#Porter Cliffbreaker

[orionis13]

This moment brought to you by ice feast

[beegs-of-the-baronies]

[let-me-sleep-or-die]

There is something so poetic about the moment in this fight where Porter is hovering above Fabian ready to just end it and then Gorgug uses his last attack to grapple him, and then beats him on what like 3 opposed checks to keep him grappled.

Gorgug has always had his rage be something he uses to protect his loved ones, Porter has always insisted that that was a mistake, a misuse of rage, that Gorgug was a defective inefficient barbarian because of it.

And in that moment Gorgug uses his rage to protect a friend and Porter just can’t shake him off.

[foggysirens]

adaine calling porter a freak after he threatens to bite off gorgugs head and then immediately following that up with “you don’t even know me???” and “what’s my name???” is my absolute new favourite thing like idk about porter but if a teen girl did that to me id never mentally recover

[islandoforder]

gorgug oinking at the fbi, gorgug getting a teacher to fall for “loser says what”, and you’re telling me that fabian is the coolest kid in school? bffr

[sea-buns]

gonna need some ICE FEAST for that burn

[eaglerayys]

It's honestly so funny that we haven't been given an inkling of a motivation for Jace's role in all of this. Like we got so much lore about the Rat Grinders and Porter and then Jace is just there.

[bloodyshadow1]

it's funny how Adaine might have been the perfect Bad Kid for Porter to corrupt yet he didn't even know her name. She was the younger unfavorite daughter in her family, prone to panic attacks and lashing out. She wanted to punch people in the face the first day of school, she's the first one of the Bad Kids who killed a person instead of a monster and she did it with a melee weapon.

Even after she is in a healthier environment she is actually more vicious than fearful like she was in freshman year. She lashes out against authority figures and injustice, she is proud of killing her father by punching off his head. everytime someone wrongs her she response twice as hard in a fury that even the rest of the party doesn't match.

And to make things worse, the Wizard teacher is a condescending bitch who talks down to her students. It would have been so easy for him to take Adaine under his wing. She's literally everything he pretended Fig was and now she's turning her anger on him. The guy is not only a bad teacher, an all around dick, but he's also as bad at proselytizing as Kristen is.

Frankly all of the bad kids were kind of perfect for him and his plans, if a bit too headstrong and willful, but he was never clever enough as he thinks. That's why he's being mocked by a bunch of teenagers when he tries to get them to debate him/ engage with his philosophy

[alexalessandro]

"PORTER! THE VOTES" In that voice? oh they ARE fucking tumblr was right

[audible301]

There’s a world where Zelda and Mary Ann became friends freshman year.

Theres a world where these two quiet, awkward, nerdy teenage girls with RAGE found each other in a class for traditional barbarians and bonded over their not fitting in.

There’s a world where Mary Ann becomes an ally to the bad kids after Zelda gets kidnapped.

There’s a world where even after Zelda joins the seven she and Mary Ann train together because they just get each other.

There’s a world where they help each other with that instead of both being mentored by Porter.

You cannot look at me for a second and tell me Porter is able to pretend to know how to connect with either of them but goddamn do their strengths and weaknesses compliment each other.

[logansgaar]

the difference in the way Porter treated Fig vs Gorgug is fascinating and disturbing in hindsight. Fig always impressed him and it's clear that while he was manipulating her and using her, his end goal was that she'd be an accomplice. He encouraged her and steered her direction how he wanted it to go, but he clearly did want her to be a paladin to him once he became a god. He wanted her to choose him, in a twisted fed lies, honey pot kind of way as he encouraged the fun side of things to Fig (which is just so creepy still)

Gorgug on the otherhand, he was constantly placing Gorgug under intense stress and suffering in the guise of it being a concerned teacher, even in previous years he's always had contempt for Gorgug. Knowing he has an ability to control students with a particular Rage Token, whatever that is in their out-of-meta terminology, it's disturbing how hard he tried to make Gorgug reach his limits and lose his free will completely over years, not just junior year though it certainly picked up but since the start. He openly hated Gorgug and he clearly does not want Gorgug as an accomplice the way he wants Fig to be...

He wants Gorgug as a pet

[77brainrots]

you know, while it still would be extremely satisfying for Gorgug to land the killing blow on Porter, I think it might be even more so if he's not the one to do it. Like, yeah, showing Porter that Gorgug's way of Raging isn't wrong would be cool, but one of the gripes Porter had with it was that it was protective; he said protective Rage would not be as effective as an aggressive one. The other Bad Kids don't have the (capital r) Rage - but they sure as hell are protective of each other, and would rather go down themselves than let the others (examples: Kristen going up to the ship despite her shit Dex to make sure Gorgug stays up, Fabian constantly baiting enemies to attack him, Riz compelling Kalina to duel etc.); and try to tell me that seeing Gorgug, who's been regularly taking so much damage to for them, whose Rage has been nothing but protective, who's been fucking manipulated by Porter, his fucking teacher, to stray away from that, held unconscious (and on the verge of death, let's be fucking honest) in said teachers fist would not send that protectiveness into overdrive. And then the battle isn't just Protective Rage vs Aggressive Rage; no, it's now also Rage without Protectiveness vs Protectiveness without Rage. And in the end, Protectiveness will win, if only for the fact that it makes determination that much stronger; to quote a fanfic "Love can be even more terrifying than fear itself" because yeah, some of them are under the frightened condition from Porter; but they all love each other more than they are afraid of him. And I think that would be beautiful (and also still squash Porters theory that protectiveness isn't powerful)

[pawthorn]

“What do you want me to do with your friend?”

[copper-ice-cube]

as far as we know, the rat grinders are not being possessed

the people who are possessed are still alive and are taken over by shatter stars. this is what happened in the synod fight at the mall—they were still alive and were taken over. everyone who was shatter starred also DIED permanently very quickly, such as the loams, because their blood crystalised.

none of TRGs or Jace have been shatter starred while alive. they all died and made a deal with ankarna/porter to come back to life as followers of rage. their scars are from dying, presumably killing each other with weapons (per lucy's wounds). they then chose to be reincarnated as a follower of ankarna/porter. they also still have their sanity, just more rage, which would make sense if your abilities or magic is now powered by rage.

tldr: yes, TRGs were manipulated by adults, but they MADE CHOICES to follow evil and do evil things, they are not possessed. They MADE CHOICES, brennan and ally EXPLICITLY state that.

[islandoforder]

everyone but fig and gorgug being like “dude i don’t even know you shut the fuck up” to porter is soooo good

[tandoorinightsmare]

Something about how the bad kids and the rat Grinders were both looking for scapegoats.

How the rat grinders felt insecure in their abilities and blamed the popular successful kids in school instead of analysing their own party dynamics.

How the Bad Kids spent an entire year stressing about school work and the presidential campaign and blew that off by killing the rat Grinders and not the teacher who had manipulated them all.

Something about how both parties wanted someone to blame and picked the easiest target.