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corellianhounds · 2 months

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Analyzing The Mandalorian’s Motivations — “The Heiress” Criticism

Part I / Part II

Word Count: 2k

I have several issues with how Mando is characterized in Season 2 of the show, and some of the most concise examples come from actions in “The Heiress” and “The Rescue,” which have parallels in their ending fights and character takeaways. In Season 2 it often felt like the end result the writers wanted dictated how certain plot points had to be accomplished without taking into consideration what the characters logically should have done in the situations that came up based on their prior scenes and established characterization. It didn’t feel like Mando’s reasoning, choices, or personal motivations were explored or exemplified, so his agency as a character was put to the side in favor of meeting certain plot beats (though he wasn’t the only one).

The biggest conflict of this show is the fact that being a Mandalorian makes Din susceptible to danger at every turn, which he feels is no life for a kid to be a part of, and the longer the things he holds dear are in proximity to each other (him being a devout Mandalorian vs. keeping a mostly helpless Force-sensitive child), the more he’s in danger of losing one for the sake of the other. Both are at the core of Mando’s internal conflict, which sets up the biggest question of the series: “If forced to choose, which will be more important to the Mandalorian in the end?”

That gives us an overall objective of Mando needing to give the child to somebody else so the kid will be safe and he can continue to be the kind of Mandalorian he aspires to, even if it means he and the kid will be separated as a result. That internal struggle should dictate each of his smaller choices within the individual episodes because at this point in their story he doesn’t see any other way for him to have both.

For some reason, Season 2 felt like the writers missed the obvious reason Grogu needs a Jedi teacher. Mando needs to find a Jedi to train the boy so that not only will Grogu be safe (and presumably happy) with a person who better understands him as a Force-sensitive child, but so Grogu will be able to defend himself when he is alone. It’s important to remember that the Jedi code wasn’t just a belief system and way of life, it was also a martial art.

Even if Din were to keep the child and protect him to the best of his ability, he knows his own past as a hunter and his reputation as a Mandalorian make the child a target by association (to say nothing of the Empire and whoever they send after them, though he won’t know those are still a threat until later). The child does not age at the same rate humans do, and Mando knows there’s no guarantee he’ll always be around to save him. Even if he survives to old age with the child by his side, he doesn’t know if the child will be mature or capable enough of even caring for himself, especially if he doesn’t grow to be much bigger than he is now. Grogu needs to learn self defense and strengthen his skills if he is to ever have a chance at surviving those he outlives. Din has to reckon with the fact being the best Mandalorian he could be isn’t enough to keep the child safe on his own (which is another inner conflict we don’t get to hear about from him).

We never hear Din’s perspective on his quest outside of “This is what I was told to do,” which makes him a character the story is happening to instead of him driving his own narrative. The external goal is good because it means we get to see him struggling to keep the child at arm’s length, knowing he’ll have to give him up and not wanting either of them to be hurt by that separation, but Mando needed to have that internal motivation because it ties directly back to his main objective. Yes, the Armorer tasked him with returning the child to his own kind, but it was not only because she understood the importance of him being raised with his own culture, it was because the child is virtually helpless if his strength and control over the Force is inconsistent like Din has seen.

Without that internal motivation, Mando ends up not having much choice in where the story goes, making his character in the second season weaker as a result.

So now we’ve clarified his overarching goal and given him a more driven role and perspective in the story. Everything that follows should be a result of his active ambition in achieving it, which brings me back to his choices in “The Heiress.”

This episode introduces the idea of different Mandalorians having different customs/placing importance on different aspects of the code, but has Din choose to set those thoughts regarding ritual aside in order for him to receive information now that he realizes he’s so close to getting it (showing us him prioritizing the child over himself). What we didn’t get and what we should have gotten to see was Mando more visually desperate to achieve the episode’s tasks in exchange for the connection Bo-Katan has directly to a Jedi. The internal conflict of the episode now comes down to “What is Mando willing to compromise on to achieve his goals, and how far is he willing to deviate from his own code to get it?”

The main external conflict the writers/show-runners initiate but don’t resolve is Mando’s problem with Bo-Katan not sticking to the terms of their contract. Bo-Katan changes the terms of the deal midway through the heist, having kept her real motive from him the whole time. His character has no reason in these circumstances to honor the deal that she broke first, and I think his willingness to continue with the heist in order to get the information deviates too far from another seldom-explored, nuanced character trait of Mando’s: while he does give everybody at least one chance, if they prove to be a continued threat or refuse to back down, he reacts with swift, decisive justice.

This should have been the point in the episode where her actions were the last straw; she put him in a much more dangerous position and proved by her deception that she was using him. This should have been the point he said “No.”

I made a post before talking about Gor Koresh that puts Mando’s actions into perspective, but there are plenty of examples in every episode to back up the fact Mando has a tipping point. That’s a good thing. Yes, it’s admirable how much Mando shows restraint, but there has to come a point where your characters refuse to do something because otherwise they’re just a pushover and a doormat. Characters shouldn’t have to say yes to everything, and they should be able to make decisions that result in the story becoming more difficult for them. His choice here, outside of saving his own skin so he can guarantee being able to get back to the kid he is responsible for, should be to let Bo-Katan experience the consequences of her actions. He should have refused to let her be rewarded for her deception. He doesn’t have to shoot her to prove a point, but he certainly doesn’t have to help her.

If he’s willing to let their dishonorable actions slide, what else would he be willing to let others do at the expense of himself without holding them accountable or without them receiving the consequences they deserve? What aspects of himself will he compromise? I’m not even talking about compromise in the choice to take the helmet off in “The Believer,” I’m talking about who he is as a person.

Bo-Katan changing the terms of the deal reveals to the audience that she knew he wouldn’t have agreed to do the job in the first place because otherwise she would have told him at the beginning. Hijacking the entire Empire ship is intensely riskier and poses a danger to himself and by extension the kid if he doesn’t make it back. She gets him onto the ship and only reveals her intentions midway through, thinking she’ll be able to coerce him because they’re both Mandalorians.

That should have been the moment Mando decided the cost of this job outweighed the reward because if she was willing to deceive him about this, what reason does he have to trust her at all? She could have simply lied about having any information about a Jedi to begin with, or could withhold the information once the job’s done. Season 2 has several episodes with the theme of honoring one’s word being what marks somebody as a good Mandalorian, or at least as an ally Din can trust. Cobb Vanth, the Tuskens, the Frog Lady, later Boba and Fennec all have story elements that relate to the idea of honoring one’s word.

What Mando should have logically done based on what we’ve seen of him up to this point was tell Bo-Katan “No deal. I’m done. I’ll find the information I need elsewhere.” And then we see him jump off ship.

This has two major consequences to the show’s story moving forward.

• One: Mando doesn’t receive information about the Jedi and will have to find it somewhere else, a cost he is willing to take because staying with Bo-Katan would have meant putting himself at undue risk, with the possibility of her having lied about ever having the information at all. As it stands in canon, he’s forced to allow somebody he thinks SHOULD be honorable to reap the benefits of their dishonor, and what does that say about his character’s sense of justice in the end?

• And two: Bo-Katan’s heist fails, losing her the shipment (and potentially, in her eyes, the information about Moff Gideon she could have gotten if Mando had continued to the cockpit with them to interrogate the Imperials), meaning Bo-Katan’s already established antagonism would have pushed her into open animosity, pitting her against Mando as an enemy. That makes for a much more interesting and compelling narrative conflict Mando has to overcome in the finale when he has to convince her to join him, which would heighten interpersonal tensions and have the audience truly not know whether or not Mando is going to succeed in the end.

It also sets up a stronger villain for Mando after Moff Gideon is defeated. The show already presented Bo-Katan as an antagonist, and it would have made more sense to lean into that especially with the conflict over the Darksaber coming up at the end.

When Mando goes to her in the finale to recruit her for the ambush, Bo-Katan initially refuses anyway. I don’t have reason to think she entirely cares about Mando’s kid because her actions in the heist put him at risk. He is the sole caretaker and provider for the kid, and being willing to risk his life as collateral shows she only cares about Mando insofar as he’s willing to do what she says. With that change to “The Heiress,” each of them becomes a more strongly written character and he now has to make a more compelling argument to get her in the finale. It’s still the fact he knows exactly where Moff Gideon is that wins her over.

Their interpersonal conflict comes to its Act III at the end of the finale when it’s revealed Mando won the Darksaber in combat, and to add insult to injury Mando offers it up in forfeit in front of witnesses, so now she can’t even challenge him to a duel; people will know he never wanted it in the first place, meaning they’ll assume he’d throw any fight the two of them have. It’s the perfect setup for Mando’s next primary antagonist.

#The Mandalorian #Din Djarin #Bo-Katan Kryze #The Nite Owls #the mandalorian crit #my writing #the mandalorian meta #character analysis #hounds speaks

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erinptah · 8 months

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thoughts on Moon Knight 35?

It's the X-men crossover where Steven (and the others but mostly Steven) deal with being wheelchair bound and the reason he is in episode 5: Asylum. As someone who was temporarily chair bound in the psych ward both scenes mean a lot to me.

Also Storm flirts with frenchie, Nightcrawler saves Moon Knight's life and Bora is such a classic tragic villain and Xavier can read Marc's mind which we know is not true of most telepaths in Mckay run.

Ooh, hey, I remember that one. Time for a reread...

In the comic the guys are using a chair because of a spinal injury (a Comics Injury which comes and goes as the plot demands), and the implication I got from the show was that the asylum put them on meds so strong they couldn't walk. So I don't think they're that directly connected. But it's nice to have the visual callback.

Marlene being so present and supportive during the hospitalization and physical therapy is extra-depressing compared to how Marc will treat her hospital-grade injury in later runs =(

I don't think it's actually Steven fronting for the first chunk. Marlene usually calls them Steven, but that's just like how Frenchie always calls them Marc, and the diner crew always calls them Jake -- even if someone with a different name is fronting, he almost never corrects them.

(More than that, Marc specifically encourages Marlene to call him Steven! Skipping to a later scene, this is one of the issues where he spells out how much he wants to be Steven for her.)

Backing up: The whole "detaching from his personal trauma by obsessing over how to catch the bad guy" thing is classic Marc.

And when he starts getting snippy, then goes "Sorry, lady, that's the pain talking," that sure sounds like Jake, elbowing Marc away from the front to smooth things over.

(No wonder Marc's relationships really start imploding in the runs where Steven and Jake are MIA.)

The diner crew visits and calls him Jake, and I think it's Jake fronting for most of that, too. Especially when Crawley asks when they'll need his help again, and Marlene offers to just put him on a regular retainer salary. Steven would've offered that himself!

...Not that Jake doesn't care (he absolutely does). Just that he doesn't think of himself as having that kind of money.

It's totally Steven fronting when they do anything at the ballet studio, though. Marc wouldn't have the patience for it, and that kind of High Culture setting would make Jake awkward and out-of-place.

Extremely funny: the leaps the narrative goes through to justify "we're going to have cameos from like 20 other S-class Marvel heavyweights with actual superpowers..."

"...but all of them agree that Moon Knight -- a guy with gadgets and a cape who couldn't walk two days ago! -- should face the also-superpowered villain one-on-one."

She's such a typical Moon Knight villain (in a good way!) with the twist of mutant powers, most of this works. It's just. The avalanche of cameos, vs. how little they affect the plot, is a lot.

Looking over the Professor X scenes, and what he says he reads in Marc's thoughts...fear, doubt, agony...I think that's totally consistent with what we get in the MacKay run.

Marc's mind has always been a dangerous place. It's just that (a) by the current run he's learned to weaponize it against telepathic villains, which he's not even trying to do here; and (b) Xavier, for his part, isn't trying to stick his metaphorical hands in the psychic box of bear traps, just observe it from a safe distance.

And the ending, oof =(

Paired with the earlier Marc-Marlene conversation, it totally sums up one of the recurring themes of the MK comics.

When Marc can't be honest with himself and his loved ones ("I am definitely a mentally-stable singlet, who would be happy to be just Steven forever, and can totally quit being Moon Knight any time I want"), his relationships are tense and distant.

When he is honest ("so maybe I have a lot of issues, also this Moon Knight thing gives me purpose and I'm going to be doing it forever"), the people in his life are actually okay with it! Even if he's a weird mess, people can accept that and love him anyway! He just has to own it!

...We get a surprisingly close parallel to that in the modern run, where Marc obsesses over tracking a different bad guy, and ends up lying to Tigra, putting her through a bunch of extra work, and making her feel seriously betrayed. But when he gives her a sincere apology and owns up to some of his issues, that's when they get a happy makeout scene.

So! Has Marc gone through enough personal growth (and enough "accepting that he needs Jake and Steven around for support") to actually stay on the emotionally-honest path this time? Guess we'll find out.

#Moon Knight #Moon Knight comics #Ptah's inbox #so uh #was that enough Thoughts or what

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bambi-kinos · 2 years

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George excerpt from the McLennon server

@rookghosty has very kindly given me permission to repost our conversation regarding George Harrison and John Lennon re: their relationship during the 1970s, George’s frustration with the obnoxious Lennon-McCartney diva double act, and eventually how Paul ended up being more key to the Beatles than anyone realized (even Paul himself.) Since this is from the McLennon server the Paul bias is built in and of course we couldn’t really help but go back to the shipping well, but this was a good conversation about John and George all the same. Hope you guys enjoy.

Once again I have restructured the order of our conversation for better coherency due to Discord’s “reply” feature making it hard to follow if you’re not in the program itself.

***

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 So I've just starting listening to the AKOM podcast and I'm absolutely LOVING it!! On their part 2 of diving into How Do You Sleep? they talk about George and his relationship with the song, and therefore John and Paul in the 70s

I loved their analysis so much, the gist of it is that George kind of resented the Lennon-McCartney partnership, but not really John or Paul on their own

I've always felt bad for George in a way, because he just wanted to make some cool music and with his cool friends but had to deal with John and Paul's massive cosmic obsession with each other in between. Like imagining that as a musician myself... bro

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 yeah...it placed him in this really awful position

like he wants to make music with his friends and he loves them but you can only disappear so many times whenever john walks into the room before you start resenting the hell out of it

he just didnt have a lot of great options at that point.

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 For real. Obviously I know all the bugs loved each other very much, but he just clearly was not appreciated by them as an artist as much as they appreciated each other.

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 he just couldn't take it...not when he had other musicians going "hey you're really great, y'know?"

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 By playing on Imagine tho, George kind of sided with John on the whole John vs. Paul feud, which I think was so damaging for his relationship with Paul. The narrative is usually because "bossy Paul restricts George more and John is more sympathetic", but I don't really buy that cause John could be really dismissive and cruel to him (like the scene in Get Back with his reaction to I Me Mine struck me as really shit)

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 nodnod

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 And even in the Lennon Remembers interview John slags him and his music off in a way that is,, unneeded to say the least.

George is repaid by John for siding with him by John later saying that he used to follow him around Liverpool like a puppy

Idk I'm just going off a bit 😭 I love John as much as anyone else but I love George so much too and this particular instance makes me mad to think about

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 i dont blame u at all, its really crummy

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 But I think AKOM is right is saying that the reason George relished working on that song and did so many takes of his solo (which does go really hard), is because he was probably more motivated to do it because it was a wrench in Lennon-McCartney rather than because he hated Paul specifically so much more than John. Like "finally! They are not up each other's asses for 5 seconds!"

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 to be fair I think George knew John was just kind of....like that and he was ready to take it from him. despite his protests otherwise i also believe that George hero worshipped John until the end and wanted his approval so he didn't really want to rock that boat because he knew there was a significant danger of John burning that bridge forever especially since he was with Yoko and she brought out John's narcissistic qualities to the max. so if George wanted to stay in contact with John (and he did up until a point, I think George finally cut him off a bit once John slagged off Dylan and John reacted so weirdly to George not talking about John in his autobiography) then he couldn't really afford to hold John accountable for that stuff.

whereas with Paul its more personal but also more secure. he trusted Paul more emotionally I think though maybe he didn't like that quality about himself. The upside of having Paul as your big brother is that Paul will forgive you no matter what and George relied on that more than he really wanted to admit IMO.

the thing about the "Imagine" phase is that was when John (and George but especially John) was still in the sowing phase of the sowing/reaping tweet:

I haven't listened to AKOM so I can't comment tooo much on their take but ultimately it sounds right to me? Like George just wanted to stick it to this partnership that had taken over and kind of ruined his life for the last few years.

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 So true, he wanted his approval so bad but it just sucked so much for him. There's that meeting between John and George that May Pang talked about, I'm not sure if it's in her book, where George goes completely off on him and rips his glasses off his face, and John stays quiet. But one line he says is "I did everything you asked me to!" Which is just :( heartbreaking...

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 the thing that I don't think anyone really realized -- except maybe John, and Ringo but Ringo isn't the type to point it out -- is that the Beatles thing was totally contingent on Paul. Once he was done, it was over. John relied on Paul to keep the thing together from the start. I'm not saying that it wasn't a four way relationship, it totally was, but it was always dependent on Paul holding his shit together and de facto everyone else. If Paul wasn't in the picture than the Beatles would never be a thing and we saw that in the 70s. Paul looked at the shitshow of Klein and how the other three treated him during the break up and the fact that he had to sue them to get away from them and he said "no fanks love" and he ran off with Linda and got to be happy with her and have his own successful band.

I've reblogged some posts recently about George in the 70s and he was under the impression that the Beatles were going to come back together once "things got sorted out" -- like he had been talking to people about how they would do it and he wanted them to tour again, that was as late as 1976? I think?

but the thing is that "HDYS" and everything else that happened in 1969 and 1970 just really fucking destroyed Paul and I don't think anyone really realized just how much for a very long time. So I can easily imagine George playing on the Imagine album and HDYS thinking "This is going to own Paul but he'll get over it because he always does and then we'll sort our shit out and then we'll be the Beatles again. It might take a few years but we'll get there."

but that's not what happened. Paul was hurt very deeply by all that -- and it's not that George and John and Ringo weren't justified but it really did skewer the possibility of the Beatles ever getting back together because Paul just couldn't do it again.

so its all just kind of a shitshow, where you have these egotistical people who don't understand how much they're hurting each other or how much they actually need each other to make this thing work.

and the thing is that's not George's fault, it's not his job to put up with McLennon fuckery and he did the right thing for himself, I think. but its also just really sad.

a lot of it comes down to the fact that John and Paul hurt each other, themselves, and the people around them and it lead to a lot of horrible ricochets.

if they hadn't been up each other's asses like that all the time or if they had just been more careful with themselves and the people around them then a lot of things could have turned out differently.

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 Paul was completely right for being fucked up by that song, it nearly singlehandedly ruined his critical perception as an artist. He is a king for rejecting that bs

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 (Paul did so many things wrong but I still respect the fuck out of him for looking at his life's work in the Beatles and going "I can just write more songs" and then lighting the whole thing on fire. King shit, I wish I was that cold.)

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 I think you hit the nail on the head. They mention it in AKOM too, how basically everyone working on that song had been pursuing Paul / wanting something from him in some way for years (John obvsly, Yoko with her John Cage shit. Allen Klein, Phil Spector, etc.) Like Paul was the one laying the golden eggs, and everyone wanted a piece of him. When he was like "fuck off" they all just went like "lol he is so lame and he isn't a real artist, he makes muzak, we never liked him anyway." Then you get the narrative where John just tolerated Paul for... over a decade... and he felt so free without him. Yeah, no one believes that for a second.

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 I think that's the difference between George's relationship with Paul and his relationship with John.... Paul pushed back on attempts to disrespect him but he was also willing to forgive so that made it safer to badmouth him in the press if George felt like it. Whereas Yoko-era John couldn't shrug it off and he wasn't thick skinned the way he used to be, so he couldn't take the ego drubbing that George could hand out. So in the end George had to swallow a lot of disrespect from John before he found his personal limit with him.

its just kind of the perils of being John Lennon's friend I guess and then having to decide whether you're in for the ride or not. I don't know too much about that time period for George and John so I wonder if George found out that it's actually kind of hard to be John's friend if Paul isn't there to run interference or soak his outbursts.

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 John without Paul was a lot of John Lennon, all at once, and I think for many people that just ended up being too much to take.

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 Real, it's just all so sad to me, this time period of their history. I love all these lads so much.

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 Yeah, thinking about it ended up making me angry at John. He kind of got forgiven by people a lot of times for shit that was, not so easily forgivable. I really think HDYS is one of the most damaging and shitty things he did, and the fact that Paul still continued to have a relationship with him afterwards is a testament to his endless patience with him

At the same time, the way John talks in interviews around that time, he seems like he didn't expect there to be any consequences?? Like he was acting like he was baiting a response from Paul, he actively wanted that call-and-response game, not to end their relationship. It seems like he was really oblivious to what he was actually doing, especially being influenced by Yoko, Allen, and Phil ("who all sort of love me"... BRUH) constantly egging him on to do it. That was his circle at the time and no one told him "hey this kind of sucks maybe you should stop"

He was really gullible and easily manipulated honestly, I think Paul knew that and that's why he forgave him for that

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 precisely. and even if there was...well...he's a Beatle, he doesn't have to put up with it if he doesn't want to....

Yeah, John's problem was always that he never learned cause/effect. He was always stunned when someone thumped him in response for something he said or did.

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 I think on some level Paul knows it was John's psychic damage batting him around like a mouse being tortured by a cat. he knew there was something wrong with John, it's just that it was the 1960s/1970s, they were still only 5-10 years removed from lobotomies and straight jackets. mental health help didn't exist and no one knew that it was something that they could ask for and receive even if it did. Paul knew something was wrong and I think part of the 1967-1969 stuff was Paul panicking because he knew that John needed help but he had no idea what to do about it. So he tried to fix it the only way he knew how and that had always worked for him: more work.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: John needed a lithium prescription. But no one knew about it, that information was intentionally gate kept by medical providers and John might not have accepted it anyway.

The other thing is, Paul is alo deeply attracted to personalities like John's. Volatile people, sometimes unstable people, people with emotional baggage but try to stay strong regardless. Which flared up during his relationship with his second wife Heather Mills. Paul just likes Those Sorts of People. but Paul is also a weirdo. the impression I get is that George just didn't know what to do with John after a certain point and that's because Paul was always willing to put things behind him and George didn't know how to do that. George wasn't that much of a weirdo and was definitely heavily weighted towards the Normie end of the scale.

Like, George held on to things, thats why so many of his songs are about "getting over it" "letting go" "that was fun but now its done." Like he didn't write those songs just because, he wrote them because he couldn't let go even though he thought he should. So if john slags him off about I Me Mine then George can't go "you're a cunt :)" and kiss him like Paul can. because he was "the normal one."

And the thing is that's not a bad thing! I hope George didn't internalize guilt over that. It's not a bad thing to look at someone like John and go "get out of my life forever, right now." In fact if more people had done that than John might have stood a better chance because the fact that people pitied him so much and kept giving him more chances is partially what fucked him up.

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 This is so true, I wish more people had stood up to John, I think he would have learned how to get better faster. His relationships with Paul and Yoko are so interesting to me, because whereas Paul kind of kept his John-ness in check by being his foil, Yoko enabled him in more ways because she was more similar. At least that's how I see it

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 Literally so true. I've said joking a few times that George was the most normal person in The Beatles. The McLennon fuckery is so insane. I love them to death and back, but they were insane

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 absolutely

George completely did the right thing in standing up for himself, no reason for him to take that.

RookGhosty — 06/25/2022 I think he was justified in keeping John out of his book. Without context, it seems cruel, but after knowing everything now I'm like "yeah man I would have done that too"

Leggy Maddingway — 06/25/2022 he knew it would cut John to the quick and he wanted that at the time, though I don't know enough to say why. I know he and John had a falling out because John was jealous about Bob Dylan having such a big piece of George's life post-Beatles but I don't know how the timelines match up on that.

#john lennon #george harrison #paul mccartney #the beatles #mclennon #lennison #my meta #mclennon server #rookghosty

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separatist-apologist · 2 years

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i’m the anon from the cassian post and i’m so so so sorry about it. Reading it back i can totally see how it sounds backhanded and i’m sorry it came out that way and the harm it caused you (in hindsight the fact that i needed to reinforce that i like your works in the end and say that it wasn’t criticism should have been a red flag on its own). Impact vs intent, i guess. I think my mind went that way bc i do read a lot of fix it fics and it probably mixed my thoughts and tranfered one thing to the other, so the ppl in the comments saying my reading comprehension skills were lacking are correct bc my assumption was way off. It’s not about you and your writing but the way i wrongly connected it to other ppl’s posts.

My intent (that i fucked up very much on) was to ask you about how you write your au lucien, and if you want to share i’m still interested in it.

Again, i’m so sorry I contributed to the bad anons you’ve been getting lately. I apologize deeply.

Hey anon. Thank you for sending this. I appreciate the apology and I hope you do know that I ALWAYS want to talk about my writing. You can just ask very directly, you don't even have to justify your interest. This was a really good and nice apology and I appreciate it a lot.

As for Lucien, do you remember in ACOTAR when Feyre overheard Lucien telling Tamlin they should just dispose of her and deal with Amarantha on their own? Or how he didn't come help when he heard her scream after sending her to the surial? OR how he had that literal TABLE of weapons? Or how it's his sword that kills Amarantha?

Or in ACOMAF when Rhys is bragging no one can get over his border but Lucien can. He tracked her down. Like intruder proof EXCEPT for Lucien. He's the only one who can break the spell Hybern uses to keep them all down.

And in ACOWAR, Lucien helps Feyre track down the bogge to torture Dagden/whatever her name is incest twin 2.

He's the reason she gets out of Spring alive, the incest twins would have killed her and its Lucien's help/skills as a warrior that tip the scales in her favor. Same with his brothers. Lucien is taking on TWO of them while Feyre, the most powerful being in Prythian, is getting owned by Eris. She has no practical fighting skills which isn't a slam but worth mentioning that she would have died if she'd gone it alone. It's his ability to navigate the land, to utilize a weapon, and think quickly that keeps her alive.

And when Rhys is like, tracking down that flying angel army (or whatever they are) is gonna be dangerous, Mr. Vandaddy literally smiles and says it would be NO FUN otherwise. C'mon.

In ACOWAR, when he arrives, he doesn't chill on the sidelines. Man RUNS across a BATTLEFIELD in 0 armor, sword in hand, cutting down bad guys and being hot (allegedly) the whole time.

Literally no one is doing it like him. And when I write him with big dick energy, its because he embodies it. He's got a lot of work with and I find a lot of people pull from ACOSF when they write him because they like gentle Elucien WHICH IS FINE. Gentle, sassy Elucien is a vibe by my man fucks covered in blood (if he happens to have it on him, anyway) and you cannot tell me thats not canon. He likes a little danger, he doesn't mind getting messy or brutal. He gives Feyre her first ever knife and then another one after under the mountain and he can do that because he's just got them all over the place.

My point is that Lucien is also a warrior, despite what Feyre flip flops on in her narrative. Of course he's not CASSIAN, Cassian's whole job is murder while for Lucien, it's like a Saturday afternoon past time. It's his HOBBY, if you will.

I feel like he's the guy who charms you to your face before stabbing you in the back. he's got a code. When he fucks up with Feyre and almost gets her killed, he says sorry and gives her a dagger. He helps her when she gives her name in exchange for his life. He turns his back on his best friend and court when they fuck over Prythian. He goes looking for an army based on three fragmented visions from a woman everyone else thinks is crazy.

#anyway #lucien vanserra really is that bitch #we have no choice but to stan #lucien vanserra #lucien vandaddy

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ear-worthy · 2 years

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How Do Podcasts Balance Free Speech With The Truth

There are more than 200 countries in the world. By many calculations, only a third of those nations allow free speech. Speech tolerance ranges from zero in North Korea to almost infinity in the U.S., where citizens are allowed to say almost anything.

Coupled with almost unfettered free speech, Americans have a handy communications tool called social media, where disinformation and misinformation thrive. Tribal political warfare has weaponized information as blunt force trauma to beat down political enemies.

Don’t like the narrative that damages your political cabal? Either deny the truth or make things up. In the flurry of charges and countercharges, the truth becomes ironically irrelevant.

Don’t like the information coming from the January 6th Congressional Committee? Counter-narrative. It’s Antifa. Or the FBI in disguise. You can always fall back on “The Deep State” or “elites.” There was no violence at The Capitol that day. Just a peaceful protest where people happened to die, numerous others injured, and hundreds either convicted or have pleaded guilty and are now serving jail time.

Communications technology has accelerated the speed at which fake news spreads. Sure, high-tech serves us a powerful communications device we can carry around in the form of a smartphone, but high-tech has made lying easier, faster and more credible. Fake news has become a major trait of our generation. In the past, lies spread by word of mouth. Today, fake news spreads like COVID at a jam-packed concert.

Singapore has reacted — or possibly overreacted — to the fake news threat. Its government recently passed a Fake News Act, which began to be enforced over a month ago. The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) protects civilians against fake news. Critics argue that POFMA poses a serious threat to civil liberties, and there is a massive challenge on how to go about implementing the rules.

The foot soldiers for this misinformation mob are podcasters like Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, Charlie Kirk, and Jordan Peterson. Social media has dealt with disinformation delinquents by suspending their accounts temporarily or banning them. InfoWars’ Alex Jones feeds off conspiracy theories, false flag claims, and reality pretzel bending.

It would be easy to label them as liars, prevaricators, scam artists, deceivers, and equivocators. Unfortunately, the truth is much more complicated, much to the delight of these horrible human beings.

If anyone still views fact checking websites, you will notice that all facts are not branded as true or Pants On Fire false. Frequently, there is this swampy middle ground of somewhat true or false.

Remember the controversial Joe Rogan episode with Dr. Robert Malone, where the aggrieved doctor explained the multiple dangers of COVID vaccines? Rogan was widely assailed for not challenging any of Malone’s assertions. In an episode of the Science Vs podcast several weeks later, host Wendy Zukerman and her team analyzed Malone’s claims. They found disinformation devices such as cherry-picking data, making unsubstantiated claims, and drawing conclusions not supported by data. Out-and-out lying? Maybe, but perhaps the bad doctor was spinning a narrative that used just enough actual and perceived facts to have the patina of credibility.

Look, cretins like Bannon, Giuliani, and Jones are easy. Their lives are ludicrous and completely divorced from reality. Tragically, they don’t care. Because they understand something called naive realism, which is our tendency to believe our own perception of the world, even if the facts don’t support our conclusions.

We believe that the 2020 presidential election was rigged because we believe it is so. When “unbelievers” point out that no court or governmental law enforcement organization found fraud sufficient to alter the results of the election, facts become irrelevant because our beliefs are unbiased, and unaffected by emotions, our cultural identity or experiences. We are so sure that we don’t need facts to prove it.

But it’s the podcasters — both left and right — who cultivate the veneer of credibility that are the most dangerous. It’s the Robert Malones’ of the world that pose the most serious threat to the truth, because they have a degree, or expertise, that offers them the presumption of validity.

Marble-mouthed extremists like the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys will only appeal to those who blame their pitiful existence on another group. Somehow, the fact you live in your parents’ basement and work part-time at 40 years old is the fault of the black family who live in a much nicer home down the block. However, it’s the Fox News podcasts with people like Tucker Carlson, who are perceived to be informed and insightful, who persuade the large swaths of the viewing audience that they are either being replaced or relegated to being second-class citizens in a country they’ve always thought was exclusively theirs.

Is replacement theory by the Democrat Party a “tin-foil hat” falsehood? Yes. But it makes sense to millions of white voters. What Carlson and other podcasters accomplish isn’t to spew lies. No, they’re above that.

What they do on these podcasts is to viciously tie together seemingly unconnected events, trends, and currents to convince listeners that the Trojan Horse has been pulled inside the “Gates” of their nation. Danger is at the border, or sanctuary cities, or legions of black looters coming for your big-screen TVs and infinity pools in your gated communities.

For these podcast listeners, it’s frightening truth. No matter that the disparate facts to assemble this Babylon of deceit and Barnum-style flimflammery often collapse into a dumpster fire of deceit.

For many, abandoning the truth is a feature, not a bug. Consider how avid Trump supporters are not only unaffected by his constant lies, but also they support his avoidance of the facts as a way of “owning the libs.”

When Trump met NATO General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg in 2019, he told the NATO top chief that his father, Fred, was born in Germany. In fact, he was born in New York City. When the media pointed out his perjury, his supporters dismissed it as his “way of thumbing his nose at the media.” The message was clear. “It’s okay if he speaks falsehoods for our side.”

Of course, when Trump spent years claiming that former President Obama was born in Kenya, his supporters avidly embraced that lie, even when it was proven false.

For those of us who love podcasting, what can we do? I’ve written several articles about the harm that certain serial plagiarizers in the true-crime podcast genre have caused. In that case, I’ve advocated condemnation of those plagiarizers by the podcasting community.

Can podcasting do anything at all about podcasters who evade the truth, promulgate fantasy visions of our world, incite violence against fabricated enemies, instill fear in the population, and stoke the embers of simmering racism?

First, we need podcasters to speak up and condemn the podcasts that subvert truth, celebrate misinformation and inject disinformation in the body politic. It was encouraging that Joe Rogan was condemned for his Malone and Alex Jones episodes. That doesn’t mean that Joe Rogan should be banned from podcasting. Many of his shows have guests that bring expertise and objectivity to the discussion. Rogan should be applauded for those shows and denounced for the others. Silencing him does listeners and Rogan a disservice.

Second, podcasting networks and studios — Acast, Amazon, Apple, Cumulus Media, iHeart, Vox and others — should form a coalition to establish sensible guardrails for responsible journalism and reporting. Those who disregard their public responsibility, should be condemned by this newly formed advisory body.

Third, podcasts should carry warnings that distinguish between fact and opinion podcasts. Let me give you a TV corollary. When Trump’s ex-mistress Karen McDougal sued Tucker Carlson for defamation, the ex-model lost her case because the judge ruled in 2020 that “given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer arrives with an appropriate amount of skepticism.”

In other words, Carlson’s viewers shouldn’t believe everything — or anything — they hear from him. Unfortunately, for our society, Fox News viewers digest delectable bits of spurious information with a self-righteousness nuzzled in the assurance that Fox News would not lie, when, in fact, they do, disguising such dissembling as commentary, political hyperbole, or entertainment-based exaggeration. In fact, the name “Fox News” is a deception because much of the network is under the entertainment umbrella precisely because that grouping insulates them from litigation.

Fourth, podcast feed apps should re-classify podcasts that exist only to supersize misinformation, propaganda, and disinformation, from the NEWS genre to an OPINION genre.

Finally, podcasters need to stand up and condemn podcasts such as Infowars and others like the contemptible Jones, who is now getting his comeuppance for his heinous torture of Sandy Hook parents.

The United States isn’t Singapore. A fake news legislation isn’t needed, isn’t practical, and only inflames the divisiveness that feeds these malefactors. This country has a long and distinguished history of protecting free speech rights. Can we live with these charlatans who question the Holocaust, and concoct conspiracy theories when the facts are inimical to their cause? Do we suffer white supremacists misogynists, and homophobes?

In a democracy, we unfortunately have to, but we can deny them what they so desperately desire — credibility, attention and legitimacy.

Condemnation should not just come from their political enemies but from everyone.

As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.”

Podcasting needs more courageous people like Wendy Zukerman of Science Vs or Brene Brown of Unlocking Us. Podcasting cannot stand by and be “99% invisible” as its good name gets dragged through the mud.

#podcast #psychology #politics #disinformation #reality

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seacoloredeyes · 3 years

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oh hell im watching 3x18 and during his fight with buck, bobby actually tells him :

« you can’t just rush into any dangerous situation assuming it’s going to be okay, because sometimes it’s not and i’m tired of being on the wrong side of those hospital doors »

and i remembered the hospital doors line but for some reason i didn’t remember the first part, which is very relevant to our current « you think you’re invincible » vs « you act like you’re expandable » discourse

and i didn’t realise it was such a theme for bobby and buck, but really it’s the whole crux of their scenes together in season 3 even way back during the lawsuit arc

because bobby saw buck pushing himself while not completely healthy and was terrified thinking buck would be careless and assume he’d be okay no matter what and thus might end up hurt again

meanwhile buck just felt that no matter what happened to him it didn’t matter because his life is worth nothing if he’s not out there helping people, and if he dies saving someone then at least he would have been useful, if not loved

and i just

fuck but this misunderstanding between them colours so much of their relationship???

i was actually ranting at @buckactuallys the other day after watching 3x06 and the resolution to the lawsuit arc that i was so frustrated that they never talked about why bobby made the decision to bench buck. we understand from bobby’s discussions with athena and hen that he’s being overprotective because he loves buck so much and is scared of losing him (funny how both times hen and athena make parallels to the feelings a parent has for their child, at this point it’s not even subtext anymore) but he never actually tells buck that. and in fact i just rewatched the scene and we’ve got another instance of bobby telling buck he doesn’t worry about himself!!

bobby: [he’s got a fair chance] because you jumped in there and saved him. probably didn’t even occur to you to worry about yourself.

buck: yeah i know, i didn’t think, just rushed in like i always do. i guess it’s like the uniform is my costume. you know i put it on and suddenly i’m brave, i’m strong, i make a difference. feels like without it i’m not much of anything.

bobby: buck, you saved two lives without the uniform. it’s not a costume, it’s who you are.

buck: does... does this mean that you’re ready to let me back for real?

bobby: it doesn’t matter if i’m ready, you are. it’s time for me to get out of your way.

(side note: i find it interesting that buck puts on a tone when he’s saying « yeah i know: i didn’t think, just rushed in like i always do » like he’s paraphrasing bobby. it’s like he’s internalised it but he’s not actually being honest about his thought process until he’s talking about putting the uniform on.)

so we have buck still unsure and telling bobby in no uncertain terms that he feels worthless if he’s not helping people and bobby trying to reassure him without understanding what buck is actually telling him. because if he had understood then explaining to buck that he’s just scared of losing him would have seemed like the right choice to really reassure him.

but no instead we’ve got buck who goes on thinking that bobby believes him to be reckless and a pain in his ass sometimes, and bobby who goes on thinking that buck doesn’t realise he might get seriously hurt and die from that one day

buck who doesn’t know how much bobby loves him and keeps on thinking his life is not worth much, and bobby who refuses to acknowledge to himself that he loves buck like a son (again, callback to his discussions with athena and hen) because he’s terrified he might lose him to the job

if they just talked to each other openly and honestly they would lay each other’s fears and insecurities to rest and fuck, but now i feel like this is where their relationship is going maybe? because they won’t let up narratively. it comes up again in 3x18, and in some way in 4x05, and then again in 4x14. but now we’ve got on screen evidence that bobby doesn’t understand buck’s thought processes and the true extent of his low self esteem (thank you eddie my darling) and i feel like at some point something has got to give.

anyway i’ve written way too much and none of it is particularly coherent but the gist of it is: boys use your words and hug it out i am BEGGING

i’m not okay goodbye

#911 #911 on fox #buck x bobby #evan buckley

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theseerasures · 3 years

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RWBY V08C14 reaction post

haven’t done something like this for this fandom yet, but the finale was so much all at once that i could not muster any level of critical thinking the first go-around. my thoughts have...settled somewhat with a second rewatch. still nothing conclusive (obviously), but at least coherent enough to be written down.

in rough chronological order:

i am very into it, of course, but i’m still not quite sure what to make of the fact that this finale very explicitly pivots around Winter Schnee, to the extent that the episode (sans prologue and coda) are bookended by her. she begins the episode charging into a fight, and ends it the same way. even putting aside that her in-universe presence has increased by magnitudes, that we end a season where she has mostly been a sparse supporting player with THIS has implications i can’t suss out for her narrative role going forward.

going into the finale i thought that Ironwood vs. Winter would turn out to be another RWBY Flagship Fight (ie long and flashy and indulgent in the best ways), but i pretty much knew that wouldn’t be the case once the fight began in earnest and they immediately started talking to each other.

for what we did get i’m happy to say that the Core Dynamic of the fight was exactly what i predicted: Winter rushing in to melee and not giving Ironwood enough time to fire, Ironwood trying to make room by shoving her away and using his cannon as a makeshift club--even down to breaking the cannon formation BACK to dual wielding to give himself an edge.

i will say that for Winter to have blocked him head-on--this is James Ironwood, who once stopped an Alpha Beowolf cold with one bionic hand, and now he’s got TWO--with her broken noodle arms is...incredibly cool. stupid! but cool.

Ironwood doing the double pistol whip while screaming about how no one is grateful has i wouldn’t have to be doing this if you just behaved all over it.

in retrospect i’m not sure why i expected a RWBY Flagship Fight when just about every fight this season has been extremely different. the camera work is always fucking frantic, we’re often cross-cutting between different simultaneous fights, and there are far fewer shots where both combatants are clearly shown and evenly matched. about the only fight we’ve had resembling that is AceOps vs Penny waaaaaaay back in Strings--even the low-stakes triumphant JNPER + Winter vs. Ironwood fight in Creation was extremely short and crosscut with BRA vs. AceOps.

case in point: the showdown in Grand Central takes up pretty much the entire episode, but combatants are continuously entering and exiting, the setting’s physical dimensions feel wonky and surreal, and the fact that half of the people fighting have flight capabilities means we’re relying on wide shots and oners to figure out what the fuck is going on. it’s a war now, and even though we follow only a handful of characters in it the fights carry that grander and more desperate tone.

Cinder relies twice this episode on just fucking nova-ing herself to overwhelm her Maiden opponents. it’s different from how she usually fights, which is still fireballs and conjured swords/projectiles--she’s learning to use her Maiden powers to wreak havoc on a larger scale, which a) reinforces what we already know of Cinder, but b) complements her recent relearning of subtlety and manipulation. still a tenuous balance of extremes that can and will shatter, though.

Weiss got to save everyone during the fight, and none of it mattered in the end.

the thing about priority one is that they all planned for this. they all went in planning for the contingency where they don’t make it out, where they have to watch others not make it out.

Weiss plucking Penny out of the air and Penny pleading to make the sacrifice play is an EXACT recreation of what happened in Enemy of Trust, down to the saved looking up at the savior while the savior is looking onward. she’s just swapped places with the Schnee in question, and...they are the priority targets this time, unfortunately.

Cinder smugly flipping her hair out of...her eyepatch...she really is living her best life and she knows it

Blake made the right choice, and it didn’t matter at all.

Qrow ending the last episode with a berserker charge at Harriet and then immediately pulling back here and trying to talk her down really got to me, as did him trying to block the bomb with his body. the man is so desperately trying to be better than he was, and it doesn’t take a lot anymore for him to realize the right path.

Elm and Vine--

the thing about Elm and Vine is that both their powers boil down to getting attached. so watching Elm hold Vine in place while Vine holds the two airships together, everyone in this little world, it’s...everything i could ever want, out of how the story of the AceOps would end.

Anairis Quinones for dark horse MVP. why can’t you just let me do my job, delivered in the way that it was, is the perfect encapsulation of Harriet Bree desperately trying to outrun her personal feelings and the grief it has given her.

Elm tells Harriet that she’s their friend, to stop her from killing a part of herself as she tries to kill others. it’s the first time this happens in the episode, but not the only time.

Penny saved Blake so they could save Ruby together, and it didn’t matter at all.

our heroes have GOT to stop falling for the “watch the thing flying in the air! OH WAIT I STILL HAVE A WEAPON IN MY HAND WALLOP WALLOP” trick. it happens multiple times in this one episode.

Harriet, who has the fastest Speed Semblance known, says there’s no time to make it out of the blast range. she doesn’t try to outrun it. she just...stays put, and admits that she brought them all here, to this. i’m sorry.

here’s the thing: they’re soldiers. they were prepared for this eventuality, where they don’t make it out. that’s why Elm let Vine go grab Harriet; because she thought they were all going to die, and if that happened she wanted Harriet close enough to reach.

but--just like with Team Hero--some of them do make it out. they just have to watch.

Vine and Hazel sacrificed themselves in the same way in the end: pulling their loved ones close wasn’t working, so they threw themselves around the thing trying to kill them instead.

Ruby was clever, and pragmatic, and brave. it didn’t matter in the end.

Cinder letting Neo fall as soon as she gets a chance proves that she still lacks patience, and that’s going to bite her in the ass.

the Penny-Blake fastball special and the fall; Penny crying tears for the first time, but not moving immediately to rage, as she had last episode, when Yang fell.

Weiss’ shaking hands around Gambol Shroud, crying berserker tears as she tries, desperately, to pull off another miracle. it’s another role reversal in a way: her sister’s the Riza Hawkeye, but she’s the one emptying useless clip after useless clip into an enemy she can’t kill, because her heart has been ripped in two.

the last time Nora Valkyrie saw Jaune Arc, they clasped hands, and their eyes met with determination, and hope.

it figures that a Schnee would be the last one standing, letting all her friends die first. she was right, but again: wrong Schnee.

Weiss diving past Cinder’s blind spot to slice the Grimm Arm, to save Penny--the same script, but the wrong player. and too late.

at Haven, Jaune went from trying to do harm to unlocking his Semblance, and realizing that he was meant to heal. here, he goes from trying to do what he is meant to do, what he has made peace with, to...

it will take a long time, i think, for him to learn to live with himself, even with Penny reassuring him that this is what she wants. to go from wanting to harm to being the one who does no harm, to being forced to acknowledge a person’s right to die, and carry out the deed himself. it’s a new variation on what he’s always had to wrestle with since Pyrrha’s sacrifice.

Weiss managed to outlast Cinder Fall without an Aura WITHOUT getting her entire body broken, Winter

the boundary between material worlds is made of darkness. the boundary between souls is made of light, and there is no danger of falling.

where...what is this? of course Winter doesn’t know. she never would have, even if she had gotten the powers, because she would have used the Transfer machine.

i thought of you, and here we are. that was all it took. the last time Penny saw Winter, Winter was still loyal to Ironwood. she’s only known abstractly, secondhand from Weiss, that Winter was on their side again and trying to help save Mantle, for about an hour. and yet: i thought of you.

and in the face of this thought that is love, Winter averts her eyes. tries in vain to hide her face, because she knows she is unworthy. she doesn’t deserve this.

but here’s the thing: no one deserves this. Penny. are you...the one? even Penny herself wasn’t sure.

you were my friend. the second time it happens this episode. friends save friends from themselves. friends transform what would have been murder into sacrifice.

remember what Penny said to Cinder, shortly before Cinder killed her? you wouldn’t know anything about friends. she’s right. it wasn’t Cinder’s choice, but she’s right. and now Cinder has learned how to use that.

i’ll be part of you. it is, of course, something that’s been brought up repeatedly this whole season. but it’s also what Winter said to Penny after Fria died: she’s a part of you now.

and i do love this yoking together of arc words. Winter is of course the firstborn Schnee, but Winter is, more broadly, The Firstborn in this new generation. so here we have something similar to the chain that begins with Winter letting her sisters go, through Penny letting Emerald go, through Emerald helping Oscar escape, to Atlas’ however ephemeral victory over Salem. what Winter begins--haltingly and with resentment--becomes transformed into radiant grace in the hands of her younger siblings. and she gets to be the direct benefactor this time. the prodigal daughter returns to her family.

during Enemy of Trust we watched from the outside as Oscar fell and Penny rose, as one set of eyes closed as another opened. during The Final Word, we watch from the inside: one set of eyes close. another opens.

Winter’s leitmotif plays on the piano for the first time since the previous season as she comes back to the world. it makes sense. the piano version is for her sisters, and she just left one of them.

here is the apotheosis of Winter Schnee: she gets back up. she falters and sways but she gets back up, and then she, the person who once managed to convince herself that so long as she could make peace with someone else’s choice it meant she too was choosing, tells the man who has been choosing for her for years: you chose nothing. and she rises.

in the end James Ironwood was finished by his petard thrice over. Atlas had defected against him. his greatest creation had become the Maiden and unshackled herself from him. and there is of course, the cannon: a literal petard, in the other words, which he fires at Winter, and Winter reflects back upon him.

Jaune Arc used the heirloom that his family has held for generations to kill a defenseless girl. he took the blade and sunk it in deep, because Penny trusted him and he had to be sure.

and then it shattered in his hands.

there’s something here in the second fight between Maidens, about Cinder having a named weapon and forsaking it for what she can make on the fly, and Winter insistent on using a weapon with no name at all, but i still can’t put my finger on it.

Winter never got to see Weiss try to Summon her Nevermore.

the thing that gets me about how it turns out is: Winter was winning. she’d managed to get her hands on the Staff, and even with Cinder’s immediate counterattack she managed to get the Staff away from Cinder. but then Cinder saw Jaune and Weiss, and she remembered a few days ago, when Penny saved Winter instead of going after Cinder, when Winter attacked Cinder to save Penny.

so Cinder attacks Weiss and Jaune instead of racing for the Staff. and Winter--

this is Winter Schnee. she saves people despite herself. she runs toward them, despite herself. and it has always, always been what saves her.

not anymore.

last time it had been Winter who was in mortal danger, and Weiss who, with Ruby’s help, drove Cinder off. same script, wrong player. and too late.

Weiss falls and for a moment, the camera makes it seem like Winter is falling too.

she wants to. no one deserves this.

the thing you have to ask when characters leap for the exit and fall just short is: is it about faith, or friendship? in Jaune’s case it’s both. his faith broke with Crocea Mors. and the portal is one-way, so he had no friends to grab him from the other side.

but Nora was still trying. they clasped hands. she promised.

the first time Winter sees her family--really sees them, after years of separation--she averts her eyes. she hides her face from them, because how can she tell them that Weiss is gone? how can she tell Penny’s friends that Penny is a part of her now, when Penny is just a part, now?

there are people all around her looking to her. there are voices within her. she has never been more alone.

(Winter Schnee has never met Pyrrha Nikos, and Pyrrha Nikos never became Maiden. because Pyrrha Nikos never became Maiden. Cinder Fall did that, too.)

this is what Winter Schnee thinks, as she screams and charges, as she kills Grimm faster than they are drawn in by her despair: in the fairy tales, eldest siblings never win.

i failed you again, master. master, but not queen.

Cinder won this. the heroes tried and tried and tried and none of it mattered, and she won this. but here’s the thing: Cinder won because she was LUCKY, and because she made her own luck. that she was able to pin things on Neo and Team Hero depended on things going exactly as planned, and some things going better than planned. and the reason she’d even made it that far was because she cheated, with the last use of a divine relic. it doesn’t take away her from her victory, but what i do know is this: this is her finest moment. she will never win as completely ever again, and she will fall farther than she has ever feared. (and that will save her, in the end.)

and that’s checkmate. i said that i wanted Atlas to fall the same way that Amity rose, but of course they did it like this. of course it would horrific yet unspectacular, with its General slumped in defeat, unable to fire a single shot from his gun. with the city in the sky falling onto Mantle, in Mantle’s palette. from the Dust from which it arose into Dust again.

as below, so above.

#rwby #helen writes meta

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curlsofsagesmoke · 3 years

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TMNT (2012) DID DONNIE DIRTY WITH THE HALF-ASSED LEADERSHIP PLOTLINE AND HERE’S WHY

not to turn into a tmnt blog or anything but I've been watching the 2012 version and I have some Thoughts about the weird leadership conflict subplot between Leo and donnie that the writers started going for and then abandoned. admittedly I've only seen up until a few episodes of season 3 so I don’t know if they ever do go back to this, but from what I've seen this plot had amazing potential but it was handled in a truly awful way!

keep in mind also that I really love this show. I watched it as a kid, I think it holds up pretty well even now. it does have its flaws (many, many flaws) and the worst flaw is the writing imo, which can be lazy, ignorant, or just straight up bad at times.

with that out of the way, buckle up and hold on to your butts cuz here the heck we go!

you cannot talk about leadership in tmnt without starting with the leader, Leo. the writers gave him a really interesting arc at the beginning of season one where he was really eager to become leader (splinter gave him the job because he asked for it, after all) but then he started to realize the burden that came with the title and started to crack a bit under the pressure. the most well-known character conflict in the entire tmnt multiverse is the tension between Raph and Leo, and this iteration of the show is no different. Raph is very obviously upset about Leo becoming leader and he (and donnie, but we’ll get to him in a bit) tries to argue that he should be leader instead. ultimately he fails and this does create tension throughout the rest of seasons one and two.

this tension comes to a head during an episode where Leo, tired of Raph always questioning his decisions and needling him, decides to fuck off for a little bit, leaving Raph in charge (”New Girl In Town”). from a writing standpoint, this episode is important for many reasons, but in terms of this subplot it is a moment of crisis for Leo which he inevitably overcomes by accepting the burden and responsibility of leadership; and for Raph it is a moment of realization where he finally accepts that he wouldn’t be a very good leader and he doesn’t want the burden that Leo carries all the time. after this episode, Raph and Leo do have their arguments, but overall Raph is much more accepting of Leo’s position as leader and only calls him out when Leo starts to go on little power trips.

which brings us to donnie. donnie also argued that he should be leader in the first episode, but it wasn’t treated as seriously as Raph’s argument, and after that there wasn’t much conflict between Leo and donnie (except for the technology vs. tradition thing surrounding metalhead, but I’ll get to that later). donnie and Mikey are presented as generally pretty laid back. when Raph becomes leader in “New Girl In Town”, they exchange a lot of “yikes” looks in the background but are willing to follow his lead and give him the opportunity to actually be leader. of course, this comes to a head when they confront the villain of the episode, snakeweed, in the sewers. they’re getting their asses kicked, Mikey is knocked out, Raph is having a panic attack, and donnie is left to fend for himself against snakeweed.

instead of having that little “I must meet this challenge and overcome it” moment that you’d expect, Raph gives in to the panic and it’s donnie who not only incapacitates snakeweed to give them time to escape, but also snaps Raph out of his panic attack and tells him what to do (namely, get Mikey out of there and retreat to safety). it’s not given any more attention after this so it’s kind of blink-and-you-miss-it, but this is the first instance we see donnie reveal a bit of his potential as leader.

this is in direct contrast to “Mousers Attack!” which came a few episodes before New Girl In Town. that was the episode that introduced the a-team/b-team dynamic, and in that episode we saw that donnie, while attempting to lead him and Mikey, was able to come up with a bunch of plans to infiltrate dogpound’s operations but wasn’t decisive enough to actually commit to anything. thus in New Girl In Town, we’ve already seen very obvious growth in donnie and the way he approaches leadership, but it’s very much pushed to the background, and for good reason. this is simply laying the foundation for the big showdown between Leo and donnie.

the next significant moment of leadership potential we see from donnie comes in the episode the Pulverizer. donnie gets stuck with Timothy in the lair but soon becomes willing and even eager to teach him the basics of self defense, because, as he tells splinter, he knows Timothy is going to keep putting himself in dangerous situations and he’d rather Timothy be able to protect himself. splinter tells him that anything that happens to Timothy will be donnie’s responsibility, and donnie accepts this and begins training him. at the end of the episode they all make it out okay, Timothy goes on his way, and donnie seems to have become just a bit fond of him.

significantly, this is the first time donnie is given full responsibility over the fate of another person, and we see that even though he doesn’t really like Timothy, he takes this responsibility seriously. here he shows great leadership potential, as well, though again, it’s not really commented on narratively.

the next significant moment is, as you might’ve guessed, The Pulverizer Returns. in this episode we find out Timothy has joined the foot and is willing to pass information on to the turtles. Leo and Raph jump at the opportunity, Mikey is ambivalent as usual, and donnie is the only one who shows any concern. this is most likely because the last time he saw Timothy, splinter told him Timothy was his responsibility completely, and he obviously takes that seriously still. the entire episode, he tries to get Timothy to leave the foot and his brothers to take this seriously, but his worries are brushed off until they find out the shredder is about to mutate Timothy as an experiment.

so they race off to save him, and donnie ends up in a warehouse without his brothers to help, weaponless (because of some bullshit lesson splinter is trying to teach them, and as a side note, this was the first episode where I started to seriously dislike splinter as a character, because the way he was written here is just awful). the villains of this episode are dogpound and fishface. if you’ll remember, these are two serious villains, and up until this point they’d only ever been subdued, never defeated, and even then the turtles had to double team them in order to win. so it was of course surprising and incredible to see that donnie, armed with literally just a broom, was able to hold off a squad of foot ninjas, dogpound, AND fishface by himself for a good while, all while keeping Timothy away from the mutagen.

then Timothy IS mutated and a bomb is activated, and in just two minutes donnie comes up with a plan and executes it, getting them all out safely. when he starts barking orders at his brothers, they don’t even stop to question him. they listen immediately and that’s part of the reason why the plan succeeds. so what does this tell us? it tells us that donnie has a very strong sense of responsibility, protectiveness, and determination; that he is extremely capable when he’s focused and is good at thinking under pressure; and that his brothers trust him enough to follow his orders when he does give them. these are all incredible qualities for a leader to have!

notably the episode after this is Operation Break Out, where donnie goes off on his own to rescue April’s dad from The Kraang and they only make it out because his brothers followed him and intervened. clearly, then, donnie’s not really ready to be a leader and still lets his emotions cloud his judgement, which is a narratively sound writing decision. the big donnie-as-leader showdown doesn’t come until the end of season two, anyway.

and then season two. the tensions between Leo and donnie aren’t as obvious as the tensions between Leo and Raph, but they’re there, even if no one explicitly challenges Leo’s position as leader any more. here’s a quick rundown of the two significant episodes:

“Follow the Leader”--> Leo wants to stick to the old, traditional ways, but his brothers insist on unorthodox methods of fighting. Leo eventually comes to accept this to a certain degree when he admits it’s a good strategy to use against the footbots.

“Metalhead Rewired”--> donnie upgrades metalhead’s AI and Leo is suspicious of it. on the trail of The Kraang, Leo blames donnie for a few of metalhead’s mishaps, but apologizes when they realize that metalhead was leading them to a Kraang mutant prison. metalhead sacrifices itself to save them. Leo is sympathetic here because donnie is really upset, but it’s clear that these two are still fighting over the tech vs. tradition thing

and then we get to The Invasion, the season two finale. the synopsis makes it clear that this is where all of these moments that I've been discussing come to a head: “Leo and Donnie disagree about their plan to stop The Kraang invasion. When Leo makes a critical mistake, he is separated from the team and Donnie must step up as leader.” So we’re off to a good start as far as concluding this character arc goes. I was excited to finally see donnie live up to his leadership potential (and I thought this could be a good way to give Leo some closure regarding his issues with holding the world on his shoulders/blaming himself for every mistake/basing his self worth on his position as leader).

but I was sorely disappointed! in the episodes, donnie’s and Leo’s tech vs. tradition conflict comes to a head when Leo wants to flee the city (this seems very out of character for him) but donnie wants to stay and fight in his new combat robot, the turtle mech. this disagreement lasts until they are attacked in the tunnels and donnie is injured; Leo draws the Kraang robots away (I assumed this was his critical mistake: separating himself) to give the others time to escape. they go to April’s apartment to hide and regroup while Leo is hunted down and almost killed by the shredder. Raph and Casey rejoin the others, then shredder throws Leo through the window of the apartment, and they escape but barely. donnie then makes the decision to fight Kraang prime in the turtle mech (which is, I assume, his big leader moment, though of course it doesn’t even happen on screen). they fight Kraang prime and almost die, but Casey arrives in the van, saves them, and drives them out of the city. donnie apologizes to Leo’s unconscious body and says that Leo was right, and then the episode ends.

so. let me first say that this was quite possibly the worst way to end this really interesting and nuanced character arc that the writers had set donnie and Leo on. first of all, we barely got to see donnie act in any kind of leadership role. in Leo’s absence, they made most of their decisions as a team, where I had expected at least some sort of “I need to overcome my fears and anxieties and lead my family to safety” moment from donnie. secondly, Leo wasn’t entirely correct. yes, they ended up evacuating the city anyway like Leo wanted, but he was wrong about the turtle mech; it ended up destroying Kraang prime’s robot body thing. and donnie wasn’t entirely correct, either: the turtle mech was a great weapon that did some significant damage, but it wasn’t enough to stop the invasion. so we have these two characters who were both wrong in their own ways, both face the consequences, but no one ever discusses it.

so not only did we not see any significant character development from Leo; and not only did donnie not really get to act in any significant leadership role; but also worst of all, these two characters never got any closure! I'm a good handful of episodes into season three, and not one single character has even mentioned the tension between Leo and donnie during the invasion. everyone acts as if it never happened, so now as a viewer I'm stuck here waiting for the other shoe to drop or for one of these characters to finally snap, but I don’t think it’s going to happen, which sucks. in other iterations of tmnt (like the 2007 movie or the show from 2003) we get to see Donatello act almost like Leo’s second in command. I think that’s a really, really interesting direction the writers of the 2012 show could’ve gone in and I think it’s a waste of this subplot’s potential to just abandon it the way they did. I'm not sure what’s going to happen in season three, but I think a good conclusion of this arc would’ve been donnie and Leo confronting the argument they had, doing a little more maturing, and eventually donnie becomes Leo’s second in command. instead I'm really worried about how the writing of this show is going to devolve as I get further into the later seasons.

(as a side note: I'm currently working on a series of tmnt fics that addresses this issue, as well as the sometimes shitty ways the brothers treat each other and the stupid-as-fuck donnie/april/casey love triangle. so if that floats your boat, keep an eye out! I'll be reposting this with the link attached once I upload the first fic, so give my blog a follow or keep an eye on my ao3 account, heyassbuttimbatman)

#if you got to the end of this monster #congrats!#I hope you guys are excited for that fic I'm writing #because I sure as hell am #tmnt #teenage mutant ninja turtles #tmnt 2012 #teenage mutant ninja turtles 2012 #Leonardo #donatello #raphael #michaelangelo #donnie 2012 #Leo 2012 #Raph 2012 #Mikey 2012 #capriltello #rant #fic

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travoltacustom · 3 years

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The Presentation of Hifumi’s Trauma

I’ve been thinking on how Hifumi’s trauma has been presented for years now, and with the release of Bad Ass Temple VS Matenro, I feel like now’s as good a time as any to give my thoughts on this.

Note: This is in no way a defense of KR for the presentation of Hifumi’s trauma, but it is an analysis of such. I’m open to discussion on this and you’re free to disagree with me at any point on this. Most of this was also written BEFORE the release of the album, save for the last section.

CW: Mentions of abuse, trauma and rape + spoilers of the MTR dramatrack

I hear a lot that the presentation of Hifumi’s trauma is a ‘poor attempt at humour’, but I don’t exactly think it’s that simple. It is still a presentation of trauma, but it’s not portrayed as humorous in comparison to the rest of the humour of the series.

NARRATIVE

Hifumi panics when he sees women. He is unable to do anything until women are removed from the scene - but these instances are hardly ever the focus of the scene. It’s mostly used as a scene cutter to progress the story. When Chuo enters, Hifumi’s panic cuts off the situation and the focus shifts straight to the women. When the women find Hifumi, Doppo, Gentaro and Dice, Hifumi’s jacket is taken away to shift focus off of the women and to have Gentaro and Dice speak. Rather, Hifumi’s panic at these times are plot movers and not the focal point of the scene. Sadly, they can be seen as plot devices, but it’s not supposed to be seen as humour.

In addition to this, the ‘hysterical’ screaming (for lack of a better word) in the presence of women is limited to the dramatracks. In the manga and the anime, Hifumi runs away/removes himself from the presence of women. The purpose of Hifumi’s hysteria in the dramatracks is for visualisation purposes as there’s no visual aids - the reactions to women are toned down in the anime and manga. With this, it’s easier to believe that the anime and manga is the ‘intended’ portrayal of his reactions as the dramatrack has to make up for what isn’t seen.

PRESENTATION

The narrative is very aware that Hifumi’s trauma affects him badly. It’s a panic response. But it’s not the same as a panic attack. We know how awful the presentation of such can be, and it’s definitely something triggering for a lot of people. Personally, I would feel horrible to see him have a panic attack every time he saw a woman. KR doesn’t want to make his discomfort the focus of the scene either. Simply put, I think his trauma response is a part of the scene, but has less plot purpose than what is going on around it.

Trauma can be presented in different ways, but it’s more controlled to see only a glimpse of how trauma has affected Hifumi. There are other ways of showing this trauma and how it’s affected Hifumi that HPMI has already covered: Hifumi being unable to take off his suit jacket, behavioural change when wearing the jacket, his extremely warped perception of danger when his life is threatened etc. He’s spent 10 years adapting to the trauma and is in a stage of recovery as he’s going to confront his said abuser. If we were compounding this plot point with an idea of a Hifumi that is always having panic attacks, then we would have a Hifumi that is clearly not ready to deal with what he wants.

COMPARISON

We know the writers can portray trauma as such from Jyushi’s backstory. If we remember the fandom response, there were people who were legitimately triggered to varying degrees by what happened to Jyushi’s grandmother and the severe bullying he suffered. Really, I believe that Hifumi’s trauma hasn’t been the forefront of scenes because narratively it’s not the time for this to happen yet.

There seems to be a ‘trauma-porn’ narrative around the need to have Hifumi’s trauma played out ‘correctly. Trauma porn is media that showcases a group’s pain and trauma in excessive amounts for the sake of entertainment. There’s no need right now to show the extent of how badly Hifumi has been affected, because his trauma isn’t the focal point of the story or his character. His past is about to be shown, but it shouldn’t be what defines Hifumi as a character. And even more importantly so, there’s no ‘right’ version of trauma to portray.

HONOBONO

[ This section is written post Bad Ass Temple VS Matenro’s dramatrack.]

There are no redeeming qualities to Honobono, the source of Hifumi’s trauma. She’s despised by Chuohku and kept around for her ‘usefulness’, and Doppo was unsure of Hifumi going to confront his own abuser. However, in the recent dramatrack, Hifumi’s power is taken away from him in Honobono forcing herself into his space. This is the first time we’ve ever seen Hifumi have an explosion of emotions; ‘a typical image of a panic attack’. It is an audibly uncomfortable scene, just as Jyushi’s backstory was to read. There are different levels to trauma responses that HPMI has shown us with the 1st season’s Hifumi with short moments, but this instance is long and drawn out with guttural screaming.

HPMI was always perfectly capable of showing trauma, but for a listener, to hear this sort of occurrence every time around a woman would be potentially harmful. At this moment, Hifumi was nearly completely paralysed, suffering a breakdown of his identity by switching pronouns and screaming (similar to Gentaro’s breakdown at the insult of his clothes). It is difficult to listen to this. I don’t believe you would’ve wanted to hear this every time Hifumi was reminded of Honobono. We’ve even learned that the abuse might not have been dealt directly to Hifumi but to his family - we see Hifumi’s love for his family here in being so torn by her actions, and how trauma does not have to deal with someone directly either. However, the first instances of Hifumi’s trauma were more ‘digestible’ for a viewer, and they set us up for this moment. It was good that Hifumi’s panic responses were less heavy than the blow we’ve been dealt with this dramatrack.

In meeting Hifumi, Honobono greets her with “Hi-Fu-Mi”, just like how Hifumi says his own name in songs. It is most likely that Honobono said his name like this when they were in highschool; for Hifumi to use it in his songs now can be seen as a reclamation of his identity, as now Honobono can’t use his own name against him. Hifumi has spent years recovering from her, and seeing small hints of how he’s trying to move on from that time is a legitimately good way to understand the recovery from trauma.

WHAT IS IT?

The HPMI fandom seemed to have an ‘obsession’ with what exactly traumatised Hifumi up until this point. Most believed that it would have been sexual abuse/rape, given that he fears the opposite gender, and it wouldn’t have been the first time sexual themes have appeared in HPMI (the trafficked women at the start of BB/MTC’s manga). However, to think that ‘there is only one sort of trauma that can cause Hifumi’s pain’ is a dangerous idea. Almost anything can be traumatising, and almost anything can be a trigger.

There’s no need to theorise ‘what is good enough’ to be a trauma for him. To fear women, it can simply be that a woman has done something bad to him - which we see is Honobono. When we hear women fearing men because a man did something bad to them, we don’t theorise what exactly happened to her. There’s the automatic assumption that gendered fear is the result of sexual abuse, when in reality, it can be any manner of abuse that has caused this.

OPINIONS

So I don’t think KR is portraying Hifumi’s trauma as humorous. It’s definitely awkward, but the narrative has constantly made it clear that he’s in a state of discomfort that stems from trauma and Doppo and Jakurai always do their best to move him out of those situations without drawing too much attention. Nobody in the story laughs at him, save for Asunaro, who’s an ill-mannered child without sensitivity towards both Doppo and Hifumi, and Honobono, the source of his trauma. Those who don’t understand Hifumi in the adult cast however only find confusion in him.

There’s no ‘best’ portrayal of trauma in any media. But it’s clear that HPMI isn’t trying to be malicious or poke fun at any sort of trauma at all. If anything, I think the portrayal of it so far has been relatively ‘easy’ on common audiences that don’t explore such media, helping people to realise how trauma can manifest without forcing others who do have trauma to realise their pained experience in this media. Hifumi has been painted as someone relatable to those with trauma because he’s still a man who’s capable of doing his best while still stumbling along his way to recovery. Traumatised shouldn’t be the descriptor of Hifumi, but he is a character that has been traumatised.

While Honobono and her abuse is an integral part of Hifumi’s backstory, she does not define him as a person. To portray Hifumi as a strong character, despite moments of trauma responses, was a suitable choice in treating him respectably.

#hypnosis mic #hypmic #hifumi izanami #analysis

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bamfdaddio · 3 years

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X-Men Abridged: 1980 - The Dark Phoenix Saga

The X-Men, those enduring mutants that have sworn to protect a world that hates and fears them, are a cultural juggernaut with a long, tangled history. Want to unravel this tapestry? Then read the Abridged X-Men!

(X-Men 132 - 140, X-Men Annual 4) - by Chris Claremont and John Byrne, John Romita Jr. and Bob McLeod

Go on. Name a more iconic X-Men panel. I’ll wait. (X-Men 134)

If you were born in 1980, you were born under the sign of the Phoenix. This means you will have great hair, but you’ll also be absolutely corrupted by power. Don’t worry, as long as you don’t consume any stars and/or galaxies, you should be fine.

This year hits the ground running, introducing Emma Frost, Kitty Pryde and Dazzler in one fell swoop. The White Queen is the first of the Hellfire Club to make her move, but Phoenix is quickly able to dispatch of her, as you can read here.

Cyclops, worried that the rest of the Inner Circle will soon come in for the kill, decides to abscond to Angel’s Aerie in New Mexico to throw their pursuers off their scent. Jean decides to make the most of it and has sex with Scott on top of mesa. (Kinky!) She also shuts off his uncontrollable destructo-beams, nbd. This somehow inspires Scott to go from reactive to proactive and lead an ill-advised charge straight into the Hellfire Club on the night of their big ball… soirée... thing. Call it a Hellfire Gala-avant-la-lettre.

Fine, he might have been inspired by the raw power of the Phoenix. She’s the biggest gun on their side and, if there's one thing you can be sure of, it´s that reliable powerhouse Jean won´t switch sides in the middle of battle.

Oh wait, that's exactly what she does.

As soon as they enter the Hellfire Club, Jason Wyngarde, who reveals he’s actually Mastermind, takes control of Jean, finally turning her into the Black Queen. With the power of the Phoenix and the patriarchy on their side, the Inner Circle makes short work of the X-Men. They consists of:

Jason Wyngarde, aka Mastermind.

Sebastian Shaw. Often shirtless. The Jeff Bezos of mutantkind. Has the ability to absorb kinetic energy, which means punching him only makes him stronger. (Colossus and Storm figure this out the hard way.)

Harry Leland. Ability of mass manipulation, which has got to be one of the dopest powers ever. Uses it to dunk Wolverine three floors down into the sewer.

Donald Pierce. 25% robot, 100% asshole, 100% useless in taking out X-Men, 225% the worst.

Wolverine is the only one who escapes, resulting in another iconic image:

Apparently, this picture is solely responsible for the fact that Wolverine became the face of the X-Men in the zeroes. It also lit my cigar from the other side of the room. (X-Men 132)

Needless to say, stabbing ensues.

Meanwhile, Shaw pontificates what he wants with the X-Men. He means to use them as guinea pigs to isolate the X-Gene, which he’ll then reverse engineer to give everyone (with money) super powers and all of a sudden, I want Shaw to do a team-up with John Sublime. Jean is not all there, however: she’s trapped in the astral plane, cultivating a cruel streak a mile high.

And suddenly, Jean-turning-evil is not all that funny anymore. (X-Men 133)

Cyclops traverses the mental link he shares with Jean to confront ‘Sir Jason’ and challenge him to a duel. Guy can’t catch a break: in Jean’s mindscape, he is stabbed and he promptly collapses in the real world. Ruh-roh!

Wolverine, meanwhile, has done a passable impression of the Bride against the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill, and he interrupts the Hellfire Club and their gloating. That’s when Jean resurfaces as well, snapping out of her voluptuous Victorian fantasy and, playing a dubious tango with everyone’s trust issues, switching sides once again. The Phoenix is like the golden snitch: as long as your team holds it, it’s enough to win.

Colossus snaps Pierce’s robo-arm, Shaw gets punted through a floor and Leland uses his powers to increase Wolverine’s mass - just when Logan is jumping on top of him. Oops! Should have made him lighter than a feather, Leland.

Jean, meanwhile, is doing her own passable impression of the Bride and goes on what the advertisements would refer to as a ‘Roaring Rampage of Revenge’. (Oh, she roars, and she rampages, and she gets bloody satisfaction.)

This is what happens when you fuck around and find out, Jason. (X-Men 134)

Phoenix makes Mastermind’s mind touch the infinite. His tiny human mind can’t cope. And, just like me when I’m at Pride and surrounded by a bevvy of shirtless gym bunnies, he becomes a dribbling mess. A shell with nothing inside. For those of you paying attention: this is where your Lit teacher would shout “dramatic irony” and underscore Emma Frost vs. Storm on the chalkboard.

This is also the moment where she officially Breaks Bad.

We see powerless people become heroes all the time. The reverse, where the angel falls? That happens far more rarely. I think that is the reason this story was so shockingly effective in the eighties. The reason why it’s still so effective? I think because, like the One Ring, you can read the rise and fall of the Phoenix in a myriad of ways. Is this a victim, reclaiming power? Is this a woman, trying to rise in a man’s world? Is this someone who was always buttoned up, daring to embrace her own power, her sexuality, her dangerous side -- only to get promptly beat down? The ambiguity of the narrative gives it strength, which is why I think it keeps resonating even now. This counts especially in the X-Universe, inherently designed to appeal to the underdog.

Anyway, the X-Men try to flee, but it’s too late. Jean can’t hold it in any more. She explodes in Phoenixesness and vaporizes the X-Men’s aircraft over Central Park. Relishing in her power, Jean easily defeats her friends, before flying off into the galaxy.

In the Avengers mansion, Beast gets the report that the X-Men are trashing the Hellfire Club. Ignoring his duties as an Avenger, Beast chooses his old family and hops off to investigate on his own.

The report, by the way, comes from Shaw, who knows when to turn tail and cut his losses. Among the confused, scared refugees of their party, he begins working a politician on the importance of a Sentinel program. That politician? Senator Kelly. Remember that name.

Jean can’t talk, she’s doing hot girl things. Nomnomnom that star system, sis. (X-Men 135)

Originally, Jean wasn’t meant to die. This one panel, the one showing the inhabited planet, is the reason why she eventually does: Jim Shooter, editor-in-chief, felt Jean shouldn’t be able to get away with a literal genocide. Claremont and Byrne, who had planned to strip Jean of her powers at the end of this, had to change the end of their story within days before it went to print. Additionally, this stoked the adversarial fire between the two: Claremont claims that he hadn’t originally intended there to be an inhabited planet, but felt his hands were tied when Byrne drew one. I wonder how true this is, considering how embedded it is in the narrative, but that’s neither here nor there.

The Phoenix’s genocide alerts the Shi’Ar - and therefore Lilandra - to her presence. Lily says that Galactus is nothing compared to the Phoenix: he merely eats planets, she will consume all that exists.

A hungry Jean, meanwhile returns to Earth, not sure what she’s looking for. She pays a visit to the home of her parents, but when they warily come to greet her, she can’t help but read all the innermost thoughts of her family. Nothing is secret, nothing is sacred. (Imagine knowing all those little thoughts your parents had about you, all those little terrible human things they did in their life. Imagine knowing all their sexual fantasies. Brrr.) It sours the Phoenix against them and she is about to start familicide to her list of sins, when the X-Men attack!

Nightcrawler slaps a psionic scrambler designed by Beast on her, but she’s still too strong. Wolverine tries to end her, but he isn’t ruthless enough to do the deed. When the scrambler overloads, Scott tries reasoning with her, appealing to her love. This causes the Phoenix to waver and Charles Xavier (airdropped in by Warren), bolts Jean telepathically.

Drinking game rule for the Phoenix saga no 6: shout “ca-caw” and take a sip every time the raptor appears. (X-Men 136)

Xavier feels Jean helping him out from within the Phoenix and together, they slowly trap Phoenix in the same sort of energy-matrix as Jean did with the M’Kraan-crystal. The Phoenix finally lays dormant, the X-Men have Jean back and Scott, overwhelmed by emotion, sort of awkwardly proposes to her. Happy Ending! And then, pulling the rug out from under our feet, the X-Men (including Beast and Angel) are whisked away.

They appear in front of Lilandra. The Shi’Ar hold Jean accountable for her planet-killing ways and Lilandra orders her Imperial Guard to take her away! But Charles invokes an ancient law with the same relish of someone who invokes an obscure board game rule against the person who is about to win: he demands a trial by combat.

The rules are easy:

X-Men win: Jean lives

Shi’Ar win: Jean dies.

The trial will be on the dark side of the moon. The Shi’ar are way too strong and, one by one, the X-Men fall, until only Jean and Scott are left. In their last stand, Jean loses control and becomes the Phoenix again, wiping the floor with the Imperial Guard. Technically, they win, but she knows now.

Suicide by abandoned-machine-of-a-long-forgotten-civilization-on-the-dark-side-of-the-moon. (X-Men 137)

She dies. Phoenix dies. The X-Men lose. Scott, bereft, leaves the X-Men.

One detail I love is the holempathic crystal that Lilandra bestows on Jean’s parents.

Without becoming too maudlin, the idea of this is beautiful. A condensed image of a person you love, one you can touch when you feel memories slipping away so you can remember who they were. (X-Men 138)

And with that, season 2 of the X-Men ends. Without Cyclops and Phoenix, the X-Men have to readjust. While Beast returns to the Avengers, Angel takes up residence in the mansion again. He confesses to liking most of the new X-Men, except Wolverine. (To be fair, Wolverine is an acquired taste.) Kitty Pryde also formally starts attending the school and slowly, the Jean-and-Scott-shaped void is filled.

Patriarchal Charles is thrilled to finally have a new teenager in the house who will hang on to his every word. It’ll be like the sixties all over again! (X-Men 139)

There are so many beautiful touches in the few panels:

Wolverine calling Charles ‘Chuck’

Nightcrawler getting drinks (and a beer)

Most amazingly of all, Storm becoming the leader. (I give Chuck a lot of flak, but this decision is Right.) Not just because Storm is the best X-Man for the job, but also because she was a black woman leading one of premier Marvel superhero teams for, what? The better half of a decade? The eighties had barely started, so this was a big fucking deal.

Storm also takes up a motherly role for Kitty, who takes up her suggestion for a codename: Sprite. (This after Kitty rejects Charles’ suggestion of Ariel, which is only fortunate, considering that name would soon be associated with redhaired mermaids.)

The rest of the year is dedicated to two adventures, both of them starring Kurt. The first is depicted in the annual: on Kurt’s birthday, he receives a mysterious package with a mysterious figurine that mysteriously explodes in his face. Professor X calls guest star Dr. Strange for aid, who deduces that his soul has been stolen. What follows is a quest to regain Kurt’s soul in an adventure that feels a little too I just read Dante’s Inferno, check how smart I am.

Hell is a little too pedestrian and boring, though we do get a King Minos hitting on Kurt and Ororo. A man of wealth and taste indeed. Anyway, at the end of this side quest, it turns out all of this was a convoluted revenge scheme concocted by one Margali of the Winding Road. She turns out to be Kurt’s (adoptive) mother, who’s getting revenge for Kurt killing her son.

Kurt, racked with guilt, reveals he had no choice. Stefan had always feared the darkness in his soul and he’d made Kurt pledge to stop him if he should ever succumb to it. After Stefan killed a child or two, Kurt had no choice but to end him. Stefan perished and Kurt was blamed for all of the murders, having to flee an angry mob.

Margali forgives him, with some help from Jimaine, Kurt’s foster sister. In a twist that is a little too soap opera for my tastes (and I watch Riverdale), Jimaine turns out to be Kurt’s squeeze, Amanda Sefton. I’ve always disliked this twist, and not just because of the incesteous vibes: I like the idea of Kurt dating a regular lady who is into him despite his appearance and his being a mutant. Making Amanda Sefton his sorcerous half-sister dilutes that message a lot.

The tail end of 1980 involves Wolverine going to Canada so Wolverine can make amends with Alpha Flight. Kurt joins him, ostensibly to flirt with Aurora, but in fact this shows that Kurt and Wolverine are establishing a rapport. A deeper friendship.

In a pretty paint-by-numbers adventure, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and the worse half of Alpha Flight take down a Wendigo. We don’t get Northstar or Aurora, but we do get more Snowbird, who can change herself into Canadian animals, with the danger of being consumed by her animal side.

We get this delightful panel out of it:

Scared Nightcrawler almost makes me forget how full of shit Jimmy MacDonald is, considering last time Kurt saw them, they tried to kidnap the fuzzy elf. (X-Men 139)

This whole arc is meant to show the softening of Wolverine. Not only does he share his name with Kurt (well, sort of: “Logan, is that your name?” “Yup.” “You never told us.” “You never asked.”), but when they fight the Wendigo and Snowbird turns into a white wolverine to deal the final blow, he talks her out of being consumed by her vicious animal nature.

The year ends with two details worth mentioning:

The Canadian government dissolves Alpha Flight, which I can only find a prescient move that highlights their good taste. A realistic note I like is the minister referring to the mutant problem as ‘an American problem’ even though they employ the Beaubier twins. Wankers.

Fred Dukes escapes prison to join the New Brotherhood of Mutants!

We’re now entering a run of the X-Men which I haven’t read much of yet, but Freddy mentions he was helped by some lady lawyer. That’s gotta be Mystique, right?

I can barely contain my glee.

Ugliest Costume: Despite that godawful hooded thing Kitty wears, I have to give this to Dazzler. There’s no salvaging that costume: I’m sorry, but she’s wearing a disco ball around her neck. It's a boot from me.

Best new character: Emma Frost. Fight me by the bike rack near the parking lot if you disagree.

Turns evil: Jean Grey, famously so.

What to read: X-Men 129 to 137, the Dark Phoenix run.

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baoshan-sanren · 3 years

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I saw your post about svss and you pointed out a bunch of interesting things and it got me thinking... there are plenty of fics about og!lbh meeting sy( !sqq ) but what is your take on this? How do you think things would go down between them and what kind of relationship do you imagine they'd have? After Bingge vs Bingmei do you think og!lbh would wanna find his own Shizun (sy) / or would he try to take sy!sqq back? Thanks for this blog btw! It's an absolute danmei goldmine!

lmao I see a lot of those fics too but I’ve never read any bc I just can’t see LBG and SY together in any context that doesn’t involve making one (or both) of them extremely OOC. Mainly, I can’t see SY ever willingly remaining by LBG’s side. In the LBG vs LBM extras, the only pity he feels for LBG is solely caused by LBG’s physical resemblance to LBM, or the physical resemblance to the person SY actually cares for. I mean, there is no need to imagine how SY would react to being pursued/forced to exist alongside LBG because we already see it play out in SVSSS. Before SY finally realizes that the boy he raised turned out very different from PIDW LBH, he spends like a dozen chapters (if not more) trying to run away from him. And SVSSS LBH is no alternate dimension stranger either, but a man SY had raised himself, and knows better than he ever could have known PIDW LBH just from airplane’s shitty writing.

I’m putting the rest under read more, bc idk if you thought I was kidding about writing essays about SVSSS (I wasn’t).

The LBG vs LBM extras are actually my fave extras. So many people start SVSSS expecting to get a romantic relationship between the two mains, but technically, this relationship only begins after the novel ends. SY even clearly states that the entire time they had spent in the Demon Realm post the events of the last chapter (not quite a month if I remember correctly?) they had not even as much as kissed. The fact that the first physical intimacy of sexual nature SY experiences post all the misunderstandings and misery of the novel is with LBG and not LBM (as well as the first time he is aroused by the activity) is a big deal for A LOT of reasons. The main being that SY enjoys himself only up to the point where he realizes the person kissing him is not LBM.

Mxtx makes it a point to tell us that SY and LBM have terrible sex. For one, this is a fairly realistic scenario, flying in opposition to all the novels where the lead is somehow born with magical knowledge on how to provide mind-blowing sexual gratification under any circumstance. With the “protagonist's golden-halo” firmly in place, any other author would have made him a veritable sex god without any consideration for the fact that LBM wouldn’t know the first thing about kissing someone, let alone anything else. LBG, on the other hand, has the experience gained from his 300+ member harem. In the extra, it takes him literally no time to push SY’s buttons. I believe he even says something like “Why would you stay with him (LBM) when my technique is so much better?” For LBG, who clearly doesn’t understand that any relationship which purports itself to be based in affection or love does not require continuous application of sex in order to exist or remain stable, SY choosing to stay with LBM makes absolutely no sense.

It always blows my mind when people talk about SVSSS like it’s perpetuating some “dangerous ideas” about sex and consent (but it does make me better understand why mxtx chooses to literally lead the readers by the hand through those same themes in TGCF, because they obviously didn’t get what she was saying in SVSSS). The number of narratives in which the bad guy is terrible at sex and the good guy is somehow a sex encyclopedia on two legs (and there are no realistic reasons for either scenario) are a dime a dozen in every genre, in every language. Mxtx steps back and says “no, actually, sex has nothing to fucking do with love, and the ability to receive/give pleasure has nothing to do with either goodness or villany” and then she gets lynched for it by people who have no reading comprehension.

Literally the only thing LBG has going for him is that he can turn SY on in 0.5 seconds and that he physically resembles LBM. And while the latter does ping on SY’s radar, it only incites pity. He obviously does not give a shit for the former, because his relationship with LBM, his affection and love for LBM, his decision to marry LBM has literally nothing to do with sex. This actually might be healthiest aspect of their relationship, that all the groundwork, including the plethora of misunderstandings, was laid down before they had a mutually consensual sexual experience together. And it is a stark contrast to PIDW LBH’s relationship with sex which is unhealthy in a dozen different ways, and mainly transactional in nature, from being a means of obtaining loyalty, affection, or a sense of self-worth.

So basically, a relationship between SY and LBG is, in my opinion, as unrealistic as airplane’s original PIDW plot. Although SY did admire PIDW LBH enough to read the entire atrocity of a novel (that literally ended up killing him), I think we’re all supposed to understand, without being told, that those things we admire in fiction are rarely ever things we’d be willing to experience in real life.

#svsss #meta #i feel like anyone who asks me about svsss regrets doing so #lol #Anonymous #ask for ts

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professorxsmokesweed · 2 years

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erik in the dofp scene where trask and raven are in the same room makes me crazy specifically i just talked about it with my twitter moot and it’s just so.

im so mad that we live in the society we live in cause we will never get a true version of eriks politics (in a mainstream movie at least i dont know whats happening comics wise) freed from “dangers of radicalism!!!” propaganda like i will argue to defend him in the movies knowing he sometimes does stupid shit but his stupid shit is undercut by the knowledge that in most situations he’s gonna be thrown into the villain role and therefore always do something extreme and ridiculous!!! i want to see him do stupid shit cause he as a character is doing stupid shit not because the writers are making him do something so the audience will side with the chosen preferred narrative (that charles is often the transportation for! i know he doesn’t honestly believe trask going to jail will suddenly fix the trask problem!!! i know he doesn’t!!!!)

back to dofp he tries to kill raven when trask, who is the one ACTUALLY responsible for the mutant killing robots is standing Right There in The Same Room you cannot tell me he would hold raven, his mutant ally, more responsible/dangerous in that situation than the actual guy who wants to do and planning the mass murder???? he didnt try to kill trask even a little bit he went straight for raven now i DO think he would try to kill raven to prevent a mutant mass murder but why the fuck wouldnt he try to kill trask first

if they wanted to show erik going after raven, which AGAIN, is something i honestly and really do believe he would do, trask shouldn’t have also been in the room. and in the good xmen that lives in my head he wasnt! erik is not going to ignore the mutant mass murderer to kill the mutant he used to commit mass murder!

he was yelling about how his mutant brothers and sisters are dead literally idk how many scenes earlier and he’s not going to go after trask for that first? knowing that trask was the one who carved them up? when he has specific trauma regarding all of that?

i know he takes control of the robots later but???? honestly this brings up the question of how much he actually knew before paris i can’t actually remember which might make this entire thing invalid if he didn’t know about trask being responsible??? and the argument is the murder of trask made them realize how dangerous mutants are or whatever do you really think erik would buy into that. you really think he would care? erik already believes that mutants are going to be feared and attempted to be destroyed no matter what. raven is also super necessary for the sentinels and her being the one that murdered trask and then getting caught immediately after is what caused the problems not trask himself dying look me in the eye and tell me that erik wouldn’t go and try to wipe the entire program out as part of his “stopping it before it starts” plan. yes he would go after raven if he’s getting nervous about it since another holocaust is his biggest fear but really?? he’s not gonna go after the mutant haters first???

additionally some of the language in dofp used to describe the entire raven vs trask situation is so gross?? yes she fucking shot the dude but it is not her fault she was tortured and used to create weapons that killed everyone else she was upset that her friends were also brutally tortured and torn apart i feel like that point is undersold in the movie.

also: trask was going to kill mutants anyways raven not going after him would change nothing in that regard i want to know what the plan would be if raven actually did drop the revenge mission and erik didn’t pull some wild shit. because trask was not going to suddenly stop and the idea that raven murdering trask made people nervous enough to kill all mutants is fucking ridiculous that’s not ravens fault. it is the fault of the people who, i don’t know, decided to do mass murder?

marvel/hollywood has known ties to the military!! erik’s ideas are never truly truly going to be explored in a movie! charles himself is chained to dumb ideas through this!!! and despite that sony got away with way more than anything the mcu would give us and thats why i live in fear of the mcu reboot!!

tdlr: i think its stupid that erik would hold raven accountable for the trask thing over trask himself

disclaimers: my last dofp rewatch was in like. october so i dont have specific-specific moments memorized. yes i believe erik has flaws as a character i am not trying to claim he is right about everything he does. i actually love the erik trying to shoot raven plot point its just that trask was also There. Right There. i think attempted murder makes for good character conflict!!!! restating what i said earlier but i gonna say this again because this is tumblr: in my head erik tries to kill trask with raven and it goes wrong trask escapes or they catch up to raven before she gets close to trask and eriks like “raven i am sorry to do this but we need to make sure that trask can never do anything i promise after this i will burn down the entirety of trask industries and will remember your sacrifice” or some shit and then we continue on with the plot

i am also tired and dont even know if this is coherent i kinda just let emotion possess me sorry folks xx

@stuck--on-you was the person i was talking this over with!!

#tfatws also drove me nuts karli baby. karli baby i am so fucking sorry that happened to you #like tfatws is as far as the mcu is ever going to go and we all saw how that ended #sam and bucky worked with the nypd along with w*lker who was stripped of cap but faced no consequences otherwise as he was out helping them #and karli died. along with all of her group being blown up by zemo. who also fucking sucks i hate zemo #at least i’ll always have the boat scenes #sorry for talking about mcu in the tags. please dont unfollow me i promise im a mcu hater #also dont get me started on the killing changes you or whatever idea #like obviously murder has an affect on you mentally but like it does not suddenly mean you are going to go evil #i think murder is bad before anyone jumps me. irl i think that no one should die.#murder is bad killing people is bad!!!#but ravens not suddenly gonna go full bitch cause she shot one dude #once again. trask carved her friends apart #i am reminded of jet atla who was also portrayed as evil for doing direct action in the choice to have him blow up that village #and he also died! he was treated worse than some of the characters who have done real worse crimes!#does any of this make sense or am i just being insane #thoughts #erik lehnsherr

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the-lightning-strikes-again · 3 years

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Yeah the Loki finale was meh/disappointing it doesn’t even feel like a Loki show anymore. I swear you could swap him with another character and the story would barely change.

Hi, anon! I'll put thoughts under a cut since idk who all has seen the Loki show yet.

Tbh, Loki is my favorite character from the MCU. I have waited for YEARS for this character to have an actual spotlight...

And I really wanted to like this show, I really did. Like, I legit wanted to just turn off my brain and enjoy everything?

But yeah, your message resonates with me. There were things I liked about the show, but once I got over the cool CGI and angst and female gaze, it just...feels like Loki got sidelined in his own story? The focus hadn't been about him specifically since episode 1. It instead shifted to Sylvie, who is different enough from Loki that she might as well have been Hawkeye still on his Endgame rampage for justice. And it was Sylvie's problems and Sylvie's motivations that drove the story. Which, you know, were interesting in their own way but not what I was expecting from a Loki show. A lot of scenes were just Sylvie running around and Loki somewhat helplessly following along in a daze that this is what his life has become. He was just ultimately a very passive character in someone else's story...because as the finale clearly showed, his core issues that needed to be worked out weren't in alignment with her own.

So it's sad to me that the show opened up by saying that Loki's destiny was always to function as a dead-end catalyst for other people's character development/journeys. And in the end, that's...exactly what Loki became for all the other characters in this show. ;A; And I'm not sure what they have going on for s2, but I fear he'll just play second-fiddle to Dr. Strange at this point.

I have other issues with the show as well....

___

I felt like they also massively declawed him? Ignoring the comics entirely (where he's even more badass) and looking just at the movies: He survived a Hulk smack-down, could toss humans like they were nothing, could travel between worlds through a variety of means, could already see into people's minds/memories and cast illusions and even change his form, and yet somehow all of this got retconned to make him a less powerful sorcerer compared to his Variants.

I remember this guy being actually dangerous and physically capable, which is why they locked him up. Loki used to have Avenger-level capabilities and strength. But now, he can't hardly fight off a human, and his defense skills are relegated to basic hand-to-hand combat and a dagger. The show even makes fun of his abilities and calls him a pussycat and turns him into a tie-wearing analyst...But I suppose that's in line with the general downgrade of his abilities in recent MCU movies...

___

And if being a sidekick in his own show and having his abilities retconned wasn't enough, I feel like the show failed to convince me that it really understood and is working to grow Loki's character.

The underlying issue that the show calls out as Loki's ultimate weakness is that he's "afraid of being alone," and that this feeds a narcissism complex. But this doesn't really make sense to me? Because he didn't grow up alone or unwanted. He had a mother (Frigga) who loved him deeply and taught him magic. He clearly made it into adulthood believing that Odin was his father, who certainly wasn't absent. He was always on adventures with his brother. He had clearly tried to build a reputation for himself that was differentiated from his brother's (the Silvertongue). This goes against how narcissists don't really have a personality of their own because they just absorb other people's mannerisms to fit in...So like, idk about parsing out the details of narcissism as a clinical diagnosis because I'm not a psychologist, but something feels a little odd here to me? Like, it's more than just...fear of being alone that drives Loki to be destructive? The loneliness is only a symptom??

The problem based off the early movies, providing that I'm not entirely an idiot in listening (which I suppose I could be), was that he was always in Thor's shadow and was never considered an equal, someone worthy of respect despite their differences. Even in the 2009 movie, his peers belittled his title as a Silvertongue and his love for magic. Discovering that he was actually an unwanted frost giant just twisted that knife in deeper and set him on a self-destruct path, once and for all. And it's really interesting to me that throughout this show, people are still constantly trying to establish themselves as alpha over Loki and make jabs about him as worthless and weak. And he's just desperate enough for validation to still try bonding with them the instant anyone tosses a bone of mild curiosity at him.

The fact that he's still positioned as less valuable and less respected than Sylvie, and that even Sylvie herself ultimately usurps equality in their relationship/partnership to enforce her will is just...depressing.

And for all this discussion about Loki changing/redeeming himself, at the end of the day, his perspective hasn't really changed? He still identifies himself as untrustworthy, even though he careens as a desperate lap dog for Mobius' approval and then Sylvie's once she gives him an ounce of attention. He has difficulty with accepting the value of a life, especially in regard to his own life. For example, he was still willing to consider upholding the death of future untold numbers via pruning despite being such a victim himself. And that's not a slam to his worry about a worse alternative, which is probably valid, but it's still weird that he does not believe he could contribute to a powerful resistance group capable of taking out multiple variations of one human man.

It's even weirder that he still seems to be caught in a tailspin regarding "necessary dictatorship," even though Loki is supposed to be a Silvertongue and could have won He Who Remains over as an ally against the other Variants of He Who Remains, thereby dismantling the TVA and freeing the multiverse. But unfortunately, he still can't see beyond two binary roads (mass chaos vs. subjugation). He has totally lost his confidence and identity as a Silvertongue. He can't see an alternative option despite supposedly being a Master Strategist, and that's echoed in how his initial thought to defeat Alioth was to kill it in a very Thor-ish, Asgardian way.

And because he has accepted the show's narrative that he is not capable or worthy of respect for his own unique talents, he openly just..accepts the concept that he's not meant to mean anything to anyone but himself ("I just want you to be okay") or do actually anything meaningful with his abilities. This probably underscores why he is so incapable of using his full powers for a Chaotic Good.

And for one final jab of hopelessness, the show immediately reverses the one (1) other mildly positive relationship he had just started to build via Mobius, solidifying that once again, Loki is not allowed to have friends. Loki is not allowed to have equals. Loki is not allowed to be respected. Which is probably why even when he's surrounded by other people, that's why he still feels alone.

I'm just sort of dead that for all the time the show spent on diagnosing Loki, it never got deep enough to ask why he feels alone.

Conclusion

So idk, the show just kinda depressed me tbh. I don't want to be this critical??? They have really great actors, interesting concepts, and clearly a strong CGI department. Again, not sure I could do better, so I recognize I'm playing armchair critic here. Maybe it'll get better in s2. I really want this show to prove me wrong and move Loki into a level of character development where he can like, actually have purpose in his own title show beyond serving as second-fiddle to other people in other people's self-discovery journeys.

Like please, just let him realize that he can have a positive, meaningful purpose. And that whatever his purpose is, that he is Enough just as he is, and that he can contribute meaningful things to others and be fully worthy of respect. And I think once that clicks with Loki, we'll see him really grow into something phenomenal. Something truly formidable, even if that character doesn't sit on a throne....

It's possible the show could go there? But I'm just a little leery that it's not really a show about Loki....

#Loki #Marvel #MCU #Sylvie #Agent Mobius #Loki show salt #Loki show critical #;A; there's things I do like about this show #but ahhhhhh #Marvel always devalues Loki #I just...guess I didn't expect them to do that here

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irritatedandroid · 3 years

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The Fire Burns Bright

A Personal Essay From an Alolan Marowak -Jasper (@irritatedandroid, @irritatedDroid)

Summary: Below the cut, this is a personal essay written by Jasper on his experiences with being an Alolan Marowak fictherian and fictionkind. Personal experience, discussion of awakening, shifts, instincts, animality, culture and spirituality are elaborated on alongside a critical view on community narratives and boundaries.

CWs: In-depth look on death, personal experiences with death

I find there isn’t enough discussion on the fact that nonhumanity can be approached from multiple different angles and axis, instead treated like a hard binary of animality vs humanity - or if you’re lucky, a two-way spectrum. I’m someone who is nonhuman through and through, but the way in which I can experience being “other” from humanity can shift wildly. A strong sense of animality is brought on when shifted towards my Alolan Marowak fictotype - enough that I tend to strongly identify with the word fictherian. Though that sense of animality is its own thing, and is a wholly separate scale from the nonhumanity I experience when shifted towards my android kintype. But the experiences drawn from being an android could fill an essay of their own. We’re here to discuss the Marowak.

Both very not human, both very “other”, but a wholly different view upon what it means to be human and not human respectively. And I suspect the scale my Marowak self experiences may be different as well from the scale any given earthen animal may experience. Similar enough to where therianthrope discussion rings loud mental bells of familiarity and understanding, but still something else worth acknowledging. After all, how many earthen animal therianthropes feel the raw instinct of fire breath? Were-dragons however may understand that one well. And yet that animality is not something to be ignored or to set aside entirely even if the axis runs at a slightly off angle in comparison.

My name is Jasper, and some of you might know me, I’ve been around the community for a couple of years. Some folks even remember the internal grapple with identity and understanding that I had when I started being unable to deny I am an Alolan Marowak. The moment when the Alolan Marowak design was teased, and I had pointed out the familiarity as well as the typing before it was actually shown. There was a moment then when experiences and vague, blurry memories I’d held onto quietly for years without the priority of digging in deeper - as I was already busy with questioning and understanding my android kintype - became an absolute priority of mine to understand further.

I often half-joke about how my “awakening” as discussed in nonhuman communities was completely rocky, as it was. It was less a solid awakening, and more multiple years of slowly accepting and embracing aspects of my life that had always been present, which I had denied either to ease my own responsibility to myself or to appease others. Folks in the community may recall seeing me step into denial, and to substitute in any possible reptilian, fire-based creature I could in order to try and understand the experiences. Because how could I be a Pokemon? I’d been critical of fictionkin while diving into the community, something which when looking back was likely a compensation for already having been something odd and to be met with criticism - the android. I ran through a number of species when questioning: everything from earthen lizards, to draconic entities, to the elemental spirits of salamanders.

There were multiple aspects absolutely vital to communicating what I was experiencing, those being a) instinct-driven and wild, reptilian, and b) inherently connected to the elements of fire and spirit. My thoughts could be as unflattering as a scavenger’s instinct, growing frustrated at any leftover food or uncleaned-up animal remains (which sure made living in a populated city interesting, with abandoned scraps of food everywhere and the leftovers of unfortunate urban creatures who tried their luck at crossing Yonge Street), or curious to try and make a meal for myself out of the live insects I keep to feed to my own little old leopard gecko, Saleen. Yes, she was named after a car. No, that is not important. Having her around does however provide an up close frame of reference to draw out my own lizard drives. In terms of food instincts, raw eggs are absolutely another tempter of mine, as my carnivorous scavenger self would have been ecstatic to see a nest of unattended eggs to make a meal of. As I’ve learned due to that raw eggs absolutely suck, please cook them. It’s much better that way. But embarrassing nonhumanity stories will always be embarrassing.

Some of us Marowak - especially the males like myself - could become quite territorial. And that territorial feeling is something I’ve had to settle in my mind over life. Nowadays it’s decently well integrated, but it does now and then try my patience especially when it comes to setting out what is for me and what belongs strictly to me. Renting a small apartment in a populated city, once again, does definitely force you to keep the “this land is mine and it belongs to me, so screw off before you chase off my dinner” thoughts in check. A bit of human humbling for an animal’s self thought. I’ve of course needed to remind myself a number of times that the tourists in the train station on my way to work, while annoying, won’t manage to chase off the Tim Hortons I’ll be eating on my break.

But in the wild frontier of the Pokemon world, predator and prey dynamics were absolutely important to know and understand - and those dynamics reach beyond game mechanics such as elemental types and abilities. Even as a carnivore, scavenger and troublesome predator that I was when I reached the age of a full-grown Marowak, I still was in a dangerous spot on the food chain. The worst predators I’ve had to deal with while working to survive in my ecosystems were other Fire types, intriguingly. Even as a small Ground type Cubone. The fact that Cubones wear the skull of their lost mothers was something I am familiar with, my own having been taken down by a Charizard. This natural order of predation is both a major part of my animalistic experiences as a Marowak, but also did tie into my more sophisticated or spiritually-focused aspects that stemmed from my Pokemon identity and lifetime.

All of this lead to an animality-focused time in figuring out what I was, to the point where when I was in denial of the possibility of being a Pokemon, I identified myself as a theriomythic, fire-oriented reptile. And the animality definitely tends to lead the discussion upon how I live and experience being an Alolan Marowak. I sometimes joke that you could strip that side of my life down to the bare essentials and I’d be a lizard hanging out by a campfire. Though it certainly isn’t every aspect of me, as the Marowak.

At times I think on the term theriomythic, and how it could be extremely valuable in describing more than just “animal but from myth”, but to also communicate experiencing the self on a spectrum of animality and mythicality. In my case this spectrum is very much there, and the aspects of experience that make up me as the Marowak are scattered along it. All aspects are important to me and how I live as myself, as well as how I understand my own fictional animality and nonhumanity.

The Marowak, despite being a wild animal in how I recall and experience my species, do have a displayed aspect of culture and even spirituality. Setting aside the fictional wildness of being able to summon up fire at will to defend one’s turf, we’re shown to be able to interact comfortably with each other when it comes time for rituals, such as fire dancing at the sun rise and to mourn the lost. Mourning the lost is a large part of how one can experience being the Marowak as well, as it’s a pretty integral part of the species’ canon lore, starting from when we’re little baby Cubones. For those unfamiliar with Pokemon lore, a Cubone wears the skull of its dead mother Marowak. Adorning bones in a sort of ritual to mourn is something that I can’t say I’ve seen an earthen animal do. If you have then please do let me know, because it interests me a lot. But all I can say about it in my own drives and thoughts is that it’s just what we do, it’s cultural. To cite the Pokedex, “MAROWAK is the evolved form of a CUBONE that has overcome its sadness at the loss of its mother and grown tough. This POKéMON’s tempered and hardened spirit is not easily broken” (Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, 2002).

The donning and weaponizing of bones is both symbolic and an act of mourning, but also an example of tool using similar to some of our world’s apes. The Pokedex talks of this vaguely, stating “It has been seen pounding boulders with the bone it carries in order to tap out messages to others” (Pokemon Gold, 1999). The various Pokedex entries theorize on where the bone clubs come from, some entries mentioning a graveyard specifically for Marowak existing in the world, where Cubone and Marowak get their bones. Some entries state this like fact, such as Pokemon Crystal, meanwhile others bring up this as a rumour, such as Pokemon Silver. In my experience, it’s a rumour. I’ve not seen a Marowak graveyard, my bone club first came from my mother. But the main referenced use of the bone club is as a weapon, and also as a method of overcoming grief and turning to viciousness. “It is small and was originally very weak. Its temperament turned ferocious when it began using bones.” (Pokemon X, 2013). In my case, the symbolic use of them is as a tool of war, transforming grief into a vicious will to fight on and survive. Due to this, I hold bones and particularly skulls as a sacred object and have my small collection of skulls I keep as comfort objects. With time, having a large femur bone similar in shape is a life goal.

Though it does then get taken a step further, when peering in through the eyes of an Alolan variant Marowak. A spirituality that incorporates the dead and lost is brought in and becomes an extra step of important, crediting the Ghost type aspect alongside the Fire. Newer Pokedex entries focused on specifically this variant states “The bones it possesses were once its mother’s. Its mother’s regrets have become like a vengeful spirit protecting this Pokémon” (Pokemon Sun, 2016) and “It has transformed the spirit of its dear departed mother into flames, and tonight it will once again dance in mourning of others of its kind” (Pokemon Let’s Go, 2018). Spiritual awareness is very much accepted to be something that the Alolan Marowak possess and engage with openly, even building monuments to the lost as stated in the Generation 7 Pokedex entry: “Its custom is to mourn its lost companions. Mounds of dirt by the side of the road mark the graves of the Marowak” (Pokemon Moon, 2016).

Culturally there is a lot to the Marowak’s experience, comparing and including both Alolan and Kantonian variants of the species. The species as I remember are mostly solitary but I do recall clan dynamics and groups especially among the Alolan variant. These groups were less for survival and more for the purpose of those ritual gatherings, mentioned above. At times I was very foreign to these clans, being a Kanto-born Cubone evolved in Alola (a fact supported in canon and proven in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon via the ability to evolve a Kanto Marowak in Ultra Space). Behaviorally and culturally there are differences between Kanto and Alolan Marowak, brought on by how each looks at their situation differently. While an Alolan Marowak processes mourning in a more spiritual way, a Kanto Marowak becomes hardened by anger. “A MAROWAK is the evolved form of a CUBONE that has grown tough by overcoming the grief of losing its mother. Its tempered and hardened spirit is not easily broken,” (Pokemon Emerald, 2004). Because of this there was a separation between myself and the local Marowak that reinforced my solitary nature, and also influenced my introverted and almost outright nomadic nature in my current life and self. The fire dance under the sunrise was one known in canon. These rituals and dances are a custom humans in canon have taken notice to, and can even speculate the reasoning for. “This Pokémon sets the bone it holds on fire and dances through the night as a way to mourn its fallen allies” (Pokemon Sword, 2019). The fact that that cultural dynamic prevailed even through the difficulty of communicating is something that may be surprising, but a number of nonhumans know well that body language and tone of animal vocalizations can go a long way in communicating

Ignoring these experiences would be a step towards cutting down and denying important experiences that affect me as a fictherian and as a Marowak. There’s important parts of how I experience being this Pokemon that are heavily grounded in a context of a mystical world where visibly potent acts of fantasy are possible unlike the world we are living in here. Some of these aspects can be emulated in more subtle ways through exploration of spirituality, religion and the occult. To dive deeper into that, I used to identify as Pagan, however now I practice what is called chaos magic. Chaos magic is a magical practice that developed in England in the 1960’s, working off of Austin Osman Spare’s occult practice and ideas. Chaos magic gave me an approach and freedom to incorporate what I know and remember as an Alolan Marowak into my every-day spirituality. Tailoring my spiritual beliefs and practices to focus on working with the element of fire, with spirits and the energy of death, bones, and to the very fabric of fiction crossing over into reality was extremely important as an avenue for me to explore the way my fictotype affects me in the modern day, and in the human body. This practice also gave me a bit of freedom to accept working with an entity from my source - Giratina - as a patron deity in pagan circles, which ultimately proved to be extremely valuable in exploring my own Pokemon identity. Practices like energy work, meditation, spirit work and visualization hit close to satisfying that need to be delved into the magical world we see in animation. And yet, even in these more sophisticated and fantastical experiences lie links back to the animality and to an inherent disconnect to humanity.

One thing I always enjoy in therianthrope and non-humanoid otherkin discussions is an openness to discuss the instincts that are ugly, disturbing or outside of what one’s human morals would ever agree with in this life and time. And in a lot of cases these instincts and memories can become a lot more “ugly” than a scavenger’s drive to eat carcasses or the awareness and cynical eye needed to survive in a completely wild world. At times, a wild creature can have defense mechanisms or behaviors that to our human minds would seem outright malicious. And Pokemon, even in the whimsical canon, are no exception to that. Once again I’ll drag up a few Pokedex entries - as honestly the Pokedex is a wonderful thing for exploring the deeper aspects of a wild Pokemon - to illustrate my point. “When it beats opponents with its bone, the cursed flames spread to them. No amount of water will stop those flames from burning,” (Pokemon Ultra Moon, 2017) and “The cursed flames that light up the bone carried by this Pokémon are said to cause both mental and physical pain that will never fade” (Pokemon Shield, 2019).

Yes, even the fun and magical world of Pokemon is no stranger to wild animals who inflict effects upon others that seem absolutely awful, and in some cases cruel. But, that’s survival in the animal kingdom, or in this case the Pokemon kingdom. It can be surprising to some that a person who’s fictotype hails from the fun and upbeat franchise that defined a number of childhoods may be hardened to the need to survive in a natural world. The things I know I had done to creatures who my childhood Pokemon fan self would have only wanted to hug, at least at a baseline mental state. In a shift, that’s a different story after all.

But ultimately, this blend of experiences causes an interesting time in exploring myself within the general nonhuman community as it can be quite split up. Certain narratives of individual communities I can’t find myself fitting into, or find myself sitting in between. I settle into spaces focused on everything from therianthropy, to mythical otherkinity, and to fictionkinity, though there’s narratives and cultural aspects in every separated community that either are foreign to me or that I might confront as they expect clear-cut boxes between them which individuals can fit into. In therianthrope communities I’ve been one to criticize the expectation of a solid line between human and animal experiences, or in general animal vs non-animal with regards to forcing a further divide from the otherkin community. I’ve also been involved in discussion criticizing therian community narratives such as a shifting focus and the model of integration. The model of integration is interesting to me, as I experienced it in a way that I was unaware of at the time, particularly with my android kintype. My android kintype is almost fully integrated into me - I barely shift at all at least mentally. However my Marowak fictotype provides less integration, and my mental shifting will be a lot more noticeable against my baseline self. At times it can be as stark as appearing like a different person, or more accurately like a wild animal. But ultimately the differences in the closeness of each kintype draws up issues for me with the integration model, as well as having found it normalized a severe mental health issue I had with my traumagenic plurality at the time of “least integration”.

The therianthrope community is far from the only community with narratives that put a barrier between me and relating, especially as members of each community push for further separation between individual branches of nonhuman experience and identity. I have trouble relating to humanoids when heavily shifted towards my Marowak self, and that puts a bit of a barrier between myself and the otherkin community’s more humanoid side - such as elven, fae, divine, angelic, etc. - as well as the fictionkin community’s focus on humanoid or completely story-driven fictionkind. I have no use for prioritized experiences within the fictionkin community such as finding canon-mates and creating aesthetics. Even in some Pokemon fictionkin specific communities I find I cannot relate often. My experience with my “Pokemanity” is heavily wild and animal-based as I was never caught, socialized with a human, or trained. In no way shape or form is my Pokemanity adjusted to interaction with humans, nor is it something that is settled down or subdued for human consumption unlike what my source was created for.

In both otherkin, therian and even fictionkin communities there is a push towards prioritizing the narrative of a solid awakening. That’s one more focus in the communities that I struggle with, as like I said before, mine was a process of accepting bits of myself which spanned multiple years. Every part of me that is nonhuman has always been present within my life, though for almost two decades muted heavily.

To draw back into my spiritual practice here, consider a practice known as shadow work. Shadow work is a practice that hybridizes spirituality and psychology, and describes the process of becoming aware of one’s shadow (the id, shadow archetype, or shadow aspect drawn from Carl Jung’s psychology) and working to integrate it into oneself by accepting the repressed parts of oneself that are pushed back and merged into the shadow. The shadow can be known as the unknown dark side of the personality, and I theorize that more nonhumans have undesirable aspects of their nonhumanity pushed onto their shadow than they might think they do, like I had done to my own Pokemanity for a number of years. In my case, I was slightly forced to tear into and meet my shadow aspects of my nonhumanity due to the fact that even upon immediately breaking into nonhuman communities, the specifics of what I was were already viewed with hostility and disbelief. In a way, it strengthened me. But with my shadow opened wide and not much held back, I can be a bit of a fire-starter in spaces where I speak my mind whether others want to hear it or not. And part of that is directly confronting the forced separation of animal vs non-animal, or the arbitrary ideas of what is a human experience and what is not.

I can only best put forward my experience as a Pokemon through in-depth discussion, which I find tends to come across better in spaces where the experience of being by-and-large a feral animal is allowed without restraint. Ultimately a space I will thrive in most and be most open about my experiences and life as someone who is spiritually and psychologically an Alolan Marowak is one where I can discuss both my animality, my experience with fiction, my spiritual practice and the combination of these things that seem to be pushed into separate boxes. The Marowak serves a lot to my sense of self and to my life, and has psychological affects on me as well. It’s been a part of me that has fought through and survived when my life hit a rocky start early on, witnessing the death of my brother in childhood, and having loss and grief be present all around as I grew. The Marowak is both an inherent part and vital context in my life, as well as a symbol of my own endurance.

Through it all, the fire burns bright.

Citations

Marowak POKÉDEX: Stats, MOVES, evolution & locations. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2021, from https://pokemondb.net/pokedex/marowak

Chryssides, George D. (2012). Historical Dictionary of New Religious Movements (2 ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-8108-6194-7.

Jung, C.G. 1938. "Psychology and Religion." In Psychology and Religion: West and East, Collected Works of C.G. Jung 11. p. 131

Roberts, Gwilym Wyn, and Andrew Machon. 2015. Appreciative Healthcare Practice: A guide to compassionate, person-centred care. M&K. ISBN 1907830936. p. 71.

#essays #personal essay #fictherian #fictionkin #fictionkind #otherkin #otherkind #personal log #alolan marowak #death tw

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snapeaddict · 4 years

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I was fairly certain Remus did regret his actions though. He literally tells Harry that he often stood aside and watched it happen without saying anything, and that he wishes he had. In the Prisoner of Azkaban, whenever Snape gives a dig at Lupin or insult him and Harry tries to stand up for Lupin, he repeatedly excuses Snape's actions. Hell, even when Snape tries to reveal Lupin is a werewolf and eventually causes his loss of job, Lupin never hits back, or even tries to defend himself.

I’ll divide my answer into three parts.

1 - Repentance vs Regret

So, you are right. I do think Lupin regrets some of his past actions - but the thing is, it seems to make you think he understood the seriousness of his actions/has grown up/is now a better person. And I strongly believe it is not the case regarding the subject of bullying.

“In repentance, there is a retrospection of the past mistake and a search for a better way so as to not commit the mistake if such a situation arises in the future. In repentance, there is a commitment towards change. Thus, repentance is an act that intends to make one a better person. If you are repenting, it means you are learning from your mistakes and willing to change to become a better person.”

This, does not apply to Remus. We know from the books he never understands and/or refuses to acknowledge what he and his friends did wasn’t justified or deserved; he doesn’t address it as bullying as I explain in this post. Lupin’s behaviour pattern is quite clear throughout the saga: he never or only partially acknowledges his faults and they are always someone else’s doing for the most part.

“Regret is a feeling of remorse that is a negative emotion as it leads one to think continuously about his past action or behaviour and causes more shame, guilt, anger, disappointment etc.

On the other hand, repentance is a positive emotion as it makes one learn about his mistake, and he vows not to repeat it in the future.”

Lupin gives the image of a kind, understanding and mature person who knows how to put into question is own behaviour when necessary when he tells Harry and Sirius he knows he should have prevented them from tormenting Snape (Chapter 29 of OOTP). But then, as the conversation continues, if you closely analyses his thoughts - he keeps indulging into self-beating and talking about his own behaviour. He is completely self-centred and cares more about the image he gives than about the consequences of his actions and this clearly is the way he functions:

- He is willing to risk Harry’s life by not telling Dumbledore Sirius is an animagus rather than confess he betrayed his trust as a teenager: he cares more about what the headmaster thinks of him than about the consequences of his actions.

- He finds the time to acknowledge he should have behaved better - what a mature reaction - but never acknowledges Snape’s trauma or the seriousness of what was done to him. He thinks of it as a “rivalry”.

- He puts a lot of effort into burnishing his and his friends’ image by justifying bullying with “rivalry”, “jealousy”, and agreeing with the fact “it was a mutual hate and those are things that happen” rather than admitting they behaved terribly.

So yes, Remus regrets his actions. But it is clear to me he firstly regrets them because it gives him a bad image in front of Harry and Dumbledore, and to himself; he never learns from his mistakes nor can make sure to not repeat them in the future, because he simply refuses to acknowledge them and put his energy into minimising them or making them, for the most part, Snape’s own fault. I find Remus to be a self-centred and cowardly person, and this behaviour goes along with it.

However, I am not saying this makes him a bad man and understand this is directly linked to the fact he is a werewolf and giving a positive image of himself is nearly vital for him. But clearly, the fact he regrets his actions means nothing besides what I just explained, in my opinion, because Remus refuses to acknowledge what they did. He never repents and we must not mistake regrets for repentance. Remember that being critical of a character doesn’t make him less interesting or likable and has nothing to do with your personal liking of him. Snape isn’t a saint either, it’s actually interesting to have characters with layers. However, Remus was written kindly and “loved” by the books’ narrative and POV; Snape was not.

2 - He still behaves, in his thirties, like a bully

...which shows he does not repent or feel sorry for what was done to Snape and their other victims. I had the chance to discuss this with @ottogatto and she was very helpful and gave me a very interesting insight on Remus’ behaviour as we see it through Harry’s eyes in the books.

As she explained, nearly every time the subject of Snape is brought up, Remus will subtlely put the fault on him. “He was jealous”, “Your father was more popular than he was and he hated it”, “He was jealous of James’ talent for Quidditch”, “Sirius and James were good at everything and everyone loved them, unlike Snape” are embedded quotes from HP5. Why was Snape furious against him at the end of HP3? “Because he wanted the Order of Merlin”; not because Remus had nearly killed him again as well as three students, just as he had done when Snape was younger. He keeps dismissing the consequences of his actions and justifies (to both Harry and the readers), the abuse Snape went through at the hands of the Marauders. He uses a florilegium of excuses commonly used by bullies that are both very vicious and even pervert in their aims (pervert = lead someone away from what is considered acceptable. Distort or corrupt the original meaning or state of things. Exactly what he does repeatedly). This is still the behaviour of an abuser. If @ottogatto finds the post she made about it, you may like to read it as well. Remus refuses to acknowledge Snape is right to act in the way he does regarding the bullying he went through and thus deepens the hate that already exists between Harry and Snape.

From the (wonderful) @ottogatto: You see, when you tell people how your target is jealous of you, it demonizes them in a shameful way. It tells how they are a pathetic person attacking you wrongfully, oh poor innocent human that did nothing wrong. Jealousy, after all, is a fault that remains completely on the jealous one. It gives your listeners the image that your prey is a mistrustful person while putting you in the position of someone who can be envied -- supposedly for your goodness. Because that prey is framed as mistrustful and ill-intentioned, it allows people to doubt whatever accusation your target might have: either "they're lying", or "exaggerating", or "making things up". Only those who are versed in the mechanisms of bullying -- the easy or the hard way -- will spot the problem. Otherwise, people will find a pretext, a rightful excuse, or an innocent, well-intentioned goal, to keep your prey alone, weak, and "punished".

3 - It is absolutely normal Lupin doesn’t defend himself or hits back when Snape reveals he is a werewolf

...because he is in the wrong. Snape doesn’t even cause his loss of job and you may want to reread the books while not taking Harry’s perspective for the unbiased truth. Dumbledore is obviously the one who asks Remus to resign. Remus just nearly killed three students and a professor, and roamed freely onto both Hogwarts grounds and Hogsmeade as a werewolf, risking many deaths and infections because he forgot the potion Snape had been brewing for him (he depended on Snape, another reason not to fight with him). Dumbledore just learns it isn’t the first time he betrayed his trust and he did the same for two years as a teenager, risking Hogwarts’s closure and reputation and his position as headmaster, breaking the promise he made to him when he was accepted as school. The worst thing is, it is Sirius who tells Dumbledore. Not Remus. Remus clearly demonstrates he is dangerous in spite of himself - Dumbledore learns as well he hid a very important information from him (Sirius being an animagus) during the year, supposedly risking Harry’s life. Dumbledore doesn’t apologize for Snape’s behaviour when he tells him goodbye and it is reasonable to suppose it is because he is fine with Lupin’s identity not being a secret anymore.

I understand Snape’s decision (and certainly Dumbledore’s as well, as read in Snape: A Definitive Reading and various clever posts on Tumblr) may seem cruel and negatively impacted Remus in a society full of prejudices; but I understand Snape’s decision as well. Lupin was a walking danger and had proved it countless of times, nearly killing him: I’ll always argue his decision wasn’t a bad one but you may disagree. I’m sorry for Lupin and what happened to him- but I also am lucid and acknowledge the fact he continuously risked people’s lives and was a danger to society at this point (because said society didn’t help him in any way, don’t get me wrong). But to come back to your main point, Lupin was the only one who caused his loss of job, and he had no legitimacy to call out Snape for revealing his true nature to the public, because clearly only this knowledge would prevent him from doing harm in the future. It’s a complicated situation that goes deeper than Remus and Snape’s relationship.

Lupin could also be deemed as dangerous on another level: he spreads around pro bullying rhetorics and makes it look okay if it was "deserved". He makes bullying less serious if the victim isn't likable. He makes bullying less serious because he is likable. And this is very wrong both in and outside the books.

#Snape meta #Severus snape meta #Marauders meta #Remus Lupin #anti remus lupin #Sirius black #James Potter #anti james potter #Anti Sirius Black #Pro snape #Bullying #Snapedom #Snape community #Severus snape #Harry Potter #Hogwarts #marauders era #Ask #Snape ask

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