#but whether he’s wrong or right and what he thinks abt that is irrelevant. he made a choice and he’s got to stick by it when it comes to

[aalghul]

when it comes to being willing to make concessions on methods & morality specifically in exchange for gaining batman’s trust & access to the inner bat circle vs rejecting an existing trust & access (because it did exist prior to jason’s death & would have existed had he chosen to walk back in with no radically opposing beliefs after lost days #1)….jason should never choose the first

[thedissociatives]

Heeeyyyy, I'm so so intrigued by your hockey posting. I'd love to know more about Fedorov, like what's the lore, what makes him special? Have a nice day/ night <333

good morning/afternoon/evening anon! since you asked so nicely i'll try my best but i do tend to forget everything i know when i have to actually explain it. there is a lot of lore tho so i'm not gonna go over all of it (mainly the bits that interest me the most + some other stuff). i guess what really makes him special (at least to me) is the fact that we don't get players like this anymore. and i'm not talking playing style here (the impact of euro hockey players of the 90s on the nhl today is still so obviously there). a lot of his early career was directly impacted by cold war politics, and since those circumstances haven't existed for a while now, we don't get this insane type of backstories and lore anymore. i should also make it clear that i'm a massive nerd who sat in classrooms for years learning abt soviet stuff which i think definitely has an impact on who My Guys are

seriously there is a lot under the cut so be warned because i did get carried away with myself A Lot (i literally wrote over 1k words on this. sorry in advance)

ok so. sergei started playing "pro" hockey in the soviet union in the mid 80s (i don't think this is the place to explain whether these players were pro or amateur so will leave it like that), first in minsk (only for a year) before being picked up by cska moscow- the central army team. these guys made up most of the national team, which can probably be explained by the fact that their head coach also coached the national team (god that's a bit of a mouthful, but incredibly relevant). he wasn't the only rookie on the team that season; another kid (i think they were both like 16 at the time ?) called alex mogilny had also just arrived in moscow. they would become good friends. sergei would play three seasons for cska before being called up for the national team- he was going to the 1989 world championship. alex would be there, too, having already played on the team before. naturally, the ussr won gold (as they did almost every year). but that doesn't mean everything was good with the players. not long too after the tournament, some of the older players would finally get permission to play in the nhl, but for the younger guys it was looking like they had no way of getting out any time soon. in the days between the end of the championship and the soviet team's flight home, mogilny apparently approached fedorov and asked him to go to america with him- sergei said no, worried about what would happen to his family. alex would go anyway, disappearing for a few days before popping up in buffalo ready to join the sabres. (this might seem irrelevant right now but it's actually really not- i'm getting there now)

that same summer, sergei would be drafted in the fourth round by detroit. this choice may or may not have been influenced by steve yzerman telling them sergei was better than him. after a bit of back and forth, they got him to defect after cska played a series of games in north america. it literally sounds like the type of shit they write in spy films it was fucking mental. this made him only the second soviet to defect in order to play in the nhl i'm pretty sure (defo the second in like 18 months- funnily enough it was his bestie who was the first one. what a coincidence), but they weren't the first two from the other side of the iron curtain to do that. might be wrong but i think that honour goes to the stastny brothers. anyway. when sergei got to detroit he wore 91 because he wanted to "be like stevie" or some insane shit like that. which i literally think about all the time. like seriously what was that about sergei.

okok can't not talk about the russian five so doing that now. since idk how much you know about hockey i'll do a better job on this bit. after sergei arrived in detroit, management must've figured they could get more russians. over the next couple of years they got vladimir konstantinov (who was drafted the same year as sergei) and slava kozlov to make the jump to the states. since i'm mainly talking about sergei i won't go into how they got those two but it's just as unbelievable as you'd expect. after the 1994-95 lockout, the wings traded for another russian- slava fetisov. if you ever want to learn about soviet hockey you'll hear a lot about this guy, and for good reason too. he won two olympic gold medals and seven world championships with the soviet union, and captained most of those teams. obviously adding a guy with that much experience winning was a smart choice imo, even if he hadn't won anything in the nhl yet. by now the wings had four russian players- why not add a fifth ? in 1994 the wings were embarrassed in the playoffs, losing to san jose. it just happened that sj happened to have two of the older soviets who had fought for the right to play in north america. one of them was igor larionov- probably the smartest guy to ever play hockey. it was his tactics (and refusal to change his style of play) that led to his team's success in the first round. and i guess detroit didn't ever want to deal with that again because they ended up trading for the guy in the first part of the 1995-96 season. the russian five first played together in calgary, where they played that style of soviet hockey that nhlers could never really wrap their heads around at the time. they walked all over the flames in their own building, and would continue to do the same to the rest of the league. the five would be a key part of the 1997 stanley cup-winning team, which was the first wings team to lift the cup in over forty years.

sergei stayed to win a few more cups, and then left the city. he signed w the ducks in anaheim, bleached his hair and moved out to california (i think we can all resonate with wanting to change our appearance and move thousands of miles away from where we've spent over a decade building out lives amiright). from what i can tell, this move was Not Liked by detroit's owners (honestly i can't see any other reason his number hasn't been retired there). he'd bounce around a couple more nhl teams before going back to russia to play on the same team as his brother, eventually retiring in 2012.

jumping to 2015, that year's hockey hall of fame inductees included sergei (and nick lidstrom, one of his detroit teammates and one of the best defencemen to every play the game). it was basically a 90s wings reunion. in sergei's induction speech, he did like everyone else and thanked a bunch of people who helped him out throughout his career. and, you know, it was all the expected stuff (hockey guys can be so predictable sometimes), but "to my captain, steve yzerman" still fucking gets me. it had been twelve years since he'd worn a wings jersey. my captain. i think you get my point but i'm gonna have to stop there because i can't carry on and be remotely normal about it.

oh and in 2021, after spending a few years bouncing around random jobs for the team, cska announced that fedorov would be taking over as head coach. he went back to the team where all this started. now i don't know how exactly he is with his team but i sure hope he learned enough from his days there as a player under tikhonov on exactly how not to treat your players. cska won back to back gagarin cups (the trophy awarded to the khl team who wins the playoffs) in sergei'd first two seasons behind the bench, and they're probably looking to make it a threepeat with the playoffs starting today (?)

[fkinavocado]

Just because it should be a norm for women to protect women, it doesn’t mean that they can never do anything wrong. You can still be a feminist and an allie and hold a woman accountable for her actions. But it should JUST be her actions, like in this case the video and what she’s said in prev articles and stuff. And that she’s gone like missing and not taking responsibility for any of it. It just feels like bad karma that’s catching up really. She’s fast to critizie Jason and talks very openly about how bad he is and about her kids while he hasn’t said a thing about her, he seems to be so sweet to fans that comes up to him and he even hung out with Gemma Chan like days ago. I’m just saying that if everyone else doesn’t have a problem except you, than maybe YOU’RE the problem. Only 4 more days til Venice🍿

that's what i'm saying too. we have a saying here if 3 ppl tell you you're drunk, just go to bed shdjsjs

(this got long)

i never liked her cuz so much that is problematic abt her has been said/done way before harry. ppl like to say it was years ago- so what? is it irrelevant just because it was years ago? and she never publicly apologized for any of it. and the way she talks to ppl, not only people she's worked with that have come through but fans that tried approaching her- you can choose to believe them or not since they can be an unreliable source, but they're honestly so many and i personally feel there's truth to them. but that's just hearsay and speculative. everything that is just coming to surface now isn't though, and it's just a confirmation to me that i was right about her ever since i first saw her on house or the oc (whichever of these came first cuz i watched both when they were airing). there's just this vibe about her. and it's all fine- we don't have to like every actor out there and i honestly forgot she existed for years and years and when i found out harry was allegedly seeing her i was like.... huh. it just rubbed me the wrong way cuz like i said, smth always irked me abt her. then i found out what she's done in the past, and now all this recent stuff comes to surface

ppl that turn a blind eye to this in support for harry are concerning me. yes i want him to be happy. this and not liking her are not contradictory in my head. i just think he deserves so much better, sue me 🤷‍♀️

but we'll see. whether this was all just pr or lord knows what, maybe it'll one day make sense lol. if not, yeah, venice is just around the corner and boy oh boy.. i'm bracing myself lol

[qualityrain]

ive heard of honkai impact but i never really got a look at the actual game itself whats your favorite guy like??? how do they work with the plot?? love you bye<3

there is sO much to say and absolutely nothing at the same time

this isnt going to be coherent at all

whats your favorite guy like???

this is going to be very inaccurate because at this point i cant tell what is canon or not + rlly disorganised

tbh. like a generic emo guy. a family guy. ride or die. his love language is dying for you. actually really chill??? and like kind of straightforward (at least to one of the main characters in the game. whether it is for plot or an actual character trait nobody knows) shows no emotion whatsoever(never explained). will kind of crack jokes. highly efficient, won’t do more things than necessary(this is definitely canon). hasnt slept well in like 10 years (vibe). takes promises really seriously. the i owe you and i WILL pay you back guy. he’s an older brother. has STRONG annoying little brother energy with another character that is literally my favourite dynamic in this entire game with 5mins of screentime together. a piece of shit. will talk stupid shit to lighten up the situation. he will do anything for his goals(probably). this guy definitely has trauma and mhy wont ever address it and he’s repressing it like crazy. like has this dude ever processed the whole i almost fucking died and everybody i love is dead thing properly yet. i could tell you his height but not his birthday. its 173cm. i refuse to believe he’s taller than 170cm. there’s probably more but i don’t know what else to say. this guy’s barely a character in the game, there’s absolutely no depth at all. all i have are vibes and my brain ran with it and now this guy has been in my head for 2 years now.

how do they work with the plot??

short answer: they don’t.

long answer: his role in the plot is to parallel another main character(mei) and it is done so so so soooooooo poorly. he appears in one (1) arc in the game and appears in 2 chapters and its imo the worst arc in the entire game and its almost irrelevant and every new chapter that gets added makes me wish more and more that this arc doesn’t exist. I genuinely do not know why this parallel needed to exist like. why? why do we need this parallel to see the main characters with an outside perspective?? there’s probably a reason its just this arc is terrible. they couldnt even get meis arc right in this arc like its sO BAD.

mei has this whole ass scene where she just accepts having to kill this guy!! my fave!! the blorbo!! shes like oh i cant hesitate anymore i have to do this for my girlfriend(basically)!!! AND THEN SHE HESITATES AGAIN AND DOESNT KILL HIM AND IM SO SO UPSET AND ANGRY BECAUSE WHATS THE POINT. she has this whole moral dilemma of ohh noo if i kill this guy its like im a hypocrite or smth cos im doing the same as this guy but i gotta to protect somebody i care about!! for this arc and then SHE DOESNT KILL HIM. he dies another way!!! resolving to kill somebody is not the same as actually doing it!! im so upset abt this because its so. whats the point of the whole scene where mei literally collects herself to strengthen her resolve to not hesitate and kill this guy and shes like oop i guess i wont!

im going to be real i try to forget as much as i can from this arc because i hate it and its probably all wrong and inaccurate but i still hate it to bits and i wish mhy wasnt scared to make mei commit murder

this isnt proof read at all this is a word vomit ive spent over half an hour on this and 3 days thinking abt this. there are definitely things i wanted to add and forgot almost immediately.

thanks for the ask!! 🫶🫶🫶

[cruelsister-moved2]

kinda hate the debate that's all is xyz bad behaviour due to your mental illness / neurodivergence because what the hell does that even mean. why does it matter. what they are really arguing is about if you're helpless in stopping that behaviour or not abt the reason they care is to know whether or not they can blame you. its always like this guy is misogynistic bc of his autism = he cannot stop being misogynistic = he should not be treated badly for being misogynistic which is just... like i have no interest in this train of thought which achieves nothing and I think is coming from a punitive mindset of like who is it ok or not ok to punish, vs a constructive mindset of how do we expose women to less misogyny.

wouldnt it be better to ask if this is something it's fair to expect others to tolerate and how to prevent it if not. like if an autistic person flapping their hands makes you uncomfortable then the solution is u dealing with ur ableism, but if someone is touching u inappropriately for example my starting premise would be that you always unquestionably have the right for that not to happen to you & interrogating whether the person doing that knows its wrong is irrelevant to that. why devote ur energy to an impossible thought experiment instead of supporting the victim and preventing it from happening again what is this idea that if a behavior is a symptom of something that changes its effect.. i like can't put into words how weird I find the idea that it matters

[sotorubio]

God yes!!!

You know what the most fucked up part was about skam season 2? I was around 17 or so when I watched it. No relationship yet. And thought it's admirable that someone is so hot for you that they can't stop. And like. Fuck no. That's terrible. Your no should always count. And then even in the context of the SA noora experienced. Imagine how groundbreaking that scene would have been if they would have gotten it on and noora would have realized she is not ready yet and would have stopped William and they would have talked about it and he would have been understanding and patient and would have said we have all the time in the world?? Like fucking consent.

Also talking about the sex toys, like yes if they would have talked before about them it would have been maybe even like this icebreaker. But like this? Her knowing his insecurities right now coming to sex?? And then just getting over there like completely with the intention probably of getting it on? I think that's kinda disrespectful.

Do you think tiff and max would stay together a long time?

(also was he in a relationship with Maya before? Did they make love?)

(and thank you for talking with me about this lol it keeps me sane!)

OMG RIGHT??? so sorry it affected u that way that's so terrible... that's exactly why i dislike the whole concept of noorhelm so much like there r more "irrelevant" things that i just personally don't like abt it but the worst part is how they romanticized rly vile shit for a very impressionable young audience a lot of which rly saw themselves in noora.. n that's in no way the viewers' fault like the writing straight up promoted toxic behavior as a romantic thing 😐

ur idea of it would be SO much better!!! i wish we got more stuff like that from skam & its remakes... like when smth that has been set up as an epic moment like a love declaration or first time or smth goes "wrong" as in not according to plan but it wouldn't be considered a negative thing, instead it's a moment of growth for the characters. just showing that u never have to do anything u don't want to even if u figure out u aren't comfortable w it After u already agreed once! it's okay to change ur mind at any point n in a season w themes such as noora's that would be rly meaningful. like seriously in what world the canon scene wasnt triggering for noora like....??? how was that supposed to be romantic for a survivor (or anyone else to begin with) i-

yes icebreaker is a good way to describe it! if they had talked abt all of it before it would've been a cute moment like "haha i know this is silly but i wanted to apologize n we talked abt this before so 🤪" it would still be weird but.. in an intentional way? a self aware way? now it just feels weird in a bad way like tiff just went in w the assumption that they will not only make up their differences but also.. have sex?? even tho that was off the table even while they were on good terms.

realistically i think that max & tiff wouldn't rly work out for multiple reasons but since skamfr has glossed over those reasons... maybe they will then lmao 😭 like they have very bad communication atm (proven by this sex debacle where they never discussed max's feelings more + the fact that they have very weird expectations of max's role & their life w moïra) n tiff just existing around max's supposed best friends w her immense privilege that she doesn't even realize she has is not a good dynamic in real life. so i wouldn't see it working out. BUT LMAO france has decided that "in canon" not communicating actually didn't have bad consequences for them n they simply don't need to do that, they can just magically be on the same page + tiff is somehow besties w all of la mif including lola for no realistic fucking reason so that's not an obstacle to them anyway! 🤪 so, apparently a healthy relationship in the skamfr universe requires none of the things real life relationships do so they can be everlasting w/o ever putting in effort 💆‍♀️

and yes max n maya were dating before he came out! idk whether or not they had sex tho i don't think that was ever specified 🤔 i guess that since max wanted to take things slow bc tiff is "the first girl he's been w after transitioning" that kind implies that he's been w girls before that. don't know if that specifically would mean maya but still it seems to imply he has had sex before tiff, otherwise the sudden jump to their first time would be even weirder like imagine if he had never done that before n tiff just showed up w toys... at least skamfr hasn't lost their minds THAT much

[dabistits]

im super conflicted abt hawks atm but i was thinking abt his parallels with shigaraki and i was wondering kinda why there's a difference between wanting 'redemption' (i dont think this is the right word but i cant think of a better one 'want better' maybe?) for shigaraki but not for hawks? is it bc he made a permanent decision to kill twice as essentially an agent of the state?

Just to preface, I don’t think I’m objectively right for just wanting Hawks to eat shit immediately in the next chapter. I’m just complaining because a lot of people who “love both Hawks and Twice” and “think Hawks was wrong, but…” are hard to get away from without going in the other direction toward a group of people who have shitty fandom behavior, whose opinions about the Hawks/Twice situation are (unfortunately) much closer to my own. I don’t think there’s necessarily a “correct” way to feel about Hawks, but I feel differently than a lot of people I see around (who, ironically, are the ones insisting that there’s a “correct” way to feel about Hawks), and that’s frustrating. I want to be done with Hawks. I don’t want him to get any more focus in canon, I don’t want to see more posts about how Hawks committing murder is an indication of inner turmoil instead of him choosing a side, I don’t want to keep running into posts that tack on “but Hawks is also sad/a victim” in discussing what’s pretty clearly a tragedy for Jin and the LOV that Hawks was completely and 100% solely responsible for.

But, yeah, sure. I’ll also explain what I think is the difference between Tomura and Hawks:

1. Part of it is emotional and not logical for sure. I love Jin a lot. He embodies the person who has faced incredible adversity, and still comes out on the other side ready to love and open his heart to others, moreover to protect others. I’m not like that at all, but I think it’s very admirable. So in that sense, it hurts on a personal level to lose him over anyone else, and I can’t not associate that with Hawks, since he’s the killer.

2. Jin is a significant death. The nameless minions that Tomura has killed (many of whom were active “Quirk supremacists”) don’t mean anything to me compared to Jin, and?? Through the lens of narrative, I think that makes Tomura more forgivable, because I genuinely have no interest in there being any plot “resolution” with, like, the dead anti-mutant cultists, because I just do not care about them.

3. Tomura, especially early Tomura, has threatened to go places that are unforgivable, like leaving All Might’s students dead and forcibly bringing Bakugou over to their side (whatever terrible procedure that may have entailed). The difference is that the narrative never actually allowed him to cross that line by actually killing the kids, who we do care about as characters, so while the intent in itself is pretty awful, he was never allowed to complete the action that would take him over to the point of no return. Hawks, however, did cross the line by killing someone who we care about and who is narratively established as a “good person,” who even Hawks concedes is a good person.

3. a. I don’t like the MLA ideologically and I don’t like the decision to have the LOV team up with them. But, again, their takeover plan has been stopped in its tracks, which I’m actually fine with to prevent the LOV from crossing the moral event horizon, but that’s, like… completely irrelevant to me thinking Hawks shouldn’t have killed Jin.

3. b. Though there’s still a chance for Tomura to cross the moral event horizon, and I’m not going to convince myself that it won’t happen. If it’s going to happen, I think it’s highly possible that it might happen in this arc, because now Jin is dead and we know how Tomura and the LOV have historically responded to their friends getting hurt. I, and many others, have called Jin the “heart” of the LOV (his name is also literally written with the kanji for “benevolence”), and now without him, there is no remaining heart nor goodwill.

4. Although both Tomura and Hawks are, on one level, fighting on behalf of the ideals that they were “raised into,” their fights happen in very different ways. The MLA arc in particular made clear that the villains are, in part, fighting for their very survival in ways heroes just aren’t. The threat that the LOV were living under was constant—when it wasn’t heroes or other villain groups, it was trying to find money and shelter and essential upkeep. Hawks may not be “free” from the HPSC or the occasional villain attack, but he’s free from those constant material struggles. He’s not an “underdog.” 

4. a. Tomura is also, in part, fighting to protect his marginalized friends. It’s for sure not on behalf of every marginalized person, but it’s certainly more than we’ve seen any pro hero fight for. The people Tomura is surrounded with are people who have never been protected nor cared for before, because they were not deemed “innocent” enough to deserve that care and protection, and Tomura continued to care for them even when it was troublesome for him to do so, when they disagreed with him, when they threatened him, and when they fucked up very, very badly. 

4. a. i. Eri is an example of a victim who the heroes fought for, but she’s an easy case to want to love and protect: Overhaul was inarguably an abuser who wanted to elevate the yakuza, she was being used in extended torture-experiment sessions, she killed her father on accident, she’s a child, she’s innocent, she’s selfless, she’s well-behaved. It’s basically not even a question whether or not she “deserves” help.

4. b. It’s people who are difficult who get overlooked. Hawks and hero society are completely unprepared to protect and care for people who don’t behave as they’re supposed to. Hawks did not care for the LOV who didn’t personally befriend him. For the one he did, when Jin didn’t cooperate the way Hawks wanted, he went for the kill. It’s either being easy and “manageable,” or die.

4. b. i. Tomura has specifically spared two people who tried to kill him or actually succeeded in killing his ally, people who he explicitly hated or did not care for. So make of that what you will, I guess.

5. From a leftist perspective, it’s just impossible not to account for the fact that Hawks helps maintain a social structure that creates so much suffering. The question isn’t really whether AFO’s teachings to Tomura are better (they’re not, and I want Tomura to break away from them), but it can’t really be ignored that Hawks is enforcing an ideal that’s wildly popular. Why this matters is that Tomura doing the wrong things will be roundly condemned, and he’ll probably be “punished” for them; but heroes are very unlikely to be punished or held accountable for committing murder, especially if it’s “justified.” 

5. a. This is problematic because it allows heroes, and the state, to define what a justified “emergency situation” is, and who can die in those emergencies. The people who are deemed killable “in an emergency” are usually those who are already marginalized; hence heroes can wait until those marginalized people get desperate enough to commit villainous acts, and then they can swoop in to arrest or kill them to widespread public acclaim.

5. b. Heroes (and law enforcement IRL) don’t address the roots of crime that lie in overarching oppressive structures like misogyny and capitalism. They don’t prevent theft by bringing people financial stability; they arrest people who were desperate enough to steal, and use those people to send a message to poor people everywhere. They make these conditions of desperation more permanent by punishing the most vulnerable people when they slip up, while doing absolutely nothing until the slip-up happens.

5. c. Heroes are punching down, and villains are punching up. That may not be the case with AFO, but I believe it with the LOV specifically, and I believe this matters because it’s exemplified between Hawks and Twice. Hawks targets someone who reached out to him, despite being hurt over and over again by types like him, who has dealt with poverty and fantasy mentally illness completely on his own, and kills him in defense of the very society that allowed all those things to happen to Jin. Hawks was given a choice: sympathize and relate to Jin, and acknowledge his well-founded grievances toward a dysfunctional society, or prioritize the safety and security of that dysfunctional society by permanently removing Jin from the equation. The choice he believes in is the choice he made.

5. d. In order for Tomura to make the same choice with the same implications, they’d have to be living in an alternate universe, in the Kingdom of AFO, where Tomura is a respected noble who infiltrates a rebel group who were going to “commit atrocities,” kills the one person who offered him a way out of AFO’s control, and possibly screws the rebels altogether, but everyone is happy that the rebels are gone. Even if you think Tomura is capable of that, it’s irrelevant because canon!BNHA has completely different power dynamics. Because Tomura’s violence will always be unpopular and persecuted, rather than justified and glorified by the state, he physically cannot replicate a choice like Hawks’. Tomura can approximate it, but even if he does, he’ll be hunted down by heroes for doing so. The circumstances and consequences for making such a choice are totally different.

So. That’s why I don’t think Tomura and Hawks can be equated. Suggesting that this is a level playing field is essentially believing that criminals and law enforcement exist on level playing fields, and they absolutely do not at all. Hawks is particularly abhorrent because he’s already followed through with his choice. He holds power by being part of the policing class, and regardless of how he came into it, he behaves exactly the same as everyone else who “freely” joined, and in his position of power he made the choice to eliminate someone who was socially powerless.

[lovleez]

s.k.y “burn” mv (short-ish) theory

link to watch the mv (for reference) (maybe keep it open while reading this bc i didnt provide gifs to back up my thoughts for this 😔 ) 

no warnings needed for this (for once) !

okay so! first of all there are 2 worlds in this mv - the regular s.k.y (maybe even their real selves aka idols that were training or smthn) and the second world is a dystopian one

     - i say this bc for a majority of the mv the setting/filtering is orange/yellow/red ish which is usually the hue for apocalyptical/dystopian stories

     - plus all the lightning storms kind of set up a gloomy-ish mood? maybe?

     - when that one member (idk his name yet sorry) is riding his motorcycle through an area, everywhere around him is desolate without much signs of life (this ones a bit of a stretch ehe)

most of the mv takes place in the dystopian world, so regular s.k.y will be a bit irrelevant for now

as most dystopian plot follows, there’s another bad group of humans out there (maybe hogging all the resources needed to live or something along those lines) to which s.k.y is a group who opposes them

     - im going to assume this bad group is the military solely for the reason that in one dance set theyre wearing miltary pants

          - to expand on that: s.k.y could have been part of this military once (hence why they have the pants) and broke off from them to make a resistance group when they realized they were doing something wrong

what were they doing wrong? building androids! maybe to replace the human population or so

     - i get the androids from linjie’s solo scenes where he’s walking through a room full of skeleton models of what i assume is for androids + a lot of head/body busts (mayhaps for the skeleton to be modelled after ?)

and not only a just androids in general...the military were building androids replicating real living people 

     - 3:12 xikan is standing across another member...but not the actual member, an android version of the member

          - i say this only bc his gaze is kind of standoff-ish (hostile?) towards the other (idk this one’s name either T-T) 

               - why would he feel hostile towards his fellow comrade right? so it has to be a military built android :D !

so! s.k.y probably takes it upon themselves to destroy this android building area and mayhaps take down the military too by 

*drumroll please*

.

burning it down! 

     - minor detail of the mission: s.k.y split themselves into teams on how to take down the place = xikan + linmo set off to take down the monitors the army has on them, zuo ye + linjie are tasked with destroying the androids, and everyone else is guarding the perimeters? they’re all outside on stand by is what im assuming

         - the team (or specifically xikan?) being monitored is backed up by the tvs showing xikan on them early in the mv (both of them also appear in what i assume is the monitor room so)

          - i paired linjie + zuo ye up and gave them their specific task bc 1) around 1:12 ish linjie is seen knocking an android skeleton thingie down 2) all of zuo ye’s solo shots are in similar rooms as linjie’s 3) at 2:20 ish theyre standing back to back (at least i think thats linjie behind zuo ye??)

whether they succeed at their whole scheme is unsure, but when scouring/destroying the place they might have found a portal/a way of contact with regular s.k.y (namely a mirror?)

...the end :D !!!

i cant rlly figure anything else out abt the connection between the two worlds (_ _ )>

.

- extra 1: the ring that one member holds at 1:28 are member rings for their resistance <3

     - but this same member also takes of his ring and burns it so maybe he’s a traitor :0

- extra 2: some members can control fire (namely wenxuan)

     - or maybe even all of them bc at 3:46 the fire from the projector above makes it looks like there is fire running through their veins/bodies (= an implication abt their abilities ?)

- extra 3:  maybe its not  two worlds, but instead s.k.y in the dance practice room is actually dystopia s.k.y in the present (or they escaped to another world) and they were just reminiscing the past (and hinting that they were successful w/ burning the military down as implied by xikan blowing the ash out of his hand ) (but this can be disproven? by the mirror reflecting the two worlds..?) (does this part even make sense ajksdfhjkfh)

[lilyhoshikawa]

Aoi Zaizen & Misogyny

The characterization Aoi is given in Vrains isn't exactly subtle about how it wants to frame her, but I've had a fair share of ppl try to say the writing isn't misogynistic, and so to prove my argument here, I just figured I'd go beat by beat in her character arc and see what it points to.

Aoi is a character defined by her helplessness. Before we even meet her, she is made helpless. From the very beginning her struggle is about her brother trying to watch out for her because he's worried she'll get hurt- this isn't inherently a bad setup for a conflict or a character arc, I'm not say saying it is. But it's already starting Aoi off in a position where she is being protected, and any attempt to break out of that is considered selfish. We are expected to understand early on that Aoi is putting herself in circumstances she cannot handle by getting involved in the plot. And it shows. Before she even gets her first duel, Aoi is brainwashed. That's a new record, even amongst Yugioh girls.

The duel with Playmaker is, itself, fine. It's pretty well written and it allows the potential for future growth on Aoi's part. But it'd be wrong not to note that it's this situation that reinforces her helplessness and puts her in coma #1. Aoi is being controlled and is reliant on Playmaker to defeat her, and later, to save her. Her consciousness is wagered in the duel against Revolver, yet it always seems strange that it is. Yusaku's motivation for fighting Revolver is absolutely not about Aoi, it's about his revenge. Aoi is an afterthought. He's not dueling Revolver to save her, it's her needing to be saved that gave him the opportunity to duel Revolver. They have enough tension at play by this point to make Aoi's involvement irrelevant, the only contribution it offers is the occasional shot of Akira watching the duel.

I'm gonna mainly gloss over the duel against the A.I. and Akira vs Yusaku aside from noting a few things. Aoi defeating the AI is fine, it gives her a decent win. It's mostly a result of being on Playmaker's side, and it's not really a significant opponent, but it's a meaningful win if it establishes a new character shift. Which I'll go on to establish it doesn't do. Aoi reaching out to Playmaker and wanting to know his story would also be meaningful and relevant if it went anywhere, but 50 episodes later she still doesn't know Playmaker's identity and had to be given another connection to the lost incident bc her relation to Yusaku was that weak.

So in any case. Aoi awakens from coma #1 and is determined not to be weak anymore, and decides to fight for the sake of others in her duel against Vaira. This is the ONLY relevant win she ever gets, and the one everyone seems to love to parade around as if it proves the rest of her losses don't count, or that I'd be the misogynistic one for ignoring this win. This is ignoring, however, that this duel was part of a series of duels building up Aoi, Yusaku, and Go as they ALL got their own respective Knight of Hanoi to defeat in order to bump up their characters. Go and Aoi hadn't done much by this point, and if they were meant to be Playmaker's partners, they needed something additional to build them up. This one win can't be counted as any more significant than Go's win against Doctor Genome or Yusaku's win against Faust. I like these episodes, I like the way Aoi is written in them and I LOVE that she gets to be the hero. But it's disingenuous to imply this single instance of winning dismisses the following assault of bad writing.

As part of her decision to fight for others, Aoi sympathizes with and even tries to save Specter, who by all means she should have every right to hate. In a twist of backwards development, he gets to win, so that he can have a hastily-constructed reason to duel Playmaker instead, making her the only one to lose to a minor villain out of the party. This duel is riddled with Bad Stuff so much so that I don't even feel a real need to touch on it. The main thing of note though is that the annoying plant man's arrogance comes from the fact that he sees everything coming, nothing surprises him. He gets to be in control the whole time, guiding Aoi along as he mocks her. She is helpless from the beginning of this duel. Whether or not you'd like to claim Specter specifically is a well written character is it's own argument, but necessary in that conversation is the note that any development he gains is at the expense of Aoi. She is an expense in this duel, a sacrifice to give Yusaku one more big opponent before Revolver. Enter coma #2. The Tower of Hanoi arc ends and everyone comes back.

Season 2 is when all the character transformations happen, and for Aoi, each one is just a big neon sign of her imposed weakness.

Blue Angel becomes Blue Girl. This is meant to be a big moment on Aoi's decision to fight in a new way and improve herself. She talks abt improving her deck and becoming stronger. In the episode literally titled "Blue Girl's First Duel" she loses to Soulburner and does not duel again before her second transformation.

This strange, confusing and ultimately pointless transformation doesn't last long, as soon enough she encounters Aqua and suddenly remembers Miyu.

Enter Blue Maiden. NOW we're supposed to understand that Aoi has ACTUALLY matured, for real this time, we promise. Now she's fighting for her childhood friend's consciousness, she has the plot-armor of an Ignis, and a new deck. She is framed alongside Takeru and Yusaku as a main protagonist. She's even being called a victim of the Lost Incident now, albeit secondhand. It seems that while she was put through the wringer, she's at least finally been given the chance to shine.

Several Yusaku, Takeru, and Blood Shepard duels later, Blue Maiden finally gets her first duel. A speed duel against Haru. She wins. Hooray, she beat a relevant character, and all it took was a completely new deck and 2 transformations! Sarcasm aside, she naturally couldn't lose here. You can imagine Marincess debuting only for its user to immediately be killed off again, and to top it all off, this is before the killing game of late season 2 begins. They're saving the deaths for that. But on the bright side, Aoi gets a win to show off her new deck and new resolve, and it has the handy side effects of taking care of Haru and giving slight motivation to Bohman.

But now Bohman is here, and he has to defeat literally everyone except Playmaker so we can have their 5th duel. Aoi is, of course, the first to duel him. He wagers the data for Miyu's consciousness in much the same way Revolver wagered Aoi's. Even with plot armor though, Aoi has to lose. Does it make narrative sense? Oh, sure. Can't have the big bad lose on the first big match. But if that's where your analysis stops, you aren't trying to think critically at all.

You have to understand the implications of these repeated losses. Aoi is given new resolve each time only to have it ripped away, and a random new motivation is thrust upon her as the plot demands it. She loses so Playmaker can clean up the villain she failed to beat.

And that is, of course, without even bothering to ask why Miyu has to be in a coma at all, why Ema loses so much and is being sidelined now. Whatever happened To Queen, after Go lost? The very few girls Vrains has bothered to write have very little agency. Aoi may get the spotlight among them, but she is highlighted only to be the designated loser, the one who tries her best and always falls short to show how dangerous the threat is. Whatever this may do to her psyche can be worked out by thrusting a new character motivation onto her. Next arc she'll once again care about becoming stronger, for the sake of some new arbitrary thing. She'll always be attempting to grow, with no success.

It's also worth noting that much of Aoi's suffering is to serve Akira's very lukewarm character arc. And you can ask yourself why Aoi has to fight for her brother always, or later on her childhood friend, when Yusaku gets to fight for himself. Aoi is almost always fighting for the sake of someone else, but the answer is simply that this is a byproduct of what Aoi has had to become. Continually fighting for herself is redundant if she can't win the way Yusaku does. She needs a new reason to reignite her flames of passion so that her drive to get better won't go out. Yet it will always fall short, each and every time.

Aoi's character is defined by helplessness and desperation as she struggles against forces that have already decided she is worthy neither of victory nor even basic respect.

[zekhromss]

ive got some Opinions and i dont wanna get myself mad 4 separate times to make separate posts so like heres a masterpost of everything ive made myself mad about in the past 20 minutes.

-im so fucking tired of transmisogyny and like actually transphobia in general but whatever it sucks that like every piece of media has some form of it and its like its 2019 how is the joke “man in dress think he woooomahn” not tired like how do people keep greenlighting it.  its stupid and ugly and i hate it i hate it so fucking much like can you get better jokes i wish there were a point in time where theres a collective Woke Millennial Hivemind that fucking massacres unfunny ass transmisogynists.  every time i have to cringe through a “excuse me did you call me sir” “oh apologies maam are you gonna get the Surgerie done” in a normal human context i die on the inside and also explode

-i think it should be illegal to force organized religion on your kids (but like in a non-religious persecution way like not in real life illegal i just wish it never existed) and in fact if kids are sheltered from shit that doesnt hurt them like homosexuality and scientific studies on the world around them i think they should be sheltered from religion.  religion causes a fuckton of mental and developmental disorders (typically emotional and psychiatric) that are damn near fucking impossible to recover from because youre always gonna be afraid of god or hell or whatever the fuck.  like not even in a christianity sense (theyre typically the worst about this and i say this from personal experience but like, idk, ive seen it from things like....not christianity....) i really truly believe religion should be kept from children until they can develop their own personalities and states of being because basing ur life around a pre-existing moral code of What Makes You Good is harmful and in most cases kids wind up wilding out and putting themselves in danger because they feel trapped and constantly under the watchful eye of karma or god or whatever.  like i really cannot think of a single religion where the basis is “just chill and promise to be cool” without some kind of punishment existing whether it’s “you’ll have to pay for this in your next life or in future interactions” and i think it’s just reaaaalllllyyyyy harmful for kids to experience like i dont think it teaches responsibility i think it teaches fear of mistakes because regardless of how merciful you as an adult think your god is, kids will not think like that.  like idk.  im sure theres good religions that handle this better but speaking from my standpoint i never found a religion that made me feel safe and Human until i got older.  even now that im like a buddhist im still like “yeah but what if this religion based in being cool and kind winds up fucking me over because karma doesnt think im the same person i think i am”.  idk im like traumatized from christianity tho so this isnt a good opinion for other religions so i guess this is about christianity sorry guys im not deleting this whole paragraph though.

-i think relationships in media need to fucking get away from “crazy insane medical professional who tortures people”.  i dont think i need to write an essay on this.  i dont understand why people keep making this archetype when it usually winds up being thinly veiled fetish torture porn for the first person this particular character interacts with and doesnt kill.  like maybe its okay for strictly horror films but i really cannot wrap my head around why people keep using this trope, it’s lazy and uninspired and feels like the biggest cop-out of a character.  like, you can make someone with baseline similar characterization but to put them in a place of forged authority to do whatever is just uh.....lazy....and it winds up being really gross really quick.  this isnt strictly abt cicciolata or w/e his fucking name is but hes the first character beyond like idk jigsaw that i can think of so this is all his fault now.  fuck you you stupid ugly bitch.  be in a horror movie if you want to act like this.  god.  it is like better than Doctor Man With Psychosisisisissis!!!!!!!11111!  because at least theyre being ugly as fuck on their own but ohhh mannnnnn you guys went to like.  editors and whatever and they thought it was a good idea?  we have to destroy all media and start over because these new archetypes SUCK.

-this kinda goes with my christianity rant but like i think....like i wish some form of black mirror existed where kids were independent from their parents personal opinions and there was like a thing that you could see when you were a kid that says “THIS IS NOT REAL LIFE THIS IS AN OPINION” when ur parents say some dumb racist/phobic shit because like literally parents are socially-acceptably brainwashing their children into having the same ugly ass outdated opinions and it fucking sucks.  i dont think kids should have to listen to their parents opinions i wish there was a cool fucking Opinion Free Zone where nobody can tell you a religion is wrong or a race or identity is wrong because fucking yikes.

-also i wish every employer was like lgbt friendly and not “at will”??? idk how its 2019 and we still have fucking people getting fired for zero reason other than theyre not cishet and their boss like has some irrelevant problem like theyre a cheap fucking asshole who doesnt want to pay them like i wish every employee had a Book of Rights thats non-negotiable and if you as an employer overstep those rights you get murdered like im being for real like if youre a fucking piece of shit i want you dead why would you exist in a capitalist state where you have to have a fucking job to live and then fire someone for a reason that isnt real.  fuck.

[roxilalonde]

I agree with everything in your mockingjay posts except the “Peeta forcing Katniss to have children she doesn’t want” part bc 1. Peeta isn’t capable of pressuring anyone into ANYTHING and 2. I feel like the Mockingjay Theme Tee Em is abt overcoming your fears and emotional hang ups and while i’m definitely not suggesting that not wanting to have kids is something that needs to be fixed, but katniss’s reason for not wanting them was bc of the hg, not because of any natural aversion to it.

i suppose a better way to phrase what i meant is that peeta does pressure katniss into having kids, he just doesn’t do it intentionally. katniss frames having children as something that she does because peeta wants it, and not something that she was ever interested in of her own right -- she just yielded to the feeling of pressure to make him happy. that’s not voluntary. granted, i think it doesn’t matter particularly in the context of the ending of mockingjay, since i beef more with the narrative decision to make her have kids against her wishes at all than what peeta specifically had to do with it. to put it another way, i don’t think peeta did anything wrong, i just think that collins made the wrong narrative decision.

that said there isn’t really a difference between her having a natural aversion vs having a learned aversion in terms of the ending. whether or not she wanted kids before the hunger games is irrelevant, because after the hunger games, she really doesn’t want them, and having them is an uncomfortable experience for her. if we saw her working to overcome her fears and hangups about children, it might be different, but the epilogue jumps so many years into the future that it skims over those conversations & moments of growth in a way that makes it seem like she had children because she should, not because she wanted children and was only prevented from having them by her anxieties re: the hunger games. to put it another way: i’d want to see that she affirmatively did want kids before she entered the hunger games in order to buy that having kids is a form of recovery. i also agree with your broader point re: mockingjays themes, and think it would be a good idea to show katniss overcoming some of her fears and traumas at the end of mockingjay (one of my biggest beefs with the ending is that we didnt), but at the same time, i wish that was done with a fear that wasnt childbearing, since IRL there’s this heteronormative emphasis on having children as the be-all end-all of a womans life and i just don’t think that’s the right conclusion for katniss as we know her at the end of mockingjay.

[uniformbravo]

god free! is such a dumb goofy series i love it like shit gets real sometimes but when it comes down to it it’s just a bunch of dumb goofy teens living their lives together?? i have compiled a list of my favorite examples from s1

makoto: *enters haru’s house uninvited, walks right into the bathroom while haru’s in the bath, presumably naked* hey haru: ....................................hey LIKe he just.... Accepts that this is happening, theres like a solid like 2 seconds of him just staring at makoto like he’s debating within himself whether to Say It or not before almost tangibly going “fuck it” & just going along w/ it*

haru & makoto & nagisa going “is it really okay to dig up our old trophy if rin isn’t here? idk it just feels wrong w/o him” only to find out that rin not only beat them there but also fucking just went ahead and dug it up by himself hfjdkjgd

haru having some kind of sixth sense for sugar apparently??? when nagisa throws “salt” on them he like tenses up all dramatic & goes “this isnt salt........................ it’s sugar” like ok????? just gonna let that one go i guess

rin having sharp teeth for absolutely no fucking reason

haru & rin not noticing the fucking pool they're about to race in is empty????

haru straight up rejecting their encounter with rin & trying to convince himself they all hallucinated him like huh? what? rin?? haha impossible he’s in australia there’s no way he couldve been at the swim club last night. no theres no such thing as airplanes he’s gone forever. yes im sure

rin going back to the old swim club again bc the first time his melodramatic brooding was interrupted by those old elementary school Goons showing up so he needed a do-over

nagisa skinny dipping in samezuka’s pool??? an apparently prestigious competitive swimming powerhouse that trains up future professional gold medalists, reigning champions of interhigh swim meets near and far in that same water & nagisa just jumps the fuck in dick out no fucks to give whatsoever???? this bitch

haru literally only showing up to both the old swim club and samezuka academy for the pools, it’s literally the equivalent of college students showing up to any given event for free food (and the fact that they had to break in both times, these Rowdy-Ass Teens)

rin showing up just in time to interrupt their illicit pool activities bc he Sensed Them

haru wearing his swimsuit under his clothes literally everywhere despite reportedly not having actually swum since middle school (except for in the ocean during summer, but it’s like the middle of spring rn?? is he just doing this in way advanced preparation? is this the equivalent of people who start posting abt halloween in july)

gou showing up to haru’s house bc apparently she just Knows where he lives (also haru hearing the doorbell & immediately submerging his head in the bath bc he’d rather drown than have to answer the door #relatable)

rei calling haru “haru-chan-san” upon first meeting him bc “haru-chan” is what nagisa has been referring to him as so that’s his sole point of reference but he also has to add his own honorific too bc come on

haru being instantly pissed at this random new fuck for calling him not only -chan, his Least favorite honorific, but now -san on top of it too??? Outrageous (and this is the same guy who reportedly “hates water,” a completely unacceptable sentiment that should under no circumstances be allowed anywhere near their team in the first place- honestly from haru’s pov it’s like “oh so this is the guy who hates water huh, this hot shit” & then the hot shit’s all “you must be haru-chan-san” he probably just immediately sees red ghdjsjf)

nagisa’s whole “we need this guy bc he has a girly name just like us it’s fate” thing even tho rei’s already in the track club doing pole vaulting that he’s obviously been training v hard to be able to do is such a stupid anime bullshit motivation & my favorite part of it is that their plan for recruiting him basically amounts to the whole gang of idiots showing up to all of rei’s practices and staring at him intensely from the corner until he joins them, like,,,, think of this from rei’s perspective he’s just minding his own business trying to perfect pole vaulting & these fuckers have fixated on him for no apparent reason? he can’t even swim???

rei going so far out of his way to avoid admitting to nagisa that he can’t swim that he comes up with this bullshit philosophy about “humans evolved from the water so why would we regress and get back into it??? Checkmate y’all are fucking idiots now leave me alone” (& also the effort & passion he puts into the delivery, the overdramatic gesturing hfhhddjf rei are u sure u don’t actually belong in the drama club)

after all that, rei up and deciding to leave the track team (even tho he literally structured his daily schedule around it, went running in the mornings & everything, read books n shit) to join the swim club bc haru just looked really, really cool while swimming that one time

haru legitimately having a hard time choosing between like 5 of the exact same swim suit

when they’re trying to figure out why rei can’t swim & haru’s like “the water doesn’t like him” & nagisa’s immediately like “poor rei-chan :(” like hfkglfkj he just Accepts

rei being so frustrated with his inability to swim that he blames it on his speedo & is very convinced that buying a new one will somehow solve all of his problems (& everyone else just going along w/ it like ok i guess it’s time to go swimsuit shopping then)

haru, the owner of the previously mentioned 5 identical swimsuits, joining in with everyone else to go shopping for even more swimsuits, and picking out another one that looks just fucking like the other 5 he already has

nagisa being told that he can’t put their ugly-ass bird mascot on the swim team uniform so he puts “secret iwatobi-chan” on the back of the shirt that will be hidden beneath the jacket as if that’s not Blatantly what he was told not to do (also the fact that anyone entrusted the handling of the uniforms to nagisa, the exact kind of person who would do exactly that kind of thing)

(ok this one isnt rly goofy but haru just bit his ice cream & im so intimidated rn??)

rin’s fucking 6th sense for haru again???? “smells like mackerel”????? i truly cannot handle this one (haru & company are looking in at samezuka’s practice through the window & rin’s just like “HUH what the fuck is that who’s there i smell Mackerel” like????? oh my fucking god)

amakata “we don’t have enough money for a training camp” miho renting herself and gou a room at a lodge on the beach?????? power move

this goddamn show having a fun ~spooky~ haunted house adventure right after everyone almost fucking Died

haru’s story about his “first love” being about a fucking waterfall igmgkdjkg

rin jogging on the beach the next morning & stopping by the tents like “who r these fuckin dumbasses camping right on the shoreline” & then he turns around and there’s haru & his band of swimming idiots

rin waiting in the hallway at the interhigh in case haru comes by so he can casually get up & have a Cool And Dramatic confrontation w/ him where he brags how he’s gonna beat him in their upcoming race (which, even better, he purposely entered himself at a lower skill level to be able to do while probably his whole team went “uhhhh are u sure abt this lmao we’re kind of trying to be the best here” & hes just like “yeah yeah its fine it’s gonna be so fucking cool just wait”)

haru apparently also having a Rin Sense where he just Feels that rin is there, watching him about to swim (although now that i think about it that bright red hair is probably a fuckin beacon, i bet literally everyone looked over at him the second he stepped out of that doorway- that and the massive aura of Teen Angst surrounding him at all times)

the whole thing with nagisa & rei’s operation at the summer festival to keep haru from seeing rin? first of all is v cute but they get so into it fjdhgkdj fucking dumb cute kids playing secret detective mission texting each other Classified Intel about the location of their targets while also trying to hide it from haru & makoto (who eventually find out bc nagisa is literally the worst liar ever while also already being the most suspect little shit out of all of them by nature)

rei getting so caught up in the detective shit that he ends up following rin out of the festival entirely & into town where the purpose of his pursuit in the first place is irrelevant bc haru’s not gonna suddenly happen upon rin at the elementary school?? rei is such a nosy bitch i love him

rei being such a nosy bitch that he inadvertently fixes the emotional turmoil that has been building between rin & the others unresolved for years

rin texting gou to get rei’s number bc he needs to have a Serious and Dramatic conversation w/ him but he didnt have the chance to exchange contact info the last time they yelled at each other behind the school

rin sitting alone in samezuka’s bus bc they banned him from swimming for being too obsessed w/ haru & he needs somewhere to Sulk

rin finding some random tree outside the swim meet & being like “this reminds me of that tree from elementary school” bc hes a nostalgic bitch like that

haru being able to find rin bc he saw the same tree earlier and went “wait, rin’s a nostalgic bitch, i know Exactly where the fuck he went” & Sure Enough

iwatobi getting themselves disqualified bc they wanted to swim w/ rin in an official race like??? i know it’s an emotional & satisfying moment but miho chewing them out for it afterward is so fucking funny like objectively this team was doing rly well & then suddenly went “u know what, we do what we want, this red guy is ours now” & the judges went “hmm............... no”

in the v last episode when theyre all just sitting in a classroom w/ rin having him pretend to introduce himself as if he were a transfer student like theres absolutely no reason for this, theyre just goofing off together and reconnecting after having lost each other for so many years & it’s so dumb & heartwarming & the perfect way to close off the season & im crying i really do love this show i love these characters so much what a dumb cute goofy heartfelt show aaaaaa free is a treasure

*from the very 1st point: i know there r cultural differences to take into account where it’s probably not as big a deal for makoto to walk in on haru’s bath time in japan as it would be in like, america & the real issue haru takes w/ this happening is that his one little place of refuge in a world w/o water is being breached by this annoyingly persistent guy who not only interrupts his coping time but is actively trying to get him to leave it for “important” things like “going to school” and “not being late” & the extended pause is really him registering this unpleasant situation & trying to decide if it’s worth it to fight for his solitude, ultimately deciding it’s not worth the energy and begrudgingly accepting makoto’s outstretched hand, though he vocalizes his displeasure by rejecting his -chan bc no one who pulls him away from the water is someone he can call a friend, not even his like. actual friend. only friend. either one

anyway i love free bye

[wingheadshellhead]

Hi, I love your blog! So I've been reading a lot of 616 stevetony lately, and I've noticed that in both canon and in a lot of fiction, Steve seems to really dislike Extremis (even before superior iron man). Why do you think that is? Even without looking at this with shipper goggles (which I always am), I think it's really strange that Steve has so much disdain for something that essentially saved one of his best friend's lives.

(THIS HAS TAKEN ME 5 BILLION YEARS BUT HERE IT IS FINALLY)

i used to be in the same boat and automatically assumed steve’s dislike of extremis was one of those fandom headcanon things that was so commonly accepted it’d basically become fact, but it’s really, actually, all 100% canon. but the comics that deal with it happen right before civil war so i think many ppl have simply forgotten or skipped over that part of tony’s timeline.

execute program is the 6-issue arc that comes right after extremis and it’s the main thing i tell everyone they have to read if they’re putting themselves thru the ringer that is 616′s civil war. it is so so important to understanding tony’s headspace and where he’s at before the events of civil war occur. 

READ EXECUTE PROGRAM. a) bc it’s absolutely crucial to tony’s side of civil war, b) the follow-through from the extremis arc is just… amazing, virtuosic. i really genuinely think it is a fascinating, excellently-written arc, c) when it gets gay it gets very gay. truST ME you do not need your shipper goggles for this at all bc guess which of the following things are canon: the sound of steve saying his voice being the only thing that snaps tony out of (likely a dissociative episode) trying to murder a villain that nearly kills peter, dyeing his hair blond when he’s going on the run, tony stopping his heart to save steve’s life. all of them !!! all canon !!!!!! 

extremis is, basically, terrifying. to the average human being, hell even the average superhuman. it’s p much unfathomable the sheer level/magnitude/scope of extremis. extremis allows tony to access and control any piece of technology on earth and even in earth’s atmosphere, he can hear satellites. it’s like having the singularity as a superpower. 

so part 1, iron man vol. 4 #7 (2006), opening issue and we have tony stopping a villain with lethal force, all while counting down the milliseconds and bidding on priceless artefacts.

now, avengers don’t kill. and tony doesn’t, he stops the man’s heart, then restarts it, basically performing defibrillation. 

and then we get this conversation: 

and after tony jets off leaving the new avengers to sort out the aftermath, we get this disturbing reminder:

a proper reread might prove me wrong but i don’t think the writers ever clarify whether this transformation in tony’s personality is due to extremis or outside manipulation (which is the culmination of execute program’s arc as i’ll go into in a bit). but when your brain is literally a machine and you Have Become more machine than human, this is the natural progression of tony’s humanity – the aspects of compassion, empathy, etc. – fading into the background to accomodate for extremis. 

extremis brings out everything about tony that steve (and possibly the world) fears most. it makes him cold and calculating, and with a brain like tony stark’s elevated by the superhuman capacity to think and react at the speed of a machine, he’s unstopppable.

part 2, iron man vol. 4 #8, we have tony nearly straight up burning a man alive for almost killing peter and laughing about it. 

he’s so deep in Destroy Mode that he doesn’t even register steve’s warning, and here i think he acts entirely out of instinct –– like extremis is thinking for him rather than his brain prompting him to do this. 

extremis is also the cause of tension between tony and the newly-formed new avengers (one of my favorite line-ups!!), he almost gets into a fight with logan and jessica has to break them up. it turns out tony is missing time in his memory, which is extremely worrying for someone w/ his level of power…

what’s so fascinating about extremis, and why we have so much to thank warren ellis for (the writer of the extremis arc), is that it is the perfect and the most logical climax of the modern iron man story. tony’s worst villain, as we’ve known since the very beginning really, has never been anyone else but himself. and in the case of extremis, it’s a highly technologically advanced version of himself that can do and be everything he’s ever dreamed of being able to achieve vs. him. 

the question extremis asks is at what cost? at what cost does technological advancement, bleeding-edge breakthroughs, and the spirit of human innovation come at? how far would tony go to become the Ideal version of himself that he sees as superior in every way? what would he sacrifice for that?

extremis represents basically the pinnacle of sci-fi tech in iron man comics, it’s why even god awful superior iron man used a 3.0 version of it as the foundation for tony’s sins. it’s the farthest point he’s ever reached, and it’s also the lowest in terms of the damage and fallout that comes from it. because ofc, tony stark can’t have nice things like this, but also bc the hubris + nature of extremis allowing its host to play god can’t exist without there being negative consequences. really b ad consequences. 

huge respect to danial & charles knauf, the authors of execute program, too, because they find a way to perfectly bring the arc full circle as ellis did with his extremis. the central villain plot revolves around ho yinsen’s son. the kid hacks extremis and uses it to control tony, sending him to subconsciously assassinate a bunch of people on his kill list, i.e. a list of all the men involved in yinsen’s death. i mean like, HOLY SHIT, an iron man plot where a literal ghost from tony’s past – a direct victim of events tony was involved in, the son of the man that sacrificed his life so iron man could be born and so tony stark could live – shows up, weaponises tony’s own body + technology and uses him to murder people who are scheduled to participate in a peace summit despite the blood on their hands and the human cost of their involvement in the weapons industry.

DRAWING PARALLELS BETWEEN YINSEN’S LIFE’S WORK AND TONY’S LIKE DEATH AND DYING WOULD BE KINDER. again bc of my memory or even regardless due to constant retcons + reruns of the iron man origin story, i don’t know if it’s ever been explicitly stated before that yinsen also got into the weapons industry in order to get the funding necessary to support his other revolutionary work. but his son literally conflates yinsen with tony here, blending them into one + the same with that final panel and it becomes very obvious that at least a small part of him blames father for entering into weapons design. if he hadn’t, he might never have been captured by the the terrorist group that wanted him and tony to build them missiles. 

also, yinsen + villains involving yinsen are a recurring theme in iron man history but can we talk abt the fact that tony has never ever let himself forget the man bc jesus christ

yinsen’s kid is killed by a SHIELD sniper, activating the dead man’s switch and unleashing all the peackeeping units tony built that are now compromised. now, tony’s no jean grey or wanda maximoff but if this arc shows anything it’s not to underestimate him bc intentional or not (lmao) if he put his mind to it there’s literally no limit to the damage he could do. 

we see various heroes fighting off the peacekeeping units, and the new avengers are at the peace summit fighting a hulkbuster. 

and here it is people !!! the 23989485th time tony kills himself so steve can live. 

JUST. THE LOOK ON HIS FACE. AND THEN THIS ABSOLUTE LACK OF HESITATION:

so, yes. extremis was traumatising for pretty much every single person involved. steve has extremely good reasons for HATING extremis, even in the early stages or even if a fic is taking place before the events of execute program.

if you read the full arc, you’ll see tony running himself into the ground with his new abilities (world’s greatest multitasker can now multitask 192483958 things at once? ofc he’s going to use and abuse and exploit that), you see him spiralling and losing his grip on reality (mainly because he’s actually having dissociative episodes and losing time due to being remotely controlled to assassinate ppl but also bc of the Effect extremis is having on him). i brought up wanda and jean earlier as a casual reference but like, to put it in that kind of perspective, people just weren’t made to have this much power.

on a smaller scale, apart from eating up all of tony’s time and attention and mental health in a really bad way, it just Distances him from everyone. especially from the team. it’s Isolating, having this much going on in his brain and no one else in the world to fully understand it. 

and on steve’s side, you also have the fact that tony’s genius is both one of the things he loves and lowkey resents most about him. he has this deep-set anxiety about tony with all his brilliance and intelligence leaving him behind in the dust, or worse, laughing at him and how outdated and dim-witted he is in comparison. this is steve’s version of tony’s “i’m never going to be good enough for him”, a sentiment summed up in a quote from him as early as tales of suspense vol. 2 (1995): “yes, tony stark, a man of today and tomorrow is the man i’ll never be.” he’s so afraid of being abandoned + alienated by tony’s mind and the future that tony’s worked so tirelessly to build that might render him irrelevant. he’s scared of a future where he has no purpose, but more or just as importantly, he’s scared of becoming obsolete in tony’s life, of not being needed by tony anymore. one of the things that endeared him so much to tony, and which laid the foundations of their lifelong friendship, was the fact that from Day One (1), tony made him feel At Home. he never let him feel ashamed or isolated as The Man Out Of Time, he actively worked to make steve feel comfortable and to give him the things he needed to acclimatise and to fit himself into this brave new world. 

extremis undoes all of that. it propels tony so far and so fast into the future that it makes tony untouchable to steve. all of the ‘i can hear satellites’ stuff renders steve helpless and even more out of his depth than usual. it presses all of steve’s secret buttons and then some.

to sum this all up, and to finish my extra rambling abt tony bc u asked me about extremis and i couldn’t not finish with this:

here we have, ladies and gentlemen, everything u need to understand abt tony going into civil war. and it’s not on any of the official civil war fucking reading lists which really pisses me off because whether or not they did it on purpose the knaufs basically wrote all of execute program as the perfect precursor and characterisation groundwork for an antebellum tony stark. 

a tony stark who was just very recently manipulated against his will into assassinating people and causing a world-threatening incident that could have resulted in the deaths of thousands, including his own friends and teammates (and the love of his life), is a very different tony stark to the one ppl see in civil war #1.

what happens in stamford was an accident, too. no one meant for that to happen. tony knows first fucking hand what that means and what it feels like to carry that responsibility and guilt. his position in civil war supporting the SHRA is not only to protect the potential lives that could be lost in another stamford incident but also to protect superhumans and superheroes from ever being exploited against their will by villains to kill and hurt and destroy. 

superheroes are inherently susceptible to being used, it’s just part of the narrative convention –– a superhero is brainwashed or mind controlled or otherwise forced against their will to do something awful. and even if it’s not their fault there needs to be  accountability  for the victims. both the victims that suffer directly because of superhuman incidents but also the superheroes that become victims of ppl who abuse their powers. it’s abt protecting superheroes not just from civilians but from themselves. and if u’ve read a single comic u kno that this kinda shit happens way too often and way too easily.

sO YE S T hIS iS W HY. AND IT Ex PL AINS SO MUC H AND i j UST WISH P PL WOULD GODDAMN REA D THIS. LIKE EVERYONE WHO EVER WANTS TO SAY ANOTHER A GODDAMN THING ABOUT TONY STARK IN CIVIL WAR NEEDS TO FIRST READ EXECUTE PROGRAM FIRST OR PAY ME $10

anyway…………… one last time, i’m so so so sorry this took forever to get to. hope the wait was worth it!

[lookwhatilost]

well i’m off my soapbox FOR NOW. so here’s some word vomit related to the "incel forums were probably a massive contributing factor to my son turning into a perverted monster” thread i read earlier. i put it under a cut bc it was wordy but it’s something to chew on, in case you’ve happened to run out of gum.

i mentioned earlier that a lot of people were talking abt the possibility of the narrative being fake, and to be honest, there were a few elements of it that read as a little bit weird to me (a couple phrasing things, unnecessary amount of focus on somewhat irrelevant aspects of the narrative, jst general stuff like that) but i’m honestly beyond the point where i feel the sincerity of the stories i read online is worth much, because i will honestly forget them in a week. but one of the commenters mentioned something about how the demarcation between the truth and a lie can be determined by the inclusion of detail or lack thereof. theoretically, a detailed story is more likely to be a lie bc the inclusion of specifics are a way to coax your audience into believing you.

it struck me as a bit odd, mainly bc (as anyone who follows this blog is probably aware of) i’m literally incapable of conserving my words... but i think, when i tell stories abt my life, i have a hard time figuring out what details are relevant to the point i’m trying to make, or the understandability of the story, so i jst include, like, everything that comes to immediate memory. i think abt stories i’ve retold a few times that i’ve added details to in later retellings, not bc i was inserting a false detail, but bc i had time to think abt what’d happened and it occurs to me, “oh, right, that was probably significant”. i think abt when i tell funny stories, i know the delivery makes a big difference in how they’re received, and that details play a role in that. like “i was at an nye party once and this guy was being a creep, so my friend threw a gallon jug of water at his face and he left” isn’t that funny of a story, even if that basically is the whole thing. but if you describe the events leading up to it and provide details abt how the whole thing plays out, it’s a lot more satisfying. it’s still the same story, but the details help set the scene and convey the point more clearly, and ultimately the listener walks away with a more whole understanding of this event and why it was so amusing. however, that is how i view things, and my communication style reflects it. some people are more conservative with their words, and some people have the verbal skill to elicit that same response with their stories without using anywhere near the volume of words i would. communication is very individual. unless you have a rapport with someone, you can’t attest to the way they communicate, obviously, and you can’t poke holes in what someone is telling you solely based on the way they are communicating it, especially in a text based context where there isn’t something like body language for you to observe.

so back to the incel story: even if this particular case is extreme, what exactly makes it so inconceivable that you would write off anyone who took it at face value? we know that incels exist, and if you browse their forums and communities and such, you’ll see them periodically talk abt living with families that dnt understand their “philosophy” and clashing with them. we know that radical online groups target, be it intentionally or not, young people who are dissatisfied with their lives and give them something to scapegoat. we know, and many of us, through personal experience, how powerful online communities can be in shaping our beliefs and behavior, even in more benign contexts. we know that therapy is useless unless the person who is attending it is willing to engage with their therapist and their own issues. we know that the kind of thinking bred in such online communities has lead to real-world sexual violence and the murders of women. we know the misogyny that these spaces were born from already had a body count before they existed. so there is evidence that a young adult man being really perverted and entitled and terrible to his family is far from the most shocking thing to come from an echo chamber of bigoted & predominantly white men. so that leaves us with two questions: if we know all the components that make up this story are real, then what is the necessity of scrutinizing this particular narrative, or any other personal anecdote from someone you do not know? and what is the consequence of this story being fake, if it is?

the answer to the second question, obviously, is “there isn’t one”, but the first is a little bit harder to figure out. here’s what i think:

there’s really no rubric or rule of thumb that can tell you with perfect accuracy whether or not something is a lie or the truth. there are things that can tip you off, but these are not always reliable in every situation. i think living in a time period where there’s misinformation all around us, whether it be in the news cycle, or online, or in our personal lives, elicits this sense of fear and vulnerability. & i think rationalizing xyz inconsequential story as “made up” gives people a sense of power bc it allows these people to tell themselves that they’re capable of enough scrutiny to determine misinformation when they encounter it, even if it is small. you want to be able to tell yourself you aren’t gullible. you want to be above it. it dznt actually matter whether the incel kid and his dad are real, but in the case they aren’t, you wanna be able to say you didn’t fall for it. you dnt want to be stupid, you dnt want to be wrong, but above all, you dnt want to be vulnerable. i think that fear motivates a lot more than we realize.

i could totally be grasping at straws, but i see iterations of this a lot on the internet. i cant help but wonder where it comes from, even if it’s not that deep. but also, what isnt?