#Topic Exploration

[recsspecs]

A good structure is something you can trust.

It relieves you from the burden of remembering and keeping track of everything. If you can trust the system, you can let go of the attempt to hold everything together in your head and you can start focusing on what is important: The content, the argument and the ideas. By breaking down the amorphous task of “writing a paper” into small and clearly separated tasks, you can focus on one thing at a time, complete each in one go and move on to the next one . A good structure enables flow, the state in which you get so completely immersed in your work that you lose track of time and can just keep on going as the work becomes effortless (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975). Something like that does not happen by chance.

- How to Take Smart Notes (Sönke Ahrens)

[im-a-meme-or-so-i-hope]

Cosmic horror, to me

It is late, it is time for me to ramble in the incoherent words of the maddening sleep deprivation that I find myself in. What should the topic be tonight? Monsters? Ghouls? The horrors of the unknown? What if instead the horror of the too well known. Horror itself is a nice topic, for it is so diverse and could be built with such depth that once you sink in you could as well never find your way out of it. Even if you did, it may stick with you like a cancer in your flesh, unseen by most but the moment you know of it, it fills you with dread. Horror comes in many categories, but I have begun to learn of a new kind of horror. That of which is Cosmic horror, not horror of something indescribable. If anything, it could be perfectly described, filling you with enough detail to phsyically feel and see it in your mind. But that is not the true horror of what cosmic horror brings. Cosmic horror is beautiful as it does not rely on terror, hell, it doesnt even need to be horrifying itself. Cosmic horror is a cognito hazard. It is the feeling of putting yourself in the place of an ant before a human, but to a scale one can barely imagine. Cosmic horror could be caused by anything greater than one's self. From seeing the cosmos and being entrapped in the sense that you will cease to exist one day while it remains untouched and unimpeded. The sense of being so small in the scheme of another entity brings us such dread. For all we want is to make an impact. We are all bred with a NEED for purpose. But cosmic horror takes that from us. Gods bring me a sense of cosmic horror, being a pawn in another's plan doesn not scare me, what scares me is that I will never know what that plan is, or how much I may impact it. How little I mean to an all known, all seeing, all being godly entity fills me with a consuming dread that I can not shake off, no matter how much I try to. It is truly horrifying, yet beautiful at the same time. I wish I know the exact reason why it is so…

[ravensgone27]

Red and black mall goth 90s mood board edit

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

I can’t quite remember if I’ve ever made a post about this before, but I honestly have a lot of complicated feelings about Jonathan Sims being asexual, and how that’s treated by the fandom on a wider scale, as an asexual person.

With Jon’s asexuality, is it’s only ever actually mentioned once, and from an outside perspective at that, and so, while Georgie says he isn’t into that sort of thing, Jon’s personal feelings on the matter are left fairly vague and up to interpretation. You could argue the author’s intent was that Jon is entirely uninterested in sex, but then comes in the counter argument of Death of the Author, and that the reader’s interpretation is more important and holds more value, especially when something is left this vague.

And this vagueness leaves a lot of room for various asexuals to explore their own and other identities through Jon, whether that be a Jon who is sex-repulsed, sex-neutral, sex-favourable, or somewhere else in that grey area, maybe he’s demisexual, maybe he’s graysexual, maybe he’s aegosexual, maybe he’s unlabelled! The truth is, we have no real concrete canon, beyond the fact he falls under the asexual label.

Naturally, I’m often wary of allosexual people using the argument ‘asexuals can have sex too’, as it tends to stem from a place of ignorance and erasure, rather than a place of care and a desire to learn and understand. That isn’t to say allosexuals can’t engage with Jon’s asexuality, in fact, I’m overjoyed when they do so in good faith, it’s just a little more complicated due to the nature of asexual erasure within fandom spaces.

Speaking of fandom spaces, I disagree entirely with the idea that all NSFW content of Jon is inherently bad, because a lot of people creating that content are asexual! You are allowed to be uncomfortable with an interpretation, and you are allowed to disagree with it, but that is when you cater your own internet experience and block tags or creators, rather than attack them.

Again, I understand why this is such a common response, because as asexuals, we constantly have to deal with blatant erasure and acephobia. But isolating other asexuals from the fandom is doing more harm for us than it is good.

[centaurianthropology]

What LeeBeeBee does for the Story of ‘Murderbot’

So we’ve finally met Blonde Lady in the series (her name is LeeBeeBee), and I think she’s filling a really interesting and important role plot-wise and worldbuilding-wise, and doing so in unexpected ways that are surprising even book-readers.  She’s wholly original to the show, so no one knows what precisely the writers have planned for her.

But I certainly have thoughts and predictions. 

I figured I’d break my thoughts on her up into two sections.  The first section is for all the folks who are show-only, and I’ll only be examining her role in S1E5, without any additional speculation pulling from book knowledge and what I think the writers are doing with her in the longer term.  The second part will speculate on the upcoming episode, and how I think it could play out.  No idea if I’m right about everything (or anything!), but it’s always fun to speculate!

FUNCTION IN S1E5 (SPOILERS FOR E1-5)

Let’s kick it off by talking about LeeBeeBee in isolation in this episode, what her function in this particular episode was, what she does for the plot, the larger world, and what she does for the storytelling format. 

Let’s start with her plot function, the most obvious part of her role in this episode.  She appears at the beginning as the sole survivor of DeltFall, makeup smeared and uniform dirty.  This immediately sets her apart from the PresAux gang.  She’s apparently the indentured cleaner that DeltFall rented for the hab along with the SecUnits, and this cleaner is wearing makeup despite having a physically laborious job in a field unit on a mostly-uninhabited planet. 

This small bit of visual storytelling sets DeltFall up as a very different society to PresAux.�� PresAux deliberately only took one (cheap) SecUnit, which is understandable given their objections to using constructs as slave labor.  None of them wear makeup in the field, and they certainly don’t have a cleaner.

But DeltFall not only had multiple constructs, but also an indentured servant to do housekeeping, and there is either an expectation or a cultural norm that she be made up while she do her indentured job.  They feel, from this introduction, very Corporation Rim. 

LeeBeeBee herself acts as a personification of the Corporation Rim on a level we haven’t been able to dig into with the limited screentime of the Company Tech Bro sales reps.  From her first scene on the hopper, she feels like she’s from a completely different world to the empathetic and sweet Preservationers.  She almost immediately objectifies SecUnit in a way that is openly offputting to both the audience and clearly to the Preservation crew, who likely don’t say anything both out of shock and out of some belief that this woman has to have some sort of brain damage to say something like that.

But this level of objectification, I think, lies at the heart of the Corporation Rim.  It’s not that constructs are objects, but their workers are valued.  LeeBeeBee is an indentured servant.  She has no more free will than SecUnit.  She objectifies it because she sees herself as a step above a construct, and in the CR hierarchy, you’re likely encouraged to objectify anyone beneath you.  And that comes around to something equally uncomfortable when she finds out it’s got a hacked governor module and is a rogue.  She views it as a person now, but what does that mean? 

She objectifies herself for it. 

And doesn’t that make the worst sort of sense on a survival level for a person in her position?  She’s fully adapted to doing what she has to do to survive.  She views sex in an incredibly transactional and exploitative way.  When she thinks SecUnit is an object, she has the power and she immediately speculates about using it as a sex toy.  When she shifts into thinking of it as a person, she also knows how dangerous it is, and reverses their power dynamic, offering sex as a transactional way to protect herself. 

It’s awful, deliberately so.  But I think it’s a great and visceral way to get into the Corporation Rim mindset: constructs aren’t special; everyone who isn’t wealthy or powerful is an object.  You don’t get to be a person with fully autonomous choices until you’re one of the elite.  Until then, sex is just another way of trying to get a slight advantage in an endless rat race.

Having LeeBeeBee represent this deeply uncomfortable aspect of an end-stage capitalist hellscape like the CR also does something on a storytelling level.  This addition of an outsider character fully shifts the POV in the show.  Up until her introduction, the PresAux crew felt like the strange outsiders that MB was judging, but by introducing the worst possible representation of the CR, our alignment completely shifts.  We are not only on Preservation’s side, but we are insiders with them.  They now feel normal and lived in, and she feels like the outsider.  And this reflects the shift going on in Murderbot.  Even before it’s willing to acknowledge it, through the framing of LeeBeeBee we subconsciously know it has realigned itself with the PresAux crew. 

So that’s why I think she was an effective addition in this episode.  If you’re interested in some book spoilers and speculation for the next episode, jump below the cut.

FUNCTION IN S1E6 AND BEYOND (SPECULATION, SPOILERS FOR ‘ALL SYSTEMS RED’)

Are they gone?

Groovy.  Let’s get under the hood and talk about all the ways she’s working on multiple levels, not just embodying all the worst parts of the CR as I previously mentioned, but playing it up as a means of camoflage.  Because LeeBeeBee is almost certainly a GrayCris plant, precisely what SecUnit and Mensah were worried about, and the crew absolutely did take her in despite the danger because they are good people.  And they would do the right thing, even if Murderbot objected.

It’s so nice to get to see exactly how DeltFall might have been infiltrated, which we didn’t get to see in the book.  And so many of her lines read differently when you think of her as a plant.  Did DeltFall call PresAux ‘the Amateurs,’ or was that GrayCris?  Did DeltFall actually have an indentured servant, or is that GrayCris?

I think that a lot of what she’s saying is truthful, or is just a slight twist on the truth.  I do think she’s likely indentured.  I do think she views others and herself as objects to be used and exploited and discarded.  She’s suffering under one of the cruelest practices in the Corporation Rim, but she’s still fully bought into the CR propaganda and mindset.  Rather than defecting and embracing freedom the way Gurathin likely did, she’s almost certainly looking at getting years shaved off her indenture by acting as an infiltrator and assassin

That’s so perfectly horrid.  She would rather still be indentured but get in better with her bosses than accept real freedom.  It’s a cowardice I think we can all see in our world, that she would take the safe misery and be willing to hurt others to do it, rather than take a major risk and step outside the system.

She’s also dialing up her inherent objectification of others to a level that makes her deliberately off-putting, so the PresAux crew want to look away from her rather than examining her too closely.  If they just want to sort of ignore her, then they’re not going to dig too far into her actions.  If she runs off to communicate back to GrayCris regarding a rogue SecUnit they’re not going to follow her, and are going to be glad to get a break from her.

Her distraction tactics work particularly well against Murderbot, who she makes wildly uncomfortable to the point it’s very glad to get away from her, and is likely deliberately trying not to think of her.  If you watch who she’s targeting with this barrage of unpleasantness, she does it first as a blanket with the crew to gauge reaction, then targets it at SecUnit once she realizes that it’s not being controlled by the combat override, and that it’s fully rogue.  There’s no easy way for her to control it (as I suspect she was controlling the DeltFall SecUnits), so she had to improvise, because as far as she’s concerned, this independent SecUnit is the #1 threat to her plan to kill the PresAux crew.  She must have been so relieved when it went with Mensah to trigger the beacon, because she knew the beacon was rigged to explode, and she had a good chance of getting rid of both the biggest threat and the team leader, and she didn’t even have to do anything!

Which, to her mind, only leaves the rest of the PresAux team to deal with.  After SecUnit, she almost certainly considers Gurathin the next biggest threat, because she would certainly underestimate the Preservationers, but he’s ex-corporate, so she would respect the threat he posed.  So after Mensah and SecUnit are gone, she zeroes in on Gurathin.

I think she almost certainly has a dossier or some other large amount of personal and professional information about him from his days in the CR.  What did she do when she first talked to him after Mensah and Murderbot were gone?  She offered him a stimulant.  I’m now convinced that his therapy modules were—in addition to being for generalized trauma (why did you learn to be quiet, Gurathin??)—meant to treat a stimulant addiction he struggled with after using them to work whatever insane hours he was required to work when he was in the CR. 

I think this next episode is going to be Gurathin-heavy.  The writers are setting up deliberate contrasts between the die-hard-to-a-horrific-level Corpo LeeBeeBee and Defector-with-Trauma ex-Corpo Gurathin.  I wonder if he won’t try to sort of reach out to her in the next episode (was he indentured too?), convince her to defect too, only to have her turn it all around on him and use his backstory against him.  If he was indentured, did he break contract to run to Preservation?  Is there a bounty on him?  Is there a bounty on his AUGMENTS, body not needed in return?

I sort of have an image of the next episode playing out like a horror film, where we realize that LeeBeeBee is the exact infiltrator that took out DeltFall, that GrayCris SecUnits are incoming, MB and Mensah may already be dead, and the person who was responsible for the DeltFall massacre is inside the hab right now.

Especially if we don’t know what happened to MB and Mensah for the majority of the episode, instead focusing on the rest of the group.  Without the snarky voiceover, the terror of the situation could really get hammered home.  Again, this is fully speculation of how it might play out next episode, but my guess is that the big cliffhanger next episode is going to be LeeBeeBee attacking Gurathin.  Previews have shown him with a bandage on his leg, and holding a cane, which some people have pointed out looks like a blind walking cane.  That makes me wonder if she manages to not only disable him with a shot to the leg, but damage visual augments he might have, rendering him partially blind.

I think we’ve also been getting a lot of background work with Gurathin being terrified of rejection and abandonment throughout this season.  He and MB parallel one another in not wanting to share Mensah, because they both are afraid the other will manage to take her from them (completely ignoring that Mensah has two fucking hands, and more than enough love in her to love her family, and both of these idiots too).  If LeeBeeBee really wants to twist the knife in him, she’s going to tell him that if the others are going to survive, they have to abandon him.

And Pin-Lee, Arada, Bharadwaj, and Ratthi are almost certainly going to refuse.  Much like Mensah refused to abandon MB when it was damaged, they’re going to refuse to leave their friend behind.  Because they can disagree with him, they can think he’s wrong about SecUnit, but they still love him and won’t leave him.

This sets up E7 to be the big turning point between the nadir of act 2 (MB and Mensah may be dead, Gurathin is injured, and the others are in direct danger because they won’t leave him behind), and the start of act 3 (MB and Mensah return and save everyone!  They can all come together, defeat GrayCris and escape alive!). 

And all of this gets facilitated because of the introduction of LeeBeeBee, who acts as a face for GrayCris (and likely a way to give us information about them) and for the whole vicious corporate people-as-objects theme that consumes the Corporation Rim.  It’s so much easier to loath GrayCris when we can see the sorts of people it creates, and she is such a great example of that.

[swoomoo]

"I don't like Malkavians because the mental illness stuff makes me uncomfortable". Oh the incest, torture, noncon, necrophilia, mind control, racism, homophobia, gore, homicide, abuse doesn't bother you? "but we shouldn't make light of that subject" We shouldn't make light of any of these subjects but if you argue that incest is okay because 'gothic horror' then get upset that someone made a malkavian inspired by elements of a real mental illness then I'm not sure what to say to you. People like clans they can connect to. Several trans people I know really like the Tzimisce because they can connect to the concept of molding the flesh into something they want to become. It's magical and it's okay. Some people like Malkavians because they like connecting to a character that has to navigate unlife with a unique condition that others often don't take seriously.

Malkavians are my favorite clan, but I and I know several other people who are scared to play them because malk players get bullied by the community when they come up with any derangement that isn't quirky random uwu smol and it's why you end up with so many fish-malk players. btw literally in the corebook for v5 (pg 76)

"All Malkavians suffer mental illness following the Embrace sometimes accentuating an existing condition, other times adding a new dimension to their instability." "As a rule, no other Kindred feels completely comfortable around a known Malkavian, often viewing them as unpredictable maniacs whose flashes of insight are rarely worth the fits of insanity."

The entire clan in lore has made others uncomfortable since its conception. If you're uncomfortable with mental illness there are much much darker themes the game addresses and I'm not sure WoD is the best setting for you.

[rednightmare18]

Sometimes I do think the hyperfocus on religious guilt, especially the hyperfocus on religious guilt pertaining to sexual behavior (with one particular romance taking up 90% of the fandom's concern here), is eclipsing the absolutely fascinating canonical relationship Henry has with God.

Henry's guilt, a complicated tangle of survivor's guilt and moral guilt, is never on clearer display than when he dreams of his parents. This dream is the face of how Henry feels about himself and the sins, moral and divine and cultural, he has committed. It always troubles me when I see people yelling at Henry's parents as if they were really there... and not recognizing this is insight directly into how Henry feels about what happened in KCD2.

Notice that he is deeply caught up on theft and revenge/wrath (even when he argues with his father/i.e. himself in his own defense).

Notice, too, that he has no apology to make about Hans (if romanced). Of even greater interest from a character analysis standpoint, neither of his dream-parents (the voice of his internal guilt and misgivings) spare more than a moment's surprise on it. Henry's mother immediately scolds Henry's father when he expresses surprise; down to the marrow of his dreams, Henry does not seem to feel badly, guilty, or conflicted about romancing Hans at all.

Henry's aversion to touching the dead in kcd1 and kcd2 (particularly when someone he deeply cares about does it) is period-place-typical. It is fascinating how he rationalizes with himself in different contexts and how he justifies or does not justify this.

Henry usually gravitates toward social pariahs out of genuine curiosity first, compassion second; I find this point (blended with the above point) especially interesting in the context of his work with Executioner Hermann from KCD1!

Henry's anger is extraordinary, especially in KCD1, and whether or not Henry comes to understand his anger has immense echoes into the "voice" of his guilt.

Henry has a curiously spotty religious knowledge; this always delights me, as he's had a dash of monk's education and grew up in a town without a church. "Crimbo" is a hilarious line, but in other ways, it is also nicely representative of the half-formed grip he has on religious philosophy.

Henry's furious outbursts of "you call yourself a Christian?" are almost exclusively tied to his outbursts in defense of the defenseless, and this is used as a call to moral shame, especially against militant men. I always think first of his genuinely furious attempt to interject when Kuno deliberately uses civilian women as bait in KCD1.

Henry at times seems incredibly confident in his personal relationship with God. I adore the quest A Sinful Soul for how it showcases this. In a direct prayer the player has limited control over, Henry addresses God as informally as one might address a neighbor he has a minor grievance with. He essentially tells God, "Look, I know what you said about this issue, but I also know that YOU know I'm right this time, so I'm gonna do it my way, cause I know you didn't exactly mean it the way you said it there. Thanks in advance - knew you'd agree with me." Henry believes in a God who makes individual exceptions based on what is moral; he also differentiates what is moral from what is godly, and seems certain that God also draws this distinction for Himself.

Fucking thrilling from a character development standpoint! Fucking thrilling in the breath before the Hussite rebellions.

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

one of the reasons why i love ToA so much is the little bits and pieces of the gods we get to see.

so i guess this is really more of a 'this is why i love the gods so much' rather than my usual 'this is why i love ToA' post lmao

but fr, the gods are just sooooo much more fleshed out in ToA. they're more complex, and have these layers to them that pjo and hoo just Did Not convey (and really, only conveyed those things post publication of ToA, which came with the tools on how to decode the gods and read between the lines).

and i'm not even talking about Apollo here. he is by far the most fleshed out god we have because he's the pov character, but i also mean all 12 of the other olympians - they're just so juicy!!

like okay, sure, in pjo and hoo we get glimpses that Dionysus may care more than he lets on, but ToA CONFIRMS this, but not in an 'in your face' way - but in the 'Dionysus picks at Apollo like a little brother would' way, and in that FIRST interaction between Apollo and Dionysus, we can SEE what their relationship was like!!

Hermes is another VERY layered god, ESPECIALLY with pjo's context. but that context ONLY gains its own importance BECAUSE of the story ToA gives us - we would NOT have 'resigned to fate' Hermes without it. or embittered at his favorite brother Hermes. we love this Hermes eheheheheheheh

Artemis also gains more character, and is no longer just the stoic cool badass #Girlboss she's largely presented as - she's scared, she fears for Apollo, so much so she SPLITS. she comes RUNNING to help him in TTT as soon as she could, giving her a softer side, while simultaneously expands on her previous appearances and allowing us to see how she is unconsciously enabling the abuse Apollo's experienced. LAYERS !! !! !!

DEMETER. OOOHHH DEMETER ILY, IN MYTHOLOGY AND THE RRVERSE. BUT FOR COMPLETELY DIFFERENT REASONS LMAO

we can infer Demeter has basically shot herself in the foot by obsessing so much over Persephone, where she NEGLETS her other kids (ex: Lityerses, Meg). myth Demeter would NEVER but rrverse Demeter is still a fav BECAUSE of how flawed she is.

ARESSSSS do i even need to say anything. we KNOW Ares and Apollo are bros because of how often Apollo takes pot-shots at him in his dialogue LMAO true brother behavior

Hades is a chill uncle with Apollo in particular. i mean. *gestures* he used to purposefully mess up Apollo's aim when shooting for no reason. need i say more?

looking back i'm also a little intrigued by how little Poseidon was mentioned - perhaps lending credence to the idea that he and Apollo grew apart over the centuries?

also Hestia's position as the goddess of the hearth and home calls into question how passive she is on olympus BECAUSE of the shitshow it's become!! she defends it!! what has caused the hearth and home, the FIRSTBORN OF KRONOS, of the ENTIRE PANTHEON to be so stagnant in the face of this toxic cycle? the people want to know and so do i.

Hephaestus is trickier to pin down for me because he has little mention, but there's one SPECIFIC one that has stuck in my brain and its the "apollo missed an entire decade watching Hephaestus's newton's cradle INSIDE HIS OFFICE"

what was apollo doing in his office. and why did hephaestus - notorious introvert - let him stay in there. these are the questions we are all dying to know.

ATHENAAAAAAA !! !! !! !! !! that nod she gives apollo at the end. her bet on his SUCCESS. need i say more? she's bros with him trust <3 add in the mythology and it gets SPICY

Aphrodite is arguably a tricky one to pin down too, and honestly we as a fandom have probably taken more from the mythos to pin down her character than with the others, but she's sooooo interesting too!! the eldest olympian. powerful goddess. extremely cunning and ruthless. and yet she's seen as airheaded and vain by practically everyone.

makes you wonder who else is like that. *quick glance at our favorite god* i dunno who that could be. *whistles innocently*

and do i need to say anything about Zeus? about the tragedy of him falling into the cycle he was meant to break? ABOUT THE TRAGEDY OF HOW HE DEF WANTED TO BE A FATHER BUT HIS PARANOIA GOT THE BETTER OF HIM UNTIL HE NO LONGER WAS ONE??

*seizes you by the shoulders* HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BE NORMAL ABOUT THIS. HOW.

and ofc. one of my FAVORITE gods...Hera. oh, ho ho Hera. you do NOT deserve the hate you get <3 okay maybe a bit of irritation is warranted because you do pull off risky things in hoo but we stan a goddess who takes charge in this house.

YOU CAN'T CONVINCE ME SHE'S GONNA BE - well, nicer? is that the right word? - BETTER WITH APOLLO POST-TOA. AFTER SEEING EVERYTHING HE SUFFERED? AFTER SEEING HIM SHED THE MASK? AFTER JASON GRACE?

*pounds mercilessly on the table* I WILL NEVER NOT BE ANNOYING ABOUT THEM I LOVE THEM ALL INCLUDING THE BITS OF CHARACTER FROM THE MINOR GODS WE GET TOO!!

[aroaceleovaldez]

not to complain about the show again but genuinely I think people should be WAY more pissed off that s2 cast an abled actor as a character with Down syndrome - particularly a character whose entire arc and narrative presence is focused on the fact that he has Down syndrome and how Percy has internalized ableism and how Percy unravels that (and also chewing out Annabeth for her ableism).

Like. Tyson has down syndrome. This is a very core part of his character, because like I've said before: the entirety of the first series is centered around and hinges on disabled stories and themes. If you are having an abled actor cast as Tyson you have already failed step one. Cause either you are actively erasing Tyson having Down syndrome or you are having an abled actor try to portray Down syndrome and neither of those things are okay.

[sha-brytols]

it is genuinely strange to me how little the lyrium enslavement aspect of templar training is Actually utilized to make the templars more sympathetic. like the withdrawal IS a huge part ot cullen's character arc, but not the chantry's part in it. i think samson is the only one where it's actually a defining character theme?

[phantom-thieves-official]

can I say something controversial. I think by interpreting the Maruki reality stuff w Akechi as 'Joker's greatest wish was for Akechi to live bc they're in love!' is kind of a poor read of the text. Not because I don't ship them or whatever, my shipping opinions aren't relevant to this post. But because I think it overlooks a big part of Joker's actual character. He wanted Akechi to live because he saw an innocent person taken advantage of and discarded. He saw someone who needed help. You can even go further with this and say, okay, Akechi wasn't an innocent person - he killed people and tried to kill Joker himself. And what does that mean for Joker's character? It means he saw someone who had done terrible things - some of them to Joker, personally - and he still came away from Shido's palace with the understanding that while he did bad things, Akechi was a victim of Shido's, too. Good, or bad, or in between, that he still was someone in need of help. Joker wanted to help Akechi. He wanted to give Akechi a chance to make things right, and to show him that they didn't have to enemies - that Akechi didn't have to fight the Phantom Thieves, and he didn't have to be alone; that it's never too late to change course and be a better person and that Akechi's life didn't have to be one of hatred and isolation. He could atone for his crimes, still take down shido, and have a group of people to support him. After the terrible things Akechi did as Shido's lapdog, after he sold the thieves out and plotted to murder Joker. Joker still just wanted to help him. Joker saw that while Akechi was undoubtedly a criminal he was also a victim, and there was something in there worth trying to save. But you know what? He couldn't do it. Right as he seemed to be getting through to Akechi, he was killed by Shido's cognitive version.

And so when Maruki's reality brings Akechi back, it means imo that Joker feels guilty. Out of all the people he'd been able to help, Akechi was the one person he just couldn't save. It's not because they're in love, it's because Joker regrets how things worked out. He regrets that he didn't get through to Akechi sooner. He regrets failing a vulnerable and victimized person whom he feels he could have helped. Even if that person hated Joker. Even if that person had previously tried to kill Joker with his own hands. Joker's sense of justice is imo his biggest character trait, followed closely by his massive savior complex. Of course he wanted Akechi to live. Because in Joker's eyes, despite what he'd done to hurt Joker, Akechi was still a victim. He was still someone Joker should have been able to save.

This all comes to a head when Joker chooses to deny Maruki's reality. He's choosing to live with the guilt; to accept he can't save everyone no matter how hard he tries. He's moving beyond the savior complex and recognizing that sometimes, some people are really just unreachable, or don't want to be helped. It's a moment not only of characterization, but of character growth for him.

anyway that's my hot take. by viewing the third semester through a shipping lens exclusively you lose a huge point of characterization for Joker bc you overlook the nuances of Joker's desire to help everyone all the time and the guilt he feels about failing to help Akechi. You misconstrue Joker's desire to help in the first place as coming from a place of love rather than a place of selflessness and justice; a place of 'doing what's right simply because it is the right thing to do.' You miss out on the subtle ways it shows Joker's not biased by hatred or contempt, how despite the heinous things Akechi has done, and despite the harm done to him directly at Akechi's hand, Joker is still capable of seeing that Akechi is a victim, too - which in itself shows that Joker's idea of justice isn't motivated by personal relationships, grudges, or biases.

[upsidedownsmore]

Tribute to Mynki Oil and digital painting for class

Thank you for all that you have done.

Rest in peace.

Timelapse of digital adjustments in Krita:

Thank you Mynki.

[alltimefail]

Trying not to think too hard about what is going through Edwin's head in ep 4 when Charles is crying and saying that he hates being dead, that he "puts on a smile" for the sake of everyone else - singling Edwin out specifically, saying "Are you gonna do that Edwin, huh?"

I really hope this moment is addressed next season because it's heartbreaking. Knowing what we know, Edwin is starting to figure out that he is in love with Charles at this point, but he's also starting to realize that Charles has buried so much pain in their 30 years together that Edwin wasn't fully aware of (and, in all fairness, this sentiment goes both ways). It was never for a lack of caring; Charles had been denying the pain himself; I think about him telling Crystal his dad wasn't the nicest guy, Edwin then parrotting this sentiment later to Crystal at the Devlin house: "He wasn't a... nice man." Edwin can only know what Charles has been willing to share, but still... knowing Edwin, he probably feels a lot of guilt (which Charles would be devastated to know he played a part in, btw, because I truly don't think he intended for his feelings to come out, nonetheless as "harshly" as they did).

I know Charles briefly touched base afterward and told Edwin he wouldn't want to be dead with anyone else, but I have a feeling that since we explored so much of Edwin's personal development in S1, that Charles' development (sexuality/feelings for Edwin AND facing the trauma he's been burying, among other things) will be at the center of S2...🤞

[jestersking]

i genuinely think that "Despite all I've done to you, I loved you." is one of the most heartbreaking lines in the history of forever. it's acknowledgment that what verity - and everyone else in fitz's life - did to him was wrong and twisted, but his uncle loved him. he had to use fitz, he had to break him, he had to make him into a weapon, despite all the cruelty that fitz had to do on verity's behalf, verity never wanted it. he wanted to love fitz properly and in his last moments of being human, of having some consciousness, he wanted fitz to know that verity always loved him.

but it's the lines after that that truly break my heart. "I told him, I never doubted it. Never doubt I loved you." because like. it's fitz. fitz always doubts and he never believes that he is loved and it's something that is really driven home throughout the series. but he never doubted verity's love, despite how broken he was. he doubted fool's friendship, he doubted burrich's care, chade's advice, molly's love, but not verity's. and he loved him back, even knowing what verity did to him. it was never about verity being his king, it was about verity being family

[blackhholes]

Monstrosity in Teen Wolf

Hybridity Is the New Metamorphosis by Harvey L. Hix / Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters by Judith Halberstam / Monstrosity: The Human Monster in Visual Culture by Alexa Wright

Written for @teenwolf-meta‘s Meta May Monday theme: beast

Monstrosity and what, precisely, makes a monster is a topic that is discussed both within the text and the larger narrative of Teen Wolf. The most direct mention of monsters vs monstrosity is in *Monstrous* when Lydia tells Meredith “Not all monsters do monstrous things” referring here to Scott, which Meredith then flips back onto Lydia herself. It’s obvious to see here that the show makes a clear differentiation between what it means to be a monster and what it means to be monstrous. To be a monster means to be something unnatural it’s particularly about the outward facing part of a person, this is mainly seen with the shapeshifters who undergo a physical transformation which marks them as something different than humans, but Meredith referring to Lydia as a monster means that it’s not only the physical attributes which makes someone a monster. Being a monster is less about what you are and more about what you aren’t. Once you’re no longer able to be comfortably placed within the category of human you are a monster. This form of monster isn’t a negative attribute though, it’s a neutral one. It simply describes that the person is not a human. 

Acting monstrous is a negative attribute within the show, humans and monsters alike can act monstrous. Monstrosity is therefore not a description of person but instead a description of character. One of the most potent examples of this is in *Fury* where the viewer sees three different factions of characters. Matt is a human so he is per definition not a monster but he is a monstrous human, he stalks Allison and has spent the season carrying out his revenge plan by taking away Jackson’s autonomy and forcing him to kill people. The werewolves on the other hand are monsters who aren’t monstrous, at least to the viewer, they, particularly Scott, are trying to find a way to catch Matt without having to kill him or Jackson. It’s interesting to consider that the Argents, hunters who have always equated monster to monstrosity, have become even more radical after the death of Victoria, despite Matt’s actions he isn’t their primary target when they enter the police station, Derek is. Because, to them Derek killed Victoria by biting her and turning her into a monster just as he is. Matt is an afterthought, he’s the loose end they will deal with afterwards. The Argents therefore has the opposite understanding of the situation than the viewer does.

Humanity is also an important topic within the show, humanity is something fallible. In *Lies of Omission* the scene at the end with Scott and Stiles in the rain serves as an important look into the characters’ and particularly Stiles’ understanding of what it means to be human. When he says to Scott “Some of us are human” it’s a vocalization of the idea that to be human is to make mistakes and that humanity makes a person incapable of always doing right. As opposed to the in-humanity that comes from being incapable of erring. It is preceded by Stiles saying “Not all of us can be true alphas”, throughout this conversation, and even the entire season, Stiles has started categorizing Scott as something other than human capable of humanity, it’s not the monstrous monster previously mentioned either, it’s a third category of non-human. The true alpha isn’t monstrous but he isn’t human either. To Stiles Scott has become a sort of mythologized character who always does the right thing instead of being a real person who’s standing in front of him.