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itsclydebitches · 3 years

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The Bad Batch: A Crosshair Analysis

Hello, Star Wars fandom! I have just completed watching—and loving—The Bad Batch, which you know means I now need to dump all my thoughts about the first season into the tumblr void. Specifically, thoughts on the complicated drama that is Crosshair. I have no doubt that the majority of what I’m about to say will be old news to anyone who watched the show when it came out (I’m slow...), but I’m writing it all out anyway. Largely for my own sanity enjoyment :D

I want to preface all of this by saying that the above is not an exaggeration. I love the show and I love the entire cast. My enjoyment in each of the characters is directly connected to my enjoyment of the season as a whole, which I say because I’m about to get pretty critical towards some of the characters’ choices and, to a lesser extent, the writing choices that surround those. Does this mean I secretly hate The Bad Batch? Quite the opposite. I’m invested, which is presumably just what Filoni wants. I’m just hoping that investment pays off.

But enough of the disclaimers. Let’s start with the matter of the inhibitor chip. I’ve seen fans take some pretty hard stances on both sides: Crosshair is completely innocent because he’s definitely been under the chip’s control this whole time, no matter what he might say. Crosshair is completely guilty because he said the chip was removed a long time ago and he chose to do all this, no moral wiggle room allowed. However, the reality is that we don’t know enough to make a clear call either way. The audience, simply put, does not have all the necessary information. What we have instead is a couple of facts combined with claims that may or may not be reliable. Let’s lay them out:

Crosshair was definitely under the chip’s control at the start of the series.

He was able to resist it to a certain extent, resulting in a pressure to obey orders coupled with a primary loyalty to his squad. See: telling Hunter to follow the Empire’s commands—which includes killing kid Padawans—but not turning his team in as traitors when they did not. It’s an in-between space.

Crosshair’s chip was then amplified to an unknown extent. I’m never going to claim I’m a Star Wars aficionado—I’m a casual fan, friends. Please don’t yell at me over obscure lore lol—but within TBB’s canon, no one else is undergoing that experimentation. The effects of this are entirely unknown, which includes Crosshair’s free will, or lack thereof.

Crosshair then becomes a clear tool of the Empire, hunting down innocents, killing on a whim, the whole, evil shebang.

In “Reunion” he’s caught by the engine and suffers severe burns to his face. One leaves a scar that covers precisely the place where the chip would have been extracted.

Removing the chip leaves its own scar behind. If Crosshair’s was removed, we can’t see that scar due to the burn.

After these events Crosshair seems to mellow a bit. He does horrible things under the Empire’s orders—like shooting the senator—but is still loyal to his squad—killing his non-clone teammates to give TBB a chance, saving AZ and Omega, etc.

Crosshair claims that his chip has already been removed. However, Crosshair is arguably an unreliable source if he’s been lied to or if the chip is still there, encouraging him to manipulate the team.

Crosshair claims it was removed a long time ago, which is incredibly imprecise. As we can see from just some of the events listed above, precisely when the chip came out—if it came out—makes a huge difference.

Hunter realizes this and presses for clarification, but Crosshair dodges giving it. Again, a legitimate belief that it doesn’t matter, or evidence that he can’t say because something else is going on? We don’t know.

Hunter checks Crosshair’s head and finds the burn scar which proves… nothing. As stated above, they wouldn’t be able to see the surgery scar one way or another: its existence or its absence. It’s useless data, as Tech might say. I’ve seen a few fans claim that Hunter was also feeling for the chip with his enhanced senses, but 1. I didn’t catch any evidence of that in the scene and 2. Even if we assume Hunter did that anyway, the chips are notoriously hard to spot. Fives and AZ couldn’t find the chip at first when examining Tup. Ahsoka had to use the force to find it in Rex. TBB themselves couldn’t find it at first in Wrecker. If machinery consistently fails to find the chip on the first couple of tries—it’s meant to be a hidden implant, after all—why would we believe Hunter’s senses could pick it up instantly? Maybe he missed it, or maybe it wasn’t there at all.

Crosshair appears to be struggling with a headache in the finale, just as he was at the beginning of the season and just like Wrecker was for the first half.

The point of listing all this out is to emphasize how ambiguous this whole situation is. I don’t want to use this post to argue one way or another about whether Crosshair’s chip is really out. I have my preferred theory (the chip’s still in, but only partially functional), but at the end of the day none of this is conclusive. The writing takes us in what I hope is deliberate circles. Crosshair says the chip is out? Crosshair is not a reliable source of information until we know if the chip is out. What other evidence is there that the chip is gone? A scar? We can’t see if there’s a scar. Hunter’s abilities? He only checked once for a canonically hard to find implant—if he actually checked at all. And why would the Empire want the chip out? Well, maybe it has to do with that push towards willing soldiers, but if that were the case, why leave Crosshair behind and have the “clones die together”? By that point he was one of the most willing, chip or not. Did they have to take it out because of the engine accident? Pure speculation. We just don’t know and THAT is the point I want to make.

Because it means the rest of the Bad Batch didn’t know either.

The core issue I have here is not whether the chip is in or out, or even how long it may have been in if it is out now. The issue is that TBB spent 99% of the first season believing that Crosshair was under the chip’s influence… and they didn’t try to do anything about that. They abandoned him. They left a man behind. Does this make them all horrible monsters? Of course not! This shit is complicated as hell, but I do think they made a very large mistake and that Crosshair has every right to be furious about it.

“But, Clyde, they couldn’t have gone back. It was too dangerous! Hunter had a duty to his whole team, not just Crosshair.” True enough and I’d buy this argument 100% if Hunter hadn’t spent the entire season throwing his team into dangerous, seemingly impossible situations to save other people. Crosshair became the exception, not a hard rule of something they had to avoid. They went back to Kamino for Omega, a kid they’d only had one lunch with, despite knowing how dangerous the Empire was. They went into the heart of an occupied planet to rescue not just a stranger, but one belonging to the Separatist government. They helped Sid when she asked and there was plenty of compassion for the criminal trying to take her place. Most significantly, there wasn’t the slightest hesitation to go rescue Hunter when he was under the Empire’s control, in precisely the same place. Every explanation I’ve seen fans come up with—Kamino is too fortified, they don’t know where Crosshair is, they can’t risk Omega being captured, etc.—also holds true for Hunter, yet there wasn’t a second of doubt about needing to at least try to help him. And his rescue was arguably far more dangerous given that TBB knew they were walking into a trap. Going after Crosshair would have at least had some element of surprise.

I think the problem with these justifications is most easily seen in “Rescue on Ryloth” and, later, “War-Mantle.” In the former, we do watch Hunter decide that going on a rescue mission is too much of a risk, only for Omega to talk him into considering it.

Hunter: “It’s a big galaxy. We can’t put ourselves on the line every time someone’s in trouble.”

Omega: “Why not? Isn’t that what soldiers do?”

Hunter: “It’s not worth the risk.”

Omega: “She’s trying to save her family, Hunter. I’d do the same for you.”

The arguments that sway him are ‘Soldiers should help people’ and ‘Soldiers should specifically help their family.’ So… what does that say about their feelings for Crosshair? They’re willing to put themselves on the line for the parents of a girl they met once at a drop site, but not their own brother? That’s the message the writing sends. “But, Clyde, the difference is that they had an advantage here. Hera’s knowledge of her home planet tipped the odds in their favor.” Yeah… and Crosshair is stationed on TBB’s home planet. Even more than them collectively having the same knowledge that Hera does, “Return to Kamino” reveals that Omega always had additional, insider knowledge of the base: she has access to a secret landing pad and the tunnels leading up into the city. That knowledge was given and used the second Hunter’s freedom was on the line, but it never once came up to use for Crosshair’s benefit.

“War-Mantle’s” mission puts this problem in even sharper relief. Another claim I’ve seen a lot is that TBB only took risky rescue missions because they needed to be paid. The guys have got to eat after all. Yet Tech makes it clear that going after Gregor will lose them money. They’re meant to be on a mission for Sid and deviating for that won’t result in a payment. He explicitly says that if they decide to do this, they won’t eat. They do it anyway. No money, no intel, a huge risk “on a clone we don’t even know.” But that’s not what’s important, the show says. All that matters is that a brother is in trouble. This time it’s Echo pushing that message instead of Omega. When Hunter realizes that they’re about to try and infiltrate an entire facility and they don’t even know if this clone is still alive, Echo points out that they took that risk once before: for him. “If there’s a chance that trooper is being held against his will, we have to try and get him out.”

Yes! Exactly right! So why doesn’t that apply to Crosshair?

“Because he tried to kill them, Clyde!” No, that’s the easy, dismissive answer. A chipped Crosshair tried to kill them. AKA, a Crosshair entirely under the Empire’s control. The only difference between his enslavement and Gregor’s is that Gregor’s chains were physical while Crosshair’s were mental. And again, the point of everything at the start of this post is to show that no one knows when or even if that chip was removed. TBB definitely didn’t have any reason to suspect that Crosshair was working under his own power until Crosshair himself said as much. We might have been able to make that case at the start of the season, but “Battle Scars” removes any possible confusion. The entire team watched Rex reach for his blaster when he learned their chips were still in. The entire team watched Wrecker become a totally different person and attack them, just like Crosshair did. The entire team forgave him instantly and had their own chips removed. So why in the world didn’t anyone go, “Wow, Crosshair has a chip too. He was no more responsible for attacking us than Wrecker was. We need to try to get him out, no matter how hard that might be, just like we had to try for all these other people we’ve helped.”

But they didn’t. No one even considered rescuing Crosshair. They only went back for Hunter and, when they realized Crosshair was there too, they didn’t change their plans to try and rescue him as well. He’s treated as a particularly threatening inconvenience, not another team member in need of their help.

The problem I have with how this all went down is that the team treated Crosshair like an enemy despite all evidence to the contrary. Despite Omega outright saying that this isn’t his fault, it’s the chip, the group seems to decide that he’s gone crazy or something and that there’s nothing they can do. “It’s fine,” I thought. “They don’t really get what the chip is like yet. They don’t understand how thoroughly it controls someone.” But then “Battle Scars” arrives and Wrecker is treated with such compassion (which he deserves!) only for the group to continue acting like Crosshair is somehow different. It’s easy to say, “But Crosshair shot Wrecker” and ignore the easy pushback of, “and Wrecker nearly shot Omega.” Up until Crosshair’s own accusations and Omega’s ignored comments, TBB’s understanding of the chip’s influence and the lack of responsibility that accompanies mysteriously disappears when the show’s antagonist becomes the subject of conversation. This is seen most clearly in how Hunter tries to frame things during his talk with Crosshair:

“You tried to kill us. We didn’t have a choice.”

“Can’t you see that they’re using you? It’s that inhibitor chip in your head.”

“You really don’t get who we are, do you?”

Hunter mentions the chip, but he acts as if it’s Crosshair’s responsibility to overcome it: “Can’t you see…” Of course he can’t see, that’s the entire point of the chip, the thing he currently believes Crosshair still has stuck in his head. But Hunter and the others—with Omega as a wonderful exception—never seem to have accepted this like they did for Wrecker. When Crosshair “tried to kill us” it’s seen as a deliberate act that he chose, not something forced on him like with Wrecker. When Hunter talks about their ethics, he subconsciously separates the team from Crosshair: “You really don’t get who we are, do you?”, revealing a pretty ingrained divide between them. Even Wrecker gets in on the action, the one brother who truly understands how much the chip controls someone: “All that time, you didn’t even try to come back.” What part of he couldn’t try is not hitting home here? Again, for the purposes of this conversation it doesn’t matter whether Crosshair was chipped this whole time or not. The point is that TBB believed he was chipped… and yet still expected him to somehow, magically overcome that programming, writing him off when he failed to do that. He’s consistently held responsible for actions that they were told (and, through Wrecker, saw) were completely outside of his control. Even when we factor in his claim that the chip was removed, TBB has ignored all the evidence I listed at the start. No one, not even Omega, challenges this super vague and strange claim, or seeks out proof because they don’t want to believe that their brother could willingly do this. There’s just this... acceptance that of course Crosshair went bad. Why? Because he was an asshole sometimes? Taking it all as written, it doesn’t feel like the batch considered him a true part of the team. Certainly not like Wrecker or Hunter. As shown, the batch will go out of their way, risk anything, forgive anything, for them. They have a level of faith that was never shown to Crosshair.

“Severe and unyielding,” Tech says and he’s absolutely right, but I’d seriously challenge this idea that any of the others would have automatically done better if the situations were reversed. It stood out to me that each batch member has a moment of doubt throughout the series, a brief glimpse into how they think the Empire isn’t that bad, at least when it comes to this particular thing. Basically, a moment that could lead to a very dangerous line of thinking without others to stomp it down. Wrecker announces that he’s happy working for whoever, provided they give him food and let him blow things up. Tech finds the chain codes to be an ingenious strategy and is clearly fascinated with their development. Hunter initially wants Omega to stay on Kamino, despite knowing that this Empire has already, systematically killed an entire group of people: the Jedi. Doesn’t matter. She’s still (supposedly) safer there than she would be running with the likes of them.

There’s absolutely no doubt that those three made the correct choice in defying the Empire, but I believe that their ability to make that choice is largely dependent on them having each other. They survive together, not apart, and it’s their unity that allows them to make the really hard calls, like setting out on their own and opposing such a formidable force. But if Tech’s chip had activated and he’d been left behind, would he have muscled through to escape somehow...or would he have gotten caught up in all the new technology the Empire offered him, succumbing to both his chip and the inevitability that if his squad no longer wanted him, why not stay? Would Wrecker have escaped, or been easily manipulated into a new life of exploding things? Would Hunter have been able to push through without his brothers, or would he have become devoted to a new team to lead? Obviously there’s no way to ever know, but it’s always easier to make the right decisions when you have support in doing so. Crosshair had no support. His team left him and yes, they had to in that specific moment, but the point is that they never came back. As far as we saw throughout the season, they never planned to come back. They all talk about loving the Crosshair who existed when life was easier, but they weren’t willing to fight for the Crosshair that most needed their help. When he says “You weren’t loyal to me,” he’s absolutely right. The same episode, “Return to Kamino,” gives Omega two powerful lines that the group rallies behind:

Omega: “[The danger] doesn’t matter. Saving Hunter is what matters.”

AZ: “You must leave.”

Omega: “Not without Hunter.”

The key word there is “Hunter.” Danger, stakes, risk, probability… none of that matters when Hunter needs help. Crosshair did not receive that same level of devotion.

Which creates a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. The group is upset that Crosshair isn’t rejoining them, but they fail to realize that he has no reason to trust them anymore. He’s not joining the Empire because he’s inherently evil and that’s that, end of discussion. He’s joining it because above all Crosshair wants a place to belong… and TBB has made it clear—unintentionally—that he does not belong with them. The horrible actions that Crosshair took under his own free will (theoretically) came after he realized that doing bad things while under the Empire’s control was, apparently, unforgivable. If it wasn’t, his team would have come back to rescue him. They could have at least tried. But they didn’t, so Crosshair is left with the conclusion that either what he did under the Empire’s control is something the group can’t forgive him for, or they can forgive that (like with Wrecker) and he’s the problem here. He’s the one not worth that effort.

“The Empire will be fazing out clones next,” Hunter says. To which Crosshair responds, “Not the ones that matter.”

He wants to matter to someone and events show he no longer matters to his brothers. So why not stay with the Empire? I mean, we as the audience ABSOLUTELY know why not. Self-doubt and feelings of isolation aren’t excuses for joining the Super Evil Organization. Crosshair, if he is under his own control, is still 100% in the wrong for supporting them, no matter his reasons. So it’s not an excuse, but rather an explanation of that very human, flawed, fallible thinking. He needs to be useful. He needs to be wanted. Crosshair is an absolute dick to the regs and I have no doubt that a lot of that stems from the harassment TBB has experienced from them (with a side of his inflated ego), but I’d bet it’s also due to Crosshair’s intense desire to be valuable to someone. He keeps pointing out the regs’ supposed deficiencies because it highlights his own usefulness. When Crosshair fails to find Hera, the Admiral says that soon he’ll get someone who can, looking straight at Howzer at the door. It makes Crosshair seethe because his entire identity is based on being useful, yet no one seems to need him anymore. TBB seems to no longer want him. The Empire no longer wants clones. Now even regs are considered a better option than him, the “superior” soldier. Everywhere Crosshair turns he’s getting the message that he’s not wanted, but he’ll keep fighting to at least be needed in some capacity, no matter how small. Even if that means overlooking all the horrors the Empire commits.

“All you’ll ever be to [the Empire] is a number,” Hunter says and he’s absolutely right. But to TBB recently, Crosshair hasn’t even been that. He’s been nothing. Nobody worth coming back for. To his mind, at least being a number is something.

I hope that all of this resolves itself into a conclusion that is kind to each side (preferably without a Vader-style death redemption), especially given the still ambiguous state of the chip, but from a writing standpoint I’m admittedly a bit wary. We’re obviously meant to believe that the batch all love each other, but as established throughout this entirely too long post, this season did a terrible job imo of proving that they love Crosshair. Or, at least, proving that they love him as much as the others. If this was really meant to be just a matter of miscommunication, with Crosshair making terrible life choices because he only thinks he was abandoned, then we as the audience would have seen the batch trying and failing to get him out. Or at least establishing a very good reason why they couldn’t take that risk, hopefully with entirely different side-missions so the audience isn’t constantly going, “So you can risk everything for Gregor... but not Crosshair?” I’m VERY glad that Crosshair was allowed to air his grievances to the extent he did, but the end result of that—Hunter continually denying this, Omega walking away from him in their rooms, neither Tech nor Wrecker actually sticking up for him and acknowledging the chip’s influence during at least some of all this—is making things feel rather one-sided. It’s like we’re meant to take Crosshair at his word and accept that he’s this garden-variety antagonist who joins the Empire because yay being on the winning side… despite all these complications that clearly have a huge impact on how we read the situation. It doesn’t help that the show has already embraced an inconsistent manner of portraying chipped-clones. We know every clone has one, we know only a couple clones are aware of the chip’s existence (and can thus try to get it out), we know they enter a “Good soldiers follow orders” mindlessness once activated… yet towards the end we see a lot of side character clones thinking for themselves. Howzer decides that he’s no longer loyal to the Empire, giving a speech where a couple other clones throw down their weapons too. Gregor was arrested because he likewise realized how wrong this all was. But how is that possible? Do the chips completely control the clones, or not? Are these clones somehow exceptions? Are the chips beginning to fail? All of that has a bearing on how we read Crosshair—what were his own decisions, how much he was capable of overcoming the chip, whether that changed at all during certain points—but right now that remains really unclear.

It’s details like that which make me wonder if all these other questions will be answered. Will the story resolve all those ambiguous moments surrounding the chip, or brush them off with the belief that we should have just taken Crosshair at his equally ambiguous word? Will the story acknowledge Crosshair’s points through someone other than Crosshair, allowing it to exist as a legitimate criticism, rather than the presumed excuses of an antagonist? I’m… not sure. On the whole I’m very happy with TBB’s writing—despite what all this might imply lol. Until my brain picks over the season and discovers something else, my only other gripe is not allowing Omega to form a solid bond with Tech and Echo, instead putting all the focus on big brother!Wrecker and dad!Hunter. I think it’s a solid show that does a lot right, but I’m worried that, unless there’s a brilliant answer to all these questions and an intent to unpack both sides of the Hunter vs. Crosshair debate with respect—not just falling back on, “Well, Crosshair is with the Empire so everything he says is automatically bad and wrong” take—we’ve just gotten the setup for a somewhat messy, ethical story. For anyone here who also reads my RWBY metas, I’m pretty sure you’re not at all surprised that I’m invested in going, “Hey, you had one of the heroes suddenly become/join a dictatorship and do a lot of horrific things, but within a pretty complicated context. Can we please work through that carefully and with an acknowledgement of the nuance here, rather than throwing the ‘evil’ character to the proverbial wolves?”

God knows TBB is leagues ahead of RWBY, but I hope things continue on in not just a good direction, but one that tackles the aspects of this situation that many fans—and Crosshair—have already pointed out. As much as I adore the cast—and I really, really do—it was discomforting to watch a found family show where 4/5th of that family so completely wrote off one of the members and crucially have, at least so far, refused to acknowledge that. I want complicated, flawed characters, but that’s only compelling when the storytelling admits to and grapples with those flaws. We have quite firmly established Crosshair’s flaws in Season One. I hope Season Two delves into the rest of the team’s too.

Aaaand with that meta-dump out of my system, I’m off to write TBB fic. Thanks for reading! :D

#The Bad Batch #TBB #Crosshair #Star Wars #SW #mymetas #do I take my life in my hands #by posting SW meta?#probably lol

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rosemarydisaster · 3 years

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So, about Bi Caleb

Warning: very long post, discussing bi representation and biphobia.

*Sorry for spelling errors, English ain’t my firts language.

I can’t believe I have to tell you guys, but anyways: Caleb is bi whether he ends with a male character, a female character on a non binary character. That’s what bi people do, you know? they experience atraction for all genders. Saying that a bi character that ends with someone of the opposite gender is straight and queerbaiting is incredibly biphobic.

Yes, Vax was bisexual. Yes, he ended up with Kiki. Get fucking over it.

Now, I can understand why LGBT+ fans may feel disappointed when they tease a “gay couple” but the “straigth” couple ends up being endgame. Notice the quotation marks because there’s not such thing as a straight or gay couple for a bi person. They are bisexual in both situations, but I can see where the problem comes from. I’ve been queerbaited to hell and back by a lot of shows and it really hurts. It feels like they are laughting at you for caring. But I want those fans (whose feelings are totally valid, don’t get me wrong) to consider a few things when it comes to Critical Role, the first one being: it’s a D&D game.

Let me explain, because I know a lot of CR fans haven’t experienced what D&D is like in real life (and that’s absolutely valid, you don’t need to play D&D to enjoy CR). This is an improvisation game, not an scripted TV show. In a Tv show you can plan ahead of time what ship is going to be endgame, what themes are gonna come up for each character and it’s easier to deeply explore sexuality and gender as different planned arcs. In D&D you character’s sexuality may or may not come up depending on how you play it. Take for instance how other CR character’s have stated their sexuality:

Beau: overtly. Very *In your face* kind of lesbian. Marisha said “fuck it, I really just want to romance girls and be bad ass”

Yasha: openly, but not as in your face. Ashley Jhonson wanted to drink from that WLW cup while also being a shy disaster. Seafood market is her favored terrain.

Caduceus: Our Ace king has never hidden his sexuality, and yet he didn’t mention anything about it until chapter 114. He didn’t had the need to either hide it or state it. He was simply vibing.

I think Liam is going that route with Caleb. He’s flustered by Essek and Edwulf (Come on you guys, he always asks Matthew if he’s still hot). He also had/has a thing for Astrid and a think he might have feels for our favorite Tiefling gal. I know we are all too used to characters being teased as gay/bi only to have execs pull a “haha jk they be straight”. But this is not Sherlock or Supernatural. This is a show that not only has queer rep, but also supports queer organizations and creators. Hell, I’m sure some of the cast members are LGBT (but I’m not here to speculate on real people’s sexuality). If Caleb shows attraction to men he is not just queerbaiting, doing it for fanservicing or tricking the fans in any way shape or form: he’s just portraying a bi character. The thing is, since this is not a TV show, he is not doing it por woke points or to send a message. He’s doing it because he wants to play a bi wizard with depression.

So maybe there will be a point in which he can explores his sexuality more deeply, but remember he is playing a game. And his character is one that has a lot of trouble opening up to his feelings. Caleb is not someone that makes sexual jokes or flirty remarks. He is shy, awkward and has developed a really fucked up sense of love that he is now slowly fixing. Hell, in the same Talks episode Liam explained that Caleb was trained on Honey-pot tactics. Which, for those of you who can’t stand Bond films, means seducing your enemy/target to get information, manipulate them or assassinate them. WHICH IS A REALLY FUCKED UP THING! Let’s remember how he was the one to push Fjord to sleep with Advantica so they could spy on her. That boy has Issues when it comes to relationships. So if we don’t see him being as overtly gay as Beau, Molly or Yasha, well maybe it’s because that’s the way Caleb is. Bi people don’t owe you flamboyance, or dating both guys and gals for your approval. I wouldn’t make a post if it was only that, because I do feel the people who are aching for good bi rep and would love some more explicit confirmation. But Vax exists, so I know we can’t have good things down here.

VAX EXPLICITELY SHOWED ATTRACTION TO GILMORE. AS EXPLICIT AS IT GETS. HE FUCKING KISSED HIM. THEY WERE PRACTICALLY DATING. AND YET SOME OF YOU FUCKERS CALL HIM QUEERBAITING. AND I SAY: NOT ON MY WATCH! NOT ON MY FUCKING WATCH!!

How come a character can have canonically kissed another character in a romantic/sensual context and still be called straight? I know fucking Sherlock traumaticed y’all into having trust issues but believe me when I tell you: I’ts not that deep. This is not a “Haha I love u but in a no homo way bro”. It’s a “full homo darling, but also we’re gonna break up because I like someone else”. This is the opposite of queerbaiting. Instead of keeping a charade he was honest with Gilmore because he valued his feelings and realized that he couldn’t reciprocate them at that moment. And if you try to tell me that Vaxleth was forced and didn’t have a reason to exist except queerbaiting, let me tell you: you are wrong.

Vax saw Gilmore once or twice monthly while he spent a heck ton of time with Kiki. Sure, they didn’t had the kind of camera chemistry Gilmore and Vax had because Keyleth is not charismatic. She’s really awkward, and her relationship with Vax was more on the adorable and dorky side of things. I bring this up because I’m predicting something similar may happen to Shadowgast.

Trust me, I ship the hot wizards as much as any other critter (even though I’m a multishipper). But they haven’t talked to Essek in centuries. I think it may have been almost a month in rol and quite a few outside. And you have to take into account out-rol time to because they are humans (except Tal) playing a game and they forget about stuff (except Marisha and Matt). So Shadowgast may not happen because sure, they had really good chemistry for a month a month ago. People have crushes that die down over time All The Time. So maybe don’t be so butthurt about your ship not being canon that you accuse an ally of homophobia.

The cast of CR put forward such an amazing representation for the LGBT+ community and it really hurts me that you gets stuck on the one thing that isn’t canon. Matt has created a world in which coming out is not necessary because no one assumes your sexuality. A world in which people respect pronouns and orientations (except Tary’s father, who is a villain). A world in which Cad or Caleb don’t need to explicitly say “I’m ace/bi” unless it comes up in conversation. A world in which his friends can be whatever they want to be without pressure or reprecusions. A world in which they get to explore different gender identities and sexual orientations with full freedom. Let’s not interfere with that (unless there’s missrepresentation), and let them play their game. If you really need mlm or wlw canon couples or more outwardly LGBT+ people you have plenty examples among NPCs and other cast members (Allura and kima, Yasha, Beau, Dairon, Keg, Reani, Tary, Molly and Vax among others).

There’s way worst shows taking LGBT+ cred for barely doing nothing. Fucking Supernatural is the most recent example! Critical Role works towards showing an honest portrayal of LGBT+ folk and accepts valid criticism from their fans on the subject (when they changed J’Mon Sa Ord pronouns from it to they/them). They don’t owe you making your ship canon or portraying their characters the way you want them to (again, unless when it’s constructive criticism). Stop being so Fucking entitled and enjoy the show for what it is

,Respectfully~

*Edit: I´m tagging Caleb’s ships into the post because most hate comes from shipping wars. Most Shadowgast fans are respectful of the cast’s decisions, even if it disappoints them. But since I’ve already seen people accusing Liam of biphobia in that tag and since I’ve already seen this shit with Vaxmore I’m tagging the ship. If you want to read my long ass post do it, if not, ignore it. I’m not forcing you to read it. I’ve also tagged it with biphobia so people can avoid it if it’s triggering. I’m sorry if it makes you mad that your ship is not canon, but that’s not an excuse to be toxic to the cast. Those of you getting mad are the ones that need to read this the most. Like I’ve said in the post: you’re allowed to be disappointed, you are allowed to want more, but you can’t force the cast to give you exactly what you want. And most certainly, you can’t accuse them of some very serious stuff like biphobia and queerbaiting when it’s not the case..

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supercantaloupe · 4 years

Text

on Aelwyn Abernant, the Reformed Villain Squad, and redeeming teenage antagonists

an analysis on antagonist character development in Fantasy High. spoilers through sophomore year and (mildly so) the most recent roll20 oneshot. essay under the cut bc i am very long winded

the turnaround with Aelwyn in s2 is handled so well i cant get over it. she was such a major antagonist in the first season and just. despicable. she had no pathos. we hated this bitchy older sister who tried to kill Adaine and her friends and raise an evil dragon, and when she gets knocked on her ass and thrown in jail, we cheer.

and then s2 fucking starts saying “hey she’s in jail still if you’d like to look into that” and pursuing that thread ends up being almost as comedic an idea as it is a reluctant one; it’s also quickly shunted to the background as soon as more pressing leads present themselves, to the point where we almost forget about her until Adaine is kidnapped and then the first time you see her it’s just. viscerally upsetting.

she’s bad. she did evil. she got what she deserved.

but she already got what she deserved. last season.

she got her ass handed to her by a bunch of 14 year olds including her little sister (how embarrassing!). her plans were thwarted. she got punched in the face and made fun of. she already got her punishment.

it just……immediately registers as over-the-top Wrong to be told “hey, remember that antagonist you beat last season? she’s still being punished for that, except it’s way worse than just going to mumple.”

and there’s that reminder that like…this is a teenager. a child. who has been manipulated and abused. which is a really fascinating look at this character we used to see pretty much unilaterally as a one dimensional bitchy villain.

i mean we got a more in depth look at Penelope’s and Biz’s motivations in s1 (Penelope being the popular rich girl sorceress obviously hungry for power and the alllure of the high school clout that is being prom queen, but also we know that her having to turn on her best friend Sam Nightingale as part of the scheme was something she was reluctant and not happy to do; and Biz being that predatory incel creeper type dude besides just a nerd with computers and a lack of social graces). and they were as much willingly active in the plot as Aelwyn was. yet in s1 they really never do bother to explore Aelwyn’s motivations. i remember after watching s1 but before s2 that was one of my biggest lingering questions: why tf was Aelwyn involved?

well. she was manipulated and abused. her terrible parents raised her in an awful environment that conditioned her to Listen and Obey and Behave and Be Perfect, and then Kalina helped cinch the noose around her neck with threats and coersion into the KVS Kaper and the NMK crown debacle. she doesn’t freely choose any of it; she’s coerced, manipulated, abused.

and she already got justifiably punished for her bad actions in s1. the torture is almost literal overkill. it’s just……there’s this immediate turnaround in sympathy and view of the character. on first watch, it’s viscerally upsetting to see her getting so brutally punished for actions she already faced consequences for, and on rewatch, it makes your skin crawl to know she’s being tortured for terrible things she had little choice in carrying out. and tortured by some of the very same people who coerced her to behave terribly in the first place, to add insult to injury.

and it’s still fucking frustrating when they rescue her and her memory gets reset and she goes back to her parents because it’s like “well shit, she’s evil again, and we just wasted all that effort for nothing” but it’s also sad cause we know she’s running back to her abusers and she isn’t happy about it but doesn’t feel like she has a choice. and it’s sadder still that what eventually inevitably gets her to turn to good for good (i.e. away from her parents) is just. a full dissociative mental breakdown.

(but then she survives and it’s gonna be good!!! until Adaine dies in her fucking arms. which is. almost funny. she’s been through so much shit and that isn’t something that Brennan would have just. preplanned. like a written in plot point. no, that was just an unpredictable consequence of the battle. what a juicy fucking moment. she’s been through All That Shit™️ and has finally turned to fight for good and her sister just fully dies in front of her. yeowch)

and she turns out okay in the end. she comes out the other side alive and whole and supported by her sister and her friends, with the hope of a future and recovery. there is an acknowledgement that A) she can and will grow from her mistakes and damage, B) it’s going to be really hard, and C) the post-s2 one shots both prove that she’s doing okay now. hell, she has a whole squad now of other former-teenage-villains-turned-good-guys. she has friends now, Ragh and Zayn, with common ground, and a secret handshake and everything. they’ve all grown from the mistakes of their past into better, happier, healthier people

and about Zayn and Ragh. we’ve seen a lot of characters, protagonist and antagonist, teenage and adult, PC and NPC do some really fucked up shit and get punished for it. but why do they get happy endings? why are Aelwyn, Ragh, and Zayn the only members of the RVS and not someone else like Biz or Penelope or Dayne?

well, the latter two are dead by then; but then again, Biz and Ragh were also killed by the Bad Kids in s1, and subsequently resurrected. (Zayn died too, but was neither killed nor revived at the Bad Kids’ hands, so i’ll get to him in a sec.) and there are plenty of adult antagonists the Bad Kids face who are killed and left that way by the Bad Kids without second thought: Johnny Spells, Coach Daybreak, Captain Wicklaw, the Abernant parents (presuming Arianwen doesn’t survive in the forest for very long, which i doubt). why do some characters get second chances while others don’t?

in the case of Zayn, his death was pretty much out of the Bad Kids’ hands, and they later found out he was manipulated by Daybreak into being bad anyway because of his sad living situation. he was a pretty minor antagonist in the scheme of things, and when we re-meet him as a ghost in the s1 epilogue, he’s pretty obviously remorseful for his actions. and dying seems like a steep enough punishment to me for the shit he did to contribute to the KVX caper; returning as a ghost, free from the trappings of his unfortunate living life, he now has the room and freedom to grow into a better person.

in the cases of Daybreak, Spells, Wicklaw, and the Abernant parents: these are bad people who should know better. these are fully grown adults who actively choose to do evil. whether they think it’s the right thing to do or not (in Daybreak’s case), whether they think it will benefit them and don’t care about anyone else (in the Abernants’ case), or whether they don’t care much at all and are just doing shit because they feel like it (in the cases of Spells and Wicklaw), these are all adults who consciously make the decision to do terrible things and hurt other people. of course Johnny Spells, who is generally a punk thief and thug, is not on the same level of bad as Angwyn, who kidnaps and tortures his own daughters for political gain, but the point remains. these fuckers should know better. they’re grown ups. they had their chances to be good and they chose not to heed them. their minds are set on bad actions and they are a continued danger to other people as long as they are alive. when they die, the Bad Kids do their damndest to make sure it stays that way.

now, in the cases of Penelope and Dayne: these are teenagers who actively chose to participate in an evil plot. Penelope, Dayne, and Biz were all fully cognizant of what they were doing trying to raise KVX back to his former power. why? well, to some extent, we can only speculate. i suspect Penelope was just one of those Regina George bitches who is rich and popular and powerful and obsessed with power and popularity within high school as if that’s the end-all-be-all of existence (which, like, when you’re currently in high school, is a somewhat understandable worldview i think). Dayne being her boyfriend and a musclehead jock probably falls into a similar line of thinking. they are actively and willingly trying to cause harm, and teenager or not, must be stopped. they’re killed, anyway, during the Climactic Battle™️ anyhow; it’s not like the Bad Kids were going to gain anything at that point by keeping them alive.

now, Biz: Biz is the creepy Nice Guy incel type, sees woman as a prize he deserves to win, yadda yadda. he does, like Penelope and Dayne, actively choose to help KVX. there might be something to be said about his motivation the Bad Kids discover after the arcade battle by detecting his thoughts (that being to upload the captured maidens from the palimpsests to “call the shots” himself) is an altered memory; whether this was his original motivation from the start or not, i’m not sure. but the Bad Kids do kill him – and then resurrect him for important, time-sensitive information. and they beat it out of him – he gets two of his fucking fingers blown off. and Riz reattaches them once they have their info, and they realize his memory is altered. of course, the Bad Kids don’t know at this point that the altered memory was something he, Penelope, and Aelwyn had planned and agreed on and done to themselves, but this points to something important in my opinion: the Bad Kids, and the narrative/show as a whole by extension, acknowledge that external manipulation affects how guilty someone is in a crime.

which brings us to Ragh. Ragh, introduced from episode 1 as the meathead jock. Ragh the archetypical one-dimensional high school bully. Ragh who works with the harvestmen in effort to (ostensibly) end the world/provoke international war. Ragh, whose low intelligence but high loyalty and internalized homophobia led him to be fully swayed and blindly led by his coach and captain, who have actively chosen to do evil. Ragh who is killed in combat by the Bad Kids and resurrected for information, not Daybreak. Ragh, who the Bad Kids realize was probably not aware of exactly what he was being made to do and how bad it really was. Ragh, who by their kindness in sparing his life and directing him on a better path, becomes a well-rounded character and an active ally to the Bad Kids during and after prom, an invaluable companion during their quest in sophomore year, and overall a really good friend and person.

(it might also be worth considering the case of Jawbone here, too, who started out a very minor antagonist in a fight but ended up becoming a major NPC because the Bad Kids talked to him, found out he came from an unfortunate situation and set of circumstances, and showed him kindness in offering the school guidance counselor position, a kindness that isn’t really owed but given anyway and ends up changing his entire life for good.)

and then, Aelwyn, whose case is already discussed above. so, why is the RVS what it is, why them but not others?

if you’re familiar with Avatar: the Last Airbender, you’re probably familiar with Zuko’s character arc, and how it’s often lauded as a masterful example of developing a villain into a hero over the course of a narrative. what makes Zuko’s arc so well done and exceptional is that he starts out as a kid in a bad situation under the influence of bad adults seeking to do bad deeds, but he later realizes the error of those ways, actively removes himself from that situation despite the difficulty and danger in doing so, goes through a lot of shit and reflects on his past mistakes and learns from them, and then actively chooses to fight for good in the end with the help of close, trusted friends, found family.

this, i believe, is the same in the case of Fantasy High and its treatment of the RVS. its members, like Zuko, are all teenagers who came from shitty situations and were manipulated by evil adults to do bad. they are punished for their bad actions, and they learn from their errors and mistakes. with the kindness and help of good people, friends and chosen family, they are able to escape their abusers and bad situations and grow into their own people. and they actively choose to improve themselves with that help and fight for good.

Fantasy High, through the arcs of Jawbone, Zayn, Ragh, and especially Aelwyn, asserts that it is not your fault if you come from a bad situation and are forced to behave badly as a result. it does not pretend that you are absolved of any responsibility for those actions; quite the opposite, as even though they were externally manipulated into their evil actions, all of those mentioned characters face tangible consequences for their actions and later express remorse for their mistakes. but Fantasy High also asserts that even if you have made great mistakes in your past, even if you came from a bad situation beyond your control, even if you were manipulated and abused, with care and love and support and a hell of a lot of work and effort, you can improve your situation and find good, happiness, peace, you can thrive. evil adults who should know better don’t get redeemed. teenagers who aren’t coerced but actively choose evil don’t get redeemed. but abused kids deserve another shot at happiness. with enough work, and some love and help along the way, they can get there, even from the lowest imaginable point, from rock fucking buttom. it’s possible.

#fantasy high #fantasy high spoilers #dimension 20 live #dimension 20 #fantasy high sophomore year #fantasy high freshman year #d20 #dimension 20 live spoilers #brennan lee mulligan #aelwyn abernant #zayn darkshadow #ragh barkrock #sasha reviews #hello tumblr. tonight i bring you a 2.3k word essay. tomorrow? who knows #i'll just throw myself into the nearest river if this doesn't show up in the tags this is fine #this one's for y'all in my notes i see u and i love u here's some content #the first half of this is mostly copy pasted from my discord ramblings #i didnt intend for this to be as long as it got but yknow. i never do and it always is #so thats why the first part of this is written differently from the rest of it lol

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a-froger-epic · 3 years

Text

The Queen fandom, Freddie Mercury and Characterisation

Or: Why are those anons like this? Why are those writers like this? Why don't we understand each other?

In this essay, I will-

No, I’m serious, I will. And this is an essay. It’s roughly 2500 words.

The friction, concerns and hurt in fandom around Freddie’s characterisation - most recently centred around a fic the author tagged as ‘Bisexual Freddie Mercury’, stating in the notes that they have chosen to write Freddie as bisexual - have given me a lot to think about. And if you have been asking yourself the questions above, this here might be of interest to you.

First off, why do I feel like I need to talk about this?

The answer is not: Because I’m so very influential in fandom.

I think my influence in this fandom has been vastly overstated by some people. If I were so influential, everybody would rush to read anything I rec or write. And trust me, they really don’t. My relevance is confined to a very specific part of the fandom. That part is made up of: Freddie fans, Froger shippers, some Roger fans, a handful of writers who like to support each other and like each other’s work, and people who are really into research.

There are many parts of fandom where my opinions are entirely irrelevant. Looking at the big picture, by which I mean only the Queen RPF fandom, I simply am not that important. Looking at the even bigger picture: the Queen fandom as a whole, the majority of which doesn't read or care about RPF - I am literally nobody.

Furthermore, everything I will be talking about here is in relation to the RPF-centred part of Queen fandom.

So why this public essay?

Because I have been deeply involved for two years in a divide of opinions concerning how Freddie ought to be written and how people think of RPF. I think this is in large part because I - like several other authors currently writing for the fandom - absolutely love research. It's my idea or fun. I love to dig into these real people’s lives. Not everybody does that and not everybody is comfortable with that. It’s a personal choice depending on people's levels of comfort surrounding RPF. But this does put me firmly in the camp of Freddie fans who like to explore who this man really was, and track down every last fact about him.

Freddie Mercury vs. Fictional Freddie

I’ll admit that I am one of those people who have the urge to speak up when they see somebody claim that Freddie was bisexual, and sometimes I will say: “Well, actually, we do know that he didn’t see himself that way, because…” For me, these have often been positive exchanges.

I think there is overwhelming evidence that Freddie Mercury identified as gay from his split with Mary to the end of his life (wonderfully curated here by RushingHeadlong). In the niche of fandom I have frequented over the last two years, as far as Freddie the real man is concerned, I have barely ever seen anybody argue with this.

But fanfiction and talking about real Freddie are not one the same thing, and they shouldn't be, and as far as I am concerned they don't have to be. Some writers like to put every last fact and detail they can find into their fic, in an attempt to approach a characterisation that feels authentic to them (and perhaps others), and other writers are simply content to draw inspiration from the real people, writing versions vaguely based on them.

But writing historically and factually accurate RPF is more respectful.

Is it? I've thought about this for a long time, and I really can't agree that it is. This, to me, seems to presume that we know what kind of fiction these real people would prefer to have been written about them. That, in itself, is impossible to know.

However, if I imagine Freddie reading RPF about himself, I think that he might laugh himself silly at an AU with a character merely inspired by him and may be really quite disturbed by a gritty, realistic take full of intimate details of and speculations about his life and psyche. Such as I also tend to write, just by the by, so this is definitely not a criticism of anybody. Freddie is dead. Of all the people to whom the way he is written in fiction matters, Freddie himself is not one. There is no way to know what Freddie would or wouldn't have wanted, in this regard, and so it isn't relevant.

Personally, I can't get behind the idea that speculating and creatively exploring very intimate details of Freddie's life, things he never even spoke of to anybody, is in any way more respectful than writing versions of him which take a lot of creative liberties. As I've said so many times before, I think either all of RPF is disrespectful or none of it is.

So who cares about Freddie characterisation in fiction anyway?

Clearly, a lot of people do. Freddie Mercury was an incredibly inspiring figure and continues to be that to a multitude of very different people for different reasons. There are older fans who have maybe faced the same kind of discrimination because of their sexuality, who saw Freddie's life and persona distorted and attacked by other fans and the media for decades, who have a lot of hurt and resentment connected to such things as calling Freddie bisexual - because this has been used (and in the wider fandom still is used) to discredit his relationship with Jim, to argue that Mary was the love of his life and none of his same sex relationships mattered, to paint a picture where "the gay lifestyle" was the death of him. And that is homophobic. That is not right. I completely understand that upset.

But.

These are not the only people who care about Freddie and for whom Freddie is a source of inspiration and comfort. What about people who simply connect to his struggles with his sexuality from a different angle? What about, for example, somebody who identifies with the Freddie who seemed to be reluctant to label himself, because that, to them, implies a freedom and sexual fluidity that helps them cope with how they see their own sexuality? Is it relevant why Freddie was cagey about labelling himself? Does it matter that it likely had a lot to do with discrimination? Are his reasons important? To some degree, yes. But are other queer people not allowed to see that which helps them in him? Are they not allowed to take empowerment and inspiration from this? Can you imagine Freddie himself ever resenting somebody who, for whatever reason, admired him and whose life he made that little bit brighter through his mere existence, however they interpreted it? I honestly can't say that I can imagine Freddie himself objecting to that.

This is the thing about fame. Anyone who is famous creates a public persona, and this persona belongs to the fans. By choosing that path, this person gives a lot of themselves to their fans. To interpret, to draw inspiration from, to love the way it makes sense to the individual. Please remember, at this point, that we are talking about how people engage with Freddie as a fictional character creatively. This is not about anybody trying to lay down the law regarding who Freddie really was, unequivocally. This is all about writers using his inspiring persona and the imprint he left on this world to explore themes that resonate with them.

This is what we as writers do. We write about things which resonate with us and often touch us deeply.

But don't they care about the real Freddie?

Yes, actually, I would argue that a lot of people care about "the real Freddie". It seems to me that depicting Freddie as gay or with a strong preference for men is what the vast majority of the RPF-centered fandom on AO3 already does. You will find very, very few stories where Freddie is depicted having a good time with women sexually or romantically. That he was mostly all about men is already the majority opinion in this part of fandom.

But another question is, who was the real Freddie? If the last two years in fandom have taught me anything, it is that even things which seem like fact to one person can seem like speculation to another. I have personally had so many discussions with so many people on different sides of the debate about the exact circumstances of Freddie's life and his inner world, that I must say I don't think there is such a thing as one accurate, "real" portrayal of Freddie. Even those of us who are heavily invested in research sometimes disagree quite significantly about the interpretations of sources. So that narrows "You don't care about the real Freddie" down to "You don't care about Freddie because you don't interpret everything we know about his life the exact same way I do". Sure, by that definition, very few people care about Freddie the same way you do.

The bottom line is, there are so many writers and fans who love him, people who are obsessed with him, people who care about him deeply. They might care about who they believe he really was or who he chose to present himself as to the world, the way he wanted to be seen. But ultimately, in my personal opinion, if somebody is inspired to write Freddie as a fictional character they feel that Freddie means a lot to them. And it is hurtful to accuse them of not caring.

But what some people write hurts/triggers me.

Yes, that can happen. Because the nature of AO3 is that everything is permitted. Personally, I am very much in agreement with that. You will also find me in the camp of people who are against any sort of censorship on AO3, no matter how much some of the content goes against my own morals or how distasteful I find it. Some people disagree with that, which is fine. We must agree to disagree then. Here, I would like to quote QuirkySubject from the post she made regarding this whole situation because I cannot put it better myself: “The principle that all fic is valid (even RPF fic that subverts the lived experience of the person the fic is based on) is like the foundation of [AO3]. The suggestion that certain kinds of characterisations aren't allowed will provoke a knee-jerk reaction by many writers.”

No matter how much you may disagree with a story's plot or characterisation, it is allowed on AO3. "But wait," you might say, "the issue is not with it being on the site but with people like yourself - who should care about "the real Freddie" - supporting it."

This is some of what I have taken away from the upset I have seen. And it’s worth deconstructing.

I've already addressed "the real Freddie". Moving on to...

The author is dead.

This is something others might very well disagree on as well, but to me the story itself matters far more than authorial intent. And what may be one thing according to the author’s personal definition, may be another thing to the reader. Let’s use an example. This is an ask I received yesterday:

This author thinks they were writing Freddie as bisexual. However, going by the plot of their story, I would actually say that it is largely very similar to how I see the progression of Freddie’s young adulthood. To me, personally, Freddie would still be gay throughout the story because he arrives - eventually - at the conclusion that he is. The author and I disagree on terminology only. And I think simply disagreements about terminology, given that some terms are so loaded with history in Freddie’s case, trips a lot of people up.

It seems to me that many people still equate bisexuality with a 50/50 attraction to men and women, when in actual fact many - if not most - bi/pan people would say that it is nowhere near that distribution. Some people are of the opinion that anybody who experiences some attraction to the opposite sex, even if they have a strong same-sex preference, could be technically considered bisexual. (However, sexuality isn’t objective, it’s subjective. At least when it comes to real people. What about fictionalised real people? We will get to that.)

Let's briefly return to real Freddie.

What I'm seeing is that there are several ways of thinking here, with regard to his sexuality.

1. Freddie was gay because that seems to be (from everything we know) the conclusion he arrived at and the way he saw himself, once he had stopped dating women. Therefor, he was always gay, it just took him a while to come to terms with it.

2. Freddie can be referred to as bisexual during the time when he was with women because at that time, he may very well have thought of himself thusly - whether that was wishful thinking and he was aware of it or whether he really thought he might be bisexual is not something we can say definitively. He came out as gay to two friends in 1974 on separate occassions, and he talked to his girlfriends about being bisexual. (Personally, I think here it is interesting to look at who exactly he was saying what to, but let's put my own interpretations aside.)

3. Freddie can be seen as bisexual/pansexual because his life indicates that he was able to be in relationships with both men and women and because there is nothing to disprove he didn't experience any attraction to the women he was with. Had he lived in a different time, he may have defined himself differently.

Now, I'm of the first school of thought here, personally, although I understand the second and also, as a thought experiment, the third.

I think all of these approaches have validity, although the historical context of Freddie's life should be kept in mind and is very relevant whenever we speak about the man himself.

But when we return to writing fictionalised versions of Freddie, any of these approaches should absolutely be permissible. Yes, some of them or aspects of them can cause upset to some people.

And this is why AO3 has a tagging system. This is why authors write very clearly worded author's notes. This is the respect authors extend to their readers. This, in turn, has to be respected. Everybody is ultimately responsible for their own experience on the archive.

Nobody has the right to dictate what is or isn't published under the Queen tag. As far as I am concerned, nobody should have that right. As far as I am concerned, everybody has a responsibility to avoid whatever may upset them. I understand where the upset comes from. I also maintain it is every writer's right to engage with Freddie's character creatively the way they choose to.

None of us can control how other people engage with Freddie or the fandom. None of us can control what other people enjoy or dislike about the fandom.

The best way to engage with the content creating part of fandom, in my opinion, has always been to create what brings you joy, to consume the content that brings you joy and to respectfully step away from everything that doesn't.

#Queen fandom #Freddie Mercury #bi Freddie

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jeonjk0504 · 3 years

Note

Their in the soop conversation to me isn’t proof that taekook isn’t real. That conversation seemed so weird to me. Not what they spoke of but just the conversation being aired period. Maybe there were some inklings of truth to what they spoke of but I think that was a staged talk for the most part. Just because a lot of TaeKook were not shown in official content in the past couple years doesn’t mean they weren’t close. Now the reason why Big Hit didn’t have a lot of TaeKook moments may have been to protect TaeKook (I don’t see any other reason why they wouldn’t promote one of their most popular ships and make money, just my opinion though).

To me personally, JK and V’s conversation was a strategic move by Big Hit to be able to show more TaeKook content going forward. I really think something like that was discussed when they were renewing their contracts. To be allowed a little more freedom between them. It would be weird if after not showing much content all of a sudden TaeKook are so close, so I feel like that was the purpose of that talk. To let fans know everything is “good now” and they shouldn’t be shocked to see them glued to the hips and being touchy with each.

Again, this is just my personal opinion. No hate to anybody that doesn’t agree. I am happy to see all the TaeKook moments that have been shown after that talk. So regardless if some people use that against TaeKook, I am grateful for it lol.

Is TaeKook real?? The world may never know until they come out and say so. Until then, let’s just all have fun speculating and enjoying all the boys’ interactions. Thank you for reading my rambling lol.

Hey hun 💓

I‘m answering late but i had this in the back of my mind constantly, since i think it‘s a very interesting topic and i have a lot of thoughts.

I do think their convo had a true core (what i explained in my post about the episode in general and FESTA) but the fact that this was something shown to an audience, should stay present in our mind.

I also do think that Taehyungs problem with his distant behavior was real and Jungkooks advice was earnest.

But I see it like this: In the Soop is an entertainment format that is supposed to be calming/authentic/natural and approachable. It‘s supposed to give us a sense of „ah, so this is what they are like when they have free time and do what they want! This is what their actual relationships look like! This is how they talk to each other casually without pressure and entertainment purpose“ Because this is something that BTS Fans like about them: Their authenticity and the relationship they have. So they gave us a format we might enjoy. It‘s similar to Bon Voyage, but Bon Voyage has clear entertainment schedules and serves a different purpose.

But if you put BTS together, a group who have simply known each other for years, you don‘t see them fight or have deep talks all of a sudden and even less if it’s just a week and while shooting something for an audience. And even if something was up they probably would think „ah, we should talk about this when the shooting is over.“ Pretty sure you wouldn‘t choose an entertainment format for private matters, right? Even less if you are a professional (and BTS are professionals).

So in my opinion their talk was deliberately included, ergo planned, ergo not 100% a good representation of how they would usually go about this and this talk served a purpose. The purpose of „look, they are close so they have deep talks and care about their friendship“. And that‘s why i don‘t give this whole thing too much weight, even less if it‘s to say anything about their relationship really. I even think it wasn‘t important that it was Tae & JK. This could have also ben JK&Jimin or Yoongi&Hobi.

Now, i’m saying this while knowing this is my personal opinion and in no way a fact…you can disagree (and a lot of you probably will to some extent because i‘m deromanticizing the whole thing a bit 😬 or simply because you have a different view on the matter) and that‘s fine with me.

The other implications of what was the motivation of BH/HYBE to have them talk about this stuff… i won‘t go into that because i really don‘t know. It could be everything and nothing.

If we blame BH or HYBE for deliberately cutting moments or choosing other pairs for content, we should know it‘s still possible that Taehyung and Jungkook actually asked for it. I think sometimes we forget in what kind of position they are in. And it doesn‘t matter if they are just friends or secretly romantically involved - if you get this much attention (and as the most popular pair, they trend if they only sit together and breathe) it can make you conscious and uncomfortable if people are so focused on you. And what we do know is that they like to keep things private. They don‘t share when they go out or spend time. They only sometimes let it slip or you can guess by the amount of info they have on each other.

It could also have been coincidental and we are simply too biased and over-sensitized when it comes to the amount of interaction/screen time/ promo we get.

I know some of you will think „that doesn‘t seem very likely“ but it‘s still a possibility and as long as we don‘t actually have facts on this matter, it‘s important to stay open minded. :)

Thank you for sharing your thoughts love!! Pls continue to do so mwah 💕

#ask mo #mo replies #taekook in the soop #taekook #vkook #kookv #kooktae #taeguk

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dahlia-coccinea · 3 years

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You have said that you thought that “some critics overstate the concept of childhood in the story” and that Catherine and Heathcliff are not eternal children. What do you think about the concept of “childhood” in Wuthering Heights? In many ways this is a novel that is so preoccupied with childhood and attachments made in childhood, despite the main characters not being children for most of the book. Is there a distinction to be made between the actual depiction of the childhood of the main characters and the nostalgic conception of their childhood they later have?

I have read a review of the book that said that 5-year-old Hareton’s interaction with Nelly in Chapter 11 is unrealistic and reveals that Emily Bronte didn’t really know children unlike Anne Bronte who worked as a governess. I personally think that she was talented in depicting childhood rivalries, friendships and woes, Chapter 7 of Wuthering Heights is the proof of that.

This is a pretty big topic so I think I’m just going to ramble and explore the topic and see where it leads so I apologize in advance if this is unreadable hah.

For reference, this stems from this conversation, in which I mentioned how Catherine and her daughter both proudly view themselves as mature women and you mentioned how easy it is to forget that Catherine does try to take on difficult, grownup, responsibilities in planning how removing Heathcliff and herself from Hindley's dysfunctional household.

As I said I do think the concept of childhood has a big impact on the story and it is easy to remember moments such as Catherine’s utterance of how she wishes she was a girl again, and her appearance as a child ghost feels not without significant meaning. Many critics have fixated on this and have led them to make a few assumptions. There have been connections made with Freudian child psychology, pathology, and narcissism, or sometimes is developed into theories around Heathcliff and Catherine’s relationship and them having a twin soul in part because of their childhood bond and likeness. Still, I think these narratives give too much weight to the symbolism of childhood in the novel by not mentioning the moments that Catherine and Heathcliff display a grown-up understanding of things, or have wishes and desires that aren’t infantile or nostalgic.

Catherine is typically the character associated with childhood and childishness. Catherine’s anxiety about her choice between Edgar and Heathcliff is partially associated with her distress at life beyond her childhood and while that could be pathological as some critics state, including Marielle Seichepine in her essay Childhood and Innocence in Wuthering Heights. She argued this shows her narcissism and demonstrates Freud’s ideas on the "perversity of the infant.” I’ve written a long post about why I disagree with her here, so to save time I won’t repeat all of that.

Another reason why I think Catherine is sometimes viewed this way is because she dies at 19, which many people today consider to practically be a child. For all of Heathcliff’s longing to return to happier memories during his youth, or returning to their old shared bed, or being spurred to commit revenge against Hindley for disrupting his childhood and trajectory in life, he is still an adult during much of the novel so it seems he is saved from some of this speculation and psychoanalysis. Which may or may not be right. I think a problem with a lot of these theories is that they seem to forget that Emily never knew of Freud, as he was born some 8 years after her death. While an interesting lens to read the book through and I’m glad there are essays on it, I think Catherine’s situation says much more about spiritually, society, and the human experience and is not an overt psychoanalytical case study (I feel like it sounds like I hate Freud, I really don’t lol I just think he’s over/incorrectly used a lot).

Also, like many other proposed narratives, the theories that conclude they both wish to return to their childhood often assume Heathcliff doesn't care about the world or education, that they just want to be dirty children running around the moors forever, etc. All while ignoring that by their teens they both aren't ignorant of how the world works, or injustice of it, and also how they both view the other as the person they would like to marry and to escape from the home that is no longer welcoming to them. J. Hillis Miller, and a few other critics I can’t remember, fall into this trap. Miller’s take was something about their boundaries being blurred by their shared spaces, and childhood, and that all their later struggles are to claim that shared space again. While he believes they are strongly platonic, others make similar suggestions, like their mystical union is reminiscent of a "primordial androgynous being.” I’ve mentioned part of this argument before, but I didn’t mention how it is common that these arguments overstate the importance of childhood and Catherine’s and Heathcliff’s supposed fixation on it. (This is all a lot of ground to cover so sorry if this is hard to follow.)

Now there are few reasons I think childhood is important in the book, and I think can be representative of a number of things. One of the reasons WH is so interesting is because so many metaphors and symbols can be explored in multiple ways. Understood in a very simplistic and broad way it does nicely lend to the imagery of wildness, freedom, and being in a natural rather than materialistic state. It also speaks more plainly of the angst most people feel when surrendering childhood freedoms to adult responsibility and of being introduced into a world that is unfair and tragic. I’ve also thought their moving from childhood to adulthood with their coinciding loss and separation, feels similar to awakening to a vast existential dread that causes the loss of meaning and proceeds to force the characters into chaos.

I think it is also important to the plot that Catherine and Heathcliff's relationship begins early on - it makes more sense that they are unable to view their past, present, or future, without the other since they’re in each other’s earliest memories. It also helps prevent a more cliche "love at first sight" plot and leaves less room to believe it is based on anything superficial.

Something that I find interesting is it seems to be somewhat contested as to how to reconcile the fact their childhood isn’t particularly happy yet they seem to desire to return to it. I don’t remember reading anyone who tries to really tackle this. Catherine and Heathcliff have only a brief time after Hindley leaves and Mr. Earnshaw is still alive that their lives are relatively peaceful. But I don’t think anyone could consider even that part of their childhood as ideal, nor do they specifically mention that time, apart from in Catherine’s diary when she says her father was back because Hindley is a terrible substitute.

I certainly don’t see the story as an ode to childhood as I've seen some critics suggest. Partially because Cathy and Hareton are able to grow up and live the life that Catherine and Heathcliff would have wanted, and also because of how telling it is that Catherine is trapped as a child ghost until she’s reunited with Heathcliff. If the book was an ode to childhood the shepherd boy should have seen two children on the moors and not Heathcliff and "a woman."

You mention how some have accused Emily of not understanding children - I think that’s kind of a funny claim. I think her writing, despite the poeticism, is concerned with humanity and in that way is relatable and the emotions very intelligible - still the characters' actions and language could never be mistaken as striving for hyper-realism. Also, she grew up with siblings and knew family friends, and servants who had children so I don’t think the way little Hareton or whoever, is written has to do with her not understanding children. I don’t think any of the sisters were maternal, so perhaps that changes their writing or what others would expect from them.

#wuthering heights #emily brontë #thoughts #i'm totally forgetting points i wanted to make but i think this has gone on long enough lol

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starcrossedau · 3 years

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Disclaimer: This is not for commercial use, all intellectual property belongs to @timetohajima. Copyright: here.

ANONYMOUS SAID:

genuine question: in your opinion does jungkook have a kink for older women (or guys if he's into that)? 👀 and out of the members who's most likely to have no strings attached flings?

Hey, anon! I would only be able to tell that for sure when having his birth time. :( And even then I don’t think I’d share since I think it’s quite personal? If I were to say it for sure. From a psychological perspective, though, it seems quite obvious to me that older people will attract him more since he’s been surrounded by them since he was young. Like, younger or immature people will hardly be his type because he’s not used to them and won’t be patient enough - also because he was forced to mature earlier than most as well. I like to joke that he’s a little shit and he indeed is, can play around a lot and loves provoking others, but it’s clear that it’s some kind of escape to how mature he’s forced to act, a way of dealing with the pressure of actually having to be like a grown up while being so young. This is all just speculation, though, no Astrology facts involved. lol

As to MTL likely to have no strings attached relationships… This is hard because houses will define a lot of how things will actually go down regarding this matter, but I’ll speculate a little (so be advised that if I ever get my hands on their birth times everything could be different). Above anything else, I’d like to clarify that none of them seem to be the type, to me, to not have even a little bit of feelings when in a relationship with someone… They’re all a little to soft for that to happen. But anyway:

Taehyung | Alright, hear me out. Capricorn everywhere makes him loyal and eager to share seriously when in a relationship - but also makes him picky af. He knows exactly what he wants and that not only makes him demanding but also someone that has quite an easy time on not allowing himself to feel when he sees no logic in it (like, if he’s physically attracted to someone he’ll know how to separate that from actual feelings). Some people with as many Capricorn placements as he does combined with a Venus in Aquarius could even have no relationships at all for a really long time - in his case, though, there’s also this little thing called Moon in Aries. Said sign is agitated and loves to conquer (goals and people lol), loves the thrill of being able to get what they want and loves the chase. So while he’ll take a little longer to actually settle down since he’ll be picky af in the process - he’ll like to try out a few things before getting to that point. Like, he’ll want to be in simple relationships until the actual time comes. He can be very intense and eager to share absolutely everything about him when truly in love - but that is likely to take time and he won’t be able to just relax and wait because his Moon won’t allow it. So. No strings attached flings would be an option because he’d have control over it, and he’s very good at attracting people his way, so…

Yoongi | I know, I know - guy is soft af. No strings attached does not seem to be his thing, right? However, his Venus is in Aries is combined with a Moon in Virgo or Libra (since he was born on the day it was about to change I can’t say for sure which one it is without the birth time). Both are actually likely to make him someone that likes to be in a relationship - but doesn’t necessarily feel as attracted to the other person as they should. Libra because it loves to be in love but rarely ever is truly in love (loves the idea of it but will only honestly do so when finding the exact partner they want) and Virgo because it feels the need to be in a relationship but is so picky that it isn’t very likely to actually open up (not as often as other signs would, anyway). Let me elaborate: Yoongi is picky lvl 99. The guy is demanding af, loves things to be exactly the way he wants them to - meaning he will be interested in people but can get tired of them very easily if they’re not up to his standards, or will just approach said people out of the need of his Venus in Aries getting to express itself but won’t necessarily be emotionally involved. Said Venus loves to attract people and feel powerful, loved - but can get tired very easily and not really… Love. He has many Pisces placements and a Mars in Cancer that balance this, so he does have feelings… But I’m inclined to believe that not having to deal with feelings all the time is something that makes him more comfortable and so having no strings attached flings is an easy enough option that will attract him.

Originally posted by gotjhope

(a fluff ball that will test you)

Seokjin | Moon in Aries and Venus in Capricorn plus a Sun in Sagittarius and a Mercury in Scorpio… Basically he’s very talented at attracting people his way and won’t necessarily be as interested as the other person will. Don’t take me wrong, at the end of the day he’s still a sweetheart (mostly because of his Mars in Cancer making him a little too soft) - but doesn’t mean he won’t be able to attract people he’s not into. I don’t think he does these on purpose, though, he’s just literally that attractive (not only his looks but also his personality). Meaning that the guy has many options without even trying and since Venus in Capricorn can take ages to commit and Moon in Aries, like I’ve already stated, loves the thrill of being in intense but not very lasting flings… What I’m trying to say here is that he doesn’t try to have no strings attached flings but they literally fall on his lap. Not only does the society that he lives in give great importance to looks (and I mean, c’mon, look at him) but his career is also so demanding that he barely has time to work his Venus in Capricorn properly (again, a placement that takes ages to commit so only fully does so after a long time) - meaning that although I don’t feel like it’s his thing it has probably happened at some point because 1) it was too easy to happen for him to say not to it and 2) if not doing so with no strings attached flings he just simply wouldn’t have any relationships at all (since, you know, Venus in Capricorn - but his Moon in Aries definitely wouldn’t allow him to just lay around waiting for the great love of his life™ to appear).

Namjoon | Moon in Sagittarius makes one… Experimental. And have great appreciation for feeling free to do whatever they want, when they want to. They like to try out different things while having their personal space respected - and when it comes to relationships, they’ll be eager to look for different experiences as so to grow as individuals. Mixed with his Venus in Scorpio giving him great passion and Mercury in Libra making him eager to look for relationships… I’d say that yes, he’ll feel something for the people he’s with - but above all, he’ll love the thrill of said relationships. He’ll love to try out different things and can have some talent separating himself from the situation - be it either an emotional one or not. However, his Venus is conjunct his Jupiter, increasing his feelings immensely… So could mean that he’s so passionate that he can’t feel ok when being single and loves to relate to people even if it’s not that deep - but could also mean that as much as he’d approach said people in an experimental and eager-to-maintain-his-freedom way he’d still eventually get too emotionally involved. Basically, he might like the idea of it but will end up being the one that does it wrong. lol

Jimin | So this is hard because I’m struggling not to place him higher up but hear me out. Guy has a lot of passion and feels deeply the need of being in relationships all the time, he has probably been in love with the idea of love since a very young age - so he definitely has had many flings. Having a Moon in Gemini (great communicator, great at smooth talk) combined with a Venus conjunct Mars in Scorpio (feelings everywhere, passion everywhere) and a Sun and Mercury in Libra (a sign that stands for flirting and relationships)… The guy knows his way around the people he’s attracted to, I know he can act shy sometimes (I’m not saying that he isn’t with absolutely everything, but he does also use it as a casual charming way of attracting people - the little shit) - but it’s very likely that he has been through many, many… Situations. lmao I don’t wanna go to deep because I feel like it’s too personal, but you get the gist. He’s awesome at flirting and therefore could be comfortable with attracting many different people (not saying that he did, though…….. I can’t know that without the birth time) - but at the same time Jimin has a bunch of feelings. So his… Romantic life has been… Intense?… But I wouldn’t say that he’s likely to have no strings attached flings since he’s too intense for that to happen. Everytime anything ever happened in his life regarding romantic matters there were certainly a lot of feelings involved.

Originally posted by sonyeondan

(i’m sorry bb i feel like i’m always exposing you lmao but i love you okay)

Jungkook | Much like Yoongi, Jungkook was born on the day the Moon was about to change signs - so he’s either a Moon in Leo or Moon in Virgo guy. If his Moon is indeed in Leo, combined with his Venus in Libra I’m very inclined to believe that he’s actually into having many flings - but even then he would definitely be emotionally attached somehow. If his Moon is in Virgo, though, could mean he’s had less flings (which I believe is the case) - but got emotinal about them just the same. Virgo is a sign that talks about fidelity and committing, Libra loves relationships but above all likes to be in love - although both are very demanding, his Libra is working differently than the others I’ve mentioned here. His Libra is defining his Venus, the best place for it to be at, so Jungkook is great at loving people in the best way that it could be - his emotional being is healthier than most. Even though I can’t place his Moon properly I’m still inclined to say that combined with his Virgo placements he’s actually likely to feel extremely devoted to the people he loves - so no strings attached flings are probably not his thing. He could have to be into a few because of his career, though… If they were to happen, he’s fully capable of separating himself from them - but I honestly don’t think it’s something he’s into (however, he could be someone that plainly announces he’s not interested in a serious thing but the other person will be fooled out of their own… delusional nature? - like I’ve mentioned here) .

Hoseok | There’s really not much to say here… Moon in Taurus by itself already talks about stable relationships and the need to fully share healthy and romantic feelings with someone - combined with a Venus conjunct Mercury in Pisces? I know it already seems like it so there’s no big revelation here but Hoseok has many, many feelings. He could try to have no strings attached flings because his Aquarius placements will make him curious but I hardly doubt he ever got to it because. You know. Feelings. He has too many, I honestly cannot see this kind of relationship happening for him.

Originally posted by hobioppa

(a cutie that is way too dramatic to not get emotionally involved)

That’s it, anon! What do you think? Do you agree? This ended up being huge but, well, rambling is my thing. lol

29.06.17

–

12 NOTES

REBLOG

#thekpopnetwork

#btssunshinenet

#bts scenarios

#bangtan

#venus

#miya answers

#mtl

#this took me so fucking long

#take it on me to overthink such a simple question lol

#miya #astrology #nostringsattached #bts jimin v jungkook rm jin namjoon yoongi jhope relationships

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felassan · 3 years

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I've been thinking about how Ghilan'nain is amongst the gods that Solas trapped and wondering what she did to be grouped with the rest of them. But according to the lore, she wasn't the same after the hunter incident and maybe her everlasting wound turned her cruel to the point that she made creatures out of cruelty/to be destructive and frightening. I'm curious to see what the DA says too! <3

Hello! This answer is under a cut for length. TN spoilers under cut.

Part of it will be that she was a part of the institution that he was seeking to strike down in order to free the People. After ascending Ghilan’nain was actively part of the problem, a false would-be god at the top of the power structure, in a system where said gods had come to rule over a stratified society and keep slaves. Her included, as there’s Ghilan’nain vallaslin. Part of it will then have been her part in the events that preceded the fall. When Solas talks about what the Evanuris did and why he created the Veil, he talks about them as a group. “They” killed Mythal, and he believes the Evanuris - as a faction, at least - were going to destroy the entire world. It’s interesting - did they all have a direct hand in Mythal’s death, or did only some of them and the rest were indirectly involved, say via conspiring? We only have his side of the story here, but that’s what he says. It’s totally possible he was speaking in generalities (sometimes we’re like “I’m out with my family / the lads / whatever” when not every single member of the mentioned group is actually present) and only some of them were directly and indirectly involved in the murder, but then we’re still left with the power structure problem and the slavery and the peer group destroying the world stuff. And I wonder about her maneuvering against Mythal - the sinner took the form of what’s implied to be a dragon (a creature heavily associated with Mythal) at her urging, and it was then Mythal that he begged protection from. Why did she urge him to do that I wonder? Was it a scheme? A slight, an insult to Mythal? Like ‘Look Mythal, one of the non-gods flies in a divine god-only shape, the one particularly associated with you btw, how disrespectful!,’ something ‘said’ while knowing that when caught it’s Mythal he’d go to to beg protection, kinda rubbing her nose in it? And then ‘oh look everyone, the All-Mother and adjudicator isn’t showing the sinner favor after all, so much for the great protector you think is so great. Maybe she isn’t so great after all’. That undermines and creates a situation where Mythal looks bad.

There’s also what she was doing on the side. Before, she created monsters and dangerous beasts and then slaughtered most of them en-masse in return for apotheosis and more power. If the Pride that stayed her hand when she was going to destroy the sea creatures was Solas, then he had knowledge of those events and knew what her inclinations were. That codex tells us a few things: that Ghilan’nain was just as.. well, Evanurissy, as the rest of the Evanuris in her own way, that she made monstrous terrible things that even the Evanuris considered dangerous and that she was ruthless enough to kill most of her creations in order to obtain godhood, even though she clearly loved some of them. And that was before being one of the Evanuris-proper. The Tevinter Nights prison-ship carvings imply that the things she was experimenting on weren’t simple animals. Livestock animals or lab rat-type animals aren’t transported or kept in “prisons”, people are. Pens or cages would be more animal-appropriate language. Then her research notes have her explaining her process to the “stock” as a courtesy (which is straight up telling a captured human-level-sentient being what you’re going to do to it, we don’t explain anything to our science fair volcanoes or to the lab rats being used in medical research, as they can’t and don’t understand). The “lesser animals” bit implies the things she was working on at the time were higher, complex beings. So from the fragments we have an unethical scientist archtype who performed twisted experiments and made monsters out of people who were prisoners or slaves. Did she stop doing those things after ascension? She could have continued her work in secret, and post-ascension she was in a position of great power and privilege and had a supply of slaves. Could she have been tempted to continue, in that position, with that access? Post-ascension she was also part of the Evanuris group, and whatever the Evanuris were doing, power corrupted and they had a lust for it.

I’m sure there’s a lot more to it as we only have fragments and Solas’ side of things (which has stuff omitted). It’s also hard to say because which parts of the Dalish beliefs nowadays about the gods are true and which parts were a bit misconstrued or evolved over time? They’re a mix. The story of Ghilan’nain and the hunter as we can read it is from the modern Dalish belief system. Parts of it definitely line up with other fragments - she had a connection to Andruil, halla are involved, in the short story focusing on her in TN there are striking similarities between Ghilan’nain being wounded and bound and Warden Friedl, someone affected by Ghilan’nain’s work, gouging out her own eyes and being bound by Ramesh and Lesha. Other parts don’t quite, and the truth is probably somewhere in-between the Dalish belief and the picture ‘painted’ in the Temple of Mythal inscription (whoever created those inscriptions had their own biases, and were likely in the service of Mythal. Mythal’s temple will naturally be full of pro-Mythal information and things reflecting Mythal’s views).

Anyway given her inclinations and Solas’ views on slavery and freedom I can see why. I do like the theory that maybe an encounter like that with a hunter (or was it a “hunter”? It could have been someone specific) influenced how she got started doing that stuff. Like maybe that encounter is why she began keeping herself apart from the People and where she got the idea from? Notes on Methods of Enchantment feel scientifically detached and coolly concerned with the technical aspects and the aim of the work though, so while obviously heinously cruel it feels more like she thought of it as a scientific endeavor done for that purpose (this is the danger of not seeing other people as people but instead seeing them as “stock”) rather than something done for the terrifying sake of it and out of “I specifically actively want to see people suffer”-cruelty. Who knows when they were written though (or even if she even wrote them), she could have come to be that detached over time.

This post is speculative not prescriptive. :)

#dragon age #bioware #mj replies #katie-my-lady #video games #solas #tevinter nights #tevinter nights spoilers #spoiler #spoilers #tevinter nights spoiler

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popcorn-hero · 3 years

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The Tales of the Todorokis

Acknowledging character development and writing character development is not and making excuses for ones crimes.

Disclaimer: I read, I interpret, I express. This is a long post filled with images. Also probably some horrible grammar

Apologizing: Apologizing is acknowledging ones faults and vowing to never commit the same mistakes. What has happened has happened. Nothing can change the past or the effect it had. What you do now, does not change or erase the past, but it helps guide a path of healing for the future. It can be the start of change and morphing into a better person. BUT, only if that person truly means it.

Apologies is not making an excuse for yourself.

Forgiveness: Forgiveness can be rightfully given, or not. It can be a tricky thing to understand at times. Forgiveness doesn’t remove the pain. Forgiveness doesn’t erase the memories. But for some people, forgiveness is a key to freedom, for inner peace. For other people, forgiveness doesn’t offer them that, and that's fine too.

We are not monoliths, we are individual people, with individual brains, with individual emotions, with experiences that affects us as individuals. Our stories might overlap - they might even be identical, but how we process it may not be.

I don’t like this narrative I’ve been seeing recently in the fandom of Horikoshi being an abuse apologist. I think Horikoshi is challenging us and its working.

The Tales of the Todoroki’s: Enji, Rei, Touya, Fuyumi, Natsuo, Shoto

6 people

6 perspectives

6 stories

1 truth

Each viewpoint and each experience from everyone is very important in putting the pieces together (yes, even Enji). In fact, I think it was important to have Enjis viewpoint to the situation because it was such a contrast to what we’ve heard and seen from everyone else. In Enjis mind, he truly thought everyone was complaisant. He saw nothing wrong with attempting to live vicariously through his kids. In the same breath he expresses contempt for this children, its also laced with disappointment

He speaks of Rei as though she was consensual, but we know he essentially used her a valuable Mare and hurt her as well.

His treatment of Rei cannot be erased, justified, or forgotten. It happened. We as the audience are suppose to carry that in our minds because we are reading a story about Heroes. This challenges us to understand that heroic actions is not what a hero makes.

There are cops who (most of them tbh) that become cops simply for the power dynamic, not because they desire to protect. A lot of cops abuse their spouse.

Rei: We are only introduced to her through the lowest point of her life and we have no insight on how Enji acquired her (yeah that sound harsh, but isn’t that what happened) nor her domestic life with him. What we know of her are scenes of her pain, and I think thats relevant enough. She may have had some “good” moments out of her situation, but she was still a mouse trapped in a lions den. Good days do not erase her state. Thats why this panel, was so odd to me

Because it implies that Rei was complicit in having kids even though we as the audience understand that he basically brought her for that single purpose. Now note, this is coming from Enjs mouth, not hers so I can’t sit her be like “oh yeah she was fine with everything”

To me, this is simply Enjis projection because what was Rei honestly going to do? Say no? But who’s to say that she didn’t want Touya to be lonely? Idk, that panel was too wishy washy for me.

Moving on

She replies to Natsuo by saying that's not true

Its not in his defense like how Natsuo claimed. Rei never states that she forgives him, and we can see she is still on her journey of healing when she mentions shes still a bit scared of him. However, she acknowledges his acts as stepping stone for his own path of atonement.

If she does come to forgive him later in the story, thats her decision (Horikoshi actually lol). If she doesn’t, that her decision.

Natsuo:

The only insight from Natsuo is his resentment towards his father with what happened to Touya and the hurt of their mother. It is revealed later that Natsuo was Touya confidant in the house (I’ll get into that when I talk about Touya).

But He doesn’t forgive him....or hes not at that stage yet

When endeavor saves him from the villain, we are able to see Natsuos raw thoughts:

He’s conflicted: He wants to maintain the peace, but he can’t deny how he feels.

Natsuo felt like he had to compromise his feelings, and that shouldn’t be fair. Even thought he is the middle child, I feel like he took on the presence of the big brother and wanted to protect his siblings. But when you have a man like Enji as your father and you know how he is.....standing up to him as a child is terrifying

So when Enji says this

I’m like: DUH! Of course he would feel like that

But I’m taking this scene has Enji recognizing how he made Natsuo feel as a child which showcases. he owns up to the fact that he pushed Touya to the edge.

Yet with all that said, hes not suppose to forget. Hes not suppose to suppress how he feels. And even at his age, that child inside him still hurt and was never offered a chance to properly heal. I know what that feels like.

Natsuo must figure out what he needs to do to find peace - however that may be.

Fuyumi :

We don’t have much insight to Fuyumi and I’m sure her experience is completely different from her brothers. One, because she was a girl and Enji is misogynistic, I doubt he gave her any type of attention as a father figure especially since she only inherited her moms quirk. I don’t recall signs of physically abuse on Fuyumi and (Natsuo), but there probably was demeaning behavior at some point. Just being in that environment and seeing their sibling subjected to that, negatively impact her however

But with Fuyumi, she is trying to move on

I think Fuyumi is on her path of forgiving her father - thats her choice to make to find peace for her experience. After expressing her desire to move on as a family, she ask Shoto how he feels....

Oh my sweet prince Shoto:

Shoto has a lot of baggage and being one of the main protagonist, we get a more in depth experience on his relationship with is father. I’m not going to go into too much detail because we all know he detested his father. I’m mainly going to focus on this middle ground that I find him at.

In the panels above he mentions having grudges and how it clouds the mind. Thats a toxic feeling to carry with you, especially when you’re trying to be a hero. He recognized that, and he’s been working on fixing that. Even his mother had to forgive herself towards what she did to him.

Shoto is not here to forgive Enji, hes here to forgive himself

What I mean by that is the fact that Shoto experienced self-hate. He hated a part of who was, how he looked, where he came from. He had no control of his childhood, but he now has control of his future. At the sports festival, that was Shotos first step towards finding his healing. It wasn’t about Enji apologizing to him. It was about him.

And now look at him, he’s more social, more expressive, more powerful once he began to love himself. He got there on his own and with the support of his friends.

It doesn’t change what happened to him, and it doesn’t erase his feelings However, it gave him control over himself.

This is almost the same position Natsuo is in. He hasn’t seen anything (yet) for himself that warrants him to forgive his father. Maybe we will see it in these later chapters... maybe we wont.

Thats his decision

And last: Touya

Touya, touya, touya touya......

I honestly don’t know how to tackle his situation, but shoot me

From this memory (by Enji), Touya appears...enthusiastic. He appeared that he wanted to train with his father.

And I think this is where things went wrong in his rearing. He was GROOMED .

Enji, being who he was, probably placed the ideas in Touya head of great success, importance, power, fame, ect. These things sound good to a child, and being the only child at the time, he had all his fathers attention. But as he got older and his quirk became incompatible, things started change.

Even before his quirk no longer became compatible for him, Enji still didn't see Touya as his ideal child, but he accepted it. Touya looks to be about 6 here meaning Shoto wasnt born yet or an infant.

Going by the ages given for Shoto, Fuyumi, and Natsuo I’m going to state that

Touya was 13 when he staged his death

Fuyumi was 11, Natsuo was 8, and Shoto was 5 and thats when we are introduced into in abuse.

So there is a 8 year window between Touya shift in his relationship with his father and the start of Shoto gaining his quirk.

That is a missing puzzle piece, and I can only speculate what happened in that time period to drive Touya to his mental breaking point and what his father did or, didn’t do for him.

Here, there is more white in his hair and he looks to be maybe 10? And this is when he starts to question his existence.

I can’t say all that Touya went through from the time Shoto was born to his faked death.

I think Touya suffered from feeling abandoned by his father father, the feelings of being a failure because of these ideals of greatness only to be sideline. That he was just a placeholder like the rest of his sibling and not worthy to work along his fathers side.

I don’t think he faced the same treatment from his father as Shoto did. I think he became blinded by approval and pushed himself to his limits to compete for Enji attention, He probably developed depression, anxiety, and a lot stressors as he became more and more incompatible with his quirk

And I think thats why there is the hate for Shoto because he feels like he took away his purpose ( which has nothing to do with Shoto but everything to do with Enjis grooming)

We know Touya is absolutely not on the scale of ever forgiving his father for what he did. For him to sit there and watch his father on TV and proclaim to be a hero when he knew what went on behind closed doors, it can drive him towards wanting to retaliate.

His story showcases damages of a broken child. Where Shouto found liberation, Touya remained bound to the ambers Enji left on his worth and lies on being a hero.

Not everything can be fixed, and once a crack forms, it will continue to spread until it shatters.

In conclusion

The Tale of The Todorokis is not to serve as excusing abuse. Its a showcase of how 1 man can affect the lives of many people in different ways. It is a tale of moving forward, finding peace, and gaining control over your own person.

Enji knows he can’t snap his figures and all will be well. Though I think some actions he could have done was to take it upon himself to address the country, come clean, and maybe retire as a hero, but he’s not a perfect character.

But I’ll take what I can get. Enji knows his place, he knows what he has done.

Happiness to his family is absence

Its there space

And there nothing more better he can do than that.

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brightbeautifulthings · 4 years

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Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

"'What if sometimes there is no choice about what to love? What if the temple comes to Mohammed? What if you just love? without deciding? You just do: you see her and in that instant are lost to sober account-keeping and cannot choose but to love?'"

Year Read: 2014, 2020

Rating: 5/5

Context: It's hard to know where to begin writing a review for this book. I read it for the first time in graduate school in about five weeks (alongside everything else I had to do in grad school, so I don't recommend that), and it basically blew my mind. At the same time, it's hard to imagine tackling it any other way for the first time. Despite its difficulty, there are things obsessive and immersive and, appropriately, even addictive about it. Full immersion might be the only way to read it for the first time, and I obsessed about it for months afterward. Since I'm not on any deadlines, I took it more slowly this time (21 weeks) so I could enjoy the writing and the nuances without the pressure to finish. For my less coherent weekly updates in real time, see my blog posts. Trigger warnings: Everything, everything. Death (on-page), child death, animal death, suicide, suicidal ideation, rape, pedophilia, possible incest, child abuse/abusive households, graphic violence/gore, eye horror, severe injury, drug use, addiction, alcoholism, mental illness, depression, OCD, grief, racism, ableism, transphobia, sexism, inexplicable hostility toward Canadians.

About: If it's difficult to know how to write a review, it's equally hard to describe what Infinite Jest is about. It's about so many things, tennis, addiction, communication (failures), and entertainment among them, but I'll do my best. Beneath all the numerous characters, timelines, and subplots, the main plot is about a film so entertaining that it kills anyone who watches it, robs them of all desire to do anything but watch it until they die, and what a faction of Canadian assassins will do to possess it. The auteur is James Incandenza, a suicide whose son, Hal, is a prodigy at Enfield Tennis Academy. Next door to E.T.A. is Ennet House, a drug rehabilitation center where Don Gately, former thief and Demerol addict, is taking it day by day to stay sober. Though they don't know it, Hal and Gately are connected, and the deadly Entertainment and those who seek it draw their paths closer and closer together.

Thoughts: It's rare to find a book that is actually as smart as it claims to be, but IJ is--certainly much smarter than I am, despite all my attempts to make sense of it. It starts off strong and doesn't let up for several hundred pages, which is a huge achievement all by itself. Wallace excels at writing extremely polished sections that could almost function alone as short stories, and the first chapter is one of my favorites in all fiction. It's reassuring, I think, to start the book off on a strong note, in case we worried we were in for a thousand pages of tedious slog. It can be both, but it's often heartfelt, insightful, and funny as well, and the payoff is well worth the effort. I don’t know how Wallace manages to pack every page with so much meaning. Anybody can put tedious lists in their books or make reading purposely difficult (and I have attitude about writers who do this for no reason), but there’s nothing haphazard about this book, despite its size and varied focus. Everything seems utterly intentional. The conversations are really top-tier; Wallace has a great ear for how people talk, and it's a fascinating look at how communication works and doesn't work.

Thematically, I think the book succeeds on more than any other level, including plot or structure. If we could say this book is "about" anything, we would almost certainly start with the themes and not the plot, which is often secondary to whatever point Wallace is trying to make at the moment. It takes an in-depth looks at things like addiction, depression, loneliness, failed communication, sincerity v. irony, critiques of postmodernism and metafiction (while being very meta itself, at times), and the very specific selfishness of an American culture that insists on freedom even to the point of self-destruction. At times, it feels a little heavy-handed or like it was yanked right out of an intro to philosophy course, but I suppose something in a thousand pages has to be obvious if we're ever going to pick up on it. A lot of these themes resurface in his other work, from "This is Water" and "E Unibus Pluram" to Orin Incandenza's Brief Interview style Q and A (and he would be a perfectly fitting character in that book).

The characters are some of my favorites in literary fiction as well, particularly the Incandenza family and Don Gately, and to a lesser extent Joelle Van Dyne (although Wallace typically doesn’t write female characters very well, and she comes with some issues). Hal and Gately couldn't be more different; Hal excels at everything he's ever done, and Gately has a record that includes accidental homicide on it. Hal is the hero of non-action, since little that happens in the book is engineered by him, while Gately is closer to the more typical hero of action, who defends the undeserving at great cost to himself. Yet their struggles with addiction are similar, and they both manage to be incredibly sympathetic characters. In my opinion, the book is always at its best when we’re with Hal or Gately, but I’m strongly driven by good characters. Despite being dead, James Incandenza's presence is also felt all over the book, from the Entertainment he created to his haunting ETA and sticking beds to the ceiling (probably the weirdest ghost I've ever seen in fiction). He's a tragic character in a book full of tragic characters. The others are too numerous to name, from the other tennis players at ETA and recovering addicts at Enfield, to the various bystanders populating Boston. We get brief glimpses into almost all of them, and while they may not all feel relevant at the time, most are memorable or heart-wrenching or slapstick funny, or all three. It's a book that contains multitudes.

That's not to say it's always on point though, and it isn't. There are a number of very serious problems with representation in this novel, and they're as bad as its detractors claim. A lot of the 90s humor aged very poorly, but that's not an excuse for some of the unabashedly racist depictions of African Americans, the uncharitable descriptions of Steeply's and Poor Tony's cross-dressing, or--however much I love him as a character--the fact that Mario Incandenza’s descriptions are ableist in just about every possible way. Wallace thinks he's capturing "voice" when he's really encouraging harmful stereotypes. The humor of the novel often doesn’t depend at all on these stereotypes and would in fact, be a lot more funny if I wasn’t spending so much energy cringing at it. So many of the little racist and ableist asides could have easily been edited out of the entire novel to make it less offensive. There are also sections where he seems at pains to be as gross as possible for its own sake. There are plenty of things grim or uncomfortable or flat out distasteful about this book, but sometimes the graphic violence kind of jumps out and stabs you in the eye, say, with a railroad spike.

If there are times when I was totally absorbed in the little tragedies of the Incandenza family or Gately's struggles, there are plenty more where it's like pushing something heavy up a hill. No lie, some of it is slogging through tedious minutiae and various experimental writing styles (some more successful and less offensive than others). Wallace has a gift for purposeful tedium; it’s at its peak in The Pale King, but he gives it a nice warm-up round here. The novel is difficult and meant to be, since Wallace maintained that some of the best pleasures are the ones we have to work for, and he's not totally off base. There's something very satisfying about living, for a time, in a book that spans a thousand pages, that demands focus and perseverance, and manages to give back (almost) as much as it takes. The book is always structurally interesting, but it starts to get more complicated toward the end as various characters and plots begin to almost slide into one another. I forgot how frustrating it was to near the end and realize--again--that it wasn't going to wrap up with any kind of satisfaction; the various plots slide, but they don’t meet. I thought if I paid closer attention on a second read that I would pick up more of the plot things I’d missed on my first, but I think the problem is that those answers simply aren’t to be found in the actual text. Of course, they can point us toward various conclusions, and the novel certainly encourages us to speculate and make connections, but I don’t think the actual answers are there.

That brings me to some of my final thoughts, for now. There's no doubt that this is a hugely successful book, and I believe it accomplished exactly what Wallace meant it to do. He jokingly referred to it as a failed entertainment, much the way Jim considered his lethal Entertainment a failure, but I have the sense that Wallace, unlike Jim, failed on purpose. The book purposely pays more attention to structure and theme than it does to plot or character, yet the plot and characters are hugely compelling for what we see of them. Imagine the book it could have been if he had paid equal attention to all of them. Wallace attempted to create a book that people wouldn't want to stop reading. Reaching the end certainly encourages us to begin again, as the first chapter is actually the last in chronology, but that trick only works the first time. By my second read, I realized that starting over wouldn't help me fill in any of those blanks or answer any of my questions, and I was content to let it go. On the one hand, IJ depends upon its structure to tell the story it's telling. On the other, think of the book it could have been if it spent more time telling a story and developing its characters and less time belaboring a point. It's one of the best books I've ever read, and the tragedy is that I think it could have been even better.

#book review #infinite jest #david foster wallace #literary fiction #adult fiction #5/5 #rating: 5/5 #2020 #bookoween

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monstaxdirtywonk · 4 years

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MX’s ideal types based on their chart

Hey everyone! Today we are gonna talk about our boys and *surprise surprise* their charts lol

Reminder : We don’t know their birth time aka their rising, however I did a post speculating so yes take this with a grain of salt !

*keep in mind i’m using love related placements like venus and mars, sometimes their rising*

Shownu

Someone with a nice voice (Gemini do appreciate nice voices a lot)

I don’t think he’d be into an overly cute one, more sophisicated

nice hands and a good manicure going on (taurus aspect)

which brings me to the fact that he’d like a well put girl

someone that dresses well, lives well and has nice taste

someone a little bit more spontaneous than his caclulated self

but nothing too much

he’d def appreciate some humour since he is pretty quiet

(but a comedic genius)

someone flirty and playful

a nice neck because tauruses rule the neck

very elegant all around and feminine but no try hard

a very nice perfume, something rare and unique

suitable signs : Taurus, Libra, Aquarius, Capricorn

Hoseok

listen up

not to be annoying and say it for the 863rd time but he is a boob man

cancer mars (our insticts) and his rising is a cancer too

they rule the boobs and in general love some softness

i can see him with a girl that has the exact opossite of his body

very soft and cuddly/curvy unlike his really toned muscular self

someone very motherly, that takes care of him but NEVER treats him like a child

he CAN’T work with someone that isn’t romantic

he has so much water, in his eyes anyone with too much earth,air etc will feel cold or distant

natural and efortless, not into super made up girls or insta baddie etc

understanding,caring and SAFE

His home

Suitable signs : water ones, Libra

Minhyuk

Scorpios are freaky

They have a fascination with butts and we can tell because Min is pretty grabby

someone daring and hard to get but still approachable

nothing overly mysterious because it would turn off his libra placements since they truly enjoy connecting with others

they truly appreciate a smart partner, brains matter a lot

lingerie and such, some sexiness in the bedroom and this hidden factor only he can see

someone that takes care of themselves and are confident

keep him on his toes and challenge him often

have meaningful and deep convos

sex matters a lot to them but it is a way to connect further

truly emotional if you dive deeper (wink)

Suitable signs : Aquarius (with other water placements),Leo,Sagi

Kihyun

Both his Sagi and Scorpio placements thrive for communication

connecting well with someone is the biggest turn on

someone with cute thighs

care taker (sagi) and kinky (scorpio) leads us to some age play

in general power dynamics since freedom is a big point for sagis while scorpios can get possesive, those two together can give a ‘im giving away/taking power’ kink, so someone into this

adventurous WHEN in a serious relationship

I think he’d appreciate a woman that’s similar to him when it comes to being tidy but her mind can be a bit of a mess

not someone too similar because it can give only one perspective and this might lead to being bored and sagis HATE boredom

(i can read him like an open book because we almost have the same chart)

Suitable signs : water signs with some air, capricorns and not sagis (i have a feeling us sagis don’t enjoy relationships with fellow sagis)

Hyungwon

Listen up

Capricorns have a thing with status and authority so they might often engage in role play or dress play with such concepts

but my guess on his rising (sagi) are the opossite so idk if it applies to him because i’m not getting such vibes just putting it out there

someone sure of themselves and motivated

lady in the streets fire in the sheets

he loves that duality

a thing for hair

not a particular style or anything, he enjoys running his hands through them

someone that’s in for a more stable relationship

capricorn placements usually like someone older

but i don’t think age matters that much to him

Suitable placements : Libra, Taurus, Aquarius

Jooheon

My fiery son would be into someone sexy but not a show off

he is really posessive (leo and scorpio) and this won’t turn out well

which makes you think, he’d not be a good match for very carefree placements like aquarius, sagittarius or gemini

a booty man and that lower half in general

I think he’d be into a bagel, cute face and sexy body just like him

someone just as passionate as he is

devoted and honest

magnetic eyes

but a sweet smile

also into quickies

Suitable signs : water with some fire, Capricorn

Changkyun

Hey how are you im not well who told him to have so much aquarius

usually they aint my type unless they have water placements and he does with his cute ass pisces venus and scorpio rising

someone intellectual seriously looks dont matter as much as brains do

not into someone that doesnt think,read,appreciate music,art etc

not into someone that doesnt pay attention to their fashion

not anything over the top, more like a way of showing the world who you are

i truly feel like he might be into tomboys

or at least someone not pretty by typical beauty standards

a face with character, something unique about them

experimental but safe in bed

(they say aquarius are good at bed idk)

Suitable signs: SAGITTARIUS, PISCES and Libras

for astrology ships DM me (4-5$)

#monsta x #astrology #kpop astrology #monsta x astrology #shownu #hyungwon #kihyun #hoseok #wonho #minhyuk #changkyun #jooheon

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phoenix-reburned · 3 years

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The Eagle: An Alternate Take to the AnR Theory

Before I begin this post, I want to preface this by saying that if the AnR ending happens, I will be sad but not disappointed, this is simply a thought I had that I hadn’t seen anyone else propose. I won’t be discussing why people believe that the eagle is Eren, although I know that there’s a lot of symbolism regarding it. This is simply my own thoughts on how Isayama could have a tragic ending that destroys us while also keeping some people alive.

Spoilers under the cut for both the manga and season four of the anime, you’ve been warned. Also long post, sorry.

First of all, if you have not yet watched the Akatsuki no Requiem video, I highly recommend you do that before continuing to read this post. Here’s the video:

youtube

For those of you that don’t know, the AnR theory states that the eagle in this video represents Eren and that this video basically spoils the entire ending of AOT. But what if the eagle isn’t actually Eren? What if it’s another character, telling the story of how they ended a war through bloodshed and lost their closest friends on the way? What if the same person telling us this story in the video is the same person who’s been telling us this story the whole time?

I believe that the eagle in this video is actually Armin Arlet, and that this is him recounting how he stopped the rumbling. This mixes in some of the Lebouch (?) theory, but not in the way you think.

Let’s start with something most people overlook about his character: Armin is extremely manipulative when he needs to be. He was able to convince Pixis that Eren wasn’t an enemy, quickly became a strategist that even Erwin trusted, and told Bertholt that someone he cared about deeply was being brutally tortured to save Eren. In his current position in the manga based upon the 137 leaks, he’s been able to take control of some of the titans away from Ymir. Whether or not he’s really done this or this is apart of Ymir’s plan is up for speculation, but for now let’s just assume that he did this of his own accord. He was able to talk Zeke into dying for humanity, a literal nihilist who killed countless people. Armin clearly will get his hands dirty if it benefits his plan, as shown multiple times. He’s not innocent.

Something else that helped me come to this conclusion, although this isn’t necessarily a huge reason I believe it, is that Armin is the one telling us this story. He’s been our narrator since season one. If Isayama wanted to kill him, why not just have Eren be the narrator? If Armin’s dead it makes no sense for him to be able to tell us the story even if you take the paths into consideration, since you can’t interact with anything or anyone in there.

Last thing before I get into the video is that Armin is being treated like a god right now by the titans on Eren in 137. The creator of the trojan horse theory (@/localhangeluvr on twitter), which is another inspiration for my theory, made a thread showing this and the similarities between Armin and the devils in Ymir’s story. This shows that he is going to be extremely important to the ending, whether or not he lives or dies. This thread also discusses the idea of Armin being the eagle, but we came to different conclusions based upon that idea.

Now let’s get into the video. The first thing I want to point out is the appearance of the color blue. We first see this when the eagle cries and dyes the baby eagle(?) blue. Later on, it reappears on the butterflies. The character that is most associated with this color is Armin, through his love of the ocean. His eyes are also blue in the anime, although blue for the ocean fits better since they’re hazel in the manga. The first time we meet Armin, he’s also wearing blue. Maybe this represents him wishing for a simpler time, before the fall of wall Maria?

Another thing, the grave the eagle visits. Look at the symbol on it.

To me, it resembles a snake eating it’s own tail. This makes me think of Eren, someone who ended up becoming what he hated most. First in the form of a titan, then in the form of a mass murderer. This could very well be Eren’s grave that the eagle visits, meaning he could be crying because of the knowledge that he killed the person that was once his best friend.

Next, let’s examine the thing on top of the baby eagle’s head, which also reappears later in the eagle’s library.

This clearly is supposed to be the wings of freedom. If Eren was the eagle, why would he hold onto the wings? At this point, he’s completely abandoned the scouts. Why would he want to keep anything what reminded him of what became his enemy around? These questions disappear if this is actually Armin though, as he would have no reason to renounce the scouts.

Another interesting thing is that the eagle has blue eyes when he has the lizard/frog mask on, but his actual eyes are brown. As I mentioned before, Armin has blue eyes in the anime but hazel in the manga. This could be another subtle hint to the eagle’s identity.

Next, the lack of walls in the sky city, or the fact that this is what it represents. This is when the Lebouch theory comes into play. While I don’t necessarily believe that Eren wants to be stopped, I do believe that if he is killed and the rumbling ends, that this will create peace. A scene all the way back in season one makes me believe this. After Eren agrees to try to seal the wall, he takes a walk with Pixis. To paraphrase what is said, Pixis states that only a world ending event could truly bring humanity together. Well, I do think an attempted mass genocide would be world ending enough to do it. Plus, there’s the fact that if the alliance stops it, that would put Paradis and the eldians back into the world’s good graces. And if one of them gets their hands on the founding, there’s also a possibility that they could completely remove all titans from the world.

The family is another reason a lot of people assume that this is Eren we’re watching because of his and Historia’s possible relationship in the manga, if you believe that Historia’s child is his (which I do, but that’s not super relevant right now). But that’s not necessarily what’s happening here. If someone’s able to reverse the curse of Ymir, then this COULD be Armin and Annie’s family. If Armin and Annie’s feelings for each other wasn’t important, why bring it up right at the end of the story? At this point there’s no reason for Isayama to show us that they like each other UNLESS it plays a role in the prologue. Or, maybe it’s to make Annie’s death sadder if he does kill her, but since she’s still alive I’m sticking with option a. I’m not sure if the cat means anything, however black cats are usually regarded as an omen of death. This could be a reminder that Armin killed Eren.

Another clue is the library.

It’s shown to be very expansive, clearly showing that whoever owns it loves to read. Only one character comes to mind when you think about books.

The lizard family is next.

Notice that it’s a father, mother and child. Maybe Armin will have to end up killing both Historia and her child along with Eren? Or this could just show Armin’s regrets at the deaths he’s caused in general.

In the ruins, we again see the image of a snake eating it’s tail. Possibly representing the damage that Eren caused with the rumbling?

Now the butterflies. Possibly one of the biggest reasons why people believe that Eren is the eagle.

In total, we see 10 butterflies. I believe that this does represent the alliance as they attempt to stop Eren, and shows that about 5 of them will die. I believe that the first death is either represented by Hange or Zeke, depending on how you view it. Maybe Zeke, as he was an outlier to the group until his death. I believe that Levi, Reiner, and Pieck will be the last three deaths. To add to this, the ground shot also only shows five butterflies, meaning that more than likely the rest of the alliance will live.

Right after these deaths, the baby eagle is shown preparing to fight. I believe that this means that these last three deaths will happen in quick succession and drive Armin overboard, causing him to do what Mikasa won’t and kill Eren.

Next, we see both eagles in a field of graves, showing that Armin regrets not being able to save more people. Maybe he even blames himself for their deaths, wishing he had stopped Eren earlier.

While I know that Mikasa is the one to wake Eren up from under the tree, maybe this shows that Armin is the one who says ‘see you later’ before she does?

I believe that this represents Armin realizing that, without Eren’s destruction, they never would have gotten peace. I believe that him dropping the arrow represents him feeling a kind of gratitude towards him, in a weird way?

And then the end of the video just shows us again that, while Eren did ultimately bring about peace, it came at a heavy price.

A few more things to mention:

1. The lyrics DO tie into chapter titles, while I won’t list them here going through the comments of this video will show all of them to you.

2. Armin’s last name literally means eagle.

That’s the end to my theory! Basically, I believe that Armin will kill Eren and that peace will be achieved, however it won’t be a happy ending for anyone involved.

There’s a few things about the video that I can’t necessarily explain, like the eagle’s lost leg. Though maybe, if they do rid the world of titans, if Armin is injured while killing Eren he’ll end up losing it? It’s something I’ll keep an eye out for over these last few chapters. Another thing is the revealed last manga panel. Most people do believe that it’s Eren (for good reason), we never get that confirmation. If this is after another time skip, that could be another character, hell maybe it’s even Armin talking to his and Annie’s child.

That’s it from me though. Let me know what yall think, if you think it’s plausible or tell me that I’m wrong, I don’t care lol. Proofs to either disprove or prove this would be great if yall find any! Thanks for reading my longass post.

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electric-sympathy · 3 years

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OK, it’s Dean in Hell speculation time, is anyone ready??

I’ve been going through my notes for a fic that’s like, half vampirism half post-Hell issues, and a lot of the time I write down my general thoughts as if I’m making a post to organize it all and maintain clarity.

It’s a little hairy though so it’s going under the cut lol. Probably not something you should read if you don’t like dark!Dean material or horror in general. The process of being someone that writes horror means you have to go down dark trains of thought sometimes.

So, in this fic I needed to have flashbacks to that 10 years for a rather specific purpose. In order to do that, I needed to think about what Dean’s experience learning to torture would be like at an intimate level...

I don’t think a Dean drunk on the beginnings of demonhood’s first impulse would be torture itself.

I would think that Dean's early journey through torture and the process of becoming a demon-- which I DO believe starts the moment you step off the rack, with some preparatory mental/spiritual tenderizing leading up to it that warps one’s mental state-- would be a tactile experience. Dean is a tactile, intimate person, as well as someone that deals with autopsies for work, and I think twisting that around would be fitting. Anatomically speaking, I think he would spend lots of time learning the ins and outs of the human body.

I think the scariest thing about monsters like Alastair is the fact that they could run a hand down your side and it wouldn't be sexual. You don't have anything in your human experience to deal with violation that doesn’t fit into that box. There's no compartment in your head for it. That's the terrible unknown.

Human beings are very picky about who can touch them, how they can touch them, and when. I don't think people are always perturbed by touchy-feelies (i.e., a lot of people seem really uncomfortable with the excess of hugging and kissing my loud Italian family is in the habit of doing) because it reminds them of sex. It's just too close. Physical intimacy is an expression of trust. Being particularly comfortable with contact with your mother, for example, isn't just because she's taken care of you since you were a baby. It's because you love her. Contact can be uncomfortable because, emotionally, it can be like touching a raw wound. Too intense.

Being allowed to touch someone with no strings attached whatsoever would be utterly alien. Breaking these barriers down seems like an important step in becoming a demon and in torture in general. You put enough pressure on that human bubble around your soul, and eventually...

So, yes. I see the first few years of Dean's apprenticeship involving a whole lot of just touching. Slotting his fingers between muscle and bone, running tendons through his thumb and index fingers, sliding a hand down into the innards to feel the weight of a stomach in his palm. He knows precisely what an eyeball feels like, a brain, the clearance between your lungs and chest wall. And probably a lot of being able to answer those questions of "What does touching an eyeball feel like? A brain?"

Fuck, he could probably explain in detail why air comes out of your ears when you sneeze sometimes.

The experience of using someone, exploring their body in the most hostile way possible, would be an awful, twisted kind of freedom. We know from real life criminals that perverting and destroying such a fundamental social structure can be addicting. It's an intensity of control, rather than emotional attachment. Someone touching your lungs, cupping your stomach, poking through your intestines-- I think we don't always think of gory things like this as such a severe violation because our attention is diverted to the idea of violence and injury... But in Hell? Where there is nothing but time, no real bodies and no permanent harm?

I think even aside from the pain, just being the soul-of-the-day made the subject of that investigation of fucked up curiosity would be enough to terrorize people. I’m sure Alastair would let it go. And aside from the demonic interest in the violation of personal space (leading up to the ability of demonic possession), I do think a thinker like Dean would take it as an academic interest as well when stripped of the human trait of squeamishness/seeing damage to another as damage to oneself.

I think that Demon Dean would be sharp and insidious. I don’t think all those fics that see him (it?) as just like some kind of axe murderer are accurate (I’m talking about contemporary stuff written about S4 type Demon Dean, not juiced-up-specifically-on-murder Knight Dean who is a whole other deal)-- it’s Sam, the boring unempathetic one, that uses brute force when evil. I think Dean’s history of trauma, empathy, and academics could be used to form a demon that could destroy a man with just a few slices and cutting words in just the right place. S4 Demon Dean beating someone to death with the butt of an axe like any baby demon could do? Please!!!

~🖕 this blog is anti d*stiel and anti w*ncest, don’t use my meta for nasty shit 🖕~

#dean winchester #spn #dean meta #demon dean winchester #is it okay to tag apprentice Dean content with Alastair???

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meggannn · 4 years

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hello do u have any fantasy/scifi/dystopian books to recommend?? i love ur taste in books

UHHHH i’ve been reblogging posts about most of what i’m reading lately so none of this will probably come as a surprise, but off the top of my head......

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin made me cry and was easily the best book I’ve read so far this year. an ambassador from Earth (for some reason this is a cisgender guy) goes to planet full of genderless aliens to invite them to join a intergalactic league of worlds. there are politics, and of course some gender exploration (not perfect but still interesting), but mostly it’s an exploration of the human condition, like most of Grandma Ursula’s books. very good, also heartbreaking, with an enemies/rivals-to-lovers relationship in there, sort of. the first time I’ve liked an enemies/rivals-to-lovers anything tbh.

I just finished Graceling by Kristin Cashore and ngl it was dumb as shit at times but still kinda fun lol cause it had Prince Po who fulfills a lot of my favorite character tropes. it’s a YA fantasy/adventure/romance where people with heterochromia have “Graces” which are like superhuman abilities unique to the person. the main character has the grace of “killing” and for this reason has been used as a weapon all her life by her uncle the king. I’m reading the sequel right now which I think is a lot better so far and expands the world and character depth. there are a lot of POC, the protagonists are (mostly) WOC, and there’s some gender commentary about being a woman with power that isn’t really mind-blowing, tbh I found it kind of trite in the first book, but so far in the sequel I think it’s handled a bit more maturely. I hear the third book gets gud.

if you’re in an Avatar: The Last Airbender mood, I was surprised to enjoy The Rise of Kyoshi by FC Yee and I hear the sequel is as good or even better. it didn’t blow my mind—some things were predictable but others did surprise me at times. and I enjoy Kyoshi struggling her wants with her identity as an Avatar, a pursuer of justice, and also a killer.

the MaddAddam trilogy (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam) by Margaret Atwood is probably one of my favorite dystopian books, or “speculative fiction” as she calls it. it’s near-future world where most people either live in corporate compounds provided to them by the companies they work for, or in poverty in half-flooded cities. most of the world is in need of resources. the books follow two parallel stories, one of what happens after a worldwide extinction event wipes out humanity, and the second of how society gets to that point. predictably, it’s a dark and unpleasant read. despite my enjoying it, I have a lot of mixed feelings about this series, it’s super weird on race (like most Atwood things I’ve read) and I didn’t like the last book at all, but I thought the first two were pretty good and enjoyable in a sick way, if you think you can stomach a story of where we might be in 20-30 years wrt climate change, capitalism, genetic modification, and scientific freedom gone rogue. it’s definitely a hard series to read. I feel like I need to give a disclaimer for why I like this one so SLIGHT SPOILERS: personally, I think of Oryx and Crake as like a typical “male” narrative of the apocalypse, where a regular guy who was there to witness the events of the End of Times ends up alone at the end and trying to rough it out by foraging a ruined land for supplies and living day by day, and I think of The Year of the Flood as a more typically “female” perspective, where the apocalypse just sort of happens to a regular woman and her community. then she—eventually they—have to find ways to deal with it and come together to think of surviving the future, not just each day. it’s not to say that one way is better than the other, but I think both perspectives combined make for a fuller view and YOTF really had a sort of light at the end of the tunnel that I found myself hoping for after reading OAC. (meanwhile, the last book.... I ignore it.)

the Murderbot series by Martha Wells is a delight and really funny. in the far-future where humans are exploring the galaxy, a security robot develops feelings and takes on bodyguard and mercenary work as it discovers how to be a person. I’m still not done (and the series is ongoing) but this is a pretty sweet, lighthearted read of a scifi future in which corporations are still awful and technology is still misused, but not everything is terrible and friends can still be made and robots have feelings for their charges.

looking back it is embarrassing how few books by WOC I have read this year, I am trying to rectify that. but also I’m glad in a way that I’m reading at all because this is the first year in a long time i have actually, like, read stuff that isn’t fanfic or comics? and that is entirely because this year I am working in a job that isn’t working me to the bone and have time to read at the end of the day, unlike the previous 4 years, so this list is not as long as I’d like it to be, but so far, the sixteen books I’ve read this year are a lot better than the total of one book I read in 2019, which was a Deadpool novel, so.

feel free to add me on goodreads btw

#alliecatstrophe #askbox #books

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hamliet · 4 years

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Hello! Have you seen TROS yet? [Spoiler alert] I was really devastated by the ending - coming out the theater feeling upset and disappointed. Do you have any thoughts on it? Or maybe any plan to write fix-it fic? Thank you!

I am seeing it tomorrow. That said, I’ve read the plot summary, and no good execution can save that. So I was planning on posting this after I watched it with amendments made as I hope to enjoy it, but I’ll just post it now and amend this as necessary based on the film as I see it. (I still believe I will enjoy the film, even if I don’t think it’s a good film. I do think that. I really do... I hope.)

BASED ON THE PLOT SUMMARIES ALONE (grains of salt everywhere!):

I think it’s technically… messy writing at best and downright bad writing in other parts.* 10/10 it’s a blockuster-y, JJ Abrams-esque, (hopefully) fun, messy narrative movie that will be forgotten in 0.3 seconds.

Disclaimer before everyone comes after me: if you like it, AWESOME. If you think it’s good writing, great! Good writing and bad writing are inherently subjective; that said, there are general consensuses among literary studies about what constitutes bad and good writing. Hence, I’m relying on those consensuses when I call it messily written.

Before we get into specifics, I’ll compare it to two other major pop culture endings: Game of Thrones and Avengers: Endgame.

TROS is similar to the GoT final season in that it attempts to incorporate every aspect of fan speculation ever. However, it’s more like Endgame in that it is still somewhat true to the themes and characters—but unfortunately also like Endgame, it is not transformative or particularly interesting as a story on its own. In fact, it’s rather boring and honestly… bad storytelling. It tries to rehash Return of the Jedi but it doesn’t succeed in any way because the world and the overall story has grown since the early 1980s, and so the same story doesn’t work anymore.

Showing a cyclical story remaining cyclical with no sign of that breaking–instead, the cycles are even reinforced–does not give optimism nor does it give hope.

Redemption=death needs to die already. If we really want to reach people and tell them that the message is that you can always make a better choice (as Daisy Ridley and JJ Abrams have said about Kylo’s arc), maybe don’t send the message in each and every story that you have to die to redeem yourself. Look outside of cultural secular Calvinism, for the love of God and the betterment of the world and stories as a whole.

Now let’s talk Rey’s parentage.

We know Rey Palpatine wasn’t planned from the beginning (Trevorrow, the original write/director of IX, who was thankfully fired, said that he never planned for Palpatine to return), which means Rey’s parentage was most likely retconned from TLJ and there was no real plan for the sequel trilogy’s overall character arcs (save for Kylo’s, according to the actors and writers).

Listen to me. You don’t have to have everything planned when you start a three-film saga, but you gotta know the major beats.

This is like a sad game of movie telephone.

Yes, I know the OT Star Wars didn’t have a plan either and it’s like one of the only examples I can think of where no plan worked out–albeit not without hiccups (Leia kissing Luke, anyone?) If you expect lightning to strike twice in the same place, I’m sorry, but you are hopelessly naive.

Having Rey decide she wants to carry on the name Skywalker at the end is lame as shit. It’s a way to appease fans while being like nah she still isn’t related. Trying to please every fan is a sure way to guarantee that you will please no one. It might make for a perfectly pleasant film experience (I really hope it does), but not good, lasting storytelling (though not like, horrific either). It’s meh. It’s like… giving someone who is starving oatmeal. It will get the job done but will it satisfy and enthrall people? Not quite.

And let’s switch gears for a minute to Finn and Rose, my first and third favorite characters in this trilogy (Kylo is second, Rey is fourth). The sidelining of Rose is nothing short of a terrible attempt to please the white-supremacist-aligned Fandom Menace. Let’s not pretend it’s anything else. JJ’s lipservice about how wonderful it was that Kelly was cast at SW Celebration is, in hindsight, absolutely nauseating.

Shame on JJ. Shame on Disney.

But the main problem I have with this film is this:

Why did it need to exist?

The answer is money. Obviously. I know, I know stories exist to make money. That doesn’t mean I can’t criticize the fact that the story was sacrificed on the unholy altar of capitalism and Disney’s desire to own our souls. (Disney–the reason I like your movies is that a lot of them are good stories. I’m not interested in pandering soooooo.)

The Rise of Skywalker does not enhance the Star Wars narrative. Nothing about this film satisfies the Skywalker Saga nor the sequel trilogy, and it kind of all comes down to Kylo Ren’s death being the nail that sunk the entire world of Star Wars.

Keep in mind Kylo is not my favorite character when I’m saying this. Finn is. But I never spoke about Finn as much because the story didn’t utilize him properly. I never had concerns about Finn getting a happy ending while I was worried for Rey and Kylo’s arcs. (Finn’s arc, however, did have a ton more potential than was capitalized on; in particular, he would have been better if he was more conflicted over say, shooting other stormtroopers. His whole character humanized the usual red shirts, which when paired with Rose’s everywoman character, had so much potential I could shriek about it all day. That he didn’t lead other brainwashed stormtroopers into rebellion and freedom saddens me. Also, his ending again seems to bring about a good victim/bad victim dichotomy when it is compared with Kylo’s. The reason these two are my faves is that they were brainwashed as kids which, well, I can kinda sorta heavily relate to.)

Kylo Ren and Rey’s relationship doesn’t really get much better than it did in The Last Jedi. It actually rehashes that arc significantly. We already knew Kylo would fight for Rey and the galaxy, so… how was this different? Now, if he had lived, it would have been different, because it was the after the fight that proved that Kylo wasn’t ready to redeem himself in The Last Jedi. It was Kylo’s choice to stay at the expense of Rey and the Resistance that was literally the set up for conflict in the next film. This… turned it into nothing? Their conflict is rehashed and then whoo-hoo! Easy way out! Kill him so that they don’t have to deal with the “after” this time! They never have to deal with the conflict literally set up in The Last Jedi.

That’s bad writing, fam.

Life is infinitely more interesting. Leaving the story open with a living Skywalker instead of killing literally everyone involved with the Skywalkers except Rey who now adopts that name is… so unsatisfying I can’t even. Even if later material shows him showing up as a Force Ghost, like: cool saw that with Vader so this… adds nothing to the existing films. It doesn’t really reconcile anything.

It also… does not help the Rey=Mary Sue argument. She is NOT a Mary Sue, and that is a sexist term itself, but in no way is it a satisfying ending to her arc, because it isn’t a well-written ending which means it isn’t a well-written arc. The problem with Rey’s ending is a mirror of my problem with Kylo’s ending: it’s the very much a combination of her ending in The Last Jedi and her life before The Force Awakens.

She and Kylo are now separated (permanently this time).

She’s has her Resistance friends.

She’s alone on a desert planet.

But wait! Now she’s now happy!

Uh, why? The only reason I can think of is that the narrative demands it. Because honestly, what changes? The family she chose–the Skywalkers–are just as dead as her Palpatine birth family, soooooo. I suppose she reconciled with her heritage and come to peace with it and so that’s why she’s happy now, but… I can’t lie. It’s not hopeful. It’s not optimistic. It’s not Star Wars and it isn’t consistent for the message (especially if this is supposed to be the ending to the saga!) to be both:

life sucks for the Skywalkers and then they die–seriously, look at Shmi, Anakin, Padmé, Leia, Luke, Han, Kylo–it is LITERALLY ALL OF THEM; and

deciding to be a Skywalker means you’re at peace.

I can only assume Rey’s life will suck and then she’ll die, tbh, unless of course she is better off because of her blood… which negates the point of her being a Skywalker and is a really gross idea.

YOU CAN’T HAVE BOTH IN YOUR ENDING. PICK ONE.

Rejecting the Skywalkers would be anti-Star Wars, for sure, but marrying into them as a way of bridging the unfinished pain between Anakin and Padmé and Leia and her father? Much better. Or just leave it open. Honestly, leave it open for Kylo and Rey to both be alive and see each other again.

But you’re just upset your ship didn’t get a happy ending!

No, I’m upset about the storytelling, of which shipping is a part. A canonical part just as much as the lightsaber fights are. Anakin and Padmé. Leia and Han. Finn and Rose. Poe and Zorii. Rey and Ben.

The Force created Anakin, remember? All films–even the spin-offs–encourage our heroes to trust the force. “May the force be with us.” But the Force created an ENTIRE FAMILY THAT LIVED LIVES THAT SUCKED AND MADE LIFE SUCK FOR EVERYONE AROUND THEM AND THEN THEY DIED.

May the Force stay far the f*ck away from me, amen.

But seriously I can’t trust the world of a galaxy far far away or its narrative anymore. It’s a contradiction that causes all nine films to unravel. Why?

Again, let’s return to my earlier GoT comparison, because there is one thing TROS does that is more similar to GoT than to Endgame: Endgame drew together a bunch of unique distinctly separate stories into a crossover. TROS, just like GoT, relied on cliffhanger, incomplete endings to its films and therefore the ending matters a hell of a lot more than a stand-alone story.

I’m not dying to rewatch it like I am with stories where I realize I might learn more the second time. And by “rewatch it” I mean the entire nine-film saga. Knowing that canonically Leia, Luke, Han–they all die and their last descendent dies, the last descendent of Padmé and Anakin–for me, it’s personally gonna be hard to watch again. It’s gonna be hard to watch TROS going into it the first time.

And so the saga of bad endings continues.

Game of Thrones remains the worst at a -100 out of 10. It’s followed by Tokyo Ghoul:re which is still 2/10, and Star Wars is, on paper (meaning after I see it I am hoping it rises a few notches) now… 4/10. Endgame is a solid 6.5/10.

Banana Fish, sweetie, I’m sorry you were ranked down there. Your ending is a 7/10 but the rest of your story is like, 10/10 so you are sprung from this list.

Help me, Shingeki no Kyojin. You’re my only hope.

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