#because we do not live in the Fallout universe | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mutfruit-salad · 12 days

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Long post ahead. My full thoughts on the fallout series. TW for references to Sexual Assault, racism, antisemitism. It's not particularly in depth here- but I do reference specific acts of violence done in the show.

I've had people insinuate I'm only mad because I'm a New Vegas fan, because I think they retconned the lore. I'm not upset at the fallout show for its dubious lore additions and reworks. I think they're quite bad in places, but they're by far the least of the show's problems.

This isn't a case of a New Vegas fan mad they messed with my game in a way I didn't like.

Please refer to literally any of my posts pointing out the racism and antisemitism in the show. They brand a black man in episode 1. They named the enclave scientist after a real life holocaust survivor and then spent most of the show lobbing around his decapitated head like a volleyball.

But I'd like to consider other elements of the show. View it as a whole.

Consider the inherent misogyny of having a female main character whose entire character arc is just her getting abused for 8 episodes. How the trajectory of her character revolves around not giving up on the humanity of the man who waterboarded her and sold her to organ harvesters. A female main character who is raped in the first episode and watches her entire community get brutalized and who comes out of it completely unphased- still as plucky as ever- just worried about her dad.

Consider the horror of having a black woman be the one to drop the bombs. Consider the horror of her leading a council of elites who have infiltrated and taken over the US government. Consider the ways this group is presented and shown, the ways every fault of the US government in the series is offloaded onto a shadowy group of elites.

Consider how the capitalist critique of the show only goes so far as saying there's a secret organization of bad people who must be purged. The antisemitism and conspiratorial nonsense inherent to that premise.

Consider the rampant classism with the show's depiction of Wastelanders as either animalistic monsters or too stupid to live.

Consider the ways the show punishes nearly every act of kindness- the ways the world rewards might-makes-right authoritarians.

Consider the way the NCR collapsed offscreen because a disgruntled husband was mad his wife left him, and how after it collapsed the army immediately became raiders and the survivors became blood drinking cultists. Don't give me "it's just shady sands that collapsed" because the NCR was a developed nation. If one of their cities blew up, they would send aid. They would assist.

Consider the way the show constantly uses sex crimes as comedy and horror- the incest jokes and the "chicken fucker" bit, and the Vault 4 monster impregnation and the main character's rape in the first episode.

Consider the ableism of the treatment of ghouls, how every ghoul is now a ticking time bomb, how Lucy helps free a small dementia-riddled old ghoul woman from a medical torture facility and then is immediately punished with the woman trying to inexplicably murder her. Thaddeus openly talks about ghoul exterminationism and it's never a joke or a bit- he just says it and nobody reacts or says anything.

Consider the way the Vault 33 town councillors use real world progressive talking points about restorative justice and prison abolition and multiculturalism- meanwhile Norm advocates for the death penalty and a closed society. How Norm is shown as good and righteous and the vault dwellers range from deluded to damningly stupid- how the mere concept of restorative justice is made a farce because the NCR raiders are screaming about eating organs and murdering people 24/7.

Consider the way they removed the Boneyard, and the Followers of the Apocalypse by extension. In New Vegas we heard about the Followers operating a university in LA. It's gone now. Not destroyed by bombs- but written out of existence because the Boneyard never existed, and Shady Sands is in its place. Consider what that says about this world- that the group most dedicated to peace and rebuilding has been surgically excised from the narrative- destroyed more wholly than even the NCR- written out of existence entirely.

This is the single most reactionary fallout story that has been produced. By a fucking country mile.

Whatever lore critiques there are should be secondary. The storytelling is reactionary in ways I straight up have not seen from other Bethesda entries in the series. It is cruel to a fault, and depicts a world that is incapable of healing or growing- where the best you can do is hold onto that small spark of goodness while every bit of the society around you tries to murder it out of you. This isn't a story about rebuilding, or about postwar politics, or about society- it's about dueling warlords and might makes right attitudes and grimdark views of the nature of humanity. It's fallout in aesthetics alone- and it's perhaps the most hateful thing I've seen come out of this series outside of the actual neonazis in the fanbase.

Whatever hope there is in Moldaver's final moments looking out over the glittering ruins of LA is undercut by the knowledge of what came before. What was destroyed. And it's undercut by the Brotherhood's totalitarian control. It's not hopeful, it's the bare minimum of survival. It's all the progress of the postwar world, 200 years of humanity and history, reduced to just barely getting the lights back on.

In the intro to fallout 1, "War Never Changes" is used as thematic glue. It ties together two concepts- past wars- and present capitalism and militarism.

Ron Perlman describes the Roman Empire, the Spanish conquests of the Americas, and the Nazi regime- and then he says "war never changes" and uses it to connect those past atrocities to the modern world of the setting- to the war that ended everything. The phrase existed to link the resource wars and their ensuing fallout to all the crimes of empire prior. War never changes wasn't a hard and fast rule of human nature- it was a specific condemnation of America.

Lonesome Road even ends with the phrase refuted. War Never Changes. But men do, through the roads they walk. There is hope. That's what this series has always been about. The Master died at the end of fallout 1 and said "leave while you still have hope."

In this show, the black woman Vault Tec exec who ends the world says the phrase. It's stripped of all meaning. Just a generic throwback because it's a famous phrase in the series' history. It's not a condemnation of America, it's a celebratory thing. Vault Tec toasting to the end of the world.

What a thing to see this series become. What a thing to see celebrated.

#fallout #fallout new vegas #fallout show #this has gotten more feedback then I was expecting #and i'm glad this is resonating with some folks #turned off reblogs cuz i cant actually deal with the response this has been getting at this point 👍

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spirantization · 5 months

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"Wild Blue Yonder" dealt with some of the emotional fallout of the Flux, so I want to rewind a bit and look at what that means for the Doctor.

I know that the Timeless Child and the Flux are contentious topics. I'm not here to argue either way. But now those storylines have decisively not been retconned, and with both of these fresh in my memory, I feel the need to offer some context for anyone who may not have seen it, and to recontextualize it for myself and anyone who has.

NotDonna: You don't know where you're from. The Doctor: How do you know that? How does anyone know? How does Donna know?

In "The Timeless Children", we find out that the Doctor was discovered as a child alone under a wormhole, and adopted by a woman named Tecteun. There was an accident where the Doctor fell from a cliff and regenerated, and subsequently Tecteun performed "experiments" on them to try to understand regeneration. The show minces words about this but she killed a child a whole bunch of times is what happened. Her experiments created the Time Lords and allow them to engineer their regeneration properties. The Doctor has no memory of any of this, and only finds out via the Master and information stored in the Time Lord Matrix.

The Doctor, predictably, doesn't tell anyone about this revelation. She makes a speech to the Master about how this makes her more, we get a single shot of her looking a bit tired in the TARDIS, then she immediately gets thrown in prison.

Ultimately, the Doctor doesn't know where they're from or who their parents are. And the very fact that they're not from Gallifrey is information that no one in the universe should have. Everyone who knew is now dead.

NotDonna: I saw it in your head. The Flux. The Doctor: It destroyed half the universe because of me. We stand here now, on the edge of creation, a creation which I devastated, so yes I keep running, of course I do! How am I supposed to look back on that? NotDonna: It wasn't your fault! The Doctor: I know!

A fun fact about the Flux is that the Doctor did not cause it. So why does he blame himself? Because the person who caused the Flux was Tecteun.

The reason why Tecteun wanted to destroy the universe is because the Doctor interfered with things too much. Too much morality. Too inspirational to people. She calls them a virus. So her solution to the problem of the Doctor is to destroy the universe, with the Doctor inside, and take her ship to a different universe to start fresh. She also was the one to steal all the Doctor's memories of previous lives in the first place. She's dismissive and patronizing and clearly does not care about the Doctor on an emotional level at all. Tecteun is a piece of work, and the implications of her actions and how they've shaped the Doctor have the potential to go deep.

Thirteen doesn't get too much of a chance to react to any of this, because there is plot going on. And shortly after they reunite, Tecteun gets killed by a different villain. So there was no emotional closure in the moment, and there's now no possibility for the Doctor to make sense of her actions. The Doctor does not tell any of her friends about any of these events. She keeps promising to tell Yaz but does not.

"Wild Blue Yonder" is the first time we, as the audience, hear the Doctor discuss the Flux. And their perception of events is skewed at best. The Flux wasn't caused because the Doctor made a mistake and a lot of people were killed, which is what you can argue for many other situations. The Flux and the devastation of the universe was caused by their mother, who promptly turned around and told them it was their fault for being such an interfering nuisance. We know that the Doctor is often an unreliable narrator, but this is beyond that. These are the words of an abused child who has internalized the narrative that the abuse was their fault.

So the Doctor being able to talk about this with Donna, who has seen what happened, who knows him, and tells him that it's not his fault — it means so much to him. He wants it to be her so badly. And then NotDonna laughs in his face. You can see the devastation. He thinks for one moment that he can finally talk about this with his best friend, and it's snatched away from him. He gives himself a moment to break down in the corridor, and then you can see the walls rebuilding as he suppresses it all again.

At the very end of the episode, back in the TARDIS, he's trying very very hard to be nonchalant. I'm curious. The NotDonna could remember all these things that happened to me while we were apart. Can you? Just wondering. Things happened, but I'll be fine. In a million years. It's not a joke.

He wants so badly to be able to talk about this. You can see it in all the lines of his body language. He's keeping himself together but is prepared to fall apart in an instant. He doesn't want to actually tell anyone, but if Donna just magically knew already, and could tell him it wasn't his fault — well, that would make the world of difference. But she doesn't know, and he can't bring himself to tell her. And so the cycle continues.

#doctor who #dw spoilers #wild blue yonder #the flux

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scintillyyy · 4 months

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the steph brown conundrum aka the problem with steph being a character with hugely divergent doylist and watsonian readings

okay, so like. there is always a part of me that feels that to this day, didio kind of won when it came to the destruction of steph's character. like she wasn't a toxic character like he thought before he got his hands on her, but since he did & there was fallout from it, it has completely destroyed dc's desire to do anything potentially interesting with her, even as they've brought her back. like. she will always just kind of be a shell of her former self, doomed to stay uncontroversial and in the background. because when it comes to steph, and the problem with utilizing steph as a character now, you have to acknowledge two things

steph from an editorial and out of universe perspective was treated horrifically. the nonsensical and terrible things they made her do to move along the plot of post-crisis are awful and excessively reckless to the point of intentional character assassination & it was all done to justify her fridging for bruce's (and tim's) manpain which is awful

but the things that steph did as a result of the above are extremely load-bearing and important on plot and character dynamics and motivations from war games all the way to reborn era & to try and remove or minimize things that happened as a result of those actions just because they were arguably out of character from her has the unfortunate result of completely and intentionally warping the characterization of everyone who interacts with her to the point where it negatively affects almost every single other character instead.

so in order to show this we need to start at war games, talk about what happened, & go into how this affects things & why her character assassination is not as easy to fix as cass's or leslie's

so war games. ah war games. you know, having recently reread it, war games is frustrating because it's arguably a semi good event for most everyone except steph and leslie (especially leslie--now that was character assassination.). so let's get into the bare bones of what exactly happens in war games (war games being the three main events of this time: war drums (the prequal), war games proper, & war crimes (the follow up & worst part of the event)) (and i'm not saying i necessarily agree with this, just. this is what we have to consider.)

war drums:

this event has two main stories - the bruce & leslie story and the steph becomes robin story

in the bruce & leslie story (which is definitely racist), we have a young teenage pregnant girl who shows up at leslie's clinic having been shot. leslie attempts to save the girl and baby, but is left in a precarious situation where only one can be saved. she reluctantly calls bruce for help finding the girl's family, who finds out that the girl in question is popstar l'shea's sister--the popstar and her entourage in question kidnap leslie & the girl & bruce finds them, where it's revealed the girl is actually l'shea's daughter (like i said. racist.). l'shea makes the decision to save the baby, which kills the girl. leslie tries to get bruce to see that he can't save everyone, and ultimately gets upset about the cycle of violence she feels he perpetuates when he goes to take mr. freeze back in. she later comes to talk to bruce & it ends on a positive note fairly consistent with the bruce & leslie relationship--one in which leslie wishes he could devote himself to saving lives nonviolently & hoping he could see her as an example. my only quibble is that bruce responds as "ha-ha" leslie when if you compare to the batman chronicles #18, bruce absolutely counts on her to challenge his worldview & be a shining example of what he cannot be.

we do start to see the seeds of character assassination for leslie here imo, though this part is the best understanding of her by far--she's always been a foil to bruce as far as her pacifism and her determination to try and show him that there are other ways than his crusade, but traditionally she's always been defined as well by her immense love for him & he for her. she fundamentally disagrees with his crusade, but she's going to be there for him because she knows there's good in him that's worth saving--because to leslie, every life, including bruce's, is worth saving. anyways, read the batman chronicles #18, where she's determined to use O- blood on zsasz because of her firm commitment to the belief that every life is precious & she and bruce talk about their differences in opinion but how she's determined to keep showing him there's another way & he wants her to do so. this leslie who has, up until this event, been troubled by his crusade--but has decided it's tireless, but worth it to show him the good in people, suddenly seems a lot more, hm. overtly hateful of how batman operates & the fact that he puts criminals back in prison just for them to break out and the cycle to continue & has a sudden desire to not work with him if at all possible because of her total disagreement with his methods. which is. hm. somewhat but not entirely consistent with leslie's motivation. leslie would have no problem asking bruce for help if it meant saving an innocent & the fact that he believes in the redemption of criminals is something she inherently believes in. anyways i digress-

the other main story is, as we all know, the steph becomes robin story. and while you do not have to agree with how it is written wrt stephanie, the barebones of what exactly transpires is thus: tim has quit robin for his dad. he is attempting to live a normal life--go to school, hang out with friends, & not do the vigilante thing even when he sees people in need. he meets up with steph, who tells him of her determination to return to spoiler now that her broken leg has healed & he tells her that it's very hard for him to leave the house on account of jack always being suspicious that he's going out to be robin & be involved in anything vigilante again (it is implied that this is the first time he had been able to get out in a while because of his dad, as he didn't know she got her cast off). one day, when tim is at school, darla aquista, who has a crush on him, kisses him out of the blue. this happens to be seen by steph, who is now officially active again & chooses to be active during the day as a result of wanting to avoid batman as she doesn't have his approval, has gone over to tim's school to check on him because she's suspicious he's hiding something from her other than he's basically under house arrest from his dad atm since it had been so long since she had seen him. it, of course, looks terrible to her and she flounces off--deciding that she's going to become robin. bruce agrees, which everyone--alfred, barbara, eventually tim, etc completely understands to be a scheme to lure tim back. steph proceeds to completely ghost tim for the next two months--he calls and leaves messages, and she never calls back or comes to see him at all--she is completely radio silent & avoiding him and he doesn't know why but he is worried. bruce tells stephanie that she will not be privy to any secrets & the minute she disobeys an order she's out (a double standard, yes, but completely consistent in that he, again, is using her basically only to lure tim back). meanwhile, scarab is hunting tim, killing boys in his age range with dark hair and their families in an attempt to kill robin as there is a contract out for his life. tim then finds out through the newspaper that the reason steph has been avoiding him is because she became robin & calls the batcave to finally talk to steph & ask her to meet so they can finally talk in perso. about what exactly happened and how on earth steph became robin. cassandra comes instead--steph doesn't show up because batman and robin are busy hunting scarab who is trying to kill tim/previous robin & tim needs to be put under protection. steph gets a tracking device on scarab. day 49, bruce and steph go to get scarab, bruce goes in while steph is let behind for support in the batplane, bruce gets blinded, steph disobeys bruce and comes in to help, steph gets caught by scarab, scarab gets away in the batplane because steph forgot to arm the security system. steph officially gets fired 3 weeks later for disobeying an order on day 71.

yea, it's something. but it is what it is.

war games:

so we get to war games proper. overnight, a gang war has erupted & set the city ablaze and into chaos after a letter was sent out calling all the crime bosses to the harbor where a firefight breaks out on account of the main player who was supposed to be there if those letters were sent out, matches malone, not showing up. since tensions are high, it's easy for then to start shooting and killing each other & in doing so creates an immediate and widespread vacuum of power in the criminal underworld of gotham that people leap to try to fill & wipe out their competition in the meantime. innocent people are caught in the crosshairs.

nightwing (who is already having a terrible time) shows up to help (with tarantula) & is personally dealing with the emotional fallout of letting tarantula kill blockbuster amongst other things.

barbara is doing her best to help out and triage people to help, but there's really only batman, batgirl, nightwing, tarantula, & orpheus against a whole city. and at this point, tarantula has taken over a gang under batman's command to try and control things and can't overtly help & orpheus was already in control of a gang under batman's command in an attempt to protect women & children and exert some control over the criminal underbelly of gotham and also cannot overtly help out.

stuff with hush is happening in gotham knights but i don't care aj lieberman, by god, i do not care.

tim is doing his best to go about his day and keep his promise to his dad and not go out to help despite the fact that the city is falling apart. this becomes harder when a rival gang comes to kill his friend darla aquista at their high school, on account of her father being a mob boss. the kids are panicked and run into the school for sanctuary and safety, but are followed in and darla is shot.

what happens next is that tim's school is taken over by gangsters--the ones who came to kill darla, and the ones who see the opportunity to kill the ones who are trying to kill darla--and the kids are trapped in there with them, doing their best to hide, but some are taken hostage & are at the mercy of their captives (kids are killed). tim shelters in the nurses's office & does his best to go out and help who he can bring to safety, alone with getting a lay of the school (which gang is where).

meanwhile, bruce, cass, & dick have been informed that tim's school is taken over and kids are dying. along with all their other current trauma, they have to go find tim in an active shooter zone where he could very well be dead. dick gets to be the one who finds him (such a traumatic time for dick btw), and he's thankfully okay. they get control back of the school and free the kids. batman comes out on live television holding darla's body--she's not dead yet, but she's close.

we find out where steph is. selina finds her and we finally find out why this happened: upset at getting fired and frustrated that she's never been able to truly land their approval, steph lashed out & stole a plan designed to unite the crime families in gotham under batman's control hoping that if she was able to set off a plan for batman & it worked he would take her back and she'd finally have his approval. however, the main man didn't show up and it fell to pieces--doomed to fail. and the reason that this all happened is because steph was never told that batman is matches malone. there's actually a ton of 'bruce what have you done' here. catwoman shelters steph & tells her to stay put. steph does not do so, she leaves so she can try to find orpheus & help get the situation under control because she knows he's key to the plan.

tim, unable to stand by any longer despite his promise to his dad after the thing at the school, returns to the manor where he is greeted by alfred & returns to being robin.

batman finally also realizes that what happened is his war game contigency plan/hypothetical/thought experiment just as a citywide blackout hits--a plan he never intended to implement, it was one of his hypotheticals. & they also start looking for orpheus, as he's the key because they need to keep him alive as the plan was for the criminal underworld to reform united under his, and therefore batman's, rule.. steph finds him first, just in time to see his throat slit--by black mask.

steph gets into a one v one altercation with black mask and is overpowered and at his mercy. he tortures her. it's gross, we all know.

tim tells his dad he's returned to being robin. we get what is probably some of the best jack drake charactetization. tim meets jack and dana so they can go help out at leslie's clinic to help the injured.

steph, eventually, after being tortured, finally tells black mask that the plan required orpheus and is now obsolete because orpheus is dead.

cass is looking for steph because she's probably the only one aware that steph is out as spoiler & she knows that the last time she saw steph steph was lying to her about something

leslie is currently acting extremely out of character. and she's kind of a jerk to cass when cass comes looking for steph & is downright hateful about his mission. (which. is ooc for leslie--while she's never agreed with bruce's mission she's always, always, loved and respected them all--consider her in NML vs here. she wants to end his crusade and him to do something better, but she's always looking to be a beacon of hope that there is another way. every disagreement should be steeped in her love for them).

hush is still here for some reason and will tell black mask where the batcave is

catwoman is concerned about steph--who has passed out from the torture--calling her "the kid you messed up so badly she started this whole mess"

batman takes over oracle's & the police's system by force. we're really in it now. steph wakes up, determined to get to batman to tell him about orpheus's death.

black mask, however, has taken over orpheus's identity and is contacting batman, ostensibly to continue the "plan". and darla officially dies, meaning her father is out for revenge and wants everyone killed.

batman meets up with black mask as orpheus & figures out spoiler was there, but he assumes she fought zeiss. he leaves, black mask is planning...something as orpheus.

batman has barbara take over the police waves once more. barbara is getting really sick if this shit.

gotham city is starting to rail against vigilantes as a result of the widespread chaos of war games, calling for them to turn themselves in.

batman has orpheus call a grand meeting. ostensibly to end things and ensure peace in gotham with everything unified under orpheus's commands. orpheus is, however, dead. black mask uses the meeting to set everything ablaze again & barbaba has to call off the vigilantes from helping to protect the gcpd to go help batman--this is the straw that breaks the camel's back of this causes an official break in the uneasy alliance between vigilante & gcpd and comissioner akins gives the order to shoot to kill vigilantes on sight (as also, as a result of the plan failing due to orpheus's murder it seems as if batman et al are on the side of the villains causing mayhem)

at this point the game it out of control & they have to focus on stopping it. cass finally has a chance to talk to batman and tell him her suspicions that steph was the one who set the entire thing into motion, which he has now figured out (on account of him finding traces of spoilers's at orpheus's)

dick gets shot in the leg by the police while fighting firefly

tim meanwhile is happy to return to robin, and actually has bunch of nice things to say about steph's time as robin--that she kept things light for bruce, that he's not too proud to learn from her--even if he did admittedly resent her a little bit for how it all went down. he's also currently in the middle of a breakdown over darla's death and is pretending everything's okay by just go go going.

steph has freed herself from her bonds and gets into it with black mask, finally overpowering him when she realizes "this isn't a game". she gets a gun to his head & wants to pull the trigger and end him for good, but can't--as that would mean betraying everything she's been taught. the hesitation costs her and black mask gets the gun and shoots her in the shoulder & kicks her down the stairs & leaves

she manages to get herself up despite her extensive injuries and escapes by rooftop, where she's finally found by batman, who brings her to leslie and begs her to save steph. he then tells her she did good & that she did everything she could & that the city owes her after everything she went through.

and black mask is still causing trouble--hush supposedly told him the location of the batcave & he plans to solidify his reign as the undisputed crime lord of gotham by sending everyone there--it's not the batcave, however--it's the clocktower. all the criminals are now converging on and headed for directly for barbara. they get in and make it past all her defenses and invade her safe space, black mask making it to her control room & taking her hostage. the gcpd also descend upon the clocktower.

batman goes ham and almost kills black mask, saying it'd be worth it to end everything that's transpired. tim creates a diversion by lying saying they'll turn themselves into the police. barbara blows up her clocktower so that bruce has to make the decision between saving her & killing black mask. bruce chooses to save her & it's over. bruce gets called to leslie's clinic, where it turns out steph had too much internal damage to save her. steph tells him that she started it all, and bruce says he knows but that they took care of it. he tells her that tim isn't mad at her and that the baby she had won't want for anything ever. he lies and says that taking her on as robin wasn't just to bring tim back, that she was really robin & that he'll be watching over her. she dies. black mask takes over as the new criminal overlord of gotham city.

as a result of all of the above, we get the following: gotham is no longer safe for vigilantes to operate. tim has been set in motion on the path of loss from darla to steph to his dad in another event that will eventually lead him to the mental space he needs to be in to become red robin and leaves for bludhaven. cass follows in her grief of all that transpired. dick is out of commission due to his gunshot wound & dealing with the fallout of working with bruce while feeling like he doesn't deserve to, but is also the only one left to work with bruce. barbara, whose safe haven was trampled upon and destroyed, feels gotham to go be with the birds of prey in another city. bruce is operating all but alone, save for a couple of other distant vigilantes.

we find out that bruce didn't--couldn't--tell tim steph had died until hours after the fact, and that's when tim was finally able to hear the whole story as to how steph became robin all the way to how the gang war got started. this is also when dick finds out the whole story as well.

and thus, war games ends

war crimes:

so we make our way to the epilogue of this storyline. the very aptly named war crimes

the public is still railing against vigilantes. it comes out publicly that stephanie brown was spoiler, then robin, and that her injuries were not thus that should have killed her. batman finds out and goes to leslie's to find out who leaked stephanie's information, only to find out leslie has resigned and her chief resident left with her. batman finds the resident, murdered in a clear attempt to set batman up. (it's black mask setting him up). a man named aaron black is railing against black mask, batman, & the gcpd for the gang war

we find out that treatment was deliberately withheld from stephanie and she was purposely left to die. we find out aaron black is the not so dead arthur brown. & we find out that crystal knows something and is prepared to spill it all. black mask comes dressed as batman to attack crystal brown on live tv. we find out the joker is after black mask for killing robin. the joker gets arrested, black mask gets arrested (and escapes), a tv reporter gets indicted, the leader of the odessa mob gets indicted, commissioner akins and athur brown don't get indicted, and batman has finally figured out who killed stephanie and goes to africa where she fled to.

in, quite possibly, the greatest moment of character assassination in this entire gd event we find out it was leslie who let stephanie die because she was tired of batman's crusade, destroying everything she once stood for just to prove a point to bruce about the senselessness of it all and to try and put an end to it. congrats to dc for this horrific epilogue.

so there it is--the entire event. it certainly is a thing that happened. and that's the problem--it happened. and it was very, very much intended as a personal fuck you and goodbye to the characters of stephanie brown and leslie thompkins. and that's terrible on so many levels. but unfortunately the fact of the matter is, despite that and regardless of any personal feelings about it, war games became a load-bearing event to batman canon.

because war games had so much influence on fundamentally upheaving and changing the status quo of the characters involved and storylines following this could not happen without war ganes existing. without war games, tim does not become the tim that will eventually become red robin. without war games, dick is not injured and out of commission and does not flee to new york and the mob, leaving bludhaven for tim and cass and on his passively suicidal mission that will eventually lead to infinite crisis and the one year boat ride. without war games, barbara does not leave gotham because she needs to leave it behind, only to return during the reborn era & all the tension that entails. without war games, bruce doesn't end up alone & isolated as needed for the red hood storyline. without war games, stephanie is not killed and thus can't be evolved into batgirl as an apology for the way she was treated. the dynamics caused by war games are essential to the stories that come after it. and then you're left with two very, very uncomfortable truths:

one, war games was a horrific fuck you and. fridging to a female character solely because of the evil sexism present at dc editorial at the time and of course you want to delete anything that had such awful intentions behind it

two, war games happening is essential to the trajectory of every single bat characters' story that comes after it including hers. and so it had to happen. and the thing with war games is that steph, while not completely to blame for it transpiring, was humongous part of it transpiring no matter what. because we end up with what it seems to me, the grand circle of blame. it goes as follows: war games never would have happened if bruce hadn't made his contingency plan to begin with -> yes, but. even if it is one of bruce's toxic traits to do that, he never intended for the contingency to go into effect and it was more of a hypothetical than anything and the only reason it ever saw the light of day was because steph stole it and put it into action -> yes, but. if bruce had been less of an asshole and told steph the basic information of matches malone is batman she wouldn't have made the mistake -> yes, but. to completely blame bruce is to remove any and all agency from steph, because nobody put a gun to her head and forced her to implement the plan, that was entirely her decision. and as much as we would have liked her to have decided she no longer needed batman's approval, the fact of the matter is she did want it and she did make the decision to send those letters -> yes but, if bruce hadn't had a contigency to begin with she wouldn't have had such an awful plan to steal -> yes, but having contigencies for plans that will never come to fruition is honestly a normal thing for them and bruce planning out a hypothetical is just another tuesday, and it was steph who set it into motion -> yes, but... and so on and so forth endlessly until the end of time. like, whether things were out of character or whatnot is a valid discussion (though all comics characters are doomed for stories where they're out of character), but putting that aside: the fact is, for every character's trajectory into the reborn era, war games had to happen. and for war games to have ever seen the light of day and happened, steph had to make the decision to send those letters.

and so we're left with this. steph made those decisions because of horrificly sexist behind the scenes decisions. if steph didn't make those decisions, then no other character trajectory makes sense. and that's how we end up with a steph conundrum that is so much harder to fix than any other character assasination of the time. because cass's was easy to retcon as brainwashing, it makes sense for slade being involved. leslie was easy to retcon as faking steph's death, that removes her intent to kill a child and restores her original characterization of every life is sacrosanct. but war games? war games does not and can not happen unless stephanie decides to send those letters. things with tim and barbara and cass and even through steph becoming batgirl don't happen unless steph sends those letters. and when she sends those letters, hundreds of innocent people die and even though bruce is largely to blame (and is blamed, by the narrative), there is a culpability of steph's active decision in the entire mess that exists.

and if that culpability exists, if she sent those letters and war games happened, and innocent people died and barbara had to blow up her home and tim had to do cpr with darla's blood pouring over his hands and dick got shot in the knee and had to find tim in an active massacre, and cass lost herself to grief, then from an in-universe perspective while it's easy to for them to blame bruce for the majority of it, it also is true that every single one of those people has the right to question whether she is capable of making good judgements because of the extremely bad one she made that had so many in-universe consequences & they were all victims of it. from an out of universe perspective, it is so, so, so hard to put that kind of culpability on her, though, because of the sexism involved in deciding to make her make those decisions.

(as an aside. you also get this same issue that occurs as a part of the last arc of the robin series--wherein in order to justify steph no longer being spoiler and graduate her to batgirl, they need her to make a mistake so bad it would justify the idea that spoiler is a tainted mantle & she can't go back to it--so they decide that she needs to hire assassins to try and kill tim under batman's orders. now this is stupid & nonsensical, and she makes a mistake like that due to writer sexism thinking that that was the way to go. but her making that mistake and hiring those assassins is essential to the overall self isolation of tim & him being unable to trust her amongst everyone else that he needs to be in the headspace to kick of red robin & steph needs to have made a mistake that taints the spoiler mantle & makes people not want her to be it otherwise why would she become batgirl... it's messy. very messy.)

but because of all the horrific sexism out of universe behind the decision to write her to do these things, you're left with. hm. it is hard to want to make her have any culpability because that would just be entrenching the sexist writing she's had & she was the biggest victim, but to just completely throw it out is to make every other character appear completely irrational and unreasonable when it comes to dealing with steph. and that's truly hard for dc--who, once they make her a headlining character in her own right as batgirl, now has to be a lot more careful when dealing with steph. because if any other character does have reasonable concerns about steph continuing to exist as a vigilante after the decisions she made that sparked off war games, or hire assassins for tim, or etc etc etc then you risk people being like "no, maybe these people have a point. maybe these people shouldn't have to work with her if they feel at all uncomfortable by decisions she made that resulted in truly terrible times for them."

so you end up. dc finally has to do something grand, something triumphant for stephanie's character to make up for the completely atrocious way she was treated before. and you get batgirl 2009, which is a triumph for her character, it's the approval she's always deserved but never given, she finally gets to show all her naysayers that she's worth it--that they were all wrong about her and she deserves to be there just as much as them. and she does deserve a big doylist apology--she was treated terribly & cruelly & it wasn't right for dc editorial to do so. but you run into. hm. this problem of in order to make this big doylist apology work, you need everything that came before it to have happened. because it's a big doylist apology you can't actually have it that those things to have happened because if steph has to prove herself to the naysayers, the naysayers have to be completely wrong about her.

and that's hard given we're in reborn era and bruce is "dead". because in that case, steph's naysayers have to be barbara, tim, & dick. and while steph shouldn't have to prostrate herself for forgiveness & they shouldn't blame her for everything ever (they've all had their own issues where they've made mistakes, some with tragic consequences, and therefore can't call the kettle black), the problem with having to make them her naysayers is that you have to make them unreasonable about her & that's hard to do when they were all victims of something that occurred in part due to a decision she made. you have barbara, who should be able to have reasonable concerns about whether steph is fit for the job because she had to blow up her own sace space because steph sent those letters. but you can't acknowledge that because that would be entrenching the sexism behind that decision. so you make it so barbara is the one in the wrong about her. you have dick, who should not be able to look at stephanie without remembering his little brother calling him, wanting to commit suicide over everything that's happened, without remembering the tim at the edge of the pit, without remembering getting the call-code 619-and realizing that tim's at the site of a massacre occurring at his school and could be dead, and he gets to realize he was completely wrong about her with no consideration to what complicated personal feelings he may have about her on account of his own most precious relationships. you have tim, who does have things to apologize to her about, to be sure, but has to be cast as completely in the wrong despite the things she did having to have happened such as hire assassins & everything he had to endure as a result of her sending those letters. and that's not to say that any of this means that she shouldn't be a vigilante of course, you can't have a double standard where male characters are allowed to make mistakes and continue on regardless of mistakes made and not afford that same grace to female characters. but at the same time, it's uncomfortable to cast barbaba, dick, and tim in the role of naysayers to be overcome because that erases their victimization by the events that had to have happened in order to make it to this point. and again, they don't have to blame her to feel like it's her fault to have reasonable discomfort because discomfort =/= blame, necessarily.

and you get into this entire mess solely because of the decisions didio made because he hated her character and was determined to destroy it. and it's gross! we hate didio! but like. way back to my original thought, in a way, he did succeed a little. because of the horrific things that happened to her due to cruel and gross out of universe editorial decisions, you do have to be extra delicate with the character. you've lost the ability to show steph making any sort of mistake that has significant ramifications because to do so is to go back to war games & all the baggage that that entails. you need to play it incredibly safe with her. she can't be shown to be in the wrong because of the horrific way she was treated. at the same time, you need things to have happened, but you need things to not have happened. it's just a lot of baggage for a character, and there's probably a reason why they still play it safe by sticking her with tim (until they broke up) and now cass. it's uncontroversial after everything she's been put through. idk. i think current continuity is the best chance to finally really do something interesting with her again given that the mistakes of the past are so softened and don't need to be forefront to the character anymore because we are in an era ripe for things happened but they didn't happen, but will they? i don't know.

#anywho this is probably super incoherent #but this is also the thing i rotate in my mind when i think about steph #this is why i like to envision steph as an unreliable narrator of bg #because then you have more space for the fact that others were also victims and they're not necessarily unreasonable #but since steph is also extremely traumatized and a victim of horrific things she has to not thing about the ramifications of her decisions #or something idk

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tavina-writes · 5 months

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MDZS Society! aka: there's a lot less killing than you'd expect

This follows from this post and also the recent translations of MXTX’s most recent interview (which I can now no longer bother to find bc this has been sitting in drafts for like, siiiix months? More? Oh god anyway.) which reminded me about my feelings regarding MDZS society and how different it is from the martial societies we see depicted in typical modern wuxia. (Small disclaimer, I am a wuxia genre fiend and I love like, thinking about fictional societies so this is like, “AHA! You’ve unlocked my trap card!”)

For the purposes of this, I’m going to be looking at MDZS/CQL’s depiction of the jianghu (which I think is fairly similar! I don’t actually think the show writers made CQL’s jianghu/martial society more genre typical than it was in the book) and comparing that with modern classic wuxia (mostly Jin Yong and Gu Long works.) For this comparison, I’ll be looking at a Jin Yong book — Legend of the Condor Heroes (which is widely considered the starting point of modern wuxia as a genre) — and one Gu Long book — Dagger Li/Sentimental Swordsman, Ruthless Sword (widely considered his most popular work) — and seeing how their societies differ from MDZS society.

This will likely come in two parts because this one was already getting long, and I don’t think we can fit “how often does nobility exist in a typical jianghu and what do bloodline sects look like normally versus what they look like in MDZS” in this post along with the main topic of “is MDZS society a particularly physically violent place?”

This post discusses how often cultivators are socially expected to kill people. Like, actual living human beings instead of, say, monsters or ghosts which have been categorized differently than like, human beings.

EDIT: I forgot to talk about Dagger Li but this was already much too long sorry. Feel free to hmu for more thoughts though.

Now, it might be easy to think that cultivators killing actual people is a really common thing in MDZS/CQL universe! After all, they do have martial arts training and one of the prominent things about the first life is just how many people die both in the Sunshot Campaign and the fallout afterwards. However, I would argue that a lot of the traumas and related issues and reactions that happen in MDZS happen because cultivators are, by training and education, not actually prepared for killing actual living breathing human beings! (And also that the morality of this world prevents it for the most part)

Now, we do actually get a pretty good window into what the typical training is like for young cultivators in MDZS, because we get a fairly well defined schoolhouse scene where LQR is asking them questions about "how do you tell the difference between various different problems we have to solve?" and "how do you go about fixing this problem?" and none of those include the moral quandary of "if I, a young cultivator out in the Jianghu, see a guy who is doing something I morally disagree with, under what circumstances do I beat him up and/or kill him." This does not appear to enter the curriculum at any point, leading me to believe that the morally correct number of people not like, ghosts or ghouls or fierce corpses, a regular average MDZS cultivator is supposed to have killed is approximately 0.

Which. Is a thing you get in a normal martial arts wuxia jianghu. There is generally the threat of "oh yeah this that or the other faction will be doing shitty things and thereby try to murder you." Instead, in MDZS/CQL most of the heirs of sects are...attending school together. Doing teenage things like partying and gossiping and attending classes.

And sure yes, there was a case of WWX and JZX trying to beat each other up. But the sects did sure let their kids stay at Lan summer camp for months on end (sometimes repeatedly, see NHS) without fearing for their lives or that anyone would steal another sect's techniques or otherwise causing real havoc or intersect warfare etc.

Which is infeasible in any other sort of Jianghu situation. For example, contrast this scenario with this scene from LOCH where Guo Jing's shifus are giving him advice since he is newly 17 and about to set out by himself into the great big world:

Guo Jing therefore bid farewell to his teachers. They had witnessed his battle against the Four Demons of the Yellow River, and were not too greatly worried. The young man had proved that he knew how to use the skills that they taught him. Therefore they let him leave alone. On one hand, the meeting of outlaws in Yanjing worried them greatly, so that they could not ignore it; and on the other hand, a youngster always had to travel the jianghu alone, in order to learn lessons that no teacher could pass on. At the moment of parting, each made their last recommendations. As usual when the Six spoke after one another, Nan Xiren was the last one to express himself. "If you cannot defeat the enemy," he said. "Flee!" He knew that given Guo Jing's dogged character, he would prefer to die rather than to surrender, if he met a master, he would certainly fight to the bitter end, even at the risk of death. That was the reason Nan Xiren gave him this common sense warning. " Martial arts have no limits," added Zhu Cong. " As the proverb says, 'For every peak there is one yet higher', so for every man there is one stronger. Whatever your power, you will always one day meet a foe stronger than you. A true man knows to retreat when necessary, when facing grave danger, it is necessary to contain one's impatience and anger. This what is meant by the adage, « If one preserves the earth and its forests, one does not fear to lack firewood ». It is not therefore not cowardly to take good advice! When the enemy is too numerous and that you cannot face them there, it is especially necessary to avoid being too reckless. Keep in mind Fourth Shifu's advice!"

Does this seem like the sort of advice that any Young MDZS Cultivator would get? "You're a good kid, but when you go out into the world, there will be people who straight up want you dead even though they met you 15 minutes ago, you cannot persist in fighting with these people because they will want you dead and you are a baby cultivator who needs to learn to run away when shit gets rough or you will be dead."

And again I come back to how MDZS cultivators are more like occupational ghostbusters because this really does inform how their society functions and runs and how everyone reacts so badly to the Sunshot Campaign beginning and its aftermaths and possibly explains how JGS could get his way after Sunshot.

Because what happens when you get a society that does train heavily in martial arts and have Able To Kill Real People Weapons who spends most of their time solving very black and white situations of "okay is this ghost whose eating people's livers good or bad? y/n?" and a clear hierarchy of "how do we get rid of the ghost eating people's livers in town x" instead of say "is it morally correct to kill this group of bandits who's been threatening the town" or "is it morally correct to kill this shitty businessman who's been holding people hostage and threatening to hack off their limbs" you have a reduced level of philosophical musing on like, "what is the purpose of martial arts, which is designed to kill people and what do I use martial arts for?" and "under what circumstances and situations would I personally find it morally correct to kill a man?" Which are all questions that Wuxia coming of age stories typically have, and I think MDZS does have, but expressed differently.

Again, it appears that the number of Real Live Human Beings that it is morally acceptable to have stabbed in your life is approximately 0 in this universe, and the expectation that you, personally, might have to fend off people trying to stab you over brunch is also approximately 0.

This also leads to a situation where like, questions of vengeance have very difficult escape hatches! If your parents are murdered on the job by an evil rampaging ghost, this is very sad and tragic and now you're an orphan and of course that's not good, but this is a occupational job hazard, not like, "Yeah Joe Bob from the sect down the street murdered my dad because #Reasons~, and now it's my legacy to grow up to murder Job Bob from the sect down the street to avenge my dad."

(I have a whole essay about how this pertains to both of the Nie Brothers, and how it pertains to JGY and also Jin Ling, and how this seems to routinely fuck people up in MDZS in a very specific way we don't typically see in other wuxias, but this is getting SO long as it is).

But yeah "the socially acceptable number of real living people (instead of ghosts or demons or fierce corpses or whatever) to have killed in your lifetime as a cultivator is approximately 0" means that the Sunshot Generation gets really really fucked up by all of this "killing real people" they did.

Which! might be why JFM was so slow to move on "yeah the Wen are threatening to kill your heirs." <- socially inconceivable behavior. Why society in general is so shocked by Xue Yang and the murder of the Chang <- which would be bad normally but not quite like this. And why no one did anything specific about JGS even if they felt he wasn't entirely correct. What are they going to threaten him with? Death???? A trial of his peers? Social Shunning??? Public shame???

"But Tav how does this relate to CQL!Su She's morality?" I hear you ask. Well you see, the question of "he should've been ready to die for his sect!" is utterly baffling in a society where nobody is expected to be ready to die for their sect on a regular basis because the idea that you should be ready for someone trying to stab you before brunch is utterly nonsensical in a world where most people expect that the baseline number of murders a cultivator does in their lifetimes is 0. That's the world he lives in.

On this regard CQL!Su She is utterly blameless. Nobody handed him a rulebook or expectations sheet for "the sect down the street will try to kill you" nor SHOULD they expect he'd be ready to die at a drop of a hat when no part of the education or social expectations include "ready to die for your sect because it's routine for people to try to kill you."

If you don't even expect to be stabbed and possibly die at a discussion conference where there are lots of cultivators from many sects why on EARTH would you expect to be facing down death in your own home when there's. cultivators here to kill you, this situation is so out of left field?

#modao zushi #mdzs #meta #my meta #su she #this is not a society *without* violence to be clear #but it's not the sort of place where it'll have been acceptable to murder and maim before breakfast #and that's why traumas happen as they do #I've been sitting on this for ages #please don't discourse in my notes about if 'murder' is a good thing or a bad thing #this is just an observation on like #'is it societally common for cultivators to run around killing people?'#the answer to this question is no

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xanthera · 1 year

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Apparently people still give Fallout 4 flak for how underdeveloped the Commonwealth is in 2287 compared to the parts of the USA we see in earlier installments in the franchise, and like. I guess that’s valid, it is a pretty stark difference, but I think people forget that the Institute was knowingly and violently sabotaging every attempt to improve the Commonwealth basically from its inception

They sent armed synths to gather resources from the surface and would use deadly force if those resources had already been claimed by settlers. An Institute plant undermined talks between the largest settlements to unite the Commonwealth in a manner similar to the RNC. Scientists had people kidnapped from the surface for their FEV research, and then released the resulting Super Mutants into the Commonwealth when they were done with them, with no regard for who they might hurt

Most damning of all, Kellogg and a small army of synths massacred the entire settlement of University Point because one person found pre-war research data in an old computer system, and the Institute wanted it. They didn’t even know what the data was, they just wanted it because it seemed like it might have been about fusion energy, and they immediately resorted to slaughtering innocent people in order to get it instead of just, you know, asking to look at it. The real kicker is that the research data in question was never about fusion energy, but an energy weapon. It would have been useless to them, and even then, they never even found it. All those people died for nothing, on the Institute’s orders

That’s what the Institute has been doing in the Commonwealth for almost two centuries by the time Fallout 4 takes place. Ruthlessly culling resources, hoarding pre-war research and tech for themselves, and treating the people still living on the surface as subhuman and disposable. That’s why the Commonwealth is so woefully behind in technology and society. It’s by design, because the Institute benefits from the Commonwealth being unable to fight back against their machinations

Anyway, I guess I’m back to defending Fo4. It’s definitely got its flaws, but it does rub me the wrong way when I see bad-faith criticism or “hot takes” that completely ignore the actual canon of the game

#fallout #fallout 4 #fo4

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thesettlementneedingyourhelp · 6 months

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Fallout 4 companions as surgeons in a medical drama

This post has been brought to you by my old Grey's Anatomy hyperfixation clawing its way out out of the basement in my brain

Minus Strong because God no do not let Strong do surgery in any universe

Cait- Orthopedic surgeon, do not fuck up in her OR because it will not end well for you

Codsworth- Pediatric surgeon. He's very good with his paitents, good with teaching residents

Curie- Head of Cardio. Godlike in the OR, very passionate about her clinical trials.

Danse- Trauma surgeon. Used to be a surgeon in the military. Can save a guy you're sure is going to be dead.

Deacon- Plastic surgeon, focus on reconstructive surgery. Probably does free cleft pallet surgery for kids.

Hancock- Not technically a surgeon but Hancock is an anesthesiologist. Cracks jokes in the OR. Has probably "accidentally" taken drugs from work home with him.

Maccready- Surgical resident, interested in pediatric surgery.

Nick- Head of General Surgery. Has seen a lot of shit in all his years of being a surgeon, very little surprises him anymore. Very calm in the OR, if he's worried everyone is worried.

Preston- Heart Surgeon. Amazing bedside manner, probably cries when he loses a paitent, does probono surgery.

Piper- Another surgical resident like Maccready, not sure what she wants to specialize in. Potentially interested in neuro but a little scared of X6

X6-88- Neurosurgeon, hardly ever says a word in the OR, no one knows anything about his personal life. Scares the shit out of the residents. Very talented, it you ask him about his research he'll show emotion around you

Bonus

Gage- Gage lost his license to medical malpractice

Elder Maxon- Nepo Baby Resident. Piper and Maccready talk shit about him behind his back. X6 yelled at him in the OR and he will never live it down.

Desdemona- General surgeon, been there almost as long as Nick, she is so tired.

Father- Used to be the head of neuro, got fired for something that the board is keeping on the down low. Even acting head X6 doesn't know what exactly he did.

DiMA- Radiologist, doesn't seem to have left the scan room in months, does he live there?

Dogmeat- therapy dog, we love you Dogmeat

#fallout #fallout 4 #companions react #fo4 companions #cait fo4 #codsworth #curie fo4 #paladin danse #deacon fo4 #maccready #nick valentine #preston garvey #piper wright #x6-88 #god imagine being a paitent at Commonwealth General #the workplace dynamics would be off the wall

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damnesdelamer · 1 year

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On the picket line the other day, I saw a former lecturer of mine, and we got talking. Part of the whole dispute we in UCU are involved in is around the fact that Higher Education as a sector has over £40 billion in reserves nationwide, and many universities have chosen to dump that into vanity projects like shiny new buildings (many of which are both exorbitantly expensive and also not fit-for-purpose), rather than invest in staff during the biggest cost of living crisis in living memory.

My former lecturer, a staunch liberal, intimated that £40 billion seems like a lot, so who knows if that money even exists. So I told him, here’s what I do know: three years ago, my managers, who were responsible for allocating a £5 million bid of government funding, ignored the advice of me and another expert on practical teaching equipment, and chose instead to spend more on products from existing contracts. This could be seen as corruption, but technically I think it’s just laziness. But it also amounts to a mutual agreement among university management and external contractors and suppliers to continue to profit off government funds, rather than invest in staff.

Over the last ten years, workers across Higher Education are being paid 25% less in real terms, due to stagnating wages, due to inflation, due to increased cost of living. This is to say nothing of the fallout from covid, or the arguably substantial decline in education standards new students receive (in spite of all the money dumped into new buildings and equipment).

Meanwhile, my institution’s student intake has nearly doubled in the past five years, which both means greater workload and, in theory, greater revenue. But who sees that money? Not me, nor even the lecturers who make twice as much as me, but you can bet that money is going somewhere.

Initially we had no offer of increased pay, then we went on strike and got an offer of 3% (again, in the face of a loss of 25% over the last decade in real terms), and then 5%. These ‘offers’ have been overwhelmingly rejected by UCU members, in part because they prove that that money does exist, and is available for our employers to give us our due. But more importantly, this is not just about pay, and the problems of workloads, pensions, mismanagement, and discrimination, which sparked the current strikes, won’t be solved by throwing money at them.

Nevertheless, slowly but surely, we are making advances. Industrial action works. Support the Unions and support the strikes!

Solidarity forever.

#UCUrising #UCU #UK politics #strikes #strike action #industrial action #original #University & College Union #trade union #labour union #up the union!

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ginoeh · 3 months

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Dream’s Coat (TM), pretty please??

@chaosheadspace asked for the same! Here you go, lovelies...

This is probably not what you think it is. Or, idk, maybe it's exactly what you think it is? Because both of you know that I'm actually a little dark angst writer at heart lol.

Okay, so this started a long time ago (read: in March last year) in a wild and hilarious brainstorming session that I saved the transcript of. So far, this is more of an intriguing concept to make Hob suffer and Dream repent - eventually at least. I haven't touched it in a while; I'd have to really dig into Dream's fucking ugly side - the 10000 years in hell side - to get this going.

It all started with a 'what-if' variation of @messmonte 's Saddest Wank (1889 instead of 1989!) because in that drawing, Dream didn't just leave his gloves, he also left his Cloak. Here, this has pretty severe consequences. In SoM, the story gets told of how Dream takes Nada into the Cloak where they have sex unbothered by anyone's gaze. So there we have a ‘magical cloak’ with space-time special features…

~~~

Now here is Hob, in 1889, drunk and sad and wearing Dream's gloves to get himself off in a seedy room above the White Horse. He took the garments his Stranger left behind in a mixture of spite and pathetic hope that he might come back for them. He doesn't, of course.

(Snippets and more details under the cut)

(Hob doesn't know that Jessamy *has* actually come back to get them and gets to witness what is going on. This, as well, has consequences)

After, he rolls over onto the cloak he has been gripping, disgusted with himself but still unable to let go of the pathetic need to be close to the Stranger. But instead of falling asleep, he falls into the star-studded folds of the cloak.

And falls and falls and falls.

He barely manages to keep a grip on the strangely wispy fabric. It's what saves him, at first. Because Hob has just managed to accidentally yeet himself into outer space. The cloak is the only thing that's keeping him whole and sustained as a living being, as it were.

(Jessamy is unfortunate bystander to this. She takes off to the Dreaming immediately and informs Dream of his ‘acquaintance's’ mishap. She's worried - she actually likes Hob and knows that Dream does so, as well. Dream though, is still furious.

“Let him enjoy this new experience then”, he says and Jessamy recognizes the stubborn curl to her Lord's mouth. “May he experience the meaning of true loneliness for a while.”

Jessamy rather thinks that Lord Morpheus is really tipping his hand there about *who* had it right at their meeting but she'd never dare to point that out.

She has a really really bad feeling about what this might mean for Hob Gadling, though. Since her Lord is so intent on forgetting that the immortal is, above all else, human and as such not made to sustain himself outside of his own world.

And besides, he is a Dreamer. Lord Morpheus will surely reconsider soon and bring him back.

But as time passes, he does not.

Hob Gadling is not one of Dream's priorities, after all. In the face of the Universe nearly unravelling, the Corinthian's disobediance and its fallout, Hob Gadling gets forgotten for the better part of a century.)

On the other end of the universe, Hob's life is an unending and undying nightmare. He is neither starving, freezing nor suffocating - not that he knows that he should do the last two - but there is nothing around him but the vastness of space. No sound, no smell, no touch but that of the cloak around his shoulders. He is truly alone for the first time in his existence.

Until, suddenly, he isn't.

“Oh my what do we have here,” a voice resounds inside his head. His perception slides sideways, something breaks somewhere in his mind and then there is the form of a voluptuous, incandescently beautiful woman that takes over everything around him.

“A human - here! Covered in my Dream's regard!”

She stretches a hand towards him and Hob thinks that space has decided to cease existing. Maybe he's going mad.

“If I keep you, do you think my son will visit?”

***

Dream does, of course, remember Hob eventually. The horror that rises in Dream, still caught in Burgess’ basement, over what he has allowed a Dreamer to suffer for his own mistake, is as dark and deep and cold as the black hole he has once been cast into.

After he escapes and has gathered his tools, he searches out his sister.

“Hob Gadling? No, he hasn't asked for me.”

She falls silent for a moment before leveling a longsuffering and suspicious look at him.

“Is there a particular reason you're asking me this?”

Dream closes his eyes and shreds the rest of the mauled baguette between his fingers.

“He may have. Fallen though an actualized piece of my power. Into space. And I may have been. Too angry to care. At the time.”

There is the rustle of clothes and he feels Death kneeling before him. Her voice, when she speaks, is very soft and very serious.

“Dream? When, exactly, has this happened.”

He opens his eyes.

“Hob Gadling has suffered my wrath since 1889, sister. I hurt a Dreamer, unprovoked.”

“Oh, Dream.”

He cannot bear the horrified pity on his sister's face.

“How shall I -” His words fail him.

“Go and get him back, Dream. Now. Hob Gadling hasn't called for me - yet. If that will help you, though, I don't know.”

~~~

Or: A pathetic wank and Dream's canonically bad decision making skills meets the 'meeting the parents trope' but make it eldritch horror. Then add a magical healing journey afterwards an voilá - you get this.

Yeah I can still make this Dreamling despite their horrifically bad start. Watch me lol.

#dream of the endless #hob gadling #dreamling #the sandman fanfiction #death of the endless #ginoeh writes #wip tag game #edit: forgot to @ messmonte who's art started this whole thing lol

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peachshadows · 1 year

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So what if MK gets transported to a world where Wukong was never trapped under the mountain or went on a journey to the west?

During the havoc in heaven, Wukong successfully overthrew the Jade Emperor and now rules the celestial realm with an iron fist

Wukong in this universe is more bloodthirsty and doesn't hesitate to use violence or straight up murder someone

Wukong and Macaque are married in this universe since they never fully had their big fallout

Both Mac and Wukong live in FFM but Wukong has his godly ruler duties to attend so he leaves Macaque with the responsibility of ruling the mountain during his absence

MK, upon landing in this new world, accidentally bumps into Red Son at a market place and hugs him cuz he doesn't know where everyone is and is glad to see a familiar face

Of course Red Son gets hella pissed because how dare this peasant touch him like they're acquaintances

So Red Son tries to kill MK, but is shocked when MK not only evades Red Son but manages to land some blows (not hard enough to leave broken bones, but some light bruising)

"Red, please! I don't want to hurt you!"

Red Son just attacks even harder and faster

In desperation, MK summons his staff and pins Red Son to the ground. MK lifts the staff and Red thinks this is the end for him but then hears a loud crash right beside his head

"you're lucky I was holding back"

"...you were holding back?"

"Duh. Now I'm gonna get off, but you have to promise to not murder me, ok?"

Red Son nods, still in shock

But now, there are whispers of the staff that MK is holding (and it looks very identical to the staff that the Great Sage Ruler of Heaven has)

To make matters even worse, a lot of demons are now mistaking MK as Wukong's heir (due to the staff) despite never seeing or hearing about a monkey prince

Regardless, Red Son falls in love through the sheer show of power and the fact MK was holding back

Red Son has the great idea of courting this idiot so he kidnaps MK and takes him to the palace

Upon kidnapping MK, who's screaming and kicking as he's tied down with magical ropes, Red Son's parents immediately sees the very same essence and magic that Wukong has in MK

So PIF sends a letter to Wukong to inform him about his "cub"

Red Son tells his parents that he's gonna court MK

PIF: "Darling, you do realize you're already engaged?"

"You're engaged?!"

"That's besides the point. Me and the dragon girl already talked about this and it's fine between us."

"dragon gir- MEI? YOU'RE MARRIED TO MEI?"

"engaged, but I've already settled on courting you"

Both Mac and Wukong finally arrive at DBK's palace

DBK, pushing MK towards Wukong: "brother I believe we found your cub"

Swk: "...cub?"

Mac, puts a hand on MK's shoulder: "ah bud, so this is where you've been. You gave me and your baba quite the scare."

"What- baba-?"

"You see, we've been keeping our cub a secret 'cause peaches here is too paranoid. Trained him ourselves as you can tell"

PIF: "well you should've told us sooner, Mihou. We could've arranged a marriage between our children. My darling here is already smitten."

Wukong: isn't your kid already engaged?

PIF: you can't really stop love, can you? Great Sage?

Mac tries to grab for MK and drag him back to their palace but Red Son stops him by grabbing MK's other hand

"I'm courting MK. He stays with me."

"Little prince, you'll get your chance with our cub but first we need to...talk to him. It's his first time outside our territory so we're just gonna establish some rules."

Anyways, I have a lot of things planned for this au but I'm not sure how to exactly write it but let me know what y'all think!

#shadowpeach #spicynoodleshipping #lego monkie kid #lmk #the sundown era #yup that's the name for this au

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shitpostingkats · 2 years

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There is something so chilling and incredible about remembering the fact that Red vs. Blue is a war story.

It’s a workplace comedy, it’s a goofy ensemble show. It’s everything a silly, off the cuff web series should be, so relaxed its characters feel realistic, so unconstrained its world feels alive. It establishes in a few lines what some shows takes seasons to not even accomplish at all; that every faceless person is, fundamentally. A person.

And people are silly and bored and have their own little small scale lives and they don’t think about the grand story they’re telling, their part in the tapestry of the universe. They think about how hot the afternoon is. They bitch about their coworkers. They throw rocks at complicated military equipment and then get together to ooh and ah over ‘Oh wow, the rocks got all ashy and sizzley.’

Every soldier in the show has those moments of down to earth humanity. And the down to earth humanity is having dumb conversations to pass the time and doing very dumb shit because you’re bored. Every. Soldier. The guards in the tower at the sarcophagus heist. (“Did you hear something?” “The sound of you being an idiot?”) The soldiers at Rat’s Nest (”Seriously?!?! How have you never met another person named Jones?? It’s very common!) The freelancers, both top agents to the so-so agents to the worst agents to the dozens of people that work for PFL that aren’t even freelancers. (Wash’s twirly straw and skateboard, the triplets and Five Things, 479er’s never-ending feud with the guy who moves the crates.)

Everything has a face, and that face is human.

Which is why it comes out of nowhere when the show starts waxing philosophical on the atrocities of war, how flexible our societal morals become, the aftermath and the tragedy of it all. It’s a gutpunch to be forced to take a step back and be told “You are nothing. You are disposable assets, names on a sheet of paper, and only used to further more violence.” To see the characters be told that.

I find it fascinating that, due to the strange relationship between rvb and Halo itself, we never actually see the war. Never really learn what started it, what’s hypothetically being fought for, only the fallout it creates. That outside the lens of our ragtag heroes, people are dying and lives are being ruined for?? What? We don’t know. But one very sad and very twisted man saw an opportunity, and the loosened ethics and the institution of war gave it to him. No one thought to look into PFL, no one batted an eye, until the dust had settled, until lives had been ruined and ended. Because when faced with extinction, every alternative isn’t just preferable. It’s encouraged.

War is just the broad, inhumane system that gives real, human people the chance to excuse atrocities. The director. The counselor. Felix. Locus. Wash.

There’s something so poignant, so heartbreaking, and so goddamn fundamental to the story of rvb in Kimball’s speech.

“When you spend every day fighting a war, you learn to demonize your attackers. To you they're evil, they're sub-human. Because if they weren't, then what would that make you? What I'm trying to say... is I've been afraid to see you for what you really are. You're our brothers. Our sisters. And the things we've done to one another are unforgivable.”

The audience knows, has had it shoved in their faces, over and over and over again. Everyone in this universe is human. We see, from our omnipotent (yet incredibly limited) perspective that everyone in this show is a distinct person beneath that helmet. That no one is unattached from humanity.

And what do the soldiers see?

A crowd of faceless bodies, all wearing the same color armor.

#red vs blue #rvb #More of my overly adjectived musings on the same show that gave us #'Its on a timer.' 'A countdown timer?' 'No. A count UP timer. It goes from one to explode.'#essays

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vaspider · 8 days

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Last night, I turned off ep 4 of Discovery out of disgust and went to watch Fallout.

I put up with a lot, but you don't drydock a fucking starship in atmosphere and Utopia Planitia is on Mars, for fuck's sake. It's not sitting in the fucking hills of San Francisco where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge out the window.

[Below there be spoilers.]

For 4 seasons, I have defended the FUCK out of this show. For 4 seasons, I have genuinely loved most of Discovery, and I've loved it enough to make me keep watching it even when we only found out that one character basically had a full-body prosthetic in the episode where they killed her off, and when the Red Angel turned out to be the hokiest answer ever, and when Disco fell prey to the storywriting trope I tend to call Skywalker Syndrome (you know, the one where there are only like 6 people who matter in an entire galaxy and anybody who matters has to be related to them somehow).

But I can't fucking put up with what they're doing to Discovery.

It started with the decision the writers made - for the sake of POINTLESS DRAMA - to have an Admiral look at two captains about to go on an Extremely Crucial Mission, which they told us over and over again was Extremely Crucial, using a term nobody had ever heard before like we were supposed to know or care what that meant, "why don't you two try to get along" when they asked who was in command of the mission.

Okay, look, first of all, absolutely not, and you're a shitty admiral if that's what your response is. SOMEONE is in command of this mission. And second of all, if you're the admiral and that's what you said, then who is the one in trouble when things go to shit bc there is no clear chain of command? YEAH. IT'S YOU. Holding one of your captains responsible for making a decision that you wouldn't have made, and for "not listening to the better decision," and taking his ship away? That's bullshit. You put two captains at odds and then you hold them responsible and not yourself?

Dude, you fucking suck, and this shit ain't Starfleet. It ain't even acceptable under the "oh no we're post-Burn and getting our shit together." This is basic stuff. There's a chain of command for a reason.

Then you have Saru suggesting that Burnham make her Extremely Recently Ex-boyfriend, a convicted criminal who stole crucial technology from the Federation and tried to break the universe, her Number One bc Saru is resigning his commission to become an ambassador. Her never-been-Starfleet ex-boyfriend. Yeah, sure, I'm sure that's the Very Best Idea that a Federation and Starfleet idealist like Saru would suggest. Let's put this guy who has never worn a uniform and has been very loudly Not A Team Player and has no idea how Starfleet works and hasn't done his Time In Grade one heartbeat away from being in command of the Discovery. I'm sure that will be GREAT for crew cohesion, having this dude who has not put in the time just leapfrog his way past everyone who has been busting their ass for years and who literally left their entire lives behind, centuries in the past, to land in the XO spot because "he works well with you" and "he knows [this season's antagonists] and how they work."

Thankfully that didn't fucking happen, but having Saru even suggest it felt like a profound betrayal of Saru *as a character.* File that under He Would Not Fucking Say That.

I can't even enjoy Leoben's actor, and i can't even enjoy him being from an alien species that somebody dug up from one episode of DS9, because he is not just an asshole but he's an asshole who has no respect for anybody or anything. Star Trek's assholes are always the ones that you can at least understand why they are the way they are, and you can excuse it because they are Federation Idealists or they have such great skills or respect for an ideal that you might not understand but you understand that it's important to them.

No. This guy is just there to be a dick and make Burnham look cool and reasonable and nice by comparison, and he's 90% of the time incompetent as fuck. Like, one time his ideas are good, but when his ideas are good, it's only because he's been disrespecting chain of command so hard for so long that he has info he shouldn't have. They made him suck so much that I can't find ANYTHING about him to like, AND I LIKED LEOBEN.

"But at least we've got our gay relationship-- " Nope! They broke up one of the queer relationships pretty much right away, and the other one gets zero screen time and might as well not exist. They don't even really interact at the one party we've had. It's almost painfully obvious that they're avoiding having the two of them together.

"Maybe I can tough it out to see Tig, I love Commander Reno-- " Nope. We've gotten one scene in which she predicted the breakup of the baby gays.

It really feels like they took away all the writers who know and love Trek and understand what makes it good, and filled the writers room with people who are just standing around and peeing on the show Bible while saying "THIS WILL MAKE GOOD DRAMA."

I'm sad. I hate this season, and after suffering my way through s3 of Picard out of hopes they'd answer the goddamned question finally, I'm not putting myself through this again.

I used to love this show.

#discovery #star trek #st disco

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fantastic-nonsense · 2 years

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If you don’t mind me asking, one question I have that you might be able to answer (seeing as your pretty much the Cass expert around here) - how often has her age relative to the rest of the batkids been brought up in canon?

I’m just curious because every now and then I see it mentioned that she’s around the same age if not slightly older than Jason, which always sort of throws me off a little given how she’s more often paired with Tim and Steph. I guess I’m just curious if you know whether or not this was just something mentioned once and then forgotten about or whether or not this has been a more consistent part of her character.

You're actually insanely lucky you asked me this question tonight, because I had a twitter conversation that prompted me to go hunt down relevant panels and information about this very thing about a month ago. tl;dr: post-Crisis!Cass is the second-eldest Wayne kid and generally written as such; she's consistently two and a half years older than Tim, at least a year older than Steph, and seven months older than Jason legally (and one year older biologically, since Jason was dead for around six months). The only Batkid older than her is Dick.

Canonically, the age gaps between the (pre-reboot) Batfam look something like this:

Depending on which age retcon you prefer (post-Zero Hour or post-Batgirl: Year One), Barbara is either 6-7 years older than Dick or 3-4 years older.

Dick and Jason are approximately 6-7 years apart. Dick is 18-19 when Jason is adopted at 12 and thus 21-ish three years later when Jason dies at 15.

Cass is 7 months older calendar-wise than Jason; biologically she's about a year older, since Jason spent ~6 months dead

Tim is around two years younger than Jason: Tim was 13 when he was introduced a few months in-universe after Jason died at 15. By the end of the post-Crisis universe, Tim is 17 (potentially 18, depending on when Gates of Gotham takes place).

Stephanie is one year older than Tim. This has been confirmed on several occasions, but most notably Steph is explicitly 18 and a college freshman in her Batgirl run, when Tim was 17.

There's 6-7 years between Damian and Tim. Tim is 17 during his Red Robin run and Damian is ~11 by the end of the 2009 Batman & Robin run, though he never turns 11 on-panel.

Those are still the basic age gap guideposts, regardless of "on-panel" post-Flashpoint age retcons. Dick is the sticky one here, mostly because writers could never decide on a) what age he was when his parents died and b) how long he was Robin before becoming Nightwing. Dick's age is also complicated by Tim's backstory, because it gets really sticky if he's too old for Tim to have been in the audience when the Graysons fell.

Anyway...Cass. Cass was 17 in Batgirl (2000) #1; Tim had just turned 15 and was living with his father. While her age isn't consistently brought up, she was treated as a mature older teenager who switches between living with Barbara and independently in the 'cave' that Bruce gives her. We also know she's 18 by 2002 because of Batgirl #33, the issue where Cain tells Cass that her real birthday is January 26th, and Batgirl #37, where she formally turns 18; Tim is still 15 at the time.

Tim turns 16 on July 19th in Robin #116, published in 2003. This once again indicates that Cass is approximately two and a half years older than Tim. This is further confirmed by Batgirl #48 in 2004, where Bruce mentions that Cass is 18, and the fallout of War Games later that year, since Cass relocates to a new apartment in Bludhaven without all of the messy convoluted legal hoops a 16-year-old Tim jumps through to do the same.

As for Cass and Jason, that's discussed in Detective Comics #790, also published in 2004. Bruce takes Cass to Jason's grave on what would have been Jason's 18th birthday, August 16th:

"No one talks about him. All I know is...he was the second Robin. And that the Joker kil-" "He would have been eighteen today." -Detective Comics #790

Ages are always a bit difficult to parse in comics, but this issue confirmed that Cass and Jason were around the same age. While we were never explicitly told whether Cass was 18 or 19 in this scene, we have a very important context clue that provides the answer: Cass's birthday, January 26th.

This would make Cass still 18 during Tec #790, around 7 months older than Jason should have been. This would also keep the correct age gap between both Cass & Tim (since Tim had just turned 16) and Jason & Tim (since they're two years apart). This is further confirmed by Jason being around 19-20 during Under the Red Hood (which I previously puzzled out here), published the following year in 2005. This makes Cass vaguely 20-21 during the Reborn era, since we know that Tim is 17 (nearly 18) and Steph is solidly 18.

In terms of writing, Cass was consistently treated as a slightly "older" character. Tim and Steph were a bit of a matched set even though they were a year apart, but Cass's stories were always pitched for a slightly older and more mature character than theirs. Any writers engaging in infantilizing behavior tended to do so because they were trying to make points about Cass's social skills, not her age. Cass being grouped in with Tim and Steph rather than Jason had more to do with Jason being dead until 2005 and a villain until 2011 than it did age considerations.

So then we get to the post-Flashpoint universe, where we have to throw literally everything I just said out because welcome to the reboot, where the timeline is made up and the ages don't matter:

Cass was re-introduced in Batman and Robin Eternal, where she is explicitly noted to be 16. Stephanie and Tim were both about 17, since Tim's college application arc in Detective Comics Rebirth puts him at 17-18.

But Cass is written as slightly older than Duke during the 2019 Outsiders run, and Duke was 16 when he was introduced and supposed to be slightly younger than Tim and Steph.

Then we run into Tim's "eternally 17" issue compounded with DC actually allowing Damian to age (first to 13 in 2016 and then to 14 in 2021), which throws literally everyone else's timeline into whack.

We also get the Infinite Frontier era allowing Dick and Babs to be in their late 20s again (vs. being 21, like they both had been since 2011) while also dealing with the Batgirls writers admitting they thought both Cass and Steph were 13-14 before being corrected (which explains a lot about how they're written right now).

If all the information I just threw at you confuses you, congratulations: it confuses everyone else, too. Don't worry too much about it. This is why most people ignore any on-panel age considerations we've been given since 2011 and go with pre-reboot ages. Anyway, Duke is now in college as of Urban Legends #18. Logically Cass, Steph, and Tim should thus all be between 20-22 right now, if the timeline actually made sense. Accounting for basic pre-reboot age differences+new age considerations, here's where everyone SHOULD be:

Babs: early 30s

Dick: 28-29

Cass: 23

Jason: 22-23

Steph: 21-22

Tim: 20-21

Duke: 18 (confirmed)

Damian: 14 (confirmed)

............yeah. That's clearly not how they're all being written, but that's the best age approximations I can come up with based on the super convoluted and contradictory information we've been given over the past 11 years. Love how canon is instead acting like Cass and Steph are 13-14 (but still getting less mature storylines than the actual 14-year-old), Tim is eternally 17, Jason is somehow 21 and 35 at the same time, Dick is forever in his mid-20s, and no one knows whether Babs is supposed to be 21 or in her 30s. I hope this answers your question sufficiently despite all of the confusing info!

#rip sorry for that info dump because that was probably way more information than you probably wanted #cassandra cain #dc comics #tim drake #jason todd #dick grayson #damian wayne #stephanie brown #duke thomas #barbara gordon #long post #batfam meta #batman meta #cassandra cain meta #tim drake meta #jason todd meta #asks

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