#and the show’s about the Evil Horde and how it destroys the lives of the two main characters in different ways | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

spop-romanticizes-abuse · 8 months

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I would like to share my perspective about Horde Prime’s dinner scene and showing colonization via food in SPOP’s final season.

Horde Prime is further seen as evil for serving food from a planet that he colonized and destroyed, and it’s supposed to be a thoughtful and deep but subtle insight into Horde Prime as a villain who should be condemned. Catra has no problem eating this food, and I think the writers meant this to signify that she wouldn’t initially succumb to Horde Prime’s mind games like Glimmer, who starts hyperventilating in horror (You know, before Horde Prime told her that she’s not even a player in his game, but with the writers’ favoritism of character and shipping, as per usual, with Catra clawing the table and that talk about “elevated heart rate” and “dilated pupils” for Adora when she was shown on Horde Prime’s live robot feed).

It really reads to me that, like Horde Prime, Catra feels no weight of guilt from taking lives and what those lives once owned (unlike Glimmer, who actually cares about the colonization of her planet, as well as that planet that was destroyed by Horde Prime), as a fellow colonizer and destroyer. Like, it’s not because she has a better poker face than Glimmer, it’s because she literally does not care, and thus does not react to Horde Prime’s statement.

This “sensitivity” to colonization via food is another double standard. This perspective of colonization and consequence is completely blind to Catra, despite it being highlighted via Horde Prime; I am specifically referring to when Catra joins the others in the spaceship to eat the food that Glimmer said she and Angella used to make together. Catra does not deserve to partake in anything positive pertaining to Angella’s memory: she attempted to destroy the Moonstone, colonize Bright Moon, and killed Angella. She does not deserve to eat the food that Angella used to make with Glimmer, and she does not deserve to live in Bright Moon (a disgusting implication shown in Adora’s supposed dream of the future).

That’s all for now 💞.

i never thought of this but yes, that describes catra's character perfectly. we only see her feeling mildly guilty about the way she treated adora, scorpia and entrapta. we never see her considering the weight of what she did in the horde, the lives she ruined. she never cared about the civilians and she certainly did not care about what horde prime did to them, because at their core, they were the same kind of person. controlling, apathetic and cruel.

again, we can take zuko for comparison here. zuko isn't just guilty about trying to capture aang. he is shown to be very clearly guilty about the way he harmed other innocent civilians and about what the fire nation did as a whole. even though he didn't take part in the war directly, he still takes responsibility for what the fire nation did. his confrontation with ozai says it all. he could have just been like "i'm leaving to join the avatar" but he stayed and pointed out the effects of the war and how the fire nation has brainwashed its citizens into thinking that they were doing something good.

and there's build up to this. throughout the series, zuko meets and interacts with various civilians, all with their own story of how the fire nation ruined their lives. song shows him a scar she got during an attack, jet confides in him about how his family was killed when he was little, lee (the little boy in zuko alone) is almost recruited into the army forcibly, just like his brother was. ATLA does a fantastic job of showing us how war affected everyone, not just the heroes and villains. and through this, zuko's conscience is unraveled more and more until he decides to take a stand.

meanwhile, spop has the theme of war as a pretty backdrop. they give no importance to it whatsoever and catra, who did way more damage than zuko ever did, isn't even shown to be guilty of partaking in the war. she doesn't have to answer to how she conquered salineas or how she invaded a village in s1, nothing. it really makes me wonder what the civilians in spop thought of her. is it just "oh she's she-ra's girlfriend now so i guess we can't say anything"?

#this analysis was really good btw op!#and YES catra did not deserve to partake in anything honoring angella's legacy #what the actual fuck were the writers thinking?#spop critical #spop #spop salt #spop discourse #spop criticism #she ra #anti catra #anticatra

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i-am-made-of-stupid · 4 months

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This post will contain a lot of spoilers for various things, so beware.

So about a week or two ago and while I was in the middle of watching She-ra I saw a post that was about Catra’s redemption arc being rushed in season 5. While I didn’t read it I do want to toss my hat in the ring and give my thoughts.

So for starters, everyone probably already knows what a redemption arc is, but in the most basic terms is when a protagonist goes through character development that involves them starting evil but ending good. For example think Zuko in Avatar or for a real live example Robert Downy Junior.

Ok so we all understand how redemption arcs work, now to go back to Catra. There are examples of characters who can have rushed redemption arcs. One most prominent I would say is Ben Solo in the Rise of Skywalker, who after two movies of showing how bad of a person he was, changed sides after one fight with Rey where she heals him. That feels very rushed to me, especially when we see Kylo have moments where he is given a chance to come back to the light and he always refuses. In comparison.

But I would argue that redemption arcs can be as long or as short as they need to be depending on how evil the character is, and I would argue that Catra, despite not having good intentions throughout the first four seasons, was not in any way evil. So her redemption arc can be shorter because, yeah she did bad things, but wasn’t fully evil.

A lot of what goes on with Catra can be caulked up to the woman who raised her, Shadow weaver. Shadow weaver treated her in a very different manner than Adora, praising Adora for the frequently and claiming she was a perfect child. Catra on the other hand was treated poorly by Shadow weaver, in one example when she and Adora snuck into the Black Garnet chamber, despite Adora trying to take the fall Shadow weaver still blamed Catra for it. All because as Shadow weaver puts it to Catra, she sees a lot of herself in Catra. So I believe Catra is always living with the need to validate herself to Shadow weaver.

I can expand this to a lot of the characters in She-ra who fill an antagonistic role, starting with Shadow weaver. She only became evil after the ritual she wished to perform to protect Atheria from the Horde failed. She had good intentions, but that doesn’t make it right at all, and her heroic sacrifice made her unable to have a redemption arc, but she still was able to do something good for Atheria.

Next, I can talk about Scorpia, she’s a simple case where she only joined the Horde because her family sold the Black Garnet to the Horde, and she went along with it and joined. So she needed less redemption because she wasn’t ever truly an evil character.

Next, I can talk about Entrapta, she didn’t need much redemption because she only worked with the Horde because she was accidentally left behind by the Princess Rebellion. She didn’t do anything wrong to help the Horde, she just felt abandoned by her friends.

Next, I can talk Glimmer, who never became an antagonist, but her becoming Queen of Brightmoon put a lot of stress on her, so she slowly began to have antagonistic tendencies and alienated her friends. Leading her to try and seek out Lighthope for help and getting taken by Horde Prime.

Finally, the antagonist for most of the series up to season 5, Hordak. He’s also one where he’s evil, but his evil comes from a similar place to Catra. He created the Fright Zone in order to attract the attention of Horde Prime, so he can be at his brother’s side again. But when he does, he’s called a failure and a mistake for not only taking his own name, but altering himself to help with him being a clone. Leading to Horde Prime cleansing Hordak and making him like any other Horde Prime clone. I see Hordak as the Darth Vader of the series, manipulated by a much more evil individual and significantly changed as a result. Plus he gets a heroic sacrifice that almost works in destroying Horde Prime. But he gets the added benefit of surviving the sacrifice so he’s able to help fix what he broke. Furthermore, like Vader, Hordak had Entrapta, who helped him to see that his imperfections made him beautiful, and helped him despite him technically being her enemy.

So all the characters I mentioned are not truly evil, they are antagonist, but that doesn’t mean they are evil. Just like how just because you play as the protagonist doesn’t make you a good guy. Think like Paul Atreides from Dune who does horrible things once he becomes Emperor. Or any time you play an evil character in a Bethesda RPG. The only truly evil character in She-ra is Horde Prime, who was perfectly willing to enslave the minds of the people of Atheria in order to harness the power of the planet’s heart to spread his galactic empire.

In conclusion, another long post where I just wanna nerd out about stuff I know and like.

#she ra #redemption arc #horde prime #hordak #catra #entrapta #scorpia #shadow weaver

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invested-in-your-future · 9 months

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One of the ideas and changes I often think about is what can be done to make Kingdoms actually feel like different places. Why are they different places in the first place? Show sort of gives bits and pieces of that to Atlas but beyond that it might as well be Vale1, Vale2, Vale3, etc.

The idea I settled upon is basically building each Kingdom as something very different from the ground up, creating clear reasoning for the divisions and differences as well as establishing each Kingdom's flaws.

For example:

Vale

Vale was an old monarchy ruled by a royal bloodline that started with The First King of Vale who is said to have played a major role at the dawn of Ever After when the Kingdom of Vale was founded from the ashes of previous age. History books day that after an order of scholars, known as The Emerald Circle, devised effective countermeasures, The First King personally led an army pushing back countless hordes of the Grimm that covered the continent, establishing protective lines and Kingdom's defenses. The bloody campaign of war where thousands perished so millions could live is known in the history as The First Crusade. After the situation stabilized he promptly ruled with the advice of his seers.

Now, nobody knows exactly how much truth there is in the written history of that period because rulers, monarchs, leaders, when overcome with pride tend to turn history into tales of their own greatness, going as far as even personally believing in them. The First Crusade could have been a grand campaign against the creatures of Grimm or it could have been just one king's conquest of surrounding lands, nobody would know.

Still, the kingdom persevered for centuries under this rule. The King would lead the armies against the Grimm and make political decisions while the scholars and the seers would pen the governing decisions.

The status quo lasted till the rule of The Third King of Vale, whose short-sighted egotistic decisions led to one of the most heinous events in the history of Remnant known as The Third Crusade. The years leading to the Third Crusade saw the bloody end of the Emerald Circle, deterioration of the living conditions and the patchwork being made for the death and suffering of the campaign itself. The years after saw hunger, illness and even more death. The creatures of Grimm once again wandered closer to the human Kingdom with the first known historical record of the sighting of a lone Goliath. It was the beginning of the period in Vale's history known as the Hundred Year Famine.

By the time Fourth King came into reign, the population was tired and fed up and the slowly brewing revolution came to fruition. The Fourth King, with his execution, being the last monarch of Vale.

The Third King's name was erased from the history books, the only reminder of his rule being the destroyed monuments and the words "The Third Crusade" that became synonymous with the possible evil within human nature and the terrifying irreparable damage humanity can cause.

The consequences of his rule, however, could never be erased. Vale lost much of its territory to the encroaching creatures of Grimm, attracted by the turmoil of both the third Crusade, century of famine that followed and the bloody revolution. Multiple settlements, both within Vale and around, were in ruins. And the lush farmlands in the east of the continent were lost to the Grimm completely.

The ones mapping the Kingdom's future swore that there would never be a repeat as it was a miracle the Kingdom was still standing after everything.

The Kingdom Of Vale from that day forward was ruled by a government body known as The Council of Vale. Anyone could be elected regardless of their background or status. The government structure was intentionally designed in such a way that no single council member could attain power over others and all and any major decisions had to be made in unison. All forms of slavery were abolished and a plan was enacted to provide help and reparations for the still remaining countless people displaced by the Third King's madness.

Still even though officially all are equal under Vale's laws, the kingdom is far from perfect. The history of past tragedies created an environment where people grew obsessed with status quo, even if the situation demands change. And for all the grandstanding, after the Great War, the Kingdom was still willing to turn the blind eye to less than savory elements both within and without, making business with Schnee Dust Company in spite of rumors of them "employing" slaves, as well as trading and engaging in diplomacy with Mistral in spite of the Kingdom only having changed on the surface, the power still being in the hands of pretty much same noble families that started the Great War. Slowly the slogan of never repeating the past got twisted into the very concept of demanding change being demonized.

A kingdom so petrified by fear of things getting worse and so enamored with the illusion of "the now" that it was blinded to what's transpiring behind the curtain till it was too late.

#rwby #rwde #rwby au #rwby stuff mine #rwby rewrite

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anthonybialy · 7 months

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Taking Sides While Bottoming Out

It’s a tough choice between siding with the virtuously innocent and the diabolical horde seeking to destroy for just that reason, apparently. The allegedly progressive express their desire to for peaceful cooperation by either explicitly or tacitly siding with the demons doing their wicked best to crush Israel. As is typical of their lamentable ideology, the debate doesn’t feature anything distracting like pondering if siding with decency is correct.

Admitting a fondness for evil in their perfectly inverted way shows why our allegedly futuristic year features an alarming quantity of raging decapitations. The refusal to express the simplest chance for condemnation makes it seem like they sympathize with destroyers of life itself. There’s an appalling secret that’s not really one.

Your more enlightened betters won’t condemn the contemporary Viet Cong movement they clandestinely admire. Everyone decent sees compensation for personal failings. Those who insist on staying left sound the alarm about using the ends to justify the means because that’s precisely how they approach life. There must be a crisis to exploit so they can control more of our lives. Zealots subscribe to an ideology based on thinking everyone else is one removed regulation from turning into a barbarian because they view government with their own personalities in mind.

Wholesale war is going to hurt more than feelings. Oh, they’re just fighting for their very survival. Necessary tactics might lead to ghastly consequences. The only thing worse than collateral damage is targeted damage. Blame terrorists who ripped out water pipes to make rockets to aim indiscriminately. Using a simple device for progress to destroy sums up what century Hamas resides in mentally.

Foes of Germany at their naughtiest may be surprised what it took to defeat them. The confused typically think they’re the equivalent of Omaha Beach invaders for their heroic service of branding Black Lives Matters foes as racists. As for what actually happened during World War II, the good guys firebombed Dresden, which would have horrified pronoun announcers. Those frothing at the mouth for a chance to punch a Nazi should learn history, and not just so they can see how their economic dreams have become nightmares every time.

National Socialism’s descendants are presently attempting to relocate Israel into the sea. Godwin’s law is suspended while discussing an effort to eradicate Israel and everything in it.

Typical loudmouths are jarringly quiet in their refusal to side against terrorists attacking a religion and civilization. What makes you think they’ll oppose shoplifters? The woke fetish for siding with those with baseless grudges creates actual harm. Spot the difference by how they won’t preen about victims.

Primitive enviers of society are nothing new. Commies and slight variants always seek opportunities to drag others for equality. Great leap forwarders have to remember to not cheer too loudly when they think a massacre will bring glorious progress.

Explaining why terror fans aren’t terror fans is just another bout with reality. The same deluded souls are already exhausted from informing Americans why they should cherish how easy inflation makes carrying groceries. As with everything else leftists try, they don’t get better with practice. George Costanza is unimpressed.

Electing Hamas is maybe not the most effective way to show they don’t represent you. Self-anointed resisters who claim Trump winning brought fascism have ample excuses for the result of choosing rabid murderers as their leaders. One of the globe’s most prolific terror factories churns widespread pollution.

It’s tough to condemn their cause. The left treats the Middle East’s only country where the alphabet soup community can live freely with the same contempt they aim at exchanging currency for goods and services.

Sourcing their contempt for Israel shows who actual bigots are, and you’ll be unsurprised to discover another case of projection. The nation in question just happens to be Jewish, so don’t read anything obvious into that connection. Contempt runs deeper for a country that should take being despised by college professors as a compliment. A functioning republic is the alleged goal of woke activists who sure enjoy fuming at the one place in the neighborhood known for voting in representatives.

Feeling they’re for the oppressed doesn’t require anything complicated like checking facts. Indigent types who seem like refugees must be the good guys. They’ve obviously suffered and could never attack innocents, right? Leftists never think it might be members of a religion that’s been demonized for as long as it’s been around who might be the distressed party.

Pretending that wasteland nobody wanted until the Jews got it officially is the most popular justification for aligning with terrorists. Gaza residents who sure seem to dislike living in proximity to Israel couldn’t have their own chunk of land in, say, Iran. Famously tolerant mullahs would surely welcome the affected. Attackers got sick of coexisting just like the Prius bumper sticker demands.

The left already hates remembering in general, as it always makes them look bad. Believing ghastly notions about coerced cooperation requires a daily fresh start. Fawning over the side that put its hands on a culture without consent is consistent.

Awfulness can best be excused by obliviousness. It doesn’t just mean noticing why their ideology requires forgetfulness to attract new recruits. Adherents would prefer you forgot when they asked why they hate us by the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Sympathizers pretty openly thought terrorists had a point about our greedily oppressive capitalistic hellhole. They’ve always enjoyed looking for nonexistent Islamophobia while disregarding a very existent mass grave. Israel bombed a hospital except for how the precise opposite happened.

Speaking up on behalf of actual good guys would mean violating their ideology, and they’re deeply committed. Self-righteousness about how nobody can afford to be silent to, say, fight repression does not apply to defending those out to eliminate threats to infants and concertgoers. Actively advocating against a cause that would be too cartoonishly stark for a Marvel movie shows they don’t grasp the simplest plots.

#Israel #Hamas #Middle East #war #terrorism

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st-just · 2 years

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Hi I'm here to give you an excuse to write up what WoW should have been

WoW dream build

I’m glad you asked!

So, you know how the whole entire plot of Warcraft 3 was about the various non-Scourge factions finding common ground to live alongside each other and unite to stop demons from destroying the world? How Frozen Throne’s whole pseudo-Wow epilogue was about Jaina’s dad showing up with a fleet and trying to restart the race war, and Jaina sided with the Horde against him?

So, first things first, in the base game, there are no factions. If you’re a tauren or troll or orc you start in Orgrimmar, if you’re human or dwarf you start in Theremore, if you’re a Night Elf you start in whatever the night elf capital was called after Archimonde blew up the old one. Thrall, Jaina and Tyrande are political leaders and there would be some tension,, and quest-lines based around hardliners and agent provocateur from one faction or another, maybe getting to the point of creating battlegrounds in places, but officially speaking everyone is Kumbaya.

Speaking of – as of vanilla, the entire game map is Kalindor. Because one giant continent should really have enough content. The main questlines would be stuff like putting down radicals trying to restart the war, dealing with scourge agents trying to create beacheads, satyr and fel orc dead-enders trying to call the Legion back, Old God cultists corrupting/awakening ancient spirits, centaurs and quillboars, and just general fantasy adventure stuff. You’d need to make a bunch of raid bosses for endgame content, but I assume people who care more about warcraft lore than me have ideas for that.

Then, expansions! Each one would, of course, expand the map.

First, a really big one that opens the Eastern Kingdoms back up. Each sectioin is kiiiind of a complete clusterfuck, because of course it is.

-Londoner is zombie apocalypse 101, with Kelthezad’s generals fighting the Forsaken and scattered remants of living survivors (or escapees, because evil undead mad science needs fresh corpses,and that means people farms), mostly organized by the Scarlet Crusade

-The dwarf mountains in the middle are a second, unrelated clusterfuck where Ragnoros’s whole empire of enslaved dwarves and elementals fight the dwarven holdouts

-Stormwind! Which would feel the sorely missed niche of fantasy-racists with a real power base, and consider all the Kaldindoran humans/elves/dwarves basically race traitors. Just real assholes about it. Even before you add in the disguised dragon playing grand vizer to the king, who absolutely isn’t helping but also isn’t at all solely to blame.

(This is also where you’d add Forsaken as a playable race.)

The second expansion would be Outland. And really I can see two ways of going here.

First is that this is where you add faction conflict – Naga, Blood Elves, and Dreanei are all now playable races. They start in Outland, working for Kael’thas, and oh boy are their a bunch of battlegrounds and conflicting quests. The whole ‘all of us are utterly fucked, and totally reliant on the goodwill of an archdemon to not waste away and die/find a home’ is a pretty good motivation for faction cohesion, really, and who doesn’t like playing the bad guys? (the dreanei you see in WC3 to be clear, not the basically unrelated goat-angels in actual WoW)

Alternatively, they’re the main antaongists of expansion, all sympathetic anti-villain like, Outland falling apart around them. The rest of the zones would be filled up with fel orcs and demons, probably.

Aaaand that’s as much actual thinking about it as I’ve actually done.

#reply #circletofcircles #in this essay i will #warcraft

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villainihavedonethymotheronao3 · 1 year

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Zwiefacher spoilers

jester: okay, we all met ages ago in trostenwald—well, most of us. there was this circus and an evil frog eating a little girl and me, and yasha, and molly, and fjord, and beau ended up defeating the frog just barely. but nobody believed us and we ended up in prison! so we broke out of prison, along with nott who was also in jail there and were on the run, sort of. not sort of, we were definitely on the run. fjord really wanted to go to rexxentrum to learn about his wet dreams so we thought, it’s a big city, they can’t be looking for small town criminals there.

so we headed to rexxentrum and on the way we stopped in alfield and killed some gnolls and molly came up with our name. we skirted around zadash ‘cause beau was worried people there might recognize her from the scene of our last crime. ended up taking a swamp detour and met these two little lost bird girls? kiri and siri they were so! sweet! also fjord wrestled a fish so he could eat a ball and we nearly got killed by a troll. we ended up in druvenlode helping a bunch of miners assassinate their boss—don’t worry, he totally deserved it— when we heard there was a war?! and we were all like ‘we don’t want to die in the war!’ so we skipped town again.

a bunch of dwarves offered us money to escort their family out of nogvurot but when we got to nogvurot it turned out the kids didn’t want to go, they were talking to the kryn soldiers under the city, and it was very sad and we learned a lot about the kryn and how they can only have babies with their special thingy. unfortunately the army did not like them leaving and it got hot the next day. so we had to look for somewhere else to go. the local criminal guy had an odd job carrying a bunch of these cages to a place called shadycreek run but it turned out the cages were going to a group that was selling people! we took a group vote and turned on them and a bunch of us nearly died, and yasha did die, but luckily we took her to caduceus and it turns out she comes back to life really easy. molly lost an arm but decided not to get it back. also beau got to have sex. then caduceus came with us because we were his fate. a bunch of the people in shadycreek were super mad because we killed their guys, and also molly made them super mad before he died, but this lady named ophelia stole us and was all like ‘i’ve wanted them dead for a long time, thank you, you work for me now, do crimes for me,” so we did even more crimes for her. then she said “now come with me to zadash”

so we went with her to zadash even though beau didn’t want to, but it was fine because we met pumat and the gentleman, who turned out to be my dad—we didn’t know that yet though. we helped save the city from this horde of invisible spiders living underneath and destroyed a portal to the abyss! and when Beau went back to the cobalt soul it turned out they cleared our name for the frog stuff ages ago and no one was even looking for us in druvenlode or nogvurot! a really important monk named yudala even offered to be her teacher and was all ‘you’ve learned techniques on your own that most take years to master rawr, you’re undisciplined but strong, what are you doing’ and she got so. much. training. uh, and then we learned that the gentleman was selling people too and because we didn’t know he was my dad we kind of turned him into the cops. yudala liked us a lot more after that. ‘cause we had clear raps, and molly was looking for more info on their past, and caduceus wanted to know about his family, and fjord’s sword swallowing was getting to be, like, an issue, we tagged along to rexxentrum with yudala.

that’s when we met you! you showed us around the academy and the city and helped fjord and nott and were super coo. gave us odd jobs to do to earn money, took us out dancing... you were the best, we would have been so lost without you, we were going through a lot. it turns out yasha did not come back from the dead all the way okay, she kept having these creepy dreams and disappearing—different from normal yasha disappearing—in the night to stand outside this temple. and people were saying the traveller was a cult! And that fjord was also in a cult but for the betrayer gods! nott was crying because they were saying turning her back into a halfling was impossible. plus one of your archmages kept looking at molly funny and calling him lucien. the last one was actually a biggie. it turns out it’s really hard to spy on an archmage but we finally snuck nott into a meeting to eavesdrop and they were talking about her husband? nott’s husband, not vess’s. we didn’t even know nott had a husband back then.

nott was all, ‘let’s go, go go! we gotta save my husband’ and we skipped town again. but before we left we said goodbye to you and we said that we were scared we’d be watched cause vess was so hung up on molly, and you gave us our necklace! it kept is safe as long as we stayed really close together on the road. you’re probably the only reason we made it to felderwin safely. as soon as we got there we had to murder the guard protecting yeza and the beacon. as was all ‘waah?’ and we went ‘the assembly is super evil and also your wife is a goblin now, grab your kid let’s go!’

we ended up having to use the vibrator we got from the kryn in nogvurot. they said it would only help if there was a purple worm nearby—but luckily there was! And the kryn came out all suspicious but beau held up yeza with the beacon and went ‘yo, take us to your leader, we need to get out of this country pronto”

anyways, we’re heroes of the dynasty now? a lot happened since then, we snuck across borders to see my mom and my mom told me i got my dad arrested which sucked. fjord realized he needed help with his snake after he let it go, then we met yussa and realized we stole the other arcana’s name, molly might be haunted and he spent time in the forest hanging out with old people. there were a lot more abyss portals, beau was doing this whole spy vs. spy thing in rosohna with another person from the cobalt soul, and we saved the bright queen from assassination so now we’re, like, double heroes of the dynasty. we went to bazzoxan and there were lots of evil temples, fjord got bitten by spiders, yasha got super-duper possessed and unpossessed again which let us figure out an evil cult is trying to take advantage of the war to let out the hungriest evil shadow ever. but we got back on yudala’s good side and said, ‘we’re totally not traitors, we did all that for the empire!’ and dairon backed us up cause we have been helping them try to minimize the impacts of the war. So we came back and stopped tharizdun—yasha died again by the way—and the bright queen told us specifically that we’re allowed to negotiate terms if they pinky promise to give the beacon back. dairon was with us and we gave the king all sorts of evidence that the assembly is super evil, kill them all and give us the beacon please! and he was still like; hmmmm, idk.

and traveller con is in a month!

bren: kittenwhoonlythinksofmurder.jpg

#zwiefacher fic

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chriswhitelawyer · 5 months

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You Might Go to Prison, Even Though You're Innocent

In his book, Professor Brooks identifies numorous false presumptions most of society has about the Criminal Justice System. If you have been charged with a crime you should call me, I am a Lynchburg Virginia Criminal Defense Attorney.

The United States of America's criminal justice system is an adversarial one. Prosecutors and law enforcement have taken that and made an excuse for themselve to act unethically and with an underhanded nature. The authorites are charged with what is best for the interest of justice. They are not supposed to beget a social media driven hysterical hord agenda propagated by the #mindvirus that has infected most levels of government. One passage from Professor Brooks' book that I think is highly applicable and scary at the same time becuase I have seen this displayed with my own two eyes:

“The Prosecutor did believe what he was saying. He wasn’t putting on an act. And he wasn’t evil. Because [the accused] innocence conflicted with everything he [the prosecutor] had internalized for years about the system to which he had dedicated his life, he was in a form of psychological denial that prevented him from evaluating the evidence objectively. He literally could not mentally or emotionally accept the truth.” Today the Criminal Justice System is rot with “confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, administrative evil, bureaucratic denial, and dehumanization, among other factors combine to cause prosecutors to not see and/or not act on indicators that a person they are prosecuting might be innocent.” Brooks, Justin “You Might Go to Prison Even Though You’re Innocent,” (2023)

When the local government lacks the ability to what Jefferson coined as "think for yourself" then the entire community will suffer, not just the wrongfully accused or convicted. we need total tranparency in government. Currently, that is not the case. The following is what I believe needs to be changed as far as the Commonwealth of Virginia's Criminal Justice system is concerned:

Defendants in a criminal proceeding should have a right to videotape/video record proceedings.

If a person accused of a crime requests that the proceedings be video recorded this should be allowed. At a minimum allowed. Right now a judge can say no to this request. And, Especially if the accused is facing incarceration this should be allowed. This would substantially cut down the absurdity that Lynchburg City Police Department and Lynchburg City Prosecutors office put forth to our good communities courts. They waste courts time, destroy employment prospects of the accused and probably have put innocent people in prison where if it was video recorded injustice would quickly be addressed. And the problematic people that are part of our “system” likely fired.

The expense of this would not be substantial given the fact that every police officer has a camera on them now anyway. And, certainly should be permitted if the accused is willing to pay a licensed Court reporter to do the video recording. We live in a nation where you are constitutionally afforded an open public hearing. Today, that means it needs to be on video for later review. What this would also do is allow the accused to later show other people just how absurd any accusation against them was in its entirety. In this internet age, a false accusation can quickly permanently destroy futures.

Booking Photos/Mugshots should not be released to the public until a conviction, guilty plea, or fugitive from justice (on the run from the police). If a person is not convicted the photos should never be released to the public.

This is already the standard for the federal government, if an accused is arrested by a federal agency their booking photo is taken but it is not released to the local media or the extortionist internet mugshot industry unless an accused is on the run from the cops. The internet mugshot industry is extortion, to see it as anything less is to not understand what they are doing. Also, a false accuser can use the police in this way to hide themselves but harass the accused.

Due process is a foundational U.S. Constitutional right. The Government is supposed to have a hearing before they take from U.S. citizens. In an internet era, the current automatic disclosure law regarding mugshots is a fraud on our nation and communities. It is a practice that takes from citizens accused of crimes that have not been permitted the right to cross-examine the evidence against them. It gives immense power of local police or a single officer acting on their own to permanently defame a citizen without the public ever knowing the truth or weight of any accusation against them.

The Right to a Jury trial should be held by the defendant only.

As it is currently, an accused can assert their right to a jury trial or request a judge trial. The prosecution should not have the right to assert a jury trial. When prosecutors assert a jury trial over the objection of the defense, this is a clear sign the prosecution is attempting to do something fraudulent in the courts. A jury trial takes longer and costs the accused in a criminal proceeding more money. And a jury can be tricked unlike a judge.

When we think about the right to a jury trial, a right to be judged by a panel of your peers or community members, that is a right held by the defendant in a criminal proceeding. Prosecutors today can use their power to assert a jury trial to try and trick lay persons into a conviction based on absolute nonsense and not the law. Prosecutors can force longer procedural times by asserting a jury trial because there is a much longer wait to have a jury trial than a judge(bench) trial. Prosecutors can use unethical, unprofessional and quite frankly fraudulent tactics during a jury trial to “create” scenarios in front of a jury that a judge would just simply ignore or not even utilize in their logical analysis of the facts and the law. If an accused choses to have a learned mind come to a verdict as opposed to the local pot smoking theater kid or social media hysterical activist, the accused should have that right.

Double Jeopardy should attach at the preliminary hearing.

Essentially, how a well trained lawyer would advise a client is what the law is. Today, if an accused is charged with a crime and there is a preliminary hearing, a seasoned defense attorney will advise against putting on a defense because if the case is dismissed by the court a prosecutor can direct indict a defendant anyway. This means that double jeopardy does not attach until after the preliminary hearing.

Double jeopardy should attach at the preliminary hearing. This would save astronomical amounts of money not only for the falsely accused but also for the state because if an accused has solid irrefutable evidence of innocence at the preliminary hearing stage of a criminal prosecution they wouldn’t have to pay for an entire trial. Neither the state nor accused. This would separate the chaff from the wheat, quickly and at great savings to the system.

Judge selection should be double blind random, attorneys or any of the local authorities, should not have input on which judge presides over which cases whatsoever.

This should realistically apply to both Criminal and Civil Proceedings, but certainly Criminal proceedings. In a criminal trial who the judge is going to be, should be unknown to both the Prosecution and in fairness the Defense. It should not be “chosen” by one side or the other.

Because in smaller communities such as Lynchburg Virginia where the interpersonal relationships of professionals in a “profession” interact with each other daily at work and out side of work, who the judge is should not be the choice of either the Judge nor the attorneys. It should be the sole selection of God or random. The only exception should be if the judge officially recuses themselves as per the Bar rules and on the record.

Prosecutorial immunity must not be “absolute.”

Prosecutorial immunity must have limits. They should have more of an inquisitorial role seeking truth than an adversarial role seeking conviction. There is a foundational difference between being soft on crime and seeking the truth. If a prosecutor is not aimed at the truth they should be removed from their position immediately.

As it is today a prosecutor can do nothing short of lie to a judge in open court and get away with it. A prosecutor can seek to have exculpatory evidence of the accused excluded from trial. A prosecutor can play a “gamesmanship” with peoples lives by using “experts” with their scienciey science to trick jurors. Prosecutors can make unfounded claims to jury’s based on no evidentiary indication. Prosecutors can knowingly put on perjured testimony.

All of the forgoing is a crime unto the Citizens of this good commonwealth. And, a prosecutor as it sits, just gets away with it.

There needs to be an exception added to the Rape Sheild Laws.

If a false accuser in a rape case, speaks to an accused about how she masturbated earlier in the day right before consensual sex, that should be admissible. Today a judge can exclude from trial statements that a false accuser made to a criminally accused while she was sitting next to him on the coach talking about her masturbation from earlier in the day and what she likes. The defendant in a criminal proceeding should be allowed to testify to that and any statements made to a defendant by the false accuser. Especially if it’s the same day, proximate time and same sexual subject matter.

We need standard Jury Instructions.

As it sits a judge gets to form how jury instructions are presented to a jury. This needs to be standardized. Standardized so that a jury does not have to sift through a 25 page package to get to the verdict form. With this a judge and prosecutor can make deliberation times substantially longer than they would be. They can attempt to manipulate a future civil litigants decision making based of off that judges own personal bias, prejudice or religious values. That must not be the law, the law is the law not subjective manipulative pretense.

Bail, the evidence against the accused must be considered before an amount of bail is set.

There must be zero bail set for pre-trial release when the evidence against an accused is absurd, makes no plain common sense and a police officer is exercising her own narcissistic incompetence.

Bail should be set at zero, especially if upon becoming aware of the charges the accused immediately presents themselves to face the charges. If an accused presents themselves to the authorities immediately upon becoming aware of the charges against them the only purpose a multi-thousand dollar bail serves is to fill the local bail bondsman’s coffers. Because the purpose of a bail is to ensure appearance in court and not running away, if that concern is eliminated, there is no purpose in setting a bond. And, especially if there is no criminal record of the accused.

Chris White Lawyer, LLC. is a Lynchburg, Virginia Law Firm available for free consultations in person, via Facetime, Skype, Zoom or phone (434) 660-9701. Please also check out my practice areas in Criminal Defense Attorney and Car Accident Lawyer. At my Law Firm we focus on the best result for the client. To stay connected I have a Youtube Channel, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Blogger, Reddit, Yelp, Avvo and Justia. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Chris White lawyer, LLC

Cellphone: (434) 660-9701

Available with appointment (434) 660-9701:

700 12th St, Lynchburg, VA 24504

Available with appointment (434) 660-9701:

100 Tradewynd Dr. Lynchburg, VA 24502

#lawyer #lynchburgva #virginia #caraccidentlawyer #attorney #criminaldefense #duiattorney #reckless driving

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cruelfeline · 4 years

Text

All right. I’ve cried enough about it; now let’s try to do something useful.

I’m going to try to articulate my interpretation of the scene between Hordak and Adora. I’m not certain that I will be able to do so adequately, but I will attempt it.

It’s... it’s everything, this scene. Everything haunting and terrible and tender and wonderful about this story. And I want to express why it affects me so deeply. So. Let’s try.

Upon having Horde Prime’s consciousness purged from his body, Hordak experiences a flashback to the moment he found Adora. The triumphant music that has been playing suddenly stops, and we experience this utterly silent moment between two characters that have, over the course of the show, interacted directly only a handful of times.

Hordak looks so very young, so innocent. He wears an outfit that appears to be a sort of mix of clone attire and his future armor, and it makes him look small, non-combative. He has his dyed hair and black eyeshadow, but none of it is as dramatic as it becomes later on. His face carries none of the stern bitterness and rage that we’re so used to seeing in him.

He’s just... quiet. Contemplative, perhaps. Maybe even a little confused, but entirely devoid of any malice, of any hint of evil that one might anticipate, remembering his demeanor back in the first couple of seasons.

He holds Adora gently, almost tenderly, the way one would expect someone, a regular, non-clone someone, to hold an infant. As he appears to adjust the blanket around her face, her hand rests close enough to his that, if she wanted, she could touch his skin.

This moment... I don’t know if I can properly express the emotions this moment instills in me. A sense of immense importance in a seemingly innocuous act. Something foreboding and melancholy, yet tentatively hopeful.

Here is a Horde clone, a cultist whose sole purpose is the glorification of Horde Prime, and here is a tiny infant girl. They are so very different, so entirely unlike one another, and yet they are the same. Both infinitely far from home. Both lost and alone in this strange place. Both beholden to others’ machinations, whether they recognize it or not. Both fated to suffer so terribly, for reasons entirely outside of their control. And neither knows it: what the future holds for them.

Hordak will suffer through chronic illness, and shame, and loneliness, and the terrifying disgrace of failure. He will visit grievous harm upon Etheria in his desperate bid for validation and acceptance. He will return to his god-Brother full of misguided hope, only to be mentally and emotionally destroyed.

Adora will be given to an abusive woman who will instill in her insecurities and traumas that will affect her for life. She will spend her days driving herself to meet everyone else’s needs while pointedly ignoring her own. She will experience the horror of being groomed to be a weapon.

They will both suffer immeasurably, and yet within that suffering, they will find friendship, and love, and strength, and eventual peace.

And this moment? This moment that Adora is too young to remember, and that Hordak once claimed to forget? This brief moment of a Horde clone’s inexplicable mercy towards an infant girl is what starts a chain of events that ends with the death of a monstrous tyrant and the liberation of an entire universe.

Neither recognizes this moment. Neither knows its significance.

They don’t know that Hordak, by indulging in mercy and saving this child, has likewise saved himself and the rest of the known universe. They don’t know how incredibly important this brief moment is to the both of them, to everyone. They won’t know it until everything is said and done, until the journey is over.

It’s such a poignant, haunting realization: that everything we see happen, everything they all go through, every triumph and frustration, is the result of this single decision Hordak made for reasons he likely doesn’t quite understand. The result of a small connection that neither Hordak nor Adora realized they shared.

But once they do realize it, once She-Ra purges Prime from Hordak’s body and mind and recognizes this connection, we witness a beautiful moment of understanding and forgiveness.

Her hand gently cupping Hordak’s cheek, She-Ra sees that, despite everything, despite all that Hordak has done, there was no malice in him. Not really. Not when all of the anger and frustration and fear are peeled away.

She sees him not as a tyrannical conqueror, but as the wounded, frightened, emotionally sick person he truly is.

She-Ra sees that, in the end, Hordak is a victim of terrible circumstances, of another’s sordid plans, just as she herself was. She understands that what drives him is not the desire to rule, or to destroy, but rather something so much more tragic and painful and desperate. Something that necessitates healing, rather than punishment.

She sees all of this. She understands it. And so she chooses to forgive.

And because She-Ra is Etheria, and Etheria is She-Ra, it is as if the planet, too, recognizes what Hordak is and what he has done. Etheria sees Hordak, Etheria understands Hordak. And Etheria, too, forgives him.

Despite everything that’s happened, despite the war and the destruction and the litany of pain and fear he has wrought, Hordak is forgiven.

And as She-Ra smiles at him, he quietly realizes that the tiny infant he rescued from a silent field all those years ago is the reason all of this has happened. The reason he is free. The reason he is forgiven. He remembers her. Hordak remembers a moment and a connection and a choice he once made, and he recognizes the loving act of kindness that has resulted from them.

It’s so tender, all of it. So kind. So compassionate and gentle, that this man’s wrongs can be seen for the cries of pain that they were, and that he can be helped up off the ground instead of subjected to vengeful justice.

Because that is what this story is about: compassion and forgiveness. People and how their most unassuming connections can radically change their lives. Choices and personal agency rising above destiny. Recognizing the pain and trauma in others’ mistakes and reaching out to them in healing rather than retribution.

And all of it started and ended with two lost individuals who, without knowing, without meaning to, would forge a connection and save one another’s lives.

This brief scene is a loving celebration of everything this show stands for, every compassionate message it has conveyed, and every hopeful lesson it has taught. It makes me weep more than anything else this show has offered, and though I will never be able to truly express my feelings about it as well as I would like, I hope I’ve provided at least some idea of why it is so important to me.

#hordak #adora #she ra

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testudoaubrei-blog · 3 years

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Content note for discussions of eternal damnation, and all sorts of other shit that will trigger a lot of folks with religious trauma.

Before I get started I might as well explain where I’m coming from - unlike a lot of She-Ra fans, and a lot of queer people, I don’t have much religious trauma, or any, maybe (okay there were a number of years I was convinced I was going to hell, but that happens to everyone, right?). I was raised a liberal Christian by liberal Christian parents in the Episcopal Church, where most of my memories are overwhelmingly positive. Fuck, growing up in the 90’s, Chuch was probably the only place outside my home I didn’t have homophobia spewed at me. Because it was the 90’s and it was a fucking hellscape of bigotry where 5 year olds knew enough to taunt each other with homophobic slurs and the adults didn’t know enough to realize how fucked up that was. Anyway. This is my experience, but it is an atypical one, and I know it. Quite frankly I know that my experience of Christianity has very little at all to do with what most people experienced, or what people generally mean when they talk about Christianity as a cultural force in America today. So if you were raised Christian and you don’t recognize your theology here, congrats, neither do I, but these ideas and cultural forces are huge and powerful and dominant. And it’s this dominant Christian narrative that I’m referring to in this post. As well as, you know, a children’s cartoon about lesbian rainbow princesses. So here it goes. This is going to get batshit.

"All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." - John Calvin

“We’re all just a bunch of wooly guys” - Noelle Stevenson

This is a post triggered by a single scene, and a single line. It’s one of the most fucked-up scenes in She-Ra, toward the end of Save the Cat. Catra, turned into a puppet by Prime, struggles with her chip, desperately trying to gain control of herself, so lost and scared and vulnerable that she flings aside her own death wish and her pride and tearfully begs Adora to rescue her. Adora reaches out , about to grab her, and then Prime takes control back, pronounces ‘disappointing’ and activates the kill switch that pitches Catra off the platform and to her death (and seriously, she dies here, guys - also Adora breaks both her legs in the fall). But before he does, he dismisses Catra with one of his most chilling lines. “Some creatures are meant only for destruction.”

And that’s when everyone watching probably had their heart broken a little bit, but some of the viewers raised in or around Christianity watching the same scene probably whispered ‘holy shit’ to themselves. Because Prime’s line - which works as a chilling and callous dismissal of Catra - is also an allusion to a passage from the Bible. In fact, it’s from one of the most fucked up passages in a book with more than its share of fucked up passages. It’s from Romans 9:22, and I’m going to quote several previous verses to give the context of the passage (if not the entire Epistle, which is more about who needs to abide by Jewish dietary restrictions but was used to construct a systematic theology in the centuries afterwards because people decided it was Eternal Truth).

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

The context of the allusion supports the context in the show. Prime is dismissing Catra - serial betrayer, liar, failed conqueror, former bloody-handed warlord - as worthless, as having always been worthless and fit only to be destroyed. He is speaking from a divine and authoritative perspective (because he really does think he’s God, more of this in my TL/DR Horde Prime thing). Prime is echoing not only his own haughty dismissal of Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s view of her, but also perhaps the viewer’s harshest assessment of her, and her own worst fears about herself. Catra was bad from the start, doomed to destroy and to be destroyed. A malformed pot, cracked in firing, destined to be shattered against a wall and have her shards classified by some future archaeologist 2,000 years later. And all that’s bad enough.

But the full historical and theological context of this passage shows the real depth of Noelle Stevenson’s passion and thought and care when writing this show. Noelle was raised in Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity. To my knowledge, he has never specified what sect or denomination, but in interviews and her memoir Noelle has shown a particular concern for questions that this passage raises, and a particular loathing for the strains of Protestant theology that take this passage and run with it - that is to say, Calvinism. So while I’m not sure if Noelle was raised as a conservative, Calvinist Presbyterian, his preoccupation with these questions mean that it’s time to talk about Calvinism.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that Calvinism is a systematic theology built entirely upon the Epistles of Romans and Galatians, but only -just- (and here my Catholic readers in particular will chuckle to themselves and lovingly stroke their favorite passage of the Epistle of James). The core of Calvinist Doctrine is often expressed by the very Dutch acronym TULIP:

Total Depravity - people are wholly evil, and incapable of good action or even willing good thoughts or deeds

Unconditional Election - God chooses some people to save because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not because they did anything to deserve, trigger or accept it

Limited Atonement - Jesus died only to save the people God chose to save, not the rest of us bastards

Irresistible Grace - God chooses some people to be saved - if you didn’t want to be saved, too bad, God said so.

Perseverance of the Saints - People often forget this one and assume it’s ‘predestination’ but it’s actually this - basically, once saved by God, always saved, and if it looks like someone falls out of grace, they were never saved to begin with. Well that’s all sealed up tight I guess.

Reading through these, predestination isn’t a single doctrine in Calvinism but the entire theological underpinnings of it together with humanity’s utter powerlessness before sin. Basically God has all agency, humanity has none. Calvinism (and a lot of early modern Protestantism) is obsessed with questions of how God saves people (grace alone, AKA Sola Fides) and who God saves (the people god elects and only the people God elects, and fuck everyone else).

It’s apparent that Noelle was really taken by these questions, and repelled by the answers he heard. He’s alluded to having a tattoo refuting the Gospel passage about Sheep and Goats being sorted at the end times, affirming instead that ‘we’re all just a bunch of wooly guys’ (you can see this goat tattoo in some of his self-portraits in comics, etc). He’s also mentioned that rejecting and subverting destiny is a huge part of everything he writes as a particular rejection of the idea that some individual people are 'chosen' by God or that God has a plan for any of us. You can see that -so clearly- in Adora’s arc, where Adora embraces and then rejects destiny time and again and finally learns to live life for herself.

But for Catra, we’re much more concerned about the most negative aspect of this - the idea that some people are vessels meant for destruction. And that’s something else that Noelle is preoccupied with. In her memoir in the section about leaving the church and becoming a humanistic atheist, there is a drawing of a pot and the question ‘Am I a vessel prepared for destruction?’ Obviously this was on Noelle’s mind (And this is before he came out to himself as queer!).

To look at how this question plays out in Catra’s entire arc, let’s first talk about how ideas of damnation and salvation actually play out in society. And for that I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, Gin Lun’s Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (if you can tell by now, I am a fucking blast at parties). Lun tells the long and very interesting story about, how ideas of hell and who went there changed during the Early American Republic. One of the interesting developments that she talks about is how while at first people who were repelled by Calvinism started moving toward a doctrine of universal salvation (no on goes to hell, at least not forever*), eventually they decided that hell was fine as long as only the right kind of people went there. Mostly The Other - non-Christian foreigners, Catholics, Atheists, people who were sinners in ways that were not just bad but weird and violated Victorian ideas of respectability. Really, Hell became a way of othering people, and arguably that’s how it survives today, especially as a way to other queer people (but expanding this is slated for my Montero rant). Now while a lot of people were consciously rejecting Calvinist predestination, they were still drawing the distinction between the Elect (good, saved, worthwhile) and the everyone else (bad, damned, worthless). I would argue that secularized ideas of this survive to this day even among non-Christian spaces in our society - we like to draw lines between those who Elect, and those who aren’t.

And that’s what brings us back to Catra. Because Catra’s entire arc is a refutation of the idea that some people are worthless and irredeemable, either by nature, nurture or their own actions. Catra’s actions strain the conventions of who is sympathetic in a Kid’s cartoon - I’ve half joked that she’s Walter White as a cat girl, and it’s only half a joke. She’s cruel, self-deluded, she spends 4 seasons refusing to take responsibility for anything she does and until Season 5 she just about always chooses the thing that does the most damage to herself and others. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that Catra is morally culpable in every step of her descent into evil (except maybe her break with reality just before she pulls the lever). The way that Catra personally betrays everyone around her, the way she strips herself of all of her better qualities and most of what makes her human, hell even her costume changes would signal in any other show that she’s irredeemable.

It’s tempting to see this as Noelle’s version of being edgy - pushing the boundaries of what a sympathetic character is, throwing out antiheroics in favor of just making the villain a protagonist. Noelle isn’t quite Alex ‘I am in the business of traumatizing children’ Hirsch, who seems to have viewed his job as pushing the bounds of what you could show on the Disney Channel (I saw Gravity Falls as an adult and a bunch of that shit lives rent free in my nightmares forever), but Noelle has his own dark side, mostly thematically. The show’s willingness to deal with abuse, and messed up religious themes, and volatile, passionate, not particularly healthy relationships feels pretty daring. I’m not joking when I gleefully recommend this show to friends as ‘a couple from a Mountain Goats Song fights for four seasons in a cartoon intended for 9 year olds’. Noelle is in his own way pushing the boundaries of what a kids show can do. If you read Noelle’s other works like Nimona, you see an argument for Noelle being at least a bit edgy. Nimona is also angry, gleefully destructive, violent and spiteful - not unlike Catra. Given that it was a 2010s webcomic and not a kids show, Nimona is a good deal worse than Catra in some ways - Catra doesn’t kill people on screen, while Nimona laughs about it (that was just like, a webcomic thing - one of the fan favorite characters in my personal favorite, Narbonic, was a fucking sociopath, and the heroes were all amoral mad scientists, except for the superintelligent gerbil**). But unlike Nimona, whose fate is left open ended, Catra is redeemed.

And that is weird. We’ve had redemption arcs, but generally not of characters with -so- much vile stuff in their history. Going back to the comparison between her and Azula, many other shows, like Avatar, would have made Catra a semi-sympathetic villain who has a sob-story in their origin but who is beyond redemption, and in so doing would articulate a kind of psychologized Calvinism where some people are too traumatized to ever be fully and truly human. I’d argue this is the problem with Azula as a character - she’s a fun villain, but she doesn’t have moral agency, and the ultimate message of her arc - that she’s a broken person destined only to hurt people - is actually pretty fucked up. And that’s the origin story of so many serial killers and psycopaths that populate so many TV shows and movies. Beyond ‘hurt people hurt people’ they have nothing to teach us except perhaps that trauma makes you a monster and that the only possible response to people doing bad things is to cut them out of your life and out of our society (and that’s why we have prisons, right?)

And so Catra’s redemption and the depths from which she claws herself back goes back to Noelle’s desire to prove that no person is a vessel ‘fitted for destruction.’ Catra goes about as far down the path of evil as we’ve ever seen a protagonist in a kids show go, and she still has the capacity for good. Importantly, she is not subject to total depravity - she is capable of a good act, if only one at first. Catra is the one who begins her own redemption (unlike in Calvinism, where grace is unearned and even unwelcomed) - because she wants something better than what she has, even if its too late, because she realizes that she never wanted any of this anyway, because she wants to do one good thing once in her life even if it kills her.

The very extremity of Catra’s descent into villainy serves to underline the point that Noelle is trying to make - that no one can be written off completely, that everyone is capable of change, and that no human being is garbage, no matter how twisted they’ve become. Meanwhile her ability to set her own redemption in motion is a powerful statement of human agency, and healing, and a refutation of Calvinism’s idea that we are powerless before sin or pop cultural tropes about us being powerful before the traumas of our upbringing. Catra’s arc, then, is a kind of anti-Calvinist theological statement - about the nature of people and the nature of goodness.

Now, there is a darker side to this that Noelle has only hinted at, but which is suggested by other characters on the show. Because while Catra’s redemption shows that people are capable of change, even when they’ve done horrible things, been fucked up and fucked themselves up, it also illustrates the things people do to themselves that make change hard. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, two of the most sinister parts of her descent into villainy are her self-dehumanization (crushing her own compassion and desire to do good) and her rewriting of her own history in her speech and memory to make her own actions seem justified (which we see with her insistence that Adora left her, eliding Adora’s offers to have Catra join her, or her even more clearly false insistence that Entrapta had betrayed them). In Catra, these processes keep her going down the path of evil, and allow her to nearly destroy herself and everyone else. But we can see the same processes at work in two much darker figures - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime. These are both rants for another day, but the completeness of Shadow Weaver’s narcissistic self-justification and cultivated callousness and the even more complete narcissism of Prime’s god complex cut both characters off from everyone around them. Perhaps, in a theoretical sense, they are still redeemable, but for narrative purposes they might as well be damned.

This willingness to show a case where someone -isn’t- redeemed actually serves to make Catra’s redemption more believable, especially since Noelle and the writers draw the distinction between how Catra and SW/Prime can relate to reality and other people, not how broken they are by their trauma (unlike Zuko and Azula, who are differentiated by How Fucked Uolp They Are). Redemption is there, it’s an option, we can always do what is right, but someone people will choose not to, in part because doing the right thing involves opening ourselves to the world and others, and thus being vulnerable. Noelle mentions this offhandedly in an interview after Season 1 with the She-Ra Progressive of Power podcast - “I sometimes think that shades of grey, sympathetic villains are part of the escapist fantasy of shows like this.” Because in the real world, some people are just bastards, a point that was particularly clear in 2017. Prime and Shadow Weaver admit this reality, while Catra makes a philosophical point that even the bastards can change their ways (at least in theory).

*An idea first proposed in the second century by Origen, who’s a trip and a fucking half by himself, and an idea that becomes the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which protestants vehemently denied!

**Speaking of favorite Noelle tropes

#she ra horde prime #she ra #she ra catra #she ra spoilers #redemption arcs #toxic religion

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balillee · 3 years

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my unpopular dsmp opinions, some of which genuinely should be popular

c!dream has crossed the moral event horizon and is irredeemable. once you cross that threshold, you're no longer a 'morally grey' character.

pre-recorded, heavily produced lore killed the lore. it was cool, sure, but you completely misunderstand the magic that the smp had when people watched it initially. the story is improv and that's how we like it. we can tell the cc's have lost interest in it, you can admit that to us, we'll understand, just stop lying to me.

c!dream's pov isn't necessary to understand his character or his motivations. if you've watched literally any c!primeboys stream he's basically spelled it out for you.

i don't understand how fans can dislike l'manberg or have claimed to be against it since the beginning. i honestly don't get it. what's so bad about wanting your own spot where you make your own rules and skirt accountability that has been used to technically oppress you before - and, before someone who never saw the earlier streams tries to disagree with this, the og l'manberg crew were imprisoned for shit that everyone else on the server was practically encouraged to do. also, what do you have against fun and happiness?

i think some of you forget that 'hybrids' aren't a thing, discounting c!ranboo. there's no piglin hybrids, c!techno is just a pig. there's no avian hybrids, c!phil is just a man with wings. there's no creeper hybrids, c!sam is just a creeper who's indecently exposed from the hips down. canonically there's no hybrids, and therefore no hybrid discrimination. people ran with that concept too much.

the loss and the fanon rewriting of the early lore up until pogtopia has ruined fandom perception of c!dream and the og l'manberg boys. c!tommy is more morally white than you think he is, and c!dream has always been a villain - he massacres and he kills and he destroys and he schemes and he always has broken his own rules. no wonder the boys wanted their own space after how they were treated.

i think ranboo oftentimes forgets his own lore. he brings stuff up that c!ranboo may have done, such as exploding the community house to frame c!tommy, holding onto Cat, and it goes absolutely nowhere. we've gotten all of these developments in his story but they have never been expanded on, and we're nowhere closer to figuring out his relationship to c!dream and what his other side is and honestly i see no hope that we'll be any closer to knowing even by the end of the year.

your characters don't all have to be morally grey for the story itself to be morally grey. this is fiction - some people can be nothing but evil and others can be nothing but good. being purely good or evil doesn't mean that you're one dimensional, either.

c!dream apologists have ruined c!dream for me. he's not a good person. how about you let me enjoy a villain for who he actually is, rather for than your percieved woobified ragdoll you pass off as c!dream.

the story was better when there was a central writer. it was brilliant back when wilbur wrote it to be that the environment drives the characters and the story, and it was really good in early s2 up until techno's execution day when it was more character driven. since then, the amount of autonomy people have over their characters without any central 'director', as it were, has been a detriment to the story overall. there needs to still be one overarching figure or director or writer.

not everyone is a main character. just because they have a pov, doesn't mean they're a main character. some characters have such little impact on the overall plot and describing everyone as a main character oversaturates the story and makes some characters seem more important than they are.

the egg lore had so much potential up until it didn't. all that built up threat that we were expecting and we still don't even know what the egg wants really other than just controlling people. does it hatch?

genuinely, if there's no major plot developments by the end of the year (and let's be honest, it's a very big possibility at this point), a few of the more prominent members of the server should do a podcast style stream talking about where the story would have gone, because at least then we would have gotten somewhat closer to a conclusion.

c!techno is a villain and an asshole and a bad person. he stops caring for people once their interests don't align with his or if they look at him funny. he makes meta-jokes about his own tyrannical and oppressive nature. stop taking that away from him. he's a bad person. cc!techno does a fabulous job portraying that in a comedic manner and the balancing of him being a deeply flawed person with deeply flawed morals and ideas with his comedically-portrayed stubbornness and lack of willingness to hear out opposing viewpoints is incredible. i want to like characters who are arseholes for the sake of being arseholes, and who refuse to take into account the hurt they've caused either out of self-righteousness or because they don't care, so let me. he's the anti-peacemaker, LET ME HIM ENJOY HIM FOR THAT!!!!

i think tommy and wilbur's way of doing lore is my favourite. relies heavily on improv, voice acting, sprite acting and facial expressions. really shows off the acting props and they pull off the emotional moments well for the insanity of the creative medium.

i'm not a fan of fan-music. i find songs about media i'm into difficult to listen to. coincidentally i'm also not a fan of shit like slam poetry or live music/musicals/pantomimes.

the death of l'manberg killed people's motivation to go on the server casually. i've talked about it more in depth before, but destroying what was a central, driving environment for the story killed momentum and motivation. imagine in an episode of she-ra, the princess alliance just nuke the freight zone and all of the members of the horde just have to deal with it. that would be shit.

until season 3 has some momentum, i'm counting the end of the smp as january 20th. that had a conclusion. season 3 has... whores, technoblade and tommyinnit. that's about it.

i wasn't a fan of the development of c!tubbo joining las nevadas. i preferred snowchester and the walled city conflict. give c!tubbo some backbone and some badassery. also tubbo where's the fucking nuke bro if you're shelving that plotline just tell us on like an alt stream what the plan was i beg

add like 2 or 3 new people to the server so that michael mcchill has someone to talk to and so that there's something always happening on the server. it gives the og's more motivation to return if things are happening in and out of canon and it'll help with momentum, and who knows? maybe they can write their own story/stories.

i really think that c!sam is an underrated character. he's multilayered, extremely interesting, and the dichotomy of his loyalty to his job and how far down the rabbithole that's taken him versus the genuine love he has for his friends that drives him to do what he does out of wanting to do right by them is brilliant. i don't talk about c!sam enough.

STOP HAVING FUCKING VILLAIN ARCS!!! I'M FUCKIN SICK OF IT!!!! i want to see more characters who see everyone else being absolute selfish, abhorrent cunts and go 'if nobody else is going to be a good person, i fucking will'. GIVE ME SOME MORAL WHITENESS!!! IT'S INTERESTING AND MORALLY GOOD CHARACTERS ARE FUN!!!

let tommyinnit build cobblestone towers. everyone bullied him too much for how ugly they were and the one he built outside of the prison looked genuinely really nice. it gives the boy something to do.

i'm a fan of the revive book and the canon lives system. don't ask me why, but i think it might just be the morbidity of it. it adds to c!dream's god complex persona, and i think the fragility of death itself is a really fun concept. not enough fan cc's have made connections with that and c!mumza, and it could make for cool fanfic.

ranboo your house is fucking ugly. it's an eyesore

c!niki, and to some extent now c!jack and c!fundy, are boring me and ruining my mood. i think c!jack is the closest to being an actually interesting sympathetic villain, mainly because nobody else seems to realise that c!niki is a villain. not a good one imo, but she's a villain. c!jack just has the problem of starting a new project over and over and over and over again and because of the slow in momentum for the primary cast, there hasn't been a lot of recent development for him.

not really a dream smp opinion, but if philza went full geordie accent, i would love it. i want him to, in canon, say shit like 'me n ye' instead of 'me and you' and use geordie dialect. i want him to be physically unintelligible because it's funny.

i don't really know what's up with c!foolish but i think he's a dumbass. he had a while to think about c!q's proposal and then changed his mind about joining the guy to admitted to letting him die just because. moron

i wish there was more c!eret lore. i wish he was an actual king with an actual kingdom and actual subjects and royal advisors. c!eret is far too fucking cool to be the king of nothing and nobody. fatten up the kingdom and the castle with people who work with c!eret, and don't just make it tyrannical and dictator-y to prove the point of the server's 'anarchists'. make it a healthy working environment, please - if you want moral greyness, have 'anarchists' who claim to care about the welfare of the server oppose a kingdom of happy people under a fair and just ruler because their ideologies clash.

the server needs more characters who oppose anarchy in more peaceful ways, or passively wish for systems to be a part of. i think a chaos vs order conflict ending only in mutual understanding where everyone understands that they should just leave each other alone would slot nicely into the story that's been created so far.

you need to have watched all of the previous arcs to understand the story. i've seen people argue that they don't need to know about earlier lore to understand the prison, but that's the equivalent of only watching the final season of pretty little liars and expecting to understand the context of what's going on.

some characters aren't that morally grey. some characters, take c!tommy for example, are definitely on the whiter side for the morality scale, he's just an asshole. he's abrasive and rude and a dickhead but he also doesn't agree with terrorism, he's patriotic, he strives for a better world, he's apologetic, but he's also a fucking BITCH.

you can add onto this if you want, but not if you're a c!dream apologist. nobody likes your opinions

#dream smp #dsmp #esclaposhitpost

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sometipsygnostalgic · 2 years

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Wait I had a thought. Horde Prime was alone and built his own family, by making them all pristine white, identical to him, to use and abuse to his liking. He is obsessed with perfection. Entrapta was alone and built her own family, but instead of cloning she gave each robot in Dryl its own looks, each one has its own personality, they are grimy and gray, and she takes care of them when they break instead of disposing of them. She loves imperfection. Idk what it means but, creation contrast.

OH, I just noticed you were talking about Prime, NOT Hordak!!!!! This is in reference to my colour inversion post, eh? ;)

The question is: Did Prime START OFF alone, like Entrapta (implied) and Hordak, or did he end up that way, like Catra?

Personally, I have the headcanon that, like Catra, Prime was the master of his own isolation - he drove away everyone that would have cared about him. But unlike Catra, Prime had no remorse and no regrets. He was a true monster. I've seen quite a few stories where Prime's homeworld was eradicated, thus, perhaps giving an interesting backstory - having seen disorder shatter his own world, he sought merciless control.

ANYWAY, Entrapta!

What I noticed upon rewatch is: There are a couple of times in the show where Entrapta shows darker shades, with her treatment of her own robots.

I wonder if this was back when they were 50/50 on what direction to go with her character? Or, at least, part of the great evil mad scientist ruse. Like, she is unstable in her approach to her own creations.

Anyway here are some caps.

The ones in the FIRST Dryl episode are kinda slavebots. Like she has one for baths. Don't ask me how that works. And they power down when not in use.

She isn't sorry for getting them destroyed, but fully intends to repair them, carressing the top robot mask.

(also fyi she gave her city to the horde while there were people living in there??? oh dear, it seems dryl wasnt completely empty)

Petting this robot, and then lasering it, as a demonstration. Love the juxtaposition here.

Blowing up a failed experiment in the next ep. Also she watched a lot of them get blown up and reacted with curiosity more than anything else.

Though props to this one for having a cute bow tie!

Then it's a bit different by "The Portal".

THIS is the scene I'm most interested in.

The robots are now "my friends", with the Best Friend Gang being a bit taken aback. And this time, they don't power down when not in use - they're all active in her lab, and one of them even starts to flirt with Bow!

But then she says this!!!

I don't know, there is something a bit fucked up about this line. It is her bitterness about repeatedly getting let down by human friends leaking into her version of the portal world. A couple even speculated that this could relate to her family instead/as well. Which is a tragic thought, and I dig it, though I think face value it's the friendship.

But my point is Entrapta doesn't always value her robots the same way as people. It depends on the robot, mostly. But I think it makes her more interesting if this bitterness/dehumanisation of her machines comes and goes with her mood. It's a flaw and part of her darker side.

Anyway I think there's a difference between these robots and the more advanced AI from later on. For example - Entrapta would immediately protect Emily. She calls her "my most advanced robot yet" and jumps into harms way to protect her.

Though, she does admit to having accidentally blown up Emily more than once in some experiments and maintenance xD but she put her back together.

Of course, back to the original ask, yeah. Prime's robots have absolutely no originality, no quirks, and no elements of humanity to them, as much as Entrapta tries to flirt with them.

#she ra #spop #entrapta #long post

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masterweaverx · 3 years

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RWBY Parents from Best to Worst

That’s right, everybody, I’m a-going to rank how terrible these people are to and for their kids! For the sake of covering as many parents as I can, I am defining ‘parent’ as either ‘legal guardian’ or ‘the one that gave birth to you’, and excluding relationships that are explicitly something else. That does mean that we’re going to miss out on some very important people, though, so before we begin, let’s have some Honorable Mentions!

Yang Xiao Long and Winter Schnee: Professional Momsisters

“That’s why big sisters come first, to protect the ones that come after.” I don’t know who said that to these two, if anybody actually did, but it’s a quote that most definitely applies to them. Not only would they take a bullet (or a sword, or a fireball) for their younger siblings, they took the time out to give them affection and training that they needed when their own parents weren’t quite doing the job. If I absolutely had to rank one of them as the better momsister, I’d say Yang, but that’s really only because Yang had less to deal with overall; a depressed single dad not being able to pull himself together just doesn’t stack up with an abusive powermonger, a self-loathing drunkard, and all the institutional bigotry and pressure of Atlas. Plus, you know, Winter went into the military for a bit. Still, pretty good track record considering!

Klein Sieben: Doing the work of seven good dads

Look, there is only one reason Klein wasn’t listed before the momsisters, and that reason is that he is technically the hired help (and could therefore become the fired help). He is, hands down, a better surrogate parent than Yang and Winter, providing guidance and care to all the Schneeblings and very effectively undoing the damage Jacques Gele (HE DOES NOT GET TO BE CALLED SCHNEE!) did to them. And he even helped out Willow! If he was allowed to do more, he would absolutely be My Real Dad of the year.

Qrow Branwen: “The only one that gets to be sad in this house is me!”

Qrow has a lot of flaws. Like, so so many flaws. As Yang said in a noncanon spinoff, he’s cool but not exactly a role model. Thing is, you don’t have to be a role model to be a good parent--you just have to make sure your kids (or nieces in this case) get good advice and the opportunity to grow into the best versions of themselves they can be. And when Qrow’s not beating himself up or drowning his sorrows, he’s actually very good at helping Yang and Ruby. Honestly the only reason he’s not on the actual list is because he’s technically not a parent.

Uncle Copper: Adopting a blind kid automatically makes you cool

So here we have a character that appeared in a single flashback in the novels, but from what we do know he was pretty likely to be a good guy. Like, raising a blind kid is hard enough; raising a blind kid in a desert after their actual parents got nommed by sand is so, so much more difficult. And yet, this guy said ‘If nobody else is going to adopt this kid I will!’ and by all measures he was a very caring and loving guy. Also, shout-out to the tribe, who took Fox in after Copper got killed by some maniac (and also killed said maniac). Fox has had a rough life, but it’s been filled with supportive people. Not everyone can say that.

Starr Sanzang: She put up with Sun

Sure, she’s only had one scene in one novel, but Starr showed patience and caring and... probably did a lot to make sure Sun stays as aggressively cheery and patient as he is. Plus she’s got a dojo in Vacuo now... okay, I’ll be honest, I don’t know nearly enough about her to really assess her. Still, as far as cousins go, Sun Wukong could do a lot worse. And there are the implications of their motifs to factor in...

Rhodes: If you’d done even just a little bit more--!

So, reasonably, what would you do when you see a little girl enslaved with a shock collar? Would you (A) get the girl out of there, (B) arrest the woman doing it, (C) try to get the girl therapy, or (D) all of the above? If you picked (E) secretly train the girl in swordplay so she can join a huntsman academy when she comes of age, then congratulations! You’ve given her hope! Good for you! And what if she snaps after five years of literal torture, kills her abuser, and then turns to you for comfort and/or approval? Welp, obviously she’s an irredeemable criminal and you have to bring her in, crushing all the faith she had in you and herself.

Seriously Rhodes, dropped the ball hard on that one. I’m only mentioning you because you had such a serious impact on Cinder’s development.

Brother Gods: Creating and destroying entire species

Like, okay. Look. These are the two that made humanity, so an argument could be made that they’re humanity’s parents. But, by the strict and arbitrary rules I have selected, they aren’t parents. And even if they were, they would be just the worst sort of parents possible. Darkbro is bad enough, what with viewing only strength as valuable and creating the Grimm and, you know, annihilating humanity that one time, but he’s at least honest and honorable. Not like the cryptic Lightbro, who doesn’t bother making sure people understand him, who doesn’t even keep his own promises to his brother... I get that they’re basically overpowered children. Yeah, they are. Still... kinda terrible.

So, now that that’s all done, let’s get to the actual list! After the break, so you don’t get stuck scrolling a lot. RWBY parents, from best to worst, are as follows:

23. Saphron and Terra Cotta-Arc: Two moms are better than none!

If I’m rating all the parents, and I am, then I have to acknowledge their flaws. And... these two don’t have any! Okay, fine, they used Adrian in a criminal scheme that one time (and that was literally just asking him to cry on command) and maybe Terra’s overworked and, to be fair, parenting a young kid is a lot different than parenting a teenager. But not only did they support their kid, they helped out all the kids that needed to room with them for a while! Saphron may also qualify as a momsister, depending on how well the Arcs managed their massive-numbered horde of kids. Look, the point is: Excellent parents. Bam.

22. Yatsuhashi's Parents: Their slipups weren’t their fault

When your kid can wipe your memories and you don’t know about it, you’re bound to get a few mistakes down the line. Luckily for everyone, after the whole incident with Hiyoko Yatsu came clean, and his parents made absolutely sure that he understood (A) that having such an ability was a big responsibility and (B) that even though he really screwed up he was NOT evil. Given the man that Yatsuhashi is now, I’m pretty confident in calling them great parents--even if they only appeared in a book flashback.

21. Coco's Dad: He exists!

That’s... honestly all I really know about him. He’s mentioned once in the books, and Coco has a few brothers. I’m kind of just assuming he’s a good parent from that, even if he didn’t figure out how to help Coco with her claustrophobia. So... yeah, shrug, Coco’s got a dad.

20: Ghira and Kali Belladonna: Actually marvelous people

Loving. Caring. Mentoring, protective. You may be asking why these two aren’t lower on the list, given that they are absolutely great for Blake, and I’ll have to admit that they only really made one slipup--letting Adam talk with Blake.

And okay, look. The thing about people like Adam is that they don’t start out showing their true colors. It’s always a slow, gentle broil. Blake was young and stupid, Adam was cute and edgy, and these parents want their daughter to be happy. So not twigging on what Adam really was--or at least not being able to properly convince Blake--that’s entirely understandable. And they did instill her with a strong enough moral code to leave when enough was enough, and they absolutely welcomed her back with open arms. Frankly, if the lower-listing parents didn’t exist, I would happily say they are the best parents in the show.

19. Pietro Polendina: He took Penny’s death flags

When you carve out part of your literal soul to bring your girl back from the dead, you get MAJOR parenting props. And even beyond that, Pietro is an absolutely caring and supportive father to everyone’s favorite bundle of sunshine. Even when she’s put in the rough position she was in, Pietro did his best to help her out. His one big flaw, though, is being overprotective and a bit presumptive. He does want Penny to live her best life, but he also can be just a touch too quick to say he knows what’s best for her. To his credit, when he’s called out on it, he does mend his ways. And he’s at least better then the GENERAL...

18. Salem and Ozma: Good parents, surprisingly!

Sure, Salem decided that world conquest was a good idea and wanted to put down anybody that wasn’t directly from her bloodline. Sure, she psychologically manipulated her husband when he had doubts. And, being fair, it’s highly likely that her four daughters were killed in the crossfire of her and Ozma’s little tuff. But! That was likely an accident, she’s been shown to still clearly mourn their passing, and before that point she absolutely loved and adored the girls. Ozma gets points for being a generally good person who fell in love with her before she became unstable and, honestly, was just trying to help his girls escape... and hey, he blames himself for their deaths. As does Salem.

Just because they’re kind of directly responsible for a LOT of Remnant’s woes doesn’t mean they aren’t good parents!

17. Will and Meg Scarlatina: Estranged but loving...

Yes, I know Rooster Teeth hasn’t officially confirmed that Bill is Will. I still believe though! Also it makes for a great picture, in any case.

Look, you can be the best and most loving parents ever--and from what we saw in the novels Will was definitely loving--but if you split up, your kid is going to get a little stressed. And hey, it’s not like these two were terrible people! Velvet’s just got a lot going on because of things entirely out of her control. Parents are people too, but sometimes the stress of one situation will leak out into another. Just... give people time to adapt.

16. Nicholas Schnee: The man, the legend, the titan!

Nicholas Schnee is the rockstar success story of Remnant. Some guy from Mantle put in all the work to make the SDC, and honestly from what little we know about him he was probably a great guy! But if we’re registering parental goodness, well... he wasn’t quite smart enough to warn Willow away from abusive gold diggers, and he’s not present when the story starts. So, yeah, even if he was a good parent otherwise--and I think he would be--he kinda... didn’t put in the work to prevent Willow breaking later. Still. Not deliberately terrible!

15. Li and An Ren: Don’t die in front of your kids, folks!

Seriously, it traumatizes them, especially if there’s a Grimm assault going on at the same time. Oh, double-especially if you reassure them that everything will be fine literally the second before the roof collapses on your head. And... well, okay, you couldn’t help your son and some random girl being the only survivors...

In all seriousness, that whole situation was absolutely out of their control. And before their deaths they were shown to be loving, wise, giving good advice to Lie Ren and helping him understand what the right thing to do was. Honestly, if they hadn’t died in front of him he’d be a lot better, mentally speaking. His trauma is not their fault. Plus Li went out distracting the big Grimm so Lie could run. No greater love hath man, indeed.

14. Summer Rose: Loving mother, ticking trauma bomb

When she was around, Summer Rose was probably the best mom Yang and Ruby could ask for. Sure, everyone could be exaggerating a little on how great a person she was--fond memories and grief can do that--but even taking that into account, she was probably a great and wonderful woman to be raised by. And hey, it turns out the reason she vanished was to go confront basically the Devil Herself so her kids wouldn’t have to live in a world where she existed! I can totally get the logic behind that.

And to be fair, “I’m going to do this on my own so nobody else suffers” is a pretty common character flaw among the RWBY cast. There are entire arcs where each character learns to overcome it. Still, wandering off on your lonesome without telling anyone was not the smartest move, Summer. Especially if you expected to die--which, you know, Devil Herself, high probability. And you know, if you had died, that would be bad enough, but now Ruby’s practically certain to have to fight your grimmified self. At least she figured out what happened to you before Salem decided to hammer in the trauma button, so she’ll be a little more ready, but... seriously.

13. The Arc Parents: Look, you try juggling eight kids!

To be fair, neither Arc parent has appeared on screen, but we can derive some of their traits from their kids. Jaune’s father said women like confident men. Jaune’s mother said strangers are friends you haven’t met yet. Jaune’s sister moved out of the house and (it’s implied) was happier for it. Jaune himself took his family’s ancestral weapon and ran off to Beacon to become a hero without any training whatsoever....

I get the impression that these two are not horrible parents, but they aren’t really stellar ones either. They slip up, don’t understand their children, give some really bad advice (as well as really good advice), and... look, it’s kind of middle of the road here. The Arcs could be wonderful people that just weren’t ready for the complexities of raising eight kids. I come from a big family myself, I know it can be stressful. And their kids turned out well anyway, so...

12. The Mother of Pyrrha Nikos: You taught your girl too well

Hero complexes are funny things. And Pyrrha Nikos... in retrospect, she was really hiding a lot of insecurities under that facade. Laying it all at this woman’s feet is unfair, I’ll admit, a lot of that came from being The Mistral Champion. But... with stories and fairy tales of heroes, it’s not hard to imagine a genuinely loving mother making sure her daughter knew right from wrong, always knew to act with mercy and protect the weak, and made her hardline into being a hero at the cost of her own... sense of self. It wouldn’t even be something either of them noticed, really. Good people can make bad choices sometimes.

11: Ilia's Parents: Oh god, can good people make bad choices...

So the idea of getting Ilia up to Atlas for a better life, that rocks (if you assume the propaganda to be true). And I’m certain her parents absolutely did what they did out of love. But what they did, you see, was tell Ilia to hide a very important part of herself from anybody who could find out, since it was likely she would be kicked out of the school she was in if people found out she was a faunus.

Which actually, did a lot of damage.

I mean look at Ilia now! She has trouble expressing herself until she explodes, she follows a crowd instead of her own morals, she broke down in tears when she finally did the right thing... Conceal Don’t Feel is never good advice, and these two went on and said ‘Honey, because of racism, you have to hide the fact you literally change color when you have emotions.’ Oh, and then they died offscreen--again, not their fault, but boy howdy did it give Ilia a complex.

10. Taiyang Xiao Long: Slumped at just the wrong time

Honestly, Tai as he is now is a wonderful dad. Supportive of his daughters in their time of need, able to lift their mood with a tasteless joke or two, frankly if we were assessing just how they were in the moment... I’d still be a little critical of his refusal to talk about the girls’ mothers, but hey, that’s minor. Compared to, you know...

Okay, so this needs serious addressing. Taiyang cannot be blamed for falling into a depressive slump. People can hurt, and need time to heal. That said, his depressive slump is at the root of Yang’s many issues, and frankly if she hadn’t had to pull herself together for Ruby she would be a major mess. It’s a bad situation all round, even if it’s not his fault.

9. Willow Schnee: “Kids, don’t wind up like me.”

Drowning her sorrows isn’t the best way to handle being stuck in an abusive marriage, but it was the best way Willow could think of. And, yeah, that really cut into her skills as a mom... but despite that, she did her darnedest to make sure her kids had what they needed to free themselves. Heck, once Jacques was out of the picture, she even pulled herself together and risked her life to save them! A broken women, to be sure, but not a shattered one.

8. Neptune's Mother: She exists!

Being fair, there’s not a lot to go on here. We know Neptune’s mother is a lawyer (insert evil lawyer joke), that their family are famous swimmers, and that his brother caused his hydrophobia by tossing him into the water. It does paint a bit of a picture, though, of everyone having expectations for Neptune that he was not able to live up to. Pretty poor parenting, if it’s true.

7. Nora Valkyrie's Mom: Come get your girl!

Literally the only factoid we have about Mama Valkyrie is that she abandoned her to the Grimm. We don’t know when this was, and it’s feasible it’s a case of ‘Oh No I Lost Track Of My Daughter In The Panic!’ But given we see young Nora scavenging for scraps of food... I’m not optimistic on her parenting skills.

6. Raven Branwen: "I wasn’t part of your life, how could I ruin it?”

Raven is just not a good mom at all. And, surprisingly, she seems to know it. Or that’s one interpretation of her character. The thing about Raven is that she plays her cards close to chest. We still don’t know why she left her daughter, and we only have inklings about the reasoning behind her behavior once they reunited. In the end, though... she did concede to Yang, she did apologize for something, and there’s a very deliberate indication that a lot of her behavior is a mask to both others and herself. So, terrible mother, for the moment, but self-aware.

5. Salem's Father: Explicitly noted as cruel

We get a bit more about Salem’s father from ‘Fairy Tales Of Remnant’, how he became possessive of the last remnant of his wife and locked her away in a tower. From what we know of him, that’s all he did--lock her away and not let her go. Still makes him a terrible dad. And with this, we transition firmly into the most definitively abusive parent figures. Everyone before this might have the excuse of not realizing what was going on or having their own damage, but now we’ve got parents actively deciding to make their kids’ lives worse.

4. Jacques Gelé: HE DOES NOT GET TO BE CALLED SCHNEE!

His children are property, to be manipulated and traded for the benefit of the company he married into, and any defiance is to be quelled instantly. He is manipulative, scheming, abusive, and frankly the worst sort of scumbag to ever wear a white suit. He does have the single redeeming quality of only leaning into the punishment if it benefits him; nobody would ever accuse the man of being needlessly cruel. His name is Jacques, and you will hate him... especially on the rare occasions he actually has a point.

3. The Marigolds: There’s no peppy tagline, they’re just mean

There’s not a picture of these jerks on the wiki, so you’ll have to make do with the woman that is no longer their daughter. See all that empty space around her? That’s about as close as they ever got. May spells out how much they hated her for having a heart, and how little they cared about her as a person, in one epic line. And even if they have other redeeming qualities (unlikely) we can tell they’d probably still be terrible parents because of how sleazy May’s cousin is. Honestly, for once I’m glad some characters don’t get pictures. They don’t deserve to be remembered. They aren’t even the cool kind of evil, they’re just... gross.

2. Marcus Black: Look if you train your kid to be a killer...

...you’re going to have to expect them to kill you. I mean, you basically ripped apart Mercury’s legs, man. He had to get cyberlegs. Also, you used your semblance to steal his. Which, given that semblances come from aura, and that aura is a manifestation of the soul, is kinda... that’s a deeply personal and intimate violation. Sure, you got your assassin kid. And can we talk about the fact that Marcus was an assassin? It’s not a pretty job. I guess I can see all the abuse--physical and mental--as a good way to train up another assassin, but... geeze, if that’s your goal, why did you use your own kid?! Why not hire some angsty teenager?! Yeah, no, Markus Black stood high on my list of parental monsters... and was only toppled by the arrival of one other.

1. Madame of the Glass Unicorn: She only appeared in one episode and she rocketed to the top of this list, that should tell you something

Let’s be clear here: What Madame did to Cinder is bad enough. It was literally slavery. Enforced by a shock collar. And because the collar looked like a necklace, she pulled it off in front of I don’t know how many clients. Granted, said clients were racists, why else would they be customers at a ‘We Do Not Serve Faunus’ hotel, but keeping her torture just out of the public eye very clearly shows both that she knew what she was doing was illegal and that she was clever enough to avoid detection.

Oh... and then there are her birth daughters.

With Cinder, she was abusive to a dangerous degree. With her daughters, she was permissive, not only allowing but encouraging them to bully their adoptive sister. The whole point of parenthood is to teach your children how to become the best version of themselves, but Madame didn’t even bother to instill a semblance of morality in these girls. She used them as extensions of her will, and they obliviously played along because that was all they knew.

You’d think the biggest monster on the show would be the Grimm woman, but no--it’s some random lady with a hotel.

#RWBY #Analysis #Ranking #I had the urge to make this #Feel free to disagree #Some of this is opinion-based

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tuiyla · 4 years

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The Duality of Redemption: Zuko and Catra

There’s much to be said about Zuko’s and Catra’s redemption arcs but today I’d like to highlight how both Avatar and She-Ra use visual storytelling to portray the duality of their characters.

(Check out this amazing video essay on Zuko’s duality through visual storytelling to hear more about him, in particular.)

One of the easiest ways to establish that something’s off about a character is to make them asymmetrical, to visualize their duality. Both Zuko and Catra have an obvious way in which their duality is visualized and for the both of them it has to do with their eyes. For Zuko, it’s his scar that his father had given him, marking him for life. For Catra, it’s her heterochromia, one eye blue and the other yellow. It’s worth noting that while heterochromia is common with cats, the original 80s Catra had green eyes so this is a deliberate storytelling choice for the new She-Ra.

Zuko’s duality can be seen throughout the series and he gets many more signifiers. He wields dual broadswords, he has an alter ego in the Blue Spirit, and he has a colour-coded (and voice actor coded) dream about a red and a blue dragon in the episode “The Earth King” (long before he meets Ran and Shaw in season 3). They’re not even trying to be subtle and his duality and inner conflict are basically spelled out by Iroh in “The Avatar and the Firelord”.

Ultimately, though, it’s the scar that dominates, just like the trauma that came with it haunts Zuko in the series. In crucial moments like in “The Crossroads of Destiny”, the framing focuses on Zuko’s left side, the scar, and his right, the “untouched” side, as visual representations of his conflict and choice. Parallels between “The Awakening” and “The Eclipse” further emphasize just how crucial this framing is in his arc. His scar is the past, the ideal of his father that he’s trying to live up to, but it’s a literal scar, abused and torn. When he walks away from Ozai, it’s his right side in the frame.

That’s not to say that the scar represents his “evil” side and needs to be gone for his redemption to be complete. The idea is teased when Katara offers to heal him, but Zuko’s arc makes it clear that the scar is part of him, just like his duality, and he needs to accept it. Getting rid of it would be as much of a rejection of balance as solely focusing on it would be.

As for Catra, her duality is perhaps not as striking at first but used to visually enhance story nonetheless. In critical scenes her left side, the yellow eye, becomes a symbol of the Horde, the past and the unwillingness to let it go, much like with Zuko. Oftentimes when she fights Adora, she’s in the right half of the frame so we see her yellow eye.

Her blue eye (blue like Adora’s) represents the potential for healing. It’s not a coincidence that, when the portal’s opening results in a corrupted Catra, it’s her right side and therefore blue eye that gets consumed. Catra hits her lowest point yet, consumed by anger about everything that happened with Shadow Weaver and Adora, and it threatens to destroy her "good side”, her connection to Adora and her chance at redemption.

It’s s equally significant that in season 4, after the portal incident, Catra gets a new outfit. Her outfit always had a sense of asymmetry to it because of the belt but it’s further emphasized with her sleeves. In season 5, after Horde Prime chips her, her design becomes eerily symmetrical and her heterochromia is gone as her eyes turn green under his control.

Again, much like with Zuko, this rejection of her duality is presented as a false solution. She gets more disheveled as she fights Adora and gets injured, gets more asymmetrical, and after they get rid of the chip, she changes her outfit yet again. This new look is a sort of cross between the early seasons and season 4 ones: it still has the asymmetry of the belt and her eyes are back to being yellow and blue, but the sleeve is gone. And so is her mask.

In many of her later scenes, especially the ones with Adora, her blue eye dominates. This, then, presents a progression from the yellow eye and corruption threatening to overtake the blue one, to the green eyes forced on her by Prime, and, finally, the triumph of blue. But the blue eye doesn’t completely overshadow the yellow; rather, balance is maintained as she becomes a more well-adjusted character. Same with Zuko, this duality doesn’t mean that yellow is evil and blue is good, but it does enhance the visual storytelling.

This is just a brief overview of these two characters and how their redemption is aided by their visual qualities and how they’re framed. I often see people comparing their arcs and while I think there’s certainly a discussion to be had about that (and the comparison of the two series), for now I wanted to highlight how both shows cleverly use the visual nature of their medium to guide their redeemed angsty deuteragonists. I might make this into a gifset or a longer analysis later.

As a sort of side note, they also both have to have everything they thought they wanted before realizing it’s not their way and choose to change for themselves, not for someone else. And that is true redemption.

#catra #zuko #avatar: the last airbender #spop #catradora #atla #she-ra #my thoughts #there's more to be said about this but for once i kept things under 1k and i'm kinda proud of that

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kittyprincessofcats · 3 years

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She-Ra S5 E06 - Taking Control

Yes, I am still determined to finally finish these reviews because I have thoughts on all of these episodes and still want to write them down (even though it’s been ages), so here we go. Spoilers for the rest of the season in case you haven’t watched it yet.

So let’s get into it:

- I love that they just took Wrong Hordak with them and that they’re actually calling him “Wrong Hordak”.

- Adora obsessively checking on Catra all the time is so sweet ❤️ (but also sad because she just came so close to losing her for good).

- “I honestly can NOT believe it worked.” Yeah, I’m with Bow on that. But like I explained in my Save the Cat review, I actually love that their super risky plan ends up working, as it already shows that Horde Prime is not as invincible as it seems.

- “Well, friends and one person who threw me off a cliff once.” I’m so here for all the “former enemies who now casually reference all the times they hurt each other in the past” banter, you have no idea!

- “I am honored to provide nourishment for my exalted brothers.” I love Wrong Hordak. Pretty much every one of his lines is a winner.

- Change in the opening: Only a tiny one (for now), but Wrong Hordak has been added to the heroes’ shot in the end and his expression is hilarious.

- Catra’s flashbacks to Horde Prime submerging her in that pool are so painful. (I saw a theory on here somewhere that this is why Catra’s fear of water seems even worse in season 5 compared to before. It makes sense when you consider Horde Prime tortured her in that pool. Side-note: This also makes me want to have a word with all those people who complain that Catra’s redemption was “too easy”. She literally went through extreme torture and mind-control to protect other people, but go off about how that’s “easy” or not a vaild reason for those people to forgive her, I guess.)

- Gosh, just the fact that she’s so panicked when she wakes up 💔

- I love how Adora, despite being so concerned and wanting to reach out for her, holds back and gives Catra her space.

(- Side-note: Let me take this moment to shamelessly promote what’s most likely Noelle’s fanfic: Don’t Go by Annacharlier on AO3 does an amazing job filling in the blanks between Save the Cat and Taking Control and explaining what goes on in Adora and Catra’s heads here. Give it a read if you haven’t already!)

- “I keep having this horrible vision of a blonde girl who thinks she’s better than everyone barging into my room all day.” I love how Catra’s still her snarky self, though. And how Adora isn’t even mad and just smiles at this.

- Okay, so the obvious topic of Catra not wanting to face everyone she’s hurt aside, I find it interesting how Entrapta is the only person she doesn’t use a nickname for - she calls them Arrow Boy, Sparkles and Entrapta. I think it’s a mix of her knowing Entrapta better than the others, and her respecting Entrapta more.

- The entire fight between Adora and Catra is such a good scene (as sad as it is). Catra doesn’t want to face all her mistakes (she didn’t think she’d actually live long enough to have to), is plagued by obvious guilt and still doesn’t really realize that Adora came back for her because she cares about her (hence her accusation that Adora “just loves feeling like a hero”). Adora on the other hand thinks that things should be okay now because she saved Catra and they’re together again, so why can’t they just make up? She doesn’t realize that Catra needs a bit of time to really digest everything that’s happened. And that “I never hated you!” moment? Beautiful. I think it’s a huge thing for Catra to realize that even when they were enemies, Adora’d didn’t hate her.

- Many She-Ra episodes have two plots going on at once and one of them happens to be way more interesting than the other. In season 1, it was often “the Horde plot is more interesting than the Bright Moon plot” for me. In this episode, it’s a very clear “the plot in space is more interesting than the one on Etheria” - sorry.

- I’m glad we finally got a Spinnetossa kiss, though!! This season is just bringing all the gay!

- Micah freaking out about Glimmer potentially not liking him (not realizing that Glimmer’s really not a kid anymore) is also kind of cute.

- I love Glimmer’s expression when Adora complains about Catra. She just looks so #done with all of this.

- Adora calling Catra a “stubborn brat” is amazing. (Though tbh, I misheard her at first and thought she said “stubborn cat” - which would be true, too.)

- “Did you think she was going to just instantly become a totally different person?” That’s a very good point and I’m glad the show didn’t make Catra just insantly act completely differently.

- “I believe - in Horde Prime.” Look, I could just quote all of Wrong Hordak’s lines here because they’re just too good 🤣. Also, the fact that his apron says “Smooch the chef” in first one’s writing? Amazing.

- Poor Bow being the designated driver and having to fly into an asteroid field. Love how excited Entrapta is about it, though.

- I just noticed that when Catra’s getting those flashes after the ship is hit, the first image she sees is of Krytis!

- “Once again, Catra is ruining out lives!” Okay, but that’s really not her fault this time. Though I get that Adora’s just being overdramatic here. (“Then try not to hit anything!” 🤣) Also, my first thought was Wrong Hordak was sending the trace signal, not Catra’s chip - but the chip does make more sense, since Wrong Hordak was cut off from the hivemind and Horde Prime also couldn’t find Hordak for years.

- Honestly, the group on Etheria should have left that party way sooner. Something was so obviously super off there, and they noticed it as well - but still stuck around for way too long. (But then again, they had no idea about the chips at all, so maybe that’s a bit harsh.)

- The way Spinnerella moves her neck when she says “something weird just happened” - very nice hinting/foreshadowing there!

- “Me? Why would I wanna hurt you? Ooooh, you mean because you sent me to Beast Island, stole my work and used it to rip a hole in the fabric of space and time? I get it. Hold still.” 🤣🤣🤣🤣 Have I mentioned I LOVE ENTRAPTA??? I love how she’s not even mad at first and then so genuinely proud of herself for “getting it” - but also, since this is pretty much the worst thing Catra’s ever done and something she (rightfully) feels a lot of guilt over, I’m glad the show took the time to address it. Yeah, it’s played for laughs here at first, but then the episode actually seriously addresses it.

- “We’re doing this. Then if you think hiding from the people you hurt will make you feel better, we’ll drop you off and you’ll never have to see us again. *sigh* You’ll never have to see me again.” THIS MOMENT. Okay, let’s get into this: I like that Adora’s not letting Catra get away with anything here. That she tells her straight-up that they have to remove the chip or else Prime will find them, that she questions if hiding from everyone she’s hurt will really make Catra feel better, but that she also agrees to drop her off if Catra really wants that. And I like how Catra, now that Adora is offering her what she said she wanted earlier, realizes she doesn’t actually want to lose Adora again either. Adora offered to let her go, and Catra realized she doesn’t want that. I also really like Catra asking Adora to stay: It shows that Adora’s presence still makes Catra feel safe, hence why she wants her there for the chip removal procedure, but it also nicely foreshadows the finale, where Catra will ask Adora to “stay” again. Also, all that hand-holding and blushing? Cute.

- “I’m not protecting you, I’m protecting them.” YES. And here’s where Micah shows that he does take Frosta seriously and does understand how strong she is - good!

- Catra seeing Horde Prime’s thoughts: First of all, it breaks my heart how tiny and scared she sounds when she talks about Horde Prime “using” her (but also not really because I’m evil and I’m here for the angst). Then, I like how she insists she has to do this because otherwise Adora will “do something stupid and get herself killed” - Catra is super protective of Adora. And again with the hand-holding and asking Adora to stay with her 😭. I also like that it really works and Catra ends up finding out what Horde Prime is doing and even seeing what’s going on on Etheria.

- Also: I like that Horde Prime is genuinely furious about Adora saving Catra. That the whole reason he changed his strategy and started chipping people on Etheria is because he’s genuinely pissed about that and wants revenge (something Double Trouble will again confirm one episode later).

- Can we also talk about Adora and Catra immediately reaching for each other and hugging when the ship gets hit?

- “She-Ra, if you really are out there: Are you getting this?” Okay, but that’s just the thing: She literally is getting this! I like how the two plots connect here and how Adora becoming She-Ra and defeating the ships in space also helps Swift Wind power up and save the others.

- Everyone’s already talked about this at length, but I love She-Ra’s new transformation! The symbols representing Adora’s friends (winged boots for Glimmer, heart for Bow, mask for Catra), the way better outfit and hair in a ponytail, the beautiful galaxy background with those lights, the triumphant orchestra version of the transformation music - I’m here for all of it! (Also for Catra’s little blush at the end there.)

- She-Ra destroying the ships in space is epic.

- Catra’s apology to Entrapta is such a huge moment for her and such a nice scene! I like how she technically didn’t even have to do it: Entapta didn’t expect an apology and was already on her way out. But Catra has been feeling bad about this for a long time and realized now that she doesn’t actually want to run away. And after we’ve seen Catra being awful to everyone and feeling guilty over what she did to Entrapta since early season 4, it feels so good to finally hear her genuinely apologize for it (and genuinely apologize to someone other than Adora in general). And Entrapta patting her head with her hair is so precious 😭. I love both of them.

- The scene of Catra joining everyone else at dinner is so good 😭😭😭. How she’s finally ready to face them, but still sits away from them, not expecting to be forgiven or accepted, how Bow and Glimmer make room for her and invite her to join, how her ears perk up at that, Glimmer offering her food, that glance between her and Adora... YES. Catra is someone who’s been rejected and made to feel like an outcast her entire life, and she was convinced everyone hated her now. Bow and Glimmer inviting her to sit with them here was so important.

- I love Entrapta asking if the food comes in smaller sizes. She just has a thing for tiny food and I can respect that.

- And... oh no, Spinnerella is chipped!

This was another really good episode! I like how it shows Catra’s growth and shows her working on herself. I also like how things weren’t just immediately okay between her and Adora and that she still has to work on actually redeeming herself even after her heroic sacrifice. But I also think it’s realistic that Adora and Glimmer aren’t holding a grude against her, since she literally went through hell for them. Her apology to Entrapta was really beautiful and all the soft moments between her and Adora make my heart melt.

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