#I’ve seen interpretations where he hates her but the thing is

[hearts4juzi]

Me thinking about flashlight duo and their connections to Elizabeth because everyone explores Michael knowing I genuinely cannot figure them out

#I don’t blame ppl for focusing on Mike #hell I of all people am not ALLOWED to blame ppl for focusing on Mike #but also because she never interacts with Evan in canon #but it’s so complicated #Elizabeth doesn’t treat Evan like straight shit but she’s not kind to him either #and she avoids him #so idk how Gregory would feel about her #it’s making my brain explode #I’ve seen interpretations where he hates her but the thing is #I don’t think Liz would ruin her relationship with Evan beyond repair like Michael did #and I don’t think she’s as stubborn as Michael #so idk I genuinely don’t know #flashlight duo #I just rambles in the tags. sorryyyyyw #tzu rambles

[rallamajoop]

On Mia Winters, misogyny, and abuse

As should be pretty obvious by now, I love Mia Winters. I honestly think she’s one of the most compelling characters in this whole damn franchise.

But let me make clear: you don’t have to love her. Mia’s canonically done a lot of shady shit in her time, and her relationship with Ethan has real problems. There are perfectly viable interpretations where the only thing really holding it together is his own denial. Only I never seem to get to read any of those takes, because the most common characterisations Mia gets in fic are an irredeemable monster, or a cardboard cutout who exists only to be written out as quickly as possible. And to write Mia out to that degree doesn’t just do her character a disservice, it does Ethan a disservice, and a big one.

The amount of Mia-bashing I see out there in this fandom turns my stomach. It’s not just the slash fans who’d rather ship Ethan with another dude. I have seen Mia loudly bashed in tags on het or gen fic in which she does not even appear. I have seen male fans reviewing these games on youtube who treat her the exact same way. But it’s never more frustrating than when that hate comes from the same fans who’ll turn around and talk about characters like Chris or even Lady Dimitrescu (she who canonically abuses her and murders her servants, and, y’know, eats people without a shred of remorse) like they’re perfectly forgivable and have done no real wrong. And don’t get me wrong: I love Lady D, but I love her because she’s magnificently evil. Mia? Mia’s a whole lot more complicated.

But to really explain why this hate makes me so uncomfortable, I’m going to have to start with the start of Resident Evil 7, and Mia’s very first scenes in this whole franchise.

Let me quickly summarise the opening of that game. A man whose wife disappeared without explanation suddenly gets a message about her whereabouts. He travels to an isolated location, breaks in, and finds her. She denies ever sending him that message, and seems incredibly distressed that he’s there at all. They fight. It ends with him sinking an axe into her neck and shooting her several times with a handgun. But see, he didn’t do anything wrong! It was all self-defence! She started it! She was acting crazy!

If you didn’t spot it, the whole opening of RE7 reads uncomfortably like a story about a woman escaping an abusive relationship, then being tracked down and murdered by her ex.

Obviously, I am not here to tell you Ethan’s abusive. He’s not, we’ve got no reason to imagine he is. He was legitimately acting in self-defence.

But the fact the first thing Ethan has to do in this game is find the balls to kill his own wife ‒ that a whole new era of Resi games has opened with a sequence so easily read as a sympathetic justification for how a man might perfectly innocently track down his missing spouse and "have" to kill her – that made those opening minutes into by far the most uncomfortable part of this whole franchise for me. Shit like this really happens. I mean it, I will track down the fucking statistics on women who are murdered after trying to leave an abusive partner if I have to.

What happens to ‘Mia’ in the opening to RE8 isn’t much better: it's as textbook a fridging as any I’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s a fridging that gets retconned away later when she turns up alive, but the fact that’s even possible speaks to just how awful and confusing her death is. The game opens with Mia’s violent murder at the hands of this series’ longest running ‘hero’, and the event is framed entirely in terms of how awful it is for her husband. That's as frigid as a fridging gets.

The eventual reveal that the real Mia was just trapped alone in a cell being experimented on by a madwoman for god knows how long doesn’t actually make it better. The horror Mia goes through in both these games is a footnote, barely explored.

I bring these events up not to condemn the RE franchise, not to say that including these sequences was unconscionable, or that violence against women can never be shown in a horror title. A quick glance at my tumblr should demonstrate how much I adore these games. Tropes like fridging become problems only because they’re so ubiquitous they can come to define almost the only roles women get to play, not because any individual example is necessarily grounds for outrage. If anything, there’s just as much to analyse in all the hate thrown at characters like Ethan Winters (or his predecessor, Jonathan Harker) as a archtypical examples of sexism against men – backlash against the very idea of a male character in the disempowered role of horror victim, usually reserved for women.

But with this context in mind, my god is it uncomfortable to see people talk about Mia as irredeemable monster who deserves to suffer more. People who will valorise the likes of Chris Redfield, who didn’t even bother to stop to tell Ethan that’s not Mia, yet talk about Mia like being shot to death in her own living room was only what she deserved. That is just a whole load of yikes.

And given that both games open with Mia being violently killed by a male protagonist (twice in RE7, with the player in control), it sure is convenient how so many people have managed to ‘find’ the evidence that proves she’s the real villain. You don’t have to think too hard about Chris Redfield as a violent maniac or Ethan Winters being forced to kill his own wife if it’s okay to inflict violence on this woman. “Yes, but she shouldn’t have done [X]…” or even “But what if she’s the real abuser” is a narrative that gets thrown at real women in abusive relationships all the time – especially when the man is a friend of whoever’s casting judgement, or even a celebrity. Real world examples of this shit in the wild run the gamut from wild fan-takes on The Shining ‘proving’ that actually the abused wife was the ‘real’ abuser all along, right up to the ongoing hate campaign against Amber Heard. People don’t want to have to think badly of someone they admire, and will take any excuse to shift the blame. The stakes are infinitely lower when we’re talking about fictional characters, but the same pattern plays out.

And look, I do get it. It’s easy to go into these games and come out with a negative opinion of Mia. She’s the one who lures you into danger in RE7, acts all innocent, and then comes at Ethan with a chainsaw – and when you finally find out her big secret at the end, it turns out she was working for the people who created Eveline from the start! You’re really not given a lot of reasons to invest in Ethan and Mia’s relationship before she’s suddenly coming at him with a knife, and the fact she never does get to come clean to him in canon leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

It’s really easy to go into RE8, note all the glaring signs that Ethan’s relationship with Mia isn’t healthy, and draw your own conclusions about a woman we don’t hardly even see again for most of the runtime of the game. Half this goddamn fandom still seems to think Heisenberg is actually a lycan, ffs – most of what people think they know about Mia is more meme than fact, and the rest is pretty surface level. Basic media literacy is not exactly high out there in the tumblrweeds (let alone the rest of the internet).

But as for the idea that Mia’s responsible for all the horrors Ethan went through, people seem to forget that Mia herself went through so much worse. Ethan spent a day in the Bakers’ property, and a day in the village. Mia spent years trapped in the Bakers’ property, and days at least imprisoned in Miranda’s lab, knowing exactly how much danger her family were in, helpless to save them. She’s no innocent herself, but ye gods has she already suffered for her crimes.

So with all that out of the way, well, what’s the actual ‘evidence’ that Mia herself was abusive? No-one's coming into this one without some bias, but let’s at least give it a fair shake.

Right upfront, I want to recognise that in both fiction and reality, women can be abusers, and men can be victims. Abuse in heterosexual relationships is far more likely to occur with the man as the abuser, but the reverse does happen, and the fact culture at large can be so eager to cast the woman as the villain doesn’t make it any easier for the real male victims of abuse to get recognition and help. Society as a whole is still just really shitty about enabling or excusing real abuse.

But the idea that Mia was abusive has very little to back it up. Whatever you make of “her” interactions with Ethan at the start of the game, the fact remains: that’s not Mia, and the fact she’s acting so strangely is meant to be our clue that something much bigger than a little marital strife is going on here. Knowing all this doesn’t really make the scene where she’s violently executed less disturbing, but you can’t miss the hints we don’t yet know the full story.

So the question becomes, is there any evidence that the real Mia was abusive? I’ve dug into this one a bit before in my post about trying to figure out the timeline of exactly when Mia was replaced, but there are no definitive answers as to how long Miranda's been living in their house. To summarise a long post (and a surprisingly lively timeline of events from the days before the game begins): the most likely intent seems to be that Miranda’s been posing as Mia for less than a week, though a lot of the vibes of the scene give me the impression it’s been several weeks at least. Ultimately, that’s going to come down to your own interpretation.

The Mia mentioned in Ethan’s diary who blew up at him at the hospital could be the real Mia, but more likely isn’t: you can’t really use her to argue anything definitive, one way or another. The Mia from the flashback where Ethan gets the call from Rose’s doctor is the real Mia, but if you think getting upset when your husband brushes off your obvious distress over your daughter’s health makes you abusive, then nothing I say here is going to convince you otherwise.

The only ‘real’ evidence that Mia might be a problem is one line you might hear from Ethan while taking Rose to bed, and it is admittedly a red flag: your mother’s scary when she’s angry.

And to anyone whose whole hatred of Mia has been built backwards from this one line – especially anyone who’s grown up in a dysfunctional household themselves – hell, I get it. It is one really yikes thing for Ethan to say about his wife.

But in Mia’s defence, I can only point out that, well, yes, canonically, she is scary when she’s angry.

Oh, did I say angry? I meant fucking possessed.

And if Ethan’s bringing up the spectre of that time, even subconsciously, maybe that should be an even bigger clue that the Mia in this house right now isn’t Mia.

But what really shows this line for what it is is that we’ve seen the real Mia angry. We’ve seen her cold fury at Eveline, daring to go right back to asking ‘can we be a family now?’ within hours forcing Mia to assault her own husband with a chainsaw. We’ve seen her frustration at Ethan’s own denial, and we’ve seen her stalk out of the room when he blows off an important conversation for a call from work. We’ve seen her advance on Chris after he shut her down, demanding, Where is my husband? Where is my daughter?!

We have never seen her angry without real justification. Her anger is neither violent nor disproportionate. It’s consistently purposeful, focused, and contained. There is nothing scary about the real Mia’s anger, unless you’re threatened by the very idea she might have something valid to be angry about.

There is evidence of tension in the Winters’ marriage from before Miranda’s arrival, but it takes a very different form – most evident in the flashback scene where Ethan receives the call from Rose’s doctor. Far from Miranda’s brusque, dismissive copy of her, the real Mia is anxious and depressed, scared of what Rose’s results might reveal. Here, Ethan’s the one brushing her concerns aside (“We talked about this […] Rose is fine!”) He recognises there seems to be something Mia’s not telling him, says they should talk about it, but then immediately brushes the conversation off when he gets a call from work, while Mia storms out of the room.

You can certainly read Mia as a hypocrite here, getting angry at Ethan for not knowing things she’s deliberately kept from him. But it’s Ethan who decides a call from work is more important than a conversation with his wife – someone who is obviously distressed, canonically still on a regime of drugs after the traumatic events of RE7, very likely suffering PTSD along with Ethan, and maybe even some form of postpartum depression. We don’t know anything about Ethan’s work, so there’s no point in speculating about how much he ‘needs’ to take that call. Mia’s no clear villain here – quite the opposite.

Personally, I tend towards taking this scene as evidence that Mia has tried to talk to Ethan about what really happened to him, but hasn’t managed to get him to face the truth. For all that Ethan supposedly wants to talk about the past, it’s a defining plot point that he’s badly in denial himself.

Or they could both be at some fault here: Ethan unwilling to face the truth, while Mia is reluctant to force him to face something she knows will hurt him and bring him distress. Even when Mia says outright that she ‘tried to keep this a secret, but…’ to Chris at the end of the game, the implication is as much that she’s tried to keep it a secret from people like Chris, who might decide Ethan is dangerous. She’s lied to protect him before, and if she’s still lying to him about her past with the Connections, then the fact that knowing the truth will hurt Ethan is obviously among her reasons. Protecting Ethan has always been among Mia’s top priorities ‒ even at her own expense.

The only other real hints we get about Mia’s inner life come from the glimpses of her we get in Donna’s domain. But I’m hesitant to read too much into these, given how unclear it is how much is just a manifestation of Ethan’s own anxieties. If anything, the ‘Mia’ in these scenes almost seems to have some far worse secret than simply having not told Ethan something he really ought to have put together on his own, and I’d kind of love to see that explored too – at least as long as that goes somewhere more interesting than round umpteen of ‘and that’s why Mia sucks’.

But my point here isn’t that you have to read any of these scenes the same way I do. I do think it’s important to recognise that nothing written for a game like RE is truly character-driven; scenes exist to serve the plot far more than to reflect consistent character motivations or hold up to fridge logic (which, let’s face it, is the real reason for most of Chris’ horrific behaviour in this game, let alone anyone else’s). The result is rarely super consistent, and leaves ample space for multiple interpretations of anyone’s motivations. Regardless, the idea there’s any hard evidence that Ethan and Mia’s relationship is dysfunctional, or that whatever’s wrong is Mia’s fault alone, is going to be incredibly hard to justify.

Any assertion that Ethan and Mia are somehow on the verge of divorce also needs to be weighed against the masses of evidence of how much they love each other – the number of times Mia has said she loves Ethan, up to and including (yes, I’m bringing this up again) how ready she is to die for him in RE7. Her speech to Chris at the end of RE8 states explicitly that being together with Ethan and Rose is the only thing that matters to her. “Mia, I’m sorry, I love you,” are some of the last words Ethan ever speaks – and I can’t help but read into how the moment he finally pushes Rose into Chris’ arms so they can get away with him weighing them down is right after he learns that Mia is alive, and thus implicitly that Rose won’t be alone if Ethan doesn’t make it. And good god does that scene break my heart every time.

It’s worth recognising that the fact Ethan and Mia love each other doesn’t inherently mean their relationship is healthy, or that you have to love them together as much as I do. Like I said up top, you don’t have to like Mia, and you don’t have to justify not liking her if you don’t. I would genuinely like to see fics where Mia and Ethan’s supposedly-necessary break up feels in character. Where Ethan loves her but just can’t deal with the resentment and the fallout over all the lies she told him, where he's been clinging to his 'happy ending' with Mia after surviving the Bakers so hard he can't face the fact things just aren't working, or where he’s having to face that their relationship only ever really worked because she was away so much. It will break my heart, but fiction is allowed to do that.

But god, it would be nice if people could just take the bashing below an eleven around this place. The number of times I’ve had to sigh and back-button out of reading something, because yet another author has decided to project their own hatred for Mia onto the husband who’s still reeling from watching her being violently murdered in front of him… it gets fucking old, y’know?

I would really like to think that in the year of our lord 2024, fandom would be a bit past this thing where they bash the canonical female love interest in the name of shipping the hero with another dude. People will bend over backwards to try and cast Heisenberg and Chris as guys who really care about consent and worry about Ethan getting hurt, because heaven forbid anyone be caught shipping something slightly problematic. And yet misogyny still somehow gets a pass.

You do not have to love Mia. You don’t even have to like her. But ye gods, the hate she gets is baseless and absurd.

Hasn't this poor woman suffered enough?

(And on that note, I promise I am finally done soapboxing in defence of Mia Winters, thank you for bearing with me for this long.)

#Mia Winters #Ethan Winters #mithan #Resident Evil Village #Resident Evil #Resident Evil 7 #RE lore #meta #Mia Winters week

[ilikekidsshows]

@aaghht honestly, after seeing more of the show and now the Paris special, my opinion abt Chloe's writing writing has turned from "the writers hate her specifically bc they're out of ideas" into "did Astruc make her based off some1 he hated irl?" cuz it's very ridiculous how s1-3 gave us a different picture of her than we got later. Thomas saw how the fans thought she should grow into redemption as a char,and very strongly disagreed.

Astruc's inability to take criticism is a part of a bigger issue he has as a creator where he is unable to deal with fans interpreting his work differently from what he intended. If his seasons 4-5 treatment of Chloé is backlash at people who saw her as redeemable, it does raise the question why he's so vested in the interpretation that Chloé specifically is irredeemable when the likes of Gabriel and Félix (people whose evil schemes have actually succeeded) got to go scot free. Does he just hate mean teenage girls that much?

I’ve seen this "Chloé is a stand-in for someone Astruc used to know" theory around, and it would explain why he gets so emotional about Chloé online and why he insists a character he created is irredeemable instead of just saying he wrote her to be irredeemable, acting like she has some kind of agency when he's the one who made her and has the power to put her on any character development path he chooses.

My only criticism of this idea is this: I don’t think Astruc is that subtle. I don’t think he’d have the self-control to hold himself back for three seasons and a special when it comes to having a fictional manifestation of his hatred he could do anything with, even though he's made some comments about there being more corporate control over the story during seasons 1-3. Like, the instant they decided to make Adrien a Sentimonster Gabriel started twirling his ring like it was a merry-go-round and he was working at an amusement park. This is why I also don’t believe SentiAdrien was a thing before season 4, and why I call season 4 a retooling. Astruc seems to have very little subtlety as a creator, we can see what he thinks in what he writes, and season 4 marks a clear difference in how he writes Adrien and Chloé specifically.

Astruc is incredibly invested in Marinette's character. She's his baby OC, she was the first idea he created for the Miraculous concept and he worked on the idea for years before a company decided to catch his pitch. Chloé was created as a nemesis to Marinette, a character he calls his imaginary daughter. Does Astruc want the audience to hate Chloé because she's mean to his "daughter" or because she's some spectre of a past school bully he never got over? Considering only school bullying is treated with proper gravitas on the show, while terrorism, domestic abuse and slavery are just everyday stuff everybody is cool with, it could very well be the latter. But if that's the case, seasons' 1-3 production must have really stifled what he wanted to do with her character originally.

#miraculous ladybug #ml critical #ml writing critical #ml writers salt

[pavel-chekov-appreciator]

I want better for Sybok.

I want a world where he got a fighting chance to do anything but become a cult leader. I’ve seen aus where he becomes a counselor and I can’t stop thinking about it.

No gods, no Sha-Ka-Ree, no cult. Just a kid who knows his history. Who researches Surak, and the world before him, and finds himself dissatisfied with present day Vulcan’s interpretations of his teachings. Unable to see the logic in following one ancient man’s words with no additional input or thought. Is this truly the best way for them to live? His mother didn't think so. He doesn't think so either.

He’s young, and he has big ideas and a lot of charisma, and a lot of inner pain from losing his mother and being suddenly told the way she was raising him was wrong. He quickly earns a reputation as a troublemaker. Indulging in blatant displays of emotionalism, just to prove his point, that he smiled and nothing bad happened, he cried and he felt better after.

He’s dissatisfied and ostracized and convinced there’s a better way to be living.

He fucks off at 18-not quite banished, but so strongly encouraged to leave that he might as well have been-and goes to a college on Earth, because the federation is a post-scarcity society so he has his basic needs met and he just wants to figure himself out, and where better to do that than a college campus, as far away from Vulcan society as possible. On his step-mother's home planet, where he knows at least a little of the culture, the language, what to expect.

He sees the school counselor a lot, and gets a lot out of their sessions. Takes some psychology courses and ends up getting really passionate about it.

Teaches himself to embrace his emotions while acknowledging that it’s very easy to be ruled by them. Utilizes aspects of traditional Vulcan control combined with the human practice of mindfulness to understand his emotions and control his strong impulse to act on them, without completely rejecting them. Knows he is choosing not to control his emotions, but he can and should control the actions he takes in response to them to avoid hurting himself or others. Knows that understanding why he feels a certain way can help him understand himself better.

Lives his best life and studies psychology to help other people find the same joy and peace he has, in whatever form that takes for them.

Then he finds out his baby bro basically told the VSA to fuck off and that dad more or less disowned him for joining Starfleet. Feels so damn proud of him for standing up the their parents like that.

Reunites with his brother after years of separation.

It’s rocky at first, but after both being disowned they’re all the family the other has left now, and they both do really care about each other.

Spock doesn’t understand Sybok’s choices, but he doesn’t need to understand them to respect them; Sybok is clearly still exercising some degree of control over himself, he even still meditates, he’s just controlling himself less, and differently, and his mind is more at peace than it’s ever been before. Sybok doesn’t really understand Spock’s continued dedication to logic either, but he respects it too, because clearly it still means something to Spock in a big way.

They make peace with each other, and their differences, and with the fact that their parents and society have rejected them. That Sybok did everything “wrong” and Spock did everything “right” and yet they both ended up in the same place; on Earth, with mom ignoring their calls, because she loved them both but she loves her husband more.

And ultimately he enrolls in Starfleet medical to become a ships counselor, because he still takes great joy in doing things he knows dad would hate, and because he wants to specialize in trauma and grief counseling and Starships need a lot of that, and because getting a new perspective on life from being around humans helped him a lot and he’s rejected a lot of philosophy that he found unhelpful but IDIC is something he still believes in; he wants to be around as many different ideas and perspectives as he can to improve himself and his practice, and Starfleet is a great way to do that.

Getting to follow his only remaining family into space is just a bonus.

#star trek #star trek tos #spock #sybok #s’chn t’gai sybok #priority one shitpost #i havent actually watched any snw yet i know some sybok stuff is explored in that but im not 100% on the details #this is mostly based on st5 and some secondhand info from a plot description of the novelization of st5

[patcaps]

you can read my other thoughts on the finale here so i’m not gonna just say all the same things again but

the ending was always gonna be divisive with people loving it or hating it, liking it but wishing some things were a bit different. it’s the ending of a beloved show and nobody is ever gonna agree on what the right ending would be. it sucks to have folks outright rejecting it but it also sucks to see people like “you are wrong for having any criticisms whatsoever” like, i’m all for being able to discuss aspects of media and what we liked and didn’t like. it’s not always a bad faith interpretation, or cynicism, or being poor at understanding the writing and intention. and i love meta and analysis that doesn’t completely pick apart something and refuse it any grace or leniency. i think sometimes we’re way too hard on stuff that is ultimately heartfelt and from a place of love and joy, and unraveling them dampens the magic.

anyway. that aside. i love this show so much. there are things i’d have done differently, pacing choices that made it fall flat in places, but it’s not my show and these guys know their characters and love them as much as we do. and the ghosts and mike and alison never stopped being family - which is, ultimately, the biggest thing that matters. not the house, not where they are, but how they’ve helped each other for the better. alison and mike spent their entire lives making sure the ghosts were never forgotten, always went back to catch up. they got to enjoy all the fun and love of visiting family without the stress of living under each other’s feet 24/7 - and relationships with family often improve tenfold with that breathing space.

the show ended where it started with the plans to turn it into a hotel, but this time instead of the ghosts panicking and being like “drive her out, kill her” they loved alison enough to take all of that change on, safe in the knowledge that alison would never ever just abandon them. that’s such a neat way of showing how they’ve all helped each other. like, robin’s seen that house and the houses and land before it change so much but he felt so good about this change, literally said he felt christmassy finally, because they could do this. for her. for their friend, their family member, their alison.

they existed before alison and they’ll exist after her, but in the meantime they get to enjoy being her family and also know they’ve given them a more stable, secure, less stressful living arrangement that works for them all. they aren’t fully dependent on alison anymore and alison was no longer fearful of leaving and losing them because she knew they’d still be her family no matter what. i’ve seen some people interpret this as “they’re saying having a baby meant her found family weren’t important anymore, they have to go be a traditional family alone” and that was my kneejerk response too, but then i sat with it. and actually, alison goes from being a (presumed) orphan with no family besides mike and his side, to having all of that plus the ghosts, people who love her and always welcome her back to visit whenever she wants. how lovely for her to have her very own family she can go and see, who did such a kind thing for her, however bittersweet a decision it was initially.

and yeah, it’s true that the ghosts have less of alison there to take care of things like personalised entertainment, but that’s the whole point of them leaving - alison wasn’t in a position where she could worry about entertaining them all the time whilst also being with her husband and raising a newborn. it wasn’t fair to keep asking her to run around after a houseful of ghosts when looking after yourself and a small child is hard enough. she could have stayed and ended up resenting them, getting frustrated and angry the way they did with mike’s mum, potentially souring that relationship with the ghosts. instead she moved out and gets to go back and see them and love and enjoy them fully without that responsibility 24/7. i’m sure she took them new things, gifts, let them watch tv and read books, i bet they had requests for whenever she visited which she was more than happy to supply. and i bet they always had new anecdotes and things to catch her up on.

the more time i have, the more i warm to it all. it’s easy to say “they should have stayed together at the house” but this show is about being human, about life and death, how existence is both cruel and kind and beautiful and unexpected and it changes you and you change it. they did stay together, just not under the same roof. home is more than just button house, more than just a dream because dreams change as we go, and belonging is about more than just a destination. alison found home and belonging in the ghosts, and they found it in her too. the rest is just bricks and mortar.

#bbc ghosts spoilers #bbc ghosts #quill to paper #ghosts meta

[seastarconstellation]

Does anyone want to scream about Lily Evans and her relationship with Snape with me? I'm writing a longfic and I'm struggling a little with my characterisation.

Okay, actually. I'll start:

Lily fascinates me because we know so little, and what we do know often contradicts in very interesting ways. Who Harry’s parents were is presented as a mystery that Hary solves throughout the books. Lily appears to be even more obscured than James; he has a group of friends to tell Harry all about who he was. People seem much more hesitant to talk about Lily (the marauders mostly bring her up to talk about her green eyes. That part where Lupin talks about being close with her is movie-only), and her closest friend and family actively withhold information. There are never any Griffendor women who talk to Harry about being close to his mom. It leads me to assume that Lily, a known muggle-born from a poor town in the middle of nowhere and a known associate of Severus Snape, wasn’t quite as popular as Slughorn suggested in Hbp

I’m also going to go out on a limb and say she wasn’t quite as put together as you’d assume; she had a baby at 19 or 20, in the middle of a war. I’m really trying to put what I’ve seen happen first-hand with super young parents aside. But even when I accept that Lily was able to be a good mum at such a young age, I can’t pretend that this was a mature decision. A war was happening, and Lily and James were both prominent soldiers in it. Surely she realised how much danger they both were in.

The big bombshell is, of course, her friendship with Snape. We know they became friends at eight years old, considered each other ‘best friends' at one point, that their relationship started crumbling in the fifth year and that she officially cut him off after he called her mud blood at the lake. Other posts have already masterfully illustrated how they were torn apart because they were fundamentally unable to see things from each other's point of view. Severus talks about being bullied, then dismisses the bullying other Slytherins were doing (when Lily tells him about Mulciber using dark magic on a student he waves her off. “That was just a laugh.”). Lily, on her end, seems very eager to believe Griffendor's gossip over her supposed best friend when it comes to the shrieking shack incident. They’re both hypocrites. Completely ignoring each other's issues while blaming the other for not acknowledging their own. So one thing leads to another, Snape yells a slur and Lily decided that enough is enough. Which makes sense, it’s not her responsibility to fix him if he’s starting to get radicalised. There’s a certain tragedy in baby Sneeple being thrown in the dungeon with a bunch of wannabe-death eaters at eleven, but again, that was not for her to fix.

But I’m still completely baffled by the fact that she laughed. Whywhywhy did Joanne(derogatory) write that. That’s your best friend being publically humiliated and borderline sexually assaulted, what in the hell are you smiling for. I’ve tried to argue that she’s not laughing at Snape, she’s getting flustered by James’ antics. But no, that doesn’t make sense either. At that point, she’s still very turned off by him, and she calls him a toerag only a few lines later. His show-off is precisely what she dislikes about him. This would not be charming to her even if she already had a crush.

One explanation I’ve seen is that the friendship was one-sided from Snape’s end. She pitied him when they were kids, got sick of him at Hogwarts and then dragged this dead horse of a friendship around for five years before finding a way out. Meaning that she laughed because she genuinely thought Snape being bullied was funny. And to be honest, I hate this interpretation. It’s just sad, but not in an interesting way. There’s no tragedy there. It reminds me of those fanfics on Wattpad where the love interest was only fake-dating Y/N as a joke.

It’s wildly unrealistic, renders Snape’s sacrifice kind of meaningless, makes him seem like a total idiot and her like an evil harpy. I’m rejecting it on principle.

So… then what? Lily just has a lack of empathy? Demonic possession? Honestly, it seems as likely that Joanne(derogatory) had not quite figured out what their relationship was supposed to be. Because it makes perfect sense if they don’t really know each other, doesn’t it? The smile emphasises that Snape is socially ostracised. The fact that she composes herself emphasises that Lily is a moral figure and does not approve of James’ conduct.

If you have another interpretation that makes sense, please tell me! I’d love to know how others are reading this scene because I feel it’s essential to her characterisation but I’m just not quite able to get there yet.

#lily evans #severus snape #harry potter meta

[dailydegurechaff]

I wanted to know how do you interpret Tanya's gender. After reading chapter 58 of the manga i got the impression that she is definitely trans coded, but maybe thats just me

Very good question.

To be honest, when I think too hard about Tanya’s gender (and sexuality, for that matter) it gives me brain worms. Fun brain worms, but brain worms nonetheless. I can’t explain it. Everything she’s got going on is complicated as shit there’s way too much to think about.

Like, she was a man, but now she's a girl. But at some points she says she still sees herself as a man internally so is this MtFtM? How does that work. And if she accepts she's a woman now, is that just MtF or do we add more letters. More importantly: Was Being X being Transphobic or being the Greatest Trans Ally of All Time with the free divinely issued sex change.

Ok ok, jokes aside. Confession: I actually do not keep up with the manga, so I had to go find the chapter and read it first. Having read it now though, I see what you mean.

The conversation she has with the Salaryman/herself in that chapter really does read as essentially saying “I’ve accepted who I am now.” It’s a far cry from a much earlier part of the manga I remember where she has a breakdown about being a man/people seeing her as a girl.

A friend of mine was actually showing me stuff from more recent chapters of the manga (don’t know which chapter tragically, but I know it’s not currently translated to English) and from what I gathered of it, Being X was showing Tanya a dream of being back in her past life and in response she basically demanded to go back to being Tanya immediately. It is definitely not just you, I 100% see the trans-coding you’re talking about.

As for my personal interpretation of her gender, I touched very briefly on it once before, but I honestly think she wouldn’t want to label herself as anything. At first, this is out of hesitance and not wanting to acknowledge that anything might be ““wrong”” or ““different”” about her. Later on it turns into character growth, more along the lines of, “I don’t need the label to define me, I just am what I am/like what I like. I don’t care about it any more than that.” Yes this is 100% projection on my part. No, I won’t apologize for it lmao.

Of course, that's entirely my own headcanon. I definitely am not saying it’s the only way to interpret her, it’s just my personal thoughts. Especially since my opinion is subject to change on a dime depending on what I’m reading/working on myself. The Tanya gender is, in fact, transient, shifting like water.

Like. A transfem Tanya fic that focuses on her adapting to life in her new world and coming to discover she doesn’t actually hate her new body? I’d totally read that. I’ve seen a few fics that include that as a part of the narrative and those scenes of acceptance were among my favorite parts.

I get the feeling this is the route that the manga is going as well. It’s a bit of a shame that we don't have those aforementioned scenes in the light novel (or at least, I don't remember them), but I don’t think that Carlo Zen really intended that to be the focus/narrative in the first place. And honestly, I also think that’s a good thing because it allows for so much more room for interpretation and headcanon around Tanya’s character.

Anyway, the other direction is also compelling to me. A transmasc Tanya fic where, after feeling uncomfortable and hating how feminine he looks for years and years, he finally goes ‘Fuck this, I’m gonna go back to being a man’? I would read the fuck out of that too.

Could also be paired with him finally choosing to defect, where they think about it like, ‘Well there’s nothing to hold me back now, right? I don’t have to maintain appearances anymore. Also, since I’m defecting this would be a great way to hide myself. They’d all be looking for the wrong person. Two birds with one stone, how efficient.’ …Now we’re getting to fic ideas I won’t ever get to so it’s time to move on I think.

Semi-related to the Trans Tanya Concept, this actually brings me to a bit of a lore/headcanon/idea/question I want to present to the public for opinions. In Norden, during the inciting battle of the war, Tanya uses magic to “dope up” so she could enhance her strength and reaction time and kill pain. I took this to mean she used a formula to synthesize the narcotics/adrenaline hormone/whatever else directly into herself, right?

Can you see where I’m going with this? As long as you know which hormones to make, how they’re made up, and what quantities you need… Well, don’t you think magic HRT is completely possible? Of course, as I'm not sure it makes sense for Salaryman to have known the detailed specifics about it from the modern world, it would require a lot of in-universe research/science advancement for someone to actually do that, but theoretically...

The magic system in this universe has so much potential to be explored, I’m fascinated by what you can theoretically do with it. Although, this is long and off-topic already I think this should be the end, lol.

I think I talked too much? I’m sorry, you were probably not expecting such an answer. I told you, Tanya gives me brain worms (mental illness).

I guess the TL;DR is this: that kid definitely ain’t cishet.

#marathehomosexual #ask #not a daily post #you could ask me a simple yes or no question and i would STILL find a way to make the answer multi-paragraph #i STILL have things to talk about. im just choosing to throw it in the tags now #LIKE. if synthesizing hormones is something completely possible in universe #is birth control possible as well? how about anti-depressants? #how far can we go with this? can you get addicted to these magic-synthetic chemicals/hormones/whatever? #say you need a little pick me up in the day. you give yourself a little boost in the happy-brain-chemicals (dopamine or whatever) #(im not a biologist or knowledgeable about most biology-related things honestly. please just go with it) #would a mages body start to rely on magic to produce it and stop creating it naturally anymore? #could this create a dependency? would you start to need to make more? #its insane. i feel insane #you ask me a simple question and i refuse to stop elaborating #rimu be quiet now

[nerves-nebula]

I sometimes get uncomfortable around arguments about if certain characters are abusive or not- obviously I see this the most with 2012 tmnt and nobody really needs my opinion but I keep thinking about it so here’s some words to chew on.

Keep in mind I haven’t seen much of 2012 so I’ll mostly be talking about the WAY I see these discussions being had here, rather than the show itself.

I doubt the creators intended for the turtles to be abusive and I kind of just assume that everything they do is within the genre of slapstick kids show. But I also don’t think people who cringe away from the way they treat each other are reading too much into it.

I’ve seen people argue that ppl who think the brothers are abusive just don’t have siblings and that’s an insane take to me. Obviously its probably hyperbole in some instances but as someone with more siblings than most of the people I know, I 100% see the abuse reading of this series. It’s a very obvious idea to latch onto for me as someone who HAS been abused by my siblings- and who’s probably been abusive too.

The main thing that really gets under my skin is when people point out how much the turtles actually care about each other as evidence against abuse. Cause that doesn’t make any sense ??? you can abuse people you love and care about deeply.

And it really rubs me the wrong way when I see a post that’s like Raph can’t be abusive because he does X nice/cute things with Mikey or something like. That’s not how abuse works. You guys have to know that right?? Abuse isn’t just a person being mean 24/7 without pause.

A bit of a tangent coming up, but growing up, I really hated Mabel from gravity falls. not because she is inherently any more annoying or selfish or anything than other characters but because the way she treated dipper was extremely triggering for me as a child with a lot of anxiety. Like if Mabel was real and my sibling, I would’ve considered a lot of the shit she did abusive. Obviously I’m normal about her now cause I’m not 12 anymore but the biggest hurdle about watching that show when I was younger was that I would sometimes be brought to tears of frustration, imagining how scared and distressed I’d be if Mabel did that shit to me.

THE POINT of this tangent is that saying “the 2012 turtles aren’t abusive because I do that stuff with my siblings all the time/cause teenage boys are just like that” isn’t a genuine critique because abuse isn’t just about the action it’s about the relationship. Punching your sibling who’s actually ok with being punched isn’t abuse. Punching your sibling who really doesn’t want you to, and who you KNOW really doesn’t want you to, and who you KNOW would be genuinely upset by being punched? That is abuse.

And I find it annoying because I think we’re all aware that abuse was likely not the intent of the show. (Probably not even the text of the show but once again can’t say for sure) Maybe some dysfunction for drama, but probably not abuse, so you’re really just arguing against someone’s headcanon/personal interpretation of this show. And it’s like.. ok you have a different reading cool I guess.

In the show they aren’t treated as abusive, but fandoms are built around exploring different aspects of art that weren’t explored in canon. So I guess idk why this is a big deal.

Idk I think people have this idea that abusive = evil and always wrong. But abuse is just someone hurting you repeatedly and refusing to stop for whatever reason.

And with a show like 2012 where it’s all played for laughs it can be hard to tell if that’s how they are with each other because they’re ok with it or if that’s how they are cause they don’t know any other way. The turtles are kind of really mean in 2012, and wether that’s a familiarity kind of meanness or not is up to you in fandom, yknow?

Does Mikey actually consider Raph hitting him as like a fun part if their banter or is he coping with jokes about being physically abused? You decide! Like genuinely it can be either and I think that’s fun!

I mean obviously you all know what i’d pick, but that’s because I’m blissfully aware of what I want out of stories and what i want is nuanced discussions of abuse.

Personally, I acted very similarly to the 2012 turtles when living with my siblings, but I didn’t actually fucking like it. It was a defense mechanism because being genuine would only be met with ridicule. So I’m not inclined to agree that it’s fine because it’s just what they do.

Once again though, I doubt it was on purpose. And if you don’t think that they’re abusive then congrats! The show probably doesn’t either! So I just don’t see why people get super upset about it. Don’t you love that someone got a different story out of the same media??

Anyway obviously it doesn’t super matter and I don’t really have a horse in this race. I just got a bit annoyed with the way abuse is discussed and as a hobbyist Abuse Analyst I thought I’d weigh in.

I wrote this instead of going to sleep and it’s sooo late and also so much longer that I meant for it to be… y’all better not have bad takes in response or I’ll be annoyed as hell tomorrow morning, guh.

#nnstuff #rambling #tmnt 2012 #abuse tw #child abuse tw

[jasmine-tea-latte]

JTL's long but not as long as it could've been review of Netflix's ATLA

So.

I’ve finished watching the Netflix adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender and I have a lot of thoughts. Because despite some of the more questionable changes, I overall enjoyed this as an adaptation.

I wish I could say that I was surprised by the criticisms I'm seen so far, but unfortunately, I’m not. As much as I adore the OG series for being one of the greatest animated shows (or television shows, period), it’s been placed on a pedestal over the years and any adaptation of it will always be held to an impossibly high standard. And for better or for worse, a lot of fans have their nostalgia glasses on when it comes to the show, so any deviation from the source material is going to receive some form of backlash. I say this as someone who clearly still loves the show 19 years later, otherwise I wouldn't be here writing about it, ya know?

Anyways, if I had to give it a grade compared to the OG series, I’d give it a B- or a C+. If I’m grading it as its own thing, I’d bump that up to a B+ or A-. There are some elements (pun not intended) that definitely should have been kept in, and some changes that I thought were done well.

TL;DR – I had fun watching it even during the parts that made me cry, and the parts that made me say “… well that was a decision.” I’d love to see the last two books be adapted as well, if for no other reason than to meet Toph Mothereffing Bei Fong and see all of Team Avatar together.

(Also because I’d LOVE to see The Ember Island Players, especially if they managed to work in a few fun cameos. Can't you picture Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as Play!Toph and thee Dante Basco as Play!Zuko, hamming it up for all it’s worth? Shut up and take my money!)

(And of course, the Last Agni Kai for obvious reasons)

So I’d recommend at least checking it out if you’re interested. I’d also like to recommend that if you do, watch it from a pragmatic standpoint that it’s a condensed adaptation, not a shot-for-shot remake.

Some things that I liked, and some that I didn’t are below the cut:  

(SPOILERS, obvs)

Aang – I really liked this version of him, and though his actor’s still young, I thought he embodied the upbeat, playful side well. I also liked that they removed his one-sided crush on Katara, and – don’t shoot me for this – if they went with Kat@ang later based on how they did their characters in this first season, I wouldn’t be entirely opposed if it’s built on actual friendship and not an unrequited crush. (Still Team Zutara for life, but I don’t think that I’d *hate* it if the show went in this direction.)

Katara – I thought her actress did great when it came to portraying the nurturing, sensitive side. What I didn’t like was them removing nearly all of her feminine rage. Let her be angry! Let her lose her temper and be hot-headed! This post sums it up nicely. That being said, I do think she did well enough with the direction she was given. Here’s hoping we’ll see our girl eff some stuff up if we get Seasons 2 and 3.

Sokka – Fantastic and sarcastic. I really liked his actor’s interpretation of him, and it definitely felt more in line with the character we all fell in love with during the OG show.

Zuko – out of the main cast, I think his performance was the best. He had to step into a major role, taking over from a beloved performance that is still hailed as one of the greatest redemption arcs in modern media with a lot of expectations riding on his shoulders, and I think that his actor knocked it out of the park. It’s different from Dante Basco’s interpretation, obviously. But as I watched each episode, I kept thinking, “there’s our grumpy fire boy.” The scene where he’s throwing the temper tantrum over losing his journal, while Iroh’s standing back and watching? I thought to myself, “this boy is the worst, he’s perfect.” Plus the flashbacks to his life before scarring were done well, and even though I knew what was coming re: the Agni Kai against his father and subsequent banishment, I still got emotional.

Also, regarding the Agni Kai – on one hand, I feel like his absolute refusal to fight back was such an integral part of that scene and understanding who he is as a character. That being said, I didn’t *hate* that in this version he was pushed into defending himself, albeit by holding back. That one shot where he hesitates to attack Ozai, only for his father to use that same move against him moments later… oof.

My ONLY complaint with this version of Zuko is that he didn't say "honor" once.

Other thoughts I had:

🟣 I really liked that we got to see more of the Air Nomads and life at the Southern Air Temple prior to Sozin’s attack. I also liked the explanation the show gave of having all the Air Nomads gathered together for a festival celebrating the comet, which makes more sense if they’re all (allegedly) under one roof.

Additionally, witnessing the genocide itself… I was crying. Especially during the final showdown between Gyatso and Sozin, and the realization that we were witnessing Roku’s (former) best friend slaughter one of his other closest friends.

But why wouldn't they send the children out on the flying bison to escape instead of having them all cornered?!

🟣 I really enjoyed getting to see interactions between Ozai and Iroh, which was one of the biggest missed opportunities in the OG show.

🟣 MY GIRL JUNE. That is all.

The part where she flirts with Iroh was also a nice flip on what happened in the OG show, with his covert pervert crush and all. Plus Zuko’s face when she calls his “dad” cute? Peak Zuzu. Also, poor Iroh hahaha.

🟣 Suki! I really liked the Kyoshi Island episode, plus her awkward flirting with Sokka by kicking his ass.

🟣 I really wish the whole subplot of Kya’s necklace hadn’t been cut, tbh. The flashbacks involving her were good, and as devastating as it was actually seeing her death, it does hammer home the point what a horrifying experience that was (side-eyeing you, everyone making the jokes about Katara always bringing up her dead mother.)

🟣 THE SCARF SCENE. Nice try, Netflix, but I know better than to get my hopes up again from 5 seconds of slow-mo. Did I still screech when it happened, though? Ofc I did!

🟣 The twist with the 41st Division was bittersweet and I may have (okay, definitely) cried.

🟣 Combining Jet’s subplots with the Mechanist’s and putting them in Omashu wasn’t too bad. I do wish the message of “not everyone in the FN is evil” from Jet’s episode had made it into this version, tbh.

🟣 Overall, I liked Jet + the Freedom Fighters. Also, props to his actor for capturing the pretty boy / f*ckboi attitude well.

🟣 Loved Chong and the hippies, of course (SECRET, SECRET, SECRET TUNNEL, YEAH!) and I don’t mind that they were included this early.

🟣 I loved the change to the Cave of Two Lovers and having Oma and Shu be lesbians.

🟣 I feel like if the show’s renewed for a second season and we come back to Omashu, there’s a chance they could revisit the COTL with Katara and Aang this time around.

🟣 The random lady smacking Zuzu with a broom – “how dare you hit that child?!” – was hilarious, and Dallas Liu’s facial expressions of “wtf” and “fml” were a thing of beauty (starts at 1:40 in the video below)

🟣 CABBAGE MAN! I just love that they got the original voice actor, hamming it up and screaming at the sky.

🟣 I LOVED the Blue Spirit episode, and all of the flashbacks, plus the voiceover about masks and seeing past!Zuko contrasted to present!Zuko, as presented in this gifset? RIP my heart.

🟣 The flashback to Lu Ten’s funeral and showing Zuko being the only person to join his uncle, sharing a sweet memory of his cousin while Leaves from the Vine plays? Beautiful. Ditto to the flashbacks of Iroh standing up for his nephew prior to the Agni Kai and the scenes of them getting ready to set sail to search for the Avatar. “I don’t need a babysitter.” “How about a friend?” how about excuse you I did not ask for these emotions how dare you.

🟣 I actually liked the inclusion of Ozai and Azula + Mai and Ty Lee. I also loved the opening of Ep. 3, showing how she was able to infiltrate the team of rebels. RIP to Kevin Tran (in advanced placement), though.

🟣 I loved that Katara rallied the women waterbenders and they were able to help during the Siege of the North. I also liked her reaction when she's talking with Yugoda in the healing huts and realizes why she's been sent there. It gave us a glimpse of the fiestier / headstrong Katara we all know and love, and if the show gets renewed I hope we'll get to see more.

🟣 I really enjoyed them giving Aang and Zuko a few minutes to talk / form a connection after he was unmasked as the Blue Spirit. That was nicely done.

and finally...

Nothing else to add, just chef's kiss.

(gif source)

Anyways! I might make a more extensive list of my personal pros and cons, but for now, I’d still recommend giving it a shot.

#long post #avatar the last airbender #netflix atla

[botherkupo]

i think people let nostalgia blind them a little when it comes to atla. don’t get me wrong, it’s great cartoon and i’ve rewatched it countless times but i also recognise it’s fine for the live action to make changes because that’s what happens when you adapt something. the live action is not perfect, but i had fun watching it and it feels like some people are just watching to nitpick and hate

Big agree. There are weak spots in the cartoon and also weak spots in the live action show. Are both enjoyable shows, though? Yes.

And that’s what I feel people can’t grasp. They’re like oooh they cut this, or why did they add that, or this character isn’t the same blah blah — and like yeah it’s not the same. I had zero interest in watching a replica with real people. I’ll just watch the cartoon and enjoy it

Like shows with real people have a lot of limitations, and not just because of budgets. It shouldn’t be news to people that there would be changes and a lot of stuff will get condensed, cut, or adapted in a different way. That was always going to happen.

I’ve seen people complain about Bumi and I’m like you know what I really loved the live action show Bumi. It’s a different take on it — him feeling bitter, showing obvious trauma from the pressure of ruling during a war that’s lasted this long, and being more unhinged rather than all super goofy guy like hey Aang just wait till you realise who I am. It’s different, more serious, and that’s okay. You can still enjoy cartoon Bumi. He ain’t going anywhere

Ppl complain about Katara, and like yeah I get it. She’s not as “fierce” in some aspects. But she suits this version of atla. She suits feeling more like a younger sister instead of a pseudo mum. She suits getting angry when Sokka treats her like a little girl rather than angry he doesn’t wash his own socks. She suits being paralyzed during fights at first because she has major ptsd and has been hiding her bending gif so long. It is realistic and fits the show, just as Cartoon Katara fit the cartoon and is still there. You can enjoy her. Cartoon Katara is not going anywhere

Like please will ppl stop looking for the things to complain about and instead see what we’re being given — an adaptation that is intense, funny, emotional and yes different.

We get Jet and the freedom fighters bombing places in omashu than wanting to flood a fire nation village. That’s not a bad thing. It cut out a whole lot of unnecessary stuff and also gave us an emotional scene with Jet and Katara. Did the part where she freezes him and says goodbye feel less dramatic? Yeah, honestly I would have been down to see her angrier. But I also think part of that is the limitations with special effects and waterbending (which always looks the weakest). the actress playing Katara is also dojng her interpretation of the character. (And can I just Jet was perfectly cast and I couldn’t imagine a better Jet)

So we didn’t get Sokka being with Jet? Who cares. Sokka’s story arc is focusing on different things. I loved how his interactions with Suki went. I love even more the scene where he’s listening in on Hakoda and Bato’s conversation and that line “some people aren’t made to be responsible for others lives” or whatever it was. It was so powerful.

And the cave of two lovers being resolved through family love? YES. I love that so much. Like thank you for giving non-romantic love a moment to shine. Katara and Sokka’s argument in that cave had so much weight and emotional intensity. It’s different from the arguments we get in the cartoon and that’s okay. Their dynamic is slightly different and that’s okay. THE CARTOON IS STILL THERE. YOU CAN ENJOY THE CARTOON OKAY

And honestly I could scream for days about what they’ve been doing with Zuko and Aang. I love them both so much and I love the extra stuff we’ve been getting with them. The Blue spirit stuff and that scene after was sooooooooo good. The little smile, the way they start to connect, and then Aang says t he wrong thing (bringing up Ozai) and Zuko lashes out and it’s just perfect ahhhhh

Also Zuko actually fighting back in the Agni Kai but hesitating to hurt his father was such a good choice. I love the cartoon for having him cry and beg to the end, but I also love the live actuon show for giving us something different. I WANT TO SEE THESE KIND OF CHANGES

And maybe I’m in the minority for that and I really don’t care if ppl think my opinion is rubbish. I love the cartoon. I love tye live action show

I wish ppl would understand that it’s okay they are different

#atla #netflix atla spoilers #atla live action spoilers #wooo this is long #i could keep talking about this as well but I’m hungry

[misrepresentedmorallygrey]

PROPAGANDA

Six

Once again (just like with every morally grey character I think) there's a war between "she's a monster" and "she's an angel". Six, as a character, is very cool because there's no dialogue or anything in the Little Nightmares games, and a lot of things that are just not showed. The whole point is everyone can have their own interpretations and theories. But Six is just so disrespected by the fandom ! On one side, it's "she's a monster, we hate her, she's selfish and uses people to get what she wants !" On the other side it's "she's a kid and my favorite character so by default she can't be a bad person, she's actually a sweet and pure angel !" None of them are right. For the first ones... Six isn't that much of a monster. And I'm gonna say it : yes, she is a literal kid. That doesn't mean she can't be bad, but she thinks like a kid. She probably cared for Mono before she betrayed him – we can see her trying to help him when he was in the TVs. She probably has a reason why she betrayed him. There's a lot of different theories on that and none of them is more valid than the others because again you're meant to have your own interpretation, so I won't tell any of the popular theories here. You can think she did it for selfish reasons. That doesn't mean she's a literal monster, and that doesn't mean the people who don't think it was selfish are mischaracterizing her. For the second ones... I don't even know what to tell you. If there's one CLEAR thing in these games, it's that Six is morally grey and could do something scary at any moment. As the player you're literally MEANT to be scared of her and what she could do. In the first game you are meant to slowly realize her hunger isn't human. You can also see how she doesn't try to help any of the kids trapped here, she's just helping herself. In the second one she does scary thing all along the game to keep you scared that she could kill and eat Mono at any time, only for her to betray him in the worst way possible at the end. We don't know her reasons but she still did it. Six is a morally grey character. She's just a kid trying to survive in a world full of monsters. She's also full of darkness, acts like a creep and eats literal people. You can't say she's "just a monster", the same way you can't say she's "a little angel who did nothing wrong".

The whole thing with Little Nightmares is that the world is terrifying and horrible. It is eat or be eaten in the most literal sense. Six does what she has to to survive. Has she done some bad things? Yes. Was it her fault? …Debatable. But the fandom treats this CHILD like she’s the worst person to ever exist. Like, she’s not even ten years old. She’s a survivor. Mono did plenty of questionable things too, but I’ve never seen anyone hate on him.

Daisy Tonner

A lot of people just. Write her character off, especially in the earlier seasons, as acab. She did bad things as a cop while she was being taken over by an evil eldritch entity, but everyone just kinda focuses more on the do part than yk. Evil eldritch entity. Now I ain’t gonna justify her actions, she was indeed kinda a bitch, but she was also under the influence of the Hunt, and been for I think decades at the point where we first meet her. Afterwards she ofc got her redemption arc, but everyone (both in canon, but also fandom) treated her like shit even after that, when she was trying to be better. Idk, maybe I’m a daisy simp, maybe IM the one viewing the character wrong, idk. I’m just mad at everyone writing everything off as her being a cop when it was also A PRIMORDIAL GOD OF FEAR THAT WAS PRACTICALLY POSSESSING HER

Girl is a brutal cop who murders people. She is also someone who resisted the absolute pull of the Fears in TMA and didn’t hunt anyone for multiple weeks, something the main character couldn’t even do. She’s incredible bc she is literally like. Grey grey. She’s a fascinating character and cannot be good nor bad depending on how you interpret end actions vs intent.

She did try to slit the main character's throat, and she did do a ton of police brutality- BUT she got a redemtion arc. She tried to better herself. She gave herself over to a evil fear god in order to protect her friends. Her arc is about how it's never too late to try to be better, and about how you can accidently drag others down with you and about how sometimes we become monsters when we want to be better. And I swear- everyone either thinks she's evil or she's good. No inbetween.

#misrepresented morally grey #round 1 #bracket d #little nightmares #six little nightmares #the magnus archives #alice tonner #daisy tonner

[1moreff-creator]

Firstly, as always, good luck with the David video Secondly however, I would like to know your thoughts on the hidden text that can be seen when you inspect the about page on the DRDT Tumblr. I saw it on a Youtube community post and I honestly thought it was fake for a while because no one said where it could be seen, and I only now found out that it's in the about page. I have seen literally no one on Tumblr analyze it so I wanted to know your thoughts on it. Thank you !

Hey! Thanks for the usual well wishes! I’ve edited comfortably past the halfway point of the script by now, so hopefully my suffering will end soon! It only took… like an hour and a bit to get to the halfway point! Haha… ha…

Anyways, About page text. Yeah, it’s a weird one, there’s a reason there’s not much discussion around it. It’s hard to point down exactly what it means, but I do have some things to say about it. I was actually already thinking of making a post about it, so this is a good excuse :v

Anyways, a fair bit of my interpretation come from a lot of other posts around Tumblr, but there are a few things I want to bring to the table, especially regarding the mastermind’s feelings towards the killing game and the potential connection between the DRDT mastermind and Mukuro Ikusaba. Sure, that sounds insane enough for my average post.

CW: Murder, mentions of starving

So here’s the About page text for the uninitiated:

“You don’t understand, do you? I used to be like you. I barely remember, but I used to be like you. I cared so much about people, I cried everytime someone was hurt. I suffered for a long time stuck in here caring about people." "I know what you’re going through. You’re going to hold on as long as you have, with hope that you can make it out of here with everyone. Then you’re going to despair. That lasts a while, too." "Then you’ll get bored. Like me." "And you’ll wish you were still suffering. Anything else is better than boredom." "I wish I could feel something, anything else, other than being bored. I’m stuck in here for eternity, and I know everything that could possibly happen. I know how everyone reacts to a murder, what makes people turn to despair, what fills people with hope and make them survive until we all run out of food and starve to death." "I wish I could feel terrified, or afraid, or angry. But I can’t anymore. I don’t feel anything at all except boredom." "Do you understand, Teacher?" "This is why I’m letting you suffer as long as possible. Because it’s better than the alternative." "I’m sorry. I don’t envy you." "You’ll understand eventually.”

As you can see, it’s pretty weird. You got some character monologuing to some “Teacher” about hope and despair and boredom, saying they can predict what everyone’s gonna do and feel and how that makes everything boring.

This definitely makes them sound a lot like Junko, and the connection is certainly clear. They both hate boredom with a burning passion and are able to easily predict people’s actions and feelings. But there’s actually one crucial line we have to keep in mind which separates them:

“I don’t envy you.”

The character speaking doesn’t enjoy despair, they only prefer it over boredom. This separates them from Junko herself, who does explicitly enjoy despair even without factoring in her hatred for boredom. Keep this in mind, I’ll bring it up later.

But what’s most important about this character, is that they’re likely not a DRDT character, but rather the protagonist of “Forever Dead”, the book Veronika talks about in her introduction. Take a look at how she describes it (and sorry the screenshots aren’t perfect, the text flashes too quickly).

Veronika: Oh oh oh! Speaking of horror, let me tell you about the horror bookI'm currently reading! It's called Forever Dead! You see, it's about a boy stuck in a time loop and forced to watch his friends die for eternity. While he is horrified at first, he eventually becomes more concerned over his growing boredom in t[he face of the] terrible tragedies because he sees them over and over again. The book is written like a normal autobiography at first, but as the protagonist descends into insanity over time, the writin[g style] starts to fall apart and take on a more sinister tone. Format twists like that are so fascinating, don't you think? Honestly, I would really love to know just how it feels to be in his shoes and experience something so horrible over and over and over again. And then, my favorite scene in the book, is one time he's impaled by many metal spikes and left to slowly bleed to death while he's left c[ontemplating] his thoughts. He's forced to apologize for everything he did... while... he... um... ohh..."

“Forever Dead” (FD) is a completely fictional book, as in, it doesn’t exist in real life. You can actually tell because it isn’t censored the way the dev usually censors real things, like A****a C*****e’s name [Agatha Christie]. So if it was made up specifically for DRDT, that would imply it holds some significance.

And you can see a lot of the same ideas as in the About page text. A character who ends up becoming bored of their environment, turning to unethical acts to entertain themselves. But what’s really striking is the repeated mention of the “Teacher” in the About page text.

(Is that a Rei Mekaru reference?!)

There… really isn’t a DRDT character who would be called that. I’ve seen it related to Mai before, and while the teacher could be an allegory for Mai, it can’t literally be her. Mai is a student, and not a particularly academically gifted one at that; she’s not anyone’s teacher. The only other person who could apply is the teacher Min is implied to have had at the end of her Bonus Episode, but… like, what would that mean. Why is he important?

No, I think it makes more sense to assume this is related to Forever Dead. That would also explain why the character claims to be “stuck for all eternity” even though they know what to do to make everyone “survive until [they] all run out of food and starve.” And also because of a little theory-bordering-on-headcanon I have.

Don’t you think it’s strange how the character uses the word “Teacher”? People in the US, to my knowledge, don’t speak like that. I believe they use “Mr/Ms/Mx [Name]” or something like that. So, could this be an in-universe translation quirk? For example, if “Forever Dead” is originally Japanese, the character could actually be saying “Sensei”, which I think is more common, and is sometimes directly translated to “Teacher” even though it sounds a bit weird in English. I personally love this idea because it conjures up the frankly amusing idea of the dev making up not a book in English, but a book translated to English from Japanese just for shits and giggles.

Anyways, rambling aside, the point stands. I think this is a (fictional) quote from (the fictional book) “Forever Dead.” So what does it mean for DRDT?

Well, seeing as it’s literally in the About page, it’s likely closely linked to the very nature of the killing game, right? It makes sense to assume we’re meant to relate the mastermind to this quote. The attitude is mastermind-y, the actions are mastermind-y, the context is mastermind-y, we’re calling mastermind.

But wait. Since this Forever Dead protagonist constantly speaks of boredom, doesn’t that instantly relate them to Veronika?

Well, yes.

…

But… it’s Veronika. It would honestly be weirder if something related to the mastermind doesn’t link back to her. She’s the biggest mastermind bait I’ve ever seen, and unless she has an early reveal, I don’t quite see her as the mm (I’ll just start shortening it).

Other theories have also connected it to Whit’s intuition. I find these interesting, and about as plausible as any other good mastermind theory. However, since the “boredom < despair” angle is something which I feel is quite intuitive for the average DR fan who knows anything about Junko and Izuru, I actually want to dive a bit deeper into what the connection between the mm and the Forever Dead protagonist could mean, since that’s an angle I’ve seen explored less often.

For one, there’s the time loop thing. Now, I don’t believe DRDT takes place in an actual time loop, but I think there’s an argument that there is a repetition of events at play. As in, things which happened in the past, and are repeating in the present.

Yes I’m talking about the pre-prologue cutscene.

... Fuck!! Fuck, fuck, fuck, this really hurts... Ouch... I really wasn't expecting her to attack me like that. I made a massive mistake to trust them. I can't rely on anyone. All by myself... I have to end the killing game. And even if I can't do that... I have to kill Teruko Tawaki. No matter what.

I’ve talked about it before, but as a refresher: that fork with blood on it implies whoever is speaking got attacked with the fork, which fits Xander’s eye injury suspiciously closely.

(Believe it or not, the David MV might have an allusion to it as well but I am not getting into that)

So if Xander is the one speaking, if you think about it, it must mean he was involved in a killing game previous to the one we see in DRDT. Which, in fact, Teruko may have some vague memories of.

Teruko: And also, as a way to reference that "past killing game," right?

That could be about the THH killing game, which frankly sorta makes more sense in context, but seeing as Veronika then claims nothin like a killing game had happened before, I find it most likely that got completely erased from history.

So what’s the important thing here? Well, for one, if Xander’s eye injury came from a previous killing game, then we are definitely not talking about an actual time loop, as that would have erased his eye injury. However, it could be talking about a repetition of events. Perhaps there have been multiple killing games before this one, a la V3 but without the “fiction” aspect presumably.

This is nothing new by itself, but it does have an odd implication when related back to the About page text. Think about it, the FD protagonist doesn’t enjoy the time loop. If he could, he would end it. So if he’s meant to reflect the DRDT MM’s attitude, could this mean the mastermind doesn’t actually enjoy the killing games?

It sounds insane, but hear me out. We’ve already established the FD protag doesn’t actually enjoy despair, so if they’re meant to parallel the MM, then that could imply the MM doesn’t enjoy despair either. And if they’re being forced into the MM role repeatedly for one reason or another, the same way the FD protagonist is forced into the time loop, wouldn’t they grow bored of it, despite the despair? It’s the same thing as the FD protagonist:

“…I used to be like you. I cared so much about people, I cried everytime someone was hurt. I suffered for a long time stuck in here caring about people.”

If we apply this with the idea that “time loop” = “repeating killing games”, and that “FD protag” = “Matermind”, then what we have is a reluctant mastermind forced to go through with several killing games for reasons unknown, who only grew slightly fond of despair once they grew bored of everything else.

So, uh, there’s definitely unhinged point #1. However, there is another thing to note, the one I mentioned in the beginning. And since I mentioned it, you probably caught it. The FD protag dies the exact same way Mukuro does, and since the FD protag is connected to the DRDT MM, it’s possible there’s some connection between Mukuro and the DRDT MM. Most likely related to their mastermind-iness.

Of course, what the connection could actually be is very vague, and there’s a ton of options. Still, here’s a few possibilities I find the most interesting:

>The mastermind is a secret extra student, hiding somewhere in the school. So Mai. I don’t quite like this one since it’s sorta silly and I just don’t see Mai as the mastermind, but it is there.

>The mastermind deeply adores a loved one, and may even disguise themselves to look like this loved one. Like Mukuro does with Junko… and like Whit does with his mom. This is to appease the people who love the Whit MM theory, because I know some people are really passionate about it and it’s frankly always fun to see those people talk about it! It is also just objectively funny to always find ways to pin him as the MM imo.

>The mastermind fully disguised themselves as another person. So, Veronika = Mai crack theory. Sure, at this point.

>There are two masterminds, and one of them died early on. Basically thinking of Xander here, given the whole “kill Teruko Tawaki” thing. The second would probably have to be Mai unfortunately, so I don’t quite see it. Though I guess it could also be David, or just anyone else in the killing game for that matter, but you know.

>The mastermind faked their death. You know, we never saw Min’s corpse… So we’re off to delulu land! Min is still alive! Min is still alive! Min-!

Blatant favoritism aside, that’s pretty unlikely. I doubt the mastermind would want to straight up lose an arm in a fake execution. Though I guess if she’s a reluctant MM maybe she doesn’t get a say in the executions, so…

Min is still alive! Mind is still alive!

>There are two masterminds, and one of them is disguising as the other. This fits shockingly close to the J & Ryan double mastermind theory I swear exists somewhere on Tumblr and I’m not going insane I just can’t find the post. Essentially, the idea that Ryan and J swap places constantly, taking turns on who is the more traditional mastermind and who stays in the killing game, explaining that one time Rose seemingly didn’t recognize J in chapter 1. So two siblings, where one of them disguised as the other while the other just presents as themselves? Exactly like Mukuro and Junko.

But I feel the most grounded ideas are usually the likeliest ones, which is why I think this connection to Mukuro may simply be another way of saying the MM was manipulated/coerced into their position, instead of choosing to be the MM on their own.

It’s a less conclusive answer, but it’s less farfetched than the other ones. And it sorta fits… uh….

Well, see, I’m making a post with AUs for all possible MMs… and I kinda accidentally convinced myself Rose might be the mastermind? I might make a more detailed post about it later, but basically this more vague connection to Mukuro fits, so.

Anyways, those are all the possibilities I can think of for unhinged point #2, the connection between the MM and Mukuro. I don’t have much else to say, as I feel this is something that’s gonna make more sense as we move forward in the series.

Hope that was satisfying! Take care!

#drdt #danganronpa despair time #drdt theory #forever dead #we tag fake books in this house

[raidnae]

LOOk I’m not saying that the dragon show is perfect, but I’m tired of reading these takes about how the show doesn’t understand the source material. That it has a pro-Targ stance. How people can say that even after a finale where two Targs lose control of their fire-breathing nukes and end up jump-starting the bloodiest civil war in Westerosi history?? I don’t know.

People seem to think that the show has portrayed Rhaenyra as perfect (questionable) and the good guy, and wouldn’t it be better if they’d stayed more faithful to the source material where Rhaenyra was kinda awful and a terrible leader?

Here’s the thing about the source material okay (and I’ve seen surprisingly little discussion of this): F&B is written from the perspective of a Maester living in a world steeped in violent misogyny. Maester Gyldayn’s prejudice against women colors his interpretations of events. I think Martin expects the reader to engage with this aspect of the text. That not only are we dealing with three unreliable sources, but the narrator himself has his own prejudices. Women who birth trueborn male children are spoken of much more charitably than women who refuse to marry or exhibit any sort of sexual agency. In fact, any woman exercising sexual agency has been characterized as fickle, manipulative, or vindictive (e.g. Saera Targaryen, Rhaenyra, Alys Rivers, etc.). So we can’t take any of the Maester’s impressions about women at face value. This shit is subtextual and it is frustratingly ignored by A LOT of book readers. 

HotD is directly engaging with this latent theme in F&B. Which is GREAT and unexpected after the way GoT treated women. A lot of people seem to think that the show is pro-team black, but I think the show’s just pro-Rhaenyra (it’s also pro-Alicent, I’m sorry if you can’t accept this but Rhaenyra 👏and👏 Alicent👏 are👏 the 👏protagonists). Or at least it’s trying to portray her with more empathy and nuance. Book!Rhaenyra doesn’t have much agency. Daemon is the driving force behind everything she does. He teaches her how to have sex, he fights all the battles she wins; after Luke’s death she’s barely involved in the war. From the perspective of a misogynistic Maester this must be the truth. The show could’ve portrayed a more morally gray Rhaenyra but ultimately the writers decided to make this show about Rhaenyra and Alicent and their tragic, doomed love affair the disintegration of their relationship, as a commentary on how violent patriarchal systems ruin people even when they have generally good intentions. And show!Rhaenyra’s far from perfect, she’s arrogant, she (like her groomer uncle) has issues with consent, she absolutely takes advantage of her dumb dad’s callous treatment of everyone apart from her.

So the fucking white stag is the thing people bring up as an example of the the show picking Rhaenyra as the rightful ruler/ chosen one. But this ignores the context of the what happened before we see the white stag. Viserys’s hunting party has caught a normal stag, and we see him unwilling to kill it but caving under the pressure because that’s who he is as a person and as a king. Viserys hates violence but when it is expected of him he will enact it (cutting open his first wife to get an heir, committing marital rape on his second wife). Rhaenyra sees the white stag but she shows restraint. Her claim to the throne is already threatened by Aegon’s birth, killing the stag would have been as symbolic gesture to show the lords present at the hunt that her father had made the right choice when naming her as heir. But unlike her father (and her uncle) Rhaenyra does not believe in using violence as a show of strength (something that becomes relevant again in the finale).

The stag can’t be a sign that Rhaenyra is the divinely appointed ruler of Westeros because we (and the writers) know how this all ends. 

AND THEN there’s prophecy and the business with the dagger. Now we’ll have to see where they go with this (I think they have some coherent plan with this). But does the prophecy as the reason for Aegon’s conquest now cast Targaryen imperialism in a positive light? Well again, we know how the story ends. It was a dumb af ending but this is the prequel to GoT the show, so writers know how this ends. The Targs don’t do shit with this dagger. Their precious prophecy will be lost to time. The most they did was act as glorified couriers who brought the dagger from Valyria. All their ideas of grand destiny will amount to nothing. What do you call that? Dramatic irony? 

#house of the dragon #hotd #rhaenyra targeryan #alicent hightower #the show definitely had some missteps #mainly the Larys feet thing was in extremely poor taste #and rhaenys bursting out of the dragonpit was a dumb decision #but overall some very very good and smart decision were made for this adaptation #rhaenicent

[bestworstcase]

I feel like (different anon) half of the fandom doesn’t even care about Salem in the sense that regardless of what Her goal is? To be fair in my corner I’ve seen more individual character hatred rather than “this plot doesn’t make sense” hatred. Or ppl just saying the plot sucks without offering why they think so which is the majority of rwby “criticism”. But Salem being the key to the end of the show has been very well telegraphed since the end of volume 3. She started as this faceless monster, a creature to hate, the one who killed their headmaster and plunged the world into war. Then we learned that Oz was also keeping secrets and outright lying, so that knocked him off of the Trusted Adult pedestal (tho he has always been kinda shady but in terms of story formula that’s what I mean). Volume 6??? The Lost Fable?? Still so amazing. Salem very literally gets humanized in the eyes of our characters. She still did all of those awful things but she’s a Person now rather than an Entity. Those moments of confrontation (Ironwood’s office with Ruby, Yang while in the whale, Oscar.” We get to see her talking to her Evil Guy Crew. We see her have emotions.

AND THEN THE BROTHER GODS once thought of as entities much like how Salem was seen by the cast in the beginning. Yes they are still gods but not in the sense that at least I was thinking. They came From somewhere. And yes Salem was the first to discover they were fallible but knowing what V9 told us helped me put it into perspective

So the last arch being about fully learning what Salem wants and then, probably possibly, deciding how to help alongside with it. I think ppl get upset bc they view that as “oh yeah all the ppl she killed and lives she ruined don’t matter she’s our bestie mow” kind of Joining with Salem. When im seeing it as a more Neo agreeing to work with Cinder type deal. If Salem wants to stop the gods, get revenge, make them humble, and the gods return and want to wipe out remnant For Good, I’d say that’s a common goal our kids can get behind.

rwby is a cool show with cool villains and I enjoy it a lot and also your thoughts about it sorry this is so long

the thing with salem and the, like, common fandom interpretation of her and where her arc is headed is that. at least since v9 it’s less about resistance to the idea that the final confrontation being team rwby vs the gods as it is the way folks assume salem fits into that, namely that most of the fandom still takes completely at face value the idea that she’s selfish, arrogant, and needs to learn her lesson about the value of life and death. so you get these wild takes that the gods were assholes who punished her out of proportion for what she did, paired with this implicit idea that salem does actually deserve this punishment because she Still RefusesTo Learn Her Lesson, and thus she needs to be redeemed by team rwby proving her wrong somehow.

but like

salem did nothing wrong. praying to the gods was not wrong, reacting emotionally when they were cruel to her was not wrong, recognizing their fallibility and unworthiness was not wrong, rallying people against them was not wrong, vowing to keep fighting after they massacred everybody was not wrong, cursing them after they left and blaming them for ending the world was not wrong, jumping into the pool of grimm was not wrong, BEING grimm is not wrong, rejecting the divine mandate after ozma hid it from her for years was not wrong. frankly continuing to be a thorn in his side since then is, i would argue, also not wrong, because she’s made herself the immovable obstacle preventing him from summoning his genocidal god back to remnant to kill everyone again; it is laughably obvious that the ultimatum is not a game humanity can win. and then factoring in the part where ozma is obsessed with finding a way to destroy her, what else is she supposed to do besides live in exile. and of course if you close off every other door except violent rebellion you are eventually going to invite violent rebellion. 

so like. Salem Is Right, and seems to be taking what she considers the path of minimal destruction (the grimm held beacon but pull out of vale within a few days; her plan for haven was nearly bloodless and left mistral untouched; she made no move to attack mantle and began her siege with a grace period for her to leave in peace if the relics were surrendered), which means that she’s likely willing to negotiate methods if other less destructive paths are opened to her. her villain -> hero arc can’t turn on team rwby persuading her that she’s wrong, because fundamentally her position is “the genocidal divine tyrants do not deserve our obedience and we can and must defy them” which is, um, correct. but if they adopt that position themselves and then negotiate How i think they’ll find she’s a lot more reasonable than they’ve been led to believe, and i do not think the wider fandom is prepared for that whatsoever

#50/50 the first olive branch comes from salem’s side #which would be hysterical

[corvusalbus93]

About Phee

Well, there seem to be a lot of opinions on Phee and her relationship with Tech specifically. Most, from what I’ve seen, like her as a character and as a love-interest for Tech, while others never warmed up to her and the ship/their interactions really rub them the wrong way.

Having read a few posts, I went back to watch every episode featuring Phee, plus a few others, paying closer attention to her specifically.

These are just my personal observations and interpretations, and you may disagree. We all read people differently; otherwise, we would never misinterpret each other.

So, everyone relax, put down your pitchforks…yes, you too, there in the back. I see you.

Down.

Down.

Good.

Now, starting with "Spoils of War":

Honestly, Phee doesn’t make the best first impression. But let’s take a closer look. At first she seems interested in the Batch, no animosity, but then Hunter is clearly displeased that Cid told Phee about them. Cid tries to reassure the Batch, tells them that Phee is the most trustworthy pirate she knows, and Echo is very dismissive. It’s only then that Phee starts being more disrespectful, hitting back by making fun of them not looking alike despite being clones and all. She’s only briefly sweet to Tech, before he starts talking about the phenotypical eye colour of clones and she interrupts him and leaves...not the first time it happened to him, but still. Not cool Phee.

Regardless, despite Phee’s attitude, Hunter and Echo didn’t exactly put their best feet forward here and arguably were the first to be impolite. Both sides did pretty poorly here, but I do admit that upon first watching in January, I didn’t really like Phee much. I didn’t hate her or anything, but I wasn’t endeared.

Moving on to "Entombed":

Clearly some time has passed, as Tech must have heard some of Phee’s stories several times to be able to comment on how she changes them up. While she isn’t close to the Batch, they seem at least casually acquainted at this point.

As a note to Phee and Tech’s interaction in the cantina; when he dismisses the items Omega found, Phee walks up to check them out, apparently touching his chin as she says “Easy, quick draw.”, and he has doesn’t really react to it. He’s probably used to his brothers doing anything from placing a hand on his shoulder to shoving/punching him, but I feel it’s important to note that he doesn’t seem at all visibly uncomfortable, even though it’s Phee, who he barely knows at this point. He just carries on as usual and tells her she’s holding a broken regulator, still certain there is nothing useful among the various objects.

The episode shows her working with the Batch for the first time, Omega is by far the most enthusiastic and Phee encourages her whenever possible. She really seems to like the girl and maybe she also figured that if she wants to get on the Batch’s good side, Omega is kind of the key.

In the tomb it is clear the Batch, especially Hunter, don’t exactly trust Phee completely or at least doubt her expertise. Given all the various things that don’t go smoothly, and them not knowing her well, all too understandable.

Hunter accuses her of trapping them early on, and once inside Tech mentions that he’s analysed the minerals of the stone slabs, finishing with: “Phee may be onto something,” which she hears, proving that they didn’t believe her.

So, Phee knows they don’t really have faith in her and acts especially confident and nonchalant, whenever confronted by the others or hears remarks. However, instead of reassuring, she often comes across as dismissive towards their concerns, much to Hunter’s annoyance.

She’s also quick to jibes back, and all these just seem like a natural character flaws, especially for someone, who usually works alone and deals with pirates/smuggles/black marketers, where keeping up appearances certainly matters. In this episode though, it’s actually Tech who gets the last jab. “This puts us at 0 for 2 in treasure hunting even with a professional.” (seriously, the tone he uses for “professional”).

Still, she also watched out for them; she warns Wrecker about the collapsing mountainside, when they first uncover the entry and later she pushes him out of the way of more falling rocks, after aligning the wrong symbols. In the spinning tunnel she notices Hunter is in danger and immediately runs to his aid, even before he falls, making it just in time to grab the grappling hook before it can slip off.

When the group is separated, she also only pushes onwards after Tech reassures them that he can navigate the side tunnels and rendezvous with them later. Later, upon finding the Heart of the Mountain and accidently activating the walker, she’s reluctant to put the crystal back at first, but is quickly convinced to put it back.

Personally, I liked Phee better after this episode, but hadn’t completely warmed up.

Next we see her in "Pabu":

Once again it must have been some time, since Hunter let’s Omega sit by Phee’s side during the negotiations, and Phee trusts him (and the others) with her life. She doesn’t move, seems completely calm as Hunter throws his knife and saves her.

While we haven’t seen it, this shows that they’ve worked together a few times since “Entombed” and her relationship with the Batch has only improved. She feels more like a part of the team in the opening, rather than someone who just tagged along.

And she’s started to really care for them.

She’s the one noting that Omega needs friends her age, and perhaps shouldn’t live the life of a soldier/merc. When hearing about them breaking ties with Cid and not having a plan, it only takes her seconds to invite them to her secret “home away from home.”

Here we also have Tech’s first actual reaction to her casual flirting, looking caught off guard when she calls him “brown eyes” and gently taps his shoulder...no reaction a moment earlier, when she was just touching his shoulder, though. Either Tech has realized she’s legit hitting on him, or he’s started developing feelings towards her as well (whether he’s realized it or not), so her flirting hits differently. Maybe both.

Btw, on the island, Phee explains that many of the artefacts she finds belong to the cultures of the displaced people seeking refuge on Pabu. This, aside from making her motivations more noble, is something I find interesting due to certain similarities to the second episode of the season. There Tech helped restore the datacore and Romar explained its cultural value, how his people existed before the war, which was something new for Tech to consider. And here again, he talks about how the “jade” tree has little monetary value, before Phee notes that treasure and value can mean many things. This appreciation for culture and history could be something to bond over.

Still, in “Entombed” Phee clearly wanted to sell the Heart of the Mountain, though part of me is wondering if some of that money would have gone to Pabu, given all this new information. But that’s just speculation.

Now this is the episode we get some actual flirting. She teases him, but as we all know, Tech can be pretty sassy himself, especially towards his siblings and I mentioned his jibe at her in “Entombed”. Also, he’s the only one looking after her, when she separates from the group to put the artefact away (with a subtle smile on his lips before following the others) and at the end of the episode he gives her two real, genuine smiles, after agreeing with Hunter to stay a little longer on Pabu, and her teasing him once more (Tech: “I had the same idea.” Phee: “Did you now?” Tech: *smiles at her*).

Whether this is actual romantic interest on his part or not, is up to debate, but it shows that he likes her, enjoys her company (he even follows her around earlier in that last scene) and is comfortable being around her.

Earlier at dinner they also sat next to each other, clinked “glasses”, until the sun set. She invites Tech to join her as she waits for the lights to turn on across the island, but when he doesn’t see what she’s talking about, he immediately turns back to his datapad. Now, all she does is ask him to wait, while simply touching his arm, because Phee really doesn’t want him to miss it. No eye-rolling or annoyance, which we’ve seen from other characters, even her, back when she didn’t know the Batch...but now she does know them better, and she is a lot gentler and more patient.

And Tech does enjoy the view, before the two turn to each other and smile.

"The Summit"

This is the very first time in the entire show that Tech is really visibly uncomfortable, speaking with someone.  

We’ve never seen him like this before and it’s a safe bet neither has Phee. Considering how comfortable he was around her in “Pabu”, how vocal he usually his with his opinions and his own tendency to jibe (including at her), she might have been confused by this sudden shift in demeanour. Yes, he’s often occupied with his datapad, but here he’s so focused, as if to avoid the conversation, without actively preventing/ending it.

When approaching him, Phee could have easily interpreted his behaviour as the result of him just feeling guilty for not telling her or something along those lines. Which isn’t necessarily wrong. Given his reaction upon spotting her, Tech probably recognized she was upset, had a pretty good idea why and simply didn’t know how to handle such a delicate situation, perhaps feeling a bit overwhelmed as well. After all, he was already focused on the mission at that point.

She tries to initiate a conversation, pausing to give him the opportunity to respond, smiling encouragingly. When he asks her if he should have briefed her, she counters with “...when two friends are talking, it’s called a conversation”.

Now, I’ve seen people get upset with this, like she’s talking down to him, but I don’t think that is happening here. He used the term “briefing”, he’s talking like they’re in the military and it’s very formal, even for him. But she’s very deliberate with her choice of words. I think she wanted to remind him that they have a closer relationship now, something more personal/casual; they are friends, they can open up to each other. And she pauses again to give him a chance to think and respond.

When he gives none, she smiles and tells him not to run off with any other pirates, which is very much in line with the usual teasing between them. Remember, the sass goes both ways. And another hint to him that she has a thing for him.

One he doesn’t seem to pick up on, or again, his mind is already too preoccupied with the mission he’s about to go on. This seemingly half-hearted reaction is when Phee gets a bit frustrated.

I think she understands him, but is also a little hurt.  And the thing is, as far as we know she never had a heart-to-heart with Tech like Omega did in “The Crossing”. Omega thought he didn’t care about their family falling apart, asking why he didn’t act like it mattered to him, and they had a short but very important conversation.

If Phee never had that with Tech, and he usually appears confident and comfortable around her, it’s not surprising she accidentally overstepped his boundaries, when she felt frustrated. I mean who hasn’t done or said something stupid, when feeling hurt/upset and later thought: “Damn, could have handled that better.”

And I’ve been in Tech’s position, so I get it when some say watching her push his datapad down made them uncomfortable by proxy, that Phee’s actions seemed abrasive. But this scene to me felt realistic, especially since they are still getting to know each other and figuring things out between them. Mistakes are going to be made by both, what matters is how they are handled.

And here, after pushing down his pad, Phee watches him shift his googles, tense, his shoulders go up, he’s unable to respond... and within seconds Phee relents, giving him space again. She saw how she made things worse and tried to fix it. Her expression softens, she smiles again and tells him, quite affectionately, she’ll see him around, leaving without further pushing for a reply.

Tech relaxes as he looks after her, and then looks thoughtful, as if he’s trying to find the right words and probably has a thousand other thoughts... but she’s gone they need to go, so he gets into the Marauder.

He still likes Phee, it was just this very specific situation at the time that made him so uncomfortable. He didn’t know how to handle it, and she was trying to find out what was going on and pushed too hard.

I’ve seen people say that she’s trying to change him, but I really don’t see that, certainly no more than his family (Tech interactions with Omega this season especially). She wants them to get to know each other better, and someone has to do the first step to make that happen. Phee’s just treating him like a person, an adult, but still adjusts as she gets to know him better.

As of now it feels the romantic interest is mostly one sided. Now, I still like to see an eventual Tech/Phee, because I can really see it happening, but right now, Tech deals with a lot of things, from adjusting to this new life to trying to save Crosshair, despite everything that happened between the Batch and their somewhat estranged brother.

Considering his reactions in “Pabu” and “The Summit”, I think Tech is now aware of Phee’s flirtations being serious, but doesn’t know how to approach/deal with it, and again has a lot of other things going on in his life.

If Tech is still alive and has a chance to settle down, I do think they can and will eventually be romantically involved. “Pabu” has shown that he enjoys her company, likes her as a person and since it has taken him this long to realize that she’s interested in him, it might take him time to realize his own developing feelings, especially since this is likely all new territory for him.

Here to him hopefully being alive, so we can see how these two develop further.

#the bad batch #bad batch #tbb #the bad batch tech #phee genoa

[localplaguenurse]

hii its amorette—can i just say i freaked out when i saw capillaries updated?? i loved the latest chapter so so much!!

i love how you characterize dottore and wanted to ask if you have any tips on how you write him / things you keep in mind while writing him, since your fic really inspired me to try writing my own! i hope you have a nice day :DD

Hi Amorette!!! Glad you liked it!

I saw this right as my first break at work ended and suffice to say, it’s been on my mind all day. You’ve opened a Pandora’s box, you’re getting a whole character analysis, because Dottore is actually a royal pain to write about so I have to REALLY study this bastard. The first half is going to be just purely on his canon traits, and the rest are my interpretations and headcanons.

So canonically, Dottore is very prideful and driven by the pursuit of knowledge. No subject is off limits to him, and he doesn’t care about how ethical or moral his research is. Whatever he needs to do, he’ll do it, the ends justify the means. He’s been obsessed with surpassing the gods since he was young, which is why he was ostracized by society. Sohreh’s notes describe him as initially “frigid,” but then she goes on to say she had a good time working with him and is looking forward to spending more time with him (Rip Sohreh). He created segments of himself from different ages as a way to surpass the limits of human cognition, and because they could offer their own individual contributions to his research. Omega is described as more selfish since he was the one to nuke the other segments for the gnosis, and Webttore/Beta is more manic and prone to mood swings. Also, none of the segments like each other.

That’s all the canon stuff. With that alone, you already have a pretty solid start for how to write him. He’s a man who views himself above the people who rejected him and wants to surpass the gods that ignored him. He doesn’t really care about keeping company and he barely gets along with himself. He’ll do anything in the pursuit of knowledge and doesn’t care if someone has to die for him to get it done. If Sohreh’s notes are anything to go by, he may have been antisocial but not completely opposed to finding connection, but that’s up to how you personally interpret her notes and subsequent death. He’s very calculating, and though he does resent the gods, he’s at least mature enough to hold it together for a conversation.

Now, onto my personal take on Dottore, which I’ve sprinkled through the fic already but it won’t hurt to share here :3

So the one key thing I have latched onto personally is his name. Zandik. By this point we all know it means “heretic” but really think about that for a second. That is the name of a man who was born in a world where gods are not only real, but they actually interact with the populace. Maybe it was because my bestie got me into Ethel Cain, but I started thinking about the implications/potential of religious trauma. What sort of homelife would a kid have when his own parents named him heretic when god is actually real? Certainly not a very pleasant life. Of course at some point he’d develop a hatred of gods when he’s been seen as a blasphemous monster since he was born. Of course he’d despise society as a whole, they’ve despised him from the start. This isn’t something he asked for, but it’s all he has. He did no wrong and yet all the world hated him for being born, what did they expect him to turn into?

As a result, my personal interpretation of Dottore is that he is still that prideful, cold and calculating scientist that hates the gods and isn’t afraid to do awful things to prove it, but he is also, deep down, motivated by validation. At the very least, that’s how this all started. At this point he’s become more callous, but there’s a part of him that wants to be appreciated, genuinely, by someone or something. This would have been especially prevalent in his younger self/segments, because he’s not as “mature” as he is now. If you cut through the 400 years of his callous cruel ways, you might find a little boy full of pain and anger asking what he did to deserve all of this. 

… TLDR: He’s very smart, very callous, thinks very highly of himself, and I write him as one of those “they treated me like the villain so I became the villain they feared most” characters with a splash or religious trauma for flavour.

If you want to, you're more than welcome to use some of my characterization if you ever write about him! Honestly, for as big a pain in the ass he is to write, he's really interesting to explore as a character! It's actually why my favourite chapters/moments so far are the backstory ones, or whenever he's reflecting on his relationship with widow. He's a bastard and I love him.

#ask #amorette! #dottore #dottore headcanons #dottore divorce arc #character analysis