, unable to protect one of the people he cares about anymore.

As for the “more than a friend” bit...it is implied by an NPC soldier (who mutters about Reinhardt “running to the queen’s side in a time like this” and is then told off by his commanding officer) and by Julius himself that Reinhardt might have romantic feelings for Ishtar. However, I’d also like to point out that rumours about lady-and-knight relationships probably aren’t uncommon in Jugdral, and that Julius himself has a highly personal stake in the matter.

If anyone’s jealous, it’s Julius, forcing Ishtar to tell her male bodyguard not to hang around her anymore on the pain of death (Reinhardt’s death that is). Regardless of whether Reinhardt actually had feelings for her or not, you get the feeling that Julius just doesn’t want any men hanging around his fiancée, particularly Reinhardt who has been close to Ishtar for a long time. And again, Reinhardt never actually says anything explicit about how he feels about her. So while it’s possible he does love her romantically, I wouldn’t call it canon beyond a shadow of a doubt.

-----

Anyway yeah I don’t think Rein is an evil person but he sure as heck ain’t a poor bb paragon of virtue who just happened to be forced to stay on the wrong side ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I love him, but I also want y’all to know he’s a fucking trash man so please don’t baby him on this blog! Call him out! Judge him! I support u...

#this is a really fucking long post jsyk #rein: hcs #i love reinhardt but he's a fucking garbage man and i will fight on this #ACKNOWLEDGE THE TRASH #ACCEPT THAT HE HAS GOOD POINTS AND BAD ONES #many bad ones... #every day is roast reinhardt day on this blog #*adds him to my collection of crispy boys*

[ganymedesclock]

the fact that zarkon is always in his armor (i don't believe we've ever seen him without, even at his wedding) speaks a great deal for his character. i hope we see lotor without his in future episodes.

Honestly one of the things I really appreciate about Zarkon writing-wise is that he manages to come across like an ostentatious, selfish tyrant, while still being the trend-setting ruler of an incredibly spartan empire.

I’ve said it before but s3e1 is a fascinating illustration of galra culture and its ins and outs at the higher level, so the thing that you have to understand is culturally, the aristocrats here are vain and prone to showing off. They’re flaunting what their culture values, things that they have in abundance.

The TL;DR of this ramble is that rather than the empire stubbornly wearing their “work clothes” to formal occasions? Armor is formal attire for the empire.

Throk defines himself as the ideal under galra culture. He confidently speaks for the fleet as a group and expertly tempts other commanders to his side. He’s the pinnacle of what the empire views as an ideal person, and he defines himself very explicitly and clearly as a warrior. He is a proud soldier, not a mere “enlisted infantryman” (scoff scoff), an individual of rank and power and most importantly of strength.

We see this underlying character established as early as s1e1, and throughout the series. A very specific, ritualistic phrase, offered by Sendak first: “I Conquer In The Name Of Galra.” 

“Vrepit Sa”- a real-world phrase that is the derived root of ‘vampire’, meaning to stick or cling to. And it’s worth noting in DotU and especially in GoLion, the galra were neck-deep in vampire imagery. Zarkon was very batlike in looks, they literally drank goblets full of blood, Haggar once hissed and recoiled from a holy symbol.

The imperial commanders define themselves as predators. They are hunters, they are conquerors. When Lotor basically needles Throk right in his cultural pride, he challenges Throk to prove himself as a soldier. “You say you’re strong, so let’s see you pick up a sword and step into the ring. Prove your worthiness by proving your strength.”

See how this aligns with, say, Morvok, in s2e6, that cheerfully tells the Taujeerians he’s just screwed over that if they deserve to live they’ll prove it by being strong enough to endure. Or how Zarkon states in s1e1 that endangering soldiers in such a way that half of them die will prove that the surviving half will be stronger for it.

The culture of the empire boils down to pride in strength, and pride in mercilessness. So thus the image of an idealized galra is a long-lived and loyal soldier, one who has brutally and mercilessly hacked down any who stands in their path. They are cunning, they are cruel, and they are insatiable. They defer to their betters and discard their subordinates.

And the empire and its high-ranking commanders are greedy, but not in the sense that they want to surround themselves in opulence and gold. Rather...

They seize and hold vast regions, or command huge open spaces for themselves, that they have no intention of filling. Because the point is the invasive and aggressive nature of the deed. The point to Zarkon’s throne room is that as the Ideal Galra according to the empire, he has gorged himself on resources, on territory, on admiration. To approach him, to even be allowed in his presence, the other proud and conquering people in his environment must fold themselves up and become small.

And what this comes back to is that... of course these people are not covering themselves in extravagant resources. When all of their pride comes from being battle-ready soldiers, they cover themselves in armor, and only armor. They name themselves not as dukes, baronesses, or marquises, but as lieutenants, commanders, generals.

Which is why Lotor is able to play Throk like a damn fiddle by daring Throk to face him. The very implication of being not a soldier who will meet his enemies on the field of battle but a coward who’s scheming around behind the scenes creates immense pressure on Throk by the force of his colleagues and especially his allies- allies who backed Throk because they saw him as a better leader than Lotor.

Which is no surprise, really- it’s abundantly obvious that Lotor is not a soldier. He takes a lot from Altean culture and Altea’s social paragons were diplomats, explorers, scientists- and the long skirt of his armor is a piece worn by galra researchers. Lotor wears his hair long, his armor is sleek and smooth compared to the bristling spikes, he chooses to wear his own colors over anything that would depict him as a rank-and-file member of the fleet.

And Lotor’s not trying to pretend he is. He takes no pride in conquest- if he attacks, it’s to further a goal, and he withdraws as soon as that goal is better served a different way. To the Puigian leader, he extends not “it is your destiny to be crushed under my heel because I, a Galra, am superior to you” but crouching to speak to his hostage on his level, trying to entice him with power, with collaboration. His speech in s3e1 is pointedly discarding, even mocking things that the empire considers cultural ideals. Especially the idea of refusing to back down when, in Lotor’s own words, “your repetitive attacks are getting you nowhere.”

Lotor has chosen very pointedly to shape himself to Altean ideals, to value diplomacy, communication, information and observation. Military matters, loss or victory, is only significant to him where it either nets him something valuable or risks taking that away from him. He invokes the imagery of the paladins, who were found worthy for the character of their personality- for virtues like compassion, instinct, curiosity, empathy. 

So what we see with the aristocrats in s3e1, that the fleet wrinkles their collective lip at the very thought of him, makes perfect sense. Because Lotor isn’t just unfitting in the galra ideal, he’s willfully subverting it and criticizing it.

But how does Lotor exemplify this, make his point, pretend to court the fleet’s opinion when he’s actually telling them exactly where to stick it?

He shows up as a gladiator. He shows himself off: all small and willowy, all dodging and evasive tactics- hair and armor in very Altean styles. He wears, proudly and comfortably and very, very obviously everything about him that makes him utterly unacceptable to the empire and he not only tricks everyone and sneaks up on them, but does so by posing as a slave gladiator.

Slaves, and the gladiators in particular, are the single lowest person in Zarkon’s empire. Below the average soldier, below non-galra citizens (who are shown watching gladiatorial matches in s1e3), gladiators live and die for the entertainment of the elites. They’re lab rats without rights.

Consider just how much of an audacious move that is for the prince trying to prove himself, when the empire considers so much as talking to prisoners socially frowned upon. Lotor up and pretended to be one.

And he uses that completely unacceptable, frolicking-about-with-the-lower-class kind of behavior and his completely unacceptable very atypical appearance, and he shows that all off, and then, he says “Hey, Throk. Fight me like a proper galra, because I know you’ve been plotting against me.”

Because Lotor’s just established himself as the most unacceptable atypical galra any of these people have ever seen without explicitly dropping his status as a mixed-race child- and now he’s accusing Throk of being improper by the standards of the empire’s culture.

This is a huge insult. And if Throk doesn’t immediately rise to this, prove himself a soldier, the implication is this outrageous brat is the better of the two of them- because passively folding up is how galra of the empire react to their social betters.

Throk actually doesn’t have any choice to respond. The entire commanding elite basically wheels to him with “Are you gonna let him talk to you like that, Throk? This brat? He wouldn’t know a real galra if it bit him, are you gonna let him accuse you of not being a real soldier?”

And of course the icing of it is, Lotor then proceeds to threaten Throk with the generals. Other “unacceptable galra”, using sneaky underhanded tactics. People Lotor has given the rank of general- making them higher ranked than Throk. Again, in the fleet, galra have some very ritualistic submission behavior to their ‘social betters’.

Lotor’s making it very clear if Throk doesn’t challenge him, that Throk won’t just be bowing his head to Lotor. He’ll be bowing his head to these guys. The generals each, in their own way, challenge Throk to back down- to fold and acknowledge them. Which Throk, a bigoted member of the old guard who doesn’t want to acknowledge Lotor’s legitimacy, much less that of the generals which he would view as even weaker, would rather die than do.

It’s not just a blow to Throk’s pride, Lotor precision suckerpunched Throk’s pride in front of the entire fleet and then sits there smiling because Throk’s fucked.

If Throk does the smart thing and backs down, his insurrection is over. None of his allies will stay behind him. He’s proven himself to be- scare chord- a coward. When elites in the empire are defined as being Proud Warriors, more than anybody else, people who would rather die than accept failure or defeat- if Throk folds, it’s a direct loss of status.

But of course Throk’s not going to be sensible- he can’t afford to be, and more importantly, Lotor just publicly humiliated him. So Throk is going to fight, and he’s going to be working overtime to prove that he’s a real, proper soldier, a true blueblood of the empire: proving how violent, merciless, and aggressive he is.

Which the other reason Throk is fucked is Lotor’s spent quite possibly years honing a fighting style that punishes excess aggression.

It’s a plan that hinges on galra aristocracy being incredibly proud and ostentatious and, just like any other case of nobility, keen to defend their status- with the added thing that in the empire, status is defined by martial prowess and cruelty to “lower status” individuals.

#voltron legendary defender #vld #Lotor #Throk #Zarkon #galra culture #readmore #Anonymous

[sheriffcobbvanth-blog]

It’s Great That You Realize There’s a Problem, Now Go and Do Something About It: On Bardan Jusik, wasted potential, and generally why he sucks.

So I’m just going to start with this by saying that, as he was written in RepCom and LoTF, I really hate Bardan Jusik. He’s smug, preachy, holier-than-thou, and always framed by the author as being a paragon of virtue despite the fact that he’s actually a useless, hypocritical lump who sucks. He’s also, like many of Traviss’s characters, a neglected gold mine of potential.

The thing that really grates me about Bardan Jusik is that he is treated as being morally superior to every other Jedi in the Order for seeing what’s wrong with the Jedi Order and the use of the clone army, despite the fact that he does nothing to even try to stop it. That’s ridiculous -- sympathy without action is meaningless.

And Jusik’s sympathy is entirely without action: he didn’t  do anything to help the clones outside of his little clique, or try and change the Senate or the Order’s mind and convince them that they were wrong. He just left and that was it. The only clones who benefited from his departure was Skirata’s little Cartel. Nothing changed for any of the others.

I could understand if he had left after doing everything in his power to try to assist the clones -- which should have been more than lecturing Padawans, most of whom are literally children and all of whom more powerless than he is about the situation -- and just couldn’t stomach the repeated rejections and failures as he tried to sway the Council and the Senate to his side. I still wouldn’t agree with it, but I’d understand. But that isn’t what happened -- if Bardan made any efforts to change attitudes towards clones on a large scale, we were never shown them. He just up and left, leaving the situation as he found it. His departure accomplished possibly worse than nothing.

I honestly think that he was wrong to leave the Jedi Order: a Jedi Knight who turns his back on the Order has no sway over anything. They’re basically just ordinary civilians in terms of social influence, but possibly worse than that because hey, if a Jedi leaves the Order then there must be something wrong with them, right? However, if he had remained with the Order, he might have had something of a platform to speak from and possibly affect change.

And more than that, having Bardan stay with the Order would have been more interesting, narratively speaking. Just take a second to picture this characterization of Bardan instead of the one he got: as he’s working with clone troopers, Bardan realizes that the Order is doing something terrible and that he needs to stop it. So he resolves to never lead troops into battle again. At first Zey is like “no, absolutely not; the Order is stretched thin and you’re needed at the front. You have duties and responsibilities that you can’t back out of and you need to fulfill your obligations as a Jedi Knight,” and so Jusik is just like “Fine, I’ll go study to be a healer because they have the option of staying at the temple and serving as non-combatants,” and then he goes out and finds a slightly eccentric Jedi willing to tutor him in the healing arts (because honestly that shit  takes time and guidance – why else would Anakin have turned to the Sith to learn how to heal if it was something a Jedi could easily and randomly pick up -- seriously, did we ever even get and explanation for how he learned healing? I don’t remember one). So he trains at the temple and in the meantime uses both his position as a Jedi Knight and the fact that he’s basically stationed in Coruscant to petition both the senate and the Council on why using an army of slaves is wrong and basically serving as an advocate for clone rights.

And he has different reactions from different people. Some senators hate his guts and will literally slam doors in his face or threaten to have their guards shoot him if he shows up at their office. Others hear him out but disagree with him on a fundamental level, engaging him in an even-keeled manner and the audience gets to see the issue from a new perspective with no bias from the author – like, I’d love to see him engage in a conversation with a Pantoran or Twi’Lek or other non-human senator who is in support of using the clone army because they believe that a civilian draft unfairly tilted in favor of humans would be instated in its absence, and their people would suffer as a result. They may not be right, but they’re justified in their own mind.

Others, however, might agree with him whole-heartedly – I know that this is kind of left-field, but I’d love to see him interact with Padmé: I could see her privately confiding in him that she agrees with him 100% but can’t say anything on the matter publicly because she’s already considered something of a maverick and making such a bold assertion might end her ability to serve as an effective politician. However, she agrees to examine his ten-year retirement plan and bring it to the floor while also attempting to de-escalate the conflict and trying to open negotiations with the Seperatists. 

And because, obviously, his efforts aren’t going to be successful, his involvement with the political world could be used by the Empire in the days of the purges as evidence that the Jedi weren’t neutral and subservient, the way they claimed to be – like, look at the way this Master Jusik guy was actively undermining the Republic war effort! Those schemers on the Council probably put him up to it.

And the Jedi would probably have different reactions to his cause as well – some might agree with him, but don’t want to sow discord or believe that they have an obligation to obey the orders of the Senate because the word of the Senate is an extension of the will of the people. Others might disagree with him, claiming that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he’s a healer who’s never been on the front. Maybe some people agree with him, but then take things too far -- hello, Dark Siders!

And how would the different clone troopers react? I’d imagine that some might be glad that someone’s looking out for them but think that he’s just a little too extreme. Some might be offended – like what, are we not good enough for him? Some might agree with him whole-heartedly, and Bardan might just be making Palpatine’s plans for Order 66 a lot easier.

So Bardan faces a lot of resistance, but he decides that no matter what others think of him and his message, he’s not going to stop spreading it. He can’t. As a Jedi, he’s obligated to serve the Light and ensure justice, even if it means going against the Order. He has to keep going because it’s the will of the Force.

And when Kal encourages him to leave the Order and offers to adopt him, Bardan just looks him dead in the eyes and says “I’m not leaving unless if every clone in the galaxy is free to come with me.”

But then there’s also a bunch of fun ways this could end for Bardan, and a lot of potential plots that this could drive. Maybe there’s a bounty placed on his head by a political rival, or maybe the Chancellor wants him taken out – while he might not be a political juggernaut, he’s out there placing the seeds of doubt in people’s minds and it’s always best to be on the safe side. Someone could find out and then head to Coruscant to rescue him – or he could just die under mysterious circumstances, leading the commandos to investigate and reach a dead end (because Palpatine is not sloppy). 

Or maybe that never happens, and Bardan is at a med center when Order 66 goes down. Maybe he’s shot down with the rest of the Jedi, leaving his friends to wonder how it could have happened. 

Or maybe he escapes. Maybe he lives. But he’s a wreck. He couldn’t help the clone troopers, who are still being mass-produced by the Empire, which treats them worse than the Republic ever did, and he couldn’t stop the Order from falling. And now he’s the last of his kind and for all he knows Order 66 and the things that followed were his fault – maybe if he’d just come to his senses a little earlier, or tried a little harder, he could have prevented everything. So when the Empire falls and the Jedi rise again, he throws in, offering to train people in healing and what he remembers of the Jedi way.Or maybe he doesn’t. Maybe he doesn’t think he’s worthy of helping to rebuild the new Order of Jedi after he allowed the last one to fall. So he stays on Mandalore, not out of delusions of moral superiority, but out of shame and despair. And maybe, when Jaina comes to Mandalore to learn about tracking individuals or to improve Jedi-Mandalorian relations or something (the canon reason she went to Mandalore was stupid, why would you train with a Mandaolrian to beat a Sith that doesn’t make any fucking sense), she meets him and inspires him to come back to the Jedi.

But I think that the best ending for this au is that he was on Corruscant during Order 66, and he’s the one who dies during the evacuation instead of Etain, because there was an indiscriminate kill Order on Jedi and that included Jusik, even though he did nothing to deserve it.

Even in the book itself, I think Jusik should have died during Order 66 instead of Etain, even without the alternate characterization I came up with for him -- it avoids the women-in-refrigerators trope, matches with the  tone of the PT, he’s dead, and it could cause some really interesting moral conflict. It would have highlighted what a tragedy Order 66 was -- because it was genocide, and that’s not any sort of victory or resolution. The destruction of a culture or religion is never something to be celebrated.

But he doesn’t die by jumping in front of a lightsaber because that’s stupid. He should get killed by clone troopers. And when one of the nulls or commandos points out that hey, that was my friend Bardan Jusik, he stood up for us when no one else would, he cared about us when no one else did, he was one of the good Jedi, his little brother says “The only good Jedi is a dead Jedi,” and then the other clones try to kill the nulls, commandos, and Kal for aiding a traitor.

Like, really. I need someone to explain Bardan’s existing characterization. All of these options, and Karen decides to make him a preachy hypocrite who never lifts a finger to help anyone outside of Kal’s immediate circle. She goes with the lamest characterization that causes the least anguish and conflict. Why? Because the idea of a guy in Mandalorian armor wielding a lightsaber was just too cool to resist? Because her characters are cool enough to be smarter than everyone else and definitely too cool to try to help other people outside of their little clique? Because she’s a shit writer who’s too cowardly to even think about adding legitimate conflict and the inclusion of multiple equally-viable perspectives on moral conflicts into her plots? WHY?

#in which i rant

[dear-mrs-otome]

4 + 11 +1 with Ieyasu please hehe for the drabble things hehe

(That’d be ‘I have never wanted anything more’ + Surprises + Coffee Shop AU)

Full disclaimer: This is probably not what you had in mind for these prompts but this is what struck me. Also, I’ve never played Ieyasu’s route (sorry! sorry!) SO I hope I didn’t royally eff up his character here. Enjoy!

Also P.S. Why can I never write a drabble, or anything less than a bazillion words for these things?

“Richie Rich, on your six.”

Your coworker’s muttered warning had you smothering a sigh, yanking on the handle of the portafilter viciously as you seated it for a fresh round of shots. The coffee shop was packed this morning, a line of customers snaking through the maze of tables, and the absolute last thing you needed right now was to be waiting on the whims of His High-ass. Through the clamor of drinks being called out, you set about putting together the fruity abomination he always ordered, practically by rote - a triple shot ristretto mocha, light on the chocolate, with exactly six (and a half) pumps of strawberry syrup, plus extra whip, served at no more than 140 degrees.

Double cupped.

You could see his artfully tousled mop of blond hair drawing inexorably closer to the front of the line, like an advancing storm. Today was Tuesday - which meant it was olive-green suit day, a color that no living man had a right to look as sinfully good in as he did, but you shouldn’t have been surprised by the fact that he made something so damned contrary work. It was in his very nature, you imagined.

Pretty as one of Reni’s angels…but a devil lurked behind those russet eyes.

He left the till (without tipping, of course) to make his way to the bar, and you slid the drink you’d already prepped across the tiny counter towards him, hoping like hell that this would be the one day that he’d simply thank you and move on.

Instead, he offered you a genial smile that had your hand clenching around the handle of a jug of milk, because you knew the second he opened his mouth it would be -

“It’s too cold. Remake it, barista.” Somehow he managed to turn that single word into an insult.

You entertained a glorious, fleeting fantasy of swinging the full gallon of two-percent at that grin for a handful of seconds, before offering him a smile in return that was more the feral baring of teeth than anything resembling ‘customer service’. “You haven’t even tasted it, Mr. Tokugawa.”

“I watched you. That was enough.”

Ok. There were real things very wrong with you, because despite the constantly-simmering annoyance his mere presence ignited, your brain took that simple statement and the quirk of his lips and ran in the total wrong direction with it, spurred on by the faint midnight burr you imagined you heard in his voice.

Knocked off-kilter by your derailed thoughts, you swallowed down any further rebuttals and set about making another, movements sharp and furious, taking out your anger and discomfiture on the poor espresso machine. It shouldn’t bother you, by now. Two years you’d been tolerating this. Remaking the same mocha, exactly the same way, at least three times. Every. Damned. Morning.

Or at least the ones you were clocked in for. Your coworkers swore up and down that he never set foot in the shop unless you were manning the bar. So why you? What exactly had you done to deserve being singled out by this man? The one genuine moment of interaction you’d ever had with him was on your first day of work, when something about his ruddy gaze as he stared off absently while waiting in line seemed lost, twisting something inside of your chest. When you’d handed him his cup, you’d offered him your warmest grin and teased him about a grown man liking strawberries so much, hoping to draw a smile in return.

He’d merely blinked owlishly at you, taking the coffee without a word, but that had been the lone time he’d ever accepted the first drink you’d made him. And only after he’d left had your horrified manager leaned over to inform you that you’d just ribbed the nightmarish landlord of this building, God save your soul.

The hiss of a steam wand brought you back to the moment, a satisfying mirror of the fury building inexorably inside of you. Only unlike the machine before you, yours had no outlet, and you genuinely began to question, as the pile of other customer’s cups waiting to be filled stacked up beside you, whether the stress of any of this was worth minimum wage.

No, you decided, as you switched gears and reached for a scoop of ice, rocketing past ‘irritated’ to land firmly in ‘doing something stupid’ territory. It was most definitely not.

Stalking from behind the counter over towards the bistro table he’d carefully perched himself at, you held a new cup out towards him. “Your drink, Mr. Tokugawa.”

He eyed the clear plastic and straw narrowly, lips curling downwards in a moue of distaste. “That’s not my order.”

“It’s a surprise. Try it, on the house,” you cajoled, shaking the coffee so that the ice in it rattled enticingly, offering him a cloyingly sweet smile.

His expression only soured further, growing wary. “I don’t like surprises.”

“Ah.” You sighed with exaggerated disappointment, crestfallen. “That’s too bad. You really won’t like this then.”

And every last fantasy you’d ever entertained to get through the insults he’d slung at you, every wicked elaborate revenge scheme you’d ever conjured up in your head, they all paled in comparison to the glory of seeing Ieyasu Tokugawa, head of the Tokugawa Group, sputtering with fury and disbelief as you popped the lid and upended the frigid drink all over his perfectly pressed lap. Milk and coffee and half a bottle’s worth of that garish red syrup he so dearly loved, running down his legs in rivulets to pool in the chair beneath him, ruining silk and fine tailoring that had probably cost him more than you ever made in an entire year of putting up with his shit.

He shot to his feet, still dripping and livid. His eyes were incendiary, but it was the icy perfection of his calm tones that had you truly unnerved, each word limned with frost. “That. Was the last thing you’ll ever do on this job.”

“Because you’ll have me fired?” You laughed a challenge, untying the apron around your waist to fling it at him. He flinched, but caught it, and the stained green fabric hung limply from his fingers like a banner of war. “You can’t. I just quit.” Closing the gap between you, you set your jaw and glared up at him. “No more redoing your drinks. No more putting up with your spoiled, bratty insults. Never having to see your pretty two-faced self ever again? Let me tell you, Ieyasu. You might consider firing me a threat, but I have never wanted anything more.”

And rolling on the strength of what ire still smoldered in your belly, you turned on a heel to storm back through the shop full of slack-jawed customers and staff to snatch your purse from the back room. Stiffened your spine and made it out the front door, through the gleaming lobby and a handful of tottering steps down the sidewalk before what was left of your bravado withered and you sank back against the marbled side of the building, bent over shaking knees and huffing out breaths. Wondering who’d stolen all the oxygen from the air.

Then polished oxfords filled your field of view, still beaded with pink milk, and you knew with a sort of bowel-churning certainty that you were dead. They’d be hauling your body out of the harbor, two weeks from now, clucking and shaking their head about tragic accidents.

“I’ll triple your pay.”

Nothing he could have said would have possibly stunned you more, and you straightened to gape up at his impassive face, floundering. Too shocked too even be afraid any longer. “Wh-what?”

Where were the threats? The army of lawyers breathing down your neck, ready to sue you within an inch of your life?

He shifted his weight, glancing away a moment, before fixing you with a sneer. “Did I stutter?” He thrust your abandoned apron back in your direction. “Put it back on.”

You ignored the gesture. “Triple still isn’t enough,” you said, before you could falter beneath the intensity of his glare. “It’s not…just about the money.”

Scoffing, he folded his arms. “It’s always about the money. Quit pretending you’re some paragon of virtue.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t partly about the money,” you shot back, emboldened by the way he kept his eyes trained on you and the lack of a counter or uniform between you - just two people, standing on a busy sidewalk. Removed from the social confines of business and transaction. “But the other part…”

Oh God, it was too stupid to even say out loud. You clamped your mouth shut and shook your head.

“The other part?” he supplied, after your silence had dragged on, brows arching with no small measure of impatience.

Ah, fuck it. You were never going to see him again, anyways. “I just wanted you to smile.”

A myriad of expressions flickered across his face, like signs past the window of a  speeding car. Too quickly for you to follow or read before his features settled back into their usual veneer of disdain. “That might be the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Yes, well…” You shrugged, at a loss, before pushing away from the wall with one last bit of mockery, offering him the same bland goodbye you had for years. “Have a nice day, Mr. Tokugawa.”

You’d made it two steps before a hand wrapped around your arm and jerked you to a halt, though you didn’t grace his arrogant behavior with turning around. “Name your price. And… I’ll…work on your bonus.”

Perhaps it was your imagination, but you thought you caught a hint of his lips curving as you finally faced him and took the apron back from where he’d folded it over an elbow, tying it back on. Maybe you’d live to regret this.

But then again, maybe you wouldn’t.

“All right.”

“All right,” he echoed, and something like relief softened his brow, only for a moment, before he nodded his head in satisfaction. “I’m still docking the dry cleaning from your pay, though. Double what it costs me.”

And as you trailed behind him, back towards the front door of the Tokugawa Tower, it was, you figured, a small price to pay for progress.

(Part 2)

#slbp #slbp ieyasu #prompt fill #my writing #omgwtf am i doing #besides butchering poor ieyasu #sorry everyone

[creative-type]

Queen Otohime: The Nuanced Idealist

Every story has a message. Good stories usually have a central theme that lies at the core of the narrative with any number of secondary themes to support it. Even if a creator claims that there is no specific idea that they’re trying to communicate (the “it’s just entertainment” defense) they are still sending a message to their audience, and the lack of point becomes the point.. 

As the entertainment industry grows to unprecedented heights, so does their influence on their audience. There are a couple of different theories on the exact relationship between media and culture, but it is plainly evident that there’s an endless cycle of culture influencing media which in turn influences culture. 

Which is why I want to talk about One Piece’s Queen Otohime

Before I get started, I want to make it clear that I don’t think Oda is obligated to write his story in any particular way for the sake of his audience. He has the freedom to put whatever he wants in his manga, whether I or anyone else agree with him or not. It’s the reader’s responsibility (or perhaps their parents, in the case of younger children) to discern for themselves what media they consume.

I do, however, think that a writer has a responsibility to be aware of what ideas they’re presenting. Oda’s audience happens to be huger than most, and to paraphrase Dumbledore that means his influence is greater than, say, a random upstart on tumblr.

*Cough*

For most, the Fishman Island arc is an inauspicious beginning to the second half of the series and a major let-down after the peak that was the Marineford War. I think that Oda would have had a difficult time satisfying fans no matter what, if only because Fishman Island had been such a long time coming. But while the meat of the arc falls flat, the backstory is excellent.

Now I write this as a white American, so keep in mind stones and glass houses, but Japan has a problem with xenophobia and racism. Oda has also tends to write his female characters - especially if they’re royalty - in a way that can be seen as problematic. Shirahoshi from this same arc irritated the crap out of me, and she shares a lot of traits with her mother. 

So what’s the difference?

A Multiplicity of Ideologies 

Considering the subject matter and Oda’s past history with female characters, it would it have been really easy to screw up the backstory for Fishman Island. I commend Oda for presenting the issues of slavery and racism in the first place. It’s not something he had to do, and I’m sure he wrote the Fishman Island arc fully aware of what he was getting himself into.

What I think helps us buy what Oda’s trying to sell is that Otohime’s view isn’t the only ideology presented. Her greatest foil Fisher Tiger has similar goals, but approaches the problem in an opposite manner. Jimbe ends up representing the middle ground, and says he doesn’t know which one of them was right

We’re also given a whole spectrum of characters that fall between these two opposites. There’s Aladdin, a former slave and soldier who never showed any hatred towards humans. There’s Arlong - who starts off rebuking Jimbe for his brutality and ends up enslaving entire islands in the East Blue - and Macro, who seems to turn over a new leaf before returning to the slave trade in the present day. 

On Otohime’s side of things, her own husband doesn’t agree with what she preaches, but lets her continue as she wants because he loves her 

And that’s not even looking at the human characters. I think the only viewpoint we don’t get within the flashback is one of a “good” Celestial Dragon, and Oda covers that during the Dressrosa arc. To this day Koala is the only flashback character I wish was the protagonist in her own manga. (If you didn’t feel something here, you’re either lying or have no soul)

It also helps that Oda does his research and is well-informed on the issues at hand. While it’s not been confirmed (to my knowledge, anyway) I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if Oda based Otohime and Fisher in part on Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X.  

On the other hand Oda does have just about every “good” character say that Otohime is right, so it’s obvious that he’s presenting one ideology as superior to another. I remember reading some criticism when these chapters first came out saying Oda was getting too preachy, and there is some merit to that. I think as an reader outside of the intended demographic it’s important to remember that One Piece is written for young boys whose worldviews are still being shaped and whose critical thinking skills aren’t completely developed. Some anvils do need to be dropped.

At the same time, by including the story of Fisher Tiger Oda is showing that these other ideas exist, which is more than can be said about a lot of media written for this age group. Otohime’s way of doing things has its flaws, namely that it’s gonna take a loooong time to work while there are untold number of fishmen (and humans) suffering under the unjust rule of the Celestial Dragons.

Which brings me to point number two

Suffering and Selfishness

In some ways Otohime is a parody of the all-loving hero archetype. In her introductory scene she slaps a thief into repentance (breaking her hand doing so) and is commended by her subjects for her compassion. Her unique brand of Observation Haki gives her super human (merman?) empathy that she uses to better understand and serve her people. Everyone except the villains agree that she was the ideal mother, wife, and queen.

And boy oh boy does she suffer for it.

The timeline for the Fishman Island flashback is confusing, but it does cover at least four years in which Otohime starts her petition, sees little success, and then actually goes backwards as the people withdraw their names before finally getting the support that she needs to make her motion to attend the Reverie. 

The implication is that she was working on her goals long before the flashback begins, but we’ll just look at what we’re explicitly told. In the grand scheme of things, four years isn’t that long of a time, but the daily grind clearly has an effect on Otohime’s emotional well-being.

Queen Otohime, presented thus far as a paragon of motherhood and virtue, gets so drunk that she calls out her entire nation over speakerphone. What resilience and polite discourse can’t do, she achieves through inebriation XD

It’s here we see Otohime’s true character. Yes, teaching the children, organizing sea rescues, preaching peace with humanity are all things Otohime believes in and wants to see happen. She wouldn’t have continued so long with so little support otherwise. But really, when you get down to it, her reasoning is just a little bit selfish

Otohime’s drunken rant is was solidifies her as a character instead of a caricature. She’s a mother who wants her children to have a better future than what she’s experienced, but she wants to do it the right way, the hard way, because she wants her kid’s future to be a peaceful one. Otohime is always looking forward, which brings me to my last, but perhaps most important, point

Nuance 

One of the things I found most annoying about Dressrosa was King Riku - and by extension Rebecca’s - pacifism. I don’t have a problem with pacifism in and of itself, but when a murderous sociopath comes a knockin’ on your doorstep then you might need to rethink your priorities. It was the same difficulty I had with Shirahoshi not telling anyone who really murdered her mother. There is literally no justification for her to stay silent in that instance, I don’t care what anyone says. Oda chose Ideology over common sense. 

That’s the problem when writing idealists. No one ideology is going to have an answer for every situation, and it gives rise to situations like Shirahoshi and Rebecca.

There are people who will never get over their irrational hatred.This is true to both the world of One Piece and Real Life. What Otohime wants for the future can’t exist in the same space as hatred. They are mutually exclusive. 

Nor can she sidestep the fact that the hurt and the pain her people have suffered. The injustice is real, and Otohime knows it. Heck, because of her Haki she probably knows it better than the people themselves because what they feel, she feels, and she has taken all of their burdens upon herself.

Chapter 625 gave me chills when I read it for the first time. Volume 63, which contains the vast majority of the Fishman Island flashback, is the only volume of One Piece that I own a physical copy of largely because of this moment. 

The title of the chapter 625 is “Uninherited Will”. Passing on one’s will is one of the major themes of the series. It’s no accident that chapter 145, best known for Hiliruk’s  speech, is literally called “Inherited Will”. Characters don’t die in One Piece unless they’ve achieved their dreams or passed them onto someone else, so for there to be something that needs to be uninherited - or to put it another way, abandoned and left behind - is a pretty big deal.

Otohime isn’t saying that the former slave’s pain is to be forgotten or left unpunished. She’s not even asking them to forgive the Celestial Dragons for what they’ve done. What she asks is for is the chance for their children - who know nothing of humans whatsoever - the opportunity to grow up and form their own opinions free of the hateful bias of their parents. What Otohime is looking for is a chance to end the cycle of revenge that will only lead to more death and misery and pain, and start over again. What happens after that...well, that’s up to the next generation. 

Note that despite saving his life, Saint Mysogard’s views don’t change, nor does Otohime expect them to. Also note that Hody, despite never suffering at the hands of humans and hearing Otohime’s words, still grows up to be one of the most racist (specist?) characters in the series. She dies before seeing her dreams come to fruition, and ten years later Fishman Island is on the brink of a hostile takeover by fishman supremacists. 

She did, however, pass on what was most important to those who matter most. What Otohime couldn’t do, Fukaboshi, Manboshi, Ryuboshi, and Shirahoshi will. And I think if she were real, Otohime would have been happy with that.

(I promise I’m not crying. I’ve just got dust in my eyes)

#One Piece #Eiichiro Oda #Fishman Island #Otohime #Queen Otohime #Writing #Manga #analysis #creative-type analyzes

[naesoonghonors]

Sita Sings the Blues, and not much else

Sita sings the Blues

 In history and mythology women have a tendency to be written a certain way. By that I mean they are written about in a certain way, in large part due to the fact that historically many women did not write. Yes, women have the common storyteller role but are not often the ones writing it down for any sort of historical record. That is true even with Sita, she tells her story to a monk and he is the one to write it down and preserve it for historians. And due to sexist views, that persevere through a majority of cultures women of mythology come off in these certain ways. Namely passive, but bitchy and nagging or either strong but unwilling to use their powers actively or completely weak damsels. And this movie has a very interesting take where it explores Rama and Sita’s story through her lens, giving her a bit more of an active character.

The first we see of our main duo has Sita lovingly massaging Rama’s leg. And I do believe Sita would be happy to do this for the rest of time if she were allowed. Her life is very much focused around Rama. She multiple times throughout the story contemplates suicide only to be turn away from it due to her beloved Rama. She is disgraced and banned from her home and only stays alive in order to give birth to Ramas boys. This paragon of womanhood for Hindu women is both suicidal and overemotional while living only to serve her husband. This is no way for any human being to live. This one-sided dedication is nearly admired by the story at large. Sita sings the blue almost exclusively about Rama being mean or ignoring her and her needs. This is paralleled by the other story presented, one that ends in an emotional divorce. So I do believe this relationship dynamic between Sita and Rama is ultimately unachievable, and completely unwanted, in this modern era. This because a real woman cannot have her emotional needs filled by a man willing to pack up and leave her for 14 years. Not to blame Hindu culture in particular, this is just the standard most goddess and mythological women are held to. It is more a reflection of the author and their fantasies as opposed to any realistic reality. While one may want a doting wife the idea of her being unwilling to leave you alone would soon drive most insane. That is to say there is no cultural figure not molded by the passage of time. As opinions of women grow and women’s right progress some aspects of the story are left behind or become outdated. As the narrators explain these events in a tongue in cheek way it is an affirmation that women are really no longer expected to behave like this.

As the story picks up Rama was to be crowned king, but he was banished from the kingdom for 14 years. Rama is looked back upon as an exemplary ruler, so he behaves as a big honorable man and does not question his father on this. So it would seem culturally the need to respect ones (male) elders is bigger than a mans need take his rightful place. So decides to dedicate his time to protecting holy men from the demons who would destroy their fires. And he wants to do this alone. Seemingly with no consideration of his wife and willing to just leave her to her bidding for fourteen years. So before he can run off for the foreseeable future Sita proclaims that a wife’s place is next to her husband. “but Rama a woman’s place is next to her husband. I cannot live without you”. As a goddess Sita is touted as a paragon of spousal and feminine virtues for all Hindu women. Most beloved for her devotion to her husband and her purity. Not to say these are not very coveted and lovely traits but then why is she such a passive role in this story? As Rama and Sita continue their lives in the woods, Rama killing demons and Sita mostly singing about her darling husband and not helping. This strikes me as an outsider as odd as later in the story Sita claims she does have marvelous power but is not using them because she is not commanded to by Rama. Just why. She only uses her great power at the end to prove a point about her purity and return to her earth mother from which she came. While extremely hilarious I find it hard to expound upon what this is supposed to mean or say to the audience. At this point she seems to have fulfilled her role as the perfect wife, and mothers Rama twin boys, only to top it off by once again proving her purity. I guess as she has borne sons her role here as the faithful companion to Rama is complete. And that is a bit sad.

Despite how manically devoted Sita is portrayed throughout the story she is ultimately rejected by her husband. As the demon king taunts her, she continues to reaffirm how she is Rama’s forever; she belongs to Rama as the rays belong to the sun. So Sita shares her genius ideas with the audience, she will either wait patiently for her husband comes to get her or kill herself if he takes too long. She is not going to try and sneak out to rejoin her beloved she misses so much. NO as her man it is Rama’s job to come get her. Even as Rama sends a monkey soldier to come help her, she refuses to go unless Rama gets her. Like do you want to see your man or not? So she winds up spending a bit of time stuck at the demon king’s palace. She is so excited her man came to save her and restore her honor. Rama however is not having it. Because she has lived at another man’s house, he thinks she is no longer fit to be his wife. He has done his job in avenging the insult of the demon king stealing his wife, so he is done with her. He does not believe her claims of character and conduct. So Sita ever the active protagonist as his one last request of having HIM build her a funeral pyre to throw herself on. I cannot believe I’m saying this, but girl make your own funeral pyre. Ultimately Rama does not make her that fire but in order to prove herself still pure and virtuous she has to stand a trial by fire. So Rama believes she is impure and 100% ready to watch her burn to death in order to prove her purity. But she survives the trial and proves herself. Flowers literally rain from the sky.

As an outsider to this culture I thought this story was wild. Rama falls to peer pressure and literally exiles his pregnant wife because a guy said something that made him feel bad. But I imagine this is the same as anyone not raised Catholic feels about any bible story. So no matter how intense these stories may get we know, whether or not their content it true, they are deeply ingrained with culture and biases of their respective times. So I just wanted to acknowledge that some of my interpretations of the story are either dead wrong or comedy bits from the movie itself. There is nothing wrong with Sita or the virtues she is intended to reflect. This reflection is all in good fun. The world is now simply a different place with different values; but that does not mean collectively humanity cannot look back on the past. Overall I hope you enjoyed this, and I did not manage to offend anyone. If I got something wrong or someone wants to discuss I am completely open to listen and learn. Thank you.

#honors project #review #sita sings the blues

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

8th November >> Fr. Martin’s Gospel Reflections & Homilies on Luke 16: 1-8 for Friday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time: ‘The master praised the dishonest steward for his astuteness’.

Friday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

Gospel (Europe, Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada)

Luke 16:1-8

The master praised the dishonest servant

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘There was a rich man and he had a steward denounced to him for being wasteful with his property. He called for the man and said, “What is this I hear about you? Draw me up an account of your stewardship because you are not to be my steward any longer.” Then the steward said to himself, “Now that my master is taking the stewardship from me, what am I to do? Dig? I am not strong enough. Go begging? I should be too ashamed. Ah, I know what I will do to make sure that when I am dismissed from office there will be some to welcome me into their homes.”

Then he called his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, “How much do you owe my master?” “One hundred measures of oil” was the reply. The steward said, “Here, take your bond; sit down straight away and write fifty.” To another he said, “And you, sir, how much do you owe?” “One hundred measures of wheat” was the reply. The steward said, “Here, take your bond and write eighty.”

‘The master praised the dishonest steward for his astuteness. For the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light.’

Gospel (USA)

Luke 16:1-8

For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.

Jesus said to his disciples, “A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said, ‘What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward.’ The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes.’ He called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He replied, ‘One hundred measures of olive oil.’ He said to him, ��Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ Then to another he said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘One hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Here is your promissory note; write one for eighty.’ And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently. For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than the children of light.”

Reflections (4)

(i) Friday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

The parables Jesus spoke were all drawn from the experience of life with which he and his hearers would have been familiar. All of human life is in these stories, what we might call the good, the bad and the ugly. Many of the characters in the stories that Jesus told leave a lot to be desired. That is certainly true of the parable in today’s gospel reading. A wealthy landlord entrusted the care of his estate to a steward or a manager. We are aware of the figure of the absentee landlord from our own Irish history. This particular steward took advantage of the absence of the landlord to enrich himself dishonestly. Eventually, as often happens, his dishonesty caught up with him. The landlord came to hear of what was happening and called him in and gave him his notice. What the dishonest steward does next showed that he had some redeeming feature. He called in the landlord’s debtors who worked the land and he reduced their debt to the landlord, perhaps by cancelling what he had planned to take for himself. In that way he hoped to make friends with these tenants so that when he lost his job they might look favourably upon him. He was still acting out of self-interest, but in a slightly more enlightened way. Jesus saw something of merit in the actions of this rather shady character. A moment of crisis brought home to him that some things were more important than acquiring wealth for himself, such as the friendship and hospitality of others. The landlord ends up praising his dishonest steward for his astuteness, his wisdom. What is Jesus saying to us through this story? The crisis that the steward found himself in brought a shift in his values. This can happen for us too. Jesus is calling on us to value people more than possessions, and to use our material resources in the services of others, especially those in greatest need. Our values are to be in line with the Lord’s values, and it is people he values more than anything else.

And/Or

(ii) Friday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

There are many parables of Jesus in the gospels, and the people who inhabit these stories are not all saints. Some of them leave a lot to be desired. That is certainly the case with the character in this morning’s gospel reading. He is described as wasteful with his master’s property and, as a result, is dismissed from his post. Yet, there was something about this steward that Jesus believed his own followers could learn from. When his back was to the wall, this steward took decisive action to secure his future after he was fired. He treated favourably those who were in debt to his master, ensuring that he would have people who were well disposed towards him when he found himself out of a job. The master could not but praise his steward for his astuteness. Jesus implies that the children of light, his own followers, have something to learn from this man of the world. We need to put the same ingenuity into serving the Lord as this steward put into looking out for himself. The steward acted decisively in a moment of crisis. We need to do the same in the living out of our faith. We live in a moment of crisis in terms of the faith. We need all the skills and gifts the Lord has given us to respond to this crisis. It is a time to be proactive and not to sit back in a spirit of despondency. If we do what only we can do, the Lord will work through us in ways that will always surprise us.

 And/Or

(iii) Friday, Thirty First week in Ordinary Time

Sometimes the principal characters in the stories that Jesus tells leave a lot to be desired. The younger son of the father who left home comes to mind in the parable of the prodigal son. Very often those characters who leave a lot to be desired have some redeeming feature to them. That younger son did make the journey home again, even if it was out of desperation. This morning’s gospel reading gives us another example of a story in which the principal character is anything but a paragon of virtue. He is described as a dishonest steward who was wasteful with his master’s property. Yet, he too had a redeeming feature. Perhaps Jesus is reminding us that everyone has some redeeming feature. The redeeming feature of the dishonest steward was his shrewd ability to take decisive action when his back was to the wall, so as to ensure that after he lost his job there would be people who would be well disposed to him. Jesus’ comments on the story suggest that we have something to learn, not from his dishonesty, but from his shrewdness, from his ability to take decisive action when required. Very often our following of the Lord requires us to take decisive action to ensure that we continue to take the path the Lord is calling us to take. There can be something we need to do or to stop doing if, in the words of this morning’s first reading, we are to remain faithful to the Lord.

 And/Or

(iv) Friday, Thirty First Week in Ordinary Time

The parable we have just heard is one of the most puzzling of all the parables that Jesus spoke. The main character in the story is a steward who is dishonest and wasteful, as a result of which he is dismissed from his post. After his dismissal he takes decisive action to safeguard his future as best he can. Calling together his master’s creditors, he reduces what they owe, probably by cancelling the cut that he would have got for himself. In other words, he forfeited money he would have received to ensure that he received something more valuable, the goodwill and the hospitality of his master’s creditors. In a moment of crisis he realized that being in communion with others is more important than money and, on that basis, he took decisive action. Jesus spoke this parable because the children of light, his followers, have something to learn from this somewhat shady character. It took a moment of personal crisis for this steward to realize that human relationships have a higher value than acquiring money through whatever means. We can all get our priorities a bit skewed from time to time. Sometimes a moment of crisis in our own lives can help us to look again at our priorities so as to bring them more into line with what the Lord desires for us. The steward learnt that at the end of the day people are more important than possessions and that is a lesson we all need to keep re-learning.  

Fr. Martin Hogan, Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin, D03 AO62, Ireland.

Email: [email protected] or  [email protected]

Parish Website: www.stjohnsclontarf.ie  Please join us via our webcam.

Twitter: @SJtBClontarfRC.

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Tumblr: Saint John the Baptist Parish, Clontarf, Dublin.

[tediousreviews]

The Second Generation

Back to Dragonlance, and it's time to advance the plot. Unfortunately, I don't have the Legends trilogy so we have to skip Raistlin's entire quest for godhood, Kitiara's death, and Caramon's workout montage. Pity.

Instead we get to skip ahead to the next generation of heroes. Sort of.

It's five separate stories, in no particular order: three of the stories serve primarily as character introductions, one is an apocryphal romance set before the original dragonlance novels, and the last is a madcap adventure starring three of the new heroes.

Kitiara's Son

A woman shows up at Caramon and Tika's tavern in Solace with a wild tale of how Caramon's evil older sister Kitiara seduced their mutual friend and paragon of chaste virtue Sturm mostly for shits and giggles but forgot her birth control.

This isn't the apocryphal romance.

Steel Brightblade is real, and he's his parent's son. He has Sturm's honor, courage, and integrity and Kitiara's wits, ambition, and skill. And he uses all of those traits to their fullest as a member of the evil goddess Takhisis's new knightly order. Caramon and Tanis do their best to save him, but saving a true believer from themselves is easier said than done.

The Legacy

We're back to Caramon's family again for story two. This time it's to meet his three sons, Tanin, Sturm, and Palin. Tanin and Sturm take after their father, although they're a bit more concerned with honor and glory than Caramon ever was. Palin, on the other hand, takes after his uncle. Which is why every living male Majere is sitting in the Tower of Wayreth when the story opens.

The mages say they're trying to keep Raistlin from stealing Palin's body to resurect himself. The truth is that they're trying to trick an overprotective father into letting his magically gifted son take the Test. The truthier truth is that is isn't a good idea to toy with the most powerful magic user in history, even if you think all you're doing is creating an illusion.

Palin passes his Test and his test of character, and he gets a nifty new glowing stick as a souvenier. A glowing stick that is one of the most iconic magical artifacts on Krynn and could only have been given to him by Raistlin himself.

"Wanna Bet"

In almost any fantasy setting, almost every tavern that serves a multi-raciel clientelle comes with an engraved plaque that says "Do not try to outdrink the dwarf". Palin doesn't need to read that sign. Unfortunately, his brothers are the sort of young men who take good advice as a challenge.

It wouldn't be a major Dragonlance adventure without a deity wandering around in the flesh. Reorx, as Dougan Redhammer, is a nice change from Fizban. But... he isn't quite so farsighted.

Reorx created the tinker gnomes on purpose. The dwarves and the kender were and accident. But all three races are Reorx's children through and through. And it shows.

Plotwise this is the most important story in the book. And it's far and away the silliest. Palin’s the central character, and we get to see both his wits and his insecurities on display. More than any other character in the book, Palin’s kind of a study on what it’s like to be both very talented and nearly crippled by the knowledge of how thoroughly overshadowed you are by the one person you can’t stop comparing yourself too.

Raistlin's Daughter

Raistlin wasn't exactly known for his womanizing ways. In part, that was because he was cursed to see anyone he looked at as though they had been aged hundreds of years. But the simple truth was that by the time he became an adult, Raistlin didn't have room inside for any real human connections beyond the one with his brother that he resented so much.

It'd take some convoluted circumstances to get Raistlin into a situation where he'd be likely to get a woman pregnant. Magic and curses and an impossibly beautiful woman from an ageless and mythical race add up to convoluted and then some even before adding in the whole 'we have to huddle together for warmth, naked' thing.

It's no wonder the story starts off with a note from Caramon saying that he doesn't believe it.

The Sacrifice

Back in the Chronicles, Tanis was known for his wisdom and written as being unable to bring that wisdom to bear in her personal relationships. It's no exaggeration to say that Tanis's poor handling of his romantic life was central to the fate of the world during the War of the Lance.

Is it any surprise that his poor handling of fatherhood becomes central to the fate of the elven nations and by extension the world?

By contrast, Laurana was pretty much pure distilled awesome except for a bad habit of walking into traps. So is it any wonder that after he lets himself get tricked into becoming a puppet-king, her son shows signs of making the forces of evil thoroughly regret his coronation?

I’m always confused about how elven aging work. Even now, Laurana is barely considered an adult by elven standards, and she’s roughly a century old. Gilthas is 16 when this story happens, and he’s indistinguishable in maturity from a human 16-year-old. So do elves physiologically mature at more or less exactly the same rate as humans, and it’s just cultural that they aren’t considered adults until they’re at least several times as old as they were when they hit puberty? Or is it a brain chemistry thing, like how they say that our brains don’t finish maturing until our mid-twenties. That sort of matches how Laurana herself is written in the Chronicles. 

That last idea is truly horrific. I remember being a teenager. Can you imagine how much it would suck to mentally and emotionally be a teenager for eighty years?

Final Thoughts

It's a good collection, and the stories almost all do a good job of setting the stage for what's coming. But that’s also the flaw. This is a collection of introductory and stage-setting stories, so it’s hard to fairly judge it on its own. That said, every story in here was a good read and only The Sacrifice bogged down even a little for me.

There's one thing that really bothers me though. The 29 page preview of The Dragons of Summer Flame comes with a truly brutal spoiler.

#dragonlance #the second generation #margaret weis #tracy hickman

[bonerhitler]

Moral Choices Are Lame

Been a while since I wrote anything on here – been a busy few weeks. So, lets see what I can grumble up about Moral Choices in games. They're not as popular as they were in previous years, especially during the PS3/360 era, but they still rear their heads every so often and developers continually make the same mistakes with them over and over again, and the choices always fall flat for the same reasons.

For a start, they're rarely presented as genuine or earned choices. Dating back to the classic JRPG Dragon Quest for the NES video games have had a history of giving the player false choices. Whether it's the option to “join” the villain's side leading to a game over or reject the princess' hand in marriage – an infamous feat you literally can not do leading to her repeating the same “But Thou Must!” line of dialogue over and over until you pick the right option. More modern moral choices are often very similar, and in some ways even simpler.

You see, with the Dragon Quest example, the choices exist to serve the narrative. The player character didn't speak but you didn't have any influence over their personality or development either. It was the only way they could allow the player – and the character – to respond to NPCs. Now take a game like Dragon Age, written and developed by Bioware for the 360, PS3 and PC. You're often given choices to do a mean thing, or to do a good thing. But outside of the big act-ending binary choices of which factions you want to side with the only morality involved comes down to “Be mean and get rewarded” or “Be nice and don't get rewarded”. So if you want that cool sword, you can bully a child and he'll hand it over. But no one will care and there's no long lasting, or even real consequences from it. At worst your party members disapprove but you can give them gifts and they'll never remember it happened. Let a demon posses a small child so you can learn blood magic? Never comes back to bite you in the ass. Absolutely nothing you do in the game affects you outside of the big plot choices because it is safe. It wants the player to be absolutely free to be as good or as bad as they want without ever suffering any consequences. In fact the only time you can ever really screw yourself over by taking a wrong moral choice is by bringing your religious party members along a trip to go defile some saints ashes.

The inversion of this are of course series like Fable, Infamous and Bioshock where the entire morality system is simply a binary choice. Are you The Good Guy or The Bad Guy? You get a Good Ending and reward or a Bad Ending and reward once you max out your good or evil points and finish the game. There rarely is ever a reward for maintaining a neutral state and the rewards in games like these are usually either equal, such as in infamous where at both max good and evil you gain almost identical powers except one is red and one is blue, meaning the difference is almost solely visual alone turning it into less of a moral choice and more of a aesthetic one. Or the rewards are entirely skewed to one choice over the other, like in Bioshock where the upside to not being evil is so overwhelmingly beneficial there's no reason to be evil other than for the sake of it. These aren't interesting choices, they aren't even well thought out or clever choices. They're choices shoved into a game because moral choices were the hot fad at the time and for a period telling someone to go one way or the other and giving it a few arbitrary visual distinctions was a great way to generate marketing buzz.

So, is it possible to do moral choices well, at all, in a game? Certainly! A lot of games do them in a variety of ways. Take my old dead horse Dark Souls for example. You can kill every NPC you meet, most of them drop items and equipment when they die. If you're a jerk or have zero intention of doing their quest lines you can murder them for immediate reward. Or you can do their quest lines and receive more rewards with a greater investment. But ultimately, finishing their quest line leads to their eventual hollowing. So you're given a second choice; Complete their quest and perform a mercy killing or leave a character you might have grown attached to, alive while forgoing the ultimate rewards of that quest line? Going even further there are NPCs who, independent of what you do, will kill other NPCs if you don't kill them. They don't harm you, some of them are even friendly and helpful towards you and if you're observant you can see the foreshadowing of what's to come and choose who gets to live or die. Without a single prompt, scripted sequence or forced choice Dark Souls manages to give you multiple choices more involved than those previous competitors that all hyped up their moral choices and “gray morality”

Even older games manage to execute morality with more interesting results and designs. One of my personal favorite PS2 games, Steambot Chronicles (AKA: Bumpy Trot) is a game where you pilot strange automobile mechs and fight them while working on the side as a musician in a band. By sheer accident you get embroiled in a war between a militaristic crime group and those fighting them and you're given the choice to join them. And you can. You lose your friends, and the game's plot largely changes if you do. There's even a secondary plotline of trying to usurp the crime syndicate and becoming its leader! The game has multiple variations on the core endings, your actions over the course of the game genuinely impacting what happens to your friends, enemies and even potentially leading to deaths in the main cast.

Lastly I want to talk about “Moral Grayness” for a moment since I mentioned it above. For a while it was a fun buzzword people used to describe games like Dragon Age Origins and The Witcher, it largely just meant that everyone was a jerk. The concept of Gray Morality is rather simple, it's that there is no black and white good and evil. That your main character can do some bad stuff because they have to, they're not paragons of virtue. Essentially, it's the video games equivalent of a 90's X-TREEM comic book era anti-hero. So this leads to people crowing about how cool and morally gray a game is when you pick the “stop him!” choice in a Dragon Age regarding a guy fleeing from you, and your main character – regardless of how good, evil or strictly anti-murder you have been up until now – will just pull out a knife and gut him. “Gray Morality” is a video game's moral choice what the color gray is to a castle's interior décor. Boring. A game where everyone is a jerk and no one has any determined, dedicated goals and ideals beyond being a self interested jerk is just hard to buy into.

#nerdshit #Sorry for the long break #Go play Steambot Chronicles though #I personally blame everyone who didn't for its cancelled sequel #Not seriously #That was a joke guys

[rkcarnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://www.rkcars.my/driving-back-to-kl-in-cayenne-and-panamera-sport-turismo/

Driving back to KL in Cayenne and Panamera Sport event

It was a fun six days and over 2,000 km of driving some of the most exciting cars on the planet, but all good things come to an end. We wrapped up Porsche Club Malaysia’s Drive of the Year 2019 on Friday, and we’re already suffering from withdrawal syndrome.

When we last left you, we had just arrived at the Belum Rainforest Resort in Perak on the third day of the drive, having long ago passed half distance. From there, the 467 km to our final stop in Penang was all that was left, and what lay before us were some of the best roads we encountered on the trip.

Indeed, the action started as soon as we left the car park, with the wide, sweeping East-West Highway giving plenty of room for owners to exercise their cars’ considerable performance. But it was when we turned off onto the roads heading up north into Kedah that the going really got tough.

The undulating tarmac, cut into the region’s barren, rolling hills, not only afforded a fantastic view but also provided a thorough test of the cars’ dynamic capabilities, filled with dips, crests and blind corners. It really was a roller coaster ride, and it’s a testament of Porsche’s engineering prowess that even the large, heavy cars that we drove – the new Cayenne and Panamera 4 Sport Turismo – took it all in their stride.

Sadly, it was all over by lunchtime, as we reached the Shell petrol station at Changlun – just a few kilometres south of the Thai border – for another fuel stop before making a short jaunt to Perlis to fill our tummies. Thereafter, it was only the matter of hopping back onto the North-South Expressway, crossing the majestic Penang Bridge and tracing the island coast to Golden Sands Resort for the night.

The next day, as the owners headed out on a day trip around Penang, us members of the media went back onto the mainland to Porsche Centre Penang to give the two cars a well-deserved wash (to get them ready for us to take the photos you see here). On the way, we stopped by the brand’s latest retail endeavour – a pop-up store nestled within the Gurney Paragon shopping mall.

Aimed at expanding the Zuffenhausen brand experience beyond the traditional sales network, the store has space for a display car – in this case the new 718 Cayman SportDesign – as well as a variety of merchandise and accessories. These include everything from clothes and luggage to teddy bears and pedal cars and even a RM22,000 (!) bookshelf made from the rear wing of a real 911 GT3 Cup racer.

Just like that, it was all over, and the following morning we bid goodbye to PCM and Porsche Club Singapore, cruising straight to Porsche Centre Glenmarie (well, apart for one last detour to Taiping for lunch and a short photo session). As we handed the keys over and booked a Grab back home, we couldn’t help but steal one more glance at the two cars that have been nigh-on bulletproof the entire trip.

Detractors have long criticised Porsche for moving away from solely producing 911s, but this experience proved that the company hasn’t sacrificed the sporting character it has worked so hard to build, despite opening up the brand to a wider audience. And make no mistake, these two offerings are about as far away from Porsche’s core sports cars as you can get whilst still being allowed to wear the hallowed crest.

The Cayenne is a known quantity, the SUV having spawned three generations since the controversial original debuted in 2002. But the Sport Turismo is Porsche’s first wagon, a direct descendant of the well-received 2012 concept of the same name – the same show car that demonstrated the Panamera sedan could actually be good-looking and not bludgeoned by the ugly stick as the first generation was.

Clearly, these two cars are the maxim of the brand’s recent “Sportscar Together” campaign – that sports cars need not be limited to just two people at a time. As you’d expect, then, they both seat four in immense comfort, especially the Panamera with its long wheelbase and cushy individual rear seats.

The occupants are surrounded by plush, well-made cabins that feels just as good as they look, although some of the touches, like the Panamera’s powered air vents, are more gimmicky than actually useful. On the bright side, both cars will easily swallow two full-size suitcases, and the Sport Turismo’s massive 520 litre load bay was even able to carry several buntings for the event on top of that.

But a Porsche earns its keep on the road, and despite being the base models in their respective ranges, the Cayenne and Panamera 4 are still nothing to be sniffed at. Both come with a 3.0 litre twin-turbocharged V6 that sends 330 PS (340 PS in the Cayenne) and 450 Nm of torque to all four wheels, plus the optional Sport Chrono package that adds a few extra high-performance drive modes and a nifty analogue stopwatch.

Even though they weigh the better part of two tonnes, the cars will sprint to 100 km/h in under six seconds – the Cayenne does it in 5.9 seconds, the Panamera in 5.3. Those figures aren’t quite so impressive at a time when modern hot hatches do the same benchmark in numbers beginning with a “4”, but on the flip side, this low-tune V6 is a smooth operator, delivering its torque from low down and sustaining it across the rev range.

Belying the mill’s VW Group roots (the smaller, more powerful 2.9 litre unit in the S models apparently has some Porsche input) is a muffled engine note that has no place in a sporting machine, although the Panamera’s sports exhaust (again, optional) helpfully kicks the noise level up several decibels. With it, the deep, bassy rumble and the pops and crackles on the overrun makes for a much more engaging experience.

Also a smooth operator is the Cayenne’s eight-speed automatic gearbox, which delivers seamless shifts both when you’re at full throttle or just mooching about in town. The Panamera’s PDK dual-clutch unit, on the other hand, is occasionally clunky in stop-start traffic but delivers even faster gear changes – and it’s the only one with a full manual mode. In truth, both transmissions are brilliant, and I’ve got no complaints.

Out on the open road, refinement on both cars is compromised somewhat by the fitment of wide, low-profile tyres that generate a not-insignificant amount of road noise, though wind noise is fairly suppressed and the engine is all but inaudible when you’re cruising on the highway. To help with ride comfort, both cars are equipped with Porsche Air Suspension Management (PASM), which has been made standard-fit this year.

But while both cars still ride with a firm edge, it is the Panamera that is the more cosseting, serving up an impeccable balance between bump absorption and body control. By virtue of its taller body, the Cayenne has to be made stiffer to be able to handle with the same composure, so its ride does jostle its passengers at higher speeds – to the point of making this writer a little carsick on one particularly spirited drive.

The Panamera’s advantage extends to the corners as well, as the low-slung shooting brake feels quite a bit more agile when you turn the wheel. That’s not to say that the Cayenne is a slouch in the bends, not when it comes with the same rear-wheel steering as its sibling.

This, together with masses of grip from the fat tyres and all-wheel drive system, means that both cars can enter and rocket out of the corners with unbelievable speed and ease. Special praise must be heaped onto the speed-sensitive Power Steering Plus system (now also standard across the board on both), which, unlike similar systems from other carmakers, still provides an abundance of feel and precision.

At the end of the 2,069 km road, the Cayenne and Panamera 4 Sport Turismo have managed to win this sceptic over, and having already been blown away by the 911 GT3 last year, I’m convinced these cars will make the perfect addition for Porsche collectors looking to complete their garage. Sportscar Together, indeed.

#Cayenne #Driving #KL #Panamera #Sport #Turismo