#he's real interesting with how many paths he fits. but he is a survivor and values preservation above all else

[hitokiri-izou]

Ok I've processed the 2.1 questline and in regards to aventurine's status, I'm confident that he's alive. I thought so while playing but had doubts.

Acheron explicitly said that his gamble isn't over, and even went so far as to sever the harmony from him. So his death sentence has been lifted.

He was also the main character of this patch in a way. Whenever we were in his pov we saw glimpes of his past giving context to his actions now and we even got to see conversations between himself that revealed his real self. At every turn we're told that he's going to die, whether by the harmony or his own machinations. His backstory peppered in even gives him death flags.

But his death is entirely expected. By us, by sunday, by sparkle, by himself. He follows the path of preservation, he's been invited by the path of elation, and by the end of his quest he's ended up on the path of nihility. A fool who wants to protect what he loves but all who he loves are gone, making it meaningless.

Acheron obliges his wish and unsheathes her sword. She is the emanator of nihility but will not allow him his end. Throughout this quest as we see more and more of aventurine we see how careless he is with his life and as his mask gets ripped off again and again it's apparent how little he regards his life and his suicidal ideation comes to the forefront. He doesn't care how this will pan out, he wants to go home and his home is where his family is.

Acheron apologizes that this void wasn't what he was expecting or where he wanted to go. She uses the power of nihility to save him from the harmony, an inversion of expectations. She denies his suicide by cop, tells him he's not done yet, and wishes him luck.

Aventurine even apologizes to his younger self saying it's not time for him to reunite with his family, some day but not yet.

Thematically, acheron talked him away from the ledge and encouraged him to live. She's giving him another chance. And he's taking it.

Where he is right now is probably outside the domain of the dreamscape where presumably robin and firefly have been. We probably won't see him for awhile as he treks through and finds a way to escape. But I am confident he'll find his way back.

[bisexual-horror-fan]

If we're gonna multi may in this house, lorde says let's do it up!

just hear me out hear me out hear me out!

bo sinclair x fem!reader.

but wait wait wait!!!

featuring leslie vernon!

*holds for applause*

there is more!

have you heard lera lynn's wolf like me feat shovels and rope. because i promise it will fit!

ugh this has been such a great event! so happy you're doing something for you and everyone loves it.

Okay! So! I did it! I know Multi-May is done and over with but this has still be living in my head and I have not been able to get over it so here it is! A new and very unconventional poly ship! I hope everyone digs this, it is deff an interesting thing, pretty angst heavy but with some lighter moments and a smattering of smut, let’s get into it.

—

Rating. NSFW. Length. 4K. Bo Sinclair X FEM! AFAB! Reader FT.Leslie Vernon. She/Her Pronouns. Warnings: Bo And You Are In An Established Relationship. Slasher x Final Girl/Survivor Girl. Mentions Of Murder. Death. Gore. Hurt. Comfort. Cross-Over. Angst. Sex. Mild NSFW Content. Pining. Complex Feelings. Leslie Is SO Down Bad For Taylor.

—

There Is No True Substitute But God You’re Close.

—

It might have been overkill but there is no such thing as being too careful, being out of state seemed smart to him.

Leslie’s first outing had gone amazingly well, he was still riding high from the kills, the twists, from her. It went much better than he could have ever hoped, but now he had to lay low. So far it has been going well, he had this remote cabin he hung out at for a couple of weeks until he was sure that it was safe enough and then he began his celebratory post spree vacation road trip. He had some places to stop off, people to see and it was nice, being able to meet with people who were like minded, in the same industry and tell them all about how well his first foray went. Before he always talked theory but now it was backed by real life experience, he felt like he belonged, the first serious move of his career and to making a name for himself, to being taken seriously. 

The time we want to focus on however is when he had worked his way down to Louisiana, it had been a long time since he’d been here, Eugene encouraged him to take some real time while considering this career path to explore around, talk to some people in the business, be sure and Leslie was thankful for that. It affirmed to him he was making the right call, Eugene told him where to go and gave the people heads up and Leslie was pretty universally welcomed. A lot of the older people were excited, they claim so few people wanted to take up this job and do it right, the old fashioned way, the way that honoured tradition. 

This was one place he spent a decent amount of time. Coming back to Ambrose and seeing the improvement and expansion that had occurred in the few years he was absent was impressive. He arrived mid-day, Lester met him outside of town, greeted him as friendly as ever and there was much excited talking on the way in, Lester telling Leslie, “I got so many new knives, I gotta show you-”

“Hell yeah man, sounds great I can’t wait to see them!” He was always down to talk tools of the trade and Lester said, “And tomorrow morning fore’ the heat gets too bad an’ it starts to smell too much we can visit the gore pit.”

“You have a gore pit now?!”

“We do!” Lester said excitedly and Leslie asked, “Business that good down here?”

“So good! I mean the town is almos’ done, that’s what Bo says anyway-” Lester admitted and Leslie gaped, “Already? God, I know there are three of you but that turnaround time is amazing. What are you gonna do when it’s all done?”

Lester hummed, hands sliding into his pockets as he considered the question, “Honest? I dunno. This been our whole lives for years now, weird to think bout what’ll be like when s’ all done.”

“Well I am sure you guys will all figure it out, you’re resourceful!” Leslie assured as he clapped Lester on the back and he smiled, “Yeah yer right, we’ll be alright.” 

Soon they were at the gas station and Bo was coming out to greet him, wiping his hands on a dirty rag before a firm handshake was exchanged. “Leslie, how are you?”

“Great, so great.” He assured and Bo asked, “Drive down was alright?”

“Oh yeah, no trouble at all. Where’s ol’ Vin at?” Leslie asked as he released his hand and Bo scoffed, “In the workshop, don’t worry he’s excited to see you, he’s gonna come out in time for dinner.” 

Leslie was excited for dinner, last time he was down they treated him to some pretty good BBQ, it was going to be great. Bo and Lester proceed to show Leslie around town, updating him on changes and showing off all the new procedures, the developments and wax figures. 

It was a great afternoon Leslie was so glad he made the effort to get down here, and as the sun had begun to go down but the sticky heat remained, on the way out of the movie theatre Leslie asked, “Should we go get on cooking dinner?”

“Oh no need, should be just about ready.” Bo said easily and Leslie was confused, “What is Vin already cooking or something?” 

“Nope. You’ll see.” Bo said with a grin that made Leslie just a touch concerned but he didn’t pursue it further, the answer became clear once they had gotten his bag back from where they left it at the station and gotten to the house. 

“We made up the same room you had last time.” Bo told him as he started to come inside and Leslie followed, Lester bringing up the rear and there was a call from the kitchen asking, “Hello?”

“Heya, we’re back.” Bo responds and there is a series of excited footsteps from the kitchen into the living room and Leslie sees you for the first time. Barefoot and apron on, dish towel over our shoulder you asked with a point, “Is this him?”

“Yes this is the guy I was tellin’ you all about, this is our guest, Leslie.” You came forward and shook his hand, “Pleasure to meet you, I’ve heard so much!” 

Leslie returned the gesture before reluctantly pulling his hand away, “I wish I could say the same, this one hasn’t mentioned you.”

“You haven’t? Man, what am I gonna do with you?”  You ask as you snatched the dish towel off your shoulder and playfully swatted at Bo who waved you off with a scoff. There is a beeping coming from the kitchen and you say, “Sorry, excuse me, that’s the oven.” You turn and flit back off to the kitchen and Leslie turned and asked, “Who is that?” 

The story came out over the dinner you made. Leslie was regaled how you came to town alone, the chase, the hunt, the fight that turned to more than that, all of the struggle and eventually Bo deciding to keep you for a while before killing you off. That never happened. No instead you stayed, you fell and that was that. Leslie could not believe it. Of course he knew about Eugene and Jamie’s history, he loved them but he thought they might have been an outlier but to see it was possible for someone else? It’s everything. 

Listening to the stories, seeing how you held Bo’s hand and looked at him, made him ache. He can see it so clearly from how you both talked about it, the initial meeting, the chase, the scuffle, my God. He loves this for you both but seeing it? It makes part of him hurt. 

He thinks of Taylor. You remind him of her.

He tries to push that down and instead tries to focus on the rest of the conversation, how nice it is to be back here. 

You were cleaning up the dishes, bringing them to the sink and Leslie was currently saying, “Thank you so much, it was amazing.”

“Oh good! M’ glad, I spent so long in the kitchen today.” You admit and he asks, “What? For me?”

“Yeah! I knew this was a big deal, is it so wrong I wanted to impress you just a bit?” You asked in a joking tone and Leslie asked Bo, “What did you tell her?”

“Nothin’ that wasn’t true.” 

Leslie was unconvinced and turned to Vincent who signed without Leslie even having to ask the question, as opposed to responding directly he posed this, “Where’d all that confidence go?”

“Yeah, we don’t just hang round with anybody.” Lester insisted and Bo scoffed with a roll of his eyes, “Yeah we’re really picky about the company we keep.” 

“You joke but 99% of the people who roll through here get gutted and waxed, in that order.”  You say that so casually, so easily. It then comes out that you don’t just tolerate what happens, you help with the cause, luring, lying, cleaning up, whatever is needed. What a fucking dream were you. 

To have a quality survivor girl who not only makes the change but becomes part of the business? Unthinkable but fantastic that it is possible.

The rest of that evening you made yourself scarce, you were tired and went to bed early with promises of spending more time with everyone tomorrow. Leslie and the boys have dessert and drinks on the porch and he tries to keep you out of his mind, instead trying to focus on what Vincent was trying to tell him about the latest art project. 

The next morning he comes downstairs to find coffee brewed up and wrapped breakfast sandwiches, Lester was already in the kitchen and when questioned Lester said, “S’ Tuesday, she’s out workin’ on her art but she makes us all breakfast to go.” 

You were an artist too? I mean it made sense you would have some sort of creative outlet but hearing it confirmed was a horse of a different colour. It was sweet you thought of Bo’s brothers but even more so that you thought of him, a relative stranger, you were very trusting of him all things considered. 

This road trip was to celebrate, it was to get out of state, it was to keep things low key but also to try and forget a bit about her. Taylor was just so upset when everything came out, he was trying to keep his spirits up about their future but who knows what might happen, what if getting his own relationship shift like Eugene and Jamie or you and Bo had was an impossibility with her? He thought the distance would help and yet here you were reminding him of everything he really craves.

He goes out to the gore pit and does some work with Lester and loses himself a little in getting shown Lester’s extensive knife collection. 

Leslie hangs around town with the boys but with you too, he starts getting closer to you and the more he sees you and Bo are together he wants and he aches. 

He spends time with Vincent, getting shown the updated process of how he makes the figures as well, “So some of them are still technically alive when you coat them?” Vincent nodded and Leslie stood up from his crouching position with ample praise, “You sadistic bastard I love that!” 

Leslie was also treated to seeing the other ways Vincent expresses himself, the paintings in particular are amazing. Leslie goes on drives with Lester talking up a storm and adds to the pit, he actually has to consider fighting off the urge to gag when they went by in the late afternoon, “Christ on a bike Lester! How do you stand it?” To which Lester laughed and responded, “C’mon Les, taint that bad.” Leslie fires back, “Yeah says you.”

He spends time in the gas station with Bo, fucking around with cars, listening to music too loudly and touring around the basement as well as sharing stories. “Sooo you’ve gotten into photography?”

“Vincent has the sculptures and paintings, Lester has his taxidermy and wood carving, I take pictures.” Bo said with a casual shrug. Everyone is so creative here, it makes Leslie want to work more on his next outing, bringing in more creativity to his work couldn’t hurt. 

Leslie feels bad that you are putting in so much work with him around so he insists he helps out with cooking. He asks about your art while making lunch, he is genuinely interested and impressed to learn what you like to do and the answer is almost everything. Painting and doll making and sewing, some gardening, you dabbled in so many things to help fill your days and satisfy your creative urges. 

“How do you do it?” He asked as you both were deep in a sandwich assembly line, him taking out slices of bread and putting on the spreads and you building the rest from there, and you questioned him, “Do what?”

“All of that. Have the time and energy for pursuing so many different creative things?” 

You laughed, closing the current sandwich before telling him, “I have the energy and ability and fuck, the time, because of the guys. Being here affords me the opportunities to do all this. I have no one to answer to. I can just do whatever I want to, no schedule. Somedays I paint for hours, others I do not a damn thing and camp out on the couch, it’s great.” 

It did sound great, you had a full and well rounded life here. He listened as you expounded further and it made his little problem a whole lot worse. You spoke about the inherent drive to create that you felt, this sort of pulling that came from deep inside that made you want to take nothing and make something. He understood that, related to it, the talk endeared you further to him. 

“I love that.” He said quietly and you say, “I can tell.” 

It’s quiet for a moment before you ask, “I assume you do what you do for similar reasons?”

“You want to know?” 

“Uh duh-doy Vernon. Spill.” And so the rest of lunch prep and the meal itself was spent with him pouring his heart out, telling you all about why he did what he did, why he wanted it, what motivated him and it felt good. You seemed to genuinely listen, really give a fuck, you asked questions and engaged openly and by the time he was done you understood. You gave praise, commented and as he learns more and more you don't shy away from blood, guts or gore and that was so attractive. He wonders how much exposure therapy it took for you to get to that point.

“Oh I get it now.” 

“Get what?” He asked, “I get why you look at me like that now. You are thinking about her.” 

Shit. He focused so much on talking about her and in usual Leslie fashion when excited about a particular something he cannot contain himself, it is hard to hide his emotions at the best of times but when it came to her? It seems impossible. He tries to veer, to lie, “What? I don’t look at you any particular way.” 

You give him an unimpressed look, mouth a flat line and he cuts in again, “What?!”

Your hand reaches out and takes his as you look in his eyes and say, “Les. You are…A very smart, passionate, capable guy. You are gonna have some fantastic days ahead and hopefully a long and successful career but you need to work on your lying skills.”

“I can lie! I lie all the time!” He insists and you scoff, “Not about her. I dunno if you can about how you clearly feel about Taylor Gentry.”

He knows you are right. Instead he says as he looks away, “Even if I do look at her in any particular way, I don’t think I look at you like that, it’s ridiculous because you…You aren’t her and I know that.” 

You roll your eyes and drop his hand, “See I just complimented you and said you were smart but you make me regret it when you say shit like that.”

“Elaborate.” He asks and you say, “I know I’m not her, you know that I’m not her, that isn’t what is important. The idea is that I remind you of her and that is enough when the wounds are so fresh and so deep” 

How did you see right through him? Your level of observation is nuts. “You make me sound pathetic.” 

“Hardly. You are many things Leslie but pathetic is not chief among them, trust me. I’m not mad, I’m not upset, I think it’s understandable and a little sweet.” 

He wasn’t expecting that, nor was he expecting what happened next, you got up and he thought it was going to be you collecting the lunch dishes and instead you are sliding into his lap. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Something I think you need.” Your arms loop around his neck, hands crossed at the wrists behind his head and his mind was reeling, “What do you think I need?”

“A distraction, an outlet, whatever you want to call it.” You said simply and he asked, “What about Bo?”

“This was his idea.” 

“What?” 

“He has eyes and ears too Les. He hears how you talk and sees how you look. We talked about it and it’s okay.” You shrug and then add on, “And it isn’t like he and I are tied down to just each other. The photo wall in the basement hasn’t stopped getting bigger since I came to town.” 

“And that’s…That’s fine with you both?” He asks and you tell him, “Completely. He likes the aftermath.” 

You don’t need to say the word “reclamation” but you don’t have to, he can see it as if it were painted all over your face. He is still thinking much too hard and you take advantage of that, you lean in, kiss him and it is like his brain turns off, instinct takes over instead and he returns it. 

It feels wrong but right, you aren’t her but you are close enough for now, he touches, hands wander and he feels greedy as he drinks you in. He’s been so consumed with work for so long. When was the last time he was with anyone in this kind of way? He doesn’t know, he doesn’t care. 

It’s rushed, clothes are hardly removed, mostly just pushed down or pulled aside enough to facilitate and satisfy the immediate urge and need you had stirred up in each other. He is caught between it all, in taking you in, enjoying this and you for what it is and you are but still part of him is with her, just as it always is. You know this and you don’t mind, you are getting your own enjoyment out of it, you aren’t totally selfless in this. Sureit is helping him but the strong hand around your throat as he fucks up into you, opposite hand on your hip, fingers caught between the space where skirt and shirt, blunt nails digging into tender flesh as he is panting is very, very much for you. 

He is left a bit dazed when it’s over. You tell him that the others are probably wondering where their lunch is, you tell him to hang out here and on slightly unsteady legs you are off to go deliver Bo the food he helped you make. 

Leslie is out of the kitchen and nowhere to be found when you came back, you expected that. He needed time to himself to figure this out. 

Trying to make sense of all of this is one of the hardest things and after trying to figure it out for a few hours he ends up at the gas station and talking with Bo. “Hey there he is, havin’ a good day?”

The shit eating grin combined with the knowing look communicates that you told him already. The conversation is brief but it gets the point across. “S’ fine. Really. I trust you, s’ good for her.” 

It is crazy what finding the right person and relationship can do for a person, he seemed to secure.

In between times with the boys he is with you. There are highs, being wrapped up in you, hot and needy, passionate, and times of lows, self hatred, angst, pain. He can’t bring himself to stop, he will tell himself to give this up but then you give him one of those looks where he ends up with you bent over the kitchen table while the roast for dinner is finishing in the oven. 

He stretches his stay by another week but eventually he has to go. He knows he does when he has the briefest thought about running away with you and having you to himself but it is quickly forgotten. He could never betray Bo like that, he knows he is some fun on the side, not serious, you don’t want him like that and he is sure he doesn’t want you like that either, not really. It’s different with him and more than that, he wants what you and Bo have, what Jaime and Eugene have. 

He wasn’t the whole package. He wants the investment, the history, all of it, he wants the complex relationship from slasher and survivor to a more equal and level playing field of partners. He hasn’t given up on Taylor and honestly all of this with you has reaffirmed that for him, he can still get her, he just has to try harder. He is saddened for how long it might take to get there but ultimately he is better and emboldened for the experience. 

He really revels in the last time he has you the night before he goes to leave. He is incredibly selfish, the living room is dark, he can’t see your face, he is rough and almost as if you can sense it, when he starts to feel just a bit bad you gasp out, “S’ okay. Take it out on me.” 

He does. Who knows the next time he will be with anyone, or if he will ever be with you again, if he will ever truly get to have Taylor the way he wants. It bleeds from rough to much more than that, his face buried in your neck, arms around you, fucking you the way he is praying to whatever messed up God might be listening in that he hopes to do to her one day. You know what it is, it’s a little too close, a little too intimate, you give into the fantasy and allow it to happen without commenting on it. When it’s over and your shared breathing has returned to normal, when the sweat has dried, you get up saying, “Should get to bed, you got a long drive tomorrow.” 

“Yeah. I’ll be up in a minute.” 

He heads up five minutes after you do. Your bedroom door is closed. He stares at it for a minute before retreating to his own room that is already packed up.

Lester gifted him a knife, Vincent had made a small figure of Leslie in his slasher gear and Bo handed over a CD that Leslie from a band Bo introduced him to during his stay that he ended up loving. You gave him some packed food, you refilled the cooler that he brought and told him to, “Drive safe, have a good rest of the journey. It was so great getting to know you, I hope you’ll be back some time.”

“I intend to, promise.” He admits and once the van was loaded up and about to leave he leaned out the window and asked just Bo who was seeing him off, “Are you two gonna be okay?”

“What? Cuz of what happened between you two?” He laughs, “Yeah, we’ll be alright. Thanks for the concern but s’ not needed.” 

“You are like, so, so lucky, you know that right?” He asked and Bo said with a glance over his shoulder in your direction, “Yeah, M’ aware.”

“God, you’re an asshole.” Leslie sighed and Bo said, “Hey you are too, she’s got a type.” 

He has a point. When Leslie took off to go to a mostly abandoned summer camp in the same state for some camping you still lingered on his mind, he was sure, if the arraignment extended or not he’d be back to Ambrose sometime in the future. 

[dig-jules]

"Tommy" (1969) and Christian Revelation. 1921.

Captain Walker. A pilot in the Great War. Deemed MIA in its final months. An improbable survivor.

After Walker's impossible return home, he discovers that his wife has found another man in his presumed-to-be-permanent absence. (To her credit, I'm not exactly sure you could call it cheating in those circumstances.)

Still, in a fit of jealous rage, Captain Walker shoots the man, ending his dreams of a blissful '21 with the recent "widow". The issue? The Walkers' son, Tommy, bore witness to the execution. "...the boy, he saw it all."

It's often assumed that what follows for Tommy is a partial "death" and an allegory for Christ's Crucifixion. Not only is this assumption innately ableist, but in my opinion it plays into the same ideas that the album critiques.

To the rhythm of his parents' chorus, "You didn't hear it. You didn't see it. You won't say nothing to no one - ever in your life..." , Tommy loses his sight, hearing, and his ability to speak. But even Townshend doesn't stir any false pretenses that Tommy's condition is a tragedy.

As the descending chords of "Amazing Journey" begin and the hollow vocals rise, it becomes clear that (if the title wasn't already enough) Tommy's sensory deprivation has made possible a newfound journey into self realization. A colorful symphony of touch and experience that the young boy will undergo, all in wild abandon from social pressures or a sense of conformity.

His thoughts are "...as bold as thoughts can be."

He is "...loving life and becoming wise in simplicity."

An important symbol to address, though, is the tall stranger with the "silver sparked glittering gown" and the golden beard. This man is Tommy. Likely it is who Tommy sees looking in the mirror, the only thing he can see. In Townshend's words, "...the illusory self"(Rolling Stone 1969), in contrast to what he refers to as the real self.

The idea of self, real or illusory, is where much of the album's complexity is drawn- as it is greatly derived from the teachings of Meher Baba. I don't have the understanding of the teachings needed to address this idea in full, so instead I'll focus on the most apparent distinctions between Tommy's perception of self and Christianity's, not its intricacies.

This is about to get very theoretical, very wordy, and very hard for even me as the one writing it to try and understand. You'll probably get what I'm trying to say just fine with just reading the first sentence, but I've included some additional headache if you're interested.

Here is what I have drawn from what the album seems to be conveying: The self is not a means of service to a greater power (a pillar for many of the world's major religions), but rather it is a means to seek the universal presence of God in each individual. The self is the only mirror into understanding questions like why or how we exist because it is a simple proof that we do even exist and that we are experiencing each sensation in the present- not assigning any false or illusory meanings to each experience, or looking only to a pleasant "after", simply experiencing living with its pain and its joy. Hence, why Tommy is only able to see his reflection in the mirror, and why that limited state is the true path to his enlightenment. Now, I'm mentioned will mention, this is just what I believe to be part of Townshend's intent with Tommy.

This song alone sets the tone that Tommy's journey will revolve around the curiosity and joy that comes from turning to oneself in all its simplicity. Still, much of the story to follow revolves around the fact that external pressures remain very much real and very much significant in Tommy's journey. Despite all of the pain to come, there are many moments on the second and third sides of the album that, though smaller in shock value, contribute more to this central theme and call for just as much, if not greater, attention.

[sadprosed]

𝑺𝑬𝑵𝑻𝑬𝑵𝑪𝑬  𝑷𝑹𝑶𝑴𝑷𝑻𝑺.

↬   THE  LANGUAGE  OF  THORNS,  midnight  tales  and  dangerous  magic.   (  2017  )  by  leigh  bardugo.

sentences  taken  from  or  inspired  by  the  collection’s  dialogue  &  narration.

+   feel  free  to  change  pronouns  !

i.    AYAMA  AND  THE  THORN  WOOD.

‘  love  speaks  in  flowers.  truth  requires  thorns.  ’

‘  we  all  know  the  story  of  how  the  queen  becomes  a  queen.  ’

‘  we  should  leave  this  place.  ’

‘  no  doubt  it  will  come  and  devour  us  all.  ’

‘  the  beast  will  laugh  you  right  out  of  the  wild  lands.  ’

‘  you  know  how  the  stories  go.  interesting  things  happen  only  to  pretty  girls.  ’

‘  is  the  wood  much  worse  than  a  garden  overgrown  with  pricklers  ?  ’

‘  stupid  girl  !  do  you  wish  to  become  a  monster  ?  ’

‘  strike  me.  cleave  me  in  two.  ’

‘  you’re  as  thorny  as  the  wood.  ’  

‘  there  is  but  one  rule  in  my  wood.  speak  truth.  ’

‘  perhaps  you  might  show  mercy  freely.  ’

‘  just  eat  a  bit  of  the  sun  to  fill  the  sky,  and  you  will  feel  empty  no  longer.  ’

‘  what  nonsense  !  of  course  that’s  not  how  the  story  ends.  ’

‘  some  people  are  born  with  a  piece  of  night  inside,  and  that  hollow  place  can  never  be  filled.  ’

‘  what  do  i  care  for  winter  ?  no  season  touches  this  wood.  ’

‘  you  know  the  only  bargain  i  will  make.  ’

‘  sometimes  the  unseen  is  not  to  be  feared  and  those  that  are  meant  to  love  us  most  are  not  always  the  ones  that  do.  ’

‘  bad  fates  do  not  always  follow  those  that  deserve  them.  ’

‘  no  prince  is  worth  your  life.  ’

‘  are  you  so  eager  to  be  eaten  ?  ’

‘  they  have  told  me  to  return  with  your  heart.  ’

‘  you  think  to  love  a  monster  ?  ’

‘  a  man  like  you  is  owed  no  words.  ’

ii.    THE  TOO  CLEVER  FOX.

‘  you  are  doomed  to  a  miserable  life.  ’

‘  better  to  be  hungry  now  than  to  be  sorry  later.  ’

‘  what  will  everyone  say  when  they  see  such  a  face  ?  ’

‘  we  have  not  gone  so  soft  as  that.  ’

‘  you  think  that  we  will  let  you  live  on  foolish  promises  ?  ’

‘  you  have  bested  me.  that  much  is  clear.  ’

‘  will  you  not  free  me  ?  ’

‘  you  will  have  a  fine  time  of  it,  i  can  tell  you.  ’

‘  i  can  bear  ugliness.  i  find  the  one  thing  i  cannot  live  with  is  death.  ’

‘  if  you  will  only  cease  your  talking,  i  will  gladly  go.  ’

‘  where  he  went,  he  bled  the  woods  dry.  ’

‘  what’s  a  bit  more  blood  ?  ’

‘  you  should  leave  this  place.  you  are  not  safe  here.  ’

‘  with  such  big  eyes,  i  think  you  see  too  much.  ’

‘  will  you  not  tell  me  what  troubles  you  ?  ’

‘  why  do  you  stay  with  him  ?  you’re  pretty  enough  to  catch  a  husband.  ’

‘  just  because  you  escape  one  trap,  doesn’t  mean  you  will  escape  the  next.  ’

‘  first  i  must  find  my  courage.  ’

‘  few  can  resist  the  sight  of  a  pretty  girl  crying.  ’

‘  the  trap  is  loneliness,  and  no  one  escapes  it.  not  even  me.  ’

‘  in  the  wood,  even  songbirds  must  be  survivors.  ’

iii.    THE  WITCH  OF  DUVA.

‘  there  was  a  time  when  the  wood  ate  girls.  ’

‘  be  back  before  dark.  the  trees  are  hungry  tonight.  ’

‘  who  can  say  what  shapes  an  appetite  ?  ’

‘  this  is  my  home,  you  can’t  just  send  me  away.  ’ 

‘  don’t  be  foolish.  there’s  plenty  of  light.  ’

‘  well  then,  come  help  me  stir  the  pot.  ’

‘  i  will  warn  you  just  this  once.  go.  ’ 

‘  you  cannot  come  and  go  from  this  place  like  you’re  fetching  water  from  a  well.  ’  

‘  hope  made  me  stubborn.  ’

‘  stay  there  and  keep  quiet.  i  don’t  need  rumors  that  i’ve  been  taking  girls.  ’

‘  i  will  not  have  you  bring  a  monster  to  my  door.  ’

‘  you  know  that  you  are  welcome  to  remain  here  with  me.  ’

‘  i  will  follow  her.  i  will  peck  out  her  eyes.  ’

‘  believe  me.  say  you  believe  me.  ’

‘  dark  things  have  a  way  of  slipping  through  narrow  spaces.  ’

iv.    LITTLE  KNIFE.

‘  it  is  dangerous  to  travel  the  northern  road  with  a  troubled  heart.  ’

‘  if  you  are  lost  in  your  own  thoughts,  you  may  find  yourself  stepping  off  the  path  and  into  the  dark  woods.  ’

‘  she  was  beautiful  from  the  moment  of  her  birth.  ’

‘  why  must  i  be  the  one  to  hide  ?  ’

‘  do  you  think  i  am  so  foolish  or  so  cruel  ?  ’

‘  water  only  wants  direction.  it  wants  to  be  told  what  to  do.  ’

‘  always  you  have  done  my  bidding,  but  what  good  are  you  to  me  now  ?  ’

‘  soon  i  will  be  very  rich,  but  will  i  have  a  good  man  ?  ’

‘  that  is  a  question  for  the  river.  ’

‘  your  tongue  is  not  fit  for  my  true  name.  ’

‘  will  you  come  with  me,  and  be  bride  to  nothing  but  the  shore  ?  ’

‘  she  was  terrifying  in  her  beauty,  bright  like  a  devouring  star.  ’

‘  remember  that  to  use  a  thing  is  not  to  own  it.  ’

‘  should  you  ever  take  a  bride,  listen  closely  to  her  questions.  ’

v.    THE  SOLDIER  PRINCE.

‘  this  is  the  problem  with  even  lesser  demons.  they  come  to  your  door  in  velvet  coats  and  polished  shoes.  ’

‘  you  will  find  great  love  and  more  gold  than  you  could  wish  for.  ’

‘  he’s  a  charming  fellow,  but  most  unusual,  and  peculiarities  seem  to  follow  him.  ’  

’  it  seemed  harmless  at  the  time.  ’

‘  he  needed  a  girl,  still  malleable,  one  that  he  could  make  admire  him.  ’

‘  this  is  pleasant.  this  is  enough.  ’

‘  are  you  my  soldier  ?  are  you  my  prince  ?  ’

‘  i  have  not  come  to  fight,  only  to  talk.  ’

‘  wanting  is  why  people  get  up  in  the  morning.  it  gives  them  something  to  dream  of  at  night.  ’

‘  i  am  perfectly  real.  ’

‘  she  loves  you,  though,  and  that  will  make  it  harder.  ’

‘  best  not  to  ask.  i  think  the  answer  would  please  no  one.  ’

‘  we  can  stay  forever  in  the  land  of  dreams.  ’

‘  kiss  me.  take  me  from  this  place.  ’

‘  i  sent  you  to  die  a  hundred  times.  ’

‘  i  eat  the  wonder  in  their  eyes.  ’

‘  you  were  an  idea  in  my  head.  you  were  nothing,  and  to  nothing  you  will  return  when  i  think  of  you  no  more.  ’

‘  you  wanted  only  that  i  might  live.  you  would  sacrifice  your  own  life  to  make  it  so.  ’

‘  are  you  my  darling  ?  are  you  mine  ?  ’

vi.    WHEN  WATER  SANG  FIRE.

‘  you  wish  to  strike  a  bargain.  ’

‘  make  me  someone  new.  ’

‘  this  is  the  problem  with  making  a  thing  forbidden.  it  does  nothing  but  build  an  ache  in  the  heart.  ’

‘  easy  magic  is  pretty.  great  magic  requires  that  you  trouble  the  waters.  ’

‘  no  one  expects  me  to  accomplish  anything.  ’

‘  i  can  smell  your  ambition  like  blood  in  the  water.’  

‘  i  know  that  you  should  keep  it  like  a  secret,  not  shout  it  like  a  curse.  ’

‘  yes.  i  can  imagine  it  all.  ’

‘  you  are  worth  more  than  that.  you  should  not  have  to  earn  him.  ’

‘  hope  rises  like  water  trapped  beneath  a  dam,  higher  and  higher,  in  increments  that  mean  nothing  until  you  face  the  flood.  ’

‘  there  is  no  pain  like  the  pain  of  transformation.  ’

‘  take  your  pleasures  as  you  will.  ’

‘  come,  and  i’ll  tell  you  all  you  wish  to  know.  ’

‘  he  made  me  dream  of  things  i  cannot  have.  ’

‘  i  do  not  care  for  dancing.  ’

‘  look  into  the  mirror,  and  try  to  deny  it.  ’

‘  you  have  never  been  like  the  others,  and  you  never  will  be.  ’

‘  we  were  not  made  to  please  princes.  ’

‘  i  am  not  quite  mortal  either,  and  i  have  many  lives  to  live.  ’

‘  i  wouldn’t  care  if  you  were  part  human  or  part  frog.  ’

‘  my  voice  is  not  enough.  ’

‘  you  know  i  was  never  strong.  ’

[guardianspirits13]

I wanna talk about Natsuo Todoroki for a second here.

tw// mentions of abuse, self harm, and suicide

Natsuo visibly has the most emotional trauma out of anyone else in his family (Touya not included), and I really wanna talk about why that is.

For starters, we haven't seen him really smile since he was introduced in chapter 187. He's introduced as having a friendly, easygoing persona and it's easy to imagine this is how most people outside of his family know him. However, every time we see him appear since then, another layer of his trauma is revealed and expanded upon, and it cuts DEEP.

I think the main reason that Natsuo still seems so vulnerable compared to the rest of his family is different than what you'd assume. Fuyumi and Shouto both spend a lot of time around Endeavor, and have been in close proximity to his (relatively recent) decision to atone. They have seen his growth firsthand and come to terms with it. Rei has obviously taken a very different path to healing- not entirely voluntarily- but she has been working with doctors and therapists for years to change and recover and reconnect with herself and her children. Natsuo is off at college, and takes every opportunity he can to avoid Endeavor. He (understandably) wants nothing to do with him, and shows stagnant resistance to his attempts to atone.

The reason why Natsuo can't move on from the past is because his trauma didn't come from Endeavor. It came from Touya.

Now initially we were led to believe that it was simply Touya's untimely death that still bothers Natsuo, and it makes sense seeing how Endeavor drove him to the edge. Losing his best friend and brother as a young kid without parents to support him or any therapist to speak of can absolutely been the source of persistent emotional damage, but the more and more we learn about Touya's situation, the more evident it becomes that Natsuo's trauma is much much deeper than even grief.

Touya, as we know, was driven by an ambition instilled in him by his father and experienced extreme rejection sensitivity when those ambitions were no longer realistic. Touya's relationship with his parents could be described as insecure attachment, a psychological term primarily regarding how kids react and respond to their parents and other close relationships. As he was raised, Touya learned to equate his potential to be a hero with his personal worth and similarly confounded attention with love. The difference being, of course, that love is unconditional, but even attention was being continually directed away from him as a punishment for continuing to train and burn himself so he could once again become worthy in his fathers' eyes.

This is where Natsuo comes in. At first it was assumed that all of the Todoroki children were born out of Endeavor's strong-willed desire to have a child that could surpass All Might, but we learned that this isn't exactly the case. I'd argue that it was narratively poetic on Horikoshi's part once this was expanded upon. Fuyumi was born to support and encourage her brother, and that is the exact role she plays 23 years later, keeping her family together.

Natsuo's case is even more intersting.

It was bad enough if Natsuo was only born for the potential of his quirk, but it's even more sinister that the sole intent behind his birth was to discourage Touya from his ambitions. I'd say it was to replace him, but it was more to promote the idea that Touya was expendable than to raise aonther kid with the same ideals but the potential to actually achieve it, although that was definitely a secondary motivation.

The parallelism in this is how much Natsuo's life revolves around Touya. He was born because of Touya, he looked up to and took care of Touya as a kid, and the absence of Touya in the present continues to drive him and his decisions in life (but more on that later).

I continue to pray that we will eventually get more solid backstory on Natsuo and Touya's relationship as kids and where it cut off, wether on a bad note or not, but there are a few things we know for certain. One, Touya was mentally ill. Yes, he was rejected by his parents but he seems to have been particularly vulnerable to this compared to any of his siblings since he was the first of them and thus relied only on his parents for validation in his early years. He shows early signs of a variety of different mental disorders, particularly BPD, which I have previously written a whole analysis for on its own. Touya is shown self-harming both by the very nature of his quirk and even by very directly ripping his hair out. He was incredibly self-destructive.

This is why it is so much more concerning to me that Natsuo, who was AT LEAST four years younger than him, was his primary source of comfort. Natsuo was too young to have known anything more than 'my big brother is sad that daddy won't train him anymore' and he obviously wasn't equipped in any way to handle Touya's severe mental illness. Touya most definitely needed professional treaatment as his forms of coping were abnormal even for the neglect and rejection that he experienced. Natsuo comforted Touya through breakdown after breakdown, and more than that Touya relied on him and came to him voluntarily for support. Natsuo was the best option he had, and he took full advantage of that. The main source of Natsuo's trauma was Touya's reliance on him.

Not to say at all that this was in any way Touya's fault- he was mentally ill and desperately in need of some form of comfort to keep him sane; it was almost a survival method at this point since neither of his parents really acknowleged him at all anymore. Touya's instability hurt Natsuo more than parental neglect ever did, but it was the neglect that enabled it and striped Touya of the supportive atmosphere he would have needed at this point not only to prevent but to heal from the mental damage he had already suffered.

Natsuo dealt with this for years and you can see how much it hurt him to see Touya in so much pain, not only from Endeavor's rejection but from his own self harm as well. For Natuso to know that his brotherly love would never be the same as having loving parents; would neve be enough- but at least it was something so he continued to love and care about his brother for little in return- is indicative of the kind of character he is.

(Edit: After the events of chapter 302 we know that Natsuo's relationship with Touya wasn't perfect. I will elaborate more on this in a different post, but I just wanted to clarify that although we were shown a very high-tension scene between them, it is implied that this was a regular occurrence that Natsuo was usually more receptive too but tired out of, in addition to Touya's spiraling mental health. It fit with the natrative to show the tension Touya was feeling with his family from all directions, but Natsu and Touya clearly had a stronger relationship up to and before this point, evidenced by their sharing a room and playing together regularly.)

He is incredibly selfless, and it's interesting to note how many of his positive qualities as an adult stem from negative experiences as a kid. He never really felt love from his parents, so he relied on Touya (and likely also Fuyumi) for that as well. If he grew up learning he had to give love in order to recieve it back, it absolutely influenced who he became in the future, a solid example of this being the responsibility he feels to reach out and have a relationship with Shouto and further regrets that he wasn't able to help his abuse in the past either. Another aspect of his character that intruigues me is how gentle he is. Personality-wise he seems about as opposite as he could be from the awkward, stoic, emotionally-stunted person that is Endeavor.

There are a couple of reasons for this, beyond what I've already discussed.

One, he had little to no contact with elements of toxic masculinity growing up, especially not from Endeavor.

Two, most of the influence he did have growing up was from Fuyumi, who is established to have endlessly cared for him since he was a literal baby.

Three, he grew up in a household where almost everyone around him was in much more literal, immediate pain than he was so he developed a very strong sense of empathy that might also have been tied to early survivor's guilt.

Now I have one important distinction to make, and that's the temptation to label him as a 'softboy' or something of the like after seeing him caring for his family and more pointedly, watching him break down in tears during chapter 252. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with men being soft or vulnerable (on the contrary it's actually so so important and relevant that Hori is writing characters like this in a mainstream shounen manga but that's an essay for another time), it is unfair to label him as such based on a moment when his trauma is being exposed.

Because his truama stems from such a young age, there is a blurry line between just being born with more emotional intelligence and the situation he was in fostering those traits. You know, the classic nature/nurture thing. My point being, it's important to tread carefully when discussing the nature of his personality to avoid invalidating his trauma; I have no doubt that he is very strong for having survived these things, and the moments we see of him onscreen are definitely among his most vulnerable.

Another thing that people less familiar with Natsuo's character might assume is that he is hot-headed and argumentative. I thought that at first too- after all, he doesn't seem to shy away from yelling at Endeavor when given the opportunity. However, this doesn't seem to be the case at all.

The first real scene we see him in with Endeavor, the man walks into the room and Natsuo decides he can't handle it and goes to leave. However, Endeavor happens to be blocking the doorway. Endeavor physically stops him and provokes him to his face, asking him to say whatever is on him mind. While Natsuo is notably not confrontational, Endeavor is. I think it's fair to say that he felt at least uneasy at this gesture. Natsuo is very honest with his feelings, and it's obvious that he's pissed at the audacity of Endeavor to be so oblivious to his own son. This is presumably one of the first real interactions they've ever really had, and at this point Natsuo has been dealing with trauma (caused by Endeavor!) on his own for years, and Endeavor seems completely oblivious to his pain and dismmisive to the rest of the family's as well.

Again during the internship arc Natsuo tries to get along with Endeavor and this time he actually gives it a fleeting chance. Tensions are high, however, and the conversation very quickly becomes uncomfortable, at which point he leaves. It is continually implied that Natsuo is uncomfortable being around Endeavor because his very presence brings up painful thoughts and memories of a time when sharing the same space as him was a warning to run and hide. This is later directly confirmed by Natsuo as he says that every time he looks at Endeavor's face he remembers Touya and the pain he was in.

I feel like an important side note is that we have never seen Natsuo outside the context of his family, which is understandable, as the role he plays in the story directly relates to them. However, if you take a look at Shouto, even though his experiences have shaped him to become who he is, he definitely acts differently when Endeavor's not in the vicinity.

Back to Touya's death, it would be very rare that someone would mourn a death for an entire decade without finding closure unless there are other factors preventing it, and uncomfortably this seems to be the same thing for both Natsuo and Endeavor: guilt.

This is getting incredibly long already, but it's important to note that Natsuo probably felt an incredible responsibility to take care of Touya and protect him because of his empathetic nature. His love was never going to be the same as having loving parents. His encouragement was never going to be the same as having support from Endeavor. Even further than then neglect and abandonement, it was not being able to save Touya that really made Natsuo feel worthless.

He seems to try and remedy this inability to save Touya and diminish his guilt by doing everything he can to be better. He reaches out to Shouto to be a better brother, he consistently pushes his limits to entertain Fuyumi's notion of a happy family, and he's working hard towards a degree rhat will allow him to help people like Touya (and Rei) because he failed to do so in the past.

His bio mildly implies that he didn't have much of a direction he was heading in after high school, but Fuyumi's encouragement led him to seek out his current college career. This goes back to Natsuo's 'purpose' in a sense revolving arount Touya, from his birth to his relationship with him to his death, after which he lost his direction. They were always rather inseperable, so naturally their seperation hit Natsuo hard. He lost his direction in life so when Fuyumi encouraged him to rediscover it, he thought of helping people, because that's ultimately what he was born to do.

Thank you so, so much for reading this if you made it to the end! I clearly have a lot of thoughts on this. Let me know what you think about it as well, and hopefully we'll get more info on this soon in the manga :)

[hollowandmerciless]

So it was a love story after all

One of the things that has been said over the years about Attack on Titan is that it had no romance. Isayama, was the general consensus, didn’t write a love story. AOT is not about ships. It’s about the nature of humanity, about hatred, about racism and the will to survive. It’s got its roots in Norse mythology, in real life events from the recent past and a more ancient past. But love and romance, so everyone thought, never had a place in this story.

How wrong we all were.

As it turns out, Eren’s motivation for everything he did was always his eternal and undying love for Mikasa.

Here’s where I stumble.

I never saw any convincing signs of Eremika in this story. I didn’t like their dynamics in the first place – Eren seemed annoyed with her a lot of the time, or at best consider her his adopted sister – and what really rubbed me the wrong way during the entirety of the story was Mikasa’s unhealthy obsession with Eren. Yes, he saved her, and yes, she’s an Ackerman, who are known for their intense bonding to their host (although this was a false assumption as well, according to Zeke), but her obsession was unhealthy and annoying to the point that I was unable to see her character development or her actions. 

Her looks didn’t make her special to me (contrary to a lot of male fans I encountered on social media and irl), to me she was just one of the characters, albeit a rather uninteresting one, so I wasn’t paying as much attention to her as they did – we all pay most attention to our favourites (which in my case are Eren and Levi and to a lesser extent Hanji and Connie), and as a result I may have been blind for any character development she had. 

Maybe it’s because I’m a woman and I feel like she’s one of those poorly written -“the man is my only goal in life” -women. Women who in a story solely seem to exist as an appendage to the main character and have no life or will of their own. Eren and Mikasa were, in my opinion, never equals in this story.

I know many people do see Mikasa’s character development, and do see meaningful interactions between Eren and her, but I’m sorry, I can’t see them unless I use a microscope, and I think this is the main flaw in Isayama’s writing: with all the twists and foreshadowing (which I so thoroughly enjoyed), some hints he left are way too small, while some of his red herrings are too in your face to ignore. 

It also feels like Isayama changed the ending too often and forgot about a lot of foreshadowings along the way.

This is why it feels that we’re left with so many plot holes – if you read closely, there aren’t many, but the red herrings were sprinkled so abundantly throughout the story that we may have expected way too much. The origins of the Ackermans, the importance of Historia’s’ baby and “who is the father”, Zeke’s presumed 4D chess and Eren’s 5D chess, the Underground cities as protection against the rumbling, what caused the titan forest trees to grow so large, what happened 854 years ago in the year 0, Reiner heavily being foreshadowed to become the new Helos, what is the Hallucigenia thing, where did it come from and how does it create titans, where did Ymir’s first titan come from if there was no one in PATHS yet to build it – we don’t need all these answers, but somehow Isayama made us believe there was more to this than there actually was, and that’s why many of us feel robbed of the ending we wanted or expected.

The Historia storyline bothers me the most. The dynamics between her and Eren were much more interesting and realistic than those between Mikasa and Eren. To begin with, they were equals. Whatever happened, they always had each other’s backs. So it made sense to me that Eren had at least something to do with her choice to have a baby, especially because he was so vocal against it. Instead, she too married a guy who hadn’t been particularly nice to her in the past and nothing of it had anything to do with Eren or his plans, or their shared memories of previous founders. 

Parallels between OG Ymir and Historia seemed abundant, but apparently, in the end, we were supposed to see an essential parallel between Ymir and Mikasa. Her Stockholm-syndrome-love for the first King Fritz felt like a sort of deus ex machina (and yes, if you reread chapter 122 there were hints, but so scarce, so small, that they didn’t seem to hold much significance).

I find the fact that OG Ymir needed to see someone break loose from the clutches of obsessive love in front of her own eyes to finally break loose from her own love for Fritz a bit far-fetched, especially since I consider that this is what the entire story hinges on.

(Now we do understand why Isayama had Levi so severely wounded in chapter 114 (the explosion). Had he been fit, then he had most likely been the Ackerman who killed Eren (because this has been foreshadowed too, multiple times) – and that wasn’t supposed to happen. It had to be Mikasa, or else OG Ymir wouldn’t understand how to break loose from her bond.

Another thing that bothered me was Eren’s sudden confession of his love for Mikasa to Armin. Like I said, I found the Eremika dynamics particularly uninteresting, so this confession felt very unnatural and far-fetched to me – but, again, this is what the entire story is built upon. 

He does what he does for them, specifically for her.

It’s actually kind of sad that some fan theories were better/more interesting than the canon ending, but Isayama is the creator of this story and we’ll have to accept his ending – I do know that the more I’ve been rereading the final chapter, the less it bothers me how the story wrapped up. I might even come to like it, and when I reread the full story (which I will certainly do, I LOVE this story) I’ll pay more attention to the small hints Isayama sprinkled between the lines for us about the love Eren felt for Mikasa, to see if his words in 139 will finally make sense to me.

For now, Eren’s motives don’t feel real or grounded. If he’d cried about the millions (billions?) of deaths he’d caused instead of about Mikasa, it would have made more sense in the grand scheme of things. He’d cry for the lives he’s taken, and for the realisation that it has all been in vain, because the ones he tried to protect so that they can live long and happy lives, will now be consumed with grief and survivor’s guilt.

Still, could any of this have gone differently?

No.

Eren was rightfully desperate when he, from behind the bars of his cell, yelled at Hanji if there was another way. Because there wasn’t.

The irony was that Eren always fought for freedom, but all his life he had been a slave to his own destiny. He was unable to change the future, and could only try to influence it. Or else, as Kruger said, this cycle would repeat itself, again and again.

All in all I feel there was more to this story than what we got, it could have gone deeper, more foreshadowing could have paid off instead of being a red herring.

A bittersweet ending

Levi surviving and finally getting closure with the knowledge that this was what all of his old SC friends died for, brought me to tears. And that smoke, was that the disappearing of his Ackerstrength? 

The frame where he travels the world with his carers/adopted children Gabi and Falco and his new best friend Onyankopon (friend? lover? just look at that glance they share) made me so happy that this is now the desktop background of my laptop.

(I hope they’ll travel to the AOT equivalent of the UK so he can finally enjoy some decent black tea)

To me, at least this part was sweet. The rest: bitter, even the fates of the Alliance members. This is a story with an open ending. We don’t know if they’ll succeed on their peace mission, we don’t know what the Yaegerists will accomplish, we don’t know what the rest of the world will do; all options are open again, but maybe that is the point. Eren never meant to end the hatred, there’s no fighting the nature of humans. Erwin knew this already: mankind won’t stop fighting among themselves until there’s only one person left. 

Eren’s goal was to end the titan era, and at the cost of his own life and that of 80% of humanity, he succeeded. 

Learning that Eren, who held freedom in such high regards, was a slave to his own destiny all along was painful and ironic, but in a way he lives on as a bird, finally free, finally Vogel aus dem Käfig.

Thank you, Isayama.

[thevibraniumveterans]

I'M STARTING WITH THE MAN IN THE MIRROR...

I'm asking him to change his ways And no message could have been any clearer If you want to make the world a better place Take a look at yourself, and then make a change

-

A couple of points to make.

1. Loki and identity

According to head writer Michael Waldron, "in a series that, to me, is ultimately about self-love, self-reflection, and forgiving yourself, it just felt right that that would be Loki's first real love story." 

Loki learning to love himself, reflecting on who he really is as a person, and forgiving his past misdeeds, is the ultimate character growth, something that the TVA was hell-bent on preventing because it did not line up with how they saw Loki to be. Loki seeing himself in his mirror and realizing that he needs to change? Yeah. That's the big thing going on here.

According to Tom Hiddleston, "I don't think Loki's relationship with himself has been very healthy. Trying to accept those aspects of himself, which he's been on the run from, was a way of thinking about that in a really interesting way."

Think about how Loki praised Sylvie for being amazing because she's been running rings around the TVA. Again, it's a metaphor, because Loki has never in his entire life, honestly praised himself and talked about himself in a good and honest way. I will talk about how Sylvie is Loki's mirror and metaphor later, because this is important. It's also the reason why I started this post off with the chorus of Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror". It's relevant, okay?

According to director Kate Herron, "The whole show is about identity. It's about him, and he is on a very different path, and he is on a different journey." And it is! It's kind of how the saying goes, when one reaches rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up, right?

2. "Love is a dagger."

Terrible metaphor it may be, according to Tom Hiddleston of what Loki says to Sylvie in Ep3, "They were having a talk about love and trusting other people, and not being able to either love or trust for whatever reason." The dagger, then, would represent "Loki's experience of love, I suppose. He certainly feels like it's not been something he's been close to. It has been some sort of illusion that he has trusted and been let down by."

(https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/loki-love-is-a-dagger-sylvie)

3. "Love is… uh, something I might have to have another drink to think about."

Interestingly enough, I've had several thoughts on the relationship dynamic between Loki and Sylvie.

Yes, Mobius did describe it as "Two Variants of the same being, especially you, forming this kind of sick, twisted, romantic relationship", but even I'm having opinions that would start to contradict each other.

At first I went around saying that the dynamic between Loki and Sylvie are strictly platonic, and I pointed out that to me, the Nexus Event might've been honesty and truth, because according to the "Sacred Timeline", those are two things that nobody associates with Loki, and the fact that in that short amount of time, Loki realizing that he needs to be honest with himself throws the entirety of TVA into disarray. It's a chance for Loki to be honest with himself and really come to terms with who he is as a person.

Now where does Sylvie fit into all of this?

In my opinion, even from Episode 3, I saw Sylvie as a mirror, Loki's perfect metaphor. Why do I say this? Remember in Ep2 when she told Loki, "If anyone's anyone, you're me"?

I had jokingly thought to myself that Loki was just about to tell Sylvie how he feels about her and himself (because Loki talking about his feelings is rare, as he himself said, “this is new to me”), but then I thought a little deeper and went, “hmm, this doesn’t have to be taken in a romantic way at all, Sylvie is not a love interest (because to me that’s just weird, no offense, unless the circumstances were super different, under which I think it might’ve been okay then and depending on the situation, but not here in these circumstances) it’s just Loki admitting what kind of a person he is, and if he can be better, it’s just Loki figuring himself out.” (I'll talk about why I have conflicting thoughts later.)

Even Tom Hiddleston, in a recent interview with ComicBook.com, had specifically stated about his character: "It will be interesting to see what happened when Loki can't talk his way out of a situation, as is his dominant strategy in most encounters. I am most excited for fans to see what happens to Loki when he has nowhere left to run, when he can't delude himself anymore." That last bit with Sylvie? Yeah, Loki coming to terms with himself, being honest, not being able to delude himself anymore. He had nowhere left to run.

I know I did say that at first I did not see Loki and Sylvie as having any romantic tension between them, but please, hear me out first. 

According to Classical Mythology, PSYCHE is "a personification of the soul", which is exactly what Sylvie is to Loki. It would make the "if anyone's anyone, you're me" comment make way more sense. Remember how I said Sylvie is Loki's mirror? Loki getting this close to talking about his (what I see as non-romantic) feelings about himself, how he sees his own person, talking about himself in an emotional way, really admitting to his mirror that reflects the deepest parts of himself who he really was, and then just STOPPED before he could do so was so heartbreaking.

I had said that he was not gonna tell her he loved her because that’s so messed up (I get that narcissism is loving yourself but Sylvie is NOT Loki, nor is Loki Sylvie, they’re two different individuals), but Loki was just about to reveal his true feelings, his real emotions that he’s been trying to hide from himself all along. Loki can no longer run away (remember this comment from one of the interviews?), from himself, his emotions, there’s nowhere for him to run, it was time to be honest with himself.

Somewhere I made a comment that went like this:

Loki finally finding a connection with someone who is so much like him, yet so much unlike him is rare. ("Sylvie's not Loki. Sylvie is Sylvie" and "while they're the same, they're not the same" - Hiddleston / "She is him, but she's not him." - Herron) In that Loki has always been alone, and everything that he did was a cry for help that he never received, while Sylvie had been alone for so many years she's had to rely on herself to survive.

It makes sense then, that both Loki and Sylvie see themselves in each other ("I see a scheme, and in that scheme I see myself" from Ep2) and acknowledge that they are both lonely survivors who made it through so much, that they had each other for even that short amount of time.

That connection they had, that emotional attachment that they came to share, was not romantic in any way. (I'll get to why I’m conflicted about this, and why I may come to be okay with it, in a bit.) I read somewhere that the Nexus Event was not as Mobius described it, but was that Loki finally knowing that he'll never be alone, that he's honest with himself, which is something that goes against the TVA's dictates. THAT's the Nexus Event!

According to the TVA and Ravonna, Loki can't be caring! He can't change from being a homicidal maniac! He can't change! But we know Loki can. Loki himself knows that he can change. This knowledge and acceptance was enough to cause the damn Nexus Event, because the Timekeepers did not decree it! Even in Ep1, Loki declared that he would not let the TVA dictate how his story ends. It's clear that Loki's story is nt over yet.

Two lonely survivors find each other, so it's not surprising that Loki himself was THIS close to finally admitting the truth about himself, admitting and being honest with himself... until Ravonna pruned him.

Ravonna has always been pro-TVA and anti-Loki, so it's not surprising that earlier when she was speaking to Mobius, he's like, "Loki can change" but she's like "no because the TVA said so", so therefore when she hears that Loki is finally being honest with himself (through almost revealing his feelings to Sylvie), Ravonna cannot take it and obliterates him herself. According to her, which says that according to the TVA, Loki having an honest and real change of heart is the real Nexus Event and as such, must be prevented.

Now, about love, I guess, new to Loki as it may be. 

(Talking points from https://www.marvel.com/articles/tv-shows/loki-sylvie-in-love)

Here's where I think I can explain why though I'm not 100% on board with Loki being romantically involved with Sylvie I might warm up to the idea, the possibility of them being kind of a thing. I'm a little divided on it myself, but here goes.

First and foremost, here's something that head writer Michael Waldron says about the possibility of a romance: "That was one of the cruxes of my pitch [for the series], that there was going to be a love story. We went back and forth for a little bit about, like do we really want to have this guy fall in love with another version of himself? Is that too crazy?" Maybe, maybe not.

You see, as you know, Sylvie is a version of Loki, but is not Loki. Mobius describes them as "Two Variants of the same being." Director Kate Herron notes, however, saying of Sylvie about Loki that "she is him, but she's not him. They've had such different life experiences." Tom Hiddleston chimes in with "Sylvie's not Loki. Sylvie is Sylvie. I think he realizes, and she realizes, that while they're the same, they're not the same."

But what about the love story?

Mobius concludes through context clues that Loki is "an incredible seismic narcissist! You fell for yourself!" He taunts Loki, "You like her! Does she like you?"

Here's where it gets interesting. Loki had reassured Sylvie that people like them don't die so easily, they survive. He had praised her for running circles around the TVA, calling her amazing (again, another metaphor, but I think I've covered that), after which she had placed her hand on Loki's arm. Notice his reaction - he looks down at where her hand had made contact with his arm, shifts in a way that suggests his surprise. He's like, 'Is this warmth I'm feeling? I've never felt someone's gentle touch before. I think she cares for me, is that even possible for someone like me?'

He looks up at her, and though his story differs from Sylvie's, he recognizes that though he may have suffered, she had been physically on the run her entire life, whereas Loki had been mentally and metaphorically on the run from himself. We see from the look on his face that though Loki and Sylvie had spent less than 12 hours in each other's presence, he's come to respect her and her courage to do what he could never have. "You're amazing," he says.

Michael Waldron continues, "The look that they share, that moment, [it started as] a blossoming friendship. Then for the first time, they both feel that twinge of, ‘Oh, could this be something more? What is this I'm feeling?’ These are two beings of pure chaos that are the same person falling in love with one another. That's a straight-up and down branch, and exactly the sort of thing that would terrify the TVA."

Sylvie's not sure if she's got any sort of feelings for Loki, but she does ask if he's okay after they reach the golden elevators that would take them to the Timekeepers. Anyway, after the time loop punishment on Asgard, during which Lady Sif tells him, "You deserve to be alone and you always will be", Loki realizes that he's scared of being alone. He hopes that there might be someone out there with whom he can connect on a deeper level.

Director Kate Herron points out, "Who's a better match for Loki than himself?" Or Sylvie, for that matter. But because "but she's not him. They've had such different life experiences," it would make so much sense and would totally be in character for Loki to connect with someone he sees himself in, again, metaphorically speaking.

This is the ultimate journey of "self-love, self-reflection, and forgiving yourself", as Waldron puts it, so for Loki to come to terms that he might possibly love Sylvie is a metaphor for accepting himself as he truly is, not what or who he projects himself to be. It's about being kind to himself, because as he reflects on this new feeling about Sylvie, he's also reflecting upon himself and whether or not he can keep running from his emotions, as Tom Hiddleston says. The answer is no, he cannot run any longer from his acknowledgment that he's got feelings for Sylvie than he can run from his own realizations about himself. He forgives Sylvie as a metaphorical way of forgiving himself for his past misdeeds, like admitting that cutting off Sif's hair was not funny at all. It would make sense then, according to Waldron, that "that would be Loki's first real love story." Not a story about a narcissist, but a story of identity and self-acceptance and honesty.

The fact that Loki and Sylvie are two COMPLETELY different people who are so dissimilar except for the fact that they're two lonely survivors, could possibly result in them having a relationship.

Hear me out on why.

You know how Loki had said to Sylvie at the end, "this is new to me"? He means that he has never before known how to express love and care because he's never received any of either. For all of his life, he had been treated badly by all except perhaps his mother, but as in Ep3, he agrees that though he's had courtships before, none of those relationships, none of it included any type of love that felt tangentially real to him. Loki doesn't know what real love is... until Sylvie comes along. She does not make him know what love is, because he comes to terms to his feelings all on his own.

Tom Hiddleston says, "When Loki meets Sylvie, he's inspired solely by curiosity." Herron adds, about the relationship, "It was just about giving it the space to breathe and digging into it in a way that felt earned." And I think that I might come to accept that it is earned, in some way.

Two lonely survivors who quite literally run into each other, who recognize each other for who they really are, who accept each other and themselves, and who can finally be truthful and honest with themselves and each other. It's not always a game of checkers or chess. Sometimes, it's a maze of metaphors and mirrors.

I understand that this relationship between Sylvie and Loki is controversial for some, cute for others. If I hadn't already made myself clear, I was never really against the pairing, just that I was never 100% sure I'd board that train myself. I was initially of the opinion that their dynamic was strictly platonic, but because I'm open to different interpretations, I decided to have a look at why people saw the relationship between Loki and Sylvie as a beautiful one.

The conclusion I came to, is that there definitely is more than one interpretation of Loki and Sylvie's dynamic, and that I'm okay with both. We've got two episodes left, so I'm curious to see how Sylvie and Loki's dynamic plays itself out.

Ultimately, this story is about Loki.

Loki has to start with the man in the mirror. The person he metaphorically sees himself in is Sylvie, his perfect mirror, and he's asking himself to change his ways. No message, no relationship, no reflection, no realization, no feeling could have been any clearer. So, if Loki wants to be a better person, which we know he can and will be, he will take a look at himself in his mirror and make that change.

[everything-laito]

Hypersexuality and Laito Sakamaki (UPDATED)

Hiya guys! Been a long ass time since I’ve made a post like this, I’ve been getting so much ask box activity + had school so I haven’t had the time to make an original post! This has been something I wanted to write for a while, and not only was I busy with school, but this one hits home hard to me personally, so I was going back and forth for a bit writing it. But I think I’m ready :)

I know there’s kind of a general consensus that anything DL related comes along with a trigger warning whether stated or not, but just a TW considering I’ll be talking about some real life experiences; not in depth or detail of course, but just mentions of it :) Not only is this a Laito analysis but it’s also an educational tool to help other people know about this!

So, without further ado, rant under the cut! 

Hypersexuality is something that many sexual assault/harassment and rape survivors experience after the abuse. People associate asexuality or sexual repulsion as the only (or common) psychological affect after experiencing those situations. However, there is another affect that can happen, and it is more common than people think, and aforementioned, it’s hypersexuality. It’s basically having more sexual feeling and urges after the experience, in order to cope with the nonconsensual one. And it’s exactly what Laito experienced after Cordelia’s abuse.

I’ve also experienced something like this. I don’t believe I’ve experienced it in full swing, but definitely something like it. I haven’t been raped thankfully, but I have been sexually harassed/assaulted before a handful of times. I know I’ve briefly mentioned that in other analyses, but I’m just explicitly stating it here.

I first learned about hypersexuality this year actually, and my Laito nerd brain was like “holy shit that’s the name of what Laito is going through.” Then I was like “oh fuck I’ve gone through that a little bit too.” I thought going along with  would help me “heal” myself, and it really was doing the opposite. (UPDATE: realized that what I thought was a lot of sexual trauma/hypersexuality was mostly compulsory heterosexuality (but still with those dabbled in too—quite a terrible combo) because last month I realized I’m not attracted to men! Although those experiences I mentioned did mess me up a bit, realizing this is a huge step in the right direction for my own mental well being. Just had to make this correction on my part, since the original post had more emotional investment than I would have liked it to :)) 

Like I have said in my little update, I realized I was going through mostly compulsory heterosexuality while also going through some minor sexual trauma/hypersexuality. Although again, I have not had it as bad as Laito has or other sexual assault survivors (which I am grateful for that), I still have a personal grasp of coping mechanisms with traumatic experiences or experiences I did not particularly enjoy. (If you are interested in learning more about compulsory heterosexuality, feel free to send me an ask! I just don’t feel that it’s appropriate to talk about it in regards to Laito or make a post about it, since it doesn’t relate to him)

And that’s probably also why I can resonate with Laito so much, at least on that scale, and even if I experienced a grain of what he’s going through. I know he’s fictional but these are definitely real experiences and real feelings. 

Laito’s case is a bit different than just feeling overtly sexual. Although he’s trying to heal himself through sex and other intimate actions, he’s also doing it as a type of revenge. He doesn’t like purity, and in fact, he’s quite jealous of it. I’ve heard this is also a pretty human way of coping with this type of abuse, and it is why I love Yui as a character. She’s incredibly strong and sets an example for Laito. This makes Laito jealous yet entertained by her, and that’s also a reason why he probably keeps her around. He also attempts to use Yui as a vessel to avenge his own feelings (even not knowing about Cordelia being in her at first). I  personally wasn’t like that, but given the circumstances, there’s definitely people who are. Laito’s character can be so human to me sometimes, its astonishing, despite him being a character, a vampire, and just generally does some wacky or terrible shit. 

You could say his hypersexuality could also be similar to typical Pavlovian Conditioning. You’ve probably heard of the whole experiment of training (conditioning) a dog to expect food when they hear a certain sound and thus, his mouth waters. We’re conditioned by a lot of things in our lives, from triggering a “flight or fight” response from this specific ringtone or high school bell. It’s just a built in “routine” our minds utilize to process pattern recognition. I know I say this a lot, but we don’t know how vampire brains in the DL universe compare to human brains (and quite frank, I don’t think we will), so I will just do my typical human brain picking. 

In Laito’s case, he was conditioned to “love” Cordelia in a fashion that was incredibly gross. No, I won’t sugar coat it. In my Cordelia/Laito analysis, I talk about how Laito was probably groomed. Grooming is another type of conditioning. Although I don’t believe his grooming was sexual, it definitely “prepares” the victim to be exploited in that fashion later on. It’s to build a false sense of trust to be betrayed. Later on, when Cordelia started having sex with Laito, he became used to it in a “conditioned” fashion. When someone said that Cordelia was calling him, he knew what it was. He also thought it’s what he wanted, even though he knew that he didn’t. I believe I have referenced his MB Dark Prologue monologue before, but not this part of it. Here’s the monologue: 

――Who is it that I give my love to? Throwing myself away, I caught the sight of someone Someone I didn’t recognize, Suddenly, I realized I was looking into a mirror. The mirror reflected myself within it. I couldn’t see anything else. I am disgraceful for this greed. I was wearing a visage. What I wanted, certainly was love. It’s not that easy. Because of these words, I suffer. No matter how many times love is said, The only thing that will be important to me, Is only the physical contact and body.

I know I've said it in the Laito/Cordelia analysis, but Laito is visibly confused in his flashbacks. He’s trying to grasp what love is, but then convinces himself that love is physical contact, and not emotional connection, especially near the end. He knows he’s suffering but he is still conditioned to think like this. Same case for people who suffer from hypersexuality. 

Although many people do not know why it occurs, it can be a symptom or “side effect” from disorders, medication, and the like. In the sexual trauma case, I believe a main reason is that the person utilizes sex to cope with trauma, or because they are used to sexual acts being forced upon them. That’s where conditioning still comes in. He’s treated as one of her suitors, lovers, or the like. Even as a stand-in for Richter and Karlheinz. He doesn’t consider Cordelia to be his mom until the DF Vampire ending. On top of him not receiving emotional gratification which leads to all sorts of just awful stuff for him, sexual attention is the only type that he receives until Yui comes along. He is used to not having emotional support or connections, which is why physical contact is what he is more “comfortable” with, while at the end of the day it still does not satisfy him.  

It creates a positive feedback loop of him being unsatisfied, while being confused about where he’s unsatisfied in, leading to him trying to “fix” himself or avoid his own personal, emotional problems through lust and sex, but then still finding himself not “healing.” Then the cycle continues, enthusing his hyper sexual behavior even more.

I was sent some great articles from @souchiika on the DL discord (thank you so much!) and one of the articles stood out to me, since I did not talk about this type of topic on this blog yet. Here’s the link to the article, and here’s the quote that stood out to me!

Furthermore, indirect effects were also statistically significant, providing support to the hypothesis that depression and guilt would be serial mediators of trauma-hypersexual behavior relations. The paths through depression and guilt have been found to be the most significant with moderate and high indirect effects on hypersexuality. Moreover, male gender, as covariate variable, is a relevant risk factor for hypersexual behavior.

Hypersexuality is something that is still being researched like I mentioned earlier, but since these findings came out, it definitely makes sense in Laito’s case (and in general). Like I said, Laito does feel unsatisfied and even shameful of his actions, which is more apparent in the beginning of his and Cordelia’s “relationship.” In those flashbacks, he asks himself if this is what he really wants, and although he attempts to force himself to like these actions as a coping mechanism, there is still a relative degree of shame and guilt he has. It is also apparent nearing his DF Ecstacy ending when he finds out that Karlheinz foresaw Cordelia having sex with him, and even wanted it to happen. All that shame and guilt came bellowing out while he was in a fit of distress. In initial attempts to mediate this guilt and shame, he projected his feelings onto other women through sexual acts, leading to more of this hypersexual loop. I know I talk about Laito projecting a lot, but it is frequent in his character. Like I’ve always said, it’s typical “bully” power dynamic manipulation. If Laito can bring a victim of his down to his level, then he feels better about himself (but it satisfies him for only a short while, until Yui in MB+). 

Also, note that this is no excuse or justification for him to rape or sexually assault others. It is merely an explanation as to why he does it (as for my posts in general, it’s not a justification, it’s an explanation). 

Another reminder that rape and sexual assault isn’t about the sexual urges, but about power. That’s why anybody with any background can do it, given the circumstances. 

This post was a bit hard for me to write, so I apologize if I got too overtly personal for your liking. Like I’ve said in the past, I’m not writing this to gain sympathy too, and sure that sounds superficial of me to say now (although I truly mean it), I just want to use my platform as an educational tool. Sorry about the change in my typical tone :) 

Sorry if this was too much of a doozy, I really wanted to talk about it and to educate people, despite it being a bit personal. I just felt like the most effective way was to convey how real this topic is, despite this fandom knowing about it in a fictional setting. 

I hope you have a great day! -Corn

[anarchy-n-glitter]

The Volkov Files

Summary: Years after the Raccoon City incident, questions arise after the body of an old friend is used to taunt Leon Kennedy on a mission. Who was Envy Snow really? Why was she in Raccoon City when the outbreak happened? When was she killed and who killed her?

FILE 1, FILE 3

FILE 2

IV

Leon looked at Envy as she stood, bent over and catching her breath. She was rather tall and pale, her hair matching that same snow white skin. She wore a blue, zip-up vest and a white skirt that was already splattered with blood. She looked at Leon through her long, doe-like lashes with eyes that resembled icy water. Her lips were parted slightly as her chest rose and fell, taking in deep breaths. However, Leon could see the deep red gashes on her upper arm that contrasted with her pale skin and stained her gloves.

“We have to get out of here.” She breathed. Leon nodded before pointing at her arm. She looked down at her arm, lifting it slightly to observe it. He got down onto one knee, leading Natalya to do the same.

“I’m aware. I didn’t have time to patch it up, as you can tell.” She said before gesturing to the dead zombies on the ground. Leon reached into a pouch on his hip and retrieved a small can. He shook it before holding out his hand. Natalya eyed it suspiciously then, slowly, she held out her arm, allowing Leon to take it. He began to spray her wound with a cold, scentless liquid that stung slightly. Natalya winced, shocked by the sudden sensation. Leon finished up quickly and reached into his pouch again to grab bandages, which he promptly began to wrap around her arm.

“Now we can get out of here.” He said. Natalya looked at him, silently figuring him out as if he were some sort of puzzle for her to solve. He was bright eyed and painfully optimistic, young too. She feared that he was a danger to himself; that he’d end up getting killed. She knew it wasn’t fair, but it was how the world worked, no matter what field of work you were in.

Natalya’s eyes glanced at the letters on his chest: RPD. She smiled in a fake manner, hoping that he knew what he was doing.

“Then lead the way.” She said. Leon took her hand and helped her up to her feet. She brought her other hand up to grasp at her wounded arm and watched as Leon cautiously walked down the hall, flashlight and gun pointed in the same direction. He seemed capable enough, but Natalya wasn’t quite ready to trust someone she just met.

Puddles splashed beneath their heels as the walls groaned and creaked. Leon was ready to fire, because he knew at any second a zombie could round the corner. Being ready meant life or death. Natalya felt incredibly vulnerable standing behind Leon. She didn’t have a flashlight of her own and the light of his wasn’t enough to illuminate their surrounding area. Something could sneak up behind her and she’d be done for.

Perhaps that is his plan, she thought to herself, maybe he knows and he’s leading me to my doom. Of course, Natalya knew that this was just paranoia. Years of being a spy took a toll on how one views the world and the people living in it. Now that Raccoon City was having its own mini apocalypse, this thought process was amped up to one hundred.

Normally she wouldn’t be so reliant on someone, but now? Now that she was out of bullets and wounded? Now she would certainly rely on someone, as long as she knew that they were trustworthy.

“How much longer?” She asked him. He glanced back at her, opening his mouth to reply, but he was stopped by the sounds of growling. He whipped his head around and focused on the rotting creature in front of him. He backed up slightly, the hand with the gun coming down and out to the side so he could shield Natalya.

“Get back!” He yelled to her, and she obliged without question. The zombie reached out at Leon, its fingers flexing and moving in unnatural ways as it attempted to grab at his warm flesh. Natalya drew a knife. It was a small pocket knife that was easily concealed by her thigh-high boots. It fit easily into her hand and remained hidden there until she knew what Leon was doing.

The zombie lunged, screeching hysterically. Leon dodged its pathetic attempts at catching him and re-aimed his gun, pointing it directly at its head. He fired, blood splattered everywhere as well as chunks of skull, but the creature was not deterred. Natalya backed up against the wall, watching wearily as the zombie went in for another attack. It grabbed Leon by the shoulders and prepared to bite, but he pulled a knife and buried it deep into the monster’s chest and pushed it away. He aimed again and took two more shots, both hitting the head of the zombie. This time it fell, collapsing to the ground with a loud THUD!

Leon walked over to it and grabbed his knife back before turning his attention to Natalya.

“Come on. I don’t think this thing is gonna stay down for long.” He told her, and she obeyed, running toward him, her footsteps echoing in the quiet corridor. She found herself grabbing ahold of his shoulder, allowing him to completely lead the way. They reached a door and Leon slowly opened it, peeking through the crack to be sure the coast was clear. They entered the main hall of the RPD, it was empty save for Marvin, as it usually was. Natalya broke away from Leon, looking around as he rushed over to Marvin, who was behind a screen, laying down on one of the couches.

He stopped and glanced back at Envy.

“Hey, the way out’s over here. I just gotta get Marvin and put this last piece in the thing and then we can get outta here.” He told her, gesturing to where the giant statue of a woman stood. Natalya nodded and followed him over to the back of the hall, where she finally saw the man Leon was referring to as “Marvin.” He sat on a green couch, holding his right side, which was bleeding profusely. Leon placed the last medallion into a slot on the base of the statue, and the base shifted, revealing a tunnel below the floor. Natalya stared in awe, shocked that such a place would have secret tunnels. Although, she supposed that wasn’t the oddest thing she had come across in America, especially in this city.

Leon had been a bit preoccupied, arguing with Marvin as Natalya stared into the depths of the RPD. Things got more heated behind her, but she wouldn’t realize that until she heard a gun being cocked. She turned around to see Marvin holding Leon by gunpoint.

“It’s on you now… just go!” Marvin told Leon. Leon simply stood there, looking at the dying man. Natalya came up behind him and placed her hand on his shoulder.

“I understand.” Leon said before touching Natalya’s hand and turning around. The two walked down the steps together and took their first steps to reuniting with the outside world. Before they entered the tunnel below, Leon took one last look at Marvin.

2

The rookie cop, as I had heard some people call him, whether through notes or actual survivors, was a kind man who had helped me escape the RPD. I fear that, had I not met him, I might have been the only living person left in that place. I might not have made it without Leon.

He led me into a room below the RPD, which might be in your interest to investigate after this. There was a small model of the station on a desk, and it didn’t seem to have any significance, despite how many times I searched it.

Leon and I made it into some sort of boiler room, but that was when we got separated. He went ahead of me after we heard a noise. I had already picked up some ammo and reloaded my weapons, so I went to investigate. Something happened and a tunnel collapsed behind me, the last thing I remembered before that was the sounds of metal getting smashed in. I supposed maybe some sort of foundation involving pipes broke and it caused the doorway to crumble, but I wasn’t sure, so I continued on.

3

Natalya picked up a box of handgun ammo and quickly loaded it into her gun, following Leon closely into a boiler room. It was large, and, despite its size, was rather cramped. The floors were metal and echoed loudly as they walked. Steam rose from a machine below them, creating a thick fog that temporarily blinded the two. She gripped her gun tighter.

There was a loud grunt, followed by booming footsteps above them. More sounds resonated throughout the chamber, unsettling moaning that communicated pain. Leon lifted his gun again and looked back at Natalya.

“What was that?” She asked. Leon didn’t answer, instead, he continued to travel down the path. When the noises didn’t stop, Natalya froze in her tracks.

“Envy…” Leon began. Natalya lifted a finger to her lips.

“I’m going to investigate.” She told him. He wanted to tell her not to, but he knew it would do no good. It took him a few moments, but eventually he nodded. Natalya turned around and ran off in the other direction in search of some stairs.

Leon continued on the path he was taking before.

V

Transcript (translated):

September 24th, 1998

N: Leon and I were separated. I can hear the sounds of metal hitting metal from down the corridor. I might need backup, I might need to be extracted from the city; there aren’t many people left in the city and I haven’t seen Ms. Wong anywhere. Not a trace of her.

P: Who’s Leon?

N: A man I met. He knows his way around the city; a police officer.

P: What does he know of us?

N: Not much. He doesn’t even know my real name.

P: Good. I’m afraid, NV, that we cannot extract you from the city until you find Ms. Wong. You have to trade information.

N: I don’t even know if she’s alive!

P: That doesn’t matter, find her and get the information. If you cannot do that you are useless to us.

N: So if I don’t find her you’ll leave me to die here?

P: I’m afraid so. You’ll be a liability.

N: Fine.

P: Report back when you find the target.

N: Yes, sir.

(Phone line ringing.)

2

The halls were dark and quiet, save for the brief shuffling of feet coming from a zombie or two. Natalya held up a dying flashlight, one that she found on the body of a dead officer. From what she could tell, she was in a prison. Cells could be seen to her left and right, some occupied by zombs (as Natalya liked to call them), some not. They would reach through the bars, their bloody hands grabbing for her even though she was just out of their reach. She wanted to shoot them, just to be sure they didn’t get out and try to kill her later, but she knew that she was low on ammo again. Despite being in a police station, ammo was pretty scarce.

Then she saw them, a figure, a shadow moving in the darkness. She could see from their silhouette that they were wearing heels, and assumed that this person was a woman. She hid behind the wall, peaking around the corner every now and then to watch what they were doing. The woman opened the gate down the hall, entering and talking to someone. Natalya wanted to move out, but knew that she couldn’t. Silently she hoped that this woman was Ada, but she remembered Leon mentioning a woman named Claire, so the chance was slim.

She could hear two voices vaguely. They spoke in a whisper; one was a deeper voice that sounded vaguely familiar, and the other was the distinct voice of a woman. The man’s voice rose, claiming that he didn’t even know her name. Then Natalya heard it, he announced his name. “Leon Kennedy.” Natalya could feel her hopes rise and immediately became relieved now that she knew that he was okay. Heels clicked as the woman began walking down the hall.

“Name’s Ada.” She told him, her heels clicking loudly as she walked off. Natalya pressed her back against the wall and began to move away from the corner. The target was there, but she needed to see Leon again, just to make sure he was actually okay. She found a door and opened it, which led her into a closet. She hid and waited for the target to move, then she’d follow her… after she talked to Leon. She opened the door again to watch where Ada went, and once she was sure she was gone she moved toward the corner again.

She saw him standing there, reading a paper. She grabbed ahold of the bars on the gate and tried to push it open, only to realize it was locked. Leon turned around after he heard the gate rattle, gun pointed at her. His face softened as soon as he realized it was her.

“Leon?” She called out. He smiled at her.

“Envy.” He breathed out before immediately rushing over, stopping just in front of the gate.

“How’s your arm?” He asked. She smiled.

“Fine.” She reassured him. She looked over him, making sure that he didn’t have any wounds on him. He reached out to push on the gate, which didn’t budge even on his side. Natalya shook her head.

“It’s locked.” She told him. He sighed and took a step back before drawing his gun again.

“I’ll come find you.” He promised her. She shook her head again before looking behind her, eyeing the corridor Ada had gone down.

“Don’t worry about me. I have something else I need to do. Maybe we could meet up in the parking garage.” She told him. He looked over his right shoulder after hearing a groan, then he looked back to her.

“Yeah. Deal.” Natalya then ran off, attempting to catch up with Ada. Leon was left wondering what it was she had to do; and what she was doing coming from where Ada had walked in.

Natalya ran down the hallway to her left before coming to a door.

3

I had tracked Ada the best I could in the prison but I ended up losing her. I’ll admit, perhaps seeing Leon beforehand was a mistake, but I needed to know if he was okay. When I had met him, I was sure he was doomed. But, as time went on and as he fought, I realized that I was routing for him. I wanted to see him succeed in this unfair world. We would grow closer as time went on, after we had reunited of course.

As time would go on, I would fall for him. He was so optimistic; it was almost contagious. He tried his best to protect the survivors, and, if I weren’t in the predicament I am in as I write this, I would have loved to see him continue on as an officer. He had the heart for it, and he wore it on his arm for the world to see.

I just wish I could get out of here, but I can’t right now or they’d find me. And I know he’ll never see this, but I wish I could have gotten on the train with him and his friend Claire. I knew that they were following me, that man and his woman, so I knew not to lead them to the last few survivors. They’d kill them and then me.

So here I am, writing this as some sort of sick memoir. I’m hiding in a locker, shining my flashlight on this small notebook that I found on a nearby desk. I just wanted to explain how I got here, possibly even what led up to my death, if this should go in that direction. And I want-again, even though I know he won’t see it-Leon to know that, despite how short our time was together, how wonderful he was as a person. Any other person would have left me to die in the station, but you helped me.

4

Leon clutched the note in his hand, crumpling the sides slightly as he read. He couldn’t believe it. He knew she was killed, he saw her body on his last mission but… she had died years ago. The people who had killed her were tracking her in Raccoon City and she refused to go with him because she knew that they’d come for her and kill them all.

Leon knew that Wesker was involved. He had to have been, why else would he leave her body for him to see? But the thing that got him was, they preserved her body. They had planned to use her for something, whether it really was just to taunt him or for something else.

He knew that she had cared for him though, and that on its own was something to behold. Despite how emotionless she seemed, he could tell that she was fond of him. Although, from the way she worded it, it seemed like it was more of a fascination with him. Now, with this new evidence, he questioned what his life would have been like had the Raccoon City incident never happened. Would she still have come to Raccoon City to look for Ada? Would they still have met? What would have happened if Umbrella wasn’t after her? If Wesker wasn’t?

So many questions. All without answers.

5

She had lost Ada, but she gained a stalker. It was the man. The man from the party. He had come for her. Natalya was still unsure of the reason, but she knew it wasn’t good. Perhaps he knew who she was, possibly since the party, but now he was going to get rid of her. She picked up her pace, walking faster, acting like she didn’t know he was there. He walked at the same pace, allowing her to get some distance between her, but she was a tricky one. The next zomb she saw she’d throw at him and make a run for the parking garage so she could wait for Leon.

He was silent. Every part of him was silent, even the way he walked. Natalya didn’t like that.

She turned another corner, and, for once in her life she hoped a zomb would be there. There wasn’t. So she kept walking, searching every nook and cranny for ammo or other valuable items. She found a hip pouch just a few minutes earlier, and now she was looking for other things. For example, a key card so she could get the hell out of the station and out into the streets so she could lose this creep.

Natalya only had ten days left to live, and now the reaper is following her.

VI

“Leon!” Natalya shouted. He turned around immediately, watching as she struggled to run. Ada stopped dead in her tracks and watched as a familiar face ran up to them. Envy Snow, she knew her and she knew that Envy was a codename. She eyed the woman wearily, but didn’t bother to say anything to Leon, who seemed relieved and overjoyed to see her.

“You made it.” He breathed. Natalya nodded and looked over at the woman in the trench coat: Ada. She stood at the mouth of the garage, staring the two down behind her dark glasses. Natalya, for once, felt like she couldn’t be bothered with the mission. Ada was there, yeah that was great, but she didn’t feel rushed to get info out of her. She didn’t want to do the tradeoff yet, especially if it meant leaving without Leon.

Leon followed her gaze to Ada.

“Oh, Envy, this is Ada. She’s helping me get out of here.” Natalya stepped forward, smiling at the woman she knew was a spy.

“I know… we’ve met.” Ada didn’t say a word to Envy. She knew that she had to do an exchange, but she knew she couldn’t do it there. Not in front of Leon. There was a loud crashing noise from the corner of the garage which put Leon on edge. He began to move forward slowly, which in turn caught the attention of Ada and Natalya.

“I think we should get going.” He said, moving ahead of the two spies. Ada was next to get moving, but Natalya stood there staring at the wall that began to crumble as something large moved through it, going deeper into the building and moving away from them. She finally turned around to follow Leon and Ada after being sure the thing that caused the hole wasn’t going to follow them.

The streets were as she remembered them: wet and simultaneously on fire with the infected hiding behind every corner. Ada took the lead, guiding the other two through the dilapidated roads to-what they hoped to be-freedom. Leon stood protectively in front of Natalya, despite her own urge to protect him and her ability to protect herself. She would never admit it aloud, but she thought it was sweet.

Zombies toppled over crashed cars as they attempted to get to the group. Natalya would try not to jump when she heard one scream or groan, but, especially when it was a scream, she couldn’t help it. Ada walked coolly and calmly through the streets, clearing whatever she could with what little ammo she had left, leading Leon and Natalya to do the same. Gunshots would echo through the open world, which, despite what they were aiming to do, would draw more zombies to their location. They would come in droves, lunging at the group when they got close enough. Natalya grasped her pocket knife in her hand and went in for the kill. She figured if she could stab it in the head they’d die. This plan, however, only worked for certain zombies. Natalya quickly realized this as one grabbed ahold of her arm and prepared to bite into it. She panicked and tried to rip her arm away, but to no avail. Her free hand fumbled for her gun.

Her gloved fingers kept grazing the handle, but in a panic, she was unable to grab ahold immediately. Luckily, as they were walking, Leon heard the commotion. Natalya had finally managed to get ahold of herself and the gun and promptly raised it. She was still fending off the creature, trying her best to keep its gnashing teeth away from her arm. Leon rushed over, his gun aimed and at the rotting person. Natalya had managed to get her knife free with her gun hand (on accident, of course), but in the process, she had lost her hold on the creature’s head. It was about to bite down, when two gunshots rang through her ears.

The bullets had torn through the back of the zombie’s head, shattering its rotting teeth in the process. Its grasp loosened around her wrist as it fell backward, still gurgling and growling. Natalya took a moment to process what had just happened, but Leon grabbed her shoulder, turning her around to look at him and Ada.

“We gotta keep moving.” He reminded her as more of the infected closed in around the trio.

2

They were in a lab. An underground one. Leon had just gotten Ashley back, who hadn’t shut up since they got there.

Hell, she hadn’t shut up at all.

She was complaining about something he had said, something that was supposed to be a joke, but he supposed that didn’t matter to her. Scrap metal laid below them, on the ground glistening in the sunlight that leaked through the large opening above them… the one that they fell through. Leon was sure there was nothing else there, right?

Wrong.

He saw it as he observed their surroundings, laying there like some abandoned doll. Hair, as pale as it had been before. He felt himself go cold as his heart sped up. He cautiously approached the object

(or person)

in question, hoping that whatever

(or whoever)

it was hadn’t been laid there as a trap. As he grew closer, he realized that it, indeed, wasn’t a what… but a who. He couldn’t help but gasp in shock, unable to suppress what he had been feeling. He had been looking for her for seven years, and he found her… but…

She was as pale as she had been when he met her, but with more hints of grey in her complexion. Her mouth hung open, her lips looked like pale rose petals. He didn’t want to believe it. He couldn’t believe it. She was smart, she knew what she was doing. She survived that hell only to be killed in the end. He bent down and placed his hand on her shoulder, allowing the cold flesh to come into contact with his own warm skin. She was dead alright… but for how long had she been dead?

It looked as if she had been killed recently; surely if she were killed in 1998 she would have decomposed by then, right? Everything was still intact. Her skin was flawless still, save for the puncture mark on her neck. Leon ran his hand over it, feeling the bump as if touching it would tell him what happened to her, but alas, nothing. She laid on piles of scrap metal, her body contorted in a beautiful way.

She laid with her head facing her left, her hair covering the lower part of her face and falling into her mouth. Her right arm was raised beside her head; her hand was curled into a loose fist, while the other laid over her midsection. Her legs were bent, both facing the left with one foot underneath the knee of the leg on top. She looked as if she were sleeping, but Leon knew that was far from the truth.

Why was she there? Who would have done this to her? Who could he turn to and trust enough to find him these answers?

“Leon!” Ashley screamed out, drawing his attention away from the corpse of the woman he once loved.

3

A man and woman watched a wall of screens, each with a different image being displayed. The woman’s head turned in the direction of one particular screen before leaning down to whisper something in the ear over her lover.

“That one.” She told him, her vivid green eyes glancing over at the far left of the room and pointing to the lower image. He brought the surveillance footage up and into the front, allowing it to overtake all the other screens. It showed Leon as he observed the corpse of Natalya, as he searched her for any signs of life. The woman giggled to herself, so quietly that her lover didn’t seem to notice. She watched, completely fascinated by what the man on screen was doing. He knew she was dead, right? She had been dead for years, but they knew. They knew that he was there, and they had dropped her preserved body onto the pile of trash for him to find, because he’d never know. Not like they did, at least. He’d never learn what had happened, he’d never know why they dropped her there to be found by him. He’d never understand why she had killed the spy herself.

“Looks like he’s found our present.” The man stated in his usual monotone. He laced his fingers together in front of him and continued to watch, also intrigued. He wondered what Leon would do. How would he react? Would he be able to piece this one together? Or, perhaps, he would be stuck wondering what happened for the rest of his life. It was a game to the duo; one created through jealousy and manipulation as well as their mutual love and respect… but this? This was different.

“He has…” She agreed. She then looked down at her lover and wrapped her arms around him from behind.

“I love you, you know.” She uttered in his ear. He turned his head slightly, facing the direction her voice was coming from.

“I’m aware.” He responded with a hint of amusement in his voice. She laughed and stood up straight.

“I’m going back to the labs, come down when you’re finished… and tell me what Mr. Kennedy does next.” Her lover nodded in agreement and she left promptly, allowing him to return to the screens.

4

“Thanks for saving me.” She said to him in a voice barely above a whisper. Leon smiled.

“It was no problem, really.” Ada, who was becoming impatient, turned around to face the two.

“Look, we have to hurry if we want to get out of here alive. Pretty soon there’ll be no hope for us.” She snapped. The two stared on in silence, eventually nodding in agreement and continuing on with their journey. However, Leon had some questions that needed answering.

“Was that the intel you needed?” He asked Ada. She didn’t look back when she spoke to him.

“Unfortunately no. Ben didn’t come through.” She told him. Leon processed what she had said before asking yet another question.

“Well, what exactly are you looking for?” He asked.

“More info on the people responsible for this mess.” She answered. Natalya froze in her tracks, suddenly remembering her mission. She was sure Ada knew as well, but she wasn’t going to say anything in front of Leon. Instead, she pushed past him to walk beside Ada, leaving him confused as he stood En garde.

Ada glanced at the platinum blonde out of the corner of her eye. She did, indeed, recognize the girl. She was informed that she would be sent over to exchange information. The girl would give her more insight on Umbrella, as promised, and Ada would tell her whatever she found.

She observed Natalya closely, noticing that she was a few years younger than herself. She walked with a certain confidence that not many girls her age would have. She was rather similar to Ada, in that respect. From a young age she had been confident in herself and oozed said confidence, and it showed even then… in the midst of a damn apocalypse.

Ada knew why Natalya had walked over, but she wasn’t ready to exchange just yet.

END FILE 2

[lethesomething]

Ghost of Tsushima and the Hands of Fate

I see we're still trying to prove that games are an art form by making everyone feel bad.

For the record, Ghost of Tsushima is one of my favourite games in a very long time. It is extremely pretty, the aesthetic and general … polish is *cheff's kiss*. You can pet foxes and backstab people. The fighting mechanic is decent and there are just So Many Hats.

But also, it has the kind of story that pulls you in to the point where you have to drop the controller to hide behind your fingers going 'ohgodno'.

It is an absolute bastard of a game, is what i'm saying.

So let's talk about that, and specifically about Straw Hat Ryuzo and how I feel bad for him.

I am, by the way, going to be talking about the narrative structure of a video game about medieval samurai, so expect like, a bunch of spoilers.

The narrative is one of the big draws in Ghost of Tsushima. Like yes, it's an open world rpg with fighting and flower picking and all the important stuff, and also yes, some of the bits are sloppily written (looking at you, specifically, 'Ending to Norio's Arc'), but the game definitely sets out to Tell a Story.

And because this is a Serious Game that openly bases itself on samurai movies like Kurosawa's, it is a Drama.

In many ways it is an utterly brutal Bildungsroman, a narrative in which a young man finds his identity.

I have joked with friends about the clear intent for this game to make Important Stories, in that it actually tries to tick all the boxes of hotbutton subjects: childhood trauma? Obviously. Gay relationships?  Yup. Survivor's guilt and PTSD? Oh yes. Domestic abuse? Several. Suggested pedophilia? Damn, even that.

The foxes are there to soothe the soul

It's interesting to note that from a writing point of view, this bildungsroman is even Very Classically Structured. It goes so far as to be a three acter, with a pretty standard build-up.

 Jin Sakai, traumatized man that he is, spends the first act slowly getting to grips with the bit where you don't fight an army by yourself by  just walking up to them and challenging them With Honour, like he has been taught his entire life. Instead of getting stabbed repeatedly in the chest and set on fire, he  discovers guerilla warfare and creates this persona of the Ghost, a literal vengeful spirit seeking justice for the island of Tsushima.

It gets him some big wins and in the second act he slowly embraces this identity until things get to a head where he clashes with his entire old life. The third act starts at the hero's lowest point and is utterly gut wrenching (i am Still Not Over the horse, game), forcing him to pull himself together for an ending that is, well…fitting for the narrative. It's an ending that is needed, but perhaps not what Jin deserves.

 But anyway, this is about Ryuzo, and how until that ending, I was very upset about his role.

You see, this story is told in part through the lives of Important Npc's, who contribute to Jin's journey of self-discovery. This is pretty obvious with someone like Yuna, who is the one to introduce him to the Stealth Life and who is a driving force behind the marketing of the Ghost.

Someone like Masako, meanwhile, portrays vengeance and self discipline, but Jin also kinda tries to make her fill the mother-shaped hole in his heart.

Lord Shimura, meanwhile, is an Obvious Father figure but also stands for Jin's past. He's rigid and ineffective, which pushes Jin to further look for alternatives.

Ishikawa, that other mentor figure, is more moderate and flexible, but he also represents a possible unwanted future. He literally warns Jin at one point not to become like him.

Norio, then, is as mentioned not the best written, but he too is a person that searches for his destiny and tries to become like his hero, while only barely holding on to his sanity. 

Kenji, I'm sorry, I love you but you're just comic relief, that's all you do. It's an imporant job in the story, because god does it need it, but you're not teaching Jin anything other than how to make different 'resigned sigh' noises.

So what about Ryuzo? From the very beginning, Ryuzo's story didn't really sit right with me. There's the obvious class issue: he's one of the few important npc's that are poor, and he's an Antagonist.

It has always rubbed me the wrong way that his original intentions were good, depending on how you read it. He's trying to feed his men. He essentially made the decision that this one man's life (even if it is an old friend) is worth the price for the lives of his band of ronin.

It's a lot more complex than that, of course. Ryuzo partly blames Jin for his predicament in life, and he also knows that samurai treat their soldiers as chattel, which the game goes out of its way to show you they DO.

  Essentially, he's a complicated character who makes bad decisions for arguably good reasons.

Ryuzo did everything he could to save the lives of the people he cared about. He went so far as to abandon his honor and his childhood friends, to try to make this happen.

Does that ring any bells?

It kinda clicked for me at the very end of the game.

Jin, being the protag in an assassin game, does a lot of killing. But some of these deaths are given more meaning than others. Some of them are there to make you feel like shit (the Horse Again, but you lose several friends along the way), others serve a more defining purpose.

You see, there's a fair amount of what i'd like to call 'intimate violence' in Ghost of Tsushima. It's an old trope. The 'if someone was gonna kill me, it had to be you' kinda scene that hails from a worldview in which some deaths are better than others, sure, but some deaths are better even than living. It's a worldview in which life itself is less valuable than your legacy. You die for your place in history. For your clan, for your family, for your honor.

Bushido is full of that sort of thing, so it makes sense that a game building on that worldview, would use the heck out of that trope.

  The first is Ryuzo's death. You fight him in a duel, in which he tries to plead for some resolution. You could let him go, come up with some story. But Ryuzo is a traitor, so Jin ultimately defeats him and sends him off in what would be a touching moment of bro friendship if it wasn't for the blood and my 21st century sensibilities.

You grant him a warrior's death, is what I'm saying.

  It happens again with Shimura. The game actually gives you a choice here, but if you go through with it, the scene almost perfectly mirrors Ryuzo's.

You fight in a duel, and Jin tries to get his uncle to just let him go, come to some kind of resolution. But Jin has been branded a traitor, and the only way for Shimura to restore his honour and clan, is to take his life;

This being a game in which you have the power of bamboo strikes and also save games behind you, Jin ultimately wins the duel, and has the option of granting Shimura a warrior's death.

It is utterly heart wrenching and that whole scene has no business being as pretty as it is. The swelling music? The fucking strings? The anguished yell?

Fuck.

  But anyway.

That's about where it clicked with me, that Jin never had a choice.

Ryuzo's whole role wasn't fair, but this is one of those stories where life itself is just not fair at all.

Both him and Shimura are there to show us Jin's path.

  What if, the game says, Jin had listened? What if he'd taken one of several offers the Khan made and surrendered?

What if he'd cooperated?

Well, we see in Graphic Detail what would happen. He would get pushed into doing horrific things. He gets manipulated, again and again, until there is no way out anymore. At some point it becomes clear to him that he's on the wrong side but whenever he tries to devise some plan to turn things around, things go Badly. He's firmly stuck in Khotun's web and the only way out is death.

But what if, the game says, Jin had stayed true to his honour? What if he had listened to his uncle, not defied him, if he had dropped the Ghost before it was too late?  If he'd gone full bushido and repented for the shogun and done all the groveling and the proper stuff.

Samuraihood is just another straightjacket, says Shimura's fate. The tenets are so rigorous you would take your loved ones life, while fucking bawling your eyes out. Shimura knows damn well it's unfair but he also has no way to leave this path. It's a ride he cannot, and will not, get off alive.

  Jin never had a choice.

There was only ever one way for him to go.

Like let's be real: pretty much everyone in this story was dealt a bad hand. It's a narrative about resilience in the face of utter horror, of reinventing yourself and giving up entire structures of faith. People like Masako, Yuna, Norio are finding peace in dealing with huge levels of trauma and regret.

The goal isn't to start a family and live happily ever after, it's to Survive.

Submitting to the mongols would have killed Jin's spirit. Standing tall and rigid as he was taught to do would have, ultimately, killed him as well.

  "I've given up everything to save these people", he says near the end. "And I would do it again."

That's someone who has no regrets.

Jin never could have taken another path and he knows it.

And this is why Ryuzo needed a fate as shitty as his. He fell, so Jin could walk.

I'm sorry, it's still not fair.

This game needs some comfort fic.

[innuendostudios]

Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie, a video essay on how the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers recruit. Clocking in at 41 minutes, 6756 words, 633 individual drawings, and 27 sources (including three full books), it is by far the longest and most heavily-researched video in The Alt-Right Playbook. I am very tired.

It took so long to put this behemoth together that my Patreon started to dip. So, maybe a little more than usual, if you want to keep seeing videos like these, please consider backing me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

Say, for the sake of argument, your friend Gabe is starting to worry you.

Gabe’s always been just, you know, a regular guy. Not very political. He likes video games, sci-fi, comics, Star Wars, and anime. White guy shit. The only offbeat thing about him is you suspect there’s like a 20% chance he’s a furry. For all intents and purposes, Gabe is a normie.

But recently Gabe’s been spending a lot of time on some radically conservative forums, and listening to radically conservative podcasts, and picking some radically conservative arguments with you and your friends. You never would have expected this, not from Gabe, and, given the speed it’s happened, it’s worrying to think where it might be headed.

How have the Alt-Right gotten their hooks into your friend?

If you’ve ever known a Gabe, this video is for you. Here’s How to Radicalize a Normie.

Step 1: Identify the Audience

What you need to know before we begin is: around 2013, the Nazis went online.

Hate groups in the US, as tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center, had been growing in number since the noughts, but, between 2012 and 2014, they dropped by almost a quarter. Patriot groups dropped by over a third. However, hate crimes stayed about the same. Radical conservatism was not shrinking, but decentralizing. Still radical, still often violent, but now full of white nationalist nomads unlikely to join a formal organization.

This didn’t make them harmless. What it did was protect their asses from the typical hate group cycle: getting the public’s attention, making allies in conservative media, swelling their numbers, and then eventually disgracing themselves with failures, infighting, and, often enough, members committing horrific acts of violence, which come with social and sometimes legal consequences for all the other members.

So the Alt-Right and their fellow travelers these days don’t so much have members. They have hashtags, followers, viewers, and subscribers. This insulates them from their own audience. If Gabe, as a member of that audience, were to go out and commit a crime on their behalf, there’d be little doubt they had a hand in radicalizing him, but it’d be very hard to claim they told him to do it. On some of these sites, where Gabe spends hours and hours of his day, he’s never created an account or left a comment; the people radicalizing him don’t even know he’s there.

This distributed nature is what makes the Alt-Right, and the movements connected to it, unique. (You may remember a notable proof-of-concept for this strategy.) Doing almost everything online has, as compared with traditional hate movements, dramatically increased their reach and inoculated them from consequence. The trade-off, as we will see, is a lack of control.

And so we come to Gabe.

Gabe exists at the intersection of the kinds of people the Alt-Right is looking for - straight white cis men who feel emasculated by modern society, primarily, though they do make exceptions - and the kinds of people who are vulnerable to recruitment. Gabe fits the first profile in that he got bullied in high school, and often feels he has to hide his nerdy side for fear of getting ridiculed. The Alt-Right also has success with men who can’t get laid or recently got divorced or feel anxious about an influx of non-white people in their community. These things can make one feel like less than the confident white man they’re “supposed” to be. And it’s the closest they will ever come to being minoritized.

Regarding the second profile, it’s important to know that Gabe is not categorically different from you or me. He’s a cishet white dude - his problems are not unique. There isn’t a ton of research into the demography of the Alt-Right, but there may be a higher-than-average chance Gabe has a history of being abused or comes from a broken home. You don’t know if it’s true of Gabe, he’s never said. But most abuse survivors don’t become Nazis. The things that make people like Gabe recruitable tend to be situational: it happens often during periods of transition, as dramatic as the death of a loved or as benign as moving to a new city. Things that make people ask big life questions. Gabe has concerns like economic precarity, not knowing his place in a changing world, stressful working conditions. In other words, Gabe is suffering under late capitalism, same as everyone, and it’s entirely plausible he could have gone down the path to becoming a Leftist.

This is not to make an “economic anxiety” argument: the animating force of the Far Right is and always has been bigotry. But the Alt-Right targets Gabe by treating his “economic anxiety” as one of many things bigotry can be sold as a solution to. It is their aim that, when dissatisfied white men go looking for answers, they find the Alt-Right before they find us.

Step Two: Establish a Community

Were Gabe pledging an old-school hate movement, there would probably be a recruiter to usher him into an existing community. But that’s the kind of formalized interaction modern extremists try to avoid. Online extremism has many points of entry, and everybody’s journey is unique, so rather than be comprehensive we will focus on what are, in my estimation, the two most common pathways: the Far Right creates a community Gabe is likely to stumble into, or infiltrates a community Gabe is already in.

The stumble-upon method has two main branches, one of which is just “Gabe ends up on a chan board,” which we’ve already done a video about. The other is kind of the polar opposite of 4chan’s cult of anonymity: Gabe ends up in the fandom of a Far Right thought leader.

These folks are charismatic media personalities (that’s charismatic according to Gabe’s tastes, not ours; I don’t understand it, either). These personalities may gain traction on any number of platforms, from podcasts to reportage to blogging, though the most effective platform for redpilling is, and yes I am biting the hand that feeds me, YouTube. They may get Gabe’s attention through fairly standard means, like talking about or even generating controversy to get themselves trending, while some of the more committed will employ dubious SEO tactics like clickbait, google bombing, and data voids (just pause for definitions, we don’t have time).

What they tend to have in common, especially the most accessible ones, is that they don’t present themselves as entry points to the radical Right. In fact, many did not set out to be Far Right thought leaders, and may not think of themselves as such (though they are often selling products, of which the Alt-Right are among their biggest purchasers, and it’s not like they’re turning the money away). How they present is the same way anyone presents who wants to be successful on social media: accessible, approachable, authentic. The face-to-face relationship a budding extremist forms with their recruiter or the leader of their hate group’s local chapter are here folded into one parasocial relationship with a complete stranger.

Why this person appeals to Gabe is they’re not selling politics as politics, but conservatism as a kind of lifestyle brand. They rely heavily on criticizing or ridiculing the Left: feminists are oversensitive, Black people unintelligent, queer folks doomed to loneliness, and trans people insane; I dunno if it’s a coincidence that these are all things Gabe thinks about himself in his low moments. By contrast, they don’t sell conservatism as having sounder policies or a more coherent moral framework, but that abandoning progressive principles and embracing conservative ones will make Gabe happier. Remember, Gabe isn’t looking for white nationalism or misogyny, what he wants is the cure to soul-sickness, and these friendly micro-celebs are here to offer a shot of life advice with politics as the chaser. It is extremely important that politics be presented as a set of affects, not a set of beliefs.

The second pathway is infiltration, which is its own beast. Media personalities sometimes become gateways to the Right almost by accident: they do something edgy, a part of their audience reacts positively, and, facing no real consequence, they do it more; this leads to further positive reinforcement from conservative fans, the rest of the audience acclimates, and the cycle repeats, the personality pushing the envelope further and further based on what flies with their increasingly conservative audience. In this way, they become a right-wing figure by both radicalizing and being radicalized by their audience.

Infiltration is deliberate.

The Far Right will reliably target any community that has 1) a large, white, male population, 2) whose niche interests allow them to feel vaguely marginalized, and 3) who are not used to progressive critique of said interests. This isn’t to say progressive critique doesn’t exist, or hasn’t been baked into the property from the beginning, but that it has been, so far, easy for white guys to ignore. As such, progressives within that community probably don’t talk politics much, and women and minorities are perfectly welcome to post, same as anyone, but just, you know, don’t, don’t make identity politics, you know, like, a thing.

Given Gabe’s proclivities, he’s probably already in a number of fan communities where he can geek out and not get teased. And this is where the Far Right will go looking for him

Communities are at their most vulnerable to infiltration at times of political discord. This can happen naturally - say, a new property in the fandom has a Black protagonist - or it can be provoked - say, a bunch of channers join the forum and say provocative things about race to get people arguing - or both. Left to its own devices, the community might sort out its differences and maybe even come out more progressive than they started. But, with the right pressure applied in the right moment, these communities can devolve into arguments about the need to remove a nebulously-defined “politics” from the conversation.

The adage about bros on the internet is “‘political’ means anything I disagree with,” but it’d be more accurate to say, here, “‘political’ means anything on which the community disagrees.” For instance, “Nazis are bad” is an apolitical statement because everyone in the community agrees. It’s common sense, and therefore neutral. But, paradoxically, “Nazis are good” is also apolitical; because “Nazis are bad” is the consensus, “Nazis are good” must be just an edgy joke, and, even if not, the community already believes the opposite, so the statement is harmless. Tolerable. However, “feminism is good” is a political statement, because the community hasn’t reached consensus. It is debatable, and therefore political, and you should stop talking about it. And making political arguments, no matter how rational, is having an agenda, and having an agenda is ruining the community.

(Now, it is curious how the things that provoke the most disagreement tend to be whichever ones make white dudes uncomfortable. One of life’s great, unanswerable mysteries.)

You can gather where this is going: a community that doesn’t tolerate progressivism but does tolerate Nazism is going to start collecting Nazis, Nazis whose goal is to drive a wedge between the community and the Left. Once the Left acknowledges, “Hey, your community’s developing a Nazi problem,” the Nazis - who are, remember, trusted, apolitical members of the community who might just be kidding about all the Nazi shit - say, “Did you hear that, guys?! Those cultural Marxists just called all of us Nazis!” Wedge. Similarly, any community members who say, “but Nazis though” are framed as infiltrators pushing an agenda, even if they’ve been there longer than the Nazis have. They get the wedge, too.

This is how fandoms radicalize. They are built as - yeah, I’ll say it - safe spaces for nerds, weebs, and furries, and are told that the Left is a threat to their safety. Given a choice between leaving a community that has mattered to him for years and simply adjusting to the community’s shifting politics, the assumption is that Gabe will stay. This assumption is right often enough that a lot of fandoms have been colonized.

What is true of both of these methods - Gabe finding the Right or the Right finding him - is that Gabe does not come nor stay for the ideology. He’s here for the community, the sense of belonging, of being with his people, of having his fears validated and his enjoyment shared. The ideology is simply the price of admission.

Step Three: Isolate

There is a vast, interconnected network of Far Right communities out there, and Gabe is, at this point, only on the periphery. In order to keep him in, they need to disrupt his relationships to other communities, and become, more and more, his primary online social space. Having made this space hostile to the Left, they now seek to break his connections to progressives elsewhere in his life.

This is hard to do online. The whole appeal of moving radicalism to the internet is that your away-from-keyboard life doesn’t have to change. You are crypto the moment you log off. Some thought leaders will encourage their audience to cut ties with Family of Origin, or “deFOO,” but, even then, they can’t monitor whether the audience has actually done it the way an in-person movement could. And so alienating Gabe from the Left is less controlled, and, consequently, may be less total. How much Gabe isolates is up to him.

But the vast majority of Far Right media presumes an alienation from the Left. Part of conservative bloggers and YouTubers making the Left look pathetic is doing a lot take-downs and responses. This is a constant repetition of the Left’s arguments for the purpose of mockery, and, for Gabe, it starts to replace any engagement with progressive media directly. He soon knows the Left only through caricature. It also trains him, if he does directly engage, to approach the Left with the same combative stance as his role models. (For reference, see my comment section.) And this is only if he doesn’t partake in one of the many active boycotts of “SJW media.”

In addition to mocking the Left’s arguments, they also, curiously, appropriate them. This is one part sanitization: liberal centrism is more socially acceptable; indeed, many figures on the outer layers think of themselves as moderates, even as they serve as gateways to radicalism. But, also, many of Gabe’s problems could be addressed by progressive leftism, so they sell him racist, sexist versions of it. Yes, there is a problem with workers being underpaid and overextended, but the solution isn’t unions, it’s deporting immigrants; yes, there is a chronic loneliness and anger to being a man in the modern age, but it’s not because of the toxic masculine expectations placed on you by the patriarchy, it’s women being slutty; yes, wealth disparity does mean a tiny percentage of elites have more influence over culture and politics than the rest of us combined, but the problem isn’t capitalism, it’s the Jews. And it’s hard for Gabe to reject these ideas without, in the process, rejecting the progressive ideas they’re copied from; the Right’s “take the red pill” is, to the untrained eye, similar to the Left’s “get woke.” (Or, at least, the bowdlerized version of “get woke” that is no longer specifically about race which came to fashion when white people started saying it, grumble grumble.)

Take the red pill or reject them both; either is a step to the right.

As this rhetoric slips into his day-to-day conversation, even as seemingly harmless “irreverence,” it may strain relationships with people who are not entertained by this shit. Off-color comments about race and gender can certainly be wearying for female and non-white friends, which can lead to a passive distance or an eventual confrontation [“why is everyone but me so sensitive?!”], which only seem to confirm what his reactionary community says about liberal snowflakes. If he says these things on social media, he may get his account suspended, and, if he comes back under an alt, you can bet his new reactionary friends will be the first to reconnect, applaud the behavior that got him banned, and repeat should he get banned again. A few cycles of this and he’s lost touch with everyone else.

Also, his adoption of the insular, meme-laden terminology of this community makes him less and less comprehensible to outsiders.

Over time, sources of information get replaced with community-approved ones: conservative news, conservative YouTube, conservative Wikipedia if he’s really committed. The Algorithm soon takes note and stops recommending media from the Left. He stops watching shows with a “liberal agenda,” which usually means shows starring women and people of color. Now, there is evidence that the human mind responds to fictional characters similarly to real people, and that consuming diverse media can decrease bigotry in ways roughly analogous to having a diverse group of friends, which is one of many reasons we say representation matters. By consuming a homogenous media diet, Gabe stymies his ability to have even parasocial relationships with anyone who isn’t a cishet conservative white dude or one of their approved exceptions.

To the extent that any of this happens, it happens at Gabe’s discretion and at his own chosen pace. It has not been forced on him, only encouraged and rewarded. But the fact that it hasn’t been forced can make him all the more willing to accept it, because it seems safe to consider; even though his life and social circle are changing to accommodate, he does not feel committed. But many Gabes have walked these halls, and, if they close the door behind them, there’s nowhere left to go but down.

Step Four: Raise their Power Level

(...and they say we ruined anime.)

Consider the ecosystem of the Alt-Right as layers of an onion, with Gabe sitting at the edge and ready to traverse towards the center. (No, I’m not just going to reiterate the PewDiePipeline, though, if you haven’t seen it, go do that.)

The outer layer of the onion is extremism at its most plausibly deniable. Without careful scrutiny, the public-facing figureheads could pass as dispassionate, and the websites as merely problematic rather than softly fascist. It is valuable if Gabe believes this as well; that, at this stage, he believe the bigotry is simply trolling, the extremists an insignificant minority, and any report of harassment faked. That he believe where he is is as deep as the rabbit hole goes. And that he continue to believe this at each successive layer.

People in the deepest crevices of the Alt-Right self-report getting redpilled on multiple issues at different times in their journey to the center of the onion. If Gabe’s first red pill is about the SJWs coming for his free speech, he’ll think that’s all anyone in his community believes; there’s no racism here, people are just making a point about their right to use slurs. Then, when he gets redpilled on the white genocide, he’ll laugh at those Alt-Lite cucks who tried to sweep the race realists under the rug, and at himself for having once been one, but acknowledge that those channels and websites are still useful for onboarding people, so he won’t denounce them. At the same time, nobody takes those manosphere betas seriously.

And this process is reiterated with every pill swallowed: gender essentialism, autogynephilia, birtherism, Sandy Hook truth, pizzagate, QAnon if he’s really out there. The heart of the onion is typically the Jewish Question, but these can happen in any order, and in any number. But each layer sells itself as being, finally, the ultimate truth. Each denies the validity of the others; the layers ahead don’t exist, they’re made up my liberals, while the people behind are asleep where you are now awake. That’s why they chose “the red pill” as their metaphor: take it, and everything will be revealed. That’s why it cozies up with conspiracism. But what’s supposed to follow is that this knowledge help Gabe in some way, and it doesn’t. Blaming immigrants doesn’t actually fix the economy, and hating women doesn’t make men less lonely. But, having been alienated from everything outside the onion, once that sinks in, the only recourse on offer is to seek out the next pill.

And pills are easy to find. Those within the network have laissez-faire relationships, even as they, on paper, disavow one another. When they need a source or a guest host, they aren’t going to go to the Left; they’re going to feature each other. The Left is the enemy; their ideas are beneath consideration, and the only reason to engage them is for public humiliation. [Shapiro’s book.] But you can interview “western chauvinists” and that doesn’t mean you’re endorsing them, just, you know, it’s fine to hear ‘em out, nothing should be off-limits in the marketplace of ideas. Besides, Nazis are apolitical.

And because these folks keep showing up in each others’ metadata, regardless of what they say, Google thinks there is definitely a relationship between the guy “just asking questions” and the guy denying the Holocaust. Gabe is softly exposed to many flavors of conservatism just slightly more radical than he is now, and is expected, at the very least, to not question their presence. This is an environment where deradicalizing - listening to the Left - would be sleeping with the enemy, but radicalizing further? You do you, buddy.

Gabe’s emotional journey, however, is somewhat more complex. If you’ve spent any time reading or watching reactionary media you’ve probably noticed it’s really. fucking. repetitive. It’s a few thousand phrasings of the same handful of arguments. Like, there’s only so many jokes about attack helicopters! But these people just crank out content, and most of it’s derivative; the reason to pick one personality over another isn’t because they say something different, but because they say it differently. Gabe just picks the affect it’s delivered in.

Repetition dulls the shock of the most egregious statements, making them appear normal and prepping him for more extreme ideas. Meanwhile, the arguments themselves? They’re not good. (BreadTube will never run out of shit to debunk.) They are repetitive because they’re not good. They’re mantric. A good argument you only need to hear one time; if you can follow it, internalize it, and explain it to someone else, you know you’ve understood it. But a bad argument can’t convince you on its own merits, so it will often rely on affect. This can be the snappy, thought-terminating cliche, or the long, winding diatribe that sounds really sensible while you’re hearing it but when someone asks you for the gist you can only say “go watch these 17 videos and it’ll all make sense.” Both these approaches are largely devoid of content, but, gosh, if they don’t sound sure of themselves.

And that mode can be very persuasive, but it doesn’t stick the way a coherent argument does. It needs to be repeated, the affect replenished, because the words matter less than the delivery. There needs to be a steady stream of confident voices saying “we’ve got this figured out and everyone else is stupid” or Gabe’s gonna notice the flaws. They are not well-hidden.

And the catch-22 of returning to that stream over and over is that these communities are stressful even as they are calming. People afraid they will die virgins go to forums with people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, you will die a virgin.” People afraid Syrians are coming to kill us all watch videos by people who share and validate that fear, and also say, “Yes, Syrians are coming to kill us all.” Others have already pointed out that rubbing your face in your worst anxieties is a form of digital self-harm, but I need to you understand the toxic recursion of it: Gabe is going to these communities to get upset. Every emotion is converted into anger, because sadness, fear, and despair are paralyzing but anger is motivating; Gabe feels less helpless when he’s pissed off. And so, while he’s topping up on reassuring nonsense, he’s also topping up on stress. And, being cut off from everything outside the network, the only place he knows to go to release that stress is back to the place that gives it to him. It’s a feedback loop, pulling him deeper and deeper on the promise that, at some point, relief will come.

It is a similar dynamic that keeps people in abusive relationships.

When someone in Gabe’s community makes a racist joke, they are presenting Gabe with a choice between the human interaction of laughing with his friends and his societal responsibility not to be a fuckin’ racist. And not laughing seems ridiculous; everybody’s friends here; no one’s getting hurt; this is harmless. And so the irreverent race joke draws a line between the personal and the political, and suggests that one can be safely prioritized over the other. One way to look at radicalization is being asked to stick with that seemingly innocuous decision as the stakes are raised incrementally: first with edgier humor, and then comments that are funny because they’re shocking but you couldn’t really call them jokes, and then “funny” comments that are also sincerely angry, but, in each instance, since he laughed with his bros last time, it stands to reason he should keep favoring the personal over some abstracted notion of “politics.”

This is why the progressive adage “the personal is political” is among the most threatening things you can say in these spaces.

I’m not trying to make a slippery slope argument. Most of us who laughed at edgy jokes when we were teenagers didn’t grow up to be Nazis. It is a slippery slope in the specific context of being in community with people trying to radicalize you. Gabe is a lonely white boy in need of friends, and laughing at a racist joke is personal, while not laughing is political. Staying in a community that has Nazis in it is personal, and leaving is political. The personal is what brings people together and the political drives them apart. (The “only if some of them are bigots” part of that sentence is usually lopped off). There’s this joke on the internet that nerds perceive only two races: white and political. Following that logic, what could be more apolitical than an ethnostate?

They are banking on his willingness to adapt his beliefs to suit an environment that meets a need. That same need can be satisfied by white nationalism. There are few things more seductive to people who doubt their own worth than being told you are valuable simply for being white. And you can sub in male, cis, straight, allosexual, or able-bodied. It just takes priming: by the time Gabe officially embraces bigotry, he’s already been acting like a bigot for months. The red pill is simply the moment he says it out loud.

Change Gabe’s surroundings, and you change Gabe.

Step Five: ???

The final step in a traditional extremist group would be getting a mission. But that is one thing the Alt-Right can’t do. Once you start giving clear directives, you can’t play yourselves off as a bunch of unaffiliated hashtags and think tanks; you are now a formalized movement accountable to its followers, and can be judged and policed as such.

To my mind, Charlottesville was an attempt to become such a movement, taking things offline and getting all the different groups working collectively. And, as so often happens when these people get in the same space - especially with no official leaders or means of control over their members - it backfired. Their true colors came out before they were ready and a counter-protester lost her life.

This would be the point where, historically, an extremist group starts to disintegrate. Their veneer of respectability gone, they’re now hated by the public, the media wants nothing more to do with them, and everyone not in jail turns on each other or goes underground. This is also the point where the liberal establishment says, “My job here is done,” and utterly fails to retake control of the narrative, allowing the next batch of radicals to pick up more or less where the last one left off.

But to an already-decentralized group like the Alt-Right, Charlottesville was bad but eminently survivable. People retreated back to the internet, with its code words and anonymous forums, but that’s where much of the work was already done anyway. The platforms where they organized kept tolerating them, the authorities still didn’t classify them as terrorists, and any disgraced figureheads were replaced with up-and-comers.

The major change in strategy is that it doesn’t seem anyone has tried to formalize the Alt-Right since.

So where does that leave Gabe? He’s gone through this whole process of largely hands-off indoctrination - and I should stress his journey may look like what we’ve outlined or it may look different in places, this video is not comprehensive - but now he’s swallowed every pill he cares to, he blames half a dozen minorities for everything he sees as wrong with the world, and no one will give him anything to do. You’ve got this ad hoc movement frothing young men into a militant fervor and then just leaving them to stew in their own hate. Should we really be surprised at how many commit mass shootings?

This is a machine for producing lone wolves.

Leaving men to take up arms of their own volition is a way of enacting terror while being just outside the popular conception of a terror cell. There are also, of course, more classic militias that will offer Gabe clear directives - they’re recruiting from the same pool. And Gabe may stop short of this step, settling in a middle layer that suits him or finding the inner layers too extreme. But violence is the logical conclusion of an ideology of hate, and, should Gabe take this step, he can approach violence in the same incremental fashion he approached conservatism.

He can start with yelling at people on Twitter, and then maybe collective brigading, DDoS attacks, sharing dox, leaking nudes, calling their phone numbers, texting them pictures of their houses from the sidewalk. These acts of cruelty become games of oneupmanship within his community. All this can start as far back as Step 2, and get more intense the deeper he goes. Some people join explicitly partake in harassment and violence the way Gabe joined to talk about anime.

But this behavior can serve as a kind of buy-in. The Left and the feminists and the LGBTQs and the Muslims and the immigrants are all, within his community, subhuman. You’ve maybe heard the conservative catchphrase “feminism is cancer”; well don’t treat cancer by having a respectful exchange of ideas with it, but by eradicating it down to the last cell. Cruelty against the Left is framed as righteous.

From any other perspective, posting someone’s bank information is something you might feel ashamed of. Which creates a psychological imperative not to consider other perspectives. A thing that keeps people in is staving off the guilt they will reckon with the moment they step out. Gabe is also aware that anything he’s done to the Left could be done to him if he leaves; some communities even keep dox on their members as insurance. And the things he’s been encouraged to do to the Left will likely make him feel that the Left would never take him now; the radical Right is the only home he’s got. Harassment becomes another tool of isolation.

Steadily, options for Gabe are whittled down to being a vigilante or a nihilist. There are periods of elation: moments the Alt-Right feels it’s winning - or, more accurately, the people they hate are losing - are like cocaine. They are authoritarians, after all. But the times in between are mean and angry. They are antisocial, starved of emotional connection, consuming incompatible conspiracies that may at any point run them afoul of one another, devoted to figureheads who cater to but cannot risk leading them, and living under constant threat of being outed to the Left or turned on by the Right for stepping out of line. Gabe took this journey for the sense of community and purpose, and, but for the rare moments everything goes their way, the Alt-Right can’t maintain either. They can only keep promising his day will come, a story he could get from a $5 palm reading.

The feeling there’s nothing left but to kill yourself or someone else is so common it’s a meme.

But there is always a third option: Gabe can leave.

Pre-Conclusion: For Fuck’s Sake Do Not Make Gabe Your Whole-Ass Praxis

Before we continue, I want to state plainly that Gabe went off the deep end because he found a community willing to tell him that, because he is a cishet white man, the world revolves around him. Do not treat him like this is true.

If a fraction of the energy spent having debates with America’s Gabes were spent instead on voter re-enfranchisement, prisoner’s rights, protections for immigrants, statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, and redistricting, Gabe’s opinions, in the societal sense, wouldn’t matter. Reactionary conservatism is a small and largely unpopular ideology that is only so represented in our culture and politics because they’ve learned how to game the system.

And I get it. Those are huge problems that are going to take years to address, where, if you know a Gabe, that’s a conversation you could have today. And, if you think you can get through to him, it is worthwhile to try. This is a fight on many fronts and deradicalization is one of them. But it is only one, so please keep it in perspective. It sends an awful message when we spend more time trying to get bigots back on our side than we do the people they are bigoted against.

Your value as a lefty does not hinge on whether you can change Gabe’s mind.

Conclusion: How Gabe Gets Out

He may just grow out of it. These communities skew young, and some folks hit a point where hanging with edgy teens doesn’t feel cool anymore.

He may become disillusioned after the movement fails to deliver on its promises.

He may become disillusioned if something goes wrong in his life and his community isn’t there for him, if he feels they like his race and his gender but don’t actually care about him.

He may be shocked if he sees the Alt-Right at its worst before being appropriately conditioned. Charlottesville was a step too far for a lot of people.

His community may turn on him for any perceived unorthodoxy, and he may leave out of necessity.

He may be separated by circumstance from the community - a trip with no internet, hospitalization, arrest - and not be able to top up on the rhetoric. This may lead him to question his beliefs.

His community may disappear, either tearing itself apart or getting shut down by authorities.

He may have incidental contact with populations he’s supposed to hate, and have trouble reconciling who they are in person with what he’s been told about them. In his community, people bond over shared intolerance, but, suddenly, being tolerant helps him make friends. (This is one reason the Alt-Right has made a battleground of the college campus.)

He may form or revisit relationships outside the network, people who can offer him the connection he’s been looking for. This may reintroduce outside perspectives. More importantly, it rekindles his ability to have healthy relationships at all, something the Alt-Right has estranged him from.

As with recruiters, it seems these “escape hatch” relationships can sometimes be parasocial; coming to respect a public figure who is on the Left, or is critical of the Alt-Right.

Someone he is close to may compel him to choose, “me or the movement.” A lot of young men leave to save a romantic relationship.

Hearing stories from people who’ve already jumped may help; there aren’t a lot of public formers, and some raise suspicions as to their sincerity, but it is getting more common, and may be the closest we get to exit counseling for the Alt-Right.

He may become aware of the ways he’s being manipulated, or have them revealed to him, maybe because he stumbled into BreadTube, I dunno. Knowledge that you are being indoctrinated is no guarantee it won’t work - you are not immune to propaganda - but it can help one resist.

And he may revisit a core belief system that used to guide him, be it religion or social justice or a really wholesome fandom, and be reminded of the identity he used to have.

Moments like these, in isolation or in aggregate, can inspire Gabe to jump. They are also good times for friends to intervene. The reach and the impunity that comes with the internet means it has never been easier to fall into reactionary extremism. It has also never been easier to get out. People who exit skinhead gangs often fear for their lives; for Gabe, there’s a chance getting out is as simple as going to a different website. Much of his community does not know his name or his face and he may not important enough to dox.

What doesn’t get Gabe out - not reliably, not that I have seen - is an argument with a stranger who proves all his facts wrong and his ideology bunk. Facts don’t always work because facts don’t care about his feelings. This was about staying in a community, and holding onto an identity, that mattered to him. It was about belonging, and that is something a rando from the other side of the culture war can’t give him and probably shouldn’t be responsible for.

The theme here is human connection. Before he can do the work of disentangling himself, and facing the guilt of what he’s believed and maybe done, he has to know there’s somewhere for him on the other end of it. That the Right hasn’t ruined him. They’ve told him all of history is groups fighting each other over status, and, without his clan, he’ll be an exile. He needs a better story.

I don’t know that lefty spaces are ideal for this, in no small part because bringing someone who’s a bit of a Nazi but working on it into diverse communities is… questionable. And it probably wouldn’t be good for him, either; having just gotten out of a toxic belief system, he’s going to be deeply skeptical of all ideologies. In a perfect world, people who care about Gabe could build for him - to use a therapy term - a holding space. Someplace private - physical or digital - where Gabe can work out his feelings, where he is both encouraged and expected to be better but is not, in the moment, judged. That comes later. It is delicate and time-consuming work that should not be done in public, but we find these beliefs, built up over the course of months or years, tend to fall away very quickly with a shift of environment. Change Gabe’s surroundings and you change Gabe.

But, instead, a lot of people who jump are functionally deprogramming themselves, which is working for a lot of them, but it’s haphazard, and there are recidivists.

If you don’t personally know a Gabe, or have training as a counselor, you may not be in a position to help him. Possibly there are things you can do to disrupt the recruitment process or prevent infiltration of spaces you’re in - I’m looking into it, but talk to your mods - but, elephant in the room: meaningful change will require reform on the part of platform holders. Tools to disrupt this process already exist and are being used on groups like ISIS, but they’re not being used on the Alt-Right because they try oh so very hard not to get classified as terrorists (and also any functioning anti-radicalization policy would require banning a lot of conservative politicians, so there’s that...).

But what makes our story better than theirs is that the fight for social and economic justice, though it is long, and difficult, and frustrating, when it works, it fulfills the promise the Right can’t keep: it materially make people’s lives better. I am not prone to sentimentality, or to giving these videos happy endings. But one thing we have that the Alt-Right doesn’t is hope.

[lghtpulledarch]

@starlcved​​   sent :     🍉     »        PLOTTING   IDEAS . 

okay ,   okay ,   let  me  try  to  throw  some  rough  ideas  about  for  as  many  of  your  muses  as  i  can   and  hope   maybe   something   sticks  /   works ?

THEON : 

 i  lowkey  have  a  verse  with   @goldenreign​  whereby  kylo  comes  to  mytica  to  try  and  make  arrangements  with   auranos  post   gaius’   takeover   &   senses   cleo’s   abilities   with   the   force   and   attempts   to   rope   her   into   being   trained  up   by  him .   we   could   maybe   have   some    semi    angsty    stuff   about  all   of   that ,   with   theon   being   concerned   for   cleo’s   safety    &   also   the   general   idea   of   her   using   the   darker   sides   of   the   force ?

i   also   have   a   falling   kingdoms   au   for    kylo    where    kylo    is   the   emperor    of    kraeshia  ( but  everything  is  ruby  instead   of   emerald ,  lol )   &    snoke   basically   forces   him   into   an   arranged    marriage   with   cleo .   kylo ,   being   as   nice    as   he   can   be ,    lets    cleo    bring   theon   along   to   kraeshia .    so  ...   chance   for   some    not   so    nice    kylo /  theon  angst  there   too . 

also   i   know   it   goes   against    theon’s    morals ,    but   the   first   order   capturing   him   could   be   some    👀    content .    i   imagine     his    father    will    have   made   himself   a   respectable   name    and   the    first   order   could   be   very    👀   at   him . 

NERISSA :

 she   could   fit   into   either   of   the   falling   kingdoms    esque   plots   as   mentioned    for   cleo    above ,    but   also ?    nerissa    working   in    the    first   order   undercover  /   as   a   spy   for   the    resistance ?   hot   shit .    whether   they   meet   on   a   mission    generally    or    she’s   on   the   base ,    there’s    the    chance   for   some   👀    content    there    if    she’s    trying    to   get    him    to    open    up .

CHRIS  :

bounty   hunter   chris ?     maybe  even  after   kylo ?    or   maybe    the   first   order    want    to    try   and    recruit   him ,    especially    for    his    weapons   knowledge /  fighting    tactics   in    general ?     10 / 10

MELISSA :

the   first    order    could    always    do   with   an    extra    medic   on   board ,  so   maybe   she   gets    captured    for    some    reason ?    idk    but   i   would   love   for   her   to   patch   up    kylo’s    wounds    for    some    reason   at    least    once . 

alt :   her   looking    after    him  /   his   wounds   in   his   jedi   au .    some   soft .   ish .

MAEVE : 

similar   to   chris ,   maybe  the   first    order    want    to   recruit    her ?    she’s   super   knowledgable   and   has   a   good   team    of    people   under    her    so    👀    also   a   knight    of    ren    au     could    be    spicy    for    her    if    that’s    a    path    she    would   consider    for   herself    after    everything   that    happens .

EVIE :

uhm   why   haven’t   we   plotted    anything    with   her   generally   yet ?    the   hunter   vibes    could   be    very   👀    in    star    wars    but    also    fae   in   star    wars   in   general ?    yes   fucking    please .    could   be   a   fun    person   for    ben    to    meet    in     his    jedi   days    or    in    his    jedi   au   or   even    just    some    straight   up   kylo   ren    angst .    whatever     works     best !

SERAPHINA .

um ?   her   running   a    bar   in    star   wars   for    officers    etc   /   people   who   wish    to   remain   undercover    is    SPICY ? ?    let    ben    come    drown    his    sorrows ,    or    let    kylo    come    be    a   broody    presence .   maybe    she   could    have    some    force    abilities    too  ? ?     bc    if    so  .    hot . 

JOLENE .  

i’m   honestly    not    100%    sure     how    to    make    a   star    wars   plot   with   her    yet    but    i   am      👀     for   siren    lore    in   a    star     wars    setting   ? ?     and    if    she’s    destined    to    feed    off    suffering ,   kylo   has   a    lot   of   that   going . 

JOHNNY .

feeling    soft    ben   solo   /    johnny    vibes .    maybe   he   bumps    into    him   on   a   mission   ? ?     maybe    helps    him    out  /   saves   him ?     or   maybe    they    meet    at    a    random    encounter   &    ben    latches    onto    his    niceness  ?  ?     alt :   kylo  content   could   be   spicy ,    especially    in   a   universe    where    johnny   &   felix   are    friends    etc   &    kylo    maybe    snatches    felix  /    hurts   him   in   some   way ?   👀

ADDISON .

let’s   be   real ,   the   first   order    are    going   to   be    very   👀    at   her .    technology   &     weapons    analyst ?    would   she   like   to   help    craft    something    that    will    blow    up     planets ? ?    let    kylo    go   and    thieve    her    /     persuade    her   to   join   them    if    she’d    come   willingly    for    whatever    reason . 

TYLAN .

eyooooooo    the   first   order    are    always    looking     to     persuade   more   planets   to   join   their   cause .    and   their    methods    can   be   quite    effective .    nudge   nudge ,   wink   wink .    kylo    ren    invasion   ?     fun   stuff .      magnus    will    watch   with    JOY    as    tylan   is   forced   out    of   his    Fun   Hobbies    to   try    and   stop    his   planet   from    being    burnt    to   the    ground  .    extra    spicy   if   tylan’s   family   get   caught   up   in  the   invasion   in   a   bad   way  . 

FLOYD .

i   see   you    already   have   a   double   agent    star    wars   verse   for   him   that   has    me    👀     maybe    kylo    figures   it    out    someday ?  ?    or   maybe   he    doesn’t ,    them    ‘working’    together    would    certainly    be    interesting    though .    also :   jedi   au   could    be   kinda   cute .    two    chaotic    beans    working    for    the    resistance ? 

IRENE . 

space   pirate ,   space    pirate ,    space    pirate .    another   of   the  ,    could   be   fun    for   ben   solo    hours    or    jedi    au    hours    but    also  ?    kylo    ren    and    pirates ?   yes    please .     idk    what   he’d     be    doing    with    them    but  :    yes .

IVELISSA .

not   kylo   killing    off    the    last    few    survivors    to    her    planet ?  ?    or   even   going   with   the    first    order    to    set   up   a    new    base    there    now    they’ve    gotten    rid   of    everyone    else    and    coming    across   her ?    👀

[ablogthatishenceforthmine]

A Re-Evaluation of Laurel Lance: Season 8

Intro

Laurel is in top form this season. She has discovered who she is. We get to see her living out the hero she became last season. The season has a lot of interesting and emotional moments for her character. She seamlessly fits into the ensemble and the team. She is a highlight, not a dead weight dragging the show down. And the season gives her a great send-off.

Her Own Person, Her Own Look

Laurel has a new look! Last season, in a smart move by the show, Laurel dressed like Earth 1 Laurel, illustrating how Laurel was trying to be her. But her arc last season was finding herself and becoming a hero. Now, we get to see her living that out. She has a new hair color and haircut, short and kinda spiky, befitting her edgy personality. Her new clothes also befit her personality: leather jackets and a lot of black, and darker colors. Even her Black Canary suit is different than Earth 1 Laurel’s. 

The Best of Laurel and Oliver

This season has the best relationship between Laurel and Oliver of any season. They seem like equals, and they treat each other as such. They don’t always get along, and may not be the best of friends, but they respect and value each other. Oliver finally sees Laurel for who she is, as her own person, and accepts her. One nice moment is in the premiere when Oliver tells her that Starling City is lucky to have a hero like her in it.

And the last sentiment between them is pretty awesome. In a great scene, Laurel tells Lance that everyone who got resurrected are the people who Oliver wanted his sacrifice to bring back, but that Earth 1 Laurel was not brought back. Laurel says that her Earth 1 counterpart would have been on that list too if it wasn’t for her (Earth 2 Laurel). Laurel asks why didn’t Oliver’s death fix this situation. Lance tells her that there is nothing about her that needed to be fixed. It’s a really great scene, and a really nice note to end things on Laurel’s character and her relationship with Oliver. It shows how much better the relationship between Earth 2 Laurel and Oliver is than the relationship between Earth 1 Laurel and Oliver.  Oliver deciding to keep this Laurel shows how far he has come; he sees this Laurel as she is, flaws and messiness and all, and values and respects her for who she is. As the AV Club wrote in their review of “Fadeout,” “Oliver, from beyond the grave, has made it clear that she’s not some weird spare Laurel, but her own person, worthy of a good life.”

Seeing her as a Hero

Last season, Laurel’s journey was one of redemption and finding out who she was as a hero. This season we see the actualization of that journey. We learn that she has been protecting Starling City as Black Canary in Earth 2, with the help of good guy Adrian Chase as that Earth’s Green Arrow. In a great scene between Laurel and Lyla about Laurel’s grief and survivor’s guilt over the destruction of Earth 2, Lyla echoes the words Felicity said to Oliver in the season 2 finale, words that inspired him to not give up and to believe that he is the hero the city needs: that you honor the dead by fighting. It is a great parallel drawn between Oliver and Laurel, showing how Laurel is as much a hero as Oliver is, even though Laurel is at the beginning of her hero journey while Oliver is at the end of his. Lyla tells Laurel that this world still needs her to be a hero. Inspired, Laurel decides to do just that; at the end of the episode, she shows up at the big fight, and saves Tatsu, and vows to help stop the impending crisis.

Laurel’s hero metal is tested, but she passes. The Monitor tells her that she can get Earth 2 back if she betrays Oliver. It’s a tempting offer, and I wouldn’t have even blamed her for taking it. But in the end, she proves that she’s changed, that she is a hero now and does the right thing even when it’s hard by not betraying Oliver.

And it just feels so great to see Laurel fight alongside all the other heroes in “Purgatory.” There is just something about her heroism this season that just works so much better than any of Earth 1 Laurel’s heroism. She feels both like a hero in her own right, and a hero in part of a team; she has both an individual identity and place and a place and identity within the team. Earth 1 Laurel only really felt like a hero on a team rather than standing on her own.

Laurel is also key in Mia’s hero to become a journey. She challenges Mia and inspires her to become a hero in the same way Felicity, Dinah, and Sara did to Laurel. She does this by opening up about her experience becoming and being a hero. She says that being a hero sucks, and it will always be hard, but that it’s worth it and that is gives her purpose, showing how this season we are seeing the rewards of Laurel’s season 7 arc. This scene also proves why it’s great that this Laurel has never been effortlessly heroic. She can better inspire others because she understands how hard it can be to do good, and to change. 

Just Some Great Emotional Scenes

This season also does a great job of exploring Laurel’s feelings. She has a lot of complex, heartbreaking material this season. She loses her home, a whole earth, containing people that she cared about and people she swore to protect. The show does a good job exploring her grief, and her survivors guilt. We see her go through the five stages of grief. She gets a great, emotional scene with Lyla where she talks about her survivors guilt. She has another great scene, hell great episode, when she tells Lance in the time loop everything she never got to say to the real him. The show often struggled to adequately explore. Earth 1 Laurel’s feelings, so it’s great that they are doing such a great job of this with Earth 2 Laurel. Furthermore, Laurel’s feelings are about her character, rather than as a device to explore other characters, which had sometimes been the case with Earth 1 Laurel, especially in season 1.

More Female Relationships!

Like in Season 7, Laurel has many great scenes with other female characters. Like I’ve said repeatedly, Laurel’s character, both Laurels, have always been at their best with female screen partners. Even when the relationships are kinda combative, which is definitely true in this season. Like in Season 7, she inspires and challenges the women around her, and they do the same for her. She spends “Hong-Kong” with Lyla. They have a great scene about grief and survivors guilt, where Lyla shares a story from her time in the military.

Laurel acts as a kind of mentor to Mia this season, and is pivotal in Mia’s journey to becoming a hero. And Laurel is a really great mentor. She has some flaws, but overall is really effective. When Laurel deduces that Mia is planning to kill Grant Wilson, Laurel talks her out of it. Laurel also tells Mia that she isn’t going to lecture her like Oliver. This is great, and Laurel follows through, because she doesn’t lecture or come at Mia in a preachy, patronizing, and holier-than-thou way (in a way that Oliver sometimes does when he lectures.) She’s understanding, and non-judgmental. Laurel warns against vengeance and the emptiness of it from her own experience, and even brings up how she once talked Felicity out of killing Diaz. She is also the one to show Mia that heroes are flawed and many of them start from less than noble beginnings. Mia puts heroes up on a pedestal and believes that some people are meant to be heroes, and others aren’t like herself. But Laurel gets her to see that this isn’t true at all. She advises her to stop trying to live up to Oliver and other heroes (they’re flawed too), and to not give up trying to be a hero. 

We also see Laurel’s continuing friendship with Dinah. Last season, they overcame their past to become friends, and this season we get to see more of their friendship, especially in the backdoor pilot. In the spinoff pilot, there is tons of fun banter between Laurel and Dinah. Laurel even calls Dinah “D,” illustrating how far their relationship has come. They also have a great dynamic in their mentoring of Mia; Laurel is blunt, while Dinah is gentler.

Laurel, Dinah, and Mia inspire and challenge each other. Laurel rightfully accuses Dinah of hiding, and is able to talk Dinah into being a hero again. She tells Dinah that Dinah inspired Zoe and so many other women to be heroes, including herself. Because Laurel and Mia are both very headstrong, their relationship is prickly and contentious, which is good, as they challenge each other. Mia and Laurel accuses each other of being selfish: Mia for wanting to drop the case and Laurel for dragging Dinah and Mia back into this just because Laurel needs to be a hero. Dinah tells Laurel that she is being too harsh on Mia, and asks why. Laurel relates to this Mia, saying Laurel too spend too much time pretending to be someone she was not, and she wants to stop Mia from making the same mistake. Dinah advises Laurel, telling her that empathy isn’t only about understanding someone else’s pain, but sharing your own with them. This inspires Laurel to go and do this with Mia. Laurel tells Mia about how so much of her life she took the easy path, which lead her to become Black Siren. This gets Mia to open up about living under Oliver’s shadow. Laurel talks to Mia honestly about how hard being a hero is, how hard it will always be, but that it is worth it, and gives her purpose, and she just wants the same for Mia. This talk inspires Mia to join them and suit up as the Green Arrow. It’s just so great seeing all three of them helping each other and working through things together.

The three of them also are a lot of fun in scenes together. And their dynamic is full of fun snark and banter. It’s also great that Laurel and Dinah are starting a canary network, to help and inspire other women; what a great place to leave their characters.

Wise and Emotionally Mature

Laurel is pretty wise and emotionally mature this season, and she shares this wisdom with others. It is hard-earned wisdom, won by making many mistakes. As stated above, she gets through to Mia about not killing Grant Wilson. She has a smart approach in talking to Mia about this, and talks to Mia like an adult. She talks from her own experiences and from Felicity’s, Mia’s mother. Laurel also gives smart advice and inspiration about being a hero to Mia multiple times, as stated above. In “Purgatory,” she encourages and advises Oliver to talk to Mia, and to not leave any regrets. She is also able to guide Dinah and Mia into being heroes again in 2040.

Throughout the season, Laurel continually insists that “she’s not good at this feeling stuff.” And maybe this is why she is such an effective mentor. She sees through people’s bullshit, and is brutally honest. It’s a refreshing quality, and is one of the reasons she is such a good advice giver and confidant this season.

Conclusion

The note the show leaves Laurel’s character is a great one. The perfect one really. It ends with the show asserting that Laurel is her own person. The show decides to keep this Laurel, when it could have easily brought back Earth 1 Laurel. It kept this messy, flawed, morally complex Laurel over good, saint-like Laurel. 

Laurel is possibly getting a spinoff. A pilot has been ordered, but I don’t know if it’s been picked up to series yet. While she wouldn’t be the protagonist (I imagine Mia is), she would be a lead, a main character. A few seasons ago, who would have thought that there could have been a spinoff with Laurel Lance. I wouldn’t have, would have laughed off the idea, and assumed it would be disastrous. But the episode works, and I am actually excited for the possible spin off. That in itself is incredible.  And the show did all this work to get Laurel to this point in just two seasons, and one of the seasons is a shortened one! It is really incredible how far Earth 2 Laurel has come, and how much they’ve improved in writing this character from the days of writing Earth 1 Laurel. Earth 1 Laurel barely had a place in the show, so much so that they had to kill her off because they didn’t know what to do with her. And now, Earth 2 Laurel can carry a spinoff

[dieviskais]

and i oop

so  i’m  gonna  take  a  moment  to  gush  about  silver   &   just  some  personal  stuff   ,   because  i  probably  won’t  be  able  to  write  any  of  my  replies.   silver  is  my  favorite  sonic  character   &   so  it  really  does  put  a  smile  on  my  face  whenever  you  say  you  guys  like  my  portrayal  of  him   !   i’ve  spent  months   &   months  working  on  him   <3   !   &   in  advance   ,   i  apologize  for  the  lack  of  writing   &   continuously  asking  for  opinions  on  my  portrayal  without  doing  much  fdkslajfkdsf

i  was  so  worried  to  begin  silver’s  blog.   when  i  first  came  to  the  sonic  rpc  a  year  ago   ,   i  wasn’t  all  that  confident.   i  made  gadget’s  blog  first  as  a  fail  safe  to  be  honest.   i  liked  his  design   &   considering  he  was  a  blank  slate  character   ,   i  had  free  reign.   for  months  i  kept  thinking   &   pondering   &   working  on  his  character   &   tried  to  sculpt  something  special   &   unique  for  everyone  to  enjoy.   it  wasn’t  until  i finally  started  being  comfortable  with  writing  gadget  did  i  think  to  myself   ,   you  know  there  isn’t  that  many  active  silver  blogs.   which  is  where  the  start  of  my  original  silver  blog  began.

suffice  it  to  say   ,   i  felt  out  of  place.   my  only  experience  with  sonic  was  a  couple  of  spin  off  games  like  sonic  fighters   &   the  like   ,   &   sonic  06  being  the  only  games  i’ve  really  known.   at  the  time   ,   nintendo   &   pokemon  in  specific  really  consumed  all  my  interests.   still   ,   despite  06′s  flaws  i  stilled  loved  it   &   i  really  loved  silver   !   which   ,   is  why  i  was  scared  to  write  silver  in  the  first  place.   not  only  has  silver  himself  in  recent  years  been  watered  down  to  uwu  baby   &   incompetent  without  someone  there  to  hold  his  hand   ,   but  a  lot  of  what  i  saw  from  the  fandom  also  adopted  that  mindset  for  silver.   which   ,   sucked  for  me   ,   because  i  loved  06′s  version  of  silver  a  lot.   i  remember  when  i  was  first  writing  him   &   all   ,   even  though  i  had  these  headcanons   &   this  about  page  detailing  all  this  different  stuff  about  him   ,   it  felt  like  in  my  own  writing  i  was  just  selling  myself  out   &   writing  him  like  the  baby  the  fandom  wanted  out  of  him.   it  was  really  rough   &   tiring.   it  wasn’t  until  around  the  time  i  made  his  second  blog  did  i  really  break  away  from  that   &   portraying  him  how  i  wanted  to.   which   ,   even  then  i  still  wasn’t  all  that  free   &   felt  like  i  was  holding  myself  back   ,   but...

with  my  return  to  the  sonic  rpc  after  months  of  mia   ,   here  i  am  with  my  own  portrayal  of  silver.   something  inspired  from  06   ,   but  something  unique   &   special  to  me.   giving  him  layers  upon  layers  upon  layers   &   fleshing  out  his  character  in  a  different  perspective.   as  well  as  just  taking  his  character   &   pushing  it  further  to  add  an  even  more  interesting  take   ,   the  concept  of  silver  being  this  time  deity.   while  i  may  not  be  the  most  super  active  writer   ,   please  know  that  i’m  super  ecstatic  with  writing  silver.   his  aesthetics   &   overall  character  fits  nicely  together  with  my  style  of  writing   &   it  makes  me  super  happy.   while  it’s  always  a  bit  of  a  hassle  to  reply  to  things  due  to  me  being  specific  with  my  writing   ,   being  able  to  writing  not  just  his  aesthetic   ,   but  whole  surreal  vibe  as  a  whole   ?   it’s  a�� wonderful  experience  to  say  the  least.

there’s  so  much  to  my  silver   &   it’s  fun  to  just  write  it  out.   even  if  it’s  only  ever  just  tiny  bits   &   pieces  in  my  writing   ,   just  being  able  to  read  through  some  of  my  old  writing   &   seeing  all  the  little  sprinkles  of  who  he  is  just  makes  me   :).   in  his  presence   ,   there’s  an  odd  feeling  of  tension   (   but  nothing  too  drastic   ,    but  it’s  there.   something  just  underneath  the  surface   ).   his  psychokinesis  gives  him  this  aura  that  simply  makes  it  known   ,   he’s  here.   it’s  unsettling   ,   because  compared  to  the  peaceful  presence  that  he  gives  off  in  his  voice   &   dialogue.   sometimes  he  says  things  that  are  vague  or  something  is  just  a  little  off   ,   but  there’s  always  that  small  smile  on  his  face   ,   that  tired  look  in  his  eyes   ,   there’s  always  that  peaceful  tone  in  his  voice.   he’s  patient   &   calming   (   but  his  eyes  are  always  looking  into  the  distance   ,   his  eyes  are  always  lonely   ).

but  what’s  off  putting   ,   is  that  he  knows  something  you  don’t.   what  gives  him  weird  vibes  is  that  when  he  talks  to  you   ,   there’s  a  look  in  his  eyes  that  says  i’ve  accepted  your  death.   what’s  strange  is  that  he  always  seems  to  come  around  when  it’s  a  little  too  convenient  for  him.   like  he  already  knew  where  you’d  be   ,   where  you’re  going   &   what  you’re  doing.   yet  he  simply  acts  like  he  hasn’t  got  a  clue.

upon  all  of  that   ,   he’s  still  silver.   he’s  still  that  last  bit  of  hope  a  world  on  fire  still  left.   he’s  the  remains  of  a  desolate  land   &   he’s  the  survivor  of  a  bleak  future.   he  still  seeks  his  own  justice   &   every  once  in  a  while  there’s  still  a  glint  of  hope  in  his  eyes   (   like  he’s  a  torch  just  barely  lit   /   but  the  fire  still  blazes  no  matter  how  small  it  is   ).   he’s  still  just  a  bit  playful   &   warm   &   despite  everything  that  he’s  been through   ,   he’s  still  himself.   

yet  there’s  something  that  hides  in  the  shadow  of  his  smile   ,   on  the  tips  of  his  quills   &   fur.   an  anger   &   frustration  that  resides  in  him.   he  was  just  a  child  when  the  fate  of  the  world  was  burned  into  the  palms  of  his  hand.   he  was  a  child  when  he  had  to  learn  to  fend  for  himself.   he  was  still  an  innocent  youth  when  his  angel  wings  were  torn  off  his  body.   his  childhood  is  in  the  ashes  of  the  flames  he  constantly  had  to  extinguish  every  day.   the  smell  of  something  burning  reminds  him  of  home   (   but  it  was  never  home   ).   he’s  not  free   ,   his  wrists   &   ankles  are  cuffed   ,   he’s  a  prisoner  of  fate.   no  matter  what  he  can’t  seem  to  save  his  world   &   it  frustrates  him.   his  entire  life  all  he  ever  did  was  try  saving  this  world   &   it  always  ends  in  disaster.   &   in  his  frustration   ,   he  constantly  goes  back  in  time  to  destroy  his  decaying  world  himself.   leaving  nothing  in  his  path   ,   until  he  tires  himself  out.

&   he  repeats  the  cycle.

since  silver  has  repeated  these  timelines  over   &   over  again   ,   he’s  gotten  lost  with  his  path.   like  he’s  simply  a  ghost  in  time.   he’s  not  tangible  with  the  worlds  he  sees  before  him.   he  constantly  tells  himself  that  he’s  not  apart  of  their  life.   it’s  why  it’s  difficult  to  get  close  to  him.   even  when  you  think  that  you  are  getting  close   ,   there’s  still  a  billion  more  layers  guarding  his  heart.   he  holds  a  heavy  burden   ,   that  he  can’t  simply  find  himself  getting  comfortable  with  letting  anyone  get  close  to  him.   despite  how  touch  starved  he  is   ,   he  continues  to  ache   &   keep  to  himself.   burning  the  bridges  before  they  can  cross   (   because  all  he  knows  is  to  burn   /   destroy   ).

but  enough  about  that   ,   i  can  go  on   &   on   ,   but    !   i  really  just  want  to  say  how  happy  it  makes  me  to  anyone  that  would  take  the  time  to  read  my  ramblings  at  all   :’)   !   i’m  constantly  thinking  about  silver   &   my  other  muses   &   i  really  put  a  lot  of  heart  into  creating  a  unique   &   fun  muse  to  write  with   !   as  well  as  making  sure  that  he  feels  real   &   consistent  to  how  i  want  to  portray  him.   all  while  crafting  it  all  into  this  very  extra   &   pretty  imagery  in  my  own  writing  style   !   it  means  a  lot  when  i  hear  that  you  guys  enjoy  him   &   i  want  all  my  mutuals  to  know  i appreciate  you  all  as  well   !   &   i’m  just  as  excited  to  keep  working  on  silver   &   hopefully  staying  for  as  long  as  i  can   <3   !

[impartofthesolution]

Road to London

           Alone.  It’s not a good word.  It’s not typically a fun or appealing word.  But, it’s a safe word.  Because if I’m alone, that means there’s nothing nearby to hurt me.  That’s the closest thing to a promise I have anymore. Sure, I miss my crew, but they only slowed me down, or at least, that’s what I keep telling myself.  What I have to tell myself.            It’s been two weeks, but I’ve really only been alone ten days.  Those first four were awful.  I was always moving, got almost no sleep, killed more zombies than I could count, and had to leave the bodies of the people I grew to love, unburied.  Then, I got in the clear, and there has been no zombie activity at all as I continue to make my way north.  Alone.  Safe. For now.            As I simultaneously watch my step on the potholed road and scan the horizon for signs I’m no longer alone, I reflect on my state.  I suppose I’ve always been the loner type, more alive in my head than I was around people. It served me well, when the outbreak came.  It spread far too fast, too many people unwilling to believe their friends and family could be infected.  It tore through households; friends went for a drive somewhere and never came back.  I stockpiled what I needed in my small house. I could stretch any ration as long as I had to to see this through.            The only problem is, I’m still not through.  The outbreak created hordes of ravenous monsters, and it became unsafe to say.  The radios talked about a party, thousands strong, making their way to the city, devouring everything.  So I left. I took what I could, “borrowed” what I needed, and left.  I didn’t even have a gun back then, but I’m not sure if that would have made my life easier or harder.  I certainly hadn’t learned to use it yet.  We learned early on that cars attract the zombies, and the zombies ate all the horses.  That left walking.            Rumor has it that there were some cities in Canada that had missed the earliest wave of outbreaks and had quickly contained the threat from within.  It made it so much easier to keep the zombies and threats out.  They’re fearless devils, but they lost their humanity and all that makes humans special, namely, our minds.  They’re no threat to an organized defense.  If only we had more of those.            Buffalo is 60 miles away, I note the highway sign. It’s Buffalo, cross a bridge, and then I’m in Canada.  Which, to be fair, is little different from the fields and roads and small towns I’m seeing.  Until I get to London and an old fort there.  Thankfully, I don’t have to go anywhere near Toronto; that place is a writhing nightmare of destruction.  In addition to the zombies, violent street games have divvied the city.  Nope, no place for a woman, or anyone in her sane mind. I’ll take my chances with asylum in London.  They couldn’t possibly turn me down, a single woman out in the world who can prove she can’t be infected.            Oh yes, my forearm aches as I remember the decaying jaws biting down on my arm in the early days of my escape from Harrisburg. I kicked and thrashed and did everything I could.  That was my first kill.  But then, I just locked myself up and waited for the madness to take me, unable to take my own life.  A few days passed, my arm was swollen and slightly infected, but not with the zombie contagion.  A group of survivors escaping to Canada had found me.  Ryan assured me if I could have turned, I would have.  He was the one who gave me my first gun and taught me how to use it.  I had no idea handguns could hold 15 or more rounds in a magazine.  I was just used to seeing revolvers on TV.            I make it another six miles before finding a small town as dusk was settling.  It is quiet, which is a good sign.  Towns like these usually were safe.  The zombies ransacked them for every ounce of meat and then disappeared when it was all gone. Lucky for me, they wouldn’t touch water or canned foods.  I didn’t bother to carry much with me; it was too heavy.  Finding somewhere with basic supplies like food, clothes, and bedding was pretty reliable.  I tried to stay light with my guns, ammo, maps, and a rather large first aid kit.            I find a store, grab a shopping cart, and look to see if there was anything the scavengers left behind.  The virus came so quick, there weren’t many of us left with our humanity.  The odds were good that there were few enough survivors to have come before me that there would still be supplies left.  I take what I found and go to search for a defensible looking home that hopefully had clothes that fit me for after my bottled water shower.            Buffalo is my only real threat.  I managed to skirt around the edge of the city until I walked along northern tip of Lake Erie.  Now, I could see the zombies milling around the US side of the border. From what I can see with my binoculars, the bridges look clear.  I suppose there isn’t really anything interesting to a zombie on a long bridge. But the city of Buffalo, that could keep a large pack of zombies occupied for a while, longer than I had to wait them out.  I have to make my move, and make it now, while it’s still light out.  Sure, I could hide a little better in the dark, but it would also be far harder to see the zombies.  I’m a better shot during the day, too.            There are more ways to cross a bridge than to walk the dotted line.  My target is the structure underneath, moving from beam to beam.  Most zombies couldn’t follow me or even see me down there.  All I had to do was get there.  I screw the silencers into my Berettas and hoist my backpack up on my shoulders.  I am ready for anything.            Making my way carefully along the side of the street, my primarily goal is to not attract the zombie’s attention.  I either need to strike first, or not engage at all. Otherwise, I’d be swarmed, and I have no backup this time.  On the plus side, I don’t have Robin to accidentally kick a can and alert an entire nest to our presence, either.  One small mistake, so many deaths.            I turn a corner and a twisted form hunches in front of me, back to me.  It must be eating a rat or a possum or… I don’t care.  I look and check to make sure there are no others and I shoot. Perfect, effective, trained.  A bullet through the head and the zombie collapses with barely a sound.  Alone, again. It’s an illusion.            I continue on, effectively staying undetected by the mindless fiends.  The bridge is back in my view.  It’s a couple of hundred yards out, and I’m in the last bit of cover I’ll have until I crawl under the bridge.  I survey my surrounds, looking for the best path forward.  Guns blazing is a dangerous option.  I have roughly 30 bullets without reloading, and I see at least 10 zombies.  That means another 10 zombies are out of sight.  There’s no way I can try to engage them one at a time.  I finish my plan: I need to make it as far unseen as possible, engage and kill the first attack wave, and then I just have to make it under the bridge.  Hopefully, that’s only a 100 yard sprint by that point.            Just then, I hear a noise above me.  I look up, and on top of the building above me, a zombie looks down straight at me with its one eye and crooked jaw.  I’m faster, whipping up my gun and shooting it in its only eye.  My gun may be quiet, but it’s not silent.  A quick look around me tells me I attracted some attention from the zombies on the road to the bridge, but there’s nothing coming up front behind me. Stealth gone, I start jogging towards the bridge and the two zombies eager for a fresh meal.            Shhht, shhht goes the report of my Beretta.  One zombie falls motionless, and I don’t even break a stride.  The other zombie is 20 feet away.  He must have been someone import, for he was wearing a suit, still distinguishable though it is in tatters.  I stop, aim, and fire.  Four, I keep track of how many bullets I’ve spent.  By now, I’ve attracted the attention of all the remaining zombies. There were the 8 I had seen plus another 5 had appeared.  Thirteen is too many to take on.  All I have to do is take out the ones in front of me and outrun the ones closing in from the sides.  I take a shot at the lead zombie and miss.  I mutter an unladylike curse under my breath, still careful not take make unnecessary noise.  I have to run if I want to not get mobbed by the zombies coming from my right.            As I’m running, I fire off five rounds, dropping two zombies quickly.  I’m breathing heavy.  The bridge is still 150 yards off, and there are still 5 zombies in front of me.  My chances are slim, but I have no hope.  I keep charging.  I try to steady by aim, but the running and adrenaline shake my hands. My final six shots in my right hand pistol only fell two more zombies.  Without even looking, I extend my left arm to the left and fire, hearing a zombie drop a second later.  I switch my loaded gun to my right hand.  Three zombies, 50 feet away.  I put three shots in the lead zombie, and it topples in a pile of gore.  I jump it and take out the second zombie while in the air. Ten shots left, I remember.  The final zombie is closing fast.  It lunges at me with wicked claws and two obsidian marble eyes.  I duck and slide on my leg, tearing the “borrowed” jeans.  The zombie passes overhead, and I shoot up at it, flinging it over and behind me.  As I try to stand up and continue running, the zombie’s foot connects with my head knocking me sideways.  There are four zombies closing in from my right, but my concern is the last zombie my left.  I was knocked dangerously close to her.  She reaches out with her only arm, and all I could do is bash it away with my left arm. Her decaying limb goes flying.  I sweep her legs as I spin back to full standing. The bridge is so close.  I take off in a full sprint.  I reach the edge of the bridge and jump, arms extending. Ooof, the breath is knocked out of me as I catch a horizontal bar under my arms.  I barely stay on, dizzy and winded and gasping for air.  I turn behind me.  The two closes zombies had fallen off the edge.  The others had run along the bridge above me, looking for a way to get to me, but they can’t.  I’m safe. Not alone, but safe.  For now. Back to Table of Contents (x)

[bichilchuck]

for headcanons take into consideration: johnny, gyro, diego and hot pants? you dont have to do all of them if thats too much!

YOUVE ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD thank u so much for the ask vinni!!!!! 💘💘💘

i’ll start w johnny bc he’s my fave:

-johnny obv has a spinal injury that rendered him paralyzed from the waist down but he’s Also autistic and has comorbid depression/anxiety and C-PTSD. he also deals w complex grief in relation to nick’s death and didn’t rlly start mourning him until many years after the fact post SBR bc he didn’t have the time or ability to

-johnny has a special interest in horses and horse racing and has since he was a little bitty kid!! he also loves astrology, space, and disability activist history but nothing will ever top his love for horses

-a modern johnny would TOTALLY be a disability activist and would be super into the cripplepunk movement!!! he puts spikes on the back of his wheelchair so ppl can’t push him and has a sign on the backrest that’s says “moving a disabled person’s wheelchair without consent is legally considered assault”. if ppl try to talk down to him or be ableist in his vicinity he throws a fit of righteous anger. gyro is so proud every time

DIEGO is also definitely definitely autistic!!! he has special interests in dinosaurs, specifically the paleolithic and mesozoic eras, and likes to stim w raptor hands and chewing!!! most if not all of his clothes r green and soft, wooly fabrics bc that’s most sensory appealing to him

diego and johnny have a rlly complex more-than-friends-less-than-lovers on again off again relationship where they spur each other to do better and act like they can’t stand one another but if anything ever went wrong they’d be the first person each other contacted. diego is one of the few ppl johnny feels safe being physically intimate w because his incident gave him a lot of paranoia around being vulnerable and he finds it rlly hard to let his guard down even in the safety of his own home. also gay trans solidarity !!!!!!

gyro is ADHD and has motor issues in his left side, specifically random bouts of ataxia and dexterity issues in his fingers. this rlly frustrates him sometimes but he’s slowly learned to cope w it and he eventually taught himself to be ambidextrous !!!! he has hyperfixations in medical history, biology, and foreign languages!!! one of his fave hobbies is showing johnny gross medical diagrams from his textbooks bc they both love it

gyro is a rlly good cook!! he grew up the eldest of five siblings and his parents were both busy w the family medical practice so gyro learned to cook and do basic household chores rlly fast. he loves his siblings to death also and takes every opportunity to embarrass them. he’s a huge prankster and likes to do little harmless pranks throughout the day or leave messages on post it notes in clothes or cereal boxes n stuff for ppl to find. GYRO IS ALSO GENDERFLUID!!!!! his presentation changes from day to day depending how masc or androgynous he’s feeling

hot pants!!! her Real Name is harriet pruscilla hence the initials HP but she said fuck it non-binary rights and named herself after an object. iconic. she uses she/they/it pronouns depending on the day

hot pants is also autistic !!! she has a special interest in the history of medical equipment, period clothing, and prosthetics!! she’s semi verbal and doesn’t rlly talk a lot of the time but can’t find herself to be assed to learn sign so she has made gyro, johnny, n diego learn a series of vague hand motions and grunts she uses to communicate thru trial and error. none of them r particularly thrilled abt how fucking archaic it is but they love her just the same

she comes from a small family and originally wanted to be a teacher growing up but her path changed and now she’s more interested in becoming a pediatrician or a therapist who specializes in trauma survivors. she’s a lot more emotional and soft than she lets on but she has a hard time emoting and expressing herself. she loves to stim to music and wears headphones a lot of the time bc of it