#and the ways in which the worldview is a bit skewed | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nights-at-crystarium · 3 months

Text

Fragments - episodes 31-35 author notes

You can find similar breakdown posts on older episodes in my pinned!

The chasm in their understanding of what makes Vivi tick.

The stakes in this scene seem low and the twins are just overdramatizing the danger for the sake of unwinding and being silly, right? Yesn't. One wrong move or word, and they join those leafmen scattered all over the place.

Finding the line between bad actor and caring sister.

Of course Alisaie wants to hang out with Vivi. She doesn't want to admit that to herself, let alone risk looking desperate in her brother's eyes. Tsundere moment. It's been a while since they've. Had a rest. Between rescuing Minfilia from Laxan Loft and making their way to Il Mheg. Alphinaud, at least in my hc, isn't as physically durable, but definitely as stubborn and proud as Alisaie, so he wouldn't simply agree to chill out for a moment. Alisaie makes him tunnel-vision her bad (?) acting and openly throwing the game for supposedly selfish reasons, while she gets what she wanted, AND forces Alphi to sit his ass down.

I’m sorry but I really need to point out that her ahoge did, in fact, launch into the stratosphere.

More under the cut~

....Can you blame her tho.

Vivi’s shirt’s a bit more plain than usual, he needed to wear something practical under his crystarium guard disguise in Laxan Loft.

The flashback in episodes 32-33 has no dialogue per se, only monologues, to emphasize how disconnected they are.

Technically both vivis are real, but Exarch’s memories are definitely heavily skewed. He’d only known Vivi during the CT quests, in this story it’s a month or two in summer, during which literally nothing bad happens, sans the finale. Alisaie, however, got lucky to experience Vivi during Stormblood, his absolute low.

Exarch and Alisaie sit on opposing sides of the bias, one wears pink glasses, delusional and bluepilled, the other one’s (heh) redpilled, perhaps a bit too much. Hence Alisaie feels the whiplash when her jerkass woobie friend suddenly acts mellow (back in the present), still she has the expertise to tell that he’s not affected by a fae spell or anything.

Full page because I’m so proud of the paneling here, simple as this trick is, these speech bubbles blocking Vivi from sight neatly illustrate that Alisaie just babbles away, paying no heed to his state.

With the power of flashbacks and stories told by one character to another, I’m able to revisit any moment in their past whenever I please. I didn’t commit to a linear story because there was no story! Well, just the outlines. Vivi as a character began in ShB because I really needed to fuck that old man, I started writing down the lil scenes loosely connected by the canon plot, and that’s how the whole concept of Fragments came to be.

It may not work for everyone, but my secret sauce’s that you don’t have to begin at the beginning. Make a guy, put him in a situation, then ask a lot of whys and hows to expand his story backward and forward.

Keeping the past events for later allows me to flesh things out at a leisurely pace. This Alisaie flashback is actually an iteration, originally I’d planned to have Vivi stand alone and just think the broody thoughts, and that was supposed to be the transition between ARR and ShB arcs. I grow more writing muscle as I go, and I’m infinitely happy that I avoided that angsty infodump.

Okay this’s becoming a big fat tangent, but I wanted to acknowledge another pitfall: overusing a character as a mere exposition tool. I wouldn’t do this for, say, Tataru or Y’shtola. Being THE flashback haver makes sense for Alisaie because a) they’re close with Vivi, b) her worldview and opinion on Vivi are changing in ShB, she’s a smart lil thing who would slow down and reflect when appropriate, c) she has a distinct arc in my comic, and knowing what’s going on inside that elf brain will give you the most entertainment out of her actions in the present moment.

I’m new to writing and very excited about the story that comes together as we speak, so I like to show around my kitchen. Please lemme know if you enjoy this. I don’t know if I’m parroting the boring 101s, or if this’s actually useful to someone.

“Meals made for me” YEA HE CAN’T COOK. Well, barely.

New sharp outfit, procured by our most magnanimous branch. The “tail” will help me draw the upcoming Titania fight, it adds fluidity to his movements.

*presses the upgrade button*

There's a lot happening in his head that's not being shown. I hope at least some readers wonder who or what he leaves behind in his mind's eye in this moment. What we know for sure is that he doesn’t take too long to make a decision.

Not sure if subtle, but I did try the breadcrumbing:

Unfortunately for everyone, including himself :’>

I love this one especially because, instead of telling that about himself, Vivi asks Ardbert, kinda gauging his wol experience against the other wol’s.

Episode 34 really shook people awake and reminded that we’re off the msq rails with this story. I loved the response it evoked in the tags, lots of thoughtful rambling about being a hero.

Fae temptation jokes and all, but Feo Ul really says what Vivi needs to say out loud to himself.

Normalize prioritizing self-care over world-saving.

Vivi genuinely cares about Feo Ul. That’s unusual. It might be my storytelling mistake that I didn’t show much of his typical indifference before this scene, unless you count the episodes where he does this

instead of hurrying the fuck up with the msq. Or, perhaps, it’s okay, since this gets plenty of attention later on. You won’t miss the fact that he isn’t eager to set himself on fire to keep others warm. Feo Ul just lucked their way into his heart, and, as a result, he approaches the Titania fight with unusual consideration.

/srs mode on ^

Remember how I just talked about developing this story in all directions at once? I planned Vivi to have this demeanor during the early days of writing Fragments. Like, most of the time. He’d be a broody bitch, get slowly thawed by Exarch’s kindness, and... That’d be it. In veeeeeery broad strokes, this’s still the case, but the current iteration has much more nuance.

Vivi and Titania’s likeness has no deep meaning, take it or leave it. Vivi cares about appearances, he was bound to notice this. Feo Ul can see souls, visuals are secondary to them. But Vivi, being himself, must doubt and question everything.

He moves fast and thinks a lot as the adrenaline speeds him up.

Notice how he lets Titania speak and remains quiet. This’s common in most fights: he doesn’t indulge with chats or banter those who he sees as mere targets to destroy. There’s like a point of no return, if an enemy poses no threat and can be talked out of dying, Vivi will speak, sadly he enters this fight knowing that Titania has to die no matter what.

Once he’s familiarized himself with the situation, and realized that Titania’s more than just a mindless husk, things change up a bit. But for now, he just runs in circles, analyzes the situation, and overthinks about their visual resemblance :’>

Sorry not sorry but unintentional reference x’DD

To be fair Vivi IS being a magical boy in this miniarc so this works lmao.

Wrapping up on this note, thanks for sticking with me and reading till the end~

#ffxiv #ffxiv: fragments #fragment ii: new world old friend #fragments talk

109 notes · View notes

that-ari-blogger · 3 months

Text

A Look In The Mirror

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power exists in cycles and spirals, that's part of why I call it an tragedy trying desperately to happen. A ton of the tension is driven by the question of whether or not the characters will break out of the cycle. In other words, the story is about agency vs fate (a bit like Romeo and Juliet, I wonder what else the two have in common).

There are many ways to get across this theme, perhaps with carefully laid parallels and nuanced storytelling, both of which She-Ra does. But Signals takes a different, far less subtle approach. The episode tells the audience overtly what the series as a whole is about, and what exactly can subvert it.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, God Of War: 2018, God Of War: Ragnarök)

Signals opens after Entrapta's loyalties become general knowledge, and I would like to start with Bow's story in this episode, because it is a microcosm of how the story works as a whole. A vacancy is opened in a hierarchy and the new appointee tries to do things the way that their predecessor did. People become caricatures of those they see as powerful in their designated area and have to learn that being themself is just as useful, if not more so.

Bow, for example, seems convinced that failure is to be avoided or hidden. He has to be perfect, and able to fix anything. But, as Entrapta herself explains:

"There’s no reason to get huffy because an experiment fails. Failure is a vital part of scientific endeavor."

For all of her eccentricities, Entrapta is one of the wisest characters in the series, with only Razz outdoing her in that regard. (Swiftwind comes close). To that end, this is rather decent life advice, sometimes the best way to learn is to get something wrong and experience the consequences for that, instead of being either protected from consequence, or being punished for trying.

Hold on to this thought.

In essence, Bow is a relatively simple character by nature, he is necessary to balance out the entirety of the rest of the cast. But the word "relatively" is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, because Bow is nuanced, specifically in his relationship with obstacles.

Bow begins with a very simple worldview, but Entrapta single handedly complicates this time and time again. With her death, her allegiance, and her legacy. Bow realises that his worldview needs nuance when his top down perspective gets someone "killed", then he realises that his idea of binary morality is skewed when Entrapta defects, and here he learns about failure and tactics by trying to live up to her image.

Bow remains simple, in contrast with the theme park character development of Catra, Adora, and Glimmer, but he does learn and adapt.

So, Bow sets the baseline, to break from the cycle, you need to change. You need to stop trying to be someone else, and instead focus on being the best you that you can possibly be.

God Of War: 2018 and its sequel use the analogy of fate to describe this principle. Thor becomes an absent father because of his own father's abuse, which then leads to Magni and Modi being schmucks as the cycle continures. Odin explicitly gets to see what his future holds and ends up inadvertently causing it to come true in his attempts to subvert his fate.

Fatbrett on YouTube has a video titled Odin - A Deconstruction of Villainy that delves into the character as a whole, but I would like to zero in on Odin's core flaw and the message of the game as a whole. To change your fate is to change your nature. Odin is incapable of change, so the prophecy comes true.

But Kratos and Atreus do change, but their journey is towards learning to not avoid being themselves. Kratos' journey in God of War: 2018 is directly caused by not telling his son about his past, and Atreus spends the entirety of God of War: Ragnarök trying to be either his father, or Odin. The message of the story is this:

"Don't be sorry, be better"

Learn from your mistakes.

Adora takes this in an interesting direction, because it's genuinely difficult to see her as having much meaningful character development in series one at all, and I actually think this is a good thing. Because on a surface level, Adora goes from bad guy to good guy and escapes from an abusive relationship. But does she? The only thing that happens to the parental relationship is a pallet swap.

All Adora does in season one is change her surroundings, but the key part of that is her foundation. Adora spends season one surrounding herself with people who will enable that character development to flourish and not be broken down... and Light Hope. In season two, Adora starts making strides towards actual agency, and that is all because of the setup she has been doing.

I have gone into Depth as to how Light Hope is a bad influence in other posts, but this episode hammers home just how easily Adora internalises things. She keeps Shadow Weaver's tales of the Weeping, Headless, and Undead Princesses in her mind, for example, absorbed uncritically.

But Adora also keeps the obsessive blaming. She sees a problem and immediately attributes the cause of it to the Horde, a holdover from her time there, where she had the same attitude towards Princesses. In this instance, she's wrong, and the problem is more nuanced, and her assumptions get the better of her.

Speaking of assumptions, the first ones make an appearance in this episode, kind of. The messages that they leave behind give a glimpse into their lives that we haven't come close to getting before.

"I’ve been thinking of them as these big epic figures. But they’re regular people, sending messages to their loved ones."

The theme of cycles and living up to legacies continues with the worldbuilding of this story. Modern Etheria tends to visualise the First Ones as great and powerful and perfect, but they were just as human as the rest of the characters. Once again, those trying to mimic their predecessors exactly come up short.

Over on the Horde side, Catra is going through a similar situation, she is trying to become Shadow Weaver, but coming up short because there was more the story than she realised. Shadow Weaver had to do paperwork, for example.

There's also the fact that she is still in the abusive environment. She still regularly visits Shadow Weaver, so the psychological bullying still happens, but she's also around Hordak, now. I said that Adora has just pallet swapped her situation, and I think Catra has done the same.

When Hordak takes the atmosphere out of the room, it is awful, and it's the moment in which Catra should realise that it doesn't matter how high up in the chain of command she goes, she will still be suffering. She should realise that she needs to get out of there for her own safety and sanity.

But she doesn't realise that. Instead, she applies what she has learned in her upbringing. She is convinced that all she has to do is succeed, and she will get that attention and fairness. Conditional acceptance is what she is used to, so she doesn't see anything out of the ordinary here.

"Failure is when something ceases to serve a purpose. When that happens, it becomes worthless to me."

This is Hordak's worldview, and I hate to argue with a villain, but I think he's wrong there. If success is usefulness, and everything will eventually stop being useful to you, then you have a pretty sad life. If you judge everything by utility and don't care for relationships or things that just look and feel nice, then you are alone.

But on a broader, purely utilitarian perspective, this idea is bunk by that standard too. Failure as worthlessness is an objectively false idea, because mistakes are things to learn from. If something doesn't work, try again differently.

In other words:

"Failure is a vital part of scientific endeavor."

Entrapta is back, and this episode actually gives a glimpse into how to subvert the cycles, specifically through Entrapta and Hordak.

Firstly, Hordak has evidently been trying the experiment over and over again without learning anything. So Entrapta, by nature of her ability to adapt, makes the experiment work. It's a tiny metaphor for what I've been saying so far.

But Entrapta breaks through Hordak's barriers because of her sense of freedom. The best way to break free of a downward spiral is to start moving in a different direction, and Entrapta does that easily. The reason she so easily switches sides is because she isn't tied down by anything (not even morality). She can't even be imprisoned because she is impossible to contain. Entrapta is a free spirit, and I think that that is what the series is about, personal agency.

Catra and Adora are repeating the same story over and over again because they think they have no choice, that's what the tragedy of the series is, the two main characters are on a road to destruction and can't change direction. But the story isn't a tragedy, it avoids being one at the last possible moment when the characters finally realise that they have agency, and that thematic is foreshadowed right here, in Signals.

Final Thoughts

In my plan for this post, I wanted to bring up the Darksouls series, of all things, but I think I will save that idea for a later episode.

In any case, this episode manages to discuss some overarching philosophy, as well as explicitly state that this has happened before, this is a story about repetition, learn from your mistakes.

Also, the cinematography in this episode is really cool. It flies under the radar a lot, but the camera placement and movement really heighten the tension and vibe of this episode.

Next week, I will be talking about Roll With It, an episode that is near and dear to my heart for completely unbiased reasons. Definitely unbiased. Not bias there at all. So, stick around if that interests you.

Previous - Next

36 notes · View notes

wildpeachfarm · 1 month

Note

kinda sorta spitballing a bit here, but i think at least some of the UK group's behavior in this stems from wilbur being publicly exposed recently. because he was in their circle and close to a lot of them, and they are... very online, basing a lot of their understanding of morality/ethics/etc on a very twitter-esque framework that lacks nuance. where people can be neatly sorted into Bad and Good boxes and shunning the Bad Ones and grouping with Good Ones is something that happens pretty much automatically, and if you fail to do it that means you also go into the Bad box. obviously in reality, relationships are waaaay more messy and complicated, and there is no clear cut good/bad binary to sort people by. but when that's your worldview, finding out a close friend is actually a serial abuser, and you weren't able to see it until then, well, it really threatens to shake the foundations of what you think being a good person is and whether you are one. and when you have built yourself up to be better than others based on your perceived moral superiority (in your own or in others' eyes), having that perception shaken effectively shakes your sense of self. especially in your younger years, and the UK group is all what, barely over twenty at most now? i'm turning 28 this year and i have had so much therapy focused on dealing with centering an unachievable moral standard in my sense of self that meant that any time either my understanding of Being A Good Person was challenged or i failed to live up to that unrealistic standard, i ended up in (identity) crises. nowadays, i won't say i fully fixed that issue, but there is like... "more" to my own self-identity, so having one part of it crumble or change temporarily doesn't shake me as a whole so deeply. which is a very long build up to the point i'm actually trying to make. specifically, i think a lot of the UK group just had their own self-perception about their moral standing challenged significantly, and are/were looking for proof that they are "at least still better than someone else" which prompted them to point fingers and do it loudly. couple that with the - possibly subconscious - need to get prying eyes away from their own hurt and vulnerability, and you get rue comparing george and dream to wilbur, and max screaming at the camera. they're performing the outrage and anger that their (definitely twitter/younger skewing fandom influenced) standard for Being A Good Person demands, without having to center or focus the situation they are personally involved in, attached to, and where they personally may have failed to recognize and/or act against someone who was harming others. (mind, i don't think they should be doing the processing of their relationships with wilbur publicly, but this also circles back to a mentality of "everything must be done in the court of public opinion and also immediately" that is just... not healthy, not how it works, not actually solution-oriented) ANYWAY this got way longer than i meant it to but. tl;dr is basically: i think we are seeing a lot of "SEE? They do it too, so we're not bad! Actually, they are even worse!!" from the UK group that really is testament both of a lack of maturity on their part and also how toxic and counterproductive to personal growth the "twitter stan" approach to morality is.

possibly! We have no idea what goes on behind the scenes but this could be a fair guess

#ask #anon #anti drummyache tag

26 notes · View notes

reasonsforhope · 9 months

Note

Your blog is a literal god send for me, I’ve been feeling so depressed, pessimistic, nihilistic and cynical at the state of the world right now and my fear of if I even have a future, but your blog is absolutely what I needed right now, so I can’t thank you enough. I’m just so happy to see someone who is hopeful and positive and not pessimistic, and it makes me legit want to cry tears of joy. How are you able to stay so positive and optimistic despite everything going on?

<3 <3 <3

As for how I stay optimistic and relatively positive? Lots of effort and hard work.

I'm not naturally an optimist. I spent most of my life (and certainly my adolescence lol) being pretty angry and cynical.

It's not that I never feel depressed or despairing about the state of the world. There's fucked up shit happening, indisputably, and hey, I'm trans, it's been a rough fucking year for that. But I guess I try to focus on the difference between passing moods and baseline worldview.

Some of the main ways I moved my baseline worldview to be optimistic and hopeful:

A lot of reading and looking at data and in-depth stories. The headlines never give you enough of the story - hell, most news articles don't these days, because they're so skewed toward negative news

Especially reading/looking at good news sites (I have a masterpost of good news sites here). There are good things happening everywhere that you never hear about. Mostly, you only ever hear about the good things when there's been a huge setback, which sucks!

I'm basically not on social media. Nothing except Tumblr, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and I only ever go on FB and linkedin briefly for business. It's fantastic, can't recommend ditching social media enough

I made sure I was doing something to help (aka I started this blog. I would also volunteer but my disabilities and a lot of logistics make that complicated)

My job involves reading a couple dozen self-help books a year lol, not gonna lie that def helps

Taking a long perspective of time. It often doesn't feel like it, but statistically, this really is the best time to be alive. (Here's a fantastic essay about many of the reasons why.) People really gloss over how much most of the past kinda fucking sucked to live in. 50% of all people used to die before their 15th birthday, for basically all of history until the past 200 years!! Imagine having to live with that. Imagine all of that pain and grief literally everywhere. I'm really happy about living in modern times, actually!

That last point is esp helpful to remember for me because I'm 100% for sure on the list of "people who would've died in childbirth" pre modern medicine (and my mom would've died having me, too). It was modern times or nothing lol

The vast majority of the world has spent the past 300 to 500 years being absolutely brutalized by white people and/or the West. There's still a lot of fallout to fix and colonialism to uproot, but I genuinely can't wait to see what people and nations will achieve with sustained self-rule and significantly fewer massive atrocities

Solarpunk and hopepunk stuff

I'm gonna make a whole post about this at some point but the fact that we eliminated scarcity in the past few decades actually changes the entire fucking game for the world (literally it's not a zero sum game anymore) and for the future. We're allowed a bit of a learning curve I think

I listen to the Rent soundtrack a lot and go "well you know what being trans right now sucks but being trans at the height of the aids crisis would've been way fucking worse" lol rip

Meds! Meds. Antidepressants and antianxiety meds unfortunately don't work for everyone (yet!), but also thank fuck for meds

Progress almost always happens in slow, tiny increments, with a lot of stops and starts and setbacks. You have to always remember that there are always people fighting somewhere, and if they're stopped, there will always be more people to pick up the fight in the future

#thesingingtennisball #ask #me #advice #hope #hope posting #hopeposting #not news #also tbh I highly recommend a basic understanding of statistics #and the ability to parse the basics of many academic papers #whenever I see a scary headline about some new study I check out the actual study and 90% of the time I end up going #“oh that's not that bad actually”#progress happens in tiny tiny i

118 notes · View notes

knowlesian · 2 years

Text

ofmd is an alternate history and fractured fairytale at once and i am going FERAL ABOUT IT.

the alternate history part is fairly self-explanatory; things did not go as planned/why and what if it weren’t like that are the guideposts they set in the first episode. ofmd takes place in a world of made up moths, a new name away from being just like the moths in our world, where crown royal bags are shovel covers, people wear crocs and funky little crop tops and pinocchio was available in print in 1717.

these aren’t mistakes or goofs: these are purposeful narrative choices. they’re not trying to be historically accurate, but rather to create their own alternate world where shit happened when and how the writers want it to.

the fractured fairytale bit needs a moment of explanation, just in case anyone isn’t familiar with the concept.

a fractured fairytale is essentially a deconstruction of a classic fairytale. they’re usually absurdist, they use a narrative structure or story/characters people are familiar with to tell a new story with a lot more nuance and a more modern worldview, and at their best they provide a thoughtful critique of whatever they’re attempting to deconstruct.

in a fractured fairytale, you might have an exterminator named, i don't know. sal, who has a thick brooklyn accent and is fucking sick of getting called out here to deal with this ant problem and not getting paid, lady. he doesn’t say nothing about the weird little graveyard out back or the rotating cast of kids in the oven, but he draws the line at convincing a bunch of singing ants to march their happy asses away from a cottage MADE OF SUGAR for the third time this month. cast a fuckin’ no-munch spell or pay up, & etc.

you get the picture. fractured fairytales, much like their source material, also usually operate on the Rule of Cool. things happen because it makes the story best, not because linear time or real world logic must be factored in. (unless factoring it in for a second would be coolest, like when you want to do some tender brow mopping while a wound heals: then it’s allowed.)

which brings me to the part i like best.

most alternate histories tend to ask ‘what if things were worse’. that’s not the entirety of the genre; some also ask ‘what if things were different’, but there’s not a whole lot of ‘what if things were better’.

especially not for marginalized groups.

i see a lot of utility and catharsis in narratives exploring pain, whether that’s just depicting real life or investigating how things might have gone worse. my issue isn’t with their existence so much as the wildly skewed ratio, and that for where i’m at right now in life i’m painfully aware life can get worse. i know that because over my lifetime, in many ways it has. not all the ways! but enough that political pessimism (never my chosen or instinctive mode) is currently unavoidable if i want to acknowledge reality and fight back instead of sticking my head in the sand.

all that means that i am very interested in art that says: i am not here for straight-up escapism so much as i am a celebration of defiant and sometimes angry hope for better in the face of genuinely shitty odds.

the thing about landing a dart on the proverbial dartboard o’ marginalization is that you move through life knowing the world is not for you. the ways in which that plays out change depending on how many darts any of us land and where we land them, but in some way we are always, always being reminded that we exist outside the mainstream and are allowed in on sufferance and promises of good behavior.

it’s why we can’t say ‘hey, get your fucking boot off my fucking neck, who the fuck raised you’ without getting scandalized pushback for a lack of civility. ‘please, person i know is good and kind and i am not in any way angry with, would you kindly take your foot away from the spot where you have placed it? i can happily wait another five to five hundred years, of course, but i would so like to not be down here’ is how you have to word these things, or you get called angry. or crazy, or stupid, or lying— the point is, people like us so rarely get to win, and we have to be so, so nice about the shittier realities of our lives if we want to be as effective as possible when trying to get people to listen up and knock it off.

ofmd doesn’t deny the more horrifying aspects of colonization and empire exist and hold sway in the world they built. they just refuse center them or make the trauma/tragedy the point, but instead use these glimpses into a harsher reality to craft absurd and emotionally real situations, alongside characters who get to not give a single fuck about how the world thinks they should be acting and are not punished by the narrative for being themselves.

(this does not mean bad things will not happen to beloved and/or authentic characters: it just assures them the eventual win, and means the narrative doesn’t end up enforcing a bleak set of rules that unconsciously assume to push back against the status quo is to be eventually ground down or broken in some fashion.)

this is why lucius could never have been actually dead: it breaks the show, on a fundamental level. and shows a lack of thoughtfulness and intentionality, neither of which really ever seems to be an issue for this team.

this is why nana is great with pronouns but judgey about a lack of murder, and why jackie and jim have a drink instead of fighting it out, or why stede isn’t angry about ed’s pirate face/off plan and ed comes back to knock boots just in time.

it’s about the Rule of Cool, yeah, but it’s about more than that. it’s about looking the realities of a shitty world and shitty behavior in the eye and saying, but why can’t we imagine better? we can so, so easily imagine worse. why is it so hard to think: what if people were kinder and more honest? what if you got to exist in a stacked system where you are the one it’s stacked against and still win?

and then it’s also about deconstructing pirate (and colonizer) narratives and fucking around in the murky waters of identity and finding solidarity and how to live out solidarity in the first place and a million other things silly and serious and on this day, the day of our rainbow capitalism overlords FINALLY GETTING THEIR SHIT TOGETHER

i am very, very glad this show exists. because fuuuuuuck me running, did we need a win right now.

#our flag means death #ofmd spoilers #my ofmd meta #truly i fucking love this show #it's so structurally cool and honest and new and weird and original #fuckin... feral over it your honor #would fight an army of bears for it #i will SEE THESE WRITERS OUTSIDE #(to thank them and maybe cry or hyperventilate who knows)

696 notes · View notes

hazelnut-u-out · 1 year

Text

My "Morty Deserves More Relevance" rant:

My main criticism of S6 of “Rick and Morty” so far is that Morty hasn’t had nearly enough relevance to the season on any front for one of the two main protagonists.

I could probably excuse this if the show had been rather Rick-focused for the majority of its run, but the show has been about BOTH of these characters since the get-go.

I’m not someone that generally tries to hide my Morty bias. I relate to Morty in a lot of ways, and I don’t think that’s uncommon.

I think that the writers currently have more of a Rick bias (or, at least, find it more important to tell his story or show things more in terms of how they effect him).

I want to preface this by saying that I DO believe that Rick has a right to heal, grow, and get better. I guess I’m just saying that it’s not on us to forgive him.

I think that the writers kind of needed to put Morty to the side for a bit– to have him pushed into the background in favor of Rick– because it’s really difficult to begin to empathize with/feel bad for an abuser when the impact of their behavior on their victim is staring you right in the face.

(I rewatched the series to make this post, and GOD is some of Rick's behavior downright sickening and inexcusable in seasons 1-4...)

I don’t think that anyone else can forgive Rick for what he’s done to Morty. Only Morty can do that.

Again, I’m not saying that Rick doesn’t deserve the right to heal, but I don’t think that he should get to dictate the pace of the healing in their dynamic. I think this is why I have a hard time feeling bad for Rick in terms of Morty developing agency.

Rick most definitely deserves sympathy and support for what happened to him before he came into Morty’s life, but I have to say that I find Morty’s story a lot more tragic than Rick’s. Morty’s story is one about child abuse– about becoming a victim and having your identity swallowed alive as it’s dictated by the actions of an abuser.

Take the events of “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall,” for example. I think this is one of the episodes that really puts into perspective the extent of Morty’s trauma bond with Rick, and how that can manifest in a victim. When you’re a victim of an abuser, one of the only avenues of control you have is deciding whether to stay in the situation or leave. That is literally all Morty has. He tries to put his foot down only for Rick to “cold shoulder” him, which is ultimately just another manipulation tactic. He wanted Morty to be afraid of losing the only real connection he has left. That’s how narcissistic abuse works: they isolate you from every other reliable relationship in your life so that you are entirely dependent upon their approval. When Rick drops the bombshell at the end of the episode that he’s going to be leaving with the crows, that literally strips Morty of any control he had at all. Morty is left with absolutely NO choice anymore- not even to cooperate with Rick or not.

When something like that happens to a victim– when an abuser decides that they are the one who gets to dictate healing and growth– it’s technically within their rights to leave, grow, and heal, but it strips the victim of the only sense of autonomy that was left intact for them. It’s like one last vengeful powerplay, and we can see that play out in Morty’s decisions thereafter.

We see him desperately grasp for any control of the situation back, because he (the VICTIM) wasn’t ready for this to happen, yet.

I’m not saying that Morty isn’t a flawed character, but I think that a lot of people tend to forget about the fact that he is a CHILD, who wouldn’t otherwise be involved in the morally gray situations he’s in if he hadn’t been consistently neglected, used, and abused.

Every fucked up thing that Morty has done has been as a child who, truthfully, doesn’t know better because of the way his worldview has been consistently skewed. He’s put in these situations time and time again that force him to stray from his own moral compass. Rick even goes out of his way (like in “The Vat of Acid Episode”) to intentionally manipulate Morty into thinking that anything he wants to do that would stray from what Rick thinks is best will only result in more harm to other people.

There are other episodes that enforce this kind of philosophy (straying from Rick’s corrupt set of rules and regulations must be the only way to prevent death and destruction– even though that often means actively choosing death and destruction at face value), such as “Mortynight Run,” “Auto Erotic Assimilation,” etc.

Rick, on the other hand, is the adult in the situation. Everything fucked up Rick has done throughout the course of the show was done as an adult, who most definitely DID know better.

The core of this show is literally a “hardened adult meets naive child” trope, and I think that a lot of people have lost sight of the reason that Rick’s healing should feel so satisfying in the long run. The whole point of rooting for Rick’s healing in the first place is set up to be about giving Morty the grandpa he deserves. Morty basically has no one in his corner other than Rick, and Rick is riddled with an inky sickness that bleeds and infects Morty with every movement of his character that is too quick or abrasive. It’s important to give Morty the chance to view the world as an actual child might while he still has a bit of that innocence left inside of him– in the same way it’s important to give Rick the opportunity to foster that innocence instead of crush it for once.

I think that a lot of people (writers included) have started to view Rick’s “Crybaby Backstory” as an excuse for his shitty behavior over the first 5 seasons, when there really aren’t any valid excuses for what he’s put Morty through. There are only reasons that he did what he did, not excuses. Viewing these reasons as excuses for child abuse means that some people inevitably view the situation as not requiring communication, confessions, and apologies in order to right Rick’s wrongs with Morty– but those things are NEEDED in order for this to feel EARNED. Changing and growing without acknowledging the effort and will to change with the needs, wants, and feelings of the victim taken into account isn’t really conducive to change or growth in ANY character.

99.9% of abusers exist within a cycle of trauma, and this plays a huge reason in why I have such a difficult time letting Rick’s trauma serve as a satisfying excuse for his actions towards Morty.

I feel like a lot of the same people who allow Rick’s past to serve as an excuse are the same people who tend to hold Morty 100% accountable, but I would go out on the line to say that Morty’s actions are almost always more excusable than Rick’s. While being an adult who was traumatized but knew better isn’t a reasonable excuse, it IS a reasonable excuse to be a traumatized child who doesn’t know any better.

A good example of this would be in “Solaricks” when Cronenberg Jerry calls Morty out for leaving them and talking about them like they weren’t people. It’s pretty obvious that the audience is supposed to agree with Jerry here, but it falls flat for me. Nothing about that situation was actually Morty’s fault, ESPECIALLY the initial leaving of the Prime Dimension in “Rick Potion No. 9.” Rick was the adult in that situation, and Morty couldn’t have known better if he’d wanted to.

Morty is an insert character for anyone who has ever been abused/manipulated as a child, and I think that it’s not only a disservice to Morty, but also all of those people who connected with his journey, to essentially erase any relevance his feelings had to the plot of the show. I think that completely setting his relevance to the show aside was a real mishandle of his character by the writers. I understand that it would have made an exploration of Rick’s character progression feel less linear and clean cut, but I can’t say that I wouldn’t want to see Morty gain some agency in his relationship with Rick. I genuinely don’t care that Morty’s character progression has pushed him to be less compliant and more stand-offish with Rick, even if Rick is actively changing. Morty deserves to be angry. That would have felt earned– and it would have made Rick’s development towards being a more soft/docile familial figure and someone who cares about doing the right/noble thing a lot more earned, too.

Sometimes, growth is hard. Getting better is hard. It’s so challenging to move on from being an abuser because it’s one of the most difficult things in the world to look at the carnage you’ve left in your wake and actively pick up the pieces of the people you’ve broken. It sucks to have to face your actions and realize that no one is obligated to forgive you, and that you don’t get to spend an indefinite amount of time being an abuser and then expect to dictate when people feel bad for you. That’s ultimately what’s fair, though, because you aren’t the victim.

It’s unfair for Morty to not get to share his opinion on the matter all that much when the audience’s opinion of Rick shifts to something more positive and soft. We should at least get to see some of how this has effected Morty in the present.

Morty deserves his own “Morty goes to therapy” episode. Morty deserves his own solo scenes where he lumbers off to his room and breaks down. Morty deserves to be sad and broken and irreparably damaged in the eyes of the audience as much as Rick does. I love Rick– I really, really do– but I think that part of loving Rick is rooting for his relationship with Morty to get better, too– and the reality of how all of this is effecting Morty as an equal has been a bit lost this season.

I hope that we get a more Morty-centric season next season, or at least a good handful of Morty-centric episodes that push Rick to the background in favor of Morty’s perspective to balance everything out.

#rick and morty #rick sanchez #morty smith #blurb

173 notes · View notes

myrfing · 2 months

Text

i think. ok. sitting on my hands for a bit thinking about how to say this. america is something of an outlier in the world as far as their experience with war, nationalism, and militarism goes, in terms of our psychological and physical proximity to it and our history and the kind of power we experience from it. american people making media crit who are otherwise brilliant tend to straight up forget or not fully realize this. they think that War Is The Same across the world and how they experience it and how it impacts their thinking and worldview must be a universal human thing that has variance, but within the same range of perspective. but warfare is extremely abstract for most americans. the point of the way we conduct warfare is to make it abstract for us and as the “blood is rarely shed on ‘our’ soil” country we are always looking from the pov of the guy holding the axe, but like, as a dot on a gamescreen. and so the way we parse narratives about war is skewed, and we are susceptible to having our understanding of it shaped by fiction. which is why so many people have trouble grasping how, say, japanese stories that have a “war is bad” tempo to it, may still be structured around imperialistic notions. the white american antiwar narrative has largely been centered around the trauma it inflicts on american soldiers for ultimately nothing and so when americans see this trauma thing in any story, including any foreign story, they’re pretty quick to deem it as unequivocally antifascist and anti-imperialist: see, look, the story tells us how millitarism dehumanizes us and leads to all sorts of bad shit, how can this be xyz. it is obviously a cautionary, condemning tale about Humanity (<- no examination of a whole other culture’s differing definition of humanity). but then this is said by someone who has little to no clue on seeing in action how the self-inflicted trauma of war and it’s suffering and horror and humilliation can actually create justification for its continuing. the logical, easy two step assumption taken as granted is always that if something is bad and hurts, you stop doing it. this is like. different for the people of countries with extremely extensive long periods of modern warfare on their soil and inflicted on their people, who do not have an extremely wide berth to the violence they both perpetuate and experience. like i.e. what it actually means to dehumanize is mythological itself to a lot of white americans, and then they do shit like assume all grotesque imagery is pointed inward because that’s easy to say for people who have no real stake in it. Wat ever actually i got tired of writing this post the context is i just watched another a0t is actually good analysis vid and it did not change my mind

#also i have to say the easiest way to tell when a story is like that is when it takes its war narrative utterly seriously #and does not have an element of human absurdity and humor to it.#not a 100% thing but you can smells it yes

10 notes · View notes

raayllum · 11 months

Note

In regards to your last post, they did do that with Soren (ik ik you weren't talking about him) but his character has depth and a more satisfying arc (relating back to the vulnerability is strength theme) so I'm cool with him

Here's the thing about Soren though, honestly. He's just jerky and loyal enough to his father (and the fact that Viren asks him to kill the princes rather than Claudia in the first place) that in S1 it's more of a tossup, even if I do remember being more worried about Claudia / her skewed worldview in S1 than I was about Soren.

TDP also has more complex explorations of morality (if not in some ways just exploring actual morality) than most shows aimed at kids/young teens do.

In She-Ra, the war is mostly a backdrop conflict used to explore relationship conflict, so when characters do defect from like, a conquering empire, it's because they've realized they aren't 1) treated well there by their 'friends' or 2) would rather be someone's friend than enemy. That's fine as a show focus, but it is more shallow in the morality department; thus, even though I have issues with how Catra's redemption arc was executed, I still always absolutely knew it was coming. To be clear, there's nothing with a predictable character arc (I love good setup and subsequent payoff and would take that over a 'subversives surprise' any day) but it did make her less interesting / harder to watch her be continually terrible to the people around her, even when they just risked everything to save her from death.

In The Owl House, every antagonist besides the main villain is either just misunderstood, misguided, redeemed, or all three (hi Hunter, Amity, The Collector, Lilith). There are a few others - Boscha, Kikimora, Odalia - but they're all regulated to small episode conflicts (each get like maybe 2 eps as an antagonist at most) and it's just... they all want power. Okay, cool.

What I'm trying to say through these examples is that's not a lot of moral depth in their character arcs, and to me, that makes a redemption arc less interesting to watch. However, Soren is a very morally driven character and he struggles with the morality of his choices and of his father's. His redemption arc ties in many other important relationships in his life and develops them (Claudia, Viren, Callum, Ezran) all in different ways. Ezran is his king and becomes his new purpose; Callum is a second chance and also kind of a little brother and also kind of an emotionally unavailable best friend who doesn't entirely trust you; Claudia is his sister turned enemy; Viren is, well... We're gonna get into how complicated that is even more, I'm sure.

I guess that's also what it comes down to me, the sacrifice / inconvenience element of the character doing the redeeming. Soren had, and has, something to lose by staying on the side of the good guys. He defects for his safety, yes, but he leaves behind his little sister and his previous idealization of his father on his own terms through a series of events and his own realizations. He shows up on the good guys' doorstep with "We're doomed." Even in S4, he's still losing things and at least somewhat on the losing side, with his entire family on the other side of the line. (Compare and contrast to Amity, whose entire family - all four of them - unanimously ditch her crappy mother or Catra, who defects after realizing she's effectively worthless to the new #1 villain replacing her, etc. They lose nothing, really, in the end.)

And again, I think Soren's arc works because well... it's the only one that TDP has had in this way. Rayla defects immediately, so her redemption arc works a bit differently. Claudia is still in the middle of her "what if I got worse haha jk... unless?" arc. So they all work as his primary arc foils in a very nice way. Now Viren is going through a bit of Soren's S2 arc, which we'll have to see how that goes, but full fledged died and resurrected and dragged through the mud by his daughter's determination to keep him alive sad old sack of an evil man isn't an arc you see often, now is it?

Soren realizes he's wrong without 1) a mentor figure or 2) heroes pointing it out to him and offering him second chances (save Ez sparing both him and Claudia in 3x02, which had an impact for sure but like - think of how much more reaching out, comparatively, even someone like Zuko got from protag team). Part of this is also because Soren starts off in an interesting place for a 'redeemed character' which is that he starts off on the 'right side' (protecting the king) so he has more of a restoration/maturation arc than an outright redemption arc, in some ways.

So Soren's arc is unique within his story, it's very well paced, there's a depth of morality, and it's tethered to theme so so well. It's *chef's kiss* and refreshing for someone who honestly doesn't truthfully love redemption arcs most of the time (at least not the classical kind) so it's just. Nice, y'know? It's really nice

#spop critical #toh critical #JUST IN CASE #nobody be weird about it please #thanks for asking #anonymous #tdp soren

41 notes · View notes

epicspheal · 2 years

Text

Something that I brought up on Twitter and thought would be good to bring up here is a bit about the dragon that chooses N in cactusverse. So full disclosure a lot of this is just solely due to the fact that I played White and White 2 as my Unova games, so the player in White gets Zekrom and N gets Reshiram. But as I’ve actually been fleshing out the stories for each of the regions, I’ve begun to realize that the symbolism of Reshiram being the dragon of truth could still work. Like yeah N is definitely looking for an ideal world which makes him being paired with Zekrom make a ton of sense. Yet when you think about the events of gen 1-4 there is an ugly truth to the relationship between humans and Pokemon. We’ve seen multiple evil groups hurt Pokemon. We’ve seen regular trainers not necessarily treat their Pokemon with trust and love. We see this not only in the gameverse but also in the animeverse and mangaverse. And now with legends (yes I’m including a game that came out a decade after gen 5 but bear with me) we know that humans themselves have been hurt. It’s never been all sunshine and rainbows. The truth is that the relationship between Pokemon and humans can be painful for both parties. N thanks to his painful upbringing and his gift of being able to communicate with Pokemon understands this clearly from the Pokemon’s point of view. Is it applicable to every relationship between humans and Pokemon? Absolutely not. The whole truth is that while some Pokemon get hurt by humans, the majority of Pokemon have good relationships with humans and benefit But of course N’s sheltered upbringing doesn’t allow him to see the whole truth until he travels the world. But still it doesn’t change the fact that his worldview, while heavily skewed, was in fact true for some portion of Pokemon. Going back to Reshiram, yes it’s the dragon of truth. And while N’s way of thinking isn’t entirely true, the key word there is entirely. Some of what he says and believes is true. And as Colress just mentioned in the Paulo interludes, Pokemon don’t have the same complex thoughts as humans. Even if we say Reshiram is on the higher level of thought complexity among Pokemon, that gives way to why it would still recognize N as the hero. Because what he says, on some level is true, that’s all Reshiram needs.

Conversely the protagonist (Hilbert in cactusverse) isn’t 100% and ideal trainer. No one is perfect. Even the absolute most legendary trainer that is Red isn’t perfect. But Hilbert strives to be an ideal trainer and has thoughts that align with what an ideal human and Pokemon relationship should look like. For Zekrom that’s enough. Hilbert isn’t always ideal, but on some level he is.

#cactusverse #trainer n #reshiram #pokemon worldbuilding #trainer hilbert

37 notes · View notes

cyanide-latte · 2 months

Note

Favorite animal in a literary sense? what's the most interesting (DND) alignment? Favorite character trope???

Hmmm... These ones have given me a little bit of trouble...

1: "favorite animal in a literary sense" is one that keeps tripping me up because no matter which way I try to interpret this question (there are a couple of different ways) I still don't actually know the answer. ^^;

2: Lawful Evil. It's not one I skew towards as a player myself (I usually prefer Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral) but from a standpoint as a DM or a senior player in a party to help direct and teach newcomers? I'm fascinated to see someone pick Lawful Evil and see how they choose to then interpret that and the way it impacts events. One of my favorite exercises ever is seeing players take a Lawful Evil character and constantly putting them in Situations that challenge their worldviews and structures and force them to grow and seeing what happens.

3: I'm gonna need to compile a list and essays for this one... Because there are so many and while some of this can be put down to my utterly indecisive nature, I have a lot of thoughts and analyses about the ones I do have and why I think I gravitate towards those tropes.

#anon answered #damn you're out here making me think tonight! respect!#Cyanide speaks

2 notes · View notes

zukkacore · 1 year

Text

Idek who in my audience would still be on the h*p bandwagon but tbh I say this as a pitch both for ppl who still have nostalgia for the property and ppl who enjoy being haters (I mean, if you can withstand the salt without also getting just so so so burned out hearing about JKR’s bigotry, I know it hits me sometimes too), the Shrieking Shack Podcast is excellent in terms of critical analysis of the wizard books while also just being extremely funny. I swear the hosts xeecee and Liz have a wire tap into my brain, in terms of sense of humor and just voicing the problems I have with this stupid franchise.

I understand the stance of people who are avoidant of the franchise completely, but I do think having a better understanding of how and why the books ultimately failed and veered off in quality definitely helped me demystify the franchise as this like, untouchable thing of quality I was too attached to to ever give up but instead as a flawed work that I had grown out of and was far more at peace with letting go. I also think it helps me articulate to other people why the artist is not separate from the art. Her worldview is imbedded into her books, and especially later on, that’s why they were so mean-spirited and awful. No matter how much I liked the series as a kid, I think the distaste for the pernicious aspects of the franchise has been an… effective deterrent for me going back. And while I don’t have the energy to get into terminally online arguments, I think critical analysis is useful as a skill to give people who also have a skewed and nostalgia colored view of the franchise.

I will addendum that their perspective on the first few books is a lot more charitable and while I do agree w their thoughts, hearing nice things abt the franchise might feel distasteful in this climate, (I know it is for me) so if that’s the case and you have no problem starting in the middle I recommend starting around book 4! That’s when you start to get much more of a mixed bag.

And if you wanna hear basically nothing but wall to wall dunking, start with Deathly Hallows. Jumping in cold to a seventh season is rough but I promise it’s so worth it. I re-listen to the podcast All The Time when I’m between interests, and I tend to skip the early seasons and just go straight for the bad stuff. I’ve probably gone back to the DH season so many times. It’s brutal yet somehow completely earned. I’ve never seen anyone so thoroughly articulate my long held feelings that DH is a failure of a capstone on that franchise on all levels structural, thematic, and moral. This is not me pretending I had clairvoyance into the future bc there was plenty of shit that snuck past me as a kid (hello, book 4 was my favorite for forever) but when I read that book in like 5th grade I could just feel something was deeply wrong.

Also they just wrapped up the season where they were reading midnight sun and twilight at the same time and it’s been great. It’s way more lighthearted which has been a nice palate cleanser & I do think they’re a bit charitable toward twilight but the thing I appreciate is that their critique is more substantive than just the common reactionary low hanging fruit talking points & they have actually brought up the neglected topic of racism within the books

Also if you’re just starting and the news topics + freebies / goofs segment they do at the beginning and ends of the episodes throws you off , I get it. I love shriekcast & I do find the segments funny but they’re not everyone’s thing, and I do scrub through that stuff sometimes bc it can be long winded. For reference It usually lasts abt 30-40 min sometimes shorter and occasionally way longer.

#shut up janelle #sorry for the sermon. if any of my mutuals also listen to this #podcast PLEASE tell me bc I need to complain abt DH so bad it’s such a catastrophically bad book it actually makes me sick in the head

14 notes · View notes

myersesque · 6 months

Note

UM UM UM fav npmd song?

OH GOD HARDEST QUESTION YOU COULD'VE ASKED. i am notoriously indecisive and there is not a single skip in this whole tracklist BUT ALAS. I WILL TRY

ummm um um uh. i'm gonna have mercy on myself and make it a tie. i'm allowing myself a tie

nerdy prudes must die - i love a good villain song. the reveal of max's new costume/makeup (STUNNING btw, especially considering how stressful it must be do to makeup whilst a show is actively going on - doing a costume change between acts is nerve-wracking enough), will branner's endless charisma and stage presence (literally devastated he's new to starkid bc i need more of him NOW), and his and jon matteson's fucking gorgeous vocals... both the chorus and the "who will pray for me?" section are CONSTANTLY looping in my head. absolutely 500% deserving of title track status.

as cool as i think i am + reprise / if i loved you - i'm counting all 3 of these as one bc i honestly can't decide between them, and i love them all for the same reasons. acaitia is such a well-done establishing song for peter's worldview - both his perception of himself (and how that shifts and skews more positive as he psychs himself up) and his perception of steph (the "smarter than she thinks she is" line always gets me - he thinks so highly of her and is so respectful of her even this early on when they're still bickering, and it sets the foundations for how strong their relationship ends up becoming). it's also just really nice to have a nerd character as a protagonist who has some confidence and, whilst steph liking him certainly helps with that, his sense of self-worth isn't inherently tied to her, it's inherently tied to himself and how he lets himself exist (he's as cool as he thinks he is - if he allows himself to think he's cool, then he's cool - which also has an interesting sort of parallel to max's sue sylvester "you are what i say you are" philosophy). then of course the reprise is absolutely devastating (i have absolutely no shame in saying i was openly sobbing) and serves as such a good example of how things have changed throughout the story, especially in terms of his sense of identity and relationship with steph. then ofc if i loved you is just... SUCH a fun song about their dynamic, and how they both clearly adore each other but aren't willing to admit that until forced. "not saying what we mean, except we literally are, just backwards" is one of my fav kinds of song (also - it reminds me a bit of i could do without you from calamity jane, if that's anything).

the summoning - villain song, horrifically catchy, and the lords in black having their moment. the distorted background vocals, the childish way the lords present themselves contrasted with the heaviness of their song and the darkness of their lyrics ("stephanie has got a gun, tra-la-la-la, how fun!" - they're DELIGHTING in their suffering)... it's just really fuckin good. i also don't super mind the dialogue interrupting it since it's part of the pacing, and the lords breaking into song in the middle of a serious discussion feels very on brand for them

honourary mentions include literal monster (for similar reasons to as cool as i think i am, but for max's character instead - also, again, villain song) and hatchet town (i ADORE hatchetfield's ensemble-heavy songs, and i think this one sorta encapsulates the whole vibe of the series). i also have soft spots for dirty girl and go go nighthawks, but that's in more of a "this is REALLY fun" way than a "i have deep opinions abt these songs" way. obviously just for once is also devastating and a beautiful song that serves as a great demonstration of lauren lopez's skills but i'm trying not to say "every single song, actually"

...i realise i just listed 90% of the tracklist but i justified most of it??? so hopefully u at least got SOMETHING from this answer idk

#you: what's your favourite (singular)#me: here's an essay on why i adore almost every song in this show bon appetit #ask #horror tag #npmd spoilers

2 notes · View notes

terrence-silver · 2 years

Note

What Terry Silver do if beloved was a danger to herself and their children?

Well, Terry isn't the pinnacle of safety either.

Terry can be all devotion, all protection, all the most extreme acts of service imaginable (which you can't say 'no' to, because if he intends to give something to you, you'll take it and say 'Thank you very much, sir.'), all bleeding someone for the ones he holds dear, but he is also an immensely dangerous man...to himself, to beloved, to his children. To literally anyone, in fact --- and very few people actually come close to his level of deadliness. In the 80's. Afterwards. Pre-rehab. Post-rehab. Present time. One would argue, that yes, even as Twig, because fact is, even though he is often written off as a weakling and a wimp, he did serve in Vietnam in spite of his timid and appearantly shy nature, and he for sure didn't pick daisies out in Vietnam. He is a finely ticking time bomb with a seemingly immaculate mechanism that can unexpectedly go off and take everyone down with him. In his own words 'Don't play with fire'. Terry is danger. His worldview is skewed and, by extension, so is his understanding just what danger is.

Now, when one says 'beloved being a danger to themselves and their children', that is a very broad term and can mean a bunch of things. Does beloved neglect the snakeys? Can beloved not care for them properly because of mental or physical illness? Does beloved have extreme anxiety, panic attacks and moments of anger?

If so, I think Terry would take over.

I imagine beloved tucked away in some chamber in the mansion where they're always recovering (on his insistence), always tended to by Terry's handpicked, most trusted people --- beloved themselves being available only to him. He resembles a bit of a Victorian novel antihero with his approach. Mr. Rochester relegating Bertha Mason to the attic, but it isn't as grim as it sounds, because it is done out of his own messed up perception of love, and the ''attic'' is very much the most lavish room on his estate. Suffice to say, his children are raised by him, because he's a perfectionist and nobody, in his opinion, would do as much of a good job as him anyway. In the aftermath, they're in stupendously expensive private schools and colleges while he still micromanages and controls their studies and early career development as involved as ever on the road to making them adults in his image and expanding his own monopoly through them. As for beloved? Beloved remains. The one person fully his.

There's little of a downside to someone waiting for you in the bedroom.

At least the way Terry sees it.

Beloved is effectively disabled and ultimately his due to it.

Like I said, Terry himself is a danger too.

#terry silver #kk3 #cobra kai #tw; medical mismanagement #tw; gaslighting #tw; overbearing tendencies #terry silver x reader #terry silver x beloved #dad!terry #terry silver as a parent

15 notes · View notes

mortau · 1 year

Text

I just watched the newest episode of y.ellowj.ackets which is always good henri inspo and it got me thinking of rearranging his backstory a bit (considering the elements in it this will have some brief mentions of grooming so ya know. Content warning.)

Originally I had Pavati making him see a child therapist when he was 11 right after Ishaan died but I don't think this makes sense considering he would have been on his best behavior at the time instead of acting out. Especially since Pavati didn't even really believe in therapy.

I think it makes more sense for her to have made him get help a few years after the grooming and the abuse started which would be enough time for her to notice his change in personality, mannerisms and worldview. I think it would make more sense for him to have been around 15 when he started seeing a therapist, and then dropped her after a few months.

I'm also extending his second time in therapy, way after he got married, to being about a year with little progress, to drive home WHY he doesn't believe in therapy but also to explain why he knows these tools that allow him to so easily manipulate other people by sort of playing therapist to THEM.

I also need to think about how Pavati's spiritual psychosis played into Henri's belief system and how that skewed his view of things like religion and, once again, mental health as Pavati is partially the reason why he doesn't think things like psychosis are even real and attributes symptoms to spiritual parasites or demons. He doesn't believe Pavati needed any mental help nor does he believe Damian needs to be on medication in the two verses where he knows he's alive (Main Story and Patrons of the Moon).

#the a.ntler q.ueen is such a big henri aesthetic ngl #ANYWAY i think y.ellowj.ackets gives me the good inspo for henri because his character deals with stuff like #how he should act in society vs base bestial instincts leftover from mortau #his ancestral god is a predatory animal and that has been passed down to every castelleve #ordans || headcanons #grooming tw #csa tw

1 note · View note