#by people who have also fallen for the Act. i call this the General Audience Dean Act | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

words-writ-in-starlight · 6 months

Note

Hello, I came across your Kencyrath rec post and I am tentatively intruiged. That said I wanted to ask about a trigger before I dive in. Suicide is pretty strong trigger for me. I can handle it if it's mentioned, but detailed descriptions of the act or a lot of time spent in a suicidal character's head/thoughts dealing with suicidal ideation would not be. Is this an issue in the Chronicles of Kencyrath, and if it is, do you have a different recommendation?

Okay SO.

The Kencyrath exist in a honor/shame society, in which going against the code of honor (lying, breaking your word, etc) is considered a sin that can only be forgiven through an honorable death. Sometimes this takes the form of going into battle without the intention to come back, generally without armor, but it also takes the form of ritualized suicide with a specific kind of knife. I would call it a very specific kind of suicidal ideation, in which it doesn’t come so much from a depressive headspace as it does from a kind of rigidly religious one. There isn’t a ton of time spent in the heads of characters actively pursuing ritual suicide, nor what I would call traditional depressive suicidality, but it IS a very present element of the society, including people freely making choices with the understanding that they will be expected to take their own life afterward, or people being forced to take their own life as an alternative to being dishonored. Think samurai rules or Imperial Chinese rules and you’ll be in the right ballpark. Ultimately I can’t know the inside of your brain, but if onscreen suicide discussion or aftermath is a concern, I might table this series until you feel more ready for it.

In terms of alternative recommendations, buckle up, I have a list based on what part of the Kencyrath pitch you were into. These recommendations are made with the assumption that all the OTHER content warnings for the Kencyrath are not a problem, but I’ll note any really major ones and include a broad rating according to AO3 rules. Anything with an asterisk by it heavily features the big Chivalric Devotion vibes of the main Kencyrath dynamics. I read a lot of that.

Sprawling politics:

The Unbroken* (drafted soldier impresses daughter of the empress, they try to stop a war, full of double-crossing schemes and gallant ladies, cw colonialism, M for violence, sex, and extremely real colonialism)

The Captive Prince* (dethroned prince is sold into slavery under his mortal enemy, definitional enemies-to-lovers content, cw sexual assault, E for a very sexually relaxed culture in a bad way)

A Taste of Gold and Iron* (unambitious prince gets tangled up in a currency fraud scheme and gets a shiny new bodyguard, E for a very sexually relaxed culture in a good way)

October Daye series (starts out classic urban fantasy, rapidly becomes Blood Magic and Politics The Series, for those committed to a long series, T for violence)

Pulp fantasy adventure vibes:

Hero and the Crown/The Blue Sword* (classic sword and sorcery fantasy, for DnD lovers and people who read Horse Girl Books as kids, General Audiences)

Silver Under Nightfall* (vampire couple teams up with vampire hunter to cure a magical plague, the polyamorous murder romance you need in your life, cw coercive assault and body horror, E for gore and numerous threesomes)

Heaven Official’s Blessing***** (translated Chinese novel, very old fallen god returns to Heaven and Does His Best, for those committed to a LONG book, currently on volume 8, T for violence)

Witch King (body hopping demon tries to solve his own murder with his found family in tow, perfect standalone book, T for violence)

Spicy magic systems:

The City We Became/The World We Made (sentient cities and extra dimensional invaders, for everyone who read a lot of Avengers In NYC fic back in 2012, cw racism and survival sex work, M for sex)

Gideon the Ninth/The Locked Tomb series***** (everyone knows about this series, it’s the one with the lesbian space necromancers, cw for just the craziest flavors of abuse, M for violence and cannibalism I guess, also fits the below category)

The Gilded Ones* (what if all the misogynists who said women were demons were absolutely correct, and it was fucking rad, cw for SO much sexism and also religious indoctrination, T for violence)

A Soul to Keep* et al (okay oKAY LOOK THIS IS MONSTERFUCKER CONTENT BUT I RECOMMEND IT, local cursed woman gets forced to marry a demon, they argue a lot and the sex scenes are REAL bizarre, cw kidnapping and the second book deals with a character coming out of a severe depression, HARD E for monsterfucking, obviously)

Interpersonal relationships that are just SO fucked up:

A Dowry of Blood (a letter from Dracula’s first wife to the man himself, cw domestic abuse, M for adult themes and sex)

Remnants of Filth/Yuwu* (translated Chinese novel, loyal general becomes the jailer for his traitorous ex-lover, cw slavery and discussion of sexual assault, E for sex)

The Salt Grows Heavy (homicidal Little Mermaid and plague doctor wander through an apocalypse together, actually read everything Cassandra Khaw has ever touched, the absolute pinnacle of horror, cw all her stuff for really creative violence and body horror, M for violence and gore)

Anyway if you have any other book recommendation questions and/or you read any of these and enjoy them, hit me up, recommending books to people is genuinely one of my great joys in life.

#Kencyrath #book rec #chronicles of the Kencyrath #hooooo boy howdy let’s get into these tags huh #the unbroken #the captive prince #a taste of gold and iron #October daye #the blue sword #silver under nightfall #heaven official’s blessing #tgcf #witch king #the city we became #the locked tomb #Gideon the ninth #the gilded ones #a soul to keep #a dowry of blood #remnants of filth #Yuwu #the salt grows heavy #cassandra khaw #listen i fucking L O V E recommending books #i AM the person who will ask what you like about your favorite books and recommend five things off the top of my head #i flatter myself I’m quite good at it #oh the other cassandra khaw book i recommend is hammers on bone #which is about an elder god working a day job as a private investigator #and has the vibe of a magnus archives Meat Episode(TM)#but that one doesn’t really fit the kencyrath tone except a couple niche scenes in the master’s house and jame’s nightmares

61 notes · View notes

idv-news-boi · 4 months

Text

Interviewing Fallen Stars~ [Act 1]

Ft. @idv-ask-the-showman (this has been proofread.)

Note// This is content in means to feature residents that are active in Olectus Manor :)

____

{At Laurence's Studios}

Laurence// Good morning, fellas!!! *cheers and music can be heard in the bg* Today is a new beginning once again! I'm Laurence Godfrey, your local reporter of Oletus Times!

Laurence// Welcome to "Interviewing Fallen Stars!" Show~ ✨️🎉

Laurence// The honored guest for this month is going to be....

Phineas// HEYYYYYYY!!! >:DD 🎉✨️<- {Phineas Smith, the Bitterfly Showman} *kicks the box that has been hiding him out of the way */ih

Laurence// Alright, my friend! Feel yourself at home. :)

Phineas// Oh yes, I really feel like I'm still sitting on my couch- *leans back on the guest armchair dramatically* But of course... THERE IS NO OTHER PLACE LIKE HOME~~ (n3n)✨️

Laurence// Well said, my man! And well, how are you doing?

Phineas// I'm doing wonderful...! Fantastic! supercalifragilisticexpialidocious~!!!

Laurence// I love your spirit! Well, here are some questions some people may like to know about you... Would it be alright if I address each of them? ^^✨️

Phineas// OH-✨️ That’s perfectly great! Hit me up, I'll do all my best to answer them all. >:)

Laurence// Excellent, and no worries! We have all day. B))✨️

...

What's the inspiration that created his circus? Like even the origin of its name?

“oh! MANY generations ago, my ancestors were poor and hardly had a penny to their name. But there were a pair of twins, a girl and a boy, who were skilled with some card tricks and dances. They put their skills into use after seeing how their parents struggle to meet their needs. They would always go at night to the public gardens and perform there underneath the moonlight for a living, surprisingly catching ppl’s attention...."

"They would talk about the beautiful girl who dance among the butterflies of the garden and the boy with the beautiful blue gem like eyes and charming smile, shocking everyone with his card tricks. By how much attention they had gotten, they earned a lot of money and managed to save their family from dying from hunger..."

"They didn’t stop after that though, and instead continued it and invited the rest of their family to join in, they decided they would open a circus (aka the Butterfly of the Blue Moon) and travel the world to not only for their needs, but also spread the joy and happiness they also feel~”

What regions did the circus used to travel in Europe?

“The circus normally stays in one place for a whole year before moving to another. It was at first limited around Europe and mostly Germany yet we managed to expand the horizons at the end! Later on, we started to go to other nations as well as we could while recruiting more people along the way. That is how our circus has many people from multiple backgrounds!”

What should the audience know you as? Either by name or occupation

“I do not mind what my beloved audience calls me, as long as it is not disrespectful!! Normally, I would like to have a closer bond with them, and if they just call me by my name!”

What does the circus offer for one's entertainment and delight?

“The Circus offers all kinds of entertainment that has never seen before! We proud ourselves by our unlimited imagination and how far we are willing to go just to draw a happy smile on everyone faces~ There is a reason why it was ranked #1 after all, so it's worth to come and see it yourself~! hehehe.”

When do performances usually start?

“hmm~ it depends, but normally we start the main shows around nighttime when the moon is high in the sky! But there would still be mini shows that start around daytime.”

Are there any times or days where you can contact Phineas for questions?

“You can hang out with me around the afternoon, where I normally be in the greenhouse and enjoy my afternoon tea time break!”

What's with the theme about butterflies from his performances?

“The butterflies were always around when the twins were performing, giving how the garden was full of them, so it became a tradition in the circus to always have butterflies fly as the crest. They fly around freely, and we make sure they are treated well. There are times you can find the butterflies roaming around, or even having the performers wear butterfly themed outfits!”

What do you like and dislike?

“I dislike heats and close tied places… it brings bad memories… I especially also dislike it when someone talk about my own death without me allowing them to. As for what I like~… hmm~ MAN, there is a lot! But you can say one of them is enjoying some theatre shows and hanging out with my friends!”

Favorite holiday? Favorite food?

"I like Christmas! The nice cold wind and the beautiful atmosphere you get when hanging out with your family, ahh~ such a priceless feeling!” “As for the food, it would be none-sugar apple pie! My nanny used to make it a lot of times for me!”

What are your thoughts when receiving gifts from fans or admirers?

“oh~ the sheer joy and happiness I get when I receive a gift from my beloved fans is just over the moon!! I would even start feeling bad since I wouldn’t have something to return the favour, so I tend to either invite them for a small mini tea party or I go out of my way to get them something, hahah!”

...

Laurence// Well, these are all the questions for you so far! Everyone, if there are any more things you want to ask to Phineas. Let him know!

Phineas// YESSS! I’m always at the certain butterfly trailer door if anyone needs me- you might find it easily, it's not so far from Laurence's door after all~!

Laurence// Thank you so much for coming over, Phineas! Want a cup of lemon tea? :DD

Phineas// Don't mention it! And you don't bother to offer... I'm already drinking from the jug~ ^^ *sipping from a huge cup of tea *

Laurence// *notices that his jug of tea in his hand is now empty* Huh...??? Oh, Oh well,,,,;;; 🤣😅

THE END

#reblog// breaking news #// phineas smith #idv writing

10 notes · View notes

drawingpad-studios · 2 months

Text

(I was gonna do the Beast of Pride first, but I started drawing the Beast of Lust first after I was asked if I was gonna post lore about my chaos beasts. So here's my first Chaos Beasts Lore post. Also things might get a bit mature, because I plan on trying to have The World Below be for mature audiences, and also it's the beast of lust. Lust and mature tend to go hand and hand.)

Chaos Beasts Lore: the Beast of Lust

Staff

__________________________________________________________

Appearance:An only staff lines stomached Harmonian with straight long hair resembling staff lines, with a heart parting at the window's peak. Usually having a full face of make up, a big fur scarf, corset tied with a bow to make her slightly top curved body more curvy, and a long cigarette holder that is in one of her jewel adorned ruffled cuffed hands.

Voice: a still on pitch middle age female singer voice that has a slight gravel due to smoking. Think something like Marilyn Monroe but with a slight gravel in the background of the voice.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Staff was originally created by Duskkar, along with Baalead(not a chaos beast), as an attempt to passify the two Wish Titans that Equinox made. In her case, she was supposed to passify Aulto Tenwor.

Though before she was ready to be deployed, she started to show signs of being power hungry and wanting more and more. Attempting to seduce those she deemed powerful to strip away their at least most of their power via lust.

Starting with the general of the Incubi and Succubi(in this universe, Incubi and Succubi[those being the female and male version of the after-death Crevon subspecies] are basically similar to the depictions of Cupids[an after-death Harmonian subspecies] shooting arrows of love at new couples. Both Cupids and Incubi/Sucubi tend to work together in helping with relationships of the living), Concord, before Tenwor got to him(will be explained more in AT's lore post). Before setting her sights on her intended "Target", Aulto Tenwor. Luring him in via making herself look like an innocent and easy to manipulate Futility Goddess. Something a Wish Titan like the Beast of Greed, who contains the sin of Lust among the sins he is, would not blink away the opportunity of.

Once the two started their equally toxic relationship, she was able to give in his first and only blood related child, who would eventually turn into the Guardian of Chastity, in exchange for taking some of his power. Over time though, she started to get bored of the Wish Titan. Both because she's not one for commitments like marriage, but also she found him to be quite boring during her "favorite parts of life". So she looked towards others for entertainment, catching a Fallen Harmonian that she would see always singing just outside of the city AT's cult resides in.

Thou this wouldn't go unnoticed, for she would have an egg that wasn't AT's. Knowing she would be next after he took care of her side pick, she left the premise with his blood daughter(being the age of the Harmonian equivalent to 5) and leaving him with her bastard egg. Going into hiding as a simple nun. Using the same methods she used to lure in AT.

While in hiding, she hypocritically teaches her daughter about chastity and all the other stuff nuns are supposed to teach to the next generation of possible nuns. While herself was still going around in secret, stealing power from random people she could lure in and seduce. It wasn't until she found out about Equinox, and how much power he has, that she fully dropped the act. Heading to his call for those to join his side the moment she heard it. Just for a chance to possibly get some of his power.

Unfortunately for some, she ended up on a team with her ex-husband. She isn't sorry for cheating and in fact, she started to rub it in his face about how much more fun she had with the person she cheated with and after the divorce. With the others of the group, she's fine with. Except for another person, Discord. As soon as she found out his undying infatuation(more info will be on his lore post) towards Equinox, it was essentially onsite with their rivalry. Competing on who will have Equinox first as their own desires(Discord for a relationship and Staff for his power)

She is essentially is the first Harmonian to be a succubus and the first succubus to be evil.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Powers:

Her cigarette smoke(helps with seducing along with creating a smoke screen that she can use to sneak attack)

Normal Harmonians species magic(the Crystals that Base Cleph is seen summoning and using in HYS)

Disguise Self

Main Weapon: Spiked Whip(made with the Crystals from her species' magic)

Highest stat: Agility.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Additional notes:

If I do decide, "eh, fuck it. I'm gonna attempt to add songs to The World Below" like something similar to Hazbin Hotel, I plan on having every beast have at least one song each. Staff in particular I have the idea of her having a "Mother knows best" like duet with Brace, with her trying to convince her adult daughter to switch sides and that "all Harmonian men just want is a quick hook up"

(Honestly with her changes from her first drawn version back when I posted that big OC Ref sheet[which were the HYS versions of my OCs] to now, it's like night and day in my opinion.)

#spr oc #the world below #super paper roblox #chaos beasts

5 notes · View notes

calmingpi · 9 months

Text

Some more hall of tuesday stuff~

Specifically, some thought processes and concepts. Yes, I know its Wednesday, but I got too tired + didn't feel well last night to type all this out

I'm noting the design process of this one, because while writing a Tarvek thing the other day it occurred to me that I have a habit of getting attached to characters that follow some philosophies that have become attached to lolita fashion- the dislike of ones true personality, using consumerism and extravagant tastes to fill a metaphorical hole, hiding negative traits beneath literal layers of cute clothing, presenting a personality thats within specific ideals of elegance and refinement, the concept of feminine androgyny, etc

Tuesday the first

Anyway, this outfit was inspired by Baby The Stars Shine Bright

Streamer Tarvek

I can't even possibly explain why i drew this to begin with, partly because i dont actually remember. But i love this au SO much. I wrote a whole bunch of these that i never ended up finishing. Heres a couple of them

Tarveks streams are not gamer related; its more of a commentary stream but really he talks about whatever he wants. Often hes prompted by questions from the viewers, that causes him to go on extreme tangents about whatever. History, politics, pop culture, math, literally whatever. It's also not a popular stream in the grand scheme of things. He doesnt market or promote this thing at all, but he has a small and very dedicated fanbase of very strange people. In general tarvek likes having an audience and not having to act really put together and refined. Instead he can infodump to strangers and not worry about impressing people too much. And he can wear cat ears and feel only a little bit silly instead of a lot

Girl Watching With Colette

Tarvek is married to agatha and gil in this, which i believe ive mentioned, and i think ive also mentioned that he pretends the stream doesnt exist to them. They dont bother him about it, but they do watch it and regularly comment. I think hes just embarrassed about having a goofy internet outlet, and they just really love watching him excitedly talk about his interests

This was another one from the original prompt list, called "girl watching with Colette." They're sitting at a little teahouse, i think. There's a sequel prompt called "Gil watching with Colette," where Tarvek is holding a large pair of binoculars and absolutely SEETHING with anger while Colette is laughing. Otherwise exactly the same setting

Unforgiven

Before this blog, one of my first Tarvek drawings is a picture of him dressed as Nayeon from Twice. I also remember a picture I did of Lars in a Love Dive inspired outfit being complimented a lot on here, lol.

Anyway, this one was inspired by the concept photos for Unforgiven by Llesserafim. I think concept photos are a really cool form of art in general. Art direction. Needs more recognition, really!

This one was based off the "fallen angel" style of photos they did, but they also have this weird "office cowboy" style of photos? From the same album? I have no idea what that was about, but it's really funny to me. There's a horse loose in the office space. He's using the copier. I didn't know he knew how to do that. Anyway, maybe I should do an office cowboy Tarvek, too. Ive drawn him as a cowboy before, and it was really fun

I Still Feel Alive

This is actually my favorite tuesday, which is funny cause it was just coloring practice, really. But my favorite bit is really all the just. Amount of stuff i shoved in there. We're on castle wulfenbach, hes been stabbed and poisoned (dw about it), hes drinking the vaccine gil made from his notes, weve got his favorite clank girls (which by the way i unfortunately love that we have tinka without a head and anevka without a body), his weasels of course, agathas portrait (because whos office is this, really?), we've got the portal to the eldritch monster dimension out the window there, and an apple tree!

I drew Tarvek with a lot of apple themes for a while, as a reference to his condescending snake description. Its kind of funny 2 me to think of agatha and gil as adam and eve (dont ask which is which. I dont think it particularly matters, tbh), and tarvek as the evil snake, because i think its exactly how hed see himself really. Whether hes actually an evil snake or not. Token evil teammate, awful seductress, yadda yadda yadda. Really, aggie and gil arent innocent either, which makes it funnier 2 me

Godqueen

I really love the idea of tarvek as a godqueen (or godking, i just think godqueen suits him better) because he was originally supposed to be killed off in sturmhalten. He could always still be killed off, which would be very disappointing because i think we would have wasted a lot of time then. Or he could live and things would be as expected. Or we could go the funnier route and make him literally immortal. That would be hilarious to me!

Also, im pretty sure gils going to be storm king. And with agatha as the heterodyne + probably a godqueen, and gil as storm king and the only one whos graduated college, i believe tarvek should be allowed a little immortality. Or maybe financial compensation. As a treat. Make it harder for bang to bully him

Looks wise, godqueen tarvek is based on what he keeps shoving agatha in (sidenote: that is NOT anevkas dress. Can you even imagine her in that? That is his dress. I dont think he wore it, but its definitely tarveks). When it comes to dresses i always put tarvek in something really flowy and needlessly gaudy. But suits and pants should be a tighter fit. A lot of the design inspo is wizard of oz based, particularly ozma. In a lot of illustrations she wears these very loose fitting gowns, and often very simple crowns and a few specifically placed flowers

His crown is also little storm clouds. If gil was a godking hed have little lightning bolts, but i think gil shouldnt be a godking. He can already lift tanks. But if he was, hed have little lightning bolts. Theyd match!

Tuesday Anniversary

First of all, i love painting. Like i love it SO much. Ok, cool

I wanted Agatha in the picture right off the bat, but originally I was going to draw them dancing at Albias ball. I drew this, discovered i drew them facing the wrong way, scrapped it, and then crab anons drink got spilled on them, so it was not meant to be. Also, frankly, i think the impact would have been all wrong. I wanted a kind of "what tarvek wished had happened" kind of thing and instead i think it just keeps bringing back how gil and aggie danced together. And really i wanted something special for just agatha and tarvek, since i tend to do so much gil shipping with them. Its been a while where ive drawn them something of their own

So i kept thinking about tarvek and agatha ideals, from his perspective. I went back to his "when im an evil overload and agatha is my sexy dark mistress" idea, but decided to go for a more likely scenario. So this is sometime in the future, and hes happy being able to walk her down the hall for whatever it is theyre doing. Theyre in Castle of course (with the little wall hangings from the game! I love those), and shes let him dress her up in one of his flowy dresses. His outfits still really similar to the one from the ball, which is also really similar to the one from sturmhalten. I think its just a design choice he likes, so i kept that up. Agatha also has two rings, because this is a moment to themselves but theyll never stop loving gil, really

#hall of tuesday

2 notes · View notes

counttwinkula · 1 year

Text

On Horror and True Crime

The idea of moral purity through media consumption has been troublingly prevalent on all forms of social media lately, particularly visible on Tumblr through DNI lists and catalogues of “irredeemable” media that are, frankly, laughable. I feel like the attitude toward true crime is another iteration of this same phenomenon, and I find it troubling for a couple of reasons.

Perhaps the most obvious problem here is the vast overgeneralization these statements make. Not only is there a worthwhile question as to what is and isn’t ethical (I have trouble buying the idea that we must all have identical ethics to one another), but even if we pretend that the problem of ethics is far simpler than it is, the genre of true crime is by no means homogeneous. Yes, there is true crime media that extends too much sympathy for the perpetrators, media that fails to properly consult the survivors, media that we can call copaganda. Should the failures of certain works condemn the whole thing? When you decry the entire genre of true crime because of careless works like Dahmer – Monster you are mostly showcasing your ignorance of how diverse true crime is.

What actually spurred me to write about this, however, was a post that generalized the audience that consumes true crime, reducing the whole viewership to “true crime freaks” or something similar. I think we’re all familiar with the image such a phrase is supposed to conjure: serial killer flower crown edits and RPF, or the devotees who harass families of victims in misguided amateur attempts to solve unsolved cases. With the massive fandom that true crime has garnered in the last couple years, it should obviously be laughable to assume that everyone consuming this media falls into those categories. Certainly, there are audience members who behave poorly—can’t that be said for every form of media?

True crime is often blamed for sparking disproportionate fear and paranoia in its viewers, especially with regards to race, class, and gender. The stories that are told most often generally focus on demographics who are not at the highest risk for violent crime or murder—what’s been dubbed Missing White Woman syndrome. That is certainly worth criticizing. However, I think we oversimplify the way true crime fans respond to the stories this media covers.

This feels like a good place to begin talking about the similarities between true crime and horror. I believe that the vast majority of people who have seen Psycho experience a certain amount of anxiety taking a shower for the first time after watching the film. Intellectually, the audience member knows that they are at no greater risk of being brutally murdered in the shower post-Psycho than they were before, but the film has opened up the possibility in their head. If we can accept that the horror viewer can hold a multi-layered reaction—entertaining anxieties that they understand, on some level, are unfounded—then we must consider that the true crime viewer can have a similarly complex response, even if the source of their anxieties is nonfiction.

In many ways, horror and true crime are two sides of the same coin. These stories are intended to shock and repulse and terrify the audience. The audience is drawn in to bear witness to dark and disturbing events. Yes, the acts of violence in a horror film are designed to thrill the audience, but they’re also designed to disgust and frighten them. The depiction of such heinous acts are meant to entertain the audience, but that does not mean the film endorses these acts. After all, horror generally also features a hero who must mourn the fallen and cope with their losses while trying to evade and even defeat the perpetrator. Again—if we can understand these complexities in horror, we must be able to extend similar possibilities to true crime as its soul sister.

Horror has long been disparaged and censured, often with similar arguments to those you hear leveled against true crime. With regards to the audience we can go all the way back to the earliest Gothic literature and find that it was railed against as schlock—and we understand that part of that reaction was an elitist backlash to the readership of these novels, an audience that was largely middle class and female. In the 20th century the audience of horror comics and cinema was largely understood to be composed of undesirables, especially the newly constructed demographic of teenagers, who were the perpetual subject of moral panic.

The position horror has been relegated to—considered subcultural, turned away from the mainstream, refused serious consideration as meaningful art—has allowed it to be particularly subversive. As a genre, horror has been able to depict things that would not fly in a more socially acceptable space. Even when the representation leaves much to be desired, horror films often present alternative sexual behaviors and gender styles that would never see the light of day otherwise.

I bring up the demographics and transgressiveness of horror because I think those two factors create a fuller picture when we’re considering why horror has been repeatedly the subject of moral panic. It’s about more than the blood and the violence, it’s about repression. When you stamp out horror (or at the very least make it difficult to access or produce) you are also suppressing the ways horror challenges societal norms.

In his discussion of the literary monster, how monsters serve as allegories for societal anxieties, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen asserts that the monster “polices the borders of the possible”. In other words, tales of the monster (or horror object) exist to discourage behaviors that society deems unacceptable or taboo. At the same time, however, Cohen states that “fear of the monster is really a form of desire”. According to Cohen part of the social function of the monster story is providing the audience with a venue to vicariously experience the very actions it warns us against. In other words, horror provides us with temporary relief from the constraints of society, a space where we can indulge the socially inappropriate parts of ourselves before packing them up again. Doesn’t true crime serve a similar function?

Ultimately, I think the main driving force of this moral crusade against true crime is discomfort. Honestly, more often than not discomfort is the driving force of any of these moral crusades targeting media. Stories of guts and gore, violence and torture, crime and murder are designed to make us uncomfortable. Some people are uncomfortable at the very thought of others enjoying those stories, and instead of investigating why they feel that way, they decide it’s a moral failing on the part of those audiences. It’s a dangerous groupthink—instead of encouraging people to develop good critical thinking skills and use their own ethics to assess each piece of media based on its own merits, we prefer to give blanket statements of what is bad and therefore should not be touched.

I want to wrap this up by returning once more to the complaint I see most frequently: that the true ethical failing of true crime lies in how it treats and depicts the victims, survivors, and other people touched by these tragedies. I think it’s a good instinct to want to protect these people, to try and shield them from further suffering that may result from a media spotlight. It’s okay if that’s the moral line you want to draw in the sand for yourself.

The issue is the endless posturing and vilification. It becomes a moral imperative that each user takes a stand against the Bad Media, makes clear that they disown it and that anyone who fails to do so is a heartless degenerate. Perhaps my least favorite symptom of this trend is that because the Bad Media becomes so immediately radioactive, you must decry it without actually consuming it. How the hell can anyone actually analyze and diagnose the problems with a single work—nevermind an entire genre—if you’re forbidden from actually touching the thing? Its complexity becomes obscured behind an opaque curtain manufactured by moral panic, and thus you must trust the judgments of other people based entirely on hearsay. Put that in the context of an internet culture dominated by a tendency for piss-poor media literacy (how dare you say we piss on the poor?) and you find yourself in this mess.

I’ve been drafting this for a couple weeks now and I just saw someone trying to argue against the horror genre saying nothing more than “a lot of horror is based on true crime” as if that objection should speak for itself. This is exactly my problem: horror is a precious, transgressive genre that represents societal fears in a complex allegorical way. Horror is maligned because of this, because what the commentary it presents threatens the social order. Horror makes us uncomfortable. True crime makes us uncomfortable. It is okay to be uncomfortable, it is okay to object to things, but is foolish to decry an entire complex and varied genre over a moral panic.

#horror #true crime #long post

6 notes · View notes

amandamelodramablog · 1 year

Text

I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

The 1943 film, I Walked with A Zombie follows a woman named Jessica Holland who has fallen victim to the power of voodoo and is essentially turned into a zombie. The audience is then introduced to nurse Betsy who is brought to the town of St. Sebastian to help care for Jessica and help return back to her husband Paul Holland, from her zombified state. During the film, we are able to understand the significance of the figure of St. Sebastian which was the figurehead of a slave ship that represented generations of pain; explaining the weeping that nurse Betty had heard before coming from the maid in Mr. and Mrs. Holland’s home. Throughout the film, superstition and voodoo is seen as a negative thing that has shown through the film industry which has created a stigma around Haitian culture and has created narrative that differs from what this Haitian practice truly is. While looking at the setting of St. Sebastian, it is obvious that black individuals have to serve the white tourists and people who live there, illuminating the slave like treatment and exploitation of these individuals as a figurative representation of zombies who have to follow the orders they are given. During nurse Betsy’s time at the restaurant, there is a song that is being sung by a man who seems to be delivering a message or backstory of what actually happened to Mrs. Holland before Betsy’s arrival. It illuminated how Mr. Holland had not told the truth about what happened to Mrs. Holland and that there was something unsettling about the whole scenario she is now involved in. We learn that Wesley loves Jessica and had been involved in an affair with her while Betsy tries to heal Jessica because she loves Paul. Best tries shock therapy but ultimately fails to bring back Jessica leading to the final option to bring her back. The house maid Alma tells Betsy that there is another way that Jessica can be brought back to life which is through voodoo. Alma explains that there are better doctors that can save Jessica, who are voodoo priests. As Betsy takes this option into account, she decides to follow through and have the doctors use voodoo on her to bring her back from the mysterious state she has fallen under. As the film comes to a close, the audience learns that the voodoo doctor was Paul and Wesley’s mother who had put Jessica under the spell in order to keep her form ruining the family, not allowing her to be brought back from her zombified states. In the final scenes of the film, Wesley takes Jessica’s body and walks straight into the ocean ultimately committing suicide to die with the one he loves, creating a Romeo and Juliet affect, as their bodies are found and brought back to give them a proper memorial.

The article, “Slaves, Cannibals, and Infected Hype-Whites: The Race and Religion of Zombies,” by Elizabeth McAlister explains the use of zombies and zombification and how it is introduced into American culture. The article states, “As a constellation of misunderstood and distorted elements in early Hollywood films, the Caribbean zombie representations might be described as a profound example of what Toni Morrison calls “American Africanism,”...Eurocentric learning about these people. ” There seems to be a constant repetition of how Haitian culture has chosen to be represented by western films and media creating a negative connotation to everything attached to these beliefs and ideas. the article also states, “The films invariably cast black sorcerers (or quake sorcerers) plotting for conquest of and control over white women, and blackness is unmistakably linked with primitive menace, superstition, and the diabolical.” As I previously stated, the way these types of films represent not only Haitian culture but also the black community has created a stereotype or what many call a type cast that only allows these individuals to act in stereotypical roles that have been reinforced within mass media.

#i walked with a zombie #horror film

0 notes

jaeheewillalwaysbemyfav · 3 years

Note

helloooooo!! can i request some headcanons for the demon brothers with a MC that is Non Binary but is afab and insecure about being afab and doesnt feel like they are Non Binary. platonic or romantic either one is fine. thank you. also Jaehee is a Queen period.

I haven’t had Mystic Messenger installed on my phone for like a year and this blog is mostly, if not exclusively Obey Me rn, but I refuse to change my url because it remains true. Jaehee is the best and deserves the world <3

Also don’t mind me casually throwing in some Devildom/Celestial Realm gender headcanons as an intro~

Warnings: Mentions of gender dysphoria, internalized transphobia, insecurity gang rise up. I’ll try and keep it more general since this is meant to be a comfort/fluff piece.

The Brothers With an Insecure (AFAB) Nonbinary MC

As a whole, the Devildom doesn’t really do traditional gender. The variety in demons’ and fallen angels’ appearances makes for such a diversity of body types that markers of femininity and masculinity are easier to disregard. It’s commonplace to provide one’s pronouns along with their name when meeting someone new, and any changes in a demon’s presentation are noted with little more fanfare than a new haircut.

Even angels don’t really get preoccupied with gender: in fact, as MC discovered one day while talking with Luke and Simeon, most barely grasp the concept of what a gender is. Simeon had mentioned that this occasionally resulted in him forgetting the genders of his characters, resulting in TSL being extremely popular among transgender and nonbinary fandom communities.

But MC is not from the Devildom, nor are they from the Celestial Realm. They’re from the human world, with its reductive views on bodies, presentation, and identity. A year in the Devildom can’t erase a lifetime of cissexism.

Some days, it wears on them more than others.

Lucifer

Lucifer is always aware when MC’s self image starts wavering

As someone who has fought tooth and nail to remain true to himself, he understands the struggle of facing resistance to this

But the idea of it coming from within is somewhat foreign to him

Nonetheless, he’ll do anything within his power to make MC feel better

Will calmly, but firmly assert that MC is the only one who can determine their identity

It’s not about how they were born or raised, but who they know themself to be deep down

If it’s their gender dysphoria making them feel invalid, he’ll try and minimize it however he can

Need a different RAD uniform? No problem. Worried about being perceived a certain way? Anyone who stares at MC for too long or even dares to make a comment about their presentation is getting the Lucifer Death Glare.

Physical/body dysphoria? The Devildom has tons of temporary and permanent solutions for that, they can try whatever they’d like

It is vital for the success of the exchange program that all the students feel comfortable and well-accommodated

Also MC is very dear to him and he hates to see them suffering

Mammon

As soon as he notices MC is upset, he is READY TO FITE

Who’s been messing with them?!

What? They don’t feel like they’re really nonbinary? Are they questioning again, or—

Oh. Oh…

Well that’s stupid! What do you mean you don’t “look nonbinary”?! What’s there to look like? Humans are so weird about this stuff, look: you want to know what someone’s deal is, you ask! And their answer? That’s it! End of story, there ya go!

It’s not so simple in the human world, MC tries to explain

Mammon huffs and mumbles something about how it should be, but he can see this avenue isn’t making MC feel better

It seems whatever junk ideas the human world has about gender really gets into people’s heads…

Well, whenever Mammon wants to take his mind off of something, he opts for something exciting! Hitting the casino, making new plans that’ll definitely work this time, maybe even try and pull a prank on one of his brothers…?

But if MC just wants to cuddle and watch some mindless TV or play video games he doesn’t mind doing that either…

Leviathan

Levi knows, without fault, every single TSL characters’ pronouns and identities, if and how they change through the series, and between different media adaptations

He can (and will) list all the nonbinary characters like a gender Pokemon Rap, with special attention on those who match MC’s presentation and/or AGAB

(Not that AGAB is essential or even always available information, but dysphoria is not a rational creature, and Levi is very familiar with irrational emotions)

Would MC say that any of these characters aren’t really nonbinary because of how they look or how they started out? Then why are they any different?

But if something about their appearance is really bothering them, he might have a solution

Cosplay

Well, sort of

Crossplayers use all sorts of techniques to masculinize or feminize their appearance when necessary, and Levi’s pretty familiar with most of them

So if MC wants to try some out to see if it makes them feel more comfortable, he wouldn’t mind showing them! You know… if they’re… interested…

Also double-checks to make sure it’s okay that he calls them his “Henry” and assures them that it’s about the character’s role and personality, and not some sort of gender-based comparison

Unless... they like the comparison? andwouldliketocosplayasHenrytohisLordofShadows??

Satan

Who said this to you, MC.

Names. Now.

Boy gets frothing mad when MC explains it’s a societal and cultural problem, not an individual one, that fuels their insecurity.

If they don’t want to hear an hour long rant about the rich history of human gender expression and identity, they need to cut him off fast

If he could maim the concept of transphobia, he would

But alas, this is not a problem that can be solved (entirely) with violence

So he has to find other ways to show his support

Ask him about any notable trans, nonbinary, or otherwise gender nonconforming figures from human or demon history. He’ll happily tell MC all about them.

But, at the end of the day? In his opinion, there’s one person that shines above the rest

Someone who braved the longest odds, who persisted against the fiercest enemies and even turned them into their closest friends

Who saw others at their worst and sought to bring out the best in them…

*stage whispers* He’s talking about you

If there’s anyone who’s going to believe in the right to self determination and the irrelevance of your origins to your present identity, it’s Satan

And if anyone ever does try to tell MC that their doubts about themself are true?

Just give him their name and don’t ask questions

Asmodeus

So they’re worried about being too feminine? Is there such a thing?

If that’s the case, they can be “too feminine” together

Asmo’s gender nonconformity has earned him praise all throughout his life, so the idea of being ashamed of such a thing is alien to him

But he does know what it’s like to have an audience who expects a specific image from you

And the fear of disappointing them

But gender isn’t a performance

Well, it is, sometimes, poor choice of words: but it’s a performance for you

Asmo presents the way he does because it’s what makes him happy, same with the rest of the brothers

MC shouldn’t be any different

If they’re looking for a more masculine wardrobe or just want a change of pace, he’ll happily help them find clothes that make them feel more comfortable, but his main concern is that they know they’re free to wear what they’d like, act how they’d like, and it doesn’t change who they are

Whatever image they want to make of themself, he can get them there, but only if it’s because they want it, not because it’s what they think they’re supposed to be like, okay?

Beelzebub

When MC first confesses to Beel that they feel like they’re not really nonbinary because of their body, he kinda looks around and gestures as if to say “really? Down here?”

Has MC ever noticed that RAD doesn’t have gendered sports teams?

Yeah, if they separated people by something as irrelevant as gender or Diavolo forbid, sex, people would get seriously injured or worse

There are so many ways to be a man or a woman or a nonbinary person, and they’re not always what you’d expect

Some of Beel’s best teammates and scariest opponents look and act nothing like you’d expect them to

If they’re feeling disconnected from their body, Beel is totally down to work out with them, keep them grounded in all the good their body does for them and that they can do for it

And yes, also the good food their body lets them experience

He also definitely reaches out and gives their hand a lil squeeze if he ever notices them feeling down while they’re out together

He cares for them a lot and just wants them to be happy at the end of the day

Belphegor

Oh yeah, that’s one of the stupidest things about the human world

Belphie remembers being mistaken for a woman a lot when he used to visit the human world, and how confused he was when people got into such a tizzy over his gender

Why waste all that energy on something that doesn’t matter? If you must know, just ask the person and be done with it

It doesn’t matter what they look like

MC is MC

If they say they’re nonbinary, that’s good enough for him

If they don’t want to be touched, especially in certain places tiddy pillow naps, he might get pouty, but he’s all bark and no bite, he’ll respect their wishes

His approach to making MC feel better is more geared towards normalizing their identity

If he accepts it as a fact, then maybe they’ll catch on that people will respect them if they know what’s good for them?

Also, if they hear him mumbling about correct pronouns and punching transphobes in his sleep… No they didn’t. He’s not dreaming about them, he swears...

#obey me #obey me imagines #obey me headcanons #obey me shall we date #om:swd #mine #my writing #lucifer #mammon #leviathan #satan #asmodeus #beelzebub #belphegor #tldr; they all love and support you!!!

125 notes · View notes

new-sandrafilter · 3 years

Photo

How Timothée Chalamet Channeled The Blockbuster Pressure of Leading Denis Villeneuve’s ‘Dune’ Back Into His Role – Venice Q&A

DEADLINE: In a few days Dune will premiere at the Venice Film Festival. You first met Denis Villeneuve about the role in May 2018 and started shooting in the early half of 2019. It was always going to be a long journey, but the pandemic stretched it even further. How does it feel to have finally arrived at this moment?

TIMOTHÉE CHALAMET: You know, I like to think that with every film I’ve done, whether it’s Call Me by Your Name or Beautiful Boy, The King, or Little Women, the character you play is almost a piece of your flesh. And that’s always true, but simply from the perspective of how long the shoot for Dune was, and also the arc that Paul Atreides is on, as well as the huge love and almost biblical connection that so many people have for the book and the original film, it really felt… tectonic, if that’s the right word for it. Just getting to this finish line feels like: phew.

And independent of what the film is now, and what it has become, the experience of making it was I was put in such a safe environment, which you can never take for granted as a human, as an actor, but especially when you’re just starting your career, and when this is the first film of this size you’ve ever done.

To get to work with Denis on it, to get to work with someone of his caliber, let alone on a book that he considers the book of his youth and one of the things he has connected to the most… When he would have it in his hands on set, his body language would become that of a fan; of a kid who had fallen in love with the book at home in Montreal. And when all the kids around him were wearing hockey jerseys with their favorite players’ names on the back, this was a kid wearing a jersey that said ‘Spielberg’ on the back.

For it all to come together, especially with the added challenge of the pandemic, it has all combined to make this moment feel especially spicy [laughs].

DEADLINE: The entire ensemble will show up in Venice.

CHALAMET: Right. And I just can’t believe it; Jason Momoa has the number one film on Netflix right now with Sweet Girl, which I just watched. And since we shot, Zendaya has had all this success with Euphoria and Malcolm & Marie. Just to be part of this cast, period, let alone as one of the title characters, it’s really the shit you dream of.

And let me not forget, too—and I know I’ve told you this before—that The Dark Knight was the movie that made me want to act. That movie had a score by Hans Zimmer, and he has done the score for Dune. And it’s almost not what you’d think. It’s totally appropriate and excellent for the movie, but he has somehow managed to do something subversive, in my opinion. It’s a pinch-me moment all over.

DEADLINE: So, take me back to the start. Is it true you had a Google alert set up to track the latest news on this project before you were ever cast?

CHALAMET: Yeah, it’s true [laughs]. Not right away—Legendary had the rights and was developing it—but as soon as Denis got involved, I set up a Google alert and that’s when I got the book.

In total honesty, I think my understanding of Dune at that point was from a graphic novel I’d seen at Midtown Comics when I was shopping for Yu-Gi-Oh! cards when I was about 10. The year you and I first met, when I was there at Deadline Contenders with Call Me by Your Name, that would have been 2017 or early 2018, and Denis was there with Blade Runner. I remember I was trying to put myself in front of him as much as possible and set up a meeting with him. We had a night at the BAFTA where one of my good friends, Stéphane Bak—who’s also an actor—saw Denis across the room and was like, “Hey buddy, he’s right over there.” So, we went over to talk to him. I kept trying to put myself in front of him, but I didn’t really get a sense of the possibility [of working with him].

I was about halfway through the book when I got the call that he was going to be the president of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, and I was in London prepping The King. He asked me if I could come out there, so I quickly busted through the second half of the book as best I could. So, like, the first half of my copy is properly annotated and full of my thoughts, and then the second half I just raced through. And then I had that meeting with him, and it was such a joy.

I’m struggling with this even now, as I’m working with Paul King [on Wonka], because he’s another guy I have huge respect and admiration for, and it’s hard to feel on a level. Not that you ever are, because as an actor you’re a cog in the machine, and you’ve got to be humble to the vision of the director. But with Denis, he was pacing around the room, throwing ideas around, in some fancy suite in Cannes, and all I could think was that a year before I was just sat on a stoop on 9th Street in the East Village or something.

DEADLINE: Was that your first time in Cannes?

CHALAMET: Yeah. Well, bizarrely, my sister would do dance camps growing up. Ballet intensive programs in a town called Mougins, which is nearby Cannes, so I spent a lot of time there growing up, but never during the festival, and not on the Riviera. To get to be there for the festival was just nuts. I went to see the Romain Gavras movie, I think, and it was just a huge joy.

I got attached [to the role in Dune] a couple of months after that, and it was nerve-wracking from the announcement, because like I said before, the fans of the book, and the fans of David Lynch version, the computer game, and everything, there’s so much love and strength of feeling. And so much of our pop culture and films and books have been derived from Dune, and all the philosophy the book. I’ve been shocked to learn how many people have a next-level connection to the book. I compare it to how our generation grew up with Harry Potter, and that one makes sense to me. But it’s cool to see with Dune also, when you actually sit down and read it… It’s not that it’s a quote-unquote “hard read” or anything, but it’s not made to be consumed easily, I think that’s fair to say.

So, I was grateful to be working on something of this size not only with Denis Villeneuve leading it, who between Polytechnique, Incendies and Prisoners had nailed the smaller indie film across languages, and then had nailed Arrival and Blade Runner, but who, in his own words, he didn’t feel he’d made his greatest film yet. But also, to be working with this cast. I don’t know if there’s some nightmare version of a film where a young lead is not supported by the rest of his cast, where every one of them had been the leads in their own huge projects. But on this, everyone was there to support, and I think it’s because we all wanted to be foot soldiers for Denis, and I think we understood the potential, based on the script by Eric Roth, Jon Spaihts and Denis, that this could be something really special.

DEADLINE: I don’t have a connection to Dune; this movie is really my first experience of the story. What strikes me is this is clearly an enormous universe—a broad canvas being painted with various families and factions and politics and mythos—but that ultimately it comes down to very elemental, human themes, and we feel them through this character you play, Paul Atreides. Did those themes help ground the experience for you?

CHALAMET: Yes, and I would give the credit entirely to Denis. He would constantly say on set that he had some opposing drumbeat or something. In my diminished intellectual standing, I didn’t understand it, but it was like some vision for the movie based on how biblical the book is that tries to tackle so much that it doesn’t tackle anything. I think he felt the need to be close to a character in it, and Paul is that guy in the book. He’s a character that is still in formation, like a lump of clay, which makes him a great figure for the audience to mirror off.

It speaks, I think, to Denis’ premonition and his directing ability that there were times when we’d move on from a shot or move on from a scene, and I swear, literally, we’d go back because Denis wanted to get something over my shoulder, or push in on my reaction, just to make sure [it stayed on Paul].

And again, it’s something where I’m pinching myself. I had the best time on Interstellar, and that was one of my favorite films I’ve ever worked on, but it was very much something where I was aware of when I had the opportunity to do real acting. And on a movie like Dune, again, one could think it would get lost in the scale and scope. But I felt every day like my plate was full.

DEADLINE: One of those themes is fear, and Paul must overcome his to become the person he needs to be. When you are number one on the call sheet on a project of this scale, and the cast list reads like an address book of Hollywood in the 21st century, and Legendary has injected hundreds of millions of dollars into this production, and it’s all falling on your shoulders, I have to imagine fear is a theme you can readily relate to.

CHALAMET: Oh yeah, and they can bleed into each other for sure—not to diminish the other work that goes in. It’s great when your life experience can inform the role. That’s not at all to say I’m on some crusade in the universe or anything, but definitely… And I had that same good fortune with The King I think. My life is not nearly as significant or as exciting as Paul or Prince Hal, but we all share an unwitting needle in the haystack feeling. On The King that feeling was because I was so new to having a career. On Dune it��s because of, as you say, just feeling the pressure of the hugeness of the project in all those different ways. Those things can absolutely inform each other.

And then there are the moments of glee that come, too, like seeing Jason Momoa running at you at a hundred miles an hour, or just getting to shoot the shit with Josh Brolin, or getting to do a scene with Oscar Isaac. I felt so supported, whether it was Rebecca Fergusson or Charlotte Rampling. When Zendaya came, it was a total breath of fresh air, and she’s one of my favorite parts of the movie. I just got really lucky, and I can’t wait to see them all in Venice.

Denis split the book in half, and the hope is a second movie will get a greenlight. That’d expand Zendaya’s role in the story.

CHALAMET: Definitely, Chani will play a huge role in the next film. I don’t know if there’s a script yet, but just based on the book, along with Lady Jessica [Rebecca Fergusson], they have a lot to do together, let’s put it like that. And Zendaya was incredible in this movie; the moment she pulls the mask down, it felt properly showstopping and powerful. I was hiding behind the camera, counting my lucky starts, because I was there in month two of the shoot and here was a total powerhouse just coming in for the first time.

And as I said before, this was before I’d seen Euphoria and Malcolm & Marie. She’s doing such incredible work and is just trailblazing her own path, and she’s so, so cool. She also happens to be in the most-watched trailer of the moment, too, for Spider-Man: No Way Home. I cannot wait for that movie, and I was there, by the way, with everybody else, clicking through the trailer frame by frame looking for clues [laughs].

#timmy #timothee chalamet #dune movie #dune 2021 #denis villeneuve

97 notes · View notes

weirdcrocodilelady · 3 years

Text

Fury of a Warchief Scorned (Narrative Smoke and Mirrors, or How to Brainwash Your Audience: Yes, it's another Sylvanas post)

By the time "Reckoning" takes place, Sylvanas has been so thoroughly demonized that nearly everything she says will be immediately discounted as yet another sign of her innate villainy. So when she says "the Horde is nothing," the other characters (as well as most of the players) are spared the challenge of wondering what exactly she might have meant and whether there might be a deeper reason for such an outburst, electing only to label her a traitor.

But imagine the same line coming from any other character, in a different tone, under different circumstances. Characters' words and actions are judged first through the lens of our preconceptions of that character as told to us by the relevant media, then by their actual content. For example, the reason so many players (including myself at one point) have fallen into the trap of believing Saurfang's empty rhetoric about honor and forgetting his many past crimes, including his substantial role in the destruction of Teldrassil, is that Blizzard's writers have framed him as a noble antihero and tricked us into processing everything he says and does through that lens. The many narrative smoke and mirrors used to do this include placing him in alliance with other sympathetic characters and playing up his trauma from years of war as well as losing his son in order to garner empathy.

Sylvanas has received the opposite treatment since the beginning of Battle for Azeroth. Rather than gifting her with any meaningful relationships or alliances with other characters, Blizzard writers have slowly and systematically been alienating her from every other character who may have been sympathetic to her (the death of Nathanos being the final nail in the coffin, pun not intented). Even the Forsaken, her people in every sense of the phrase, have been taken from her and given to Calia Menethil as a consolation prize for Calia having misplaced her personality somewhere during her time away from canon. Sylvanas is thus left with no one to sympathize with or stand up for her when other characters get together to discuss how much she sucks. Isolating her also helps to create an illusion of her as a narcissistic tyrant.

Of the many characters Blizzard has set up in opposition to Sylvanas, Anduin and Jaina have been particularly useful as weapons with which to tear her down even further. Anduin has been Blizzard's favorite good boy since his first appearance, and is known throughout Azeroth and its fanbase as a kind and fair king with an open mind and a desire for peace. Given that Anduin tried to sympathize with Garrosh Hellscream of all people, saving his life and even voicing his belief that Garrosh could change for the better, his hatred of Sylvanas is a notable departure from his established character model. It was shocking enough to read the line, "I believe that Sylvanas Windrunner is well and truly lost," even without knowing that this would be only the tip of the iceberg of Anduin's vitriol toward Sylvanas. He threatens her life. Anduin Wrynn, the consummate pacifist, tells another person to "surrender or die." This is HUGELY out of character for him, and yet we are meant to view it as necessary and even noble solely because of who he is talking to. By making him the "good guy" driven to act against his nature by the sheer awfulness of his enemy, Anduin becomes the perfect weapon for Blizzard to use against Sylvanas's reputation.

Jaina is the character most likely to be able to sympathize with Sylvanas, given the many similarities in their backstories, but in giving Jaina a redemption arc (and I'm being quite generous by calling it an "arc"), Blizzard has inherently placed her against Sylvanas, their chosen villain. Jaina's past crimes are acknowledged and addressed, she even begins to receive comeuppance for some of them, but this is done in a way that turns her into a victim and a martyr. The narrative sympathizes with Jaina, therefore we sympathize with her...and this contrasts nicely with the way Sylvanas's trauma is used to drive a wedge between her and her audience.

It would be understandable to mistake the flashback in "Warbringers: Sylvanas" for an attempt to inspire sympathy and understanding toward Sylvanas, but on the contrary, her death and resurrection/transformation are actually used to further dehumanize (for lack of a better word) and vilify her. Prior to being stabbed by Frostmourne, Sylvanas is a brave and selfless leader fighting not for her own life, but for the lives of all her people. To fully hammer this point into the ground, she is shown trying to save a civilian woman and her baby. After being raised into undeath, one would expect her to keep this admirable character. She's still Sylvanas, after all. But of course, no. This image, along with the sound of a savage roar, is the last thing we see before returning to the present:

..Yeah. It's a far cry from the sweet little child!Jaina hugging her father goodbye. And of course, we all know what happens just after this flashback ends: Sylvanas and Saurfang capture Teldrassil as planned, satisfying their common goal of commanding the greatest naval force in Kalimdor and increasing Azeroth's chances of maintaining a lasting peace in the future. And Tyrande dies from tripping over her own messiah complex.

Right?

Anyway, the implication of cutting the flashback just after presenting this monstrous portrait of Sylvanas snarling like an animal is that the noble Ranger-General is dead. She's the Banshee Queen now, a completely different person who shares nothing in common with the J. Crew model who mourned that mother and baby. And with her former self dead, we are freed from the burden of having to try and empathize with her. We can hate her without guilt and without feeling the need to question why she pulls so many erratic stunts over the course of BFA, despite her long history as a master strategist and leader. Blizzard just gave themselves a get-out-of-jail-free card, and it reads "idk she's just crazy."

And so we arrive at "Reckoning." Our cast of main characters is established, each one set in our minds exactly the way Blizzard meant them to be: Saurfang, the grizzled old soldier with a heart of gold, who lost his son and therefore is absolved of all his past crimes. Thrall, who may have blood on his hands but he admitted it himself while overlooking a lovely vista so it's cool. Angel Boy Anduin. Zekhan, who, let's be honest, exists mostly to "humanize" Saurfang by showing us his softer side while serving as a constant reminder of the son he lost. And of course, Sylvanas.

(As a side note, I'd like to point out that there's something about a group of several men ganging up on one woman that just never looks good to me, in any context. Call me an SJW for that if you want🤷🏻‍♀️)

I'm not going to go into a full analysis of the cinematic itself, because that's been done many times in a much better way than I could ever pull off. What I am going to do is briefly call attention to Saurfang's most glaring nuggets of BS before finally getting to the crux of this essay, my interpretation of Sylvanas's infamous line, "the Horde is nothing."

I'm also not going to drop everything and gush about how beautiful Sylvanas is in all her CGI glory, because...oh come on, who am I kidding. I just - she-

It's - I - just look at - I can't- (chokes on tears) (falls on floor) (gurgles) help

So let's get Saurpatchkid’s BS out of the way first. "You cannot kill hope...you tried at Teldrassil, you failed." First of all, where did all this stuff about hope come from anyway? Last time I checked, Sylvanas and Saurfang didn't even mention hope when they were planning the attack on Darnassus together in A Good War.

Oh yeah, they planned the attack together in A Good War.

Wait, so if Saurfang deliberately omitted himself from the narrative in order to gaslight Sylvanas and their entire audience at the mak'gora, then wouldn't that make him...a liar?

No, of course not, because Saurfang only helped plan the attack. It's not like he actually followed through and led the armies and gave orders and stuff, right?

Oh.

But that's still just giving orders. It's not like he actually killed anyone, right? And if he were to kill someone, it would probably be another old guy like him with equal strength and fighting experience, right?

...Oh. But he was sad, so that makes it okay, right? I mean, it's not as if he actually ENJOYED-

Oh.

"You set us to kill each other at Lordaeron." I assume this is just a bad translation or something, because I don't think even an orc would normally mistake defending your own city against an attack for setting everyone to kill each other. It's almost as if Saurfang (read: Blizzard) is just hoping their entire audience will suddenly forget the entire decade of WOW content that happened before BFA and replace the memories with a slideshow of a shirtless Saurfang flexing his biceps in his bathroom mirror. If you think that sounds a lot like gaslighting, you're right.

"Here we stand, and you just keep failing." He must have a different definition of failure, because from where I stand, it looks like the closest thing to a "failure" for Sylvanas happened when Saurfang failed to kill Malfurion.

"The Horde will endure. The Horde is strong." This is her Horde he's talking about. She's still the warchief. Imagine how condescending it must sound to her ears, to have a man who previously worked under her and took orders from her, only to betray her later, now lecturing her about the quality of her own faction, which he abandoned. If you think that sounds a lot like mansplaining...yeah, so do I.

We've finally arrived at "the Horde is nothing." But before we zoom into Sylvanas's headspace at that moment, I want to try out a little experiment. Take those four words, "the Horde is nothing," but hear them in Saurfang's voice. Change the emotion, too. Make it sadder. Add in some regret with a pinch of hopelessness. Then change the scenery. Let's put Saurfang on top of a big hill, overlooking a lovely sunset. Anduin and Jaina are there, and we can also throw in Zekhancody for good measure. The three of them are looking melancholically up at Saurfang as he sighs, says "the Horde is nothing," and sighs again. Then the sun goes down just as he finishes the line, because Cinema.

The same four words suddenly have a very different meaning. Saurfang's "the Horde is nothing" would come across as lamenting the loss of the "honor" of the "old" Horde under Sylvanas's leadership. And even without the hill and the sunset and the presence of the other characters, I would wager that Saurfang's "the Horde is nothing" would still be met with a more sympathetic ear than Sylvanas's, simply because of their respective roles in the story. Once a character is firmly established as a villain, the audience will view them first and foremost as Villain.

Now we're going to try that experiment the other way around. Remember when Saurfang said he's never known honor? Let's pretend Sylvanas said that. She says it to Anduin probably, and where Anduin is in BFA, Saurfang can't be far behind. The other Horde leaders are most likely there too, along with Jaina. Let's just say Sylvanas has a HUGE audience for this, because that's what villainesses love, right? But it's important that she doesn't have any allies in this scene. Everyone there hates her.

So there she is, standing before her throng of enemies, and she says "honor?" (scoff) "I have never known honor." Her tone is somewhere between sarcastic and boasting. Rather than regretting her past sins, she's celebrating them. Not only is she acknowledging herself as a villain, she's saying she enjoys being a villain. And again, even without the context of the rest of the scene, this line spoken by Sylvanas would probably always have the same connotations of arrogance and pride and disdain for others, because that's what the villain filter does.

Therefore, in "Reckoning," the line "the Horde is nothing" is presented to us in a way that tries to manipulate us into interpreting it the way Blizzard wants us to. Specifically, we should view it as Sylvanas finally showing us her "true colors." That tiny little cut from Shalamayne was a metaphorical shedding of a mask of deception, pulling away to show us the "real" warchief, a maniacal tyrant who never cared about anything except power for herself.

"Dude," you're probably typing in the comments this very second, "you just said yourself that this is exactly how Blizzard wants us to interpret it. Blizzard makes the canon, so if they want us to see Sylvanas as a maniacal tyrant, that must mean she's actually a maniacal tyrant.” But if Blizzard makes the canon, they also made the web of circumstances that would turn Sylvanas against the Horde and bring her to a breaking point.

Imagine you work with this person you respect and who seems to respect you in return, and he's pretty much your right-hand man for this major project you're working on, but then he messes up a big part of the project and ruins everything and you have to scramble around to make a last-minute replacement project, even though all your last-minute options REALLY suck and the one you end up picking happens to suck even more than all the others, and then your former right-hand man suddenly decides he doesn't want to have anything to do with you or the project anymore. But instead of just fucking off quietly, he goes crying to the enemy team about how terrible you are, and he tells all kinds of lies about how he had nothing to do with that really terrible project at all, it was all you because you're an evil mastermind.

And then he gets all the other main leaders from your team to join him in hating you and blaming every bad thing that ever happened on you and you alone, and burying every fault of their own under pretentious rhetoric about peace and honor and shit, even though literally all of those people had followed you without complaint in the past. So why, you want to ask, did they never speak up about their concerns back then? The answer, of course, is that they didn't actually care about their precious peace and honor at all. Their real concern was with their own reputations, and it wasn't until this former-right-hand-man went tattling to the other team that they realized "oh shit, if those other people believe what he says then that'll make us look pretty bad, but hey, good thing we have a convenient scapegoat in the form of our evil mastermind leader!"

Oh, and by the way, this other team? They're the ones you and your team tried to join YEARS ago, that turned you away in your most desperate time of need. So yeah, the fact that your right-hand man went to them when he decided he was done with you? That hurts a lot.

So you're over in your corner just basically trying to do damage control, but since there's only so much control you have over your own public image even when there is more than just one (1) person in the entire world who actually likes you, you still end up looking like an evil mastermind no matter what you do because that's what all the other important people have decided to paint you as. Then one day you hear someone yelling your name outside your door, and it's that goddamn guy from work again, and suddenly he's challenged you to a fight to the death??? And there's a whole-ass army lined up in front of your house????? And the weapon this guy wants to fight you with is a sword that belongs to a COLLEGE KID, but wait, it gets worse, this college kid inherited the sword from his father, who you knew and actually freaking liked, and he liked you too, and you saved his life once but then later you had to abandon him for complicated reasons and then he died, possibly because of you, and you had to watch him die from this ship you were on, and you didn't even get to go to his funeral and stuff because all his friends hate you and also as soon as you got home your boss dumped a gigantic promotion on you that you didn't even want, and then you had to go to literal fucking war. But even though he's dead, that sword still belongs to him as far as you're concerned, and it literally destroys you to see it used against you by a former colleague who hates your guts.

Then the guy trying to kill you starts spewing lies at you in front of hundreds of other people (all of whom hate your guts too, by the way), calling you a failure and blaming you for things you either didn't do at all or did only with substantial help from him, then he has the audacity to start mansplaining to you about how great your organization is, the one you are in charge of and have devoted your life to since receiving that unwanted promotion, and even though you know you could overpower and kill him easily in less than a second, you also know it wouldn't do you any good because he's already got the whole crowd on his side and dying will just turn him into a martyr. So you really have no choice but to keep letting him yell at you, and just as you're thinking this can't get any worse, he hits you in the eye with your dead friend's sword.

And you are NOT the kind of person who gets hit in the eye. You're just not.

So this is humiliating, right? Unbearably humiliating. So you tell yourself the first thing you can think of that might try and make you feel the smallest bit better. You say, "well, fuck it, they're nothing!" But oh shit, you accidentally said it out loud. And you kind of yelled it really angrily. But you know what? You don't care. Because they are nothing, and you should say it again, and you're honestly kind of pissed at yourself for not realizing it much earlier.

In other words, why are you booing her? She's right. The Horde sucks. (And so does the Alliance.)

"But dude, attacking and occupying and then burning a whole city isn't the same thing as a 'project'" -I don't care.

"You can't talk about war and life-and-death issues as if they're just everyday work problems" -I don't care.

"Sylvanas is a murderer and murder is bad and" -I. Don't. Care.

The game is called World of WARcraft. Literally everything about this story and its characters revolves around war and violence. And besides that, it's fiction. It's not. Real. But you know what are real? The experiences real people like me and you gain from interacting with this fictional world and its stories and characters. I'm not a "champion" when I play WOW, I'm my real self, and my real self happens to be a lonely, mentally ill woman with a boatload of traumatic baggage in my past. Sylvanas's treatment in BFA and Shadowlands (from Blizzard, players, and the other characters in the game) has a real, tangible, hurtful meaning for me that goes far beyond just being salty that the story isn't going the way I want it to.

But damn it, there's just something about "Reckoning" in particular that haunts me almost to the point of agony. I thought it was the open hostility from Saurfang, and the fact that despite all his lies and hypocrisy he got to die a hero. Then a few weeks ago something really terrible happened to me irl, and when I got home and went back to WOW I suddenly knew exactly where the pain was coming from. I felt it distinctly when I watched the gates of Orgrimmar part before Sylvanas as she walked out to meet her fate, alone, knowing she wouldn't have a single sympathizer waiting for her. I felt it when she dissolved into blackness and escaped, knowing the only reason anyone regretted her going was that they wouldn't be able to kill her on the spot. But I felt it most deeply after Saurfang gave her that goddamn cut on the eye, and she said "the Horde is nothing."

You don't have to be a filmmaker to know the intense power a close-up can hold. Just look at the buildup from shock and hurt to full, murderous rage. I find these few seconds so damn painful to watch, that capturing and posting screenshots of them may actually constitute some kind of self-harm.

The closeness of the shot in her most immediate moment of pain, zooming out only as she scrambles to regain her dignity and then blows it by yelling "you are all nothing," that is ultimately what haunts me. Because she is just. So. Alone. And so hated. And she knows it.

Of all the things Blizzard has put Sylvanas through in the last two expansions, I think isolating her from anything that could possibly resemble a support system might be the most damaging. One simple reason for this is that without friends or supporters, there is no buffer between Sylvanas and the villain bat. But even more depressing is the fact that loneliness is something too many women like Sylvanas can relate to in real life because of harmful attitudes our society holds toward women with severe trauma, women with mental illnesses and disabilities, and even just loud, opinionated women - attitudes perpetuated every day by popular media like video games. And those real-life women don't get spiky armor to protect them.

Whatever Sylvanas is going through emotionally right now in the Shadowlands, I hope she's secure in her belief that her decision to leave the Horde was the correct one. Because she was right: The Horde is nothing. And hopefully one day the rest of the Horde will realize it. But this is Blizzard, so I'm not holding my breath.

#sylvanas windrunner #world of warcraft #wow #wow: battle for azeroth #world of warcraft: battle for azeroth #battle for azeroth #wow: shadowlands #shadowlands #world of warcraft: shadowlands #varok saurfang #anduin wrynn #jaina proudmoore #eecmidford #not kuro

97 notes · View notes

oumaheroes · 3 years

Text

hii its bougie <3 if you're still taking hc requests, i was wondering if you'd have thoughts on something that's been on my mind for a while. i was interested in the nuance to english culture due to regional differences. eg.,dinner being called "tea" in the north of england, rugby being more popular in the south, the difference in how scones with jam and cream are enjoyed in Devon and Cornwall?? or how certain english accents are perceived as... "less attractive" i guess (the black country accents are unpopular apparently?) -- you'd probably know more about these particularities than me ;u;

i was wondering how these cultural differences might map onto hws England's character, and how they might influence his attitudes and behaviours. because there's such a clearly defined stereotype of the english that i think shape people's expectations of what the english are like, i usually think that Arthur usually consciously acts according to what counts as positive interpretations of himself. however, i love nuanced and somewhat subversive interpretations of his character, and am very curious if you might have any ideas on how these kind of internal regional differences might shape him.

--------------------

Bougieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee <3

I’m not gonna lie this sent me down a RABBIT HOLE of thoughts, so hang on tight cos we're gonna get messy.

Accents:

Let’s start with my personal favourite, so excuse me whilst I geek out for a second. I’ve gone into this area already in this headcanon, but I personally see England being a very proud little dragon regarding English accents, those both native and non-native to the British Isles. Focusing just on accents within England for this post, the way Arthur himself sees them, (regarding class and general preference), comes a lot down to how I see him feeling about language and the unification of England in general.

England is a tiny country. It’s really teeny, compared to some, and yet holds an incredible number of regional accents and dialects (from digging about the internet for a good source, I keep finding numbers ranging from 37 to 43). There are a number of reasons for this, but the one that I love the most is that accents are influenced by the previous/ influential other languages spoken in a given area. Accents on the East of England are more influenced by Viking invaders, both phonologically and via the dialectal words used, and accents/ dialects in the West are more influenced by Welsh, for example.

Accents and dialects tell the history of a place, all who ever came there and influenced it to some degree. The map of English accents is a patchwork quilt of old cultures and people now lost to time, but their ways of speaking have been preserved in the modern tongue. The old English kingdoms might now be mere counties- Kent, Essex, Sussex, East Anglia, etc- they may not have their own influence or language these days as they used to, but their old ways have been imprinted on their people of today whether they know it or not and they carry pieces of the past in their words and how they speak them. Older speakers of the Northern English dialects liek the Yorkshire dialect still use ‘thou/thee’ where this has fallen out in other areas, the Midlands and parts of the South-East still keep the ‘-n’ ending for possessive pronouns (‘yourn’ instead of ‘yours’, ‘ourn’ instead of ‘ours’), and there’s even some linguistic research into how Brittonic, the ancestor of Modern Welsh, influenced English structure and phonology (for references, see notes at the end).

Back to England the person (to contain myself slightly), his regional accents are a story of himself, his history being kept alive in all of its variety every day. He doesn’t hold a classist view of a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ accent because he knows why they’re all there- what languages and people influenced them and how these events affected him- the older generations now lost and forgotten being kept alive in the smallest of phonemes.

Every dialect, every accent, and every language tells the story of a people, from the smallest phonological marker right up to a language as a whole and England takes comfort and pride in his dialects and accents’ longevity and variety. He is as much of the North as he is the South, as much of the East as the West and a patchwork man born of patchwork cultures it makes no sense for him to favour one particular accent over another.

That being said, he is aware that there is a common cultural stance on accents as well as an opinion regarding ‘ugly’ ones, ‘common’ ones, and ‘classy’ ones, but he himself doesn’t partake in these ideas. I like to think that a nation takes on the speech of the people and the area they’re in, matching the person they speak to or the area they visit to relate to their people. So, for me a Chav Arthur exists as much as a Brummie one does, or a Scouser, or a Geordie, or a Cockney. They’re all English, and thus they’re all a part of him.

Class

I have to include this one, if only to touch on it lightly regarding accents and dialects. Class does influence which words you speak, arguably just as much as which accent (this is known as a sociolect). Although I said that England adopts the accent of whatever area he’s in, or whomever he’s talking to if they’re English, the class people are will also affect which words he choses to use.

Here’s a short example from here:

'It is pudding for the upper class. Dessert is sometimes used by upper middles, but afters and sweets very clearly put you below stairs.'

Have some more!

Upper class: Spectacles, Lavatory or loo, Die, Napkin, Sofa

Middle class: Glasses, Toilet , Pass on, Serviette, Settee or couch

(Working class is a mix but harder to find sources for).

This is where England treads a fine line. It could be that he again adopts more of a class lexicon regarding who he is speaking to, matching his people word for word. However, England is not unaware of the affects of class, regardless of how he himself feels, and also although class snobbery and divide frustrate him, he cannot deny using this understanding to benefit himself, which also conforms to how his own people behave. (I myself have, many times, diluted and filtered my speech to be seen as ‘better’).

Want to be seen as more reliable and powerful? Want to be taken more seriously? RP and Estuary English (a lot more so these days), hold undeniable sway and England is not above adopting a manner of speaking to come across ‘better’ or more polite, or a more ‘common’ accent to fit in with the working classes. I think of England as leaning more towards a working-class mindset- he’s very hands on, very up for and used to manual labour and this particular English class has always made up the bulk of his population. It makes no sense for a nation, who represents all of their people, to have a snide view or a preference for a particular group and England as a person I see is someone who does not enjoy the foppery and false airs of aristocracy.

That being said, England is an intelligent man. He knows how to work a room and use a crowd to his advantage, knows what must be done and what he needs to do to achieve a goal and if this entails courting the upper classes for a time then he will do so. He’s adepts at switching himself like a chameleon, blending his behaviours, accent, and dialect to match who he’s talking to to achieve a goal or to fit in with someone’s perception of him, or to gain influence or prestige. He also doesn’t hate his upper classes- they are of him too, and the middle and working class have their own prejudices and ideas against the others. But he doesn’t adopt a stereotypical distain of lower classes because to him, it really doesn’t make much sense.

Abroad, this need to cultivate a particular perception defiantly comes under greater pressure. RP and Estuary English are more well know, more heard and taught, and more recognisably ‘British’, and so these are what he uses when speaking English to other nations or foreigners, either wanting to uphold an image of himself (more so in the Victorian/ Edwardian period than nowadays) or just for the ease of being understood.

Regional Differences

Okay, this one is a lot more fun. Does England put in his milk first or last when making tea? Does he put jam first, or clotted cream when having a scone? Does he have chips with gravy, or curry sauce? Does he have dinner at 6, or 9? To marmite, or not to marmite.

Ah, that is the question, and England does not know the answer. Does he do what he does because that’s what he likes, or because that’s what his people do? He didn’t grow up with these habits, after all, they’re all relatively recent in his lifetime, and so these habits are defiantly things he cultures for a particular audience.

I’m not really sure if the above preferences are class based, (well, milk first when making tea is argued to be, but I can't find any sources I'd consider entirely credible. I put the ones I did find in the notes below, in case any one's interested), so it’s hard to get a sense of which one to use. Overall, it doesn’t matter which you do and neither is right or wrong, but the English feel strongly about them, one way or another, and often Arthur the man isn’t sure at all which one he himself actually thinks is better.

Food in another sense though is something he can be surer of. A Cornish pastie not from Cornwall is not worth eating, nor is a Bakewell tart outside of Bakewell. England can be very particular about this sort of thing and enjoys maintaining and supporting the ‘original’ flavour or recipe of a thing where he can, considering this to be the ‘best’. Sally Lunn Buns from Bath, Gypsy tarts from Kent, Eccles Cakes from Eccles.

England wants to preserve his food and culture and has what could be considered a snobbish view on the ‘best’ way of creating or eating his national foods. Some things he is more lenient with: he will eat cheddar cheese, whether or not it is from Cheddar, same from Cumberland sausages not from Cumbria. But he certainly has a preference and he is not afraid to voice this when asked for his opinion.

Okay, we're done

Phew! This had me digging out my old linguistic student brain. To anyone who has made it this far down, gosh golly miss molly thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the ride, and especially @prickyy who was kind enough to want to hear my opinions about all of this <3

----------------------------------------

Notes:

Brittonic influence on English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittonicisms_in_English

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_url?url=http://journals.mountaintopuniversity.edu.ng/English%2520Language/Celtic%2520Influences%2520in%2520English%2520A%2520Re-evaluation.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2ohDYdq3BoWImwHn6oWQAg&scisig=AAGBfm29zTF0FBCpd1KqDiAbjM-0X7nfoA&oi=scholarr (PDF)

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar_url?url=http://www.oppi.uef.fi/wanda/unicont/abstracts/14ICEHL_MF.pdf&hl=en&sa=X&ei=2ohDYdq3BoWImwHn6oWQAg&scisig=AAGBfm3UvOXbJEb0b51J73eBnTJvgGaQOA&oi=scholarr (PDF)

Sociolects and class distinction within language in English:

https://languageawarenessbyrosalie.weebly.com/social-dialects.html

https://www.grin.com/document/313937

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U_and_non-U_English

Milk in tea first and the potential class reason:

https://www.theteaclub.com/blog/milk-in-tea/

https://qmhistoryoftea.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/milk-in-first-a-miffy-question/

49 notes · View notes

testingcheats0n · 3 years

Text

Detroit Become Human AU where:

-> Tommy is an up-and-coming livestreamer of the retro game Minecraft- forming part of a fledgling community of all-human players of the game. His growth is slow but steady and he has a future in a genre that had fallen out of fashion with the rise of the newest and more immersive VR games on the market. People love to see an actual human that could make mistakes and win against another fellow human fairly. The nostalgia it brought to some people is also undeniably at play.

It's worth noting that Tommy is a very lonely kid, with a non-existent social life since he and his family had to move to America after his father struck a lucrative business deal with his brilliant protege.

-> Wilbur, Tommy's older brother and only guardian after their father, Phil, dedicated his life to the creation of androids with his young but brilliant pupil Elijah Kamski, is a simple busker. It's hard to find a job at 24 with no previous experience or further education, he had to take care of Tommy, after all. True, their economic troubles never ended, and he could barely provide for Tommy, but at least they had each other, even if Wilbur was off to the streets of Detroit more often than not. He has no idea of his younger brother's blooming career in the gaming industry and is very worried about his future. The solution? A very suspicious android his best friend Schlatt offers for very cheap.

-> Phil Watson is a household name together with Elijah Kamski's, they created one of humanity's greatest tools, after all. Nothing suspicious here, they're definitely not hiding any potential deviancies from the code! In any case, his family never saw a dime of the frankly insane amount of money piling up in his bank account. He has an old phone he carries in his pocket every day with Wilbur's phone number, but he never dares to call it despite RN800, his assistant's, insistence that he was only making his own life harder. He is going to dial that phone number someday. Surely.

-> TU880 is an android from an old companion/educational line, discontinued after a few notable bugs and glitches in their core programming. Nothing serious, or life-threatening, but many customers have complained about disturbing behavior that falls straight into the uncanny valley- he's too human. Schlatt, his previous owner, refuses to disclose where he got TU880 from, nor does he have any legal documentation to prove he is his owner. Wilbur, desperate to find a solution for Tommy's perceived loneliness pays the fifty bucks his old pal asks for the android without asking any questions. It's weird for an adult to go around with a teen model created to counsel adolescents and help them with their homework. TU880 had problems with reading his grocery list, anyway.

-> Tommy is a bit weirded out, he thrives in an internet community which openly despises anything android, but his good friend Technoblade has plenty of useful advice, from maitenance to behavior. TU880 is odd, which he discards as kinks and bugs of the older models, but they get along nicely once TU880's programming kicks in. He likes to help Tommy edit his videos and speak about the problems of adolescence, he is oddly fond of bees or anything small and defenceless and likes to tell his 'dreams' of scientists in labcoats and other kids like him stuck in experiments. Tommy listens with half an ear, TU880 is his friend, after all. He thinks nothing of it.

-> It all becomes a bit too much when TU880 accidentally appears on camera during one of Tommy's streams. People assume he's Tommy's brother, and insist on getting an introduction. TU880 is ecstatic, but from what Tommy's told him, revealing his artificial status might harm his friend's career so he greets the chat as Toby, Tommy's older brother. The community goes wild and Tommy has to pretend that TU880 is his brother (which isn't that terrible per-se) and not the house assistant who has a complete psychological profile of him.

-> TU880 begins to feel strange, both regarding Tommy and his own place in the household. Calling Tommy hus brother is easy as calculus and makes his thirium pump skip a few beats, but he's not sure if he should be getting this attached. He's sure he is malfunctioning in some way, but Schlatt always assured him that he is fine. He thinks nothing of it and instead continues to watch over Tommy.

-> Minecraft is fun, and he eventually gets his own account on Wilbur's old (read: ancient) laptop despite possessing an internal processor powerful enough to play the game at its maximum capacity in his mind, and probably in a 3D holoprojector. At this point, he's in too deep and the friends he's making would certainly ask questions if he were to disappear. He has the opportunity to talk about anything at all to his growing audience, and the community is very welcoming in general once one integrates into their culture. He still doesn't feel it's fair to participate in the tournaments and all the other official competitions. People find it odd, but they assume he's not very good at PVP so no one tends to comment on it for now. It's okay though, he and his new friend Ranboo act as commentators during the events and everyone thinks they're pretty funny.

-> Ranboo is fun to be around. He just gets TU880- or as the internet knows him as, Tubbo. They click easily, sometimes the other boy seems just as confused about other people's reactions and behavior as Tubbo is (despite his in-depth knowledge of psychology. He's not quite connected to Cyberlife's database anymore and his learning algorithm is outdated at best.) and they like to spend their afternoons with Tommy, watching movies. The game overtakes their lives and they spend a lot of time playing privately with the best strategies Tubbo's advanced algorithms and Ranboo's sheer brilliancy can create. That's how they meet their friend Fundy, who is more than happy to keep their Technical Minecraft server a secret, as long as he gets to do his own thing with coding and they test it.

-> Tommy is just happy that he can use the cool farms for his own grinding.

-> Technoblade is Tommy's mysterious internet friend and fellow growing streamer. Everyone is sure that he's an android infiltrating the budding community, but after several years of isolated incidents, investigations, and online scandals no one was able to prove anything. Technoblade just never dies. (Tommy is 50% sure his friend is really an android, the older man simply refuses to comment). It is possible to spend months farming digital potatoes, people are just mean and want drama. Technoblade is just vibing. Incidentally, he's also the first one to figure out that Ranboo and Tubbo are androids. He is also the first one to figure out they're deviants. He doesn't mention it until much later though.

-> Jack and Niki Manifold have successfully founded their own mechanic business for android repairs. Cyberlife mumbled and grumbled at the siblings' repair shop, but in the end it was good for PR so they let them be. Tommy and Wilbur become their friends as TU880's frequent malfunctions inevitably bring the pair to the cheapest android repair service in the city. TU880 can't complain, Niki is sweet to him and understands what is wrong with him just by his description, since his diagnostics aren't working entirely and each an every single one of Jack's repairs last loner than every other mechanic he's been to.

-> Gradually, Tommy's fame becomes apparent, and Wilbur has the time to actually rest and spend time with his brother. He's just happy that they can be together. A weight is lifted off his shoulders and for the first time ever he feels like his little family has a future. Not even once does it pass through his mind that TU880 isn't acting like a typical android- he avoided the things on principle. Once, TU880 calls him his brother and he cries.

-> Sam is Cyberlife's very own private investigator. He is in charge of researching and turning in possible deviants that might help the company with developing a solution for the rising problem. In particular, he's been after the trail of a specific line of androids, the first one released by Kamski and Watson dubbed as TU. According to his investigations the line might have contained the code responsible for deviancy. Further research indicated that Kamski's code was based on a group project from the Dutch university for cibernetics.

-> Fundy is just a 21 y/o with a Twitch account and a passing interest in coding. Nothing serious, nothing suspicious. He absolutely wasn't part of the early AI coding trials that Kamski would later on use as the basis for his own code. If someone asks, he has no idea what ra9 means. He is almost sure that his friends are androids, the thought makes him very happy.

-> Puffy is Phil's new psychologist. Need I say more? Eventual Hurt/comfort baby!!!

#dream smp #detroid become human #crossover/au #tommyinnit #tubbo #ranboo #wilbur soot #dream smp au

128 notes · View notes

mmvalentine · 3 years

Text

The Pianist pt 2 | Jurdan

Modern AU. Read part 1 part 3.

Jude was having a good day.

The landlord had been ignoring her emails, as usual, but somehow Cardan had had a quiet week this week. She would have thought he was away, or sick or something, had she not been seeing him with his friends in their regular booth at the diner. And even those pricks couldn’t get her down today.

She whistled as she tied on her apron.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” Van commented.

“I am,” Jude replied. “Someone left me fifty bucks this morning.”

Van whistled. “Damn, which cafe has those kind of tips?” he asked.

“None of them,” Jude told him. “I was busking at the subway station.”

Jude always spent her free time busking. It was mostly for fun, but she did derive an amount of satisfaction knowing that any of her money, even if it was just a few dollars at a time, came from her singing.

“Well I hate to bring you down, but you’ve got table 13 this morning.”

“I know,” Jude said, sticking her notebook in her apron pocket and picking up the coffee pot. “But you know what? I don’t care today.”

Jude strolled to her table, and stared around at them with a grim determination. The table's usual occupants stared back.

Nicasia, a beautiful dancer with blue hair. Twenty years ago, her mother was the principal dancer at New York City Ballet, and she now sat on the board of directors.

Valerian, an actor who got into a punch up the previous year when he lost a role and nearly got expelled. His parents were wealthy and connected enough that he wasn't.

Locke, who wrote plays and scripts and was vaguely known to dabble in music and dance as well. His father was a Broadway producer and a few of Locke's works had been staged in small theaters already.

And Cardan. The beautiful, talented, awful, hedonistic pianist himself.

"Hello and welcome to Elfhame's diner, what can I get for you?"

She didn't bother with the sickly sweet smile she usually put on for customers. These people were the worst, and she would simply maintain her dignity and not let them get to her. The fifty dollar note was warm in her bra, like a good luck charm.

"Hey... Jude," Nicasia said, peering at Jude's nametag like they hadn't been coming to this diner and served by her several times a week for the past four years. Valerian burst into a Beatles chorus. "You know," she continued, "I've seen you around."

Jude rolled her eyes. "Yes, I've only been working in this diner since you guys started coming here, so you've probably seen me before."

"No," Nicasia said. "Not here."

"Well," Jude responded impatiently. "I also work at Mab's Tavern and Java Island. Girl's gotta eat. I'm 'around'."

But Nicasia shook her head. "No honey, I've seen you seen you. You sing outside the Lincoln Centre subway station."

Jude froze. It was more than confirmation enough for Nicasia, whose eyes took on a predatory glow.

"It is you, I knew I recognised you from somewhere!" Nicasia leaned her chin in her hands. "Sing us something, darling."

"You want music? The jukebox is over there," Jude told her. "Now what do you want to eat?"

"Oh come on," Valerian said, crossing his ankles on the corner of the table. "Let's have a little live entertainment while we eat!"

"Yes," Nicasia purred. "You know, if we like it we might even put a good word in for you at Juilliard."

"I'm sure she's wonderful," Locke said. He looked at her. "Jude, don't listen to them, you don't have to do anything you don't want to."

Cardan said nothing. Just sat with his head on the table, probably nursing a hangover.

"Maybe you could sing us the specials," Valerian suggested. Then he frowned. "Although, if you're terrible, that might put us all off our appetites."

"You can all order now," Jude said, smiling widely, "or you can all have sloppy joes. I don't care one way or the other."

"Touchy," Nicasia frowned. But then she ordered, and the boys followed suit. Valerian broke out in another rendition of 'Hey Jude' as she walked away, until she heard Cardan tell him to kindly shut up. Jude could not comment on his acting ability, but Valerian was a god-awful singer.

/////

Cardan sat with his head on the table and his hangover shoved up his nose.

This week he had actually gotten some sleep. Just not in his bed- he had fallen asleep on the floor most nights, listening to the woman's voice in the downstairs apartment. He had even tinkered the song she sang on the piano once or twice, but then felt so desperately pathetic that he went out with Locke and Valerian last night and they all got black out drunk and woke up in Nicasia's room. Cardan had no memory of going there, but they had all trudged out for a late breakfast this morning and he had no idea how the rest of them were so chipper.

He didn't know what they were talking about but at some stage Valerian started singing- if you could call it that- and Cardan raised his head long enough to order. "Coffee. Just... coffee."

The waitress nodded, and for a second she looked hauntingly familiar. But then she turned on her heel and was gone, and Cardan's forehead found the cool metal surface of the table once more.

Cardan had not heard back from his parents, but now that he knew they were going to be in the audience for his next performance, he suddenly had no idea what to play. He had originally planned to compose something for the occasion, but inspiration had dried up, and he had barely played anything all week. Had very little motivation at all, and might even have just crawled into bed and stayed there had his friends not insisted on dragging him around with them.

The next day they decided to look for the waitress around the different subway stations.

Lord knew why; Cardan hadn't been paying attention because he didn't care much what they had to say at the best of times let alone when the outside air itself seemed to rub harshly against his skin. It was times like these that he had to rather wrack his brain for why these people were his friends in the first place. He supposed they had always been his friends, they were the children of his parents' friends and somehow this made them his own friends by default. Or something like that.

At any rate, he was towed along the subway line, from station to station and in general spending much more time underground in the space of an hour than he had otherwise done all year. Cardan had no idea why they were so determined to find the waitress- she was attractive enough, but Nicasia and Valerian in particular had previously been very vocal about their criteria for who they hung out with. People who worked in diners tended not to make the cut.

Finally, when he could smell more of the Harlem River than he wanted to, Nicasia stopped them.

"There she is," she breathed. And at first, Cardan was just happy to stop walking. But then he heard her.

She was singing 'Ain't No Sunshine,' but Cardan knew her voice from a different song. A wordless lullaby that floated up through the air vents and sang to him at night. A cure for the insomnia that had plagued him for twenty years and then some. He'd know it if she were singing Old MacDonald.

Jude. That was her name, he realised with a jolt. And more surprisingly, she was gorgeous. How had he not realised before? Cardan watched her sing, with her eyes closed and her hands moving, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

The other three giggled on the sidewalk, and as the song came to an end, they tripped forward to talk to her. Jude looked around with a smile that could break a man's heart, as the crowd around her applauded. And then she looked up and saw his friends, and her smile vanished. Saw him, and he had no idea what to do once her doe brown eyes were on him. He just turned, and walked quickly away.

Okay okay I think we have direction! Let me know what you think!

****

JURDAN MASTERLIST

TAGLIST: @asteria-of-mars @swankii-art-teacher @loosingdreams @feysand-loml @cityofbookish @story-scribbler

#jurdan #jurdan fic #tfota #mine

58 notes · View notes

arkus-rhapsode · 3 years

Text

MHA Chapter 315 Discussion-An Almost Great Conclusion, But Misses It’s Mark

Hi guys, Rhapsode here and it’s time for another MHA discussion. I haven’t really done one in a while, but after reading 315, I had a lot of thoughts I was working through. And before I start I want to say, I do not think this chapter is overtly bad. I think there’s a lot of good ideas to it, and overall nothing objectively bad. However, as the climax to this Deku vs Lady Nagant fight, I felt it didn’t quite hit its mark (pun not intended).

If you want my brief opinion of this current arc of “solo Deku”, I actually enjoy it quite a bit. I’m happy Horikoshi refocused on Deku after such a long war arc. As well as Deku FINALLY be proactive in his hero duties. No longer on the rails of the school setting. And I have especially enjoyed his current fight with Lady Nagant.

In terms of sheer action, it’s got a tried and true set up of a sniper battle, but then adds to it by taking the fight into the air. The action is hectic in all the right ways with the unpredictable bullets cutting up Deku as he dodges them with Danger Sense. As well as the introduction to a new quirk of OFA.

But where this fight really shines is Nagant and her origin. Lady Nagant was hero assigned to maintain the illusion of order by getting rid of potential threats and heroes up to no good for the Hero Safety Commission. Until being told to kill in the name of improving society and any of her activities being covered up finally weighed on her and she killed the then president of the Commission and placed in Tartarus. While she’s only hunting down Deku because she’s assigned to, she says that even if AFO wants to rule the world, it’d be more transparent than a return to the status quo.

It’s honestly a great reveal as it finally puts out in the open the actual corruption in the system that’s hinted at, but was never really delved into. But now it also finally has Deku confront the problems of the status quo that he’s grown up in. This isn’t an ideological battle like with Stain on the definition of hero or reaching people who have fallen through the cracks of society like Gentle. This is real flaws with the system that people have had faith in from the mouth of someone who has done their dirty work.

It’s something I think a lot of people have wanted to see. And I’m glad Horikoshi finally did dive into it the structural problems of hero society.

So how does this all get resolved in 315? How does all this end? Well after Lady Nagant targets Overhaul and shoots at him to make the situation harder for Deku to focus, Deku without hesitation goes into trying to save Overhaul (despite knowing Overhaul is a villain), Deku homages All Might and then shatters Nagant’s arm, and finally Deku makes an observation that Nagant wasn’t really going to hit Overhaul and that if she seeing the darkness of society, she knows where to expose it as she still has the heart of a hero. Nagant should join Deku.

But then AFO activates an explosive power right as Nagant is coming around. The blast fries her as Hawks arrives and we’re left on the cliffhanger of “is she going to survive.”

Now after reading this, my feelings have been… mixed. Let me get out this out of the way there is nothing with this chapter I disagree with: I have no problem with Deku making an emotional appeal to Nagant, I have no problem with AFO acting like a heel, and I have no problem with Nagant not being fully evil and never intending to kill. I know that last one has upset some people, but given Nagant’s backstory of killing innocent people for others because they told her so is the reason she fell off her path in the first place. So it makes sense she never intended on killing anyone.

And I know some people have nitpicked how it’s the female villain who isn’t fully evil, but that honestly doesn’t matter to me. As narratively, this arc started with the attack by Muscular and Deku couldn’t reach him. So it’d make sense to potentially end this mini arc on an example of Deku reaching and reforming a villain. It also helps that Nagant has actual layers to her motivation that could actually allow her to be swayed away.

Now my real issue with this chapter is honestly a problem that I was afraid Hori would do after he introduced just how messed up the Commissions back dealings, it’s that Deku doesn’t really take any concrete stance on what should be done about this status quo. Instead, Deku focuses more on telling Nagant she is a real hero and he ultimately wins her over after showing how much a real hero he is.

While Nagant uses the term “fake”, “sham”, and “phony” when discussing heroes and hero society, it doesn’t address the bigger issue. Namely that she feels this way because of the corrupt and unheroic things the Commission has done to maintain faith in it. Deku offers no actual answer to the very real and very hard question she poses.

And his only real response is this:

(I’m being generous as there can be something lost in translation here and it’s a bit on the flowery side )

While Deku did acknowledge this world isn’t Black and white and he’s saying she can expose corruption if she works with them, he dodges actually offering a solution to her concerns about the status quo. Instead more time is devoted to the same kind of “I will save anyone” appeal he always does.

And while one could argue Nagant’s only on the side of AFO because his reign would keep the Commission from having the power they did, even if she doesn’t fully believe in him. She still poses why being ruled by AFO has its appeal to her and Deku doesn’t actually counter that. No pointing out the obvious anarchy that could result from this or how AFO uses even the people he claims to love like Shigaraki. Deku doesn’t rebuff anything and once again passes the tough decisions onto other people. With Hawks appearance here at the end and his baggage about killing Twice, I can very easily see cleaning up the commission as becoming his motivation going forward. Once again resolving Deku of actually needing to make hard calls or form stances.

This is compounded by the fact AFO just blows Nagant up. It really doesn’t matter if you rebuff anything that AFO has said or offered to convince Nagant to join you, there’s no way she’d work with him after he attempts to kill her. Which feels like it undercuts this conversation about morally gray society.

Look we all know that AFO is evil. The audience knows and this is absolutely what he would do, but if you’re trying to give all of the illusion that we’re finally confronting issues with society and bringing this up and why we would get people loyal to AFO or people like the liberators or people like stain. And trying to sway someone away, then just having him nuke them for having a change of opinion. then it undercuts any actual ambiguity of a clash built on addressing moral grayness. Which I feel is always been one of the strengths of MHA.

I was not expecting Deku to have a thesis on how he plans to dismantle the shady parts of society. Or go full Eren Yeager and become his own revolutionary. But when confronted by a villain who isn’t like Shigaraki or Toga or Twice, who fell through the cracks in the system and needed a safety net like Deku wants to be, Nagant was a part of the system. The corruption of society runs deep in her motivation and Deku doesn’t really address it beyond acknowledging its flaws. And yet his actions of “true heroism” are enough to sway her. It just feels incomplete. There is a brief line that you can interpret of him wanting to clean up the system, but it feels way too short for a moment like this. Deku being confronted by all the darkness of a system he admires should cause him to make some kind of stance.

And no, I’m not going to speculate on if Lady Nagant is actually dead and this will finally forced Deku to take a firmer stance or what have you. I do want to keep these discussions at least relative to when they are released and in this moment the thing that wins over Nagant is the same “save everyone”/“inspiration by example” Deku usually does. Which doesn’t feel as satisfying a conclusion as it could be.

Not helped by a good chunk of this chapter being taken up by explaining all the bits and bobs of OFA’s power system and finally explaining what exactly his third quirk does. This feels like padding when I wanted the space could’ve been used for character dialogue or a continuation of their conversation about the status quo.

I do want to repeat though that there is nothing outwardly bad with this chapter. There is no real objective failure in the writing. It’s just a case of, “ this could be stronger.” And that’s the frustrating part.

Tl;dr there’s a lot of things that are good about this chapter from a technical and narrative level. The natural progression of characters and the switching of allegiance makes sense. however it’s just all shy of really living up to a lot of the stuff it sets up about society and going back to the status quo. As Deku doesn’t seem to have any real concrete stance beyond his usual.

And because a lot of the things around it are very good it makes it a lot more noticeable when it doesn’t quite stick the landing. Not helped by what feels like nothing more than padding with the explanation of quirk ability instead of character introspection about this very legit and difficult revelation. There is nothing outwardly bad, it’s one of those cases of something that could be an 8-9/10 ends up more as a 5-6/10.

That’s my opinion at least. But I am extremely interested in seeing where Hori goes with this. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

#my hero academia #boku no hero academia #MHA 315 #bnha 315 #my hero academia discussion #my hero academia 315 #boku no hero academia 315 #izuku midoriya #deku midoriya #lady nagant #hawks #all for one #keigo takami #hero safety commission #overhaul #kai chisaki #my hero academia chapter 315 #boku no hero academia chapter 315

67 notes · View notes

sometimesrosy · 3 years

Note

Hey. It's been a long time since I had a question. Maybe the 100's demise was the reason.

Now coming to my actual query. This past year I have binged numerous shows ranging from American to korean dramas or Turkish dizis. There is certain thing that I have felt and noticed throughout i.e., the woman characters aren't given even a slight leeway by the audience. If the even make a slight mistake, the audience remembers it always to stand against that character. Whereas if there is a male villain, people gets cheerful seeing even a slight bit of humanity in him. They even wait for its redemption.

Let me take an example of a Turkish show "kara sevda(black love)". A one line synopsis can be put like- two leads who love each other endlessly but can never be together. So, the villain in that show is beyond redemption. That character has fallen so far off that there is no coming back. But still when he is playing with a baby, people's comments are like 'best moment of the show.' 'see he is such a good person'. 'the female lead should accept his love'. Am like what?

And if I tell you about the female lead. She is a good person at heart who is sacrificing love for family. And she is labelled "selfish" by audience. 'She doesn't deserve the male lead' etc. And you know I too felt like that for the majority of the show until I reached the point of self reflect.

Even Clarke from the 100 faced so much hate that there wasn't any visible backlash when in the end the makers made her a villain. The backlash was for Bellamy death and stupid end instead.

Looking through tv series, it's so easy to see why tv or films doesn't have female anti heroes. Male anti heroes are so easy to find and also widely successful like Damon from tvd or Klaus.

What is your take?

Yup!

Yes.

Definitely.

You are absolutely correct. The leeway for female characters to show human imperfection is very, very thin. Meanwhile, a guy can literally blow up a planet, kill his beloved father, have temper tantrums with kicking and screaming and torture the female main characters and fandom-- and the creators-- think that makes him a hero. And the requirements for his redemption, if there are any at all amounts to:

WOOPSIE! I'M SOWWY.

I simply do NOT understand that phenomenon.

I mean, I get the need to relate to darker characters, morally gray characters, to explore our own negative impulses...but the whole tendency is, for me anyway, given a more sinister light when you compare how the audience tends to treat these outright villainous male characters compared to even SLIGHTLY morally gray female characters. Maybe just flawed.

It also interferes with satisfying redemption arcs. Because YES watching someone face their dark past and attempt to become better and be redeemed is a great story... but if male characters only have to wear a cape and be hot to be redeemed.... then that's not a satisfying redemption arc. And if women can't do ANYTHING to be redeemed because they are considered irredeemably selfish or whatever for the same flaws someone's Hot Dark Badboy smirks about and isn't even sorry for? Then we barely even get redemption stories for women.

And that's part of the problem, isn't it? Women aren't allowed the same representation as men... even as flawed characters.

The point of good representation is not to represent only the best, most perfect, most desirable, most successful type of people. The point is to allow everyone of any sex, race, gender, sexuality, religion, class, ability, etc to take part in the full spectrum of humanity in our stories, good and bad and mediocre. A female Mary Sue is just the female version your general male hero. One is considered bad storytelling the other is taken as The Way It Should Be.

Women are not allowed to have flaws in most of our pop culture, or women are ghettoized into only women's fic or romance or YA, or women take backseat to male villains, or whatever.

I'm writing a book where the woman abandoned her child, and she sleeps around and cons people and avoids commitment. I purposely wrote her to be unlikable.... or rather, she's not unlikable, she's clever and funny and weird, but she has characteristics that women aren't supposed to have. She essentially acts like a male anti-hero, until her call to action and she is forced to face her past mistakes. But I know that these are things that audiences say are irredeemable for women. Abandon her own child?? No. Not allowed. Even though plenty of male characters go off on adventures leaving wife and child behind and it isn't even considered a character flaw, just... a male adventurer. Or honestly, just a guy. Sure one who's imperfect, but that old ball and chain was probably the worst, right? He had to move on and now he has a tragic backstory and complexity and oh the audience will probably either want to be him or want to be with him, because, that's how these things work.

Not saying that characters shouldn't be dark, do bad things, have flaws, be anti-heroes, have redemption arcs, or have a deep, multilayered villainy.

But I am saying we might want to be a little more critical about what we consider irredeemable for certain people and what war crimes and abuse we let some characters get away with in the name of bold (white) masculinity.

IS the nature of being a (white) man we look up to someone who destroys other people?

I think that toxic masculinity IS seen as sexy. Unfortunately, that's one of the reasons it's seeped into our culture. Manly (white) men who abandon kids and kill without remorse, but with muscles. Manly (white) men who murder whole regions because bad things happened to them, and smolder while doing it. Manly (white) men who commit genocide regularly, but fall for the heroine and save her once. Manly (white) men who are serial killers but with an intriguing depth.

tbh there's lots more to say on the topic, some of it very controversial. These are the stories we like to hear and the characters we love. And it might be rooted in the toxic masculinity that our society has been selling to us as propaganda for decades, if not centuries-- but we don't like to be told to examine our biases, our tastes, our preferences, or our beliefs. It's threatening to our sense of self.

However, that is how you unravel all sorts of toxic belief systems, from misogyny to racism to homophobia to bigotry of all kinds. I added the (white) to this post after I read through it, because I realized non white male characters are not allowed this leeway, either. So this phenomenon is generally (not always) limited to white men. Why?????

my theory? we're still making the colonialists the heroes of the story, friends.

#misogyny #toxic masculinity #media #anti heroes and villains #colonialism #pop culture #fandom #redemption arcs

34 notes · View notes

rainbowoverdragon · 3 years

Text

Thoughts on Ryo

This is an analysis of Zane Truesdale/Ryo Marufuji, focusing on his mindset as well as his relationships with other people. As I am basing this off the original Japanese version for standardization, all names likewise are their sub counterparts.

When Sho obtains a rare and powerful card from his brother, he believes he has it made. After this, Sho finds the courage to confront his bully in a duel. So after he draws Power Bond, Sho thinks he has it made. He gloats to the bully, insulting him, making outlandish claims out of the arrogant belief that he can't lose. Before he can use it, Sho is interrupted by the very person who gifted him that card. "You aren't worthy to use that card yet. Until you have what it takes to be called a duelist, I declare that card off-limits.'' Devastated by this statement, Sho proceeded to view himself as incapable of dueling for years; unworthy of Power Bond. It’s an establishing character moment for both Marufuji brothers, setting Ryo up as an impossible standard to reach in Sho’s eyes. However, for Ryo, his intentions are revealed to be more well-intentioned than Sho is led to believe. In episode 8, Sho realizes that Ryo wished for Sho to treat his own power with respect: towards both his opponent and his high-risk high-reward cards. This constant cycle of good intentions and misplaced words leads to a negative feedback loop between the brothers that seems impossible to resolve. Ryo struggles to convey his own observations to others in a way that doesn’t come off as condescending. Sho cannot take things past face value, and places his brother upon a pedestal that he cannot surpass. After all, how can you beat perfection itself?

During his years in Duel Academy, Ryo is the embodiment of perfection. He is the opposite of his brother, never missing a single mark in any area. Everyone constantly refers to Ryo as “perfect”, from his teachers to his peers to even the Kaiser himself. He even soundly beats Judai in the first duel they have together, a feat seen as impossible by the audience. But it’s this very idea of perfection that haunts Ryo, as he believes that perfection implies stagnation. If Ryo has perfect scores in class, there is no way to improve them. If he reached the peak of his potential in one duel, that means it’s all downhill from there. His greatest fears are confirmed when he loses to Edo in the Pro Leagues, starting a chain of losses that ruins his career beyond repair. Ryo is perfect. He is so perfect, that during his school years he never truly struggled against an opponent (Aside from Judai in Episodes 51-52 however he maintained the advantage for the majority of the duel). In fact, he suffered from the opposite problem. As Ryo is too powerful, he’d purposely hold back until his peers could unleash their trump cards against him. Only then did he defeat them with just enough power to avoid humiliation. His first loss wasn’t only his first loss, it was the first time Ryo found himself in a disadvantaged position. His inexperience with failure led to him associating the mere act of struggle with the idea of loss. Ryo’s inability to move past this is his own self-fulfilling prophecy. Being afraid of failure makes people play to not lose. Playing to not lose instead of playing to win causes chokes, which results in losses. Unable to break from this cycle, Ryo is abandoned by his sponsors. Which is why the idea of Underground Duels, a place where he can start over and regain his bearings is so enticing. At least, until they reveal the condition.

And at first, Ryo despises the Underground. He appeals to be released, he states it’s not what dueling is, it’s nothing like he could ever imagine. And how could it be? Ryo’s life is on the line, and for no good reason. The shock collars are there to make things fun for the audience, not for any other benefit! In his duel with Sho, who says that 'this isn't dueling', Ryo even admits he thought the same thing. It spits on the very concept of respecting your opponent. The collars humiliate you, egging you on to forget about the other person. And in general, is amoral (as well as a human rights violation). Underground Duels are almost always life or death, because nobody fights harder than people who are convinced they are going to die. And Ryo is convinced that if he duels the way that he always has, if he clings into his morals, he will die. His opponent, Mad Dog, purposely created a deck to counter him. So why should he respect him? Why should he not aim to win? Why can’t he aim to survive? After crawling from hell, nothing is the same for the Kaiser. Because every duel is another reminder that he survived. He is unable to see any match he takes for fun, every duel to him is life or death. In the real world, there are people who lose and wither away, and people who win and thrive. And by god, he wants to feel alive. He spent so long losing, something utterly unthinkable for the Kaiser of Duel Academy. Ryo was undefeated before, now he truly wishes to not experience it again. If forcing himself to feel that every fight of his is to the death, literally or mentally, then so be it. He continues dueling in the Underground, continues to utilize the shock collars he once despised. No matter what cost, health or mind, Ryo requires victory.

When Ryo is told that his health is failing from his shock collars, he doesn’t seek medical attention. Because to Ryo, being alive is more important than living. He transformed into Hell Kaiser achieved the great power that comes from becoming a monster, at the cost of self-destruction. He flirted with death, and finally has to pay the price. And he doesn’t care. As long as Ryo obtains what he wishes, he is happy. And what the Hell Kaiser wants more than anything else, is one last duel to surpass all others. Ryo would rather reach the limit of his capabilities, and die meeting them than waste away quietly to be forgotten forever. Thus he seeks Yubel, the strongest monster spirit in the Universe. If he meets an opponent of his caliber and 'shines' during the mattle, then he’d have nothing to fear in death. But he does. After entering his long-awaited match, Ryo admits to not wanting to die. He wants to live, he wants to leave a mark that can never be forgotten. Yet he doesn’t want to die. Ryo has achieved everything he wanted, shown the strongest he has been or will ever be. Before he duels Yubel, he comes to a revelation. At first, Ryo wished to fight the strongest being to win. He doesn't care anymore. Ryo is dying, win or lose the result is the same. Since he turned Hell Kaiser, Ryo only respected victory. The joy he obtained by knowing he survived another duel is utterly meaningless against Yubel. What happiness does he obtain knowing he survived….when he isn’t going to live to begin with? He understands that the duel itself is what makes Ryo feel alive, doing the most with what remaining time he has with his life. As Ryo tells Judai, his death is the end of the road for people who glorify power. And thus it’s no surprise that Ryo is taken out by the card he is associated with most: Power Bond. A card that lets you receive unthinkable amounts of power, at the price of self-destruction.

Out of all the people who save Judai from himself, the Kaiser’s impact is one of the most apparent. It takes someone who knows the suffering someone else goes through to achieve empathy, especially in Judai's case. Judai struggles with sympathy, as shown with his interactions with Sho in Seasons 1-3. Whenever Sho asks for help with his confidence, Judai gives him the helpful advice of "Don't be anxious!" Judai cannot comprehend being insecure with one's capabilities, thus he cannot help Sho directly. In contrast, Judai is more receptive to empathy. Manjoume's crisis in Season 1 revolved around the pressure others placed upon him to succeed. Judai deeply understands his strife, and helps him fight for himself. This is why Misawa's speech about accountability fails to help Judai utilize Polymerization. Misawa has no fundamental basis to understand Judai's feelings. In contrast, Kaiser's duel with Yubel awakens Judai's character growth. Ryo is Judai's cautionary tale, a warning of self-fulfilling prophecies. During the Graduation Duel, Ryo tells Judai that he possesses infinite potential compared to himself. This rings true in watching Ryo's belief of his own lack of capability to change, resulting in his inability to change because he destroyed himself beyond repair. In contrast, Judai has not fallen to this path. Watching Ryo's descent as well as his late realization means everything to Judai: especially someone so responsive to empathy. This is because they are mirrors of each other, to the point their character’s arcs are entirely parallel to one another. Both are idolized for the power they hold over others, both of them experience the loss of the pedestal they once stood upon. Both achieve the sharpest fall from grace (against an opponent with ‘Mad’ in their title), which leads to them glorifying their own power and abusing it against others. Despite their friends trying to help them, it is ultimately up to themselves to self-actualize their shortcomings. However it is Ryo, who thinks he cannot change, who succumbs upon his own revelation. And it is Ryo, who always believed in Judai’s infinite potential even in the Graduation Duel, who changes Judai’s path. Without Ryo, Judai would be unable to utilize his power responsibly. Because Judai now knows what happens to people who push themselves too far, just like how he used to. Power is not something to be afraid of or abused, but to use responsibly.

The Hell Kaiser doesn’t entirely work for others; he even states he fought Yubel out of selfish motivations. However, Ryo is also constantly associated with lighthouses. To the people that mean the most to him, Ryo is a light that tries to guide others to safety. However lighthouses are far away from the people they try to save, and thus it takes the initiative of others to help themselves after seeing the light from afar. This is shown by Ryo’s relationships with the people he’s closest to remaining fundamentally the same from his own side: regardless of his actual guidance being positive or negative. Ryo’s actions and intentions around Sho remain the same across both his younger self and Hell Kaiser: each time trying to guide Sho to become the best version of himself. "Until you have what it takes to be called a duelist, I declare that card off-limits."", is the devastating statement Ryo told Sho as kids. But Ryo believed his brother needed to understand true power in respect, guiding Sho away from arrogance and towards the light of good. His brother's weakness required defending. This concept is twisted on its head once Ryo becomes Hell Kaiser, who only views power or meaning in victory. Thus he employs the same tactic, because Ryo does not see the difference between restricting Power Bond to teach respect, and having Sho experience the same pain he did to ditch it.

Both Ryo and Hell Kaiser sing the same song. Ryo intends on ‘protecting’ his weaker brother by teaching him right from wrong. Both times, Sho and Ryo misunderstand each other. At first, Sho doesn’t comprehend the real reason why Ryo forbade Power Bond. The second time, Ryo doesn’t understand how Sho can cling to his own beliefs of respect even if he loses because of it. However, the one time Ryo’s words connect is when he saves Sho in season 3. And even then, it’s an admission of distance between the two. Ryo sees Sho’s pain inflicted by Judai far outweighs what Ryo had done to Sho. Thus Ryo advises Sho to follow Judai, since it’s what his heart truly desired all along. He then leaves, to force Sho into walking his own path. Ryo cannot spell out Sho's wishes any more than he does. And if Sho is alone, then he is forced to swim instead of sink.

Ryo’s association with lighthouses in canon directly correlates to Fubuki. As much as Fubuki is associated with darkness, Ryo is quite literally the light that shines through to him. When Fubuki was overtaken by Darkness in the first arc, we later find out that Ryo regrets being unable to find Fubuki no matter how much information and effort he scrounged up. Fubuki then replies that the mere act of trying saved him, as he could see Ryo’s feelings in spite of the darkness that consumed him. To Fubuki, Ryo is the lighthouse that guides people through the darkness. And when Fubuki is overtaken by the Darkness in an attempt to save Ryo from it, Ryo’s feelings once again vanquishes Fubuki from the dark. However, instead of the Kaiser saving Fubuki, Hell Kaiser explicitly protects him from Darkness. Because the two are friends, even after everything Ryo’s been through. This leads Fubuki to a revelation that no one else understands: Hell Kaiser is not fundamentally different from Ryo. Fubuki realizes that even as Hell Kaiser, Ryo respected Fubuki. Why else would he save him from Darkness? Indeed, every interaction of Ryo’s major interpersonal relationships are fundamentally the same. It’s simply his worldview that shifted. As much as Ryo wishes to respect others, he doesn’t think he can in a world where everyone must take advantage of their life to the fullest extent.

And Ryo, who cannot change because he thinks he cannot change, stayed as he was until it was far too late to be saved.

#yugioh #ygo #yugioh gx #ygo gx #ryo marufuji #zane truesdale #gx

24 notes · View notes