#i think its mostly happening so that i can be potential moral support

[sus-bee]

the friends talking to each other and communicating and trying to become super duper fuckin close again. hough

[jgabi51]

“Home doesn’t exist anymore… because of you!”

Sonic Prime was great and I can’t wait to see what happens next. There are still so many questions that we have unanswered. But listen y’all Sonic is gonna need therapy.

!!!!SPOILERS(sort of)!!!!

And its a lot of reading, like if you are going to read this next part sit down and be ready for bad grammar and to think critically

What Sonic is going through in Prime felt like/reminded me of the metal virus and or lost world. In those stories the basics are: Sonic doesn’t listen, does something impulsive, makes the issue worse, everyone gets on the ‘Sonics fault’ bandwagon sooner or later and yells at him; people expect Sonic to fix everything, forgetting that he is a living being too who needs food, rest, support, to fix the problem. In past games Sonic seemed too happy in the face of the grave situations he was faced with. For the sake of argument, to me this is Sonic putting his ‘hero’ persona on to inspire hope in those around him. And maybe to try and fool himself as well. But in recent stories, and under certain writers, Sonic has matured to show more emotion and vulnerability to better flow with the dark themes his adventures address. Some great examples of this are Unleashed, Frontiers, and of course the metal virus saga. To clarify, I’m speaking in reference to the difference between: Sonic showing genuine emotion of (mostly) any kind [typically when by himself as an internal monologue or when around 1+ of his very close friends] vs. Sonic being exaggeratively bravo, trash talking his opponent(s), overly optimistic, and narcissistic [typically dawned while enemies or someone whom he met recently or doesn’t see often are present or when he his in public/has a lot of eyes on him]. Think Sonic in the Tail’s “am I a burden?” Scene in Frontiers vs. Sonic being allegedly in prison and tortured for 6 months after he gets his behind handed to him yet seeming fine and as confident as before once a complete stranger comes and saves him in Forces. Also to note, if it wasn’t clear, Sonics impulsiveness, impatience, quick-wit, fast learning/adapting nature, creativity, sense of justice, and ‘valuing his friends/family’ mindset is shared and holds strong across the board. They’re skills, traits, and morals that shape the spiky blue speedsters opinions and views; his personality. Those things are just who he is. Woo! That was lengthy but theres more, I bring this all up because in Prime I saw hints of both: the too-happy/‘hero’ persona Sonic who’s sassy, snarky, and a bit of an a-hole and the Sonic who feels the pain, would sacrifice a world/universe (hehe) for his friends, is Tails’ (adoptive and unofficial) big brother. This shows that Prime has a lot of potential and Prime!Sonic has a lot of layers yet to be explored as a person. Which may shed light on what Sonics personal and mental journey might hopefully for me be as the story is told. I just hope either Sonic snaps, breaks down and cries or yells and rants about (not killing anyone or a villain arc, just not yet) or if Sonic is gonna be able to keep it together til the end we see him get his trauma addressed. Either way blue is gonna shed tears and its all I can ask for.

[lollytea]

miss lolly i never thought id say these words but. i want the young sheldon spoilers (if nothing else id expect fucking ATOMIC retconning/continuity issues)

So the whole point of this show was to wring all the comedy potential out of the premise of taking Sheldon and making him an 8 year old prodigy attending highschool in 1980s Texas. Unfortunately they forgot to add the comedy part. But. Yknow. It was standard television. I always get annoyed when I see people trashing on young sheldon when I know they've never actually watched it because they're not trashing it for the right reasons. Its not bad for the reasons you'd expect. Its bad because its boring. It is so SO boring. Its insane how boring and mundane it is. Its a show revolving around baby bazinga but they managed to make it so mild numbingly underwhelming.

But....I would say that the first few seasons were probably the strongest. it was never particularly outlandish. Just basic slice-of-life stuff yknow? Every episode just revolved around Sheldon having some miniscule problem and blowing it way out of proportion. His family were mostly supporting characters, written for the sake of dealing with how eccentric Sheldon is. He's got an overly religious mom, a surprisingly level-headed dad, a snarky grandma, a dumbass teenage brother and a sassy twin sister.

This was the era of it being Sheldon's world and we're all living in it.

However it is currently 6 seasons in and here's a run-down of what's currently happening.

So during season 4 (or maybe 5 I have forgotten the order of events) the family begins financially struggling, which is only made worse when Dad gets fired from his job. I think there was this gradual build of tension between Mom and Dad across the season until they eventually blow up at each other in a big nasty fight and Dad admits that he's deeply unsatisfied with the way his life has turned out, including his marriage and family. Then he storms off to the bar where he starts drinking with his recently divorced female next door neighbour.

The season ends on a cliffhanger to lead the audience to believe he's gonna cheat on his wife. He doesn't. But he and ms neighbour both consider it. Which leads to the most insufferable plot point that they refuse to let go of for two more seasons, so he's probably gonna sleep with her eventually. He feels guilty for considering it. She does too. Which leads to them avoiding each other, having secret little rendezvous where they talk about how guilty they feel for considering it, lots of awkward sexual tension undertones. I'm so sick of it I hope he hurries up and cheats on his wife so this shit can end.

MEANWHILE there's the other slow building infidelity subplot with Sheldon's uptight Christian mom who believes everything is a sin. So she works at her local church and they happen to hire a new pastor. And after a few episodes of becoming closer friends, Sheldon's mom starts having sex dreams about him. Also he is like over a decade younger than her. This is another subplot that has been dragging on for over a season I am so tired. I need her to know this pastor carnally already I can't take this anymore.

But the most utterly batshit morally reprehensible plotpoint that is currently happening is whatever Sheldon's dumbass teenage brother's got going on. So basically, he's currently 17. He met this 29 year old woman, lied to her and said he was in his 20s so he could fuck her. Which he did. Then his grandma found out and bullied him into telling her the truth. Which he did. And she was understandably horrified because why the fuck WOULDNT she be?? And she makes it very clear that she never wants to see his face again.

That's when she learns that she's pregnant. And considering she's working as a waitress, doesn't have a lot of money, eventually gets evicted from her apartment and is cut off from her parents, the show forces her into a position where she has to depend on Sheldon's Dumbass Brother and his family for support. They kinda make her situation and dynamic with him into a joke?? Like she hates him and wants nothing to do with him and is trying to keep him at arms length throughout the course of her pregnancy, while the narrative frames him as this sweet charming attentive boy who just wants to help her and be a good dad to their future baby, and he's still constantly treating her as his girlfriend, giving her cheek kisses and calling her pet names etc. Basically she's kinda roped into integrating into Sheldon's family unit. Like it's trying to play off her growing relationships with them as cute and wholesome, while not really acknowledging that she has no other option but to depend on these people and it's still very VERY nonchalant about the extremity of how Dumbass Teenage Brother has wronged her. She's gradually beginning to warm up to him again and it's. Ew.

Oh and also she's being constantly guilted and pressured into marrying him before the baby is born because Sheldon's mom, who wants to know the 25 year old pastor carnally, is very insistent about the baby not being born out of wedlock. Its a mess.

Oh and also Sheldon's grandma and dumbass teenage brother also run an illegal gambling den behind a laundermat. I forgot that part.

And Sheldon is....also there. He hasn't seemed to notice that his whole family is falling apart yet. Most of his subplots remain just as low stakes as they were 6 seasons ago. He gets a 98% on a test and beefs with the teacher about it. I think the writers are sick of him at this point.

AND, with all these deranged plot points in mind, the show STILL manages to be so so SO fucking boring. I don't know how but they manage it.

[exoticalmonde]

So in today's day of eventful events that were not supposed to happen but they did:

I got Carnelian. It's actually a double slap to Dr. Kryo who got my Gnosis, because not only did his wife Surtur visit (for which I have her at pot 5 now and subsequently - folded and leveled her up to 45 with an M2S3) but his other operator of preference came home after he was wondering if it's worth pulling when he barely has anything saved up for Yato-alter.

I'm slowly driving it back to 12K orundum for those sweet 40 pulls that should definitely totally get me the Noir Corn-alter.

How many posts is it that I mention him? Countless at this point.

Dr. Kryo just picked me up and set off guiding me along the chapters. I finished at 9-14 last time with S9-2 being my best work yet because I need to start unlocking the Salt.

While miles away from the actual goal of 11-2 where I get the T3 Salt, it's still advancing at a speed I doubt I've moved with alone before.

Can't even believe most of these were a two-OP runs. Mostly using Kal'tsit and people like Thorns, Blaze, Mountain. Of course I had the support of Chongyue. And morally supported by the presence of Ling since I need her 100 trust because that ark forsaken Module.

The AFK Lee and Mountain level was really funny, definitely recommend if your Lee is E2 lvl60 to bring a Myrtle or Bagpipe to block the other side until he charges up good. I leaked twice, learned that lesson the hard way.

Chapter 10 baby, it's time for the Sanguine Arc. Where we fight not the Sanguinearch but definitely something hideous and simmilar. I saw the worms yesterday when Pinkie showed me around the enemies for Chapter 11. Imagine... Leeches. In a trenchcoat. I hate them so much, looking at the enemies is putrid and they're all just slowly moving 20 pixels.

Yet here's the GORGEOUS video for the start of Chapter 10, which is supported by stunning vocals and a goosebump-indusing energy when you see it play on your own screen.

Gosh, I don't even know what this is but it sure looks like another set of achievements I will need to be getting. Nothing to be tryharding about, surely, as we leave the border between 'Tier 2 hardness level + Challenge Mode' and we sink right into 'Tier 3 hardness - which IS the CM' .

Amiya, it's been a pleasure working with you. Disappointment happened only during the Mandragora fight because I forgot turning Mon3ter skill... So we leaked...

And also one gargoyle got through...

I should go back and do that before future me hates for losing the will to fight Mandra again + just forgetting the run.

Which, spoilers, if you know what you're doing, is actually quite pathetic to fight. Just throw a rock at her and she sits down and pouts for long enough to Surtur/Texas-alter her.

But moving onto chapter 10!

Oh, I remember the good old days of being chapter 7 and suddenly CC10 operation Nuke (Ashring) landed with its fully charged Orbital Space Cannon to give me the sad news that, no, I will not in fact get all the medals.

Dr. Pinkie joins the conversation just on time to reminesce over how they used to guide me during Ashring. Very fun times.

---

Pinkie: "It's good that you're well aware how the Orbital Space Cannon works now, because for the next 16 operations you'll be doing just that."

Me: "..... WHAT?"

---

Pinkie: "It's alright, the Nuke does only 3000 damage, so as long as your defender has more than that, they should survive."

Me: *Checks Hoshiguma's health*

Hoshiguma: 3158 HP

Pinkie: "Oh, oh no."

---

Me, Kryo and Pinkie: "HERE IT COMES."

---

Me: *Pauses to think what to do after the Nuke blows because I can see that Hoshiguma will be blocking and Archetto will be in her range.*

Pinkie: "Oh, it would have been so nice if you had an operator whose skill 2 makes them invulnerable."

Me: *Knows it's not Ethan so I click on Archetto to read what her skill does*

Pinkie: "Oh, you know. Someone who can, potentially, block." *Nervous because the enemies are coming* "Especially since you have one place to guard."

Me: "Do I put her IN the range?"

Pinkie: "YES."

Me: *Drops Specter there*

Pinkie: *Sighs*

---

Hoshiguma: *Dies after the second Nuke*

Pinkie: "A wonderful opportunity to use reinforcements."

Me: *Positions Archetto and Ethan*

Pinkie: "I MEANT SPECTER SKILL."

Me: *Barely surviving the stage* "They're fine, they're all doing very well."

Pinkie: "I think you need to go to more morning sessions."

Me: "NOOoooo..."

---

Me: *Doing kissy noises at the scren*

Pinkie: "There Eve goes, licking the sweat off his armor. Like a dog."

Me: "Hoederer is just so... Mm..."

---

Me: "Can I catch you for a screenshot with your eyes open?"

Me: *Looks at him*

Me: "Well... Eye... Open..."

---

Me: "Pov, every time I see that my operator who is E2 level 50 is not doing enough damage on an E1 level 30 operation."

---

Operation 10-4: Warning Shot

Me: "Haha, warning shot."

Pinkie: "Imagine what they'd do if it was a threat."

Finally, here is a silly bird boy being deployed.

[serpenteve]

why we ship darklina

an essay literally no one asked for

Nobody needs a "reason" to ship Darklina. But considering this is a villain x hero pairing, it got me thinking about why we shipped it in the first place when the narrative and author so badly wanted us to root for the more sensible alternative pairing and why it became the most popular ship of the entire trilogy.

Personally, I find it really interesting (and low-key hilarious) that a lot of the reasons shippers gravitated towards Darklina can be directly traced back to how badly Bardugo bungled Alina's character arc, Mal's entire characterization and narrative role, Nikolai's wasted potential as an alternative love interest, and the noble intentions she gives the the Darkling.

Alina's Character Arc

Alina's character arc doesn't match who she is as a character. I've written more about that in this post, but a lot of readers were introduced to a passive and insecure protagonist who we were expecting to undergo a typical YA coming-of-age character arc where Alina acquires self-acceptance, confidence, and embraces the full breadth of her powers over the course of the trilogy. Instead, Bardugo gave Alina the kind of character arc that's usually deserved for power-hungry anti-heroines or tragic heroes with a fatal flaw to punish.

The plot offers a strange binary: either Alina suppresses and hides her powers and therefore stays away from descending into villainy OR Alina attempts to find Morozova's amplifiers in order to defeat the Darkling but then becomes corrupted by power in the process. Alina's journey to self-acceptance and exploring her own powers are unfortunately entangled with her relationship with the Darkling. The only way she is allowed to move forward through the plot is to succumb to the corrupting influence of the amplifiers.

For better or for worse, the first character to really embrace her powers instead of thinking she's a fraud or that she's weak or that she's an unholy abomination is the Darkling. He's the first person to recognize her power for what it is and accurately judge its potential and implications for the rest of the world. He advocates for her in front of the royal court, in front other Grisha who think she's weak, and even against Baghra who is initially a very ill-tempered mentor with little to no faith in Alina's abilities. He even rather ironically advocates for her even when the heroic person who's supposed to be supporting her (Mal) does not.

At the start of her journey, Alina is insecure and in constant need of assurance and validation. The Darkling's role as her mentor and guide into this unfamiliar world of Grisha makes him the perfect advocate not only for her powers but also to help Alina see her place in the world. However, once he is revealed to be the villain, Alina also fails to realize that it's time for her to advocate for herself and throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Mal's Characterization & Narrative Role

When Alina loses the Darkling as an advocate in S&B, Mal steps up to take this role. Alina is still rather passive for the majority of the first book and it's Mal who originally wants her to have Morozova's stag as an amplifier if it will mean being able to stand against the Darkling. Bardugo intended for him to be a heroic love interest as a foil to the villainous love interest and I believe she mostly succeeds for the first book.

However, because this is a story about punishing Alina's "evil ambition" (despite there being very little evidence of that) Mal is supposed to serve as a voice of reason in the narrative. Once Alina considers the necessity of acquiring more amplifiers to defeat the Darkling, it is Mal's role to warn her of the potential consequences, to remind her of her inner humanity, and to ward against the corrupting influence of Morozova's amplifiers. Mal's declarations that he wants back the old girl he knew without any power is meant to drive an ideological wedge between them, yes, but he's also meant to be Correct™ because, again, Bardugo is writing a story about a corrupted power-hungry heroine who goes too far and needs to be punished rather than the arc we were all expecting and the one that Alina's character needs: a coming-of-age story of self-acceptance and personal growth.

Some point after the backlash of Siege & Storm, Bardugo seems to have become aware of her mistake and attempts to scrub Mal's character to be more sympathetic. There is a bizarre exchange half-way through the third book when Mal finally declares:

"I wasn't afraid of you, Alina. I was afraid of losing you. The girl you were becoming didn't need me anymore, but she's who you were always meant to be."

This is an interesting line because it's a complete reversal of Mal's narrative role so far. He's supposed to be her voice of reason that opposes her at every turn but readers interpreted him as being resentful of Alina's powers and angry that she was no longer dependent on him. Bardugo is forced to retcon Mal's entire role in the narrative from being a voice of reason that opposes Alina's quest for power to a supportive friend who will fight by her side. But this was never her initial intention and I believe this change was brought on 100% by audience reaction because she failed to understand the arc her heroine needed and the kind of story her audience was anticipating for such a character.

Needless to say, having your heroine's main love interest actively resent her quest for power until half-way through the third damn book did not endear many readers to Mal. Because Bardugo failed to understand the kind of character development her heroine needed and failed to understand audience expectations, we hated Mal. He became the embodiment of every toxic chauvinist we'd ever met who can't stand the idea of his partner's success and feels entitled to be the center of her universe. He was not the voice of reason. He was an annoying gnat hellbent on dragging the heroine down and away from her destiny. We did not want to root for him. Even the villain was more sympathetic than him because he could bring her closer to achieving the self-acceptance the narrative was obsessed with denying her.

Nikolai's Wasted Potential as a Solid Love Interest

Nikolai plays several roles in Alina's journey but most importantly in our discussions for why we ended up shipping Darklina, his entire potential as a serious love interest is wasted.

When we meet Nikolai, we have hitched our wagons to the Darklina train because despite being the villain, the Darkling is the only one who will allow the heroine to accept her powers and come into her own. Her heroic love interest, Mal, is actively sabotaging her efforts and holding her back from her true potential. But then, in swoops Nikolai and we pause, wondering if there may be a better heroic alternative after all?

In a lot of ways, Nikolai and the Darkling alike: they are eager for Alina's power and see her as a solution to all their problems. They may want to use Alina to prop up their own agendas, but unlike Mal, Alina's summoning powers are a massive plus, not a burden. Nikolai is the heroic alternative to our villainous Aleksander. So we wait, wondering if Nikolai will be the one to fix this mess of a romantic subplot. His royal connections offer an easy path to upwards mobility for our heroine and we sense that an alliance between them (even if it's initially political in nature) may bring our heroine closer to obtaining more power, influence, and self-acceptance not only for herself, but also for the oppressed minority she is a part of.

But, again, Bardugo is still obsessed with that "punish the heroine for wanting power" agenda so while Nikolai exists as another mentor figure who offers Alina advice on how to rule, how to appeal to other people, how to charm, how to win people over, and Alina learns and applies much of what she learns from him, he is not treated as a real love interest.

Despite Nikolai being written as a fairy tale prince (handsome, charming, smart as a whip, brave in battle, etc) Alina never actually considers him romantically. They are friends and allies at best and the only time she considers kissing him is only when she's pissed about Mal.

Nikolai's proposal at the end of Ruin & Rising feels like one last saving grace, one last opportunity for our heroine to take control of her life and make a dramatic change to break from the past. But this too is rejected because Alina's arc will never let her access any power. She does not reject Nikolai because she wants to marry for love. She rejects him because she has been "punished" for wanting power and has internalized that she must not seek any more power for fear of angering the plot gods (and Bardugo). She must return to being nobody in order to remain a good and moral person.

(And, of course, we resent Mal even more because who in their right mind would choose him over Nikolai? Once again, he becomes a roadblock on our heroine's journey to power. We grow irritated that the heroine is failing to grasp an opportunity to elevate herself. We throw the book against the wall. Why are we even following this heroine?)

The Darkling's Motivations

Still, all of the above might still not have been enough to pull the reader to the villain's side. But the Darkling is the living embodiment of Villain Has A Point™. He is not pure unadulterated evil. He is not Lord Sauron or Voldemort or the Terminator.

He's more Magneto, Roy Batty, or Ozymandias---a man who is part of an oppressed minority who longs for justice and power but is absolutely unhinged in his methods.

Alina runs away because she does not want to be a non-consenting weapon in hands. But we always end up wondering what would have happened had Baghra not warned her. What would have happened if Alina gladly joined the Darkling's side? There's hundreds of fanfics written precisely about this situation because despite the villainy of his methods, we wonder if Ravka might not have been safer after all?

If the Darkling had used the Fold as a weapon against Fjerda and Shu Han, would any of the problems Ravka faces in the later books even exist? Would any Grisha fall victim to the khergud programs or be killed as witches? The Darkling wipes out Novokribirsk and kills hundreds of lives, but how many would he have saved with the Fold as Ravka's greatest shield and sword? 🤷🏽‍♀️

And therein lies the problem with the trilogy inconsistent moral landscape. The Darkling is an anti-villain that exists in a narrative that is very black and white, unlike the rest of the books in the Grishaverse where our protagonists are anti-heroes who kill, steal, and torture their way through the plot with nary a judgmental glance from the narrative. We long to see our heroine give in to her dark side and get her hands dirty because watching a naive, passive, scared little girl grow into a ruthless powerful Grisha would have made for a hell of a compelling story.

But that's not the story Bardugo wanted to tell.

The Greg Trilogy

Despite taking place in a fantasy Tsartist setting, the Grisha trilogy is oddly anti-Grisha. The narrative doesn't spend much time trying to examine the context or implications of an oppressed minority group fighting for power other than to say "magic powers = evil". Nikolai skates by on a throne of inherited wealth, privilege, and imperialism but it's okay because he's charming and witty and the only monstrous part of him is the Darkling's curse. Literally everything is worse for Ravka and their Grisha after the destruction of the Fold but Ravka must move forward into a new age without relying on Grisha power but putting their efforts into new muggle technologies. Alina must be stripped of her powers and returned to her "old self" in order to be purged of evil.

Basically, it's all one gigantic ✨ dumpster fire ✨ of mismatched character arcs, incompatible moral aesops, inconsistent characterizations, wasted potential, unexamined plot points but it's a a dumpster fire we lovingly and spitefully embrace in fanfic.

We don't ship Alina with the Darkling because we're stupid abuse apologists who somehow missed the giant flashing moral aesop of the books---and honestly, who could have possibly missed them when it's shoved in the reader's face every other chapter? We ship Alina with the Darkling because the entire ship is the embodiment of wasted potential (and wasted ✨aesthetics✨ tbqh 👀). We ship Alina with the Darkling because we're sick and tired of stories where female power is demonized. We ship Alina with the Darkling because the plot gave us literally no other alternative to see our heroine succeed except to give in to her alleged villainy.

But most of all, people ship Darklina because Leigh Bardugo utterly failed in writing the story she intended to write because had she succeeded, Darklina would not be the most popular ship of the trilogy.

[shoechoe]

the moral inconsistence of vento aureo

(Warning: spoilers for Jojo’s bizarre adventure, part 5: Golden Wind/Vento Aureo.)

(Bit of an update here: As of writing, this post was made almost a year ago now. While I still agree with my general conclusions and most of this, I don’t really like my assessment of Bruno here anymore. I still mostly have the issues with him that I mention here, but I think I misinterpreted the way he was portrayed. That’ll probably be due for an update sometime in a future post lol.)

Vento Aureo is probably the part of Jojo that I like the most. It has some of my favorite characters in the series, the fights are amazing, the stands are well thought-out and fun, the jokes are hilarious, and a lot of the symbolism in its narrative is incredibly interesting which makes it really fun to analyze and dissect.

 That being said, writing-wise, the part also has a lot of things in it that kind of annoy me- whether it be due to some wasted potential of a plot point or general underuse of a character, under-foreshadowing of important events, etc. One of those things happens to be the way that the protagonists, Giorno, Bruno, and the rest of Bruno’s group, are portrayed in contrast to the main villain, Diavolo, and how the ending of the part, instead of being satisfying, ended up just sort of... leaving a sour taste in my mouth. In this post, hopefully I’ll be able to articulate why I think that is. (and I promise it’s not just because I like diavolo)

Bruno + Team Bucciarati

I’ll start by looking at the deuteragonist of the part, Bruno. After the initial battle between him and Giorno, he is portrayed as an almost saint-like moral high ground for all of the other characters. He’s portrayed as loyal, caring, kind, and helpful, has a great reputation with the general public, and is a sort of parental figure to the others (I mean, where did you think the “Bruno is a mom” fanon thing came from?) In other words, he is a character that we are supposed to look up to.

When the Boss is revealed to have been plotting to kill his daughter the whole time, Bruno is outraged and goes against him for the first time in the entire series. He loses his life fighting for Trish, an innocent fifteen year old girl. When he dies, he has a scene where his soul literally ascends to the heavens in gold, surrounded by cupids- a direct contrast to the demonic main antagonist, Diavolo.

The thing is... I have an issue with this portrayal of Bruno’s character. For a couple of reasons.

 Bruno, as a character, has done many incredibly iffy things, moral-wise. Was it supposed to be a good thing when he invited a seventeen year old (Fugo) to join the mafia after he was expelled from school? What about when he tried to murder Giorno, a fifteen year old, because he might have been involved with the death of Leaky Eye Luca (who is, on his own, a person who threatens innocents in order to gain money, so he’s not exactly a good person either?)  What about when he invited and helped Giorno (again, a fifteen-sixteen year old) to take over the mafia? (I mean, yes, sure, it’s anime logic... but if we’re going to hold Diavolo responsible for doing things like selling drugs to children, should we not also hold Bruno responsible for inviting children to join a dangerous criminal organization?)

Not to mention, Bruno is a well-known and respected member of the mafia, from what we’ve seen. He and the rest of his group were almost or completely loyal to the Boss up until they realized what his true plan was with his daughter. Sure, Bruno may have felt internally conflicted about the drug trade being open for children, but he continued to support and fight for the Mafia regardless of that fact. I can also understand his motivation to join the mafia initially for some guaranteed protection for him and his father, but he never seemed to show any real issue with the shady practices the Mafia makes him do up until he realized that drugs were being sold (at least, he didn’t seem to have a real problem with murdering Giorno, and the fact that he thought the Mafia was a solid enough idea that he invited multiple people to join it probably means something as well).

 Should that not be something to condemn this character for, or at least view him as morally flawed? The mafia isn’t just bad because the Boss wants to sell drugs or kill his daughter- people in mafias threaten innocents on a near-daily basis for the sake of money, fear-mongering and power. I don’t think it’s possible to be a good person with benevolent intentions and simultaneously attempt to kill minors and illegally threaten people to give you money through violence (and that’s just one example among the MANY other illegal things that mafias do). This is something that I feel is never properly acknowledged by Vento Aureo. (I also can’t help but feel annoyed at Bruno’s shock and horror in his backstory once he “finds out” that Passione has been operating the drug trade without him realizing. Like, dude... how are you surprised at this, exactly? It’s a mafia.)

  Bruno’s strange portrayal throughout the story is a symptom of a larger issue here, and that’s that Passione in general is very over-romanticized, I think. A lot of the inherently fucked-up, greedy and evil aspects of being in a mafia are completely glossed over in favor of portraying characters who would logically be dangerous criminals as unequivocally "the good guys” once they stand up to one evil deed that they perceive as “too far”.

 Sure, Bruno and his group are against killing an innocent teenager, but is that really where the bar is set? They still don’t seem to be against most forms of murder, torture, and attacking innocents (for example: remember when they mercilessly beat up a random civilian, and then after taking a moment to look and see that they were completely uninvolved with the mafia and were just some random guy, then proceeded to use him like a test dummy to see if their food was poisoned or not?) Most of their worse actions (i.e. the torture dance, Mista creeping on Trish, the scene where they pummeled an innocent civilian for no real reason) are just played off as jokes and are never mentioned again, nor do they end up ever questioning the goodness of their actions or facing any consequences for them- if you’re trying to portray your protagonists as anti-heroes who aren’t entirely good people, I really don’t think this is the right way to handle them. If Araki was trying to make them out as explicitly bad people, that wouldn’t make sense to me either (you can’t exactly show someone floating up to the heavens with their soul in gold and being surrounded by cupids and tell me that they’re actually supposed to be a bad person).

You could argue that some of their actions in the part were necessary for their own (and Trish’s) safety, and I would agree with that. For example, I think killing La Squadra was necessary for their own survival- their stands were too dangerous to just keep them alive and captured, and La Squadra was actively trying to murder them as well. They had to kill them for the sake of self defense. I have a very hard time believing that all of their criminal actions were completely unavoidable (or at least could’ve been lessened), though.

Not to mention, for Abbacchio, Narancia, Fugo and Mista, joining the mafia seemed to be portrayed as an almost positive turning point in their lives, and it’s just... what? Each of their backstories, the driving motivation of their characters, portrays them as all being beaten down by life due to some major negative event (Abbacchio accidentally causing the death of a fellow police officer, Narancia being betrayed by a friend he trusted and looked up to, Mista being sent to jail, etc.) until Bruno comes along and invites them to join an, again, criminal organization, marketing it as something to turn their life around and give their life a purpose. However, instead of really showing what should be the blatant moral dubiousness of this, it’s almost treated like a “found family” type situation, I think, which is... honestly extremely weird.

 Narancia was groomed into a life of crime by a manipulative gang that ruined his life, and you solve this by... grooming him into a life of crime by another manipulative gang? Abbacchio went into a depressive state because of all of the corruption he helped cause in the world, and he ‘solves’ this by entering a crime organization? That just doesn’t make any sense to me, and I hope you understand why I think that this is just... bizarre storytelling (and not the good kind). It is incredibly weird to portray a mafia member manipulating teens and broken people into joining his mafia as some kind of parental figure and savior. (To be honest, it almost feels like Araki forgot he was writing about a bunch of mafiosos and just wanted to write a cute family dynamic into Vento Aureo. To be fair, that dynamic is cute, but really not fitting for the setting in the slightest.)

Some members of the mafia are portrayed as unequivocally bad (like Leaky Eye Luca and Polpo), and some are portrayed as bad people despite having some form of understandable/decent morals at heart (like La Squadra). I think Bruno and his gang should’ve definitely been showcased in a more critical light like this. I just don’t think you can be an active mafia member and still be a completely good person. They don’t have to be entirely awful people, but what I think would’ve helped the story is if we saw Bruno and his gang question their actions a lot more, and make decisions (that aren’t just played off as jokes) that the audience is explicitly supposed to disagree with/have mixed feelings on. This would’ve added more nuance to the story and just make a lot more sense for the setting, in my opinion.

Diavolo, Giorno & VA’s Ending

I’ll start off the next criticism I have with the fact that, generally, I think almost everything we see about Diavolo makes his character out to be draconically evil. He is portrayed as essentially the root of most (or all) of the evil and corruption in Passione, and the main cause of all of the problems in Italy. He burned down his home village, killed his parents and abandoned his girlfriend on a dime to become the crime boss of Passione, and attempted to murder his daughter when he found out about her existence due to his paranoia. He murders anyone and everyone who even shows signs of wanting to find out about his identity. He sells drugs to children. He abandons both of the characters he’s ever shown to be close to (Doppio and Donatella), and leaves them to die. He murdered some of the most fan-favorite characters in the entire series (that being Bruno, Abbacchio, Narancia, and Polnareff). He only cares about power and nothing else. His name is literally “Devil”, dude. You want to despise him and root for the main cast in their attempted overthrowing of the mafia. He’s probably one of the most hated characters in the entire series. When he’s subjected to (seemingly, eternal?) torture in the death loop at the hands of Giorno, you’re supposed to cheer it on- he “deserves” it, after all.

I feel like a big mistake a lot of people make when discussing these issues with Vento Aureo is that they try to defend Diavolo’s actions far too much- painting him as “misunderstood” or “just doing what he had to do to survive”. I think that this is very false. Diavolo did not have to kill his family. He did not have to burn down his home. He did not have to sell drugs to children. He didn’t have to be a mafia boss. All of this was purely due to his lust for power and blatant disregard for the well-being of others- in other words, Diavolo is evil. My goal is not to defend his actions or paint him as “sympathetic”. However, I do dislike the way he is portrayed sometimes and his fate at the end of the story, and here I’m going to explain why.

First off... I feel like Diavolo is unfairly interpreted by the fanbase (and maybe even the series) to be the most evil/monstrous villain, and I just can’t see how this is true. He is evil, yes, but there are villains who have committed far worse atrocities than Diavolo, and have even worse intentions and motivations for their actions- for example, Kars genociding his entire race of people over a disagreement, Angelo sexually assaulting and murdering children, and DIO... well, being DIO.

Diavolo’s main motivation is to have his identity remain hidden from everyone else in the world (mostly for safety reasons- if he had his identity discovered, he would be in more danger of being attacked), and to remain in power as mafia boss of Italy. This doesn’t make the effects of his actions any less atrocious, but it is a much more understandable motivation than simply killing and torturing for the sake of enjoyment, like many, many Jojo villains do (say, DIO forcing a woman to eat her own baby for his own amusement, Kira murdering women for sexual pleasure, or Cioccolata torturing innocents for fun).

 We even see Diavolo express disgust at Cioccolata’s actions, so we know that he isn’t completely heartless, and has some form of moral standard, however low of a bar that may be. (Again, Diavolo is still horrible. I am only making the case that he is not the most monstrous person in the series.)

So, here is my problem: if Diavolo is far from the most evil villain... why does he, by far, get the most severe punishment out of anybody?

 This is something that I felt from the moment I watched through Vento Aureo- despite all of the atrocities we watched him commit, unlike every other Jojo villain in the series, watching Diavolo’s defeat scene didn’t make me feel any sense of justice or satisfaction. It just made me feel kind of... bad, honestly. I understand that Araki likes having severe punishments for his villains, but Diavolo’s fate was just way too overkill. It only left me feeling frustrated- why does a villain like Diavolo, a villain with hardly any screentime, a fairly understandable motivation and considerably less horrible actions than plenty of other characters, get tortured for seemingly eternity, but DIO, someone who is almost an objectively more monstrous character, get to die via an immediate, painless explosion?

I have seen some people argue that Diavolo’s death was a metaphor/form of irony relating to his stand ability. King Crimson has the ability to erase time, essentially (in his own words) removing the ‘action’ and keeping the ‘result’ of something. In that way, the logic behind the death loop makes sense. Instead of removing the action and keeping the result, it removes the result (death) and keeps the action (being killed).

I don’t think this is really the best argument, though. For one thing, how exactly is King Crimson’s stand ability something that Diavolo has any real control over? It’s not exactly like he can change the very essence of his soul. This is still overkill-levels of brutal, in my opinion- it doesn’t really make the ending feel any better to me. Plus, if we were going for cosmic irony, should that not apply to other monstrously evil villains, as well? For example, what if DIO was defeated by forcing his mind to stay in a “stopped time” state forever, or something along those lines? (Honestly, I don’t think I would have a problem with Diavolo’s fate if other worse villains got equally brutal-levels of punishment like this.)

I guess the real main thing that irritates me is how the guilt of the “evil” in Italy is concentrated on solely Diavolo as an individual, and the actual mafia is ignored as the source of the issues in Italy. Sometimes I just want to shake the story and go ‘dude, the mafia isn’t just bad because the Boss wants to kill his child or that he allows the drug trade to be open for minors, it’s bad because it’s a corrupt and greedy crime organization that shouldn’t exist in and of itself.’ Just killing the current Don and taking over the mafia for yourself would do virtually nothing to solve the problem (if you don’t believe me, just look up major mafia organizations and see the gigantic list of crimes that they do, way beyond just selling drugs).

Overall, I just didn’t care for the way Diavolo’s character ended out. Not only was it an unfittingly harsh punishment, but I also dislike the connotations of Gold Experience Requiem as a whole (which I will get to later). I feel like a better ending for Diavolo’s character would be something painful, but less... existentially terrifying? For example, I would’ve been fine with a death akin to Cioccolata’s or Kira’s, with him being finally exposed to the public right before he dies or being beaten to death by regular Gold Experience. That would’ve felt more justified to me and less needlessly cruel.

Then, finally, there’s the main focus of my issues... Giorno. Being the main character of the part and a Joestar, he’s presented as a sort of moral judge for the other characters, I think. We frequently see him decide which characters are “good people” or not, and use that to decide what amount of force he uses in attacking them. (This also leads him to mercilessly killing a large majority of the people he fights throughout the part.) This is what made him decide to spare Koichi and Bruno, but immediately murder characters like Polpo and Melone. He only decides to take over the mafia once he realized the things the Boss was doing, supposedly for the primary sake of keeping drugs away from children. Essentially, it’s pictured as if Giorno is only joining a criminal organization for benevolent reasons- there’s no need to question his morals, then, you might think.

But... here is the problem I have with how Giorno is handled in the story. For a start, I can’t really wrap my head around Giorno’s “make the Mafia honorable again by taking it over and becoming a ‘Gang-Star’” schtick. This plays into my romanticization issue with the part- when were mafias and gangsters ever a positive influence on anything, exactly? It only makes me think of Giorno as either naive and ignorant about the real nature of gangs, or as a kid who’s in denial about being power-hungry (mostly joking with the latter assumption, but you get what I mean).

 We see that his first experience with mafias were with another Don when he was a child, when he saved the Don’s life and was repaid with protection and making his bullying cease- this is portrayed as the thing that stopped Giorno from becoming just like his father. While this was a particular good deed on the Don’s part, it... isn’t really an excuse to glorify the mafia to the extent that Giorno and the story does, really. The dude is still a criminal.

 Additionally, it is demonstrated several times through his actions that Giorno isn’t exactly a saint either; being DIO’s son, he inherits a lot of his personality and methods of getting what he wants from him. He doesn’t hesitate to murder or torture “bad” people who are in his way (Melone, Polpo, Cioccolata, and Diavolo are good examples of this.) Essentially, he’s the “I will not harm you until you get in my way, then I will be as merciless as I possibly can” type of character. Not only that, but he doesn’t do anything about or even seem to care about his own team’s more immoral actions, either, nor does he seem to care about virtually anything the mafia does other than the drug trafficking.

So, I hope you can understand why the decided ending of giving Giorno (who is shown to have the capability to be as cruel as his father, given the incentive) a stand that puts people in death loops and making him one of the most powerful people in Italy as a crime lord... doesn’t exactly make me feel good?

I mean, think about it. If Passione continued to exist or even thrive under Giorno’s leadership as we are left to believe, just how many people would try to usurp him from the position and be thrown into the death loop alongside Diavolo? How many of those people were as monstrous as Diavolo or really deserved it? The only sort of guarantee we have to prevent that outcome is that Giorno probably wouldn’t willingly use that kind of force on people if he didn’t perceive it as needed, but it’s not even canonically specified if Giorno can really control if GER puts people into death loops- it’s shown to act pretty much on its own, after all. The stand attacked Diavolo automatically without Giorno’s full knowledge when he attempted to use King Crimson against him. That’s honestly a little scary. If anything, that’s an even worse reign than Diavolo’s.

I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with GER being a thing if Giorno didn’t become mafia boss of Passione by the end. (In fact, 90% of my problems would probably be either gone or so inconsequential that they wouldn’t matter if Vento Aureo ended with Giorno just destroying the mafia instead of taking it over. Why didn’t Araki go that route?) As it stands, though, I feel like it’s just way too much power (and an unnecessarily violent ability) being given to a very morally questionable person running a massive crime organization- I heavily distrust the notion that Giorno taking over the mafia will leave Italy at peace, or even get rid of the drug trade, honestly. There are still other crime organizations out there that can just take over the drug trade for themselves, after all (unless Giorno set out to stop those as well, which would probably just lead to even more undeserving people faced with the death loop...)

To me, Vento Aureo’s ending was just sort of... poorly thought-out in general? It gave me the impression that it was very rushed, and Araki was focused more on crushing together an ending that made sense in the moment and didn’t really stop to consider the full implications of it or if it really solved the issue presented from the start. I would’ve much preferred the ending I proposed where either Giorno just destroys the mafia, or the more radical solution of an entirely different setting for the story. I think it would’ve worked much more for what I think the part was going for.

In the end, I feel like Vento Aureo tries to have a black-and-white “villain is pure evil, heroes are good, heroes overthrow villain” story, but... sort of fails at it. Due to the nature of its setting, every character (with the singular exception of Trish) is very morally gray at best, I think. I can’t help but see them as a bunch of hypocrites, and I fail to see how Giorno being the crime lord instead of Diavolo changes... very much at all, really. (Maybe it’d be slightly better since drugs aren’t being sold to minors anymore, but that’s not enough to be what I’d call a “good ending”.) I definitely feel like a canonical follow-up or explanation of what happens afterwards would be a big help to the part.

I love part 5, but man it is flawed lol

[neonacity]

HYACINTHE | CHAPTER 3: JAEMIN X READER

SUMMARY:

Na Jaemin is far from being your typical 20 year old. Instead of slaving through college, he wastes away his hours cracking safes. Weekends that should be spent partying with friends consist of illegal races on good days and small scale bombings on bad ones. Na Jaemin is far from being average, unless you consider being a member of Seoul’s top organized crime family normal.

There is no such thing as a sense of normality and peace in his trainwreck of a life, so when he met a barista who was brave enough to call out his dangerous taste in coffee, he was like a moth to the flame. Everything about her is normal, which means she is forbidden to him, in all sense of the word. So why, then, does he always find himself at the front steps of her shop, breaking all his personal rules even if he wishes he could stay away?

A/N + Disclaimer: this is a side story to Black Daisies, my main mafia fic feat. 0T23. While the plot is based on the main story, this can also be read as a standalone fic. As usual, this is purely a work of fiction and in no way am I implying any member of NCT to behave the way I write them here. tw: crimes, heists, potential death, mentions of drugs and other illegal activities.

PAIRING: Jaemin x Reader

TW: illegal activities, gunshot wound, mentions of blood

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

FIC TRAILER

MASTERLIST

"Another bank was looted last night around 11PM, this time in the Geumchon district. This is the second bank that was broken into in the past week and the fourth that is rumored to be the doing of one of Seoul's organized criminal…."

I sighed and put down the pen that I have been using to scribble on a piece of napkin. A frown creased my forehead before I grabbed the offending piece of flimsy paper and crumpled it with my hand. Jeno, who was silently watching the news, looked up and shot me a curious look. He was leaning over the counter lazily, his cup of half finished hot cocoa beside him. 

"You okay?"

I winced. "Yeah... Actually. Actually, no. I am not okay," I said finally as I threw the used napkin to the closest thrash. I have been scribbling all the things I have to pay for the coming month there and couldn't bear to take another look at it. Jeno grabbed his drink and silently took a sip of it, obviously waiting for me to elaborate.

After my initial 'unplanned' meeting with Jaemin's friends, it has become more or less of their routine to drop by the cafe to hangout. Jaemin was initially against it at first, always scowling whenever he would see one of them already in the shop, though it seems like he has gotten used to it lately—or rather, he didn't have any other choice but to simply accept it. They would often sometimes come in groups—Jisung and Chenle are big fans of the pastries—but other times it's just one of them who would drop by to visit like Jeno now. My favorite is when all of them drops by to visit, not only because I've started getting closer to them too, but because customers would automatically flock into the shop whenever the "handsome gang" is there. Honestly, I couldn't blame them.

"I'm a little bit short on money this month. I was supposed to get my monthly allowance from my scholarship but something happened so it will be delayed. I have lab things to buy and well—everything sucks." 

Jeno nodded slowly, though I have a feeling he doesn't really understand my plight with money. Spending time with the seven of them has given me a better understanding of each boys' personalities. Jeno, for example, is definitely the calmer one of the bunch. While the others would cause chaos every now and then—Jaemin included, he would be on the side watching them usually with that adorable eye smile of his. He is different from Mark who would mostly jump in to join the fun before calming everyone once things get overboard, though both seem to share the same responsibility over the group. He also seems to be the closest to Jaemin, so by extension, I am also most comfortable around him. 

"How much money do you need?" 

I gave him a look as I reached out for a paper cup to make myself my own hot cocoa. 

"I heard the same question from your best friend before. Are you also going to offer to be my sugar daddy?" 

Jeno choked on his drink and hid his laughter behind his raised cup. 

"Do you want Jaemin to kill me?" 

That made me inappropriately blush.

"Sometimes I just want to bust out a bank like that group everyone is talking about." 

Jeno didn't say anything and continued watching me from the brim of his drink. 

"You think you can do it?" 

"Do what?" I asked as I poured hot cocoa on my cup. I said that off-handedly, I almost forgot my words the moment they left my lips. 

"Rob a bank. You know, do something illegal." 

I leaned back against the counter and craned my head a little sideways as I thought the question over. I didn't actually think of that before so I had to listen to my moral compass a little bit before answering. 

"It depends on the reason." 

Jeno looked surprised by my reply. He was probably expecting a goody two shoes answer from me, which I don’t blame him for, to be honest. Even I am mildly shocked by what I said. 

"The reason?" 

"Yes. I mean, if the only reason I would steal is because I don't have money to support my studies, then no, I wouldn't do it. I have other options. I can work extra jobs or I can just drop out from uni. But if I didn't really have any other choice, if I had to do it for someone really close to me, for example, then I would do it." 

"That is very…"

"Cliche, right? I know. But that's how it works, at least for me," I said with a laugh. "I do know what's good and bad, but I'm willing to jump the gun if I have to." 

I didn't know if it was my imagination, but I thought I heard Jeno murmur something under his breath as I turned to get back to work. 

"I bet Jaemin wouldn't like that." 

-----

PRESENT DAY, a little over one month after the happenings in the first chapter. 

They disappeared like bubbles. No, he disappeared in thin air, like smoke that was blown over by a strong gust of wind. After that night when Jaemin bust through my cafe door, hiding god knows what and asking for temporary shelter, he hasn't shown himself again, apparently leaving while I slipped into a light sleep. Even his friends stopped visiting the cafe which, for a few days, made me genuinely feel scared. Are they okay? What happened to him? Who was he running away from?

That worry slowly and gradually morphed into anger as the days lengthened. I know it was my way of coping with my emotions, but I couldn't help myself. I tried calling him, but the line was cut. It even came to the point that I had to call each of his friends, but it seems like the numbers they gave me were all temporary ones, too. I felt frustrated. I felt...abandoned. 

Was it really easy for him to just cut off all contact with me? 

Was it foolish of me to think that there is...something deeper here than just friendship?

It was the start of winter when the loud ringing of my phone woke me up from my nap. Eyes still heavy with sleep, my first instinct was to look at the clock by my table which registered 1:19AM. I frowned. I was in the middle of finishing a paper before I decided to take a nap but who could be calling me at such an ungodly hour? 

I blearily reached out for my phone and barely looked at the unregistered number before hitting the answer button. 

"Hello?" 

"Noona?"

I froze. Just like that, I felt the sleepiness slowly melt away from my consciousness. I know that voice. 

"Jisung?" 

"Noona, we need your help." 

I sat up on my seat after registering the panic in his voice. I heard another tone suddenly hiss at him from the background before a rustling sound overtook the speakers. It sounded like someone grabbed the phone from his grasp before he could even react.

"Jisung. What's happening—"

"Hello?" The new voice that spoke on the other line made my heart stop. I stared at my wall, wide-eyed.

"Jaemin." 

"I'm sorry. We didn't mean to—"

"Jaemin, we don’t really have any other choice but her, give me the phone," another one jumped in. It was Mark. 

"No. Hyung—"

"We're losing him," my lips parted in shock at what I heard. His voice sounded clearer now and I could very much pick up the iciness on it. Mark has always been so friendly and warm that it threw me off guard. 

"Give me the phone." 

The authority he held made me assume that Jaemin did as he was told. Next thing I know, he was calling out my name from the speaker.

"Mark, yes, I'm listening." 

"Hey. I'm really sorry about this, but we need your help. We really have no other choice, Haechan is in such a bad state—"

That made me stand up and push away from my desk.

"What the hell is going on? What do you mean about Haechan?"

"I'll explain later. We're on our way to you now."

"Wait, what? You don't know my address."

"We'll be there in seven minutes."

That was all he said before he cut off the call, leaving me standing shell-shocked in the middle of my room.

---

They banged on my door not even five minutes after. I had barely pulled on a cardigan when loud knocks rang through my small one bedroom unit causing me to quickly run and grab my knob open. 

I stood frozen at the sight of the seven boys crowding my doorway. Everyone was covered in some sort of soot, leaving them almost unrecognizable in their black outfits. Mark and Jeno were in the middle of the group, carrying a half-conscious Haechan between them. Jisung, Chenle, and Renjun brought the rear, their eyes moving wildly as if checking for eavesdroppers. Jaemin stood closest to me, his jaw tense and his eyes apologetic. My gaze snapped back to the center of the group when Mark called out my name. 

That's when I saw it for the first time. I didn't notice it at first because of its dark color, but Jeno was holding a towel against Haechan's stomach. Except it isn't black, it was a deep dark red.

Blood. 

"Oh my god." 

"Please help us." 

Maybe it was the shock, but I quickly stepped aside to let everyone in. I had barely slammed the door shut when I heard a crashing sound from my small dining area. Jeno pushed everything on top of my table to the ground as Mark and Jaemin gently guided Haechan on it. 

"What—what is going on—"

"He's been shot. Thrice. We're not sure but I think two of the bullets are still there," Renjun answered me as he grabbed the soaked towel from Mark's hand and replaced it with a new one. Jisung and Chenle worked on closing all the shutters of my windows while Jaemin tore off a lamp from my living room to move it close to Haechan. He closed all other lights other than the ones on the dining area and the small lamp.

It was then when my training finally kicked in. I ran towards the table to peer at the wound, my shaking hands gently moving the new towel that is quickly getting soaked by blood again. Haechan gave a soft grunt of pain before slipping to unconsciousness again. 

"I think there are still foreign objects there. It's what causing the severe bleeding."

"Can you take it out?"

My eyes shot to Jeno. The harsh lights from the lamp threw strong shadows on his stressed features. 

"I'm not a licensed doctor."

"We don't need a licensed doctor right now, we need someone who can patch the hole in his stomach. Please." 

I gritted my teeth. I have a ton of questions running through my head right now, but he's right. We need to act fast or else we will lose him. I rolled up my sleeves then and called out to whoever can act fast to my orders. 

"Somebody get the black box under my bed. I have all my surgery practice tools there. I need hot water and lots of towels. Everyone move. Now."

As soon as I said my orders, each of the boys were moving in a flurry to get everything that I asked for. I was adjusting the small lamp directly over the wound to peer at it better when I felt a gentle hand circle around my arm. I looked up to see Jaemin staring at me. 

"Thank you." 

I didn't say anything at first. I don't know if it was the shadows playing over his features, but he looked different from the Jaemin I knew in that brief moment.

"Don't thank me yet. Say that once we're sure he survives."

---

I was stirred from my sleep by the light snoring of someone to my right. Turning my head, I was greeted by the sight of Jisung who was currently sprawled on my sofa, his legs so long that they were dangling on one end. Chenle was on the floor below him, his face covered by one of the pillows he probably fished from one of my love seats cradling Renjun's curled up form. Mark and Jeno were both sitting upright, the former close to Haechan and the other by the door like a sentinel. They seemed to be in deep sleep too, they're heads hanging low. Jaemin was on the floor next to my seat, his breathing slow and relaxed. 

I blinked slowly as my gaze moved from boy to boy. It took me a painful two hours to do the impromptu surgery, first working on taking the bullets out before sewing everything back together. Haechan was lucky enough that the bullets didn't hit any vital organs or important vessels, and that the extreme bleeding was only caused by the wrong muscle being hit by the impact. He slipped from being conscious to unconscious throughout, and everyone had to work together to help me while I did my thing. 

I couldn’t really blame any of them from crashing the moment we made sure that Haechan’s safe—for now. 

After rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I tried to silently move from where I was curled on, careful not to stir anyone. I still have a ton of questions, but those can be taken care of later. I padded as carefully as I could towards the table where Haechan was still resting and peered at the IV that I had hooked on his arm to make sure everything was moving well. 

They even have spare blood bags with them for emergency transfusions. 

...As if this kind of thing normally happens.

"He's going to be okay, right?" 

I hastily turned to see Jaemin staring at me. His voice was low and was only loud enough for me to hear. 

I stared at him for a bit before looking away. 

"Yes. He'll survive."

"Thank you so much." 

I didn't answer. He also didn't say anything else, though I could still feel his gaze heavily on me. I braced myself before speaking again.

"We need to talk." 

I didn't wait for him to reply. I simply walked towards my room, leaving my door open for him to follow. I only turned back to look at him when I finally heard it close softly behind him.

"Who are you?" I asked, before he could even say anything else. I watched as his jaw tightened and released, his eyes full of indecisiveness. I didn't waver. Not this time. 

"You said…"

"That I will never ask questions? I did. But I can't do it anymore, Jaemin. You disappeared for a month without even saying goodbye then showed up on my door with your friends, one of them with a hole in their stomach. You have blood bags—freaking blood bags. What the hell is going on?" 

I tried my hardest to control my voice, not wanting any part of this conversation to be heard outside. My legs felt weak at the moment but I tried my best to continue standing so I could hold his gaze. 

The look in Jaemin's eyes, however, almost made me want to give up. I knew from the pain and hesitation there that I wouldn't like whatever it is he is about to say.

"I'm a criminal."

My stomach dropped. 

I was expecting it, but hearing it straight from him didn't soften the impact and the shock. 

"A…" 

"We steal. We do illegal things. There is absolutely no good way for me to describe this, but yes, I am a runaway who was stupid enough to bring you into this mess," Jaemin said through gritted teeth as he tore his eyes away from me. He ran a hand through his hair and tried to take a deep breath to steady himself.

"I was stupid and I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone back and tried to befriend you after that order of coffee. I'm sorry I ran to you that night a month ago. I seriously thought I was going to die and I wanted you to be the one that I see for the last time. I'm sorry for today, or that I couldn't answer any of your questions back then. It was selfish of me to keep you in my life without giving you anything back," he stopped and forced himself to look at me again. My heart squeezed painfully in my chest when our gazes met. 

"I'm sorry." 

I didn't… couldn't say anything. One part of me had already expected this because it is the only reason that makes sense. Those vague answers, his detachment from normal society, the money, every clue seems to point to one direction, but that didn't spare me from my moral dilemma now. Because while I knew, I didn't exactly consider how it relates to me.

I was afraid to.

Because the truth is, I like Na Jaemin to the extent that I'm afraid of what I can do for him.

"Do you kill…" I asked in a whisper, my voice shaky. A frown passed his already stressed features before he answered.

"No. None of us do," he answered, and I knew then that he was telling the truth. Regardless of what he is or what he didn't tell me, I trust him to not lie to me.

"Am I—am I in danger?" I asked next. He firmly shook his head.

"No. I made sure of that. No one would dare—" he stopped, as if gauging what words he can use to not scare me even more. "You have always been under protection." 

That’s when it clicked. The cafe visits from his friends. The random strangers who seem to spring out from nowhere every time I was out and about and needed sudden help. 

My legs finally gave way and I collapsed on my bed behind me. My mind was trying its best to wrap around the situation, leaving my thoughts in a jumble. There are a million things I wanted to say, but I couldn’t get a single one out at the moment. 

Jaemin seemed to know what I was feeling at the very least because he simply stood there, silently watching me. I'm not sure how long the two of us stayed in that bubble of silence, but it was also him who brought me back to reality when I felt warmth cover my hands.

I looked up to see him kneeling in front of me, both his hands gently enveloping my clasped ones. The look in his eyes made my heart lurch, but I couldn't bring myself to say anything still. 

"I'm sorry if I was selfish… I promise, after this, you won't have to worry about anything else."

No. 

"When I met you, I saw something that's so different from the life that I have. Believe me, I tried my best to leave you alone, but I wanted more of it—more of —you, so I kept coming back." 

Are you going to leave me again?

"But you'll be safe now. I promise. You can go back to how it used to be before I… almost ruined it." 

Please don't leave me. 

Jaemin gave my hands one last squeeze and I felt him move to straighten himself. Before he let them go, however, another gentle warmth pressed against my forehead as he grazed it with his lips. 

"Thank you."

My tears dropped the same time the doors closed behind him. 

---

Chapter 4

[captainofthetidesbreath]

I mostly agree with you when it comes to Fjord and power, springboarding off the Gilmore quote, but I think you’re giving the concept of seeking power and power itself a little more generosity than they are owed.

Power is basically the ability to materially affect the world around you, so the gathering and use of it is going to be morally fraught from the get go. Intentionally elevating yourself to a position where you can exert your will over others, even if you intend to do so benevolently or even not at, carries an inherent degree of I guess complication to it for me to view it as a truly neutral act.

I do agree that Fjord’s initial power coming from Uk’atoa is largely irrelevant, but it’s not unreasonable to view power itself, regardless of where it comes from, as corruptive or at least potential corruptive, and (sorry for the run-on) so people who strive for power as suspect.

Of course if people were doing that they’d apply that view evenly across the 9 to Beau advancing in the Cobalt Soul, Caleb doing magic research, even Veth studying to be a wizard, but that doesn’t really happen in my experience.

So yeah, I agree that people are being unreasonable or maybe even hypocritical by decrying Fjord’s desire to gain power, but maybe from a different angle than you’ve talked about.

I also emphasize something here: I treat power narratively as a little more neutral than power in-real life. So, while I agree that the gaining of power is materially fraught due to the fact that it involves elevating oneself to exert a will over others—for me, that applies to real life. In narrative, it is possible to treat it more neutrally than this because, well, it's a story.

I recognize that's not the case for you! And that's wholly valid, and it is indeed the case that we are largely in agreement. It's simply we're coming from different places, and in the end, I'm commenting on a very specific phenomenon in fandom commentary that isn't nearly as well-reasoned or conscious as you are. My concern is largely with reductive and simplistic commentary.

There is so much of fandom commentary just straight up labels Fjord a bad person for openly admitting that power is attractive to him because he has found power necessary to have agency and affect change. And much of that commentary places the burden of Fjord's flaws on him seeking and wanting power rather than the aggressive and controlling manner in which he initially uses it. The way in which fandom approaches Fjord and power, they simply stop at the idea of "Fjord sought power, which was bad of him" and framing Fjord as having morally been in the wrong for the sheer desire of power. The desiring itself is considered morally wrong of him—not even a little morally complicated, just flat out wrong. This is despite the fact that there is a massive gulf between seeking power as someone who was helpless and without agency and seeking power as someone who wishes to lord over others; this is an inherent difference, and the suspicion comes from that, not from an inherent quality of power itself.

Fjord HAS deep-seated control issues, and that is a problem and a deep flaw related to his relationship with power. He must go through the process of learning that wielding power does not mean that he must control others because this was his experience with the powerful in his life. I'm not going to unpack the entire thing, but it is a fact that is true and that deeply complicates his relationship with power and his becoming someone with it. However, this is not an issue with the concept of having power itself, it is an issue with the way in which it is wielded.

There's actually a whole structure woven in Fjord's narrative about power as subjugating others and power as serving others, which in itself relies on treating power itself neutrally and placing the moral burden on its use, but I'm not going to unpack that here.

My entire point is actually railing against the very idea that power is inherently corruptive, particularly when treated within narrative. So, I actually disagree that it's reasonable to start with that position. That's my entire point, people treat seeking and having power as inherently bad and inherently something to be treated with suspicion, which comes out of the position that power corrupts or potentially corrupts, and I find this a horrifically tedious position to start at.

And why that's tedious to me is proven by what you've brought up: if wanting and having power is inherently so awful, then why doesn't the fandom malign Beau for advancing through the hierarchy of the Cobalt Soul, why haven't they vilified Caleb for continuing to specifically seek to become a more powerful wizard, why haven't they decried Veth for supporting Caleb's studies because she understood someone powerful was what she needed? Why do we not denounce Allura and Vex for maintaining positions on the Council, despite how incredibly powerful that makes them? Or Dolan seeking to be Starosta, even when he achieves it by conspiracy? Or the Nein as a unit for attempting to coalesce power as a means to influence the Bright Queen to make peace? Would we not need to treat every single person here on suspicion for that?

But, only really Fjord gets villainized and denounced and tsked-tsked by popular fandom commentary for the sole act of wanting power—even before factoring in his intent, the way he wields it, or any other item of context—because it comes out of a place of power itself being inherently bad. And that's what I find tedious.

[whitehotharlots]

The point is control

Whenever we think or talk about censorship, we usually conceptualize it as certain types of speech being somehow disallowed: maybe (rarely) it's made formally illegal by the government, maybe it's banned in certain venues, maybe the FCC will fine you if you broadcast it, maybe your boss will fire you if she learns of it, maybe your friends will stop talking to you if they see what you've written, etc. etc. 

This understanding engenders a lot of mostly worthless discussion precisely because it's so broad. Pedants--usually arguing in favor of banning a certain work or idea--will often argue that speech protections only apply to direct, government bans. These bans, when they exist, are fairly narrow and apply only to those rare speech acts in which other people are put in danger by speech (yelling the N-word in a crowded theater, for example). This pedantry isn't correct even within its own terms, however, because plenty of people get in trouble for making threats. The FBI has an entire entrapment program dedicated to getting mentally ill muslims and rednecks to post stuff like "Death 2 the Super bowl!!" on twitter, arresting them, and the doing a press conference about how they heroically saved the world from terrorism. 

Another, more recent pedant's trend is claiming that, actually, you do have freedom of speech; you just don't have freedom from the consequences of speech. This logic is eerily dictatorial and ignores the entire purpose of speech protections. Like, even in the history's most repressive regimes, people still technically had freedom of speech but not from consequences. Those leftist kids who the nazis beheaded for speaking out against the war were, by this logic, merely being held accountable. 

The two conceptualizations of censorship I described above are, 99% of the time, deployed by people who are arguing in favor of a certain act of censorship but trying to exempt themselves from the moral implications of doing so. Censorship is rad when they get to do it, but they realize such a solipsism seems kinda icky so they need to explain how, actually, they're not censoring anybody, what they're doing is an act of righteous silencing that's a totally different matter. Maybe they associate censorship with groups they don't like, such as nazis or religious zealots. Maybe they have a vague dedication toward Enlightenment principles and don't want to be regarded as incurious dullards. Most typically, they're just afraid of the axe slicing both ways, and they want to make sure that the precedent they're establishing for others will not be applied to themselves.

Anyone who engages with this honestly for more than a few minutes will realize that censorship is much more complicated, especially in regards to its informal and social dimensions. We can all agree that society simply would not function if everyone said whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. You might think your boss is a moron or your wife's dress doesn't look flattering, but you realize that such tidbits are probably best kept to yourself. 

Again, this is a two-way proposition that everyone is seeking to balance. Do you really want people to verbalize every time they dislike or disagree with you? I sure as hell don't. And so, as part of a social compact, we learn to self-censor. Sometimes this is to the detriment of ourselves and our communities. Most often, however, it's just a price we have to pay in order to keep things from collapsing. 

But as systems, large and small, grow increasingly more insane and untenable, so do the comportment standards of speech. The disconnect between America's reality and the image Americans have of themselves has never been more plainly obvious, and so striving for situational equanimity is no longer good enough. We can't just pretend cops aren't racist and the economy isn't run by venal retards or that the government places any value on the life of its citizens. There's too much evidence that contradicts all that, and the evidence is too omnipresent. There's too many damn internet videos, and only so many of them can be cast as Russian disinformation. So, sadly, we must abandon our old ways of communicating and embrace instead systems that are even more unstable, repressive, and insane than the ones that were previously in place.

Until very, very recently, nuance and big-picture, balanced thinking were considered signs of seriousness, if not intelligence. Such considerations were always exploited by shitheads to obfuscate things that otherwise would have seemed much less ambiguous, yes, but this fact alone does not mitigate the potential value of such an approach to understanding the world--especially since the stuff that's been offered up to replace it is, by every worthwhile metric, even worse.

So let's not pretend I'm Malcolm Gladwell or some similarly slimy asshole seeking to "both sides" a clearcut moral issue. Let's pretend I am me. Flash back to about a year ago, when there was real, widespread, and sustained support for police reform. Remember that? Seems like forever ago, man, but it was just last year... anyhow, now, remember what happened? Direct, issues-focused attempts to reform policing were knocked down. Blotted out. Instead, we were told two things: 1) we had to repeat the slogan ABOLISH THE POLICE, and 2) we had to say it was actually very good and beautiful and nonviolent and valid when rioters burned down poor neighborhoods.

Now, in a relatively healthy discourse, it might have been possible for someone to say something like "while I agree that American policing is heavily violent and racist and requires substantial reforms, I worry that taking such an absolutist point of demanding abolition and cheering on the destruction of city blocks will be a political non-starter." This statement would have been, in retrospect, 100000000% correct. But could you have said it, in any worthwhile manner? If you had said something along those lines, what would the fallout had been? Would you have lost friends? Your job? Would you have suffered something more minor, like getting yelled at, told your opinion did not matter? Would your acquaintances still now--a year later, after their political project has failed beyond all dispute--would they still defame you in "whisper networks," never quite articulating your verbal sins but nonetheless informing others that you are a dangerous and bad person because one time you tried to tell them how utterly fucking self-destructive they were being? It is undeniably clear that last year's most-elevated voices were demanding not reform but catharsis. I hope they really had fun watching those immigrant-owned bodegas burn down, because that’s it, that will forever be remembered as the most palpable and consequential aspect of their shitty, selfish movement. We ain't reforming shit. Instead, we gave everyone who's already in power a blank check to fortify that power to a degree you and I cannot fully fathom.

But, oh, these people knew what they were doing. They were good little boys and girls. They have been rewarded with near-total control of the national discourse, and they are all either too guilt-ridden or too stupid to realize how badly they played into the hands of the structures they were supposedly trying to upend.

And so left-liberalism is now controlled by people whose worldview is equal parts superficial and incoherent. This was the only possible outcome that would have let the system continue to sustain itself in light of such immense evidence of its unsustainability without resulting in reform, so that's what has happened.

But... okay, let's take a step back. Let's focus on what I wanted to talk about when I started this.

I came across a post today from a young man who claimed that his high school English department head had been removed from his position and had his tenure revoked for refusing to remove three books from classrooms. This was, of course, fallout from the ongoing debate about Critical Race Theory. Two of those books were Marjane Satropi's Persepolis and, oh boy, The Diary of Anne Frank. Fuck. Jesus christ, fuck.

Now, here's the thing... When Persepolis was named, I assumed the bannors were anti-CRT. The graphic novel does not deal with racism all that much, at least not as its discussed contemporarily, but it centers an Iranian girl protagonist and maybe that upset Republican types. But Anne Frank? I'm sorry, but the most likely censors there are liberal identiarians who believe that teaching her diary amounts to centering the suffering of a white woman instead of talking about the One Real Racism, which must always be understood in an American context. The super woke cult group Black Hammer made waves recently with their #FuckAnneFrank campaign... you'd be hard pressed to find anyone associated with the GOP taking a firm stance against the diary since, oh, about 1975 or so.

So which side was it? That doesn't matter. What matters is, I cannot find out.

Now, pro-CRT people always accuse anti-CRT people of not knowing what CRT is, and then after making such accusations they always define CRT in a way that absolutely is not what CRT is. Pro-CRTers default to "they don't want  students to read about slavery or racism." This is absolutely not true, and absolutely not what actual CRT concerns itself with. Slavery and racism have been mainstays of American history curriucla since before I was born. Even people who barely paid attention in school would admit this, if there were any more desire for honesty in our discourse. 

My high school history teacher was a southern "lost causer" who took the south's side in the Civil War but nonetheless provided us with the most descriptive and unapologetic understandings of slavery's brutalities I had heard up until that point. He also unambiguously referred to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshmia and Nagasaki as "genocidal." Why? Because most people's politics are idiosyncratic, and because you cannot genuinely infer a person to believe one thing based on their opinion of another, tangentially related thing. The totality of human understanding used to be something open-minded people prided themselves on being aware of, believe it or not...

This is the problem with CRT. This is is the motivation behind the majority of people who wish to ban it. It’s not because they are necessarily racist themselves. It’s because they recognize, correctly, that the now-ascendant frames for understanding social issues boils everything down to a superficial patina that denies not only the realities of the systems they seek to upend but the very humanity of the people who exist within them. There is no humanity without depth and nuance and complexities and contradictions. When you argue otherwise, people will get mad and fight back. 

And this is the most bitter irony of this idiotic debate: it was never about not wanting to teach the sinful or embarrassing parts of our history. That was a different debate, one that was settled and won long ago. It is instead an immense, embarrassing overreach on behalf of people who have bullied their way to complete dominance of their spheres of influence within media and academe assuming they could do the same to everyone else. Some of its purveyors may have convinced themselves that getting students to admit complicity in privilege will prevent police shootings, sure. But I know these people. I’ve spoken to them at length. I’ve read their work. The vast, vast majority of them aren’t that stupid. The point is to exert control. The point is to make sure they stay in charge and that nothing changes. The point is failure. 

[maaruin]

The Institutional Problems of the Jedi Order

Preface

I think it is time to finally write this post. These ideas have been going through my head for some time after reading some Jedi discourse. But I should preface this with: even though the Jedi made mistakes, this does not mean Palpatine’s genocide of them was justified. It only means that he saw certain flaws in the Order that he could exploit. I suspect that without these flaws, he probably still would have managed to take over and persecute the Jedi, but much more of the Order would have survived.

For this post, I am mostly using the prequel movies with a bit of lore added from the old Expanded Universe. I’m not using The Clone Wars, because its depiction of Anakin’s fall to the dark side is different from the movies. And I’m not using the new Disney Canon, because I don’t know what has been retconned so far and what hasn’t.

Depending on how we count, I think there were either two or four major flaws. I’ll number them as four, but the first three could be grouped together.

1. The Jedi Order is a religion but isn’t organized like one

The Jedi are a religion. They are a group that believes certain things about the universe and practices a way of life that fits with these beliefs. But they are also entirely organized as “Jedi Knights” who are “guardians of peace and justice in the [old] republic”. This is… odd. The entire religion is basically made up of full-time professionals. Or rather, monastics.

If you want to study the Force and use it, you have to become a monk, basically. And more than that, to be accepted you need to already have a special talent in using the Force. Actually, you can’t even do that, they only take toddlers, so your parents have to decide if you should join this religion and become a monk. (Or maybe the Jedi Order just takes all Force sensitive children no matter what the parents think, it’s not entirely clear.)

A normal religion isn’t organized like that. Normally most members of a religion are normal people with normal jobs with varying levels of devotion. They participate in the practices of the religion in a way that fits into their daily life. Then there are religious professionals like priests who work to make it possible for the normal followers to practice this religion. And then, in some religions, there are monastics who dedicate their life to practicing the religion, generally apart from the normal believers. The Jedi only have the last group.

That alone would make them much easier to target and wipe out. But it is even more like that. The entire Jedi Order is integrated into the institutional framework of the Republic. All of the higher ranked Jedi (we will talk about the lower ranked later) basically work as special police and special diplomats for the Republic. “and” not “or”, all of them must fulfill both roles. And, when the Clone Wars start, they all become officers in the Republic military.

Now, in principle I don’t think religious institutions working closely with the state and fulfilling important roles for it is necessarily a problem. But if this is the only way this religion can be practiced, the practice of this religion will become poor in variety and closed off to most people who would be interested in participating.

2. Slavery in the Galaxy

There is slavery in the Galaxy Far Far Away. It is illegal in the Galactic Republic, but it is widely practiced in the planets of the Outer Rim, which might or might not be members of the Republic. The Jedi know that slavery is bad. What should they do?

Well, as much as a like the image of a hundred Jedi waltzing into the Hutt Cartel and killing/arresting them all, that probably wouldn’t be the best idea and cause much more chaos and harm than it solves, at least in the short run. But there are alternatives besides doing that and mostly ignoring it. For a start, here are two:

Establish underground railroads to smuggle slaves to freedom or assist on already established ones. Jedi mind-reading and precognition abilities will be very helpful in such endeavors.

Assist in organizing and fighting in slave revolts. One Jedi can turn the tide on the battlefield and if they are respected diplomats, the can help the slaves in finding supporters.

But this isn’t what the Jedi do because they are preoccupied with their role in the Republic. Qui-Gon says to Anakin that he didn’t come to Tatooine to free slaves. Which is true, he was sent to assist the government of Naboo against the Trade Federation, not the slaves on Tatooine against the Hutts. And why was he sent to Naboo and not Tatooine? Because Chancellor Valorum decided that resisting the Trade Federation was in the interest of the Republic, but freeing slaves wasn’t.

As mentioned in part 1 the number of members of the Jedi religion is smaller than it should be and integrated into the Republic in a way that leaves little room for it to act independently.

3. The Clone Army

Suddenly, an army for the Republic conveniently appears in time when the Republic is about to go to war after centuries of peace. This army is made up of, for all intents and purposes, slaves. Slaves that have been bred to be especially obedient. The Republic is expecting the Jedi to serve as officers in this army. What should the Jedi do?

Serve as officers, because the clones would suffer more without them?

Refuse to serve because that would mean supporting the introduction of slavery into the Republic?

Throw their political weight around and demand the clone troopers be freed and given Republic citizenship and in addition demand an end of the clone production in return for serving in the war?

Serve on both sides of the clone wars because the Republic obviously doesn’t have the moral high ground anymore and if their service in the Republic army leads to less suffering, their service in the Separatist army will do so as well?

There are probably more options. The Jedi decided to pick the one that reduced the suffering of the clones in the short term, but by doing that squandered the opportunity to take a stance against the creation of the clone army. And we don’t even see meaningful discussion within the order about this choice. This is, I suspect, because the Jedi are so used to their role as enforcers in the Galactic Republic that the alternatives weren’t really on the table.

(Palpatine’s plan was counting on the Jedi to behave this way when he planned Order 66.)

4. Dealing with emotions (the problem with Anakin)

While the Jedi Order may not demand it’s members to be emotionless, it does demand that they keep their emotions under very strict control. Nonetheless, almost all the Jedi we see do seem to be emotionally well adjusted. Obi-Wan, Yoda, Qui-Gon, Mace Windu, all of them seem to have little trouble with this demand.

Anakin, on the other hand, has a lot of trouble with it. He often has emotional outbursts through Episode II and III, then shortly afterwards walks back and apologizes. Curiously, this isn’t the case in Episode I. There he is actually quite good in dealing with his emotions. In other words, his time in the Jedi Order made his ability to handle his own emotions worse. Much worse, actually.

I think the reason for this is that whenever he feels something, other Jedi tell him that this is not right. It starts with Yoda in Episode I. “Afraid are you? […] Fear is the path to the dark side... fear leads to anger... anger leads to hate.. hate leads to suffering.” Criticisms like this no doubt continued all the way through his training until, by the time of Episode II, every time he feels an emotion he is angry at himself for feeling that emotion, which leads to more emotional instability, not less.

But why is this a problem Anakin has and not for the other Jedi we see. Maybe it is because he started his training later than is normal for a Jedi. But I suspect it is something slightly different: The Jedi who go through their training either find a way to handle their emotions in a way the order approves of, or they are sorted out. In the Expanded Universe there is a so called Jedi Service Corps where Jedi who fail their training go to work as farmers, explorers, educators or medical assistants. These jobs are, however, seen as lesser and going there is considered a failure. This is unfortunate, I think the Jedi could do much more good in the galaxy if the best of them were able to work in different fields instead of all being stuck with warrior-diplomat. Nonetheless, the Service Corps actually mitigates one of the flaws the Order has to some extend, if it works like I suspect. If the Jedi don’t have a way of dealing with emotions that works for everyone, the next best thing is to only pick the ones that can handle it and put the rest somewhere where they are useful and can’t do damage. Certainly not ideal, but an understandable adjustment.

But anyways, Anakin wasn’t sorted out. It is never confirmed in the movies, but I would suspect they made an exception for him. Yoda already made an exception for him when they decided to train him at all. And because he was the chosen one, I think they thought that his potential would be wasted if he only got to be in the Service Corps. If we ignore the Service Corps and only go off the movies, my criticism still stands: Yoda recognized that Anakin might not handle Jedi training well and he should have stuck to his guns and refuse Anakin to be trained within the Jedi Order.

Why are the Jedi like this?

Personally, I like to explain these flaws of the Jedi Order historically. Now, the EU doesn’t really fit with the theory I have. Because in games like KotOR and SWtOR the Order seems very similar to the Order in the Prequels. On the other hand, other sources say that this structure of the Jedi Order is a product of the Ruusan Reformation which happened after the end of the last Sith War a thousand years before Episode I.

To defeat the Sith at the end of that war, all Jedi were brought together as one army, no matter what they had done before. They didn’t really defeat the Sith (the Sith were deceived by Darth Bane to destroy themselves), but they thought they did. They thought they almost single-handedly saved the Republic from destruction.

Because of this, they rebuilt the Jedi Order in a way that was explicitly integrated into the institutions of the Republic. They built it in a way that made the fighting Jedi the core of the Order, other forms of being a Jedi were downgraded to the Service Corps. Because many Jedi had fallen to the dark side in that war, they taught a very strict form of emotional control and only trained force-sensitives from birth. And because they were so linked to their role as enforcers for the Republic, the neglected many other things Jedi should do, like helping slaves free themselves.

A better Jedi Order

No matter if this is how it happened, I do think the Jedi Order could be different (better). Here is how I would change it:

A Jedi Laity: Every living being is connected to the Force, so let them participate in practices that serve this connection like Jedi meditation. They may never be able to move things with their mind, but that’s not the point.

Jedi who serve the people should live among them: Jedi priests, Jedi healers, and yes, even Jedi knights should not form their own community but instead be in the same community as the Jedi laity.

Monasteries for the monks: Jedi who fully want to focus on their connection with the Force could still live in monastic communities.

Don’t completely integrate into the state: Working with the Galactic Republic could still be a thing, but the Republic should never depend on the Jedi and only a minority of Jedi should serve the Republic directly.

Help people everywhere: Because they are not completely bound to the Republic, many Jedi can decide how they will serve the people in the galaxy. Some might decide to help the slaves in the Outer Rim.

A Variety of Emotion: Not every Jedi will be as capable of controlling their emotions as the others. If there is a large variety of ways to be a Jedi, I suspect that most of them could still find their place to fit into the Order.

Allow adults to join: With adults it is much easier to determine if they would make a good Jedi and what way of being a Jedi would suit them. If there is a Jedi laity, they can be trained as children to some degree before they decide if they want to join.

Would this Jedi Order have fallen to Palpatine’s manipulation? I don’t know. But I think it would have been harder for him. If most Jedi didn’t serve in the Republic military and weren’t in a small number of Jedi temples, Order 66 would have claimed much less of the Order. (Probably 10%-20% instead of >90%.) Jedi would find it much more easy to hide in the population and the laity could help carry on the Jedi traditions in secret. Anakin might have been more emotionally well adjusted and not fall for Palpatine’s manipulations. (On the other hand, in a more open Jedi Order like this, there might be more people who could be turned, so who knows.)

Well, this is my contribution the Jedi discourse. The Jedi aren’t evil, and they certainly didn’t deserve genocide because of this. But as the Prequels depict them, they have certain tragic flaws in the way they are organized that Palpatine could exploit.

(Maybe I’ll make a shorter Part 2 about how Luke deals with this.)

[writernotwaiting]

Loki Meta Nobody Asked For, part 3--All MCU Lokis are AU fan fiction Lokis

There is so much in part 3 that I really wanted to see and I very much want to celebrate, but once again, I am conflicted.

Ok. Good things: Loki and his magic. Loki and fighting. Loki and improvisation. Loki as bisexual. Loki talking about his mother. Loki showing a moral compass.

All of these are Most Excellent Things: • Loki here is finally not a de-powered pushover. His illusions are effective. He teleports over a short distance. He resists Sylvie’s mind control. He stops a multi-ton support tower from falling and pushes it back up into place!!!! • He fights effectively--finally! Granted, his dagger misses its mark, but he was drunk, so I’ll give him a pass on that. Aside from that, he finally shows us some highly effective hand-to-hand combat skills. Thankyouverymuch for acknowledging that Loki survived a millennia of life in a warrior culture. He was raised by a warrior king. His brother is a Hero(tm). There’s no way he didn’t learn some skillz. His ineffective fighting in episode 2 can easily be attributed to the fact that he was pulling his punches when he was fighting the human shields Silvie possessed. • Loki’s character explicitly acknowledged their queerness!!!! This makes my little queer heart glow bright, and I think needs no more comment. Just . . . yesssss! • Loki loves his mom. Loki is conflicted about that relationship because They Lied To Him.  And did I mention that Loki speaks wistfully about his mother and a bit about the fact he was adopted and no one told him until he already pretty much found out (in the most awkward way ever). Even Sylvie thought that was pretty poor parenting. Good stuff. • Loki really doesn’t want to kill innocent bystanders and only attacks folks who attack him first. He is also kind of appalled to hear that the TVA workers are all variants who’ve had their minds wiped. Again, this is all excellent, and fits well with the Loki we met in Thor I who just really wanted to make sure his war-mongering brother didn’t sit on the throne until he grew up a bit, and then Everything Got Way Out of Control. • We see Smart!Loki in action, as opposed to hear Mobius flatter Loki to get him to cooperate. While one of Loki’s attempts at deception fails miserably, the other works (with Sylvie’s help). This is all excellent and made me Very Happy Indeed!

[more below the break]

I also very much liked many parts of his interactions with Sylvie, and the fact that we got a tiny bit of her backstory (and I love her insistence on her own identity--this is very much I think a Loki thing, “I am not you. I am my own thing, thank you very much”). This relationship has a great deal of potential for complexity and depth. I am totally here for enemies to frenemies to allies if that’s where the series is going.

I like the reveal that the TVA agents are all variants themselves who have been “wiped” and indoctrinated. We are finally getting more obvious hints at the insidiousness of the TVA.

So why am I still conflicted about the series? Well, here is what I did not like: • Loki’s improvisation with the old woman--he had too little information to pull off an effective scam like that and he would have known that. He had a photograph. A black and white photograph--no voice, no personality, no coloration, no body language; he didn’t even know if the picture really was one of a husband and not some other type of relation. There was no way it would ever work. He should have known that. Loki would have known that. • His voice and body language when he pretended to be a guard was stupid and unconvincing, not mimicry. That was a joke. • The getting drunk thing. I found this not only disappointing but insulting and also possibly lazy on the part of the writers. It felt completely out of character. In fact, Sylvie felt much more “Loki-ish” in this scene than Loki did. I just cannot in any universe see Loki doing anything like this under these conditions. They are undercover in a high-pressure situation in which they are about to be wiped out of existence if they fuck things up, and Loki decides to get drunk? No. This is a virtually suicidal loss of control. They have no idea how long they would be on that train or what they would have to deal with later. They have no idea what sort of security is in place on the train. Why did they even stop in a bar, of all places? Why not find a sleeper car and stay out of the way? For that matter, why not just find seats? Why would a guard be sitting in a booth at a bar with a prisoner? They wouldn’t. Loki’s sense of self-preservation is stronger than that. He’s smarter than that. It was stupid and out of character and also unnecessary--there are so many other ways they could have gotten them shoved off that train that did not involve Loki making a spectacle of himself. It was, in fact, a very Thor thing to do, not Loki-like at all. • I still feel as though Tom is over-emoting in all of the scenes that are less than life-or-death. It does not feel like the Loki I met in Thor I and The Avengers. That Loki had a length of re-bar up his spine and only genuinely smiled when he looked at Thor (when Thor was smiling).

I feel like Tom is playing two Lokis in the show--the one that fights his way out of tight spots and occasionally deals with his difficult family issues, and the other is a parody of mischief!Loki--whose face is extremely emotive and who wants to bare his soul to whomever looks vaguely as though they’ll listen to him.

So, here’s my mid-series conclusion. All MCU Lokis are fan fiction Loki’s of the comics. Among those MCu fan fics are three distinct AUs.

1. The Loki we meet in Thor I, The Avengers, and Thor II. This Loki works hard to bury his emotions. His body language is generally stiff and prickly. He is the product of growing up in a culture that is driven by a toxic masculinity and devalues those traits that are coded “feminine” such as all of those things Loki excels at. Because of this, he has gotten the message his entire life that he is with less that the Golden Child that is Thor. He loves his brother with all his soul but resents him because his father placed them in competition with one another. All of this was reinforced by growing as the “tag-along” little brother who was tolerated but not embraced by Thor’s closest friends. This Loki becomes self-destructive and suicidal, experiencing a psychotic break as a result of revelations about his adoption and internalized racism. He spends who-knows-how-long falling through the void enduring perhaps months of sensory deprivation only to be tortured and manipulated by Thanos. He emerges from that experience Truly Fucked Up, stopped of much of his power because he’s had the living shit kicked out of him. But his core self is still there somewhere--a core self that loves his brother, that craves affection, that really hates what Asgard has done to him but still has a moral compass in there somewhere that says wiping out the entire universe is a bad thing and I guess protecting helps humans is something he ought to do since his brother loves them.

2. The Loki we meet in Ragnarok and IW. This isn’t really the same guy as Loki #1. It’s a fan fiction AU in which Loki has no trauma to deal with. He is a manipulator. But he is a manipulator because he is a survivor. He does what he has to do in order to be not dead, and if he can also have some luxury while he does it, well, that’s a bonus. Theoretically, he is a powerful mage--since he was able to overcome Odin and place him in a nursing home--but we don’t see any of that on screen. He is revered Mostly Harmless by the narrative. There is no re-bar up his ass. His body language is much more loose and emotive. His characterization has been flattened out in order to serve as a narrative foil for Thor, and will be bridged in IW to serve Thor’s character development (yet another feminization of his character). Many people really enjoyed this version of Loki. But let’s be clear, he isn’t the same Loki we met in the other three movies.

3. The TVA Loki. This Loki is a new fan fiction. A third AU. This Loki is slightly closer to Loki #1 in that his characterization is a bit more complex than Loki #2. He is smarter. He is more versatile and powerful. He has a backstory that isn’t being mocked. His queerness is not being used to villain-code him. But it would be wrong to say he’s the same Loki that we saw in the first three movies. This Loki’s trauma is all family-related, which great, at least they acknowledge that.

However, he clearly is not the PTSD!Loki that we see in TDW. They have decided (at least so far) to completely ignore what happens between Thor I and The Avengers. I’m not quite sure why it’s ok to deal with trauma when it’s Bucky Barnes and Tony Stark, but not ok when it’s Loki, but this is the decision the director made, and if I want to enjoy the show, I have to be ok with that. So that’s what I’m going to do right now. The Loki show is fan fiction. It’s an AU. And it does a pretty good job at doing that.

[where-theres-smoak-2]

This Needs To Stop.

Trigger warning: Sensitive topics, p*dopilia, grooming, mental health and r*cism. 

Ok so this is a bit of a rant so apologies for that, I usually try to stay away from sensitive or controversial topics but this is something that I am passionate about and that I think is important. Also I just want to say that I am in no way directing this to the entirety of the M*lina fandom, I know most are just enjoying their ship, but there are those few who are deliberately seeking out darklina posts or are cross tagging and coming into darklina’s asks and just generally harassing the fandom which sadly I am seeing happen more and more often. Also I do feel like this can apply to all fandoms not just exclusively shadow and bone/ grishaverse, its just this is the one I am experiencing it in right now.   

I’ve seen antis call darkling/darklina fans many problematic things, delusional, mentally ill, ab*se apologists. They also like throwing around words like grooming and p*dophile. The thing that makes me angry about this is that they are taking sensitive topics, topics that many users have been effected by and they are using them to attack shippers merely for liking a character or ship that they don’t. What is even more frustrating is they seem to be throwing these words around without evening fully understanding what they even mean. For example the claim that the Darkling is a p*dophile because Alina is only 17 in the books. Well p*dophilia is a psychiatric disorder where adults are attracted to children and in order for it to be classed as p*dophilia the child involved has to be 13 or younger. A 16 year old can be diagnosed as a p*dophile if they become attracted to a child that is five years or more younger than them. So the relationship between the Darkling and Alina does not meet the criteria to be categorised this way as Alina is over the age of 13. As for it being a case of Alina is underaged, well, for one that depends on where in the world you are. This is based on imperial russia, in russia the age of consent is 16. This means that a 16 year old can have a sexual relationship with a 30 year old, a 70 year old or a 500 year old immortal and in a court of law it is still legal, whatever your own moral issues around age gaps might be. Even then it can be argued that it is irrelevant because, as with most historical literature where young girls marry older men, you cannot put modern day concepts onto them. Like I said this story is based on Imperial Russia, the life expectancy of a person in that time was around 30 years old. That means a 15 year old girl is already half way through her life, she is literally middle aged. It is at this point usually that girls started to prepare to get married and have children and yes sometimes it was to an older man because men were expected to provide for their wife and family which means having a house and job and means to support a family which an older man was more likely to have. My point is a 15-17 year old in say Imperial Russia is not the same as a 15-17 year old in modern day therefore you can’t take modern day laws and morals and place them onto that situation, it doesn’t work, they lived completely different lives. In Alina’s world, she is at the age where girls might get married and her being courted by a man of the general’s status would have been a normal occurrence, for her to have caught the attention of someone with his standing would have been considered very advantageous for her. I mean she literally gets two marriage proposals in book 2, where I believe she is still 17, and Nikolai is talking about how if she marries him it’ll be in name only and they can make Mal her guard so she can do the horizontal tango with him whenever she feels like it, so clearly the characters themselves feel like Alina is at an age where she can, one get married, and two be engaging in a sexual relationship. 

So why does all of this matter? Well it matters because people reading these posts, asks and comments left on posts, may be victims of p*dophilia and grooming. A lot of these comments don’t have trigger warnings and when you are talking about sensitive and triggering topics like this you need to be careful and when you are talking about them without even really understanding them, and where they can’t apply to the characters you are talking about anyway, then you are potentially triggering someone needlessly because you didn’t need to be talking about it in the first place, I hope I am making sense there. I am not saying don’t talk about these subjects if you do think they are relevant, I am saying make sure you do the research, that you understand the subject you are addressing and when you do talk about it do it in a respectful manner, don’t throw it out there in an angry spew accompanied by alot of other derogatory words because that won’t help anyone.     

Another subject I want to talk about is I am also seeing a lot of posts about how darklinas must be delusional or mentally unwell. This, again, is hurtful and harmful. Mental illness for a very long time has had a stigma around it, one that makes the person suffering from it feel weak and ashamed. There was always the attitude of if you are mentally ill then there is something wrong with you, or the attitude of oh just get over it, cheer up, think a different way. But mental illness isn’t just a state of emotion its often caused by hormonal imbalances and chemicals. Genetics can also play a part. There is nothing wrong with someone who is mentally ill their brain is just wired a different way. I also find it problematic when people throw around the word delusional. Maybe its nothing to you, just a word, but alot of mental illnesses have actual delusions as one of their symptoms. These can be scary and upsetting and are outside the control of the person experiencing them. Making the suggestion that liking a particular ships means you are delusional is potentially very triggering to those who do battle delusions and have fought to overcome them. The stigma around mental illness has prevented alot of people suffering from mental illness from seeking help out of shame or embarrassment or even out of fear of being judged and although I do feel like as a society we’ve become alot more open about mental health and alot more accepting there is still a long way to go. When antis start saying things like ‘I can’t believe people ship this, they must be mentally ill,’ or ‘they must be sick in the head’, or ‘if you like this ship than you must be delusional’ not only are they being incredibly prejudice against people who have mental illnesses but it is also so harmful because if there is someone reading that post who is struggling with their mental health and are considering seeking help then you’ve just made them feel more ashamed, more like there is something wrong with them which will make them even less likely to seek out help and as I said before there isn’t anything wrong with a person who has a mental health condition they are just different from you. That doesn’t give you the right to make them feel like they are less capable of deciding what they do or do not like or even what they should or should not like to be classified as a ‘normal’ person. 

The most latest problematic statements I’ve seen have been those accusing Darklina’s of being r*cist. This one I found a bit funny in a it’s not funny kind of way. I just don’t think there is much logic behind this view point. I’m not sure I understand the antis reasoning here. Mostly because I’m pretty sure the majority of the Darklina fandom comes from the books where Mal is described as being a white, brown haired, blue eyed guy. Funnily enough the Darkling is described as being able to pass for Shu, though to be clear it isn’t confirmed that he is a POC, but out of the two in the books the Darkling is more likely to be a POC than Mal. On top of that whilst many darklina fans have made it clear they are not a fan of Mal in the books many have said they like the show version of Mal who, as we all know, the actor Archie is a POC. So by anti logic darklinas are all r*cist because they don’t like book Mal who is depicted as white but we do like show Mal who is a POC. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I do understand that there were some ‘fans’ who made inappropriate and r*cist comments to some cast members including Archie and I would never ever condone that no matter who I ship. But you also can’t condemn an entire fandom just because of the actions of a select few. I don’t judge all M*linas for that one fan who accused Ben of being a pr*dator and p*dophile because of his friendship with Jessie. Once again my point is r*cism is a serious topic and not something someone should use as a retort or comeback to someone not shipping your ship. When we use these words casually it makes it less likely that they’ll be taking seriously when they really do need to be taken seriously, when they really are relevant to what is happening. If we keep using them so casually then when we really do need to talk about them, when it really matters, people will just shrug and go ‘its just antis being antis.’ 

I think it is possible for people to like different things, to debate and analyse different relationships and characters and talk about what flaws they may have in a respectful manner. I wouldn’t say I am anti m*lina but at the same time there are things about them that I find problematic but when I talk about those things I hope I do so in a way that doesn’t demean those who do like the ship. I understand that people will have a different interpretation than me and whilst I might not understand where their thinking comes from or why they have a particular opinion I would never make the assumption that they are mentally unwell or make judgements on their character or morals. I try to think about the words I am writing. I know how easy it can be to just throw a word out there without thinking about it. I used to use the word delusional to describe fans of certain ships, but when I recognised how damaging and problematic that was I stopped and I changed my behaviour because it was never my intention to hurt others. I guess the main message I am trying to convey here is we need to be careful with our words they’re not as insignificant as we might think.                

[kettlequills]

yeah can you break down miraak or ulfric's ass?

Uhh so I fucking hate Ulfric, and the fact I can only kill him once in game upsets me. He's a lazy racist warmonger and while I'm no fan of the Empire either, deciding to lead a group of ethnonationalists in the name of Literally Some Guy who frankly is more of an Imperial god anyway sucks and has done  direct harm to the country and culture he claims to care about.

As a character, though, he like the rest of Skyrim is not really taken to his full potential or written compellingly in a way I would like. His narrative goals are not only deeply unsympathetic in every possible way but reinforce the ignorant views of the game devs, and the wider context of the emergence of rising racism around Skyrim's release is important when analysing his purpose in the story, and the reasons behind the very sympathetic endorsement of the Stormcloaks, into account.

Secondly, though, he just isn't particularly interesting to me personally. We are told, second-hand, not shown, that he is a victim of the Thalmor. Aside from reading into his portrayal as a stereotypical sternly spoken Nord with dramatic, cool lines like "Legends don't burn down villages" who believes in Honour as a desperate cover up for a possibly more realistic or interesting responses to the trauma he has undergone, there is nothing in Ulfric himself to tell us this about him. His core character as an extremist who thinks he's a hero restoring justice within the binds of a strict moral code could be interesting if it is seen to be questioned or even displayed in its different facets in any of his subordinates or the scenes he's in. Why do people follow Ulfric? I don't believe everyone cares about Talos or the Thalmor. What is he actually promising them? Where is the impression we are supposed to gain of the charismatic man we are told, not shown, that he is?

Also. Windhelm Sucks. It's the shittiest city and Yes, I am including Riften. Get a better city or better yet walk off Windhelm bridge.

People I  ship romantically with him: Not many, tbh. I prefer to imagine him as focused on his campaigns mostly. Galmar perhaps? Other than that I cannot stress how little I view Ulfric as a romantic creature.

Platonic OTP: Galmar. Ulfric has one bestie only but you have to hand it to him the bitch is ride or die.

My unpopular opinion about this character: I don't think any of my opinions are that unpopular tbh, Ulfric sucks and I think most people know it. I do think though that he probably did kill Torygg perfectly in accordance with Nord law.

One thing I wish had happened in canon: The opportunity to overthrow Ulfric not as an Imperial soldier but by supporting the disenfranchised within Windhelm to rise up.

Miraak!

I enjoy Miraak because he is, at the base level, kinda a silly character to me. He has crotch spikes on his dragon aspect. His mask looks like a tentacle face. He decided to make a pact with Mora then thought trying to outwit the Prince of Secret Knowledge in secret would go well. He turns up to steal your dragonsouls and says catty one liners about how much he's better than you and then immediately gets his ass whooped when you're there in person.

He is pathetic in the fun way and I heartily wish I had the option to proverbially steal his lunch money.

As a character, a lot of his appeal to me is how little we know about him. Anyone who has had the immense patience to follow me all this time knows that as a rule, I have a soft spot for powerful, usually villain, characters with a distant past and an "out of time" arc to them. I also have the capacity to make him as fucked up looking and eldritch as I want. He is an easy character to lend to exploring some really dark and tragic situations, which is my fic bread and butter, and also easily allows for playing with unreality, abuse of power and control. The narrative mirroring of the Last Dragonborn and Miraak makes them interesting, either if you decide to make them foils or not. I think he is probably the best villain of the game? None other have an even slightly personal relationship with your Dragonborn unless you create it.

Romantic partnerships: i actually. Cant list all of them without spoiling some of the secret miraak fic I'm working on, but as a general thing the last dragonborn (specifically, my ldb laataazin), or Vahlok the Jailor (What can I say, I like tragedy. What if Vahlok hadn't fought him at all but Mora still stole him away, and it was easier to explain? How hard, how painful, to raise a sword to the one you love when his lust for power grows.). I don't think canon Miraak would honestly consider many other people as close enough to his equal to bother giving the time of day to, tbh, though as I enjoy him as a character I frankly ship him with near as damn every other character in the game.

Platonic: Sahrotaar, Relonikiv and Kruziikrel. They've been locked together in Apocrypha for thousands of years. What's that like? When one of you is mind controlling the others into obeying you, that's clearly going to be very unhealthy and festering, but years of being locked up together and you've got to imagine they end up at least somewhat codependent.

My unpopular opinion: Miraak is a scalie. And for the love of the divines this man is not smooth. He has terminal angry wet cat syndrome and is about as romantic as a fistful of sheepshit in your boot.

One thing I would change: sAHROTAAR SAHROTAAR SAHROTAAR. let me free the dragons. But also. PLEASE let me acknowledge somewhere that bend will is an extremely fucked up Shout to not only use but create and what that says about Miraak's mental health and ability to actually, genuinely recognise and connect with other people as equals to himself. Obvi I wish we could spare him but frankly he is not the most important one to get out of Apocrypha.

[bookwyrminspiration]

(pyro here! i feel like this is...very ramble-y and i apologize if this doesn't make sense, and no obligation to post if it all feels like i'm just going in circles or for any other reason)

this could just be me, but i find keeper to be so interesting in so many ways but mostly because of how little actual good guys and bad guys there are, if that makes sense? it doesn't seem like it on the surface, and the story seems rather clear-cut if you don't think about it too hard, but there's no character or group in the series that's completely perfect and hasn't done anything wrong ever, iirc? like, the council is very obviously not too pressed over whether their actions are morally right and they're the government of a species that's supposedly all about being righteous, and neither are the black swan nor neverseen, which i find really interesting to look at, especially when the protagonists start to realize these things and question them, outwardly or inwardly.

and even any developed individual characters aren't clear-cut. yes, sophie is our protagonist, but she's also an arsonist that frequently breaks the laws of her world and has nearly started a war by breaking a treated because she was curios as to what was in an ogre king's mind. linh is- well, she's the token nice asian girl, but she also flooded an entire city, twice, and has most definitely killed people. dex may not have done anything really wrong, but he still created the ability restrictor, a device that put his best friend through days/weeks of torment, all because he was happy to recieve attention from the council. and that's just three of the main characters.

and i'm under the impression you really don't care about the council (which is fine and totally valid!) but it's still so interesting how the three important characters from there follow this as well. oralie was revealed to be sophie's mother meaning she committed treason and should probably be in exile, kenric was actively hiding important information from oralie (and knew about her being sophie's mother and therefor was a willing accomplice to treason and should also be in exile), and bronte has gotten...better(?) in the later books? maybe?

i suppose im wishing that shannon will deliver on this in the future, but im not really getting my hopes up. sophie is very interesting, but the books have always framed her actions as the right ones to take, no matter how terrible the consequences could've been, and they definitely frame the rest of the "good guys" as, well, good people who do good things, which isn't exactly true in most cases. i just...i guess i find it really interesting. i'd also be interested to hear your thoughts on this! on the surface, keeper really does seem like a rather basic series, but it's cool how if you dig even just a little deeper you start getting messy.

hello pyro !! nothing to apologize for, I love rambling! and you are in luck because I happen to have so many thoughts about everything all of the time.

and I agree with you! When you first think of keeper—or at least when I do—I seems very black and white, even bland at times in terms of the interest of the characters and the aspects of their world. Especially when you’re an older reader and have since read more adult books with more complex characters. Which is common. Because these are middle grade series and there’s more limitations of what topics authors can reasonably cover. They’re being careful. Because their audience are young and impressionable and despite their best efforts may be influenced subconsciously. So they have to lay things out more clearly, explaining that actions are bad when adult readers can put that together themselves.

(I know there are a lot of younger people in this fandom so let me clarify: I am not saying you are incapable of critical thought. However, thorough analysis becomes easier with experience, and adults and older readers will often have more experience with this than you. We’ve also had more time to figure out our own opinions and morals. This is not meant to put you down, just remind you that there are inevitable differences between us).

Back to what you were saying, pyro, despite its appearance, when you take a closer look there’s actually not a lot of black and white—or at least not as much as you’d think. I know there’s a canon line where Sophie says something like “the Black Swan were…the good guys?” (paraphrased from the first book). Which makes sense because at this point in time she’s twelve, where it makes sense for her to have that very black and white mindset. Good and bad. Pleasant and unpleasant. it’s a very all nothing mindset, which I know I also had at that age. But as she’s grown older in the series, she’s thinking about things from a more mixed perspective. She’s bargaining with herself and deciding what’s worth what and if the consequences are worth the risks, making decisions she likely would’ve condemned earlier in her life. Like setting the storehouse on fire. That’s a very loaded and controversial decision from her. It’s neither good nor bad. It accomplishes something she wants—sending the Neverseen scrambling and setting them back—and she decided that was worth the consequences—burning potential information and doing something that might’ve been previously against her morals. It’s not the “right” decision to make. It’s just the decision she makes.

We see this a lot with Black Swan too. I’m actually going to bring their oath into this: “I will do everything in my power to help my world.” It seems simple and straightforward at first, but thinking about it, there’s no qualifications for what “help” means. And there’s no limit on what they’ll do, just that they’ll do it if they’re capable. This leaves it open for a lot of morally questionable decisions, like creating Sophie. Did creating Sophie help their world? She’s already started to make positive changes (like at Exillium) and she’s not done yet, so you could say yes she’s helping. And they were capable of bringing her into existence. So they did. It was in their power and it helped, so they did. Despite using Emma’s body, despite forcing Sophie into this situation.

with the Neverseen, they seem more like misguided anti-heroes (if I’m using that term right), doing “bad” things for “good” reasons. Fintan is making these bold statements and undermining the council, actions viewed as negative, to try and highlight the unfair discrimination in their system and reform it—a motive one could consider reasonable and positive.

as for the council, the most notable event this applies to is Sophie’s ability restrictor in Everblaze. This was not supported by everyone else, actively hurting out main protagonist, but their reasoning was generally sound. Sophie had already broken several laws at this point as was causing unrest in their society, the one they’re supposed to govern. And she’d used her abilities yet again to go against those rules, this time with incredible serious consequences. So if she refuses to listen, what do you do? Take away those abilities. Keep her from hurting this society further. There are more specific examples of this, like Oralie and Kenric’s cache, but this is getting long so i can talk about those later if you’d like /g

part of what is intriguing about these characters is how they’re not so black and white on the surface despite the world seeming to be so easily divided into good and bad, so it’s fascinating to talk about how those parts are actually displayed. You brought up a lot of really good topics and I love talking about this!! /g

if you’d like me to expand on any specific part more or have more thoughts of your own to share, you’re more than welcome to send another ask <33

[veryvincible]

Hey! 👋🏼 I was looking at Tonys panel with Carol and his AA panels. It got me thinking how can a person like Tony .. who is an atheist, a believer of science and a confident engineer rely on AA which has a religious foundation (the 12 steps) and place so power on God. I know secular AA have different takes on it and encourage a personal definition of God as any higher power the person may choose. But doesn’t that defeat Tonys belief? Because I don’t think he believes in a higher power regardless if it’s a deity or not.

This is a wonderful question. There’s a lot of nuance to the answer, in my opinion, because I think there are some things called into question here that Tony (very realistically) treats with a lot of complexity.

Firstly, Tony’s atheism is kind of... I don’t want to say it’s up in the air, because at this point, I think it’s kind of made its place in canon and fanon both. But, most likely as a result of the times in which he was created, he has been shown in canon (at least in the early stages of his life) to follow some sort of organized religion. This is from Iron Man Vol. 1 #164, and it’s... not strong evidence for him being a spiritual man, as most people who call themselves “not that religious” tend to be religious by way of traditions, but. You know. It is what it is.

Of course, we could dismiss this as yet another thing that early canon imposed on a character who wouldn’t be like that at this point in time, but I think it brings up interesting beats in the way Tony’s character has progressed over the years.

Considering him as someone who may have been raised as traditionally religious makes sense in the context of defining events, as well, given that we watch him pray the Lord’s prayer in #14 of Iron Man Vol. 4, one of his Civil War tie-ins.

Given the proximity to the alcohol (and the point he’s at in the timeline, here), one could also easily assume that even if he had no religious background, the very presence of the Lord’s prayer in AA meetings could have formed a connection in his head between this “worship” and sobriety-- at the very least, enough of one that the prayer strengthens the effectiveness of his willpower. It seems the little push he needs to pour a drink down the drain is borderline Pavlovian.

There’s actually a lot of religious imagery in Tony comics in general. He’s a man with a suit facing conundrums of cosmic proportions. It’s difficult for him to keep rationale exclusively within the range of earthly probabilities.

Point is, his atheism doesn’t come from his disbelief in a higher power. It’s quite the contrary, actually. His atheism comes from a belief that there’s no single entity that could claim the title of God, that any being willing to try has, just by being, already forfeited the title.

Which is a fair assessment to make, given that he’s fought many people claiming to be Gods, and they’ve all bled. He’s also watched people worship Gods that turned out to not... really be Gods, whether they were otherworldly beings, his buddy Thor, or, uh, himself. The idea of him, at least. In space.

Because of course that happened.

But Tony actually does have a higher power to give himself up to in these meetings. In Civil War II #1, he very explicitly states it:

“I respect the future. I believe in the future. I worship at its feet.”

“The Future” to him is something he can affect, certainly, but he’s aware of just how massive it is, just how massive all of time is compared to the few decades he’ll spend on earth. This is his higher power, his cosmic deity of choice.

It can’t bleed. It can’t falter. It’s inevitable.

And this mindset is... pretty in line with everything else he’s done. He’s referred to himself as a “necessary monster.” He’s implied many times over that he thinks he’s rotten and potentially dangerous, but he’s also intelligent and capable and he wants to do the right thing, even if he doesn’t always know what that is. 

If you’ve ever been in a religious environment, you’ll probably recognize his mindset going into any problem: there’s always a solution, always information he’s missing, always a “right choice” he’s looking for with a domino effect that’ll be as favorable as possible for future generations. He trusts in the future the way people trust in God, with an awareness that he’ll never have all the pieces to make sense of everything, but he can have enough information to act. And he must act, or else his worth, his right to be alive, even, is at stake.

So, needless to say, he’s not praying to a mainstream God. But religious imagery isn’t and has never been off-putting to him, and though he certainly could seek out unreligious (is that a word?) alternatives to AA, I find it hard to believe that he would, given just how influential his higher power of choice is as it guides him through life. He puts everything at stake for it, going so far as to make choices that will destroy not only himself, but also his relationships with his loved ones if it means he’s doing what he perceives to be the right thing.

Secondly, even if he were a man who had no belief in any form of higher power, not even a stand-in for it, AA still might not be something he’d discard in favor of an alternative.

Religion serves as a guide. Most often, it has “do”s and “do not”s, certain beliefs it supports, and a kind of... basic explanation of what human life is and how it should be treated. One of the more common threads among most religions that I’m aware of (I am not an expert in religious studies; please don’t @ me) is the idea that human life is generally sacred, and as such, people should treat each other with respect. Yes, some texts can contradict this, but the general rule is “be nice to each other!” when you really look at the basics of what people are trying to teach. At its core, religion is linked to what we as humans already tend to for the sake of survival: compassion.

As such, though we might not always identify with religion as a concept, it’s not difficult to identify with some religious morals and teachings. Some people take to certain teachings better than others-- it’s super case-by-case-- but if you’re stuck in a religious environment listening to some preaching or anything, there’s probably going to be something you can relate to, and some way you can morph and adopt the message. This isn’t, like, all-encompassing, by the way. Of course there are some things that atheists and religious folk will never be able to relate to within each other, but.

You get what I mean.

I’m an atheist myself. I spent a chunk of my schooling at a religious institution. At best, there were messages that affected me deeply (as they were hard-hitting even when I stripped them of the God-worshipping aspects). At worst, I had to grit my teeth through some assignments, though I felt mostly indifferent (if slightly resentful at times, more out of frustration with the closed-mindedness of the administration than with the concept of religion itself). My experience isn’t universal, of course-- some people in my shoes were more frustrated and angry than I was, and I can see why. But my point is, being an atheist in and of itself (even one as strict as Tony) doesn’t render religious imagery useless.

For example, if you happen to pass by a pastor preaching about struggles with guilt, you might not identify with the sentiment of “Give your worries to God and know He’ll take care of you.” However, you could identify with the sentiment of, “Those little things, those side effects of decisions you’ve made? They’re here. Those decisions have been made. You’re allowed to swallow past the reality of what it is that’s passed and move on. You’re allowed to let go of it, so long as you’re better today than you were yesterday.”

It’s especially easy to do this if you’re listening to or being exposed to content from a religion you’re already familiar with; in Tony’s case, if we assume he was a Christian at one point or was raised with Christian ideals (not unbelievable in the slightest, given his circumstances and upbringing), then he wouldn’t have to do a lot of heavy lifting in order to get to “core messages” of certain Christian teachings that he could still identify with. Couple that with the higher power mentioned before, and... it’s not hard to see what might be appealing to him about AA, and it’s not hard to see why it was so effective at sticking in his mind all the way through his darkest periods in life.

Now comes the less healthy part.

There’s also an aspect of self-flagellation to it that I feel Tony might identify with on a deeper level. We’ve seen him hate himself openly, and we know how he regards himself. Even if he managed to find himself in a courthouse-like environment where the religious undertones were more about judgment than recovery, I don’t know that that would necessarily... push him away? He’s already told himself there’s something rotting and evil at his core many times over. He’s already committed himself to a lifestyle of atonement and progress, punishing himself when he fails to accomplish things no human reasonably could and barely praising himself when he doesn’t fail. Do I think these kinds of meetings would be totally sustainable for him, given that he clearly needs to feel pride or relief on some level for conquering his demons? No, not really, but. I don’t think he’d abandon them straight away.

Besides, every healing environment he’s been shown in has been more on the welcoming, open side, even if we only get to see a bare bones interpretation of AA (with deeper exploration happening more with Tony’s response to it, or his and Carol’s responses to each other) in canon. He’s in a good place with it, and it’s very nice to see.

Tl;dr: Again, great question. At the end of the day, I think the combination of self-loathing, his desire for progress, and his conceptualization of “the future” as his higher power makes AA a good fit for him despite his lack of a belief in "God” as an entity.

[catherdrashepard]

Red Rising/Persona

I’m a huge fan of the Persona series and pretty much anything Atlus has done. I am ALSO a huge fan of Red Rising (blame that on @hyena-frog) So, the natural conclusion is that I should determine which Persona the main RR POV characters would have. As well as a couple extras. Pictures will be included with credit to the artist when applicable. Please let me know if I forget to credit someone. (https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Persona_5_Royal_Personas) Here is the website I’m using. Spoilers for the first three books and probably a little of Iron Gold. Also a spoiler for the Faith Confidante in Persona 5: Royal. Avoid the Lysander paragraph if you want none of that. Disclaimer: I have not finished Dark Age yet so some of my thoughts might be lacking complete information.

Darrow: The main characters of the Persona series always start with a Persona from the Fool arcana. It doesn’t necessarily stay that way depending on the players personal preference. That being said, Darrow does fit the Fool arcana very well. It’s considered to be the beginning arcana or one without a number. It represents innocence, divine inspiration, madness, freedom, spontaneity, inexperience, chaos and creativity. These traits I think describe Darrow pretty accurately, especially in the first two books. Considering the story revolves around his journey, it makes sense to label him as a character of beginnings. Persona-wise, I think the one that fits Red Rising and Golden Son Darrow would be Satanael. This Persona is basically the equivalent to Lucifer, the angel who led a rebellion against God. But also that isn’t all that Darrow is. I also think the Death arcana is fitting for him, from Morning Star and beyond. Death is an arcana roughly in the middle of the tarot deck and it’s one that represents metamorphosis and change. Literal interpretation aside, Darrow experiences a change in himself after his capture at the end of Golden Son and his rescue in Morning Star. Not to mention, his entire purpose for becoming a Gold in the first place was to provoke a change in the current system of government. For his Death Persona, I would give him Thanatos. Because he’s my favourite, but also he’s considered the harbinger of death. Perfect for the Reaper. I don’t think Darrow completely loses Satanael in favour of Thanatos; I could definitely see him using both depending on the circumstance.

Virginia/Mustang: By Persona standards, because Mustang is Darrow’s main love interest, she would be the Lovers arcana. However, and this was incredibly difficult because she could really fit more acana, I think she could be both the Judgement and the Empress arcana. The Judgement arcana, I feel, fits her Sovereign persona (ha). It’s associated with a deep understanding of life, a balance of light and darkness, and characters who are well-aware, and intelligent. Not that this doesn’t fit her in her private life as well, but it seems more prevalent in her dealings as the Sovereign. The second arcana is the Empress. This one is more associated with mothers and women of authority. As we saw in the first trilogy, she went to great lengths to protect her family, i.e., working for Octavia, being with Cassius, the whole incident in Lykos. Choosing her Persona is tricky, mostly because Personas can shift arcana depending which game they are pulled from. I think the one to go with is Astarte. This is more of a feeling rather than definitive “proof”. She is identified as the goddess of war, hunting, love, sex, horses and possibly the morning star; her symbols are thought to be the lion, panther, and an eight pointed star. This is also the ultimate Persona of Haru in Persona 5, who awakens her initial Persona in defiance of her father and his corruption, which also feels apt. That being said, Astarte is from the Empress arcana and I could not find a Judgement arcana Persona that I felt fit her well enough.

Credit for the picture of Astarte to: Machia McMadlass on Amino

Sevro: Sevro was very easy to choose a Persona for. One in particular stood out to me. I think Sevro could fit both the Fool arcana and the Devil arcana. I think the aspects of the Fool that Sevro embodies are the madness, freedom, spontaneity, and creativity. The Devil arcana represents the urge to do selfish, impulsive, violent things. However, it also can represent a healthy bond and commitment.  Sevro is a wild card from the beginning, killing Priam in the first book being a prime example. Both he and Darrow were very unexpected successes in the Institute. This is something that also describes the protagonists in the Persona games as well. They all just kind of show up out of nowhere and completely shift the paradigm, especially in Personas 3&5. As for the Devil arcana, Sevro reminds me of the Devil confidante in Persona 5. Their goals are not the same, but both characters are very focused on what they want and make every effort to push through despite any obstacles in the way. As for the Persona, the one I chose was sort of picked for superficial reasons; Bugbear. Its name comes from the Celtic word bugs which means evil spirit or goblin. It’s also considered to be something of a boogeyman, a creature that lurked in the woods to scare children. Also, it’s essentially a stuffed bear filled with skulls, which seems to fit Sevro’s weird tastes.

Victra: With Victra, one arcana stuck out in my mind immediately, the Chariot. This arcana represents victory, conquest, self-assertion, self-confidence, control, war, and command. When first introduced to Victra, she does seem very sure of herself and what she wants. She strikes me as a shoot first and ask questions later type, which is something she has in common with the video game characters who share this arcana. Like Sevro, she could also fit the Devil arcana, especially during certain events in Dark Age that she pursues very single-mindedly. Although, I would say Victra is more Devil leaning than Sevro. As for the Persona, I think Pazuzu would fit her style pretty well. What really struck me as fitting Victra was the description of Pazuzu as an evil spirit that drives away other evil spirits, and protects humans from plagues and misfortunes. Also, despite trying to stick with the arcana placements of Persona 5 Royal, I think it’s worth noting that Pazuzu was summoned by a character in Devil Survivor who seeks revenge for death of a loved one.

Cassius: While perusing the arcana descriptions, the one for the Lovers immediately reminded me of Cassius. The Lovers is usually reserved for the “canon” love interest in the games, barring player preferences. However, Dassius jokes aside, what really made me think Cassius is that this arcana symbolises two paths a life could lead to and, standing at a crossroad and needing to make a decision. I think this describes Cassius’ personal journey throughout the books to a T, especially in the climax of Morning Star where he makes the decision to join Darrow in taking out Aja and Octavia. The other arcana that Cassius would be is the Star. This arcana is said to represent hope, self-confidence, faith, altruism, luck, generosity, peace and joy. I feel like self-confidence, faith, and altruism fit pre-end of Morning Star Cassius very well. He was considered the pinnacle of Golds and I think, at least until he learned what was actually going on, that’s all he wanted to be. The game characters with this arcana are teachers or mentors to the protagonist. Characters that are very good at what they do and offer some form of training. A sort of outlier to this is Teddie, from Persona 4. While he does have more experience than the main character dealing with the enemy (both Cassius and Teddie are part of the group the protagonist fights against), Teddie doesn’t take a combative role until later in the game. This is only possible because Rise, who replaces him as support, makes him question his identity or the “real” him. This is very similar to what happens to Cassius in the first three books. Darrow becomes what Cassius thought himself to be and it causes Cassius to question who he really is. Although, unlike Teddie, I think Cassius chose to heavily lean into being the perfect Gold specimen until the end of Morning Star, where he makes a choice to be the “real” Cassius. As for the Persona, I could easily see him with Sraosha, who represents the highest virtue of humanity, obedience to and submission to Divine Law. I think his motivations for using this Persona would change, however. I imagine at first, he would use it to keep the Society functioning how it always does. But, after Morning Star, I bet it would shift to be more about protecting his own ideals and the submission aspect would relate to Cassius’ personal morals and sense of justice.

Lysander: I really wanted to avoid using the arcana that are not present in a standard deck, and added for a specific game. However, one of the arcana that stood out to me for Lysander is the Faith arcana. This arcana symbolises, in the positive, belief in others and in oneself. Negatively, it represents blind faith misplaced in something that does not deserve trust. From what I understand of Lysander’s story, his personal journey seems to mirror that of the game character who shares his arcana. It is revealed later that she is a fake, and her memories were overwritten by another character. I have not finished Dark Age as of writing this but, I am under the strong impression that Lysander has been brainwashed and that some of his memories have been replaced or erased entirely. And while he does have some misgivings about the Society, I believe he is blind to how fucked up it really is. But it also holds potential for Lysander to overcome this indoctrination. I had a bit of trouble with what the second arcana would be but, I think the Moon fits Lysander pretty well. You could say he’s a….Moonie. But in all seriousness, the description that struck me as Lysander-esque was "They often tend to have trouble accepting themselves for who they are and, because of that fear, try to correspond to an ideal person. And like the arcana, there is a hidden depth as to why they act in their behaviours." Lysander was definitely sheltered and isolated, by both Octavia and Cassius (he tried his best). And perhaps by Atalantia to some degree. He is a fed a narrative and doesn’t really get a chance to analyse his own perceptions and why they may be incorrect. The characters of the Moon arcana in the game often struggle internally with themselves which, to be honest, is a trait most of the POV characters have. But what I think Lysander lacks in that case, is self-awareness. As for the Persona, I ended up going with Cendrillon. This Persona is based on Cinderella, which is a little different from some of the other ones. As much as I like to make fun of Lysander for his poor choices, it’s hard not to see him as a victim. I don’t necessarily think he’s a hero or that he’s entitled to the kind of happy ending Cinderella gets. However, I do feel that, like the fairy tale princess, some of his circumstances were as a result of situations that were out of his control. Also, a line really stuck with me from the initial awakening for the Persona that really made me think Lysander; “Well, if those really are the shoes you've chosen... Then we'll dance to the end.”

Ephraim: Ephraim suffers a lot throughout the books, and I feel like that reflects heavily on what arcana he is. I think the first one that fits him well is the Tower arcana, which is associated with a fall from grace. His story reminds me a lot of the Tower social link character in Persona 3. Both Ephraim and the game character lose their family and turn to substance abuse to numb the pain. People of the Tower arcana seems to suffer a lot of internal pain which they fail to cope with healthily and thus turn to less savoury means until and outside force steps in to help steer them in a better direction. The other arcana I believe fits him well is the Hanged Man. What makes me think Ehpraim is that the appearance of the Hanged Man can be seen as advice to take the time to reflect over one's upcoming actions, which is something I think he needs to learn how to do. They can also be self-sacrificial and are often notable for being stuck between two different stages of life. Also, much like the Tower arcana characters, their journey seems to revolve around some kind of loss that they are failing to cope with. As for the Persona….this was a bit tricky. I have a few I like but one comes with a bit reluctance because of how it plays into the plot of Persona 4 and how it would reflect on Ephraim’s character. But, my gut is telling me that Magatsu-Izanagi is the way to go. What is making me think of Ephraim when I see it is the symbolism behind this Persona. It represents emptiness, impulsiveness, poor judgement, obsession and frivolity. There are also some similarities between Ephraim and the character who wields this Persona in Persona 4. They both exhibit little tact and seem to be playing some sort of game with the other characters. However, Adachi (Persona 4 character) seems to do this because he’s a psychopath whereas I think Ephraim is this way as a terrible coping mechanism. In Persona 4, the arcana where this Persona fits in is meant to be the reversed Fool. And while I’m trying to stick with the Persona 5 Royal placements (which for Magatsu-Izanagi is the Tower arcana), I think the implication here is that Ephraim has a lot of potential to be something so great if he can just reverse the path he is going down.

Lyria: I love Lyria. I think she’s a wonderful and interesting character. I love that she highlights the ramifications of undoing a toxic form of government. She gets so much development that it was easy to see what arcana she fit into. The first one I thought of was the Hermit. It represents wisdom, introspection, solitude, retreat and philosophical searches. In the beginning, she has very strong opinions about Darrow and the rest of the Rising. Which is entirely understandable considering her entire way of life was stripped from her without a way to cope with the changes. But, unlike Lysander, she’s willing to re-examine herself and her perceptions as she is presented with new information. She also tends to try and keep under the radar if she can, which is another trait of the Hermit. What’s interesting to me is that other characters of the Hermit arcana are victims of circumstances out of their control, but they see their own victimization as a result of a flaw in their character. The other arcana is very tricky for me, as there are parts of Lyria’s character that I don’t know yet. After much discussion and deliberation with my resident expert, the second arcana for Lyria is the Priestess. This arcana is a symbol of hidden knowledge or other untapped power, wisdom, female mystery and patience. The characters of this arcana also take more time to open up to the protagonist than others. Which also fits Lyria as she needed time and introspection to really understand Darrow and Mustang. As for the Persona, I’m actually going to cheat a little with my choice. I try to keep the arcana placements from Persona 5 Royal but for Lyria, I’m choosing Hariti whose arcana is Priestess in Persona 4 and Persona Q. Hariti is a protector of children and childbirth after going through a significant change in perspective which, from what I understand and have been told, is also something that Lyria does.