Just came across this post from IMPACT on Instagram and find it to be relevant to conversations parts of the fandom have had about DWD.

Having re-watched Alien (1979) and Aliens (1985), I think I've realized what went wrong with the further expanded film universe on a thematic level (this is not accounting for AVP films, which seem to exist within their own continuity atm).

The main issue is that these films made 2 intertwining mistakes:

Making the Xenomorph too animalistic

Removing the mystery of space

For the first part, Alien and Aliens are quite vague about the Xenomorph mind. Alien treats it almost like a serial killer at times, including a particularly interesting moment where it disregards Jones the Cat entirely, despite making a very easy target, and how it will sometimes meander up to the crew as if it knows it's inflicting terror upon them. This Xenomorph even seems to only flee when Parker goes to kill it with a knife and hides within the evac shuttle when it realizes that Ripley was going there as well.

Aliens forgoes this in favor of showing how terrifying their numbers are even in the face of superior (if greatly mislead) fire power, but then pulls the rug under our protagonists by (seemingly) cutting the power and testing the endurance of the auto-turrets. While the drones are not individually as intelligent as the original xenomorph from the first film, this is instead given to the Queen, who understands not only the danger Ripley poses to her Hive but hostage negotiations of the most blunt variety. And, of course, incredible spite and vengeance when Ripley burns her eggs.

Basically, the two films do a good job of making you wonder... how sapient and sentient are the Xenomorphs? Do we take Ash's word and think of them as simply Hostile Weapons or do we see them for the adaptable and complex - if instinct guided - parasites just trying to protect their hive? This is further food for thought when we learn that one of the cut endings would have had the Xenomorph kill Ripley, tentatively use the shuttles control panel, and speak into the intercom with Dallas voice (ala Predator).

Imo, that goes too far into making them human, but we'll circle back to that later. The point is that the Xenomorph is never clearly one thing or another, but rather, something that constantly foils our attempts to understand them completely.

Aliens 3, Alien: Resurrection, Prometheus, and Alien: Covenant fail in that regard, because they take the firm stance that the Xenomorph is... an animal. A very, very, dangerous and hostile animal but an animal nonetheless. It's not some vague horror that we struggle to comprehend and reason with, because all the facts (as they are for now) are laid out: the Xenomorphs are weaponized animals that just kill, reproduce, and kill etc etc.

Nothing is entirely new about the Xenomorphs in these movies (beyond the forms and one part of Covenant, but we'll circle back to that as well), but rather trying to recapture the formula of Alien and Aliens. And even when the film isn't necessarily about the Xenomorphs like Prometheus, it still goes out of its way to copy the play by play of Alien to an almost hilarious degree (except, somehow, having a cast entirely of stupid scientists).

The Xenomorph is used as a toll for the films to talk more about the human threats who would use them, which is fine, except the same message of "Weyland-Yutani wants Xenomorphs, They Failed" over and over again (except I guess for Alien: Resurrection, but that had Walmart as a plot point so...) gets tedious. It's not longer about the folley of mankind, but rather this one company led by a man (or Android?) who keeps fucking up.

Ditto goes for the second part: removing the mystery from space. Alien and Aliens treat the Space Jockey and other (non-Xenomorph) alien life at an arms distance. They are large, grand, ominous, and vaguely defined. We don't know much about WY in either movie, nor how much is them knowing versus independent people within the company (Burke mentions cutting out his own bosses for profit for example, and Bishop the company Android is heroic and horrified at the situation they are all in, a big difference to Ash). The Xenomorphs having a Queen was a huge reveal, because we literally had no idea until then if those were actual eggs or simply pods artificially created.

Aliens 3 tries to add some mystery with the prison colony, but it's also hamfisted and given a lot of exposition to explain the situation they are in, but I will give it kudos for making Weyland (???) look like Bishop as a twist. Aliens: Resurrection... yeah, no.

Prometheus and Alien Covenant gave us a plethora of seeming mysteries, but also gives us really super simple answers. Basically, Space Jockeys are just super humans seeding life across the planets and they wanted to bomb Earth into oblivion because we killed Jesus Christ (who was a Space Jockey). And one of our androids then - possibly - goes to their home planet and bombs them to oblivion thus wiping out the human race. And they made Xenomorphs yadda yadda.

Prometheus in particular seems to despise the idea of space being a mystery, with the conversation David has with a scientist being plainly spelled out as the theme of the film: "Sometimes, humans/space jockeys just build shit, and it goes wrong I guess. No gods or mysteries here, just hubris."

Which, if handled well, is still a fascinating idea (I think it's a pretty interesting 'take-that' against the stupidity of Ancient Alien Conspiracy Theorists)... but it's not handled well. At all. And certainly doesn't work well when trying to write Xeno-Horror.

So, what COULD work?

Well, I think we need to look at how Alien and Aliens made the Xenomorphs, Space Jockey's, and Space itself all work.

For the xenomorphs, I think back to one scene I actually thought was interesting in Alien: Covenant; as a chestburster is born from a hapless scientist, it lays its eyes (???) on David and replicates his movements, mimicking the first living thing it witnesses. Nothing is ever done with this (of course), but think about the potential that could be used! Plenty of animals like crows, ravens, dolphins, octopi, killer whales etc etc can use mimicry in voices and actions, and that includes things like tool-use! And of course, the fact that they take on new forms from hosts helps with that.

For the Space Jockey's: scrap them. They had their time, the mystery is basically solved. Show us new and different alien civilizations long past. Were they also victims of the Xenomorphs? From some other threat entirely? Surely, there are extraterrestrial predators out there that don't follow the Xenomorph formula. Why not have them share the splotlight, with just as little explanation?

For space itself: stop with trying to recapture Alien and Aliens. Alien: Isolation is the only successor specifically because of the format of the medium. Alien and Aliens rely heavily on the shock factor of sudden reveals. Remove that, and you are given "bug hunt" games and movies ala discount Starship Trooper. Focus more on making human space feel almost alien and beyond our understanding as well, but just enough that we can recognize the purpose that we would have them for our society.

How I would write an Alien Story:

(This would all be backstory and setup for the actual story)

I would set it within a colony satellite with an explicit task: a skyscraper ecological time-capsule for deep space experimentation of wildlife.

It would have levels, with humans situated at the second uppermost and an AI as the manager at the top level of the satellite, with all the other animals in different levels fit for their habitats (including some non-earth, non-xenomorph aliens). It's a religious sponsored and run organization, offshoots of [Insert Church Here] that is trying to get good press with cutting edge AI and biological research.

The prize is an alien lifeform that looks like a cross between a crocodile and a panther. Usually docile when fed, it has been growing more and more agitated, harming several workers on the job. Most assume it may be some late-stage degenerative disease within it's brain.

Not all things are as it seems, as at the bottom of the station, a location no one but a select few faithful engineers are sent to maintain, a pod is damaged. A young attendant watches in shock and horror as a bloody and maimed chest burster crawls out of the pod, possibly having injured itself to burn through the lock. The creature is mewling in pain, but the young attendant makes a choice: leaving food, water, and blanket for the creature. Watching as the creature watches them, before going to feast. All under the gaze of a camera.

The xenomorph grows and grows, eating more, getting bolder and allowing its "caretaker" to feel more comfortable. Soon it begins to recognize certain sounds as they pray when he feasts, and association occurs. One day, its hiss sounds suspiciously like "Lord".

This is when the young attendant reaches out to higher, but trusted, priests to share this miraculous revelation. The first one is shocked, terrified, but intrigued as the creature mimics words like "Lord" and "Mighty". Barely audible, some would say hallucinatory, but they believe they can here this humanoid creature speak their language.

The second is equally shocked, terrified, but listens and becomes a believer.

The third one does not believe. Rightfully horrified and full of questions. Their arguments in front of the beast escalate into violence and when the young attendant shoves the priest to the ground, it is the Xenomorph that pounces. Blood is shed. the creature rises in front of it's faithful, and the Xenomorph uses the same sounds it heard over the fight. Lord. Mighty. Here-tik.

They can't be delusional or driven by guilt! This is a sign... right? This creature is speaking to them!

The faith grows. Never large. Can't risk word getting out or people noticing too many missing priests. The satellite is just barely large enough that people can excuse going missing for a few days between objectives.

But key individuals are brought in. The creature is worshiped. Animal offerings are delivered. It's changing, slowly. Growing larger (not a Xenomorph Queen, it's too maimed, but adapting to a steady diet).

Things might have escalated, had one of the priests killed not had an estranged sibling/spouse/loved one who had the pull to make a formal investigatory complaint.

The investigator arrives with his repertoire, this supposed garden of eden in deep space, none the wiser to what he would uncover. (Again, this would be the backstory, not revealed except through character investigations and evidence found during that. Defeats the purpose if it's spelled out like this).

It would play with the idea of how sapient/sentient the Xenomorphs are (do they care? do they understand? if not, why act like this? if yes, what does this mean for their continued slaughter), how much one puts into faith versus delusions, and leaves lingering questions: who put the xenomorph on the ship, why is the AI so complicit with the deaths and disappearances, and why is the one non-xenomorph alien acting so dangerously agitated despite being far away from the xenomorph's quarters?

I’m in undergrad but I keep hearing and seeing people talking about using chatgpt for their schoolwork and it makes me want to rip my hair out lol. Like even the “radical” anti-chatgpt ones are like “Oh yea it’s only good for outlines I’d never use it for my actual essay.” You’re using it for OUTLINES????? That’s the easy part!! I can’t wait to get to grad school and hopefully be surrounded by people who actually want to be there 😭😭😭

Not to sound COMPLETELY like a grumpy old codger (although lbr, I am), but I think this whole AI craze is the obvious result of an education system that prizes "teaching for the test" as the most important thing, wherein there are Obvious Correct Answers that if you select them, pass the standardized test and etc etc mean you are now Educated. So if there's a machine that can theoretically pick the correct answers for you by recombining existing data without the hard part of going through and individually assessing and compiling it yourself, Win!

... but of course, that's not the way it works at all, because AI is shown to create misleading, nonsensical, or flat-out dangerously incorrect information in every field it's applied to, and the errors are spotted as soon as an actual human subject expert takes the time to read it closely. Not to go completely KIDS THESE DAYS ARE JUST LAZY AND DONT WANT TO WORK, since finding a clever way to cheat on your schoolwork is one of those human instincts likewise old as time and has evolved according to tools, technology, and educational philosophy just like everything else, but I think there's an especial fear of Being Wrong that drives the recourse to AI (and this is likewise a result of an educational system that only prioritizes passing standardized tests as the sole measure of competence). It's hard to sort through competing sources and form a judgment and write it up in a comprehensive way, and if you do it wrong, you might get a Bad Grade! (The irony being, of course, that AI will *not* get you a good grade and will be marked even lower if your teachers catch it, which they will, whether by recognizing that it's nonsense or running it through a software platform like Turnitin, which is adding AI detection tools to its usual plagiarism checkers.)

We obviously see this mindset on social media, where Being Wrong can get you dogpiled and/or excluded from your peer groups, so it's even more important in the minds of anxious undergrads that they aren't Wrong. But yeah, AI produces nonsense, it is an open waste of your tuition dollars that are supposed to help you develop these independent college-level analytical and critical thinking skills that are very different from just checking exam boxes, and relying on it is not going to help anyone build those skills in the long term (and is frankly a big reason that we're in this mess with an entire generation being raised with zero critical thinking skills at the exact moment it's more crucial than ever that they have them). I am mildly hopeful that the AI craze will go bust just like crypto as soon as the main platforms either run out of startup funding or get sued into oblivion for plagiarism, but frankly, not soon enough, there will be some replacement for it, and that doesn't mean we will stop having to deal with fake news and fake information generated by a machine and/or people who can't be arsed to actually learn the skills and abilities they are paying good money to acquire. Which doesn't make sense to me, but hey.

So: Yes. This. I feel you and you have my deepest sympathies. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to sit on the porch in my quilt-draped rocking chair and shout at kids to get off my lawn.

Obsessions

For ghosts, Obsessions are what they exist for, it's their last thought before they die. Or in other words, their obsessions are more like sentences that they believe in heavily rather than a single concept. Ghosts can control which aspect of their obsession they fulfill and the way that they fulfill it.

For example, Danny's last thought before he died was to 'help people discover the unknown'.

While it's more satisfying for a ghost to fulfill their Obsession to the fullest, it makes them more vulnerable to being manipulated if someone else figured their sentence out. That's why it's taboo to ask a ghost what their Obsession is.

The Ancients are known for very little, even what they're known for is completely different/misleading than what their Obsession actually is. Same goes for the ghosts Danny usually encounters. Even the Box Ghost is careful about it (it's not box, it's being respected for a job that protects precious things. That's why he ends up being into boxes and wrapping paper. And when his daughter gets born, his Obsession wraps into being respected as the best ghost dad)

For Danny, his circumstances has forced him to latch onto 'help people' as his main aspect (and on occasion, simply 'help'), and fulfilling it by protecting Amity Park, his friends and family from any danger. He can fulfill his Obsession in other ways without any violence, and he casually fulfills the second half 'discover the unknown' with his interest in space and his exploration of the GZ.

His desire to be accepted at NASA is what fulfills his Obsession completely

Maybe I’m reading into it too much, but I am LOVING that the username of the blogger in tmp1 is “Red Canary,” which to me reads as a combination of “red herring”, something purposefully misleading, and of course a canary, an early warning of dangers to come. The name completely contradicts itself and I love it

One thing that drives me nuts about the narrative surrounding the Radium Girls is that the company still has such a strong hold on the way the story is often told.

Granted, it may be an attempt to affirm to a modern audience that these girls--deliberately using 'girls', not 'women' because most of them were in their teens or early twenties at most--had no idea how harmful radium could be, but the narrative always seems to start out that "no one knew it was dangerous".

As soon as anyone does a deep dive, though, you realize someone did: company higher ups. In fact, men working in the same company--doing a different job, that I would say involved less contact with radium--were given full PPE for their jobs. One company scientist, upon hearing the women were practicing "lip-dipping"--which involved the girls using their lips to bring the fine-bristled, radium-soaked paintbrushes to a point--was reportedly horrified and tried to stop the practice, before any of the girls ever reported any symptoms. But the policy wasn't enforced because stopping the girls from lip-dipping cut into profits. So they turned a blind eye, telling the girls radium was completely safe out of one side of their mouth while they told the men to fully suit up out of the other.

There's better coverage of the company's reprehensible behavior during the trials--claiming the girls' symptoms were a sign of syphilis, funding misleading/fabricated studies on the safety of radium, etc. I really just wish it was more clearly stated that the company knew from the start. That knowledge hadn't trickled down to the general population yet, and they fully took advantage of that.

Outgoing Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot took to CNN in order to once again request that Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) stop sending immigrants to the Windy City.

Lightfoot sent Abbott a letter over the weekend to condemn his policy of relocating migrants to so-called sanctuary cities, which she called a “dangerous and inhumane action.”

Read a portion of the letter here:

Chicago is a Welcoming City and we collaborate with County, State, and community partners to rise to this challenge, but your lack of consideration or coordination in an attempt to cause chaos and score political points has resulted in a critical tipping point in our ability to receive individuals and families in a safe, orderly, and dignified way. We simply have no more shelters, spaces, or resources to accommodate an increase of individuals at this level, with little coordination or care, that does not pose a risk to them or others.

I know by your actions that you either do not see or do not care about the trauma these migrants have already faced and continue to suffer under the humanitarian crisis you have created. But I beseech you anyway: treat these individuals with the respect and dignity that they deserve. To tell them to go to Chicago or to inhumanely bus them here is an inviable and misleading choice.

While critics have spoken out against Abbott’s “stunt” of bussing immigrants to Democrat-run cities, his administration has defended its actions as a means of generating political pressure for more action on border security. When Lightfoot discussed this on CNN This Morning, she said she hadn’t heard back from Abbott’s administration, “and frankly, I didn’t expect to hear anything back.”

“I felt like it was important to once again try to engage the governor, but also let him know what his policies and practices are doing in cities like Chicago,” Lightfoot said. “We are completely tapped out. We have no more space. No more resources. And frankly, we’re already in a surge.”

When Kaitlan Collins pressed Lightfoot on Abbott’s reasoning, the mayor stood by her point that the governor refuses to engage with her while sending migrants with “serious medical conditions” into her city.

“So if we don’t put the humanity of these migrants front and center — I understand, and I’m solely compassionate to the fact that the borders are themselves really overrun, but you don’t solve that problem by simply sticking people on buses to a city that they didn’t ask to, for an uncertain future, and now we are literally full.”

I really enjoy all these headcanons of hisagi being the gotei 13’s most eligible himbo lol

I don't think "himbo" is quite the correct description. A himbo is kind, beefy, and stupid, and I wouldn't really describe Hisagi as any of those things, at least not as primary defining characteristics. Hisagi is very cool-looking, in a dangerous, edgy, and completely misleading sort of way. He rides a motorcycle in a land where everyone walks everywhere, and carries around not one scythe, but two double-scythes, but I feel like he would also ask you to text him when you get home from your date so he knows you made it safely. The '69' is polarizing. Either it's a red flag or it piques your curiosity. He seems sensitive and artsy, except that he's not actually very good at playing his guitar, all his Bulletin columns are unpopular, and Nanao says his cooking "is boring." (He seems to like it, so good for him! but also his favorite food is hot dogs, so hmmm!). I think he's actually very smart--he's well-read, loves to learn, and is great at making connections between things, but my headcanon is that he's absolutely riddled with learning disabilities (primarily ADHD, but then all the co-morbidities like dyslexia and dyscalculia). I mean:

He exudes an air of cool indifference, but in actuality, I think he's one of the hardest working people in the Seireitei, except that he's always split between nineteen different things, so he never comes off like a star worker. He's a little bit slow on the uptake--in WDKALY, he and Hanatarou were the only ones who didn't guess what Rukia and Renji's "big announcement" was, when they invited everyone to a fancy restaurant to tell everyone they were engaged. His best friends are all big nerds, yet they drag him constantly.

Anyway, I say all this with unalloyed affection. Anyone can make a character who is cool. Hisagi is the coolest guy in your friend group, which is a much harder target to hit. In my mind, he is also kinda slutty. He tells really interesting stories, but he'll also listen to absolutely anyone talk about anything they're interested in. He is very Open to Experiences. Even he's kind of a disaster, he can absolutely Get It, and to that I say, once again, good for him.

Double Trouble AU: Still a C student

Life after Danny’s portal accident was anything but normal, that being said there were no problems between Fenton and Phantom. Rather the trouble came with everyone else.

Sam and Tucker were pretty freaked for a while after. It got a bit better in time but Phantom can still see they feel more comfortable around Fenton than with him. As for Jazz and their parents? Well of course Danny decided that they couldn’t tell their parents about this development, Maddie and Jack being as ghost crazed as they are, and who knows how Jazz would react to the news that he technically died.

It was easy to keep Phantom hidden from their family with his invisibility but that doesn’t mean it’s all smooth sailing. Jazz is always more preoccupied with scolding their parents to really notice anything amiss with her little brothers brother, and so far their parents have been dismissing their tech reacting to their son as software bugs.

Despite all that, Fenton can’t help but pity his ghost every time they are unfortunate enough to witness a demonstration of their parents newest inventions. He and Phantom are separate, their experiences are their own unless they choose to share it with each other, but they are still one person, still Danny. It’s clear in the way that Fenton can feel prickles of terror not his own each time their parents talk about catching a ghost. Clear in the contented warmth that gathers in his chest when it’s just he and Phantom in their room after a long day. Even in the pangs of frustration and confusion that ripple in his head when they try to work through their homework.

Phantom is ok. It’s fine that their parents would possibly end him on sight, or worse. It’s fine. Really. He’s completely fine. He knows that Fenton wouldn’t let anything happen to him, that he’s safe from their parents so long as they stay close. Fenton always does his best to reassure him when their parents get a bit too close for comfort, always makes sure he knows he’s safe, he really appreciates that. And it’s not like it’s all bad staying in the Fenton household as a ghost!

Now that there’s two Danny’s their chores get done in half the time, they even split it evenly between the two of them. Phantom does the chores that his powers make significantly easier and Fenton does the chores that were already pretty simple and easy to do. The only exception to this is when it comes to lab-related chores, which Fenton absolutely refuses to let Phantom do.

“It’s not safe with all their junk laying around.” Fenton had reasoned when his ghost insisted he could help.

It made the ghost huff in offence and cross his arms like a petulant child as he float there. “Yeah that’s exactly why I should be the one to do it!” Phantom argued, “I’m already dead, it makes way more sense that I be the one to deal with the dangerous stuff!”

But the human boy wouldn’t relent, insisting that he handle anything involving the lab filled to the brim with ghost hunting equipment. It’s the closest the Danny’s have ever been to a fight, but fortunately it never reached that stage. Neither of them wanted to figure out how to explain something like that to Sam and Tucker when they inevitably noticed something was up with their friend. Both versions of him.

So with two Danny’s on the case chores became way easier, and so did most things. Education was not one of those things. You know that saying, two heads are better than one? Well Danny does and it turns out it’s a complete lie! Ok, maybe not a complete lie. But still very misleading!

Considering there was two of them, Fenton and Phantom thought for sure their grades would get way higher, after all there’s two of them now, double the focus! Literally two heads! Yeah, no. As it happens that is not how things went. If anything Fenton would argue that their focus is even worse now and they’re lucky that they are still getting Cs.

Sam seemed to find their dismay at the revelation quite amusing. In hindsight it does make more sense that splitting one person into two would half their attention span rather than double it, but the Danny’s agree to keep that between them. No way were they gonna give the goth girl the satisfaction of being right.

Even though it didn’t seem to make much difference either way Fenton and Phantom still worked together on every test and stack of homework that got sent their way. “It’s just more fun that way,” they had answered in unison when Tucker had asked.

“Even if it’s not improving my grades, it doesn’t suck as much when I’ve got a partner,” Fenton explained when they only received a confused expression in return.

Phantom nods along with his human half in full agreement. “Sometimes it’s even kinda fun!” He adds with glee.

Both their friends share a confused look but Danny doesn’t mind, his friends don’t get it but they don’t expect them to. He thinks maybe this is something you can only understand through experience.

Danny is still a C student, but who cares about a letter anyway? He has something far better.

So chores are way easier and school work still sucks. Being separated like they are might not be helping their grades, but it has provided an easy way to get back at a certain jock.

It wasn’t exactly a secret that Danny had been in an accident involving some of his parents tech, so naturally all of Casper High knew. Amity Park isn’t exactly a big place, news travels fast, especially when it involves the Fentons and a hospital trip. Most of the A-listers took some kind of pity on Fenton because of this, everyone in fact. Everyone except Dash.

The news of the Fenton accident didn’t deter the bully at all.

Everyday Dash would corner Fenton in one hallway or another and take out some frustrations on the boy, and usually this would be all, Danny helpless to stop the daily harassment and abuse without incurring further problems. But now he has Phantom with him.

So now every time Dash try’s to corner Fenton, malice and violence on his mind, his laces might mysteriously get tied together. He might trip and land on his face. He might be chased down the hall by the floating football he had been carrying only a moment before. He might suddenly need a belt.

The different ways Phantom drove away the bully always managed to get a chuckle from Fenton, and the decrease in bruising was very appreciated.

It also inspired Fenton and Phantom to try pranking, much to the displeasure of their victims. As it turned out having two people working on it, one being a ghost, made the whole pranking thing a bit too easy.

How do you avoid an invisible pie? Sure it’s suspicious that Danny suddenly wants you to show him some of your psychology books, but the door is locked so how could there be a bucket of water ready to be tipped over your head? Surely you’re just imagining that plant moving, you must’ve forgot to pick it up before, Danny isn’t close enough to have moved it and there’s nobody else around.

Needless to say nobody was pleased with Danny’s new found love for practical jokes. But boy did the two sets of giggles that their jokes always caused give them reason to tolerate it.

It seemed like there were no downsides to this situation! Fenton got to keep living his life, maybe even better than they did before, and Phantom got to keep being Danny, as well as taking some long overdue revenge when necessary.

Everything seemed so much better now. Danny was happy, both of them were happy.

They’re still a C student, but they’re happy and that’s what matters.

Hanako VS The World

Nuance and critical thinking are two things that are very important when it comes to analyzing a character, especially when they’re written to be and portrayed as morally ambiguous. Along with that, main relationships aren’t always good or healthy. Bias is always taken towards a main character or fan-favorite, and that can lead to a very big lack of the aforementioned nuance and critical thinking. What does that matter? Well I’ll tell you what!

When it comes to fan bias no other character gets mischaracterized, excused, or completely misunderstood more than Hanako when it comes to the Tbhk fandom as a whole. And I think that it’s important to -I don’t know- understand the title character of the manga at least a little, because understanding him can really help with understanding everything else. So here’s that.

Selfishness

To start off, Hanako is very similar to the rest of the cast, in the sense that he is extremely selfish. Selfishness as a whole isn’t always malicious, in the cases of Kou and Yashiro that should be pretty obvious. With Aoi & Akane their selfishness manifests into parasitic and mutually destructive behaviors. And someone like Teru it’s selfishness caused by forced maturity and obligation, causing him to isolate and only trust himself and his ideals. Hanako comparatively is selfish for unidentified reasons, but it’s to be assumed it stems from Amane. Amane being depicted as lonely, self-interested, and generally antisocial, but all of this behavior isn’t dangerous is it? In the hands of someone like Amane, who is just a child, he can’t do anything outrageous (other than murder). Hanako on the other hand is capable of a lot, and with such capabilities, he does almost everything in his own self-interest and to the detriment of those around him.

Severance

Back to comparing characters, the fact that Teru and Akane’s interaction is shown right next to Nene and Hanako’s I think is a good point for comparing self interest. Teru throughout the boundary doesn’t tell Akane that Aoi isn’t returning, Aoi knows this (assumedly), Akane doesn’t, and Teru doesn’t tell him until they go past the point of no return. This isn’t entirely a selfish act on Teru’s part, Akane most likely would’ve died had he been told and stayed back, and Aoi didn’t say anything either. But it is still that, selfish. But see Hanako’s side in the same chapter, he doesn’t tell Nene anything either, he specifically doesn’t assure her that he isn’t disappearing permanently, he instead intentionally misleads her into thinking the opposite. And it’s not the first time he’s done something like this before either.

Everything for you for me

In the Picture Perfect arc, he forces Nene into a fake reality (along with Kou but he’s not important right now) and tries to make her stay. He pretends to not know what’s happening, and only breaks once he knows the illusion is fully broken, and then he just kidnaps her. If this really were an act of love or respect for Nene, He wouldn’t have been so forceful, he does everything in his power to make sure she doesn’t leave. And when he’s finally convinced, he switches to a different idea. When Nene said she wanted to live forever, Hanako instead of realizing Nene didn’t want unwanted help, he then went on to sacrifice her best friend so she could live. As he says himself, he values Nene over Aoi, which -and I can’t believe people think it is- is the most non romantic and messed up thing he could’ve done. He wants what he wants for Nene, not what she wants for herself, and that should show people that he does most everything in his own self interest.

Now, is he doing it maliciously or is he just doing what he thinks is best. Both, but that’s not exactly an excuse. He refuses to change, doing the same thing over and over again, always taking his beliefs seriously and disregarding what anyone else has to say because he thinks he knows best.

Ending notes

This isn’t to say Hanako is a bad character, he’s incredibly well written and it does take a little stepping back to first realize his actions are flawed. But taking that step is incredibly important when it comes to understanding Tbhk as a whole. Every character is flawed, every character does good and bad things, and understanding and not justifying the bad just because you like them is baseline for liking a character completely. Tbhk is also a comedy! And I actually do enjoy a good chunk of Hanako outside the drama, he is the title character, so you kindof have to find some part of him to like so you don’t drop it completely. And just remember I’m not a genius and this all just me saying whatever shit I think, I’m not a foolproof source of toilet knowledge, I’m just a guy who reads sometimes.

Idk how to end this uuhhhh ninja out *kickflip

Atrocities US committed against ASIANS

Between 1956-65, the Chinese Confession Program sought confessions of illegal entry from US citizens and residents of Chinese origin, with the (misleading) offer of legalization of status in exchange. The program resulted in 13,895 confessions, with about 10,000 in the San Francisco region (where the bulk of the illegally entering Chinese population was concentrated. This was far less than the number of people suspected of having entered illegally, and the less than complete usage of the program was attributed to lack of trust in the United States immigration enforcement agencies among the Chinese population, the lack of clear benefits from confessing, and the risk of deportation faced by the confessor as well as his or her (blood and paper) family. Since confessions by neighbors could implicate a person and cause him or her to be deported, the program created fear and distrust in many Chinese-American communities. Anybody who had illegally entered and came in contact with the FBI before he or she had confessed was subject to immediate deportation. The confessions had a significant impact on the Chinese-American community: as a result of the confessions, 22,083 people were exposed and 11,294 paper son slots were closed. For comparison, the 1950 Census listed 117,629 Chinese in America (excluding Hawaii).

From 1942-46, FDR imprisoned ~120,000 Japanese Americans in concentration camps after the attack on pearl harbor. The conditions of the camps were notoriously horrible, and most were forced to make “loyalty oaths”, or risk deportation and separation from their families. It was later admitted that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”. Most lost their homes and jobs, as whites took over vacated homes.

The repression faced by Chinese Americans in the 19th and 20th century are found in the articles, History of Chinese Americans, and Anti-Chinese Sentiment in the US.

The Immigration Act of 1917 imposed literacy tests on immigrants, and created new categories of inadmissible persons and barred immigration from the Asia-Pacific Zone.

The Scott Act of 1888 was a law that prohibited Chinese laborers abroad or who planned future travels from returning. It left an estimated 20,000-30,000 Chinese outside the United States at the time stranded.

In 1882, the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, illegalizing Chinese immigration, in a long chain of anti-chinese legislation. It was repealed in 1943.

The San Francisco Riot of 1877 was a two-day pogrom waged against Chinese immigrants in San Francisco, California by the city’s majority white population from the evening of July 23 through the night of July 24, 1877. The ethnic violence which swept Chinatown resulted in four deaths and the destruction of more than $100,000 worth of property belonging to the city’s Chinese immigrant population.

The Page Act of 1875 prohibited entry of immigrants considered undesirable, classifying that as any individual from Asia who was coming to America to be a forced laborer, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own country. It was introduced to “end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women”. The Page Act was supposed to strengthen the ban against “coolie” laborers, by imposing a fine of up to $2,000 and maximum jail sentence of one year upon anyone who tried to bring a person from China, Japan,or any Asian country to the United States “without their free and voluntary consent, for the purpose of holding them to a term of service”. However, these provisions, as well as those regarding convicts “had little effect at the time”. On the other hand, the ban on female Asian immigrants was heavily enforced and proved to be a barrier for all Asian women trying to immigrate, especially Chinese.

The Chinese Massacre of 1871 was a racially motivated riot which occurred on October 24, 1871 in Los Angeles, California, when a mob of around 500 white men entered Chinatown to attack, rob, and murder Chinese residents of the city. An estimated 17 to 20 Chinese immigrants were systematically tortured and then hanged by the mob, making the event the largest mass lynching in American history.

The Pigtail Ordinance was a racist law passed in 1873 intended to force prisoners in San Francisco, California to have their hair cut within an inch of the scalp. It affected Han Chinese prisoners in particular, as it meant they would have their queue, a waist-long, braided pigtail, cut off.

The Anti-Coolie Act of 1862 was passed by the California legislature in an attempt to appease rising anger among white laborers about salary competition created by the influx of Chinese immigrants at the height of the California gold rush.The act sought to protect white laborers by imposing a monthly tax on Chinese immigrants seeking to do business in the state of California.

A WARRIOR’S VOYAGE

"With the sins of the sun and the sadness in the sky, you shall wonder why the universe never loved you back."

— In a world overrun by the corrupt and mad, driven by lust, greed, egoism, desire and obsessionalism, having a sweet and innocent nature always ends with death. Being honorable and having a strong moral compass is viewed as something ethereal one can only dream of.

That being said, her chances were slim. But she wasn't going to let that stop her.

It was winning or dying.

And Fiyona Mormont was not ready to die.

SCROLL DOWN FOR MORE…

HOUSE MORMONT of Bear Island is a vassal House which holds fealty to House Stark of Winterfell, to the Warden of the North. They had always been a small House – it was no secret. But somehow, that alone just made them even prouder.

It didn't matter how many overlooked the island's inhabitants and failed to see the whole picture. For even if most didn't fully realize it, House Mormont was fearsome enemies but also excellent allies. Even if they indeed are a very small house.

Their ancestral home of Bear Island is an island far to the northwest of Winterfell, its location and densely forested areas with a large bear population the main reasons to why it's the home to mostly woodsmen, crofters and fisherfolk. Despite that, Bear Island was one of the places within the Seven Kingdoms known for their skilled warriors. Known for how impeccable they were at sword fighting.

Not only that, but Bear Island was also one of the few subcultures within Westeros with an tradition of female fighters. You see, over the age of time, there had always been dangers of imminent attack from ironborn raiding ships while the men were out at sea which eventually led to the women of Bear Island being expected to defend their homes from attacks. Sometimes it even was attacks from wildings who avoided the wall completely by using boats to cross the bay from the Frozen Shore.

Thus people who hail from Bear Island are mostly strong, hardy, loyal and deep down compassionate and kindhearted. When they know what needs to be done, they don't hesitate to take action.

Fiyona Mormont was no exception. The young she-bear was taught to be a warrior from an early age, and she had always known the true horrors of the world, known about the monsters hiding in the shadows since the early stages of her youth.

Fiyona was no stranger to death either, for she had watched the life leave disappear from the animals which she hunted, even watched the life slip away from her father's eyes. It was horrible, but she knew it was a part of the harsh world she lived in.

Nothing could ever change it. It was the way it was, the way it always had been and always would remain.

What Fiyona was a stranger to, however, was love. Not the kind of love you receive from your mother, a sibling or a dear friend. No, Fiyona was a stranger to the kind of ethereal love which exists between two souls. Between two hearts which ignites in such a heated flame whenever they're near one another.

Not even in her life as Mia Nordin had she ever experienced it... not that she remembered that life...yet.

As the Seven Kingdoms seemed to hold its breath while preparing itself for yet another war, completely amid the world where greed and power reign supreme, Fiyona's life collides with a another's...under arranged circumstances.

Thus began the story of Fiyona Mormont and Robb Stark. Two young humans who would change the course of the game itself.

The future Warden of the North and the former heiress of Bear Island.

The Young Wolf and the She-Wolf.

The King and Queen in the North.

As brave as the dusk & as fierce as the storm.

Fiyona Mormont's tale is filled with broken pieces, terrible choices, betrayals and ugly truths. In spite of those parts indeed being heavy and literally true, they are nevertheless misleading. For the tale is also filled with happiness, heroism, love, humanity, kindness and peace in her soul.

It's an entangled tale in which a black bear is forced to run with the wolves only discover she was one of them all along.

A tale of the wild wolves and the black bear.

Interested to read more? Then check out the story A Warrior’s Voyage on my wattpad profile melxhunter!!

Ok I've promised this before... Chernobyl HBO retrospective

Well I mentioned before that I wanted to eventually delve into this, so here is my retrospective on the HBO Chernobyl show. Why it was my favorite work of art ever, why it is still irredeemable trash that the world would be better without due to inaccuracies and misleading claims, why most of the criticism of it completely misses why this was (or just says things that are downright unfair to it), and how it ruined my mental health.

            If you ever see this show discussed on the internet, it’s usually a bunch of people praising it and calling it the best show ever, a person or two saying it’s just typical manipulative Hollywood tripe lying about history and science for propaganda/making things more dramatic, and the original people dogpiling said dissenter with downvotes. And… neither of these sides are really right, or at least the latter is very much misattributing the motives behind the problems with the show. 

            The thing is that, it’s clear from listening to the supplementary podcasts and discussions that Mazin was not trying to lie for clout, and was genuinely deeply thoughtful (unlike a lot of people making “based on a true story” works) about representing the truth, and about carefully considering before adding anything inaccurate into the story, and if he did he would always justify it with it being necessary to convey a greater truth within the limits of 5 hours of television, rather than for coolness or tropes or drama or making nuclear power look bad (the latter of which he is explicitly against). He made a clear attempt to read multiple sources rather than basing everything on one source and getting into trouble for that (Hamilton looking at you). The common criticism trope that gets leveled is that the show is hypocritical for being about the danger of lies and misinformation but peddling lies and misinformation itself, but he was fully aware for the potential for hypocrisy in the show’s premise and made the podcasts where he would give an honest breakdown of all of his decisions specifically to avoid such hypocrisy. And thus people who have listened to said podcasts are often the show’s loudest defenders, because of that uncommon thoughtfulness it shows making it seem very unfair to lump it in with Hollywood’s typical crass and mercenary manipulation of truth. He even explicitly went with the least dramatic story whenever there was a contradiction between sources.

            Except the problem is that all of that care… wasn’t enough. Like wasn’t even nearly enough. Not only the things he admits to changing but half of the things he cites as being “ok this one is shocking but real” actually still turned out not to be true. In some ways it’s not a surprise why. He mentions reading 20 sources that said the three people who went into the reactor to drain the water died before reading one correct report that they survived, and it’s not hard to believe that these other cases were ones where he never found that one correct one. My read on it is that the problem is that, as sincere as he was, he is not a historian with the ability to not just read a huge number of sources but locate the most important and reliable ones and prioritize them over the less so. 

            But in the end, it doesn’t really matter, does it? From a death of the author perspective – if you are sincere and careful but the end result is completely indistinguishable for manipulative tripe and/or propaganda, who cares what your intentions are, it’s still trash! All that knowing the motivations behind it does is make you mad, because rather than being something you can dismiss, it’s something where the creator made an effort to know the truth they were based on the story on, played their hand brilliantly at, within the constraints of the format and fact, making a powerful and haunting story, a masterpiece, and none of it matters in the end anyway. Which brings me into why it was executed so brilliantly…

            Besides being very well done, Chernobyl captivated me because it perfectly appealed to things I had always wanted to see but never really got to. I had always dreamed of a reinvention of the disaster movie genre that could touch at the heart of the tragedy and horror and awe of disaster for the ones living in it and dying from it; not merely a cheap excuse to have fun thrills at the death of nameless victims or (as seems to be the fashion everyone is begging for in disaster/apocalyptic types of things now) narratively bypass that people died, that something happened that cannot be reversed, altogether to focus on the hopeful fantasy of being a survivor. And this seemed exactly what I was looking for. And then there was the amazing way it incorporated complex scientific explanations in its finale, something that excited me so much as a Chemistry major in college at the time who really wanted to devote myself to science. At last, a work that didn’t treat its audience as dumb, that incorporated an intricate and fascinating explanation (with an actual nuclear physicist hired as a consultant) in a way that added to the story rather than ever dragging it! Nothing has ever really compared to that; any time I see a movie where science is an aspect of the plot I find myself disappointed in comparison with how there is no real science in it. Come on, I want to see the real fascinating complexities of the world explained with the excitement people devote to their fictional magic systems. This show had spoiled me forever on that to the point where I was just watching the Oppenheimer movie complaining that they never actually explain the science at all, let alone in an amazing and riveting way. The atmosphere was well-executed and uniquely executed, and it was like I was there in the long days, the deserted nature, the machinery and the dread of the radiation that permeated everything.

            And then the characters… wow, they were well done, I had never been this invested in characters that had such a short time to be built up, and I have very rarely been this invested in characters period. Legasov was amazing, I will talk more about him later, and Shcherbina was, well… my ultimate blorbo from my shows who I thought of all the time and, if I was on Tumblr then, probably would have been posting analysis posts of nonstop. The way he was the harsh and practical bureaucrat and provider of materials but subtly, in a way I picked up before with his genuine excitement over things like the moon rovers but had big payoff in his final scene, a sort of lapsed idealist who sometimes betrayed a genuine excitement for making things work. Someone for with all his bluster of having power, was fundamentally helpless, a cog in the system who knew it and tried to shut and deny everything away like everyone in the show. And the beautiful irony of how only when he’s thrust away from normal life and into this twisted, haunting, as some reviewers had said cosmic-horror like/small scale apocalyptic realm where the life he had built and future he had hoped for is forfeit, where he is nothing more than a ghost and he’s walked into a trap from which there is no return, but within this realm has power that he can grab onto and fight for something with, then he’s able to live up the idea of the benevolent authority figure he had tried to in the past and gotten crushed for. That’s when he’s able to show all of his cleverness and drive and an honesty that the supposedly more “innocent” Legasov struggles with, a cold and frightening honesty that both sees the ridiculousness of Soviet ideals of sacrifice that got them into this situation in the first place and knows that is still exactly what is necessary in this time and place and is willing to follow it to the bitter end, enacting exactly the heroic ideal he had once thought he could be. One criticism I have seen of this show is that it romanticizes the ideals of sacrifice too much to be anything but a lukewarm criticism of the system it purports to criticize, but that part, particularly in relation to this character, was really impactful for me. Not an easy and unquestioned lauding of those values, not solely a detached cynicism either, but a knowledge it was cruel and ironic and partly the fault of these ideals in the first place that it had come to this, that there was (as Mazin said in the podcast) no beautiful realm to sacrifice oneself for and just more bitterness, but there was still something noble and meaningful in what now had to be done, and in a way that made it hit harder than a more straightforward story. 

            And that wasn’t the only case I noticed where a common criticism seemed to “miss the point”, there are two other big examples of that. One is the argument that the show distorts history by making Dyatlov and co. into the sole villains who were individually responsible for everything, ignoring the reality of the government and system as a whole being responsible. This seems to betray a lack of comprehension of a lot that was not only implied, but sometimes outright stated in the text. The starting framing device sets up the explicit expectation that Dyatlov did bad things and isn’t going to be a likable character, but he’s still fundamentally a scapegoat whose individual failings are used to obscure the greater problems within the whole system, and the finale follows up on that. Using the explicit framing device of Legasov starting off by telling the part of the story that is true but not the whole truth, only the part his audience wants to here because it focuses on the failings of a few individual people, only to go off-script at the end and reveal the problems go far deeper. The same goes for another big criticism I’ve seen, that the show lacks understanding of the psychology and experience of people living under an oppressive government for how Legasov somehow remains innocent and sheltered and just shocked that people would lie like that. To me it seemed pretty clear that said character was portrayed brilliantly as someone who, by nature of his high rank in such a system, has to know the politics and make cynical moves and lies all the time just by virtue of existing there, but keeps that part of him as an instinct rather than something he consciously makes part of his identity so his self-concept can be one of nobly truth-seeking innocence. He can’t do politics when he tries to to it “consciously”, and refers to himself as someone who must not understand how horrible people can be because he’s so sheltered, but when he needs to get people to die for his cause his first instinct is lies and bribes, and the more we know about him the more it becomes clear that he has done plenty of bad, cynical moves to keep his position of power and esteem and avoid the horrible consequences that would come with defying those with greater power, it’s just that he does it on autopilot and separates it from the part of his identity that he acknowledges and gives him internal moral justification for existing. His character arc is about being forced to confront this contradiction in himself in the most horrific of circumstances and actually, hesitantly, very humanly, become what he believed himself to be, even if it destroys him, and I think that’s really brilliant character writing! 

            Now, a lot of the sources of criticism are from people who are knowledgeable about history or lived in the Soviet Union themselves, and so, if they had acknowledged these subtleties but said the show was not realistic or honest in these ways in spite of them, I would concede they knew more than I do about these topics and the criticisms were justified. Such as if they had said “Yes, I know the show is trying to point out that someone who is genuinely unlikeable and did bad things can still be a cynically used scapegoat to hide systemic problems, but the real person wasn’t that unlikeable and bad in the first place” or “Yes, I know there is a very specific reason with regards to the framing device that the criticism of the government gets saved for the end of the last episode but giving it so little screen time still undersold how that was the main point”, or “Yes, I know Legasov’s character was significantly more nuanced than an innocent noble truth-teller but it still didn’t do enough to read as how a real person would act in the Soviet Union”, but it never seems to be that, it always seems to be the critics seeing the show as playing these tropes straight, unsubtly and unironically, which just seems to be bad comprehension to me. 

            So I’m just going to finish it off with why I care so much, which is the impact the show had on me. At the time it came out, I was going through a horrible time mentally, having constant obsessive thoughts devaluing anything I cared about or found meaning about in life, and I was just for the first time starting to get to a more stable point where I could actually find value in life. At the time I was in college doing an internship in a lab I really loved. And I know people will see me as a freak for finding any comfort in a show infamous for being a grueling an depressing exploration of a real-life disaster, but it made me feel real emotions for the first time in a while. Sadness and haunting awe and real suspense and fear that no supernatural horror thing could ever dream of striking in me (the roof scene was just wow…). But also a kind of bitter hope and sense of purpose that I alluded to earlier. What has always compelled me most in media, in terms of making me feel enthusiastic just to live, is not the things that get labeled as “optimistic tm”, but the things that throw you against a wall and twist everything and then there is still a hope and value in it that exists purely, beyond words or any pretensions. 

            And the more I looked into the show and the various criticisms of it, the more I began to suspect that none of the value, none of the thoughts and feelings I had, even mattered. It didn’t matter the creator’s honesty and scruples and good intentions, or how it was just about the perfect work of art that I loved more than anything. Because fundamentally this was a story about truth, one in which the horror and meaning of it relied on it being real, and if enough of the plot points and key emotional beats weren’t really real, then that’s an irreparably failed work, in fact one that can do harm in the real world, and nothing else it does right even matters. Sure the sequence where the danger to all of Europe of a second explosion is outlined is an immensely well-crafted scene in an immensely well-crafted episode, and it made me feel more strongly than anything had made me feel in perhaps two years, but it didn’t really happen so the whole thing is a farce and I’m wrong to feel that way. Mazin believed it was real, he clearly got it from real sources due to people believing at the time and some sources still perpetuating it rather than making it up for the sake of drama, but accidental manipulation is still manipulation. I’m still not an expert so I may be wrong on this, but one can easily read both the supposed drama and the supposed meaningful actions, actions that mattered, that appealed to me as someone who wanted to find a purpose as a scientist, as a farce rather than a tragedy; the drama was all from people at the time thinking the situation was worse than it was (i.e in real life, they overestimated the likely deaths by a factor of 10 at the time), and all the actions that seemed to be meaningful were done on so little knowledge that they didn’t really make a difference. Probably Legasov saying that Shcherbina’s actions mattered in the end despite everything would be laughable in light of what really happened (I don’t know this for sure and this is just the sense I get from limited information, but I wouldn’t be surprised…) And really at the time, I had had enough of farces. Sometimes it seems like that’s all life was, and drama and tragedy would at least have some kind of meaning. I had gone so long obsessively punishing myself for liking and valuing anything. The more passionately I cared the more greatly I would punish myself, arguing that the flaws in whatever I cared for not only demanded a more nuanced view but completely erased anything good or valuable in whatever it was, making it objectively wrong to care. I would do this for anything from my favorite books to life itself. And the more I realized that my obsessive thoughts on this show, which I felt more intensely about than anything, were actually objectively right, that it really was irredeemable and none of the things it did right even mattered, the easier it was to believe that the same was true about all those other thoughts. I feel like, more than anything, this show ruined what would have been my recovery from my years of depression and made me like that for more years to come. And the worst thing was that I didn’t want to tell anyone about this, I felt horribly embarrassed that my view of the world could so depend on something so frivolous as a TV show, rather than be determined solely by grand philosophical questions about life itself. Honestly being on Tumblr has helped me be more comfortable with the part of me that can get very focused on fiction in this way, for how everyone else is willing to be that passionate, but at the time I didn’t have that. 

            In conclusion I would just want to note that I know it seems to be the fashion nowadays to say “well who cares about historical fiction/things based on a true story being accurate, it’s actually better the more ridiculous and disconnected from the truth it is and accuracy is just laziness”. But I’ve never felt that way, I have always felt there is value in telling a story with solemnity and compassion about true events, with the fictionalization allowing one to endow it with a technique and most of all humanity that can still be preserved without deviating from the important details. This has always been my personal white whale, because most creators don’t seem to care a bit about being faithful to the truth, or as much as they can within the constraints of the format, or they think the truth is boring (when actually the made-up details are inevitably far more cliché, weaker, and well, boring than the fascinating truth is). And then, when you have a one-in-a-million case where the creator is actually disciplined and honest, people are still idiots and probably I should give up on hoping anyone who isn’t a trained historian (and scientist) themselves will be able to conduct their research so as to not make so many mistakes it completely ruins the whole project. But still, they had the resources of a TV show, they actually hired experts, it is still mind-boggling how something done with such good intentions and care could go so wrong? Probably I will never be satisfied. But I will still wish for something that as amazingly tackles real events as this show does with the events as its creator believed were real, as something that in a different world I would have easily named as my favorite work of art ever. In the end, though, that’s probably another false hope.

you know the idea that Arlong views himself as Nami's father would explain everything. He was willing to let everything slide when it came to Nami. And when Luffy (a strange boy) showed up and demanded Nami (who is basically his daughter) he's gonna be like who the duck are you? And why are you demanding my daughter? And he's not gonna react very well

Luffy didn't really show up saying he was gonna take her (Nami had the freedom to leave anytime she wanted after all) but he would absolutely be confused over this weird kid gettin all mad about making her cry lmao

I do think Arlong legitimately thought all she cared about was money. Give her nice clothes and new pens she wants and she'd be fine. He really thought she wasn't still angry about her mother. He should have known better. After all, his own lifelong quest for vengeance against the human race started with losing his mother. Not that he can remember much of her anymore, but details.

I love the dynamic between Arlong and Nami because they view each other completely differently, he's almost an idiot for it. He shouldn't be surprised, she tried to kill him multiple times in the past, but that was their little game, he thought it was endearing. She was tenacious and bloodthirsty, of course he'd love her.

But it's conditional to how useful she was to him. When she drew her own thing or made something misleading he knew and she was punished for it. There was only freedom if it aligned with his plans, his ambitions. And man, Arlong is kind of lazy as fuck and takes his time, and had no plans of letting her go anytime soon.

And you have to wonder if it hurt when he was defeated. Besides everything he worked for, his dreams and ambitions and hope for a fishman colony safe from the dangers of the grand line and sabaody, all that being destroyed and having failed your brothers, now beaten, some might've even been killed---BESIDES being a complete an utter failure,

I wonder which hurt more, the betrayal, or knowing their time together didn't mean as much as he thought it did.

Not that he cared if she was happy there or not. Right?

He didn't. But he still wanted her to be.

Solas is not the Dread Wolf

Since Trespasser, everyone is departing from the assumption that Solas is the Ancient Elven God known as Fen'Harel. What everyone should be asking, though, is: where's the evidence?

Solas claims a lot of things when we meet him again in Trespasser. He also claimed he was a harmless apostate that used to live in a secluded village during our first dialogue interaction with him. Throughout the game, he makes tons of statements which later prove to be false or misleading. And when confronted with the possibility that he's not who he claims to be, you earn disapproval from him.

(Remember the dialogue after the Wicked Eyes quest, in the rotunda at Skyhold, where he disapproves if you hint at how odd it is that he misses court intrigue if he'd never been in a court before?)

Now, Solas made several wild claims to the Inquisitor about his identity. However, we know for a fact that he is a mitomaniac (the habit of lying, of fabricating untrue stories to manipulate people's perceptions, either about the subject in order to cast them in a favourable light or to alter their perception of reality and facts), a tendency closely associated with narcissists, psychopaths and megalomaniacs. This is highly relevant to DA4 because, if he indeed isn't who he claims to be, then he is more dangerous than we realize.

Let's assume Solas isn't Fen'Harel. Instead, he was a mage living in the times of Arlathan. We can attribute his knowledge of the Evanuris to him living or working closely to and with them. Maybe he was a servant? An escape slave, freed by Fen'Harel? And in the process, he may have met Mythal and became her follower, even a close ally. That would explain why she calls him "old friend".

Solas, being simply an ordinary servant of the Evanuris, knows everything about where their power truly comes from. He knew about in uthenera, the sleep of "immortality", and so managed to wake up thousands of years into the future. He knew about the Elven orbs - the Foci - and the power they held to allow passage into the Fade from the waking world.

What he (likely) did not know is how to use some of these powers correctly. Hence, his failure in expecting Corypheus to die after unlocking the orb. In fact, the orb likely belonged to another Evanuris and he was stealing it, with Fen'Harel's followers being none the wiser.

There were other failures that Solas confesses, such as the fact that a great portion of Arlathan, located in the Fade, was destroyed after creating the Veil. Not only that, but every life form literally became Tranquil due to his actions. As he himself states, he made everything worse in the hopes of saving the world from the Evanuris. This is very telling, because if any of this is true, then it means he is incapable of foreseeing the consequences of his manipulation of magic, and he isn't such a great magic wielder as the legendary Elven God he claims to be. Or worse, he claimed to have performed these magical feats by himself when it was in fact the historical Fen'Harel who performed them.

And worst of all: if Solas isn't Fen'Harel, then he's no more than a power-hungry mage going after the powers of the Evanuris to storm the Black City and claim true godhood. That would explain why he states: "as the world burns in the raw chaos"...he doesn't really care about the consequences of his actions, not even to the Elven people, who he might be deceiving in order to get them to work for him, so long as he can control what could very well be the Heart of Thedas, the source of all life and magic and effectively become "The Maker", reshaping reality as he sees fit.

...

As usual, this is just speculation on my part. However, Solas' magical blunders and his complete lack of power after waking up from in uthenera are highly suspicious. Couple that with him being a mitomaniac and the fact that the real Dread Wolf seems to be a spirit from the Fade guarding the Black City, rather than an Elven mage and you have the perfect combination of factors for suspecting that Solas might be in fact a CHARLATAN. For all we know, the real Fen'Harel might even be trapped with the rest of the Evanuris. Until the Veil is lifted and they are freed, we won't know.

One of my favorite negative reviews

I can’t find a full text of it online, so I’m going to copy out some big chunks of Stephen Hunter’s retrospective on Gone with the Wind, which apparently resulted in lots of angry letters to the editor.

Long, stupid, ugly and, alas, back for the sixth time (in theaters, innumerable television showings have preceded this rerelease), it is probably the most beloved bad movie of all time, as its adjusted box office gross of $5 billion makes clear. If you love it, that is fine; but don’t confuse its gooeyness, its spiritual ugliness, its solemn self-importance, with either art or craft, for it boasts none of the former and only a bit of the latter. It is one of the least remarkable films of that most remarkable of American movie years, 1939. In fact, far from being one of the greatest American films ever made, I make it merely the twenty-eighth best film of 1939! It may not even have been the best movie that opened on December 15, 1939! It is overrated, overlong, and overdue for oblivion.

Of the various characters and actors:

It’s profoundly misogynistic...the secret pleasure of the film is watching Scarlett O’Hara being punished for the sin of selfhood. The movie delights in her crucifixion, even to the point of conjuring the death of a child as apt punishment for her ambitions. Her sin, really, is the male sin: the pride which goeth before the fall...

Leslie Howard was a great actor and a brave man, who raced home to join his unit when World War II broke out, thereby missing the famous December Atlanta premiere. He was killed in 1943 when the Nazis shot down a plane he was in. Let us lament him as we lament all the men who gave their lives to stop that evil. That said, the truth remains that on screen, he was a feathery creature, best cast as the foil to Bogart’s brutish Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest, where his cathedral-abutment cheekbones gave him the look of an alabaster saint in the wall of an Italian church. But he was about as believable as a sexual object as he would have been as Duke Mantee...

The wondrous Olivia de Havilland was an actress of spunk and pizazz, and she gave as good as she got, even across from such hammy scene stealers as her longtime costar Flynn. But she, too, is trashed by Gone with the Wind as sugary Melanie Wilkes, a character of such selfless sweetness she could give Santa Claus a toothache.

Of the film as art:

Too much spectacle, not enough action. David O. Selznick, who produced the film and rode it to immortality, didn’t understand the difference between the two. Thus the film has a fabulous but inert look to it; the story is rarely expressed in action but only in diorama-like scenes. It is curiously flat and unexciting. Even the burning of Atlanta lacks dynamism and danger; it’s just a dapple of flickering orange filling the screen without the power and hunger of a real fire. And the movie’s most famous shot- the camera pulling back to reveal Scarlett in a rail yard of thousands of bleeding, tattered Confederate soldiers- makes exactly the wrong point. It seems to be suggesting that Scarlett has begun to understand that the war is much bigger than she is. And yet she never changes. The shot means nothing in terms of character; it’s an editorial aside that really misleads us.

Of the film’s message:

From its opening credits, which characterize the South as a lost land of lords and ladies, to its final images of Tara nestling among the Georgia dogwood, the movie buys into a myth that completely robs the region of its truth. Love it or hate it, it’s a land (as Faulkner knew) in which the nobility of its heroism lived side by side with the ugliness of its Original Sin: slavery. I’m not attacking the South here, just Margaret Michell and Selznick’s version of it. Other movies or 1939 were beginning to find the courage to express some subtle ideas. One of them was John Ford’s Young Mr. Lincoln.

Of its comparison to other 1939 movies:

I found 797 titles from the year 1939, had seen fewer than a tenth of them, and even on that small list there were 27 that struck me as fundamentally better than Gone with the Wind, movies that I would watch again with utter delight. They are: Allegheny Uprising, Another Thin Man, Babes in Arms, Beau Geste, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Dark Victory, Dodge City, Drums Along the Mohawk, Golden Boy, Gunga Din, Juarez, The Light that Failed, Made for Each Other, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Ninotchka, Of Mice and Men, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Real Glory, The Roaring Twenties, Stagecoach, The Story of Alexander Graham Bell, The Three Musketeers, Union Pacific, The Wizard of Oz, The Women, Wuthering Heights, and Young Mr. Lincoln.

Dammit, my dear, I’m just being frank.