#blatantly ignoring the rules to serve his needs and ideas

[shots-of-whiskey-and-wilson]

idk i think this pretty much encapsulates house in a nutshell

[cocogum]

Each passing day I'm more and more convinced of the fact that Aurora is unworthy of the Sadida throne, not only because she's an Osamodas who refuses to have the one (1) person she actually needs around (Amalia), but because it's blatantly obvious she never cared about her husband's people and, more glaringly, his family.

And the biggest evidence I have of that, besides her scornful treatment of Amalia, is the Sheran Sharms' tomb-trees.

Season 4 opened up with what seemed to be Armand bidding his father goodbye and then returning to the palace with Aurora, instead of, you know, his wife being there with him as he mourned his father like in any good marriage.

At first I attributed that to the possibility that the tomb-trees were meant to be a sacred place only the royal family had access to, but the webtoon has swiftly debunked that theory.

Because upon returning in chapter three she announced she and her father (an even bigger outsider than she is) would be waiting by Armand's tomb-tree while Amalia got her things in order. Likewise, in chapter 5, Yugo was there beside Amalia as she spent time with her late family and reflected on what to do, supporting her.

And while it could be argued Aurora simply didn't want to intrude upon her husband's grief, it should also be pointed out the second Yugo learned Amalia lost her father his first instinct was to go and be there for her, only being stopped by his mother pointing out Amalia would most likely prefer to be alone. Whereas, as I mentioned before, married couples are expected to be there for each other when one of them loses a loved one.

(Which already reflects how Yumalia is the superior royal couple, but I digress).

This all comes to show Aurora never cared about her in-laws and, therefore, even if she came to care for Armand and vice versa, what they had was never true love, they just grew fond of each other with time. And, quite frankly, someone with so little regard for the people and family she's supposed to serve just doesn't deserve to be queen, period.

Hey geekgirles ✨

Let me just say that I 100% agree with you on the fact that Aurora DOES NOT deserve the kingdom for all the reasons you stated.

What’s funny is that before The Great Wave chapter 6 was released, I believed that there was one thing that was acceptable about her.

And I now hate that idea for even thinking about it.

And that was her view on the sadidas.

Yeah, I’m not going to stand here and tell you that she actually absolutely cares for them or secretly wants to be with them rather than in her father’s kingdom. No way in hell.

She fled like a coward from the necrome war that would have completely annihilated the entire Sadida race so her level of care for the sadidas is extremely low. Lower than a bottom feeder.

Despite this, and the very accurate facts that you enumerated, I used to think that she strangely had some kind of…endearment towards her late husband’s people?

(I genuinely don’t know if I’m making any sense saying this)

What I mean by that is that she might have felt some type of pride or emotional pull to them. She never ruled anything before, much less been married to another royal. So seeing all these people praise and call for Armand, a man who she genuinely loved, made her feel pure joy at the idea of being with them.

When she and Armand walked up to the balcony to talk to the people, we can see Aurora smiling while Armand looks much less happy (due to his father’s passing).

She has a hand behind his back, supporting him through this moment.

When they walk up to the balcony, the people rejoice in their new king and we can see Aurora’s smile getting bigger at the praises. She was even going to shed a tear!

As much as I loathe this woman, I cannot ignore the fact that she does care about Armand, and due to that, loves the attention he is receiving from his people.

So to make it short, I used to think she loved the sadidas on her own accord but it turns out she used to appreciate them because she loves Armand.

That’s how I would describe her relationship with the sadidas.

Everything that relates her to them is because of Armand. That’s it.

And she keeps on loving him even after his death in the worst ways.

(spoilers for chapter 6 under the cut)

She was angry at seeing a sadida and an eliatrope get married because Armand hated eliatropes.

Aurora: “My Armand would have never permitted this!”

Aurora: “He hated the eliatropes!”

She was saying how Armand would have never accepted the eliatropes so therefore she hates the idea of them being here as well.

Aurora: “This little pest doesn’t waste any time!”

Aurora: “In only a few months, she had given some funny ideas to my subjects…”

She was referring to the sadidas as “my subjects” because she still believes she has the right to call them like that, reminiscing about the time she used to be with Armand. If she wasn’t reminiscing, then she would’ve called them “my children’s subjects” or simply “the sadidas”.

Aurora is the embodiment of a trophy wife.

She had been promised to get married to Armand.

She hates and likes what Armand hates and likes.

She doesn’t do anything besides being by Armand’s side and holding his hand every now and then.

She doesn’t speak in any political situation and just sits next to Armand most of the time.

She doesn’t fight alongside Armand and simply stands in the back waiting.

She doesn’t have a throne seat of her own. She sits in the only small space available to her in Armand’s seat.

Her only excuse for getting the throne back is her pregnancy.

She listens to her father most of the time.

She listens to her husband most of the time.

Her only accomplishment was getting married.

This pretentious blue cow has nothing special or charming about her.

The only skill she has is literally looking petty.

So yeah, based on what I gathered, it doesn’t even matter if Aurora did like the sadidas because she’s not even suited to be their ruler. I think Armand was just horny so he accepted the arranged marriage (if he couldn’t get Eva then he might as well pick another blonde lol)

But with the things she has said, I believe Aurora only likes the sadidas by default because she likes Armand. That’s it. If Armand never existed, she wouldn’t have even glanced at the Sadida Kingdom, let alone think about these people for a millisecond.

[princess-of-the-corner]

Idea, with the negative reads on both Chloe & Adrien's parents, imagine a parent swap?

IE, Gabriel/Audrey & Emilie/Andre.

Gabriel/Audrey

Its two massive egotistical perfectionists who ae incredibly callous and easily given to cruelty. They are a power couple in the most terrifying sense of the word and place basically no regard on those around them except how it serves their interests.

When things are good.

If there's ever a problem a mishap. a failure, oh boy can it become destructive & given Audrey is intensely independent and Gabriel is a massive control freak I can envision there being no shortage of room for conflict.

I imagine whichever kid they end up with is either a traumatized and nervous wreck, often used as ammo against the other parent & needing to navigate their endless expectations & drama. & or wound so tightly they're going to pop and kill someone.

Emilie/Andre.

They are on the surface loving and indulgent parents. Unfortunately they are also intensely selfish and toxic people who are just instinctively good at dressing up their behavior.

Andre is blatantly corrupt and considers this fine, he will oscillate between sycophant's and stern power house as needed. His relationships exist to make him feel good about himself & stop mattering the moment he's not in the mood.

Emilie is more on the surface moral, but will happily compromise any moral or belief if it gets her what she wants. What she wants is to be the apple of of someone's eye, their sun, their moon, their definition of love. Andre showers her with gifts & her to him affection.

Their child is someone they have insulated and isolated, they don't want to share, they don't want them to leave, they want them always around (When they are wanted) and always focused on how great they are. Its looks loving but it basically two parasites using their child for food.

I would have suggested Gabriel/Andre & Emilie/Audrey but that'd just canon with the genders swapped right? Huh... Maybe not?

If one were to touch on the sociological side of things, gosh being openly queer would potentially affect a lot. Especially whether some of them could even make it big. If nothing else their trajectory might change a bit.

If we ignore the sociological and treat their relationship as totally normalized culturally, so its just their personalities being kept in mind...

I think there is stuff to muse on definitely, but needing sleep I might be less than my best with this one XD

Emilie/Audrey

High flying famous stars, they go where their work is. For Emilie this means studios and locations, for Audrey its a mix of New York, Paris, Milan and so on.

Their child is likely used to being carted around as Emilie's luggage, essentially a mascot and emotional support dummy she says she loves cos she likes the idea of them adoring her.

Audrey is far more indifferent unless they impress her, but is more keyed into the marriage itself. Emilie is exceptional and while inclined to be swept up in Audrey's wake, can coax some tact from her.

She is still distant, harsh and near impossible to please however and neither think much of their Childs needs & tend to be very much enamored with one another when times are good & when not... There's work.

Likely a very unpredictable, isolating and unstable childhood with an affectionate but emotionally selfish parent and a callous impossible to please parent.

Gabriel/Andre

Definitely a bit more public than the hyper private Agreste of canon; Gabriel's penchant for isolation and antisocial behaviors, would still exist.

This would n many way ways suit Andre as it lets him be the socializer, the face, the mover and shaker the one who meets people and is protecting his dear husband by handling all this stuff in one way or another.

Gabriel's more aloof nature would beckon one like a moth to flame however and he likely thinks of himself as the protector in the same way the viziard who rules through the puppet prince is a protector.

Both are very much in favor of corraling their child in the home, Andre so he can always have a source of easy affection & praise & Gabriel because he wants everything under his control.

Andre is probably the "Fun parent" but provides nothing but superficial acts. While Gabriel does want to raise said child to be a success, he also doesn't care if they are happy or have opinions.

So in both cases rather similar to canon but also distinct I think?

Either way these kids are FUCKED

[neonscandal]

Hi! I have a question, I hope I can explain myself: how would you describe Gojo on a moral level? I see the majority of the fandom (jjk in general, not just the shipping ones) considers him a good person, but I'd argue he's more on the grey side...and not a light grey. See, I can't really wrap my head around the way he blatantly ignores the fact the Suguru was completely fucked up, to the point that in chap 236 he wishes Suguru was with him before fighting Sukuna and imagining him (adult Suguro, the fucked up one) together with the same students he tried to kill in jjk0. How on earth? If I'm not mistaken Gojo never really says "yeah, Suguru was my friend but he used to be completely different, this is not the Suguru I used to be friends with". He never says Suguru was wrong. He just misses him, even though he was surrounded by people who liked him. At least Shoko clearly doesn't feel any affection towards Suguru. And let's not talk about the way he doesn't really seem concerned about the future of his students in chap 236. What do you think? Just to clarify: I do like Gojo. But I don't share the sentiment of the rest of the fandom: he's not a good person. I guess Nanami was right

This is a (somewhat) fair assessment.

Character alignment wise, I think Gojo enters into Jujutsu High as a Chaotic Neutral and transcends into more of a Chaotic Good or maybe Neutral Good? It's hard to say because, if in universe, Gojo is the perceived solution to every problem then why are there still so many problems? Including Geto's 10 year stint running amok?

Morally, Gojo absolutely exists in shades of grey. He uses his power to do the lawful thing but... at the same time, could, on a whim, use his power to do what he or Geto feels to be the right thing. The biggest example being the fact that they were willing to protect Riko Amanai's right to choose whether she wished to merge or not even if the latter would have catastrophic ramifications. Based on the needs of society, Riko needed to merge with Tengen, but Gojo recognized erasure of one girl for the security of others wasn't necessarily right. As an adult, again, he does what needs doing but pushes back on elders that would rather see the likes of Yuta Okkotsu or Yuji Itadori dead.

We have to understand that jujutsu society, with all its rules and hierarchy, isn't a morally upright system to begin with. Gojo, as a Big Three Family heir, is deeply entrenched in that. But he has enough sense to, in his own way, try to correct what he perceives to be travesties.

Suguru Geto is a casualty of this imperfect system and Gojo's initial inability to recognize Geto's struggle was the fatal flaw that put the final nail in his coffin. Discovering the twins was the hand that swung the hammer and he was subsequently radicalized. Gojo wasn't the only person who still kept space for Geto. Nanami and Shoko could also understand that the slaughter of that village was wrong but not find it in their hearts to condemn Geto or hear ill words spoken against him. None of them condemn him because, even if his method was wrong, they understand why he desperately wanted to change the way things are.

Gojo's affection for Geto, in my mind, does not necessarily make him a completely bad person, though. For one, while he doesn't outright condemn what happens in the village, he is clearly dismayed by the murder of Geto's parents. We see that he does in fact understand the wrongness of Geto's transgressions. Bear in mind that, until broken by the system they all served, Geto was a gentle and just person with a noble idea of what was right. So earnestly that Gojo allowed space for Geto to influence his own morality. So this radical change in behavior is a shock to Gojo's system and, even though he was used to deferring to Geto's judgement (like not killing the Time Vessel Association), he very clearly and autonomously recognized Geto's sins. Gojo had an unconditional acceptance or love for Geto which is why, despite everything, he would still find satisfaction in closing the loop, as it were, with Suguru right beside him.

⚠️ Spoiler warning for JJK chapter 236.

The man is dead, what more do you want from him? He knew he was going to die and fought hoping that those who remained could pick up the slack of the weakened opponent. 236 was merely an echo of the same faith he had after he was sealed - that he trusted in the people he left behind. I think Gojo has also come to terms with the fact that all he can do is throw everything he's got at the situation. His failure is unfathomable to most but he's been shown the limits to his power before so perhaps that's why he's overly cavalier. In most situations, he's the first line of defense so if that doesn't cut it... what more can he do?

Bear in mind, what we see of Gojo's afterlife in 236 is more than likely what he hopes for in his heart of hearts. But I'm not really subscribed to the idea that he's Gojover. I could be wrong, especially since Gege Akutami keeps comparing other people to Gojo in his absence to fill in the gaps and explain how they could possibly hope to beat Sukuna. But I think what we saw was an extended version of what Nanami experienced before passing.

You can go left or right - Yuki to Geto about his radical ideals

You can go North to start anew or South to your old self - Mei to Nanami and actualized in his dying moments with an apparition of Haibara

These are choices and the second is as explained to Gojo as if he has the same choice. From his hope that it isn't all in his imagination and the setting therein, it would seem he's leaning toward accepting his fate but I just don't think that's the case. If anything, this prolonged ideation is possible because that brain of his is intact. Gojo even told Toji that he should have cut off his head if he wanted to kill him so, who's to say whether that applies now.

Regarding Nanami being right, I assume you mean the Nanami in chapter 236. In which case:

Hypothesis: The reason we see Gojo surrounded by younger versions of those he lost is because they are attached to the version of himself that died. Gojo will come back as a more enlightened person.

Keep in mind, in a way, Adult Nanami understands Gojo. Every version of Nanami is annoyed by Gojo but there's still a respect that goes both ways, even when their ideals differ. I think Nanami's assessment that "You live for jujutsu. You don't wield it to protect something. You use it solely for the sake of satisfying yourself." is apropos for high school Gojo. But that was before he lost Geto, developed a resolve to take in Megumi and Tsumiki (albeit selfishly), protect Yuta from the elders with his life, and protect Yuji. Empirically, there's a facet of Gojo that uses his power for good and it feels like the versions of Haibara, Nanami, Geto and Yaga that he encounters would be unaware of that. I think that's what makes the fact that Gojo visualizes Adult Geto celebrating him stick out even more. Why the mind games, Gege??

In summation, Gojo continues to exist swathed in shades of grey. He could be better but he could definitely be worse. He is a reflection of a corrupt system that masquerades under the impression of working in service of the greater good but ignores the problematic elements of the likes of Mei Mei, and Naoya Zenin.

[encrypted-cryptid]

🌸 + scar?

growing pains - scar is very quickly realising that there's more to the soulbond than just sharing eachothers pain

"gri? grian? griaaaaaaaan?" scar huffs, flopping backwards into the soft dirt of the jellie enclosure and wincing when it further aggravates his aching back, sharp pinpricks of pain setting his nerves alight.

really, how hard is it for grian to stretch his wings and back out every now and then? he knows flying is banned on this server, knows because his soulbound's wings are tucked small under his sweater all the time but surely there's no rules against preening them, or just having them out so they aren't so cramped up all the time! otherwise, jimmy is breaking the rules blatantly with his gold wings that stand out so clearly against the blue of his shirt and - as much as the idea of jimmy getting scolded by grian is a little funny to scar - he can't help but feel like that would have been important to point out sooner than this.

scar groans, covering his face with both hands as the noise rises in pitch and he wiggles uncomfortably in an effort to alleviate the ache at all. one of the jellies ambles over and nudges at his elbow with it's nose. it waits for scar to notice, perhaps pet it but decides it isn't going to wait for long and flops over to lie it's entire body weight across scar's chest. petulantly, scar hopes grian can feel his ribs being pressed on even as he wheezes at the sudden added weight. serves him right for not looking after his wings to the point that scar could feel it.

shifting and pushing the jellie off enough to breath properly, he reaches up awkwardly to scratch at the itch on his back, right near his shoulder blades. scar, however, stops short when instead of warm skin under his hand, he feels something soft and decidedly feather like.

he pushes the jellie away, ignoring it's annoyed grumble, and jumps to his feet, both hands reaching under his shirt to grab and pull at the soft down emerging from his back. handfuls of tawny feathers are dropped at his feet as he makes a surprised and concerned noise at the back of his throat. scar stares, dumbfounded.

"grian! grian, i really need you to come answer me right now!"

[broadwaycutie16]

Earlier today, I watched a video by TheTake on YouTube, exploring and deconstructing the “Nice Guy” trope in popular media.

Basically, the trope explained the Nice Guy trope and how toxic it really is, devaluing the girl’s feelings in a relationship and promoting male entitlement. Now, I’ve heard many people in this fandom complain that Adrien Agreste is the embodiment of this trope. The underdog sweet boy, pining after a girl who has rejected his feelings multiple times, persisting in his romantic advances towards her despite her making her disinterest clear.

While I must admit that Adrien does check many of the boxes for the standard Nice Guy, I quickly remembered who else in the show, besides him, checks out many of the same boxes, and perhaps a few more than him. Someone who exhibits many of the same behaviors of the Nice Guy, but whose less-than-healthy attitude of love is often overlooked and/or pardoned by most of the fandom, while they bash Adrien for similar behaviors.

Can you guess who it is?

It’s Marinette Dupain-Cheng.

I know what you’re thinking. How dare I accuse Marinette of such a toxic mindset! She’s the hero of our story! She fights off the bitches that are bad for Adrien and yet he doesn’t even give her the love she deserves! Adrien is the one who should consider himself lucky that she adores him! Hashtag Marinette Deserves Better!

But you see that right there? That, my friends, is what makes Marinette Dupain-Cheng, in my opinion, more of a Nice Guy than Adrien Agreste.

The whole purpose of the Nice Guy trope is to make us root for the underdog. Because who doesn’t love a good story where the loser that everyone expected to fail spectacularly ends up winning it all in magnificent fashion? Almost every movie has it’s underdog. With sports movies, it’s the unathletic wimp with a skinny, small, and/or weak body. In high school movies, it’s the outcast weird kid who’s been ostracized by the popular crowd for their unusual interests and/or attitude. In romantic comedies, the underdog is the hopelessly romantic Nice Guy who adores the girl and worships her like a goddess, as opposed to the cooler, more aloof, more sociotially successful man who takes her for granted. And since the cardinal rule of feel-good films is that underdog must end up getting what he’s been wanting throughout the whole movie, the movie then directs the story narrative to favor the Nice Guy’s desires, manipulating the audience to cheer him on and, in the process, blatantly dismiss all his unhealthy behaviors and obsessive traits, like stalking the object of his affections or trying to edge out any competition he has.

Sound familiar? That’s because that’s exactly what many Marinette stans who are also Adrien haters do.

I’m not saying Marinette is a bad person, but as far as Nice Guys go, she has shown us many red flags. She often stalks Adrien, trying to sneak into parties she has not been invited to just to see him, or following him to his house when he goes to study with one of her enemies. She often tries to keep away any girls she sees as competition for Adrien. With Chloé and Lila, it’s semi-justifies, because they can be total bitches. But not Kagami.

Is Kagami kind of cold? Yes. Can she be competitive? Absolutely. But she is not evil. Many Adrienette shippers often hate on Kagami, saying she is a stone cold bitch who will stop at nothing to “steal” Adrien away from Marinette. They misinterpret what she whispered in Marinette’s ear during Frozer. Kagami said, “The reason you cannot stand on your feet is your hesitation. I never hesistate.” Adrienette shippers translate this to, “He’s mine, bitch. Back off, or I’ll kill you.” But what she’s ACTUALLY saying is, “I know you like Adrien, but I like him, too, and I’m not gonna just back off out of curtesy while you fumble the ball. So if you want Adrien, you’re going to have to win him from me fair and square. That means you have to suck up whatever insecurities you have and really work to win him over.” She knows Marinette loves Adrien, but Kagami loves him, too. And she’s not just gonna wait around for Marinette to get over her nervousness and ask Adrien out of curtesy. She’s telling Marinette that if she wants Adrien, she needs to get herself together and go after him while he’s still available.

Kagami is not a bad person. She is simply lacking in social experience to properly express her emotions and desires without coming off as an ice queen. And yet, many Adrienette shippers view her through the same toxic lens as many fans of romantic comedies view love rivals of the Nice Guy. If the rival is even the tiniest bit self-serving or emotionally detached, they are automatically dismissed as bad people and therefore, less worthy of the main love interest than the Nice Guy. Thus, viewers are quick to pardon any attempts made by the Nice Guy to sabotage or undermine his rival as a necessary evil, something that must be done so that “true love” can prevail. Like say, I dunno, setting the rival up to be humiliated at a fancy party, despite all that they did to supposedly deserve such treatment was show up to said event, which they were invited to, and act friendly towards the main love interest, because they ARE friends?

If the scenario seems familiar, that’s because that’s exactly what Marinette tried to do to Kagami in Animeastro.

One thing I’ve noticed about this fandom, is that people seem to have a double standard when it comes to Marinette’s negative behaviors vs. Adrien’s. In Glaciator, Adrien seems to accept Ladybug’s rejection, claiming that her friendship was what mattered most, then takes back everything he said in Frozer, acting salty towards Ladybug for her earlier second rejection. After that, the whole fandom was on his case, calling him a jerk and a liar.

Am I happy Adrien went back on his word like that? Of course not. But in that same episode of Frozer, Marinette accepts that she may not be more than Adrien’s friend, and even helps him on his date with Kagami, despite her heartache and despite how everyone thought she was crazy for doing so. Super sweet, right? Except when Animeastro happens, she goes back on her mature acceptance and teams up with her worst enemy, all for the purpose of embarrassing the same girl who she supposedly accepted Adrien might like instead of her. Funnily enough, no one in the fandom seemed to give her any flack for that, despite the fact that it was an exhibitation of the same possessive, hypocrital and selfish behavior that Adrien displayed earlier on, which everyone hated on him for.

Many Marinette fans are projecting the same toxic, biased mindset onto her that fans of romantic comedies project onto the Nice Guy. They excuse any negative behaviors done by the protagonist, insisting that it’s for the greater good, all while hating on the love interest for not immediately falling into their arms. They prioritize the needs and feelings of the Nice Guy/Marinette while completely disregarding those of their love interests.

Marinette stans insist that she deserves Adrien’s love more than anyone else, bashing Adrien for overlooking her in favor of other girls. After all, Marinette has done so much for Adrien, while all Ladybug does is reject him in favor of some other guy, despite how he’s put his heart and life on the line for her. That means he should just cast aside his feelings for Ladybug and settle for Marinette, right? Well, by those standards, shouldn’t Ladybug do the same? After all, Chat Noir has risked his life for her several times and made it clear he adores her, while all Adrien has done is ignore her feelings in favor of other girls, even though she’s been right there the whole time. If Adrien should ignore some of Marinette’s stalker tendacies and easily-jealous nature, shouldn’t Ladybug be able to overlook some of Chat Noir’s less-than-acceptable behaviors?

Marinette fans often share the mindset of Nice Guy stans of romance as a moral issue, harboring the idea that goodness and unwavering affection should automatically earn romantic feelings. They believe that being nice to someone automatically means they owe it to you to love you back. Sadly, life isn’t that clear cut. Love is often given to someone, whether they deserve it or not. It’s both the best and worst part of it. This close-minded, morally black-and-white mindset is given to fans by the Nice Guy, as it’s his expectation that his being kind to the girl and showering her with romance should mean that she should know he is the one for her.

Sadly, this thinking by the Nice Guy is often hypocrital in the movies, because the same Nice Guy is attracted in his crush at least in part to some sort of superficiality (ex. she’s beautiful, popular, dresses well, is the Cool Girl who drinks beer and watches sports while looking hot in a tank top and short shorts). He says she’s superficial for not wanting a dork like him, but it’s not like he’s looking around for some socially-awkward, plain-faced girl on his own level or lower and falling for HER because of HER kind treatment of him and the intensity of HER feelings. Fans get upset when Adrien the teen heartthrob doesn’t give Marinette her due attention, but it’s not like they’re clamoring for her to settle for Nathanael in “Evillistrator” or Nino in “Animan”, even though they had intense feelings for her and were kind to her.

Because of the partial superficiality of the Nice Guy’s attraction to his crush, he has this fantasy built up in his head. He puts her up on this pedestal, much like the pedestal Marinette puts Adrien on. It gets to the point that he’s in love with the IDEA of her, this image of a perfect angel that he’s made her out to be, and not the real her. He refuses to admit that she is flawed, much like how Marinette overlooks Adrien’s doormat attitude and overwillingness to forgive, seeing him instead as the perfect boy who can do no wrong. This is a set up for disappointment later on, as when the love interest does not do what the Nice Guy expects from her, like instantly return his love, the illusion that he has so carefully crafted for his pleasure is shattered, and everything goes downhill.

Many people blame the love interests for not instantly favoring the Nice Guy once he’s shown his romantic dorky side, thinking they should pick up on the feelings right away, like it’s their job to know who they should be with immediately upon meeting them, that it’s their fault they miss the signs. But this misconception shifts blame away from the Nice Guy for not properly acting on his feelings. This is where the Nice Guy becomes his own worst enemy. He automatically convinces himself that he’s below the girl’s standards and gives up before he even tries. He hesitates to act on his feelings, much like Marinette is so certain that Adrien is out of her league that she lets her insecurities get the better of her and avoids confessing to Adrien or even talking to him because she’s sure she’ll mess up before she even tries. Then when the girl doesn’t immediately realize that she is loved, despite getting no clear signs or even the words “I love you”, she is blamed for leading the Guy on, much like how Adrien is blamed for not recognizing the mixed signals from Marinette as affection.

Even after Adrien has told her that he loves another girl, Marinette still decides to keep pursuing him, much like Chat Noir kept pursuing Ladybug even after she told him she loved someone. Yet, while Adrien is bashed for not immediately accepting her choice and working to move on, Marinette is pardoned from not accepting Adrien’s feelings in the matter. Viewers excusing all her Nice Guy traits while prosecuting Adrien for displaying all the same traits is what makes Marinette, in my opinion, more of a Nice Guy than him. Because the Nice Guy is usually the one that shippers root for, despite the warning signs of their behavior and the fact that the love interest has said flat out that they are not into them that way.

Do I think that Marinette is a bad person? No. Do I condone Adrien’s behavior over hers? Absolutely not. But these are fictional characters. We can’t control their flaws or talk some sense into them anymore than we can change the past or rewrite the movies that have sold us this one-sided mindset. I don’t hold their flaws against them and act like their imperfections define their whole character. I focus on the good they do, and if the characters forgive them, I forgive them, because they’re the ones who choose who to forgive, who to love, who to be friends with. So kiss off, Adrien salters. Y’all are a bunch of hypocrites. Peace out.

[anika-ann]

Attached: Words Lost in Translation Pt.1

Type: (mini)-series,  Modern-college-professor AU… aka the wrong attachment AU ;)

Pairing: Steve Rogers x reader   Word count: 4200

Summary: There’s a new guy in your history class ��� a foreign student from Milan, Italy. Handsome, nice enough, pretty smart, actually.

But dammit, you should have known that a guy complimenting the way you say his name will be trouble – Bucky certainly thinks so from the start… and he’s not wrong. Oh boy.

A/N: Attached: Words Lost in Translation is a 3-part addition to the Attached series.

A/N: Many thanks to my lord and saviour @chase-your-dreams-away​ for her help with Italian bits which you’ll find in the fic :-* Seriously, big shout-out for her, she was awesome! Vocabulary at the end if you’re interested.

And many thanks to @wxstedhexrt​ for sending me the link and putting the plot bunny into my head in the first place :-* 

Warnings: smug insistent jerk, harassment(?), swearing, one remark about LBGT+ that could feel insensitive

Story masterlist

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“Uhm… hi. Can I sit here? And uh—this is kinda ridiculous, but could I borrow a pen?”

A very much handsome young man was standing by your seat in the second row, week two of your first semester of master’s at uni, deep brown eyes, naturally tanned skin, relatively tall, his smile a fraction shy but honest.

What else could you have done that what you did?

Even if he wasn’t a relatively cute guy – mind you, you were dating Steve, very happily needless to say – you had no reason to be a bitch to a guy with slight accent you weren’t sure where to place, to a guy who was apparently a tiny bit lost on his first day at Bucky’s class.

“Yeah, sure. Seat all yours,” you smiled encouragingly, sliding him an extra pen on surface of the desk.

His smile widened brilliantly, exposing a set of perfectly narrow and white teeth. A twinkle appeared in his eye and you caught your heart skipping a beat.

Oh. Ah-oh.

“Thank you so much. Something tells me that the prof wouldn’t appreciate me missing the first class of his and not taking notes on the second,” your mystery student grimaced and you chuckled, unable to help yourself.

First of all, yeah, kinda on point.

Second of all, not on point at all, because the said prof was Professor James Barnes. Bucky had a relatively benevolent policy when it came to his classes – yes, he appreciated when his students were paying attention, interacting even, but as long as you weren’t an ass or weren’t making noise (or both), you were fine.

You said so to your new classmate and he nodded in acknowledgement.

“Good to know… but you know what would be even better?” he asked, cocking his head to side curiously – or teasingly, it was hard to tell.

“Oh, what? I guess you need the syllabus too, right? I can-“

A low chuckle erupted from his throat, his eyes glimmering with amusement as his gaze gave you a not-exactly-subtle once-over you weren’t sure how you felt about.

Except you knew exactly how you felt about it, you just knew you shouldn’t feel that way.

“That would probably come in handy too, but I’d rather know the name of my lovely saviour with a pretty smile.”

You found yourself lowering your gaze, heat rising to your cheeks.

Here was a thing – this was most flirting you got in like a year. You adored Steve, you truly did, from the bottom of your heart, he was a dream come true… however, the fact that you two were dating was clear to everyone.

And by everyone, you really meant everyone; considering the scene at your bachelor graduation and the mess around, it appeared that the whole damn city accepted the fact that you were Steve’s and thus no one even considered stepping on his toes.

Which was alright, absolutely, but… girl’s got needs, her ego craves a boost from time to time, even if it’s an appreciative glance from a stranger. Just a teeny-tiny bit of flirting.

No one ever flirted with you anymore.

It was why it was way too easy to fall into the sweet trap as you introduced yourself, lifting you gaze only to see your companion wearing a lop-sided smile. He most definitely liked what he saw.

“Sweet name for a sweet girl. I’m Daniel. I’m here for two semesters. And before you ask, it’s Milano, Italy,” he added quickly with a flash of his teeth again, holding out his hand – and upon having it accepted, he most certainly held it too long and swept his thumb over the back of your hand.

Which was the point when your head started yelling at you to stop this in an instant and draw a line. Yes, it felt amazing to be complimented to, but you had a boyfriend – a fucking dreamy one, no less – and you sure as hell didn’t want to give Daniel (how was his name pronounced again?) the wrong impression.

You retreated your hand with your smile turning tight-lipped, a cold pang of guilt stabbing you in your gut. Served you right.

“Nice to meet you, Daniel,” you said politely, and his expression shifted into one just a fraction patronizing.

“Da-ni­-el. Kinda soft ‘i’. Daniel. You’ll get a hang of it, I’m sure. Once more, please?”

Well, since he said please. “Da-ni-el,” you repeated more from a common curtesy, because honestly, the least you could do was to try to pronounce a name right for a handsome classmate.

Shush it, it doesn’t matter if he’s handsome or not!

Daniel smiled widely, turning his palms up and gesturing towards you. “Perfetto. Amazing. You’re a natural.”

Before you could say thanks, Bucky entered the class and you felt the stab in your insides intensify as his eyes found you unmistakably, as if he had witnessed our interaction with the Italian and was telling you he’d rat you out to Steve if you didn’t stop right now.

Ridiculous – there was nothing to talk about. You were just being nice to the friendly stranger who happened to be in your class and whom you’d be meeting for at least a semester. That was all.

Except you still felt your heart pounding furiously, equally because of the feeling of getting caught doing something wrong and because of enjoying the attention. Fuck.

Okay, fine. You’d tell Steve about this guy on your own as a precaution. It would at least remind you to keep yourself in check, because honestly, you had no desire to get tangled up in some mess. You had no desire to taint the beautiful thing you had with Steve with anything at all, less so for a fling.

Content with yourself, you forced yourself to listen to Bucky’s lecture, taking notes like you were supposed to, determined to ignore Daniel’s presence.

Except Daniel interrupted him twice with questions and remarks about accuracy, drawing attention of the whole class to him and you felt hot in your face for a whole different reason than before – simply hating that someone sitting next to you was, frankly, quickly getting annoying.

And God, you had no idea how much.

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Daniel Gallo was a relatively nice guy –social perhaps a little too much, but cute and open, easy to be friends with.

However, he had one fatal flaw, one you discovered very early on; he was the smuggest asshole you had ever met.

Perhaps it was his need to correct Bucky all the time – mostly failing, because Bucky knew his shit, he was just sparing you the tinniest details, leaving them for you to find in text books.

Maybe it was the fact that Daniel hadn’t given you the pen back, not even asking if he could keep it for the day, which you’d understand despite being protective of your pens; except he carried it around for two weeks, using it in front of you, returning it only upon your curious and slightly sarcastic comment about it.

Most definitely though, it was the fact that he was unbearably insistent on flirting with you – shamelessly – even after you grew so uncomfortable that you blatantly told him you had a boyfriend. He smirked, but backed off for the day, only to continue his advances the next week.

And then Jill, a girl from your year and a sort-of-friend, actually told you that he mentioned you in front of her, saying that you were two growing rather close, if she knew what he meant, and she admitted that she snorted into her latté when hearing it.

“What? What is it?” he had asked.

“I sincerely doubt that,” she claimed she had said, causing him to frown.

“Why? She gay? I don’t think so, I can tell this kind of stuff.”

“No. She’s taken. Very happily, I might add. Sorry to burst your bubble.”

“Nah. We’ll see about that,” he had replied supposedly and learning that felt like a punch to your stomach, causing you to see red.

You showed him ignorance incarnate the next week, but he didn’t seem to mind in the slightest.

And then even Bucky noticed and kept casting dirty glares at you both as if you had done the worst crime.

To be honest, after that you did feel dirty; but you didn’t want to make a fuss.

In fact, you hadn’t even told Steve about Daniel besides informing him about the existence of a foreign student in your class.

Partly, shame was to blamed, because you kept wondering if you had done enough; perhaps you should have been more radical, sterner with Daniel to make him stop.

The other part of the reason was that Steve was under tons of pressure because of his academic duties; all professors had to publish an article in a prestige journals dedicated to their area of expertise at least once in two years – university policy – and working on that while teaching several classes was simply taking its toll on him. You really didn’t want to add to his stress.

It wasn’t even a big deal ��� Daniel was overly social and he probably said shit like the stuff you learned from Jill about other girls too. What was the golden rule? When there’s nothing broken, don’t fix it.

There was nothing. No problem at all.

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Except there was.

That morning, you were zoned out, because Steve snapped at you for not doing the dishes and didn’t bother to apologize till you left the apartment in a foul mood. Then he went to shower you with texts full of apologies, gradually growing into pure cutesy (involving a picture of his puppy eyes) and gifs and stuff and you ended up spending the majority of Bucky’s lecture on your phone.

By Bucky’s policy, that was perfectly okay, because he couldn’t care less if you were smiling like a loon into your phone – hell, if he noticed, he was probably glad, knowing shit had rained down and was now being fixed.

At the end of the class, Daniel graciously offered you his neat notes – and really, they looked amazing –, surprising you rather pleasantly.

“Oh… that’s… that’s very kind of you,” you stuttered, almost rendered speechless. Perhaps you truly were just making a big deal of things, seeing something that wasn’t-

“Anything for my principessa.“

The cloud that had been following you since you left the apartment made its comeback in a second, so fast that you actually felt your stomach drop to your feet.

Oh no, you were not imagining things – after all, Daniel even had a term of fucking endearment for you. And you might not be speaking Italian, but you understood that just fine.

“Perhaps one day she’ll repay me with a dinner date,” he continued with a supposedly charming smile, one you found disgusting at the moment.

You opened your mouth and swiftly closed it when no sound came out, scoffing at your naivety. Of course he wouldn’t give them for free, jackass. You shook your head with a wry smile and packed your untouched pencil case and papers, rising to your feet without another word.

A hand on your wrist stopped you from spinning on your heel and walking away.

“Aspetta, aspetta-” an all-to-familiar voice now whispered as you grinded your teeth and glared at the point of contact, skin on skin. He squeezed your wrist almost gently before letting go. “Wait. Here. Just… take a picture, okay? Where would we be if weren’t nice from time to time…”

You really didn’t want to give him the satisfaction… but you could really use his notes too.

Dammit shit.

“Thank you,” you uttered, obediently taking a photo of the three pages of ridiculously perfect notes. Then, you met his gaze, face torn between stern and grateful. “Just… a reminder: I have a boyfriend.”

Slow smile spread on his lips and in that moment, you wanted to punch him in those perfect teeth of his. “Doesn’t stand in the way of admiring your beauty, does it, la mia ragazza…”

You had no clue what he said, but the la mia hinted you that he called you something his and that sent a surge of white-hot anger through your veins, mixing with humiliation. Your hand actually curled up in a fist, twitching – but instead of giving your piling anger an outlet, you took a deep breath, huffed and stalked away without a word of goodbye.

“See you next week!” Daniel called after you and you gripped the strap of your backpack tighter, squeezing your eyes shut.

That night, you got next to zero sleep, watching Steve’s passed-out form with tears in your eyes.

It was ridiculous, it was nothing and you were doing nothing wrong-- but you couldn’t make yourself to cuddle to Steve’s side despite desperately needing his wordless affirmation that everything was alright.

Just a simple embrace of his was like a promise of a brighter future. With him.

Chuckling wryly into your palm, you wiped at your tears and snuggled to Steve, causing him to stir and hum, his arm circling around you on instinct, a barely-there sloppy kiss to your hair chasing more tears into your eyes along with a watery smile gracing your lips.

Yeah. Everything was going to be fine.

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Nothing was fine.

Daniel was getting handsy if you could call it that. His thigh brushed yours multiple times the next class as he was sitting uncomfortably close and no amount of subtle pushing away (of you and your chair) was helping, so no, there could have been nothing coincidental about that.

You dug your nails into your palm and bit your cheek, but survived the lesson somehow.

Bucky called for you at the end of the class, saving you further interaction with that Italian Satan, allowing you to breathe freely until he addressed the very problem your head was occupied with.

Bucky didn’t like Daniel’s attitude to begin with – which wasn’t surprising, seeing as he was being a prick – but he liked the fact Daniel seemed to be awfully close to you even less if his tone was anything to go by and his eyes screamed accusations and you fucking hated yourself, feeling the tell-tale of incoming tears burning in your eyes.

“I can talk to him, you know. Tell him to back off,” he offered then though, the grey with blue threads of his irises warming when he noticed your state.

The pressure in your gut eased upon learning Steve’s best friend didn’t only blame you and apparently wanted to help rather than presenting you with ‘you made your bed you lie in it’ attitude.

You even charmed a small smile for him, determined to do justice to your word: “Thank you… it’s fine. I’ll deal with him. I can handle one guy who doesn’t take no for an answer.”

And sure you could.

Daniel hugged you goodbye the next class, saying he was planning a get-away with his new friends for a weekend and it might be dangerous – fucking absurd.

With your heart in your throat, you quickly patted his back and twisted from his arms, feeling dirty.

“No kiss for good luck?” he teased, that annoying smug smile on his face and you had to remind yourself that punching him was a terrible idea seeing as you were already walking a fine line dating a professor – who happened to be the best friend of one of your professors.

You didn’t need any problems – and for some reason, you were certain Daniel would make a big fucking deal of it. So no punching it was.

Your resolve crumbled to nothing when a sudden kiss landed on your cheek, the sensation cold like a kiss of the death itself.

Before you could as much as catch your breath which got knocked out of your lungs and not in the good way, your blood pressure skyrocketing along with your pulse to a point where your head began spinning… he was gone.

You gulped, eyes fluttering shut as the world seemed to sway from its place and you nearly jumped out of your skin when a hand grasped your arm.

“Daniel, go fuck yourself-“ you snapped and glared at him- only to meet Bucky’s angry and very much concerned gaze.

“Too bad you didn’t say that about thirty seconds ago. You alright?” the brunet asked you, grip firm yet gentle as he steadied your shaky stance.

“Uh-huh,” you hummed, a little strangled noise. “And I am gonna tell him exactly this the next time I see him.”

“Not good enough for me. You’re not stupid, I know you’re not. But I’m not either,” he remarked, expression gravel. His tone hardened, unlike his eyes that studied you thoroughly, examining your face as if searching for something. “You think I didn’t notice the change of your wardrobe?”

An icy-cold shiver ran an up your spine, causing all your muscles to stiffen.

Fuck. He noticed.

You supposed it wasn’t too hard to see and it was only natural that he kept an eye on you as on his best friend’s girlfriend. Yes, your Tuesday’s outfits suddenly somehow lacked skirts and anything with a deeper neckline than a turtle-neck, simply in hopes to turn Daniel off or at least not to pluck up his interest further; an action that had taken zero effect.

But being called out like this? That stung. It hurt your pride and it hurt by its very nature, because it reminded you how pathetic you were, unable to get rid of a jerk who didn’t take no for an answer – in a public space, with witnesses for god’s sake. It made you feel weak and incompetent.

So you looked Professor Barnes dead in the eye, your lips a thin line, your voice cold as you spoke the only words that made sense at that time:

“I—I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

So what if you stuttered? So what if his brows furrowed with what was a damn patronizing worry? You didn’t care as you gathered your stuff without another word exchanged.

You made a mental note to wear your favourite outfit the next week, forgoing pants and turtle-necks, because you could fucking take care of yourself.

Penny encouraged you, clearly having faith in you too, but she also gently reminded you that you could report him.

As if. Brining more attention to your person was the last thing you needed.

You could do this on your own, thank you very much.

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For all your bravado, you asked a girl you barely knew by name if you could sit next to her and nearly cried when she said yes and another girl seated herself to your other side within two minutes. You even smiled for yourself contentedly, seeing a dawn of a new age.

And then Daniel fucking Gallo walked in and charmed his way to the seat next to you anyway, somehow managing to scare off your original saviour as well.

Well, too bad for him; you had your confidence back along with your outfit that suited you much better and you were going to tell that jerk to fuck off, just like you promised to Bucky and yourself.

“You thought I wasn’t coming today, la mia bella ragazza? I couldn’t bear not seeing you…” he started off again and you eyed him head to toe, causing a smile spread on his face. You had found that smile cute once, the kind of smile you would let a person get away with murder for.

Now it was making you want to commit murder.

“I was hoping actually.”

“Oh, sassy today, are we? What’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? He had the audacity to-

You can’t punch him, you can’t punch him, think of the bureaucracy and your future…

What about my satisfaction?

Zip it!

You took a deep breath and watched that asshole take a seat next to you, automatically shuffling his chair closer.

“Daniel, look-“

“Zitta, zitta…” he interrupted you softly, but the manner he spoke with only pissed you off further. Fuck Italian.

“I don’t know what that means and frankly, I don’t care. I’m taken. I said so, several times. So back off,” you hissed, watching your volume despite the prof not being in yet – you didn’t need a scene. You were disgustingly certain Daniel had brought enough attention to you already – in fact, you were shocked Steve hadn’t learned about this yahoo yet with how quickly gossip spread on this university.

And that Bucky hadn’t told him-- God, you hoped Bucky wasn’t saving it for today’s boys night-

To your utter shock and annoyance, Daniel didn’t seem bothered in the slightest, smiling widely as if amused at your antics. “Am I putting doubts in that bella testolina of yours?”

Your blood boiled at such implication… and maybe there was a thin flow of steam coming from your ears too? Because you couldn’t fucking believe this guy, implying such thing-

--okay, you weren’t sure what exactly he said, honestly, but you understood just enough. No doubts. You were perfectly sure he was an asshole you wanted to have nothing to do with.

“No! No way! Jesus- okay. Let’s be clear. Was... this,” you gestured between the two of you in self-explanatory manner, “flattering at first? Yes. But seriously, now you’re just making me uncomfortable.”

As if appealing to his conscience would work…

“Then give in. Just one little dinner,” he insisted, showing a small space between his thumb and forefinger, grinning as if he hadn’t been listening to you at all. “What could it hurt? Who knows, maybe I’ll show you a real good time and you’ll forget all about some boring boyfriend of yours… who I’m not sure he exists actually-“

You inhaled sharply, wheezing in fact, heat of righteous anger flooding your whole body. That fucker-!

“Oh for fuck’s sake-“

You can’t punch him. You. Can. Not. Punch. Him.

You repeated those words to yourself like a magical mantra that was losing its effect, because there was nothing you wanted more. Maybe except for Steve punching him, that would be quite a show… but it was not an option.

For one, Steve, thank heavens, still didn’t know about Daniel’s unwanted advances and for two, chances were that he would show a little less restraint and you wouldn’t blame him one bit. But it would bring a whole new set of trouble, so you had to deal with this alien of a man on your own.

And right now, staring into that stupidly smug face of his, you only saw one possible solution.

“Okay, fine.”

You almost slapped your hand over your mouth as soon as the words left your lips, numbing horror overwhelming your body.

What the fuck did you just do?!

“Yes!” Daniel whisper-yelled, pumping his fist and you noticed that the class was gradually falling silent, probably with Bucky’s approach – but there was still enough chatter going on for you to save the situation somehow.

“-but you have to earn it,” you added in an equally hushed tone.

He cocked his eyebrow, as if smelling your fear that arrived instantly after the rash decision he provoked from you. “I won’t back out from a challenge, bellezza.”

Yeah, I friggin’ bet.

Your mind was racing hundred miles an hour, choosing to ignore the whatever-it-meant petname in favour of the crisis at hand.

“How about… you ask the professor a question-“ Oh Bucky was going to have your head on a stick for that, but hey, he had offered to help you- “-and if he answers wrong, I’ll go to one dinner with you, tonight.”

…that would be alright, right? Just to get rid of him. One dinner so he would get the clue at last. You’d be a hateful bitch, possibly embarrassing him, doing just about anything for him to finally stop making your life a living hell.

Yeah, looking back at the product of your frantic brain, it had been an excellent thinking actually. Go impulsive me!

Hell, tonight was perfect for it, with Steve having a night off with Bucky and you originally planning on studying with Penny. You would tell Steve after, explaining everything—or maybe before? Bucky was your witness that you weren’t exactly an enthusiastic participant in this, surely he would help you explain and would be able to distract Steve-

But really, that was all theoretical, because Daniel would have to catch Bucky off guard first, which was very unlikely. Bucky knew his subject through and through and Daniel’s chances were extremely low anyway.

“Easy-peasy,” Daniel grinned confidently, making you internally roll your eyes at his overconfident ass.

Or perhaps you had let your annoyance show for real? You couldn’t tell anymore, the adrenaline rush in your veins making certain things too sharp and other dull. For instance, you registered Daniel’s eyes flickering towards the teacher’s stand, his already wide smile growing enough to nearly tear his mouth.

“Even easier when we have a substitute.”

“What,” you blurted out, head snapping to the professor at the front.

A flash of blond hair and a shade darker beard. Broad shoulders. Blue eyes of which you simply knew they had a glint of green in them.

Your heart positively stopped in your chest, your lips parting in mute horror.

“Oh shit.”

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Vocabulary: Perfetto - perfect Principessa – princess Aspetta – wait La mia (bella) ragazza – my (pretty) girl Zitta – shh Bella testolina – pretty head

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Part 2

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Eh, I swear the first idea was giving off less of a harassment vibe. But it gets better, I promise ;)

I apologize to Italians if you find this offensive, but it was in fact not my intention at all for Daniel to be a representation of a whole nation. I figured there are insistent jerks all over the globe. (And I happened to have an Italian real-life template, not gonna lie.)

[nezumiismissing]

Control Through Culture and the Lack of It

Ok so before we get started here I would like to just give a big thank you to everyone who came to my panel during the convention all the way back in September and listened to me ramble out the first draft of this! We had some great discussion and everyone brought up great points that all came together to make this post happen, and it wouldn’t have been nearly as good without all of your input! I also profusely apologize for taking this long to get this done, but sometimes you have 18 college credits and 30 hours a week of work that have to come first! Now, on with the topic:

When we look at the city of No.6, we see a world that appears, for the most part, free of any defining cultural characteristics. It would appear, in fact, that as part of the city’s construction, what we would normally associate with such a society’s culture has been purposely removed as a factor in the citizens’ lives. The “removal” of culture as a contributing factor in the city of No.6 is highly effective in what it was meant to do; separating citizens from the “other” while reinforcing the identity of citizenship and treating it as not only a good thing, but the only acceptable way of being. In the minds of the citizens, this is a functional system, as they are the ones who have benefited from it, and they are able to live comfortable lives free of the suffering that is inflicted upon “others”, creating the sense that despite their internal differences, they still constitute a distinct group. But while at the citizens’ level they have been chosen as existing on the top, the picture is much different for those ruling the city. While the nonexistence of culture functions as a way to dehumanize outsiders and reinforce No.6′s position as superior (ie. it does not need culture to be a complete society), it also serves as a highly efficient way of making sure that the citizens are also unable to truly empathize with and care about the other citizens, or any other humans for that matter. Because the city is all they know, and they have been conditioned to not be able to understand anything outside of that context, the “othering” of those outside the walls by the citizens and No.6’s government becomes that much easier, as the understanding of “citizen” to those in the city is equivalent on some level to their understanding of being human, making anyone outside of the citizen category not only lesser, but also not fully human, and justifying the violence used against them for the purposes of supporting and expanding the city. In a less explicit way this is also functioning within No.6, as citizenship is viewed as a single, mostly homogenous group, and so it becomes impossible to view the lower classes as being treated unfairly. In their eyes, citizenship is equivalent to safety from injustice, and so any violence or mistreatment experienced by a citizen is justified based on their perceived noncompliance with the city’s norms.

By removing culture entirely from the picture, No.6 not only limits what its citizens are able to express in terms of art and politics, but also in their own self-expression and understanding of the human experience. This is probably most clear with Safu, who at the beginning of the story shows an almost complete inability to recognize and express basic human emotions in a way that would be seen as appropriate and useful to the average person reading/watching the story. This type of behavior, shown more subtly by several other characters throughout the story, distances us from them. While the lack of any existing social norms would usually allow space for us to impose our own norms onto the city, which in many cases is what happens, these micro level interactions, instead of coming off as a blank canvas for us to fill in, instead are just off-putting and strange, completely distanced from what we would recognize as a normal interaction, and that distance is perhaps the clearest example of culture we get to see in the story, as it reflects a set of norms that is completely separated and distinct from what we are used to seeing.

No.6 as an entity exists to alienate its citizens from the rest of the world, positioning them as existing “elsewhere”, and as being “other”, with No.6 existing as the “real” world. However once we, and Shion, are removed from this context, first through his meeting with Nezumi and again when he moves to West Block, we see that while No.6 exists as a template upon which to place our own social structures and systems, it is the “elsewhere” and “other” that I think ends up being more relatable to most of us. Even if we haven’t lived in extreme poverty or experienced much in the way of suffering, the West Block is a world that, more than anything, feels human. There is culture in the West Block; we see the food people eat and what an average day looks like for those who live there. We understand the issues that they face on a daily basis because they are concrete; hunger, violence, homelessness, much different from the highly technical and abstract problems facing those within the walls. There is diversity among this group, but there are still norms in place (no matter how questionable) that hold it all together in a way that feels organic and far removed from the isolated, expressionless world of No.6.

So, it should also be stated at this point that when I reference No.6’s “removal” of culture, this is not an entirely accurate description of what is happening. At its core, culture is simply social aspects of a group that differentiate it from another group, and that is something that can never be fully and purposefully removed. But what the city does do in order to replicate this effect is remove other groups as a point of comparison, leaving only one culture to be learned, accepted, and practiced. We can say that No.6 has no culture only because the citizens do not perceive that other people live any differently than they do. And as we see with Safu’s travels to No.5, as well as our own experiences learning about the city, the realization that other ways of living do exist completely shatters the illusion of No.6 as a perfect society, making its issues immediately clear. No.6 does have a culture. It is a culture of authoritarianism, nationalism, and isolationism. The city is to be worshipped and given absolute loyalty, to the point that social activities not in the city’s interest come with harsh punishments, and knowledge of anything outside of the city is limited only to those who have demonstrated an extraordinary level of commitment to the project, intentionally or not. While social norms and laws are generally viewed as overlapping but distinct, with many norms not legally enforced and many laws viewed as universal rather than cultural, in No.6 there is no such distinction.

So where do we, the reader/watcher, fit into this equation? I mentioned at the beginning that the lack of easily identifiable culture in No.6 is what makes the city and the story easily relatable to us, as we are able to layer our own culture and ideas on top of what is otherwise a blank city. But if No.6 does have a culture as described in the last paragraph, then where does that leave us? Now the easy answer here is that in recent times (including when the novels were originally written) many places around the world have faced an increase in the types of ideologies that make up No.6, and our viewing No.6 as a reflection of our own society shows an understanding (either implicit or explicit) that this shift in dominant ideology is occurring in the real world, that authoritarianism is still a prevalent part of our lives. But that answer is no fun, and is actually extremely depressing, so I’m going to point out some other aspects of the relationship between No.6 and our own world as well. 

Although the culture of No.6 does exist, it isn’t blatantly discussed or shown in a way that most people would traditionally associate with “culture”. We don’t generally treat government and political ideology as part of a society’s culture, as so much of our everyday lives is determined by norms and practices that aren’t necessarily directly dictated by political systems. This is why No.6, despite having such a strong presence, also feels so blank. It looms so large over the events of the story and yet, once we are outside of it, we see that it has basically no impact on everyday occurrences outside of its walls. Unlike the West Block, where we see so many of the things we associate with culture; food and music and marketplaces and so on; No. 6 just doesn’t really have any of these, and what does exist doesn't really have a distinct form separated from any other modern industrialized nation. It is easy for us to imagine then, that perhaps the people in No.6 live similarly to us, that they share many of our values and understandings of the world, and have the same everyday concerns that we have. So much of what we use to understand a society is just not mentioned that the story basically forces you to impose yourself and your worldview onto it. It forces you to take part in the story and forces the story to take a shape that makes societal critique impossible to ignore.

On the other hand, besides just having a feeling of being more “alive”, the West Block also has its reasons for being the more relatable of the two places, at least for a solid chunk of the people who are going to be experiencing the story. Despite the fact that the structure of No.6 is meant as a representation of the issues found within the modern industrialized world, the position from which we are seeing those issues is skewed. I have touched on this in my post about Getsuyaku, and will definitely go into more depth on it in the future, but outside of Lost Town, No.6 exists as an upper middle class utopia only. There is no room in their world for regular working people, or those framed as being “unproductive” in society, such as the elderly. While wealth is a complicated topic when talking about No.6, class is not, and it is clear that the ways in which class manifests are strikingly similar to the real world. So where does West Block fit into this? Well, the reality is that a significant percentage of the people reading or watching No.6 do not belong to the upper middle class, or even the middle class. A lot of us are working class or poor (or both depending on how you categorize classes), and even if the West Block is a somewhat extreme example, those people, along with those in Lost Town, have far much more in common with us than those living in the regular districts of No.6 or in the gated area of Chronos. So while the city may reflect our own society in significant ways, and accurately describes the “culture” of that society, it only does so through the lens of someone who is successful within that structure, leaving it “blank” and without culture for those of us who have not had such an experience and view that position as something completely distanced from ourselves, or that we only encounter from a subordinate position.

In the world of fiction, there basically are no rights or wrongs when it comes to writing culture. That’s kind of the point of fiction. And to a certain extent every story is going to have some aspect of the society it was written in in it, because culture is just an unavoidable part of every person’s life that dictates everything about how they see the world. But through the story of No.6 we get to see that influence from several perspectives, both within and outside of the story, showing not only a reflection and critique of our own society, but the ways in which the positions of the characters and ourselves changes how we perceive that reflection. Ultimately every society is controlled through culture, and systems are in place to in turn control how culture functions, creating an endless loop of changes and reinforcements. To, in any concrete way, remove culture from a society is a fundamentally impossible task, and yet the illusion of removal is very much real, created not through an active effort of removal, but through the elimination both of comparable groups and the perception that any culturally significant differences may exist within the original group.

I could probably go on, but I’m getting away from the main topic, so I’ll stop here for now. The topic of culture in No.6 is really fascinating and something I definitely want to write more on in the future, but it will have to wait until I finish a couple of my other drafts first! So like always thanks for reading  if you made it all the way to the end, and I will hopefully have at least a short thing done in the next couple of weeks or so!

[batmansymbol]

why the mcconnell rule is invented, illogical, and inconsistent

this post has no action items. i am truly just ranting at this point, i just need to get this all down.

these days i feel like my head is spinning with misinformation. i haven’t seen a single well-cited post or article outlining every problem i have with the so-called “rules” mcconnell has invented. what i have seen are hosts of people defending him online based on scraps of unconnected, irrelevant information. even the people who have an issue with mcconnell’s actions rarely address every part of the problem.

so i’m just going to write the post myself, to feel sane again. i’m going to go through every reason that McConnell denying the Garland appointment, but pushing forward with a Trump appointment, is nakedly hypocritical and logistically contorted.

it freaks me out to see the Republican base accepting, for instance, this arbitrary idea that the Senate and presidency being of different parties should make any difference for a SCOTUS appointment—because if McConnell & co. can convince voters of this invented “rule,” what part of our (deeply flawed, but largely democratic) institutions will be next to fall at a moment’s convenience?

anyway. let’s go

The facts: after Antonin Scalia’s death in February 2016, Barack Obama nominated a replacement to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland. He made the nomination in March of the same year, but Mitch McConnell and his Republican cosigners, acting in a Republican-led Senate, blockaded the nomination and refused to hold a vote, saying that “the American people should have a voice” and later referring to Obama as a “lame duck” at that point in his presidency.

McConnell’s original reasoning for the blockade cited what he named the “Biden Rule,” referring to a suggestion Biden had made during George H.W. Bush’s presidency in 1992 to delay a SCOTUS nomination until after the election. (Biden’s suggestion was hypothetical; there was no vacancy in 1992.)

Flash forward four years. After Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death on Sept. 18th, 2020, McConnell immediately stated that a Trump nominee would, unlike Garland, receive a Senate confirmation vote. In this statement, though, he declared new reasoning for the Garland blockade. He claimed that the blockade had been based in political precedent rather than on the "Biden Rule.” McConnell’s supposed precedent was that “since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.”

In other words, his claim evolved in 2020 into the idea that a Senate of one party and a President of another represents a divided American opinion. Based on that premise, a Republican-led Senate confirming a Trump nominee while blockading an Obama appointee is, apparently, consistent.

So let’s start with that idea, McConnell premise #1: “The American people’s will is unclear when the Senate and President are of different parties.”

Yes, you could make this claim. But if the American people’s “unclear will” is really the point, then the Senate should blockade any presidential nominations by an opposite-party president at any point, not just in the year leading up to an election.

The Senate has never behaved this way—19 justices of the 114 in our country’s history were nominated and confirmed by different parties—so this can’t be the point.

Then how about McConnell talking point 2, a direct quote from his statement? “Since the 1880s,” he claims, “no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.”

This is plainly false. We non-politicians might even call it a “lie.” We only need to look back to 1988, when, on February 3rd of an election year, a Democratic-controlled Senate confirmed Republican Ronald Reagan’s nominee Anthony Kennedy by unanimous vote. McConnell blatantly ignoring this fact in his statement is particularly brazen.

“Yes, but Anthony Kennedy was nominated before an election year! He was nominated in 1987, only confirmed in 1988!”

OK. Let’s give McConnell the benefit of the doubt and say that he mistyped. Let’s assume he meant to say, “Since the 1880s, no President has successfully nominated a Supreme Court justice in an election year.”

McConnell is clearly namedropping the 1880s to make the practice seem shockingly out of date. Don’t buy it. SCOTUS appointments are lifelong, which means replacements are infrequent by nature. While 12,348 people have served in U.S. Congress over the course of our history, only 114 justices have served on the Supreme Court, ever. And of those 114, only 64 of those justices were confirmed after the 1880s.

Out of 64 people in 130 years, is it a real shock that none of their confirmations met the narrow criteria of McConnell’s rule? Let’s look at it mathematically. Criterion 1: their nomination would have had to arise in an election year, one of 32 such years since 1890. Criterion 2: the confirmation would have to happen under divided government (when the Senate and Presidency are led by different parties), one of 36 such years since 1890.

I’ve cross-referenced the years. There are only 13 years since 1890 that meet both of these criteria.

And then there’s Criterion 3: the vacancy would almost certainly have to be a death rather than a retirement, because Supreme Court justices often tactically retire when someone they trust to replace them is the President. I’m not at all surprised that, of the 13 election years since 1890 when the country had a divided government, there were no voluntary retirements or sudden deaths among a court of 9.

My point here is this: McConnell is implying that an opposite-party confirmation hasn’t taken place since the 1880s because it’s an out-of-date practice, a matter of principle, and a matter of representing what US citizens really want. In actuality, an opposite-party confirmation hasn’t taken place since the 1880s because of sheer statistical unlikeliness.

In saying that an opposite-party confirmation hasn’t taken place since the 1880s, McConnell also implies that parties have often obstructed each other’s nominees. In actuality, only 3 SCOTUS nominees have been voted down by opposite-party Senates since 1890: Haynsworth (Nixon nominee), Carswell (Nixon nominee), and Bork (Reagan nominee). None of these votes occurred during an election year, and crucially, Nixon and Reagan still wound up filling those vacancies with different candidates.

In essence, it’s all a totally arbitrary bit of framing. McConnell might as well say something like, “No Senate with primarily brown hair has confirmed a nominee whose birthday falls in April since the 1870s!” It’s the exact same process: picking random categories in order to winnow down the numbers, in order to make something seem more archaic and unlikely than it is.

We should also consider the fact that something “not happening since the 1880s” is hilarious as reasoning. Since when are the 1880s and before not considered as valid precedent? Does the entire Republican party not, right now, constantly refer to the second amendment, ratified 1791, as something that must be obsessively adhered to, letter for letter?

But all this is just about the reasoning McConnell gave this year. So let’s go back to his 2016 talking points, justifying their initial blockade of Garland, which Republicans everywhere are recycling faithfully. I see this one a lot:

“Blockading nominees in an election year was Biden’s tactic first! It was the Democrats’ idea!”

This is incorrect for two reasons. Firstly, there was no vacancy in 1992. Biden was speaking in hypotheticals and, unlike McConnell, had no actual power to control what would happen if a vacancy had arisen.

Secondly, Biden’s suggestion was that, should a vacancy arise, the nomination and confirmation process should take place after the election (still allowing Bush time to nominate and confirm before the inauguration), so that the process wouldn’t be tainted by campaigning and politicking.

Biden suggesting to George H.W. Bush that he should wait to name his hypothetical nominee until Nov. 4th of that year is not, in any way, the same thing as McConnell & co. refusing to vote on actual nominee Merrick Garland’s appointment for a ten-month period, destroying Garland’s nomination.

And then there’s this: “This wouldn’t have happened if Harry Reid, a Democrat, hadn’t removed the judicial appointment filibuster in 2013!”

Technically true. Harry Reid removed the appointment filibuster, dropping the number of necessary confirmation votes from 60 to 51. In my opinion, it’s true that Reid shouldn’t have changed this precedent. But it’s also true that Republican obstruction has made operating a functional government impossible since Obama’s election. Reid had few other options with a Republican Congress obsessed with stymying Barack Obama’s appointments.

This one just rubs me the wrong way: “Obama was a lame duck!”

The phrase “lame duck period” refers to the period between an election and the new president’s inauguration. In 2016, this was the time between Nov. 9th and January 20th.

Obama nominated Garland eight months before the lame duck period, in March. As little as I have faith in McConnell’s moral center, I would at least expect him to know the difference between the words “March” and “December.”

Barack Obama had nearly 1/4 of his second term left when Scalia died. The expansion of the term “lame duck” to include an entire year of the presidency is fundamentally ridiculous. You may as well call his entire second term a lame duck term, but maybe I shouldn’t type that, because they might get ideas.

And lastly, my least favorite of the McConnell talking points: “Dems would do the same thing and 1) blockade a Republican equivalent of Garland or 2) fill RBG’s seat!”

Well, a couple problems with this. Firstly, no, we haven’t ever done anything like the Garland blockade, so you can’t use this logic. In the 20th century alone, Democratic Senates voted to confirm twelve nominees by Republican presidents to the Supreme Court. A Dem Senate has never refused to consider a nominee by a sitting President, no matter the party.

Secondly, yeah, of course Dems would fill RBG’s seat if we were in power at this very instant. That wouldn’t be a hypocritical action, because we didn’t blockade Garland. The point isn’t that Presidents should be less and less frequently able to nominate justices. The point is that in 2016, McConnell changed the playbook by demanding that “the American people” get to decide—and now that he’s been asked to apply the same rules to his own team, he’s scrambling to create loopholes so that he can pack the court further.

This is the most infuriating to me because it’s truly invented. “Dems would do the same thing” - based on what? What are you even talking about? Every time a Dem Senate voted no on a Republican appointee, it was eventually followed by that same Dem Senate confirming another appointee by that same Republican. Conservatives are truly bending themselves into knots trying to feel victimized by the left wing. I don’t think I’d mind so much if they didn’t also insist on calling us precious little snowflakes with victim complexes.

The fact is this. Mitch McConnell invented a new SCOTUS appointment rule in 2016, loosely based on something Joe Biden floated but never did. He got away with it because our systems, left and right, are showing how poorly they’re equipped to handle people who are obsessed with gaining and keeping power. And now, in 2020, in order to justify going back on his own rule, McConnell added new stipulations about party and precedent that don’t hold up under even the scrutiny that I, someone with no legal or political expertise, can apply to the situation.

Mitch McConnell and his ilk are a moral black hole: spineless, shameless, power-hungry. The effects of McConnelism are obvious. Once Trump’s nominee goes through, five of the justices on the Supreme Court will be conservatives nominated by Republican presidents who lost the popular vote. In fact, Republicans have only won the popular vote once in the last 28 years. This is the current state of representative democracy in the US.

[seyaryminamoto]

I recently saw a heavy criticism of The Beach saying "it's the single least realistic portrayal of teenagers on television: spoiled, rich kids don't actively shun Zuko for having a disfiguring scar on his face, no one tries to start shit with Azula over the volleyball game, teenagers referring to themselves as teenagers, a teen boy tells people not to make a mess, a bunch of 14-16 year-olds sit in a circle and psychoanalyze each other, everything else about the campfire scene." Your thoughts?

:’) that someone looks at the Beach and dismisses it for being “unrealistic” by whatever their cultural standards are is probably enough of a sign of the irrelevance of said person’s opinion. I mean, obviously they’re free to think what they will, but...

Fire Nation society is not American society. I’m going blind here, maybe this person isn’t American at all, but somehow I mostly see such kinds of narrow-minded criticism from first-worlders who are seldom exposed to lifestyles outside their particular, contemporary bubble of experiences. 

Now then, let’s get into the actual debate: Fire Nation society values violence quite a lot. Fire Nation society is full of people who saw Zuko’s literal Agni Kai burning scene, and didn’t look away: the only character who does is Iroh, a very obvious hint by the writers that Iroh has discarded the cruel moral values the rest of the Fire Nation upholds.

With this in mind, a boy with a scarred face might earn all sorts of “ews” from our societies, damn right. From Fire Nation society, though? If even watching how the burn is inflicted didn’t bother most of them, why would the result be a problem? If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if people with burn scars are even seen more attractive because it implies they were caught in violent scuffles with fire and still survived? Of course, the argument might go that Zuko’s burn is meant to be a mark of shame... but it’s a mark of shame for PRINCE Zuko. For that mysterious boy with the emo haircut in Ember Island, whose real identity is a mystery? It is shown, instead, to result in this reaction:

Now then, we could say that this is meant to be a jab by the creators and writers at Zuko’s hordes of fangirls, because frankly, Book 3 has several instances of groups of girls swooning over Zuko and it might be what they were going for. In this case, though, they’re swooning over him WITHOUT knowing who he is, as opposed to the fangirls in Nightmares and Daydreams. So, while it absolutely can be inspired on the many Zuko fangirls the staff knew about, this actually ends up serving to characterize a society, a culture: they don’t think his scar makes him unattractive. It’s blatantly stated that their reaction is the opposite. So, instead of thinking “oh god that’s so unrealistic”, how about we actually stop trying to measure everything by our standards and consider that this could be an element of WORLDBUILDING...? :’)

(Also, I’m pretty sure there’s a fair share of privileged young women in our current society who think Kylo Ren was hot as hell with a huge scar across his face... are those people not real, by any chance? :’D If anything, they’re living proof that girls swooning over a scarred boy in ATLA are absolutely feasible, no matter if not everyone shares their opinion)

Continues under the cut becasue this got long....

Now then, Azula is shown to take the Kuai ball game too far. She outright causes the ball, in the final kick, to burst into flames and burns the net. Going by Chan and Ruon Jian, these kids are privileged idiots, why lie... but are these privileged idiots stupid enough to see a girl flying three feet into the air, kicking a firebent ball and then giving a foreboding speech, and say “OKAY WE’RE GONNA PICK A FIGHT WITH YOU FOR BEING SO COMPETITIVE!”???? I mean... honestly. Why would anyone do this? Azula turned an inoffensive Kuai ball game into a battlefield singlehandedly: THIS, as well, is meant to be a display of characterization. That people don’t take the game so seriously, that they wouldn’t pick a fight with her because she’s dangerous or because they just don’t care as much as she does... it’s characterizing Fire Nation people every bit as much as it characterizes Azula.

Azula and Zuko are both shown reacting in ridiculous ways to casual things in this episode: Azula takes the game too far, potentially stages the burning down of a house in retaliation for being rejected by a boy, Zuko is hysterical and jealous and snaps at Mai over stupid things... it’s, again, a matter of showing how poorly adjusted these characters are. They’re not normal kids. They DON’T behave like normal kids. Normal, privileged kids in the Fire Nation, are kids like Chan and Ruon Jian. The episode literally gives you the chance to see Fire Nation society for what it is, in a way no other episode does... and because it’s not like our societies, it’s somehow wrong?

... Also, teenagers referring to themselves as teenagers is somehow unrealistic? I mean... is it nowadays? I don’t think any teenagers had a problem with saying they were teens in my youth :’DDD literally remember MCR released a song called Teenagers and a lot of us loved it to pieces. What exactly is so outrageous about it? Might be that this worked better in the mid-00′s, but I hardly think this makes no sense? Aang refers to himself as a kid earlier in the show, is that unrealistic too and worth rebuking a whole episode over? Are all teenagers supposed to be pretending to be grown-ups, like so many 16-year-olds on Tumblr who always talk like they’ve figured out the world and try to impose rules on fully-grown adults upon whom they have absolutely no power? :’DDDDD Yeah, I think this particular point is a stupid thing to make a fuss over. Honestly, it is.

Chan tells people not to make a mess = unrealistic. Ha. Did this person ignore his reactions at the chaos Azula, Zuko, Mai and Ty Lee caused in his house? “YOU BROKE MY NANA’S VASE!!!”, anyone? Like... I’m sorry, but this IS characterization, yet again! This shows Chan is a spoiled brat who wants to stay in his family’s good graces. The party isn’t at all as crazy and wild as you’d expect from, again, an American teenage party... and why? Because, for one thing, Chan is clearly afraid of the consequences of too much chaos in the beach house: this implies fear of authority, of his parents, perhaps even his grandparents. 

For another, again, FIRE NATION SOCIETY: what does this clever critic know, by any chance, of Nazi Germany’s Hitler Youth? I’ve watched a few documentaries about it, and basically if you were a boy and you weren’t in Hitler Youth, you were no one. You were worthless. And what happened in Hitler Youth? Conditioning to the extreme. These kids were taught all the alt-right ideology that Tumblr despises, and they were made to believe it was an undeniable reality. Were there cases of kids who didn’t like it, kids who didn’t approve of it? Surely. But the general idea of Hitler Youth was to educate every kid to behave in the way Hitler considered appropriate, to the point where “the notion "Germany must live" even if they (members of the HJ) had to die was "hammered" into them.”

This is, of course, an extreme example and I’m sure Fire Nation education wasn’t that extreme because we saw it for ourselves, it’s not. But a slightly milder version of it? That’s absolutely feasible and consistent with what we see in The Headband. Therefore, kids getting high and drunk at a party? Maybe that kind of thing simply DOESN’T happen in a Fire Nation party? :’) Maybe they’re taught that those kinds of things are off-limits to anyone under a certain age (or outright forbidden, might be the case with drugs), and as they live in a tyrannical society that priorizes the Fire Lord and his decrees above all else, where his word is treated as that of a god, even mischievous teenagers refuse to act out? :’D oh, what an implausible concept, this just can’t possibly make any sense! Hitler Youth is unrealistic too!

Lastly, that a bunch of kids would sit in a circle psychoanalyzing each other seems implausible to this person is actually laughable for me. Not only have I constantly found myself, from my early teenage years to current days, serving as some sort of unofficial therapist for many of my friends, who share their woes and ask me for advice (whether they’ll heed it or not), most importantly, I once had an experience with a friend, back in high school, much like what happens with these kids in The Beach, after I’d spent years doing a lot of post-depression introspection. I shared a lot of stuff I didn’t often talk about, and beats me WHY I felt completely comfortable sharing it with my friend that day, but I did. She understood me, listened, offered her opinion, and we talked about her problems too. This happened when I was 15-16. If this person has never experienced such situation... why, that’s not anyone’s business. But it’s certainly not their business to determine this just DOESN’T happen, to anyone, ever. I can safely say it does, to people who do have problems and who sometimes just need a friendly shoulder to rely on. Maybe this critic’s life is just so perfect they’ve never had to share their woes with anyone else :’) I’m afraid that doesn’t invalidate those of us who are different, and it doesn’t invalidate the possibility that those four could talk, as they did, without breaking characterization, in the scene of the fireplace at the beach.

ANYWAYS...

Saying that a show about a group of kids who save the world and then effectively become leaders of such world, facing very little opposition in the process, is unrealistic because “teenagers aren’t like that becuase I wasn’t like that as a teenager” may be one of the most ridiculous and shortsighted things I’ve seen in this fandom, AND I’VE SEEN A LOT OF RIDICULOUS AND SHORTSIGHTED THINGS. A person’s experiences are NOT universal, regardless of how widespread their culture may be. More importantly, fiction does NOT have to abide by rules established by our current society’s state and cultural values. ATLA, as it is, is a completely different world from our own, regardless of its inspiration in many Asian cultures.

I, personally, find it a lot more unrealistic that Fire Lord Zuko can become Fire Lord without much in the way of visible protesting or boycotting when he was a banished prince who didn’t even win in his Agni Kai against Azula since it’s Katara who ends up defeating her and, as far as the rules go, Azula technically won even if not in the most dignified of ways. I find it even more unrealistic that LOK tells us Zuko was Fire Lord successfully for 70+ years and the Fire Nation has been fully reformed into a non-warmongering country despite the 100+ years of indoctrination started by Sozin’s rule. That this gets swept under a rug, not only in the neatly wrapped finale that leaves a thousand unanswered questions, but in the sequel show that merely confirms Zuko succeeded and shows NOTHING of how he managed to reform such a fucked up society...? That is a thousand times more important to me than “privileged kids aren’t acting like privileged kids OMG!”. Honestly, you want privileged kids abusing all their privileges in our society? Go watch Gossip Girl, I genuinely recommend it. You want something that proposes a completely different possibility and a glance at what a society guided by a tyrannical dictator looks like? Feel free to watch The Beach again with a completely different focus and MAYBE you’ll understand what the writers were going for.

If this person happens to see my answer, I hope they learn that worldbuilding, for a storyteller, entails CREATING a world that isn’t necessarily like the one we’re familiar with. There are multiple layers to such a world, and society and culture are some of them. Not all cultures and societies work the same way, which is part of why sometimes you’ll find behaviors from people who belong to wholly different cultures and wind up perplexed because whatever they’re doing is completely unfamiliar for you. Are there any universal behaviors in humans? Maybe! But in a work of FICTION, even the most universal of behaviors can be changed, deleted, altered however the writer sees fit! :’D it’s not a novel concept, and as far as logical fallacies are concerned, this show features a whole slew of those that have nothing to do with this peculiar sense of “realism”, fallacies that absolutely can and should be called out. Namely, things that contradict the internal logic of the show, rather than things that are incompatible with OUR world. Portraying a world that’s very different from ours, on virtually every level you can think of? That’s called creativity, not lack of realism. Please learn the difference.

[ask-these-fantrolls]

this is just an ask, not a request, but do/would u ever draw ur trans characters, like bel, pre transition? (i think this makes sense?) im not trying to be rude, just your own take as an artist yk. ˖°°˖✧◝(♥◡♥) love ur art

[I’m very glad you like my art, and I appreciate it very much.  But to just be honest...  I got this ask yesterday and didn’t have the motivation to answer it then, and now I’m sick with an off and on fever of 100+ degrees and I am NOT in the mood to be overly polite and to coddle people on this, so I’m going to be relatively blunt.  I know you probably are well meaning anon but I’m very tired of answering this question and questions similar to this one over and over again.  I’m going to be a bit rude under the cut, so read at your own risk.

Short answer: No, I have not and will not do that, and no amount of cutesy emojis or posing it as a question of my “take as an artist” will make the obsession some anons have with seeing my characters (and Belshn specifically) “pre transition” not creepy.  You don’t need to know what he looked like as a child before he transitioned, and I will not answer any more questions asking for it.

I want to be clear that i am NOT ANGRY AT YOU SPECIFICALLY!!!!  I’m just a bit fed up with answering this same thing in overly nice ways time and time again.  I know you probably just don’t understand that this might be an issue for some people, so please don’t take offence to what i say here

Long answer: Why do you think you need to know this?  Why do you want so much to see Belshn before he transitioned?  This is a general “you” question, but I’m assuming that if you know he’s trans than you have probably seen me talk about how he transitioned at a young age and how I’m uncomfortable with the idea of showing what he would have looked like as a small child pre-transition.  

You wouldn’t ask a trans person “can i see pictures of you from before you transitioned?” right?  If you would, let me tell you something in the nicest way possible while I feel like I’m dying: That’s creepy.  That’s weird as all hell.  When you ask that, you’re asking someone to show you a part of themselves that they wanted gone and changed and never to be seen again.  What you are really asking is “can I invalidate who you are at present so that I can have very intimate knowledge about you that you don’t like to show others so that I know what you “really” looked like?”

By the few anons I’ve gotten about this I can only assume that you are clamoring to know what Belshn looked like “as a girl” and it really makes me upset.  I’ve shared sketches of him from when he was a teenager, so if you want to see what he looked like when he was younger you can go look for those.  Fuck, if you wanted to see what he looked like as a younger troll and you asked for that I would be happy to draw it.  He’s one of my favorite characters!  I absolutely love drawing him and I am VERY HONORED that you like him enough to ask these things!!  But when you go out of your way to specify that you want to see him pre-transition?  You are asking me to go out of my way to draw my character who is a man as a little girl.  

Like, I REALLY don’t understand what you want out of seeing him before he transitioned other than being able to get some weird pleasure out of knowing that he hasn’t always “been a real man”.  There’s nothing to be gained out of knowing what he looked like.  I mean, this is an honest question, what purpose does seeing him like that serve?  So you can think about him looking like a little girl with goddamn pigtails and a jumper dress or something every time you see him used in RPs or art?    

4 people have asked for things like this- with only one of them having the nerve to ask me directly and off anon.  I explained to them (a lot nicer than this) why it’s not something that you should ask for, just like you don’t ask for someone’s deadname, and how it comes off as you just wanting to have a little extra dirt on them or to get some weird sense of knowing “the REAL them”.  

You don’t need to know what a real life trans person looked like before they transitioned, and you don’t need to know what a character looked like pre-transition.  What matters is who a person is in the present.  I don’t know why some of yall hear “this is my big cowboy!  He’s trans, he’s a dad, and he loves you already” and immediately think “Ok but i want to seem him as a Girl and in a state where he hated himself”.  

Some artists are fine with sharing that sort of thing.  I don’t understand why, whether cis or trans, you would want to do yourself or your characters dirty like that, but that’s for them to decide.  I am not and will never be comfortable forcing my characters back into a state where they would be dysphoric or at all unhappy with their body.  As a transman the LEAST i can do for my characters if give them the comfort that I don’t have access to.

I thought it would be enough common sense that seeing my “I will not do genderbends” rule would extend to things like this, but because of these kinds of asks (and yours specifically, anon) I guess I have to add to my rules blatantly out in the open for any freak to see “No, I will not draw what my characters looked like before they transitioned for you to gawk at”.

I know this is all a VERY harsh reply, and you probably aren’t the same person who has asked to see Belshn in his ex-matesprit’s clothes or to see him 10 sweeps younger “oh wait, no, before that” or asked if he doesn’t like wearing Women’s Clothes because he’s Trans and Was A Woman(TM) but I am honestly out of patience for this.  

At this point it feels like fetishization of the character.  I’m not feeling very generous with being nice about this topic or babying those who ask these (even if honestly) ignorant sort of questions.  I really hope that it’s an innocent desire to just know more about him as a character, but you could just as easily ask that deadass instead of asking to see him before transitioning.]

[whatcouldgowrong-ohthat]

Beauty and the Beast Ch.3 (Bucky x Reader)

Next chapter is here and I’m finishing up the next chapter of “His Shooting Star”. Hope you guys like it!

Chapters: Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7

Warnings: Cussing is always a thing in my chapters, but I try to keep it tame. 

Summary: It took the kingdom of Hydra five years to finally take advantage of the disappearance of the Stark Kingdom. It took Prince Brock two weeks to make the small, unprotected village of Marveline hate his existence. His ways left Captain Rogers to go looking for help, hoping to find a royal family that could protect the people. But what happens when he hasn’t come back? It’s up to Bucky to find out what happened to his best friend and the royal siblings, but he never expected what’s to come.

Chapter Three

It had been a week since Bucky had traded places with Steve. It had been a week since he had given up his freedom to play prisoner for a royal beast. It had been a week of being left alone with no one to talk to, with no one to keep him company.

Bucky had forgotten how much he loathed isolation.

Wandering the long halls, he started to think about the beast that ruled this castle. Y/N. The name was different. It sounded different in his head and on his tongue and yet there was a sense of familiarity to it. He just didn’t understand why. But after blatantly saying no to lunch and dinner three days in a row, she seemed less interested in reaching out to him. That meant he lost track of the hours. He didn’t know when food was served or anything. They practically ignored his existence.

So now he was wandering with a growling stomach tugging at his attention. He needed to eat something. He needed to find the kitchen and then he needed to eat something.

“What were you expecting to happen? You know how she is and trying to play last minute matchmaker never worked out for you. Even when you were human!”

The sound of a new voice made Bucky slow his strides. It was female. Not Rhodey or Sam. How had he been here a week already and yet hadn’t met anyone else? Leaning against the wall, he was curious what else he could learn.

“I was just trying to help. We’re running out of options.”

“What if there aren’t any more options, Sam? Can’t you be satisfied with that?”

“No! Of course I can’t! It’s not only about her. There’s a castle full of servants and people that don’t deserve to live their lives as…objects.”

“They don’t or you don’t?”

“Shut up, Wanda.”

“Hey, um…” A new voice — a boy’s. Perhaps a teenager? “The big guy is listening to you from the door.”

“Bucky?”

At the sound of Sam calling him, Bucky rounded the corner and stood in the doorway. What he hadn’t expected to see speaking to the candelabra was a large, porcelain teapot. He assumed this was Wanda. Next to her was a smaller teacup with a chip at the very top. Bucky couldn’t help, but be curious what his name was.

“What are you doing here, Bucky? We haven’t seen you leave your room since…” Sam faltered, shrugging. “Well, since Y/N showed it to you.”

“I —“ His stomach interrupted him, the low rumble of its discontent and hunger being heard by everyone.

The teacup snickered. “He’s hungry!”

Oh, how Sam wished Y/N was here. He’d give anything for that stubborn woman to see the sheepish look on Bucky’s face. He’d give anything for his princess to have a conversation with this man that didn’t end in them trying to one up one another. But unfortunately, she wasn’t here and the odds of that conversation happening weren’t looking great. 

“Well, if he’s hungry, let’s get him something to eat.”

“I don’t need much. Just some water and a sandwich or something,” Bucky rushed out, his words running into one another. He scratched the back of his neck, strands of hair falling free from the bun and shielding his face.

“That’s not happening,” Wanda told him. “Peter, get some food put together for our guest.”

“I’m not a guest.”

The look Wanda gave him was enough for Bucky to wish he had only thought the words instead of voicing them. She had that motherly look. It reminded him of Steve’s mom and all the lectures she gave him and Steve during their youth. “You certainly aren’t a prisoner, so you aren’t going to eat like one.” Wanda’s voice tore him from his thoughts. “If you were, we’d send Vis to make you food.”

Sam snickered, shaking his head. “Believe me. You don’t want that. No one deserves that kind of punishment.”

Bucky found himself smiling at their kindness. When was the last time someone other than Steve was nice to him simply for the sake of being nice? “Thank you,” he murmured before hearing the clatter of a plate.

“Let’s not get Y/N’s attention,” Rhodey snapped as he entered the room. “You know how she barely sleeps as is.” Realizing Bucky was in the room, Rhodey instantly regretting his words. He probably should have been more careful.

“We’re getting something for Bucky to eat,” Wanda explained. He noticed how she was beaming a little brighter than she had been the past few days, but decided not to comment. Perhaps Bucky could bring some light to their home.

“Here ya go.” The sound of Peter’s voice made Bucky turn. He had been so focused on the new voices, the new people to talk to, that he hadn’t realized how large the kitchen actually was. There were two large tables in the center of the room, spanning the length and leaving room to spare. Lining every wall were shelves. Some had herbs, others had plates and cups. There were jars filled with unidentifiable things and even a few spices here and there. Tucked away on the opposite side of the room he noted that there was a large stove and a thick door. No doubt, on the other side of the door was the cold room filled with things like meat.

Shifting his gaze, Bucky looked back to the table where Peter had set up a plate filled with leftovers. It was radiating heat, filled with corn and carrots, a couple pieces of bread, what looked to be boar meat, and something else he hadn’t seen before. “How’d you put this together so fast?” he asked, looking at Peter curiously.

“We’ve been waiting to see how long it’d take you to visit.” Bucky glanced at Sam, confused. Why did they care? And that still didn’t explain the food.

Rhodey seemed to notice his confusion and elaborated, “Peter’s a little overeager. Boy’s been making a plate of food for you every night just incase you came by.”

Bucky chuckled and looked at Peter. “Thanks, kid.”

“Thanks for calling me a kid. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ve actually missed it.”

Bucky frowned at that, taking a bite of his food before he asked, “How long have you been like this?” He looked at all of them, his eyes scanning the room. “And how many of you are…”

“Cursed?” Wanda asked, amusement lacing her voice. A moment of silent passed. It seemed they were all debating whether that was information worth divulging. “Too long.” 

Her answer made him feel sick. He wanted to know the story. Bucky wanted to ask all the questions and understand what made this happen. Each of these people had stories and lives, something they wanted for the future. They had something or even several things that made them tick. How did they get cursed? What made it happen?

Who made it happen?

“Do you want some more?”

Bucky jumped, startled from his thoughts once again. It seemed almost too easy for him to get lost nowadays. He looked to Peter then to his empty plate. Had he really finished it so quickly? 

“Aw, look! Big man’s ears are all pink. He’s blushing,” Sam teased.

Bucky shot him a glare, ready to say something, but he stopped himself when Peter made his way to get the man more food. “You don’t have to —“

“Nonsense. Do you know how long it’s been since we got the opportunity to help someone? Someone who willingly participated in a conversation with us?” Wanda hopped over to him and nudged his hand gently. “This is our way of thanking you.”

“But I haven’t done anything.”

“You’ve come out of your room. You’re talking to us.”

“And,” Sam added. “Judging by the look on your face, you’re actually interested in how all of this happened.”

“Don’t go getting any ideas,” Rhodey snapped, crossing his arms. “That is not our story to tell.”

“Isn’t it?” Bucky raised an eyebrow. Clearly curiosity was getting the best of him.

“No,” Sam begrudgingly agreed. “It isn’t.”

“Then how am I supposed to comprehend any of this?” Bucky felt something nudge his hand and looked down, surprised to see another plate of food. How was Peter able to move so fast? 

“Have you thought about talking to Y/N and asking her?”

“Rhodey, come on now, Bucky doesn’t have the confidence to go talk to her,” Sam teased. He barely jumped up fast enough to avoid the swing of Bucky’s hand. “Rude!”

He huffed, ducking his head behind his hair as he grumbled, “I don’t have any interest in talking to some royal brat.”

“Someone has a problem with authority figures.”

“Rogers said you’re a soldier,” Rhodey said, brow of gold furrowing in confusion. “So —“

“I was. Past tense.”

Silence fell in the room as Bucky went back to eating his food. Clearly he wasn’t so open to discussion regarding his history. He wasn’t Steve and judging by the way they glanced at each other, Bucky managed to put the pieces of the puzzle together. Steve liked being distracted from the now. He enjoyed talking about the old days because he still felt drawn to them. He had no ties to the village or a calm life. Not unless Bucky was a part of it. 

Clearing his throat, Sam asked Bucky, “Would you like a proper tour? It might help with adjusting to the whole thing.”

“I want to help!”

Sam and Bucky glanced at Peter and, in all honesty, Bucky was actually amused by the little teacup…boy. He reminded him of his little sister, Rebecca. Clenching his jaw, he picked at his food. Rebecca had been a scar he hadn’t thought about in a long time. He went out of his way to avoid her. 

Closing his eyes, he took three slow breaths. In and out. In and out. In and… “Where do we start?”

Peter was more than eager to fill the silence of the tour, telling Bucky about everywhere and everything they came across. If there was a painting hung on the wall, Peter somehow remembered who painted it, why it was here, and what it meant to whichever sibling had purchased it. So far, the only thing that interested Bucky was learning that Y/N had a sibling. 

His mind drifted to the walls. There was so much unnecessary art. He noticed the long lines of armor lined on either side and wondered whether they were alive or merely decoration. Were they cursed or a means for the royal family to show off? 

Finally tuning back in to his tour guides, he listened to Sam. “Up the stairs is the East Wing and —“

“East Wing?” Bucky slowed his steps and looked to the grand staircase. It was tall and broke off in two different directions — east and west. That little itch appeared in the back of his brain, wondering what it possibly was that Y/N was hiding up there. What secrets could she possibly be keeping?

“Don’t even think about it, Buck. She gave you one rule, remember?” Sam looked up at him. “Just follow it. Please.”

Peter noticed the way Bucky wanted to argue. However, he was the kid in the situation. He shouldn’t have an opinion. He really shouldn’t even say anything. Still… “Um…there’s a lot more to the castle you have to see, Bucky.” He earned his attention. Thank god. 

“Like what?”

“Well, there’s the gardens! And we have the dining room and ball room and there’s the armory and —“ Peter swore he saw Bucky’s eyes glaze over with every addition to the list. He looked impossibly bored. Lamely, he finished, “There’s the library.”

His ears perked, eyes shining that bright, curious blue. “That’d be something to see.”

Sam breathed a sigh of relief as Peter perked up. The kid obviously felt accomplished. “Then to the library,” Sam announced. He followed the overly eager Peter, the two of them leaving soft thuds echoing through the hall with every hop they took.

But Bucky was much quieter than the pair.

He ducked to the side, silently moving up the stairs. Glancing to the hall, he smirked as their voices became a low echo. They didn’t even notice he decided his own destination was a little more interesting. 

Bucky wasn’t sure what he expected, but dark and gloomy wasn’t in the top three or even the top ten. He wandered the halls, the eery quiet enough to send a chill down his spine. Goosebumps covered his skin as he passed by the broken windows. Multiple panes were shattered with glass shards left on the floor. He was careful to step around, not wanting to alert any one of his presence due to a simple misstep. 

Lifting a tattered curtain out of his way, he ducked out of the moonlight and back into the shadows. Why was the place so destroyed? And why did Y/N want to keep him out of it? Surely this place didn’t serve any importance to anyone in the castle. Another step and he found himself in a new room. Broken pieces of furniture littered the floor and a slashed painting took up most of the wall to his left. Raising an eyebrow, he tried to see the details. It looked deliberately destroyed and the moonlight was barely bright enough to give him a good look at it.

Where was Peter and his memory now?

Huffing softly, Bucky lifted one of the larger tears and noticed how, when it met the one above, the image formed a portrait. Y/E/C stared at him, peering through his very soul. The color looked familiar and warm, but he couldn’t place where he’d seen those eyes before. Shifting his gaze, he was met with the kindest, most open and honest smile he’d ever seen. He’d never seen such a look from anyone and yet it was captured in a portrait of all things.

Who was this woman?

Bucky’s curiosity was pulled from the portrait when he noticed a warm glow coming from out of the corner of his eye. He looked away, his brow furrowing when there was nothing there. Odd until he saw its reflection had come from a broken mirror. Turning his head, he noticed the balcony where most of the moonlight was coming in. Nearby was the only piece of furniture that wasn’t broken. A small wooden table. In the center of it was a glass dome and inside — a floating black and red rose. He walked closer, feeling almost entranced by the glow coming from the flower. Circling the table, he noticed how there was a bit more black than there was red. Why? 

Lifting the dome, he set it to the side and crouched in front of the magical flower. His mind was racing with questions. Was this connected to the curse? Why were the petals black? Was this the significance of the East wing? One little rose? He reached out, his fingers lightly touching the black stem. It was so dark. Such a light, hopeful glow was coming from such a dark little thing. Bucky didn’t understand it. 

He wanted to.

“What are you doing in here?”

He jumped, pulling his hand away from the rose and spinning around. Y/N stood before him, blocking his exit. Her looming figure was covered in her cloak, the rest of her shrouded in shadows. Claws clung to the doorframe, splintering the wood when she saw the dome was removed. “I—“

“Get out.” Her gaze shifted to him and Bucky felt his stomach clench. Her eyes were filled with hatred, anger, and fear. Fear? He swallowed when he noticed the color of her eyes, the back of his mind drifting back to that portrait. Y/E/C stared at him with such animosity. “Are you deaf?” She stepped forward, glass cracking underneath her feet. “I said leave.”

Y/N ripped her claws out of the wall, knocking the mirror in his direction. Bucky quickly jumped out of the way, knocking into the table with a grunt. She lunged towards the table, towards him, and Bucky stumbled back. Catching the table before the dome fell, a low growl rumbled through her chest. A snarl curled her lips as she used the utmost care in covering the flower. “Leave, Bucky,” she muttered. “Now.”

Pushing the small bit of fear aside, he stepped forward and asked, “What is that?”

Y/N spun on him, snapping at him with her fangs. She rose to her full height, towering over him and covering him in her overwhelming shadow. “I said,” she snarled. “Get out!” Claws gleamed in the moonlight, making him flinch.

Bucky froze. His mind flashed to Hydra, to men breaking him down and beating any sense of humanity out of him. He remembered the cells and being prisoner. He remembered constantly living in fear. Spinning on his feet, he quickly ran out of the room. Glass crunched underneath him, but he paid it no mind. All he could think about was his racing heart, his quickened breath, and the sinking pit in his stomach. He had to get out of here. 

Y/N watched him leave, eyes wide when she realized her mistake. A large hand covered her face as she closed her eyes tightly. She screwed up. Royally.

Racing down the stairs, he stumbled around Sam and Peter. “Bucky!” Sam’s voice was distinct, but fell on deaf ears. “Bucky, wait!”

Running ahead, Bucky’s feet echoed in the halls as he approached the massive doors. He pushed it open, grunting from the unexpected fight against the outside wind and snow. Glancing back, he saw the fear and panic that crossed Peter’s and Sam’s faces.

“Mr. Bucky?” Peter’s voice made him falter.

“I’m sorry, but I’m not staying here.” He shifted his gaze to the stairs. “I can’t stay here with that thing.”

Bucky opened the door more, a flurry of snow coming inside as he slipped out. The door closed with a loud thud, leaving the two in the empty hall. Peter blinked away unshed tears. “S-Sam? What do we do?”

Sam grimaced, shaking his head. “There’s nothing we can do, kid.”

-----

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[kcwcommentary]

VLD7x07 – “The Last Stand Part 1”

7x07 – “The Last Stand Part 1”

I really want to like this episode, and I liked it a lot more the first time I watched it than I did this time. It is not an episode that holds up well to scrutiny. The episode wants us to side with Sam and Colleen and against Admiral Sanda, but I just don’t. The writing of the conflict between Sam and Sanda is simplistic and unrealistic. The show does nothing to establish the Galaxy Garrison’s position in the world. The reality that there would be many governments, and the need to explain how the Garrison connects to them, is completely ignored. This isn’t minor, background information. What the government structure and function are is fundamental to being able to tell the kind of story that this episode is trying to tell.

This episode makes Sam the de facto main character, and since he’s an extension of Pidge, and since this show has Pidge never having to face the consequences of her behavior, Sam and Colleen don’t have to either. They both very clearly committed crimes in this episode, but it’s just ignored in the end under the banner of Sam’s right and Sanda’s wrong.

I guess I shouldn’t be as surprised that Sam is so willing to violate protocols and the law since he blatantly violated the Galaxy Garrison’s rules in a flashback in 4x02 “Reunion.” He never has had respect for the organization or its methods.

This episode starts with a partial repeat of the ending of the previous episode, Voltron blasting toward the Milky Way. The show specifically shows the galaxy and Voltron’s position outside the galaxy, and then cuts to Pidge trying to contact her father, saying, “We’re back in Earth’s solar system, and heading home now.” Like how it bothered me at the end of last episode, it bothers me that the dialog saying they’re in Earth’s solar system does not match the animation of them still being outside the Milky Way. I don’t know if animators just ignored the script, or if after it was long into the animation process, the dialog was changed and replaced. Either way, it’s a glaring error.

A crackly message starts to come through, and Pidge’s eagerness causes her to not listen but to instead talk over that incoming message. I guess it’s supposed to reveal her excitement, but it reminds me too much of Pidge’s infamous lack of patience. Pidge tries to clear up the message, and they finally hear Sam Holt reference the titular “last stand” and to “get word to Voltron. We need help.” As Keith hits a couple of buttons, we see that the Milky Way is still outside Keith’s window, so they are most definitely NOT in Earth’s solar system. A smaller display pops up, showing Earth. The display then highlights an image a Galra cruiser. The Lions have some significantly powerful scanners if they can image a ship on the surface of a planet millions of light-years away.

Sam Holt’s message repeats, “To any beings who receive this message, Planet Earth has been overrun by the Galra. Most of the citizens have been captured. Those of us remaining are making our last stand. If you get this message, please get word to Voltron. We need help.” Considering Earth’s current population is nearly 8 billion, the idea that the Galra have captured nearly that many people seems ludicrous.

The episode then cuts to “four years earlier.”

The story now moves to having none of our main characters in it. I totally get why a lot of people thought, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were right, that this was an attempt to demonstrate viability for a spinoff show. The amount of focus put on these new characters, especially in their inclusion in promotional material for this season, seemed significant. I’m not against the premise of this shift in the story. The emotionality of this occupation plotline is interesting. I just wish that the process of having this detour in the show’s story didn’t result in it feeling like the creative team of this show were bored with the show’s main characters and wanted to move on to others. The introduction of these characters and the amount of time and consideration the show gives them, not just in these two “The Last Stand” episodes but from here to the end of the series, brought about a period in this show where the main characters become increasingly unimportant. If the inclusion of new characters didn’t result in ignoring the main characters, I would have less of a problem with the show going in this direction.

Admiral Sanda meets with Sam Holt, who’s been kept unconscious for most of the week he’s been back on Earth. She’s not exactly wrong that they would want to run tests on him as part of his return, but that doesn’t mean that they had to do so in a way that amounts to violating him by drugging him unconscious for a week. She says, “The Joint Chiefs are eager to hear what you have to tell us,” and Sam replies, “Tell the Chiefs I’ll debrief when I’m ready. There’s someone I need to see first.” Of course, I understand Sam’s desire to see his wife, but I don’t understand Sam’s condescension and aggression, and those are totally the qualities in his voice when he says this line to Sanda. Sam is instantly antagonistic. I guess he is where Pidge gets her arrogance from. Of course, they really get it from the writers who write them both the same way.

Sam asks for the transmitter he brought with him to contact Voltron, and Sanda says they can’t yet let him make any broadcasts. I can understand that, there is a risk in navigating Earth’s entrance into the rest of the universe. But then Sanda says, “Any contact with alien species needs to be run through the appropriate channels.” This line is poorly written because it has her responding to something that Sam didn’t say. Sam said nothing about contacting aliens. Then Colleen yells, “I don’t care about your channels, I want to talk to my children.” Barely restrained aggression must be common to everyone in the Holt family.

Sanda also says that they’re not going to let Sam leave the facility they’re currently in because they’re trying to figure out how to manage letting Earth know about the existence of aliens. Sam responds, “So, you’re holding me, like a prisoner?” Okay, I know the show is pushing a certain narrative here, and to do that quickly, they’re making Sam behave this way, but Sam is a member of the Galaxy Garrison. And while we don’t know precisely what the organizational structure of the Garrison is, it seems to have at least some military aspects. Sam would not have advanced through that kind of organization without developing the mentality that would cause him to understand these cautions. Even if he had not been captured by aliens, just going on any space mission would include protocols of periods of relative isolation after returning from a mission. That’s not being held like a prisoner, that’s part of what he would have agreed to prior to going on the mission.

Colleen continues her aggression, yelling, “If he’s staying, I’m staying too.” It’s like Colleen’s anger is preoccuring out of the writer knowing what they were writing Sanda to say next. “I’m afraid you don’t have the clearance, Colleen.” If Sam is allowed to walk around the entire Garrison, then how could Colleen not have access since the Garrison grounds are populated significantly by students? If Colleen was coming to visit a child who was a student here, would she be denied access due to not having clearance? “This is the only family I have left,” Colleen says. “You’ll get me the clearance.” The way the Holts are just instant anger is so awkward and weird. The concept of what they’re saying in this scene makes sense, just not the way they’ve been written to say it.

Iverson gives a briefing to a bunch of Garrison personnel we’ve never seen before. Iverson reveals that immediately after Shiro, Sam, and Matt were taken by the Galra, the Garrison intercepted the transmission of the Galra report back to Zarkon. Sam tells them about Zarkon. Sam identifies the Galra as “advanced” and “hostile,” and he’s asked to clarify. Rather than doing so, Sam asks Sanda for his communication device. It’s not just a communication device, it’s also a hard drive containing all the information from the Castle of Lions that he brought with him. He explains to everyone that Zarkon held power in the universe for 10,000 years, notably through harvesting quintessence. He explains that it’s “an energy generated by living beings.” And this just reminds me how quintessence is barely defined in this show, how in one moment it can be something good and in another it’s poison, without any explanation for why it changes.

The show employs some unrealistic, cheap-drama dialog by having some guy say that quintessence in humans is “impossible. We’ve never come across anything like that.” The show wants to be able to set up Sam as having the superior position to everyone else, but to do so they write this denial guy so amateurishly. This isn’t supposed to be some random guy, he’s supposed to be important enough to be in a classified meeting of the Galaxy Garrison. A person would not get to be part of an organization that is all about space exploration while thinking that they know everything there is to know. So, this whole moment feels totally forced.

Sam goes off listing the ways he’s superior to everyone. “Have you ever traveled faster than the speed of light? Have you ever seen a living creature biohack nature? Have you ever come face-to-face with an alien warlord who’s older than the entirety of human civilization? Well, I have.” It still feels like the show is trying to show Sam to be smarter and better than everyone else, and thus the one the audience is supposed to side with, but I don’t like either the denial guy or Sam. They’re both arrogant.

Sam continues telling his story of time in space. I guess it serves as a summary for anyone who hasn’t watched the show before now, and it is information that Sam would be providing these people, but it feels like it’s wasting time. We already know everything he’s telling us. Iverson takes over telling us the story of the first episode of the show, I guess in case we forgot what happened? It’s so awkward.

Oh, and it’s weird how Colleen is sitting, not at the table, but behind other seats at the table in some shots but not in others. It’s like in some shots the animators forgot to include her, or like her inclusion was added in after most of this scene had been well into the animation process. Looks like Sanda is being kind and got Colleen clearance, which honestly is really something. People don’t get clearance to hear classified information just because they’re the spouse of someone who knows classified information.

Sam tells them about Voltron, the five Lions, and the Paladins. I don’t get why this repeat, this summary was considered worth including in the show. Given how much the executive producers complained about not having time to include story elements that a lot of us thought really should have been included, it makes them seem hypocritical to then okay a script that wastes so much time telling us what we already know.

Sam says they need to improve Earth’s defenses. Iverson asks about the threat of Zarkon attacking Earth, and this of course is done so Sam can recount Zarkon’s death and the fracturing of the Galra Empire. “Without a clear leader, things are worse than before,” Sam says. The problem with what Sam says is that when he left Voltron to return to Earth in 5x05 “Bloodlines,” the last he knew was that Lotor had assumed the throne of the Galra Empire. We know Lotor’s dead, the writer of this episode knows that Lotor is dead, but Sam does not. From Sam’s last knowledge, Lotor had just established himself as the “clear leader” of the Galra Empire.

Iverson asks what they should do, and Sam says they should tell the world everything. Sanda rejects the idea. “If we told the world there was an imminent attack, we’d set off a global panic,” Sanda says. In response to the idea of an attack, she asks, “When? How will the attack happen? Is there a plan to stop it? None of these things have been discussed.” She’s not wrong. Sam, like his daughter, is very impatient. In terms of a timeline of Sam’s return, assuming this meeting happened soon after he wakes up earlier in this episode, this meeting would be in his second week back on Earth. Sanda is not being unreasonable in saying there need to be more meetings and discussion before they could reveal the problem to the whole world.

Part of the issue with this is that the show does not explain what any of the world’s governmental structure is. Given the geology of the environment where the Galaxy Garrison is located, they would seem to be in the southwest of the United States. Does the United States even exist in this world? Are there other Garrison campuses in other countries, or is it just this one? If the Garrison is a global organization, then what is their relationship and how do they interact with different countries’ governments?  None of this is ever really explained in this show, and I don’t think the creative team for the show even thought it was important.

Before telling the whole world like Sam wants to, I would think the Garrison would have to first discuss the information with world leaders. And I would think Sam, who’s not a new cadet, would know this.

Sam asks to contact Pidge to begin to answer Sanda’s questions, and she agrees. No one responds to Sam’s contact. I get his contacting Pidge first, but would he not have set up communication with Matt too? Speaking of Matt, the last time we saw him, if I remember correctly, was when Sam left Voltron at the beginning of 5x05 “Bloodlines.” That episode didn’t show Matt leaving Voltron, we just had to assume it happened sometime after Sam’s departure and before the next scene. It makes me wonder if Pidge/Voltron bothered trying to contact the rebels once their discussion with Axca at the end of 7x03 “The Way Forward” about it having been three years for the rest of the universe since Voltron killed Lotor. I would think Pidge would especially try to contact Matt, given the stress she went through to find Matt in the first four seasons of this show.

Sanda offers to have regular attempts to try to establish contact with Voltron, but insists they have to work within the confines of this information being classified. Sam seems agreeable and wants to begin work on improving Earth’s defenses. Iverson tells him they already have. Iverson says that they’ve spent a year studying ship Shiro used to return to Earth in the first episode, and now are doing some research on the ship Sam returned in. Iverson says they thought the technology of the two ships would have been the same but isn’t, and Sam explains, “That’s because one’s Galran and the other Altean, created by two different species.” It’s written like Sam is explaining something baffling to Iverson, but the idea that there’s more than one technology, even if it came from the same species, should not be unexpected. I think this bad writing is the result of the writer thinking of different species simplistically as monocultures.

Iverson says they haven’t been able to produce enough power in the ships to fly them. Sam responds, “The crystal must’ve been damaged on entry.” If Iverson was just talking about the Galra ship, I would understand, since it fully crashed into Earth (it’s amazing that it survived crashing). But the way Iverson talks, it sounds like he’s talking about both it and the Altean pod in saying that they haven’t been able to power them up. Sanda sounds baffled that there’s a crystal that’s part of the ships’ energy systems. Even if they didn’t know how to use it, I would think that in examining the ships’ systems, they would have realized that they fundamentally involve a crystal. This again feels like it’s written to make Sam look like the smartest, most capable person, but it does so by making the others look unrealistically incompetent.

Sanda says that they’ve modeled the ships’ control systems (I assume mostly the Galra ship’s since a couple weeks wouldn’t have been enough to integrate the Altean pod) and have created a flight simulator. I do like seeing how Earth, or at least the Galaxy Garrison, has been handling the aftermath of Shiro’s return in the first episode. As you might remember from some of my previous commentaries, I’m not fond of the Garrison lying about the Kerberos mission and telling the world that due to pilot error, the mission was lost. But being reminded that the Garrison knows about the existence of aliens, it makes me even more want to know what they’ve done with that information in regard to the various world governments. Have they kept it hidden even from those governments? Or have they also over this past year of storytime established specific diplomatic channels regarding extraterrestrial knowledge? I would hope the latter. The former would make the Garrison look extremely arrogant, selfish, and would most likely be interpreted by other world leaders as endangering the world.

Waiting for them at the base of the elevator are the new characters that this show heavily promoted. None of them are really interesting though. Iverson says they’re “the best pilots to come out of the Galaxy Garrison in the last year.” James Griffin, who last we saw was an obnoxious, bullying antagonist in the flashbacks in 7x01 “A Little Adventure,” seems to be the squad’s leader. That he’s now with the flip of a switch changed into being a protagonist is kind of demonstrative of this show’s inability to write character transformation well. Also, we get Nadia Rizavi, Ryan Kinkade, and Ina Leifsdottir. It’s honestly offensive that these four characters are given last names while several of the show’s main characters never got one. There is really only one thing about these pilots having full names that I like: Leifsdottir. I think it’s super cool that they have a character from Iceland.

James ends his salute while the other three continue saluting. Since he seems to be reporting to Iverson, I would think James would have to continue saluting like the others until Iverson salutes back or commands them at ease or something similar. James’s ending his salute, stepping forward, and talking unprompted seems inappropriate. Iverson and Sam continue talking, and Sam wants to get things working so that the pilots can start flying actual craft, not just the simulator. Rizavi then ends her salute and tells Sam, “But they aren’t working, sir.” Her saying that also shows she assumes that Sam hasn’t been briefed. Regardless, I would think protocol would make it not her place to tell him, especially with Iverson standing right there.

Cut to the Altean craft taking off, flying a bit, and landing. James watches and reacts, saying, “No way!” Why would he have that reaction? Sam came to Earth in this pod, he flew it here. There is no reason that James should be baffled that the pod can fly. The cadets are eager to fly, but Sam says that the ships they’ll end up flying are going to have to be better than a transport pod.

So, there’s another meeting. Sam starts bragging, “When I was enslaved by the Galra, I was forced to work on technologies that are a hundred times more complex than a simple pod. […] I continued learning alongside the Olkari […] they taught me everything I know about integrating technologies.” I’m not objecting to the idea that Sam would be by nature of his experience more knowledgeable about alien technology, but it really does feel like the show is continuing to position him as superior to everyone else. The narrative itself, how this story is being told, is creating a hierarchy with Sam at the top.

Accompanying his narration, there is a time-lapse montage of them building new fighter jets. I love the music.

The show indicates a year has passed since these first new fighters began being used.

This show did visual design for two sets of fighters. Now with this year skip forward, they’re flying a totally different design. I’m surprised the show wanted to put that work into designing a fighter for such a short amount of screen-time since the Galra ships have stayed the same throughout the show. I think seeing this extra amount of work in the design contributed to the sense that this was being done to try to set up a spinoff. It just feels like there’s more production work done for this particular story arc than there has been for a long time.

Sam asks the pilots, “How’s the response time compared to the previous generation?” To develop a new fighter in a single year is a significant amount of developmental and manufacturing effort. I don’t think there is any way that the Garrison could be doing this work without having informed and received the approval and funding from at least one country’s government. I just wish the show had explained at least a little about this.

Sam is called into the Garrison facility. Matt has contacted them. Matt tells them that Voltron is missing and that the rumor is that Voltron fought Lotor. Matt tells Sam, “You need to stop broadcasting from Earth. Members of the Blade of Marmora and the Voltron Coalition are being hunted. Our army has been all but wiped out. The situation is bad out here, and the last thing we need is to put the Earth in danger.” It makes the Voltron Coalition look really weak and invalidates all the time this show spent building up the idea that they were becoming a force that could defend against the Galra. Of course, the various factions of Galra would be attacking the Coalition, so I would expect fighting, but the idea that the Coalition is “being hunted” seems antithetical to what the Coalition supposedly had become, especially with the Galra no longer working with unified forces.

Sam argues that now is the time to inform the world. He says if they’re going to finish building the Atlas that they need “more resources and more manpower.” He says, “The world needs to come together so we can take the fight to the Galra.” Sanda criticizes Sam as “too emotional […] and not thinking straight.” She seems to me to be reacting very precisely to Sam’s declared desire to go fight the Galra. Sanda says, “We’re not building ships to fight aliens in different galaxies.” She’s not wrong. The whole plan Sam has been arguing for up to this point was to produce a defense for Earth, not go into the rest of the universe to fight.

Sam gets angry, slams the desk, “But they need us.” He acts a lot like Pidge has acted in this show: Arrogant. It kind of gets exhausting that the show expects us to view him as right. Sanda calls him out on his change and restates their goal of improving the defense of Earth. Sam again counters with wanting to tell the world. Sanda says no.

Later when they’re alone, Colleen says, “We’ve got to do something. We can’t just sit here while our children are in danger. […] The admiral is making decisions for the rest of the world. I say let them make decisions for themselves.” If Colleen is right, and there is no governmental oversight of Admiral Sanda, then there’s something really wrong there. Because this show doesn’t explain the Galaxy Garrison’s relationship is to the world’s governments, we have no way of knowing if Sanda is acting without any oversight or if Colleen is just saying that because she doesn’t like Sanda’s position. 

Also, like Sam, Colleen is just like Pidge: Arrogant. I never liked it when Pidge behaved like this, and I’m not a fan of Sam and Colleen acting this way either.

Sam responds, with a sound of surprise in his voice, “You want to tell the world?” Why would he be surprised someone else, especially Colleen would when that’s precisely what he wants to do? Also, why does Colleen have ongoing clearance to be a part of all this? What is her role? She doesn’t seem to be a member of the Garrison. She’s just here because she’s Sam’s wife. She feels thoroughly out of place in this story.

They sneak into some unmanned, insecure communication center. They upload some information from a flash drive and set up a worldwide broadcast. Colleen starts the broadcast, identifying herself as the wife of Sam Holt and mother of Matt Holt. She talks about the lie told by the Garrison about the Kerberos mission and then speaks about the Galra.

I really love the music.

Colleen says Sam returned to Earth, “but the Garrison forced him to stay in hiding,” and the broadcast plays video of Sanda telling Sam and Colleen that Sam was restricted to the Garrison compound from back in the beginning of the episode. What security system did Sam and Colleen hack in order to get a copy of this video? Sam and Colleen most certainly have committed crimes in doing this.

Sam then enters the broadcast, saying they need the world’s help. He then shows footage of the “advanced ships and weaponry” that the Garrison has been working on. This is a huge violation of classified secrets law. Sam had earlier said to Colleen that they could get kicked out of the Garrison, but it’s more that they should be imprisoned for this. But in traditional Pidge-fashion on this show, they never have to face consequences for their behavior.

Their broadcast then introduces Voltron, and they use some of the videos the Paladins had sent to be given to their families. I guess I understand why Sam would think that using these videos in this way was acceptable, but it’s still a violation of the trust the Paladins put in him in giving him these videos. We see some of Hunk’s video and then family, Lance’s video and his family, and Pidge’s video. Keith has no video since his only surviving family is Krolia. Shiro has no video since the show never bothered to give Shiro a family since the EPs’ only interest in Shiro was in killing him. This juxtaposition of Hunk’s, Lance’s, and Pidge’s families only serves as a stark reminder of just how much this show mistreated Shiro as a character, and it’s infuriating.

Somehow, Sam and Colleen have deactivated the door’s security system so that Sanda can’t open it. Sanda’s men are able to eventually open the door, and she orders them to arrest Sam and Colleen. Iverson says, “For what?” like he’s baffled what Sam and Colleen could be charged with. Iverson told Pidge that she could be charged with treason for breaking into his computer system in 1x07 “Tears of the Balmera.” If he thought Pidge’s actions were bad, he should certainly think Sam and Colleen’s actions are, and he shouldn’t be at a loss to think of why Sam and Colleen should be arrested. Sanda specifically says, “For divulging top-secret information.”

Sam responds with a gross amount of condescension in his voice, “Now, now, Admiral. Don’t get emotional.” This is pure Pidge arrogance. And it’s really gross that this show is telling us that we’re supposed to think behaving like Sam is here is right. Also, I can’t get over feeling like, even though Sam is repeating Sanda’s earlier words back at her, that his use of them against her here is sexist.

Sanda tells him, “You disregarded a direct order,” and Sam rants, “You held me at the Garrison against my will.” He had over a year to seek legal counsel and work the system if he really did feel imprisoned here. He is never shown complaining about being restricted to the Garrison compound “against his will” during any of the time he spent working there over the past year. It’s only now being used to try to justify his crimes. I know I won’t like Sanda after the rest of her story is complete, but I’m on Sanda’s side here.

Since the show has not established that Sanda is working without government oversight, I have to assume that she is. The Garrison has enough elements of the military that I have to assume that, even if the Garrison was built around space exploration, that it is a branch of the military, or at least military-interfacing. And unless the government is non-existent, then Sanda would have people she would have to answer to, there would be at least a few non-military members of the government that would have full access to the classified information. The show wants us to think of Sanda as some kind of military dictator character, but they haven’t successfully presented her as that.

Sam continues, “You lied about my death! You want to control every situation!” As I’ve said plenty, I don’t like the lie the Garrison told, but specifically the “pilot error” blame on Shiro. An equipment-failure lie would have worked just as well without demeaning Shiro. Sam is part of the Garrison and has a rank within it, there’s no way he would be this ignorant of the need for classifying information. He just comes off here as being highly naïve. Like father, like daughter.

He continues, “Right now the world needs a leader that’s not afraid to face facts, and you’re not it.” The show has not established Sanda as being a world leader. At most, she seems to be the head of the Galaxy Garrison. That’s one organization. That’s not the chief executive of the government. 

This conflict feels off because so much of this is undefined.

Sanda asks him, “And you think you are?” Sam says, “Yes.” Either Sam thinks he should be able to bypass the entire command structure of the Garrison, a command structure that he would be fully aware of and participated in, or he thinks he should be granted rulership of the world without being elected. This just comes off as excessively simplistic and ridiculous of the writers.

Sanda orders the soldiers to “get these traitors out of here,” and Sam has a look of surprise on his face. Sam and Colleen did commit crimes, they should be arrested. Iverson intervenes, saying, “If Sam goes, I go too.” This is infuriating. Iverson would know that Sam and Colleen committed crimes. Again, he once told Pidge that he could charge her with treason for accessing his computer, and what Sam and Colleen have done is far more of a violation than what Pidge did.

The show expects us to side with Sam because he’s an extension of Pidge, and thus a protagonist. Supposedly by not letting Sam have and do everything he wants, Sanda is the antagonist. But I keep coming back to Sam and Colleen committed obvious crimes. This isn’t just Sam and Sanda having a disagreement. It does not seem consistent or realistic for Iverson to side against Sanda.

Some random guy comes and tells Sanda, “Calls are coming in from all over the world. Citizens want to know how they can help.” They’re calling the Garrison and not their local governmental leaders? That’s not realistic. Is this show is trying to say (but has absolutely failed to do so) that the Galaxy Garrison is the government of the entire world and that Admiral Sanda is the head of the world government? Without any explicit description of the world’s governments, the audience has to assume that it’s more or less the same as what our world is like now. If there’s a differentiation, then the show needed to establish that, and it hasn’t.

And the show uses these incoming calls as a way of declaring Sam right and Sanda wrong. Like Pidge, Sam and Colleen are don’t have to face consequences of their behavior. Cut to Sam working with James on creating a particle barrier when they pick up something in the atmosphere. It’s a lot of Galra ships. The Galaxy Garrison has really failed if they did not set up any kind of monitoring system to scan for incoming ships before those ships could enter Earth’s atmosphere. Their not knowing until right now as the ships dip below the clouds is totally contrived writing. Sam orders the particle barrier activated just as the Galra start shooting at them.

The music is really good. (Seriously, I love the music of this episode!)

This episode is a lot worse this viewing than I remember it. My tolerance for Perfect Pidge and how that is extended to Sam and Colleen is just too low to be able to watch this and think their actions are acceptable. The show treats Sanda in this episode like she’s some clear villain, but very little of what she says seems unreasonable.

I think the fundamental failure of this episode is that it does not do enough world-building to make this story work. Instead of spending so many minutes repeating the story of the show up to this point in that one meeting, the episode could have instead given us an explanation about the Garrison and its relation to the world’s governments. This story is just too big for such unskilled writing.

I know I end up feeling super frustrated with Sanda’s character, but I don’t in this episode. It’s really weird to have the complete opposite reaction than what the expects me to have. The show thinks it’s showing Sanda as unreasonable and that Sam is right. This episode alone, I totally support Sanda.

It’s just frustrating to really like the music so much, to like the designs of the new fighter jets, to like the premise of this story, but to be unable to stand the protagonists. The show thinks it showed us Sam is right, and I’m left wondering why he’s not in prison for clearly committing crimes.

(EDIT: I went back over this text and cleaned up some of the grammar and phrasing to try to make a few awkwardly worded statements better.)

[kob131]

https://rwdestuffs.tumblr.com/post/187342767682/not-be-be-all-double-standards-but-taiyang-has

I’m tackling his reblogs from here.

I think it’s more about how the narrative built them up rather than the actions.

The narrative made Tai out to be a guy who was struggling to put his life back together for the sake of his kids and had a definitively good relationship with all of them and would go to the sun and back for them. Then it turned out that not only did he drown himself in his work, but he also opted to garden instead of go with Yang to look for Ruby.

Notice how he tries to treat ‘struggling to put his life together and ‘drown himself in work’ as if they were happening in the same timespan, not, you know: one after the other. Dudeblade, you don’t get to rewrite the order of events to support your headcanon while arguing it to be truth.

And let’s honestly think about this for a second. Do we REALLY want yet ANOTHER character to the cast? I could give the same argument of ‘he’s suppose to teach at Signal’ but let’s address the actual reason why Taiyang can’t go with Yang: He serves no purpose. There is NOTHING for him to do as Yang’s issues need to be dealt with by Yang, Ruby is closer to Qrow, we already have Qrow as the tragic member of proto-Team RWBY. We already have issues between Oscar and Jaune, we don’t need ANOTHER fight for screentime. So the question is: Do you want Taiyang to eat up screentime, especially considering your hatred of him is because of your issues with your mom, or can we just accept the excuse since it makes sense AND prevents more writing problems?

Willow, on the other hand, was made out to be neglectful at best, or abusive at worst. Since she got married to Jacques and ended up being an alcoholic, she was indeed made out to be neglectful.

No, that’s RAVEN.

Willow is portrayed as a victim who incidentally caused issues with Weiss, since her being an alcoholic is DIRECTLY related to Jacques using her. And by your rules, that means she should be attacked.

And Raven was made out to be a bitch.

You know Dudeblade, you’d be more convincing if you didn’t have a history of trying to portray Raven as basically being Summer or trying to downplay her abuse while completely rewriting canon to demonize Taiyang.

TL;DR: Willow and Raven fulfill what their characters were made out to be, Tai was not. Which is why he gets demonized while Raven and Willow do not.

Except by your own rules: Willow isn‘t fulfilling her character.

You BLATANTLY ignore canon with Taiyang.

And one look at your ‘savior mom raven’ series says otherwise.

Also, at least Raven saved Yang’s life once. Taiyang just belittled her and made callous comments about her lost arm. 

Raven: Saved Yang’s life once which she used to try and manipulate Qrow into siding with her while also using Qrow to tell Yang that she didn’t actually care about her.

Taiyang: Gave not one, not two but THREE speeches about how great Yang is while using moping as a way of empahsizing how little her depression is in comparison to her while raising her alone for over a decade and even trying to make Raven look good to Yang despite all the damage she caused not just to him but Yang and Qrow as well.

THAT is what you are comparing.

You could have directly had this conversation with me instead of doing it like this. I mean… Bashing me for my ship preferences? How much of a warning is that?

Dudeblade you BLOCK him in this chain because he corners you.

And your shipping preferences actually DO matter here since it feeds into the idea that you’re a man hater.

But also, your idea of Taiyang needing to teach at Signal is kinda debunked by the fact that both Port and Oobleck point out that it would be perfectly reasonable for him to go out and look for Ruby. Taiyang instead states that he has to take care of Yang instead.

And Port and Oobleck are right...why again? Also refer to my previous argument about this.

But let’s give the benefit of the doubt here. let’s say that Taiyang wasn’t teaching because he was taking care of Yang. Then why does the narrative choose to show him gardening instead of teaching or defending Vale/Patch?- That was a choice on the narrative to show him gardening instead of teaching or clearing out grimm. Which means that either a) Taiyang wasn’t teaching at the moment (In which case, that needed to be better conveyed to the audience),  or b) that Taiyang is slacking off.

Because the narrative needs to show Taiyang noticing the feather of Raven in order to communicate that he knows she’s there. It also gives us some insight into what he actually thinks of Raven (seeing as he looks miserable at the sight), connects Raven to the home in Patch (which itself acts as the grounds where the family lives) and makes Raven more pitiable (The ONE person left who might have accepted Raven is visibly miserable at her arrival? That’s pretty fucking sad even for Raven.)

Also, what canon evidence do you have that Taiyang is absolutely needed to teach at Signal? What evidence do you have for Taiyang even teaching at all?- That’s all your headcanon.

“With Beacon gone they'll need Dad at Signal more than ever-”

Nope, that’s what Ruby said. And if Oobleck and Port, two people who we never knew had a connection to Taiyang before are right, then Ruby Rose, Signal graduate and his fucking DAUGHTER, is most certainly right.

And Yang has two moments where she says that Taiyang wasn’t entirely there for her.  She explicitly says this twice.

Yeah, bullshit.

A. Don’t think I didn’t catch that manipulative little detail of yours. ‘entirely there’ and ‘always there’ imply VERY different things, with entirely saying that Taiyang is somehgow distant to Yang and always implying a period of tie of disconnect. You choose that word because while it’s surface level means the same thing, the actual meaning is very different.

And B. That second example also says Yang was being emotional and has Yang placing blame on Summer for dying. That is disingenious as fuck.

Do you have evidence to the contrary? Last I checked, all you have is a headcanon that Tai is best dad™. Meanwhile, I have actual canon evidence.

“ She's actually a really great fighter! You can tell she's learned a lot from Dad!”

The fact that TAIYANG TAUGHT YANG, meaning considering Yang’s level of skill and how she went through all years of training at Signal, means he was there for a significant amount of time.

And your evidence is one manipulation of intent and one disingenuous. So no, you don’t.

And “Sociopath”?- Really? Just because I sympathize more with Yang over Tai?

More like you demand fictional characters be killed off or maimed in brutal ways (Jaune or Taiyang) because you project onto them...or the numerous incidents where you either call people Nazis, call them brainwashed because they don’t fit your narrative or ACTIVELY CALL FOR DEATH.

You reblog from known harasser/stalker/racist/sexist KOB.

Cool-

You reblog from known racists, know sexists and known SUCIDE BAITERS while all being ONE YOURSELF.

If he’s wrong, then you are. And funny thing is, I don’t believe that.

1: I never told anyone to drink bleach. I wanted it for myself because of knightof “BLM Is making things worse for black ppl by making more racists” balance. A person you reblog from regularly. Guess you didn’t catch him saying that.

Yeah-

He’s probably talking about Mage. The bisexual guy you said that to after you preached about LGBT suicide rates and he called you out ad then ‘apologized by putting the blame on him and saying you wanted him to go into a coma. And just for reminding me of that: I’m gonna be as sadistic as possible.

2: I apologized for that, and I took the post down.

You said you took it down because ‘neo-nazi right wingers’ were ‘harassing’ you and added on a fake ‘and it was wrong’ thing while keeping that waterboarding tag of yours. Also, that JSWV incident you keep pulling out even in THIS post? I did the same thing AND MORE. So you’re actually worse STILL by your own rules.

3: I headcanon Yang as a lesbian. I just get angry when people shove other headcanons down other people’s throats.

Then I assume you punch yourself whenever you call people homophobic for disagreeing with you?

Yang doesn’t have to resent Tai for him to be negligent. She can have other reactions to it. Like, say, not opening up to him about her issues. Or her calling him by name instead of “dad” like she did when she was talking to Weiss. It’s a complex thing.

Or you know, open up to him about her issues and call him dad like EVERY OTHER APPEARANCE?

Also: You ignore the resentment against Raven.

Aside from this, you are ignoring what my original response was about. It was about intended characterization

And you’re full of bullshit either way.

Y’know what?- I’m going to block you after this. And don’t think about using that as an excuse to claim that you won or anything, I’m just tired of your bullshit. Also, don’t think you can just pull a kob and just copy/paste my posts so that you can argue them. Otherwise, I’d have to report you.

Yeah, how many times have you tried that with me? It never works.

And you ARE silencing him. SO guess what? Time for a classic KOB-style beatdown.

(I’ll unblock you after  this for convenience sake, but next time,   don’t pull this shit because it could be seen as block evasion). 

Oh fuck off.

All I’m saying is that it should have been better conveyed. It was also the middle of the day when Tai was last seen, he should have been in school teaching if that were the case. I would have less of a vendetta against Tai if he was shown in a classroom, or out in vale clearing out some grimm when Raven went to him, but the narrative chose to show him gardening. Which is a poor look for Taiyang.

If you ignore everything we know about school, like days off, or the limitations of the budget while also maliciously misinterpeting scenes: sure.

Although you never seem to accept that with Yang or Raven...

And again: I have to go back to intended characterization.-

Once again: You CANNOT try ‘intended characterization while ignoring the intentions in other scenes and EXPLICTEDLY trying to make things look worse than they are. You’re bullshitting.

Lastly: It was bad writing that made Taiyang out to be a bad dad.-

No Dudeblade, as seen by how the writing continuously CONTRADICTS you: it’s personal bias.

On top of all  of that, Yang got shafted on screentime in volume 4 because the writers said that it would be “boring” watching her mope around a house all day 

Citation needed and when they tried that you all proceeded to huff paint and demand more fight scenes.

It’s your choice to like Taiyang and not ship ros/ebird, just like how it’s my choice to do the opposite. I ship rosebi/rd because I’m a slut for angst. And that Raven is leagues more interesting than Tai.

Except that A. You ship rosebird because you have a yuri fetish and B. you project a perfect vision of your mom onto Taiyang. Just more bullshit.

No really, if you love angst so much: PHOENIX should be your ship as there’s more angst on Taiyang’s side than Summer. Or SummerXQrow. Or hell, QrowXTaiyang. All of which have more positive chances (and thus, more angst) than from Rosebird, where one side nuked Ruby in the face for sounding like the other side.

Plus, I find it irritating that criticism about Tai always has to go in the rwde tag while criticism about Raven can go in her main one. It honestly feels like a double standard… Which is something that I have found to be commonplace in the fndm.

It doesn’t.

You just do it because the main tag isn’t your echo chamber in regards to Taiyang.

Did you know that some people unironically called Jacques “A stern parent trying to discipline Weiss” but then turn around and call Willow “A bitch who should take care of her kids”?

Citation Dudeblade, that sounds like a troll.

And it’s still not as bad as Taiyang “abusive parent who was never there for Yang” and Raven “misunderstood loner mom who totes cares for Yang more than the loving father who raised her.”

[ravenaveira]

People that say Taka was the best team/friends for him is like saying a drug addicts friends who are also drug addicts are whats best for them simply because they went along with and encouraged their habit rather than trying to get them help and off a toxic lifestyle

Just because you have friends that support your bad habits doesnt mean their good friends and whats best for you

Friends who try to get you out of that toxic lifestyle to a better place where your clear-headed and healthy THOSE are real friends who want the best for you

I know this is a weird topic to touch on after the previous episode which I'm not downplaying because I thought it was wholesome, but the fact that people blatantly ignore how toxic and unhealthy Taka was for Sasuke AT THE TIME really just rubs me the wrong way

Do I think his relationship with Team 7 perfect? course not, but you can definitely see the difference between how TRUE friends behave and how enablers behave

Whenever Sasuke talked or thought about Team 7 he viewed them like family and precious bonds he had to cut in order to focus on and pursue revenge

Whenever Sasuke talked or thought about Taka he treated them as strictly subordinates, we never see him bothering to interact with them other than pursuing his goals and once they were no longer needed? he discarded and abandoned them without a second thought, he didnt even know Karin was an Uzumaki or that he even met her in the past which shows how little he cared about any of them on a personal level, the only one I can say Sasuke even remotely cared about to that degree is Jugo

None of them tried to empathize with Sasuke, none of them tried to talk to him about his struggles or problems and let him suffer alone, none of them cared for Sasuke to that point and if they did then they had one hell of a way of showing it

So my point? yes I think Sasuke cared somewhat about Taka in his own way and yes I think Taka cared for Sasuke as well I'm not saying they didnt, I'm just saying they didnt care enough

And it seems crazy to me that the same people who complain about the injustices done to Sasuke and his clan are the same one who support Taka and them supporting Sasuke and his crimes against pretty much everyone

Yes killing Danzo was a good thing but it was still a crime, Sasuke and Taka joined Akatsuki and tried to kidnap the 8 tails which was a crime against the Cloud village, Sasuke attacked the 5 kage summit and every single kage there making him an international criminal regardless if his goal was just Danzo it was still a risk of them getting involved, Sasuke just being a rogue ninja joining another rogue ninja is a crime, Sasuke attempting to kill all the 5 kage after the war would have been a crime

Yes some injustices can be resolved through violence but that is not the one and ONLY solution, Sasuke going rogue unfortunately even from a narrative standpoint yea it needed to happen for him to train with a Sanin etc but the only way to resolve Konoha’s injustice was to go through the right channels and expose to corruption that was in it, once Sasuke left and started committing crimes he lost the moral high ground and anything he said or did would easily be ignored and just thought of as another crazed Uchiha who deserved to die

You can argue yes but then Naruto and Kakashi could have said something once they found out but by that point it was like Temari said, it was FAR too late for Sasuke and even with the truth revealed how does that excuse his actions at the summit? against Bee? joining Akatsuki? killing Itachi and Danzo MIGHT have been able to be excused but the rest? there's no way that was getting overlooked even with the corruption exposed Sasuke was still just as much in the wrong now

I'm a huge Sasuke fan but even I can acknowledge that not every single one of his actions was 100% right and just, his actions towards the people who actually wronged him WERE in the right, but his actions in everything that didnt? yes he was in the wrong no ifs ands or buts about it

So for those who think Taka is so much better for Sasuke because they supported his criminal actions [except Jugo I believe he’d be fine either way] but not Team 7 who wanted Sasuke to stop his criminal actions and return to his senses and be in a healthy condition again, truly make me wonder if they actually care about Sasuke’s well being or just think everyone who isnt a yes man to everything Sasuke did somehow dont care about his feelings or the injustices done to him and just wanna change him

Yeah, change him for the BETTER not worse, if anything Taka tried to do the opposite of that but hey I guess being a bad influence is better than being a good one

And listen we can go back and forth all day about Sasuke's situation after the war because I agree wholeheartedly that thats bullshit, but realistically speaking the fact that some things about the Uchiha massacre are unresolved like those two elders even being allowed to breathe, realistically speaking what CAN you really do? the Uchihas are dead and the main man responsible is dead and Hiruzen who failed to stop it is also dead so what would exposing everything do at that point? everyone directly involved is DEAD so exposing it really is pointless even if only to clear Itachi’s name which I'm gonna say something alot of you wont like

But the Uchiha’s were not all innocent victims, atleast not the ones involved and planning the coup, yes they were treated unfairly but does that mean the best approach to fixing this is to overthrow the government? how does that make you look? your proving their suspicions of you right by attempting to be the threat they all think you are, that is NOT how you get your point across and demand justice for your clan by planning a coup that would result in many lives lost including your own

Does that mean do nothing? course not, but if you want their trust then you have to EARN it and if you want justice and equality then go on strike and refuse to serve them until their willing to talk and compromise, seriously the Uchiha was a HUGE asset to Konoha so them refusing to obey and offer their services definitely would have gotten their attention and force them to listen and find a compromise, if that didnt work they could have tried spreading the word to fellow citizens and gain their support as I'm pretty sure not EVERYONE in Konoha felt the same way towards them and would have joined their cause for equality

But no, they chose the path of violence and it resulted in their entire clan's downfall and they end up with NOTHING but a bad name, so what did they gain? absolutely nothing, so was it worth it? NO

So lets stop acting like Konoha’s the big bad villain that did nothing but wrong and the Uchiha’s were pure innocent souls that did nothing wrong to deserve what happened to them because Ima say it THEY DID and their downfall was entirely their own fault for their approach, was it right? of course not genocides never ok and just as the Uchihas could have found another method Konoha could have as well so they were both in the wrong not just one or the other

Itachi also isnt a saint for the same reason the Uchiha’s and Konoha isnt and thats choosing the wrong approach to resolving the problems, there were many other paths he could have chosen but he chose the worst ones every time so just clearing Itachi’s name because of his good intentions wouldnt be right because his methods were beyond fucked up on so many levels

So my point is Sasuke was a victim of both sides wrongdoings, Taka didnt help with that at all, Team 7 tried to empathize and tried to understand and console him and save him from himself, its just that Sasuke didnt let them and pushed them away and thats of no fault of theirs since they did try but mainly Sasuke and them being mostly in the dark about everything

Yet Taka knowing almost everything didnt even try to reach out to him or help him cope in any way, Karin you’d think would understand and get through to Sasuke the most, cared more about her lust for him and seeing his ‘smile’ than actually empathizing with him and helping him through the turmoil he was in, Suigetsu made it clear he was out for himself from the start and Jugo is just wholeheartedly loyal to Sasuke no matter what

The fact that in the end, Sasuke makes no attempt to visit them until he needs them for something speaks volumes of his attachment to them, I think Taka thinks more of Sasuke than Sasuke does of them

He didnt even say goodbye to them before he left for his redemption journey nor did he bring them along on his years-long mission which again speaks volumes

So all Im saying is, Taka being the best team for Sasuke and his true friends is complete bull because I have yet to see any argument or reasoning for this be anything other than he chose them and that they went along with everything he did without question

If you have a better reason for why you think this then please share with me I welcome it maybe you can change my mind, but as of right now all the arguments I see is bullshit or occasionally shipping based which isnt a legitimate reason btw, so if you can be civil then I'm all ears

Note: I didnt mention the other Kages because it should be obvious their ways were screwed up as well and ruined a lot of lives, however what does Sasuke’s idea of basically ruling as a dictator resolve? how does that fix and reform the system? Sasuke wont live forever so what happens when he dies? he cant be the enemy that unites everyone once he’s dead and gone it’ll return back to how things were and thus mission failed another Uchiha dies for nothing, Sasuke’s approach to the situation was just a temporary solution not a permanent one and one that wouldnt last long anyway so lets not pretend Sasuke had the best solution to the problem when in all honesty both his and Naruto’s solutions were flawed and it makes sense that they’d work together using both methods rather than one and compromise, again we can argue about Sasuke’s situation after the war all day but fact of the matter is just gotta accept this is what it is and move on, at least Sasuke achieved partially what he wanted which was a bright future for the next generation and the villages to be at peace with one another without the need of a common enemy anymore, are things completely resolved? no, but its progress, and 15 years is nowhere near enough time to fix decades worth of damage so its still a work in progress and will be for a long time

[eachainn]

Game

Days in the Aries Villa were dull. Julius supposed that it just came from them being too young to be of any use. Emperor Charles zi Britannia may have doted on his children, but he was a practical man. They were princes and princesses, so they had to be of some use. Julius didn’t mind the distinction, but he knew that it made his twin brother bristle.

Julius looked over at Lelouch, watching as his brother turned the page in his book. He tipped his head to the side to look at title, giving up when he realized that it was in Latin. He knew plenty of Latin, but he was feeling too bored to try and translate it. He would leave Lelouch to all of his impotent and ill-directed anger at their father, it would get him nowhere.

Their father was right that Nunnally was useless, but he only meant it as in her position as princess. It was blatantly clear that Charles preferred her to the other children born by Empress Marianne. She and Euphemia were their father’s favorites. It was just that Nunnally couldn’t be married off to win an alliance, not when they didn’t know if she would be able to have children without endangering her health. She could, however, rule just as well as the rest of them or work to make alliances or do charity work around the city. Still, that was a job half done and their father was nothing but a blunt and practical man. Lelouch was just too emotional, and it wouldn’t serve him well.

Julius sighed and tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling. By that definition, the two of them were useless as well. They did nothing but spend their hours with their tutors or wandering around the grounds of the Aries Villa with their string of guards trailing after them. It was the same routine since they were little, which was probably why it was wearing on him. He was seventeen, well beyond the age that some of his other siblings had been given something else to do.

Odysseus had been confirmed crown prince at birth and had been in training since the day he started school. Schneizel had been allowed into council meetings at the age of sixteen. Cornelia had started training with the guards at the age of fifteen and had served for a year with the guards in Aries Villa at sixteen. Julius had been expecting something to come their way, but there had been nothing.

The closest that he had gotten was Schneizel talking about taking him on a tour of the EU that he was going on, but that had been put to a stop by the war. Julius had been following it closely, waiting for a window for it to stop or to make himself useful. Aside from Schneizel, Julius was sure that he knew the most about the conflict.

It was just a falling out between Euro-Britannia and the EU over rights and Britannia had remained carefully neutral. It had to since they had an ongoing treaty, although Julius was sure that it wouldn’t last long. Their father was getting annoyed at the failures of the Euro-Britannians and the rumors that they were planning to break away. That and the EU didn’t seem to care about their insolence. As far as Julius was concerned, they should sweep in and take it all as a reminder to both the EU and Euro-Britannia.

He glanced over at his twin, shifting on the couch. He was tempted to start up a debate with Lelouch again, just to have something to do, but he was sure that it would end the same way as it always did. Julius would lay out his argument logically and Lelouch would respond with nothing but emotion.

Julius sighed and sunk deeper into the couch. It hadn’t always been like that. When they were younger, Lelouch would argue logistics and politics with him, but then he’s heard their father call Nunnally useless, and the argument had followed had left Lelouch more than ready to disagree with their father over everything. That and Sophia li Britannia had started taking Lelouch and Nunnally out on her charitable endeavors. Julius wasn’t sure which had been the most detrimental, but it had proven something to him. If he wanted to keep his sense and be useful to their father and the empire he had to stay his course. Emotion wouldn’t get him anywhere, it would just show weakness.

He sighed and rested his hands on his stomach, looking up at the ceiling. In a few hours Nunnally and Rolo would be done with their lessons, which meant the four of them could do something together. It was a beautiful day, and they had been stuck inside for weeks because of the rain. They might as well ride out to the lakes on the far edge of the gardens. It was something that they would all enjoy, and it would distract him enough to keep him from thinking about what Schneizel was doing in the EU. It would be another few hours before all the reports would come in and then another hour or two after that before Schneizel was able to talk. But that still left them with hours.

Julius groaned and got off of the couch. He thought he heard Lelouch make some sort of questioning noise, but he ignored it. His twin wouldn’t understand, Lelouch could just sit around and read his books and make his useless policies. But he couldn’t, he needed to be doing something.

He turned on his heel, pacing past the windows. Julius gave them a cursory glance, intending to walk past. He slowed at a flash of blue and gold, staring down at the guards outside.

They were lined up along the front drive, standing patiently as Lady Marianne walked down to where the car had pulled up. Julius stepped closer to the window, leaning against it as he stared at the scene. It couldn’t be too important, because their mother would have called them down. If it was just her and the guards, then it was a matter of security and not of interest to him. Still, it was someone new, which could be interesting.

Julius tipped his head to get a better look at the man waiting for his mother, automatically looking over his uniform. It was a Knight of the Rounds, the Knight of Seven to be exact. That in itself was strange because he hadn’t heard that the empty slot had been filled. Then again, his attention had firmly been on what had been happening in the EU.

He stared at the man standing by the car before twisting to speak to his brother. “Who’s the Knight of Seven?”

His answer was the sound of a book being set down. Julius turned to watch as Lelouch came over, his twin leaning on the other side of the window. Lelouch stared down at the drive, talking even as he played with the collar of his shirt. “Suzaku Kururugi.”

“I haven’t heard of the family.”

“He’s not from one of the noble families. He’s from Japan.”

Julius sighed at his brother’s insistence of using the old names of the Areas, but he didn’t comment on it. It was an argument that neither of them could win just yet. “So he’s a Number.”

If Lelouch took offense to it, he didn’t see it. Lelouch just raised his shoulder in a shrug. “He’s worked his way up through the ranks. I heard that his scores with a Knightmare were nearly as high as Bismarck’s.”

“Impressive, for an Eleven.”

That made Lelouch huff, but it was easy enough to ignore, especially when things were going on below. The Eleven was bowing to their mother, the knight straightening up a moment later when Marianne made a lazy gesture. From the look on the Eleven’s face, he was surprised by the allowance given to him. It was enough to make Julius smile.

Their mother had been a Knight of the Round before she had married their father, which was probably why she was so informal. Marianne had never fully shaken off the informality that came from her background as a guard and as a Round. It was probably a shock for the Eleven. He would have had to toe the line to get to where he was, that and Julius had heard that the Elevens were ridiculously formal.

He sighed, watching his mother and the Round talk. Whatever they were talking about wouldn’t matter to the two of them. Having a Round meant that their father was making sure the family was safer, which meant that the war might be going badly for them, or there was an assassination threat. Either way, it was a good sign that they wouldn’t be getting their own knight this year either.

Julius huffed and leaned against the window. It was one thing not to give them an assignment, but another to deny them their right to a knight. Even if it was one, that was a start. The two of them could start getting used to each other before they were put in more dangerous situations. A Round would mean that their father considered them well protected, much to Julius’ disgust. It would mean that he would just have to plan another appeal, probably without the help of his twin brother, because Lelouch didn’t seem interested in getting himself a knight.

He shot Lelouch an annoyed look, his eyes widening at the considering look on Lelouch’s face. Julius glanced back at the Round standing on the drive and abruptly recalculated. Maybe Lelouch had just been keeping his own ideas close to his chest. Julius tapped his fingers against the window, tensing when he saw the Round look up their way.

It was unlikely that the Round had heard his fingers tapping, but it still made him stop. He stared down at the Round, struck by the Round’s green eyes. Julius hummed to himself, tipping his head to the side.

The cape did much to hide what the Round looked like, but it wasn’t enough to hide everything. The knight was attractive, for an Eleven.

Julius looked over at his brother, recognizing the look on Lelouch’s face. His brother was thinking along the same lines that he was, which meant that they could finally do something interesting.

He tapped his fingers against the window again before turning his back on the window. Lelouch remained staring down at the drive for a moment longer before twisting to look at him. “Father is being attentive.”

“He always has been.” Julius raised his shoulder in a shrug, quick to move the subject on when Lelouch looked like he was going to argue. “But this means we’re not going anywhere.”

“Damn.” Lelouch muttered the word under his breath.

Julius nodded his agreement before taking a step forward. “But, I think we have something that can relieve the boredom.”

Lelouch looked at him before glancing back at the drive. Julius didn’t have to ask his twin if he was following because Lelouch nodded slowly. “What are the stakes?”

“Nothing steep, unless we agree on it later.” Julius inched closer to his twin, a smile on his face. “The goal is simple. The first to seduce the Knight of Seven wins.”

“What?”

Julius hummed, tipping his head back. He glanced around the room before grinning. “Support for their project. Next year, one of us is getting what we want. This way, we’re sure of it.”

Lelouch tipped his head to the side, his gaze sliding back to the drive before it snapped back to Julius. He smiled and help out his hand. “Deal.”

Julius reached out to shake the offered hand, not bothering to hide his smile. “Deal. I look forward to having your help in this.”

Lelouch snorted and looked away, Julius leaving him by the window. Lelouch could stare and plot all he wanted, but Julius wanted to get the lay of the land, anything to get the advantage in their little contest. And any way to stave off the boredom that was slowly consuming his life.

---

Lelouch turned his head as Nunnally drove by in her pony cart, her hair flying out of the careful style that her maid had put in her hair that morning. It whipped out behind her as the ponies cantered around the wide turn at the end of the drive and then she was urging them into a gallop again. His heart thundered along with the ponies’ hooves, but he had learned to live with the short spike of fear. It was better to remain silent and ready. Nunnally would resent any question that he asked of her abilities, because that’s what everyone else did. Everyone else saw a young princess confined to her wheelchair, and that made them pity her. Nunnally had somehow gotten the ability to hold her tongue at court, a miracle considering the rest of her family. But that ability did not extend to the Aries Villa. Whatever she said may have been technically polite, but there was no missing the snap in her voice.

She was perfectly capable of whatever she put her mind to, but that didn’t stop him from worrying.

Nunnally was his little sister, and he was one of the few people on her side, more so now that Julius had decided that their father’s esteem was more important than their family.

Lelouch took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. He relaxed back into the bench, idly drumming his fingers against the back of it.

He wasn’t out on the drive to watch Nunnally, there were plenty of guards that were perfectly happy to keep watch on her, because it meant that they would be doing something more interesting than standing around the villa. That’s all the rest of them did with Rolo jumping at every shadow and Marianne reduced to stately and painful walking since the assassination attempt. He and Julius weren’t the most exciting princes either. Their father had not given them anything to do than waste their time, and the two of them had never been athletic. Lelouch had caught a guard nodding off while he studied, something that could be avoided if they had personal knights. But, to have personal knights, one needed to have sort of standing to attract them and make the position worthwhile. Or to be in the court more often than they were.

It was hard when the imperial palace hadn’t been altered to make it easy for Nunnally or Marianne to get around, or when Rolo nervous about new places.

He looked up as he heard Nunnally shout, smiling when he saw his mother coming back from her morning ride. Lelouch was tempted just to lift his hand in a wave until he saw the person riding by her side. He shot to his feet before he could really think about what he was doing, Lelouch swallowing when he realized what he had done. The Knight of Seven technically ranked below him, but maybe he could pass it off as respect for his mother. After all, Sir Kururugi didn’t know every protocol, it was something that Julius had viciously pointed out many times.

Lelouch swallowed, watching his mother and the knight move to meet with Nunnally. His sister slowed her ponies down, the three of them turning to head towards the end of the drive. He ignored the pained thunder of his heart as they moved away from him, because it was irrational. Nunnally and Marianne were competent horsewomen. Marianne, despite her injuries, was still fully capable of defending herself. She had been the Knight of Six before she had married. Besides, they had Sir Kururugi with them and he wouldn’t be in the Rounds without being skilled. His scores in the Knightmare simulator were far beyond the usual mark of recommendation.

Then again, it wasn’t fear that made him stare at them. It was something else, something twisting and undefinable.

They were well outside of the royal court, partially out of choice and partially because their father seemed more than happy to keep them out of the way until he was sure that they could be of use or not embarrassment. It wasn’t often someone entered the carefully sequestered world that was the Aries Villa. Lelouch was sure that, even with their father’s distance, that everyone was carefully vetted before coming to Aries Villa. It was no secret that Marianne was his favorite wife and Nunnally was one of his favorite daughters. That put them in danger and, for all of his faults, Charles had learned the first time.

It was Suzaku, Lelouch was sure of that. It was something to do with the Round and unrelated to everything else. It was something that would take time to parse through, which was just another distraction. There was the game with his brother to consider after all.

Lelouch frowned at the thought, trying to gather together his plans. There were many, but they depended on suitability and he hadn’t established what the Knight of Seven was like. Marianne had mostly kept him to herself and Captain Gottwald as they folded Suzaku into the system at the villa. Lelouch didn’t think that he’d gotten to talk to the man, and he doubted his brother’s claims. Julius seemed to be too busy courting Schneizel’s favor to pay attention to a new Round so easily dismissed as just another Number.

He jerked his gaze up at the sound of hoofbeats, Lelouch swallowing hard as he saw Suzaku riding up towards him. He glanced back at where Marianne and Nunnally were heading out, probably to take another turn around the garden. Lelouch watched as one of the guards scrambled in beside Nunnally on the pony cart, the woman holding on tight to the side and Nunnally clucked to the ponies. The three of them moved off, leaving him with Sir Kururugi.

Lelouch swallowed, looking up at the knight. He was struck by how young Sir Kururugi looked. He’d only seen the knight from a distance, but the height of a horse was nothing.

Sir Kururugi was about his age with messy brown hair with stunning green eyes. Without the ever present blue cape, it was easier to see what he looked like, Lelouch pulling himself up short from raking his eyes over Suzaku. It would be too obvious, and he didn’t want that. He didn’t want to lose the game so quickly and have Julius gloating at him. It was a matter of carefully watching the situation and gauging his own interest, because it was there. It was just a matter of determining whether it was because it was a new face or it was because it was Suzaku.

“Your highness?”

He jumped at the sound of Suzaku’s voice coming from close to him. The knight had dismounted while he was distracted. Sir Kururugi was keeping a respectful distance, but it still felt like it was too close.

Lelouch wanted to take a step back, but he held his ground. “Sir Kururugi.” He glanced over at where his mother and sister had been, desperately reaching for some kind of conversation. “Do you enjoy riding?”

The knight seemed startled by the question before he laughed, Lelouch’s stomach jerking at the sound. “I have to admit, I haven’t had a lot of practice. It wasn’t covered in training.”

“Of course not.” Lelouch eyed the grey that Suzaku had been given. He remembered the horse from his own lessons and the frustrations that came with it. Apparently, it had been his father’s horse before the gelding had gotten old and earned his retirement teaching the royal children to ride. “Don’t worry, my mother is good at judging these things.”

“I trust the lady’s judgement completely.”

The corner of Lelouch’s mouth twitched up before he could stop it. He rocked back on his heels. “In everything?”

From the way that Suzaku tipped his head, he sensed something. Lelouch wasn’t sure how just what because he couldn’t see any calculation, just a slight hint of confusion, and then it was gone. It was replaced with a bland expression, one that Lelouch was familiar with on another from the conquered areas. It made him bristle a bit and want to snap, but it wasn’t on him. If Sir Kururugi wanted to play the unintelligent Number than it was fine by him. If anything, that might get the stupid phase of his infatuation with the man over with.

Sir Kururugi kept quiet for a moment more before shaking his head. “She is my commander, for now.”

“For now?”

“Until she gives it over to me.” The knight shrugged. “It’s the way of things.”

Lelouch wasn’t sure if he imagined the resignation in Suzaku’s voice, but he filed it away anyway. It didn’t sound like discontent, just someone used to the system. And, surprisingly, it seemed like good sense. Suzaku was new and knew nothing about the way that the Aries Villa was run. Despite his rank, he wasn’t pushing to change things immediately without seeing anything. It was not what he expected, because all of the Knights of the Round had some kind of sense of entitlement. They were all from noble families or families that were specially doted on. Sir Kururugi wasn’t that, he had come at his position in a different way. Just how was something that he would have to look into, because that could mean everything in the context of the game.

He flicked his gaze over in the direction of the stables. It wouldn’t take his mother and sister much longer to make their rounds, and then Marianne would be looking for Sir Kururugi. And just like that, he was out of time with him, but that made it all the more fun. It meant that Julius would have to do the same thing without knowing the information he knew.

Sir Kururugi was a Round unlike the others, and that made it more interesting.

Lelouch tipped his head to the side, belatedly remembering to make something like a dismissive motion. “My mother will be looking for you soon. It would be better not to keep her waiting.”

“Of course.” The knight bowed, taking a few steps back before starting to turn around. It looked court-perfect and rehearsed, the knight pausing a moment longer to incline his head in an almost extra bow. “Your highness.”

“Lelouch.” It slipped out before he could stop it, Lelouch fighting to keep his expression neutral as Sir Kururugi looked up at him in shock. It wasn’t protocol, but Lelouch didn’t normally care for it. Even still, it had only been a few days, and he didn’t know the Round. But Julius wouldn’t give him that. Julius wouldn’t allow the knight to step out of the carefully made boundaries of protocol, and Lelouch wanted to have every advantage.

He swallowed, trying to play the slip off as something purposeful. “Please, call me Lelouch.”

The knight hesitated for a moment before inclining his head. “Prince Lelouch then.”

Lelouch smiled at the compromise. Demanding more would come later, especially when he was surer of where he stood. This was just an opening shot, something to gauge the battlefield. Maybe in a few months he could hear Sir Kururugi saying his name.

He was surprised by the shiver that went down his spine, Lelouch quickly clearing his throat. If the knight noticed, he didn’t show it. Sir Kururugi turned the horse away and started leading it back towards the stables.

Lelouch watched him go, trying to formulate his next move but his found his mind drifting to unhelpful places. There was no need to think about how long their father would keep the Knight of Seven with him, or when Marianne would release him from his quick training. The brief flash of regret that came with his position of a Round might be warranted, considering that Lelouch was sure that Suzaku would make a great personal knight. He had to be competent enough if he was in the Rounds and it would be a way to rub it in his father’s face.

He smiled to himself, playing with the collar of his shirt. Those were all things to consider, but maybe at a later date. Until then, he had to plot his next move.