more incorrect quotes for the stillborn danyal au - dpxdc
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Student: so like,, *gesturing to Plasmius* is he like,,, your dad or...??
Phantom: he would be if he wasn't such a BITCH
Plasmius: excuse me
Phantom: YOU HEARD ME
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Under the Bleachers: Danny and Dash smoking in solidarity
Dash:
Danny:
Dash: do you have notes from Lancer's class today
Danny: since when do I ever have notes from Lancer's class
Danny: I can ask Tucker but only if you have notes from Abernathy's class
Dash: deal
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Sam and Tucker: *making s'mores with Danny's lava hair*
Danny, as Phantom: >:I
Sam: you're just mad because you didn't think of it first
Danny: yEAH
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Danny, freshly ghosted: ....
Danny: well. at least i dont need to waste money on lighters anymore
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Tucker: with how long your hair gets we may just have to start calling you rapunzel
Danny: don't you dare
Sam: rapunzel, rapunzel, let down your lava hair
Danny: NO
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Danny's hair tie breaks in the middle of a fight
Danny: fuck
Skulker: language child
Danny, pushing lava bangs out of his face: fuck you! just for this im turning your suit into molten slag
Skulker: waitholdonwecantALK--
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Danny: you know, by your logic Maddie is equally as guilty for abandoning you as Jack. She also never visited you while you were in the hospital.
Vlad, had put his infatuation with Maddie aside but still kinda had feelings for her:
Vlad: you're right
Danny, not used to an adult agreeing with him: I-- huh, I am?
Vlad: yes. If Dr. Walker had cared about me -- even if only as a friend, she would have tried to remain in contact with me. But she didn't. She is also as equally guilty for the accident that took your life too since she also failed to properly check over the portal for flaws and any improper wiring.
Danny: wait- wait, i mean--
Vlad: this means only one thing
Danny, bewildered: ???
Vlad, extinguishing all lingering feelings: I have to kill her too (somehow)
Danny: nO.
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I have a lot of complicated feelings when it comes to what Neflix has done with the Witcher, but my probably least favourite is the line of argumentation that originated during shitstorms related to the first and second season that I was unlucky to witness.
It boils down to "Netflix's reinterpretation and vision is valid, because the Witcher books are not written to be slavic. The overwhelming Slavic aestetic is CDPR's interpretation, and the setting in the original books is universally European, as there are references to Arthurian mythos and celtic languages"
And I'm not sure where this argument originated and whether it's parroting Sapkowski's own words or a common stance of people who haven't considered the underlying themes of the books series.
Because while it's true that there are a lot of western european influences in the Witcher, it's still Central/Eastern European to the bone, and at its core, the lack of understanding of this topic is what makes the Netflix series inauthentic in my eyes.
The slavicness of the Witcher goes deeper than the aestetics, mannerisms, vodka and sour cucumbers. Deeper than Zoltan wrapping his sword with leopard pelt, like he was a hussar. Deeper than the Redanian queen Hedvig and her white eagle on the red field.
What Witcher is actually about? It's a story about destiny, sure. It's a sword-and-sorcery style, antiheroic deconstruction of a fairy tale, too, and it's a weird mix of many culture's influences.
But it's also a story about mundane evil and mundane good. If You think about most dark, gritty problems the world of Witcher faces, it's xenophobia and discrimination, insularism and superstition. Deep-seated fear of the unknown, the powerlessness of common people in the face of danger, war, poverty and hunger. It's what makes people spit over their left shoulder when they see a witcher, it's what makes them distrust their neighbor, clinging to anything they deem safe and known. It's their misfortune and pent-up anger that make them seek scapegoats and be mindlessly, mundanely cruel to the ones weaker than themselves.
There are of course evil wizards, complicated conspiracies and crowned heads, yes. But much of the destruction and depravity is rooted in everyday mundane cycle of violence and misery. The worst monsters in the series are not those killed with a silver sword, but with steel.
it's hard to explain but it's the same sort of motiveless, mundane evil that still persist in our poorer regions, born out of generations-long poverty and misery. The behaviour of peasants in Witcher, and the distrust towards authority including kings and monarchs didn't come from nowhere.
On the other hand, among those same, desperately poor people, there is always someone who will share their meal with a traveller, who will risk their safety pulling a wounded stranger off the road into safety. Inconditional kindness among inconditional hate. Most of Geralt's friends try to be decent people in the horrible world. This sort of contrasting mentalities in the recently war-ridden world is intimately familiar to Eastern and Cetral Europe.
But it doesn't end here. Nilfgaard is also a uniquely Central/Eastern European threat. It's a combination of the Third Reich in its aestetics and its sense of superiority and the Stalinist USSR with its personality cult, vast territory and huge army, and as such it's instantly recognisable by anybody whose country was unlucky enough to be caught in-between those two forces. Nilfgaard implements total war and looks upon the northerners with contempt, conscripts the conquered people forcibly, denying them the right of their own identity. It may seem familiar and relevant to many opressed people, but it's in its essence the processing of the trauma of the WW2 and subsequent occupation.
My favourite case are the nonhumans, because their treatment is in a sense a reminder of our worst traits and the worst sins in our history - the regional antisemitism and/or xenophobia, violence, local pogroms. But at the very same time, the dilemma of Scoia'Tael, their impossible choice between maintaining their identity, a small semblance of freedom and their survival, them hiding in the forests, even the fact that they are generally deemed bandits, it all touches the very traumatic parts of specifically Polish history, such as January Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, Ghetto Uprising, the underground resistance in WW2 and the subsequent complicated problem of the Cursed Soldiers all at once. They are the 'other' to the general population, but their underlying struggle is also intimately known to us.
The slavic monsters are an aestetic choice, yes, but I think they are also a reflection of our local, private sins. These are our own, insular boogeymen, fears made flesh. They reproduce due to horrors of the war or they are an unprovoked misfortune that descends from nowhere and whose appearance amplifies the local injustices.
I'm not talking about many, many tiny references that exist in the books, these are just the most blatant examples that come to mind. Anyway, the thing is, whether Sapkowski has intended it or not, Witcher is slavic and it's Polish because it contains social commentary. Many aspects of its worldbuilding reflect our traumas and our national sins. It's not exclusively Polish in its influences and philosophical motifs of course, but it's obvious it doesn't exist in a vacuum.
And it seems to me that the inherently Eastern European aspects of Witcher are what was immediately rewritten in the series. It seems to me that the subtler underlying conflicts were reshaped to be centered around servitude, class and gender disparity, and Nilfgaard is more of a fanatic terrorist state than an imposing, totalitarian empire. A lot of complexity seems to be abandoned in lieu of usual high-fantasy wordbuilding. It's especially weird to me because it was completely unnecessary. The Witcher books didn't need to be adjusted to speak about relevant problems - they already did it!
The problem of acceptance and discrimination is a very prevalent theme throughout the story! They are many strong female characters too, and they are well written. Honestly I don't know if I should find it insulting towards their viewers that they thought it won't be understood as it was and has to be somehow reshaped to fit the american perpective, because the current problems are very much discussed in there and Sapkowski is not subtle in showing that genocide and discrimination is evil. Heck, anyone who has read the ending knows how tragic it makes the whole story.
It also seems quite disrespectful, because they've basically taken a well-established piece of our domestic literature and popular culture and decided that the social commentary in it is not relevant. It is as if all it referenced was just not important enough and they decided to use it as an opportunity to talk about the problems they consider important.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing anyone to write about Central European problems and traumas, I'm just confused that they've taken the piece of art already containing such a perspective on the popular and relevant problem and they just... disregarded it, because it wasn't their exact perspective on said problem.
And I think this homogenisation, maybe even from a certain point of view you could say it's worldview sanitisation is a problem, because it's really ironic, isn't it? To talk about inclusivity in a story which among other problems is about being different, and in the same time to get rid of motifs, themes and references because they are foreign? Because if something presents a different perspective it suddenly is less desirable?
There was a lot of talking about the showrunners travelling to Poland to understand the Witcher's slavic spirit and how to convey it. I don't think they really meant it beyond the most superficial, paper-thin facade.
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Now that I've had time to feel all my love and nostalgia for bnha, and I'm actually thinking about the ending a little bit more, it strikes me how sad it is. Like it's a good ending for our heroes, but that's just it, it's just a good ending for our heroes. I know we gets little bits and bobs of quirk counseling and heteromorph visibility and working towards their acceptance, but some of it feels a little last minute?
I know there are points to be made about punishment for crimes, but is death all there is to that? We see the league's backstories and we're sympathetic towards them, but I do think that seeing them working towards redemption would be a little more satisfying. Not all of them, I do understand the satisfaction of a good and tragic death in media, but part of it just rubs me the wrong way. I do think it takes away some of the nuance of the grey of heros and villains when all the people on the villain side end up dead or dying, and heroes who have made big mistakes are redeemed so easily.
I think bnha tries to be grey, and it does at times do a good job of it, but sometimes it feels like it chickens out and goes back to black and white. Because who even are heroes without villains to fight? And when the villains aren't completely immortal and irredeemable, what does that make the heroes?
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