#specifically hero war fear and until the end

[strwhnn]

Have you heard that there are people who live in something called "survival mode"?

As Mitski said "I fell in love with a war, nobody told me it ended".

That's the current Roier, despite being a charismatic and playful person, he literally just came back from a war.

He killed his friends on several occasions, he killed the people he loved the most just to amuse an entity that wanted to see them fight each other, he got so used to blood that he ended up enjoying it.

And now, overnight, he returns "home."

He comes back with the fear that his husband has not shown up, with the fear that he is dead, and as always, he makes jokes about it. But we all know it already, it is obvious that he doesn't want to think about it, he doesn't want to talk about it, he doesn't want to remember that he stayed on that stupid island.

Roier has always been like that, even with his children.

And this is where Pepito comes in.

The first thing he does when he sees him, when he learns that he will be a father again, is to say that he can't get attached to him, not again, he can't allow another child to be taken away from him.

🌷;; Now, from here on will only come MY opinion, my perspective and how I see things. If you have anything to comment or would like to leave input, feel free to do so. Now, let's get started.

Roier has only raised strong children. Just like that, he has only fathered children who are not afraid of the world, who do not live in fear and who are brave little warriors.

That's the "Mexican way" in his own words, and it has always worked for him.

Bobby and Richarlyson, specifically Bobby (his first son), have always been brave, and have never let anyone on the island scare them, they have known how to keep their heads up even in dangerous situations.

Bobby, during his last ten minutes, never showed sadness, never showed regret, he was an adventurer and knew that bad things could happen, but that was not going to stop him.

Roier loved those children because they were a small reflection of himself.

Roier is brave, he is strong, he is funny, he is friendly and he can always bring a smile to everyone's face.

That Roier who months ago was going on adventures with his children, is now broken and shut down, having to take care of one more little one.

But this time it's not like always, this time it's not so easy. Pepito has shown himself to be slow, clumsy, small, fearful.

And he has to live, unfortunately, under the shadow of the people most loved by his now father.

Pepito arrived at the lowest point of his life, and he arrived when Roier already had a family made, a complete family.

Pepito arrived after Purgatory, after the most intense two weeks of his entire life, and he is a weak little egg, a little one who must be cared for, who cannot afford to be a hero.

For Roier this is something new, a new experience and something that can serve to calm his wild soul. He's even wiped the blood off his suit, he's not quite ready to wear red again but he's ready to at least make an attempt to get close to it.

Pepito, despite knowing that Roier is only waiting for the arrival of his other son, has already accepted him and loves him as his father, after all he never had one, and if he did he no longer remembers him. He lived alone for so long that now having someone else is wonderful.

Both, Pepito and Roier need each other, they have everything they need to help each other heal even for a moment. They both came from the same island and they both know how horrific it was, they can both support each other until one day they can have a normal life again.

So, Pepito will currently continue to live around memories that don't belong to him (Bobby's castle and town) but that doesn't mean he will be their replacement, he can't even come close to that, he will just be a new bond, a new dawn.

A breath after the storm.

This is my first post on Tumblr, English is not my first language so I probably have several mistakes :D anyway, I wanted to post something to test the application and nothing better than talking about one of my favorite QSMP characters ₊˚⊹

#qroier #qsmp #qsmp purgatory #q!roier #qsmp pepito #qsmp bobby

[justmybookthots]

The Prisoner's Throne

This is THE book. The book that's been consuming my every waking thought since I read its prequel in May last year. The book which, if I didn't manage to read any in 2024, would be the only one I read this year at all. The Stolen Heir was among my favourite reads last year, possibly even more than The Cruel Prince because of Oak's characterisation. 

The last few days before the book release was agonising. Sheer, skin-flaying agony. When Ann Liang's 2024 release let me down after I'd spent months hyping it up—as did I with Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands—I have to confess I was terrified the same thing would happen with The Prisoner's Throne. Ann Liang is one thing, but this is Holly Black. The Prisoner's Throne is on a much, much higher pedestal for me than any other book in existence thus far. If this hurt me like the others did, I might really go into the worst kind of depression. (Yes, I'm one for histrionics… only I'm being perfectly serious.)

After a night of poor sleep—I am still very grateful that I managed to sleep, albeit fitfully, most of the hours away—I started reading this book at 7AM. (I'd downloaded the book at 2 in the night.) And then I didn't stop until I was done at 10AM. 

First thoughts: THANK THE FUCK IT WASN'T A MASSIVE LETDOWN OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. Was it as good as its prequel? No. But it didn't end up anywhere as bad as my jaded, paranoid self had secretly feared, and for that I am grateful. Overall, I enjoyed it!! I saw quite a handful of negative reviews on Goodreads but I don't feel the same way. Granted, the book definitely has a few issues, but being too slow or character-driven was not mine.

Let me talk about some things I liked and did not. Beware: Spoilers abound. 

Things I did not love:

I'm going to start with my most major disappointment. Oak, who is the highlight of this duology to me, wasn't as alluring as I found him in the first book. I think that Oak's character is written best when his POV isn't the entire book. I definitely LOVED reading his POV and welcomed it, but I also felt that having the entire thing in his perspective dulled some of his mystique. This is my personal preference, because I don't generally love stories that have too much of the hero's POV. I think Six of Crows is a good example of finding balance with Kaz's perspective and the other characters'. Also, because the story is in Oak's head, we don't see much physical descriptions of him. I miss all those parts about his adorable marigold hair and his golden eyes 🥺

I also miss his cleverness. He was very manipulative in the first book, and it was easier to feel impressed back then because you weren't in his head and you didn't know what was coming. In this instalment, he thinks a lot about playing the fool, over and over. It gets wearisome because I'm constantly being told but not often shown. In the first book, I was actually shown without being told at all—which is why it hit so much harder. Moreover, I don't think he did anything specifically very clever in this book? I guess he did use the wedding ruse to prevent a war, and he did find out what Wren was hiding, but he found that out too late and that was less cleverness than the plot being in motion.  

There's a running theme in this book about being accepted and loved for your truest, darkest self, but… I don't think it was conveyed very well. In the end, he says that Wren is the only one who can love him for who he is, but it isn't convincing to me because it's so clear to me how much—and how unconditionally—his family loves him. A lot of his inner turmoil felt very contrived and self-inflicted, whereas I thought Wren's own self-loathing was a thousand times more convincing and understandable. 

I was also quite confused by how much he loved Wren when their feelings seemed to be only gradually building in the first book. But he's completely head over heels for her at the start of this book and I wonder about the transition. I'd been hoping for some clarity because he mentioned in Book 1 that he'd loved a lot of different girls, so what made Wren The One here? I suppose it's because he didn't play the fool with her and she "saw him as himself"? I wish the writing was more convincing in this regard.

Genuinely a little baffled by the plotline about the Ghost. I'd thought we'd already covered his part in Liriope's murder in the Cruel Prince series. (I may need to reread the OG series to be sure.) But it's being rehashed again like ripping open an old wound. And I never knew Oak cared that deeply about his biological parents. My point is: Leave the Ghost alone! 

I wasn't invested in Tiernan and Hyacinth's story. I skimmed a lot of their screen time together, but their fans will probably receive quite the treat. 

Lady Elaine, fuck off!!! (That said, I do understand her role in the story, especially the climax.)

OAK TRYING TO KILL WREN AT THE END, SIR, SIR, PLEASE. DO NOT. 

We didn't need the sex scene being SO IMPLICIT –- GIVE ME DETAILS, DAMN IT!! Now I feel empty.

Things I liked: 

One thing I predicted when I'd read the exclusive first few chapters of Prisoner's Throne months ago: Wren's power came as a cost to her health. I was right. And I loved it. I'm not the biggest fan of overpowered heroines and her limitations were a great story point to me. Holly always does such an exemplary job in making her heroines, including Jude, badass and yet so human (more a figurative phrase for Wren since Wren is fae) and grounded. Also, in general, I liked Wren a lot in this book. My heart broke for her over and over. I JUST WANT WREN TO BE HAPPY AND I AM GLAD SHE GOT A HAPPY ENDING.

I had COMPLETELY forgotten about her connection to her mortal family and I am so, so happy we managed to resolve that in this book. The fact that Wren would do anything to protect her sister Brex moved me immensely. Holly did well in tying that loose end up, and hurray that Wren finally got to spend time with her family at the end of the book. 🙂

JUDE AND CARDAN!!!! Especially Cardan. He was such a gem and so intriguing in this book. Once I'm done writing this review, I'm going to reread all his scenes. No one can complain that Jurdan wasn't in this book—they were very, very involved in the plot here.

Holly Black's prose is still one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. It's my favourite prose of any author, period. It's succinct and poetic at the same time. It scratches an itch in my brain that I never knew needed scratching. 

The ending where Oak goes to find Wren and he proposes was so lovely. Ahhh. I will always have a special love and fondness for them. Bless their baby hearts.

Oak supporting Wren when she was ill will NEVER not move my stone cold heart. The way he held her weight to keep her from falling while they danced...

Before I sign off, I want to say one more thing: WHAT IS HOLLY PLANNING WITH NICASIA'S STORY? Is she going to write / create a male lead for Nicasia? What's going on?? Holly pretty much confirmed that she's going to write something else in this universe, and I must KNOW what she has in mind. Nicasia was so unlikeable in the original series that I wonder how it would be like to read her as a heroine of her own story. 

Holly, I'm right here, waiting for whatever you might throw at us next. 

#book review #the cruel prince #the prisoner's throne #the stolen heir #oak greenbriar #cardan greenbriar #jude duarte

[justaghostingon]

The Random Guy in the Carbonite

Or, Jin Ling Meets a Man who is “Definitely not the Yiling Patriarch” 

An Untamed star wars au.

Jin ling will admit in the privacy of his own mind, that he did not think this through. Running off to confront one of the most notorious crime bosses of the outer rim was one thing, but ditching the Jedi hired specifically to protect him was not his best move. 

In his defense, they had been very annoying. His Uncle and the Jedi master had gotten into a long fight over what plan was best, forgetting entirely that they were Senator Jiang Cheng of Yumeng, famed force user and war hero, and Hanguang-jun, the single most respected of the Lan Jedi to walk the earth. But noooo. Put them together and they argue like children!

People were dying! The clock was ticking down, and Jin Ling had to do something dammit!

What was the point of being the future emperor himself if he couldn’t even save one measly planet from the Hutts?

So yeah, he’d snuck out on his own, confronted the Hutts, and gotten thrown in this dark empty cell, surrounded with solid metal and cut off from his father’s lightsaber. 

Well, not completely alone. In the wall was a carbonite encasing of a man, frozen mid scream. At least, Jin Ling assumed it was a man. He looked human, and the cut of his robes were distinctly masculine, but there really was no knowing for sure until he was released. 

A grating noise from above snapped his attention away from his frozen companion. Light filtered in as a mechanism removed the dark metal lid above. Jin Ling blinked his eyes, taking a few minutes to realize that this was not salvation or release, but another worse punishment, humiliation.

For above him, separated only by a metal grate, was a growling, hooting crowd of the worst looking ruffians he’d ever seen. 

“Welcome guests!” Jimbo the Hutt’s booming voice echoed in the circular arena Jin Ling now realized he was in side. “To witness the battle of a life time!”

“In the corner we have Jin Rulan!” A loud booing filled Jin Ling’s ears.

“You’re going to regret this when my Uncle gets here!” Jin Ling shouted back. “And its Jin Ling!”

“The feisty heir to the emperor himself! Quite the challenger!” Jimbo continued as if he’d not heard Jin Ling. “But lets see how he does against his family’s natural enemy...”

A pure red beam hit the carbonite. Heat danced across Jin Ling’s skin, forcing him to step back as far as he could. Little by little, the carbon melted off, freeing the man beneath. 

“...The Yiling Patriarch!!” Jimbo’s voice boomed as the man inside stepped out.

Jin Ling’s blood beat fast in his ears. The Yiling Patriarch? The man who’d made him an orphan, who’d led the second great rebellion against the emperor himself, notorious sith and master of the dead. His knees began to knock. He wanted his Uncle, who’d defeated the man last, froze him in carbonite, and only lost him due to an unexpected attack of pirates. He wanted his dad, who he’d never known, but most of all he wanted Fairy, who Uncle had said would be a hinderance on this particular mission. She would have never let him get caught like this. 

The Yiling Patriarch turned his head towards him, black eyes met large and grey, before grey rolled back, and the Yiling Patriarch, feared destroyer of worlds and killer of millions, proceeds to fall flat on his face in a dead fate.

Jin Ling blinked. What the heck was that? 

Now he could see him clearer, he began to notice the discrepancies in the supposed enemy of all light force users. His robes were grey and black, but rough and patchy, clearly of poor make. Even the bright red ribbon in his hair was worn on the ends from what was likely years of use. The man himself was too thin, cheeks gaunt from hunger, and far to pale. 

In short, this man was definitely not the Yiling Patriarch. 

Jin Ling felt a bit foolish. He of all people should have known it wasn’t. After all, his Uncle had been getting sent carbon frozen bodies of “sith users” and the “Yiling Patriarch” since he was a little kid. His Uncle had diligently unfrozen every single one, confronting them on the accusations they’d been brought to him for. Some had been genuine wannabe sith, although nowhere near the level of the Yiling Patriarch. But most had just been ordinary folks who’d bought the cheeper carbon-freezing ticket for space travel on some shady ship, and gotten sold off as a novelty for looking a bit to similar to Wei Wuxian.

Lotus Pier had gotten a reputation for being a very good place to go to rescue stolen family members from these so called carbon thieves. 

If Jin Ling had to guess, he’d say this guy was a farmer. He nudged the guy with his foot. 

“Hey, wake up.”

The man groaned but didn’t move. Jin Ling shoved him harder. “Get up! This isn’t the place to take a nap!”

He reached his hand down and stuck a finger in the man’s ear. The man gave a shriek and flung himself up and away.

“Shidi what the Hell...” the man’s voice faded as he took in Jin Ling, and then the crowd above them. “...what is going on.”

“You got mistaken for the Yiling Patriarch and now they want us to fight.” Jin Ling shrugged. “Now stop being a baby and help me find a way out!”

“Mistaken?” the man blinked at him.

“Yeah, it happens,” Jin Ling scowled. “Don’t buy shady tickets next time.”

“Hehe, that’s very wise young master,” the man grinned. “You’re pretty smart for a Jin.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jin Ling shook his fist.

“So snippy! No mother to teach you manners I see!” the man laughed.

Jin Ling saw red. He didn’t care that this guy was a civilian, no one talked about his mother like that. He charged forward, fist swinging.

The man stepped easily out of his way. “Good job,” he whispered to Jin Ling as he passed his ear. “Keep fighting like that.”

“Oh I’ll show you a fight!” Jin Ling aimed a kick at the man, but he sidestepped once again. 

“Touchy, touchy,” the man shook his head. “I’m trying to get us out of here, you really think they’d let us go if they realized we weren't going to fight?”

Jin Ling lowered his fist. “So you’re doing this on purpose?”

“Of course,” the man struck forward with surprisingly good form. Jin Ling barely managed to parry, and that was only thanks to the unnatural quickness that all force users possessed. “We need a proper distraction if we’re to get out of here.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Jin ling struck out again.

“Oh I’m not going to do anything,” the man laughed and aimed a kick at Jin Ling’s face. “I’m a civilian remember? You’re going to get us out of here.”

“How?” Jin Ling dove forward, but missed, hitting the metal wall instead. 

“Using the force of course!” the man laughed. “Find the seams of the metal and the bolts holding it down, somewhere here there has to be a trash shoot. They wouldn’t want to keep dead bodies in here long term.”

“That’s not how the force works!” Jin Ling shot back, then stopped. the man’s suggestion hadn’t been wrong exactly, just not worded very well. Jin Ling hardly had the skill to sense nonhuman things like metal, but all dead things were once living. If there was a trash shoot, he cold find it, he just had to follow the decay.

He closed his eyes and concentrated. The life of the mob above was loud and wild, but down here there were only two signatures, his own and the flickering of the man he was fighting, and just behind him...

“There!” Jin Ling dove forward, slamming directly into the carbon casing.

“Ouch,” the man tutted as he watched Jin Ling stumble back to his feet. “Let your senior help here okay? I’ve worked in the fields, I’m stronger than I look.”

Jin Ling stepped back as the man circled his old prison, thumb in his mouth. Above them the murmuring of the crowd quieted to a disgruntled hum, no doubt wondering what they were doing now they weren’t fighting.

The man darted forward, to the side of the carbon casing. Back to Jin Ling, he shoved his whole wait against the casing. For a second nothing happened, Then the force flickered, a sour taste filled Jin Ling’s mouth, and the casing moved, inch by inch, but faster every second, until the hole beneath it was visible. 

Jin Ling frowned. But the taste on the edge of his senses was gone as soon as it came. Had that man used the force? 

“What are you waiting for?” the man called. “Thinking later. Escape now!”So saying, he threw himself down the hole. 

“Stop him!” Jimbo screamed.

Jin Ling cursed and dove after the man. Together they tumbled down the dark shaft, a disorienting fall of head over feet until it finally met its slimy end in a splat of water.

“Ugh,” Jin Ling pulled himself up. The stench was horrific, iron and rot and sick, sick sick. His clothes were soaked with who knows what and there was slime in his hair...

“Don’t look!” the man slammed a hand over Jin Ling’s eyes. His voice gentled. “This isn’t a sight for young ones.”

“I’m not a kid,” Jin Ling knocked the hand from his eyes. He blinked at his new surroundings, and promptly threw up.

Bodies lay all around them, some complete, some in pieces, some near skeletons and others almost fresh. Jin Ling ducked his head to stare at his own feet, standing next to the decomposing flesh of a human face...

A hand covered his eyes again. 

“It’s okay,” the man whispered in his ears. “It’s a lot for anyone. Just don’t look. I can handle it from now on okay?”

Jin Ling nodded and took a deep breath trying to center himself in the force like his Uncle had taught him, but the decay and agony stirred the dark side of the force, making it a struggle.

He heard the man move away, rummaging around in the piss/blood/water.

“What are you looking for?” he asked.

“Just some tools,” the man reassured him. “I know a thing or two about mechanics, and I can get us out.”

“Hurry,” Jin Ling choked out, the force was moving all wrong, resentment thick in the air. Even his companion’s presence seemed to flicker in and out against it, leaving him uncertain where exactly he was.

A click echoed through the sound. “Done,” the man said. 

Jin Ling began to lower his hand, but the man’s own stopped him. “It’s alright,” the man’s hand lowered to Jin Ling’s elbow. “The way it clear. You don’t need to look again, I’ll lead you.” 

Jin Ling wanted to protest, to point out he wasn’t a baby, he could handle it, but the dark side of the force was choking him, eating away at his bravado until all the remained was the scared boy who really, really wanted his Uncle.

 “That’s it,” the man spoke as he guided Jin Ling forward. “Step up now, over the entrance, good, good. There we go.”

Jin Ling’s feet stepped onto solid ground, the faint clink of metal beneath his boots. Behind him the resentment rose up, a furious at being robbed of its prey. Then another, sharper, redder resentment clashed with it, sending it back into the trash pit. A loud clank sounded behind him, and both presences cut off. 

“You can look now,” the man said.

Jin Ling blinked the spots from his eyes. They were in a corridor, just another black metal like all the others in this maze of a palace. Beside him, the man knelt before a control panel, having yanked it open to fiddle with the wiring. 

“What are you doing?” Jin Ling scowled, trying to recollect himself. “We need to run!”

“Not without a map we aren’t!” The man said. The panel glowed green under his fingers and he laughed with delight. “Bingo!”

Jin Ling leaned over him, to look at the small screen built in above the wires, dictating two pathways in red and green. “Is that the way out?”

“Not bad for a radish farmer is it?” the man beamed. “Let’s go!”

“Wait.” Jin Ling shook his head. “I can’t go. I have to get my lightsaber.”

“Just build another one,” the man dismissed, reaching out to drag Jin Ling towards the path.

“I can’t!” Jin Ling bristled, shoving the man off. “It was my fathers! It’s all I have left of him!”

The man stopped. “Your father’s?”

“Yes!” Jin Ling crossed his arms. “And I’m not leaving it!”

The man hesitated.

“It also has a tracker in it,” Jin Ling went for the killing blow. “And a panic button. We hit it and the Jedi and the whole of Yumeng Jiang will come down on their heads!”

“Yumeng Jiang?” the man startled.

“My uncle,” Jin Ling sniffed. “So its our best bet.”

“Okay.” The man let out a breath. “Okay you can go to your lightsaber. I’ll calculate you a path. But as for me...I’m getting out of here.”

Jin Ling abruptly remembered that this man was a civilian. He didn’t ask to get mixed up in this. “Fine.” 

The man gave him a small smile. He reached into the control panel and pressed a few more buttons before pulling the screen itself out and shoving it into Jin Ling’s hands.

“This map will lead you to your lightsaber,” he said.

“What about you?” Jin Ling asked.

“It’s all up here,” the man rapped his knuckles on his head. “Don’t worry about me.” The smile slid off his face. “Be safe Jin Rulan.”

“Jin Ling,” Jin Ling corrected automatically. “How did you...” the man raised an eyebrow. Right. Emperors nephew. Famous. Of course he knew his name. 

Speaking of which...”What’s yours?” Jin Ling asked. The man had never said, and unlike Jin Ling, he didn’t have his plastered all across the galaxy. All he knew was it wasn’t Wei Wuxian.

“Yuandao,” the man smiled. “I’m Yuandao the radish farmer.” 

“Yuandao,” Jin Ling repeated. “Come to Yumeng when you’re free. My Uncle will help you find your family. They’ll probably be worried since you got frozen.”

Yuandao’s smile twisted. “Goodbye Jin Ling.”

“Goodbye.” Jin Ling awkwardly agreed, before taking off down the hall towards his lightsaber. He had an Uncle to call. 

-------

Behind him the man who was not Yuandao stood and watched until the boy was out of sight. Then he turned back to the trash door and opened it, to meet the standing force of the dead within. 

He nodded to one of the fresher dead who still wore the uniform of the Hutt’s staff. “Follow him, make sure he gets there safely but don’t be seen. Lie still on the ground so that they think you’re a fresh kill. As for the rest of you,” His eyes flashed red.

“Make sure to teach that Hutt a lesson.

#the untamed #wei wuxian #jin ling #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #mdzs au #the untamed au #star wars au #untamed star wars au #wei wuxian is a little out of character but listen #no one messes with shijie's kid

[tender-hearteddd]

when aot was just abt to end, there were leaks ofc as there always are lol abt eren not really achieving any of his plans. and so much of the aot fandom, who have never lived through war, were genuinely upset over this. eren literally commits global genocide, he and his plan doesn’t deserve to achieve anything. especially not anything that would benefit him.

eren wasn’t one of my favorites until season 4 because of how utterly fucked up he is. he was a tragic MC who started off as a hero and as the story progressed, became a monster. even though we know what leads to his corruption, genocide is still wrong actually and having a characters worst fear come to life due to their own actions is the sort of tragic irony isayama loves. we’ve already seen isayama do this with reiner, zeke and grisha. it’s satisfying yet devastating at the same time how harsh the story is on them.

and the story should’ve been a lot more harsher to eren instead of the positive reaffirmation he got in 139 and from most of the fandom. eren claims the rumbling was for paradis, like thst shit didn’t kill off most of paradis’ population, and than he claims that it was for his friends (like pieck, who he has never even had a conversation with) but than he admits it was for himself - and it wasn’t satisfying at all because isayama wanted us to feel bad for eren and it worked. never mind the fact that eren killed his own mom, that he manipulated his own father for taking the FT for his own gain, that he annihilated 80% of the world - he did it for his friends 😊 so it’s okay! friendship >>>> genocide 😝

aot taking a very strong stance against eren’s actions and plan, denouncing them as wrong (bc they are) and showing them that nothing good comes out of them is wayyyyyy better the woobification and the mini redemption arc we got from him in the last chapter.

this is why i hate it when aot fans talk abt aot like it’s the greatest anti-war anime ever made. i think majority of aot fans are westerners or come from developed countries. it’s easier to understand war when ur watching cartoons of it instead of actually living through it. a huge part of the fandom justifies eren’s genocide, even with characters explicitly condemning him. do you really think it’s clear with its anti-war message when all we got was a few sad faces and a huge thank you from the main cast? one of the main themes in aot is the moral grayness of the world. the warriors did what they did because they were child soldiers trying to protect their families, EMA would’ve done the same. the scouts raided liberio (and were heavily against it). and masses of innocent people died in the name of other groups interests. there were literally no winners in this at all.

but why have characters that should’ve narratively and thematically been against eren suddenly forgive and praise him?

why break all the characterization, break all those different point of views, for the warriors specifically, if not for the final woobification of eren?

eren could’ve had one of the most extraordinary corruption arcs in all of anime just for that to be ruined and i will forever be mad abt it

#ending defenders dni #we are not gonna argue abt this if you see this just look away 😭 #if you haven’t actually lived through war #if you haven’t actually had to see people dying due to war #if you haven’t had to go through the humiliation of being a refugee #than you have no reason to defend this atrocious piece of anti war media #anti-war media made by those from countries of imperial power are always really bad #idk i just hate when westerners talk abt war #over the past few weeks #my homeland has been routinely bombed and attacked #and while i try to ignore this deep seated feeling of anguish inside of me #i go onto tumblr #and i see bitches woobifying a fictional white man for the genocide he commits #and seeing pple praise aot as an anti-war piece of media is what prompted this post #being a refugee in this country is so funny lol #also my homeland is one of the countries that has the most child soldiers in the world #which is why i think i relate more to the warriors than anything #aot could’ve been so great if it was written by me #attack on titan critical #attack on titan meta #eren jaeger critical #eren critical #eren jeager meta #eren x reader #eren jeager x reader #aot spoilers #aot isn’t a good anti-war analysis because isayama isn’t a devoted anti imperialist #if ur naming characters after nazis and imperial japanese war ships #i don’t expect u to even be anti-war i expect u to be a bigot #i can’t believe people just swept isayama’s worrying obsession with ww2 under the ruh

[compacflt]

hey! seeing your post about iceman and hamilton reminded me of the 1812 au that you had posted about previously - do you mind sharing any of your thoughts on that, specifically Ice & Mav's reactions to the politics of war back then, before the US military and Navy were such huge institutions (in today's standards)? EDTS Ice & Mav are decidedly anti-war (more Ice than Mav I think), but would that same sentiment be true for them back then & how would Ice feel about war hawks like Calhoun & Clay? there's obviously a pretty big role that war plays in forming national identity, especially in early US history, and with external forces like impressment & embargoes & all of the international relations nightmares that came w/ early state building, I'm really interested in how that may have an impact on how Ice and Mav view military service and duty. I would love to read this fic if you're still planning on writing it (really I love to read everything that you write tbh) - also hope you are doing well!! 😊😊

hiya!! i hope you are also doing well!! I am not sure if im ever going to post the 1812 au to be honest—i would really love to but i think it would be so long it would have to be my first priority for a few months, and I’m not sure when I’d have time to do that. but i have it all planned out at least, so maybe we can compare notes.

So here are my notes.

IF i were to complete my 1812 AU… It would not be about Ice at all. Which is how I’d be able to stomach writing about Ice’s death. AND the characters would be very very different from the characters i wrote about in EDTS (i.e. confessed their love for each other way back in the 1770s). And what I want to tackle in this AU is exactly what your ask is about—duty to your fledgling country! Im interested in a version of TGM maverick who had to be away from the love of his life, on his deathbed, to serve the national interests of his country. *questionable* national interests, in TGM’s case, or *forgettable* national interests in the War of 1812’s case. The War of 1812 is sort of America’s forgotten war—its causes were nebulous & hard to rally around/understand today, and there were no real heroes until the end, unless if you count Andrew Jackson as a hero (i really try not to). So this would be a direct attack on the heroism we are presented with in TGM: what is mavericks mission really accomplishing in the grand scheme of things? Using the 1812 war, itself forgotten and largely irrelevant, as a meta backdrop for that question of heroism.

So—this version of Ice & Mav are: actual factual war heroes. Revolutionary war heroes who were genuinely educated & truly believed in the American experiment of representation & freedom from tyranny. Fighting the British 36 years apart. (Something i really really like & will take advantage of… the 36 years between 1776 and 1812 exactly equaling the 36 years between 1986 and 2022… it was meant to be.) They’ve spent their whole lives together in the romantic sense, in a world where they couldn’t live openly together but at a time when sexuality was also understood completely differently. But they have to be apart when Ice is dying because Maverick has been handed a mission, a duty, by the USG that he has to take care of. (Part of the reason I’m stalling on this project is because I don’t really know what that mission would be… something something naval warfare, something something Captain of the “USS Dagger…” but im a better romance writer than an action writer… idk how to come up with those plots at all. And I’m not super well-versed in EARLY naval warfare [I prefer wwii navy stuff] so idk how ships like sailed clippers & schooners etc actually work. That’s a completely different wheelhouse for me & is integral to a story like this, and fundamentally im kind of a lazy person who doesn’t put a lot of effort into research if I don’t have to)

the AU would be written in two parts—the warm summer of youth vs cold winter of old age. Confronting my own fear as an author of getting old & dying, tbh. What does it mean to be a hero and die of old age? Shouldn’t you want to die WHILE being a hero? Part one: 1776-1782 is… ice & maverick falling in love and dealing with goose’s death together and cementing their hero status in American naval history (like they do in the original top gun). Then part 2; 1812/1813… ice is retired from being the first USN commodore/secretary, but he’s dying and maverick has to choose between being with his de facto husband in his last days VERSUS being out at sea, serving his country, but for a war that he (a bit metaphysically, to serve my metaphorical aims) knows will be forgotten. He can be a hero or he can be there for the love of his life but he can’t do both. Duty & sacrifice. Ice persuades him it’s time to let go, maverick goes out to sea, and then ice dies while he’s at sea. & the 1812 war was kind of forgotten, and their love will never be known by history because they were two men, so what was that sacrifice really for? Shouldn’t he have been home with ice?

Which leads me to: I am also slightly interested in an interpretation of the TGM mission as a possible su*cide attempt on mav’s part, post-ice’s death. Trying to die a hero. So, there’s that. That would be in it as well.

Some issues: that’s pretty simple & i submitted a 4k short story with this exact premise (1776 war hero has to choose between one last shot at heroism in 1812 vs staying with his male lover at the end of his life) to one of my writing workshops last semester and they loved it. But, by god, does it get 10x more complicated once you add Bradley to the mix. It’s ALWAYS made it more complicated & it’s why I’ve had so much pain trying to edit EDTS over the last 8 months (as you know). Because LETS PLEASE BE REAL TGM did NOT give me much to go on there. Like the emotional turn that is I think SUPPOSED to happen in the scene where ice and mav talk in TGM—I don’t understand it & I think that scene was only written for fanservice because it serves no purpose in the story and I’m not sure what emotion we’re supposed to take away from it. Maverick says “please send me ice, don’t ask me to send someone else to die,” (is he asking ice’s permission??) and ice DOESNT actually answer that request, doesn’t even acknowledge it; he says, in a COMPLETE AND UTTER NON SEQUITUR, “It’s time to let go.” Maverick says, “yeah I know,” so what does that actually mean? Who is he letting go??? Bradley??? Goose??? ice himself??? Is ice giving mav permission to go or not???? It’s so vague it means absolutely nothing, and i have no idea what ice’s emotional/story purpose in TGM is except to bail mav out of sticky situations and nostalgia purposes, and don’t even get me STARTED on how out-of-character it was for MAVERICK (guy who hates having his papers pulled from the Academy) to pull Bradley’s papers from the Academy in TGM, both of which are why ive struggled so much trying to fit Ice into the mav/Bradley narrative of betrayal & loss etc. And in a two-shot piece where all those years in between are kind of skipped over… idk. I feel like I would sort of have to sacrifice the Bradley storyline for the overarching icemav duty-sacrifice-heroism theme. With WWGATTAI, i was KIND of able to do both, but only after MULTIPLE rounds of very very intense editing & like 50k words of rewrites and even then it’s kind of awkward so… idk. For a quick two-shot like this I’d have to pick. I don’t have the energy to write another 50-100k reinterpreting that story all over again lol

So to answer your question it would be way less about the actual weird politics of the 1812 war and more about providing a place for me to get into mav’s emotions dealing with ice’s death and the historical implications of a mission like that, kind of glossed over in the movie … though this ice & mav are veterans of the XYZ affair / battles with the Tripoli pirates, so that probably affects how they see things… but mostly, duty is still duty & orders are still orders, but sometimes following orders means sacrificing what little time left you have with your family… following the TGM timeline where ice only has about 2 weeks left to live from Mach 9.

So, pros of the 1812 au: lots of the purple prose poetic writing i shamefully really like. Icemav open and honest with each other from the very start ❤️. Dealing with the themes and emotional consequences of ice’s death finally. Focusing only on mav instead of only on ice. Penny & sarah in a lesbian relationship. Some discussion of the cyclical nature of queer history (i.e. we’ve always been here making history and we always will be). Mav finding reasons to live after ice is gone.

Cons of the 1812 au and why I’m hesitant to really get invested in writing it: don’t know much about pre-diesel naval warfare so can’t come up with the technical action elements of the plot & too lazy to do that much research. I have a sailing license, so I know like… knots and rigging and mainsail vs jib/genoa/spinnaker and sloop vs schooner etc, but i do NOT know anything about THAT kind of sailing. Warship sailing, tactics, “dogfighting” equivalents, etc. Also: would probably have to sacrifice the whole “getting Bradley kicked out of the academy-equivalent” storyline, just to make the story less complicated. Not sure how much of the original ice and maverick the story would retain as a result. Also: i know wayyy more about the early national period (1776-1800) than anything after about 1808, but even then the last time i was really into this period of history was my freshman year of high school, so i can’t necessarily claim to know what im talking about when it comes to the intricacies of the early American state (as i think is pretty obvious here). Also too lazy to do that much research.

But, here are some notes/snippets etc if you would like. they’re solidly 6 months old now & unedited & largely unresearched, just throwing words on the wall in writing phase one, but whatever

#oooo that’s a lot of words to just say ‘im lazy & self-conscious of the fact i don’t know what im talking about’ #thanks for the ask ily ❤️🥺 #i think you know more about This period of history than i do so honestly we should chat #OMG ice saying i love you & maverick hasn’t even died yet whoa #ice goes to yale instead of the academy. yale guy. ☹️ #pete maverick mitchell #tom iceman kazansky #top gun #top gun maverick #icemav #asks #top gun fanfiction #if someone wants to pick up this idea & do it please do #not feeling very articulate with my not-fiction words today; sorry if this post is incomprehensible

[gaylactic-fire]

Headcanons for each boy's most embarrassing/irrational fear?

Also, do you mind if I redirect an anon to you? They've been sending me hc list requests and while I'm mostly fine with it, I think I would be happier doing my own ideas on my own time.

Ohohoho. Now we're talking. This shit is my bread and butter >:]. A lot of these fears aren't necessarily irrational in their cases, but boy would they be embarrassed by them.

(Also yeah Idm. Can't guarantee I'll always be in the mood to write em but sure!)

Four: Statues. Specifically, those very detailed human statutes. He watched Zelda get turned into one at the start of Minish Cap and it left an awful mental scar. Whenever he's faced with them he'll avoid all eye contact and if he must get close he'll be sweaty and shaky. He can definitely shake hands with Wind on this fear, though I can't imagine Wind has the same adverse reaction. He's just uneasy around them.

Hyrule: Squeamishness is a pretty normal fear. But what embarrasses Hyrule is that he's arguably the least afraid of blood when it comes to other people's injuries (he's the fanon healer after all). When it's his own blood however, dude will literally start to feel faint and panic. Something something blood of the hero. Combine this with transmasc Hyrule having to deal with shark week for the ultimate whombo combo of torment. Sorry buddy.

Legend: Thunderstorms. Yep. You saw this one coming if you read Downpour. Legend has had SO MANY awful experiences during/because of storms and I cannot see him doing anything but going into blind panic when faced with one. I won't go into much more detail bc I've written about it. But yeah. Poor baby boy 🥺.

Sky: Being left behind. Yeah, you can imagine where this came from. If he's with a group of people and somehow ends up alone or lost he will get pretty distressed. Poor guy's like a lost kid at Walmart. When he finally reunites with his group he'll give them a tongue lashing once he calms down.

Time: Maybe not necessarily a "fear" per say, but I can picture him getting extremely stressed and on edge if they are ever behind schedule. If they were supposed to reach a village by dusk but it's already close to nightfall, for example. Yep, it's that Majora's Mask time crunch stress coming back to bite him on the ass.

Twilight: Bugs. I think it's Arbiters Grounds, but the dungeon in TP where yoy get swarmed by insects at one point? Yeah no. Would turn you off bugs for life. Twilight is the one sheepishly at your door at 3am, but instead of "I threw up." it's "There's a spider in the bathroom please help." I also think he would be too kind to actually kill any bugs so the dude just makes it hard on himself lol.

Wars: This one isn't even based on something in HW. I projected hard and wrote a fic once and it's stuck ever since. Dentists. Wars HATES getting dental work done. The thought of it even makes him sweat and squirm. Why? Because he's but a vessel for my own anxiety disorder.

Wild: I'm highkey projecting again. Wild's claustrophobic, but specifically he does not like the feeling of being trapped in a small, cramped space. It's definitely been spurred on by waking up in the resurrection shrine. He would not have a fun time in some of the other boy's dungeons.

Wind: Bridges. I imagine this fear didn't really start to set in until some time after WW. But now he cannot cross long bridges. He will literally freeze up. All can hear is the wings of the helmaroc king and the sound of Aryll screaming. Most people assume its a fear of heights but it goes much deeper than that. Poor lil guy needs a hug 🥺

#fires posts #ramblings #linked universe #askbox #I LOVE writing about their fears it's just so cathartic #God I have so many fics planned which I lack the dedication for lol #anyone feel free to ask me more about fear stuff I can project SO HARD #long post

[mentaly-british-biologist]

TF2 PLAYABLE CAHARCTER LORE:

Okay, so just some context. Mann Co is a business organisation that runs most other companies in the world. Everything was shared equally between two brothers/heirs to the corporations power and money, apart from one thing in particular. A gravel pit.These two brothers, known as Redmond and Blutard Mann wanted to overachive and be better than one another, so decided to hire mercenaries to fight for this land. This original team, founded between 1800-1850's was comprised of Billy the Kid, Stonewall Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Alfred Nobel, John Henry, Nikola Tesla, Sigmund Freud, Davy Crockett, and Fu Manchu. They would take the roles of the mercinaries like so:

Scout: Billy the Kid (1859 - 1881)

Soldier: Stonewall Jackson (1824 - 1863)

Pyro: Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)

Demoman: Alfred Nobel (1833 - 1896)

Heavy: John Henry (Folk Hero)

Engineer: Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943)

Medic: Sigmund Freud (1856 - 1939)

Sniper: Davy Crockett (1786 - 1836)

Spy: Fu Manchu (Fictional Villain)

These people would battle with others with similar weapons, stature, and power until they would eventually get too old to fight.After this, the two brothers soon realised that they may die prematurely before the battle could end, so asked for personal commissioned machinery designed to keep them alive for longer. [[This will be elaborated in the plot later, this stuff is kinda important.]]Okay, now the old team is dead. Time for the new ones. 1930's mercs were probably the most advanced out of all of the mercs, with the 1850 mercenaries looking like they've been pulled off the streets to fight, and the 1970 mercs looking like a mix of the two old teams designs. Everyone has some sort of camo on them apart from their engineer, who possibly be Fred Conagher, the father of the Engineer we know and love. Fred Conhager, in particular, may be the same man who created the machines keeping the Mann brothers alive, but we are currently unsure. The next generation, and the one we know today is the 1970's team. This consists of:

Scout- Jeremy

Soldier- Jane Doe

Pyro- Unknown

Demoman- Tavish Finnegan DeGroot

Heavy- Mikhail

Engineer- Dell Conagher

Medic- Mr. Ludwig

Sniper- Mick Mundy (Adoptive name)

Spy- Unknown

Along side them is Ms.Pauling and The Administrator. I'll list out characters as shown, one by one.

**SCOUT**

Full name is unknown, so we'll stick to Jeremy. He was born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He is the youngest of eight children, and so constantly looks for attention. Can't read, but can run extremely fast. Seems that a specific brand of fizzy drink, known as Atomic Bonk can make him much faster. Dies in the comics and goes to heaven, whete he is told he was God's gift to all women, and was sent back to earth to 'get laid' [[This is the comics words, not mine]]

Has a tattoo of tom jones with the words 'S€X BOM' on it [Told you he couldn't read] and is canonically Spy's son. Has a crush on Ms. Pauling.

**SOLDIER**

His name may not even be Jane Doe. Because those are USA and UK placeholder names for unidentifiable corpses. [[Jane Doe as a woman]] Is a God-fearing patriotic Midwest American. Despite his role in the team, he has not once been in a war situation. He just got to the frontlines in WW2 and started blowing up Germans. He has lead poisoning, although we're not sure if that's why he's like this, he is extremely aggressive and has a special move called 'rocket jumping' where he can fire a rocket at his feet, shooting him into the air. It doesn't hurt him however, because he doesn't think it will [[So stupid he bends nature's laws at will??!?!?]] He was also roommates with a wisard called Merasmus. Merasmus kicked him out, and tom jones became his new roommate.

Soldier kills tom jones. For no reason. Soldier is also in love with Heavy's sister, Zhanna.

**PYRO**

Whoo boy, this is a confusing one. We do not know Pyro's gender, where they're from, or even if they are a person. We do know that many characters refer to Pyro as he/him, but Soldier does have a suspicion that they might be a woman. He may be schizophrenic, or it could be their optical mask, but he sees the battle as a fluffy arena filled with unicorns and lollipops. However, they do have the capacity to be very much enraged, and cut off Soldier's hand once when in a car with Demoman and Ms. Pauling.

**DEMOMAN**

Drunk. Born in Ullapool, Scottland. His parents were Tilly DeGroot and her husband who we don't know , whom both are blind. Demoman was put up for adoption by them after being bad at blowing things up. He would eventually find a book called 'The Bomonicon' [[I hope i wrote that right]] with a mischievous spirit inside. Once he had opened the book, the spirit inside made it's way to his eye, haunting his eyesocket, and making him lose said eye. He then blows up his adoptive parents while trying to hunt for the loch ness monster, then gets taken back by his original parents. His mother keeps asking him to get a job, even though he makes 3 million+ a year. Loves alcohol. Like, really loves alcohol, so much so, that when he eats normal food, his body thinks it's been poisoned. After an extensive time away from alcohol, his body turns his stomach into a makeshift distillery, fermenting bone marrow into alcohol. This alcohol in particular is so strong, it gives blood-sucking robots [[Don't ask]] alcohol poisoning. Can also do something similar to Soldier by 'Stickybomb jumping' that also takes no damage, due to him being too drunk.

**HEAVY**

Heavy was born in Russia sometime around WW1. His father was an anti-revolutionary who opposed the Communist uprising, so he was executed and Heavy's family put in the gulag for three months before it was burnt down in 1941 and all the guards tortured to death. Yeah, you heard me right, the gulag. He has three sisters called Zhanna, Yana and Bronislava. His mothers name is currently unknown to us. His weight is the same as his HP: 300. He is quite a nice guy when it comes to his teammates and gives even more affection to his guns, who of one he has a case at the end of his bed for. This gun in particular is named Sasha, of which he is very possessive and which weighs 150 kilograms and fires $200 custom-tooled cartridges at 10,000 rounds per minute. He also reveals that it costs $400,000 to fire his weapon for 12 seconds. Heavy has named all of his primary weapons, basic Minigun being Sasha, Tomislav being Svetlana, Brass Beast being Oksana and Huo Long Heater being Sheila. He was also the first in the team to have the experimental ubercharge operation and survive, making him bulletproof. Also sandvich.

**ENGINEER**

Known as Dell Conagher, this man has eleven PhD's. Yes, you read that right. ELEVEN. He was born in Bee Cave, Texas, USA, and may or may not be related to one of the previous mercinaries in the classic team. Apart from this, he has created machines like teleporters [[Don't put bread in them]], sentries, and dispensers that he can place around the battlefield to help his team. He is friends with Pyro, and seems to understand them, despite their speech being muffled. One of the only few to help The Administrator with her Australium-Age related problem, and answered the phone for her when she died once.

**MEDIC**

Okay, this will be too long if I go into detail. This is quickfire. Mr. Ludwig was born in Stuttgart, Germany and has little regard for the Hippocratic Oath. He is insane. He loves doves, especially his most beloved one, Archimedes. Managed to get into contact with the devil and made a deal that would cost his soul. We do not know what he had sold his soul for, but the chances it was for his medical 'discoveries' is quite high. Managed to steal an entire skeleton and got away. Lost his medical licence soon after this. While giving his teammates surgeries, stole all of their souls and surgically added them to his own soul. During a Halloween party, he was caught off gaurd by a mugger. After knocking him out, he then put the muggers brain in a pumpkin.This would later help him out. Re-hired to aid the 1930 Classic team for a new leader, *Grey Mann*. When sniper was shot down by the classic's heavy, he brought him back to life an hour later with the help of a blue whale's pineal gland directly into his brain stem. The entire surgery cost about 1.3 billion dollars. Classic heavy, after seeing this, crushes his favourite dove, Archimedes. He also brings his bird back to life. After this, classic heavy and Medic get into a fight. Heavy shows up, only for classic heavy to shoot Ludwig twice in the chest. After quickly swindling the devil by giving him another soul for a pen, he comes back to life, and then pretends it is an inducer that would make classic heavy give birth to three healthy baby baboons, due to the three baboon uterus's he had placed inside him during a surgery [[I'm confused too, don't worry]] Classic heavy belives the bluff, giving Heavy enough time to take him down. after that, he takes out the real inducer and claims that the human body could only generate two at the most.

**SNIPER**

He is Australian.

Except, he isn't. He's a New Zealander.

New Zealand is Atlantis btw.

His adoptive name is Mick Mundy, although his real first name is Mun-dee, like his real mother and father, Bil-Bel and Lar-nah, making his real name Mun-dee Mundy. New Zealand is underwater due to the fact that the geniuses wanted to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. After being shot out of the country in a Krypton-Superman-Spacepod style fashion, he is adopted by Jonathan Mundy and his wife Mrs. Mundy in Australia. He then becomes skilled in shooting from afar. In the most previous comic, he dies. Medic brings him back to life, and he immediately attacks him, asking why he was the last person he saw before bleeding out. Yeah, he also pees in a jar and throws it at people as a weapon, so... yeah. Also, golf trophy.

**SPY**

Not much is really known about his past but all that is known is that he was born in France in an unknown region. It's a mystery on how he became a master spy and a master of disguise as no one knows if someone trained him or he rather he trained himself. We do know however, that he is Scout's father. He seems to hate everyone and everything, and may or may not have lung cancer due to how many cigarettes he smokes. He is snarky, witty, and cocky, some of these traits are shared with Scout also. He got shot in the kneecaps when a plan in the latest comic, and Sniper saved him by shooting the guy who did it. He also disguised as Tom Jones when Scout was dying, and for the first time, directly called him son. He wears a custom tailored Louis Crabbermaché suit, is valued at $10,000, and has his own smoking room within the base.

I made this all in the Undertale server. Don't ask.

This took me three days to do.

#team fortress two #tf2 #tf2 lore #tf2 pyro #tf2 spy #tf2 demoman #tf2 scout #tf2 engineer #tf2 medic #tf2 heavy #tf2 sniper #tf2 soldier #THIS TOOK ME THREE DAYS TO WRITE DOWN GIVE ME LIKES OR ELSE

[stainedglassthreads]

Pretty sure it’s been done to death before, but it’s still so interesting comparing soul colors to how the monsters are colored. 

Toriel and Asgore use the most purple in their respective designs. They’ve both lived through immense amounts of tragedy, and done their best to persevere, and stick to morals or duty, respectively. Asgore also has some yellow in his design, he’s trying to deliver the monsters the Justice that they expect from him, but it’s no longer his primary desire. (I actually headcanon that the walls of New Home used to be painted bright yellow, but after Chara and Asriel’s death the color faded to grey. Both to reflect how the Underground lost hope, but here it could also be Asgore growing tired of war and justice and vengeance, only wanting to see his family again.) 

Meanwhile Alphys’ primary color is Justice. And a lot of people might think that’s a pretty strange choice for her. She’s a bad person, some might say. She created the Amalgamates, kept them in the True Lab, and lied to their families. But one could possibly say that she did all of that BECAUSE she had a strong sense of Justice. 

Alphys is a flawed person, but I believe she does have a pretty strong sense of morality, and right and wrong. And that’s part of her problem. She KNOWS she’s done wrong, and because she has such a strong morality, she judges herself very harshly, but fears others will do the same-- or even moreso. So she begins to lie, to buy herself time, but there’s nothing she can do with her very limited resources, so she instead keeps building and building people’s reactions to her in her mind, and worsening her anxiety and depression. 

She is a better critical thinker than most of the Underground in some ways, though. Most of the Underground accept that humanity is composed of monstrous people, and even those that do believe humans can be good people still want to collect the seventh soul, either so they can see the stars, or for the fame and prestige associated with capturing a human. Even Papyrus, the kindest and most idealistic monster, wants to assist in capturing you. Even Mettaton, who genuinely loves and admires humanity, still wants to take Frisk’s soul for his own purposes. 

Alphys stands apart, as one of the only monsters who’s never met a human, but of her own volition does her best to actively assist one in evading capture. Yes, she has some selfish motivations in wanting to play out her dreams of being a hero, but everyone in Undertale is a bit selfish. As I said, Papyrus wants to capture a human to become popular, and yes, he does know what death is and that his boss wants the human dead. 

Alphys is perhaps, besides Toriel, the only major character who both loves humanity and wants to keep the Royal Guard from capturing Frisk. (I’m not counting Sans because it’s hard to tell how serious he is about ‘you’d be dead where you stand.’ I don’t think he’d kill Frisk the second they leave the ruins, but who knows.) 

Then there’s the stuff with the Amalgamates. The more I think about this, the more I realize... I think Alphys’ biggest problem is that she prioritizes people’s happiness so much. She really does. She specifically says it would be better if Asgore didn’t see the tapes, because she knows they’d hurt him even worse. And I think the biggest reason she was so stressed about the Amalgamates and  lying about them was... she had already told the families that everyone had woken up fine, and had in that case been made a liar by unpredictable circumstances. She didn’t want to deliver anything less than the happy ending she promised them, and so stalled, lied, delayed, and begun to judge herself more and more harshly for lying, for failing the Amalgamates and their families, until she hit rock bottom and found herself in Waterfall, overlooking the abyss. 

Alphys has a sense of right and wrong. And she knows better than anyone else when she does wrong. But because she’s such a harsh judge of herself, she feels the people she’s failed will be just as harsh-- or even moreso. So, trash that she is, she lies and scrambles to fix things, and sometimes she lies more to make herself feel better, feel like a hero, and she’s also helping the human not die, isn’t she? Maybe everyone can win! 

But it’s not that simple. Sometimes, despite your best intentions, you just can’t tackle all these problems alone. And Alphys can’t. Sometimes, as scary as it is, the best thing you can do is come clean to everyone around you and try to deal with the fallout together. And Alphys does do that, too. She does it with Frisk and Undyne’s support in True Pacifist, and when things get really, really bad, she does it in the oft-overlooked Queen Alphys ending, too. 

Side-note. But what with all the evidence supporting that Determination may be golden instead of red... it’s also interesting that Alphys, the character most heavily involved in the DT experiments, is a yellow lizard. Not quite the same color, but fittingly close. 

#undertale #undertale meta #undertale analysis #toriel #asgore #asgore dreemurr #alphys #how did this become an alphys analysis post

[sophietv]

I like your latest post intricately explaining the LSK secret family theory and such even though I'm not thoroughly convinced yet, simply because in my gaylorism playbook I put lyric analysis above everything and I believe her art and her words in melodies and songs are the ones that conveys her story in it's most truthful sense before any hints shown through clothing items or merch etc (even though they are very interesting & convincing too I must say). That is how I got into gaylorism and how I could connect to her artistry and songs as a lesbian even when PR news publications and the general public all reports about her as this boy-crazy straight woman, I knew it's not true because her songs paint this unique specific experience that gay/lesbian women go through so I believe in that more rather than some staged pap walks of her with some random famous man.

Now the question is that, so many songs in evermore and midnights talk about Taylor fearing and not wanting the marriage and family model in all it's varieties, especially the system of lavender marriage itself. One song even explicitly states how she's annoyed at being pressured into it. The daughter-in-law line in anti hero feels more like a confirmation of her fear of family to me and for Peace, I saw it more as a contemplation with herself if lavender marriage/family is something that she wants (which she then answers in lavender haze, midnight rain, champagne problems, antihero, dear reader, etc).

If theres any late stage theory between Kaylor I see it more as taylor being an outsider looking in through karlie's domestic life and being on good terms/supportive to her, and I do believe they are love of each other's lives, they'll never forget each other and they'll keep referencing each other etc etc but they also recognized they wanted different things in life (Midnight Rain, I personally think this song finalizes and marks the end of any possibility of them getting back together).

All these songs in evermore and midnights painting this picture of taylor being alone and a pariah with self loathing and feeling sorry and guilty and melancholic about her old love that is doing good creates this perception in my head that when an LSK says they both are in a happy family raising a child together it felt like all those time in 2020-2021 when toes/hetlors were trying to convince everyone taylor is in a stable happy longlasting relationship while in contrast she writes 2 albums about a disastrous falling out and a damn near divorce.

However, I do try to keep an open mind and there are some songs in midnights that could point towards the secret family theory of LSK, such as the great war, bigger than the whole sky, sweet nothing, labyrinth and glitch but idk. The sadder songs about her being alone and rejecting the family model, being a pariah, etc feels more real to me. I guess if ts11 is coming I'll know for sure when it drops. P.S: I do think that random "mom! " voice over in Dear Reader is sus as hell. Perhaps the one thing I cant get my mind off.

Oh and also if we get into any kind of LSK stuff, what are your thoughts about the two of them coming out, either alone or together? We all know 2019 taylor wanted to come out, some say karlie was also in the picture but there was lack of evidence for it I think? In Midnight Rain it says that K wanted it "comfortable", which explains marrying her beard of 7 years while T is the opposite of that, to which I believe that she'll keep dropping hairpins untill the time comes where she'll do some grand dramatic thing, maybe in the long future. I just wanna your thoughts if T or K ever decides to come out, how will it all unfold?

Hi!

Thank you for your questiond!!

I see what you are saying.

And you are not the only one. The songs are a big part of why people question LSK.

Since it's a really long and complicated answer. I already wrote a post about it here: (X)

This post about my reflexion on why I still believe in Kaylor and my thoughts about them having a family off of the public eye might help as well (X)

I don't believe that Taylor was gonna come out with Karlie in 2019. Whatever happened there seem to have had a change of plan made toward May to exclude Karlie of this.

I don't believe that this was either Karlie's or Taylor's choice.

So in 2019 when she was to come out, I believe she would have come out as bi with Joe by her side.

As for now.

Tree seems to be working really hard toward the reconcialliciation narrative.

Especially since Karlie went to the Eras Tour.

So I believe there is chances that if Taylor comes out. She does so with Karlie by her side.

Hope this answers your questions!

Don't hesitate if you have any other!

#anon #lsk #kaylor

[peggy-sue-reads-a-book]

Day 2

This is a question I have had for  while. What are your feeling on all the olympians? Like all of them. Thanks if you answer lol(can’t believe I even remembered 2 days)

Oh wow, ok, I’m excited about this question and will do my best. Been thinking about it all day. I’m going with feel as the operative word. I am not a Hellenic polytheist (I am a Christian; anyone can ask me about this☺️) but the gods are real and dear to me as part of humanity, so yes, I have feelings. In a way, your ask is as much about me as it is about the gods. So you’ll get my completely personal take. I will not give you subversive fan theories or analyses on why they are problematic. I’m also a synesthete, so bare with me; my sensory process is what it is.

Zeus — I feel like we’d date. A friend of mine told me that he reads my fanfiction but his powers enable him to watch it like a telenovela. He’s a warm, gregarious energy to me. I live for silly Zeus memes but I think what we all miss is how likeable he is. Large and scary on the outside, but full of wonder at his core. He’s the visionary behind Olympus after all. He’s a swan, a glittering shower, he wants thrones for all his kids, crowns for his brothers and sisters. My favorite myths include just how much he delights in his kids. Like when Artemis and Apollo are born and he’s just like here, have the sun, have the forests. Or when he rescues little Dionysus by putting him in his own body until he’s done growing. I think his presence would feel so alive you wouldn’t really care who he was or what nonsense he’d been up to.

Poseidon - ya know, he’s a mysterious dude. He’s moody, a little weird. Thinking of him makes me imagine my fears of the bottom of the ocean. Of the kraken, of trenches, places with no light and freaky pressure changes. Almost like he’s specifically the lord of the deep. Of any god, I’m most afraid of him. (Feel free to psychoanalyze in the comments) Also I imagine him as a hunky merman. I picture him in deep greens. I think of that folk song full fathom five. Choleric. Hard to please. A sense of weariness.

Hera — I think we oversimplify her rage. I see her in bright golds. Fresh smells, peaches, a crisp essence. She’s glamorous, a leader. But has battled her insecurities hard. There’s a frustration and anxiety close to her surface. And I’m not so sure her issues are really with Zeus. I feel like there’s a deep wound there from the titan war and perhaps Zeus has great compassion for it. Rosalie Hale and Amy March are both strong Heras to me. Daenerys Targaryen is a Hera. Hera is the feminine form of hero, by the way. Somehow it’s been lost as a noun, which is a shame.

Demeter — I picture Demeter as my sister, who, by the way, is lovely. It just fits too well. She’s a gentle, sensual woman. She enjoys food, dancing, comforts. Of any gods, I would want her on my side. A better ending to the Judgement of Paris is that Demeter divided the apple evenly and served it with humus and peanut butter. The koine suffix meter means mother. Demeter is a giver, she’s the full moon, the mom friend, the feeling when your s/o makes your lunch or kisses your head at night.

Hestia — heckin sweet. She and Zeus are the closest of the siblings. You go domestic ace-spec girl. Like I bet she’s just so pretty and kind. See previous headcanon posts.

Ares — everyone who’s been here knows how I feel about Ares. I can’t resist finding one single nugget of lovability and letting it take over. He’s Zeus and Hera’s most difficult traits all in one guy. He’s intense and moody like Zeus but with the anxiety and insecurity of Hera. He’s angsty, kinda tortured. I think he’s often taken for granted as the “strong one.” He holds a lot inside in order to be there for others. I think he supported Hera beyond what he was ready for as a little boy.

Hephaestus — Blacksmiths are cut. Have you met a blacksmith before? Lemme tell you, I’m a huge horse person and I have. They come in with their their truck and their strong arms and they pick up those little horsie feet and it’s everything. And that sad backstory of being raised in a cave? Please. You want Hephaestus.

Athena — She intimidates me. She’s not one I identify with much and sometimes have a hard time with. I have felt in the shadow of “Athena” type women. To me she’s that cousin who’s in med school or law school or literally just passing third grade math. A golden child. Homer calls her “a stately dame … graced with all the noble gifts of womanhood” in song 16 of the Odyssey. Which sounds great and maybe it is. But the irony of perfection is it’s never really what what we find most beautiful is it? We never romanticize precision.

Apollo — oh, buddy. I love you. Somehow the god of order and reason and also the biggest himbo of all. Still in therapy from both his lovers turning into plants. He’s so pretty and so brilliant but he’s the god of song. Apollo is #sadgirl through and through. Somehow a melancholic, a genius, and an innocent all in one. Spencer Reid vibes, definitely. He makes me nostalgic for something I can’t quite reach.

Ya know what, someone ask me about just Apollo sometime. I wrote loads of fiction about him in 8th grade and I had a dog named Apollo. I really miss that dog.

Artemis — There’s a kind of prickly charisma to Artemis. And culturally, she’s beloved. Katniss is Artemis. So is Scout Finch. I love that the Greeks gave us an all girl mashup of Peter Pan x Where the Wild Things Are x Moonrise Kingdom. Yet, she gives me a little sense of melancholy too. Sexuality aside, she made a fascinating choice when she vowed eternal girlhood, celibacy, and to never become a mother. She chose autonomy over intimacy. She chose innocence over heartbreak. I wonder if she ever sorrows for the road not taken. Even an immortal life is only one life. And yet, I want her to be free. I would lose my shit if she ever for one second knew grief or regret or even jealousy. It would crush me for romance to displace her friendships. I hope she’s just perfectly 100% happy. She means a lot to me.

Hermes— what a mysterious dude. Honestly, I’m not sure what even to do with him. He’s … detached. Like just kind of a stinky guy in stinky rafting sandals. Paradoxically he looks the most human, would seem to be v cool towards humans, and yet is just as magical and strange as can be. I’m pretty sure I literally saw him in Asheville. @heljos , he’s special to you, speak of Hermes sometime.

Aphrodite— above all, Aphrodite is hopeful. My favorite epithets for her are “laughter-loving” and “foam-walker.” Even the specific wording of “mother of desire” as opposed to “lust” or “love.” There’s all kinds of things you can desire. Fun, humor, joy, health, self-acceptance, friendship. Aphrodite and Dionysus are the Pippin and Merry of Olympus. But as a Artemis’ opposite, I think there’s a part of her that grieves her freedom. To be the goddess of beauty and love means being defined by perception and relationships. That’s why I give her such a distinct personality when I write about her. I bet more than anything she wants identity. *follow or ask me for more on this.

Things that have the same energy: Dionysus and Tom Haverford.

#effeminate stranger #you asked peggy answered #ask answered #zeus #poseidon #demeter #hestia #hera #Athena #apollo #Artemis #ares #hephaestus #hermes #aphrodite #Dionysus #the pantheon #greek mythology #analysis #ancient greece #greek literature #ancient greek literature #ovid

[dailycass-cain]

Dark Crisis wrapped up today with #7. So it's no better time than to talk about Cassandra Cain and DC “Mega Events”. How she's faired in them and compare fairly how the most recent said event was for the character.

Now, just a heads up this is me talking about universal events in DC. Not Bat-specific ones. So No Man's Land, Bruce Wayne: Murderer?/Fugitive, Night of the Monster Men, Joker War, Fear State, etc.

The very first mega event Cass took part in was Joker: Last Laugh (I know right? I said no Batman but guess who the mega event centered on? 🙃🙃🙃) were said Clown Prince of Crime infects various supervillains with a modified form of Joker Venom and set them upon the DCU as his "lasting legacy" because he thought he was dying (sadly he wasn't).

 #3 She shows up to find Harley Quinn with Spoiler. And we get this being the only big highlight of her in the main book:

Cass is well-- overtly cocky in this comic and she gets a hubris check (and her meta-human weakness being exploited as she takes on 3 superpowered Jokerized foes with Steph).

This totally makes the tie-in issue all the more baffling as Cass just straight destroys a Jokerized Shadow Thief in the tie-in with this event in issue Batgirl Vol. 1 #21.

Like outside the event had NUMEROUS Cass appearances? Besides her main book, we get good stuff like this little bit in Wonder Woman #175 below (the issue features all the female heroes of the DCU at that time having their moment and this was Cass's):

That and this event gave us her only team-up with Supergirl (Linda Danvers) in Supergirl #63 where she fights a Bizzaro Supergirl and a Jokerized Two-Face (her second canon encounter with the villain, and the last time she’d fight him canonically until this year’s Batman One Bad Day: Two-Face #1) with the Linda variant.

The next Cass appearance in a DC mega event wouldn't come until... 2007 with World War III.

Aka the only reason, she's in this "event" was to showcase HOW Deathstroke nabbed her and explain why she was EVIL due to "One Year Later".

Now I know I could list Infinite Crisis (the event prior to this). Yes, Cass did have crossovers prior to the “main series”. I.e. #60--71 is one long “tie-in” as she takes on the Society (who Penguin uses to send assassins against her like the Brotherhood of Evil and Deathstroke/Ravager), OMAC, and the Society again (with Nyssa being a member along with using them to make a weapon for her advantage). 

Of course, the biggest effect of the main series would also haunt Cass aka the destruction of Bludhaven:

:But again, she never showed up in the “main series”. Just dealing with the aftermath. Unlike say WW III where she appears throughout the mini-series (which mainly tells of Black Adam wanting revenge against the world for what was wrought upon him in the 52 series). 

Cass’s role though is more “filler”:

That's it. 

That's the extent of "WHY" she's justified in this event. 

We already know HOW this goes down (not good for Cass) and it's just "Why do we need this?!" Other than to fill that gap between OYL and Titans East (which was going on in the Teen Titans comic at the time this event was going on. It was DC’s attempt to get the last gasp of EVIL Cass before they undid the STUPID mistake they made back in 2006).🙃

I mean they did retcon showing that it was her and Alfred who really was looking out for Gotham during that year (and not just Harvey Dent with a few weeks of training from Bruce). But oh shucks that wasn’t the story we COULD’VE GOTTEN INSTEAD.

A year later we'd get our very next appearance of Cass in an event with Final Crisis #1 and she's in this group shot here and...

That's it. That's all she does. She doesn’t even show up as a corrupted female Fury (but then again maybe that’s for the best). I guess the closest we get to an actual “appearance” is the prelude to the event which had DC running various mini-series that all fed into this comic.

For Cass she appeared near the tail end of Gotham Underground (her and Helena mopped up some of the gangs that were at war with one another trying to take over the Gotham Underworld with Great White having been taken out by Bane). 

 We wouldn't get another appearance of Cass in a mainline DC Event until--- 2015 with Convergence.

But it’s a bit of rinse and repeat here. Not really doing much in the main book Cass does but showing up towards the final issue of it in various panels (like the one above). 

Her, Steph, and Tim do have their part in Convergence Batgirl #1-2. But yeah... I made my thoughts much on how flawed that series was (even if #1 has a few cute moments).

Truth be told, I rather enjoy her one panel cameo in Nightwing & Oracle #2, where she and Steph attend Dick/Babs’ wedding. And I didn’t even realize that it was them until much latter on. 

So we’re given another event by DC that didn't treat the character with any sort of respect. Surprisingly, it would take until 2020 we'd get an event that would treat Cass fairly in Dark Knights: Death Metal.

Cass shows up in various forms in the event first in #4 as Batgirl in the "bad ending" to Final Crisis with Darkseid winning (seriously it’s little bits like this that writer Scott Snyder pays so much attention as these three heroes were the ones really not accounted for when the New God took over the Earth at that time period. 

Then right after that issue began showing up all over the place in the event. From being a supporting cast appearance in the secondary story in Dark Knights: Death Metal Robin King #1 (along with a one-panel cameo in the first as an evil Batman being tortured by the Batman who Keks) to appearing throughout the remaining three issues of the main book.

Along with showing up in Dark Nights Death Metal: The Last 52 - War of the Multiverses #1 (in the Dexter Soy drawn scenes particularly because I guess he loved to draw her) and another as Batgirl in the Prime one-shot to this event.

Though to her appearance in the later I more attribute to timey whimey multiverse shenanigans as Nightwing was flashing between his Justice League tie-in garb to his usual attire in the story. So I guess he and Cass had “issues”. 

That or an artist slipped this in because she was back to being Batgirl in the main Batman comics at this time.

I gotta say this is probably one of the better events for Cass. Even if she didn't do anything it got you interested in with a, "Hey who is this?" And blows the lid off the rest of the events prior.

This leads us to the latest event, Dark Crisis of Infinite Earths. Cass did have appearances in the main series yes. I did enjoy the comic because of #2 and well three of my favorite DC characters being in an event warms my heart.

Look I love Cyborg Superman too. Don’t judge me.

While I did ENJOY Dark Crisis, were the Cass appearances throughout the main series good? 

 No.

The book's core theme is legacy and yeah the Batgirls were there but never once did the Batgirl mantle mean anything in the event save kick Punchline in the face (which okay is VERY DESERVED given she’s abusing their girlfriend in her mini’s). But...

Cass/Steph/Babs never once appear in the "legacy" shots of the book nor is the Batgirl mantle even treated as such either (unlike Green Lanterns, the Flashes, the Supermen, the Batmen, and Wonder Women). 

Really of the Batgirls in the event, probably Steph had the best showing in it of the three. She had a little subplot go on from the beginning to end with Nocturna. 

I mean yeah both Cass/Steph had a good showing in The Flash #786 (which isn't all surprising as it is the best comic DC is currently churning out).

But even with the final issue when there COULD'VE been a moment. No really there SHOULD’VE BEEN A MOMENT.

We literally had main universe Cazzam and all we got was this:

How do you screw up something so awesome? Tom Taylor would’ve freaking given us it! Heck why wasn’t he on speed dial to the editor saying, “Um yeah Cazzam needs to do something with that specify cover coming up in January). 

But there wasn't. 

I do like that Cass was consistently SHOWN in the final battle attacking things way out of her class (she literally tried to attack the Spectre and was shown attacking B and C-list supervillains who are all physically strong). 

But yeah.

 I'm conflicted about the event when it comes to that when thinking about the overall appearance of Cass in this. She appeared and fought, but really didn't do anything of note (unlike Death Metal where SOMETHING of a status quo shift hit her directly).

I digress we didn't get that ACTUAL ramification with Cass until LAST WEEK'S BATGIRLS #13!!! It's only been implied never fully shown Cass had her past memories (or old origin fully back).

A wee bit two years later. 😬

I mean if you take the implication that she’s Orphan during this event and at the start of Joker War she still is such and then during said event becomes Batgirl again with Steph (Batman: Joker War Zone #1):

Again, I'll take Dark Crisis and Death Metal over the stuff DC had given Cass in the past. Even if they screwed up the overall legacy message (at least for Batgirls) I'll take it over World War III or Convergence any day.

Cause at the very least both treated the character somewhat fairly. The message was there even if it wasn't fully stated in Dark Crisis as it was for Death Metal. So we got a happy Cass in the end in both:

#dc comics #cassandra cain

[darkestprompts]

What about DD characters as animals in general instead of dogs. BH being a barn owl is a popular one and I can't see it any other way. GR would be a secretary bird or any other kind of graceful bird. That one I picked specifically because they are vicious killers despite looking beautiful. Jester as a maned wolf would be fitting. Red and black color scheme with lanky legs and strange barks

I’m gonna end up doing an animal behavior especialization course for all the wrong reasons. Let’s fucking go!

Some of the heroes come with pre-baked animal themes that are obvious, like BH and raptor birds, SB and serpents/cobras, Houndmaster and dogs. PD is probably meant to be some kind of corvid. I think all of those fit well enough and require no explanation.

I like your Secretary Bird idea for GR, they are not only graceful, but also quick and precise. I like to imagine that her husband would have been a snake she knocked on the head. 

While maned wolves have the right visuals for Jester... Idk, they are known for being shy loners. He's more of a marmoset. They have adapted to urban areas and live in groups. The noisy little bastards will break into your home, eat your food and then throw stuff at you. Or a ferret? Slinky little dudes that need a *lot* of play and socialization. Super curious too.

Antiquarian is a squirrel. Hoarding little jerk that doesn't fear god nor man. Five ounces of whoopass.

MAA I imagine as a big proud buffaloo. Chilling by the water until some dumbass predator decides it wants to be yeeted 10 feet in the air and then skewered. Gotta protect the herd.

Leper is like... an elephant. Super smart and caring gentle giants but also will destroy you if you piss them off. No kidding, they will actually seek out humans to take revenge and wreck their entire shit.

I’m torn with Hellion. I like the lioness theme** of her CC trinket and it kind of fits the fact that she’s a loner, but only because she was cast out by her people, who are definitely war-like hunters. But did you know that a jaguar has more bite power despite the smaller size? They are less about running down prey and more about powerful, decisive blows. Their jaws are adapted to crush skulls! Since Hellion is a high damage fighter that gets debuffs the longer she uses her skills, that aspect fits her better... Maybe her problem was being a jaguar among lions.

** I should acknowledge that Hellion has both a wolf theme and a “warhawk” theme. I didn’t opt for wolves because they are primarily endurance hunters that rely heavily on tactics, coordination and patience to take down large prey, since they are much smaller than large cats. And the raptor theme fits in much better with BH and GR.

HWM is a trash panda. It’s true. Listen. Raccoons are urban animals (which by itself requires smarts), that can survive on anything, have little skillful hands and like to hang out on their own. Trash. Panda. Boy.

Vestal... Maybe a horse? A domesticated prey animal that can therefore be skittish, but by god if it fights back your life is over. Otherwise can be helpful and sociable, and help people in medical situations. I feel like a lot of it applies to Crusader too, except it’s more that he’s a farm animal repurposed for battle and made to look imposing and intimidating... Vestal is like a sweet therapy pony and Crusader is a warhorse that bites.

Flagellant is a badger. He just is. He’s the motherfucker getting bitten by an apex predator 10 times his size, shaking himself off and turning back to intimidate the shit out of them. Badger Flagellant don’t give a fuck.

Abom in human form makes me think of a fox. Scared of people, hunted by humans and larger prey animals, crafty, gets a bad rap. Transformed abom is something crazy like a bearmoose.

Occultist... I’d say some type of highly intelligent parrot. What’s more notable about their intelligence is their language skills, after all, and Alhazred is a liberal arts guy. Also shows his fun/silly side (he sings camp songs, come on).

Arbalest could be an ibex. Herd animal that nonetheless likes to go out and explore and whose main defense tactic is staying out of range (but can still break your bones if you push your luck). 

#darkest dungeon #dd ensemble #dd lists #anon #asks

[yourreddancer]

J Bernard Jones The reason why The Little Mermaid casting has triggered so many (mostly) white people (the ones who are outraged) is that, beyond the garden variety recent racism that has plagued Black actors from Star Wars to Captain America to The Rings of Power to House of the Dragon, is simple: it’s their deep down fear of replacement. That’s right: replacement theory. On steroids. And the actual reason this particular casting has sent them over the rails is, beyond any other, in their mind it is a violation of America’s most treasured symbol of purity: the white woman. Literally replaced by a Black woman. 

Nevermind that Disney’s beloved 1989  “The Little Mermaid” is a cartoon. Nevermind that mermaids aren’t real. Nevermind that in the original Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Little Mermaid is green and basically dies in the end after being treated like an annoying pet by the prince (spoiler alert).  None of that matters to these folks whose least concern is whether or not Ms. Bailey is actually good or can sing as much as their Yosemite Sam foot stomping (wrong studio!) that Ariel must be a white woman since they apparently believe the ‘89 cartoon is a Ken Burns documentary.

There is historical context for all of this unhinged mass hysteria over a made up fish girl and the Black actress chosen to portray her. Epigenetic memory does not just exist in the souls of Black folk. The Middle Passage, slavery, and Jim Crow are our crosses. Epigenetic memory exists in the cells of many white people, too: having dominion over black people, white supremacy and anti-blackness itself dwells deeply within, literally imprinted on their eyeballs in the very first official blockbuster, 1915’s smash hit ultra-revisionist, ultra-racist “Birth of a Nation.”

That film, originally titled “The Clansman”— to this day admired as much for its pioneering technical achievements and epic scope as it is criticized for its valorization of the Ku Klux Klan as heroes saving American society from the unfettered savagery of its made up out of control Blacks — formed the modern foundation for many core American stereotypes that endure to this day. And none of those stereotypes are more potent than that of The White Woman as the epitome of virtuous purity, the delicate flower whose innocence must be protected at all costs. In fact, in DW Griffith’s immortal film, that cost is extraordinarily high: the young heroine Elsie (played by Lillian Gish, America’s Sweetheart superstar no less) commits suicide rather than be raped by a vicious Black man (a cartoonish white actor in blackface), reinforcing and ingraining the stereotype that all Black men are dangerous, potential threats to white women from then until now.

Yet Elsie wasn’t just saving herself from the film’s Black rapist. She was saving herself from that film’s version of “blackness” itself. In the film, the freed ex-slaves are portrayed as lazy, out-of-control savages; they are cast in the role of destroyers of society, law & order, and are a literal threat to the survival of the white race. Elsie’s suicide was not simply to avoid having her white womanhood defiled by sexual assault by Griffith’s Black brute stereotype, but from the not thinly veiled “threat” of being impregnated.

Even then white audiences, who loved the film, understood it’s plain meaning:“they” will not replace us. And they made it plain by engaging in a series of race riots and massacres of Black people in many areas in the immediate aftermath of showings of the movie. Fast forward. 

Ariel, the little mermaid, isn’t real. She’s a character: a friggin’ mermaid. But catch this: Elsie wasn’t real, either. What both of these characters share is the idea of them: pure and true and virtuous. If Elsie was the prototype of the idealized myth of white womanhood, Disney’s first Ariel is that mythology’s idealized realization.

Animation requires a specific kind of suspension of disbelief. It allows us to “purely” imprint our ideas about who a character is and what the canonical version of that character should be, absent the physical presence of an actor to distract us: other than their voice — itself a powerful instrument —  we are able to absorb the “purest” version of the character both as intended and in our own imaginations. And in some cases as reflections of ourselves or at least what we think of ourselves, especially as kids and impressionable youth. That’s what we really mean when we say “They’ve destroyed my childhood!” when we feel the favorites of our youth have been altered, disrespected, or reimagined.

Out of the many, many reports of racist vitriol directed at Disney and this new film version — not solely by white people but also some Latinos & Hispanics and even a few Blacks (un-shockingly, Black dudes from the incel-ish manosphere) —this one strikes a more primal nerve than the rest. This hatred is not merely their version of the other “moving into the neighborhood and bringing the property values down” whenever a Black actor, woman, or gay person inhabits a role in their favorite sacred franchise. This time, as they see it, it is literal replacement theory come to celluloid life as if they can’t rent or buy the precious 1989 version that Disney will happily take their money for a 33 year-old film.The racist backlash against Halle Bailey’s casting is rooted in this foundational notion of a white supremacist fantasy of The IDEA of The Virtous White Woman being upended.

In fact, the most striking aspect of the racist reactions is that these people have no other recourse than to fall back on stereotypes and racist imagery going back to Griffith’s film: memes and Photoshopped Mammy-versions of Ariel are circulating aplenty, one egregious example with gargantuan lips and her riding atop a watermelon. “Woke” is being slung around as a synonym for the n-word with Klan-like abandon. The settings on their virtual tiki torches have been turned up to 11. It doesn’t matter how many bots are involved or if real people make up the majority of vitriol. At the heart of this madness is not merely hatred and not necessarily fear. Instead it’s the realization that the thread of one of the rugs of their own self-mythology has been yanked out from under them and they are unraveling as a consequence.

Black women, as much or even more so than Black men, have always represented an existential threat to the Confederate adjacent. Ms. Bailey, as she emerges from the shadows in the trailer, is that Black woman. The threat. The replacement. And many of these miscreants are deathly afraid that if their little cherubs fall in love with a beautiful mermaid played by a real Black actress with an angelic voice the way they did with the white cartoon version, their worst fears about ”critical race theory” will come true and, in their minds, be their undoing. The beginning of their end. If that is the case, in some ways even if this version of The Little Mermaid turns out to be a bad remake, it will most definitely be worth the price of admission.

[hournites]

TKV’s Stargirl s3 Bucket List 

- Yolanda’s hair down 

- Artemis and Beth backstory drama (bonus points if they were friends in elementary school)

- Starman being a fake

- Artemis being called out for being the most privileged ISA kid 

- The Fiddler Sr makes a reappearance 

- Beth flashback episode opener 

- Cameron accidentally freezing someone

- Cindy gets vetoed out/kicked out of the JSA

- the Gambler blackmailing Beth or people she loves as payback

- the Gambler is racist 

- Beth expulsion arc 

-  Jakeem and Mike break up 

- Jakeem being terrified of Cindy

- Mike terrified of Cameron

- Cameron unhinged for Courtney’s love after one (1) date

- Mahkent grandparents try to assassinate Courtney 

-  Confirmation that Cameron was and is being groomed by grandparents

- Beth helping Rick with the hourglass to parallel 2x03

- Beth saving someone with medic skills (bonus points if she uses her gloves and her suit’s may compartments) 

- Rick making blackout bombs for Beth to use 

- Rick holding Beth’s hand during a scary moment 

- Yolanda slapping Cindy in public as a treat 

- Rick gets addicted to Miraclo arc (Max. 3 episodes)

- Beth confiscating the hourglass until Rick gets sober 

- Artemis helping Rick through withdrawals (bonus points if she threatens to give him another swirlie if she catches him making miraclo again) 

- Dr. McNider coming to town and hating on Sylvester 

- Mafia Mike 

- Or at least Mike’s mom is confirmed to be tied to villainy 

- 70s Rick (Time Travel of the JSA confirms Jennie and Rick were perhaps not born in the year that they thought they were) 

- Sylvester acknowledging that he failed his sister and nephew real bad

- OR Sylvester not giving a single f*** that his nephew was murdered 

- the Gambler pretends to be good 

- Rick lives in the tailer park with the Gambler (and maybe Sylvester) and hates it 

- Ms Woods offers Rick a place to live/becomes a mother figure for him 

- Mike moves in with the Crocks 

- The Crocks kickstart Mike’s fruit arc 

- A frenemy exposes Rick’s crush on Beth 

- Someone does something to the diner (vandalism, arson, theft etc) to hit Yolanda where it hurts 

- Artemis switches sides like 5 times 

- Cameron dramatically flings off a scarf 

- Rick breaks into Cameron’s house 

- Cameron talks to Beth (he thinks she’s a safe way to learn about Rick) but this sets off Rick’s berserk button and it backfires 

- Beth’s parents make Beth a suit she cannot stand 

- Beth alters said suit when her old one gets somehow stolen or destroyed 

- Beth’s parents starting a POHAC (Parents of Heroes Alliance Club) 

- We get to meet Jakeem’s parents 

- Starman controlling or manipulating Courtney 

- Cindy asks Beth to help her with an experiment 

- Cindy uses the dragon staff again to set something on fire 

- Someone has a car crash or a near accident and Rick has a panic attack 

- Call back to Beth’s fear of heights 

- Another Pat & Beth undercover pair up 

- Yolanda and Rick spying on Cameron (bonus points if they get caught)

- Courtney wearing dresses and skirts specifically because she is in her Dating Season 

- The Shade only ever showing up in fights to help during teen gang wars

- Yolanda runs for student president again 

- Jakeem accidentally throws the JSA into an alt reality 

- Mike and Cindy become friends for real 

- Mr. Bones talking in rhymes 

- Jennie referred to as Jade (and gets a suit) 

- Nurse Love revealing that Yolanda and Artemis are metahumans 

- Jennie finds Todds and lowkey discovers she hates him 

- Todd injures or even kills the Shade 

- Pat and Barb have a romantic dinner date which the Crocks crash

- Beth in Rick’s car 

- A repeat of Yolanda’s chaotic texting 

- Homecoming episode 

- An episode where the entire JSA is giving each other the silent treatment and the ISA have to act as mediators between them 

- Rick being openly flirtatious with Beth on miraclo/the hourglass 

- Rick trying to ask Beth out for half a season but always chickening out/getting interrupted. Beth being the one to do it in the end. 

- Yolanda saving her parents 

- Alex Montez reappearance 

- Mr Bones or Nurse Love kidnapping Yolanda or Jennie for the Helix Institute 

- Or Yolanda’s parents discover Wildcat and actually get manipulated into sending her there 

- Todd vs Cameron showdown 

#stargirl #hournites talks #s3 #meta #we'll see lol

[dangarretjournal]

The Scarab Won.

It’s been months now since Fantomah waged war on the Earth. For 48 hours, the world was in a panic, fearing her name for the first time in centuries... and the Scarab came along. Not Daniel Garret, and indeed not any particular incarnation of the Scarab, but an amalgam of all our collective beliefs about him. After that, Fantomah fell. She holds no physical power over our world anymore, but nevertheless, she has left a permanent scar on our world.

Jade obelisks litter Oregon. Due to the locust swarms, crops have died, and the nation is now experiencing a food shortage. Perhaps even more devastating is the effects she's had on the water supply: blood filled the waters during the calamity, some say even replacing it. There is an ongoing effort to separate the blood from the water using the usual filtration process, but blood can still be found in the water supply months later in lower-income areas.

Several countries and islands are submerged beneath the waters, and tens of millions are dead… such a high number is difficult for the mind to grapple with. Artist Arturo Cruz did a devastating exhibit about it for the Miracellium (Dr. Maxwell Miracle's Museum). You go into a dark room and all you can hear are voices casually going about their day. There are so many that it becomes deafening… but then you notice some of them go away. Minutes pass, and you’re still in darkness, and the voices keep vanishing, one by one, then ten, twenty, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, ten-thousand at a time, fifty-thousand, and they scream and scream, but they’re so much quieter now, a million… none. It’s all silence. Eventually, an attendant walks you out of the room. Jenny rated it very highly.

I suppose the change most specific to this journal is that our heroes seem to be gone for good. Most of Judicial Supreme was slain by the shadow of the Magician from Mars, and there has been no attempt at recruiting new members. Dr. Maxwell Miracle seems to have given up crimefighting, even though several communities affected by flooding require protection. Attempts to ask him about this have been declined by Maxwell, stating he'd prefer to be alone to collect his thoughts.

Nobody knows how the Scarab won. Not even me. Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from emailing me due to my proximity to Dr. Miracle… inspired by his response, I’ve just decided to block keywords related to this event. Believe it or not, if I don’t give an answer to the Daily Oculus, then I don’t have one. My memory starts with me waking up and seeing Maxwell typing on my laptop, and it ends with the Scarab coming back to life. Apparently, I fainted and didn't wake up until the Scarab had won. Maxwell just let me fall on the floor, and I got to spend the week nervous that I might have some sort of brain injury.

I did of course try to investigate what happened, but it seems I wasn’t the only one with a fractured memory of it all. Ask anyone you know and they might tell you about the deaths of most of the members of Judicial Supreme, they might tell you about the rallies at the capitol building, they might tell you about the plagues or the locusts or the obelisks, they might mention the Mermazons sinking England, they might tell you about the Magician from Mars killing President Gardner, but no matter how much detail you get from them, they mostly stop or start to stop after the Scarab returns. Occasionally you can squeeze some information like the Scarab turning the Magician's shadow good again, or the Magician killing the Spirit of ‘76's shadow (I’ve seen this event described both before and after the Magician teams up with the Scarab). One testimony mentioned him stealing a submarine to defeat the Mermazons… but that’s. Memory only resumes as normal once the calamity ends, and no one can tell you how it ended. It just did.

For those asking me if I’ll retreat further into my Grandfather’s past, the answer is no. The journal is gone. I burned it. Every fragment of my grandfather’s life he imbued into the pages, all the parts I had seen and so much more I had yet to learn… all burned as soon as the calamity was over. Sometimes, in the days since then, I think of that moment. Standing there, the flames refracting in my broken glasses, Maxwell standing over my shoulder. “You did the right thing,” he said over and over again, like a hypnotic chant, and I didn’t quite process it. In my mind, the crackle of flame drowned him out. I think about this moment, and every time I've done so I’ve tried to make myself feel bad about it… but instead, I just feel free.

Truly I knew I didn’t want to report on this anymore, but, as a journalist, sometimes you just learn to act against how your heart feels. In this case, I emailed Dr. Miracle like so many other journalists have tried, asking for an interview... though I didn't mention that I really wanted to ask him about the Calamity. Despite being conscious throughout the whole event and likely knowing what happened, he has not given an official statement about it. When I asked him about it directly after I burned the journal, he immediately teleported out of my house. To my surprise, he said yes to my email, and asked me to meet him at the Miracellium after closing time.

Standing outside the imposing image of a museum bathed in purple light that emanated from vault lights in the pavement, I couldn’t quite get it out of my head that he might not come. Then, as the hour struck, I felt a tap on my shoulder.

“Hello, Gale,” he said, hovering in front of me. Literally, his feet were inches off the floor.

He had started to show signs of ageing for the first time in years. His dark-brown pompadour was littered with specks of white, and his face looked more stretched, with crevices lining his cheeks. His lips were thinner and I think he was wearing lip gloss of some kind. It was hard to tell in the dark. What wasn't difficult to sense was the thick and ghastly perfume he seemed to have drenched his blue suit in.

He continued to speak, “We can’t go in through the front door, unfortunately. Follow me, I can get you in through the back.”

I followed him through the parts of the exterior they’d prefer you didn’t see, leading to an ugly dark-green door that Maxwell quickly unlocked. Unexpectedly for someone as antiquated as Maxwell, he walked in first, preferring to lead me around the cold museum.

As we walked, he started talking again, “So, Gale, I assume you want to ask me how I’m here right now?”

That was not what I was here for. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, earlier I claimed that I was replaced atom-by-atom by Fantomah… and yet, I’m still here after Fantomah and most of her constructs disappeared from our reality.”

“I suppose that’s confusing, yes.”

He smiled, “It is, isn’t it?” 

“Well, why are you still here then?”

Maxwell feigned offence, “Oh you wound me, Gale, you wound me!”. After my lack of response, he composed himself, “Well, in truth… I don’t know either. I’m just here now. I have my powers still, but they’re fading. Maybe I should change my name back to Maxwell Grant.”

I shrugged, “It doesn’t matter to me.” in hindsight, that might’ve been rude of me, but talking with Maxwell for too long does tend to grind away any politeness you might have.

Eventually, we reached our destination. A recently erected exhibit called “Capers of the 20th Century”, mainly consisting of replicas of famous superhero costumes. Among them was a replica of Daniel Garret’s costume, and I couldn’t help but notice the irony of it all. My grandfather made his costume using botched museum replicas, but now all the same parts can be considered a successful one. Part of me wondered if we might get a new Scarab using a botched replica of this very costume.

“It’s perfect, isn’t it?” Maxwell asked.

“I wouldn’t know, I never saw that costume,” I responded.

“No, I suppose you didn’t… but you had the journal. Did it look like how you imagined?”

I paused for a bit to look at the costume. For some reason, I always got the impression that the chainmail my grandfather wore was more clearly blue, maybe even a darker shade… but here it was more close to a silvery-green colour.

“Not really,” I said after a moment.

Maxwell tilted his head in mock-confusion, “How come? It’s an entirely perfect replica, after all. I would know, I had all the original parts.”

“Well, my grandfather said it was… blue.”

“We got into lots of arguments about this, Dan and I… and yet, he always gets to win in his own diary. If he says it's blue, then it's blue.”

At first, I thought this was his usual academic pettiness seeping through again, as it did in his commentary for the section my grandfather wrote about him, so I brushed it off. It was getting late, and I knew we needed to get to the point one way or another. 

I set my phone to record. “Maxwell, I'd like to ask you a few questions–” I started.

“Yes,” he interrupted, “we’ve been over this in the emails. Go on. What is it you really want to know?”

And I asked him exactly that. I wanted to know what happened after the Scarab returned.

Maxwell’s face was twitching in and out of stiffness, like he felt strongly about this, but didn’t want to show. “It’s a rather complicated question, isn’t it?”

“Not really,” I stated, by now rather tired of this whole affair.

“I suppose you think I remember it well and will recount it to you perfectly?”

I nodded.

He chuckled, “You do have a strange amount of trust, Gale.”

I shrugged off his comment, “As far as I know, you’re literally the only  person on Earth who remembers.”

He nodded, “True, true… but how do you know my memory is accurate?”

“Well, that’s for me to decide. Answer the question.”

“Ah, you get to decide who is being accurate… and you’ve done such a good job so far, haven’t you? What with your little blog series about Danny boy.”

“Will you please just–”

“I’ll give you credit, Gale, you’re good at writing things down. Very very good… deciding on accuracy? I don’t know about that. Danny’s statements about the Second World War seem a bit suspect to me. I mean… I’ve seen the original Spirit of ‘76… he was just a kid. Like, sixteen at most. And I don’t think I saw him kill anyone… so how could he have been so integral? Some historians have even argued it would've been shorter if he wasn't there.”

“Well, I’m just here to transcribe here, my opinion isn’t needed all the time.”

“Sure, it’s not needed in a professional context but… didn’t you think of anything? Did anything strike you as peculiar?”

“What are you getting at–”

“350 pages. His diary. He can write about anything in there, and he writes about his past, he writes about Fantomah… yet he never mentions his wife or daughter by name.”

“Well,” I said, feeling slightly uncomfortable,  “they weren’t the focus, it’s…”

“Focus? His academic essays, his memoir, and his letters to space women, all in the same book. You call that focus?”

“That's not what I mean–”

“He was engrossed in his past, Gale, the remnants of his own golden age; the war heroes who galavanted across the battlefields and were a nuisance to both sides, the woman with a submarine who claimed she found an underwater city and probably drowned, the Angel from Mars who we never deserved… and me, I suppose. And, for every spot of rust in that Golden Age, he finds a reason to exonerate himself. Oh, he only beat up those Capers because they were in the wrong, oh he struck me out of self-defence… he saw my friend die, and he talks about how it made him glad he stopped being a hero… perhaps if he was a hero, Peter wouldn’t have died in the first place.”

In hindsight, I had many problems with many of the things he said (mainly regarding how he functioned as a vigilante) but I was tired and the only question I could manage was “I thought you liked my grandfather…”

“I didn’t like him, Gale, I loved him, and when you love someone you notice everything wrong they do.”

“Look,” I said, once again desperately trying to get back on track, “what’s–”

“The point? The point is… I suppose sometimes the best version of the past is what we say to make ourselves happy, rather than the blunt truth of it all. We have control over fiction… we can’t control reality.” I think he could sense that I was getting ready to leave, because he started again without response, “Now, do you want to know how one man, strong but cosmically insignificant, managed to stop three horrors of the collective subconscious and ultimately defeat Fantomah?”

“Yes.” 

He looked at me sheepishly, “Well… I don’t entirely know, is the thing.”

“What?” 

“A lot happened! I spent so long transcribing that I didn’t pay much attention to what I was writing…” his thin lips etched out a wry smile, “Heh, I’m a lot like you in a way!”

I just wanted an answer, “Come on, you must know something..”

“Okay… you want the gist? No extraneous details? No descriptive flare? No dialogue? Well, I suppose what happened is this: despite all that was going against him, the Scarab defeated Fantomah and saved the day.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes… well, it’s the best we could do. Sometimes I wonder if there could have been another way… but Fantomah’s problems were foundational and could only be fixed with foundational change… we’re not ready to do that yet. So, until we’re able or ready, we all need to believe in the Scarab. Believe that he won and that Fantomah is no more.”

After that, he walked me out of the museum, waved goodbye to a security guard, and we both walked separate ways. As far as I know, Maxwell stopped existing as soon as our meeting ended. He was reported missing soon after, and I was left with the very sparse version of events that he gave to me.

The Scarab won. Fantomah is dead. That is all we need to know, and it is what we need to tell ourselves.

[moontheoretist]

Andor starts small. To the point that the first 4 episodes may be even hard to get into if you didn’t have the resolve to push through. But it steadily becomes bigger and starts hyping you up pretty well around the middle of the story (almost like a movie). I have my issues with the show. One of them being the fact that there are still not as many women in the Galaxy as I would like to see, but the show definitely does better than any other one before it when it comes to the female representation (as long as you are willing to settle on not asking why there are not many black women there). By all means and purposes, I see it as a good thing that Andor tries to do better with representing people. It is a sign that maybe step by step franchise will change, but I won’t hold my breath, because one show that tries harder than the others doesn’t mean the next one will try to do the same. We have to always be vigilant and not let them think that giving people the bare minimum that should be there from the start, that should be at point 0 of the norm, instead of the point 100, is enough to satisfy us.

It’s ok to like Andor, but it is also ok to be angry that it pushes only to a certain point. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about isn’t that, but I had to mention it nonetheless, so people would stop badgering me that I am unfair to Andor when my argument is about the franchise as a whole, not one show specifically. Andor is just convenient to mention, because it is the most recent show we got, and it has useful visuals and scenes that can be used to illustrate the points of the argument that expose the issues that this franchise had since 1977.

What I wanted to point out, and which I saw online magazines like The Mary Sue already point out, Andor is different from Mandalorian or Kenobi, because it doesn’t just show us the glimpses of the fight against the Empire or very redundant vision of it rallied around one hero that is “the chosen one”. It shows us all the gritty reality of the rebellion and how Luke Skywalker was not some god that ended it all. He was part of the net of actions that were taken long before he even appeared. He had a task, and he did that task splendidly, and he lived to see the outcome of it, but many did not. People who put years of their lives and sacrificed everything to see the Empire fall, did not get that privilege, and Andor shows it in the Prison Break Arc specifically. Some of those people didn’t make it. They hoped to leave for so long, and they died trying, and we don’t even know how many made it back except Cassian and his friend (also can I point out that it was a friendship forged in anger, fear and pain? I never saw Cassian get on with someone so quickly as he got with his inmate friends, he was always the mistrustful and careful one, so you can probably guess how impactful that image is). Rebellions are not fairy tales. They are not some heroic stories in which everybody gets a happy ending, because heroes journey said they do. Rebellions are messy, and there is no morality to them. If anybody tries to tell you that there are moral and amoral things to do during the Rebellion, they are not aware of the reality of the Rebellion itself. There will be sacrifices. There will be heinous acts committed for the sake of justice and freedom, and all of it is needed so at the end there could be people who still live to see another day, the day without their oppressors. The day they can smile knowing it is all over, and not think about what was the price for that new-found peace. Still, as a franchise, Star Wars fails to do one thing constantly. It is true that Star Wars, is a "reflection of our world", but its commentary as a whole is often not visible and often comes off as reinforcement rather than critique. (Or at least did until very recently. Andor serves as a perfect example of a positive change, because I don’t know how to stress it, but some people need it spelled out and said out loud, instead of just hinted at with clever storytelling, that fascism is evil). Just look at all those Star Wars fans who fail to see that Star Wars was always political, and demand it to stop being "woke” simply because they don’t like the fact that there are more women and people of color in the picture now. Their perfect comfort fantasy about fascist regime ruined. Oh, my. How very sad for them.

Anyway, what I was trying to get at since the beginning of this post is that because this franchise is about fighting the baddies, every time it gets continued there must be a new enemy and a new resistance to fight it. It’s an endless war, because it is “Star Wars”. Times of peace are apparently not worth representing in a franchise that is build on showing war (which saddens me because the TV show in which we are shown how hard it is for people to switch from “fighting mindset” to “rebuilding mindset” would be really nice and maybe even helpful to former soldiers, if it showed the struggle and solutions to how to abandon fighting after war is over and put yourself to use in creating a better future). Star Wars as a franchise highlights the circularity of the issue, and lack of steps taken into the direction of progress for positive change that we all see in the real world. But in opposition to the real world where we can only influence the outcome of our future with voting and private endeavors, in SW we could write a natural and progressive change after all those wars, and show that it is possible to break the cycle. At least try to show that each time the Empire comes back under a new name, it is smaller, and needs to adapt to conquer and oppress people again, because each time we became smarter (however unrealistic that may seem to some people, we are able to do that, we just don’t, because we don’t put enough effort into eradication of harmful ideologies and allow them to fester).

Give us some hope for the future. (Is only Star Trek allowed to do it?)

So what SW franchise ultimately fails to notice is that Hitler lost and nothing was the same in history after what he did, to the point that historians declared “an end of history” right there, because it was so horrifying it was unthinkable. (Very convenient of them to blame it on one man and one regime, as if it was not an outcome of hatred that existed long before it. They focused on the scale of it, instead of the true issue - the ideologies of dehumanization that we should have eradicated by now, but still struggle with even in 2022). Regimes still exist, fascists still exist, but the scale is so much smaller than in the case of the Third Reich, which SW uses as their primary influence. We didn’t have any major scale war since WW2, because we started to do something, working to prevent it (with varying success, mind you). SW universe, however, seems like a place where people learn nothing from their own fights. There is no systemic change for the better. No lesson learned. There is just a constant come back from oppressive regime to faulty status quo that breeds another regime, and it keeps ongoing forever and ever, for thousands of years. With no hope at all, even though it could become better if only the story was allowed so.

Star Wars as a franchise is not even allowed to experiment. They are so obsessed with keeping the formula intact that it hurts everything.

#andor #andor spoilers #star wars #star wars critical