Ok ok ok I'm not Tryna start discourse but bluestars prophecy was my first ever warriors book and bluestar will always be my favourite so I'm gonna make some counterpoints to you about her being a Smajor character

bluestar has always been led by an intense loyalty and dedication to those she loves and cares for - this includes her mum, her sister, her clan, eventually Firepaw when he joins the clan, and she has a VERY strong moral compass when it comes to doing the right thing - when she sees thistleclaw teaching tigerpaw to hurt a then baby scourge she very much discourages it and is against it

Afaik scott is Not like that, he doesn't have an emotional or love-driven moral code, he does things because they're smart decisions in the long term or because he wants to. Granted I havent seen a ton of his stuff but I have seen his limited life and 3rd life perspectives and he is very much a singular team player there, there to look after himself and well if people align with him that's great he's got allies (jimmy and Martyn) but he won't go out of his way to care for them

Bluestars defiance of starclan in the first series is BECAUSE she gave herself to them and what the warrior code demanded so much - yes she broke clan rules by having kids with crookedstar but she did everything in her power to make sure they'd have a happy life and felt terrible that thrushpelt was willing to say they were his to save her reputation. She didn't do it out of a selfish want, she only ever wanted to help her clan and those she loved, and her becoming clan leader is emblematic of that want. When she rejects starclan so wholeheartedly in the first series it's because THINGS KEEP GOING WRONG WHEN SHES TRIED SO HARD TO STOP THEM FROM DOING THAT - starclan has never cared about the sacrifices she made to keep her loved ones and clan safe, she lost her mother, her sister, her kits, her mate, literally everything, and things STILL KEEP GETTING WORSE. it's not a demand that she deserves to have everything good, it's a cry for help that shouldn't something go right after she's tried so hard???

C!Scott isn't like that. He puts himself above others and inherently believes he will get the best if he just plays his cards right, and he is good at it, he's very competent at lasting a long time in life series and getting what he wants - the ruthlessness of gem driven by desperation kills him in secret life, Martyn's complete fucking about face kills him in limited life, and I'm pretty sure it's etho who gets him out in 3rd life by luck. He doesn't plan to look after the ones he cares about, because he cares about himself first and foremost. Yeah you can argue when he doesn't get what he wants he gets annoyed, but his is less of a 'why don't I get this don't I deserve it' and more of a 'oh fuck this didn't work. Ok new plan double down on getting what I want by appeasing to people cos they're easy to read and therefore account for'

I don't doubt Scott would make a bluestar adjacent character if he made a warrior cats oc BUT his character would honestly be closer to darktail or ashfur than bluestar and that's that on that.

(sorry you activated 13 year old me's unskippable cutscene sjdjsjsjja this isnt meant to be a serious argument I just love bluestar a lot and love talking about her)

OKAY 1. this is fucking awesome thank you 2. i am going to do something new and exciting (advocate for scott instead of beating him to death with sticks) because unfortunately this bluestar info has only made me believe she is a smajor character even more.

As a general note when I talk about smajor characters as a collective here I’m referring to characters more in the realm of esmp/traffic/rats/pirates/etc, less vampire scott or necromancer scott who are intended to be villainous.

Scott characters tend to operate under a “If I am not a Good Person I may as well die” rule, and consequently abide by a strict moral code to keep themselves feeling clean. For instance: traffic Scott will never go back on his word, he will avoid dishonesty, and he won’t take from others unless he is sure that he can repay them. He will never betray his seasonal primary ally (even when they betray him first), and will often give people things just because they asked him nicely. He stakes a lot of his own identity on this, because it is through being a “good person” that he justifies his superiority (and, by extension, his own existence); in his mind he deserves the best and *is* the best because he is such a good person. When things don’t go his way, he thinks he doesn’t deserve it because he has been nothing but good, so he tries to place a reason. He often assumes that somebody must “have a vendetta” against him, even if this somebody is the world (see: him asking if limlife episode 1 boogeyman is some kind of joke played on him for not giving in to the boogey curse in Last Life.) which is very Bluestar to me, convinced that her misfortunes are a divine punishment.

This is all to say that Scott does have a strict moral code and deep sense of loyalty. Being a “good person” and devoted partner in the ways he understands it are so ingrained into what he is that I think he definitely has the capacity to be a Bluestar if he were raised being taught clan values, even if his internal systems are often built around never letting gross emotions be fully felt rather than what those emotions compel him to do.

was rewatching the last few episodes of season 1 and got to feel the grant ward experience (tm) all over again. after finishing the finale, i kinda have to work it off, so here is a rant about everything that pisses me off about him.

he lied to everyone about everything from the beginning, killed so many good agents and friends and random bystanders, kidnapped skye so shed decrypt the harddrive, and still seriously thought he had a chance with her, after the people he works for literally almost killed her. he flirted with her during that kidnapping, he tried to get empathy from her while an agent he just killed was hidden in the supply closet with his blood ruining the linoleum. and then he tried to get her to feel sorry for him, because it was hard for him to make all those choices. those choices being to kill her friends and destroy the only family shes ever had. he still saw himself as the victim, despite being the worst most psychotic perpetrator he could ever possibly be. literally working for hydra and killing people just because his boss told him to. this one scene in the plane describes him perfectly, even before season 2 dove into these characteristics in detail. he is completely beyond saving.

one of the central mechanisms of his character is that he wants approval, and will do absolutely anything - anything - to get it. that ruthlessness was inside him already. garret didnt exactly manipulate him into becoming what he was. he took a dysfunctional juvenile, dumped him in the woods for 6 months, where he survived by raiding cabins and presumably killing their occupants all to impress garrett when he returned, and then he joined up with hydra for the same reason, and presumably that stayed his main motivation. and he cared so little for anything else that he continued to be willing to do anything, from murder to kidnapping to using other people to fuel his delusions to rescuing hive, an ancient inhuman hellbent on consuming earth just to "punish" shield for how they treated him.

and that desperation for approval came from the way his family and especially his parents were, and thats what may meant when she said that they all had trauma and it didnt turn any of them into psychopaths. his sad backstory explains why he is the way he is, it doesnt excuse it and it doesnt excuse the actions he takes in the present, at any point he couldve done any amount of self reflection, recognized what he is, and chosen to better himself, and instead he chose to keep blaming the rest of the world for his misdeeds, and thats on him.

yes, its tragic, he was groomed into the man he became. its not his fault that he is who he is. but he is that man, and its gone far beyond what garret pushed him to be. he chose to do all these terrible things and to keep serving him, to ignore every opportunity to even just stop and walk away, and he is making his own terrible choices even after the man who groomed him is gone. he is a twisted delusional sociopath, a murderer, who uses other people to support his narrative that actually hes some kind of hero and everything bad he does is someone elses fault, who desperately clings to the narrative that he is the victim and because of that hes allowed to do whatever, and who would rather burn the world before acknowledging any of that.

@cinnamonrollorder

Preface: I only read about three paragraphs into what you have down for the au so that I had room to make my own stuff without feeling like I was stepping on what you made (since a lot of Ghostbur is his past). If we have similar things it’s bc we both big brained and I think that’s iconic.

Au is from this post, you can prompt others at here or my inbox.

Hcs:

So, Ghostbur.

Basically folks instead of happy memories he just keeps bad ones.

What really confused people was his kind of.... confusion at mentions of L’Manberg.

T!Ghostbur isn’t very talkative, he’s more keep to himself type. His guilt sits on him like a weight, he’s bitter and sad and doesn’t know how to stop it.

Despite that, just like Ghostbur. He wants to help others.

It takes awhile for him to voice that, to voice anything really.

He spoke but he never said “I want to help you.” Nor did he ever really make any firm beliefs. He scoffed at mentions of Shlatt and disappeared and came back with stacks of wood to give Tubbo. And when everyone was asleep he spent the night building.

He showed his intentions in very small ways, he saw the world he hated, the one he exploded and discarded and he saw the new President be so insistent to pick the nation he found so hard to remember up from the dust. And he wanted to help.

He was still upset. He was upset that Tubbo cared so much. He didn’t understand, told him himself that.

They got in a small argument, it was the most Tubbo had heard him say at once in awhile. There was a flash of fear in his eye when t!Ghostbur got animated and started yelling. “L’Manberg is nothing but a mark on the world that shows how bad I was, how bad I can be! I had one thing Tubbo, one thing! Couldnt even take care of it! Made it with my own two hands and yet the world said I couldn’t take care of it with those same hands and I blew it up for that! That nation. THIS nation is but a reflections of my mistakes! A constant reminder of what I failed to be— of someone I hate that I was!”

“Well... I’m sorry Wilbur but that’s exactly why I like it.” And that’s more awkward then how Tubbo wanted it to come out and the look from t!Ghostbur encouraged him to speak again. “It’s.... you.... did you really forget? Wilbur, we made... I joined your side. L’Manberg’s side after I had stood and watched you sit in the hto dog van. After I reimbursed you for the hassle and saw you killed for singing clown music at Sapnap and the others. I joined after you.... you showed me that the Americans weren’t running things right. I joined after you guys had came into my house and stolen anything to make drugs, and then the next day or so I gave you guys everything I had so we could make more. I didn’t leave when Eret did, nor did I sell out like Manifold had. I knew I could never leave the moment you wrote ‘suck it green boy’ to the sky because I didn’t know if I had ever laughed that hard or felt that happy. And I haven’t left.”

Things are softer between them after that. Wilbur doesn’t remember a lot of what he’s saying, though he remembers reading that book and declining having it in his possession. But he believes Tubbo, and he helps him more afterwards in his small ways that are attempting to be big.

When Tommy got exiled he didn’t have much to say, he just tagged along and helped make him a home. Set him up. He knew Tubbo would rather that he was helping Tommy but knew the other boy couldnt.

After that he kept eyes on both of them, though mostly Tubbo since it was quite easier. Helping him out with what he could, hanging out with his dad in silence. Helping Eret with the museum.

There’s a lot of hatred in his heart, especially towards Eret. But he pushes past it often. Not to find light but to just find some ease. Almost of his energy goes into keeping his feelings in check, though he has dark grey dye he carries around that helps.

One time he ran out of translucent dye to help manage his bitterness and it caused.... quite the scene.

Nothing exploded this time but there was a fight with a handful of people.

Fundy is. Hurt by t!Ghostbur. The last thing Ghostbur fully remembers of Fundy is him taking down the walls.

Tommy gets pissed at t!Ghostbur in exile because he’s such a fucking downer. Eventually tells him to never come back despite Ghostbur having made a home there.

Niki avoids him at all costs.

Eret.... kinda just watches him around. Doesnt really know how to interact. Him and Tubbo are the ones who put the pieces together that Ghostbur only remembers bad things so he’s hesitant to interact and makes their interactions sparse just in case.

Eret has spent most of his time since his betrayal trying to get forgiveness and redeem himself so its hard knowing t!Ghostbur will only ever know him for the worst thing he ever did.

Ghostbur’s sewer still has drugs in it, instead of a library it has blocks of old buildings and he labels them accordingly. He helps Eret with blocks that would be replica’s vs. authentics but sometimes they have to call Tubbo in since he had a clearer mind about it.

Those moments are hard because it’s three of the original four people who founded L’Manberg all attempting to remember it’s history. To t!Ghostbur its like hitting his head against a wall over and over in attempts to remember anything. He’s on the brink of good memories, it always feels strange when he does but he can’t quite reach him and that gives him a special kind of pain.

I hope I did. Literally any of this justice,,, it’s such a heavy au tbh and there’s so much you can explore with it. I genuinely do like the idea of him having generally translucent dye that takes up his feelings, I didn’t come in meaning to put in grey dye but it just worked. Because for canon Ghostbur it’s an act of avoidance, but for t!Ghostbur it’s an act of care and self control. I’ve really enjoyed this like. God. This is sm personally, thank u for sending it in dhdhhdhdb

8/9 translucent emotion controlling dye.

i’ve been thinking about the nature of the velvet room and what that means for goro akechi and also sae’s promise at the end of the game for adults to do better by the younger generations. by this i mean that i work in student services, and i have a headache.

there’s a pretty strong conclusion in the field of education that students do not succeed alone. they’re constantly being guided, assisted, and advocated for by adults. parents go into schools to argue for their child’s rights. they call the school to change grades. they help children at school with their homework--it’s an expectation that parents have the time and education to do so. learning disability staff work with teachers to help the students in the teacher’s class receive appropriate accommodations. college guidance counselors are in fact critical for the jump to college, because admissions officers don’t have the time to meet every single student in the world, and rely on college counselors to introduce them which students are worth speaking to. coaches guide students through athletics, but athletics is socialization, character-building, and sometimes also therapy. coaches in turn also function in the same way that college counselors do, because they also will promote and advocate for certain student-athletes to talk to recruiters. 

on and on and on. adults at every single turn are helping children. it’s advocating, evaluating, assisting, and guiding all rolled into one. 

i work in student services right now, which is an entire industry that’s popped up in higher ed under the assumption that the higher education system on a structural level is a) too complicated for one teenager to go through alone, and b) that left to their own devices, students are unlikely to succeed alone. when in need of help, student services is an entire office dedicated to providing adults as a resource for students, so that students can come in, speak to someone with administrative power, and get help. in the office that i work in specifically right now, these students have committed some sort of infraction or are reporting another student’s infraction, and are seeking to get through the university’s disciplinary system, hopefully unscathed.

there’s something that relieves the tedium of being a desk jockey by thinking about the place as a real life velvet room, but the more i think about the comparison, the more i feel like it’s not a silly, surface-level comparison. the underlying assumption of student services, and the velvet room, is that you cannot succeed alone. you cannot succeed without a significant amount of help, either from your peers, local adults, or long-nosed men who never give you a straight answer.

the reason why student services, and family/coach help, is so emphasized in student success is because this support network can and often IS the difference between failure and success for a student. student success is so often correlated with how much money the parent has to fund their education, how much free time they have to do their homework, whether or not they have reliable transportation, whether or not they had an adult to walk them through their lowest emotional moments, whether or not they had someone who believed they could succeed, whether or not they had someone to tell them to shoot higher and farther, whether or not they had a benefactor to give them the resources to do that.

now that i type this out. i would like to propose that most of navigating schools, systems, and life depends on your benefactors. 

ok. benefactors, so i can get my own story straight, are defined by advocating, evaluating, assisting, and guiding. i would say that this is very similar to a lawyer. (the french word for lawyer is “l’avocat,” by the by.) the main distinction that i think a benefactor has from a lawyer is that a benefactor is also supposed to provide resources for the person they’re advocating for, and that the benefactee is supposed to, yknow, be able to do things for themselves, and actually use the resources they’re given, rather than just sitting pretty and having the lawyer do everything.

and now i’m going to shift this entire essay to be about benefactors, but i just figured out that that’s what shido is, but i’m also too lazy to go back and restructure the stuff that i’ve already written to reflect this discovery. so i’m typing this paragraph instead. i have a headache and i can’t sleep. fuck you

what’s compelling to me about akechi--and adachi, since we’re on the topic--is the ways that he’s set up as “he could have been the main character if not for X.” for adachi, the statement goes “he could have been the main character if he hadn’t self-isolated and blamed other people (specifically women) for his ensuing loneliness.” for akechi, it’s “he could have been the main character if adults in his life hadn’t consistently let him down, put him in the worst possible situations, given him very few resources to work with, and refused to advocate for him in any way, shape, or form, leaving him to do all of this himself.” that is to say, the phrase goes it takes a village to raise a child, and akechi was forced to do the work of what should have been fifty-something different people. 

the shorter version of this is “akechi could have been the main character if he’d had a benefactor,” aka someone who actually took interest in his life success, gave him the resources to do it, and guided him on how to use those resources. 

which brings me back to the velvet room.

akira, like most of the persona protagonists, loses parental and adult support in the beginning of the game. minato’s parents are dead, and his mental health seems to reflect the fact that he’s got very little adult support in his life. souji’s parents don’t call him once during his year in inaba, and dojima is, how do we say, not exactly much of a functioning adult himself. akira being cut off from adults in his life is more explicit in that his parents literally try to get rid of him.

but from the beginning of the game, from literally the first thing that happens in the game, akira gets a benefactor. the game starts off with finding sojiro sakura. it is the first thing the game asks you to do. 

the thing about sojiro is that the game starts off presenting him as a manifestation of adults further driving akira into the dirt, but the fact of the matter is that sojiro is akira’s first benefactor. sojiro complains and whines and vaguely threatens akira in several different ways, but (1) sojiro’s threats for akira to stay in line are actually him taking an investment in akira’s success, because he’s telling akira to not get in trouble. they just don’t look like it, because he’s being gruff and hard-assed about it. (2) sojiro gives akira a place to stay, a physical and very fucking important resource for akira. akira doesn’t have to worry about being homeless, and akira doesnt have to worry about rent. the game would be very different if akira was homeless. (3) sojiro, again, complains and whines and threatens akira in several different ways, but he goes to shujin, where three adults (the principal, kawakami, and sojiro) all get together to, theoretically, talk about how to help akira succeed at that school. (this doesnt happen, but that’s what the talk was supposed to be. again, it’s an example of the ways that kobayakawa isnt doing his job as well as he should, and the ways that kawakami in particular is not being a good benefactor/advocate for her new student for whom she’s responsible for. kobayakawa tells akira he expects good behavior; kawakami says in front of akira and everyone and also god that she’d rather him transferred to another class. as a teacher, her entire JOB is to help him succeed, and the first thing she says is that she’d rather not do it. in comparison, sojiro IS doing his job as a parent, especially by asian-father standards, by showing up at the school, telling his charge to stay in line, demonstrating investment in akira’s educational success, providing transportation, etc, etc.)

the game would be very different if sojiro were not here. akira would be homeless or paying rent, and making rent would be consuming most of his time. akira would not have the time to be a phantom thief, and probably not even the time to maintain good standing in competitive academics. he’d get through his probation, i’m sure, but with great difficulty, and also despite great odds. being underfunded and under-resourced would only create greater incentive for akira to look into illegal activity, potentially falling prey to someone like kaneshiro who promises quick cash. like lavenza pointed out, the game is rigged and unfair, and it’s remarkable how we don’t find it supremely fucked up that the people most in need of support are those who are denied it and told to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” to “work hard and deserve your success,” to “keep your head down and do as you’re told.” 

not to say that sojiro was THE deciding factor that determined akira’s life trajectory, but sojiro was really really really really really really fucking important, is what i’m trying to say.

literally like forty-eight hours after this, akira gets a whole bunch of new benefactors, including:

1) caroline/justine, providing resources and access to personas

2) yaldabaoth, providing a stable link to the metaverse (and if i can elaborate on this for a second, consider: rejection syndrome, that fun thing where shinjiro’s persona goes fuckin wild and tries to kill you, occurred in persona 3 but not in persona 4 or persona 5. persona 3 is the game in which people just sort of come by their ability to manifest a persona and wind up in the dark hour by accident. persona 4 and persona 5 has izanami and yaldabaoth, respectively, ensuring that persona-users get in and out of the TV world/metaverse safely, aka acting as a benefactor and providing a resource for persona-users. there’s a more stable link by far. this is, of course, complicated by the fact that izanami and yaldabaoth are also the gods that are proposing the harsh conditions for which usage of personas is required, but i would also like to point out that izanami and yaldabaoth are both beholden to the collective unconscious of humanity, and that yaldabaoth himself was born from that, and both of them actually have very little choice in the matter as a manifestation of humanity’s will.) 

3) igor, even if igor is not igor, in that igor provides general guidance, the third eye, and encourages akira to pursue healthy relationships and support networks

4) MORGANA. 

LITERALLY THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF MORGANA IS SO FUCKING WILD TO ME. 

LIKE. 

THINK ABOUT IT.

morgana being a literal manifestation of humanity’s hope and then condensed into a fucking CAT and then sent out with a mission to help AKIRA SPECIFICALLY is like. a FUCKLOAD of aid. hypeswap pointed out that morgana is basically kind of a minor deity, in that morgana (like yaldabaoth) is a manifestation of some aspect of humanity’s subconscious, and then morgana is MADE TO HELP AKIRA SPECIFICALLY. morgana doesn’t even LEAVE akira at the end of the game!!!!!! morgana was SO PERFECTLY TAILOR-MADE TO BELONG TO AKIRA that morgana STAYS with him!!!!!!!!! LIKE!!!!!!! imagine having a fucking SMALL GOD HAND-MADE FOR YOU, TO HELP YOU THROUGH YOUR DAILY LIFE, BEAT UP SHADOWS, TALK TO YOU ABOUT YOUR ACADEMICS, POINT OUT WHICH FRIENDS YOU SHOULD MAKE (LEGITIMATELY HALF OF MORGANA IS JUST HANGING OUT IN AKIRA’S DUFFEL BAG AND SAYING “HEY YOU SHOULD TALK TO TORANOSUKE NOW”), AND ENFORCING A HEALTHY SLEEP SCHEDULE. ON GOD. literally anyone who complains about morgana enforcing a healthy sleep schedule better be some ungodly motherfucker who gets nine hours of sleep EVERY DAY because i REFUSE to have yall discounting the importance of a healthy sleep schedule for a growing teenage boy

and as more than a few akechi-centric fanfics have pointed out, morgana is like, THE singular reason that akira and the phantom thieves even KNOW about stealing hearts in the first place. they don’t know anything!!!! ryuji and akira wouldnt have even made it out of kamoshida’s palace without morgana!!!! it was because morgana specifically told them about finding treasures, removing it, and leaving the shadows alive that they knew THE FIRST THING about pulling off a heist.

okay, so, akira had help. so what. why am i telling you this.

the reason why im telling u this is because traditional morality tells us that people do things because they are bad, and that circumstance is an excuse, not a reason, and that everyone always has a choice when it comes to doing bad things.

AND THAT’S TRUE. that’s super true. that’s very extremely true. correct. absolutely. especially when it comes to doing harm to other people, everyone has a choice to either cause harm, or not cause harm. period.

WHAT IS ALSO TRUE is that from a macro-scale, odds are NOT in certain people’s favors when it comes to succeeding. (and again, persona 5 would like us to look at things from a macro-scale, because it keeps referencing the rigged game and how odds are not in akira’s favor.) the rules are set up to have certain people lose, and keep losing. 

bringing this back to akechi, akechi lost from the literal moment he was born, because he was the son of (a) wedlock, (b) political scandal, (c) and non-consensual sex, apparently. literally the only way he could have been any more disadvantaged by nature of his birth would have been some extremely dramatic birth-related complication, or a genetic birth disorder, or some other medical complication. so he’s already lost.

the part about “keeps losing” comes from his mother’s difficulties in raising a son alone while supporting herself, further underfunding her to do a task that should be done by at MINIMUM two people. her mental health suffers because of the strain, the lack of resources, the sheer fact that she’s raising a son she didn’t ask for and also didn’t consent to conceiving, resulting in her death. things get worse. akechi’s shoved into the foster care system. more adults who don’t care about him who do not invest in his success or well-being. more schools full of more teachers that are in themselves under-funded and under-resourced, meaning that akechi, amongst a bunch of other under-funded and under-resourced kids who by this point probably have a shitload of emotional and mental trauma, are all stuck together in an environment that is in itself increasingly less equipped to support these students. 

the great irony of education is that schools receive more funding if the students in the school do well. hilarious, right? a school produces good students, and suddenly they have alumni funding, stakeholders, donations, so on and so forth. a school starts failing, and people pull out. students in struggling schools get even less help when, arguably, they’re the students who need more help. 

like i said. rigged game. you lose, and you keep losing. 

in comparison to akira, akira “loses” his skirmish with the justice system, and everything in his life sets him up to keep losing--and literally sojiro is THE ONE PERSON standing in between akira and continuing, successive losses, that would have piled up and compounded upon each other. 

all this in mind, i’d like to propose that one of the reasons why akechi is so attached to shido is because shido is akechi’s benefactor. shido provides equipment for akechi, likely provides cash, most certainly gave akechi the gun he uses, probably had a hand in akechi attending whatever school he attends. 

and to further complicate this, i’d like to mention that benefactors can and do come in terrible types: madarame, for example, was yusuke’s benefactor. i’ve mentioned yaldabaoth is a type of benefactor. kaneshiro is arguably a type of benefactor, although a particularly malicious and overtly parasitic type. as i’ve pointed out before, kobayakawa is a type of benefactor for makoto, in that kobayakawa offers explicit aid to makoto’s educational career.

having a benefactor puts you at their mercy. again, not to draw parallels between yusuke and akechi, but yusuke’s entire social link revolves around potentially getting a new benefactor post-madarame. yusuke ultimately declines for a variety of reasons, but i’d like to point out that one of the reasons is arguably that yusuke is hesitant to put himself at the mercy of a new benefactor’s wishes. if yusuke accepts that money, he’ll be beholden to please whoever’s funding him, and this greatly restricts his artistic freedom.

this is also part of the reason why it’s so fucking funny that you can mouth off to sojiro and sojiro, apparently, gives not a single shit. you tell sojiro that you’ve been a criminal for eight months and he helps you. you tell sojiro that you’ve gotten his adopted daughter involved in criminal activity and he’s just like “well it’s good futaba has friends i guess.” 

sojiro is a type of benefactor whose help is... probably not unconditional, but hilariously close. morgana is the same way. caroline and justine are the same way. notably, morgana and caroline/justine were, yknow, made to help akira, and likely cannot do anything else. akira has a lot of benefactors who will help him regardless of what he chooses and how he utilizes their help.

a lot of the abusers we see in persona 5 are benefactors using their pull to make the benefactee behave in a way they want--people who can threaten to stop sponsoring, people who can threaten to leave if the benefactee doesn’t do as they like. this puts the benefactee in a precarious position of having to behave in a certain way in order to continue to receive aid. 

circle back to shido: shido is akechi’s benefactor.

but akechi’s plan is to become shido’s benefactor.

NO IM SO SERIOUS. THAT’S WHAT AKECHI’S PLAN BOILS DOWN TO.

as some people have pointed out, akechi’s plan isn’t actually to kill shido. akechi’s plan is to make shido dependent on him. akechi is trying to position himself as having a valuable resource that shido cannot do without (access to the metaverse). what akechi’s trying to do is to position himself in such a way that shido gets a taste of his own medicine.

(which, personally, amuses me greatly, because akechi’s plan boils down to “oh well you abused me? i’ll abuse you back,” which is just. so fucking stupid and also very much exactly what anti-goro fans do 99% of the time, so the entire thing is just an endless source of schadenfreude.)

but as we know, this doesn’t really work out. first of all, shido likely operates as akechi’s benefactor in financial ways, and the fact that akechi requires shido alive and in power in order for his STUPID fucking plan to work means that shido has akechi by the throat. even if both of them are benefactoring each other, this means that, at best, they’ve come to a situation in which both of them are an equal threat to each other, so it’s really no surprise shido wanted to cut akechi loose. 

and i think it’s important to note that shido is probably one of the very few adults in akechi’s life who actually helps akechi--again, in the same way that madarame helps yusuke (with a lot of fine print, coercion, and other hidden knives involved). people have pointed out that akechi did rely on shido’s praise--the value of emotional stability and improved mental health, no matter how slim, cannot be understated. (there’s a reason why people wind up in self-destructive behaviors; the behavior itself fulfills some need that the person has.) i’m not sure that akechi would even have a job at the police force if shido had not pulled strings to get him there. i’m not sure akechi would have the grades that he does at the school he attends if shido had not helped him get there. like any other employer relationship, when akechi proposed to help shido by utilizing the metaverse, shido is expected to provide the funds to ensure akechi can actually do that job, and those funds would have made a remarkable difference in akechi’s life. and all of these are conditional on akechi killing people. 

when sojiro decided to invest in akira, sojiro drastically changed akira’s life trajectory, and protected akira from a lot of future misfortune, all at basically no cost to akira and without any strings. shido investing in akechi does the same, not only stopping akechi’s “losing streak,” but reversing it altogether into a winning streak. 

suddenly, akechi’s in a school that actually gives him schoolwork that pushes him intellectually, actually prepares him for college, actually teaches him things. the better akechi does, the more he’s rewarded for it, because there’s actually teachers who are there who will notice. he gets paid for working with the police, which means better pay, better hours, better living conditions, more free time. people take note of his success. people start talking about him. all of a sudden, he’s getting interviews for being so remarkably young and still so adept as his job. and again, it’s all conditional on akechi fulfilling his deal with shido.

compare and contrast to akira, who has sojiro, morgana, and the velvet room all acting as his benefactor. the entire POINT of the velvet room is to  be an unconditional, no-strings source of aid. meanwhile, akechi only has shido, whose help is highly conditional. the difference is remarkable. the difference between akira and akechi comes down primarily to the adults and other forces who took the time to invest in their success, future, and well-being.

*

all this in mind, persona 5 (although it has very little backbone in a lot of its execution and doesn’t like following through on its own train of logic) has the audacity to say: maybe people doing bad things is not certain people’s faults. it’s the fault of the rigged game itself. 

so the question becomes: who’s setting up the game?

this is usually answered by “who’s the shitty benefactor?”

who has more resources and more ability than someone else, and provides those resources/abilities on a conditional basis? who has power over someone else and is using that power not to help, but to harm the person with less power? who’s using what they have in order to make someone else act according to their needs? who’s rigging someone else’s life circumstances?

the plot of persona 5 is the phantom thieves seeking “who’s setting up the game,” which turns into a sort of matryoshka nesting-doll escalation as they move further and further up the chain to find bigger and more comprehensive sets of games. start with kamoshida, who’s setting up unfair conditions and a rigged game in which ann, shiho, ryuji, mishima, and akira are at his whims in an increasingly-unfair situation. kamoshida, as the rule-maker of the game, needs to go. but kamoshida is ALSO part of a different game, which is shujin itself, which is being funded by (apparently) shido’s conspiracy to some extent. kamoshida is an olympic medalist who has no other prospects in his life and is stuck in a job he doesn’t really like because shujn has a deep investment in providing a competitive athletics program, because competitive athletics programs is a mark of a good school, and there’s a lot of money involved in making shujin a good school. kobayakawa is the next chain up, in that he’s strongarming makoto to catch the phantom thieves, but even kobayakawa is not the person making the rules; kobayakawa is at the whims of an even larger game. so on and so forth. 

which brings me back to shido. 

(for the record. it was this point that i realized that this essay had gotten out of control. because i’d started a whole other meta essay one other time, so i already had a bunch of thoughts about loki and the importance of akechi’s plan to take down shido in the way that akechi was hoping to, and i realized that this entire train of thought was rapidly taking me into “norse mythos analysis hours,” and i was like. fuck. fuck. god fucking dammit. i started this essay as a way to pass the time and cure my headache and now we’re doing this??? we’re really doing this????? fuck me)

“who’s setting up the game” is a neat observation that systems of oppression are intangible and operate without humans, but at the same time, are maintained and composed of humans simultaneously. (i know. it doesn’t make sense. it sucks.) palace rulers, then, are an attempt to locate intangible systems of oppression into a single human person.

in reality this doesn’t happen quite so neatly, but masayoshi shido is a nice fantasy that maybe, a very large portion of systemic corruption can be boiled down to one bald man with ugly glasses. he embodies literally EVERYTHING wrong in the world: corruption, misogyny, embezzlement, gross adults, manipulation and blackmail, murder, child abuse--basically everything you can think of. and from akechi’s point of view, shido is not only at the heart of government corruption, but also most of akechi’s personal hurts as well. 

watch closely this very cool narrative trick that persona 5 forgot to capitalize on: you store all the shitty things in the world in one person, and then you take him out, destroying him and all the world’s sins all at once. if you locate all the sins in one place, you don’t have to worry about the fact that systemic injustice is permeated throughout every aspect of the fabric of our world, from the policies in place to the ways that we think to the ways that our imaginations are arrested from imagining new possibilities (the prevalence of anti-goro fans who insist that he’s scum of the earth being fair evidence of the ways that traditional morality prevents people from re-imagining a kinder world in which people can be held accountable for their actions in conjunction with empathy).

akechi, in particular, would like us to think that all the sins of the entire world are stored in the masayoshi shido--again, from his perspective, it certainly looks that way. but i don’t think we should underestimate the degree to which akechi engineered his own shitty situation with shido, and the degree to which akechi is a highly unreliable narrator of his own circumstances.

the SECOND after shido goes down, the PT are wondering why very little has changed. it turns out that shido is not the source of all the world’s evils. 

shido was a symptom of the world’s evils, that’s for sure. shido is a uniquely-perfect piece of garbage that, by some freak accident, was a well-placed and well-timed fit for the government system’s flaws. the fact that shido got as far as he did is a symptom of the situation, but he isn’t the cause, or the source.

okay, now the phantom thieves have to go one level higher. they’ve got to kill yaldabaoth. yaldabaoth is the cause of everything, isn’t he?

also no. yaldabaoth is also a symptom of humanity’s desires. yaldabaoth was made by the human subconscious and, despite yaldabaoth being a bitchass motherfucker, yaldabaoth wasn’t just being a shit to the phantom thieves when he said that ultimately he’s just fulfilling humanity’s own wishes. 

well, akira takes down this fucker too, but by this time the damage is done. we’ve realized that corruption cannot be contained in a single person. one person alone cannot be conceptualized as the Source Of All Evil. we’re forced to confront the fact that corruption is widespread, everywhere, and exists within individuals as well as in the relations between individuals.

compare and contrast this with the ending of persona 3, in which humanity calls down nyx to enact the end of the world out of some mass collective suicide drive. since nyx cannot be killed, and humanity cannot be stopped from wishing to die, minato becomes the seal to prevent humanity from calling out to nyx. in killing yaldabaoth, akira destroys the manifestation of humanity’s desire to be controlled and kept apathetic, but in both of these situations, the enemy is still humanity itself.

so as it turns out, despite the phantom thieves’ desire to take down shitty individuals in order to dismantle large-scale systems of injustice, the game would have us turn to the fact that this is not enough. the solution is always in the mass population--in everyone everywhere, and that our responsibility as individuals works in conjunction with the fact that everyone is collectively responsible simultaneously.

which brings us back to sae niijima.

i know, i know. i talk about akechi and the velvet room and shido and akira and sojiro for howeverthefuckmany words, and now i’m going to talk about sae. 

sae is the center of persona 5. or at least, she should be.

all the threads that persona 5 has been tracking (or at least has been attempting to track) ultimately boil down to sae and her decision to become a defense attorney. sae takes up the idea of being a benefactor and makes it her profession. and sae, very specifically, tells akira that she, as an adult, will start taking responsibility for the younger generation.

sae says: we might be collectively responsible, and the injustices of the world may be a product of everyone everywhere. but it’s also true that the actions of the collective start with individuals. and that individual is going to be me.

persona 5 begins and ends with an adult saying that the game might be unfair, but i’m going to take it upon myself specifically to do what i can to try and stop that. i will be the benefactor that this kid needs. i will be the difference in someone else’s life. i will stop unfortunate events like akechi and shido from happening.

the truth is that benefactors can and do make a meaningful difference in someone else’s life. that’s the entire reason why they’re so critical to a child’s success in life. as it turns out, people cannot and do not succeed alone. and that it’s not unusual for a child to seek out adult help in any way that they can, and that in fact they should, and it’s normal and understandable, and that adults should seek to help children in any way that they can, lest situations like shido occur.

this is part of the reason why i really like that the velvet room has become such a staple in the persona series. the entire premise of the velvet room is based on the idea that people do need help, and that it’s not a moral failing if you aren’t able to succeed without someone in your corner. 

anyway. say thank you sae, sojiro, and igor.

Mint Condition 14x04

If you follow me on the tweety you’ll know that I made a pathetic attempt at a full season re-watch starting in like… September. I got as far as the end of S5 before S15 began, but given my severe case of swiss cheese brain I decided to pause the full series re-watch there and pick up at 14x01. I figured it’ll be faster to get through S14 for a refresher and then go back to S6. Shut up my logic makes sense to me.  ANYwho, Mint Condition is probably my second favorite episode of S14 and definitely an overall series stand out for me - even tho I did have terrible nightmares after the first time I watched it. That fuckin dummy was goddamn terrifying and my subconscious was REALLY GODDAMNED SURE he was going to kill me in my sleep. I’m happy to report i had zero issues sleeping after watching it this time. :) Altho watch I just jinxed myself, since I am gonna watch again as I write this to pull quotes and screens.  You can tell I’ve been looking up recipes cuz theres a massive intro nobody gives a shit about before I get to the point of the post. NEVER FEAR! The good bits are under the cut. 

Let me just start by pointing out that while I do believe that Stuart is a mirror for Cas, The whole toxic fanboy/incel/chan troll shtick isnt reflective of Cas as a person in the way we (I) would normally judge someone like that.  I’m not sure if it’s because Davy actually sympathizes with and sees no harms in humanizing those people, or if it was for the fun of playing with a character like that, but there certainly are some parallels there - in the sense that even within his own community he’s  a misfit, rebellious, and argumentative. either way, the trench coat is pretty damning. 

Girl Sam comments that the store had been left to her and Dirk, but Stuart had been fired twice, the previous owner kept catching him stealing. But they hired him back because “he’s my friend”. That forgiveness, Stuart’s bad choices and lack of ‘impulse control’ it’s all reflective of Cas, even though it paints Cas in an unnecessarily negative light, on the surface it’s arguable but not entirely wrong. When Stuart pulls out the Panthro toy, his response is: “so angry, so handsome” and damn if that doesnt describe Dean lol.The fact that the first thing we see him do is steal this handsome, angry figure from the place it was sent is just another Dean detail. 

Hey you know who else got stabbed in the gut like that and almost died?

These two are the strongest mirror in the ep. Bonding over candy, shared fashion sense and a love of horror flicks, Dirk tells Dean (those names) that he wants to ‘watch over’ Stuart while he is unconscious, and that despite his rough edges, Stuart has been there for him, giving him a place to crash and escape his shitty father. Which, I mean, this is heavy handed as fuck, presumably to make sure the GA doesn’t miss it, but seriously all this kid needs is an American classic muscle car and a love of Led Zeppelin. 

This where I 

curse my inability to gif because it’s the sublest of moments here but when Dirk asks Dean which of the All Saints Day movies is his favorite, Dean throws a quick glance over his shoulder, as if to make sure nobody is listening. He’s so used to hiding this side of himself, the nerd, the fanboy, that even though he’s a grown ass man that regularly kills supernatural evils, he instinctively looks around real quick to make sure he won’t get caught having this conversation. It’s heartbreaking, and I think, attributable entirely to Jensen - but that’s entirely spec on my part. He does this three times in this scene, before finally getting comfortable and enjoying Dirk’s company. Jesus you’d think he was engaging in some kind of elicit trade the way he’s got his head on a swivel. Poor thing. 

“growing up it was always nice to check out for while… I like to watch movies where I know the bad guys’s gonna lose.” Dean’s preferred method of escapism is relatable, sure, but  he’s also point blank telling us right here, WHY he’s been hiding out in his room watching these movies, he’s self-soothing. He’s just revealed that he was awake and drowning the entire time he was possessed by Michael, he doesn’t know why he was ‘released’ but he knows he came home to find a ‘house full of strangers’. The fact that his self care at this point is pizza, beer and movies the way he did as a kid rather than cheap whiskey, the way we’ve seen him do as an adult, probably speaks volumes to how actually affected he really is.  

Dean being the one to wrestle with the father figure - the owner of the store who taught them everything they know before his death, leaving them the business to run and then possessing the lifesize figure of a mechanic who’d been literally burned in order to get revenge on the one who’d been stealing from them - I hate the idea of a John vs Cas parallel and I don’t think it was intended to go that deep, but there’s no denying a paralell between the ghost of Jordan and John.  

The thread on these two, in my opinion, is a little thin. Beyond the ‘ha ha Sam’s a girl’ joke, and their shared science nerd bit here, the main thing really is that even though the store was left to Sam AND Dirk, it seems like Sam is the defacto leader. She’s the one we see dealing with the incoming delivery, she’s the one behind the counter, and she’s the one who called Stuart to call him out on their one star yelp review. At this point in the season, Sam Winchester is the defacto leader of the new hunter collective he’s inadvertently assembled by way of rescue hunters from Apocalypse World. She also demonstrates Sam’s usual ‘lore’ skills, figuring out that it’s the keys that the ghost is most likely tied to, and finding a chemical in the morgue to use as an accelerant to help rescue Dean. That’s literally all I’ve got on them two. 

This is random, but the significance of that poster has been bugging me since the live airing of this ep. I do not understand that reference and it’s driving me bonkers, so if anyone does, PLEASE TELL ME. 

🙃 I really hope I don’t have nightmares tonight. That mask on the dummy is fucking horrible. 

Character Solidifying for Rowan!

god this is so fucking late forgive me, but anyway here u go! answers under the cut

1. How does your character think of their father? What do they hate and love about him? What influence - literal or imagined - did the father have?

oh he loved his dad, and he thinks of him with a lot of love and respect. really, the only thing about his father that was not so great was the amount of time that he spent working, and both rowan and em wished that he had more time to spend with them. at the same time though, if rowan or emilia sought their dad out he’d always try to spend time with them. he was a good guy, and rowan wants to be someone who would make his dad proud & honor his legacy.

2. Their mother? How do they think of her? What do they hate? Love? What influence - literal or imagined - did the mother have?

his relationship w/ his mother is more complicated, mostly because she died when rowan was very young (she died in childbirth giving birth to emilia, so rowan would have been about 3) so rowan doesn’t remember her well. he maybe thinks of her with a bit of longing, but that’s more about the idea of a mother rather than the woman herself. 

3. Brothers, sisters? Who do they like? Why? What do they despise about their siblings?

he has one younger sister, Emilia (3 years younger). he loves his little sister a lot, partially because he was always very attached to the role of being a “big brother” and partially because he and emilia were probably each other’s only playmates as kids? they probably fought sometimes, like siblings do, especially since em always had a lot more energy and rowan just wanted to be left alone sometimes, but at the end of the day she’s one of the most important people to him. he’s very proud of her, even if she is a terrorist probably?

4. What type of discipline was your character subjected to at home? Strict? Lenient?

it wasn’t very strict at all but i also think he was a pretty good kid who didn’t get into trouble all that often

5. Were they overprotected as a child? Sheltered?

physically yes, mentally not as much? he and em had their own personal guards, and rowan was accompanied by a group of guards + marcus after his family was attacked, so physically he was never in much danger. on the other hand, his father believed in being honest w/ the kids and not trying to hide all the stuff that was going on in the outside world, and after rowan started traveling w/ marcus they didn’t keep their plans from him and let him be involved (probably because rowan would be even more upset if he didn’t know what was going on)

6. Did they feel rejection or affection as a child?

all affection. one thing that can be said for his tragic backstory™ is that at least he was always surrounded by people who loved and cared for him

7. What was the economic status of their family?

very rich, they were nobility

8. How does your character feel about religion?

he wasn’t raised in any religion so he has no attachment to any specific religious beliefs, but he believes that gods exist and it’s probably a good idea to stay on their good side (although this is changing a bit now that he’s met a bunch of gods and some of them are dicks *cough* aengus *cough*)

in modern day he’d probably be considered vaguely agnostic

9. What about political beliefs?

very anti-new initiative and pro-hoth (obv). on a more theoretical level, he believes that there should be a government to unify, organize, and protect the people, but it shouldn’t run into totalitarianism and should have input from the people it governs.

10. Is your character street-smart, book-smart, intelligent, intellectual, slow-witted?

as a kid, very book smart, which would have continued if it wasn’t for the attack on his home. he ended up having to abandon his studies to some extent and focus much more on practical skills, so he has a good amount of street smarts as well now, although they mostly focus on his ability to move unnoticed and gather information.

11. How do they see themselves: as smart, as intelligent, uneducated?

he sees himself as fairly smart, but not super well-educated (or at least not as well educated as he’d like to be), since he’s self-taught on a lot of stuff and doesnt have a full formal education

12. How does their education and intelligence – or lack thereof - reflect in their speech pattern, vocabulary, and pronunciations?

i think the fact that he was well educated as a kid but had to quickly adapt to life on the road (w/ a bunch of guards no less) is reflected in his speech, as he goes back and forth between a more formal speaking style and more casual speech in his day to day conversations. he can switch back into more formal/well-educated speech if he needs to (see: when pretending to be a noble) but it’s not very natural for him.

13. Did they like school? Teachers? Schoolmates?

he loved it! he’s a fucking nerd and he loves to learn, so much that he kept up his studies even after he lacked a formal schooling environment. he also really like his teacher ms. alduri, even if she was strict sometimes. he didn’t have schoolmates though, he was basically homeschooled and his sister was younger than him and interested in different subjects anyway.

14. Were they involved at school? Sports? Clubs? Debate? Were they unconnected?

those didn’t really exist, he had private tutors

15. Did they graduate? High-School? College? Do they have a PHD? A GED?

he stopped his formal education at age nine

16. What does your character do for a living? How do they see their profession? What do they like about it? Dislike?

he’s a spy, basically. he doesn’t really see it as a matter of liking or not liking his work, but instead the work that he does is a matter of necessity. he’s doing this work because it’ll help him achieve his ultimate goals (bringing down new initiative/bringing back hoth) and because he has a deep loyalty to the resistance for all the help and protection they’ve given him. he likes that he’s doing useful work, and he likes seeing new places.

17. Did they travel? Where? Why? When?

all the time since he was nine. they never stopped in one place for more than a month, mostly around khajjitan (sp?) and then when he started helping out the resistance, in the desert as well, although recently he’s been traveling farther north. he travels because if he stays in one place too long he might be found by people who may potentially want to kill him, and because his job requires it.

18. What did they find abroad, and what did they remember?

this is kind of a weird question to answer, because at this point his “being abroad” encompasses… over half his life? but i would say he found his godfather, his favorite weapon, his best friend, and a lot of new skills. he remembers a lot of moving around and never really making friends or relationships that lasted, and seas of grass, and later seas of sand that go on for days. and he of course remembers marcus sticking by him and taking care of him.

19. What were your character’s deepest disillusions? In life? What are they now?

right after his home was attacked i think he realized, moreso than he ever had before, that the world was a mean and dangerous place and that he wasn’t safe, and that no one really was. i think it’s still probably something close to that, that you can’t really trust anybody but yourself and a few others.

20. What were the most deeply impressive political or social, national or international, events that they experienced?

oh boy. well, when he was very young he was in the area when the capital of hoth collapsed, and he was also present for the attack on his home where the last king of hoth was assassinated. later on, he was in the capital of khajjitan when the high councilor was killed in an attack on the city and he participated in fighting off invaders. he was also present when that one building blew up in the fishing villages. a lot of shit has happened tbh.

21. What are your character’s manners like? What is their type of hero? Whom do they hate?

he’s pretty polite to strangers, kind of a snarky shit to people he knows better. i don’t think he’s particularly taken with the ideas of heroes, but he would model his image of a hero off of his father or marcus, very kind men who always put others before themselves.

he hates a good portion of jashtall’s government. he also tends not to like people he perceives as untrustworthy which is… ironic

22. Who are their friends? Lovers? ‘Type’ or ‘ideal’ partner?

lumley + the people on his team, although to varying degrees (he probably puts lumley, maybe peitho and honeyclaw in the friend category, while he views mies and ko as coworkers, although he’s starting to get closer to mies). he doesn’t really have a lot of friends otherwise since he didn’t grow up around a lot of people his age. he also doesn’t really have ‘lovers,’ unless you count a couple one-off flings from when he was traveling by himself or his current thing with quinn.

as for ‘type’, i dont think he pursues romantic stuff often but he tends to go after people who are a bit more outgoing than him that he can have a good conversation with/match intellectually (that he can nerd out with basically). i think he also tends to go for people who are taller than him? i think that’s a thing

(i’ve also definitely decided that his taste in girls is “girls that are definitely way cooler than him” but i havent figured out his taste in guys yet, more info to come)

23. What do they want from a partner? What do they think and feel of sex?

he wants (or at least definitely needs) someone who is stable and can sort of ground him emotionally, and someone he can trust completely.

as for sex it’s…weird? because i think sex is something he wants/enjoys but he has a lot of hang-ups wrapped up in his issues with trusting others and being open with them. so he finds the experience of having to be very intimate physically or emotionally very uncomfortable and it makes sex kind of an awkward topic

24. What social groups and activities does your character attend? What role do they like to play? What role do they actually play, usually?

almost none, he doesn’t interact w/ a lot of people outside of missions. when he is around people he either likes to fade into the background unless he’s put in a specific role he’s supposed to fulfill. in reality he likes to be in control of the situation and know what’s going.

25. What are their hobbies and interests?

he loves magic! so much that he studied it even after his formal schooling got cut short. he also loves history and reads non-fiction books whenever he gets the chance. and in his spare time he enjoys playing cards (which some of the guards he traveled with taught him). it’s how he developed a good poker face.

26. What does your character’s home look like? Personal taste? Clothing? Hair? Appearance?

what home lol

as for personal taste though, he tends to go for darker/duller colors that don’t stick out too much (he likes to wear shades of blue and brown especially). he likes comfortable and inconspicuous clothes, and goes for simplicity over complicated outfits, altho he’s a fan of layers. his head is shaved, but when it grows out he has dark curly hair. 

27. How do they relate to their appearance? How do they wear their clothing? Style? Quality?

he cares a lot about his appearance but more in the sense of being very careful of what kind of image he’s projecting. he doesn’t want to stick out too much, and is careful to dress in a way that will make him blend in to whatever circumstance he needs to. unless he’s wearing the very fancy clothing he obtained recently so he could dress as a noble (a situation which is very weird and new, he hasn’t dressed up like this since he was little), he tends to go for comfortable, modest clothing that he can move around in easily, usually involving layers and some way to hide his face. nothing ridiculously high quality, but he likes clothes that will last him a while.

28. Who is your character’s mate? How do they relate to him or her? How did they make their choice?

he’s not really with anyone atm, all of his recent romantic encounters have been born almost exclusively out of him trying to get info out of people

29. What is your character’s weaknesses? Hubris? Pride? Controlling?

depends on the situation and who you ask. in relationships, his tendency towards thinking of relationships strategically and hella trust issues/lying. in his job, has a soft squishy center that can lead to him getting attached, although on the other hand he also has a bad tendency towards very black and white thinking, putting a lot of emotional weight on ppl he trusts and kinda disregarding anyone who falls into an enemy category. it’s complicated.

30. Are they holding on to something in the past? Can he or she forgive?

oh boy is he! he’s holding onto his father’s death and his sister’s disappearance, and it’s not something that he’s going to be able to forgive, ever i think. it fucked up his life too much for true forgiveness to ever really be an option.

31. Does your character have children? How do they feel about their parental role? About the children? How do the children relate?

he doesn’t have kids, although he’d like to be a dad one day

32. How does your character react to stress situations? Defensively? Aggressively? Evasively?

usually evasively, if something is wrong or he doesnt want to deal with a situation his first instinct is to run or evade.

33. Do they drink? Take drugs? What about their health? 

he drinks occasionally but not often, since he doesn’t like the “lowered inhibitions” part of it that much

34. Does your character feel self-righteous? Revengeful? Contemptuous?

very revengeful and somewhat righteous towards jashtall. they killed his family and destroyed his country and his life, he’s not happy.

35. Do they always rationalize errors? How do they accept disasters and failures?

he puts a lot of pressure onto himself to live up to the roles placed onto him, so when things go wrong he tends to think of it as his fault and freak out a bit, usually trying to atone for whatever happened.

36. Do they like to suffer? Like to see other people suffering?

no, but he’ll endure a lot if he thinks its for a good reason or cause. and he doesnt like to see people suffer but there are some enemies he won’t be afraid to be ruthless against.

37. How is your character’s imagination? Daydreaming a lot? Worried most of the time? Living in memories?

he’s not a big daydreamer, tends to be more focused on the moment and how he’s going to approach the future. he tends more towards the latter two, worrying quite a bit but tbh his situation calls for a good bit of that, and when he’s alone he prefers to revisit old (good) memories rather than daydream.

38. Are they basically negative when facing new things? Suspicious? Hostile? Scared? Enthusiastic?

almost always very suspicious, even of things that seem relatively innocuous. he’s not very trusting and usually assumes others are out to get him or could lead to him being found out unless he has reason to believe otherwise.

39. What do they like to ridicule? What do they find stupid?

he doesn’t (outwardly) ridicule others a lot i don’t think (unless they did something really dumb), but internally he thinks people who automatically trust others are dumb, as well as people who don’t think before they act.

40. How is their sense of humor? Do they have one?

he doesn’t have much of a sense of humor. he can laugh at other people’s jokes but is very bad at making them himself. he likes wordplay and puns though.

41. Is your character aware of who they are? Strengths? Weaknesses? Idiosyncrasies? Capable of self-irony?

he’s aware of his own strengths and weaknesses on a physical level, he knows what skills he has and how he can be most useful, but he’s not super self aware internally. he’s not very introspective and probably isn’t aware of how emotional he is.

42. What does your character want most? What do they need really badly, compulsively? What are they willing to do, to sacrifice, to obtain?

right now, he wants his sister back, he wants jashtall in pieces, he wants to build his home again. he’ll sacrifice a lot of work and pain and hardship for that.

43. Does your character have any secrets? If so, are they holding them back?

oh boy does he lol. mostly the “secretly the prince of hoth” thing, along with the “currently a spy” thing, along with the several fake identities he’s using at the moment. he hold these things back from most people, but he’s becoming more open now that he has more people that he can rely on. he won’t give most of this info up unless it’s necessary to do so though.

44. How badly do they want to obtain their life objectives? How do they pursue them?

very badly, but his responsibilities come first– it’s a rare occasion that he drops everything to go do whatever he wants. he generally tries to obtain his goals through planning and slow/deliberate action, utilizing help available to him rather than just pursuing things on his own. 

45. Is your character pragmatic? Think first? Responsible? All action? A visionary? Passionate? Quixotic?

very pragmatic, much of which is learned– constantly moving and running away lends itself to making one very pragmatic about their actions, which even extends to how rowan uses magic, mostly picking up charms and illusions because they tend to be the most useful, even if they’re not what he’d prefer. he’s not very impulsive and much prefers to clearly plan things out before acting. “responsible” is also a key character trait of his, he’s very committed to the responsibilities given to him or the responsibilities that come with any role he has (whether as a brother, a prince, a leader, etc.)

 46. Is your character tall? Short? What about size? Weight? Posture? How do they feel about their physical body?

height-wise he’s very average (he’s 5′9″). i don’t know his weight but he errs on the leaner side, although he does have muscles (his build is somewhat akin to a dancer’s build, where he has muscles but they’re mostly focused on being able to move quickly and efficiently rather than pure strength). he has very good posture. i don’t think he has any problems with his body, but he’s also pretty modest and doesn’t really want to show it off at all.

47. Do they want to project an image of a younger, older, more important person? Does they want to be visible or invisible?

he wants to come off as older and more secure and in-control than he is. whether he wants to be viewed as important/visible/invisible changes depending on the situation. if he’s pretending to be someone important then he wants to project that, but otherwise he feels very uncomfortable being looked at and noticed and would much prefer to blend into the crowd.

48. How are your character’s gestures? Vigorous? Weak? Controlled? Compulsive? Energetic? Sluggish?

very controlled and deliberate.

49. What about voice? Pitch? Strength? Tempo and rhythm of speech? Pronunciation? Accent?

his voice is... tenorish maybe? idk, not terribly low but not super high either. he doesn’t have a very loud voice but knows how to speak authoritatively, and he tends to speak a bit more slowly and deliberately. 

in regards to pronunciation & accent (and also vocabulary), i think it’s somewhat apparent in his normal speech that he goes back and forth between a more “proper” and “educated” style of speech that he spoke growing up as nobility (which also would probably come with a hothean accent, whatever that is in this world), and a more casual style of speech that he picked up from years on the road (he also pronounces some words with a kajjitani accent/pronunciation), he can fall back into the more “noble” style if the situation calls for it, but his normal speaking style goes back and forth between the two. 

50. What are the prevailing facial expressions? Sour? Cheerful? Dominating?

his main facial expression is a serious one, trying to seem impassive but definitely kind of “on” at all times. if he shows his emotions his expressions tend to be kind of grumpy, although he can put up a front and appear very polite and amiable if he wants (although he finds it very draining to do so).

But when that person literally made me kill my lover, left me and my remaining family and a few close friends to die, kidnapped me and held me hostage - I wouldn't ever love them!

Blarke Broken Record Lexa Hate volume #61

And yet... you all expect Bellarke to be a thing even though hes done the same repetitive shit over 4 SEASONS with even worse motivations.   Jesus Christ, How are you all clinging to this nonsense still?  HOW are you not seeing the hypocrisy in your own ship when making dumbarsed claims like that to demonize the lesbian that threatens your precious “unhealthy M/F trumps respectful F/F” trope “relationship”. Did you all seriously miss:      --Bellamy handcuffing clarke in S3 and dragging her to pikes cells/audience against her will where she would more than likely face obvious judgment, interrogation, and imprisonment for her support of the grounders and collusion with Commander Lexa - the leader of them all.       -- Clarke had bellamy drugged in S4, dragged into a bunker, held via handcuffs at gunpoint against his will (while his sister was condemned to death outside), and when he escaped got shot at by Clarke because he was endangering what mattered most to clarke which is and always has been the survival of her people and she was threatening what mattered (at this point in time) the most to him, his sister - such a constant and healthy respect to what matters to each other; especially after four seasons of “development” eh?  They still dont really care or understand each other on a personal level to go out of their way to respect each others feelings when making leadership decisions. They never go beyond the usefulness of a work camaraderie that frequently in itself doesnt make any sense due to the repeated breaking of trust between the two.   -- Bellamy goes out to get the water device in S4 to save 500+ people with the end of the world fast approaching, but idiotically chooses 25 over that 500 (25 that are going to die anyways, without that water device) - then lets clarkes make the list while he snoozes;  A heavily reduced number he was a direct cause of and dumps the now even more difficult list of responsibility on her, while also forcing her name on the list and never questioning if his should be on there - he shouldve crossed his own out - hes not a good leader, and he has no valuable skillset beyond idiotically murdering people.  Dont get me started on clarke putting bellamys name on there after all the lives he’s ended that WOULDNT make it onto that list because of yet another one of his dumb decisions clarke just lets go.  Seriously, clarke is an unhealthy enabler of bellamys problems - hes not learning because shes there to do it all (and take all the shit it develops) for him while he sits and stagnates in problematic territory with his pathetic angst and blames others for his problems, like clarke and octavia.  Like a parent doing her kids homework, or never addressing her own kids bullying of other students and instead just praises him with no discipline.  Now give that kid a gun.  Now imagine that kid is 7-8 years older than you.  Yeah, fucking stupid.    -- Bellamy condemns Lincoln in S3 and his fellow grounders and allies (INCLUDING ENDANGERING KANE, MILLER, SINCLAIR, OCTAVIA, AND ABBY - as well as the whole of Arkadia, CLARKES FRIENDS AND FAMILY AND CLARKE HERSELF) to a jail cell and execution while also being denied basic medical care, threatens and disrespects his own sisters choices to associate with and also be a grounder; bell rather sides with a man who has no qualms in killing such folk and their supporters.  WHere in the hell does bellamy think this road is gonna go?  How stupid can you be?  Basically ignores clarkes power of influence in polis to keep an eye on lexa and does his own recklessly shortsighted and dangerously over emotional shit within his own ignorant bubble - shit that could've very likely put clarkes and HIS PEOPLE’S lives in a whole lot of danger.     -- Bellamys whole “DEATH TO THE GROUNDERS!” alongside pikes regime of shortsighted xenophobic prattle basically led to the buildup and uprising in polis that got lexa CLARKES LOVER killed (yes titus shot the gun, but WHY was he so nervous to begin with, what pushed him into that extreme? Arkadia’s xenophobia and grounder slaughter, correct!) - not to mention the whole descending into chaos because lexa wasnt there to play mediator with the well respected commander chip.      --  Lets go back to season 1, when the ship started to build iteself - where bellamy condemned the ark to cover up his cowardice of facing justice for shooting Jaha, he was willing to let AN ENTIRE ARK die INCLUDING CLARKES MOM, to save his own ass.  But yes, lexa is the evil one - got it. (This is just a small handful, i can find more if you still dont see how irrational youre being in regards to this spite for C/Lexa on this level.) And yet...with ALL THAT SELFISH SHIT surrounding both characters OVER 4 SEASONS (no development really, how dumb is that!?), ALL OF THESE MATCH THE CRITERIA TO A GREATER (if not repeated) EXTREME IN WHICH YOU DESPISE LEXA - Be||arke still seems to be strongly supported by you hypocritical lot while lexa gets shit on. Crazy... At least lexa had Clarke’s interests in mind (her peoples survival, clarkes mental health and importance of her survival for arkadia\grounder relations, and her own peoples adjustments to coexist with skaikru - if ice nation got their hands on clarke, its a safe bet skaikru AND clarke, as well as her mission for peace were all royally screwed) when she “Kidnapped” her (clarkes presence was necessary for a bigger purpose; one lexa knew she would care about at her core, also clarke was being self destructive - lexa cared for clarke, can you sit and watch someone you care about self destruct without intervention?  Communication is necessary for either party to address problems before moving forward.)  and “held her hostage” (yes, holding her in a lavish guest bedroom with free reign of the grounds temporarily until her own people got there to take her home so ice nation wouldn't have the opportunity to kill her was totally monstrous, EVIL!!) and then so obviously devolved into this weird stockholms syndrome bullshit you all cling to without any real understanding of the condition or evidence of it in the show to base it on.  NONE of that has been supported by writers, showrunner, or actresses.  Seriously, go find your common sense guys - you seemed to have dropped it in your senseless hardcore shipping of a heavily problematic to downright abusive crackship that Jroth has been spending 4 seasons hopelessly butchering to horribly railroaded and nonsensical extremes. And lexa didnt force clarke to kill Finn, that was entirely finns doing - Clarke chose to mercy kill because face it, there was no other way out of the situation for him.  Dont erase finns deeds and pin it on the lesbian who was as much a victim of the circumstances HE put into motion with needless slaughter.  He captured and murdered innocent people without provocation, raided their village; a crime he stepped forward to face their justice for to not only atone but also ensure an alliance could exist between the two peoples - something finn had attempted back in s1 before suffering a nonsensical jroth 180 for shock value.  They have a 100 yr old culture based on “blood must have blood” - you saw what happened when lexa decided to change that, what did her people do? Titus was reflection of the anger, betrayal, and scorn of the grounder population.  And what happened to Lexa?  Yeah thats exactly why you dont rush big changes like that into an entire friggan culture.  It HAS to be gradual so an understanding can be grasped.  Something lexa was attempting to do, as we saw when instead of annihilating the ark decided only to barricade until a prisoner bargain could be reached, but then got rushed because she “Had to die” for nonsensical shock value.  Lincoln himself told you all WHY she couldnt just let finn live, but like always youre all willing to ignore large chunks of the show to demonize the lesbian that threatens your ship.  Your motivations are so disgustingly shallow its pathetic...

But yeah, sure, Lexa was the despicably evil one.  No wonder youre the only fanbase left watching jroths garbage.  No brain needed for the shit he peddles out these days due to how nonsensical and inconsistent it all is so you can hope that bellamy will one day force himself onto clarke.  All the racist undertones, the colonist narrative, all those offensive creative decisions you berate the clexas for supporting but then continue supporting the show itself that perpetuates them...  Lets face it, Thats really what this show is all about to you lot, right?  Bellamy giving clarke what the stupid bitch deserves right? Nothing more. His dick and repeat abuses that clarke should condone and cater endlessly to in this heavily one sided ship of douchebaggery.  So romantic.  Shits not even healthy on a platonic level... but yeah sure, the 1oo is all about bellamy and clarke.. its too bad its turned into poorly written shit to prop up bellamy while turning clarke into a meek subservient woman catering to his mass murdering shitstorm causing feelings...

I kinda feel the same way about creek, but I do have a blog about him many years after the movie (keep in mind durring those years he was obviously outcasted) and him being grey an kinda down on himself all the time but took ALOT of years for it to set in. Im not the kind to say that creek "ameidiantly" feel bad for his actions. Right? Hes too evil and stuck up for that. But that doesnt mean that he didnt one day, broke into sadness. As evil as he is, no one can escape they're inner emotions.

Yeah… honestly, I don’t really know what the far distant future holds for Creek…

But it is true that if he really survived the post credits scene, it wouldn’t make sense for him to be stuck in the same mindset for-literally-ever. 

He absolutely knows what he did was wrong, for starters, but constantly justified his actions with “I’m just doing what I have to to survive”, (he didn’t have to jump straight into genocide tho) which was boosted by his own superiority complex. I don’t know how long this would last, and how long he’d be able to keep this up. He had always been an emotionally manipulative character, since the very beginning of the film, and I know emotionally manipulative people can manage to not self-reflect and stay the way they are so long as they always have something they can fall back on (aka, ‘I’m going to sleep on your couch and eat your food without looking for work, but when that falls through I’ve got someone else I can sucker into letting me, anyways’) and never learn, and never change. 

But Creek, again, if he survived, wouldn’t have anything to fall back on. I don’t think he accepts this fact for a while, which is why I worked in his plan for pseudo-redemption in the kidnapped!Branch story. Again, Creek has a superiority complex, and would most likely blame the outcome of the movie on others, rather than himself by continuously justifying his actions.

That can last for a long time, but, again, without either an echo chamber or any means of falling back on something or someone else to avoid facing any consequences, I don’t think that can last forever. And banishment is a pretty harsh punishment for an extroverted troll like Creek, so he is eventually going to feel consequences for his actions, despite the fact that he most likely doesn’t innitially regret what he’s done, from a moral standpoint. And, if he ever did turn grey, it probably wouldn’t be for a LONG time until he really starts to self-reflect. And even then, because his efforts were thwarted and he never succeeded in getting anyone killed but Chef, his greyness would probably look more like the mourners at the Clown’s funeral, a more half-grey-looking palette, because what he regrets is a “what could have been” rather than a tragedy that DID happen directly because of him (aka Branch).

He did do something that boarders on unforgivable, though. I’d say it’s flat-out unforgivable, but Poppy sees the good in everyone. I really don’t known what the far future holds for Creek, if he’d be forgiven and accepted back into his community (especially if Branch is king, because he knew he was a scum wad before he sold everyone out, so Creek would not only have to prove regretful for his crimes, but also show that he’s actually changed as a person and is no longer manipulative) or not.

@omgthatsruff had written a piece about Branch and Poppy’s daughter meeting Creek a little over 10 years after the movie, and I don’t really have any qualms about the way he was characterized.

I guess the way I feel about it is in the air. It would take a long time and a lot would have to fall in place for Creek to ever get a happy ending, but if it’s handled in a realistic way, I’d be open to it. I don’t try to think that people never change, but I do know from experience that it’s a process and a lot has to fall into place because there are people who can keep up their mentality for a long, long time, even if people they supposedly care about are affected.

I guess, if DreamWorks decides to address it in any sequel or comics they may release in the future, we'll just have to see.

(PS: in the human!au Creek does more or less have something he can fall back on because he hasn’t pissed off his entire species, so I definitely can’t see him changing anytime soon)

Strike Witches episode 1: first impression

so im gonna try strike witches: the unknown anime i chose to not familiarize myself with the premise beyond 'something like fighter pilots i think?' that i picked up by osmosis

oh hey look a discarded doll. def war is hell vibes here

cant say im a fan of the visuals from the first several seconds, the color scheme and everything seems kinda bland? the only reason im making this observation is bc i had to pause to let it load tho

oh look Very Noticable CGI

(i have a headache and am vaguely nauseous and basically am Very Cranky as a result)

man, there aren't even characters yet. it's been almost two minuets and there still aren't people for me to relate too that's a crime by which i dont mean that literally but just 'this might not be the thing i want to watch right now'

oh hey monsters okay this is better than just straight up war is hell between humans omfg in 1939 subtle 'we wanna play with ww2 era toys but without bringing up the fact japan was on the side of nazi germany' i assume sure im onboard if thats the premise

magitech??? magitech!!!

that's. their legs. in those things. are they evoking Baba Yaga and her travels in a stupa bc thats okay panty shots i think imma quit at the end of this episode

oh i. just realized this is the movie that actually makes it a bit better and gives me more hope lets try the actual first episode first

ok the first shot is of the sky and not a discarded doll that's already better

holy shit whatever this video player is it allows to load external captions from pc or url. technology progresses at an incredible pace

i love that the fighter planes are clearly shown attacking the vortex first 9u9

opening has so many girls wearing shoes but no pants. im just. this entire device's entire point is clearly to fanservice that does not mean this is bad character-wise yet ofc. i watched and liked fucking rosario+vampire. this show has a chance yet. lets see what its got

the op song is nice its also very straightforward about aesthetic of this show being 'girls without pants in absolutely non-sexual situaitons' and i can respect that

and oh look it actually does start with characters interacting right after exposition that's what im talking about

okay so now might be a good time to mention that the first context i heard of strike witches was uh. misogynist porn. like the kind that doesnt go for 'look at these relatable characters being kinky' but for 'consider: what if powerful girls got hurt instead'. so thats the context in my brain and i want to fucking overwrite it

military uniforms+panties are definitely an aesthetic and im incredibly amused by it okay every single girl here doesnt wear pants sure that actually looks like a swimsuit rather than panties and thats nice

also they are characterizing the protagonist! like i know thats not much to ask for but im going into this straight off blogging about madoka and this is just such a relief! she is kind and brave and plucky and talks gently to a scared kitten and I love her also she Does Not Think Things Through shes like the typical shonen protagonist but a girl. im in

Yoshika her name is Yoshika

and her motivation is her dad but eh sure whatever I kind of like the touch of 'it was classified military information' not sure why

theres nothing about Yoshika that qualifies her other than her personality and magic powers huh

yep thats a swimsuit aww shes a healer!

I love that the military observers rush to help as soon as they see something is off theres work and then theres helping emergencies

oh!!!! her mom and grandma are around!!! and teaching her!!! im happy!!!

Yoshika why is all that a 'but' to 'you should learn to control your power' i dont think there was any subtext of 'you shouldnt even try' there? or was it? maybe i should just trust her for now

awww Yoshika actually doesn't want to go to war <3 but this woman thinks she will because she wants to help people and she'll help people the most there I I like this ;~; I'm so happy I like this I love Yoshika's 'fuck war' instinct I love her drive to help everyone and in fact the trope of magical healer almost killing themselves to help a patient (despite it being professionally inadvisable) is actually the thing i made my very first rp character sooo :> you know. stuff something is fishy about that letter. its no coincidence it was sent just now... I love Sakamoto and her A+ social skills HA HA HA HA HA also huh... she's not in on whatever's up with that letter

Yoshika so uh alright she'll take her without enlisting her huh interesting but uh what about school I guess military and witches can override all that and it kind of makes sense to me thematically

'Britannia' gee how familiar that name sounds and i dont mean geographically

so hm could Yoshika be a military doctor without actually enlisting? how do the formalities work there i like that Sakamoto doesnt question her dislike of all things military like its unexpected but mostly bc Sakamoto's got a one track mind that has a hard time expecting anything other than what she wants to happen and beyond that its like 'sure ok a conscientous objector got it' even though its weird how there would be conscientous objectors to fighting MONSTERS its not like theres an alternative to not fight I mean also clearly Yoshika is a kid and theres room left for that in other characters' treatment of her opinions and I love that they dont get Offended that she doesn't understand and Have Proper Respect well Sakamoto doesn't at least not sure about how other people will react

man that raccoon on the road sure was convenient though. like i first thought it was Sakamoto's deliberate tactic to gauge Yoshiko's powers. she was opening her eye to i guess do just that visually and then the raccoon appeared and it just felt very natural that one follows from the other? is this foreshadowing or are the writers of this anime just unfamiliar with the concept of 'subtle' i dont mind if its the latter tbh

(im writing a ton of reflection bc the episode broke after i tried to rewind a little and i decided to download it after all, and its doing that)

so far, this show seeems nicely straightforward and fast paced. like, really straightforward. yoshiko's introduction? saving a kitten. making a ww2 era anime without difficult shit? monsters attacked in 1939. motivations and revelations are handled with all the subtlety of a hammer to the face, from the raccoon to the letter. even fanservice has the same charming quality that makes me actually be okay with the entire point of their outfits being gratuitous panty shots. making sense and having pretense is for the weak. this anime knows what it wants to be and is going straight for that. i respect that approach

also its p clear that what it wants is to be character driven and its been Delivering on that since its only half episode one and i already Love two characters personally and also some supporting cast (Yoshiko's entire family)

and like you know that in some other show GASP MIGHT MY DAD BE STILL ALIVE would be a reveal saved for like. the halfway point. but here its literally the starting point spurring everything into action bc all other motivation was just too slow to get the character where she was supposed to go. good job yo

there's this trope where the main character doesn't want to go into the main conflict (Refusal of the Call)... and very often it's handled by either 1) letting them wallow until everything goes to shit showing how wrong they were or 2) immediately conveniently wrecking everything so they have no choice now I uh. am really glad this show went a different way if just joining the conflict isnt a good enough motivation GET A BETTER ONE and IT DOESNT HAVE TO BE ANGST (and it doesn't have to be romance, either!!! why are those two the only things writers seem to be able to think of jfc)

...okay I was more like two thirds through the episode rather than half but my points stand

okay so I think what just happened was Yoshiko realized the parallel between herself and her dad leaving and got scared and her response was to comfort other people and I love that <3

I love that Sakamoto doesn't have a doubt in her mind that Yoshiko isn't going to be useless and will definitely help and also comes to her to discuss this explicitly <3

man I love Sakamoto and her absolute lack of social graces and sense of when enough is enough

and the fact that Yoshiko is working chores now and seems to enjoy it too <3

and it's when it's established that she's part of the team that Sakamoto starts showing off <3 she clearly has a dedicated well thought out campaign of convincing Yoshiko going on and its borne out not of manipulation but of clear conviction that she is right and she just has to show the girl what she doesnt know yet <3

ahaha of course showing off worked <3

so I paused and imma make a bet with myself on whether Sakamoto is going to tell her 'if you liked that you can join' right now or leave that unsaid subtly my bet is that she is, bc subtlety is an entirely foreign concept to this wonderful human being, and if i lose im going to make my bed right now not even waiting for the end of the episode let's see

oh she starts with education huh, this is not widely known? i had no idea anyway lets see if she says the thing

I love that it's her dad and it's this kind thing of 'this is what he said he was going to do, and he did' <3

huh so that was slightly more subtlety than I expected, she offered her to try them rather than trying to recruit her directly so I lost the bet gotta go make the bed now

BAM DONE YAY GOOD SELF CARE

hey more main characters!!!! I love all of you already!!! you have personality and discuss things that make sense!!! including their outfits!!! I love them!!!! the parasol girl is my favorite but also the tiny girl and the red-haired girl they are all my favorites!!!

omfg a month of travel and half a day early Yoshiko gets impatient I love her

YOU ARE A NONCOMBATANT she said with the steely confidence of a commanding officer <3

I love so much that Sakamoto respects Yoshiko's boundaries re: fighting???

OMG THE ENDING SONG I LOVE IT

I love the upbeat and airy tone this show manages to have despite the premise??? like I had trepidations at the start bc I dislike doom&gloom-heaviness of 'war is hell' narratives and I'm not a WW2 affictionado. but instead of shiny boom boom toys and angst it's all character adorableness and so much sky??? even the lack of pants ends up feeling like freedom this is the anime we all deserve

Here’s that fucked up AU I mentioned.

Ok so this is like... More of an alternate dimension?  Like, this is a situation that I would LOVE to write and it would mean that your muses could easily exist in it in a dimension hopping sense?  Like, I have a set up reality, but just because i have an idea for say... idk Gideon, doesnt mean that another Gideon couldnt visit this dimension.  So, here we go.

So, this dimension it literally situated on the egde of the nightmare realm.  During this reality’s version of Weirdmageddon, after Bill couldnt break out of gravity falls, he essentially dragged Gravity Falls into a horrible middle ground between the nightmare realm.  This made it impossible for the people within Gravity Falls to leave.  Slowly, more towns and communities were added simply because so many people in GF perished or... Switched sides, so to speak.

When I say switched sides, I mean they underwent a sort of horrible transformation.  When Bill took the falls out of actual reality, something in him snapped (even more then he already snapped) and he made a game out of taking the mortals and warping them into more demon buddies and accomplices, as well as taking an eye out of every person he comes across so everyone has one eye.  Very few people embrace the triangular overloard, most rebel and fight back.  Many are captured and are mutilated by lesser demons, or are turned to demons themselves by the greater zodiac demons.

There are the more common demons and there are zodiac demons, which line up with the zodiac that could have ended it all (plus some extras that bill and co. deemed... important.)

If anybody entered this dimension you’d be met wit ha very small unit of people.  Most everyone in the main cast of the show are gone, so it opens the world up for interaction and adds to the ANGST of the ordeal.  What follows is what happened to our main cast, but before that I have to tell you the fate of my beloved matriarch oc, Aggie.

Aggie was one of the first people to be turned to a Zodiac demon.  True to her protective nature, she essentially sacrificed herself to protect Olive and the kids (who were with her at the time) with the combined power of Bill as well as Hex Arcana, the demon who effectively owns Aggie, our sweet loving witch lady is turned to nothing short of a monster.  She shifts shape between a terrifying dog-beast with white fur and six eyes, to a semblance of her formal self but covered in bloody hexagons, and with no ounce of humanity behind.  Zodiac demon known as The Mongrel and she mostly stays around her old house.

Dipper and Mabel survived weirdmageddon and for some time after, the got by with the help of their uncles.  Devastated by the fact they’d likely never see their parents again, they were determined to do all they could to defeat Bill.  This proved to be impossible for them.  During a raid, Mabel was taken by Bill himself, and she was warped from sweet girl to a firey demon with a sadistic streak.  Mabel no more, she became a zodiac demon; Shooting Star.  

After the loss of Mabel, Dipper became even more determined.  Together with Ford, they developed as much technology and protective measures their two brilliant minds could manage.  Ford wanted to do more tests, but Dipper wanted to stop the madness and save everyone who’d been lost.  He went out (followed by Olive, Wendy and Gideon) and was taken by his sister.  He became the zodiac demon, Pine Tree and instantly turned on the others.  Dipper attacked Olive and fulfilled Bil’s order for each person alive to only have one eye, leaving her bleeding on the ground as Wendy tried to fight back and Gideon tried to get her back to camp.  Wendy was nearly turned to a Zodiac, but she managed to get away by ‘killing’ Pine Tree, but not before one of her arms warped into a sort of ice claw, showing what she’d become if she wasn’t careful.  To her horror, Pine Tree regenerated and continued the chase.  The twins were pushed back thanks to some magic measures Aggie put on the town before she died.  

Wendy returned and essentially ascended rather quickly to the roll of leader, along with her family.  Her father was taken within the first year, so Wendy really did take charge.  To this day she still is considered to be the leader.  She, like the rest of the population, only have one eye.

Gideon managed to get Olive back to the shack, which was a base of operations.  Ford and Stan desperately try to find out where Dipper is, but Gideon explains that Dipper was gone, like Mabel was.  This effectively breaks the older twins.  They argue, blame is tossed around, rage mounts.  Ford breaks down, he runs out of the shack.  By now, Olive has come to and witnessed all of this, and she pleads with Stan to go find Ford and get him back, he could be hurt and they need him.  Stan says nothing, clearly he’s a bit overcome with grief.  Olive wearily gets up and goes ater Ford.  She’s injured and half blind, but she manages to track him down.  He’s shouting to no on out in the woods that he wont be like the rest, he wont let Bill use him to hurt anyone.  He is shoutign about how its all his fault, and before Olive can run out and stop him, he took his gun and turns it on himself.

The loss of Ford breaks the community.  He was their greatest hope to defeat the evil.  After he died it became more a matter of survival rather than victory.  After his funeral, Stan left.  Without much of a word, he was gone.  Olive tried to stop him but she was too weak, and he vanished into the woods, never to be seen again.  It is unknown currently if he’s live, met a fate like Fords, or is in the woods somewhere lurking as a zodiac demon.

With the Pines family gone, things just got worse.  Mind you, all of this happened over the span of about a year.  More people either followed Ford or were taken and transformed.  Just to make this easy, here is the Zodiac +Bonus Characters and their fates, currently.

Dipper: Zodiac Demon Pine Tree A great spiked beast that has the ability to enter trees and control them to attack. Mabel: Zodiac Demon Shooting Star  A violent firey demon who leaps into the air and comes crashing down like a comet to obliterate her enemies. Stan: Unknown Ford: Deceased Soos:  Alive, handyman of the apocolypse.  He tried to go after Stan, but Stan begged him to stay back, that he couldnt stand the thought ofl osing anyone else, especially not Soos. Gideon: Alive, living al ot like he did in Weirdmageddon.  A sort of Mad Max big rig guy who aids in going out of the town in the events of compromises of the barrier.

Wendy: Alive, but part of her body has been turned to ice reflecting her Zodiac, Ice Robbie: Zodiac Demon The Bleeding Heart Working in tandem with his demonized parents, Robbie unleases hoards of regenerating undead to plague the town for Bills amusement. Pacifica: Alive, she’s become somewhat of a medic.  She still has two eyes, but keeps one covered. Fiddleford: Zodiac Demon Spectacles A large, mechanized demon with shards of glass protruding from it.  He’s essentially the shaktron but evil.

Aggie Yearling: Zodiac Demon The Mongrel A giant six eyed wolf beast that shifts shape into a semblance of Aggie to mess with anyone who crosses her. Olive Yearling: Alive, works directly under Wendy and often works with Gideon. Steven Yearling:  Zodiac Demon Fangs Hangs around the caves he once lived in.  Murderous, violent and hungry.  He resembles a bat.

Surviving townsfolk:  Wendy’s brothers, Ma Gleeful, Durland, Tate McGucket, Priscilla Northwest, Mayor Tyler, Waddles, Grenda, Candy’s parents, Grenda’s parents, all of Sev’ral Timez except Deep Chris, Gompers, Jeff the Gnome, Celestabelleabethabelle, Thompson, Toby Determined, any remaining side characters.

Demi-demons:  The Valentinos, Manly Dan, Lazy Susan, Ghost Eyes, Candy, Tambry, Lee, Deep Chris, Blubbs, Abuelita, Bud Gleeful, most of the remaining gnomes, the Multibear, nearly all of the manotaurs, Blendin Blandin, Poolcheck, Shandra Jimenez, Free Pizza Guy, Tad Strange,  and the Shapeshifter.

Bill’s squad is still running around too.

The present in the dimension is in present day for us, 2017.  Five years ahead of 2012.

I might just write this into a fucking fic???  I came up with all of this during a CAR RIDE today.  ALL OF IT.

Building Zion: the controversial plan for a Mormon-inspired city in Vermont

A Mormon businessman is buying up land to build master-planned towns from scratch, based on the church founders idea for a plat of Zion

The roads through rural Vermont wind past rolling forested hills and quaint small towns, including South Royalton used as the quintessential New England village in the opening sequence of the TV series Gilmore Girls.

A short drive away, the Tunbridge Worlds Fair has run almost continuously since 1867, with games, contests for best pig or pumpkin, and displays of old-time printing presses and candle making.

And not far from there, one stop on the areas low-key tourist trail dotted with maple syrup farms, pottery workshops and picturesque covered bridges, is the birthplace of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church.

The site now hosts a museum, run by the church and staffed by cheerful missionaries. Outside, a giant granite obelisk rises towards the sky. Calming music flows from speakers located high up in the trees. It is a peaceful place, designed to inspire reflection.

But, over the last year, it has also found itself at the centre of a controversy. In front of many houses and shops, signs exclaim: Save our communities. Stop NewVistas.

NewVistas is the name of an unusual, indeed, one-of-a-kind project led by a Mormon businessman named David Hall to build new, master-planned towns from scratch inspired by notes written by Joseph Smith himself in 1833.

Hall says these designs, which described how ideal Mormon settlements should be laid out and were drafted almost 200 years ago, offer answers to modern-day challenges of sustainable living. And to make it happen, he has been buying land lots of it.

The first goal is to build a NewVista community near Smiths birthplace in Vermont, which would be home to about 20,000 people. The next step: to build more. Ultimately, Halls vision describes a new city of connected communities, with a total population of up to one million.

The fantastic story first came to light last spring, thanks to the careful eye and diligent research of a librarian in the small town of Sharon, who uncovered a series of local land purchases that she traced to the businessman and his plans.

Reflecting on that time, Nicole Antal, 30, says shed found it all hard to believe particularly the scale.

Plat of Zion by Joseph Smith in 1833. Photograph: http://ift.tt/2kMaNgG

This is very big for Vermont, she says. Burlington is 40,000 people. Montpellier, the state capital, is 7,000. This is not one guy buying a house and trying something new.

To date, the NewVistas project is thought to have purchased as many as 1,500 acres in central Vermont with plans to buy much more. Its focused on a largely rural area at the intersection of four tiny towns Royalton, Sharon, Stafford and Tunbridge which have a combined population of just 6,400.

Nor is the project just buying up vacant lots. It appears to be purchasing whatever it can. Antal says a few properties sold to NewVistas were second homes. But so far acquisitions have been fragmented parcels.

Antal first blogged about the land purchases in March 2016, setting off a flurry of articles in the local media. Soon Bloomberg Businessweek and the Wall Street Journal picked up the story, revelling in its unusual characters, audacious vision and local controversy.

Residents in Vermont, meanwhile, had started to organise in opposition.

This threat is like nothing weve ever seen or could have conjured up ourselves, says one long-term local resident Jane Huppe, 58, describing it as a top-down venture that doesnt fit with the areas own ideas for how it should develop.

It hit us like a ton of bricks, she adds. Antal agrees, and says it could completely overwhelm existing communities. Why does he not bring this to where they need massive amounts of housing, instead of disrupting the rural countryside?

Building Zion

Joseph Smith left central Vermont as a child with his family, moving to rural New York, where he later founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But despite his rural upbringing, Smith outlined a vision for new and compact settlements that would go on to influence the planning of hundreds of American towns.

This farm boy … dreamed to build a metropolis that rivalled the large seaport cities he had only heard about, writes the academic Benjamin Park, in a 2013 paper.

In the 1830s, Smith laid out a detailed plan called the plat of Zion. It described new towns, designed to be self-sufficient, ordered by rigid grids, and surrounded by farmland and wilderness.

The memorial of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church at his birthplace in Vermont. Photograph: imageBROKER/Rex/Shutterstock

The plan included ideal sizes of streets, blocks and lots. Roads should be straight and oriented to the points of a compass. Homes, built in uniform stone or brick, should sit within deep individual lots, with front yards and back gardens.

Significantly, the plan lacked designated areas for government buildings and town halls, as well as for markets or commercial districts. Instead, central blocks would be set aside for temples and community buildings.

Once fully occupied, with 15-20,000 inhabitants, the settlement would not be expanded. Instead, others would be built, to fill up the world in these last days.

This wasnt a theoretical plan. Smith hoped to build a new town like this in Missouri, specifically. In 1831, he said that Independence, in Jackson County, had been revealed as the land of promise and the place for the City of Zion.

Unlike other new religious movements in America at the time, which were warning congregants of the evils rooted in urban cities, Smith believed that cities were not to be fled, but sacralised, writes Park. This reflected key Mormon principles that focused on establishing a righteous civilisation … rather than individuals.

[Zion] was literally the centre place for a new civilisation destined to expand as Gods people multiplied. Gathering and city building were not incidental parts of sanctification, but the goal.

In the summer of 1833, Smith and other church leaders met in Kirtland, Ohio, and drew up specific blueprints for a city of Zion, including designs for specific buildings. Smith sent these to church members in Missouri, who were to purchase this whole region of country, as soon as time will permit.

It didnt happen; early Mormon settlers were driven out of Missouri. And in 1844, Smith was killed, before his city plan could be realised.

A computer rendering of a plan for NewVistas that would house, feed and employ 15-20,000 residents. Photograph: NewVistas Foundation

His designs survived, however, and were later used as a blueprint for as many as 500 communities in the American West. In the 1990s, the American Planning Association went so far as to recognise the plat of Zion documents for their historical significance and influence.

Most famously, church leader Brigham Young drew on the plat for the design of Salt Lake City, which was established by Mormon settlers in 1847. The citys core still reflects this: it features wide streets, oriented north-south, and mammoth blocks focusing on Temple Square, where a church museum also holds the original plat of Zion documents.

The concept of Zion remains key to the Mormon faith. The church explains that it represents the pure in heart, but also a place where the pure in heart live. It says: In the latter days a city named Zion will be built [in Missouri] … to which the tribes of Israel will gather. In the meantime, members are counselled to build up Zion wherever they are living.

Salt Lake City itself was also, of course, heavily influenced by broader trends in American life, such as the completion of the transnational railroad in the 19th century, which brought new visitors and migrants, and later by car culture and sprawl.

In December 2016, a popular architecture and design podcast noted that the citys design means that addresses can read like sets of coordinates. 300 South 2100 East, for example, means three blocks south and 21 blocks east of Temple Square. But, it said, the most striking thing about Salt Lakes grid is the scale:

The streets are so menacing and crossings so long that the city has placed plastic buckets on lampposts which hold flags that pedestrians can carry to the other side while crossing. In present-day Salt Lake City, its hard to get around without a car.

Nevertheless, some experts argue that the plat of Zion was a precursor to intelligent urban planning and leaves a legacy that could help tackle haphazard developments today.

The NewVistas project

A design of food production in the NewVistas Mormon development, Vermont. Photograph: NewVistas Foundation

This is of little comfort for those Vermont residents who oppose NewVistas. The Mormon church, too, is apparently displeased: they dont support the plan.

David Hall, the businessman behind the contemporary and controversial NewVistas project, lives in Provo, Utah. His background is in big energy: he reportedly made his fortune selling sophisticated drilling tools to the oil and gas industry.

In an interview with the Guardian, he says Smiths city plans remain remarkably relevant for todays challenges.

The plat describes a very low footprint, 20,000 people on only three square miles. Everything else was supposed to be wilderness. Its telling us not to sprawl, which is what we do, we even go into the mountains, Hall says. It really makes sense for our time.

The projects website says it follows the plat laid out by Smith and that its architectural plans are also based on the same sizing specifications for early Mormon temples, which were designed to fulfil multiple functions.

David Hall with a modular kitchen design in Provo, Utah. Hall, a wealthy Mormon businessman, plans communities of tiny dwellings based on the teachings of church founder Joseph Smith. Photograph: Rick Bowmer/AP

But, Hall says, the goal is to develop secular, sustainable communities taking advantage of modern technology, including food production techniques that make it possible for people to live in ever-smaller spaces. It is envisaged for Mormons and non-Mormons alike.

The NewVistas Foundation argues: Sustainable living in the modern world requires high density urban development, pointing out that sprawl consumes too much energy and other resources, not just in urban areas but rural as well.

It presents a detailed, wide-ranging plan, including specific designs for three-storey standard buildings with apartments, businesses, and some farming and manufacturing, all located in one place.

More futuristic ideas include internal walls and floors that could be moved by robotic systems, so that families could live in small spaces that are easily rearranged. Outside, walkway-podway systems (something like elevated sidewalks and an underground tube network) would operate on multiple levels to transport people and goods. New toilets would monitor users health.

Not unlike Smiths original vision, the foundation says the goal is massive scalability, so that these communities can be replicated to encompass all of the earths billions of people. It calls itself nothing less than a new urban model and economic system for the 21st century.

Each complete NewVista would have as many as one million people, but be composed of 50 similar and carefully designed communities, each with a population of 15,000 to 25,000 and the capacity to be self-sufficient with respect to basic needs.

There are also unusual proposals for how these places will be run: organised according to a private capitalistic economic structure. The community is not a political entity but a productive enterprise, like a company town.

There is even a suggestion that a NewVista Community Corporation would have control over things like land use, transportation, and community environment, which are usually matters of government concern.

Hall predicts that the first NewVistas community could require as much as $3bn (2.3bn) to build, expecting 20% to come from the first residents and the bulk from other investors with nothing from the church.

NewVistas is my own modern interpretation of Joseph Smiths community documents and I have not ever discussed the ideas with the church and wont involve them in the future.

Vermont strikes back

We didnt waste any time when this came up, says Michael Sacca, 61, director of the Alliance for Vermont Communities, a new non-profit organisation formed by local residents in opposition to Halls plans and any other similar large-scale developments in future.

Sitting on the porch outside the house he and his wife built themselves 15 years ago, with the sun setting below the hills around him, he says: We want to protect our future and our childrens future and the region … we want to maintain our lifestyle and our communities.

The NewVistas plans simply dont fit into local, regional or state visions of how Vermont should develop, Sacca argues, which instead aim to concentrate development as much as possible in village centres, town centres, leaving rural areas for rural life.

Sacca also describes the corporate structure envisaged for NewVistas as Orwellian and as an experiment designed to stand on its own as an insulated corporate town.

Residents attend a public meeting in Tunbridge, Vermont to discuss the NewVistas development, which many oppose. Photograph: Lisa Rathke/AP

Opposition to the project, which would transform the area, has been vibrant and vocal. Sign and stickers are visible on the streets of central Vermont, and petitions are calling for discussion at town meetings in March.

The Alliance is also tracking land purchases. By their count, NewVistas has already acquired an estimated 1,200-1,500 acres of land with purchases continuing despite the controversy.

The Mormon church is itself, a significant land and real estate developer, with farms, ranches, residential and commercial properties across the US. In Florida, a church-owned property is now set to become the site of a new city for as many as half a million people by 2080.

However, it does not seem to be too happy about the NewVistas project either.

In August 2016, a church spokesman said: This is a private venture and is not associated with The Church … [which] makes no judgment about the scientific, environmental or social merits of the proposed developments. However, for a variety of reasons, we are not in favour of the proposal.

The NewVistas website explains that the community layout envisaged follows a city plot pattern created by Joseph Smith in June of 1833. But it also carries an Important Note stating that its model is not presented as a fulfilment of Joseph Smiths vision. It is not supported or endorsed by the Church.

The church in Salt Lake City did not respond to requests for comment or further elaboration of its position.

In Vermont, some of the projects opponents hope they can use Act 250 the states premier land use law to stop it. This law was enacted decades ago after new highways and ski resorts lured investors into the state. It requires that developers comply with regional plans, as a way to manage growth and protect the environment.

Hall acknowledges his project has been controversial and many people are against it. But he says hes drawn to Vermont in particular because of its connection to Joseph Smith, because land is relatively cheap, and because there is too much of what he calls rural sprawl.

Theres lots of rules that keep you from building things, so Vermonters would eventually have to approve it but not right away, Hall adds, stressing that nothing is happening overnight and it would take decades to realise his plan.

He says technical components must first be worked out, and he needs to consolidate land, which can take generations because weve had this trend of subdividing and sprawl, so the reverse process will take a long time. The project, he argues, is very unique, but I have a hard time getting people to really look at it and study it.

Meanwhile, land is also being bought in his home town of Provo, Utah, where NewVistas is again facing local opposition. Professor emeritus at Brigham Young Universitys Marriott School, Warner Woodworth, who lives in Provo, described it as a takeover.

To have someone with money and power enter our area and gradually buy up homes, offering distorted purchase power to grab residences, is troubling. It shakes the peace and violates the sense of continuity and mutual care for one another, Woodworth wrote in September, arguing that Halls plans are also a far cry from the original plat of Zion idea:

Halls system is corporatist, while Josephs was more communal. Hall wants to establish a top-down power structure, whereas Joseph envisioned a bottom-up community of common consent. Hall seeks to control. Joseph sought to liberate. The early Zion plat consisted of large family yards and agriculture. In contrast, Hall plans for tiny urban apartments of 200 square feet in a bare, boring apartment.

But, he suggested: It may have been more achievable and acceptable if he had engaged more participants from the beginning. While one may disagree with some of his ideas, its the process he uses that becomes the fatal step.

As for Antal, who first discovered Halls project, she is concerned about the impact on her family.

There are some good ideas [in the NewVistas project] … Polluting less, creating local agriculture. But I dont think it applies to Vermont. I think Vermont is doing a pretty good job at being sustainable, she says. I dont like that this is being imposed on us.

Read the first part of Claire Provosts investigation into the role of Mormons in city planning here. Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion, and explore our archive here

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from Building Zion: the controversial plan for a Mormon-inspired city in Vermont