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somewhereinthepines · 2 years

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smth to think about.

this is part of personal notes, + some trimming of newer notices/hcs there and here. so it’s safe to say, that i have a noticeable pref, when it comes to shipping dynamics in the dark picture’s games, but it’s still pretty interesting how ‘leveled’ both of those ‘pairs’ are, as a part of general narrative.

they have a lot in common. even if the timeline/reincarnation theory isn’t something, that the creators were going with, there are still a lot of similarities between john & dar. and then, there is an interesting tendency, when you compare their ‘soft’ companions/the better half, andrew & salim. which is a subject, that i will ran my mouth about here! this isn’t an analysis per say, but might be considered such if one wants it to be. otherwise, it’s just personal thoughts and notices.

misleading guidance ;

so, john & dar are technically put in powers from the start. such as john being the professor & andrew his student; dar being a captain & salim being his lieutenant. it’s up to the player just how far their obedience will go, but the natural build of this was basically presented as: ‘final boy’ & their superior. why final boy? bc both, andrew and salim can die only near the very end. and while dar’s death is scripted and therefore can’t be changed, john’s death can be determined and it’s possible and most likely for him to be andrew’s last remaining companion, even if one picks 'everybody dies’ route. what also matters here, is that ending for both salim & andrew can change depending on if they followed along with every offer/command, that was given to them by dar & john. in both cases, blind obedience can lead salim & andrew to joining their superior, respectively by getting shot by rachel/andrew (anthony) shooting himself. and it’s also while small something, still something nonetheless.

this shows a curious little mechanism, that gets triggered, when you allow ‘the demon on your shoulder’ directly influence your gameplay. it’s out of question, if dar / john think that this is what’s the best, bc they do, they really do. but the game itself doesn’t want to give the player an easy way out, and while they establish both salim & andrew guidance from the start, it should be measured by you, personally, how ‘right’ it is to just follow along with dar / john’s ideas each time. it has more plot-connected weight in john/andrew dynamic, bc john is also the main character. while in salim’s case, most of his choices, when it comes to obeying/disobeying dar don’t have as much result. they affect smaller parts, and mostly tied to the development of salim’s personality in specific gameplay, rather than him actively influencing other characters.

john can indirectly kill or help to kill off the rest of the cast (even andrew & himself to some extent), when dar can only influence eric’s fate, and indirectly nick’s (by wounding him), to a degree salim’s as well. it make sense, though. bc the main tie of dar / john always be salim / andrew, and their main interest is always stated plain and clear, as they only care about their only well-being and well-being of their companion (even if to somewhat smaller amount lol). john pretty easily shrugs off the death of his other students, but keeps saying, that he and andrew need to stick together, and that he will make sure, that both of them will get out of here. and dar would still make sure, that salim would get free, if jason & nick had captured him, no matter how low/cool their relationships are. to degre, john / dar designed in a way, that would ‘protect’ the ‘final boy’, and also attempt to unconsciously mislead them from time to time.

but as controlling, pushy and basically, plainly states dismissive/selfish as dar / john were in some of their stubborn decisions, there was always a ‘softer spot’, that they saved for salim / andrew. it’s less noticeable with dar, duo to how non-bullshit he is at times, but the very thing, that he doesn’t outright shoot salim on the spot, in route, where he rebels against him, says something. or the fact, that it was implied that no matter what route it is, that part of dar’s main objective (beside killing the americans) was to find salim.

it’s up to the player, if they wanna stick with dar / john’s guidance all the way, but dar / john would be sticking with salim / andrew either way. their narrative is heavily intertwined with choices, that the other two make. and they’re there to make picking those choices ever harder lol.

the presence/lack of power dynamic ;

as we know, salim & andrew as unspoken, ‘main protagonists’, that basically drag the narrative forward. the way they see the situation is prob the closer to how the player might see it. andrew is concosed and to a degree, he has to rely on john. meanwhile, on a more grounded level, salim has to follow the suit, bc he and dar are on the same side, and technically surrendered by the enemy. trusting them seems like the most ‘oblivious’ decision to a degree. but…it’s not fully ‘correct one’.

dar / john can successfully feed the distrust, antagonism in salim / andrew, when it comes to the games ‘main enemy’, which till some time, remains established as the americans / mary. they can feed it to an extent, where salim can shoot eric/wound jason, basing his response on fear (rightfully so btw) in face of what the americans would/could do to him. and then, andrew can choose john’s side on the whole witch trial issue, and decide that mary is at fault for everything.

yet. the power dynamic is probably, where dar/salim and john/andrew have a very big difference. in LH, it’s not set in stone, and john would back off, if andrew would ask him to. meanwhile, in hofa, dar would most likely push and push, until salim would do what he wants or do it himself, and ignore all the arguments, that salim has on his side. both john and dar are technically in a position of power, but only dar actively uses it and can even abuse it, if he sees fit. esp bc where john has lawful and personal limitations, considering how far he can go, dar doesn’t have such things. his hands aren’t tied at how ‘far’ he can take the punishment, when someone disobeys him and his personality, seems to be one of the ruthless and cold circle. john most likely have grey-ish moral, aka ‘at extremes, what works, that works’ and dar is more of radical in nature, so it make sense, that his moral is partly tied up to cicustemses/the actual state of iraq during that time, including 80-90x. while john thinks that he’s right, dar sort of ‘knows’, that he’s right. and where andrew can actually be on ‘lawful’ side of disobedience and thinking with his own head, salim technically isn’t allowed to do the same.

so, yeah, considering all of this, the power dynamic exists mostly only in hofa. dar can invoke his position of power via ‘rules’ of the narrative even, like a grounded level of it. where john is just well, john is too much of a pushover, when it comes to andrew, so technically, his ‘influence’ on him is questionable, and in most cases, depends on andrew’s behavior. and on how many times in the row, andrew agrees with him.

yet, out of all the characters dar / salim and john / andrew have similar odd thing, when salim / andrew play around with titles and then switch back to name bases. it’s pretty casual, but i love how salim jumps from calling dar ‘captain’ to calling him by his name, as well as revealing hints, that they have a lot of familiarity between them, despite the difference in ranks. andrew, on other hand, uses ‘professor’ when referring to john, way more often, than other students, but he also easily skips back to calling john by his name as well. though, out of all the students for andrew the title of ‘professor’ must have more heavy and personal weight, same as for salim, where dar is being his captain. like remember the bit about dar / john being placed as ‘guide’, well, it comes back to this. esp considering, that you can low-key make andrew / salim into a nervewreck, into a cynical paranoiac. which is also why it would make sense for them to keep closer to a person like john / dar, who would give him directions. but titles are part of power dynamic, so the way they twist it and play with it’s a quite nice little touch.

it might have happened before ;

something, that i can’t quite unthink, is a notice that my friend brought to my attention. mainly, this picture.

it makes me wonder, if following the reincarnation/different timeline theory, dar / john, a person who basically can be considered as them (including james and others), are kind of stuck in loop, of being a part of the military. not every time, but repeatedly being stuck in the position of lieutenant or captain. and funny enough, we saw something similar in the man of medan, where one of the sergeants was anthony’s older model. and considering, the time period it makes sense for him to be there, if he’s the same person (andrew), who was in the picture, but younger. then, we also got daniel, in the said picture above. and also in the man of medan. and then, even in the hofa. 3 times in the row, he presented as part of military. ah, and jason too. he was in the man of medan as well. and tbh, he also can be one of the other man on the side. which would make it pretty ironic, if he had to fight against his once fallen commander in another time life (jason vs dar).

in this part, salim doesn’t have much placement lol. bc it’s sorta implied, that john & andrew met repeatedly, around time, when john is 40-43 and andrew around 18-20. and while it’s not stated anywhere or even was shown, i do hc, that john met andrew as dar. possibly, he even was the one who had killed him.

then, if alt timeline, and john was actually real, it’s not all that impossible, that he and salim wouldn’t have crossed ways at least once. esp with john being a college professor.

the dark pictures give an easter eggs with ref to their other games, be it a future ones or already existing, but i wonder, if they will eventually make this connected universe, even more complicated, than it was presented so far. i mean, an aliens are basically were established there, as well, as hints on witchcraft...what’s next? and would be it all that crazy, if alt timelines/reincarnations be a thing there too?

#the dark pictures house of ashes #house of ashes #dark pictures house of ashes #dark pictures little hope #dar basri #salim othman #little hope john #little hope andrew #john/andrew #dar basri/salim othman #long post #dark picture games

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joneswuzhere · 3 years

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hello join me in thinking about some books and authors that are, or might be, part of s5′s intertextuality

5.10 in particular offered specific shout outs, and also u know i’m always wondering what might be ahead so i have some ideas on that:

- first, as mentioned in a previous ask post, i know i wasn’t alone in keeping an eye out for 5.10 parallels to the lost weekend (1945) the film that gave episode 1.10 its name and several themes - or to the 1944 book by charles r jackson which the film is based on

- s5 has not been shy about revisiting earlier seasons, especially s1. altho i feel that 1.10′s parallels to the lost weekend centered characters other than jughead (mostly betty), a 1.10-5.10 connection involving jughead and themes from jackson’s story (addiction, writers block, self reflection) seemed v possible if not inevitable

- but like,, , for a hot minute after the ep, i was really stumped on understanding how anything from the book or film could apply, even tho the pieces were almost all there

- jackson’s protagonist don birnam goes thru and comes out the other side of a harrowing days-long drinking binge that could be compared to jughead’s one-night hallucinogenic writing retreat

- but jughead is struggling primarily with traumatic memories, not addiction and self control like birnam. and tho drinking activates birnam’s creativity, it paralyzes his writing as he gets lost in fantasies; he’s never published anything. jughead’s drug trip recreates circumstances that already helped him write one successful book. even the rat that startles him mid-high doesn’t line up with birnam’s withdrawal vision of a dying mouse, symbolic of his horror at his own self-destruction thru alcohol

- and maybe the most visible discordance: in the film there’s a romantic motif around a typewriter. first it’s an object of shame; birnam’s failure to write, tied up with his drinking, makes him flee his relationship. he tries to pawn the typewriter for booze money and finally a gun when shooting himself feels easier than getting sober. but with the help of relentless encouragement from girlfriend helen, he quits drinking, commits to her, and focuses on typing out the story he’s dreamt of writing. rd goes so far to avoid setting any comparable scenario that jughead has brought a wholeass printer into the bunker so there can still be a physical manuscript to cover in blood by the end, even without his own typewriter. the subtle detail of his laptop bg image is a little less noticeable than his avoidance of betty’s gift

- tabitha might be closer to a parallel than jughead is, but she’s still no helen. both refuse to take advantage of the inebriated men in their care, but birnam takes advantage of helen, financially and emotionally. jughead refused a loan from the tate family and now has resolved to deal with his shit before he considers a relationship with tabitha. instead of helen’s relentless and unwelcomed attempts to get birnam sober, tabitha reluctantly agrees to help jughead trip safely bondage escape notwithstanding. she even helps him get the drugs.

- whatever potentials exist for parallels to jackson’s story, they were not explored for this episode. ok so why tf am i even talking about this? what was there instead?

- i have arrived at the point

- s5 has been revisiting s1, not directly but with a twist. and jughead’s agent samm pansky is back. u may recall, pansky is named for sam lansky

- jughead’s trip-thru-trauma is a story device tapped straight from lansky’s book ‘broken people’

- lansky is like if a millenial john rechy wrote extremely LA-flavored meta but just about himself no jk very like a modern successor to charles r jackson. both play with the boundary between memoir and fiction. lansky is gay; jackson wrote his lost weekend counterpart as closeted and remained closeted himself until only a few years before his death. both write with emotional clarity and self-scrutiny on the experiences of addiction, sobriety, and the surrounding issues of shame and self worth

- i feel like a fool bc after this ep i had been thinking about de quincey and his early writings on addiction (c.1800s), but i failed to carry the thought in the other direction, to contemporary writers in the genre, to make this connection sooner

- lansky’s second book, broken people, follows narrator ‘sam’, mid-20s, super depressed, hastled by his agent to write a decent follow-up to his first book, but too busy struggling with his self-worth and baggage from several past relationships. desperate, he takes up an offer to visit a new age shaman who promises to fix everything wrong with him in a matter of days. not to over simplify it but he literally spends a weekend doing psychedelics and hallucinating about his exes. jughead took note

- unless u want me to hurl myself into yet another dissertation about queer jughead, i think his parallel to sam - who, unlike jughead, has considerable financial privilege and whose anxieties center on body dysmorphia, hiv scares, and his own self-centeredness - pretty much ends there

- But,, the gist of the book could not be more harmonius with a major theme shared by the 2 films that inform the actual hallucination part of jughead’s bunker scene: mentally reframing past relationships to get closure + confronting trauma head-on in order to move forward

- so that’s neat. what other book and author stuff was in 5.10?

- stephen king and raymond carver get name dropped. i’m passingly familiar with them both but u bet i just skimmed their wiki bios in case anything relevant jumped out

- like jughead, carver was a student (later a lecturer) at the iowa writers workshop. also the son of an alcoholic and one himself

- i recall carver’s ‘what we talk about when we talk about love’ is what jughead was reading in 2.14 ‘the hills have eyes’ after he finds out about the first time betty kissed archie (at that time he does not respond as would any of carver’s characters)

- this collection of carver stories deals especially with infidelity, failings of communication, and the complexities and destructiveness of love. to unashamedly quote the resource that is course hero, ‘carver renders love as an experience that is inherently violent bc it produces psychic and emotional wounds.’ very fun to wonder about the significance of this collection within the s2 episode and in jughead’s thoughts. and maybe now in the context of the s5 state of relationships. or, at least, the state of jughead’s writing as seen by his agent

- anyway pansky doesn’t want carver, he wants stephen king

- i have too much to say about gerald’s game in 5.10, that’s getting its own post someday soon

- lol wait king’s wife is named tabitha uhhh king’s wiki reminded me of his childhood experience that possibly inspired his short story ‘the body’ (+1986 movie ‘stand by me’) when he ‘apparently witnessed one of his friends being struck and killed by a train tho he has no memory of the event’

- no mention of that in this rd episode but memories of a train could be interesting to consider with the imagery that intrudes on jughead’s hallucination. i still feel like it was a truck but the lights and sounds he experiences may be a train

- ok now we’re in the speculation part of today’s segment

- if jughead’s traumatic memory involves trains, then it’s possible this plot will take influence from la bête humaine <- this 1938 movie is based on the 1890 novel by french writer émile zola. this story deals with alcoholism and possessive jealousy in relationships, sometimes leading to murder. huh, kind of like carver. zola def comes down on the nature side of the nature-vs-nuture bad seed question (tho i should say he approaches this with great or maybe just v french compassion). also i can’t tell if this is me reaching but, something about la bête humaine reminds me of king’s ‘secret window’ which we’ve observed to be at least a style influence on jughead post time jump

- but wow a late-19th century french writer would be a random thing to drop into this season, right? then again zola also wrote about miners, which we’ve learned are an important part of this town’s history + whatever hiram is up to this time. and most notably, zola wrote ‘j’accuse...!’ an open letter in defense of a soldier falsely accused and unlawfully jailed for treason: alfred dreyfus. archie’s recent army trouble comes to mind.

- since the introduction of old man dreyfuss (plausibly Just a nod to close encounters actor richard dreyfuss, but also when is anything in this show Just one thing) i’ve been wondering if these little things could add up to a season-long reference to zola’s writings. but i had doubts and didn’t want to speak on it too soon bc, u know, it’s weird but is it weird enough for riverdale??

- however,,,

- (come on, u knew where i was going with this)

- a24′s film zola just came out. absolutely no relation to the french writer, it’s not based on a book but an insane and explicit twitter thread by aziah ‘zola’ wells about stripping and? human trafficking?? this feels ripe for rd even outside the potentials here for the lonely highway/missing girls plot.

- that would add up to a combination of homage that feels natural to this show

- anyway pls understand i’m just having fun speculating, most of this is based on nothing more concrete than the torturous mental tendril ras has hooked into my skull pls let go ras pls let go

#accompanying image has no meaningful organization it's just there to make me look insane. enjoy #riverdale speculation #filmref #but books #adhd has me like. this is Not the post i've been trying to write for weeks but my brain gave me no choice

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eoleolhan-a · 4 years

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I am STILL on my MonProm bullshit bc I’m grinding through Monster Camp so let’s do some more headcanons! This time it’s gonna be Jin’s opinions on the some of the more prominent characters from the two games, and what I think their relationships (platonic or otherwise) could be like. Obviously these are just my opinions, anyone who has any of these muses is free to disagree, ofc. I won’t include player characters (yet, maybe once Reverse comes out I will update) since the PC personality is kind of fluid to interpretation and change based on the player. There are spoilers for both Monster Prom and Monster Camp regarding main and side characters.

This is in alphabetical order just to make it easy to navigate.

Aaravi

He doesn’t trust her, straight up. She’s a monster slayer with a history of targeting demons and even with her therapy and growth in Monster Camp he’s wary. He’s worried she would turn on him and try to slay him too. He steers clear when possible but could learn to trust her if he could see her progress with monsterkind more directly.

Batniss

He really doesn’t know what she’s talking about most of the time. The main character thing is weird to him, but at least she’s interesting. He respects her combat skills and her archery prowess.

Calculester

He thinks Cal is cute, in the way someone thinks a puppy is cute. He’s just so clueless sometimes it’s endearing, like watching a baby giraffe take its first steps. On the other hand, though, something about this sentient computer robot is a bit uncanny. Since Cal is generally so nice, though, he tries not to let the whole “potential robot uprising/singularity” thing bother him.

Dahlia

He has absolutely no interest in being anywhere near Dahlia because of her reputation as a warmonger. He thinks she’s dangerous and doesn’t want to risk being the one who gives her the idea to try and invade the 2nd Circle. He absolutely doesn’t trust her, and is honestly a bit afraid of her. If he were able to give her a chance (ie probably forced to do school or camp things with her, or if they had mutual friends for some reason) he could grow to appreciate her determination and at times enjoy her exuberant personality. She has the capability to grow on him if given the chance.

Damien

Similar to Dahlia, he distrusts Damien. He knows of the LaVeys, and as mentioned in my big ol 2nd Circle/Cubi lore post sees their whole “we made love popular” reputation as a bit unearned (because I’m sorta canon divergent, but see that post for the details of that). He also doesn’t want anyone from the 8th Circle’s royal family to get anywhere near the 2nd Circle lest they try to take that over, too. He would also probably resent having to go to school or camp with a prince from Hell juuuust a bit, especially since Damien is considered one of the coolest/most well known students/campers. He would be envious of Damien’s wealth and status since that’s something he lacks, which colours Jin’s perception of him. He doesn’t know about Damien’s softer side, so he sees him as abrasive, dangerous, and annoying. Like Dahlia, if he were to give him a chance though he’d grow to like him, especially his fondness for hairstyling and makeup since Jin enjoys the latter (and being fashionable in general). He does, however, reluctantly admit that Damien is indeed hot even if he is an annoying LaVey baby.

Dmitri

Jin doesn’t really know Dmitri but he knows of him. He doesn’t really care about whatever the Coven is doing, but hey at least Dmitri is a hot vampire who never seems to wear a shirt. He doesn’t mind seeing him hanging around because he’s easy on the eyes. Jin would probably find his dramatic villain monologuing and cape swishing a bit funny.

Faith

Out of the Coven members he would probably like Faith the most. She seems pretty relaxed and chill, and he would respect her intelligence and skill as a witch. In general he appreciates the Coven’s colour scheme and fashion sense, though.

Hex

He thinks Hex is straight up irritating but if he was high then he’d probably like their company more.

Hope

His feelings towards Hope are similar to Faith. He isn’t all that bothered with their Coven shenanigans but does respect them. He would be confused by all of the Hope reincarnations but he doesn’t have much of a problem with her. She seems nice enough.

Interdimensional Prince

Although he can be kind of weird at times (maybe even a bit creepy) Jin has to admit the idea of being whisked off to another dimension by some handsome anime-alien-looking prince is kind of appealing. He would like the attention and ego-boost it would cause if the Prince ever flirted with him.

Joy

Jin would enjoy her company. They’d probably get along, but he does find her “main character saving the world” thing to be a bit Intense at times. Despite that he think’s she’s smart and cool and likes being around her, especially given how wild some of their classmates/campmates can be.

Kale

They smoke weed together and vibe. That’s all. 10/10.

Leonard

Jin wants to kick him in the face so hard that he flies into the sun. -10/10.

Liam

Usually he likes Liam and likes being around him. He appreciates his creativity and sense of taste, but sometimes Liam can be a bit pretentious and annoying. That’s fairly manageable though, and sometimes he’s quite the breath of fresh air compared to some of the more exuberant characters he encounters. Jin would especially enjoy indulging in fancy, rare artsy gourmet food so Liam could take pictures of it and he could eat it.

Milo

Out of everyone, Jin is fondest of Milo. Their sense of style, taste (wine and cheese platters? yes please), flirtatious streak (and not to mention good looks) would have Jin swooning. He would also find their personality a lot more calm in comparison to some of the other monsters at camp. The only annoyance would be Milo’s constant attachment to their phone and their somewhat self-centred nature. It takes attention away from Jin, after all. Competing egos.

Miranda

Jin likes Miranda most of the time. Sometimes he thinks her royal merfolk ways are a bit confusing, and he is a bit distrustful of foreign royalty in general but less so of Miranda; he doesn’t see any reason why the Merkingdom would attack the Cubi or really have much to do with them at all, but he knows that royal life can be vicious. He does find it interesting to hear about the culture and society of the Merkingdom, though. He also appreciates her manners and poise. Plus, they’re both pink so he’s a bit biased in that regard. Sometimes he does find the more murderous aspects of the Merkingdom a bit unsightly, and it can be a little frustrating at times trying to explain commoner things to her. He doesn’t like that he would sometimes feel a bit condescended or spoken down to by her, but sometimes this has more to do with his perception than anything she would be saying or doing.

Morty

He likes looking at Morty but his personality is a bit too self absorbed and intense even for Jin. Still, he appreciates the confidence and the sex positive energy. Sexual tension always makes rivalries better so Morty is a perfect candidate for Camp Rival Camp in Jin’s opinion and his presence is at least entertaining and engaging. Also he quite likes the heart-hole shorts, a bold fashion statement.

Polly

Polly is fun to be around. She can be boisterous, but at least she knows how to have a good time. Jin also likes that she isn’t bloodthirsty or a war criminal or something, so in theory they could just hang out like normal monsters/people. It doesn’t hurt that she can get good drugs, too.

Scott

Scott is a himbo, Jin likes himbos. Case closed. In all seriousness, he would find Scott endearing because of his good nature and cheerful personality. Sometimes his airheaded antics can be a bit annoying, but he knows Scott means well. Jin thinks Scott would be a good friend because he seems honest, loyal, and kind. Those are also qualities that would make him a good date, plus he’s a big cute wolfman who Jin wants to pet in more ways than one.

Valerie

He respects the hustle and the on campus hook-up for all sorts of oddities. Plus she’s Vera’s sister, and he has mostly positive feelings about her so by relation he thinks Valerie is pretty alright. Also soft because cat.

Vera

Vera is intimidating but he respects her, in a sense. As someone who isn’t affluent he’s more wary of her scams and often disapproves if he thinks it’s taking advantage of vulnerable people, but so long as she’s scamming rich people he’s down for it. He definitely thinks she’s smart and an interest conversationalist.

Wolfpack

Bad, stinky, 0/10. Only tolerable because of their connection to Scott but otherwise obnoxious.

Zoe

Last but not least, Jin would like Zoe. He’d appreciate her creativity and particularly her ship fics. They would have a good time talking about crushes, who should date who, and the latest books in their respective favourite series (or perhaps shared shows or books). She also tells Leonard to shove it and since he wants to punt the kappa into the sun he likes that a lot.

#yes im still on my bullllshiiiiiit #hc #ooc #v; monster mash

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kekeslider · 6 years

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so whats your take on the catra/adora situation

I have a lot of thoughts about this and I’m gonna just unload them all below the cut bc this is gonna get kind of meta-y and pretty discourse-y, and I know a lot of people are trying to avoid that right now. The long n short of it is that I still like the ship.

I’m actually a little baffled by how much people don’t like this pairing now. It all basically comes down to the belief that Catra is abusive towards Adora, but people seem to be conveniently leaving out that Catra has been abused by the Horde as much as Adora. I’d actually argue that Catra’s abuse was harsher, while Adora was the favored child. That’s not to say that Adora wasn’t abused, because she obviously was, but there are different kinds of abusive situations, and in homes with multiple children, there’s often one that the parent/guardian clearly favors and manipulates and the other that gets the brunt of the abuse. Adora was manipulated and lied to and who knows what else, while Catra was physically threatened and harmed, emotionally abused, and pitted against Adora, her own best friend. They have different experiences, and Catra’s experiences have clearly led to the survival instincts she has now. I’ll also point out that members of the crew have stated that Catra’s portrayal is influenced by their own experiences with abuse (source). So flatout saying Catra is abusive and Adora needs to cut ties and leave her rubs me the wrong way. I think Catra is on course for a big redemption arc, because I think people who have been in abusive situations themselves want to tell stories of abuse victims overcoming it.

So that’s sort of the basics of Catra and Adora’s abuse by the Horde, and people have ended up saying, well Adora got out, why can’t Catra? First I’d like to point out the irony of the fandom pitting Catra and Adora against each other in the same way Shadow Weaver did, holding Catra to Adora’s standard. But what makes Adora and Catra different here? There could be a lot of things, you could get into discussions about nature vs nurture, you could argue that Adora has an inherent goodness because she was destined to be She-ra or whatever. But in the end I think it comes down to the different ways they experienced abuse in the Horde. Adora got to switch to the side of good because she thought she was on the good side all along, that’s what the Horde convinced her of, and she didn’t know anything outside of what the Horde told her. Then she also had Shadow Weaver favoring her, and the respect of her superiors and peers, so her life in the Horde was, comparatively, not that bad. But Catra knew it was bad. I’ve seen people calling Catra evil based on her duh, you just figured that out? line. But doesn’t it make sense that Catra knew she was being abused, because she was being treated so much harsher than Adora was? It was in her face all the time, but like Adora, she didn’t know anything beyond the Horde. Abuse was her norm, and she developed certain survival instincts because of that.

But Adora offered Catra a way out right? And Catra knowingly refused, so Catra is evil, right?? This is where I think Catra’s character gets extra complex, because it starts delving into the psychology of abuse victims, and one of the things that’s pretty well known is that abuse victims will often refuse to leave their situation, even when given the chance. That’s what abusers do, they make their victims afraid to leave the stability of their situation, no matter how awful it is. The devil you know, yanno? Adora wasn’t exactly offering Catra safety, she was offering her the chance to join a weak rebellion against the group that was conquering the world, a rebellion which massively failed the last time it was attempted. And leaving the Horde, and then losing? That would make Catra’s situation so much worse.

There’s a lot you can get into with Catra’s motivations throughout the season, but I’ll leave the deep details to Catra-specific character metas. I sussed out 3 big motivations for her from my 1 viewing at the asscrack of dawn.

1. She’s being forced to act against Adora by Shadow Weaver, the woman who has directly abused her her whole life

2. She wants to take down Shadow Weaver as a form of revenge and surpass her in the process

3. She want to prove to everyone in the Horde that she’s powerful and capable without Adora around (reminder that Adora said displays of weakness were a no-no at the Horde, so it stands to reason that being the best and most powerful is a goal ingrained into them as cadets) because Catra has been pitted against and compared to Adora her whole life (this ties in to Catra’s sidekick remark).

None of this excuses her actions, but it does explain her backstory and allows the viewer to get inside Catra’s head and understand why she does the things she does. It deliberately paints her as a sympathetic villain, because you understand her, and it makes you want to root for her.

Catra being sympathetic is a big thing to me, because it’s done on purpose. They’ve planted the seeds for a big redemption arc, one that may run the course of the show, and that’s something I want to see happen. A well done redemption arc is incredible to watch play out. And I’ll remind everyone that the crew has pretty openly loved Catra as a character, and they’re very invested in her as a character, and I personally don’t see how a crew with abuse victims on their staff would create an abusive character and then care about her so much. That goes double for catradora, they’re all interested in them as a duo and post art and content that toes very closely to the line of ship art, and I can’t see abuse victims creating a show just to ship a character with her abuser.

When it comes to Catra and catradora, there’s a few big important things I think people are ignoring.

- Catra has all the groundwork for a bigass redemption arc. It’s something fans have been expecting and hoping for since the first info about the show was released

- In order to get a redemption arc, she needs to do something that needs redeeming. Think of season 1 as Catra’s villain origin story. A redemption arc has no payoff if we don’t see their misdeeds. But Catra’s misdeeds aren’t a case of Cool motive, still murder, because nothing she’s done so far has such long lasting effects. She attacked some people with the Horde, of course, but also keep in mind that this is a kids show, where things like that have to be exaggerated so kids can see that they’re doing Bad Things (remember that time Zuko burned down a whole village, kidnapped Aang, attacked them all multiple times? And he has THE redemption arc every other one is compared to)

- This is only the first season! There’s so much story left to tell, maybe more backstory for Catra, more flashbacks detailing her experiences, etc etc. There’s something like 39 episodes still guaranteed to come, and I’m not expecting season 4 Catra to be the same as season 1 Catra. She’s going to change, her relationship to Adora is going to change, and I want that change to be positive. That’s a big draw for catradora: positive character development

- The crew has stated multiple times that Catra and Adora’s friendship/relationship is very central to the story, and that definitely shows in s1. Telling people not to like this ship is telling them to not fully engage with one of the show’s main foci (and there are definitely positive moments within all the hurt we see. They love each other, in an environment that doesn’t want them to)

- I haven’t seen a single person say that Catra and Adora’s relationship as is would be healthy and perfect. Everyone knows they have stuff to work through. What I have seen is people caring about both of them as characters and friends, people who love each other and deserve to be happy. People WANT a redemption arc for Catra, and they’re shipping Redeemed!Catra/Adora. They’re looking ahead down the path of character development and hoping it leads to romance, because it very well could. One of the big reasons people latch on to ships like this is that it has so so much room for growth and development, for them as individuals, and them as a pair. I know it’s illegal to talk about vo/tron, but you can compare it to people who shipped k/ance and a//urance after season 1. Neither had healthy romantic dynamics in the first season, but people were looking forward to growth and development, and shipping that. The whole point is that you want to see characters grow together. Development is half the point of storytelling. Romantic ships where they basically start out all happy and good are dull because they don’t have the same space for character growth and development. They’re static, they’re boring.

- The crew of the show likes catradora! They care so much about these two characters and their bond, and I don’t see a crew of LGBT people making a romantically coded dynamic between 2 female characters, hyping it up, creating content of the two of them, just to have one be an evil abuser

This is also where I’ll point out that many other antagonistic characters have been much beloved by the fandom and part of majorly popular ships

- Zuko: Zutara & Zukka

- Bakugo: Kiribaku

- Sasuke: Sasunaru or w/e it is

And you’ll notice these are moooostly m/m ships, and people still stan them to this day. But catradora of course is f/f, and we know f/f ships are subjected to much higher criticism than m/m pairings. In fact, the defense for Zuko and Bakugo is their traumatic abuse backstory, so the same should apply for Catra.

I’m also going to say, at great risk to myself, that I think the discourse around this ship is mostly happening because the current She-ra fandom is largely made of of (ex) v/d fans, where discourse was basically a hobby. And for good reason, there was a lot of dumpster fires in that fandom and show, but I think it’s resulted in people coming into this fandom just chomping at the bit to jump on some discourse and be the most Unproblematic and Self-Righteous. Am I basically vaguing myself by saying that? Yeah, kinda, but I’ll have to stand by it. We’ve seen so little of this show and people are already making major decisions about what’s ok and what’s not because they’re coming off of a fandom with a pretty shitty crew, and they’re expected to be hurt again. But the She-ra crew isn’t the v/d crew, and they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

This got really rambly and stuff but the point is, I like catradora. I want to see them grow and heal and love each other, because I care about both characters. It isn’t about shipping an angsty abusive ship, it’s about wanting them to find each other again without the toxic influence of the Horde.

#keke answers #spop spoilers #catradora #discourse #its under a read more but you know just in case #anonymous #ask #abuse mention

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mifhortunach · 5 years

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some Unfortunate vague vambling into the void wrt tpf

The book is a grail quest, about ppl - either knowingly or unknowingly - on grail quests, and (with/presuming the small amount that can Ever be discerned about SL) written during/around a time when a grail quest was essentially occurring/could-would be a comfort narrative. Its a surprise (to me at least) that its, as Hopeful(?) as it is*. growth occurs! people move on & move past traumas/big Events(tm)!

I had wanted to compare it to ‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ for some reason**, but its honestly not especially similar. If one was to take ILD as a starting point, as people/LD trapped in a cycle by the v nature of Who They Are, TPF kinda jumps from that point, or some a point of hitting a level of Rock Bottom and Acting/. For some of the characters its been a more gradual shift into decisive action, (Tracy, ARY Lewis), while w others its a hitting breaking-point/epiphanous kinda thing (Bob, Sid & Danny) - action is Spurred, etc.

A reading could be taken then, as Action as Redemptive Force, mayhaps***. in certain cases. maybe. Sid & Danny, would probs be the easiest players to be reading this theme from, “fucking up”**** & then immediately deciding ‘yk what! lets find this fckd up old musician dude u/i really loved, and ask him to restart his 60s-70s band but w us in it this time’. SO! then they go from essentially wasting away, getting high & rehashing old routines & watching/critiquing awful (beastiality) pornos, to going on their drug-smuggling funded ‘grail quest’, to meeting & reteaching the dude guitar, to Genuinely /Finding/ the grail - before (thru an act of giving up on Expectations / releasing Bitterness) - giving it up. the previous wallowing / lacking of Authenticity is Absolved though all tht, as is a long standing weirdness between them regarding giving up on what could've been their Original /Actually Lucrative/ band*****. ARY Lewis thru action comes to terms / peace w himself even tho he Doesn't find his grail, Tracy finds a kinda “peace” thru a ‘mortifying ordeal of being known’ thing, etc etc. The man (SG Lee) loves his Things Bigger Than The Self stuff i guess.

As a theme this can maybe Also be seen in reverse/inversion, w Abby (p fckn minor character), not rly being Unredeemed or anything, mostly bc she starts off as one of the ppl Least in the gutter. but from the like, glances/vignettes of her once she leaves the main story ( “[god] has a hack screenwriter’s sense of drama” ), shes now set a drift in a way tht she kinda wasn't before, and as it goes on loses diff aspects of control/certainties in her own life. i don't think shes mabs treated as sympathetically as she maybe ought to be? could the loss of these things be read into as a weird punishment for /NOT/ going on or supporting ppl going on grail quests******** ? idk ! or idk, the ending w PR running off bc he's finally found that cigerette end, and her then missing the Avril Lavigne’s hit early 00s song ‘sk8r boy’ reminiscent bit w S&D ringing her up to send her audio of the 1st of the New round tabyls’ gigs, might be read as her still being Stuck/. everyone else has (to one degree or another) improved their position since the start of the book, except her, as the only thing she now no longer has is a deadweight boyfriend and his kinda grody bffl, otherwise everything is The Same.

Not surprised tht he (i think?) doesn't think its necessarily aged well? or. that it is no longer Quite as Relevant bc of the internet & stuff - idrk if thats Properly True******* - both bc that kinda thing can Just About still happen, but also bc if there wasn't a p minor mention of 1997 being in the past, you'd probs assume it was set earlier. ditto some of the concerns wrt oh, You Know, fckn, Exoticism/native american/shaman stuff - which i don't think is bad/ignorant/racist! but its always difficult to tell, and everything (but which i legit mean Everything/ in Gen, in The World) could use more Nuance.

I had smth else i wanted to say, but I've forgotten what it is tbqh - & ofc, this has mostly been an exercise in Thought ReHashment(tm). It might've been that the ending seems Terribly/ Tidy. like, i don't think there could BE another ending? but its very Neat: the Bad are punished, some leads are paired off in a (presumably) cishet coupling, bad feelings are trowelled up & buried, the bois remake a hot, niche & authentic band, Luther Peyote can play the guitar again: Picture Perfect. Its an ending that fits, its an ending tht (i think? idk Anything abt this kinda thing) puts emphasis on the quest-y stuff, and the poss redemption angle; but it feels like a far remove from the kinda squalor of the first while - which is probs another point in its favour, rip.*********

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*not to say/imply (ofc! ofc!!) tht this might be seen as somewhat ooc of stewart lee, but it still kinda caught me off-guard. poss bc its a Very Tidy wrap-up, and it happens quite fast, i felt. but tht might just be the time that in it.

**this reason may have been qs of #authenticity! or maybe just bc things/backgrounds/the world are kinda gross

*** “almost. action as redemptive force (as a form off faith/belief? faith/belief as redemptive force - if not in a god, in the World or Others?)” -> thats from the Even Worse! orig version of this, lmao. but also Action as a way of Escape/breaking a cycle

****for want of a better descrip

***** the orig uhm, idfk, them lemon boys, could probs be read into - if one Wanted to read too much into these things mabs - as some kinda weird parallel to the original On The Hour stuff(?) w AL vs L&H, & how they Didn't get royalties/whatever was up there. you'd never be able to be either Accurate or Sure about that though, even w certain traits of S&D being p clearly lifted from L&H, or old SL routines - theyre not Explicit or Perfect cyphers/inserts yk?******

****** following on! (if i may) some of the. not /Tension/,, but smth similar, w S&D often feels. not truly emotionally resolved? or just like, Unclear/ at times. the whole novel speeds up a fair bit once more than 2 (two) characters have to be properly juggled in a scene. [which is to say tht in some real Old L&H interviews, (usually in the ones where L isn't present, lmao) RH says tht SL gets ‘embarrassed’ by having to directly explore how ppl might feel about each other/relationships yk? can't say thats necessarily true! but it Is smth i couldn't help thinking about. but emotional exploration & openness is also the realm of fanfic, so maybe I'm asking too much, fgdksh]

*******im trying not to use the word ‘necessarily’ here again

******** for the small sum of €5 a month, you too could support a pilgrim on a grail quest

*********tho tbf, could also v much be influenced by the whole thing being written over the better part of a decade, place/s while writing & stuff yk? idfk

#long post /#sorry to ppl who read mores won't work w #i read a kinda (quite) old (2010?) interview where he mentioned poss writing another book - this one being set in heaven lmao #- and i do kinda wonder whats up w that now - but I'm also holding out hope for HIEMCF pt2: comedy skadoo or w/e doing the last couple of #*shows. or at least CRW oof #ppp #as much as the man provided 'self-indulgent footnotes' u KNOW tht if RH had written a novel he would've provided a new re-annotated edition #which would help u read into it SO MUCH MORE than anyone would've originally thought necessary #& u would've gotten a whole buncha WU entries during the course of it as well smdh #now for something Of Worth #& Now! for something of Worth hopefully/ oof #s

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plotbunnie · 6 years

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Mm so there’s a lot of stuff under the cut I just feel like I can’t express directly? Please don’t feel obligated to read the mess going on in my head, I just need to put it somewhere.

So this is just a big,,, massive dump of things I sometimes wish I could tell people but either it is socially unacceptable to discuss or I simply feel too guilty to do so, or feel as if I will not be understood. It’s really a big mess, so this is kind of a second ‘hey, turn back now!’ warning if that’s the sort of thing you’re not about. This is a queued post, also, because it makes me feel a little less like I’m begging for attention that way, and knowing that will probably reduce the appearance of urgency it gives by being all big and emotional.

I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been venting, more. Which is natural, I’m in school, I’m stressed, yadda yadda. But like- the things I vent about are never what really upsets me? they’re usually related but not- the thing and I’ve been examining myself to try and figure out why, and it boils down to the fact that what I end up venting about is genuinely insignificant, or at least mostly so, especially compared to whatever’s actually bothering me.

I’m also always trying to- dismiss and explain away everything that upsets me. “Oh, it’s just hormones”, “Oh, it’s just school stress making me crazy, you know”, “I’m just being oversensitive rn, it’ll pass”.

But like whoops, no, it’s not passing cause the actual root issues are a lot deeper than “I feel bad bc my teacher laughed in my face when I asked a question he didn’t like”.

And here’s the thing- I can tell myself how irrational the feelings I keep getting are all I want and it will not make them go away? In fact it’s just been forcing me to internalize them and feel shitty for feeling them at all.

So I guess here’s the part where I actually say what I’ve really been feeling, so I can look at it, and stare at it, and figure out what the hell I can actually do about it. Cause in some cases the solution seems so easy- and then it’s fucking not, and I just feel worse for failing at it.

I feel insignificant, invisible, probably some other word that starts with an ‘in’. Like I no longer exist the moment I’m outside of someone’s immediate vicinity, and only re-enter their memory bank once I’m in front of them or on their screen again. Like my whole existence is just floating in the void and sometimes a comet passes by or whatever and acknowledges me, and I’m just screaming for that acknowledgement and have no way of making it permanent. A lot of this is probably because of the fact that, thanks to my roommates & their situation, all but maybe four or five of the 20 people I met and started interacting with semi-regularly last semester no longer even acknowledge I exist- literally their expressions glaze over and they move past me, even when I’ve directly addressed them ( though I stopped doing that right quick, of course ). I’ve never, in my whole life of being picked on and pushed away from people, felt so small or alone as I do now. And I don’t know how to change that. I keep telling myself there is a way to change that, and I will find it, and all sorts of other shit a therapist would probably say, but ultimately, even if I am not this invisible being, I don’t know how to make myself stop feeling like one. I mean it’d be nice if I could ask people to remind me of that, but wow I guess that leads to the second problem?

I hate asking for things. heck, I hate receiving things without asking for them. A friend told me they were giving me something they’d gotten with digital currency they’ve amassed to a point it is no object and I still almost had a panic attack and immediately had to work out how I could even the score and pay them back. This friend reasoned that they were paying me back, but on a numbers level their gift still sort of dwarfed what I did? And so it still incited genuine fear until I could find a way to repay it back. And it’s not that I don’t want to be given things? Because then if the exchange of things ( be they compliments, edits, art scribbles, inconsequential digital currency gifts, anything because yeah, literally all of those result in the same anxiety- though some I’m better at combating the resulting anxiety than others ), then I start getting that unfortunate human response that makes me sad because I’m not getting things, when it is a commonly accepted concept that when you like someone you give them stuff ( again, not necessarily monetary or physical- applying to compliments and emotional support and all that junk as well ), and to NOT receive those things at all just feeds back into my first problem?? And it’s this awful vicious cycle. And worse than being given things out of the blue ( because the resulting warm fuzzies do generally balance out the panic and make it well worth it ) is asking for something- whether it is something I want, something I need- even suggesting something totally inconsequential that can be given to me to help someone else combat their anxiety over being given something. But kind of especially asking for things I need? Asking for help, asking for emotional support, asking for an ear to speak to- it’s why I’m typing up this long-ass post I all but begged people NOT to read despite kind of?? really wanting someone to understand what I am experiencing ( because is it real if people don’t acknowledge it or know about it or understand it? ), rather than just- talking to someone. I don’t want to burden anyone with my neediness? I don’t feel I have the right, I don’t feel that I’m a Level 7 Friend who can request emotional support, and I feel like I leveled wrong on my lower levels so I can literally never reach Level 7. Nevermind that people just plain don’t want to hear about this sort of thing because it makes people uncomfortable and that is a fact not many people are willing to acknowledge? Like in my experience ( and I am CERTAIN this is not always true, but for me it has been, or feels like it has been ) no matter how close with someone you are, chances are they don’t want to hear about your deep shit. No matter how much they say ‘never feel bad for asking for help or wanting to talk’ they are also probably internally praying you ask someone else. And that is fine? Like they gotta do they own thing and I will never begrudge them that ever ever ever because Wow Dude I Get It Big Time, but it really is a struggle when there is no one who IS willing to listen?

And sure, I could see a therapist, I did for a bit last semester and I keep telling myself to find a new one this semester since the previous one left, but honestly that one just allowed me to feel like I was trying because that’s what you do when you’ve got emotional turbulence, you see a therapist- and that’s... literally the only benefit seeing one brought me. Because they seem to be more focused on “well here is a list of ways you have already tried to potentially combat this small par of your problems without actually addressing the source”, along with “do you REALLY have this thing you were told you have because you don’t have any of these stereotypical and often inaccurate symptoms listed in this short passage of a book that is my only frame of reference for it”. ( yeah, that last one is really specific but like- I was trying to talk??? about how betrayed I felt that my freaking mother was told by professionals I’m autistic NOT ONLY when I was a child, but again when I was a teenager seeing a therapist, and then told my EX BOYFRIEND before she finally told me- casually and in passing. And instead of focusing on the emotional issue I wanted to address, she focused on whether or not it was an ‘accurate diagnosis’ ).

Like I have all these problems and they affect me and how I function, but I didn’t learn what they were or how to address them or in some cases even that I had them until very recently, and I just want to acknowledge them, but if I try I’m just asking for attention or making excuses and I just don’t know what I can do about that but man that is almost a footnote in all this ugh.

And I’m sure this factors in somewhere but heck if I know where but like touch is something humans tend to need and wow I’m very touch-starved to the point I am now touch-repulsed and while the part of me that needs support is downright begging for someone to fucking hug me for like 3 hours is constantly battling the instinct to never let anyone near me ever because what if I’m too clinging what if it hurts what if it turns out it doesn’t help shit what if they take advantage of me what if they get weirded out what if what if what if

And then the final thing- and god I know this is choppy by now and I’m honestly scared of anyone who bothered to read this far cause heck, guess you know how to destroy me now, and also why- is that I am starting to wonder if there is a point to anything I do? Like obviously there is but-- I am a creature that thrives on acknowledgement more than most it feels like and I think that I am suffering a lack of just that has been made a little clear by now so I’m at that point where like- I just want someone to look at my work, really look at it and examine it and explore it and give me deep feedback and talk with me about it but nobody wants to fucking do that, as exemplified in almost all the above points and like if it’s not worth looking at in depth is it really worth looking at, at all?

Am I really worth looking at, at all?

#ooc #sky speaks #vent #negative #negative tw #depression tw #invasive thoughts tw #?#not actually sure that one belongs there but I think some of these classify as invasive thoughts #like i'm fine I'm not going to harm myself we good there I'm just- a lil lost and this is me tryna find a fucking map

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lilietsblog · 6 years

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some magic worldbuilding stuff we’ve been talking about

@synesthetic-feline

so let's start with the magic system bc its kind of the basis of everything else so first of all, there's a 'weave' of reality which is like elementary particles in physics except in a different 'dismension' (like sideways from those). It has a certain inherent stability to it, like a living system (sorta like a plant I guess? not an animal, much less anything sentient) it 'feeds' on life, positive emotions, constructive 'vibes' (various degrees of abstraction here, people in the world dont necessarily understand it in detail either) it gets more 'worn' from death, strong 'vibes' of despair, fear, hatred like, on a small scale, some negative emotions actually help it thrive, but when they overpower the positives bad shit happens

more specifically about Bad Shit, there's a 'neighbouring' hell-like dismension with demons. the philosophical implications of this do not exist nope it was just something i thought was cool for the plot. The demons feed on negative emotions, misery and death of people - all the same things that the weave gets damaged by. They arent happy in their home dismension, and really want to get some destroy on in the human one.

Human mages can 'move apart' the weave, creating openings demons can pass through (this is not the only thing they can do ofc this is just one example). Demons make deals with them, etc, etc. Demons' magic power varies a lot, and the summoners had better know what exactly they are going for, because there are lots and los of ways this can go wrong.

At one point in the story the protagonist discovers that there are actually demons just living undercover in the human world, not doing anything malicious, just low key feeding on the negative emotions they can pick up from others. Well, obviously some of them also do bad shit deliberately to make others suffer, but the smarter ones realize its not good for their long-term perspectives, and they don't really have to.

Anyway, if there's a lot of bad stuff happening - wars, particularly civil; epidemics; badly handled natural disasters; etc, basically just a lot of misery - the weave can wear thin, and demons can invade the human world, and have to be beaten back

This is relevant to start with because that's how the dynasty in the country the story is in started - the first ruler was someone who was in some way personally credited with defeating the demons (powerful mage and military commander I think). They got a nifty magic trinket - a crown - that gave them a certain power over the land, both symbolizing and providing protection for it. However, over the centuries the crown got corrupted pretty badly, along with the dynasty itself, that went from genuinely good people who happened to be rulers to... yeah.

Magic in this setting is an ability all people have inherent access to, to a greater or lesser degree. Talented folks can try to figure out magic on their own, but overall self-taught ppl can't compare to mages who actually receive a formal education. The standard system is master+student, but in various cultures different variations have sprung up. The main character comes from an entirely different overseas country where she was a daughter of a wealthy merchant who wanted to study magic, so her parents found her a teacher - a strong and learned mage who didn't mind taking on a student, especially when he was getting paid for it. Eventually he went overseas to join the rebellion, and master/student ties in magic tend to end up being close enough that she just followed him without question.

In this country the system was a 'tower' of mages, where they more or less got forcibly locked up and then pampered. Kids who showed talent for magic were scouted, torn away from their families and put into the tower, where they then got no freedom of movement but a lot of freedom of research and of course had all their needs provided for, as long as they carried out what orders their master (the king) decided to give. "No freedom of movement" of course only applied with the asterisk of "unless ordered by the king", with the asterisk being hella broad and allowing them to take on various official, semi-official and unofficial jobs. The king relied heavily on loyal mages as enforcers, which turned the local populace against them and reinforced their loyalty out of desperation. A bad mix of top-down horrible orders you couldn't refuse to carry out, and no consequences for lashing out at anyone who wasn't a government official, led to a lot of atrocities committed in the name of the king that he even didn't necessarily personally order.

Magic works basically by manipulating the 'weave', and requires energy. Some magic energy is generated by the mage themselves, the more they train this ability the more they get; some magic energy 'floats freely' generated by natural sources like life and emotions, and can be 'drawn in' by mages who know how to do that (all formally trained mages know how to do that, the question is duration and area, as ambient magic DOES become depleted). Some magic energy gathers into material stuff like ore or plants or water, which can then be gathered and used. Magic can be done purely with a thought, but the more complex the action you're trying to do, the harder it is to get it right, and words and gestures help a lot with 'fixing' it, like using a ruler while drawing. Objects can be enchanted, which isn't principally different from just generating a one-time effect, and depending on how they are made and what they are for can be single use, rechargeable, automatically recharge from ambient magic or owner, draw from owner's magic directly (bad design but hey people sometimes suck), or just have a permanent effect that doesn't 'use up' magic energy in any outside-visible way. Rituals, especially those involving pre-made magic objects, allow game-changing complexity and scale of spells. A mage who foresees trouble can, given enough time, fortify their personal laboratory/house/tower/keep absolutely out of proportion with their personal power. It's not impossible to break through / unravel such fortifications, but breaking through would require so ridiculously much force, looking for design flaws, inaccuracies and loopholes is a much more productive way of trying to hack it. That, or just trying to lure the mage outside - human factor is the weak point of any security system.

Whenever a magic action is performed, it 'leaks' some energy 'colored' by the effect it was made to do. The more harmless example would be a library that was daily illuminated by 'candle' spells for centuries eventually having faint ambient light even when no-one's there. The less harmless example can be more or less accurately compared with nuclear fallout. The amount of energy leaked depends on the degree of control an individual mage (or a group of mages; it's entirely possible to collaborate when doing magic, much like it's possible to collaborate on any other activity) has over what they're doing. Maybe comparable with how much paint gets on your hands, face, clothes and everything when you're painting. The bigger the spell, the harder it is to make it airtight; on the other hand, the smaller the spell, the less motivation there is to try hard to make it 'tight'. This can depend on an individual mage's style or skill, or on outside circumstances - an unexpected factor can make the process more messy than intended.

The social system of the land was more or less classic feudalism, eventually transitioning into absolute monarchy, as the mage-rulers took more and more power in their hands. Nobles stopped trying to give their children magic education, as it would just mean them getting whisked away to the tower (unless this was the intended result, which was also a thing that happened) (it was a whole Thing with some people, particularly poorer peasants, trying to develop magic so they can attract attention and get taken to the tower, and others desperately hiding their abilities/pursuits to avoid it) (obviously the mage searchers took bribes, though had to be careful to not get caught). Surrounding lands have some forms of feudalism too for the most part, though there's a lot of diversity there (I haven't worked out a lot of that). Neither native nor foreign nobility was particularly happy with how the king treated them; really, nobody was happy about anything he did, with rare exceptions mostly just confirming the rule.

It's hard to say when rebellion first started mounting; it's fair to say the king produced the rebellion himself by cranking down harder and harder on those who dared oppose him even a little bit. Overreactions and power trips of mages who wanted to feel superior to objectively freer people resulted in villages, towns and whole regions being wiped from the face of the earth, survivors banding together into either various rebellious movements or just bandit gangs. Rise of banditry led to more unrest, unrest led to prosecution, and so the wheel turned. Eventually, the very big majority of rebellious movements managed to unite under a single banner, with a group of charismatic leaders who were more or less agreed upon as the new rulers when the rebellion wins. Nobody really had the concept of democracy, the idea was changing dynasties.

Changing dynasties in this case was actually a more complicated thing than just toppling a government, because of the whole magic thing. As the country was a whole and single concept in the minds of the people, so the magic bent to actually make it so, and tie it to the crown/rulers. It's kind of complicated, because it's not purely 'whatever people think is true goes', but it is influenced heavily by people's 'mindscape' and also a dozen other factors that nobody keeps track of except particularly dedicated mage researchers... who in this country could be find exclusively in the tower. Rebel mages kind of had more immediate&important things to worry about, and even when someone thought about it, the thought was dismissed with 'let's take it one step at a time; it can't possibly get worse than it is right now' (see: nuclear fallout)

In the last phase of the war, the army + guard mostly switched over to the rebels' side, the problem being the king had long stopped relying on them. It was him and his mages vs everyone else, more or less, with civilian population just submitting to whoever was present.

The Big Final Confrontation was a big battle between the rebellion forces and the king. All people who were meant to evenatually rule the country were there, leading the troops, this being the only possible way people would actually follow them into what was very likely to be a suicide charge. On the other hand, a big layer of students / aides / next in commands was left out of the battle entirely as backup. This proved a wise decision as the battle did in fact end with a suicide attack - the king managed to set up a spell that would destroy the entire rebellion army, and the best the rebellion mages could do was disrupt it so it would detonate, destroying the king himself and his not-very-big-in-size army, AND a huge chunk of rebellion forces that were closer to them, including the mages themselves.

This left the victorious army basically without leadership, and the factually-kids left behind had to quickly figure out what to do. The reason the protagonist ended up in charge was just because she was the one to start telling disoriented others what to do now. She was just an apprentice mage, she didn't really expect to be looked to as a ruler, but she took on the responsibility more or less by accident and had to stick with it.

So, she was left with a ravaged country still actively in the process of destroying itself (remember, banditry, and non-aligned rebellion movements)... and the king's treasury, which she took a look at and went 'holy shit what'. And then she took a look at financial books and went 'holy shit what' a second time.

There was enough money to literally rebuild the whole country... the question was how to organize it (popular rebellions: not the most disciplined of forces) and how to not end up being a tyrant herself.

The plan she came up was was to organize a big big harvest festival in all more or less big population centers all over the country and invite a lot of foreign traders with a lot of goods to it - as much as she estimated would be needed to, in fact, rebuild the country. (The calculations on that were not done instantly and not on her own obviously). The festival would start with a census, where each person, including kids, would give their name, have their 'unique magic imprint' taken, and be given a pretty large sum of money. This would double as a pardon for any past banditry, assuming they did not get caught doing the same thing again. There are a lot of logistical difficulties with it, starting with 'what about people who can't come' proceeding to 'how many mages do we need to do this' and so on and so forth. Well, the revolution happened in the beginning of April, and she has until mid-September (the traditional harvest festival time) to coordinate the whole thing. And figure out what to do with cleanup of land and so so so many other problems (I spent many hours figuring out those problems I don't remember all of it now and I wouldn't be able to write all of them out anyway) (the long term plan is to do this same thing, festival, census and all, every year, because the crown's income is ridiculous and the structures ensuring it still more or less work, the king wasn't /that/ stupid)

One thing she decided on from the very beginning was take the tower as her own. She did keep them under a sort of 'house arrest' from the beginning, but they were not persecuted in any way. Obviously the populace would have problems with it and want to bring them to justice for what they did, but also if she let them do what they wanted they'd just burn down the whole tower and there were /kids/ there, not to mention mages are never not a significant asset. Given access to the king's personal stuff she wouldn't have problems controlling them, and she did need them. This was its own Whole Big Storyline about how she handled it, with individual approach and a lot of showmanship and focusing on giving people the impression that they were heard and believed rather than actual justice.

(There was also its own Whole Big Storyline with her burning out from trying to personally do everything just so she'd be legitimized in people's eyes)

Also she didn't want to take the crown from the beginning, despite everyone thinking she should, if only to make the situation clear and stable in the eyes of foreign powers. Then some facts came to light, and the sum of it was: the complete and absolute shit happening in the country for the last several years weakened the weave, and there's an impending demon invasion. Theoretically it's not yet too late, and if she manages to keep the peace and make everyone happy and make a lot of good vibes happen, the weave might yet hold... but she definitely shouldn't even touch the crown, as it has a lot of Bad Vibes in it by now, and as it was originally an artifact of the land's /protection/ from demons, 'activating' it again via a coronation ceremony would only make things that much worse for the country, not to mention it'd be pretty bad for the ruler personally. On the other hand, if she beats back a demonic invasion, either by force or by peace, she'll pretty much earn her own right to rule the land regardless of the old crown. Hell, she's /already/ earning it by doing everything she does.

So as far as specific questions go:

1) how did he rize to power? he inherited the throne, I think there was a bit of infighting over the crown among relatives and that had its own separate plot with a 'legitimate heir' popping up, but in the end he won out in the family intrigues

2) what prevented the revolt of hiz kingdom, thoze opprezzed to the point of zuicidal urgez gathering in one place? nothing. they did it. repeatedly and consistently. eventually it worked

3) what finally brought him down? see above: a big fucking climactic battle with his own spell detonating on him in the end

4) why didnt thiz happen before it happened? because he was a powerful ruler with a powerful base of mages who had to support his rule or greet an angry mob. It was a combination of random luck, slowly developing the organization over the years, and deterioration of the king's own support structure (there were renegade tower mages in the rebellion too, to give one example) that eventually overcame that

5) what waz the extent of hiz magic ability? that's a Really Good Question. He inherited a fuckton of ready-made magical power in magical items, including the palace itself (the defense spell system being one aspect of what it did), but he was also powerful enough personally to exploit it to its fullest potential. In the end it came down less to his personal 'power' (the amount of energy he could put in a single spell cast from his mind with no external aid) and more to his cunning, sheer nerdery (there was... a lot of creative demonology behind the scenes, and a huge part of demonology is just extensive research of every aspect of what you're going to try beforehand) and full grasp of resources he had at his disposal. Whether he would or would not win an all-out no-external-aid magic duel with the protagonist, or any other rebellion mage, is literally irrelevant. Nobody was fighting fair.

6) where did the kingdom get food? this is another Very Good Question. The country was fucking d e s t r o y e d. A lot of kingdom... simply didn't, and this is one of the problems the protagonist has to contend with. It's worth noting: - the strong foreign support the rebellion was getting, including some food supplies. Nobody wanted the fucker in charge of that world's equivalent of majority of oil wells; - the simple hedge magic a lot of villagers could do to augment their farming. This had to be kept secret from the government, but then, those mages wouldn't know what to look for, for the most part, as this kind of magic, cooperating with the land rather than forcing your will on it, was an entirely different branch than what was studied in the tower. Sure, some who came from there themselves would know, but they also knew this would mean going after literally everyone, and that particular kind of magic was no threat to anything, it was literally just particularly potent harmony with nature; - the economy of the crown getting rich on selling off magic items was built on exploiting the big magic sources, but in this country there were also a lot of tiny ones, that - see above - permitted the land to be a lot more productive than it should have been. Before the nuclear fallout shit, there was no such thing as a 'lean year' in this country, and hunger was basically unheard-of. This entire thing was a purely political problem. (so, yes, overall the answer is 'farming in villages')

7) what level of zcarcity and poverty waz there? See above: no want for food at least, until civil war started destroying everything. However, the state basically hogged all the magic resources that weren't small enough to escape their notice, so magic items were only marginally more common than in other countries. This wasn't always this way, the situation developed gradually as this specific dynasty deteriorated over the last several generations;

8) waz it a police ztate? "police" sounds to me like a much more modern concept, idk what 'police state' would mean Way Back When. But mages were being sent all over the country 'inspecting' and harshly punishing anything wrong, more and more so, so sort of?

9) waz there brainwazhing? if zo, what are the repercuzzionz that your protagonizt haz to face? not really, no. The king relied on brute force to get across his point. The closest is the tower, but mages there had an overall pretty good idea of the situation they were in, though their coping methods were often not the best;

10) how doez the kingdom deal with hygine? how doez that differ between economic clazzez? iz magic involved, and if zo, how zo? how doez that change with the protag? I'm personally a bit of a filthy pig so congratulations you hit on a question I have never thought of before. I'd have to say that in other countries, the ones where magic is available to anyone with money to pay for access, yes, magic piping and plumbing and deodorants and everything are definitely a thing for rich people, and the protagonist probably grew up seeing this as the norm. On the other hand, in this country, and others where magic is more restricted, 'magic hygiene' would come in the form of rare curiosity items. That is, among the common folk - mage laboratories, particularly old and well-equipped ones like the tower, have magic everything, including teleportation circles instead of elevators. Otherwise it's usual historical stuff... which I have no idea what it would specifically be for that climate and perios ahaha *hides*

11) do you have a ztory to tell on a zmaller and grander zcale then the ztory of economiez, that which iznt life itzelf but a facsimile carried out by it'z people? I'm not sure how to parse this question but most of the meat of the story is the protag figuring out her personal relationship with powre, so, IDK??? There are also other characters I like, like one of the aforementioned demons and a 'mundane prophet' (its a scientific term in-universe) maid and her tower mage war criminal brother and the young mage kid and the guy with a connection to the goddess of luck who ends up being her mentor though he isn't even that much of a mage and the ex-tower mage who ended up being in charge of the tower now that the rebellion won and I D K if this answers your question at all

12) what'z the landzcapez? THIS IS A VERY GOOD IDEA I NEED TO GIVE MORE THOUGHT TO. "Exactly like Ukraine" is a bad lazy answer, given the land is sort of alive and shaped a lot by its natural magic >_> but climate-wise, yeah, mostly like Ukraine. There are forests and plains and hills, mostly, with the southeastern border being mostly uninhabited mountains. There is a sea to east/northeast, with the mountains cutting off most of the coastline from the rest of the country. The capital is to the south. I don't know I'm getting vertigo trying to translate the vague mental image I have in my head into actual geographical directions )=

13) what kind of dancing are there? feztivalz? immigration? muzic? Another thing I never thought of... I'm sorry I'm so uninterested in the specifics of some of these that I can just answer 'regular folk dancing with regular folk music'. I literally have no idea how to tell folk music of my own country from folk music of any other European country and the only reason I know our folk dancing is because gopak is a meme. You don't want me trying to figure out these things anyway >_< Immigration was a thing back before the Bad Times, the country was fairly ethnically diverse and still is I guess, in bigger cities skin color variations are barely more memorable than hair color, and in the rural areas closer to the borders too. Festivals are A Thing that was part of the plotline I was figuring out, with the whole nature magic thing. Definitely a harvest festival, of course.

14) what waz there before he took over? how did hiz rule effect all of theze? Overall, the biggest effect is that people are poorer, and more focused on immediate survival. Nobody wants to stick out, nobody knows when a mage will decide that a festival is not respectful enough to the king and level a village. The bigger cities and the most backwater nobody-even-knows-they-exist villages are the two opposites that managed to keep more of the culture - cities were more integrated with the mages' 'policing' even before the Bad Times and so had less to adjust, and the most backwater villages avoided the worst of it. Tiny towns and big villages, those of it that survived, basically stopped any kinds of public celebrations at all. The protag organizing a big harvest festival will not interfere with anyone's pre-existing plans, there. (That she's foreign is a non-factor here, it's not like she's going to be personally micromanaging it, there's lots of people to delegate this particular part to)

15) doez magic work through the human body? more like through the human mind, but body is if not -the- source of energy, at leasts a very important one

16) iz it languaged bazed? no, any verbal formulas are purely to help spellcasters focus. Although given the whole 'magic affected by human concepts' thing, certain phrasings that are only ever used in magic (antiquated words, dead languages) might take on some power of their own. Basically the language basis is: if the spellcaster knows what they're saying and what they're intending to do by it, it works. If they are trying to blindly repeat a spell in a language they don't know without any idea how it works... maybe don't?

17) what'z the power zource? It can be basically summed up as Life. Life is not caused by magic, instead magic is caused by life. Dead worlds like our moon have no magic at all, other than the kind tied to what people think of these places

18) iz it through zpiritz? It can be! Many different kinds of entities that can be called 'spirits' exist. However, this is not the kind that is 'mainstream' in the tower, nor the kind the protagonist focused on when learning. They would know a little about it, like the basic fact it exists and the common principles that apply to it as well as to other kinds of magic, but overall are profoundly ignorant on this matter

19) through permiating magical energy? magic both uses up and generates ambient magic energy, yeah

20) iz it through perzonal power of zoulz? among other things, yes. If, say, two mages with vastly different abilities swapped bodies, the resulting magical abilities of both of them would be a weird fusion of what each of them separately was good at

21) iz it through perzonal power of zoulz? gods exist! like, pagan gods. none other than the goddess of luck came up so far though

22) unholy power? demons have magical power of their own, that is distinctly different in quality from that humans use, and does not interact with the weave much. It is both stronger and weaker, depending how you look at it. A demon could not learn human magic, and humans can not access demonic powers either, but various pacts are possible that allow cooperation or even merging of powers. Straight up work for hire is the most common form though

23) can it be obtained by zacrifice? how would you define zacrifice? ability to use magic, in itself, no; magical energy, yes, in many different ways. For example, it can be granted by a divine entity that likes having sacrifices made to it; more direct 'natural' transformations are possible, like draining life from something living (though this is horribly inefficient and can be compared to burning down the house to keep warm in winter); or for example, blood holds power and blood magic is A Thing

24) doez an offering of pain count? in this specific setting, this is counterproductive to human magic but makes one possible currency when dealing with demons (who feed on pain)

25) what kind of recreational drugz are there? this question sounds weirdly specific to me, and yet is wholly legitimate. Alcohol probably exists, though I'm not sure if I'd even referenced it once in the story proper; I could easily cut it out and make the recreatinal drug scene much weirder if I wanted to. Overall, I would say recreational drugs aren't widespread in this particular country (though for wealthy people there are no doubt all kinds of imports)

26) where do they come from? how doez pharmiceauticalz work? how doez magic come into play with all of thiz? I absolutely love that you asked this question, because I had not considered this before and yet it falls Within My Sphere Of Interest. First of all, there's alchemy: mixing ingredients and magic spells, producing a very weird and diverse variety of effects, though usually not very strong compared to what casting a spell on a 'solid' object can do. (An enchanted branch can be a thousand times more powerful than an enchanted potion, but an enchanted potion can have a weirdly precise effect that a branch would need to be worked at by generations of masters to achieve) Second of all, there's magic in nature: some plants can heal just because they have healing magic stored in them, regardless of what kind of plant they are (though watching out for poison shit is still, y'know, prudent). And third, there's regular folk knowledge of plants and what they do, extending into apothecaries in cities and private doctors tending the rich. There was no any kind of religion-based persecution of, say, wise women who know how to heal people with herbs (at least not in this country), so this remains a respected skillset transfered from parent to child. There are people (more often, yes, women) who specialize with it, but most people who grow up in the country would know what to brew against cough, what to put on a wound to prevent infection, and a couple of more complex family recipes.

27) how widezpread iz the availability of magic? See above: varies by country. A lot depends on how much 'natural' magic is in a specific place; rest assured this country is not the only magic-rich one in the world (though the only one with quite as many big concentrated sources). A lot depends on politics and availability of formal learning. There is the top-down direction of magic spreading, with wisened mages teaching their students arcane mysteries, and there's the grassroots direction, that includes anything from charlatans with annoyingly real disappearing coin tricks to thieves who manage to figure out how to blend with shadows to soldiers whose weapons seem to be blessed by gods of war to farmers who know how to get on the good side of the land. 'Mundane prophet' is its own category: people who get visions, prophetic dreams and other kinds of comes-out-of-nowhere knowledge without ever trying or even wanting to have it. They are, however, generally a sign of the weave weakening and the demonic invastion being imminent )=

28) can it be uzed pazzively or accidentally? On one hand, I want to say no, but on the other hand, with this system of magic I don't really feel like saying no to anything. In some magic traditions and in some environmental conditions (A LOT depends on natural and ambient magic), it probably can. Maybe you can define "I don't know anything about magic but I'm trying really hard to achieve this result I want and it weirdly seems to be working" as "accidentally" (OK, now that I'm thinking about ambient magic and particularly ambient lingering side effects: a person can 'activate' them with their thoughts if they are particularly strong/concentrated somewhere. This wouldn't technically be the person doing the magic, but then again, if they did it knowingly on purpose it might as well be)

29) are people born with it? People are born with a degree of affinity for interacting with the weave, but just as much depends on natural+ambient magic where they were growing up. A kid in a mage family, in a house where some magic is always happening, would have a stronger magical affinity than this same kid growing up in different circumstances and never encountering magic at all. What affinity influences is basically how easy it is for a person to use magic; however, there are lots of different ways to use magic (see: spirits, for example), and people's affinities can take on very different shapes. Partly this is actually cultural, influenced by a sort of collective subconscious: mages from different countries might find entirely different things easier or harder, with overlappng variations between individuals

30) do zome people not have accezz to magic, and if zo, how many and why? First of all, there are places with very little to no 'natural' magic. While ambient magic will exist anywhere there's anything living, lack of natural magic means lack of people instinctively interacting with it, doing the grassroots sort of casual magic. For children who grow up in this kind of land in a remote area that doesn't have formally educated mages, it's entirely possible to never encounter any kind of magic at all. Second of all, there are simply people who don't have access to formal education. Interacting with natural magic is very limited in terms of what you can do - mostly just what nature wants you to do - and people who can only do that and don't have the passion to stubbornly hone this ability until they can access their own energy as well might as well be cut off from magic. Most people belong to this category. Third, it's not impossible for a person to be born with zero magical affinity at all. Natural+ambient magic and inborn affinity are multiplied, not added, so someone who's a zero could never learn any magic at all. It's very rare, though, and if born to a family with a magic tradition could be regarded as a sort of disability. This person could still do certain kinds of demonology and interaction with spirits and divine magic though; gods don't care about magic affinity in picking who they interact with and gift with power. Those things are obscure in the country the story is taking place in, but in some cultures, or even specific places, it might well be a default thing for any person to learn when growing up, making their 'zero' affinity even less relevant than it is for people with simply no access to magic learning at all.

31) how doez magic effect the flora and fauna of your zetting?? VARIOUSLY. Normal farming looks mostly the same, but deep forests, mountains and swamps can look veeeery differently than in our world :> (This applies mostly to places with a lot of natural magic, of course; and in an entirely different way, to places with strong ambient effects. You maybe want to stay away from those latter ones)

#my ocs #sort of #worldbuilding #magic

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