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soupthatistohot · 9 months

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BSD: An Absurdist Analysis - Chapter 1

Absurdism is a philosophy that contends that life is inherently meaningless and that the only way to create meaning is through the act of revolt against life’s absurdities.

(For a more in-depth explanation: What is absurdism/the philosophy of the absurd?)

Right off the bat, Atsushi assumes the role of our absurdist protagonist by refusing to die despite his seemingly hopeless situation.

Atsushi is an orphan who has just been kicked out of his orphanage, he’s starving, and yet refuses to steal and cannot get a job. Even so, he has this steadfast determination to keep on living, if only to spite those who spurned and abused him. He’s already got that spirit of rebellion in him!

And so he does ultimately resolve to steal from the next person he sees… but then he finds Dazai floating in the river.

It’s a funny contrast we get here. We’ve just had Atsushi declare his intention to keep on living, and then he saves Dazai, who is salty that his suicide attempt has just been interfered with. Immediately, there’s a dichotomy here between a person who wants to live and one who wants to die.

I won’t get too into it here because it's bound to come up again, but absurdists view suicide as a cop-out, basically. If the whole point of absurdism is to rebel and revolt, choosing to take your own life is the opposite of that, it’s giving up. In this moment, Dazai represents a different response to absurdity, suicide. I will also mention here that there is a third response to the absurd, and this is what the average civilian in BSD likely does: accept absurdity and just live with it. Rather than rebelling, they do nothing, and simply let meaninglessness control them.

Anyway, after Dazai’s rescue, we are introduced to Kunikida and his ideals. His ideals are a form of absurdist revolt, in a way, and while I’ll explore this more deeply in future chapters where it's more relevant, I did want to bring it up as we establish characters during their introductions. Essentially, Kunikida’s ideals are the guide to how he navigates the absurd world and lives his life, and contrary to popular belief, he is not some goody-two-shoes who constantly panders to rules and authority, he has an acute sense of justice that he’ll adhere to no matter what. That is his way of fighting against the absurdity of the modern world.

The ADA is neither government nor criminal, they kind of live in their own gray area and their job is basically to handle the most absurd situations (i.e. a man-eating tiger on the loose). I think the ADA being the “dusk” is a really important concept not only for BSD’s ongoing theme of moral grayness but also for this idea of absurdity. The BSD universe is so insane that the government and police, who are supposed to be society’s ultimate protectors, cannot handle it alone — there has to be a specialized group of individuals to do so.

After this, Atsushi agrees to become bait for the tiger, still unaware of his own special ability, he wallows in self-pity while he waits with Dazai, and then Dazai nullifies his ability once he transforms. Kunikida and some other ADA members show up, and when asked what they’ll do with him, Dazai decides to hire Atsushi.

Note: I love how Ranpo is grinning here while the others are like "wtf?"

You catch an insecure orphan kid with an extremely dangerous ability he has no control over, and decide to hire him? It seems to make no sense, especially since the ADA is introduced as this super-specialized unit of incredibly powerful individuals who do serious and important work.

But, as we know, this works out amazingly for both Atsushi and the agency.

Dazai’s decision to hire Atsushi was his way of embracing the absurd, which is a common theme within stories with absurdist themes. Because what are the other options here? They turn Atsushi over to the police and he’s imprisoned for the rest of his life on account of his dangerous ability? They just kill Atsushi because of said danger? Both of those options have little bearing on Dazai or the agency in the end, and we’re well aware that Dazai isn’t exactly an empath, and yet he chooses the seemingly worst option for the agency, which is to take on this clueless kid.

We’re treading into Dark Era territory here, but I do want to talk about it because it’s not included in the manga. So, I think it’s also really worth noting that this decision directly ties in with Dazai’s goal to live up to his promise to Oda. At this point in the story, we wouldn’t know this, but Oda explicitly told him to “help out some orphans” when advising him to do good. Overall, what Oda tells him to do is to become an absurdist and search for the beauty in life by fighting against its meaninglessness, rather than giving in through suicide or perpetuating violence in the Port Mafia.

Anyway, that’s the end of chapter 1 of BSD! It sets up a lot in terms of absurdist storytelling, from the characters to the world they inhabit. Future chapter analyses might not take up an entire post on their own like this depending on the chapter’s content, but for the first one, I felt it was important to establish the characters and setting within the absurdist context.

I also have absolutely no plan or schedule for posting these, I’m mostly doing it for my own enrichment because I genuinely get a lot of fulfillment from merging two of my interests together like this. I will continue to read manga like this in my free time and make these posts until I catch up with the present, and that might take a while since there are currently 110 chapters to get through. Additionally, I will absolutely still continue to do my absurdist analyses when chapters come out, especially since it’s so prudent to the plot of the current arc, so look out for those, too!

Thanks for reading and please feel free to reply and/or send asks about these posts, I love engaging in discussions about this stuff and I’m sure there will be things I miss along the way!

[Next] [Masterpost]

#bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd manga #atsushi nakajima #dazai osamu #kunikida doppo #armed detective agency #bsd chapter 1 #bsd 1 #bsd absurdism analysis #soup rants

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thatstormygeek · 1 month

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Rules are not real. They do not exist the way the rock or a tree exists; they exist the way that religions exist, created by us, in service of us, and subject to our own revision as we grow wiser. A set of rules is everywhere and at all times a work in progress. Thousands of years of mankind’s best bureaucratic efforts have not altered the inconvenient fact that time is always moving, yet a rule, once made, is static. Laws are constantly being revised in a ceaseless effort to catch up with the nonstop evolution of reality. The moldy, barbaric nature of the laws of the past gives you a clue to the flaw in the belief that rules must always be followed. It is not just bygone rules that can safely be considered crude, outdated, counterproductive, or unjust. We have plenty of existing rules with those qualities as well. Because of this, the most valuable quality in someone charged with enforcing rules is not certitude or fanaticism, but humility. Wisdom, in the moment, lies in the ability to recognize the gaps between the rules and the demands of the world, and to wield the rules as useful tools rather than as deadly weapons.

Recognition of the shortcomings of rules, of the constant need to measure them against the complexities of reality, is one of the basic insights of being an adult. The urge to caricature this insight as chaos, anarchy, or riotous disregard for the common good is more childish than the insight itself. There is quite an enormous space between “No rules,” which would certainly pose some difficulties to the flourishing of human life, and “follow all rules to the letter,” which would imprison all human life in a cage of absurdity and contradiction. We spend our lives being socialized to believe that failure to follow rules is harmful to society. Less remarked upon is the equally important fact that overzealous, unthinking enforcement of the rules is just as harmful to society. Inflexible as rules are, they cannot function effectively without the ability of their enforcers to compare their text to the fluctuating exigencies of the real world. Small-minded determination to use rules as the final word on all human conduct is characteristic of goons, acting with the desperate meanness that comes from the need to have an easy club with which to beat back the imposing intricacy of life. Indeed, people with this personality type often wash up in positions of authority precisely because those positions offer them a comforting cocoon of rules to retreat into to protect themselves from having to think too much. It is much easier to bring down the hammer on anyone bold enough to violate the rules than it is to wrestle with the knotty question of how much the rules deserve to be followed in the first place. The quasi-religious worship of order above all grants its adherents the same blissful freedom from doubt that all religions tout. The price for this is a retreat into blinding stupidity. Does the ongoing murder of tens of thousands of civilians with weapons provided by our own government trump, momentarily, the rule against camping on the grass? The Religion of Rules has a straightforward answer.

It is a supreme irony that the leaders of colleges and universities, the places most eager to lay claim to the glory of deep thinking, are today giving us the most vivid demonstrations of the opposite. While the students align themselves with the mandates of morality, many institutions doggedly fight to be free of the need to ever glance up at the dreadful big picture. Though presidents at Wesleyan and Brown have demonstrated that peaceful, thoughtful engagement with peaceful, thoughtful protests is a productive path, most of their peers have done the opposite. From California to New York City, riot cops have been the blunt response to students who are trying to put the things they learned in their history and philosophy and sociology classes into practice. If any young people were in danger of graduating without being appropriately cynical about how America really works, their schools are making sure that they get a good lesson at the end of the semester.

#us politics #campus protests #hamilton nolan

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bookishfeylin · 2 years

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I’m gonna go ahead and say it: if every single main character in ACOTAR was arrested for the worst thing this fandom said they did within the scope of the books (meaning not even talking about things we as readers didn’t see happen), the only ones who would not be going to jail (in a fair & non-corrupt legal and judicial world) are Nesta, Elain, Lucien, and Tamlin. Like really, imagine if they got arrested for the things they were hated the most for, and all the evidence was there to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they all absolutely did what they were being accused of. That’s how I decide who to reserve my anger or disappointment or disgust towards.

Let’s really look at it. Nesta, so evil and abusive for…saying mean things? Letting Feyre hunt while she sat on her ass? The judge would immediately ask two questions: how old were you and where were your parents? Then he’d dismiss the charges.

Elain same as above.

Lucien…tbh, I don’t really know what people’s problem with Lucien really is other than he wasn’t immediately perfect to Feyre. Charges dismissed.

And even Tamlin. His biggest sin in the narrative is locking Feyre in the house, correct? (I asked around why people hate him so much and this was always the answer)… He (and Feyre) would probably be asked: why did you feel you had to do this, has this sort of thing ever happened before, are arguments common between you two, did you talk to her before this? And once all the answers come back (yes we argue, no this has never happened before, yes I tried talking to her but she didn’t listen, I was trying to keep her from hurting herself), those charges would also be dropped and the judge at most would order anger management and counseling FOR THEM BOTH (because I read the damn books). The judge would probably only tell Tamlin that he can’t do that sort of thing in the future even if it WAS to protect her, and to next time involve the cops if it’s not something they can resolve on their own.

Rhysand would be under the jail for his actions UtM ALONE. Convicted and charged for sexual battery or assault (both of which are felonies), aggravated assault, theft, torture, kidnapping, conspiracy to commit (insert crime here cause he’s done a lot), and a plethora of other things. UNDER THE JAIL. And this all is only in Book One. Imagine the list if we went book by book. He is by far one of the worst characters legally speaking that I’ve ever encountered.

Feyre would be convicted for theft (from Tarquin), conspiracy (for that shit she pulled in the spring court), endangering minors (spring and summer), manslaughter, kidnapping (what happened to Nesta IS kidnapping, legally) and more.

The entire inner court for conspiracy to kidnap and slavery (Nesta was working for the night court as emissary and as a warrior and in the library with no autonomy and NO WAGES and no choices to do anything other than what she was told, severe physical punishment given when she didn’t comply). They’d all be held accountable because of their positions of authority and power acting on Rhysand’s and Feyre’s behalf despite their autonomy. Jail time for them all. Elain doesn’t count here because she doesn’t have the same authority or autonomy to say no like the others considering her circumstance (newly turned fae, nowhere to go if they turn against her, living off of Feyre, etc.) so she’d probably be let off for helping pack Nesta’s stuff.

It’s really that simple to me. And that’s all without counting the magical stuff (the daemati powers are absolutely mind rape and rape is a felony) or the stuff specific to running sovereign governments (which is why I didn’t count torture for Azriel like I did for his master or the fact that women are being abused and mutilated under Rhysand’s authority right under his nose, which absolutely is neglect).

Reading this, all I could think was yessssssss. Long rant under the cut.

In the grand scheme of things, the Inner Circle are a group of war criminals and the "bad" characters just... aren't. The sense of morality is skewed in this story, and that would be fine... if it were just a blasé adult fantasy series written to explore dark themes. Instead, Mrs. Maas has made it clear across interviews that she's using real world values to try to teach a lesson about abuse and red flags and relationships and love and what it means to be good and bad, and the lesson she's teaching here is... not good. At all. To say nothing of the fact that this was originally published in YA.

Regarding Nesta and Elain: I truly can't see them as abusive. Do I particularly like either of them? No. But why would I hate them? Nesta is mean. That's it. I'm going to write more about this later, but in ACOTAR she only says two things to Feyre: that she smells after hunting, and that she won't amount to anything (in anger, after Feyre tells her she shouldn't get married). I've heard way worse than that from my younger brother. Is he abusive? (And the answer is no, as someone who was actually IN an abusive relationship I scream every time I see the "nEsTa Is AbUsIvE" posts start circulating around.) Because he and I would fight to death for each other if push came to shove. That's how siblings ARE. And that's how Nesta is with Feyre! She tried the best she could within her human limitations to bring Feyre back, and she couldn't. I've mentioned before about digging through the Feylin tag and finding some old posts from the ACOTAR fandom from 2015/early 2016, and you know what else I noticed, aside from people complaining about Feysand being popular? A lack of complaints about Nesta being "abusive." It's like people understood that they were siblings who fought frequently but still loved each other before Rhysand entered the picture and this series retconned itself to be about abuse and redflags instead of the usual fantasy fare... oh wait.

Additionally... we know Feyre can't cook, and was out hunting all day long. And if her father can barely move, then... who was cooking? Cleaning? Doing the housework? Like do people really believe Nesta and Elain just sat down and stared at the walls of their cottage every single damn day for 5 years. What's more likely--that they stared at walls for hours every single day for years on end or that they were probably doing housework--women's work, if you will? Here we do not devalue women's work! That shit is important.

Lucien has literally done nothing wrong, ever. He didn't do anything to Feyre UTM, so I don't know what this fandom is on when they say Rhysand hates him for UTM. I think they confuse Lucien healing Feyre's face and offering her his jacket UTM with Rhysand drugging, groping, and torturing her. In ACOMAF, Lucien is also in an abusive relationship with Tamlin? He's not in any state to help out Feyre? If you're mad at Lucien for being unable to fight against his and Feyre's significantly more powerful, mutual abuser, then you must also be upset with the Inner Circle for hiding the truth about Feyre's pregnancy from her for months on end, ultimately culminating in her nearly dying in childbirth, right? People also blame Lucien for trying to bring Feyre back in ACOMAF, like he didn't watch Rhysand drug and grope Feyre every single night for months and like Rhysand hasn't spent centuries wearing a mask of cruelty to convince people he's evil... ok. How dare Lucien fall for Rhysand's mask. How dare he be wary of Feyre staying with the male who drugged and assaulted her.

Then Tamlin himself. This is the only one where I disagree with you slightly, anon. Well actually... I'm not sure. I want to say, for posterity, that Tamlin is abusive in ACOMAF. I'm not debating that. My problem with Tamlin is that everyone acts like he does, but only he is called out as abusive for it, while it's excused when other characters do it. These are concrete actions. Either something is abusive or it's not. But... this fandom can't seem to decide that.

For example, is locking people up (like Tamlin did to Feyre) abusive? Most stans would say yes. But if it is, then that ALSO makes the Inner Circle abusive for locking up Nesta, and Rhysand abusive for locking them all up in Velaris for years on end. To use your example, they'd all go to jail. If the Inner Circle weren't abusive when they locked Nesta up, and if Rhysand wasn't abusive for locking the Inner Circle away for 50 years, then neither is Tamlin when he locks up Feyre, so... I'm at an impasse here. It's the same with his magic exploding when he's emotional. I'm not denying him losing control of his magic is physical abuse, but it was... unintentional. That's how Mrs. Maas wrote it. It is clearly written as an accident, triggered by Tamlin's emotions. My abuser kicked and punched me, and it was always intentionally done to get me to do what she wanted. Tamlin was not intentionally trying to hurt Feyre. A lot of people in the fandom consider this physical abuse, but it was, for all intents and purposes, and accident, and losing control of magic when feeling emotional has no real-world parallel. That's how Sarah wrote it. As something Tamlin could not control. If accidentally losing control of magic when in an emotionally charged situation is physical abuse, then doesn't that make Feyre abusive when she burned Beron and Lady Vanserra in ACOWAR? If it isn't abusive when Feyre loses control of her magic, then it's not abusive when Tamlin does it either. Either something is abusive or it isn't. What about keeping information from someone about their body? Tamlin kept information from Feyre about her powers. If that's abusive, then so is Rhysand keeping information from Feyre about her deadly pregnancy.

Not that Tamlin wasn't emotionally abusive as well, and not that he wasn't generally toxic in ACOMAF. Feyre still needed to get away from him, because he was retconned into being the perfect storm of abuse. But as I discussed above, the Inner Circle does all that and then some, acting wayyyyy worse than any other character I've discussed thus far, including, as you said: sexual assault, battery, torture, mind rape, theft, conspiracy... this response is already getting way too long but let's just say I agree with everything you said about the Inner Circle.

In conclusion: the hypocrisy drives me crazy, because Nesta, Elain, and Lucien don't do anything to warrant the level of hatred they receive, and while Tamlin is abusive, the Inner Circle acts like him and then some. If we argue that Tamlin is abusive for the things he does (which he is!) then that makes the Inner Circle abusive as well. And if not, if locking people up, losing control of magic, and keeping information from people isn't abusive... then the Inner Circle would still be in jail and are morally worse than Tamlin is, simply because they've committed war crimes and he... hasn't.

#pro nesta #acotar #a court of thorns and roses #anti sjm #acotar analysis #pro nesta archeron #pro Lucien Vanserra #Tamlin #ask #anon

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hairenya · 2 years

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The most stupid concept in American politics is constitutional originalism. Like it would be funny if it didn’t do so much damage to the nation as a whole.

You’re telling me the constitution (which has amendments btw, I can’t stress enough how it has amendments) can only be interpreted to mean what the framers originally intended in the exact words it’s written in and can never be changed. Notice how these people always seem to think the framers would agree with them even when we have letters explicitly to the contrary. But even done in good faith it’s still a stupid concept. Tell me you’re incapable of independent thought and problem solving without telling me. Did you also ask your mom’s permission for everything as a child? Do you need your dad to give you advice on whether or not to eat a grape? Like it’s such a cowardly cop out for people who are too afraid to take ownership of their own opinions and responsibility for their own rulings.

“But the founding fathers”- I hate to be the one to tell you this but they’re dead babe. That’s how the passage of time works. They are d-e-a-d dead. Jefferson is scrubbing a toilet with his toothbrush in Hell. John Adams is getting drunk with the angels. Alexander Hamilton was most recently reincarnated as a squirrel and Ben Franklin won’t stop sexually harassing people via mirror writing at seances. Do you want us to Ouija board them every time there’s a court case? If so Hasbro better release an updated version with caller ID so Dick Cheney doesn’t hide in the vents pretending to be the voice of god to spark a war again. For people who constantly yell about dead people voting, you seem to think we should let dead people make policy.

Of course, they get around this by claiming the constitution was “divinely inspired”. Okay main character syndrome. I don’t think you should take governing advice from a guy who flooded the earth because he had a temper tantrum but it sure would explain a lot. If we’re going to base our government on a narcissistic autocrat who doesn’t tolerate dissent, may I suggest Stalin instead? He doesn’t have quite as high a death toll as God (he’s only human after all) but at least we’d maybe get healthcare out of it. Plus while I realize it wouldn’t help the country any, putting dead leaders in glass coffins would be personally beneficial to my morale. “Jesus is love”- No sweetie that’s Shrek but okay sure. I’m down. Let’s base our government on history’s most controversial hippie. Oh sorry, not what you had in mind?

The worst part is that this idea that the constitution can only mean exactly what it explicitly says nothing more or less with no room for common sense, critical thinking, or interpretation has been expanded to apply to almost every text. It trickles down. When the people in charge of educational policy can’t read between the lines, you get an entire generation who struggles with the idea that not everything has to be explicitly stated. That you can interpret things without spoon feeding. That an author not having a footnote disclaimer decrying the actions of their character as immoral does not, in fact, mean they condone irl murder.

#rant #us politics #also wee bit of fandom discourse #jlktalks.#I’m queuing this because it’s currently 3am #long post #insert clever queue tag here

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wordsmith-storyweaver · 2 years

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You Die a Hero... : Complicity and Culpability in Fictional Universes

@kasamira wrote a really interesting post about how none of the more problematic aspects of the Potterverse and Grishaverse are actually addressed or resolved by the narrative- and it spawned several different threads that all basically referred to this trend as a trope common to fantasy series, whereby the author fails to address and redress the injustices underpinning their fictional societies. Now, whether you believe that the author is aware of this "lapse" in their story or not, this phenomenon is a real-world analog to the old truism: you either die a hero, or you become the villain. What this phrase implies, but does not state is that one becomes the villain because they become complicit in the social ills and injustices of their society. Any issue- perceived, implied, or imagined- that the hero does not correct becomes an evil/ill which they perpetuate by being a functioning member of that society.

So, with regards to the Potterverse (keeping in mind please that I have not read Cursed Child, nor ever intend to), in the epilogue, we only know that Harry is an Auror. He has become the Wizarding World equivalent of a cop, which means he is directly responsible for enforcing all laws in his society. This makes him an active supporter/upholder of the system, including any legally-allowed oppression of non-humanoid, magical beings (like House Elves). Harry has become actively complicit.

An extreme, fictional version of this can be seen in the first episode of the show Gotham, where a young Jim Gordon is made to kill someone for the crime boss Fish Mooney. In order to prove to his corrupt partner, Bullock, and Fish that he is worthy of their trust, he shoots Oswald and dumps his body in the river (the irony of this being that he saves Oswald's life, only for him to become the crime boss The Penguin later on). The true reason that this proves they can trust Gordon, however, is predicated on extortion and the principle of mutually-assured destruction; because Gordon's hands are now dirty, they have leverage against him if he ever tries to expose them. This is why, in the real world, gangs and cartels have increasingly elaborate and intense hazing rituals to test their members as they rise through the ranks- you can trust the loyalty of someone who has not only proved their ruthlessness, but who you can directly implicate in crime(s) if they decide to turn against you (this is also true for other organized crime syndicates and corruption within law enforcement and government). In Harry's case, his complicity and culpability for the systemic injustices of the Wizarding World are tied to any and all enforceable laws whereby non-humanoids are actively persecuted or treated as Other by Wizarding law, even if he never personally enforces those laws.

In the same way, Alina from Shadow and Bone is complicit in the persecution of Grisha; the difference in her case is that she rejected her powers, rejected her status as Grisha, and rejected a position of power/authority which she could have used to better Grisha lives, making her moral culpability in some ways similar to the average person, but in other ways greater than Harry's because she could have worked from within the system but chose not to. One of the areas where Rowling is silent with regards to Harry's moral culpability is that we do not know if, when, or how Harry might have agitated for or otherwise supported changes in Wizarding law; any activism or legal challenges are left to the readers' imaginations. In contrast, Bardugo places Alina back at Keramzin, back in the Otkazat'sya world, where she is far removed from political realities; Alina may have Grisha visitors on occasion, but the people around her have no idea that she used to be Grisha, that she could have been their queen. By refusing a position of influence, on multiple occasions, Alina becomes even more culpable for the injustices which later happen to Ravkans because she could have had an active role in making positive social and political change. It is her intimate, direct knowledge that Grisha suffer persecution which makes her refusal to act even more damning than someone who doesn't have the firsthand experience she does, and simply believes that Grisha persecution is somehow justified (like she and Mal believe in episode 1, an attitude which neither of them really grow out of). Alina might be instrumental in removing the corrupt, criminal Tsar, but she does not help Nikolai work towards abolishing the Absolute Monarchy that breeds tyranny. Her knowledge plus inaction is worse than knowledge plus "wrong" action (as Aleksander is framed by the writer).

Whether active or passive, unless the hero manages to overthrow the system to establish a new regime/order or manages to restore the old, good order (think Aelin in the Throne of Glass series or Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings), they are morally guilty by the fact of their continued existence in society. In Harry's case, he becomes the "Face" (his presence in enforcing the laws literally showing his moral support for them) and the "Hand" (by which is meant physical and legal force) of the Wizarding government and legal system. Because he is a known hero, his working for the Ministry puts a figurative stamp of approval on everything they do. "Of course our regime must be right and good!... Harry Potter works for us!" Conversely, Alina silence in the face of injustice- a bigotry which she directly experienced- her rejection/repudiation of the label and experience of Grisha is akin to an ostrich burying her head in the sand (or a child covering their ears to avoiding hearing "no"). By pretending that her experiences never happened, Alina tacitly approves of and legitimizes the continued Othering or Grisha and the perpetuation of a corrupt, Absolutist system of goverment.

#fandom meta #Potterverse #Grishaverse #you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain

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cienie-isengardu · 3 years

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What's with the Black Dragon in MK, they confuse me?

I know they are a branch off of the Red Dragon, who they left because they thought the Red Dragon was too moral.

And they are lead by Kano, who has no morals and as an absolute piece of shit.

Kano doesn't confuse me.

Kabal "I used to be B.D. but decided to be a good guy cop, and even Raiden wanted on his team" and Erron Black "I might be a feminist/sexist man, because I never throw the first punch with women, and also seem soft of kids, unless they pay me a lot to shot them"

Both of these guys, who are the only other B.D. members I know of, are morally gray at best, which is what the what the Black Dragon left the Red Dragon because of?! So why aren't they just Red Dragon, and why does the Black Dragon even exist (other than to pad Kanos crotch)?!

To be honest, I’m not sure myself what is the deal between Black and Red Dragons (not the fraction / era of games I’m familiar or interested in) but I suspect it is something similar to the situation of Lin Kuei and Shirai Ryu. At some point some rogue element decided to leave and created his/her/their own organisation and since then both groups hate each other’s guts. And somehow along the line Kano took over Black Dragons and extended its operation to Outworld. I’m unable to comment on the “moral code” of Red Dragons because really, what is an honor in a crime organisation anyway, but sadly, alternative timeline doesn’t focus much on this conflict so Kano has (on screen) monopoly on dealing with weapons and other black market deals.

Whatever the excuse was to split, it was most likely about power and control or revenge than any morality whatsoever.

As for the members alone, I think it is less a matter of their morality and more why they joined or worked with Black Dragons in the first place. People join criminal organizations for money, for the thrill of danger, for protection or because they lack better options. Not sure how it was before Outworld Invasion and Netherrealm War, but the game does not show us the actual state of modern (alternative timeline) Earthrealm, or at least modern USA society. I mean, in a short period of time, out of nowhere came armies of monsters twice, murdering people right and left, destroying cities. The rebuilding for sure took time but beside the lasting psychological trauma, I’m sure the survivors demanded answers as to what the hell happened and did the governments know about other realms. It is not stated how much common people know now about Mortal Kombat and Outworld or general history of conflict, but the last invasion and the Netherrealm War changed the world in an irreversible way. We don’t have an idea about the situation of average citizens nor how countries managed to stave off political, cultural or economic post-war crises. We have a clue about show business like movie making and military operating inside and outside Earthrealm and cooperation between fractions representing different countries and/or continents. Our main heroes seem to do well, money-wise at least, but they all are in this or another way related to the military thus working for the government (or United Nations / NATO / whatever political-economic union happened post-war). That however does not rule out the possibility there are people who were abandoned or forgotten by their government, who were marginalised for whatever big or small reason. With what happened it is easy for me to imagine how humanity was militarized in case of another attack, and in result, how societies were controlled more tightly by their governments. In theory all for the security means but it easily could escalate into social inequalities increasing with each passing year.

There is a lot of worldbuilding the games did not tell us about but would help greatly to understand the relationship between characters, fractions and countries. Are there arenas that are now closed off due to some magic contamination or became the lawless zones but people live there because they are too poor to move into safer places? Are there more young people with special powers due to raping or magic means, as the remnant of the war? How religions work now, when humanity saw an army of demons? Are religious wars escalated, especially if faith in Elder Gods get renewed? Did religious fanatics start cultural crusades against certain social groups (like LGBT+, atheists, anyone tied to Outworld or at least looking unnatural, like orphaned Frost?).

And the more society is tightly controlled, divided into poor, unwanted and written off against the privileged ones (military), the more people rebel against authority. Which is how Black Dragons may fit into the new times, as a niche for desperate, angry people with little to none perspective on life. Under Kano’s guard, they can be as violent and uncaring as they want. They can hurt a government (military), get good money and fun and until they are caught, there is only Black Dragon’s laws (or lack of therefor) to worry about.

(Looking how extremely violent the Special Forces were during the raid on Black Dragon’s hideout, how Cassie went straight for killing instead of just injuring to arrest the criminals and put them before justice, I wouldn’t be surprised if the army was not popular anymore. And yeah, Cassie wanted to save her parents but as a soldier, she is bound to respect law… that may be much different than we known from our reality)

We, as gamers (viewers) know what scumbag Kano is because we see his crimes and how he interacts with other characters. To what awful level he managed terrifying strong heroes like Sonya. But most of Black Dragon members may know him just as the charismatic leader that time after time outsmart the Special Forces and always get a good-paying job for them, whatever it is a deal in the country or a totally different realm.

And those named characters that left are those who actually experienced on their own skin what a nasty bastard Kano was. Like in Mortal Kombat X Comics Series, Erron joined forces with Black Dragons out of desperation to help Kotal which ended badly for him because Kano left him to die, thus Erron’s personal hate for Kano and his buddies. Similar thing seems to happen with Tremor, sent on a suicidal mission and then also left behind without any care or remorse. Frankly, only MK9!Kabal seems to have left Black Dragons for moral reasons and actually made proper life changing decisions like joining the police and help citizens instead of serving criminals.

Because of that, I can see why Kano, despite his true nature, is actually admired or followed by a bunch of angry, rebellious, sociopathic people and why Black Dragons are doing well despite Special Forces (and Red Dragons) hunting them for decades.

#mortal kombat #black dragons #kano #my replies #the worldbuilding i need so badly to know because outworld invastion and netherrealm war is not something that special forces or raiden #could keep a secret from the world right?#sorry not much to say about red dragons #i see their conflict as similar to lin kuei vs shirai ryu #both groups do the same crimes but think they are better than the other #kano is a scumbag but i can see why he is respected by fellow black dragons #and why so many people may be into working for him #when the mk universe is a pretty grim and dark world to live in #my analysis #my headcanons #(more like mix between those two)

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morethanmeetstheass · 3 years

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Yoooo uh, can we hear that Cyberpunk ramble? The long version? Please? I'm only vaguely familiar with the genre, I'd like to know your meta. I mean if you're not comfortable going off I'll come off anon but ye can't just offer knowledge like that I wanna know now! ovo Blast me with your wisdom, I beg of you.

YOU BET YOUR ASS I CAN, I BEEN WAITING FOR THIS ONE

okay. so. first of all. any aesthetic with the suffix “punk” is and should be a political statement. PUNK IS A POLITICAL STATEMENT. you cannot be “punk” or thrive within a punk subculture (like cyberpunk) if you don’t believe in anti-establishment, anti-capitalism, and mainly anti-authority. that’s what punk is. punk has been watered down to a grungy sort of “aesthetic” and it angers me.

so what does that mean for cyberpunk?

the main mantra you’ll hear about cyberpunk is its emphasis on “high tech, low life.” cyberpunk explores a dystopia where technology has advanced to absolutely insane levels, with all the implants and prosthetics and whatnot being one of the main things people focus on. that’s the “cyber” in cyberpunk. the “punk” stems from a huge social change which primarily focuses on the underground of society. most cyberpunk media is extremely nihilistic, which contrasts really sharply with the technological “utopia” typically depicted in futuristic-focused media.

what makes me sad is that the themes of cyberpunk have been watered down like crazy. cyberpunk is blatantly anti-corporate because the main point is not “technology bad, prosthetics make people less human,” it’s supposed to be “technology is dangerous because massive corporations control the technology that we are putting in our bodies.” cyberpunk focuses hugely on a social divide, where the rich create groundbreaking technology and use it to manipulate and control the lower class. one of the most common tropes is the brain being connected to a computer, which is dangerous as fuck because those computers are created by (usually corrupt) corporations. the cyberpunk world isn’t ruled by a government, it’s ruled by corporations. see what i’m getting at?

lots of cyberpunk protagonists are antiheroes, and that’s what’s so cool about the genre. it’s gritty, dirty, angry, and explores the manipulation of corporations on people of lower social standing. it’s a dystopian setting. hell, the book “do androids dream of electric sheep” (amazing novel btw) has rich people keeping livestock for clout. technology has become the norm, and that’s not a good thing! cyberpunk celebrates technology but condemns how the setting uses it, basically boiling down to “hey, we have all these cool implants and shit, we should overthrow the corporations and not turn ourselves into walking products and advertisements.”

and recently, cyberpunk has drifted into weird territory where the message is “you are less human if you have tech implants” and neon lights and prosthetic arms. when it’s so much more than that. the aesthetics are gorgeous, of course, with very urban settings that are usually really messy and dirty and stinky. it’s very high contrast to see beautiful, shimmering holograms and neon signs mixed with trash all over the ground and rampant violence due to social unrest. and that’s what it’s supposed to be. the irony of cyberpunk being massively monetized as an aesthetic and being sold as such is so grating. there’s also the exploration of radicals who either 1) go overboard with technology or 2) refuse to use any of it for fear of control, and that’s a whole other topic i don’t have time to go into.

high tech, low life. the world is shit and every single line of morality is blurred so bad that you can’t even see it anymore. and i fucking love it when it’s done the right way. my favorite ever piece of cyberpunk media is the game >observer_ because it does a fantastic job integrating the ideas of humanity while also spending a lot of time diving into the anti-corporate cyberpunk setting. especially because you play as a fucking mind cop trying to solve the disappearance of his son, one of the people who tried to use technology to escape a megacorporation. it’s delicious and i highly, HIGHLY recommend it if you’re even remotely interested in cyberpunk (and can handle horror games) and please talk to all of the tenants because they really build a miserable, perfect cyberpunk world

#OOPS I WENT OFF #cyberpunk #rant #i am passionate about this ok #i hope it worded it well #also cyberpunk 2077 is great but not perfect but its good enough #ask

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antoine-roquentin · 3 years

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The court set standards on when and how jurors can be subjected to background checks by prosecutors and established a process for challenging those investigations if discrimination is suspected. The justices also called for a judicial conference on jury selection -- which means the ruling could eventually result in even more much-needed reform to that process.

It’s a rare and commendable decision to re-examine the longstanding, difficult questions about how to eliminate discrimination in jury selection.

Katherine Carter, public information officer for the Essex County Prosecutor's Office, which handled Andujar's case, told me they're still reviewing the ruling.

"We believe the assistant prosecutor who tried the case acted in good faith based on the caselaw at the time" and "we do not believe that the prosecutor acted with any racial bias," Carter said. "We respect the ruling of the court and will apply it during retrial and any other cases going forward."

The undisputed facts about the proceedings make a pretty compelling case, on their own, that at least some implicit bias was at play.

One of the prospective jurors at Andujar’s trial was F.G., a Black man from Newark who worked for the East Orange Department of Public Works.

F.G. mentioned two family members who were cops. He’d grown up in a neighborhood with a lot of crime, and some of his friends had sold drugs. Crime victims also were part of his circles, including two cousins that were murdered, and a friend who was robbed at gunpoint.

“I think it just come[s] with the territory,” F.G. said.

F.G. stressed that he stayed away from criminal activity, the court said. He stated that he believed the judicial system was generally effective.

Prosecutors challenged F.G. for cause – meaning they argued he couldn’t be impartial or wouldn’t follow court instructions. They said his friends and background “draw into question whether he respects the criminal justice system,” according to the opinion.

Defense attorneys responded that F.G.’s story was typical for certain neighborhoods. The state’s position was “untenable” because it excludes too many people from places like Newark from serving on juries, Andujar’s counsel said.

The lower court rejected the prosecutors argument, saying there was no basis to dismiss F.G. for cause.

That's when the prosecution took a turn.

County attorneys ran a criminal history check on F.G., and found an open municipal court warrant for simple assault (which includes attempting to physically harm another person, and physically threatening someone).

Prosecutors then contacted the city fugitive squad to have F.G. arrested before the next day of jury selection. When that didn’t pan out, they told the judge they were going to lock F.G. up during the next court date, and they renewed their for-cause challenge. The court ultimately arranged to excuse F.G. and have him arrested outside the other jurors' view.

After all that, the charges against F.G. were dropped two months later. It also bears noting that an outstanding warrant doesn’t actually bar someone from jury service in New Jersey.

On appeal, the Supreme Court noted that the “practice of running background checks on prospective jurors raises a question of first impression.”

Prosecutor's said it’s “extremely rare” for them to investigate jurors’ criminal records. But there are indications that the practice is more common than one might imagine.

I asked attorney Dennis Drasco, a member of Lum, Drasco & Positan in New Jersey, about the prevalence of the practice. Drasco has served on multiple panels and commissions to study and improve jury selection for over a decade, both with the state judiciary and with the American Bar Association.

"The problem is that a lot people don't even realize the effect of certain practices," Drasco said. The court's ruling as to implicit bias "is a wake up call" that the problematic practice exists, he said.

The Supreme Court in Andujar’s case said it couldn't question “the State’s good-faith belief that it had the authority to run the background check.” Even defense counsel didn’t formally object when the government moved to arrest F.G. -- a prospective juror who wouldn't have been arrested otherwise -- as an apparent means of excluding him from the pool. (Defense attorneys did put concerns on the record that prosecutors singled out a juror for a background check, and that the move implicated constitutional due process concerns.)

The deference to the prosecutors' move by the court and opposing counsel suggests the practice isn't entirely uncommon, and the high court’s review of case law also shows the practice is at least generally accepted.

Iowa allows prosecutors to conduct background checks on jurors for good cause, and with a court order. At least six states allow it if prosecutors also disclose the information to defense attorneys. Just as many states, at least seven, “impose no such limits on the prosecution,” the court said.

New Jersey’s new rules require court permission before checking a juror's criminal history – and a “reasonable, individualized, good-faith” reason to believe it might reveal pertinent information that may not be uncovered by jury questionnaires or voir dire. Certain explanations will be considered presumptively invalid, the court said, including checking jurors' backgrounds simply because they express a distrust of law enforcement or lived in a high-crime neighborhood. And, if prosecutors move to strike a juror based on the results, the defense can still challenge that strike as discriminatory.

It’s a solid start, and the court clearly believes there’s more work to be done.

to summarize, a black guy showed up for jury duty and said yeah, he knew people who sold drugs cause he lived in a poor neighbourhood. prosecutors tried to strike him but defense noted that if we struck everybody who knew drug dealers from juries, we’d be ending up with racially biased juries. prosecution then ran a background check and came up with something minor to arrest him with when he showed up for jury duty. the new jersey supreme court ended up calling out the prosecutor’s conduct, although only verbally, but more importantly used it as grounds to give the defendant in that case a new trial.

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pla-teau · 3 years

Text

THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER: THE STAR-SPANGLED MAN

i’m late to this but watching episode two of the falcon and winter soldier was a ride. a necessary one in my view for the sake of understanding where sam and bucky are in this world.

from episode one to this episode, race is a lingering blanket throughout our time seeing the pair on screen (minus the action sequences and their banter). bucky constantly telling sam that he should’ve kept the shield annoyed me because i wanted sam to explode. i wanted him to unload and explicitly tell him his reasons for not keeping the shield. we saw in endgame that sam was uncomfortable holding the shield when steve passed it on to him. not that he felt unworthy but he knows the implications of the shield, the legacy it holds and the magnitude of that symbol in the usa. he knows that the history is associated with a white man for decades. at the beginning, steve is used as propaganda by the government for the war before he really grows into his own and even goes against the same government that propped him up to be this heroic symbol. sam, as an african american man, knows struggles that steve never had to face all due to the color of his skin. we don’t know specifics about his time in the military besides what we learned in winter soldier but i don’t doubt that sam had obstacles thrown at him in that environment. now, mixing in his struggles and knowing the implications of him carrying that shield, it’s understandable why sam gave back the shield. this isn’t wakanda, this is america and america doesn’t have a good track record with it’s non-white citizens - especially the african american community.

we learn in episode two that there’s a much darker history associated with captain america when we meet isaiah bradley. to me, the erased history and mistreatment of isaiah speaks to the fact that the government always wanted to keep captain america as a white man. captain america is supposed to be the all-american man who loves his country. as a hispanic woman, when i hear all-american man, my mind pictures a white man first because that’s what i’ve been conditioned to think through imagery and from simply growing up in this country. since the mcu mirrors our world, this is definitely the case when it comes to captain america because that’s the only iteration anyone’s seen or heard of. we learn that isaiah fought bucky and won that fight. to date, i don’t think anyone’s come close to defeating bucky when he was the winter soldier. the fact that isaiah did that and was jailed for 30 years in return for serving his government is explicit enough for us to know that the government doesn’t want a black captain america. and the fact that bucky never told steve about isaiah speaks volumes. if bucky told steve, i don’t doubt steve would’ve tried to do right by him. what that would’ve been, we’ll never know. bucky had this information and while his reasoning was that he was sparing isaiah, quite frankly - it’s not a good enough reason. he hurt both sam and isaiah when they visited his house. he used isaiah to physically show sam that he’s not the first black man the government has set up to fail. what angered me about that scene was that isaiah could’ve been spared by bucky just telling sam about him instead of taking him to his house. if he knows that isaiah doesn’t want that trudged up again, why do it to prove a point? i don’t doubt that had bucky just told sam about isaiah, he would’ve believed him. i think sam and isaiah’s first meeting would’ve been different and on sam’s terms, not bucky’s.

bucky, of course, doesn’t understand sam’s reasons for giving back the shield and that’s the fucking point. how could bucky understand as a white man? sam not explaining himself and keeping his composure whenever bucky lectures him on why he shouldn’t have given back the shield speaks volumes. sam’s reasons are his own and frankly, doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. because explaining it to bucky would be pointless. bucky doesn’t understand what sam’s gone through in life and yeah maybe he sees sam as the next captain america because steve said so along with the fact that he’s a good man which brings me to my next point.

a good man. that’s what made the serum work on steve. steve was a good man at the end of the day. we the audience, the avengers and steve’s friends/comrades know that captain america is not just a star spangled man fighting for the good ol’ us of a, it’s a good man that fights for what’s right. that’s why steve gave the shield to sam because he knows sam is a good man that’ll continue the legacy of fighting the good fight and not necessarily for the government or for those in charge. so sam’s comment in the therapy scene about steve and bucky never understanding is not wrong because while they see the legacy being carried by sam as the right choice, it’s wishful thinking that everything would be fine and that the whole world would be okay with it. i say wishful thinking because it’s easy to think that things wouldn’t change and everyone will accept sam as the new captain america when you don’t think about the struggles sam has faced in his life. when you’re in a place of privilege, you can afford to be a little idealistic because you don’t face or rarely see the injustices to poc/ minorities so you can afford to believe the world will be accepting of what you see as common sense or that the world will treat poc with basic human decency.

when bucky shares his fears of steve being wrong about him if he was wrong about sam and sam asks him if he’s finished also says a lot. that interaction just proves what i said earlier, bucky (and steve) is being idealistic in thinking there would be no questions asked and the world would be fine with sam carrying the shield. when sam says “are you finished?” it’s relatable because it’s representative of poc listening to white people throw a fit about something they’ve never experienced and can’t fully understand.

the scene with them and the cops also shows that bucky has a lot to learn about where sam is coming from and why he returned that shield. out of costume, apparently no one knows sam is the falcon. when i say no one, i mean those with authority (bank and cops so far) because what they see first is a black man and a superhero second. while for steve it seems that everyone saw him as captain america first and steve rogers second. seeing how before they apologize to sam for not recognizing him the officer had his hand on his gun vs. how they tell bucky that he’s under arrest gently and calmly should be a wake up call for buck. he’s one of the world’s most dangerous assassins and they’re just like “oh hey...there’s an arrest out for you because you missed therapy sorry.” is aggravating but the worst part is bucky telling sam to show him his ID, being idealistic in thinking that the situation would be resolved once sam formally identifies himself. that shows buck still has a long way to go because not realizing and thinking that being cooperative and doing what authorities say will resolve the situation is in fact hurtful to sam since he doesn’t know that even cooperating and doing as told will do nothing if that authority figure already has a bias going into that situation.

all in all, the main point for my essay-like post is that while bucky and steve see sam as their equal and the best choice to carry on the legacy, the rest of the world may not necessarily agree and they miss that due to their vastly different experiences in life than sam. i truly despised the way endgame did steve with his arc because it would’ve been great seeing him retired and adjusting to current life but also learning about the darker history and implications of the shield since now the show confirms steve knew nothing. i would imagine steve trying to do right with not only isaiah but sam as well by simply being an advocate and trying to understand how life is different for sam. i hope in future episodes we see bucky try to understand this and even fix his own biases and actions that are harmful rather than helpful to sam. i also just can’t wait to see more of sam’s story being fleshed out and seeing him take on the mantle.

#scar’s thoughts and rants #scar’s thoughts on marvel #mcu #marvel #the falcon and the winter soldier #tfatws #tfatws spoilers #anthony mackie #sam wilson #falcon #bucky barnes #winter soldier #isaiah bradley #steve rogers #captain america

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ask-spider-man-61610 · 3 years

Text

The Infiltration: Part One of Three

To say that two shapeshifters stood in the basement laboratory of a government building wouldn't be quite accurate. One shapeshifter stood in the basement laboratory. The other could more honestly be described as meticulously sculpted into shape. The particles that made up his body were arranged into the shape of a standing man, held in place by static cling, but that wasn't really standing. It was a rough approximation of standing, just like everything about Flint Marko was a rough approximation of a human being. He'd long since gotten used to the fact, but that didn't make it any less unpleasant.

The other shapeshifter, Reed Richards, leaned against a table that was great for projecting holograms but terrible for holding papers or drinks. Fancy and impractical equipment like this was one of the Cape Code Authority's most well-known features.

A third man stood in this laboratory too, off to one side. He was, in a way, the exact opposite of a shapeshifter. More on him later.

"I've taken some time to look into your request," Richards said as he tapped a few icons on the tabletop. "Here's the basics of my thoughts so far. A shell to house your nervous system and respond to electrical signals."

There was a sound like sand sliding down a dune before Flint began to speak. It had taken him a long time to relearn how to talk after becoming the Sandman; even now, it took effort to hold the shape of those granular vocal cords as he spoke in a deep and raspy voice. "Yeah. Y'said that last time, Doc. What's changed?"

Richards, in response, pinched an image on the tabletop and widened it out, his fingers stretching like rubber bands to expand the picture further. He raised his arm--he seemed to ignore his joints, the entire limb bending like a garden hose--and flicked one finger up, and a hologram rose out of the table's display to cast a soft white glow over the room. The hologram looked like eggshells glued to an Erector set, arranged into the shape of a bipedal form that lay on the table as if it were a stretcher. "What's changed is that I've done some research into actually making that shell. Take a look, I've drafted up a basic schematic for what it'd look like."

"And you decided it'd look like a Phantom?"

Richards snorted, but ignored the question. "The outermost shell is solid-light holography," he continued, making a vague swiping gesture through the air above the image. The eggshell faded out, revealing the bare animatronic beneath, which (judging by the sculpted face made of sand) Flint found even less impressive. Frowning, Richards looked down at the hologram again and added, "We could, given some finagling, calibrate it to resemble an actual human. But generating these 3D models is a pain, so I didn't bother."

Perhaps a more critical mind would have asked why, if 3D models were such a pain, they bothered to use holograms at all instead of pen and paper. But Flint's mind had never been an especially critical one; he was in no way stupid, but for all his life had tended to take things as they came. Instead he asked, "Is that why it looks like a Phantom? 'Cuz you're just recycling a picture you already had?"

"Not letting that go, eh?" Richards replied, the ghost of a smirk on his face as he glanced up at the Sandman again. He waved his hand again, and the computer misinterpreted his gesture and deactivated the projection of the suit. Rolling his eyes, Richards reactivated the hologram and said, "No. Well, partially. It looks like a Phantom because that technology is what a lot of my idea is based on. You see, what you're asking for is very similar to how the technology works anyway--an artificial support structure for a unique nervous system. The only difference is that your nervous system is two gallons of granulated silica, whereas the Phantoms are currently working with--"

And here he stopped, falling silent and stoic. His eyes, suddenly devoid of their smiling crow's feet, glanced Flint's way before his disgusting elastic fingers returned to typing on the touchscreen between them. The pile of sand, insomuch as it could, looked confused.

"What?" he said, in a voice like a seashell crushed underfoot on a beach. "What're the Phantoms workin' with? I thought they were just robots."

This was a common misconception, and Richards, like most of the Cape Code Authority, had a vested interest in upholding it. "Phantoms" were the colloquial name for Perpetual Holographic Avatar/Nano-Tech Offensive Monsters. Bipedal, autonomous drones with light weaponry, they were the foot soldiers of the CCA, the beat cops, the cavalry when an agent wanted reinforcement. They had been in development since the War of the Worlds had brought the Chitauri and all their technology to Earth six years ago, and some of the core technology of the drones was better kept unknown. What Richards had said threatened to jeopardise that secrecy.

The third man in the room chose then to speak. Stepping forward, his black cloak obscuring the entirety of his six-foot-plus form, he spoke with a voice that was digitally altered to be an octave deeper. "They are robots," he said, his white face mask moving like genuine flesh. "Their processors have a unique method of operation, though. They have some of the most sophisticated A.I. in the world, and their microprocessors are similar enough to a human's that it won't require too much tinkering to render it compatible with your...situation."

This was Scrier--or rather, a Scrier; one of many--and he was a champion liar. Nobody quite knew when he had joined the CCA or what level he occupied, but the executives of the organization seemed to treat him as a special case. He never answered distress calls, except to break up protests and strikes. He had no patrol routes, no assigned partners, and the only training courses he attended were the ones he taught--the ones about corporate rights and the agency's responsibility to them. Agents weren't allowed to try and investigate Scrier's identity. For all they knew, he was an undercover boss trying to hear his subordinates' opinions on him.

This was true, but it was a little more specific than that.

"Yes!" Richards said, gesturing towards the man gratefully. "Thank you, Scrier. I didn't know how exactly to put that. Yes, Phantoms run on a very human-like system. In theory, adapting it to suit your nervous system should be far easier than trying to create something out of whole cloth."

"I thought you were like a super genius," Flint said, sounding a bit annoyed. "You've invented flying cars and indestructible fabrics that let you go to space. You have yer own interdimensional portal. Why is this taking so much thought? Why does this need to be made out of other stuff and spit and prayers?"

Richards gave him a blank glare for a few seconds before sighing. "Okay," he said, leaning on the table. "First of all, I am a genius. I'm one of the smartest people to ever live, but that doesn't mean I know everything. I have to research and experiment. Any innovation, even one from me, takes time." He waved his hand again and the hologram vanished. "Second of all, remember: I'm doing this out of the goodness of my heart."

"You're doing this because that was my condition!" Flint shot back, and the pile of sand swelled slightly and grew almost half a foot. He raised his arms; granules fell from the sculptures and scattered across the floor. "That's what I said when I joined this stupid super-cop thing! I hate being the Sandman, Doc! You guys offered to give me this--this job of disrupting protests and taking down unregistered super-guys because your bosses told me you could make me...not."

He glanced down at his hands. And indeed hands they were; years of practice had let him sculpt the sand at the end of his arms into an incredibly realistic form, with perfectly jointed fingers. You could almost see what must have once been his fingerprints. But as he looked at them a small stream of sand fell from them to the ground.

"I'm not expectin' you to make me human again," he said. "But just...something that'll make me feel more human. Something that feels like a body." His features hardened again, sand dunes into sandstone. "If you're just half-assing that--if you're just giving me something that-that makes people treat me like a Phantom and that'll break in like a week--"

And here he stopped. There was more than just a salary that kept agents of the Cape Code Authority in line. You had a lot of wiggle room as a superhero registered under them: you could slack off on the job, you could issue arrests for what you were pretty sure was a crime, you could stop and frisk anyone you liked, you could be sure that the beatings you gave to unarmed suspects were graciously forgiven by your superiors. But one thing you couldn't do was leave. Quitting the CCA was a surefire way to bring the coworkers you had once trusted down on your head; no longer registered, you had no more immunity than a child experimenting with the most basic powers did. Nobody wanted to find themselves imprisoned in Complex 42--stranded inescapably in the Negative Zone, tortured by armed guards and experimented on to replicate your powers, only protected from the hostile, annihilating environment outside the prison by a few wafer-thin force fields. But that was exactly where Flint's line of thinking threatened to take him.

"...Forget it," he mumbled, defeated, and as he slumped down slightly his face and body lost much of its detail.

Richards stared across the table with an uncomfortable air. Glancing down at the table, he tapped a few keys on it and the hologram vanished. With one hand he pushed his glasses up, and then his arm stretched the five feet across the table and patted Flint's semblance of a shoulder.

"Look," he said. "I can't make any promises. You're...unprecedented, Marko. The only shapeshifter of your kind. I'm doing the best I can to help you. But if I can use technology we already have to do it, then I'm going to. You're not my only job in the CCA. But I'm working on it." He took his hand back, and then needed a second to brush off the sand that had come with it. "...It's getting late. We ought to call it a day, I need to head home."

"Have to convince Susan not to walk out on you again?" Scrier suggested, already heading for the door.

Reed just dragged his hand down his face, his features stretching in his grip, and didn't answer. His eyes were bagged and his posture tired. Instead he began to trudge towards the door, each leg bending like it was made of plasticine, and followed by an animate pile of sand.

The light of streetlights and storefront signs shone through the windows as the three of them stepped out of the laboratory. About ten feet away, a custodian looked up from the floor he was mopping and gave the trio a quizzical expression, but the only one who paid him any mind was Scrier, whose expression was hard to parse through the prosthetic mask. Richards and Flint just began to head the opposite direction down the hall.

"Hey! Scrier! Don't you have some skulking to do somewhere else?!" Flint called back.

As the door to the lab swung closed, the janitor adjusted his grip on the mop and looked back down at his work. Scrier, after a second more of staring, turned away and began to saunter off.

It was a long hallway. They kept walking for a good long while before they turned and were out of sight. And for all that time the janitor continued to mop and silently sweated, waiting for them to notice that the security cameras weren't moving like they usually did. Even when the three Cape Code Authority agents were gone, the custodian continued to work. He worked until the vibrations of their footsteps through the floor had faded into the background tremors of the environment. And even longer than that, until the buzz of spider-sense in the back of his mind had subsided slightly, no longer quite so focused on them.

#Spider-Man #Spider-Man AU #Peter Parker #Earth-61610 #Cape Code Authority #Reed Richards | Mister Fantastic #Flint Marko | Sandman #Scrier #story #long #Odyssey Prelude

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365days365movies · 3 years

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April 5, 2021: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) (Recap: Part One)

Yeah, so...Spectrum exploded last night.

So, I'm unfortunately a little behind. BUT NEVER FEAR! I'll get back on time before you know it! So, uh...where were we last time? OH RIGHT! Let's talk about black comedy. And I don't mean black-and-white comedies, or comedies prominently featuring African-American culture and demographic. No, I mean dark comedies.

The "black comedy" functions off of macabre or taboo humor and jokes, and is often closely associated with biting satire and commentary in film. That definition is loose as hell, I know, but it's all about the subject matter. The most common subject matter for dark humor is death, of course, and related subjects to death. War, murder, strife, madness, and violence are also common topics here.

Some of the best comedies are black comedies, though. For example, Brazil (1985; dir. Terry Gilliam) focuses on themes of depression, dreams, terrorism, totalitarian governments, and madness. And it's GREAT. How about The Death of Stalin (2018; dir. Armando Iannucci)? The title ALONE should tell you everything you need to know about the tone and topic, AND YET...

It's HILARIOUS. And also informative! If you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend it. And again, that film is about, well...the death of Stalin, and the fallout of his disastrous and murderous regime. Dark, DARK topic, but very funny movie.

Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is about war; Fargo is about murder in North Dakota; Heathers is about a toxic relationship and the death and murder of teenagers; Birdman, or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance is about an actor's existential crisis and complete mental breakdown; and Trainspotting is about the devastating effects of drug addiction and features a DEAD BABY FOR CHRIST'S SAKE...and yet they're all full of laughs! Except for the baby scene. Fuck me, the baby scene in Trainspotting.

So, yeah, these are a diverse group of films, that's for sure. But where does it all start? There's 1942's To Be or Not to Be (dir. Ernst Lubitsch), which is about a Polish theatre company who need to escape in the midst of...well, 1942 Poland. If you don't get why that's dark, you should probably look up some history, bud. Charlie Chaplin would dip into the role in 1947's Monsieur Verdoux, which I mentioned last time. And there's the seldom-talked-about Kind Hearts and Coronets (dir. Robert Hamer), a 1949 film about murder for status, essentially.

But it's hard to argue that the most prominent early black comedy is 1944's Cary Grant vehicle, Arsenic and Old Lace.

Directed by Frank Capra, this film was based on a 1941 stage play, and is about...well, we'll get to it. While its prominence as a black comedy is one reason I'm watching this movie, the other is...well, to be honest, this is a movie I heard about CONSTANTLY from my Mom, as this is one of her favorites. And yet, like Dirty Dancing, I've somehow never seen it! Let's remedy that.

So, without further ado, let's get into it! SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

The film starts off with a BANG, as a man calls me a “big simp” to my face! Actually, he’s screaming at a Brooklyn Dodgers game, where a massive fight breaks out. This fight quickly transitions to a city hall, where a line of people are waiting to file marriage licenses. Amongst the line is Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant) and Elaine Harper (Priscilla Lane).

Brewster is hiding from the press, as he’s a famous reviewer, and author of the Bachelor’s Bible, and it would be quite the scandal for him to get married. And yet, he’s head over heels in love with Elaine. After going through an existential crisis about the whole thing, he gives into Elaine’s sweet demeanor, and the two file their marriage license officially.

It’s Halloween day, and we move from the city to the suburbs of Brooklyn, where two policemen, O’Hara (Jack Carson) and Sanders (John RIdgely) are on patrol. Sanders tells O’Hara of the kindly Brewster Sisters, the sweetest women on Earth, both of whom live in the neighborhood. Currently, they are being visited by Reverend Harper (Grant Mitchell), Elaine’s father. He’s speaking with Abby (Josephine Hull) and Martha Brewster (Jean Adair), the kindly aunts of Mortimer.

Also living there is Mortimer’s brother Teddy Brewster (John Alexander), who apparently believes that he’s Teddy Roosevelt, which is...hilarious. Dude is hilarious, seriously. The cops come over to visit the two, and collect some clothes and toys for local charity. Also, Teddy only leaves a room by screaming “CHAAAAARGE!!!”, and running up the stairs, and I love Teddy a lot.

Reverend Harper and the cops leave for the night, and the sisters settle down for the evening. Abby and Martha state that their plans for Elaine and Mortimer should go as scheduled, which is probably talking about their marriage. Abby also mentions that she’s done something while she was away, to Martha’s delight and surprise. They tell Teddy that he’ll soon be digging a new lock for the Panama Canal...whatever that means.

Martha’s about to go to the basement to see what Abby’s done, but she states that because she was all by herself, the surprise is in the window seat. As she’s about to look at the surprise, Elaine shows up in the window, and the two arrive to give the happy news that they’re married. Elaine goes to tell her father of the news, while Mortimer goes to tell his sweet aunts. Afterwards, the two will be on their honeymoon, going to Niagara Falls. And I should say, they’re quite a sweet couple.

After telling the news to his aunts, he asks them where his notes are for his new controversial book, Mind Over Matrimony. They go to look for it around the house, and Teddy comes downstairs, dressed up in attire to “go to Panama.” Aunt Abby comes across a childhood picture of Jonathan, Mortimer’s brother and apparently a violent sociopath or some sort. She goes to burn the picture (geez), and Mortimer continues to look for the notes. He goes to the window seat.

Yup! It’s a body! Looks like Abby and Martha’s sweet old lady act is a guise for some myurder! Which I know, just because it’s the most famous thing about the movie. However, Mortimer thinks the murderer is Teddy, and tells his sweet old aunts about the body, asking that he gets put into an asylum. But Abby notes that Teddy didn’t kill the man, and they already know about the body!

Which, yeah, surprises Mortimer, obviously.

Abby cheerfully admits that the man, Mr. Hoskins, was poisoned by a tainted glass of elderberry wine, and that they did so on purpose, hiding the body before the Reverend came for a visit. The whole thing isn’t a big deal; it’s just Abby and Martha’s little secret!

After they leave, and brush off the whole thing as easy as needlepoint or macramé as a hobby, Mortimer, is completely broken by the whole affair, and is partially convinced that he’s dreaming. All the while, Elaine’s trying to get Mortimer to come over and speak with her father. But Mortimer can’t exactly forget about this whole silly murder thing, and goes to confront his aunts about it. He learns that Teddy’s digging not a lock, but a grave in the cellar. As he’s done with 10 other bodies. Or maybe it’s 11 others?

After picking up a phone call from Elaine, then hanging up abruptly (and understandably), Mortimer finds out how this whole thing started. See, the two have a “Renters Wanted” sign in their front lawn, and the neighborhood thinks that it’s there so the two sweet old ladies can offer help to anyone in need, even though they aren’t actually renting to anyone. In reality...well, they do it for another reason.

See, an older gentleman stopped by a bit ago, and he had a heart attack right there in the living room. After seeing how peaceful he looked, the two decided to bring in other lonely old men and bring in the same kind of peace. And from there...well, yeah, you get the general idea. They’ve been poisoning them with arsenic, strychnine, and cyanide mixed in with elderberry wine. Apparently, Martha’s got the mixture just right so that it tastes delicious. With all this explained, they offer Mortimer a sip of wine. Which he’s understandably nervous about.

But with all of that done, Elaine comes over to check in on him. But he’s not able to tell her anything, which greatly (and understandably) confuses her. He basically kicks her out (which enrages her, once again understandably), and calls a judge with the intent to frame the whole affair on Teddy, who’s always been.unstable. Which, for the record, is not even SLIGHTLY going to solve the problem.

But as he’s on the phone, a man named Gibbs (Edward McWade) comes in to rent an apartment. He’s all alone in the world, with nobody to care for him. And of course, this leads to the women trying to poison him with the wine. It’s a funny yet tense moment as he stops just short of drinking the wine, distracted by Mortimer’s freakout over the phone. But Mortimer gets off the phone JUST in time to scare Gibbs away and stop him from drinking the wine. And it is...VERY funny, goddamn.

As Mortimer tries to tell the aunts exactly what’s wrong with what they’re doing, the phone rings. It’s a call from Witherspoon (Edward Everett Horton), who runs an asylum that Mortimer wants Teddy committed into. However, they don’t quite have room for him, as they have too many Theodore Roosevelts at present. However, they do need more Napoleon Bonapartes. I love this goddamn movie.

Still, Witherspoon agrees to take him in despite that, and Mortimer head out to get the paperwork done. However, he asks his aunts to not do anything until he gets back, and he also proises that he’ll attend the “services” for their latest victim. He leaves, and kinda steals a cabbie’s car in the process (I love this movie, I’m telling you), and Abby and Martha start shutting things down for the night. However, as they do, they get a mysterious knock on the door. They pretend not to be home...only for a man with an ominous scar to enter the room regardless.

Let’s pause here, shall we? See you in Part 2!

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snowdice · 4 years

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Masterpost (Old)

This is an old, slightly broken Masterpost, but I might not remember to change all the links. The new one is here.

If you would just like to see all of my writing, I tag everything with #adriana writes on my blog. Click here for everything in chronological order of my posting. Click here for my AO3 account.

Completed fics are marked complete in their summary. You can click on the universe tags to read fics for that universe in chronological order of my posting.

The Prison You Deserve: (Complete) Virgil should have known better. Trying to help only ever ended badly for him. After a misunderstanding, Virgil gets thrown into the most infamous prison across all of the kingdoms, where the most evil criminals are thrown to get what they deserve at the hands of nightmarish creatures from the void. Luckily (for once) Virgil really didn’t deserve it. Trusting that this isn’t just a cruel trick and he isn’t actually going to be tortured though is going to take a while. (In which Patton is a eldritch horror, telepathic nightmare, and still is the sweetest thing on the planet and off it.)

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Bonus Features

Road Trips and Missing Persons: Patton was just getting groceries. The next thing he knew, there was a knife at his throat and he was an unwilling uber driver. Virgil’s on the run after the murder of his dad, and it’s not just his paranoia that’s telling him he’s being chased down. He has to get somewhere safe, somewhere he can trust, and all he has is a couple of stories from his dad and a name: “Green Bellow Foods and Dispensary.”

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

Mismatched High Heel Shoes: (One-shot: Complete) The boys are having fun. (This was for the #magpie500 event.)

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Cops and Not Robbers AU

You I’ll Come Back For: (Complete) They’d met in a jail cell, you see, but unlike now Patton had not been anywhere near trapped, not that Virgil had been aware of that fact. He’d just seen his sweet little cell mate who’d clearly not done anything to deserve being on that side of the bars. Virgil had said “What did you do to get stuck in this joint?” and Patton had started crying. It had taken zero lies and five hours for Patton to coax out the information he’d needed. He’d thought when he’d pranced up to the bars and told Roman he was ready to leave that the absolutely astonished expression which was quickly slipping into fury would be the last thing he’d ever see of the man whose crimes numbered enough to keep him in prison for the rest of his life. He’d escaped during his transfer to federal prison. (This was a dice fic. It also appears below!)

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Mistaken Identities: (One-Shot: Complete) Roman was just walking out of an ice-cream shop when an unfamiliar man’s irate voice made him pause mid lick and look up. “Dammit Remus, I told you to meet me two blocks that way and you’re getting ice cream?” | Now as an identical twin, especially one with a brother who had a… certain personality, he wasn’t exactly unused to this sort of thing happening. So, he promptly opened his mouth to say, “Oh no I’m not…” | “Remus, I don’t care right now,” he interrupted. “Get in the car.” | “But-” | The man snapped his fingers and a hand descended on his shoulder. “Get him in the car.” | Roman meets Deceit and later Logan when he is mistaken for his brother who is apparently doing SOMETHING with his life.

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A Bloody Handkerchief: (One-Shot: Complete) Dee and Roman help Logan move and Dee finds something from their past.

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Cuffed Universe

Tea, Cookies, and Handcuffs: (Complete) Logan finds a strange man on his property and of course invites him in for tea.

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What Remains Universe

What Remains of Us: (Complete) Virgil was young, but smart. “How are we going to do this?” he asked. “You’re 12. You can’t get a job or a house.” | “Remember when dad used to read us The Boxcar Children?” he asked. “It’ll be like that. Well, not exactly; there aren’t many old train tracks around, but we’ll find something. I even found an old copy of the book in the $.10 bin at the bookstore. The ending’s ripped out, but we’ve got the part where they figure out how to live in the woods. It’ll be like a guide.” | Patton and his little brother Virgil go on a “hiking trip” after the aunt they’d been living with hit Virgil.

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Remains of Memories: (Complete) Patton is about to graduate high school. As his life changes, he figures it’s time to confront some memories with the people he loves.

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Touch Me Gently Universe:

Touch Me Gently: (Complete) He had a total of four soulmarks: not an unheard-of thing, but rather rare. There were purple fingerprints on his wrist, looking like a day-old bruise from where someone had grabbed him too hard. What his mother had seen when he’d entered the kitchen was actually two soulmarks that overlapped slightly: a light blue one that darkened his lips and a yellow handprint that covered the lower parts of his cheek and jaw. The ring finger and the tip of the pinkie hit his lip, mixing with the blue to look like a sickly greenish-yellow bruise. What his dad had seen peaking out of the top of his t-shirt was a dark blue mark in the shape of fingers around his neck. Roman had been overjoyed when he realized what the marks were after the initial confusion. His parents had been a little less enthusiastic. (Roman meets his soulmates one-by-one and it’s not at all what everyone assumed when they first saw his soulmarks.)

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Bonus Features

Never a Chance to Hate You: (Complete) Logan picks Dee up for a date early in their relationship. Dee reflects on how his perceptions of his soulmates changed once he met them.

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Is There Anything Left of Patton? (Zombie AU; One-Shot Series) (Complete)

Logan has a secret in his basement. Three months into living with him, Virgil finds that secret. He almost wishes the secret was a simple as he first thought it was. Almost. AO3 Link

Something Left

Someone You’ll Never Meet

Food You’ll Never Eat

Things You’ll Never Do

There are Things You Have Lost

There Are Things That Are Missing

And There is a Question

Is There Anything Left of Patton?

And There is an Answer

But What Does It Mean?

One More Dance

One More Chance

When There Is Something Left

Bonus Features End Credit Scenes

Dilemmas (One-Shots Series)

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” he yelled.| “Patton,” Remus said evenly.|“It doesn’t!” he screamed turning on him viciously. “There’s a big difference between not being sad someone’s dead and… and… and no! No! I wouldn’t be okay with seeing someone I hated die. I wouldn’t!”| “Yes, you would,” Remus said, standing up himself. He pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You would! And you know you would! Do you think you are the only one who can get a read on another side when functions cross? Those thoughts in your head are my domain and I knew exactly what you were feeling when I asked that question!” Virgil was forcibly summoned immediately, eyes wide. Patton and Remus have a philosophical discussion and then will have to deal with the fall out. (AO3 Link)

Moral Dilemmas

Ethical Reasoning

The Dangers of Stereotypes

When I Can Say I Love You: (Complete) In a world where their very existences are illegal, let alone their relationship, Patton and Logan share a moment discussing what they wish their world could be.

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The Horror of Stereotypes: (Complete) There had always been a certain stereotype about people like him for as long as anyone could remember. After the Heart War of 1963, those stereotypes had been legalized and places like this had been created to enforce the universal truth: everyone had a soulmate. One soulmate. No more and no less. At least they were supposed to. When Remus’s brother gets arrested because of his two soulmarks, Remus risks everything by infiltrating the facility he legally should be in as well due to his own two soulmates to save him. There he meets Logan and it turns out they have a lot in common: they both got hired this week, they both have two soulmates, and they’re both here for the same reason. Oh. And as it turns out, they’re each other’s soulmates too.

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Bonus Features

Labeled Universe (A Superhero AU)

Sometimes Labels Fail: (Complete) Logan was good at labels, at categories. Logan sorted the citizens of his city into 6 different categories in his mind: heroes, villains, vigilantes, criminals, government authorities, and civilians, and knew how to deal with each. But… but what was he supposed to do with him. Virgil was just trying to survive, though he didn’t think the part of him that compelled him to throw himself into fights whenever he saw the superhero Bluebird struggling had gotten the memo. His English teacher was right; he really was stupid. When the villain criminal… when Shadow Caster gets injured while throwing himself into the line of fire for Logan, Logan can’t find it in himself to turn him over to be arrested. Luckily, he knows a doctor very, very well. Virgil is going to get kidnapped adopted by the end of it.

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Bonus Features

Sometimes Labels Shift (Post Sometimes Labels Fail Stories)

Here’s a timeline for these fics with some commentary.

Mini Fic Series: One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen Fourteen Fifteen Sixteen Seventeen Eighteen Nineteen Twenty Twenty-One Twenty-Two Twenty-Three

Two Dinner Plates: (Complete) A muscle ticked in Logan’s jaw and Virgil tried not to flinch. “We seem to be coming from fundamentally different philosophies on how food should be distributed in a family structure.” In which we finally actually talk about Virgil’s thing™ with food. It goes about how one would expect it to.

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Back to School: (Complete) It’s Virgil’s first day back to school after everything and he has some adjustments to make.Aka a blatant excuse to enact the hug Virgil initiative.

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Sticky Note Pandemonium: (Complete) There were also sticky notes on the kitchen counter, the refrigerator, Virgil’s backpack, and even the oven, not to mention every wall. There was even one sticky note stuck on Logan’s butt.His husband had gone on a rampage.

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Arguments and other ‘A’ Words: (Complete) Logan and Virgil have a row. Virgil’s new family has a weird way of fighting.

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The Things We Haven’t Talked About: (Complete) Patton and Logan have noticed some concerning behavior from Virgil in their month with him. Beyond the flinching and haunted look in his eyes courtesy of his last foster father, there’s something else of concern for Patton and Logan and they really aren’t equipped to deal with it. They enlist some help from a couple of friends.

AO3 Part 1 Part 2

Wind Symphony: (Complete) Patton and Logan are still trying to figure out how to be parents and are worried about strange behavior coming from their new son as of late. Logan takes measures to figure out what is wrong.

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Coffee and Cinnamon Rolls: (Complete) Remy meets his best friend/bosses new child and immediately has the must protect at all cost urges.

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Virgil’s Birthday: (Complete) Virgil has his first birthday with Logan and Patton and he’s going to get everything he ever wanted.

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Punishments: (Complete) Virgil gets into a fight at school. At home, everyone has to deal with their individual hang ups when it comes to punishments.

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Family Game Night: (Complete) The boys have a nice family game night. Patton gets to deal with figuring out how to not let them cheat with their superpowers.

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Family Science Night: (Complete) Dumb science nerd father and his curiosity-killed-the-cat idiot child play with electricity and superpowers.

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We Need to Put a Bell on Virgil: (Complete) Patton and Logan lose Virgil.

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Pumpkins, Corn, and Caffeine: (Complete) Remy steals Virgil to take him to a pumpkin patch. (A Labeled Universe Fic)

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Vengeance is Soft: (Complete) Logan sighed. Patton was a wonderful man: kind, gentle, and empathetic. He listened and took into account other’s perspectives and feelings on every issue and always did his best to make people feel at east. Patton while sick was an absolute monster. | Patton’s friends and family deal with him while he’s sick and here’s the thing about Patton. Patton is a hypocrite.

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First Week Fics: A collection of fics about Virgil's first week with Logan and Patton in the Labeled Universe.

AO3 Part 1 Part 2

The Importance of Practice: (Complete) Virgil attempts to perform a simple light manipulation trick during training. He fails. (?)

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Lessons From a Book: (Complete) Virgil cannot get anywhere in his training. He guesses he finally manged to piss Logan off.

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Divestment of Childhood: (Complete) Now, the thing about Virgil was, he knew how to sneak out of a house in the middle of the night. He was very, very good at it. If sneaking out of places was something one could go to college for, Virgil could easily get a PhD. He knew all of the tricks. He did none of these things.Virgil runs away from home.

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Virgil’s Culinary Abilities: (Complete) Patton’s running late so Virgil cooks dinner.

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Relabeled; Refiled (Prequels to Sometimes Labels Fail)

Coffee Shop Meet Cute: (Complete) Is this what falling in love felt like or was Patton just about to pass out from exhaustion? Patton and Logan’s first meeting in the Sometimes Labels Fail Universe.

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Coffee Shop Incident Report: (Complete) Patton and Logan’s first meeting in the Sometimes Labels Fail Universe, but what Logan put in his files about it afterwards.

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The Things We Never Mentioned: (Complete) “Believe it or not, academia and relationships are not mutually exclusive.” That was likely true, Logan knew. It was also not the problem. The problem was his ability to move things with his mind, a blue suit he kept in his bag, and the mountains of red files he kept hidden in his apartment. No one knew that Logan was Bluebird, the cities resident superhero. He hadn’t even told his parents and he wasn’t planning on doing so. Sharing such a secret with anyone was a danger to everyone involved. He refused to do so. At the same time, he knew that starting a romantic relationship with anyone who didn’t know the truth, was unfair to that person. Inevitably they would find out and there would be a disastrous fallout, but beyond that, starting a relationship on a foundation of lies was a horribly cruel thing to do to another person. These two conflicting rules Logan followed had never posed an issue for him before recently, but…But he did like Patton.

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Logan’s 25 Step Plan to Ask a Boy Out: (Complete) “No! Logan look,” she said. “He likes you and you like him. You don’t need a list or a plan or schematics for this. Just walk up to him and ask him out before you hesitate so much that he thinks you don’t like him anymore.” | Logan’s eyes widened. “Is that something that can happen.” | “Oh god, this is hopeless.” | How is Logan so good at, but simultaneously so bad at this?

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Facts on White Chrysanthemums: (Complete) Logicality first kiss in the Labeled Universe.

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Gaps in His Files: (Complete) Logan Berry has learned many things the last 10 years: a lot of math and physics, a bit of humility, and how to be a hero being just a few. Through his education, his experience teaching, and his exploits as the superhero Bluebird, he’s changed in a lot of small and large ways. He has recorded these changes in well-organized documents and files. He’s even had to create two new file designations: a red one for files about his moonlighting at Bluebird, and a light blue one dedicated to his boyfriend, Patton.When Bluebird is targeted by a memory device and all of those 10 years of progress suddenly disappear, Patton Sanders and Logan’s extensive files are left as his only resource to get those memories back. But what is Patton supposed to do when there are clear gaps in his files? And what does he do when he is one of them?

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13 Part 14 Epilogue

Remy’s Follow Up Questions: (Complete) Remy sees Patton for the first time after the closet freak out.

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First Anniversary: Logan and Patton go on a trip for their first anniversary.

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Board Games: (Complete) “You’re really going to seduce me to win a monopoly game?” he asked. | “Is it working?” Logan likes to cheat at board games. Especially at Monopoly.

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The Origin Story of a Yapping Mop: (Complete) Virgil was not the first living creature Logan carried in his arms to Patton. This is how they ended up with a dog.

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Illusory Records (Janus’ story (with a lot of Remus))

A Life That is Yours: (Complete) Decades before he was known the well-known and semi-respected vigilante Deceit, Janus makes a choice. He hopes it is good for the both of them.

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Deceit’s Follow Up Questions: (Complete) So what, if his actions could possibly be construed to look like they were in some way related to helping Bluebird. Maybe an outside might think he was in some way angry about what had happened to the superhero, but that wasn’t what was happening. It just… hit a nerve; it wasn’t a big deal. It did not mean he liked the man. It barely meant he respected him. Ugh. When had he started respecting a superhero?

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Illusions of Grandeur… Or Perhaps Just Illusions: Remus is training to be an undercover super-agent, but training is boring. So, being Remus he… finds some “fun” (read trouble) with the city’s resident vigilante.

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Other

Party Time Boredom: (Complete) Emile is bored at a party, but Bluebird suggests he go talk to a boy.

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Roll the Dice Event

1. Buckets of Roses: (Complete) As far as anyone knew, Logan was supposed to be in class right now. Which begs the question of why and how Roman is now in his room with him. (“And now that I have explained why I am currently in my own dorm room, would you care to explain why you are here?” “Not, um, not particularly.”)

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2. Touch Me Gently: (Complete) He had a total of four soulmarks: not an unheard-of thing, but rather rare. There were purple fingerprints on his wrist, looking like a day-old bruise from where someone had grabbed him too hard. What his mother had seen when he’d entered the kitchen was actually two soulmarks that overlapped slightly: a light blue one that darkened his lips and a yellow handprint that covered the lower parts of his cheek and jaw. The ring finger and the tip of the pinkie hit his lip, mixing with the blue to look like a sickly greenish-yellow bruise. What his dad had seen peaking out of the top of his t-shirt was a dark blue mark in the shape of fingers around his neck. Roman had been overjoyed when he realized what the marks were after the initial confusion. His parents had been a little less enthusiastic. (Roman meets his soulmates one-by-one and it’s not at all what everyone assumed when they first saw his soulmarks.)

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Bonus Features

3. Markups: (Complete) Roman leered down at him, clearly incredibly pleased with himself. “You,” he said as Logan did his best to swallow down the rest of his laughter, “have been criticizing my work all day. Which is basically like you’ve been criticizing me. So…why don’t I return the favor?” He wiggled the uncapped pen in front of Logan’s nose. “You wouldn’t dare,” Logan said lowly. (Logan and Roman do some editing.)

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4. Moral Dilemmas: (Complete) “But that doesn’t make any sense!” he yelled.| “Patton,” Remus said evenly.|“It doesn’t!” he screamed turning on him viciously. “There’s a big difference between not being sad someone’s dead and… and… and no! No! I wouldn’t be okay with seeing someone I hated die. I wouldn’t!”| “Yes, you would,” Remus said, standing up himself. He pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You would! And you know you would! Do you think you are the only one who can get a read on another side when functions cross? Those thoughts in your head are my domain and I knew exactly what you were feeling when I asked that question!” Virgil was forcibly summoned immediately, eyes wide. Patton and Remus have a philosophical discussion and then will have to deal with the fall out.

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5. You I’ll Come Back For: (Complete) They’d met in a jail cell, you see, but unlike now Patton had not been anywhere near trapped, not that Virgil had been aware of that fact. He’d just seen his sweet little cell mate who’d clearly not done anything to deserve being on that side of the bars. Virgil had said “What did you do to get stuck in this joint?” and Patton had started crying. It had taken zero lies and five hours for Patton to coax out the information he’d needed. He’d thought when he’d pranced up to the bars and told Roman he was ready to leave that the absolutely astonished expression which was quickly slipping into fury would be the last thing he’d ever see of the man whose crimes numbered enough to keep him in prison for the rest of his life. He’d escaped during his transfer to federal prison.

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

6. The Horror of Stereotypes: (Complete) There had always been a certain stereotype about people like him for as long as anyone could remember. After the Heart War of 1963, those stereotypes had been legalized and places like this had been created to enforce the universal truth: everyone had a soulmate. One soulmate. No more and no less. At least they were supposed to. When Remus’s brother gets arrested because of his two soulmarks, Remus risks everything by infiltrating the facility he legally should be in as well due to his own two soulmates to save him. There he meets Logan and it turns out they have a lot in common: they both got hired this week, they both have two soulmates, and they’re both here for the same reason. Oh. And as it turns out, they’re each other’s soulmates too.

AO3 Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Bonus Features

7. Remains of Memories: (Complete) Patton is about to graduate high school. As his life changes, he figures it’s time to confront some memories with the people he loves.

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8. Tea, Cookies, and Handcuffs: (Complete) Logan finds a strange man on his property and of course invites him in for tea.

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9. A Mystery in a Mask (but Not Out of It): (Complete) Roman accidentally sleeps with a co-worker, but since his job is being a superhero and they all wear mask, he’s not sure which co-worker. Also Patton got kidnapped.

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10. Pumpkins, Corn, and Caffeine: (Complete) Remy steals Virgil to take him to a pumpkin patch. (A Labeled Universe Fic)

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11. Where Ghosts Live: (Complete) Logan meets three ghosts on the way to his destination. All of them have different things to say.

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12. The Death of Benji (Complete) A crime has been committed in the mindscape. Patton and Janus investigate. Virgil semi-reluctantly helps.

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#master post #not writing #blog organization

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cctinsleybaxter · 3 years

Text

2020 in books

2020 was a year of changed reading habits; people reading more than ever or not at all, some changing their tastes and others turning to old comforts. While there weren’t any huge overhauls on my end, more free time did mean a total of 32 in a wider range of genres. In the past couple of years I found a lot of the things I read to be kind of middling and ranked them accordingly, but this year had some strong contenders in the mix. With college officially behind me I love nonfiction again, and I really need to stop being drawn in by novels with long titles that ‘sound interesting.’ A piece of advice to my future self: they will only make you angry.

The Good

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky I loved the BBC radio play when I first listened to it back in 2017, but didn’t know if I could stomach the idea of actually reading the 700-page book, especially since I already knew the plot (spoiler alert: this had no effect and I gasped multiple times despite knowing what was going to happen; Fyodor’s just that good at atmosphere.) The story follows Prince Lev Myshkin, a goodhearted but troubled man entering 1860s Petersburg high society and meeting all of the wretched people therein as he navigates life, laughs, love, unanswerable questions of faith, and human suffering. I care about it in the same way I think other people care about reality TV shows and soap operas. I’m so personally invested in the drama and feel so many different emotions directed at these clowns that it’s like being a fan of Invitation to Love (with an ending equally upsetting to that of the show ITL is from, Twin Peaks.)

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlanksy I adored this book. The first half reads a little like a Wikipedia article, and I was worried that it was leaning too clinical and would be disaffected with colonialism and indigenous peoples, but even that oversight is corrected for as the text goes on. It’s not going to be for everybody because it really is just the world’s longest encyclopedia entry on, well, salt, but it’s written with such excitement for the topic and is so well-researched and styled for commercial nonfiction that I think it deserves any and all praise it’s gotten. We have to talk about that time Cheshire was literally sinking into the ground, and companies who were over-pumping brine water to steal each other’s brine water said ‘no it’s okay it’s supposed to that’ so were legally dismissed as suspects.

Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy Cried. 10/10. The plot of Midnight Cowboy is very classic and actually has a lot in common with The Idiot, as 20-something Joe Buck moves from the American Southwest to NYC and meets myriad challenges as a sex worker. I’ve been obsessed with the movie for a few years now and the book made me appreciate it anew; I think it’s rare for an adaptation to take the risk of being so different from its source material while still capturing its spirit. The movie doesn’t include quieter moments like the full conversation with Towny or time spent in the X-flat, nor does it attempt to touch Joe’s internal monologue or his and Rico’s extensive backstories, but these things are essential to the book and are some of the best and most affecting writing I’ve ever read. Finally! The Great American Novel!

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones I would firmly like to say that this is probably the best horror novel ever written. The setup is very traditional in that it’s about a group of friends facing supernatural comeuppance for a past mistake, but delivery on that premise is anything but familiar. A story about personal and cultural trauma that raises questions about what we owe to each other and what it means to be Blackfeet, with a cast that’s unbelievably real and sympathetic even at their absolute worst. Creepypasta writers trying to cash in on the cultural mythos of lumped-together tribes wish they were capable of writing something a tenth as gruesome and good as this. It could very well be a movie the visuals and writing style were so arresting, and I can’t wait to read whatever Jones writes next.

Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas This is the least accessible title on the list since it’s a college textbook for people with background in film, but it was so nice to read a woman unpacking film theory with the expertise and confidence it deserves that I have to rank it among the best. I had an absolute blast reading it and am going to have to stop myself from bringing up the horror of 1960s safety films as a cocktail icebreaker.

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

The year’s toughest read by far, but also its most rewarding. Thompson uses mountains of documents, government-buried intel, and personal interviews to explain what happened at Attica from beginning to end, and does a fantastic job of balancing hard facts and ‘unbiased journalism’ with much-needed emotion and critical analysis. It’s more important reading in the 2020s than any kind of ‘why/how to not be racist’ book club book is going to be, and the historical context it provides is as interesting as it is invaluable. The second half drags a bit in going through lengthy trial processes with some assumed baseline knowledge of legalese (which I did not have. All that criminal minds in 2015… meaningless), but aside from that editing and prose are some of the best I’ve seen in nonfiction.

The Bad

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn A friend and I decided to read this together because I’m obsessed with how insane the author is and wanted to know if he can actually write.

He cannot.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron Barron is an indie darling of the horror fiction scene, so I was excited to finally read one of his collections but can now attest that I hate him. If you’re going to do Lovecraft please deconstruct Lovecraft in an interesting way. I had actually written a lot about the issues I have with how he develops characters and plots, but one of the only shorthand notes I took was “he won’t stop saying ‘bole’ instead of tree trunk” and I feel like that’s the only review we need.

Bats of the Republic by Zach Dodson Look up a photo of this author because if I had bothered to glance at the jacket bio I honest-to-god wouldn’t have even tried reading this.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone I went in with high expectations since this is an epistolary novella I’d seen praised on tumblr and youtube but oh my god was there a reason I was seeing it praised on tumblr and youtube. This is bad Steven Universe fanfiction. Both authors included ‘listening to the Steven Universe soundtrack throughout’ in the acknowledgements, and to add insult to injury there’s a plug from my nemesis Madeline Miller.

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton The premise of this one plays with so many tropes I like that I should have been more suspicious. It’s a dinner party with stock characters one would expect of Clue, and rather than our protagonist being the detective he’s a man with amnesia stuck in a 24-hour time loop. Body-hopping between guests, he must gather evidence using the skillsets of each ‘host’ until he either solves Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder or the limit of eight hosts runs out. I read a lot of not-very-good books, and it’s so, so much worse when they have potential to be fun. This is how you lose the most points, and how I abandon decorum and end up writing a list of grievances: • Our protagonist can only inhabit male hosts, which I think is a stupid writing decision not because I’m ‘woke’ but because wouldn’t it make sense for him to also be working with the maids, cooks, and women close to the murder victim? • Complaining about the limitations of hosts makes some sense (e.g- there’s a section where he thinks that it’s hard to be an old man because it’s difficult to get to the places he needs to be quickly), but one of his hosts is a rapist and one of his hosts is fat. Guess which one gets complained about more. • One of the later hosts is just straight-up a cop with cop knowledge that singlehandedly solves the case. We spend some time being like ‘wow I couldn’t have done it without the info all eight hosts helped gather’ but it was 100% the detective and he solves the murder using information he got off-screen. • The mystery itself is actually well-paced and I didn’t have a lot of issues with it (e.g, there’s a twist that I guessed only shortly before the end), which makes it all the worse that the metanarrative of this book is INSANE. No spoilers but the reveal as to why our unnamed protagonist is even in this situation is stupid. I just know they’re going to make it into a movie and I’m preemptively going to aaaaaaaaa!!!

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi The fact that this was the worst book I read all year, worse even than the bad Steven Universe fanfiction, and it won multiple awards makes my blood boil. I could rant about it for hours but just know that it’s a former theater kid’s take on perception and memory, and deals with sexual abuse in a way that’s handled both very badly and with a level of fake deepness that’s laughable. Select fake-deep quotes I copied down because at one point I said ‘oh barf’ aloud: -I’m filled with melancholy that’s almost compassion. It’s sad the same way. -[On a friendship ending] We almost never know what we know until after we know it. -Because we’re none of us alone in this world. We injure each other.

There are also bad sex scenes that I can’t quite make fun of because I think (HOPE?) they’re supposed to be a melodramatic take on how teenagers view sex, but I very much wanted to die. Flowers were alluded to. Nipples were compared to diamonds.

Honorable/Dishonorable Mentions (categorized as the same thing because, well,)

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North This book was frustrating because the first third of it is fantastic. It’s set up to be a takedown of the manic pixie dream girl trope, jumping from person to person discussing their relationship with the titular Sophie, and indirectly revealing that she was just some girl and not the difficult and mysterious genius they all believed her to be. Then in the third act, BAM! She was that difficult and mysterious genius and she’s now indirectly brought all the people from her past together. I wanted to scream the plot beefed it so bad, but the good news is I really liked this octopus description.

It was the size of a three-year-old child, and it seemed awful to me that something could be so far from human and obviously want something as badly as it wanted to get out of the tank.

Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore Cool new nightmare speedrun strat is to hear a 2-second anecdote from a documentary that people used to get radium poisoning from painting watch faces, be curious enough that you buy a book to learn more, and be met with medical and legal horror beyond anything you could have imagined. This was almost one of my favorite books of the year! Almost.

Radium Girls is very lovingly crafted and incredibly well-researched; one of those things that’s hard to get through but that you want to read sections of again as soon as you’ve finished. The umbrage I take with it is that it’s very Catholic. The author and many of her subjects are Irish and their religion is important to them, but it casts a martyr-y narrative over the whole thing that I found uncomfortable. Seventeen-year-old girls taking a factory job they didn’t know was dangerous are framed as brave, working-class heroes, but there’s not a set moral lesson to be gained from this story. Sarah Maillefer didn’t make “a sacrifice” when she agreed to the first radium tests, she agreed because she was terrified. She didn’t think she was helping she was begging for help.

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Tsing Tsing is an incredibly skilled researcher and ethnographer; there are so many good ideas in this book that I’d almost consider it essential leftist text… if I could stand the way it was structured. Tsing posits that because nature is built on precariousness she will build her book the same way, allowing it to grow like a mushroom, and thus chapters don’t progress linearly and are written more like freeform poetry than a series of academic arguments. Some people are really going to love that, but I’m me and a mushroom is a mushroom and a book is a book. I don’t think in the way Tsing does, and while I tried to keep an open mind it’s hard to play along when something is this academically dense and makes so many ambitious claims. As if to prove how different our structuring methods are, I’ve made my own thoughts into a pros and cons list

Things I liked: • ‘Contamination’ as something inherent to diversity • ‘Scalability’ as a flawed way of thinking (Tsing has written whole essays about this that I find very compelling, but a main example here is that China and the US have come down on Japanese matsutake research for being too ‘site specific’ and not yielding enough empirical data) • Discussing how Americans were so invested in self-regulating systems in the 1950s we thought they could be applied to literally everything, including ecosystems • “The survivors of war remind us of the bodies they climbed over- or shot- to get to us. We don’t know whether to love or hate the survivors. Simple moral judgements don’t come to hand.” • Any and all fieldwork Tsing shares is amazing; I especially liked reading about the culture of mushroom pickers living in the Cascades and their contained market system

Things I didn’t like: • Statements that sound deep but aren’t, e.g- “help is always in the service of another.” (Yep. That’s what that means. Unless an organism is doing something to help itself which then nullifies your whole opening argument.) • A very debatable definition of utilitarianism • “Capitalism vs pre-capitalism,” which seems like an insanely black-and-white stance for a book all about finding hidden middle ground • A chapter I found really interesting about how intertwined Japanese and American economies are, but it tries to cover the entire history of US-Japan relations. Seriously, starting with Governor Perry and continuing through present day, this could have been a whole different book and it’s a good example of what I mean when I say arguments feel too scattered (the conclusion it reaches is that in the 80s the yen was finally able to hold its own against the dollar. Just explain that part.) • A chapter arguing that ‘true biological mutualism’ is rarely a focus of STEM and is a new sociological development/way of thinking which is just… flat-out not true

For all the comparisons art gets to ‘being on a drug trip’ this anthropology textbook has come the closest for me. Moments of profound human wisdom, intercut with things I had trouble understanding because I wasn’t on the same wavelength, intercut with even more things that felt false or irrelevant. I can’t put it on the nice list but I am glad I read it.

#2020 #books #long post #(in case the read more isn't working)

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autumnblogs · 3 years

Text

Day 18: Engineering our own misfortune

https://homestuck.com/story/2939

It never occurred to me until now that being betrayed by Jack Noir, the first person to accept him for who he is in a sense, is probably a signifcant part of the reason why Karkat is so angry. It’s probably ironic that the Blood Player’s relationships all have a tendency to disintegrate. Poor guy.

All but one of Karkat’s coplayers will either die, betray him, abandon him, or break up with him before the adventure is over.

More after the break. CW: This one has some suicide mentions in it.

https://homestuck.com/story/2950

WV and the other Carapacians may have some instinctive level of awareness of the players’ classes and aspects - while their legend is ensconced in Carapacian Lore, WV instantly senses the narrative presence of the Thief of Light.

https://homestuck.com/story/2960

Now here is something interesting. I just picked up on it, even though it has actually been present all throughout - when the Narrative addresses WV, it addresses him with information he almost certainly could not know - in a call and response fashion! While he’s jumping from one thought to another in terms of John’s different correspondents, the way that he phrases his dialogue suggests that he is aware of what the Narrative is addressing him.

https://homestuck.com/story/2962

And by all accounts, what he is viewing here is not the literal material events as they unfold, he’s literally looking at the same panels we are.

https://homestuck.com/story/2974

Vriska’s gloating here has always given me chills. It’s in moments like these that she really shines as not just a bully but an authentic diabolical mastermind who is, at least at this point in the story, utterly indifferent to the lives of other people.

https://homestuck.com/story/2975

Vriska’s external locus of control excuses her of feeling guilty about creating Bec Noir. While she is 100% responsible for it, that doesn’t mean, in her mind, that she should suffer any consequences for it (although she’s perfectly happy to take the credit for creating him, it seems.)

https://homestuck.com/story/2992

I’ve always thought that the Dream Bubbles were an extremely cool plot contrivance - semantically linking memories together with dreams and death is a really cool bit of linking.

https://homestuck.com/story/3008

Just as Jade has had effectively no parent to help her find her way in life, she will now have to suffer a sprite who cannot give her advice either. She remains alone.

https://homestuck.com/story/3010

Bec, to a greater degree than perhaps even the Seers, is directly cognizant of interruptions by Command Prompts.

https://homestuck.com/story/3017

I’m starting to be able to actually pick up the themes of the whole Exile plotline.

It seems, in general, to be a parable on power and authority, with each of the Exiles representing one kind or another. You’ve got WV who aspires to be first among equals, democratically elected, a community leader and organizer.

You’ve got the White Queen, who fits classical tropes related to the Good Monarch, a symbolic authority.

You’ve got the Peregrine Mendicant, whose take on governmental duty is more that of a functionary - her self-concept is as someone who does what is needed.

And then you’ve got the Aimless Renegade, who, as a Mad Max Type wasteland cop, could be read as either a playful parody of eighties and nineties copaganda, or as a criticism of copaganda, or both - government as the State, an enforcer of constructed order.

Of all of them, it’s clear that WV and PM’s takes on power are the most useful. The White King and Queen are quickly slaughtered once Jack arrives, because without their magical mcguffins, they remain little more than walking talking symbols.

AR is an interesting case though, because his defining character moment is that he hesitates to follow his orders, and while it could be argued that everything that ensues is his fault for not being stone cold enough to do what needs to be done, I’d argue that his hesitation is admirable - Jack escapes to live another day, and the Mayor survives. The Mayor’s infectious compassion ultimately saves his own life through the AR’s refusal to let him die by destroying the command stations in Cascade, because AR is not willing to trade lives.

https://homestuck.com/story/3040

I’ve never been entirely clear on whether the Dark Gods should be considered evil or simply incomprehensible, morally uncategorizable - in any case, the unique nature of the Kids’ session seems to preclude an ordinary relationship with them. By all accounts they also seem perfectly happy to help Rose create the Green Sun as well, sowing the seeds that will grow into Lord English, their own murderer.

Whatever they’re up to is extremely unclear, and they mostly seem to be a wildcard. I’ll have to see if any of my Homestuck chums have thoughts about the Horrorterrors. With the exception of the Dream Bubbles and their ability to facilitate interaction between the living and the Dead, talking to the Horrorterrors seems to be at best an exercise in facilitating inevitable misfortune - they seem to be all but completely useless.

I suppose learning how to navigate the furthest ring comes in handy exactly once, since it enables the kids to fly to the Alpha’s universe.

https://homestuck.com/story/3043

Rose’s pessimistic dissatisfaction manifests in two ways during this conversation - the first is her contemplation of self-destruction. Along with her suicide mission, one of the very first things she mentions about Doc Scratch is that he wants to die - which clearly fascinates her. The other thing is that, suspicious of the version of truth that Skaia presents, and lacking an anchor, she is very easily swayed by characters who offer her an alternative truth.

https://homestuck.com/story/3045

It has just occurred to me that while Rose doesn’t do anything directly to harm her co-players the way that Vriska does, the main actual thing that they have in common, that I was having a hard time putting my finger on, is actually another parallel between the two of them and Aradia - by allowing themselves to be manipulated by forces of evil beyond human comprehension - Doc Scratch in particular - Rose and Vriska both make manifest all sorts of misfortune. In Aradia’s case, it’s her continuous manipulation by the voices of the dead.

Both of them create nearly all of their own problems, and while they’re at it, create immense amounts of suffering from other people who happen to be in the vicinity. And, according to the rules of the Alpha Timeline, both of them therefore give their assent to their misfortune. The Alpha Timeline is, of course, the same as the Glub Glub trap - if you refuse to participate, you are destroyed, but participation is horrible.

https://homestuck.com/story/3055

Couple things.

The first and most obvious is;

Monkey see, Monkey do.

We’re starting to see the fallout of Vriska’s attempts to acculturate Tavros - she’s tried to force a square peg into a round hole, and has had no luck. Tavros doesn’t fit her vision of an ideal troll, and he never will; that’s not the kind of person that he is.

The use of the word hero is what’s important here. Notice especially the way that he draws a line from physical fitness and personal worth - the ability to do important things that you want to do has become Tavros’ idea of how to self-actualize. He has internalized Vriska’s toxic ideas.

The other thing is that while Grandpa may not have literally committed suicide, but he is clearly emotionally checked out of life - playing Indiana Jones when he’s away from home, and interacting with fantasy women at his tea party, instead of engaging with his real life granddaughter.

Suicide’s a touchy subject, one which Homestuck touches on. As I’ve already said, I’m not going to touch on the Epilogues or HS^2, both of which also touch on the subject. It’s not a central theme, I don’t think, although either killing themselves or waiting around to die recur multiple times as possibilities in the minds of different characters, particularly the Lalondes and Striders. I’ll have more to say about each individual instance, but in both the insincere threat of suicide Rose uses in her early strife, and here in Act 5, the act of self-destruction is not motivated by despair, but by spite - for Rose, self-destruction would be an act to spite someone else who wants her to exist.

Grandpa Harley’s complete emotional absence from the life of his loved ones might be called a bit of emotional suicide. Checked out of personal reality completely to pursue a life of fantasy (and to facilitate Sburb), Grandpa Harley may as well have been dead from Jade’s perspective, even before he died.

https://homestuck.com/story/3056

The link between being a Hero Coolguy and Romantic (Reproductive) Success is drawn very neatly by Tavros, but because the premise is false, the conclusion is also false.

https://homestuck.com/story/3059

Vriska immediately calls attention to the way Tavros is parroting her behavior because of her influence - without all of the chest-beating and saber-rattling that Vriska does, the skillfully executed showmanship of being aloof and confident, there’s not that much difference between what Tavros tried to pull just now, and what Vriska has always done - even repeating her romantic faux-pas.

https://homestuck.com/story/3078

And we’ll pause here, before I get to another walkaround, which I will do tomorrow.

Not a lot that inspired me to talk in the 150 or so pages I got today. Lots of action in Act 5, but less emotional meat to dig into.

For now, it’s Cam signing off, alive but not alone.

#liveblogging #commentary

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