#posting this before I die of hubris | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

let-us-cultivate-our-garden · 3 months

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I had a long argument with someone on whether or not stomping Belos before he dies was better than letting him die pathetically, and I asked myself if that is what fans really believe in... or if they would hail any Belos' death as the perfect one if Dana choose a different one?

They also justify the stomping as being part of horror-comedy genre and that Belos should not have any dignity what so ever because apparently letting him die in despair with no stomping is running the risk of making the audience feel "sorry" for him.

Honestly, these justifications make The Owl House feel more shallow. Like, why shouldn't the audience be allowed to feel sorry for Belos? What is the danger? That people would agree with Belos' views?

Or are we supposed to develop a black and white view of the world akin to a conservative view but inverted? And then hide behind the horror comedy genre to justify less drama? I hate to say it, but Nostalgia Critic is right about Belos being this strange outlier. The show seems to be afraid of actually doing a complex, tragic and yet irredeemable villain.

It doesn't make any sense to argue that Belos' death fits because of toh's genre as a horror comedy because the scene was neither played for horror nor laughs. At best, you have the image of Philip slowly being dissolved by the rain and then Raine's smug "that was satisfying" line. The overall tone of the scene is one of contempt as Philip tries one last plea to Luz only to be snuffed out (and weirdly validated) by the heroes. Its intent is to be cathartic for both audience (though as you know doubt know, YMMV) and the characters.

Frankly, despite its marketing, I don't see toh as either a horror or a comedy because it spends more time on slice of life stuff and high school teen drama and romance. And even when it does go for the horror and comedy, both are rather tepid. You want a real example of a horror-comedy for kids, then go watch Courage the Cowardly Dog or Invader Zim.

The reason why I argue the heroes validated Belos is because in the moment of his death, he clings to the idea that as humans, "we're better than this!" It's a moment of pathetic delusion that is appropriately met with silence but then it's ruined with Eda and Co. barging in with "Well, we ain't!" only to then prove his point by mercilessly stomping an already dying man to death. There's a reason why kid shows usually end with either the villain being imprisoned or not outright being murdered by the heroes. Evil has to die by its own hubris, not get killed by the heroes after the Big Battle when they're no longer a threat. I made a post about the importance of defeating a major antagonist twice.

Belos' death also doesn't work with a "Kill your oppressors" theme because the show isn't about that. The show barely spends any time showing why the EC is bad for the Boiling Isles and Eda is the only named wild witch we see getting harassed by them and even then, it's mostly played for laughs given how inept the coven scouts are (seriously, they're able to quit without fear of repercussions).

I think a reason fans are split on Belos' death is because of differing expectations; the fans who paid attention to Belos and the implication of his backstory and waited for every lie to come crashing down on him since that's what the show seemed to be building up to only to be unceremoniously ignored in the end were no doubt disappointed. Then you have the other fans who hated the character to the point that any gruesome death will do, regardless whether it made narrative or thematic sense or not.

Ultimately, I think the biggest reason his death doesn't work is because Belos fails as a villain.

Belos' status as a colonial puritan only works on a meta-level; it serves a cathartic release for marginialized people to see a representative of real world oppression beaten by queer characters as it fulfills the fantasy of finally overthrowing an oppressive system. The fatal flaw though is that none of this works on a narrative level because the coven system is either treated as a joke or simply a career path one must choose and we never see the disenfranchisement of wild witches. People largely get off scot-free opposing Belos, which undermines his credibility as both a dictator and a villain because no one cares about him until the plot needs them to. Luz doesn't even care about proving he's evil until Hollow Mind, which is halfway through season 2.

Belos as a villain only works if you project your own feelings and desires in wanting to see the Evil Christian/Evil Parent destroyed. While this is extremely satisfying emotionally, it does not make a sound story.

All the reasons why people like his death ("it's great the evil colonizer died so pathetically!" "omg, the white christian colonizer was killed by two queer people and their adopted son!" etc) are all meta reasons. And to be clear, it's totally fine if you thought his death was satisfying. But for many people, it did not work for a variety of reasons, including narrative ones. And that differing opinion should be respected instead of arguing some nonsense like "we have to make our villain as stupid/evil as possible or run the risk of people liking/sympathizing with him."

Belos should have died in a manner that connected back to his original sin: the murder of his brother. All of his lies and delusions and fear of being wrong should have played a part in the finale. He should have not died thinking he was right. He should have died realizing that all he did was for nothing. And that he is to blame. And that there is no one waiting for him back home.

#the owl house #toh critical #toh criticism #emperor belos #philip wittebane #long post #asks

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deramin2 · 6 months

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God I love Orym's choice to make a deal with Nana Mori so much.

He trusts Morrigan because he trusts Fearne. They're like bonded shelter cats. This place genuinely doesn't feel so bad. Like Maybe someplace he could settle. And then he wouldn't be able to keep running. And in return none of his new family has to die, which is the thing that traumatized him and destroyed his happy life. If they can just stay alive maybe they'll be powerful enough to win. With Ashton and Fearne's new powers, and Imogen leaning into her powers. And Laudna is freaked out about Delilah but also using that power because when she felt angry and terrified and alone it was right there. Chetney is all about harnessing his curse and not just living with it but thriving. All his friends have made these big moves and he was still just some guy. So he got in on the game.

Going home is too painful to him to stay. He wants to visit, but he doesn't feel like he belongs anymore. He hasn't for years, that's why he's been traveling. But he could belong here with Fearne's people because he loves and trusts Fearne.

Nana Mori is weird and off-putting but she doesn't scare Orym. He doesn't think she's deceitful, he thinks she binds people to their word. He's offering something mutually beneficial. Her interests are inscrutable, but Fearne's happiness is one of those interests and he makes Fearne happy. So it's in Mori's best interest to take care of him. And he in turn will take care of her.

Derrig was his lover's father who trained him to be a guardian and made him more powerful so he could do that well. That's not that different than Mori. He's really just repeating familiar patterns with different contexts. He failed Zephrah, but maybe he can redeem himself and also try a new post. He's a soldier.

He doesn't want to die but he thinks it might be inevitable (and worth it) for this cause. He can't let what happened to his husband and his father happen again. He couldn't think through that fear. And he has actually been open about it, but also there actually hasn't been an alternative. This is just one more crux move in a long series of moves to stop all this. All of it suicidally dangerous. None of them are the best people to do this. Chetney voiced what they've all been thinking: their one advantage is they're expendable. Everybody at that war meeting had to be prepared to be expendable, but they're trying to minimize casualties. Bell's Hells are Team Frodo, but there may not be any eagles coming. And Orym knows that. He thinks this is an incredibly important mission but also a one-way trip. But maybe making this deal is what sends the eagles. And he knows he can't go back to The Shire, so maybe Nana Mori's domain could be Valinor. It has been a respite for him.

Maybe all that is as much hubris and misplaced trust as Zerxus trying to reform Asmodeus. What I love about this choice is we don't know. The way things were before he made a deal was just win-lose for Orym. Now it has a whole other interesting layer of things that could happen.

Campaign 1 & Campaign 2 were about adventuring parties trying to save the world. Exandria Unlimited: Calamity was about an adventuring party who fails to save the world. Campaign 3 is not about success or failure as an objective. It's about making interesting choices and then following the consequences of those choices. This is theater where anything can happen. This is Shakespeare where everything going wrong is FUN. This isn't a definite tragedy, but they took off all the guard rails that said it couldn't be.

They don't have to win to be successful in the work of art they want to make. Marisha explicitly said to throw out expectations. I truly think the cast did. The world is something being done to them, not something they are causing to happen. And they're reacting to it in whatever sounds the most interesting with potential consequences they most want to see. It's a game of curiosity.

So a couple things can happen here: Either they don't all make it back, Orym is heartbroken and trying to fix it or dead. Or Orym gets what he wants and we see more of Nana Mori's nature and if she's more like Uk'otoa or Artagan. Either way Orym gets a new and interesting direction to go in.Far more interesting than succeeding and everything staying the same. And that's why I like the choice.

#critical role #critical role spoilers #critical role meta #critical role campaign 3 #Bell's Hells #orym of the air ashari

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wordsinhaled · 2 years

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because i had to watch the 1389 scene over and over again yesterday i’m now totally convinced we haven’t talked about it enough in comparison to the 1789 and 1889 scenes (understandably because those scenes are gold) so... i’m gonna ramble now i guess! pardon any incoherence lmao

just... my sleep-deprived brain is losing it because hob is simply there talking shit with his mates at the pub, just running his mouth, but you can see the resolve in his eyes, the determination to his features, when he says “i’m not going to die,” and you can already tell that hob is set apart from any other person. i always describe hob in terms of his hubris but it isn’t that he’s prideful necessarily, to me; more that he doesn’t bother to ever think anything he says isn’t possible—it doesn’t even occur to him that what he’s saying won’t come to pass

i feel like one of the reasons hob is such a good match for dream is that even before he’s functionally immortal, hob comes across like he already operates on this level that’s beyond merely human in how he sees things—his expansive love for life, the scope of possibility, the idea that mortality is optional to begin with. hob is such a fucking regular person but he also has this, like... vaguely homeric quality to him? i can’t put my finger on it but i can just picture hob rowing odysseus’ ship to troy, you know? and i think that’s what i’m getting at. i’m not surprised at all that he would be of interest to dream

and like, we always talk about how dream is a complete mystery to hob for centuries and how dream must fascinate him and occupy his thoughts. it’s easy to see why dream would capture hob’s attention, but it’s equally interesting to me to think about why hob captures dream’s focus for centuries as well. why keep coming back to this man? why, when hob is just doing the gritty everyday work of living that dream derides and thinks himself so far above?

i imagine this is the thing about hob that fascinates dream, who is prideful to the point of it being a tragic flaw; who is a king, a lord, and isn’t typically met with this kind of dogged obstinacy, who doesn’t expect a challenge. even though he presides over all dreamers he doesn’t expect someone not of the endless to dream like this. to push the boundaries and laws of the universe like this. and how is it that hob, given this gift, then asks nothing for himself except to have an abundance of mundane experiences, when other men have been demanding and unimaginably cruel and tried to break and bend dream of the endless to their will? how can hob ask nothing more of him than presence, than friendship? than dream’s regard?

god, this post is getting away from me. anyway, back to the 1389 scene—the moment dream says hob’s name, “let us meet here, robert gadling...” there’s this minute shift in hob’s expression, in the attention he gives dream. he was already looking at him with interest (in other news, i’m convinced hob would’ve already happily gone home with dream that very day in 1389 and i will stand my ground on that...)—like, here’s this ethereal-looking stranger, in a lord’s clothes, big fuck-off jewel round his neck and eyes like the stormy sea, looking at him, at hob? why? hob doesn’t know but he’s into it!

but then the stranger knows his name, and you can see in his eyes the second he realizes this is serious, this is real. this is something hob sticks on and asks dream about for centuries—how did the stranger know his name? how did he know johanna? and lushing lou? thinking about this from hob’s perspective, living in 1389, he’s probably thinking that names are words of power in this world. and dream knows hob’s name, and you can see in his eyes, in his expression, that he’s disturbed, but hob meets that fact with trepidation but also with curiosity. and he doesn’t take his eyes off dream, who is suddenly more on his level than anyone else in this pub, who dignifies his wish to live forever, who operates on hob’s scale of time. tells dream, “don’t mind them,” like, these other mortals don’t share our understanding

like... i’m just in awe of the depth conveyed in this scene, i feel like there’s more to find in hob’s character every day and that’s all thanks to ferdinand’s acting

and as dream leaves the tavern, hob has this dawning look of deep thought on his face, like he’s realizing what he just agreed to, as if all his aches and pains, all the little fourteenth-century ills that could have led to his untimely death are falling away from him already

this is TOO MUCH for my poor tired heart!!!

#the sandman #dreamling #hob gadling

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shittysawtraps · 1 year

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hello tumblr user. you have made a tumblr post about something silly, which has gained a lot of notes. this has gone to your head, and you have begun calling yourself a tumblr funnyman (gender neutral). for your hubris, you must be punished. you must convince your followers to stop giving you notes, because for every hundred notes, I will be gifting you two check marks. because they stack, it is only a matter of time before your “funny takes” are buried under a sea of rainbow bullshit. so which is it? will you abandon your love of posting, or will you be crushed under the weight of the attention you so desperately crave? live or die, make your choice.

#shitty saw traps #saw franchise #mod Amanda #it’s been a hot second since I posted something original

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diagonal-queen · 1 year

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Oh yes please! Something where an enemy of the Port Mafia ambushes reader and leaves her for dead in an ally or something (but obviously Chuuya finds her and she doesn't actually die)

hello again my love, thank you for this! your wish is my command. (btw for context for anyone else who sees this this is the anon who sent me that one tumblr post!)

On the Verge

♡ pairing: Chuuya Nakahara x fem!Reader

♡ synopsis: After being attacked by an enemy of the Port Mafia and left for dead, Chuuya finds you face down in an alleyway and takes care of you (and your attackers).

♡ wc: 2.4k

♡ cw: Violence (reader gets beat up by some meanie heads), injuries (black eye, sprained wrist, fractured rib, cuts, bruises and blood), mentions of death, reader passes out for a bit, swearing, reader uses fem pronouns and titles, mentions of murder, mentions of Mori Ougai. Lmk if I missed anything.

note: I've known for a while how this scenario would go in my head but...my brain didn't give me the words to put on the Tumblr. I'm sorry T-T apologies for errors, and apologies that this is so long, pls forgive me anon ily 🙏

You hadn't expected your death to come so soon, and yet like they always said, your life was flashing before your eyes- as was the fist of your attacker. Attackers, to be accurate; there were two of them, and they were both large. Usually if you were gonna hire a goon, they were either large, good with weapons or had a great ability. These two didn't appear to have any weapons or abilities.

As a mafioso, you'd come to learn that on a regular basis the line between life and death was rather thin. Of course, you didn't go on missions extremely often as an intelligence operator, but even then, simply going out on your own was a risk. Fortunately enough, you were dating Chuuya Nakahara. Most of the time you were rarely anywhere in public without him (or at least without another member), but there were times in which you didn't have a choice.

You had actually been instructed by several higher ups within the organisation to not go out on your own, even if you felt you had to. You didn't listen, though. You and Chuuya had been working on dismantling an organisation rivalling your own, and you were certain that you'd found one of their hideouts that were speckled throughout Yokohama. Unfortunately for you, you were completely right.

Your timing had been rather poor, considering two of their own, clad in their masks that acted as identification badges for members, were on their way to said hideout right when you were. Of course, there was an altercation; you'd been expecting something like that. But you were sure you could get out of there before anything bad happened. That hubris was probably the sole reason you were in your current position.

Laying down on the grimy cement of the alleyway which led to the hideout, bruised and beaten to what you felt to be within an inch of your life. You weren't necessarily used to sustaining serious injuries, even as a mafioso, but you were sure it wasn't good that your eyesight seemed to have deteriorated slowly over the few minutes you'd been on the ground. Not only that, but you felt as if your breathing was rather laborious as well.

You weren't sure if you were going to die, but it sure felt like it. You certainly didn't want to die; you were young, you had a stable career and a great boyfriend and everything was going well. There really couldn't have been a worse time to die, in fact. But as blood spilled from your mouth, and you realised how isolated the area you were in was, you realised that you probably were going to die right there, alone in a dirty alley.

You supposed that at least someone might find your body, and it couldn't be any worse than something like being tossed into the ocean-

"Y/N! Fuck, oh god..." That terrified voice belonged to Chuuya. He sped down the alleyway quicker than lightning, kneeling down to quickly examine you before taking you in his arms and squeezing you. "Oh my god, Y/N- are you alright?"

"...Chuuya..." you whispered, in relief. He was here. He was here now and you were gonna live. You suddenly realised how exhausted you truly were, and almost shut your eyes to sleep at that moment. But you needed to tell Chuuya what happened first, so you sat up as straight as you could in your weary state. "I-..."

Chuuya suddenly took your cheek in his gloved hand and directed your gaze towards him.

"Who did this to you?" He growled. His voice was quiet, but it was frothing with pure unfiltered fury. There was a slight waver in his dangerous tone. Your watery eyes glistened as you locked eyes with him, his stare ferocious. Beneath the thinly veiled wrath, however, you could sense worry. Chuuya was truly worried that you might die.

"...i-it was..." you took a deep, ragged breath. "...them, Chu-"

You suddenly wretched and fell back to the ground. Chuuya quickly caught you and pulled you into his arms as you coughed. A trickle of blood spilled from the edge of your lips. You let out a cry of pain as he tightened his grip on you, but he wasn't looking at you. He was staring into the distance, seemingly preoccupied with something else.

"...Ch-Chuu...ya?" You managed to get out. Your vision was slightly blurred, and your heart was pounding in your head. He cradled your head in his hand and cast his gaze back down to you.

"You're gonna be alright, honey. You're safe now, okay?" Chuuya reassured you gently, brushing some loose locks of hair from your dirty face. "You're gonna be just fine."

"Chuuya..." you repeated, weakly. "There were t-two of them...

"Breathe," he said quickly, though his eyes were still fiery. "Breathe, Y/N. What'd they look like?"

"...the masks, th-they....one of them had...uh, gree-" you interrupted yourself with a cough, feeling the metallic taste of blood fill your mouth. "Eyes, green eyes."

"Right. Do you remember anything else?"

"Uhm...dark cl-clothes, and...how did you find me?" You seemed to have forgotten the question he'd asked. Chuuya bit his lip with worry.

"You hadn't been returning anyone's calls so I came looking for you. I thought that you might have gone investigating so I came here as fast as I could." He told you. "My god, what were you thinking coming out here by yourself? I didn't want you to get hurt doing this!"

"S-sorry, I th..." Suddenly your head rolled back limply. You felt so tired. All you wanted to do was close your eyes and go to sleep.

"Wait, you need to stay awake!" He urged, tapping your hand. "You can't fall unconscious now- stay awake, alright?"

"Mm..."

"Y/N, you need to stay awake," Chuuya told you. "Hang in there, hon. We'll get you home and all better, alright?"

You made a sound of acknowledgement. Or, at least, you thought you did. Chuuya kept insisting that you stay awake as he got to his feet with you in his arms. You felt yourself being jostled around as he carried you away, but that was it. Everything was quiet, all of a sudden.

You couldn't remember the exact moment you fell unconscious, but you didn't feel like you'd been out that long before you had woken up. It was rather dim in the room you had woken up in, and you quickly realised you were in a bed. Your head was thumping. Your face stung.

"Y/N?" In surprise, you quickly turned to see Chuuya who was sitting on the side of the bed, having changed out of his work clothes. He suddenly let out a huge sigh. "Thank fuck..."

"Chuuya?"

"Are you feeling okay?" He asked, leaning over to caress your cheek. "You were pretty bloody earlier. Anything hurt? Any aches anywhere?"

"I..." Admittedly, you were slightly overwhelmed by the questions. You felt extremely lethargic and you couldn't see too well. You lifted your left hand to reach out for him, before noticing that it was wrapped up in bandages. "...wait, I don't think..."

"Don't worry, it's not broken," he told you. You furrowed your eyebrows before glancing around the room, quickly recognising it as your own. You were in the middle of the bed you shared with Chuuya, a few pillows propping you up into a semi-upright position. One of them, a fluffy one that you used when you got sick, was positioned behind your head.

"...we're home?"

"Yeah. It's a little late, though," Chuuya chuckled. "About four in the morning."

"Wh- four in the morning?!" You turned to face the window, only to see the sky a deep shade of blue, tinted with orange in preparation for the sunrise. "Oh my god. Why haven't you slept, Chuuya?!"

"I was too worried to sleep," he answered. "Besides, I'm pumped up on adrenaline anyway."

"Adrenaline?" You frowned. "You weren't that concerned about me, were you?"

"'Course I was! You're my girlfriend. I'm always gonna be worried when you get hurt, Y/N." Chuuya said earnestly. "I don't care how long I have to stay up as long as it means you're alright."

You tilted your head at him, unable to suppress your smile at his sweet sentiment. Still, though, you felt a little guilty for prompting him to forfeit his much needed rest.

"That's so cute, babe. But you must have taken a nap or something since I passed out, right? I mean, it was like...mid-evening. What were you up to that whole time?" You asked, curiously. Chuuya had seemed so upset when he'd found you, and now he was completely fine, if not a little anxious as anyone would expect him to be. Chuuya lifted his leg onto the bed in order to be able to face you better, then began his explanation.

"Well, first of all, I had to make sure you were alive. I brought you home as quick as I could- somehow none of your bones were broken, but you're all bruised up, winded, I'm pretty sure one of your ribs is fractured, and your wrist was sprained. I put some ice on it earlier before I bandaged it up."

"Right...thanks, Chuu." You lifted your hand and examined it. You and Chuuya were always patching one another up, but most of the time it was a lot more light-hearted and domestic. You knew your left eye had to have taken a hit too- it was rather swollen and you couldn't really see too well from it. You could also feel a faint but very present sting in all the small cuts you had earned earlier.

"You were unconscious, so I cleaned you up and changed you into your pyjamas, and locked you in here while I went back out. I didn't really wanna leave you alone or anything, but I couldn't really just call up one of the others to bring them here, y'know?"

"That's why we need a guard dog, Chuuya," you remarked, making him smile. "But...you went back out? To buy something?" You asked, under the innocent assumption that Chuuya had gone emergency shopping for chicken soup or something of the sort, to treat your poor state.

"Hm? No. I went to find those pricks that left you like that. And I killed them," he said, bluntly. Your eyes widened.

"Wh- you did? How'd you find them?"

"I had help from Kouyou," he answered, and you gave him a nod. "You and I were actually pretty close to closing our investigation. Her input was pretty useful, though- we probably should have asked her advice from the start. We cracked it pretty quick and I got the go-ahead from the boss, and so a squad and I took 'em out almost immediately."

"Is that right?" You asked, impressed. "Well, I'm glad our late nights and all that were worth it. I thought they'd have been a more formidable opponent, though..."

"Yeah, sure. If they hadn't messed with you, maybe they would've been. But I was pissed, especially when I found the guys who beat you up. I'd have let you have the kills but, y'know...you were asleep and shit. So I handled it for you, promised Boss a report by this afternoon, and came back here to see if you were still alright." You blinked at his explanation, incredulously.

"That's...a lot, in a few hours. He gave you until this afternoon?"

"This one operation was pretty impromptu, and you were out of commission. He knew I had to take care of you afterwards, even if you did manage to get out with only a black eye and a fucked up rib and wrist," Chuuya answered, glancing down at your bandaged hand. "Plus, I didn't get any of the details of the attack from you so I couldn't provide that information. He's gonna wanna see you as soon as you're well enough."

"Right...yeah, should've expected," you heaved, shifting in the bed. "The Port Mafia's pretty brutal, huh?"

"Hah...yeah, you're right. But I don't think that's really bad, right?"

"I guess it certainly helps when your boyfriend is a gravity wielder..." you nodded, with a smile. "Are you alright, though? Did you get hurt or anything?"

"Pfft, barely." He shook his head. "I'm fine. I was just worried about you, so I'm glad that you're alright." Chuuya took your hand in his and ran his thumb over your knuckles. "Do you need anything? Hungry?"

"No, babe, it's fucking four in the morning. You need to go to sleep. You're gonna collapse at any minute!" You insisted, taking his hand in your own. Searing pain shot through your arm and you recoiled, scrunching up your face. "Ow! Shit..."

"You alright?" He hastily picked up your forearm which lay limp over the blanket and gave it a very slight rub. "You're probably not gonna be able to use it for a while..."

"Fuck," you cursed. "Well, I guess it could've been way worse. You know what would really make me feel better right now, though?"

"What's that, love?"

"If you got into bed with me and we went to sleep," you answered, patting the spot beside you. "C'mon, Chuu. I mean it. You gotta sleep now, alright?"

Chuuya rolled his eyes, but still climbed under the blanket as you moved aside to leave him some room. You watched as he adjusted the pillows behind you, making it easier for the two of you to sleep there together.

"You feeling okay? Everything comfortable?" He asked.

"Yep! I feel just fine. Aside from the bodily injuries, I mean."

"Aw, honey..." he cooed, bringing you into his arms slowly and loosely so as to not cause any chest pain, and then planting a kiss on your forehead. "Sorry I didn't get there sooner."

"It's not your fault, Chuuya!" You said, softly. "I'm just glad it's all over with now."

"That is a relief, yeah," he agreed. "You don't have anything to worry about anymore."

"Mm..." You hummed, your faces close. "Thanks for fixing me up, Chuuya. Means a lot."

"It's nothin', really. I'd do it a thousand times over if I needed to. Just...don't go out on your own to that place again, alright? I hate seeing you get hurt."

"...yeah, I got it," you answered, playing with his red hair with your unaffected hand and joking, "Next time, I'll just bring you with me."

never written whump fic before so i hope it's okay 🌸 (does this even technically count??) i want someone to take care of me the way chuuya takes care of y/n <3 don't get me wrong i love taking care of people! it's just that maybe it would be nice to be the one who's being taken care of for a change yk 🤧

#bsd #bungo stray dogs #bungou stray dogs #bsd fanfic #bsd fanfiction #bungo stray dogs fanfiction #x reader #bsd x reader #bungo stray dogs x reader #bsd chuuya #chuuya #chuuya nakahara #chuuya x reader #bsd fluff #bsd whump #whump fic

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turtleneck-crowley · 3 months

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Wake up babes of the GO fandom turtleneck-crowley just dropped their most recent Magnus Opus🥰🥰🥰

Hey guys I am a eccentric genius artist of the century whose works will probably only be appreciated post mortem (self-diagnosed)

Im also very certain you would all blorbos me if I were a fictional character but alas I am a boring meat package that got birthed out of an afab physiology and thus a sack of mouldy potatoes might have been a more interesting source writing this post. (Pure hubris, part irrational resentment that you are all quite familiar with *cheeky hot wink*)

I happen to own a get out of jail free card called catch 22 which is crafted out of part sarcasm, part idgasinglefgtfoofmyfacei180dmycringethroughyearsofpainandselfrelctionthatim toocoolforyounow public image

(if you actually read that you deserve, well nothing actually except perhaps my condolences and a consensual pat on the back that implies my unlicensed diagnosis that you are in fact, not dyslexic)

Anyhow cracking on back to the sentence *sighs and rolls eyes with you*

(-I mean in the streets, not with you guys, here im babygirl with half a brain cell/true form), part wholesome idiocy, years of experience in masking, part looking presentable, part knowing how society and science and art works and trying to be in tact with my own sense of humanity as much as possible -at least to the point where I’m not breaking any humanitarian law…

And yes bitch the whole eccentric genius /madly passionate or passionately mad paradox catch 22 license holder is you af - want a gold star? ⭐️ (crowley ref) (affectionate banter)

Fact is tumblrinas like to heighten and balance their EQ and IQ agreed?

I’m hyper aware that you guys are smart enough to assess me as going through a manic phase that is on the verge of psychotic-having observed hints of madness in my recent posts deducing via your own experiences that I have gone through a strict diet of coffee, whiskey, smut that Neil Gaiman himself would tear his locks and Sir Terry Pratchett would roll in his grave, finished off with a nice slice of Hozier songs as dessert

(that’s on top of of a yet to be discovered food chain which I call the Antichrist diet footnote: please credit me after I die before my Tesla gets Edisoned

‘Tis actually a great alternative way to invoke a psychedelic experience in substitute of the more expensive and questionably unlawful way that is smoking crack *disclaimer not recommended for the faint hearted or those self-diagnosed as mentally stable)

You are perfectly correct! Here’s another gold star!!! ⭐️

In fact I am currently being yelled by my parents to come downstairs because I need to be dropped off to the asylum while I’m trying to actually do something that gives me joy (Joan of Arc eat your heart out) and I assure you I have eyes and witness my very legs , naked and hairy (and did I mention Im only wearing a slutty black bra and skirt that I wore as a swimming suit AND a pajama and now my back to the looney bin outfit?) leaving a perfectly good soup with baguettes as evidenced here

However, I would like to UNO reverse such a caring notion by giving you a purple heart 💜

and divert you with a fun little clip that displays our para social relationship that I am hoping has deepened through my superficial charm to portray our rendezvous as warm and familiar and human as our beloved Mr. Holmes and Doctor Watson:

No worries, Watson also came with the conslusion that the person he’s engaged with (more like to amiright- not us i mean, them, that’s where the analogy is cut off back into our real identities) is “not human”

Anyhow it might not be your cup of tea but at least hold the mug for a few minutes it’s worth it

Head fic: Gods of Sex and Idiocy

(If anything please see it as a game where we can title it better cause I’m shit at naming things - I call one of my plants Joe)

Hey Good Omens fandom

With the note of:

“who needs sane when you have creative”

-turtleneck-crowley

I have made a meta season 3 in my head and the stars have even sent me a playlist ??? (It’s the only one that seems to be downloaded on my wifi less phone)

Here’s the link:

Check out some of my latest posts

It’s really immersive and otherworldly

Down the rabbit hole and through the mirror you go 🐇🎩🪄

And what if season 1 is the ace route and season 2 is the sexual route so season 3 might be an aro route to defeating the enemy?

Ngk idk idc idgaf

I’m just like phone rn

(side note: why do I have the infinite capacity of taking pains (Sherlock reference) for being a mad artist instead of working on the next big physics formula answer? Good question: I’m actually just an emotional idiot aka sexy trash ✨ that’s addicted to blogging and I wouldn’t trade it for any other praise worthy status in the world 💜)

Honestly guys I sound like a sociopath but I’m really just very pained and fucked royally by circumstance that is too dramatic and gay for anyone except the loonies on tumblr to understand. I’m so disappointed by all this unjust pain and agony of the world- the children, the animals, the environment, the people that I have conditioned myself to display an eloquence so pungent it seems like I’m a cold manipulator. For if I ever showed myself for who I was to them- the judgers, the perverted, the scheming, I would surely be dead either by my own or someone else’s hands. Maybe I’m God and they just like tumblr and good omens and want to eat crepes in peace with the personality they split into 2 -preferably in Paris. Maybe they have been placed all the blame by the enemy and they are powerless to the human condition as you all are by an unknown enemy and is fated to be tortured in anxiety and pain invisible to all and the only infinite power they have is love that bleeds.

But I’ll give you and I both the peace of mind that I am an in fact just a mentally ill human whose life span is between the zones of expiration and fermentation, with a god complex, whom their closest people will never truly know how to care no matter how much they try- and in fact the more they try to help me the more they leave me in my original state- alone.

I leave you (no I’m not killing myself you idiot I’m going to the mental hospital to be molested by nightmares of demons - I literally experience it everyday- as they force me to take my sleeping pills which sinks me deeper into it-oh wait that’s kind of worse lmao) with this favorite piece of classical music of mine

Stay safe yall I love you

#good omens #crowley #good omens fandom #Spotify #aziraphale #good omens headcanons #catch 22 #my only talent is lying (aka calling madness creativity and convincing people I’m intelligent and attractive)

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lukecastellanshandholder · 9 months

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Ok so, as I said yesterday I'm rereading Sea of Monsters and I've gotta admit, there are a lot of parts that I didn't remember from it that deserve more appreciation.

(Long post incoming! 😅)

One of them that I really want to talk about is after Annabeth listens to the siren song and learns that her fatal flaw is hubris. When she was listening to the sirens, she saw a scene of her father and Athena happily together, along with Luke all sitting in central park. Surrounding them is a new Manhattan that Annabeth has built and it looks so much better than the western civilization that the gods have built.

When she's telling Percy about her fatal flaw, she talks about how the west represents a lot of the greatest things to ever come from mankind, but how your view starts to change when all you can see are the bad things. She says that would make someone start to think more like Luke. That if she could tear everything down and start everything a new, that she would be able to run and build things better. That if she could rebuild it, the world wouldn't be as messed up. There would be no more war, nobody homeless and left on the streets to fend for themselves.

And this is absolutely correct, this is essentially why Luke is doing this all to begin with. This is his core goal (purely Luke's and not Kronos). To make a better world for everyone. Where no one would have to go what he and countless others had been through. So that maybe others would be able to see the good in the world after all his life he had only been shown the bad.

But then there are these couple paragraphs after that. Those are super interesting to me and it gives so much insight on the universe and how certain people think.

"She (Annabeth) gazed into the distance. 'I'm not sure. But we have to save camp. If we don't stop Luke...'

She didn't need to finish. If Luke's way of thinking could even tempt Annabeth, there was no telling how many other half-bloods might join him."

First thing to remember, this is all from Percy's perspective. These are all his own thoughts and how he thinks about things. So I think the way Percy speaking about Annabeth in the last paragraph kinda shows how he tends to think of her as strong for not thinking like Luke. Like Luke is kind of weak for thinking the way he does about things needing to change and rebelling against the gods. But also like Luke's way of thinking of his envisioning of a better world without the gods in control is, in itself, something dangerous.

Now, to the other demigods, if the gods were to fall and those demigods were to join Luke's/ Kronos's side, then... It really wouldn't be that dangerous for them. At least not much more dangerous than it is for them now with the gods ruling over everything. Because the gods and Titans are very much the same.

But ultimately, my main point is, Percy seems to have this underlying fear and aversion to anyone doing anything to go against the gods. But why? Why when we see that he is to his core, more on the rebellious side? Much like the ocean, Percy doesn't like to be restrained.

Because, he's been influenced by the gods and camp (especially Chiron). He's been steered to believe that even the thought of going against the gods is wrong and shouldn't be done. He's had Chiron who's been telling him that the gods falling out of power would be the worst thing to ever happen. One god in particular (ahem, Hermes) has used Percy's strong sense of loyalty and family to lead him, to manipulate him farther and put in his head that turning his back on his family (in this case the gods) is something that you should never do.

And it's not just Percy who has been raised to think this way, it's a lot of the other demigods at camp who stay loyal to the gods until their final breaths. Who stay loyal to them even as they watch their siblings die left and right before their eyes.

And Kronos is doing this exact same thing to Luke. It's the same thing that Kronos would've done to his subjects if he would've won the war. There is no difference between the gods and the Titans and, once again, Percy and Luke showcase that perfectly.

And people who believe that the gods are better than the Titans like to bring up the line from TLT when Luke says something along the lines of "the ones who serve Kronos will be treated well and be powerful, the others who don't will be killed."

Yeah, the gods do the exact same thing. They kill or torture anyone who defies them, and gives power to the ones who serve them. We have plenty of examples of this, two major ones are right in the last chapters of The Last Olympian. Luke rebelled against the gods, as he was fated to, and he died as he was fated to, along with most of the other traitors. And Percy, the one who had served the gods the most, he was offered godhood. Power. So yeah, there really is no difference between them.

But I just think it's so interesting how those two paragraphs can give so much insight into how Percy views things. And this is just from the second book. And the book that tends to be most people's least favorite book in the series.

#TTC will always be my favorite book in the series #but rereading SOM has reminded me that there are so many tidbits of foreshadowing and information that is sprinkled throughout this book #but yeah #luke castellan #percy jackson #annabeth chase #sea of monsters #pjo #pjoverse

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joltning · 8 months

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i forgot I never posted this here so.

how I see desert gulch is as people they COULD have realistically ended up as. like in a kind of “bad ending” where nothing caused them to grow and they just kind of simmer in their hatred. they already kind of mention how like, if Church didn’t die Tucker would grow more powerful and eventually die due to his own hubris. more of that pls. more small differences butterfly effecting. THATS LITERALLY THE THEME OF S15.

more under cut

i Lied. this is not a comprehensive post this is me slightly rewriting my rambles

adding the theme of the past coming back (instead of consequences) I’d LOVE Love Love to see some of the older speeches come back but be spun on their heads. Sarge’s rally speech being changed to one of hate by surge pointing out the negatives in the reds and blues instead? kimball’s speech being said by temple “fight because you deserve to win”?? PLEASE. HEAR ME.

temple: Please give him a water theme. I’ve mentioned this before but having desert gulch be a cold desert like sidewinder initially and then slowly melting into an ocean signifying the bitter, burning hatred for everything around him, also leaning into Carolina’s rivals being fire themed? PLEASE. it would also foil church with him growing farther from all the rest of the members adding onto his “nice on outside bad on inside” reverse of him. ALSO. MAKE TUCKER REALIZE ITS A BACKSTAB WAAAY BETTER. he’s been through this shit before. he knows what’s up.

buckey: there is so much for me to say but I don’t have the right words to say it. Tucker is such a strongly built character that with any of the wrong moves could have crumbled into the worst person possible. Most prominently, he’s very honest and while he does have an ego, puts his friends first. Buckey is already a SLIMEY bitch but he needs to be a liar, egotistical, and a show off at any opportunity. But not a good fighter. Noo.

surge: thanks for putting it into words youtube comment section. Make him like early seasons where he didn’t really give a shit about his soldiers at all. I really need that parallel theme to shine through with him berating his soldiers while Sarge uplifts them and clearly cares.

Gene: make him clearly disloyal from the start. he’s already pretty good but I’d love to see him backstab surge to climb the ranks. Simmons is bitchy and always critical, but I need gene to be a HATER. literally just straight up ready to claw at anyone to get his way. he is his ONLY priority.

cronut: instead of having an echo chamber of sex jokes how about you actually make him the most “alpha male” kind of person ever with the densest “i would never make a joke like that” shit ever make his masculinity so frail it would not only be funny but would be great contrast and make sense with how donut could have ended up. Sorry Cronut fans

the main difference here is that each of these characters would end up here due to their strained relationship, and clearly only tolerate each other due to necessity. the reds and blues don’t even have to do that much. they just have to sow the seeds of doubt that already exist, and wait for them to all crumble apart in a butterfly effect of hate that had always been there. And watch on, as every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

#rvb #red vs blue #part of my rewrite au Ofc.#takes a bow and falls on my face #s15 rewrite au #txt

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chillinglikeashilling · 9 months

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Looking back on my post about being sympathetic to Suvi's POV and I was mostly just rambling because this podcast has actually really made me think alot about what type of characters I tend to root for and explore a facet of that I'd never really noticed.

I think when I say Brennan does a good job of painting the world, I meant that you can feel the pressure of the choices the characters are making. You can understand their context because the world feels like it has natural consequences.

It's fine for us as people who are familiar with Brennan and his world building and the rest of the cast to say 'Good! fuck the wizards and empire' because that's right!

But we're not in the story. In the story it's hard to look at a hundred plus people die viscerally because of a thing they had no idea was happening.

That's a terrifying amount of power to behold. And again it's not like this is a natural disaster, that is power with purpose and intent behind it.

And because Brennan has created a world that feels lived in, I find myself thinking about what it feels like to live in a world like that. To live in a world like that when Spirits were even more present than in the current story. I can imagine other scenarios in which people, with much less power than wizards, were at the whims of Spirits much less kind than Naram.

And being completely open about my bias, as much as I want to play a witch, I understand where wizards come from. Or at least it feels like I could picture it.

I can imagine the type of people who before empire, before hierarchy and hubris and everything that comes with having power and wanting to maintain it, looked at the world around them and said I am going to wrest some control of the world into my hands by sheer will and determination.

The Wizards, that we've met, are a threat to Spirits to the extent that they are because of empire, because of the machinery and the exploitation of people and resources. Galani who is one of the greatest wizards we've been introduced to almost got fly swatted by Naram.

I don't admire the empire but I'm excited to meet other wizards

#I need to know more about wizards Brennan!!#the wizard the witch and the wild one #wwwo spoilers #worlds beyond number #twtwatwo #Wwwo

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7knives · 5 months

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hii this is random but ur ocs all seem so interesting and cool and i'd love to know more about them👀 (if you want to talk about them ofc no pressure :D <3)

thank you so much, that’s really nice of you! 💜💜💜i love to talk about them! i have like almost a dozen but the most fleshed out / to me currently interesting ones are: levi, tayuhl, lance and the priest. A brief summary of them would be:

levi (he/they/it/she) is a tma oc. he is like a monster hunter similar to trevor and julia but not an avatar of the hunt. levi loves to cause trouble and annoy people. they do the hunting more so because it messes with people and the ritual plans and not because he wants to get rid of 'bad' avatars. also because levi likes violence lol. most closely it might be aligned with the spiral but he doesn’t have any spiral-like powers. he thinks of itself as unkillable (hence the hubris).

tayuhl (she/her) is a fantasy oc. she lives in a sort of post-apocalyptic medieval fantasy world where magic that went wrong destroyed her world. it draws influences from botw when the guardians went rogue and fantasy in general. she’s fighting similar machines powered by magic and tries to collect knowledge of magic of which a good portion was lost in the destruction of the temples. with that she hopes to figure out how to stop the machines for good. strictly speaking she hasn’t got any magical powers herself (visions aside) and fights with swords and bow and arrow.

venn alancer (she/her) most of the time simply referred to as lance is a star wars oc that has existed the longest out of my current ocs. i came up with her as a teen. she is but a simple bounty hunter trying to make her way through the galaxy. in earlier (flying) accidents she lost both legs and as a young child her left arm and now wears protheses. kind of like han she assisted the rebels in the fight against the empire. her ship is called 'the silver spetum'.

the priest (they/them) is my newest oc and a time-traveling assassin. they were born during the victorian era in london. i haven’t got their backstory all worked out yet but eventually they join/are recruited by time-traveling assassins who in theory can be hired by every person from every time period. but the very frequent time-travelling takes its toll and the assassins can’t die (from natural causes. not as great as it might seem at first. it’s more like bilbo said: 'like butter scraped over too much bread') and have also forgotten a lot of crucial information about themselves. for example the priest forgot their name, who they were before etc. i only picked their name because i thought it sounded cool as an assassin’s name skskks. later i made up a story how they got it (in their first few missions they disguised themselves as a priest and the name stuck) not sure if i will stick with this story though. the reason i choose the victorian era was because i love the suits the men were wearing at the time and i always imagine the priest wearing something classy like this on a day to day basis.

typing all of that out actually made me want to work on the priests back story more so thank you for asking! 💜 id also really love to hear about your ocs if you want to share!

#i didnt get into too much detail bc i think it would’ve been too much at once sksksk #all of my ocs lore might change a little from time to time but thats the current status #ocs #oc: levi #oc: tayuhl #oc: lance #oc: the priest #honorable mention ocs are len and andy. they’re not ready yet

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septembersghost · 2 years

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that post about BCS appealing more to women made me think, and it's interesting that Walter and Jimmy are both cringefail pathetic, and don't get me wrong Walter's whole self justifying toxic macho thing is fascinating, but Jimmy is almost more... accessibly pathetic? he's emotional, got big sad blue eyes, wanted his brother to like him, lbr a total bottom with Kim, and even the vanity is treated more sympathetic than in Breaking Bad where it was essentially flamboyance helps with the sleaze. This isn't even me saying he's better than Walter, there's a whole laundry list of flaws, it's just amusing that I can't think of anyone calling Heisenberg their pathetic bb girl

editing this to say i was writing back to you last night and didn't have time to finish it, so i saved this as a draft, and now i'm like 100000x more deranged about the contrasts between jimmy and walt than i was before, because jimmy was PREPARED TO DIE FOR HIS WIFE. walt presses on with his, "everything i do, i do for my family" (despite us knowing this becomes a falsehood of an excuse), but the pure act of selfless love jimmy exhibited for kim is true.

it definitely comes down to endearment - walt is a fascinating character, but innately unlikable from the start, whereas jimmy is lovable. walt's pathetic qualities curdle into cruelty and control, he's not cringefail in a way where we want to bring him in from the rain in a cardboard box lol but there's something about jimmy, some spark of heart or goodness, where we want better for him even though we KNOW where he's headed. accessible is a great word for it, there's something in him that we get, even when his actions are immoral or destructive.

i'm trying to remember if i just wrote about this recently or if i only thought about it in my head...there's a scene in salud when flynn comes over to see walt, and it's his birthday, and walt and jesse have just gotten into an ugly, brutal fight. walt is beat up and miserable and completely out of it, and accidentally calls flynn "jesse," and then the next day when he's a bit more clear, he talks about his experience seeing his father sick when he was a child. it's an amazing, haunting scene and i don't think it gets talked about enough. bryan's performance gets praised for the big meme moments - the "i am the one who knocks" speech, "you're goddamn right," "i suggest you tread lightly," even the breakdown in crawl space, but the monologue he has in salud is one of my favorite bits of his acting in the entire show. he's quiet. he's introspective. and he talks about these terrible memories of seeing his father wasting away from illness, the caustic smell of the hospital chemicals, the sound of his breath rattling like an empty spray paint can. and he tells flynn this formative memory, this huge, revealing part of himself, and it speaks so deeply to the response he's had to his cancer, his fear of his illness, his loathing of looking weak. his father wasn't there to, as gus once said, provide. he only remembers being afraid and seeing frailty. it's just a gutwrenchingly human scene. he says to his son that he doesn't want him to remember him like that. but then flynn says, "remembering you that way wouldn't be so bad. the bad way to remember you would be the way you've been this whole last year. at least last night you were...you were real." it's heartbreaking because all he WANTS is for his dad to let him in and be honest with him, even if that means ugly crying. the emotional vulnerability matters. but walt just...seals back up. walt cannot abide being seen in weakness. and that hubris destroys everything. the narrative knows walt is pathetic, but walt cannot face that himself.

by design, bcs recognizes jimmy's more pathetic qualities, but never needs the veneer of the power or masculinity. even when jimmy tries posturing, it's ineffective. the narrative knows, but SO DOES JIMMY. the "lightning bolts shoot from my fingertips!" scene has howard walking angrily away from him with zero reactions, and ends with jimmy panting and defeated because he's aware he was lashing out in guilt and fear after having to defend lalo, after seeing grieving family members in court. when jimmy gets mad at kim and kim says, "jimmy, you are always down," he doesn't respond with a counterargument, he just sort of collapses inwardly, and starts packing his things (in his metaphorical little rucksack) until she comes to him and softens and offers support. it's not bad to see jimmy weak or very emotional or afraid or frustrated or downtrodden because it's REAL. and we can empathize with those flaws when they're honest.

heisenberg and saul goodman are both grandiose personas, but used for very different reasons and ends. they're both their worst selves writ large, but where heisenberg feels like an extension of walt's obsessive ego, saul, even in his scumminess and vanity, is a shroud for the vulnerability of jimmy's heart - and because we know that exists in him, we respond to his faults more compassionately. in fandom parlance, jimmy's meow meowness, his lovable qualities, are possible because of that genuineness we've felt. we know he can do better, we wish he would. walt's metastatic decay doesn't allow for that. it allows for such great counterpoints between the themes of both their arcs.

#although walt would absolutely HATE being called anyone's bb girl so maybe we should to annoy him lmao #jimmy on the other hand. i think if someone said to him 'omg my poor bb girl' he'd be like 'yeah :('#does this even make sense #jimmy mcgill #better call saul #walter white #breaking bad #anyway salud top episodes of ALL TIME #for many reasons #i think don eladio's poisoning kind of overshadows walt's section of the episode but it's something that has always stuck with me #cauldronofmorning #letterbox

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lemonhemlock · 1 year

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Who do you think should be the ruler in hotd?

I put off answering this because it was the most complex question and, as a result, I'm going to break it into two parts (part II linked here).

I've already posted my thoughts on House Hightower, so my answer will unfold in a similar way: I do not believe House Targaryen should be in charge of the affairs of Westeros (and, no, I do not believe Dany will sit the Iron Throne at the end of the series, but ofc we will only get confirmation once the final book is published).

This issue goes beyond Targaryens being awful people or the system being structurally unfair in the first place, favouring the strong and rich above the majority of population. House Targaryen are proudly descendant from the fallen empire of Valyria, which became as evil a place as you could probably conceptualize within a fictional world, before you write in their inevitable demise by hubris. House Targaryen should and do meet a similar demise in the main series.

Old Valyria was not only a slaver's empire, but they based their entire way of life on horrific blood magic. They intentionally expanded and conquered peaceful societies in order to subject those people to forced labour and human sacrifice rituals to sustain their malignant civilisation. The Great Empire of the Dawn predates Valyria and tells a similar story: of a great and vast society that reached legendary peaks only to fall as a result of corruption and depravity. We are not meant to look at these fallen empires and wax nostalgic over them.

The Targaryens are in no way as repugnantly villainous as their ancestors, but they have not escaped the rot of Old Valyria either. They take pride in being the last Valyrians left and actively look to preserve their Valyrian bloodline, keep to their Valyrian customs as much as possible and set themselves apart from society with their doctrine of exceptionalism and their refusal to assimilate. "People say Targaryens are closer to gods than men".

Incest and polygamy are one thing, but the main issue I would highlight in regard to the Targaryens is their use of dragons. It's easy to overlook because dragons are very popular mythical creatures, look cool AF and represent a very entertaining wish-fulfillment fantasy. But in-universe, dragons are a terrifying weapon of mass destruction that Targaryens use in order to subjugate an entire continent. They represent the worst type of absolutism - the one you can't fight back against because they possess a military weapon that outclasses any other and they can wield it with impunity, without any checks and balances.

The fact that the dragons die at the end of the Dance is a good thing.

After losing their dragons, the Targaryens do not necessarily get any better at ruling. At least now the balance of power with the other great houses is fairer, but the history of the dynasty continues with rebellions (of their own making) and many other questionable reigns. Their last King, Aerys II, commits such appalling abuses of power that the Westerosi lords have no choice but to depose him.

The removal of House Targaryen is not done bloodlessly and without its share of barbarity, but it is not meant to be seen as an unfair usurpation either.

I thought it very fitting that we begin HotD with our two main characters discussing Princess Nymeria finding shelter in Dorne. Alicent is trying to convince Rhaenyra to take the lesson seriously, but she is distracted and playful. She knows the story already, but does not engage with it critically. In that scene, she is merely a girl bored by a historical event she is made to recite from memory.

But we, as the audience, shouldn't discount the symbolism: Rhaenyra the dragonlord is telling Alicent the dragonless about Princess Nymeria and her people fleeing the horrors of dragonfire and extreme violence. She rips the page out. "So you remember."

Alicent will remember and, years later, when she is the one terrified for her own children's lives under Targaryen rule, she sends the page back to Rhaenyra, as a reminder of their childhood friendship. But there is nowhere for Alicent to run and no other way for her to protect herself. She has appropriated dragons for her faction (Aegon's banners hanging behind Otto as he hands Rhaenyra the page) and is now using them as her own deterrent.

Princess Nymeria found shelter in Dorne, but Dorne is not part of Targaryen rule at this moment, even though they abusively include Martell sigils on their emblems of state. Targaryens play by their own rulebook and there is no way to resist them other than controlling them via infiltration or fighting fire with fire. The Greens have failed with the former; now they will try with the latter.

#house of the dragon #asoiaf #house targaryen #rhaenyra targaryen #hotd meta #alicent hightower #nymeria of ny sar #ask #anon #house hightower

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wewebaggit · 11 months

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Any thoughts on El’s love for Max not being enough for her to start fighting on her own? (Although Max is literally dying next to her)

Okay. So it's a multi pronged answer:

I'm Assuming the Duffers ended up showing exactly what they meant: So the Elmax friendship is not as deep as Tumblr likes to believe. El ignored Max all the while from when she was back from Chicago until Mike lied to her and didn't come to the cabin for just ONE DAY. It is to Max's credit that she wasn't a massive bitch to El in return and instead took her in and then for a fun girl's day out. (though El got lost and was replaced by MBB) Beyond encouraging El to try and find her own style and things she likes and a crash course in independence and how to get back at your boyfriend 101, they do not have any deep meaningful conversations. AT ALL. They are having a jolly good time and are immediately then thrust into the supernatural shitshow that involves Max's step bro with El again doing her usual job of saving the day badabadabada. And then she moves away. The best friend soulmatism is fanon. That being said, El does consider Max to be her friend and she is able to channel that love into starting back her heart.

I'm Assuming the Duffers ended up not exactly being able to show what they meant: So the Elmax friendship is indeed très DEEP despite there being no textual evidence to support it, including no mention of letters/calls between Max and El while she was away in Lenora. Max was pulling away from everyone, I don't see why El would be the exception since El was even more closely tied to Billy getting poked to death by the meat monster. It still is not as deep as her emotional dependence on Mike. Mike had to be the one to get her out of Vecna's chokehold with his voice and his encouraging sloganeering (Fight!) She then saw Max basically about to die.

El looking at Max in Vecna's mind lair.

Either way, Elmax on their own is not where we want it to be. As of now Hopper and Mike are still her closest connections. AND all of that being said, she wasn't just chilling there. Vecna had whooped her ass. She was weak, scared and exhausted and as we've seen before she needs her rage AND energy to fight. (Battery low, she'll recharge.)

ALSO, neither Mike nor Max was why she was able to fight in the end - physically, that is. As Vecna went in for Max his vines around her started loosening as a combo of him focussing on Max, and then Jopper and Hawkins gang weakening him, simultaneously with her own hand raising thing. El is overpowered no doubt, but Vecna isn't a bitch either. It was team effort. And Vecna was also unwittingly on that team. Hubris!

Post Vecna's yeeting she saw Max die as a result of her "not being ready" (as per Papa and her own confession to Mike and seeing how she's never lost like this before). Out of love and and a sense of responsibility, using her happy memories with Max she restarts her heart.

She, obviously, piggybacked to save Max. It's not like 'oh I guess fuck it now that he's got her. I'm out.' I think she needed all the love and support, but most importantly she's not the answer. Which is why she failed. Love (hers, Mike's, her brothers', Hawkins gang's, Jopper and Murray's and even those Russian dudes') is why Max's heart is beating at all.

I'd not assign the blame nor give credit to one person. We have to realise that all of this is part of a story. And this just was her role in it. 💙

#byler #stranger things #el hopper #max mayfield #wewe's askbox

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argentumcor · 10 months

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Jurassic World Dominion and the Failure to Understand the Themes of Jurassic Park

That's right. Jurassic Park has themes. Crichton has been accused of constantly rewriting Frankenstein, which isn't quite true- State of Fear is not that; I recommend that book if you're in the mood for something that makes fun of the spirit of our age in a delightfully mean way. The movies changed a lot but they maintained his core themes pretty well- until Dominion, Fallen Kingdom's, uh, narrative incoherence aside (should have been about Owen, not Claire again).

What are the themes of Jurassic Park? In no particular order and probably not exhaustive:

Science cannot solve every problem.

Man is very bad at being God and when we try, people die horribly.

Humanity is not capable of understanding, let alone controlling, complex systems, and needs to respect these facts.

Nature is mean.

Materialism has made for a really shitty ethics system, to say the least.

You can quibble, but Crichton and the JP movies aren't subtle. It was brilliant to make Ian Malcom so much to take personally, and someone who likes to say "I told you so" too much to take action, because he is right a lot but is clearly not an author's pet and has the moral flaw of not acting before bad things happen.

Jurassic World has a lot of flaws as a follow-up, but it imperfectly maintains these themes until Dominion, where it precedes to blow them up. The owners of Jurassic World can't help to keep dabbling in forces they can't understand and the raptors are still dangerous and smart and not something to toy with. It doesn't take a lot for the park to go to hell really fast.

The first part of Fallen Kingdom is dumb. Claire is not the sort of character who would go off to care about "dinosaur rights", which was deeply stupid, and all her big and pretty well executed character development happened in the first movie. It should have been Owen's story, with them being together and him getting talked into going back to get the dinosaur he has an emotional connection with.

The part with the little girl, Maisie, is more interesting and fits the themes better. It comes to light she is a clone of old man Lockwood's daughter, who passed away young, and that Hammond split off from Lockwood (no relation to the young handsome ghost hunter hero) because he saw this as an abomination. Which it is. Maisie herself is not an abomination- she's a person- but her conception was.

Maisie was created as an object. Her 'grandfather' wanted to defy death and bring his daughter back to life. He did not want Maisie; he wanted his daughter. That he might have grown to love Maisie as herself does not negate what his goal was. It's twisted. From the moment of her conception, she was treated as an object- the same as the dinosaurs, hence her sympathy for them (Owen and Claire still should have told her letting them out was really stupid and wrong, because it was; people died). The process to create Maisie and the Indoraptor showed no respect for the natural order.

Now we come to Dominion.

Humanity has been mucking around with forces beyond its ken again, using a materialistic ethical framework that has gone badly wrong again and is going to get worse. Locusts, you imbeciles...the people who advised the use of fucking locusts must have been the products of a post-modern educational system.

Of course, Dr. Wu in his newfound and much, much belated ethical torment concludes he can fix this mistake of genetic manipulation with even more genetic manipulation. Super easy, barely an inconvenience (seriously, it was harder to flip the circuit breakers in Jurassic Park than sort out this locust mess).

Do you know how they sorted out Jurassic Park's mistakes of genetic manipulation in the book? They firebombed it. Because its creation was hubris of the highest order and its hazard was incalculable. It needed to be eradicated. And it still didn't solve the problem, because the raptors got off the island (and started spreading a mysterious disease). Science cannot solve every problem. Indeed, humanity cannot solve every problem. Some things are beyond our control, no matter how much we try.

My theory is that in 2022, the themes of Jurassic Park were...disallowed by the Hollywood zeitgeist for multiple reasons. The very big one, occurring during filming, was the pandemic. To say that something like a plague of locusts could not be solved by science would be...a message that would not be allowed. I have no idea if there were rewrites. Also it is long disallowed to find materialistic ethics systems wanting, though these days I feel entertainment dares to dabble in the shallow end of that.

The thing that really gets me about Dominion is the retcon of Maisie's origin, or rather the motives for her origin. Her mother (genetic twin sister) had her made...to be able to give herself a second try after her genetic disease killed her? To experience being pregnant before she died? To claim she was a mother (notice no man at all in the picture, so the kid would have no parents)? As a genetic experiment about super extra special gene modification?

None of this is better than the original version of Maisie's conception, but it is framed in an intensely sentimental fashion. Maisie is the product of something twisted, she was made as an object for someone and not a person, a child, and this should bother her. Her learning to live with that being the reason people had her made is more interesting than her learning oh, the woman she is the clone of was her mother and wanted her to go out and truly live and now she's just okay with this.

I think Crichton would have really enjoyed exploring a character with this problem. It's common in super soldier narratives and such, so it isn't wholly unexplored. Dominion just opted skip out on the...casual cruelty of Maisie's conception. The fact that it was mankind acting like it was God, with the best of intentions, and treating a human being as an object to be used for its own ends (legacy, betterment of mankind, vague and unfulfillable desire to be a mother because she would be dead, pick your motive) from the moment she was conceived is just glossed over with weepy girl-power sentiment.

This all neglects the bad pacing and other issues with Dominion. It's just such a post-modern movie, where before the franchise hewed to a pre-modern morality. It makes me mad because Jurassic Park said something important about science and humanity's role in the world. Dominion offers sentimental "mankind can do anything" mush that isn't true and hurts more than it helps.

As a species, we are capable of amazing things. But we are not God. Life and death are not ours to command. We cannot fix all problems we face. These are not simply moral opinions, these are laws of the universe with perhaps greater rigidity than that of gravity. Humility in the face of this benefits us far more than charging in to muck about with nature as if we can control it utterly- or to batter other about as if- if they would just do x, y, and z- everything would be perfect. It also prepares us for the bitter shocks of life, because we understand that we simply cannot control or even understand so many things.

#jurassic world #moral imagination #jurassic park #materialistic ethics fail

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