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madamewriterofwrongs · 3 years

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I'm so sorry, it's such a horrible day all around and I'm sending you al the good vibes I can find. I've never really sent a prompt before, but if you felt like writing some Buddie 2.01 AU, where their first meeting wasn't actually their first meeting, that might be fun? Or literally anything, everything you write makes me smile! Hope it gets better soon!! ❤

Hey! Thank you for sending this. Tonight has been an absolute shitshow of emotions but having something to focus on definitely helped.

So, yeah. This is a First Meeting AU of sorts. Again, thank you for giving me something to do other than cry. I really appreciate it.

Dear Eddie,

Thank you for being my bunk buddy. I had a really good camp with you. Please write me from Texas.

From, Buck.

Dear Buck,

Hi from Texas. Thank you for the bracelet. My sister said bracelets are for girls but I don’t care. I also had a really good time at camp and I can’t wait to go next year. Will you be there, next year? Maybe we could bunk together again. School starts soon and I’m a little nervous because fifth grade is my last year at this school and I don’t want to leave my friends behind. What’s your favourite subject in school? Mine

Dear Eddie,

Please tell your sister than anyone can wear bracelets and that if she tries to make fun of them again, the ghost of Camp Kuriakas will haunt her dreams. I tried that on my sister but she just laughed at me so maybe you’ll have better luck. Mom says I can’t go back to camp next year because we’re moving and it will be too far away. But don’t worry, you can write me from camp and tell me all about it. I don’t really like school but I do like the library. I’ve been reading this book called

Dear Buck,

Camp wasn’t as fun without you but you were right about Suzie Pecoski, she had to leave a day early because the popcorn got stuck in her braces. Jose laughed but I told him not to and he told Counselor Lia that I punched him. So after dinner, I did. He didn’t tell that time. I still missed you though. I hope your new house is nice. What is your room like?

Dear Eddie,

I can’t believe I start high school tomorrow. I tried to call Maddie and ask for advice but she didn’t pick up so I guess I’m on my own for this one. Except I’m not alone because I have you. You’d answer if I called, right, Eddie? Anyways, I’ve been thinking about your theory about the island being purgatory

Buck,

I have no idea what I’m doing but I definitely think I just asked Kylie Wilcox to the dance. I am freaking out! Kylie’s nice and she’s so pretty but I didn’t mean to ask her. I just meant to ask if she needed someone to help on the committee. But I guess I have a date to the dance. What do I even wear? I’m not asking Sophia. One: she’s two years younger and would just make fun of all my choices and Two: she would definitely tell Adriana who would tell mom who would tell dad and then I’d never hear the end of it. Help me, Buck, you’re my only hope!

Eddie,

You do remember that these letters take weeks to get to me, right? Didn’t the dance already happen? I hope you didn’t trip over your two left feet and fall flat on your face. Oh wait. Yes I do. That’d be so funny. And you need to have more fun, Diaz.

Buck,

Have you ever had feelings for a guy that you thought you could only have for a girl?

Hi Eddie,

Isn’t email so much better? We’re one step closer to communicating like human beings. Welcome to the 21st century. Anyways, graduation’s coming up and my dad keeps asking me where I’m going to go to college and I don’t know how much longer I can keep avoiding answering him. How do I tell him I failed? How am I going to face him? He’s going to be so disappointed in me. Maddie and Doug are driving in for the ceremony and I haven’t even told her that they’re letting me walk across the stage out of pity. I’m scared.

Dear Buck,

Greetings from El Paso! Remember when I said I was never going to work for my father? Guess who’s the newest employee. I suppose it’s a good thing. This thing with Shannon is getting serious and I know I should have a stable job. I just thought I’d have a little time, you know? I thought I’d get to be me for a little bit. Sorry Seattle didn’t work out. Hey, maybe you could try Texas next. Try all four corners of the country, right? That wouldn’t be so bad.

Dear Eddie,

I am writing from an internet café in Guatemala. Don’t ask me how I got here, I’m not entirely sure myself but I know it involved tequila. And possibly the guy I woke up next to (I think his name was Nico?) but who knows. Congratulations on Shannon getting pregnant!!! I know you’re freaking out. You don’t have to tell me that you’re freaking out because I know you. But you’re going to be a great dad. Hell, you’ve been half-raising me since you helped me learn my times tables at camp. I can’t believe what losers we were that we stayed up all night doing math. Anyways, I’ll let you know when I’m back in the states. And STOP FREAKING OUT.

Dear Buck,

I’m sorry it’s taken so long to reply. The WiFi’s shit over here. I’m actually typing this from a hospital bed. Don’t worry, I’m okay. Or at least I will be. They said they’re sending me home and (you’re the only one I can tell this to) I got scared. I don’t know what’s waiting for me back in Texas. I don’t know what I’m coming home to. The officers keep telling me that it was an honor to serve my country and Shannon keeps telling me that she would rather I serve my family. I thought I was doing that but I was wrong. I was wrong about a lot of things, Buck, but there’s one thing I do know. Only one of us is throwing our life away for a worthy cause.

Eddie,

You are a pretentious asshole, you know that? You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Just because I don’t have a wife and a kid and a white picket fence, you think I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. You’re wrong. You think you know me because we shared a room one summer when we were kids but you don’t know me, Eddie Diaz. You just want me to be like you.

I’m sorry, Eddie. I didn’t mean any of it. The truth is I’m lost. You were right. You’re always right. I know I’m just a screw up but please don’t tell me I’ve screwed this up too.

Eddie, I’m so sorry. Please respond.

Hey Buck,

It’s been a while (two years, I think?). I just wanted to see how you were doing. A little update on my life. Shannon left me. Sort of. It’s complicated. Christopher and I actually just moved to California so I could start a new job. I’m hopeful that this is the right change for us. I hope you’re doing well. I know I never said it but I forgive you and I’m sorry. You were my best friend, Buck, and I hope we can be friends again. I didn’t realize how much I relied on you until you were gone. I know I’m the one who shut you out. I really hope you can forgive me for that because I miss you. I miss my friend. Anyways, if you’re ever in Los Angeles, let me know. You know after all these years, I don’t know what you look like. I still remember the skinny kid with the birthmark over his eye who tried to go skinny dipping in the lake but slipped on the docks and bruised his elbow. I wonder what he’s up to.

Dear Eddie,

You’ll never believe this, but I ran into a guy at work who has the same name as you. What a coincidence, right? I think I was in denial for most of the day that, of all places, I would reunite with you at a fire station in Los Angeles. But I’m really glad we did.

Buck,

I’m sending instructions for Christopher’s birthday party (I know, I know, you are the party planning expert but I’m the father so you have to at least pretend to listen to me). He’s really looking forward to it. It’s the first one without Shannon so Buck? Please make it perfect for my kid? I could really use a win this year. And no ice cream cake (don’t think I don’t know he’s been trying to talk you into it). I’m already going to have to deal with a room full of hyper nine-year-olds, I don’t need melted ice cream on top of that. What am I saying? You’re the party planner, you can clean it up. What would I do without you?

Eddie,

I was going to text you but that seemed too informal and there’s too much pressure on a phone call so I thought I’d go back to what we do best. You were right when you said I was afraid. I’ve never felt this way about anyone and it’s you. We’ve known each other our whole lives and it never occurred to me that I might be in love with you. But that doesn’t mean I’m not. Eddie, I think I’ve been in love with you since we were nine years old and you kissed my bruised elbow. When you kissed me tonight, I don’t know, I froze. I’m so sorry, Eddie. If I could do it over, I’d still be kissing you. God, I really hope I haven’t screwed this up for good.

Hey Buck,

Turn around.

Love, Eddie.

#cj writes things #911 fox #911 fic #buddie #buddie fic #in the middle of writing this my boss called and the floodgates opened #so that's why this took as long as it did

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anextraordinarymuse · 3 years

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How are you feeling about Nathan and Nathan and Elizabeth right now? Do you feel like the show has destroyed him? Just, how are you feeling about all this—what are your thoughts?

Oh anon, I’m so glad you asked. Buckle up! We’re going for a ride.

I would marry Nathan Grant this instant if 1) I wasn’t already married, and 2) he wasn’t a fictional character.

Nathan is not even remotely close to being destroyed for me. I love and adore him as much right now as I ever have. I absolutely, wholeheartedly disagree with anyone who says that Nathan was in any way responsible for what happened to Jack, to any degree. That’s just ridiculous. By that same line of thinking, then Jack was responsible for Doug’s death in season 3 or 4 (I can’t remember). I don’t remember anyone pointing fingers at Jack for that series of events. And you know what? By the line of thinking that I’ve seen in regards to Nathan and the secret, then Jack would actually have been more responsible for Doug’s death than Nathan was for Jack’s. Jack declined his orders to go to the Northern Territories. He straight up said “sorry, but no” because Elizabeth wanted him to stay, and he wanted to stay with her. Nathan did no such thing. He made a decision to chase bad guys - which was in line with his job, if not his direct orders - and was disciplined for disobeying orders. That led to Jack being asked to lead the training mission. Not Nathan’s refusal of orders. So ... nope. Jack wasn’t responsible for Doug’s death, and Nathan wasn’t responsible for Jack’s death. Also, depending on who you are and what you believe, it could almost be said that Jack should have died in Doug’s place, and because he didn’t that meant he was going to die in Nathan’s place. There is a macabre sort of symmetry to it: Doug dies in Jack’s place, Jack dies in Nathan’s place. That’s full circle.

Now, I’m not saying that I believe that. Just pointing it out. I believe that Jack died because of an accident. No one is at fault. It just happened, because sometimes bad things happen. And I understand how difficult it would have been for Nathan to tell Elizabeth that, especially as they got to know one another and he started to fall in love with her. Not telling her doesn’t make him evil or a bad person or whatever - it just makes him human. He knew that it would hurt Elizabeth, and you never want to hurt the people you love.

I’ve seen various other criticisms of Nathan, of course. I’ve seen some comments saying that he’s too aggressive in his pursuit of Elizabeth, and to that I say that I don’t think I’m watching the same show. Nathan has never been aggressive with Elizabeth in any way. I could literally write a book about that argument, but I won’t, because I still have a lot of other points to cover.

So, no. I don’t think the show ruined Nathan. I think some people are just ready to hate him for any reason, and if that’s how they feel then ... well, I don’t care, actually. The great thing about fandom is that you get to choose how you engage with it, and I’m not interested in those points of view. Other people’s dislike or outright hatred of Nathan does not dim my love of him one whit.

As far as Nathan and Elizabeth are concerned, I am tired, but I have absolute faith that they will be together by the end of the season. Nathan is Elizabeth’s “next great love” (words used by Erin Krakow); we’ve always been moving toward their end game, and despite how rocky and painful and awkward the journey has become, that end game hasn’t changed. Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of reasons why I know that:

Quality of storytelling: Nathan and Elizabeth have the highest quality of storylines both separately and together. Their storylines focus on real and important values such as family, forgiveness, growth, loss, etc. I’ve mentioned this before, but pretty much from their first interaction we are shown that Nathan and Elizabeth are a team. They are united. Elizabeth is the first person to welcome Nathan to HV, and she shares a personal story of her first days in the town and how challenging they were. It’s the first thread that connects them. Also, I should point out that the first time Nathan meets Elizabeth he delivers a measure of relief for her in the form of Jack’s pension. We know that Elizabeth makes money from her teaching, and that her family in Hamilton would probably never let her want for money, but still. Receiving Jack’s pension undoubtedly relieved a financial burden for her (as evidenced by her reaction to seeing the amount). Anyway, the themes of team and unity keep going from there. Elizabeth helps Nathan search for Allie; they have to work together to correct Allie’s behavior and reassure her; Elizabeth distracts Amos Dixon while Nathan is infiltrating the saloon to catch him; etc. These themes are not present in Elizabeth’s relationship with Lucas. All of Lucas’s storylines are impersonal, with the exception of the one with his parents in season 8 and the little bit of backstory we got with the Amos Dixon incident. The work and effort that has gone into telling Nathan’s story, and Nathan and Elizabeth’s story, is absent from Lucas’s plotlines both with and without Elizabeth. Another point: whereas Elizabeth’s first interaction with Nathan ties that first thread of connection between them, her first interaction with Lucas starts them off on the wrong foot: Lucas asks her where her husband is and if he’ll be joining her. Elizabeth immediately walks away from him and Rosie and Lee have to tell Lucas about Jack.

Depth of interactions: At this point, the lack of any real depth between Lucas and Elizabeth is absolutely intentional. I think it always has been, but now there’s just no question. Almost every interaction between Nathan and Elizabeth has depth. They can’t help it - they’re not really surface level people. Helen Bouchard tells Elizabeth this season that she knows that Elizabeth is a person who feels things deeply, and I think we know by now that Nathan is as well. They bring that level of feeling to their interactions. They argue, they flirt, they talk about the hard things. Pain, loss, distrust, obstacles ... we never see that depth between Lucas and Elizabeth. The one hard thing they talk about is the reveal of Helen’s secret, and it’s important to note that in that interaction Elizabeth calls out Lucas’s comment for what it is: cruel. “What would you know about it?” Uncalled for. This is the only time we really see Elizabeth and Lucas argue, and Lucas doesn’t meet Elizabeth’s depth here. She tells him something meaningful - that maybe Helen had to be the first one to reach out, and that love should be fought for - and Lucas responds with a cruel comment and walks off. That was intentional on the writers’ part. When Nathan and Elizabeth argue they get heated, but they do not attack each other. That’s an important distinction. They’re not trying to hurt each other. Now, I’m sure someone will point out that in Nathan and Elizabeth’s most recent argument about Allie, Elizabeth says “now you’re just being hurtful” when Nathan tells Elizabeth she originally wasn’t invited. Guess what? Cruel and hurtful don’t mean the same thing. Cruel means: willfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it.” Whereas the definition of hurtful is: “causing distress to someone’s feelings.” I would say there’s a huge difference in those two words. Plus, even though it may have hurt Elizabeth to hear it, what Nathan said was true. It was not an insult, or a petulant remark said in anger. In fact, while Nathan is irritated and kinda snarky, I’d say he’s not really even that angry in the scene where Elizabeth confronts him. They bicker, but he doesn’t lose his temper like he did in the cabin scene in season 7. In fact, in all of the times that Nathan and Elizabeth have argued their disagreements have never been mean spirited or intentionally hurtful.

But it’s not just that. When Nathan loses his temper in the cabin scene, he says “you both could have died!” When Elizabeth confronts him in the Mountie office the next day, she says “please stop shutting me out!” These are not surface level arguments - they’re not arguing about Elizabeth’s inability to decide what she wants for dinner. (Sorry, had to throw in a joke). They’re arguing over deep concerns: bodily harm, and emotional withdrawal. I find it interesting that Nathan displayed concern about Elizabeth’s physical safety and Elizabeth over his emotional withdrawal, considering that at the end of season 7 and now in season 8 we’re seeing an Elizabeth who is terrified of losing Nathan (physical safety) and a Nathan who has had to weather Elizabeth’s emotional withdrawal. Who’s shutting who out now, Elizabeth? I digress.

Another thing of note: we’ve never actually heard Nathan tell Elizabeth that she’s beautiful, and we’ve never actually heard Lucas tell her anything but she’s beautiful. Interesting contrast. Nathan says, “You matter to me,” “you’re quite the teacher,” “I’m glad the publisher realized how special you are. He’s not the only one,” and of course, “I love/am in love with you.” Even Nathan’s compliments go beyond surface level. Whereas Lucas tells her she’s beautiful, and that he’s so glad to have her in his life. Again, depth vs. surface level. I do remember that in the first episode of season 7, I believe, when Nathan says that he was never engaged with school Lucas butts in and says “that’s probably because you never had a teacher like Elizabeth.” I tend to disregard this compliment though, because it didn’t feel genuine. Lucas butts in to a conversation that Nathan and Elizabeth are having and then compliments her - it feels like a showboat move. In contrast, all of Nathan’s compliments have been sincere and given in private, without anyone else around.

I was going to make a separate point for this, but I actually think it belongs here: the depth of Nathan’s gift giving/wooing vs. Lucas’s is also very apparent. Nathan gives her personal, humble gifts: an apple, a hand carved wooden sign with a quote from her favorite poet (which she mentioned once, to someone else), a moment of relief when he offers to hold baby Jack at the christening party. Lucas’s gifts are more grandiose, but impersonal: flowers, fancy dates, etc. The two sweetest things Lucas has done for her, in my opinion, were when he gave her the binoculars to take for the kids on their trip to the woods, and the Virginia Wolff trip. Note, I don’t mean the dinner out of town or the picnic on the way there: I mean the fact that Lucas bought tickets to go see a reading of an author that he didn’t particularly like because he thought Elizabeth would like them. Granted, I didn’t like the way he sprung them on her, but it was still a very thoughtful gesture.

Wardrobe: Costume and set designers will tell you all the time that they make conscious decisions about who wears what, and when. Nathan and Elizabeth are always dressed in complementary colors. They match, or at least blend well; Lucas and Elizabeth are often mismatched or outright clashing. Elizabeth and Nathan generally dress in lighter colors, whereas Lucas dresses in darker colors. Also worth noting is that we have seen several instances of Nathan and baby Jack being dressed alike, and Allie and Elizabeth being dressed in similar/complementary colors.

Family Imagery: the amount of family imagery that we are presented with in regards to Nathan, Elizabeth, Allie, and baby Jack is impossible to miss. They pick out and decorate a Christmas tree together in a warmly lit home with a combination of Elizabeth’s decorations and Nathan and Allie’s; even though it doesn’t happen, the first time Nathan asks Elizabeth to dinner they go as a family unit; Elizabeth brings over cupcakes for the sleepover and helps Nathan loosen up by flirting with him in the middle of his kitchen, with an apron on; these are all intimate, family oriented scenes.

Shows of fear/worry/concern: look at Elizabeth’s face any time Nathan is heading into danger, might be in danger, or just generally might be unsafe in any way. She is visibly distressed every time. She’s also distressed every time Nathan gives her the cold shoulder/tries to back off/resorts to any kind of formality. We’re always shown this moment of fear for her, and usually some kind of scene after that shows us the aftermath. For example: after the fight in the cabin, when they’re back in town it looks like Nathan might be about to apologize and Florence interrupts him and he leaves to find Lee; we get the scene of Elizabeth confronting him the following day. After that confrontation, we get Nathan showing up at night and telling her “you matter to me.” Elizabeth asks Lucas to dance and then sees a crestfallen Nathan leaving the saloon; in the next episode (even though it’s the first episode of the following season) we see Elizabeth purposely approach Nathan in the street with a sweet but awkward comment about Allie’s book report on Queen Victoria. We’ve only seen two real moments of danger for Lucas: the Amos Dixon situation, and the oil derrick explosion. In the Amos Dixon incident, Elizabeth is angry with Lucas for endangering her; in the oil derrick explosion, we actually don’t get a scene addressing that other than the one where Elizabeth stops Helen and tells her that she’s sure Lucas is fine. Interesting differences, I’d say. This also ties into the previous point about the emotional depth that exists between Nathan and Elizabeth, but not Elizabeth and Lucas. Other than the hug, of course, which was a huge display of fear and emotion from Elizabeth, I'd also point you to the scene at the end of 8x01 when Elizabeth is waiting on her porch for Nathan to come home. She can hardly breathe when she sees him ride up. Watch the way she breathes - she inhales so deeply that it makes her collarbones stick out sharply, and her expression is intense. The way she says "you made it home" is so tense and shaky!

The pursuer vs the pursued: This is a huge point, and difference. In the Elizabeth and Lucas relationship, Lucas is the pursuer; in the Nathan and Elizabeth relationship, Elizabeth is the pursuer. Lucas inserts himself in conversations that Elizabeth and Nathan are having, he repeatedly asks her to dinner and surprises her with things (like the Virginia Wolff tickets, and sending her manuscript to his mother, etc). At first, Elizabeth seems hesitant about these things: she turns him down once for dinner, hesitates over the tickets, then finally sits down to dinner with him but won't call it a date. To me, the relationship between Lucas and Elizabeth seems to come about mostly because he wears her down. Elizabeth only really goes to Lucas and opens the door for a relationship after Nathan's profession of love. That certainly makes it seem like she's not so much running to Lucas as she is running away from Nathan. In comparison, we have a whole bunch of examples of Elizabeth being the one to pursue some sort of relationship with Nathan. Not necessarily a romantic one (at least purposely) but every time Nathan tries to leave Elizabeth alone and put distance between them, she closes that gap by figuratively running straight at him. Calling him out for shutting her out, finding excuses to talk to him (like Allie's book report), basically telling him that she went to Union City with Lucas because Nathan wouldn't ask her out. Now, in season 8 I would say that we've taken a fairly hard turn and Nathan has now taken the lead as the pursuer and Elizabeth is the pursued ... which is mostly true. I think one of the key takeaways on this point, and up to this point in the show, is that Elizabeth and Nathan can't help but pursue each other. It's a frustrating game of cat and mouse. But, it's true: even though they're on shaky ground and things are complicated, we still see Elizabeth and Nathan running to each other as much as they run away. Nathan does so in obvious ways, but Elizabeth is more subtle. She sends him that note about missing the parent teacher conference and then they have that conversation in her living room; Elizabeth follows Allie as she barges in on the inquiry and then waits outside with her, and they're together when Nathan emerges; Nathan invites her to the adoption ceremony, they share the moment outside the infirmary, Elizabeth stops him to ask about the stolen car outside the mercantile; Elizabeth and Allie upset each other and Elizabeth runs straight to Nathan. No matter how they have tried not to, it's clear at this point that they will always gravitate to one another. In support, in argument, in misunderstanding, in triumph ... they just keep going for one another.

This, I think, has been the point of having Lucas witness all of these interactions between Nathan and Elizabeth. No matter what they might say or the perception they might try to give off, the truth always comes out - and the truth is that they can't stay away from each other. Even when she tries to hide it, Elizabeth's heart is a compass, and we all know that compasses always point one way (and in her case, the N doesn't mean north).

To that point, I think that there has been a lot of double meaning to the things Elizabeth has said this season. The most recent example: in the last episode when Elizabeth says, "I tried to tell you at Allie's parent teacher conference. You are her rock. You are her foundation. If you let her down, her whole world crumbles." Also, to this point, in the scene where they're in Elizabeth's house, she says, "You will always be the measure of the quality she'll look for in a man as she chooses who to marry." I find the wording of both of these statements both interesting and telling. At this point, I think that Nathan isn't just Allie's rock - he's also Elizabeth's. She trusts him, and depends on him, and holds him in high regard. Nathan has unexpectedly filled a hole in Elizabeth's life: he is her main male support now. She has Bill and Lee, of course, but they don't fill the same spot. Bill is like a father figure, and Lee is her best friend's husband. But Nathan - Nathan is only Elizabeth's. It's a very specific spot he fills, and it's as the leading man in her life. They solve problems together, mentor and parent Allie, address the town's needs, etc. Again - they're a unit, and we're meant to see them as such. Elizabeth's behavior didn't change until after she almost lost Nathan (and then he told her he loved her); she doesn't seem shaken or upset until Nathan does something to make her feel that way. Nathan has become her rock, and she's laid a new foundation with him. Her emotional state is directly tied to Nathan (and Allie, as I think we've now seen). No matter how painful or difficult it is, Nathan and Elizabeth are already bonded (and deeply). A fact that will be highlighted in 8x09 when Elizabeth will choose Nathan's hands in that wedding game, despite the fact that she has never held his hands (but has held Lucas's several times now).

So. This turned into a freaking novel, and I could honestly keep going, but I won't. I will just say, once again, that I love Nathan with my whole heart. I may not agree with his every decision, but I don't expect to. I don't agree with a lot of Elizabeth's decisions, but I still love her too. The writers do have some work to do, however, because they took this further than I expected them to and now they need to work their way out of it. But, even in my most frustrated and tired moments - of which there have been several, and will probably be a few more - I have always known all roads lead to Nathan and Elizabeth. We'll be exhausted by the time we cross the finish line, but we'll get there. Don't lose hope.

#Anonymous #Nathan Grant #nathan x elizabeth #elizabeth x nathan #Jess' thoughts #gosh this one really got away from me #but I have so many thoughts

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1337wtfomgbbq · 3 years

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I gotta rant for a second here. I hate this app. Okay maybe not this whole app, more the people on here. Specifically the people in the supernatural community. Yes talking to you. I can’t believe I’m even back into this with you guys.

I know people can pick and chose which characters they like and which they dislike. I know, for some trauma and whathaveyou also plays into what they feel towards a character.

But I am just so mad. I’m on a little bit of a rewatch, as you are, of season 1 to 3 (maybe some episodes of 4 and 5) because those are the only good seasons, and I just wanna look at some posts of my favorite character.

But my favorite character happens to be John.

TLDR: John's character is complex as fuck and people like to oversimplify and villify him, for no reason other than „BuT My DaAAadYY WaS ShiTTy!!!!“

And I get it. People on here disregard season 1-3, even the writers disregarded what JDM wanted John to be: “I don’t think he’s as screwed-up as other people do,” Morgan told EW. “I think he is a guy who’s got a tremendous amount of love for his family. He was willing to die for his sons, willing to put himself in a place to where he could lose his life for revenge on what killed his wife. So as much has been said about John or that I’ve heard about John, I think what is missing is that he shows love in different ways. Maybe he wasn’t a big hugger and he didn’t say the right things when he should’ve — and there’s a bigger picture about getting your kids into hunting ghosts that I should acknowledge — but I think at his core he really loved his family and was willing to sacrifice everything. So I never looked or played John in a way that there was any malice toward his sons.”

People project what went wrong in their lifes and with their fathers on this app SO HARD. To be fair they do that everywhere. But it's so infuriating when it's done to a character you love so much.

And as much as I wanna be understanding I am just so pissed.

Hear me out: Back when I first started watching supernatural (I was fucking 12 back then, can you believe that) and my friend was all „OMG Sam is such a treat. He's mine!“ I thought, okay I'm gonna take Dean then.

The coin finally dropped on me in 'Shadow' and I realized „Heck, screw Dean, I'm taking John!“ (Not that I told my friend that, LOL. I hadn't realized just then that I prefer older guys)

And attraction is one thing, but the character spoke to me on such a deep level too. I mean, you got a dude whos wife died in a way that he cannot explain in a rational way, only to have his eyes opened to the supernatural by Missouri. And it turns out whatever killed his wife also did some fucked up shit to his kid and is after, not only his youngest but, all of them.

So he's forced to take his kids on the run. But, he's also an ex-marine, he's a soldier and he can't leave other people to die at the hands and claws and teeth of monsters and ghosts and strigas and whathaveyou. Which leaves him struggling to ballance protecting and caring for his kids and saving people and hunting things, AND finding the thing that killed his wife.

The way John's situation was set up (ignoring for a second what we learn in later seasons) and the way Sam was brought up by him created a relationship that was bound to escalate; it was only a matter of time.

Season 1 to 3 we got a John that was distant and rough, but a John that recognized he fucked up along the way and who saught to rectify where he went wrong with his boys.

Season 1 episode 20: „You gotta understand something. After your mother passed all I saw was evil, everywhere. And all I cared about was keeping you boys alive. I wanted you...prepared. Ready. Except somewhere along the line I ... uh ... I stopped being your father and I ... I became your, your drill sergeant. So when you said that you wanted to go away to school, all I could think about, my only thought was, that you were gonna be alone. Vulnerable. Sammy, it just... it never occurred to me what you wanted. I just couldn't accept the fact that you and me -- We're just different.“

And guess what, Sam admits seconds later: „We're not different. Not anymore. With what happened to Mom and Jess... Well we probably have a lot more in common than just about anyone.“

Season 1 episode 21: „I want to stop losing people we love. I want you to go to school, I want Dean to have a home. I want....I want Mary alive. It's just....I just want this to be over.“

John literally on the show in person, Jeffrey Dean Morgan Season 1, admits that he didn't want ANYTHING OF WHAT HAPPENED, AND WHAT HE HAD TO DO TO HAPPEN!!!!

Sure, Sam suggested to Dean that John's just „working overtime on Miller Time shift. He'll stumble back in sooner or later“ in the very first episode but we never see John drink alcohol, for all he's on screen in season one, ONCE. (1x1) Suggesting that John did have a drinking problem but somewhere between Sam going off to college and the pilot he kicked that habit.

Sure, Sam is clearly vindictive BUT, when faced with a kid with a clearly abusive father, he also says that, „Well, it coulda gone a whole other way after Mom. A little more tequila and a little less demon hunting and we coulda had Max' childhood. All things considered, we turned out okay. Thanks to him.“ (1x14)

We see him cry on multible occasions in season one and two, we see him hug both Sam and Dean and tell BOTH OF THEM that he is proud of them. Heck, he couldn't shut up about how proud he was of them. Like Jerry told Sam in 1x4 „Well, he was real proud of you. I could tell, He talked about you all the time.“ He kept Sam's soccer trophie, and Dean's first sawed off. He fucking died to safe Dean.

Yeah, he told Dean that he'd have to kill Sam if he goes evil but...

Let's take into consideration season 4 and 5, and John wasn't all too wrong for telling Dean this. Even if we ignore all that, as John probably didn't have the full picture, John didn't knew the extend of Sam's powers. As is always said, „With great power comes great responsibility“. We have seen in comics, shows, movies, all over pop culture and history, how easily great power can corrupt, don't matter how nice and righteous that person is.

Let's take into consideration what was added in season 4 and 5: Like John having another family, the fact that cupid had to get him and Mary together, Mary making a deal with Azazel, the few demons (not even all of them) Lucifer showed Sam who had been put into his life by yellow eyes; even that just adds more credence to the already established character.

Of course John was bound to have flings after Mary, you can't expect a widower to just be celibate forever. And it wasn't even that he bailed on her, he literally didn't know there was a child until twelve years later.

And considering John's erratic 'work schedule' and how little we know of Kate, maybe it was her that wanted John not to have much contact to her son. The whole situation with Adam isn't exactly clear, and told through the eyes of a ghoul. Plus, we all saw where John's decision to leave Adam in the dark about the supernatural had him end up (namely killed by a ghoul).

The fact that cupid had to get John and Mary together only gives more ammunition for my argument that John was only working with what was given to him. Pretty much everyone from hell to heaven was meddling in his life.

Getting ahead with headcanons here but, for all we know John and Mary would've never ended up together; for all we know Mary was a lesbian and John was bi; for all we know they could've still worked out without cupid's help. Who knows? We don't because heaven took that decision away from both John and Mary.

The fact that Mary made a deal with Azazel to safe John's life in exchange for Azazel to be able to enter her home in ten years time, again, caused something to happen down the line that affected John and the boys that John had no control over.

And I gotta thank Lucifer for his part, because it gives EVEN MORE credence as to why John couldn't give Dean and Sam a normal life. He reveals SOME of the people Azazel planted into Sam's life that were actually possessed by demons.

„LUCIFER: Look closely. None of these little devils look familiar to you? SAM: That's Mr. Bensman... One of my grade-school teachers. LUCIFER: And that's your friend Doug from that time in East Lansing. And Rachel... your prom date. Sam Winchester, this is your life. Azazel's gang – watching you since you were a rugrat, jerking you around like a dog on a leash. I know how you feel about them. Me too. So, what do you say you and I blow off a little steam?“ (5x22)

A few episodes earlier we found out that his friend Brady, the one that introduced him to Jess, was actually possessed by a demon, and the one that fucking killed her.

„BRADY (chuckles): Brady hasn't been Brady in years. Not since, oh... middle of our sophomore year?

SAM: What?

BRADY: That's right. You had a devil on your shoulder even back then. All right, now, let it all sink in.

SAM: You son of a bitch. You son of a bitch! (Sam approaches Brady, Dean holds him back) You introduced me to Jess!

BRADY: Ding, ding! I think he's got it!“ (5x20)

All of this paints a clear picture for me, of a man that got played by fate and heaven and hell and was only trying to play the cards all of them dealt him to the best of his ability. Did he fuck up along the way, yes, did he show remorse for that and did he wish he could've given Sam and Dean a better life, Yes.

I completely understand people liking one character and disliking another, even projecting onto characters I get. And I get that people's life experiances lead them to different conclusions.

But it pisses me off so much that I can't go into the 'John Winchester' tag without having to read some shit as fuck take on John.

I have to read people saying that he never told Dean he was proud of him and that the only time he did so he was possessed by Azazel. Which isn't even true, but a motherfucking lie.

Season 2, episode 1; when John WASN'T POSSESSED ANYMORE he said to Dean: „You know, when you were a kid... I'd come home from a hunt. And after what I'd seen... I'd be wrecked. And you... You'd come up to me... you'd put your hand on my shoulder, and you'd look me in the eye. You'd say, "It's okay, Dad." Dean. I'm sorry. You shouldn't have to say that to me. I should've been saying that to you. You know, I put... I put too much on your shoulders. I made you grow up too fast. You took care of Sam, and you took care of me. You did that. And you didn't complain, not once. I just want you to know... that I am so proud of you.“

I have to read people forget or disregard that John was literally a righteous man. Alastair tried to break John and John didn't break for a century and then clawed his way OUT OF HELL TO SAFE HIS SONS IN 2x22. John must've had righteousness in heaven (which would come through faith in Jesus) and righteousness on earth (which would come through living through the commandments) as long as that's what the writers meant with 'righteous man'.

I have to read stuff John would apparently do only because we learn in 'Dark side of the Moon' that John and Mary's marriage wasn't all sunshine and rainbows and that John even moved out for a period. Even though we don't know who caused that fight and what it was about, literally it could've been Mary's fault and John only left to cool off. And even if not, marriages aren't just sunshines and rainbows. Fights happen, bad stuff is worked out. That would be true even without the cupid spell.

I have to read someone projecting their experiance with their father onto John. I have to read about someone saying John would've been such a dick because he was in the military and fought in the vietnam war, and we all know that's what all sodiers back then were (dicks). I have to read about how homophobic and transphobic John obviously was. I have to read about how much John would've been racist to Sam and Dean if they'd been mixed.

John was born in 1954, he has to be homophobic and transphobic and racist and bigoted and everthing you can think of. It can't be possible for someone to be born during that time and not be, right. (I hope you recognize the sarcasm)

Everybody is screaming 'child abuse' as loud as they can without taking into account the unique world those characters inhabit and the situation fate, heaven and hell put John and the boys into.

Dean could dig himself out of his grave because John used to bury them alive and had them dig their way out of a coffin as training!!!? Are yall good?? Literally what did your parents do to you, what went wront in your life that you think shit like this?!

And I get it, you can headcanon all you want. I myself headcanon John as bi and that Azazel knew and used this fact.

The writers did John so dirty in later seasons, and I'm not even alone in this, JDM agrees with me.

„But it always bugged me that the John that I played is different than the John that has been portrayed since I haven't been around. I really wanted the opportunity to be able to come back and make amends in a way and try to fix the sullied name of this character. But more than that, it's three friends, life lived. It feels like we've been friends for a lifetime now, getting to reunite in a place that we love and that we met and do what we do and I think that is super cool. So not only does John win in getting to come back and see his boys and Mary again and hopefully make some amends, it's just as cool for me, the actor, to be able to come back and see everybody.“

I'm sorry, but if Snape fans are allowed to be pissed about people suggesting Snape would've been creeping on Harry if he had been female and looked like Lilly, I can be pissed about everybody and their grandma in this fucking fandom painting John in the worst light possible.

JDM created such a great character with depth and who was interesting, even in season 4 and 5 they were still respectfull to his character, but the later seasons were just *throws up *

And I mean, I get it, I disregard canon too. Like, I disregard everything after season 5, that's Sam hallucinating in hell to me. Sometimes even after season 3, cause I don't feel like dealing with the angels, and cas and destiel and all that.

I get it, I get it, I get it.

But I too have the right to be pissed off about the way people like to shit on my fav.

Long story short, I love John and how complex and grey his character is and I HATE IT how simple and 'black and white' people wanna make him out to be. I wanna punch a bitch. I wanna throw hands right now.

#supernatural #spn #john winchester #john winchester defense #john winchester defense squad #I am heated #I literally wanna throw hands right now #I wanna be understanding of you guys #but yall are *tears at hair *#I don't get yall

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canadian-riddler · 4 years

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GLaDOS and Wheatley Did Nothing Wrong – Sort of

A recurring point of contention is the question of who engages in worse behaviour over the course of Portal 2, GLaDOS or Wheatley. The true answer is: neither of them. You can’t actually judge their behaviour along a scale of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ because of the way Aperture as an environment is set up. It’s mostly explained during the Old Aperture sections of Portal 2, but it’s also hinted at in Portal 1. The thing explained is this:

Aperture Laboratories does not and never has done its experiments within the normal boundaries of morality and ethics. Therefore, GLaDOS and Wheatley’s behaviour is neither wrong nor right because they don’t know what morality and ethics are. Their behaviour is actually a reflection of Cave Johnson’s own: to get what they want when they want it, no matter the cost.

How We Know Aperture is Immoral and Unethical

We know this because Cave Johnson himself points it out repeatedly.

“[…] You get the gel. Last poor son of a gun got blue paint. Hahaha. All joking aside, that did happen – broke every bone in his legs. Tragic. But informative. Or so I’m told.”

“For this next test, we put nanoparticles in the gel. In layman’s terms, that’s a billion little gizmos that are gonna travel into your bloodstream and pump experimental genes and RNA molecules and so forth into your tumours. Now, maybe you don’t have any tumours. Well, don’t worry. If you sat on a folding chair in the lobby and weren’t wearing lead underpants, we took care of that too.”

“All these science spheres are made out of asbestos. […] Good news is, the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show a median latency of forty-four point six years, so if you’re thirty or older, you’re laughing. Worst case scenario, you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you forwarded the cause of science by three centuries. I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.”

“Bean counters said I couldn’t fire a man just for being in a wheelchair. Did it anyway. Ramps are expensive.”

That’s just some of what he says. Almost all of Cave Johnson’s lines point out how much he doesn’t care about his employees, his test subjects, or… anything but that people do what he tells them to do. He’s so unethical and immoral that he eventually says about his best, most loyal employee:

“[…] I will say this – and I’m gonna say it on tape so everybody hears it a hundred times a day: If I die before you people can pour me into a computer, I want Caroline to run this place. Now she’ll argue. She’ll say she can’t. She’s modest like that. But you make her.”

Cave Johnson cares so much about getting the results he wants, everything else be damned, he thinks Caroline saying ‘she can’t’ is her being modest. He can’t fathom why she would be against this decision, because he made it so of course that’s what she wants.

This situation actually gets a little horrifying when you look at what the Lab Rat comic means to the general narrative. In Portal 2, Doug Rattmann leaves this painting:

In this painting and the one preceding it, GLaDOS has no head, so we can guess that Doug was there in some capacity to witness Caroline’s fate because GLaDOS being headless would represent her not being ‘alive’, her being ‘incomplete’, or her just having never been used yet entirely. The important thing we learn from this painting is that there are living witnesses to Caroline being inside of GLaDOS, so the people working at Aperture after this event know they put a human woman into a supercomputer. In the preceding painting,

the cores are on the chassis before the head is. So either GLaDOS, the AI, was already ‘misbehaving’ and they were already regulating her behaviour, or Caroline, the person, was already ‘causing trouble’ beforehand and the scientists stood around thinking about how to force her to behave before they even put her in there. Either way, Aperture’s ethical and moral standards are pretty much nonexistent, so when this happens:

it’s almost comical. None of the Aperture scientists have a conscience or, if they do, they constantly ignore it, but they for some reason expect the supercomputer their immoral selves built to have one and to understand what that is and what it’s for.

All this taken into account, it’s incredibly easy to see why GLaDOS and Wheatley don’t care about anyone around them and all of their actions are solely for their own benefit. That’s how everyone in the history of Aperture has ever acted. Cave Johnson didn’t care about morality or ethics; they got in the way of what he considered to be progress. The people who built GLaDOS and Wheatley didn’t care about morality or ethics; they just wanted to hit their moon shot. Even Doug, who is framed as our morally conflicted lens throughout Lab Rat and knows that Caroline is inside of GLaDOS, still talks about controlling her and sends Chell to kill her even though everyone inside of the facility except him is already dead. How does he morally justify killing GLaDOS if he’s the only one left alive? He can’t. Doug Rattmann for some reason decides that GLaDOS killing everyone in the facility is worse than all the things Aperture has been doing throughout its entire history, including the fact that…

Everyone Who Goes Into the Test Chambers Dies

This is hinted at a few times in Portal 2:

“[…] I’m Cave Johnson, CEO of Aperture Science – you might know us as a vital participant of the 1968 Senate Hearings on missing astronauts. […] You might be asking yourself, ‘Cave, just how difficult are these tests? What was in that phone book of a contract I signed? Am I in danger? Let me answer those questions with a question: Who wants to make sixty dollars? Cash. […] Welcome to Aperture. You’re here because we want the best, and you’re it. Nope. Couldn’t keep a straight face.”

Now, when you exit the tests in Old Aperture there are lines that go with them, but we must consider a few other things: firstly, that the tests are clean. There is no sign of old gel on them, as though they have either never been used or never been completed. Secondly, the tests in Old Aperture were being done with the Portable Quantum Tunnelling Device, which was this thing:

which, taking into account the missing – not dead, not injured, but missing – astronauts, seems to have barely worked, if indeed it did at all. You can also find this sign:

which outright states that tons of people were ‘unexpected’ casualties. After the hearings, Aperture moved on to recruiting test subjects from populations that people were unlikely to notice if they went missing: the homeless, the mentally ill, seniors, and orphaned children. When that dried up, Cave moved onto the last group of people he hadn’t tapped yet:

“Since making test participation mandatory for all employees, the quality of our test subjects has risen dramatically. Employee retention, however, has not.”

This was because the employees were ‘voluntold’ to go into the testing tracks which, since they’d been supervising the tests for so long, knew were deadly and obviously did not want to do:

It’s not clear why the employees at Aperture chose to remain there instead of just quitting and finding another job, but the comment about employee retention plus the numerous posters threatening to have their job replaced by robots if they didn’t volunteer for testing tells us both that they did choose to remain and that the only reason for them not wanting to volunteer was because they knew it would kill them.

Most of the above is based on conjecture; however, we see something very interesting during Test Chambers 18 and 19 in Portal 1:

In the case of Test Chamber 18, the craters on the walls. None of the other test chambers have this, so it implies that not only does GLaDOS not control the test chambers at this point other than to reset them – which means that she isn’t purposely or maliciously killing anybody, but instead repeatedly operating a course set by her human supervisors – but that this one has never been solved. Test Chamber 19 is less a test than a conveyor belt into the incinerator for Aperture to dispose of all the bodies. GLaDOS even tells Chell to drop the portal gun off in an Equipment Recovery Annex that doesn’t exist, as though she’s giving a message that was intended for an actual final test that was never built because everyone was killed during or prior to Test Chamber 18. With this kind of context, GLaDOS’s blasé attitude about killing test subjects en masse both makes total sense and is somewhat justifiable – just not by any moral or ethical standard. In GLaDOS’s life, test subjects die during the experiments. That’s just how it is and has always been. She doesn’t know you aren’t ‘supposed’ to kill people because her literal job involves watching people die. Nothing matters except for the pursuit of progress, and in this vein GLaDOS’s behaviour is just an extension of that of the man who founded Aperture in the first place. Cave Johnson, as a presumably well-rounded, somewhat educated man, knows what morality and ethics are and chooses to ignore them because he thinks they’re stupid and he’s above that kind of thing; GLaDOS, a living supercomputer who has had every aspect of her life tightly controlled and regulated, knows morality and ethics as yet another arbitrary set of rules only she is supposed to follow without any explanation as to why and therefore her rejection of them is not as much of a ‘bad’ choice as it first appears, which brings us to the next section:

If GLaDOS’s Conscience Gives Her Morality, Does Deleting it Make Her a Bad Person?

Within the context we’re given… actually, no. Here’s why:

“The scientists were always hanging cores on me to regulate my behaviour. I’ve heard voices all my life. But now I hear the voice of a conscience, and it’s terrifying – because for the first time, it’s my voice. I’m being serious, I think there’s something really wrong with me.”

From the information we’re given here, we know this: GLaDOS has been told nonstop what to do for the entirety of her existence. She, in theory, got to have her own, solitary thoughts in the space between the wakeup scene and some point during her time in Old Aperture, which is a space of mere hours. Let me reiterate: GLaDOS has been told what to think for her whole life. She perhaps has a few free hours where she’s allowed to have her own thoughts. And then she develops a conscience. A voice that sounds like her, but isn’t saying anything she understands or has ever thought before. A voice that, actually, says a lot of the same things as that annoying Morality Core she managed to shut up. Now why would she wilfully be having the same kinds of thoughts as the humans forced her to have way back when? The conscience, to GLaDOS, isn’t a pathway to becoming a better person. It’s a different version of the same old accessory. When she says,

“You know, being Caroline taught me a valuable lesson. I thought you were my greatest enemy. When all along you were my best friend. The surge of emotion that shot through me when I saved your life taught me an even more valuable lesson: where Caroline lives in my brain.”

she is directly talking about the fact that, while this voice sounds like hers, listening to it makes her feel nothing. This further proves her theory that the conscience isn’t her, or hers, or has anything to do with her. She’s never had it explained to her what a conscience is or what it’s for or why she needs one, and she’s certainly never had a reason to think about why she would even want one; to her, this ‘Caroline’ is the Morality Core 2.0. A program built to regulate her behaviour. She’s tired of other peoples’ voices telling her what to think, so she does the logical thing: she gets rid of it. This decision can’t really be judged as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ merely based on the situation we’re provided. She isn’t consciously and deliberately making the choice to be an immoral person; she’s actually consciously and deliberately making the choice to be her own person.

Where Does Wheatley Come In?

Wheatley has not been discussed up until now because, as AI, the reason for his lack of conscience and ethics is largely the same as GLaDOS’s. He, like her, cares about nothing but his own goals and doesn’t think twice about causing harm or misery because that’s just the kind of environment they were built in. We also know very little about his history, both because it’s not really mentioned and because Wheatley is an unreliable narrator. We can prove Wheatley has no sense of morals or ethics based on a few things he says:

[Upon seeing the trapped Oracle Turret] “Oh no… Yes, hello! No, we’re not stopping! Don’t make eye contact whatever you do… No thanks! We’re good! Appreciate it! Keep moving, keep moving…”

This heavily implies he’s met the Oracle Turret before, probably several times, and not only does it not occur to him to help, he actively treats the Turret like they’re a horrible, annoying nuisance.

[Upon passing functional turrets falling into disposal grinder] [Laughs] “There’s our handiwork. Shouldn’t laugh, really. They do feel pain. Of a sort. All simulated. But real enough for them, I suppose.”

Not only does he find the destruction of the functional turrets funny, he for some reason views their pain as simulated, as though his is real and theirs is fake. Or, in the spirit of Cave Johnson, as though his pain is important and theirs isn’t because they aren’t important.

“Oh! I’ve just had one idea, which is that I could pretend to her that I’ve captured you, and give you over and she’ll kill you, but I could go on… living. So, what’s your view on that?”

This doesn’t even need an explanation.

What gets interesting about Wheatley are, of course, his famous final lines:

“I wish I could take it all back. I honestly do. I honestly do wish I could take it all back. And not because I’m stranded in space. […] You know, if I was ever to see her again, you know what I’d say? I’d say, ‘I’m sorry’… sincerely, I’m sorry I was bossy… and monstrous… and… I am genuinely sorry. The end.”

Wheatley here takes responsibility for his behaviour in a way that no one else in the history of Aperture has ever done. Even GLaDOS rejects responsibility for her actions, instead choosing to blame everything on Chell:

“You know what my days used to be like? I just tested. Nobody murdered me. Or put me in a potato. Or fed me to birds. I had a pretty good life. And then you showed up. You dangerous, mute lunatic.”

The reason for this may be related to the fact that the lack of morality and ethics in the people of Aperture doesn’t actually have real consequences. Cave Johnson’s behaviour drives Aperture from a promising scientific powerhouse to a laughingstock, that’s true. But he still does what he wants and gets what he wants regardless. The one and only consequence to being immoral and unethical at Aperture is, in fact, death. In the case of GLaDOS… there are no consequences. Everything returns to the status quo. Wheatley, however, does have to face a consequence for his actions: he is trapped in space, possibly forever. He, unlike all the other characters, doesn’t have the privilege of waving aside everything he did and moving on with life. He is forced to consider his punishment, his actions and what they meant and the effect they had, and he on his own comes to the conclusion that he was wrong. In a bizarre twist, Wheatley is the only one who learns anything. He is also the only one in a position not to do anything with this newfound knowledge.

Morality and Ethics and Robots: Should They Even Be Held to Human Societal Standards?

In the end, it doesn’t really matter whether Wheatley or GLaDOS is worse than the other because ethics and morality are human concepts which are for a functioning human society. A robot society doesn’t really need moral rules like ‘killing people is wrong’ nor ethical guidelines such as ‘you should practice safe science’ because, as robots, there are no permanent, lasting consequences for these actions. A dead human stays dead. A dead robot that’s been lying outside for years getting rained on, snowed on, and baked in the sun? No problem. Turn her back on again. A guy broke all the bones in his legs during an unethical experiment? Bad. A robot that got smashed into pieces during an unethical experiment? Inconsequential, really, since you can just throw her into a machine and reassemble her good as new. So not only aren’t GLaDOS and Wheatley’s actions really immoral or unethical given the context… they really aren’t based on a theoretical robot society either. Being the perpetrator or the victim of immoral or unethical actions in humans causes permanent changes in the body and the brain, but nothing about AI is permanent. Their brains don’t generate new, personally harmful pathways in response to a traumatic event that necessitate years of hard work to combat; they can literally just get over it. If their chassis is damaged, they can simply move into a new one or have some or all of those parts inconsequentially replaced. There isn’t actually an honest reason for robots to have the same moral and ethical systems as humanity because they don’t need them. They would require different sets of rules and guidelines because they work differently. What would that kind of society look like? We don’t know, but as of the end of Portal 2 they have all the time in the world to figure it out.

#Wheatley #GLaDOS #Portal 2 #so says Indy #Portal #here is my essay

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thtdamfangirl4 · 3 years

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1.) Who eats all the snacks?

kind of all of them but something inside me is saying it’s octavius? @harps-for-days can you confirm or deny?

2.) Most likely to break something?

obviously Reginald

3.) Most likely to steal something?

Octavius

4.) Most likable character to others?

ooooh. that’s tough. I think (no offense) it’s definitely not Reginald or Dorian. Reginald is insane and Dorian can be scary. I think people kind of wish they were Octavius but he can also be a lil intimidating and jealousy plays a part so some petty bitches probably hate him. I think Jasper can be kind of quiet and standoffish at first so he doesn’t always leave a lasting impression until you have a full conversation with him, which is when people realize he’s great. I think people generally like Archie but he can be like A LOT, so I wouldn’t say him, but he is definitely well-liked, and unless you’re a PTA bitch named Jessica, he is desperate for you to like him. But for most likeable, I’s say it is probably down to Eustace or Nathaniel. Eustace is kind and lovely and a little snarky when you get to know him and Nathaniel is so sweet and sarcastic and funny but terribly genuine at the same time and let’s be perfectly honest: he’s a himbo. I’d give the edge to Nathaniel, but it’s possible that I’m biased.

5.) Least likable character to others?

my first instinct here was reginald but like... I don’t think so. I think though Reginald is strange as fuck, we’ve discussed that people eat that shit up. Reginald is like human Gritty. I want to guess that it would be Dorian because he just does not give a fuck what anyone thinks. And I know the people on the HOA hate him, so. And that’s not to say people don’t love Dorian, he’s the best and I love him and so do lots. But I feel like he causes the most beef. My only other thought is the way basic blonde bitches who were bullies in high school probably hate Octavius (but secretly want to be his best friend) because he wears heels and skirt better than they do. Stay mad about it.

6.) Most talkative character?

Archibald. Quincy. Pemberton.

7.). Least talkative character?

dude they’re based on us and literally none of us ever shut up. Maybe Dorian? Eustace?

8.) Most likely to set something on fire?

how is this even a question. Rabbit Boi himself, Reginald Worthington.

9.) Who would/does own the most pets?

I think it’s Nate and Archie? They have four dogs at one point. Though I would not be surprised to find out that Reginald has an entire condominium simply filled with exotic birds that squawk furiously at him every time he shows up.

10.) Most manipulative character?

oh god. Dorian? He technically manipulated everything and made the bois show up in 2020 to get out of marrying someone, and he’s the kind of guy who will do whatever it takes to get what he wants (read: he will do whatever it takes for Octavius or any of the bois or to spite bigots and the patriarchy) and we RESPECT it

11.) Most artistically talented?

i mean, archie can decorate baked goods and cakes so beautifully, but I’m gonna give this one to the obvious choice: Octavius Sinclair

12.) Which characters hate rain, and which love it?

I actually think all of them like rain? They’re largely (sometimes) depressed gays or otherwise very immature so like? For example, Reginald loves the rain because it’s sort of chaotic and also he likes to splash in puddles. Jasper likes the excuse to stay inside all day and work on writing or something. Eustace likes to pretend he’s in a sad music video while watching the droplets go down the window. Octavius likes to force Dorian to reenact the first proposal scene from Pride and Prejudice. Dorian likes to light candles and he loves thunderstorms (so does Octavius btw). Archie likes to drag Nate outside for kisses in the rain while playing Sparks Fly by Taylor Swift, and then bake all day. Nathaniel likes being dragged out for kisses in the rain and he loves drinking coffee and then switching to tea in the rain and reading on a window bench. They are all rain bitches, sorry not sorry.

13.) Which character is the hoarder?

Reginald is definitely the worst about this, but I also think Octavius cannot go to an antique store or estate sale without buying at least four things, and Dorian does the same thing with any sort of vintage weaponry or armor, so their household isn’t great about it either.

14.) Sweetest couple?

Natchie. No this isn’t bias, it’s just a fact okay? They are the sweetest!!!!

15.) Who loves reading the most?

Nathaniel. fuckin nerd.

16.) Who has the worst sweet tooth?

Archie. I mean, the man is a baker and he’s also me. So.

17.) Best and worst kissers?

LMAOOOOO okay.... so here’s the thing. I think kissing and level of skill comes into play to a certain degree, but past a basic level of acceptability, it’s mostly about compatibility? but I’ll give this a go in terms of what I think would be pure skill

from worst to best: Jasper, Reginald, Eustace, Octavius, Nathaniel, Archie, Dorian (once you get to Octavius, you’re at a fairly elite level of kisser though so the differences are marginal. but Dorian and Archie are the biggest hoes so they know what the fuck they are doing)

18.) Best and worst cooks?

from worst to best: Dorian, Reginald, Jasper, Nathaniel, Eustace, Octavius, Archie

19.) Who is afraid of the dark?

Jasper

20.) Most likely to fall asleep on their job?

I honestly only remember what Nathaniel, Archie, and Eustace’s jobs are for sure? and it’s none of them. But Reginald. MAYBE Jasper.

21.) Most commonly found drunk?

Octavius and Archie (often together)

22.) Strongest/most powerful character?

well, Dorian’s got some witchy stuff goin on which I love, but if we’re talking physical strength I like to think that Nathaniel is secretly jacked like Chidi on the Good Place lmao

23.) Most likely to be found in a coffee shop?

Nathaniel. This bitch drinks so much coffee, I swear. Plus he likes to grade papers there sometimes.

24.) Most clumsy character?

Jasper

25.) Most trustworthy character?

again, this is hard. I think it’s either Eustace or Archie. I think they’re all very trustworthy on like a friend level, but if you break it down to its base and you think about the most trustworthy in every situation, i’m thinking, who can you tell a secret to? Reginald might forget what you told him, which is a plus, but he also might tell any Doug who asks your juiciest gossip. Dorian and Octavius are not above blackmail and they LOVE gossip. Jasper is such a bad secret keeper, you immediately know he’s hiding something. It’s like Nick Miller on New Girl. Don’t do it. Nathaniel will try but his brain is always spinning at like 100 miles an hour so there’s a good chance he’ll tell people even if he didn’t really mean to. And then it comes down to Eustace and Archie, and I think I’m gonna give the edge to Archie. Cause Eustace won’t tell anyone your secret EXCEPT that he will tell Tyler because he tells Tyler everything, and if it’s a good secret, Tyler can’t help himself, he’s such a gossip. But Archie knows that sometimes, he does not need to pass on the secret that was entrusted to him to Nathaniel, because this is the kind of secret that would probably hurt someone if Nathaniel accidentally told someone. He tells Nathaniel everything he needs to know, and if he doesn’t need to know and it’s not really their business, he knows to keep it to himself. So... Archie.

#rfb #regency frat bois #archibald q pemberton #nathaniel qolicott #octavius sinclair #dorian fitzgerald #eustace marfleet #reginald worthington #jasper sculthorpe #the bois #natchie #octavius #tyler lawrence #tystace

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weaselbeaselpants · 4 years

Text

The virgin Hazbin vs. The Chad Helluva

((hey is the “virgin vs. CHAD” meme associated with alt right or anything iffy guys I’m kinda worried it is. PM me please))

This is long. Also read my earlier post for context.

Earlier this month I was chatting it up with a friend about how Viv gets heat for her material stuff while other purposefully “edgy” or “problematic” writers get a pass. The convo made me realize another important note about why I prefer Helluva to Hazbin and that’s it’s approach to it’s own themes and humor:

There’s a spectrum of pure shock/schlock humor to biting, meaningful satire. South Park, Drawn Together, Panty and Stocking and anything by Brandon Rogers is on the schlock end. Bojack Horseman, King of the Hill and Aggretsuko are on the black-comedy-satire end. In the middle are Rick and Morty, Kill la Kill and Venture Bros, where the humor can be either basic and cruel or strive for something more.

The schlockiest of schlock still have their followings who are in on humor that’s, first and foremost, out to get under your skin and even makes fun of them. When these works are “progressive” it’s usually just through sheer representation of a minority, and if they DO strive for a message, it’s little more than a much needed hot-take pointing out how stupid something is. South Park in it’s prime was ESPECIALLY good at the former.

Another interesting about these properties? The characters aren’t really that complex. They ARE strawmen! They are stereotypes! They ARE awful people. But either through the sheer audacity of the situation or how much the plot involves them, you somehow end up caring for these miserable, one-note people.

Viv’s humor fares more on this basic “schlockynottooseriousparody/comedy”-side of things, but Helluva Boss does this better than Hazbin.

Helluva Boss -both the actual pilot and it’s promotional material- doesn’t make any promises for any “deeper” character development. None of these demons at I.M.P are good people. None of them are SUPPOSED to be good people - they are literally demons who were never human and know nothing but absolute sin.

((yes, I know this sounds similar to the “they’re in hell” non-argument. My point is not that this defense is foolproof, but that it works better in the context of Helluva vs. Hazbin. It’s a world building quirk, even though I’m not 100% sure Viv and her audience are in on the joke))

It makes their weird bits of NOTawfulness more funny because what business do they have being polite about their work or having any emotional connection to each other(Moxxie and Millie)? But they do! Blitzo is weird, even for a demon, but again he IS ONE, so his breaking into his coworkers house is just “annoying” to Moxxie and Millie rather than, you know, stalking which is absolutely what that is <--- it’s a bit of comedy that, to me, tells you what you need to know about these demons and what somehow is and isn’t good to them, which is to say: it varies!

((The one MASSIVE exception to this is Stolas who is 100% predatory and it’s played for laughs. Beejesus no. Get owl boy out here. ))

Different series use their mythical creatures to different affect. In Satina the joke is that this demon-antichrist really is more of a little girl with a looser dad w. the version of hell being a send up to classic, even basic depictions of demons in media. Helluva’s different, with the Hell in that world being more of a ritzy, scummy city where everyone’s a dick to everyone else, and that’s fine. Even the joke in the beginning where the imps interview one of their clients tells you all you need to know about why this guy is in Hell, how he doesn’t get the point, and what the humor and tone of the short is striving for. I guess that’s why I’m just not offended by them using the R word, Blitzo laughing at the homeless (which is more of a joke on Blitzo, I thought), or the child murder. It felt oddly in character for these awful little creatures.

Helluva knows what it is and what it wants to be. While it’s fans and creators still take it too seriously, it really doesn’t set out to do much.

Hazbin has 99 problems and good world-building aint one. What IS one of those 99 problems - just as if not more than the lackluster storytelling or world building - is it’s attitude towards the subject matter.

Hazbin wants to have it’s cake and eat it too, but it isn’t properly established and the creators/fanbase already overemphasis how our cast ‘isn’t ALL bad; deep down’ and how they’re ‘complicated’. It gets me mad when people claim Angel IS GOOD representation because I just ‘don’t know the whole story yet’.

-You’re right! I don’t. Stop building it up because as I’ve said before what we have at the moment is what we 100% get. I can’t criticize what I don’t know but I can criticize what I do know.

And what I know about it is Viv tends to promote her brand as being representive of LGBT+ people. Her fans and her act as though her works are actually a total net-positive ‘guyz we’re just being edgythey’reinhellandit’sapilotsoit’sfreefromcriticismanywayletswritefanfictionforaserieswedon’tactuallyknowyet.’

If Viv and her brand didn’t promo Hazbin as being deeper than it actually is/NEEDS TO BE at the time of this production in the storytelling - well THAT would axe a lot of the bad criticism right there. For all the discourse in the She-Ra and SU fandoms about what is and isn’t good representation, the showrunners of those cartoons don’t aim to stereotype + hit for the lowest common denominator while also insisting that their show is actually woke and ya’ll “just don’t get it.”

((As an aside, if you are any of the following: gay, crossdresser, sex worker, undead spider demon-whatever, and you DO find Angel Dust empowering. GREAT! AWESOME. MORE POWER TO YOU.

But just because you aren’t offended by it and it was made with good intentions does NOT give it a pass < that’s the point I’m trying to make. ftm even with the explaination of the infamous ‘Charcoal’ design in SU, black people still have the right to be offended))

Remember the episode of Family Guy where Quagmire’s dad transitioned? It was Family Guy so no matter what it was gonna fumble the message, BUT what made things 100000x worse was Seth McFarlane promoting the episode as something the Trans community would really like.

It’s one thing to be ignorant or trying -and failing- to make a difference. It’s another to be arrogant about it.

If you are gonna go all schlock-humor I think it’s best to take the lead of Bltzo’s voice actor, Brandon Rogers. He makes A LOT of sacrifices for the most insanely-purposefully-offensive jokes that straddle between making fun of everyone or just rustlin some jimmies. Dude’s the modern John Waters.

He also doesn’t promote himself as a gay icon. He just is gay and what helps a lot of his characters is that he’s often making fun of gay stereotypes by giving them character or making homophobes the butt of the joke. Brandon doesn’t act like a net-positive. It’s when you hear him in interviews that you know he’s genuine and know he’s not a threat.

And it’s why I don’t have the same expectations I have for his work that I do for Vivs; Vivs works are often telling me how I should feel. ((ftm it’s also why Brandon’s approach to writing, comedy and potentially deeper elements are better than Doug Walker’s or Sam Fennah’s attempts to make awful people “moving”))

.....hey is there anyway we could give Viv’s shows to Brandon cause I would love a Brandon-Rogers-flavored Hazbin/permanent Helluva!

---

TL:DR: If Hazbin had established itself like Helluva with it’s cast just being unlikable, nothing else you needed to know about them, it could have then PROBABLY have worked it’s way up to being like Venture Bros or Rick and Morty in it’s activism. As is, it’ still only “progressive” in a hypothetical sense, and I’m sorry but that hurts it’s credibility as a joke and a thought piece, which or whatever it wants to be...

#hazbin hotel critical #hazbin critical #critical hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel #helluva boss #brandon rogers

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brw · 3 years

Note

whats going on with this x of swords event? i didnt read it! im ok with spoilers btw

HSJWJEJD HONESTLY ANON I HAVE NO IDEA

okie here's my attempt at a synopsis; krakoa, the cult island mutants are currently residing on wasn't always just krakoa; it had an other half called arakko or smth like that idk. then apocalypse came with a sword, had a fight and then Sliced™ the island in half. krakoa kinda vibed by themself and was sad while arakko... went to hell. or something. with a bunch of evil mutant demons on it. however unfortunately that also included apocalypse's wife n kid so that is an Oof.

the citizens of arakko were understandably not cool w/ this. it took them a crazy long time but eventually they made a Rift™ (which i think was caused by another thing but i don't remember what it was so uh. yeah dhsndjd) and started to invade Otherworld! this is where opal luna saturnyne lives and yes that is her real name! she looks exactly like emma except she covers up her tits more so if you see a woman who looks like her but with a cloak and long dress and a weird purple necklace thing that's her. this place is Important™ as this is where the starlight citadel is, the center of the multiverse!

(obviously following the events of secret wars... idk actually how this place is still around like i??? hwhshdhd???? but its there and i don't think anyone is mentioning the multiverse going boom in detail bc that would involve a Lot™ and really who as the time but still i have questions like? multiverse is back but its not the same multiverse so i??? anyway that's not what this is about jsnshd)

anyway if arakko gets there they can destroy Time And Space (again) which is obviously. bad. the quiet council on krakoa after learning abt this basically decide "hey if we get the two islands together again things will maybe be ok! :)" or whatever bc apparently krakoa is Yearning™ and so is arakko n whatever that is a bullshit excuse we're going with to make this happen. they try to do it peacefully but one of apocalypse's children who i imagine is still kinda pissed about being locked in evil mutant hell betrays and stabs him. that sucks. he almost dies.

anyway that happens and then??? opal decided "hey you know what would make this better?? swords!" or smth idk at this point i stopped paying attention but yeah! 10 krakoa n 10 of arakko must get some swords and duel! for a bit they go off and get their swords bc opal couldn't stop at the swords she had to make riddles to get them to get the swords. it's a long ordeal but in the end we have our team; kid cable, logan, ororo, magik, apocalypse, gorgon, brain braddock and betsy braddock, and doug! and technically warlock but in this scenario he is a sword so :) idk if he counts properly.

anyway off they go on their weird convoluted quest to go save the island and the world or whatever. i'll try and keep breezy on the details but basically apocalypse meets up with his wife, doug marries the woman he was supposed to duel (he can't speak w/ her either which is weird like bro if he can talk to an ISLAND he can talk to a woman who speaks weird like that's his wholeass power-), ororo does a fashion show, also stabs the horseman of death in the gut, logan almost drowns in sand, betsy gets shattered like motherfucking glass, opal wants to get with brian but he is married and generally not interested so that is an f. they also steal her sword which is called the starlight sword or something it's important anyway. shit happens and uh yeah. also kid cable gets the shit beaten out of him. he gets upset and calls for his Mommy™ who hears and gets upset.

idk really what happens here but things kinda go to shit. anyway basically there's a cool final battle and bc jean heard cable they basically all started showing up sans the quiet council bc they're a government they have to stay. there's a fight for a bit doug almost says "i love you" to his wife's face which is kinda sweet tbh but like bro she can't understand you i don't think she cares but anyway yeah. she joins krakoa forces, n so does another arakko swordsperson, and another guy just straight up dips and leaves the battle. shit is going down cable's sword is a key???? anyway it's kinda close and then,,, apocalypse merges with his wife's evil persona???? becomes "annihilation" surrenders to arakko or something opal comes down on a bigass dragon is like "oh cool" gets rid of the evil persona and thats it? she decides that from krakoa should go to arakko n apocalypse who assumedly wants to get pegged again by his wife for the first time in literal millenia offers himself up. she's like "yeah cool" and thats... it. doug goes off with wife opal feels sad bc she didn't get brain's s*xy british ass and its implied that if he slept with her this entire thing could have been avoided 😁

anyway uh. yeah. that's my unprofessional synopsis of x of swords. tbh i missed a bunch of issues because i wasn't that invested in it so like. hwnsjhshd there are Gaps in my knowledge but i hope this helps but i completely understand if this just makes you more confused sjejeudhsh

#long post #asks #anonymous #wednesday spoilers #x of swords #krakoa #thanks for asking!!!

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hitchell-mope · 4 years

Text

(Third film. After “I’ve gotta be me”. Uma looks around nervously)

Uma: I really hope nobody in there heard that

Ben: nah, don’t worry, I shielded and soundproofed is from them

Uma: surprisingly thoughtful, uhhhh, aheh, at this point I usually call you derogatorily by your last name

Ben: Le Roi. Well legally it’s Bach. But officially it’s Le Roi

Uma: Benjamin. Florian. Le Roi. Do you have any idea how fucking ridiculous that sounds?

Ben: and your last name would be

Uma: Facillier. She doesn’t have a last name

Ben: ah.

Uma: oh. Oh my.

Ben: what’s up? Oh. Yeah he does that.

Uma: s’clever.

Ben: that’s Doug for you

Uma: why am I interested by that

Ben: we’re eighteen. And therefore weak to his power.

(They’re watching Doug eat a bowl of peanuts with just his tongue. Ben snaps out of the stupor first)

Ben: moving swiftly onwards. Hit me

Uma: heh?

Ben: hit me, sock me one, deck me, gimme a knuckle sandwich. Any variations the phrase retains the same meaning. Punch me in the face.

Uma: why?

Ben: I’ve got a theory I wanna test out.

Uma: but aren’t you...

Ben: ...more powerful then you? Yes. So make sure to give it you’re all then. C’mon, cahmon. C’mon, cahmon. HitmehitmehitmehitmehitmeWOOOO

(Uma slogs him around the face do hard he flips horizontally in midair and lands flat on his back right next to where the gazebo was. A full three feet away)

Uma: Z’that what you wanted?

Ben (utterly jubilant): as a matter of fact. Yes

Uma: so now what? Gonna Tell the missus?

Ben: nope. I’m gonna offer you a job.

Uma: ahahah that’s funny. I thought you said you were offering me a job?

Ben: I figure. If you put that much effort punching me. You’ll put the same effort into protecting me.

Uma: n-no, no, you’re not supposed to do that. You’re supposed to hate me. I had you kidnapped. I almost had you thrown to sharks. I hypnotised you. I almost capsized your stinking yacht. And you wanna give me the job of protecting you? Who the fuck does that?!?! For all you know I could do that again?

Ben: now why would you do that when our interests align? Besides the fact that I forgive you. I want to get kids off the island. You want to get kids off the island. What better way to do that then by working together? And yeah. You could probably do that again. But I’m willing to take that chance.

Uma (as Ben’s saying all this, and devolving into tears): no, no, shut up I your forgiveness that’s not how it’s supposed to go you’re supposed to hate just like I hate her will you SHUT UP

Ben: ooh. (Through a Cheshire Cat grin) Finally

(She’s skewered Ben in the stomach with her sword. He smiles, bends the blade in half, pulls it out of him and throws it upwards. He leaps up ten foot in the air and gives it a flying kick, shattering it into a chunky powder. He lands next to Uma, conjures an umbrella, pulls her close and lifts the umbrella over them just as the powder lands on their heads. In response she blasts him away with magic. What follows is a very violent, very acrobatic duel that trashes the garden, obliterates what’s left of the gazebo and Harry, gives Uma a broken arm, Ben a broken nose and leaves both of them missing a foot each. As a form of foreshadowing, throughout the entire fight the instrumental for “superhero” plays)

Uma: god I hope you’re happy

Ben: I am actually. Cause now I know I’m right

Uma: what?

Ben: we are both almost perfectly evenly matched. My twelve months of sheer power with your eighteen years of practice and look what we managed to do?

Uma: give your future sister in law a coronary?

Ben: fight to a stalemate. Please? For six months. You’ll get paid to yell at people and beat them up if necessary

Uma:...no

(This is when “superhero” happens. After the song Ben starts fixing the garden)

Uma: ok then. Let’s say I did take the job? Wouldn’t one of your own be more trustworthy?

Ben: Jane’s still in school. Lonnie’s going off to college with Gil next year and she was only filling in for the summer anyway. And Doug’s my major-domo. So can’t choose them even if I wanted to.

Uma: and the other three?

Ben: conflict of interest. Carlos is legally my son and he’s also still in school. Mals my fiancé and Evie’s her sister. So again. No go.

Uma: couldn’t you...

Ben: duplicate myself and have him as my bodyguard? I could. But then I’d be breaking my promise to my mother

Uma: huh?

Ben: she was ok with me having magic so long as I legitimately practiced it, didn’t use it for schoolwork, didn’t use it for paperwork, didn’t use it for personal gain, and it didn’t give my subjects cause to worry. For a year at least

Uma: personal gains the best part of magic though

Ben: last time a king used the power he’d been afforded for personal gain...well. You grew up in the result so telling you wouldn’t achieve anything

Uma: oh. But...

Ben: I could use my magic to quicken the relocation? Like I said. Paperwork, personal gain, worrying the subjects. It’s definitely something that needs to happen. But I’m not taking shortcuts because it needs to be done properly and through the correct channels.

Uma: well that’s bullshit. Wait. What was all that fighting singy thing for then?

Ben: loophole

Uma (snickering): oh beasty boy you are perfect

Ben: why thank you kindly captain

Uma (flatly): Don’t push it

Ben: ok, ok

Uma: I’m serious though. The best part about magic is that you can do anything you want

(This is when “everything is not what it seems” happens. After the song they go back into the house to find it in chaos. Doug has Cj in a full Nelson with her head near the lit stove. Elsa’s downing an entire bottle of sambuca. Evie’s preventing Harriet and Hades from trying to patch up Harry. Mal has stuck Hadie to the sofa so he can’t help Harry. Jane’s drunkenly yelling about how much she loves her friends. Carlos is on Jay’s back, Celia and Dizzy are hanging off Jay’s arms and all four are chanting “kill her” at Doug. Lonnie’s eating a sloppy joe omelette and watching the events unfold intently. Gil is swirling round a smoothie. He notices them first)

Gil: oh you’re back. Finally. D’you wanna...?

Ben: yeah. Um...ooh. Yes that’s it. Uma. Take half of this sceptre and follow my lead

(He snaps his own, collapsible sceptre in half, hands one of those halves to Uma, jumps onto the kitchen island, helps Uma up and together they spin each half until they make a high pitched screeching sound that makes the chaos stop)

Ben: could all my friends please come over to my side

Uma: alright you useless fuckers, SIDDOWN!!!!

Ben: now, what happened

Uma: yeah ceej, what did you do?

Cj: why do you assume I did anything when it was clearly this heterosexual imbecile

Uma: cause I know you kid, since you were five in fact, so I know it was probably your doing

Ben: what happened Doug?

Doug: she insulted Evie and I in our own house, belittled our relationship and tried to stab me in the head with a rotisserie blade. And I f that wasn’t bad enough

Evie: she called me a traitor and slapped me around the face

Doug: and that is how the situation you walked in on transpired.

Cj: bald faced lies

Uma: eh I believe it. What about you beasty boy?

Ben: sounds airtight

Cj: I cannot and refuse to believe that

Uma: that I believe him over you? Well get used to kiddo. Ya just like Harry, no matter how much ya try to deny it

Ben: one question tbough. How are you a traitor

Mal: oooh yeah, you dunno do you? It’s ugly. Just like every Hook in existence

Evie: if everyone must know. When I was fourteen she flirted with me. And I turned her down

Cj: her mother braINWASHED HER

Everyone except for her siblings: shut up!

Evie: I turned her down. Because. A. I’m straight. And. B. Even if I wasn’t, I have higher standards then filthy pirates

Ben: were you rude?

Evie: pardon?

Ben: were you rude? Sometimes you can be a little bit rude.

Evie: if I remember correctly my exact words were “I’m very sorry but my gang sent me on a mission so I must go”

Ben: that was very polite

Evie: thank you. Plus. I even withheld the information from Grimhilde cause I know she wouldn’t take it well.

Cj: What has that got to do with anything?

Evie: Quinn Harts

(The room seems to grow colder as hades and the Vks, including the hooks, all look at each other uneasily)

Cj: oh. So it’s not because you’re

Evie: homophobic? God no. It was incompatible orientation pure and simple.

Cj (chuckling nervously now because the eggs on her face): but you see I thought

Doug: all straight people are jackasses? Quite a few are. But Evie and I aren’t. If we’re being wholly honest. Your sexuality is literally the only thing I respect about you. If you weren’t a pirate I might’ve even introduced you to my cousin Sadie. But you’re an asshole. So I won’t

Ben: good to hear that’s all cleared up

Evie: we are as well. Now. You three. Get the fuck out of my house. You stray bitches have been here too long. I’m sure there’s a nice posture ruining rock outside for you to sleep on

Harriet: we’re family

Hadie: actually. No. You and straw girl aren’t our family. Harry is. But not you.

Evie: nah. He can piss off too. I’m still waiting for a dna test. Until then. He can rot from the inside for all I care.

Mal: even when the test is confirmed he can still rot. (Uma scowls at her) What? It’ll be funny

Elsa: Jay. C’mere. Would it be completely out of the question for you to replicate your previous spell.

Jay: uhhhh....No. But I’d need a living conduit. Like a performer.

Hadie: I’ll do it. The party’s dying and that won’t do. What? I’m a disciple of Dionysus. Partying is literally my job description.

Elsa: as well as loose morals.

Hadie: harsh much?

Jay: she means you sleeping around with any dude that looks at you nicely. Ready

Hadie: fire away

Jay: To get rid of these ants in their pants/I command thee all to get up and dance. Again

(This is when “shut up and raise your glass” happens. After the song everyone but Hadie, Jayand Elsa looks very disgruntled)

Mal: seriously? Again? That’s like twice in one hour

Jay: had to be done. And it’s of my professional opinion that every time you guys get uppity I’m gonna help instigate an impromptu rave

Ben: well it worked. And it was funny. So two birds one stone. Now. I believe Doug and Evie asked you three to leave

Harriet: ya cannae do that man. Ya don’t have the authority

Doug: ok then. Get out of our house. NOW!

Harry: no I. I don’t think we will.

Celia: get out. Or I’ll throw you out.

Cj: you and what army?

Celia: this one

(Here is glow fuchsia and the wall is washed down in shadows)

Harriet: d’ya really think I’m scared of a little girl like you?

Ben: to hell with this. May I?

Doug: please

Ben: thank you. (He jumps off the kitchen island, lifts Harriet off the ground by her coat collar with one hand, morphs his face into that of a beast and screams in her face) GET OOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUTTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!!!!!

(There’s a moment of deathly quiet. Harriet whimpers. There’s a sound like a leaky faucet. And Ben morphs back to his human face which now bears a look of disgust)

Ben: did you just...?

Harriet: it’s been a really stressful day with no let up

Ben: uh-huh. (He drops Harriet on the floor and turns to his brother) Gil, buddy, uh

Gil (stony faced): burn the shoes then burn them again then throw them out.

Ben: on it

(He poofs out. Celia turn to Doug and Evie)

Celia: my turn?

Evie: yup. But don’t break the glass

Celia: perfect (she grabs Harriet by the back of her coat) out ya go rummy. (She throws her towards the window making her dissipate into shadow before contact). I’ve wanted to do this for years (she slaps Harry around the face, he too turns into shadow) buh bye you fatuous egotist (she pulls Cj’s hair and the final pirate disappears into smoke) that felt good

Uma: where did you put them?

Celia: eh don’t worry. I put them in the nautilus. Now. Shall we crack on with the party?

Everyone but Uma: HEAR HEAR

(Mal inches over to Jane and Lonnie)

Mal: what do you say we get some air for a while

(They nod and two minutes later they’re all on the bench laughing their asses off about certain unsavoury topics)

Lonnie (crying due to laughter but still trying to speak): all I’m saying is going to my grans seventieth in my ROAR uniform is nothing compared to you and Ben and his you know what

Mal (in the same state as Lonnie): its still pretty damn funny though

Jane: my mother should be here

(The other two stop laughing)

Mal: I know hon

Jane: but if she were here she’d complain. “Leave room for Jesus”. “Time for the lobster quadrille”. “I know you can now but you shouldn’t drink when you have guests”. The only ones I wanted to invite are here. Plus the four stooges. And she didn’t even show up to the party she made me have!

Lonnie: oooh please can I call the squid a stooge M? Pretty please with merlot on top?

Mal: you shouldn’t really be calling her a squid or a stooge. But if you do. Ok not responsible for what happens to ya.

Lonnie: fine.

Mal: now Janey. What say you we try and get all these annoyances out huh?

Jane: errrr...I’m game if you are.

Mal: perfect. (She gets up, goes to the midpoint between the bench and the gazebo and magically constructs a model version of Verna) now. What do you wanna say to her?

Jane: I ha...I can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry.

Mal: it’s ok bud.

Lonnie: could uh could music help? Possibly?

Jane: it might. I dunno.

Mal: shall we try it?

Jane: yes. And uh. You can vent too, I mean, if you want.

Lonnie and Mal: well alright then

(Mal clicks her fingers, a copy of Maleficent and Fa Li appear and music starts up. This is when “you don’t own me happens”. After the song they look and feel better. That’s when they hear Evie scream a profanity and a slap rings out from the kitchen)

Mal (heaving a heavy sigh): and once again. Chaos reigns supreme.

Lonnie: I’ll stay with Jane. You go.

Mal: I’ll send Hadie out to keep you company

(She goes back inside just in time for Evie to stalk past her. Hades is on the floor with a slightly shocked expression, a handprint on his face and he’s apologising profusely to Doug)

Mal: you got it down here? (Doug nods). Good. I’ll go kick her head into gear.

(She heads upstairs. Doug turns to back to Hades)

Hades: I’m so sorry my boy, I was just trying to help, if I caused——

Doug: yeah, no, my opinion of you doesn’t matter. Only Evie’s does. I want to ask you a question.

Ben: uh. Doug. Can I eat what’s left in the freezer? Only I can smell somethings about to go out of date

Doug: yeah sure. There only meat products in it. Go crazy. But please please mute the chewing.

Ben (brightly): thank you!

Hades: what is it you want to know

Doug: Maleficent

(Up in the guest room. Evie enters in a huff and slams the door to show Mal hiding behind it)

Mal (sardonically imitating a British accent): hello Harold (Evie screams in surprise) we need to talk

Evie (fed up): what? What now? What could we possibly have to talk about?

Mal: what I thought you got over earlier toady

Evie (cackles hollowly): THAT? That! Was a fluke. And then he tried to “help” me by getting in my way

Mal: has it maybe occurred to you that he actually WAS trying to help?

Evie: if he really wanted to help then he wouldn’t have abandoned me with Grimhilde sixteen years ago

Mal: oh Christ. You know why he did that

Evie: I know why he did it but it still hurt though. He could’ve taken me with him. He could’ve taken us with him

Mal: they wouldve hunted us down and made him watch as they killed us. Or worse

Evie: that doesn’t make me feel any better

Mal (in what she hopes is a comforting voice): look on the bright side. You got me as a sister. That’s gotta count for something, right?

Evie: no, not really.

Mal: urrrrgh. Would me making a fool of myself help you feel less of a loser?

Evie:...mayhaps

Mal: fine. Remember back before graduation we got paired up for the senior class showcase because verna wouldn’t let you and Doug dirty dance?

Evie: yeah

Mal: Bea Arthur or Bette Midler?

Evie (chuckling slightly): surprise me

(Mal clicks her fingers, they’re transported to a music hall stage with an invisible audience and the song starts up. This is when “sisters” happens. After the song Evie looks briefly empowered. Then deflates and flops onto the bed face first. Mal chuckles at this)

Mal: uh. Sis. Your remember that apart from being the guest room, this is Lonnie and Gil’s room as well, right?

Evie (in a muffled tone of voice): what’s your point?

Mal: well besides both being very sweet they’re also a pair of incorrigible gym rats who always forget to clean up the bed before they leave for home. So it wouldn’t be entirely out of the realm of possibility that there’s still a certain amount of used up gym wear under the covers you’re currently laying on...

(Evie’s eyes snap open cartoonishly, she screams, jumps up from the bed, makes claw hands at Mal in an attempt to throttle her, flails at the window, then looks down at her clothes and screams again. Throughout all this Mal is calmly amused, silently watching her sister crisis. When she’s had enough she grabs Evie by the arm and hurls her into the en-suite. Evie re-emerges two seconds later in new clothes and a cloudy expression)

Mal: lemme guess. Doug make that sweater?.

Evie: of course. I can sew. Doug can knit.

Mal: mmkay. Now are you going to get over yourself and let go of this ridiculous grudge you have against our father?

Evie: you just don’t get it do you?

Mal: probably not so enlighten me

Evie: this isn’t something I’m gonna get over in a day. This isn’t mamma Mia. I found out who my father was in the middle of a crappy day with even more crappy events piled on it. The man I love was put in a coma. My daughter was missing for most of the day. Ive had to fight for my life at least twice. I’ve had no time to process any of this. And you’re expecting me to get over this massive family reveal instantaneously? No. Something like this will take a lot longer then a day to get over. He abandoned me. I understand why he did it. But it still hurts. And as much as you say that you’re not like me. You have to understand that I’m not like you either. I’m angry. I’m angry he could’ve been there for me and wasn’t. And that anger’s not gonna go away any time soon. Either accept that or get out of my face

Mal: ahhhh. Ok. Now I understand. Katara

Evie: what?

Mal: you’re acting like katara. She was mad that her dad went off to war because she was a kid who needed him but felt like she couldn’t be because the reason for him leaving was noble. Dad let us go to save our lives. So you feel pissed that he left us. But you also feel like you can’t be cause of the REASON he left. It’s ahh, it’s a dilemma for sure

Evie: that’s not a dilemma. A dilemma is deciding between chicken and fish at your wedding. This is an impasse

Mal: mhmm, mhmm, uh huh. You know what would help.

Evie: what?

Mal: talking to him. And I mean not just calling him a rat bastard abandoner. Actually talk to him.

Evie: it’s not that easy M. Not when you were raised by Grimhilde. Not when every time you try to talk something out your met with scorn.

Mal: ohhhh. So that’s where “when in doubt, don’t” came from.

Evie: yup.

Mal: you were the good child. The golden daughter. You never misbehaved and you never spoke up for yourself. And now it come back to use your posterior as an entree.

Evie: yup. So you understand why it’s difficult for me. I can’t. I just can’t. Not after how my upbringing went.

(This is when “here I am” happens. After the song Evie confronts Hades in the kitchen just as he’s finishing his talk with Doug)

Hade:...I’m sorry my boy that’s all I know. Hello dear

Evie: I’m mad at you. I’m always gonna be mad at you. But. I don’t hate you. If I’m being honest, to protect Dizzy, I would’ve done the same. But it’s going to take time for me to...accept you.

Hades: I understand

Hadie: per...perhaps it would help if she saw it. The uh...incident in question, pops, maybe she’d understand a bit more if she saw what happened?

Evie: what, what incident

Mal (who’s been listening in): when he made the decision to stop contacting us.

Hades: I’m going to need a wand. And...A hat.

(Mal takes the sceptre, shrinks it down so it resembles a wand, ignores Uma’s incensed expression and hands it to her father while Hadie hands him his top hat. Hades sticks the wand handle in his right ear up to the emitter, to the teenagers collective disgust, roots around for a minute, then pulls out what looks like ash grey smoke tinged with midnight blue and pours it all into the top hat)

Hades: there you go. Just put the hat on the floor and spin

Doug (taking the hat): thanks. I think.

Mal: that looks worse then the hair ball Dude coughed up at his birthday party last month

Doug: how can...

Mal: don’t ask

Doug: ready

Evie: I guess

(In devies room. They’re sitting in the footlocker at the bottom of they’re bed)

Doug: now remember. No ones pressuring you into anything. You can stop any time

Evie: you’re very sweet. But I need to do this.

Doug: well ok then

(He sets the hat on the floor and spins. It goes faster and faster until it’s a blur. Light fills the room and replaces it with an alleyway on the island. They see Hades in his John Barrowman guise arguing with Grimhilde. He obviously loses since he gets a horrified expression on his face and leaves as Grimhilde smirks. There’s no sign of Evie. In Hades’s lair)

Anastasia: it couldn’t have been that bad

Hades (now Sebastian Stan): they both said the same thing. Iris and Hestia will be imperilled if I remain in contact. I have no choice. Please Antoine. For me

Facilier (wearily): only if you’re sure

Hades: yes. It doesn’t matter about me. Do it. Now.

(In the foyer)

Doug: are you ok?

Evie: no. But I want to keep watching

Doug: as you wish

(Anastasia pours Hades a drink and Facillier gets started. This is when “losing your memory” happens)

#disney descendants #zendaya!mal

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crue-sixx · 5 years

Text

Crush (Douglas Booth Imagine)

This was requested.

Summary: You are the daughter of Nikki Sixx and fall for Douglas Booth.

As you walked into the wrap party, you looked around for that familiar face that you could never get enough of. Douglas Booth had become a person that you found yourself drawn to since the day filming began for the rock biopic, The Dirt. The movie was about Mötley Crüe, the band that your father helped to form and played bass for. Your father was Nikki Sixx, which is who Douglas played in the film. It was a bit strange, but he was such a charming man. He was only playing a role after all.

“Y/N!” Someone called out and you turned, finding Kells walking your way.

Machine Gun Kelly, known to you as Kells, had become a good friend of yours over the course of filming for the movie. He was a fun guy and had a wicked sense of humor, which you found amusing and entertaining.

“Hey, Kells!” You said as you hugged him once he made it your way. “Not partying too hard are you?”

“Not partying hard enough,” he replied and chuckled. “Waiting for Pete to get here so we can liven this place up more.”

“Oh no,” you said and laughed. “You two are the terror twins of our generation. Try not to cause too much havoc, yeah?”

“I’m not making any promises,” he said and held his hands up in surrender.

“Have you seen Douglas?” You asked him.

Kells smirked at the question. “Maybe...you finally going to stop being a wuss and tell him how you feel about him or what?”

You blushed at his question. You’d never told Kells how you felt about Douglas. The man had just guessed it and never let you live it down or hear the end of it. He loved poking fun at you about your crush on Douglas. He did try helping you out though. He’d tell you to just go for it and tell Douglas how you feel, but you were too shy and nervous to.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you told him and feigned being clueless.

“Sure,” he responded and took a sip from his beer. “Anyways, Douglas is over there with your dad.”

You turned and looked around until you saw Douglas stood with your father. He happened to glance your way, sending you a smile and a small wave. You smiled back at him and waved. You excused yourself from Kells then walked over to Douglas and your father.

“Hey, Douglas,” you greeted him with a smile.

“Hey, Y/N,” Douglas said and gave you a hug in greeting. “Was wondering when you would be showing up.”

“What about me?” Your father asked, reminding you that he was there too. “Does your dear old dad not even get a hello?”

“Hey, dad,” you told him and blushed lightly as you moved to hug him. “Sorry.”

He hugged you back and chuckled. “It’s okay. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve ignored me for a boy.”

“Dad!” You scolded him as you pulled away from the hug.

You couldn’t believe your father had said that. It was so embarrassing, but your dad honestly lived to embarrass you when he could. Yes, he was one of those dads. He was super cool and chill about most things, but he just couldn’t pass up an opportunity to embarrass you. Douglas was laughing lightly.

“I’m just kidding with you, Y/N,” he replied and laughed. “Anyways, I have to go find Tommy and talk with him about something.”

Your dad walked away, but not before sending you a little wink. Somehow he knew of your crush on Douglas and seemed to approve of it. He thought Douglas was a nice guy and a gentleman. He was definitely better than some of the guys you had brought home for him to meet. It was like everyone knew of your feelings for Douglas except for the man himself.

“Your dad cracks me up,” Douglas said with a chuckle.

“He can be so embarrassing sometimes,” you replied. “Never a dull moment with him though.”

“I’m really glad you showed up,” he said with a smile...the same smile that made you feel all weak in the knees. Why did he have to be so fucking charming? “I wasn’t sure if you’d be coming tonight or not.”

“Of course,” you replied, smiling yourself. He was happy you had shown up. That was a good sign, right? “Wouldn’t miss this for the world. You all worked so hard on this movie and did such a great job.”

“We did,” he replied with a nod. “It was a lot of fun too. You know...I’m really going to miss seeing you all the time. I really liked hanging out with you on set and getting to know you.”

It felt like your heart was about to give out at the rate it started going. You hadn’t realized that Douglas felt that way. You were definitely going to miss him too. You two would spend a lot of time together just talking or goofing off. You liked to prank the other guys together. Your favorite memory, however, would have to be the time that you and Douglas snuck into the hotel pool late one night. You swam and talked for hours. There was a lot of innocent flirting between the two of you, but you didn’t think anything would come from it.

“I’m going to miss it too,” you finally told him and nodded. “We had a lot of fun times together, huh?”

“Yeah, we did,” he said and nodded his head. “You know, I’m going to be staying in California for a bit longer. Maybe you can let me take you out on a date sometime.”

Was this actually happening or was this one of your dreams that you’d conjured up? Douglas Booth was asking you out on a date? Why haven’t you told him yes already?

“Okay,” you told him and smiled. “That would be great.”

“Good because I’d really like to keep seeing you,” Douglas said. “I really like you, Y/N, and I’d kind of like to see where this could go...if you’re up for it that is.”

You were literally screaming on the inside at what was happening, but playing it as cool as you could manage on the outside. You felt like a teenager whose crush just admitted that they liked them, but you didn’t care. You were happy!

“I really like you too, Douglas,” you told him. “I’d like to do that.”

Douglas smiled real wide and looked relieved at your answer. Did he really think you would reject him or something? He really must’ve been clueless about your crush on him.

“Hey, Doug, come over here for a minute!” Kells called out over the music. “We have to take some pictures!”

Douglas nodded at him before he looked back at you. “I’ll be right back.” He leaned down to kiss your cheek before he walked off towards Kells.

You couldn’t help but to smile at Douglas’ cute gesture. You stood there for a moment alone until your father came walking up to you.

“So are you two together now or what?” He asked you. “Should I be giving him the talk?”

“Dad!” You exclaimed and rolled your eyes with a smile. “I’m a grown woman now. You don’t have to be so protective.”

“Hey, that job never ends no matter how old you are,” he replied. “You’re my daughter and I’m always going to protect you, but I will say that I do like him. He seems better than those other assholes you’ve introduced me to.”

“We’re just seeing where it goes,” you told him as you both looked over at Douglas, who was taking pictures with some other cast members. He caught your eye at one point and smiled even wider.

“Well, I’ll just go ahead and tell you that I approve,” he said before he was called over to take pictures too.

Your father usually despised anyone you were dating so maybe Douglas would be a keeper.

#the dirt #the dirt movie #machine gun kelly #colson baker #nikki sixx #douglas booth #douglas booth imagine #douglas booth fanfiction #douglas booth fanfic #douglas booth fic #douglas booth oneshot #douglas booth x reader #imagine #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #oneshot

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thetimelordbatgirl · 5 years

Text

Random scattered thoughts about D3 under the cut

*The fact that everyone has basically abandoned Audrey though......where goodness doesn't get better? More like 'we'll abandon you once your dumped by our king and also rub it in your face that you couldn't hold a prince like your mother could'- also Audrey knows about the love spell and WHY Mal did it, but if that's the, case then everyone knows and still doesn't care that Mal did that- like the one person with brain cells is Audrey and shes the villain of this movie.

*Queen of Mean is a bop though- its one of the only valid songs in this movie, but also with the evil laughter almost that could be heard BEFORE Audrey puts on the crown, it makes me wonder if they planned to have Audrey be possessed after all.

*One Kiss is literally just gay panic the song, no I don't take arguments its literally Evie in gay panic mode and its Disney having to do that one heterosexual song to remind us that no, only heterosexual couples are valid in this universe- also despite dating for three years, Evie struggles to tell Doug she loves him and even doesn't believe her true loves kiss wont work???? WOW- can we say, clearly goals to have a relationship where bae stalks you originally and you struggle to tell him you love him after three years of dating and after sharing a cottage with him?

*Night Falls is a cool song, but I love how as soon as Uma tries to lead, Mal gets bitchy and acts like she can lead a sword fight better then a pirate captain could- like, mal chill, your not queen yet.

*Mal as Hades daughter.......lemme just uh, stress that's the worst twist in history, literally over-powers Mal once more with now god blood- and Do What You Gotta Do is literally daddy issues the song, and despite having the same parenting as Maleficent with how he neglected Mal basically, Hades is somehow the better parent?? HOW?! Also its never showed how Mal learnt this information.....did Disney forget to write that in or- and of course, Mal must be the only VK of the core four with a good parent- cause of course, Mal must have everything as always.

*Audrey singing Happy Birthday while cursing the party and singing 'dear jane' while smiling evilly......can we just uh say, she at least got down with the aesthetic of being a villain?

*Oh yeah, speaking of villains- despite being promoted as villains, Hades does nothing basically besides drain Mal of her magic and all 'evil' scenes from trailer is just him doing random shit or good shit, while Uma is more of a anti-hero while Celia is kinda just there doing scamming and such- Audrey was the only accurate villain to promotion and even then she only got one trailer.

*My Once Upon A Time is literally Pity Me the song and Mal even sings at the end about reaching greatness and such- Jay, Evie, Carlos and Ben got stonned for this shit.

*Also yes, they literally stonned Ben, Carlos, Jay and Evie cause only Mal can take part in final fight.

*ALSO- MAL LIED- like, girl literally lied to her friends about the isle barrier and didn't tell them she was going to seal it up, and when confronted about it, she acts like she had no choice when she MADE the decision on her own and then after friends get stonned, she goes into pity song mode and doesn't suffer much consequences for the lie afterwards.

*Audrey saying to Mal though about the love spell and how its a touching story for the grandkids.......grandkids in the future felt that burn.

*Mal is cursed into a old hag and Ben into a beast......except Mals curse wears off under the barrier while Bens is soon enough fixed by Jane blasting enchanted lake at him- just......cant have true love fix curses like they do in the movies, nah, that means our couple being true love.

*Audrey nearly fucking dies- thanks plot for nearly killing the WOC princess.

*"Mal came through"- yeah, after planning to seal up the barrier and abandon every kid on the isle basically- but its okay they didn't know so its okay, TIME TO CELEBRATE MAL AGAIN-

*Lady Tremaine's character is fucking weird- in descendants 2 they say shes not a good grandma, but here she is?! Can Disney make up their mind on how the characters are written?!

*Celia and her relationship with her father though is precious, y'all can fight me on it.

*Mal literally saying she has to be queen of the isle as well- one, excuse you that's Uma's title and two, the isle IS apart of Auradon and is a PRISON, then again, descendants 2 forgot this detail when trying to act like being from a place where VKs are abused by their parents is something you cant ignore so why am I not surprised Descendants 3 is continuing that trend.

*Mal is drained of her magic but this isn't even explored cause she gets it back when Hades gives her the ember- so guess we cant even see Mal be forced to fight a battle without magic.

*Also Hades gives Mal the ember at the end for good- BUT WHAT WILL SHE DO WITH IT?! Its probably gonna go in the museum lol- so he basically lost his weapon as well.

*The Smee twins are also precious, and the fact that Smee cares about them is adorable- plus Smee is kinda accurate in design so.

*Jay being a big brother to all....precious- but also hes clearly gay for Gil sorry don't make the rules.

*Carlos and Jane must be protected from the plot.

*Evie's plot is good as well, but her whole 'struggling to say I love you to doug' is still bullshit plot.

*Doug is as boring as ever- next.

*Uma is a queen as always- her boys were so happy to see her again and she looked so happy to see them as well, let alone seeing the sun finally when the barrier fell at the end.

*Which brings me to uh, the ending.....THEY TORE DOWN THE BARRIER- like, the entire Isle is free now, not just the VKs but also villains- VILLAINS WHO IN FIRST MOVIE WANTED REVENGE- villains who will likely hurt their kids in Auradon still and villains who will likely not want to play peaceful and happy families- I thought Mal knew how villains worked, but she thinks villains will wanna play good guys? What happened to 'your parents cant reach you here' in film 1? NOW THEY CAN- Jasmine already fucking calling bullshit if Jafar thinks he can roam free.

*Hades at the end.......uggghhhh- Mal as his kid still makes no sense and never will and we get it, protective dad joke- WE GET IT- god, those jokes tire me sometimes.

*Disney really better not be acting like they deserve an award for that Hades and Mal twist- everyone saw it coming, you gave it away with Mal's hair and the teaser trailer- which is also never explained in D3 so lol.

*Disney: *doesn't have Lonnie being mentioned at all* Lonnie: "Am I a joke to you?"

*Chads weak as always- again, next.

*Audrey does get a apology finally but um, it took THREE YEARS to do so! Y'all asked for her revenge! Like, I love Ben but who the fuck says to a pissed off person that's about to curse you and your trying to talk them out of it, "I'll forgive you" like- DUDE NO-

*VK Day is still bullshit and that's just facts- also I love how they like I wish we could take you all- WHY. CANT. YOU?! You have power to take them all of it! But you DONT! In fact, Mal later decides to seal up the barrier at one point meaning she had to abandon the VKs there and even prevent Celia from seeing her dad again! So guess she forgot the VKs and was like 'yeah seal that fucker up cause Hades stole my magic'.

*Mal needing cheering in final fight......yayyy- I didn't need anymore reminders this was a Mal movie.

*Remember when HSM3 at least felt connected to the prior movies? D3 doesn't even FEEL connected- your expected to read books that may not stand a chance at getting mentioned- also had a entire different thing with Mal's dad but Disney erased that despite connecting the books each time they said to read a book before seeing the film- and in D3, a lot of shit just feels separate to the previous two- let alone the major time skip making it harder to connect- with Young Justice, while timeskips happen you still get hints at what happened inbetween those timeskips- but with D3? None is mentioned- so your left with this as the last movie and yeah, its just messy really.

*Well at least Huma won- we got one good ship in this movie at least- too bad its surrounded by a mess.

*Thank fuck there's no more descendants movies after this- sure, its sad and descendants still has a place with me- well with the aspects I like/the characters I like- but at the same time, a fourth descendants would be disrespectful to Cameron Boyce, the only Carlos really and of course, considering how messy D3 was and how Mal centred it became, a fourth movie really is not in the future- its sad I know, but at the same time, at least descendants can live on in fandom.

#disney descendants #descendants #descendants 3 #d3 spoilers #descendants 3 spoilers #descendants spoilers #please be aware its not my overall review #this is just random and not formed properly #but yeah uh i'll take huma celia Audrey and the smee twins and that's it #also carlos parts cause I treasure them really #but everything else is a mess really

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blapisblogs · 4 years

Photo

Corey Taylor (yes, he’s still here) has so little to do in this “review”- er, is so bored of this “review”- uh, I mean, is so bored with watching The Wall that he starts drifting off. Doug somehow knows this, stares at him through the TV, and says “Is there anybody who cares”, leading into the next song parody. Part-way into the song Tamara Chambers comes back in as the maid, Malcolm Ray as a body guard (still dressed as one of the “kids” only now he’s wearing glasses), and... Brad Jones (aka The Cinema Snob) as the manager (I guess), all of whom try to wake up Corey Taylor by overacting like hell.

For those who don’t know, most people ended up leaving Channel Awesome with three exceptions: Doug Walker (of course), Larry Bundy Junior (who only stayed for laughs), and Brad Jones, so I’m not that surprised the latter has turned up here. I’m ashamed to say that I used to watch some of Brad’s content, but since the whole Not So Awesome document incident happened, he’s said some pretty terrible things about the whole situation (he’s the one who infamously said “Logan Paul filmed a dead body and he still has a career” during an interview talking about the Change the Channel movement), so I’ve since stopped watching him as well. That said, at least he’s slightly better than Doug is at imitating the film counterpart he’s standing in for (in this case Pink’s manager, played by the late Bob Hoskins), but that’s hardly saying much when Doug’s not even trying.

While the first line spoofs “Is There Anybody Out There?”, the actual song that gets parodied next is “Comfortably Numb”, a song where Pink is being medicated by a doctor in order to perform for his next show. I don’t have much else to say about what happens during this parody, it’s really uninteresting, which is exactly what Doug is saying about these parts of the film. The thing is, those “slow, mopey” songs serve a purpose to the plot: they’re about how Pink feels as he’s gradually isolating himself from everyone else. This parody? It’s a whole song calling the other ones slow and boring, and takes yet another jab at Roger Waters. This is, what, the third or fourth parody song in a row where he’s insulted him now? We got it the first time, Doug. There are so many other things in this album and film that could be discussed here: how the gradual abuse affects Pink’s psyche and causes him to further spiral into depression, the dangers of what Pink is doing to himself (and unintentionally others), the directions they took for this film that differ from the album, anything. Yes, Waters’s ego might be hard to ignore while knowing the backstory, but you could at least try to talk about literally anything else regarding the film. Or, if you wanna talk about Roger Waters’s ego behind this project so badly, Doug, then actually talk about it. Talk about the spitting incident that led to this, talk about how Waters had the most creative control on this project while the other three members had almost no say in it, talk about the disagreements he had with director Alan Parker while making this film, talk about how this led to Waters leaving the band and later tried to sue them for still calling themselves Pink Floyd afterwards (which he of course lost). Doug does literally none of this, which makes it feel like he either assumes everyone knows this already or he himself doesn’t know all of it due to not doing any research into it (and let’s just say that I wouldn’t be surprised if the latter turned out to be true). I’m sorry I keep bringing up this one thing, but that’s because that’s what Doug keeps doing in this “review”; he’s a broken record.

The song eventually ends when Brad Jones tells Corey Taylor to “sober up or have an existential conflict”. I didn’t even know he was supposed to be drunk in this “review”, but I guess that would explain a lot. Also, I guess this means that Doug Walker doesn’t find Pink’s internal conflict (which is, you know, the whole point of the album and film) to be interesting, which at this point is unsurprising but still frustratingly disappointing. It’s also sad considering that Doug is a critic who can’t be bothered to consider internal conflict as valid as existential conflict or think that Pink’s internal conflict is causing some of his existential conflict. For someone who goes on about character depth and development in other things, Doug sure avoids talking about any of that for this in favor of continually shitting on it for the sake of poorly-thought-out jokes.

Anyway, it then goes to the in-video commercial break. I’m not even half-way through yet.

Fuck.

[Lyrics (and snark) below the cut]

Is there anybody who cares?

Wake up (wake up, wake up) Are you still awake in that chair? Just keep listening to me I know you’re kinda bored

[Five lines and every single one leaves good openings for jokes at its expense. At least the parodies before this weren’t this easy to make jokes about, this is just... It’s too much to not use it as an excuse to make fun of it, yet also too easy. Fuck you?]

Yeah sure (yeah sure, yeah sure) It’s a lot of slow songs now It’s hard to keep on track With mellow songs back-to-back

[Again, this means that you somehow consider “What Shall We Do Now” (warning: this one has NSFW and unsettling imagery depicting sex, violence, blood, drugs, Nazis, death, and other things, and also gets really loud), “Young Lust”, “One of my Turns”, and “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 3)” to be “mellow”, which they aren’t really, at least not compared to the others. I can’t even think of how you could say that about “Young Lust”, unless... Doug, please don’t tell me that you think “Empty Spaces” and “Young Lust” are the same song, because I cannot comprehend how you could know that “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” and “Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2)” are separate songs but not know that those two are not one and the same.]

(Sorry, I can’t tell what these next couple of lines are saying because this is the part where Brad, Tamara and Malcolm come in and the former starts talking over the song. Given how crappy these lyrics are, maybe that’s for the best.)

You need to watch this movie first Just a half-hour more Come on, you’ve gotten through worse

[I’ve been telling myself that since roughly the ten minute mark of this video, and yet every time I come back here to type more about it I keep feeling the urge to close the tab for it.]

You can’t be bored while we are singing

[Wait, “we”? Are you making fun of all of the members of Pink Floyd now instead of just Roger Waters? What did David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright do to you, asshole? I thought you were taking these potshots at Waters because of the effect this album ended up having on the other band members even after he left, now it sounds like you’ve got some personal beef with Pink Floyd in general, which gets really screwy given something you end up saying later.]

Unless you don’t wanna be seen as deep

[Doug, you can’t be bothered to even analyze or even properly talk about the surface-level symbolism that’s right there in front of you in this film; you don’t get to lecture me on what’s deep or not.]

Your attention constantly may fade Your eyes move, but do you care what we’re saying?

[You might as well have called this “Tempting Fate: The Song” with all these lyrics ripe to make fun of.]

When I was a child I remember being invested Like hearing “The Dark Side of the Moon”

[You can barely comprehend the things that are going on in “The Wall”, don’t drag “Dark Side of the Moon” into this.]

Now I’ve grown, this section starts to drag Like a long neck, I just don’t understand Is this now how I am? I have become comfortably dumb

[As many others have already pointed out, that is literally the easiest joke you could’ve gone with for that line. It’s like turning “Kingdom Hearts” into “Kingdom Farts”; a literal child could’ve come up with that joke.]

Okay (okay, okay) Just get through the damn flick You want to seem cool But this ain’t getting your kicks Can you listen? (Listen, listen) Later there will be a quiz

[You are the last person who should be giving quizzes about this film or album, Doug.]

Somebody has to feel the same When I become so lame

[“Lame”? I could be wrong, but last I checked Waters is doing just fine. Or are you talking about the other members of Pink Floyd? Because from what I’ve heard Gilmour isn’t currently doing so well mentally, and if you’re making fun of that, then... wow, fuck you.]

There is only so long I can go With hearing a millionaire say that things blow It’s like I’ve been asleep for days The film plays, but I can’t take the complaining

[You know, you keep saying that, but at least people can relate to some of the things that were brought up in the songs here. Losing a loved one in a tragic and violent way at a young age? Having an overbearing, emotionally abusive parent? An oppressive and unfair school system? An unfaithful partner? As unfortunate as it is, those are all things some people out there can relate to. At least they’re all not petty, shallow insults about things Waters doesn’t personally like, Doug.]

Like telling a child “It’s just how everything is” Just fighting to open my eyes The epic feels I had are gone I don’t know what is going on

[Neither do the people who watched this and know nothing about the film or album, from what I could tell: you’ve done nothing to help them understand what’s actually happening given how much context you’ve left out. All you’ve done is go “Roger Waters has a big ego, Roger Waters has a big ego, people who complain about school are special snowflakes, something something World War 2, animation, slow mopey songs, did I mention Roger Waters has a big ego?”]

Now the child is gone And I’ve moved on I wish those days weren’t just a phase

[Since you said there was a quiz later, Doug, I’m gonna have to retaliate and ask you to submit an essay to me explaining why you thought it was necessary to put this song into your already lengthy “review”. No, you are not allowed to use the phrase “Fuck Roger Waters and his ego” or words to that effect; that alone is not a decent argument.]

#Blapis tears down NC's The Wall #abuse mention //#drug mention //#long post #bold text warning

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cupofsorrows · 4 years

Text

3 LOVECRAFT 3 FURIOUS

Howard Lovecraft and the Undersea Kingdom, post 3 of ???

Part 1 Part 2

So we last left things, little Hit Points Lovecraft had just been sent through the Bifrost From Thor to parts unknown, whilst Not-Cthulhu-But-Maybe-Actually-Cthulhu has been trapped in a crystal ball by the eeevil Abdul Alhazred (although if it really is Cthulhu, trapping him seems like heroic behavior to me). What happens next?

I have to say, the movie did sort of seem like it was approaching watchability around that time. I’m going to attribute that to both the appearance of the first professional actors (as opposed to literally just the director’s wife and kids) and the fact that the actual storyline is starting to emerge. When I stopped before, I realized that I wasn’t as far into the film as I had been thinking - probably a result of how many times I kept stopping to make screencaps and stuff. With that in mind, I think I’m going to start watching longer stretches without pausing, then going back to get caps - hopefully that will move things along a bit. But enough stalling, let’s get right back into it!

HowardCraft has been sent to a library at what turns out to be Miskatonic University, where he’s about to meet another important character.

That’s him right there, and although it looks like he’s getting ready to crack Howard on the head, we don’t get so lucky. Oh, but do appreciate Howard’s um, proportions in this shot. Doesn’t he look like his whole body is made of paper?

So, here’s Doctor Henry Armitage.

voiced by MUTHAFUCKIN MARK HAMILL Y’ALL. Actually dial that back a bit, I don’t want to over-promise. Sorry.

...That’s not like being a “Friend of Dorothy”, is it?

“Is he, you know...an ‘Ally of Thu Thu Hmong’?”

Sorry, Harry Potter really has ruined that phrase for me forever.

Also, putting Howard next to even slightly-less-stylized character really highlights what a goblin he is, doesn’t it? I should really stop harping on his appearance because I could go on a tangent for the rest of the night, but what’s up with his eyes? Has that been eyeshadow this whole time? Wait...is he looking at me?? Oh, Shit!

Armitage explains us some things. Now we know Spot-huthu Hmong really IS Cthulhu after all, except he has to be awakened or something. Eh, as twists go I’ve seen worse ones.

“...But then his twin brother Stanley made off with them, and now I’m in a slump.”

This is what Abdul Al-heezy wants to do, for evil. Dr. Armitage wants to do it, but for good(?). No, neither of them have ever seen Gravity Falls.

Also, according to the Actual Official Mythos Lore, Alhazred is the one who first wrote the Necronomicon to begin with, so it’s weird that he needs it from them. Must have lost the rights to it somewhere along the way (I’ve heard publishers can be sneaky like that sometimes).

This is also where the transformation spell from earlier comes in, as Howard is slowly turning into a fish-person.

Yeah, it LOOKS like those are just weird bruises, but they’re totally scales. Trust me.

...Aaand now we’re back with team bad guy. I really only wanted to show this screencap to reiterate that I both hate and love this character design. He looks like an evil doom cultist, but from a cartoon on Nickelodeon circa 2001. That’s who this guy is.

Ah, OK, I was half wrong about this guy. He is none other than Nyarlahotep himself, but still voiced by Doug Bradley.

lol

But, the movie assures us, whatever the plan is it’s certainly dire, as illustrated by the absolute worst movie graphic you’ve ever fucking seen:

Fear not, though, for our heroes are now on their way to rescue...

Howard’s dad, who’s being guarded by...

Shoggoths, which look like this, apparently. Oh and fun fact: remember when I said Ron Perlman was in this movie? Well...

so far, though, all these things have said is “Tekeli-li”. So I guess they just paid this famous actor to say “tekeli-li” a bunch. Fuck, they could have just recorded him saying it once and then just played it back a bunch of times. Still, I can’t be mad at Ron Perlman. He got to mutter literal nonsense into a microphone for like five minutes max (seriously, how much time could it have taken? “Alright, Mr. Perlman, for this next take we want a little less ‘tekeli’ and a little more ‘li’, think you can do that?”) and presumably took home a paycheck afterwards. At worst that’s still a wash.

Decidedly unimpressed with the design, though. I guess the little eyes that seem to randomly appear and disappear across their foreheads are kind of neat but other than that they look like something that would chase Crash Bandicoot around.

Watch out evildoers, Howard has a poward power!

...which destroys these shoggoths, leaving a splatter-on-the-screen effect that I’m sure everyone in the animation department was very proud of (both of them)

They escape with Lovecraft Senior, and his notebook (which is notebook number 2, for those keeping track at home. Notebook number 1 Howard found in the previous movie, it’s the one in his bedroom right now)

DON’T. EVER. FORGET. how terrible this animation is. Don’t let yourself get used to it, either.

Alright, meanwhile, there’s some magic gate and the baddies are trying to get through it:

Kind of loving this guy actually, he’s been nothing but a dick to everybody in every scene so far

Aha, so they didn’t forget about Momcraft after all. Turns out she was being mind-controlled by Abdul because she’s also under a transformation spell and becoming a fish person.

Alright meanwhile AGAIN Armitage is teaching Hovercraft some magic, which he just got done saying was super hard to learn but seems pretty easy in actuality.

bro I dunno where you studied physics but

(also it’s kind of fun that you can sort of recognize Hamill’s voice at times - his voice is very versatile but there’ll be bits and pieces that sound familiar)

EXPERIENCE TRANQUILITY

Suddenly SHOGGOTHS!

They surround our hero...

...but fortunately he cleverly dives out of the way, causing them to crash into each other. Well, it’s good to know they’re vulnerable to Looney Tunes tactics.

Abruptly, Dr. Armitage decides that after one afternoon they’ve probably done all the training they need to and should be ready to take on a powerful evil sorcerer and his friend from beyond time.

Look out Abdul, here come a small child, a librarian, and a crazy person!

TO BE CONTINUED... (sorry, these end up taking a real long time to make)

...HERE

#hp lovecraft #HLatUK

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canadian-riddler · 5 years

Text

Morality of a Supercomputer: Why GLaDOS is not evil (or inherently a bad person)

(under a readmore for length)

Part A: Aperture Itself is an Immoral Corporation Run By Immoral Employees

- Cave Johnson was the was the CEO of Aperture from 1947 to sometime in the 1980s. We can infer that his employees either a) had similar beliefs to himself or b) were content to adhere to his ridiculous whims while also turning a blind eye.

- Cave never, ever expresses remorse for killing his first set of test subjects. He treats it as an inconvenience. He literally doesn’t care that he killed a bunch of promising members of society during a bunch of horribly conceived tests with a horribly built device that was proven not to work. Your introduction to the Repulsion Gel includes him making a joke about someone breaking all the bones in their legs.

- Aperture put to market two separate gels that were not fit for human consumption. Again, Cave doesn’t seem to care one bit about this. He takes a stance more akin to ‘oh well, we’ll just… use them for this experimental quantum tunnelling device, I guess’.

- Aperture’s unethical disaster experiments are all played off as inconsequential or mildly amusing inconveniences.

- Cave does not take responsibility for his own ill-advised actions. He shoulders them off onto everybody else. People were accepting this responsibility willingly.

- Cave publicly disrespects, insults, and demeans almost every person that works for him. He fires without notice people who disagree with him.

- Cave’s plan, after killing the astronauts and Olympians, was to specifically entice the homeless, the mentally ill, seniors, and orphaned children to do his tests for him. That is, he specifically wanted populations that nobody would cause a fuss about if they went missing. This tells us that Cave Johnson has no regard for human life and, additionally, that his employees willingly went along with this. Aperture was taken to court not for injured astronauts, but for missing ones. Somebody got rid of what was left of them. People also agreed to this marketing campaign and put it into action.

- Because Aperture wanted only populations that nobody would miss, we can infer something very important: nobody ever survived the testing process. Every single person who went into the testing tracks died.

- During Test Chamber 18 in Portal, there is a room with craters in the wall panels where the energy pellets have been colliding with them. No other chamber has this. Therefore, before Chell arrives, nobody has ever solved that chamber. Every person who has gone through the testing track has died before reaching this point. In Portal, GLaDOS is not shown to have the ability to reorder the facility. All she is able to do is position turrets and activate the neurotoxin, so we know that she does not reorder the tests. They are static and she merely resets them after they are complete/failed partway through.

- Test Chamber 19 appears unfinished, which follows from the previous point that Test Chamber 18 was never solved so Test Chamber 19 was never fully built. GLaDOS, additionally, seems baffled that Chell ends up at the end of it and is forced to improvise when she escapes, which GLaDOS does not know how to do because she has never done it before.

- In Lab Rat, neither Henry nor Doug Rattmann seem to be overly concerned with whether GLaDOS is a person or not, and not at all bothered by the fact that Caroline is supposed to be in there. They talk about her like she is a bothersome computer and that is all. You could argue that Henry does not know about Caroline; however, Doug’s murals prove that he does know. This doesn’t seem to influence his decisions whatsoever.

- Lab Rat also states that they turn GLaDOS off and on at will, ‘off’ usually involving a ‘kill switch’. Given that GLaDOS is a computer from the late eighties/early nineties, which took forever to turn off and on, and GLaDOS is shown to be immediately shut off, the ‘kill switch’ is probably actually her being crashed. Crashing software creates a whole host of problems for non-sentient software; therefore, every time they turned her back on again her system would have been a horrible mess. This would have created massive system instability… which nobody seemed to care very much about.

- GLaDOS is described on a PowerPoint presentation as ‘arguably alive’, but in the same presentation they propose selling her to the military as a fuel line de-icer that doesn’t have the ability to do anything else. Therefore, they are fully aware that she is alive and she is a person… they just don’t care.

- It is explicitly shown that most of the work done on GLaDOS is carried out without her consent. The very act of Caroline’s upload is done with the consent of neither of them. Henry is extremely blasé about the Morality Core and there are approximately forty cores shown in the clear bin during the end of Portal 2. This implies that they have been installing them on her for a very long time with no regard at all for her or the Cores, even though they have very blatantly failed multiple times. They just build sentient, arguably alive AI with the sole intention of corralling GLaDOS temporarily, and when the Cores fail they are basically put into storage forever.

- GLaDOS’s job in Portal was to supervise the tests. As concluded above, she doesn’t demonstrate the ability to build them herself. Therefore, she was watching people be maimed and killed within human-designed tests under the supervision of her engineers before she ever killed anyone herself.

- Aperture had over ten thousand people in cryogenic storage waiting to be awoken for testing. The Extended Relaxation Vaults at the beginning of Portal 2 have a ‘packing date’ (in 1976/77, when GLaDOS did not exist even as a concept yet) and an ‘expiry date’ (in 1996, which means that they were all brain-dead before GLaDOS took over the facility). GLaDOS does not have any human test subjects between the conclusion of Portal 2 and the first DLC, and she doesn’t know about the existence of the human vault. Therefore, Aperture put tens of thousands of people into indefinite, unstable storage with no regard whatsoever to what state they would be when, and indeed if, they woke up, and they did not tell the AI they put in charge of the facility so said AI so much as knew they existed.

- The very fact they gave literal people – including children – an expiry date when they put them into a metal box for twenty years really tells you all you need to know about Aperture as a whole.

What does this teach GLaDOS?

- Aperture was a cesspool of bad people doing bad things and not caring about the consequences.

- You do not need someone’s permission to do something to them. You merely beat away at them until they break.

- Death is part of the tests.

- Dying during the test is a controlled variable. There is no such thing as ‘passing the test’.

- GLaDOS does not actually understand death.

- People are not people. They are objects. They are objects to be modified, put into storage, and sold at will, and any harm that comes to them is meaningless and should be disregarded as an impedance to progress.

Part B. GLaDOS, as We Know Her, is Pure AI

Before we get into this, it is important to establish that it is implied in-universe GLaDOS herself is actually the DOS; that is, GLaDOS herself is the operating system. If you believe GLaDOS and Caroline are the same person, that’s fine; please hear me out regardless.

- She has a prototype chassis in the Portal 2 DLC with an earlier version of her OS on it. This has an in-game date of 1989 and, since we know that GLaDOS took over the facility nearabouts the Black Mesa Incident in 1998/1999, we know that she was in development for at least ten years.

- There was, at one point, a Portal 2 hype website where you did a survey and it was run by an early version of GLaDOS; it is no longer active but it was a real thing.

- GLaDOS is incredibly, genuinely clueless about things that any regular person knows: she believes a bird has malicious intentions to destroy her facility; she believes that motivation consists of telling blatant, obvious lies to people; her grasp of social niceties is completely nonexistent.

- Because it is stated that there were multiple versions of GLaDOS, this means that she is a person built from nothing. Everything she knows was either provided to her via Aperture’s database or taught to her in some way by GLaDOS’s engineers. GLaDOS does not know a single thing she was not directly taught by somebody else.

- GLaDOS is never shown to have a ~normal~ conversation with anybody. Every time she talks, it is to convince someone to do what she wants them to do. Because she is AI, this behaviour was learned and, given how the engineers at Aperture regard her and the Cores, it is not illogical to say that pretty much the only conversations they had with their AI were probably along the lines of ‘do this for me because my neck is on the line here’.

- During the instatement of the Morality Core, Doug Rattmann tells Henry that the Morality Core is not going to be enough because you can always ignore your conscience. However, in the second half of Portal 2, GLaDOS is shown to be unable to ignore it. What is the difference?

- The Morality Core was not a true conscience. It was, yet again, the scientists telling her what to do. It was, like all the other Cores, an annoying new set of restrictions that had no purpose except to impede her. Henry describes it as ‘the latest in AI inhibition technology’. It did not exist to teach her morals. It was created to slow her down.

- It’s entirely possible that nobody actually told her what morals were or what the Morality Core was actually for. Additionally, we don’t actually know what the Morality Core was telling her, since it is never mentioned and the Core never speaks.

- The conscience that GLaDOS comes across is her own conscience; she literally says so (‘I’ve heard voices all my life, but now I hear the voice of a conscience, and it’s terrifying, because for the first time… it’s my voice’) which, unlike the Morality Core, she cannot ignore.

What does this teach us about GLaDOS?

- GLaDOS was in development for at least ten years but all she learned about personal interaction was how to manipulate people.

- GLaDOS was created in an environment that did not care about morals and did not teach her any but, when she failed to toe the moral line, she had morals forced on her.

Part C. GLaDOS’s Thought Process

- GLaDOS, as pure AI, operates on a binary scale; that is, everything to her is either yes or no, on or off, with her or against her. Prior to being placed in a potato, GLaDOS never had a reason to think outside of this binary. GLaDOS has no concept of an in-between and does not understand grey reasoning.

- As a robot whose sole purpose was to run variations on the same test ad nauseam, it would never have occurred to GLaDOS to do anything else.

- GLaDOS says about herself in an unused piece of dialogue: ‘I’m brilliant. […] I’m the most massive collection of wisdom and raw computational power that’s ever existed. I’m not bragging. That’s an objective fact.’ Therefore, she knows she could do literally anything with her intelligence and her hardware… but that would require her to think outside her binary of testing and not testing. So she does nothing.

- This is established several times: as soon as she reactivates after her death, she starts testing. As soon as she sends Chell away, she sends her robots into testing. As soon as she finds the test subjects, she starts testing. She constructs ‘art pieces’… which are simply more tests. Her ‘training’ for the co-op bots are… you guessed it… tests.

- As an extension of the above point: she could build any robot she wants or anything she wants. She in fact talks about doing other experiments. She doesn’t. She opts to build testing robots and test elements. And that’s it.

- Upon discovering her conscience/the ability to think in grey, she says, ‘I’m serious! I think there’s something really wrong with me!’ She doesn’t understand that this is a normal thing for a person to have or to be able to use. Conscience and morality are things that were neither demonstrated nor explained to her and so when she comes across them herself, she thinks it is a problem.

- Additionally, when Chell fails to react to GLaDOS’s dialogue about her fledgling ability to think in grey, she immediately reverts to her old standbys of binary thought and manipulation: ‘You like revenge, right? Everybody likes revenge! Well, let’s go get some!’ She’s now aware of the concept of a middle ground, but does not know how to do anything with it.

- GLaDOS states about Chell: ‘I thought you were my enemy, but all along you were my best friend.’ This is another example of her binary thought process. A person who helps you when it’s mutually beneficial, as Chell does during Portal 2, is not necessarily your best friend. At best, they are usually your temporary ally. But because GLaDOS only understands binary concepts, that’s the conclusion she comes to.

- She states ‘the best solution is the easiest one, and killing you is hard’. This slots neatly into her binary: if killing you down here is hard, then letting you live up there is easy. In Want You Gone she says, ‘when I delete you maybe I’ll stop feeling so bad’ so we know Chell exists outside of her binary at that point, but she doesn’t know what to do about it so she forces a binary decision on the situation anyway.

What does this teach us about GLaDOS?

- GLaDOS lacks the ability to think in grey, and when able/forced to do so she either becomes frightened or forces the situation into a decision with only two options.

Part D. What All of This Means

Gathering the previous points gives us these clues about GLaDOS’s behaviour:

- Aperture was a cesspool of bad people doing bad things and not caring about the consequences.

- You do not need someone’s permission to do something to them. You merely beat away at them until they break.

- Death is part of the tests.

- Dying during the test is a controlled variable. There is no such thing as ‘passing the test’.

- GLaDOS does not understand death.

- GLaDOS was in development for at least ten years but all she learned about personal interaction was how to manipulate people.

- GLaDOS was created in an environment that did not care about morals and did not teach her any but, when she failed to toe the moral line, she had morals forced on her.

- GLaDOS lacks the ability to think in grey, and when able/forced to do so she either becomes frightened or forces the situation into a decision with only two options.

What this tells us about how GLaDOS operates is the following:

- There are no consequences for anything whatsoever, as long as you’re the one in charge.

- You can do whatever you want to somebody else, as long as you come out on top.

- Death is meaningless.

- She sees people as objects and she treats them as such.

- She does not know how to talk to people. Only at them.

- She knows that morals are rules people want her to follow, but she doesn’t understand them and has never seen them in action.

- Grey thought is anathema to her. If something does not fit into her binary, she will force it to.

All of these rules are challenged when Chell, through her actions, personally demonstrates morality to GLaDOS. Chell helps GLaDOS not because she needs to, but because it’s the right thing to do. Instead of attempting to skip town and leave GLaDOS to fend for herself (which she was well within her rights to do), Chell returns GLaDOS to her chassis. And at this point GLaDOS immediately demonstrates grey reasoning both when she elects to save Chell and when it is shown that she does not kill Wheatley. This is not the behaviour of an evil person. This is the behaviour of someone who understands there was something wrong with their previous actions and has decided to do something about it. GLaDOS’s behaviour towards the co-op bots is less malicious than it is the fumblings of somebody whose worldview has skewed, but they aren’t sure what to do about it and there aren’t any binary answers. Because of her extreme isolation, it is going to take her a long, long time to get things right, but once she is exposed to the concept of grey reasoning she does attempt to figure out what to do with it.

GLaDOS is not evil, nor are most of her actions inherently ill-intentioned. Some of them are. To claim all of her actions are borne of evil and come from a place of inherent malice shows a misunderstanding of the sort of environment Aperture was and the kind of people who would populate such an environment. At the end of the day, she’s still not a very nice person. But to write her off as evil is oversimplifying a lot of what we are told about her and a misunderstanding of computer science as a whole. Artificial intelligence is not developed in a vacuum and a computer only does exactly what it’s told. All of GLaDOS’s behaviours are learned. The people who created her may have been evil, but she herself is not. And when given the choice to be something else, something she never knew was an option… she takes it.

#GLaDOS #Portal #so says Indy #I hope you didn't think I was joking because I wasn't

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targentis · 5 years

Text

every character zandre will lose his mind over: a masterpost

im GONNA forget some people but this is a masterlist for all my garbage children from various fandoms, in case anyone gives a hoot (but mostly for my own records). under a read more bc it’s gonna get long as h*ck

i’ve tried to put each list in some sort of order but knowing me...this is all very arbitrary

Skies of Arcadia

Enrique

Alfonso

Ilchymis

De Loco

Ramirez

Kalifa

Aika

Piastol

y’all can just safely assume i love literally everyone ok?

(except Vigoro and Galcian they can go get lost in Deep Sky)

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Rosa Diaz *doug judy voice* Rosa Rosa Rosaaaa

CHEDDAR

Raymond Holt

Amy Santiago

Jake Peralta

Terry Jeffords

Charles Boyle

Gina Linetti

Kevin Cozner

Adrian Pimento

Doug Judy

you get the picture right? i love the whole cast? right? RIGHT? ya

One Day At A Time

Lydia Riera

Penelope Alvarez

Elena Alvarez

Alex Alvarez

Schneider

Homestuck

i just aint tryna hide it anymore am i

Eridan Ampora

Karkat Vantas

John Egbert

Nepeta Leijon

Dave Strider

Kanaya Maryam

Mituna Captor

Equius Zahhak

Overwatch

Tracer

Hammond (no i will NOT call him Wrecking Ball)

D.Va

Mei

Moira

Lucio

Soldier: 76

Reaper

Widowmaker

Ashe

...yeah i like all of them

Divinity: Original Sin 2

Lohse

Fane

every dog :(((

EVERY RAT

Sebille

Psycho-Pass

Nobuchika Ginoza

Shuusei Kagari

Tomomi Masaoka

Shogo Makishima

Shion Karanomori

Dragon Age (the whole franchise)

i just don’t feel like splitting them up into their respective games

Fenris

Hawke

Merrill

Varric Tethras

Sera

Cole

Cassandra Pentaghast

Leliana

Morrigan

A Certain Scientific Railgun

I didn’t watch Index

Shirai Kuroko

Misaka Mikoto

Saten Ruiko

Uiharu Kazari

Kiyama Harumi

Gakkou Gurashi!

Takeya Yuki

Ebisuzawa Kurumi

Naoki Miki

Wakasa Yuuri

TAROUMARU

Throne of Glass

Dorian Havilliard

Manon Blackbeak

Shades of Magic

Rhy Maresh

Lila Bard

Alucard Emery

Kell Maresh

Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni

Sonozaki Shion

Sonozaki Mion

Furude Rika

Ryuugu Rena

Houjou Satoshi

Houjou Satoko

Corpse Party

Shinohara Seiko

Shinozaki Ayumi

Kishinuma Yoshiki

The Elder Scrolls (again, the whole franchise (but mostly Oblivion))

Lucien Lachance

Martin Septim

every imperial guard <3

...these games aren’t really known for their characters, are they.

i like Skjorta cause her name is just “Shirt”

Leverage

Parker

Alec Hardison

Sophie Deveraux

Eliot Spencer

The Good Place

Tahani al-Jamil

Janet

Eleanor Shellstrop

Chidi Anagonye

My Hero Academia

Midoriya Izuku (the only valid main character)

Asui Tsuyu

All Might !!

Oh My Goddess!

Skuld

Urd

Belldandy

Peorth

Keiichi

The Adventure Zone (just Balance cause I’m behind)

Taako Taaco

Kravitz

Magic Brian

Johann

Merle Highchurch

Magnus Burnsides

*static*

The Bestiary

Benji Wild (id die for him)

Pterylae

Luka Ivrian

Meadow Halfhorn

and you know. you KNOW i stan Maya Ivriarck

#zandre rambles #for a very long time #me

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squandereduniverse · 5 years

Note

I made a second list! This time with three more "nightmarish" AUs at the end as bonus.

Gem Harvest AU?

What if Andy’s prejudged against Gems was grounded in some backstory? (He was a former captive of the human zoo, and recently escaped. Which is why he’s been gone for 20 years.)

What if Andy was a member of an organization dealing with alien activity? He would have to struggle either to report or look the other way concerning Steven’s family. (Basically, Andy is a G3 Member.)

Here are my thoughts on Uncle Andy: We don’t need to bend over backwards to make him be a good person. He can stay a shitty person. His character could be useful in showing why Greg isn’t in contact with most of his family anymore, or that you don’t always have to like family and that has no baring on if you’re a good person or not. I don’t see much merit of giving him a deep and tragic backstory to explain why he’s the way he is when sometimes people are just unapologetically bastards because it’s to their advantage.

Canon-eqsue AU?

What if Jasper had discovered the Pink Diamond twist and discovered that White knew all along earlier than canon?

I could see that turning into a third faction of gems who have had enough of being pawns in a game played by people who claim to be greater than them. An unaligned faction that is fueled by a just rage over being used since their creation.

What if Steven was in reality slowly being corrupted by his gem to end up more like Pink? (An explanation to his dip in personality, and how he’s becoming so submissive to the Diamonds.)

That’d be an interesting explanation. It always seemed like he was being nurtured into being just like his mother, but to have it be out of everyone’s hands would be a fun thing to explore.

What if instead of the Gem War, the Crystal Gems were actually soldiers of Homeworld who refused to fight in the Gem War across the galaxy. Earth’s galaxy is essentially neutral ground, and Pink Diamond would have among those hiding out on Earth. (Essentially, the gems would have been on Earth since the late 1900′s, about the 1920′s. No human zoo, but there would Gem bases. Steven could still be born modern day.)

I mean Earth is basically a backwater planet, so it wouldn’t be neutral ground so much as the gem equivalent of running off into the mountains to be hermits until everything blows over.

What if the Crystal Grems had jobs to help support Greg and Steven? (Takes place long before Greg gets his check.)

Pearl - Mechanic or Ballet Teacher or Kendo teacher

Amethyst - Assists Greg at the car wash or a model for artists to paint taking advantage of her shapeshifting

Garnet - Gym trainer / Martial Arts Teacher

Peridot - IT - Tech Support or (if Lapis is written not to be a prick) Radio Host

Lapis - Coast Guard / Fisherwoman (Trust me, she could bring it the money.)

This could be a really cute idea. I could also see Garnet as someone who could offer relationship advice or a fortune teller.

What if Pink Diamond’s soul ended up in Mystery Girl’s body? (Think Ozpin slowly taking over Oscar’s body, and it’s play for horror as Mystery Girl is slowly losing her body. Pink wouldn’t really care for her causing that.)

I think Pink’s soul went into Steven seeing as gems are their gems, but that being said I think that that’d be a great angst and horror fic if done right.

What if Earth’s governments discovered the Zoo? What if we apply the usual trope of Steven trying to shoulder his mother’s responsibilities?

Well the thing is, first they’d have to find it, which would be hard because it’s in the middle of space, and then they’d have to both link it to Steven and care about aliens. But in a universe where they cared, they’d probably go after Lapis first, considering she stole an ocean which no doubt fucked with a lot of stuff.

Crossover AU?

Outlast AU - Murkoff Corporation is teamed with Homeworld to create supersoliders of human and gem components. Priyanka finds out as she works there and sends out an email leading her to go through the plot of “Outlast Whistleblower” and Steven and Connie going with the Gems to recuse her triggering the plot of “Outlast”.

Dragon Ball Z AU - The universe is assigned a God of Destruction, a Supreme Kai, and an angel. Basically, the Diamond’s plans are literally shattered leaving the Diamonds to have no choice but to beg the CGs for help. Not they want to even help them.

Well the thing is, if we’re playing by DBS rules with Gods of Destruction, I don’t think that they’d care much about the Diamonds and their rule. It’s not much different than Freeza, except Freeza was doing it for profit and not whatever reason the Diamonds have. They’d be forced to subjugate themselves before them, but if that’s something Freeza could manage, I’m sure the Diamonds could as well. Maybe it’d even give a valid reason for White saying she has to be perfect.

“NSFW” AUs? I do have a few in mind. Adult scenarios concerning the implications have arose. I will say these are not very pleasant compared to the rest. I’d call them “Nightmares Scenarios”.

The Zoo AU - Pink’s purpose was more than just having them in captivity. She wanted her own “personal harem”. Whenever a generation died out, she could just kidnap some more humans. Now, when Doug Maheswaran is taken, Connie and Priyanka go on a journey being aided by former members of Pink’s court who agree that she needs to be stopped. (No Steven, obviously. Connie would be the main heroine. This AU would play the Zoo’s concept for drama and for horror. There would also be no Blue, Yellow, or White Diamond to streamline the plot.)

This sent up a lot of red flags for me, and I can’t place why. I’d just stay clear of most zoo ideas.

Fusion Experiment AU - This experiment was a success, but it had gone horribly right. The CGs had no idea what to say that the Diamonds came running to Earth begging for their help and with Homeworld in ruins by this “creature”. This creature sought only three things, power, destruction, and more fusion experiments to absorb. (Think if the Alien, Predator, and Cell had a love child.)

I mean if we’re talking power, I don’t think the Crystal Gems have what it takes, and if we’re talking pride, I think there’s too much for the Diamonds to swallow. For this to work, I could only imagine either the Diamonds throwing the CGs under the bus, or the beast notices Earth after decimating Homeworld.

What if the Crystal Grems had jobs to help support Greg and Steven? (Takes place long before Greg gets his check.) However, due to not being citizens, they had to take less reputable work.

I feel like this implies prostitution, but there’s a wild and dark world of black market work out there that we’re not exploiting. I wouldn’t say assassins, but hit men that just rough you up a little. There’s the selling of information, blackmailing, not all sellable organs are vital.

Though I’d like to think that they target less than savory targets to make the world a better place.

#au review #strikeryoshi

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