#idea > execution like always

[temilyrights]

So you know? I do.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

I want to talk a bit about Kira’s character in Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night. Before I reached that episode in my rewatch, I’d seen people characterizing it as claiming that the “Bajoran comfort women were collaborators” or otherwise as victim blaming towards Kira Meru. But upon watching it again, I really disagree, and I think it presents Meru and her situation with a lot of sympathy and nuance.

Kira herself characterizes her mother as a collaborator at the end, in her conversation with Sisko:

I’ve always hated collaborators. I mean, what could be worse than betraying your own people? During the occupation, if I ever had any doubt about what their fate should be, I would think of my mother, how she gave her life for Bajor. She was a hero, they were traitors. It was that simple. Or so I thought.

Do you know how many Bajorans died in the labor camps during that time? Died, while my mother sat sipping kanar with Dukat?

But I don’t think we’re intended to take Kira’s judgment of her mother at face value. The episode is pretty clear that Dukat is the bad guy here, and draws specific attention to how he manipulates Meru into trusting him by setting up the scene where he “rescues” her from the other Cardassian (and discloses this to her himself later in a further manipulative cycle of feigned repentance). Not to mention the abundance of food she’s given after experiencing extreme deprivation, another factor in why she’s inclined towards trauma bonding with him. The fact that she is drinking Dukat’s kool-aid a little bit does not take away from the fundamentally coercive nature of their relationship. And the degree to which she’s making excuses for him is pretty clearly a result of his manipulation. He is a manipulator! This is shown both here and in plenty of other places!

Meru even gets a moment where she stands up for herself to Kira and points out that she has very limited options and is motivated in part by wanting to protect her family. And there’s the scene right near the end where she breaks down crying while listening to the message from her husband, which really hammers home that she’s ultimately in an awful situation that she never asked for and will likely never be allowed to see her family again. Also, the episode presents us with an actual collaborator - the man who’s in charge of corralling the captured women is himself Bajoran, and a much more active and willing party to the colonial and patriarchal violence on display than the women are.

Furthermore, Kira frequently falls back onto a very black and white moral framework, and experiences a very strong sense of moral injury when people she cares about or idolizes falls on the wrong side of that. You see this with Tekeny Ghemor in Ties of Blood and Water, when Kira finds it enormously difficult to forgive his involvement in the destruction of Kiessa Monastery - and, just as she saves her mother’s life as a testament to their family connection, she ultimately goes to Ghemor at his deathbed for her own personal closure re: her failure to do the same for her father, rather than because she’s fully forgiven him. Her anger is more comprehensible there, because of course there’s no comparison between Meru’s level of complicity and being part of an occupying army (even if Ghemor’s role was negligible, as Odo speculates). But that’s exactly the thing - Kira reacts to them pretty similarly, and is not really ready or willing to acknowledge different degrees of complicity, or to put the symbolic affront of her mother living in luxury during the Occupation into perspective re: actual material harm (or the very, very limited amount of power her mother actually had within that lifestyle). How Kira reacts to Odo sentencing innocent people to their deaths in Things Past is similar - she was very invested in not categorizing him as a collaborator, even though he literally did work with the Cardassians, and was not prepared to face the possibility that that work might have made him complicit in Cardassian sham justice.

She also has that exchange with Winn in Rapture, where Winn says that people who were in the resistance discount the sacrifices made by other Bajorans, and she honestly does have a point, even if the situations are different. Kira’s answer to injustice is to fight it, at every turn, and that’s one of her biggest heroic qualities - but she also genuinely has trouble comprehending or sympathizing with the mindset of other Bajorans who don’t share that response, even when their passivity is something they’re coerced or railroaded into. She was running largely on survival mode while she was in the resistance, and it prevented her from fully comprehending the complex dynamics of the occupation - and she’s forced to do that quite a bit during the show, once she’s no longer running on autopilot.

And I genuinely think it’s interesting that she doesn’t forgive her mother, and that she’s even a bit victim blaming in how she talks to and about Meru. It’s in keeping with her character, but it’s also in character for her to have genuine blind spots. And given what we’re actually shown of the situation, I don’t think the episode is presenting Kira’s perspective as the final word on how we’re meant to evaluate the situation.

[elvyn]

I randomly saw this design, so I decided to draw it because looks cool

[amaranthdahlia]

[chapter 408] extended cut - sewer chase scene

[guiltylovestar]

I feel bad for apollo but idk why I don't care much about clay like I feel a little sad obviously but still

[robo-dino-puppy]

the sunhawk, and sunwing

↓ wider version bc i couldn't decide:

i didn't really like the composition here (unbalanced and why? is the roof not straight???) but it gives more perspective on size of sunwing vs. lodge

[akemiiya]

i think a lot of the soulless clover revival fics that make them start to kill in the very first reset does not give clover (or flowey) nearly enough credit

[last-braincell-standing]

god amorpheus is such a breath of fresh air after natlan. the biggest difference is that the devs seem to actually have a solid foundation for the creative direction planned out for the lore and characters and its already so much more interesting

[sirtadcooper]

Her feet on the ground and her heart in the stars.

[aromanticasterisms]

the epic highs and lows of rereading your own writing to seek out parts you disliked and analyze Why you disliked them to do better in the future

[ranticore]

hi hello i'm early into TVM and i gotta say i'm fascinated with the concept of moral execution. it's such an interesting sort of loophole and it has a really strong Narrative Flavor about it... i was wondering if this is based on/influenced by any particular real life practices or if it's wholly original, i'd love to know more abt that thought process. i like your guys

hiiii thank you so much for asking! for everyone else's context, 'moral execution' in inver (well, suzette really, but it has spread north) is a rare religious practice whereby a member of the clergy is symbolically executed, an effigy is burnt at the stake, and the person is given funeral rites per tradition. they are then free to break church law - particularly church moral laws - in the SOLE pursuit of the church's goals, because those laws apply to the living only. typically, after the individual has completed whatever duties assigned to them, they are killed for realsies, with the gap between their symbolic execution and their real execution simply being an extension of the time it takes for the soul to leave a dead body. so the soul is considered to have left the body before those illegal duties.

the church of suzette considers experimentation with magic (particularly faery magic) to be immoral and an executable offence, so in the context of the story. this is the reason for this particular practice to take place (so the church can experiment without being accused of hypocrisy or appearing to endorse magic)

i don't want to explain TOO much about the origins but it comes from two different 'sources'. number one is all wrapped up in the dead/undead theming in the story. each of the main characters is in some way already dead to their own society, this was just islin catching up (he is, metaphorically, undead). the rangers for example are only allowed to operate because they are also in some ways legally dead. and so on. narratively, all of the main characters in the story (except jean because he's built different) are 'undead' people all trying to come to terms with their death in some way shape or form (that sounds crazy but it WILL make sense i promise)

for the practice itself i wanted something that felt believably catholic lol. the church irl is very arcane and a lot of its rituals seem extremely esoteric, and it's also a deeply hypocritical institution that breaks its own laws all the time (but what's new). i wanted to create something that sort of enshrined that core of "we condemn this, but we're also going to secretly try it out". it is an excuse for them and a handy one too but also it's rooted in genuine belief about funerary rites and practices that the suzettes hold.

it's not based directly on any real religious or cultural traditions and if it resembles any, it's unintentional

[trappedinafantasy37]

The evil murder wives getting ready to enact their evil murder plans.

[seaofreverie]

Sparks will be real in 50 days.

[mari-art-archieve]

“Eat out to my heart’s content”

[longagoitwastuesday]

Every day I am haunted by the fact JJK could be amazing but it will be just idk Bleach or something

[fionnaskyborn]

People like this have made me terrified that I am mischaracterizing my favorite character by playing into his strengths and emphasizing them so much... That I'm making things "too anime", "too over-the-top", and by doing that straying away from the groundedness that made the character compelling in the first place... But I think it's better to be a fan who loves someone so much they're willing to step into goofy over-the-top showcases of strength and morals out of love than being a fake fan who only ever rags on what they proclaim is so dear to them. I dunno. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that. I'm hella insecure when it comes to my own writing, especially with this guy because I want to do him as much justice as I possibly can as a writer. But I have to convince myself that it's not too much.