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dailyanarchistposts · 8 months ago

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Turbulent times are upon us. Already, blockades, demonstrations, riots, and clashes are occuring regularly. It’s past time to be organizing for the upheavals that are on the way.

But getting organized doesn’t mean joining a pre-existing institution and taking orders. It shouldn’t mean forfeiting your agency and intelligence to become a cog in a machine. From an anarchist perspective, organizational structure should maximize both freedom and voluntary coordination at every level of scale, from the smallest group up to society as a whole.

You and your friends already constitute an affinity group, the essential building block of this model. An affinity group is a circle of friends who understand themselves as an autonomous political force. The idea is that people who already know and trust each other should work together to respond immediately, intelligently, and flexibly to emerging situations.

This leaderless format has proven effective for guerrilla activities of all kinds, as well as what the RAND Corporation calls “swarming” tactics in which many unpredictable autonomous groups overwhelm a centralized adversary. You should go to every demonstration in an affinity group, with a shared sense of your goals and capabilities. If you are in an affinity group that has experience taking action together, you will be much better prepared to deal with emergencies and make the most of unexpected opportunities.

This guide is adapted from an earlier version that appeared in our Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook.

Affinity Groups are Powerful

Relative to their small size, affinity groups can achieve a disproportionately powerful impact. In contrast to traditional top-down structures, they are free to adapt to any situation, they need not pass their decisions through a complicated process of ratification, and all the participants can act and react instantly without waiting for orders—yet with a clear idea of what to expect from one another. The mutual admiration and inspiration on which they are founded make them very difficult to demoralize. In stark contrast to capitalist, fascist, and socialist structures, they function without any need of hierarchy or coercion. Participating in an affinity group can be fulfilling and fun as well as effective.

Most important of all, affinity groups are motivated by shared desire and loyalty, rather than profit, duty, or any other compensation or abstraction. Small wonder whole squads of riot police have been held at bay by affinity groups armed with only the tear gas canisters shot at them.

The Affinity Group is a Flexible Model

Some affinity groups are formal and immersive: the participants live together, sharing everything in common. But an affinity group need not be a permanent arrangement. It can serve as a structure of convenience, assembled from the pool of interested and trusted people for the duration of a given project.

A particular team can act together over and over as an affinity group, but the members can also break up into smaller affinity groups, participate in other affinity groups, or act outside the affinity group structure. Freedom to associate and organize as each person sees fit is a fundamental anarchist principle; this promotes redundancy, so no one person or group is essential to the functioning of the whole, and different groups can reconfigure as needed.

Pick the Scale That’s Right for You

An affinity group can range from two to perhaps as many as fifteen individuals, depending on your goals. However, no group should be so numerous that an informal conversation about pressing matters is impossible. You can always split up into two or more groups if need be. In actions that require driving, the easiest system is often to have one affinity group to each vehicle.

Get to Know Each Other Intimately

Learn each other’s strengths and vulnerabilities and backgrounds, so you know what you can count on each other for. Discuss your analyses of each situation you are entering and what is worth accomplishing in it—identify where they match, where they are complentary, and where they differ, so you’ll be ready to make split-second decisions.

One way to develop political intimacy is to read and discuss texts together, but nothing beats on-the-ground experience. Start out slow so you don’t overextend. Once you’ve established a common language and healthy internal dynamics, you’re ready to identify the objectives you want to accomplish, prepare a plan, and go into action.

Decide Your Appropriate Level of Security

Affinity groups are resistant to infiltration because all members share history and intimacy with each other, and no one outside the group need be informed of their plans or activities.

Once assembled, an affinity group should establish a shared set of security practices and stick to them. In some cases, you can afford to be public and transparent about your activities. in other cases, whatever goes on within the group should never be spoken of outside it, even after all its activities are long completed. In some cases, no one except the participants in the group should know that it exists at all. You and your comrades can discuss and prepare for actions without acknowledging to outsiders that you constitute an affinity group. Remember, it is easier to pass from a high security protocol to a low one than vice versa.

Make Decisions Together

Affinity groups generally operate on via consensus decision-making: decisions are made collectively according to the needs and desires of every individual involved. Democratic voting, in which the majority get their way and the minority must hold their tongues, is anathema to affinity groups—for if a group is to function smoothly and hold together under stress, every individual involved must be satisfied. Before any action, the members of a group should establish together what their personal and collective goals are, what risks they are comfortable taking, and what their expectations of each other are. These matters determined, they can formulate a plan.

Since action situations are always unpredictable and plans rarely come off as anticipated, it may help to employ a dual approach to preparing. On the one hand, you can make plans for different scenarios: If A happens, we’ll inform each other by X means and switch to plan B; if X means of communication is impossible, we’ll reconvene at site Z at Q o’clock. On the other hand, you can put structures in place that will be useful even if what happens is unlike any of the scenarios you imagined. This could mean preparing resources (such as banners, medical supplies, or offensive equipment), dividing up internal roles (for example, scouting, communications, medic, media liaison), establishing communication systems (such as burner phones or coded phrases that can be shouted out to convey information securely), preparing general strategies (for keeping sight of one another in confusing environments, for example), charting emergency escape routes, or readying legal support in case anyone is arrested.

After an action, a shrewd affinity group will meet (if necessary, in a secure location without any electronics) to discuss what went well, what could have gone better, and what comes next.

Tact and Tactics

An affinity group answers to itself alone—this is one of its strengths. Affinity groups are not burdened by the procedural protocol of other organizations, the difficulties of reaching agreement with strangers, or the limitations of answering to a body not immediately involved in the action.

At the same time, just as the members of an affinity group strive for consensus with each other, each affinity group should strive for a similarly considerate relationship with other individuals and groups—or at least to complement others’ approaches, even if others do not recognize the value of this contribution. Ideally, most people should be glad of your affinity group’s participation or intervention in a situation, rather than resenting or fearing you. They should come to recognize the value of the affinity group model, and so to employ it themselves, after seeing it succeed and benefiting from that success.

Organize With Other Affinity Groups

An affinity group can work together with other affinity groups in what is sometimes called a cluster. The cluster formation enables a larger number of individuals to act with the same advantages a single affinity group has. If speed or security is called for, representatives of each group can meet ahead of time, rather than the entirety of all groups; if coordination is of the essence, the groups or representatives can arrange methods for communicating through the heat of the action. Over years of collaborating together, different affinity groups can come to know each other as well as they know themselves, becoming accordingly more comfortable and capable together.

When several clusters of affinity groups need to coordinate especially massive actions—before a big demonstration, for example—they can hold a spokescouncil meeting at which different affinity groups and clusters can inform one another (to whatever extent is wise) of their intentions. Spokescouncils rarely produce seamless unanimity, but they can apprise the participants of the various desires and perspectives that are at play. The independence and spontaneity that decentralization provides are usually our greatest advantages in combat with a better equipped adversary.

Bottomlining

For affinity groups and larger structures based on consensus and cooperation to function, it is essential that everyone involved be able to rely on each other to come through on commitments. When a plan is agreed upon, each individual in a group and each group in a cluster should choose one or more critical aspects of the preparation and execution of the plan and offer to bottomline them. Bottomlining the supplying of a resource or the completion of a project means guaranteeing that it will be accomplished somehow, no matter what. If you’re operating the legal hotline for your group during a demonstration, you owe it to them to make sure someone can handle it even if you get sick; if your group promises to provide the banners for an action, make sure they’re ready, even if that means staying up all night the night before because the rest of your affinity group couldn’t show up. Over time, you’ll learn how to handle crises and who you can count on in them—just as others will learn how much they can count on you.

Go Into Action

Stop wondering what’s going to happen, or why nothing’s happening. Get together with your friends and start deciding what will happen. Don’t go through life in passive spectator mode, waiting to be told what to do. Get in the habit of discussing what you want to see happen—and making those ideas reality.

Without a structure that encourages ideas to flow into action, without comrades with whom to brainstorm and barnstorm and build up momentum, you are likely to be paralyzed, cut off from much of your own potential; with them, your potential can be multiplied by ten, or ten thousand. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world,” Margaret Mead wrote: “it’s the only thing that ever has.” She was referring, whether she knew it or not, to affinity groups. If every individual in every action against the state and status quo participated as part of a tight-knit, dedicated affinity group, the revolution would be accomplished in a few short years.

An affinity group could be a sewing circle or a bicycle maintenance collective; it could come together for the purpose of providing a meal at an occupation or forcing a multinational corporation out of business through a carefully orchestrated program of sabotage. Affinity groups have planted and defended community gardens, built and occupied and burned down buildings, organized neighborhood childcare programs and wildcat strikes; individual affinity groups routinely initiate revolutions in the visual arts and popular music. Your favorite band was an affinity group. An affinity group invented the airplane. Another one maintains this website.

Let five people meet who are resolved to the lightning of action rather than the agony of survival—from that moment, despair ends and tactics begin.

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the-littlest-goblin · 4 months ago

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As I’ve alluded to, I think a lot of the failures of c3 can be traced to the fundamental gap that, in a plot where so much revolved around “”the gods”” CR never answers the question:

What the fuck is a god?

Others have made excellent points in how we talk about epic fantasy and the difficulties in fully receiving a world where gods definitively exist. What's interesting to me is that, if you really want to get deep into the philosophical weeds (and I always do), then what does it actually mean when we say "gods exist" in Critical Role?

Disclaimer: this isn't exactly as comprehensive as I would like but what I hoped to articulate in one meta post is more like 2-5 thesis proposals in a trench coat, and I still want the catharsis of yeeting my thoughts into the void so I can finally take a nap. I tried to limit the academia of it all but there's still plenty of jargon, and also a bibliography because I like to show my work.

Short version: Godhood/divinity is a semantic lacuna in the CR's worldbuilding. That's not a bad thing, in fact it's kind of necessary. The problem arises when the plot makes gods and godhood a central problem without resolving or even acknowledging the barriers to understanding those concepts, thus leading to hours of dialogue, plot beats, and a supposedly climactic resolution which all amount to nonsense if you look too closely.

As anyone who’s so much as dipped a toe into philosophy will tell you, you gotta define your usage of terms or the discussion is DOA. On all levels of CR text, words like "god"/"the gods"/"divine"/"deity"/etc. are used interchangeably in so many contexts, and the meaning of those terms is only accessible via contextual implication, and the deducible meanings in so many of those contexts directly contradict each other. C3 especially reveals a dissonance between how the mytho-cultural text approaches divinity compared to the contours drawn by the mechanico-ontological text.1

The former in Exandria refers to "the gods" in terms of the Pantheon, a definite collection of individual entities. These otherworldly beings of Tengar, a realm of pure possibility. But "god" is also a rank within D&D's cosmic taxonomy—a rank to which, in Exandria, other entities can rise via the Rites of Ascension. The Matron is a god same as the others; Tharizdun is part of the pantheon but separate, not of Tengar. Maybe a "god," maybe not?

In the mytho-cultural role "the gods" play in Exandria, their being-qua-being is positioned as necessarily plurally defined and unknowable, but nevertheless possessed of immense "cosmic power" befitting their role in the Creation myth and ongoing worship. It makes perfect sense that the in-world mythology is (intentionally) plural and contradictory. However, as others have pointed out,* Exandria's socio-political and cultural worldbuilding vis a vis religion are (less intentionally, I would imagine) rather underbaked, leaving significant gaps in our understanding of what the gods (and religion) mean for the cultural part of mytho-cultural.

Now let’s get into the latter. Because CR isn't just a narrative—it's a ludonarrative, and the game mechanics have huge ontological implications.1

In the mechanico-ontological sphere, the gods are positioned as sort of exceptions to the rule, by which I mean, like, we don't get stat blocks for deities. Which again, on its own, makes perfect sense! D&D focalizes the PCs, and so on the purely mechanical level, gods/the divine are subordinate, acting only through proxies. This is necessary for the game-narrative D&D supports. Giving god-level power explicit stats would be a catch-22:

first, it would severely demystify "cosmic power"—to define is to limit, after all. Not doing so can imply an ontology where gods are not confined by mechanics—their powers go beyond, their powers are not only unwritten but unwriteable.

secondly, if the rulebooks were to even attempt codifying mechanical abilities on par with the semantic associations of “god-level” power, then it would be very difficult to maintain either the PCs focal role as agents of the narrative or a fairly balanced game, much less both. We saw this play out in Downfall—the point of the mechanics in the final battle outlined the huge disparity between mortals and gods.

Speaking of Downfall—as well as their mechanic and mythic existences, the gods also exist on the narrative level as characters. As such, we must necessarily consider questions of agency and consciousness in qualifying their existence, but fuck if that isn’t a messy question on the one layer, let alone putting it in the contexts of these shifting, intersecting layers.2 Keeping it brief though, the gods’ narrative agency is subject to similar issues as their mechanical powers.**

Being an exception to the rules of mechanico-ontological existence only holds together so long as divinity remains separate from everything governed by mechanics when mobilized in a narrative. I'm not trying to nitpick—Matt's "NPCs are not governed by the same rules as PCs" MO isn't automatically world-logic breaking, and there's a degree of pedantry on that front that is simply unsportsmanlike. But the problem in c3 specifically is that the plot focalizes the gods and divinity as a construct in such a way that invites—demands even—closer inspection. And the coherence between the structural layers of the narrative breaks down quite quickly under this scrutiny.

It's not like c3 brought this theme out of nowhere. Disproving that there is any essential divide between gods and mortals defines the zeitgeist of the Age of Arcanum. The Matron’s ascension proves that, however the difference is defined, the state of being one or the other is traversable. Exu: Calamity brought this up plenty: Laerryn contends that the distinction is access to the Celestial plane, and seeks to dissolve the difference by achieving large-scale interplanar travel for all of Avalir; Zerxus embodies that so called "divine magic" is not strictly tied to a worshipful relationship with a deity.

In c2, god-or-not is a huge element of Jester's arc with the Traveler. Her build shows that, despite the very different class abilities/powers of warlocks and clerics, there is no mechanico-ontological constraining the distinction between a warlock patron and a god. These are roles defined through a relational existence, not in keeping with any essential taxonomy of substances.1 The Traveller’s position in the cosmic taxonomy as an Archfey has less bearing on the type of magic he can grant than the belief and conviction on the side of the grantee. Similarly, there’s the Luxon in all its mystery—a god but not a pantheon deity? Divine but not a god? The semantics seem less and less significant.

Now’s probably a good time to remember that CR is a story, and stories are representative constructions wherein any logic other than narrative logic is secondary. D&D as a story engine allows fictional representation to evoke a unique facsimile of materialism because the diegetic laws of physics are established in such detail via mechanics. But still, in a fictional world, metaphysics kind of are physics, and also kind of are semiotics, and both answer to the symbolic. It's fun (for me) to dig into the worldbuilding using philosophy as a framework, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if the philosophy finds gaps so long as the rest of the narrative elements cohere around those gaps.

In c3, they do not.

Next to c3, c1 gets the closest to leaning too hard against the logical house-of-cards making up cosmic ontology in Exandria due to the importance of the Divine Gate in defeating proto-god Vecna. The Divine Gate is, imo, the material nexus point where all the semantic and ontological contradictions coalesce: it was created so as to specifically block gods from traversing out of the Celestial plane, but is permeable to mortals. Presumably there is some quality or essential substance that decides who can move through it and who can’t—but what is that? What is the substance of divinity, not in the ontological sense but in the materialism of arcana? It’s not something exclusive to denizens of Tengar, because the Matron is also trapped; perhaps “divine” is a misnomer, and it only traps the specific entities designated at the time of its creation, regardless of any shared essential quality? Except no, because Vecna was able to be trapped behind it as well.

On the flip side, the great thing about the Divine Gate is that it encompasses and narratively justifies that catch-22 of divine mechanics by adding the element of time. The gods used to be un-writably powerful Pre-Divergence, hence their cosmic standing, but the Divine Gate limits their powers of acting in the present, allowing for their mechanical impotence. The Divergence and the Divine Gate incorporate the gods’ disparate ontological states into the history of Exandria, a physical and temporal division that allows for these contradictions to coexist in separate corners of the narrative.***

This coheres throughout campaigns 1 and 2—even when c1 started approaching concepts of “divinity” more closely, the plot maintains a separation between mortal stakes and divine stakes. Vecna was Vox Machina’s problem because he posed a threat to mortals; he posed a threat to mortals because he was seeking to achieve god-level power on the mortal plane. We don’t need to know what the “power” exactly means to know it would be a huge imbalance. The threat is nullified by trapping Vecna behind the Divine Gate. We still don’t know what he is vis a vis godhood, but we do know his powers of acting and affecting on the Material Plane are curtailed and as such he’s not mortal’s problem anymore. Compare this to the Bell’s Hells attitudes towards their joint BBEGs of Ludinus and Predathos. Ludinus is the threat on the Material Plane; for much of the campaign, BH cap off cyclical debates on the gods by agreeing that stopping Ludinus is their actionable concern. In the end, however, Ludinus’ rhetoric succeeds in focalizing cosmic concerns: the narrative concludes with the resolution to the questions of ‘what to do about the gods and Predathos,’ reifying Ludinus’ view that the cosmic structure was a problem to be solved (despite the complete lack of supporting evidence to that point). Meanwhile the resolution to the—previously central—question of ‘what to do about Ludinus’ is ‘leave him to his cottage-core Thanos epilogue,’ as though he is not nor has he ever been a primary source of conflict.

I think Predathos is where the irreconcilability of material substance and ontological substance really start to chip away at the foundations of narrative coherence. The “God-eater” must be subject to the same questions re: “so what do you mean by god?” The takeaway is that the Predathos lore is frankly a hot mess of ludonarrative dissonance—perfect illustration for the other side of that catch-22 I was talking about!

In theory, Matt could have introduced Predathos into Exandrian cosmology without it becoming a narrative problem, had it remained at a sufficient distance from the immediate plot to sit comfortably obscured in the same miasma of metaphysical unknowns as the Luxon or Tharizdun. It’s Ludinus and all the discussion surrounding these cosmic entities that shines a glaring spotlight on the contradictions by way of placing the gods into an ethical framework and using that judgement as a basis for praxis. Moral philosophy is not my area, but as far as it intersects with ontology: it is, to put it mildly, very fucking hard to put a subject under ethical judgement when said subject has no defined being as such that it’s very subjecthood is in question.

What I’m trying to say is that you hold a guy in a very different ethical standing than the sun. The Dawnfather is both and can be reduced to neither. He is a character in a narrative with agency and personality and relationships at the same time he is a mechanical construction that has no independent existence and extremely limited powers of acting, and all the while he is semantically presumed all-powerful.

*I can’t find the post now to link it but I’m 99% sure it was by @utilitycaster

**For an illustration of (non-game) narratives where a pantheon of gods explicitly exist, are in possession of a certain cosmic power, and are direct narrative agents, see: Homer. I ran out of steam before getting to the full comparison I wanted to make, maybe I’ll get to that in another post, but trust me when I say it has massive implications—like, ‘requires a totally different method of engagement with the work, one which heavily departs from, and at times directly contradicts, literary and pedagogical tradition since at least the early modern period’-level implications.

***In terms of Pre-Divergence depictions, frankly I need to finish rewatching both Calamity and Downfall (possibly multiple times) to properly incorporate Brennan’s contributions to the text into this consideration. Drive-by assessment though, as it pertains to the main campaigns: we see glimpses of what the gods powers of acting can be without the Divine Gate, both with Asmodeus at the end of Calamity and the final battle in Downfall, to use as a comparison. These are useful for when c3 brings up the possibility for an alternate state of affairs while providing no examples for what those alternatives would entail.

1. Bryant, Levi R. “Substantial Powers, Active Affects: The Intentionality of Objects.” Deleuze Studies 6, no. 4 (2012): 529–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45332014.

2. The structuralism I’m employing follows a number of works and theorists, namely Roland Barthes for lit theory and Richard Schechner for performance theory; the most relevant direct citation is Daniel McKay’s book The Fantasy Role-Playing Game: A New Performing Art (2001), which references both of the above and many others.

#critrole #c3 #don't mind me #I'm actually furious that tumblr formatting won't let me do superscript footnotes #cr discourse #anyway cheers to Divergence tonight I will certainly be watching with this lens on standby

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askthegirlbossau · 6 months ago

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Charlie and Bryce are both women born into a society/were raised in a society that scorns them for being women in contrast to Diana! Does this effect the trinity’s relationship in anyway?

Ohohoho why yes I have thoughts about this

Diana, of course, has literally no frame of reference for sexism besides maybe being a little disconcerted when she sees men. She understands it because when she enters the world of men, she experiences it. However, even when people are awful to her, she's hardly ever in real physical danger, she's an Amazonian for the gods' sake. She certainly uses her power to protect women physically, and her blunt honesty to confront assholes, but it was not part of her formative experience so she'll always be a little removed from it. she provides new perspective for Bryce and Charlie, but on a fundamental level, cannot understand their perspective, and there are some awkward conversations along the lines of "why did you let that man talk to you that way?" And Bryce and Charlie sort of glancing at each other because why did they? But also, that's just...how you respond to sexist assholes? Why doesn't Diana understand this?

Charlie, on the other hand, was raised in a small midwestern town. Though she was raised with loving and pretty open minded parents, I find it hard to believe she didn't internalize some attitudes about women or their 'place.' Not even in an inherently hateful way, but in the sort of way that assumptions about doctors being men or a single parent being a mother can become insidious. When she moves to Metropolis, I think that she be came aware of a lot of her internalized biases, they're definitely still there but she's working on it. Because of her physical strength though, like Diana, she is rarely in physical danger. She experiences more of the mental effects of sexism, like comments about her appearance or assumptions about her work and intelligence. She reacts meekly to this as Charlie Kent, but as Superwoman is able to stand up for herself more. The problem is that she doesn't always realize when she needs to.

Bryce between the three of them has received the full brunt of like. Being A Human Woman. She's hyperaware of her gender (in a way that is unusual and possibly a trauma response) and how it affects the way people perceive and treat her. Her choice to fight crime is made with the full understanding of the gender-based violence she could face if her identity was ever to be revealed. She is frequently in physical and social danger, especially as 'Brycie Wayne,' where she can't use her full abilities to fight back, and on some level she definitely resents Charlie and Diana for not having to 'worry about' the type of violence that is so often targeted at afab people.

And in conclusion they should all get a big hug and a beach vacation.

#dcu #batman #bruce wayne #girlboss au #bryce wayne #ask blog #batfam #gbauanswer #superman #superwoman #diana prince #wonderwoman #clark kent

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justafewberries · 10 days ago

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not only is “peeta is useless” fundamentally untrue to katniss’s character:

“I do,” I say. “I need you.”

But from a basal level, Peeta represents something crucial to long-term survival:

That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.

To unpack this, let’s explore the general symbolism of fire in a survival literature. Let’s turn to Lord of the Flies.

In Lord of the Flies, the fire is a motif used to symbolize the decay of the relationship between the survivors. At first, the fire is controlled. It is beneficial. It is a source of warmth, light, and community. They gather around the fire. They cook on the fire. Their hope for rescue resides in the fire.

When they fall out with one another, the fire grows out of control. It blazes beyond the camp. It destroys. It raises everything to ashes.

That is Peeta. Then that is Gale.

You do not need a complex understanding of The Hunger Games to read Katniss’s own words in the conclusion of Mockingjay. You do not even have to know that Peeta is a “whiz with fires”.

The most iconic line from the franchise provides enough context to understand this notion alone:

If we burn, you burn with us.

It is true that when the Capitol sets fires, it destroys the nation. However, the inverse is also true. With Gale’s uncontrolled fire, everything burns. Everything is destroyed.

There is no world in which Gale and Katniss successfully run off without Peeta. They could survive physically, but they would burn on each other’s fire. They would fuel each other until it became irreparable. Eventually, there would be no fuel left.

They needed Peeta. They both needed Peeta.

And you don’t have to have an in-depth understanding of Hunger Games lore and meta to understand this. Just an idea of what fire represents across media.

#unity and understanding are how people survive long term #they are survival skills just as anything else #thg #the hunger games #everlark #katniss everdeen #gale hawthorne

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the-virgoperspective · 1 year ago

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Part 2

Venus is one of the most important planets to understand in a composite chart, as most people (should) hold love within their bonds. Venus in the composite chart represents love, attraction, and the ability to form relationships. This placement can indicate how much love there is in a bond, how strong this love can be, and how strongly it can carry them through life. The position in the composite chart can tell how love will be expressed through the bond and what part of the native’s environment is most desired to be brought to the experience. It is not necessary to have a “good” Venus, as I personally don’t believe there are any bad positions, but a “good” Venus can make the relationship worth having.

I will be using the writings of Robert Hand from his novel “Planets in Composite: Analyzing Human Relations” to describe the meaning and significance of Venus in each composite house. Please always keep in mind that this is only one vital step to reading an entire composite chart and should not be seriously considered without viewing everything as a whole. This is just one piece. Enjoy!

7H Composite Venus

Composite Venus in the seventh house is a good indication this is a personal relationship based to a considerable extent on affection. There may be other reasons for this relationship, but love is certainly one of the most important. This position of Venus does not guarantee a successful relationship, but it does help. After the Sun and Moon positions, this is the one of the most important elements in the chart of a love relationship.

You will have a strong sense of shared emotion and feeling and a great need to share your experiences. You will think of yourselves as a unit, a couple, rather than as two single individuals. You will want to be together and do things together as much as possible.

The only danger that you should watch for with this position is that you may tend to be too accommodating; that is, you will try to agree with each other even when one of you has a legitimate grievance. Instead of expressing it, you will remain quiet for the sake of preserving the peace and harmony of the relationship. The problem is, if you do this often, eventually the friendly atmosphere wears thin, and all kinds of resentments boil out, with no way to control them. Do not let your desire for peace and harmony prevent you from confronting important issues. Speak your mind-it can’t seriously disturb a good relationship.

8H Composite Venus

With composite Venus in the eighth house, the love and affection between you will have an intensity that is often lacking in the other houses. This position does not guarantee that you will have a love relationship, however; it simply indicates emotional intensity concerning love.

Traditionally the eighth house is the house of death, although that does not always literally mean physical death. The eighth house has much to do with creation of something new as with the destruction of something old. So Venus in the eighth house represents the mingling of love and death, or more accurately, love and regeneration.

In a love relationship, the expression of love will be quite intense. With a powerful quality that will transform both of you in some fundamental way. You will experience love as a regenerative experience that makes you over into a new person. A sexual relationship particularly will have this intensity. Your love will not be light and gay but something very serious that involves both of you at all levels of the mind, body, and soul.

On quite a different level, the eighth house can also refer to joint finances and property. Venus promises material prosperity within this relationship. It is often said that Venus rules money, and although some people have questioned that, Venus does produce an ability to attract money, especially in the second and eighth houses. This is an especially good placement if the two of you ever require financial help from others.

9H Composite Venus

With composite Venus in the ninth house, love and affection tend to be intellectual issues that are discussed and pondered over rather than felt. The ninth house of the composite chart represents the overall life-view shared by the two of you-your collective attitudes and the nature of your intellectual exchange. Consequently there is a danger that you may over-intellectualize your feelings in this relationship. Love is a more distant experience rather than something felt and shared immediately.

However, in compensation, you both examine the nature of your feelings and are more capable than most people of understanding what you mean to each other. You are somewhat less likely to behave in an unconscious and inappropriate manner toward each other. You can communicate at a very high level concerning your relationship.

Love may become a philosophical ideal in this relationship, much as it was in the medieval code of chivalry. You tend to think in intellectual terms and to devote considerable attention to bringing about your ideals.

The experience of this relationship may also make both of you see more clearly and become more aware of the world around you. Venus in the ninth house can signify love as an agent of consciousness expansion. One or both of you will be exposed to a broader range of experience because of this relationship.

10H Composite Venus

The tenth house of the composite chart is an angular house, and therefore the effect of Venus is emphasized. Your experience of love within this relationship will very strongly affect the lives of both of you. The tenth house rules the purposes for which the relationship exists, the nature of its individuality, and its role in the larger society. On the psychological level, this relationship will aid both of you in discovering what you want to do with your lives. Loving each other should reinforce you and give you greater confidence in yourselves.

Partly because of this mutual reinforcement, you are likely to be very openly affectionate in the company of other people. They will regard you as a loving couple, or if you are friends, as having a very close friendship. This is a relationship that stands openly before the world and does not hide from the view of others.

At the same time, this relationship will teach you about the nature of love and how you relate to others on an intimate personal level. The only way you can learn what living with another person means is by doing so. That is one of the purposes of this relationship.

On a very different plane, the tenth-house Venus may also mean that you have come together for some purpose connected with the arts, entertainment, or luxuries. This may be either amateur or professional.

11H Composite Venus

Composite Venus in the eleventh house is one of the best placements for an intimate personal relationship. The eleventh is the house of friendship, and at the very least, Venus here will help to make you friends. However, the emotional depth of this relationship is not limited to friendship. This position can also be a sign of a deep love affair. In some ways it is better than a fifth-house Venus, because along with “being in love” you also love each other. That is, you have a strong abiding affection for each other along with that well-known, often short-lived feeling of intoxication.

The eleventh house is also the house of hopes and wishes, and Venus here is a good indication that the two of you have harmonious ideals. Because you both are seeking the same things, being together will help you find them. It can also mean that you idealize either the feeling of love or your attitudes about feelings. But if both of you are reasonably realistic about yourselves, you will experience this relationship as something beautiful and ideal, because the experience is based on truth.

The eleventh-house composite Venus is one of the best signs for a balanced and harmonious relationship of any kind.

12H Composite Venus

Composite Venus is one of the least difficult planets to have in the twelfth house. There are problems associated with it, but there are strong points as well.

This placement signifies that while you may have strong feelings or affection for each other, you may not be demonstrative about them. Other people may not even be aware of how you feel about each other. The twelfth-house Venus can be a sign of a secret relationship.

This is also the house of your own unconscious, of those areas of your lives and experience that you have repressed from your conscious mind. With Venus in the twelfth, your relationship may be influenced to a considerable degree by unconscious factors in both of you. It may be difficult to understand the dynamics of this relationship, and you may do things for no apparent reason. This can be either good or bad, of course, depending on what you do. In any case, you should try to understand what lies behind your relationship, if only to gain greater control over yourselves.

On the clearly positive side, this placement can help both of you overcome your ego-drives within the relationship. It enables you to give way to the other when that is desirable. You are able to think of yourselves as a unit and to subordinate your personal interest to your interests as a couple. This ability can eliminate many problems that will arise.

Find part 1 here!

ᡣ𐭩 star divider by @grungenglam ᡣ𐭩

#astrology #horoscope #composite #composite chart #composite venus #7H composite venus #8H composite venus #9H composite venus #10H composite venus #11H composite venus #12H composite venus

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imaginedreamwrite · 4 months ago

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Oh! I have some more if you’re up for them - this is fun and I loooooove deep dives😍😍

OK, what would someone need to understand, at the most fundamental level, about each man below AND what do you see as misconceptions about each?

Also, what would be the biggest source of contention or one of the sources of arguments with each guy (either excluding or including their person’s safety)?

Simon, price, Gaz, Rudy, Alejandro, and Konig.

Ghost: At the fundamental level, I think Ghost is 💯 ride or die for the partner he sees as the “one”. He might have a skewed idea of love and relationships from his past trauma but once he finds that one it’s all in.

A misconception for Ghost is that he’d be violent and mean to his partner. Ghost’s whole work life is violence and death, soldiering on and on. Ghost wouldn’t take that home to his partner, he’d leave that at the door. Why would be try and burden his relationship with the battlefield when his home life is a place he can relax?

König: I think at a fundamental level (like Ghost) it takes him a long time to find the “one”. He’s a cocky and confident, even arrogant, man who knows he can pull random hookups. He’s got the kind of energy to have one night stands to blow off steam. But the “one”, the perfect fit for him would take a long and harrowing process to find because he’s not going to treat his partner like all the rest.

A misconception people make about König is that his social anxiety means he’s shy. He’s a beast, a battering ram, he’s got the cockiness and confidence to scare the shit out of anyone he faces. And he’s socially anxious but more in the sense that he doesn’t know what to say with his peers, or how to perceive social situations in a kind of way that prevents him from coming across as anxious (that’s just my opinion)

Gaz: I feel like Gaz would be a family man, a man who goes home to visit his mama and his sisters. (I heading that he’s got younger and older sisters) Gaz in a relationship would mean a lot of at home dates, or local spots to visit on the weekends. He spends so much time away from home that when he gets a break he wants to stay close. I feel like Gaz would also be quick to introduce any dates to his family to gauge their reactions, whether they like the person he’s seeing or if they find something off about them

Gaz is overlooked. A. Lot. When some people think of the 141, they see Ghost, Soap & Price. It seems like a lot overlook Gaz and don’t think of him as skilled as the others but he’s just as incredible of a soldier as the rest of the 141. He’s got incredible skills and is just as dependable as the rest yet he seems to fade into the background (again, just my opinion)

Alejandro: He finds it hard to trust people, and earning his trust takes a hell of a lot of effort. After Valeria’s betrayal, after Graves and the Shadows, Alejandro keeps a real tight leash on who he can and can’t let in. The 141, yes, they’re his brothers. The Los Vaqueros are his family. When it comes to love, Alejandro is cautious out of necessity, he doesn’t and will not easily accept someone’s place in his life because they want to be. Valeria betrayed him and he loved her, Alejandro will come to live deeply and passionately, however that person will have a long haul to get his trust

Alejandro faces the typical racist perceptions of assholes, we’ve seen it in the game (MWII). I think some people (assholes) see him and expect him to fit into that stereotype or try and put him into a box. Alejandro is so much more than that, and he’s got such an amazing backstory that makes him (one of my personal favourite characters) so incredible. He’s not the stereotypes, he’s not deserving of the racism we see in the game, and I really hope we get to see him again in another MW

#simon riley x reader #König x reader #gaz x reader #kyle gaz garrick x reader #ghost x reader #Alejandro Vargas x reader

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jeonscatalyst · 6 months ago

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it’s always been interesting to me the difference between how two major ‘fights’ within BTS are told, or three if you include Koobis banana incident 😆

The dumpling fight, and the rainy day fight TM.

I thought about it since hearing Jimin talking about how it took a while for him and Tae to get closer in AYS, and said they did after that big fight. That he shook with rage at the time. The fight never really made sense to me, the dumpling one, as Jimin said it was over petty things, that they often fought over silly things.

Then you’ve got the rainy day fight, and the way they spoke about it at Festa 2020, and in lives in 2023. Both pretty much recounting it exactly the same as the other. I saw a video edit mash up of it but couldn’t find it, where the stories interwove and it’s amazing to see it. But at Festa dinner, with the others reactions, the giggling from Jin and Joon, that it sounds like a k drama, that it sounds like something a couple would do. And it does, it sounds exactly like a k drama, the dramatic pause when JK is lost, the make up in the rain, the hug. It’s so cute, and so endearing to hear them talk about it. How their relationship is essentially so important to them, they made up that night, unlike the dumpling fight, which lasted.

It shows how they really do have a good way of communicating with each other, even back then. And for JK to feel sorry to Jimin for that, and it’s something they can talk about and look back on with fondness almost, is testament to their bond.

Hey anon,

I think the Vmin fight(s) is relatively easy to piece together and understand if you have a solid understanding of their relationship….something many people unfortunately lack.

Jimin and Taehyung were among the members who got close almost immediately after meeting in my opinion. Looking at content from their rookie days, it’s clear that even the other members often pointed to them as the two who were closest. However, while they were friends and close, their relationship at the time seemed more surface-level. They didn’t fully understand, accept, or relate to each other yet. It reminds me of those teenage friendships where you genuinely like each other and have fun together, but the connection lacks a deeper level of understanding. That’s what I believe Vmin’s relationship was like in the beginning.

When Jimin says it took time for him and Tae to become as close as they are now, it doesn’t mean they weren’t friends or weren’t close before. It simply means that, over time, their bond deepened as they grew to better understand and accept each other despite their differences.

In the BTS book, Tae shared that when he first met Jimin, he struggled to understand him. He couldn’t grasp why Jimin pushed himself so hard, why he seemed so passionate, or why he was impatient about achieving his goals. Tae also described Jimin as intense….traits he found hard to relate to at the time. If you know anything about Tae and Jimin, it’s clear they’re fundamentally different people who approach life in very distinct ways. Add to that the fact that they’re the same age, and it’s easy to see how misunderstandings would arise.

I believe their many petty fights and arguments stemmed from these different approaches to life. The dumpling incident, while often highlighted, was more of a boiling point than the root cause of their conflicts. It forced them to address unresolved tensions and misunderstandings. This is why, after that fight, both admitted they’d gained a deeper understanding of each other, which ultimately strengthened their bond and brought them closer to where they are today. The way this fight is often described says a lot about their dynamic and the depth of their relationship.

On the other hand, Jikook’s “rainy day” story perfectly illustrates the foundation of Jimin and Jungkook’s relationship. Their bond is built on trust, support, and a profound emotional connection. While this wasn’t always apparent during their rookie days, anyone paying close attention could sense the nature of their bond and what it was rooted in.

The other members’ reactions to the rainy day story….rubbing goosebumps away, cringing, or making remarks like “That’s what a couple would do”, reveal how they themselves perceived the story. Even their singing of that angsty romantic taxi driver song adds to this perception. People might try to downplay it, but to me, it’s significant.

This story highlights the depth of Jimin and Jungkook’s emotional connection and how much Jungkook values Jimin’s presence and opinions in his life. It shows how their relationship has always been characterized by healthy communication and an innate ability to reach and support each other. Jungkook feeling bad about it years later underscores just how meaningful that moment was to him.

#jikook #jimin #jungkook #vmin #members discourse

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alexdswfan · 7 months ago

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About Levi and Hange's communication skills

A concept I've always wanted to talk about that I haven't really seen many people discuss in the AoT fandom is the communication going on between Levi and Hange whose bond is greatly defined by this concept. They share in my opinion some of the best if not the best communication skills I've ever seen not only in AoT but also in any other form of media I've ever consumed. From the manga evidence I've gathered displaying these characteristics, we can deduce some interesting information about their relationship that I think is worth discussing. I think Levi and Hange are actually closer than what certain people might believe due to these incredible communication skills, and I'll show how communication and closeness affect one another.

A quick heads up, when I say Levi and Hange are close, it's not meant in a romantic way and it will be never be seen as such since neither Levi nor Hange have romantic canon ships in the story. Their closeness to each other will rather be regarded as platonic, almost feeling like a partnership between two friends, and after rereading the manga, I do think Isayama tried to write their bond as a very close partnership rather than some other kind of relationship. Additionally, the fact Levi and Hange are this close doesn't mean that Hange is more important to Levi than other characters with whom he shares a relationship just because he might be closer with them than with others. There's no hierarchy in Levi's heart in regard to his emotional connections with people, meaning that his friendship with Hange means as much to him as his friendships with other characters. Hange brings something in Levi's life other characters don't, but the other way around is also true. I'll only be focusing on the characteristics Hange brings to Levi in this post, but keep in mind that Levi's bonds with others all enrich him in different ways and they're all important to him, and stating otherwise in my opinion is to not understand the fundamentals of Levi's character.

But now back to Levi and Hange specifically, I've seen some people among fandom spaces claim instead that Levi hates Hange or that Levi doesn't care about Hange as much as he cares about other characters, and to that I'd like to counter-argument, explaining why these negative misconceptions can't be further from the truth and how they do a huge disservice to Levi's character in particular.

The first evidence to showcase Levi and Hange's communication skills in a way that's more significant than what we've seen so far happens in chapter 53, Smoke Signal, and is unfortunately a manga-only scene. For a bit of context, this chapter shows the experiments Eren is making in order to improve his hardening skills while the Survey Corps are into hiding, hunted by the Military Police. Then later, after the experimenting session is over, Eren asks about how the experiments went, and we see this interaction occur between Levi and Hange.

There are many details revealed in this scene about Levi's character and how Hange adapts to his personality. So, Levi has a very roundabout way with words when he explains something and no one really seems to understand him. However, Hange is the only person seen to kindly 'translate' what Levi just said so the others present with them in the room can understand better. And in the second panel, Levi acknowledges that Hange understood his words well as he thanks them for their clearer explanation.

This scene shows that Hange needs to have a high level of closeness with Levi in order to be the only person in the room to understand him. Communication is a hard skill to develop with others, therefore this interaction between them can't be explained simply by Hange's intelligence or by the fact that they're good at ‘getting people’. This then means Levi and Hange must communicate extremely well with one another if Hange can even pass as “Levi’s translator” for others. Hange needs to understand Levi's perspective on the world in order to explain his speech to others in a way they can understand as well, which is extremely hard to achieve. The most plausible explanation for this interaction is that Hange and Levi developed a level of communication unlike any other through the years they've known each other, allowing Hange to correctly interpret his words for others who aren't as familiar with his perspective as Hange is. It's possible that in order to reach that, Hange might've been helped by their own innate ability to understand people in general, just like Levi, but the fact remains that communication between them had to be honed and perfected for this scene to happen.

The second evidence that truly solidifies their communication skills happens later on in the manga and anime, and in the manga it happens in chapter 106, Brave Volunteers. For a bit of context, it's a scene that happens during the 4 years time-skip when the Survey Corps have captured a Marleyan ship and have met with Yelena and Onyankopon, the anti-Marleyan volunteers who want to work with Paradis to oppose Marley. Hange and Levi are in a meeting with them to discuss their motivations for going against Marley when this interaction occurs between Levi and Hange.

They are seen understanding each other simply through thoughts (as shown by thought bubbles), which is proof of how strong their communication skills are. They’re literally doing telepathy in a world where such superpower doesn’t exist. They understand each other so well that one glance from the other is all they need in order to communicate together. This level of communication they share is unmatched throughout the series, because in order to do telepathy with someone else, something almost unattainable in real life, the people involved need to have a perfect understanding of the other's mind, the other's inner thoughts, which is something that can be achieved only through getting to know enough that person, and even then it's no easy feat. While it is true that the conversation they've shared wasn't very complicated, it's still surreal that they managed to pull it off so effortlessly. This can only be explained by the numerous years they've spent constantly being at each other's side, and this scene is the literal manifestation of such closeness taking shape in their lives to the point they can understand one another simply through eye contact.

I've seen a few people question the legitimacy of this scene and claim that thought bubbles here mean that they whispered this conversation to each other, however the anime version of this scene is actually what backs up the telepathy theory and solidifies it even further. In season 4, character thoughts are shown through showing the eyes of the character without their lips moving while the voice actor speaks their thoughts in the background. These are two examples of Mikasa and Hange shown when they speak in their minds taken from Season 4 Part 1 Episode 10: A Sound Argument during their meeting with the Azumabito clan.

Back to the telepathy scene, this is how the anime decided to show it from Episode 9: Brave Volunteers.

Only their eyes are shown while their voice actors are speaking with a normal voice in the background. With the anime version, it's very clear to say they spoke through thoughts and not in whispers, which canonically proves they spoke through telepathy in this scene.

With these scenes, we can say that Levi and Hange share incredible communication skills, the best in the whole series, and we've established by now that Hange understands Levi extremely well, but communication has to go both ways: does Levi understand Hange too? The telepathy scene shows that Levi understands Hange as he communicates with them only through eye contact, but another evidence from the manga supports better the idea that Levi also gets Hange when he senses that something is wrong with Hange's demeanour in chapter 52, Krista Lenz. He brings Hange to speak up about what's been bothering them, which is Pastor Nick's death, and then slowly brings back the determination in Hange to fight back knowing full well how much Pastor Nick's death has affected them, which is also one of the reasons why he accepts to torture Pastor Nick's executioner for Hange's sake as seen in his line from chapter 55, Pain: "… That’s probably everything they did to Nick.” This evidence alone shows how much Levi understands Hange too as Levi is a very perceptive character, therefore we can say Levi understands Hange as well as Hange understands him.

These are the manga panels about Levi and Hange's conversation in order from chapter 52.

This is the manga panel of the torture scene from chapter 55.

Now that we've established that Levi and Hange share incredible communication skills and they both understand each other, what does it actually mean for their relationship? To have good communication with someone means that this person must be close to you because you understand the world view of this person. Closeness and communication are interconnected, as communication enhances emotional closeness, which is "the bond that forms through deep feelings of connection, understanding, and vulnerability between partners" (Gardenswartz, 2024) (although this article mainly alludes to romantic bonds, emotional closeness is not inherent to romantic relationships and may very well happen in platonic relationships too). Besides, high levels of closeness do improve one's perception of the other's emotions as this study suggests: "Close friends detected the onset of their partners’ angry and sad expressions earlier than acquaintances. Additionally, close friends were more accurate than acquaintances in identifying angry and sad expressions at the onset, particularly in non-vignette conditions when these expressions were void of context" (Parmley & Zhang, 2014). These findings are consistent with my own arguments about how Hange and Levi correctly perceiving the other's viewpoint and emotions makes them closer to one another.

I also do want to touch up on something I don't see many people discuss, but I genuinely think the events that happened in Shiganshina, namely Erwin's and the rest of the Survey Corps recruits and veterans' deaths, made Levi and Hange grow even closer than what they were before due to shared trauma. For some reason, bonding over trauma isn't regarded highly among fandoms, however it doesn't make the bond less valid because it happened under a traumatic event. Some people like to disregard the fact Levi and Hange remained the last two veterans alive and lost their common friend as if such experiences only affected them individually and not together, but these experiences are important to their bond and it wouldn't be far-fetched to say they both only grew closer from them despite the griefs they might have felt from such harrowing losses. This concept of shared trauma bringing people closer together might look obvious, but science supports that concept as well, as seen by the findings of this particular study: "Sharing painful experiences with other people, compared with a no-pain control treatment, promoted trusting interpersonal relationships by increasing perceived bonding among strangers" (Bastian, Jetten, & Ferris, 2014). An example from the manga somewhat supporting this theory could be Levi and Hange's telepathic discussion which happens years after the tragic events of Shiganshina, showcasing how close they've become to succeed at communicating only with their eyes.

Therefore, understanding Levi in the way Hange does shows they're humanizing Levi and see him for the person he is rather than the tool or weapon many other characters see him for, himself included. Hange took the time to understand Levi's perspective, his values and motivations which shows they care a lot about him. I would even argue that the main theme of Levi and Hange's relationship is this constant care they're mutually giving to each other throughout the series, and why Hange had to be the one to find a gravely injured Levi after his encounter with Zeke in chapter 115, Support, and then nurse him back to a relatively stable state. I believe that scene is the culmination of their theme, and although we could speculate on what other characters would've done for Levi if they were in Hange's position or whether Hange would've saved another soldier the way they saved Levi (they would've since Hange is a caring person), the fact remains that Hange had to be the person to find Levi in that critical state to make sense narratively speaking, as mutual care is all about the theme of their relationship.

To show how Hange's care towards Levi is showcased throughout the manga, I will include an example occurring before chapter 115 to further prove how this theme has been explored throughout the manga. It didn't magically start after Hange found an injured Levi. There are many instances when Hange is seen caring for Levi, but I'll be using an example directly showing Hange's worry about Levi and his squad's wellbeing taken from chapter 57, Kenny the Ripper. This happens in the Uprising arc when the Military Police is out hunting the Survey Corps, and we see a visibly upset Hange asking Erwin about Levi's squad's whereabouts.

The reason I'm showing more Hange's care towards Levi than Levi's care towards Hange is because Levi cares about everyone, and Hange is obviously included in that everyone. Levi is shown caring more about people than people are really shown caring back for Levi in the same way that he cares about them, so this is why this theme of mutual care between each other is particularly more important to show on Hange's side than on Levi's side. However, to prove how the manga is portraying his care for Hange, I'll use again one example among many taken from chapter 79, Perfect Game, during the Shiganshina arc where we see Levi muse about Hange and the others' whereabouts after Bertolt's explosion. He's even considering meeting with Hange's squad to check up on them when Zeke starts throwing his rocks at the Survey Corps. Similarly to Hange's worry about his wellbeing, we're seeing here Levi's own worry about Hange and their squad's wellbeing clearly displayed in the manga.

This brings me to the misconception still circulating in certain parts of the AoT fandom that Levi hates Hange, and how we can see it has been thoroughly debunked by the closeness they share together. Even so, I'll still analyze it in detail for the remaining sceptical people who stumbled on this post.

First, let's start with the fundamental question: does Levi hate Hange? The arguments I've seen for this claim are that Levi is rude towards Hange as he calls them by harsh nicknames, which can be debated as to how "mean" they actually are (his most used nickname for Hange is "four-eyes", so I'll let you be the judge of how "insulting" this nickname is) and that such a "clean freak" like him (in Hange's words from chapter 9.5, Side Story: Captain Levi) could never tolerate someone like Hange who isn't too keen on bath time. These arguments in my opinion are rather shallow as to why Levi could even hate someone because they "don't bathe as often as he would like", and it's a simplistic view of Levi's character. Levi would never hate someone for not sharing a similar lifestyle as him, especially him, the most non-judgemental character of the series. The only person we can clearly state he hates is Zeke, and that's due to how opposite Zeke is in theming to Levi. Zeke is Levi's narrative foil in where Levi values life and fights as hard as he can to not see people die anymore, Zeke has no remorse using people for his schemes and killing them in the process, seeing their deaths as justified for a greater cause. I would even argue that had Zeke shown some kind of remorse or grief to what he has done, anything that would have redeemed Zeke a bit in Levi's eyes, Levi wouldn't hate him as much as he currently does. This is why Levi is more accepting of the warriors like Reiner or Annie because they do feel grief and remorse for what they've done to the people of Paradis unlike Zeke. But we cannot compare Zeke to Hange, except maybe their intellect and the fact they both wear glasses, but the similarities end there. Hange is much closer to Levi in ideals than they are to Zeke. Simply that Hange is the one to have brought the Alliance together to stop Eren's genocide pretty much shows why Levi even accepted to be part of the Alliance as well, which puts Hange at a complete opposite pole from Zeke.

So then, it would make no sense for Levi to now become judgemental with Hange on the basis of such a trivial disagreement on their bathing routines. Besides, this bathing argument is nowhere to be found in the manga. It comes from side material that is sometimes highly exaggerated for jokes (like in Junior High for example). Therefore, I don't think these types of arguments should be taken seriously, and especially not to prove such an important claim that can unfortunately affect the way people in this fandom see Levi and Hange's bond.

Going back to the rather "rude" name-calling of Levi, this doesn't show Levi hates Hange or anyone for that matter, as Hange isn't the only one on the other side of his rude remarks. The majority of the AoT cast has been subjected to some of his name-callings, but that doesn't mean by any means that he is hateful towards these characters. It's his blunt way to communicate with others, which probably comes from his harsh upbringing, and this is something Hange understands about Levi as they have never been offended by his rude remarks and have instead played along with him, creating a certain kind of bantering between the two as we can see in this example from chapter 26, The Easy Path:

We see how Hange has no problems humouring Levi with their answer even if Levi's comment could be seen as unprofessional and borderline disrespectful by our rather polite society. So then again, on what grounds could Levi even hate Hange, the person who understands him the most in the story? The claim then falls flat, as it would be illogical to say Levi hates the person who understands his world view and can communicate with him the best.

Now, on to another misconception closely linked to the first one, namely that Levi cares more about other characters than Hange, or that his bond with Hange is not as special or as important as his bonds with other characters in the story, or even that Hange isn't crucial to Levi's story as they could've been erased from his story and it wouldn't have changed anything in Levi's story (and if some people believe these comments are too exaggerated, these are real comments I've received under a discussion thread, so no, these ideas unfortunately lurk in this fandom). So, we've already established how close Levi and Hange are due to their communication skills and shared trauma with different examples taken from the manga, and how the theme of their bond is mutual care. Why would their closeness and theme be regarded by the fandom as less important than any other themes from AoT, and more importantly, why would Levi in particular care less about his bond with Hange when Hange is the closest to him?

I've already expressed how Levi views all of his relationships equally in terms of emotional impact, and even more so, his care for others is such that he'll care about strangers as much as he cares about his own friends or family. I do think this is a difficult concept to grasp for some people in this fandom as we as human beings all prioritize our relationships with our family and friends rather than the ones we might have with acquaintances or strangers, and this is a totally normal behaviour to have. However, such behaviour doesn't apply to Levi as he is quite literally considered the ideal person, the archetype we should strive to reach as readers or anime viewers learning about his story. And so, to claim that Levi might have "favourites" in his life is completely inconsistent with Levi's own personal theme as a character, which is the value of life. What messages would a character representing such an important concept, even more so nowadays in our troubled times when clearly, the rights of certain people are seen as more valuable than the rights of others, send if he cared more about certain characters than others? It would make no sense thematically speaking, and even worse, it would mean that indeed, some characters' lives are actually more valuable than others, which would only shatter his theme. When I say that no character's life is more valuable to Levi, it's never in relation to the ranking of said character, because by that idea, then of course Erwin as commander is more valuable than anyone from the Survey Corps when Erwin was commander, but more in relation to the intrinsic aspect of life and how that character's life affects Levi, and on that level, the emotional importance level, everyone is equally important to Levi, no exceptions. This is why stating otherwise about Levi and his bond with Hange does a huge disservice to Levi's own character as it destroys the fundamentals of his theme in canon.

If someone isn't interested in such theme and prefers a fanon version of Levi's character, that's totally valid too and I'm not here discussing how people should see Levi fanonically as we all have different headcanons and ideas about him that are all worth exploring in fanon territory, but I do think it's important to make the difference between what themes Levi actually represents in AoT and ideas about him that are fanon, which is something some parts of this fandom struggle to make sometimes. It's okay if some people aren't interested by Levi's incredible empathy and selflessness and would rather see him care the most about their favourite character, but these people should keep in mind this isn't how Levi operates in canon, and therefore claims like Levi doesn't care as much about other characters that aren't their favourites, like Hange for instance that unfortunately receives a lot of these bad takes, should not really circulate among the fandom in the first place. These misconceptions lurk in the fandom because some people genuinely believe Levi canonically has favourites, and that's what I'm trying to debunk with this post that has now become an analysis about Levi's character too lolol. But basically, by saying he doesn't care as much about Hange as other characters paints an image of Levi that's inconsistent with the actions he's taking in canon, and it confuses the fandom as to whether these claims are actually correct or false.

Just to give an example of this doubt that's cast in the fandom about Levi, the main reasons I've seen for people to dislike Levi's character are rooted in this false narrative that Levi is obsessed with the promise to kill Zeke, and by some sort of extension to be obsessed with Erwin (as if the promise was just about Erwin, but I won't start on this topic for this post), which is why they don't like Levi. But what these people actually don't like is this fanon interpretation of Levi, which many other Levi fans and myself don't like either, and that's where the doubt is cast since many Levi haters really believe this is how Levi acts in canon, that he really just cares about Erwin or cares more about him than anyone else (and yes, these two misconceptions are part of the same coin, they're not different) because they've seen this take circulate in the fandom presented as a canon fact, so of course it can be difficult to spot the mistake. Therefore, it disrupts Levi's canon self by stating such misconceptions, going as far as making some people believe these misconceptions to be true. They're not seen how they should actually be seen, as some fanon interpretations that a portion of the AoT fandom has about Levi that you may like or not, this is a personal preference, but regardless of whether these fanon interpretations are liked or not, they're canonically incorrect.

To sum everything up, Levi and Hange are both incredible characters individually and together, and what makes them really strong is this closeness they share which results into mutual care and why such close scenes between each other like in chapter 115 or in chapter 126, Pride, where we see Hange physically take care of a wounded Levi in the forest, even exist in both the manga and in the anime. I also think it's interesting to see how the two "abnormals" of the story seem to be the ones to understand each other the most, which is definitely a very fitting theme for them. While I know it's impossible to stop established popular misconceptions from spreading in this fandom, I hope at least that this post shed a bit of light on Levi and Hange's bond and maybe more people will be discouraged to state Levi hates Hange or that Levi cares more about certain characters than others after stumbling on this post.

#attack on titan #aot #aot meta #levi ackerman #hange zoe #snk #snk meta #levihan

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pansiesandposies · 7 days ago

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OKAY THEY RELEASED ALL OF ADULTS ON DISNEY+ HERE ARE SOME THOUGHTS:

I love that we see fissions in Paul Baker and Issa’s relationship in the last few episodes. They don’t understand each other’s needs on a fundamental level. Issa feels insecure in the relationship. Paul Baker feels lied to (because he has been lied to). There are cracks in the foundation BEFORE the paulanton kiss

I really like Samir’s girlfriend! She and Samira vibe so much on their upstate trip. The couple who shits together or however the saying goes

Billie is the character I see the most of myself in and I love that it didn’t end with her figuring anything out or falling in love with Samir. It felt really good to have her accept that life is going to be weird for a bit

Issa my love, I have very complicated feelings about you! I think she is really trying to be a good person, but she also has a LOT of work to do (as do we all in our mid 20s!!). I know people want her to be instantly on board with Paul Baker and Anton but I want to see her navigate the feelings of watching your boyfriend fall in love with your best friend. Especially because we often see Issa feeling unappreciated in the group (when she gets passed over to be Billie’s emergency contact) and selfish (taking advantage of PB being nice and Anton being a people pleaser to foist the responsibility of a scared young girl’s abortion onto them. Like I know Annabelle was a certified nightmare but I would have been too in a lot of ways)

Ok separate bullet point for the Annabelle thing because I am kind of having a lot of feelings about it. Annabelle is a young girl who had to go out of state ALONE to get an abortion during a time when people are getting charged with murder for it. She’s told she’ll be staying with another woman, probably spoke to Issa before hand, and then she’s… left with two strange men unsupervised for several days. She’s staying with three men she doesn’t know while she’s in New York. She’s getting an abortion. No one she knows is there to support her. They give her drugs as a way to make her more palatable. Like, yes she is a nightmare to deal with and that’s a horrible way to talk to anyone but I also think she was scared out of her fucking mind. Issa was very much in the wrong for that more than anything else on the show imo

The whole Mr. Teacher thing was so interesting because it’s so clear he’s having a midlife crisis from the second he lets someone blow him in his classroom with the door (presumably) unlocked, but they frame him as a love interest well enough that you don’t see it the first time watching it. I liked it good soup 10/10

I hope this show gets renewed because I want to see the dynamic of the house get fucked up like Samir was worried about. I want Issa to be heartbroken/jealous/angry, Paul Baker to be trying to be trying to be the Nice Guy while also learning to stand up for himself in a relationship, Anton to balance being a people pleaser and a good friend with falling in love and opening his heart to someone, Samir to deal with having a Serious Girlfriend while he’s in love with Billie, and Billie to be balancing the weight of expectations with figuring out what she actually wants out of her life.

I need a house layout. My current theory is that Samir has his own room, Issa and PB share, and Billie and Anton share. I think it probably used to be Billie and Issa sharing before PB moved in, but they switched so PB and Issa could have some privacy (for Billie’s sake more than anyone)

I need to know if Samir’s parents know how many people are living in their house lmao

Ok thanks for listening to my rant pls go watch Adults so we can get a s2 and I can get more of these people being insane

#adults fx

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katsdynam1ght · 1 month ago

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…? no because the child (touya) did NOT in fact have too much love for his father. what in the victim blaming fuck are you talking about 💀😭 a child should not be able to have too much love for their dad. enji neglecting him and pushing him away when he needed his love and validation does NOT mean that touya had an excess. his strong emotions and the fact he needed help with them does NOT equal ‘an excess’ love. what an insane thing to say. endeavor fans are like the one kind of person where i can’t separate fiction from reality when it comes to how i react to your opinions. because these takes are genuinely always so incredibly concerning when it comes to touya and rei

ok right off the bat, i’m going to assume that you, anon, as an endeavor hater, are not going to put any good faith effort into understanding what i’m saying at all. i am noting now that i do not owe you any kind of explanation on my post, nor on my opinion, and i genuinely could not care less about your inability to separate fiction from reality. in fact, i could not care less about your opinion as a whole.

that said, i do love pointing out when people intentionally misconstrue what i say, so let’s dive into this anyway, shall we? (as an aside, i do think it’s amusing that you sent this on anon. if you really think you’re justified in your opinion and not intentionally misreading my post, then why not come out and say that openly? interesting)

here we go: in my post, i did not ever say touya loved his father “too much”. i think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what i meant about him having “an excess”. let me explain—

as someone with very intense emotions myself (pretty much everything i feel is either 0 or 100 with no in-between), what i mean by “an excess” is a level of obsession and fixation that yes, is harmful. no emotion is healthy when it is felt at such an extreme, ok? even the “positive” ones. an excess of love (obsession) can lead to all sorts of behaviors that do not benefit the giver or receiver.

if you want a different canonical example of this, look at seasons 1-2 izuku midoriya and how he feels about all might. he is obsessive, passionate, admiring, and yes—those feelings do benefit him in a lot of ways, but as gran torino observes during izuku’s internship, that admiration also holds him back. he’s fixated on doing things the way all might does them, on doing things to make all might proud, and as a result, he doesn’t realize his true potential. (this occurs again in s3 when he discovers he can use his legs)

this is also reflected in touya. he loves his father, yes! but there is (in his case) a level of obsession with said father (especially his hero identity) that ultimately harms touya (because it drives his need to be greater which in turn causes him to self-harm via his quirk).

nothing in my post was victim-blaming at all. it is not touya’s fault that enji responded poorly and neglected him. it’s not even his fault that he feels things with such intensity. the tragedy of it is that his intense love was not reciprocated in a way he could understand. as the tags on my original post said, “the problem has always been love mishandled, not missing love”. the love was there—it always has been, but touya did not know how to receive his father’s love, and his father in turn did not understand touya’s own.

beyond the red-flag goggles of endeavor hate, i’m really not sure how you misunderstood my post so badly, given that the central themes of it were A) touya suffered a different kind of abuse than shouto (neglect, not physical violence), and B) enji and touya have always had love for each other, but were never able to have that love expressed or felt properly (because touya’s required validation, and all enji wanted was for him to stop hurting himself).

anyway. if you’ve read this far and are interested in having an actual discussion about this, i’d be happy to talk more. goodness knows i love thinking about the todoroki family. however, if your only intention is to come at this from an anti-endeavor lens and purposefully misread everything i say for the sake of being rude, then you might as well not waste your time. you are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but i promise that there are better things you could be doing on a monday night (or whatever time it is for you) than trying to pick a fight with a stranger on the internet.

thanks for the ask! :)

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shoechoe · 5 months ago

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Diavolo: Personality, Themes, Motivations and Beliefs

(This is the first of a series of posts about Diavolo’s character, though they can be read in any order. The links to the rest are here.)

In this post, I will try to define Diavolo’s themes and character traits. This will be a mix of attempting to pinpoint authorial intent and personal interpretation.

Word Count: ~3600

Identity and Connection

Diavolo has a few major themes present in his character, but I have always believed that his most compelling one is the idea of identity and connection to other people.

How characters relate to each other is a major theme in Jojo as a whole. Vento Aureo in particular explores the concept of trust and connection being risky, but a worthy gamble; there's always a risk in putting your trust into someone, but as much as it can be someone's downfall, it's a fundamental part of life and can be your greatest strength. This is expressed in all of the cast, but especially in Giorno, the protagonist, whose ability to make friends and inspire others is constantly noted as his main strength.

Diavolo is arguably the series' most ideological "opposite" to this theme that it has ever written. Going beyond other villain characters who simply don't form desire for socialization like Tooru or hide their true selves from others like Kira, Diavolo sees any connection to others at all as a danger. As a result, he scrubs his identity and presence from the world completely and never lets a single person see his face or interact with him in any way.

Theoretically, I could criticize Diavolo's writing right here. Having nobody in his mafia know anything about his identity despite him being their Boss, a highly communication-necessary position, is absurd and realistically impossible. But for all my complaints of how shakily written Passione is, it's such a Jojo-level impossibility that I can suspend my disbelief. Instead, I find Diavolo’s self-erasure a fascinating character trait.

It’s important to note that we have no evidence Diavolo sought to erase himself because it was his only option. Bruno once insists that he did this because there are specific enemies he knows are already after him or something else specific to hide, but they find no evidence that this is the case. As of what we know, Diavolo is simply incapable of trust; even the slightest connection to anybody at all is a perceived threat to him, including any knowledge about him being in the open.

While there are also your regular themes of good vs. evil, this is what I'd argue is the boldest contrast Diavolo has to almost everyone else in the cast. While the others choose to trust, build connections, and find strength in allies, risking betrayal, Diavolo chooses to cut off anyone from reaching him before they have any potential to harm him.

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Compassion

At first glance, Diavolo’s lack of sympathy towards others isn’t unique among Jojo villains. However, there are some differences between Diavolo’s value of people and, for example, DIO’s. While DIO is similarly self-centered, he understands other people very well, which he uses to charm and manipulate. In contrast, Diavolo also attempts to manipulate and convince his enemies into submission at several points, but they always fall flat.

Take, for example, when he attempts to demotivate Bruno during his reveal arc by convincing him that he’s too injured to continue fighting- to no avail.

Or at the end of the Risotto fight, where he asks Risotto to return his iron to him with promises of "dignity", which also doesn’t work.

Or the moment from the very final fight where he begs Bruno to let him have the Stand arrow, seemingly confused that he doesn’t see how he’s the only one “worthy” to be ruler.

I like to envision these moments as tied to his isolation and rejection of friendship. Diavolo, someone who has likely not communicated with others beyond threats and orders for years, both sees himself as an intrinsic ruler chosen by fate yet is utterly unable to understand other people.

In Diavolo’s first scene, he does not understand why Bruno cares about Trish enough to betray him after protecting her. Instead, his first assumption is that Bruno betrayed him simply due to craving power, a motivation more similar to his own.

Here, he displays an inability to sympathize with other people and their motives, particularly when they involve acting out of caring for other people. When he does attempt to understand the motives of others, he seems to draw on his own traits and beliefs. This can explain his bafflement as to how Bruno doesn’t see him as a worthy owner of the arrow; to him, he’s so obviously fit to rule that he can’t understand how other people don’t see the same way.

Diavolo also only expresses a semblance of “respect” for people who have power. He commends his enemies when they have impressive abilities and pose a challenge to him.

It is questionable if this trait is genuine or if it is simply an attempt at manipulation like his other attempts to convince his enemies to do what he wants, but it is a line he uses repeatedly. And fitting with his self-centered worldview, his first line of praise for others is their power because power is what he values most.

Diavolo values other people through traits he values in himself, the only point of view he understands is his own, and the selfless natures of the main cast are completely beyond his grasp. I do not think any of this is particularly a stand-out trait among Jojo villains, but in some sense, it is subtly unique.

Unlike the selfishness you see in DIO, Kira, or Kars, Diavolo’s selfishness results in scenes like the bizarre grovelling about how only he “deserves” the arrow and utter confusion that nobody else can see his deservedness. This results in the common perception of Diavolo as particularly “pathetic” compared to other villains, and it’s not hard to see why. I don’t think there are any other villains who are completely consumed by and, in some way, hindered by their own selfishness as much as Diavolo is.

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Tangent About Dio and Diavolo

As a side note, beyond the obvious parallel drawn between their “God” and “Devil” naming schemes, I believe that a lot about Diavolo’s character is also meant to contrast Dio:

Dio creates a cult-like following around his charm and ability, while Diavolo relies on intimidation and impersonal detachment. Dio also has a noted startling amount of charm and worshipers while Diavolo is near-universally despised and all of his attempts to convince characters with words are ineffective. Dio is extroverted and charming while Diavolo hides and threatens.

Some of Vento Aureo’s story progression can be seen as an inverse to Stardust Crusaders: The Crusaders were attempting to track down DIO’s stand from their knowledge of his identity. Meanwhile, the first thing Bucciarati’s group learns about Diavolo is his Stand, where they then attempt to track down his identity.

Dio enjoys mind games and inspecting his enemies while Diavolo is brutally fast and efficient.

Also note the (often pointed-out) stair scenes with Polnareff:

This is sort of a background detail, but it is ultimately not explored enough to be a defining feature of Diavolo’s character. (You will notice this a lot with Diavolo; details will be suggested to you, but nothing is done with them in a way that’s conclusive or even very prominent, leading you to question if it was even intentional.)

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“Results”

The most important and unique facet of Diavolo's ideology is his expressed belief that "effects" mean nothing in the face of their results. Essentially, he believes that the process of something doesn't matter as long as you get the "result" that you desire.

Beyond his monologues directly stating it, this is most obviously reflected in his Stand, King Crimson (literally having the ability to erase “effects” and leave only “results”) but it's also seen in other aspects of how he thinks and behaves.

He is brutally quick and efficient, wasting no time to cut straight to what he wants, like his murders being swift and sudden. As a result, despite having some of the lowest screentime, he has the highest major character kill count out of any main villain in the series.

He takes disgust in mindless hedonism with no material “result” to justify it, like when he finds Cioccolata and Secco’s simple sadistic enjoyment in torture to be incomprehensible- but he is still willing to utilize them when he needs to kill his traitors. (It is also notable that he takes such disgust in them despite doing things that are about on their level, just if they serve him a purpose- like his severe iron loss leading him to eat a live frog and drain a child of his blood while tying his mouth shut so he can’t scream.)

I also think this can be interpreted into his other behaviors. There is no point in the long-term work of gaining trust and having relationships when you can get the same “result” of raw power by cheating and intimidating your way to the top. There is no point in working to hide and keep your daughter safe when a more self-beneficial “result” is to simply kill her quickly and quietly.

This belief is directly challenged by the story, with his final punishment being related to it. When Abbacchio has his conversation with his murdered comrade, he’s told by him that when you only search for “results”, you will lose sight of the “truth”.

Then, Gold Experience Requiem- built as a direct counter to King Crimson and the only ability that can surpass it in the part- has the ability to remove the “results” to actions, leaving only the “effect”. As a direct callback to Abbacchio’s conversation, it echoes the sentiment “You will never reach the truth”.

Out of all the themes in Diavolo’s character, “effects” vs. “results” is the one that is probably the most cohesive (and probably the most intentional). I don’t dwell on this very much because I feel like it is very obvious and the fanbase is well aware of it, but it is a major overarching theme of the story.

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False God

I think the most interesting way to view Diavolo’s character is that in his attempts to secure his power, he is fighting against the nature of being human itself.

For much of the story, Diavolo is seen by everyone as nothing but a faceless authority only known as “The Boss”, his looming presence and power being the overarching threat of his character. “The Boss” is his ideal state, and it is the one he is in at the beginning of the story; in a sense, he is the “status quo” that Giorno wants to change. This could be read as an imitation of a godlike status- impersonal and meant to be obeyed without question, his power being silent but constantly present throughout the country.

Jojo often expresses the idea that human identities are shaped by connections and relationships, most obvious in parts like Jojolion. Jojo’s other villains also commonly have themes of shedding humanity to attain a higher status, like Dio’s ascension to vampire-hood literally phrased as a “rejection of his humanity”. Though Diavolo is never shown to be literally inhuman, I like to read his goal of cutting himself off from all other humans as both a ruthless securing of his power and a similar kind of attempted humanity-severance.

Diavolo himself has very self-aggrandizing dialogue, describing in his monologues that his life will “never ebb” and that he is destined to rule. This may seem weird for a character not shown to be literally inhuman, but under the lens of Diavolo attempting to surpass humanity, this dialogue makes sense. He both sees himself and wants to be seen as godlike.

This works in tandem with the connections Diavolo has to an Antichrist-like narrative, which I’ll get into.

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Fate

This interpretation of a desire to shed humanity can also be tied over into his desire to control his own fate and belief that he was chosen to be above others.

Beyond its ability to blindside its enemies, the core reason why King Crimson is so powerful is that it grants Diavolo the ability to surpass his own fate. Naturally, this is something that Diavolo prides himself in, expressing a belief that he was “chosen” to rule.

There is some contradiction with reality here, though; he believes he was chosen by fate, but his ability is to cheat fate. He declares himself destined to rule, but he is constantly fighting to defy and alter his destiny.

Diavolo’s active disdain for the idea of being led by fate also coincides with his major desire for control. The strongest changes in Diavolo’s temperament occur when control slips from his grasp; when we first see him, expressing his dominance and power over Bruno during his very first encounter with King Crimson, he’s icily calm and composed.

Throughout the story, this is his default state- unless an enemy manages to gain some kind of upper-hand on him, where he will have a temporary burst of rage or panic.

This rage usually subsides when he regains the upper hand and becomes confident in his victory. It only becomes sustained rage at the very final fight, when he is completely cornered and defeated, where he’s yelling in a barely-masked panic.

This rage at loss of control leads to the common mischaracterization of Diavolo being a very angry character as a general rule, but this is not really true. This temperament is a branch of his larger desire for control and freedom from fate.

Considering the heavy connection between Jojo’s fatalistic and religious themes, an easy interpretation can be made with Diavolo’s goal to control his fate and a desire to surpass or attain the will of God. When he loses control, this is being taken from him.

This is also somewhat tied to his ultimate punishment at the hands of Gold Experience Requiem. Not only is his Stand destroyed, but he is unable to move or control anything in any way as he is killed over and over for eternity. (There’s also some situational irony in his previous expression of never dying- technically, he gets just that.)

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Mortality

I’ve often seen theories that Diavolo is some representation of (or literally is) the Antichrist in disguise, and on some level, I think this makes sense. Diavolo created Passione and brought the lost souls in the country together before Giorno could, much like the Antichrist is prophesied to do in common Christian belief. Bruno’s belief and faith in Diavolo’s Passione as the justice in the world can be easily connected to the Antichrist being a false savior, alongside the Jesus narrative present with Giorno.

However, while his character can definitely be read as paralleling the Antichrist, I do not think Diavolo is actually any kind of supernatural entity. Among there being no evidence for that idea beyond his odd backstory, I find it far less compelling, especially considering his failed chase for higher power in the final fight with the Requiem arrow.

In the final fight, he chases after a final securing of his power that would give him true godlike abilities, only for that power to instead go to Giorno, the true savior. In this defeat, Diavolo proves that he is not chosen by fate to rule, nor will he ever receive the power of a god. His true mortal nature is finally exposed as he is doomed to be killed in humiliating ways for eternity.

The death loop is also where his aggressive secrecy about his identity and his rejection of allyship slips. He begins to cry out for help and yells “I am Diavolo!”

But nobody knows who “Diavolo” is, and nobody hears his cries. Just like he’s always wanted to achieve, he is completely and utterly alone, without anyone who knows or can help him, forever.

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The Past

As Diavolo states himself, his biggest fear is his past. It is the major thing that he interprets his failures through and what drives his anxieties- and, in a way, it’s what causes his downfall. It is likely some intentional irony or weakness in King Crimson’s ability that it gives Diavolo the ability to escape his future pitfalls, but he is defenseless against things that have happened in his past.

Diavolo’s fear of the past is likely a big reason why “paranoia” is a trait commonly read into his character more than what was probably intended. Indeed, it is something that he is haunted by throughout the story, and you see his nervousness hiking as the protagonists uncover more and more about him. However, this still isn’t exactly depicted as unfounded or irrational- it’s what the protagonists explicitly hunt to find first to take him down, after all.

I would say that the past is a real, potent threat for Diavolo, but it is a beast he created himself. His attempts to erase it only make it come back to bite him harder. His most major attempt to overcome his past with his murder of Trish is ironically what leads to Bruno turning fully against him, leading to his defeat.

Diavolo’s past itself isn’t necessarily the inherent threat, something accentuated by how the actual events of his past are never shown; his inability to accept his past turned it into one.

The past is also an important theme with the rest of the main cast, as we are given backstories showing how they fell down into the path of being a socially outcast gangster. However, we are shown throughout how they develop past their despair and seemingly hopeless situations to end up doing a good deed and finding hope by saving Trish. They are ultimately able to make peace and move on; Diavolo cannot.

(The only exception to this is Fugo, who was initially planned to be a traitor but ended up simply leaving the group instead. I believe Fugo’s lack of a developed backstory in the manga was a part of this initial plan in that he did not “move on” from his past to do a good deed like the others did.)

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Inevitability

The major roadblock to all of Diavolo’s motivations and the story’s slope down to his defeat is started by the existence of his daughter. She shakes the entire foundation of his perceived isolation; not only does she pose immediate danger to his anonymity, but her existence means he was never truly successful in severing his ties from the world at all.

Diavolo's attempted murder of Trish is the most personal example of his evil in the story. The reveal of his true plan functions like a twist, being the moment that completely breaks the characters' trust and loyalty to him. (He’s technically not a twist villain because we know Giorno was already planning on defeating him, but this is a major change in how we see his motivations and nature.)

Trish is the major person that “grounds” him throughout the story as an unbreakable connection and relationship. She is our first piece of evidence of Diavolo’s past and personhood, and therefore, what he wants to destroy the most. She is the biggest existing representation of everything he wants to destroy, yet can’t.

Trish being such a catastrophic existence to Diavolo is also, like his past being a danger, a beast that he created himself. His attempted murder of her is what finally turns the main cast decidedly against him; arguably, if he hadn't set out to erase himself in the first place, her existence would never have been such a life-ruining event for him.

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Contradiction

One of my favorite themes to interpret into Diavolo’s character is a nature of confusion and contradiction.

His complete anonymity is very effective as intimidation for a main antagonist, but it is also fundamentally self-destructive, in a sense. He erases himself, destroying his relationships and his goodwill, to become untouchable.

Despite him having so much power, most members of Passione we see care very little about the Boss, if not actively dislike him. La Squadra betrays the Boss after years of resentment, Cioccolata and Secco plan to attempt it, and even Tiziano and Squalo, members of his elite guard, act more out of care for each other than to him.

The only kind of explicit attachment to the Boss that we see is through members viewing him as a symbol or an extension of Passione itself. The sense of betrayal Bruno feels at his discovery of the Boss selling drugs to children and the attempted murder of his daughter is not due to attachment to the Boss as an individual, but rather his false belief in the morality of Passione and his leadership.

Perhaps most importantly, as a stark contrast to the fun, personality-based characters of everyone else in part five, Diavolo is very hateable. It’s something you see all over the fanbase. He kills four widely popular characters with no remorse and his uncaring nature gives him the feeling of utter unlikability. The people who support the death loop as an appropriate end to his character largely defend it not on the proportionate severity of Diavolo’s actions, but on his personal unlikability as a character. Not only is he hated by the cast, he is hated by the audience.

This creates a contradiction. Despite thinking of himself as a king above all others, Diavolo lives life as a dangerous balancing act. What he does to prevent betrayal, being ruthless and cutting himself off from everyone, ironically sows more betrayal by causing resentment. He wants to be erased from the world, yet he wants power, something inherently attention-drawing.

Him being cold and impossible to reach does make it monumentally difficult to hunt him down, but it also means he has no true ally, only making hatred and betrayal more likely. He is both immensely powerful and threatening yet utterly pathetic. He is hated yet obeyed, and despite holding power over everyone, he also must fear everyone.

Contradiction is a theme I will progressively expand and elaborate more upon throughout this series of analysis because you can find it throughout most of his major character aspects. However, in isolation, this is where I think it is the most obvious.

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I understand why people struggle to define Diavolo’s personality and themes in a cohesive way. What you choose to prioritize in his characterization is up to personal decision and it’s easy for people to read traits that were not actually intended or forgo his actual unique traits entirely. As a result, his character creates many vastly different opportunities for interpretation.

In my next post, I’m going to talk more specifically about what I think are the major flaws in his character writing.

#shoe talks a lot #diavolo jjba #vento aureo #this one is the broadest post so it may be messier than the other ones #however it still explains a lot about how i see him

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quotes-from-oz · 3 months ago

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Ugh another little detail I love from Wicked is the line in Thank Goodness when Glinda looks at Fiyero and says "He's so thoughtful that way." It's such a small moment but I think the word choice is perfect.

There's two different ways to read it, the first being that this is an accentuated way to show how poor of a match they are for each other. If there's one thing Fiyero is not, it's thoughtful. He is consistently described by as thoughtless, brainless, and Galinda is projecting an image onto him that isn't accurate.

However I think this is a shallow reading. And instead I suggest that this is instead Glinda picking up on something real, something that frightens her ("And he's been thinking, which really worries me!"). Glinda has noticed a change in Fiyero, his being thoughtful, a fundamental change in his engagement with the world and his approach to life, something heavily inspired by Elphaba's political actions, and something Elphaba also picked up on ("You're not [genuinely shallow and self absorbed] or you wouldn't be so unhappy."). Glinda is not just upset because this threatens the life she has hoped to build with him, but because she is sensitive enough to understand a greater change is taking place within Fiyero, and that she'll lose him soon if she doesn't act. The observational and almost reproachful note in her voice on the line highlights how this is a negative change in her eyes, reflects her complicated feelings and proves that she does understand him on a deeper level. She's trying to show she has noticed, and is accepting. She accepts this part of him, but does still try to reverse the process of his becoming moodified in vain through large parties and public appreciation.

#wicked #wicked the musical #fiyero tigelaar #galinda upland #not a quote #op #thank goodness

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atamascolily · 17 days ago

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The Demon King's Plan Was Always Doomed to Fail

You can't reverse-engineer what you don't understand.

One of my theories going into Thunderbolt Fantasy Season 4 was that humans and demons would be revealed to have arisen from a common ancestor and would become one race again by the end. This didn't happen, but I wasn't wrong that "what makes humans and demons different?" would be a key theme throughout, and in fact, the demon king's plan involved making demons more like humanity in one very specific way.

Before I get to that part, however, I first have to explain what demons actually are--a parallel race that represents humanity's worst instincts and drives. They view the world entirely in terms of self-interest, and are primarily driven by their appetites, indulging in lavish banquets, contests of strength, and tormenting the weak. The demon realm is a desolate hellscape full of ravening monsters who will tear you from limb to limb while your fellow demons cheer; where the only rule is "might makes right". They are greedy, selfish, jealous, arrogant, and cruel, with few redeeming qualities, at least from humanity's perspective.

In other words, the demons live in a Hobbesian world of "all against all" straight out of Leviathan, eternal warfare in the "state of nature", which has never actually existed in human history, but has been a convenient myth for centuries. In fiction, however, the fantastical setting allows for the story to become real. The demons are exactly what a lot of people believe that humans are in real life, and contrasting humans and demons allows Urobuchi to lay out his philosophy of what it truly means to be human--and, equally important, why it matters.

Okay. So having established this as our starting point, let's look at the Demon King's epiphany at the end of the first War of Fading Dusk: humans are individually weak, but collectively strong because they can work together. The quality that allows them to do this is "benevolence" (仁, jin), which can also be translated as "compassion". Humans will always triumph in the end because they can set aside their differences for a common goal; because they can see beyond themselves and fight for their fellows, instead of pitting themselves against each other. Thus, any victory against humanity is undermined by the fundamental weakness within demonkind: their inability to experience benevolence themselves.

This is a profound insight, and an accurate one. It's what happens after that where things start to go off the rails.

Not content with retreating and remaining within his own realm, the Demon King decides that he will go to extreme lengths to conquer humanity for all eternity. The first step is splitting his soul, and excising his own sadism, tossing it aside to reincarnate at will. This is an incredible act of hubris which ultimately destroys him in the form of a certain white snow crow coming home to roost. This is the inevitable consequence of all the demonic magics (which, at their core, work on the same principles as the heretical arts): they grant tremendous power at the cost of distorting one's soul, which in turn, always backfires on a karmic level. The Demon King's fate was sealed the moment he enacted the spell.

But. In the meantime, having freed himself to be more "objective," the Demon King attempts to reform demon society to foster benevolence in the populace by forcing the commoners to work together by worshiping the demon gods, and banning the nobles from fighting. However, this can only work as long as the demon realm remains static--as soon as humans show up, the scheming and backstabbing begins using the humans as proxies, until all of the nobles but Azibelpher are dead. (He's scheming, too, he's just better at it than the rest of them.) Ba Wang Yu and Hua Wu Zong can team up to take down Fujirai, but Hyrus and Ulaina can only pretend to work together until their schemes cancel each other out.

Since the demon king's plan was a failure, his next best option is to cut a deal with Locust and use him as a proxy to control the human realm (since humans who use heretical arts are very similar to demons in certain respects). This also doesn't work out.

Ironically, Azibelpher comes pretty close with Lang Wu Yao--a hybrid, who has embraced his demonic nature in order to enact revenge--but this ultimately fails when Lang chooses humanity after Chao Feng's sacrifice (which in turn is her choosing to pursue her love for him at the cost of her life). Demonic nature is fundamentally incompatible with benevolence; as we can see when Lang's demon form drops away and he becomes human again. This is also what allows Lang to kill Azibelpher without destroying himself in the process--he's no longer thinking of it in terms of personal revenge, but in extinguishing evil.

Thus, the demon king's plan was impossible from the beginning, and could never have worked. Giving the demons benevolence makes them human. You cannot keep all of the qualities that make a demon and have benevolence at the same time.... but the demon king does not understand this because he has never truly experienced "benevolence" himself!

In other words: the demon king is so arrogant, he assumes he understands benevolence well enough to reverse-engineer it in others, even though he actually knows nothing. His contempt for humanity is such that he doesn't bother to ask them or investigate or do any research whatsoever, even though he's trying to create the very quality he finds most contemptuous in his own people! And very notably, he does not try to apply this to himself - only to others.

This is why Lin's taunting that demonic nature is incompatible with conquest hits so hard, because it's true. The demon king wants what he cannot have, and no matter how he tries, he will never be able to grasp it, and he cannot grasp it as long as he remains a demon. Excising the sadism from his soul wasn't enough; the only way to do what he wanted was to become human.... but once he became human, would he even want to conquer in the first place?

(Note: there are plenty of humans who want to conquer and take over the world, both in real life and in the Thunderbolt Fantasy universe, so it's not that the Demon King couldn't still rule the world if human... but he'd be doing it as a human, not a demon. There is a difference! And once the demons learned benevolence, what's to stop them from feeling benevolence for more than just their fellow demons... for all of humanity, for instance! Benevolence doesn't have clearly defined limits, which is yet another reason why the demon king's plan is so absurd!)

This fundamental paradox is why the demon king's plans were doomed from the beginning. Even if the demon king had used his magic to excise the sadism from the souls of his subjects as he did for himself, it still wouldn't have worked--he would have only succeeded in creating an entire shadow race of monsters who would have eventually destroyed the remaining demons and taken their place, just as Lin Xue Ya did.

Out of all the demons, I think Lin Xue Ya is the only one who understands benevolence--not in the sense that he experiences it himself (he absolutely doesn't) but he has a practical understanding of how humans work and think that the demon king lacks. Otherwise, Lin Xue Ya wouldn't be very good at fooling people! What makes Lin so dangerous is that he knows how humans think and takes advantage of this to get what he wants.

For example: he knows Shang will throw himself into the abyss to take down the demon king in order to save the world (and avenge a comrade?), so he sets up a situation to make it happen. He doesn't care how it will impact Shang's life; he wants to keep Shang around because he finds him entertaining. The original Demon King could never, partially because he thinks humans are beneath him, and partially because he doesn't understand them well enough to pull it off even if he wanted to!

But Lin... Lin finds humanity useful. He finds them amusing. And I think he respects them, to a certain extent. That alone puts him head and shoulders above all of the other demons, who despise them, and even his predecessor, who acknowledged their power and thought he could claim it for his own. That makes Lin dangerous, and the only thing saving humanity is that he doesn't give a shit about conquest, he just hates being bored. Good thing he just got a brand new realm to explore and a whole bunch of new toys!

Initially, I think the demons will be happy to have Lin as a ruler, in that he'll let them indulge their worst impulses that were previously restrained. This will inevitably change, because Lin Xue Ya is so sadistic that other demons think he's a freak, but it will be fun while it lasts, I guess. And in a fascinating twist, Lin also confesses that he wants to shape demonkind into a super-race by unleashing the demon gods and seeing who survives in a Darwinian survival of the fittest. It's an open question whether this would be Lin's downfall (probably not, lol) but at least it would be more in keeping with demonic nature than trying to make them human.

This is also why I find Shang and Lin's relationship so compelling--Shang is the embodiment of benevolence, the moral voice of the series and its ethical heart and Lin is its opposite, yet they work together so well that they can function as a unit if they choose! Of course Lin is fascinated by him, and Shang grudgingly tolerates him in turn!

Anyway, in an era where people are denouncing "the sin of empathy" and deriding it as a toxic trait that will destroy society, Gen Urobuchi stood up and said, "Actually, it's our defining characteristic and the only thing that will save us" (again). And he's right! Behaving like the demons in Thunderbolt Fantasy will only lead us to their fates and is a fundamentally flawed premise--ironic for those who pride themselves in their mastery of "objective" logic.

#thunderbolt fantasy #wuxia fantasy puppet epic #tbf meta

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