#You are one of the few people who truly understand Leon as a character
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I’ve recently got into hockey fics and it’s completely taken over what little brain space I had left. Do you have any recs for a baby new to this wonderful new world? 💕💕
hello friend and welcome to hockey! i’m sure you sent this ask looking for a nice little list of links but unfortunately because of who i am as a person i’m about to give you way more information than you asked for.
before we dive in: i have a terrible memory when it comes to stuff i’ve read, and i have a pathological lack of bookmarks, and there is a LOT of hockey fic, so despite a fair bit of crowdsourcing from friends this list is obviously by no means exhaustive. there is SO much good stuff out there that isn't linked here. hockey fic to me has always felt like a very choose-your-own adventure fandom, and i want to empower you to choose your own adventure. there is so much hockey fic, there is truly something for everyone, but of course it’s all also subject to personal taste, so please read on for a little smorgasbord from which hopefully you can find some stuff you’ll love.
a very brief history of hrpf
when i say there is a lot of hockey fic, i feel like it is fun context to know that people have been posting hockey fic on the internet for more than 20 years. i have not been reading it for 20 years, so even having many years of this fandom under my belt, i am still building off the hard work of the beautiful weirdos who came before me. a lot of the pre-ao3 stuff has sadly but understandably been lost to time, but if you’re interested at all in seeing a bit of how we got to where we are now, @lovethygoalie has compiled some links here, and he has an nhl fandom history tag with some more fandom history!
hockey fic, due to the nature of the sport and the inexorable march of time, has always kind of happened in waves/cycles of certain players/pairings/teams being popular in the fandom for a little while, then fading away as new players/pairings/teams become the new hot thing. every time there’s a new wave of a popular thing, new people get sucked into the fandom, which creates this very charming-to-me phenomenon where i can often guess the ballpark of when they joined hockey fandom based on who their faves are, what teams they’re into, even what teams/players they’re NOT into, lol. (but obviously there have also always been people shipping rare pairs and medium-popular pairs and rooting for less popular teams and players, too! it’s a big fandom!)
anyway, that’s something i have found super fascinating to observe over the years and also something i wanted to touch on here to explain why there’s going to be some fic recs in here featuring players who you might never see mentioned the current hrpf zeitgeist. some of the players have retired, some of the pairings have simply waned in popularity, some of the teams are just not currently “in” in hockey fandom, but i still think it’s totally worth going back to dig into older stuff in addition to having fun with the current popular narratives and pairings, etc.
but onto the recs!
(it should go without saying, but please heed the tags/warnings on anything linked here! i’m offering these links mostly without commentary, but a lot of it is going to be mature/explicit-rated, some of it will deal with sensitive themes, some if it might have stuff you just don’t care for! not knowing your personal tastes, i tried to curate a selection of various lengths, types, tropes, pairings, teams, etc.)
i saw you just read my behemoth matthew/leon fic, so let’s start with more of that. it’s a popular pairing right now! very fun characters and narratives to work with! here are a few authors whose matthew/leon stuff i definitely recommend across the board (links go to their ao3 pages; there’s no point in linking individual fics because i would just be linking all of them):
bropunzeling
daisysusan
ohtempora
and some short one-shots that i really enjoyed:
if you handed over your body by photovoltaic (mature, 2.7k)
truce by anonymous (explicit, 2.1k)
and i will not come back the same by void_fish (explicit, 4k)
partly crowdsourced from pals, here are additional fic recs for pairings/players/narratives that are varying levels of currently relevant:
Fragments by heartequals (cole caufield/nick suzuki, explicit, 20k)
wait a year by daisysusan (quinn hughes/brady tkachuk, explicit, 16.8k)
cover love’s bruise by addandsubtract (johnny gaudreau/sean monahan, explicit, 8.3k)
don't ever be a stranger by bropunzeling (jamie drysdale/trevor zegras, explicit, 24k)
For the Summer by gigantic (jack hughes/trevor zegras, explicit, 3.5k)
Lionheart by Aliquis (nico hischier/jonas siegenthaler, explicit, 53k)
All Your'n by jvrcus (mathew barzal/anthony beauvillier, teen & up, 13.8k)
let's make it cinematic by kitnita (mathew barzal/anthony beauvillier, explicit, 13.2k)
@grittyreadsfic is a mostly-hockey fic rec blog! they read much more widely than me and definitely have recs for a lot of currently popular pairings not covered here, as well as rarepairs and more niche stuff.
@postoperation compiled a great list of older-ish hockey fic recs that i HIGHLY recommend, and not just because one of mine is included in there. 😂
more older fics, in no particular order; a once again partly-crowdsourced-from-my-friends list of recs:
so collect your scars and wear them well by addandsubtract (connor mcdavid/dylan strome, mature, 26k)
A Month of Sundays by Kelfin (erik johnson/gabe landeskog, mature, 68k)
Friday Night Arrives Without a Suitcase by marycontraire (danny briere/claude giroux, not rated, 14.6k)
Something Old by uraneia (danny briere/claude giroux, explicit, 13.4k)
if courage is a live wire by redheartglow (adam henrique & taylor hall friendship, teen & up, 15.5k)
Like an Explosion by Dark_Eyed_Junco (nic dowd/derek forbort, mature, 4.3k)
Lions in Arms by xihale (alex ovechkin/sidney crosby, mature, 4.7k)
Hockey at the End of the World by ionthesparrow (jeff carter/mike richards and tyler toffoli/tanner pearson, mature to explicit, a series of five fics totaling 383k)
@deepbutdazzlingdarkness has a washington capitals fic rec list; i haven’t read everything on there but i have liked what i’ve read! [i am very picky about caps fic because a) i’m a snob about local details and b) i can only read so much smut about dudes i might run into at the jeni’s ice cream in tysons corner. but there is some very good stuff. similarly, a rec i haven’t read but it comes from a friend whose writing i deeply admire and whose taste i trust implicitly:
mouth-deep by saintsideways (nicklas backstrom/mike green, explicit, 30k); the reccer says, “it’s a wild time and coated with an absolutely visionary layer of grime I can only aspire to.”]
@bunnymcfoo also has an extensive rec list, much of which i have not read, but definitely worth checking out if you need more!
anyway, sorry if that was too much, but hopefully it is just enough to get you started chasing your own hockey fic bliss. my ask box is open if you have any questions! ❤
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But then I tend to slot Eve as fairly badly socialized heroic antagonist and Arthur as the actual villain. Just on grounds of - Eve apparently going out of her way for Jean (Yeah, remove the drugs from the house, no need for a second suicide, letting Jean stay in the house) and in general deciding that the townwide illusion has to end. Arthur meanwhile - well he is the one that apparently set off the golden statue incident with his "story" (especially as he callously using Belduke's home for it)
(Part one here, because I didn't see there was more until I was already answering the first ask.)
I think the ending of the game is best assessed looking at it as a Layton game; there are plenty of revenge-seeking people in Ace Attorney, but it’s easier to see the trends looking at Layton villains in comparison to AA ones.
Since Unwound Future (and arguably earlier, though I wouldn't call Baron Reinhold or Anton truly villains imo), there's been a formula of sorts with two antagonists, one generally lower-level than the other, with different levels of justification & narrative forgiveness. A brief summary:
Unwound Future: What both of these characters did was messed up, but they both come away regretting it. Even though they'll face legal consequences, the narrative is still forgiving of both of them.
Last Specter: Jakes is hopelessly corrupt and gets his Deserved Comeuppance, and we have no idea about Descole’s deal.
Miracle Mask/Eternal Diva: This guy also did some messed up things, but he was being manipulated by Descole, so can you really blame him?
Azran Legacy: A lot of people have already spoken at length about why Bronev's turning point feels like too little too late and more. I think you need to at least be in a position to understand why Layton would choose to forgive him in the end, even if you personally can't.
Azran Legacy came out after the crossover, though they were only a few months apart, which is interesting considering the thematic similarities among their antagonists. (Cut for getting into AL spoilers.)
I agree with you about primary vs secondary antagonist here; I'd argue Eve is more like Descole (revenge; dead family; several different personas/identities) and Arthur is more like Leon (terrible awful father; runs the show; responsible for a great deal of what goes wrong). I think where the crossover goes wrong in comparison to Azran Legacy is in how much Arthur is unequivocally accepted back into the fold. Going back to our comparisons here...Des is never going to forgive Bronev, in my opinion, for the murder of his wife and daughter (among other wrongs). Hershel forgives Leon because he is in a better position to; he was not as personally wronged, and the theme with him is forgiveness. Hershel forgiving Leon is, dare I say, necessary to emphasize the theme of forgiveness in the series, and it would be more out of character for him not to.
But everyone forgives Arthur. Now -- Arthur may not have been directly responsible for anyone's deaths, but what he did was still deeply unethical, and while I am a firm believer in restorative justice over punitive justice, I think it doesn't have to be the case that Eve especially forgives him. Getting forgiven by Espella is important, and as much as I dislike it, it is in character for her. And the emphasis on embracing forgiveness and sympathy and understanding is a Layton theme as a whole.
Ace Attorney is a game about how systems can fail people, but it's not a game in which you can fundamentally change that system just by playing. It's frustratingly realistic in that you can only get rid of corrupt people and not the system that corrupted those people in the first place -- Kristoph Gavin, Gant, von Karma, and even the main antagonist of DGS. And there is also often a divide in AA between the antagonist who did some shit but ultimately is misguided (people like Ini Miney and Acro and Adrian Andrews and Godot) as opposed to the antagonist who is unrepentant and in some ways seeking something more (Matt Engarde, as well as the aforementioned corrupt legal figures).
And I think the collision here between the "Ace Attorney antagonist formula" and the "Professor Layton antagonist formula" in terms of how Eve and Arthur are ultimately written is interesting, because I think ultimately how they're written falls more into how Layton tends to treat its antagonists, but Eve leans slightly more towards the category of "Ace Attorney antagonist who massively screwed up and now has to face that" more so than the analogous Layton category.
But ultimately, as you've said here and as I implied in my previous response...Eve's plans would have been bad for Espella, but they would have been good for Labyrinthia. Arthur's plan involved just...carrying on with the way things were, content to let Espella believe what she would and to keep the fantasy going. It's why Layton and Luke present a more immediate threat to him -- though I don't doubt Eve had some hand in convincing him what exactly to do about them so that she could help Layton escape to the woods.
And in the end -- Eve never wanted Espella dead. She wanted Espella to see the truth, to see the gravity of what was done. We see that in all the times she bails Espella out of bad situations -- aboard the ship, in the courthouse, and at the Bell Tower.
#plvpw#plvpw spoilers#answered ask#grundpfieler#meta#pl spoilers#azran legacy spoilers#i'm not sure this is entirely a response to what you said. sorry?
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✨ :0
((Oh boy, It's Lucian loving hours!
Seriously, where do I even start with all your blogs? Yes, Even though you only sent me this on one, I'm going to talk about all of them.
Strength-of-heart/Adversity-born: First blog I met you on (on WillfulWayfarer). I knew you as a Terra twin before anything else. I love interacting with other Terra's because usually people who share my muse can see why I love him so much. Then I mentioned my 'Hearted Lingering Will' Verse to you (which was made for interacting with twins at first) and you helped to flesh him out to the Will we know and love today. Seriously, I don't think I would have him in this form if it weren't for us talking about it.
Besides Will and occasionally Cloud, I must admit that I don't interact with your Terra much, but I love him nonetheless.
Terranort and Arret also have a few RPs here and there that I like and I'm still interested in poking Ansem.
Reverent-Dreamer: I can't count how many time's we've talked to each other about how much we love Terra and Riku, especially the mentor/student like relationship they have, despite Terra not having taught him much.
Not only are they that, but our Terra and Riku are just, brothers. They share a deep bond that we've shown in our RPs with the two of them together. They are hands down my favorite platonic relationship in all of Kingdom Hearts.
Lionfated: Where do I even start with your Leon? Well for one thing, I think we both got each other heavily into Strifehart. I actually didn't ship it beforehand, but now I can't not ship it, not after we've RPed it together. After the Scars thread, I don't think I can go back to not shipping Strifehart.
They're just so perfect for each other. They're alike enough to understand each other, but different enough to be surprised by each other. They've both lost people in their lives so they're hesitant to trust, but once they do, they love each other hard. They heal each other. They're each other's lights in the darkness.
This is hands down my favorite blog of yours and probably the one that we have the most RPs on. I just love your Leon to bits and pieces. He's just so uniquely yours, down to the idea that he has a coffee addiction, just like you. XD
Don't even get me started on The Fatal Midnight Fall. It's probably my favorite of the Strifehart AUs. To think that it started with a night of us chatting back and forward to each other and trying to figure out the pieces of this puzzle and how they fit in place. We know how it ends, but that's a secret. I can't wait till we get to the good bits in that RP.
Moon-Hollowed: Not much I can say about Isa, except that I can tell that you've thought a lot about him. I've only just begun interacting with him, but I do want his relationship with Terra to develop. There's a lot of barriers to get there and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Nights-Fear: The blog of yours that I know the least about, but recently I started poking your FFXV muses on Mako (with my Ignis) and I have been enjoying what we've got so far! I don't know many of the other fandoms you've got on there, but I'm glad you're having fun!
Lucian, you are truly one of the best friends I've made here on Tumblr and I'm truly happy to have known you! Your art is amazing and you put so much thought into the characters that you do pick up! Thank you so much for being my friend <3 ))
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I noticed you like the witcher and was wondering if you ever considered writing a merthur witcher!au with a Witcher Arthur who is tasked with hunting magical creatures (and being conflicted between which ones truly deserve the sword and which ones were cursed due to other circumstances) and a bamf not to mention snarky openly a sorcerer Merlin? I just think that would be neat lol
Ok. So. I normally hate AUs and Especially crossover AUs but this.... is incredible. I've tweaked it a lot to keep as close to canon as possible though, hope that's cool (I know you said openly magical Merlin but my mind kinda ran away from me with this one😅)!
I'm thinking the ONLY thing Witcher-y about this universe is that Witchers and monsters (and magic) exist. None of the places/wars/background characters are real (maybe Geralt and Jaskier will make a cameo but probably not).
So maybe when Arthur is born and Igraine dies, Uther is SET on raising a magic hating, magic killing machine, and the best way to do that?? Have him turned into a Witcher. Literally warriors with the SOLE purpose of killing monsters (and if Uther sees all magic users as monster as well, then who in Camelot is gonna correct him?) So he ships him off to Witcher school as a new born (school of the Bear, obviously) and tells them to do what they want to him, as long as he comes out capable of great violence, will do what he is told, and is returned when he comes of age.
Maybe the Bears try to keep him? Arthur is one of their Cubs, and Uther is obviously a terrible father with terrible morals and even worse motives, but Uther shows up a year after Arthur comes of age with an army. They may be Witchers, but there are few of them, and they don't stand a chance.
So Arthur is returned to Camelot as the Famed Witcher Prince, given control of the knights, and told to hop to. (Uther also banishes him from EVER using his signs, because it's a little too close to magic for his comfort.) Camelot's army becomes almost impossible to beat, because though they may not physically be Witchers, they're trained like Witchers, and that goes a long way on the battlefield.
The round table knights come along (Leon's always been there and is oddly protective of The Witcher Prince. But Gwaine and Lancelot (both of whom have met Merlin outside of Camelot before) and Elyan and Percival show up) and... Arthur is extremely fond of them in a way he doesn't even really understand. But he's a Witcher, nothing but a killer, so he struggles to connect with them. But of all the knights he has, they're the only ones that really try? Leon makes sure he looks after himself and Elyan asks about his weapons and Gwaine takes the piss and Percival and Lancelot treat him so softly he doesn't know what to do with it. And none of them are scared of him. Everyone's scared of him. His adopted sister can barely look at him (though he gets the feeling that it's pity and well as fear), the councilmen are terrified, the people he's meant to be protecting are scared of him. Even Uther is afraid that one day Arthur will break from his control.
And then Merlin shows up (a few years later than in canon) and Lance and Gwaine are excited to see him so... he can't be that bad, if two of his favourite people love him. And Merlin isn't scared of him either. And though something about the man feels... off (Uther confiscated his medallion because it was in the same vein as Witcher signs: too close to magic he couldn't control or explain) he's nice, and funny, but also doesn't put up with his shit. (Merlin is definitely the Jaskier to Arthur's Geralt). They clash a lot at first, in the same way that Arthur and Gwaine used to clash before they began to understand each other. And then they become besties and Merlin is usually the one to make Arthur smile and comforts him when he starts to hate his eyes or his scars or his stupid silver sword.
Arthur confesses to him late one night that Camelot doesn't feel like his home, that he hates his father for what he did; not for sending him away, but for bringing him back again. Condemning him to hundreds of years on the throne of a Kingdom who would kill him if he weren't the Prince, who killed his clan and and hates the other schools and forces him to kill people who are are only slightly different to him. In fact, if another Witcher wandered into the Kingdom, Uther would probably have Arthur kill them for being a magic wielding feral monster. He also confesses that whilst half the monsters he kills, the Drowners and the hags and the Alghouls, actually deserve it, the rest... the far away Griffins that live in peace, and the Cockatrice that was hiding in it's cave and hurting no one, and the Unicorn that Witchers normally don't kill anyway, the sorcerers who dare to just exist... they don't deserve it. And he kills them anyway because that's what he's built to do. And then Merlin tells him it isn't. Merlin is the first person in his entire time in Camelot who tells him he isn't built to kill, but he's built to protect, built to lead as well, if that's what he wants. He reveals his own magic and Arthur is beyond touched that Merlin would trust him of all people with this. Merlin explains that whilst it might be Arthur's destiny to rule Albion and bring magic back and undo what Uther did, if he wants to run away right now, to never think about destiny again, Merlin will go with him. And the knights probably would to.
~
ANYWAY I GOT WAY TOO INTO THAT!!! This is DEFINTIELY going on The List in the next update!!
#witcher#bbc merlin#merlin witcher crossover#crossover#witcher!arthur#merthur#prompt#witcher signs#witcher medallion#send requests#send asks#asks#requests#i LOVE this#i love YOU
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So I decided to make an analysis about the last scene of Infinite Darkness
But before I start with the fun part, I just want to tell you that my history with “angst ships”
I had a bad experience with another ship, soul mates full of angst tropes and true love, beautiful... and a really bad ending because the showrunner fought with the actors (I wasted years watching and I regret it).
Anyway, after suffering that kind of pain, no other ships and angst scenes can hit me hard enough. I'm numb or just got used to it. You choose.
So maybe the scene of Leon and Claire's argument wasn't that impactful for me because of that. But for all the fans who felt hurt, I understand and it's okay to feel that way, because the scene was meant to hurt. The scene exists because of that. And your feelings are valid.
So let's get to the fun part.
spoiler alert, it's not that fun, it actually hurts 😅
The scene starts with Leon going to meet Claire at the gates of the White House.
I don't think anyone denies the fact that, whatever Leon is doing, he just wants to protect Claire. And he doesn't want her involved because of it.
But this dialogue makes this even more evident if we analyze how it begins.
Nothing in a show or movie is by accident. Everything is handpicked for one reason or another. The meaning is not always that deep, but there is still a meaning behind it all.
So when – of all the ways a conversation can be started – they decide to make Claire joke that she sneaked out of the hospital, Leon takes it seriously and she has to clarify that it's a joke, there's a reason:
Show that Leon is taking what happened to her too serious, and Claire not that much.
When Claire makes a comment about when he's going to stop treating her like a kid and he says probably never. There's a reason:
Show that Leon wants to protect her (or being overprotective) and Claire doesn't like it.
Of course, some might argue that this specific line is capcom trying to show that their feelings aren't romantic and sink the ship completely. And, ok, people are free to think that.
But if they really wanted to sink cleon forever, they shouldn't have done the scene of Leon saving Claire the way they did. They did it because they knew it would tease a certain part of the fans... They knew exactly what they were doing...
And there's simply no reason to tease a ship you want to sink.
So no, I don't think that's it...
For me the scene means the classic and simple: "stop being worried about me🙄" "noooo🗣️"
Another way to intensify Leon being overprotective is Claire's broken arm. A reminder that she was injured following his plan. Just as she was hurt the last time they saw each other in Harvardville.
And yes, I know Degeneration made Claire hurt to take her out of the action. It is undeniable. But somehow I don't think the same situation and reason applies to Infinite darkness.
Because Claire was already out of combat, following Leon's plan and showing no intention of doing anything different. It's not like she's going to attack the monster that is several platforms higher than where she is. She couldn't fly around and there were no guns where she was anyway.
So why hurt her to get her out of combat if the story itself has already done that?
Again, you are free to think differently. Capcom made Claire dirty, she was underestimated and they wasted her potential. I won't argue with that, I'm also on the team Claire deserves better.
I just don't think it fits this specific situation.
The injured arm is there and a awkward conversation about Leon being overprotective starts because of it. I think it makes sense.
So moving on.
Claire mentions the chip and Leon looks disappointed for a moment and says he thought they were going to dinner.
This is to indicate that he didn't come to see her with the intention of breaking their friendship. Leon just wanted to spend a good time with her and nothing more. Some place a little more normal, maybe?👀
But Claire wants the chip and tells Leon her plan. The same plan that Shen May was killed trying to convince her partner to follow. Is there a parallel here?
The only difference is that Jason broke her neck while Leon decided to break Claire's heart.
Okay now I could show more parallels between them, but I won't because this is already too long and I know maybe I'm reading too much into this. Resident Evil isn't that deep most of the time 😂
Anyway, Claire asked for the chip and Leon said no.
And that's the point, right.
The climax of the conversation and the turning point in their relationship.
Note that Leon took a few seconds to say he couldn't. That was the moment when he made his decision...
He went to meet her for dinner, remember? He didn't expect to have this conversation or make a decision like that. But he had to.
Now, I'm not from the US and I don't trust politicians in general, fiction or not. But I admit this sounds realistic.
Just imagine if the president makes a speech about peace and prosperity and whatever and the next day the media reveals that members of the government are involved in BOW and planning an attack on another country.
At the very least, it won't look good.
In the worst case, it will be a catastrophe 😂
So... I don't agree with Leon, but I understand why he chose this.
It's an important decision, however. And how long it takes him to say something and how he's quiet after saying it shows he knows what's on the line. Not just the security of the country and “peace”, but also his relationship with Claire.
And despite everything... He didn't lie to her.
It would be much easier for Leon to simply say "the chip was destroyed in the fight" when she asked. Claire would never know about it and probably never doubt him. And they would still be fine with each other and having dinner.
But he didn't lie. Why?
Because their relationship is not based on lies. And it's not based on betrayals.
And while it may be hard to believe right now and it hurts to think about it, this relationship is still based on truth and trust in each other. And now their relationship is being tested.
It's easy to trust someone you're on good terms. How hard it must be to trust someone who has let you down.
There is a lot of room for development here.
Obviously Claire felt hurt in this moment. Maybe even betrayed. Heartbroken. I think we all feel that same way.
But Leon played fair there. He said he had the chip, showed it to her, and then said he wouldn't give it to her.
He was honest with her. And this act also shows respect.
They are two people with different points of view and that truth hurts.
There is silence as they look at each other. She never asked his reasons and he obviously never told them. The exchange of glances is enough for them to understand what was happening.
When Claire says “you do things your way and I do mine” it's almost like “do you know what that means? ”
Then Leon nods and another moment of silence. The time they need to accept that the relationship is broken.
Now that's angst
Interesting choice of camera angle. Showing her broken arm as a visual reminder of why he was pushing her away like that.
Claire leaves, but looks back and says again that his outfit doesn't suit him.
What's interesting here is that the director has done a few interviews over the past few weeks and he always said that the suit is a representation of Leon's position in government.
Claire commenting that it doesn't suit him is basically the writers/producers/directors admitting that this position doesn't look good.
And while all the characters praising Leon for his success, Claire is the one who sees this reality and who he truly is out of the suit (position)
And that's good angst.
Claire walks away and Leon with a sad look watching her leave and he has to say to himself "I will stop this".
Could it be just one of his one-lines? Yes.
Could it be a way for him to remind himself why he's doing this, even if it means sacrificing his relationship with Claire?
It's already done, now he has to make it worth it.
Whatever happens after that is a mystery.
I don't think Claire believes that Leon is going to cover up the government's involvement in things (their discussion would be much more intense if that were the case), she probably thinks he's going to resolve it internally without taking anything public, which is precisely what she wants to do.
I also don't think Leon believes Claire is going to give up on the investigation, he probably thinks it's going to take some time to her to get real evidence and he has time to carry out his plans.
But this is capcom... They are masters of forgetting plot points. So who knows.
Angst is only good if it has a good closure. I hope they keep that in mind.
In any other tv show that used this kind of angst trope and drama I would be completely fine...
I would expect a sequel to this plot. The characters find each other unexpectedly, having to work together and acting awkwardly because they don't know how to stick around each other after the argument. Then the story would develop and they would gradually mend their relationship.
That's the trope.
So that's all I can hope for.
#cleon#this just got too long and l didn't write half of my thought 😅#I only watch the show once but I've seen this scene a thousand times#I'll probably have more to say after rewatching everything again#leon kennedy#claire redfield#resident evil infinite darkness#leon x claire#claire x leon
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Biohazard: Infinite Darkness
At First Glance
Good morning to everyone. It’s been a long time since we’ve had new content for Leon Kennedy-related material, and I have risen from the ashes to observe, to poke and prod and lay flat this soft, tender meat beneath the microscope.
Netflix’s Infinite Darkness officially dropped a trailer, and while of course the series doesn’t focus on one character, I will be approaching its content as it pertains to Leon Kennedy and his experience alone.
Do be warned: I tend to be long-winded. It’s my recommendation that you sit down with some Jim Beam, a mimosa, or some strong coffee (all of Leon’s favorites) and get comfortable.
With this in mind, let us begin.
The Interrogation
We open the tailer on an interrogation, the man in question sitting on the left, sweaty, compromised. Leon stands the one in power and in control--ever the good cop so to speak--as he asks gently, “Wanna talk about it?”
When we fade to black, we hear a voice say, “Every night I have the same nightmare.”
The soldier is a man named Jason. He details his nightmare and we see his memory in action as it happened, before the trauma and the events which led him to this moment. When we return to the interrogation, Jason’s position is shot on the right side of the screen. Leon sits on the left, having taken the position of confession, of vulnerability.
“I remember...people screaming.”
The difference between Leon’s experience and Jason’s? Leon’s nightmare never truly ends. We know this based on external sources, true, but as Leon details his nightmare, we are given the series’ current events as they happen AND as they directly relate to Leon’s details: The Capitol Building, the power outage, the infected undead opening its eyes and another rising to sit up.
“We watch it spread. And spread.”
We watch Leon through the darkened halls of an unknown labyrinth, an unnamed facility. It matters not, really, the details of the time or place. Both Leon and the soldier alternate between telling the same story, the same experience, but it is Leon who is there to witness, to fight, to survive.
“It’s terrifying.”
We drop into black.
(This scene also supports the meta post in which I detail the way Leon hears the confessions of the inevitable dead before they move on. He is entrusted with secrets in ways few others are, and he carries the entire weight of them on his shoulders. This interrogation is yet another confession. I suspect Jason will not live.)
Later in the trailer, we see Leon and a man whose profile strongly resembles Jason’s. This time, the other man sits to the right, not standing but slightly elevated in a position of confidence and power. He is surrounded by weapons and his hand creeps closer to a firearm. Leon sits at the left side of the screen, and the camera angle leads us to believe that he is looking up, that he is not in the position of advantage here.
Viewing Leon in Shades of Grey
I have never made the time to write a full essay on my belief that Leon works with the government not for the government. He receives orders but often ignores them for what he believes is best for the situation and all parties involved. Leon operates largely out of his own moral principles and sense of obligation--and this is plainly evidenced throughout Leon’s career.
“We cannot allow anyone to interfere with peace and prosperity.”
As the government gives a press release regarding threats to the United States, the person splayed dead center of the screen during this line is Leon Kennedy. He wears a suit, its color scheme monochromatic. He is, at his core, good (white shirt), but always surrounded by and cloaked in the government’s corruption, in corporate greed (the black jacket).
He wades through a place enveloped in darkness but stands surprised and enlightened. As the look of recognition, perhaps, or understanding, breaks across his face, so too does light beam into the picture from out of frame.
“What are you here for?”
“That’s classified.”
Leon has forgone the suit and tie and sits in a leather jacket, all black. The room he occupies is dark, dank, full of smoke and guns and tension. He faces a threat of a man head-on.
The unnamed woman lingers out of sight, she is wrapped almost entirely in shadow. Like Leon, she appears to be wearing all black. In direct juxtaposition to Leon, who faces his threat in full view and full danger, she has her back turned to the scene but is no less aware, no less in control. We assume that this is Leon’s ally going forward.
Speaking of allies....
Claire Redfield
There is something significant to be said for Claire Redfield’s introduction. We are trapped in a claustrophobic facility and pursued by the undead when the image of Leon falls into obscurity. The singular piece that pulls him--and us, the viewer--out of total darkness is the sound of her voice.
The following scene is full of light: Claire Redfield smiling, swathed in warm shades of brown and red unlike the harsh, cold Emergency floodlights of the previous imagery.
She is both safe, and a safe place for Leon.
Claire is only ever open and truthful and honest with him. She tells him as much as she can in the short time we are given, and Leon, the agent privy to secrets and classified resources he cannot--by law and by duty--share with the one person he cares about most, merely says, “I gotta go.”
“Don’t do anything stupid.” (I will later write a headcanon on Claire and Leon and their habit of parting ways. Someone shoot me a reminder.) He doesn’t tell her to stand aside and do nothing---Leon respects her far too much and knows her far too well to ask that of her. He merely reminds her not to be reckless and leaves her with his blessing.
“Do you know where the root of terror comes from? It starts with fear.”
The trailer climaxes with this quote, depicts Leon running toward Claire, hands reaching out. It starts with fear. As it did with Raccoon. With the outbreak 7 years later. The Rockford Island Incident.
It starts with fear, yet once again, Claire and Leon find themselves at the end of it.
#leon kennedy#resident evil#resident evil infinite darkness#infinite darkness#claire redfield#meta.#biohazard commentary | ooc.
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Title: It Starts Like This, Ch. 7
Rating: Teen and Up
Fandom: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Vento Aureo
Pairing(s): BruAbba
Summary: Trish freezes in the doorway, mid-stride, but she doesn’t turn around. Her shoulders are tense, and she looks prepared to bolt at the slightest hint of trouble. It adds weight to his ongoing theory that she’s been steering clear of him, and now it’s time to confirm whether or not he knows why.
Notes: Turns out being dead has a bit of a long term effect. Who would have thought?
This fic got away from me, so I'm breaking it down by character interaction (sort of). This is Trish's chapter, which should be the second to last! I'll still write in this universe in the future, though they'll likely be one-shots going forward.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
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Bucciarati steps into the kitchen, expecting it to be empty. As far as he knew, the only three people at home were Narancia, Leone, and himself. The former is busy doing his homework in the library, while Bruno’s just left Leone’s presence to explore the contents of the pantry. Alone. Or so he’d thought.
A blur of pink nearly startles Bucciarati as badly as he must scare Trish, considering the way she nearly jumps out of her seat at the dining room table. Rather than sit back down, she’s scrambling up to weave past him. “Oh! Bucciarati! I’m sorry, I can- I can go,” she says, moving almost too quickly for Bucciarati to recover in time to catch her, much less speak.
“Wait, Trish.”
Trish freezes in the doorway, mid-stride, but she doesn’t turn around. Her shoulders are tense, and she looks prepared to bolt at the slightest hint of trouble. It adds weight to his ongoing theory that she’s been steering clear of him, and now it’s time to confirm whether or not he knows why.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Bucciarati says, speaking the words slowly. Carefully. He doesn’t want to chase her off before they have a chance to talk.
Trish sucks in a breath, but she doesn’t find the right words to reply despite the frantic look in her eyes.
Bucciarati decides that’s his cue to continue. “Since the day in Giorno’s office, you won’t stay in any room that I am in alone.” He picks his words as carefully as he can. He’s not offended, but he doesn’t know how to emphasize that to her while still getting down to the root of the problem. “Something’s bothering you.”
“I’ve just been busy,” Trish manages to squeak out.
Bucciarati doesn’t need to brush up on his interrogation skills to know that she’s lying. She isn’t particularly good at it, either. At least not when she’s trying to lie to him. Someone else, maybe, but he sees right through the brave face she attempts.
“Trish.”
“It’s nothing! Really!” She grabs the doorframe, as if he might drag her back into the kitchen when she makes a run for it.
“If I may be so bold,” Bucciarati starts, still careful, “You’re feeling guilty. You have been for a while.” He doesn’t need all of his life experience to know that. The look on her face screams it.
Trish wavers in place. Her hand drops from the doorframe, but only so she can wrap her arms around her middle. She hugs herself tightly, as if she can ward away the onslaught of reality. It makes Bucciarati feel guilt of his own for pushing the subject. Maybe she isn’t ready, but he doesn’t want her pain to continue over this. He thinks she’s done more than enough self-loathing, and the punishment is unjust. She’s committed no crime.
Blood once meant everything to Bucciarati. He killed for his blood, traded his life away to the mafia for a few short and illness-riddled years for his blood, but he would never assign the sins of the father to that of the child. Trish is not-- and never has been-- her father. She isn’t capable of doing half of the things Diavolo did in his life.
Trish’s breathing hitches, and it’s all the encouragement that Bucciarati needs. He carefully moves toward her, stepping around her turned back so that they’re facing one another. He brushes his fingers through her hair and tucks some of it away from her face. The first tear falls then, and it breaks his heart.
“Trish,” he repeats, hoping she’ll look at him, but he knows she won’t. All she does is tuck her chin into her shoulder in shame. If she can’t run, then she might as well try hiding. “This isn’t your fault.”
“I know,” she says. Lies.
Bucciarati sighs, though immediately regrets it when Trish flinches away from him. For lack of a better idea, he pulls Trish against his chest and smooths a hand over her hair. “You didn’t do this.”
“But you did it for me!”
Ah. There it is.
“And I would do it again,” Bucciarati reassures. “I didn’t expect our path to involve you, but Giorno and I had intended on taking down your father before we met you. You didn’t change that.” Though she had given him a renewed purpose. A reason to fight even beyond death.
“It doesn’t matter,” Trish insists with a voice that breaks halfway through.
Bucciarati can feel the wetness of her tears against his-- or, rather, Abbacchio’s-- shirt beginning to build as more fall. He continues to brush his fingers through her mass of pink curls. “You didn’t hurt me, Trish.”
“But he did, and he did it because you were trying to protect me!”
“Losing you wasn’t an option,” Bucciarati answers with a gentle squeeze. He lets his chin rest on top of her head and takes a moment to calm his own thoughts.
“Why?” She asks when the silence stretches on between them.
Bucciarati doesn’t think that’s the question that she really wants to ask. And he knows that she doesn’t want-- and won’t accept-- the answer, anyway. Because you deserve to live, he would tell her, if it would mean anything to her right now. He knows what she’ll say in response. Knows she’ll tell him the same, and that his life wasn’t worth her’s.
“You didn’t choose this life,” it’s a gentle reminder, but one that she apparently needs. Her situation is a result of her birth. There’s nothing she did to warrant any of this. “None of this is your fault.”
“Like you did?” Trish snaps the words at him, all sharp edges and surprisingly painful. “Why do you think you deserve this?” She’s demanding now, despite the snuffle in her voice. She’s more anger than unending melancholy, and it’s throwing him off, but not as much the words himself. He doesn’t have an answer to give. Not this time.
She deflates after a moment of receiving no reply and tries to pull away, but he won’t let her. He knows she regrets the words, but he understands why they hang in the air. Why she had to say them. It’s not as if she’s wrong, but that doesn’t mean he knows what to do with them.
“You save everyone around you, and- and for what?” Her hand slams against his chest, open palmed and far from painful. “Was it really worth it?” Her voice is no more than a whisper now.
“Yes,” Bucciarati answers; this time without hesitation, because this is an answer that he does have. A truth that he knows with absolute certainty.
Trish chokes on a sob, and Bucciarati pulls her against him once more.
“Why?” She repeats her earlier question.
Grief is a miserable thing, and he finds that question at the center of it so often. He remembers asking himself that on a loop for years on end without ever finding an answer that satisfied him after all the suffering.
Silence stretches over them once more, and he lets Trish cry with the question hanging between them. It doesn’t matter anymore. The important part is that he’s pushed past the worst of it. He’s confident now that she won’t continue to avoid him. At least not to the same degree. The healing will take time, but he hopes that she’ll allow him to take part in it. That’s all he could truly ask of her anyway. He wants to be there for the people he cares about when they need it, regardless of whatever’s happening in his own head.
“I’m sorry,” Trish says when her sobs slow, and she’s hiccupping more than gasping. She tries to wipe at the tears with frantic hands, but he interrupts her to offer the handkerchief from his pocket.
“Don’t be.”
After taking a moment to wipe at her face, she looks at him again and her expression shifts to mild horror as she takes in the mixture of snot and tears staining the front of his shirt. “Shit, I’m so sorry.”
Bucciarati can’t help barking out a short laugh. He squeezes her shoulder gently. “Ah, no harm done. It’s one of Leone’s, anyway.” The dismissiveness is only a joke. He’ll replace the shirt before Leone notices it’s gone, but he gets his intended effect when she lets out a startled laugh that has him smiling warmly at her in response.
“Oh, you were coming in here. Are you hungry?” Trish asks, suddenly remembering how their entire conversation started. She shifts her eyes to the table, clearly not ready to part ways now that they’ve worked through some of what’s been bothering her.
Bucciarati is more than happy to take the invitation. He goes a step further and turns it around on her, “Actually, I was thinking about having some gelato. Care to join me?”
“Depends,” Trish says with false hesitance. She’s teasing him now, and it makes him smile even wider in response, “What kind?”
“Stracciatella?”
Trish tries not to beam, and Bucciarati bites back an endeared laugh. She seems lighter now. Less restrained. She’s not trying to hide from him or avoid letting him see her emotions. There’s a weight off of her shoulders, and he’s glad that he could alleviate some of her misplaced blame.
“Can we eat in the living room?”
“I don’t see why not,” Bucciarati says with a shrug. It’s not as though they haven’t all broken that rule time and time again.
“You’re the best!” Trish calls as she bounces out of the room, presumably to find something for them to watch.
Bucciarati takes a moment to compose a text to Leone. A quick, barely legible update to the ‘Trish situation’, as they’d affectionately been calling it. Leone sends his response before Bucciarati’s phone touches the counter, and he bites back a fond smile, knowing that Leone must have been waiting for an update after so long. He’s doing his best to avoid being overbearing, but it’s not always easy.
Trish pokes her head back through the doorway before Bucciarati can set his phone back down, though she doesn’t give it a second glance before asking, “Are cartoons okay?”
“Depends,” Bucciarati says, reaching for the bowls. “Are they the ones Mista likes?”
“God no.”
“Then yes.”
#bruabba#abbabru#trish una#bruno bucciarati#bruno buccellati#bucci gang#part 5#vento aureo#golden wind#jjba part 5#blitzwrites#blitz#fic: islt
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@intcrpol asked: 🔥🔥🔥 [Just GO OFF]
1. Having characters be OP for the sake of being OP is boring and overdone. This goes for protagonists the most, as I have already addressed how the games are designed around the idea that the Prodigy Child who started training two weeks ago will befriend the local deities, but it can theoretically go for any character. I understand the appeal of being strong in the pokemon world, but when everyone is fighting to be the best with no actual thought behind it, it feels like a paper-thin attempt to simply one up each other and win the unspoken game of Who’s The RPC’s Best Trainer. I want to see characters who are strong, very strong, but have an actual reason behind how and why they’ve trained themselves (or are currently still training themselves) to reach such a goal.
Fun fact: This is partly why I lean so heavily into Leon’s postgame and vastly prefer interactions post-Swsh. Having him be undefeated gets boring so fast, and imo it’s a more compelling story to show that you can be strong without being perfect, you know? He’s still able to defeat most opponents he faces, but there’s an ever-growing list of people he’s more on the fence about, or more likely to lose to. I actually made a little HC list of his outcomes against the Champions and Villain Leaders.
If you want to see a positive example of the type of power I’m describing, I will once again recommend my friend @cosmoscourge !! As the hardest League in the world with a ton of very impressive lore behind it, it makes sense that many of the people involved in Unima would be insanely talented with teams most other Trainers wouldn’t even dare dream of raising. It’s a mature League designed for a mature target demographic, and everything about it has been so wonderfully explained and expanded upon that it all makes sense. It’s a brilliant example of how OP-ness can be used to help push a narrative, rather than getting thrown into characters just because.
2. The heavy emphasis on sex and shipping is legitimately draining at times. Like I understand if you want to write smut or have a million ships - that’s great! I’ve had NSFW discussions myself with a few close friends and shipping partners and they are always enjoyable conversations that help me understand my muses better.
But when every meme on a person’s account is suggestive, or about one night stands, or infodumps about how many times a certain person has bumped uglies and what kinks they have.... I’m so tired of feeling like I’m expected to provide the dash with constant Horny Fodder. Again, people are free to write what they want, and smut can be used to further a character’s development or illustrate some new parts of their personality. It’s a fantastic way to show an intimate relationship moment and how they deal with the accompanying emotions. But when every post someones makes or reblogs is NSFW in nature... How do you expect me to interact with that?
3. And finally, the endless pessimism in the pokemon fandom is exhausting. I know the internet loves praising negativity and telling us all that everything new is bad and terrible and deserves a hundred page rant, but I truly couldn’t give less of a fuck. I am choosing the enjoy the games despite their faults, and I’m sorry if you can’t do the same but that’s really not my problem.
❝ But the inanimate designs- ❞ Voltorb’s a pokeball. There’s always been item-based designs, and tbh a lot of the modern pokemon more creative than just taking an already existing animal and recolouring it purple.
❝ But the graphics- ❞ My first game was Diamond where everything was basic and pixellated to shit, and yet I still thought it was beautiful. I don’t care if the Wild Area’s tree leaves look clunky and the grass doesn’t wave in the wind, the environment has never been something I paid much attention to when I have six adorable pokemon to look at instead. Use a little imagination if you’re that upset.
❝ The writing was- ❞ One of the major letdowns of Sword and Shield, yes. The story could have used some revisions, and the characters were poorly balanced in terms of their development and screentime, but this is something that’s been a continuous fault with pokemon. Aside from a few notable exceptions, their storytelling always seems to come secondary to everything else.
#↪ answered asks.#↪ dear queen of hearts; let me grow you red roses so you can learn how to be kind | out of character.
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Who are the “Venoms Mob?”
Well, first things first: if you go to China and talk about the 5 Venoms, or the Venoms Mob, they’ll have absolutely no idea who you’re talking about there, because that’s a fandom-term among US Kung Fu cult movie fans.
In Hong Kong, the Venoms are known as director Chang Cheh’s Weapons Expert Troupe, a group of five lifelong friends, martial artists, bodybuilders, exotic weapons experts, and trained acrobats who did at least a dozen movies for manly man Kung Fu director Chang Cheh in the 1970s and 1980s. They were the real deal: they usually choreographed their own fight scenes, which often involved flips and crazy stunts due to their acrobat training, high-wire acts, and unusual and exotic weaponry not typically seen even in martial arts movies. It’s like every single one of them drank the Captain America potion. Their films tended to end in heroic sacrifices, and the Venoms, for all their athleticism and daring, tended to be identifiable people on the bottom end of the societal ladder: homeless drifters, refugees, itinerant hobos, traveling performers, or restaurant workers.
The Venoms were stars in the US, particularly among the black community who love Chinese martial arts movies, not just because of their truly breathtaking skill and choreography, but because they are how most people feel they are, secretly, deep down: rams among sheep. They are the poor, downtrodden, or average person who decides “not to take it anymore” after untold indignities. This is also why the Venoms are especially important to the black community. In fact, if you want to know how much the Venoms mean to their fans, just go up to nearly any Black Dad over 45+ and ask about the “5 Venoms.”
Chang Cheh, Director of the Venoms
The best way to describe the director and writer of the Venoms films, Chang Cheh is that he is basically Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia if he decided to make Gladiator and loved Sergio Leone and Kurasawa.
The director and writer of the Venoms movies, and maybe the most significant name in the history of Kung Fu cinema apart from Bruce Lee, Chang Cheh was towering enough that Quentin Tarantino dedicated Kill Bill Part 2 to Chang Cheh in the closing credits. It would not be inaccurate to say he invented the Kung Fu movie as we know it, with its training montages, mentor-student relationships, all cut with themes of vengeance, noble self-sacrifice, and rebellion of poor and ordinary people against unjust authority.
Chang Cheh’s life story is fascinating. His father was a warlord during the Republican Era between the World Wars, which must have made for an interesting school career day. He started as a film critic and became a screenwriter, then from being a screenwriter, became a director. I wonder if that is the reason that Chang Cheh was so fascinated by themes of masculinity and male bonding, as the arty, openly gay movie critic son of a central Asian warlord had a nearly impossible standard of masculinity to live up to.
The two Western movies that are, thematically, the closest to Chang Cheh are Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan, and if you like both of those movies, you’ll probably like him. His heroes are often James Dean-like angry young men, poor and at the outskirts of society. His movies tend to end in heroic self-sacrifice for a noble cause, and tend to have themes of vengeance, arty blood red slaughter, and a distrust of authority and government of any kind. He loves bloodshed and thinks violence is beautiful; an image that comes up often is someone in an all white outfit that gets covered in blood, an arty view of violence similar to his two biggest influences, Sergio Leone and Kurosawa. Like the Shawshank Redemption, Chang Cheh movies are essentially ensemble pieces about the friendships and close comradely bonds of brotherhood between men. Very few women of any kind have extensive speaking parts in his movies.
Another movie that also summarizes Chang Cheh would be 300. Remember that Sarah Silverman bit where she said that “300 is the answer to the question, how gay is this movie on a scale of 1 to 10?” Not just because it is about an entirely male cast, or about finding fulfillment in noble self-sacrifice and heroism Alamo-style against desperate odds, but also because it’s about glorifying the male body, with tons of abs and pecs. I suppose I should mention here that Chang Cheh’s movies are profoundly homoerotic, and discussion of their homoeroticism is the major way film academics talk about these movies. How many scenes in Cheh’s movies are about dudes hanging out with their shirts off, flexing their muscles? Or about “brothers” who clasp each other on the shoulder while looking longingly into each other’s eyes in a shot-reverse shot? The only meaningful relationship in his movies are male ones. I dislike passing on cheap gossip, but by all accounts it’s actually an open secret in the Hong Kong film industry that Chang Cheh was homosexual and lived with other men.
Yi Kuang -Screenwriter of the Venoms
The screenwriter of nearly all the Venoms movies, much like Chang Cheh, Yi Kuang had an interesting life. He was a Communist Party officer who went to Inner Mongolia, where his primary job was writing death sentences for landlords. Once idealistic, he left disillusioned with the Chinese Communist Party, and a remained a die-hard anticommunist. Evil bureaucrats tend to show up in his stories often for that reason, and a common theme of his scripts is the anger of ordinary people against distant, unapproachable authorities. There’s no understanding Venoms films without their screenwriter. Chang Cheh started as a screenwriter and wrote his movies, but Yi Kuang was his most frequent partner.
Interestingly, Yi Kuang got famous long after for writing a series of supernatural and horror novels called the Mr. Wisely books, where a traditional Chinese medicine expert fights for sites of power charged with Feng Shui. It’s interesting to see his turn to the supernatural, sorcery, and ghosts as an overreaction to his distaste for Marxist materialism. Of all the Venoms films, the one that shows his influence the strongest was the one the Venoms fight an evil human sacrifice devil cult, Masked Avengers.
The Hero – Kuo Chui
A guy with a big smile and a body carved out of marble, Kuo Chui started as a circus acrobat before becoming a stuntman and then a leading actor. He was the Venom with the strongest and most natural screen presence, the one that was the most “movie star.” In fact, he was almost always the hero and central character of Venoms movies, usually playing the most levelheaded and strategic minded of the group.
Kuo Chui deserves some credit also for being the one Venom to actually direct a movie himself, Ninja in the Deadly Trap. This sounds like a heck of a leap, but in Hong Kong, nearly all choreographers also direct their fight scenes. It’s no surprise that a common career path in Hong Kong cinema is to go from choreographer to director (see also Chang Cheh’s ex-choreographers, Tang Chia and 36 Chambers director Liu Chia Liang)
The Bad Guy – Lu Feng
Every single movie, Lu Feng was the heel, the bad guy. I mean, heck, in Shaolin Rescuers, he even played the evil apprentice of the supreme supervillain of the martial arts, Pai Mei! But no matter what, Lu Feng was just so cool that you couldn’t help but root for him just a little bit. He was a character type common in pro wrestling: the arrogant “cool heel,” like Rick Flair and the Horsemen.
The Venoms tended to be workaday regular poor guys, but Lu Feng usually played a rich guy who oozed arrogance and menace, rather like the evil rich football player heel in college movies.
The Funny Guy – Chiang Sheng
A guy who usually played the funny young hero or a wisecracking comedy sidekick prone to wiseassery and pratfalls, Chiang Peng was the Venom who most benefited from the rise of Jackie Chan, and his introduction of silent film era inspired physical comedy into the otherwise stale Kung Fu film. Like Robin Williams, Chiang Shiang was someone who made everyone else laugh, but because he had a lot of darkness inside him, which ended up killing him. Chiang Sheng is the only Venom to not be with us, he drank himself to death after his divorce in 1991. Because of this, there can never really be a full Venoms reunion.
One of the most amazing things about Hong Kong cinema in the 70s is that the actors tended to have scraggly teeth that aren’t perfect and that seemed to be Chang Shieng’s defining trait. To be clear, I am not in any way mocking him for having bad teeth. In fact, I think it is rather winsome and endearing, like a teenager with braces.
The Tough Guy – Lo Meng
Known as the “Shaolin Hercules,” the person I’d compare Lo Meng to is Mr. Worf. Ultra-strong, humorless, intimidating, dead serious and never smiling, he was by far the most muscular and powerful of the Venoms, with tons of machismo and swagger, “big dick energy” as the kids say today. The camera tends to linger on his oiled up biceps and chest in extreme close-up…but was also, usually, the first to die in nearly all of these films. Much like how Worf was the toughest guy ever, but usually got beat up a lot so the writers could show that the situation was serious. In fact, Lo Meng, still in great shape, was in Ip Man 4, where, not one to break with a tradition, he was the first guy to get his ass beat in the film, even in a movie made in the Year of Our Lord 2020.
Lo Meng tends to be the “backup main hero” and was even the main character in films like 2 Champions of Shaolin. He had the most impressive “solo” film career apart from the other Venoms. Like Geri Halliwell, he left the Venoms to do his own thing, which is why the defining trait of the later Venom films is that he wasn’t there.
Lo Meng wasn’t Taiwanese like the other Venoms, and was a native of Hong Kong. In fact, he got his start in the film industry not as a stuntman or muscleman, but as an accountant for the Shaw Brothers studios, and he lifted weights and did Praying Mantis Kung Fu as a hobby. That’s…that’s hilarious. Reminds me of that fake Simpsons movie, Undercover Nerd with Renier Wolfcastle:
The Wild Card – Chun Shieng
Would YOU trust this man? I wouldn’t. He betrayed the Toad!
That’s Chun Shieng for you, the wild card Venom who could “go either way” and so wasn’t an entirely trustworthy ally.
Allow me to correct a misconception I’ve seen in a lot of places: Chun is sometimes known as “the one Korean Venom.” He isn’t Korean but Chinese, but he was trained in Korea and is a Tae Kwon Do expert, unlike the other Venoms, who studied Chinese Kung Fu and Peking Opera. And it certainly shows: he always fights with a kick-heavy Tae Kwon Do style that does not look much like any Kung Fu at all.
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Blood on my hands (all that i've gained and all that i've lost)
pairing: merthur
warnings: non
status: fanfic draft, Part 1/? (~ 2300)
It’s yet again an hour of need for Camelot. But the weapon they need to safe kingdom and people comes with a price. Only those who prove that they are powerful and wicked can receive it. The knights of Camelot don’t have enough evil deeds to be worthy of the sword. They think everything is lost - until Merlin speaks up...
A magic reveal story in which Merlin makes good use of being a morally grey character. Because, yea, Merlin-is-the-victim-reveals are swell and all but he is capable of making his own decisions and some of them are pretty shady. There is still a good amount of Uther bashing included.
Somehow they get into a situation that requires someone with blood on their hands - figuratively (otherwise it wouldn't be a problem because seeing how often Arthur and Merlin and also Gwaine get wounded by just existing they probably wouldn't even have to injure anyone)
Maybe a god of the Old Religion guards a weapon they need to kill the magic beast of the week or to destroy a cursed item.
In any case: they are really desperate. People are dying and this is their last hope, their last resort.
To their misfortune, this weapon is guarded by a very cunning and wicked god and they will only give their weapon to someone who has the power and the will to use it for evil deeds
There is a test that must be passed by the one who wants to receive the weapon. They must prove that they did enough evil deeds to be worthy of it.
Arthur quickly fails his test because despite some wrongs he's done he is way too just and noble to be wicked
The only knight that seems to get at least a few moments more of consideration is Leon who has done some terrible things - however under Uther's orders which isn't quite powerful enough
"Ahh, Uther Pendragon," the god muses, "Him i would have given the weapon. Such rage and blind hatred and, oh yes, so much blood."
Arthur grits his teeth and sets his jar. he wonders if his father would be disappointed in him for not living up to this legacy of his. he wonders - not for the first time - why he wanted to be like his father once and how he managed to end up being so different.
The knights discuss their strategy. non of them is wicked enough to pass the test. they have wicked people in Camelot's dungeons. But Camelot is three day rides off and their quest is really urgent.
They could separate and seek for wicked folk, but the chances seem slim and the risk of them keeping the weapon as they receive it seems too big
People are dying and they need to do something now.
"there must be another way to destroy it," Lancelot suggests, though they've been over this. His eyes stray to Merlin, but Merlin seems caught up in thought.
If there was an easier way to do this, Merlin and Gaius would have come up with it by now. asking the god had been their idea in the first place.
"What if there isn't?" Gwaine argues heatedly. "We can't have waisted six days for nothing. This is probably our last chance."
"so what do you suggest?" Lancelot interrupts somewhat irritated. They temperaments are heated at this point. And suddenly knowing each other’s worst deeds doesn’t exactly lighten the mood. "All of us failed the test. i wouldn't have thought that I'd ever be angry about being found too good and noble."
Gwaine shrugs with a grimace. He hadn't thought that he'd ever be deemed good and noble in the first place.
"maybe there's a way out of that," Arthur says. He hasn’t spoken in a while and all heads turn towards him.
"what do you mean, Sire?" Leon asks, looking uneasy as if he already knows and doesn't like it.
"If you're not noble enough, you proof your nobility by doing good deeds," Arthur starts matter of fact. "so, logically, if I'm not wicked enough, i prove my wickedness by doing an evil deed."
The god smiles a toothy smile.
"To murder just anyone obviously isn't evil enough" Arthur says, looking at the god with disgust. "so it must be somthing worse. murdering a friend, for example."
"My king, with all due respect, this is madness," Leon say carefully.
"sir Leon, that's the point." Arthur says sourly.
"is that really it?" Gwaine shouts at the god who watches his outburst unimpressed. "You want us to slaughter each other?"
the god laughs, distant and hollow and the earth seems to vibrate with it. "The weapon can only be taken by those of power who are wicked and cunning enough to wield it." the god repeats his earlier words.
"So there's not even a guarantee," Gwaine says, throwing up his arms. "Arthur, let's just leave and see if we can find something else."
"there is nothing else, Gwaine, you said so yourself!" Arthur returns. His expression is incredibly pained but determined in a way that makes them all shudder. Leon, Percival and Lancelot unconsciously get into fighting stance.
Gwaine takes a few steps to put himself between the king and Merlin who is the most vulnerable
Arthur nods to himself, seemingly coming to a decision in his head. Tehn he draws his sword . "If either of you kills me while i try to kill you, that might be enough too" he muses
They all stare at him in horror, unable to believe that he will go through with this.
"My people are dying," Arthur says, his tone pleading, "if i have to sacrifice my good conscience to help them - well, it is a price i must be willing to pay. I'm sorry. But all of you swore to protect Camelot at all costs too."
Arthur halts for am moment then nods grimly. "Don't try to sacrifice yourself. I'm sure that's not what he's looking for" Arthur nods towards the stony god who smiles.
"you can't be serious" Mordred whispers.
"I'm afraid i am. Now, it's been an honour. truely. and i hope - i hope I'll still have your respect afterwards. Though, i can understand if you can't trust me again."
"that's enough."
They all turn around. Partly, because they had forgotten about Merlin who has been uncharacteristically quiet the whole time. and partly because they have rarely heard this sort of tone from him. harsh and demanding. a voice more fit for a king than his manservant.
They stare at him and he makes short eye contact with Arthur before he steps forward, in front of the statue that the god is using as a vessel.
"test me." Merlin says. his voice is determined and his shoulders are set.
Arthur let's out a short laugh, because clearly this is absurd, right? Merlin is the best and kindest of all of them. Actually, coming to think of it, if he's really honest, Merlin probably is the reason Arthur is not like his father. Merlin makes him better. Merlin makes him want to be better.
A few of the knights share his sentiments, laughing slightly hysterical with tension but still perplexed over this development.
Only Lancelot steps forward with a frown as if to pull him back, but merlin raises a hand without looking at him and he stops in his tracks.
Arthur who was about to say something stops too.
The god looks more alive than before he seems to stretch himself to his full height as if he has waited for this
"welcome" he starts as he has with all of them. "young warlock, tell me your deeds."
lancelot tenses, casting a worried glance back at the king who stands there, sword still drawn, eyes fixed in Merlin as if he doesn't understand any of this
Lancelot doesn't either. Even if Merlin is a sorcerer - what evil deeds can he possibly have done? Saving Arthur's life over and over without ever seeking credit doesn't have a ring of evil to him.
"I am Merlin, and they call my Emrys." Merlin starts.
Some of the Knights gasp. Emrys is a name they know by now.
Lancelot wonders whether Merlin considers his identity an evil deed in itself. The possibility breaks his heart a bit.
"I was born with magic. I am the most powerful sorcerer there is."
Merlin takes a deep breath.
"i lied to all my friends. I let them think they can trust me, that they know me. But they never will. I could kill them just by looking at them. I am magic and i killed many behind friends backs and before their eyes, but never revealed myself to them"
"I am a slayer of my own people," he continues, his voice hard, "I killed many creatures and men of magic to protect their murderers - the king and his son. I did it out of self-righteousness and out of selfishness because...” for a moment, Merlin halts, but then he continuous with the same hard tone as before, as if something is forced out of him, but he wants to stand for it.
“I loved Arthur more than my own people. i let many of them die even though i could have helped them if i had revealed myself. But i couldn't bear the thought to be separated from him so i stayed quiet and watched them burn."
The god nods Merlin on. They all stand in shock. They know from before that Merlin won't be able to stop telling his deeds before the god thinks he is done.
"I killed the witch Nimueh even though she told me i have to pay with a life to save Arthur's. Instead of giving my life as i promised, i killed her."
"I killed Mary Collins, Afanc, Aulfric, Sophia, Cornelius Sigan, Myror and many more. "
Merlin's voice falters a bit, but he seems to pull himself together visibly, because his voice is clearer again when he keeps speaking.
"My betrayal to my people is so great, my wickedness so deep, i considered to kill a child on the mere possibility that he could threaten what was mine in the future."
Mordred makes a quiet stricken noise.
No one dares take their eyes off Merlin, but Merlin himself turns his head slowly.
There is a gasp of horror when they all see that his eyes are glowing yellow with magic.
Up until now, no one except Mordred and Lancelot had truly believed it.
"I tried to kill Mordred when he was a child and i wish his death even now though he is kind and serves Arthur."
Lancelot looks at Merlin with complete bewilderment as Mordred sobs.
Merlin doesn't answer Lancelot's gaze, he just turns around again.
They can hear him take in another breath and it sounds more halting than before.
"I knew that my friend had magic and i saw her turmoil and her fear of being killed. of being burned by her own kin like all of the others. but instead of helping her, i left her in the dark. I told her to trust me - she trusted my - and then i poisoned her."
Merlin stops for a moment, his voice sounds rough as if speaking becomes quickly more difficult.
"I gave Morgana poison in full intend and watched her as she died and i regretted when she was healed."
"Only i had the power and knowledge to save her, but i turned my head from her suffering, i killed her when she didn't know better than to turn to her sister, it was me that made her what she is today."
There is another short pause. Lancelot is desperate to see Merlin's face. To demand how this all really went. Because though he knows that Merlin is bound to say the truth by the power of the god, he still thinks there must be a mistake or a trick. This is not Merlin. Merlin would never...would he?
"I conspired with and freed the dragon that attacked Camelot which led to the death of many innocent people. I attempted to kill Arthur on multiple occasions."
Lancelot frowns. This one he knows to be untrue. Merlin didn't want to kill Arthur. it was Morgana's doing that he went after him.
"i saved Uther Pendragon's life - more than once. I let him live even though he slaughtered my people. I saved his life even though i didn't have to. I never killed him even though i had many opportunities."
Merlin pauses then, looking up at the god.
"Do i really need to go on?" he asks and it sounds almost indifferent. except they know Merlin and they know how his face looks when he sounds this way.
The god leans their head to one side slowly. the stone his vessel is made of groans.
"You are worthy, young warlock. More than you know. Into your hands i command my sword."
Suddenly, there is noise and light and they cover their eyes, everyone except for Merlin and Mordred.
They can't be sure but they think they can hear Merlin's voice through it all, speaking a foreign tongue. Then, it's over.
When the air clears, Merlin stands alone, the stone vessel of the god has crumbled to pieces, a big sword in his hand. For just a moment, when he turns around to face them, he looks nothing like Merlin at all. His eyes are golden, and his face is grim, lips pressed into a thin line. His posture is straight and majestic and he holds the sword like a warrior. His appearance strikes them with fear. He looks like power incarnate.
The others notice from the corners of their eyes that Mordred kneels before him. and even as they are completely bewildered, they have an urge to do the same.
The next moment though, it's all gone, and Merlin looks like he's never handled a sword before. His eyes are blue and his cheeks messy with dust and tears. He sinks to his knees and the weapon falls from his hands - is pushed from his fingers as if through magic, landing on the ground with a strange sound.
Merlin looks after the sword with disgust clear on his face. Then he looks up and suddenly he looks afraid.
To be continued
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If nobody asked it, merthur for the ship ask?
Thank you for the ask! Funnily enough, nobody asked for merthur yet 😄❤️
when I started shipping it if I did:
“And how long have you been training to be a prat, my Lord?”
my thoughts:
They just have everything I love in a ship; snark and a bit of enemies/rivals, friends to lovers, soulmates, balancing each other out while also being very different, and a whole bunch of external and internal issues to give it the right amount of messy. Their roles put them into positions that enable them to understand each other in ways nobody else really can, and yet there are so many issues and secrets and differences that it’s not nearly that easy. But what I love most is that despite all that, despite destiny and prophecies and Camelot, they just love each other for who they are, and they’d give up everything for the other.
what makes me happy about them:
There’s so much humour in their relationship, and I adore their banter, on top of all that devotion. I think all that is what makes it so easy to throw them in any kind of universe, and the gist of their relationship still works perfectly.
what makes me sad about them:
For one, obviously the ending, even though I love it (I’m just a sucker for angst tbh). But also, just all the pressure that’s on both of them, and with how much shit they have to deal from too many sides. One of the truly tragic things about them imo is that so often, you think “If only you could actually be honest with each other, you’d be able to support each other so well,” and at the same time, it makes so much sense why they can’t “just” be honest with each other.
things done in fanfic that annoys me:
When Merlin’s kind of a pushover or too apologetic; when Arthur’s made out to be nothing but a bully and lacks depth; when the power-dynamics and the weight of secrets is ignored or glossed over; generally (not only in fanfic), one thing that bugs me is the refusal to acknowledge that Merlin had every right to hide his magic, and yet Arthur has every right to be hurt about being lied to by someone he trusts so much. It’s not mutually exclusive.
things I look for in fanfic:
I love when that conflict above is really explored and worked with. I generally love magic reveals a lot, especially when it serves to get Arthur to move away from Uther, and how they deal with all the revelations of the things Merlin has done. I want to see all the devotion and struggle and how they come out stronger on the other side.
who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other:
Merlin: Leon, Mithian
Arthur: I said this before, but Arthur’s one of the few people that I don’t really vibe with in any other ship. No idea why, but it is what it is 🤷
my happily ever after for them:
Either Arthur survives Camlann and they rule Camelot and Albion for years to come, or they get to leave it all behind and roam the land before settling down on a nice little farm; screw destiny.
who is the big spoon/little spoon:
Merlin’s the big spoon.
what is their favorite non-sexual activity:
I have this headcanon that they read to each other, regardless if canon or modern fics. They just curl up somewhere and swap the book every chapter, or just one of them reads while the other listens if one of them is in need of comfort.
send me a character or a ship and I’ll tell you what I think
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All this over the Japanese liking a game they don't like...
Ghost of Tsushima opens with a grand wide shot of samurai, adorned with impressively detailed suits of armor, sitting atop their horses. There we find Jin, the protagonist, ruminating on how he will die for his country. As he traverses Tsushima, our hero fights back the invading Mongolian army to protect his people, and wrestles with the tenets of the Bushido code. Standoffs take advantage of perspective and a wide field of view to frame both the samurai and his opponent in something that, more often than not, feels truly cinematic. The artists behind the game have an equally impeccable reference point for the visuals: the works of legendary filmmaker Akira Kurosawa
“We really wanted to pay respect to the fact that this game is so totally inspired by the work of this master,” director Nate Fox said in a recent interview with IndieWire. At Entertainment Weekly, Fox explained how his team at Sucker Punch Productions suggested that the influence ran broadly, including the playable black-and-white “Kurosawa Mode” and even in picking a title. More specifically, he noted that Seven Samurai, one of Kurosawa’s most well-known works, defined Fox’s “concept of what a samurai is.” All of this work went toward the hope that players would “experience the game in a way as close to the source material as possible.”
But in embracing “Kurosawa” as an eponymous style for samurai adventures, the creatives behind Ghost of Tsushima enter into an arena of identity and cultural understanding that they never grapple with. The conversation surrounding samurai did not begin or end with Kurosawa’s films, as Japan’s current political forces continue to reinterpret history for their own benefit.
Kurosawa earned a reputation for samurai films as he worked steadily from 1943 to 1993. Opinions of the director in Japan are largely mixed; criticism ranges from the discussion of his family background coming from generations of samurai to accusations of pandering to Western audiences. Whether intentional or not, Kurosawa became the face of Japanese film in the critical circles of the 1950s. But he wasn’t just a samurai stylist: Many of the director’s films frame themselves around a central conflict of personal ideology in the face of violence that often goes without answer — and not always through the lives of samurai. In works like Drunken Angel, The Quiet Duel, or his 1944 propaganda film The Most Beautiful, Kurosawa tackles the interpersonal struggles of characters dealing with sickness, alcoholism, and other challenges.
His films endure today, and not just through critical preservation; since breaking through to the West, his visual ideas and themes have become fodder for reinterpretation. You can see this keenly in Western cinema through films like The Magnificent Seven, whose narrative was largely inspired by Seven Samurai. Or even A Fistful of Dollars, a Western epic that cleaved so closely to Kurosawa’s Yojimbo that director Sergio Leone ended up in a lawsuit with Toho Productions over rights issues. George Lucas turned to Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress in preparation for Star Wars; he’d eventually repay Kurosawa by helping to produce his surreal drama Dreams.
Ghost of Tsushima is part of that lineage, packing in action and drama to echo Kurosawa’s legacy. “We will face death and defend our home,” Shimura, the Lord of Tsushima, says within the first few minutes of the game. “Tradition. Courage. Honor. These are what make us.” He rallies his men with this reminder of what comprises the belief of the samurai: They will die for their country, they will die for their people, but doing so will bring them honor. And honor, tradition, and courage, above all else, are what make the samurai.
Except that wasn’t always the belief, it wasn’t what Kurosawa bought whole cloth, and none of the message can be untangled from how center- and alt-right politicians in modern Japan talk about “the code” today.
The “modern” Bushido code — or rather, the interpretation of the Bushido code coined in the 1900s by Inazō Nitobe — was utilized in, and thus deeply ingrained into, Japanese military culture. An easy example of how the code influenced Imperial Japan’s military would be the kamikaze pilots, officially known as the Tokubetsu Kōgekitai. While these extremes (loyalty and honor until death, or capture) aren’t as present in the myth of the samurai that has ingrained itself into modern ultranationalist circles, they manifest in different yet still insidious ways.
In 2019, to celebrate the ushering in of the Reiwa Era, the conservative Liberal Democratic Party commissioned Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano to depict Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as a samurai. Though described as being center-right, various members of the LDP have engaged in or have been in full support of historical revisionism, including the editing of textbooks to either soften or completely omit the language surrounding war crimes committed by Imperial Japan. Abe himself has been linked to supporting xenophobic curriculums, with his wife donating $9,000 to set up an ultranationalist school that pushed anti-Korean and anti-Chinese rhetoric. The prime minister is also a member of Japan’s ultraconservative Nippon Kaigi, which a U.S. congressional report on Japan-U.S. relations cited as one of several organizations that believe that “Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers, that the 1946-1948 Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate, and that the killings by Imperial Japanese troops during the 1937 ‘Nanjing massacre’ were exaggerated or fabricated.” The Nippon Kaigi, like Abe, have also pushed for the revision of Japan’s constitution — specifically, Article 9 — to allow Japan to reinstate its standing military.
This has been a major goal for Abe as his time as prime minister comes to a definite close in 2021. And from 2013 onward, the politician has made yearly trips to the Yasukuni shrine to honor the memory of war criminals, a status of which his own grandfather was accused, that died with the ethos of the modern Bushido code. Abe’s exoneration of these ideals has continued to spark reactionary nationalist sentiment, as illustrated with the Nippon Kaigi and their ultranationalist ideology. These traditionalist values have encouraged xenophobic sentiment in Japan, which was seen in the 2020 Tokyo elections with 178,784 votes going to Makoto Sakurai, leader of the Japan First Party, another ultranationalist group. Sakurai has participated in numerous hate speech demonstrations in Tokyo, often targeting Korean diaspora groups.
The preservation of the Bushido code that was highly popularized and utilized by Imperial Japan lives on through promotion by history revisionists, who elevate samurai to a status similar to that of the chivalric knight seen in Western media. They are portrayed as an honor-bound and noble group of people that cared deeply for the peasantry, when that was often not the case.
The samurai as a concept, versus who the samurai actually were, has become so deeply intertwined with Japanese imperialist beliefs that it has become difficult to separate the two. This is where cultural and historical understanding are important when approaching the mythology of the samurai as replicated in the West. Kurosawa’s later body of work — like the color-saturated Ran, which was a Japanese adaptation of King Lear, and Kagemusha, the story of a lower-class criminal impersonating a feudal lord — deeply criticized the samurai and the class system they enforced. While some films were inspired by Western plays, specifically Shakespeare, these works were critical of the samurai and their role in the Sengoku Period. They dismantled the notion of samurai by showing that they were a group of people capable of the same failings as the lower class, and were not bound to arbitrary notions of honor and chivalry.
Unlike Kurosawa’s blockbusters, his late-career critical message didn’t cross over with as much ease. In Western films like 2003’s The Last Samurai, the audience is presented with the picture of a venerable and noble samurai lord who cares only for his people and wants to preserve traditionalist values and ways of living. The portrait was, again, a highly romanticized and incorrect image of who these people were in feudal Japanese society. Other such works inspired by Kurosawa’s samurai in modern pop culture include Adult Swim’s animated production Samurai Jack and reinterpretations of his work like Seven Samurai 20XX developed by Dimps and Polygon Magic, which had also received the Kurosawa Estate’s blessing but resulted in a massive failure. The narratives of the lone ronin and the sharpshooter in American Westerns, for example, almost run in parallel.
Then there’s Ghost of Tsushima. Kurosawa’s work is littered with close-ups focused on capturing the emotionality of every individual actor’s performance, and panoramic shots showcasing sprawling environments or small feudal villages. Fox and his team recreate that. But after playing through the story of Jin, Ghost of Tsushima is as much of an homage to an Akira Kurosawa film as any general black-and-white film could be. The Kurosawa Mode in the game doesn’t necessarily reflect the director’s signatures, as the narrative hook and tropes found in Kurosawa’s work — and through much of the samurai film genre — are equally as important as the framing of specific shots.
“I don’t think a lot of white Western academics have the context to talk about Japanese national identity,” Tori Huynh, a Vietnamese woman and art director in Los Angeles, said about the Western discussion of Kurosawa’s aesthetic. “Their context for Japanese nationalism will be very different from Japanese and other Asian people. My experience with Orientalism in film itself is, that there is a really weird fascination with Japanese suffering and guilt, which is focused on in academic circles … I don’t think there is anything wrong with referencing his aesthetic. But that’s a very different conversation when referencing his ideology.”
Ghost of Tsushima features beautifully framed shots before duels that illustrate the tension between Jin and whomever he’s about to face off against, usually in areas populated by floating lanterns or vibrant and colorful flowers. The shots clearly draw inspiration from Kurosawa films, but these moments are usually preceded by a misunderstanding on Jin’s part — stumbling into a situation he’d otherwise have no business participating in if it weren’t for laid-out side quests to get mythical sword techniques or armor. Issues like this undermine the visual flair; the duels are repeated over and over in tedium as more of a set-piece than something that should have a component of storytelling and add tension to the narrative.
Fox and Sucker Punch’s game lacks a script that can see the samurai as Japanese society’s violent landlords. Instead of examining the samurai’s role, Ghost of Tsushima lionizes their existence as the true protectors of feudal Japan. Jin must protect and reclaim Tsushima from the foreign invaders. He must defend the peasantry from errant bandits taking advantage of the turmoil currently engulfing the island. Even if that means that the samurai in question must discard his sense of honor, or moral righteousness, to stoop to the level of the invading forces he must defeat.
Jin’s honor and the cost of the lives he must protect are in constant battle, until this struggle no longer becomes important to the story, and his tale whittles down to an inevitable and morally murky end. To what lengths will he go to preserve his own honor, as well as that of those around him? Ghost of Tsushima asks these questions without a truly introspective look at what that entails in relation to the very concept of the samurai and their Bushido code. This manifests in flashbacks to Jin’s uncle, Shimura, reprimanding him for taking the coward’s path when doing his first assassination outside of forced stealth segments. Or in story beats where the Khan of the opposing Mongol force informs Shimura that Jin has been stabbing enemies in the back. Even if you could avoid participating in these systems, the narrative is fixated on Jin’s struggle with maintaining his honor while ultimately trying to serve his people.
I do not believe Ghost of Tsushima was designed to empower a nationalist fantasy. At a glance, and through my time playing the game, however, it feels like it was made by outsiders looking into an otherwise complex culture through the flattening lens of an old black-and-white film. The gameplay is slick and the hero moments are grand, but the game lacks the nuance and understanding of what it ultimately tries to reference. As it stands, being a cool pseudo-historical drama is, indeed, what Ghost of Tsushima’s creators seemingly aimed to accomplish. In an interview with Famitsu, Chris Zimmerman of Sucker Punch said that “if Japanese players think the game is cool, or like a historical drama, then that’s a compliment.” And if there is one thing Ghost of Tsushima did succeed in, it was creating a “cool” aesthetic — encompassed by one-on-one showdowns with a lot of cinematic framing.
In an interview with The Verge, Fox said that “our game is inspired by history, but we’re not strictly historically accurate.” That’s keenly felt throughout the story and in its portrayal of the samurai. The imagery and iconography of the samurai carry a burden that Sucker Punch perhaps did not reckon with during the creation of Ghost of Tsushima. While the game doesn’t have to remain true to the events that transpired in Tsushima, the symbol of the samurai propagates a nationalist message by presenting a glossed-over retelling of that same history. Were, at any point, Ghost of Tsushima to wrestle with the internal conflict between the various class systems that existed in Japan at the time, it might have been truer to the films that it draws deep inspiration from. However, Ghost of Tsushima is what it set out to be: a “cool” period piece that doesn’t dwell on the reasonings or intricacies of the existing period pieces it references.
A game that so heavily carries itself on the laurels of one of the most prolific Japanese filmmakers should investigate and reflect on his work in the same way that the audience engages with other pieces of media like film and literature. What is the intent of the creator versus the work’s broader meaning in relation to current events, or the history of the culture that is ultimately serving as a backdrop to yet another open-world romp? And how do these things intertwine and create something that can flirt on an edge of misunderstanding? Ghost of Tsushima is a surface-level reflection of these questions and quandaries, sporting a lens through which to experience Kurosawa, but not to understand his work. It ultimately doesn’t deal with the politics of the country it uses as a backdrop. For the makers of the game, recreating Kurosawa is just black and white.
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I would like to add Gwaine to the list of friends Merlin had. Especially in the 3/4 seasons he really was ride or die for Merlin, they shared intimate details with each other, they truly trusted each other. There were instances where the show alluded that Gwaine knows about Merlin's magic and is fine with it.
hi there! i’m assuming this is in response to the post i reblogged about will and lancelot being merlin’s only “real” friends?
i’m actually happy to write about this, now that the question has been posed - it’s been a while since i wrote anything long about gwaine!
fair warning in advance: i don’t personally classify gwaine the same way i do will and lancelot, and that’s what this piece will cover in more detail, but these are just my own thoughts, and it is totally cool for everybody else to have different opinions. my take is my take, but it does not have to be everyone’s take - if people wanna scroll past because this isn’t their vibe, i don’t mind in the slightest. :)
so, without further ado - i LOVE gwaine, and i have written extensively about how amazing his relationship with merlin is (some examples here, here, here, and here, if anybody’s looking). he is the most likely of all merlin’s living friends to ditch arthur in the name of addressing merlin’s needs, which is super important, and he also has a much healthier friendship with merlin than arthur does (in my own personal opinion, of course, which nobody is obligated to share). he definitely does go ride or die for merlin in S3/S4, i agree.
but my own thoughts on this particular point are still the same as they were in that original post. i tend to hide my clarifications/explanations in the tags, so they might have flown by, but i’ll just copy/paste the relevant bit here for ease of access, as some background for the rest of this post.
re: will and lancelot were merlin’s only ‘real’ friends:
#what this does not mean: merlin has no other friends! merlin doesn't have meaningful and important relationships with other people! #what it does mean: #every single one of merlin's other relationships is undergirded by the sickening knowledge that those friendships are conditional #every single one of his other relationships is accompanied by the constant undercurrent of 'they would hate me if they knew' #merlin knows his friends 'care' about him #except they don't really; because it's not truly him they're caring about #they care deeply - about someone merlin made up #about a facade. #in the most basic sense #those relationships aren't Real #the love merlin feels for the people in them is real #but you cannot truly be 'friends' with somebody who doesn't even know who you are #you cannot be loved without being known #you certainly cannot be loved without being safe
obviously i suppose a person’s thoughts on this would be different if they headcanoned that gwaine knew about merlin’s magic, and that’s fine. i personally do not believe canon indicates or supports that, but i’m not out to convince people to abandon their own fanon interpretations of things; i’m happy just hanging out in my own space talking about my thoughts. me writing meta is the virtual equivalent of me talking to myself in my room - if other people have different conversations with themselves, that’s fine :) i don’t mind if other folks organize their thoughts about things differently.
in accordance with that - everybody please feel free to continue on with your own interpretations, and ignore mine if mine do not appeal to you! if people are interested about how i organize my ideas on this, though, they are essentially as follows:
1) a cage fighter, a class traitor, and a fake sorcerer walk into a tavern
ok, to start with - here’s a graph.
(...who tf starts a meta post with ‘here’s a graph’ lol i just drew a venn diagram for the first time since like...middle school...i LOVE fandom, man, this is RIDICULOUS)
anyway
this is a very rough interpretation of how i think about gwaine, lancelot, and will:
to address some of these elements individually:
lancelot and will give merlin something that gwaine can’t - safety, authenticity, the comfort of being known and seen for real, a respite from constantly qualifying every friendship with ‘they would hate me if they knew’
lancelot and gwaine, likewise, give merlin something merlin wouldn’t be as likely to get from will (if will were still alive, i mean) - an understanding of merlin’s devotion to the Crown, a supportive ally in the fight to promote arthur’s reign and keep arthur/camelot safe
will and gwaine, for their part, are more likely to tell arthur to go fuck himself, if it’s important for helping merlin, and that’s a different kind of support that merlin also really needs.
and will, on his own, gives merlin something that neither lancelot NOR gwaine can provide, which is a friend who isn’t connected to or even particularly interested in arthur pendragon (merlin has nobody in his life like this, not after will dies) - somebody who knew and cared about merlin before merlin had any proximity to arthur, before this whole ’destiny’ issue reared its merciless head.
everybody in merlin’s life matters to him and gives him something important. gwaine is STUPIDLY important to merlin. the love there is real. but in canon, because gwaine is not in the know, gwaine is still one of the people from whom merlin feels compelled to hide himself. gwaine is right up there alongside gwen, arthur, elyan, percival, etc - every other person who merlin loves, who merlin nonetheless constantly, back-of-his-mind fears, ‘they would reject me if they knew.’
the above is part of why i personally have never been too interested in ‘so-and-so knows about merlin’s magic’ canon-imaginings. there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them, and i’m sure people must have tons of fun with them - and in an AU context maybe i would have fun with them too - but as hopeful interpretations of actual canon, they don’t appeal to me. merlin’s near-total isolation and desperate, constantly-frustrated desire for real, honest love is an inalienable aspect of his character for me, one i can’t separate from who he is and why he does the things he does and why he eventually ends up in the place where we find him towards the end of the show.
2) i just want someone to see me for who i am
i have seen a bit of sentiment out there along the lines of ‘merlin should have told (x person) about their magic’ or ‘(x person) obviously doesn’t have a problem with sorcerers,’ but i guess i personally don’t think it’s as clear as all that, and i think me saying it is would be doing merlin a disservice.
merlin’s desire to be seen/known/accepted is literally the most base urge he has. if he truly thought he could tell somebody safely, he would.
i think merlin knows the people in his orbit well enough to know how they feel about sorcery, at least in a general sense. and even if they aren’t bloodthirsty bigots like uther, they aren’t exactly welcoming magic with open arms, either. at the most basic, elementary level, merlin understands something that we don’t like to think about: none of his friends ever challenge arthur on the sorcery ban or express any dissatisfaction with the political status quo, and, even absent outright bigotry, this fact speaks loudly enough in and of itself. merlin’s friends might not be out clamoring for sorcerers’ blood, but they aren’t criticizing a society that criminalizes sorcery, either, and they are never shown to have a problem with the way things are, even though the way things are is wrong.
The Way Things Are is, in fact, unjust. it’s oppressive. and allowing that state of affairs to continue, unquestioned and unchallenged, when you have access to the king’s ear and aren’t personally in danger of being persecuted, indicates that you’re okay with the injustice. that you’re comfortable with the oppression. that you don’t see a problem with the status quo, and that you're unbothered enough by it to let it be.
it doesn’t matter that merlin’s friends have never straight-up said ‘boy, magic sure is evil’ onscreen. they never say that camelot’s policies are wrong, and that delivers a clear enough message on its own.
3) it is not a crime to fight for your freedom
to bring this back to gwaine specifically, since that was originally the focus of this ask -
for me, for all that i adore gwaine, and for all that i think he was, for the most part, an INCREDIBLY sound, healthy relationship for merlin, the truth is that gwaine is as much a part of this problem as everyone else. does that mean i personally think gwaine would have summarily dumped merlin if he’d found out merlin had magic? no. but i don’t think it’s as uncomplicated as maybe we wish it might be, and i think merlin has every right to be as uncertain of gwaine on this issue as he does of everyone else.
for one thing, like i said before, even gwaine, who used to have fewer qualms than any of the knights about pushing back on arthur’s BS, has never said a word about camelot’s injustices, or ever acknowledged that the laws of the land are unjust to begin with.
for another, there are specific moments that kind of make you wonder.
5.05 (’the disir’) is a good example of this - when gwaine finds osgar in the woods, the two of them have this exchange:
you are a sorcerer, a heretic, and a murderer.
the rhetoric of this sentence frames all three of these things as equivalent entities - criminal ones.
to pick this apart more carefully:
a) sorcerer
it’s worth noting here that we’re never told osgar has done anything worse than evading arrest for the crime of being a known sorcerer. when leon mentions him in the council meeting, the conversation consists solely of the following:
“as you know, a few days ago our garrison in the forest of breckfire intercepted the man who goes by the name of osgar.”
“the sorcerer.”
“the same. they were trying to apprehend him when he used his powers to escape.”
and…that’s it. osgar’s crime, as far as we know, was simply being a sorcerer (and then, after that, attempting to escape an unjust arrest, thereby killing a knight in the process). there’s no mention of any other activities that would have warranted his arrest in the first place, other than the possession of magic.
but magic, even on its own, IS a crime in camelot - and gwaine levels the accusation at osgar as such.
b) heretic
that’s a hell of a word to throw around, if you think sorcery is chill.
“heretic” isn’t a mild accusation. "heretic” has vitriolic severity behind it. people are accused of heresy when they’re perceived to be in brazen defiance of what is (in the eyes of the accuser) unquestionably right and correct. “heretic” is like…it’s like blasphemer. the connotation is not just that something is bad, but that it’s sinful.
for gwaine, either osgar’s association with sorcery and/or his defiance of camelot’s army makes him a heretic. and that’s not something a person who is down with sorcery or supportive of a magic-user’s struggle for freedom would say.
c) murderer
if gwaine were cool with sorcery, we would expect him to understand that a sorcerer who resisted arrest for the crime of being a sorcerer isn’t a murderer.
it’s like kara said in 5.11 - it is not a crime to fight for the right to be who you are.
camelot has been killing sorcerers for decades. osgar mortally wounded a soldier (not an innocent civilian, i might note) who was trying to imprison him. he was resisting the armed forces of an oppressive state. that’s not murder.
somebody who understands that camelot is an oppressive regime wouldn’t think of this as murder. they would understand that it is not a crime to protect your own life when the state has literally been trying to exterminate your people for years. and even if osgar had been engaged in rebellious activities against the state (which as far as we know is not the case - nothing like this is ever referenced!), they would understand that people with magic have long been overdue for a righteous uprising.
but gwaine is a little more like arthur, in this moment - he sees the “wrong” that osgar has done (in the form of sir ranulf’s death) without seeing the thousands upon thousands of wrongs that camelot visited upon the magical community first.
4) you can’t go armed into a sacred place
the rest of this episode is similar. gwaine pays just as little heed to merlin’s warnings as the rest of the knights, when merlin admonishes them that the disir’s cave is sacred. gwaine doesn’t relinquish his sword or take special care upon entering the cave. in fact, he is the one who outright interrupts the disir while they’re speaking - as they’re telling arthur a series of hard truths, that he’s persecuted magic-users, “even unto slaughter;” that he’s desecrated their space: “you come here, to the most sacred of the sacred, to the very heart of the Old Religion, with weapons drawn - trampling hallowed relics - treating our sacred space like you do your kingdom - with arrogance - with conceit - with insolence - ”
and gwaine cuts them off, pushing to the front of the group and shouting at them “enough! you speak of the king!” and that’s when the fight starts, when mordred gets stabbed.
someone who was fully accepting of magic, or who knew anything about it at all, would not have behaved this way. they would not have bristled at hearing how arthur’s regime unfairly persecutes the magical community. they would have known that it was true.
5) i just want to be myself
the above is just one example, but it’s a clear enough one to illustrate what i mean. gwaine IS an amazing friend to merlin. he does treat merlin well. and merlin loves him to death. but gwaine is NOT totally chill with magic. i’m not saying he actively hates it, but he is not, from what merlin has witnessed, entirely safe. merlin loves him, but he can’t be himself around him.
and i do think that pains merlin terribly. all these people who he loves so much, and every time he’s with them there’s always that whisper: ‘this is a charade. all the love in my life is a lie. they only like me because they don’t know me. if they knew who i really was, this would be over.’
and we wonder why he never tells anyone. we tell him he ‘should’ have told gwaine, gwen, morgana, arthur, like it would have been easy, or even possible, for him to ever consider putting himself in a position where he could lose what precarious, partially make-believe connections he has.
merlin, in the later seasons, when he worries about his magic being exposed, isn’t afraid of being executed. he’s afraid of becoming even more alone than he is now. and he has good reason to feel that way - even people who appear to put him first aren’t fully on board with the thing that makes him who he is. and merlin knows this. he’s seen it. none of his friends are out fighting for people like him at court. some of his friends shake their heads and assure arthur “you are a good and just king” when arthur expresses concern that maybe the disir are right, maybe he has indeed transgressed. some of merlin’s friends used to buck the system in defense of the powerless, but now they defend the regime even when the accusations levelled against it by an oppressed population are true.
merlin knows that revealing himself is a kind of risk that could very plausibly end with him utterly disowned. every single friendship he has is subject to this justified fear, this bitter knowledge. merlin has every reason to doubt the soundness of his relationships.
and, circling back to the thing that started all these musings - the only friends who never made him feel that way were will and lancelot.
that’s all i mean when i say that will and lancelot were merlin’s only “real” friends. i wish there were a better word to use than that, because i really don’t mean it like…as if merlin’s relationships with other people weren’t…valid, or important, or based on true love and care. they were. but there’s just not a better way to express that will and lancelot were the only people who ever even knew who they were friends with, who saw merlin for exactly who he was and said “i love you still.” they were the only ones whose friendship was something merlin didn’t have to be afraid of losing solely for existing.
i always think of morgana’s line in 2.11 - ‘i don’t want to be brave. i just want to be myself. i don’t want to be alone anymore.’
around everyone else, merlin has to be brave. he has to keep up the pretense, which means even when he’s surrounded by friends, he’s completely isolated.
with will and lancelot, though, he could be himself. with will and lancelot, he wasn’t alone.
6) post-script
i really appreciate being given the opportunity to muse to myself about this in more detail - i actually needed to think through some things regarding gwaine anyway, for writing purposes, and this was actually really helpful in organizing my brain. so thanks, anon, for the prompt!
i know my answer probably runs counter to your own interpretation of things, but as i said, this is just my own personal outlook. i typed it up because the message got me thinking, and because i know i have a couple of friends who might find it interesting, but my thoughts apply only to me, and i do not mind at all if folks think about these things differently! nobody is obligated to agree with anything i write, or give it any further thought, or even read it at all - we’re all going to engage with this story in different ways, so if anybody finds that this isn’t their cup of tea, please feel free to scroll on by, and keep having fun with this show in whatever way makes you happiest! :)
#tumblr is doing something weird and not letting me use read-more's in posts that are replies to an ask#i was able to screenshot the last ask i replied to and just turn the whole thing into a text post with a read-more#because i knew the sender would see it anyway#but i'm not sure an anon will see this without getting the notification#sorry this is a#long post#i will play with it more and see if i can get the cut to actually show up#=/#the once and future slowburn#you're the only friend i've got#meta#replies#the bravest and most noble of them all#no kings no masters
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i felt the urge to riff on the hive streams for a little bit since discussion came up on the hive discord, namely, holding issue with the idea that the alpha stream is inconsistent in that it is about leadership when otto is the only leader, and that it’s also possible that the alphas are just kids with specialized skills, and not actually bonded by any particular unifying element.
and, in response, @vulpix-sinistre brought up a quote from the abridged hive fanfic, that goes something like: “there are four streams: main characters, stereotypical bullies, ?, and nerds.”
and i disagree with the first two ideas, but almost completely agree with the abridged fic quote. that is pretty much how the streams work, and it is IMPORTANT that that is how the streams work.
in the end, you may conclude that the streams system still doesn’t make sense. you won’t be like “well clearly dr. nero was just logically dividing the labor of his students to reflect a specialized training program” because it’s more complicated on that. i hate to do this to y’all, but a lot of everything streams-related requires an out-of-book explanation to get where you’re going, but i can promise that i will at least try to go
first, let’s think about why h.i.v.e. would have streams at all
on the one hand, it’s inescapable to consider that one primary reason that hive has streams is because harry potter had houses, and for the same reason that percy jackson had cabins, the 39 clues had branches, hunger games had sections (or counties, idk), divergent had factions, and so on and so on. the rise of fandom spaces on the internet was concurrent with a big ya/mg boom in the post-2005 world (after twilight was published), and within those fandom spaces it became important to identify with an aspect of the fantasy world as part of your personality. that became a very marketable thing for a while, and so separating children into streams would, to a publisher, seem like a pretty solid storytelling choice.
however! the alpha stream is not the same as gryffindor house. on the one hand, it seems easy to make an alpha/gryffindor and henchman/slytherin parallel, because one group is good (relatively) and one is bad (or at least antagonistic). but it doesn’t work because while slytherin has a reputation for constituents of poor moral character (which has been largely revised in fanon), being a henchman is where you go, according to the books, if you are unintelligent and burly. it’s not a really sexy stream, is what i’m trying to say. and though there are undoubtedly some readers who would look at the henchman stream and see themselves, i think the majority of readers would likely find the henchman stream a completely undesirable stream to be in.
and, given how little importance the role of streams have after the first book, i will go out on a limb and say that mark walden knows that the henchman stream is unsexy. we aren’t interested in the hopes and dreams and motivations of the henchman stream; as we learn in book two, the ideal henchman is weak-minded and easily led—so what dreams would they even have? this leads me to conclude that while mark walden might have sold h.i.v.e. on the “there are personality-based groups in the school!” idea, he had something completely else in mind when he started writing and that, I think, is actually far more interesting.
but really, why would h.i.v.e. have streams at all
a few things about mark walden: 1) he studied english lit in school, 2) he has a background as a video game producers, and 3) he likes james bond. i know the first two things because i have read his bio and i know the third thing because i have read his books in conjunction with seeing all the james bond films. so we will call 1-3 facts.
if you are wondering what a lit degree, video game production, and the james bond franchise all have in common, then let me connect those dots: all three of those things depend heavily on the study and understanding of repetitive structure in storytelling as an interpreter and creator of meaning. each one of these fields requires an understanding of how stories and words work to create meaning in order to be successful.
and, to quote mr. walden here directly (sourced from this here link):
“So, I was playing with this cat one day and it got me thinking that those old-school Bond villains always just seemed to appear out of thin air with very little back story and that got me thinking about how they became world- conquering megalomaniacs in the first place. It was only a short mental walk from there to HIVE.”
so, imagine you’re a writer trying to tell a story about a school for villains like those in james bond—you’ve studied storycraft and you have a lot of experience in a job finding believable and compelling obstacles for people to interact with in video games. you have noticed patterns. and you need to make those patterns work for you.
enter: streams
i have watched all the james bond movies (all of ‘em) (i mean it) (just not the unreleased one yet lol) and you know what?
there’s probably just about four kinds of villains in those movies.
henchmen include the likes of jaws, oddjob, and tee hee. often physically disabled in a cinematically interesting way, these guys are the muscles and the machines in every bond film. they are the ones who tail bond as he takes long train rides and who try to personally throw him into shark tanks. they are the hands and feet of their evil masters and they don’t have a lot of emotional depth or backstory.
politicians/financiers abound in the james bond franchise because he is a government employee who often hangs out with other government employees (he has no friends). these people are like colonel rosa klebb, georgi koskov, prince kamal khan. there are a lot more, as a matter of fact, because the whole point of james bond is that they are in the cold war and even people without titles have political and financial motivations for screwing around with stuff. these types of villains depend on being well and truly embedded in an existing infrastructure or hierarchy, somebody who worked their way up from being a foot soldier or clerk into a powerful leadership position that gives them a lot of state-sanctioned trust and authority.
technicians and inventors include folks like henry gupta and boris grishenko, who use technology as their primary weapon. they are often inventors or innovators and are really good at making high-tech stuff. however, i think this stream is also a direct result of the character Q, someone who is actually on James Bond’s team and who runs an entire department of people who test sometimes outlandish gadgets for Bond to use in the field. (but we love the gadgets. they are fun.) in other words, Bond arguably has a technical stream at his disposal in MI6, which means the idea isn’t necessarily evil, but, likewise, our James Bond School also needs Qs. it’s the rules. if you are familiar with Q from James Bond at all then you understand
and that leaves us with alphas... the “supervillains.” these are the famous ones. dr. no. mr. big. scaramanga. le chiffre. blofeld. max zorin. emilio largo. goldfinger. these are the ones with the master plan, the dreams to recreate the world as they see it, the passion to see their desires to fulfillment and the resources to make them happen. they are rich. they are fancy. they are larger than life. is it weird that karl stromberg tries to incite a nuclear war between Britain and the USSR so that a lot of people can die so that he can colonize the ocean? yes. but by god, it’s fancy and dramatic, and that’s what counts.
are there other kinds of villains? oh, definitely. lots more. but you have to understand, that those kinds of villains generally don’t appear in Bond. sometimes! but it’s not a staple. for example, not many people in the bond films are motivated by revenge because each movie is kind of designed to function as a one-shot. villains don’t come back and so there is no revenge. the villain who gets the most notable reprise, jaws, actually ends up finding his true love in space.
compare: every movie is going to have henchmen. every movie has government stooges making morally questionable decisions. (almost) every movie has Q, or some gadget stuff going on. and every movie has a big bad that has to be better than the last.
so that explains why the streams are what they are.
it was a jumping-off point for mark walden to figure out what this universe might look like and how different character types need to function. consider that while the core four are all alphas and are kind of insulated as a group, the teachers all kind of roughly align with one of these groups. colonel francisco, raven, and chief lewis are henchmen types, doing on-the-ground work to get stuff done. ms. tennenbaum and the contessa are political af, they are all about the corruption and infiltrating institutional power. ms. gonzales, ms. leon, and professor pike all have technical skills that help keep an organization moving forward. and over them all is the singular alpha, dr. nero, who is coordinating and monitoring it all for his own evil plan: to run a high school.
honestly, dr. nero’s hive idea operates just like a james bond villain plot! it works, or it does when pitching the idea. the problem is that the books continued after the pitch did, and with worldbuilding came some complications. namely, the fact that the megastructure of james bond villainy does not replicate well into a small friend group on which the narration focuses. so let’s return to the question presented at the beginning:
how can alphas really be alphas when not everyone on the field trip can be a mastermind?
i’m gonna give this to you in two ways. one, the way i personally interpret it as an in-universe explanation, given the background premises we have already established. and the other, why the stream system kind of ruins the structure it sets out to create.
so, for me, the alphas can be alphas because there is more to villainy than being a mastermind and there is more to being a mastermind than being in charge. as i think about it, this novelization is actually the backstory for every one of the students, who will go on to do great and scary things. they will manage big projects and come up with interesting ways to terrorize the British government, because that is what James Bond villains do (and James Bond does canonically exist in their universe). much like your actual teenage years, this is not the main event.
as students, the core four need to learn to do a little bit of everything. you gotta learn some lock-picking, that’s essential. everyone has to be able to climb a rock wall. it’s the rules. and everyone needs to be able to do some programming. that’s just the way school is. though everyone has a different personality and a different way of looking at the world, their education has to cover the basics because the fact of the matter is, none of them are villains yet. will they become one? that remains to be seen. but they are being given the tools to become the greatest villains if that is something they choose.
the main problem that remains when holding this attitude is that the specialized skills of otto and his friends might be better suited to other streams, in which case, what is an alpha anyways?
here’s the facts: if everyone were assigned to a stream by talent, then there wouldn’t be an alpha stream.
franz? political/financial stream.
nigel? laura? otto? technical stream.
shelby? wing? henchman stream.
you can debate me on the specifics of those assignments, but the point is this: all the other streams are based on hard skills. franz can manage a ledger and that is a financial skill. laura can build a computer from scratch and that is a technical skill. wing can do martial arts, and each martial art is a physical skill that can be taught and performed in a measurable level of proficiency.
the idea of being a “mastermind” is a much softer skill—which is to say, there’s no one recipe that will make it work. my manager at work has coached me by saying that leadership is often about having a “style,” and working at it that way. leadership requires interpersonal flexibility, being able to stay organized and to make important decisions rapidly, it is about being able to prioritize and delegate. and it’s very much open to interpretation, every day, all the time.
let me tell you something else about james bond: there is a lot of classism, racism, and sexism embedded into every aspect of those films, but that goes for double when it comes to the villains in the show. to vastly oversimplify that very concept, it shows up in the bond films like this: henchmen are working class folks, the villainous equivalent of “the help,” and the supervillains are (usually) rich and glamorous and powerful. henchmen are uneducated (read as: stupid) and ugly and poor. no one cares if they die. (there’s more complexities, as always, but this essay isn’t actually about james bond so we’ll fast forward through My Opinions to the end)
the problem with replicating james bond in your villain school universe is that some of the biases of the james bond universe get replicated in there, too. poor and uneducated folks get turned into disposable henchmen whose lives are irrelevant. people who are educated and talented get fast-tracked to a more glamorous and interesting stream that will catapult them to the top of the ladder as soon as they graduate. if you look at the dialect with which block and tackle are written, they are clearly meant to be seen as a different social class than otto, despite the fact that otto is coming from basically nothing. and we understand that when otto graduates, he will be able to do basically anything that he wants to at all.
so, if you’re asking why wing has a role in the alpha stream when he doesn’t seem as leader-y as otto, there’s a simple answer: because dr. nero believes that wing can be more.
the climax of book one is dr. nero explicitly telling otto, wing, laura, and shelby that they are in his school because he believes in them and he wants to see them grow. they are given an elite status other students do not have despite the fact that they have just literally tried to escape. as we see in the case of duncan cavendish, the main way to get on that highway to a guaranteed career is to convince him that you’ve “got it.” for those who are not believed in, there is no way to make up for the special grooming. you’re stuck with the stream you’re placed in, doomed (perhaps) to be a second-in-command at best.
is all this intentional? probably not. but it is implicit in the structure of the story and, alas, that’s the way it is.
all i can think to say in conclusion is that while the stream system tends to replicate some of the unfair and classist realities present in other media and the world we live in, i think part of the reason we read h.i.v.e. is because the alpha stream is so appealing. imagine! you are competent and you have a desirable, specialized skill as well as a proficiency in many general skills and you are certain you are going to do good things—and all because someone believes in you. to receive someone else’s support and confidence can be life-changing. the magic of h.i.v.e. is that yes—lives are changed and ordinary, boring people were elevated to the level of supervillains. we are only left to wonder, are they the only people who deserved that honor?
#meta#spoilers#streams#alpha#henchman#political/financial#technical stream#technical#james bond#hive#h.i.v.e.#higher institute of villainous education#the higher institute of villainous education#otto malpense#max nero#streams post#musings
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Light My Way, Part 8
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5 - Part 6 - Part 7 - Part 8 - Part 9 - Part 10 - Part 11 the end
⚠️ WARNING! ⚠️
-It is a twisted story of Pokemon Sun and Moon, and a crossover of Pokemon SM and SWSH.
-It features Hau and Kabu as the main characters.
-Extremely angsty.
-Everything is headcanon.
-It isn’t spoiler-free.
"There. I'm glad I was able to help while researching out in the Wild Area."
Hop smiled at Hau after bandaging him, but he still looked nervous.
"You should be more careful with the pokemons of the Wild Area. Your Appletun and Alcremie sure seem tough, but some of the wild pokemons are quite fierce."
"......."
Hop was curious about why the boy was so nervous. But he knew it would make it worse if he asks bluntly, so he decided to unravel bit by bit.
"Hey, umm, I didn't catch your name..."
"It's Hau..."
"Cute name!" Hop smiled.
"Umm, so what are you training for? Are you going to take on the Gym Challenge in a few years?"
"........" Hau shook his head.
"But you seem very burdened with stacking the power... Do you have some pressure in your mind?"
"........" Hau looked at Hop and frowned a little, as Hop seemed like perceiving him. But at the same time, he needed someone to open up his pain since he cannot rely on Kabu anymore. Plus, Hop's gentle smile gave him the extra relief and courage to speak.
"I need to be strong..." Hau whimpered.
"So that I am cut to become the next Gym Leader... I'm sorry I lied earlier, but you're right. Mr. Kabu is fostering me... And everyone says I should be his successor. It sure pressures me, but... I, I don't want to part away from him. He was so nice to me... I... I tried to go against fate and it destroyed my family. So I won't let it happen this time..."
Hop felt as if his heart was smacked down with a sledgehammer because it rang a bell of his torturous past. Hop, too, didn't know what he wanted with his life too. He vaguely pursued Lee's steps to become Champion because everyone along with his family praised his brother, never knowing whether if it is a dream that suits him or not. It was difficult for Hop to dream of something else when everyone ever talked about at home is Leon.
And when that dim light was blown out with Bede's harsh remarks and Leon's stepping down from Champion, Hop felt as if he is lost in a desert without water. Only after going through the adventures and saving the legendary hero, Hop realized what he truly wanted in his life, and it is okay to walk a different path from Leon. And only then Hop was able to truly take Leon as a 'brother', not 'an idol'. What pained Hop more is that Hau is much younger than him and is NOT supposed to worry about such a thing. He should be out in the garden playing with his pokemons without a worry in the world, instead of agonizing over his future.
Hop inhaled and processed his thoughts.
"Hau, I know I am not in the position to say such a thing, but..."
Hop cleared his throat, as he is about to convey something heavy.
"Hau, look up to the sky!"
Hau followed his instruction, wondering what is he trying to say.
"See the stars? They may look the same here, but they say every single one of them is different."
Hop grinned at Hau again.
"What about pokemons? Have you ever seen pokemons that are EXACTLY the same? I mean, they might look the same in appearance, but even the pokemons of the same species are different. My Dubwool here can't be a carbon-copy to that Dubwool out in the Wild Area."
Hau stared at Hop asking what his point is.
"Oh, umm, so the point is, it goes the same with people! Just like you and I are different, you can't be the same with Mr. Kabu, right? And... It is okay to be different! See? Stars are all different, but they are dazzling and beautiful in their own way!"
Hop inhaled again before continuing.
"...You see, my brother was a Champion of the region, and I thought it was obvious for me to follow his path. But after a long journey, I realized it isn't. Everyone is different and can have various dreams in life. And that's okay! So just because Mr. Kabu is a Gym Leader, it doesn't mean you must be the one as well! Doesn't matter what others say, you are Hau. You can look for the path YOU want to follow. No one can change it and don't let them change it. Everyone goes through a distinctive experience that makes who they are. There's nothing wrong with it."
Hau looked at Hop with round eyes. No one ever spoke to Hau that way. No one ever said it is okay to have a dream of his own. It was mind-blowing to the point it didn't feel real. Finally, someone accepted the fact that Hau is an 'individual'.
"Considering Mr. Kabu, I'm sure he doesn't want you to be pressured either, Hau. He is a wise person who cares for others well. I'm sure he would be heartbroken to see you pushing him away like this... You see, I always thought I would not be able to talk to my brother as a family unless I step up the game, but it wasn't the case at all. When I honestly asked him if he would hate me, he denied it and said it's okay to follow the alternative future from him. Only after we dropped the titles and what other people think of us, we were back to being brothers again."
Hau's eyes instantly became dewy. Every word from Hop relieved him so much that he felt safe. It was great to have someone reassure Hau that he doesn't have to mimic someone's life and love Mr. Kabu even if he isn't a Gym Leader.
"Sorry for all the babble though! I... went through something similar, so I didn't want you to go through the same."
"No, thank you so much. I appreciate it..." Hau smiled at Hop, and Hop smiled back too.
"Shall we go back home now? Mr. Kabu would be worried sick."
"Hau!!" Kabu instantly ran to the little boy and cuddled him close. His face was red and his eyes were puffy from crying too much. That was enough sign for Hau to see how much Kabu cares for him. Hau nuzzled back to Kabu with teary eyes. The Fire Gym Leader felt as if his heart is torn apart when he saw bandages on Hau.
"He'll be alright. All of it seems like flesh wounds, so it would heal after a while. I am glad I was able to help." Hop calmed Kabu down, but it wasn't enough for him.
Hop explained what was going through Hau's mind on his permission, and it weighed heavily on Kabu. He didn't know that a simple sentence from someone could trigger the trauma of his boy so easily. It warned the foster parent to look into his child better.
"I cannot appreciate enough, Hop."
Kabu thanked yet again.
"Oh, no! Please, it was nothing, really. I was glad that I helped!" Hop beamed from ear to ear. Hop chose the dream of becoming a Professor to help others, and it felt awesome to already be of help.
"Now, Hau. Shall we say thank you to Hop? He was a hero of the day." Kabu asked, and Hau nodded. He went to Hop, hugged him, and appreciated with a bright face.
"Thank you for saving me, Big Brother Hop!"
"A... Aw, shucks! No problem at all, Hau." Hop blushed in all shade of red. As the youngest of the family, he never was addressed as a big bro, and now he was. It made Hop feel like a proud young man.
______________________________________
As Kabu and Hau headed back home after promising Hop, Milo, and Nessa to see them again, it was close to midnight. Kabu got himself together and prepared Hau for bed. Before they fell asleep, Kabu gave another big hug to Hau and spoke in a subdued voice.
"Hau. I don't need you to be anyone for me. I just want you to BE with me. Do you understand? So from now on, please don't push yourself. Tell me anything in your mind."
Hau's heart warmed up like never before. Not even his blood-related family gave such relief in his life before. He nuzzled into Kabu. The child and his caretaker fell asleep almost simultaneously, as it was a long day for both.
#pokemon hau#rival hau#trainer hau#pokemon hop#trainer hop#rival hop#pokemon kabu#kabu#gym leader kabu#pokemon gen 7#pokemon generation 7#pokemon generation 8#pokemon gen 8#pokemon swsh#pokemon sword and shield#pokemon sm
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task 001: sofia leon
La Roche was a small man, unassuming and rather plain looking despite his name and its meaning. There was nothing rock like about that man but it was his name none the less. Perhaps that was what made him an effective spy master here in the french court and why when he stepped into a room quietly filled with opulent and lavish surroundings few if any paid attention to him. When he spoke though in a thick french accent the voice was not mousey or projecting meekness. It was a voice that commanded respect even here. Gesturing to the seat before him he motions for your character to sit as he begins his line of questioning. Even if well acquainted to members of his own court he asks the same. Whether you take the seat is your choice but the unassuming La Roche begins to ask questions and scribble down the answers not once looking up from their notations..
“You have been summoned here this day at the behest of the French court for an interview and we appreciate your cooperation at this time. Can you please state for official records your name, age and court position?”
There were so many things she did not mind doing, but being interrogated like a criminal was certainly not on the list. Still she took the seat offered, maintaining her calm and composed posture as she looked at the man she had added onto the list of men she disliked in France. The sooner she was done from this, the better. “Sofia Leon. Twenty-nine. Crown Princess of Spain.”
“Prior to the debacle of the dance floor where had you been?”
“I was participating in the fashion show that was being held next door to the dance floor. We heard a scream coming from the room where the dancing was happening. Hence the show was interrupted and we quickly made our way to the main room. The rest,” she said, taking in a deep breath as she recalled the fiasco on the dance floor before continuing, “the rest is history.
“Had you noticed anything during that ordeal that seemed personally amiss to you other than the obvious?”
“My attention was on the activity on the dance floor. The only thing I took notice of was the way my precious pearl necklace was torn away from my neck, all the pearls scattering along the floor as that fool tried to chase the dog. Maybe you should investigate what a dog was doing on the dance floor too,” the princess suggested, still visibly pissed off by what had happened. It was a precious piece of jewelry, a treasured gift that had been destroyed along with her dignity and her pride.
“Where were you when the body of the Italian king was discovered and where there witnesses to where you were at the time?”
“In my chambers, of course. I was getting changed into a new dress after the one I wore was torn in the debacle. My ladies were accompanying me, and my guard, Sir Santiago, was standing guard outside my chambers’ doors.”
“Who or what do you personally suspect could have contributed to the unfortunate demise of the Italian king?”
At his question, Sofia had to stop herself from scoffing. For an investigator, he certainly had no way of getting information out of people. If anyone knew, they would not answer a question so directly. “It is not my place to speculate. I believe it is your job to find answers to such a question. Although I am more than certain it was not the plague. If that was the case, other people in the Italian court would have been affected by now, and possibly others from different courts too. We saw how quickly that disease spreads after all.”
“How did you personally feel about Italy’s position in the last five years to six years?”
Sofia held no feelings towards the Italians. She understood that luck was on their side, that their losses were minimal compared to other nations. Jealousy, however, was not a feeling she allowed herself to feel. What she disliked was the way they flaunted their luck and their attempt to use it to gain power. “Luck was on their side and their losses were minimal in comparison to most nations. I cannot harbor any feelings towards luck. As far as I am concerned, Italy and Spain have not been at odds.”
“What reasons would you have to harm the king, if any?”
His next question made Sofia’s eyebrows raise in unison, as she started at him in disbelief. How did he have the audacity to ask such a question? It took all of her willpower to not toss insults in his direction. “None whatsoever. The King and I were not acquainted with one another. Like I said, Spain had no issues with Italy. As long as my country is safe, then I have no reason to harm anyone. King of Italy included.”
Upon the answer of your final question La Roche looks up from his notes to raise his hand before clearing his throat to make a small statement. “Please understand we do require you to stay here on the ground while we are conduction our investigation and that any plans involving travel in the immediate future be cancelled. The French court will handle this matter but we may require your further cooperation. Please send in the next individual, we will keep apprised of our findings once we are concluded” With that he bids you farewell and one can’t help but wonder do they truly suspect murder or is it the plague returned?
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