#ill do what I can do talk to other people

[flawseer]

In your last ask, you mentioned misgivings with Book 10's ending, and especially how it pertains to Winter. I absolutely agree, and I know why, but I wanna hear your thoughts on it, too: What's up with Book 10?

The following is a (very long) examination of my personal feelings with regards to the WoF second story arc finale. While it is based on what is in the text, this analysis will be interpretive and fill in blanks with my own thoughts. Keep that in mind.

Hahhhh... okay. Since mentioning it in my last post I’ve gotten several requests to talk about my feelings regarding the second arc finale. There’s probably no way around it then.

If you haven’t read that last post (it was admittedly very long, and so will this one be), I talked briefly about why I didn’t like that part of the story. I have to warn you now, this will likely be the most negative and dour post in the history of this blog. In a few parts it will sound like I hate Wings of Fire, and I want to say now, while I still have the chance, that I don’t. I love this series, thinking about its setting and characters brings me joy.

I also—very emphatically—want to make it clear that I have no ill will against Tui T. Sutherland. I’ve looked around other people’s stuff a bit and there are a huge number of posts wishing violence upon her or threatening her for doing things to her series that people don’t agree with. That is NOT what I am doing here, shit like that is NOT okay! While I will be critical of her choices, I still respect her effort of bringing this vibrant, wonderful world of dragons to all of us.

Also, obligatory last disclaimer: If you liked the finale, that is okay. You are valid for feeling that way. I’m here to share my point of view, not to demand people agree with everything I say. Just be warned that you most likely won’t enjoy what I have to say. If you don’t think you can handle that kind of criticism, this is your guilt-free opportunity to stop reading.

Otherwise, let's get into it.

CW: Discussion of parental abuse, depression, disease, and extreme acts of violence.

In defense of the finale

Before I start to systematically disassemble this narrative and get lost in a quagmire of negativity, let’s talk a bit about the circumstances that brought forth this part of the story. The plot of this arc was a mess from the moment animus magic was unshackled from the restrictions it had in the first arc, and from then on there was no longer any conceivable way to end this story in a clean way. Sutherland had created an invincible, unbeatable, omnipotent villain; he could read minds, see the future with perfect clarity, and anything he could imagine he could conjure into existence at any time with no cost to himself and no drawbacks. She was likely wracking her brain about how to resolve this impossible conundrum. What we got wasn’t good, but I believe nothing could have been. The foundation was rotting and by the fifth book it couldn’t bear the weight of the plot anymore.

The thing about animus magic in arc 2 is that it is so potent, so all-powerful, and so free of restraint that everyone who uses it also HAS to be a simpleton, or they would be able to break the plot immediately and become god. From the moment Darkstalker broke out of that mountain, he could have said “Any and all spells that are cast with the intention to harm me, interfere with my plans, or do something I don’t consent to will not work, from now on until forever”, and he would have instantly won. The strawberry would have fizzled out. The Darkstalker-blocking earrings would not have been created, and no one could have saved the Icewings. On the flipside, Turtle or Anemone could have said “I enchant the concept of animus magic itself to no longer obey Darkstalker”, and his threat would have been neutered. Point is, powers as potent and easy to use as this really need limitations, or they will quickly eat your plot alive.

I don’t envy the situation Sutherland was in at the time at all. If you’re an author, that kind of thing is a nightmare. It really is no wonder she decided to blow up animus magic for good in her next arc, even if I would have preferred it to get more healthy restrictions instead of killing it outright.

The Darkstalker age regression thing

Everyone has talked this part to death already, but if I am to write a thorough analysis of my feelings regarding this finale, I’m going to have to talk about it as well. I’m sorry if I end up repeating a lot of things you’ve already heard.

This final fate of Darkstalker, to have his memories wiped and be reset to an infant, is really uncomfortable. As far as I am aware, though correct me if I’m wrong, Sutherland said in an interview that she didn’t want Darkstalker to die because, in her view, he did not deserve to. We can debate here about the philosophical question of whether anyone is truly deserving of death, and the merits of “justice” and “punishment”, but in general, Wings of Fire did not seem to have any issues killing off its villains prior if they committed suitably terrible acts. That makes this moment stand out as noteworthy.

Who is Darkstalker then--and if we assume villains can be “deserving” and “not deserving” of death--what about him speaks in his favor, or against? The guy had a pretty crappy childhood, coming from a broken home (there is that inadequate parent theme again). He genuinely loved his sister and felt protective of her, and whenever he liked someone he wanted them to be happy and feel affirmed. The thing that Queen Diamond does to his mother is awful and he is justified in hating her for it. He is also portrayed as rather sympathetic in Moon Rising. When he asks Moon to find his scroll for him and not to leave him, he is not manipulating her, he is sincerely begging for her help. He is stuck somewhere underground, trapped in darkness, in a space so tiny that he can’t move. He remains that way for months, lonely and sad. If you just focus on these aspects, it’s easy to understand why he has so many fans who want him to see healthy and happy.

On the flipside, while he is dedicated to the happiness of his friends, he doesn’t always go for the most ethical way to achieve it. He tries to brainwash said friends without their consent whenever they exhibit behaviors he doesn’t like, or when he thinks he knows better and wants to “fix” them. He has very little regard for other people’s autonomy, lies to his loved ones with alarming frequency, and is unhealthily attached to the idea of power. Those things are certainly not good, but they are his character flaws. These are his demons; everyone has them and they make him a person. If this was all there was to it, he might still be a villain, but I’d argue he’d not be wholly irredeemable.

But there are things about him that take him beyond the pale. Things that go beyond the realm of just being misunderstood, or easily excusable.

He is possessive. He wants Clearsight and Fathom for himself, and for them to listen to him primarily. When Indigo makes it clear she doesn’t like him and cautions Fathom against trusting him, he deceives his friends and traps Indigo in a wood carving, just so he can isolate Fathom from his support network and manipulate him easier. He alters Clearsight’s mind to make her more agreeable and stop her from holding him accountable for his actions; while he thinks he loves her, he only loves an idealized version of her that is wholly devoted to and unquestioning of him. This is why, when he later forcibly overwrites Fierceteeth’s existence to recreate her (which is another horrific thing), he tries to excise the parts he finds undesirable to create a perfect version of his lover. But this caricature he has created in his head is not and can never be Clearsight, which frustrates his attempts.

He is vengeful. Not against people who have actually wronged him, like Queen Diamond. That would be questionable, but understandable. What makes this unacceptable is his frequent targeting of innocent people who just happen to be related to the person who wronged him in some esoteric way. He enchants a secret murder knife that kills random Icewings regardless of who they are or what they think about the Queen, just because the one who took his mother from him happened to share their tribe. He hates Turtle and wishes death upon him in Moon Rising just because he is a green Seawing, like Fathom was. And then there is the big one: He tries to kill all the Icewings who are alive in the present day, where Queen Diamond is long dead and none of them have ever even met her. Even his mother, who suffered from Diamond’s actions the most and has the most reason to hate her, is horrified and calls him out on that one.

And lastly, he is sadistic. He revels in torturing those he hates. He forces his father to disembowel himself, while the latter is fully aware and powerless to resist AND the man’s traumatized daughter is watching. Later he sends a magical plague to kill every single living Icewing sans one.

It should be noted that Darkstalker possesses virtually infinite magical power; whatever he declares, with very few exceptions, will happen. Even if he wanted them dead, he had the power to prevent unnecessary suffering. He could have said “Arctic, fall dead instantaneously”, or “Every Icewing will fall asleep and pass away peacefully,” but he didn’t. He wanted them to feel pain and pass away in the most wretched, agonizing ways he could imagine.

So what he chose to do instead is—and I want you to picture this for a moment—Darkstalker sat down, calmly, and said “Henceforth every living Icewing, excepting Prince Winter and those of hybrid blood, will fall ill with an incurable disease. This disease will cause heavy internal bleeding and make its victims cough up blood and waste away for a few days, followed by certain death.”

This spell does not discriminate with regards to who its victims are. The book glosses over the implications, but imagine the ramifications. Young children are notoriously frail, how many newborns got infected and died because of this? How many families were torn apart because they couldn’t get the magic earrings fast enough? Or accidentally got one earring less than there were family members and had to decide who has to die?

Most of the Icewings were physically cured by the earrings, but an experience like that sticks with you for the rest of your life. Somewhere surely, a dragonet watched as his mother put the earring on him and then slowly wasted away because she didn’t have one for herself.

It’s really easy to overlook how horrific this spell is because it isn’t shown or dwelt on. But the trauma, grief, and suffering it caused must have been immeasurable.

And none of those victims have ever even met the person Darkstalker wanted to get revenge on. None of those deaths meant anything to anyone.

The attempted death toll and scale of the calamity here puts even Scarlet to shame. The ones who come closest to it were Queen Battlewinner and Morrowseer with their attempted Rainwing extermination. All three of those died for what they did. Gives you some food for thought for sure.

Peacemaker’s burden

Despite just airing all of his dirty laundry and declaring him an irredeemable villain, I actually do have a lot of sympathy for Darkstalker still. His story is really sad. He was a child born with an amount of power that nobody should possess, and it corrupted him to the point where it destroyed his life before it began. His parents were always fighting and no matter how good his intentions were, he was unable to understand why he couldn’t hold on to his friends and relationship. He kept making mistakes, then made bigger mistakes to fix those, until his hands were covered in blood and he couldn’t stop anymore. My belief is that, after he wakes up in the present and realizes Clearsight is dead, he loses his reason for living and becomes completely lost in his grief.

Therefore, my opinion is that it would have been appropriate for him to die. If not to punish him, then to finally grant him reprieve from all that rage and pain, and let him rest. I think that would have been a dignified end.

But instead he got turned into a baby. ... And then they decided to magically erase his father’s blood from him? I don’t know what it is, but something about that Icewing erasure makes my skin crawl?

The thing that turns this baby twist from weird into highly unsettling is the context. Darkstalker’s mind is erased, then modified into a new person via animus magic. This is the technique a lot of this arc’s villains used to victimize Hailstorm, Queen Ruby, Peril, Kinkajou, Fierceteeth, and Winter. The same technique is now used again, by the heroes, which is a dangerous thing to have your protagonists do if you want them to remain morally upright.

It is also very reckless, because in almost all of these instances, animus mind alteration has been shown to be very unreliable. The spells seem to wear down over time and are susceptible to partial breaking upon encountering certain strong stimuli. Hailstorm—while trapped as Pyrite—seems to retain trace amounts of his former memories, which is why Pyrite is subconsciously drawn to Winter and clings to him all the time. Ruby is able to ignore half of her conditioning because her familial love for her son partially overpowers the magic. Qibli is just straight up able to reason his way out of it.

The thing to note here is that spells of this nature require a very meticulous approach; you can’t half-ass your reprogramming or the victim will just think their way past it. If you alter someone’s mind, the wording of the spell must be ironclad, lest you risk it wearing down over time and even break.

Luckily we have nothing to fear in that regard, because the spell that created Peacemaker was written by a Rainwing with a total of four days of literacy training. No one better mention the name Clearsight to the new baby Nightwing, or next month is going to be rather interesting.

But that’s just speculation on my part. Let’s assume that, somehow, this spell isn’t as unstable as all the others. Somehow Kinkajou threaded all the needles, and masterfully dodged every conceivable pitfall to pen the perfect incantation, despite having been illiterate just a few weeks prior. This one is built to last and Darkstalker is sealed away really thoroughly, for good.

That is still absolutely terrible and morally dubious, because now you have Peacemaker, who for all intents and purposes is a COMPLETELY innocent little kid, saddled with this huge burden of being the certifiable reincarnation of a genocidal ancient wizard. He’s gonna grow up thinking things like “Mommy gets real quiet whenever the topic of the Icewing tragedy is brought up,” and “Why does Auntie Moon look at me like that? One time she accidentally called me a weird name, who is Darkstalker?” “What is this ‘Clearsight’ name my mind-reading friends from the village found in Mommy’s mind?”

In a village that will be full of mind-readers soon, eventually the secret will come out, and Peacemaker is going to learn what was done to him. A huge, messy load of undeserved baggage was forced onto this completely separate, innocent entity. He will be devastated. Whether he then chooses to forgive them for this remains to be seen. To be honest, he would be well within his right not to, and turn resentful.

Poor kid.

Qibli’s callousness

I love Qibli, he is one of my favorite characters. This happens to be his book, and the fact that I fundamentally dislike half of it makes me rather sad. If anything, I hope this tells you that I’m not just hating on it for my personal amusement. I really wanted to like this. I tried to, and I couldn’t.

Qibli is really weird in this one, to be honest. He is suddenly made to be co-dependent on Moonwatcher, fawning over her every third paragraph, saying how much he loves her, how he is an incomplete and dysfunctional wreck without her, how it physically pains him to be apart from her, oh if only the stars would grant his wish and split the mountains apart so that he may fly to his princess, his muse, his goddess of ebony wit. It gets so old.

And it’s not Qibli. He never acted this clingy towards Moonwatcher. It’s more intense than even Winter gets about Moon, and Winter was actually depicted with a crush on her in book 6. Qibli was always just a supportive element, eager to befriend Moon but never desperate, like he is going to keel over if he is separated from his true love five minutes longer. These very frequent love declarations feel so forced coming out of him. It strikes me like it was just written in service of the love triangle. Maybe if we make him confess his love every four seconds readers will overlook the fact that they had no proper romantic build-up.

You might rightly accuse me of bias. I have previously admitted I am fond of Qibli/Winter as a romantic pairing, on the surface this seems like I am just not happy with my pet ship being blocked by Moonwatcher. But I assure you, I am actually pretty flexible and accommodating even towards pairings that contradict my preferences. I have no issues with Winter/Moonwatcher, for example, because the possibility was properly established and they have good romantic chemistry in Winter Turning. In theory, I would have no problem with Qibli/Moonwatcher either if it was ever set up as an interesting romantic dynamic. But to me, it seems like Qibli is written as a good, supportive friend to Moon for four books, only to pivot hard into “Moon moon moon moon moon moon swoon” at the last second, and it just reads to me as obnoxious.

I got distracted. This section is called “Qibli’s callousness”, and I haven’t even talked about the main part.

Qibli and Winter have excellent chemstry together, whether you read it as romantic or platonic—both of these interpretations have merit and are set up. They’re always the highlight of any scene they’re in. Throughout the story arc you get the impression that these two really get on each other’s nerves, but they bond and grow into really strong friends who bicker a lot but have each other’s backs when it counts.

Then there is a scene where Qibli casually tells Winter that he wouldn’t object if someone wanted to mind-control away some of Winter’s more objectionable traits.

This is genuinely a terrible thing to say to your friend. Like, it crosses a line and ceases to be harmless banter; you’re just telling them that there is something you hate about them so much that you wish they were someone else. Winter actually WAS mind-controlled earlier and felt (and proably still feels) guilty about having attacked Qibli in that state. And now Qibli says “Hey, I wouldn’t mind if someone did that to you again! Hue hue!”

It is awful, BUT I don’t necessarily object to Qibli saying this here. Qibli is in the middle of his character arc at this moment, so he is expected to be flawed. He is making a mistake by thoughtlessly telling Winter this horrid thing, and it seems like a believable continuation of his current character track. This is a reasonable development as long as the plot acknowledges that it’s a mistake.

Spoilers: The plot doesn’t acknowledge that it’s a mistake. Qibli never has a scene after where he reflects upon what he said and apologizes to Winter. When Darkstalker has Qibli trapped in his mountain jail and mind-wipes Qibli’s grandfather into a toddler (hey, wait a minute), Qibli gets visibly disturbed. Like, this is so off-putting to him that he gets queasy and Darkstalker hastily changes the spell. That could have been a great way to bring this back. Like in the epilogue, have Qibli track down Winter and tell him about disturbing baby grandpa theater and how he realized that wiping people’s minds is actually messed up and should have never said that to him.

But he doesn’t. He just lets Winter go, allowing him to believe he is broken and needs magical intervention to be tolerable. It leaves me to think that maybe he’s still okay with it, and fantasizing about rewriting his friend’s mind. Great.

Moonwatcher’s character death

You will find as this goes on that, I get the impression that the second half of this book takes all of the wonderful, endearing characters I have learned to love throughout the story and replaces them with really mean, or stupid, or otherwise inaccurate caricatures.

Moonwatcher’s relationship with Darkstalker gets plenty of setup and development in Moon Rising. You get the sense that these two could be great friends if their circumstances were a little different. It does a great job at making you think maybe Darkstalker is just misunderstood; maybe Moon should free him from his predicament.

Then at the end of Escaping Peril comes the emotional gut punch. Darkstalker actually IS a villain. He callously admits to Moonwatcher that he used his magic to make his own father gruesomely disembowel himself. Moonwatcher is horrified and disgusted that he would do that. There is no circumstance in which something like that would ever be okay. She ends the scene awash in tears because the person she thought was her friend is a murderer and a sadist. This is good, that is a natural reaction to what she was just told.

A few hours from there, in Talons of Power, Turtle finds Moon again and she is completely cool with Darkstalker walking free, despite crying her eyes out after feeling so betrayed earlier. That may seem strange, but this is still good because later, Darkstalker’s mind control plot is discovered. This scene was obviously written to set that up, Moon is mind-controlled into forgetting that Darkstalker could do something that morally reprehensible, and thus forgives him. This is also completely in line with his characterization in Legends: Darkstalker. It’s a kind of stunt he would pull to get Clearsight to shut up about him slipping into villainy.

In my earlier post I alluded to a moment where Moon is set to narrative auto-pilot and says something so rampantly off-kilter that it does irreversible, permanent damage to her character. It happens here, in the second half of book 10. Qibli gives Moon the Darkstalker protection earring, and Moon, somehow, says “I’m not being mind-controlled, Darkstalker really is my friend.”

I get what the plot tries to do here. It’s taking this concept of mind-control and adding a nuance, in an attempt to flesh out Darkstalker and give his character depth. He is ready to control everyone in the world, but for Moon, who is his best friend in this era, he wants her to remain herself. Perhaps this is his attempt at attonement for playing with Clearsight’s mind and driving her away from him. It is very touching in a way, viewed in isolation.

Unfortunately, it does not work with the full context of all the books. Because Moon is in auto-pilot mode right now, her main character trait is “Darkstalker=Friend,” so naturally she would speak in support of him. But this revelation has devastating retroactive consequences. The earlier scene that was written with Moon under mind-control is now altered into her having been in her right mind! She is completely okay with Darkstalker’s admittance to cold-blooded torture and evisceration, within hours of being so shocked by it that it made her cry and ready to denounce him. That is such a quick turnaround it’s giving me whiplash. And what’s more it turns Moon from a principled, upstanding girl into a sociopath who casually accepts gruesome torture and murder if it is committed by someone she likes.

Did Sutherland forget about the scene two books ago, where Darkstalker’s actions were so inconceivably horrid for Moon to learn of that she started crying? It baffles me that this made it into the final version. Her saying she was never mind-controlled makes Moon come off as so awful. This torture-excusing lunatic is not the same kind-hearted and insightful character I followed in all the other books.

Kinkajou’s character derailment

The world is a sad place when I have to question the way Kinjajou is written. Fortunately she is mostly fine, despite her having the biggest excuse to act out-of-character since she’s the victim of a mind-altering spell. Her only real moment of “what!?” comes at the end.

I already talked about her role in casting the spell that regresses Darkstalker into an infant. But I didn’t mention how her being the source of it is questionable in itself.

The clue is in the first paragraph of this section: She herself has experienced the effects of invasive mind-alteration. She was cursed by Anemone in the previous book to be in love with Turtle, and kind of half-struggles kind of not with it, it’s really strange. Turtle is appropriately horrified and acts like really awful things are happening, but then it’s mostly played lightly for some reason. My assumption is that Sutherland introduced this plot point, but then realized how uncomfortable this premise really is and tried to downplay it until the story got to a point where it could get done away with.

But I think the takeaway is still supposed to be that this was a horrid thing to do (which it absolutely is), and that Kinkajou will have to spend a lot of time trying to untangle her real emotions from the fake ones the spell created.

The point is: Kinkajou knows first-hand how awful it is to do something like that to another person. Ideally she should never even conceive of the idea to cast a spell like that, but if we’re really set on this Darkstalker baby thing and it has to happen, she should at least be a bit hesitant about it. And afterwards she should struggle with the guilt of having resorted to it. Not celebrate it and be proud, like it’s funny.

The assassination of Winter’s future

Now we come to the part I’ve alluded to previously; the part where all of these threads converge to utterly destroy one character and drive him to the brink of ruin. Let’s talk about Winter.

Prince Winter is the son of Tundra and Prince Narwhal, hatching in the same clutch as his sister Icicle. He spent his formative years being unfavorably compared to said sister—who easily took to traits that Icewing royalty considers desirable—whereas Winter struggled greatly to embody those same ideals. He was just a little too kind, too merciful, too gentle. As a result he often had to endure abuse from his parents, who made him feel like he was defective.

Because he was young and didn’t have any other frame of reference, he embraced this abusive narrative and began to drive himself with a vigor unreasonable for someone of his age. He scraped and cloyed for every bit of credit he could get, obsessing over advancing up the circle rankings in an attempt to “purge” the wrongness out of himself. To make his parents as proud of him as they were of Icicle.

This never worked. He was always seen as the runt, poised to embarrass the family name. Whatever he did, no matter how hard he strived, there was always something he could have done better.

The only real source of love and affirmation in his life was his older brother, Hailstorm. Where everyone else only saw what Winter wasn’t, Hailstorm embraced his brother despite of his “failings” and was openly affectionate with him. When Winter was with him, it was okay to not think about rankings all the time, and just be himself for a bit. I assume Hailstorm fulfilled a similar role for Icicle as well, which is why both of them love him dearly, and Icicle destroys her own life to bring him back.

Winter also has a fascination with scavengers, possibly because they are small and perceived as useless, like he himself is. He likely feels a kinship with them and observes them being craftier and more adept than everyone else sees them. This is therapeutic for him, to see that a thing can have merit even if no one wants to see it.

One day, he and Hailstorm sneak into Skywing territory so Winter can catch a scavenger as a pet. This excursion turns hostile when they are discovered by a roaming Skywing troop and faced with the prospect of capture, possibly execution. In a gambit to save Winter from this fate, Hailstorm mirrors the words of his parents, calling Winter pathetic and useless, so the Skywings will not think of him as a threat and show mercy. His act succeeds in convincing the Skywings, but it also convinces Winter, who does not understand Hailstorm only said these things to save his life. He returns home—believing his brother hated him all along—to face the wrath of his furious family for losing them “the desirable son”.

For all of his life, these themes have repeated themselves and haunted him. “I was born wrong and defective,” “I am unlovable,” “No one wants me.”

A few months after the war ends, Winter is one of the five Icewings enrolled in the newly founded Jade Mountain Academy. Shortly after departing, he unexpectedly returns home, having successfully rescued his older brother and bringing him back. He is made to believe that this erases his mistakes, his mother even pays him a backhanded compliment, an uncharacteristically “nice” gesture. He is promoted to the top of the rankings, finally his parents are proud of him.

But of course it is all a trick. The “adoration” afforded to him was all a ploy. Secretly, his parents abused power and tradition to arrange for Winter’s death. They force him into a lethal trial they intentionally rigged against him, all to finally erase that stain on their family’s honor.

Winter finally realizes the true nature of his parents’ opinion of him. Even when he succeeds, and does everything right, he is still defective, unlovable, and unwanted. He will never be anything else to his family. And so he leaves his homeland, pretending he is dead, resigned to live in hiding forever.

During this time, while at the brink of despair, Winter is able to draw strength from one source: His new friends from the academy. He vocalizes that, for all the abuse he suffered at the hands of his birth family, he fervently believes that THEY would never do anything like that to him. They chose to stuck with him, even when he was awful, and told him he was not hopeless. He was not a mistake; he could be deserving of love.

So naturally, he returns to them; they accept him readily, are willing to be his new surrogate family. When he almost burns to death at a later point, they fear and weep for him. When Qibli sets out to confront his own abusive family, Winter, despite being mind-controlled into a placid potato at the time, feels concerned enough for his friend’s safety to insist to come along (returning the favor of them accompanying him in his time of need in book 7). When Darkstalker’s mind control forces Winter to attack Qibli, he is shown ashamed and guilty of it once the control wears off again.

They bicker and struggle, and make mistakes, they break up but always come back together again. Time and time again the one thing that is always reinforced: When the cards are down, Winter loves his friends, and they love him. They would never intentionally hurt each other, or give up on each other.

I want you to keep in mind how wholesome, and loving, and mutually supportive this ramshackle band of misfits has been portrayed to this point... Because we’re moving on to the arc 2 finale, and it will do everything it can to corrupt all of it and consign Winter to a life of misery.

We arrive at aforementioned scene, where Moonwatcher receives her earring. Just a little bit prior, Winter had learned that Darkstalker unleashed a magical plague onto his people in an attempt to wipe them out. Now here is Moonwatcher, revealing that she is not under any spell, and has aligned herself with this guy willingly, speaking fondly of him as if he was a dear friend who never did any wrong. Winter takes this badly and accidentally breaks a vase; the narrative lingers on this moment and really tries to sell us on how unreasonable Winter’s reaction is, how he is overreacting, but let’s examine that interpretation for a moment.

Moonwatcher doesn’t yet know about the attempted Icewing genocide, but she DOES know about Darkstalker being okay with casting spells to inflict immeasurable torture upon those he hates. WE know that she knows this, so her stance here is already suspect. Yet she goes on to praise Darkstalker and refer to him as a friend. Look at this from Winter’s perspective. This “friend” of Moonwatcher just tried to kill his entire tribe, and he actually succeeded in killing his aunt, Queen Glacier, a person Winter greatly respects. Winter is currently unable to return to his homeland for fear of being branded a traitor. Even if he could return, he knows his obstinate and spiteful family would prevent him from attending the funeral, meaning he is not even afforded the basic dignity of saying farewell to his aunt. The aunt whom Darkstalker murdered by making her vomit her own blood until she withered away in her bed. And here is Moon, absolving the person who did this to Glacier from his appalling actions, despite knowing full well what Darkstalker is capable of and choosing to look away.

I don’t know about you, but I think I can forgive the grieving, emotionally overwhelmed boy for shattering a little pottery after hearing his trusted friend—who held his hand when he was dying—say that the guy who makes people disembowel themselves and wipes out entire countries may be misunderstood and not so bad. I think I would have a similar reaction. In fact, I would never want to talk to her ever again.

There is no way I can read this scene in which Moon doesn’t come off as either an absolute lunatic, or critically stupid and callous. In fact, based on her earlier behavior I half-expect her to get over the news of the attempted Icewing massacre in a couple hours, saying “Eh, it’s kinda bad, but you just have to do these kinds of things sometimes, you know? I’m sure he had his reasons.”

Then there is the part where Qibli makes his off-color comment about how Winter’s brain could really use a good wash. I already went into how it could have worked but didn’t. But with the timing here, we’ve already had Moon spit on their friendship, so as Winter’s other closest friend, it naturally follows that Qibli also craps on his feelings.

Consider the context: Winter comes from an abusive household where his parents forcibly tried to change him away from who he was to purge the “wrongness” from him. When they betray him and he narrowly escapes their attempt on his life, he re-affirms his belief in his friends, and the knowledge that they wouldn’t treat him like that gives him the strength he needs to keep going. But now, Qibli asserts that Winter DOES need to be altered, thereby AGREEING with Winter’s abusive parents, rendering Winter’s affirmation from book 7 erroneous. Qibli WOULD treat him like that if it made Winter less “intolerable”.

Neither Moonwatcher nor Qibli ever make an attempt to repair this rift. Winter is left betrayed and alone.

Stuff happens, and the forces of the Nightwings and Icewings come to blows over Jade Mountain. With his two closest friends having written him off and his support network eroded, Winter relapses into thinking he is worthless, seeks validation in unquestioning patriotism, and realigns himself with his abusive family by throwing himself into the battle. Nobody wants him to, in fact his parents still hate him for it, but whatever. His father dies and his mother blames him for it.

Meanwhile Turtle, Anemone, and Qibli are cooking up a solution to the battle problem. They have the idea to make everyone’s minds connect in a huge empathy wave for a few moments, which I think is a pretty interesting idea for what it’s worth. But then they teleport both armies back to their homes, and the spell sweeps Winter up with them, taking him out of the rest of the finale and bringing him to the Ice Kingdom. The characters say “whoops” but aren’t further concerned with the situation. It’s all a big laugh.

Let me remind you that Winter is currently considered not welcome on Icewing territory. His family, whom he was sent back with, is extremely abusive and vindictive. His friends know this. Said parents have previously arranged for him to be killed, and are still on record as wanting him dead. His friends KNOW this. And now he is alone with them and a gaggle of other royal Icewings who all are extremely pissed off at him for ruining their sacred trial site.

It is very possible that he is being torn apart and mauled by an enraged mob right now. He could be forced into captivity and flayed. Maybe the interim regent is sentencing him to death and getting the rope ready. There is a million different horrible things that could be happening to Winter right now, while he is trapped alone with people who hate him, things his friends would be reasonably able to anticipate. And nobody is doing anything to get him out of there, to suggest bringing him back, even though it would only take a single spoken sentence to do so! They aren’t even concerned!

Then the climax happens, strawberry thing and all, and we get the coup de grâce. After all is said and done, the group decides that Winter is untrustworthy, and that they must protect the secret of Darkstalker’s fate from him, because they fear if he knew he would kill Peacemaker.

Moon, who read Winter’s mind in book 6 and reached out to him about how the “ruthless Icewing warrior” persona in his head is a facade and how she sees he has a gentle and good heart... Moon, who in book 7 finds out about Winter’s secret deal to kill Glory and STILL trusts him, who calls out his bullshit to his face because she KNOWS how kind-hearted Winter is and that he would never resort to murder... Moon who, again, held his hand while he was dying... thinks that the dragon she has reminded of his compassionate nature time and time again would kill an innocent child.

This is disgusting. Moon believing that is so far off the mark with regards to anything this group has embodied or done for any of the last 4 books, that my only conclusion can be that these are different characters. Maybe the Nightwing library collapsed on top of original Moon, and when Darkstalker magiced her back to health she came back wrong or something. I don’t know.

So after all of this, Winter is left alone. He somehow escaped from the Ice Kingdom; luckily there is a timeskip so we can just gloss over the horrible situation he was put in by his friends. He thinks about Jade Mountain. He reflects on everything that happened, how his parents never really loved him... How they hated him so much they tried to kill him... How he despaired, but found solace in his friends who loved him for who he was.... How those friends then betrayed him too and magiced him away... How they didn’t care about what happened to him... And he decides he is done. He won’t bother going back. A few people, probably Sunny, reach out to tell him he is welcome back, but he says “it wouldn’t be fair to other Icewings if an exile took up a bed”. The decision isn’t hard to make, after all there is nothing left for him there. Everyone has written him off, moved on and left him behind.

Kinkajou visits sometimes, tries to stay in touch, but that’s just how she is. Maybe the others sent her to check on whether he’s going to become troublesome. They don’t trust him. Better to keep an eye on him, he might kill the baby.

With nowhere else to go, Winter moves to Sanctuary, a place for rejects like him. I picture him standing there, at the edge of a cliff staring blankly into the distance. He is completely alone; no one wants to go near him or talk to him beyond the bare necessities. He could probably make new friends with the Talons of Peace if he tried, but there is no point. Why should someone like him have friends? It wouldn’t work. They’d just decide he is too inconvenient to be around. Sooner or later they would just tell him to leave anyway. It's better not to try, so he doesn't get hurt again.

And slowly it dawns on him. His parents had been right all along. It was never them, or the others, it was him. He is the problem. The Icewings said it, Qibli said it, Moonwatcher said it. There is just something fundamentally wrong with him.

He is defective. He is unlovable. Nobody wants him. He will never be anything, or have anyone. And so he stands at the cliff, looking over the broken vase fragments of his life... This is who he is. Prince Winter. A mistake.

And quietly, where no one knows or cares, he does the only thing he has left to do... he begins to weep.

As it is written, the tale of Winter is the story of a boy who is told he is wrong for being alive. He closes his ears and tries to keep walking forward, desperate to prove that he is not an error, that he has merit. But this book comes out and it unmistakably says that he doesn’t. He is nothing, and he deserves to have nothing.

And I just cannot accept that.

Why did this have to happen?

I think that the author was really struggling with the ending of this book. I’ve said before how much of a corner she wrote herself into with such an invincible villain. I think she came up with the strawberry idea as a solution to this problem. But as she was writing it, the characters kept fighting her. It was not a natural solution, not a decision the characters—as they were established—would ever make.

So concessions had to be made to force the issue. Established traits had to be bent slightly to make this plot work. The farther she went, the worse it got. The concessions piled up and turned into contrivances. Eventually the characters were no longer acting like themselves. Their bonds got stretched too far and some snapped. It’s a very tragic pitfall that occurs with long-running series.

I think Sutherland must have also been tired. Writing an entire book is a monumental task, and writing 6 connected ones even moreso. She also comes out with these things really quickly. Maybe she was burnt out? Maybe she wanted to be done and her attention lapsed. Maybe that’s why she forgot that Moon knew about the disemboweling. It seems reasonable to believe when you consider that the next story arc would make a relatively clean break from the problems of this arc, especially with regards to the magic system.

But I don’t know what ultimately happened, so I can only speculate. I reiterate, I bear no ill will against Sutherland for writing this. Even if I kind of hate everything about this finale, and very vocally wish it would be different, I don’t want this examination to generate (or reawaken) any hatred towards her, or to attack her personally. I understand the pain of an artist who gets trapped with something for too long and has to find the means, any means, to see it through to the end. I criticize the story, but I could never hate anyone for that.

But for me, I do not consider this half of the book as part of the story. The characters act too unnaturally for it to have happened. So to me, it didn’t. We don’t know what happened, maybe Darkstalker is still out there. Maybe they dealt with him. Maybe what actually happened is my crappy and self-indulgent rewrite of the ending which I will never show to anyone because it would be really embarrassing.

But whatever actually ended up happening, I am sure Winter never ended up at that cliff, pondering how worthless and meaningless his life was. He is currently at Jade Mountain, surrounded by friends who love him, and bickering with Qibli about the correct solution to their advanced calculus assignment that is due tomorrow.

Is there anything left to say?

Probably.

I didn’t talk about Anemone yet. You know, in the epilogue she enchants herself a bracelet that makes her “not be so mean all the time”. I find that creepy. To me it reads as Anemone voluntarily brainwashing herself with magic to erase her negative traits instead of growing past them naturally because she finds them undesirable and wants to work to change for the better. I would ordinarily assume that this is an overreaction on my part, and I’m just reading the scene wrong. But no, we just got through a part where the heroes brainwashing someone is treated as an unequivocal good and worthy of celebration, so I think my reading may actually be spot on. Why are we letting the little kid alter her own brain without supervision? Hello? Tsunami? Someone intervene maybe? This cannot be healthy.

Turtle stands out to me as the one bright spot in all of this. He (and Peril, but she’s mostly out of focus) remain as the only main characters of this arc who don’t have any mind-boggling out-of-character moments or sudden streaks of uncharacteristic callousness. I really like the part where Qibli goes to free Turtle from his captivity and plans to give him an earful about the comically unhelpful messages he’s been sending him. But when Turtle asks if what he did was helpful, Qibli sees how beaten down and exhausted Turtle is, and wordlessly drops his frustration to tell him “Yeah, they were helpful.” That is the true Qibli shining through for a moment, showing that he cares about the well-being of his friends.

Do I hate the pairing of Qibli/Moonwatcher? No. Well, I DO hate how it happened in the book, and how the story tried to assassinate Winter’s character to resolve the love triangle and make it happen. I don’t hate it on principle though. If you are a fan of Qibli/Moonwatcher and want to write fanfics about it, please do! I absolutely encourage you to do that! Maybe you can fix this mess and turn it into something that’s actually properly handled!

Mightyclaws keeps the power that Darkstalker granted him past the finale. That means all the spells that Darkstalker cast are technically still active. Does that mean the Icewings have to wear earrings for the rest of their lives? Do they get sick again if they take them off? Is Peril forever cursed to think of Darkstalker as a cool old uncle and has to somehow reconcile how everyone else thinks of him? How did the Nightwings relinquishing their powers work, do they have to wear the earrings forever too now?

And there is one more thing to mention.

My confession

You may have already intuited this, if you’ve been following the content of my blog. It is very heavily skewed towards the first and second arcs of the series. I would now like to confess something.

When I read the second half of book 10, I found it so disillusioning, Winter’s fate so upsetting... that I put down the series then and there. And I haven’t picked it back up since.

That’s right, I have not read arc 3. I don’t know if that makes me a fake fan. I know pretty much everything that happens in it, the controversial twist at the end, Pyrrhia coming back into the story later, Snowfall getting brainwashed by a piece of jewelry until she cares about a plot that had nothing to do with her or the fate of the Icewings, etc..

It’s not out of malice, or because it’s a new continent. The opposite in fact; I would have greatly prefered a clean break with a new setting—Bug-themed dragons in a slightly more contemporary, developed environment sounds fascinating and full of potential. I don’t hate Pantala or the new characters.

I just... I can’t really do this again. I can’t handle the thought of Pyrrhia coming back post-Darkstalker, with Winter showing up and talking to these guys again like nothing happened, seeming like a different person, joking around with them like his entire character wasn’t dragged through a mountain of manure to make the plot bend a certain way. I think as long as this is the ending that the story is continuing from, seeing that would just make me miserable.

Maybe I will just stay in the parts of the story that I fell in love with. And imagine a version of reality in which Pantala is allowed to exist on its own, where Swordtail was the fourth POV character of arc 3, where Queen Wasp stayed the villain throughout, and Snowfall got her own legends book about how she reformed Icewing society and fixed all the shit that poisoned Winter’s life, so future generations don’t have to suffer through the same stuff he did.

~~~~~

If you’re still with me, thank you for reading this far. I think this is everything I ever thought about the finale of the second story arc, so now I never have to talk about it again. Writing this was difficult. I found it crushing at times. This will probably stand as the only overtly negative post I have ever made on this blog. I love Wings of Fire, and I want to celebrate it. To add to it, not tear it down.

I hope this wasn’t too boring, or painful, or frustrating, or soul-crushing to read through. I’ll see you later, hopefully with a more constructive post.

[majikkulu]

♱ 𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖗𝖔 𝖓𝖔𝖙𝖊𝖘; 003 by majikkulu ;P ♱

━━ ❝ masterlist ❞

these are my personal observations and may not resonate with everyone. please take them with a grain of salt, as i'm not a professional astrologer! :))

♱ having transit saturn square natal chiron/pluto can indicate potential injuries or illness. the same goes for transit uranus conjuncting natal mars, but that happens unexpectedly.

♱ virgo moon is great at advising others on their feelings and decisions, but it's funny how they struggle with their own. they often feel confused and chaotic. (i’m speaking from experience!)

♱ mercury at 20° can indicate clearer ideas and communication. in scorpio, it brings confidence in what they say, but they can be reckless with their words and talk quickly. they might ask controlling questions and easily read others, being very observant.

♱ i feel like mercury conjunct pluto people have an easier time saying controversial things that could get them canceled, lmao. they dgaf. 

♱ moon opposite mercury may struggle to express their emotions and desires clearly, often feeling disconnected. they might say things that don’t align with their true feelings and tend to overthink. mood swings are also common.

♱ saturn retrograde natives might struggle with confidence, often feeling uncomfortable in authority roles and fearing failure. they can be quite pessimistic. they may avoid or struggle with taking responsibility and accountability, especially when younger, but with age, they learn to embrace it. things get better over time.

♱ jupiter retrograde natives might struggle to embrace positive changes in their lives due to a fear that they will be temporary. it's hard for them to fully express and feel happiness because they may feel it will be taken away from them.

♱ men with moon conjunct venus are incredibly caring and nurturing. they’re affectionate and understanding, usually avoiding conflicts. this placement will avoid arguments at all costs and strive to make things better. they also want the same treatment in return. in general this placement falls in love easily (which is not a bad thing! they find beauty in everything)

♱ many men with venus conjunct chiron have been cheated on or experienced significant heartbreak, leading them to question their worth and if they are enough. they may also have faced abuse, making them hesitant to pursue romantic interests. they could attract partners who are wounded and somewhat toxic.

♱ i've noticed that people with a taurus midheaven (mc) often have their own businesses or work as accountants or in real estate. both of these careers tend to be stable, long-term, and provide financial security.

♱ having chiron in the 5th house can bring delays and challenges in romantic life, making it take longer to enter the love scene. once they do, they love deeply and unconditionally. sometimes, romantic connections can offer them healing in some way.

♱ natives with the moon in the 11th house may find that friends are often in love with them due  their caring and comfy presence. many of their romantic connections can start as friendships as well.

[blood-starved-beast]

Hey do you guys think about Vi hallucinating a more innocent, "untainted" by reality Caitlyn in the "Nothing to Lose" clip? Doesn't it sound familiar?

It's just like how she hallucinated Powder back when Cait took her down to her childhood home. She misses Powder then, just like in the s2 clip, she misses that Caitlyn, the one not harden by the events of the end of s1 and s2.

Caitlyn and Powder have a lot of parallels. Both are characters underestimated by the societies they are born into, and for a long time are outcasted from them. Cait is an outcast to Piltian High Society cause she rather be an Enforcer doling out Justice than playing the Politics Game. Jinx is outcasted for being well, for being Jinx. As a kid, Powder wasn't see as strong enough or respected, the same way Caitlyn isn't treated with respect. And with both of them Vi makes the same mistake of underestimating them/putting both into the Box of "I need to protect them."

The "Oil and Water" scene is often talked about, but people don't realize how it and the subsequent Caitlyn bath scene parallels another s1 scene - that is, when in ep3 Vi tell Powder to stay put while she and the guys go save Vander. Vi tells Caitlyn in other words, to stay put while she goes off (with Jayce) to handle things about Silco. Both Caitlyn and Jinx, who both have issues of self identity and wanting to be something, take it very badly in each of their respective moments. And the resulting aftermath ends badly for everyone involved - (Jinx deciding to help with the monkey bomb/Caitlyn gets scoped out for the dinner party).

What I'm saying is, that s2 is gonna be Caitlyn's "get Jinxed" moment. Vi already compared her and Powder once, back highlighting how Obsessive Cait can be with her maps in s1. She is gonna get obsessive about hunting Jinx, the source of her many many ills these two seasons. Damn everything and everyone that gets in her way. And Vi, well Vi is gonna have to confront again, this person that she cares for, has this side of them that she did not account for. And I think, much like in s1 with Jinx, the "breakup" is gonna be the consequence of it.

[jealousmartini]

hi! i saw ur post where u mention age change with loa and could u talk more about that? cause i just turned 20, but i wanna be 17 again just so i can experience teenage things (i had depression and extreme social anxiety my whole teenagehood). i wanna feel young and do things right, apply everything i know now to this time in my life cause i can't help but feeling so old speacially since i have zero "firsts", like i'm 20 and no first crush or first kiss (ik it's not the end of the world, but i want back the expirences i was stolen from). i don't wanna over-explain myself nor trauma dump on u, but basically i just wanna start over yk? i know nothing is impossible to loa, truly know, but this one wish makss me insecure cause that will mean i was born in 2007 instead of 2004 and my old classmates werent really my classmates which is okay cause i never liked them but instead i had different ones that i don't know? i don't know if i'm making sense here, sorry to be asking u these things but ur the only person i've seen talking about age change so i'll be very thankful to anything u have to say to me. hope u have a good day :)

This ask unironically made me frown, like so hard, knowing that manifesters like you have to ask if starting over is okay because of the heavy misrepresentation and misunderstanding of manifesters and shifters who age change.

My love, OF COURSE you can. I cannot believe we have come to the point, on the interent as a whole, that people feel that they need to ask permission on what to do with THEIR LIVES, because the all high and mighty LOA police feel like they have the right to dictate what others should and shouldn't do with their lives.

And God forbid you don't obey them because then they'll throw every derogatory name, they'll diagnose you with every mental illness they want to insult you with (that they don't even understand), they'll assume that utmost worst about you, and take to their side of the community to shame you infront of them all. It's genuinely appalling.

Which is why I finally reminded myself a couple years ago that these people are not my mum. I have free will to do what I want with MY LIFE and whatever they say are nothing more than opinions that I can literally choose to listen to or to ignore. I refuse to fall into the trap of giving power, MY power away to outsiders and let them control me because real talk now, what are they actually going to do? At the end of the day they can cry, shout, rip their hair out on camera an tell me how insne I am for not having the same views as them, but none of that's stopping me from sleeping with their mum AND dad in another reality

Long story short, my answer is yes, you can start over and change the year you were born hun. You can do whatever you want because this is your call. Do what YOU want, not whatever the LOA police deems acceptable by their beliefs

[imbecominggayer]

How To Write Characters With Addiction

From @differentnighttale: "I am curious if you give advice about writing people with addictions for example substance. I have reasons my male MC does it. But how can I describe the addictions the MC has correctly."

In this post we are going to be talking about addiction! From alcoholism, substance abuse, nymphomania, to everything else that can be a possible addiction. This post will be all about making this realistic and complex :)

A) What Are The Benefits?, Make It Convincing

Grab a fucking piece of paper or whatever you have and just write a paragraph from your addict's perspective on the situation. Omit the bad stuff. Make it highly convincing. if you aren't thinking "hmm, understandable" after you've written and read it, you did it wrong.

What do they get out of it?

Why did they like it at first?

Are they calmer, more intensely concentrated, does it take the edge off?

Are they more confident?

Does it ease the sense of being fundamentally wrong or dull some other pain?

Is it fun to do something rebellious?

What made them like this thing so much they tried it again, and again, and again?

B) Think About The Consequences, And Ignore It

Oftentime, at least in my experience, people will continue with a bad habit if it means they don't have to be the one to think about the consequences.

The Consequences For Addiction Include:

Financial. Depending on what your character uses to get their fix and how much they use, they might be spending hundreds a week if they are a particularly aggressive user. People often steal money from their loved ones. Addiction also tends to get people fired. Write a scene where your drunk character gets fired for operating machinery. Have them be a burdenous sponge.

Social. It's common for addicts to lose their loved ones since it often gets to a point where it's impossible to care about these people despite how much you love them. Make love ones leave your character! And don't blame them

Physical. STDs, Overdose, Liver Failure, and a shit ton of other issues from the chronic to the fatal either cause, exacerbate, or are linked with addiction. Recovery can't automatically save your character so don't write that story.

Psychological. Being an addict isn't fun since you get to struggle with points 1, 2, and 3 all at the same time! Write about your character issues. Their lack of control. Their spiralling life.

Write all about your character's suffering. And then have them justify it. Make it convincing.

They need it. It's not their fault that this is the only that helps them! Everyone just doesn't get it. I'm trying to work on it, OK?! It'll all work out! They know that it's wrong but...

My most hated shit is when a character's arc is easy. They struggle with some things like a big dramatic argument with their wife, they cry a bit, and then they learn that "drugs are bad" so everything is fine :D

NO!!! Why don't you write about a friendship that doesn't get mended? A chronic illness they now have to pay huge medicine bills for? A fucked-up rap sheet that they can't escape?

And it's not because we want to punich addicts. It's because it doesn't matter if you care about addicts if you don't care about the messy shit!

It's easy to sympathize with an addict if you make them the most innocent victim who never hurts someone intentionally and who gets rid of the addiction in a second and never struggles with it ever again!

Do the hard shit. Make your readers sympathize with the unsympathetic asshole addict! Addicts aren't always good people! They can be dickbags. And they still deserve resources. Life isn't some kind of karma game where dickbags suffer and good people rise! Everyone deserves to not suffer!

Addiction is ultimately a disease. But it's a disease that can make someone you love into an absolutely unlikeable person. And this is coming from someone with an alcoholic dad <3 He does good things and bad things. I can sympathise with my dad and not let him walk all over me.

C) Withdrawal Is Leaving An Ex, Relapse Is Returning

Addiction is a motherfucker trying to leave. It's basically the equivalent of a clingy ex who keeps contacting you, asking for just one conversation, and the moment you so much as acknowledge them you are fucked.

And suffering the brunt of a clingy ex who won't take the hint tends to cause the same symptoms as withdrawal!

Obviously, withdrawal symptoms depend on what type of ex you have and what age you are and yada yada yada. Research for specificity :)

Withdrawal symptoms can include:

Headaches

Insomnia

Fatigue

Hallucinations

Seizures

Tremors

Cravings

etc.

BE AWARE: Relapses are when someone returns back to their drug if they were going cold turkey or going back to their original dose. Relapses can sometimes result in an overdose due to the fact that the brain has been weened off the substance and is now overwhelmed by the high dose.

Relapses often happen when a person makes the deliberate choice in order to stop these fucking nightmarish symptoms. To use the analogy of a clingy ex, you start talking to them in order to tell them to stop contacting.

Relapses can also happen through being in a setting where the behaviors associated with the addiction such as sex, gambling, drinking, substance use, and all manner of things are normalized.

This setting could be a party, a bar, or even a friend group.

Relapse is made more likely if someone is self-detoxing away from a support group or a doctor.

Writing about withdrawal and relapses are an important part in making a story feel more authentic. Just like with mental illness, people rarely learn the lesson and follow it perfectly. They make mistakes. Slip back into old habits. Do shitty things.

We aren't writing their suffering to punish them. We are doing it because you can't say you care if all you are willing to do is look at the easy parts.

D) Little Tidbits To Keep Track Off

This is the miscellanious things that didn't fit into their own boxes.

Friends!

Do they have friends who also have their addiction? How do they hang out? What are they like? How are their substance using friends different from their non-addict ones?

Slang!

Don't just look up slang for your substance of choice. You'll need to look at some first-hand accounts of addiction. Find an influence who has struggled with substance abuse in the past and see how they talk about it!

Variables!

Remember to keep their geographical location, socioeconomic status, time, and a host of other factors. If your character is a penniless alcoholic then it's unlikely they'll get their hands on some type of expensive gin. They'll probably use rubbing alcohol. Keep the price of your drug in mind.

A character's status will also impact their slang. No one unironically says doobie anymore.

A character's location will also impact how they get their shit and how other characters will react to that addiction.

A character's financial status also impacts how the consequences of their actions impact them. A low-income character wont be able to afford the same medication as a rich addict. They also won't have the same luxury for quality therapy, rehab, programs, time, anything really.

Look At The Addict And The Loved Ones

Try not the skew the reality of addiction to paint the addict as the victim and the loved ones as evil for not being forgiving and tolerant enough.

Keep sympathy for both the addict and the loved ones. Or drop sympathy for both of those characters.

E) RESOURCES

FDA and DEA online databases and drug resources

Social Networking Groups

Medical Journals

Local medical professionals, police, and medical examiners

The US national poison center

[imustbenuts]

nuts reading trigun in japanese 6 - kaite's foreshadowing. plant synchronization's downside

remember in my part 3 and 5 i was talking about hierarchy? surprisingly, it continues past chapter 8 with kaite. and wolfwood. triangulating nyoom

(to be honest... ive been doing these read and analysis completely blind in a 1st JP read through. so its possible ill find new nuances, get things wrong as the context shifts and changes, so my stuff looks like its scattered all over the place. sorry about that.)

i think ill start explaining names and meanings. kaite's name in japanese is kaito. カイト. this can be a homonym with i think 怪盗 (kaitou) in this case, which means phantom thief. for trying to help Neon with stealing loot from the Stand Steamer.

left bubble next to neon: 道案内は的確だったかね！？ I trust your guide has been giving you clear instructions?

^the headaches with manga translations has always been to keep texts short and reasonable for flow and readability, so these simplifications can and sometimes must happen.

but, add dakutens, the " on 2 of those カイト katakanas and suddenly, kaito turns into. ガイド gaido. Guide.

so Kaite has been playing as a guide to lead vash to his death at the hands of Neon. this page is such a fucking whammy with the wordplay going on. if you just read this in japanese theres a moment of "oh shit, no way, Kaite, vash just told you to stop betraying people! what the hell!"

yet theres a level of trust going on already, so its not as bad as it seems

nightow really likes his worldplay. i really like this page.

kaite redeems himself by later charging into the boiler room and helps turn the valve to stop the sand steamer from running off cliff and killing everyone on board....

hm. a guide. and those sequences

we sure have a lot of guides here. one who appears in the manga later with a kansai dialect. and another in TriStamp, where he is younger than he appears.

when i spoke about hierarchy and the fact that vash is over 150, i was also kind of hinting that all of current humanity are akin to children in the system of JP hierarchy. that takes on extra meaning with a little change of context and language

wolfwood is filling in the shoes of kaito here in tristamp. and within trimax, kaito foreshadows him. incredible.

theres actually more going on with wolfwood and certain design/changes choices i wanna talk about with tristamp but ill save it for another day. maybe when i run into him in this read later

Plant Synchronization downside.

....so theres a bad downside to vash synchronizing with the plant that i didn't catch. which also answers what the fuck was going on in tristamp when that version of him hits the ground

nightow mentions this in an interview, link here posted and transcribed by xoxo-otome (thank you!) that he likes action flicks and has incorporated a lot of action into his work. and its true. there is so much action in the form of sound effects.

reading through the entire manga and paying attention to the sfx peppered around offers a lot more context to whats happening in half of the panels that seemingly doesnt make sense

like this one where the top panel has "DADADADADA" sfx. so they're stomping down the corridor with their guns crossed and facing each other. the "GO OH" in the bottom panel emphasizes the sudden burst into open air. unfortunately, anyone who values their life and sanity in this economy will not want to translate trigun's sfxs 100%.

i should have paid more attention when reading trigun in english. but i didn't so here i am. in the trigunbookclub tag now doing this.

why is it important? here. this. below. when vash does his plant thing with his sister:

see those heart panels? i tried searching real quick but nobody seems to have pointed this out. i havent seen this in EN fanfics. maybe i missed it. maybe im stupid:

thats Dokun, the sound effect of a heart thumping. as vash synchronizes, the heart panels with the same sound effect appear, but they gradually split apart further with ellipses "..." to signify his heart beat slowing down. and down. and down....

Dokun, do kun, do... kun....

then the wings comes out. and the panel below it:

sfx: PIIIIIIIIIII

breathes. a FLAT LINE.

aaaaaaAA?!

何かなんだかわかりません I'm not sure what's going on. とにかくプラントの動きは一切止まっています But the Plant's movement has completely stopped. 同時に男にも呼吸　心音ともに停止してます It's the same with that man. His breathing and heartbeat sounds like it's stopped with the plant too.

AAAAA?!!?! the も means vash is in the same state as the plant?

i.... um. um.,, ANYWAY-

AAAAAAAAAAAA?! HUH?! HUH??? HUH?!

is THIS why he has a metal grate over his heart? something happened and he an an operation on his heart???? by some engineer maybe? what? huh? am i reading this wrong? what? wait, hello? HEY!!!

what the fuck. okAY--?!

and then he just. pretends like nothing's happened. doesnt tell kaito anything. and he leaves the Sand Steamer.

and im going to have to sleep bc its 5 am now and pretend like i didnt just realize something this big right in front of my eyes during the first read.

[boneyardbob]

Whoops I said I’d post this like three days ago my bad. Head canons for the masks in Marble Hornets! I may post a bunch of shorter stuff that are general headcanons soon. Also if you want more details on this lmk I’d love to dive deeper @forgottenporkbun @monszsterz

Here's my headcanons for the masks. Honestly I could go on like a huge, rambling essay about why I think these things, my inspo for these ideas, down to the details of what they feel like and how they work but Imma try and keep this short. I plan to put all that other stuff in my fics anyway and if you're reading this you'll probably wanna read my MH fics so you'll figure it out eventually. The idea that Tim and Brian made their mask with stuff from Hobby Lobby is REALLY funny but I have to stick with the idea the masks are gifts from The Operator (TO). Tim got his in college because if he was given it at any point while in the hospital, it would probably be found and taken away. TO waited until Tim was free before gifting it. Its when their "relationship" begun. TO switched from this unfamiliar, constantly looming monster into this warped guardian angel. This is obviously very fleeting because by the time Jay runs into Tim in MH, he's forgotten this entirely, or repressed it, and is back to viewing TO how he did his entire childhood.

During the tail end of college, while filming Alex's project, is when this Masked Era began and it ended for an unknown reason a quarter of the way into MH. My timeline isn't great but roughly that's the situation we're talking about. This is when we get all those videos of Masky and Hoody stalking Jay and Alex. I don't think I could fully call Tim and TO's relationship that of worship but that's the closest I can get. Tim knew what he was dealing with was some kind of unimaginable creature, but it could feel human emotions FOR HIM. At least if he listened. If Tim did what TO wanted, then in return he got benefits. At some point he understood TO needed him-either to keep living or to stay grounded to earth, and things got a little extra toxic. I imagine its a LOT like the Fears and their respective Avatars in TMA. I use you to get food, I give you powers that make it easier for you to get food, win win.

These benefits were really only accessed when wearing his mask. The more he wore it and the more work he put in for TO, the better things got. At the very least it instantly cleared up his lungs so he could breathe easily, he no longer suffered from migraines, he didn't have any hallucinations that weren't purposeful messages from TO, and most debilitating affects from mental disorders were gone so he wouldn't feel depressed or anxious. Fuck if I had a magical mask that made me neurotypical and took away my chronic illness I'd kill people in the woods too/j. More benefits were added on with time like growing stronger, healing faster, its kinda giving the vampires from Twilight ngl. My RP partner and I make a LOT of Twilight vampire jokes about them. It also spiraled Tim into a euphoric mania, giving him the energy and desire to sprint around the woods all hours of the night. This was an addictive sensation that had him craving his mask. He had to share it with someone.

His closest (and really only) friend at the time was Brian so he opened up to him about it and eventually got him involved. Because of Tim's medication and natural resilience to TO he eventually got OUT of this cult-like situation but Brian couldn't. He got to the point he was constantly under that mask and if he took it off for long enough, he'd probably suffocate and die. This explains why he ends up homeless, constantly in his mask state, and seems to have uncanny abilities. He just disappears into thin air, he seems to be doing physically GREAT despite living on a mattress in the woods with no source of food or money, and we only ever hear him cough. That ties back into my idea their vocal cords melt due to the TO disease. He can take the mask off for short bits of time. Its not like an astronauts helmet, more so an oxygen tank while hiking a tall mountain.

[shiikiyun]

people into the heavily symbolic media when the media is heavily symbolic

im sorry but ill just never buy into this narrative. you dont have to agree with me when i say i forgive him or talk about the sympathetic traits i find in him but on this case i just cannot be swayed and im not taking talk backs. it doesnt make sense for his character nor for the story and theres a very easy very interesting interpretation of that frame anyway (he sees the funeral from the outside through his phone because his crime was entirely online and, unlike the other characters, there isnt a set location for anything pre/during/post murder. cause it was in his phone)

and on a personal opinion. taking this so literally and SWEARING up and down he physically showed up to the girl's house kind of defeats the whole point of his themes. every character has set themes and a societal problematic they represent (haruka- child neglect, the result of abandoning and outcasting someone from society all their life. shidou- dubious medical decisions, the ethics of very specific situations in the medical field. mikoto- overworking and masking, the consequences of a society that forces its people to conform to a norm, etc) and futa's is the mob mentality and shield enforced by social media that can easily corrupt anyone at all no matter how pure or noble their initial intentions/morals are. its about the twitter users that will kickstart harrassment campaigns before fact checking or over the most innocuous things (see: kpoptwt currently making up the most gross allegations en masse about the group lesserafim because of a made up rivalry with their label mate newjeans). if futa breached that line between online and real life by physically showing up to his victim's house (be it before or after the fact) the initial themes fall apart. cause then he's dangerous in. real. life.

at that point, what story do we want to tell? why is it that we need futa to be this horrible when his actions online are enough for people to be unable to forgive him? lets sit back for a second and question ourselves on the reason we have to turn him into a creep and believe he became a threat in real life to justify disproving his actions. why we cant simply judge him from his online behavior, that caused much harm than he couldve done in a face-to-face argument. cause that is the excuse people online will use. theyre not hurting anyone in real life, so why should their posts online define their character?

pd: you can bring up the fact that his professor situation was in real life. and youre correct. but that part of the story can easily be placed as the only needed merge of realities for his case: he didnt actually confront the professor, the university isnt as private of a place as a family house so he still has some anonimity (he made the post, but who took the picture? u could not tell if he did it himself or got it from other sources, we just know bc we saw it). not to mention it still correlates: hes brave through the screen, but a complete coward in the flesh. he took a picture of the scene whilst hiding and did nothing to stop it. as much as denouncing the professor is a good thing (and the only good thing he does in the mv), he was still a coward. as ive already explained, mixing the online actions with forced real life ones in the actual murder case he has misses this point

[ceolocunt]

[lobotomy-lady]

the most batshit insane traumatizing thing happened at work today & I won't know if people are dead bc of my inability to talk a man down from a mass murder until the news reports start coming out lollll

edit: it's all good there was nothing about a shootout on the news 🙏

[eveningrainstorm]

People often talk about Rio Ranger as if he's the doll version of Sei but what I find super fascinating is that he isn't, not in the same way Fake Reko or the Dummies are replications of their human counterparts.

Ranger resembles Sei on a surface level — same physical appearance, just an unclear amount older; same way of speaking. But he is unmistakably different. Ranger is an incomplete being, missing his positive emotions, but even the true Ranger is Rio Laizer rather than Sei, because there's still something different.

Rio Ranger is, fundamentally, inhuman and yet desperate to be human. He was created to be jealous of humanity and despite his hatred for them, humanity is what he is always striving for. But it is something that he doesn't possess, and is forced to steal instead. He takes clothes from the dead and uses drawings on cards to feign emotion; he is the Dress-Up Doll, Rearranger, not possessor of anything of his own.

While the other dolls based on humans in the game have identity issues based on their personhood being defined by someone else, being merely a copy of another person, Ranger is not even allowed Sei's identity to base himself on — it's very likely he doesn't even know who Sei was. He does not have Sei's clothes — nondescript and tied to Asunaro as they are — and he does not have the capacity for expressing emotion that Sei had.

When comparing Ranger and Sei in terms of personality, differences are obvious. There are similarities, naturally — besides the abrasive way of speaking, there's the jealousy and desire for validation. But in Ranger, these are present to an extreme — they're all he has. (And, ironically, this is what Gashu claims to believe makes him so human, even when Ranger's inhumanity comes through most clearly in this lack of anything else.)

In Sei, on the other hand, these traits are tempered by logic, to put things in YTTD's beloved logic vs. emotion dichotomy. Despite his outwardly emotional nature, from what we see of him he appears realistic and focused on survival in a way that Kai isn't. He's aggressive and overly casual about killing people, but he doesn't express the glee at violence that Ranger does, only a fierce desire to prove himself and survive. Sei is jealous of Kai and desires Gashu's affection, but also has an understanding of the situation he's in that both Kai and Ranger lack — he can tell that Gashu doesn't care about him as much as he does Kai, and recognizes that the way Gashu treats both of them is wrong. Ranger believes Gashu truly loves him, a fact proven blatantly false by his eventual demise at Gashu's hands. Ironically, this blindness is more similar to Kai as we see him in his minisode, rather than Sei.

Of course, this understanding isn't simply a part of Sei's basic nature, but rather the fact that unlike Kai and Ranger, he has past experience to go on. Sei wasn't born into the Satou family — though his exact origins are unclear, based on his grief for his birth father and how he talks about Asunaro ("all this shady organization crap"), it's possible he wasn't even born into Asunaro at all. Before being sent to Gashu, he had his own father, one who we don't know anything about but whom he apparently loved. He doesn't accept Gashu's treatment of him and Kai the way Kai does because he has known a different father and a different way of life. This doesn't free him from Asunaro's influence — he still accepts the role of assassin they give him and resigns himself to becoming a killer. What choice does he have, after all? But he carries no illusions about Asunaro or his role in it. He knows that the training is cruel, that he is viewed only as a tool, that Asunaro is wrong even if they are also not worth resisting.

This is a major part of why Ranger isn't Sei, why he cannot be; because Asunaro is all Ranger knows. They are his creators, who he was literally built to serve. In Ranger's mind, he is not only Gashu's son and heir, but his creation, his masterpiece. And of course he wouldn't have been created with Sei's memories — why take that risk? Why give him any sort of knowledge of a life outside Asunaro or reason to be disloyal to them?

Ranger is not Sei — so why model Ranger after him? Because Ranger is the idea of Sei, what Sei was meant to be: a counterpart to Kai, a rival, a second choice. Gashu preferred Kai, once; Kai won out over Sei. But Kai has proven himself a failure and betrayed Asunaro, leaving Gashu with no choice but turn once more to Kai's long-dead competition. Ranger is, like Sei, the opposite of Kai, temperamental and vulgar while Kai is stoic and polite, and perhaps more importantly, capable of murder while Kai steadfastly is not.

And yet Ranger isn't Sei. Sei was jealous of those — specifically Kai — he saw as superior or at least as being treated as such; Ranger is this idea taken to its natural conclusion. Sei had lost everything he had outside of Asunaro; Ranger never had anything else to begin with. Sei was a human; Ranger will never be, doomed to forever long otherwise. Ranger is Sei only in the ways Sei was useful — desperate for recognition, willing to kill, a perfect rival to Kai — but something entirely different, an inhuman machine, in all the ways Sei was a liability.

Sei was human, and he knew that he deserved to have that fact respected. Ranger isn't human and gets only the wanting, desperate to be as good as a human even humanity itself is unattainable. Of course, it isn't being a doll that is actually Ranger's problem — it's Asunaro, who view humans and dolls alike as disposable. Sei's humanity didn't make him any less of a tool as far as Asunaro was concerned, it only made him more difficult to control. All Sei wanted was to be seen as an equal to Kai, a person worthy of respect — and this is what he gets, in the end: his face and voice used as a base for one of Asunaro's weapons, while his true identity and personhood remains forgotten.

Ranger has nothing to hold him back from doing his duty for Asunaro, nor does he have anything to hold onto outside of it. In that sense, Ranger is an ideal asset for Asunaro — at least until the very jealousy and hatred Gashu programmed into him goes too far, and he is, once again, deemed a failure. Ironically, Gashu shoots Ranger for attempting to kill a participant, when willingness to kill was perhaps the one true advantage Sei had over Kai.

In the end, Ranger is offered no more humanity in his death than Sei is — they are both merely pawns of Asunaro, set to die at its whims. But while Sei dies in the arms of his brother, receiving one final act of kindness as Kai refuses to kill him, Ranger has no one in either of his deaths but his creators: in his death as Rio Laizer the dubious kindness of Tia Safalin, making his final moments full of agonizing guilt, and of course in his first death, as Rio Ranger, nothing but Gashu's coldness, the bullet in his head a sort of culmination to the favoritism Sei found weighed against him, and a demonstration of just how far Gashu has come from the father who once genuinely cared for Sei. Sei was human, Ranger was not, but as far as Asunaro is concerned, they are exactly the same: tools, easily thrown away as soon as they stop being useful.

[dailyrmdoodle]

I need to know… do you think Royal margarine is scared of bugs? Like would he scream and climb on top of furniture with a pantufla in hand ready to throw it (horribly) at the bug or is he a brave guy and just carefully takes the bug outside again?

(Please don’t mind this very oddly specific question, I just think it would be neat if you drew Royal margarine with a little (or big) buggy creature)

OH DEFINETLY THE FIRST ONE

he for sure SAYS he would confidently take the bug outside for you if asked and the bug would be safe and everything would be fine but i dont think he could actually even throw anything at it, hed cower behind buttercream until the bug either just leaves on its own or someone else takes care of it

this also reminded me of this one meme everybody was drawing from however long ago and i wanted to do it for such a long time and i did im sorry couldnt contain myself

also a bonus little doodle of him actually getting the courage to carry said buggy

he would only do this if forced to take care of it by himself with no outside help and then he'd be fine and boast about it for the next 2 hours

[highlordofkrypton]

Not the ACOTAR reddit fandom appropriating DC Comics to prop Rhysand up, shoving Tamlin as a Red Lantern and saying Nesta would be a Black Lantern. Oh, and Papa Archeron is a Yellow Lantern because he 'acted like a coward'.

Please, Sinestro is such a compelling villain -- like what.

What a weird topic to bring up in another fandom that doesn't understand the nuance of each lantern.

Anyway, where my dc x acotar fans at so we can lament together 😭

[bunnihearted]

being too weird and unlikable and off putting and always being shunned and turned into an outcast everywhere i go and not having felt the connection and healing friendship has on you for so many years has really done a number on me

[quietwingsinthesky]

see my brain just doesn’t register the idea of anyone having a ‘one true love’ which is why the common fandom tropes of making canonical love interests terrible in order to justify why your ship is better always bugs the shit out of me. it feels like the only reason you would do that is if the idea of the characters in your ship having any other sort of romantic relationship that was important to them, even in the past, is a threat to their current one, therefore all their past relationships need to be demonized in order to make them ‘not real love’ so that they remain pure and chaste and ready for the True Love of the endgame ship.

[powerfulkicks]

ppl need to talk more about how the experience of getting diagnosed with chronic conditions can lead chronic pain sufferers to literally question their own sanity and experiences

like after getting so many tests and they all come back fine, you eventually start to question if you're even feeling pain at all or if you just somehow made it all up. you can't even identify if you're in pain anymore because every test is telling you that you're healthy. maybe everyone just feels like this and you're the weak one for not being able to handle it.

this is on top of the shit you'll get from doctors or friends or family members saying that it's all in your head or that it's somehow your fault for being in pain. you just need to exercise! you just need to eat right! do yoga! you're not doing enough!you start to think they're right, because nobody can find anything wrong with you. so it MUST be your fault!

it starts to take over your mind until you can't figure out if what you're feeling is even real. it makes you doubt that you can accurately label your own experiences. it makes you feel like a liar in your own head!

and it took me a long time to realize that i'm not tricking myself into feeling pain and what im feeling is real. and even though i might never get a doctor to tell me yes, your pain is real, and i know what's causing it, at least i can tell myself that what i am feeling is REAL. i am in pain and i am not making it up!