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simplegenius042 · 4 months

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Fallout 2 OC - Finidy Mona (The Chosen One)

More information under the cut:

Here's my Chosen One of Fallout 2, Finidy Mona, the 22-year-old granddaughter of Elrand Brandt, and the next Elder in line to lead the Arroyo tribe after her mother. After the recent passing of her grandfather, several failed harvests and rampant sickness take hold of the tribe, which leads Elder Mona to send out her daughter Finidy to retrieve the Garden of Eden Creation Kit (GECK) to save the village, and Finidy takes this as an opportunity to prove herself to her village and mother, despite having failed the Temple of Trials (to her credit she got halfway through it). With a deadline hovering over her, Finidy goes off into the Southern California Wasteland to retrieve the GECK and save her village in her grandfather's Vault 13 jumpsuit, his flask and a spear. If only New Reno crime bosses, gangs, fascist regimes and all sorts of monsters weren't in her way. But hey, at least she gets some help along the way.

Finidy is a quite the beautiful and healthy intersex woman at a height of 5 feet and 11 inches, with overgrown wild hair tied in a low bun, with enough energy that outdoes all the other villagers. She had inherited her grandfather's hazel eyes, with exceptional strength and dexterity towards the Wasteland's environment. Her wardrobe changes from her grandfather's jumpsuit to jackets and leather armour to fancy clothes given to her by the crime families and finally Enclave power armor while infiltrating the oil rig. She's pretty decent at keeping her hygiene up even in the Wasteland.

As Elder Mona's daughter, and the next in line to inherit the title of "Chieftess", she was taught everything she needed to be taught to do the title right and exceed her own mother. Her ability to communicate and mediate in conflicts is impressively thorough, and is the most combat, stealth and survival efficient of Arroyo, and her cooking is to die for. Finidy is also extremely creative, both in methodical plans and improvisation, and had gotten what her grandfather failed to receive; The Rizz (TM). Alert but not paranoid, Finidy is quite comfortable walking about without worry that an animal will attack her, and her luck wasn't as terrible as her grandfather's. Persuasive and literate, Finidy has a natural charm that just lures people in. However, future chieftess she may be, she is inexperienced with technology and the likes of children (though the latter isn't as bad as how Elrand viewed them).

Finidy's intellect, while not as advanced as her late grandfather, is still pretty impressive. Her spirituality is as high as her passion to help the village under any means necessary, and her humor can chink the armor of the most serious man (well... except one, though his status as "man" is debatable). Her anxiety only comes up during unexpected and/or high stress situations, which can waver her confidence, especially in regards to the deadline and retrieval of the GECK. When it's all over, while she's exhausted and saddened of what she's lost, she is still able to find the silver lining. Patience though... could be improved.

She's a lot more polite than her grandfather was, though she can't refuse a bite in her words when speaking to some... unpleasant individuals. Though naive and inexperienced in such a hostile world, Finidy is brave, while she would prefer a peaceful solution, she will not hesitate to use violence if she thinks its necessary or she believes the person deserves it. Finidy is impulsive, and often times agreeable. Though she starts overbearingly idealistic, Finidy manages to wring it back, but keeps her hope. Finidy manages to spend more caps that she really should keep for something else. Though having living in an isolated village for majority of her life, Finidy loves the outdoors and excels at talking with people. She's young, impulsive, the daughter of the chieftess and also related to the man who drove the Master to despair after pointing out super mutants can't clap cheeks... of course she's a bit wild. Finidy is ambitious in proving her mother and village proud, and is stubborn in achieving this goal, the crime families and Enclave be damned! Surprisingly, Finidy can get jealous easily, and is quite possessive over her lover/s.

Finidy is charismatic and empathetic, qualities she needed to learn as a future leader (though the only authority she will ever truly bow down to is that of her mother's), though she has quite a temper. Generous when she needs to be, and responsible enough to keep tabs on her wealth so she doesn't lose everything (despite being a big spender). Though, unlike her grandfather, she has a high libido, and gets around often. She's cute and flirty, but often times obedient (in a non-sexy way, though useless full disclosure, she is a bottom) to the whims of others, especially if they have something over her (though she gets back at them) and due to her village's isolation, is more gullible than her grandfather (though she slowly loses this gullibility like her grandfather... though it takes longer for her to get there until she reaches the Bishops).

Finidy kind of believes in higher powers? Like most of it is mixed in with the belief her grandfather is looking out for her, and some others she gains on her journey. A very big believer in fate and destiny, as well as magic. However, while she does believe there are people who are driven by maliciousness and greed, and not everyone is as noble and generous as they appear to be, she does try to believe there is an explanation for their evil deeds, but never excuses them (especially the likes of President Richardson and Frank Horrigan, as well as John Bishop). Finidy is under the belief her grandfather's spirit has blessed her with luck, though whether she believes luck and karma exist is entirely for convenience.

Finidy's top priorities are the survival of her family and home, and while on her journey, ensuring her companions and lover/s safety. She does her best to take care of her health, to reveal the truth and take into account other's opinions. While she is mindful of praise (a desire she used to want for but is replaced by the weight of responsibility and duty she knows she has to commit to), dispensing justice, and ensuring some wealth, they aren't top priority but if given the opportunity she tries. Power and fame are hardly what she wants and is a little annoyed she gets some of it anyway.

Her SPECIAL Stats include:

Strength (7), Perception (7), Endurance (4), Charisma (8), Intelligence (7), Agility (10), and Luck (6).

Tag Skills include:

Melee, Lockpick and Speech.

And lastly main Perks:

Magnetic Personality, Awareness, and Toughness.

Template below:

#fallout 2 #fallout #fallout oc #the chosen one #oc: finidy mona #series: a radioactive calamity of love bombs & gore #fc: jessica alba #fo2 the elder #oc: elrand brandt #dick richardson #frank horrigan #the enclave #john bishop #arroyo #new reno

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taltos-seidmadr · 2 years

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hello! i'm a burgeoning queer norse heathen and i was wondering if you would be willing to talk about your personal view on odin, specifically his relationship to loki and their partners and children. i'm interested in working with all of them but i'm conflicted on how i feel about odin tricking and getting rid of loki's children, especially the children of angrboda since i am currently working with her. does it ever feel like, unethical to work with gods who have a bad personal history with each other? or is that an oversimplification of the gods? thanks for any thoughts!

Awww dear anon, as another queer heathen let me extend a hug (respectfully)! I'm happy you wrote. I hope that you will enjoy your newly blossoming spirituality and if you wanna talk to someone about literally anything, don't hesitate to reach out.

I think what you're asking is an extremely interesting question because it fundamentally hinges on what you think the gods exactly are, like what is a god overall and what they do, as well as what the myths actually are, and what they mean if anything? These are extremely complicated questions and depending on the underlying beliefs you can get wildly different answers from different people and even one person's belief can change over time (as mine did quite a lot). I can definitely tell you what I believe/built up from my personal experience but I don't want to convince you to think the same, I thought I would just kinda circle around the topic a little bit and maybe you can sort of use it as a springboard to discover what you want to believe.

So... I will start there, that I don't treat the myths like what you are describing, at all. I think of them as entirely man-made constructs, beautiful stories that explain how a certain culture thought the world works. That doesn't mean that they don't matter, of course, but they matter in the same way that for example a beautiful poem does, and not like scientific facts do. I still think that they can and might hold truths, but in ways that are a thousand ways more removed from reality than say, a historical account. It's not even whether they actually happened or not, it's just that like a poem, it's not really the point whether they did.

I wanna point out that if you wanna treat the surviving myths as an actual account of things that really happened, I don't want to attack that - you absolutely can - but keep in mind that that is also an "artificial" and subjective choice. There are two reasons for this. One, is that type of storytelling where the individual stories all hang on a singular, cohesive narrative thread and make up One Big Series of Ragnarök Netflix Original, either didn't exist yet (afaik) or even if it did, it can only be applied to norse myth as a creative exercise, because "norse myths" as they were, were always a collection of regional traditions that sometimes tell wildly different and occasionally conflicting accounts. The reason why this is important is because originally a version of the narrative where, say, Ódin over the course of five separate but tightly connected, linear episodes "turned evil" and "betrayed Loki's family" did not really exist. There is no linear timeline. There are only stories, loosely scattered across a landscape, in which gods sometimes appear, taking on different narrative roles. There are stories in which Ódin is the villain, and there are stories in which Loki is the villain. And there are sometimes accounts that all tell the allegedly same story but in one everything is Loki's fault and in another Loki wasn't even there.

Is this where I insert the gif? You know the one. Yeah, I think it will fit just right here.

The second point overlaps with the first a little bit, but I wanna point out a different side of the same coin. We KNOW this, for a fact, that those versions of the myths that exist today, are texts that were written by human authors (some of which we know by name), specifically for entertainment purposes, with their own unique authorial voices and intent, and the text should be understood within that context before attempting to take it at face value. This is true for all texts, generally. So it's actually less like Ragnarök Netflix Original and more like Ragnarök Extended Universe (as in like, superhero comics) full of parallel universes, retcons, and being handled by different authors who all might have had different visions of what the canon should look like.

Sorry, unfortunately I learned philology and questions like "what is the context?" "what is canon, and why is that canon?" "what does a text actually say, why that, and how is it trying to say it?" are actually SUPER interesting to me and therefore I had to make this detour. But I wanna point out one more thing, and not as a philologist, but more as a friendly fellow believer.

Like I said, treating the texts as something that literally happened is a subjective choice, and not one that I would make, but making choices like that about your beliefs is not only absolutely okay but YOUR prerogative. If someone tells you otherwise, they are either trying to control you, or take your money, or both. Dems the facts.

To stay a little bit closer to the point, my answer to this question is that to me to blame a god for something they did in the myths would be like blaming an actor for something that the character that they played committed in a movie. This would be nonsensical to me because the context is different. Which is a really simple and maybe kinda boring answer. But if you choose to treat the myths as facts, you have some really interesting questions to ask yourself, like, why is it that there are different versions of the same story? Which one do I choose to believe, and why? Are they maybe... really all factually true at the same time? How is that possible? What does that say about Aristotlean logic? Btw I personally do believe that gods come from a place where two things can be true at the same time, if that's anything!

Ok, so, you're asking about the morality of it all, which is I think an even deeper and more intriguing question. The thing is, that there was a time, when I was just a newly beginning Heathen, when I was very convinced that the gods are actually kinda like personified/conscious forces of reality (kinda like forces of nature, but more abstract) and the myths are like an approximation of the blueprint of how they interact, in an extremely metaphorical way. So at that time I was kinda like what I believe is called a "soft" polytheist except that I ALSO did believe that the gods are actual beings that you can interact with somehow, so I was more like a hard if slightly platonistic animist, if you will, without being completely aware of it. At that time, I would have told you that Loki and Ódin being "in conflict" is more like how fire and ice are "in conflict". Ya feel? That's just kinda how things are and there isn't really any morality involved.

However as time went on, I almost completely shedded this belief, and did so extremely quickly. I'm sure there's someone out there who believes the same thing right now, so I don't want to sound even a little bit dismissive, I think it's just a good example of how you don't have to set your beliefs in stone cause time will shape them regardless.

Today, with all the experience(s) behind me, I can say only one thing. I have no fucking idea what the gods really are, where they come from, and what they are doing when they are not interacting with us, if anything. But I do think that even if they are not exactly like people, they are kinda like people. Thinking, feeling persons with their own choices and preferences, and their capacity to have emotions is either like that of a human, or at least comparable to it in some kind of way. So... yeah, from my subjective point of view treating them like the Blorbos from the Ragnarök Show is a little bit reductive... but only if you are willing to take my assumption as true.

That also means that I'm absolutely sure they occasionally experience conflicts among many other things, most of which we will probably never hear about. But I will be honest, just for me, subjectively, it's hard to imagine that the gods engage in conflicts with each other that are irreparable in nature, because it's bad for PR, to put it bluntly. Like, there are so many forces in the world you could be focusing the anger on instead of infighting. It's way harder to Get Things Done (what things, I don't know, but I do believe that the gods are doing Something, influencing the way the world is going as it were) if they sow pointless discord among the few individuals (human followers) that they can count on. On the other hand, even if Ódin and Angrboda are not like, bosom buddies per se, with a little courtesy and encouragement a human who is willing to listen to Angrboda can become a person who is willing to listen to Ódin VERY easily. That's a net positive for everyone involved. Free of charge!!!!

I don't actually believe that the gods are forming like little high school factions against each other that will one day actually and physically go to war, even though the myths literally say that. I'm sure a lot of people would beg to differ, and they would not be able to convince me. In my belief, there are enormous conflicts in the world, maybe even battles, but they are somewhere completely different, and on entirely different scales.

Because I see gods as Kinda Like People, I would treat the issue of hanging out with one or the other as more or less like an interpersonal relationship, as well. Which is to say, I would ask what they think of it, and then I would think about it for myself and whether I give the gods the right to have a say in that or not. And if you believe in gods as persons you can talk to, I would urge you to do the same.

I wanna go into a hypothetical for a second, cause I feel like there is an interesting sub-question embedded into this that I have several thoughts on. Let's say that you take the myths as something that actually happened (which I think you do) and you also think of a god as a person, more or less like you and me (I don't know if this is true but I wanna assume it for the sake of the hypothetical) AND you think that "following" a god means something like "having a friendly or familial relationship with" (which I agree with, and... I think that's also what you think? I'm not sure but let's assume that too, for now.)

So let's say, that said god comes to you, and they reveal it to you as your friend that the other god was really mean to them and/or their family, and let's say you have accepted that as your personal truth. Is it unethical to hang out with said god knowing that they were in some way harmful to your friend? On a completely hypothetical level I think there is at least some sort gray area. But I wanna add two things to this. One, I personally believe that if your answer is "Sorry, I'm a human and this is god stuff and I don't want to be involved/take sides" or even "I don't want you to try and influence my relationships with other gods" it is entirely in your right to set that as a boundary. The second thing is, that the hypothetical is completely moot, because it is my personal experience AND logical conviction that gods never actually do this. If this exact thing happened to someone reading this, I'm not gonna fight that, that's your truth and I'm sure that happened for a good reason. But again, generally this is bad for PR, and also they tend to respect people's boundaries about making their own worship. If a spiritual entity comes to you and tries to control what other spiritual entities you are talking to, that is usually the exact same in the spirit world as it is in the human world. A big red flag.

I will say this. I, as a devoted Lokisperson, not only work with Ódin very frequently, but second to Ódin from his family the one I interact with the most is actually Baldr (if you can believe!) and the only conflict that has ever arisen from this was that at the very beginning Loki was a little bit upset that I assumed he could cause problems about it, which he never did, and truly, it was unfair of me to put him into such a defensive position right off the bat.

I wanna add just one more thing, that I don't really know if it will help or not but I feel like is important to add. Even if you don't believe in the myths as fact even the slightest, like me, being influenced by them on some or other level is not stupid, and in fact in a way kind of unavoidable, I think. Unfortunately it happened once that I had to say: sorry, I know this is unfair to you but the story about you just hits so incredibly close to home in a bad way that it might not ever work out between us in this whole lifetime, no matter what I do. I do think of this as a bad thing, but it is what it is, and we could discuss that and let it rest with no further conflict or issue. I don't really know in which direction the pendulum is swinging for you. But however you feel about working with these gods, is valid, and it's up to you to change it or leave it as it is.

Okay, so Ódin. I like to talk about him, because I think he is a little bit misunderstood and I fancy myself being capable of bridging over this gap, even if shoddily. I think he gets a bad rep because his followers love to talk about him as That Motherfucker(affectionate) and it makes perfect sense from an inside joke point of view but it scares potential new followers away from him as someone not to be trusted. This is really bad for many reasons but especially because he deserves way better than being (mis)represented by fascists and we could always use more people to drown them out.

You know, "tricksterness" is an extremely broad term that entails an entire kaleidoscope of different things, and trickster entities can be so different from one another depending on what aspects they tend to take to. I don't know if you have a personal connection to Loki at this moment, but if you know him, then whatever you think of him (and I can blindly say that, with certainty) you will find Ódin somewhere deep down, in the core, a little bit of the same but in the actual, practical manifestation completely different. What I personally think - and I'm not alone with this view, as far as I can tell - is that Ódin likes to perpetually do something that I could scientifically describe as a "little bit of trolling". If you pick up contact with him, it is very possible that he will purposefully challenge you and especially provoke your intellect and worldviews. Depending what kind of person you are this may seem exciting, annoying or a mixture of both. I think that the sentence "Ódin cannot be trusted" is a 10000000% true statement but more like an optical illusion cannot be trusted. In an emotional sense, he is perfectly capable of building a relationship based on trust and he does deeply care about his followers, like any god worth their salt would. It is definitely worth at least a conversation to figure out whether this is for you or not.

You did ask what I believe personally, so. In my experience Ódin and Loki are clearly very close, and I have never personally witnessed bad blood between them about anything even the slightest bit. Do they bicker, or even fight, yes of course but in the way that two people (and/or two beings who are intertwined across narratives and beyond time and space) who care about each other do. Honestly... I don't even know how to describe that but whatever they have going on makes even such a weighty thing as a narrative plot point in a thousand years old myth completely irrelevant and weightless in comparison. Wherever the story goes, they can go bigger. A book about them may say whatever, their bond is like that which holds the ink of the print to the paper. It cannot be torn apart because it's just on an entirely different level.

As for my tiny little personal perspective, they only ever encouraged me to reach out to the other, I often ask one of their opinions on my workings with the other and they are always supportive and helpful. Needless to say, I treat the myth of Ódin mistreating Loki's kids as entirely fictional, and while this does not necessarily mean that Ódin has never crossed them in any way in the history of time, I have literally never heard about it, saw them behave like that's a thing that happened, or even encountered them referencing it even one time. Somehow I never actually saw Ódin interact with any of Loki's kids but I know that Sleipnir and Ódin are in contact with each other a lot, obviously, and seem to be just fine (yes, I know this may not be the same for everyone but I do treat Sleipnir as a god in his own right). Just going off of gut feeling I would say that out of the whole bunch maybe Angrboda and Ódin are the farthest from each other emotionally, though it wouldn't veer into animosity, just in a room full of gods it's very little likely that they would be the ones to stop to talk to each other unless they had something very important to say. I must admit that I interacted with Angrboda very rarely and I really don't know her well enough to know her true opinions on anything. When we interacted, she seemed like a person who likes to keep a little respectful distance in general, but it was not even a little bit a problem to her that I was connected to Ódin.

The tl;dr of the whole thing is that I don't think that you have to be afraid of picking up contact with either of them if this is what you truly want. I don't know what they will tell you if you do. But I can't imagine they would have anything against it - as far as I know, being an Ódin and Loki follower in some or other capacity, at the same time, is actually very common.

#sithi replies #sithi's posts #anons #blood brotp #odin #odindeity #all dad #loki #lokideity #lokean #general religious #the nine long nights #spiritworkings

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blessedarethebinarybreakers · 2 years

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LGBTQ Catholics respond to the question “Why not just leave?”

In an article interviewing Catholics in Pittsburgh. CW for religious homophobia.

‘One of the things [Ken] Pruszynski appreciates about the congregants at Dignity [an LGBTQ affirming Catholic org] is their seriousness about the Eucharist, or the sacrament of communion in which Catholics receive bread and wine to honor Jesus’ death. When he comes to Mass, he seeks a spiritual experience. He finds that at Dignity. “I’m stubborn,” he said, laughing. “Maybe the church left me behind, but I didn’t leave the Catholic Church behind.” He also takes refuge in his sense that local Catholics’ views on sexuality and church doctrines aren’t the same thing. “If it was put to a vote in a city like Pittsburgh,” he said, “I think we would be accepted.”

Jamie said people frequently ask her questions like, “Why not just leave the church?” She feels “conflicted.” She has had good as well as bad experiences in the church, and she’s a fan of Catholic Social Teaching, a tradition focused on human dignity. Then again, the Catholic Church is aging, and when she’s actually participated in church reform efforts or social action groups, she’s been frustrated.

“There was so much pushback to even the most moderate changes that I just sort of stopped believing that the church wanted to change anything,” she said. At this point, she’s not regularly attending Mass. However — and although she sometimes questions it — she does still identify as Catholic. She’s had a Catholic education. She’s studied Catholic theology. If she feels she’s Catholic, she said, no one has “the right to take that away.” “Like, they can’t unconfirm me,” she said. “The bishop is not any more important than I am.” James Nusser, a 54-year-old Episcopalian who also worships with Catholic congregations, has grappled with his identity as a gay person of faith in several different religious institutions. At one Episcopal congregation where he served as the groundskeeper, a new priest came in and, during worship, fired the LGBTQ members from their roles, preaching that “the gays were an abomination.” He had the landscaping that Nusser had carefully planted and tended, including memorials to deceased members, ripped out. It felt like “my heart was ripped out,” Nusser said. “It took some years to heal.” Nusser has also witnessed homophobia in Black faith communities. Although Nusser is white, his late spouse was a Black man who was HIV positive. Nusser and his spouse would travel to Black churches doing HIV/AIDS education. Some churches refused to have them, Nusser said... Still, for him, the question of whether to forgo faith altogether doesn’t really feel like a question at all. He sees his faith as something that starts not with him or any institution, but with God. “How can any human resist the call of God?” he said. “Once you've been baptized and you've had that Spirit given to you, it's not something you can turn away from.”

...When Nusser looks around at churches in America, he senses the fastest growing ones are not LGBTQ-affirming. That’s “the scary part for me,” he said. He sees people coalescing around hate, not love.

If the Catholic Church were to change its stance, he thought, it would surely take decades — probably spanning multiple Popes’ terms. Still he doesn’t think it’s impossible. He offers his own experience with the trans community as evidence. For many years, he was transphobic: “I avoided trans people because I didn’t understand them,” he said. That changed when he got a chance to listen regularly to the stories of people from his church who were going through gender affirmation. “Like, the scales fell off my eyes,” he said, citing a biblical passage. If church leaders would look LGBTQ Catholics in the eye, listen to their stories, and repent for the harm they did, he thinks the church would look different...’

Photo of James Nusser, an older white man with a white goatee sitting outside and smiling at the viewer.

Being Catholic and LGBTQA+ is complicated, but there are resources out there. Wander through my #queer and catholic tag for more posts like this one.

Visit this post in particular for information about LGBTQA+ support within the Catholic Church, including specific ministries.

#why we stay #queer and catholic #synod on synodality #lgbt catholics #faithfullylgbt

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silverflame2724 · 3 years

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WWX decides to kill two birds with one stone and with the help of WQ reforges the Stygian Tiger Seal into a artificial golden core replacement which she implants into WWX.

WWXs eyes are now permanently red and he has the full power of the seal at his fingertips at all times because its part of him now.

Another side effect of this Stygian Core is discovered when WWX misses JZXs ambush and is instead attacked and disembowled in Carp Tower in full view of the cultivation world but then immediately regenerates without a scratch and blood ruined robes.

Watching WWX be more annoyed at the bloody robes than being disembowled because the Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation has apparently cultivated to immortality USING RESENTMENT shakes a lot of people.

“Huh.” Wen Qing says as she observes yet another failure of Wei Wuxian’s inventions quite literally blow up in his face. “So this Seal of yours protects you?”

Wei Wuxian coughs from the smoke of his busted invention, “Well, yeah. What about it?”

“It’s sentient, correct?”

“Yeah....?”

“Hmm.” Wen Qing observed the Seal slowly bobbing up and down. “Can you circulate resentful energy through the Seal for a moment? Don’t make it do anything. Just channel resentful energy through it like you would if you channeled spiritual energy normally.”

“Okayyy??” Wei Wuxian was perplexed but nevertheless obeyed and watched as Wen Qing’s eyes brightened. “What? What is it? Wen Qing, tell meeeeee! Don’t leave me out!!!!!”

“Brat, I’m trying to concentrate.” She scolded him, but her tone was fond.

Wei Wuxian waited a few more moments before it seemed like Wen Qing had seen enough.

“I want you to calm down when I say this, but I think you can reforge the Seal into a core which I can transfer into you.”

Wei Wuxian was silent......for about two seconds. “............What?”

Wen Qing sighed. “Wei Wuxian, when you channeled resentful energy through the Seal, the Seal acted much like how it would if someone were to channel spiritual energy through their core. The Seal can be made into an artificial core is what I’m saying.”

“I.....you are sure?” Wei Wuxian asked. He knew Wen Qing wouldn’t joke about this.

“Yes. I’m about eighty percent sure this will go well. I can even knock you out when I cut you open this time.”

“I.....okay.” Wei Wuxian was at a loss for words.

“So I’ve rendered you speechless.” Wen Qing smiled. “That kinda feels good.”

Wei Wuxian pouted.

...........

It took a few days to reform the Seal into a form that would resemble a core but Wei Wuxian was a genius and having Wen Qing there to bounce ideas off of helped in giving him a clue as to how a core should look and feel like.

“Are you ready?” Wen Qing asked.

Wei Wuxian, who was one hundred percent not ready, said, “Yes.”

Wen Qing saw through this. “It will be alright.” She squeezed his hand. “This time, it will be alright.”

That was the last thing he heard before he was knocked out.

When he awoke, his eyes had burned for a little before the pain dissipated.

Wen Qing had been in the midst of declaring the operation successful when she suddenly paused, “Huh.”

“What is it?” He asked nervously. Did something go wrong?

“Oh.....it’s, hmm. A’ Ning, get me some water, will you?”

Wen Ning returned not long later and locked eyes with Wei Wuxian. He seemed quite startled and that made Wei Wuxian even more curious. Based on Wen Qing’s reaction, it wasn’t anything bad, but still.....

“Wei Wuxian.”

“Yes?”

“Look at your reflection and you’ll understand why A’ Ning and I looked startled.”

Wei Wuxian did.

And he was shocked to see that his eyes have now become a brilliant shade of red. “What the hell?”

“Mmhm.”

“Why are my eyes red???”

“Well, Wei Wuxian, I’m not sure if anyone’s told you, but you’re aware your eyes turn red everytime you use demonic cultivation, right?”

“Umm, no??”

“Well, they do. And considering what your core is, well. I’m not entirely surprised this happened. It was certainly unexpected though.” She finished cleaning up and left Wei Wuxian to just sit and admire his reflection.

...................

A week and some carefully supervised experiments later, Wei Wuxian had full control over his core. It was really just the same thing as how one would normally use a golden core, so it didn’t take long for him to get the hang of it. However, considering his core is the Seal, he also had the ability to control thousands of corpses and this time without any of the side effects.

He also spent time trying to get Suibian to respond to him using resentful energy. Considering that the sword was a spiritual sword, he was unsure of the compatibility but Suibian seemed to adapt well enough and Wei Wuxian was so glad he didn’t have to give up ever using his beloved sword again.

The next step on his agenda was to update the wards. Using the power of the Seal to strengthen it was a walk in the park and Wei Wuxian finally felt like despite how the cultivation world was always on the verge of killing him and the Wens, they’d be safe. The wards would hold out.

He then started absorbing all the deep-seated resentment in the soil to make it more fertile as well as trying to clear the Burial Mounds resentment by listening to the stories of the dead and helping them pass on. He also painstakingly dug up all the strewn about corpses, burned them and held proper funeral rites for them.

The crops flourished, the Wens and him were well-fed, and the Burial Mounds started to lighten up. Wei Wuxian no longer looked to be on the verge of death and he was able to cultivate without any problem.

Like this, time passed peacefully.

..........................

He was invited to his nephew’s one month celebration not long later and Wei Wuxian decided that this would be a good time to show the cultivation world that he truly is the grandmaster of demonic cultivation they all claim him to be. (In truth, he never considered himself to be any sort of grandmaster considering how little he knew of demonic cultivation, but it was different now.)

He told Wen Ning and the other corpses - of the resentful spirits that stayed behind saying they wanted to help him - to watch for any Jins since he trusted they’d take this chance to attack the Burial Mounds.

After he put on a concealing talisman for his eyes - since he knew that his different eye color would make a huge uproar -, he took to the skies with Suibian and nearly teared up. He’d missed flying. He’d missed this feeling. Laughing happily, he circulated the resentful energy in his core and sped up, becoming a black blur as he flew straight over Qiongqi Path.

When he landed at the foot of Koi Tower, invitation in hand, the Jin guards seemed surprised to see him there but had to let him in, not wanting to offend him.

Jiang Yanli-- no, it was Jin Yanli saw him and waved excitedly, beckoning him over. Out of his sight, Jin Guangyao and Jin Guangshan seemed surprised to see him there.

“A’ Xian!”

“Shijie!” The form of address slipped out.

Her face softened. “You made it!”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world!”

The whispers of the people around him, wondering why he was there, surrounded him, but he ignored it. “Shijie, here’s my present!”

She looked at the bell with a little bit of wonder. “What does it do?”

“It’ll ensure that high level resentful beings and below won’t be able to move!”

“Oh, A’ Xian! This is perfect.”

“Thank you.” Jin Zixuan said, awkwardly. Wei Wuxian had forgotten he was there.

“No need! If it’s for Shijie’s son, I’d do anything!”

“He’s my son, too.”

Wei Wuxian made a face at that. “Well, yeah.”

“Wei Wuxian!” Jiang Cheng called and then stopped. “You have your sword?”

Wei Wuxian shrugged, “Yep!” He twirled around. “I started picking Suibian up again! But let’s not focus on that, Jiang Cheng!”

Jiang Cheng seemed hesitant but dropped it readily enough as they started bickering like they used to.

Suddenly--

“Wei Wuxian!” Someone yelled.

Wei Wuxian groaned. Can one day go on without someone yelling my name with hatred??? Like, please??

“Yeeeeeees?” He drawled tiredly.

And some Jin guy that vaguely looked like Jin Zixuan stomped in, looking murderous. “You, remove the curse that you put on me!!”

Murmurs started up all around them.

“Curse?” Wei Wuxian looked confused. “What curse? And who are you anyway? Am I supposed to know you from somewhere??”

“You know who I am!!”

“No, I don’t actually.” Wei Wuxian scratched his head as he walked forward to get a better look. He really didn’t know!

“That’s Jin Zixun.” His shijie said, coming up to him. “From the Phoenix Mountain hunt?” Before Wei Wuxian could say anything, she continued. “The one that was supposed to apologize to you.”

“Hmm?” Wei Wuxian thought really hard. “Oh! I remember you now!” He said to a rather red-faced Jin Zixun. “Sorry about that buddy, but uhh I didn’t curse you! I didn’t even remember you until now!”

“It must be you! It has to be you!!” He screamed and it was really grating on his nerves. “See! Look at this!” He ripped his robes open and everyone gasped at the evidence of the Hundred Holes curse on his torso.

Wei Wuxian whistled. “Well, that’s quite some curse. But I still didn’t do it.” Jin Zixun looked ready to refute so he continued, “Why would I curse you secretly when I usually make a big production of those I kill?”

People had to admit he had a point.

Jin Zixun continued to scream expletives until he finally rushed forward and in a rather bold move, drew his sword, plunging forward. However, in his anger, he completely missed his target and the direction of the blade pointed towards Jin Yanli.

“A’ Jie!!” Jiang Cheng screamed

Wei Wuxian was the closest to her and pushed her back, stepping in front of her taking the sword to his gut.

“A’ XIAN!!!” “WEI WUXIAN!!” “WEI YING!!” Jin Yanli, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Wangji, who was actually there, all screamed.

And Wei Wuxian who had just been disemboweled, grit his teeth and pulled out the sword. Which, in hindsight, was a horrible decision since blood got everywhere. Though not so much when his stomach stitched itself back together. “................Huh.” I knew I regenerated quickly considering how often I got hurt plowing the fields and digging up the corpses to put them to rest, but damn that was quick. Though..... “My robes!” He fake-cried, turning his attention to a stunned Jin Zixun. “You ruined my robes! I just managed to scrounge up enough money to buy this new pair and you ruined them!!!!” He fretted over the large rip over his abdomen. “What am I going to tell Wen Qing? She just told me not to stain them!”

The entire cultivation just stared at him in silent shock, making Wei Wuxian feel a little self-conscious.

“Uhh, what are all of you staring at me for?”

“Wei Wuxian,” Jiang Cheng said with all the patience of an exasperated brother. “Is that the only thing you can ask?!” He glared, signaling for two Jiang disciples to restrain Jin Zixun from anymore stupid ideas he’d like to enact. “When did you cultivate to immortality?”

“I didn’t??? What do you mean??”

“Wei Ying.” Lan Zhan said, checking him over. “Are you alright?”

“Hmm? I’m a little dizzy considering all the blood I’ve lost, but it’s nothing big!” He grinned. It felt nice to have Lan Zhan care for him rather than fight with him.

“Wei Wuxian, stop flirting with Hanguang-Jun and answer the damn question.”

Wei Wuxian turned his attention back to his brother and pouted at him, missing Lan Wangji’s red ears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“A’ Xian.” Shijie said and Wei Wuxian abruptly realized her robes had his blood on them.

“Shijie, I’m sorry I got your robes dirty!”

“It’s fine.” She patted him. “But A’ Xian, I know you didn’t pay attention to those lectures, but only immortals can heal from wounds like that that quickly.”

“Really?”

“Mn.” Lan Zhan confirmed.

“Huh. So I’m immortal?”

“Yes.” Jiang Cheng deadpanned. “And you didn’t even notice it. In true Wei Wuxian fashion.”

Lan Zhan frowned then. He had still been checking Wei Wuxian’s pulse. “Wei Ying, what happened to your core?”

“Hmm? .........Oh shit.”

“Why is it covered in resentment?”

“Oh. Umm.” Wei Wuxian really was at a loss for words now. “We can discuss that later?”

“Wei Ying.”

“Aiya, how do you make my name sound like reprimand?”

“Don’t try to deflect the conversation.” Jiang Cheng said, now paying attention.

Wei Wuxian groaned. “Okay. Well, everyone would have found out sooner or later but umm. I might have cultivated to immortality accidentally via demonic cultivation? Haha, ha......”

No one laughed with him. They all looked pretty shaken and Wei Wuxian wanted to laugh at their reaction. He felt pretty detached from it all, to be honest.

“Can we all just forget about this and continue celebrating Jin Ling’s one month celebration?”

And everyone collectively said, “No.”

“Aww.”

___________________

To this day, I’m still unsure of whether it’s Carp Tower or Koi Tower.

#mdzs #wei ying #wei wuxian #wen qing #immortal wei wuxian #fluff #wei wuxian has a new core #but it's not a golden core #wen remnants #jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #jiang yanli #jin zixuan #jin zixun #humor #lan zhan #lan wangji #mild warning for blood

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canary3d-obsessed · 3 years

Text

Restless Rewatch: The Untamed Episode 16 part one

(Masterpost of All the Recaps) (Canary’s Pinboard)

Warning: Spoilers for All 50 Episodes

All righty, this one is going to be a laff riot...not. Let's do it.

The first half of this episode is like a beautifully executed standalone tragedy, while also threading together all sorts of themes and paying off all sorts of relationship building that's happened in the previous episodes. My hat is off to the writers, while I also shake a fist at them for making me cry an unreasonable amount.

We’re Sailing on a Strange Boat

The episode starts right off absolutely DESTROYING me with the Yunmeng brothers holding hands, fingers interlaced, in the first of many hand-touching moments that punctuate the episode.

Jiang Cheng has to be pretty far gone to accept this degree of comfort and tenderness. I think, from their positions, he is also holding Yanli's hand out of the camera's view.

Zidian finally lets the trio go, and they immediately turn the boat around and head back to Lotus Pier. Wei Wuxian gets the clever idea to turn the benches into makeshift oars but nobody gets the clever idea to use magic to push the boat like they do literally every other time they are in a boat.

Their emotional need to go back to Lotus Pier is understandable, but they are being disobedient and irresponsible by doing it. Jiang Cheng is the future of the clan, and should not risk his life, particularly after his mother chose to sacrifice herself to protect him and after both of his parents told him to go hide with his sister and personal bodyguard brother.

On the other hand, Jiang Fengmian, as clan leader, probably had a duty to go into hiding himself rather than go home to die romantically, so his authority is questionable at this point. Anyway, this is the Jiang Clan, they get to kind of do what they want, except when that pisses Jiang Cheng off.

Lotus Pier Massacre

Back at Lotus Pier, the Wens are kicking Jiang ass. The fight choreography is pretty good, taking full advantage of walkways, railings, pools, and other features of the environment.

Using the set this way always makes fights feel more kinetic and real, as opposed to simply sparring in an open area.

(more after the cut)

Yu Ziyuan is fighting adequately with a sword, having given her preferred weapon to her son. She's clearly been at it for a while, and is tiring; the Wen soldiers are starting to land more and more sword blows but no critical hits yet.

Wen Zhuliu is kicking ass and possibly melting cores, although we don't see him do it to anybody yet. Later we'll hear from Jiang Cheng that he crushed the cores of his parents, but it's not clear when that happens.

Sixth young master replays Jiang Fengmian's entire archery lesson in his head while he waits, and waits, for Wen Zhuliu to finish strangling a dude the right moment to shoot an arrow at Wen Zhuliu.

Homicidal tart Wang Lingjiao notices him lining up a shot, strolls over, and stabs him in the back while he's still thinking about what Jiang Fengmian said. One could wish that JFM's archery lessons weren't quite so wordy.

Wang Linjao normally doesn't carry a sword because of her low spiritual power, but apparently can use one just fine when she's killing kids.

If you start feeling like this episode is unreasonably painful, just think of it as building up calluses so you can handle Yi City when the time comes.

Jiang Fengmian to the Rescue

Jiang Fengmian shows up very far past the nick of time, although he is not actually useful, so it's questionable whether arriving earlier would have helped. But his wife is glad to see him.

Netflix subtitles say that Jiang Fengmian calls Yu Ziyuan "My Lady!" which sounds courtly and romantic in English. His actual words are "San Niangzi" which hunxi-gullai breaks out here. I might render this as "lady wife!" rather than "my lady" but I don't think English really has a perfect equivalent.

Jiang Fengmian sails across the courtyard, knocking down a few Wen soldiers and becoming a young, slender man in the process.

I mean, come on, that stunt double does not look like a boxy middle-aged man from any angle.

The Dying Bit

The episode splits up the big death scene for dramatic effect but I'm recapping it all together to keep things simple.

Within moments of arriving, Jiang Fengmian gets shanked by Wen Zhuliu like Scatman Crothers in The Shining (or Groundskeeper Willie in The Shinning).

Wen Zhuliu stops a Wen soldier from finishing JFM off, just so that a different Wen soldier can deliver the killing blow from the back, which is kinda harsh. With all this spin-fighting there is probably not an implication of cowardice when someone dies from a stab in the back, but still. Too rude, Wen Zhuliu.

Yu Ziyuan sees Jiang Fengmian fall, and after having a moment of sorrow and despair, she stabs herself in the heart, falls down, crawls to him and interlaces her hand with his. He revives just enough to give her hand a squeeze and say "San Niangzi" one last time before dying.

She dies next, with a smile on her face at the end. The soundtrack plays that amazing "horribly emotional death scene" music that isn't one of the tracks available on the OST, argh. This same music appears at the end of Xue Yang's story.

Of the many things I love about the Untamed, the complexity of all the minor characters is possibly my favorite. These two people suck at parenting, and suck at being married, and ultimately suck at protecting and leading their clan, making stupid, selfish choices at every step of the building conflict.

And then they have this incredibly romantic death scene, in which they both face the inevitability of failure, and find comfort in failing together. Yet their death scene is totally in keeping with who we know them to be, and who they are to each other; the drama doesn't cheat by making them ideal lovers or great people at the end. But they have a great, great moment.

Jiang Yanli, waiting in the woods while her brothers are presumably running toward Lotus Pier, drops her lotus pendant, which is made of the loudest jade ever discovered, and it breaks with a crash.

Yanli, who is a well educated young lady, knows a moment of doomy symbolism when she sees it.

Jiang Yanli: Who put a giant rock out here in the woods? What are the odds I’d drop my pendant directly on it?

It’s all Over Except for the Crying, Running and Choking

The brothers climb up on the roof and are shocked to see nothing but Wen soldiers and piled up Jiang corpses...

...including one child who is either about to become a zombie or who is being played by a young actor who can't control their curiosity, judging by the way this eye is sneakily opened while the camera is running.

There's a moment where Jiang Cheng is saying they must have spared his parents, they must be okay, where Wei Wuxian's face is just...wow. You can see right here the gulf in life experience between these two.

Wen Zhuliu roams around looking troubled while searching for more people to kill. He’s an interesting villain; someone who believes his loyalty to his boss makes him a good guy, but knows his boss is a bad guy.

Then we are treated to a hell of a camera move, where it tracks over Yu Ziyuan and Jiang Fengmian together on the floor, heroic in death and still holding hands, and then sweeps up to show their killers sitting on the lotus throne.

The dead couple were at odds for their whole lives together, while the evil people who killed them are acting like devoted lovebirds. It's a stunning shot and a terrific thematic contrast. When Wei Wuxian eventually comes to take his vengeance, he will spend some time turning Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao against each other, before ending them.

The camera shows us JC's reaction, then shows his mother, then WWX’s reaction, then JF; each reacting to the death of the person who loved them. Some folks may feel that Jiang Fengmian actually did love Jiang Cheng but was just bad at showing it. But Jiang Cheng doesn't think so, and I don't think it's a given that parents love their children.

Side note: Macroexpression king Wang Zhuocheng is able to open his eyes so far that a giant strip of white shows above his irises, and keep them like that, which is quite a trick. Try it yourself.

Meanwhile Wang Lingjiao and Wen Chao gossip about YZY and JFM's bad marriage. Wen Chao admires YZY's beauty, and Wang Lingjiao insults her character, and announces that she's going to stab YZY's body a few extra times. Jiang Cheng briefly faints at this, taking a page from Wei Wuxian's book, and rolls off the roof.

Run Run Away

Both young men run, and run, and run away from Lotus Pier while Wen Chao and Wang Lingjiao mistreat the bodies of Jiang Fengmian and Yu Ziyuan

The stabbing happens off camera, because it's ok to stab a live child on camera, but not a dead adult. (As always, there are cultural reasons for "what's ok" in any country, and I'm not saying anybody's wrong about these choices).

Wen Chao follows this up with pouring a cup of wine across their faces. He does this in the style of a libation for the dead, but as a desecration, combining mistreatment of bodies with profaning a ceremonial rite. In a world where ghosts are real and have sharp fingernails, this is deeply, deeply stupid.

Yu Ziyuan’s actress Zhang Jingtong is able to have liquid poured INTO HER EAR without flinching. Mad props.

The brothers eventually finish running and arrive in a field with an extreme purple photo filter on it. Which I've done my best to remove for these gifs, with variable results.

Jiang Cheng wants to turn around and go back to Lotus Pier. He says he wants to retrieve his parents’ bodies and to take revenge, but he's devastated and it seems likely he just wants to die with everyone else.

Wei Wuxian pleads with Jiang Cheng to calm down and stay safe, while Jiang Cheng gives himself over to anger and shock as the brothers shout at each other.

Punching and running ensues, and Wei Wuxian tries to hold his brother back, grabbing him around the shoulders him in a gesture that painfully echoes the many hugs he's given over the years.

This time Jiang Cheng doesn't just push him off. He turns around and chokes his brother for nearly a full minute, while screaming at him and blaming him.

Just as when Madame Yu beat him, Wei Wuxian doesn't fight back; he pulls on Jiang Cheng's wrists but doesn't hit him or try to break his hold.

Finally Jiang Cheng lets him go, and cries out for everyone he's lost, while Wei Wuxian weeps silently next to him. Eventually they fall asleep in the grass together, their bodies curled up in the form of a heart.

Damn, this episode really brings it.

Side Note: during their argument, Wei Wuxian says, among other things, that "revenge is a dish best served cold," according to subtitles. It's a French saying from the 1800s so it's probably not precisely what Wei Wuxian is saying. More importantly, as a longtime Star Trek fan I can't help but hear James Kirk yelling "KHAN!!!!!" whenever I encounter that phrase.

There’s Got To Be A Morning After

When they wake up in the morning, Jiang Cheng is still in his feelings, but now his feelings have moved along to despair, from anger.

I feel bad for noticing how handsome they both look in this scene. Let's all feel bad about this together.

Jiang Cheng is free to have this level of emotional breakdown because Wei Wuxian is there keeping his own shit together and focusing on what matters.

When Jiang Cheng refuses to get up, Wei Wuxian reminds him, very, very gently, that they have a sister, who has waited all night to know what happened.

At this, Jiang Cheng gets up, but won't look at Wei Wuxian, continuing to blame him for everybody else's actions, as he walks onward to find Yanli.

Wei Wuxian follows, hurt and bereft, as he gets to work internalizing everything that he's being accused of. This is good practice for his future as a widely reviled bogeyman.

Part two will be slightly less awful! Coming soon!

#fytheuntamed #the untamed #the untamed gifs #the untamed meta #wei wuxian #jiang cheng #restless rewatch the untamed #canary3d-original #my gifs #yu ziyuan #wen zhuliu #jiang fengmian

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darealsaltysam · 3 years

Text

what your paladins main says about you

a comprehensive essay by a paladins player of right around 4 years

this is like really long so i’ll make it under the cut so my followers don’t have to scroll through this if they don’t wanna

(for context i’m a current maeve main, i used to main skye and sha lin and played tyra a long while ago)

Androxus

it’s not a phase, mum

“i don’t care we don’t have healer, i’m really good at him i swear”

you ult every time it loads in and you die before the final shot

your favorite mode is siege because you can fly up and shoot the whole point on ult

you’re usually really stand-offish and don’t communicate much and/or a 13 year old boy with anger issues

Ash

you are level-headed but in a scary way

you will hold the point solo even if it costs you your streak

“get on the point” “guys get on the point” “attack the objective”

you’ll ult to save yourself 99% of the time

good leader

Atlas

you probably used to main lex or androxus before he came out

“he’s like a flank, but a tank, he’s great!”

you chase after solo kills instead of sticking to the point

healers hate you, flanks and damages fear you

your favorite mode is death match

Barik

you’re a former/current tf2 player looking for something fresh

you don’t like working too hard so you spam turrets on the point and hope for the best

“healer stick to me i’m boutta ult”

actually really nice between rounds

but you don’t communicate much mid-game and kind of do your thing

Bomb King

you’re a really old player. you have the beta makoa skin and you were there when lex was first released. veteran’s discount.

your favorite maps are the old ones and they barely show up any more

the team always underestimates you

“who plays bomb king in 2021 lol?”

you need a hug

Buck

“wait, he’s a flank? i thought he was a tank??”

you’re also a veteran in the game

you’re a dying breed. i like never see you. do you even exist?

you’ve been here since like the first day of the game

buck gets so many skins and you want all of them but the best you have is a random recolor

Cassie

sweetest person alive

“we can do it guys! let’s try to all rush the point this time!”

you are the bane of every flank

the opposing team hates you, your own team kind of doesn’t notice you’re there

*casually gets a pentakill*

Corvus

you know those weirdly political kids who like ww2 and know the details of every tank to ever exist? yeah that’s you

but like that’s corvus. as a character.

but no one ever plays him.

like i never even see him do you exist???

you are a cryptid.

Dredge

yo ho you’re a hoe

no seriously the other team views you and they FEAR you

“yeah i just got a penta kill” “YOU WHAT?” “eyes on the point mate don’t get distracted”

hella good at the game and hella casual about it

you like onslaught on the one sea map the most

Drogoz

another veteran, are we?

you’re either useless or can wipe out a whole team in seconds. there is no in-between.

you always have a really cool skin.

dovahkiin, dovahkiin...

“i don’t care about the point i gotta get them trips”

Evie

you bought her because you thought she was cute, admit it

*turns into ice right before dying* *turns into ice right before dying* *turns into ice right be

your personality type is identical to her. no question about that.

always buys faster reload and better speed

strangely good communication with the team

Fernando

gay gay homosexual gay

“he’s kinda hot if you look at him the right way”

fernando is the tank for gay people

you are gay people

i don’t have much more to say

Furia

mum energy. not as much as inara mains, but still, mum energy.

will protect every member of the team with your life, even the flanks

you’ve been maining her since she was first added

i bet you didn’t even know she’s canonically seris’ sister

“we’ve literally failed to capture the point the last 3 times we might as well give up and go to another game”

Grohk

“yeah i have a gremlincore tumblr blog, how could you tell?”

i honestly have no words

you’re kind of like a catboy but a racoon

do you even heal the team or do you just pretend

you were there when lex got announced and thought he was cringe, now everyone finally agrees with you

Grover

he was your first purchased character and he’s stuck around ever since

he’s the only healer you can play well

“i am groot lmao”

you would never say a word to your team

would give your life for the tank but that’s about it

Imani

daenerys targaryen on drugs

your favorite anime is my hero academia

your husbando is todoroki

you see where i am going with this

“team protect me i’m gonna ult” *dies 5 seconds into ult*

Inara

BIG MUM ENERGY

your team is your family. you will protect them with your life.

can only hold your own with a good healer so you have good teamwork going for you

*cutely places wall in front of your ult*

useless in tdm so you stick to onslaught, siege and koth

are you a furry, furry, or a furry?

“victow! dont ult on my tweam pwease! uwu!”

you 100% find her attractive in some way shape or form

you are either a 30 year old redditor who enjoys loli content or a 16 year old teen who is playing a shooter for the first time

she’s kind of cute, i guess

Jenos

i can never tell if i’m going to absolutely destroy you or if you’re gonna kick my ass

*cutely holds you up so the whole team can shoot you to death*

kamehameha

you’re a healer??? i guess???

your character has such deep lore and i bet you don’t even know half of it

Khan

one day you were playing and your team desperately needed a tank. you picked the first one you saw. suddenly, you’re lian’s foot stool

despite 2 layers of heavy armor, you’d still let this man walk all over you

“this skin is really cool, wish it wasn’t behind a pay wall...”

YEET

you actually know the game’s lore, for some reason

Kinessa

i never trust people who are good at a sniper. if you’re bad that’s natural and you’re 99% of the population. if you’re good you are definitely up to something

you’d sell your sister for 5 pennies if you could

you’re missing from the team all game and somehow have the most kills

“we have a kinessa???”

you are an urban legend to your team

Koga

someone’s been watching naruto

you are so shit at the game. like i’m sorry. no one’s good at koga i’m so sorry

how do you have so many skins for one character???

you’re always missing from the point

healers hate you. so does the enemy kinessa.

Lex

quit the game /nm

“who mains lex in 2021??? lmao???”

wall hacks, aimbot, and it’s all legal for you as an ability. you are a hacker in a world of puny vanillas. you like it easy so you go for the easy min max character. have fun getting hated

you think he’s hot and press on his loading abilities just so he can scold you and you can hear him being mad at you

*bonk* go to horny jail

Lian

"she could step on me”

you used to main some sort of healer but switched over when you got sick of everyone being needy

you can hold a point all on your own for a really really long time but the moment your team gets there you start flunking

you wish you had more skins for her

you don’t

Maeve

so imagine this. it was like 2018 and you were just chilling playing the game. you kept getting killed by maeve. in every game. she was in every game you went to and she kept killing you over and over and over again. you got frustrated, snapped, and bought her to see if you could do the same to others. you are now the maeve in every game. the cycle repeats.

your whole team doubts you but then you casually get a quad kill and they just sort of look away

you die a total of two times each round and 99% of the time it’s because you go too fast and fall off the map

you repeat everything she says in her accent because you think it’s cute

“welcome to ze meant streets, kitten!” “can you shut the fuck up” “i hate to cut and run, he-he!”

Makoa

you have the plushie skin or the beta skin, otherwise you don’t main and only play casually stop lying to yourself

“attack turtle go brrr”

you’re really good if you get paired with a good healer

otherwise you’re useless

you wish you could get better teammates because you could really thrive with an organized group. but on paladins you won’t get that, i’m sorry-

Mal’Damba

i always forget this guy is even in the game

you’re definitely under 6 foot IRL

you have an older sibling you always fight with

you’d love to have a snake irl

you’re really chill outside of the game, but when playing you hella rage

Moji

you are so precious

but also such a little shit

you annoy me but i also want to give you a hug

“let’s go guys!! to the point!! wheee!!”

please never change but also get out of my sight

Octavia

you always main the new character until the new person drops

somehow always have enough credits to buy the new champion whenever they come out

you don’t like having a stable main cuz you get bored

you like hanging out at the training rage

hate siege and love team death match, you like your games quick

Pip

you are the worst and best thing to ever happen to this game

you only pick him to heal yourself and hardly ever heal your team

no one notices you there until you ult

then you get focused

honestly you just seem like you wanna do your thing and i can respect that

Raum

you probably go to therapy or desperately need it

“BIG MAN BIG. HE IS BIG. BRRRR”

you always love the demons in media

you like being in charge of the team and wreck the point any time you are there, you like fighting on your own but having a healer nearby is nice too

you probably have daddy issues

Ruckus

you think ruckus’ and bolt’s dynamic is cool and that’s one of the main reasons you started playing him

he’s the only tank you can play

you used to main either inara or ying at some point but chose violence instead

really short irl. you physically relate to ruckus and spiritually to bolt.

“funny goblin man :)”

Seris

certified girlboss

you can hold an objective all on your own or heal your whole team no problem. either way you are SLAYING

“alright. who’s ass am i kicking today?”

mum energy is inferior to inara but still kind of there

i’m like 50% sure you have a foot fetish

Sha Lin

*pointing and chanting* incel, incel, ince-

whether that’s about you or the character you can decide

you like minecraft bedwars on the side

“if i don’t get this headshot i am literally going to spontaneously combust”

really useful when there’s no other long distance people - otherwise a nuisance

Skye

AWOOGA *jaw drops to ground, eyes roll out of head* BOOBA BOOBA BOOBA

you bought her for the tiddies, didn’t you?

she’s actually really satisfying to play once you get the hang of her, but can be real tough on rough days

you need a break i think - maybe play some other game for a bit?

*casually gets team kill with ult*

Strix

you own at least one pretty knife

you played him when he was unlocked on rotation, fell in love, and spent a whole evening collecting credits to buy him fully

“haha bird man”

i’ve said what i said about snipers. if you’re actually good at him you are hiding a body somewhere. i fear you.

why does everyone ship him with viktor????

Talus

little furry child

he reminds me of tommyinnit because he is small and annoying

if you play him you are tall and intimidating

i’m friends with a tall scary talus main

i can’t say bad things please spare me

Terminus

you always ult at the worst time and just get killed again 5 seconds after

“hey losers watch this” *goes on the point, dies, revives, kills one person and dies again*

you’re only a good tank if you cooperate

you don’t

on your own you’re a pretty good player

Tiberius

*sigh*

you think the cat is hot, don’t you?

“his accent is kinda cute tho hehe”

you saw that one ending scene in zootopia with the dancing tigers and it CHANGED you

you are probably a furry. if not your awakening is coming. be ready.

Torvald

you’ve been playing this game for too long

you’ve seen skins rise and fall. you’ve seen nerfs and buffs. you’ve seen reworks and remakes. you are ancient. older than the dragons and wiser than makoa. respect.

people see you on the opposing team and get really annoyed

“the point is really crowded, we can’t move in” “don’t worry guys, my ult is charged up”

you’re really good at all the characters but you like this guy a lot because you think he’s funky fresh

Tyra

you’re either new to the game or have been playing for too long

either way you can KICK ASS but you need to keep behind your team to do the most damage

flanks are the bane of you, especially the fast jumpy ones

you really want one of the cooler skins but you can only ever get the basic ones. such is the curse of maining one of the OG characters.

“bite me”

Viktor

you are level 100+ guaranteed, and everyone fears you

“oh shit they got a victor. flank focus him”

you probably play COD and CS:GO normally and wanted to go with something familiar and easy. your skill from the other more advanced games DWARFS everyone else

but why are you playing “guy with gun 132″ in a game with magical elves and fairies. like come on bro.

you don’t have any in-game friends because paladins is your guilty pleasure game you would never admit to

Vivian

“step on me” syndrome cranked up to 100%

this woman could spit on you and you’d still respect her more than your own mother. good for you

“i’m not a simp. i’m just tier 3 subbed to pokimane ironically”

you sweat the game hardcore. former victor main or he’s your secondary.

you’ve got her on level 50+ at least

Vora

like the maeve mains but somehow worse

bought her out of spite or played her while she was on rotation, now here you are grinding credits for her a day after she became unavailable

honestly you’re really good at the game i have nothing else to say

you enjoy the newer characters more than the OGs - you’re either a former vivian or lian main

you miss the play of the game feature in the game because you’d get all of them with this girl

Willo

you seem like the moji mains at first but show your true colors soon after

“fuck you” x50

you are a trash talker on max overdrive. you need to sit down, do some breathing exercises and have a drink.

you hate your own team more than the opposing guys

when you see a willow on the opposing team you make it your sole goal to eliminate her as many times as humanely possible

Yagorath

i bet you didn’t know she was canonically female until you read this

you don’t like sweating too much so you pick the tank that leaves you heavily relying on your healers and damages

you can hold a point really well so you like siege and onslaught

“are vora and yagorath connected in the lore somehow and do i really care?”

you have a friend who you always party up with to be your healer, otherwise you might switch to another character

Ying

“tanks love me, flanks hate me”

you are too powerful. literally. how are you so strong

you’ve mastered the most difficult healer in the game. the others are really easy for you to play but you have trouble with seris

motivate your team a lot but start shading and trash talking if they don’t cooperate

you’ll gladly play someone else for a long while and like taking breaks from her

Zhin

this is your first main after switching over from overwatch. we can smell it on you.

you’re really annoyed with his personality and voice lines but the character is too good to play for you to pass him up for that. you respond to his voice lines aloud very aggressively to let him know he’s an ass

“YES ZHIN HEALERS AREN’T USELESS YOU SELFISH PRICK”

you try your best but you’re not a great team player

infinite trips on a good day, die repeatedly without kills on a bad one and you switch over to vora or skye for a bit.

this took me hours to write out pls leave reblog and note thanks uwu

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sprawa-przybyszewskiej · 3 years

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Gnostic inspirations in Przybyszewska’s works

At the highest point of her intellectual life, Stanisława Przybyszewska spent over 12 hours each day simply on writing her own works, continously, and with maniacal care, educating herself on absolutely everything (she was constantly looking for fields in which she might be a natural genius) and she rarely did anything else at all, which included things like earning a wage or sweeping her own floors. The effect of such existence was of course that she was severely depressed, but also thoroughly educated. It means that traces of whatever matter from history or philosophy can be spotted in her works, are most likely intentional and put there exactly with the hopes of showing her erudice.

One of such matters was gnosticism. Gnosticism is a set of beliefs which put emphasis on obtaining liberation from this life through gnosis (knowledge) and cast aside all that is not of the mind – so not only the flesh, but also the spirit. Without going into details of some specific gnostic rite it is simpler to say that gnostics value gnosis higher than any of their base beliefs and teachings (in Europe gnostics are mostly mentioned in relation to early christianity, Cathars are an example of this). Then the contrast one can find within religion (for example sin and liberation from it) is replaced with earthly illusion and gnosis, which frees one from the illusion and guarantees a higher level of life, of sorts (in gnostic beliefs, our presence on Earth is not linear, leading from birth, through life and death to afterlife, but resembles more of a ladder, with each rung leading closer to obtaining total knowledge, and simultenously losing all that tethers one to earthly illusions.

In literature, strong contrasts are a good indication we can look into it to spot gnostic inspirations or at the very least make a strong case they could be there, even if unintentional. In Przybyszewska's case, however, they are all the more probable, for I vaguely recall she was well aware of the presence of these beliefs and everything she wrote on the nature of genius points in the same direction, too. She held these beliefs in her own, private set of core values, and there isn't any better place for her to show them to us but through her works. She presented us with an utopian vision of mental progress in her plays, while in her prose works, she focused on the darker side of the same things.

The axis of conflict in gnosticism is between the mind and the spirit. Robespierre is without a doubt a man of the mind much more so than of the spirit, and all the important figures surrouding him are more on the spiritual side of things (with Camille being the most prominent in this regard). Maxime has achieved the gnosis, the crown that will burn [his] brains right through.Before it happens, though, he is elevated onto another plane of understanding, a place where no other person can reach him, or even understand him:

Danton, of course, is lying.

(There is, sadly, no French translation of Thermidor; on another note, it took me this long to realize the French decided to change the person's tag from Camille to Desmoulines, which is suprising in the best sense of the word).

Robspierre is clearly constructed to be a genius, standing above everybody else and thus bearing greater responsibility, something which demands of him more than it does of others. Madness which he suspects within himself at the end is only a threat because it potentially leads to commiting mistakes, and a mistake is an unforgivable offence when it is committed by the one who ought to know better. Mistakes by a hand of another – for example Camille – are a different story altogether, for the majority of people not only don't achieve gnosis, but even cannot achieve it, their mental state isn't developed enough for them to grasp at the higher concepts. I think this is one of the reasons why Saint-Just's words: It is not madness, it's despair, are actually calming Robespierre down. Despair is simply a sign of being weary, something to be expected.

Maxime's knowledge and better judgement of everything is of course still a curse, leading to his death. In gnosticism, death isn't meant in a macabre sense, since it leads to yet another, higher rung of the metaphorical ladder we're standing on, but the gnosis obtained beforehand makes a death a good one instead of a waste. When Robespierre is going through his moment of despair at the end of The Danton Case, he betrays the gnosis he has in favour of admiting that the future will turn out differently than what could be expected: his death won't be a natural progression, but a failure, his depaire sets him back into the crowd of the sad, grey mass of the people who are not – like him – predestined to understand more.

From the linguistic point of view, I find it interesting that in the original and in the French version, he is using somewhat esoteric language (the future is under the sign of Danton – to my eyes, it is a clear refereance to the Zodiac signs, something which is supposed to predestine our futures, and which is also esoteric and ritualistic; given all the hints that she was abused by her satanist father, it makes a really sad, hopeless final note on the grand scheme of things for the humanity, that we, as humans, are incapable of running away from the brute forces which will continue to rule us simply because the world is built like this – not to mention the inability to change the future or even just the fate of one's life is a staple of gnostic beliefs).

No matter what he says about it, the inability to escape from one's fate is something which we rarely associate with Robespierre, because – as much as Przybyszewska makes it clear, thet he is a genius and thus everything he does he is not only allowed to do, but must do it for the greater good – he seems a bit like a self-made man, perhaps because we see him all the time in situations which are hard and difficult, but not impossible. A much more tragic situtation of the lack of escape from his own poor choices is being presented to us through Camille.

Camille has had a chance to be continously tethered to Maxime, securing for himself relevant safety in the public life, and calmess or even happiness in his private one. Yet he breaks with Robespierre over and over again, starting even before the plot of the play. Maxime reaches out to him against his better judgement, and Camille – also against his better judgement – decides to stay loyal to Danton. He is as if glued to his leader, even though he sees him clearly for what he is. Camille is an apotheosis of a spiritual being, someone ruled by impulses, perhaps even with the best of intentions, but whose mind will never achieve gnosis, the clear vision of what is right and true. When Robespierre argues with the Committee by demanding they leave Danton (and Camille by proxy) alone, he plots against Maxime in his newspaper; when Robespierre goes to him under the cover of night, he doesn't want to see him and then throws him out; when Robespierre tries to either break him free from the prison or at the very least console him by admitting his love (I never actually knew what was his plan here), he follows the advice of his bad influences and doesn't admit him. It's as if a strange force kept him by Danton's side, and I don't think it was any normal feeling (of shame or guilt) keeping him away from Maxime. In The Last Nights of Ventose he makes it quite clear being a stronger person's lap dog would never bring him shame, but honour, thus I don't think he'd have any problem with returning to Robespierre after a long while of abuse and slander.

The relationship Camille has with Danton is another aspect of gnosticism, namely its duality. Danton is a stand-in for Maxime, which doesn't work because Danton is anti-Robespierre, his negative double (much like in some gnostic beliefs world was created and being conducted by two gods, one good and one evil). It is unclear whether Camille had any real, true potential to serve "good" Robespierre, but even if he didn't, if his friableness kept him from serving a greater purpose (which I don't know if I believe, in The Last Nights of Ventose we are presented with a very different portrayal of Camille, one who could achieve something much greater than he did if only he was by Robespierre's side at all times), serving the "evil" Danton couldn't possibly have a good outcome.

He even does return to Robespierre, for a short while, steered by emotions rather than anything else. But in this dualistic, gnostic reality, emotions have little to do, they aren't worth very much. What's more, if we focus solely on Camille, we have to admit that – as in every story, revolving around a single character – a person is in a way stuck in time. He can go about in the space his life takes, but time is more like a deity, untouchable and something you cannot pact with. For Camille, it doesn't matter how many times and at what point in time (before their fallout, during the crisis or at the last hour) Maxime asks him to break with Danton and go back to him, because time and predestined fate hold all the power of what is happening, while individuals hold none (and the aforementioned last statement of Robespierre explains right away that it is so even for the "great" individuals, who in other aspects are being held to different standards, but against time and fate they are just as powerless).

I like to think, though, that Przybyszewska has left a small postern for Camille to achieve gnosis or its more humane equivalent by drawing a symbolic parallel between two scenes, which are only made significat by their possible relating to each other, but mean next to nothing on heir own:

In the first scene, the key could have been a completely incidental choice of words/tools, after all it's a logical conclusion of the scene. There is, however, a more symbolic reading of it, as a key is of course a symbol, and a pretty easy one at that. If Camille gave Robespierre the key himself, this could be read as an end to their relationship, Camille returning the power that Maxime holds over him to Maxime's own hands. But since we only see Lucille relay the key, and we know that Lucille is also capable of influencing her husband and directing his steps (even if she says she can't; Robespierre's words, seeing as he's the genius here, are the final judgement of this), this could mean she is giving her portion of power to Maxime, whom she trusts to save her husband. And Maxime uses this one more time, when he tries to visit Camille in prison. That he fails miserably is against Camille's wishes, because Camille even in his demise only succumbs to wishes of others.

But we know he regrets this step mightily and we know it precisely because he dreams (or rather has a nightmare) about the very key he was supposed to convey to Robespierre earlier. He regrets the desire to give Maxime his power back, he regrets that by doing so in any way, shape or form he has finally given up his life. Choosing a beautiful death over an ugly, humiliating life only sounded good in his head, but in truth, he is beyond terrified and would love nothing more but to Maxime to come in again and if not save him, then at the very least – forgive him. But for that, they'd have to meet again, and he couldn't throw Maxime out. I also don't understand why both the English and French translation added the word "effortlessly" when describing his last moment with Robespierre, because make no mistake, it is very much an unnecessary addition, going against everything that he has been portrayed like so far. Their last conversation is just as much a tragic one for Camille as it is for Maxime.

Przybyszewska took great pains to paint Camille in front of our eyes as someone so weak that we find him as more of a comic relief than anything else, but in reality he is just a differing portrayal of powerlessness when faced with fate. Camille is not a comical character, but a tragic one, he is just the same as Robespierre, his other half: they both believe in their own agency, they both believe they are the ones making choices and pushing their lives forward, but it is not a coincidence that they both end up in he very same place, in a span of mere weeks.

This post would not have been born if it weren't for @patricidefan.

#@patricidefan thank you so much for talking with me about it #as i said you opened my third eye #patricidefan #Stanisława Przybyszewska #stanislawa przybyszewska #the danton case #sprawa dantona #thermidor #Maximilien Robespierre #maksymilian robespierre #Camille Desmoulins #Kamil desmoulins #gnosis #literary analysis #philosophy

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dancingthesambaa · 3 years

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The Smell of Plum Blossom Tea Ch 14

Summary: Just like a butterfly wing, a single act of kindness can change the course of the future, it certainly did for MK as a black furred monkey put out a hand towards him.

Rating: Teen and up

Also as a heads up, since college started back up for me I decided to change my posting to every Thursday night rather than Friday Mornings. There also might be times where I won't be able to post that week or be late due to schooling, so this is an apology in advance!!!

Chapter 14: Memories Intertwined

A clear cut path was set for the public eye as it stood between rows upon rows of Plum Blossom trees and flowers spread all around. There were quite an abundance of people along these paths as families came together for a picnic, couples went for a stroll together as they held hands, or the occasional jogger or artist that ran or drew as they wandered in. Many don’t try to venture off the path, not because of its danger, but rather in fear of getting lost in the woods.

Well except for two people, a human and a Monkey, as they stood on the outskirts of the forest.

“Well this is it, welcome to the Plum Blossom Forest,” MK said as with his arms raised high. “The most awesomest place to be.”

It took a few minutes for Wukong to respond as he took in the beautiful view, but also felt that there was something else rooted in the leaves, along the branches, and deep into the ground within the forest. It wasn’t bad, just something different. Normal trees don't usually have any types of aura on them unless they are spiritual in nature, these aren’t those types of trees. At the same time though it does, he can’t quite put his fingers on it, but it just feels like…like safety. “Yeah, it is.”

“Monkey King?”

“O-oh yeah,” he snapped out of it, “this place looks absolutely amazing.”

“It sure is, now follow me,” MK went into the forest as the Monkey King followed.

“It would probably be faster if I used my cloud instead of going through the forest, you know,” he pointed out.

“Sure, but this is your first time, so you have to experience it on foot at least for your very first experience!” He countered.

“You got me there,” he grinned, “on foot it is. So, tell me more about this place, anything interesting about it besides the abundance of trees?”

“Tons! Like this forest doesn’t just have regular animals, but it also has so many mythical creatures living here!”

“Really? What kind?”

“Well we have a few Qilins that like to roam around here.”

“Qilin, haven’t seen one of those in a hot second,” he muttered.

“They sometimes come and go, but some even make a den here,” MK continued.

The further they went in the clearer it was that MK really knew the forest as he began to excitedly tell all sorts of things to his mentor.

“So the faeries tribe get along with the Xianglu? Now that is something I didn’t think was possible, the faeries are especially a…crafty bunch,” which was Wukong's way of saying manipulative sons of bitches. He got lost in a forest for a month because of those little bastards.

“Not really surprisingly, they both like to collect shiny things so they usually like to show the other what they have found, bargained, and/or stolen,” he shrugged. “And-oh hey BaBa!” He cheerily waved to his long time friend.

Wukong just blinked as he looked at her and just nodded, “Okay, not even gonna ask how or why he managed to get a Bashe here.”

“Dad says that apparently she just came here one day and decided to stay.”

The monkey opened his mouth and promptly closed it instead to bow to her, “It’s nice to meet you.”

BaBa gave a shallow nod to him and laid her giant head back down and curled up in the sun rays.

“Come on! We’re almost there,” he grabbed the Monkey King's hand and dragged him back on track, or at least they tried to get back on track as not even twenty minutes later, MK was ambushed by a couple of macaque monkeys.

“Guys! Guys! I’ll play with you all later,” he tried to push them away, but they held a tight grip on him. “Guys! Why are-don’t you even think about it,” he snatched one by the tail, who was sneakily digging into his pockets and hanged him upside down. “Really?”

They all just grinned at him as the infants attempted once more.

“That’s-okay, no! You can’t just steal from me like that unless you have a distraction in place,” he managed to gather all four of them in his arms and put them down. “A distraction helps a lot, it will steer your target attention away from the pickpocketer and towards something else.”

The monkeys were paying very much attention to his impromptu lecture as they stared wide eyed.

Wukong, on the other hand, was holding back his laugh as he looked on in the scene with fondness and amusement as he was drawn into a familiar memory.

“I can easily steal from those people no problem, why do I have to disguise myself and sneak in?” Wukong groaned out as they made their way to the edge of the market.

“Just because they look weak doesn’t mean they are, haven’t you heard the phrase ‘Don’t judge things on how they look.’” Macaque argued back.

“No.”

“Of course you haven’t,” he rolled his eyes, “well how about this, you distract them, I’ll grab the food from the assholes.”

“Works for me!” He happily threw away his brown cloak and gave a loud screech as he dashed through the market causing a huge commotion when he ran into people.

“I didn’t mean now,” he hissed to himself as he quickly grabbed the fallen cloak, but nonetheless got to work as he stole from the fruit vendor, who cussed them both out yesterday, grabbed a few loaves of bread from the bitch who decided to stomp on Wukong tail, and took a few things here and there from customers who he recognized from other days that always sneered in disgust when they saw him.

He was just about done wrapping up, and with such a nice haul, all that was left now was to sneak around and look for Wukong, quickly tug on his shadow to bail out and make way to the forest.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work out quite like that as not even twenty paces in he heard sounds of a fight occurring as many scruffed up looking people were all going at it at each other, and guess which reckless monkey is in the middle of it all.

“Damn it Wukong,” his eye twitched as he once again contemplated about leaving his reckless ass, but begrudgingly moved his way to the front. The first, and last, time he had tried that, he got side tackled hard by the monkey and he swears the bruises haven’t left him since.

When he reached the point where he was not entirely in the front, but still had a good angle on the fight, he saw that it wasn’t just humans that were drunkenly fighting each other, but also demons…who were wielding weapons.

“Shit!” The monkey shrieked as he dodged a flaming spear to the back of the head.

Weapons that happened to be enchanted…great.

“How does he even get himself into these messes,” Macaque lowly growled as he made sure everyone's attention was focused on the fight before slipping into the shadows, something he has recently been learning when he saw something on the rooftop. There was a figure standing there and in his hands was a bow and arrow that was aimed right towards the fighting monkey.

Now this wouldn’t usually worry him, he has seen him tussle with deities for fun, but then he noticed that the arrow too was also enchanted as he heard a soft crackle and saw a shimmering blue glow as he soon released it.

“Shit!” He quickly, and he will admit a bit recklessly, dived into the shadows and straight in the middle of the brawl.

Good news, he made it to the middle of the brawl and tackled his friend out of the way. Bad news, he currently has an arrow stuck in his right shoulder that hurt worse than the time he got stabbed by the selkie.

“Fuck!” He grunted as he laid on top of Wukong and promptly winced when everyone started screaming at the arrow that came out of nowhere.

“Mac! What do you do that for-your shoulder!” He screeched as he got the monkey off of him and sat him up and saw his shoulder was currently smoking. He didn’t even look back to use his tail to throw the man about to attack them from behind as he was focused on the arrow. “What happened?!”

“We can worry about this later,” he gritted as he tried to stand up, only for his head to feel dizzy and he stumbled.

Wukong quickly grabbed him before he could fall and set him back down. He knew that he had to get the arrow out of him soon, but now was not the best time to do that as he gazed upon the people looming over them. He looked to see his friend trying to stand back up despite his injuries and was fully ready to fight back with him.

It was time to go.

The monkey stopped his black furred companion from moving, “Shall we bail?”

Macaque gave a nod as he grabbed his friend and sank him down into the shadows once more and managed to travel all the way to the outskirts of the fight. They didn’t stop there though as Macaque quickly gave Wukong his cloak back and the two began to make their way through the town, past the entrance, and back into the field with a large tree stood, which is where they agreed to meet up in case things went south, like a lot of times before.

“Well,” the injured monkey grunted as he sat down, “that could have gone a lot worse.”

“You're telling me,” the bruised simian agreed as he began to look over the arrow that was still embedded in his friend's back. “Sit still, I’m about to take this out.”

“Yeahhh, it hurts like hell,” he grumbled as he sat in place as Wukong got the arrow out and only flinched when he began to lick the wound shut. The first time he found out that this was a thing was when he pricked his hand against a thorny bush and the impulsive simian decided to put his finger in his mouth without warning. He had almost chucked the monkey for that. Soon enough it was over as the bleeding stopped and the tongue left his back.

“That should be good, though you were an idiot for getting struck in the first place,” he said.

“Me?! I was only doing that to save your stupid ass,” he indignantly said.

“I would have been fine!”

“Maybe, but I wasn’t about to take that chance with an enchanted weapon,” he shot back.

“That does explain the weird marking, wait there was another one?” He was already interested in that flaming stick that the demon used, but now there was another weapon he didn’t even see…that had struck his friend…he really wants a round two with those fuckers. “Who even were they?”

“Hopefully people we don’t have to meet anytime soon,” Mac grunted as he took the sack that he managed to quickly snag on their way back and grabbed himself a nice looking mango. “Come to papa,” he said and took a big bite.

“Bring it here,” he said and he caught the bag thrown at him and rummaged through it a bit before he found some nice looking loquat.

After that, they filled the two rested up in the tree, and dozed off in a peaceful slumber. Though the same couldn’t be said for a certain group of people as in the middle of the night they were ambushed by a cloaked figure and proceeded to get thoroughly pummeled into unconsciousness, the archer especially as his hands were broken beyond use and his bow shattered. Then the figure slipped off into the night with his hoard of coins and trinket stashed into his pocket and bounded his back to the tree where his friend laid.

No one was allowed to mess with anything that was claimed by the great Monkey King after all.

“Bye! Now use that to mess with everyone else!” He was snapped back to reality as he saw the monkeys leaving and MK waving to them. “But don’t use it on the faeries please, they tend to hold grudges!”

They got screeches of confirmation as they eventually vanished from sight and were ready to commence their new found knowledge amongst the wildlife.

“Alrighty,” his protege clapped his hands, “let’s back on track.”

“I’m just gonna assume that means we’re heading to that big tree over there,” he pointed to the enormous tree they were heading towards.

“Yup! It’s the very first Plum Blossom Tree that was grown here!” He stated as they continued onward, “and it’s where our home is.”

“You guys live in a treehouse,” Monkey King amusedly said.

“Yup!” He exclaimed as he began to climb up the tree and leap towards the house, “race ya there!”

“You're trying to challenge a monkey?” He grinned as he easily began to catch up to him. “You don’t stand a chance!”

“Home Field advantage!”

“Dream on!”

“First!” Wukong cheered as he landed on the wooden porch.

“Damnit!” MK said not even a second after, “you cheated! You pulled me down!”

“All is fair in love and races,” he cockily grins then he stilled as he felt a killer intent behind him. He swiveled around only to stop and see a smiling child behind him. “Hel-”

“MK, it’s about time you got here,” the girl playfully rolled her eyes as she wrapped her arm around him. “It took you long enough.”

“Says the one who was lazing about here waiting for us, speaking of us,” he wiggled out of his sister's arm and pointed to the monkey. “Mei meet the Monkey King!”

It could have just been Wukong, but he swore that her grin seemed to grow a little wider when their eyes met. “It’s nice to meet you Mei,” he tried to play off that weird feeling.

“Same,” she said as she stepped forward and pushed MK towards the kitchen, “it’s your turn to help pops in the kitchen.”

“Why? Can’t you do it?” He whined, he literally just finished walking here.

“I already did my part, now wash those nasty hands of yours,” she fully pushed him out the room.

“But-”

“Bye~”

“Ugh fine!,” he huffed and turned to his mentor, “You can wait in the living room with Mei! I’m pretty sure there are still some plums if you want, we have plenty of those.”

“You're telling me,” Wukong chuckled as he saw his student leave the room, so he turned back to Mei. “So how long have you-” he paused as he saw the pigtailed girl hold up a small piece of paper in front of him with words saying.

I don’t like you

“Umm,” he paused as Mei continued to smile.

“Well let me show you the living room,” she said as she went to the next card.

You may be MK mentor, the great and powerful Monkey King, and Dad old friend, and they may have both forgiven you, but I will not

“Thank you,” he managed to wrangle out as he followed Mei who began to walk forward.

“It’s no problem,” she said as they made it to the living room and held out the last card. “Just promise me to remember where it is next time monkey man.”

I know what happened and I’m keeping an eye on you, cause if you fuck up again then it won’t be pretty

Her eyes glowed a dark green as she stared down with wary golden eyes.

“I promise,” he nodded his head.

She looked at him for a few moments before walking away, passing by a trash can filled with torn up letters, and to the kitchen, but not before calling out, “I do hope you keep that in mind.”

It was only after she had left that Wukong sank down into his seat and breathed. ‘Well that wasn’t frightening at all,’ he sarcastically said to himself as he picked up a plum from the middle of the table and began to eat it. ‘I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I expected it to be from the awkwardness, not the girl who looked like she would gladly see me twenty feet under.’

He would continue his train of thought, but then he smelled something delicious making his way to him and saw Mac walk towards him with a plate in hand.

“Hope you still like dumplings,” he said as he plopped a huge tray of dumplings, filled with various fillings, in the middle of the table.

“Hell yeah…So you learned how to cook?” He was about to reach for the chopstick but paused and waited until the other monkey sat down first.

“Kinda had to with everything and all,” he didn’t specify as he sat down on a chair adjacent to the couch Wukong was on.

“Do you know how to cook?” Wukong was momentarily surprised at MK's voice as he and Mei were actually following behind the monkey and carrying plates, cups, and a pot.

“In a way yes, thank you,” he nodded his head to Mei as she gave him a wide grin.

“Hair food does not count,” Mac deadpanned.

“Hair food?” Both teenagers looked in confusion.

“He uses his hair to make food.”

“It’s not that bad,” he tried to defend himself.

“It’s fast I’ll admit, but it’s bland as hell,” he stated.

“It’s still not that bad.”

“I’ll take your word for that,” MK said as he sat down next to his mentor and happily began to eat the dumpling.

Wukong, after seeing everyone starting to eat, began to follow suit and his eyes widened as he quickly grabbed another dumpling. “This is delicious!”

“More than your hair food,” the black simian smirk.

Wukong stuffed another dumpling in his mouth in place of answering and drank some Plum tea, only to blink in surprise. “What kind of tea is spicy?”

“Pffft,” Mac couldn’t help himself as he barked out a laugh that was quickly followed by MK giggles.

And that’s how it was for the rest of the lunch, small chatter here and there, mostly from MK as he talked about his week or Wukong in his small questions from ‘What he likes to grow in his garden?’ to ‘How long did he take to build his home?’ It was nothing too invasive, just simple questions here and there and they finished up the plate, though there was a small fight between both humans and the sage monkey over who would get the last beef dumpling. It was a tense match, but it was MK who won in the end after a serious battle of Jan Ken Po.

“Victory tastes so good,” he smirked as he devoured the dumpling.

“I will remember this,” Mei hissed as she messed with her pigtails.

“Maybe it’s time we review the basics again,” Wukong huffed and he slurped down the tea.

“You're just mad that I won.”

“Children all of you,” Mac said as he got his clone to put the plates in the sink.

“You're not wrong,” she said as she leaned back against him.

The simian hands then began to unconsciously undo her messed up pigtails and groom her hair. Both parties didn’t really take note of the change as this was a daily routine for anyone who has known them long enough.

Wukong just eyed the scene with mirth and a small bit of jealousy, that he will forever deny, as he watched his friend groom his child.

“Can I groom your fur,” he was startled by MK’s question.

“Wha-I mean, sure,” he quickly agreed after getting caught off by the question.

He smiled widely as he pushed the great sage Monkey King to the floor and began to gently groom his hair as well. He couldn’t help himself slowly become relaxed as the fingers gently caressed his fur. He has done this multiple times with his tribe, but this feeling will never get old.

“What is up with your fur being so soft?” The boy commented, “Dad’s fur is super soft and now yours? Is there a rule that demon monkey fur has to be soft?”

“Technically not a demon, but that is just the side effect of quality grooming,” he had to stop himself from letting a purr out as the kid continued. “Makes the fur nice and silky.”

He didn’t really pay attention to what his student said next as he closed his eyes and let the soft hands thread through his fur then when he opened his eyes once more it was dark and the hands had stopped.

He took a quick glance around and saw that he must have dozed off during their impromptu grooming session as he saw MK was now leaning against him in deep sleep and Mei curled up like a small cat on the couch with a pillow under her head. Yet there was no Macaque insight, his eyes flashed a bright golden as he scanned the area and saw the familiar outline of violet aura sitting on the railing outside.

So, he carefully dislodged himself from his student grip, laid him down gently with a blanket, and softly padded his way outside the warm home and into the cool night air.

“Could have sworn you were passed out,” Mac said as Wukong sat down next to him.

“What can I say, grooming plus silence equals sleepy time,” he shrugged, kicking his feet as he looked around, “you do have a nice home.”

“Thanks,” he awkwardly answered.

“Must have taken quite some time to build.”

“A few years.”

“Oh,” he said, then an awkward silence filled the air as neither side knew what to do without the kids acting as some sort of buffer between the two. Neither monkeys knew how to go from here despite one inviting the other over, they didn't know where exactly how to start nor, which is both their biggest worry, how it might end. But the inevitable conversation did need to start, so Wukong turned to his friend.

“Look, about the whole fight the other day and me saying you were just trying to use MK, I’m sorry,” he really knew he did a major fuck up then. “You really do care for the both of them and I can tell that they really love you as well.”

“…thanks, I got really lucky having them in my life,” he smiled then he winced, “Sorry about almost killing your friends back then, that was stupid of me.”

“Yeahhh, about that,” he turned his whole body to face him, “that has been nagging me for the longest of times. Why did you attack them?” He surprisingly watched the black furred monkey groan and put his face in his hands.

“It was both parts stupidly and sheer impulsiveness. I came to find you after Guanyin freed you and I heard you screaming and I saw you in pain, I thought you were being tortured,” he quietly replied.

Wukong's eyes were shot wide open as the truth of this finally came to light. This whole time he thought rage towards humans finally erupted in one huge explosion and attacked them, but it wasn’t. That wasn’t it. Macaque attacked them because he thought they were hurting him, he attacked his friends because he thought he was in pain because of them. Everything that happened, from the fight to their long separation was due to a fucking screwed-up misunderstanding!

“Oh,” yet he didn’t know how to voice any of that out, which is ironic considering he is known for being a loudmouth after his impulsiveness.

“I am sorry,” he reiterated as he barely got a reaction out of his friend. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions, but I just heard screams and I saw you lying there, that I couldn’t stop myself from listening to the voices,” he admitted. Wukong is one of the few people he has ever told about the voices that like to whisper in his ears all their malicious intent and their cruel lust.

“…we both are truly hot messes huh,” he finally said as he looked back to the moon and gave him a small nudge. “Just look at the two of us, you somehow became the recluse medicine man that lives in the forest alone, but still somehow ends up with two kids, and me, who lives up in the tallest of mountains and became the Great Sage Equal to Heaven.”

“You forgot to add reckless idiot, somewhere there,” Mac lightly jokes.

“Heh yeah…I forgive you,” he quietly stated.

Macaque whipped his head to him, “Just like that? I almost killed you and your friends back then and that whole fight, and the words-” they both winced at the reminder of those damned words they spoke to the other. “What I did was horrible.”

“And we fought and I made you fucking blind!” He hissed out as he tried to see past the glamor in place to look at his hazy eye.

“I’m pretty sure I left you with a few scars yourself,” he shot back.

“A few scars are nothing compared to being blind!”

“That is just one injury compared to the multitude!”

“It doesn’t work like that, you are literally a physician?!” He threw his hands up.

“And I do declare myself completely capable despite my disability!” He barked back.

“I never said you weren’t capable, I know better than to underestimate you. Remember back with the fire spirits.”

“Which ones?”

“The arrogant bastard ones.”

“Which ones? There are numerous of them,” he deadpanned.

“The ones centered by the river, you know the spirits who thought they were powerful enough-”

“To take on the deity that commanded that puddle of water,” he said with him and continued. “I still can’t believe that those words came out of his mouth,” he snorted.

“And after we kicked their asses,” Wukong reminded him with a wide grin, “remember the look on their faces when the river goddess heard what they said.”

“I have never seen a fire spirit look like they want to piss themselves that fast before,” he barked out his laughter.

“Right!”

The two shared a laugh at the memory of the deity whooping their asses once more as the arrogant spirits either ran away screaming or died beneath her thundering waves. Both of them were completely safe as they watched the entire thing from on top of a tree and made bets over which idiots would survive. Their laughter eventually died down as the night silence took over once more, but it wasn’t the awkward silence that greeted them but a kindling of familiar comfort they shared before.

“We really are idiots,” the medicine monkey faintly commented.

“Glad to hear you finally admit it,” the sage monkey replied then he paused as he thought for a moment, but pushed forward. “After our many years of friendship, I would have never thought I would ever hear the day.”

Mac's eyes widened at his admission, “Friends?”

“Yep,” he boldly looked him in the eyes, “I mean I have spent centuries with you, so I think we are way past that level you know.”

“Despite not seeing each other in between those centuries,” the simian retorted.

“Well friends do have stupid fights with each other sometimes, it’s just not specifically for mortals you know,” the monkey slightly grinned.

“You're not wrong,” he swung his feet, “do…do you want to start over? Maybe try anew?” Thinking that maybe they couldn’t go back to how things were before, how the easy smiles and laughter that they used to share between the two of them and thoroughly dissipated. That maybe, if they begin right here and right now, there can be some resemblance of that bond that was once shattered.

Wukong let that answer sink in and ponder it only for a few moments before shuddering. “I…no I really don’t,” he said with a surprising harshness in his tone. “You were the one person who has known me longer than anyone other than the ones that still reside on the mountain, you are the only one who knows me the best out of anyone, and call me selfish, but I don’t want to start over with the only person who knew me from the inside out and still give a damn about me.” He can’t even imagine just throwing away all those years that he spent with moonshine, it would be easier if they ripped his head out instead, at least then the pain won’t be so bad. “So how about we both agree we made and did stupid ass decisions and continue on, cause if I’m being honest here, I really missed your grooming,” he teased.

“You just want me for my hands,” he couldn’t help but say.

“You do have very lovely hands,” he didn’t deny.

Macaque snorted before nodding, “Yeah, I like that peaches.”

“It’s been a while, mango,” Wukong grinned as he took in his friend form once more. He really had changed a lot since the last time he saw him, who he was is still the same, but he has opened up his soul a little wider and has beautifully flourished. Just how, well he just has to see more for himself. But not just his soul, but his whole outer appearance and he’s not talking about his ‘feminine’ clothing, both of them aren’t ones who care for gender roles or whatever the humans have decided their identity is based around. Rather his long fur that is swaying gently in the breeze under the moonlight night.

He couldn’t stop himself from taking glances at that fur each time he looked at the black furred simian. From just the sheer size to the fluffiness, as his student had proclaimed (though he can’t help but agree) he really just wants to thread his fingers through his fur. Maybe it’s just the absence of not grooming his friend fur in a long ass time, but he wants to remember how soft his fur is, to gently smooth out any tangles, to let him sit in between his legs as Mac sinks into his ministration and purr once more, to hold him as long as he can as they gently relax in each other arms to have his hands move down from his gorgeous fur and to his beautiful face and tilt his head up so that his golden eyes meet his own and ben his head down to meet-…oh.

And it was at this moment as he stared at Liu Er face did the thought occur to him as their tails unconsciously had entwined for the first time in over five hundred years and sat together beneath the stars.

‘I still love him,’ he faintly thought and his own heart pounded in confirmation. Not even when they have been separated for five hundred years did he stop loving his moonlight. ‘I really won’t stop loving him…and for some reason, I don’t mind.’

But instead of saying anything, he instead put his face on top of Macque's head and playfully nuzzled him. He can see his moon fondly rolling his eyes at his antics, but lean in as he feels his smaller friend rest his head on his shoulder.

‘This is enough,’ both simians privately thought as they cuddled close together.

Though they weren’t quite alone as two pairs of eyes were trained on them from the living room and they haven’t moved an inch since they heard Monkey King walk outside for the first time.

Mei and MK looked at each other in complete shock as they took in the scene. The surprise wasn’t from their conversation nor from the harmonious aura that surrounded them, but rather from the black and brown tails that were intertwined with each other. Now they may not know how romantic love feels and looks except from t.v, movies, couples strolling, and the scarce amount of times Mei parents come around, but they can tell there is something definitely there as it was hanging around the two monkeys and seeing them like this, it clicked.

‘Holy shit, Monkey King is the old flame!’ MK exclaimed with his eyes as he looked toward Mei.

‘It would seem so,’ her eyes flickered.

‘And he likes Dad back!’ His eyes widened.

‘Indeed he does,’ she narrowed her viridian eyes.

‘What do we do?’ He blinked three times as he was happy that they reconciled, but was unsure of what’s to come.

‘Watch for now and see what happens,’ she breathed as they both turned to look at the two silent monkeys basking together in the night.

Slow burn? Slow Burn?! They have been slow burning for countless centuries that even the polar bears are starting to feel the heat

HAHAHAHA I’m turning up the fucking heat for these damn monkeys

#lego monkie kid #monkie kid #mk #macaque #six eared macaque #monkey king #PlumTeaAU

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aceredshirt13 · 3 years

Text

“Objectively Bad Parent Behavior”: Manfred von Karma and the Treatment of his Children

I wrote up a short little post expressing my frustrations with Dahlia Hawthorne apologists several months ago, because that’s something I’ve encountered more than once on the AA branch of social media. And while it is a much less common take in the fandom, I have also seen more than one person insist that Manfred von Karma was not an abusive father - some saying he wasn’t abusive toward Franziska, some saying he was abusive to neither Edgeworth nor Franziska. But given the textual evidence present in the game, as well as the behavior of Edgeworth and Franziska alike, it’s hard for me to believe that’s the case. Manfred treated Edgeworth and Franziska very, very differently, which caused some damage to their sibling relationship (and frankly, I’m glad their closeness survived the manufactured inequality imposed upon them). It’s... hard for me to believe that anyone could see the way he treated Edgeworth and view it in a positive light, but his attitude toward Franziska was also harmful to her psyche, if not in the same way and not to the same degree. With Edgeworth, the abuse and psychological manipulation was quite direct; with Franziska, the abuse was the neglect of a daughter constantly left in the dust. Let’s analyze Manfred von Karma’s parenting.

I was chatting/debating with a good friend of mine about this subject, and they brought up the point that Edgeworth and Franziska both seem to have a great deal of respect for von Karma, and used this as evidence that he was a good parent - but that is not always proof. You can respect someone, love someone, even if they don’t treat you well back. After all, Sebastian greatly respected and admired his father, and wanted nothing more than his respect in return, and Blaise was one of the most unapologetically abusive and manipulative (and quite possible psychopathic) parents in the entire series, insulting and belittling him to his face almost constantly. Pearl had a great deal of respect for her mother, even to the point of following her instructions to the letter (well, as much as she could understand them) in T&T, despite the fact that Morgan seemed to have no interest in her children beyond their spiritual power and thus the improved position in clan life they could give her (because she clearly didn’t care about Dahlia and Iris) and repeatedly tried to have Pearl’s beloved cousin killed in various ways. It’s the same reason people in bad relationships stand up for their partners when they mistreat them, or people in toxic friendships still keep coming back. Humans are messy, inherently illogical creatures that don’t always act and certainly don’t always love in our own best interests. So respect isn’t necessarily an indicator of good parenting, and neither is love from the child.

Certainly, in the case of Edgeworth, it’s difficult for me to imagine von Karma was any sort of good parent at all. I don’t think there was any love whatsoever from Manfred’s perspective, or even any degree of fondness beyond being a pawn in his needlessly complex and flawed revenge scheme. I say this not because I think Manfred is incapable of love - his affection for his wife as shown in The Inherited Turnabout proves that to be untrue - and also not because I imagine him to be a one-dimensional villain - frankly, I think it would have been fascinating for him to grow to care about/be proud of the son of the man he despised, and be embroiled in conflict about whether to continue or abandon his vengeance. This... kind of seems to be what that filler episode in the AA anime’s second season was trying to suggest?? However, for a number of reasons, I don’t think that’s the case at all.

Edgeworth was indicated to be a rather sensitive child, with Phoenix having mentioned how he cried over paper cranes and got otherwise emotional, but he has been so emotionally repressed by the time of his adulthood that even all the way up to SOJ we’ve never seen him really, actually smile in a way that wasn’t a smirk. In regard to emotional suppression, yes, you could say the same thing about Raymond, and thus trace it back to Gregory’s death as the only starting point of the trauma, but Raymond doesn’t hide all of his emotions - mostly he hides the ones that he perceives as weak, like sadness or anger, until there’s a point (like in Inherited Turnabout when they finally corner Dane Gustavia) where that laid-back facade finally shatters and he reveals the depths of his anger and self-hatred. Edgeworth has trouble with positive emotions (shown by the whoop detective Gumshoe) as much as he does with his own vulnerability (shown by the internal struggle of frustration and guilt that is his “unnecessary feelings”), and while I imagine even in the best of circumstances Miles would have inherited more than a touch of his father’s social awkwardness, I definitely think his time at the von Karma household wounded his emotional health to an immense degree.

One thing that stuck out to me in AAI2 was that when Blaise called Sebastian an idiot for the first time, Edgeworth privately asked himself, “...Is this really a healthy family relationship??” I remember playing this segment and wondering how it could even be a question, since the answer was so obviously “no”. Eventually, as Blaise becomes blunter and more consistent in his nastiness toward his son, Edgeworth, as well as everyone else, quickly comes around to the fact that Blaise is an utter piece of shit. But it occurred to me that maybe the reason Edgeworth wasn’t immediately certain if it was unhealthy was because of his own experience with being constantly belittled by Manfred von Karma. He remembers his time with Gregory, who I can hardly imagine was the sort of father to belittle his son, but those memories are fuzzy, and old - most of his childhood memories are of life in the von Karma household, where our limited interactions with Edgeworth and von Karma together suggest that being made to feel unworthy was just a part of life.

I don’t think Manfred was physically abusive toward Miles, mostly because I don’t think he had to be. We’ve seen Manfred angry, and he’s terrifying. We’ve seen Manfred say that Edgeworth isn’t worthy of even attempting to strive for perfection, and young Edgeworth, who in all other regards is sassy and abrasive and outwardly full of himself, just shuts down and accepts it. Edgeworth speaks with Franziska, and suggests he wouldn’t have had the courage to stand up to Manfred and attempt to continue the investigation into Byrne’s death if she hadn’t been there to support him. In Turnabout Goodbyes, Manfred not only served to prosecute the man that should have been his son, but also took direct delight in letting Phoenix prove Edgeworth not guilty in the Yanni Yogi case so that Manfred could instead indict him in the shooting of his father. It seems odd that he would wait so long, going down to the wire in regard to his time limit - after all, as grand revenge schemes go, holding the trial so close to the end of the statute of limitations is playing an awfully dangerous game. However, this strategy makes sense if you take into account that he may have wanted to maximize his revenge - to put as much influence over Edgeworth as possible, and twist him against his father's ideals as much as he possibly could. This proves that it wasn’t just Edgeworth’s imprisonment that he wanted - he wanted to play with him, manipulate him, like a cat toying with a mouse before eating it whole. Finally, Manfred finished off his last case by literally chanting for Edgeworth’s death after it was discovered that Gregory’s killer was in fact Manfred himself. As @trollseamstress rather entertainingly put it in the notes of my friend’s reblog of a post on the subject (you can find that thread here), this is “objectively bad parent behavior.”

(I've also been told that the Japanese fandom tends to have a bit of a different viewpoint, and doesn't see Manfred as being quite as abusive as the Western fandom does. Though I'm trying to learn Japanese, I am far from fluent, so I don’t know how different the original Japanese version is, or if that would have an effect on their perspective. To make up for that, I contacted someone on Tumblr who does comparisons between the English and the original Japanese for some perspective on Manfred berating him in AAI, and they were the ones who told me that while what he says in Japanese is common for “strict mentor” characters and may not on its own be indicative of emotional abuse, Edgeworth’s conversation with Franziska about being fearful of standing up to him in any way, and the contrast between Franziska’s treatment of Edgeworth and Manfred’s treatment of Edgeworth, solidified the fact that Manfred’s treatment of Edgeworth was far from caring or healthy. Since I don’t know them at all, I didn’t want to harass them too much for every little detail that I was curious about, but this reflects that it wasn't something that results from a mistranslation. If the Eastern fandom truly does take this less condemnatory perspective, I'm unsure why.)

There’s also the fact that Edgeworth calls him “sir.” Don’t get me wrong, this series is pretty weird with what characters call their adoptive parents - Apollo calling Dhurke by his first name (though Nahyuta does too - maybe it’s a Khura’inese cultural thing?) Katherine calling Jeffrey “Monsieur Master” instead of some variant of Dad. (Dhurke and Jeff’s affectionate attitudes toward their children would also suggest that they would much prefer to be called some variant of Dad.) I am also aware that in some places - the American South, for example - calling your parents “sir” or “ma’am” is something of a cultural tradition. However, this is quickly disproven by the fact that Franziska calls Manfred “Papa.” That is a clear separation of the two children, a clear othering of Miles Edgeworth. Franziska doesn’t really have this othering viewpoint- after all, she calls Edgeworth her “little brother,” and despite their many ups and downs and arguments, the two of them clearly care about each other as siblings, however dysfunctionally they may have grown up. This may suggest that Manfred didn't have much interest in warping Franziska’s view of Edgeworth as not being a “real” part of the family - and therein lies the problem with Manfred’s interactions with Franziska.

He lacks interest in her.

Perhaps the clearest point in this argument is his line at the end of Turnabout Reminiscence, where Franziska - who has become a prosecutor at thirteen years old, something which is clear from the reactions of other characters is completely insane and unheard of in this universe - asks her father if he’ll come see her first trial. And the man who has spent this entire day giving Edgeworth all his attention - pushing Edgeworth, hounding Edgeworth, telling Edgeworth what he should and shouldn’t do on the day of what should have been his first case - all he says to his own incredible prodigy of a daughter is “We’ll see.” Yes, there are different modes of parenting. Yes, there are different ways of showing love. But there is absolutely no justification for being so incredibly dismissive of your daughter’s absolutely amazing achievements - achievements she worked so hard to reach because she just wanted her father to notice her, and be proud.

As for Franziska, and Manfred’s treatment of her, I think of something my mom told me about my own family - my extended family, who had a history of being dysfunctional, to say the least. She talked to one of my aunts about her young sons, and how she wasn’t taking care of them - wasn’t helping them in school, wasn’t making them lunch, wasn’t helping them get dressed, wasn’t supporting them emotionally when they needed her. My aunt protested that she “loved them very much.” But as my mom said - both to my aunt, and to my younger self when she recounted this story - loving someone is easy. It doesn’t require anything from you. But taking care of someone, helping them, showing them that you love them through your words, or through your actions, in all the different ways that may be, is another step entirely. And that step is what makes you a good parent - not just love.

So it’s not unreasonable to assume that Manfred loved his daughter. But it doesn’t change the fact that he was so wrapped up in screwing up Edgeworth’s life that he neglected Franziska. Every sliver of interaction with her, or mention of interaction with her, is distant, and cold, and left Franziska feeling utterly alone and worthless compared to Edgeworth because Edgeworth received all of her father’s attention (even if that attention was ultimately quite malicious). This indicates that even if he loved her, he didn’t do a good job of showing it, and that’s what makes him a bad parent - and is what caused a great deal of Franziska’s psychological problems as an adult.

Being a bad parent isn’t just limited to insulting Sebastian in front of others until he cries, or to smothering Pearl and refusing to let her learn of the outside world while trying to kill the family member she adores. It’s not limited to leaving Mia and Maya alone in a village of dysfunctional mediums who want them dead for their own personal gain, or to abandoning Trucy in a courtroom by herself at eight years old, or to refusing to tell Apollo and Trucy that they’re related and you’re their mother for no clear reason, or even to taking out your grief at Metis’s murder by beating and harassing your robot “children” that feel human emotions. It's not even limited to murdering a child's father, adopting him so you can psychologically manipulate him for fifteen years, and then framing him for two murders. Sometimes it can be as simple as not being there when your daughter needs it - and causing her to grow into a person who will take any kind of attention - fear, anger, sadness - because she thinks it's better than no attention at all. Unlike Miles, who hopefully still retains some memories of his own father (who, yes, was rather reserved and could sometimes come off as stern and serious, much like Manfred, but always took the time to listen to Miles, and support him both educationally and emotionally as much as he could in between long stints at work), Franziska didn't know any other kind of father - she didn't know how a father was supposed to be - so she had no evidence that her father's cold distance was neither rational nor good. So I hope that those who see Manfred as a positive influence at least ask themselves why it is they think that.

If you have any questions, comments, rebuttals, or anything else to say, let me know in replies, reblogs, or asks! Thank you for reading this lengthy monster of an essay, and have a good rest of your day!

#red randomness #ace attorney #manfred von karma #miles edgeworth #franziska von karma #I can't help but think Franziska would have turned out much less angry and retaliatory if he'd been more present in her life #and I don't think that her belief that she and Miles were being pitted against each other was imaginary either #ace attorney spoilers

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ibijau · 3 years

Text

How to woo a Lan pt2 / On AO3

Jin Ling takes a walk with his dog, reminisces on the past, and gets a brilliant idea

It took Jin Ling the better part of two weeks to remember the idea he had nearly had that night, after he’d accidentally insulted Lan Sizhui. He’d just been so busy that entire time, with more problems arising from that haunting they’d dealt with (Jin Ling had to write to Wei Wuxian, who in turn sent word to the person who had initially reached out to them). Then there had been councils, and bills for a change, and some trouble with a disciple who’d tried to take advantage of his position to harass some girls in town, and just about a billion more things that had kept Jin Ling impossibly busy.

Even that particular afternoon when the idea returned to him, Jin Ling was supposed to be working. He was trying to see if there was any way to reorganise the way Lanling Jin was run so certain people who had profited a little too much from Jin Guangyao’s less savoury decisions would be pushed aside, and that meant gathering a lot of proof of their suspected corruption (bills, mostly. It always came back to bills. Jin Ling was in hell). Jin Ling was trying his best, and he’d been very serious all morning, but by lunch time he had a raging headache and decided he deserved at least a little bit of fun.

The most fun Jin Ling could think of having on a bad day was to spend time with Fairy, so he went to get her. The poor old girl barked happily at him when he came near her pen, and ran around him for a few minutes when he freed her. The man in charge of Lanling Jin’s spiritual dogs wanted to order her to stop and behave, but dared not to so when Jin Ling himself was delighted by his dog’s happiness. So what if Fairy wasn’t always as serious as expected? She was a good girl who had more than proven she knew how to behave when it was really important. Other people might say she was spoiled, but they said the same about Jin Ling anyway, so at least they were well matched.

When Fairy had calmed down, Jin Ling went out into the gardens with her, figuring they could both use the chance to stretch their legs. While walking, he gave her orders in and there, just so he could say he was training her, should anyone bother him. But in all honesty, he just wanted to relax a little and have fun with the one friend he had who didn’t care that he always said the wrong thing.

Although their walk didn’t have any particular aim, Jin Ling soon realised that they seemed to be heading toward the aviary. He hesitated for a moment, fearful Fairy might scare the birds, before deciding it would be excellent training. A good spiritual dog had to know how to ignore distractions… and Jin Ling liked the birds well enough, if only because he’d heard his father used to keep some, back in the days. Jin Zixuan, he’d heard some people whisper when they thought he couldn't hear, had been the sort of person more at ease with animals than people. Nobody would actually say it directly, but Jin Ling strongly suspected that he’d inherited his people’s skill from his father... though at least Jin Zixuan had been universally liked in spite of it, or so he'd been told. Jin Ling wasn't so lucky.

It was nice, in the aviary. A little noisy, sure, and the smell took some getting used to, but it was very quiet and there was rarely anyone there these days. Jin Guangyao hadn’t been very keen on animals, so he had kept only enough birds to show status, and the person in charge of those birds had other tasks to keep them busy, so the aviary was often empty of any humans. It had made it a good hiding place, when Jin Ling had been younger and slightly more temperamental than he currently was.

When Fairy started whining and growling at the birds, Jin Ling ordered her to stay put and continued walking alone among the cages.

He used to hide in that place a lot, back in the days. There were a few good spots, like between those two high cages… Jin Ling remembered getting in that little dark space when he wanted to avoid all adults, and sitting among the birds for a shichen or two until everybody was too worried over his disappearance to think of scolding him anymore. And he wasn’t the only one who had noticed what a good hiding place the aviary was, because one time…

Jin Ling gasped as the memory returned to him.

He’d been… ten, maybe eleven at most. Jin Ling couldn’t remember what trouble he’d caused that time, but Jin Guangyao had been particularly cross because they’d had guests, and Jin Ling had been his usual temperamental self, but in front of a whole bunch of sect leaders. Except Jin Ling hadn’t meant to cause a scene (he rarely did, even then) so he’d been upset at being scolded so harshly when he didn’t understand what the big deal had been… and he’d run away after shouting something awful about hating his uncle.

The aviary had been a good place to hide, as it so often was. Jin Ling had gotten into his nice little dark spot unseen, and prepared himself to wait however long it would take for everyone to calm down about what happened.

After a little while, two people had entered the aviary. Jin Ling hadn’t seen their faces right away, but cold sweat had run down his back when he’d recognised their voices.

“I really don’t think Jin Ling will have run here,” he’d heard Lan Xichen say in a very odd tone, quite different from the usual way he spoke.

“Really?” Nie Huaisang had replied, half laughing. “But I think it’s worth checking anyway, gege.”

Lan Xichen had laughed too. A real laugh, not just something polite.

It had been so odd to hear those two laugh, Jin Ling recalled. Back then, Lan Xichen had barely seemed like a real person to his childish mind. He was the mighty Zewu-Jun, practically an immortal already, aloof and always calm, and he didn’t just laugh like that. As for Nie Huaisang, he was always sad and pitiful, nothing at all like this laughing and teasing young man Jin Ling could hear but not quite see at that point.

Jin Ling had hesitated to leave his hiding spot to check if it really was them, or demons having taken their form… but if it was them he would have been punished, and if it was demons they’d have eaten him, so staying hidden had seemed more prudent.

He’d heard movement then, the rustling of fabric, and Lan Xichen gasping.

“Huaisang, not here,” Lan Xichen had said, trying and failing to sound scolding. “If someone were to come…”

“No one ever does,” Nie Huaisang had retorted. “I know, I used to come hide here when da-ge dragged me to conferences. It’s just us, gege, and I haven’t seen you in so long…”

“We’re meant to look for Jin Ling, A-Sang,” Lan Xichen had complained, sounding almost whiny.

Nie Huaisang had laughed again, and now he was coming into view for Jin Ling.

It might have been better to not see that, Jin Ling had thought at the time.

Because what he’d seen, then, was Nie Huaisang smiling widely, walking backward, pulling Lan Xichen by the collar. And Lan Xichen, who surely could have resisted if he hadn’t liked this, was following willingly, eagerly even, his eyes burning until he suddenly grabbed Nie Huaisang by the waist and he…

And they…

Jin Ling remembered crying out in surprise.

He hadn’t been used to adults kissing, or anyone at all really. His uncles had both taught him to be careful about showing affection, because of his status as sect heir, and they’d both made it clear to him that only married people should kiss.

Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang weren’t married, Jin Ling had known that. He hadn’t always paid enough attention to the lives of grown-ups around him, but Lan Xichen had been in Jinlin Tai all the time, and Jin Ling had heard both Jin Guangyao and Qin Su offer to help their friend find himself a suitable bride. They’d also offered the same to Nie Huaisang, and talked sometimes between them of how it might help lift the permanent gloominess of character that had taken over him since his brother’s death.

“Oh, shit,” he’d heard Nie Huaisang say, and somehow that had been the last drop for Jin Ling who had broken into tears.

It had taken Lan Xichen and Nie Huaisang great effort to get him to calm down, and more still to convince him to get out of his hiding spot. But by that point they’d been back to their normal selves, Nie Huaisang a pitiful, panicky mess, Lan Xichen radiating calm to the point it became contagious.

“Jin Ling, will you do me a favour?” Lan Xichen had asked when the little boy had been standing in front of him. “What you saw just now… can you keep it a secret?”

Jin Ling had hesitated, still sniffling a little.

“It’s forbidden to do that,” Jin Ling had said, remembering his weird bastard uncle, the one they’d kicked out some years before. “Only married people can, and two boys won’t marry. Are you going to be punished if I tell on you?”

“Cut-sleeves aren’t allowed in Jinlin Tai?” Nie Huaisang had gasped, going from pitiful to angry until Lan Xichen motioned for him to calm down.

“There was an incident a while ago, that Mo Xuanyu boy,” Lan Xichen had explained to his friend, before looking back at Jin Ling. “But Mo Xuanyu wasn’t punished because he liked boys, it was for being forceful about it. You understand the difference, A-Ling, don’t you?” Jin Ling had nodded, more to please that kind man than out of real understanding. “You are a good boy. To answer your question… no, we wouldn’t be punished, not really. But it would make some people unhappy, and we need more time to prepare for that. You understand, right?”

“Like when I break something and I don’t want to admit it right away, but if I calm down then I can tell jiujiu or shushu?”

Lan Xichen had nodded, smiling so gently that Jin Ling had been a little flustered.

Come to think of it, he’d always been a little weak to that kind smile the reallygood Lan had. So weak that he had promised to keep Lan Xichen’s secret, and had done so for years now, never thinking much about it again, never catching any sign of these two being more than friends. Maybe it had just been a fling between them, and that was why they hadn’t wanted to go public about it.

Considering everything that had happened, Jin Ling hoped for them that it had never been serious.

Still, as he walked among birds and reminisced about that incident, Jin Ling finally remembered that idea he’d very nearly had two weeks before: if he wanted to seduce a Lan, he needed the help of someone who had done it before. This meant either Wei Wuxian, who was awful and unbearable and hadn’t realised Lan Wangji liked him until Jin Guangyao told him while holding him captive, or…

Or Nie Huaisang, who hadn’t seemed to be having any trouble figuring out on his own how to get a Lan to like him, judging by what had happened some years before.

With the beginning of a plan forming at last, Jin Ling returned to Fairy's side to give her all the petting she deserved. If his hunch was the right one, then he'd be even busier than before in the weeks to come, so better give his dog a lot of affection while he could.

#xisang #zhuiling #jin ling #nie huaisang #mo dao zu shi #mdzs #jau writes #operation woo a lan

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happybinghe · 3 years

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Shen Jiu Character Analysis:

The Misunderstandings Regarding Shen Jiu and Why I Feel Sorry for Him

Shen Jiu is a very misunderstood character, and although he may not be all smiles and sunshine, his attitude is very realistic considering all that he's been through. While I don't approve of his behavior towards Bingge, when you think about it, you can understand that he's applying the way he was treated by Qiu Jianluo who always beat him up, to Luo Bingge who, backed up by his protagonist halo, somehow manages to get things right despite Shen Jiu's attempts to sabotage his efforts. To him, Bingge's strength and spiritual prowess which seems to come easy to him, is something Shen Jiu struggled to achieve while Binghe, no matter what Shen Jiu tries to do, always succeeds in the end.

Shen Jiu has subtle anger buried in deep, but treats it apathetically. The world has done so much to him, and it seems no one is ever there to help, still constantly blaming him on everything instead.

In the extra chapters of Airplane's Adventures, Shang Qinghua/Airplane accompanies Shen Jiu and Liu Qingge on a mission. After Shen Jiu and Liu Qingge fought with each other again, where Liu Qingge believed Shen Jiu was trying to harm him instead of the demons, Liu Qingge left. Airplane, who is the writer of the original novel and creator of the characters, who knows about his characters more than anyone, thinks to himself, as written in the novel:

Ah right, he had gone to all the trouble to do a good thing, but the result didn’t meet expectations. If it didn’t meet expectations just go out and tell Liu Qingge, “I only wanted to help you out just then”, but he wasn’t willing to do it. If you’re not willing, just let me help you explain, but he couldn’t tear down his face━maybe he was embarrassed. This person really was full of twists and turns, always tormenting himself.

As we can see, Airplane knows Shen Jiu originally meant well and actually helped Liu Qingge when he was being attacked by a demon from behind, but no one would know that as the story is filtered in a way to show Shen Jiu being purely scum. There's a lot hidden under the surface, but the only way we get to see true intentions is when we see the story from Airplane's point of view, since he wrote it and knows how he intended for these characters to be.

Airplane then proceeds to advise Shen Jiu, telling him:

“If, in the future, you see someone going into qi deviation, do not panic, and do not rashly go up thinking you can save them. You must stay calm and go call for help, do not make a move yourself. Or else, you will definitely be more of a hindrance than a help, poke a big hole in the basket, and abandon yourself to despair from then on, unable to free yourself for the rest of your life. Not even jumping into the Yellow River could wash you clean!”

So originally, Airplane wrote Shen Jiu with him having in mind believing himself that he could help Liu Qingge when he had a qi deviation, not having any intention of killing him. But him being written as the villain clearly gives Shen Jiu a hand that can only destroy, even if that wasn't his intention. Shen Jiu, as well as Luo Bingge, are prisoners to the system and to a force stronger than them in which no matter what they want or intend, there are simply things they have no control over, no matter how much deep down they wish they did. I'll keep that topic for a different post.

Shen Jiu is too prideful to state his good intentions. Since they believe him to be scum no matter what he does, then let them. He doesn't care what anyone thinks, even if he doesn't want to harm them, if they believe he does, then he doesn't care enough to change their opinion about him. Shen Jiu is a self-hating person. And he won't defend himself if someone accuses him of something. The sort of attitude he has will hide his good intentions. He's the type of person to carry himself with a cold aura and look on his face, do good in secret, and never let anyone know about it.

However, sometimes when you're constantly accused of anything and everything, and to people you're considered a scummy person, then at some point, you may just throw everything to the wind, with the thought of if that's what they think, then so be it. You want me to be the villain, I'll be the villain. And that's possibly where throwing his frustration comes, towards Bingge, the boy who can clearly bear everything and not complain about it, in his perspective. Everything has led up to that, originally he had good intentions, but now, he simply doesn't care.

When he is later faced with so many accusations at the same time, in his mind, no matter what he says, it simply won't help. The people will simply only hear their own voices and believe what they want to believe.

I believe that despite if Shen Jiu has good intentions, it's covered up by the fact that he's written as a villain, with details of his past and personal view originally unknown and covered up considering Airplane Bro left out alot in his original drafts and didn't include alot of details concerning Shen Jiu's life since he wanted to mainly write what his fans wanted even if it originally wasn't what he had planned. So just as Luo Bingge has a protagonist halo that will basically bend the story to protect him from death and help him to succeed, Shen Jiu has a villain halo that no matter what good he does, in the eyes of others, he will seem guilty no matter what he does to try and fix things. Also, think about Liu Qingge and how he treats his disciples. He barely shows up, Bai Zhan Peak is always destroying things and fighting everyone, including Luo Bingge. But the story doesn't focus on that and it's considered a normal occurence, because it's filtered in a way where even if the characters all treat their disciples roughly for example, Shen Jiu is the targeted and chosen villain, so every little thing he does will become emphasized and make it seem like he's the worst person in the world, even if everyone else does the same or worse. There are a lot of people with bad attitudes, but they're not called a villain. Because there's no focus on the cruelty of others, only focusing on Shen Jiu's actions and emphasizing them, no matter how many actual villains there really are, it won't seem as terrible as Shen Jiu because he's put in the spotlight, on stage, where everyone points out and focuses solely on his flaws.

When someone is treated like a villain and constantly hated without any care, kindness, or love ever being directed towards them, it's only natural for them to become a cold, distant, and self-loathing person, shutting themselves out from the world, as Shen Jiu originally did when he was rarely at the peak as he never really felt welcomed there by anyone. No one ever shows him any genuine care, other than Yue Qingyuan, but Shen Jiu feels betrayed by him for leaving him and never coming back to rescue him when they were young, never knowing the truth of what really happened even up to his death, which I think is really sad and tragic. Also, Yue Qingyuan is a great person and all, but it kind of bothers me that he still calls him Xiao Jiu even though it bothers Shen Jiu, who prefers the name Shen Qingqiu since the other name brings back memories of a life he would really love to forget and not think of. It's like constantly reminding your best friend of their ex who they really want nothing to do with anymore. He wants to fix what happened but he's really constantly struggling to. Anyway, I just feel that it's a bit disrespectful to call someone something they don't like and they're trying to forget. (I'm using the name Shen Jiu here so you don't get confused) Shen Jiu needs for others to show their good intentions before he does. So far he hasn't seen that from people, and so he believes that everyone is intentionally against him and doesn't like him. Like when he was fighting with Liu Qingge, he later mentioned to Yue Qingyuan and asked him why Liu Qingge doesn't show him kindness and mercy first, and why does he always have to be the one to do so. Shen Jiu is like a cat, if you want him to approach you kindly, you need to approach him kindly first, even if it takes a while.

According to a psychology fact I read, it takes 7 positive compliments to make up for 1 negative comment. So if he is constantly faced with negativity and barely anything positive, how is he supposed to function properly without bitterness taking over him? He's only human. He too has feelings. The negativity targeted towards him outweighs the positive. Watching Shen Jiu's actions, he's generally trying to find a place for himself to belong, and no one ever accepts him. All of that turns into subtle and low-key hatred and anger. It hurts deep down to be hated by everyone and not having anyone you can even trust. Of the very few who were nice to him was Qiu Haitang, sister to her abusive brother who always beat up Shen Jiu, without her ever knowing. He was going to marry her, but it's pretty normal that someone written as a villain isn't allowed to be happy, and so life happens. He's always had a difficult life, constantly hated, never loved, being rejected and seemingly betrayed. He's never fit in anywhere, and I see him to be a very lonely person who wants somewhere to belong and has a human need to be loved, even if he'd never admit it.

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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youtube

Watch the 2024 American Climate Leadership Awards for High School Students now: https://youtu.be/5C-bb9PoRLc

The recording is now available on ecoAmerica's YouTube channel for viewers to be inspired by student climate leaders! Join Aishah-Nyeta Brown & Jerome Foster II and be inspired by student climate leaders as we recognize the High School Student finalists. Watch now to find out which student received the $25,000 grand prize and top recognition!

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turtle-paced · 3 years

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A:tLA Re-Watch: Fine-Toothed Comb Edition

The warning for the last episode was genocide. The warning for this episode is second-hand embarrassment.

Book 1, Chapter 4 - The Warriors of Kyoshi

(0:55) Previously on Avatar, Aang announced that he has Serious Business to attend to before learning waterbending. Zuko made a new enemy in Admiral Zhao on top of his existing problems with his dad, now revealed to have kicked him out of home pending Avatar-capture. Aang learned he really is the last airbender.

(1:48) Zuko’s room still has those broadswords on the wall, in case anyone was wondering.

(2:08) Today we’re focusing on Zuko’s scarred side while he talks about his single-minded dedication to catching the Avatar. In the context of the previous episode and the previously-on, I think this is the scar as the symbol of Zuko’s supposed obligations to his family, rather than scar = bad guy. Which is more obvious on the re-watch.

(2:17) “Uncle, you taught me that keeping a level head is a sign of a great leader.” He’s trying. Not very successfully right now, since he’s got capital I Issues, but he’s trying.

Moreover, it’s a pretty consistent thread with Zuko that he definitely wants to run the Fire Nation and does things to a) secure that outcome and b) prepare himself for the job so he can do it well. It’s an understated but profound contrast with both Aang, who’s already stated outright that he doesn’t want to be the Avatar, as well as with the blind, destructive ambitions of Ozai and Zhao. The latter is something I’ll definitely talk about more later, probably when the show digs into firebending philosophy. For the moment, however, Zuko’s overt desire for the Fire Nation throne hits a lot of genre biases about the evils of ambition. The show puts that out there now…so we can talk about it better, later.

(2:26) Zuko’s anger manifests in overactive candles; Iroh gently reprimands him for the effect (the heat, telling him to open a window), rather than for being angry.

(2:38) “He’s clearly a master of evasive maneuvering,” Zuko says, despairing of ever tracking down the Avatar. Aside from the cut to Aang’s actual methods right now, this one’s a bit of an awwwww moment when you think of the series finale, where the universal response to “we can’t find Aang” is for everyone to look to Zuko, trusting he’ll have some ideas. How things change.

Over in the A-plot, Sokka has the maps. This will also be consistent.

(2:50) Aang stares up at Katara, who’s focused on her mending, and tries and fails to get her undivided attention. This episode makes some important progress in Aang and Katara’s relationship. Now that they’ve decided to be in each other’s lives, now that the novelty’s wearing off, what are things going to look like when the other is an everyday feature? Katara’s got stuff to do and can’t look up every time Aang wants any of her attention. Aang can’t always be after attention, either.

(3:15) Sokka’s sexism is very obviously brought up here. Gotta love Katara hauling him up on it by withdrawing the benefit he gets from her work, leaving him scrambling to apologise. And for his pants.

(3:46) Goal-oriented Sokka wants to keep flying. Aang wants to stop and enjoy travelling. This time, Katara agrees with her brother, pretty understandable given her investment in learning waterbending. Always interesting keeping track of how often the main characters disagree with each other, even over little things - it’s actually pretty often. This is a good thing for the story! Arguing characters are showing the viewers what they want, how much they want it, and how they want to get it.

In terms of timeline, we’re still solidly in winter, and Katara’s projecting arrival in the Northern Water Tribe close to spring.

(3:55) Bad habits from Aang; he doesn’t defend his desire to stay here on its merits, but uses Appa as an excuse. He avoids even this little argument.

(4:15) Plus his insistence that Katara watch him ride the elephant-koi (which sound terrifying). Same thing as the marbles just then, but with the danger level scaled up.

(5:14) This sort of miscommunication, where Katara and Sokka are stuck on shore yelling for Aang to get out of the water and being dramatically misinterpreted, could only happen this early in the series. Much past this point, and Katara in particular would be confident enough to charge in herself and do some rescuing, especially on open water.

(5:48) Having narrowly escaped sea monsters, the gAang get ambushed by a group of mysterious warriors. And taken out quite effectively, too. Again not the sort of thing that would be possible later in the series.

We intentionally don’t get a good look at the ambushers at this point.

(6:13) Not that we’re left hanging for long, as the voice of the person in uniform is clearly female. Three seconds later, Sokka’s blindfold is torn off to reveal - ta-da - an organised, professional team of female warriors defending their home island. We can get the organised and professional thing from the fact that they’ve got uniforms and Suki’s headband clearly being a marker of rank.

In case it wasn’t already apparent that this episode is going to smack Sokka out of the very worst of his sexist ideas about women in combat, Sokka puts his foot in his mouth by asking where the men who ambushed the party are. Nowhere, mate, they don’t exist.

(6:41) Since Sokka can’t stop being sexist for thirty seconds, it’s left to Katara and Aang to talk their way out. Neither of them seem to share Sokka’s patriarchal notions; we’ve already seen that Katara’s an outspoken feminist in her patriarchal society. Aang just hasn’t commented. He simply doesn’t say anything about women in combat, and through his silence conveys that it’s just not all that remarkable to him.

(6:46) Kyoshi Island might be formally neutral and staying out of direct conflicts, but it’s still Earth Kingdom - they’re not worried about generic spies or generic partisans, but specifically Fire Nation spies.

(7:01) Exposition and timeline. Avatar Kyoshi, for whom Kyoshi Island was named, born 400 years ago. Helps us see the enduring legend of some past Avatars, despite the disrepair her statue is in. This is before we got the information about typical Avatar lifespans and who, specifically, came before Roku. Thinking that there were five Avatars between Aang and Kyoshi wouldn’t have been too out there a conclusion.

(7:07) Aang reveals himself as the Avatar of his own volition. Right now it’s just to get himself out of a jam with local authorities, but as we’ll see over the course of the episode, it’s got consequences other than people wanting to kill him.

(7:22) Another example of airbending being proof positive that Aang must be the Avatar. This goes to show just how thoroughly the Fire Nation wiped out the Air Nomads. Airbending is so vanishingly rare in this setting now that people think it’s more likely the kid airbender is the Avatar than a random descendant of a random survivor.

(7:38) Can’t say I like the running joke of the guy foaming at the mouth. But this kicks off the counterpoint to how Aang’s relationship with Katara is settling. The people of Kyoshi immediately give Aang attention. Lots of it. Lots and lots of positive attention. The Avatar is a celebrity.

Aang, for his part, is completely fine with being the centre of attention. He likes the spotlight. This won’t be the last time we see him seek it out, not by a long shot. This episode does some character work for him in this regard.

(7:47) In something of a continuation of last episode’s giant spiritual announcement that the Avatar is back, this montage shows us word spreading throughout ordinary people in the southern Earth Kingdom. From one person to another and eventually to people who’d see Aang captured. Love how the colour palette changes and the Fire Nation horn comes in through the music over that quick montage.

(7:58) Here’s another way Zuko’s season one treatment differs from your Zhaos and your season two Azulas - you see him and Iroh in little domestic moments like this. Zuko’s not in armour, he’s sitting down for a meal with his uncle, he leaves the scene insisting he’s saving his meal for later. He and Iroh are depicted as having lives outside messing with the protagonists. (Villain domesticity gets a different twist in season three, which is heavily into exploring how the war’s messed up the Fire Nation at home, in all senses of ‘at home’.)

Broadsword status: still there. Seriously, the animators left them in for a single shot where they’re only partly in view behind Zuko’s head. They were extremely careful with that particular detail, given that not one but two plot points hang on Zuko having and displaying those swords.

(8:13) Cut to the statue of Kyoshi being cleaned and repainted, showing how the people of Kyoshi are honouring the Avatar. Appa is also getting the spa treatment, lucky Appa.

(8:32) Aang immediately identifies the food set out in front of him as a dessert not usually served at breakfast and starts scarfing it down; Katara looks at it more dubiously. She’s never left the South Pole before, so she’s not familiar with Earth Kingdom cuisine. Aang’s travelled pretty extensively, so he is. Have I mentioned recently how much I love the attention to detail in this show?

(8:41) Sokka, meanwhile, is sulking in a corner. His sexism is depicted here as petty and as more self-inflicted misery, pathetic and self-sabotaging.

(9:15) Again, the pattern. Katara says ‘we’re probably going to have a problem if we stay here too long’, looking at future issues, Aang says ‘nah, we’re fine for the moment!’ Another thing he learns a lesson about by the end of the episode - and he doesn’t repeat that specific mistake.

It’s also noticeable that even as Aang’s clearly glutting on the attention, it’s important to him that he’s making the town happy. He wants the people around him to be happy, even just casual contacts.

(9:25) Katara spells out the moral of Aang’s story this episode. The attention is going to Aang’s head, and he needs to get a grip.

(9:33) Even here in episode four, Katara is noticeably annoyed at girls around Aang’s age fangirling over him, and at how positively Aang reacts to it. Not going anywhere but Kataang, just a question of maturity.

Cue montage of Aang being very popular and doing a bit of showing off (airbending push-ups! An exercise in lifting one’s own body weight with airbending, with sufficient control not to physics oneself flying backwards!), while Katara prepared to move on and looks rather unimpressed.

(10:34) Sokka, who as I mentioned back in episode one, is teenage insecure, walks up to the Kyoshi Warriors’ training area with the clear intention of proving something to himself, I mean, to them. When he approaches, we see the Kyoshi Warriors are moving in unison, again showing us their discipline and professionalism.

(10:42) Incidentally, Sokka totally knows what he’s doing by calling the Kyoshi Warriors’ practice a “little dance lesson”. Condescension guaranteed to raise blood pressure.

(10:50) Suki, who is way more gracious than Sokka deserves right now, apologises for arresting Sokka and friends on suspicion of being Fire Nation spies. Not because arresting suspected Fire Nation spies without a lick of proof is bad, mind you, but because the assumption turned out to be wrong. Compare with Sokka and Gran-Gran wanting to kick Aang out of the South Pole village and into the antarctic wastes without so much as a snack or a blanket. We’ll see this more in the next few episodes, but the Fire Nation’s war damages the ability of Water Tribes and Earth Kingdom to trust any stranger.

(11:01) Suki’s patience is not infinite. When Sokka doubles down on being a dickhead, she gets ready to smack him down. This doesn’t seem like her first experience dealing with men talking down to her and her group, either.

Over the course of the series we’ll see some Earth Kingdom women in some bureaucratic positions with varying levels of power (never a top job), but aside from Toph, I don’t think I can recall seeing any Earth Kingdom women in active combat situations. As a whole, the setting as of the time of the main series seems to be patriarchal. The Earth Kingdom seems to settle into a place between the Water Tribes and the Fire Nation, with sexism being a little less obvious than the Water Tribes’ outright “stay in the kitchen,” and the glass ceilings firmly in place.

(11:31) As you’d expect, the teenager who’s had the opportunity to train their martial skills regularly with other warriors handily defeats the teenager who hasn’t. It’s not even close.

(12:11) In contrast to Sokka’s sexism, Aang’s hanging out with the younger girls of Kyoshi Island, happily showing off the fact that he was a woman in a past life, and not batting an eyelid when one of the girls says Aang was very pretty in that past life.

(12:20) Katara asks Aang to help out with the shopping for provisions; Aang refuses because he booked himself having fun with other people. He still wants Katara to come along, though. Ah, different attitudes to work. Katara picks up responsibilities without being asked, Aang puts the work off. Katara also uses her words to say “watching you show off isn’t fun for me” - she wants to be Aang’s friend, rather than his audience, while Aang’s having a bit of trouble distinguishing the two.

Aang’s issues with attention are also rendered a bit more painful on the rewatch. On first viewing, it’s immaturity, plain and simple. And there’s a lot of immaturity involved here, it’s true. The first impression isn’t entirely inaccurate. With knowledge of ‘The Storm’, the viewer also knows that the reveal that Aang’s the Avatar threw a wrench into his peer relationships, which he never had a chance to rebuild or readjust. The girls of Kyoshi aren’t exactly Aang’s friends, but they are providing companionship and strings-free fun, something which Aang was feeling pretty short of prior to running away. The issue’s more complex than just the attention going to Aang’s head.

For his part, Aang also accurately assesses that Katara’s jealous. She doesn’t want to just sit back and watch Aang, she’s said as much, but it’s true that she also wants Aang’s attention in return. The context of Katara and Sokka’s social decisions in this episode is them trying to work out how to relate to people around their own age, something neither has had to do before. So while Katara doesn’t want to be Aang’s audience, like she said, and she’s not willing to put her goals on the backburner just to keep Aang happy, she’s also on new social ground and not the smoothest about it.

(13:18) Outside the Kyoshi Warriors’ HQ, Sokka is kicking rocks and clearly thinking about something.

(13:35) And here Sokka starts to prove his worth. When evidence and facts conflicted with his worldview, Sokka went with the evidence and the facts - Suki and company are better at fighting than he is. So to improve his own skills, he respectfully requests that Suki teach him.

Realistically, this does not instantly make Sokka the perfect feminist ally, as we’ll see. Even here he’s gone for the “if I insulted you earlier” apology, though I’d tend to be a bit more tolerant when that’s followed up with the blunt “I was wrong,” as Sokka does. Suki, who’s well within her rights to be annoyed at a guy coming back to ask her a favour after insulting her like that, tests Sokka’s commitment by insisting he train in their traditional dress and facepaint.

(14:10) Suki’s explanation further makes it clear that any humiliation Sokka might feel is a Sokka problem, as opposed to her inflicting women’s clothing on Sokka specifically for humiliation value. Her uniform was tailored for women, and it’s also a warrior’s uniform. Nothing to be ashamed of. So if Sokka wants to train as a Kyoshi Warrior, he dresses for it.

(14:17) Like I said, getting the bulk of the point doesn’t instantly make Sokka a perfect feminist - when Aang says “nice dress,” he still can’t hang on to Suki’s point that dressing “like a girl” isn’t inherently insulting.

(14:26) Katara just quietly practicing waterbending in a free moment, nothing flashy, just manipulating small amounts of water.

(14:34) In a transparent attempt to get Katara’s attention, Aang says he’s going to go do something silly and dangerous. Katara’s not indulging these particular antics. It’s a brief fight and definitely a kid fight.

(15:05) Sokka’s fumbling with a new routine and new weapon in new armour is accentuated by the off-key music.

(15:29) The way that Sokka manages to knock Suki down with exactly the technique she was talking about shows how quick a study he can be when he actually tries to learn. They’re probably both right in their little spat here, too - Sokka did get her, Suki probably did let her guard down more than she usually would since Sokka is such a beginner.

(15:45) Back over in Aang’s storyline, Aang’s fanclub is getting bored with the lack of sea monster action.

(16:04) But as the fanclub wanders off, Katara arrives. And there’s the point for Aang this episode. Katara’s not Aang’s fangirl, she won’t always agree with him, they’ll occasionally fight - but she means it when she says she wants what’s best for him, and she’s not going to wander off on him because she got bored.

(16:24) So they end it by mutually acknowledging what they did wrong and apologising to each other. What is this communicating business? Who does that in an episodic drama? And what sort of sea monster attacks after our protagonists have got their emotional act together?

(17:27) This is a lackluster action sequence by this series’ standards, because it’s basically Aang getting whipped backwards and forwards by a giant eel, while Katara stands on shore. The creativity isn’t there. Fortunately, this part of the action sequence is brief.

(17:42) When Katara does manage to intervene, again we can see that she’s not practiced in a fight. Her waterbending does want she wants it to do, blast her and Aang back towards shore and away from the Unagi, but damn that’s a simple and straightforward use of the art. Note also that waterbending was her last resort - she waded out to Aang rather than any waterbending that would let her maintain speed and maneuverability.

(17:56) Zuko shows up here, because the fight scene needed a boost.

(18:10) Where’d he get the komodo-rhinos? Who knows.

(18:35) Katara’s earlier practice drawing water out of a basic bowl here gets a more lifesaving use, as she waterbends the water right out of Aang’s windpipe. The show didn’t make a big deal of Katara’s earlier practice, but here it is, same move!

(18:51) It’s sunset, and Sokka and Suki are still training together. This has clearly not been a miserable experience for either of them.

(19:09) Another instance of Zuko rocking up to a location and just shouting “Avatar! Where are you, Avatar!” No intro. No niceties. Just single-minded shouting.

(19:18) When, shockingly, the Avatar does not show his face at such an eloquent plea to come out and get kidnapped, Zuko orders his men to search the village. Bad things for bad reasons, just trampling over people’s homes and peace of mind for his objective.

(19:40) The Kyoshi Warriors are a match for non-benders, but have a bit more trouble with Zuko, especially when he’s on a komodo-rhino (and apparently knows how to use that fact).

(20:07) In the brief exchange between Zuko and his soldiers and the Kyoshi Warriors, Zuko does not personally set any building on fire. He doesn’t do what Zhao does later this season and trash everything his fire touches. That doesn’t negate the fact that he showed up to terrorise people until the Avatar showed up, assaulted a bunch of people, and that his subordinates weren’t as careful about the buildings as Zuko was.

(20:38) Aang uses some dropped fans to blast Zuko right through a wall, and we get a reaction shot afterwards to note that he’s not happy. Aang doesn’t like fighting and tries not to hit back.

(20:45) Aang glides over the village and gets a look at the destruction, including a look back at the statue of Kyoshi in flames.

(21:10) Aang blames himself for the village getting burned down. Katara says it’s not his fault. Again, it’s a deceptively complex ethical issue for a kids’ show. Arson is on the arsonists, but what are Aang’s responsibilities to random villagers in living in indefensible, flammable locations, when they don’t know Aang’s being chased and Aang does? As a matter of sheer practicality, Aang can flee a lot more easily than most villagers can fight back against the Fire Nation.

There aren’t good, totally fair answers to this. But after this point, if the gAang decides to stop in one place for a while, it’s either a decent-sized population centre, or somewhere out of the way. Not a village.

(21:19) Katara says she reckons Zuko will leave Kyoshi Island alone to chase them, and resigned, Aang says he’ll call Appa. Goodbye, any hope of normal travel! This looks to me like the point where Aang internalised that yes, in the dystopian future he woke up in, being the Avatar means being hunted down by the Fire Nation.

(21:33) Sokka apologises for treating Suki like a girl when he should have treated her like a warrior. Suki gives us the galaxy brain take - there’s no contradiction, she can be both.

(21:52) Appa takes off and Katara’s prediction is borne out. Zuko drops everything to chase them.

(22:11) Aang isn’t happy with just running, though. He feels obliged to do something else to defend Kyoshi when it’s already burning. So he dives back into the ocean and lures the Unagi back out to spray water all over the village.

(22:38) The look on Zuko’s face at being drenched is priceless.

(22:58) Katara gives Aang a hug for risking himself to help others, and the group flies off into the sunset to end the episode.

So, on the whole. This episode doesn’t do anything radical in terms of the plot, but it does provide some character development that needed to happen early. Aang needed to come to terms with being the centre of attention, whether the attention was shallow adoration or a serious desire to harm him without much regard for collateral damage. Katara and Aang both needed to work on maintaining a long-term friendship not based on novelty value. Sokka needed to snap out of that particular form sexism, because the rest of the series isn’t going to be short on female combatants.

#a:tla #fine toothed comb edition

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sailordiavolo · 3 years

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Sparda Headcanons

nobody asked, but i’ve had many thoughts about Sparda lately, and i need to get them out before i go mentally insane

[ mostly general headcanons about Sparda himself, with some including his relationship with eva and the twins. ]

sparda started out like trish; a full demon who learned compassion, love and empathy, despite those traits not occurring naturally to demon kind.

when he did experience these emotions for the first time, it completely blew him away and fundamentally changed him. he became horrified by things such as the qliphoth tree, which eventually motivated his rebellion.

sparda, similar to mundus, could spiritually inhabit statues that were made in his likeness. there was one placed in fortuna, the purpose of which was originally to watch the hell gate for potential activity

though he would quickly dispatch of demons that tore into the human world, he wouldn’t meddle with human politics or affairs.

unlike vergil, sparda’s hair (in his human form) naturally grew out of his head in that slicked-back manner because that was how his horns grew (curled backwards). his hair even curved out and around like his horns did if he let it grow long enough

he had a romanticised view of humanity. he loved humanity like a neurodivergent person loves their hyperfixation

sparda spent most of his time in the human world in his demon form. he would occasionally take a human form when he wished to experience certain human things firsthand, or if he wanted to blend in, but he did this sparingly

while sparda was alive and at his strongest, there were a lot less demons trying to break into the human world, so the dark knight was often left with long periods of time to himself.

though he had learned empathy and compassion, sparda did not form close, loving bonds with humans for many centuries. thus the dark knight did not really have a concept of loneliness. he read about it, but didn’t really understand.

sparda was very reluctant to let people into his inner world, especially humans, who lived their entire lives and died before he could so much as draw a breath. there had been attempts to mingle with humans, but he stuck out like a sore thumb, or would outright scare people if he was in his demon form.

in his spare time, sparda liked to travel the world and visit various places, observing people, cultures, languages, arts and customs.

several different cultures have legends that somewhat fit the description of the legendary dark knight, but at present, nobody knows how accurate these legends are, and many of these legends do not mention him by name. they tell of his bravery and heroism.

sparda, like vergil, loved poetry and the artistic pursuits that humans created. (after all, swordsmanship is an art, too.) he admired the beauty of human art, especially the ways they used it to express emotions or tell stories

sparda liked to collect weapons and armor, even ones of human creation because they fascinated him. contrary to popular belief, sparda had been wielding guns since they were first invented, although for several hundred years they weren’t any match for most demons.

sparda’s mansion was like his den. it was filled with human literature, a lot of ancient texts in ancient languages; including various works of art, textiles, collections of weapons (including Luce & Ombra) and various items he’d been given as acts of worship. The doors and ceilings were very high because of how tall Sparda was in his demon form.

he had a colllection of human trinkets, various things he’d find that he thought were interesting, but didn’t really know what they were for. random mundane items, like an egg beater, hot water bottle, electric appliances that he doesn’t know how to turn on, spinning tops, and the like. he’d sort of just guess what they were for and put them up in places.

in his human form, he liked to dress in ways that imitated his favorite characters in books.

sparda had wished to know love like what he read about, like in the stories humans love to tell, which just seemed to be intrinsic to their nature. he could sort of understand shakespearean tragedies with his own understanding of love and compassion, yet for many centuries he still found the true meaning of such love to remain elusive to him.

eva was as curious about him as he was about her and humans in general. he would ask her questions about humans (initially, he had a lot of misconceptions about humans) and she would ask questions about him. when he was more comfortable around her, he showed her his human trinkets collection and asked her to explain what they were for. (he did not think that the egg beater was for mixing eggs).

he was bad at socialising and often spoke in a way that sounded ancient and out-of-place, sometimes mixing middle english with modern english, but he improved after meeting eva, since he had more practice after that.

after finding out sparda liked things such as poetry and literature, eva would bring him other human things to try; films, music, food and the like. just as vergil got his love of literature from his parents, dante got his love of music, dance and film from his parents, too. (sparda a fan of old western films? more likely than you’d think)

like dante and vergil, sparda was prone to aging in his human form. that’s why you see the version of him in dmc1 (pretty young-looking) and the older version of him as seen in the family portrait. ( see below )

therefore, it was a HUGE decision to marry eva and stay with her. it meant staying in human form, which meant aging, which meant shortening his own lifespan. although it was a big decision to make the commitment to marry eva, when the time came, he made the decision instantly.

he could’ve lived thousands of years longer had he left her alone, or had he resolved to watching her wither away and die from old age, but that was a very lonely existence, and once he had known eva, he had known loneliness and he had known sorrow.

eva and sparda were married for many years before the children came into the picture. (eva has a banging skin care routine btw)

sparda actually wanted children because of the many times he’d witnessed the loving bond between a human parent and child. it was a type of love he’d secretly longed for

though he wanted children, he was very reluctant to actually create them with eva, because of the potential risks involved with carrying hybrid offspring. not only that, but eva being the mother to his offspring would only put her in even more mortal danger from his enemies.

but eva had insisted, soothed him and reassured him. eva understood the risks of becoming a mother this way, and she was prepared to go through with it anyway.

dante was a mommy’s boy and vergil was a daddy’s boy

sparda was a great storyteller. he would recount in great detail his various adventures to the children, or sometimes read his favourite books to them. dante was only interested in stories where the hero defeats the bad guy, whereas vergil would soak up anything his father told him. thus, vergil was privy to many stories that dante wasn’t.

by the time the twins were young children, sparda had aged considerably since he first married eva, meaning his power had begun to dwindle. this meant he was away from home more often, because more and more demons were beginning to break into the human world.

and once mundus figured out that sparda had fathered children (with a human woman, no less) they’d begun to target the wife and kids.

dante specifically remembered waiting for his father to return on several different occasions, but being disappointed many times. vergil however, understood that sparda was protecting them, because he was the strongest, and there was no one else who could.

the twins often bickered about this. vergil would remind him that his little attitude towards father was “foolish”. at which point dante would try and hit him in the face. (he only managed to actually hit vergil half the time)

while sparda was gone, the twins would stay with eva. sparda’s excursions grew longer and longer, until one day he did not return at all.

dante in his youth held a grudge against his father for his absentee behavior, but it wasn’t until he was much older where he finally understood where his father was coming from. and dante too had become like his old man in thay regard, pushing loved ones away with the intention of protecting them.

and it wasn’t until much later that vergil had finally realised that sparda’s love was his driving force behind the immense power he wielded; sparda’s love for the beauty of humanity. a realisation that had come far too late for vergil.

if sparda and eva had’ve known how it ended for them and given a chance to take it all back, they wouldn’t do it. they knew what they were getting themselves into when they chose to bring dante and vergil into the world. the only regret they would’ve had is not being able to spend more time together as a family.

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ashandboneca · 4 years

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Racism, abuse, and why I don’t consider myself a part of the ‘community’

I’d like to talk about the event that pushed me away from the idea of a pagan community, and forced me inwards to further develop my own practice - and about the events of the last few years in regards to continued abuses in the pagan community. About 6 years ago, I started to look into the Norse pantheon. I had worked with Thor in the past, and about 6 or 7 prior to that I did an experiment where I worked with the Aesir for a month. At that point in my life, I didn't connect with them. I don't know why I didn't, I partially blame the terrible book I had for guidance, and the fact that the person who initially agreed to guide me flaked out. However, this time around I endeavoured to learn as much as I could from a reputable source, because the last time I had no idea what I was doing. I approached my friend, who is a practicing forn sidr heathen, and they agreed to teach me what they knew. We spent a number of sessions discussing cosmology and theology. I felt confident going forward, armed with book recommendations and a passion to learn further. I wrote a bit about my experiences openly on my previous blog with Odinn. Interactions with him were not sought after, but something that merely happened. When gods or spirits or ancestors come calling, you answer in some way out of respect. I wrote more about my experiences, and different techniques I utilized to connect with him. None of them were specifically Heathen - but I don't soley identify as Heathen, so I figured if that was an issue, Odinn wouldn't have shown up in the first place.

Some time later, my friend had messaged me to let me know they had gotten some hate mail about me via Witchvox (which no longer exists, but used to be a connection board for finding pagans and witches in your area, as well as open groups, etc). I was initially gobsmacked. Why the hell is someone emailing her in regards to something I did? Wouldn't have been more productive to email or message me to resolve whatever issue? I found it who it was. This person was, at that time, a member of a well recognized organization locally who put on events and rituals - an organization whose first mandate is "We hold that each one of us has their own path to follow to truth and spirit." To be honest, I had never really interacted with this person beyond being paid to do so in my former job at a pagan bookshop. We attended a few of the same events, but never really interacted. There was no real beef. I wasn't particularly fond of said person, but I had no real issues with them - so this came sort of out of left field. I sat on it for a bit. I did not reply to the sender. Instead, I decided to post the initial email on my previous blog. Inevitably, someone is going to disagree with how you practice or what you do, even if you're not doing anything wrong. The point I think is important to underline is that you do not need to stand for other people trying to tear you down, assert some kind of moral superiority over you, or telling you how and when you should be practicing, unless your practice is appropriative - in which case you should be taking a long, hard look at yourself. As heathenry is an open tradition, I had no concerns. I also think transparency is very important, and when people behave badly they often do so to gain something from it. Whether it is attention, drama, or they feel they are in a safe space to do so due to anonymity. So, by posting the email (albeit in edited format - I removed all identifying information about said person, because I wanted to focus on the behaviour, not the person), I felt I was addressing something that more people should have been addressing. Afterwards, my friend received a few more emails about how I was 'pissing on their ancestors' and etc. My friend told them, in no uncertain terms, that the emails were unwelcome, the issue was none of their business, and to fuck off. I also got a few emails, a few messages on Witchvox, a few comments, and a lovely comment from a sockpuppet account here on tumblr, as well as finding out my writing was posted to be mocked because I wasn't 'heathen' enough - with screenshots! I did not respond to anything, just kept record of everything in case it was needed. I disagree with the idea of bringing in some third party who is uninvolved to do one's dirty work. If someone has an issue with how someone else is practicing, they need to question whether it's something to address. Bringing in someone uninvolved is both cowardly and childish. They did not ask to be involved, and I'm not sure what involving another person serves to carry a point. Fight your own battles, or say nothing.

There were a few other instances. A series of screencaps of this person’s continued racist, sexist, and abusive behaviour was provided to a few of us. A known leader was accused of racism and verbal abuse by other members of the community with credible evidence. This leader had a pattern of setting up multiple Facebook accounts and when one was found they would set up a new one with a new name. They talked at length about their feelings on immigration, POC in the Heathen community, and interfaith. They advocated violence and celebrated terrorist acts. Some really troubling, disgusting stuff.

We did what we thought was right - we emailed the organization to tell them and offer proof via said screencaps. In the response, we were told, and I am not bullshitting, that this person was a valued member of the community, that they are 'proud' of their heritage (uh, so am I, but I don't run my mouth off about diversity being white genocide), and that we could essentially go pound sand. I quote "own personal outlook on (their) culture and (their) path. (They are) entitled to (their) own practice as much as anyone of us are, and (they) cares deeply for (their) culture. (They) makes a significant contribution to the Pagan community with (their) efforts through (group). (They are) a hard worker and has accomplished a great many things in (their) time on the board, a commitment that is not to be taken lightly. (They) fulfill (their) duties as a board member admirably."

Do I agree with their hot take on this? No. I think if someone comes to you with an accusation of that kind of wrongdoing, you have a duty to do some manner of preliminary investigation, because if you are in a position where you are teaching people and have authority, those students need to feel safe. You need to determine if the accusations have any truth, and if they are found to be false, feel free to stand behind and assert your belief in the accused. I truly believe the harasser/abuser showed their group the email, and they spun it in some way to discredit us.

Complicity via ignorance is still complicity - it's enough to tarnish an organization's good name. In the working world, business owners have been hung out to dry because of their racist, homophobic, or sexist employee's actions. The whole Kenny Klein situation happened for years because people excused his behaviour and allowed other people to be abused. We are all finger-wagging and clucking when people try to bring up this behaviour - don't be starting drama, oh that's just how (name) is, oh that's just rumours. Look, everyone - assholes, creeps, criminals, and predators exist in every faith, every organization. We are so quick to sweep it under the rug, so rushed to prevent judgement, that we always forget that one important fact. While I think it's important not to jump on every bad thing you hear about people, I do think it's important to have an open and frank discussion about proper behaviour while in a position of power. Especially if proof of misdeeds are being offered.

This group, and their lack of action, stood complicit in this person's bad behaviour. If they made the choice to stand behind a racist, bigoted person who spends their time trying to harass people online (I am not the only one, I have been told - there have been multiple people, including some of their own family members), that is their choice. They have made that choice, and they have chosen to accept any repercussions going along with it. They chose to stand behind an abuser.

Sarah Lawless, back in 2018, named a number of known abusers in the wider PNW community. The flack she received for being brave to stand up and call that shit out was disgusting.

Abusers are coddled and protected in pagan communities. They are viewed as elders, as productive members of the community, as local heroes. While I have been fortunate to encounter very little sexual harassment in the pagan community, I have suffered other abuses and harassment that has shown me that, just like the priests and cardinals in the Vatican, pagans protect and believe only those in their clique. And there are cliques in the community, have no doubt about that.

Sarah pointed out that the ideal community is a fantasy - I agree. Stories I have heard from others about their own experiences in the 'safe and welcoming' pagan community would break your heart. One person I spoke with said 'it's scary to even fathom trying to approach anyone, because it's hard to know who to trust, who might lure you in and take advantange of you'. That is a sad statement, and one I know too well. I have a tendency to keep abuse like this close to the chest because I have been burned by people in the past. There is no spiritual support for people who get abused - no chaplains, no pastoral care, no therapists.

These were people who were putting everything on the line to be heard, and the vitriol and hatred and lies I had seen made my blood boil. This is precisely why people do not come forward. They could put everything on the line - in Sarah's case, the safety of her partner at the time and children - and people will still find a way to claim the survivors are lying. Why? What do the survivors get out of lying about their abuse? What person would come forward, knowing they will be attacked, confronted, slandered, and encounter more abuse, if they weren't telling the truth? Why would any survivor put themselves through that unless there is truth? The most stalwart defenders claim 'they couldn't have done it, I've never seen them do anything to me!' Humans are complicated and complex beings, with many facets and many faces. The face you see may not be the same face others see. The John Doe you know and the John Doe I know may be the same person, but very different relationships.

It comes down to this: You can't 'believe survivors' if you're supporting abusers.

You can't support survivors if you're sheltering abusers.

You can't help survivors if you're siding with abusers.

You can't call it a safe community if you don't protect it's members.

Standing up for myself and others lost me “friends” who ditched me about the ‘drama’, and my community. Something needs to change. It is inevitable that change will befall the community, and those denizens had better wise up quickly. There are a lot of young, vulnerable people looking for guidance and safety, and the community better fucking step up and prove they are willing to protect their members, or they have become no better than the Christian groups who continue to enable their abuse. We need willing leaders to push forward to make the community better. We need dedicated, smart, and savvy people to navigate a new and better future for paganism, because it's got a death rattle going on and it needs the kiss of a new life.

Burn the whole of the modern pagan community down. Burn down the groups that perpetuate abuse, that enable abusers, and grow something better and safe from the ashes. Dismantle the sexist, enabling, racist, oversexed community with it's abusive elders, cleanse it with fire, and create a place where people can come together without having to fear predators.

The only I have learned from watching my and other’s experiences is that we shouldn't call out wrongdoing in the community, because I have gotten abuse hurled at me for it and I have seen others who have done the same get more and worse abuse. People get mad, they accuse those who come forward of 'causing drama' or 'rocking the boat'.

That is a terrible lesson. A witch is sovereign unto themselves.

Bitches, this boat is rocking. Grab on, or drown.

This is my own story. I have posted links for further review down below.