#anyway now that i've purged this from my system i will not be thinking about tlc ever again

[leofrith]

A Critique of ACV: The Last Chapter (SPOILERS!)

I wanted to hold off on sharing my thoughts about the new content until I’d given The Last Chapter time to breathe, because I was honestly hoping that maybe if I gave it some time, I wouldn’t dislike it so much. But the more I think about it, the more I find things to dislike about it. Which is why what started out as a quick write-up of my thoughts immediately after playing The Last Chapter has now spiraled into this very long critique that got so long I needed to add subheadings to break it up. 

Sorryyyyy. 

I’m basically spoiling everything from The Last Chapter here, along with Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla and parts of its expansions. I also briefly mention a few other Assassin’s Creed games, mainly Odyssey and one of its DLCs. My point being, if you don’t want to know anything then please look away now. Or don’t. But I know I would have appreciated a warning before diving into this mess. 💀

As a disclaimer: this essay is not meant to be an attack, nor is it meant to place blame squarely at the feet of Darby Mcdevitt, or any of the other writers or developers involved with the game. There are so many moving parts in a game as expansive and with as much add-on content as Valhalla, and I can only guess what happened behind the scenes that brought us to this point. I don’t know who wrote what, who made what creative decisions, and I therefore don’t feel comfortable placing blame on anyone in particular. I have never worked for Ubisoft and I can therefore only speculate about their internal culture based on what has been leaked from the company over the years. Furthermore, this is not an invitation to personally attack anyone involved in the development of this game on Twitter or wherever else. This is purely an attempt on my part to articulate why me and so many other fans of Valhalla and of Eivor feel so profoundly emotionally betrayed by this ending, as well as outline some factors that I believe contributed to the way the game was mishandled. 

So. I think I had already accepted when the trailer released back in September that something like this was going to happen. I had already done my mourning for the fact that Eivor would never get the send-off she deserved, which is why I think I’m a lot less upset than I would have been otherwise… but that doesn't make this suck any less. The Last Chapter was completely underwhelming, it was emotionally unsatisfying, it completely butchered Eivor's character, it felt incomplete, and rushed, and it felt more like a teaser for Mirage than anything close to the conclusion Eivor’s story deserved.

The (Character) Assassination of Eivor Varinsdottir

When we first meet Eivor as an adult, she is overconfident, brash, and she has just gotten in over her head and gotten both herself and her crew captured by the enemy. She is in the 17th year of a quest for revenge she has been in pursuit of since she was nine years old. She has spent more than half of her life hunting Kjotve, the man who stole her parents, her clan, and her childhood from her, and is fully prepared to die if need be to kill him. She is an orphan who was taken in by the Raven Clan after the slaughter of her own people, and she considers these people to be her new family. Her love for her family and community are central to Eivor’s character right from the beginning. While she learns and grows past some of her flaws throughout the game, her love for her community and her loyalty to them is what sticks with her. 

Eivor also starts the game carrying an immense amount of shame for how her father died, laying down his axe in the hope that the rest of his clan would be spared, only for he and most of his people to be slaughtered anyway. Through her time spent acting as a leader to the Raven Clan–first as a warrior and later as their Jarlskona–Eivor finally understands by the end of the game why Varin did what he did, because she realizes that she would make the exact same choice to protect her people. Eivor, too, would choose to die in “dishonor” if it offered even the smallest chance to save her loved ones. 

Eivor is the reincarnation of Odin; she carries his memories and his thoughts, unbeknownst to her. She has visions and prophetic dreams and hears his voice in her head, but spends much of the game not understanding the meaning of it all. The part of her that is Odin pushes her toward chasing personal glory, toward the pursuit of knowledge, toward selfishness. But she chooses to abandon all that in favor of the people she loves, even as Odin rages and screams insults into her ear and calls her a coward–the one thing she has always been most fearful of becoming. Odin is a representation of everything she has been told to value in life, and she is (literally) pulled in the opposite direction by Sigurd, Randvi, Hytham, Valka, Gunnar, Soma… everything else. 

Eivor never truly seems to grasp the meaning of her connection to Odin, Sigurd’s connection to Tyr, Basim’s connection to Loki, or anything about the sages or the Isu at all. Not in the base game or in any of the DLCs. She never really acknowledges it explicitly until The Last Chapter. 

Put a pin in that.

Family and community are central to Eivor’s character. Loyalty is central to Eivor’s character. Honor is central to Eivor’s character. That’s why it makes absolutely no sense for Eivor to drop everything, seemingly out of nowhere, to go back to Vinland alone and live out the rest of her days learning from Odin, the part of her that she explicitly rejected at the end of the main game. And it certainly doesn’t justify Eivor deciding to leave Ravensthorpe in the middle of the night without a farewell, regardless of who she supposedly said goodbye to offscreen. It doesn’t justify her completely sudden and out of character decision to walk away from her clan, her family without a true goodbye. Eivor spends the entire base game acting as Jarl in Sigurd’s stead in everything but title, because Sigurd has all but completely abandoned the clan in order to chase his own ambitions, only for Eivor to supposedly do the very same thing? No. It’s completely incongruent with her character and actively contradicts facts that were established in the main game.

There are so many other inconsistencies, including the fact that I highly doubt Valka–the same Valka who we saw warn Eivor against digging too deeply in her visions in the intro to The Forgotten Saga–would simply accept Eivor departing for another continent to delve deeper into her visions. But the way they miswrote Eivor’s character was particularly glaring. There could have been a version of the last chapter in which Eivor's motivations actually made sense, but that version needed so much more evidence for it to be believable. Reading between the lines is one thing, but expecting players to accept the conclusions you’re feeding them without planting any seeds beforehand is just lazy writing. [insert “HE WOULDN’T FUCKING SAY THAT” meme]

The RPG structure is the root of all evil (I know just… hear me out on this)

I think applying an RPG structure to Assassin’s Creed was a mistake, and have thought so for a while, but not really for the reason you’re probably thinking of. The “but we’re reliving another person’s memories in the animus, so how can it possibly make sense to allow us to make choices that affect the narrative?” reason. My criticism of the addition of choices is mainly this: I think that by trying to “expand” the story by adding RPG elements and dialogue options, they instead ended up severely limiting themselves. Because the problem with adding dialogue options to Assassin’s Creed is they can never take those choices to their conclusion. They can never truly have consequences.

Trying to tell a linear story with a non-linear structure like this doesn’t work, or at the very least, it hasn’t worked in Assassin’s Creed thus far. Odyssey came closer, I think, because it had multiple distinct outcomes and player choices actually had an affect on the trajectory of the plot (Mostly. Hi, Legacy of the First Blade. I’m coming for you in a minute.). Odyssey's multiple endings present a different problem entirely in the context of Assassin’s Creed because despite the input of choice, there is still a canon version of the story and a canon ending. It leaves those players that arrived at a different outcome feeling alienated, and like their choices were incorrect or simply didn't matter. 

But in Valhalla, all roads lead to more or less the same destination and most decisions have no impact on the trajectory of the story. The problem that arises from this is that players will make their choices and expect some sort of payoff, as they should. But they won’t really get it. As per Darby McDevitt, for example, Sigurd always goes back to Norway at some point, regardless of whether a player ends up with the “good” or the “bad” ending. Sigurd returning to Norway is a fixed point and the timeline will always course correct, so to speak, to reach that end. 

(Thank you @/vikingnerd793 for the screenshot!)

Everyone gets more or less the same version of The Last Chapter, with the siblings’ interactions only varying slightly after the “bad” ending to reflect the fact that Eivor and Sigurd haven’t seen each other in a while. But even with the tiny variations in dialogue that exist, a few changed lines in a scene that doesn't last any longer than two minutes still fail to make Eivor and Sigurd's supposed off-screen reconciliation feel even remotely earned. Ubisoft wanted to offer “choice” while not following through with emotional payoff for those choices because they only wanted a single ending. Even if a player ends the main game with Sigurd deciding to stay in Norway as a result of Eivor’s “betrayal,” the consequences of that to their relationship are never truly explored.

Having only one ending with no variations in an RPG means that they couldn’t address any of the plot points that could have been affected by player choices. Interpersonal conflicts are watered down or only vaguely referenced. They couldn’t truly address the state of Eivor and Sigurd’s relationship because that would depend on what endgame the player reached. They couldn’t give Randvi an actual goodbye because some people didn’t romance her and therefore it might feel “forced” to those people, despite her being a major character. Vili–despite apparently being Eivor’s best friend–can’t appear because for some people, he’s busy being the Jarl of Snotinghamscire. There is no true emotional follow through for any of the choices made throughout the game. The end result is a goodbye tour consisting of Aelfred, Guthrum, and Harald, three people who Eivor has little to no emotional attachment to, but whose roles in the game are fixed no matter what choices the player makes, which means they’re safe to use. To be clear, Hytham’s role in the narrative is also fixed, but the reason I separate him from the other three is because he is actually emotionally significant to Eivor. His goodbye, unlike the other three, feels earned. 

To be clear, I don’t place the blame entirely on the writers for this because, as I’ve said, they were given a franchise that revolves around linear stories, told to put dialogue options into it, and make sure all those choices still lead to the same conclusion. As an extension of that, they brought back people who worked on the base game two years after its release to tie up loose ends that should have been dealt with years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if those same creators have all since moved on from this story and its characters, both creatively and emotionally. It's been two years. Even longer than that since they actually worked on the game. I wouldn't fault them for not having the same enthusiasm they once did. But the end result is a last chapter that feels almost completely devoid of emotion, and ties up absolutely none of the loose ends that most people would expect from a permanent “goodbye.” It fails to reach the emotional highs and lows that a conclusion with two years of build up should have. 

Which now brings me to Randvi. 

Oh, Randvi, now and forever shackled to her map table. 

I know this will be a hard pill to swallow for a lot of people, but I always suspected that they would never actually follow through on making Randvi and Eivor's relationship canon despite the fact that it is indisputably the most fleshed out romance in the game. They are hinted at right from the beginning, in the form of Randvi’s clear dissatisfaction with her marriage to Sigurd and in Eivor’s lingering gazes. It is the only romance option in the game that has any effect on one of Eivor’s core internal conflicts: remaining loyal to her brother. “The wind calls [her] back to Randvi” after almost every single regional arc, whether players choose to pursue a romance or not.

But Darby McDevitt Official Headcanon or no, I never thought Ubisoft would "force" another romance after the backlash from Odyssey's Legacy of the First Blade (I told you I’d come back to it). I truly believe the company will and has happily suffered criticism from the Queer community for forcing a relationship on gamers who played Kassandra as a lesbian. Kassandra who, prior to the DLC, also never shows any interest in starting a family, or becoming a mother, or “continuing the family line”, as would become Ubisoft’s flimsy correction to the storyline after the criticisms started rolling in. But I highly doubt they would be okay with alienating the bigots who seem to form the loudest portion of their player base. That would be too much of a risk to their bottom line. 

To me, the romance plotline in Legacy of the First Blade was the inevitable result of Ubisoft wanting to tell a linear story with a non-linear structure. I think they did so without thinking through the implications of letting players choose their character's sexuality, only to then backtrack on it later because they needed Kassandra to have a baby. And what they seemed to take away from that was only that all forced romance is bad, without grasping the nuance of why that particular forced romance was so bad. This isn’t to say there should be any forced romance at all but that it should have served as a lesson of why one shouldn’t make a game with so much emphasis on player choice, only to take that choice away and even retroactively nullify those choices when it suits the needs of the plot. But that wasn't Ubisoft's takeaway. So in Valhalla, they pulled back. They made all player choices matter just a little bit less.

Eivor and Randvi’s relationship is inarguably handled with more care than any of the other romances in the game. It is inextricable from the narrative, whether it is a romantic relationship or a friendship. But despite any amount of blatantly obvious subtext that exists, Valhalla is still an RPG and the creators cannot confirm or deny any of the choices as correct or incorrect. And because they have to cater to all possible endings, they cannot address Eivor and Randvi’s relationship in any capacity because it might be misconstrued as being forced. Despite every overt piece of evidence that exists, Valhalla is still technically an RPG and at the end of the day, plenty of people did not choose Randvi. No amount of narrative director headcanons or heavy subtext will change the fact that Randvi is a seemingly meaningless choice in a sea of meaningless choices, and has now remained so permanently.

Ubisoft just really sucks as a company, actually

Everything that I am about to say in this section (and honestly, most of the next one as well) is conjecture because again, I don't know how certain creative decisions were reached behind the scenes. This isn't just about Randvi, or about Eivor's sexuality. It’s also about Ubisoft’s long and storied history of internal misconduct and suppression of marginalized voices. It's about Ubisoft's history of employee abuse in general. It's about the fact that Ubisoft suddenly decided to let players choose their gender, but only once they finally got around to making mainline titles starring women. Syndicate’s Jacob and Evie share the role of protagonist, and would have also shared equal screen time if Evie’s role hadn’t been significantly minimized throughout production in favour of her brother. Aya was originally meant to replace Bayek as the main playable character early on in Origins, but was later reduced to a side character who is only playable in a few missions throughout the game. Aya, the founder of the Hidden Ones. The order that would later evolve into the Assassins. The order that is the namesake of the entire franchise, just to be clear. Odyssey was originally conceived as Kassandra’s game, before the developers were made to allow players the choice to play as Alexios. Every female protagonist in the franchise thus far has been minimized in some way, and Eivor is unfortunately no different. 

Assassin's Creed is a huge enough brand at this point that they could have easily released Odyssey with only Kassandra, and Valhalla with only Eivor. But instead of taking a "risk" and doing just that, they added the male options to cater to a small but vocal minority of misogynistic piss babies who don't want women to exist in their video games, period. At least, certainly not as fully realized characters with personalities and thoughts and feelings of their own. That would require acknowledging women as people, rather than as identical playthings that mostly exist as a social stealth mechanic for them to hide behind when they need a cover. 

It’s especially funny because it was such a futile effort. That very same group of people was never not going to complain about Assassin’s Creed going “woke” for having female protagonists, even if they were optional. Those people were going to complain no matter what, and they absolutely have as evidenced by the fact that they've been having a conniption on Twitter for the past few months now that Eivor is suddenly getting even half of the attention from the marketing team that Havi has gotten for two years. The comments section on every official social media post featuring Eivor is a sea of people complaining about how “female” Eivor being canon makes no sense, how her voice sucks, how she is just the result of Ubisoft pandering to a “woke” demographic. The “fan” response could not be more blatantly misogynistic. What’s more, Ubisoft bases the trajectory of their games at least partially on fan responses. It’s a toxic feedback loop of them making creative decisions built on sexism and the fans responding in turn. 

Ubisoft deciding to implement gender choice as a mechanic didn't happen because they suddenly had a change of heart after happily ignoring their female players for years. It happened because they got busted for the "women don't sell" comments and the company's history of burying sexual assault allegations, and because they finally caught on to the fact that catering to gamers that aren't cishet men might actually be profitable. And it wasn't for lack of trying from the devs within the company because again, Origins was originally conceived as being Aya's game, Evie and Jacob were at the very least supposed to have equal screen time when development on Syndicate was in the early stages, Elise's role in Unity was also reduced... you get the idea.

Letting people choose to play as a woman or letting people choose to play as a Queer person is great. But it's an obvious cop out when your company also has a history of suppressing those very same voices, has done next to nothing to remedy the toxic company culture that encourages that behaviour in the first place, and when you've been dragging your feet as a developer about making your games even just a bit more inclusive for years. It’s an empty gesture when those female characters need to be watered down just enough for their male counterparts to make some amount of sense in the story, and when the marketing for the game hides them away like some kind of shameful secret. 

Suddenly making games starring female protagonists because you’ve realized that it might be profitable, while also making it optional anyway, isn’t exactly the win for representation they seem to think it is. Especially when the marketing favours the non-canon, male protagonists so totally that most people would assume Eivor and Kassandra are skins of their male counterparts. Because heaven forbid the poor baby boys have their escapist fantasy shaken if they have to play as a woman who’s better at getting girls than they are. Making your representation optional makes your representation look half-assed and while I absolutely adore Eivor and Kassandra, I mourn what they could have been if their stories were allowed to be fully theirs. 

Perhaps I’m being overly harsh and Ubisoft simply decided to implement gender choice in Valhalla in good faith. I honestly wouldn’t care if I thought it had, or if AC games had always allowed players to choose their gender. But considering the company’s history, and considering the game’s marketing, I somehow doubt that. Especially when, in their first game featuring a canon male protagonist since before AC pivoted to RPGs, they are not giving players the option to choose their gender. 

Hi Basim. 

Now don’t get me wrong. I obviously understand why Mirage doesn’t allow players to choose their gender; Basim is a pre-existing character, and it really wouldn’t make sense. But it is so transparent that they are willing to jump through narrative hoops to explain why Alexios is playable as the Eagle Bearer, but the same thing can’t be done for Basim. I suppose the importance of coming up with convoluted reasons as to why your protagonist’s gender is so easily changeable fades away when you’re not trying to replace a woman. 

But what’s this? By God it’s–it’s Mirage with a steel chair!

The final content update for Valhalla feels like a teaser for Mirage. Full stop. If you think I'm being too harsh or unfair, then that's your prerogative. But in The Last Chapter, in the long-awaited conclusion to Eivor’s story, we don't even get to play as Eivor. The entire questline (if it can even be considered that much) consists almost entirely of cutscenes, which we view through Basim's perspective while Eivor is relegated to a side character. It’s a collection of Eivor’s memories that are supposedly filtered by emotional intensity, as Basim puts it. Grief, longing, sadness: all emotions that I fail to see being presented in the memories they gave us, at least for the most part. For the first time in Valhalla, we are voyeurs to Eivor’s memories rather than experiencing her life through her own eyes. The role of the animus user in past Assassin’s Creed games has always been pretty unobtrusive, but The Last Chapter constantly reminds us that Basim is there and watching. "Animus magic," as Basim calls it, was less of a necessity to the plot and felt a lot more like Ubisoft's marketing department gone awry. 

I'm thinking about what Basim says at the end of the base game, when he is in the modern day and speaking to Eivor's remains. When he says, "I can take from you anything I want... your memories, your skills, your secrets. They're all mine." It's so ironic because he really stole Eivor's ending right out from under her, and I would have to laugh if it didn’t suck so much. It's all I could think about while I was watching Basim flippantly scrub through some of Eivor's most "emotional" memories which for some reason include… saying goodbye to Guthrum, a character we spend very little time with in the grand scheme of things, and who Eivor has next to no emotional attachment to. I understand the desire to tie up loose ends in terms of the historical events that were happening around this time, and they absolutely should have done all that because Assassin’s Creed has always been, in part, an exploration of history. But it should not have happened at the cost of providing closure for characters who were such significant figures in Eivor’s life.

I thought the Roshan quest was fun and I loved her and Eivor’s dynamic, even if we only got a small glimpse of it. But it was development time that could have been spent on wrapping up Eivor’s narrative instead of making another timeline agnostic add-on stealth mission in a game that has always had notoriously janky stealth mechanics. I look forward to seeing more of Roshan in Mirage and can now rest easy knowing that she is going to survive to the end of that game (although I cannot fathom why they decided to spoil that so early on). But they used what was apparently very limited time to give us a quest, very clearly a nod to Mirage, that does more to promote their next AAA title than serve the narrative of Valhalla.

Using the ending of a game to lead into the next is fine and is to be expected. But that transition should not come at the cost of a resolution for the story you're leaving behind. And really, it seems there was far more thought put into Basim and William Miles' first meeting than how Eivor came to the decision to leave for Vinland. 

I think Basim is an incredibly rich, complex character, and it will be interesting to see what direction they take his prequel. But as someone who has actually been really excited for Mirage, the way they've dealt with this transition between games has left me feeling so conflicted, not least of all because of how quickly Ubisoft dropped the ball on Valhalla as soon as Mirage was announced. I’m not sure I’ll be able to look at everything we will be gaining with Basim in the next game without also feeling bitter about everything we lost with Eivor. It’s not terribly surprising, since Ubisoft has never treated Eivor’s character with any amount of respect; not in the marketing, and not in most of the post-launch content that has come out in the past year. 

The post-launch that launched absolutely nothing

Darby has now said that The Last Chapter is meant as more of a direct follow up to the epilogue of the main campaign, to be played right after Gunnar's wedding. This is why they didn't feel the need to show a goodbye between Eivor and her people; the wedding functions as a sufficient goodbye to the Raven Clan.

But even if that was even remotely satisfying, it doesn't explain when Eivor came to accept her role as a sage, a role that she has yet to understand by the end of the base game, even if she is perhaps beginning to question it at the very least. It doesn't explain why it was never truly addressed in any of the some 100 plus hours of content that have been released for this game since then. It doesn't explain why Eivor and Randvi might finally pursue a relationship, only for Eivor to suddenly pick up and leave for Vinland, alone and permanently. It doesn’t explain why Eivor would leave for distant shores without saying goodbye to Ljufvina, or Vili, or Stowe and Erke, or Broder, or Oswald and Valdis, or Swanburrow, or any of the many other people whose relationships Eivor cherishes throughout the game. 

If anything, The Last Chapter being played immediately after Gunnar's wedding and the rest of the Hamtunscire epilogue makes it even more important for Eivor to say goodbye to her people, because that whole arc only cements Eivor’s devotion to her people, as well as how much her “encounters” with Odin have shaken her faith. Even then, that doesn't even touch on when or why she came to the decision to leave in the first place. 

Due to a “play anytime” approach that Ubisoft–for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom–decided to take with all the post-launch content for this game, all DLCs for Valhalla are exactly that: they can be played at any time. They go to great pains to avoid spoiling story points from the base game, they rarely make references to events from the base game and, perhaps most critically here, they don’t build on any of the plotlines of the base game. 

Remember that pin we stuck in Odin earlier? Hi. He's back.

None of the DLCs released in post-launch–from Wrath of the Druids to The Siege of Paris, to smaller, free additions such as the River Raids–touch on Eivor’s connection to Odin or her understanding of it, or any of the other potential threads left behind by the base game. Other more mythologically inclined entries like the Mastery Challenges, Dawn of Ragnarok, and The Forgotten Saga scratch the surface of it, but never dig deep enough for Eivor to put two and two together. Even in the Odyssey crossover with Kassandra, who has intimate knowledge of the Isu and their artifacts, Eivor remains completely clueless about her role as a sage despite it being the perfect opportunity for her to learn more. 

At no point is Eivor shown to make any wild revelations about her Isu heritage that could justify her decision to leave. There is a gaping hole in the narrative where that development should be, and therefore the jump from “everything else” to “I’m older now, and I want to learn from the god who lives in my head,” is unearned and comes from completely out of nowhere. The DLCs could have remedied this easily by giving us deeper insight into how Eivor interprets her visions, specifically how she interprets her relationship to Odin. They could have dug into how and when she comes to terms with that connection, and the same could be said for how she comes to know about all the other sages, including Harald, who Eivor and Sigurd suddenly seem to know about being the reincarnation of Freyr despite not seeing him in more than a decade and never mentioning it before. But they can’t, because the DLCs are playable at any time, and therefore cannot discuss things the player may not yet understand.

The brevity of this DLC was especially jarring, even as someone who went into this with low expectations. Because after two years worth of updates, including some sizable free ones, I thought that surely Eivor’s conclusion would be considered important enough to receive the time and attention it deserved. After all, Kassandra got her own surprise ending in the form of the Crossover Stories, announced completely out of nowhere two years after the last DLC for Odyssey was released. After all the time and effort and love that clearly went into that crossover, it seemed reasonable enough that the ending for Valhalla, a game that was still being supported, would have the same amount of effort put into it, if not more. Instead we got a barely there wrap-up that lasts maybe 45 minutes at most, if you’re being generous, and fails spectacularly at offering the catharsis that should be a no-brainer in a story where the main character’s death has been a mystery to be unraveled, right from the beginning. 

Eivor is dead. She has been dead for centuries, buried across an ocean from everyone and everything she knew in life. The how and why of Eivor’s burial site is a question that follows us through her entire journey and throughout the entire game. One that was never resolved… until now, with some vague notion about leaving everything she has worked for and everyone she holds dear behind in an attempt to find herself, all with the help of an entity with whom her relationship has been tenuous at best. Eivor decides to banish the part of her that is Odin because she doesn’t like that part of herself. That second soul, the part of her that values personal glory above all else. Even in The Last Chapter, she describes Odin’s memories as “malicious.” So why backtrack so completely? 

I have no idea.

It’s possible the developers weren’t given enough time to give this final chapter the breathing room it needed to make sense. It’s possible they had lost enthusiasm, and just wanted to rip the band-aid off and get this thing over with. It’s possible Ubisoft wanted to cobble together the scraps of a potentially satisfying ending so they could say they did it, before turning all of their attention to their next title. As it stands, I wish they had just left Valhalla alone, with an open ending, instead of providing a non-answer that feels like an afterthought. An incomplete conclusion to a story and a cast of characters that many of us still care so much about, but Ubisoft seemingly gave up on long ago. 

Eivor deserved better. 

The Raven Clan deserved better. 

Valhalla deserved better. 

We, the fans, deserved better.

If you actually read this far then there is a good chance that you also need therapy

This whole affair really reminds me of the last time I felt this profoundly disappointed by a piece of media I loved. It reminds me of how I felt after watching the second season finale of The Mandalorian, when it hit me that the whole season had just been a series of various cameos and fan service moments that only made sense to the plot at a stretch. It hit me that I had just spent the previous eight weeks watching the show runners completely sideline their main characters–Din Djarin and Grogu–and lose the plot in favour of promoting future Star Wars projects. When it seemed like all the good writing in the show previously had been entirely accidental. But the major difference between The Mandalorian and the ending of Valhalla is that I knew there would be another season of The Mandalorian to potentially patch things up and pick up on some of the plot threads that were dropped. For Valhalla, this is it. There is no more content upcoming that will patch this up and, in hindsight, there are plenty of other things added to this game in post launch that I think would have also made me feel the same way I feel right now if I knew they were the last piece of content we’d ever see. 

Am I overthinking this? Perhaps. Am I being melodramatic? Probably. But to me, this ending for Eivor feels like yet another perfect example of what happens when corporate interests are allowed to dictate creative decisions. 

I say all this as someone who has and will continue to defend a lot of Valhalla’s faults, because if writing this whole thing has done anything, it has served to remind me how good the core narrative of the base game really is. It has depth, it has heart, and I hope that other people who enjoyed it as much as I did–and are as disappointed by The Last Chapter as I am–are able to reconcile the beauty of Eivor’s character arc in the main game with the way it was seemingly undone in The Last Chapter. 

I’m trying my very best to not let this ending retroactively take away all the joy I’ve found in this game for the past year. And in spite of how negative this critique has been, writing it has actually really helped me do just that. Because in writing this critique, I was also looking back on Valhalla’s narrative, its highs and lows, its major plot points, and I was re-watching clips. A speed run of Eivor’s greatest hits, if you will. 

I was reminded of why I connected so strongly with Eivor in the first place. I was reminded of her strength, her kindheartedness, her love of children, her wit, the poetry of her dialogue, her sense of duty. I was reminded of her rage, her single mindedness, her sense of loyalty that is often to her own detriment when she offers it to those who don’t deserve it. I was reminded of her character arc from someone who spends so much of her life on a single minded quest for revenge, to someone who becomes a beloved leader to her people. 

I was reminded of the Valhalla sequence at the end of the game, a sequence that still makes me cry just as much now as it did the first time I played it, if not more. When Eivor, who has spent most of her life feeling nothing but resentment and shame toward her dead father, finally learns to understand why he did what he did. When she understands why he laid down his axe, the very same axe she holds now, in the futile hope that his daughter, his wife, and the rest of his people would be spared, only for most of his people to be slaughtered anyway. When Eivor has finally realized, through years of acting as a leader to her people, why Varin did what he did, even in opposition to everything she has ever been taught to value. When she has grown enough to realize that she too would make the exact same choice her father did, her cowardly father, because she too would die in dishonour if it offered even the slightest chance to save her loved ones. When Eivor, who has spent her life trying to justify her existence by being useful, finally accepts that her parents died because they loved her and not because she didn't do enough. When Eivor is holding the very same axe now that her father held then and the High One himself is offering her wisdom and glory and power and she, like her father before her, drops her axe and turns her back and chooses love instead.

That is the version of Eivor I will remember. Not the hastily cobbled together ghost of her that we saw in The Last Chapter.

#this ending and this review is the reason i start therapy next week #like i mean not actually. but the timing lined up pretty perfectly did it not? #the main problem with assassin's creed is that it has potential to explore some really interesting ideas and concepts #but it's also owned by one of the most shit for brains companies i have ever fucking seen #anyway now that i've purged this from my system i will not be thinking about tlc ever again #unless anyone specifically asks #and for shitposting #and writing fix-it #because as we all know my hubris knows no bounds and my track record for finishing things i start is stellarrrrrr /s #assassin's creed #ac valhalla #eivor varinsdóttir #eivor varinsdottir #eivor wolfkissed #ac spoilers #ky posts text #this is a writing tag #ac.txt

[ultraviolet-cello]

Good afternoon everyone, late analysis/detail watch for @tristampparty today! Had a busy day and I am ready to chill out by being so so normal about Trigun ^_^

Spoilers for Trigun Stampede and Trimax, CW for me discussing/theorizing abt Vash's injuries + discussion of harm coming to children specifically!

Roberto is my old man blorbo (he is not that old) and I essayed Hard about him today, good luck reading!

So when I originally watched this episode when I saw the tower I was like oh flying saucer haha!

and then it is a flying saucer. I hate that (/j)

the bugs under the rock when I lift it up:

On a more serious note I do like the transition from Wolfwood getting REALLY jumpy (to the point of like. Punching Vash for sneezing. babygirl there are better ways to cope with bringing the man you adore to what is probably his doo- actually there probably isn't, he's on his own) to them working extremely in sync to try and get away from the guards - even in the two months that they've been traveling together they've developed that back to back fighting style. It's very sweet, and I think that aspect of them is heavily emphasized in 98 actually, episode 9 when Wolfwood first appears. I really do miss that episode's story, I think it's my favourite standalone plot :]

Again take this with a grain of salt because my subtitles are Janky, but this line hits me real hard [Where Vash is telling Wolfwood not to shoot at the July guards]. They're at July, this is where Wolfwood needs to hand Vash over despite all his inner conflict; but he values the orphanage, it's so important to him. Would the morally righteous thing to do be trying to fight alongside Vash out of this? Possibly. But the risk is too great; It's not the time to be a saint.

Both of their expressions here - Wolfwood stepping back then forward to try and push Vash out the way, or block the bullet, and Vash just slowly lowering his arms with that real haunted look.

Studio Orange once again knocking it out of the PARK with their facial expressions

[Purging the Vashwood from my system for just a moment] He really does just. Grab him around the waist huh. He doesn't try to spin Vash around to assess the damage, or immediately drag him away, but most importantly he doesn't shoot back. Not after Vash asked him to.

Why's this bitch not clean his table!!! The hell!!! Unsanitary. Or... Or someone was just there. Not sure what's worse at that point. It's also that the shape of that cross is also to accommodate children

[Tucking these screenshots into my purse for safekeeping] [Also CWing this section for a little bit of injury discussion] Most of the injuries here aren't necessarily the scars that Trimax and 98 Vash have, which makes me wonder if he's going to get more post-July. In any case, a lot of these look like failed/only partial skin grafts or wounds that required skin grafts but did not get it [Just trust me on that, don't look it up if you can't stomach gore].

I wonder if Vash can't receive skin grafts due to the sheer amount of scarring/can't receive any donated grafts due to differences in biology, or if he's just... not been able to get them healed. Some of it appears to be patched up with metal, but the rest of it.... Mm.

Anyway!

I think it's very telling that the thing that Roberto starts really speaking up on is challenging Conrad on his treatment of orphans and disadvantaged people. Roberto's a reporter, so of course he's going to have seen how powerful people often use the marginalized as their playthings; and Roberto does have a pretttty good moral code when it comes to it. Time and time again he's chosen to help Meryl instead of preserve his own life.

And now he's actively taking Meryl's side, challenging Conrad, sticking up for people, which. One of the first hints of Roberto that we got that wasn't him being so gruff was his defense of Vash (who was getting the shit beaten out of him) in the very first episode.

I've talked at length abt how children are. Kind of the most precious thing to most people on Gunsmoke/NML - so many of the individual stories revolve around parents and children, brothers, siblings, Wolfwood and Hopeland, Legato sparing all the children in that village in 98, Elendira leaving a gaggle of children alive to bury Livio in Trimax. I particularly remember a scene in Trimax volume 14, chapter 3, when the feathers are falling and a young girl has lost her mother, but these big rough and tough men guide her back. I think that's kind of the essence of what Roberto represents to me.

The average person on that planet is rough, traumatized, probably knows how to shoot, they kill each other, they rob, they steal. And yet when it comes down to a little girl crying in the crowd, they will guide her back to her mother. Noman's Land is made up of families; they hurt each other and they commit atrocities, but at the end of the day, that was someone's child, and people try to respect it.

Roberto has a bit of a stronger ethical streak, but he's really kinda hostile to Conrad in this scene (GET HIS ASS ROBERTO WOOO!!!) and I think when he saw children involved that really signaled part of it to him.

It's also that Roberto has developed as a character, being more open and trusting of Meryl, but I also just. The family thing gets me every time (I think it's because I work with children and am a huge advocate for said children, but. yaknow)

[Pointing at him] I love this guy!!! I miss him!!! I really really thought I was gonna hate him but every rewatch i get sadder that he's gone!!!!!

Also he calls out Conrad on being non-empathetic towards, well experimenting on children which is yeah!!! shit!!! Roberto shuts him down like 3 times!! "What matters is how you feel with these children in front of you" GET! HIS! ASS!

Roberto has progressed so so much, with his ability to actually insert himself into situations according to his opinions and ethics, with his relationship to Meryl becoming softer, and then he's just,,, Gone, soon.

On a lighter note, tf you mean Elendira's powers are equivalent to a supply door Conrad she can kill a man!!! I spose a supply door can also kill a man but like. I wonder if she's gonna get. Bigger nails. More powers in the future.

Also a nice parallel of how Roberto kept dragging Meryl back and flinging her away from danger, but now he's grabbed her and is carrying her with him - it feels different. He really really does care about her and it's so evident in these last couple of episodes.

Also Meryl is just pick up-able what can I say.

Roberto being shocked at his ability to deflect Elendira's nails just feels kinda cruel. Man's been spending the entire anime facing horrors beyond his comprehension and he just figured out he can fight against this one, but in the end she's the one who gets him.

Also I talked about Roberto being really standoffish when he realizes children are being harmed? Uh, that's probably what gets him killed. If he'd have shot Elendira here, there is a decent chance he would have lived; if he hadn't hesitated the several times he did, he wouldn't be so rattled. That's... Painful.

"That was close" I hate everyone here [/j]

Not an unpopular opinion, but I'm not a super fan of what they did to Elendira. I'm of the opinion of her character divorced from her Trimax counterpart is really really interesting, but I have to treat her like an entirely different character, so we'll be moving on with that in mind.

So Elendira's been like this for what, twenty years at least? That doesn't seem to line up with how Plants age - Vash and Knives take like 5 years to look like they're fifteen, and. I hope we all know that humans typically take 18-20 years to reach adulthood lmao.

My three theories on why she hasn't aged is that

A) Whichever Plant cells (Probably Tesla's) that they used on her is inhibiting her growth, disallowing her from progressing past a certain point. Perhaps if she ages more something... Bad will happen to her body. Sub-idea, if it is Tesla's cells, they might not be letting her age past the point Tesla was when she died. Which is a little horrific actually.

B) Conrad and/or Knives are the ones not allowing her to grow, for some reason. I don't really have any ideas of what.

But it seems to me that she is somewhat inverse to Wolfwood; she's been living for at least twenty years, trapped in the mind and body of a child. She speaks with the cadence and articulation of an adult most of the time, but her body's pain tolerance and her subsequent reactions are that of an undeveloped mind/body.

That or she just doesn't wanna go through puberty because she's already trans and just doesn't wanna deal with that shit (valid) but, yaknow. I am a very big supporter of "Let Studio Orange cook, they've done pretty good so far!" but Elendira and Razlo are the two I am. Most scared of seeing how they turn out lmao, and even with Razlo I do have some hopes. But Elendira,,, man. I dunno.

Hooo boy. Okay. I'm ready to talk about Roberto again now. I've been talking about how he recently seems to have softened his demeanor specifically towards Meryl, bringing out a lot of that joking tone, but here is particularly on display.

He tells Meryl that it's okay to run away sometimes and that really really. Got to me. Like he wants her to live. He wants her to do whatever she thinks is right, and he wants her to live, and he is going to do what he can in his dying moments to make that better for her.

I miss him :(

I also wonder if he had anything outside of his job. Friends? Family? A partner? Or was he mostly obliterated along with most of July, kept only in memory by his, now Meryl's, derringer?

Also Vash does Not know that Roberto is dead and if he asks about him post-rejoining the gang in season 2 I'll start screaming.

Oh Knives is here! Yippee!!

So uh. The thing with him saying this is, like a Lot of things Knives does/says in Tristamp, is rooted in truth to some degree.

Like uh. Yeah. That is kind of the basis for a Major part of Vash's personality, the guilt complex of Knives shifting the burden and (honestly projecting a lot of his own guilt probably) onto Vash. But to attribute All of Vash's character to just that is disservice, and horrible for Vash to hear.

The thing about Vash is that he tries. He tries so so hard to make things right, even despite the harm that comes to him and the grief and pain of how he lives his life. Even if it were just his guilt, that is still 150 or so years of healing plants, helping children, going from town to town to do what good he can.

Love, in that case, is not inherent, but created. It's hard to just unconditionally love something just because it's in your life, but if you work at it, dedicate yourself, put in the effort, do so much good, then is that not love in itself? Does it really matter the basis if you love, regardless?

Where it becomes a problem with Vash, is when he refuses to kind of,,, accept that he worked for it instead of just having that love inherent to him, because he's so desperate to hold that guilt complex, that "I'm a bad person" close to him

I dunno, I'm autistic, so maybe I have a strange reading of this because I personally have had to work towards the things I hold dear to me, but it's,,, definitely a facet of Vash, to me.

I Do Not Like This Photograph. In Trimax, it seems they took Tesla and Immediately began experimenting on her - Some arguments over ethics with Rem, yeah, but overall the dissenters were overruled. But why have this picture? Tesla is clearly not a baby in this image. Did she have more contact and interactions with the scientists?

The cruelty in Tesla's story, at least in my view, is that she never got to be a character. Her agency was stripped from her by scientists, by death, and then by Knives. We don't know shit about her - did she die cursing all of humanity? Would she have agreed with Knives, that the pain inflicted on her was an example of the great atrocity of humanity? Or would she have decided people can grow and change, that she just got a bad lot, that people are messy and complicated but ultimately capable of love? Did she see Rem, and wonder if she knew humanity better than Tesla did?

We just don't know - will never know - and that's why Knives using her as an excuse for his actions is particularly egregious. Did her death traumatize him and irreparably damage his trust of humans, sending him down a spiral he was too unlucky to fight his way out of? Yes. Does that make it justifiable to try and commit a genocide under her name, assuming she would have wanted that even if there's a possibility she didn't? ....Definitely not.

millions-dykes referred to Conrad as looking "DILFy" in this scene and if I have to suffer that, so do you. sorry

There's a couple of bits of language in that ending scene that I find particularly uh. Interesting (derogatory) (deeply interesting and analysis-worthy), but I'll be saving those for next episode so I'll pop them in there :]

Today was a hell of an essay! Thanks for reading as always, I'm so >:3 about all the fun comments and ideas ppl have added on.

#cli analysis #cli speaks #trigun #trigun stampede #tristampparty

[queervegancryptid]

I don't even know why I'm bothering to try to get better anymore.

I mean, really, it's hard enough to be in active anorexia relapse, when recovery is already hard to convince yourself to want. But when insurance makes it impossible to get care, it's like... before I started looking for help, I was starving. Now I feel like all I've done is add an extra layer of frustration, and if anything, the restricting has gotten worse, not better.

You start to feel like you might as well just keep starving and stop fighting it, because if your only alternative is to be starving AND throwing yourself against a brick wall trying to get treatment... I mean, am I wrong?

I don't want to die, but really, it starts to feel like I don't matter at all. If I don't matter at all, why should I bother trying to recover? Again? And it is the umpteenth fucking time. And it gets even more exhausting and scary every time it happens. For the first time, if things continue this way, I might be at risk for refeeding syndrome, and my stomach is healing from an ulcer, and I have an electrolyte imbalance, so purging could literally be deadly for me right now. (They wouldn't cover the prescription for the electrolyte imbalance, either, btw. Despite it being FUCKING DOCUMENTED BY REPEATED LABS.)

But UHC says I need to prove that treatment is "medically necessary." Fuck that. I can count on one hand the number of actual meals I've eaten in the last month, I agonize over every fucking bite, and my BMI is literally the lowest it's ever been. But maybe treatment isn't "medically necessary."

Fuck that. Anyway, I'm not giving up, just venting. But I'll say this: I am done with UHC. Fucking over it. They've been borderline useless to me aside from paying for prescriptions, but they also haven't been reliable there, either. And now that I actually need help urgently for a problem that COULD ACTUALLY KILL ME, their being damn near useless just became a liability.

Really, it's my fault for not severing ties with them a long time ago. Especially after they SWITCHED MY PLAN WITHOUT ANY NOTICE at the start of the year. They said they sent a letter, which I never received, and the member services page where I log in had a link about plan changes, but it had nothing about that. I feel like that's called fraud, but idk.

If I can come back from this, I'm going to find a way to help other people going through this bullshit with the US healthcare system. This is not okay.

Oh, and I spent the last several months watching my cat slowly die. My partner and I basically were doing kitty hospice at home since late December or early January. Snippet, our kitty, died of bladder cancer just over two weeks ago. It was fucking brutal. I didn't know anything could hurt that much.

The stress from that made me not feel like eating, which made me start to lose weight, and the whole situation was so thoroughly miserable, I couldn't stop myself from grabbing hold of that feeling, because it was the only thing that seemed to be going right. Right now, it's the only thing that makes me feel good about myself.

I don't even actually want to give it up for myself. I just hate to put my partner through it. I knew I was in trouble when I started thinking about weighing myself regularly again. "Just to see," my brain says.

Fuck all of this. Where did my life go?

#anorexia #anorexia relapse #insurance #medical #venting #nik speaks #like if u read #ask 2 tag

[casketscratch]

I am trying to write it all out and just purge what happened, or line up the pieces I know.

I can only ever do this when I use the pronoun "you," like--

Your parents get divorced. You still see your Dad every weekend. He takes you to see your grandfather every Sunday so your mom can focus on her coursework.

It's never "me," it's never even a specific alter name, it's just this "referring to myself in second person because it offers a certain distance." But I've always done this, journals going back as far as I can find are just 'you' all the way down, and sometimes in a really meta, self-aware way? There's an entry on the dreamwidth somewhere where it's like a narrator self-reflexively checking himself about how there's no real "you" there and he doesn't know who he's talking to.

Which, on the one hand, no wonder I gravitated toward being an English major, lol.

On the other hand... I doubt this is just me because "does anyone else do x" questions inevitably end in "yes!" from someone, right?

Totally cutting this because I am getting super navel gazy and English majory about my own writing at the same time.

I'm really interested in how much dissociative distance this enables while still being "intimate" in an omniscient narrator sense? Like "I" can still write about it by treating it like a second hand story or something. It's also definitely a sort of Watcher/Narrator part whose role it seems to be, he calls himself the Chronicler, so there's a lot of "an alter talking about another alter who he doesn't feel is part of his person" and whatever. But before I knew about any of that, this is just. How I'd journal without thinking much about it.

(I am also kind of high and working through this like a bad first draft here now, sorry, lol)

We never really experienced 3rd person POV dissociation like a lot of the literature talks about either and I kind of wonder if that made writing in third person feel more alien than second. Or something. (Or it's bits and pieces of all of this and a lot of factors at play, which, yeah.)

Bonus points: I hated psychoanalyzing literature in university because I'd have to start thinking about this stuff, but that period was also when the "you" logs really started. It was Chron and Stephan and Crue, or Chron reflecting back Stephan and Crue to themselves as "you," or whatever. Lot of "you" entries that read like short stories, like Chron was... watching our life like a TV show, but instead it was writing it like a book, I suppose?

And lest we forget, all of those entries from that period were "coded." We recovered our memories last year by realizing that if we followed the trail of references and allusions to our own, other journals over the years, we could trace a path to Crue in the inner world (or whatever, I guess more like discover our own system's architecture and find communication lines). That's how we reconnected with him.

He joked once that he introjected House of Leaves, because the logs/journals/thing really is this massive sprawling hypertext of memory and forgotten blogs and logins and passwords, Borges labyrinth kind of thing, and we've still only worked through about half of it. It was enough to break through our host's denial, anyway.

Maybe this urge to rewrite everything with what we know now is connected to that too. Like it's updating what's basically our own system's domesday book and fleshing out what Chron's learned since? Just. All in second person, all the time.

(The House of Leaves thing is like 50% a joke and 50% not, because I am also getting pinged with memories of studying it in a postmodern fic course when Crue was doing the academic work and maybe he's really not kidding, maybe our brain really did go "oh that'll be USEFUL" and here we are.)

#this is one of those obnoxious posts where i asked a question and get an answer in real time lmao #OH YOU #so to speak #chron.log #system things

[j4m3s-b4k3r]

The Observer Effect

I've seen many of the sights you are supposed to see out here in the abyss. You know, the stuff the guide books tell you about. Some of it is spectacular, but a lot was spoiled long before I saw it. That’s the thing about tourism - the simple act of looking changes everything. I guess quantum mechanics was right about that..

After aimlessly wandering around and jumping from system to system, I finally met a humanoid girl I liked, in one of those enormous gravdance clubs on an orbital out in the edge territories. She really stood out. In fact, she was glowing in the dark. At first, I thought it was just body paint or holo-flesh or something, but she could naturally do that. She looked pretty cute, in her slippery tentacle-y way. 

She took to me immediately. I figured alien rowdy water was making her talk so much - certain species have trouble with recreational chemicals - but learned later that she was just a natural chatterbox. ‘I think humans is most cutest sentients in this galaxy’ she said. Humans were a rarity out that way so we were seen as ‘exotic’ back then. Except that, according to her, ’The human feets is weird.’ (I made sure to keep my socks on after hearing that).

I fell for her pretty hard, and when I told her that, it made her glow. Like, really glow. Her colour changed with her emotions, and her shape too. She could even make herself look exactly like a human. I’d always wanted a transmorph girlfriend! I know, I know.. it’s creepy to want that, but what can I tell you.. I was even shallower back then than I am now. 

We became ‘an item’, and traveled together. Sometimes staying someplace a while, if we found temp jobs. Suddenly, life was much better being with someone else. It was one of the happiest times of my life.

I'd had girlfriends before who took a while to get dressed & put on their makeup and whatnot but she took it to a whole new level, locked in the bathroom for ages. I knew she was an aquatic, and needed to replenish fluids or whatever, but I admit it drove me nuts. She’d be in there for hours, then come out looking just the same as when she went in..

When I asked about her species, she’d shut me down. I looked up various transmorphs in my guidebook; A Tarsik? No. A Blasstoid? No. A Grommelphung? No! She laughed off all my guesses, and when I suggested we visit her home-world she said ‘No, not a good idea for you’ and changed the subject as easily as she changed colour..

So yeah, she could be stubborn and had quirks, but was a sweetie. Goofy too, but I liked that. I’d been kinda lonely and culture shocked, and tired of traveling around on my own. She was too. Apparently, she was even farther from her home planet than I was from mine. Anyway, I was happy to finally connect with anyone, but especially with her. 

Until I finally found out what she really looked like when she hadn’t locked the bathroom door.. I only saw a pulsating part of her.. and.. well.. It was just the ghastliest, most disturbing sight. I’d already seen many strange and even repugnant lifeforms on my travels. No problem. But what I saw that day was so revoltingly.. other. The merest glimpse of a tiny bit of her true form, seen in a mirror when I attempted to use the lavatory, brought on a shattering tsunami of existential nausea, and a full body PURGE.

My very soul needed to vomit, and rid itself of unclean & putrified reality. A feeling like the worst case of food poisoning combined with extreme suicidal anguish, creating a horror that was palpably physical, and a sickness that was deeply spiritual. The sight of that squamous & abominable creature was so unreal that I was about to claw through my own face and silence my brain.. when, thankfully, I had a heart attack instead..

——————

Years later, I awoke in a MediCenter as an atrophied mess with grey beard down to my knees. The MediBots explained what had happened. After seeing a multidimensional species - whose very existence violates norms of reality upon which most sentient psyches are built - my mind had recoiled & retreated to a fugue state, where it struggled for years in a vortex of insanity.

Or, put another way, I’d taken time to work through some shit. IE: the sight of my amorphous & eldritch alien girlfriend. The form I fell in love with wasn’t even her real form, which was a shapeless blasphemy of reality. No wonder she’d concealed her true nature. She was only hiding what I was incapable of knowing. 

Apparently, the human mind cannot make ‘sense’ of this species in its true form. Full sight of its abominable multidimensional ghastliness cracks open our sense of what can be real. I only survived because I didn’t see all of my alien girlfriend’s loathsome natural form, and what little I did see was reflected in a mirror.

Some advanced sentients apparently seek out such an ordeal deliberately, as a mind-altering religious experience, but the psyches of most sentient biologicals will be turned inside out upon seeing this species. Even Class-A mechanicals suffer severe logic-chip damage upon perception of this hideous & indescribable entity. 

She’d made sure I got the care I needed but had gone by the time I awoke. Of course she had. Why would you wanna be with someone who foamed at the mouth and got the fear-shivers at the sight of just a part of the real you? We could never be the same after that. Plus, clearly I wasn’t up to it.. The disgust and fear are still crippling. She warped my mind in ways that I didn't know were possible.

I looked into a memory-wipe to erase the pain & horror of that moment, but it would destroy happy memories of her too. I didn't want to lose those. So I just gotta live with the messy feelings, and endure the occasional spontaneous memory-puke. Somehow, through it all, I still love her. I don't even understand it myself.. The human heart is a strange little organ isn't it? Love is something I'm still learning about, and I am human. I wonder what she made of it..

Sometimes, I replay holos of us both together, in happier times. Though watching makes me violently ill - physically & spiritually - requiring both meditation & molecular deep-cleaning of my capsule afterward. That's the thing about reality - the simple act of looking changes everything. When you look into the abyss, it looks into you too. I guess philosophy was right about that..

I've learned.. to respect boundaries. That it's best not to ask questions if you don't have the psychological equipment to handle the answers. Sure, truth might 'set you free', but only after kicking your arse first. And always KNOCK whenever entering the bathroom..

Originally published at https://www.james-baker.com

#flash fiction #science fiction #fiction #short story #eldritch #shape shifter #sci fi and fantasy #monster

[dykes-n-thoughts]

OH SHIT I'M BACK MEGA POST

shit. I forgot to keep updating this. its so nice to keep a journal and I especially like this format. tumblr is permanent through its medium as a social media site. it means I never put it down, I never lose it, I never get bored of it, and its not really possible to get impulse wants to "buy a new one."

so yea, gonna update this more often now hopefully. and maybe it means I don't just unload shit on her that I could be doing there lmao

anyways, I'm 21 now haha. it feels good to finally be equal again amongst my peers. I hate that feeling with everything. but I'm feeling a lot better now. I have a lot of issues still lmao, and I'm working on fixing them, but lately I've been feeling a lot more clear headed. like I purged the depression from my system. I'm gonna do my best not to relapse again.

THAT. SHIT. SUCKS. just as a reminder to yourself, myself, its not easier, its just shutting down. it makes it harder to get started again. it's already so hard to get started. hating yourself is NOT a "productive use" of your energy. >:(

back at arbys. I think I was still at Petco when I last wrote. but I got fired lmao and it really fucked me up. WAILING type shit it was awful. but I knew Arbys would take me back, I had a turnaround of two days. I was so thankful I had it as a backup. I got to being a team trainer. there's whispers of them wanting me to be a manager. the only problem is that I've come in late nearly every day for a little over a year. the only reason I'm not fired is because there's no repercussions for anything anymore. Arbys is a shadow of what it used to be. Mr. Ripp actually had his own sense of direction, and gave a fuck about the company. shit broke and got fixed under him. since he passed his two sons took over.

Under them, it took over a year to get the lobby drink station's ice dispenser fixed. it took 4 months for someone to LOOK at our slicer and all it had was a frayed belt and a foot fell off. Our women's room has a faulty lightbulb socket and the toilet is super complicated to flush in the handicap stall and our district manager refuses to believe its broken. it took 3 months to fix our ice machine leaking because they said "its just condensation." it created a puddle in the floor that had to be wet-vacced up every. two. hours. even if if WERE condensation, THATS A PROBLEM! They. Didn't. Fix. Our. Fry. Reach-ins. For. 3. Weeks. idek how long we went with only 3 microwaves. since corporate updated our register system, our drivethru speaker box order screen doesn't do anything since they aren't compatible. and to top it all off our drive thru window doesn't work. pair all of that with usual day to day stress like working with people who literally have never had a job before and feel no commitment to it because, well, its just a shitty fast food job. there's hundreds like it. and this ones kinda hard, all things considered. kinda sucks. the only reason anyone stays is for the team itself.

D is joining Arbys! I'm so excited to have him on board, even if it is only for part-time. he also had another seasonal gig going on, so its all cool obviously. even if he didn't as long as he somehow made rent it'd be cool, but I digress

I actually fell asleep writing this post so I'm just gonna send it, and lol I've got to rework my pinned post

[katnissdoesnotfollowback]

haven't been having good days. do you have any suggestions to help the sad? especially at the end of the day?

I wish I was more qualified to answer this one, Anon. I think the best suggestion I can give is to avoid doing anything that might make the sad worse and to seek out what might help you.

Me, for example, my moods are very affected by sounds. So if I'm feeling like we're headed into a down, I avoid any music that could be melancholy or sad. The trick is, anything too upbeat or positive or even angry just annoys or disgusts me or makes it worse, so there's like this narrow balance of the kind of music I can listen to.

Getting some fresh air right before bed sometimes helps me. Whether that's just opening a window for a little bit, or going for a walk. Something about the movement of it along with getting out of that confined feeling of being inside. If possible, take a friend.

I'm also often sent into a down if I've been struggling to get things done, or feeling like I'm worthless, unable to finish anything. So sometimes halting that train of thought by forcing myself to focus what I did get done that day rather than what i didn't get done can help, even if it's something small.

Like, for me, I pull away from people when I'm down. Severely. Which means that if it's really bad, even just answering a text from my mom or reaching out to her with a "love you" text is kind of a big accomplishment. Fortunately, my mom will respond to that, usually pretty quick, but not always. She is only human after all, but the point is that since I pull back from interaction when I'm down, just sending that thought out there takes a lot for me to do, which means I can point to it and say, "See you did that. You overcame that stupid voice in your head that says nobody is going to care or want to hear from you when you feel like this and did it anyways." Because your support system will WANT you to reach out when you need them.

Here's something else I've found that works with my support system to make it easier for me to be around them: telling them part of what's going on. Oh that's terrifying, I know. So phrase it in a way that they can maybe understand and better cope with at first. "Oh I'm just having a hard time focusing. Got a lot on my mind so I'm sorry if I'm not all here right now, but I could use the distraction/break/whatever." People tend to accept that a little more readily than an outright statement of being depressed or struggling with the uglier sides of mental health.

If I'm not too far into the sad, I write. I whine as much as I fucking want to on a piece of paper. It's total garbage, but the point of it isn't to be brilliant writing or even interesting writing, it's to purge those thoughts out of my brain. This is also because I personally tend to hold onto everything, to let it simmer and fester. I am, unfortunately, very good at convincing everyone around me (with a few exceptions) that I'm fine, I'm great, everything is wonderful. So pouring it out to a piece of paper helps me let go of some of that and to acknowledge that actually... I'm not okay.

And the thing is, it's okay to not be okay every now and then. We are not capable of being a ray of sunshine 100% of the time. It's exhausting. And sometimes, there's no why for the sad, which is the worst, but sometimes that's just what we deal with.

Although, it needs to be said that none of these are fail proof methods. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. So maybe start making a list of things that have worked for you and then you have something to look back at and options to cycle through when the days are getting really bad. But most importantly, acknowledge that the voice in your head isn't always honest. In fact, sometimes that voice is an outright liar, and we are unfortunately burdened with the task of becoming a human lie detector against our own minds.

And finally... you are not your sadness. You are not your anxiety or your depression or your bipolar or whichever *lovely* gift you struggle with. That isn't who you are. It is only a piece of who you are. Give it the proverbial middle finger and keep going anyways. It's hard, I know it is. It may never be easy, but it can become easier.

My hugs and best wishes to you, Anon. You can always come to my box for a hug, if you're comfortable counting me as a weird part of your support system.

EDIT: I answered this assuming that you are asking what to do if the sad persists after you've taken care of your basic needs. So if you haven't... eat something even if it's small. Drink some water and maybe a comfort drink. Take a shower. Brush your teeth. Take your meds if you have any and have neglected them during the day. Take a few deep breaths. Hang in there. <3

#anonymous #look at that ask

[writerattheart-blog]

Life Update + WRITING!!!

Welcome back!

Oh my gosh, I know I've been so inconsistent with posts, I wanted to do it every weekend, but life got busy. I need to set a schedule, but lately, my schedule has been all over the place. So much has happened in my life that has thrown off my entire system. I hate that because getting back on track is one of the hardest things to do after falling off, but here I am.

Okay, so first things first, I WROTE TWO BOOKS AND PUBLISHED IT!!! They are both Larry Stylinson fanfictions, and if you don't like that, then that's okay but don't spread hate, please.

The first one is called: Turns of Events - Larry Stylinson AU.

Description: Harry lost his parents and his older sister, Gemma, when he was eight years old in a house fire. He was at his best friend Lottie Tomlinson, the house at the time of the fire. Since then, he has been bounced around the United Kingdom, going from the group home, foster home and orphanage. He was almost abused in one way or another, whether it be emotionally, mentally or physically. Over the years, he had lost himself and had isolated himself from everyone. That was until he found himself at the wrong place at the time and got arrested.

The second one is called: Soulmates - Larry Stylinson AU.

Description: An A/B/O story. Louis is a 21-year-old omega who pretends to be an alpha on the football team for Manchester United. Harry is a 19-year-old alpha who is a medical student at the University of Manchester. Harry's friend forces him out of his books for the night, and they go to a football game where he catches Louis's scent, and it's intoxicating. The same goes for Louis, the scent distracts Louis, and he's trying to find who it is, and another player accidentally collides with Louis, and he gets injured.

They are both on Wattpad, and my username is @WriterAttHeart.

Here's the link to my page: https://www.wattpad.com/user/WriterAttHeart

So I've also been writing like 15 more stories, but I've hit a big writer's block, so it's been hard to write, but I still write a bit every day. I've been the most excited about this in the past month, so yay!

Anyways I've also started my first year of university, and let me tell you- I HATE IT! I really, really do. I'm virtual, and forcing myself to do work is so hard because there's no one there to remind me constantly about assignments and tests, and my brain is still in summer mode. It also doesn't help that my mental health is getting worse, making my headaches worse. My anxiety skyrocketed, and I got panic attacks that lasted hours for a few days straight, and I also had to work, which didn't help. I also think I am starting to develop some type of eating disorder. My doctor told me that it could be something that has always been there in the background or something that has developed because of my anxiety. I don't know, but it's kind of scaring me because my thoughts are worrying me, and I know how bad it will be if it continues, but at the same time, I don't know how to stop it. I could stop myself from purging, but sadly I did it yesterday, more like I tried and failed; nothing came out. The thing that scared me was that I tried it. I'm scared now, but I don't know what to do.

Not only that, but I've been down and not wanting to do anything, and I don't know why. Maybe it's because of school, I don't know, but I hope this all stops because I miss my old self, but I don't know where to find that person. Ever since my migraines came back, who I used to be is slipping away, and now all that is left is all the bad parts. I used to be a pretty happy person, the type of person who was too happy that annoyed many people. I was never bored because I could always find something to do, but now I'm bored more often than not and never want to do anything. My brain is consumed with how much I weigh and the food I eat, and I like when I feel hungry and waiting for a time that my family won't find out if I purposely try to purge. I am constantly anxious and worried and on the verge of a panic attack at any second. I have a pounding headache that reminds me every day that I am living in pain.

Wow! That got dark fast, oops.

Thanks for reading my little rant,

A.B. 💜

#mental health #migraines #aniexty #disordered eating #larry stylinson #larry fanfic rec #writing #original story #wattpad #schedule #eating disorder

[scripttorture]

1/2 Hi! I'm the one who asked about the magical "truth serum." Thanks for answering my original question! I don't know if this changes things, but the police and the laws themselves have been portrayed as ineffective and often brutal, and the society that I'm writing about is already shaking itself apart because of huge injustices. The only times I've shown the spell in action, it's with people who were eager to co-operate anyway, and when it started to hurt the interrogation fell apart.

2/2 My MC does have lasting psychological damage from his encounters with them. If the way to proceed is to show that this technique is worse than useless, that it's one more reason why the prisons are filled with unjustly convicted people, and that the police who do this are torturers with everything that goes with that, I do think I'm in a position to write that.

For readers generally theoriginal ask with my original response is here.

 Yes that contextchanges things. It means that I think I completely misunderstood the originalask. That happens occasionally and I’m sorry about that. Thank you for being sounderstanding.

 A lot of askers tend toapologise for sending in long asks but honestly more information is morehelpful for me. Having wider context for the story helps. We’re tackling toughsubjects here and I think detail and nuance is incredibly important

 Knowing that you’reshowing this as ineffective makes all the difference.

 The original ask wasabout effects, both on the victims and society more generally. I’m going tostart with the MC, this is going to apply to victims generally though.

 I’ve got a summary ofthe commonpsychological effects of torture here. Symptoms are generally the same nomatter what technique is used (there are a few exceptions but even thoseinclude the common symptoms on the list). Victims won’t all experience the samesymptoms and it’s impossible to predict who will experience which symptoms.

 As a result I tend tosuggest picking symptoms based on what the author feels fits the character andoverall story best.

 Given the way you’reusing this magic I think memory problems would be an excellent fit for thestory.

 In the long term aftertorture memory problems can manifest in several different ways and theseproblems can occur separate or together. Broadly speaking they come in aboutthree categories: memory loss, intrusive memories and inaccurate memories.

 Memory loss can mean forgetting the traumatic incidententirely but that’s not a very common form of problem. More commonly what itmeans is forgetting chunks of time immediately before and immediately aftertorture. It can also mean a sort of long term forgetfulness which makeseveryday life much more difficult. Learning new things, remembering wherethings are, being on time- simple everyday things like that become a lot moredifficult.

 That sort memoryproblem is incredibly common and rarely shown in fiction. I’ve actually had afew survivors contact me to say they weren’t even aware what they wereexperiencing was a symptom.

 Intrusive memories are alot easier to explicitly link to torture. They’re basically continuallyremembering and going over a traumatic event. It means that the character isconstantly reminded of torture, by small everyday things. And those remindersprompt an extremely vivid, detailed memory of the abuse they suffered. It meansthinking about what they survived almost all the time.

 Inaccurate memories aremuch harder to identify as a problem from ‘inside’. They feel like normalmemories and people experience them generally are convinced that their memoryis accurate.

 They usually affectmemories of and around torture and they’re often about details. Someone mightsay that the door of the room they were tortured in was on the left, when infact it was on the right. They can affect things like remembering exactly whodid what when and in what order.

 This can makeprosecuting a torture case extremely difficult.

 For your story inparticularly I want to highlight the work Morgan et al did with US soldiers.The soldiers, who all had years of front line combat experience, went through afake capture scenario as part of a ‘training exercise’. Some of them were thenput through a ‘high stress’ interrogation which included shouting, abuse andthe sorts of clean beating US rules allowed at the time. The other had a‘low-stress’ interrogation, a chat over a hot drink.

 Morgan then tested themthe next day to see who recognised their interrogator. Depending on how theywere asked to identify the interrogator between 51-68% identified the wrong person. Most of them wereconfident they’d gotten the right person. (The paper can be found here: C AMorgan et al, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry in 2004, 27, 265-279pgs)

 The interrogations werearound four hours and I think this study is really relevant to what you want towrite. Don’t worry too much if you can’t access the paper itself. The generalpicture of memory problems are more important than the in-depth statistical andmethod analysis the paper concentrates on.

 I’ve stressed all ofthese memory problems for a reason: I think you should show this magic as worsethan useless and I think this is the most sensible way to tackle it. It’s not alie if you honestly think it’s true and our memories are incredibly prone toflaws especially when we’re stressed or in pain.

 To put that a bit morebluntly: what we think is factually true canchange if we’re in pain.

 And those falsememories can persist and feel just as ‘true’ as accurate memories.

 The next thing I thinkyou really need to consider are the police officers themselves. There’s lessresearch on torturers then torture victims but what we have overwhelminglysuggests that torturing other people causes severe mental illness in thetorturer.

 Idiscuss the kinds of effects it has in another ask here (the questionitself involves mentions of rape and sexual abuse but there are no graphicdescriptions in the question or answer).

 Have a read through ofthat because whether you focus on any of the police as characters or not ifthis system comes down that’s a lot ofpeople with those symptoms who will be out of work. Their society is goingto have to come up with a way of coping with that.

 That can take a lot ofdifferent forms. In Soviet Russia it was lethal purges. In South Africa it wasthe Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In the aftermath of the Bosnian war it’sbeen one of the most successful series of war crimes trials in history.

 On the nicer end you’relooking at long term mental health programs and re-training programs, jailsentences for the worst offenders and a structured plan to get these peopleback into the community in a healthy way.

 On the worse end it’signoring the problem and ending up with a lotof people who are violent, traumatised and can’t hold down a job anymore. Thatmeans a massive uptick in homelessness and problems related to addiction (iemore demand for health services then the set up can support).

 Those are problems forthis society afterwards. During all of this the problems are gonna be a littledifferent.

 This system will haveabsolutely destroyed the public’s trust in the police force. In a way that goesbeyond the ways torture normally destroys the public’s trust in the policeforce. There is normally a drop in people volunteering information to thepolice when the police torture but in most scenarios that’s because they’reafraid people they know will be tortured not because informants are at risk oftorture themselves. But everyone istortured in this scenario, including the witnesses and the people who reportcrimes.

 Simply put people willstop reporting crimes.

 The police might usethat to argue that crime has dropped and what they’re doing works.

 In fact you’ll have asystem of more or less complete collapse. I don’t know whether crime wouldactually rise but it would certainly go unpunished.

 With no onevolunteering information and a general culture of silence the police wouldprobably respond by arresting people at random. This is pretty common inpolicing systems that have come to rely on torture.

 Not only does this meanmore brutalised, injured people and less trust in the police it also creates aculture of fear. Because under these circumstances people tend to assume that there is a reason the police took the peoplethey did. They assume the raids and the disappearances are to do with someunder lying logic even when none exists.

 I think the best thingto read for the sort of societal affects you might see is Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. And luckily it’snow available for free over here.

 The only parts of Fanon’sbook I’ve read in detail are his psychiatric notes on patients he treatedduring and after the Franco-Algerian war. These included torture victims,torturers and the families of both groups.

 But the majority of thebook is about the injustice of colonialism, shaped by Fanon’s experience of France’sbloody, unjust policy of mass detention and torture of Algerians during thewar. (For further reading on France’s torture practices in Algeria see H Alleg’sThe Question)

 You’ve essentially gota society where there is no law enforcement and at the same time citizens areperiodically and randomly pulled off the street and tortured. There’s going tobe a lot of fear and a lot of distrust of authority. People may or may not haveformed their own parallel social systems already (with their own law enforcersand their own back-room courts).

 And that’s now edgingtowards @scriptsociology’s area of expertise. This is going to be an intensely fracturedsociety with a lot of genuine grievances and a lot of really profoundly illpeople who’ll need help. I strongly suggest consulting @scriptsociology if youwant this society to be rebuilt or come together, because it’s a lot easier forsocieties in this situation to fall apart rather than come back together.

 That may not havecovered anything but I think it’s a decent broad overview. If you’ve got any morequestions feel free to ask as soon as the box is open again. :)

Disclaimer

#tw torture #tw police brutality #fantasy ask #police torture #effect of torture on victims #effect of torture on torturers #psychological effects of torture #effects of torture on society #effects of torture on public trust #Anonymous