#justified meta

[insistonyourcupofstars]

Okay, so in doing an unofficial rewatch of Justified, I was watching 1×07 and WOW was That Scene between Boyd and Raylan gay.

I am about to go on a madman rant, so best put this under the cut.

Look, I am no expert on cinematography, so this is more of personal observation/opinion.

For context, in the seventh episode of the first season, Raylan has been trying to figure out who put a hit out on his girlfriend/witness, Ava, after they were ambushed in the middle of the night by a hired gunman. Because Ava is on bad terms with the Crowders for killing one of their family members (he abused her when they were married), Raylan assumes that the assault was planned by the Bo Crowder, the family patriarch, and goes to prison to talk with Boyd. who is also in prison.

See, Justified understood the usefulness and creativity that comes with cinematography, and that's how the director and lead cinematographer were able to elaborate on the homoerotic subtext that exists between Boyd and Raylan.

(shout-out to @dyinglikeastar for being my soundboard for this lol)

Now, in both scenes between Raylan and Boyd, there is a noticeable intimacy between the actors and the camera.

Here is where we start to dive in on the homoerotic subtext.

It is important to note that up until this point, anytime Raylan went to visit Boyd, there was always a glass partition between them. We see, especially in the pilot, how Boyd and Raylan are very physical with each other (greeting with a hug, the lingering touch on Raylan's arm in the church, Boyd touching Raylan's hand in the hospital after the shooting). The two of them have been established to have a complex and physical dynamic with each other, but since Boyd got arrested, they always had a physical barrier between them, and even when they leaned so close to each other (the blocking of their scenes when talking almost always shows the other's head in tighter shots of one of them, suggesting the actual closeness of the two), they could never touch. Now, they are left alone, in a room with no barriers between them.

It's interesting to note that there is a transition between long-shots and close-ups, and whereas the former is steady, the latter is much more flexible. The close-ups are constantly moving, never still. They cut back and forth between Boyd and Raylan because this is a game of tug-of-war. It isn't until Boyd calls into question Raylan's trust in him that the camera starts to tell a greater narrative.

The next shot cuts to Raylan, a close-up, and while it starts with his face in the center (as close-ups do lol), his face lifts out of frame, but the camera lingers on his lips for a good five seconds before lifting itself up to re-center his face. This grabs your attention, as it is the rule of thumb that when a character moves, so does the camera. But in the world of art, rules are made to be broken. Therefore, my hypothesis is that the camera is starting to dive into the POV of both men. Like many people do, when we are attracted to people, we pay attention to physical characteristics that catch our eyes.

(this is seen in another show, Gossip Girl, when two characters want to sleep together in season three, and the camera focuses on many aspects of both characters, elaborating on the tension and desire both have)

After a long shot is used to redirect the audience into a third-person perspective, it becomes even more obvious how the use of the close-ups is giving the audience a look into the visual POV of the characters.

Shots start to linger on both men as the first scene and second continue. Whereas the first scene eases into the use of close-ups, the second almost dives straight into it, focusing on Boyd's big green eyes as Raylan walks back into the room.

And just like how the first scene used the close-ups to show the cerebral tennis match between Boyd and Raylan, the second goes even farther.

Almost every shot is used to highlight certain facial features of both the men.

For Boyd, it's either his big eyes, his nose, or his lips. The camera is seen to focus on his face for a split second before moving down straight to his mouth, repeating multiple times.

For Raylan, the camera focuses much more on his lips, his lashes (the position of the low-key lighting from the sunlight providing a contrast, highlighted by the extreme close-up to his eyes), and the beauty mark under his eye.

By using the camera as a POV for both men, not only is the audience able to stay immersed in their conversation, but they are also led to appreciate and notice these certain aspects of each character, and gain a sense of tension.

In conclusion, these two middle-aged men want to fuck each other so badly.

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[bitter-ishsweet]

A lot of 2.07 analysis have been about how stede was getting too cocky and needed to "be humbled", and while there may be something to that, i haven't seen mentioned that stede cracked when ed left, but he only broke when he saw zheng recruiting his crew.

This is a guy who hasn't been particularly well liked or respected by his crew (which often is fair), and has been pushed to the side in favor of pirates such as calico jack or zheng herself. Real Pirates.

Well, stede is now a real pirate himself, and ed still left him, just like Ned Low said he would. Stede is a real pirate, and his crew still wants to leave. He saved them from zheng after they killed the love of his life, and they still want to leave to join the very person they had to be saved from, no fucking less.

And say what you will, but the guy chugging alcohol and screaming "i'm a sea god" is not the one that draws the sword.

The guy that draws the sword has tears in his eyes.

[mxtxfanatic]

Mxtx, creating a beautiful and well-rounded female character that appears only briefly: Hey, isn’t it fucked up that this character who is so important in the world of this story and to the people that knew her can only be known to you, reader, through flashback memories because the people in power were willing and able to sacrifice her in their never-ending quest for ultimate dominance? Do you feel the constant grief over what could have been had her potential not been killed in its infancy? Do you understand that you as a reader are mourning in the same way that her loved ones she’s left behind are, knowing that the world has been changed for the worse by her premature death? Doesn’t it suck?

(English-speaking) Mdzs fandom the bane of her existence (probably): Killing women in stories can have no other meaning than that you hate women, so this was a misogynistic choice, actually.

[ladystoneboobs]

no, but the way, cersei brushes sansa's hair with her fingers after telling her ilyn payne will kill her if stannis wins his battle, so they can all die together. this intimate, almost maternal gesture following a death threat. and then later a similar gesture is used with her actual child, when intimidating the king himself, her youngest, after threatening to have his whipping boy brought in to be beaten before them. just as she scared sansa, she scares tommen, also thought to be meek as sansa was. cersei only knows how to rule through fear but in these certain cases, she can sometimes mix in acts of tenderness too for a particularly unsettling combination.

[potpourri-of-ecclecticism]

Helaegon are probably one of THE ONLY ships in the history of entertainment media that, despite being canon in all realms, actually came alive only through actor interviews

[mearchy]

Maximus is so fun as a character to me for two reasons:

He's a slave to his most selfish desires at his core, and that selfishness allows him to do cold, evil, ruthless things over and over again. And that's not something that he becomes and it's not some crazy plot twist that gets revealed to us, as though his normal personality is a veil. His personality is genuine, it's just driven by the deeper motives that get more revealed throughout the show. And then you start to reinterpret all of his other actions in a different light and go oh.

This set of character traits gives him the funniest ability to repeatedly be like "I will kill people, I will commit violence, because I have strooong values/opinions related to this!" and then somebody gives him some friendly company or, like, a bathrobe. And he's like "ohh :) Nevermind, I would trust you with my life if it meant I could have more of this. Would you like my social security number."

[theriverbeyond]

meeting Kiriona is just like: that's our girl but she's wrong but it IS her but also what the FUCK. what happened to her, what happened to her before the series even started, what new horrors has she endured?

meeting Kiriona is understanding that these sharp edges ARE our Gideon; she was always made of knives but before NtN we were holding her by the hilt and this is the first time we get the blade. all her rage and pain and trauma, amplified 10,000 times by the way her losses - loss of harrow, loss of the parents that existed only as a fantasy, loss of the idea that revenge could ever sate her, loss of any autonomy, loss of her own damn life - keep accumulating with no respite. no end in sight. it is uncomfortable and distressing and upsetting and that is the point. anyway. wrapping her in a blanket as we speak!!!

[artbyblastweave]

On reflection I'm realizing that a really prominent thematic throughline in Invincible, indeed, in a lot of Kirkman's writing, involves taking a character who's trying to Make A Hard Utilitarian Choice and going, hey, hang on, did you actually need to do that or are you just chasing the high of being Adrian Veidt. Were you actually in between a rock and a hard place here or did you do something expedient and thoughtless to try and resolve the situation at hand, which you now feel the need to dress up after the fact in the language of self-sacrifice even though it's some other guy's arterial spray all over your nice outfit. Are you actually in this for the omelet or do you just really enjoy the tactile sensation of breaking eggs

[someguyinc]

yknow a take on morgana pendragon's story i see often is that if merlin had told morgana about his magic in that moment where they were in his chambers alone that she wouldn't have turned to become evil,, i disagree,, i think that morgana as a character would have eventually turned to become evil and bitter even with merlin as a mentor if she'd learned his secret early in season 2.

let's not forget merlin himself is NOT the most stable of mentor options (not that gaius or kilgahrah or ANY of the druids were a great help either) but he didn't know what the fuck he was doing,, just trying his best consulting that outdated spell book and had cryptic messages from a conniving dragon who MIND YOU still wanted morgana dead and was manipulating merlin the whole time and gaius was a traitor to most magic people like,, he literally was pro-gaslight morgana

merlin also loved arthur, however you view that love (romantic, platonic, brotherly, whatever) merlin loved arthur more than he did magic. we see this multiple times with merlin choosing what kept arthur safe and happy over him doing what would be best for the old religion (fuck them too but that's another post),, major example being the episode with the disir where he straight up tells him there is no place for magic in camelot (which is crazy considering he IS magic made flesh but anyways)

morgana HATED. uther, she hated everything about him and for awhile she disgusted that hate as righteous fury, raining down terror and pain onto innocents (even other magic users) and justifying it as payback. she hated arthur as an extension of uther because that's what uther raised them both as (again another post for another time) and tried to kill him without even asking what his stance was on magic (i believe arthur would have immediately done some introspection and realized he was wrong but thats imo)

i think that eventually,, their two stances would have come to blows (merlin's love for arthur above his magic/morgana's hatred for uther above all else) and morgana would still go to immeasurable heights to murder uther once more, merlin would have stopped her (or tried) because he knew the pain it would cause arthur even if he hated uther too, and morgana would've hated merlin for getting in her way,, her anger triumphing her love for arthur (see: s1ep12: to kill the king)

i feel like often times i just see morgana painted as someone who just needed a little love and light,, when in reality she's been heavily abused and pit against arthur since she was like 10/11 (however old she came to Camelot) and is now a grown woman who is realizing she hates her abuser and everything he's done and wants to destroy him and everything he loves !!

likewise merlin was manipulated and gaslit and forced to become a compulsive liar and would've NOT !! been good for morgana and eventually everything would've gone to shit !!

they are worsties for better or much much worse

[originalaccountname]

Mori Ougai’s belief as the boss is [...] “The boss stands on top of the organization, and at the same time, be the slave of all.” For the sake of the organization, the boss must always take the “logical optimal solution.” That is the duty of the boss. [...] “Therefore, no matter how much your heart aches, you have to ignore your personal feelings.”

Kafka Asagiri, for the BSD exhibition

On Mori and regret.

This man acts based on his perceived "optimal solution". It means relying on cold logic, detached from (his own and others') emotions. In that way, he fits right in as one of the smart characters of BSD, contrasting for example Dazai's way of working with/around people's feelings, and Fyodor's way of manipulating and twisting those feelings into monsters.

Mori remains cold, logical, distant, efficient. It meant disregarding Yosano's and the soldiers' deteriorating mental health during the war because the concept of an army that cannot be wiped out was too good. It meant following Natsume's plan and taking the old boss' place himself to fix Yokohama's underground and protect the city and its people. It also meant disposing of Mimic by sacrificing Oda in order to get the special ability business permit, despite (and perhaps because of) Dazai's attachment to the man.

The thing is, humans are not logical creatures, and will inevitably encounter conflicting emotions.

(does this look like the face of a man without regrets to you?)

Mori in Dark Era tried to pass on to Dazai his practice of putting aside his own feelings for the sake of choosing the most efficient solution that will benefit the group. It backfired spectacularly, so much so even, that Mori regrets it to this day.

For the BSD exhibition, Asagiri wrote some individual character commentaries, all very interesting insights into their characters and the writing intentions. For Mori, here's what he wrote:

“He who fell out of the optimal solution” Mori Ougai’s belief as the boss is described in the novel “Dark Era” and “Dazai, Chuuya, Fifteen”. That is “The boss stands on top of the organization, and at the same time, be the slave of all.” For the sake of the organization, the boss must always take the “logical optimal solution.” That is the duty of the boss. There is an unspoken additional point to it. “Therefore, no matter how much your heart aches, you have to ignore your personal feelings.” We can catch a glimpse of that in this scene. [the ADA-PM alliance meeting] Mori’s expressions after “Burnt it.” and “Like what you did to your predecessor”, gave us a glimpse of his true feelings that were made sacrifices for the sake of the “logical optimal solution”. (By the way, it goes without saying that Dazai is inducing Mori’s thoughts by words that will make him regret the past. It is to make him decide to form an “alliance”.) source and translation: Popopretty

(notice the inclusion of Hirotsu in this scene. Remember that later, Hirotsu suggests that Dazai knows why Mori did what he did to overthrow the old boss, which, in my opinion, is both a proof of Dazai's support in Mori's goal, and a reminder to uphold it.)

One of my favourite parts of the Dark Era light novel is a small scene during the epilogue that was not adapted into the anime. This is two weeks after Dazai defected:

To quote Asagiri again, "Therefore, no matter how much your heart aches, you have to ignore your personal feelings." Mori is conflicted about the outcome of the Mimic incident. He holds in his hands the Silver Oracle he himself gave to Oda, and reflects on its purpose: to "help the man mentioned above without hesitation in the face of any and all trials". Didn't he fail to do just that with Oda? Didn't he set him up and sent him to his doom? Didn't he abandon him to his trial?

But he rationalizes the events by saying he got the permit they so badly needed. No matter if he sacrificed one of his men. No matter if he drove Dazai away. He accomplished his priceless goal. It was a total success.

And yet, he poorly folds a paper airplane with the very Silver Oracle he gave Oda, throws it, watches it crash immediately, and mourns the loss of his right-hand man, without ever moving on.

But we have a direct example of Mori expressing regret.

The perception that Mori in BEAST is a completely different character than Mori is in canon, when that perception doesn't extend to any other character from that universe, rubs me the wrong way. The characters in BEAST are very similar to their canon selves, with some core traits getting a new twist. They are all one or two major life changes away from becoming these versions of themselves. As far as we know, Mori's only life-altering event was being forcefully removed from the Port Mafia by Dazai, and secretly put in charge of Atsushi's old orphanage.

Mori unambiguously made that orphanage a better place, as stated by Atsushi himself. BEAST!Mori is a lot softer, vulnerable and honest. That Mori offers to be a father to Atsushi while he heals. He also expresses regret in not being able to help Dazai when he was in his care.

I think it's very interesting, especially when knowing that Asagiri wrote both BEAST and Fifteen at the same time for the Dead Apple movie, because in Fifteen we have this:

The beginning of the first chapter of Fifteen is a gold mine. It is narrated from Mori's point of view, the man of logic and calculations, and yet it is full of doubt. He is alone and struggling to fix everything with so many people against him. But, throughout this scene about grasping at the Port Mafia's power, there is also this secondary thought being woven in, of Mori having started to actually care for Dazai.

The teenager is scary to him, smart enough to be a threat should he decide to be done with all this and turn against him, and yet, he immediately (and with a hint of sadness) finds that Dazai reminds him of himself. This lonely, lonely man found a kindred spirit, bright enough to grasp any situation in seconds and prone to using an uncomfortable obsession to divert and keep you guessing his true intentions. Mori entered Mentor Mode™ then. He taught Dazai his ways, he shared his struggles and thought process, he fought tooth and nail to keep him alive.

So when he asked Dazai why he wanted to die, it was with the concern of someone who has started to care. It was with the mind of someone who is trying to prevent the worst by fixing the problem at its source.

(translation: Reneray)

But it's also that self-projection/ability to relate that made him drive Dazai away, when he pushed too hard and forced Dazai to adhere to his optimal solution philosophy. Because Dazai cannot separate himself from his attachments, could not ignore his emotions like Mori does, and chose Oda over Mori's logic. From Dazai's point of view, that was betrayal. Mori and him were accomplices!

Dazai planted the idea that Mori was afraid of him taking over as boss, and Mori seems to agree with that thought (would it be because he feared for his life, or for Dazai's ability to replace him?) Yet, for a man afraid of his closest subordinate backstabbing him, he seems to be hanging on quite hard to the possibility of Dazai coming back, leaving his seat open to this day, inviting him back twice in the same arc, and...

(yeah I used this picture at the start too. "I hAvE nO rEgReTs" he says)

Mori may try to convince himself he feels no regrets and no guilt over his own actions by weighting gains and losses objectively, but he still hurts and has a very hard time moving on. He's human despite his best efforts, prone to mistakes and doubts. He's lonely and wishes to impart his knowledge onto others. His cold logic has both helped him in fixing the city, and alienated him from some of the people he most cared about.

In a similar vein, should the ADA employee transfer be of topic again, and should Mori clash with Yosano again, I wish we get to see some similar conflicting emotions in Mori between the usefulness of Yosano's ability, and Yosano herself as a person. The war was 14 years ago, that's a long time, and I want to believe that counts for something.

[drakaripykiros130ac]

I am really curious to see how they will “modernize” and “woke-ify” the Tales of Dunk and Egg.

I’m surprised GRRM hasn’t become a drunk by now to cope with how HBO ruined his great work.

[wlwanakin]

could you explain to me in your opinion what exactly saw padme in anakin to fall for him? in aotc it came like out of nowhere after three days knowing him, anakin then commited tusken genocide and padme was ready to forgive him despite her strong sense of justice, to me it just feels very off and diservicing to her, how wasnt that a deal breaker for her

i’ll gladly explain!! and i’ve spoken briefly about how i view padmé’s reaction to the tusken massacre before, but i’ll elaborate here too.

i think the key things to remember when looking at anidala from padmé’s perspective are a) love is by nature pretty irrational so you’re never gonna be able to fully rationalize padmé’s love for anakin, b) padmé is a deeply lonely person in a career that requires her to distance herself from others and sacrifice authenticity, c) padmé met anakin when he was an enslaved child and she was a teenaged queen dealing with an unprecedented crisis and he played a key role in solving that whilst showing her extreme kindness and selflessness, and d) as of the beginning of aotc, padmé has just narrowly escaped death and lost two of her devoted handmaidens who she also considered to be her friends. these are the big things informing her mindset and her perception of anakin throughout the film.

i think one thing that trips people up even before they go to tatooine is that anakin is just weird in aotc, but the thing is that that’s what made padmé fall for him. she’s been in politics since she was a child, and politics is a field that requires inauthenticity by default, and in padmé’s case that’s to an extreme degree because she spent her teen years putting on the queen amidala persona and the anonymous handmaiden persona, then the minute that was up she became a senator and senator amidala is not as dramatic a persona but it is one nonetheless because politics and diplomacy require that. her entire life since she was fourteen has been spent playing roles, surrounded by others also playing roles, and she’s a severe workaholic working under a sense of moral obligation so unlike some people in the same field might she doesn’t really have a life outside of this. and here comes anakin, who she’s already fond of because of the kindness he showed her and her people when he was a child, and he’s so unlike any of the people she’s surrounded by because he is earnest to a fault. he’s socially stunted, he’s abrasive and combative, he doesn’t give a shit about niceties or diplomacy, he says every weird thing he thinks before he even finishing thinking it, and can you imagine how refreshing that must be to someone whose entire social life is just her staff and fellow politicians who are all inauthentic by nature? and on top of how appealing that is on its own he’s also hot, and he still shows that he cares for her, and he gives her space to be authentic as well. he jokes with her, he speaks openly about his emotions and gives her room to do the same, he treats her like a person rather than a figurehead. it’s a perfect recipe for romance, really.

so it’s important to note that, for all these reasons, she was already in love with him before they even left naboo, and that informs all her actions throughout the last half of the film. it’s also important to note that she is carrying the guilt and grief of cordé and versé’s deaths on her shoulders as well as all the strange emotions that come with a near-death experience. and that’s the mindset she’s traveling to tatooine with, knowing that anakin might be on the verge of a monumental loss himself. and then the worst case scenario happens and she does see him grieving, and she understands to an extent what it’s like to experience a loss that feels like her fault. it’s the opening scene of the film! so she sees his volatile grief and that doesn’t scare her off because his vulnerability and depth of emotion are part of what drew her to him in the first place since she is someone who has long been denied access to such vulnerability. and all this gives her immense grounds to sympathize deeply with him by the time he confesses to the massacre.

i guess i kind of understand why people think her reaction to anakin’s confession is a bad character moment or a disservice or whatever, but it’s actually one of my favorite padmé moments for a lot of reasons. it makes sense to me that under the circumstances padmé would underreact to the crime being confessed. she has a strong sense of justice but she also loves anakin and understands what he’s feeling, she knows him and knows his immense capacity for goodness because she’s witnessed it, and above all she is an idealist. she is driven by immense compassion and that is something that can be misapplied and it isn’t inherently virtuous. she can look past anakin’s crime because she sympathizes deeply with the emotions that motivated it, and because she knows him well enough to know that he isn’t defined by this level of cruelty and she has no reason to believe he’ll make a habit out of it considering the remorse he’s expressing, and quite simply and selfishly because she loves him. it isn’t a morally upright moment for her but it doesn’t have to be because this streak of hypocrisy she has is really interesting and makes her feel more human than if she was just a paragon of virtue.

so after that really crazy week? week and a half? geonosis happens, and this is padmé’s second super close brush with death in like a month, and her love confession comes in a moment right before what’s supposed to be an execution because of course you’re gonna grab life by the tits if you only have like five minutes of it left. and near-death experiences are very perspective shifting things, and she just had two super close together and anakin just had one right along with her and is about to be shipped off to the chronic near-death experience that is Fighting In A War, and she is very madly in love with him and he is the only person she can be herself around, and after all that and lifetime of repressing and sacrificing her entire self for public service she says fuck it and lets herself have this one selfish thing and marries him. and that’s really all of it, nothing was a dealbreaker because padmé really truly loves anakin and almost died twice and also almost lost him and he gives her something no one else ever could and she wants that. and after the whirlwind she just experienced she’s gonna take it.

and even with all this aside i think it’s important to give padmé as a character space to be irrational because she is, at the end of the day, a character, and not a real person or even an audience insert. and she’s a character in a shakespearean space opera on top of that, one where an exorbitant amount of guys cope by doing mass murder. her love interest is one of those guys and he’s also constantly off his rocker about everything all the time, so why can’t she be a bit off hers too, yanno? anakin and padmé’s relationship is almost transcendentally intense, and that just wouldn’t work if the intensity weren’t on both ends. and padmé loves just as intensely as anakin does, it’s just more focused and less outwardly fiery. and her moral oversights are part of that intensity.

[caeslxys]

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but it feels relevant again in light of the most recent episode. Something that’s really fascinating to me about Orym’s grief in comparison to the rest of the hells’ grief is that his is the youngest/most fresh and because of that tends to be the most volatile when it is triggered (aside from FCG, who was two and obviously The Most volatile when triggered.)

As in: prior to the attack on Zephrah, Orym was leading a normal, happy, casual life! with family who loved him and still do! Grief was something that was inflicted upon him via Ludinus’ machinations, whereas with characters like Imogen or Ashton, grief has been the background tapestry of their entire lives. And I think that shows in how the rest of them are largely able to, if not see past completely (Imogen/Laudna/Chetney) then at least temper/direct their vitriol or grief (Ashton/Fearne/Chetney again) to where it is most effective. (There is a glaring reason, for example, that Imogen scolded Orym for the way he reacted to Liliana and not Ashton. Because Ashton’s anger was directed in a way that was ultimately protective of Imogen—most effective—and Orym’s was founded solely in his personal grief.)

He wants Imogen to have her mom and he wants Lilliana to be salvageable for Imogen because he loves Imogen. But his love for the people in his present actively and consistently tend to conflict with the love he has for the people in his past. They are in a constant battle and Orym—he cannot fathom losing either of them.

(Or, to that point, recognize that allowing empathy to take root in him for the enemy isn't losing one of them.)

It is deeply poignant, then, that Orym’s grief is symbolized by both a sword and shield. It is something he wields as a blade when he feels his philosophy being threatened by certain conversational threads (as he believes it is one of the only things he has left of Will and Derrig, and is therefore desperately clinging onto with both bloody hands even if it makes him, occasionally, a hypocrite), but also something he can use in defense of the people he presently loves—if that provocative, blade-grief side of him does not push them—or himself—away first.

(it won’t—he is as loved by the hells as he loves them. he just needs to—as laudna so beautifully said—say and hear it more often.)

[esinofsardis]

omegaverse, even at its most dystopian, requires worldbuilding where capitalism is forced to bow to people's physical needs. society needs to be reordered to prioritize a physicality that is not only uncontrollable, but irrational and emotional. in a real world where emotional needs are devalued, irrational needs are dismissed, and physical needs are met with a "just push through it", omegaverse offers an alternate reality for disabled people. here, we can imagine a world where society is oriented around bodily, mental, emotional, and sexual needs, regardless of political or economic system. this can be intensely comforting to those whose needs are not met in real life. in this essay i will...

[57sfinest]

kim is such a funny little guy like he emphasizes how little the rcm salary is when you ask about it (5500 reál annually- 460/mo) but here he is with his nice electronic sports watch and his little instant camera and his fancy revolutionary cosplay for plainclothes and he's living in the GRIH which can't be cheap and he's got his fancy little mnemotechnique notebooks which are like the moleskine of elysium i guess and his fancy little ballpoints that he does NOT want to share with you which i bet is because they cost him like a week of salary. and this is the rcm he's not getting stipends for supplies or watches or housing or probably even the gas for the kineema. poor as fuck but he is going to buy himself his little treats god damn it. if he lived in our world you know he'd be out getting himself a $9 vanilla soy milk half caf dirty chai iced latte every morning on the way to the station and eating instant noodles every night to claw out room in the budget for it