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dr3amofagame · 7 months

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I find it strange that a lot of people are coming forward and saying that the staged finale was a bad play for one reason or another but it really isn’t and I don’t understand where the hate is coming from.

yeah i've seen some of this the last few days--staged finale has always been somewhat "controversial" in the lorehead scene, so a measure of disagreement/discourse about it makes sense. especially bc it was honestly a very big change to what people thought was the story and required people to go back and reevaluate a lot, which. people are naturally resistant at doing

but while obviously i think that some healthy discussion about these things is good, and i feel like i have seen a level of...misunderstanding? about it?? which has gone into the ways that people disagree

staged finale refers to the decision to stage the finale. that's it. staged finale just asserts that based on preexisting foreshadowing and based on the sheer level of suspension of disbelief in order for genuine finale to be real, it made more sense for the finale to be staged than for it to have been genuine. how the finale was planned, when the finale was planned, and to what ends it was planned are all things that you can disagree on w/ other staged finale believers/supporters while still being a staged finale believer/supporter, ykwim? if you believe that c!punz faked his betrayal to c!dream, then congrats! you believe in staged finale. oftentimes i see people say things like "i don't believe in staged finale, i think that c!dream faked the betrayal and all and always had c!punz on his side but i think that the reason behind why he did it is [X]" and it's like. staging the finale is one (1) event, not a comprehensive explanation for everything c!Dream does. that would be more in line with something like the "strategist dream interpretation," which in itself does have different readings as well.

people have listed all of the inconsistencies in the staged finale before, but just to summarize--the guy literally could've dipped when everyone came to "defeat" him, c!tommy leveraging his own life is basically no leverage at all when the mans has the revive book, skeppy cage is a joke, c!dream revealing all of his plans when they were maybe 10% carried out (the entire damn attachment vault was empty of items besides stuff that was literally faked, his own damn stuff, and stuff that he stole recently from c!tommy such as the Axe of Peace and the discs) is ridiculously stupid, why the hell does he have blackmail against c!punz included in a bunker that c!punz clearly had access to???? the list goes on.

(as someone who took awhile to be fully convinced in staged finale, what really tripped me up was the stream punz did the day before: here's a post breaking it down that definitely helped me to see it in a different light.)

as far as foreshadowing goes, just off the top of my head: the original prisoner is a constant question from the day of the prison's creation, being something that's even highlighted on the day of the staged finale itself. c!Dream saying he has "the biggest house on the server" and how it's full of redstone. the entire conversation he has with c!punz, obviously. his holding back on the favor with c!techno, the connection between the revive book and the prison that he establishes the day they begin prison construction.

from a logical perspective, the plan as c!Dream establishes it doesn't make any damn sense. c!dream had opportunities to escape that he didn't take for illogical reasons (if the only reason why he allowed himself to stay in a fucking possible kill chamber was to keep c!tommy from committing suicide, then? what about the revive book? what about the fact that he literally kills c!tommy just a few months later????) -- a level of plot contrivance is expected in the medium, but for a lot of people this was just. Going way too far. Unless he literally lost his whole mind (which, to be fair, was the persona being played) there's just. really no other way to make sense of what was going on there, if it was all genuine.

the other argument is a narrative one--people claim that the story established by a genuine finale is cleaner than the story of the staged one, and honestly. it's like. like that's...a feature, not a flaw? the reason why the genuine finale worked isn't because it was logically believable. dream is Dream Manhunt. he's famously hard to nail down, famously good at escaping sticky situations, famously a man that can outsmart his way out of crazy disadvantageous situations--like. just in terms of minecraft skill, i'd wager that most people would think that dream would've technically been able to pull off an escape even when facing down the collection of enemies that were there. like he had 2 stacks of pearls.

narratively, though, the staged finale has a story that's quite appealing on the surface. the "story" of the events from the spirit speech onwards is one that revolved around the idea of "attachment." c!Dream rejects attachment in favor of control in the spirit speech when he says he refuses to let his love for his dead pet control him anymore, and he focuses on the ability to use the discs to control c!Tommy. the fact that c!Dream's relationships deteriorate at this time seems to support this point, and c!Tommy's strength in his relationships being what saves him and damns c!Dream ties everything off into a neat bow. c!Tommy wins because he has friends and c!Dream loses because he doesn't, moral of the story established, hip-hip-hooray. And so it goes.

but when we look at this more in specifics...? it does start falling apart a bit, doesn't it?

although c!Dream supposedly begins his rampage over his existing emotional connections with the spirit speech, his reputation had been in shambles long before that point. c!Dream-as-villain is first established as part of the greater story in the lmanburg revolution, and that's a title that he never really sheds (this point being emphasized in inconsolable differences and the book c!Wilbur has c!Dream write.) Dethronement happens within a day of Spirit Speech, iirc, and on that day c!Quackity specifically points out that c!Dream has no one on his side but c!Punz. the moments where he is more specifically isolated go back to events such as november 16th, where his alliance with c!Wilbur involved blowing up L'manburg, his deal for the revive book, which involved his publicly betraying Pogtopia, or his opposing Manberg to the literal Manberg cabinet. etc. all of these events in the Manberg/Pogtopia era had c!Dream's loyalties erode to end up as just c!Wilbur and later c!Schlatt for the book, two dead men. (and i say eroded loyalties as if pogtopia really believed dream was on their side, like, ever? like he was never trusted in their ranks, even by c!Tommy, who was definitely the person he worked the closest with outside of c!Wilbur.)

if we look at Dethronement itself, it doesn't actually fit the pattern of "c!Dream cuts off his attachment to people in order to make himself uncontrollable" -- in fact, what it does fit the pattern of is. Staged finale? Faking an end in a relationship with people that he does consider important to him, making a public appearance of betrayal + anger to mask an existing connection, drawing attention to their being enemies to hide the fact that they're actually friends--that's not c!Dream cutting anyone off. That's just the exact same ploy that he uses to make people think that c!Punz betrays him (only c!Sapnap and c!George ended up deciding that Nah We're Gonna Kill You Now. Fuck You It's Coup Time. so that's how that ended up.)

Otherwise there's...the Badlands, who were perfectly happy to agree to joining the coup on the day of dethronement if it got them more power and land. c!Techno, who c!Dream wasn't an ally of until later on with the favor established and then doomsday, and who was someone c!Dream was quite openly wary of + afraid of due to his combat skill. c!Dream was alone literally before exile even happened, his remaining "attachments" of c!George and c!Sapnap turning against him like the day he goes on a whole spiel about ohhoho from today onwards i DONT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT MY ATTACHMENTS !!! I ONLY CARE ABOUT THE DISCS !!! like congrats you don't even have a chance to cut off any attachment at all dingus they all hate you and want you dead already.

further, with c!punz, he literally says that they're more than just employer/employee in the infamous conversation they have about planning a betrayal. if the whole point of the story is "attachment good," then why is it that what takes down c!dream is...his one remaining attachment? if his fatal flaw is that he didn't trust people enough, why is it that he loses because he trusted someone too much? it's not like c!tommy had any attachment to c!punz--c!punz explicitly "has a reason" to betray c!dream because of money. he helps c!tommy because dream "should have paid [him] more." none of that reflects that spirit of "attachment" that people claim was c!dream's downfall.

(not to mention how the people present in the staged finale to take c!dream down included people who literally hated c!tommy's guts. like. what brought them together wasn't the power of friendship, it was the power of we hate this green bastard.)

this isn't to say that c!Dream didn't have some relationships that go up in flames because he starts acting particularly cackling evil villain (with the green festival being the specific moment where he really goes full in with that persona, going from someone that was framing himself as having a Reasonable Complaint to literally the joker as soon as he gets the disc from c!Tubbo. It's purposefully played as a "mask off" moment that is meant to make him look like a crazy fucking villain in front of a large audience--whether or not you think that was a choice that he made in character or not, the way his personality changes as soon as he receives the disc is jarring.) In particular, his relationships with c!Puffy and c!Sam come to mind--c!Puffy burns the house she made him when she decides that he's too evil (but, uh, c!dream really wasn't even there for that and didn't ever have a particularly close relationship with her) and c!Sam is among those whose opinions of c!Dream become drastically more negative around the period of time that spans green festival->doomsday->staged finale. but it's important to note that c!Dream's relationships on the server aren't...great, at the time of spirit speech. They're uh, really fucking bad, actually. dethronement only makes them even worse, and all of this happens pre-exile. c!Dream had significant reason to be paranoid and afraid for his life long before exile happens, which is Quite Significant, Actually, when you consider that that paranoia is literally what goes into his decisions to carry out the staged finale + put himself in the prison (which isn't the case for genuine finale, where he's more motivated by a desire to control the server without being controlled himself.) staged finale does solidify c!dream-as-villain for a lot of people, but it never would've worked if people didn't already see him as a villain in the first place. c!Dream doesn't make people hate him with the staged finale; he uses hatred that he already knows exists to put himself in what he sees as a safer position.

and look we could go into a whole discussion about manberg/pogtopia c!Dream (which i do think is way overdue to be fair considering that that's where the paranoia + isolation that motivates him post-november 16th comes from in the first place) but this post is long enough already and i still have to figure out a better way to articulate my thoughts on the matter. anyway. carrying on:

people still have different feelings on why he carries out staged finale in the first place, but what we do know for sure is that it was meant to protect punz and protect the revive book. by firmly establishing that c!punz and him were on opposite sides, he keeps the revive book safe and both of their lives safe by extension: as long as no one would kill both of them at the same time, they had a means of reviving the other if need be and obviously had the information on how to raise people from the dead secure. which was important to them. and otherwise...c!Dream is paranoid. c!Dream is very, very paranoid, and this paranoia goes back at the very least to when he learns about the revive book. the prison, for all the dependence that it required of him, was tailor made (and the construction process controlled by dream every damn step of the way) to make sure that whoever was in the main cell would be safe from external threats. the security of the prison and the prisoner was the POINT. i've seen some assertions that staged finale implies that he predicted everything that happened after he was put in prison and...no? i'd say that c!dream's behavior indicates him being thrown off by c!sam as early as bad's prison visit, c!sapnap's prison visit for sure. c!Ranboo being banned from visitation pretty damn obviously fucks him up, tbh. he has c!punz explicitly out there to keep an eye out on the server while he's in the prison, where he was meant to remain for a period of time that was supposed to be much shorter than how long he ends up being there. likely because, you know, he was supposed to have a consistent and reliable source of information with the outside world in the form of c!Ranboo, and c!sam wasn't supposed to fall off the fucking rails as soon as the prison started. people have also talked about how having the staged finale be true means that c!dream doesn't lose, which...i mean. gestures at the prison arc? that whole thing is a loss so catastrophic it literally destroys him. he's never the same after the prison happens. the false betrayal of c!punz is deliberately like ironically described to c!sam, who was the REAL betrayal that fucking. ruins him. he loses SO MUCH over the course of the prison, which was something he literally designed to keep himself safe from external threat. as far as losses go, i definitely find that a lot more compelling and a lot less contrived than watching c!dream go "whoop de doo guess i have to die now" when he's like 3 pearls away from making a clean escape in the disc vault, tbh.

at the end of the day, i think having some conversation about staged finale is fun! and it's always good to reexamine what you believe to make sure that it still holds water. but i've really not seen much staged finale crit that makes the genuine finale feel favorable as an explanation: logically, it makes a lot less sense. narratively, it relies on a story that the audience wants to be true and acts as a "clean" explanation for everything while not actually taking into account a lot of what was ACTUALLY going on for c!dream (cutting off attachments for the sake of control versus watching people turn against you and becoming increasingly paranoid, for example). and believe them or not, the content creators involved have always asserted that staged finale was the plan from the beginning, not any form of retcon. (and we do know that people have been dodgy about stuff like the "original prisoner" literally since the week that c!dream was imprisoned, so take that as you will.) (okay to be fair theyve been dodgy about the original prisoner since the day that the prison began to be constructed, but the QnA from that first week of imprisonment sticks out to me in particular because cc!Sam had the biggest fucking smile on his face and staged finale would've been planned out and then carried out in entirety by the ccs and the c!s by that point.)

this is a longass post but uh hopefully it makes sense, lmao. tried to touch on most of what i've seen recently 😅

#my asks !!#long post #c!dreamisms #also like. im making this post from the perspective of someone who always saw staged finale as really cool #but really wasn't 100% convinced until like ehhh halfway through the prison arc roughly?#like im not claiming any credit as a believer from the beginning it took me awhile #so like. i get it.#i think for me a lot of it was also just a lack of faith in the ccs' planning and writing and feeling that narrative contrivance #could be explained through the ccs being less experienced writers + the sheer level of what they were carrying out #but you know. staged finale canon now and im not gonna sit here and pretend that im the smartest person in the room #when these guys definitely overachieved in terms of what i was expecting them to pull off #by making a plot twist that was THIS BIG and conning the whole damn fandom and server in one #like nah they deserve their W actually lmao

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chaogongoozles · 5 months

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It has nothing to do with Satan, Mama. It's me. Me. If I concentrate hard enough, I can move things. - Carrie (1976).

WOOOOWEEEE- 💀

I'm SUPER late to the Halloween party with this piece, but truth be told the last months of October-December 2023 were busy as hell! So I initially planned to post this piece on New Years Day, but unfortunately, tragedy happened within my family, which at that point posting was the least of my worries :0(

Things are slowly clearing, so now I have the emotional/mental energy back to share this piece I worked hard on! I'm super proud of how this came out, and how wonderful IbisPaintX is to make doodles/finals on the go on my phone! Also huge thanks to @thetageist ( https://thetageist.newgrounds.com/ ) for giving me this suggestion!! Even gave them a spot on the credits wheeee 📽️

Bonus to you my fellow Tumblr dwellers, y'all get the individual sides to view and see (cause hooray for multiple photo posts!) 🎉

I rarely get to draw Amy, so having the challenge of redrawing her to the Carrie 1976 (USA poster) was an awesome and challenging experience, I got to test out some techniques I learned along the way ✨

I plan on doing this for 2024 as well, it was too fun to not try again! Happy super late Halloween y'all 🎃

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iamamythologicalcreature · 2 months

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Sentences or Sketches or Something... Sunday

Hello strangers! It's been a long time since I last did a progress post of any kind - thank you everyone who's continued to tag me so I don't get left behind! And thanks to @noblecorgi, @alexalexinii, @you-remind-me-of-the-babe, @blackberrysummerblog, @thewholelemon, @mooncello, @monbons, @prettygoododds, @shrekgogurt, and @youarenevertooold for tagging me, today. (I feel so loved! <3) I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone's up to.

It's still Sunday in my neck of the woods, though just barely. And yes, I've used my "sentences" banner, but... It's a bit more chaotic than that. Honestly, I wasn't sure about doing a post today because I'm a bit all over the place, but then I figured... eh, why not? I am all over the place LOL.

So here's your snippet from the collective efforts of Jo's creativity, lately, under the cut. (Because I ramble...)

On the Haunting of Simon Snow... I haven't forgotten about it! Nor is it abandoned. As I keep telling anyone who will listen, I have a rough draft, which basically amounts to an outline, meaning I have way too much figured out to just let the story fade away. XD I attempted to work on Chapter 2 earlier this month, and ran into some roadblocks - of the architectural variety.

So I've started to research manor houses and English estates like mad. I'm going to do the thing. I'm going to figure out Pitch Manor. Why? Because my brain won't let me gloss over paltry details such as the location of Simon in the grand scheme of the house, or how and where the roof attaches and where that tree is going to be. It's annoying, but I figure... This is a fun puzzle, too. One I hope to be able to share with the fandom at large once it's complete.

This little snippet is from an early design I've since scrapped (but you never know what might come around, again.)

"That's great, Jo, but how about some sentences?"

Okay. Ahem. Here's... some Simon sentences... that have just been scribbled out. *cough*

I sit there and listen to the man on the other side as he blathers on about extra fees associated with estate deliveries due to distance and blah blah bloody fucking blah. I wish he’d just say it. Just say 'this is the Pitch Manor tax.' No one ever does. But everyone charges it.

I HAVE WRITTEN SEE THERE'S PROOF.

Okay, moving on...

The other thing I'm working on is illustrations for @mooncello's beautiful fanfic, "Lost Boys." I just posted art from Chapter 1 here, and I'm working on art for Chapter 2, now. The story is stuffed to the gills with absolutely gorgeous imagery, so choosing what to illustrate is a challenge. Hopefully it all works out, and in the meantime, here are a couple doodles.

(I was telling Heath last night... this morning...? about how all illustrations start out as baby sketches XD These are the little babes in the creative nursery, basically. Also I have never posted baby sketches before and I'm kinda nervous about it. But. Well. >.> )

THERE YOU HAVE IT. A couple of my reasons for being so entirely absent from all other aspects of the fandom. (Also I got hit with the flu super hard, but doing better now!)

Tags for future wipsdays/hello's! @leithillustration, @artsyunderstudy (thank you for listening to me ramble about Pitch Manor), @erzbethluna, @nightimedreamersworld, @cutestkilla (thank you for also listening to me ramble about Pitch Manor sorry I'm reworking it again XD), @angelsfalling16, @fatalfangirl, @hushed-chorus (thank you for being my secret-garden-enabler XD), @rimeswithpurple, @best--dress, @whatevertheweather, @ileadacharmedlife, @scribble-tier, @imagineacoolusername, @brilla-brilla-estrellita, @alleycat0306, @ivelovedhimthroughworse, @tender-ministrations, @katmiscellanious, @anxious-m3ss, @bubble-gumhead, @ebbpettier, @facewithoutheart, @bazzybelle, @theimpossibledemon, @aristocratic-otter, @ic3-que3n, @palimpsessed, @raenestee

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fuckyou-saidtheraven · 5 months

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some thoughts i had over discord over the past few days

when you're a long-time odyssey enjoyer and walpurgisnacht 2 drops one month after incidentally getting into weber's opera bc of der freischütz lobcorp

#original post #fandom #limbus company #lobotomy corporation #lobotomy corporation spoilers #bc a/c is briefly discussed here #outis lcb #der freischütz #character analysis #carrying her with the back of her jacket's really tall collar in my mouth like a cat #also uh. apologies for any inaccuracies classics people‚ opera people‚ and folklore people pls feel free to correct me if im wrong #me when der freischütz lobcorp is meant to be both max AND the black huntsman

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lunarlivs · 1 month

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Ohh am I late for Sleepover Saturday? It's technically Saturday in my time again so I hope we're still good haha

Let's see:

FMK the big three, James, Sirius n Remus

3 things you love about Remus that you don't get to see often in fanfic/media representation

you are NEVER late for sleepover saturday!! it’s actually a 24/7 event here ^-^ thanks for asking!

god…. i actually thought of this for so so long and each answer leaves me hurt, but this is the one i feel most good about (and sorry for the long explanations)

marry: remus, because i think about marrying him every day every hour every second, i love that man and i think us living together would work. also i think that means we’d fuck and yes i am very much yes okay yes. james would make a better wife but rems is just my number one

fuck: sirius. i mean, i gotta fuck the hottest and prettiest person to ever have lived right? i think he’d be just a fantastic partner and if me and rem are already married we all can d- *get run over by a car*

which unfortunately means i’d kill: james >_< i love him but games the game sorry baby, next time i’ll marry and impregn- *gets run over by the same car again*

also THANKS FOR ASKING ABOUT REMUS you don’t know how happy it makes me to talk about him <33333 (also idk what you count as not seeing often but these are what popped into my head)

remus being a genuine LOSER. i mean, he’s very much accepted it and is content with it, but he is such a loser and a nerd. yes he’s got that secret charm of a brilliant mind and lovely brown eyes but to most people he is a man with bad posture and star wars stickers on his shitty computer, who wears the same jumper five days in a row and doesn’t remember how to talk to people. he is shy and kind and thoughtful but also the most awkward person you’ll ever meet and not in a good way. his hobbies include reading awful complex books about history, smoking on the parking lot behind his barista job where he is an absolutely bitch, crouching under doorways, saying ”actually” and correcting people who didn’t ask for it, and admiring sirius from afar (they’re still gonna fall in love obvi bc that certain something about his sad dude charm just pierces right through sirius’s though heart)

i love beefy remus. not necessarily muscular but just big, meaning tall and hairy and a soft stomach and thighs like treetrunks… you get the vibe, him and i are new acquaintances but love love love him

remus’s family dynamics can be super super interesting, idk if this is a rare thing but maybe just mostly something i’ve been thinking abour lately. him and hope being each others best friends (again to add to the loser part) and so similar in how they treat other people. she’s shown him how to make a house a home, they bake and cook together a lot, hope read him all the storybooks she could find when he was small. i love lyall being a nerdy funny old man who works with animals (or magical creatures) and loves nothing more than being out in nature with his family. they go on hikes with both of their backpacks filled with books and snack, they look at plants and animals and lyall keeps blabbering on whilest remus is just happy to be with his dad. in a world where remus has lycanthropy i love him teaching remus how to be with the wolf, and how to love himself though it all.

#thank for asking :3 #i got things to say😭#can you tell i got carried away #thinking about remus #he is just so special to me #i can’t really even pin point what it is about that man #but that something #oh wow #he’s got me #asks 💌#marauders #marauders era #remus lupin #sirius black #james potter #marauders fandom

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sp00ky-scary · 4 months

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I wanna rant about how people will use the term "seperate the art from the artist" and then talk about fucking JK Rowling however I think I'll sound too much like an asshole so I'm just going to say I think it's super fucked up when people say "seperate the art from the artist" when talking about a bigot who is alive and whos bigotry is so ingrained in their works that even when they aren't actively involved in something it is still present. It shows a misunderstanding of what the term means and a disregard for the people that person is harming and in the case of Harry Potter has become an excuse for people to continue supporting and funding a known transphobe and all round bigot and her works that aren't even that fucking good.

#i still see far too many people enaging with harry potter these days and i dont trust you if you do #especially those people who are in the marauders fandom #they like to think that because a lot of it is fan creation that its okay but its still based in jk rowlings work #and carries a lot of the same problems that her works did #and its very obvious that the maraduers are still from harry potter so its still promoting and talking about the original series #this is coming from someone who really loved harry potter as a kid too it was my special interest for a while #but i grew the fuck up and moved on acknowledging that whilst it holds some nostalgia and i might occasionally watch one of the dvds i own #it is no longer something to actively engage with and is full of racism and fatphobia and anti-semitism and was created by a transphobe #sorry i just really needed to rant

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oopdeathnote · 1 year

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Your daddy issues compelled you to write Soichiro as a bad parent to vent, I write him as an ideal father figure who has semi adopted all of the under thirties in the story. We are not the same.

#death note #really fun to see how peoples relationship with their own father #affects how they write lights relationship with his #i was wondering why i get slightly defensive about bad parent soichiro yagami #and why i adore soichiro is everyones dad fics and posts #and then it clicked #light yagami #soichiro yagami #were saddling this fictional man with so much of our baggage #how does it feel to be carrying the daddy issues of an entire fandom chief?

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everlastiingiimmortals · 14 days

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good morning, just saw the most braindead complaints on twitter from people discovering that the alliance is not actually this paragon of goodness that they deluded themselves into believing, and mourning the fact that the astral express seems to be the only "good" faction, so i think i'm starting my day off alright

#//immortal; (OOC)#salt cw #im honestly just. i'm so done w the way the fandom needs everything to be black and white #where is your appreciation of nuance #of course its impossible for a large body of power to be 'morally white' (i hate that phrase as well and they used that in their complaint)#and the closer to an aeon a faction is the more extreme it will be #this is obvious.#they are carrying out lan's decree naturally they are not going to be completely good. LAN is not good.#what we are shown with the factions we have is that there is such a wide range of interpretations and temperaments within them #AS THERE SHOULD BE #and sometimes we are shown really really good ones (jy) and sometimes we are shown really really fucking bad ones (oswaldo)#but to define the entire BODY OF POWER by one individual??????#are u crazy?????#jy's not a perfectly good man either i'll remind u!! hes still a war general who has kept prisoners for centuries!#on such grand scopes of intergalactic powers and interests the idea of being morally good or evil becomes obsolete #everything is far more complexed and nuanced that that i dont understand this mentality #than that*#can we gatekeep hyv games (can we also especially gatekeep r.atio from the masses bc holy shit the hate is insane)

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serialreblogger · 2 years

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the thing about the joker

is that - well, even canonically, he’s not actually “insane.” in the most canonical version of his backstory (bc there are many conflicting incarnations, but this one is the touchstone for a lot of later canon), he was part of a street gang before falling into a vat of Nondescript Toxic Waste that damaged his melanin production and That’s It. he supposedly “lost his mind” after seeing his reflection, which is absurd on many levels. no. he’s not “insane.” what he is, is an angry white boy.

the thing about the joker is that he exults in his own uncontainability. He laughs, because all of gotham - all the world - is built to be his playground. the only lunatic thing about him is the lunacy of ~Society~, to borrow from the joker’s own playbook; the lunacy of the joker lies in the world that grants him power: in the inheritance of loss: in white privilege, and what it means for everyone else.

“to prove a point.” those were the joker’s exact words, when he shot and paralyzed Barbara Gordon. she asked why: he laughed. “to prove a point.”

because that’s all he ever does. he hurts people because he can. and because all the power in the world can’t save him from getting hurt - and isn’t that just peachy?

because the thing about the joker is that he can get hurt. he has been hurt. but he has so much more capacity to harm than to be harmed. he is immortal. he and he alone will never have to face the consequences of the hurt that he inflicts on other people.

so then: why not hurt them? misery loves company, after all.

the joker is the embodiment and end result of our own social system: the madness of the exception: the laughter of the white man: the imprecation to smile, as he kills you.

(no one ever says it, i find, but it’s still true: barbara deserves to kill him.)

and who, then, is the batman? if the joker is the yin to his yang? if they’re two sides of one irredeemable coin, if they represent the “balance” of an unjustifiable system - who is he if not another white man?

because he is. Bruce Wayne is a white boy born into unspeakable privilege and forced to endure suffering anyway; who copes with his suffering by taking it out on others; who copes with his suffering, not by taking advantage of the world as it is, but by attempting to reshape it. to make it in his own image - as if it isn’t already his, as if claiming it further will crush out the pain.

the batman is the benevolent oppressor to the joker’s malevolent one. he changes nothing, in the end. two privileged white boys with their own respective navel-gazing grudges - where, after all, lies the difference between benevolence and malevolence?

because they are not “chaos” and “order.” not really. They are laissez-faire laughter and law. Joker exults in the disease of the system, Batman seeks to treat its symptoms, but neither of them will ever change anything about the root cause. because they may have suffered the faults of this system, but they still benefit so much more from it as it exists. Uphold it or break it, neither of them wants to change the law.

but the law is only as good as the people it’s made to protect. and who does that law protect, really?

waylon jones is, in one issue, explicitly depicted as Black. between that and his skin disorder, there has never once been room for his character to be any more than a monster: king croc is, always, a character to be violated and brutalized, over and over and over and still - always - written as the villain. (he tried so hard to scrape out a place for himself, so many times, in so many incarnations, and each and every time he finds himself relegated once more to the sewers. he will never be anyone’s king. there is no place under the sun for people like him.)

victor fries only ever wanted to save his wife, and a capitalist mogul decided a few extra numbers on his eight-digit paycheck were more important than the people whose lives depended on that money. fries’ body was damaged to disability by that choice, left without the resources to find a cure for his wife, and he robbed banks because there was no other option available to him. we seem to have forgotten, or maybe never really understood, why that matters. why a desperate man trying to save his life and that of his loved ones under the crushing gears of capitalism is a villain, and the one who stops him is our hero. why, under the law batman upholds, a bank vault and a CEO’s hoard is worth more than a life.

poison ivy just wants to live, too. wants a life not defined by the devastation of her body, of the beings that exist as extensions of her, a life where green and growing things are not commodities to be plowed up and poisoned and destroyed for the sake of another man’s profit. these are villains; they are written as such. these are their motives.

who does batman fight for, really? who is our hero, this emblem of our law?

is he our hero? ours, the broken and bleeding members of the world he claims to protect?

who does the law protect, except him - him, and the joker?

#i'm having another Moment over batman friends #this is not a bruce wayne hate post #for the record. there is so much to be said in a bruce wayne hate post about child abuse and authorship and diversity of canon #but this isn't about bruce wayne. it isn't even really about the joker #i'm stuck on batman. batman as a story. batman as a myth #because the myths we tell and the threads that run consistently through them despite the multitude of tellers and times -#those say so much more than people give them credit for #who batman is - who his villains are - what those heroes and rogues represent? that *matters.* on a level wholly distinct from comic fandom #because one of the few things that remains true of batman across his many incarnations and authors and settings and media #is that: he stands for the law. (except for all the ways in which he breaks it.) his only role is to catch the criminals #when he loses control and begins dispensing Punishment he must be drawn back from the edge. because that is not Batman #Batman is Jim Gordon's only deputy. Batman is the myth of the Good Cop #and the joker? the joker is batman without the law #this too is one of the few strains that carry through nearly all tellings. the joker is never his opposite:#the joker is him without a direction. without restraint. without limits. without control #and these things say a lot about the world beyond batman. about the storytellers behind him. who - to them - is a hero? who is human?#and who is a monster? the joker is a monster because he is lawless. because he is ''mad.'' because he looks Wrong #bruce wayne is a hero because he is lawful. a dark hero because he walks very close to the line of that law - but lawful still #and what is that law? what law do these storytellers see fit to uphold? for which characters does that law do any good?#which characters explicitly harmed by that law are disposable? which are villains by birth?#the fact that someone made the creative decision to depict king croc as Black in a 2008 graphic novel wherein he went cannibal -#the fact that the issue where babs was assaulted and paralyzed was also the issue in which batman sat down and sympathized with the joker -#that all of these villains are neurodivergent or queer-coded or intersex or disabled or Disfigured or just plain not white -#it says a lot. not just about the comics; about the world in which so many writers have crafted this consistent narrative of heroic cruelty #the world that accepts these as our villains. these as our heroes. it says a lot. and it *matters.*#batman #dc comics #linden writes an essay #linden's originals #linden in the tags

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