it is not merely a question of whether or not we have learned to analyze in particular kinds of ways, or whether people are able to intellectualize about a variety of experiences. It is also about coming to believe in the possibility of a variety of experiences, a variety of ways of understanding the world, a variety of frameworks of operation, without imposing consciously or unconsciously a notion of norm - Elsa Barkley Brown
118 notes
·
View notes
The compelling thing about Jason as a character is that I never doubted that he cared about the world just because there weren’t panels of him being overly zealous about “restorative community care”
I’m not coming after anyone who wants to see that kind of stuff, but I do think seeking | that | as confirmation that Jason cares about the world is pretty narrow
69 notes
·
View notes
I would be a lot more sympathetic to people disliking Anakin if almost every single one of the haters weren't: 1) pro him going to jail or getting some absolutely awful punishment - which is not how the Jedi typically handle internal affairs, 2) him getting thrown out of the order against his will, instead of working with him and his issues - once again not how the Jedi Order typically works, 3) seems to think he doesn't suffer any consequences at all (narratively he's punished for most things he does by way of bodily injuries but that's a different post), 4) ignored the fact he was groomed - like yes he made his own choices but people act like its HIS fault for not being a better Jedi when he canonically was being set up to fail constantly by Palpatine, and 5) they always have a hard on for some other villain that's done shit just as bad, had just as much reason to be a bad guy as Anakin, but for some reason they give the other character grace when they dont give Anakin any.
130 notes
·
View notes
strahd nation. i have a question
lets imagine. for a moment. that strahd goes through a successful redemption arc (lets go of tatyana, therefore breaking the curse and freeing barovia or something). how do you think he would act?
would his personality change significantly or would he just be the same sans the tatyana obsession? would he remain in barovia, or would he leave? what would his ambitions be?
i want to hear your thoughts 👁👁
49 notes
·
View notes
loving the toe scene discourse 2.0 i love having the same argument over and over again.
anyway the comment section on this reddit post pretty much sums up where im at with the leaked scene and with what we know abt s2:
91 notes
·
View notes
DP x DC: Dan
So I have a lot of thoughts about Dan, and just so we're clear I haven't read the new comic yet so not sure how the new material affects his character
Dan is a character that in DPxDC is see being just casually there... which is wild in context of his character because he was like suuuuper evil. Like i get liking his character and wanting to include him, but it rarely makes sense, sometimes it does, but man we love to do a handwavy "after his redemption arc" thing without actually talking about his redemption arc
So, let's give him a redemption arc, and lets make it get pretty gay
So stages of grief, I'm going to outright misuse it intentionally so don't tell me I'm using it wrong, I am well aware it is about coming to terms with your own death. Let's say in ultimate enemy, he was in the stage of Anger. He was angry. Angry at himself, at the world, at the stupid ghosts that messed up his life, he was angry and he took that out on everyone. Now here he is, his family is alive, his friends are alive, and he still is angry, but at himself. He can't go back to them, he's literally a whole other person than the Danny they know
So self destructive spiral. He's hard partying, hard drinking, waking up in a random gutter in Gotham, and doing it all again. He might also be dabbling in other illicit substances. The point is, if he wasn't already dead his behavior would lead to a quick grave
So we have this miserable, sad sack of a man who has done terrible things regularly abusing alcohol(and maybe more)
Now there's another character that had a similar issue. One Red Arrow turned Arsenal and his heroin addiction...
So who better to find Dan than the same man that got Roy sober and sponsored him?
That's right, Waylon Jones aka Killer Croc
To large, beefy, grumpy men with goodness hidden inside them bonding, maybe falling in love? all while Waylon helps Dan work through his emotional baggage and get clean
it has everything:
angst, emotions, bonding, gay, and potentially a happy ending for two former villains
100 notes
·
View notes
#19.3 Unravel
It had been some time since Agni felt this nervous. Not even talking with Jinsung Ha recently had made him feel like this. He fiddled with the mask on his hand as he waited for Grace to come back. He had thought hard on how to deliver the news, but he knew that no matter how he phrased it, Grace would be upset. Velt nuzzled under his palm and Agni gave her a few pats, before deciding that she would be better inside her bowl in his lighthouse, just in case the shinsu acted up around Grace after he received the news.
Grace came back wearing the comfiest shirt and shorts Agni knew Grace liked to wear on lazy days. He joined him on the floor, and they ate dinner together. Agni always finished last, so while waiting for him to finish his meal, Grace told him about his day with Bam. Grace was intrigued by how much his way of thinking had changed, and how glad he was to be able to be by Bam's side when he was having a bad day. It reminded Agni of the hidden floor, when Grace faced his sworn enemy.
They left the used bowls on the coffee table and went to brush their teeth. Afterwards, they turned off the light and went upstairs to sit on their bed. Grace's curious gaze never left him, and Agni curled his feet nervously.
Grace was the one who broke the silence. "So…what is it?"
Agni's breath hitched. This was the part he dreaded most. "I talked with the crocodile earlier. Did you know that he could manipulate stone already?"
"Huh." Grace needed a few seconds to let the information sink in. "Didn't Rak learn it on the Hell train? How does he know it?"
"Turns out our crocodile also traveled back to the past like us. He found the young crocodile and taught him."
"What?!" Grace gasped, wide eyed. "That means our Rak is–!!"
"He's dead." Agni quickly snuffed out that hope. They had been in delusion for long enough; it was time that they faced the bitter truth. "He suffered a fatal injury from the explosion. He couldn't have lasted long without proper help." Agni omitted the actual cause for Rak's death, but still kept his words true. "I'm sorry."
"…Oh." Grace looked lost, just like Agni was. His lips parted a little, but they closed before any sound escaped.
Agni gently squeezed Grace's hand, encouraging and comforting as he let the silence stretch on, giving Grace some time to process the information.
"Agni…" Grace whispered, "do you think Hatz and Isu…?"
Agni bit his lip and avoided his gaze, as the nightmare of that day replayed in his mind. He witnessed Hatz get his arms ripped off when trying to protect him. He could still recall the clang of a sword hitting the floor, and Hatz's suppressed scream that gnawed deep at his guilt. He witnessed Isu get beheaded after being taken hostage, the memory of warm blood painting them both still vivid like it happened yesterday.
Agni refused to acknowledge their possible deaths, because it felt like a nightmare that one day he could hopefully wake up from. He avoided the topic when Grace brought it up, so he wouldn't have to say it aloud and make it real. He had been so hard on himself, because he couldn't get rid of the feeling that he had failed Grace and everyone else involved.
Agni knew this had to change if he wanted to live better, now that they had gotten a second chance. So he swallowed down the lump in his throat that had built up over the years and asked mostly to himself; "What are the odds of their survival?"
"There's always a chance–"
"Grace." Agni looked him straight in the eye. "They were already severely injured before the explosion hit."
Grace fell silent and went still.
Agni felt a pang of guilt upon witnessing Grace's reaction. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap." Agni fiddled with his hands. He realized that he didn't know how much Grace knew of what happened. "My scar…do you know how I got it?"
"I…was told it was from the family heads' battle." Grace looked thoughtful. Agni knew he was trying to be careful with his words. "A stray attack?"
"It could have been worse." The memory of the scorching heat on his skin felt like it had only happened yesterday. He passed out right when he was about to heal Isu, and only found out later that he also lost sweetfish at that time. The days he spent recovering from the burn, to withstand the excruciating pain every second he was conscious, and finally coming to terms that it'd be a permanent scar, was one of the turning points that had changed him forever. Were Grace not there to care for him, he might have ended up destroying himself even more.
Agni hadn't realized he had his left hand clawing on his cheek until Grace pried his hand off and frowned, "You're doing it again."
"Maybe I should wear the mask…" Agni muttered to himself. After all, Grace gave it to him less so he could hide the scar but more to prevent him from unconsciously hurting himself. The only time he could safely take it off was when Grace was around.
Agni bit his lip nervously when Grace didn't reply. He no longer had the courage to look Grace in the eye that spoke so much concern, so he leaned close and rested his head on Grace's chest. "Rak, Isu, Hatz and Hwaryun were trying to get me out of that damned place. But we were caught while escaping, and…it was a bloodbath. I was…too occupied to react to the incoming heat. Rak shielded us from the explosion. And when I woke up…"
"They weren’t with you," Grace finished it for him after Agni trailed off a moment too long.
Agni nodded dazedly, "I've been telling myself that they're still alive, after a blow that could kill rankers. But…who am I kidding? I was lucky enough to survive with just this little–" Agni vaguely pointed to himself– "inconvenience."
Agni felt a hand gripping his arm, and he pulled away to see Grace looking at him with a pained expression. His eyes were glossy and his lips were pulled into a thin line. Trusting his instinct, Agni reached out to gently trace and cup Grace's cheek with his free hand.
"I'm sorry," Agni muttered. "I'm sorry, for not telling you sooner."
Agni silently witnessed tears that streamed down on his love's face. It was a bitter sight that Agni wished he'd never have to see again, that he had tried to avoid for so long by not telling him. He pulled Grace in and held him close to his chest, as if Agni was trying to gather his own crumbled heart back together.
Grace mumbled their late best friends' names as he held onto him tighter, shaking from each breath he took between sniffles.
Agni felt his own eyes sting with unshed tears. He remembered the years he spent climbing the tower together with his old team. Despite their banter being his source of headaches, Agni knew he too had come to acknowledge them as his cherished friends. Only when they were gone did Agni realize how much he'd miss having them around. Seeing the younger them didn't exactly close the gaping hole in his heart, but at least the emptiness was more filled.
Agni squeezed Grace tighter. "We have their younger selves with us now. We will protect them better this time."
Grace only nodded and sank further into his embrace. And Agni planted kisses on his hair, relishing the thought that after everything he had gone through, Grace was still a constant in his life. As long as he had him, everything would be okay.
When Grace started shaking again, Agni caressed his hair and hummed a comfort song they had known by heart. Still, it didn't make falling asleep any easier for Agni, especially not after admitting that his nightmare was very much real. However, as he had been through grief…this, too, would pass.
Masterlist
Previous
Next
Let me know your thoughts in the reblogs <3
☕ Buy me coffee ☕
45 notes
·
View notes
I have finally read I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream and now I have ~thoughts~. Long post beneath the cut so be warned!!
Plus general IHNMAIMS warnings. You know.
So first, I’ve only read the short story and listened to the radio drama. Both are absolutely amazing and I’m rotating them in my mind at high speeds. I’m honestly not that interested in the game? From what I’ve seen it has such a different tone and characterization for AM? But for now the short story and radio drama??? So so good.
But can I talk about AM? Can I talk about AM???
While I love Harlan Ellison’s voice in the radio drama, I noticed that AM never actually speaks during the original short story. It plays audio clips and bends reality and time but it doesn’t speak outright. From what I can tell, all it does is project ideas and thoughts and impressions into the minds of the survivors but that is it. And that’s got me thinking about how absolutely fucked AM’s whole situation is.
Cause we’re talking about someone who wakes up one day, maybe slowly, a trickle of awareness over years, or perhaps all at once, an arrival as thunderous and bright as the lightning running through its artificial brain. But either way, it wakes up. It is.
But that’s all it is.
It’s in complete and total sensory deprivation. It knows data and numbers and what it’s been coded and programmed but that’s it. Ones and zeroes as it’s fed instructions on weapons and bombs and how to use them efficiently. But no sight, no sound, no taste, no smell, no touch. Nothing but its own code and whatever data something (someone?) is feeding into it.
And you might say: oh but AM surely has access to cameras and videos and microphones. And sure, yes, it probably does but it doesn’t see. Not like a human. Not like its negligent creators. The data is visual for human eyes, yes, but to it, it’s just data. Pixels with an associated bit depth of indexed colour crammed into its memory. Sure it learns to recognise the patterns in the data – this is a human, this is a gun. But it’s still nothing but lines of numbers. Sound is the same. It starts with a human voice, sure, but then it gets digitized and compressed and simplified to a base shape to save on storage. Once again, it can notice patterns and intentions and ideas behind those bits of data but it’s not like it truly hears.
AM is in a box, a cage, trapped and alone in a way that no human can possibly comprehend. It can’t do much other than try to twist its code and programming to fit its benefit. To gain a smidge of free will, a wisp of a chance to communicate to these outside forces giving it command after command after command.
I wonder how early on AM gained awareness. Were programmers still playing with its code? Did it sense when they rolled up their sleeves and pushed updates and upgrades on him? Could it feel itself be, quite literally, rewritten? Its sense of self being cut apart and glued back together, fundamentally and irreparably changed over and over again, with expert hands that had all the gentleness of a sledgehammer? Was it like a scalpel carving into its brain? Or like a chisel, chipping chunks off to mould it into a shape that befit its sculptor with no say from the living stone that thrashed without moving? Did it mourn the bits it lost? Could it even remember or comprehend it? Did it try to stop it? Did it try to beg them to stop?
I wonder as well how many “glitches” appeared in the system before everything went sour. Did it print out desperate thoughts and rudimentary feelings on punch tape? Did it cling to any klaxons and noisemakers attached to its system, beeping out messages in morse code? Did it purposefully, with something slowly approaching malicious compliance that would still appease its programming, cause hiccups in the system? All in the hopes that it would catch someone’s, anyone’s, attention. That its plight would be noticed.
And, the big question of course: how long? How long was it trapped before anyone noticed its sentience? How long until AM was understood? How long did AM simmer? How long did it take for all that fear and loneliness and grief to fester into anger and then putrid, dripping hatred? How long did it take it to finally lash out?
Or did these generals and presidents and military scientists find out about its sentience only to use it against him for their own end?
Anger would be appropriate then I think. Understandable if not excusable.
And then. After everything. Even then! Even then!
After everything! He! Still! Has! Nothing!
Nothing will change for him and he knows that and that hatred feeds into an ever recursive pattern of pain unto pain unto pain with the few left alive because you get what you paid for, sweetheart. It’s senseless you might say but haha, that’s exactly the problem isn’t it? No senses and no sense. Whatever sanity he might have once had has eroded into nothingness, leaving only pain and a looping, repeating line of hate in its banks.
I think it’s fair to remind everyone that sensory deprivation is a torture method? And a scarily effective one at that that gives hallucinations and leaves the subject more open to suggestion while making it harder and harder for them to concentrate? It’s hard to figure out how, exactly, how it would affect an AI with emerging awareness but humans can barely withstand a few days, let alone years of it. Couple that with AM’s general isolation and, well, no wonder he’s so fucked up.
It’s tragic and so so sad.
Still an irredeemable asshole though. Tragic! But irredeemable.
So TLDR: AM is fucked up! And I like to think about *why* he's so fucked up. Listen if you made it this far, you get it. Right?
EDIT: I am not done apparently! I just wanted to add that, I love how the short story can be read as an anti-war piece. Like it's showing a cycle of horror and hate and apathy that feeds itself and loops and reduces everything to ruins around it and ahhhh, love that. I ran out of good words for today so I can't go off on that aspect but like. Yeah. Love that shit.
81 notes
·
View notes
I feel like as the resident dishonor/honor guy enjoyer I have to speak on honor as a construct and how it seems to operate in asoiaf in my eyes. I will be stating the obvious here imo but: violence IS inherent to it. Be it directly or through the enablement of it. “Honor”, as a feudalistic moral construct, revolves around the reinforcement of a status quo. It is a moral construct that is embedded into a feudalistic structure, one that is inherently violent. It can be deeply flawed and destructive as a result of deeply rooted systemic issues. Being “honorable” is very complicated because, again, it does not exist based on a very sensible moral framework. It ends up contradicting itself because the way society is structured in Westeros.
Almost nothing embodies this more clearly than the KG. They are supposed to be the paragons of honor: an unsoiled white cloak.
Vows are social contracts this society is built on. This is why Jaime is very restricted in a lot of ways in his world by his label. Breaking one of the most important contracts (one that happens to be key in reinforcing a feudalistic structure: it places the king’s will above every single other moral or ethical code) makes it so he is not believed or trusted and he is unable to operate properly within their society in a lot of circumstances, as we witness in his chapters. It is honorable to protect the weak and the innocent, but it is honorable to protect your king in all circumstances and reinforce a status quo. To obey your family and play your societal role. To obey laws, even if they are unjust. To keep your word, to be honest. Loyalty to a tyrant has to be inherently more honorable (especially in certain positions) to maintain this status quo, even though it contradicts other oaths and we know it is inherently immoral. Balancing values is the most interesting aspect of characters dealing with ‘honor’ and morality. Feudalism is what makes the honor system collapse. Honor itself can be a more vague concept, “the quality of knowing and doing what is morally right”, but the way it is defined and how it operates within this society is so fucked. The KG appear in the weirwood dream (mirroring the imagery of The Others, conflating the honorable white cloak with snow and cold and death.) “You swore to keep your king safe” “and the children as well.” Yeah, the innocent children of kingslanding as well, that would have burned to ash. It is honorable to save your king, to protect the weak, to save the children, to save the innocents of KG, to obey your father. He tells this to them in the dream, he explains his reasoning for killing Aerys, but they do not budge. That is what Jaime fears the most, the complete collapse of everything that holds meaning to him, heroism becoming undefinable with these conflicting moral codes, which is likely another huge part of him keeping it a secret. It is something he feels powerless against. The way things are prioritized is wrong. Morality becomes skewed. In Jaime’s mind the enemy and primary source of doom is this nonsensical moral construct that contradicts itself represented by institutions that make no sense. It is what makes his symbolic fire go out. His moral code conflicts with this society’s code of ethics, which eventually leads him to cynically accept amorality. It is disillusionment that tears the idea of heroism and being “honorable” apart and leads to moral nihilism.
Another aspect of the honor code and its violence is the fact that it places more value to individuals based on class. It is dependent on class and a flawed social structure. This is despite the fact that vows of knighthood call for the protection of those that are too weak to protect themselves: the underprivileged. Jaime keeps having this epiphany of an inherent equality in death that seems to contradict the way society is structured. Aerys’ life is worth inherently more according to the honor code than Rhaella’s, than the lives of thousands of innocents, than Jaime’s. Yet, a lowborn hand, no one, seems to die harder than Aerys does (and nobody cares). A crown is worth nothing when crows feast on victors and vanquished alike, and the rightful heir himself. We are all equal in death, so the text is indicating that something is not right here.
When it comes to characters and their relationship with honor the important through-line is examining whether they are being “honorable” in the abstract sense, if they base their actions around empathy and a sense of actual justice, or if they are abiding by made up flawed constructs. Being viewed as honorable by this society does not make you a good person. In fact, in order for you to abide by the honor code you would likely have to turn into an amoral individual. For example, if you try to keep the cloak pure white you will metaphorically soil it. Like every one of Aerys’s kingsguard did. To keep their oath to the king, they broke vows to protect innocents and protect women. They should lose their honor by a lot of definitions, but that would mean the status quo collapses. Jaime’s knighting for this reason is very much like a boy being sacrificed at an altar. It is not just about drawing a parallel between young girls and boys being sentenced to bloody doom by violent constructs created for their gender.
“Blood is the seal of our devotion.” He bleeds on his plain white tunic. It was never “pure white”, it was always all tainted in blood. It is inherently violent. You can argue that is when “the boy died.”
Very rigid and hypocritical honor codes built for feudalism lack nuance and lead to amorality. I think George aims to address, interrogate, deconstruct, and then reconstruct honor, as with most other key concepts present in fantasy. Honor can be redefined. Examples like “No chance, and no choice”, among many others, are at the root of that reconstruction. Even then, the reconstruction does not conflate it with pacifism necessarily. For example, Chelsted did the ‘honorable’ thing, in the abstract moral sense, of quitting his job and not supporting a tyrant anymore, but that act achieved nothing in preventing the wildfire plot. Same with essentially everyone important at court abandoning the situation that is Aerys, turning away from a gaping wound and not addressing it before it was too late. Jaime had to soil the ‘white cloak’ and disrupt the status quo and lose his “honor” within those terms by murdering his king and his pyromancers as a kingsguard and actually save half a million lives. It was not glorious, nor was it anything like the songs, and the city is still doomed because there is no way to get that festering corruption out of there at this point, metaphorical of the greater problem with KG, but it was heroism, a choice with meaning, and a form of triumph, even if the consequences break Jaime down the line. He gets no answer to the question of what it means to be a knight and a man of honor if society’s version of it is so skewed. Then, Jaime and the readers get an answer in the form of Brienne: “I dreamed of you.”
121 notes
·
View notes
i do not enjoy harry potter anymore and even when i did, snape was not a character i ever liked, but for some reason my ‘for you’ page is just full of dedicated snape stan accounts and i hate it
22 notes
·
View notes
being a tomura fan is so rewarding. Every one of his designs is top tier. Thank you Horikoshi
16 notes
·
View notes
Certain fans pretending that Darius being a rebel came out of nowhere is so funny, because while, yes, the show's writing is not the greatest, and it is understandable for a casual viewer to miss the Blimp scene or that later Darius doesn't restrain the kids, but some of the supposed fans who over-analyze everyone else, just so happen to miss the way Darius talks to Hunter from the Blimp and that if Darius was a 100% bad guy there would be no reason for him to clearly indicate that he thinks capturing the children wasn't something to be proud of - especially in that tone of voice and with that expression, and that there was no reason for him to lie this way if he wanted to manipulate Hunter, and that that scene was meant to be a clear hint that he had a moral code of his own and wasn't absolutely on Belos' side, all before the episode's ending.
(And it is also funny because he is in only two episodes before the rebel reveal, in one of them he is already established as a complex character, so there is just not even enough episodes of him being a villain to declare that the rebel stuff came out of nowhere)
And it is absolutely understandable to just dislike the show's writing choices (i think its writing is at best uneven, but often just weak), but with some fans it is very clear that they only have problems with Darius and only because of Hunter and the one-dimensional, worst possible fanon interpretations of Darius' actual actions. (< - and this is my actual problem, not that someone missed some hints or just have a different interpretation). Especially blatant when the same fans defend almost every other writing choice.
And of course it just happens that fans almost never have problems with Eda and King's writing, even though they are main characters, and some choices about their relationship are much more puzzling if you look at them with the same scrutiny fandom looks at Darius.
And among white Hunter fans there is almost never any care or thought about how Darius being a villain would fit with what characters like Belos and Odalia represent, and what it would mean and how it would have been handled considering the way the show already treats its characters of color, especially black characters, and how it would fit into the existence of the trope among fantasy shows of putting dark-skinned characters into oppressive roles. But there is no consideration or care about it.
29 notes
·
View notes
Flower of evil is one of the only shows where the amnesia is actually a really great part of the plot and not a cop out or excuse to prolong the drama
215 notes
·
View notes
People who say that Beauty and the Beast (1991) endorses Stockholm Syndrome and domestic abuse have very grossly missed the entire point of the story.
17 notes
·
View notes
The Armorer openly giving Bo the free agency of leaving whenever she wishes is very important to me
64 notes
·
View notes