#anti cormac

[dramioneasks]

LF a fic-- Draco saves Hermione from being SA'd by Cormic McLaggen in the corridors during Slughorn's Christmas party... Any ideas?

Anyone?

Edit: Thanks!

exo-raskreia: There's a scene where Cormac is straight up harrassing Hermione outside the party but Draco ends up intervening in 'Between The Lines' by owsarelovely (https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9445726/1/)

[acgames]

Shaytham art I had marinating in my art folder for few weeks.

First art of mine to have some spice put on it, and I don't mean naked Shay 😂

[astrababyy]

the second cc book is so weird because cormac is the guy fighting for justice and pushing the plot along, and he’s got to drag the actual mcs along with him kicking and screaming. like, HE’S the good guy who’s fighting for human liberation, and all the others are playing the whole “reluctant hero” cliche but it just doesn’t work cause they’re, collectively, two royals, an ex-member of a super powerful wolf pack, the underwater queen’s spymaster, and the fucking umbra mortis who JUST got his freedom back after centuries of slavery. but then the mcs are the saints on a moral high horse and cormac is the devil incarnate. idk if it changes as the book goes on, but i’m on this part where declan is joking around about a situation where people could die and cormac is the only one taking it seriously. like this is so tone deaf???

[hp-confessions]

Oh, this is an interesting blog

My confession/opinion:

Cormac McLaggen should’ve been held accountable for what he did to Hermione in book 6, the day of the Slug Club party!

~

[creamcitywriter]

Blue Meridian; Or, The Evening Playtime In The West

[bennydiazepine]

God did not make me, yet try I did to live in his image.

I came into the world sharp in places I should not have been. I hide claws and teeth and spines, I walk among men.

The greatest sin is to lie to oneself.

[what-do-1000-swords-look-like]

Beau: "So you really won't date anymore cops?"

Jenny: "Why? Would that just break your heart?"

Beau: "You wish."

Me:

[ladydeath-vanserra]

Hayes and Meredith were so good together and leave it to Owen to RUIN IT smfh

[hitchell-mope]

Natch

[constitutionalweasleymonarchy]

I really wish some Ron fans would take a step back and realize how Ron antis have successfully lured you into playing on their field via the neverending social media moral purity circlejerk, buying into their arguments in your efforts to debunk them.

Whenever I hear a Ron fan say something about how the author did him dirty in HBP and how HBP was written in some kind of weird effort to malign him while glorifying Hermione and everyone else, i want to flip a table. You know why? Because in making this argument you are buying into the idea that Ron was some kind of awful person in that book (or at least really looked like one) and the only way you can combat that notion is by saying, "uh, well, yes, but the author intentionally wrote him wrong because we all know Hermione is her self-insert so she had to level the playing field."

I read HBP before social media had become anything like it is today, and before I was involved in any way with fandom online. HBP did nothing to lessen my love for Ron -- absolutely nothing. It did nothing to lessen my love for Hermione. It made me love them more, individually and together. The fucking humanity and heartache evoked in those characters in that book -- via their imperfect and completely fucking human attitudes and actions -- is wonderful. These are two young people each convinced that they are not being seen by the person they want the most. And they're dealing with this on top of the stress of school and the impending war and just how much it fucking sucks to be 16 years old. (And the fact that they have "more important" problems, by the way, doesn't magically make people behave more maturely and rationally when it comes to "silly" personal issues. That's some other pure unrealistic nonsense I've heard.)

I'll bet when you read it, HBP did nothing to lessen your love for Ron either. It was only after you began entertaining and internalizing garbage on tumblr and twitter about how awful and "abusive" they were, because people like pretending they've never behaved similarly in their lives, and social media isn't known for fostering nuance.

I behaved at age 16 in ways I really wouldn't like to have held against me forever. In ways I wouldn't have liked -- or deserved -- to have held against me for even a month. Same at age 20. And 25. And sometimes even today. If you claim you haven't behaved in harmful ways rooted in your own hurt, I won't even engage with that. Because it's delusional.

Forget this "who was worse" trap. The great thing about Ron and Hermione is how evenly matched they are -- in force, in fury, in passion, in loyalty, in pigheadedness, in their desire to be loved and needed, in their deeply-embedded sense of right and wrong, and not least of all, in their ability to know exactly how to push each other's buttons when they're pissed off. They both have moments where they behave shitty in this book, but none of it is in a vacuum and none of it is without a catalyst. And that doesn't mean the action itself is okay, but it's a hell of a lot different from someone like, say, Malfoy, who is maliciously cruel without provocation, or Cormac "Her Lack of Interest Means Try Harder" McLaggen.

Sometimes in a relationship, you need to say you're sorry for causing hurt even if you didn't mean to do it, or even if you believe you were in the right or the hurt was started by the other person in the first place. Because that's part of having a loving, understanding, gracious relationship. It's also being willing to admit you've done something uncool without falling into a sense of despair that you're suddenly a bad person. And it's no different when you're talking about these two idiots. If someone points out Hermione behaved like x because she was upset when Ron did y, it doesn't mean we need to do mental gymnastics to prove that y was completely justified. Y might not have been justified. Or maybe it was. Either way, we can acknowledge Hermione was responding out of hurt, without it having to mean that Ron is the devil incarnate. And vice versa. We don't need to do the proverbial "oh you like pancakes so you must hate waffles" bullshit.

The first stop in combating Ron hate, should be for self-proclaimed Ron fans to stop trying to reason his bad moments into nonexistence. Stop giving the time of day to people who believe someone's dipshitted moments of indiscretion during a time of learning and growing somehow make him less worthy. You were never going to win an argument against that kind of mindset anyway.

[feyresdandelion]

eLrIeL iS tOo ClIChÉ

disclaimer 1: this post will contain spoilers for the pairings of every sjm book.

disclaimer 2: if I were to add every single couple sjm has written I would be here all day, so I will only add couples who are currently together (LoA and Beron), endgame (Aelin and Rowan), heavily implied to be endgame (Manon and Dorian) or where one of the people died (Aelin and Sam). I will not add couples that have broken up willingly or really secondary couples.

disclaimer 3: this post is anti gwynriel and elucien and pro elriel. It's also really long.

The argument that elriel is too cliché and cheesy due to the whole "3 brothers, 3 sisters" is so stupid to me. However, due to that part of the fandom and their unwillingness to think objectively, let's look at the statistics, shall we.

Here is a list of the sjm couples and their status as mates or not:

Aelin and Rowan - mates

Yrene and Chaol - humans, not mates

Manon and Dorian - we don't know, maybe

Elide and Lorcan - mates

Lysandra and Aedion - mates

Nesryn and Sartaq - humans, not mates

Elena and Gavin - mates

Aelin and Sam - broken up, not mates

Lyria and Rowan - broken up, not mates

Aedion's mom and Gavriel - heavily implied mates, maybe

Sorscha and Dorian - broken up, not mates

Asterin and the hunter - we don't know, maybe

Feyre and Rhys - mates

Nesta and Cassian - mates

Viviane and Kallias - mates

LoA and Beron - currently together, not mates

Jesminda and Lucien - broken up, not mates

Miryam and Drakon - mates

Amren and Varian - we don't know, maybe

Thesan and his lover - heavily implied mates, maybe

Rhys' mother and father - deceased, mates

Tamlin's mother and father - deceased, mates

Theia and Aidas - broken up, mates

Bryce and Hunt - mates

Lidia and Ruhn - mates

Danika and Baxian - broken up, mates

Sophie and Cormac - heavily implied mates, maybe

Fury and Juniper - we don't know, maybe

Declan and Marc - we don't know, maybe

Ember and Randall - humans, not mates

Bryce and Connor - broken up, not mates

Shahar and Hunt - broken up, not mates

Out of the 32 couples mentioned above, 14 are mates (43.75%), 10 aren't mates (31.25%) and 8 we don't know/it's implied (25%)

Out of the 14 couples who are mates, 12 either died while being a couple or are currently together (85.71%) and 2 are broken up mates (14.29%)

Out of the 10 couples who aren't mates, 3 are humans (30%), 6 are broken up and therefore not endgame (60%) and 1 are currently together (10%)

Before we continue let's talk about the definition of cliché:

something or someone that is not at all original, surprising, or interesting because it has very often been seen before.

In this post, a cliché couple will be part of the highest percentage of it's category.

Now let's add Elain, Gwyn, Azriel and Lucien to the mix. Here are the most discussed possibilities of these couples:

Elriel - mates and together

Elriel - not mates and together

Elriel - not mates and not together

Elucien - mates and together

Elucien - mates and broken bond

Gwynriel - mates and together

In the case of gwynriel being mates and together that would mean elucien are mates and together and would make elriel not mates and broken up.

So in this case there would be 35 couples, 16 mates (45.71%), 11 not mates (31.43%) and 8 we don't know/it's implied (22.86%)

Out of 16 mates, 14 either died while being a couple or are currently together (87.5%) and 2 are broken up mates (12.5%).

Out of 11 not mates, 3 are humans (27.27%), 7 are broken up and therefore not endgame (63.64%) and 1 are currently together (9.09%)

Therefore that would make gwynriel part of the 87.5% of mates who are together and a cliché

Elucien would also be part of the 87.5% and a cliché

Elriel would be part of the 63.64% of not mates who are broken up and a cliché.

In the case of elriel being mates and together, that would make elucien mates who are not together and gwynriel would be nonexistent.

The only reason gwynriel is noted as nonexistent and not not mates and not together is because while we have got clearly stated evidence of a romance between elriel (the almost kiss in the bonus chapter), we haven't gotten confirmed evidence of a romance between gwynriel (there are theories and maybe subtext, but not clearly stated evidence).

So in this case there would be 34 couples, 16 are mates (47.06%), 10 aren't mates (29.41%) and 8 we don't know/it's implied (23.53%).

Of the 16 mates, 13 either died while being a couple or are still together (81.25%) and 3 are broken up (18.75%).

Elriel would be part of the 81.25% and a cliché.

Elucien would be part of the 18.75% and not a cliché.

However, elriel being mates would mean that Elain had two mating bonds with two different males, so although the outcome would make elriel cliché, the execution would be a first for sjm and not cliché.

In the case of elriel not being mates but together, that would make elucien mates who are not together and gwynriel would be nonexistent.

Of the 34 couples, 15 are mates (44.12%), 11 aren't mates (32.35%) and 8 we don't know/it's implied (23.53%).

Out of the 15 mates, 12 either died while being a couple or are still together (80%) and 3 are broken up (20%).

Out of the 11 not mates, 3 are humans (27.28%), 6 are broken up (54.55%) and 2 (18.19%) are still together.

Elriel would be part of the 18.19% and not a cliché.

Elucien would be part of the 20% and not a cliché.

In conclusion, the only way elriel could be cliché would be if they were not mates and didn't end up together and if they were mates who ended up together. Even in the last case, they wouldn't be too cliché because it would mean Elain had two mating bonds, which we have yet to see in any sjm book.

The endgame for both gwynriel and elucien would make them cliché, while the breaking of the mating bond would make elucien not cliché and, let's be honest, there's not any other possibility of gwynriel being endgame apart from them being mates.

You can dislike whatever ship you want, but saying that elriel is a cliché would be an objective lie, when they are the most unique couple written by sjm to date.

[dramioneasks]

Hey! I read a really good Dramione fic a few weeks back and can't really remember the title, could you please help me?

The synopsis I remember is that Hermione works at Ministry and Draco's firm Malfoy Enterprises is famous for its advanced gadgets he was basically asked to renovate the ministry's auror department I think.Even Harry was impressed by him. They were assigned to work together and Hermione hated it. He also bought Hermione a really nice chair for her office. Cormac Mclaggen and Hermione both were in the race to be minister I think. It included victories as Draco's assistant and she had a room for a baby with a teddy there eventually.It ends with Hermione being the Minister of Magic.Other characters there were blaise and Harry

I am sorry if it's a little difficult to understand but I would be really grateful if you could help me find this fic.

This sounds so familiar!!

Help please!

Edit: Thanks!

sun-celine: I believe it's The Deadline by Lena Phoria, I only found it on ffn https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9831689/1/6

[acgames]

I realise I am crappy Assassin's Creed fan because if someone asked me to name my favorite characters from the franchise, it would be two guys who are supposed to be antagonists of the series:

But listen, if I am supposed to have feelings against them, why these two are one of the deepest and most complex, but also most relatable characters in the series for me?

If an antagonist, why so friend shaped? Why Ubisoft?

[saintsenara]

I know you responded with a meme, but if you're able I'd love to hear your thoughts on harry/hermione 👀

fine. i'll scream into a pillow periodically and get through this...

obviously, i don't actually find the concept of harmony sincerely upsetting - people shipping things is never that deep, and because, as i've said before, i subscribe to the principle that any pairing is possible if you just have enough nerve. i've been recommended some harmony fics by people who are fonder of the ship, and while i've not found them immediately compelling, i do appreciate that there are plenty of people who disagree.

but my feelings are basically the same for harmony as they are for dramione: that it's never done interestingly.

harmony is - like all hermione pairings except [broadly] romione - a breeding ground for fanon!hermione, who is perfect and flawless and so clever she can solve millennia-old mysteries in afternoon. i hate this version of the character because i find her boring - it's just standard self-insert stuff, which is fine but not something i have any interest in reading. i similarly dislike the version of harry who appears in these stories, who ends up - like all men in hermione pairings except [broadly] ron - being either this impossibly sophisticated and suave intellectual with the body of a greek god or a doormat who's happy to shut the fuck up forever and do whatever she says.

[i also hate - obviously, since he's my king - the way harmony stories are often even more egregious than dramione ones in writing ron as a cruel and violent misogynist who is ontologically indistinct from your average death eater. and i think it somewhat proves my point that neither of these ships work particularly well that this character assassination has to take place in order to make them plausible...]

and i think the flattening of harry and hermione's personalities within most harmony is the main thing which keeps the ship from being interesting. because - while i certainly don't go in for the common anti-harmony argument that harry actively dislikes hermione - it's undeniable that there is a lot about the two of them which wouldn't be conducive to a harmonious [lol] relationship.

their communication styles - hermione works through problems by debating them, harry prefers not to be challenged - are the obvious one. their ways of expressing affection - hermione shows people she cares about them by nagging them and meddling in their lives, harry very much does not - are another. they have extremely different views about authority, they decompress in different ways [harry is someone who clearly needs to keep physically active to clear his head, hermione is much more of a homebody], and harry's impulsiveness is a poor match for hermione's fondness for planning.

they are also similar in ways which would cause them to butt heads. both have a tendency towards obsessiveness, which they rely in canon on ron pulling them out of. both have a significant capacity for cruelty and extremely black-and-white moral codes - harry has a tendency towards forming judgements on people and situations based on whether they are people he likes or things he benefits from [i.e. how he's appalled by dobby's treatment because his masters are the malfoys, but doesn't give a shit about kreacher's because his abusive master is sirius], while hermione tends to regard any rule-breaking she does as justified even if she'd regard it as outrageous from anyone else [i.e. her fury over harry appearing to use felix felicis to improve's ron's performance at quidditch when she herself confunded cormac mclaggen to get him onto the team...]. both have a tendency towards giving people the silent treatment when they're angry. both are incredibly stubborn...

and so on.

obviously, they also have positive qualities in common too - a shared loyalty, for one - but it always seems to me that the standard move in harmony is for authors to completely ignore these conflicting traits, either really over-egging what makes harry and hermione compatible platonically in the books or just inventing similarities [especially intellectual ones] to justify the pairing. whereas i would much prefer to see just how difficult it would be for harry and hermione to fall and sustain being in love with each other, and i've never seen that done compellingly.

but the conflict i'd love to see explored in harmony fics most of all, but which never seems to be acknowledged by fans of the pairing, is that [despite the fanon slander that ron is the person who behaves poorly towards her] harry is often horrible to hermione and hermione is often scared of harry.

this is at its most profound after ron leaves the horcrux hunt in deathly hallows, but we see several times throughout canon that - if ron isn't there to mediate between them - harry often treats hermione in a way which can be considered downright cruel. if she criticises him in a way he considers unjustifiable, he tends to side with other people against her [ron in prisoner of azkaban over the firebolt; ginny in half-blood prince over snape's textbook]. if she tries to reason with him he often beats her down with the force of his emotions [i.e. when she tries to get him to think about whether his vision of sirius in the department of mysteries might be a trick] or his convictions [i.e. when he lures her into near-death by being certain that nagini is really bathilda bagshot], and she often ends up having to soothe or appease him when he's the one who's screamed at her.

hermione is also scared more generally of harry's experiences - she's by far the least amenable of the trio to talking about voldemort [even though she says his name earlier than ron does] - and mission, which puts up a barrier between them which will be difficult to bring down post-war. i think there's something which could be really interesting there - the most interesting dynamic in hinny, after all, is when harry and ginny's tendency to not actually be honest with each other is explored - but unfortunately at the minute that sort of character work is drowning in a sea of "ron is so stupid and harry and i just love talking about classic literature, come darling, put on your leather trousers and let us solve world hunger; i look like emma watson" nonsense.

dull!

[fanfic-lover-girl]

Romione Hot Take

So I have seen arguments from Dramione antis claiming that Dramione would only benefit Draco (re. Draco's redemption) and Hermione would just be a prop to Draco's redemption arc in an AU where Dramione was canon.

And I kind of agree? I do think Hermione could benefit somehow from the ship if I think hard enough but Dramione mainly benefits Draco when you look at it from a surface level.

But I would pose to Romione fans that this criticism applies to Romione too. But in the reverse: Romione benefits Hermione more than Ron.

Off the top of my head, I can recall various and numerous moments where Ron was very caring and protective of Hermione. Like Ron covering Hermione with a blanket (or something like that), Ron screaming when Hermione was being tortured by Bella, Ron praising Hermione for being brilliant, Ron showing concern when Draco hit her with the growing teeth jinx, defending her against Snape in book 3 etc. Of course, Ron has his jerk moments but the dude is a teenage boy. He learns from his mistakes and it's nothing to crucify him for.

I can't say the same for Hermione. When I think about Hermione's treatment of Ron, the first moments that come to mind are moments where she is dismissive, cold and belittling Ron. Nothing Ron has done can top Hermione's vicious canary attack and the way she shows absolutely no remorse for it (she even jokes she is tempted to do it again in book 7). Or when Hermione doubted Ron deserved to be prefect in book 5. Or the Scabber and Crookshanks' fiasco and Ron was the one who was made out to be the bad guy. Hermione does care for Ron in her own way, not saying she doesn't, but it's sickening how the narrative constantly vindicates her. And plus there are a few moments where she shows care for Ron that make her look bad because it involves hurting others. Like how she sabotaged Cormac in tryouts so Ron could be goalkeeper. This is not as romantic as it seems.

I can't believe I keep defending a ship I don't like. But I am tired of seeing Romione fans toss stones from their glass houses. Several criticisms they level at Dramione shippers (most of whom they blanket label as rape apologists and sexists) can be applied to their canon ship.

Romione is not the ultimate romance. I am sure that if Ron treated Hermione the way she treated him, people would have a different tune about this ship. Ron deserved better than Hermione. Ron deserved someone who would build him up and could reciprocate his caring nature. Because Hermione ain't it.

Ron does not need Hermione. Ron is a sociable guy and has other friends and can make more friends. When JKR remembers to treat Ron with respect, the guy is smart enough on his own and he's probably the most emotionally intelligent of the trio. He's definitely the one with the most common sense. Hermione needs him more than he needs her. Romione does little for Ron. Sometimes I feel that Romione is just there to make Hermione feel special IMO. Romione and Hinny serve no great purpose as ships except to ensure our main characters can pop out their annoying offspring in the epilogue. If you take out the ships, nothing really changes.

That's my random TED talk. Not interested in hearing any defence about Romione either. I don't think there is anything that can endear me to this lacklustre ship.

[nicklloydnow]

Illustration by @steve_fagiano_art

“Chigurh stands up to God with an unflinching, uncompromising belief in predetermination—no free will or human choice, no mercy or sentiment, no giving in or letting go or giving up. Principled in the purity of his work, he defies sentiment and falsehood and betrayal. A pure born-again agent of death, anti-Christ Calvinist Chigurh is a man of his deadly word, a relentless avenger, an implacable killer defying God, no less than the diabolic Judge in Blood Meridian. "How to prevail over that which you refuse to acknowledge the existence of" lago was never so clear-minded, Ahab no more manically fixated, Kurtz no less obsessed with his mission to exterminate losers. "The horror! The horror!" What more can a man say of pure evil?” - Kenneth Lincoln, ‘Cormac McCarthy: American Canticles’ (2010) [p. 144, 145]

“Chigurh again adopts the Socratic method in his final encounter with his fellow hitman Carson Wells. Although Wells isn't given the privilege of a coin toss, Chigurh nevertheless engages in an incisive dialogue with his victim. While holding Wells at gunpoint, Chigurh asks, "If the rule you followed led you to this of what use was the rule?" When Wells replies, "I don't know what you're talking about," Chigurh elaborates: "I'm talking about your life. In which now everything can be seen at once." Knowing that the moment of death has arrived, Chigurh wants Wells to examine the path that led him here, claiming that the present situation "calls past events into question" (175). Even though Chigurh admits that he and Wells are in the "same line of work," he finds it necessary to distance himself from the other hit-man: "You think I'm like you. That it's just greed. But I'm not like you. I live a simple life" (177). This distinction between the two hired assassins suggests that Chigurh transcends mere criminality. The "simple life" he leads imbues him with the ascetic austerity of a monk pledged to evil, a satanic reversal of traditional, spiritual roles hinted at by other descriptions of Chigurh as a "faith healer" and a "prophet of destruction" (7, 3). In his study of the portrayal of evil in literature and cinema, Paul Oppenheimer points out that evil often "begins in criminality" but then "surpasses criminality, and finally, by comparison with criminality, overwhelms and belittles it, causing it to seem oddly cumbersome and even childish" (21). Chigurh lives by a different "rule," not motivated by the usual spectrum of human desires and thus remaining largely inscrutable.

It is significant that Wells is given a premonition of his own death exactly three days before it takes place. While examining the damage caused by a shootout between Chigurh and Moss at the Eagle Pass motel, Wells notices "two bulletholes in the windowglass" of a "second floor level" apartment across the street. After knocking on the door and receiving no answer, Wells lets himself in and finds the corpse of an old woman: "She'd been shot through the forehead and had tilted forward leaving part of the back of her skull and a good bit of dried brainmatter stuck to the slat of the rocker behind her. . . . A second shot had marked a date on a calendar on the wall behind her that was three days hence" (147). The path of the stray bullet converges with the path of the unsuspecting woman, much as Chigurh's coin converges with the equally unsuspecting gas station owner earlier in the novel. The woman's death reminds Wells of the inexorable machinations of fate: "Not what you had in mind at all, was it darling?" he asks (148). Wells correctly interprets the mark on the calendar as a portent of the day of his own impending death.

During the final encounter, he tells Chigurh, "By the old woman's calendar I've got three more minutes. Well the hell with it. I think I saw all this coming a long time ago. Almost like a dream. Déja vu." Well's words reveal that he had a vision of his own death long before he saw the calendar. Nevertheless, the question posed by Chigurh, namely, "How did you let yourself get in this situation?" suggest that it was still within Wells's power to make different choices, live by a different "rule," and thereby change his fate. Chigurh encourages Wells to engage in a final moment of self-reflection: "I thought you might want to explain yourself. . . . Not to me. To yourself" (178). Chigurh's questions seem to be directing Wells toward something akin to the existentialist concept of authentic existence, which, though "not clearly defined by the existentialists . . . implies an attitude of sincerity and honesty and the absence of self-deception" (de Silva 1). Furthermore, it is a mode of existence based on "a realization that one is what one makes oneself by one's acts" (Manser 20). It is worth mentioning that Sheriff Bell strives for the same realization: "It's a life's work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong. And that is somethin I dont want to be wrong about" (295). Despite the fact that Bell and Chigurh are diametrically opposed in a Manichean battle between good and evil, respectively, both men insist on the importance of authentic existence arrived at through knowledge of the self.

Existentialist themes are also apparent in Chigurh's attempts to make his victims come to terms with the inevitability of death. He accuses Wells of believing that he can keep death at bay: "You think that as long as you keep looking at me you can put it off." Wells denies thinking such a thing, but Chigurh insists, "Yes you do. You should admit your situation. There would be more dignity in it. I'm trying to help you" (176). Behind the "existential preoccupation with the theme of death" is the belief that "living authentically is living constantly in its presence, for then alone can we attain 'freedom in the face of death" (Dutt 80). When Wells accuses Chigurh of thinking that he is "outside of everything" and reminds him that he is "not outside of death," Chigurh replies, "It doesnt mean to me what it does to you" (177). The reply can be read in two ways, the surface reading being that Chigurh has adopted an existentialist approach to death. More subtly, however, the words hint at the idea that Chigurh is no ordinary mortal and may perhaps be Death itself, albeit a modern version that carries a pneumatic stun-bolt gun instead of the traditional scythe.

Wells grows weary of the conversation, announcing, "I'm not interested in your opinions. . . . Just do it. You goddamned psychopath. Do it and goddamn you to hell." Despite the verbal command, Wells's body language suggests that he is not quite ready: "He closed his eyes and he turned his head and he raised one hand to fend away what could not be fended away. Chigurh shot him in the face" (177). Although there is some discrepancy between Wells's words and his reaction to the shot, the fact that Wells commands it enables him to reclaim a certain degree of control over his fate, however insignificant it may appear. Furthermore, McCarthy makes a point of informing the reader that the "new day was still a minute away" (178), thereby emphasizing the fact that the old woman's calendar was not entirely accurate. The fact that, by asking Chigurh to shoot him a minute early, Wells refuses to die on the prophesied day suggests that even within a universe ruled by seemingly inexorable forces of fate, minute degrees of free will and personal agency remain.” - Petra Mundik, ‘A Bloody and Barbarous God: The Metaphysics of Cormac McCarthy’ (2016) [p. 268 - 270]

“The Coen brothers built a story of war between two teams: one team represent the human mind wish to understand the world and the second team represent the universe as a chaos. During the first half of the movie the war looks good for the human mind team but then the human mind team lose – a beatiful metaphor for absurdism.

(…)

Result of the war:

Anton kills Carson, Llewelyn is killed by Mexicans, and the sheriff is retired loosing hope in the world.

The Coen brothers message in this film is that they do not think humans mind will ever be able to understand the world and we are doom to internal ignorance. Depressing.”