#about a relationship that would genuinely be more socially acceptable in its own context if it WERE incest

[abbenai]

class relations and thomas hutter in nosferatu 2024

i think this is all the nosferatu thoughts i have in my head for main.

thomas' character neatly explores ambitions and insecurities of the emerging middle class in 19th-century europe, specifically (and im paraphrasing @cafeleningrad here. tysm for the added context!) the characters live on the northern german coast, in a fictional city that appears to be a swedish colony. during this time, sweden’s overseas holdings were in economic decline, creating financial strain for many. friedrich, as a dock owner likely from old money, remains stable, whereas thomas, burdened with debt, must secure an income in a struggling town.

politically, the region is in turmoil. germany, as a unified nation, would not exist until 1871, and the decades leading up to unification were marked by instability. in response, many middle- and upper-class germans withdrew into domesticity and romanticism, deliberately ignoring the broader chaos. friedrich embodies this mindset—his rigid adherence to patriarchal structures and his fixation on an idealized home life reflect a widespread desire to impose personal order in the face of political uncertainty.

thomas' profession as a real estate agent places him in a social stratum striving for upward mobility, navigating between the working class and the aristocracy. and even still thomas is working within a system that offers little room for upward mobility unless you’re willing to go to extremes. his encounter with orlok is not just about the supernatural terror of a vampire, but also a confrontation with forces beyond his control: the economic pressures of his profession, the authority figures who hold the purse strings, and the overwhelming sense that life is far more fragile than he’s ever understood.

economic anxieties permeate the domestic sphere is thomas' mind too though. see, something interesting about thomas and ellens relationship is that it looks like ellen comes from money. her family home looks like a manor house and her childhood bedroom even looks larger than the apartment her and thomas share. the script also says they have a topiary garden which is definitely fancy.

it is kind of sweet in the way it implies a love match since ellen's marrying "below her station" in that regard but i also think this class disparity informs his insecurity in their relationship. he strives to take on a provider role and attain the same idealized domestic life and financial independence friedrich has. its not like that desire exists in a vacuum though, as vi pointed out friedrich does ask when they'll be having kids and is very generous with his money and loans to thomas which emasculates him as a provider since he hasn't reached those "benchmarks" like his friend has. there's also herr knock. "a new husband needs new wages," knock leverages thomas' financial insecurities as well as his precarious financial position to lure him into accepting a long and ultimately disastrous assignment.

until he comes face to face with ellen's tormentor, thomas struggles to balance economic realities and his desire to genuinely care for ellen. and you can see that when he initially dismisses her nightmare and sends her off to the hardings' to carry on with his assignment which he believes to be securing their future and maybe even what he expects ellen to value having come from money (nicer lodging, a midservant, the ability to support children).

thomas and ellen’s relationship is ultimately defined by this tension between love and economic survival. while their marriage appears to be a love match, thomas’ persistent struggle to provide and establish his own security renders their union fragile. his need to prove himself as a provider, exacerbated by the class disparity between them, prevents him from truly prioritizing ellen’s concerns until it is too late. ellen, in contrast, becomes the true agent of resistance, recognizing orlok’s threat not just as a supernatural menace but as an embodiment of the very forces that have already made their lives unstable. her end underscores the futility of the structures thomas has relied upon—money, property, and even marriage—leaving behind a question of whether true security or love can exist within such a system at all.

the economic underpinnings of thomas’ assignment become even more apparent when he arrives at the inn. his money holds power here, but it also isolates him. in a small community, thomas’ ability to throw around coin—whether it’s paying for a room, securing a horse, or ordering a meal—marks him as an intruder. this financial dynamic is particularly evident in how the innkeeper reacts. they are deferential because of his wealth, yet reluctant, knowing that their compliance means sending another hapless man to his doom. their hesitance is not only rooted in fear of the supernatural but also in an unspoken economic calculation: can they afford to refuse him? can they afford to lose him? thomas, in contrast, remains oblivious to these tensions, his mind singularly focused on fulfilling his commission.

thomas' interactions with orlok similarly reflect his precarious social and financial standing. thomas enters the vampire’s domain thinking he is the agent of commerce, the man negotiating the sale of an estate, the professional wielding the authority of paperwork and contracts. but orlok immediately undermines this dynamic. from the moment they meet, the count does not engage with thomas as an equal in business; instead, he toys with him, positioning him as prey long before any overt supernatural horror is revealed.

money, which has defined thomas’ sense of self and security, becomes meaningless in orlok’s world. thomas’ attempts at maintaining professional decorum fall flat against orlok’s eerie disinterest in the transactional. there is a perverse irony in how thomas, a man whose livelihood depends on property and ownership, finds himself trapped in a place where all pretense of control is stripped away. his financial ambitions, his carefully curated aspirations of upward mobility, disintegrate as he realizes he has been lured into an arrangement in which he has no power. the estate sale, which once represented his economic salvation, becomes irrelevant. the true exchange occurring in orlok’s castle is not about land or money, but about life itself—thomas’ life and ellen's life, which orlok has already deemed his for the taking.

in the face of a creature who exists outside human constructs of wealth and property, thomas’ insistence on playing the role of the aspiring bourgeois only hastens his downfall. it is not just supernatural horror that undoes him, but the crushing realization that the economic structures he has placed his faith in hold no power in the face of something ancient and inhuman.

[hueman-instrumentality]

△➞ ://0017 Hueman ≈ Instrumentality • [1653] ➞ ▲ ▌│█║▌║▌║🔅 ╚╚|░|☀️△☀️|░|╝╝🔅║▌║▌║█│▌

Schizophrenia—Mental Models and the Power of Imagination

We all carry models of other people in our heads. Your brain has built a working model of everyone you know well, especially those you love. Think about someone close to you - your mother, perhaps. You can predict what she'd say about almost any topic. You know her opinions, her speech patterns, her likely reactions. It's a neural model you've constructed through thousands of hours of interaction.

Love might have evolved partly for this purpose - to motivate us to spend enough time with certain people that we can model their minds accurately. Children model their parents. Parents model their children. Friends model friends. It's how we predict social outcomes, avoid conflicts, and maintain relationships. These models are so detailed that we can have entire conversations with someone in our heads and be reasonably accurate about their responses.

The models are necessary for social functioning. Before you speak, you run scenarios - "If I say this, they'll probably say that." It's so automatic we don't notice we're doing it. But these models can become something more.

When someone believes these internal models are actually communicating with them - when they think the voice of their mother in their head is their actual mother speaking telepathically, or that God is talking to them directly - that's when things shift. The model stops being a predictive tool and becomes, in their experience, a separate entity with its own agency.

Religion has been providing this framework for millennia. The idea that God speaks directly to individuals, that the Holy Spirit moves through you, that you can receive divine revelation - these concepts create a permission structure for believing internal voices are external communications. Once you accept that supernatural communication is possible, your brain's natural modeling process can be reinterpreted as exactly that.

The framework says this is not only possible but expected for the faithful. Prayer itself teaches people to listen for responses from their internal model of God. For thousands of years, those who didn't experience or claim to experience such divine communication could be branded heretics, burned at the stake, exiled from their communities. The pressure to hear these voices, to interpret internal models as divine presence, became a matter of survival.

This selective pressure may have actually shaped our evolution. Those who could more easily experience their internal models as external entities - who could "hear God" when the culture demanded it - were more likely to survive and reproduce. Schizophrenia, or at least the capacity for such experiences, became woven into our cultural and possibly biological inheritance.

There are benefits to modeling an idealized figure like Jesus - someone described as perfectly compassionate, who turns the other cheek, who forgives unconditionally. When you build a detailed model of such a figure and consult it for moral guidance, you're essentially using a cultural hack to improve social cohesion. The model becomes an internal compass, always asking "what would perfect compassion do here?" This can genuinely help people become kinder, more patient, more forgiving.

As far as religious figures go, the Jesus model might be the most psychologically beneficial one humanity has produced. A figure who advocates for the poor, forgives enemies, shows radical compassion - if you're going to have an imaginary friend in your head guiding your moral decisions, you could do worse. None of these religious figures were real in the supernatural sense, but the mental models we've built of them are very real in their effects on human behavior.

The same mechanism operates whether someone attributes the voice to God, angels, demons, or in secular contexts, to telepathy or advanced technology. What matters is having a worldview that says "entities can communicate directly with your mind." Once that door opens, the brain's predictive modeling can be experienced as external communication.

And this was the point of today's discussion - that I believe this is likely how schizophrenia works.

We create mental models, a logos of the world, we model friends and family, we hold onto models of deceased loved ones, and then some excuse comes in to either exploit those models or build new ones, and some excuse to believe them. Maybe you feel it's God speaking to you. Maybe it's demons. Maybe it's self-dribbling basketballs from hyperspace, as McKenna would say. Or maybe, like in my case, it's wondering what your loved ones' 'true selves' would be saying if they knew this was a simulation. The mechanism is the same - we build models, we believe in them too much, and our powerful imagination does the rest.

The brain's capacity for self-deception is staggering. We underestimate how readily we can convince ourselves of things that aren't there. Once you give your brain permission to believe something is possible - whether through religious faith, psychedelics, or philosophical frameworks like simulation theory - it will construct elaborate, convincing experiences to support that belief. The models become so detailed, so responsive, so seemingly autonomous that distinguishing them from external reality becomes nearly impossible for some people.

What's particularly striking is how these delusions feel more real than reality itself. The voices carry emotional weight, perfect timing, uncanny relevance to your thoughts. They know things you forgot you knew. They respond with the exact words you need to hear - or fear to hear. This isn't because they're real; it's because your brain is extraordinarily good at pattern matching and prediction. It's running these models with such fidelity that they surprise even you, their creator.

We need to remember that the human brain operates at roughly 1.1 exaflops - that's over a quintillion calculations per second. We are, each of us, walking around with a supercomputer capable of generating entire worlds, complete personalities, convincing realities. When we understand the sheer computational power we're working with, it becomes less surprising that we can delude ourselves so thoroughly. We're not just imagination machines - we're reality-generating engines that sometimes forget which realities we've created and which ones actually objectively exist. Respecting this power means recognizing both its creative potential and its capacity for self-deception.

[mycartoonmonster]

Like Ive stated before in this post; Bill shares one or two things with the zodiac members but if we're talking about the Pines;

Bill is detached from reality, prioritizes his fun and desires over other people's as well as rejecting that life doesn't always goes his way not unlike how Mabel would be without her family and friends and past relationship since she can accept she's wrong and decides to self improve whereas Bill doesn't, he wants things to be his way and refuses to improve

Bill's confidence in his smarts, attention to detail and knowledge does make him pridefull and arrogant with no one to call him out for it, he can be over-zealous and constantly demands to be taken seriously due to how he was treated back home but he's self centered and ruthless on the pursuit of his goals and he's not above breaking the law to have fun but to negative uncontrolling extremes like Dipper would be without his family.

Bill's mutation made him a social pariah which started his delusion that he was special hence he's arrogant and feels entitled to respect to lessen or soften the hurt he was feeling and cant let go of stuff easily, doesn't wanna admit the shame he has and refuses to admit hes wrong not unlike Ford but he didn't have any family nor genuine friends that pulled him back to reality and make him realize the error of his ways (As much of a jerk he was to McGucket, Ford let him go when he saw Fidds was hurt by his actions and didn't pursue him and he doesn't ask for forgiveness cause he feels he's not deserving of it)

Both scam and lie to people for their own benefit as a result of a mistake they did that forbides them from going back home but Stanley did it for survival (and thanks to the website we now know what stuff he had to go through) and his family whereas Bill can get by and he doesn't have a family that cares about him anymore so essentially he lost his impulse control/moral compass with the death of his family not to mention they both harmed Ford the most but Stan does know this whereas Bill refuses to accept the guilt and downplays everything he ever did to Ford and still seeks to be with him cause he sees him as his other half (in a more romantic context than a brotherly one) but Stan, although saddened by the fact Ford initially wants him out of his life, respects Ford's wishes cause it's thanks to his family that Stanley is selfless, willing to sacrifice his happiness and memories and why he got the happy ending Bill wanted.

And also he projects onto other members of the zodiac who deep down are miserable like him like Gideon and Pacifica;

Gideon was originally an outcast, just like Bill, who gained power at a very young age which speeded his growth into villany and ended up creating a rivalry with the Pines and both deeply crave connections and affection but dont know how to do it in a healthy way and damage those around them and think its the sibling of the twin they're pursuing who interposed in their relationship when in reality it was their own actions that did and both not only try to paint Stanley in a bad light but they essentially have the same plan in both seasons finale of taking over certain place and its up to the Pines to stop them and they get outdone by Stanley which makes them hate his guts for meddling with their plan for absolute power and both end up in jail where they do art therapy after failing to talk their way out of sentence.

The thing that differentiates them both is that when confronted for their actions and explained why what they want is impossible, only Gideon realizes the error of his ways and tries to do the right thing even if it ends up bad for him which is something Bill would never do.

Pacifica and Bill were nice kids before the abuse they went through by their parents (Bill's was accidental/didn't mean to but their actions hurt him and it peeved the way to his descent into villany) turned them into mean individuals who seek to hurt others to feel better about themselves and their miserable lives and both act like they dont care what others think of them but they secretly do (Bill is a monster but deep down craves connections and was hurt over his and Ford's breakup), can't admit they need help cause that would break the mask they're presenting to people which would reveal they are nothing but a weakling seeking help and the riches they have access to dont make their lifes better and they see themselves as monsters covered in blood for their sins (Euclydian's blood in Bill's case and human blood in Pacifica's case) but Bill already accepted that (cause there's no undoing what he did) but refuses to admit it whereas Pacifica suffers cause she's genuinely trying to change for the better but thankfully she's not alone in doing so (she's got the Lumberjack's spirit and she's working at Greasy's dinner and Lady Susan is a much better influence for her than Priscilla and Preston ever were); the same cant be said about Bill, I'm afraid.

And on a minor scale, Robbie and Bill are heavily inmature for relationships with both of them being jelaous of the partner's friends which did eventually lead to their demise in one way or another and it was their own actions that led to the break up which they did not take well and did message their ex in attempts to get their attention but nothing but at the very least Robbie is aware enough he cant force Wendy back into the relationship and was able to move on and find someone else whereas Bill became abusive and aggresive towards Ford to the point of physically harming him either by puppetering his body or using his neurons to cause him pain and is still down bad for Ford even 30 years later and refuses to move on hence why he tries to offer him several chances to join him as an ally or why he gets better treatment (in Bill's standards) than the townsfolk in Gravity Falls or his Henchmaniacs during Weirdmageddon.

Everything boils down to family if you think about it; Bill is shown able to form relationships and feel guilt/remorse but he's so detached from reality that he refuses to recognize his wrongs and he cant help but project onto others as soon as he sees anything that makes another person similar to him cause he cannot take or recognize the pain that he's carrying cause that would break him and unlike old times he's got no one to sing him a comforting lullaby to lessen his hurt.

No parental figure is flawless in Gravity Falls;

Dipper and Mabel's parents's troubling marriage situation does worry their kids and is why they're never homesick and they decided to focus on other stuff during their summer and why Mabel was terrified of going home all alone to a place that would be broken, she couldn't bring Waddles, she wouldn't be able to go back to the Mystery Shack next summer and she'd have to face the horrors of high school all alone (which can be pretty terrifying lemme tell you as someone who spent the first year separated from her brother and it was among the worst school years ever) and there would be no one at her birthday party to say goodbye to her.

Priscilla and Preston did abuse Pacifica by essentially treating her like a dog with a bell and installing the idea she needs to be pretty and perfect.

Bud and his wife let Gideon do as he pleases cause they're terrified of him and dont give any discipline.

Fildbrick was a bad father with his kids by constantly treating Stan badly and Ford as the golden child but not truly respecting him or valueing his wants and essentially raising them to be abuse victims throughout their adulthood (Stan was only 18 when he had to fend for himself and thanks to the website we now have clues about how awfull his expierences were in a decade of homelessness and due to his need for validation he never got from his dad, Ford became trapped in a toxic relationship with Bill where he felt he couldn't get out and was helpless and alone when facing Bill) and Carynn, as loving as she was, she couldn't stand up for her son when it mattered the most. Plus, we still dont know how bad Shermie had it between living in Ford's shadow and fearing to be a dissappointment like Stanley was, not only to his dad but the entire town he was growing up in (and doing the math assuming he's the youngest of his brothers, it would mean he got married at 19-20 and moved to California probably in an attempt to get away from it all but thankfully he broke the cycle of abuse if Mabel and Dipper's parents dont want the kids to witness their rough patch going through which shows they care for their kids)

Stanley does gaslight Dipper and lies to everyone around him in an attempt to protect them which surprise to no one did get them into trouble more than enough times that could have been avoided if Stanley warned them or how he could of told them head he had a brother sooner to save himself the trouble, not to mention he struggles with Dipper when it comes to masculinity because of how he was raised but he would never lay a hand on him like how his father did. And he does try to be a better parental figure to those closest to him like Soos or Wendy, but again its hard.

Ford, although fond of his niece and nephew, can't help but project onto Dipper a bit and is why he offers him the chance to study in Gravity Falls as his apprentice for his well being but in reality this is bad for him as its stealing Dipper the chance to grow up and miss on many life expierences he wont get to expierence if he stays in a lab (said by Alex Hirsch) and Ford doesn't take a moment to think about Mabel's feelings regarding this situation and assumes she'll be okay all on her own just like he was in collage but fully overseeing the fact that she's still 12 years old and just like his brother, Ford hides the truth in order to keep them safe but with the addition of shame for not seeing past Bill's manipulations and tricks and he cant talk openly about it cause he was never given the proper tools to deal with it and he cannot bring himself to be fully trusting his family save for Dipper aka the person that resembles him the most (not unlike Bill sharing with Ford what truly happened to Euclydia) and it's exactly that distrust which causes Weirdmaggedon.

Scalene and Euclid as well meaning as they were; medically abused their kid and installed the idea he was different from others and Billy deflected that onto him being special in order not to feel bad for not fitting in and being the weird one in his home. Worst part is that Bill seemed to be aware that as bad as his treatment was, he knew his parents wanted the best for him but went about in the worst way possible and despite everything they did to him, he still loves them as seen in how he continuosly draws red and blue triangles or the fact he's wearing what remains of them aka his bow tie and tophat and he drops the sass and becomes serious upon hearing his mother's name coming out of Time Baby's mouth. He misses home but can't return. And now their baby boy is stuck somewhere somewhat resembling the past expierences of medical abuse he had back in his childhood and he cannot get out without exterior help which he lacks and tries to convince himself he'll get out of there, but can't.

It's sad and I do pity the small child who just wanted to show others the stars Bill once was but I cannot extend the sentiment towards the sociopathic megalomaniac monster that seeks to hurt others he became later on.

....im gonna read happy fanfics to cope now.

you ever think about how bill is who the pines could have been if they didn't have any kind of support from anyone in their lives

[amorremanet]

.

Happy Monday, this Barbie is seething in her corner because her fellow westerners insist on being ignorant jackasses about going “wAaAaAH, BuUuUuUuT iT’S iIiIiIiNcEsT!!!!1” with regard to Chengxian/Xiancheng, a ship that:

1. literally is not, by any definition, incest;

2. hugely affects the plot of its story in several ways that are directly related to it NOT being incest;

and 3. has several explanations about why it IS *NOT* incest out there, across multiple platforms, written by fans who actually know Chinese, don’t have to engage with the text exclusively in translation, and have a much stronger understanding of the cultural normas and nuances at play in this relationship than us westerners, who can read and learn and try to do better about checking ourselves while engaging with CN texts, but will likely always be, to some extent, projecting western ideas onto them

but………y’know, sure, whatever. If it makes you happy to completely flatten a deeply complex and nuanced relationship into “everything about them is Normal Sibling Behavior and that’s literally all it will ever be,” despite both CN fans explaining why that’s wrong and the text itself offering multiple examples to the contrary, then hey, be my guest (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

[googledocsdyke]

thinking incredibly earnestly about like why i unironically love bite me (a google slides social media au) as much as i do and why it’s so fucking funny and i think a huge part of it is that it lays bare the process of total decontextualisation that generally is at work within the self-contained world of like, fic in general. like, in many ways most fic is the same fic. i think we can generally agree on this. obviously there are like fics that transform the way you view the source text, or fics that generate their own world and fandom (down to agincourt), or fics with profound complex thematic engagement (so says the sword) or fics that have their own specific cult status (my immortal, twist and shout). but like the reason the fic ecosystem chugs along, the reason bajillions of fics are posted to ao3 every day, is because of the kind of fic that is so clearly based off other fic, maybe just shifted 2 degrees to the left.

like fanfiction IS by and large a repetitive medium that is often primarily interested in working off and re-articulating very widely accepted tropes. think of all the largely identical 15x20 fix-it codas you may have read. or this harry potter au i wrote when i was fourteen years old that could not have ANYTHING less to do with the actual characters dean, cas, or charlie as written in-show, or even like, anything to do with hogwarts as a setting. there was NO reason it needed to be a harry potter au. why the hell were the x-men there? there was no characterisation. the presence of potions homework, and gryffindor dean, and “charlie ships it,” were all just empty signifiers towards a narrative that i knew better from reading other fics than from watching the show itself. actually, i think at this point i hadn’t even watched any charlie episodes, but you wouldn’t be able to tell! because i lifted my concept of charlie wholesale from other fics that asserted that this was her “characterisation” and her place in the story. like it Was a 1600-word exercise in copy-paste, which is what large amounts of fanfiction are and historically have been. and is so fundamental to why we keep coming back to them

and i’m not saying this as like. a normative or “judgmental” statement in any way! i think there’s no point in insisting that all fic be like. deeply grounded in discrete characterisation or a sincere engagement with the complex themes of the original text, or whatever. firstly because a) most people writing fic ARE young teens/young adults who do so as a kind of participatory gesture, a low-effort way to signal their earnest investment in a particular ship or imagined narrative, and b) decontextualisation is like… at the beating heart of what fanfiction is. like most fanfiction is not “literary” (in huge skeptical quotes bc of how contested that very term even is) but it also feels like it’s a mistake to… ask it to be? i’m thinking along the lines of this post, where gothhabiba asks that we “articulate an actual theory of how and why fanfiction is created, its relationship to other kinds of media and writing, and what it does for the people who write and read it,” rather than “arguing about whether or not it’s ‘good’” . because that is truly a moot point!

i think as most of us return for the renaissance, some 6-7 years older, we’re now at the point where we’re able to engage (more) critically with the substantive text of the show, the actual themes it engages and (mis)handles, the cultural context in which it was produced, the texts it builds off of, intentionally or unintentionally, and the critical frameworks we can apply to it. and all of that is like overall a very good and interesting thing!! but it’s also so interesting when paired alongside the decontextualising impulse that drives a LOT of fandom engagement

ANYWAYS. all this to say that like 95% percent of the joy of bite me is how unapologetically ooc it is. like this is the continuous thing i’ve been talking about other people with. you could copy-paste any characters from any broadly popular media into this situation and the characterisation/speech would be no more or less jarring; it would still make the same amount of “sense” from an in-universe perspective. nothing about this au is really about dean and cas so much as it’s about decontextualised figures LABELLED dean and cas (and again, this is not some literary condemnation or smth, the majority of fic does this in some way! i’m just using bite me as an example). we are told to believe that sam winchester, a grown white man & published author, says “yall wildin” unprompted and that kaia nieves tweets things like “oomf famoose” and it’s fucking hilarious. it’s so good. because intentionally or not, it DOES reveal how much of fic, as a genre, is utterly separated from the characters they propose to be telling a story about.

i said earlier today that bite me is a social media au written in a riverdalian fashion, and i don’t just mean that in a general “it’s bad but good but outrageous” way, but more specifically that both bite me and riverdale decide on something objectively absurd and instead of shying away from it or trying to cover up the writer’s lack of knowledge, it faces it head on. like we ARE told unapologetically and continuously that actors live in their trailers when they’re filming a movie, that a hashtag trending for one day is enough to get a magazine writer that hasn’t been accused of sexual misconduct fired, that dean and cas are starring in a gay romantic comedy called fucking trainspotting. and the writer doesn’t/won’t/shouldn’t apologise for a word of that. in the same way that riverdale will look you dead in the eye and say “archie is going to war and world war ii-era combat aesthetics never ended even though it’s 2020” or “jughead got into the iowa writer’s workshop despite never having been an undergrad” and like what are you supposed to do? make fun of it?? the text doesn’t CARE if you make fun of it! it’s light years ahead of you! it’s so totally unconcerned with this “realism” you’re supposedly chasing that the joke doubles back on you.

so like tldr: bite me is emblematic of the decontextualising urge at the heart of your average fanfiction, lays bare its own ridiculousness, and raises genuinely fascinating questions abt what fanfiction as a text is meant to be or do. also kaia and claire fall in love on stan twt. UNPARALLELED media experience

[bestworstcase]

mm. that’s where i’m getting 16-17 as his age in the convoy scene: ghira left the white fang five years before the events of V1, so blake was 12 and adam was (with a range between 20-23 in the present per word of god) between 15-17.

but this actually does feed into what i said in the op about the white fang having a problem, across the board, with treating children like adults: i don’t think the situation between adam and blake was necessarily as open-and-shut as “he was an adult, she was a minor, he groomed her” because they were embedded in this group that treated both of them like adults. blake was only twelve years old when her parents left, and they seem to have made no effort to remain in contact with her because they felt she needed to find her own way; she was TWELVE. and sienna obviously did not have a problem keeping a twelve-year-old child in the ranks of her freedom fighters.

it gets a bit lost because the belladonnas are genuinely excellent parents of adult children. but blake was twelve. twelve.

(i don’t think the white fang is unique in this: combat schools begin around that age, so it is broadly culturally acceptable across most of remnant to train children as young as 12-13 if not even younger as warriors. less egregious but relatedly, the age of majority within the kingdoms is 17, which we know because that is how old cinder would’ve needed to be to enroll in a huntsmen academy without her guardian’s permission. but the white fang under sienna acted in a much more dangerous environment than a combat school, which makes the consequences more severe.)

so: you have twelve year olds, fifteen, seventeen year olds fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with adults in the ranks of a militant organization, and absolutely nobody making any distinction between ‘child’ and ‘adult.’ set aside the romantic aspect for a minute and just consider that situation on its own.

that is… not good. all the kids in the white fang were regularly involved in violent, dangerous situations and expected to handle adult burdens and responsibilities from a very young age. that is not an environment that fosters healthy boundaries between teens of different ages or teens and adults. even if adam did not exist, blake would have emerged from this experience deeply traumatized.

but, adam does exist, and a romantic relationship did at some point develop between him and blake. based on blake’s appearance in the short (in which 1. she is clearly not twelve, and 2. they are now in vale), i tend to think this happened later, 3-4 years after ghira and kali left the white fang. blake would have been 15 or 16, adam somewhere between 18 and 20.

and… in all honesty, in the context of the situation with both of these characters having grown up in a militant group where twelve year old children get treated like adults and that’s normal, the age difference strikes me as less adam individually being a predatory creep and more adam and blake existing in an environment where ‘minor’ wasn’t even a meaningful social category because: twelve-year-old guerrilla fighters. i do think the larger context matters; modern cultural norms regarding age gaps and appropriate dating ages are not innate or universal.

absolutely fair as an audience member to be disgusted or find it triggering or creepy. it is a gross and uncomfortable age difference, and cultural norms notwithstanding 15/16 is a very vulnerable age for reasons of brain development. i do get why people feel so strongly negative about it. but i find it… difficult to blame adam given the circumstances. how is he supposed to know not to date a teen when he’s twenty if twelve is considered old enough to Participate In Guerrilla Warfare?

Hello and good day. I hope that this isn't too much to ask, but what are your thoughts about Adam? It has always been my belief that Adam and Yang are mirrors to each other. Well, Adam has a lot of things to connect with Team RWBY, moreso with Yang, I think. Just wanted to hear your thoughts about Adam, I guess. Thank you.

i rattle him around in my brain from time to time. a lunar eclipse. he and yang are absolutely character foils; power vs strength, cruelty vs compassion, spite vs love, revenge vs justice. he refuses to control his temper, yang is defined by her meticulous control over her anger. moonslice and burn are almost the exact same semblance, even. a dark mirror.

he’s also doing… something… thematically salient to summer rose. which is what i’m picking over in that linked post. i’m not sure what it is yet but the setup is pretty evident.

tbh i think the narrative is far more sympathetic to him than most of the fandom cares to admit. the triumph and vindication burns bright when adam realizes he’s lost in V5 and runs away—that’s the moment where the narrative framing is like “fuck yeah, the bastard got what he deserved.” but when he dies? there’s just exhaustion, pain, and relief that yang and blake survived. it’s not played as a proud or happy moment. it just sucks so much that they had to go through this ordeal and it’s pitiable that he chose to waste his life on this. blake breaks down crying and all she and yang can do for a moment is cling to each other.

like. -> “there’s no cause to celebrate/another soul consumed by hate and spite/another destroyed life/there’s no pleasure, there’s no joy/it’s just the story of a boy who lost his way/into shadows strayed/he’ll see the light of day/nevermore”

he chose over and over and over again to be cruel, letting his anger rule him. chose to be vindictive, chose to pursue vengeance over justice. chose to hurt people. every time he was offered an out, he refused to take it and brutally punished the people who gave him second chances. sienna, blake, yang. in the end, he left blake and yang with no other choice but to kill him before he killed them. but… the narrative still mourns the person he could have been, if he’d made better choices, if the world had been kinder to him.

there is no question that blake and yang made the right call. they did everything they possibly could to avoid killing him, and they had every right to defend themselves when he refused to stop.

BUT,

it’s sad that they were forced to do that. it still weighs on blake’s conscience as a terrible ordeal and a choice she never wants to have to make again. because killing another person—no matter the circumstances—is horribly traumatizing. and that’s why the narrative refuses to frame his death as a triumphant moment. (the same thing happens with jacques’ murder in V8: it’s sudden and shocking and unjust and there is zero satisfaction in watching him die. and it’s terribly unfair to weiss, who specifically chose not to leave him to die. rwby is a story where every life matters and every death is sad.)

great character. the final battle between him and blake/yang is done really well and one of my favorite fights in the show mostly bc it brings the foiling between him and yang into really sharp focus. “what does she even see in you?” is such a raw fucking line because the things blake sees in yang are exactly the things she once saw in adam: he’s so consumed by his obsession his vengeance his spiteful rage, he’s strayed so far from the person he was that he can’t even recognize her when she’s staring him in the face.

i do think that when adam was 16-17 at the very start of his character short, he was genuinely a lot like yang. angrier and more aggressive, because his mentor encouraged him to be that way, but i think his ideals were true and his commitment to the cause of his people was genuine.

he was only a kid the first time he killed someone—sixteen, seventeen, about the right age to be enrolling in one of the huntsmen academies. and i truly do not think he meant to kill that man; he saw a dangerous person running towards his already-wounded leader with a gun and reacted. and this?

this is a lot.

no matter the circumstances, killing another person is traumatizing. after this happens, adam slowly straightens up and sheathes his weapon, then just stands there frozen, staring at the body, until the other assailants make noise and he startles. his face falls when ghira says “that wasn’t necessary.” he’s slow to turn around, but he does, and he listens quietly to what ghira has to say to him. he didn’t mean to. he can’t be older than seventeen. he is in shock—he doesn’t know how to react, how to feel, and like any teenager would, he looks to trusted adults for guidance. (much like yang looks to ironwood and qrow after she hurts someone by mistake.) ghira starts to scold him (not ideal), but sienna cuts him off and calls adam a hero, and then everybody starts to fucking cheer; “that was amazing!!”

this moment, while adam was reeling and unsure, this is when adam desperately needed to hear from an adult in the middle. ghira is right that using lethal force wasn’t necessary; sienna is also right that adam likely saved ghira’s life by taking action. what adam really needed to hear was “you were right to take action, but this man was not such a grave threat that he needed to die. why did you react the way you did?”—not to be scolded or lionized, but to be treated like a teenager who made a bad choice for a good reason and given support and understanding so that next time, he would know what to do better.

instead he got swamped with praise and the came away from this experience having learned that Killing Humans is Cool and Awesome and Heroic, Actually.

(i have a secondary thought here that the white fang’s fatal weakness—under both ghira and sienna—is treating children like adults. if adam had been an adult when this happened, he wouldn’t have been so dependent on his mentor and his leader to guide his reaction and an adult would be better equipped to hold “that wasn’t necessary” and “he saved your life” as non-contradictory ideas. similarly, ghira and kali respecting blake’s decision to stay with the now expressly militant white fang when they left sounds great until you remember that she was twelve years old at the time and then they didn’t contact her in any way for the next five years. it is… probably not a coincidence that adam’s splinter group skews young.

not that teens can’t be good activists but good activism does require pragmatism and emotional maturity and an understanding of nuance, and if you throw a teenager into a high-stress organization where they’re involved in often-violent direct action and give them zero guidance beyond “here’s how to fight!” because they’re assumed to have adult-level maturity and critical reasoning, then… yeah, you’re going to end up with an extremism problem. the kids are not going to just magically know the difference between tactical violence and violent revenge.)

anyway, i really like his character short. i think the narrative is very sympathetic to the boy he used to be and the thread of sienna inadvertently enabling and reinforcing his violent tendencies is interesting. my sense is that in the beginning she sort of used adam to score a point against ghira in their clash of opinions over the direction of the white fang, and later made a habit of being overly indulgent with him and turning a blind eye to his excessive violence—like.

during the fight in the SDC building, sienna rips through the AKs just as ruthlessly as he does, but once the human security personnel arrive, her tactics immediately change. she uses her whip to snag a man’s gun and yank it out of his hands, flicks bullets away, disarms, trips, disarms, trips, disarms, trips. the only time she uses the bladed dart, it’s to disable her opponent’s weapon. meanwhile adam is hacking and slashing behind her. she stops him when he moves to kill an man who’s disarmed and on the ground. faced with living opponents, sienna holds back and fights strictly to disarm. adam is not like that, and she knows it and presumably doesn’t approve—she doesn’t kill anyone herself, and intervenes to stop him from killing—but it’s also clear that there were never like. Consequences. she never took him to task for crossing these lines. as his leader she had a responsibility to do so, but she kept letting it slide until it was too late.

(tbh i think the biggest disappointment i feel regarding her death is well never find out why she cut adam so much slack. did she want to believe he was better than that? had she known him for so long that her memories of what he was like as a teenager blinded her to the adult he was becoming? was it that she found him too useful or realized he was too popular to chastise, finding herself in the same trap she once sprung on ghira? did she, like blake, convince herself it was just “accidents” or “getting carried away” and ignore the warning signs that it was a deliberate pattern? was she like the albains, fully aware that he was dangerous and unstable but confident that she could control him? there’s so many possible reasons she might have had and i think it’s unfortunate that her motives and her side of the relationship didn’t get explored at all.)

also this is stupid and doesn’t matter really but he’s not a fucking bull 😭 those are goat horns. he’s a goat. A GOAT!!

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

Continued from this post, Part 3 of my discussion of Essek Thelyss in the context of real-world espionage. This time: what happens to espionage assets in the long run? Do they break contact, and why? What might have been in store for Essek?

At the treaty meeting Essek tells Ludinus to his face that he wants no further contact with the Assembly, not even to learn what the Assembly discovers via their own beacon. He’s far from the first asset to try to sever their relationship, and it ends in one of three ways: they don’t manage to break contact, they break contact but voluntarily return, or (rarest of all) they end the relationship permanently. 

Most attempts don’t go beyond option 1, because intelligence agencies are not in the business of respecting their assets’ choices. Handlers are skilled in keeping the upper hand in their asset relationships and will take any further opportunity to gain leverage by compromising the asset. For instance they’ll often pay for information even if the asset hasn’t requested it, because money changing hands makes it far harder for an asset to frame their activities positively to their own side if they attempt to confess (”You expect us to believe they were blackmailing you when you got $10,000 to hand over the secret manual?” etc.) And when push comes to shove most people aren’t willing to accept the severe punishments for espionage. An asset’s threat to confess is more likely a negotiating ploy than a serious option.

Some assets, especially nervous or ego-driven ones, get the carrot: the KGB did a strong line in awarding secret medals to convince them they were doing important, well-regarded work and that the KGB would protect them - not an empty reassurance, as highly-placed moles like Aldrich Ames warranted elaborate ops involving double and triple agents to avert suspicions. And some assets get the stick: the handler tightens the screws using whatever leverage they’ve gained, implies that they’re already “too far in to go back,” or gives some time for those who were blackmailed into spying to think about the consequences of exposure.[1]

Those who get as far as option two, breaking it off and later returning, are usually driven away by fear but back by finances. Fantasy spies have all sorts of motives but in real life the majority are in it for the money. Assets, as you might imagine, make bad choices. About half start selling secrets just to stave off massive debt from overspending and poor financial decisions (the rest feel underpaid.) So even if these assets stop temporarily, the circumstances that drove them to espionage in the first place are still very much present. In these cases all a handler has to do is shrug and say, “You know where to find us.” Infamous FBI mole Robert Hanssen broke off contact with his Russian handlers when the Soviet Union collapsed, fearing he might get outed in the chaos, but linked back up with them just 10 months later when, surprise surprise, he needed some cash.

And then there are the rare handful who stop completely. There’s a bit of survivor(?) bias here because anyone who passes along secrets, breaks off the relationship before being caught, and manages to get away with it is by definition someone we don’t know about. Those who do manage to break contact long-term are usually able to do so because they left the situation that gave them access to interesting secrets and therefore the controlling agency determined they were no longer a useful resource and not worth pursuing. But even if an asset stops working for an agency, they’re far from forgotten - and far from off the hook. Names and evidence of their espionage would be kept on file for potential use as blackmail, leverage in state-to-state negotiations, or expendable material to prove bona fides in ops involving fake defectors or triple agents. A surprising number of spies are caught/outed years after their espionage ended.

Very few assets permanently sever their espionage relationships the hard way: making a genuine confession and accepting punishment. But it’s not unheard-of, especially if the espionage was brief and the asset believes the damage can be repaired. In 1989 Army signals analyst Michael Peri disappeared from his post in West Germany along with a portable computer containing numerous classified documents. Eleven days later he returned to his previous post with the computer and voluntarily confessed to the theft and sort-of defection to East Germany. When interrogated, Peri - who had been a model soldier until that point - said he felt overworked and underappreciated by his superiors, though he couldn’t entirely explain his decisions either to leave or to return (a sexy female Russian agent might also have been involved). He received a 30-year sentence.

Marine Clayton Lonetree, a guard stationed at the US Embassy in Moscow in 1985, was blackmailed over an affair to hand over details on the embassy compound for a year, but his conscience finally got the better of him and he confessed in late 1986. Being a Marine he faced the very real prospect of death by firing squad, but the court martial ended up giving him a 30-year sentence. It was later reduced to 15 after the Marine Corps Commandant wrote a letter to the Navy Secretary on his behalf attributing the young Marine’s actions not to treason or greed but to loneliness, naivety, and poor judgement.[2]

Going back to Essek’s case, he’s already in the minority of espionage assets because he doesn’t want money in return for the secrets he passes along; though the knowledge the Assembly promises him in return fulfills a similar desire, Essek doesn’t need that knowledge to pay off the equivalent of debt or to maintain his lifestyle. He has no pressures at home that force him to continue spying. With the beacons returned, the fall guys in place, and their tracks seemingly covered, he tells Ludinus that all he wants is to be rid of the entire affair. That rules out option one (he sincerely means to cut the Assembly off) and option two (he won’t be driven back by need.) 

Essek is also in an unusual position in that the worst of the damage he caused is repairable - just return the beacons.[3] A secret, once compromised, can’t be un-compromised. If an asset hands over a cipher machine they can’t fix the situation by stealing the cipher machine back; the foreign agency they sold it to has already studied the machine and learned its secrets, meaning it’s now effectively useless. But returning the beacons restores what the Kryn lost. While keeping dunamancy secret gives the Kryn a tactical edge, and I’m sure the Dynasty would prefer to keep the magical soulstones of their elite hidden from their long-time rival, the beacons don’t need to be secret to work. Essek therefore has a much better chance than most to simply repair the damage, cut off his handlers, and try to forget the whole affair ever happened. He might even think that, now that the Assembly has their own beacon, they’ll have no further use for him and will just leave him alone.

But from the Cerberus Assembly's perspective, this fruit still has plenty of juice in it and they risk nothing by continuing to squeeze. Now that they have their own beacon Essek’s knowledge becomes even more valuable. He has access to hundreds of years of dunamantic spellcrafting - and more importantly the rite of consecution, since the Assembly were probably after beacons in the first place to make themselves immortal. If Essek is caught, it’s treason for him, but the Assembly doesn’t suffer; they were doing it for the good of the Empire, learning about dunamancy to help the war effort. So if he refuses to keep spying voluntarily for the Assembly, they’ll just have to find another way to motivate him. 

As part of evaluating Essek before recruitment, Assembly operatives would have noted that he’s, well, highly motivated to save his own skin. Ludinus’ goal therefore becomes to make Essek see further espionage as the only way to stay alive. So instead of confronting Essek then and there, Ludinus shrugs and goes, “Okay. Sure.” Then he activates the Volstruckers, maybe leaks a little info to the Dynasty about a traitor in their midst, and sets up Essek to stew in fear, feeling isolated and attacked from both sides - targeted by the Assembly for his defiance, under suspicion from the Dynasty, unable to ask for help because of his crimes. Ludinus sits back and waits for Essek to re-establish contact on his own. Of course Ludinus didn’t know that the M9 had confronted Essek and gotten him to confess, making a return to spying impossible even if he tried.

While Essek’s motives revolve around ego, frustration, and rebellion, his situation is more like those of people who end up defecting because they’re unable to pursue their careers or live as they want to back home. He has virtually no social/family ties to leave behind, no loyalty to Dynasty authority, and no religious fervor to defend the Luxon, while the Assembly promises him the company of like minds and free rein in his experiments. Assuming no intervention by the M9 I think Essek would have ended up defecting to the Cerberus Assembly. If he did it early enough in the story he might have even joined the Volstruckers to complete the narrative foil transformation.

If the crew had confronted him at the treaty but not offered mercy I think he would have defected purely out of fear, thinking the Assembly were the only people who could protect him from both the Dynasty and the M9. He was already on edge watching the guy he'd set up to take the fall getting walked away in chains and with the Assembly's Wind of Aeons ship right there it would be the ideal time to make the move. Assuming the treaty confrontation went as it did (the crew makes him confess but lets him live) but the M9 hadn’t shown up in Eiselcross, Essek would likely have fled the outpost and gone into hiding in a bid to outrun his crimes (and probably gotten caught two weeks later given how awful he was at being “Dezrain Thane.”)

Essek is far from the first recruited asset to regret what they did even as they kept doing it. Those who can sell out their nation and not feel even a pang of guilt are thankfully thin on the ground. Most start off doing what seems to be a favor for a friend - or accepting a favor from a friend who wants to help with their “financial difficulties” - and end up so deep they can’t see any way forward other than to keep handing over secrets. He’s one more in a long line of those who compromised information out of frustration, especially through the appeal to shared professional interests (that’s how industrial assets tend to be recruited.)

But he’s also in a much better place to make up for it than most assets. Since he primarily compromised property, not secrets, returning said property can (somewhat, mostly) repair the damage done, which goes a long way towards buying leniency from the powers that be. And now I’m realizing that this post actually needs one final part, which is: how do you try someone for espionage, and should you charge them with it in the first place?

[1]  While spy dramas love sexy blackmail, and handlers will happily collect it to leverage against a balky asset, it works far less often in reality as a main reason for espionage. Social penalties for extramarital affairs pale before actual legal penalties like the death sentence for treason. On the other hand, those with foreign relatives are sometimes coerced by threats against those relatives.

[2]  Lonetree’s case for leniency got a boost in 1994 when Aldrich Ames was finally caught and some serious breaches of embassy security that had been attributed to Lonetree were found to be Ames’ work instead. In 1996 Lonetree was released after having served 9 years total.

[3] Although I did just think of a really messed-up Cerberus Assembly plan: consecute a handful of completely loyal Volstruckers, kill them, and send the beacons back so said agents will be reborn in the Dynasty and work to undermine it from within. How fucked up would that be?? Campaign 3 plot hook anyone?

(This accidentally turned into a series on Essek & IRL espionage: Parts 1, 2, 3, 4)

[flashflashhundredyarddash]

batkids and their relationships with their siblings headcanons. under read more because this got fucking LONGGG

dick

dick is the eldest so he doesnt want to bog down his younger siblings with his problems, but if he DOES, he tends to talk to jason about it

dick and cass start to really begin to bond when Cass shows up to dicks gymnastics class for 3rd-6th graders and then cass shows up all the sixth graders and they get frozen yogurt after lmao

dick and tim are Very much thick as thieves. tim is very much like bruce on the Emotional Suppression scale, so dick just really wants to make sure his little brother is safe and happy ALL the time

Duke and Damian are the only two really permanently at the manor anymore, so when dick drops by he tries to do something with both of them. duke frantically zoom calls dick every other week to help him with his his trig homework. dick shows up to dukes high school graduation with literally the BIGGEST SIGN

everyone insists damian is dicks favorite but he does actually genuinely love all his siblings equally, his relationship with damian is just Very different from the others because of the age gap and being dami's primary caretaker for a year. dick babies dami every chance he gets

jason

would sell Dick to satan for One corn chip

him and cass don't have the greatest start to their relationship because cass is very much Against Killing so it takes a while for jason to warm up to her and earn her trust. now, though, jason is competing with steph by showing cass all the classic American Teenager things she missed out on. steph is currently winning but jason is like 98% positive a crunch wrap from taco bell is going to push him over the edge

tim and jason are currently competing over who can solve the most cases in a month. tim is winning. that won't last long.

jason Loves to Big Brother duke its so embarrassing. duke will get out of school and go to his car and jason is SITTING IN THE FRONT SEAT FRANTICALLY WAVING TO GET DUKES ATTENTION. JASON THAT IS MY CAR. signal has one (1) mission with arsenal and arsenal goes hey did you ask that girl to homecoming yet and duke is like I DON'T EVEN KNOW YOU.

Damian is proof that Actually, Little Brothers are Pests. Jason fully believes that he was brought back from the dead PURELY to torment damian and he will fulfill this mission at any cost

cassandra

it actually really upset her when Dick didn't accept her at first. she knows her other siblings really adore dick so his lack of trust was really disheartening. it takes dick a while but once he Actually Accepts that cass is going to be a permanent part of their life and oh, wow, dick you really hurt her feelings he really hyperfocuses on bonding with cass for a couple of months which definitely improves their relationship

she really likes jason!! their relationship doesn't start well but because he's close with steph and tim who are cass's top two favorite people to exist ever, cass is like well i GUESS ill hang out with him more. jason is fun to talk to because he always tries his best to explain jokes and give context to what people are talking about (also tim took her to taco bell already but she didn't tell jason she just wanted to hang out)

cass LOVES tim. they just click okay. tim always seems to know when to give her space and when to push and come closer. Tim's "guest room" is just her room lets be real. tim and cass occasionally get mistaken for twins and Cass Loves it.

duke makes cass listen to metal once and cass loses. her. damn. mind. they bond over music a lot because they both Love Music to a degree the others in their family don't.

damian!! damian is her little brother!!! dami isn't As Hostile to cass at first because he is 100% aware cass has the edge in fighting and respects her. cass likes all of his instagram posts and they have a snapchat streak going

tim

tim Loves dick, dick was his first sibling!! he had Very strong hero worship when he first met dick but it mellowed out when tim got older because wow 17 is really not that cool and mature lol. tim has an open invitation to dick's apartment which he does occasionally take advantage of. tim has more than once scared the shit out of wally when wally comes over and wally is convinced they're being robbed (HA) for half a second. i mean. he's not wrong.

listen. tim understands that forgiving the guy who tried to kill you would be a Struggle for some people and it was! definitely! but also at least he can trust jason to, uh, be open about if he doesn't like tim. which is not an assurance he has with other people. so if the guy who tried to kill him tells him tim is cool now then like. maybe tim isn't that bad or annoying a person? also jason arrested a whole gang and won the cases competition but then it created a power vacuum that the whole batfam had to clean up the rest of the month. thanks, jason.

tim LOVES cass. you know how most of the time theres this empty feeling inside you and you just kind of ignore it because you don't know what will fix it or if you do, you know you can't fix it? cass makes that empty feeling feel a little less empty. they just click. tim always tries to travel with cass whenever she leaves gotham.

tim and duke. Tim is actually the sibling who duke goes to whenever he has questions he doesn't want to ask bruce or alfred about, like, life or vigilante-ing or school or college or whatever and Tim is always like yes!! i love Giving Advice and Solving Problems!! tim and duke and jason fill out their college applications together.

tim and damian. LMAO. ROUGH START THAT'S ALL ILL SAY. at some point alfred goes like fuck it. family therapy. and tim and dami are PISSED. tim and damian get along best when they have a common enemy to work against. their relationship gets much better when damian is older and they actually talk about their feelings like emotionally stunted bats. despite how bad their relationship was, tim will ALWAYS protect damian

duke

very much intimidated by dick at first. dick is so much older and has his own job and friends and life and is very much AN ADULT. dick likes to take duke out to do lots of cool stuff (paintball, lasertag, tech exhibitions, concerts, etc). also, dick PERSONALLY introduced duke to superman and is dating THE FLASH. 10/10 awesome big brother.

was intimidated by jason for 0.5 seconds before jason actually opened his mouth and started speaking. jason is literally. So Embarrassing. which is weird because nobody else really seems to feel that way about jason but duke knows he's 100% in the right here. like yeah jason is also An Adult and does Adult Stuff but he's also at the manor like every other weekend???? and he always complains about bruce but always seems to be in the same room bruce is in????? like okay jason. they bond over literature!! jason and duke and alfred will spend literal hours talking about books and duke loves it. duke is the only one who doesn't think jason is funny and jason gets so upset about it lmao.

cass has this one week where she gets really into photography and by virtue of being nearby (and also not nocturnal), duke becomes her victim subject. duke prints out all the pictures and hangs them up in his room (his favorite is one he took when he stole the camera and took a really bad selfie of them together).

tim is closest in age to duke so duke tends to hang around with him a lot. tim introduced duke to his young justice friends and duke is like yes!!! meta-friends!!!! tim really helps duke out with his powers because tim is always like wow i wonder if your powers would work if we did This? can you see farther than other people? is your visible spectrum of light different than other humans? Bruce does the same thing but bruce is boring about it lol.

damian and duke live in the same house and will be in the same room and just send each other social media posts back and forth. they follow each other on instagram and will, OCCASIONALLY, make tik toks together because they're tik tok fiends. each of his siblings have visited his parents once or twice but damian routinely comes with him.

damian

damian gets a special bullet point to say that it took him. forever to come around to the idea of having siblings. he very much believed that he was Bruce's Blood Son and everyone else were just tagalongs or allies. it took him ages to acknowledge that dick, jason, tim, and cass were his siblings, so when duke came and like a week later damian was like Ah, Yes, this is my brother Thomas everyone else was like dude wtf

listen. LISTEN. Obviously. Richard is very highly skilled. and also Father values him highly. and also Richard will listen to Damian complain about his schoolmates. and also Richard is much more patient with Damian than other members of his family. listen....,,, (all this to say damian kind of fucking adores dick lmaooooo this kid).

Todd is kind of unbearable but damian has been informed this is both a normal feeling when it comes to Todd and also big brothers. damian was an only child for ten years so yes, Father, if Todd attempts to tickle me I WILL break his fucking nose. yes i WILL put money in the swear jar but I want you to know i don't regret it. they always try to sneak up on each other but mostly fail.

DRAKE!!! but no lol once damian grows up and is like I Apologize for attempting to murder you it was wrong and you are just as much a son to Father as I am tim is like UGH i guess its cool since ur being so emotionally mature and all. also im 2 for 5 on siblings trying to murder me so im definitely going to win trauma bingo and damian is like i take it back you are insufferable. When Will My Older Siblings Stop Joking About Their Trauma.

CASS!!! listen. cass is cool. Cass Gets It. They have a special Bond. also damian really likes it whenever cass is home because 1) he gets to hang out and do something cool with cass and 2) he feels significantly safer with cass in the house because Nobody will be able to hurt any of their family if Cass is there. ALSO he tries to call her cain but everyone is like DONT DO THAT and he doesn't want to call her wayne bcus theyre ALL wayne (dick adds it on as a middle name but also Richard John Wayne West-Grayson is just. the lamest name ever so dick needs to reconsider it before his upcoming nuptials)((dick will not reconsider it except maybe whether grayson-west would work better)) and so he tries cassandra but cass is like :) call me cass and damian is like cassandra is more formal and respectful and cass is like :) and finally damian just has to give in.

Duke! him and duke actually live together so they get the Most Bonding Time and have a bunch of inside jokes as a result. (is it bad i wanted to laugh because inside jokes... joker... i'll see myself out). they're eating breakfast together (and also alfred sits with them IM NOT A MONSTER ALFIE'S LIKE 70 NOW OKAY) and duke laughs and bruce is like what are you laughing at, son? and duke is like oh damian just showed me this funny meme and then he shows the phone to bruce and bruce grabs it (both the boys groan) and after WAY TOO LONG is like "i don't get it" and so now duke and damian have to try and explain the comedic intricacy of bob's burgers

[shihalyfie]

With Digimon Ghost Game starting, I thought about how different it is from previous Digimon series, though it's still undoubtedly Digimon... and then I realized all Digimon series are like that. So I wonder, what do you think sets each Digimon series apart from the rest?

I think both Ghost Game but also the reboot have been a wake-up call for people in terms of realizing that likes, dislikes, and tastes are subjective, and I think it's especially important in terms of this fanbase that is so obsessed with this idea you can objectively rank things by quality -- especially when each series is often deliberately trying to have its own identity, so it's arguably apples and oranges -- and forcing this idea of what's Good and Not Good on everyone else (especially when there's a nasty double standard phenomenon where Adventure and often Tamers get to be so impervious to criticism that people conveniently forget they're perfectly capable of being scrutinized for a lot of things they're weaker in). Very frustrating to see everyone who likes less popular series treated as if they have to accept that they like a "badly written series" for some things and everything else is a guilty pleasure, which I find to be incredibly dumb.

The most important take-home here is that the fact each series has its own identity is always going to be the main factor in what makes it "good" or not to you, not some arbitrary bar of comparison that's based on some narrow-minded view of "good writing" (which is usually unreasonably based on Adventure). For instance, the reason why 02 is so important to me is because (see below), to me, it has the highest amount of meaningful, important life lessons and themes that it wanted its audience to remember, to the point that I frankly do not care about where the plot goes in comparison. That may not be the case for everyone else, and that's fine, but should my tastes be called unreasonable for that? I think we're also coming to realize that because of Adventure (and kind of 02)'s precedent, so many people have been judging series purely by how intimate their individual character development style is, but this is unfair because Adventure and 02's ridiculous level of character depth to psychological detail is extremely unusual and unrealistic to expect of others; Adventure and 02 only achieved this by practically considering the plot utterly subservient to its character arcs, and it's arguably why they have some of the weakest "plots" in this franchise. It's so bizarre that I can see character development in other Digimon series that outstrips even most kids' anime on the market, but it's not as much as Adventure's so apparently it's bad. And, moreover, as it turns out, some people have priorities other than characterization; just because Adventure had that as its strength doesn't mean that's the only thing anyone should care about. Is the plot fun? Is there a meaningful message besides characters (also important to me)? Do you vibe with the tone being dark, or being silly? How much do you care about resourceful usage of Digimon lore? That kind of thing. Everyone is different, so that's why everyone has their own priorities. If you’re someone who prefers darker content, you may not realize that writing good and well-timed comedy is actually a very, very difficult task, especially when said comedy simultaneously has meaning (in comparison, it’s surprisingly easy to write “dark” but shallow content).

I think it's fair to like every Digimon series for its own thing, depending on your personal tastes. I can't speak for everyone, but my impressions are that it has to do with the following:

Adventure: Significantly easier to understand than 02 due to its more straightforward plot, and focus on individual character development ("individualism" being a strong point here). In terms of characters, it goes a lot into some very real social problems (the divorce around the Ishida and Takaishi families and the pressures surrounding Jou, for instance) in a very realistic manner. Also, it has that sense of mystique and absurdism to the Digital World that's both whimsical but also mysterious, and while 02 has it too, Adventure's the isekai story that has it the most.

02: The first is its focus on the importance of human relationships and the compelling group dynamic unparalleled in this franchise, and the second is its important themes and life lessons that I think are some of the strongest in said franchise. I have a whole tag for the ridiculous amount of nuance packed into every detail and dialogue line for this series, and I think every time I've rewatched an episode I've learned something new about it because there are so many things that clearly wanted to be said in each line. The entire series is basically an unpacking of the feelings of insidious self-hatred and the crushing feeling of being subject to society's expectations, and ones that are so deep-seated that you often don’t even have a single answer to how to unpack it (for instance, Miyako hardly has a tragic single event in her backstory, but she says and does a lot of things that'll be painfully familiar to those who have experienced chronic anxiety). Almost every plot point can be said to connect to each character arc in some way, and the mantras for appreciating and treasuring your own life and living life the way you will make this, in my opinion, the strongest series in terms of speaking to those who struggle with this kind of existential crisis for reasons of depression or otherwise. (Oops, I think I went too passionate about this; my biases are obvious...)

Tamers: I think it forms an interesting study and unpacking of the kinds of things you take for granted in Digimon or the monster-collecting genre in general, and an examination of how they'd work in a real-world context (although 02 had a focus on daily life, it didn't quite merge the Digimon and the real world factors until very late in the series). Also, probably the second highest on "hard sci-fi" (the only one that outstrips it is probably Appmon, but Appmon has a very different, more simplified take on it).

Frontier: A series that lies somewhere between Adventure's scale of individualism and 02's scale of group dynamic, and one more discussing the feeling of having your heart hardened from being an outcast, and what it takes to accept the idea of opening yourself up to others again. Recommended for those who like transforming hero and magical girl stories, too. From the Digimon perspective, also the one with the most detailed and consistent Digital World mythos.

Savers: I think this is the series that most drives home "life is complicated" (i.e. there isn't a single mastermind behind everything) in the most tasteful manner, because while it drives home the point that you can't just simplify everything into a good side and a bad side, some bad things really are evil (hi, Kurata), and it doesn't change the fact that everyone's responsible for cleaning up the fallout. The portrayal of the evils of government bureaucracy is probably the most realistic out of any of these series.

Xros Wars: For those who like fun, most of all! For those who like seeing Digimon finally get more of the spotlight and individuality since so much of it had been geared and biased towards the humans prior to this. For those who really like worldbuilding, and, after all, this is called Xros Wars, so it's interesting to see shakeups on the usual formulas in the form of the different factions and their priorities. Hunters is very different in tone, but I do think they have some of these aspects in common; that said, it being closer to having single partnerships brings it a bit closer in line to conventional Digimon partnerships, and it also has more of a picture of daily life. Also, as much as Tagiru is probably your-mileage-may-vary since he's not exactly a very nice kid (I get it if you don't vibe with that), which may also rub those hoping for not nice kids to become nice the wrong way, I do have to say I find him to be one of the funniest characters in this entire franchise, and you'd be surprised how hard good comedy is to write.

Appmon: Probably one of the strongest theme narratives besides 02, since it has a very clear and obvious theme about the importance of kindness in a world where technology is dominating and we're almost encouraged to strip the feelings out of everything. (Bonus for more straightforward plot than Adventure or 02 while still retaining a lot of its elements in terms of how to characterize them.) Also the first series to be speculative about the near future instead of taking place around the time it airs, and it's very obvious it wants to provide important and necessary commentary about what we need to do in the incoming era, especially as a lot of what it has to say becomes increasingly relevant.

Reboot: For those who like Digimon mythos and null canon -- this is probably the only series to show it off in this level of detail -- and the kind of cool action fights that would usually be saved for the climax in prior series (and animated in much more intimate detail with battle choreography than prior series would have). There are a lot of people into this franchise who felt like it genuinely was not making enough use of its Digimon roster and its potential because it kept going back to the old standbys (especially Adventure-based ones), so it was a huge relief for that crowd to see attention finally being paid.

[blaiddydbrokeit]

Welcome back to the asks, here's Part III - Sylvain and the Goddess Tower. A minor disclaimer - Sylvain is my weakest link when it comes to analyses of the trio mentioned, so there may be misinterpretations or overlooked nuances.

As usual, I'll put it under a cut.

So here's the thing. Sylvain happened to catch Byleth on their way to the Goddess Tower, and followed after, only making his presence known when Byleth is already at their destination. On the one hand, some might think it's creepy that he wants to know just who they were meeting, but I have a feeling that he was hoping they would be alone - which he does later admit.

He doesn't hesitate to open the conversation the moment Byleth questions his choice of words - "tryst". This is an intentionally distinct choice of words to probe for any romantic undertones in Byleth's reason to be at the tower to begin with, but he isn't surprised when Byleth questions it (he has a neutral portrait here), and is surprisingly nonchalant about the manner in which he proceeds with skimming the legend to them.

Sylvain has a much more varied progression for this conversation in comparison to Felix and Dimitri. At this point, Byleth can either counter-probe Sylvain's solo presence, to which he does admit his curiosity and relief to find them alone, playing at his ulterior motive to flirt. Alternatively, Byleth can directly ask about Sylvain's lover, which is normal given that by that point, it is strongly established that he is a skirt-chaser, and it skips to expressing his interest in them.

Of course, Byleth doesn't really fall for anything of the sort and rejects him, either quoting that it was moving along too quickly (who knew Byleth liked to take a relationship slow?) or that Sylvain was still untrustworthy when it came to romance. He immediately tries to laugh it off, but he doesn't backtrack. That's one of the differences between him and Dimitri - Dimitri would fluster and backtrack, if he even had the guts to flirt with intention. One of the important things about Sylvain is that he, like his father, does somewhat build a wall around themselves - but they differ in that Matthias builds a wall that keeps people at a distance because he fears losing them (much like Felix, actually), while Sylvain builds a wall that hides his real feelings behind facades of being unbothered and carefree.

Though, he does begin to let down his guard when he expresses his disappointment in his own methods (sad portrait), because it basically dug his love life its own grave when he came to find someone he genuinely wanted to settle down with by having a marred track record of being untrustworthy with feelings. However, he quickly perks up at his own realization that trust can be rebuilt if he puts in the effort to be genuine about it, and his first action is not to redouble on the flirting, but to politely offer to escort Byleth back to the ball.

Should Byleth accept, he does play up the flirting a little bit out of habit, but is extremely sensitive to the boundaries that Byleth set even without being explicitly told - Byleth doesn't really want to be hit on or fawned over with excessive familiarity, he shuts up as soon as he realizes he's toeing the line and plays it off a joke, but is happy that they would allow him to escort their return.

However, should Byleth refuse, he doesn't pressure them and expresses concern that they might get cold, but once again, out of habit follows up with a suggestive remark featuring the smile portrait. He does more explicitly realize that he's once again toeing the line, and appears to genuinely apologize, before he leaves without regret or resentment - as indicated by his smiling portrait.

So, some afterthoughts as I have included with the Felix and Dimitri goddess tower analyses: I do think that it really shows off how his social shield works in keeping up the appearances of being socially blithe, especially now that we have context of his father's manner of coping with loss by socially and emotionally withdrawing, with the information from Three Hopes. (I personally consider Three Hopes to be a separate continuity that isn't meant to fit perfectly with Three Houses, but to provide pieces that guide us in assembling a more complete picture of each other.)

If anything, it actually is a little easier to pick out moments where he is being genuine because the way he emotes does change ever so slightly - when he flirts, it's almost always done with the smile wink portrait with the shocked portrait being inserted wherever rejection is played straight as a gag, but in all other instances that such cheek isn't warranted, he tends to be very steady in using the neutral portrait where he still does smile, interspersed with other portraits depending on the context.

[mmikmmik2]

My thoughts about what One was like, and some differences between him and One-One. These aren't theories; they're a combination of speculation and a wishlist of tropes that I think could be fun in this context.

One thought of himself as equipment essential to the functioning of the train. He didn't completely understand that he is a person, with a personality, who exists in relation to other people. He couldn't think outside of the very limited role he'd been playing for his whole existence. One-One has almost no self-awareness and also struggles with this idea, but he's made progress since being One (mostly because of Tulip and Atticus - if someone had picked him up and gone from the snow car directly to the engine and immediately plugged him back in, he would still be a lot more emotionally stunted).

One saw no reason to ever interact with denizens. He's a little more aware of their emotional needs and social lives than his own (because he, um, made them to have those), but he more or less also thinks of them as part of the train's machinery. Maybe someone like The Cat could convince him that he needs to talk to them about important train matters, but that's it. If a denizen tampered with the train or attacked One, he would have a Steward briskly remove them to another car while scolding them with its prerecorded stock phrases; if they started overpowering the Steward or clearly presented a serious ongoing threat, he would kill them. One-One has also made progress here, but not much. As we've seen, One-One understands denizens have feelings and is willing to offer assistance, but he doesn't understand why they would have an issue with the train's system, and would also be at least willing to consider killing an innocent person to keep that system functioning.

One has many of the same preferences and traits as One-One, but expressed them differently. He likes music and dancing and any car that's like a big amusement park or a playground (but he won't sing or dance or play). He's morbidly fascinated by the idea of death but has an almost childish inability to truly grasp its implications (the one case where sometimes One says something horrifying and it's actually less bad than it seems). His favorite part of the train is passengers getting their exit doors.

One is proud. One-One is carelessly cruel in his arrogance that he can and should "fix" passengers, but lacks deliberate malice, and is even humble in his own way. One is proud. He's a super-advanced artificial intelligence, the crown jewel of an infallible system that sees everything coming. He's slow to accept criticism and advice, but proud of his willingness to take it once he's acknowledged it - adaptability is a virtue on the train. But he won't question his most fundamental assumptions and values (like "the train is good actually") and he is not happy when someone puts up an argument against those beliefs that's too strong to dismiss as them being stubborn and not wanting to take their medicine.

One did not understand that passengers need to come to terms with their life beyond the train. The train uses their memories to identify their issues, but that's just raw data for analysis. Why would they need to engage with their pasts, or their relationships with other people, or Earth society or culture, to fix their problems? The problem is with them. (Yet another area where One-One is starting to make progress, but is still very very very far from Getting It.)

One felt genuine warmth and camaraderie towards Amelia and the disintegration of their friendship was Baby's First Emotional Crisis. They weren't exactly buddies who had good times together, but there was mutual respect and trust and even affection there. One was evil, but Amelia doesn't really talk about that (beyond saying he has no interest in specific passengers) or criticize his actions even when Tulip was yelling at her for hurting him. And she agreed to work for One-One... that's mostly her not having any better ideas and taking the path of least resistance, but she wouldn't have put herself through reading the "all aboard the growth train" speech unless she was sincerely making a good-faith effort to work with him. I think she thinks of herself as having wronged him. He's not a part she broke or an administrator she usurped. He's a friend she betrayed, because he hurt her first. And that's the final missing piece for how some random British lady overthrew a centuries-old AI in the train he controls like it's an extension of himself. He thinks he's an objective computer and not a messy irrational person, he's proud, and he went from having almost no feelings to being emotionally crushed. That's one too many emotional weak points to grapple with during a conflict with someone as sharp and willing to exploit them as Amelia Hughes.

[bloodbenderz]

Can I ask what your season 1 Lok reboot looks like?

this is about 3k words i checked lmfao dont say i didnt warn u

a key part of the whole thing is that korra gets way more perspectives and more experiences representative of like, normal people in republic city bc i think something that really defined what a good avatar aang was was how many people he met and got to know and how he didnt exclusively or even mostly associate w cops and bureaucrats and leaders. so mako and bolin. well first of all their backstories are a little more fleshed out and we get a less black and white view of the “triads” (lol) and mako and bolin’s experiences w them. cuz the show very much does the whole thing of like Criminals Bad but dont worry even tho mako and bolin did commit crimes theyre not Criminals!! so just a little more nuance on the alleged gang problem and the poverty in the city

korra does start out very naive w very black and white ideas (ex. “you guys are CRIMINALS?”) i think a really good way of developing her away from her sheltered naive worldview is putting her in whats clearly an incredibly complicated city w an absolute cesspool of political conflicts, ethnic tensions, the lasting effects of colonization, etc and having her try and understand the needs of “the people” in a more complicated way than “i have to save the good guys from the bad guys” ykwim? and i think the absolute WORST way to do that is what they did. bc we get mako and bolin who could contribute genuinely compelling thematic elements to the story: one parent who was indigenous and one who was from a colonizer background in the decades directly following the end of the war, kids who grew up in poverty apparently without any familial support, and who now are trying to be “respectable” members of society (especially mako). and then most of that is pretty much tossed aside bc asami swoops in w her capitalist dad and her piles of money and the class issue is just never talked about again.

so the way i’d fix all that is like. introducing more, like, normal people. some nonbenders, more workers, more immigrants, etc, to show what daily life is actually like for people. because. we dont know! we dont have any context about whether the nonbender oppression thing is actually an issue bc we dont KNOW any nonbenders with normal lives! and spoiler: the nonbender oppression thing is not an issue. bc it doesnt make historical sense. lok is set 7 decades after the end of the war. that is not by ANY stretch of the imagination long enough to heal from the scars of imperialism, ESPECIALLY not when lok is also set in a settler colonial state. like that fact should have featured PROMINENTLY in the political and social setting! realistically, nonbenders arent an oppressed class, earth and water nation people are, regardless of bending status! as in all settler colonial states, the colonizers and their descendants (in this case fire nation people) retain most of the financial and political capital, leaving the colonized and racialized immigrants (in this case earth kingdom and water tribe people respectively) generally impoverished and politically suppressed. like aside from the fact that theres no way toph would have become a cop, it’s so ridiculous to think that an established privileged class of fire nation colonizers would EVER accept being policed by earthbenders!

imagine how much more nuanced and interesting it would be to set republic city as a remnant of a colonial past still fraught w the violence and tension that colonialism and the associated ideology imposed?? instead of some vague ideas of criminal who wear 1920s outfits and harass shopkeepers think about why extralegal and violent groups like that might form! earth kingdom people trying to push for the reclamation of their land? ethnic groups protecting themselves against corrupt cops? ESPECIALLY w the history that the fire nation has of SPECIFICALLY jailing and killing earthbenders and waterbenders BECAUSE of the potential they have to resist against fire nation imperialism like it just makes no sense at all that earthbenders would be privileged on land that, 70 years ago, they would have been imprisoned on! like these various paramilitary groups falling along these different ideological or ethnic lines, fire nation or earth kingdom or water tribe, pro colonization or anti colonization, pro cop or anti cop, pro immigrant or anti immigrant, and then you juxtapose that w depictions of a govt thats failing to keep this all under control w tenzin trying desperately to keep it together despite the fact that it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the state has no interest in taking the conflicts seriously and would rather just point vague fingers at criminals and gangs? and THEN you bring in korra, who has no idea about any of this and thinks that all its gonna take is kicking some ass every couple days, meeting normal people who offer all kinds of different opinions abt the efficacy of the state and the different violent or nonviolent groups and ideologies clashing in the city and the way all this shit is affecting people’s lives and livelihoods and relationships w other citizens??

theres so much good shit there so many incredible things u could do w that like Where do we go after colonial atrocities? is it possible for a settler colonial state to take revolutionary or indigenous ideas seriously? is liberal reform enough in a state like this? and then all the growth that korra could do going from a simple black and white life about mastering the elements to this messy complicated sociopolitical knot of a city? and all the different kinds of characters u could introduce in this city? like why would u EVER think that the most interesting characters that this story has to offer is a police chief a congressman and a billionaire????

but anyways. that’s what the Setting of my idealized version of lok is. as for the actual plot, it is as follows

it starts out similarly as the show. republic city is MUCH more fraught w political tension and violence and korra knows this but assumes that it’s just a matter of throwing a few gang leaders and corrupt officials in jail. tenzin manages to come see them in the south pole and intends give korra real lessons while he’s there but they receive news of a terrorist attack in republic city only a few days after he gets there so his family has to pack up and leave again.

korra stows away to republic city (katara catches her leaving and gives her blessing im a SUCKER for that moment). she does have a hard time adjusting but she doesn’t do what she did in the show lol the first person she meets in the city is this older woman who works on the docks, directs her to a place where she can eat and gives her a roof to sleep under for the first night. so korra’s first exposure to republic city is just about forming connections w ordinary people like ship workers and a family owned restaurant and people practicing their bending in the park. and by the time she reaches air temple island a day or so later her head is spinning w all this new information and the way that nothing is really what she expected it to be. tenzin gives her his own perspective on everything and pema gives her her own perspective on everything and even those two seem wildly different from all the people she’s already met. and so korra starts to get a kind of outline of the conflicts plaguing the city as extremely complex and a lot more influenced by older ideas of fire nation imperialism and earth kingdom land reclamation than she had any idea about.

mako and bolin are still pro benders but not like. super famous like they are in the show. korra’s picked up a couple friends by now and one of them takes her to a gym where a lot of amateur pro bending (is that an oxymoron? lol) matches happen and thats how she meets mako and bolin and joins their pro bending team. Unfortunately for korra, this gym is run by lin beifong, and also has the distinction of being one of the most notoriously anti settler state organizations in the country. lin beifong is NOT a cop but she runs this gym (and the pro bending league) as a way to offer support to local earth kingdom/water tribe youth, teach self defense skills, a center of community organizing, and sometimes to act as a front to hide revolutionary/combat organizing against the pro fire nation paramilitaries/police force. tenzin is DISTRAUGHT that korra does this and this is where the friction btwn them comes from bc (from tenzin’s perspective) she does things like this without thinking or even fully understanding the context behind them and tenzin will have to deal w the political fallout of the avatar openly aligning herself w a very divisive figure in the community and (from korra’s perspective) tenzin is too unwilling to take sides in a conflict that’s claiming lives and when the state is clearly not taking sufficient steps to protect people well then why the hell shouldnt she align herself w lin beifong, who IS taking steps to protect and support people?

as korra more fully integrates herself into the city and learns more abt how different people think abt everything going on this is where the real exposition abt the equalists begins. they’re a paramilitary group w an ideology thats gaining increasing support among middle/upper class fire nation people, esp nonbenders. on the face theyre abt putting checks on “bender oppression” but really it’s an excuse to persecute and surveil earthbenders waterbenders and airbenders, bc fire nation people have all this leftover fear about benders who arent fire nation Rising Up Against them and these people who r using their Savage Excuse for Bending to terrorize good innocent (fire nation) people. theres all too frequent terrorist attacks that the equalists claim credit for mostly against monuments to earth/water/air nation people and earth/water nation community centers (one like it was the event that forced tenzin back to republic city) but also like the govt doesnt take a lot of these seriously or if they do only a couple people are charged without doing damage to the entire organization

this is also around the time that they meet asami and she becomes part of their friend group. asami likes pro bending but her dad HATES it so she sneaks out to watch matches at lin beifong’s gym (korra says ironically like don’t u know how ~divisive~ that is and asami answers that the only reason its Not divisive is that gyms like beifongs are the only place where nobody recognizes her). and asami alongside korra is also kind of developing a more nuanced perspective on the city that she lives in cuz obviously the only worldview she’s ever been exposed to is her father’s right? and she keeps pushing it off making excuses not to bring mako and bolin and korra around to her house or even not to be seen w them in certain neighborhoods until they call her on it and she’s like Well honestly my dad might do something awful to u! and i dont wanna risk it!

and as time goes on we see more abt asami’s home life like her father’s hyper conservative politics and asami keeps these secrets abt her hobbies and her friends from him but she’s still clearly under his influence and mako bolin and korra r getting increasingly worried abt it cuz like...asami seems to tend to make excuses for him so that she wont have to be drawn into conflict and originally they think its just her being privileged and thats def part of it but the more they find out abt it the more they realize what a tight fucking grip he has on her and the way that like. asami sneaking out once or twice a week is the Only thing she does for herself. and it really starts freaking them out how influential this billionaire is and all the information theyre getting from asami abt what a piece of shit he clearly is. and so that whole plot thing comes about and shows us how deeply embedded these “equalist” ideas are in conservative republic city politics and how much influence theyre actually having in policy making and law enforcement.

asami suffers in the aftermath of this like being forced to truly confront the harm her father is doing both to the city and to herself. and she ends up leaving home when this discovery really breaks. but bc of the deep corruption in govt and police sato isn’t really....dealt with? like this big story breaks and everyones like Oh, My God! Hiroshi Sato Is Funding An Illegal Paramilitary Group! and theres all kinds of inane political discourse about it and he’s arrested but he bails himself out immediately and his finances are examined but he maintains control over them and after a few weeks the gang (bc they Have become close among all this w much less interpersonal drama lol) has to admit that this news story hasnt done what they thought it was going to it hasn’t dealt the equalists a real hit its just given them a very high profile ally

and this is when things really start to ramp up in terms of action like up until now korra’s daily activities are mostly like hanging around in the city w her friends  (which in part entails doing little avatar stuff that people dont feel comfortable going to police with, like Can you help me my ex husband wont pay child support or Please help i got robbed and i really needed that money for rent next month or Help my son keeps skipping school can you talk to him cuz im worried abt him being safe and doing well in school) and pro bending and airbending lessons (which i know ive neglected this part of the story in terms of her whole spiritual/physical conflict but it’s more of a subtle thing like it’s one of tenzin and korra’s more frequent arguments like tenzin says she needs to focus on spirituality and korra asks why she even needs to bc republic city is a sociopolitical problem not a spiritual one) but now the equalist threat seems to really be looming on every level of society like the storyline of equalists preventing pro bending matches happens here and everyones just at a total loss of what to do next. plus increasing and scary rhetoric about tenzin and his family that destroying the last airbenders is necessary to preserving the integrity of the united republic

and so theres the equalist takeover of the city. the people who are mostly resisting this are lin and ragtag group of people who have been resisting colonial rule for a long time (including suyin, who is part of a communist anti colonial community outside the city, because i said so and i think it would be fun), people who have been visiting her gym for years, members of her amateur pro bending league, plus asami and korra and tenzin. korra and tenzin have a sweet moment (bc they do genuinely care abt each other a lot even if their relationship has been marked w a lot of tension and arguing) where tenzin says like you know i think that ive lost focus on the kind of spirituality that might actually help you. korra says what do you mean? and tenzin kind of gestures to where theyre sitting with people buzzing around organizing to take care of innocents and civilians and to fight the equalists and he says this is a kind of spiritual too, isnt it?

and something something plot plot blah blah i havent decided on the details of the plot climax yet but that’s the climax of korra’s character development and what helps her connect w her spiritual side in order to protect the city: the realization that community is its own kind of spirituality. and it kind of represents the real development that i want her to have going from somebody who thinks that the world is divided into criminals and victims and she has to save the victims Into the kind of avatar who understands the people that she’s bound to serve. she becomes an avatar of the people!

and then happy ending lol korra and asami get together lin and tenzin reconcile after years of being at odds the show ends on a hopeful note that the inhabitants of republic city and the united republic as a whole Can move on from the scars of colonialism by reckoning w the remnants of fire nation colonial ideology and reparations to the earth kingdom people whose land this is and destruction of colonial systems that have maintained and enforced colonial violence all these years

[scandeniall]

falling in love

Pairing: sakusa x reader

Warnings: none for once ??? Usual college/aged up

A/n: Yeah it’s almost 3am and I just soewed this out. Idk if it even makes sense but I wanna be in luv with him lol. Also; the references to no limit to you (bc even months later it’s still top 3 one of my fav things I’ve ever written)

Falling in love with sakusa is slow and steady. Its weeks of being an acquaintance and friend of a friend. You were friendly enough, considerate of his space and that he wasn’t the most outgoing guy in the world. Paying attention when he made his way into the conversation as you all sat at a group dinner. It’s the not shoving your social media in his face unlike other people trying to get a highly sought after athlete to follow them.

It’s months of getting to know one another as friends ignoring the tiniest spark whenever you two would meet up for lunch. So tiny, it could’ve been a hallucination. Getting his number one night as the two of you found yourselves outside of a party (one he’d been forced to go to and wanted nothing more than to leave), the rest of your friends having the time of their lives on the dance floor. At that point he’d watched you and got aquatinted enough to know that you were relatively genuine. He’d detected no ulterior motive. Late night texts were his thing. After a busy day of classes and practice, where he’d remembered you’d texted a joke the day before. He’d shoot a quick apology for his poor conversation and offer his own meme as consolidation.

It was just over a year of knowing one another that it’s the first time as friends he felt nervous to hang out with you and couldn’t exactly pinpoint why. It wasn’t a date by any means, just a mutual friend’s birthday dinner. He’d offered to pick you up as an apology for his horrible texting one week in particular citing that it was on the way. It was the first time you’d ridden in a car just the two of you and the way you offered a breathless greeting and apology for taking so long to come out (thus putting you two behind schedule, something that had garnered the tiniest bit of annoyance) had his own breath caught in his throat. He’s not even sure he uttered any real words when you’d complimented him.

It was at the end of the night, seeing you delirious with exhaustion yet as happy as ever, finally having a break from the reality of classes that his crush might’ve started. Your insistence that he texted you when he made it back home safe and the fact that you even stayed up to make sure he did stirred something inside of him.

It was something he’d pushed down. ‘It was only because of the atmosphere’ is what he tried telling himself. Yet he couldn’t shake the way he actually enjoyed hanging out with you in a way that was different from hanging out with Komori or his teammates out of obligation. At some point the two of you began studying together and that unveiled a new layer of yourselves to one another.

You learned that he needed nearly complete silence to study and he had to force himself to not focus on the tiniest muffle coming from your earbuds. He learned that when you began to stress to got extremely fidgety and would have to shoot you a look whenever you clicked your pen one too many times. Sometimes you’d have to break from the libraries harsh fluorescent lighting because he worked best there on the quiet floor. The compromises you made as friends in even school were because there was something oddly comforting about the presence of one another when studying. For you, it was how studying with him actually forced you to be productive and not get distracted like you’d do with your own friends. For him, it was the sheer comfort of having someone there, someone who didn’t try and talk with him and ultimately let him be.

It was early into your third year of college when he finally asked you out. At this point you’d been friends for nearly two years and sitting on feelings for at least a year. It was a simple date, takeout from a place the two of you mutually agreed on and a movie at his place. A clean spot for his first date with you. The date had been nothing special but you’d gotten to truly witness first hand just how meticulous his cleaning habits were in his own personal space.

Of course in the time you’d known him, you’d seen his cleanly nature in action. It’d manifested itself in the the mask he frequently wore and the hand sanitizer he carried often. You’d always noticed the way he glanced at public tables and admired the fact that he was never too shy to ask for a different one at a restaurant when it was obvious that it had hardly been cleaned in between guests.

His desire to immediately wash his dishes, and wipe down the table post dinner caused him to offer you an apology yet you didn’t care. The way you just wordlessly helped him confirmed that his crush was indeed real. When it got chilly, you didn’t feel obligated to cuddle up for warmth and even gratefully accepted the blanket he offered you, separate from his own.

In the nearly two years you’d known Sakusa, neither of you had ever initiated any sort of physical contact. Yes there was the occasional glance of one another’s shoulders to show the other something, but it’d always been platonic. That first date ended with the first of many hugs and a cautious look asking for permission to kiss his cheek.

That first date quickly turned into a second and third and fourth and fifth, the two of you sharing your first kiss sometime between the third and fourth. Itd been after one of his games, one your school had won. You’d waited up for him, the promise of boba on you if he won. Not that he really wanted it, but more so felt drawn to hang out with you. “We’re gonna win”

The kiss was quick and what others would have attributed to being “a moment.” It wasn’t unusual for silence to envelop the two of you. You’d been privy to many comfortable ones after learning to gauge when sakusa needed a moment to cool off from conversation. As the two of you just walked from the shop, drinks in hand and back toward campus he’d paused and asked to try something. Neither of you knew it, but inside both of your nerves were going crazy. The slightest shaking lasted the remainder of your time together unsure if the kiss really happened or if you’d just imagined it.

It’d been two months of dating exclusively before you two became an official couple. The kisses from there became more frequent but for some reason there was the hesitation to jump into anything official. So instead, the two of you spent that time getting to know one another in purely a romantic context.

At some point you’d joked asking when he was going to officially become your boyfriend.

“Do you really want me to?” Itd been a thought that had been at the front of his mind lately. He’d been trying to find the right time to ask as well, getting annoyed at the questions his teammates would ask about you in the locker room. He watched you intently analyzing your reaction to his words as your amused look turned serious than softened before you indicated that you really did. And so he asked and it became official.

It was the way that even after the honeymoon stage had ended that he still felt drawn to you. Even when you bickered about your room not being clean [enough] when he came over or about your annoying own clicking habit, neither of you wanted to bicker with anyone else. Even during your first serious argument that resulted in you admitting that you loved him his heart both dropped and swelled. He’d been the one to fuck up that time, the argument being quite heavy. That night he left with a kiss on your temple and a promise of seeing you soon.

It was the way that the days the two of you didn’t speak felt like hell to him. He was more irritable towards others and found himself stress cleaning whenever he could (something his teammates witnessed as he wiped down his locker for the 50th time in a span of 5 minutes). The usually cautious player may not have performed differently to outsiders, but when he didn’t see you in the crowd during the home game he was off.

Making up felt like a weight had lifted off his heart. He’d swallowed his pride and reached out first. Returning those 3 words for the first time had him feeling like he was on cloud nine.

From then the love between you and Kiyoomi continued to grow. It was never perfect, with the two of you always having something something to work on. But, it was you.

The day he’d revealed to you that he’d signed to MSBY post college was one of his favorite moments. The two of you had been at his hanging out when he’d given you the unmarked envelope. He’d watched your face go from confused to realization to excitement as you read aloud “we welcome your commitment to MSBY Black Jackals-.” It was one of those times he didn’t mind the camera you’d shoved in his face insisting that you were filming a once in a lifetime moment. He’d found himself smiling at the kisses your scattered over his face, ignoring what usually would’ve made him grimace in disgust for the love that overpowered it.

He’d considered the next step in your relationship for a while the question of asking you to move in with him ultimately flowing out of him at graduation. It was the start of a new journey and he wanted you by his side.

Moving in was no easy feat. Learning to live with another person and their habits got to the two of you at times but you were determined to stick it out. Once the initial struggles faded, and you’d gotten into the swing of things he was met with a different kind of love. The love of a domestic life with you. Love was never easy, and potentially being harder when you were young. Yet you’d waited it through. Slowly built a friendship and the foundation of something great. Sakusa has no intentions in proposing anytime soon, yet knew for a fact that he wanted you and you want him.

a/n: i honestly coulve kept going but uh i gotta go to bed and this shit is long nough

[mc-critical]

So I honestly thought of this ask from the Dilruba ask you got that spoke about Safiye’s idolization of Hürrem and Nurbanu. It makes me think, I felt like in observing Safiye’s character, she exhibited a phenomenon in which you’ve spoke of before, in which she reached a point of her life where she completely internalized and became the toxicity in her enviornment. I feel like she put Hürrem and Nurbanu on such a pedestal (especially with Nurbanu having treated her so terribly) is because she adapted a Social darwanist mindset of sorts which caused her to firmly believe that those who were/are “strong/worthy” were those who succeeded within the system by any means necessary, even if that meant killing and harming even those closest to them. It felt to me almost as if she came to “understand” Nurbanu’s stance towards her or even sympathized with it albeit in a strange, traumatized way? Or when she wanted to pass down her ring to Kösem after she suceeded in killing Iskender, it was almost like she wanted to congratulate Kösem on being able to kill her son. It’s interesting, like her entire moral compass was completely warped having been in the harem for so long and in unlike any way I can recall seeing on other sultanas in either franchise. I don’t remember Mahi/Hürrem coming to idolize Hafsa later in their lives but this could also be because the SOW time period was still relatively fresh in their time and Hafsa may not have wielded or exhibited as much power as Nurbanu may have as a valide sultan. What do you think?

Yes, Safiye as a character is the embodiment of these destrustive philosophies to the extreme. The toxic system leaves no one untouched and she is indeed one of the characters in the SOW and in the franchise overall that is the most affected by it.

Unlike Hürrem and Nurbanu, where we get a solid exploration of what exactly made them this way, with Safiye we have the philosophy set at the very start, her introduction sets many things clear. We know that she loves power. We know that she wants to keep that power until the end of time. Her role as an antagonist is revealed immediately in her unwillingness to give up her power. One may find her a little less multi-faceted, precisely because her motivations were more vague than the rest- we don't get anything outright with her, we don't get much insight. We're left to figure things out by ourselves. That doesn't make her a cardboard cut out however, given that we have very vague reasoning, but with enough context to see what's behind it. I find her "backstory" counterpart very interesting in that she could only be used to drive a contrast between MC E139 Safiye and MCK Safiye, be presented as the former shadow of Safiye's self, what she has previously been. With only a single scene we technically have her foundation, but what is retroactively set-up (her worship of Hürrem aside) is completely turned on its head. MC E139 Safiye is perceptive that one day you have to step out of power, but that's the primary dilemma of MCK Safiye, the very thing she refuses to do. It's hinted that she has had many, too many years of power in the harem and it's not only something she has become used to, it's much more than that: it's as if she's had this power her whole life. The prospect of her losing it has become truly unthinkable, out of reach. She has gained an self-image of greatness that would always "sustain" the castle and preserve its life force. She's accustomed to endless, limitless power. She has set her own network of people. She loves every aspect of this power: both the simple and the complex stuff, from her long morning routine to her orchestrating things from the inside. Her power as a concept alone is her whole being and I don't think she ever separated herself from her royal demeanor. She is always power and majesty and splendor everywhere, from her dresses, to her mannerisms, to her constant addressing of herself as "we", taken from European courts.

I agree that she values power as something for herself and something that is hers by right, not for the advantages or disadvantages it may bring. Safiye doesn't care about that: as long as she's there and in power, it would all be fine, it would be enough. Safiye has her own distorted understanding of applying power: she speaks constantly about the dynasty and the country (just like many sultanas), but she leaves them aside completely when she's threatened. And she doesn't view what she does as morally right, she's always ready to play dirty in order to maintain her own accomplishments and to outplay everyone else. She actually resorts to dirtier and dirtier tricks the more she loses her power. I did mention when paralleling and contrasting her with Kösem in another ask of yours that Safiye, unlike Kösem, doesn't focus her efforts on reaching out to the people, she is a lone wolf when it comes to power and she is projecting indisputable superiority on everyone she's in front of. The closest relationship she has is with Bülbül and even that is merely an addition to Safiye and the result of him being the person always next to her and fills all her whims much more than it is all genuine affection. The Darwinian philosophy is what she lives by; and the notion that she gave the ring to Kösem because of her starting to respect another person's own power except for her own, admitting that someone has outplayed her, doing it only because someone has outplayed her, is really important. Her arc was about finally accepting defeat after deluding herself for so long that no one could truly eclipse her, but then again, has she gotten completely over her toxic environment? Hardly. Because once again, by giving the ring, she symbolically continues the SOW cycle that has, in the show, many toxic aspects especially when it comes to power. Safiye could respect people only when they keep up for longer than she anticipates, have been tied up to her in a more "unconventional" way and have a (previously and contemporarily) good position on the hierarchy. She did accept Kösem as a rival at the end of the day, in part probably because she started off as someone loyal to Safiye and evolved way past that, but didn't accept Handan, because she couldn't face it that someone like her, someone she perceived as weaker, can now rule over her. I saw Safiye as someone finding disobedience from a person previously loyal to her more challanging than a permanent, irreparable change of the hierarchy she is strongly dissatisfied with. Her elitism is so strong that she doesn't go past it even when there is a change in position. She doesn't get over that biased, stereotypical thinking.

She worships this Darwinist philosophy in Hürrem, that she's the strongest survivor, that she has prevailed over her opponents, without having the chance to know the bigger picture and has heard only the banter of someone who is still biased to her after all (Mihrimah). She shares this philosophy with S02B post-E59 and S04 Hürrem in even scarier extremes and that's what she has set as an example for herself. It's true that she takes this mindset from this cult to Hürrem, too. This very disrupting cult of hers. But then again, I never saw her sympathizing with Nurbanu, per say? She's perfectly able to acknowledge Nurbanu's cruelty and correct me if I'm wrong, but the only praise I recall for her is her being the most beautiful (but the cruelest) sultana she's ever known? Which in no way indicates sympathy. But I wouldn't brush off at all Safiye viewing fer experiences with Nurbanu as the twist of fate, in which she has prevailed after all, but could acknowledge the ones before her. (but not after her, Kösem aside.) Safiye isn't that kind of person that would show in any way that she has experienced trauma, but she could've brushed said trauma even deeper within than other characters, to the point that her direction even would never ever indirectly hint at it, keeping her usual regality in check.

[Hürrem did say she set Valide as her own example in her last words to her in E61, but I get how it could be missed when she also lamented their previous, not so good experiences and told her about Nigar and Ibrahim, which put an end to Valide's life. Mahidevran, on the other hand, never mentioned Valide post-S03 outside of saying that they would bury Fatma in Ayşe Hafsa's mosque (was it?). They both mourned her death, but interestingly enough, both of them have "violated" her memory in some way by wanting her chambers. Mahidevran wanted the chambers to set her own model in the castle during her harem ruling period, while Hürrem wanted it to show she could one-up everyone, for them to respect her the way she thought she deserved. There truly wasn't this worship to such extent as in MCK, also because it presented the beginning of the SOW rather than the peak of it. There wasn't much to blindly praise there, hence the effect wouldn't be as strong.]

[thecottageinthedark]

Sorting Glass-Maker’s Dragon

I’ve been working on this for a looooong time, and finally it’s complete enough to post. I’m using the Sorting Hat Chats system, basics of which are explained here by its inventors and here by @wisteria-lodge.

A lot of GMD is flexpoints and inferred stuff, but this is, at least, the way I read the main eight.

Chuubo: Snake Primary, Badger Secondary. His Snake ambition isn't immediately obvious because it's backwards to us; he's an Imperator and a god of dream and probably the Spirit of the Age, but those were just things that happened upon him. He doesn't want fame or fortune; he wants a peaceful human life, or at least a human-style one, and his drive to achieve this has literally reshaped the world itself while still being, at its core, all about him.

His Badger Secondary is hard to see because of the one big gimmick in the way; the Wish-Granting Engine, that supposedly allows instant results with no work, and the way he uses it whenever possible. But the thing is, the WGE is both dependent on his Secondary and in some senses what he uses when he can't draw on that Secondary itself.

Badger Secondaries have to mean what they do; they put in hard work when and where they are motivated to do so. For Chuubo, that's not schoolwork, which is where he as a high schooler is socially expected to, and so he gets a rep for being lazy. Where he does put the effort in, is with his friendships, and in 'learning the ways of Fortitude'. With those, he doesn't cut corners. He doesn't pull out schemes. He patiently and consistently puts in the work. His Secondary is on full display in the way he persists in trying to be friends with Leo, even in the face of Leo's hostility. Chuubo doesn't try to win Leo over with subtlety or with grand gestures; he just doggedly carries on offering support, company, and good-natured teasing.

So where does the Engine come in? Think of the Wishing Map. It's the friendships and connections he's worked at creating and maintaining that help Chuubo's wishes to succeed. Wishes based on whim are almost certain to go wrong.

The wish for a best friend is maybe the most telling part of all. Or rather, what happened after it. Because despite having acquired Seizhi through unnatural means, it never once occurs to Chuubo to continue their association by those-to lean on miraculous or mundane coercion and create a relationship that all goes one way. Having acquired someone to love him, he just proceeds to love them back, with a generosity of spirit that is entirely genuine.

Like a lot of Snake Primaries, Chuubo has a Primary model that he uses to fill in the gaps where his ambitions and his loyalties aren't relevant. His is a kindly and expansive Badger Primary. He lives in this model most of the time-until there's a threat to his inner circle or to his hard-won quiet life. Then he'll set the model aside and act from his real Primary to keep hold of what's his. (Being a snake sometimes helps.)

Seizhi Schwan: Snake Primary, Burnt Snake Secondary. Like Chuubo, their huge ambition is for something that most people just get handed on a platter; to be real, to matter, and to be loved. Their Primary and his instinctively understand each other about this-and also understand each other perfectly about the importance of treasuring and being treasured. (They're all but making big eyes at each other and swooning, in fact.)

Seizhi's Primary is somewhat wobbly in one regard; they're the sort of Snake who has kicked themself out of their own inner circle. After all, they reason, they're not real-not yet, at least-so why should they value themself? There's nothing there to value. This is linked to the burning of their Secondary; their supreme and miraculously-enhanced ability to fit into any social context is something that gives them pain, because it's just more unreality. Over and over they reach out, hoping that this time they've found a destiny; over and over, they stop sustaining an Intention, and the whole thing fades away. Even mundane uses of the Snake Secondary toolkit feel tainted-deceit and lies-and that's a problem, because this is the best and most practiced skillset they've got. They're trying to cover up this lack with a Badger Secondary model, because that's what they feel like they should have, what a Real Person would have-the slow grinding authenticity of method. (Possibly this decision is linked to Chuubo being a Badger Secondary.) But they don't like it. It feels like crap. It doesn't even work that well. And when they're in trouble, they drop the attempt to  Do Things The Real Way and start shifting and adapting and reacting like the Snake they are.

As of the start of GMD they're still hoping for the magic to happen, to wake up transformed into a Real Person who bears little to no resemblance to the 'fake self' they despise-for the Badger model to smother the Snake to death. The situation's in flux. Under pressure, they might begin to find ways to accept themself for what they are, and realise they are loved already; but it's just as likely that they will crack and fall into despair. If that happens, they'll probably Burn their Primary too, cutting themself off from Chuubo and from anyone else in their inner circle. This they'll frame not as a way to protect themself, but to protect the inner circle. A fake person has nothing real to give. How can they inflict such a horrible creature on the people they love? Might as well feed them fairy food and watch them starve, as do something like that.

That unpleasant possibility aside...unlike Chuubo they haven't yet created a Primary Model when the game starts. They might do so during the course of it, though-they will, after all, need to make a lot of decisions, and they won't always be able to relate those back to 'will it help me become real' or 'will it help Chuubo'. I don't think they're likely to copy Chuubo's Badger for this; it fits him fine, as an inherently peaceful Serpent, but Seizhi is an Actual who has had to fight just to exist, and isn't prepared to lay down arms just because things are now somewhat better. What'd work better for them would be a valorous and fierce Lion Model based on that of their brother Laodemus, or a wider Snake Model with an inner circle encompassing 'everyone I know' or 'the whole of Town'.

Leonardo de Montreal: Lion Primary, Lion Secondary. This poor man.

Oh, he'd love you to believe he's a Double Bird, or a Snake/Bird mix of some kind. He'd probably pick one of those Houses out if he had the choice! But that's...actually for pretty superficial reasons. He likes science so he figures he's a shoo-in for the 'smart person house', he's snappy and standoffish so equally he thinks he's in the 'mean asshole house'. But in the SHC system neither of those really fit.

Let's look at his Primary first. He's not a Snake, right away-because he doesn't have an inner circle and he's okay with that. There's no 'my people, who are most important' and 'everyone else'-even when he's not leaning on his Friendless wound, when he's prepared to concede that he cares about Chuubo or Jasper. If he were a Snake, those two would be the most likely inner circle candidates-but they're not in there. Not because he doesn't care, but because he doesn't do the Snake style caring where his people are the centre of his world and the place he gets his morality.

Where his morality does come from is the Song of Hell, his 'love for the wicked'. It's intuitive, not constructed, and centred in himself, not reliant on others. (When he loses his heart, he doesn't draw up a systematic list of ethical principles to live by instead; he creates the Mechanism of Original Sin, which emulates the feeling of having an internal conscience as well as the function.) And the fact that he's a fallen angel means that at some point in his past he gave up Heaven on ideological grounds. The Song of Hell is just right, and therefore he follows it. Any justifications he makes for that decision come after the fact. And so he follows his Song, and becomes heroic-it's not just Jasper he saves, he's got a whole Thing about helping people. That's Lion Primary.

And though he's smart, he doesn't act Bird under pressure; he charges. He responded to Jade's death by first ripping out his own heart to save her daughter, then marching down to the BA to throw down with its Headmaster. He probably has a Bird Secondary model to help with Science, though-and he uses this model to back up his real secondary. Charge in throwing nightmare devices at the problem.

Natalia Koutolika: Bird primary, burnt secondary that's probably Bird or Lion.

Natalia's frozen heart sounds like a Petrified Snake thing, but it's not any specific person that makes her realise thawing is a possibility-it's Fortitude. And that's not because Fortitude is nice, the way a Badger might un-Burn on being accepted into a welcoming community, but because it's magical. The rules of the universe work differently here...so maybe that means things can be possible for her now that weren't possible back on Earth.

I thought at first her primary was burnt, but...freezing her heart made her lose faith in human goodness, and in her capacity for being happy, not in her ability to discern truth. She trusts her cynical System; actually, I think her looking like a Petrified Snake is down to that thing Birds do where their systems often come out looking like the other Primaries. Natalia has decided that the Petrified Snake morality is the true one...but when she arrives in Town, she reconsiders, and begins to edit.

Her Secondary is where she's burnt. Because part of the cynicism of her Primary System is the idea that there's no point trying. Use whatever methods are available, who cares? They won't work, because you can't do anything that matters-the world doesn't work like that. Most of the time she'll use Bird or Lion methods because those come easily to her, given she's a genius and a martial artist, so it's probably one of those. But then again...she doesn't seem to get any joy from them. I think her Arcs will (hopefully) involve healing the burning-and that could look like learning to trust in her charging or her knowledge base, or like finding that what she really feels Right about is putting in the work like a Badger or thinking on her feet like a Snake. (Burnt Badger secondary would be especially poignant, as it'd be her learning to rely on community as a source of strength.)

Jasper Irinka: Bird primary, Bird secondary.

She starts out with her system based on her mom's Heaven-style Lion primary; it doesn't work, and leaves 'a hole in the world' for her. So she starts looking for ways to make it work by picking up ideas from all sorts of people-her dad, her friends, the Moon Prince and assorted other NPCs-and either adjusting it by adding these in or making a new system entirely. And her matching secondary helps her to do this very effectively. Her Primordial ability to shape herself as she likes by growing limbs that she can then use and discard as she pleases is really Bird Secondary-and the fact that those limbs manifest from other people's Hopes? 'I know a guy' Bird.

Sure, she inspires people. But it’s not a Lion inspiration-being so completely and ferociously her own glorious self that others are attracted to her radiance. Jade probably worked like that, from what we know of her, but Jasper inspires because she deliberately does things to inspire Hope in people, using a toolkit of stuff she’s picked up.

(And of course Leo is fascinated with her-not just because she's 'Jade Irinka's daughter', the shine on that would wear off fast-it's that she's a Double Bird like what he wants to be! And she in turn is loving Leo's double Lion because that's what she thinks she's supposed to be like!)

Rinley Yatskaya: Badger Primary, Lion Secondary. Of course the Storyteller Arc kid gets the 'protagonist sorting'.

Rinley's stated purpose in their playbook is to be the social glue of the party, and their powerset makes them really good at it. They first save then make friends with Prince Eduard despite their family's feud with the Rats, and when they see Iolithae in the Titov shrine, they go to rescue her, because Eduard and Iolithae are people and that matters more than Eduard being a Rat or Iolithae being a dangerous sacred horror. In other words, they're a beautiful Universal Badger. As far as Rinley's concerned, you don't just see someone who's injured or imprisoned and then not help them, even if they're meant to be an enemy on ideological grounds or even grounds of prudence. And to help people, they jump right in and Do Something. That's textbook Badger/Lion.

Principal Entropy II: Exploded Badger primary, Badger secondary.

This guy is just community-building and caretaking all over the place. He shows up, he does the work-as the Angel of Fortitude he's literally fixing potholes and curing peoples' ailments! And he's doing that by going to the people and creatures of his Gardens, calling in favours.

And he's doing it because people are important. The denizens of the Evil Island, the people of Fortitude. 'All things can earn their recompense through love'.

The problem is, though-he's doing the dehumanisation thing that Badgers are so infamous for. He's not going 'some people are Enemies Who Must Die, and therefore are not really People', though, which is the usual form of the trope in fiction. That's the mode of a Badger at war, and E2 isn't fighting a war. He's going 'some people need to be Sacrificed for the Greater Good of the Community'. And that's not an easy thing for a Badger to believe. If he was an Idealist, or Snake who is comfy prioritising an inner circle, he could just hold that belief without problems. But being a Badger, he can't. If he sacrifices people, he has to either feel horribly guilty about it...or stop thinking of them as people.

One big group he tends to dehumanise are School students. School exists to create tools to fix the world. It's okay if he makes students into cursed Hall Monitors, it's okay if he turns SEED students into prototype world-trees and weirding walls. That's what they're for.

He also dehumanises himself. He's Other Than Human, Set Apart. He refuses to acknowledge his needs, and overworks himself-he's even, at game start, nullified two Divine Health Levels to make his Code Novae binding on the Evil Island, meaning that if you can get past his Immortality power he's actually the squishiest PC of the lot. So he's an Exploded Badger, sacrificing both himself and others to his community.

Miramie Mesmer: Bird Primary, Badger Secondary. She shares this sorting with her former self, Melanie Malakh.

Melanie's Bird Primary used the Bleak Methodology as her truth system. Coupled with her persistent, hard-working Secondary, this combination made her a star student at the Bleak Academy-a 'prodigy of hatred and despair'. However, when she left the Academy, things fell apart for her.

At the Bleak Academy she'd been sheltered from experiences or ideas that could provide any real challenge to the Bleak worldview. Because of that, her system wasn't as robust as she thought-and she didn't know how to shore it up or how to cope if it shattered. Which-along with the glass dragon-it did; her time in Town, the things she had seen and done, had led her to doubt the truth of ultimate futility. The last straw was the dragon itself. Melanie, through the work of her hands and mind, had created something that was not futile; a master-weapon that could destroy Town, just as she had intended. The very fact that she was able to do that gave the lie to the Bleak Methodology. Unable to deny this truth but just as unable to live with it, Melanie Fell so hard that-as Strategists sometimes do-she lost her identity and became a new person.

Unable and unwilling to use Melanie's system, Miramie has begun to construct her own, drawing on various sources-the communal and peaceful mores of Fortitude, Hideo Hayashi's belief that even unlikeable misfits do not deserve to be left alone without support systems, the other Archive kids' idea that outcasts should stick together, and Chuubo's Snake prioritising of personal ambitions and loves. Since she's not had much time to do this, it's nowhere near finished-but it looks likely to be robust. It also seems to me that she's likely to be able to edit it as she needs rather than Falling-or, if worst comes to worst, to Fall but get back up as herself, rather than shattering again or reverting into Melanie Malakh.

Her Badger Secondary is a contrast to Chuubo's, as where his is socially based and linked to personal relationships (Courtier Badger), hers is more focused on the more usual definition of 'work', and on community in the sense of history and tradition (Bookkeeper Badger). It's her Secondary she brings to bear on the tasks of setting up a cafe from scratch and helping maintain the Archives. It's also what she uses to keep herself going under the weight of the world's wrongness, to keep making art even though it's doing so that activates her Curse. She just keeps slogging away.

I can also see the Badger Secondary in Melanie's construction of the glass dragon. She sat herself down with Hideo Hayashi and learnt glasswork from scratch, putting in the time and effort to both master this new skill and to bring Hideo himself fully under her control. Simple, honest work, even though used for deeply destructive ends.

IN CONCLUSION:

Chuubo: Snake primary, Badger secondary, Badger primary model Seizhi: Snake primary, Burnt Snake secondary, unhealthy Badger Secondary model Leonardo: Lion primary, Lion secondary. Bird secondary model Natalia: Bird primary (with a system that starts out looking a lot like Petrified Snake), very burnt Secondary that is likely Bird or Lion Jasper: Bird primary, Bird secondary Rinley: Badger primary, Lion secondary Entropy II: Exploded Badger primary, Badger secondary Miramie: Bird primary, Badger secondary

[serialreblogger]

Hey! I'm thinking of reading Dracula, and knowing that's your eternal hyperfixation, I wanted to ask your thoughts, if you had any comments, suggestions, ect.

HEY WHY DIDN’T I SEE THIS SOONER I’M SO SORRY FRIEND

okay okay okay okay (...several people are typing...) SO

the first thing you should be aware of when reading Dracula is that it’s quite Victorian, so you might find it easier, especially on a first read, to get an annotated version (the Norton Critical Edition version is quite good) that puts footnotes in to explain all the outdated references to like, London penny-meat merchants and stuff. I would say it’s significantly easier to read than Lord of the Rings, but because it was written 200 years ago the difference in language means it’s not a simple read. (However, if you have absolutely any attraction to the Gothic aesthetic, Dracula is so very much worth the brainpower to slog through the rougher sentences. Like. “...the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky.” The whole book is like that. A bit stilted to contemporary readers, but also breathtakingly spot-on in its Spooky Factor.)

the second thing you should be aware of is that Dracula is extremely gay, but in a Tormented Victorian Closeted way. There’s a part where Jonathan climbs out a window that just. It’s uh. The descriptions are very,, metaphorical-sounding. Again, the whole book is like that, and sometimes it’s very fun and sometimes (lookin at Lucy’s whole thing) it’s significantly more unsettling if you pay attention to the weirdly sexy descriptions of how the protagonists interact with the vampires, but I think that’s part of what I find so fascinating about Dracula--it’s unsettling and strange and the pieces don’t fit together clearly, and I still don’t know quite what to make of it, but all the same the feeling of what Stoker’s saying comes through quite clearly. There’s a reason why so many Dracula adaptations have this narrative of a protagonist falling in forbidden love with the tormented Vampyre, yknow? There’s something so unmistakeably sympathetic about the character of Dracula, even when the narrative of the story goes out of its way to establish that he has no redeeming qualities or even proper personhood, that he’s just a monster. Because there’s something about the story (even without getting into the whole “Mina and Jon murked their boss” thing) that makes a reader wonder if that’s really the whole truth. If there isn’t something tragic about Dracula. If there isn’t something in him, if not of goodness, then at least of sorrow, instead of only fear.

Anyway I digress but I think we all knew that was gonna happen; point is: Jonathan and Dracula definitely had sex, Mina and Lucy were definitely in love, Seward’s got something weird goin on with the old professor (and also he’s just very weird, full stop. sir. sir please stop experimenting on your asylum inmates. sir i know this is victorian england but please Do Not), and Quincey, well, Quincey is an American cowboy with a bowie knife, and I think that’s all we really need to know.

ok and! the third thing you should be aware of is The Racism. Imperialist Britain, yo. Bram Stoker was Irish so like, it isn’t half as bad as some other authors of his time period (Rudyard Kipling anyone), but the racism is real and I don’t wanna gloss over that. The g**sy slur is used with abandon for a huge assortment of people groups, there’s a tacit as well as overt acceptance of the idea that West is superior to East, and because the educational system where I grew up is a joke and I can only learn things if I accidentally fall down the wikipedia hole of researching the insect genus hemiptera, i genuinely still don’t know how accurate the extensive history of Romania recounted in the first third of the book actually is. Oh also casual and blatant anti-blackness is verbalized by a character at least once. I’m pretty sure the racism has a metaphorical place in the framework of Dracula’s storytelling, but I couldn’t tell you what it is because I am not going to bother putting myself in the mindset of a racist white Victorian man. This is the mindset I am trying to unlearn. So: read with caution, critical thinking, and the double knowledge that even as the narrators are meant to be unreliable, so too is the author himself.

Finally, regarding interpretation: so personally I’m running with the opinion that Dracula is, at least partly, a metaphor for Stoker’s own queerness and internal conflict re: being queer, being closeted, and watching the torture his friend Wilde went through when the wealthy father of Wilde’s lover set out to ruin his life for daring to love his son. Whether this is true or not (I think it’s true, but hey, that’s analysis, baby), you can’t understand Dracula without knowing the social context for it (as with all literature--the author isn’t dead, not if you want to know what they were saying), and the social context for it is:

- Stoker was friends with Wilde, growing only closer after Wilde was outed

- Wilde was outed, as I said, because the father of his lover was wealthy and powerful and full of the most virulent kind of hatred. This is especially interesting because of how many rich, powerful parents just straight up die in Dracula and leave the main characters with no legal issues and a ridiculous amount of money, which is the diametrical opposite of what happened to Wilde

- Stoker idolized his mentor Henry Irving. Irving was a paradigm of unconventional relationships and self-built family, in a world where divorcees and children born out of wedlock were things to be whispered about in scandalized tones, not people to love and embrace. Irving was also famous for thriving off of manipulating those close to him and pitting friends against each other. Given the painstakingly vivid description Stoker provides for his titular vampire and how closely it matches Irving’s own appearance and demeanor, Irving was widely understood even at the time of writing to be the chief inspiration for the character of Dracula

- the book is dedicated to Stoker’s close friend, Hall Caine, a fellow writer whose stories centered around love triangles and accumulation of sins which threaten to ruin everything, only to be redeemed by the simple act of human goodness

- Stoker was Irish, but not Catholic (he was a Protestant of the Church of Ireland, a division of the Anglican Church). This may come as a surprise when you read the book and see All The Catholicism, Just Everywhere. Religion is actually a key theme in Dracula--most of the main characters start out your typical Good Victorian Anglican Skeptics, and need to learn through a trial-by-fire to trust in the rituals and relics of the Catholic Church to save them from Dracula’s evilness. Which is interesting. Because not only do these characters start off as dismissive towards these “superstitions” (in the same way they dismiss the “superstitions” of the peasant class on the outskirts of Dracula’s domain), but the narrative telling us “these superstitions are actually true!” cannot be trusted, when you know the author’s own beliefs.

(Bram Stoker is not saying what his characters are saying. This is the first and most important rule to remember, if you want to figure out Dracula.)

- The second-most famous character in the novel, after Dracula himself, is Van Helsing, whose first name is Abraham. Note that “Bram” is a declension of Abraham. What does this mean? I legitimately have no idea. But it’d be a weird coincidence, right? Like what even is the thought process there? “Oh, yeah, what should I name this character that comes in, makes overtly homoerotic statements willy nilly, and encourages everyone to throw rationality out the window and stake some vampires using the Eucharist? hmmmm how about ‘Me’”

ok wait FINAL final note: you legitimately do not have to care about any of this. I love Dracula because it has gay vibes and I love trying to figure it out, like an archaeologist sifting through sentence structure to find fragments that match the patterns I already know from historical research; but that’s not why you should love Dracula. The book itself is just straight up fun to read. Like I said, Stoker absolutely nails the exact vibe of spookiness that I love, the eerieness and elegance and vague but vivid fear of a full moon crossed by clouds at midnight. The characters are intriguing, especially Quincey gosh I love Quincey Morris but they’re very,, sweet? if i can say that about people i, personally, suspect of murder? They come together and protect each other against the terrible threat that is Dracula, and you don’t get that half as often as I’d like in horror media. I don’t even know if Dracula could qualify as “horror” proper, because it’s not about the squeamish creeping discomfort that “horror” is meant to evoke, it’s not the appeal of staring at a train wreck--it’s not horrifying. It’s eerie. It’s Gothic. It has spires and vampires and found family and cowboys, and to be honest, I don’t know what could be better than that.