What traits do the people in theos choosen few have?

Ngl theo definitely seems like he'd be the kind of guy to enjoy quietly spending time with someone where you're both in the same room but doing different things, but like no talking, no contact, just in each other's presence

I'm answering this one a bit out of the context of Amaranthine specifically because it got me thinking about all the various people Theo's gotten close to in all his incarnations as a character over the past too-many years. Not all of these characters are in his "current" story, but the through-line of his desired traits in a "chosen one" are there nonetheless. He's developed a diverse set of friends that don't have too much in common at first blush. But there are a few commonalities!

As established, Theo is extremely paranoid and has been burned by people many times before, which is one of his many barriers to getting close to others. A person often needs to have a quality that makes them feel more "safe" to him in order for him to stop seeing them as a potential enemy. Most often, this trait is "innocence" or "naïveté," or put in another sense, being so stupid Theo can't possibly imagine them trying to betray him. In one AU (Fallout), he developed weird friendships with three people (Jack, Frank and Dwight) because he thought they were all incredibly dumb and utterly clueless and therefore anything kind they did for him was probably genuine. In another roleplay I did with him, he very quickly developed a bond (and very one-sided infatuation) with a blind woman. She literally couldn't judge him on appearances, so he felt less defensive around her.

He tends to feel even more guarded around men compared to women for various reasons (daddy issues, bad school experiences, often more physically threatening to a little guy like him, feeling the primal urge to battle for dominance, so on), so it's theoretically easier for him to become close to women. At least, it's harder for him to start off on the complete wrong foot with a woman than he can with a man, where he takes a look at a random fellow and just decides he's a "bad sort" and cannot be convinced otherwise. That said, he can get close to fellas and he absolutely can learn to loathe a woman, as Hyden and (eventually) Alex could attest.

Hyden gets around the paranoia by being someone who Theo thought was dead for hundreds of years. It's safe to idolize a dead man because he'll never hurt you. Of course, Hyden isn't dead, but Theo already developed his imaginary bond with Hyden-as-historical-figure before he found that out, so Hyden got to fast-track the Theo friendship process.

He also thrives off of being people's protector (which is kind of hard as an asthmatic little person whose main form of exercise is lifting heavy books off the shelf, but he tries). The easiest way to forge a connection with him is to make him happen to stand between you and someone who strikes him as a "bully." Yes, like many men who would dare to say "milady," he is a white knight in pinstriped armor. It is very, VERY hard for him to resist the urge to defend someone he's been made to feel a sense of responsibility for, even if his more cynical side is telling him to just leave someone to their fate. Of course, that's all very noble until he ends up resolutely defending an evil warlock from the people whose lives were destroyed by evil warlock magic.

Theo also isn't someone who really grew up having those things called "friends." He tends to have trouble conceptualizing what a relationship between peers is even supposed to be like. Therefore, he tends to shirk his "equals" and instead is unconsciously more drawn to people he considers either above or below himself in station, intelligence, age etc., as that gives him more of an idea of how he's supposed to behave. He tends to seek out relationships he can imagine to mirror familial bonds (replacement parental figures or "wards") or mythologized dynamics from fantasy novels (handmaidens and feudal lords) because those are the dynamics he's familiar with and feels he can fulfill the duties of, more or less. (That said, he prefers people "below" him in almost every circumstance due to insecurity reasons.) If given enough time, he can ease out of those roles and into a more balanced connection, though.

ALL THAT SAID, none of this is a guarantee. Someone could be a completely innocent, harmless little peasant waif who gets beaten up by burly football players on his doorstop every day and he could still just slam the door and yell at them to stop annoying him with all that racket. In the end, excepting rare impulses of charity, he's a deeply unpleasant and misanthropic man driven by irrational pseudo-logic and unstable moods - you kind of just have to be there at the right time to catch him when his rotten little heart is open.

FINALLY, as for enjoying parallel relaxation as quality time, I'd say that's his "default" mode of enjoying people's company. But he can learn to enjoy more energetic ways of bonding with people (maybe a little too much... he can have some serious thrill-seeking issues if exposure to enough excitement brings them out). As much as he'd insist he could only tolerate another person if they have a taste for opera and quiet reflection, I think he could really get into a monster truck rally if he'd let himself get in the mood for it.

God gave you so many chances to obey before punishing you, well he gives you your whole life as a chance to repent so counting to three for a toddler hardly seems like a big deal to me but go off

Amane, indoctrination, and gaslighting

and why voting Amane innocent would be the best course of action

I've been wanting to write a big post on Amane talking about indoctrination and such. Because I see takes sometimes that make it clear the person doesn't really... Get It.

Most of what I'll be explaining comes from my personal experiences growing up.

Additionally, most of what I say when it comes to outcomes (i.e. "If x happens, Amane will do y") will be based on the assumption that realism, not entertainment, is prioritized in the writing and that there are no major holes in our knowledge of what's going on. Theoretically anything could happen since this is a fictional scenario and we don't know everything when it comes to the world, the cases, and the characters. Not to mention my situation was nowhere near as extreme as hers. So although I probably have a better understanding of it than most people, I definitely can't claim that I know what she's gone through.

Personal anecdotes I add to better support my points will be in the small font (this!) since I don't want them to distract from the main text and so that they can be easily skipped for those who may be worried about being triggered. But if anyone needs plain text descriptions, I'll happily provide them!

!! TW for child abuse, religious abuse, and cults !!

I recommend skipping my personal anecdotes if more detailed discussions about these topics are a trigger for you.

At the heart of "good" (read: successful) indoctrination is gaslighting.

Since gaslighting has been one of the many psychology terms completely watered down and distorted by the internet, I will define it just so we're all on the same page!

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation used to make the victim question their own sanity, sense of reality, or power of reasoning.

Basically, you can't trust yourself. You can't trust your thoughts, your feelings, your interpretations, etc. You become completely reliant on other people (usually specific people who are the ones doing the gaslighting) to figure out what's real/true or not.

Toxic/extremist religious groups like to take gaslighting a step further though. Not only do they make it so you cannot trust yourself to judge what is right or not, they may also teach you that what feels wrong is actually right. You can see where this can start to cause some issues lol.

Anything your gut may tell you that contradicts what the group/cult leaders tell you—"this is wrong!", "this is bad!", "I don't want to do this..."—must be ignored. Because those feelings and thoughts, according to the leaders, are actually the sinful part of you trying to lead the good and faithful part of you astray. They make you question yourself to make sure you never question them.

They will figuratively or literally beat this into you until your first instinct is no longer to listen to your gut and do what it says, but to dismiss it and do what it's telling you not to do. Existing becomes a chronic power struggle between your unconscious mind and your conscious mind. Unfortunately, the fact that you're struggling often then gets used against you as proof that you need to follow their teachings. Because if you're unhappy, then you must be doing something wrong. You just need to have a little more faith, dedicate a little more time to the religion/group, go a little harder into your duties... Only then will you feel better—feel more enlightened.

An integral part in making all this work is isolation. If you don't somehow isolate the members, they may figure out that they're being manipulated and abused.

Now, isolation doesn't always mean purely physical isolation (though Amane is being isolated physically to at least some capacity). Psychological isolation is almost just as powerful. An almost universal psychological isolation tactic used by extremist groups and cults is the "Us vs Them" mentality. We can see this being very prominent with Amane. A lot of things she talks about with regard to the cult involves an Us-vs-Them dynamic. There is "Us", the cult, and "Them", everyone else.

Personally, we were taught that those who weren't believers of our religion were out to get us or will, at the very least, get us hurt/killed somehow. We were told many people wanted us dead just for being believers. You had to be careful and watch out when interacting with non-believers; you couldn't trust them. God was constantly testing you via others, and you had to make sure you stayed faithful.

This in particular is why no matter if you vote guilty or innocent, that itself will not actually do anything to change her beliefs. Voting her guilty will not make her start to feel bad and then question her beliefs. Voting her innocent will not make her listen to us and then question her beliefs. If we make her have any doubt about the cult, that's just proof to her that what we're telling her is wrong and is just another "trial" from God for her to overcome. So, changing her beliefs should not be a factor considered when voting since it's completely irrelevant. Everything can be twisted to support the cult. That's just how it works.

I don't think any amount of punishment will make Amane "come to her senses". I mean... what could we possibly do to her that she hasn't already had to endure? Punishment will likely only escalate things even more. Not to mention that having a bit of a fascination with martyrdom isn't all that uncommon in those who have been religiously abused and indoctrinated. The threat of punishment may only serve to motivate her to double down on her beliefs and behavior. Not to say she wants and likes punishment. It's obvious she's both scared of punishment and wants it to stop. After all, that's most likely the motive behind the murder.

Even prior to Amane's age, I was already fantasizing about being a martyr. A part of me almost wanted to be killed for my religion and community. It was seen as something extremely admirable. The ultimate sacrifice, if you will. We were taught that if given the choice between saving yourself by denying your faith or letting yourself be hurt/killed by standing your ground, you should choose the latter. Of course, I also did not want that to happen at all. It scared me shitless. But we weren't allowed to be scared about that stuff. It was seen as questioning God and the religious authorities, which was completely taboo. So I had no choice but to "want" it.

Isolating Amane is the worst possible thing we could do to her. No one gets better from being isolated, and this goes double for people living in abusive environments. She's been isolated her whole life. The best thing for her would be spending time with the other prisoners without restrictions. The more time she spends around people who have no connection to the cult, the better. Trying to argue with those in cults about why they're wrong and why they are in a cult (because most don't even recognize they're in a cult due to the gaslighting, indoctrination, and stigma) will almost always backfire. The best thing to do is to just be there for them to have someone to interact with who is not a cult member.

The only reason I left the extremist religious community I grew up in was because I made a friend who was not affiliated with it. I don't think I would've been able to see that the conditions I was living in were Not Very Good without that friend. He didn't even really do anything to actively help me. Just learning more about the real world through him was enough to make me start looking closer at my life.

To vote her guilty would be to continue isolating her. Not just physically as the guilty prisoners get restrictions put on them, but it's also an inescapable psychological isolation. Innocent vs Guilty is just another Us vs Them dynamic.

I fear that, if she ends up guilty this trial, she will likely be voted guilty again in trial 3. Her aggression will probably only escalate as she feels herself becoming more and more cornered. And since I know many people are voting her guilty solely to make sure she doesn't hurt Shidou or other prisoners, I can only imagine what the voting will look like for her in trial 3 once she's forced to become even more aggressive to protect herself.

And tbh... I can't imagine that having a prisoner with 3 guilty verdicts will make for all that interesting of a story for them. Not that it would be boring, per se. But having variety would, in my opinion, be the most interesting and entertaining! So, if nothing else I've said has been able to sway those who vote her guilty, then think about the entertainment factor!

Please vote this severely traumatized 12 y/o girl innocent. We can give her so many secret cakes to eat.

wip wednesday: the going is slow but the going is going

kanghan and sailom are a Trainwreck ☝️ because of how dependant they are on eachother (emotionally as well as financially to an extent for sailom) and it all shows in this episode. it's delicious

i don't think kanghan is aware of this. but sailom definitely is and he's tried to keep a distance for the past few episodes because of it. when kanghan kicks him out it's like he was expecting this to happen someday (because he knows how kanghan can get at his worst)

from their fight to ep 8 to now ep 10 we can really see the much messier side of their relationship and i am enjoying every moment

ok so i’m sorry if this is annoying but i’m genuinely confused- your pinned says you don’t care if swifties interact but you also post/reblog alot of stuff with swifties dni tags ?? /gen /nf

-a swiftie who’s also mutuals with you (has been for awhile)

Its not annoying, don't worry! :-)

I genuinely don't mind having swiftie mutuals because like, while I don't like taylor swift, my mutuals are cool and i respect them a lot, and I like a lot of other stuff they post, along with their vibes!

The reason I tag some of my stuff as "swifties dni" is geniunely because I care about my swiftie mutuals. I figure y'all probably don't wanna interact with my anti taylor swift stuff.

Like, back when I was a swiftie, I had the tags "swifties dni" and "anti taylor swift" blocked because I didn't want to see that negativity. I understood that people didn't like taylor but it hurt to see others talking negatively about her, so I took it upon myself to block those tags and enjoy the other stuff my mutuals posted. So now I give my anti taylor stuff those tags just in case my swiftie mutuals block those tags. I don't want to put anti taylor swift stuff on your blog if you're trying to block it. :)

I mean I probably could just tag that stuff as anti taylor swift, cause that alone gets the message across and since a lot swifties don't wanna interact with anti stuff anyway (so the menacing and foreboding "swifties dni" tag is somewhat unnecessary)

anyways, to sum up, I really like and respect my swiftie mutuals. I don't mind if y'all are swifties because we are both can respect each other's opinions. I just use those tags in case my mutuals want to block that stuff, but since youve brought it up, I will just tag it as "anti taylor swift" and if you don't wanna read it, I guess you could block that specific tag or ignore it

Not to worry, though, I am not primarily an anti Taylor Swift blog. Now that TTPD has been out for a bit, my dislike of Taylor is not the center of attention, so you won't be seeing a lot of any anti ts stuff (aside from a few posts here and there). I will return to reblogging and posting about merlin and Narnia and umbrella academy and the women I like and all that jazz.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention! Love y'all, and if you ever wanna unfollow me cause of what I post, that's okay 👍

❤️

Rieca

Doing that thing I said I'd never do and writing a story in present tense.

Will you update tomorrow cuz i'm dying i wanna know what's happening after this oh God 😭😭😭😭😭🥹🥹🥹🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼🫶🏼💔💔💔

not tomorrow babe, i'm very sorry 😔 i am very excited to show you what's next, it's all i can think about, but life is making me alter my updating schedule a little. fingers crossed for next week 🥺

trying so hard to keep this oneshot a oneshot 🙏

At the heart of it, something - maybe the thing - that really hurts me about what became of the animated Young Justice show is the way later seasons are contemptuously cynical-bordering-on-hateful towards the ideals of heroism set out by its own first season.

In Season 1, Superman states that the Justice League of Earth-16 upholds the ideals of Truth, Liberty and Justice.  And yet, the thing the characters from Season 2 onwards can be most reliably expected to do is lie.  

They lie constantly, for ill-justified, often-selfish reasons, with the intent to control and manipulate their peers (and civilians), in ways that betray and endanger people who trust them.  And when confronted they refuse to hold themselves accountable, at best giving lip-service apologies that are rendered meaningless by them continuing the same behaviours in later episodes/ seasons.

That is mind-numbingly awful.  The S2+ iterations of these characters have not only failed to embody their own series’ stated ideals of heroism, but have so consistently acted antithetically to them that, if placed into almost any other hero story (or even their own first season), they would at best be tragic dire-warning fallen heroes, and at worst be insidious Justice Lord-style villains.

Not only that but later seasons seem almost personally vindictive towards the specific ideals and aspirations of the individual characters:

The Dick Grayson of Season 1 was openly afraid to become someone who would sacrifice others for the sake of the mission.  And yet the Nightwing of S2 onwards is forcibly re-written as a compulsively dishonest manipulator who pointlessly conceals information and concocts callous sacrifice-plans by default.  (‘Dick Grayson is a pathological liar’ becoming a fandom meme.)

The Bruce Wayne of Season 1 openly admitted that he didn’t want Dick to become too like him, and was invested in the emotional wellbeing of the proteges. And yet the Batman of S2 onwards is rewritten to actively enable Nightwing becoming exactly that; an approving co-conspirator who praises him for the ‘respect’ he now commands.

The Kaldur’ahm of Season 1 was concerned that he behaved too much like a soldier to be an effective leader, while worrying about the possible damage he might do by forcing that mantle onto Robin too soon.  And yet the Kaldur of S2 onwards is rewritten to be unfit for every leadership position the show arbitrarily hands him, specifically because he consistently enables Nightwing to use him as a soldier in plans that go against every principle the Team once stood for.

The M’gann M’orzz of Season 1 was terrified of creating a situation where her powers would hurt the people she cares about.  And yet the Miss Martian of S2 onwards is re-written to intentionally misuse and abuse her powers; violating Conner’s boundaries, manipulating him, Garfield, Artemis and others, and destroying the minds of people she has decided are her enemies.

The Conner Kent of Season 1 wanted to know what it meant to be Superman while not wanting to be treated as a weapon.  And yet the Superboy of S2 onwards is never given a meaningful personal or professional relationship with Superman on screen, while being used as a pawn and a tool by teammates who constantly lie to him, with the writing putting the burden on him to accept and forgive this mistreatment.  (The show itself being unable to fully pretend that his and Miss Martian’s rewritten relationship isn’t abusive).

The Artemis Crock of Season 1 was desperate to become her own hero and define herself by something other than her criminal family.  And yet the Tigress of S2 onwards is forcibly narratively separated from her ‘new family’ and defined primarily by her relationship to her biological family and brother-in-law, while being narratively punished for and written to regret every show of agency that doesn’t involve retiring from heroism to become a subservient trad-wife to either Wally or Red Arrow (because Greg Weisman is a misogynist).

The Wally West of Season 1 was a character who questioned the objectivity of others and learned to appreciate that the value of heroism was helping people. And yet the Kid Flash of S2 onwards is rewritten to be a jaded cynic who decides heroism isn’t worth it (in order to remove him from the narrative), is rudely dismissed by Nightwing when he attempts to question the plan, has his cynicism validated when he is killed in a twist to hurt the audience, and after which is only grieved in superficial ways as the others use his death to justify actions he would never have stood for.

The Zatanna Zatara of Season 1 was insecure about living up to her father’s legacy, especially after losing him to the Helmet of Fate.  And yet the Zatanna of S2 onwards is never allowed to heal from that loss or grow into a magician in her own right, instead being relegated to a support character who is arbitrarily handed whatever magical abilities are needed to solve plot problems, uses her powers to manipulate others, and is primarily defined as either Nightwing’s ex-lover or by her Father (because, again, misogynist).

The Roy Harper of Season 1 was a proud character driven to prove his worthiness for League membership, only to be shaken by the reveal that he was a Cadmus sleeper agent.  And yet, the Red Arrow of S2 onwards is never allowed a satisfying on-screen arc about identity or self; instead being used first as a prop to introduce Arsenal and then as a surrogate-Wally for Nightwing and strong-male-provider for Tigress to fall into the arms of (oh right, the misogyny).

Even the Team as a unit, the bonds between them, the themes of trust and communication, and everything they worked to achieve in Season 1 is systematically torn apart and undone across Invasion and Outsiders in a way that feels almost intentionally cruel.

I’ve heard people compare Young Justice to Dreamwork’s Voltron, and while that is a fair comparison, I think Young Justice is actually worse.  Voltron managed to sustain itself for 3 seasons before gradually falling apart over another 4, and - while it was tragic in the loss of its theme, abandoning of stakes, failure to conclude character arcs and weakening of cast bonds - it never felt like the Paladins were intentionally hypocritical to the point of being toxic for one another, or like they were a threat to the fundamental ideals of the Lion corps.

Meanwhile the core cast of Young Justice have been so consistently re-written to betray each other’s trust and their own explicitly stated values while never taking ownership of or changing their behaviour (no matter how many times they are confronted over it or see it hurt others) that eventually you stop wanting them to succeed and start wanting them to fail just for there to be some accountability.  And when that doesn’t happen (because the showrunners and executives don’t see a problem with selfish, dishonest, unjust behaviour) you almost start wanting them to die, if only because death would be a kinder fate than being forced to exist as a corrupted parody of everything they never wanted to become.

And if Earth-16 is a world where fundamental heroic ideals like compassion, honesty, respect and accountability are sneered at as childish things that cannot survive into adulthood?  If this is their reimagining of Dick Grayson - a character who in many stories is so meant to embody the ideals of heroism that any world in which he is a good person is worth saving?  Then, frankly, Darkseid can have this one and good riddance.

This is what I mean when I say that Young Justice only truly has one season.  Season 1 is a very distinctive and separate product to the rest: a sum total of its entire production and executive team.  To me, it was the last breath of a golden age of DC TV-animation, with heavy creative input from DC/Cartoon Network old-guard members like Jay Oliva and Michael Chang (a pair of directors who were prominently involved in the Teen Titans animated series, and who together directed over 75% of YJS1 - each individually handling more episodes than any of the writers, including Greg Weisman).

And then a change came and we see those old-guard creatives disappear from the credits of S2 onwards.

It feels like the new production/executive teams hated what Young Justice Season 1 was.  It’s kind of an open secret that multiple Cartoon Network shows were cancelled around that time due to a combination of poor toy sales (partially resulting from the low quality/ limited variety of official merchandise) and for having too much ‘four quadrants appeal’, especially when it came to drawing in unexpected numbers of older female viewers.  (There’s this deeply stupid marketing idea that shows which attract an audience outside of their intended demographic are “internally competing” with and drawing profit/ sales away from shows aimed at those other demographics).   That might also explain why Oliva, Chang and other old-guard members dropped from the production, since Teen Titans seems to have been one of the other shows under fire. This is just speculation but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that Young Justice Season 1 was up for cancellation and - instead of just dropping the show and launching a new one - the decision was made to cancel it in all but name; gutting everything that actually made it what it was and repurposing the brand identity and visual aesthetic to take advantage of an established audience.

We never really got a genuine narrative continuation of Season 1.  What we got was a series of In Name Only sequels, designed to sell merchandise, subscriptions and comics, by new production/executive teams that wanted the show to be anything other than itself.  And, in repurposing the title to sell a set of antithetical stories as sequels, those later seasons destroyed any future possibility to actually see that original story continued or concluded.

This is why I haven’t watched Season 4, why I won’t be using any of it in my own fandom stuff (and why I’m low-key kind of offended by its premise).  It’s existence is creatively bankrupt; I’ve talked about it here but the showrunners and production/executive teams have so thoroughly dissembled every piece of narrative mechanics that there simply isn’t a story or stakes to carry it.  And the claims that Phantoms was going to return to the original team or that ‘this has always been their story’ are blatantly exploitative.   This is a show that has had nothing but condescending cynicism-bordering-on-hatred for its own starting point.  Its second and third season have done everything they could to deny these characters their arcs, undercut their values and walk back everything they once worked to achieve.  If the showrunners and new production teams had ever sincerely cared about this story, its themes or its stated ideals of heroism then they would never have re-written them in such a fundamentally contemptuous way.   We would never have been given Invasion and we certainly wouldn’t have been given Outsiders.  So for Phantoms to try to crawl back; to make one final grasp at profit by pretending to care about characters and a season it has done nothing but cynically undermine and misrepresent… it’s emblematic of the kind of bald-faced dishonesty and manipulativeness that has destroyed this show from the inside out.  

From a narrative perspective, Young Justice only has one season: the original Oliva-Chang directed season, by a production/executive team that genuinely seemed to care about who its heroes were, understood the ideals they stood for, and made a sincere effort to tell a good story.

But it has been followed by a corrupted, soulless parody of everything it never wanted to become: full of hypocritical, unjust strangers-wearing-familiar-faces, written to unapologetically do things that they know to be wrong in service of a product which is contemptuously cynical-bordering-on-hateful towards the ideals of truth, liberty and justice.

A show that now hates everything it used to stand for.

And it just about makes you want to cry.

I just realized I forgot to put "writing prompt as the beginning of a previous request. Sorry!

Naaaah I got you friend. So long as I can tell it's a write-up request rather than a question/point of discussion then I'm good to go, and your request was well communicated. You're all gravy, baby. <3

being a humanities girlie in stem is constantly facing the horror of how bad your classmates are at writing

realizing just how much of my own behavior.. not intentionally, not knowingly, but absolutely does... i do act in a way that puts me in the position to be taken advantage of. a pattern in my behavior of encouraging people to be cruel and manipulative to me. not to say i am the only party at fault but rendering this makes it much easier to communicate my needs in a way people actually understand and can do anything with

sigh it's getting to be too long

but it's also been six months since an update

but it's just too fucking long

... i'm still not done, either

Btw i am wrapping every single one of you in a blanket and handing you a bowl of soup and a hot cocoa.

I've noticed many of you guys don't feel well today and i want to make sure all of you know you are loved and cherished. No exceptions!

you mean i have to listen to this podcast to consume it? you mean i can't just vacuum it up straight into my brain?? i can't slurp it down like an icee and suffer the consequences???