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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years

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Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

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c-ptsdrecovery · 4 years

Link

“Did it ever get physical?”

This is often the first question we ask someone we know or suspect is in an unhealthy relationship. While starting a conversation around physical abuse is essential, the issue is when it’s the only question we ask.

Stopping short of inquiring about other forms of abuse implies that physical violence is the defining factor of an unhealthy relationship. Even worse, it conveys the message that whatever else might be going on is just “not that bad.”

This is a huge issue, because emotional abuse can absolutely be that bad.

Even if relationship never gets physically abusive, emotional abuse can escalate over time with devastating consequences, even death. And while emotional abuse does not always lead to physical abuse, physical abuse in relationships is nearly always preceded and accompanied by emotional abuse.[i]

Why don’t we hear more about emotional abuse? In addition to the common misconception that it’s just not that serious, many people simply aren’t sure what emotional abuse actually entails.

My aim here is to help you understand what emotional abuse really means and what makes it so dangerous so that you’re better equipped to start the conversation. Because if you want to stop it, you first have to know what you’re dealing with.

Defining Emotional Abuse

Understanding emotional abuse is complicated for many reasons. One reason is because there are several different names used interchangeably to refer to the same kind of abuse, including emotional abuse/violence, psychological abuse/violence, and mental abuse. For simplicity, we’ll use “emotional abuse” going forward.

Another complication is that there isn’t one accepted definition of emotional abuse. It seems that everyone has a slightly different version.

We’ve identified several common threads that make up the most widely accepted definitions and combined them here to create the following description of emotional abuse:

Emotional abuse is any abusive behavior that isn’t physical, which may include verbal aggression, intimidation, manipulation, and humiliation, which most often unfolds as a pattern of behavior over time that aims to diminish another person’s sense of identity, dignity and self worth, and which often results in anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts or behaviors, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Wow, that’s a lot.

Each part of the definition presents its own complications to fully grasping the reality of emotional abuse, so let’s dissect what this really means, piece by piece.

Breaking Down Emotional Abuse

1.“…any abusive behavior that isn’t physical…”

Pretty broad, right? Emotional abuse is difficult to comprehend because it encompasses so much. Just take a look at the non-exhaustive list[ii] below of behaviors that are potentially emotionally abusive:

Intimidation

Manipulation

Refusal to ever be pleased

Blaming

Shaming

Name-calling

Insults

Put-downs

Sarcasm

Infantilization

Silent treatment

Trivializing

Triangulation

Sabotage

Gaslighting

Scapegoating

Blame-shifting

Projection

Ranking and comparing

Arbitrary and unpredictable inconsistency

Threatening harm

Forced isolation

We specify “potentially” abusive behaviors because some of the behaviors on this list could occur in a healthy context as well. Let’s take sarcasm and infantilizing speech, for example. Many people consider sarcasm a key component of a good sense of humor. Many people would also agree that using infantilizing speech as terms of endearment is harmless, for example referring to a significant other as “baby.” However, in the context of emotional abuse where the intent is malicious, these behaviors can be extremely cutting, especially when disguised as affection or an innocent remark. For example, someone who repeatedly tells his or her significant other “My baby is so smart” in a way that’s meant to mock their partner’s intelligence using sarcasm as well as infantilizing speech to make them feel small is a form of emotional abuse.

2. “ …which may include verbal aggression, intimidation, manipulation, and humiliation”

The key word here is “may.” Not only is the list of emotional abuse tactics incredibly long and dependent on context, the particular combination of behaviors that show up, how they show up—whether overtly or covertly—and with what intensity can also vary greatly from relationship to relationship. As a result, we have another layer of complexity: emotional abuse doesn’t have one specific look.

For example, an emotionally abusive relationship where overt aggressing behaviors like yelling, threatening and blaming are predominantly used will look very different from a relationship where only very subtle forms of abuse like gaslighting, passive-aggressive put-downs, and minimizing are used.

3. “a pattern of behavior over time”

Emotional abuse is rarely a single event. Instead, it occurs over time as a pattern of behavior that’s “sustained” & “repetitive.”[iii] This particular characteristic of emotional abuse helps explain why it’s so complicated and so dangerous.

Even if you’re the most observant person in the world, emotional abuse can be so gradual that you don’t realize what’s happening until you’re deeply entangled in its web. As a result, the abuse can go unchecked as the relationship progresses, building for months, years, even decades, especially if the abuse is more covert. In such instances, the target’s self-esteem is steadily eroded and their self-doubt becomes so paralyzing that they often have only a vague sense that something (though unsure what) is wrong.

4. “aims to diminish another person’s sense of identity, dignity, and self-worth”

Regardless of how emotional abuse unfolds, experts agree that it has devastating effects on those who are subjected to it.[iv]

Unfortunately, these effects as well as each harmful act of abuse are largely invisible. This makes it difficult for most people to comprehend the very real risks and damage of emotional abuse.

Let’s demonstrate why. For a moment, try to imagine a scene of physical violence, a fight. Even if you’ve never witnessed or experienced it firsthand, your imagination can probably fill in the picture pretty well. The struggle. The adrenaline and fear. The aftermath of blood, bruises, tears. It’s a painful portrait but likely one that you can envision.

Now, try to picture a scene of emotional abuse, specifically someone whose self-identity has been annihilated. Can you see it?

Chances are your mind doesn’t know where to begin. But if you are able to create a picture of either the acts of abuse or what the damage looks like on the person who experienced it, can you put that image into words?

While describing physical wounds is pretty straightforward, it’s much harder to articulate emotional trauma. The parts of a person that sustained emotional abuse destroys—identity, dignity, and self-worth—are abstract, almost impossible to picture or measure.

5. “results in anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts or behaviors, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)”

Because emotional abuse is essentially invisible, singling out the abuse as the culprit of its destructive effects is another kind of challenge and frustration.

Even in cases of extreme emotional abuse, there are no bruises or gashes where the victim can point and say, “This cracked rib is from that constant belittling and invalidation” and “That swollen eye and broken lip are from the incessant name-calling and guilt-tripping and pathological lying.” Instead, what emotional abuse ends up looking like is a person suffering from painful yet not uncommon afflictions like anxiety or depression.

It can therefore be heartbreakingly easy for anyone—whether the person inflicting the emotional abuse, a third-party observer, or even the target of the abuse—to misattribute its damage to some other cause like unemployment or family stress or even blame the target’s prior mental state if he or she battled similar issues in the past.

Closing Thoughts

Hopefully this explanation of emotional abuse is as comprehensive as possible, but I recognize that it’s still bound to have gaps due to the complications I’ve just mentioned. Think of it more as a springboard for future conversations and exploration than an all-encompassing definition.

Emotional abuse, like any other form of cruelty, thrives in the darkness when no one understands, discusses, or recognizes it. Use your newfound knowledge and curiosity to shine the light on the risks and devastation of emotional abuse.

A great place to start is with asking the question, “How does that behavior or action make you feel?” or “Did it ever get emotionally abusive?”

#emotional abuse #abuse #mental abuse #verbal abuse #psychological abuse

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tomorrowsdrama · 4 years

Text

Hyena Ep. 16

I’m baaack! Kind of. I think I hit that point in my quarantine life where I kind of lost my mind so I went on an unexpected hiatus that lasted longer than intended. I know it’s been over a month after the finale of Hyena but here are my ramblings. This post is super long so I’ll save my thoughts on the series as a whole for another post.

Objectively, it was a pretty good finale that was entertaining and wrapped up the important plot lines. We even got some sweet otp moments (more on that later) and satisfying smackdown of the bad guy. But subjectively? Personally? Purely based on my selfish expectations? I wanted more romance! More sexiness! I wasn’t expecting a wedding or anything like that but, not even one kiss? Or a long embrace? Why????

I mean, how can you give me all this sexy chemistry in the promos:

And then not make use of it in the finale? That’s just not fair I say! I feel bamboozled!

Ep. 16

Anyway, let’s talk about the parts I enjoyed of the finale. This is mainly (99%) going to be about the moments between Geum Ja and Hee Jae. So on the morning of episode 16, way back when, I woke up so excited for the finale. Since this was the last episode, surely there will be a kiss! And surely it would be epic given the chemistry between JJH and KHS. I mean did you see that kiss in episode 8? So when we started off the episode with the scene of Hee Jae telling Geum Ja he didn’t want to see her hurt anymore, I was amped. Yes, we’re starting off strong with the romantic scenes I thought.

How can you not fall for him?

Geum Ja, you are not a gangster, you do not need to show your story through the scars on your body. Joking aside, it’s sad that she’s been through so much in life that she has the scars to prove it.

I love that Hee Jae says this half-sarcastically but you can tell that he truly does not want Geum Ja to go through any more pain/suffering. And it’s his sincerity that makes Geum Ja smile so softly. And this is where they kiss right?

Nope, he gets a hearty bro punch in the shoulder.

Cut for lots of caps and ramblings. It’s a bit of a mini novel, you’ve been warned!

Mmm I loved how many scenes of concerned Hee Jae we got in this episode.

Geum Ja screams from a nightmare and Hee Jae immediately runs into the office to check on her. The only way he could have reacted so quickly is if he was sitting outside the office guarding Geum Ja which...AHHH I think I’ve just died and gone to hurt/comfort heaven. Just look at JJH’s face.

EEE! I audibly squealed when Geum Ja said this. Ok, now I’ve truly died. Geum Ja? Asking to be comforted? By Hee Jae? What? This is major. She’s finally letting down her walls a little bit around Hee Jae and allowing herself to be vulnerable. Keep on leaning I say! Lean all the way into bed.

Omg and then she showed concern over Hee Jae’s own emotional state despite her own trauma. His dad totally betrayed him just a few hours ago so Hee Jae’s having a pretty shitty day too. But of course, Hee Jae is only concerned about Geum Ja. Ahh, how many times is he going to make me swoon in this episode?

Feet piled on top of each other?! Are they finally in bed together?

Of course not. Unfortunately, this isn’t that type of drama. SIGH. But this is still very sweet and squeal-inducing.

Have I talked about how much I love JJH’s little sly smirks?

I love that these two fools can’t stop worrying about the other. Geum Ja knows better than anyone how deep emotional scars caused by a parent can be. On top of that, Hee Jae’s father was someone he respected and loved, so the blow is even bigger. I just really like it when my otp show how much they care about each other, ok?

Look at that smile on Hee Jae’s face. It’s like there’s no other place he would rather be than next to Geum Ja.

No, please don’t. Y’all are not 12. Please get at least a queen size bed with plenty of room for two adults to move around in and do...adult things lol.

And then. AND THEN! Geum Ja takes the initiative and turns over towards Hee Jae. She’s finally the one taking the first step towards him without any prodding. And Hee Jae smiles to himself and follows her lead to turn over also. And then the two fools smile lovingly at each other as they fall asleep. Omg, excuse me, I need a moment. I’ve temporarily passed on to the other side from sheer otp happiness.

This moment was just too good. I literally raised both my arms up into the air and cheered when I first watched this episode. I thought, wow the writers are feeding us so well. They’re showering us with so many romantic scenes. The otp caring for each other? Being tender with each other? Sharing a “bed?” I don’t want to ever get off this love train, keep it coming! This is only the first third of the episode so surely it can only go up from here.

And then it ended on a comedic note. I guess I should have seen that coming. This is SBS, not TVN (or JTBC from the looks of The World of the Married). Hah, well I suppose they both had a pretty tiring day so it’s understandable that they would not have much energy to do anything else.

It’s the little everyday things like asking if she’s ok that get me.

(JJH I thirst for you.)

Suuuuure you are.

Lol, he wouldn’t be Hee Jae if he didn’t pull something childish/petty. At least Geum Ja is amused by it and finds it cute now. Get you a man who can be both your emotional support and amusing bratty boyfriend.

Geum Ja does end up meeting Hee Jae for dinner and he can’t help but smile a little. Gosh, it takes so little from Geum Ja to make him happy.

(damn, look at that profile!)

So some time during this episode, Geum Ja’s adoptive father died off-screen from the stab wound he sustained while stopping her assailant. At first, I went “Huh, that’s it?” But then the more I thought about it, the more I liked how matter-of-factly it was treated. It’s certainly consistent with how Geum Ja deals with things. Also, she faced her demons/him in a previous episode so you could say that she already resolved that chapter of her life.

Still, you could tell that she’s not completely unaffected by it. KHS’s acting in this scene is so good. You can tell there’s more to it than what she’s saying just by the little subtle changes in her expression. I can only imagine the many complicated feelings she must be experiencing.

On the one hand, he’s the worst part of her past life and surely deserved to die. But on the other hand, unintentional or not, he died saving her. Geum Ja does not state this with any affection or sentimentality in her voice. It is merely something that happened. Thank goodness the writers did not try to redeem him in the last minute. One good deed does not make up for all the violence and abuse inflicted on her and her mother.

Anyway, all that muddled history and emotions would make anybody conflicted. They really handled it the best way they could - simply state what happened and move on. No hate, no praise, no sadness. He was a terrible man who paid the ultimate price and died. I like that Hee Jae understands not to push the matter any further and changes the subject.

Bro, you’re delusional if you think you still have a chance with her.

And then we get to the ubiquitous Big Shareholder Meeting that we see so often in dramas. I love how Geum Ja is so ballsy in everything she does and she does it all in her comfy tracksuits. Of course the Big Shareholder Meeting does not go as planned and Song Pil Jung gets arrested.

God I love the look on Geum Ja’s face. It screams “is this guy still talking to me?”

Can I just say, I love how utterly brutal Geum Ja is in her rejection of Kevin Jung. Woof, ouch. If I ever heard that from someone I liked, I would be so devastated and embarrassed, I’d find a dark hole to bury myself in and lick my wounds. But of course, Kevin, like all the other men who fall for Geum Ja, seems to be into it. It takes a certain type of man to go for Geum Ja and apparently that type is a total masochist who likes getting rejected and their heart ripped out. I mean, to each their own.

I like whenever they do their power couple strut.

A bro fist bump? Really? Hm, I never really fist bumped the guys I dated but that’s cool I guess. They’re going in to destroy Song Pil Jung so I guess a fist bump is appropriate.

Hm, I don’t know. It seems like you’re the one who got arrested.

Bro. Mister. Are you for real? Did you forget all the shitty things you did to her?

Yeah, that’s kind of a big deal I think.

SO. SATISFYING. Whew honey, this exchange gave me life. My skin has cleared, my bank account is full, and I’ve lost 5 pounds.

Yessss I am all for this nerdy JJH in glasses and turtleneck sipping on expensive instant coffee aesthetic.

The couple that taunts together, stays together?

Hahahahaha, Hee Jae talking about being professional at work? Hahahahha.

I live for jealous Hee Jae because he’s extra ridiculous whenever he’s jealous. In this scene he’s getting jealous over Ju-Ho calling Geuma Ja “noona” and it’s like come on, they’re foster siblings. Let him call her noona. Side note, Netflix translates “noona” into Eun-Young, Geum Ja’s real name, and it irks me. Couldn’t they have just translated it into “sis” instead?

Now we’re around the 55 minute mark and I’m thinking, okay this is probably where it’s going to end. This is when it’s going to happen. They don’t have that much time left in the episode. All right, give me us all that we’ve been waiting for.

(Good looking main stays looking good.)

You can’t ever accuse Hee Jae of not being committed to Geum Ja.

We finally get an explanation for why Geum Ja always stared at that huge building

Haha, can you expect anything less from her character? At this point, I’m looking at the remaining time and thinking, ok then, when’s that kiss gonna happen?

SHRIEKS WHAT ARE THOSE HIDEOUS THINGS ON HIS FEET?! On another note, I’m sure Kim Hye Soo must be so glad she doesn’t have to wear those gigantic heels anymore.

Omg, ok, this is it. We’re getting shots of beautiful sexy people strutting and being playful with each other. They’re setting up for a romantic ending kiss. Ok, time to prepare myself.

Yes, put your arms around each other. We’re getting closer now.

Oh, ok. I guess this will be a far away in the distance kind of kiss. That’s ok, too I guess.

Oh, wait. Never mind. Looks like we’re going to get a frontal view of the ending kiss after all. Even better!

What? That’s it? What? Did I miss something? This can’t be.

Oh whew. An epilogue. Ok, this is when it’s going to happen.

Hahaha, they’re totally using the vloggers to advertise for their law firm. I love how Hee Jae has loosened up on what he thinks a proper lawyer should act like and it’s reflected in his more flamboyant wardrobe choices.

These damn fist bumps again. All the time spent fist bumping could have been spent hugging and kissing. Priorities, people!

Hah, like hell Hee Jae would ever leave Geum Ja.

Haha knew it. Boy is more whipped than whipped cream.

This pretty much sums up their dynamic. SIGH I’m not going to get my kiss am I.

Oh no. That caption can only mean one thing.

Yeeep. That’s it. This is the end. Finito.

Well. All right then. You know, the first time I watched this episode, I felt very disappointed that there was no final kiss. I mean the last time we saw them kissing was in episode 8 at the midpoint of the drama. This drama was clearly a rom com/screwball comedy so it only seemed fitting that there would be one last kiss scene. That’s how you end a romantic drama! But alas.

Actually, upon re-watching and re-capping this episode, I realized that even though we did not get any kiss scene, the writers still gave us plenty of sweet moments between Hee Jae and Geum Ja. We got to see their lovely progression into becoming partners who supported and trusted each other so that was nice. Even though they’re clearly together now, it’s nice to see that they still have their playful bickering dynamic. So objectively, it was a nice ending. I just personally wanted more smooches.

If you made it through this entire post, thank you for expending so much time reading my ramblings and congratultaions on having so much patience!

#sbs hyena #hyena #ju ji hoon #kim hye soo #joo ji hoon #kdrama

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soveryanon · 4 years

Text

Reviewing time for MAG185!

- Given Jon and Martin’s recent conversations about categorisations:

(MAG183) ARCHIVIST: This place is… an homage, shall we say. A monument. To him, and those like him, who tried to… categorise the world with themselves at the centre. In so doing, constructed the architecture of its suffering…! […] Avatar isn’t a thing, Martin, it’s not–! It’s just a word. A word used by… fools like Smirke to try and sort everything into neat little boxes, to reduce the messy spray of human fear into a checklist: Human, avatar, monster, victim. Only now, now, there’s a binary. There’s finally a clear dividing line and… [SIGH] Well. I’m sorry you’re not happy with which side you’ve ended up on.

(MAG184) MARTIN: … I thought you said Smirke’s Fourteen was a load of bull? ARCHIVIST: I said it was limited, and draws artificial borders, but it does have its use when it comes to conceptualising these things.

Yep, this episode really conveyed the concept! I had felt like the Monument was predominantly Spiral; but this one? No idea. Utter blob of terror, I didn’t have any moment of “Oooh! Could be mainly x?” at all. The statement at times made me think of The Buried, with the lack of space (“The cell was small and cramped, and Tina kept hitting her shin on the bench. […] And now, she is back in her cell. Or a cell that looks like hers. It is… smaller perhaps, the metal bench is cleaner, but… rusted through on the hinges, so when she lies on it, it squeals and threatens to collapse.”); I got a few Hunt-vibes when Tina recalled the moment before she was arrested (“All day she had been feeling on edge, smelling the faintest hint of something rotten on the wind. Had it been her imagination? No; others had sensed it too, she was sure of it. In the shops she had seen them, eyes darting nervously, fingers drumming incessantly on trolly handles, waiting for whatever was coming.”); there were a few Beholding moments with the feeling of being watched, being listened to, having her secrets exposed and used against her (“And all day, that intense, unshakeable feeling that she was being watched. […] And there had been a file, a thick manila envelope stained with grease and coffee, which held the pages of her life typed out in a small, no-nonsense font. She remembered that she had read those pages with increasing alarm. It had all been there, all of it. Her life, her loves, her choices, her mistakes. No details spared, no nasty inference ignored.”); the lights out reminded me of The Dark, through the Inspector’s own fears (“Please, I’m… It’s almost lights out. I can’t be here for lights out! Not again.”); the guardians had Stranger vibes (“The door opened, and there they stood, identical in their uniforms, their skin fishbelly white, and their eyes gleaming with malice.”); there was some Spiral-y feelings, punctually or through Tina being unable to make sense of her situation (“The man had laughed at that. It had been a dry and hacking sound that cracked the mirrored glass of the interview room, and made the juror’s ears bleed.”); and the cold, the separation from others, her inability to connect also made me think of The Lonely (“Had she ever been this cold before? Outside, of course, in the deepest winter, bundled up and pushing through to a heated home. But sat inside, with nowhere to go, nothing to change or wrap up in, just a thin grey jumpsuit, unable to do anything but sit there and shiver… [A BED CREAKS] that was a sort of cold that was alien to her. […] When she saw the world beyond her walls, her heart sank. The world seemed bright, and normal. […] The world didn’t miss her, didn’t know or care about what was happening beyond these walls.”) – for this last point, I could almost believe it was part of Martin’s domain… so it wasn’t a big surprise that we would jump straight to it right afterwards.

So, I was able to think of this and that Fear, but unable to classify the place as a whole. The fear of being subjected to what you want to believe others deserve (even though you’re aware on some level that they don’t)? As a whole, the statement was a denunciation of the complacency and willing ignorance amongst the privileged in the middle of an authoritative and repressive state – and it made quite an interesting POV because we rarely get a case of the statement-giver/victim coming across as inherently unsympathetic in the middle of their own distress. Last time I felt that way was with Tova McHugh (MAG155), and this time was for different reasons, mostly due to Tina’s inability to… change her mind and denounce was what truly atrocious:

(MAG185) ARCHIVIST: “It was obviously a mistake, some miscommunication somewhere, or a case of mistaken identity. These things were unfortunate, but sometimes they happened…! One of the people in charge would no doubt realise and sort it all out. […] Part of her wanted to lie there and weep, overcome with what was happening to her. But faster than that came the anger, the indignation – how dare they? She did not deserve this, she was better than this, this did not happen to people like her. [SCRAPING SOUNDS] She clawed her way back up to the window and looked out, trying to see the spiteful little brat. […] There has been a mistake. She should not be here, but she had met the person in charge, she had pleaded her case, told him of what had happened. … And he had laughed at her. […] Tina ignores it as she grabs the hatch and tries to keep it open, tries to tell the guard, to explain what’s happened, that something’s gone wrong, that she shouldn’t be here, this isn’t right! Why can’t anybody see this, this isn’t the place for people like her!”

Underneath, there was the implication that others would still “deserve” to be subjected to this, and the fact that her anger was misdirected as a result: Tina was upset that it was happening to her, not that… it was happening at all, to anyone, and that nobody should deserve this. There was still this unabashed confidence and trust in the regime and in order as a thing, while she was directly exposed to its atrocities, and her anger that the world didn’t conform to the scenario in her head where she should be protected by the very same thing oppressing others. This season, Jon’s kept pointing out Martin that things were complicated, that “No one gets what they deserve. Not in this place. They just get whatever hurts them the most!” and this episode was pushing that to its (unpleasant) limits: first, with Tina, where it still felt like a fair retribution, in a way, with the irony of her complacency not protecting her against authoritarianism and its violence; and secondly, with the Inspector from MAG120 being imprisoned here, which also felt like a fair retribution (if he had so casually punched Elias when he was handcuffed back then, what are the chances that he had also exerted violence on more vulnerable (and innocent) people in the same situation? And he confessed to tampering with evidence, and Jon pointed out that he would probably enjoy a seat of power in this domain, implying he would make it worse for others). And yet, still: Jon had pointed out that nobody deserved what this new world inflicts on them.

(I got biiiiig Kafka vibes with this statement (“‘None of these things are illegal,” she had said. […] ‘The laws have changed.’ […] . They never told her any charges, never gave her any verdict.”), I wonder if it was a deliberate reference to The Trial, with the deconfiguration of justice and executive systems, which turn into something arbitrary, unreadable, impossible to understand?)

- There were so many mentions of Tina’s memories not being exactly linear, of memories being… supplied, to fill in the gaps?

(MAG185) ARCHIVIST: “And then she was here. Tina didn’t remember the journey, not… properly. […] It didn’t matter, it wasn’t her memory. She was just here. […] She turned away quickly, and saw the window above her. … Had there been a window when she had first come here? When had that been? […] The child’s eyes met hers, the first moment of human connection that she had really felt since she’d arrived – but… hadn’t she only just got here…? – and Tina felt herself begin to smile. […] And then she was back in her cell. [FOOTSTEPS] She didn’t remember the interview, not properly. Or had it been a trial?”

And I wonder if it was to increment her anguish (not really understanding what was happening, shutting down hopes as soon as she was formulating them in her head), or maybe a symptom of getting closer to the Panopticon…? We might have gotten the first reference of someone remembering the beginning of the apocalypse (“‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us,’ they had said, as the sky above them began to change.”) – though I’m not excluding that it was just a fabricated memory, too, making her skip from one place to another. Still, the fact that she was able to question a few of her memories makes me wonder if it might be due to Jon and Martin getting closer to London and the Panopticon, making people a bit more lucid about what happened and aware of the dream-logic not following physical laws…?

- Jon still doing his statements alone in his corner, and if not for the end of this episode, I would have been worried again over Martin disappearing during a statement… though we still have fifteen episodes left so that’s still a possibility ;;

(MAG185) [METAL DOOR CREAKS OPEN] MARTIN: [BRIEF EFFORT SOUND] All done? ARCHIVIST: … Yes. [FOOTSTEPS] MARTIN: I still think doing it in one of the actual cells was a bit much…! ARCHIVIST: It was the most soundproof place I could find. MARTIN: Pffft! Soundproof? Yeah, dream on. ARCHIVIST: You… heard? I… I–I’m sorry, I know it was, uh… MARTIN: I, I actually didn’t, but only because I was too busy hearing what was going on in all the other cells. ARCHIVIST: Ah. Well.

I’m a bit surprised that Martin is still refusing to listen to Jon’s statements: is it still because it’s plain upsetting? Is it because it makes him feel like a voyeur, like he has no right to know about them? Is it because he’s still refusing to listen to the Fears’ doing, refusing to face the way people are hurting, in a way? Will it change with his domain…?

I felt that Martin and Jon were a bit more awkward, at the start of their exchange? A bit more cautious than usual, as if they were dancing around issues and making sure that the other wouldn’t get the wrong idea. Was it due to Jordan’s transformation last time? Was it because of the whole domain (tense, oppressive)? It already felt like they were on the verge of something, that a change was coming…

- So, it sounds like they had met the person/monster of charge of the domain, the “Warden”, beforehand?

(MAG185) MARTIN: What if another one comes along? ARCHIVIST: It’s fine, we’re, uh… We’re “guests of the Warden”. MARTIN: Urgh… ARCHIVIST: Mm-hm. … Come on. [BAG JOSTLING] [FOOTSTEPS, AND THE METAL DOOR CREAKS SHUT] [SILENCE BUT FOR FOOTSTEPS] MARTIN: … Does it not bother you? ARCHIVIST: What? Being a “guest”? MARTIN: Yeah! I–it’s, it’s not like it resisted. Hell, it was chummy! ARCHIVIST: Would you rather it had attacked?

Same thing as with Dr. Doe, then, who was overall extremely friendly to them. Martin is finally understanding the extent of their status: that they’re mostly untouched, that they’re favoured by The Eye, that they do get a special status in these domains… and not solely due to Jon.

Gosh, Jon sounded so tired, in this episode too? Like he was recapping most of his story, close to an epilogue, trying to guess the process of what had happened in his own mind retroactively.

(MAG185) MARTIN: No, it’s just… Is that how these creatures see us now? As one of them? ARCHIVIST: Mm! [AMUSED] I forgot that’s a new experience for you. MARTIN: Excuse me? ARCHIVIST: You have to remember, I’ve had this for years. Right from the start, it’s always been “Archivist” this and “Archivist” that, all these… weird, awful creatures assuming I’m… “in” on all the secrets. Even when they were trying to kill me, they treated me like I was a… a peer. MARTIN: Yeah, but they were still trying to kill you! ARCHIVIST: Not all of them. And now? Sure, the power’s shifted, it’s all… politeness and respect, but it still feels just like… more of the same…! I guess I just stopped caring at some point. Besides, they are technically right, I am one of them. To a degree. MARTIN: I suppose.

And it’s true! Jane Prentiss had called him “Archivist” (in her texts from Martin’s phone, and directly in MAG039); Michael had done the same (through Sasha, and then in person starting MAG047). For the different monsters and avatars, Jon wasn’t really “Jon” but “the Archivist” as a function (even the Not!Them referred to him as such at the end; Nikola did too, Jude identified him as “an Archivist”). Jon had even wondered about his status in season 3 (MAG085: “Maybe whoever sent this wants me to consider how many of these creatures used to be people. How many seem to have taken the mantle from the ones that came before them, and how none of them have been able to overcome their new natures. How most of them don’t even seem to think like people anymore. Given that there is every possibility I’ve taken one of these mantles myself, this is not an interpretation I’m keen on.”). And at the same time: Jon is still making a separation here, between himself and these “weird, awful creatures”? Is it due to the Archivist’s status being still a bit of an oddity in the Fear landscape? Even Jonah had mentioned that the function was extremely old (MAG160: “You see, the role of Archivist has been part of The Beholding for as far back as my research can go. This isn’t uncommon for the Powers: most of the beliefs around them are guesswork and fallible human interpretation, but there are certain… throughlines and consistencies that can be spotted, regardless of the trappings.”), and in Jon’s case, he didn’t have a lot of manoeuvre in the powers he got – he began trapping people in his dreams and compelling before even noticing and understanding that those were things he could do, and we know that those were happening with Gertrude too. Jon’s powers didn’t shape themselves through his own relationship with the Fears; he got them with the position, and they seem to have been consistent amongst the Archivists at the Institute.

OBVIOUSLY, Jon broke my heart a bit when he mentioned he might have “stopped caring at some point” ;; By season 4, he was introducing himself as “the Archivist”, as if he had given up trying to fight it, and there was his long interrogation about whether or not he was still himself, still human… But: if Jon is accepting that he has changed, the real question is whether he still has choices with his new status? He might accept that he has changed; it doesn’t mean that he has to accept everything that comes with the new urges and the new status, and we’ve already seen that he was able to take decisions, to reject some aspects – just because the fear of this world feels “good” to him on some level doesn’t mean that he can’t challenge that perception, and him and Martin precisely went off on a quest to try to undo this world.

- Given how Jon redirected the question towards Martin’s own feelings:

(MAG185) ARCHIVIST: I think the real question is… how are you finding it? MARTIN: [SIGH] I–it’s not the same. I’m still just your… “plus one”. ARCHIVIST: [AMUSEDLY] Don’t put yourself down. It’s not your fault you’re a bit overshadowed; I am such a very big deal after all…! MARTIN: Oh, very big arse, more like it! ARCHIVIST: [CHUCKLES] Either way, even if I wasn’t here, I don’t think you’d be in any danger. Not anymore. I wasn’t sure when we first started out, I hadn’t properly, uh… looked into it, as it were. But now I’m certain. MARTIN: … I’m one of them. ARCHIVIST: One of… “us”. MARTIN: [SIGHING] That’s not as comforting as you think it is. ARCHIVIST: Doesn’t mean it’s not true though. [PRISON AND PRISONER SOUNDS ARE CLEARER HERE] MARTIN: [INHALE] And this is all because I’ve been given a domain? Because, apparently, I somehow have people’s fear feeding me? ARCHIVIST: Well… feeding The Eye through you, but yes.

* Was it a case of Jon already knowing that Martin’s own perception and feelings could influence their journey, that Martin had to understand and process a few things before being able to enter his domain (just like Basira)? That Martin’s journey was mostly emotional and logical, rather than physical, and that Martin understanding and accepting his own status as an “avatar”, as a “us”, would matter?

* ;w; over Martin mentioning that he still feels like Jon’s “plus one”… Jude had made a few digs about it, and Martin, left on his own, had also remembered that he was “following” Jon, not the reverse way round (MAG170: “I was following, al–always following, never leading; never leading.”). He had been casually threatened by a few avatars/monsters, while they were showing deference to Jon; of course that Martin would feel like he’s mostly unaccounted with compared to Jon, who can turn Watched into Watchers, and kill the latter… while it turns out that Martin is also a Watcher of his own, and thus technically has the same importance as all the monsters/avatars we’ve seen in season 5, and maybe more, since he’s from The Eye.

* LAUGHING HARD at Jon’s shitty sense of humour. It sounded more clipped and posh-smug than his usual? Was it the tiredness, was it the gravity of the surroundings, was it Jon feeling comfortable enough to put on a role? Smug posh cat.

* Can’t believe that the Jon’s Ass discourse was resolved this episode smh (Jon “big arse” canon, Jon is “scrawny” and has a big butt the episode said.) (I’m joking.) (But MARTIN PLEASE! <3)

* That indeed confirms what had happened since the Change at the end of MAG160: the reason Martin didn’t become a victim was not (or at least not just) because he was protected by Jon… but because he was a Watcher of his own. It’s interesting that Jon confirmed it just a few minutes before they would get separated – at least, we knew that Martin would be “safe” even when they weren’t together. … But at the same time, it’s interesting that no, they’re not 100% safe from the domains either: Martin got entrapped into the Lonely house (MAG170) and could have stayed there, while Jon got trapped in a cycle of statements in the Web theatre (MAG172), and might not have been able to snap out of it if Martin hadn’t come back to interrupt him. Are they really truly safe, when the domains can influence them in these ways?

* … This is also a reminder that Jon can’t know something he hasn’t thought about looking for, that he’s not all-knowing naturally. If Jon wasn’t sure about Martin’s status at the start as long as he hadn’t searched for it, what else does he not know? His main weakness is still that he has to look for things in order to know them, which requires… asking himself the right questions.

* Martin is right that it’s not “comforting”; it’s an unpleasant truth. And yet, it’s still true, still something he has to face and deal with: that he’s protected because he’s benefitting from this world and feeding on his own victims’ fears.

(* It’s still all linked to The Eye getting fed through them: is it getting a special flavour through its agents? Variety? I’m still pretty sure that Melanie wasn’t given a domain, since she cut her connection to The Eye: it wouldn’t be able to feed through her at this point.)

- I love how Jon has reached this point, with what he’s seen and witnessed, where he’s adamant that “no one gets what they deserve”?

(MAG178) ARCHIVIST: No one gets what they deserve. Not in this place. They just get whatever hurts them the most! … Even me.

(MAG185) MARTIN: Even though I didn’t ask for it? Did nothing to deserve it? ARCHIVIST: “Deserve”, huh! Now there’s a word that always causes trouble. MARTIN: [HUFF] Don’t be patronising. ARCHIVIST: I just mean that nobody here deserves the position they’ve found themselves in, not really. I suppose a few may have asked for it, sought it out even, but far more didn’t. They just made the wrong choices for the… right reasons, or even the right choices. But ones that still led them here in the end. MARTIN: … I hate it. ARCHIVIST: On balance, that’s… probably a good thing.

It was even more powerful in this episode given the underlying tone of ironic retribution going on with Tina and the Inspector (subjected to what they felt others deserve)? I also remembered Tim’s words about the Fears and the fact that there was no particular reason for people to get hurt by them (MAG117: “I used to blame my brother for going off on one and poking around where he wasn’t wanted; I used to blame myself for… not helping him, but now? Now it doesn’t matter. I’ve read through enough of these things to know that this doesn’t matter. The only thing you need to have your life destroyed by this stuff is just bad luck. Talk to the wrong person, take the wrong train, [SCOFF] open the wrong door – and that’s it!”) – the idea that this whole Fear-machine was there to make people suffer anyway, that there wasn’t really any point to fight it individually, that being a victim of it doesn’t mean it’s (at all!) earned or warranted. … I hope that, at this point, Jon is also aware that all of this also applies to him? Jonah had gloated that it was due to Jon’s own “rotten luck”, that he had only been a “chosen one” in the sense that Jonah had decided to pick him for his ritual.

- Love’s Martin spiteful “I hate it” ;w; Just because it’s true doesn’t mean that he has to like or defend it; there are different forms of acceptance and rejections to be had around these concepts, even though it doesn’t change anything concrete, and I still like that he’s voicing it so simply and earnestly ;w; (And I feel like Jon understood that, too? In the same way that feeding on people in season 4 had felt “good” or that he’s been prospering since the Change, while still aware that it’s a bad, awful thing at the core that he wants to change.)

- I was so surprised by the return of the Inspector!

(MAG185) [SUDDEN RATTLING AGAINST METAL BARS] INSPECTOR: Hey! Hey, you! Yeah, I know you! MARTIN: U–uh…? INSPECTOR: It’s, f–fr–fr–from the, uh, Magnus Institute! Hum… aaah… Mark! ARCHIVIST: You know him? MARTIN: Martin.

* … Did he get a promotion since MAG120? He was a “police officer” back then – did he get a promotion for Elias’s arrest?

* After the Basira-Daisy mini-arc, this was our reminder that… the issues with Section 31 weren’t inherently tied to them, that it was existing outside of them, that it was awful on its own even without them (as the system protecting Daisy and accepting (and enabling) her violence, and also as the system who was ready to serve its own interest: Elias managed to coerce Basira to sign up with the Institute by pointing out that there were plenty of other Sectioned officers that would gladly execute them all to ensure that their exactions and Daisy’s would remain hidden).

* Mark Kerosene Blackwood. (I’m living, there have been so many references to Martin’s name this season! The face that he doesn’t have a middle name, Martin barely remembering his own name in the Lonely house, Annabelle pointing out that he hadn’t given her his name on the phone…)

* About names:

(MAG185) INSPECTOR: Martin, right, yeah! Y–you remember? You tipped us off, and we came and nicked your boss, the, that Bouchard bloke! MARTIN: Oh! Oh right, the, hum… oh, In–inspector… uh, I, I’m so sorry, I’ve forgotten your name. INSPECTOR: So have I! It, I’m just… 547 in here. MARTIN: God, I’m so sorry.

Laughing so hard at this because. The dude had never given his name at all in MAG120, had only been credited as “police officer”.

- … It was indeed a part of Martin’s past:

(MAG185) ARCHIVIST: Martin? What do you think? MARTIN: What? ARCHIVIST: I decided about Jordan. This place is from your past. MARTIN: Yeah, but I mean only briefly! ARCHIVIST: Still.

It was a time Martin was still confident in that system (MAG082: “But you’re the police!” / MAG092: “Okay, wai–wai–wai–wait, that’s the police that you’re talking about! Okay, they… they wouldn’t… Would they?”), where Martin was ready to use it against Elias to get him arrested; it was Martin’s plan in season 3 – when in the end, the prison would strike a deal with Elias, technically serving his interests (preventing Jon from accessing him) and allowing him to escape when he would need, as shown in MAG158. And Martin had been the one to carry through Elias’s arrest, leading the officer in to Elias’s office by himself (Jon was in a coma, Basira was in shock, Martin had been reluctant to call in Melanie). That officer was only related to Martin.

- … Congrats to Martin for asking the right questions:

(MAG185) MARTIN: Why are you here? INSPECTOR: What? MARTIN: What are you so afraid of that you ended up in here? INSPECTOR: I didn’t do anything! MARTIN: Jon? [STATIC RISES] ARCHIVIST: Why are you here? INSPECTOR: [RESISTING] I don’t… Argh! Stop! Stop! ARCHIVIST: I will stop when you answer the question. INSPECTOR: Argh! Look, you can’t know if they’re all guilty, all right? [STATIC DECREASES] MARTIN: [SIGH] INSPECTOR: It, it’s just about evidence! MARTIN: [FLATLY] Right. [STATIC FADES] INSPECTOR: Sometimes, you just have to, to… MARTIN: What, guess? INSPECTOR: I’m sorry, all right? MARTIN: No. You’re just afraid…! INSPECTOR: Please, I’m… It’s almost lights out. I can’t be here for lights out! Not again. Please, you owe me! ARCHIVIST: This place is born of their nightmares. And of yours. MARTIN: If you made him a Watcher… he’d become part of this place? ARCHIVIST: … He would. MARTIN: And if he was, would he enjoy it? INSPECTOR: What are you talking about? No! Of course not! ARCHIVIST: You know I can’t see the future. MARTIN: But? ARCHIVIST: But I can see his past. MARTIN: And based on that? ARCHIVIST: … He probably would, yes.

* “It’s just about evidence”: just as a twisted “justice” tends to be about forging a convincing reality through a few cherry-picked elements, rather than uncovering a truth (well. Or establish what is “true” legally, which is not the same thing as an objective truth).

* Which means that on some level, the Inspector knew that what he was doing was arbitrary and could be turned against him, and was still doing it anyway, and still aware that it was the reason this place would be his own nightmare. Yikes.

* I’m also guilty of having cheered when Elias got punched in MAG120, but: it was also true, back then, that if that police officer was violent with Elias (who was dangerous and handcuffed)… then, he probably was used to getting violent with way more vulnerable people. So, no, not really a Hero, even though we really wanted Elias to get punched. (Same thing with Basira in MAG148: it felt good on a narrative standpoint… and also felt absolutely horrifying that she would be allowed to get violent towards him in a visitor parlour, without anyone intervening to put a stop to it.)

* Jon’s compulsion was SO HARSH and pressuring, wow Jon.

* Anooother reminder that Jon “can’t see the future”.

* I really like Martin’s sentence about “You’re not [sorry], you’re just afraid”? It encompasses so well a few things we’ve witnessed in Magnus, that there is something deeply and tragically human in the fact that we want to be out of harm’s way, but that there is a problem at the root if our decisions are mostly forced by circumstances that don’t really feel like a choice? What the Inspector did was awful; he sounded absolutely nasty and despicable in the way he tried to plead his own case without regretting his actions; and at the same time, refusing him didn’t feel exactly “good” either — to leave behind someone who was pleading for help and clearly desperate, who was mostly motivated by fear and trying to grasp any lifeline to get out of there? What was messed up is that we didn’t have a situation in which he could change and evolve, that he wasn’t able to realise that he had committed awful things and wanted to “be better” like Daisy when she was in the Coffin…

* … I subscribe to Martin’s choice in this case, though: that it would have felt bad to allow him to enjoy a new status, despite what he had done, with the clear risk of him making things worse for the other prisoners (since he has already displayed and confirmed that he had previously abused his power over more vulnerable people). It was such a huge contrast to Jordan, who didn’t want to become a “torturer”, yet agreed that he didn’t want to become a victim again?

Who gets to be “saved” in this new world, then? People Jon and Martin personally know? Is it better to turn someone into a Watcher when it would make them suffer morally (Jordan), or is it better to turn someone into a Watcher when it would allow them to enjoy it (the Inspector)? It felt good on some petty level of irony to ultimately ignore the Inspector, but it also felt bad to ignore someone who was desperately pleading and reduced to frantic begging…

- Haaan, Jon’s apologies echoed what had happened with Jude’s building in MAG169!

(MAG185) MARTIN: [LONG EXHALE] That was horrible. ARCHIVIST: I’m sorry I put you in that position. MARTIN: N–no. You were right to, that’s… that’s a lot of power to have to deal with. Lot of responsibility. ARCHIVIST: Yes… [INHALE] Thank you, Uncle Ben. MARTIN: [CHUCKLE] Pop culture? Really? ARCHIVIST: I’m allowed to know what Spiderman is.

* And it feels like they both have evolved a bit on the matter of leaving the choice to the other: Jon acknowledging that it’s an unpleasant thing to do, and Martin acknowledging that Jon, so far… had to bear with it and was mostly the one choosing for them both, and that they’re both unequipped for it.

* Oh, Jon… I can’t even scream “Jon, you NERD” (but still a bit) – but aww at Jon’s way to try and defuse the tension…

* … This is how Web!Martin can still w-

- Aaaah, I love that we’ve reached this point of pointing out how inaction is still a choice:

(MAG185) MARTIN: [SIGH] … Not helping people is still a decision, isn’t it? ARCHIVIST: Well… You saw Jordan, I’m not sure “helping” is really… MARTIN: I know, I know, not the right word. Ignoring them, then. ARCHIVIST: Yes. It’s a choice I’ve been making a lot recently. MARTIN: … I guess we should get used to it. Knowing that all these awful things are happening for our benefit…! ARCHIVIST: Maybe it’s better if it never gets comfortable. MARTIN: Maybe.

* It was Jon’s struggle with Jordan already; the fact that having to “ignore” him… felt like too much, this time, since it was someone Jon knew and whom he felt indebted to. (And yet, as Jon had pointed out previously, there is no “better” in this new world: it was saving Jordan from one hell, to subject him to another… with Jordan still acknowledging that this new state of being felt more enviable than the previous one.)

* I wonder if in his “ignoring them”, Martin also included his own refusal to hear about the domains and the horrors of this world? Technically, shutting himself off from the victims hasn’t been any better this season – although, at first, it felt like Martin being finally able to establish his boundaries.

* If they’re now agreeing on the idea that “ignoring” the victims (not trying to do anything to change things for them) is still a “choice”, will that status quo change anytime soon…? Martin, in his own domain? Is the Panopticon coming very very soon, right after Martin’s?

* I like the constant about refusing that this awfulness, as real as it, is a positive thing. It’s what has made Jon so different from other avatars, the fact that he was refusing to embrace everything The Eye wanted him to like?

- Martin felt his domain first!

(MAG185) [VERY SHARP SQUEAL OF DISTORTION, SLOWLY INCREASING] [THEY WALK IN SILENCE FOR A WHILE] MARTIN: Hey, do you… do you feel that? [FOOTSTEPS STOP] ARCHIVIST: Martin? Martin, listen you need to get ready. [FADING] We’re about to enter– [HARSH CRACKLE OF STATIC] MARTIN: Yeah, “my domain”, yes, right, I get it. Dream logic, and timing, heh, apparently! [STATIC FADES] [FAINT EERIE WIND SOUNDS] … Jon? Jon? [BAG JOSTLING] Oh… Shit.

* The Lonely static squeals! It had been a while!

* Did Martin manage to access his domain right now because he accepted that he had himself changed, that he was one of “them” in this new world, that the world is awful but still real, that he’s still making choices in his journey despite his trying to pretend he was staying neutral? It feels like Martin had to confront himself a bit for these last two episodes, guided by Jon in the same way that Jon had previously guided Basira…

* Aaah, after the stressful sounds of the prison (distant voices, their echoes screeching a bit; the harsh creaking of the door, the overall oppressive atmosphere)… Martin’s domain already felt more soothing. Was it the sound of wind, or the sound of a gentle rain falling? (But I like how, sounds-wise, I already got the feeling that this place could be depressing, and also a small comfort, lulling people to sleep? Which is Martin’s experience with The Lonely as a whole: a temptation towards apathy, to stop hurting.)

* Gasp, two swears this episode!

(MAG185) INSPECTOR: Hey, hey, fuck you, you scrawny little tit! What the hell do you know? […] MARTIN: … Jon? Jon? [BAG JOSTLING] Oh… Shit.

Martin, still the Big Sayer Of “shit” in season 5 (there was his string of it in MAG179 when Jon got injured, and the SERIES of them in MAG163 when escaping the bullets).

I’m getting nostalgic because ;_; MAG039 had ended on Jon saying that word, when he had realised that the trapdoor had actually led them right back to Prentiss… and now Martin is closing an episode with that, when something expected but still surprising and unpleasant is happening…

- Tape recorder thing: the episode began with Jon’s recording, where he was isolated; it went on with Jon&Martin walking in the corridors together… and then it still recorded Martin, once he entered his domain and got separated from Jon. It was the same tape recorder; it was Jon’s. But it “stuck with” Martin when they got separated.

Small recap of the various mentions of tape recorders since they had reached the safehouse, without knowing for sure if some were the same:

(MAG160) MARTIN: Everything all right? ARCHIVIST: Just… making sure it works…! [SHUFFLING SOUNDS] MARTIN: I still don’t think we should have brought it. ARCHIVIST: Oh, it’s better than no warning at all.

(MAG161) MARTIN: Hey – when, when did you start recording? [WOODEN CREAKING SOUND] ARCHIVIST: I… didn’t. MARTIN: [TENSE EXHALE] ARCHIVIST: I only brought one, and I’ve been using it to play the tapes. MARTIN: Oh. [INHALE] That’s not a great sign. ARCHIVIST: No… No it’s not.

(MAG163) MARTIN: … Oh. Oh, hey! [SHUFFLING] [CLOSER] Jon, did you– … No. No, he was carrying his. [INHALE] All right…! [STEPS THROUGH LIQUID] What’re you doing here? [PLASTIC RATTLING] It’s dangerous. Could… get yourself blown up, like all these poor… […] You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here.

(MAG166) MARTIN: [SIGH] [SILENCE] [BAG JOSTLING] … Kind of wish the apocalypse had some magazines. … A–ac–actually, no, second thoughts, probably not. Mmh! Def, definitely not.

(MAG170) MARTIN: [VOICE ECHOING SLIGHTLY] … Oh! Hello. [CHUCKLE] What are you? Do I… do I know you? Eh…! I can’t… [SHUFFLING] [CREAKING] I can’t tell through the fog, sometimes. You feel… n–not “friendly”. “Familiar”? [CREAKING] The shape of you in my hand… I talk to you, don’t I? We talk. What do we… what do we say? … I can’t quite…

(MAG181) SALESA: Hmmm. [SHUFFLING] Interesting… […] Now tell me, do you know why there’s a tape recorder here? I noticed it just now, but I don’t believe I actually own one. ARCHIVIST: … Uh… Not really. MARTIN: They sort of just … follow us round? SALESA: Hmmmm. Interesting. Did you carry it in? Things shouldn’t be able to manifest in here like that. ARCHIVIST: … You had one in your… bag, I–I think, Martin, did, did you drop it here? MARTIN: Uh… I, I don’t think so…!

=> Jon had initially brought one in Scotland. Another one appeared at the beginning of season 5, recording him listening to the tapes playing on his first tape recorder (so we’re sure that it indeed required two different recorders: the one playing the tapes, the one recording Jon listening to them). Martin spotted a wandering tape recorder at the end of MAG163, and was recorded when he was waiting for Jon at the end of MAG166 – it’s unclear whether it was the same one, or if Martin had picked up the one from MAG163 and kept it. In MAG170, Martin was recorded all alone (and, same thing, we don’t know whether it was one of the previous recorders, if Martin had kept it, etc., or a new one). By MAG181, Jon was aware that Martin had a tape recorder in his bag; but it’s unclear whether it was the same one as the one which popped up to listen to Salesa (what is strange is that Jon was implying that it couldn’t be his).

Tape recorders have been spawning for sure, so it’s not a complete restriction, but it’s interesting that by the end of MAG185… both tape recorders were presumably on Martin’s side. His own (in his bag), and Jon’s, who followed him into the domain (… but without Jon himself). Jon is currently recorder-less, although of course another one could pop up to record him (because it’s what they do!)… but I really wonder if we’ll be able to hear Jon at all as long as they’re not reunited, as long as Martin doesn’t find him back…?

- And so, we’re SPLITTING THE PARTY! Excellent, I’m sure nothing bad could ever happen from this.

Interestingly, it was the first time we directly heard someone transition from one domain to another: previously, it had felt like there was just that wasteland between them, while we went from the prison to another location immediately this time around, the only transition being the static and the squeals of distortion. To me, it felt like Martin’s domain is functioning on dream-logic even more than the others, that it has no… truly concrete location? That it was just accessible and there at this moment because Martin went through a few realisations and agreed to change his framework? We might hear about that next episode. I wonder if it’s more or less the same case for Helen’s domain, since Jon had mentioned that she would be on their way…?

- I’m not sure exactly what happened at the end of the episode! Given Jon’s warning, and how the soundscape changed, Martin definitely has entered his domain, but outside of that…

* What about Jon, since they got separated? Did Jon enter it another way? Is he a victim or vulnerable to Martin’s domain? Was he kept outside of it?

* How long will they be separated – will they find each other by the end of MAG186, will they go their separate ways for a few episodes?

* How will they manage to find each other again? There’s been a small progression in Martin getting stuck in Lonely space: Jon saved him and got him out of it (MAG159), then Martin became strong and firm enough about his identity for Jon to be able to find him (MAG170). This time around, will Martin have to find Jon, or find his way back to Jon by himself, without Jon being able to do anything?

* Alternatively, will there be any complication, anything Martin needs to do to be allowed to leave his domain? Will the domain tempt him to stay (because it’s made for him, and because he’s fed inside of it)? Jon had to learn to separate his urges, what felt good, from the morals and behaviour he actively chose to prioritise (it felt good to feed on other people’s trauma and to retraumatise them… but it was still atrocious, and something he decided wasn’t acceptable); comparatively, Martin might not be well-equipped if he’s hit with those feelings right away, without the years of slow avatarisation/path of dealing with the Fears…

* Still related: will Martin be able to leave on his own? On the one hand, we know that Helen can find him anywhere, and Martin was told he would be safe to travel through her corridors (MAG164: “The Distortion can always find anyone who has… crossed its threshold.” “And that includes you, Martin! […] I would happily take him. But I don’t think he’d want to leave you.”); on the other hand, Annabelle had explicitly told Martin that they would meet again very soon (MAG181: “Don’t worry, Martin. We’ll meet again. Hopefully when you’re feeling a little bit more… open-minded…!”), and now that Martin has learned about his own complicity, about the fact that he counts amongst the Watchers, that the concept of “deserving” isn’t really relevant when the Fears were involved… isn’t he precisely more “open-minded”, in better disposition to hear whatever she might have to say…?

* Jon had warned Martin that he wouldn’t be able to see his victims:

(MAG183) MARTIN: Are there people, Jon? ARCHIVIST: What? MARTIN: Are there people in my domain? ARCHIVIST: Not many. […] It’s a small domain. A swirling mix of The Eye and The Lonely. Inhabited by a few lost souls whose fear is not of their isolation or their agonies, but that no-one… will ever know of them. That they shall suffer in silence, and be mourned by nobody. That’s why you can’t really see it. It’s why even if we do travel through it, you won’t be able to see… any of the people trapped there.

Is that still the case? Has Martin’s perspective changed enough for him to be able to see them, now, or will he spend most of the episode unable to see or to know them, all by himself for a while…? Will Martin be able to challenge The Eye in order to give a statement about the victims, like Jon has been doing this season? Will Jon give the victims’ statements?

* … Is anyone we know in Martin’s domain? His father? Naomi Herne (MAG013: “There was no presence to [the fog], though, it wasn’t as though another person was there, it was… It made me feel utterly forsaken.”)? Jess Tyrell (given how Martin received her story, but couldn’t help her, and focused on what it meant about Jon rather than how his victims would fare)? In season 4, Martin looked like the primary victim of his own fall into The Lonely; he was able to disappear in front of Georgie (MAG149), but after months of forcing himself to stay isolated. Since he’s been discovering that he wasn’t as neutral as he would have liked, that he was himself benefitting from this apocalypse as a rewarded servant of Beholding, I would find it interesting if at least someone in his domain were to be someone he had directly or indirectly wronged in the past…

* Jon reminded the Inspector that the place was born from his and the inmates’ fears. What about Martin’s domain: was it shaped through others? Is it a reflection of Martin’s own trauma, as someone who was trying to stay hidden, both due to his sick mother and due to his many professional lies?

* I’m really wondering if the victims will sense Martin in the domain, in a way. To them, will he look like a monster, a creature they have to hide from…?

MAG186’s title is [EXTENDED SOBBING SOUNDS]. It reminds me of things Martin had said in MAG156 and MAG159, so obligatory SOB. It’s… a very Martin title and we’re indeed in his domain, uh…

(But is it actually about the people in his domain? About what is appealing to Martin? About Martin’s own wishes?)

#long post/#will tag later

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writing-radionoises · 4 years

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forgive?

ship: none, platonic father-son bonding with akutagawa and dazai

genre: hurt/comfort

prompt: akutagawa and dazai cope together

notes: more ada akutagawa.

mega tw for csa, child abuse, and suicide. they’re not spoken about in depth but this drabble is centered around dazai talking about his relationship with mori.

It’s been a few months since Akutagawa joined the agency.

Something that has never been quite discussed was this relationship with Osamu Dazai, it’s something Akutagawa never felt like he had to explain.

His and Dazai’s relationship was personal.

… But, mostly, that’s just a cover up reason.

His and Dazai’s relationship is difficult, complicated beyond belief.

It’s only gotten worse since Akutagawa did join the agency.

It’s like some underground reason between him, Dazai, and Fukuzawa, the secret that it was Dazai who hurt Akutagawa, who threw him on the ground, broke his ribs, broke his arm, pointed a gun at him, tried to kill him at least twenty different times and, and, and-

A lot of different things. Dazai did a lot of different things to Akutagawa.

Even after his apprenticeship with Dazai ended and Dazai left the mafia, he still used Akutagawa. He hung his approval over Akutagawa’s head for years, like dangling a carrot over a horse’s head so it’ll walk. And no matter what Akutagawa did, Dazai would never approve of him. He’d just laugh and walk away, call Akutagawa names, make fun of him.

And Akutagawa would never forgive Dazai. Even now.

Dazai knows that. He doesn’t seem upset, and Ryunosuke knows well now that it’s because Dazai knows he fucked up.

It’s been awhile since Dazai formally apologized, though, and Akutagawa refused to forgive him with a half-assed apology. Instead, they’ve both decided to draw a line between past Dazai and current Dazai.

It was past Dazai who hurt him and used him, current Dazai would never.

Akutagawa is pretty sure Dazai would take a bullet before doing that now…

It’s not a perfect relationship, they still have fights and bumps in the road, but mostly it’s developed into a father-son relationship.

It’s thanks for Dazai that Akutagawa even figured out his feelings for Atsushi.

And it’s thanks to him Akutagawa and Atsushi even became friends…

So, maybe it’s natural that Akutagawa feels the need to check in on Dazai while he sits in the corner of the training grounds, facing the wall.

They both have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, after all. Ryunosuke has had flashbacks, they’re never good, and it always hurts.

Akutagawa approaches him carefully, getting on his knees beside Dazai, though keeping a distance.

“Dazai-san, you’re not looking too good. Are you okay?” He asks.

Dazai lifts his head from his knees, looking over to Akutagawa, followed by a pained smile and laugh.

“Akutagawa, what’re you doing here?”

“Checking in on you, what does it look like?”

Dazai turns his head away, the pained smile still plastered to his face.

“Actually, I’m doing awful. Thanks for asking.”

Akutagawa glanced off to the side, trying to figure out what to say next.

His social skills are failing him.

“Do… You wanna talk about it?” He asks.

Dazai pauses for a moment, thinking.

“I’ve… Never done that before, but, I guess, if I were to talk about it with anyone, it should probably be with you…”

“Is it mafia related?”

Dazai nodded, dropping his knees from his chest and instead sitting criss-cross applesauce. His hair is messy, the ends of his hair was wet from crying, eyes red from the same thing. His shaking has subsided, though, which is a good thing.

“Do you know anything about what happened to me in the mafia?”

Akutagawa nodded a no.

“Good…” Dazai mumbled, “It wasn’t fun. It was awful. I don’t know how to talk about it…”

Akutagawa sighed, brushing a piece of his hair behind his ear, “Then let’s start with this. Why did you join the mafia?”

“... I was basically kidnapped into it. I never really knew my parents, I was passed around from a lot of different people since I was young. I assume my parents were apart of the mafia as well, as I was passed around between mafia members mostly. I was an unofficial member of the mafia most of my life, I received training and all that other bullshit from the age of nine,” Dazai began to explain, “I developed suicidal tendencies from there, the training conditioned me to be ready to die at any moment, to give my life to somebody else. It backfired on them, because I found myself wanting to kill myself to avoid the violence and bloodshed of the world around the age of ten.”

Akutagawa nodded understandingly, the background wasn’t surprising. He’d seen this happen to other children, it’s not uncommon for children to be born into the mafia, either.

“Then… How did you formally join the mafia?”

Dazai smiled a bit, looking off to the side, “I kept trying to kill myself, they were unable to put me in a psychward because of the information I held. So I met Dr. Ogai Mori, an underground doctor at the time. It was a mistake, he was a homicidal maniac, a manipulative piece of shit… He used my suicidal tendencies as a way to climb up to the top. He took me, age fourteen, with him to meet the former boss, and I watched him slaughter him. He used me as insurance, to get him to be the new mafia boss. In hindsight, it was good he did decide to kill the former mafia boss, but… Mori is no better.”

Akutagawa’s eyes widened, nodding along with Dazai story. He could tell this was likely the first time he had never said something like this to another person, he kept fidgeting with the buttons on his coat.

“... Mori is a pedophile. I’m sure you’re aware of that, right?”

“Yes, I’m well aware,” Akutagawa, “That why I used to tell Gin to stay away from him.”

Dazai chuckled a bit, “Clever, but you probably didn’t need to do that. I was fourteen at the time, correct? Well, when his plan fell through as I never ended up successful in killing myself, he ended up resorting to other methods… He groomed and manipulated me, abused me. Don’t imagine it, I don’t want you in the same state I’m in, but physically he did just about everything I did to you, but much worse. A doctor knows exactly where to hurt you without it being fatal, it’ll be the most painful experience of your life, but you won’t die…”

Akutagawa frowned. He took Dazai’s advice, not imagining it, and trying to avoid the thought of Mori standing above Dazai, who is in a pool of blood.

“... I hesitate to talk about this. I’ve talked about the physical side of things with people like Odasaku and Fukuzawa, Fukuzawa knows most of the crimes Mori has committed… But I never did get the chance to tell Odasaku about the sexual parts of the abuse,” Dazai explained, his voice getting quieter.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Akutagawa answered, “But sometimes it’s good to get things out, especially if you’ve never talked about it. I can promise you I’ll never tell anyone.”

Dazai ruffles his hair casually, “I know, Akutagawa. You’re a good kid, you’d probably take this secret to your grave.”

“If you asked, I happily would.”

Dazai takes a breath, running his hand through his hair as he continues to speak, “... I’m not gonna speak about it in detail, but he assaulted me on many different occasions, usually after he had beaten me up so I couldn’t fight back. I don’t usually get upset by it anymore, I’ve blocked out most of the memories, but sometimes I still remember.”

“Is that what you remembered today?”

“... More or less. I have constant reminders pasted all over me, whether or not it triggers me depends on the day,” Dazai replied, slipping off his tan jacket and beginning to roll up his sleeve.

Dazai began to unwrap the bandage on his right arm, the white fabric falling away to reveal dozens of pale white scars. Some were messy vertical incisions, if Akutagawa had to guess, they were self inflicted, versus the neat and clean horizontal ones more towards Dazai’s upper arm and shoulder.

… What I went through is nothing compared to what happened to Dazai. I don’t really have an excuse to be so upset over what he did to me, Akutagawa thought. It was a bad thought, he knew better. Atsushi told him better, his therapist told him better. There was no need to compare trauma with Dazai, but sometimes, he just couldn’t help it.

So caught up in thought, Akutagawa barely noticed Dazai beginning to shake again as his eyes ran over each scar, muttering something.

Muttering the situation each scar came from.

Akutagawa, desperate to bring his former mentor back into stability, took the bandage Dazai dropped and began to wrap it around his arm again.

“You don’t need to remember that anymore,” Akutagawa replied, reapplying his calm facade as he continued his work, “It’s in the past. It was awful, it hurt a lot, but you’ll never have to face it again.”

Dazai visibly relaxed as Akutagawa finished applying the bandage, rolling down his sleeve as Dazai then pulls Akutagawa into a hug, Akutagawa’s head against his former mentor’s chest. Ryunosuke relaxes against the other, Dazai brushing through his hair with his fingers, likely as a distraction.

“Akutagawa.”

“Yes?”

Dazai smiles a bit, “Past you would’ve just ignored me, brushed off me sitting in the corner as just me being silly, but instead you approached me and made sure I was okay.”

“Yes, and?” Akutagawa questioned, raising a brow.

“You’ve come a long way,” Dazai replied, “And I’m proud of you.”

Akutagawa pauses, feeling tears begin to well up in his eyes as he brushed it off and buried his face in Dazai’s chest again.

He’ll never forgive Dazai for what he did.

And he’ll never forgive Mori, either.

… But Akutagawa can’t lie. He’s pretty happy all of those awful, awful things led to this moment.

#tw csa #tw child abuse #tw suicide #bsd #bungou stray dogs #akutagawa ryunosuke #ryunosuke akutagawa #osamu dazai #dazai osamu #bsd akutagawa #bsd dazai #writing #writer #writers #fanfiction

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king-paimon · 4 years

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HNK Chapter 86 thoughts: Complicated characters being complicated (Thoughts on Diamond)

I’ve been so anxious about this chapter after the last one. I’m happy to say that it isn’t as heart wrenching as I thought it would be, which was great, but it’s clear now we are approaching end-game and there will no doubt be some sadness coming soon.

The art in this chapter was gorgeous! I want that two page spread as a poster! Phos looks awesomely horrifying and Ms. Ichikawa never fails to make me laugh at the most weirdest of times. Seriously, the whole buildup with Alex for it to end up with him passing out was hilarious! It was also nice to see most of the gems in the same chapter, and while I’m still sad we’re going to have some major losses, I’m really looking forward to what’ll happen next.

But I want to give my thoughts on the true star of this chapter: Diamond.

This is another really long post so be warned. I again apologize for the messy writing; it is still not my strongest trait, but I’ll do my best to put my thoughts into words and I will make any necessary edits if I need to. These are my thoughts and if you want to share yours, I’m all for it. Please no attacks, though. Everyone has their own opinion when it comes to the characters and while we may not agree, these opinions will be respected. Thank you and please enjoy my probably poorly written analysis!

Diamond... is such an interesting, complicated character. Like with Phos, it’s fascinating how they ended up this way.

After chapter 84, I was curious to see how Dia was going to react to Bort and it turned out better than I thought. After years of not properly dealing with this toxic relationship between Dia and Bort, of course it would end up with an emotional driven fight. But what has me most interested is how it’s Dia who’s going feral while Bort is being calm. It’s like their personalities flipped, but after looking back, it makes sense.

Diamond is tightly bound to their inferiority complex and their so-called rivalry with Bort. I betcha that if Bort was the same as he was at the beginning of this story, I’m sure Diamond wouldn’t be flipping out like they did in the chapter. I’m sure that was exactly what they were expecting to see, but that’s not what they got: not only had Bort changed physically, but he had changed mentally. He’s no longer the battle hunger fighter Dia knew; he’d rather care for the jellyfish and not fight at all. Bort has changed through and through. And maybe I’m seeing this all wrong, but I think this is one of the facts that made Dia livid.

In Dia’s insecure mind, they believe they must be equal to or better than Bort. They must prove to themselves that they are a true diamond by beating the stronger, battle loving Bort at his own game, so they can be truly free of fear and feeling inferior. Dia now finally has the chance to do this… but that Bort isn’t there anymore. And because of that, Dia feels cheated and angry. Also, I think it’s funny that Dia claims that Bort got to live freely because of them, though really, it’s Phos to thank but of course neither gem will acknowledge that. (Continuing to show how much the gems care about Phos, I see *sarcasm*)

It’s interesting though: Diamond was the one who left and got a new life, but didn’t truly mature or change, while Bort was the one who stayed behind but had changed and matured (sort of.) You’d think it would’ve been the other way around but the fact that this is what happened just makes the characters more interesting to analyze. Speaking of which...

Diamond and the blame game

I can understand Dia’s inferiority complex and how it’s tied to their obsession with Bort. I can definitely sympathize with them and understand why they made their decisions. But at the same time, I recognize that these feeling are not Bort’s fault but rather Dia’s. This ‘rivalry’ of Dia’s is entirely one sided and the negative thoughts Dia has about themselves are all self-imposed. For this reason, my sympathy for Dia can only go so far.

If Bort was the type to over-gloat and constantly and intentionally belittling Dia and putting these terrible thoughts in Dia’s head, then I would definitely be more sympathetic towards Dia and would hate Bort... But as far as I can remember, Bort never said anything like this to Dia (yeah, he said very mean stuff to Phos but that’s entirely another thing.)

While he had scolded Dia harshly for doing anything risky, like that time after he saved Dia and Phos all the way back in the first chapters (Chapter 3 specifically,) I pretty sure Bort never went out of his way to intentionally make Dia feel inferior, especially for some sort of personal gain. As far as I see, Bort’s only crimes against Dia was being overly protective, overly strict, and simply existing. I’m not saying that Bort is completely guiltless, because Bort is guilty of a lot of things and does deserve some form of punishment. But intentionally making Dia feel sorry for themselves isn’t one of them. That is all Dia; Dia is the one who put themselves in this negative head-space and chose to run away than properly deal with them. They shouldn’t keep blaming Bort for their self-inflicted misery, but they chose to.

Should Bort have treated Dia differently/better? Oh yeah, most definitely. Bort, throughout most of the story, had a problem when it came to how he treated the other gems, especially Dia and Phos, and could have done things differently. But regardless, I still understand why he acted the way that he did, partially due to my own experiences in life, and I can’t hate him for it. And despite what I said before, the same goes for Dia; I may not agree with how they’re handling things, but I can understand why it came to this. But in the end, the truth is this: Diamond’s inferiority complex

What’ll happen next?

I keep on telling myself to not make predictions for this series because Ms. Ichikawa is great at throwing curve balls, but I can’t help but think of the possible scenarios of what’ll happen next between Diamond and Bortz.

The first one is that they end with a draw. Both end up beaten to the point of exhaustion and maybe they both realize the errors of their ways without further destruction to one another. As nice as this scenario sounds, I don’t think it’ll happen, at least not this way. Maybe they both end up destroying each other without a proper resolution… I wouldn’t put it passed Ms. Ichikawa, honestly. So, this scenario, if it were to happen, can either end satisfyingly or unsatisfyingly.

The second possibility is that Dia wins. I find this more likely to happen because Dia has the advantage of the moon people and Bort having a messed-up arm. Anyways, I picture that Dia would win over Bort, finally ‘proving’ to themselves that they are better than Bort and is a ‘true diamond’ afterall... they finally ‘won’...to only realize they aren’t happy. They still felt empty. Wouldn’t that be both satisfying and unsatisfying? This whole build with Dia and Bort, after years of self-inflicted feelings of worthlessness, for Dia to win…to only realize that it was pointless. I kind of hope that we get a scenario like this because it’ll force Dia to acknowledge that Bort, as much as they may hate/love him, isn’t the one who’s holding them back. They’re in charge of their own happiness and blaming Bort for their misery was nonsensical and dumb.

The third possibility is that Bort would win but I definitely don’t think Ms. Ichikawa will have this happen. Regardless of how I’d feel, I think its safe to say that Bort is most likely not going to survive this fight. If he did, then it would honestly be quite pointless for both his and Dia’s character development. Who knows, though? Maybe something like this will happen but with more twists? Anything can happen with this series…

Either way, I don’t think Bort or Dia are going to get out of this fight unscathed. It’ll end up with both becoming completely broken physically and/ or mentally. (And to a degree, they both kinda deserve it. A lot. For various reasons.)

Final thoughts:

I’m glad to see I’m not alone when it comes to this character. Dia is anything but perfect or even morally good. Their character is more than the cute, soft, nice girly archetype; they have layers with many negative traits, including pettiness and selfishness, and these traits are shared by many of the other characters in this series. I know I say this a lot, but I can’t think of many characters in this series that are truly good or bad, black or white; everyone are various shades of gray and I think that makes for a fascinating story. And while Dia isn’t one of my favorite characters in this series, seeing them shed become unhinged after everything that happened is really fascinating and I can’t wait to see what’ll happen next.

Sigh, these dang gems…if only they knew how to communicate with each other! So many conflicts would’ve been resolved! But nope: they’d rather ignore the problem and let it fester or they let their emotions take over and go straight to violence without properly trying to resolve anything. Man, I love all of these characters, but they can give me such a headache…

And though a happy ending for all is out of reach, I still have hope that all of them. The moon and earth gems, the Admirabilis, the moon people (minus Aechmea) and most of all, Phos, deserve happiness. How will this happen? I don’t know… we’ll see.

#houseki no kuni #land of the lustrous #hnk spoilers #hnk spoiler #hnk chapter 86 #hnk thoughts #hnk diamond #hnk bortz #HNK theory #character analysis #i stan happiness #for everyone #except aechmea

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gayregis · 4 years

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angouleme can have little a avuncular guidance. as a treat ... heres some semblance of a compilation of regis being a guardian to angouleme, things i think about . both funnie and sad moments included i think

angouleme sneaks out at night to get into trouble / does other questionable things around the palace nocturnally, regis always catches her and it’s always on accident since they just have very similar time schedules. angouleme stares at him intensely in “oh fuck i just got caught” like O_O for a good 30 seconds EVERY time this happens but regis is just like :| and shrugs saying “i didn’t see anything, i’m a human, i can’t see at night or whatever” and walks off. also the next morning geralt always questions him as to what angouleme was doing, if he saw her when he was coming home, and regis always denies knowledge or says smth along the lines of “i’m not a narc, geralt :/”

angouleme yelling/losing her shit/saying wildly inappropriate things ... regis produces a ye olde granola bar from his bag and gives it to her and she quiets down immediately and is like :) content eating the granola bar. you can also substitute the granola bar with a bag of baby carrots.

similarly angouleme saying crazy shit and geralt telling her to be quiet and asking regis to recount this instead and regis says something incredibly similar/the exact same

that one time that milva was teaching angouleme to shoot and angouleme clear missed the target and got regis instead and actually for the first time was incredibly upset and regretful and guilty that she had inflicted pain and potentially death upon someone and was very worried and apologetic and ashamed ... but also when regis inevitably just plucks out the arrow and hands it back to her and says “oh i think this is yours” angouleme is like wait so he litcherally cant be killed... this is epic

basically angouleme who’s been abandoned having an immortal protector and mentor. peace

as i said in the tags of this post here: regis comes of as so peaceful as an individual that at first angouleme resents him a little, because she associates peace with arrogance... like, oh youre content with your life and dont hate yourself? so you think youre better than me? fucker. and she’s so used to asshole men being creeps in her life that this company still seems really bizarre in the regard that none of these men are dangerous. but then she learns about what ... who ... regis was in the past and she realizes that they’re similar, and then does the math and realizes that maybe one day she’ll also find this inner peace and can stop hating herself so much for the things she’s done and the things that have happened to her. angouleme not feeling as though she's so alone and such a fuckup that only she could ever get into such a mess like this... i feel like she has an unhealthy amount of survivor’s guilt, as in she blames herself for not dying while everyone else in her band did, and she also feels like what the world has given her she deserved because she was a fundamentally bad person from birth bc of her status, and that she will be stuck in this violent hellscape of a life forever and thats just how it is and she has to continue violence... but i think when she meets regis (and also milva) she realizes that violence does not need to be a cycle and change is possible.

also in the tags of that post: i think... regis developing more understanding/empathy and putting ethical philosophy into actual practice where it actually has stakes (haha haha haha stakes haha haha haha haha haha). i think in the hansa he learns what humanity actually means

also bc vampires just... do not parent, it’s not in their culture to, regis learning what guardianship actually means and growing into this position where he protects this child and begins to understand humanity on this deeper level of the feeling of protecting a child, because that’s very human, valuing and protecting the progenity for a new generation is incredibly human

also geralt arguing with regis that “humans don’t regrow their heads” so he can’t just be supporting her doing all sorts of dumb shit just bc he did it and he turned out alright... they kind of have to argue on how to parent i’m saying bc again vampire parenting is not much parenting at all. just let them go wild what’s the worst that could happen... they’ll learn sort of thing. so regis has to confront the idea of human fragility and mortality

i think regis also learns from angouleme in that it’s very easy to hate and loathe your past self and curse your past self, asking “what could i have possibly been thinking, what an idiotic thing to do...” when your past self was not actually devoid of any redeemable qualities and was actually just misguided and without hope... regis condemns his past self quite harshly but because he would never admonish angouleme in such a way i think he realizes that the self-loathing is excessive and unproductive and potentially harmful

i said this in a post already, but geralt is overflowing with fatherly vibes and milva is also stern so i think there is a lot of value in regis to angouleme , in that she can tell him practically anything and he won’t get on her case for it . she finds this kind of amnesty in him whereas with the other members of the hansa they’d freak and start asking her all these questions. regis is just like “hm ok” and maybe discusses a little but doesn’t give her shit for it. this allows angouleme to confide a lot of stuff that she wouldn’t normally feel safe to tell someone else, and also probably gets her out of a lot of trouble bc someone (a very powerful someone) will know where she is and what she’s doing... so if she gets into trouble, she has a lifeline

this also means she can tell him a lot of funnie stories that she doesn’t have to stop herself with because “was gonna say smth funny and then remembered it involved murder.” also regis has like a thousand stories too obviously so he counters her wild tales with smth even crazier and then they’ll try to compete for a bit like “well ONE TIME i...” but angouleme actually always wins and neither knows how she does

surgery lessons, or basically regis was sewing someone up and angouleme invaded the scene going “can i watch can i watch”

also alchemy lessons, which turns into basically “so that’s how you make fisstech... interesting”

i think also in these mentorships regis quizzes her lightly like “and what reactions does this species of plant produce in the human body...?” and angouleme says the right answer, “oh they drop dead” and regis is like “very good!” and angouleme kind of goes insane with happiness a little at being called ‘good’ / being praised by a parental figure for maybe like one of the first times in her life. similarly, i think regis would attest to angouleme’s character at the breakfast table in discussions, and say things like “well our angouleme is very smart” and she’d be like >:3!!!

as in canon, adopting each other’s speech mannerisms... not just regis adopting angouleme’s unique phrases, but i would also like to think abt angouleme saying smth pseudo-philosophical to throw someone off of her tracks... like “so, i owe you money... but what is the concept of debt and ownership, anyways? isn’t it all just a construct by society? by humanity?” and then she bolts and evades her creditors

regis trying to teach angouleme stuff and then being like “oh wait i forgot you can’t fly, hmm... ” “oh wait i forgot you can’t hypnotize people, hmm....... that complicates things...” ... jokes on regis though bc apparently angouleme can scale buildings and talk her way out of a lot of situations, so that’s almost as good as flight and hypnosis

im trying to not be sad rn but i think regis would be a very good person to cry on. like his cloak is very soft. and he smells like herbs. so there you go. but i think also angouleme having a breakdown would be cathartic for both of them because angouleme realizes that she’s being vulnerable around an adult and she isn’t afraid of them and regis realizes that he has a responsibility to not treat physical wounds, but rather to treat emotional ones and that’s infinitely more difficult

i think angouleme would have breakdowns to regis about: her family/her mother, geralt taking her into the hansa but she feels like he probably just sees her as a replacement daughter, i think also she gets into too much trouble one night and regis has to get her out of trouble and she kind of just breaks down because her life is crazy and has always been crazy and there’s no way out because this is all she has

i think angouleme also gets pretty upset at seeing children/teens with “perfect lives,” like she just gets crazy bitter about it... and there’s no shortage of nobility around the palace, so she’s constantly reminded of her background. i think regis’s not-being-a-human-isms and philosophy that stems from an immortal perspective that all humans are equal in life and death can help with this. but also he kind of has to learn that you can’t just talk about smth abt society or the past that is fucked up and solve it by having had said it... it will always remain an issue...

i also think that regis has his ravens scout around for angouleme’s lost pendant with a sea-cat on it, but when she gets it back she gets mad and says that she doesn’t want it because she doesn’t want to be reminded of her mother, regis is like “ok” but angouleme is still mad, she realizes she’s mad because she doesn;t think that regis realizes that he’s actually become more of a guardian to her than her biological mother was, and tries to provoke him but regis is unprovokable ofc so he’s like hm explain that and angouleme just spills her emotions

to bring this back to happy i think they could also prank geralt pretty hard. and or eavesdrop. plus there will be times like where angouleme is waiting by a door trying to listen in and straining and regis stands like 3 feet from the door and hears everything perfectly, just recites it all aloud and she’s like oh this is so much easier.

also once angouleme was eavesdropping on geralt and dandelion arguing and regis approached and was like “angouleme :/” and angouleme was like >:/ “get out of here i’m tryna eavesdrop” and regis was like “there’s a more professional way to do this” and disappears through the door, angouleme is like “showoff!” ... geralt smells sage and throws a moon dust bomb at him and regis coughs up silver shards for the rest of the day. also when angouleme hears the explosion she jumps in, so this was a failed attempt all around

#angouleme #regis #the witcher #sorry for longpost.........

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troubleswift22 · 4 years

Text

Posted this on Facebook, but wanted to share here as well.

Alright so I don't like to post politics on my Facebook for many reasons(and was hoping to post some cool personal updates), but I think I need to speak out on some things that i've been wanting to talk about for years(but have been afraid to do so due to antagonizing people that I am close with in my life). If you have time, please please read as i'm about to say some things i've been wanting to get out for years and i'm about to get real vulnerable here about some subJects that I can no longer be silent about......

The state of the world we are in right now is far too dangerous to ignore, and i'm sick and tired of people in my life who are defending Trump and who have no idea what's going on other than their own personal beliefs they get from Fox News. I'm going to hide this post from family and a bunch of people, but if you see this and are a huge Trump Supporter or something and disagree, we can have a civil debate in my messages, or feel free to remove me if you are going to be rude about it(or ignore it, like I probably usually do for you.) I simply don't have the time, energy, or resolve to get into a long argument, but it is what it is. Feel free to leave a comment though, Just be nice.

As the protests are going on now in Kenosha Wisconsin after the shooting of James Blake, a far-right militia member about an hour or so ago murdered 5 protesters. These protesters were not causing any damage or any problems, and I saw this as it was happening live on Periscope, no media spin attached. As many other cities have done, they are fighting for the simple reason that Black Lives Matter, and enough is enough. I'm sick and tired of seeing new names being added to an ongoing list of innocent black lives being murdered. Breonna Taylor. Philandro Castille, Trevon Martin, George Floyd, Sandra Bland, and many more names. Seeing the video of what happened with James hit me even hard then George Floyd for some reason. Maybe it was the fact that gun-shots were featured idk. While I understand the convenient narrative being pushed that rioting is bad, as Martin Luther King Jr says "A riot is the language of the unheard". Anyone who knows me knows I don't condone violence, as i'm a huge pacifist, and have even had this used against me in my life to take advantage of my kindness. However, who is really listening to black lives when they do try to speak out? Collin Kapernick sat down during the national anthem, he got criticized. So he changed to kneeling, still criticized. People were(and still are in many instances) peacefully protesting, and many still aren't being heard. I'm studying Psychology as an Undergrad, and it makes sense that when people aren't being heard they tend to lash out and violence often ensues. That's what tends to happen when your community constantly is having trauma inflicted on them. I'm not condoning it, but maybe we should listen to people who have been trying to get our attention for years and do something to fix the root cause of this issue.

Most politicians on both sides don't care. Just like Trump didn't care when he's personally made decisions that affect either myself, many of my friends I have made both online and offline, as well as my basic sense of empathy for humanity. A sampling of these actions include trying to remove DACA, eroding LGBT rights or attacking those in the LGBT community, Trans-Military Ban, Muslim Ban, promoting violence through his Twitter, ruining the mail system that many people rely on for basic needs, saying that there were "good people on both sides" in Charlottesville when Heather Hayer(a Bernie supporter) got run over by a car by Neo-Nazis, gaslighting anyone who disagrees with his views, among others. It's not a political issue. I don't care if you support Republicans because you believe that "Socialism is a bad economic policy that would ruin our country" or something like that. I'm a Libertarian Socialist, but that's beside the point, vote for who you want. But when Trump systemically comes for my friends and attacks those I love and care about, I'm not going to stay silent.   

Finally, this also ties into my religious faith. Growing up as a Christian, I grew up with the teachings of Jesus Christ and i'm sick and tired of so called "Christians" using their beliefs to try to Justify voting Trump, because they want "A conservative maJority on the Supreme Court" or are "Pro-Choice", or "Mike Pence is a strong Evangelical." Trump is the biggest con artist this country has ever had, and I can't believe so many people I love and care about are falling for this. He doesn't care about Evangelicals. He doesn't have love in his heart, and Jesus would probably be out there with the protesters right now fighting for Change. I had to fight with whether I was still a Christian for many years after graduating High School, due to seeing how so called "Christians" and people I love have so much hate in their heart. I have Just recently reconciled with the fact that there are many other Christians Just like me who want to do what's right. Innocent people are dying from Covid due to our president. He's trying to divide us up in order to win, as that's all he has left. I've been called not a "true Christian" due to my views(which is literally a logical fallacy by the way), and i've gotten so much hate from people due to being Bisexual, a Libertarian Socialist, and a Christian who is mostly alienated from those I grew up with. But idc anymore. I'm not arguing to vote for Biden at all, I personally don't like either candidate. But please, don't vote Donald Trump. I don't know what else to say, but seeing constant hate and divisiveness has really being causing some awful depression lately, and I needed to share.

I'm going back to bed, and then continue working on my Junior Year Psychology courses that I started Monday with UCF Online. I have known since 2017 I want to work in Mental Health, and we need/will need it more than ever. This post might have a lot of spelling and grammar errors, and normally I would spend time proofreading my post more. But it doesn't matter. Innocent people are dying every day, things like that are insignificant. Make sure you use your platform to do what you can to change the world. Silence is complicity. Black Lives Matter. LGBT lives matter. If you are also a Christian, please consider your actions and how they might be impacting those around you. Because for all you know they are absolutely heartbroken, and have reconsidered whether their morals are in line with the Christian faith. If I can share something as vulnerable as this publicly on Facebook(which could get me in huge trouble with my family), then you can put a little effort in to make some change. Register to vote by mail at vote.gov. Vote the day(or within a few days of) when it arrives, or early-vote/ drop it off to ensure it's counted. Finally, make sure to have these tough conversations with those you care about. Remember it's supposed to be uncomfortable, as creating change around you shouldn't be comfortable. If you read all this, please stay safe, wear a mask, and consider how your actions affect those around you.

 In solidarity,

 Alex Morgan

#blm #donald trump #kenosha #christianity #wisconsin #black lives matter #lgbt #James Blake #religion #republicans #vote

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waywardcryptid · 5 years

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Do you feel that a person’s sexuality is a defining trait of their character? I personally find it unimportant. I don’t see how it’s something that should be a defining factor in their personality. Sorry if this ignorant, I’m just trying to understand it more I guess...

Boy howdy what a complicated ask to wake up to on my Sunday

This is a lot, and quite a bit more complicated of a subject than I think you realize, but I’mma try and answer it anyways to the best of my personal ability.

Full disclosure so you know the angle I’m coming at this from: I’m a trans gay man. I’m out online and to most of my irl friends, but not to my family (except my sister), so needless to say my sexuality is pretty significantly tangled up in my gender identity.

Disclaimer aside, heterosexual cisgender people have the benefit of experiencing representations of themselves and their sexuality as the cultural default in... well pretty much everywhere. I’m American so I can only speak through that lens, but it doesn’t take a particularly astute person to be able to look at the world and see that.

What that means is that, because they’re the majority, heterosexual people have a pretty different relationship with their sexuality, how it informs their personality, and the way they present themselves from anyone who lands on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. I could (and many other, smarter people have) write an entire book on the inherent problems that come with heterosexuality in the forms of toxic masculinity, performative femininity and a million and one other things that make life that much harder for everyone. Just to be clear, I’m not trying to say that heterosexuality is bad in any way, simply that even when you do fall into the ‘default‘, socially acceptable category, you have your own share of issues regarding your sexuality. It’s usually just less immediately obvious than the persecution that LGBTQ+ people have traditionally suffered.

When you say ‘I don’t see how a person’s sexuality is important‘ or ‘how it’s something that should be a defining factor in their personality‘, what this immediately puts me in mind of is (mostly) heterosexual people that say ‘I don’t care if you’re gay or not, I just don’t want you to be so in my face about it‘.

I don’t want to make any assumptions about you or what your orientation is; for all I know you’re LGBT+ yourself and maybe just a little disconnected from your community. Maybe you’re in a place where it’s hard for you to accept your own sexuality in an open way and so you unconsciously cope by wishing others would ‘tone it down a little‘ so you wouldn’t have to be reminded of it. That’s just what this question feels like to receive, if you get my drift.

Whatever baggage heterosexuality comes with (and it is significant, if slightly more insidious and difficult to pin down on first glance), they’ve never been persecuted for being what they are (no matter what some of the more extreme right-wing voices out there might be screaming atm). Being anything outside of heterosexual was not only outright illegal until frighteningly recently here in the states, but still is in many parts of the world. Hell, here in America there are STILL a few states (*side-eyes Texas*) that have anti-sodomy laws on the books that have never been repealed and are still used to make people’s lives difficult when it suits the people in power. And all that is before you even get to extra-legal harassment, violence, and even murder that is disproportionately inflicted on the LGBT+ community (and god help you if you also happen to fall into some other kind of minority category on top of that).

Still, things have gotten better in recent decades. You can’t legally kill people for being gay (or whatever) these days, and there’s even some laws on the books that protect us from discrimination (though there’s still a long ways to go), and so LGBT+ people now feel at least a little safer in being open about who they are and who they love.

After a long, long time of being persecuted for who they are, some LGBT+ people finally feel secure enough to be out and loud and proud in the face of a system that has been trying to humiliate, ignore, or outright exterminate people like them. So, yes, their sexuality becomes an important factor of their personality because for the first time they (in some parts of the country) don’t have to sneak around in the shadows and pray that this person they’re interested in that seems to be interested in them too actually is and isn’t going to report them to the freaking police for ‘indecency’ or something.

Coming out is difficult. I’m not looking forward to having to come out to my own parents because there is a very real possibility that they’re going to disown me, or at the very least the relationship itself will be crippled for the rest of our lives and will never go back to what it was before. But I’m still going to do it because the idea of living a lie for the rest of my life for the sake of their comfort and the comfort of others is completely insupportable. I only get one life to live and I don’t want to live it like that, I want to live it as me, and I assume most other LGBT+ people feel the same way, which is why they make that leap.

At that point there’s a good chance they’ve given up a lot to get to the point where they’re out and able to be themselves, of course that part of them that they’ve sacrificed so much for will wind up being something of a focus for them.

That said, even LGBT+ people who aren’t ‘loud‘, one might say, can often be perceived as such by the heterosexual majority simply for not obviously being one of them. If a gay man likes wearing makeup because he likes the way it makes him look and feel, is that him making his sexuality a character trait? A lot of hetero people would say yes, and if a straight man decided he liked to wear makeup, most people (including many in the LGBT+ community) would probably make a snap judgement that he was gay when they saw him.

But the thing here is that the hets also perform their sexuality as part of their personality. But so long as it falls within the norms set by our traditionally patriarchal society, no one really notices. If a heterosexual person likes to flirt, would you say that they’re making their sexuality part of their personality? How about one of those traditional country boy ‘manly man‘ types that likes to talk down about city guys that put a lot of effort into their looks because it makes them ‘look gay‘? Is that not just a form of aggressive heterosexuality they’ve turned into a personality trait? What about women that tear down other women for not putting more effort into make-up or their wardrobe or whatever?

There are less toxic versions of heterosexual ‘personality traits‘, of course, but you get my drift. The point here is that everyone performs their sexuality, it’s just that the heterosexual version of that is so widely accepted that it’s not even really seen anymore, so anyone performing anything else sticks out like a sore thumb and is treated as some sort of caricature.

This applies to the ace community too. Even if you have no interest in sex, or are even repulsed by it, you still perform that disinterest. That lack of sexual attraction becomes a personality trait if you’re ‘out‘ (and still is if you’re not out, it’s just being suppressed at that point).

So, tldr; everyone’s sexuality (or lack there of) is a defining part of their personality, whether they realize it or not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It informs what we like, what motivates us, and how we present ourselves to the world at large; to try and separate it from the rest of ourselves is a fool’s errand.

Hope that answers your question, lol XD

#jack answers #sexuality #Anonymous

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kyojuuros · 5 years

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Hi! With Levi being in bad shape, what do you think is gonna happen to his character in the future if he survives? I keep fearing he doesnt have a lot to offer to the story. I used to think there was some potential but recent talk about it are making me doubt..

Hey there! I’ve seen a lot of posts arguing one way or the other about Levi’s general usefulness to the story or what his character can do from here on out, so I probably know some of the ones you are talking about. Rather than come down on anyone else’s interpretation of the narrative and Levi’s character, let me just explain how I see it.

When trying to analyze and figure out what a character has left to offer to the story, I think it’s good to consider:

Has the character’s arc been completed?

Does the character still have unfinished business?

Is there anything left that the character can offer to other core characters?

What have the character’s actions up until now contributed to the story’s overall themes?

How would the story benefit from the character being eliminated? How would it be hurt?

I’m personally not too keen on entertaining the notion that Levi will be announced dead or dying in the coming chapters. With a scar that characteristic and intentional, as well as missing fingers, it is clear to me that Levi is meant to carry on with the new design and handicap. To serve as both a lesson and a reminder, whether that be for Levi only or to also touch on some development for the other characters.

I’d made a messy and emotionally driven post when spoilers about him “dying” leaked in my heated rage about all the reasons why killing Levi off here and in such a manner wouldn’t be good writing (imo). I still agree with all of those points and am relieved I won’t have to sit on those fumes for the remainder of the story. He still has things to do and people to impact.

So to touch on my points above…

Has Levi’s arc been completed?

Absolutely not. While Levi is an adult character who’s traits are more or less set in stone upon his introduction, that doesn’t mean there isn’t still a story to be told and lessons to be learned. We are all always growing and changing regardless of our core personality traits.

Levi’s biggest character flaw is his tendency to react with violence in situations that are beyond his control. This has been framed as a negative thing within the narrative (and there have been a handful of meta posts throughout the last few years that touch on this) but Levi hasn’t really had to face any consequences for inflicting harm onto the other characters. This ties into the overall narrative that violence isn’t the way we should solve our problems and that letting go of grudges is the only way for humanity to move forward in a healthy manner. Levi is currently stewing in a bowl of both of these issues.

A thought I had the other day was how Kenny is a person who lusted for power and used violence as a means to prove he was the strongest. He was the one who taught Levi that violence is the only way to be strong and stay on top. Levi has lived by this his entire life since then - it’s the only thing he’s ever known. Kenny never let go of violence and in the end that’s what got him killed. Levi would surely head down the same path if he keeps using violence as a means to solve his problems.

“But Zeke had it coming.”

I fully agree! Zeke has done horrible things that have affected Levi more than anyone and he certainly didn’t do himself any good by adding fuel to the fire when he transformed Levi’s soldiers into titans. Levi reacting angrily to Zeke’s actions is understandable and very much justified.

However, it should have stopped once he had Zeke disarmed and disabled.

It did not.

The first mistake that Levi made was impaling Zeke with a thunder spear which endangered not just Zeke, but Levi himself. He did so in order to force Zeke to stay completely still while Levi indulged himself in slicing Zeke’s legs up piece by piece. Not just once, but multiple times. This goes well beyond the point of disarming and capturing your enemy and crosses the line over into senseless self-indulgent torture. Levi makes his hatred for Zeke plain and clear as he taunts him and inflicts extreme pain onto him repeatedly. It’s vengeful, dangerous behavior.

It reminded me a lot of Roy Mustang’s treatment of Envy once he learned the truth about Envy’s role in Hughes’ murder in Fullmetal Alchemist. He hunts Envy down like an animal and makes it a point to torture Envy with his flame alchemy over and over and over, taunting him relentlessly while doing so. It’s a very ugly side of him and had he continued to indulge in that behavior and finish Envy off in such a cruel and horrifying way it would have destroyed the core of Mustang’s character. Luckily for him, he had Hawkeye there to stop him from taking that dark path. Levi had no such support here. But the result would end up the same had Levi fulfilled his goal of killing Zeke off for good after indulging his hatred this way. He would not have come out of the situation a better person.

So rather than being accompanied by a helpful character who could have supported him, stopped him and helped him understand why this behavior is dangerous, he got a thunder spear instead.

While it’s easy to cheer Levi on during chapter 113 (and I certainly did), I felt that it was clear he crossed a line toward the end and that the narrative would punish him for it one way or another. So now Levi has a large scar on his face and, most importantly, two missing fingers. These are the consequences he must now face because he wanted to blindly indulge in his own hatred through violence. As someone who relies on violence, who relies on fighting to survive, Levi is going to be forced to adapt to his handicap and either relinquish violence and fighting forever, or find a way to modify his means of engagement. Either way, he is now going to have to rely on the help of others to accomplish anything for the remainder of this conflict.

I personally still believe that a workaround is possible for Levi and that he can still fight using his signature reverse grip so long as a way for him to grip the handle can be figured out. Alternatively, he’ll be reduced to a ground soldier. Either way, “Humanity’s Strongest” will probably no longer be an appropriate title for him moving forward. Still, it would be a shame if he can’t provide some support in the climax as the main action guy of the series.

“So, if Levi can still find a way to fight, then what lesson does he learn?”

Well, I think it’s simple: he needs to let go of killing Zeke. It is clear that the Powers-That-Be want Zeke alive. While I think that Levi’s vow at its core is a very beautiful thing in its intent and as a show of his unyielding loyalty to Erwin, it is a destructive one due to his feelings of resentment and rage being laced within it.

Levi has indeed been very patient and accommodating with Zeke and the situation over all. He’s been an absolute trooper. I imagine there was even a part of him that hoped he had been wrong about Zeke all along and that Zeke could help them find a way out of their situation. But those feelings of hopefulness stopped as soon as he’d heard Eren was going off the grid. Once he had an opening and a reason to let that feeling of potential faith in Zeke die, he acted without a second thought and prepared immediately to see his vow fulfilled.

Eren needs Zeke alive if he’s to fulfill his own plans without using Historia as a sacrifice. This is a huge and ongoing plot point - Historia’s life must not be sacrificed. Zeke is the “key” to unlocking the coordinate. Eren will be the one in full control. Regardless of Zeke’s own intentions, his body is needed as a vessel. This is why Levi cannot kill him and partly why Levi needs to let go of his grudge so that Eren can accomplish whatever it is he is trying to do. The other part being the overall theme of leaving the past in the past and moving forward toward a better future:

Levi is certainly not a child, but the cycle of vengeance has to stop somewhere. He can absolutely become one of the people who choose to stop it. Someone who has lived his entire life relying on violence finally choosing to let it go, particularly in a situation where he has strong feelings of hatred accompanying his current roadblock, would be a very powerful thing, in my opinion.

Levi’s unfinished business & his ties to characters who still need him

Levi certainly still has things to do. His vow is the most prominent thing in the overall discussion. Levi swore to Erwin that he would take out the Beast Titan and ensure that Erwin’s death and the deaths of all his comrades would have meaning.

The way I see it currently, this vow is being taken too literally and is weighing Levi down as a result. When the world was smaller moments before unlocking Grisha’s diaries from the basement, when Zeke was seen as the ultimate enemy to humanity, this vow made perfect sense. Take out enemy #1 and the problem is solved, humanity can move forward. That is no longer the case. The situation is far more complicated.

Stewing in feelings of resentment and seeking revenge for what happened in Ragako and Shiganshina are not going to solve the problem at large and Levi needs to direct his energy into helping resolve the bigger conflict - something that goes far beyond Zeke and his boulder barrage four years ago in Shiganshina. This is the way that he can best honor the deaths of his comrades and give those deaths meaning. Killing Zeke won’t solve anything. Those deaths would still have been for naught if Eldia is wiped out anyway. Levi can still honor his vow. He just needs to put his eyes on the bigger picture.

I think that one way for him to do this is not by focusing on the fallen comrades of his past, but by focusing on the relationships and people who are still alive and impacting the future. People who still need him as a support and mentor figure.

Levi’s relationships with Eren, Hange and Mikasa especially are ones that still need touched upon and fulfilled.

Eren

While the world is certainly an enemy to Eldia, the true problem is the titan power. If the story’s resolution is removing the titan power from the world, then that is the idea that Levi needs to get behind and support. Since nothing is a guarantee, then Eren needs to use Zeke to see if he can make it happen in hopes that Historia’s fate will never be tied to the power of a shifter.

Levi is one of the few characters who aren’t aligned with the Yeagerists who’ve expressed a reluctance to believe that Eren has become a true enemy.

As the narrative continues to unfold, I believe that it has become more and more clear that Eren’s goals are not aligned with Zeke’s. Most likely, his goals aren’t aligned with the Yeagerists either. Eren knows things that the other characters and the readers do not. How much he has actually shared with the other characters is, however, unclear.

Since their first meeting, Levi has been a character who understands Eren’s true nature very well. He is good at reading people and always has been - this is why he chose to follow Erwin, even after realizing Erwin’s true motivations. As a foil to Erwin and someone who’s clearly taken the mantle of a “4D chess player” in his place, it makes sense for Levi to find it in himself to keep backing Eren up if he believes Eren’s heart is still in the right place. Like Erwin, Eren has chosen to keep certain individuals in the dark while trying to dish out a larger plan. Like Erwin, Eren has chosen to take heavy risks in order to see a goal through. There are differences in their methods, but that is why perhaps Levi (with the help of Hange and eventually, hopefully, Mikasa and Armin) can be used to guide Eren down a less destructive path.

Eren appears to have been honest with the Survey Corps about his intents prior to Liberio, but Hange had made it a point on the airship to let Eren know that they no longer trust him and then Eren was imprisoned as soon as he was returned to the island. If the SC refuses to trust in Eren, perhaps that is the reason why Eren has chosen to withhold from them.

The exchange between Levi and Eren in 105 is still a very intriguing one in that Levi seems to be really let down with Eren’s current state and feels that Eren is not the type of person he’d ever see look this way. He’d always seen Eren as a untamable monster with an incredible amount of will. When he sees him on the airship, though, Eren just looks dead, down and defeated. This genuinely affects Levi. Levi’s show of sadness toward Eren in turn makes Eren react, eyes lighting up.

On top of Levi’s vow to Erwin, there is unfinished business with Eren as well. As a narrative mentor figure to Eren and someone who parallels him in many aspects, it makes sense for Levi to be one of the few characters left who can still reach Eren. Unlike Mikasa and Armin, who were thrown off by Eren’s abrasive attitude toward them and became emotionally compromised by Eren’s intentionally hurtful words, Levi is someone who wouldn’t sit back and allow Eren to pull such a stunt. Levi’s no-bullshit attitude in addition to his injuries might be one more tipping point to get the Eren we are familiar with to come out of hiding and divulge his plot. With Hange accompanying Levi and able to communicate to Eren what happened not just to Levi, but also about how Armin and Mikasa were almost caught in the Yeagerists’ assassination of Zackley, it could be a turning point for Eren’s character overall.

Hange

As others have pointed out, Hange has been struggling with the pressure of living in Erwin’s shadow. Hange very much has her own strengths as a strategist but the nature of these strengths is very different from Erwin’s. She hasn’t been able to find the answers easily and feels that she cannot live up to Erwin’s legacy and it’s been a huge point of pressure for her. Throughout these years, Levi is the one who’s had to work as a support for Hange so she doesn’t crack under the pressure.

Levi’s vow to Erwin has also created a similar pressure on him. They love Erwin very much and they aspire to fill in his shoes. But it’s a heavy weight on their shoulders, whether they realize that or not.

These two have always worked better together, and it’s a blessing that the narrative has reunited them in their darkest moment. Hange has utterly hit rock bottom in terms of confidence, and Levi has now hit rock bottom in terms of his strength. It’s only when Hange finds Levi injured that we finally see a spark of her on-the-spot strategics come to the surface again.

I think that a moment similar to this one -

- is something that the two characters very much need. While they need to come into their own in terms of stepping out of Erwin’s shadow, I think that this can be achieved by them realizing that they can be just as good in comparison. They’ve reached this type of enlightenment before, and I think that they can do it again.

One thing that Levi can contribute to the story is by working as a support character to Hange to help her come into her own as a commander and as someone who can make the right decisions again. Someone who can bolster her confidence and help her find the answers. She has been lost in this last month without him there to help push her. In return, she can work as a support to Levi during his time of uncertainty on how to move forward with his new handicap and/or perhaps help him figure out a way that he can still fight.

I think that with enough brainstorming and time to hash out ideas, they will come to a conclusion together in terms of getting through to Eren and moving forward with a solid way to handle the conflict ahead of them.

Mikasa

Mikasa is a character who is long overdue for a profound moment with Levi, especially in light of the recent revelations about their shared blood.

Her sense of identity has taken a massive hit, and she is probably wallowing in feelings of complete uncertainty about who she really is and what she really stands for. While having Levi sidelined via injury or death is something that would force her to take more spotlight in terms of fighting prowess, he can also serve as a support for her in this time of doubt about who she is as a person - of course, he can only be that person if he is alive.

Levi is someone who can assure her that she is not beholden to Eren, that she is not a slave to him and that her feelings for Eren are true and real. This can, in turn, lead Mikasa to the correct answer on whether she wants to continue supporting and protecting Eren or to let him go. If the opportunity comes, I think it’s long overdue that the two of them talk about their shared blood and what it means to them and for them.

I think that there is no better person for Mikasa to have an interaction with during this time than Levi. Sure, Armin can assure her that her feelings are real, but to have this verified by someone who’s allegedly beholden to the same kind of bond as she is, I think it would be more reassuring coming from Levi. Perhaps even together, they can figure out how best to move forward in terms of Eren.

If Levi is to let his vow to Erwin go, I think that he can find fulfillment in knowing he contributed to the growth of those around him if they can reach the answer that will save Eldia together. I think that this is something that honors Erwin’s memory far more than indulging in vengeful violence toward the man responsible for his death. I think that this is something that allows Levi to stay a good and kind person, and also allows him growth, to move away from violence as a means of survival, and instead rely on others to help push everyone forward toward something better and brighter. To a world where violence is no longer necessary.

Whether all of these things happen or not, they are potential developments that Levi would have to be around to push forward. His biggest role in the story is as a support character who has helped to guide others in the right direction. To lose him is to lose that sense of guidance and cast a larger feeling of helplessness all around in terms of the feel of the story and the overall plot. I’m personally a fan of the more hopeful narrative.

To summarize:

The lesson Levi can learn from what happened to him is that he needs to learn when to let go and to direct his attention to the living who still need him; this ties into the overall theme of letting go of grudges and violence and moving forward to a more positive and kinder future rooted in forgiveness and looking ahead instead of wallowing on the wrongdoings of the past.

The role he can play is to be a figure of guidance and support for the characters who are still very much in need of it (whether that be his physical strength or mental fortitude).

I hope this helps at least a little. A lot of these are merely wishes and hopes that I have for his character (and admittedly a lot of these things also require enough downtime for the characters to begin with - something I’m uncertain they will get). But I think that he has far more to contribute to the story alive than he does dead. I’m very curious to see how he pushes forward in light of his injuries and learning that Zeke is still alive.

#anon #reply #snk spoilers #snk meta #mymeta #levi

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safflowerseason · 5 years

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With the exception of season 1, I think that the show doesn’t go awfully deep into the actual physical dynamic of having Amy being the only woman on Selina’s staff. Like, I feel like so many of the tampon and menstruation jokes given to Gary could have done more if given to Amy to establish their relationship. Kinda focusing on menstruation so I’d love to hear what you have to say but if you have more to say in the same general sphere I’d love to hear as well.

This is a very astute question, Anon. First things first, let’s not forget Sue! Sue is also a woman on Selina’s team! (although her relationship with Selina is not nearly as intimate as Amy’s, so I understand why the question isn’t about Sue.) Also, I’m really thinking of S1-S4 in my response here…the gender dynamics of S5-S7 are a separate (and far more monstrous and less nuanced) thing entirely.

In general, I would say that the reason that Gary gets the jokes about menstruation and make-up and Selina’s general physical needs is to demonstrate to the audience that those aspects of Selina’s experience as a woman are “professionalized.” In order to do her job as the Vice President, Selina’s personal needs, like menstruation, eating regularly, looking well-groomed, and feeling awake, have to be dealt with equally seriously as writing press releases and developing policy. It’s important enough that it has to be someone’s entire job—Gary’s job. Selina can’t afford to be all hush-hush with the only two women on her staff when she gets her period. Someone has to be prepared for it. And while that’s not in the job description of the chief of staff (Amy) or the executive secretary (Sue), it is the job description of a politician’s body man.

I don’t know very much about the role of the body man in politics, unfortunately…most of what I do know is gleaned from The West Wing and Veep, which aren’t exactly “real” sources. I would love to know if Hillary Clinton had a male or female body man…for one, it does seem like the job requires a lot of carrying things. In general, I think the physical dimensions of politics tend to be examined less in popular culture. There’s a reason why campaign staff have to seriously respect the interests and wishes of a candidate’s spouse, even if they disagree or think that person is a nightmare…because hardly anyone else has that kind of physical access to the candidate. This is why Selina had to be unmarried in Veep…if she and Andrew were unhappy but had remained together for appearance’s sake in some sort of Clinton arrangement, he would still have a kind of access to her that would complicate Selina’s relationship with her team. For Veep to really work as a show, with Selina’s particular psychology, her team—and above all, Gary—need to be the people in closest physical proximity to her.

So, in short, the reason that a lot of jokes about Selina’s physical needs and experiences in the world went to Gary is because the writers were trying to explore the realities of Gary’s job. Plus, Selina and Gary's relationship is the interpersonal connection that is arguably at the heart of the show, and their physical closeness and constant proximity to one another is a huge part of what links them together. (And the writers also wanted to poke fun at/critique the fact that because Selina is a woman, her body man has to deal with things like tampons and lipstick, and in the eyes of most men, such as Dan, that somehow makes Gary less masculine.)

Also, the idea that Selina and Gary first encountered each other at the hospital where Selina delivered Catherine is patently ridiculous. Like, did Selina really insist on taking the random candy-striper guy home with her after that?! Did she just start paying him as her private…attendant? She hasn’t even run for Congress yet! None of the internal logic of the final two seasons of Veep makes any sense.

I do very much agree that the show never really does anything with the reality that both Selina and Amy are comparatively diminutive women and they’re constantly surrounded by a bunch of a very tall men who could theoretically inflict personal harm on either of them at any damn time. The show played with Timothy Simons’s height quite a lot, in a variety of different ways, as well as the height differential between Reid Scott and Anna Chlumsky, but their smallness compared to all the men around them is never something that actually links Selina and Amy together. Their connection is sketched out in terms of emotion, not their shared physical experiences. Certainly, Selina is very physically touchy-feely with Amy in a way she can’t be with Dan or Mike, which reinforces how close they are. However, the physical realities of being women in a man’s world do not seem to be part of what draws them together, at least in the way the show presents their relationship.

For example, we never see S1-S4 Selina “look out” for Amy when it comes to the male politicians and staffers she encounters. In the very first episode, she’s totally fine with using Amy as bait to get Jonah to surrender the condolence card. She never tells Jonah (or Dan, for that matter) to back off Amy, she never says “be careful” whenever Amy has to meet with a man alone. We know Selina has been sexually assaulted before, and yet, even in the early seasons of the show, she’s never worried that something like that might happen to Amy. Nor does Amy ever reach out to Selina to ask for guidance or support when it comes to dealing with men. We never see them talk about how much it sucks to wear heels all day. In general, it seems their relationship is not explicitly grounded in the fact that they have similar experiences of inhabiting (attractive) female bodies in the world. (And then in the Mandel years, Selina does things like actively endanger Amy by trying to sell her to Leon, so….a different issue entirely.)

The closest I think we get is the miscarriage plotline in S1, where Selina asks Amy to fake a miscarriage for her, which is obviously a very gendered gesture that she can only ask a woman. And the subtext of Amy’s attempts to soothe Selina in 1.07 very much read as “I’m a woman, unlike Gary, Dan and Mike, so you can talk to me about your boyfriend if you need to.” And of course, there’s ep. 2.05, when Selina and Amy have very similar reactions to Osmo groping Selina. Still, it’s Gary who knows about the miscarriage first, and Gary who immediately finds out about the groping incident, simply through the demands of his job.

The general lack of exploration into that dimension of Selina and Amy’s experience is probably linked to the broader hesitance of the show to delve into the nuances of sexual harassmant and violence except when the plot demanded it. And I suspect there are other reasons as well…Selina’s narcissism obviously plays a huge role in how she thinks about Amy, as well as her own complicated relationship with feminism. And, not for nothing, Selina is consistently surrounded by Secret Service, and I think she is self-centered enough to assume that sort of protection would surround Amy even when she’s not physically with Selina. In other words, she might subconsciously assume that Amy is untouchable through her association with the VP’s office. I also doubt that Selina is thinking very much about what happens to Amy when Amy is not in her direct line of sight, or when she doesn’t need something from her.

I also wonder if, by the end of S2, Selina—and probably Ben and Kent—might be taking for granted that Dan is probably with Amy wherever she is, which means she’ll be safe from any predatory men because Dan is projecting his possessive caveman vibes all over her. Most of D.C. probably assumes something is going on between Amy and Dan, which could act as a deterrent for predatory behavior as well, since some men only respect women who are “spoken for.” (Obviously, some do not.) (Men are the worst no matter what.)

Anyway, the intersection of gender, interpersonal relationships, and workplace politics represents a really fascinating, if canonically under-examined, thread within the show. Thanks Anon!

#selina meyer #amy brookheimer #veep gender politics #veep workplace politics #gary walsh

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hollywayblog · 5 years

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How “The Umbrella Academy” Surprised Me

In many ways, good and bad.

This is a spoiler-free review of season one of The Umbrella Academy

I remember when The Umbrella Academy comics came out. It was 2007 and I was a broke thirteen-year-old living in suburban Australia (a cultural wasteland!) so I never actually read them, but as a rabidly obsessed My Chemical Romance/Gerard Way fan, I managed to fold The Umbrella Academy into my identity anyway. I’m not sure exactly how that works, but hey. Adolescents are powerful creatures.

As a distinguished almost-twenty-five-year-old (I’d like to acknowledge that I took a small break here to have an existential crisis) my walls are free of band posters and my eyes are no longer encircled with that thick black eyeliner that always managed to look three days old and slept in, but I still got kind of a thrill when I learned that The Umbrella Academy was being adapted into a Netflix show. It was something I had always assumed I would end up reading, back in the depths of my emo phase (which is probably more accurately defined as a My Chemical Romance phase) but then just kind of forgot about. So, great, I’m simultaneously being reminded that this thing exists, and freed of the nostalgic obligation to go seek out the comic and read it. As much as I love reading, comics have just never been my thing.

Then the trailer came out. Honestly, it kind of killed my enthusiasm. It just looked kind of generic. Apocalypse. Superpowers. Bold characters. Lots of action. My takeaway was a big ol’ “Meh.” Frankly, without my pre-existing attachment to Gerard Way and the very idea of The Umbrella Academy, I highly doubt I would have given it a chance - not because it looked inherently bad, but just because I’m a hard sell on the kind of show it appeared to be.

But it’s Gerard Way, man. I had to watch at least one episode.

The Umbrella Academy centres around the famous-yet-mysterious Hargreeves family. The seven children - six of whom have special powers - were adopted by Reginald Hargreeves, a cold and severe patriarch who didn’t even deign to name them. He made them into “The Umbrella Adademy,” a crime-fighting squad of tiny children who would later dissolve after a tragic incident. Now they’re grown up, and Dad’s dead. His spare and tense memorial is what brings the adult Umbrella Academy back together, and this is where the show kicks off.

We’re treated to a rather clumsy beginning; a gripping opening scene followed by an unimaginative montage. We get a glimpse of each of the Hargreeves’ regular lives, leading up to and including them learning of their father’s death. It’s a heavy-handed introductory roll-call, complete with on-screen name cards. It’s a baffling waste of time, considering we don’t learn anything in this montage that isn’t later reiterated through dialogue or behaviour. We don’t need to see Klaus leaving rehab to know he’s an addict. We don’t need to see Allison on the red carpet to know she’s a movie star. It dragged, even on a first watch not knowing that the whole thing would be ultimately pointless, and I’m surprised no one thought to cut it and let us go in cold with everyone arriving at the mansion for the memorial - an opening that would have both set the tone and let us get to know the characters much more naturally. Maybe it feels like I’m focusing too much on this, and that’s only because it gave me a bad first impression - and I want anyone who reacts the same way I did to stick with it. It really does get better.

The further we got from the montage the less gimmicky it felt, and I started to sense some sort of something that I liked about this show. Stylistically it was interesting, and there seemed to be an underlying depth; room for these characters to be more than brooding ex-vigilantes with daddy issues. I was intrigued enough by the end of episode one to keep watching, and was gratified as the series went on and truly delved into those depths. There was a memorable turning point for me around episode five, where Klaus (the wonderful Robert Sheehan) was given space in the runtime to visibly, viscerally feel the effects of something he had just been through. It sounds so obvious, and so simple, but it’s something that is frustratingly glossed over so often in fiction. You know. Fallout. Feelings.

It wasn’t just that moment, though. Prior episodes laid the groundwork, developing not just Klaus but all the Hargreeves. Each character feels real and grounded, each of them uniquely good, uniquely bad, uniquely damaged by their upbringing. It’s this last point I particularly appreciate, this subtle realism in the show’s execution of abused characters. We see how siblings growing up with the same parents does not necessarily mean they got the same childhood, endured the same abuse, or that their trauma will manifest in the same ways. And certainly, it’s important to see the different coping mechanisms each of them have developed. Furthermore, there is a lot more to each of these characters than just their trauma. There are seven distinct personalities going on, and I have to applaud the writers for this commitment to character. It was largely this that kept me hooked (I’m such a sucker for good characters), and to my own surprise very invested in the way things unfolded.

I love the tone, which found a cool rhythm after the pilot. The pacing was decent and the character development balanced well against the plot. I like the little quirks that remind you of the show’s comic book roots, like Pogo, the talking ape and Five, the grouchy old man in a teenager’s body.

Weirdly, I like the apocalypse stuff, which they managed to put their own spin on despite it being such a played-out trope at this point. I like that the show found small ways to go in unexpected directions, even if the overarching plot and big twists weren’t all that surprising. And most of all I love that in a world saturated with forgettable media, I woke up today still thinking about this show.

Even if not all of my thoughts were so generous.

See, for everything I love about this show, there are also quite a few things that rubbed me up the wrong way. I can’t list them all without going into spoilers, but I think it needs to be said that there are like, a fair few problematic elements in this show. I couldn’t help but notice that while women and people of colour are the minority in this cast, they also seem to cop the worst abuse. Only two of the Hargreeves siblings are female. One of them has no powers and the other’s power is influence (a non-physical power). Their “Mom” is literally a robot created for the sole purpose of caregiving; she dresses and acts like the epitome of a submissive 50s housewife. The Hargreeves sisters are also the ones most likely to be left out or ignored when it comes to making decisions, with one of them even literally losing her voice at one point (yikes!). Beyond that we have some truly disturbing imagery of violence being inflicted on women of colour almost exclusively by white men, and the fact that the only asian character is um… well, he’s literally dead. Before the show even starts.

Overall the problem is not just insufficient diversity, with white men taking up most of the screen time, dialogue and leadership actions, but the way that the few female and non-white characters are depicted.

These are all depictions that, in a vacuum, would be innocuous. I mean, just looking at the root of many of the show’s problems exemplifies that - the root being that all of these characters were white in the source material (uh, a problem in itself, obviously). It wasn’t a problem, for example, when Dead Ben was not the only Asian character but just another white Hargreeves sibling. And wouldn’t it be nice if we lived in a world where you could race or gender-swap any character and have everything mean - or not mean - the same thing. But life is more complicated than that. Art is more complicated than that.

Honestly, I’m not sure if we should give props to the developers of The Umbrella Academy for diversifying their cast when the fact is they did so - and I say this gently - ignorantly and lazily. Race-swapping willy-nilly and leaving it at that ignores a lot of complex issues surrounding the nuances of portraying minorities in fiction, and leaves room for these kinds of harmful and hurtful tropes to carelessly manifest. So many storytellers don’t want to hear it, but let me tell you writer to writer that it does matter if the person being choked is white or black, male or female, trans or cis. It does matter who’s doing the choking. Camera angles matter. Dialogue matters. It’s all a language that conveys a message - about power and dominance and vulnerability in the real world. Because art doesn’t exist inside a vacuum, as inconvenient as that might be. Having the empathy to recognise that will actually make us better storytellers.

In shedding light on these issues, I am not dragging this show. I am not condemning it. And although it is problematic in itself, I’m not even saying it’s problematic to enjoy it. I’m pulling apart the lasagne, looking at the layers, poking and prodding at the individual ingredients and saying, “Hey, the chef probably should have known better than to put pineapple in here. Maybe let’s not do that next time.” I’m also saying, “When I get a mouthful with pineapple in it, I don’t enjoy that. It’s jarring and unpleasant. But it doesn’t ruin the whole meal for me.”

I’m getting better at allowing myself to dislike something on the basis of its shitty themes. To not have to justify myself when something is problematic in a way that just makes it too uncomfortable for me to watch. That wasn’t the case here. I won’t lie; the bad stuff was no afterthought for me. That kind of thing really gets to me. It does ruin a lot for me. But in this case, the show redeemed itself in other ways; mostly by just being a compelling story with characters I liked. I’m trying not to justify that too hard either.

So I liked The Umbrella Academy, and I hope it gets a second season. I also hope that the creators will listen to people like me who want to be able to enjoy their show even more and create more consciously in the future.

And please let Vanya be a lesbian.

The Umbrella Academy is out now on Netflix

Watch this show if you like: witty characters, iconic characters, complex characters, mysteries, dark themes, superpowers, vigilantes, comics, dark humour, epic stories, shows about families, stylistic TV shows, ensemble casts, character dynamics, dramedies

Possible triggers (don’t read if you care about spoilers): suicide, child abuse, claustrophobia, addiction, violence, violence against women, violence against women of colour, death, torture, incest, self-harm, pregnancy/childbirth, kidnapping/abduction, blood, mental illness, medication/themes of medication necessity, blood, manipulation/gaslighting, homicide, forced captivity, guns, hospitalisation, medical procedures, needles, PTSD, prison rape reference (1).

Please feel free to message me if I failed to include a relevant trigger warning and I’ll include it.

#the umbrella academy #review #tropes #diversity #representation

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theonyxpath · 6 years

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Via Satyros Phil Brucato:

Janine was a homeless junkie I found dying one night along the path of my post-midnight constitutional. What could I do? Let her perish? Of course not! I took her home and did what any conscientious scientist would do: used my G8-Z26 purgative treatments while stabilizing her physical condition with Dr. Johnstone’s now-famous bioregeneration matrix. I admit she’s not the sharpest scalpel in the drawer but given the condition I found her in last year, I doubt she ever was. There’s no excuse for sloppy work on my part, of course, but Janine’s still alive, and I consider that a victory…

Hola, folks!

When I first conceived of Gods, Monsters and Other Familiar Strangers in 2013, I had initially pictured it as a collection of good, bad, and neutral NPCs to drop into your Mage 20 chronicle. During the intervening years and projects, however, I began to envision a more coherently thematic book – a collection, true enough, but one that featured a coherent theme, hinted at potential metaplots, provided additional rule-systems for non-mage characters, and approached those characters from a broader perspective than a simple, “Here’s a bunch of folks you can marry, fuck, or kill.”

Bringing in several additional authors – Hiromi Cota, Atalanti Evripidou, Jason Louis Feldstein, Antonios Galatis, J.F. High, and Isabella M. Price – we began to shape the slightly retitled Gods, Monsters & Familiar Strangers into a larger and more comprehensive sourcebook. Featuring constructs, consors, Avatars, familiars, spirits, Loa, and many other entities, this book also contains a revised and expanded collection of Special Advantages, spirit Charms, and companion construction rules. Although the past year or so has hit most of the book’s contributors with an array of personal and professional complications, we’re nearly finished with a book that is – in the grand Mage tradition – larger and more ambitious than we had initially intended it to be.

The following excerpts come from that bigger, better book. Enjoy!

The Banner Dei Brute Squad

When the Ecstatic jam band / performance troupe Banner Dei formed on the last night of 1999, that troupe found immediate, enthusiastic support from fans who’d been there that night. The Brute Squad, as they were dubbed by then-bandleader Tricia “Thunderheart” Rykomanski, held the fire-line against unskilled would-be performers who’d be more likely to set themselves on fire than add anything to the performance, pounded out improvised percussion on anything that would make some noise, and then stayed all day the following morning in order to help Banner Dei and their friends clean up the post-gig trash-piles and load the gear into whatever vehicles they could find. Since that night, both Banner Dei and the Brute Squad have cycled through dozens of members. The core of both groups, though, remains stable: Banner Dei blows minds, and the Brute Squad gets them in and out of gigs intact without leaving a huge mess behind. Under the guidance, since 2010, of Kore Valkyrie Smith, the “Banner Brutes” provide drop-in support for Banner Dei’s members and former bandmates. Either collectively or as a group, those Banner Dei personnel can send up a flare, text message, phone call or blog post and have members of the Brute Squad on the location as quickly as a bunch of mortals can arrive. Because the Brute Squad consists of several dozen unAwakened hangers-on scattered across North and Central America, Northern Europe, Japan and India, and because Smith happens to be really good at resource-management (and has backing from several noted Ecstatic philanthropists), a team of three to 15 Brute Squad folks can show up within a day or less with a little advance warning, or be on-site when needed if they know at least two days in advance where they need to be.

Once dispatched, the Banner Dei Brute Squad can handle trash collection and disposal, crowd control, violence-free de-escalation, light medical attention, and set-up / tear-down logistics for stage gear and musical equipment. Most Brute Squad members can also dance, spin fire, perform acrobatics, play musical instruments, or contribute other skills to the performance itself. Kore and her co-leaders train Brute Squad personnel in the essential skills before those people are allowed to back up the band and its people, and though Banner Dei and its support team have rather liberal attitudes about sex and drugs, there’s a strict code of conduct that expels any Brute Squad member who abused his position or can’t be bothered to respect a given “no.” So far, most folks associated with the Brute Squad have remained trustworthy and reliable; Kore’s very good at vetting people, and the few who step out of line and take advantage of Ecstatic hospitality tend to wind up gibbering mindlessly by the side of a road if they’re ever seen again at all.

Traits-wise, Banner Dei’s Brute Squad features a colorful collective of Subculture Devotees (as per that template) whose training lets them haul gear and calm crowds with minimal fuss. Although the oldest members have looked age 40 in the rearview mirror, most Banner Brutes are in their mid-20s to early-30s. Regardless of age or gender, these folks combine tattooed badassery with Zen-focus people skills. Most have traveled extensively throughout the mortal world, and a number have spent time in the Otherworlds as well. Despite appearances, these are friendly people who blend old-school manners with new-millennium social consciousness. They rarely possess paranormal powers themselves (Kore probably does, but if so she doesn’t brag about it), but occasionally bring along mystic goodies they’ve found or been gifted with at various events. The majority of them speak at least two languages, and some enjoy learning as many tongues as they can recall.

Arriving in dust-crusted cars (many of which have been modified for all-terrain use), all Banner Brutes sport a tattoo that marks them as approved and official members of the group. This design – a Hulk-green banner with a white lightning bolt slashed across its surface – glows in the dark so Brutes can find each other in the dark. If a Brute gets booted for good cause (as opposed to retiring from the group on good terms), his tattoo burns away in an agonizing flash of bright green fire, leaving the thunderbolt behind as a permanent scar.

Joe Dread

He’s the face of fear, though he has no face. He can look like anyone yet resembles no one. Joe Dread is the embodiment of terror that wears a human guise. He lurks in alleys, shouts from cars, and walks loudly down the street behind you when no one else is around. Some people, though, make a friend of Dread. For them, he’s family, and his gifts to them are legion.

You’ll never see Dread clearly. That’s the point. His dominion is the unknown factor at the edge of what seems certain otherwise. At times, he’ll crouch on your shoulders when you’re trying to get things done, or loom over your bed on a restless night. Dread is an imp. Dread is a stranger.

Dread looks just enough like one of Those People to get you fired up about them, yet he can look like you as well. He’s the fiend whose face is everyone’s. Dread knows no ethnicity or class because terror haunts us all.

Some folks view Joe Dread as part of Big Owl’s brood – a servant, perhaps, or a human manifestation of the fear-god himself. That might be true, but there’s no way to be sure. These days, Dread is everywhere: screaming at you on the internet, lurking behind your best friend’s grin, knocking on your door and the then disappearing before you answer, smashing your car window just for fun so you can wonder what he took or fear that someone might be inside the car, waiting…

As a totem entity, Joe Dread gifts his chosen with Intimidation, Stealth, and Torture. He knows how to hurt folks and likes to share his secrets. For Joe, the threat of pain is sweeter than pain itself; thus, the favors he confers focus more upon what might happen than on violent acts of certainty. He’s not about beating someone to a pulp, but about getting them to fear what being beaten to a pulp feels like. Dread’s chosen people are similarly frightening, not because they use brutal force but because the potential for force always seems to hover around them. Inflicting such fears really is a kind of science, so Joe’s an exception to the rule that Technocrats cannot bond with totem spirits. His kinsmen among the Black Suit and PsychOp ranks don’t view him as an ephemeral entity, though; to them, he’s just a guy (regardless of gender) like them, who happens to be extremely good at his job.

Despite his colloquial name, Dread isn’t bound by gender. A man who fears women would meet Jo Dread instead. She sneers at him, tears him down, leaves a blank space of rejection in the center of his world or else tells that world that he’s really no one at all. Names are just conveniences we attach to things we wish to classify, and Dread reminds us we have no control. Even those who Dread befriends realize that life is full of terrors and their lives are no exception.

Manifestations: Loud noises, sudden shouts, feelings of anxiety, shadowy figures, whispered threats, posts and comments on the internet, sudden acts of random violence. Associations: Terror, anxiety, suspense, phobias. Brood: Elementals of cold wind, “bad luck” or fearsome animal spirits (spiders, black cats, crows, owls, snakes, and so forth), people who use fear to their advantage. Abilities: Intimidation, Stealth, Torture. Bans: Those who embrace Dread cannot comfort other people or ease their fears unless they do so as a tactic to scare that person even worse afterward.

Baron Samedi, the Cemetery Lord

Everybody dies. Even gods, it is has been said, must die eventually. And when we die, it is the Baron – Baron La Croix, Ghede, the Cemetery Lord – who will greet us on the other side. Tipping his top hat, puffing his cigar, laughing at mortality’s little joke on us, Samedi embodies life as well as death, and can bestow either one with a snap of his fingertips.

Wrongly viewed by outsiders as a demonic figure, the Baron represents balance, not cruelty. Amidst the horrors of slavery and poverty, his presence seems oddly comforting. All things end, the Baron reminds us. Even suffering. Especially suffering. This doesn’t mean he’s not above poking fun at humanity, of course. Among Loa and devotees alike, he’s infamous for crude jests and sexual humor. You might as well laugh at it all, La Baron says. The alternative is misery… and who wants to go through life like that?

A large man dressed in a mockery of the white man’s fashions, Baron Samedi heads the Guédé Loa family: a clan of entities whose provinces are death and fertility. His wife, Grandma Brigitte, appears as a blazing skeleton-woman who guards the crossroads and cemeteries of the nighttime American South. Le Baron has a thing for crossroads too – a territory he shares with Papa Legba… usually over a bottle of good rum and a lot of filthy jokes at humanity’s expense. Manifesting most often with his signature top hat, tailed coat, and a face either painted with skull-like make-up or replaced by an actual skull, Samedi speaks in a high, often loud, nasal voice, swears continually, and smokes up a storm. He often wears dark glasses, with plugs up his nose like any well-dressed corpse should have. His devotees, when ridden by La Baron and his kin, smear themselves with crushed hot peppers and raw rum, taxing the limits of the flesh because what’s most important is the state beyond this mortal shell.

Straddling life and death like an enthusiastic lover, Gedhe always speaks the truth. Because he transcends mortal limitations, he ignores the bounds of propriety, too. The head of his cane has been carved into the shape of a cock, and he loves to wave it around. Samedi is, after all, a deeply sexual Loa, too. Some folk call upon him when they want to get laid in non-fatal fashion, and his devotees have a reputation for being frighteningly seductive yet downright crude. Samedi loves to party, but he’s always watching the clock… not his, but yours. A trickster godhead, he’s got the blunt honesty of the grave. Sex and death are his dominion, and he enjoys indulging both.

Thanks to his province over death, Samedi tends to attract necromancers to his path. These folks often wind up wishing they’d knocked on someone else’s door. Although he often plays the fool, La Baron does not suffer fools at all, most especially not if they’re white folks who think they understand voodoo. In addition to the frenzied dance called the banda, Papa Gedhe loves to mess with people’s minds. He can read minds, too, so it’s a bad idea to try and fool La Baron. Coffins, poisons, graveyards, and near- or actual death are signatures of his rites, and would-be devotees need the courage to face both the grave and what lies beyond it if they wish to beg Samedi’s favors. Offerings of rum, cigars, black coffee, roasted peanuts, and bread (baked black if you can manage that) attract La Baron’s attention, but you’d best be ready to meet Death face-to-face if you wish to work with Samedi. Though often associated in popular media with zombis, Samedi actually prefers to keep dead people dead. Behind his rough humor and fearsome façade, Baron Samedi hides a secret compassion for the poor souls walking this hard earth. Demise, he knows, is not a torment but the blessed relief from life itself.

Manifestations: Skulls and skull-faced men, gravediggers, skeletons… very profane skeletons. Associations: Crossroads, death, sexuality, graves, top hats, phalluses, black or purple clothing, cemetery dirt. Brood: Ravens, black dogs or roosters, gravedigger spirits, Southern American Goths, and the Guédé Loa as a whole. Abilities: Intimidation, Medicine, Occult. Bans: Don’t lie. Seriously, don’t.

#Onyx Path Publishing

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