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iturbide · 9 months

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*reads tags on the last post*

...ok but now I'm actually curious about your issues with TOTK👀

okay so to be per, fectly clear: Tears of the Kingdom is a really fun game. I've been playing a lot of it, aimlessly wandering around, exploring the Depths, finding shrines, doing side quests, and so on. At this point I've cleared the four regional quests, a bonus mainline quest I wasn't supposed to know about yet I found the shrine early and had enough hearts to open the door, what can I say, I'm curious, I have the Master Sword, and I think most of what's left is armor upgrades and wrapping up the main story.

But also I have been spoiled since the game came out about what's in store and boy do I see a lot of similar narrative issues to my gripes with Fire Emblem.

So we might as well start off small with how TotK actively rewrites its history in ways that are even more extreme than Skyward Sword. Skyward Sword introduced Hylia and Demise as concepts, with Hylia inheriting the Triforce from the Golden Goddesses of Din, Nayru, and Farore and tasked with protecting it, while Demise appeared as a demonic entity intent on taking that power for himself. As of Skyward Sword, Zelda was written as the mortal reincarnation of Hylia, thereby retroactively contextualizing her powers. The Triforce has been a power source sought after and fought over through every prior entry in the series, and even though BotW didn't make outright reference to it, the Triforce was clearly present on Zelda's hand when her powers awakened and appeared in full when she sealed Calamity Ganon at the end of the game.

And Tears of the Kingdom does away with it completely.

Hylia is mentioned as the only goddess. The Golden Goddesses aren't referred to at all. There is no Triforce at all, it's instead been replaced by the Zonai 'Secret Stones' even in the ancient past, despite the fact that we saw the Triforce at the end of the last game. It was right there. Zelda is also no longer the reincarnation of the goddess: instead her powers are re-explained as being the product of the historic marriage between the Zonai Sage of Light and the Hylian Sage of Time, giving her command over both (but she's considered only the Sage of Time for some reason?).

Also, BotW pretty heavily implied that Hyrule was a matriarchy: it's the queens and princesses who have the sacred power, so it stands to reason that Zelda's mother was actually the one in charge of Hyrule before her death, and the king only stepped into the leadership role on a temporary basis until Zelda came into her powers (hence that pointed "heir to a throne of nothing but failure" remark in one of the memories). But despite there being a Hylian queen right there in the ancient past, the game firmly establishes that Rauru is the one with the power, and Sonia is just his consort, a priestess who he chose to marry.

And then there's the Shiekah. Throughout all of BotW we were surrounded by these amazing machines, ancient technology crafted by the Shiekah and unearthed in working condition after a myriad in the ground which are still running and wreaking havoc a hundred years after the Calamity. We start the game in a Shiekah Shrine that literally saved Link's life and allowed him to recover from what should have been fatal wounds, though it did take a hundred years to do so.

And all of that is gone in TotK. Not a trace of it remains: the shrines have all been wiped from the face of the earth, the Divine Beasts are nowhere to be found, the Shiekah Towers have evaporated into thin air -- and the shrine that saved our lives is completely gone, replaced by a hot spring. It still bears the name of the Shrine of Awakening, but none of the miraculous technology remains.

Personally, the idea that either Purah or Zelda would consider the Skyview Towers worthy of dismantling that Shrine completely shatters my suspension of disbelief. They're both scientists: they should want to study all of that in detail to understand how it works, not destroy it for glitchy impersonations of the old towers I hate the Skyview Tower miniquests so much.

(Let me tell you, it was absolutely chilling for me to get to Rito Village and see an empty place where I clearly remembered there being a shrine. The Shiekah presence in history has basically been wiped out in TotK outside of Kakariko Village, and I don't like what that says considering that the Shiekah were also victims of a genocide by the ancient king of Hyrule.)

And then there's the imperialism. I have my issues with Three Houses and every ending needing Fodlan to be united under a single banner, though it's most egregious in CF where Edelgard's stated purpose is returning Fodlan to its proper state unified under the Imperial Standard. TotK is worse. There have been some excellent breakdowns of the narrative implications, touching on everything from the loaded imagery and black-and-white narrative purpose of Ganondorf and the Gerudo (dark-skinned evil desert dwellers who oppose the good and glorious worshipers of the goddess...where have I heard that before...) to the game showing outright that the other races of Hyrule were treated as lesser vassals in the ancient past (the Sages being masked and therefore erasing their individual identities, receiving the Secret Stones that Rauru had been hoarding only when Rauru needed help to fight Ganondorf and thereupon swearing their very lives and the lives of their people to him and his empire???). They're great analyses, they've been living in my brain for weeks.

But I think the thing that I'm most mad about is that the narrative bends over backwards to keep anything from changing. At the start of the game, Link's arm is so badly damaged by the Gloom that he nearly dies and he spends the rest of the game with Rauru's arm in place of his own...but then, in the end, he magically gets his original arm back no worse for the wear. Zelda, in an attempt to empower and restore the Master Sword, turns herself into a dragon, a process that we are told outright in the narrative will cause her to lose herself and is therefore irreversible...but then, in the end, she magically returns to her human form thanks to her ghost ancestors somehow reversing this supposedly irreversible process. And on top of all that, Hyrule itself is exactly the same when all is said and done: there's no change to the power structures, no independence for the other races who choose to come together in the spirit of cooperation like we saw at Tarrey Town -- instead, the four Sages once again swear their support and fealty to the Princess of Hyrule.

Personally? I like a narrative where the characters and the world change over the course of it. That's one of the things that I thought was so meaningful about BotW: while most of the gameplay takes place in the present, the true start of the game is 100 years in the past, allowing us to see how the Calamity affected Hyrule, the devastation it wrought and the continued struggles of those who survived through the century that followed. We end the game with Zelda once more free, where she had been locked in combat with the Calamity; with the spirits of the Champions at peace, where they had been trapped by the Blight within the Divine Beasts; and with Hyrule finally at peace and beginning to recover now that the Calamity has been sealed away. I still think it's ridiculous that they don't actually show any of Link's scars in the game (especially since we are at one point forced to strip to prove that we are who we say we are, and they say point blank I would recognize those scars anywhere when there are no fucking scars), but at least things have changed over the course of the narrative!

But nothing changes in TotK. The status quo remains untouched and unquestioned. And it just feels...bad to me. Insincere, maybe. Unrealistic, sterilized, manufactured. It's a narrative that says there's nothing to question, that everything going back to the way it always was is the right and proper way of things, because clearly the Hyrule Empire is the right and proper rule. And I just don't like that.

#answered #unsuspecting-person #tears of the kingdom #totk spoilers #totk critical #i see a lot of familiar narrative beats in totk #that i have also seen in fire emblem #narrative beats that make me super uncomfortable #and for as fun as the game is to play #there's stuff about this story that really unsettles me #but also: i hate the zonai devices and i hate the building #i didn't even use a damn horse through most of botw #i continue to not use a horse through totk #i walk everywhere on foot and enjoy the scenery #i build only when i have no other choice #it's a pain in the ass and i get no joy out of it #that's very much a me problem though #i have the same issues trying to play minecraft

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beancret-santa · 6 months

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Welcome to Beacret Santa Year Two!! I just wanted to make a little post so people can see the group we've got -- I felt bad that the event is supposed to be a way to try your hand at new things and see new artists, and then no one knew any of the other artists until the very last day :')

Even if you're not in the secret santa come check out the awesome artists joining us >:3

@chinchillasinunison ~ @fayessketchbook ~ @flowersize ~ @ging-ler @girafferoyalty ~ @good-beans/@bad-beans teamup ~ @igotbones ~ @imjustawaffle ~ @jayfeatherart ~ @jinzouactor ~ @nitetime-moon ~ @ruvikdraws ~ @thepatchycat

(like last year I'm going to draw, but thought it'd be silly to put a request in myself so my sister's is in place of mine 👍)

I'll keep the rules post pinned to this blog, but feel free to reach out if there are any questions! If your giftee has anon on you can ask them questions if needed, but I can also pass along information and keep identities secret. Just don't... spill the beans... 👀

#you all are so wonderful and im so excited wooo!#even in the prep stages ive had users complimenting your kindness and creativity <3 #and i couldnt agree more 😤👏👏👏#if you didnt get your assignment yet lmk! i sent things from this sideblog so that may have made things weird #i sent out the username that contacted me but i realized i should tag peoples art accounts here --#i think unsuspecting-person -> fayessketchbook and plantpretender -> flowersize was the only swap i made 👍#beancret santa

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cheeseandcake-from-ao3 · 2 years

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I want to scream, the DR finale was wild

WAIT I'M NOT READY FOR IT- I'LL NEVER BE READY-

#Ask #unsuspecting person #kingdom hearts #khdr #I will reblog this with my reaction once I can talk myself into watching it #I am. So Nervous #I've had it opened on my computer for over an hour and I do not have the courage to push 'play'#I need to WATCH IT but-#This may take a while

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elegyofthemoon · 1 year

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3, 10 and 27 for the emoji ask game?

hiya friend !

emoji ask

3 was answered here!

10. 🎉 -- How do you express excitement and joy?

Ohhh my excitement/joy is so physical LAKSJDFHALS I will actually jump and swing and dance around if I'm super super happy. Or you'll catch me running around everywhere or singing loudly. Excitement can't be contained!!!

🪆-- Share the differences and similarities between who you are with a stranger versus a trusted friend.

OH LOL I feel like that depends tbh cuz how long am I gonna know this stranger? If we're talking for like a hot minute or something, I'm more likely going to be blunt or forward because it's like "well we'll never see each other again why should I bother hiding?"

On the other hand, if it's like a stranger Ik I'm going to deal with for a little while, say a classmate that I'm stuck sitting next to, I'm going to be overly polite lol I still try to be welcoming and mindful towards them to make them comfortable and all, but I get a little too bogged down with minding what I say because that's a new person I have to get to know so I wanna observe first before I act accordingly

A trusted friend gets a mix of both things where I will be forward with certain things and not hide a lot of myself while retaining care/mindfulness towards the other :')

#the strangers vs friends thing is so funny to me tbh #i remember i confused my friends once bc i was in one time meetup stranger situation #and they were just like ??? do u know this guy??#nope! jdjddjd #now if i could maybe do that for like. strangers that i gotta deal w all the time thatd be swell jrjfjfjfjr #answered #but anyhow lol #unsuspecting person

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polysyndetonaddictsupportgroup · 10 months

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don't wait for tumblr to give u more tags. go off about tony and steve and zola pls i am humbly requesting

As a part of my ongoing war on my ask box this is a very old post regarding a tumblr tag essay i made forever ago. i half answered this ask when it came in and then forgot to finish. without further ado:

Anon is talking about this post about Steve and Tony’s relationship. I HIGHLY recommend the original post it's great but i copied the original tags essay below since it's been so long since the ask arrived.

#I feel like anyone who writes Tony stark for marvel should have to go watch bojack horseman first as like a mandatory assignment#because that show understood the premise of Tony stark better than any MCU writer ever has and it wasn’t even writing for tony stark#in sum bojack horseman follows the titular bojack who is a washed up 90s sitcom television star#bojack himself is extremely self destructive and the show follows him as his selfish and egotistical tendencies erode at his relationships#However bojack himself is an extremely sympathetic character. his harmful acts are all tied very directly to the trauma of his life#he’s a survivor of generational abuse whose own substance abuse problems stem from the fact that he was in such a neglectful environment#that he had started drinking at an INCREDIBLY young age got himself sober only to relapse due to a spiked drink after fame

#this sympathic is increased by the fact that he does geninuinely love and care for his friends and often goes to extreme lengths to show it#but what the show understands that MCU writers dont is that his tragic past doesn’t excuse the harm or pain he causes and the show goes to#LABORIOUS extents to emphasize the consequences and suffering his actions cause in his attempt towards making amends#it is FASINCATING to me that MCU just fails to grasp this because it’s really the core of Tony’s character. his story is one of redemption#and regret. but what it never seemed to get is that requires recognition of wrongs and change and his relationship with steve is a prime ex.#when they meet tony is 40+ and Steve is 23-25. steve has been awake from world war 2 for less than 2 weeks everyone he loves is dead and hes#visibly haunted by his time in the ice. his ptsd flashbacks to crashing the plane is how his character is introduced. Tony spends the time

#calling him ‘capsicle’ and talking about how much he can’t stand steve. the narrative plays it off as a gaff of little consequence but#practically speaking that’s INSANE. like can you imagine you’re a traumatized war vet who got out of a coma 2 months ago and woke up to#discover everyone you ever loved is dead and this stranger twice your age at your new work nicknames you coma boy and hates your guts bc of#his daddy issues? like Tony in avengers is borderline cruel but the narrative and the fandom never acknowledge it. it’s like removing the#laugh track on a scene from one of those old sitcoms and realizing how mean it is. and while we can fully acknowledge that Howard hurt Tony#that doesn’t make it Steve’s fault and doesn’t give Tony the license to take it out on him. like at the end of the day your healing is your#responsibility and the MCU fails to grasp that with Tony. honestly it does a disservice to the depth of his character b/c Tony should have#already grown past this by the time of Avengers. he had already gone through iron man 2 and grappled somewhat with his relationship w howard#while that doesn’t mean he’s healed yet it does mean that his character needs to learn to grow past it or he risks stagnation. mcu just#happily embraced stagnation and it made the character worse for it. Theres a scene in the comics where Tony is the first to reach out to#Steve post ice. he takes him to the air&space museum and welcomes him to the future. THATS the growth we want. Bc fundamentally even if we

#sympathize for Tony’s abuse by Howard lashing out at someone who was functionally dead at the time of ur dads mistakes is a very juvenile#mindset. /growth/ is deciding to be better than the person who hurt you and the MCUs obsession with blaming Steve for howard cut that off#CW would have been SO MUCH MORE COMPELLING if Tony had formed a relationship with Steve bc Steve would be torn between past and present but#instead Tony is saying how much he hated Steve during the fucking movie and Steve’s taking it with grace. like you’re 50 man you gotta work#past this at some point. out of tags but I have Opinions about Tony and actually zola too but we won’t get there give me more tags tumblr

Fundamentally, my issue with Tony and how he's written for the MCU is that he has the potential for one of greatest redemption arcs ever and the writers are fucking allergic to giving it to him, and his dynamic with Steve is a a prime example of it. How poorly Steve's relationship with Tony was mishandled is a pretty perfect case study as to how Tony as a character was mishandled as a whole.

As stated in the Tumblr Tags Essay above, by the time Steve came on the scene, Tony should have already grown past his hate for Steve. To be clear, that is not saying he should have gotten over Howard or any harm that he suffered as a result of his. Howard was his parent who was, to some degree, at least emotionally neglectful, if not abusive. Healing and learning helping coping mechanisms does not demand you forgive your abuser.

But Steve was never his abuser. He's a 20-something year old guy who has been trapped in a block of ice for Tony's entire life and who woke up two weeks ago to find out that everyone he ever loved is dead or suffering from alzheimer's and that his sacrifice was for nothing because he was just told the thing he drove a fucking plane into the fucking arctic over is Back Again Because We Learned Nothing.

And the thing is that the realization that "This man can hold literally no complicity in my abuser because he was frozen in the Arctic Circle the entire time" requires a level of emotional maturity you generally achieve at the age of thirteen or so. Tony is fucking fifty. Mentally, he's over twice Steve's age. At absolute best, the way Tony treats Steve from the outset is immature and more accurately it's downright cruel. Voluntarily killing himself by driving a plane into ice only to wake up and discover that he has lost everyone he ever loved is undoubtedly one of the most traumatic things that has ever happened to steve, and he just woke up from it. He is two weeks out from this. He's actively having flashbacks of what happened right before Tony starts cracking jokes about it. It'd be like if Steve walked up to Tony right after he got back from Afghanistan and called him Waterboarding Boy and everyone treated it like it was a cutesy character trait.

That's one of the most egregious parts of how Tony's character is written--things that are objectively things that need to be addressed in his character arc area treated like acceptable and borderline justified quirks in his personality. Tony's relationship with his father is one of the cornerstones of his backstory and who he became. While he doesn't have to forgive his father on the road to recovery, he does have to realize when he's using it as an excuse to hurt others and stop it.

That's also something he never does, and one of the reasons why i think that the writers for him need to watch Bojack horseman. In the same movie he's claiming to that he was Steve's friend, he's still saying to his face how much he fucking hated him over things that happened when Steve was supposed to have martyred himself to save the world.

There's multiple parts of Tony's character that could have formed the basis of an amazing character arc if he grew and improved from them, but the narrative refused to even recognize them as problems, let alone have him overcome them, and his relationship with Steve is a perfect example of it. The writer's refusal to recognize that brings down the quality of his entire arc and cheapens him as a character.

If Tony had been allowed to recognize that Steve was not to blame for his father, accepted it, and given a man half his age who just lost everything a lifeline, that would have shown an amazing amount of growth. Instead, they left him as immature and cruel. It's a shame and an insult to the potential of his character, and it's a mistake that they repeat again and again. Tony was supposed to be completely against developing weapons for others, but he canonically helped build a major part of Project Insight. Tony's entire stance in Civil War was meant to show that he had accepted that he made mistakes and that he needed to be held accountable for his actions, but then he went and unilaterally built EDITH, whose existence violates multiple international treaties including the Accords and had so few safety precautions that a teenaged boy was able to accidentally call out a missile strike on his teenaged classmate. He's in a movie where he's driven by his guilt for causing the death of someone's college-aged son, and in that same movie he blackmails a high-school-aged boy to join in on a fight he knows nothing about, that goes directly against his interests, and could get him killed even if he was certain that Team Cap wouldn't use lethal force. Rhodey got paralyzed from the waist down from friendly fire. Tony had a moment in the same fight where he had reason to fear that Peter had been injured if not killed.

Ultimately, Tony's entire character is built on a foundation of repentance and growth. That's why he has so much potential and why he's so compelling. The fact that his writers were unable to recognize when he even needed to repent, let alone allow him to grow, was honestly insulting to what he could have been.

Zola:

The reference to Zola is actually more of a response to fandom’s response to Zola as a whole than the actual specific person who made the comment.

Overall, the majority of fandom response that I've seen just seemed to be sort of besides the point? The thing about Armin Zola working for SHIELD is that I personally have only seen discussion about this in context of talking about how Peggy and Howard are Bad or talking about how steve would feel betrayed when he discovered it. To be honest most of the discourse I’ve seen has just been about hating Peggy Carter and using this as a sledgehammer in that discussion.

It’s not that I disagree with that reading of it—like, I do think Steve felt betrayed by the realization that Zola was recruited in the end, and I think it’s bad to have recruited literal Nazis—but I do think that fandom elevated the most tangential point of it to the detriment of its entire narrative purpose. I've only ever personally seen it used in character discourse and shipping wars--which like, anyone can draw on any plot point they so choose while participating in fandom. But Zola's recruitment was the thematic core of Winter Soldier, and it always seemed kinda weird to me that it was treated as a personal defect in Howard and Peggy when it was the entire argument of the movie and one of the best social commentaries that the MCU ever made.

Zola gives what I think is one of the better MCU villain speeches in the bunker about how Hydra recovered after the war. He states that they realized that taking the freedom of the world by force only galvanised people against them. It led to their own downfall. But he explains that Hydra realized that the people of the world would freely give away their own rights and freedoms if you made them comfortable. If you say you’re doing it for their own safety and comfort, then they’ll effectively look the other way while Hydra seizes control of the world. And that entire monologue is bolstered by the fact that that is exactly what happened in Zola’s case.

Zola was brought into SHIELD as a part of operation paperclip. Operation Paperclip was a post-war initiative by the United States government to recruit key Nazi scientists into United States scientific development. This entire initiative was brought about in response to the Cold War arm’s race and it was justified on the basis of dire national security need. Both America and the Soviet Union were EXTREMELY CONCERNED about losing the cold war. As a result, they were willing to take pretty much any strategic advantage they could, including After, President Truman, who gave the final go-ahead for the initiative, said that "this had to be done and was done."

Even after it became public knowledge, it was defended as more of a necessary evil and the cost of the practicalities of governance than a world power welcoming war criminals with open arms. Multiple participants have been linked to human experimentation, slave labor factories, etc, though none were ever formally found guilty of anything--which may be because the US aggressively whitewashed their pasts and then went so far as to help relocate one of the members of the initiative to Argentina.

This was, again, all a part of the Cold War arms race with the USSR--who had an identical program going at the same time, Operation Osoaviakhim.

En arguendo, let's just assume that all of this was done with the best possible intentions and execution. The nominal rationale was the Cold War. While analyzing the Red Scare and the entire Cold War period would take way too long, I think a solid premise we can agree on is that nuclear war is bad. It would have been disastrous for anyone alive if the Cold War had escalated, and recruiting top scientists from the Nazi regime 1) kept the USSR from doing it instead, which they were actively doing, and 2) helped prevent strategic advantage in one country or another that may have led to an escalation. Now, I'm not a historian, and all of these premises can naturally be debated, but these were the like, best faith premises that world leaders had at the time. If you want a nuclear deterrent, you need the biggest stick.

The thing is that, if you assume these premises as genuine for the sake of the argument, the absolute best this leaves you with is doing a very bad thing for a very important government purpose. You're supposedly preventing nuclear war, but you're doing so at the cost of justice for all the people who suffered at the hands of these people, and the risk of future harm that they may cause.

Which, thematically, is the core of the Winter Soldier.

I've usually seen Zola's recruitment discussed in terms of Peggy or Howard making the decision to let him in, when in reality, they probably didn't make the call themselves so much as become complicit in it later. Zola was captured and recruited right at the end of CA:FA (he later clocks this at 1945) but Peggy and Howard didn't even have an organization at that point, let alone the power to recruit a head Nazi scientist. This was two decades before SHIELD was ever founded, and if we take the Agent Carter series as binding canon, at the time of Zola's transition into American government would, Peggy had so little sway that she couldn't even get anyone to listen to her, let alone recruit a nazi scientist, and Howard was potentially on the run and definitely not involved in any formal governmental decision making. Even if you assume that they were somehow in charge of a government agency at the time of Zola's recruitment, the actual recruitment and function of Operation Paperclip was conducted by independent agencies (Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency and the Counterintelligence Corps) that Peggy and Howard weren't a part of, and the person who made the call for Operation Paperclip itself was The Literal President Of The United States. Whatever way you cut it, Peggy and Howard probably had nothing to do with Zola's initial recruitment--what most likely happened was that two decades passed (the time between Zola's recruitment and SHIELD's founding) and when resources were being allocated some big-shot in the overseeing body was like Yeah You Do Weird Stuff? We Got A Guy Who's Been Doing Weird Stuff For Us For Like Twenty Years and then when Peggy and Howard saw him they were like Oh Its This Motherfucker.

To be clear, this is not at all to absolve howard and peggy for working with a guy they knew did literal human experimentation because he did it on one of their best friends. But this is to more clearly reframe it from Decision They Personally Made to The Ways Being At A Certain Level Of Government Makes You Complicit With Horrible Things, which perfectly encapsulates the heart of the movie.

At the open of the movie, Steve is visibly on a fucking ledge with SHIELD. Fuck, Fury and Nat spend most of the opening trying to keep him from flying the coop. And it's because Steve for the very first time has to grapple with the consequences of being an active participant in a governmental body.

Straight up--Steve spent the entire war going AWOL. His entire military career was spent doing what he wanted and flipping his superior officers the bird. The man was a terrible fucking soldier but by the time anyone figured it out they had already given him a comic book and the Medal of Honor and the man could bench press a tank it was simply too late. Then, he got encased in ice for 70 years, woke up, had two weeks of fun future integration activities like Not Getting Therapy For His Problems and Looking At Pictures Of His Dead Friends, got tapped in because they fucked up with the exact thing he lost everything to stop, immediately went AWOL again, almost died again, went on a roadtrip of self discovery, and at some point between then and CAWS started working as one of the main STRIKE members of SHIELD. This is likely his first time having to ever deal with the realities of being a hand of the government.

One of the most insidious things about high-level government work is there's rarely some Main Guy sitting behind a desk signing Evil Decrees and responsible for everything. Power is allocated and things get messy very quickly.

Take Ghost for example. One of SHIELD'S Main Guys falls out with another Guy, smears his name, which makes the Ex-Guy so desperate that he takes unnecessary risks in his experiments that predictably blow up in his face and leads to his young daughter having a debilitating power that results in her uncontrollably phasing through objects. Another Guy tries to do the right thing and help her, but Other Main Guys think "This kid would make a GREAT assassin" and leverage a cure for her debilitating health condition into turning her into a forced operative. This health condition starts to kill her, but the Main Guys were so happy with their new forced assassin that they never looked for a cure to begin with and was going to use her until she died. She goes rather reasonably goes AWOL, and in her attempts to cure herself, she's willing to do just about anything to get cured, and including contemplating kidnapping Scott's daughter as an option.

Steve obviously wasn't called in to help with that (he was AWOL himself at that point) but assume he was--he would only get pulled into this mess at the very end when all the damage is done and there's a highly unstable assassin kidnapping little girls. SHIELD was at fault for every horrible thing that happened to this person. He has a strong sense of justice, and he'd likely to be furious to find out that SHIELD took an orphanged child and abused their incredibly painful and terminal medical condition, which was indirectly caused by them, in order to force them into becoming a highly skilled operative.

But there isn't just one person that he'd be able to find and blame for what happened with this--culpability was stretched out over Multiple Main Guys who made bad decisions, a lot of Lower Guys who built the suit, trained her, handled her in the field, and experimented on her to learn her limits, many of whom likely didn't even work for the organization any more.

Who do you go after for that? The Main Guy who smeared her dad? But he didn't have anything to do with the assassin business or the actual accident. The Main Guys who made the calls for the assassination thing? Better candidates, but is it that simple? What about the guys who just get orders every day and have no decision making authority, who were handed a little girl who was vulnerable and in pain and told to train her to kill? What about the ones making a child-sized tactical suit with no details about what was going on but who had reason enough to suspect it wasn't all good? They were just following orders, but so were Nazis working the camps.

How do you go after people for that? Fire them? It's been decades. Most are probably retired. And that's a pretty lame punishment for what they did. He doesn't make the calls for legal action, they definitely have qualified immunity for their decisions, and there's a whole host of problems with proving anything.

But, on the flip side, what does he do about Ghost? what happened to her is terrible, but if she had kidnapped Cassie Lang, he couldn't exactly sit on his hands and let it happen no matter the justification. There's a very good chance he has to stop her and become another link in a chain of what's been a lifetime of abuse. Things get messy when you're just a cog in the machine of a sprawling agency that has a lot of power to abuse.

While we don't know what Steve's been doing while he worked for SHIELD, we do know that it pissed him off to high heavens. The very first thing we see him doing for SHIELD is recapturing the off-course Lemurian Star from pirates, and he is the exact opposite of a dutiful soldier during it. He doesn't just salute and follow his orders without question--one of the first lines of his mouth is calling them out for lying about the ship being in those waters because it was off-course. He's like "Oh, so it's not off course, it's trespassing" to which Nat says "I'm sure they had a good reason" and Steve replies "I'm getting a little tired of being Fury's janitor."

He's saving the hostages, and then all of a sudden he finds Natasha in the control room downloading the drive and realizes that this was about SHIELD's data to begin with but no one clued him in on that fact. He's pissed because the hostages could have died, which is a fact he immediately goes after Fury about.

There is so much character jammed into those few minutes of screen time. This is visibly an old argument--at one point, Fury says to him "It's damn near getting past time for you to get with the program, Cap" to which Steve tells him not to hold his breath. Steve doesn't like or approve of a lot of SHIELD's actions, but he's called in after all the bad things they did went to shit. Like, what's he going to do--say, sorry, the Lemurian Star was obviously Up To Some Shit that I don't want to be a part of, RIP to the hostages but I'm just going to let them get shot in the head? He's the janitor and he's sick of getting called into SHIELD fucking something up through their own immoral actions and calling him to pull their ass out of the fire. He spends the entire first half of the movie on the verge of flying the coop entirely, and Nat and Fury visibly know it and are trying to get him off the ledge in every interaction they have on screen with him--which directly contributes to the fact that Steve doesn't trust either of them for the first half of the movie.

It also is likely the motivator behind why he does ultimately trust Sam. Steve spends the first half of the movie getting Managed. He's increasingly pissed and distrustful of SHIELD and its agents, and he's got good reason to be--Nat and Fury hide things from him and keep trying to persuade him to stick with the program (to be clear Nat's (and to a somewhat lesser extent Fury's) own actions and whether any culpability for things like project insight could possibly be imputed to her has to be analyzed under an entirely different lens due to the difference in her personal history and character type, but this is already way too long to tackle that here. this isn't actually meant to assign blame to her, but more to analyze the likely results on steve). Fury takes him for a tour of his Fascist Death Machine and tells him that's what the world needs. The neighbor he was growing increasingly intimate with was a SHIELD agent who lied to him about her name and the fact that she was spying on him. At the end of the day, the majority of the of the early movie is spent with his desires and principles are treated as secondary and unwanted complications to the fact that they really need him to keep throwing that shield on SHIELD's behalf (whether this is actually what nat and fury specifically are trying to do is, again, a separate analysis we don't have time for, this is just to go to how it likely affects and appears to Steve).

Sam, meanwhile, is beautiful and charming is the only one who openly expresses a genuine concern for Steve as a person and not steve as a solider. Sam spends the entire first half of the movie reaching out to someone in a position he's been in himself and trying to get him help. his entire first meeting with Steve is defined by him trying to help a fellow Vet recover from war. he tries to gauge where Steve's at with the future, invites him to the VA, and packages it in a easily-seen-through excuse that gives them both plausible deniability--Steve can come by and get the help he needs not as Captain America The Man The Myth The Legend Who Is Really Fucking Struggling, but as Steve the guy helping Sam impress the girl at the front desk.

When he comes to the VA, Sam has the direct opposite response that everyone else in the movie has to Steve questioning his place in SHIELD and in government work--he's like "Quit. Quit now. Be free and beautiful like me. become an ultimate fighter or whatever the fuck you want." He doesn't give two shits about what the world will do without Captain America keeping it safe--he just cares about what Steve needs.

This all goes to a greater analysis about how Sam is beautiful and charming the perfect parallel to Steve, the only one who could possibly have taken up his shield, and actually wrong in that line he says about how he does what Steve does but slower because he consistently decides to do the right thing before Steve is another analysis that would go too far off the point to get into. The point being is that Sam exists in the narrative as the direct opposite and alternative to the reality fury and nat offers Steve. Steve spends the beginning of the movie with Nat and Fury seemingly sacrificing the means for the end, but there's Sam, beautiful and charming someone who made the same decision he's now faced with, being like "fuck it. sometimes you have to walk."

Steve's entire struggle about his position with SHIELD reaches its climax when he first finds out the truth of Project Insight.

For the avoidance of any doubt, SHIELD secretly being infiltrated by HYDRA has no effect on how wrong Project Insight was from the start--it just emphasized how horrifically wrong it could go. But "Space Super Death Weapon That Can Immediately Kill Dangers To National Security" is a bad idea no matter who is in charge of it. First off, Steve is right--punishment follows the crime. No government has a crystal fucking ball and anyone who justifies things on the basis of "taking out threats ahead of time" is talking out their ass. to be clear, i'm not saying you need to wait for someone to be on a plane and flying at the twin towers to stop a terrorist attack--in law, we have a designated level of "closeness" that lets us say "yeah you were totally actually doing what we don't want you doing" at which point you can charge them with attempt, and often a lot of the earlier steps leading up to the Big Harmful Thing are actual crimes you can intervene with.

Project Insight was the flagship of of a "quantum surge in threat analysis." It did exactly what it was designed to do: it took out threats before they became threats. The only difference between SHIELD being at the helm and HYDRA is who gets defined as a threat. HYDRA would have defined that as anyone from a high school valedictorian in Iowa to Stephen Strange, but it's not any better if SHIELD's defining that as some random kid in Afghanistan who shows whatever traits show a risk for one day becoming a combatant.

And yet, steve's the only one in the movie who says this. We don't actually know how much Nat knows about Project insight itself, but Fury is fully aware and a participant in it, and Tony Stark apparently took one look at the thing and said "your engines are shit. i'll improve them." Steve takes one look at them and calls it fascist bullshit.

At the end of the day, you can never justify shit like this under the assumption that the people controlling it will use it for the best, because you cannot trust the people controlling it. Yeah, Project Insight was probably pitched with being used against the worst threats. Dangers to public safety, terrorists, that kind of thing. Do you want to know who else was considered a danger to public safety? MLK, who the FBI fucking murdered. The people who define threats to national security are the ones who have the same incentive to maintain the status quo in an unjust world. Even if we assume Project Insight was made to stop the next 9/11, we also have to assume that at least some of the strikes it would have carried out under not-HYDRA control would have been for the wrong reasons.

What the fuck does all of this this have to do with Zola?

Operation Paperclip and Peggy and Howard's decisions within it directly mirrors Project Insight and Fury's decisions within it, directly mirrors Steve's journey and central conflict over the course of the film, and directly contrasts with the alternative Sam poses within it.

CA:WS at its thematic core, says that initiatives that sacrifice justice for claims of national security and public safety are exactly what robs us of our rights and freedoms and ultimately endangers us all. It's not even subtle--Zola says it out loud in his evil villain speech. but operating at a high level in a government agency puts you in a position where you're meant to make that decision again and again, even if we assume you have the best of intentions.

Peggy and Howard were people who believed that they had to make the hard decisions to save the world. They were handed a decision where perception of culpability was obscured by how distributed out the blame was, and the direct public benefit to national security was posed to be overwhelmingly good. It leads to SHIELD's infiltration. Project Insight went through on the exact same reasoning. Fury, Maria Hill, possibly Nat, and Tony (off-screen) all do the exact same thing and justify the means by the end, and it leads to the helicarriers being made.

Steve spends the movie being told, explicitly, to "get with the program" and start making the same decisions. His central conflict is being someone on the inside of this club, being told that he needs to start understand what keeping the world safe demands, and his journey leads to him refusing to do it. The climax of the movie is a character so minor that we never learn his name refusing to launch the helicarriers with a gun pointed at his head, even though the complicity he carried in it would have been just as attenuated as Steve's was as SHIELD's janitor. And all throughout it, there's Sam, someone who left the military explicitly because he couldn't follow the rules he was being given anymore.

Peggy and Howard's decision to go along with Zola in Operation Paperclip is a direct parallel of the decisions Fury made with Project Insight and the decisions Steve ultimately refuses to make himself. Making Peggy and Howard complicit in what let in Arnim Zola encapsulates the entire core argument of CA:WS and it's so weird to me that I've only ever seen it discussed in shipping wars and discourse as to whether a Character Is Bad.

Peggy and Howard, ultimately, were members of a governmental task force who made the Hard Decisions for The Public Good. As an inherent part of that role, they did bad things. Unjust things. They undoubtedly saved the world multiple times over as a part of their tenure as the head of SHIELD, but it would be absolute naivety to assume that anyone in that position didn't become complicit in terrible fucking things. It's the direct product of their positions in the government, and it's exactly what leads to Steve's position in Civil War. it is absolutely bonkers to me how people watched Winter Solider and then reacted to Steve's opposition to the Accords like Local Imperialist Military Boy Refuses To Listen To Anyone Else. Steve just had a masterclass in how people in the government make decisions that sacrifice justice up to and including people he once trusted with his life. Of course he didn't fucking trust General Human Experimentation And I Consider Bruce Banner The Property Of The United States Military with his every action as Captain America. He had just learned that he couldn't even trust Peggy and Howard with it.

#this became very long #and you know what #if i want to say the same thing in the tags of some unsuspecting person's post then that's my right #more tags when #more tags NOW

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bumblingbabooshka · 1 year

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id love to hear about your ideal tuvok-seven and tuvok-b'lanna relationships!!!!

THIS IS VERY LONG AND /ALL/ OFF THE DOME PLEASE FORGIVE ME. Seven&Tuvok: Tuvok is the first person on board who Seven forms a friendly bond with. They understand one another’s methods of communicating very well. They’re both seen as cold and unsocial by others. Tuvok is excused from this because he’s Vulcan but Seven is constantly told she’s wrong for this because she’s human. Perhaps a bit of resentment from Seven about this but it’s not a huge problem. Tuvok is one of the few people Seven feels she can relax in front of

(B’Elanna too - though they argue more than Tuvok/Seven that’s another kind of relaxing. She can talk to her like a friend where they’re on equal footing rather than the Doctor or Janeway who tend to talk ‘down’ to her by which I mean they present themselves as being a mentor figure and Janeway is also literally her boss).

Seven does not need a father figure or another mentor in my mind. She has enough of that, EVERYONE is that. I know people view Tuvok showing care for Seven as fatherly but I personally view it as more friendly concern. In my mind Vulcan parenthood or Tuvok’s particular brand of fatherhood seem to stem more from teaching. (Ex: The children from Innocence or his lessons with Kes). Tuvok does obviously care about Seven but not in what I perceive as a fatherly way. It’s far more interesting to me that Seven is often helping/protecting Tuvok or that they’re often in some kind of dangerous situation together. I think it’d be interesting to lean into that more. Like, it’d be sort of sweet if the relationship Seven finds confidence in caring for someone else in was with a Vulcan. I know they have that whole borg children thing, I couldn’t care less about that honestly. The Naomi-Seven relationship is cute enough on its own!

Both Seven and Tuvok go to and through hell for each other.

My personal favorite Tuvok-Seven moment other than Comfortable Silence one we all know and love is the one where Seven believes the borg are calling her and she tells Tuvok to get out of the shuttle so he won’t be assimilated. Tuvok then says no, he’s not leaving her. It’s just so fucking sweet to me. Both of them. Seven’s like ‘I want to spare you this’ and Tuvok’s like ‘I’ll walk headfirst into this for you’.

I see both Seven and Tuvok as traumatized people, both of whom would probably deny this citing either ‘borg’ or ‘vulcan’ as the reason this is so. However they both seem to suffer a lot, especially when it comes to their minds. Tuvok even parallels Seven’s initial trauma in being fully assimilated into the borg yet this never comes up between them. Look more into that!! What was that like?? They both suffer traumas, in some cases even similar (Repression, Retrospect) or the same traumas but the reaction of the crew to those traumas is very different with Seven being badgered about her emotions & reactions and Tuvok being left alone with his. I just think it’d be nice for them to have a certain solace. Tuvok would have a shoulder to lean on Seven would have someone who wouldn’t be expecting anything out of her.

Regarding the Borg thing: If ANYONE could understand how being part of an interconnected network of minds would be comforting it would be Tuvok. If ANYONE could understand how being suddenly and traumatically separated from that network via the actions of a certain captain Janeway could be confusing and painful it would be Tuvok. Not that I think Tuvok blames Janeway, I don’t at all. He’s Vulcan (it would be illogical) and also Kathryn’s #1 stan so I think that could again be a point of friction between them. Tuvok doesn’t push Seven in any direction but doesn’t ever admit that Janeway could be wrong. I think at one point in Year of Hell he literally tells Seven she shouldn’t disagree with her? But just Tuvok’s general behavior in the show (like not commenting on her attempting to torture information out of a guy and going on a bloodthirsty quest for vengeance in Equinox) shows that despite what lipservice the show pays to him being her ‘moral compass’ in earlier seasons he mostly just agrees with her after that one instance of him going against orders. He has a tremendous amount of faith in her and would probably encourage that same faith in Seven. That or he’d just excuse himself from the issue by saying he’s Vulcan and can’t really comment on what it means to be human.

Long story short Tuvok is in desperate need of characters he’s not seen as a mentor figure for and Seven is in desperate need of characters that aren’t trying to mold her into what their vision of a good human/starfleet officer is. I think they could and should find that in one another.

B’Elanna & Tuvok: Both B’Elanna and Tuvok have a lot of similarities in their backstories that are unexplored. They both at one point wished they were not the race they are (for different reasons and to differing degrees as Tuvok grew out of this and B’Elanna still has it). They were both sent to a temple to better connect with their heritage. They both quit Starfleet (at different times). They both are seen by people chiefly with regards to their species ‘It’s because [s]he’s Vulcan/Klingon’ and they have both taken issue with it in the past. They both seem like they have had a complicated relationship to humanity with B’Elanna lauding it and Tuvok loathing it (not actively in canon I mean in the past for Tuvok).

B’Elanna from a young age viewed humanity as Good. Full stop. No matter how much humans hurt her the lesson she seems to take away from it is that she needs to change, not that humans should change. She covered her ridges, she lies about not knowing Klingon, when she knows her baby will be born with her features she’s TERRIFIED of how her daughter will be treated and tries EVERYTHING in her power to “fix” (HEAVY air quotes) her and make her socially acceptable to humans.

Tuvok on the other hand, when faced with similar (though not as dire, sustained or internalized as B’Elanna) issues went the opposite way. He grew to really resent how humans pushed their own beliefs and values onto him. I think it’s interesting how he mentioned humor specifically, implying that Tuvok has and had his own sense of humor - of personhood - that humans didn’t understand and thus ignored or viewed as lesser.

Now for how these elements would interact…B’Elanna in her dreamscape in Barge of The Dead places Tuvok as the arbiter of What is a Good Klingon which I interpret as meaning she views him as very upright and traditional. This makes sense as we see Tuvok is a very staunch person. In canon he doesn’t struggle at all with his cultural identity. He is Vulcan and he’s at peace with that no matter what anyone has to say about it - unlike B’Elanna. He even has a holoprogram of a temple which is interesting when you take into account the fact that B’Elanna denies her cultural spirituality.

I think B’Elanna would see Tuvok as a bit intimidating and very frustrating. He’s stubborn like her and I can’t imagine them working well together. They don’t interact much but the two times I can remember him doing so he says something that could be interpreted as very hurtful (though the narrative hates B’El- doesn’t see it that way).

1 After B’Elanna tells him a painful story about her past in which she was bullied to the point of snapping and attacking another student Tuvok immediately uses the same jeer to incite her to anger yet again. After he intentionally does so he criticizes her for being angry and says she’s too easily riled up.

2 After B’Elanna is acquitted in Random Thoughts Tuvok says something along the lines of “You know for a brutal and illogical Klingon you actually control yourself somewhat well.” and B’Elanna says “Thanks??” which…B’Elanna…you can punch him, it’s okay. I know you don’t punch people but you can do it just this once. Again, I don’t see them being either father/daughter or mentor/mentee. (I assume them having a father/daughter bond is just conceptual as Tuvok IS a father and B'Elanna has a bad relationship with her own) They don’t interact with one another much and seem like they would aggravate each other as they’re both stubborn and kind of similar. I think in fact that Tuvok constantly being relegated to ‘Mentor Figure’ is side-eyeingly similar to the ‘Magic N*’ trope by which I mean Tuvok is used in both canon and fan narratives ONLY to advance other characters’ stories, give them advice etc but his own personhood remains unexplored or seen as unimportant.

I think B’Elanna-Tuvok could really bring that out. Both of them being just two people. B’Elanna and Tuvok arguing, learning about one another, coming to respect each other. B’Elanna questioning Tuvok and his ideas and Tuvok being unused to that, caught off guard - and through that questioning and response we learn more about both of them as people.

Tuvok, at the end of the day, is not a therapist. He’s just some guy who’s part of a culture which is known for controlling themselves. He doesn’t even seem to really WANT to do what little exercises of control he does with B’Elanna (he says Chakotay insisted). Tuvok is not a people person and doesn’t seek out interactions with others. When he talks to others they often view him as either cold (perception of Vulcans) or superior (Tuvok-specific trait) neither of which I think B’Elanna would jive with well.

I think it would be very interesting if B’Elanna called Tuvok out on how he’s implied to view Klingons. I think she’d be way more likely to do this with Tuvok because he’s not a human. Like, imagine if after rising tensions Tuvok makes one little comment too many and B’Elanna’s like “Hey. Do you remember when you were an ensign and people kept making these comments about YOU??? Do you think maybe you’re doing the exact same fucking thing right now to me???”

ALSO one last thing I find interesting is (I’m sorry) LITERALLY ONE line in Innocence that’s NEVER brought up again. Tuvok saying that he used to believe in the concept of a katra and the Vulcan afterlife but “in recent years” he’s begun to experience doubts. Let B’Elanna and Tuvok talk about spiritual doubts.

At the end of the day I DO ABSOLUTELY want them to be friends. I want them to stick up for each other when a human makes a little comment. I want them to have each others fucking backs. Maybe it's not the fact that I'm Vulcan or You're Klingon that's the problem.....maybe it's the whi- humans...that are wrong. This could also connect to Seven's personal journey with humanity. Seven seeing that two people she cares about have been hurt by humanity and humanity's perception of them could be an interesting thing for her to notice and think about in regards to what sort of person she wants to be.

#SORRY.#THIS IS.......SORRY #kind anon #Anon (sweet and unsuspecting): Hmm Bea hasn't answered my ask in a long time maybe he's not interested #Bea (lunatic): I'm too interested to even TRY to reply. Let me just -WRITES AN ESSAY-#st voyager #B'Elanna Torres #Seven of Nine #Tuvok #these are just my personal ideas.......alotofthem..........sorry #Tuvok is interesting to me in part because he used to be rebellious and wilder but now he's so by-the-book and uncompromising #there's a LOT A LOT that could come from that in my mind especially in his relationships towards both B'Elanna and Seven #thank you everyone who sends me asks I really do love them #sometimes I love them so much I can't answer them right away v_v please bear with me

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