#discussing the inherent trauma of falling

[giantmushyfriend]

Talking about the Crowley Clipped Wing Theory (ft. a small portion of Ethel Cain talk, autonomy and the reclaiming of it, stars, and why Aziraphale loving Crowley's fallen angel traits may mean more than we initially realize)

I will never get over the headcannon that Crowley cannot use his wings to fly because they were clipped before his fall. It hurts on so many different levels, but mostly for one:

It is just another reminder of what he is. What he was made to be. He can do good as a demon all he wants, he can save the world, he can fall in love, he can separate himself from other demons by associating with a different type of animal than we've seen most demons portray (i.e., bugs, reptiles, creatures that are viewed as scary and gross, as opposed to a crow, which despite still being seen as a bad omen, is held in much higher regard) but certain aspects of him will always reap the punishment of simply asking questions. He cannot fly, and in that way, he is once again reminded for eternity that he was cast to slither on the ground as a snake, a creature now commonly associated as a symbol for trickery, malicious behavior, and betrayal, for the rest of time. Like his eyes, it is a permanent reminder that those who were supposed to love him and cherish him cast him out for something so juvenile as asking questions, a reminder that on some level, he loves his creator more than so loved him.

It reminds me so heavily of one of the songs of an album that I think Crowley would really like, Preacher's Daughter by Ethel Cain, specifically one of the lines from Family Tree (Intro),

"And Christ, forgive these bones I'm hiding

From no one successfully

Jesus can always reject his father

But he cannot escape his mother's blood

He'll scream and try to wash it off of his fingers

But he'll never escape what he's made up of"

Like Cain's exploration into generational trauma, Crowley, whether he wants people to see it or not, is still grappling with trying to dissociate himself from Hell because he doesn't believe he belongs there (i.e., "all I ever did was ask questions" "I never meant to fall"). But the world around him, the institutions of Heaven and Hell, have shackled him to it; he can never escape it. He cannot free himself of this association. He can change his appearance (i.e., portraying black wings that look more like a bird than demons, hiding his snake traits, changing his name from Crawly to Crowley). He feels robbed of that autonomy, which is cemented by the fall, taking both his vision (because of his eyes, snake eyes) and his ability to move freely by taking his ability to fly, and he's trying to refine himself by making choices that take it back, which makes it even more crushing when we look at these things he inherently can't get rid of. Like mother's blood, he cannot escape what he's made up of.

And as if that wasn't painful enough, there is also the salt to the already gaping wound by limiting Crowley's ability to fly; they further limit his access to the stars. Heaven knew how much the stars meant to Crowley; he took such pride in his creations, and they were the thing he loved most. They took this into consideration when thinking about his eternal punishment, firstly by taking away his ability to physically see his creations, as his snake eyes cannot see the stars since they are so far away, and then by making it almost physically impossible for him to go see them up close by making it so he could not fly.

Now, Heaven probably doubted Crowley's imagination because we all know he was 100% ready to drive the Bentley to Alpha Centauri with his houseplants, maybe husband, and Queen tapes in tow- but that is beside the point.

Things like his wings and eyes were meant to strip Crowley of everything he had when he was an angel; they're meant to be a punishment, a reminder of the privileges he lost when he asked questions. They are designed to make him feel nothing more than a lowly creature cast to the Earth and make him hate what he is. And that's why theories of Aziraphale loving these aspects of Crowley, finding them beautiful, are so meaningful. Because, at the end of the day, Heaven is no longer what it should have been, Crowley recognizes that. He understands that Heaven, alongside Hell, is dysfunctional and corrupt. So, when he sees this angel, the one thing who he sees as inherently good, the best thing that Heaven has ever produced, loving these things that he's supposed to hate, are meant to mark him as a disgrace to all creation, it's like a freight train. Because, to him, Heaven's opinion doesn't matter. He has Aziraphale, who loves these traits because they are so unabashedly Crowley. Aziraphale loves how he has reclaimed these traits, and for him, that's enough. He may not be able to escape the fact that he's a demon, cast out for something so juvenile as asking questions, and he may never be able to fully separate himself from Hell, but it's in these small strides of stepping away and reclaiming things that were meant to be a punishment, that is so endeared to the only being who he truly loves, that Crowley finds peace. And isn't that just beautiful?

[solarmorrigan]

May I request a thrupple for the angst quote prompt?

“Please I just… really need space right now.”

With ChissyxStevexEddie. If not the thrupple then a pair of your choice from those three characters.

Hello! I'm sorry, I didn't quite manage to work Chrissy into this one. Honestly, this particular fill argued with me so much I'm kind of glad I even got Eddie and Steve in there. I hope this is okay, anyway!

[post-S3 Steddie AU; CW: Deals with the aftermath of torture, heavily discusses non-consensual touching (not inherently sexual, not between Eddie and Steve), contains the theme of trying to help someone through trauma. This is very soft, though, I promise]

Angsty-ish Prompt List

-

The Steve Harrington who comes home to Eddie from the hospital on the fifth of July is not the same one who had kissed him goodbye before his shift at that shitty ice cream parlor two days prior.

He’s still Eddie’s Steve, of course he is, but he’s also – he’s withdrawn, and he’s jumpy, and he’s so, so hurt.

Eddie had seen the aftermath of that fight with Hargrove (who hadn’t? Though Eddie had even had the privilege of watching the last of the bruises fade from up close as he and Steve became friends), but this is worse. Eddie can’t articulate how at first, but it is.

At least back in November, Steve had been able to talk about how he’d gotten his injuries; this time, he has to hide behind some fucked up cover story – because bull-fucking-shit had he gotten hurt by falling debris in a freak mall fire.

Debris hadn’t left marks like fucking boot prints on Steve’s back and chest. It hadn’t bruised and rubbed his wrists red and raw. It hadn’t left the distinct shape of fingers in purple and blue, wrapped around his arms on both sides.

Eddie had tried exactly once to address this, when he’d first seen the extent of the damage hidden under Steve’s shirt. He’d tried to demand answers, tried to get out of Steve who had laid their fucking hands on him, but Steve had gone grey under his bruises and shook his head.

“It was a fire, Eddie. Nothing else. I need you to understand that,” Steve had said, more serious than Eddie had ever heard him, his one good eye wide with urgent anxiety – with something almost like fear. “It was just a fire.”

Eddie hasn’t brought it up again.

It makes him burn to know that someone had done this to Steve and that he can’t do a goddamn thing about it. It makes him want to scream, it makes him want to find whoever had been responsible and make them hurt, but more than anything–

More than anything, it terrifies him.

Because this Steve is different – his Steve is different now, and Eddie doesn’t know what to do.

It scares him to see Steve slinking around the trailer like it isn’t his home (more of a home than his parents’ house has ever been). It scares him when he forgets that Steve’s left is his bad side and that if he comes up on him too fast, he’ll startle the shit out of him. It scares him that Steve has a bad side. It scares him when he reaches for him, unthinkingly going for the contact that Steve has always been so hungry for, has been so comforted by in the past, and instead Steve flinches away.

Eddie has never really had to take care of someone else, and he feels like he’s fucking it up at every turn. He feels like he’s hurting Steve even more, that he’s no better than whoever did this to him, no better than Billy fucking Hargrove, no better than Steve’s parents; he’s afraid he’s going to ruin things, break Steve beyond repair, because he doesn’t know how to care for this new version of him.

The only thing that gives him hope that he isn’t doing too badly is the fact that Steve is staying. He still wants to be in Eddie’s company, still reaches out sometimes and tentatively slides his hand over Eddie’s while they’re watching TV together, still shares Eddie’s bed at night. He’s been stubbornly insisting that he’s fine, he’s fine, he just needs time to heal, but beyond a refusal to admit that anything is wrong, he still trusts Eddie to help when he’s not at his best.

Of course, no matter what he says, Steve isn’t actually fine, and even if that weren’t made apparent just by looking at him, it becomes abundantly clear when the lights go out and they lie down to sleep – when the nightmares hit.

Sometimes, they’re small things: quickened breath and inaudible murmuring, furrowed brows that eventually smooth out as Steve is released back into deeper, more peaceful sleep.

Sometimes, though, they’re loud and sharp and violent.

Sometimes, like tonight.

Steve is half twisted in the sheets, struggling in a way his broken ribs really can’t afford, arms flailing and jerking as he tries to fight something off, as he mutters no and stop and please. Eddie sort of wants to cry, thinking about what could be making Steve beg, but more than anything he wants to wake Steve up.

He shakes him by the shoulder, dodging the jerk of his arm, and hopes he can call louder than whatever’s going on in Steve’s head.

“Steve. Steve, c’mon, wake up,” Eddie shakes Steve again and Steve jerks away with a wounded noise. “It’s just a nightmare, baby, come on. Steve!”

Steve’s eyes snap open with a sharp gasp, like he’s been holding his breath, but his gaze is still hazy. He’s awake, but he isn’t present, and he immediately starts shoving at Eddie’s hands, trying to scoot away on the bed.

“No, no, get off– get off me!” he shouts, managing to make it as far as the edge of the bed before the tangle of the sheets holds him in place.

“Steve it’s– it’s just me, it’s Eddie, it was a nightmare, you’re–” as reassuring as Eddie is trying to be, he can’t help the distressed crack in his voice. “Baby, you’re safe, I fucking swear.”

Finally, Steve stops struggling. He lies against the mattress for a moment, breathing heavily, before he ventures a small, “Eddie?”

“Yeah, sweetheart, I’m right here,” Eddie promises.

He shuffles closer on his knees, reaching out for Steve, hoping to comfort or soothe or ground or something, but Steve flinches away, tossing up an arm to halt Eddie in his tracks with a quickly barked, “No.”

“Steve,” Eddie breathes out, and he doesn’t mean to sound so fucking broken, but he should be the one person Steve is never afraid of, and he’s fucking that up.

“I… Please, I just…” Steve stutters out, still catching his breath, trying to sit himself up against the wall that the head of the bed is pressed to, “…really need space right now. Just– just leave me alone for a while.”

And all at once, even if Eddie knows nothing else, he knows that isn’t right.

“I don’t think you should be alone right now, sweetheart.”

Steve, now propped up against the wall, lets his head hang with a heavy sigh. “Eddie…”

“No, look, I’m not–” Eddie scrambles off the bed and moves across the small room, until he’s got his back to the opposite wall. “I’m not gonna touch you, I’ll stay over here, you don’t even have to look at me, but I’m not going to leave you by yourself.”

Steve had never wanted to be left alone when things were bad before. When he was alone, his anxiety would consume him; without the anchor of another person, it would carry him away, and Eddie is certain the same thing will happen now if he leaves Steve to deal with the aftermath of his nightmare in solitude.

For a long moment, Steve stares at him, eyes wide and wet with unshed tears in the low light of the bedroom, but he eventually looks away again. He says nothing, just curling in on himself in a way that must be hell on his ribs as he leans back against the wall, and Eddie takes that as the best permission he’s going to get.

He slides down the wall and sits on the floor, his knees pulled up in front of him in a loose mirror of Steve’s position. He doesn’t move, he doesn’t speak, but he’s there, and he has to believe that’s worth something.

It startles him when, some thirty minutes in (probably the longest Eddie’s ever been able to sit in silence without something to occupy him), Steve speaks.

“I can still feel their hands on me.”

His voice is a quiet rasp, but the words hit Eddie like hailstones. He wants to ask who, he wants to demand what, but he knows if he says anything now, Steve will clam up, so Eddie keeps his mouth shut, and he waits.

“Even before they– before they started hitting me.” Steve isn’t looking at Eddie, instead addressing the wall, gaze distant and unblinking. “They grabbed me and… searched me, cuffed me, they kept – putting their hands on my face, grabbing my hair, and I couldn’t…”

Couldn’t stop them.

Eddie feels a little sick.

Steve is quiet for so long after that that Eddie begins to wonder if he should say something, but Steve breaks the silence before he has to figure out what.

“Out of everything, I don’t know why that… why that left the biggest impression, but I–” he breaks off, turning and finally looking at Eddie. “I want to feel you again, but any time someone touches me, I can only see them.”

Eddie doesn’t think he’s going to survive this. His heart is going to fucking break.

He needs to do something, he needs to help, and maybe he has no clue what he’s doing, but this is his Steve, and he has to try.

Slowly, Eddie levers himself up off the floor and moves towards the door, where he hits the switch for the overhead lights, making the entire room go bright.

Steve winces at the sudden change, turning a wary look on Eddie as he approaches the bed.

“Eddie, what…”

“Just– just trust me. Let me try,” Eddie says, soft and earnest, holding Steve’s gaze as he sits on the edge of the bed. “Please?”

It takes a long moment, but Steve gives a hesitant nod, and Eddie scoots closer. He leaves space between them, still, but he gets close enough that he could reach out and take Steve’s hands – which is exactly what he intends to do.

“Look at me,” Eddie says, quiet and firm. “Just look at me, nowhere else.”

Steve does as he’s told, and Eddie manages a smirk.

“Just pretend I’m the most interesting thing in the room,” he tries to tease. “Like there’s nothing else you’d ever wanna look at.”

“Don’t have to pretend,” Steve murmurs, eyes locked on Eddie’s face, and Eddie’s smile melts into something more genuine.

“There you are,” he says softly.

He reaches for Steve’s hands, and slowly, Steve unwraps them from where he’s been clutching firm around his legs, and lets Eddie touch him.

His hands are cold in spite of the summer heat that invades the trailer no matter how hard their crappy little air conditioner works, and they’re trembling slightly, but Steve doesn’t pull back. He stares right at Eddie and holds on.

Eddie brings one hand up, cradled in his own, and presses a gentle kiss to the knuckles. The bruises there have already faded (their presence had been the least distressing out of all the damage; Eddie likes knowing that Steve had at least gotten a few hits in), but he attends carefully to each knuckle, anyway. He kisses the back of Steve’s hand, feeling a little like a courtly lord from one of his own campaigns. Steve is starting to look at him like he might be one.

The bruises around Steve’s wrists are taking longer to heal; the damage is deeper, and the colors still paint livid rainbow circles on his skin (his face is going to take longer, still; Steve says the doctor told him he’d lucked out with a minor fracture to his orbital bone that will heal on its own with time. Eddie looks at the discoloration there and feels like he has some choice words for the doctor). Eddie moves his attention up, brushing his lips featherlight across the top of Steve’s wrist before turning his hand over and paying the same devotion to the underside.

“Eddie…” Steve breathes, and Eddie presses one last kiss to the palm of Steve’s hand.

“It’s me,” Eddie promises, bringing Steve’s other hand up now. “Watch me, sweetheart, it’s just me.”

He keeps eye contact as he lavishes Steve’s left hand with the same attention he’d given the right, and it occurs to him that he’s been inside the boy in front of him, but this is somehow the most intimate thing they’ve ever done.

Eddie doesn’t move beyond Steve’s wrists, doesn’t push any more than he already has, and Steve’s eyes are still on him by the time he finishes, wide and soft and glassy.

“Okay?” Eddie asks softly, dropping his hands to hold both of Steve’s in his lap.

Slowly, Steve nods. He looks away at last, turning his eyes to their joined hands, and tightens his fingers until he’s holding onto Eddie properly.

They sit like that for a long time, quiet and close, until Eddie can feel himself flagging and he can see Steve’s eyelids drooping.

“Let’s try to get some more sleep,” Eddie says around a stifled yawn. “You do need your beauty rest, after all.”

Steve laughs, a little huff of a thing, and casts a quick glance up at Eddie. “Can– can we leave the light on?” He rushes the words out, like he hates to even ask, but Eddie only nods.

“Whatever you need, Steve,” he promises – and he means it.

Maybe he has no idea what the fuck he’s doing, but he’s not going anywhere until he figures it out.

And when Steve settles down beside him in bed, and scooches just close enough that their arms are pressed together, Eddie figures maybe he’s not doing too badly, after all.

[valtsv]

is all true crime bad? genuine question. not referring to the very obvious disrespectful ones that are usually brought up when discussing the topic but rather documentaries and things of the sort. I feel like a lot of the documentaries around real crimes I watched bring up issues that aren't really talked about and a lot of the times are covered by institutions/media and also inform people on various things that they probably wouldn't have been aware otherwise so to me they can be very informational. there's also cases where victims of abduction for example have been recognised years later because of media like this which is objectively a good thing so I would like to know a little more about other negative impacts that might not be so obvious. if you have any source I can research on that's also great. sorry to bother!

i think that "true crime" in itself is a nuanced and varied topic and have no intention of tarring everyone who has an interest in it with the same brush, because there are definitely respectful ways of engaging with it that do their best to avoid and minimize harm. however i think that the popular culture depictions of true crime and capitalization on it as a form of entertainment tend to do more harm than good to both victims, who are frequently exploited for "content" and/or have their trauma dredged up for consumption, and consumers/producers, since a lot of mainstream true crime media reinforces harmful stereotypes, paranoia, surveillance tactics, and social divisions, and sensationalizes human cruelty and suffering. not to mention that this kind of approach to and fascination with horrific crimes and unusually cruel and violent criminals may encourage more people to inflict violence on others in order to gain notoriety and fame.

i don't think it's wrong to be interested in these things and to want to understand what makes people do horrific things to other people. one of my hyperfixations is the history of decapitation/capital punishment and its legacy, which is a topic that is fraught with issues surrounding the abuse of some of the most marginalized and vulnerable members of society. i myself am fascinated by it partly because of my own past experiences with abuse and marginalization. being interested in unpleasant things doesn't make you inherently a bad person, and thought crimes don't exist. however it's really important, especially when it comes to topics like this, to be self aware and critical of the information you're given, and to be careful not to be taken in by popular opinion and stereotypes without questioning them, or to get so immersed in your pursuit of knowledge and understanding that you lose your grip on reality and fall victim to misinformation and bias. believing too strongly in your personal ability to recognize and identify criminals and "criminal traits" and "solve" crimes, especially when the justice system is as flawed as it is, is more likely to lead to incorrect assumptions, the persecution of the marginalized and vulnerable, invasions of privacy and miscarriages of justice than it is to help.

[mintedwitcher]

So I was going to reblog further on that "Scott believed Theo over Stiles" post from yesterday, only by the time I'd finished writing my addition I realised 2 things:

I was writing from a reactive standpoint. I felt a negative way about the previous reply and I let it impact how I responded, and

I ended up talking myself out of the stance that I'd started with.

So in that vein, I'm going to rewrite it here as it's own post, with the encouragement from @prettyshon10 (the OP of the previous post).

Sorry for the long intro but I wanted to be transparent about where I'm coming from here. I'll put the rest under a cut because this is going to be long.

(Edit: it got Very Long, sorry.)

The key thing to note first of all is that I wasn't giving Stiles a "free pass". I acknowledge and agree that both he and Scott mishandled the situation. However, because of the power imbalance inherent in their dynamic, with Scott being an alpha werewolf and Stiles being his Second, I do believe that there is more weight on Scott's shoulders here than on Stiles's.

The timing of the discussion alone is a misstep on Scott's part. He initiated the conversation in the rain, while they were already short on time, trying to save a girl who was dying. Stopping to have any kind of heavy conversation at that point in time wasn't going to end well, because there are simply too many details that have to be hammered out. There is too much to say, and not nearly enough time to say it all. Especially with the emotional weight of the situation on both parts.

I also say that Scott bears more weight in the moment because he is the leader of their group. Stiles might have plenty of influence with Scott, but Scott is still the leader, and so it falls to him more than anyone else to sort out conflicts within the group. That's not to say that Stiles shouldn't have come forward about it - in fact I think that Stiles should've gone to Scott first about it - but that Scott has a responsibility to their entire pack to make sure that everyone is as comfortable as possible. That is the role he's taken on among them, and in confronting Stiles the way he did, he failed in that role. (Stiles' failing is not trusting Scott to have his back if he'd told him the truth, and I desperately wish that the canon had gone deeper into the reasons why he didn't trust Scott with this. I've seen fanon interpretations that the trauma from the nogitsune could be influencing Stiles' distance, but again, that's never really discussed in canon so... it's an interesting theory, but it's another place where the show's writing fell short.)

In my initial response, I said that Scott has a "killing = bad" mentality, and I do stand by that, because from canon observation, his morality is fickle at best. He allows - and even encourages - murder when it suits him (killing Peter to "cure" himself, killing Gerard to be with Allison, killing Jennifer to save his mother) but condemns it when it doesn't (letting Jennifer go after her ritual failed, locking Peter in Eichen after Mexico, letting Deucalion and Gerard live). There are even points where his fluctuating morality doesn't make sense, such as when he refused to kill assassins who were actively targeting people he knew and loved. He persists that killing is wrong, and that murdering a Bad Guy makes you Just Like Them. But he overlooks it entirely when it suits him, when it can be justified as something that the Good Guys did. (Most notably here can be the way he overlooks Allison hunting and nearly killing Erica, Boyd and Isaac; not because their deaths would benefit him but because going against Allison would damage his relationship with her.)

It's actually a very interesting contradiction, and if Scott was an adult in the series it would be on a whole different level, but unfortunately, he's a child. Which means that his contradictions aren't exactly novel and groundbreaking, they're just... teenage conflicts. He's doing the best he can with the limited information he has, and the limited experience he has as well, and that leads to some very black-and-white thinking.

His worldview is black-and-white not as a character flaw but as a result of his age and the life he's led so far. He's still a child for the majority of the show, and so his worldview is limited by what he knows. He knows that murder is illegal and that killing people is not a good solution all the time, and that people who kill anyway are bad, ergo, killing = bad. Until he needs someone dead for whatever reason, which he can then justify to himself as "But I'm a Good Guy, and this person is a Bad Guy, and I'm going to save a lot of people from them if I kill the Bad Guy, so my actions aren't Bad because I have Good Intentions." Which is a very black-and-white thing to do. (I'm not saying this is a fault or a failing of his character, it's just an observation. This mentality also isn't specific to murder but also to many other 'immoral' actions.)

Stiles, similarly, has a black-and-white worldview for the same reasons; age and life experience. Where the two differ, however, is that Stiles has experienced more trauma than Scott has at this point of his life. So his priorities are skewed in a different lens than Scott's are. Scott is very much "Save Everyone, no matter what," whereas Stiles is more "Some people can't be saved, protect your own." Which are both very fair views to have.

Stiles watched his mother mentally decline for months(?) before she died. He was in the room with her when she died. And if the very vague timelines can be believed, he would've been around 6-8 years old at the time. There was nothing that he could do to save his mother, and there was nothing he could do to save his father from his grief after her death. I do really wish we had more lore about the Stilinski family during that grieving period, because that would likely inform the way that Stiles behaves now, too.

But what we do see from Stiles is that he is suspicious. He has one friend and he likes it that way. He distrusts anyone who gets a little Too close, especially too close to Scott. (This to me reads like a protective behaviour rather than the fanon-preferred possessive; Scott grew up with severe asthma, and Stiles likely would've been the one helping Scott deal with that throughout their childhoods.) But he's not suspicious to the point of paranoia. His suspicion is always firmly rooted in reality. He notices Matt's weird behaviour in season 2, in fact he's the only one to see Matt as a potential threat. He notices - though doesn't actually put the pieces together right away - that the kanima was familiar to him the first time he saw it. He's the one who goes through the process of actually investigating and documenting the weird shit that keeps happening to them. His pattern recognition skills are unmatched, though severely underutilised in canon.

What I'm trying to get at is that Stiles is the realist in the Scott+Stiles dynamic duo. Scott is the Optimist. Scott is the one who always wants to find the peaceful solution, who wants everyone to walk away happy and satisfied - or at the very least, alive - at the end of the day. Stiles is the one who recognises that sometimes that's just not an option. Sometimes there are going to be people you can't talk down, threats you can't just peacefully walk away from.

Their dynamic should - and normally does - function perfectly. But there are times that it doesn't, because Scott has a bad habit of ignoring or dismissing Stiles' concerns.

Which brings us (at last) back to the actual point.

Stiles had said from day one that he doesn't trust Theo. That there's something off about him. That he's not the kid they knew growing up. Scott humours it at first, but ultimately decides to make his own judgements about Theo (which is a fair choice). This, however, plants the seeds for the discord that Theo is about to sow within the pack.

(There are other instances of Scott dismissing Stiles' theories but if I get into that I'll be here for hours.)

Theo has spent all this time trying to ingratiate himself into the pack, to get into Scott's good books, and at every turn, he's met with Stiles barricading him. He's got Stiles' alarms ringing, and Stiles isn't going to drop it. So what does he do? First, he shows empathy to Stiles, by saying that he knows about Donovan - and dropping that in the middle of an already emotionally heightened moment so to deliberately keep Stiles off-balance - and then using that to plead Stiles's silence about Josh. Stiles, in response, backs off of Theo. Not entirely, but he keeps his distance, because now Theo has incriminating information about him and Stiles doesn't want Scott to know about it. Once Theo has some breathing room, he escalates. It's now not just about getting in with Scott, it's about getting rid of his overprotective packmates. So he tells Scott an edited version of the story. He lies through his teeth and Scott, the bleeding-heart that he is, laps it up. He's horrified by Stiles' involvement of course but he feels for Theo. Which is exactly what Theo wants, and exactly what Stiles wanted to avoid.

The crux of it all is the confrontation. Scott and Stiles are having two completely different conversations, and due to the timing of the moment, they can't go into further detail to untangle the miscommunication between them. So it keeps getting worse.

From Scott's point of view, he's trying to understand what would make his best friend snap so violently. He's trying to understand, to be there for his friend. He wants to help. Why can't Stiles see that he's only trying to help?

From Stiles' point of view, he's being punished. He's being pushed out and away, he's being lectured at for trying to defend himself, why won't Scott just see that he was only defending himself?

Neither of them know what the other is really saying. They both Think that the version of events in their head matches the reality, and they both walk away from that moment feeling like they've failed.

The problem - and where my own stance on the discourse is really rooted - is that the way the scene is presented, makes it look like Scott is choosing Theo over Stiles. It looks like Scott is turning his back on his lifelong friend. I'll have to rewatch the actual episode to get a better analysis of the specific placement of that scene, but that was the impression that I walked away with the first (and almost every) time I watched that episode.

To sum up: I don't think that Scott "believed" Theo over Stiles, but to the characters, it would feel that way. The problem is that fandom tends to project themselves onto the character they like more. I've seen people insisting that Scott underreacted to the situation in equal measure to the people insisting that Scott overreacted.

I think it's kind of fascinating how our personal preferences interfere with the way we interpret media.

[that-ari-blogger]

"Do you want to know a secret?" (The Portal)

I think that the rules of writing are overblown.

Don’t get me wrong, there are things you should and shouldn’t do when telling a story, but those are more guidelines than actual rules.

Case and point, She-Ra is a story predicated on repetition, which shouldn’t be as entertaining as it is. The “bad ending” is effectively another season, which is a unique premise, and a threat that the story absolutely delivers on multiple times.

But, to me at least, the story is enthralling, and keeps me coming back to it. It works, not despite its repetition, but because of it.

Although, that isn’t exactly true. I’ve described the story as cyclical before, but it isn’t entirely. It’s a spiral, because the cycle of abuse is an innately unstable dynamic, and will only end in tragedy if it isn’t broken.

If you don’t want to take my word for this, I give you the season 3 finale, The Portal, which spells out the series’ thesis in about as blunt of a way as is possible.

Let me explain.

SPOILERS AHEAD: (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Watchmen, Batman: The Killing Joke, Superman: For The Man Who Has Everything, Justice League Unlimited)

I grew up reading Alan Moore comics, and if you don’t know who that is, I both pity you and envy you. Alan Moore is one of the most misrepresented writers of the modern age, and its entirely his own fault.

Moore is known for writing V For Vendetta, The Killing Joke, and Watchmen, all of which have a distinctly grim tone. He is one of those writers who seems to care more about the story he is telling than how much people enjoy it, and so he usually has a point to make.

Unfortunately, we end up with the Cyber Punk dilemma, in which Alan Moore’s genuinely unrivalled literary talent leads to people really enjoying his stories, which means they unintentionally miss the actual themes of those stories. In the case of Watchmen, this led to people seeing the gore and the violence and the depression and trying to replicate that.

This is where we get The Boys from, shallow sadness and spectacle. If that’s your thing, go for it, but it isn’t mine.

But I bring up Moore in a discussion of She-Ra for a reason, and that is the relentless hope inherent in his writing. In Moore’s stories, hope prevails every single time, with the only exception being extremely subjective. The Killing Joke focuses on the idea that everyone is one bad day away from becoming evil, and that gets proven wrong. Watchmen is about how small humans are and how annihilation changes people, yet the characters are able to find joy and an escape from their trauma, and show kindness to each other even when the sky almost literally falls on their heads.

The Boys isn’t very good as an adaptation of Moore’s themes (In my opinion). If you want one that actually understands the source material, watch The Incredibles, or Justice League Unlimited, or She-Ra and the Princesses of Power.

I have praised She-Ra for its animation and pacing, as well as its overarching story, but I think its greatest strength is its humanity. Characters in She-Ra are incredibly fragile, psychologically, and yet they are incredibly resilient.

Catra and Adora’s development gets methodically and efficiently destroyed by Shadow Weaver, and yet Adora becomes a hero and Catra… well, we’ll see how that works out in later seasons.

One of my favourite Moore stories is a superman story from 1985 called For The Man Who Has Everything. This was adapted into an episode of Justice League Unlimited, but I prefer the comic.

The story follows Superman being forced to live out his greatest desire. It doesn’t sound that bad, but the point is that he is kept happy and therefore out of the picture while villains can do villain things. It’s very much a story from its time, and I love it.

Interestingly, however, Superman’s dream takes him back to Krypton, where he isn’t Superman, and he is happy. He has a wife, and a son, and he never lost anything. He can spend time with his parents.

Even with the shenanigans that ensue (because this is a comic), his time in this dream is fun, and relaxing. Until he works out he’s dreaming, and has to let it go. Superman gets the choice of happiness, or duty, and he takes duty.

The scene in which he says goodbye to his “son”, who does not exist and therefore does not matter, is heartbreaking, and if I ever do comic reviews, I’m talking about this one first.

I now turn your gaze to queen Angella, from whose perspective this story is being told.

The episode actually does a bit of a bait and switch with the point of view, convincing its audience that it is about either Glimmer or Bow, and it kind of is, but not entirely.

Angella has everything she could possibly want, her daughter, her husband, her city. There is no war, there is nothing. Everything is perfect.

“This is perfect, my love, but it’s not real. I remember now. I miss you so much, but Glimmer needs my help, and I can’t stay with nothing but memories. Goodbye Micah”

Does this ring any bells?

I want to point out that this is still Catra’s hallucination, the thing that she wants. So why does she want Angella and Glimmer to be happy?

Catra wants Adora, and arguably loves her, but in an extremely dysfunctional way that says "if I can't have her, nobody can". She is petty, and fully the villain in this episode.

So, the way that she gets Adora to be hers is by ensuring that the people who accepted her would have no space for her in their lives. Why would Glimmer want to spend time with Adora? She has her father. Why would Angella accept Adora? She has her family.

What Catra doesn’t understand is that love isn’t transactional, and that these people are genuinely kind and accepting.

There's the idea of "what you are in the dark." The concept of what a person does when there are no consequences. Characters in this episode keep getting moments like this, when they know that they are fading from existence, and are given moments to show their true colours. Entrapta chooses to be grateful, Bow chooses to be reassuring, and Glimmer chooses to be emotional.

The thing that breaks people out of Catra’s reality is the unexpected. Its Catra’s lack of understanding of people that leads to those people being themselves and instinctively breaking free.

Case and point, Angella and Glimmer help Adora, and because this world was completely unprepared for that minour act of kindness, it can’t keep them contained.

Now, I know what scene you are expecting me to talk about, so I’m going to make you wait, and talk about Catra instead.

Catra is the villain of this episode. If it wasn’t for this being set in her mind, she would have zero nuance. By which I mean, everything about her as a character here is done externally, the way she acts makes her seem like a generic, abusive partner.

Because let me be clear about Catra’s actions here. This is abuse, and it is treated as such by the story. The show doesn’t make apologies for her in this episode, or try to justify it here. Subtlety be damned here, Catra is abusive.

And so, I will read her this way, for this episode. We have seen the nuance leading up to this moment, and we will see a redemption arc. But this is Catra at her lowest, and so I will put aside the past and future to examine the present and the present only. Catra is abusive.

There are two ways you could read this drop in subtlety. One, there are parts of this character that you aren’t seeing, left blank. This episode is presenting you with a character and not showing you the whole thing. Or two, this is a character who has been broken by the story, almost as if parts of her have been removed or lost. Catra is now a fragment of her former self.

I wonder if any of this is reflected in her character design.

“If you hadn’t gotten captured, your sword wouldn’t have opened the portal. If you hadn’t gotten the sword and been the world’s worst She-Ra, none of this would have happened. Admit it Adora, the world would still be standing if you had never come through that portal in the first place.”

This hurts Adora because it’s true. Ok that’s unfair, and inaccurate, but it’s not entirely wrong, and that’s the kicker.

Catra isn’t making this up, she’s just leaving out important details. Because of course, if Adora hadn’t been captured, things would have worked out better, but who was it that captured her? Who was it that made the choice to pull the switch? Who was it that destroyed the world out of spite?

Catra blames Adora for her own actions, and that is, once again, abuse. Which is why it’s so satisfying when Adora stands up for herself.

“I didn’t make you pull the switch. I didn’t make you do anything. I didn’t break the world. But I am gonna fix it.”

Hope is relentless.

But I also want to point out the claiming of agency here. Catra was weirdly insightful at the start of her monologue.

“It's always the same with you, Adora. ‘I have to do this. Oh, we have to do that.’”

Adora’s word choice is a flaw. I looked back at the past few seasons and did a word search through the scripts. I don’t think Adora uses the word “want” more than once at all up to this point.

Essentially, Catra sees things, but extrapolates exactly the wrong message from it. It’s almost as if she’s only seeing half of the world, like her vision is impaired or incomplete somehow.

I wonder if that is reflected in her character design.

In any case, Adora frequently says that she “has to” do things. “Need” is also something she says a lot, and this has the effect of making her an extremely passive character in her own story.

Like I said, this is a moment of agency, but the entire story is a story about that agency. The characters are making choices to either get out of or go along with the downward spiral that the tragic form has set out for them. Catra made the choice to follow, but Adora didn’t. Adora’s word choice makes her look like she has made no choice, but a lack of action is still a decision.

So here, when Adora declares she is “gonna fix it", she takes her agency and decides to walk in a different direction.

This reminds me of an earlier episode, that being Promise.

Hey, look at that action. Looks familiar, right?

This is the only episode I found where Adora says she wants something, although her actual wording is “I never wanted to leave you” when talking to Catra. Go figure.

The moment in question was the episode’s namesake.

“It doesn't matter what they do to us, you know? You look out for me, and I look out for you. Nothing really bad can happen as long as we have each other.” “You promise?” “I promise.”

Agency. Adora is making a decision to stay with Catra and protect her. She is knowingly choosing to do something.

It’s telling that the two most prominent times Adora has done this have been to protect people. It’s almost as if she wants to be useful, or helpful, or protective. Almost as if she wants to be wanted. It would seem Adora is just as addicted to the highs of Shadow Weaver’s programming as Catra, she just has a better support group.

Although this isn’t a full victory, she doesn’t want to save the world, she is just going to, – we still don’t know what Adora wants – this is a partial success. Hold onto that idea, it will come back later.

“Do you want to know a secret? I am a coward. I've always been the queen who stays behind. Micah was the brave one. And then Glimmer, oh, Glimmer. So much like her father. And once again I stayed behind, letting her make the hard choices, letting her be brave for me. I told myself I was being responsible, but, Adora, I was just scared. And then I met you. You inspired us. You inspired me. Not because it was your destiny, but because you never let fear stop you. And now I choose to be brave.”

Queen Angella is voiced by Reshma Shetty. She doesn’t get much praise, but for this monologue, I think she deserves so much more than she got.

In my fourth post about She-Ra, I discussed Adora’s ability to inspire and linked her to Batman, something I stand by to this day.

In universe, She-Ra isn’t important because she’s a warrior. She exists as a leader, to protect people and pull them into a greater tomorrow. She shines a light for others to follow.

That is what happens in The Portal, Adora succeeds not by fighting the enemy, but by being herself. She only becomes She-Ra to destroy the portal at the end. To save Etheria, the giant sword lady isn’t important.

I mentioned earlier that humans are fragile and resilient at the same time, and I give you Angella as evidence for that claim. Here is someone who has lost her husband, and makes decisions based on that fear and trauma. But when push comes to shove, the fear is secondary.

Reality falling apart lets directors get away with true nonsense. Micah's staff has no reason to be here, other than the fact that it makes a phenomenal metaphor for Angella's trauma. But that's all you need.

Jon Pertwee was the third doctor, and while he isn’t nearly as iconic or influential as some of his predecessors and successors, he did deliver the line that defined the whole series.

“Courage isn't just a matter of not being frightened, you know. It's being afraid and doing what you have to do anyway.”

I started my discussion of this season by claiming that this is the season in which the characters put a dent the tragic cycle, and I have mentioned several times that the cycle of abuse is unstable. So, here is my thesis.

Catra’s arc fails, not in a story sense, but in a personal one. The idea that every character has a single story arc is something is a specific bugbear of mine, and Catra is kind of my case and point for that. She has a redemption arc up to this point, and she ends up as a villain. Then the story continues and she has to start again and decide where to go next. She has no choice but to move in a different direction from here.

But she tasted redemption already. The crimson wastes gave her a taste of what she is missing, and it offered her an out. It gave her a choice, she made one, and consequences were served. I can’t help but imagine that for the entirety of the next season, she is considering running off to the wastes again.

That idea of consequences comes back with Adora, who makes a good decision, and is rewarded for it. Or rather, she makes a decision to actually do something. Adora becomes an active character, and that is what starts to break the cycle. Because now the motion is halted, and the puppets are pulling the strings.

But, this isn’t a complete victory. Angella is lost, Entrapta and Micah are still gone, none of the villains actually get defeated. For an episode with lasting consequences, not much actually happened.

This episode is big on the fact that this is all a dream, which should destroy the engagement. But it doesn’t. In reality, it preserves the status quo physically, but lets all the characters spontaneously experience character development. The victory of this season is that growth, but it came at a cost.

I want to briefly talk about that final shot, before I go, because this is how you introduce a villain. Sure, the voice acting is impeccable, and the cinematography gives an air of mystery and menace to this threat, but the showstopper is the reveal that this villain can destroy a moon with ease.

You see a fleet of ships, there was no battle here, just a villain showing off for nobody but himself. He gets interrupted by the plot, and he’s busy DESTROYING A MOON.

Horde Prime is f***ing terrifying.

This scene is in this episode too. It's meant to show how reality is falling apart, but I actually have a reading of why it's here. I think Catra wanted to preserve who Adora was, hence why she is the source of all the paradoxes. But Catra doesn't understand that Mara's legacy and Razz's teaching are a big part of Adora.

Final Thoughts

I’m going to talk about the implications for later seasons for a moment here, so if you’re avoiding spoilers, now you know.

I think Catra being the villain here makes her redemption so much more compelling, because she actually needs it. There is a difference between this and, for example, Hunter from The Owl House, who doesn’t really need redemption because he hasn’t done anything wrong.

Catra here has very much done wrong and is evil as defined by the show. But the show’s message is that anyone can change, and that the cycle of abuse isn’t set in stone.

So, Catra will redeem herself, and she will struggle, and fall back, and try again. Forgive her or not, the redemption is the effort to be better.

Next week (or whenever the next post is released, I have a terrible work schedule), I will be discussing The Coronation, so stick around if that interests you.

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[aptericia]

speaking as a textbook atheist who has never believed in a higher power of any sort, some of you really need to be normal about religious people.

Taking "religion" to mean Christianity and "Christianity" to mean whatever specific branch and church where you were traumatized by old White people as a child is inaccurate and self-centered. I firmly believe that religious trauma is real and serious and that no one who suffers from it should have to engage in triggering discussions of religion, but that is a personal right and has nothing to do with the morality of religion as a concept. Yes, people do horrible things in the name of religion, just like they do in the name of science and patriotism and many other ideals. Yes, religion (especially institutionalized religion) deserves a lot of criticism, but it deserves criticism based on the real-world harm it causes and not gut reactions of disgust.

For instance, I know plenty of scummy Christians who use their beliefs to justify terrible actions, but I know far more Christians who are vehemently feminist and anti-racist and supportive of LGBTQ+ rights, who respect both modern science and the natural world, and who I know have my back whenever I need help. It's important to criticize institutions of power, but please don't fall back on the same kind of awful, sweeping generalizations about religious people that like, TERFs make about men and masculinity, for example. You don't have to follow it or even like it, but you do have to treat your fellow humans as the infinitely complex and inherently worthy beings they are, no matter what labels they choose to use.

[dragonseeds]

what are your thoughts on rhaegar and lyanna?

oh i love them! there’s all this talk of them haunting the narrative and they do, but i’d take it further and say they are the black hole at the center of the story. the choices that they made, starting with lyanna’s decision to defend howland reed and what that meant to both him and rhaegar, who was very likely at his lowest point at harrenhal after the ruination of his careful plans, touched or changed the lives of every character and plot line in the series. the story itself is such a fun mashup of tristan and iseult, lancelot and guinevere, helen and paris, the fall of camelot and all of arthuriana really, the classic trope of the princess in the tower and the dragon and the knight: all of that in one couple and we don’t get to experience any of it with them. we can guess and speculate, but we can never truly know them. we experience their story only through the memories the people who survived the war they ostensibly kicked off, and those memories are all heavily colored by trauma, guilt, nostalgia—alternately faded and sharpened by time. it’s this incredibly fun and brilliant reconstruction of some of the most enduring tragedies in folklore and mythology and i adore it.

hate beyond articulation the way asoiaf.tumblr.edu approaches their relationship and the individual characterizations of both of them, though. just absolutely some of the most insufferably sanctimonious disingenuous decontextualized analysis i’ve ever experienced—much of that coming from people viewing this through a historical lense instead of a thematic one. like, imagine approaching the battle of the trident as “rhaegar is a bad person for fighting for his father who was evil! he lost the moral high ground with that one” as opposed to “rhaegar as a character exists to fail and die; he was the last dragon, carrying the unbearable weight of his family’s legacy and the burden of the prophecy for which they conquered westeros: the end of his life is the end of the targaryen dynasty. he must fail and he must die, so that dany and jon can grow up free of that weight and that power. daenerys gets to redefine what it means to be targaryen on her own terms. she and jon separately and unknowingly do the things that he thought he had to do—the things he was conceived and born to do—but never knew how: they do it because of their circumstances, because of the people that they have grown into, because they believe it is their duty, because they have the power to do it.” also, like, re: interpretations of battle of the trident, is there maybe another battle that occurs later in the series that is exactly the same thematically and contextually? where perhaps a character who was missing for a while shows up on the eve of battle, knowing that the opposition is right and their cause is just but that his family will die if he doesn’t fight with them? anything that adds an extra layer of meaning to what happens, aside from dany’s own connection—which is not as thematically similar but is still incredibly meaningful. like i certainly don’t think there’s any one interpretation of a character or story, but the worst ones are consistently applied to rhaegar.

and then with lyanna in particular, it’s like people cannot stomach her or find her sympathetic as a character unless they’re wallowing in her eternal victimhood. the constant dismissal of the importance of lyanna’s actions and what they meant to rhaegar is pure misogyny, by the way. her choices and her agency, the inherent meaningfulness of the struggle for both of those things in a system that seeks to reduce her to her body and the use men can make of it—all of that is important. the person she was and what that meant to people was important, but from the way i most often see her discussed, it’s like her gendered death is the only thing that matters. it’s okay to lament her because she got crushed by the wheel. if she hadn’t, if she wasn’t a victim to write flagellatory meta about, she would be a hypocrite, someone who needed to learn a lesson—as difficult for some of these people to relate to as dany or rhaenyra apparently are.

like, it’s just wild to me because her kindness to howland reed and her choice to defend him, to disguise herself as the knight of the laughing tree and risk her life and reputation to fight for him—is the answer to and the embodiment of one of the most thematically significant questions in the series. we see it most prominently in dany’s chapters because she asks it directly: why do the gods make kings and queens if not to protect the ones who can’t protect themselves? that’s what lyanna did, when no one else was doing it: she had more honor than any knight at that tourney or any man sitting on the small council, and it meant something to rhaegar. like what about this is hard to understand? i think he must have idealized her immediately: she must have seemed like something out of a song or a story to him, and rhaegar was a singer, a songwriter, a bard: he knows how stories are supposed to go—how to finish a song, or at least he thought he did.

bran, who also loves stories, says it himself: “and the mystery knight should win the tourney, defeating every challenger, and name the wolf maid the queen of love and beauty.” like obviously bran has some critiques i cut out, but he has the ending right—only the wolf maid was the knight, and she couldn’t have won. in the feudal gender prison, women are rewarded for being beautiful and their worth is derived from that and from what their bodies provide. she should’ve won the whole thing, but the system doesn’t allow that, so rhaegar—in a fit of single-minded capital r romantic hero idiocy—dedicates himself to winning the tourney to honor her in the only way he can: the only way the system allows him to recognize her. it was the worst possible move he could make at that time because of the romantic connotations, but i love him for doing it, as stupid as it was and even though there is no way it didn’t hurt and humiliate elia, or make him look terrible when he desperately needed to make a good impression on the lords of the realm—it’s just such a Moment. being reminded that there’s good in the world—feeling hope in the face of endless abject overwhelming despair—how do you express gratitude for that? the idea that he could only doing it by hurting someone who didn’t deserve it and making himself look like an ass is fucking awesome. i’m genuinely so sorry for people are incapable of enjoying that. could not be me!

but that’s just my interpretation of what happened at harrenhal. like i said, part of why i like them so much is that we truly don’t know. while i love darker relationships in general, the idea that he crowned her at harrenhal because he wanted to impregnate her then does not work for me. it’s a popular theory, but it renders some of the very few contextual clues we are given about what happened meaningless. for one, he didn’t know that elia wouldn’t be able to have more children at that time. this was discovered after she gave birth to aegon, and that is the point at which the question of the third child appears to have become a motivating factor for him. i personally think he left for the riverlands to consult with the ghost of high heart—the one whose prophecy is the reason he was born, the reason is parents were forced to marry, the reason his family burned alive the night he came into the world—and ran into lyanna somewhere near harrenhal. it’s possible he had been in contact with her prior to this (how? without her family knowing? what are the logistics of that?) but i think it’s just as likely it was pure chance. i really like the idea that his crowning her queen of love and beauty caused lyanna’s father to set a date for her wedding to robert or talk of moving it up, maybe even suggest a double wedding at riverrun, which would have almost certainly caused her to balk. either way, high heart is located between harrenhal and riverrun. arya also stops there while she’s kidnapped by the brotherhood without banners on the way to ransom her to her family at riverrun, and they trade songs to the ghost for her dreams and prophecies. i think it’s worth noting because arya’s journey in the riverlands mirrors lyanna’s right down to her “death” as arya stark when she leaves for braavos, paying the ferryman’s fee with the coin jaqen h’ghar gave her—just as jon’s journey at the wall mirrors rhaegar’s in many ways right up until his own death.

i also don’t think rhaegar and lyanna eloped because they were in love—this is implied by lyanna’s famous quote—but that they did come to love each other deeply, which is suggested by the way they died: her roses and him saying her name. notably, rhaegar did not leave the tower of his own volition—someone had to come and get him with news of war, which is hilarious because i think the tower of joy is right in the middle of like three major battles of the rebellion? like quite frankly, if he didn’t love her or care for anything beyond the prophecy and if she didn’t love him despite how badly things went wrong, then where in their story is the heart in conflict with itself?

i do want to clarify that i love the tower entrapment and the power imbalance aspects of their relationship as much as i love (what i interpret as) the genuine respect for each other that grew into love: it’s really the tension of those disparate elements that interests me. a dragon can love the maiden, but he’s only ever a dragon—still liable to hoard her like treasure or burn her up and rip her open trying to be gentle, to protect. that FUCKS, sorry! love is sweet and hopeful, but it’s also at exactly the same time horror, consumption, destruction.

idk it’s myopic to act like the beginning or the ending of their relationship—of their lives—is the summation of it. i think people want their story to be easy when it’s not: a clear case of a villain and his victims where everyone knows who to root for and no one has to think too much about things that are difficult or uncomfortable, questions where there probably isn’t an answer that doesn’t hurt someone. what a sad, tedious way to approach any text, but specifically this one. i’ve sometimes seen it suggested that if their story is romantic then it’s an endorsement or justification of all the “bad” things that happened because of it, and that’s also stupid. grrm as an author is never going to be someone who tells us how to feel about anything: he presents these characters and situations, often as a means of exploring certain facets of the human condition, and each of us has to come up with our own answers and find our own meaning. i don’t think he always knows what he means, or what those answers are, you know? but for me rhaegar and lyanna are one of the most fascinating parts of story, and whatever the truth is—if we ever find out—i can’t imagine a scenario where i don’t love them or find them really interesting and wonderfully sad.

[i-write-hurt-not-comfort]

in the defence of Ruki Mukami - why Ruki's trauma has just as much influence on his actions as everyone else

i am sitting in the chemistry library at uni right now and am going to spend my time on the most useless task ever to avoid doing anything impactful. please don't take this too serious because i can't write meaningful character analyses.

so i've seen a ton of stuff around, because i know Ruki's not one of the best loved characters in the western fandom. well, of all the characters, i see nearly the most Ruki hate. and obviously everyone is entitled to their opinions, whatever. but what DOES bother me is the reason.

a lot of people say that Ruki's trauma doesn't correlate to his actions, or explain abusive behaviour in the same way that the other characters' do. and i would die for Ruki and we know this, but i've thought about it a lot and i have a Theory as for why some people seem to view his character this way. (i have also studied neuroscience at degree level and learnt about trauma and synaptic plasticity)

to summarise for those who perhaps haven't read all the games (my sources for all this is basically Ruki's MB, DF, and LE), Ruki was born as an only-child in Romania to a rich family, and his father was revealed to be a politician during the Ceaușescu period in Romania. they had a lot of servants, all of whom Ruki learnt from a young age to abuse. he admired his father very much and looked up to him, and his mother was good to him and was close to his father. it would seem like a very good, perfect family - although i'll briefly discuss later why this wasn't necessarily the case.

unfortunately, in the DL universe lore, Karlheinz and Ceaușescu were buddy-buddy politicians, and Ruki's father was eventually chased out of his position. during his downfall, Ruki's father became an alcoholic and began abusing Ruki's mother, verbally and physically. Ruki saw a lot of this as well: somebody he looked up to, admired and trusted, becoming an abusive monster in a very short period of time. i think that's part of why Ruki overlooks Karlheinz's crimes and sees him as a good father anyway.

not only that, Ruki's mother - once again somebody who nurtured and cared for him - turned out to be having an affair. and shortly after that, his father committed suicide: something Ruki actually walked out on.

that in itself is a lot more traumatic than i think people consider. a lot of the DL characters have long-term trauma, but intense sudden trauma, such as your "perfect" life falling apart due to an alcoholic, abusive father killing himself and his mother having an affair, has similar psychological impact. remember, these are people who were supposed to care and nurture him, he trusted them a lot, and they both abandoned him abruptly in very extreme ways. that's the number 1 root of Ruki's trust issues. he's been seen to cut Yui off entirely because he's scared of becoming his abusive father.

similarly, living in a "perfect" household as a spoiled only child can be inherently traumatic. i don't know about you guys, but i've met some (only some, not the majority) of very, very emotionally constipated spoiled only-children. a lot of children showered with materialistic affection are missing key emotional maturity developments. their outlook on life is very narrow and they lack the emotional components of attachment; this is part of why Ruki is quite emotionally immature.

not only that, but growing up as an abusive sociopath to "lower" members of society such as servants is a form of abusive on his parents' behalf. they did not teach him proper world awareness. some children are born as psychopaths etc, true, but the majority of "sociopaths" (diagnosed as ASPD) are that way because they were not taught remorse as a child. Ruki would've learnt to treat his servants that way because that was how his parents did (and we see his father being a dick to the servants in LE too i think), and that in itself is inherently traumatic too.

imagine then, with very little capacity for remorse or a concept of societal hierarchy, being thrown into an orphanage. Ruki is a dick to everyone, yes, but the shock of having everything you know challenged suddenly and without explanation or support is going to cause further trauma. i think people just don't like to consider the fact that a lot of "sociopaths" (again, ASPD is the correct label there) were victims too. he went from being the "master" to being "livestock" and that's going to very rapidly alter your young brain chemistry, entering a "master" mindset as a defensive mechanism. that's why he gets angry/upset/confused when it's challenged.

Ruki has a fuck ton of PTSD as well - he's the only character who i've seen literally throw up MULTIPLE TIMES when experiencing flashbacks.

but i think people generally know that, perhaps not thinking about it as deeply. my Theory as to why people don't seem to see this as being as "extreme" as the other boys' trauma goes further than that.

diabolik lovers follows this dynamic between the Sakamaki's vs Mukami's, whereby Yuma, Kou and Azusa (Yuma and Kou more strongly) have this mindset of "the Sakamaki's can't have trauma because they were rich" and obviously as readers, we're supposed to be like "um, no, the Sakamaki's can have trauma too" because they do.

with that said, Kou and Yuma do successfully get to Subaru/Laito and Shu's heads respectively with this narrative. especially Subaru and Shu who get really fixated with this "i was a spoiled, privileged kid" and because of that, naturally we, as readers, lean towards feeling sorry for the Mukami's especially.

obviously, Ruki is the odd one out when it comes to the Mukami's. he had a sheltered upbringing whereas the other brothers were fighting for their lives in poverty/on the streets, victims and witnesses of the civil war and orphan crisis. Yuma particularly pushes this "Ruki had it easy" notion too, and i've definitely noticed that a lot of people who don't particularly like Ruki tend to fall towards that.

this idea of "not enough" trauma has enough to unpack as it is and we won't do that to, but personally i think that all of Ruki's abusive actions are justified. no, they are not an excuse. none of the diaboys' behaviour is excusable, but i think Rejet did quite a good job of giving them enough fucked up backstory to make us as readers at least understand why that might be how they act.

and from what i see, it seems to be Ruki who people think is the exception to this the most, because his trauma isn't in the same vein as the rest of the Mukami's. the "rich people can't have trauma" narrative gets pushed so hard that i think people forget 1) it isn't true and 2) Ruki went through a ton of fucked shit as a kid, and i don't think any of his actions made me feel any differently than the other diaboys' awful behaviour towards Yui.

you can find Ruki boring, not interesting, or just not your type. but he very, very much has "sufficient" trauma to explain his toxic and dominating actions. thank u for coming to my TedTalk.

[sophieinwonderland]

More on DNIs, and examples of why I hate them!

The DNI has become a weapon for bigots to harm marginalized communities. It has the illusion of setting a boundary, but in reality is meant to just give them a free pass for spreading hate and misinformation.

DNIs While Invading Spaces That Aren't Yours

As I've discussed before, the "plural" label is inherently inclusive. It was coined and popularized by nondisordered and endogenic systems.

But some have seen fit to try to take inclusive spaces from us and drive us out of the spaces we've built for ourselves. One such example is @illusions11, or the Lemon System.

They were an Aspenvader who came to Tumblr from Aspen's server with the express intent of trying to take our community from us and driving us out.

Lemon since had a falling out with Aspen, and blames Aspen for their old account getting banned. It should be noted though that on that old account, IIRC, they reblogged the infamous post calling for endogenic systems to die, and have always been a hateful person. This was likely not the reason they were banned, since Brassy unfortunately wasn't banned for posting it, but their ban was likely justified.

They've been informed that the tags they post in are inclusive, but they hide behind a DNI whenever anyone points out that they're invading our spaces.

If they actually wanted endogenic systems to not interact, it would be pretty easy to simply not post in our tags and spaces. But they intentionally do so, knowing that these spaces are ours and always have been, with the intent on causing harm to endogenic systems and driving us off.

I've likened this in the past to breaking into somebody's home, drawing a circle in chalk, calling them rude names from the circle, and then accusing them of violating your boundaries if you step inside the circle they drew in your own home.

DNIs To Protect From Being Corrected When Spreading Misinformation

This brings us to @jabberwock-islanders who claimed endogenic systems never provide resources when they say there are studies supporting endogenic systems.

This is pretty clearly misinformation, if you have actually paid any attention to the endogenic community.

There's a huge document of studies into endogenic systems and related phenomena here:

I can point to so many examples of psychologists, with various phrasings, acknowledging that you can be plural without trauma. But linking to those will be pointless when dealing with somebody who refuses to even click on your links.

So I could point to the fact that Dr. Eric Yarbrough has acknowledged the existence of endogenic plurality in a book reviewed and published by the American Psychiatric Association. I could point to how the creators of the theory of structural dissociation have said it may be possible to have self-conscious dissociative parts without trauma. I could point to the ICD-11's DID entry referring to how multiple distinct personality states (a term it uses synonymously with dissociative identities) can be experienced without a disorder. I could point to the doctor behind the Stanford Tulpa Study discussing early results of their brain scans, and referring to tulpa systems as tulpa systems.

But what would be the point when someone is committed to ignorance and refuses to even read anything that proves them wrong?

For Jabberwock-Islanders, their DNI is a shield that says "I can spread any lies about you I want, no matter how harmful they'll be to you and people you care about, and if you try to even politely correct my malicious lies, you're breaking my boundaries."

Normalizing Queerphobic DNIs

This DNI list comes from @strand-hunters, who doesn't want queer people with "contradictory labels" to interact with them

In another post, they give an explanation of what they mean to someone who asked about it.

"If you're queer in a way I don't understand, you aren't allowed to interact with me."

Most of what I've focused on has been the endos DNI up until this point, but what I want to highlight here is how the Endos DNI helps normalize telling queer people and other marginalized communities to not interact, and treat that as a valid boundary.

If "Endos DNI" is a valid boundary, then why not "bi-lesbians"? And if Bi-lesbians DNI" is a valid boundary, why not just "lesbians?" Why not "queer people" in general?

Do we want a world where it's normalized to tell people not to interact with you based on their queer identities? Because this is where DNI culture will lead.

One person with a DNI is an annoyance. But entire communities where DNIs are a mainstays means mass ostracization for not just different systems, but various types of queer people who present differently from what gatekeepers deem acceptable.

So sincerely...

Fuck your DNIs!

I will not respect hateful DNIs! If I see a post spreading hate against a marginalized community, I'm going to fucking interact with it to correct lies and combat hate! (Maybe not through reblogs since that gives the hate more notes, but at least through screenshots and tagging as I'm doing here.)

DNIs be damned!

[mae-i-scribble]

Seeing that one reblog of yours about the manhwa I Became The Male Lead's Adopted Daughter really intrigued me! Is it a good one? 👀

Funny story about that, after your reblog brought the post to my attention again and after talking with a friend on discord about stories that subvert tropes I just went back and reread that entire manhwa up to the end of season 2 so this is great timing XD. Im summary: It's absolutely worth your time if you're a fan of father/isekaied daughter fantasy, if you're an isekai manhwa fan in general, or if you just want a well made fantasy father daughter story. Its fantastical concepts are handled with a grounded maturity that most stories in the same genre just don't manage to pull off because it takes the time to truly flesh out its characters as human being first and any tropes last.

The long story is below the cut, I'll be discussing vague spoilers throughout seasons 1 and 2. (side note, im using the official TL names for this bc i like em better)

I Became the Male Lead's daughter has a lot going for it, first of which being Pelliot, the cold duke of the north who adopts Lionia from the orphanage. Most manhwa of this nature have the isekaied person be our main pov with brief glimpses into the parent's perspective, usually done more for plots sake or to comment on how strange the isekaied child is acting. Pelliot shares the protagonist spotlight with Lionia because this story is about both of them concurrently- in fact, we don't even get a look int Lionia's head to find out she's been isekaied until chapter 8(i think, either way its after chapter 5). Before that we get to know her from how Pelliot and the people at the estate see her. Which is such a refreshing take for me, especially when you consider that Pelliot while a stereotypical "violent and competent northern duke who becomes a parent" in theory, is actually played out in a grounded way. The reason he even wanted a child is because he's feeling lonely and he sees how his best friend (yes!! our cold duke has friendships!! and they're super sweet!!) is so happy with 2 children, that he goes about getting a child in the most pragmatic way possible. He is violent and regularly commits war crimes, but he isn't cruel to his staff or his knights as is standard fair for these archetypes. (Can't say the manhwa avoids classist tropes, but such is the way when you have noble protagonists and don't want to make them look complicit in a degrading class system but overall things are handled well enough in that regard). Pelliot, in his fatherhood, also avoids falling into trope traps yet again by being a very believable first time parent. He struggles to adjust to Lionia's emotional needs but is learning, he goes to his knights for advice, he's studying Lionia and trying to make sure she gets a proper childhood and does his best to protect her from further exposure to violence beyond what happens with the abusive orphanage staff. They have a believable banter and play off each other to a scary degree, and while he loves her and worries for her he isn't an overbearing protective trope either. I feel like this is already too long but like. He's such a cool protag to have in a genre that tends to have very narrow and singular dynamics of parent/child relationships. And this isn't even talking about the other relationships we see him have with his peers which are just as good.

Moving onto our other protagonist, Lionia, the post made by @living-as-the-enemy-prince HERE (which clearly you have read but in case other curious souls want to look at it) sums a large part of what makes her work. This is a story that fully realizes its concept to the most effective degree. And I love in turn the story addresses the trauma that comes with being reincarnated- not only from a "i miss my home and family and friends" but from the inherent trauma of being an adult only to one day become a child. Lionia didn't get a chance to rest, she was thrown into a life of abuse, all her agency stolen from her, forced to look after the other orphans because she was the only one who could thus she felt responsible. That sort of disruptive event isn't something that can be brushed off, and it shows in the way Lionia is deeply insecure about her relationship to Pelliot. In this way their dynamic is made equivalent from both sides- in many stories its almost one sided, with the parent figuring out this relationship naturally and the isekaied child playing things 'for the story' and only recognizing the relationship theyve built later (thank you wmmap for helping solidify that -_-). It's truly so well thought out and every aspect of the central relationship feels so natural.

As for the story at large, I'm very excited to see what the plot has in store. As of season 2 of the manhwa, we're only just starting to kick things off plot wise, up until now its been far more concerned with relationship building and giving us a foundation on these characters. But things are definitely cooking now that we've heard mention Baria- the protagonist of the novel Lionia read in her past life (I could probably write another blurb about how well that is being handled but this post is so long already so). On that note though, don't be worried about that "oh but i have to follow the original plot against all common sense and reason" trope bc that doesn't matter at all here. Lionia has her concerns when it comes to the story, some of her insecurities stem from the fact that Pelliot never had a daughter in it, mentioned or otherwise, but at the end of the day she doesn't give a shit, she just wants her dad to have a happy and peaceful life.

Tbh anyone who hasn't read this should absolutely give it a chance bc I haven't even mentioned half the things I find cool about it like all the side characters that I love or the empress storyline that I am eyeing with extreme interest, etc etc

[requiemsystem]

PROGRAMMING MISCONCEPTIONS

Trigger warning for discussions of programming and RAMCOA. CLOCKING Clocking is not a real thing. It's arguably one of the stupidest things I've heard of in this community. I don't blame people for believing it, paranoia is understandable, but I absolutely do blame the person who chose to spread that misinformation in the first place. It operates under the assumption that everyone comes from similar groups with similar hierarchies, which is just not true. There is no possible way for someone from a completely different group with a completely different structure to tell your rank or anything about your group just by looking at you. What is possible is identifying dissociative traits and trauma responses as well as potentially attire matching specific groups, if you are still involved with your group. Even this would take some level of practice and familiarity with the individual, you probably can't tell some random stranger in the grocery store is traumatized and dissociative just by looking at them, the same is true for anyone else. INTERNET PROGRAMMING You can't be programmed over the internet. You just can't. Programming requires someone in person torturing you and causing you to dissociate, this is not possible virtually. Programming takes a degree of control and torture that is just not possible over the internet. What is possible, and what is probably being mistaken for programming over the internet, is virtual manipulation and grooming. PROGRAMMING OUTSIDE OF A GROUP Programming is inherently organized because of the nature of the abuse, there need to be multiple people to reinforce the abuse. If only one person were involved it would fall apart from not enough reinforcement and exposure to cues. Even if there aren't many active abusers, there have to be people complicit in the abuse and allowing it to occur. Programming groups typically have multiple victims as well, it's very unlikely that they just suddenly decided to program only one child one day. What can happen outside of a group setting is conditioning, which is frequently mistaken for programming. For more details, see this post. SCRIPTING Scripts have to be implemented very early on, and it's very hard to implement a script. Most programming survivors will not have scripts. It's also unlikely to have multiple scripts, as they would get confused very easily. I also dislike the term "miniscript", as it's still a script even if it only affects one part of the system. What commonly gets confused for scripting is forced introjection, where alters are forcibly introjected as certain characters. Scripting involves molding the innerworld and programming around the media, forced introjection does not. PROGRAMMING AFTER THE AGE OF OSDDID FORMATION The entire purpose of programming is to create dissociative states in the individual, this cannot occur past the age of OSDDID formation. What can happen past the age of system formation is someone manipulating and abusing you, which can cause further splitting, but this would not be programming as it doesn't have to do with the formation of your system. To my knowledge, programming has to do with the actual creation of the system, not just causing someone to split. I am a bit uncertain about this, so correct me if I'm wrong. DEPROGRAMMING You cannot be deprogrammed without a lot of internal work. You have to put in a lot of work yourself and with a reputable therapist to effectively deprogram. It isn't something that happens overnight, and it's not something that can be done to you if you aren't ready, and you have to be in a safe and stable environment in order to effectively deprogram. PROGRAMMING ONLY OCCURRING A FEW TIMES In order for programming to be actually effective, it has to occur repeatedly on a regular basis. It cannot happen just a couple of times. This isn't to say it has to be constantly occurring, but it has to be semi-regular and reinforced via activation of cues. If it happened infrequently, it would be much less likely to cause dissociation. - C-004-2

[fellthemarvelous]

hi! i hope you don’t mind but i just wanted to thank you SO much i just saw your addition to a post somewhere and you talked about how so many people view aziraphale as a support mechanism for crowley who’s never allowed to be his own person. you put EVERYTHING i’ve been wanting to say since July into words and I was audibly cheering while reading that so yeah just THANK YOU SO MUCH

(TW: religious trauma briefly discussed)

I absolutely don't mind at all!! The horrid Aziraphale takes are ending me, and as a few people in this fandom have come to realize, you can always rely on me to be a PETTY ASS BITCH while being really dramatic about it.

And these are all the same reasons that I fully endorse Aziraphale being petty as shit next season (I will take his inner Cordelia Chase if he has one) if we're going to let Crowley get a way with treating him like shit.

It's super cool that people think Aziraphale should always carry the burden of Crowley's pain in addition to his own on his shoulders considering the fact he probably already does that.

Like that doesn't line up with my own experiences with religious trauma as a woman who grew up in the Catholic Church or something. We were literally told from 5-years-old that we must always carry the weight of Original Sin on our shoulders because we were the ones solely responsible for Original Sin. That is a heavy burden to carry as a child, and we were made to believe that everything we do must be approved by a man.

Think of the way that Aziraphale is so good and full of love. He probably already carries the burden of Crowley's fall because he's the one who started the conversation with Crowley. He tried to warn Crowley not to start trouble because he already understood that getting in trouble would lead to bad things. Why? Why did he already know this?

Why not ask that question?

Why don't people ask who it was that Aziraphale heard that rumor from in the first place?

Like I get that it's so much fun for people to hate on religion right now (trust me, I think organized religion is to blame for the majority of our problems in the world), but taking a character as inherently good as Aziraphale and villainizing him because he doesn't act like a Stepford Wife is PISSING ME OFF SO MUCH!!!!!!!!

[edenfenixblogs]

I think that the user who made this post is lacking reading comprehension as to me it looks like Netanyahu is just saying that he wants security controls in place which if we go by the Wikipedia article for security controls, is just tighter security. The article in that post also doesn't include his full statement which adds context.

This article has his whole statement

what are your thoughts on this?

Idk what article or post you’re talking about.

I don’t like or trust Netanyahu. I do not believe anything he says. He’s Israel’s version of Trump. Idk what exactly he wants more control of but based solely on this post it seems like he’s offering to end the war by placing more security and checkpoints around Palestine.

My thoughts on that are that people not dying is better than people dying. But that’s too low a bar. Palestinians deserve better than just “not being under siege.” The steps must be in the direction of increasing freedom, not limiting it further.

This is what I’ve been talking about for months while people have been busy trying to compare me to a Nazi for saying I don’t want Jews to die or be expelled.

The only proper way to behave right now is to actively discuss what a future where both Israelis and Palestinians live together in peace should look like and then taking steps to ensure that future.

If we don’t do that, then Netanyahu will get his wish: tighter controls around Palestine, increased tension between Palestine and Israel, a guarantee that enough discontented Palestinians will look to organizations like Hamas for a solution to their oppression only to end up endangered between a terrorist organization and a hostile Likud-run government that stays in power by casting them as inherently vicious villains.

So, idk man. I can’t know for certain that I have any of this right. I’m just going off context clues cuz I refuse to look it up. Why do I refuse to look it up? Because I’d give myself an 85% chance of being right about what Netanyahu is proposing. Because he’s predictable and a bad person and a bad leader whose only goal is to weaponize both Jewish and Palestinian trauma to retain his own power.

This, even more than the personal attacks from antisemites, is what has bothered me most about western leftist “support” for Palestine during this most recent flair of the conflict. By focusing on attacking Jews around the world and stanning terrorist organizations and ignoring Jewish people and Israelis and even Muslims and Palestinians and Arabs who are and have been actively engaged in working towards peace and against Netanyahu for literal decades they have all but ensured that the most reasonable and informed voices have been effectively silenced. And you know who’s gonna fill that power vacuum? Netanyahu. Cuz it’s what he does.

And then the next time this happens, because it will, we will have to all live through this (or fault to live through it) again.

So, do I get a gold star friends? If I’m wrong I’ll delete this post. But man just the idea of Netanyahu proposing tighter security makes my blood boil. He knows what he’s doing. And it’s bad.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope I’ve misinterpreted something. And I will look it up further. But before I do, I genuinely want to know: is that asshole really that predictable? Did the entire western left literally just fall for his whole schtick and end up helping him to concentrate even more power? Did it work because it relied upon people hating Jews more than they trust Jews or love Palestinians? Cuz it feels like that’s what’s happening.

In the meantime, A Land for All is a solution worth actually discussing. Let’s all work toward that or another equally mutually beneficial solution to this conflict instead of helping Hamas gain adherents and helping Likud retain power:

https://www.alandforall.org/english/?d=ltr

[bookishfeylin]

this was a while ago (a couple months at this point i think) so i might be misremembering, but once in the comment section of an acotar critical video a commenter kept claiming that tamlin was never retconned (which... im not sure what else youd call one of his defining traits in acotar- being observant- suddenly disappearing due to trauma when he was still observant post-amarantha at the end of tar, or some of his values and opinions suddenly also changing in maf, but alright) because throughout the first book he was, according to them, manipulating feyre- specifically lovebombing her. they never specified which events led them to believe this, just that it happened. thoughts?

*sighs*

This argument is one that, unfortunately, I've heard many, many, many times over by now, and have made several posts about in the past. Because, truth be told, it's the best rebuttal they have when you point out direct retcons. The problem is that Tamlin manipulating Feyre, or even lying about his values, is disproven both in the book and in the sequels that follow, and this is because a lot of Tamlin's characterization is based on Feyre's observations of Tamlin, especially at times when he's not aware she's observing him (in contrast to Rhysand telling Feyre what to think about him every other page in ACOMAF).

A very good example of this was with the dying Summer Court faerie. Tamlin and Feyre care for the faerie as it passes away babies, and this scene is viewed by many as a good character moment for Feyre that establishes her kindness under a gruff exterior, but the same is not said for her other half, likely because all the Feysands who reread ACOTAR view all of Tamlin's actions as inherently manipulative. The problem here is that Feyre was never supposed to be present. Feyre was supposed to be asleep in her bedroom on another floor of the manor when Tamlin returned with the fae, and it's only through coincidence--her having a nightmare about killing Andras that wakes her up--that she's present to see Tamlin extend kindness and try to help the faerie in the first place. Ergo, Tamlin's action here can't have been an attempt to manipulate Feyre because Tamlin never expected Feyre to be present, and the kindness shown to lesser fae, and by extension, what that says about how Tamlin views individuals in lower socioeconomic classes than him, is a genuine facet of his character.

There's also a lot of background established about Tamlin that simply can't have been done on purpose by him to manipulate Feyre. What, did he start taking in refugees from other courts like Alis and her nephews because 50 years prior he had a psychic dream about Feyre and he wanted to make himself look really appealing to her? Did he treat them well solely so Alis could make him sound good to Feyre to convince Feyre to go UTM?

I also take issue with people arguing that Tamlin was love-bombing Feyre. It was already discussed before here by someone who's pro-Feysand who also picked up on this (and this ask is already getting longer lol so I'll just link it here and reblog it later) but the TLDR is that Tamlin demonstrably does not want to manipulate Feyre per another conversation she listens in on, and he decidedly chose to abandon the goal of making her love him when he sent her home. Every single "Tamlin never really love Feyre he was just love-bombing her and manipulating her" argument forgets that fact for some reason??? Like he sent her home before she could even do what she was supposed to. He sacrificed himself and his people to eternal damnation for her, without ever expecting to see her ever again. He offered himself to the woman he's known since childhood to shield Feyre from harm. So if you want to argue that, like the beast character he was based on, Tamlin originally brought Feyre to his manor for the purpose off making her fall for him to break his curse, then fine, but it's impossible to argue that throughout their relationship and by the end he was manipulating her and had no genuine love for her.

TLDR: it's a stupid argument that relies on selective reading and I hate it.

[discord-lurking]

Dungeons and Daddies Wiki Drama: A Greek Tragedy Told through the Medium of Forum Posts (Part 2)

Act 2: The Wax Melts, The Sea Beckons

In which the wings begin to fall apart.

Despite the drama unfolding over the November admin discussion post, wiki life continued. User posts showed cracks in the foundation. Something was rotten in the state of Wikia.

November 6th, 2023:

November 9th, 2023:

It seems that the administrators were deleting pages, instituting rigid new rules about how long a post could stay unfinished (and, apparently, what qualified as unfinished).

Enter anonymous wiki user Chekovsnakess.

November 23rd, 2023:

Chekovsnakess pointed out the issue inherent in the deletions- moderators wanted more people to engage with the wiki, but what's the point, when the page will get nuked?

Chekovsnakess: "The wiki feels more of the admins' wiki rather than a community wiki."

The admins didn't take well to this critique.

TwoRatner: "In no way have we, the admins, been hostile."

TheOneTrueGod41: "It can't be unprofessional if we absolutely mean it."

PawnSum: "Uh, you can't type fast or something? I can, so that shouldn't be a problem."

Also, iconic quote from PawnSum: "I literally broke my ankle and couldn't get home, so I understand what pain is."

PawnSum makes a good point- only they, a wiki editor experiencing mild criticism and a broken ankle, could ever understand true pain.

Opening a paragraph with "you also don't seem to understand that your opinions aren't facts" and closing it with "Please stop leaving and just stay!"

A masterpiece of salesmanship. Glenn and his high Persuasion rolls could only hope to reach the levels of charisma displayed by wiki administrator TwoRatner.

Other iconic TwoRatner quotes:

"Admins are like princiPALS after all, or a nice janitor."

"You want me to quick my job? I can't! I already paid for the funeral and now I need more money to feed my family."

After this, Chekovsnakess remained silent, perhaps choosing to disengage from fandom wiki drama and move on with their life. An unthinkable choice, to be sure.

More users turned to the forums to express frustrations with the wiki, falling on the administrator's deaf ears.

November 29th, 2023:

December 3rd, 2023:

With this, we segue to the moderator response to wiki user critiques: splitting the wiki into two websites with separate mod teams, one for season 1 of the podcast and one for season 2.

In haunting Anakin-like fashion, TwoRatner says "I promise to bring about a satisfying future to this wiki." A promise they would be unable to live up to.

December 2nd, 2023:

TwoRatner's attempt to bring peace to their new empire wiki would first involve mysterious user Largeo and a separation on par with the Great Church Schism of 1054. Equally important decisions with equally worldwide consequences.

TwoRatner made the generous decision to put this up for a community vote, with only one dissenter: Zilstreet.

Zilstreet pointed out the obvious criticism: wouldn't splitting a wiki for a single show between two different places make it confusing for casual browsers? What about characters that appear in both seasons? Was there a specific game plan?

This was met with a measured, thoughtful response from the administrators.

"When life gives you grapefruit, you make grapefruit pellets to shoot at your friends, because plastic pellets hurt." -HungerBunger, December 5th 2023

How dare Zilstreet not take into account HungerBunger's trauma and exercises in extending trust???

"It's very obvious. We clearly thought about this."

Indeed.

More users with suspiciously similar speech patterns chime in to support TwoRatner's proposal.

Interestingly, MotPot brings up jazz unprompted. Where have we seen that before? Honic Washington and The One True God 41, in Part 1.

Clearly, there must be a lot of overlap between jazz fans and D&D podcast wiki editors.

Marth8204 came out swinging, telling Zilstreet that they should be ashamed for having the audacity to ask questions about a drastic site change, but seemed pacified by TwoRatner's warning to "tone it down a bit."

TwoRatner imposed a deadline for users to vote on the change.

FunderStun also came out swinging- this time, against Gaycowboyrats (featured in Part 1) and... Amber Heard? Then they delivered this line: "There is no savior, so we have to be."

Again, poetry.

And again, I'd like to put a pin in the Gaycowboyrats reference.

Thus ended the split discussion thread, leaving me with more questions than answers.

Nicoh Watonshing seems to be referring to wiki security breaches. Was this an ongoing issue? Were admins getting hacked? If so, by whom? What could hackers possibly want from the wiki?

What happened between Brazil86 and TwoMarshall? What did Brazil86 do wrong? Are there any words in the English language that can strike as much fear in one's heart as "abnormally long Discord call"?

Note the TwoMarshall brother reference: this is very similar to references made by TwoRatner to a brother that died. How coincidental.

This period of forum volatility closely follows the themes established in Act 1: a strict, opaque sense of wiki justice, wiki moderator power as a status more important than wiki functionality, calling for more community engagement while largely ignoring community engagement when it happened, and making drastic changes in response to real or perceived wiki problems.

Here, we see more new administrator names pop up in the forums with similar styles of speech and occasional non-sequiturs, even after Honic Washington's (apparent) departure.

Here, we see new discontent in the moderator ranks- some apparent failure by Brazil86, and its severe consequences with TwoMarshall.

Here, we see two moderators (TwoRatner and TwoMarshall) with similar brother-related situations. Did TwoRatner switch accounts? Was this related to the alleged security breaches in the wiki?

Despite being active in the forums and wiki at large before this, Gaycowboyrats is now conspicuously absent except for the reference by FunderStun, who wants to remove Gaycowboyrats from his position of influence and "free" the fandom.

Has the Dungeons and Daddies wiki been subject to some kind of administrator security breach and subsequent overthrow, resulting in a schism?

Life seems to be giving this wiki a lot of grapefruit.

And when life gives you grapefuit, you make grapefruit pellets to shoot your friends.

Chorus:

A statement from Zil Street.

Interim attempts at community engagement by the administrators.

Stay tuned for part 3 tomorrow with the thrilling conclusion of the wiki split saga!

[giantmushyfriend]

Discussing Crowley's S3 (potential) relationships

As soon as season 3 got confirmed, or even since Neil told us that one way or another he would tell its story, we as a community have wondered about how Crowley will interact with the different characters as he and Aziraphale attempt to once again prevent the end of the world, and finally resolve the barricade that has stopped them from actually talking to each other, which will allow them to eventually be what they are meant to be: together. While we know that Aziraphale and Crowley will end up together in a cottage in the South Downs, presumably in a garden, we don't know how we are going to get there. All we know of season three yet, especially since scripts are still being written as per Neil's Tumblr, is that Aziraphale and Crowley are currently not talking, that they will save the world and end up together. That's it, and that's all we're going to know for a very long time since these shows take a very long time to produce to the level of quality that we've come to expect from Neil and the team. That being said, we know that major character growth is going to happen for both of our protagonists. For Aziraphale, it seems safe to assume that he's going to learn how to be more independent and overcome his issues with his faith, which is currently centered in the institution of Heaven. Aziraphale's growth is going to be within his predetermined beliefs of what things should be vs what things actually are. Heaven should be inherently good, but it's not. Aziraphale should have no issues with the plans Heaven and Hell have concocted, but he does. That's what we can assume will push Aziraphale's story and character within the last season, and it's assumably going to be by himself. There aren't a lot of people who are going to be around him to help him in his journey outside of Muriel and eventually Crowley as they rebuild their relationship. Crowley, on the other hand, looks like his story will be primarily based on him building relationships with others and moving past his trauma. This seemingly will be through Muriel, Nina, Maggie, and then eventually Aziraphale. To best understand how these potential relationships, their growths, and even their conflicts will help Crowley grow as a character, it's best to look at them one at a time.

Let's start with Nina, the character that, on the surface level, mirrors Crowley. Nina and Crowley are parallels in terms of their personality. It's straightforward to compare the two of them and how they carry themselves. Both are protective and strong-minded and despite being tough on the outside, they have a lot of unresolved issues. It wouldn't be hard to believe that Crowley sees aspects of himself in Nina and vice versa. However, when we dig deeper, we see that Nina more or less mirrors Aziraphale in terms of her relationship with her abusive ex-partner. Like Aziraphale, Nina made excuses for how her ex-partner was treating her, often being manipulated into thinking she was the problem in the relationship. Nina knows what Aziraphale is going through and also knows how to put it in terms that Crowley will understand. It wouldn't be surprising sometime next season to see Nina talk about her experiences in her past relationship in a way that helps Crowley understand not only her past but also Aziraphale's. One of the largest roadblocks within Crowley and Aziraphale's relationship is that Crowley doesn't understand the relationship that Aziraphale has with Heaven because it's so different from his own. Crowley, since his fall, knows that Heaven is toxic. They can punish those who don't deserve it, and they, as an institution, cause a lot of harm. He knows that, has witnessed it firsthand, and has recognized the systematic issues that are constructed within the framework. In modern terms, Crowley has seemingly deconstructed, despite the fact that he still holds faith in God. This is a large gap from where Aziraphale is in terms of his journey and relationship with these institutions, something that Crowley has a hard time comprehending. He doesn't understand what Aziraphale's relationship with Heaven is really like and thus doesn't see Aziraphale's actions through the lens of someone in a toxic relationship. Rather, based on his prior experiences, he believes that Aziraphale could never love him or choose him because he's a demon; he's fallen. To Crowley, Aziraphale rejected him for the same reasons why God and Heaven rejected him: he wasn't good enough. Nina's storyline matches well to help Crowley understand where Aziraphale is coming from and why he has acted the way he has, and it helps him make sense of their situation. I believe that Nina will help be the person who gets Crowley to a place where he can help navigate working with Aziraphale to save the world through a close-knit friendship that we've already seen the fandom begin to speculate about.

Another interesting dynamic I'm excited to see develop next season is Crowley and Maggie. Like Nina, Maggie, at first glance, appears to fulfill the role of Aziraphale's parallel as the kinder, more cheerful member of the duo. However, as many others have pointed out, she's a better parallel for Crowley in terms of her role in the plot. Maggie is deeply in love with Nina. Unlike her past partner, she cares for her profoundly and respects her. With Nina and Maggie, it's a partnership, not a hierarchy. And like Crowley, she waits as long as necessary until the person she loves is ready to begin that relationship. Unlike Nina, I don't necessarily think that Crowley and Maggie are going to be the best of friends. Maggie has a lot of traits that Crowley will probably see Aziraphale in, such as her kindness, her affection for specific things like records or books, and the odd quirks that she's expressed throughout the second season. Those aspects of Maggie will both be comforting to Crowley since they reflect traits his own best friend had/has, but they'll also be reminders of Aziraphale. The two won't be attached to the hip, but they'll have this mutual understanding. Through Maggie and her relationship with Nina, which may be established by the time season three starts, Crowley might see glimpses of what he and Aziraphale could have if they worked out their differences.

That being said, there could be room for conflict and resolution within their friendship. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw, at least once, Maggie trying to talk to Crowley about Aziraphale and him pushing her away, saying she knows nothing about them or him. It wouldn't be unlikely to see him make some snarky remark about how he got abandoned the last time he followed her advice and tried talking. And it wouldn't be unlikely for this to lead to either Maggie or Nina confronting Crowley about how he reacts to things, inherently pushing people away out of anger rather than communicating, and how that probably drove Aziraphale away- most likely in the heat of the argument. While this may hurt Crowley at the moment, it could act as a springboard for some self-reflection needed for his growth and to complete his arch.

Muriel is also another character who may, and most certainly will, have a complex relationship with Crowley. I've heard a lot of people discuss these points, so they won't be new, but Crowley will be initially hostile towards the young angel before eventually warming up to them. Muriel will initially stand as a reminder of what happened between Aziraphale and Crowley. Crowley will look at Muriel, at them running Aziraphale's bookshop, and be instantly reminded of why Aziraphale isn't there. At least initially, their mere existence will be a reminder of Aziraphale's absence, and he will be furious at them for it. He will most likely use them to grieve the relationship that he lost, the one that got away. But I think there will be a couple of ways that Muriel helps Crowley along his journey. Firstly, in combination with Nina, Muriel will help Crowley understand where Aziraphale was coming from, even if his actions were misdirected. I think they will do this by displaying their newfound love and admiration for the world around them. As many have pointed out when discussing this potential plot point, this is Muriel's first time on Earth, and they are mesmerized by everything they see. They will be amazed by everything around them, even the ugly parts, and probably filled with questions about how the world works. This will resonate with Crowley, perhaps showing him aspects of who he used to be and helping him remember what this has all been for in the first place. Muriel will help him remember why he and Azirapahle saved the world in the first place and potentially give him the drive to save it again. Initially, like Nina and Maggie, I think Muriel will push Crowley and Aziraphale back together. Muriel is the only connecting point between Aziraphale and Crowley at this point, primarily because of their new role as the bookshop keeper. Through their role as this bridge for the two of them, Muriel will get them to reflect on what they love about the world and their love for each other. I would bet that Muriel, at least once, asks Crowley about his feelings for Aziraphale or points it out like Nina did, and I think that will cause Crowley to spiral into readmitting to himself that he did love Aziraphale that he still does, even if he's angry at him.

Lastly, Aziraphale. We already know that the beginning of their reconciliation is going to be a literal shit show. I am still determining how or when these two will find their way back to each other, which is primarily why this section is so short, but I have a hunch that it will be a slow-burn-ish subplot throughout the season. They're both probably going to be angry at each other at the beginning, but then put aside their differences to save the world. No matter what, through the help of the other characters and their respective relationships with them, the two will slowly find their way back to each other. I think it's going to be a season full of them essentially talking to each other in the ways that couples in couples therapy talk to each other, but I also think it's going to be a season of them falling in love with each other and learning how to express that love within their new dynamic. I think after years apart, under these new circumstances, they will be reminded of what they love about each other and the place of salvation their relationship has been for them. They will fall back into their banter, bickering, and longing glances, but they will get it together at the end of it all.