#also his father really does despise the fact that they aren’t human so he forced fenrir to stay as a human

[dogsrot]

the fact that like . . fenrir technically doesn’t exist ??

[kittydemon9000]

SO MERLOPIAN KAI PART 2 ELECTRIC BOOGALOO

So, with Kalmaar, he ofc immediately goes to his parents about his feeling, slightly placing his revenge on hold. They are...dubious about it, but Maya raises the point of how there has never been a human/merlopian hybrid before, and from what Ray has told them about having two EM parents it’s possible for Kai to have some water abilities himself, which could be what gave Kalmaar his feeling. So, they agree to look into it.

Moving on..... Uh. Kai doesn’t have a fun time in S6, as briefly as he’s there. You see, Nahdakahn knows exactly what buttons to press and is able to get Kai into a panicked state where he, on the verge of a panic attack and mental breakdown, just says “I wish that I could just be normal! I wish I could just go home! I wish I could be with dad and mom and father and Kal and Bentho and Nya!!!”

The “normal” comment comes from how they weren’t able to completely hide Kai’s heritage since yeah, there were other people on the boat who saw him. That and he also tried a lot less to keep it hidden. And because some humans are assholes, he has to deal with that.

So ofc, Nahdakahn interprets it in the worst ways and as two wishes. Kai is now a full human yes….but was also sent to where the fish fam currently were……which just so happened to be at the bottom of the ocean.

So yeah, double trauma for both groups. Kai got to experience what drowning felt like, and his fam was essentially forced to watch him die since there was nothing they could do. They were too far under to take him to the surface and too far from the palace to take him there.

But dw, it gets even worse.

You see, the whole reason Nahdakahn is being this malicious about Kai’s wishes is because he learned that Kai was the reason the Preeminent was destroyed, thereby destroying Djinjago.

Nahdakahn is then able to do a “oh? Is this not what you wanted? I thought you wished to be normal.” Which ofc sounds really bad since it’s in front of his family. “But, I understand. You grow tired of the stares in the street, how they whisper behind you back about what you are. Not human, not merlopian, not normal. Just a freak masquerading as one of them.”

This ofc supremely pisses off the fam. Like, weapons drawn ready to commit murder.

But then Nahdakahn stop them with a “ah ah ah, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. After all, I am the only way your son has a chance at living. So go ahead. Make a wish.”

Trimaar ends up being the one to do it, and is smart enough to know this uh will twist it in anyway he can so says. “I wish for Kai to be sent safely to the surface without harm done upon him.”

Blah blah blah, your wish is yours to keep, Trimaar realizing “wait there’s a lot that could be interpreted” but too late BAM now Kai’s kinda stuck on the Misfortune’s Keep.

And he....generally has a pretty bad time. Think Jay but this time it’s personal.

However, Kai’s appearance had Trimaar get the Merlopian army and start heading to the surface. The remaining ninja have a brief moment of “are you kidding me two enemies at once” before learning that this is Kai’s lost family and they’re here to help.

So now the ninja have a whole ass fish army to help them, plus a very protective, very angry fish family.

But for the rest of canon, the only difference is that when they’re leaving Tiger Widow Island, Nya gets snatched along with Jay(who was taken because he hadn’t used his wish yet) and they aren’t stuck on the island, and then later that Kai gets sucked into the sword when the ninja launch their rescue mission.

But yeah, it gets all Un-Happened by Jay’s wish(which at seeing Kai physically hurt and being emotionally torn apart at his baby sister dying, wished that none of this ever happened and that Nahdakahn was never found), only like canon Nya and Jay still remember what happens.

Nya is now firmly on team Kai Is Alive and tells her parents everything about what happened and the wish Jay made, and more importantly where Kai is.

Unfortunately, they need to take some time and prepare. Trimaar and Maya have been doing their best over the years to open the populace possibly making bonds with the humans, but now it’s finally happening. They can’t just go up there out of no where, since from what Nya has told them 1) most humans don’t even know they exist and 2) in the past few years they have been subject of many attacks, mostly from non-humans, so they need to make sure the humans understand they don’t mean any harm.

So DotD happens, then the beginnings of S7 :)

Right out, Kai never liked the museum curator. Up to that point he’d only ever caught fleeting glimpse of him but something about him Kai just despised. As a result, he also visited the museum as scarcely as possible, and thus didn’t notice a very interesting painting containing a two very strange figures.

When he learns his name was Dr.Saunders.....things don’t go well.

It happened when Kai brought the helmet with his dad’s symbol on it. As much as he disliked the curator, he was the most likely to be able to recognize what kind of helmet it was.

Then in his anger he gets himself captured.

He’s taken to a special cell lined with vengestone and has guards around the clock, and Krux takes extra care to make sure Kai doesn’t know where Ray is.

ofc it’s around this time that the Merlopians arrive and express their wishes for a possible alliance between their two races. Unfortunately they showed up at literally the worst time, and double unfortunately the people in charge of diplomacy decide to bring some of the ninja in as an extra precaution because of the villains have been running around.

So the people who join the meeting are Lloyd and Jay from the ninja(they would’ve brought Kai but he hasn’t returned from his missions yet and isn’t answering their calls) as well as some police officers and from the Merlopians is the whole royal family plus a few guards.

Both Jay and Nya have a silent moment of staring at each other since “I know and I’m not sure you know but I think you know but I don’t want to say anything since you might not”

And just as they’re about to start, The Time Twins attack. Because why the hell not.

They’re actually able to hold them off for a while, but unfortunately there are too many Vermillion. Then Kalmaar whips out his Water Powers which causes him to get kidnapped since they need both Fire and Water masters for the blade.

While they’re recovering, Lloyd then gets a panicked call from Zane saying that he checked the museum footage and Kai has been captured. The gets overheard by the royal family, and then Lloyd asks why they looked so upset at which they learn(sans Jay since wish) that Kai is royalty. The eldest son actually, and thus first in line for the throne, as well as being presumed dead for the past five years.

So basically Krux has kidnapped the King and Queen’s husband, the crown prince, and the second in line prince(if anyone knows a more fancy term for this please let me know)

Maya, Trimaar, Nya and Benthomaar are not happy. Not with the Ninjagian people, no they’re fine, but they’re bout ready to murder Krux, and they don’t even know about Ray yet.

So they offer any help they can.

Zap back to how Kai and Kalmaar are doing.

Kalmaar is….kind feral tbh. Like, he’s biting, clawing, trying to strangle them with his tentacles, and before they got vengestone cuffs on him was trying very hard to drown anyone.

Ofc, this does little to the Vermillion and soon Kalmaar finds himself in the cell right next to Kai’s. He’s overjoyed to see his brother again, albeit upset that this is why.

They both reluctantly come to the conclusion that there isn’t much they can do at the moment, and there are many Vermillion guards right outside their cells, so they decide to start catching up.

And for pretty much the rest of the season canon is pretty much the same, just shuffle around the characters a bit and add a protective Fish Fam. 

Though their little trip back in time is quite sight for the Past EMs, especially because of how Kalmaar is using his powers, which leaves Kai mostly stuck in his Fish Form. This time they don’t even bother trying to explain, just give instructions on how to defeat the Vermillion and jumping into the battle. 

And I mean just imagine that from the EMs perspective. An enemy you thought you defeated just returned with a giant metal creature and an army of snake things that don’t look like any kind of Serpentine they’d ever seen. Then a shark person and squid person??? show up and not only do they know how to fight the snake things but they also seem to be Elemental Masters???? Despite the fact Ray is very much alive and they didn’t even know there was a Water EM. Then the two not only summon dragons but they also fuse their dragons into an even bigger one with two heads.

And then all of them disappear into the sky without a trace.

W i l d

But yeah, after that it calms down quite a bit. Kai spends the time skip before S8 reconnecting with his family and his dad, and through some tech courtesy of Borg they're able to bring Ray with them :D

And Kai actually goes to meet the Jade Royal Family since y’know. He’s the crown prince. He’s kinda important and legitimately forgot about it. Luckily Kalmaar is able to help coach Kai through it, but is also a bit smug about how he finally has something to teach to his older brother. Kai was actually the one who suggested asking the ninja for help protecting the mask.....but we know how that inevitably ends.

Bentho, Kal and Nya were actually on the ship for this particular adventure, and then Nya and Bentho were dragged along when they got sent to the First Realm. Bentho, despite being the youngest sibling and to the surprise of literally everyone, was actually really good with kids and spent the most time with Little Wu, right behind Cole.

But yeah S9......Nya and Bentho have a really bad time in the First Realm beause of the heat, but at least they don’t get captured. Kai on the other hand....

Yeah at some point he gets accidentally splashed with water and well.....it definitely doesn’t help with the Oni accusations. The Dragon Hunters decide to burn him along with the Wind Dragon, which moves up their Build Our Own Dragon time table.

After they escape Faith is actually pretty chill about the whole fish thing, but she does ask a lot of questions. 

And then S10..... kinda the same. They end up dropping off as many people as they can with the Merlopians since the smoke can’t reach them.

I might make a Part 3 for the rest of the seasons, but yeah. this is where we’re at.

[c-c-cherry]

HELL YEAH I HAVE SOME BRUNO :D

I fuckin love Bruno. Can’t really explain it, stoic/parental characters and found family tropes are just drawn to me and writing it just gives me immense joy! It’s time to dive right in this, babey >:)

Also I’m sorry for the recent inactivity. School’s been kicking my fucking ASS and I need to put in more time for that right now, so things might be slower until Holiday break. Hope y’all can bear with me a bit :)

//content warning for whump-related shit (sickness, major injury, drugs etc..)

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Pain Tolerance

-When it comes to physical injury, he can handle almost anything with grace

-With a job like his, it always helps to be quick on your feet and resourceful enough to save your life

-He’s not stupid, either. When he’s hurt in a way that he can’t fix himself, he doesn’t hesitate asking someone who actually can help

-He doesn’t particularly like it when people help him out because he’s supposed to be this omnipotent leader figure, but he won’t be stubborn when it comes down to it. He hates wasting time more than he hates showing weakness

-No one can tell him that Sticky Fingers ≠ instant stitches because that stand can get shit done

-Is it sanitary? Not really. Does it hurt a shit ton? Yeah. Does he care? Take a fucking guess y’all >:)

-This man is used to putting up with shit in order to survive and trained himself to take pain in waves. If he can just ride through it, he’ll eventually be able to function again

-Sometimes hesitating isn’t an option. Neither is acknowledging that the bullet wound in your side is bleeding out and logically you should be unconscious from how painful it is

-It takes a certain person to quite literally hold off on their own pain to help others (partly because they aren’t ready to acknowledge it) but Bruno is definitely that saviour-complex, martyr type

-He could have a fucking bullet still in his side but he’s too busy to worry about it because Narancia might have a concussion or Fugo’s arm is broken or they can’t find Giorno amid the stand battle the possibilities are endless

-The one thing he can’t seem to shake off? Getting drugged.

-He almost always has control over his surroundings with any other mishap but once his brain is messed with like that, he’s basically done for

-It doesn’t really help that he’s a lightweight with recreational things in general, but heavy stuff used for spiking or kidnapping absolutely fucks with him

-His stand completely shuts down, he loses control of all his surroundings,,,basically everything he relied on to get through stuff in the past is off the table

-It doesn’t happen very often, but when the gang has had to deal with him like that, its like watching someone’s entire self completely break down

-Suddenly any kind of feeling or pain is amplified and it’s unbearable. It’s awful seeing someone who’s usually so stoic act in such a manner, but it’s almost,,,,cathartic? It reminds all of them that he’s human and his stoicism shouldn’t be taken lightly

Injury

Rule #1 of Bruno’s moral code that doesn’t really make sense but you can’t really argue with him on it: DO NOT BRING HIM TO A FUCKING HOSPITAL.

-He’ll flat-out refuse to go

-Things are much easier now that Giorno is on their team, but things used to be borderline nightmarish during pre-canon missions that went awry

-He’ll have no problem recommending getting professional medical help to anyone else on the team, but there’s no way in hell you could make him go himself

-He hasn’t set foot in a hospital since his father was in one, and and plans to never go in one again

-To him, the medical system failed him (even though there was nothing they could virtually do)

-It’s an irrational way of thinking, but he refuses to talk about it either way

-Even when he is injured enough to require going to a doctor he can usually repress it, usually because he’s in shock, and his mind convinces him that he’s absolutely fine

-His refusal to acknowledge when he’s injured sometimes can get him in deep shit though

-Abbacchio is beyond counting on his fingers how many times a mission will be over and Bruno will be cooking dinner or reading a book and suddenly stop and get this look and Leone will be like “you good?”

-And Bruno just sets his book down and says:

“I fractured my arm and dislocated my elbow earlier today. I should probably look at it now, shouldn’t I?”

in the calmest fucking voice on the planet.

-Sometimes Bruno will just go on about his day and won’t have the chance to tell them calmly because suddenly blood is leaking out of the side of his head or they find him passed out oN THE FLOOR INSTEAD

-Needless to say it gives them all fucking heart attacks all the damn time

-Its actually so common post-canon that the gang has to do routine checks on each other to make sure no one is “withholding any injuries” (but they all know who the rule was really created for)

Sickness

-The. Most. STUBBORN MOTHERFUCKER

-Extremely irritable and hates not being able to do anything. Most people when they’re sick either get very clingy or very bitchy and we all know which one he’d be

-This is nothing like injury. He’ll KNOW he’ll be fine because it's just a fever, so to him that automatically means that no one is obligated to know and/or care regardless of how shit he’s feeling

-He either pretends it’s not happening at all, or he hides away in his room or some zipper dimension until he’s totally fine again

-Hates, and I mean HATES it when people try to take care of him

-Maybe he wants it. Maybe he doesn’t. Either way, he feels too selfless to “make someone do all that” for him

-Though Abbacchio and Fugo would refer to it more as self-destructive than selfless (but they aren’t exactly ones to talk)

-Seriously high fever? It’s just really hot in here, better turn the heat down.

-Can’t fucking breathe because he’s coughing so hard? No no, they still have another mission today to get through. Just have some tea and you’ll be fine

-So nauseous that he can barely stand up on his own? Probably just need to drink some more water today

-The KING of sick denial. The embodiment of the “parents don’t get sick because they don’t have time to” myth

-The times when they do catch him before he can disappear is when stuff is really bad. He’s gotta be too weak to move for them to pounce on him and force him to take care of himself, and even then he will only let Abbacchio do things for him because he doesn’t want to seem like a weak role model for the rest of them ;-;

-Bruno makes the best soup for when the rest of the gang catches something but Mista pulls out the good shit and makes the best fucking food for sick Bruno and it’s very wholesome and nice :)

Emotional Stress

-Bottles up everything, and I mean EVERYTHING until his limbs are fucking shaking and he’s unable to do anything else but sit there and cry

-He feels like he has to be stoic and emotionless most of the time, and although everyone knows that Bruno’s a bleeding heart, he’s also very reserved when it comes to what he really needs

-Things like nightmares or his father or things that happened to him in the past or things that you need to talk about to get off your chest are things that he keeps to himself

-Taking on too much and overworking himself is how he distracts himself from most things. He’d rather just pretend that things aren’t happening then confront it and end up breaking down

-It always comes out in the worst ways. He’ll start snapping at people when he normally would never, stops sleeping and eating, drinks too much even though he knows that it does nothing for him

-He hates the fact that he doesn’t tell people when he’s hurting, but he can’t bring himself to do it without thinking about how weak it would look on his part

-He zips himself away and cries in secret, but everyone can always tell when his nose is too red or the light is gone from his eyes later that day

-When things get bad, his hands will shake. It's almost an unconscious action that happens when he’s thinking too much about things or when he hasn’t gotten nearly as much sleep as he should, but it's extremely noticeable and he despises the fact that he can’t do anything to stop it

-His face and body will look completely put-together but the gang’s eyes will drift to the trembling paperwork that his hands are holding

-Fugo or Abbacchio will usually pull him aside and ask him if everything’s alright and the answer is always arguably a no

-It usually ends up with Leone dragging Bruno somewhere alone or kicking the rest of them out and just letting him let everything out

-Sometimes it’ll take hours and these giant “blow-ups” happen more often than they should, but Leone’s just glad that he’s communicating, even just a little bit

-Once things blow over, they actually talk. They find solutions as much as Bruno doesn’t want to, and things really don’t seem as bad once he starts actually talking about them

-The rest of the fam comes home and makes dinner/finishes up his paperwork for him and they all watch a warm-hearted movie together :3

-He loves giving people hugs because he’s all about that family love, but asking for one is a whole other story (good thing Narancia and his impeccable emotional intelligence always swoop in for a hug when Bruno looks like he’s on his last legs) :))))

-No one said opening up was going to be easy, but he’s got his supportive Passione fam to help him out when he needs it most :’)

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I actually had some fics in mind while writing this list! If you want some Bruno whump to inhale, here’s what I was thinking of while writing this: 

The Mighty Fall by @lady-wallace​

Only Bend When It Breaks  and Night go Slower by roktavor

and Yet here he was by Your’s Truly!!

[notthatiwilleverwriteit]

Read the latest mafia ask and I got some questions too about that hope you dont mind Don't you think that if he tian will be in a relationship with mo in the future someone will try to hurt mo to get to the He family? because of his relationship with he tian.I hope he tian will not get involved with his familys job.He hates that side and what they do as we seen(but he still used his brothers man on she li)and the only reason I see him working for them or with them is to protect mo or his friends

Good evening, dear anon-san!

This is going to be a rather long answer, so  youbetter get comfy...

“Don't you think that if he tian will be in a relationship with mo in the future someone will try to hurt mo to get to the He family? because of his relationship with he tian.“

I very much think that is a realistic possibility. Mo Guan Shan’s connection to He Tian can get him mixed up in dangerous people, for sure. So far, it’s mostly worked the other way around: HT’s connections and the influence of his family name have ended up saving MGS. But it’s most definitely a delicate balance, and I doubt it’s escaped HT either.

The interesting thing about “connection” is that it comes down to “distance”. And I think physical and emotional distance is an essential part of how Tianshan works both now and in the future. From the beginning, when we were just getting to know HT, it was obvious how isolated he was (130):

The person he was in front of his schoolmates was very different from when he was by himself. The distance and isolation were at least partly self-imposed. HT was very careful about letting others get close to himself both physically and emotionally.

The first time he allowed his solitary to be breached was when MGS came over to make him beef stew (ch. 144): 

HT’s face being hidden in that panel has always been an interesting detail to me. What was going on in his head at the moment? Up until that, I doubt no one besides He Cheng (and maybe Qiu) had much visited HT. Certainly, no one at school knew where or how he was living. The other students didn’t really know HT, and he actively posed as a different person in front of them. He was cheerful, cool and friendly. Living in an expensive and yet sparsely furnished apartment by himself certainly wouldn’t have fitted the image they had of HT. I doubt they would have understood the person HT became in that apartment, either. It was a place where he could drop his mask and be honest about his darkness. I think it’s something special that MGS was the first one to see all that even though he probably wasn’t aware of what he was granted to see.

If you compare that panel to when the rest of the gang came over, the atmosphere is quite different (ch. 186):

But I digress.

As Tianshan has kept developing so has the distance been narrowing between HT and MGS. Despite isolating himself and being guarded, HT was also someone who sought comfort and reassurance in physical contact (ch. 225, 260, 291, 295):

Being physically close is very much associated with feeling safe and secure in HT’s case. It’s as if he’s given himself permission to be needy in that sense. And it’s different from clinging to MGS at every turn by hooking an arm around his shoulders and dragging him along. It’s more private and vulnerable than that.

At the moment, HT seems to think that keeping MGS as close as possible is also the best way to keep him safe (ch 244, 265, 296):

As far as HT sees it, threats and enemies are lurking around every corner. She Li is uncomfortably close without HT being able to do much about it. The fact that MGS won’t back down from fights also requires HT to keep a close eye on him. But as long as HT is around, nothing bad can happen to MGS. And even if something happens, HT is right there to protect him. He’s become a blotch of darkness looming right behind MGS where all his enemies can see him.

HT’s protectiveness also has a strong possessive streak which only enhances the importance of distance. The earrings are a good example of that (ch. 282):

The earrings are a tangible proof of their connection. MGS is under HT’s protection. He belongs to HT, and no one is allowed to touch what is his. Especially people like SL who used to hold power over MGS. By wearing the earrings HT gave, SL’s reign is overwritten.

Now, if you compare that distance - or lack of - to how they seem to be connected in the future, the difference is quite obvious (ch. 224, 271, 313):

Based on the little hints the Christmas specials have granted us, the nature of their distance has shifted. They aren’t physically nearly as connected due to HT being in another country. And it seems like when they can see each other the next time is always somewhat uncertain. HT is also putting a new kind of distance between them by not telling MGS when he’s coming to see him (and probably when he’s going to take off again).

Is this distance as safe as what they had in middle school? If HT has gotten involved in his family’s businesses, does he think it’s safer to stay at an earshot from his family and potential enemies? Rather than sticking close to MGS? If he knows what’s going on instead of being in the dark, he can be proactive? 

It’s also possible HT thinks it’s the safest if he keeps MGS separated from his assumed line of work. But the safety that way of thinking grants is of course on the flimsy side. HT showing up like that is a living, breathing connection between them. Is HT perhaps treating MGS as a safe haven of sorts? I doubt his visits to MGS have remained a secret completely, but perhaps he’s trying to keep MGS hidden from his family? At least hoping they don’t know too much about him? The little storage room and narrow bed are for HT to get away from it all, even for a moment. But will HT be able to have his cake and eat it, too?

As an interesting side note, I think there’s a potential parallel between how HT visits MGS in the future and how HC kept the dog alive and goes to see it (ch. 252):

I think MGS in the future will represent similar things to HT as the dog does to HC. Someone, something, or a place where they can let their guard down and show softness, even vulnerability. They have both saved and nurtured something and by being around that something, they can feel better about themselves than in their everyday life. It reminds them that they still have humanity left in them.

“He hates that side and what they do as we seen(but he still used his brothers man on she li)“

That conflict between how HT despises his family and yet utilizes its strength when it suits him surely is interesting and something I’ve always wondered. It almost looks like even he himself is torn despite his seemingly strong resolve. Regardless of everything, they’re still his family. His interactions with his father and brother raise the question of how difficult and painful HT actually finds it trying to separate himself from them. And what compromises he’s willing to make to avoid it.

When HT went to see his father, it seemed like he was still holding at least some hope that they could reach some kind of understanding (ch. 251):

What was he going to ask his father? Did the mind games Mr. He was yet again playing with him (by not showing up), convince HT that getting the answers wouldn’t be necessary? He knew what he wanted to do and what his father happened to think it about didn’t matter.

And yet even if HT dismisses his father, it doesn’t seem like Mr. He took his threats at all seriously (ch. 251):

Mr. He probably realizes HT is conflicted. But rather than trying to force him (which I’m sure he’s tried already), he’s changed tactics. He’s allowed HT to seemingly have his way which is meant to show HT how impossible his goals are. He can set out to save the world all he wants, but the truth is he doesn’t have the resources by himself. And it seems Mr. He has managed to prove his point at least once already. I don’t see why that couldn’t also be the reason why HT is in another country in the future.

The interesting problem about that would be for how many people HT is buying safety by presumably working with his family. What about all the other people suffering at the hands of his father and the likes?

Even a stronger hold than that is probably HT’s complex love-hate relationship with HC (ch. 168, 229, 252, 260, 266):

On the surface, HT is bratty towards HC and HC lets him take out his feelings on himself. But deep down, I think the idea of cutting ties with his brother is much more painful and impossible than HT would admit out loud. HC might have become the kind of person HT hates the most, but I don’t think HT has lost hope in him despite saying so. He probably desperately wants HC to follow him, and it’s that hope that keeps him still hanging on. He doesn’t want to jump off the boat by himself. And in return, HC is probably one of the very few people who hold actual power over HT.

What I’m trying to say is HT is perhaps more hangup on his family than one would think. That’s why he’s kicking and screaming so much. Because losing hope is difficult and it hurts.

In the meantime, he seems to have settled with using his family’s strength for good. I think this panel sums it up pretty well (ch. 267):

HT being backed up by his brother’s strength to fight evils that aren’t his family. It’s probably his relationship with HC that allows this kind of leeway. I doubt Mr. He would have granted HT such favors without demanding something in return. HC, on the other hand, has always understood his brother’s struggle despite not feeling like he can support him directly. So, even if HC can’t allow HT to have his way, he can at least help keep his friends safe. From threats that aren’t the two families, that is.

“the only reason I see him working for them or with them is to protect mo or his friends”

In short, I would say the same. He’s already kind of doing that, though. HT has had to make concessions because as strong as he might be, there are powers against which even he can’t win. At least, not yet. And I kind of like that. The fact the HT isn’t invincible and can’t do whatever he wants makes it more realistic. There are still rules (albeit evil and meant to hurt other people) to which even he has to submit.

But of course, we know that isn’t going to stop HT, merely slow him down a little. Just because he can’t stop HC trying to take JY and keeping tabs on him and his friends, he sure as hell is going to be the stubborn thorn in their flesh (ch. 168, 287):

Your questions, dear anon-san, were weirdly fitting because I have (yet again) been thinking about the future dynamic of Tianshan. I’m planning a Tianshan AU which revolves around the themes of committing bad things, punishing ourselves for our sins, being forgiven and getting absolution only to rinse and repeat the same cycle again. Who judges our sins fairly; ourselves or someone else? Who decides when we have atoned enough? I think some of those questions and themes also fit the canon version of Tianshan and whatever bits and pieces we know about their future. Especially, if HT will be more connected to his family when he’s older and yet be in a relationship with MGS.

Thank you for your questions, dear anon-san!

[idkwhoiamanymorebutwtf]

Below imma put my reasoning for each of these if you were confused about why I put certain characters where I did.

(note that this is about the show Harley Quinn 2019 so most things outside of this show won’t be taken into account when discussing the character’s alignments)

James Gordon as Lawful Good: He’s group and order oriented, and will cooperate with authority in all cases. You’ll never see Gordon team up with anyone who isn’t strictly on the ‘good’ side of things. He’s convinced that order and laws are absolutely necessary to assure that goodness prevails and continued to uphold the law even when Batman was gone.  A lawful good being kills whenever necessary to promote the greater good, or to protect himself, his companions, or anyone whom he's vowed to defend. In times of war, he strikes down the enemies. Gordon was very much willing to kill Two Face and basically went into an all out war against Harley. He admitted himself that he got into the police force to shoot bad guys. So long as it’s within the letter of the law and the people in question deserve it, he’s very much willing to maim and kill. Gordon responds to authority and when there is no authority figure around he does his best to uphold the law on his own.

Bruce Wayne as Neutral Good: He, like most neutral good characters, values life and freedom above all else, and despises those who would deprive others of them. Neutral good characters, including him, sometimes find themselves forced to work beyond the law, yet for the law, and the greater good of the people. Multiple times throughout the series he teams up with people the law dictates he ought to be fighting, like when he helped Harley in season one and even sacrificed himself to save Harley and Ivy, or when he helped Harley and The Joker get the Justice League back in season two. He’s a super hero, he tries to stay within the law, but he’s willing to work with those who aren’t strictly on the side of ‘good’ if it’s for the sake of goodness.

Barbara Gordon as Chaotic Good:  A chaotic good character acts as his conscience directs him with little regard for what others expect of him. He makes his own way, but he's kind and benevolent. He believes in goodness and right but has little use for laws and regulations. Babs, within the context of the show, does work with law enforcement, but she isn’t exactly bound by codes and laws. She worked with Harley and Ivy to take down the Riddler in Season 2 (and lets be real lawful characters...probably wouldn’t work with criminals) and she actually tries to befriend and hang out with the two. Working with them wasn’t just because she had to and there was no other option, she actually wanted to be friends with two criminals which again shows that she isn’t exactly bound to the law. In fact, she actively goes against it when she warns Harley about Gordon coming to take her down and tries to dissuade her father from going through with it, actively sabotaging the police to do what she believes is the right thing.

Pamela Isley as Lawful Neutral:  A lawful neutral character acts as law, tradition, or a personal code directs her. Order and organization are paramount to her. She may believe in personal order and live by a code or standard, or she may believe in order for all and favor a strong, organized government. Traditionally, when people think ‘lawful neutral’ they think the latter of those possible motivations, someone who believes in the law and government, however in Ivy’s case she’s much more dictated by a personal standard. A lawful character trusts someone or something better than he trusts themselves, but they still pick which thing that is, it doesn’t have to be the laws of the land, it can be anything so long as it’s a solid principal or code or set of ideals rather than “whatever I feel like at the time”. Ivy’s moral code focuses mainly on saving the earth and she doesn’t every stray from that. She has a strong ideal that she’s completely dedicated to and doesn’t ever really change. She’s an eco-terrorist, and terrorism is usually enacted over incredibly strong beliefs. She isn’t exactly ‘good’ because although her goal is respectable she does things that most people consider immoral to get there, showing she isn’t too concerned about doing what’s good towards people. However she also doesn’t exactly go out of her way to harm or do evil (i mean she hurts people who try and hurt harley or the environment but this is moreso a form of vigilante justice than doing something ivy sees as immoral because she inherently believes that most of humanity is below the environment and below harley too “she’s my only friend but that’s by design, because she’s the only human I think is worth a shit”.)

Harleen Quinzel as True Neutral: True Neutral character’s fully think of good as better than evil. After all, they would rather have good neighbors and rulers than evil ones. They’re just not personally committed to upholding good in any abstract or universal way. True neutral characters are known to behave in a good, moral way towards friends and allies. They support the people who support them, often out of genuine love. True neutral characters also typically only go out of their ways to hurt people who they think deserve it. Basically people who tried to hurt them or their loved ones first. Beyond that they don’t care. They don’t go out of their way to hurt people who don’t deserve it but if these people haven’t done anything to earn this character’s affection then these people don’t really matter. True neutrals often believe in lex talionis forms of justice. True neutral individuals do not lack interest, ambition, or passion--they value their own well-being and that of friends and loved ones. They may struggle passionately on behalf of themselves or others, as well as feel compassion for those they barely know. But overall they aren’t bound with any loyalty to doing what’s good. They aren’t bound to the law. They don’t feel an obligation to go against morality or law just for the sake of it either, though. I honestly think this is the most fitting for Harley. She doesn’t see any reason to follow the laws so she doesn’t. When someone fucks with her she’ll fuck right back, but generally she isn’t known to go out of her way to hurt people. It really feels like she’s mostly out to protect herself and her own. She’ll fight for things her friends care about and to help the people she loves. She has no qualms about lying and killing when the people in question hurt her or someone she cares about, though. She said herself that she can’t really even be considered a bad guy. Harley turned down the chance to take over the world because she isn’t evil and doesn’t want to inflict unwarranted suffering on random people, but at the same time she’s taken down multiple people who mess with her with little remorse for doing so. The broader conflicts between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and ‘law’ and ‘chaos’ don’t seem to mean much to her, she’s just out to protect her and her own.

Selina Kyle as Chaotic Neutral: She, like all chaotic neutral characters, strives to protect her freedom first and foremost. Chaotic neutral characters follow their whims without any regard for good or evil or law. They often don’t have much actual concern for personal relationships. Chaotic neutral characters do not necessarily want others to suffer as a result of their actions, but do not care if others do suffer. They tend to behave in a good manner towards friends and allies, unless their friends and allies do not agree with them. Within the show, Selina has betrayed her allies multiple times, first abandoning her to steal a blood diamond and leaving Ivy to pay for her hotel bills, then stealing the the diamond Kiteman wanted to use to propose. She generally isn’t concerned with the wellbeing of Ivy, Harley, or any other allies, and prioritizes her own interests over all else with very little loyalty to...well...anything.

Darkseid as Lawful Evil:  A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity, or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion. Darkseid is difficult to please and demands grand gestures of obedience and power in order for people to prove themselves, as was the case of Harley and Doctor Psycho offering to conquer planet Earth for him. Any acts of betrayal or disloyalty towards him is met with anger on his part and an oaf of vengeance. Despite this, he is not without a sense of restraint, as was the case of him returning to Apokolips after Harley refused for a second time to rule over Earth. He keeps his promises (when he offered harley the ability to rule earth after she showed her strength, for example), but doesn’t take kindly to disobedience or disloyalty and is undoubtedly evil, going out of his way to maim, kill, and conquer.

Edgar Cizko as Neutral Evil: Neutral evil characters are primarily concerned with themselves and their own advancement. They have no particular objection to working with others or, for that matter, going it on their own. Their only interest is in getting ahead. If there is a quick and easy way to gain a profit, whether it be legal, questionable, or obviously illegal, they take advantage of it. Although neutral evil characters do not have the every-man-for-himself attitude of chaotic characters, they have no qualms about betraying their friends and companions for personal gain. These characters willingly cooperate with anyone who will further their own ends. They often seek the easy road to fame and fortune, with little concern for the people they trample along the way. They value strength and ability alone. If the neutral evil can use laws to weaken those who stand in the way of his success, he will use them. He may betray a family member, comrade, or friend if it is convenient to do so and it advances his agenda. Dr. Psycho was fully willing to completely betray Harley over an offer of power, something that everyone else on the team viewed as reprehensible (this is why he’s the only one who i’d consider ‘evil’, btw, because king, clayface, harley, and ivy all value their friends/allies over power and control and view each other as friends wheras Dr. Psycho was willing to betray all of them even after everything they’d all gone through together). He does whatever it takes to elevate himself and goes out of his way to hurt people (like trying to take over the world or broadcasting revenge porn of harley and ivy into the sky).

The Joker as Chaotic Evil: As Harley said, he’s a sociopathic narcissist. As with all Chaotic Evil characters, he is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable.  Thankfully, these character’s plans are haphazard, and any groups they join or form are poorly organized.The Joker may be a ‘genius’ but he often fails to really think things through or execute plans successfully (I knowwww I said we were just analyzing this show and not the character’s other appearances but there’s such a good example from another show to what i mean when i say the joker isn’t as effective as he could be. remember when harley literally came closer to killing batman than joker did and improved his original plans? and the only reason batman survived was because joker threw her out a fucking window and screwed everything up? yeah.) He’s smart and powerful and rutheless and all that but he doesn’t think things through or organize his thoughts well enough.  The major precepts of this alignment are freedom, randomness, and woe. Laws and order, kindness, and good deeds are disdained. Life has no value. By promoting chaos and evil, those of this alignment hope to bring themselves to positions of power, glory, and prestige in a system ruled by individual caprice and their own whim. The chaotic evil creature holds that individual freedom and choice is important, and that other individuals and their freedoms are unimportant if they cannot be held by the individuals through their own strength and merit. Thus, law and order rends to promote not individuals but groups, and groups suppress individual volition and success. The Joker abused his girlfriend ruthlessly, goes out of his way to hurt innocents, tries to kill people on a regular basis weather they deserve it or not, and generally goes out of his way to exert his power over other’s simply for the sake of proving he’s dominant to them.

[atlas-of-a-human-soul]

Αιώνια αγάπη (DT AU), pt. 15

15/Finale: I choose you

A/N - Instead of a summary, I just wanted to thank everyone for bearing with me on this series and for all the support. I hope I did the story justice and gave you all something to look forward to in the past, to take your mind off real life even if it just for a few minutes.

Also, special thanks to @godlydolans for being Yashi in the story. Love you girl!

Word count: 3.2k

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Αιώνια αγάπη (DT Modern Greek god/frat! AU) MASTERLIST    

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Apollo and Hermes spent most of the next month half out of their mind and half pretending to be fine while they spent time with the kids. One would stay with her, the other reassuring two very confused four year olds who were convinced mommy turned into a sleeping beauty or Snow White and someone needed to kiss her in order to have her back. No one could tell them otherwise. And gods and goddesses have tried. All of them did.

"They're as stubborn as their fathers." Hera smiled softly, unable to contain the light inside her heart the kids have brought back to the surface after so many centuries of complete darkness.

"Is this where you tell us this is karmic justice?" Hermes groans, rubbing his forehead as if he's trying to keep a headache at bay. He's been human so long that he forgot headaches aren't just human traits - gods have them too, he just didn't realize they came after hours of chasing two very wicked little cuties, both of them his blood in various degrees.

"She always wished us to have kids that were like us." Apollo agreed, resting his head on the bed beside Y/N, clutching her cold hand in his for some sort of comfort. It's the only way to remind himself she's still there - her heart barely beating, but the change taking over with every passing hour. He knows she's almost ready to open her eyes, completely made new - still his beautiful Y/N, just a little less fragile.

"No. But I can't say I'm not enjoying this." Hera chuckled, giving Hermes a quick pat on the back before retreating to her room, overjoyed with the fact her grandchildren are sound asleep right when it's her turn to watch them.

"I miss her." Hermes whispers, taking her free hand in his much larger one, or so he felt like it is. Lying there on the bed, Hermes forgot how small she really is for her attitude and strength always gave him an impression of a much larger, robust human being that could force anyone on their knees begging for forgiveness over something they most likely haven't even done.

"Yeah, but look. She's already more like us than mortal. She'll be with us in hours. I can feel it." Apollo kissed the back of her hand tenderly, smiling against the skin fondly.

Standing up, he sighed deeply, hating himself for having to leave her behind but ever since Poseidon's been killed, he had to return to his kingdom and take care of business. He could find time to see her and the kids every day, spend hours upon hours, but at the end of the day he had to return to his new home and face his responsibilities. He's wearing thin, but so is Hermes. After all, he has a kingdom of his own to take care of - one as complex and as torturous as death itself.

Hermes stood up as well, just as torn about leaving his love alone, but he had a job to do and his job was never-ending. After all, people die all the time and while his old job has been taken care of for now, long enough for his son to take over once he's grown, he had to take his crown and rule as Hades and he had to make amends - starting with Hecate and Yashi, two women he did wrong more than anyone else.

"Back to Atlantis, brother?" Hermes smirked, having trouble hiding the giddiness over knowing not only does Apollo have to leave and he won't be the first one she sees in case Y/N opens her eyes, but also because he was genuinely happy his brother got a throne of his own. As a man who loved adventure and sea, nature in every form, he knew Apollo would do his new job well, even the old one - until little Valerie could take over.

"You going down too?" Apollo raised an eyebrow, kissing Y/N's forehead before starting his walk back to the door, side by side with his brother. He had already claimed his trident, picking it up just before walking out.

"See you in the morning, little bro." Hermes winked, his form clouded by a gust of black smoke just as Apollo is swallowed in a water portal, each of them gone from Mount Olympus, missing a crucial moment.

The very moment she's been left alone, Y/N's eyes opened, sitting up with a strangled gasp, looking around in panic. She placed a hand on her chest, not that she needed to touch her chest to feel her heart because it pounded too strongly, too loudly for her to miss.

"I'm alive." She whispered under her breath in disbelief, pushing her legs to one side of the bed, the one closer to a mirror placed in far left corner of the room. Struggling with the dress someone had seemed fit to put on her, she grabbed fistfuls of it as she rushed toward the mirror, stepping once her image showed in the reflection.

Her hair is long, longer than it was back when she met the boys and definitely not the mom cut she did after the kids took up all her free time that she had zero time for herself and the long hair she knew Ethan and Grayson loved on her. The curls formed down the thick mane her hair had become, drawing a smile up on her lips. But then she noticed the elaborate braid crown on her head too. She places her hands on her face, admiring the way her skin is soft like silk, void of any imperfections that brought her insecurities to a torturous level. Her eyes seem bigger, brighter, no longer surrounded by dark circles, rather framed by long and voluminous lashes she envied men for because they never knew how to appreciate their god given beautiful eyelashes. And then her fingers grazed her lips, slightly more plump, pink and gentle, definitely improved in comparison to her previous small lips. Her body is curved, yet still short in stature, but she didn't care as she admired the incredibly beautiful dress that clung to her body - like melting gold on earth and a perfect fit on all her curves. Twirling, she caught the ends of her hair spark purple under the light, a little reminder she belonged to Hecate's bloodline.

Running her hands down her dress and to her waist, Y/N straightened up and lifted her chin, smiling to herself for she finally made the ultimate sacrifice to be with the ones she loves. It would be a sure way to not only spend an eternity with her two gods, but have her children grow up in safe environments, nothing they could need for she could provide them with everything. She wondered what her power is, hoping she doesn't find out by accidentally making a mess.

The Underworld

Hermes paced back and forth, trying to find the proper words as Hecate and Yashi stared at him with unyielding glares sent his way. Neither of them understood why would the new king summon them, especially with the way they left things in life, and in death.

"I've done you both wrong." He stops, turning toward them, his hands set behind his back as they looked toward one another in shock and confusion. To hear Hermes even wanted them around was a surprise, let alone hear him confess to something for that part seemed almost impossible.

"Wait. Is this some new form of torture?" Hecate interrupted, looking around wildly like something would jump out at her any moment now.

"What? No!" Hermes shook his head, stepping down from his throne in order to make himself seem more remorseful and approachable. To be perfectly honest, he did feel bad. After going over their history, he's learned exactly how badly he messed up.

After taking Yashi's virginity and her heart, she had lost the one thing that mattered back in the day. At that time, men valued a hymen more than beauty in a woman, reducing her chance of love and moving on almost to nothing. She chased him off, true, but had she let him stay he would have returned to Mount Olympus and she would have stayed a disgraced woman, alone, possibly with child and at that time it was just as bad as a death sentence. He learned she pushed him away in order to take up an offer of arranged marriage her father set up for her. A man, one much older than her who didn't care much about her not being a virgin, had requested her hand in marriage and he was willing to pay a lot of gold for her. She didn't see a way out but to accept his offer and secure her family's standing in society. Not only did she lose her maidenhood, but she also did it with a man who wasn't of her religion nor did he have money to redeem that fact - basically, no one in her family would have approved of Hermes. But this man...he was kind to her and he protected her. She loved him, but she was never in love with him. Hermes knew he robbed her of the chance to have a true love in her life and she never forgave him for having to live without it.

Hecate on the other hand married another. By force, not a choice. She married Helios, the former god of Sun and all Apollo had attained once he was of age. He was a bitter god, banished to Tartarus and his hate for Apollo is spoken of in every story ever told of him. He was anything but kind to Hecate, the former wife of his worst enemy's brother. He abused and used Hecate as he pleased over the centuries, having a single child together. She, a woman who despised cheating, turned to mortal men for love and affection, having many more kids over the centuries that allowed her bloodline on Earth to continue. But he understood why she hated him. Not only did he cheat on her even though she loved him, which he couldn't even fathom at the time. But his banishment caused her to suffer even more ever since and he didn't blame her anymore. He just wanted to find a way to help her.

"I've done terrible things, caused horrid things to happen to you and all because I was selfish and crude. I want to change this." Hermes took in a deep breath, turning to Yashi first.

"If you'd like, I can have your soul reincarnated on Earth. Give you a chance of a proper life, a great love and with no meddling from me." He offered, seeing Yashi's eyes widen with the thought of having all she longed for.

"It's the only way I can think of to repay you for all the pain I've inflicted." Honesty was never his strong side for Hermes liked to manipulate, but Yashi could tell he's being truthful. One nod on her behalf, a single clap of his hands and Yashi was gone, sent back and reborn as someone he knew would have a much better life than the one she was dealt before.

"What can you possibly give me to fix everything you've done? Cause there isn't anything you can do to undo centuries of hurt, Hermes." Hecate's spiteful tone isn't lost on him, but he knew he could help make her afterlife somewhat better.

"How about I end your marriage with Helios by sending his soul to Chaos and you can finally be free of him? I'll reunite you with your children and send Persephone to live with you on the Isle of the Blest while she's here too?" He offered, raising both eyebrows once he noticed her usual frown is erased, exchanged by absolute shock. She didn't even know he noticed how close she and Persephone were, nor how badly she longed for her children to be with her for she didn't raise any of them. After so many men screwing her over, she was ready to be far from them and just enjoy the afterlife.

"I...That...would be nice. I'd like that very much."

Atlantis

"I'm sorry, your majesty, but there has to be an earthquake on daily bases. It's a rule Mother Nature set in place a long time ago. It's to keep the humans fearful of the gods, loyal to us."

Apollo turned around swiftly, his usually calm and beautiful face now twisted in rampant rage, uncensored as he feels his mouth foam unrestrained.

"I know! But I said a minor earthquake in the middle of the Pacific! Not right on the shore of one of the greatest cities!" His thunderous voice echoed the castle, spreading throughout Atlantis. Returning to his kingdom only to find his people have decided to set a natural disaster to happen without his approval had set him off and he had already sentenced more than a dozen to do some time in the Underworld. His brother would surely find a proper way to punish them for taking lives that weren't on the list quite yet.

"There is a list of mortals who are meant to die and none of them were on there! You've put a ripple in the timeline and destroyed the butterfly effect. We have to contact Chronos to rewind time just to erase your idiotic mistake."

And he did. Apollo had managed to strike a deal with Chronos to rewind time, saving a lot of lives. He knew he'd have to take lives in his rule, some would be evil and some innocent, but it's the heaviness of his job. He's no longer just Apollo, he's the new Poseidon and he has to preserve the butterfly effect and the veil of this reality humans call life. Without it, they'd all perish. And as hard as it is, he felt comfort knowing he won't be alone in the task. He'll have a good woman to keep him company, his brothers and sisters to keep him sane and his children to keep his heart light.

Mount Olympus

On cue, a dark cloud of mist appeared at the same time as a portal made solely of water, allowing the brothers to return to their home and see their love. They expected to find her in bed, nearly screaming at the top of their lungs once they found it empty, a smooth, kind voice coming up from behind them.

"Missed me?"

They turned around instantly, taking in the way immortality had sculptured their beloved just a little differently, giving her the poise and grace every goddess possessed, but keeping the merciful look behind her sweet doe eyes.

"More than anything." They said at the same time, rushing toward her, pulling her into a soul-crushing hug, each of them pulling her closer to them, but they couldn't really hurt her anymore. Not now, not like before. She could return the hug wholeheartedly and they could truly feel her press into them, let her lilac scent rush their senses and render them slaves to her will.

Parting, she smiled up at them, still unable to get used to her enhanced vision, seeing every little line of perfection and imperfection on their bodies, appreciating their beauty even more.

"I still can't believe you drank it!" Hermes exclaimed, claiming her left hand as his.

"I was sure you'd take the kids and go back." Apollo agreed, deciding the right hand is his as he intertwined their finger.

"Why? After all, I choose you. Every time. No matter what happens, I choose you. The kids will always come first now, but if once choice gives me all four of you, why would I let it pass?" She cocked her head to the side, her lips twitching into a small smile as they both caressed her with their eyes alone.

"So, you, uh...chose us both then?" Hermes wets his lips, wondering just how difficult this will be, knowing she can't fight her heart anymore.

It's humans who have decided monogamy is the right thing. It's the humans who claim that love should be restrained and placed in one person. But love doesn't work like that. You can't choose who you love nor is there a scale that will decide who you love more. The heart can only feel, love, it knows no rules of social conduct nor does it care. And her heart, pure as it is, has fallen for both of them.

Neither of them could ask her to break it in half and dispose of the part that held one of them inside. They couldn't handle losing any piece of her, not after they thought they had lost her entirely.

"I know it's wrong." She closed her eyes, willing to defend her choice, but Apollo placed his index finger against her lips, stopping her effectively.

"It's not. Not here. Not when we both have children with you. It will be hard for us to learn to share the time we spend with you, but ultimately, we don't care. We all have a kingdom to take care of now, each of us busy at one time or another, taking care of the world's fate or our children. We'll take turns, giving the other to spend time with you." Apollo reassured her, kissing her cheek.

"So, that means", she starts, Hermes interrupting her.

"That we choose you too." He smirks when she frowns, pursing her lips. Without a warning, she huffed, her hands emitting a light blue flicker that instantly dropped both brothers to their knees at her side considering they both held onto one of her hands - like a jolt of electricity that forced its way through their bodies.

"I don't like being interrupted." Y/N corrected Hermes' behavior, smirking at the way both their eyes widened and their mouths opened.

"Holy hell, I'll follow you to the end of the world woman!" Hermes blurted out, mesmerized by her for she's finally in her full form and glory.

For the longest time, he was sure this story wouldn't have a happy ending or it wouldn't end happy for him to the very least. He had believed he was past saving, unlovable, too hateful to ever have someone like Y/N love him.

Apollo had a similar thought. He was certain he'd never know love for he never loved anyone as much as his family and himself. He was selfish and self-righteous, someone who would end up alone for all the sins he had committed. Who knew he'd find a woman to not only love him, but bear him children?

"Is it weird that I liked this?" Apollo chuckles, not nearly enough vigil after the shock to notice Valerie as she jumps at him, tackling him to the ground with a high pitched "DADDY" leaving her mouth. Henry didn't hesitate to do the same to Hermes, rendering him powerless on the marble floor, stealing glances at Y/N who had the widest, sweetest, most happiest smile on her face while she watched all the pieces of her heart before her.

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Tags: @mutuallynotmutual @lanadeldolans @xalayx @accalialionheart @gia-kerks @historyheart  @heyits-claire @daddygraysonsbitch @fallinginlove-16  @lanadeldolans @beautifulfound @thearachna-kid  @dinnerwiththedolans  @graydolan12 @justanotherfangurl272 @dxlansfxck  @godlydolans @flowery-dolan @dominatedolans @buckysjuicyplums @ethanhes @dolandolll @dolanstwintuesday @peacedolantwins

[marginalgloss]

the republic of heaven

Back in 2000 when The Amber Spyglass came out I feel like there was not so much news in the world. At the turn of the millennium we seemed to be entering a more optimistic time. Tony Blair was elected in 1997 at the head of a liberal Labour government, and while it may be true that Blair would never be so popular again as he was in the opening years of his premiership, the Tories seemed hopelessly outdated by comparison. They were still the nasty party of old, while the country was ambitious, outward-looking, internationalist. Explicit racism and homophobia were no longer tolerated. We were Europhiles, but we weren’t part of Europe. There seemed to be a lot of money about.

At home there were occasional horrors — the murder of Jill Dando, the homophobic pub bombings in London, Harold Shipman — but they were somehow isolated, disparate, inexplicable. They were exceptional. There was the war in Kosovo, which set a template for liberal interventionism in years to come. The economy was trucking along; unemployment was low; for the first time there was a national minimum wage. I skim the headlines today and it seems like such a comfortable time by comparison. Perhaps I am remembering it wrong. But when the years to come would bring a spiral of endless war, recession, and one of the most significant declines in relative generational living standards, I’m not sure there is any need for rose-coloured glasses.  

Into this comes The Amber Spyglass, which is basically quite an optimistic anti-authoritarian novel. It was also the book which, for a handful of reasons, really brought Philip Pullman to the world’s attention. It was this which ensured that his name still lurks around the list of authors most frequently ‘banned’ in America, and which in the years after its publication would attract scores of avid cheerleaders and detractors. Inevitably most of those had no interest with engaging with the substance of the book itself. Instead, it became a sort of battleground: on one side, those convinced that religion was under attack from an educated elite; on the other, those who were committed to reducing the role of religion in public life, discourse, education, and so on. It is worth revisiting this typically excitable interview and profile by Christopher Hitchens for an example of how these novels were talked about. 

To call the novel ‘optimistic’ might seem surprising, because much of it is shrouded in scenes of gloom and suffering. But when I think of the tone of the novel as a whole, it is pastoral. When the world isn’t tearing itself apart the language seems more lyrical than in either of the two preceding books. Some of that is to do with the perspective, which now has at least three (and sometimes more) main characters to follow. This means that a sense of distance, of floating high above the many worlds of the story, becomes necessary. But it’s also that the reader has a sense that this book is going to be about the promised war against the heavens outlined in The Subtle Knife, and it’s likely the reader will also understand that this is a war that must be won. 

It feels like a world of binary opposites. Even characters who seemed villainous in the previous novels are here redeemed (at least in part) so they can be mustered against the ultimate figure of the ‘Authority’. A certain amount of good versus evil is likely in any book for children, but here things are now cast explicitly in terms of these two sides squaring up against each other. And taking sides is a matter of decision, not of belonging. This is a book where angelic figures can decide to fight alongside men, and where demonic harpies can be convinced not to consume the souls of the dead because they want to hear their stories instead. It’s plausible in terms of oldest storytelling traditions, where it is possible to talk one’s way out of anything — where the role of storyteller gives a person the ultimate kind of authority.   

Is the capital-A ‘Authority’ in these novels intended to be absolutely synonymous with God? I’m not sure. The book is explicitly anti-religion in the sense of being anti-church, but the forces of the Authority (and the being himself) do not seem to represent any kind of absolute power in the universe. The Authority is not omnipotent nor omnipresent, nor is he very much of a creator or a father-figure any more — he is a despot, but he is also somehow irrelevant. Like a shrivelled relic, he is vastly reduced when we finally meet him. The worst aspects of his regime seem like the calcified remnants of decisions long since made and now barely remembered, like the afterlife that has become a giant prison camp. In fact it’s the abolition of the afterlife, not the death of its creator, that’s the only really significant consequence of the fall of the Authority. 

So if God isn’t in the Authority, then where is he? In spite of the tendency for atheists to want to claim the author for one of their own, it seems like the heart of these novels is not in pure humanistic rationalism, but in a broader sort of pantheism. The idea of ‘Dust’ is the closest thing to a true divine presence here. It could be characterised as something akin to a spirit which moves through all things. It is ‘conscious’, and though it’s hard to determine what this means in practice, we know that it is not indifferent to humanity. It’s not like a host of little thinking homunculi (although Mary did have a whole conversation with it on a computer back in The Subtle Knife). But it wants to persist. It would seem to be the force that drives the Alethiometer. It has intentions.  

The counter-argument to this would say that Dust isn’t divine at all — it exists at the bleeding edge of science, and has nothing to do with faith. It’s a material thing. It’s not a spirit. But I don’t know that this is especially convincing. The books often try to equate Dust with quantum mechanics, but this doesn’t entirely seem to add up — these are particles which are somehow small enough to slip through gaps between universes, but big enough to see with the naked eye. Everything about Dust seems too convenient from an authorial perspective. It’s as though someone took everything indefinable and unique about evolved human (and non-human) consciousness and made it into a quantifiable thing and then said: there, without this thing we are no longer what we are. It’s an easy solution to the hard problem.

It the article linked above, Hitchens described the Alethiometer and Will’s knife as ‘tools of inquiry and struggle, not magic wands’. This is only half-right. Clearly they aren’t tools like a microscope or an X-ray machine. Both items are bonded to their owners through an innate sensitivity that has little to do with rational enquiry or rigorous method. The Alethiometer is even compared to the I Ching at various points. It seems wrong to mistake ‘inquiry’ here for the scientific method; it has much more in common with ‘negative capability’, a term which is actually quoted in The Amber Spyglass — the ability to pursue truth and beauty via one’s innate sensibility, to ‘see feelingly’ through a fascination with a sort of natural mystery, and not to depend exclusively on reason and knowledge.  

This leaves the reader in an odd sort of no man’s land between the armies who supposedly either adopted or despised this novel. A hypothetical arch-rationalist might find it difficult to accept all of what they find here without rolling their eyes at some of it. Negative capability does not sit comfortably alongside the scientific method as a tool, but nor does it have much to do with priests and popery. And yet it is a sort of inspiration, and in that respect I think it comes closer to a religious experience than it does a rational one.  

The problem with this is that it is not possible to get any sense from this novel of what it means to be religious, or to believe in a higher power, or to be ‘spiritual’ (choose your own euphemism). There is Mary Malone, but while I like Mary’s story here, her account of her early life in cloisters and later conversion/defection is unsatisfying. We have no sense of doubt, of anguish, of guilt — it is an all-too-straightforward seeing of the light. Will is arguably more complicated, more conflicted, but for the most part he never seems to have to make any difficult compromises. If he ever loses out on anything by abandoning his mother to travel through a whole set of alternate universes, we aren’t told about it. 

What if Will made the wrong call? What if he weren’t so trustworthy? He is, in a way, the lynchpin of the whole story. For all Lyra’s good intentions and inner strength, if it weren’t for Will, Asriel would have failed and nothing would have changed. So Will must be made to work. Yet it often seems as though he doesn’t want anything for himself, except perhaps to be with Lyra. It’s interesting to wonder what might have happened if Will weren’t quite so faithful (for want of a better word). 

But it’s inconceivable in the world of these books that anyone could possess negative capability and then use it for anything other than a pursuit of — well what exactly is being pursued, anyway? What is Asriel’s goal, above and beyond the overthrow of the Authority? There is vague mention of something called ‘the Republic of Heaven’ — a heaven on Earth, as it were — but today that phrase can only make me recall the idea of ‘Outer Heaven’ in the Metal Gear Solid games. It’s difficult to discern any latent irony lying in wait for the reader in this case. Will whatever replaces the Authority be just as bad, eventually? Perhaps, but again, the vibe of optimism in this novel is so strong it feels odd to impose doubt on it from elsewhere.   

The paradox of The Amber Spyglass is that while the explicit ‘moral’ of the novel is set against organised religion, it cannot help but describe the world in terms originally set by religion. (A very basic reading might declare the novel invalid for this reason, for much the same reason as a socialist might be declared hypocritical for buying a smartphone.) It isn’t just that there are angels, or that the story of Adam of Eve is central to the thing. It is the journey through the world of the dead and back. It’s the arc of redemption and overthrow. 

At times it feels like this book is re-fighting a battle that was begun hundreds of years ago in the English reformation. In the pursuit of humanistic knowledge, a godlike figure is re-cast in the guise of an Authority who can be overthrown, and cast out of our land, and even killed. And all for the sake of nothing especially certain, nothing at all new in political or ideological terms, except a sense that we would be more free — that we would be better off without. Is it better to eject the columns of the dead into a kind of oblivion than to consider any improvement to their position? I don’t know. Perhaps things seemed simpler twenty years ago. 

[derpyslurpy-da-derp-master]

Why Emotionally Abusive Dads In Disney Is A Serious Problem

PLEASE SPREAD THIS. LET EMOTIONAL ABUSE VICTIMS KNOW THAT THEY ARENT ALONE AND THAT THEIR ABUSE ISNT OKAY.

So. Let’s get this outta the way immediately, I had and still have an emotionally abusive father myself and it took me a very long time to realize I was being abused. Why? Because I saw so many dads in movies I watched act exactly like him. Because to a kids brain, seeing these Emotionally abusive characters put in a positive light in the end made me think it was normal and okay. But it’s not. Not by a long shot. Because of this I let myself be victimized by my father over and over again, because I thought it was okay. And I just know that other kids with emotionally abusive fathers are growing up with this same skewed perception of morality because a movie said these abusive men are good parents. And before you go ‘What emotionally abusive parents?’

What these characters have in common?

Dream Crushing. Telling their children they can’t pursue their dreams. Neglecting them. Solving arguments with shouting. Not thinking about what their child must be feeling. Destroying or attempting to destroy things their child loves/cares about.

These kind of characters are the reason I thought my emotional abuse was okay.

Now, the reason it was so potent in making me okay with my abuse was because a lot of the things these guys do hit close to home. 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve feared for my well being when his temper rose to Triton levels. I can’t tell you how many times my dad’s treated me nicely when I’m doing what he wants like Moana’s father only to snap at me the second I try to be who I really am. I can’t tell you how many times my dad has been like Remi’s father, telling me that i’m crazy if I pursue my dreams as an artist, saying it’s useless, treating me like garbage because I kept doing what I love. I can’t tell you how many times he’s outright abandoned me the second I’m under scrutiny that he doesn’t want to deal with like Buck Cluck does to his son.

I’ll start with the first and most violent of abusive fathers I've listed; King Triton. He’s one of two men on this list that tried to (and succeeded) destroy(ing) something his child cares about, and by that I mean everything his daughter cares about short of murdering Flounder. Like... The scene in Ariel’s grotto ties by stomach in knots every single time I see it because it’s so familiar and so harsh and just... I can’t even put it into words. This scene makes so many emotions go through me, both because of the scene itself and the memories it brings to the forefront of my mind. I’m not going to say anymore because I’d rather not throw a pity party for myself. But this is absolutely the prime example of an emotionally abusive father in Disney, he spends most of the movie literally trying to control Ariel who shows many of the signs of an emotionally abused child. And this... This scene is just the icing on the already toxic relationship.

Tritons not the only one trying to legitimately destroy something his kid cares about, when watching Moana I had serious flashbacks to the aformentioned scene. I already was going ‘great another emotionally abusive dad’ when I saw how the main conflict of the first half of the movie was literally Cheif Tui forbidding his daughter from being herself, something that a lot of emotionally abusive parents do to keep control of their children. But then, this happened. 

He... He wants to burn the boats. He wants to burn the boats Moana had found and chucks the Heart Of Tafiti as far as he can, something of great importance to his daughter. This man is literally pulling a Triton, but in this case he doesn’t get the chance because he tossed the Heart where his mother’s walking stick had dropped. Think about that for a moment, if he hadn’t thrown it right there, He would have been too busy burning boats while his daughter was crying ‘NO!’ to be with his mother on her deathbed. That is how far Tui would go (Moana pun unintentional) to say ‘You can’t be who you are because I say so’ to his child. 

Django isn’t violent per-say, but he definitely is controlling and NOT a good father to Remi.

This guy refuses to let anybody do anything even remotely different from him, Emile mentions at the beginning of the movie that Django would be upset if he saw Remi walking on his hind legs. Yes, you read that right, this guy would be very upset at his own son if he dared to do so much as to walk on his hind legs. That’s how controlling he is. 

And when Remi is found alive at first Django’s nothing but happy that his son is alive, but the second Remi reveals just how much he’s grown as a person away from his father’s suffocating watch Django’s on him again and being even more adamant then before on telling his Son who he can and can’t be.

He goes so far as to take him to a pest control storefront with Rat Carcasses in Mouse Traps hanging from the display to make his point of ‘Humans can only be bad because they hate us and you’re wrong.’ He shows his child dead bodies of other rats killed by humans. To make a point.

Remi rightfully takes every opportunity to be away from his dad, and thankfully had a much better role model in Chef Gusteau who taught him how to create things in his own way and that his father was wrong about the world, and thank god for that, if Remi listened to his father Ratatouille wouldn’t be my third favorite Disney Movie.

Ohhhh Buck Cluck. Where do I even begin. Well how bout with the fact that the Youtuber MysteriousMrEnter hates this guy so much he would ‘Urinate on his grave given the opportunity’ and is from one of the most despised Disney Movies of all time which is very bad/offensive like half the jokes are ‘ha ha this guys fat’ or ‘ha ha this girls ugly’ or ‘ha ha bullying and maiming’

Well Buck’s definitely not the same as these other guys... And by that I mean he neglects his son and abandons him to avoid the embarrassment of having Chicken Little as his son. Oh, and he only ever acts like he loves him after he does good in baseball since Buck wants to re-live his glory days through his son and if he can’t do that his son is dead to him. He. Is. SO EMOTIONALLY ABUSIVE. He neglects his son and makes his son feel absolutely worthless, he abandons him when he needs his dad the most, all for what? Because he doesn’t want to be associated with his own son??

Every one of these abusive dads has a happy ending and is ‘redeemed’ because they help their kid somehow in the end. Every. Single. One. And the movie acts like the abuse didn’t happen in the first place or that them occasionally being nice makes the abuse okay. It’s already hard enough to get away from Emotional Abusers, it’s even harder when they’re not awful all the time to make you think you’re exaggerating what’s happening to you, and it’s even worse with movies reinforcing that you are exaggerate since these abusive dads are put in a positive light at the end. This entire hot-cold attitude is how Emotional Abusers keep their victims from leaving or getting help. (This push-pull/hot-cold technique is also the same technique used by cults to keep their members from leaving.)

We need to stop letting abused kids think their abuse is normal, we need to stop normalizing abuse.

But, to end on a positive note, here are two Disney Dad’s that gave me some hope and a glimpse of actually good and healthy Father-Child relationship. These dads were genuinely really great parents that were very good examples for their kids and poured all their love into them, and that would be Mufasa and Tiana’s father, James. I mean both of them are dead and have little screen time, but that’s what happens when you aren’t an antagonist I guess.

In the Lion King, there’s a moment that is set up exactly like the aforementioned ‘kid does something they were told not to do which makes emotionally abusive dad lash out at them and/or destroy something they really care about’ that was highlighted with Triton and Tui. Simba just endangered both himself and Nala, Mufasa is clearly upset about it and says he needs to teach his son a lesson. Simba looks like he expects to get the aforementioned treatment of anger and i’m assuming this is the first time he’s ever truly upset his dad. Except...

Mufasa doesn’t shout at him. He doesn’t try to destroy anything. He isn’t upset because his child dared to defy him, he’s upset because his child put himself in danger, he was afraid for his well-being. Instead of shouting angrily, Mufasa takes this opportunity to take his ‘teach my son a lesson’ comment literally and teach Simba something. He teaches him what it truly means to be brave, they resolve their tension by the two being lovingly playful like a father and son should be, then Mufasa decides to teach him something else, about the past kings, and about how he’ll always be there for him. Instead of punishing his son harshly, he taught his son how to be better. That is a good dad.

James on the other hand doesn’t even have the hinting of the usual abusive dad trope to subvert it, James is just that- A really good, supportive dad.

Like, there are SO MANY bad dads in Disney specifically that try to keep their kids from their dreams because they don’t approve or understand, here James is nothing but supportive of Tiana’s dream, in fact they share the same dream of opening up a restaurant they can call their own. James sees her talents and he nurtures them so she can pursue her own dream, he instills the value of hard work and good cooking into his daughter, but not by force like the other dads on this list, because as Mama Oddie says, ‘You’re your daddy’s daughter, what he had in him you’ve got in you!’ Tiana grew up to become the amazing woman she is in large part because she had such a supportive, nurturing father that pointed her in the right direction. 

So, in conclusion. We need more good examples like Mufasa and James, we need to stop pretending emotional abuse is okay, because it isn’t. Let’s set future generations good examples that they don’t get in their own homes.

[survivaltricks]

------- ( alicia vikander + cisfemale + she/her ) — there’s a rumor running around about a survivor called danneel laundin. they are said to be twenty nine years old, from lowell, oregon , and have been labeled the arcane. fitting, considering that they are reported to be equanimous + versatile, as well as aloof + uncompromising. they reside in fort point and are a deputy. apparently they are a bisexual + scorpio. worn leather,  empty bullet casings. 

hiya babes ! i’m nae, she/her, 19  --  although :/ i have all the traits of a Grandma™ -- i’m currently studying animal studies at college,  i’m from good ol’ straya, and my favourite past time is Destroying the lives of my ocs !  it’s lovely to meet ya’ll ! i’ll be writing danneel laundin, who was loosely based off an old oc that i’ve been playing in hs for awhile now, but i’m so EXCITED so let’s get down to the itty bitty bits, huh ! 

also that . .  .  .beautiful . . .angelic. . . .smile? Fake. don’t trust it, she’s a SNAKE. 

tw. murder, alcoholism.

 born danneel eve laundin   (  call her nell !  )   at the coffee creek correctional facility   (  after mama got arrested nine months prior due to theft   &  fraud offences. n*ce !  )   to parents staffan  &  petra laundin  ---  staffan owned the local lowell hunting  &  tackle  store  and  petra  was.  .  .  .  the  ol’ rapscallion of town  ---  a couple that admitted their relationship was created purely for the convenience rather than affection  &  the child that formed was not one of love, but one from drunken foolishness.  the only two things they managed to agree on was ONE. they hated the thought of being stuck together for the remainder of their days and TWO. they hated the thought of being stuck together for the remainder of their days with a child. 

petra was in and out of the correctional facility for the majority of her child’s life, and danneel learnt not to grow attached to the flighty woman that’s forever leaving  --- many times a toddler shed some tears for the woman that would barely give her a glance when she walked in the front door from a late night or the months spent behind bars. danneel is only young when she learns that a hard heart is a safe heart, and the ice thickens around her own  ---- which is inevitable considering the parental figure she was forced to be raised by. staffan laundin is all sharp edges  &  intimidation, an icy shell and even icier core that never falters, and a man that never shows affection, softness, nor smiles. emotions are absent in this household, and any tears or laughter danneel emits is scolded. he despises her, she can tell, because he wanted a son, not a daughter. 

danneel spends her childhood struggling to gain her father's respect  --- afterall, a girl can’t keep up with him, nor can she be trusted to man his store, or go on hunts. she fights hard to keep up with his pace  &  prove her capabilities, and eventually the constant scowls  &  stern tones from the Old Prude eventually subdue  ;  he teaches her how to fire a rifle, how to track her game, how to navigate the wilderness, how to be HUNTER and not hunted.

danneel is only fifteen when her mother is convicted of second degree murder, and petra laundin pleads guilty to the crime, receiving a lifetime sentence   ----  the laundin’s weren’t a well off family. the store her father owned was a unreliable source of income that often left meals being replaced with whatever game steffan managed to drag home, but following the conviction of petra, the town of lowell refused to purchase off the family who murdered one of the most respectful men in town. reputations run wild, and soon speculations began that it was a family ordeal, and even the father and daughter are shunned.

the remainder of danneel’s school life was brutal, spawning a defensive streak  &  sharp tongue that gets her into more trouble than not. she drops out of highschool, works at her dad’s full time at her father’s store. eventually, she moves one town over; gets a job at buckhorn tavern  &  feels settled  ----  she makes sure visit mom once a year  (  two if she can help it.  )  and her dad every few months. but danneel doesn’t have much sentiment for family, she doesn’t have much sentiment over anything.

following the news of the virus, danneel instinctively retreats to her father who, just like any other visitation, is passed out on the floor due to drink. lowell remains secure for a good week before people start to panic when mrs. kluger decides to take a chump out of her husband down the road  &  the whole town gets taken by the dead  ---  the laundin’s take refugee in the hunting cabin, and do what they’ve done for years ; hide from the world, survive on their own. 

danneel spends a year there, and besides the odd infected that gets caught in a trap or bangs on their front door, that year is peaceful, for the apocalypse. staffan comes home with dinner looking like he’s been through the war  --  scratches line his neck  &  there’s a bite wound on his shoulder  -- and danneel doesn’t wait to put him out of his misery, she pulls the gun on him then and there.

she remained on her own after that tbh. she didn’t join any other camps, avoided interaction with anyone (  was with one chick for awhile tho?? uh , ,her name was blair ?? or brigid ?? briar?? danneel might have left her 2 Die.  ) in fact, she avoided the human species for the entirety of her travel to san francisco, and even then, the thought of  joining a camp? Disgusting, but she took a liking to fort point. found the people who resided there  .  .  .interesting, adopted the title deputy and for the most part does a pretty darn good job, if i do say so myself !

except the moral compass is a little iffy, but it’s Fine. for the most part she’s ok. the other parts she’s a Rude Ass DEVIL who needs to learn to keep her gun in her holster ! gosh.

has a really good sense of judgement tho, , ,not trying to justify her Bad Habits because i disapprove of everything she does, but she’s very much like a hybrid between carol peletier and, , ,Vengeful rick grimes??  

wanted plots.

what up, i have the creativity of a Teaspoon, my dudes  ✌️   i will work?? on my wanted plots page now in more detail ?? but?? 

she’s one Mean Bean, give me someone who pulls her up on her bad social skills !! or scolds her for trying to kill the prisoner, because she saw him do a Suspicious Blink Sequence that looked like morse code and now she thinks he’s a camp SPY

a friend?? what’s that?? more like Moral Support & Mutual Respect. maybe even a drinking buddy?? someone that might have even been able to get some Juicy facts out of her !

Mm. angst. let’s give her an enemy too because that’s always fun ! probably someone she disagrees with?? or took a dislike to?? or she distrusts?? or maybe it’s the other way around. either way, let’s get 'em riled up !

a softie that nell has taken under her wing?? nell isn’t one for emotional commitment, but this person?? why aren’t you standing up for yourself?? here, let me Kill this guy for you--

uh ---- that’s all my brain can handle at this stage. Come Back in 3-5 Business Days For More ! 

[gigilberry-wips]

20 Facts About Charlotte (and family) That The Readers Will Not Be Given In The Story

So here I am trying to organize my thoughts and do some character building in order to answer some questions about my oc that someone was very nice to ask and which I still need to come up with answers for, carry on with your business don’t mind me

(for those who’re sticking around to read this, a warning: this is long as heck)

1. Charlie was known as that kid who’d always be full of questions and giving the adults a run for their money “Why do crocodiles have big noses?” “Where does the moon go?” “Why don’t humans have claws? Aren’t they more useful than fingernails?” “Why do people sleep?” “Why are we supposed to do this? Why can’t we do that?” “Why can’t we ask questions? How would anyone learn things if they don’t ask questions??”

2. In her family she’s closest to her older brother. She doesn’t always share her concerns with him but when she comes to him with her thoughts and questions she trusts his words.

3. One time she read in a book where a meal of grilled cheese and tomato soup was described so delectably that for one entire month she insisted on having that at least once a day (it’s like what happened with me and when I read about the ‘bread and butterflies’ from “Through The Looking Glass” and now if anyone ever offered me a towering stack of heavily buttered toast with an ocean of horrifically sugary milk tea I swear I will devour the whole thing no hesitation). She stopped being so vocally fussed with them after that but she never really got over it. So if, whenever she might see either one of those two (or both!!) in the wilds, be it in person or on television or if she just catches the smell of it, and if you happen to be looking at her already then you just might catch her making The. Biggest. Heart Eyes. Like the love of her life has appeared before her and she is going to run into their arms and both of them will head off into the sunset.

4. Her favorite things to get on Christmas and her birthday are “fun science projects for kids”, or puzzle and strategy games, or books that had riddles, secret codes, recipes, more experiments, and especially made-up languages in them. She’s filled entire notebooks with the languages that she’s learnt from books, from Morse Code to Tolkien elvish, and she can easily recall many of them from memory. She knows a lot of the most common kinds of numerical puzzles and algorithms that have been used, and partially due to that and partially because of how good she is in math she frequently makes computer related jokes about herself.

5. Charlie’s brother is doing an internship at a nearby aerospace museum and planetarium. He’s currently studying for a degree in astronomy and engineering and works as one of the technicians there, and about once a month Charlie’s family goes to visit and have a picnic nearby and spend the day there. Since it’s so close, her brother is able to go from home and usually drops her and her friends off to school in the mornings in his old, beat-up car because he’s a good brother and he loves his sister.

6. One time when Charlotte was little (about 7-8) she was loaned a textbook from her school about famous people that she had to do her homework from. Her brother caught her scribbling in it with a pencil one time and found out that she was replacing all the pronouns of the historical figures in it (Mr. Miss Alexander Graham Bell, he she invented, Mr. Miss Albert Einstein, he she discovered, etc.).

(She didn’t really have the words for it back then but essentially she was doing this because all of these Oh So Important People Of History(TM) Who Did Oh So Important Things(TM) were different from her and she was very strongly aware of that and it made her really, really angry. She thought that if the only thing anyone was ever going to teach her was White Man History(TM) and that’s the only thing that ever existed since the dawn of time and that’s the only thing she’d ever learn then she wasn’t just gonna sit there and swallow that like the rest of her classmates, thank you.)

The next day he bought her a book about famous women in history from all around the world. She read it cover to cover and has kept that book with her to this very day. It’s got pictures like this in it too :D -

[image description] Three women (left to right: Indian, Japanese, and Syrian) who graduated from the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886

This is also one of the reasons why she likes Star Trek so much, and why she wants to learn so many languages.

[Edit: if anyone’s wondering, her brother’s the one who erased the pencil marks from her textbook. He told her since she’s the one who did it then she should be the one to remove it. But she refused to do it and she did not say sorry either. He knew she’d get in trouble if he told his parents or anyone about it, or if it was left alone, so he sat down with an eraser and methodically went through the book with it himself.

Charlie neither offered to help nor stopped him (she could’ve if she’d wanted to, she had cheeto crumbs on her fingers and she could’ve smeared them in the book or poked her brother with them but she didn’t); she just attached herself to his side and quietly glared because that textbook is Enemy #1 and no one should touch it as his hand patiently went through page after page and removed all traces of her vandalism]

7. Charlie loves her hair. When she was little one of her favorite shows was My Little Pony (don’t tell anyone but she still has a soft spot for it) and she wanted to have bright, colorful hair just like the other ponies did. One of her cousins was very fashion savvy and when she told her this, her cousin showed her all the fun hairstyles she could do with her own hair instead. She’s been growing out her hair ever since. Now Charlie and her brother are Long Hair Siblings(TM). :D

8. On the other hand, Charlie despises make up. When she was little she noticed that almost the only people that were on make up advertisements were white women, so in her head she thought that meant those pretty women owned the make up companies, right? Well, she looked it up and learned that the people who really owned the companies were not those women but instead ugly old men and that was when she came to the conclusion that advertisements are all full of lies and not to be trusted (also she learnt later that silicone rubber is used in making water proof mascara and her brain is forever scarred with that knowledge and now so is yours :DD)

9. When she got her first loose tooth she heard about the tooth fairy and how she takes teeth and leaves money. So her natural course of action was to look up the price of human teeth online. Then she took the case up with her father and told him all about her findings and how the tooth fairy was basically scamming everybody and should not be trusted. He found this entertaining enough that the morning after she lost her tooth she found a 2 dollar bill under her pillow. She kept it away safely and once she had enough “tooth money” she bought a whole set of glitter gel pens with it.

10. The number of times Charlie’s gone to a party can be counted on one hand, and that’s only because she was forced to go. One such house she’s frequented is one of her aunt’s and after all these years the only name she knows from there is the cat’s, whose name is Toast but she thought that was boring so in her head she renamed her as Clementine. She hasn’t told anyone else that she’s never learnt anyone else’s name but she has the feeling her brother knows.

11. She loves cats. She loves them so much. She was always such a solemn and serious little girl but the moment she saw a cat it’s like watching a toddler wandering after a butterfly. Abso-lutely adorable. She has these knitted cat socks and 2 cat plushies (one more worn than the other) and when she was 11 her parents let her and her brother adopt an orange kitten and she got to name it Tigger after one of her favorite childhood characters. In her friend group there are so many cat puns surrounding her. So many. (half of them are her own btw)

12. Charlotte is bisexual. I remember reading somewhere that it’s unrealistic to just have one lgbt kid all by their lonesome in any story worth telling and I agreed with that. I’ve also heard about the “disaster bisexual” troupe. In my cast of characters the one that fits it the most is Josie, so me being myself I flipped that troupe and instead made the most calm and collected one the bisexual kid (so instead of a disaster bisexual(TM) what we have is a distinguished bisexual(TM), thank you and good night). It’s not mentioned in the story because this story is told from Laila’s point of view and Charlie hasn’t told anyone about her sexuality, not her friends, not her family, not anyone. She learnt about it earlier than Laila did (when she was 13), but like it’s said in her intro she’s a very cautious and private person and it’ll take her a long time to think about something so personal openly let alone talk about it with anyone. I want to talk about this more in a separate post, and I’ve got a one shot planned that’ll focus on this too.

(Edit: so it turns out Charlie is in fact a bit of a disaster human and when I told her she comes off as smart and polished and good at judging people’s intentions she turned around and told me she also hisses under her breath at things she doesn’t like, lives in her room like it’s one giant nest, and sometimes forgets to eat and i find it too annoying to argue with my strong willed daughter so here we are goddamn)

13. For Charlie, feelings are ... awkward. They’re messy and confusing, and when she’s feeling too many things she needs a lot of alone time to sort through them and understand them. It’s not that she doesn’t feel anything, it’s just that she can’t usually identify what she feels from the whirlwind in her head in any proper way. And when people need comforting she doesn’t feel like she’s the best person for the job. But that’s not going to stop her from trying to help; if one of her friends comes to her with a problem then she’s going to help them find logical solutions to those problems. She knows her strengths and she tries her best to use them.

14. She finds it hard to cry. Even when she’s feeling too many things and she really wants to cry (because she thinks maybe that’ll help her, at least it’s scientifically proven to help) the tears won’t always come. Aside from early childhood, she can count on one hand the number of times she’s cried, and half of them are from when she was exhausted or shocked with sudden feelings. The other times feel random to her and often at odds with each other. (She can’t force herself to cry, she can’t fake her own emotions.)

15. One of the few times she remembers crying was the first time she saw the Aurora Borealis. She saw it in a movie theater, not in person, but to her it was like seeing the real thing. She was little at the time and when she saw it she was just - she was overwhelmed. She was overwhelmed with so many feelings, like happiness and beauty and wonderment. When they came out of the theater and her family saw her still crying they all started freaking out, until she tried to explain it to them (she was really choked up but she tried). She remembered describing it something like, “It’s like seeing music ... Mama, I think I saw music.” she counts this as the one time she expressed her words so artistically she doesn’t know how but she did. it was also one of those rare times she was envious of artistic people for being able to express human emotions so well (there’s that part in The Tale of Despereaux when he said that he “heard honey” when what he’d really heard was music that comes to my mind). Later, she was told what the lights were called and she decided then and there that if she ever had a daughter then she’d name her Aurora (no papa, not from Sleeping Beauty, this is different!). It was also around this time that she really got into learning about space.

16. Charlie’s a night owl. She loves being awake when all the world is asleep. She loves the silence and the clarity she feels in her thoughts when there is no one else around.

17. Charlotte has an “all things pink and glitter” obsession that she never quite grew out of and never really plans to. Her room is pink, her glasses are pink, her stationary is pink, most of her clothes are pink, and her favorite Care Bear and My Little Pony characters are also pink.

18. She got her glasses when she was around 10, and she even got to choose them herself. :D The sad thing was that she was only one of 2 kids in her grade who had glasses and the other one was who she considered to be an annoying prat, but the good news was that at least 3 girls in her year got braces and one of them was nice and called her glasses pretty and also she was the only one who’d done her braces sparkly so there.

19. Most her life she never had close friends. She was always considered too smart and aloof for them. She had her nose stuck in books and she always got the best grades in her year. She was also really good at chess and strategy games and not to brag but she’s even one a few awards for this and this quality was always something that alarmed and frustrated people to no end (read: boys who wanted to prank her and various arrogant, would-be bullies) when she would know all sorts of things about them that they never remembered telling her. What they didn’t know was that she gathered all that information just from observing them and listening to what they said. She’s a strategist and a planner and she delights in knowing more than everybody else, making it so that when she wasn’t purposefully faded into the background, she came off as intimidating and scary, and rightly so. You cross her or try to pull any nonsense around her and she’ll make you regret it.

20. Contrary to what I feel might be predictable for her, it wasn’t Hailey (the friendly and cheerful one) or Josie (the smart and sociable one) that pulled Charlie into Laila’s friend group, but instead it was Laila herself. Charlie might not be good when it comes to feelings, both hers and other people’s, but she’s an excellent judge of character. She doesn’t talk to her peers because she’s categorized them as not being her “type”. She sees them and thinks they’re silly and petty and loud and annoying. She gets impatient with how childish and flighty and apparently short of memory they are, how they haven’t yet decided what they want with their life, how they’re all sooooo fussed about what other people want them to be and how they haven’t made up their minds about who they want to be. Dealing with them is boring and somehow oddly exhausting, so she doesn’t waste her time with them.

She and Laila met through circumstance. And what she immediately got from Laila was that she was someone who was filled with something akin to gentle warmth. She saw someone who didn’t judge or expect things from her. Someone who didn’t raise her hackles or crowd her space, both physically and mentally. She saw a person who didn’t pretend to be something she wasn’t, who didn’t really have anything to hide. Most of all, she saw in Laila someone who went about her day with honesty and good will in her actions towards others, who was genuine and caring. Those are things she’s not often found in other people, no matter their age. It’s something that she’s come to appreciate and respect in the rare, rare instances when she does find it. It took a while, but as she got to know Laila and her other friends better and hung out with them more often, she saw that she found a place where she felt like she could breathe.

[gateofeden]

The Similarities of Ludwig from Bloodborne and Jacob Seed

Short answer? They were both men transformed into weapons, men who were made to be protectors/defenders with no one to do the same for them; they were men put into a position of power where they trained those around them to be hunters/warriors, people who could be ruthlessly efficient to cut down enemies without question–and that responsibility broke them irreparably. They are men to be pitied, who can only achieve true peace in death.

Long answer?

(I’ll be pulling from summaries and gifs seen here and also here. I recommend scrolling down to the gallery to get a good look at some of Ludwig’s attacks to see how impressive he can be.)

Make sure you have this on loop as you read–it’s Ludwig’s themes.

Ludwig was the first hunter of the Healing Church. This means that while the beast scourge was ravaging Yharnam and slowly getting more and more out of control, the Church turned to this man and told him, “Fight the beasts. Keep Yharnam safe.” Jacob was likewise put into a position of having to protect/defend his brothers when they were children, stepping in to take the punishment their father inflicted on them. His protection of his brothers extended so far as to committing arson to keep them safe, and he was dragged off to juvenile detention for it, where he was kept until he turned 18, where he most likely shuffled right into the Army, as he had very little options left to him (read: no options).

Like Jacob, Ludwig took on his role and all the responsibility it demanded–as well as all the horror and hurt and, as we later see in his boss fight, the utter corruption and horrific transformation of his body into something subhuman. This is seen in his first phase boss name: Ludwig, the Accursed. The Accursed. Meaning, something that is cursed, or something loathsome, detestable, despicable, horrible, ghastly. Not even human.

The Whitetails and other Resistance members refer to Jacob as a psychopath, dismissing him as barely human, as just a monster. They despise his motives and his methods and the means he uses to achieve them all. Ludwig was likewise reviled and denigrated by those who didn’t agree with him, but these were two men put into situations that had no good choices. All the choices they had were bad ones, and they still had to make it. “It’s not something I wanted, it was something I had to do.” And they were reviled for it.

Ludwig’s boss fight is our first glimpse at Ludwig in the game, but it is not the first we’ve heard of him. The game has been building him up as this impressive warrior, this beacon of a man who stood firm against the worst of the worst of the worst, monsters and creatures that are so twisted and corrupted as to be barely recognizable as once human. And Ludwig fought them. More than fought them, he struck them down. Ludwig was the first cleric (a holy man) to take up arms in the name of the church, and the man whom regular citizens of the city rallied around and were converted into hunters themselves.

I repeat–he recruited regular citizens to become hunters to fight the scourge. He recruited regular people–civilians–and made them hunters, fierce and fearless. He made them strong. That should be ringing a few bells.

We learn of Ludwig only in snatches of item descriptions, the first of which says:  Ludwig was the first of many Healing Church hunters to come, many of whom were clerics. As it was, clerics transformed into the most hideous beasts. The very people within the church who were made to cleanse it and be emblems of it were the most corrupted. Similar to how Jacob, the leader of the Eden’s Gate forces, was himself a broken, weak man who had to use the Deputy to take out Eli and the Whitetails; a man who knew he was just a sacrifice, who knew he was disposable, his life meaningless, his death nothing to fear.

We find Ludwig’s Greatsword early in the game and can use it as our own weapon. It has a hidden damage stat called “righteous” damage–any creature you fight in the game that is especially corrupt or messed up takes more damage from this sword, because the sword is derived from a holy blade. But it’s not the true holy blade–we only get that after we kill Ludwig.

And guess what you get after you kill Jacob? His weapon–his rifle.

Ludwig’s true holy blade was taken with him into the Hunter’s Nightmare, where he suffers in the River of Blood at its lowest, most disgusting level: the corpse pile. It’s a terrifying, horrible place, similar to the fugue state conditioning Jacob puts the Deputy through. The colors are the same (albeit Ludwig’s arena has a more logical architecture to it), and the threat is the same: you can only kill to survive. That’s it. Kill. Hunt. Slaughter. Survive.

Once we get Ludwig down to his second phase of the boss fight, he collapses to the ground screaming. The camera slowly shifts, and we see a glowing blade in a pool of blood next to him–the holy blade. His eyes open wider: “Ah, you were at my side all along. My true mentor…my guiding moonlight.”

After this, he stands up. We see him lift up the blade and shift into a new battle stance. And then the second phase begins, and he’s no longer a beast screaming on all fours. He’s no longer a monster at all–he’s standing up as a man, and his boss name changes: Ludwig, the Holy Blade.

Ludwig’s attacks in this phase are precise, hard, punishing. He fights like a knight. He fights with dignity and ruthless control. He can lift the blade high and channel moonlight into it, slamming it in beams that burn you, thrusting it through the air in sharp stabs. He’s not just a boss anymore, he’s a warrior, righteous and proud–just as proud as Jacob sounds when he praises the Deputy: You’re a warrior.

It is in this phase of the fight that Ludwig shows himself to be the man all the item descriptions have been hyping him up to be, a man worthy of the acclaim built around his name. But he’s still suffering. He’s still an enemy. We still have to kill him–and he is in the Nightmare, which, as the game tells us, is a realm that was born out of the hunters’ misdeeds. Which means he’s being punished–and Jacob is no different.

Joseph’s eulogy for Jacob mentions how he brought demons back from war with him, how he was always fighting some kind of war, mostly against himself. Ludwig, trapped as he is in the Nightmare, is a boss that must fight hunter after hunter after hunter who comes to confront him, and is likewise stuck in a constant battle.

“War” and “hunt” are comparable phrases between Far Cry 5 and Bloodborne, and the two of them meet in themes by the final words that pass over the screen each time you beat a boss: PREY SLAUGHTERED.

Prey slaughtered. And what does Jacob’s region drill into your head, over and over? Cull the herd. Hunt. Kill.

The Hunters Nightmare is like hell, an endless prison of killing and violence; blood oozes from almost every surface, creatures terrifying and inexplicable patrol every corner, and some of the darkest secrets of the Healing Church are only made known the further you travel in. Ludwig is your first boss, the first obstacle, and the first sign that the Healing Church were worse than the scourge they were fighting, because they made Ludwig. They gave him a task, they made him a tool, they made him a weapon. He was no longer just Ludwig, he was the Holy Blade–a tool. A weapon.

And so was Jacob, and the responsibility for this is shared not just among the Army and his father, but Joseph himself. What Joseph demanded of Jacob, whether Joseph knew it or not, further denigrated this barely composed shell of a man into something even more broken, someone who saw himself as hollow, disposable, empty–a sacrifice.

Ludwig knows himself to be corrupted and beyond saving. He talks to you after the fight, asking you quietly, almost timidly, if his hunters are “the honorable spartans” that he always hoped they would be. You can tell him yes, they are (a pleasant lie), and he sighs happily–”so I did not suffer such denigration for nothing.” He then speaks further, telling you that he was always a little wary of the dark truths of the Church, as well as what his “guiding moonlight,” really was (IMO this refers to the hope he clung to, as well as the arcane, eldritch power of his blade, the very thing that gave him his name) that he knew something had to be wrong, but he didn’t want to know what it was.

“Good hunter, have you seen the thread of light? Just a hair, a fleeting thing, yet I clung to it, steeped as I was in the stench of blood and beasts. I never wanted to know, what it really was. Really, I didn’t.”

He was understandably scared of what that truth would do to him once he discovered it; he preferred to take comfort in the brutal simplicity of the hunt.

Now, who does that sound like?

If you lie to him, Ludwig’s final words to the hunter are words of peace and acceptance. He thanks you, saying he can finally sleep in peace. “Even in this darkest of nights, I see…the moonlight…” If you don’t lie to him, he sobs, broken and miserable: “Just as I feared. Then a beast-possessed degenerate was I, as my detractors made eminently clear. Does the nightmare never end?!“

And even through all this, even after how broken and corrupted and twisted Ludwig’s body is, I still think he has it better than Jacob–because Ludwig at least had hope. Jacob doesn’t.

Jacob’s dying words to you aren’t as broken, but they are certainly bitter and miserable. Joseph saw all this coming; he knew exactly how it’d all play out. Jacob doesn’t care if what he was doing was right–if it was honorable, if it was exactly as God willed. None of that matters, because none of that changes the fact that it still happened. It happened as Joseph was it would happen, and Jacob has no more questions to ask. The nightmare doesn’t end for him–he doesn’t even consider the possibility of it ending because to him, it never did.

Much like how Ludwig is trapped in the Nightmare, freed only if you kill him or lie to him (and let him sleep peacefully), Jacob is still fighting his own war. He never came back–he could never come back. And the only way to free him is to kill him.

And yet, even so, I can’t help but love them, and pity them, and be proud of them–Ludwig more than Jacob. With Jacob I feel pity and sorrow, with Ludwig I feel all of that and real, painful sympathy. Because I’m a hunter, even if I’m not one of Ludwig’s. I’m carrying on his legacy; I see that there were things the hunters had to kill that were beyond men’s capacity to comprehend, and the killing of them likewise diminishes the humanity and overall sanity/peace of those killing them.

With Jacob, he turns me into a killer, a warrior–he trains me, he’s my unasked for mentor–and I have to kill him. He trains me to be the best of the best of the best, and then asks me to strike him down. How can I be proud of him for that? How can I take any pride or joy in killing him?

In this way, he’s also like another Bloodborne boss: Gehrman, the First Hunter (who shows you more mercy than Jacob does). But that’s for another post, at another time. This one is long enough as it is.

[tkwadeblog-blog]

"Fairy Tale Spotlight: Interview with a Demon" by T.K. Wade

T.K. Wade: Well, it's been a while, but the time finally came.

Demon: Yes, not since April. I'll admit that I have been looking forward to this.

TK: Oh, good. I'll admit that I haven't really been looking forward to it at all. I already postponed it once.

D: Any reason why?

TK: It wasn't really you. I just went through some hard things in my life and I couldn't make the time or emotional effort to arrange a meeting with you.

D: You did seem upset when you called to apologize.

TK: Well, I really was sorry. I wanted to do this much earlier. But now you are here.

D: Indeed.

TK: So I'd like to welcome you back to my home.

D: Thank you.

TK: As you can see, I am recording this on my phone to be transcribed later. And like last time, I'll be redacting as needed.

D: I'm sure you will. I read through the transcript of what you called the preliminary interview. It was rather curious what you chose to show and what you chose to redact.

TK: ***REDACTED***

D: ***REDACTED***

TK: ***REDACTED***

D: ***REDACTED***

TK: ***REDACTED***

D: Very well, I won't bring it up again. And just so you know, I really am pleased to be here.

TK: It means a lot to me that you feel that way. Now, I wanted to go over some things you mentioned in the preliminary.

D: Very well.

TK: You seemed to align yourself, to a degree, with humans in that each has value in their own way and is capable of being used. You also seemed to insinuate that humans as well as demons are meant to operate as a collective like the cogs in a machine rather than blatantly as individuals.

[The power went off right about here. We waited patiently for it to come back on, which it did in about a minute. There was a storm outside at the time. We only muttered about it a little, and after I listened to the recording, I decided to keep it off the record as irrelevant. We picked back up as if nothing has happened.]

D: You are skewing what I said a bit.

TK: It's really what I got from it.

D: Let me explain it to you fact by fact. Living things serve a purpose. If they did not serve a purpose, then there would hardly be a reason to have them around. Can you imagine what would happen in the world if everyone simply stopped working? It would be chaos. Human beings as pure individuals are chaotic and unpredictable. That may be fine on a deserted island, but other people do not deserve to put up with such chaos. Unpredictability is chaos. Am I making any sense to you?

TK: I'm trying to understand your definition of chaos.

D: I'll try and paint a picture for you. Have you ever seen an explosion?

TK: Yes.

D: An explosion does not really care what it destroys and what it does not destroy. It just tears a gaping hole in reality and leaves everyone to deal with the consequences. A individualist may, perhaps, be a benign thing, but that which cannot be controlled is a liability. It has the potential to be much like the explosion. The only correction to this problem is to push everyone into being the same. You have to force them into it or else their problematic and chaotic individualism could cause an explosion of a sort.

TK: I appreciate you dumbing it down for me.

D: Oh, it is my pleasure.

TK: I do see what you mean. I really do. But what about the demons?

D: What about them?

TK: Are they treated the same way?

D: We do not have a problem with individuality or chaos. Your problems are not ours. We are superior. Yes, we do, at times, work as a collective but not because we are being forced to. We simply do it because we know that it is the correct way of doing things. Certain tasks need to be accomplished, and we know how to do it without suffering the unfortunate ills of humanity.

TK: And I am sure we often give you trouble.

D: All the time.

TK: You do understand that I don't agree with any of this.

D: I am well aware of where you stand on the matter.

TK: And you could consider my standing on this to be that... chaos you mentioned.

D: Perhaps. It seems a bit more like ignorance to me. I am interested in your work. I don't despise you.

TK: But do you think I would be better off if I adapted to your way of thinking?

D: I think you would do better if you applied yourself to better instruction.

TK: Your instruction?

D: Oh, I don't think so, but I am very good at referrals.

TK: No, thank you.

D: Continue.

TK: Some of my readers were interested in who you are. They may not understand that, from my perspective, you look like a human being.

D: Physically, I am.

TK: But you have no soul.

D: I do not have a soul.

TK: Do you want a soul?

D: ***REDACTED***

TK: ***REDACTED***

D: ***REDACTED***

TK: I'm not bringing that up again.

D: Try not to get too upset with me. I really am happy to be here.

TK: I'll try. Sorry, if I offended you.

D: I'm not offended.

TK: Could you please tell my readers what you do for a living.

D: I invest with the purpose of making money.

TK: Alright, I wanted to say something about that.

D: I am eager to hear you.

TK: I have looked into investments a number of times in my life. It honestly just seems like playing the lottery. Unless you have some sort of insider knowledge, there is really no point in bothering with it. It's all chance.

D: [He chuckles.] It may be chance to the layman. To me, it is merely a puzzle that needs to be solved.

TK: A puzzle requires a pattern.

D: There is a pattern to it. It's not chance. You simply crunch the numbers and produce a solution. You then apply said solution and reap the rewards.

TK: It can't be that simple.

D: But it is. I am always surprised to hear people refer to the stock market as a game of chance. It isn't that at all.

TK: You aren't doing a very good job at making me feel very smart.

D: I wasn't really trying to.

TK: When did you first realize that you were a demon?

D: I was thirteen.

TK: Interesting number.

D: Why?

TK: Okay, before I make myself sound more like an idiot, can you tell me a bit more about what it was like to realize that you had no soul?

D: I think I need to clarify something. It was at thirteen that I was invited into this person.

TK: You were invited?

D: Yes.

TK: By a thirteen-year-old boy?

D: Yes. I was his friend. He offered and I accepted.

TK: [I was having a little trouble getting my words out at this point. I'm not going to type out all my stuttering.] But where is he now?

D: Who?

TK: The boy.

D: He is me. The boy you seem to be referring to is a memory. He allowed me to make better use of him. That was very kind of him. We were friends.

TK: So he's gone.

D: It's just a body. I am putting it to better use than he ever would have. You are doing a rather good job yourself with yours. That's all there is to it.

TK: I can't believe what I'm hearing.

D: Is this upsetting you?

TK: ***REDACTED***

D: ***REDACTED***

TK: ***REDACTED***

D: ***REDACTED***

TK: ***REDACTED***

D: Take all the time you need. I am rather upset myself that you got upset.

TK: I'm fine. I just needed a drink. I was getting a little dehydrated.

D: I understand.

TK: I talked to my friends a little about this whole thing, and I asked them to provide me with questions that I can ask on their behalf. In the interest of time, I am not going to ask all of them but have picked my favorites out of them and narrowed them down to four.

D: Very good.

TK: I just want you to answer each of them as clearly as you can and then we will end the interview for today.

D: Go ahead then.

TK: What do you dream about?

D: As in when I am asleep or is your friend talking about personal aspirations?

TK: Honestly, I didn't even think about that. Let's go with the second.

D: I marvel at the very idea of absolute equality. A perfectly functioning world where humans and demons operate as one towards the goal of indomitable synchronicity.

TK: Just to cover both bases, do you actually dream at night?

D: I do not dream, but I believe I have heard of a demon having dreams before. Generally they are the dreams of the human who once owned the body.

TK: What are the angels to you?

D: [He smiles and chuckles.] No less than than your fathers and mothers. Elders. We listen and as do accordingly.

TK: Do you consider them greater than you?

D: I know they do. I am still more of a proponent of equality.

TK: This is more my own question but is there a difference to you between the regular angels and the fallen angels?

D: [He out right laughed.] Nobody has fallen. That's a myth. The angels are what they are, and we are what we are. We all have our places, and Heaven and Earth would be much better off if we could simply work together and establish a status quo of some sort.

TK: Do you know love, if so what is love?

D: Well, it's really the same thing as desire, isn't it? If you love something, you want it. Humans romanticize it a bit more than they need to. I hear them say they love different things so complacently that a greater meaning seems implausible to me.

TK: Um... Okay. You answered the second half of the question. So can I assume that you... know love?

D: I appreciate the qualities of love--the qualities of which I just detailed. So yes.

TK: So... uh... Okay then. My last question is this: If all your desires were fulfilled what would you do next?

D: Die, probably. If not that, I would promote the status quo. I have no interest in either stopping what I am doing or changing my plans in any way. I do nothing in the name of chaos.

TK: Thank you very much for coming. I may invite you back later on. Would you be interested in a return?

D: Yes. And I will continue to monitor your blog as well as your other works. The experience was fascinating.

TK: Excellent. Have a good day.

D: Goodbye.

[therealdragonnerdagain]

Game of Thrones S7 Ep5

So Jaime was trying to kill himself. I was pretty certain he'd be captured by Dany, but thanks to Bron he made it back to King's Landing. And I hope Bron really does leave when Dany comes because I don't want him to die. I forgot he's another character I love.

Tyrion is really starting to annoy me.

He wants Dany to show mercy but only to the people he likes. He would use her to shield his favorite people and let everyone else die. It's becoming more and more apparent.

I'm really glad Dany is not listening to Tyrion. She's right: she gave them a choice and going back on it would be showing herself as wishy washy and weak. This is war, and this is the way of war. Either you choose a side or you die.

Tyrion is a Lannister and is supposed to be a pragmatist. Instead, he is showing himself to be an idealist. He thinks they can win the war AND spare everyone he likes personally. And . . . it's just not going to work that way.

It's really annoying how they keep calling her army savages. Meanwhile, the people in Westeros have got heads on pikes and are blowing shit up and torturing each other. But no, no, they aren't savages at all.

Jon Snow is behaving the same way as Tyrion. Dany makes the point that Jon has killed thousands, yet he wishes for her to wage war "peacefully."

The reality here is, these men are terrified of the idea of a woman in power. They don't believe she can wield it responsibly, even though every war waged on Game of Thrones so far as been waged by men who ravaged their own countries.

It's really annoying how they're all lecturing her and telling her to be careful. If she were a man, absolutely no one would be questioning her methods. No one.

There's one scene where Tyrion and Varys are scared out of their minds that Dany is becoming her father. It perfectly illustrates everything I just said. When Dany's father did the same damn things with his dragons (before he went mad), no one questioned him. Even when he finally did go insane. Before he went insane, though, were his methods wrong? Was he wrong to burn people instead of beheading them like Joffrey? No one seemed to think so at the time.

Dany is not her father and -- so long as Bran doesn't make her go mad -- she never will be. But she's a woman. So all the men scrambling under her are terrified she can't wield power without going emotional, irrational, and insane.

It was also really fucking annoying to see Jorah come back. Ye gods, I hate him. I hated his gross, mouth-breather expression when Dany gave him a hug. As I said on an older post, Dany seems to show compassion to all the wrong people -- her brother, the witch, and now Jorah. With her brother and the witch, she learned too late that her compassion had been a weakness.

I'm not saying compassion is a weakness. I'm saying showing compassion to the wrong people is a weakness. Varys conspired to have Dany killed and she was very slow to forgive and trust him (which was wise). Jorah was a part of that, and yet he's forgiven so much quicker. And why? Just because Dany knew him longer? That’s insane.

On top of that, Jorah kept forcing his affections on her, kissing her, trying to isolate her from the other advisers and everyone around her so that he could control her. Dany has mistaken his obsession for loyalty, and in the end, if she has another downfall, it will be because of Jorah.

There was a reason Ser Barristan hated Jorah.

I am really, really hoping Dany's eyes are opened about him, but D&D love taking disgusting dudes from the books and making them Nice Guys (see: Tyrion). So I doubt we'll ever see Jorah get what he deserves.

And is it just me, or is Jorah afraid of Jon Snow? He was going to say something to Dany -- possibly that he "loved" her -- then saw Jon Snow coming and quickly took off. Seems like every skeevy guy (Little Finger) is -- rightfully -- afraid of Jon Snow.

As I said on an older post, there is no difference between Jorah Mormont and Little Finger. One is just more openly ratlike than the other. Jorah is an inversion of the knight in shining armor trope in that he is not honorable at ALL.

Arya seems to believe Sansa has a desire to be queen of the North. After watching the scene between them, I think it makes perfect sense. Sansa wanted to be queen of Westeros, but that was taken from her in the most brutal way. And she quickly went from dreams of riches and power to nightmare after nightmare. Now she could be queen of the North if Jon never came home and seems to be preparing herself for the possibility.

It's not bad that Sansa enjoys ruling and is prepared for the worst, but it seems to be something Arya despises about her sister. She just couldn't resist taking a jab at Sansa. Old habits and all that.

So that's where Gendry was? All that time? And why the fuck is he so bloodthirsty?

Gonna be interesting to see if Arya finally bangs Gendry (we all know she wanted to).

At first I was like "Why is Gendry important again? Just because he's the dead king's son?" But now I like the idea of him fighting alongside Jon the way Robert and Ned did -- even if they were wrong.

Gilly pretty much confirmed for everyone that Rhaegar and Lianna ran away and got eloped, but Sam was too hilariously pissed to notice.

So it's true then. Rhaegar and Lyanna were in love, and Robert led his great war to become king because he was jealous and/or because he sincerely thought she had been kidnapped.

Arya and Little Finger spying on each other? I guess Arya is a typical foolish Stark after all. Little Finger clearly set her up to get some information he wanted her to have.

Jorah says something toward the end of the episode that really makes me hate him more.

Tourmond says to Jorah, "Your father hunted us like animals."

And Jorah's response? "You returned the favor, as I recall."

Well, Jorah. You treat people like animals and they will behave like animals.

I hate that Jorah said that because it's always been the typical response of a white person during any discussion about the invasion of America by the Spaniards.

Everytime we try to have a discussion about the genocide and invasion the Natives faced, some racist white person pops up with, "Well, the Native Americans weren't innocent! They slaughtered people too!"

The Native Americans were killing people who were invading their land, raping their women, and enslaving them. And yet, somehow, that makes them just as bad? If invaders weren't trying to colonize land that wasn't theirs in the first place, then their innocent little villages wouldn't have been wiped out.

Ollie's village wouldn't have been destroyed or his family killed if the wildlings hadn't pushed off their own land.

I do sympathize with Ollie. In fact, I think I'm just about the only fan of the show who does. I even have a post about him on this blog stating a few things in his defense.

But at the same time, you can't point a finger at the people you invaded and condemn them for trying to push you back out of their land.

If you invade someone's land, take their much neaded resources, and then force them to get by on practically nothing, then you better be prepared for those oppressed groups to lash back in anger and frustration.

To use another example, this time (lord help me, I can’t resist) a video game one, the human colonies in Mass Effect were being attacked in the first place because humans had invaded batarian planets and kicked the batarians off their own land. The batarians fought back, and humans tried to act like they were "the bad guys" for trying to take back what was theirs in the first place.

As someone who played a Mindoir Shepard, I feel like my Shepard hated what the batarians did to her colony and her family, but at the same time, she didn't foster some shitty racism toward them. She knew that they were individuals. So when Ashley -- a racist -- made the assumption that Shepard was out in space trying to get vengeance on batarians, my Shepard always answered, "Hmm? No. I just wanted to see space."

I loved playing a Shepard who did not become racist due to a few batarians trying to take back their land. Maybe she went through that phase as a child like Ollie, but eventually she grew up and realized that hating an entire group of people for the actions of a few was wrong. And what was more, the batarians position was justifiable.

When I played the dlc where you stop batarians attacking a colony, my Shepard lost her head for a moment, got caught up in memories of Mindoir, and took out her hatred on the batarians. She even told them they were terrorists when one called her a terrorist. For a split second, my Shepard became the racist, angry child that Mindoir made her and she lashed out at the batarians without sympathy, when they explained to her why they were attacking.  

I'm not saying the batarians were right to try destroying that human colony, but their anger and their reasons for resentment were not unfounded, and it's something my Shepard always tried to keep in mind -- even though she failed during that dlc because of PTSD and old memories of Mindoir.

The solution to the batarian conflict was not to slaughter all the batarians, but to arrest the ones attacking colonies. The next step would be to give the batarians their own planets again as reparations for the past. Because humans need to own up to their shit. Rather than just killing the people whose land they stole and crying about “evil” batarian invasions, they should be making amends.And my ME3, Shepard was totally in a position to make that happen.

God, it was great roleplaying Shepard.

Anyway. 

The point I'm trying to make is that white people who respond to the bitterness and resentment of the people they oppress like Jorah often show zero empathy or understanding toward those people, as if the people they stepped on had no right to be angry or lash out.

To anyone who has lived a life of marginalization, riots in the street are a logical conclusion to systemically denying an entire group of people what they need to survive.

Jorah embodies white racist ideology to a T. He embodies misogyny to a T. This is why I hate him, and I hope Tourmond fucking kills him.

But as I said, D&D love their racists, misogynistic Nice Guys, so they'll probably keep Jorah around until the very end. Unfortunately.

So now all these people who hate each other are going on this stupid quest beyond the wall to catch a wight.

Did I mention that this was stupid? Why the fuck does Tyrion think he can win over Cersi's help with proof of the undead? This is tremendously stupid.

If they would just let Dany take King's Landing instead of wringing their hands over her (”Oh no! Girl power! Me so scared!”), the fucking season would be over.

[babblingbat]

Sentient Castle AU (Voltron: Legendary Defender)

Basically, I had this idea a few months ago that the Castle is actually aware.  It’s designed to learn, and we saw from King Alfor’s A.I. that the Alteans have the technology to make this happen.  Anyways, the post is fairly long (read: took me 24 hours to write and get everything to gether from my stray notes to make it even semi coherent), so the bullet points are under the cut.

BASIC PLOT THUS FAR

The Castle starts out as simply being a computer but it learns over time

In the Fall of the Castle of Lions, it feels pain when the Galra crystal takes over

Then it feels guilty because it went against what it was supposed to do (keep the passengers safe and generally don’t be an asshole)

Lance hears the screaming when he’s in the cryo-pod because mind links are everywhere in Voltron for no particular reason, and someone needs to start being aware of the lonely computer

The computer likes to hang out with King Alfor’s A.I. before he goes evil

After Alfor gets deleted, the computer is very lonely because no one talks to it

It decides to help out the Paladins, but before it can do that it (she, I guess, because she’s a ship) needs to Know Things

She starts asking Allura about how emotions work by pretending it’s one of the paladins asking

Allura thinks that it’s Keith because she is 100% certain that he is terrible with feelings and he is also 100% gay

She uses her superb subtlety to try and get the truth from Keith and it goes terribly because he has no idea what she’s talking about

She also wants to know about cooking because that seems like an Organic™ thing to do

Hunk would really like to know who’s asking about his cooking

Whoever it is keeps leaving meals in the kitchen and never eats them

Also she just kind of observes the paladins in general and kind of hijacks the computer systems of any planets they come across to get more information

She is very critical of Shiro’s leadership

After Learning Things, she starts pretending that she has a therapy program in her code

She calls it the Consolation Programme

She mostly talks to Lance and Keith

She is privy to their every thought and just wants to shove them in a closet and make them kiss

She avoids the Alteans because they’ve said that she’s probably a threat

Eventually, Keith mentions the “Consolation Programme” during a meal and the castle is doing the electronic equivalent of hiding curled up in a ball in the corner of the room

“What are you talking about?” snaps Allura. “It isn’t a therapist.  It can run programs and analyze things, but it isn’t alive.” “Excuse me, princess, I actually am and that’s really hurtful.  Can someone talk to me I’m lonely,” replies the Castle.

Over time, she just starts being everyone’s therapist friend

Hunk and Pidge build robot bodies for her because she wants to be more organic

Their first attempt is terrible

They slowly get better and she starts looking more and more human with each version

She wears clothes that Lance gives her because no one knows how to sew and since they wear clothes she wants to wear them too (she bleaches the clothes because her favorite color is white)

Eventually, they make a White Lion for her.  It’s way smaller than any of the other lions, but it accompanies Voltron on missions.  It’s mostly used for scouting and that kind of thing.

She has no idea what the gender binary is because it never comes up

After a while of trying to get Keith to open up, she says “Allura is much better at this”

He responds with “it’s different for girls” and she asks what a girl is

The Castle feels really awkward being addressed as the Castle so Lance names her Castillo because the one thing the paladins lack is creativity.

Castillo is completely ignorant of Earth languages, despite knowing upwards of 100 billion languages spread throughout the stars

She claims she can’t control the language learning program (you know, the one with the dangerous holograms) but in truth, she just likes watching people squirm

Castillo actually can control the artificial gravity and anything remotely related to the main computer.  Gladiator? Check.  Alarms? Check.  Lights? Check.

When the Castle-ship is boarded by Galra, she turns off the gravity and just generally screws around with the controls to beat the crap out of them

The paladins are fine because of their jet-packs

In fact, they aren’t even there, it’s just Castillo alone defending one of the major assets of Voltron

Galra!Keith is a thing in this version (although he could also not be; he’s more of a side plot than a major plot point) By Galra I mean actually turning purple and getting ears because it’s confirmed he is Galra so the normal reactions (that appear in show) would probably happen regardless of whether he turns purple or not...

But based on a very lovely post I can’t find this link which I spent twenty minutes looking for, Keith’s Galra genes get kicked into gear after the Blade of Marmora trials

He gets fluffy and now people are doubly suspicious because ANGST

During the last big fight against Zarkon, Castillo fights using the White Lion but hangs back to help Shiro with overcoming Zarkon in the astral plane

90% of Castillo’s power revolves around her mind links and the computer part of her, rather than the combat elements

Shiro still disappears but she can help find him

She gets pissed because she TOLD HIM not to do this shit but here he is, doing this shit

HOW CASTILLO GETS ALONG WITH HER PASSENGERS

Lance

She’s really supportive of him and they both know what it feels like to be overlooked

Lance tells her about Earth, and she tells him about other planets

He’s trying to add Spanish to her language bank, but it isn’t really taking

Castillo is more or less always happy with him because he found the “humanity,” per se, in her before anyone else and gave her a name

She believes in his ability to lead and rarely (if ever) questions his judgment

She validates him and assures him of his worth

She happens to know a lot about depression and anxiety disorders because it was practically an epidemic at one of the planets they visited

Keith

Keith tells her almost everything because he was one of the first people to take advantage of her friend therapy

In return, she listens to him and helps when he’s planning things

She tends to be a bit of a matchmaker and spends a lot of time trying to get him and Lance together

She realizes early on that he’s Galran but chooses not to say anything to him or the team

She wants him to figure things out himself

Except for the Lance thing, because she has determined that it is a 100% certainty that he is too oblivious to even realize the possibility

She knows how to knock him down a peg if he’s acting cruelly or arrogantly without damaging his self-esteem beyond repair although that’s usually more of a problem with Lance

Hunk

Hunk is mostly just casually interested in her, he’s more interested in building a robot body

Castillo cooks with him, often in the middle of the night because computers don’t sleep and paladins of Voltron can’t be counted on to do so either

He sometimes gushes about Shay and Castillo doesn’t know what else to do but make encouraging noises

She spends a lot of her time with him trying to calm him down enough to get him to sleep and stop constantly worrying

He has nightmares (very vivid nightmares) about his friends dying

He’s normally able to dream lucidly, but not in nightmares

She has taught him various things to help him sleep

Pidge

She and Pidge are really good friends, and their conversations are a lot lighter than the ones with Lance and Keith

Pidge taught Castillo most of what she knows about gender

Pidge also helped Hunk out a lot with the robot bodies but spent most of her time figuring out how to integrate the massive consciousness of the castle with a tiny processor

Pidge and Castillo play board games and D&D together.  Castillo loves to DM, and Pidge does the craziest things to solve her puzzles

Pidge also has a bunch of old television shows downloaded on her laptop, so she and Castillo watch things like X-Files and MST3K when they can’t sleep and Castillo isn’t baking

Castillo comforts and helps Pidge in any way she can when she (Pidge) is missing her family

Shiro

Castillo doesn’t really like Shiro.  She thinks that he does a bad job of leading and is too self-absorbed to pay attention to other people’s problems

She especially despises how he treats Lance and Hunk, so she makes a point of complimenting them and pointing them out around Shiro

She has taught him how to get through his flashbacks without freaking out entirely or shutting down

She is fairly tactical, so she offers up very sound strategies, but he tends to ignore her or not acknowledge that it was her idea

She’s actually trying to figure out how to shut down his arm so that she can force him to learn how to fight without it

She might also be doing it so that she can be spiteful, but she’s not about to admit that

Coran

Castillo is good friends with Coran.  Coran is the only one that listens to Castillo’s problems and she appreciates his open-mindedness coupled with his caution

Coran treats her as just another member of their team and acts like the Supportive Uncle for her

Castillo does like pranking people so sometimes she gets into trouble with him

Coran is predominantly curious about how this happened instead of frightened because of his grandfather

Castillo is also good friends with the talking cubes, but they’re simpler than she is

Allura

Their relationship starts out as pretty rocky because Allura doesn’t believe that Castillo is a sentient being at first and then doesn’t really trust her

But after a while, Castillo figures out how to talk to Allura and tells her about her father’s memories

Allura, as we know, loves gossip, so Castillo tells her harmless things like what kind of music Lance listens to

It’s a bit weird for them because Allura is accustomed to controlling the castle and it acting as an appliance, but now she has to get used to Castillo acting autonomously and questioning some of her worse decisions

When Allura is unnecessarily harsh Castillo has nothing against calling her out on it

TBH Castillo doesn’t really recognize royalty

CASTILLO CHARACTER TRAITS

She wants to be as kind as possible, always

However, she has some priorities, like keeping the paladins safe and happy that will turn her into a Rage Machine™ and all that

She adheres to Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics as her moral code

She wants to fit in with the Paladins and Alteans but knows that she never will because she’s a computer

She’s actually kind of depressed, and sometimes will refuse to talk or just does things without putting a lot of effort into it

She worries about whether or not they’ll shut her down, even though she knows consciously that they value her

Castillo is a she because all ships are, but she’s probably agender

This only serves to make her feel more alienated, but she flat out does not understand the gender binary

She’s sometimes inappropriately mischievous, but she clings to that because it’s a very organic feeling

She makes a lot of bad puns and has a dry sense of humor

Sometimes, however, she is trapped by dad jokes and everything Coran says is funny somehow

She and Keith can have entire conversations sarcastically, and everyone else is five steps behind

She is all for free information and gets in trouble for taking classified documents from random planets

She can be very judgmental and tends to focus on the negatives of people she doesn’t like, making it very difficult for them to redeem themselves

THAT’S ALL I’VE GOT SO FAR BUT I AM WRITING A FIC AND WILL LINK IT LATER ON THANKS FOR READING PLEASE LIKE AND REBLOG (god this sounds like a youtuber fml)

[amerimemedia]

THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS Ultraman, a SciFi series that started in 1966, based on the character from Ultra-Q, a Japanese twilight zone style show, gets a Netflix Original anime based on the manga by Eiichi Shimizu which is a sequel to the original TV series. Produced by Production I.G it shares some visual similarities to Netflix’s other 3DCG anime Ajin: Demi-Human made by Polygon pictures. The Story The story follows a young Shinjiro Hayata a second year in high school and the son of Shin Hayata the current Minister of Defense and retired Ultraman of days past. Shin has lost his memories of being Earth’s giant warrior after the threat of invading aliens has come to its conclusion. Earth, now enjoying a period of peace, lacks a defender as slowly but surely unrest and uncertainty congeals in the secret alien settlements of earth. The SSSP, that is the Science Special Search Party, still operates in secret and deals with an alien that breaks the law and has been “marked for elimination”, a la Men in Black. It’s newest member is our protagonist Shinjiro as he dawns the new Ultraman suit to protect the earth from evil aliens and saving people from dangerous situations. It is also worth mentioning that the anime deviates from the original as it is no longer a fight between men in rubber suits fighting in model cities, causing massive collateral damage and death wherever they fight, but rather becoming Japanese ironman in regular human size, thus making the public believe the hero is but a simple cosplayer in the first act. The story is grittier and more rooted in reality than the original as it explores its themes of responsibility, power and the ability to wield it, ethical murder, and terrorism.  As we follow our protagonist coming to terms with murdering evil aliens, the responsibilities of dawning a hero’s mantle and being able to use his abilities properly, his character becomes more heroic and far less reminiscent of a whiny Shinji Ikari. A bit more time could have been used to develop the relationships between Shinjiro and his father, as he barely gets any screen time as it is and feels like a praise dispenser in the first place, as well as the complicated relationship between Shinjiro and Dan Moroboshi who dawns the mantle of Ultraman Seven. The story moves quite quickly yet never feels rushed due to its extensive use of quieter and slower parts that gives a bit of breathing room to its action-packed fighting sequences. Another caveat of the show is that it spends quite a bit of time on world building which is quite welcome to viewers who never even heard of the original series, and like me, certainly weren’t around at the time to enjoy it. Yet it also has quite a few glaring flaws. The whole season has a few distinct conflicts and set pieces, yet by the time the final one rolls around one are left asking oneself “Wait, what was that all about?  That was a bit sudden.”. In fact, the finale was marred by sloppy writing as it desperately attempts to connect plot threads from the beginning of the season yet it came across as completely forced and an excuse to indulge in some much-needed character development and show off how awesome our heroes are. As far as character flaws go, and I don’t mean the kind that is the hallmark of good writing, Shinjiro seems really incompetent about keeping his identity secret, not out of malice or self-destructive habit, but simply because he can’t keep his mouth shut in front of a girl. Its as if he never grasped the concept of “think before you act”. Another glaring writing flaw is highlighted by the fact that Shinjiro has trouble controlling his inborn superhuman strength despite living with it for 16 years. One would think that at least by then one would have mastery over their own body. Furthermore, part of his character development is that he was initially in it for the glory of being a superhero without all of the strings that come attached with that, spawning a subpar plot of “will he or won’t he ever take up the mantle”. In fact, Shinjiro as a character is barely believable as it stands. On one hand, he seems to barely be able to rub two brain cells together and on the other he is somehow a hand to hand combat master, holding his own against powerful foes. No explanation is given as to why that is the case by the way. Most of the supporting cast is either a walking talking conflict generator or they react to what is happening on screen in a desperate attempt to convey the emotions the audience is supposed to feel. Dan Moroboshi is one of the few characters that break the mold. He despises Shinjiro for his lack of experience yet acknowledges his outstanding talent that makes up for it, making him a lot more interesting and complex than the protagonist. His motivations are far more clear and righteous, even if he won’t hesitate to take out “alien scum”. In fact, I subconsciously only started to tolerate the protagonist when Dan did. The Audio The sound design in Ultraman is quite the treat. Sound effects are good and convincing allowing one to immerse themselves in the show and the soundtrack is great. All the audio is in very high quality, clear, well mastered and not grating or annoying. As a “man of culture” aka. “A massive weeb” aka “dumpster fire connoisseur” I prefer the original voice acting for anime and read the subtitles like a hipster film student watching French movies in an attempt to look more sophisticated for his social circle. Therefore it is not exactly an easy task to judge the voice acting as I don’t speak Japanese. However from what I can discern it seems at least on par with most shows out there. All in all, there isn’t much more to say, the soundtrack has an excellent heroic main theme, the battle theme has some great electric guitar, and quieter scenes get some nice strings and piano treatment. To summarize, “it sounds good bro.” The Animation Its visual style has become a point of confusion for me. The character models all have enough depth and detail to make the characters believable when they aren’t attempting to emote that is. 3DCG does not work well when it comes to detailed animation. Facial expressions look stiff, blank, and awkward most of the time. It certainly helps that the most important characters emote with a mask on. Furthermore, the animation is wildly inconsistent resulting in some hilarious eye cancer at times. More on that later. The lighting is fine if not good in some scenes but the environments suffer from the typical low-resolution texture work used for backgrounds. Crowds and background character models are straight from bad CG hell. This is not the only time something appears low quality or cheap though. A severed arm and head that looked like it came straight from the PS2 era, odd character movements, Video Copilot Action Essentials blood spatters and more. My biggest gripe, however, is with the frame rate and animation quality. It is quite well established that 2D anime will typically be produced at a lower frame rate in general even half of what one would normally use in filmmaking and even less for background characters yet this does not translate well to 3DCG. Like, at all. A lot of motions look choppy and unappealing while at times it will be smooth as butter. Its as if you are playing a game and your system from 1999 is melting as it attempts to render cutscenes in real time. The worst part about this is that the choreography is really excellent in its hand to hand combat scenes. A lot of work was put into them and it shows. Clearly, this was a stylistic choice and not a technological limitation, one I am no fan of. Another issue pops up occasionally due to this choice as sometimes it is nearly impossible to judge how fast something is happening. Most of the time when slow motion is used it is very clear and deliberate, yet I remember one very distinct scene where I for the life of me could not tell whether it was supposed to be in slow motion or real time. But the worst animation seems to be during the shows quieter dialogue moments. There are very few words that can describe this particular brand of motion vomit but the best word I have for it is jarring. This seems to be a fairly common trait when it comes to 3DCG anime, however, this unsettling style can be used to one's advantage and doesn’t always have to be a detriment. Ajin: Demi-Human is an excellent example of this. The jarring animation and cel-shaded character models helped solidify the creepy undertones of the story and especially the unsettling nature of the “Ghosts”. The animation serves to illustrate the story and the style subtly adds to its atmosphere. If you haven’t seen Ajin yet, it is certainly worth your time. Give it a try. The Conclusion In conclusion, Ultraman is certainly watchable. It has enough action scenes where you can simply turn your brain off and enjoy the spectacle. That is if you can stomach some of the choppy animations. Set pieces are for the most part quite awesome without getting too ridiculous, bar one exception in the finale, and the story will keep you engaged long enough even if it is not something to write home about. So if you have nothing to watch, give Ultraman a try, it's not great but not terrible enough to never touch with a 10ft pole. What did you think? Let us know in the comments below. Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more anime content and hit the bell icon to always stay up to date.

http://www.amerimewire.com/2019/06/ultraman-review-by-james-halmer.html