#he should have a terrible complex about Being Like His Evil Uncle

[beliscary]

there's a tower in belisaere called dolorous bastion

[akariarda]

Misako never visited Llyod. Never sent him a letter, never came back atleast once for parent conferences, and overall didnt give him any closure for around the first 8 years of his life. She left him at a school for the evil and ran away. Then he followed, ditching school and putting himself and others in serious danger.

She also hit on Master Wu while still technically married to garmadon, infront of Llyod to. Imagine your deadbeat mom randomly coming back in your life after years and hitting on your uncle, all while having to process aging from 8 to 13 in seconds and having a dad like garmadon.she could have dropped him off with wu his only other blood relative and someone she knows and trusts who could protect him teach him right from wrong, how to defend himself.

And she got really bloody lucky that Lloyd actually became the green ninja because all her decisions are seem to be validated by the other characters even though she’s a terrible person.

Garmadon on the other hand is a bad person sure but not by choice but even though he is corrupted he still puts a side his goals to take over ninjago and sides with the ninja to safe his son, and even after Lloyd is revealed the green ninja he is proud of him, still going to safe his son siding with the skeleton army once again to give Lloyd a fighting chance, and that’s just in season one

Season two he tries to stop Lloyd from unlocking his true potential but he refuses to harm him in anyway And then when he finds the dark island he has to be pushed to fight Lloyd but even then he hates it and ends up just getting consumed by the overlord

And in season three even though he takes up an oath of none violence the minute Lloyd was taken he brakes it in his own words “when you don’t my son all bets were off” and I could keep going but I think I made my point Garmadon even though he was bitten by the great devour and turned evil he still loved and cared for his son and would try to be their for him well misako just left and abandoned him because she had a hunch and even wurst she left him at a boarding school for villains She takes people for granted. She missed Lloyd's childhood just so she could find a way to stop the final battle, but couldn't. Sure, it had a positive impact on his future, but she sacrificed his present. And she just flits between Wu and Garmadon like nothing,she caused her son to free multiple snake armies that summoned a giant snake that killed multiple people and destroyed others homes and made them homeless.

She flirted with her husbands brother behind his back in season 4 and claimed I should have chose you.

And she left her son at a school that turns people evil,she's useless to the story itself! In the show she is only used for explaining lore and stuff, but everything that she says can be said just as well by Wu, Garmadon, Ronin, Zane or Nya (depending on the situation). she also made passes at Wu while still being married to Garmadon I know he was evil, but time he became good she just forgot all about Wu, and then got mad about a nearly 40-year-old letter.   That shit is NOT COOL

Here we go again...

Okay, I think that Misako is a very complex character.

I like to think of her as a person who is actually good but makes mistakes and later regrets them.

Yes, she left Lloyd...

She did it for his future and sacrificed his present, that's how it had to be.

Why in a school for bad boys?

Well, my dear, we don't have any answer to that.

The writers wanted Lloyd to be there.

Why not with Wu?

She knew about Morror, and Wu would certainly train him to become a ninja, and she wanted to prevent that.

Leaving him in a school for bad boys was a very smart move.

Was it good or right?

Who knows, we can't know how it would have been if it had been different.

And she left him when he was 5 years old, maybe he was 5 in boarding school.

Garmadon is a villain and don't deny it. I love him and everything, and that he cares for Lloyd, good for him.

I'll just ignore this with Wu, because I stubbornly refuse to admit it.

I really don't understand if Lloyd forgave Misako why can't you.

Literally later we see that they became very close.

How can you be fans of Lloyd and Garmadon when you hate Misako and they obviously care about her and she about them.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Facebook thrives on criticism of "disinformation"

The mainstream critique of Facebook is surprisingly compatible with Facebook’s own narrative about its products. FB critics say that the company’s machine learning and data-gathering slides disinformation past users’ critical faculties, poisoning their minds.

Meanwhile, Facebook itself tells advertisers that it can use data and machine learning to slide past users’ critical faculties, convincing them to buy stuff.

In other words, the mainline of Facebook critics start from the presumption that FB is a really good product and that advertisers are definitely getting their money’s worth when they shower billions on the company.

Which is weird, because these same critics (rightfully) point out that Facebook lies all the time, about everything. It would be bizarre if the only time FB was telling the truth was when it was boasting about how valuable its ad-tech is.

Facebook has a conflicted relationship with this critique. I’m sure they’d rather not be characterized as a brainwashing system that turns good people into monsters, but not when the choice is between “brainwashers” and “con-artists selling garbage to credulous ad execs.”

As FB investor and board member Peter Thiel puts it: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.” In other words, the important word in “evil genius” is “genius,” not “evil.”

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1440312271511568393

The accord of tech critics and techbros gives rise to a curious hybrid, aptly named by Maria Farrell: the Prodigal Techbro.

A prodigal techbro is a self-styled wizard of machine-learning/surveillance mind control who has see the error of his ways.

https://crookedtimber.org/2020/09/23/story-ate-the-world-im-biting-back/

This high-tech sorcerer doesn’t disclaim his magical powers — rather, he pledges to use them for good, to fight the evil sorcerers who invented a mind-control ray to sell your nephew a fidget-spinner, then let Robert Mercer hijack it to turn your uncle into a Qanon racist.

There’s a great name for this critique, criticism that takes its subjects’ claims to genius at face value: criti-hype, coined by Lee Vinsel, describing a discourse that turns critics into “the professional concern trolls of technoculture.”

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

The thing is, Facebook really is terrible — but not because it uses machine learning to brainwash boomers into iodine-guzzling Qnuts. And likewise, there really is a problem with conspiratorial, racist, science-denying, epistemologically chaotic conspiratorialism.

Addressing that problem requires that we understand the direction of the causal arrow — that we understand whether Facebook is the cause or the effect of the crisis, and what role it plays.

“Facebook wizards turned boomers into orcs” is a comforting tale, in that it implies that we need merely to fix Facebook and the orcs will turn back into our cuddly grandparents and get their shots. The reality is a lot gnarlier and, sadly, less comforting.

There’s been a lot written about Facebook’s sell-job to advertisers, but less about the concern over “disinformation.” In a new, excellent longread for Harpers, Joe Bernstein makes the connection between the two:

https://harpers.org/archive/2021/09/bad-news-selling-the-story-of-disinformation/

Fundamentally: if we question whether Facebook ads work, we should also question whether the disinformation campaigns that run amok on the platform are any more effective.

Bernstein starts by reminding us of the ad industry’s one indisputable claim to persuasive powers: ad salespeople are really good at convincing ad buyers that ads work.

Think of department store magnate John Wanamaker’s lament that “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” Whoever convinced him that he was only wasting half his ad spend was a true virtuoso of the con.

As Tim Hwang documents brilliantly in his 2020 pamphlet “Subprime Attention Crisis,” ad-tech is even griftier than the traditional ad industry. Ad-tech companies charge advertisers for ads that are never served, or never rendered, or never seen.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/05/florida-man/#wannamakers-ghost

They rig ad auctions, fake their reach numbers, fake their conversions (they also lie to publishers about how much they’ve taken in for serving ads on their pages and short change them by millions).

Bernstein cites Hwang’s work, and says, essentially, shouldn’t this apply to “disinformation?”

If ads don’t work well, then maybe political ads don’t work well. And if regular ads are a swamp of fraudulently inflated reach numbers, wouldn’t that be true of political ads?

Bernstein talks about the history of ads as a political tool, starting with Eisenhower’s 1952 “Answers America” campaign, designed and executed at great expense by Madison Ave giants Ted Bates.

Hannah Arendt, whom no one can accuse of being soft on the consequences of propaganda, was skeptical of this kind of enterprise: “The psychological premise of human manipulability has become one of the chief wares that are sold on the market of common and learned opinion.”

The ad industry ran an ambitious campaign to give scientific credibility to its products. As Jacques Ellul wrote in 1962, propagandists were engaged in “the increasing attempt to control its use, measure its results, define its effects.”

Appropriating the jargon of behavioral scientists let ad execs “assert audiences, like workers in a Taylorized workplace, need not be persuaded through reason, but could be trained through repetition to adopt the new consumption habits desired by the sellers.” -Zoe Sherman

These “scientific ads” had their own criti-hype attackers, like Vance “Hidden Persuaders” Packard, who admitted that “researchers were sometimes prone to oversell themselves — or in a sense to exploit the exploiters.”

Packard cites Yale’s John Dollard, a scientific ad consultant, who accused his colleagues of promising advertisers “a mild form of omnipotence,” which was “well received.”

Today’s scientific persuaders aren’t in a much better place than Dollard or Packard. Despite all the talk of political disinformation’s reach, a 2017 study found “sharing articles from fake news domains was a rare activity” affecting <10% of users.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586

So, how harmful is this? One study estimates “if one fake news article were about as persuasive as one TV campaign ad, the fake news in our database would have changed vote shares by an amount on the order of hundredths of a percentage point.”

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.31.2.211

Now, all that said, American politics certainly feel and act differently today than in years previous. The key question: “is social media creating new types of people, or simply revealing long-obscured types of people to a segment of the public unaccustomed to seeing them?”

After all, American politics has always had its “paranoid style,” and the American right has always had a sizable tendency towards unhinged conspiratorialism, from the John Birch Society to Goldwater Republicans.

Social media may not be making more of these yahoos, but rather, making them visible to the wider world, and to each other, allowing them to make common cause and mobilize their adherents (say, to carry tiki torches through Charlottesville in Nazi cosplay).

If that’s true, then elite calls to “fight disinformation” are unlikely to do much, except possibly inflaming things. If “disinformation” is really people finding each other (not infecting each other) labelling their posts as “disinformation” won’t change their minds.

Worse, plans like the Biden admin’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism lump 1/6 insurrectionists in with anti-pipeline activists, racial justice campaigners, and animal rights groups.

Whatever new powers we hand over to fight disinformation will be felt most by people without deep-pocketed backers who’ll foot the bill for crack lawyers.

Here’s the key to Bernstein’s argument: “One reason to grant Silicon Valley’s assumptions about our mechanistic persuadability is that it prevents us from thinking too hard about the role we play in taking up and believing the things we want to believe. It turns a huge question about the nature of democracy in the digital age — what if the people believe crazy things, and now everyone knows it? — into a technocratic negotiation between tech companies, media companies, think tanks, and universities.”

I want to “Yes, and” that.

My 2020 book How To Destroy Surveillance Capitalism doesn’t dismiss the idea that conspiratorialism is on the rise, nor that tech companies are playing a key role in that rise — but without engaging in criti-hype.

https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59

In my book, I propose that conspiratorialism isn’t a crisis of what people believe so much as how they arrive at their beliefs — it’s an “epistemological crisis.”

We live in a complex society plagued by high-stakes questions none of us can answer on our own.

Do vaccines work? Is oxycontin addictive? Should I wear a mask? Can we fight covid by sanitizing surfaces? Will distance ed make my kind an ignoramus? Should I fly in a 737 Max?

Even if you have the background to answer one of these questions, no one can answer all of them.

Instead, we have a process: neutral expert agencies use truth-seeking procedures to sort of competing claims, showing their work and recusing themselves when they have conflicts, and revising their conclusions in light of new evidence.

It’s pretty clear that this process is breaking down. As companies (led by the tech industry) merge with one another to form monopolies, they hijack their regulators and turn truth-seeking into an auction, where shareholder preferences trump evidence.

This perversion of truth has consequences — take the FDA’s willingness to accept the expensively manufactured evidence of Oxycontin’s safety, a corrupt act that kickstarted the opioid epidemic, which has killed 800,000 Americans to date.

If the best argument for vaccine safety and efficacy is “We used the same process and experts as pronounced judgement on Oxy” then it’s not unreasonable to be skeptical — especially if you’re still coping with the trauma of lost loved ones.

As Anna Merlan writes in her excellent Republic of Lies, conspiratorialism feeds on distrust and trauma, and we’ve got plenty of legitimate reasons to experience both.

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/21/republic-of-lies-the-rise-of-conspiratorial-thinking-and-the-actual-conspiracies-that-fuel-it/

Tech was an early adopter of monopolistic tactics — the Apple ][+ went on sale the same year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail, and the industry’s growth tracked perfectly with the dismantling of antitrust enforcement over the past 40 years.

What’s more, while tech may not persuade people, it is indisputably good at finding them. If you’re an advertiser looking for people who recently looked at fridge reviews, tech finds them for you. If you’re a boomer looking for your old high school chums, it’ll do that too.

Seen in that light, “online radicalization” stops looking like the result of mind control, instead showing itself to be a kind of homecoming — finding the people who share your interests, a common online experience we can all relate to.

I found out about Bernstein’s article from the Techdirt podcast, where he had a fascinating discussion with host Mike Masnick.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210928/12593747652/techdirt-podcast-episode-299-misinformation-about-disinformation.shtml

Towards the end of that discussion, they talked about FB’s Project Amplify, in which the company tweaked its news algorithm to uprank positive stories about Facebook, including stories its own PR department wrote.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/22/kropotkin-graeber/#zuckerveganism

Project Amplify is part of a larger, aggressive image-control effort by the company, which has included shuttering internal transparency portals, providing bad data to researchers, and suing independent auditors who tracked its promises.

I’d always assumed that this truth-suppression and wanton fraud was about hiding how bad the platform’s disinformation problem was.

But listening to Masnick and Bernstein, I suddenly realized there was another explanation.

Maybe Facebook’s aggressive suppression of accurate assessments of disinformation on its platform are driven by a desire to hide how expensive (and profitable) political advertising it depends on is pretty useless.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_(41793470192).jpg

Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[saby-chan]

Why the ATLA comics fail when it comes to Zuko and his family

To whom ever took their time to actually stop and read this post, thank you in advance for not skipping my post and willing to stay and read my humble opinion! I hope I won’t disappoint you!

As a relatively newcomer to the ATLA fanbase since 2020, I’ve come across a lot of interesting debates, comments and rants about the show, characters and fandom in general, but nothing has captivated me as much as the dumpster-on-fire that are the ATLA comics, more specifically: The Promise and The Search. 

On one hand we have the hardcore fans who want them to be animated or serialized into the Netflix live action, praising the comics for the new views and subject matters they’ve brought into the show’s lore, while on the other hand we have the furious Azula fandom who is really angry for the fact that best girl didn’t get the redemption arc she rightfully deserved so much after the painful event that was the Last Agni Kai and the even more angry fans of the Urzai ship (yeah, the people who actually ship Zuko’s parents unironically) who hated the retconning of the show’s cannon since the comics basically took a huge fat dump on what was previously established as official cannon, when the Search entered the scene, but between these two sides, who has the more valid point? In the end, are the comics good cannon or bad written fanfiction?

Well... Here are my two cents on this matter since I myself happen to be an Azula and Zuko fan and had huge expectations from these comics (since I wanted more from my fave hot-headed fiery siblings duo) but ended up disappointed: the comics are indeed a huge mess and actually bad written fanfiction when it comes to Zuko and his family! Don’t click off yet, because I actually documented the reasons why exactly the comics fail in this area:

1. The author of these comics is not part of the BryKe duo

Yes, I would like to start with the fact that if you actually take a second to look up who in the heck took the time to write these two books, you won’t find Bryan, nor Mike, but a fellow man named Gene Yang. This is important because while the wiki of both The Promise and The Search state BryKe as the creators, that doesn’t mean that they were the actual minds behind these comics, but rather because ATLA is their “baby” and these comics involve their characters, over which they have copyright. Mr. Yang here is the actual brain behind the plot, as the main writer, which explains why we find huuuuge inconsistencies between the show lore and the comics, especially Zuko wise.

My main issue with Mr. Yang isn’t that he isn’t BryKe specifically, but because he did an unforgivable mistake in his writing process: He projected himself into Zuko’s character, based on the relationship Zuko had with his father. This is a documented fact from an interview in which he explains that he sees himself and his dad’s relationship into Zuko and Ozai and used that when writing their interactions and built Zuko’s character in the comics. And this is wrong because when you have an already very developed and complex character such as Zuko, you can’t just come in and be like “Oh, I was an angsty teen just like him in my teenage years, fighting with my dad and whatnot, so he must have the same thought process as me!”. NO! This is bad fanfiction writer behavior! Zuko has his own personality and philosophy, which he developed over the course of 3 seasons and is not defined by only 1 unfortunate aspect of his past, so you can’t just base his whole mindset and actions off of your own personal experience just because you had the same daddy issues he had!

2. The whole “Promise that you will kill me if I turn out like my dad!” nonsense in The Promise

Reason number 2 why these comics fail and go under the category of “bad fanfiction” is because they fail to convey the core essence of the source material. The whole point of Zuko’s redemption was that he realized the wrongdoings of his ancestors and his own mistakes. He outgrew his desire of gaining his father’s acknowledgement in favor of choosing his own destiny. Having him worry that he’ll turn into his father is utter nonsense and feels like poor angsty drama material for the sake of angst. At this point in time, Zuko has overcame that obstacle in his life a long time ago and should be at the level where he himself is the “Uncle Iroh” for other people and in no way someone concerned of becoming their own worst enemy!

Not only that, but the whole point of Aang’s journey and the story of the show as a whole was to teach us, the viewers, the importance of forgiveness, empathy and love in life. Aang didn’t spare Ozai, aka “the ultimate evil” just to flex in front of his pals or because he is a “ 12 y/o vegan pacifist monk kid”, but because he knew that killing someone, no matter of what they did or wanted to do, wouldn’t restore balance into the Universe, on the contrary, him killing the villain would have meant perpetuating the “endless cycle of hate” that plagued the world. So having Aang promise to kill his best friend in case “they turned into an evil maniac like their dad” contradicts Aang’s whole character and it’s a nonsense that throws into the trash what we’ve learnt throughout the entire TV series.

3. Azula deserved (and was supposed) to have a redemption ark

This might still be pure speculation, but I count it as a documented reason because I’ve heard quite a few people saying that there should’ve been a book 4 in the show, aka “Book 4: Air”, and no, it wasn’t The Search, but actually Zuko and Azula’s journey as Zuko helps his younger sister heal her broken mind by being her very own “Uncle Iroh”. Sure, they prolly were going to end up looking for Ursa, but the journey should’ve ended with them actually being happy and a family again and not the bs we got in The Search where a still very unstable Azula runs away and becomes the “Next Joker”! The only problem is that M. Night had to pop up and curse the world with his movie, which forced BryKe to delay the project (and eventually abandoned it in favor of Korra).

All in all, either if BryKe had this preplanned or not, it made sense for Azula to get a redemption ark, she deserved it because she was just a broken 14 y/o child! If Katara’s mom’s murderer deserved to be forgiven, so did this poor child who had no fault for what happened to her since she had a dysfunctional family! What Gene Yang did in his poorly written fanfiction was to just antagonize a broken child, turning her into a monster for the sake of friggin angst!

4. The Search is the worst of the two, being flat af character wise

And finally, getting to the point that I personally find the most annoying about these comics: The Search. This one... This one is a mess on a hella lot many levels, and just to list a few: characters are flat as fudge, being either black as vanta black (like Ozai and Azula) or pure white like Gene’s Gary Stue OC, Mr Ikem (or how I like to call him, IKEA man) and his ‘victim’ rendition of Ursa, Azula gets to suffer more for no reason (see reason number 3 to why I find this as a no no), Ursa’s whole character sucks ass (man, I could write a whole thesis on why Yang’s version of her is terrible and doesn’t match the strong woman we got in the show) and Zuko does morally wrong stuff (my man literally used his unstable sister to bribe their dad into spitting info about Ursa... Show Zuko would never do that!;-;)

Oh boy, as a person who’s seen a ton of anime and other media and read many books, I can’t begin on how much I despise this type of writing: flat characters are the worst!

 ATLA characters in the show are nothing close to being flat! What I mean by that is that none of them fall perfectly into pure white (aka goodest of good characters with no imperfections) or vanta black (aka lowest and darkest twisted monsters out there), each of them are various shades of grey (like Aang who is a very light grey because despite being a very kind and nice character, he still isn’t a “perfect hero” since he ran away from his duties, practiced tax fraud with Toph, had insecurities and even threatened to kill people on ocassions like with the sand benders who took Appa) and this is a good choice because that prevents them from becoming what’s globally known as Mary Sues and Gary Stues (aka those either “perfect” characters with no flaws and/or unlimited power, or the twisted monsters full of flaws).

And the other reason why many other people hate The Search: it literally negates previously established cannon. And here comes my short essay on why this comic fails Zuko’s family (since we’ve already talked enough about Zuko himself).

In cannon and even interviews with BryKe, it was clearly stated that Zuko’s family was “once happy”. Where is this “once happy” family in The Search? All I see is pain, deception, lies and betrayal, nothing close to anything that resembles happiness. Okay, some of you might come in and say that “It’s because it was never the case! It was only lies and Zuko trying to convince himself that he didn’t live in hell forever!” and here is WHERE YOU WERE ALL WRONG! And why? Because, my dear fella, where were depicted the flashbacks of Zuko’s “happy family” in The Beach? Ember Island. And what do we know and had been even quoted in the show?  "Like waves washing away the footprints on the sand, Ember Island gives everyone a clean slate. Ember Island reveals the true you." (direct quote from the show). Exactly, no matter who you are or how hard you try, you can’t hide your true self when you are on the Ember Island, best example being Azula, who’s impenetrable though shell cracked and revealed the true vulnerable child that was underneath. If Azula couldn’t resist the “spell of the island”, no one can. So this means that Zuko’s family was indeed happy once and yes, Ozai wasn’t always the douchebag we got to know in Season 3 (I have a whole nother essay on my theories regarding what could be his real past story and why he’s actually the “Zuko” of his generation, based on stuff I gathered from old wiki entries and character analyses I made, but that’s for another time, lemme know if ya’ll are interested).

And what I guess is the biggest proof why The Search did this family’s past trash is comics Ursa herself. My dude, if this woman were indeed the victim of years of endless abuse and never loved her husband, I guarantee you that she would’ve been closer to what we saw in Todoroki’s mom from BNHA and Zuko would’ve gotten that scar or even worse long before the Agni Kai, not from his “daddy dearest”, but from “mommy dearest” herself, because no sane woman would be soo affectionate and attached to a child that’s the perfect copy of their abuser, sepecially appearance wise (again see Todoroki’s mom’s case from BNHA because the stories are really similar) and in no way would’ve she been willing to sacrifice her life for said child’s sake. With this ocassion, I remind ya’ll folks that according to the ancient ATLA cannon wikis on Nick’s site, Ozai was designed with Zuko’s appearance in mind, being meant to be like a “grown up scarless version” of Zuko. So yeah, remember this with a grain of salt that whenever you simp over grown up Zuko, you involuntary simp for Ozai too.

So yeah, I guess this kinda concludes my “not so short” rant about why the comics fail and are bad fanfiction. Lemme hear your thoughts in the comments and if you agree, feel free to leave a like and even reblog.

Bye bye and remember that Momo is the true strongest character of the show!

 Saby out.

[tweedfrog]

In a Rhaegar wins au where Dany is tptwp how do you think that affects his relationship with her and with his children? Especially if none of his kids are dragon riders?

so this ask has been sitting in my ask box for a while and I’ve been meaning to get around to it but I just saw a post that really irritated me so I’m kind of going to use your ask as a segue to talk about why I think Rhaenys not being a dragon-rider in an AU is a terrible idea unless handled very, very well.

I’ve been active in this fandom for an average/sort of long time (about 5-6 years), and let me say that it is ONLY ever Rhaenys and Aegon (whether you believe he’s real or fake) who are subjected to this ridiculous level of nit-picking over their ‘powers’. The post I saw was contending that Rhaenys could have her Roynish water magic from her ancestors but that she could never wake dragons (or freed slaves but that’s a whole other can of worms) like Daenerys did but that its fine because she has her special Rhoynish magic to fall back on.

Here’s the thing though. At its core that argument is deeply unsound because there’s already a character who will likely have access to powers from ‘both sides of his family’ - Jon Stark! I get that fandom head-canons aren’t fact yet so we don’t know if Jon will be a dragon rider or not but let me just say I have never ONCE seen anyone try to argue in meta that Jon can’t ride a dragon because he’s already a warg and therefore he should simply be content with his Stark powers.

Furthermore, any argument that Daenerys is somehow more special or integral to waking the dragons than Rhaenys is always going to descend into Valyrian eugenics tm because that’s what the whole idea is predicated on.

You can’t make the point that Rhaenys doesn’t have the personality or drive to make similar decisions to Daenerys like you could in a Jon vs Daenerys argument because Rhaenys was murdered far too young for us to make accurate predictions about her nature.

 You can’t make the argument that Rhaenys would never be treated terribly like Daenerys and would be in a better position because of her Dornish connection because:

a) she was treated worse than Daenerys in text. She literally was murdered, and her family couldn’t do anything to seek justice for her. Idk why people think the Martell’s are going to be all-powerful in a situation where the war went down in the exact same way except Rhaenys lived. In fact you could argue that they would be in a far worse position because they’d be more closely monitored and would have to be very very quiet if they were aiding Rhaenys

b) Whether you believe the fake Aegon theory or not the fact is that Illyrio, Varys and Jon Con managed to raise a boy they claimed was Aegon Targaryen for roughly 15 years without the Martells finding out. In a Rhaenys lives AU she could very well end up with Jon Con and Aegon and given the status of women in the story her hand very well could be given away in marriage (Think Calla Blackfyre being married to her half-uncle Aegor Rivers) and it could progress in a similar fashion to what happened to Daenerys and Drogo. Especially since Daenerys didn’t randomly get those eggs – they were given to her by Illyrio.

c) Any statements about how Rhaenys is “too Dornish” to ever wake a dragon are ridiculous given that due to the repeated sibling incest Daenerys herself is ¼ Dornish. According to half these theories Daenerys herself should be too *gasp* non-Valyrian and therefore not special enough herself to wake the dragons.

Everything about a Rhaenys lives AU is purely speculation and I very much hate it when in a series with dragons and magic people draw the line at a brown girl being special in the way their super cool Targaryen faves like Jon and Daenerys are.

And the thing is I hate making arguments like this because they make me sound like a Daenerys anti when I’m not? The core issue in Daenerys’ story is that she’s a strong female character who does make morally questionable choices and therefore is hated by a large chunk of the fandom who are just outright sexist. But also, that Daenerys is a white character in the midst of, let us be frank, mostly flat characters who GRRM didn’t develop further because he decided to lean on racist tropes and this understandably pisses people off. Oh and let’s not forget the ‘Targaryen madness” idea used to argue that Daenerys is doomed to be mentally ill and evil like her father. Daenerys story and her fandom presence is a hodgepodge of sexism, racism, and the stigmatisation of mental illness. Its seriously hard to engage in these debates because it’s hard to untangle the threads. 

Anyways back to your original question. I think Rhaegar would be absolutely crushed that Daenerys was TPWWP instead of Aegon who he believed was the one all along. I don’t characterize Rhaegar as actively malicious (more selfish, stupid, and with a messiah complex) so I think the idea that he plunged Westeros into a continent wide-war for nothing would deeply weigh on him. Throw in the personal element of how much hes destroyed his relationships with his children, and with Elia and Lyanna and I don’t see it getting better.In fact I see Rhaegar as harbouring an enormous amount of guilt about his treatment of all three of his children and it never really resolving itself because i head-canon Rhaegar as not the most emotionally intelligent.

Honestly even in a situation where 1 or more of his children end up as dragon riders I don’t see Rhaegar being too happy because he would have still had the wrong idea all along and made terrible decisions based on those wrong ideas.

[copperpieceharlot]

Bud I’m sorry to swing into your inbox uninvited like this but my soul is having an OOTS renaissance thanks to your content in the tag and did you say Leverage AU

haha holy SHIT this got Long. but yes. i’ve been. Thinking. (also literally Never feel like you have to apologize for sending me messages. i was Hoping someone would ask me about this. now i have an Excuse to share EVERYTHING ive written abt it :3)

Obviously, Roy is the leader/brains of the outfit. He grew up having some Strong Opinions abt what’s Legal versus what’s Right due to tragic backstory involving the death of his little brother which was definitely SOMEONE’S fault for negligence but since there technically wasn’t any illegal behavior, there were no consequences for it. Also he’s still angry at his dad bc he thinks his dad is also partly culpable (and also also just a dick). He’s the Moral Backbone of the team (alongside Durkon, more on that later) in basically the same way Nate was in og Leverage. He’s actually not the best at figuring out what people want (that’s Haley and, shockingly, occasionally Elan), but once he has that info, he is the absolute best at figuring out the ideal plan of attack to use in any given case.

Haley is still a thief. I mean she maps to Parker almost PERFECTLY. Her dad was a thief & a conman, her mom wasn’t but knew about it and mostly accepted it, but she died tragically in a mugging gone wrong or smth, which made Ian crank the paranoia WAY up and taught Haley to do the same in the name of “safety”. Let’s keep the “Ian is in Trouble and Haley needs money, Fast” which is why she signs on to the first job in the first place. She’s less acrobatic than Parker, tending towards finding (or making) weak spots in security, but she can still make a tumble check when she needs to.

Elan is the grifter who is somehow an Idiot but also not???? It baffles everyone. When he’s playing a part for a con, he’s FLAWLESS, but then the rest of the time he’s just. No Thoughts Head Empty. He probably gets lured in initially because he’s decided to try his hand at being part of a full team, rather than the two-man cons he’s been running that invariably end w his partner conning him as well and stealing half of his take. Also he likes the idea of being Crime Friends. He’s that tweet where it’s like, Roy: “after the heist is over, we split up and never communicate again” / Elan: [about to unveil his Crime Buddies Forever Friendship Quilt Puppets]: “never?”

Vaarsuvius is the hacker/gadget person. They have a Vaguely Snobby Yet Unidentifiable accent, dyed(?) purple hair (nobody has ever seen their roots) and nobody knows who they “really” are or where they came from, but they’re good at what they do so everyone just accepts the mystery. They probably got suckered into the team by their initial employer (who I’ll get to Eventually, lol) framing it as a challenge to their intellect, like, “oh, I see, you’re not smart enough to make this team work for you...” to which they were like Fucking Watch Me and also melted his computer. Anyways. They are joined (digitally) by their Intrepid Friend And Co-Conspirator (his words, not theirs), a fellow hacker known only as Blackwing, or, on certain forums, Blackwing_Bird. (In the first season, V only occasionally references him when saying they’re “calling in extra help” or smth for a particularly complex hack job. He starts showing up a little more in s2 and eventually by the start of s4 is a regular & established presence, but only appears as actions in a computer interface or output.) Elan is convinced he’s an AI, Belkar doesn’t think he actually exists, Haley pretends she doesn’t think he exists, and Durkon and Roy try not to think about it too hard, as long as B and V still get the job done.

Belkar is the hitter. He is on the team bc their initial employer got him out of jail for it. He doesn’t have a tragic backstory, he just likes doing violent crimes. As the series progresses, he grows some empathy & stuff, but really only for people who actually deserve it. Assholes still get decked. It’s all very touching. (Also he has dwarfism caused by achondroplasia. It doesn’t actually bother him and is useful in fights bc his opponents frequently have no fucking clue how to approach him, but he likes Pretending to take offense at stupid things just to see how far he can go with it.)

Aaaand last but not least, Durkon is the least involved member of the team. He’s actually a career criminal and Roy’s mentor, and wasn’t a member of the initial team that [redacted, I’ll tell you later, PROMISE] put together for a couple of reasons, the main one being that he’s Officially retired in order to spend more time with his family, which consists of his mom, his friend (not girlfriend) Hilgya, baby Kudzu, and a truly stunning number of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Roy frequently calls or visits him for advice and he Occasionally shows up to help out on local jobs, but generally he avoids doing crime if he can (as part of a deal with Hilgya, who is also a career criminal; basically, they’ve both cut back on the crime in order to provide a more stable home environment for Kudzu. But sometimes, you gotta do a little crime, and in those cases, Sigdi enjoys spending time w her grandson.)

NOW. THE BIG REVEAL YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR. Who got the team together in the first place?!

The answer: Lord Shojo (or whatever Normal Person Name you want to assign him). Now this is where it gets tricky: he had them do a thing that they thought was good, THEN they thought it was BAD, but then when they confronted him he revealed that it Appearing to be bad was actually a test of character and would they consider working as basically internal investigators for him? But then he had a heart attack, so, rip. But THEN it turned out that he’d left them a bunch of money anyway and they were all feeling kind of Inspired so they formed the Order of the Stick, LLC (which, no, i am not coming up with a new name, actually, because I just don’t care. someone else can come up w a justification for that name, tho, i’m sure it’s possible). Also Miko was there and was unhappy abt their actions, and also their general existence.

Moving on. Villains!

Redcloak is the Sterling replacement, because that DEEPLY amuses me.

Xykon is a season-long main villain, probably one that Redcloak finds himself working for but then “teams up with” (read: blackmails) the Order to bring him down bc even Redcloak finds Xykon distasteful. That’s season 3, let’s say.

Tarquin is another season villain, say season 2. Nale probably shows up pretty early in s1, actually, as another recurring antagonist like Sterling but uh. Less good at it. Anyways the s2 final 3 eps deal with them (accidentally) discovering that Tarquin runs some Evil Empire Company, then trying to outplay him and take him down. Idk if Nale still dies in this version tbh.

Tsukiko is a one-off s1 villain who returns briefly in s4 alongside Miko, who has gone well and truly off the rails.

Season 1 finale has to do w Roy finally getting Vengeance for his little brother.

The vampire squad is the s4 finale villain who do smth terrible to Durkon and then get the Mother Of All Revenge served up to them by the Order.

I envision the show as being 5 seasons (like og Leverage) but I’m not going to sketch out s5 because I think it should be based off whatever happens in the current story arc, possibly involving some legacy of the OotSquiggle.

Other stuff!

The Order of the Squiggle is a legendary criminal team from the 60s who stole a BUNCH of famous shit & then proceeded to legendarily implode. This has no bearing on the plot I’ve sketched out, I just think it’s fun.

The Sapphire Guard members should probably be reworked as FBI. I don’t care about most of them but I do think that Lien and O-Chul could be like, FBI agents who Choose to look the other way while the Order does their very-much-not-legal-but-still-fair Justice Crime, and maybe even help them out on occasion.

So, the Final season-by-season outline, based on everything I’ve written so far:

s1 e1: getting the team together, doing a con for Shojo, then at the end he dies and the gang is like “dang what now?" and intend to split up except then they Don’t.

mid-s1: Nale shows up and tries to trick the Order, but then gets beat like a drum.

late s1: Tsukiko is an underling of the Villain Of The Week, winds up in police custody. But She’ll Be Back.

s1 finale: Roy’s Vengeance: The Vengeaning. also we meet Redcloak as an antagonist.

s2 e1: the truth abt Haley’s father comes out

early s2: The Two Live Crews Job but it’s the Order vs the Linear Guild and the Linear Guild ARE all bad guys.

mid-s2: Redcloak returns. ugh.

late s2: the sapphire guard FBI makes its first appearance, hello O-Chul and Lien.

s2 pre-finale: once again they’re in conflict w Nale over smth, he spends the whole episodes making Cryptic Remarks, they basically beat him (like a drum!) but then the stinger at the end is that Tarquin reveals himself and Elan is like “Dad?!”, roll credits.

s2 finale, part 1: Elan is hanging out w Tarquin bc he’s DEEP in Denial, the Rest of the team tries to take Tarquin down, but it doesn’t work.

s2 finale, part 2: Elan finally gets a clue and they manage to beat Tarquin. still haven’t decided if Nale dies or not, but I’m leaning towards yes. also they rescue Haley’s dad.

s3 e1: fuck dude idk.

early s3: Redcloak shows up, AGAIN, everyone groans. he has blackmail on them, he wants them to take Xykon down.

mid s3: The Rashomon Job but it’s about stealing the Talisman of Dorukan and it turns out that Nale was there too (“oh!” Elan says. “I was wondering why I looked so weird in all those mirrors! But it wasn’t my reflection, it was Nale’s!” “Sweetie, that wasn’t Nale’s reflection,” says Haley. “Huh,” says Elan, “so the mirrors were broken?”, cue eye rolling from everyone else.), and the Successful thief was Hilgya, who’d nabbed it from the owner before it even went on display.

s3 finale: they beat Xykon, actually factually, because he deserves to get his ass Thoroughly kicked, even if only in AU form. Lien and O-Chul are there, so are some other less helpful FBI people. There’s a bit where O-Chul Exact Wordses his way out of telling his superiors about the Order’s less legal activities without technically lying. King shit.

s4 e1: doesn’t really matter. maybe smth to do w some legacy of Tarquin’s company to set up the drama w Malack & Durkon later.

early s4: Durkon gets SENT TO PRISON. Malack approaches the Order abt this because sure they have Different Ethics but they’re still Friends. (Roy is surprised and a little hurt that he’s never heard of Malack, but he ignores that in favor of Let’s Get Whatever Fuckers Did This To Our Friend.)

immediately after that: Miko and Tsukiko return as a Team, preventing the Order from working on the Durkon situation

mid s4: Redcloak makes another unexpected & unwelcome appearance but he’s maybe a little less of a dick? the Order collaborates with Malack & his Crime Buddies (hello, Vector Legion) to pull one over on him tho, because “less of a dick” does not mean “a pleasant or decent person”, and also he was mean abt Durkon being in jail, so he totally deserved it. he still gets whatever he wanted tho, just takes a blow to his pride. also prevents the Order from helping Durkon. they’re having a LOT of setbacks wonder why that could be, not to make sure the season fills its whole length or anything, no sirree

s4 finale: something something taking down the organization, headed by Hel (yes that’s her real name), which framed Durkon for their Big Crime. Durkon goes free and Extra Firmly retires, For Good, He Swears, but says he “met someone new” who might be an asset.

s5 e1: minrah joins the team! and the episode is set in like, somewhere really snowy. that’s all i got.

the rest of s5: don’t know, don’t care, it’s open-ended until the comic finishes up.

[spectrumed]

8. book

I decided to start writing a book. A novel, it’s going to be fiction. It’s a big project. I dread big projects. I don’t feel as if I am ever able to complete them. It’s going to be left unfinished, why do I even bother? So many projects that I’ve started and never finished. I get an idea, then I can’t make myself do the actual work to make it a reality. Why do I think I can write a book when I can barely read books without becoming distracted and doing something else instead? I give up too easily. But, then again, do I really have it in me to produce something that is good? That people would want to read? Insecurity creeps in, telling me that I will fail. I fear failure. Of course I do, who doesn’t? Whenever people say that their greatest fear is failure, all I wonder is who out there is not afraid of failure? Is there someone out there with so much confidence that they absolutely do not in any way fear failure? Even narcissists technically fear failure, it is what leads them to such ridiculous overcompensation, putting on the facade of bravado to mask their actual dire sense of insecurity. Do not fall for the scams, no person is truly without self-doubt. (Well, I guess maybe psychopaths, but there’s a whole lot of things amiss with them.)

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve entertained myself by coming up with stories, fictional universes that I would populate with characters of my own invention. When I was a kid, what I really wanted was to become a comic book writer and artist. Well, in between other gigs I imagined would suit me, including at one point wanting to be a “singing farmer,” as I put it. Still, I’ve always returned to fiction and storytelling. There’s something about creating a world that lets you so fully distract yourself from all the stressful daily hullabaloo that goes on around you. Escapism, it’s fun, it’s therapeutic, I think. There’s a reason why humans have been telling each other stories for millennia, since even before we lived in houses. Back when we were all huddled around the fire, wearing our best comfortable animal furs, sharing tales of the hunt. Your uncle who once took part in killing a mammoth, the impressive beast nearly gorging him with its big tusks. How clever he was when he noticed that the mammoth had one leg weaker than the others, and used that to his advantage. How the entire hunting party banded together to bring the behemoth down, getting all that meat to feed their families with for months! Stories make you feel good. Like as if you have something to celebrate, even when you might be starving due to the more recent hunts not having gone as well. Damn that saber-tooth tiger that killed your uncle…

Storytelling is linked to acting. Both with acting and with storytelling you have to commit. Whatever you are doing, whatever role you are performing, you have to sell it. You may be on stage talking about that time you went scuba diving with your future wife, and how you encountered an oyster with the most magnificent pearl inside, and how you made a ring for the pearl and used it when you proposed to her. You have to sell it. You have to get the audience laughing, gasping, crying, going “aww,” feeling as if they were there with you that day. Of course, they don’t know it is all just lies. You made it up. It’s all fiction. But you committed, so they won’t ever know. Storytelling is a gift to others, people will appreciate you if you tell good stories, but you’re also kinda deviant. Even if it’s technically based on a true story, you’ve certainly added your embellishments. You’re a trickster, a devious individual. No wonder actors have historically been seen as dubious folks. They come into town, romances all the young women and men, telling them big tales of their lives on the road, and they can’t possibly know if you are telling the truth or not. You may just be lying. You probably are lying. Let’s be honest, you’ve probably not told a single true thing in your life.

I am bad at the hustle. No, I can talk quite well, and I can keep people’s attention for a long while. But I can’t be a huckster. Going out there, putting myself on the line hoping people will swallow my bullshit. I can’t really avoid speaking from my heart when I do speak. Or when I write, as I happen to be doing now. This blog has so far been thoroughly candid in places, in such a way I may come across like I’m at a confessional. Not that I have much evil to confess, but I can’t help but be transparent. I can’t flip into different kinds of personalities, each with its own schemes and plots, being some master manipulator, someone who you can never figure out what they're truly up to, or what they truly want. No, what I am is clearly written on my face. I’ve got one self, and it is the one before you. He’s hairy, and tall, and a bit of a dork. I am happy to talk to you, to engage with you, but I won’t be anyone but myself. I am me. I hope that’ll do.

Of course you are familiar with all those pick-up artists that plagues the internet. Or well, not just the internet. Go into any old-fashioned bookstore (where they store books on paper, not in digital code,) and you are bound to find some sleazy book written by a sleazy guy about how to sleazily seduce women. Those books don’t want you acting like me. According to them, seduction is all about manipulation. To figure out the very right thing to say to get women to fawn all over you. They don’t want you to be sincere, telling the truth as you see it. Nah, you gotta keep that stuff bottled up, deep down inside your soul, because most likely, your true self is ugly. It’s interesting how you can get little details from these pick-up artists depending on the sort of things they say, the tips they provide. The fact that all of them seem to harbour this festering misogyny is no big surprise, but every so often, you get these little glimpses of these people’s true worldview, one where power is everything, true love is a fallacy, and happiness is a lie manufactured by Hollywood to make us all into docile consumers. No wonder the “red-pill” so often leads to people taking the “black-pill.” First hucksters will lure you in, telling you that they’ve got the secret as to how to be a success, then when they’ve got you isolated, they reveal to you how truly misanthropic and bleak their actual beliefs are.

I am fascinated with cults, for much of the same reason why I am fascinated with storytelling. What is a cult leader if not just a great storyteller? They’re something like the modern day shaman, capable of spellbinding people with their weird idiosyncratic way of speaking. High-functioning people with autism are often said to have an idiosyncratic way of speaking. No, I am not suggesting that cult leaders are all somewhere on the spectrum, though it wouldn’t surprise me if some famous cult leaders did turn out to have been on the spectrum. However, for an autistic person to become a cult leader, I think they would have to be a true believer, and not some fraud just looking to scam others. Ultimately, no autistic person would want to surround themselves with people unless they truly do believe it is essential, to like, save mankind from damnation or something. It’s the difference between sincerity and insincerity. It is difficult for autistic people to be insincere, as insincerity requires a lot of social skills that autistic people struggle with. Having to juggle all these balls in the air, making sure you keep the big lie going, that you remember to change your behaviour depending on who you are speaking to in order to keep them from figuring out that you’re a bullshitter. Hollow people are great at being insincere. People like L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of the highly profitable cult that is Scientology, was at his core a hollow individual. He had no problems twisting the minds of the people around him, because he never felt a need to be sincere. If an autistic person were to become a cult leader, I can guarantee you that it wouldn’t be a profitable cult. Nah, autistic people aren’t in it for the money, we’re all about keeping it real.

Being a sincere person, surely I should be able to write a novel and make it feel earnest. Like it was delivered with passion, because I wouldn’t be able to write anything that wasn’t true to myself. Well, I do hope so. Having something I’ve made be referred to as genuine is something I see as a great compliment. I’m a student of art history, I’ve made some “serious” art before, I know how terrible art can be when it is not delivered with good faith. Sure, some art is cynical, or ironic, but even then, it tends to come from a real place. Good artists, even when they’re fully armed with the dada mindset, must believe in what they are doing. Whether they are doing it for a laugh or not, that’s irrelevant. Even if all you wish is to be silly and make something that is comical, you have to believe in what you are creating. Or else people won’t bother engaging with it. Why look at a painting by someone who is just interested in making money? Insincere artists do exist, and they can end up becoming quite successful, but ultimately, history won’t be kind to them. Damien Hirst comes to mind, heard he's into NFTs now.

Sure, I don’t like insincere people. Does that make me a bigot? Like, it’s not as if they can help themselves. It’s just who they are, spineless maggots with no soul. It doesn’t mean we have to hate them. No, no, no... I am just generalising. Don’t go thinking there’s just two kinds of people in the world, the sincere and the insincere. It’s not a binary. Most people are both, just like with introverts and extroverts, humans are complex. But there are definitely those that decide to feed into their insincere side, realising that it is often the key to success. Through insincerity, you learn to let go of self-doubt, you stop worrying so much about what others think of you, because you are never truly yourself. If they hate you, then so what? They don’t actually hate you, they just hate a role that you are playing. So what if you seduced that woman, made her feel as if you were the perfect match, then you ghosted her and completely forgot about her? It’s her fault for falling for your tricks. You were clearly just playing the game, being a super-seducer, she should have known better. By embracing insincerity, it’s like gaining a superpower. No longer do you have to care about the impact you have on others, no longer do you have to worry about what it means to be a social human being making choices that affect the others around you. Because you’re not the person they think you are. Actually, you’re not quite sure you’re the person you think you are… Who are you?

I’ve got the plot all laid out in my head for the novel. It’s going to be based in the fantasy world that I’ve been working on for the last few years. I’ve been working on this world for almost half a decade now, come to think of it. Why do I keep feeling as if I am never able to keep to a project, when I’ve clearly been working on a massive project all this time? Sure, it’s all just in my head, but it’s not as if most people have the kind of patience to keep going back to a single big project, even if it is just in their head. Not once, while thinking about my fantasy world have I been distracted and started thinking about cute puppies, instead. And you know how difficult that is. Maybe I am too hard on myself. Maybe I will finish this book, and maybe people will want to read it. Maybe it will even get a minimal number of angry reviews, like, I may get a book published without some folks trying to harass me into committing suicide for daring to think I can write. Some people may even be enthusiastic, blowing up my ego with great praise. Maybe someone will come along and tell me that they want to buy the rights to make my book into a movie or a television series. Maybe I will get rich? Maybe I will get famous! Woo! Success here I come!

Well, no, here I go being insincere. That’s not what it’s about. I should be writing this book because I want to write it. Because I want to prove to myself that I am able to write it. Sure, it’s not as if there’s not a little brain goblin inside my mind whispering sweet nothings about how one day I might turn out a real respected author. One with real fans that gets to do big book tours talking about how brilliant I am, how brilliant my work is, and how brilliant things are going for me. I am not going to pretend I don’t have the same aspirations for success that others have. Inside of me you will find the same greedy piglet of an ego hungry for more adoration and more validation that you will find in any person. Humans don’t know when to quit, we always want more. But I am at least safe knowing that I will never debase myself, descending to the same depths as those inhabited by soulless grifters who go through life abusing the trust of others in order to get by. I’m sincere, in the end. I always turn out sincere, in the end. I am a good boy.

And I am also really sexy. I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before on this blog, but I am really, REALLY, sexy. Like, you wouldn’t believe it. Oh, I am so hot. And if you follow and subscribe and hit that bell, I will teach you how you can be just as sexy as I am! And buy my book! And my merch! And my new single! And of course, my new cryptocurrency, by the name of “autism-coin.” It’s going to be a real success on 4chan, let me tell ya!

[dontgofarfromme]

While we're on the subject of redemption arcs, what were your thoughts on the ones in Oathbringer? I wasn't on Tumblr yet, so I think I missed your hot takes, and I'm really curious!

Ohhhhh man okay I love Oathbringer so much but also it's been like 2 years since I read it in full so I do NOT have a fresh memory of it, so this'll be a little vague maybe.

In terms redemption arcs....this book kind of kills it? Like. Okay I dont wanna shit on Zuko but everyone always brings Zuko up as the 'ideal redemption arc' and I'm not saying it was bad because it wasn't it was well done, but I've also seen people saying that the reason Zuko's redemption arc works is because he wasn't totally evil, and because he didnt commit super horrific crimes so he was on the redeemable side of some arbitrary line we've drawn. Like a requirement for a redemption arc is being on the correct side of that line otherwise there should be no stories that investigate how or if a person can be redeemed and what that would look like.

Anyway. I think thats kinda bullshit. I love Zuko and I love his arc but also....its like lukewarm in terms of where we can go with a redemption arc because Zuko is never the real villain, he's never just clearly evil, he does bad things and hurts the mcs but he's conflicted and regretful and showing signs of wanting to change and always a secondary bad guy to someone else.

And those things might make his arc more palatable and easy to draw on as an example of an effective redemption arc to some people, but also they allow you to skirt around a lot of the most interesting questions that can arise in this sort of arc. Like. I dont wanna say that it's boring but. It's sad to me that it's most people's go to (maybe only??? The things some people reference as being redemption arcs actually drive me up a wall) example of a well done redemption arc bc the questions you can pose about this are limited when the set up is a generally soft hearted boy from a messed up family is trying SO HARD to please his dad by being evil but also his really chill uncle is there to mitigate his worst ideas the whole time and hes super inefficient at being bad because he's 16.

IN CONTRAST. Oathbringer takes a character we thought we knew as good and turns him on his head. It gives us a past Dalinar and shows him as chaotic, uncontrollable, angry, warmongering, the extent of his bloodthirst contrasted against and shown to be greater that of characters we currently hate in the present day series. It shows us his anger and his violence and his lack of care for anyone and his failure at fatherhood and husbandhood and then his absolute darkest moment in which he unflinchingly directs the massacre of an entire city in a fit of rage.

And then it turns and it asks not only Dalinar himself, and the other characters, but also--by virtue of this being the third book, after we've already known current, measured, thoughtful Dalinar for 2 books--asks us if we can accept him as being redeemed. It presents us with a character who has done things that are so horrendous he would make for a terrifying and effective villain in basically any setting you put him in, and has him screw up massively, break down, spiral, hate himself, be mentally magically altered so that he can live with himself and try to become better rather than collapsing in on himself and becoming an utterly nonfunctional person, and then takes that protection away and asks him who are you now?

Who are you after everything terrible you've done and everything you've tried to make yourself into following that and can you be a person again? Will you crumple in on yourself or will you blame your failures on magic because that's the easy thing to do or will you ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE THINGS YOU HAVE DONE AND MOVE FORWARDS? And does doing so make a person redeemed? Or are there things so terrible that nothing you do can ever make it right? Even if you believe that to be the case, is it worth it to try anyway? And how do the answers Dalinar finds to these questions and the answers we find to these questions impact how we as readers view Dalinar compared to how we thought of him for the first two books?

There are tons of other things I could yell about for hours wrt OB including how Moash is an extremely effective foil for not only for Kaladin but also for Dalinar to an extent because his arc is a spiralling character degradation into NOT taking responsibility, and what happens when you have an outside force influencing some of your actions (like Dalinar's being influenced by the thrill, Moash's experiences of discrimination ARE a factor in his actions) and you push ALL the responsibility from ALL your actions onto that force and how that can hinder both your ability to redeem yourself AND to move forward and progress positively as a person.

And I'm also very capable of yelling for hours abt non-redemption arc related aspects of OB BUT. This book is a brick and my thoughts on it are probably that times 10 and I do want to sleep tonight and I have no real conclusion other than that this is a really frickin good book that has the guts to explore a lot of extremely difficult and complex topics and it's great.

[crazycoke-addict]

A controversial opinion but I don't hate John Winchester unlike many fans of supernatural. John Winchester is a complex character who has made bad decisions that he wished he could undo. His wife whom he loved so deeply was murdered and finds out about the existence of monsters and how Mary was killed by a demon. John's life is around vengeance, naivety and loss.

When John was a kid, his father Henry winchester travelled back in time to Sam and Dean in 2013 and died there. Throughout his childhood, John believed his father left him and his mother. Later on, John will serve his country during the Vietnam war and will on to fall in love with Mary Campbell, get married and have 2 sons with her. While it was heaven's idea to get John and Mary. The love they have for each other is so strong that they are even soulmates in heaven. When Mary died, something changed in John. He went from his calm laid back guy to a vengeful person who wants to kill the demon who killed his beloved. Because of this, John ends neglecting his own sons and raised them to become hunters which people would say is bad parenting.

While I can say that John is a terrible father I do think that there are questions that we need to ask. One of them being if John was going to hunt all the time by moving from state to state in america than why didn't let his sons being at hands of another caretaker? Because I think what happened to Mary, he doesn't want that happened to his sons. Although Dean had to be more of the parent to Sam, John probably felt better knowing that his sons are in a safe place where he knows where he is. After learning about the monsters that exists and has study about them, he probably he doesn't trust anyone with the boys except for Bobby Singer. John probably felt the need to tell the boys about the supernatural world so they can be ready when they are gone. Since Mary died at the hands of a demon and how Sam is connected because she died in the nursery. There's no way that the boys could have a normal life even if they wanted to. You can't put the blame on John.

Sam and Dean are very much aware about how John wasn't the best father but they also noticed that his perspective and as to why he did what he did. He believe he was doing the right to tell them to fight for themselves and also to protect each other. Family is an important aspect in the show no matter who it is. Its one of the reasons why the fans love the show so much yet the reason why Sam and Dean look out for each other is because they learned it through their father who had taught them that family is important and how you need to look out for one and another. Yes, the same man that many hate is the reasoning of what the show represents.

the boys have mentioned many times about how despite their childhood not being a Apple pie life. It could've been worse. In an episode where Sam and Dean meets someone who is like Sam, he's being abused physically by his father and uncle. Sam tells Dean he was grateful that when their mum, John did become an alcoholic and started abusing them. To them, it's better for John to actually do something rather than abuse his own sons. That's why I don't believe John was physically abusive to them. I saw a tik tok video about how John didn't tell his sons that he had a kid with another woman saving that he was the worst Father for that. However when John found out that he had another son, him and Sam had got in a massive fight and left to go to college. John decided to raise Adam to have a normal life since his own realisation about his own parenting with Sam and Dean that it's too late for them but it's not too late for Adam. But because Adam doesn't know about the supernatural, it makes him an easier target. John probably didn't tell rhem because I not too sure if they were going to have half-brorher while the show was still on. We don't meet Adam until Season 4 episode 19 Jump the shark which is reference to when tv shows go over the edge. Its also worth noting the Adam we meet isn't the real Adam. The real Adam is more like a Winchester and sees John as someone he took him to baseball with.

The many times I've seen people saying that John should go to therapy is questionable because how would that help. John is going through things that normal people will deemed as weird. If he did go see a therapist and he told them about how his wife was murdered by a demon and how monsters are real. The therapist would see the demon as metaphor as best to describe the murderer and his paranoia towards monsters him is how he viewed the world as dangerous place. I do think that John should've been more opened and talk to someone he trusts like Bobby Singer about these issues that he has and the issues he put on his sons. John noticed the bad choices that he's made which is him sacrificing himself for Dean's life is not like an redemption but rather him doing what a parent would do. John telling Dean about Sam and how he wants him to look for him because may he go evil and if that does happened than he needs to kill him. John knows that Sam and Dean have a special bibd so I see it as more of John hoping that Dean saves Sam before it happens but if Sam is gone than it's more fitting for Dean to kill him than some random.

[d3sertdream3r]

TFA ruined SW imo. As soon as they chose to have Han and Leia be shit parents to Ben the story was broken. Not to mention Luke trying to kill him in his sleep! I don’t blame Rian because he had to provide a valid reason for Luke to be hiding like a coward while the Galaxy goes to hell (which again, was set up in TFA not TLJ) and why Ben went dark. Ben never should’ve been evil and should’ve been the MC. It’s the SKYWALKER SAGA. So a Skywalker should’ve been the MC, not a Palpatine.

This basically turned into a Meta, so stay with me if you can! 😅

I think Rey worked well as being half of the protagonist while Ben served as the other half of the protagonist, as Rian Johnson put it. I do think that his backstory was desperately needed though. The full story of the Last Skywalker should absolutely NOT be told in side-stories like comics and books that most of the audience doesn’t read. His story parallels Rey’s beautifully, and it would’ve been amazing to see them really lean into that on the screen instead of just implying it and then filling all that in later in outside material. 🙄

Honestly I don’t see Han and Leia as being awful parents. I don’t see Luke as being a terrible Uncle either. I see them as people that grew up during an age of oppression and fighting a massive war that damaged them all on a deeply psychological and emotional level.

I see Leia being a fierce woman whose parents showed her they loved her by focusing everything on making the Galaxy a better place for her. I see a girl that inherited her mother’s political prowess and insatiable desire to fight for justice, along with her father’s cunning strategical mind in battle, and using these strengths to her advantage from a very young age. I see her as someone who had to stand by and watch her parents and her entire planet explode and die before her eyes. In the novel Bloodline, we learn that the only way she was able to keep fighting after that devastating loss (that none of us can even attempt to understand) was to focus on destroying Vader and the Empire once and for all and making them pay for what they did to her. I see her as someone who found out that the man who gave her life was the same man she hated with every fiber of her being. I see her as a woman that was terrified of her biological father having an influence on her and even seeing herself in him and his actions. Of knowing she has issues with extreme pride that make her want to force people to listen to her and do what she knows to be the way things should be. Of even feeling a small, dark sense of smugness at seeing them all blow up in the sky above her after they refused to listen to her (read TFA novel; it’s in there!). She had a lot of fear and a healthy dose of anger and darkness after everything she’d been through, and frankly I see a ton of Anakin’s flaws in her, just as she did. She wasn’t just scared of Ben being like his grandfather; she was scared of him inheriting the darkness from her. She kept all these fears and feelings close to her chest. She talked a little bit with Luke but not much. She didn’t talk to Han about it at all, feeling like he wouldn’t understand. She really didn’t think anyone would. She had so many walls put up around her emotions, yet she still wanted Ben to know she loved him. So she showed him the way her parents showed their love for her: by focusing on making the Galaxy a better place for him. Unfortunately that meant not being around much. How could someone hiding so much fear and loneliness be expected to raise a child perfectly?

I see Han Solo as an orphan that loved his father so much, he became a pilot to honor the dream that the man he adored never got to live out, and even got a ship that his father likely worked on. He carried the wound of losing his parents, especially his dad, all his life. But the circumstances of his childhood didn’t allow him to truly grieve. He had to hide it and put on a passive face in order to survive, never fully dealing with it imo. In fact I think he ran from that pain; literally. From planet to planet in fact. His scoundrel swagger masked his true self; the incredibly loyal and extremely compassionate man he actually was. He didn’t see that in himself though. He believed the Scoundrel™️ mask he wore, as much as his son Ben believed he was Kylo Ren. He thought he was a bad person and he had no business raising a kid who might pick up his bad habits. He couldn’t live up to the selfless and kind father that had given up being a pilot for him. He had to keep being a pilot and having adventures because his dad didn’t get to. He kept his dad from getting to do that. How could he reconcile the guilt of his father never getting to live his dream because he was too busy raising him, with the guilt of trying to make it up to his dad by having adventures but in turn not always being there for his own small son?

I see Luke as a kid that always longed for adventure, but learned very quickly that it can sometimes come with a terrible price. I see a boy that suddenly had the weight of the whole galaxy thrust upon his shoulders at just 19 years old. I see a boy that loves his friends so much he ran recklessly to their aid, knowing it was a trap and he would probably die. I see a man that was willing to die for the tiniest chance that his father might actually love him. Someone who then had to try and live up to all the hype and legends and expectations building up all over the galaxy without letting the weight of it all crush him. Someone trying to restore a millennia old order that he knew next to nothing about. Who then had a 10 year old child to look after, train, and basically raise because the boy’s parents had so much pain to work through concerning both their personal lives and each other, along with their individual levels of selfishness they’d learned to harbor in order to survive their cruel circumstances, which kept them from being fully present for their son the way he needed them to be. How could Luke balance the weight of the galaxy on one hand, the restoration of the great Jedi Order on the other, and be the extremely attentive uncle that soft and sensitive Little Ben needed?

They all failed him to be sure. But it wasn’t entirely their fault. They are each complex and layered characters that have experienced more than any of us could ever comprehend, and TFA and TLJ chose to show the toll their inner and outer struggles had on them.

They each loved Ben with their entire hearts and souls, and when Palpatine and Snoke claimed him, their lives were utterly shattered. Han and Leia’s marriage was completely destroyed. Luke wasn’t hiding out of cowardice; he hid out of shame and pain. He crumbled under the weight of the Mighty Skywalker name and expectations of being the one to make the hard and selfless choice and always save the day no matter what. Ironically, in trying to protect what he loved most, it cost him that very same treasure; his family. Not to mention it opened up the galaxy for another Dark Organization to take over. Wouldn’t you want to hide and live miserably until you finally die? That’s how I’d feel.

Luke wasn’t perfect. Neither were Han and Leia. They weren’t gods. They were all very flawed HUMAN BEINGS. That’s what made them so relatable. That’s the beauty of the way the original trio was handled.... up until TRoS. Han was great, but Luke and Leia were handled terribly imo. However, that’s a whole other topic. 😉

Sorry for the length! I hope you made it to the end! 😬😄

[etraytin]

Quarantine, Day 116

July 5

This morning I ended up going out to the same complex as last night on another Red Cross run. I'm not totally sure how we managed to miss a client last night, but it seems to boil down to "sometimes roommate situations are very complicated," and I'm just glad we were able to get help to the client this morning so she didn't have to wait any longer. I also like going on calls in my home county because I can refer people to the local community thrift store operation, which is both a good place to replace a lost wardrobe and a place that puts all its profits into assisting people in need in the county. It's a great resource! I want to get back to volunteering there soon, but I can't right now because I promised we would be isolating as much as possible for the next couple weeks before my sister's wedding. She's getting us all matching bridesmaids masks, which is going to make for memorable photos, I'm sure! 

That paragraph was interrupted when I heard an unzipping noise and had to go retrieve Bixby as he slithered out of his playpen like an evil little danger noodle. The big kennel playpen should arrive tomorrow, not a moment too soon! Once they figure out how to exploit weaknesses in zippers, it's pretty much over for the mesh playpens. I gave him a cuddle and put him back in, and now he will tell me all about his Terrible Woe. The boys go into the shelter tomorrow to get their tests done for various feline diseases, plus a round of vaccinations. If all goes well, they'll be neutered in ten days and ready for new homes! They are so cute I am sure they'll be snapped right up, if Barry would just stop hissing at people. 

Oops, now Barry is telling me about his woes too, though his woes are more along the lines of "I finished that kibble you gave me, where's my wet food, human?" But I mean, just take a look at these guys, who wouldn't fall in love? 

A lot of our afternoon today was spent playing Dungeons and Dragons. I did indeed get roped into the campaign but my husband, who knows me well, did my character sheet for me so I didn't have  to worry about doing the math. We went pretty free and easy on the rules anyway, and it was a good time. We finished our adventure and got a hook for the next one, earned a bunch of gold, and spent it on stuff. (The kiddo is especially fond of the getting gold and buying stuff part.) Today was another day that he spent a lot less time using his electronics because he was reading spells and weapons lists, so that's pretty great. I'll give up some hours to being an elf druid for that. (I don't want to be Elfstar! I want to be DEBBIE!) 

Dinner was pretty simple, I cut up a chicken breast and cooked it with italian seasonings and some infused olive oil, then dumped it over rotini pasta with butter, garlic salt and lots of parmesan cheese. Easy and fast, but quite popular! I really need to use or freeze the rest of my chicken breasts by tomorrow, I don't want them to go to waste. In the evening, I made my husband very happy by reminding him to set up the stand fan we got for him in the bedroom. He loves the feeling of a fan blowing over him at night while I do not love that, but it's better when it's coming from the side and not down from overhead. He laid on the bed with the mattress topper on and the fan blowing over him and said it was the most comfortable he's been in a long time. So that is a very excellent thing and worth tossing another blanket on the bed for myself, so long as he turns it off when he's out of the room! 

One problem that all this reading has brought to light is that the kiddo's glasses are shot. He only really uses them for reading, but somehow one of the earpieces came clean off and does not snap nicely back into place. He's resorted to using them sort of like a lorgnette, and that works okay but is not much of a long-term solution. He needs his eyes checked anyway, so I'm going to have to find an optometrist who is open and taking new patients. I could go when we go to Illinois, except that my uncle the optometrist retired like a month ago, bad timing there. Even if next school year is mostly virtual we're going to need some kind of reading solution, so we'll figure something out. 

[wonderfulworldofmichaelford]

Psycho Analysis: Liev Schreiber Birthday Special - Sabretooth, Kingpin, and The Storm King

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Liev Schreiber is quite an actor, one that I think it is sadly easy to overlook despite his talent at portraying villains or other morally dubious characters. From his integral role in the Scream movies to his later numerous villainous roles, he manages to show himself as a rather skilled and versatile actor, particularly in regards to the latter; Schreiber is easily able to slip into playing a villain and deliver a fantastic performance… most of the time anyway.

The date I’m posting this on (October 4, 2019) is his birthday, so we’re going to take a look at three of his biggest villain roles to date: 

Sabretooth from X-Men Origins 

The Storm King from My Little Pony: The Movie

Kingpin from Into the Spider-Verse 

The first is a great villain trapped in an awful movie; the second is an awful villain inside a fun and enjoyable movie; and the third is a great villain in an outstanding movie.

Motivation/Goals: Sabretooth is, in short, a psychopath. The guy lives for the thrill of battle, and is never satisfied unless he has someone to kill. He’s a predator, using the numerous wars he and his half-brother Logan fought in throughout history to sate his appetite, but it was never enough. Vietnam is when he really lost it, and soon after that his relationship with Logan became tarnished, leading to their numerous conflicts throughout the film. It’s rather simple, yet it’s effective. This is what we want from Sabretooth after all, a bloodthirsty, murderous psychopath who crosses every line imaginable and who just really wants to make Logan as miserable as possible.

The Storm King is kind of approaching dominating Equestria as if it were a business venture, complete with merchandise. Beyond that, he’s a bit of a one-note evil overlord, with none of the complex motivations and characterizations of the other antagonist of the film, Tempest Shadow. He’s just here for some quick laughs and to be the final boss in the third act.

Kingpin has my favorite motivation out of the entire lot: once when he was battling with Spider-Man, his wife and child walked in, and in fear and horror they fled, driving off only to be struck by a truck and killed. Kingpin then shoveled as much money as he could and hired the likes of Doc Ock and Green Goblin to help create a giant dimensional portal all so he could be reunited with his family. It’s such a tragic motive that adds layers of depth to Kingpin, and ultimately makes him an interesting foil for Miles, who decides to continue fighting so he can live up to those he loses (Peter and his uncle) while Kingpin cannot accept his loss or his responsibility and so decides to damn everyone else in his desperate struggle to undo the damage he himself caused.

Personality: Sabretooth is easily the most simple of the villains, in that he is just a completely unrepentant monster who revels in the fact he is a vicious, remorseless killer. Normally a villain like that would be boring and generic… but this is Sabretooth. This is what we want out of him. Add in his brotherly banter with Wolverine and his single-minded desire to ruin Logan’s life at every turn, and he just ends up being a really fun and engaging take on the character, with Schreiber injecting just the right amount of soft-spoken sadism and menace to make Victor Creed pants-crappingly terrifying.

Kingpin is a sleazy, scummy mob boss. He’s another seemingly simple character, but his design really helps show what kind of guy he is without telling us. This iteration of Wilson Fisk really plays up him being a mountain of a man, with him being a hulking behemoth with a very bulky design. Despite being a normal human, he looks like the kind of guy who could kill a superhuman with his bare hands. Despite all this, he does have sympathetic  (but, and this can’t be stressed enough, not redeeming) qualities, such as his love for his family and his single-minded desire to be reunited with them. Of course, this desire is what leads to most of the troubles in the film, so he does show the dangers of that sort of careless and reckless pursuit of a goal is a bad thing, no matter how noble it seems.

Final Fate: The Storm King is the only character out of these three with a clear-cut fate, and it goes a long way to redeeming how bland the character is due to how out-of-place and dark it seems in the world of Friendship is Magic. In short, he is turned to stone, and his statue is allowed to drop to the ground, where he shatters into pieces. By all accounts, he is dead, a fate that seems to befall all terrible Friendship is Magic villains (cough Sombra cough).

Kingpin is the most open-ended, as after Miles stops him and in true Spider-Man fashion strings him up for the police. This does open up the door for Kingpin to appear again, which is a plus. The final showdown beforehand is a lot more interesting. The beatdown he gets from Miles, where Miles gets up from the pummeling that killed Peter and delivering a confident “Hey” like his uncle taught him right on Kingpin’s shoulder, sending him flying back to shut down his dimensional portal really is an  awesome moment for the film and Miles in general.

Sabretooth… it really is impossible to say. He apparently makes it out of this film alive, but Schreiber’s Sabretooth is so disconnected from the one who appears later in the timeline (mostly on the token that Schreiber’s take is actually good and memorable) that it’s impossible what to say happened to him. Further muddying the waters is the numerous canon retcons to the timeline as shown in films like Days of Future Past, which altered the timeline in baffling ways such as causing people to be born earlier than they would have been, and then there’s the deleted idea for his cameo in Logan… Really, there’s no telling what exactly Happened to Victor Creed, as the X-Men series is such an utter mess.

Best Scene: Sabretooth has a few, such as the awesome opening montage where he and his brother fight through multiple wars, but perhaps the best part is when he and Wolverine team up to kill that awful thing pretending to be Deadpool. The real Deadpool would beat them to the punch much later in Deadpool 2, but hey, at least he knew what had to be done when he had the chance.

Kingpin’s is almost definitely the scene where he kills Peter, which shows him going through a shocking amount of emotion, but there’s also the flashback to his family’s demise or even that moment on the train where he becomes a lifetime achiever in the Pontoffel Pock Awards by screwing up in every conceivable reality imaginable and disturbing an entire multiverse worth of his family in his quest to murder Miles. Few people screw up on that epic of a scale.

The Storm King… I don’t know. He’s kinda scary in his final battle? Maybe when he plays with the sun and the moon? Nothing really stands out for him super well, because quite frankly he is massively overshadowed by Tempest Shadow, who has the honor of getting the villain song of the movie. And let me be completely frank: if you are a villain in a musical, and you don’t get a song, you suck. Period.

Best Quote: For Sabretooth, it has to be this quote that really sums up who he is: “I'm not your friend. I'm an animal, who dreamed he was a man. But the dream is over. And the beast is awake. And I will come for you without mercy, because it's my nature.”

Kingpin is a little trickier, because Wilson Fisk is a man of actions, rather than words; I feel like he doesn’t have too many great quips, but he has a plethora of awesome actions. However, I DO enjoy his intro, where Schreiber just kills it with the delivery and establishes Fisk right off the bat as one hell of a crime boss: “Doo-be do. Doo-be do. Yub-yub, doo-bee do, doo-bee-do. Watch out! Here comes the Spider-Man! You like my new toy? Cost me a fortune, but hey, can't take it with you, right? You came all this way. Watch the test. It's a hell of a frickin' light show, you're gonna love this.”

For Storm King… well, this is kind of a funny line: “Here's the deal. I'm in the middle of a big rebrand here. "The Storm King" is tracking, well, as "intensely intimidating", but you know what? I need to back it up. You know what I need to back it up with? A STORM! THAT WOULD BE GREAT! You promised me magic that could control the elements, and right now, I'm holding a what? A branch. A twig. Bleh!” Kind of a reach, but I think he does have some decent comedic moments here and there, and his initial, er, phone call with Tempest is charming enough.

Final Thoughts & Score: These guys are really all over the place, but I think they really showcase Schreiber’s talents very well, as well as how to use him effectively.

Sabretooth is easily the best villain out of this bunch. While X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a terrible, bloated mess of a film, Sabretooth is one of the few redeeming factors, with Schreiber turning in a wonderfully terrifying performance as Logan’s arch-enemy. It’s frankly insulting they never had him come back to the franchise, because he was certainly far more deserving of a comeback than someone like Jennifer Lawrence. At least with Schreiber it was clear he cared about the character, which is more than can be said for whoever played the original Sabretooth (a character who is not even worth a Psycho Analysis; there’s just nothing to talk about there).

Really, the only major issues with Sabretooth are the fact that he’s in the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the X-Men franchise and the writing doesn’t do him many favors, but Schreiber is just acting his butt off to the point where it doesn’t matter, he’s selling it, he’s giving us the Sabretooth even the “better” first X-Men movie couldn’t deliver, and he seriously earns that 9/10. It should come as no shock that his take on Victor Creed is the one thing besides Ryan Reynolds fans truly love about the film.

Contrast the Storm King, who is just a depressing waste of potential. The prequel comics set him up to be something far more fascinating than what we get in the movie; he goes from a silly yet cunning overlord to a comical goober who barely gets any screentime, accomplishes half of his evil actions offscreen, and just leaves very little impression on the audience. Not helping is that he is by and large one of the biggest idiots ever seen in the Friendship is Magic franchise, backstabbing his own loyal followers for no good reason and basically playing with his hand revealed. It’s pretty telling that his henchwoman Tempest Shadow is the one who gets the villain song of the film (which, as I’ve pointed out, is a sign that he really, really sucks as a villain) and who is far more memorable, enjoyable, and interesting.

All that being said, I do appreciate the sentiment of the character, and I do like that Schreiber did it so his kids could watch something with him in it that wouldn’t make them scared out of their minds, and I don’t necessarily think Storm King is one of the most horrible villains ever or anything – he’s just boring and a waste of potential. I’d say he just barely makes it to a 3/10, and that’s mostly because he does have some amusing moments and how bad he is is offset by Tempest Shadow being such a fantastic antagonist; if she wasn’t in the movie, he’d easily be a low 2 and a lot less forgivable. That does seem kind of weird, but I think with a villain like Storm King where he’s just a simple goofball being played by a talented actor isn’t so bad as long as there’s an actual, serious antagonist. It doesn’t exactly make him any better but it keeps him from sinking to the rating of soomeone like Jared Leto’s Joker.

Kingpin is, quite simply, fantastic. I love his design, I love his motivation, I love how he just commands the scene when he walks into the room. This guy is just peak villain design, story-wise and design-wise. Some have taken umbrage with the fact that Kingpin is the one who got to kill Peter rather than a more personal foe like Norman Osborn, but frankly I like that they took a unique approach and decided to utilize a more unexpected foe of Spidey’s.

I think what’s best about Kingpin is just how they manage to make him a rather tragic and pitiable figure despite all the evil he does. Normally it would be a tall order to make the man who murders Peter Parker a tragic figure, but somehow the film manages, showing him to be a bitter, broken man desperately clinging to the tiny hope he could ever see his family again by destroying the dimensional barriers, no matter the cost. And if someone tries to tell him otherwise? Kill ‘em. Obviously this doesn’t excuse his actions, and the movie thankfully never pretends to, but I like that they made this Kingpin such a rich character in his own right, continuing the trend of Kingpin always being given a fantastic performance. Much like Sabretooth, Schreiber really earns the 9/10 with this fantastic vocal performance and just how impactful and even proactive Kingpin is in the story. He gets two major deaths to his name after all.

Liev Schreiber is such a fascinating actor, one who I think is so often overlooked and ignored. While he certainly is typecast as villains fairly often, I think it’s safe to say he excels at those kinds of roles, and he always manages to inject something unique into his roles. You wouldn’t confuse any of these three villains for each other after all.

[another-mexico-oc]

HETALIA AND COUNTRYHUMANS: Pros and Cons

Hi! Before I start PLEASE DON´T MAKE A “WHICH ONE IS THE BEST” WAR, I personally enjoy both fandoms, and both have their good things, as well as their bad things. Also, this is not a “Who did it first” thing, because let´s be honest, national personifications are not a contemporary idea, they have been for several years, there we have Uncle Sam (U.S.A), Marianne (France), John Bull (U.K.), etc. 

So, without further more, let´s go with the analysis:

HETALIA: 

Pros: 

Being the work of a single author, the characters have an established design and personality.

The author, Himaruya Hidekaz, could have gone down a conventional path while writing the story of the manga, particulary during World War events, depicting some characters as the villains, and therefore, the others as the heroes who have to defeat them. But fortunately, he didn´t. Unlike some war movies and other media, where they try to portray some countries as the good guys who had to defeat the evil enemies, Hetalia is written as if it was only the rivalry of two groups, which give me the next point...

In Hetalia, no character tries to be portrayed as if it was the best or the worst country. Himaruya designs his characters based on both, good and bad stereotypes of the country. Everyone has their good qualities, as well as their own flaws. Personally, it´s hard to choose a favorite character, everyone is likeable and no one feels like a Mary Sue.

The country characters have no power over their bosses (presidents, kings, prime ministers, etc.). This is a way for Himaruya to justify some terrible events that occurred during History. The countries have to follow orders, or are influenced by the boss they have at the moment. Although sometimes it is show that countries can share opinions and discuss with their bosses. If they have something on their minds or want to do something, they have to consult it with their boss first, to get their approval. And sometimes they are even UNAWARE of their bosses choices!

Cons: 

Even if Himaruya tries his best to give every character a likeable personality based on the country stereotypes... he has also made some mistakes and inaccuracies. This caused hard consequences, like the government of Korea banning the anime and the manga, all because of the country representation, not to mention the rivalry between Korea and Japan. Also, some countries personality doesn´t seem to be accurate. For example, many people agree that, though Finland and Sweden characters are likeable, the author have switched their personalities.

You can find some historic inaccuracies in the manga and the anime, so don´t try to rely totally on Hetalia to pass your next history exam. For example, I heard many polish people complain about one episode, which takes place during Polish–Lithuanian–Teutonic War. The Poland character was depicted as weak, who gives up quickly and depends on Lithuania to win the battle. 

Giving all this information, Hetalia is not for everyone. Not all people are big fans of humor involving stereotypes or terrible events like war. Yeah, war is awful, but I think Hetalia partially mocks how useless war is. And there always will be the person who will say: “No! Not everyone in my country is like that! This does not represent me!” I´m mexican, and even if I don´t drink tequila or say common mexican phrases like “Wey, que pedo!” I can still laugh of my own country stereotypes (of course, those I don´t consider racist or denigrating). Talking about Mexico...

The lack of Latin and African countries, as well female characters. Yes, at first the Hetalia focus were the Axis and the Allies, the main countries who got involved in WW2, but then Himaruya started to introduce other nations, even the micronations! And yet we don´t have enough latinos or africans. In part I can understand why. For what friends who have visited Japan have told me, and for what I have seen on the internet, japanese people are still very unfamiliar with the latin culture. It´s a little sad, because, for example, my country has a very interesting story with other countries. And about the female characters, yes, we have Nyotalia, which is practically an AU where the characters are gender-bent, having the majority of them being girls, but in the normal Hetalia universe, we have more men than women. Himaruya had shared sketches of Portugal, Korea and Poland, who originally were going to be girls, but apparently he changed his mind and decided they were going to be guys. I don´t know how he chooses a character gender, but I think he should not be afraid adding more female characters, seeing some of the already existing are pretty badass. 

COUNTRYHUMANS: 

Pros: 

Apparently Countryhumans is free from copyright, so anyone can have their own depiction of their country, and can establish their own personalities and design... 

(Which is not very complicated, because the countryhumans designs consist in the country flag as their skin color, they usually don´t have hair and their eyes are completely white, so you just have to add the clothing).

The countries you don´t find in Hetalia can be found here! I love to see Mexico and all Latin America in this fandom, their personalities and their interactions between them and other countries.

The fandom from all the world can share more accurate historic events, as they have more knowledge of the history of their countries and what actually happen in those places.

Therefore, the personalities of the countries can be a little more accurate.

Countryhumans can be depicted as both, women or men. 

In conclusion, as you are free of copyright, if you are not happy with the representation of your country, you can design your own depiction and we all are content, right?

Cons: 

What can be a pro can also be a con. As Countryhumans has no what we can consider canon characters of all the OCs, we cannot decide which of the designs will be the most accurate or the most representative, as everyone has their own favorite depiction. And yes, there can be a lot of Mary Sues in the fandom. (There Mary Sues in the Hetalia fandom too, but those are created by the fans, not by Himaruya)

Oh no, here I come with the controversial issues... Remember what I said in Hetalia, that Himaruya tries to not to classify the countries as heroes or villains? Well, the Countryhumans has this problem... sometimes. For example, I have read fanfictions, and watched fanarts, in which Mexico is depicted as the poor victim of the evil U.S.A. who wants to control everyone, and also the mean Spain who slaved him for years. I am not saying U.S.A or Spain have never done something wrong, but as a Mexican I can tell that Mexico has also made mistakes in the past, and it´s not the poor victim some authors describe. 

Also, in Countryhumans, the way the authors justify the horrible events of the past, is separating the present country from their former one, and then we have: Nazi Germany and Soviet Rusia, who are completely different people from the Germany and Rusia of today. That´s not the problem, actually is a good way to justify the history of the country. The problem is how authors can represent this two polemic figures...

Therefore, Countryhumans is not for everyone either. There are still people who are very sensitive with the Nazism or the Soviet Union era, and watching this two depicted as “cute” or “cool”... can be creepy. Like I said before, in Hetalia at least they try to avoid political and social themes (the american dub and the dark Hetalia is another theme, the last one was created by the fandom itself), so Germany is never referred as a nazi, nor Russia is ever called Soviet, and both had to follow orders of their leaders orders, even if they didn´t want to, and the countries don´t have to represent the boss ideology.

In conclusion, both have good and bad qualities. Yes, both can have a toxic fandom, but they also have people who are interested in history and like to see how these countries can forget the past and live in harmony together. 

Hetalia satirizes history and mocks war and stereotypes, while the fandom and Countryhumans do the same, but also can explore the things Hetalia doesn´t, like other countries, dark history or other themes. 

In both cases, we can tell the World History is very complex, that is hard to be 100% accurate when you try to explain it with anthropomorphized countries. However, is more enjoyable to learn about other countries, their history and the culture through Hetalia and Countryhumans than a textbook. Even when you have watched both of these, reading a textbook is no longer boring. So, if you are an Hetalia fan or a Countryhuman fan, or both, enjoy your fandom and try to avoid the toxic part :)

[b-u-c-k-y-b-a-r-n-e-s16-12-1991]

So, I've Been Thinking About The WinterFalcon TV Show....

Well, I don't exactly know what this is gonna become, but anyway...

(WARNING: LOOOOOONG post ahead.)

- I recently found out Bucky has a cat? Alpine? I'm not entirely sure if this is just a Fandom thing or canon in the comics but whatever, it seems to be quite widely known and I. Am. 100%. Here. For. It.

- Bucky with a cat. Just think about it. A beautiful white cat. That's it. Just Bucky with a cat.

- Alpine falling asleep on Bucky.

- Bucky falling asleep with Alpine (also asleep).

- Sam finding Bucky and Alpine asleep and smiling and this being the one (1) time he doesn't do anything snarky just smiles because aww honestly? This is the cutest thing he's seen all day?

- Oh my God Bucky getting annoyed at Alpine (while cooking? I feel like it should be while cooking or something). Like shooing her away or whatever. And then Alpine runs off sad (except not really because she's a sneaky little bb).

- And so then Bucky doesn't see her for a few hours and he's like meh whatever she's a cat she'll come back later.

- Except she doesn't.

- And it gets dark.

- And Bucky just stands staring out the window.

- Waiting.

- And waiting.

- ...

- ...and then he's stuck halfway up a tree in the middle of the night trying to get his evil cat who's so proud of herself.

- Actually at this point I don't even care about a storyline or any kind of drama or anything I just want like six hours of Bucky and his cat.

- #byesam

- Actually no speaking of Sam.

- So before I kinda shipped Stucky but I kinda shipped ScarletSoldier (so sue me, I'm a terrible person) and kinda shipped SamBucky (I think that's their ship name) but now I think about it: YES.

- They N E E D to get together. I don't even care if we have to wait til the last episode, it just HAS to happen.

- Speaking of: LGBT Bucky.

- I know, I know, but hear me out: Marvel needs more representation, the fandom ships Bucky with literally every male character that exists within the MCU, and honestly? That would be so cool?

- I actually had a dream once where Sam and Bucky got woken up in the middle of the night by some kind of noise on their apartment and they were just wearing their nightclothes and Bucky's was boxers and a black shirt that said "SOME ASSASSINS ARE GAY. GET OVER IT." in rainbow letters and he and Sam just looked at each other and he shrugged and said "I think it's it's supposed to be a joke."

- Or Bucky playing the traditionally feminine role and distracting guys and girls using his sexuality. And being really good at it.

- Also, I hear Sharon Carter is back for the series. At first I was like meh because I found her a bit boring in CW and TWS but when I think about it it was probably because she was effectively just a plot device but the more I think about what she COULD be, well, boy, am I excited.

- Sharon sharing snark with the boys! Sharon teasing them! Sharon sharing stories about Aunt Peggy and Uncle Steve! (Staron not, EVER, being a thing!) Sharon knowing how into each other Bucky and Sam are! Sharon playing with Alpine! Sharon being cool! Sharon fighting! Sharon being generally an all-round, useful, well-rounded, complex, developed character!!!!

- If she HAS to end up being a love interest for one of the boys, let her be all the above things too! If she ends up with Sam, have Bucky be completely unimpressed but fully supportive (*cough* jealous *cough*)! If she ends up with Bucky, Sam can tease them forever for it!

- Better yet, have it be temporary! Let one of them go out with her and then they slowly realise their own chemistry and she lets them be together like the good and noble person she is!

- And, the fandom doesn't hate her for it!

- So many exclamation marks! What is with these! I don't know! Please stop!

- Oh. My. God. The Shield!!!! Let them share the shield. PLEASE let them share the shield. Sam, because he's Cap. Bucky, because he has experience with the shield and honestly? Joint Captain Americas? That would be cool.

- Retro cars. Motorbikes. I know nothing about them but they're aesthetically pleasing.

- Bars. Restaurants. Have Sam and Bucky go out places. Yes. Oh my God, the fans in public places.

- The fans always going to see Sam, the Falcon, the New Captain America, Steve Rogers BEST FRIEND.

- Excuse me, what???

- Yeah.

- Just so Bucky can be salty about it. It would be hilarious.

- Also, bars: girls flirting with Bucky and/or Sam and they pretend to be a couple just for the fun of it and then, oh? Wait? Haha no I'm not still holding your hand Sam what are you talking about???

- ...

- "Buck, man, you still haven't let go."

- SAM FLYING BUCKY AROUND AS HE SHOOTS AT PEOPLE BEING TERRIFIED FOR HIS LIFE BECAUSE AAAAAGH HEIGHTS BUT ALSO WOO HE'S A SCARY MURDER PIGEON.

- Oh, God, the A N G S T. Bitterness, SamBucky comforting each other, sad stories, tears, anger, yes, yes, yes.

- Music? I mean I feel like there isn't anything that can't be made better but 70s and 80s music but at this point I feel like it's a bit cliché and overused. Dont get me wrong, I expect some proper good jams to be in this show, but I also don't want it to be generic.

- At the same time I don't want them to use modern pop happy romancey rubbish that probably wouldn't suit the tone of the show.

- You know what, I'll make a playlist. If I don't make one soon, something can digitally shout at me.

Well. Well, well, well. I didnt realise I wanted quite so much from this show until I did this. I just spent over an hour on this. Maybe I'll make a part two :P

[kurtty-drabbles]

Coraline au (A cat, a dog, a Kitty)

N/A: something out of nowhere.

@djinmer4 @dannybagpipesarecalling @discordsworld @bamfoftheundead

After everything, Fortress City is nothing but a distant memory,  and as a reward the Pryde menages to get their old house and even Cameron´s old job. Right now, Kitty is on her old balcony on the second floor looking at the scene below her along with Cosmo and Jupiter.

Her right hand is petting Cosmo as her left is petting Jupiter, but, her eyes are focused on the woman talking with her parents. A real state agent named Clarice Smith. A woman with a round body and a small nose, yet, she has a tranquil voice that brings serenity in her words.

"IT is really good at this," Kitty said still looking at the real state woman and the Prydes talking freely and joyfully. This makes the cat and dog raise their heads. "IT must understand how humans laws works...because I sure hell have no clue how we manage to get our house back so quickly and in such...normal way"

Cosmo only makes a pensative sound, while, Jupiter answers. "Is IT´s business. He knows about humans well enough to manipulate them, and, I guess he wants to give you a present...IT knows you wanted to go back here" Jupiters concludes.

"And no Death was involved?" Cosmo asked surprised.

"Sometimes the Forever Alone can surprise us"

And Kitty watches as the real state agent concludes the conversation and enters in her car. Is official, the Prydes are back in Chicago.

_________________________________________________________________________

A week has passed down and Cameron and Terry Pryde are sure to be free of Dagon´s terror and eating fish is now a sense of victory for them(while Cameron still is a tad bit cautious with any fish he may encounter) and all remains well, until, Terry receives a piece of unsettling news.

"Uncle Fred is...dead," Terry exclaimed heartbrokenly. Fred was one of Terry´s relatives that live in New York. Her great uncle to be exact, and the man did live a well-lived life.

The family sit together and talk about Death and life.

__________________________________________________________________________

"So....Death is bad" Jupiter and Cosmo are discussion this late news.  Kitty watches cat and dog going back and forth about the complexity of Death, and Kitty, who is amused by that, gives her two cents.

"Death is not evil. She´s terrible efficient as Sir Terry Pratchett once wrote. Death is essential to life.  So as my great-great-uncle Fred is in Death´s arms, I know he´s safer and I can´t villainize Death nor you two should"

"Yeah...Gaia often says that" Cosmo explained mildly " but I still never get this concept...Death seems cruel sometimes"

"Not cruel, Cosmo, just terrible efficient" Kitty reinforces kindly. And somehow, that´s the ending of the discussion.

___________________________________________________________________

After the funeral, time starts to heal Terry´s wound and life is slowly getting into a comfortable pattern. The X-men did call Kitty Pryde, of course, after knowing her family situation they were respectful and are calling with this proposition just now.

The invitation to join the X-men is a new approach that Storm and Cyclops come up with. Jupiter told Kitty that the X-men´s old method was not as good as they thought. "Egghead was a creepy person. And it comes from me, a talking cat that serves IT" and Cosmo nods "Yeah, well, now, we know Egghead won´t do any creepy thing anymore"

Kitty is pondering her situation. "I´d not think I want to join the X-men permanently. I´ve my career as a singer and yes, I know IT is behind the whole ''Kitty, take the time you want to write new songs'' don´t deny Jupiter, but, I think I would prefer something not permanent...like a reservist or something like that"

"Yeah, you don´t have all the time in the world" Jupiter concedes and Cosmo is laughing now, which, confused only Jupiter.

_________________________________________________________________________

The X-men greet Kitty Pryde and don´t seem to mind that she has a talking cat and dog, in fact, Rogue seems to know Cosmo. As the situation is unfolded and plans are being made, after all, Kitty is a reservist and can´t always be there to help the X-men, many people seem to take a like to Kitty.

Jean Grey is concerned, but, she confesses her fear is more from not understanding how powerful Kitty is than anything else. "Scott, I saw the fire...burning everything and that does not leave my mind no matter what I try" she confesses as Kitty and Rogue are talking in the other corner along with Dazzler.

"Jean...do you still want to go to that mission?" Scott asked sympathetically as he puts his hand on her shoulder, however, Jean denies.

"I can´t Scott...I need to be on this mission. I really need to be there"

____________________________________________________________________________

As Kitty is exploring the mansion, watching amusing the several types of mutants running around wildly makes a fond smile appears on her smile.

As she is walking by, without a real plan, when a German Accent calling her name makes her turn to the direction where the name is being called.

She turns to see a blue man with fur, golden eyes and tail waving his mishappen hand to her, of course, as his look is bizarre there´s no denying the man is handsome.

"You´re the newest member of the X-men," the man said charmingly and Kitty nods her head, she can see he would say something charming that would make any woman or even man woo, and she´s not entirely unaffected, but, before romantic words can be spoken Kitty respond. "I´m new as you´re too, but, the concept of time is a bit irrelevant to you, right, Chaos?"

And Nightcrawler stops smiling.

Kitty continues. "Actually, as we´re here. There´s something I always wonder about you, how can your mask really hide the true form?" she asked blinking and taking a step back and looks up for a moment. "How a hurricane of tentacles and fangs so huge be contained in a mask like that? how it does not break?"

Nightcrawler is in shock. "...you can see my face?"

Kitty nods. "I can see your face still has my punch. But, hey, cool tentacles, I like the fangs...give an authenticity style"

Nightcrawler is still in shock and Kitty is taking his arm as they are doing the tour together.

What is Kitty Pryde?

[fictionadventurer]

For the fandom ask: Psmith/Wodehouse and/or Austen

Wodehouse

the first character i ever fell in love with: For Wodehouse in general, Bertie Wooster. For the Psmith series, Psmith.

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: I used to adore Jeeves, but as time goes on, I get more and more annoyed by the coldness of some of his manipulations.

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: Can’t think of anything.

my ultimate favorite character™: You’re making me choose? Psmith for the Psmith series, Bertie in the Jeeves and Wooster stories, and Lord Emsworth in the Blandings stories.

prettiest character: It feels wrong not to say Psmith. Though I think Eve would be offended by this.

my most hated character: Downing is annoying.

my OTP: Psmith/Eve and Mike/Phyllis

my NOTP: Jeeves/Wooster, Mike/Psmith

favorite episode short story: I remember liking “Uncle Fred Flits By”, even though I can’t remember much of what happens it in.

saddest death: Does anyone die in Wodehouse?

favorite season book: Surprisingly, Mike and Psmith. My last reread gave me a new appreciation for it.

least favorite season book: Of the Wodehouse I’ve read, maybe The Pothunters. Surprisingly enjoyable, but ultimately nothing terribly memorable.

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: Not sure there’s a big enough Wodehouse fandom for this question to be applicable.

my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: Bat Jarvis is a gangster, but I can’t help liking him. He’s just so bizarre.

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: Phyllis.  And for that matter, Mike. They should not have needed to rely on Psmithian shenanigans to find happiness. (Of course, we get a great book out of it, but these kids deserve a break).

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: Not applicable.

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship:Peavey and Cootes in Leave It to Psmith. They’re kind of cute in a bizarre way, but compared to the other two couples in the book, I’m not really invested.

Austen

the first character i ever fell in love with: Mr. Bennet. I had this idea (brought about by the furor around the ‘05 Pride and Prejudice) that Jane Austen was all about sappy romance. But when Mr. Bennet quipped about his wife nerves being his “constant companion for these last twenty years”, I realized she was writing comedy, and I fell in love with Austen.

a character that i used to love/like, but now do not: I used to like Edmund Bertram much more than I do now. He seems more weak-willed yet more know-it-all than I remember. Of course, this opinion may change if I ever finish my reread.

a ship that i used to love/like, but now do not: I used to like Fanny/Edmund more than I do. I still think they’re way better than Fanny/Henry, but as time goes on, I grow more and more uncomfortable with how Edmund shapes Fanny’s personality.  

my ultimate favorite character™: Anne Elliot. Such strength and selflessness, and I love her arc of gaining more confidence in herself.

prettiest character: Jane Bennet.

my most hated character: Mrs. Norris. Is. Evil. She’s just so insidiously horrible to Fanny.

my OTP: Anne Elliot/Frederick Wentworth. Wentworth’s outgoing, confident nature is such a perfect balance to Anne’s gentler, more cautious personality.

my NOTP: Fanny/Mary

favorite episode unfinished work: If The Watsons had been finished, it might have been my favorite Austen. The main character’s in such an interesting situation, and it seems to have the seriousness of Mansfield Park with the wit of P&P.

saddest death: Mr. Dashwood’s, because of the situation it leaves his family in.

favorite season book: Persuasion. I spent most of February mentally composing essays about its brilliance.

least favorite season book: Sense and Sensibility. Just dull and hard to get through. I’m not sure I’ve ever reread it.

character that everyone else in the fandom loves, but i hate: I still love his character, but I feel major hype backlash toward Mr. Darcy. He’s fine, but he’s not the Best, Most Wonderful, Most Perfect and Romantic Man Ever, and I get tired of all the focus on him.

my ‘you’re piece of trash, but you’re still a fave’ fave: …is it weird to say Captain Wentworth? He’s one of my favorite characters, but it’s partially because of his flaws, which him more complex and realistic.

my ‘beautiful cinnamon roll who deserves better than this’ fave: Fanny Price. She deserves better in the book, and she deserves way more appreciation from fandom.

my ‘this ship is wrong, nasty, and makes me want to cleanse my soul, but i still love it’ ship: I absolutely hate myself for even thinking this, but maybe Fanny/Henry? It’s SUCH a cliché in the Austen fandom, and I don’t agree that Austen should have made them the couple. I think Fanny was 7000% right to kick him to the curb. But in an AU where Henry can become a less horrible person while Fanny still retains her moral strength? It’s kind of interesting.

my ‘they’re kind of cute, and i lowkey ship them, but i’m not too invested’ ship: Harriet Smith and Robert Martin. They’re cute, but my feelings don’t go much beyond that.