#;; does get 'redeemed'

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 317

IMAGINE THIS: Lil baby Damian, bored and being not quite old enough to start learning how to use proper weapons (curse these wooden ones, he wants true steel!) is wandering the base. This is not out of the ordinary, he’s the prince after all. What is out of the ordinary is that his shadow, his Akhi, is not here. 

Technically, he should be napping, but he woke up and neither his mother or his brother- who is quiet but gentle and isn’t a good speaker (mother said it was from a head injury)- is there. Which is how he finds his way to the Pit, which he’s not supposed to be at. Or at least not alone. 

But! His mother and Akhi are there! And- and Akhi is screaming and he’s never heard him scream like that, like he’s in agony- His eyes are green- they were blue, had, had Mother placed him in the Waters- 

And then the pool is bubbling- he should be running away, get assistance or something, he’s five, he shouldn’t be running towards it when everything is screaming to flee. But one moment he’s at the doorway, the next he’s clinging to his akhi as something writhes in the Pit, a mighty bellow echoing even as the Shadows take defensive positions. 

The water cascades, laps at their feet, splashes everywhere as a scaled form rises from the depths, wings like a bloodied sunset spreading as fur bursts into flames. Crimson eyes glare down at them all, pupils slits as they bare down at his Akhi. 

The creature- the dragon- dips its head down, its breath warm as it chuffs at his akhi, wings folding as though it is bowing. His akhi is clinging to Mother, shivering, several scars glowing as they fade and a burst of hair burned white. 

Oh. 

Oh.

@fairy-lights-and-blobs @f4nd0m-fun @hdgnj @radiance1 pspspspsps

[vaggieslefteye]

ᴍᴀᴋᴇ ᴍᴇ ᴄʜᴏᴏꜱᴇ ↳ anonymous asked: HUSK and ALASTOR or angel and valentino?

[mabbbish]

red son rising

[hbpseverus]

okay, one thing about james. he is the only marauder (casting peter aside) who i just can't forgive. i like remus, and while i dislike sirius i can at least appreciate his strenghts and his good sides. but i can't forgive james for the swm incident and many people seem to have trouble understanding why this isolated event ruins his entire character. because i am willing to believe that he worked on himself and became a better person after hogwarts (mainly because i don't think lily would have ever married him otherwise). i completely believe that even at hogwarts, he was considered a likable person by many. that he was fun to be around and friendly to most. that he wasn't all bad or only a bully.

but here's the thing. there are things you only have to do once to be irredeemable, and what happened in snapes worst memory, to me, is one of those things. i do not care if james was an amazing person outside of this one incident. and i understand that everyone has different morals and that other people can forgive james - or not forgive severus. unlike james, severus got a chance to redeem himself and he took it. he was still a bully, but here's where my personal perception comes into play again. i had many awful teachers who were bullies and i know how much it sucks (in my country, teachers are insanely hard to get fired, meaning they truly can get away with almost anything including obvious discrimination). i can't justify his mistreatment of students, but to me his good sides outweigh it, so i can forgive and like him despite this flaw while others can not which is valid too. but sexual harassment is not something i can forgive no matter the circumstances or the person who did it. i would feel the same way if the roles had been reversed and james had been the victim - i wouldn't be a snape stan. ultimately we all have our own individual morals that play into how we perceive these complex characters.

tldr: it doesn't matter to me if james was a balanced character and a good person outside of swm because committing sexual harassment 'just once' is still one time too many and makes anyone permanently irredeemable in my eyes

[the-badger-mole]

On the Unredeemed

Unredeemed villains are important in fiction. I feel like that needs to be said. There is a trend in recent years (probably since Wicked became a hit) of people wanting to see monsters redeemed. I'm not against that (per-se... glowers in Maleficent), but also, I feel like we do lose something when we lean into the idea that the monster gets to make good.

Fiction can be really useful for teaching us about life. I remember seeing a quote some time ago on Pinterest or something that said something along the lines of "fairytales are important not because they tell us dragons are real, but because they tell us that dragons can be slayed". That has been on my mind a lot recently when I see discussions about characters like Azula and (more recently) Ozai. They are fictional characters with super magic fire powers, but they represent something real- they represent the cycle of abuse in families, and while I understand the impulse to absolve someone as young as Azula, I think it's also important to tell the story where she isn't redeemed.

One reason that most Azula redemption stories bother me is because of the responsibility they tend to place on Zuko as her older brother, despite the fact that she victimized him probably more than anyone in her life (that we get to see. I don't think her soldiers believed her death threat for no reason). There are plenty of stories about the victims of abuse needing to be the bigger person to keep their families together and being villainized when they don't (I think by now we all understand that Terri was not the villain of Soul Food). We need stories about knowing when it's okay to walk away, and that illustrate the idea that "the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb".

In a time when more people are talking openly about going low contact or completely cutting off family members- close family members- I personally think that seeing stories about coming out of the other side of it, of building a new family, healing from the past, and dealing with the residual guilt that comes with "turning your back on family" even when it's the right call, is helpful in the same way that those fairytales about slayable dragons are.

I'm not saying any of this to discourage Azula redemption stories. In fact I would love to see more. Stories that have Azula confronting what she did to the people she should have loved most, and have her considering what to do with the knowledge going forward, instead of just using her past abuse and mental health to gloss over the real harm she did. I want to see her grappling to accept the fact that no one- not her brother, not Iroh, not her friends- owes her forgiveness, and then dealing with all the complex emotions that come with just one of them actually forgiving her. But also, I want to see stories where Zuko gets to let go of his father and sister and go on to be supported in that decision. Because to him, they were dragons, and they were slain.

[raccoonnutella13]

its so weird to me personally that some people think that it doesnt make sense for craig to be nice to wildernessa but still hate jason (up until scout guest), but to me the worst thing wildernessa has done is say that craig doesnt know shit about nature vs jason whos basically like "ok tony now hit the second tower" for the majority of his screentime, and people wonder why craig doesnt trust him most of the time huh

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

The compelling thing about Jason as a character is that I never doubted that he cared about the world just because there weren’t panels of him being overly zealous about “restorative community care”

I’m not coming after anyone who wants to see that kind of stuff, but I do think seeking | that | as confirmation that Jason cares about the world is pretty narrow

[amazingdeadfish]

DOES ANYONE UNDERSTAND MY VISION

I am calling for a Mr and Ms LMK au please I am begging/j

Mr Miserable and Mr Cheeky:

[incarnation-of-rasputin]

Essek’s warming orb (plus some wizard angst. We love wizard angst...) for @artists-guild-of-exandria‘s SpellsnStuff project! :D

[puppetmaster13u]

Mini Prompt

You know what i love

Villian not-redemption. Where they go to another world, or the timeline shifts, or whatever, and find the person or people they lost And instead of getting better

They get Worse Like they continue to be nihilistic assholes to everyone But said person/people (bonus if it's a younger sibling or something similar) And they are still an irredeemable evil person They are not redeemed, in fact they've gotten MORE unhinged because they Can't Lose this Person Again

[rotisseries]

my favorite thing about mha has got to be how you can't tell if the writers are aware or not that the setting is in fact a corrupt police state

[janadoesstuffwrong]

Sokka: This is getting out of hand, now there are two of them

Kiyi is the only addition from the comics that I'm willing to acknowledge, however, I will happily ignore everything else abt her story. Instead she is Ozai's daughter and protecting her was what kept Ursa in hiding, at least until a year after the war when Zuko and Katara show up for The Southern Raiders pt 2: Electric Boogaloo.

[calamitaswrath]

Every artist who (after the release of Future Redeemed) draws Alvis or A in a way that makes it ambigious which one of the two it actually is, or draws them in way that somehow blends together aspects of both their facial features with each other adds to my lifespan

[oflights]

my whole thing with the snape redemption arc (beyond it just being poorly written) and harry's reaction to it is just like. when you're a kid and an adult treats you poorly, that's a really hard grudge to shake. especially later when you're an adult and you look back and you're like "that grown ass man hated me, a kid...he should've known better...i'm an adult now and i know better, i would never treat a kid that way"

there just doesn't exist a calculus in my mind that goes "snape was in unrequited love with my mother - low key caused her death - took his guilt and anger out on children + vaguely protected me and contributed to the war effort = he's a hero and i respect him" for harry. it makes no sense!

snape never actually redeemed himself for the harm he caused harry and other kids. the narrative never even attempts to hold him accountable for that and harry is just like "meh he helped when it counted for these loser ass friendzone reasons" and is fine with it.

[dullahanblorboposting]

Anyway so like we can agree that to at least some extent Gortash probably had such a liking for Durge because Durge is among the most capable and dangerous people to exist, and they admired him, presumably liked him even. Which, for someone who craves power likely as a form of self protection due to childhood trauma, is probably a VERY good feeling. The assurance and comfort that would provide. Right.

Anyway anyway, imagine a post-canon Durge raising hell and waging war with Bane himself to get Gortash's soul back and save him from an eternity of torture for failing as his God's chosen. Imagine if they won. Imaging how Gortash would feel about that.

[ominous-horse-noises]

“if the IHs were ideologically consistent ab redemption then they should have let Ankarna kill their parents/middle school class/themselves(?) after killing the rat grinders!!” do you guys hear yourselves