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nonbinaryeggrolls · 3 years ago

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Nephophilia pt. 3

Aizawa x POC! Reader

MINORS DNI. AGELESS AND MINOR BLOGS WILL BE BLOCKED

Synopsis: You're a 20 year old sophomore university student from NYU. All your life you've wanted to be a hero , but a law in the US has banned the use of mind control quirks in the hero field and labeled them as too dangerous and "violate the concept of free will". To pursue your dreams as a hero you move to Japan and enroll in an international mentor ship program to get your overseas hero license. On your first day you meet your mentor, Shota Aizawa: he's aloof, rude, and irrational, but what starts of as a clash between two polar opposite personalities turns into a romantic relationship that you didn't expect.

Quirk: Servant Hero name (Maestro) Y/N has a second voice with a hallucinogenic rhythm, when ever you speak to someone while using your quirk they instantly fall under your control for 15 minutes or until you say "stop". The only problem is you can only give them one word commands (Example: retreat, sit, freeze, jump, cry etc.) On ONE occasion you can give a person a multiple word command. If you tell them "obey" they will follow anything you say for the full 15 minutes or until you say "stop". But you avoid saying "obey" whenever you can because it can become too dangerous if the directions are not specific enough.

Warnings: Smut, bullying, strong language, attempts at sexual coercion and other forms of manipulation, racism, descriptions of violence and blood

A/N: Sorry this took so long to put out! I hope this is okay I was having trouble coming up with a storyline for this chapter. Anyways enjoy, Y/N is gonna show the full extent of her quirk in the next chapter !

Present Mic: "God where could she be?!" he circled each and every corner of the city for hours looking for you with Aizawa. The leather on his steering wheel squeaked from how hard he was clenching it

Aizawa: “Why did I say that? Why the fuck would I say something so stupid?!” He cursed to himself while his mind tortured him with the image of your heartbroken expression, the last thing he could remember before everything went blank. He leaned against the passenger window in guilt. He did it again, he lashed out and embarrassed you for no reason and even worse you had to use your quirk just to get away from him. What kind of hero was he? A pretty shitty one...

Aizawa: "This is all my fault..."

Present Mic: "Yeah no shit sherlock tell me something I don't know…” waiting at the stoplight allowed enough time for long exhale escaped his mouth as he pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. Mic was a gentleman through and through, chivalrous to even the most underserving of men and women, so Aizawa knew he was in for far more than a few harsh words from his blonde friend

Present Mic: “What the HELL is wrong with you Shota? Are you stupid or just temporarily insane? Talking to a young girl like that, you know all she wants is to be like you and me she doesn’t need another add on to the countless people saying she can’t do it. You better have a damn good apology up your sleeve or I’ll request a mentor transfer from Nezu MYSELF!”

Aizawa wanted to retaliate, he was stunned at Hizashis willingness to go against him so quickly, but who was he kidding? He deserved it. Contrary to popular belief Aizawa wasn’t like this with everyone, of course he was gloomy and aloof but he was also protective and kind as seen with his students. It wasn’t like him to hold anyone to the standards of someone else as a teacher he knew better than that. But something about you, your excitement from the first time you came to UA, your unwavering desire to be better, even the way you get along with Hizashi almost instantly, it was like he was viewing an old flame through a different lens.

Aizawa: “I know, I know you’re right. God, you’re right…I’ve been nothing but a menace from the beginning. I don’t even know how to explain why, but…it’s like I keep expecting her to be like someone else and the second she isn’t the way I need her to be I just get furious. She’s so much like him sometimes I forget she isn’t actually him.”

Present Mic: “Like who?…Oboro?” He asked, red light now changing green leading them farther down the streets of downtown Osaka

Aizawa nodded in shame. It was selfish

Present Mic: “You…you can’t do that Shota. I understand you miss him, I miss him too but you don’t see me going around trying to make other people into him. If you can’t see Y/N as just Y/N then just let her g— SHIT THERE SHE IS!!” There you were, out of the corner of his eye he spotted your signature H/C hair slumped against the window of a scummy 24 hour diner. Hizashi turned into the parking lot like a mad man and the two men jumped out

You were a babbling mess, laughing and causing a ruckus with two drunk older men they’d never seen before who grabbed at you like they had other intentions than just having drinks. Your original orange and vanilla scent was now blanketed by a thick layer of booze and syrup when the two approached you. Hizashi screamed at the employees for serving an underage girl so much alcohol but all he was met with was "fuck off" and "eat shit".

Present Mic: “Y/N get up we’re leaving right now” he said with a far more abrasive tone than usual. Aizawa threw your purse and sweater over his shoulder as Hizashi attempted to grab your arm and lead you out of the diner

Y/N: “EW GET OFF ME YOU CREEP! *hiccup* I’m having fun with *hiccup* my friends. Why don’t you and your emo boyfriend *hiccup* FUCK OFF!” You shouted followed by more rowdy laughter from you and the other men

Present Mic: “We’re your friends Y/N, these are just perverts trying to get in your pants. Get up, NOW.” Hizashi made another attempt to take you by the hand but it proved once again to be futile. This time he was met with a hard shove making him stumble backwards, knocking into Aizawa who was still too stunned to even look at your intoxicated state.

Y/N: “I SAID GET OFF ME!”, You kicked at his kneecaps making him buckle over and cackled maniacally, “There’s a bathroom over there *hiccup* why don’t you go get another handjob in it from Best Jeanist!”

Hizashis cheeked reddened in embarrassment, of course he wouldn’t hold it against you for letting out one of his most private moments, after all you were an emotional drunk mess. But betrayal was to great of an emotion to keep under control, and it send him into a hate filled rage.

Present Mic: “FINE STAY HERE THEN! ID RATHER GET HANDJOBS IN A BATHROOM THAN BE A GLORIFIED WALKING POCKET PUSSY!” Hizashi didnt mean any of what he was saying, and in a few hours he would come to regret those words but he was too emotional to recognize the weight of what he was saying. He snatched your belongings off of Aizawas shoulder and threw them back to you before leaving the diner in a huff

Y/N: “What are YOU still doing here?! GO! leave like him ‘HERO’! Go play hero for your other students and leave me behind LIKE YOU ALWAYS DO!” you’re soft interior now began to poke through with tears pricking at the inner corners of your eyes. Even you're most intoxicated state couldn't hide the fact that under it all you were just angry and hurting.

Aizawa: “Y/N please I—

“She’s made up her mind mate, now get lost…”

This couldn't be what you really want. You wanted warmth and kindness in your moment of vulnerability. You wanted hands as gentle as yours to reassure you and give you the same generosity you so willingly give out to others. So if Aizawa knew that why was he walking away from you?

“Tch, look she’s so pretty when she cries…” the man slurred, putting a tight grip on your thigh making his rings imprint in your skin. His fingers inching dangerously close to your sex, a place that even in the most drunkest state you knew to protect, but it was hopeless. You squirmed and shifted to avoid their roaming hands but your head was so fuzzy you could barely function.

Y/N: “I…I think I wanna go home *sniffle* I don’t wanna be here anymore.“ You stated in barely a whisper but it was silenced with another drink being forced to your lips.

Y/N: “No i don’t want it! Where’s N-Natsuo!? Natty!!” now screaming you shoved the side of his face away leaving a scratch mark on the corner of his lip, doing nothing but make him more aggressive

“Don’t be a fucking tease you fucking bit—

SLAM

Suddenly the man’s head smashed face first into the table making blood from his nose splatter across the lipstick stained shot glasses. Above you was a sight you’d never seen before, Aizawa peered over his unconscious body. With a fist full of the man’s greasy hair he dragged him out of the booth and then picking you up after, unfortunately your body was too wobbly to stand on its own so you just slid down on the floor behind him.

“I-I WASNT GONNA TOUCH HER I SWEAR MAN, W-WE WERE JUST MESSING AROUND!” The other man pleaded for mercy in front of Aizawas hauntingly blood red eyes but it didn’t stop the bottom of Aizawas shoe from kicking in 2 of his incisors.

It took Aizawa everything inside him to beat both of them to a pulp. Seeing them put their hands on you made him reach a different kind of fury that he didn’t quite understand yet— and deep down didn’t really want to— because understanding it meant accepting a truth he wasn’t ready for yet. How he felt about you. But for now that didn’t matter, he picked you up bridal style and carried you back to Hizashis car who was still too emotional to say anything or even look at you.

The car ride back to Musutafu was long and quiet. Aizawa could feel you’re shaky breathing as you slept on his lap in the back seat, he silenced all 32 missed calls and 21 unread messages from Emi out of fear it would wake you up. He swore he felt his heart flutter as you muttered cute nothings in your sleep, but brushed it off claiming it was just the left over adrenaline. After all he knew better as an engaged man than to think like that of anyone else, right?

The headache you felt as you awakened was astronomical and the sun beaming in through the window didn’t help one bit. You took a quick look at your phone to read any new messages and alerts, mostly from Natsuo who sent a few pictures of the food places he stopped at in Tokyo. Even in your messy state you knew you were still mad at him for leaving you last minute like he did, so you made it a point to ignore all his attempts to talk to. You took a quick look at the top of the screen

‘Saturday. Thank fucking god’

You thought to yourself, happy that you didn’t have to make any type of effort today to be productive. Nothing sounded better than curling up in your puffy bed sheets and sleeping the day away. But to your surprise when you dragged your arms along the fabric it wasn’t puffy instead it was light and silky. The bed was decorated in a black silk duvet covers with dark grey silk sheets underneath. As you looked around you took note of the bare walls apart from the single college degree framed above the door, the furniture was dark and minimal— it was a man’s room…

Panic was already starting to set in as you wondered what had happened last night. Did you cheat on Natsuo? Had you been roofied? No you couldn’t have been your clothes were still intact??? It made your stomach turn thinking about the possibilities, but thinking was a waste of time if you were in danger it was in your best interest to act as soon as possible.

The sound of footsteps coming up the stairs sent you into fight mode. You’re head hurt too badly to use your quirk effectively so you had no choice but to look for a defense weapon, but there was nothing not even a sharpened pencil on the empty desk in the corner. With them only a few seconds away from the door you bet your safety all on your own strength and shot your best round house kick to the side of their face only for it to be blocked immediately.

Aizawa: “Take it easy…” he muttered. He bent over to pick up the to pick up the items he dropped while blocking your attack: a spare toothbrush, a clean t shirt , a green loofah, and a hair brush— presumably all for you.

Y/N: “Aizawa? Oh my god I-Im so sorry I didn’t realize it was you…”

Aizawa: “No need to apologize, I’d be the same if I woke up in another persons bedroom”, he handed you the toiletries, “the bathroom is down the hall to the left, you’re free to use whatever is in there.”

You nodded, not knowing what else to say you hurried to his bathroom to wash up and rinse the smell of liquor from your skin. You brushed your teeth and wiped the smudged mascara from your eyes before stepping in the large walk in shower. The hot steam from the shower and fresh air from the small bathroom window above you helped you sober up and relieve a bit of the headache. It gave you a brief moment to finally think clearly, suddenly you remembered EVERYTHING. You let out a small gasp at the thought of it all: the argument you and Aizawa had, the foul words you said to Hizashi, the two men, it was all still fuzzy but the pieces were slowly connecting and you sank against the wall in utter humiliation.

After your little self pity session you mustered the strength to leave to bathroom, throwing on the large oversized tee Aizawa had lended you and your pair of jeans from yesterday. You giggled after seeing it was a Gang Orca merch tee shirt, probably belonged to a cousin or nephew of his.

In the kitchen Aizawa was getting together a sad excuse of a breakfast for you; the bacon was burnt and the eggs over salted but he was putting his last efforts into making these blueberries pancakes he saw on Hizashis Pinterest board

Aizawa: “Damn it, was it supposed to be baking powder or baking sod—

Y/N: “morning”, you muttered softly, he turned around and felt the gravity around him stop working as he looked at you in his tee shirt hanging gently off your shoulder. His efforts to fight his feelings by giving you the least attractive shirt he were failing miserably. He turned around after bidding a small ‘morning’ to you, and returned back to his cooking. Breakfast was dead silent as you waited for your taxi.

Y/N: “Aizawa…did…did we fuck last night?”

His muscles tensed and his cheeks turned a pale red at the sudden question

Aizawa: “What?! No why would you ask that? I wouldn’t do that to you.”

Y/N: “Oh yeah, I forgot you hate me you’d never stoop so low to have sex with someone like me right?” You got up pushing the empty plate away from you

Aizawa: “No that’s not what I meant. I’ve never hated you Y/N!” he said maneuvering around the kitchen counter to catch you from walking out the door, “I’m sorry for everything, but if you just let me explain why I acted the way I did—

Y/N: “I’m putting in a request for a different mentor on Monday, I’ll be switching to Midnight or maybe Cementoss, so don’t even worry I won’t be your parasite anymore.” Your words left him with nothing to say, it’s not like he could convince you he thought otherwise when none of his actions showed that he respected or cared for you, “you won’t have to worry about me wasting anymore time and money, bye Aizawa…”

You opened the front door only to be met with a shorter woman with cyan hair and a nasty scowl plastered across her face that grew the more she looked at you

Y/N: “Your boyfriends a cunt.” You spat before finally leaving the complex, the sound of arguing coming from the apartment following immediately after…

“Y/N!! Y/N!! Y/N!! Y/N!!” Class 1A chanted as you took on another student in the combat training battles before heading to USJ.

It turns out transferring to another mentor is easier said than done especially when dealing with international students, so you had about a week before you could officially switch to Midnight. Making the most of it seemed like the best option. Before the transfer week ended you were able to patched things up with Hizashi in a two hour long crying session between the both of you, however, nothing changed between you and Aizawa. He made multiple attempts to apologize but it was no use, you avoided him everywhere: in class, in the hallways, in the break room and even in one on one training, you never said a word and only nodded when he gave you advice. Occasionally you’d catch him glance at you from his desk but your eyes never latched for more than a second before he returned back to his work. The both of your were strangers.

Y/N: “ There’s no shame in tapping out Bakugo! Our combat styles are wildly different, admit kid it you’re not winning this one!” he laughed as you locked him in with a double under hook

Bakugo: “RRRR SHUT UP YOU REJECT—“ you cut him off finishing with a power twist and slamming him into the mats, his face blushing beet red when you helped him to his feet

Mina: “Y/N THAT WAS SO FUCKIN AWESOME! YOU EVEN TOOK DOWN TODOROKI!”

Todoroki: “Yeah, maybe be a little less aggressive next time…”

Kirishima: “Alright alright move aside I’m fighting next!”

Y/N: “Maybe next time Kiri you guys should go get your hero suits on and get ready for your USJ training today! I’ll see you guys at lunch time!” You waved goodbye to the children

The next hour was peaceful you spent it with Hizashi tweaking some parts of your newhero suit. Your old on was admittedly, well, a hunk of shit. You put it together yourself in your college dorm since you couldn’t get help from your schools support department, obviously you were never meant to be a hero so in their eyes what was the point? So you took some skinny jeans and a sleeveless top and attached holsters to the side with fabric glue and gorilla glue to hold your weapons, but it was NOTHING in comparison to what Hatsume prepared. In as little as 2 hours she crafted a red and purple one piece suit with a voice mask to carry the sound of your quirk farther, it had a utility belt to hold one of your stun guns on each side and a small med kit in the front, and two back straps to hold your ninjatōs. It was the finest piece of hero material you’ve ever been given, but it needed some last touches…

Hizashi: “Who would ruin such a beautiful piece of metal like that?! Who even is Jaylen?” He asked as he watched you carve into the side of your sword

Y/N: “He’s my…he was my big brother. I always put his name on my material to honor him” You muttered in response

Hizashi: “Oh I-I’m so sorry…I couldn’t imagine how it feels to lose a sibling. Losing him must have been like losing a part of yourself.” He sunk into his seat embarrassed by his poor manners

Y/N: “For someone who’s never experienced it you explained the feeling pretty well” you chuckled lightly while finishing up the last letter, “there must be some skeletons in your closet too huh?”

Hizashi: “Something like that…”

Y/N: “WHAT?! HIZASHI WERE ON FIRST NAME BASIS NOW YOU CANT CLIFFHANGER ME LIKE THAT!” You flailed like a child having an episode

Hizashi: “PAYBACKS A BITCH Y/N!!” You both cackled before hearing an urgent knock on his classroom door. If you had known what the emergency was you wouldn’t have taken so long to answer it.

Y/N: “Iida? Oh my god are you okay?! Your sweating like a dog!!”

Iida: “MISS Y/N…THE USJ…VILLAINS ARE ATTACKING THE USJ!!” He yelled in between violent huffs

You felt your body go numb and hot at the same time.

This isn’t real? This isn’t happening right now is it? You thought to yourself

But it was. All the teachers racing to the USJ center, Hizashi motioning you to get your hero suit on, Nezu staying behind and comforting the other students while Recovery girl called the police. It was all real, and you were right in the middle of it running right along side them to fight an enemy you knew nothing about.

Please be okay, don’t you dare fucking die you mangy haired idiot. I still need to give you your shirt back, I still need to show you how wrong you were about me!

I still need the chance to make you proud even if I hate it!

Just stay alive!

Your thoughts moved too fast for you too keep up with, then silenced at the sight. Everything was destroyed, students hurt and screaming, a monster…towering over Aizawas crushed body.

Y/N: “What the hell is that Hizashi?”

Hizashi: “…It’s a Nomu.”

All characters belong to Kohei Horikoshi. Story belongs to @nonbinaryeggrolls do not steal

#aizawa x poc!reader #aizawa x y/n #aizawa angst #shoto aizawa #aizawa smut #hawks fluff #mha headcanons #mha smut #my hero academia hawks #mha #bakugo katuski #midoriya izuku #aizawa x reader #poc reader #mha oc #hawks x y/n #uraraka #izuku #kirishima

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naiive-and-starry-eyed · 3 years ago

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fandom: black butler, ship: merthur, character: elias bitchard, and also like some bonus ones that u feel like doing

001 | Black Butler:

Favorite character: Ciel Phantomhive tbh, he's rude and fucked up and I like him so much!! The amount of analysis my bestie and I have poured into him and the choices made in the manga and anime and how this is foreshadowing and that is a hidden message,,, Lau is a runner up as my fav tho cause he's hilarious and vibing at all times and I love that for him!!

Least Favorite character: Claude Faustus my behated, hit him with my car ass motherfucker

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Hmm idk if I have 5 ships, but we will figure this out

SebAgni - they are so fun and the fact Sebastian respects Agni is so funny considering Ciel is so bothered by Soma. They simply vibe together and I think they should have gotten to hang out more. Pour one out for Agni 😭😭

Cielois - Idc if Alois is from a non-canon season, he's an icon and it would be so fun and amazing if Ciel and Alois could get over the fact Alois tried to kill him one (1) time and live in Phantomhive manor together and kill Druitt and whoever they want <3

Will x Grell - Grell is a girlboss and it's funny how much she bothers Will; she simps for many characters but I like her with Will the most. Is this decision influenced by the Wil and Grell season 2 OVA? Mayhaps

Lau x winning at whatever he's up to - nothing more to say here, I just hope Lau manipulate mansplain manwhores his way to the top

Othello x vibes - he's doing a great job at his grim reaper forensic nonsense, king deserves a breakthrough and a coffee or 10

Character I find most attractive: *picture my aroace ass giving a blank face here* Lots of conventionally attractive characters but none specifically come to mind lmao, a lot of them are pretty

Character I would marry: Lau, we can be so cool and sexy together

Character I would be best friends with: Soma or Lizzie! They're both fun and energetic and I think we would have a great time dressing up and running around London getting into trouble

a random thought: Manifesting School Arc manga to be animated...or the musical to be subbed where I can get to it *grabby hands*

An unpopular opinion: Sebastian is a fine and well written character and deserves good things! and I think the end of the manga will be him sacrificing himself for Ciel and ending the contract that way, because he cares about Ciel. He didn't plan to care about Ciel in the beginning, but oops, you have acquired a son and you like him so much. The tragedy of Ciel having planned to die all this time but now having lost someone he cares about and who cared about him? And having to live on despite that? *chef's kiss*

My Canon OTP: none?? I don't ship anyone who's actually together in canon rip

My Non-canon OTP: Cielois, see above for my ramblings <3

Most Badass Character: Obvious answer, but Sebastian! He kills people and is iconic while doing it. His LookTM straight out of being summoned in the ritual was also fun, love the high heels his demonic form apparently has. The fact he can kill the shit out of people with fucking silverware is v badass

Most Epic Villain: The Circus Troupe are fun, and I'm counting them as a villain collectively. This doesn't include Baron K*lvin, he's another hit with my car ass bitch. Joker, Dagger, Beast, Doll, Jumbo, and Peter and Wendy are all fun though and I do like that they cause problems and kill people. Unfortunately Sebastian and Ciel were just better at causing problems and killing people. Rip the most to Doll though, you were the best

Pairing I am not a fan of: Ciel x Sebastian 🤢 he's a child worsties

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Alois. I don't really love his ending in season 2 - he, Hannah, Claude and the triplets all merge into one consciousness or something?? It's stupid and I hate that Claude is included in anything. I think Alois should have also been able to become a demon with Ciel if they wanted to go that route, or simply have him not die and get therapy but still continue being evil if he wants he's allowed

Favourite Friendship: I really like the friendship between Bard, Finny, and Mey-Rin! They all bonded and are all soo stupid together they're great. Also adding Snake to their mix is fun, even though everyone is lying to him,,, oops 😬

Character I most identify with: Lizzie I think! She's sweet and badass and wants what's best for Ciel, even if she doesn't completely understand what's going on or how he changed from what she remembered as a child. I love that she's super good at sword fighting, and I want to be that good as well!! Next step is sword fighting classes lmao

Character I wish I could be: I love most of the characters but honestly I don't want to be any of them lmaoo; they're all suffering or in danger in various ways and I just want everyone to feel better and so would not like to be in that situation <3

002 | Merthur:

When I started shipping them: Season 1 episode 1 tbh. They have great chemistry and bother each other a lot but also genuinely care about each other which is so important!

My thoughts: Oooh you are not ready for my thoughts on them. Just got done doing a rewatch of Merlin BBC with my bestie and we suffered and exalted together

What makes me happy about them: The way they are willing to sacrifice themselves for each other! Merlin drinks poison for Arthur and Arthur ignores his father and places himself in danger to save Merlin's life, who his father dismisses as a mere serving boy and Arthur's like he's more than that!! to me!! and I just

What makes me sad about them: Girl the everrrryything 😭 the tragedy of Merlin doing all he can to prevent Arthur's death at Camlann but all he does just makes it happen. The tragedy of Merlin becoming so jaded over the course of the show, with how trusting and happy he was in season 1 and how unwilling he was to trust or give Mordred a fair chance in season 5 - especially when it came to the girl Mordred loved. The fact that Arthur never found out about Merlin's magic until it's too late!! That Merlin spends the whole show worried Arthur will hate him when he finds out, and does his best to ensure magic won't return to Camelot and advises Arthur not to trust magic,,,, ough agggh the agonies!!

Things done in fanfic that annoys me: no magic AU or modern AU. Yeah I know the show ends showing Merlin still around in modern day waiting for Arthur, but I don't care! I want them to be around in Arthurian times and causing and solving problems. Throw in angst as needed, but don't put them in a place without magic or in modern day. I also tend to avoid major character death - I'm usually not opposed to it if done right since angst is a good time, but since it happened irl in the show I can't handle it in fic

Things I look for in fanfic: I never say no to a good magic reveal fic!! Especially if it takes a minute for Arthur to forgive Merlin for not saying anything and he's mean about it and makes Merlin feels bad and then feels bad later when he gets over it and Merlin is sad and they work on themselves together. Hurt/comfort type stuff!

My wishlist: That Merlin's magic gets revealed to Arthur sooner than canon and that Arthur comes to terms with it and magic is accepted in Camelot, that Merlin dates Arthur and Arthur dates Gwen and Gwen dates Morgana <3 Also that Uther dies choking on his own blood. Not related to Merthur but also still related to them cause his Huge Bitch disease prevented them from being happy

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: Merlin with Gwaine and Arthur with Gwen! Gwaine and Merlin are so sweet actually, and we see how good Arthur and Gwen are in canon

My happily ever after for them: Merlin is court sorcerer/magical advisor to Arthur, also maybe his royal boyfriend, and they rule Camelot in peace and happiness. Morgana is happy with Gwen and Mordred is vibing somewhere to, maybe with his gf if we want to continue pretending he's straight

003 | Elias Bouchard:

How I feel about this character: absolute bastard, commit as many war crimes and murder as you would like, you are so fun and so cool and it's great when you bother everyone else and sound smug abt it

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Peter Lukas and also Jon. Both are great concepts and I think that fear monsters should harm people together but also kiss kiss fall in love

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Elias, Simon Fairchild, Peter Lukas, and M

My unpopular opinion about this character: I'll be real with you besties, Melanie was kind of annoying and I had fun when he traumatized her on screen in podcast <3 also he should have won the end of the world it was great that he caused the apocalypse

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I would have loved to get more backstory on Jonah Magnus, or somehow hear statements from the people he hung out with in ye olden times in their own voices! It would also have been neat to hear his own thoughts/feelings on living through a ton of shit - invention of electricity, the car, the airplane, the internet! I would love to hear if he thinks everything is cool and better now or if he's a crotchety old bitch about it and is like "back in my day 😤"

Favorite friendship for this character: Lmao he doesn't have friends!! Best I can do is his friendships in the 1800s where he was prob just using everyone so he could open his funny little eye temple <3 but I will say I liked the statement from him about Barnabas Bennett , so I'll say I liked their 'friendship' 😏

My crossover ship: I don't have many crossover ships, and I can't honestly think of any I'd have for Elias. He's perfectly fine being evil and terrible with Peter or Jon

#ask game #girl-of-ink #joy speaknt #black butler #merthur #merlin bbc #elias bouchard #magnus archives #my opinions are so correct and so sexy

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kwangyadetective · 3 years ago

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⭐️ The Dreamers: Controlling a Dream (Glitch Mode)

A theory post talking about what happened in NCT Dream’s Glitch Mode and the significance of a video game in the Dream Lab.

(!) WARNING: This is a theory as it is not confirmed by SM entertainment nor members of NCT, so please don’t believe this 100%!

Just few days ago, I wrote about the significance of TVs and cameras being in NCT contents and turns out, this is what I will be talking about most of the time!

So I recommend you to read this:

📺 Viewing and Controlling Dreams

I once pointed out in one of the teaser pictures that there are cameras around in this room, this is because the scenes in here are in a dream.

I believe that this is the right time to bring up this color transformation picture again since there are specific colors that dominate. At the very beginning, the room is dominated with Green and Blue, which indicates that its at the very beginning of a dream. But in later scenes, this room becomes mostly Green; meaning that it is now truly the Dream world.

Then after this scene, we had a transition going through the camera and see this room.

This is the Dream Lab, at least for the Dream unit. I’m still confused why someone said, “welcome aboard” which definitely make people think that they are on some ship. They could be on a ship since they mentioned about the speed of light in the lyrics but... either way they are more focused in the lab.

Now, if we follow the color transformation picture again, this is somewhere in a deeper dream. At first, I thought this was somewhere in Reality, because in here, the members are analyzing the dream. However, I think it makes sense that they are doing this process before the Reality after Dreaming stage because they are making decisions in the dream to change Reality (they see the possible outcomes of their dreams coming true and make decisions to realize it in Reality).

Just like what I explained in the 📺 Viewing and Controlling Dreams post, the members watch the dreams that was recorded from the cameras through the TV to analyze. Eventually, video games are involved in the lab (which I also talked about in that post). Using video games, members are able to interact with the dream, this is possibly the decision-making part because they can now manipulate or control the dream. It may not look like a video game, but the essential idea of it is interacting with what’s on the screen and that’s what Mark did,

Beginning of the lyrics,

“Scratch that bring it back!”

Which is basically an expression of restarting or redoing something. Perhaps thinking of an alternate choice of action in this scenario of a dream (texting a significant other). Then there was some sort of a problem happening in this scene,

Comeback concept-wise, since its about a person who ‘glitches’ due to nervousness when facing their significant other; this scene could be exaggerating that feeling (”Slightest touch, my mind goes blank”). On the other hand, lore-wise, perhaps this is the first time the Dream unit are actually controlling the dream and there was a glitch happening in the machine. That is why there was a data buffer on the scene after Mark chose to press the button. The button he pressed has a ‘Mode Control’ written under it, he was attempting to control what’s happening in the dream but he encountered an issue in the machine. The time is there to show that they have been dealing with that issue for a long time.

An issue happening in the machine, the possible outcome in the dream become negative (lore). The texter was late to respond to the significant other, leading to a negative response from the s/o (concept).

Concept-wise, the person ‘froze’ because they don’t know what to do in front of their crush.

On the other hand (lore-wise), the machine has issues, the computer screen froze... literally, even the dream that is in the screen. Who knows if this becomes a big problem in the lore or not... (a villain intervening?)

Details

We got ourselves an SM Butterfly™ again. This time yellow. Possibly to support the “butterflies in my stomach” expression.

This could hint Chenle’s role or the director just loves to put him in this scene

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if you have reached this far, thank you so much!!

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playlistmusings · 4 years ago

Text

Make your mark on me (a golden tattoo)

2,532 words

Jude Duarte x Cardan Greenbriar

Jude is fed up with Cardan having the upper hand when it comes to antagonizing each other, so she gets dressed up. Cardan has no idea that there was any competition to begin with—but he's not mad. (set post Queen of Nothing)

Just some fluff with my two favorites messing with each other and a little spice at the end (but not a lot because I can’t write smut lol) Title from Dress by Taylor Swift

Also on my AO3

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Jude had definitively decided she didn’t mind revels anymore. In fact, if pressed, she could almost be persuaded to say she liked them. It wasn’t because she thought they were more fun or that she didn’t have to manage all of the dangers hiding among the food and dance anymore—just because she was queen didn’t mean that she wasn’t still vulnerable to faerie food induced madness. But there was just something about revels that made them better than when she was dragged to court during her school days. While Jude could be persuaded to admit that revels weren’t the worst, she’d be damned if she ever said what the something that made them better was.

Luckily for her, she didn’t have to. Because for every moment she spent biting her tongue, there was a matching moment where Cardan was whispering in her ear saying that “You should just admit that you think I’m irresistible, we both know that’s what you’re thinking”. Which was not true, even if he always looked a particular shade of devastatingly handsome with his elaborate outfits and shimmering paint on his cheeks, his crown tipping off the side of his head. Even if Jude could barely resist him when he got to that stage of just tipsy enough that his cheeks flushed with color and he didn’t mind leaving the courtiers to slip into hidden rooms with Jude. Even if he grinned with a special light in his eyes when Jude whispered things like you’re so handsome and I could stay like this forever while wrapped in his embrace after one of their trysts.

It was a true dilemma.

But, Jude, after all, was not known for backing down from a challenge, not when Cardan was antagonizing her during their school days, not when Orlagh and Balekin tried to manipulate her, and definitely not when Madoc tried to take her crown, she there was no chance in hell that she would fold because Cardan looked too handsome. So, in conjunction with admitting to herself that she didn’t mind revels, Jude pledged that she was going to go on the offensive and show Cardan that he wasn’t the only one who could use their looks to get what they wanted.

Hence why Jude was looking into a mirror at herself with a far too happy Tatterfell looking on with pride at her work. Jude’s hair was done up so it was out of her face, rubies threaded below her crown in a way that made it seem like there were flames crawling towards it when the light shined on her just right. Her dress was another shade of shimmering red, with silken skirts flowing down from her waist, and a neckline that cut down her sternum in a way that none of the other dresses she owned did. It was truly beautiful, even if it wasn’t like anything Jude had worn before, which was exactly what she wanted. She felt like she could command the attention of a whole crowd with a single look, which was all very good considering she just needed to command the attention of one particular faerie.

It was all out of her comfort zone, dressing up proactively so she could catch someone’s eye, but Jude was nothing if not determined to, at least this once, make Cardan break before her.

-----

Cardan was smug as he prepared for the revel. He knew that every time he put just a little extra effort into his clothes, while playing it off as just another boring thing he had to do, Jude couldn’t resist him. Revels would always hold a special place in his heart now that they began with good food and a little alcohol and ended with a lot more alcohol and Jude dragging him away from the crowd, frowning as he laughed softly at his comments about her eagerness. And, though he would be loathed to admit it, the way Jude dressed for revels, with beautiful gowns and her crown sitting atop perfectly done hair—no doubt the work of Tatterfell—got under his skin just as much as he seemed to get under hers. His only saving grace was that he had been hiding his feelings for years of her effortless beauty, working everyday to keep himself from accosting her. But now he didn’t have to worry, and it was much more fun to stave off his impulses as his wife glared at him, trying to pretend that she wasn’t as much of a fool for him as he was for her.

So, Cardan felt pretty happy as he slipped into the grand room where the night’s revel was being held. Even without his wife on his arm, as usual—someone had mentioned that she would be late and it had slipped Cardan’s mind to ask why—he already felt himself buzzing with anticipatory energy for what the night would hold.

As he walked through the crowd towards his throne, greeted by all sorts of courtiers that laughed and danced around him, Cardan grabbed a glass of wine from a servant. Walking up the steps to the dais that his throne sat upon, he nodded to the knights that protected it before turning and sitting upon the throne with an air of practiced ease. He was much better at sitting on his throne while listening to the problems of his subjects, now, but that was mostly due to the way he didn’t usually have to do anything except watch Jude while she gave advice and guidance and even the occasional punishment. But now, alone, he still couldn’t be bothered pretending that he didn’t enjoy the personal aspect of ruling.

Sipping on wine, Cardan spent time listening to his subjects, offering advice when it was needed and accepting gifts only when he understood the terms completely. He wasn’t aware of specifically how much time was passing but knew that it was especially odd that Jude hadn’t appeared yet, and his mind began to wander—as it often did—to her twinkling eyes and disarming smile.

-----

Jude knew purposefully arriving late to the revel so that Cardan would see her for the first time that evening while, most likely, working his way towards being tipsy and amongst a crowd of other people was at the very least petty, but she couldn’t be bothered to care. After all, most of her plan involved doing things she wouldn’t normally do for the sake of being petty and getting Cardan flustered. So, when she walked into the revel, she was already anticipating some reaction, she was walking in late in an uncharacteristically attention-grabbing outfit. However, Jude didn’t anticipate the way nearly everyone was staring at her by the time she reached the dais where the thrones sat. As she worked her way through the crowd, she was aware of all the eyes on her, of everyone seeing their queen in a new light, but she only paid attention to Cardan. Cardan, whose eyes had snapped towards the entrance to the room the second she was announced, who was clearly trying to figure out why his wife was wearing an outfit like that, who appeared to be choking on air as he saw the determined glint in Jude’s eyes as she lowered herself into her throne.

Everything was going perfectly. Jude knew that Cardan was struggling to maintain composure, mainly because his tail was swishing back and forth behind him, the tip occasionally flicking sharply towards her. She suppressed the grin working its way to her face, turning towards Cardan and looking him dead in the eyes for the first time since she had entered the throne room. His breath hitched ever so slightly.

-----

It was torture. Jude walked into the room confident and stunning, and immediately began ignoring Cardan in favor of speaking to people that came up to the dais in search of advice and conversations with the King and Queen. It took what felt like hours for her to say anything to him, evening though he was acutely aware of the way she suppressed a smirk every time she glanced his direction.

“So, how has your evening been?” Jude’s voice was cool and detached, as if she didn’t know exactly what she was doing to Cardan. He wanted to scream.

His mind was blank, all he could think of was the way Jude seemed to be glowing in the light of the throne room. If he tried very hard he could think about how this was definitely on purpose—why, he didn’t know—but every thought of Jude’s motives were very quickly interrupted by how ethereal she looked. He was trapped by her—which, if he was honest, was absolutely not a new thing, but it was definitively different this time.

“It’s been fine,” he finally choked out, trying his best to pretend unaffected. Jude smirked, clearly hearing the effect she had on him in his voice.

“Very well. I am so sorry for my late arrival, Tatterfell just spent longer than normal on my hair.” Cardan didn’t know enough about doing hair to say anything that contracted her excuse, but he did know enough about Jude to know that it wasn’t true.

“It’s alright.” Cardan decided that short responses would be best. Anything longer than a few words and he could accidentally blurt out too much—something about how stunning she looked or how he could usually barely resist her but like this, done up and confident and determined, made him vulnerable of giving away everything he had for her.

-----

Jude knew her plan was working. It was better than she had imagined. Cardan’s cool demeaner disrupted, leaving him stuttering short responses, looking as if he was going to lose it if he had to sit in his throne for a single second longer.

But, she couldn’t taunt him enough like this, while he was feet away on his throne and every word they said could be overheard by knights and wandering courtiers. So, Jude stood at the end of the current song, reaching her hand out to Cardan.

“Come, my King, won’t you dance with me?”

Cardan looked like he was fighting himself, his tail rapidly flicking back and forth, his dark eyes shimmering with lust and a spot of confusion, but eventually he stood without a word and took her hand, steering her down the stairs and into the crowd. But instead of going towards the area where faeries were congregating for the next song, he gripped her hand tight and led her to the secret room behind the thrones. His whole body was tense when he lightly pushed her through the door, firmly shutting it behind them.

“Cardan, what are you doing? We can’t exactly walk out in the middle of—” Jude was barely able to finish her sentence as she turned to face him before his lips were on hers.

“What do you think you are doing?” He asked when his lips finally left hers, leaving them both panting and disheveled.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jude replied breathlessly as he worked his mouth down her neck, pushing her hair out of the way.

Jude didn’t even receive a verbal response, just a groan and a vague gesture at her body. It was enough to nearly make her laugh, if she knew all she had to do to create a barely coherent and perfectly agreeable Cardan was pretty outfits, she might have let Tatterfell dress her however she wanted back when she was Seneschal.

However, it perhaps wouldn’t have been a perfect solution seeing as she was quickly losing her coherence as well, only focusing on the way that Cardan’s lips felt on her rapidly heating skin and the desire pooling in her stomach. It felt like a dream. Like something she’d wake up from right when it got to this point, left alone in a cold bed, wishing that it were real.

-----

Cardan had never been happier that this was real. That his reality could consist of working his way back up Jude’s neck, leaving bruises in his path, listening to the sharp intake of her breath as he got to her jaw, just before he kissed her in earnest again. Then it was her hands in his hair, tugging sharply against his scalp, leaving him groaning and gasping into her mouth, vaguely aware of his tail snaking its way around her leg. It felt like the kind of thing he would dream of back when they were in school. The kind of thing that he would wake up from and go to that paper and write Jude Jude Jude until the paper ripped and his ink blotted the words, hoping that it could leave his mind. But this was real and happening right now and Jude was kissing back in a way that made him worry that his legs would give out and they’d be left sprawled on the floor.

He steered her toward the couch, as gracefully as he could with their bodies pressed against each other and his mouth never leaving hers, before slowly stepping back. Somehow Jude looked even better like this, eyes alight with passion and love, hair just barely messed up from his fingers, lips swollen and gasping for air. He couldn’t even be bothered to care about the way she looked smug, like she had been expecting this, hoping for him to lose control.

She twisted them around, pushing him to sit on the couch, before maneuvering herself onto his lap, one of her legs slipping out of a slit in her dress he hadn’t noticed before so that she held him down with her hips. It was all he could do to stop from groaning as she began to slide his coat off his shoulders before unbuttoning his shirt, her mouth following her fingers on the way down. As she got his shirt off of him, he was acutely aware of the arousal that had been building up all night reaching unbearable heights, and as she looked into his eyes, before moving to kiss him deeply, he could tell that she knew too.

He kissed her back as every ounce of self-control left his body—which admittedly was very little ever since he had led them to the hidden room—running his hands along her back, up her sides, everywhere he could reach. But as he struggled to find the tie to her dress, doing his best to not just rip the damn thing off, because he very much would like to see Jude wear it again, she pulled away.

Even with her eyes wild, looking halfway to thoroughly debauched, Jude managed to smirk in a smug way that made Cardan suddenly aware that he had lost some unknown game. As he tried to pull her back, pull her dress off, something, she simply leaned in, whispering in his ear, “You should just admit that you think I’m irresistible, we both know that’s what you’re thinking.”

And in that moment, he knew she would ruin him—if she hadn’t already—and all he could do was love her.

#the folk of the air #fanfic #tfota fanfic #the folk of the air fanfic #fluff #jurdan fluff #jurdan #jude x cardan #cardan greenbriar #prince cardan #post tqon #the queen of nothing #jude duarte #high queen jude #jude greenbriar #2k words

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wandaposting · 4 years ago

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wandavision: the criticisms post

tl;dr: i liked the show, but there were aspects that were annoying and dumbfounding to me and here’s the post that covers That ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

this was gonna be my comprehensive wandavision review post that had both cons and pros, but the cons kind of ran away from me lsdfjs SO YOU’RE GETTING THIS FIRST. if you find my views diverging from yours in either direction, you’re valid, please don’t shiv me. this is just how i Feel in a somewhat shitposty (as per usual) format. 😔

the big con list:

the way wanda’s actual villainy gets brushed away by the narrative: or specifically the way wanda strolls past the people she mentally tortured and traumatized for a week to apologize to monica, who then goes “gg girl i would’ve done the same :)” and then wanda leaves that entire mess—that she caused—behind her and bails lol. that scene is a microcosm of my problems with this show’s attempt at portraying what the creators have described as her ““complexity””. they want us to feel sorry for her, but not in the way that we can sympathize with walter white while still acknowledging he’s broken bad. rather, this show seemed to want to paint her as more of a victim than the people she victimized. they still want her to come out looking heroic and triumphant and rewarded from her journey with new powers, a new superhero outfit, a new superhero moniker. and that falls flat when you realize she’s basically been a self-absorbed asshole throughout the course of this show. she was confronted no less than four times, and told point blank that a few thousand people were suffering under her control. that is not something we can excuse with depression and denial. that means that at multiple times she is making at least the subconscious choice that her happiness matters more than the wellbeing of her meat puppets, which includes children, across the span of a week. i don’t see monica rambeau “doing the same thing.” the fact that they made her say it while the townspeople glared on in miserable silence just rubbed me the wrong way. if they really wanted to make her responsible for westview, while also wanting her to come out looking remotely good, they needed to invest in a much more substantial redemption arc for her than “i didn’t mean to, gonna go self-exile now.” or even holding everything else constant, they could’ve delivered a more nuanced take where westview was in dire straits before her arrival. the westview she initially drove through already looked economically depressed, so i don’t know why they didn’t just follow through with this. but they could’ve made it so that by granting herself happiness and prosperity, she could’ve spread that genuinely throughout the citizens. instead of hex vision waking norm up in horror, you could’ve had him begging to be put back under. that way, her decision to accept and face reality head on could also be reflected by the people of westview. where everyone, perhaps aided through wanda’s mind link, decides they shouldn’t let fantasy consume themselves at the expense of improving their actual reality. there’s still moral ambiguity, there’s still mistakes being made, we can still side-eye wanda for doing the equivalent of drugging people, but at least these npc’s would've gained something from wanda blundering into their lives. but no she made 3 thousand people suffer through the literal plot of Get Out, giving them life-long ptsd and trauma with nothing good, and i think that’s bad. if she has more haters after this series, i can’t even blame them. but apparently she has a shit-ton more fans after this series, so... OH WELL, IT IS WHAT IT IS sdkfjkls

TYLER: which brings me to the thought that, if this show had hayward acting like a three dimensional human person with the bare minimum intellect required to run SWORD ... instead of an incompetent jackass scooby doo villain ... a lot of us would be spamming #HaywardWasRight. tyler hayward might legitimately be the worst villain mcu has ever produced, like edging past malekith. is he supposed to be an analogue to real world tr*mp appointed deputies? unlike agatha, he’s not even entertaining to watch. he’s the ted cruz of the mcu, which is bizarre when he was introduced as the strict but not particularly vexing or unreasonable successor to maria rambeau in episode 4. it ended up feeling extremely contrived how the show attempted to aggressively signal us with “hayward bad” and “wanda good, actually” through the lens of monica, darcy, and jimmy. it’s like they had to make hayward come across as Extremely Dumb in order to make wanda come across as the more sympathetic party, when she was the one doing [gestures vaguely at wall of text above].

and SPEAKING of agatha: she also ended up being the exact kind of simplified reductive cackling “gimme ur powers wanda” evil super witch that i didn’t want her to be. that’s all.

the theorybaiting: i didn’t care about the lack of mutants/doctor strange cameo (lol what happened, charles murphy)/multiverse/blue marvel/reed richards/mephisto/nightmare/chthon (altho we did get the darkhold wink wonk) so much that it ruined my experience. ralph bohner was disappointing, but i got over it. my issue here is more that they deliberately baited a more interesting story than they delivered, and i think they shot themselves in the foot with that. the first 7, even 8 episodes had set up this atmosphere of mystery and intrigue, only for them to wrap up all these questions with the most boring, uninspired answers possible. question: what does hayward want and what is he up to? answer: hayward is simply a stupid dingus. question: who is agatha harkness and what is she up to? answer: an evil witch who just wants to steal yo powers. question: who is fietro? answer: lol boner. question: was it wanda all along? answer: yes, but no it was actually agatha, but actually yes, but she didn’t mean to and is kind of sorry and now she’s gonna fly away so have fun with your ptsd, westview. ????????? yeah they could have ... done some of that better.

the pacing in the end: i remember when they said it was gonna be “around 6 hours,” and we got 4 and a half hours of actual content instead... they should have given us that extra 1 and a half hour to flesh out the finale. the sitcom portion was fun, it feels like the sitcom portion was prioritized in the writing room, and that the overarching narrative beyond the sitcom suffered to accommodate it. when it came time to break away from the format, they stumbled. so in the beginning, there were segments that felt authentic to the era but were fairly critiqued as “dragging on” ... and in the final episode, we had... the final episode. monica and wanda’s ending conversation felt unsatisfying, both wanda’s apology and monica’s acceptance of it rang particularly hollow [also gestures vaguely to wall of text above]. the appearance of white vision should have had much more of an impact on ... everyone, especially wanda. except the dude just dips and no one mentions him ever again. i feel like hex vision being revealed as the the vision that had always been ~part of her should have also had more ... fleshing out. darcy and jimmy basically ended up having no arcs in this show. they served as stand-ins for the audience, and because they were written to feel sorry for wanda (in a situation where she was absolutely deserving of more scrutiny), the audience too gets manipulated toward doing so.

there’s probably more to add but i’m running out of brain juice BUT THOSE WERE THE BIG ONES STORY-WISE

#wandavision #wandavision spoilers #i will do Things I Liked... later #I TOLD YOU MANY THOUGHTS HEAD FULL #all i can say is that i can't wait to consume fatw in a much more lowkey easy breezy way sdklfjdsl

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sola-whumping · 4 years ago

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Febuwhump: Mind Control Essay

Introduction

One of the best methods of whump, in my opinion, is mind control. There’s so much you can do with it and so many ways it can be used. When people think of mind control they might think of the normal blank stare and unfeeling protagonist being controlled like a puppet by the villain, but there is so much more that can be done with it. So today, we will be getting in to all mind control has to offer, or at least a few methods.

Introduction 2

To begin I’ll be going over some of the ways you can induce mind control in a whumpee. The four main ways (that I can think of) would be superpowers, tech, manipulation, and magic. Each come with their own uses and strengths and have a slightly different style of putting your whumpee under. Rather then going though each and every way you can use it in detail like I usually do with Whumper Weekly, I’ll instead list a few that would work well with each style and make a series on mind control later since it is such a big topic.

Body Paragraph 1

The first method of mind control I’d like to start with is using super powers. There’s many ways to go about this, looking your whumpee in the eye to activate it, having your power be activated by touch, or even being able to induce a trance by being in close enough proximity would make your whumper powerful and fluid enough in the use of it that they can pull it off without anyone else noticing. This method is the easiest to use for kidnapping your whumpee on the fly by convincing them to follow you or to alter their mind and memories to become a hazy fog, letting you control their actions. I find that this method is the best for making your whumpee betray their friends since it provides a disconnect between them and their actions.

Body Paragraph 2

Tech is what we see in a lot of sci-fi movies. It’s the mind control buttons or the pins or clips. Things that stick to skin and clothes and take control of the neural network and use it. They are always built by someone clever, you perhaps, and used on those beneath them. Sometimes that tech helps the creator to advance to something akin to a God, controlling cities at at time. And other times it’s specialized to control one specific person, which in and of itself is an art. It’s a form of complete control that can shift loyalties or change a person completely, or even just suppress who they once were to reprogram their thoughts and opinions. Whatever it’s used for, it’s sure to be clever.

Body Paragraph 3

Manipulation is a tactic almost anyone can use- if they’re good enough. For this method inducing the trance is key, you must have a good introduction and a fluid transition to pull your whumpee under, as well as the right word choice to lull them into a sense of security or to trick them into giving up control. This is the kind of mind control street magicians will use for shows and tricks but it can also be used to slowly alter someone’s perspective. There’s a bit of psychology behind manipulation and whether it’s conditioning or something else it can be very useful to develop behaviors and beliefs in other people.

Body Paragraph 4

Magic is very similar to powers but it can also be vastly different in its uses. Any kind of magic needs either an item or a person to work and direct it, though, there have been cases where it has come alive on its own. An enchanted stone necklace could be used to control a whumpee as an example of an object. Or a sorcerer could enchant an enemy into bending to their will, an obvious example of a person controlling magic. Magic can even reside in a place that causes anyone to enter it to be subjected to control which is a lovely portrayal of sentient magic on its own. It can even be triggered by touching a magic gemstone that takes control of the protagonist, though this sounds a bit more like the game holds magic in itself and can be linked to our first example. Whatever method of magic you use make sure you read through the books on it and study it’s art well. Magic can be dangerous, wild, and untamed. Make sure you control it and control it well or it can kill you.

Conclusion

The creativity of any of these methods is up to the user and the user alone, the mind is infinite and has no limits aside from the ones you set for yourself. Be free and make sure to use your control over others well. Just make sure you don’t lose yourself in the process. Absolute power corrupts absolutely- though, that is a problem for the future. For now you are young and powerful with the world at your fingertips. Make sure to use it. (Call to action)

@febuwhump

✨Masterlist✨

#febuwhump #febuwhumpday1 #mind control #whump #whump prompts #whump trope #in this essay i will #manipulative whumper #whump essay

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azurite-writes · 4 years ago

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Problem One: The Screen(s) and Digital Workspace

Part one of my multi-part doc about what I learned from doing online college at a non-online institution. This chapter: my Desktop as a Desk

Highlighted points: learning styles, work type/function in relation to the computer

My biggest problem with being pushed online after being at an in-person institution was, and still is, my forced reliance on the computer. I have to sit in front of it for hours: attending classes on Zoom; checking email every three hours; accessing Moodle pages for class and out-of-class work (Moodle is what my institution uses, other web management/e-learning software platforms include PowerLearning, Blackboard, and OU Campus, among others). And the work itself can be watching documentaries, watching seminars, accessing ebook/PDF documents, annotating documents in online portals… it's a lot. People have talked at length about "zoom fatigue," as well as the eyestrain headaches that can come with staring at said screens for hours at a time. I'll talk about my own lessons learned about that later.

The assumption among the administrators and (some) people of older generations than those currently in school seems to be that working online with computers and smartphones is more efficient. That isn't necessarily true; it all depends on the type of task and the person being expected to complete it. In my case, I cannot, for the life of me, focus on dense sections of text presented on a backlit screen. Thus, reading and answering emails is okay, but downloading scanned textbook pages to be read on a laptop screen (along with trying to highlight and annotate them) is hell on earth.

Why is this? Different reasons for different people, but in my case it's because reading/"writing" on a screen interferes with my learning style(s), which are visual/spatial, audio, and kinetic. Audio doesn't come into play for reading on a screen, but seeing words physically in a certain location relative to other words on a page is very important to my memory of the material. Computer screens can display pretty much anything at any given time; book pages can only display whatever was permanently printed onto them. That is, the content of a book page in physical space will always be the same unless you, the reader, manipulate it; a computer screen can have any type of content displayed as long as its pixels can light up and process the information. And for me, that's a problem because I don't have any physical space to relate the information to, plus I don't get a sense of how long the document is. Recalling a passage in a printout, for me, goes like this: "I remember it was on the top-left of a page towards the beginning, the shape of the paragraph was funny too… ah, there it is." Recalling a passage on a digital scan of the same document is much harder for me by contrast: literally any of the paragraphs could have made its way to the top-left of my computer screen, if I moved the window around or zoomed in to better read the text; documents are an endless scroll upward or downwards, with (maybe) a sidebar to tell me what page I've landed on. All of my "landmarks" are functions of the program I am using to access the document. They're static and contained to a window... that can show up anywhere on my computer screen. Not conducive to the way I learn at all.

My kinetic learning style comes into play with the computer, too. Annotating a document? In the physical world, a pen on the document itself does the trick; going through the physical movement of circling a word or making a note are things that solidify the information in my mind. Annotating a PDF document? First of all, it's difficult to do with a mouse (and God help you if you have a trackpad), and it's highly dependent on the program that the user selects to open the PDF. I could connect a drawing tablet, if I have one, but they're very expensive and their use is, again, dependent on the compatibility with whatever reader program the user selects. All this to say: annotating on the computer doesn't work for me, either. My kinetic and visual learning styles come together with note-taking. My memory is highly dependent on seeing words as they are formed by my own hand, processing them, and connecting meaning to them as they sit in a specific place on the page (am I over-explaining this? Basically, writing notes by hand and seeing where those notes are on a piece of paper help me remember them). Typing notes isn't a replacement for hand-writing notes for me; while I'm busy fixing my typos (on words I would never misspell on paper, usually, since my fingers are just moving weirdly over the keys), the professor moves on, and I'm not listening well enough to catch the fact that I've missed new information.

The takeaway here is figure out your individual types of work relate to being on the computer. As I said, the computer hinders many aspects of my learning when it comes to memory and efficiency. As a creative tool, however, it has almost the opposite effect; writing assignments for fiction, poetry, and screenwriting classes are much more efficient on the computer. From creative thought to keystroke, I have less time to second-guess or forget my ideas, and both the immediacy and changeability of word processing programs actually works in my favor for those sorts of things.

What I did differently from first online semester to second:

1) I figured out which materials helped me remember my notes the best. Honestly, I wasn't even doing this when I was at in-person college, and to my detriment, but I couldn't get away with it at all once I went fully remote. Think back to when you were in lower levels of school: were there certain types of materials you gravitated towards in the classroom? Did you like basic composition notebooks with faint blue lines? Wide-ruled or college-ruled paper? Did you discover that graph paper just worked really nicely with all notes besides math, or that blank pages were less busy for your eyes? When you used pens, did you prefer blue or black ink, or did colored ink help certain things stick? If you can control what materials you use to take notes with, consider using ones akin to those from a class you either a) remembered the most fondly or b) remembered the most information from. Scour your memories of class experiences for anything, no matter how small, that may have made your life easier. Equally, take note of what tasks actually worked well digitally. Adjust accordingly.

(Personally, I found my magic formula was a 1-subject memorandum notebook — marginless, with very narrow line rulings; while I hesitate to direct you to Amazon, they are hard to find at a decent price otherwise, and you can get a 12 pack for just over $40 from them — with black ink from a 0.38-size gel pen (I used a basic Pilot G2 pen until it ran out, then bought ink refills in the smaller size). To "highlight" my notes, I circled or underlined information with a blue gel pen of the same variety. Keep in mind again that I'm learning to be a translator; this is just what works for me.)

2) If I needed to print something out, I printed it out. Environmental guilt is something I struggled with a lot, and there was always something about staying on the computer that convinced me I was being "less wasteful" by staying digital. But with how much time and energy I ultimately saved reading a printed document that can be recycled vs the electricity I ate up spinning my wheels in front of the ebook… to me, it was worth it. If you find that helps you, too, don't be ashamed to print certain things out.

(If conserving ink and paper is a concern to you, it is possible in some viewing/editing apps to remove or cover images, either with white squares or by taking the images out completely. I have an old MacBook Pro and on current versions of Preview, one can draw shapes and fill them in white to cover parts of the scan that would eat up ink, such as blurred black borders and scanned images. For documents in a word processing program like Microsoft Word or Pages, it may also be possible to print the documents out at a smaller size, allowing more text or even multiple pages to show up on a single sheet of paper.)

| In the coming days/weeks I hope to be posting more content about how I tried to adapt to fully remote learning and the things I’ve learned along the way! Follow for updates ♥︎ |

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kittyprincessofcats · 4 years ago

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I love both shows (Spop and Su) but I wanted to ask about some things you’ve said:

“Can’t believe “It’s okay for fans to be disappointed when oppressive dictators who’ve murdered millions and have tried to kill the protagonists before get forgiven without having to face consequences” is a so hard to understand for some people, but here we are”

“So did Steven Univerae end with the Diamonds in prison where they should be, or did I do well to stop watching when I did?”

With that logic can’t the very same thing be said and applied to She ra regarding Catra?

“So did She ra end with Catra in prison where she should be, or did I do well to stop watching when I did?”

Hi there. First of all, I want to say sorry for taking so long answer this. January’s been a very busy month for me and I literally just didn’t have the time to write the kind of reply I think this ask deserves.

Next, I want to make a few things clear just so we’re on the same page:

I love both shows as well and nothing I’m about to say is intended to be seen as hate against Steven Universe. SU meant a lot to me and I was a big fan of it for many years. Change Your Mind disappointed me a lot as an episode and as a finale, precisely because I didn’t want the Diamonds to get any sort of redemption, but just because it was a dealbreaker for *me*, that doesn’t mean I harbor any ill feelings towards the fans or writers of the show. None of this is meant to be a personal attack against anyone who worked on this show or likes it.

I stopped watching SU after CYM, so this post will ignore anything beyond that. I have not seen the SU movie or Steven Universe Future and I don’t intend to. Please don’t try to convince me otherwise. I’m not comfortable watching more.

I wrote the posts you quoted because I got quite a few rude messages after I said I didn’t like Change Your Mind and that I don’t want to keep watching SU. The first one was a response to people who were giving me a hard time for not liking the Diamond redemption – it wasn’t me saying that /no one/ should like it, just that my feelings on it were valid as well and people shouldn’t badger me about it.

In that sense, YES you could say the same thing about Catra! If someone wanted to stop watching SPOP because Catra’s redemption made them uncomfortable (maybe because they knew someone like her in real life or something similar), that’d be absolutely fine! I’d never send them the kind of messages I got or try to pressure them into continuing a show they’re not comfortable continuing. Because respecting real people is more important than a show or a fictional character.

I’ll be honest: I’m a little tired of justifying my feelings about the SU finale to people. But I believe you’re asking out of genuine curiosity and I haven’t made too many posts defending Catra yet, so I’ll try to analyze this step by step for you – and anyone else who might be curious.

So, without further ado: Here’s my essay on why Catra’s redemption works for me but the Diamonds’ doesn’t.

Short explanation: Because if you compare the scale of their actions, their motivations, what’s supposed to make them sympathetic to the audience, their build-up, and how their respective redemptions are handled, then the Diamonds aren’t an equivalent to Catra – they’re an equivalent to Horde Prime. And if SPOP had suddenly redeemed Horde Prime at the last minute after building him up as the big bad, I wouldn’t have liked that either.

Long (very long) explanation under the cut

Okay, let’s get into this in detail.

1. The scale of their actions

Let’s look at the evil stuff these characters have done first.

The Diamonds: Created an intergalactic empire, conquered millions of planets (destroying all life of them in the process) for millions of years, created a strict caste system in which all gems only have one function to follow and where Pearls are essentially slaves who have to obey every order, persecute and send shattering robonoids after gems that don’t fit into the system or fuse outside of their caste (off-colors), created a human zoo and kidnapped people for it, shattered anyone who wasn’t loyal to them, bubbled all the Rose Quartzes, created the Cluster and the other fusion experiments out of the shards of their fallen enemies (essentially torturing them for all eternity), corrupted all the gems on Earth, including those that were loyal to them. And that’s just what we get told upfront in the show. We’re talking about intergalactic dictators with no respect for life who will ruthlessly kill anyone who gets in their way.

Catra: Helped Hordak conquer one (1) planet. Bad, yes – but not nearly on the same scale as devoting eons to conquering entire galaxies. Also, Catra isn’t the one who founded the Horde in the first place; she just happened to grow up there (likely because she was taken from her real home as a baby) and was raised with their ideals. The Diamonds, on the other hand *are* the people who started their empire.

So yeah, the Diamonds aren’t Catra – they’re Horde Prime. He’s the one who founded the intergalactic Horde and destroyed millions of planets. (There’s even a whole parallel about how both Horde Prime and White Diamond think they’re perfect and everyone should be like them…)

Now, you could argue that Catra opening the portal was a crime on a larger scale. But even that would have likely only destroyed Etheria – one planet, not millions. The scale we’re talking about is still way smaller than Horde Prime’s or the Diamonds’ actions.

Catra’s other “crimes” in the show are things like being a toxic friend, manipulating and lying to people. Those are things I’m going to ignore for this post, since you specifically asked if Catra shouldn’t be in prison for her crimes. Being a toxic friend is bad and all, but it’s not actually something illegal that you can get thrown in jail for, so it’s irrelevant for this discussion. And it still wouldn’t be on the scale of the Diamonds, who, let me repeat, have destroyed countless galaxies.

2. Motivations for their actions

“But what about *why* they did all of those things? Isn’t that relevant?” It is, and I’m glad you asked. Let’s have a look.

Catra: Catra grew up in the Horde through no fault of her own and was mistreated and abused her whole life to the point where survival and safety became her primary motivations. She was treated as second best to Adora, filling her with a desire to prove herself. She got told as a child that she’s only worth “keeping around” if Adora values her, so she tied her self-worth to Adora’s approval. She feels betrayed when Adora leaves the Horde, because she interprets it as Adora caring more about strangers than about her. She stays with the Horde because they’re the devil she knows, because she wants to prove herself and because she’s hurt about the only person who ever showed her kindness leaving her. She grew up without a proper parental figure and without ever learning what healthy relationships are supposed to work like, so it’s understandable why she has no concept of it. She opens the portal because she sees her abuser working with (and seemingly being accepted by) her enemies and that knowledge makes her feel powerless to the point where she’d do anything to get back at them. She’s been abused and victimized her entire life and all of her actions are a direct result of that. Catra thinks that if she gains enough power, it’ll finally give her the safety and approval she craves.

In general, Catra’s story always makes it clear that she’s a victim of physical and emotional abuse who never learned what healthy relationships are supposed to look like and who’s lashing out in the only way she knows how. Some people might disagree on this, but I personally never had a point in the show where I couldn’t relate to her or couldn’t understand why she’s doing a certain thing. SPOP did a brilliant job of making sure that even at her lowest point, Catra’s actions are still understandable when you think from her point of view.

The Diamonds: … Uhm yeah, I’m drawing a blank here. Unless there’s some explanation in the movie or SU Future, we never actually learn why they did any of what they did. We get an explanation for some of their deeds – that they created the zoo because they thought Pink wanted it, that they corrupted the gems as revenge for Pink’s supposed death – but what the show never goes into is the real problem: Why they’re dictators in the first place. Why they consider themselves superior to other gems. Why they shatter anyone who doesn’t fit it, etc. They’re just dictators… because they’re dictators. We never get to understand their motivations.

And just to be clear – I think that in itself is perfectly fine. I don’t think SU should have had to give us any more explanation than that. SPOP also never explains why Horde Prime conquers other planets in the first place. He just does it because he’s evil and power-hungry and the show needs an antagonist. I think not giving a villain a deeper motivation is fine – if you’re not planning to redeem them.

3. What makes them sympathetic

Catra: I pretty much explained this already. We’re told from season 1 that Catra was abused by Shadow Weaver, that Adora was the only person who cared about her, that she was always treated like she was second-best. Heck, there’s an entire backstory episode just about everything Catra’s been through. We’re meant to feel bad for her, even when she’s evil. We’re meant to cheer for her when she stands up to Shadow Weaver and defeats her. We’re meant to feel for her when Shadow Weaver stabs her in the back and Hordak sends her to the Crimson Waste. Her entire breakdown is meant to be tragic and engaging. When you’ve watched a character suffer so much through no/little fault of their own, when you’ve watched them stand up to bigger villains in a way that makes you root for them, it makes sense that you want them to eventually get their happy ending.

The Diamonds: I realize in retrospect that the writers probably meant for us to feel bad for the Diamonds, too. Like when they’re grieving Pink, during What’s the Use of Feeling, Blue?, or when they complain how stressed they are in Change Your Mind. But the thing is… it just didn’t work for me. After the show spent all that time showing us all the death, despair, and destructions the Diamonds had caused, after it was made clear that the Crystal Gems had lost multiple friends and allies to them, it just didn’t make me feel sympathetic that the diamonds had lost one (1) person. So what if someone shattered Pink for being a dictator? The Diamonds themselves have shattered millions of gems and now that it’s someone they care about I was suddenly meant to feel bad for them? I didn’t.

When That Will Be All first aired, I loved What’s the Use of Feeling, Blue? – because I thought the show was doing this brilliant thing where they show that evil people can still have loved ones and have feelings but that doesn’t make them less evil. Every horrible person in history had feelings and loved ones. That doesn’t excuse their actions. In retrospect I find it disappointing to know that we were meant start feeling bad for the Diamonds due to their grief for Pink, that we were meant to see Pink/Rose as the evil one for starting a rebellion against them, that we were supposed to believe Bismuth was in the wrong. Rebelling against a dictatorship is a good thing. Standing up for equality is a good thing. I don’t like that the show suddenly tried to spread this message that conflict is always bad even when you’re actively fighting against tyranny and oppression. What happened to the Crystal Gems and their cause? What happened to the Steven from season 1 who reassured Lapis that “They’re mean, and that’s why we *have to* fight them”? And no, the “but being a dictator is so stressful, please feel bad for us” part didn’t work for me either.

4. A well-written redemption arc

For a well-written redemption arc, a character needs to actually regret what they’ve done and realize they were wrong. Then they need to put in the effort to be better from now. They need to… actually change. And then they need to do things that make up for their actions.

Catra: We get to see Catra go through an amazing character arc that culminates in her redemption and her eventual love-confession to Adora. The entire arc that was built for her over 5 seasons leads up to that moment and it’s so satisfying when it finally happens because it makes sense. We get to see her make big mistakes, get to see how she finally even scares Scorpia away, how Scorpia leaving breaks her, how Double Trouble gives her a harsh but needed lecture, how she understands that she and Glimmer aren’t so different, how she finally remembers Adora and decides to save her. We see her regret her actions as early as season 1, when she feels visibly bad after leaving Adora on the cliff in the temple. In season 4, she has nightmares about Entrapta and feels guilty for what she did to her and for opening the portal.

And from the moment she decides to change, she’s willing to make huge personal sacrifices to make up for her actions: She sacrifices herself to save Glimmer, gets tortured, mind-controlled and nearly dies in the process. The heroes saving her doesn’t come from nowhere and their forgiveness is well-earned because she was willing to put herself on the line to save someone else. She then keeps helping the heroes, apologizes to everyone she’s hurt, is again willing to sacrifice herself for Adora in the finale, and finally saves the entire universe from Horde Prime by staying with Adora and confessing her love to her. If we’re trying to be realistic about this – I’d say saving the whole universe from an intergalactic dictator would at least dramatically shorten her prison sentence? So no, I don’t think Catra should have ended up in prison.

The Diamonds: So the thing about their redemption arc is… they don’t really have one. We’re just kind of meant to forgive them out of the blue. Steven and the Crystal Gems ask the Diamonds for help to cure the corrupted gems and they manage to convince them, but there’s never any point where the Diamonds regret their actions. They only start to regret their actions towards Steven and Pink, but there’s never even an ounce of regret for what they did to anyone else. The Cluster? The deaths? The millions of destroyed planets and civilization? The humans and Rose Quartzes in the zoo? The presumably thousands of off-colors fighting for their lives underground on homeworld every second? That’s all swept under the rug in the finale. And therefore, the Diamonds can’t even get to the point where they make sacrifices for someone else or do anything that would lead me to forgive them, because they’re not even at a point where they realize they’ve done anything wrong. The show treats them like they’re redeemed in the end, but they’re not. Everything they’ve done just gets ignored.

5. Being held accountable for their actions

Another thing that’s important for redemption arcs is that the heroes don’t just ignore what a character has done and act like it never happened.

Catra: SPOP never shies away from admitting that Catra has done bad things. Even after her heroic sacrifice, the other characters don’t just all forgive Catra at once. Adora still calls her out when she’s being selfish, some of other princesses are resentful towards her, Frosta punches her in the face, etc. One heroic sacrifice isn’t enough: You see Catra constantly working on herself afterwards and doing what she can to become a better person and make up for her actions. And most importantly, those actions are addressed in the show. (Arguably they could have addressed what happened to Angella again, but overall Catra’s actions get acknowledged in the show.)

The Diamonds: My other big problem with SU suddenly acting like the Diamonds are redeemed is that their actions never get addressed. People act like when I say I wanted the Diamonds to be held accountable that means I wanted Steven to shatter them in cold blood – no, I just wanted Steven to at least *say* that what they’re doing is wrong. Like I said, all of their actions other than corrupting gems and treating Steven & Pink badly completely get swept under the rug in Change Your Mind. It’s like we’re meant to assume that everything else will be fine now just because Steven managed to convince the Diamonds to do one (1) thing for him. What will happen to their colonies now? What about the humans and Rose Quartzes in the zoo? What about all the off-colors fighting for their lives underground on homeworld? What about the enslaved Pearls and the class system? None of that ever gets addressed in the finale – we’re just supposed to take that happy ending at face value and believe that all the other stuff will get fixed now, even though the show never says that!

(Before you tell me how any of that gets addressed in the movie or in Steven Universe Future – I don’t care. SU Future is a new show that takes place after a timeskip. The movie is also a separate thing. SU should make sense as a show on its own and it doesn’t. Change Your Mind was presented as a finale and therefore should wrap up the most important plots and it didn’t.)

For all we know after watching CYM, Steven doesn’t actually care about anything the Diamonds have done. He’s sitting on their shoulders and laughing with them in the end and we’re meant to take that as a happy ending. For all we know, there’s still an oppressive class system and gems getting shattered for not fitting into it on homeworld. The Cluster’s still suffering. The Pearls are still slaves. The Diamonds are still dictators and that aspect never changed – because it’s never addressed. When White Pearl regains consciousness, Steven says “Welcome Back”, but nothing in this episode ever implies that she’s not still WD’s slave. When Lars and the Off-colors arrive on Earth, the fact that they’re terrified of the Diamonds is played for laughs. The finale revolves only around Steven’s feelings while Garnet and Pearl never get a moment of standing up to the people who hurt them.

“But Steven needed the Diamonds’ help the heal the corrupted gems!”

Yes, that’s the in-universe explanation. But a writer still invented that rule. And even so, they could have added a scene where Steven takes the Crystal Gems aside and tells them “Hey, I know these people killed many of your friends, enslaved and persecuted you, but I just want you to know that I don’t actually like them or consider them family and I’m only doing this to help the corrupted gems. You’re my real family.”

6. Identifying with their victims

I don’t remember who made that post, but there was a post on Tumblr somewhere that said that how likely someone is to forgive a villain often depends on how much they identify with the people that villain has hurt. And if I’m being very honest, that’s what a lot of my hate for the Diamonds boils down to:

The Diamonds don’t appear in Steven Universe until way later in the show. The way we first learn about them is indirect. We know the Crystal Gems fought a war against someone and are hiding on Earth from someone, but that someone doesn’t get a face until way later. By that point, we’ve already been told that fusions like Garnet are illegal on homeworld, that Pearls are considered lesser gems, and that Amethyst would be defective by homeworld’s standards. And all of those things made me personally sympathize with the Crystal Gems and their found family of misfits – and it made me angry at whoever did all of this to them. You can easily read the discrimination Ruby and Sapphire faced for their relationship as a metaphor for homophobia or prejudice against interracial relationships, the discrimination Pearl faces as racism or classism and how Amethyst is treated as ableism.

(Getting personal here for a moment: I’m gay and my parents are from a homophobic country that’s run by a dictator, so I strongly identified with Garnet and how she can’t go back to homeworld because she wouldn’t be allowed to exist as her true self there. Am I maybe reading too much into the show there? Yeah. But honestly, if the Diamonds’ redemption relies on people not identifying with the Crystal Gems – aka the literal protagonists of the show – too much, then maybe it’s just not a good idea. Yeah, maybe if I hadn’t identified with the CGs so strongly, I wouldn’t have minded the Diamond redemption – but it also means I’d have never loved SU as much in the first place.)

What I’m saying is that we first learn about the Diamonds from the point of view of the people they oppressed, persecuted, and tried to kill. We also meet the off-colors and learn about their plight, how they had to spend eons hiding from robots that want to kill them, how they believe the way they are is wrong, etc. We see the Cluster, the people in the zoo etc. and get told the Diamonds did all of this. And then Change Your Mind expects us to suddenly randomly forgive them with no build-up and be okay with Steven calling them “family” over the actual people who raised him.

Catra, on the other hand, is first introduced to us as Adora’s best friend. We get to meet her from the point of view of the protagonist who obviously loves her. Throughout their separation and their struggle, the relationship between these two characters drives the show. Their episodes together are emotional and well-written and make the audience root for them to eventually find their way back together again. We meet her as an abuse-victim who thinks her best friend left her, and we get so many reasons to sympathize with her before she ever hurts anyone.

(And yeah, it helps that the show never lets us personally meet any of the people from the lands she conquered. Yes, we feel bad for Scorpia and all that – but again, being a toxic friend isn’t actually a crime. And yes, we feel bad for Entrapta - but so does Catra, and Entrapta ends up being fine and forgiving her.)

7. A satisfying ending for a show

This is more general, but SU didn’t have a satisfying conclusion imo, because almost none of the things that needed fixing were ever addressed. We’re meant to take “but the Diamonds say please and thank you now” as a good conclusion without getting to the part where they murder people every day. For all we know, Steven doesn’t even care about that part because the writers never made him act like he does.

And yes, I realize that the Diamonds are meant to be a metaphor for a conservative family that finally learns to accept their queer child (Steven), but that metaphor just didn’t work for me (a queer child of an unaccepting family) at all. Because they’re not presented as an unaccepting family: The show spent 4 seasons building them up as dictators and the ultimate big bad, only to drop the “they’re related to Steven” thing in there last minute and sweep the other stuff under the rug. We’ve also spent 5 seasons seeing the Crystal Gems, the people who literally raised him, as Steven’s family, so suddenly giving that title to their oppressors feels super wrong to me.

To give you a comparison, imagine the following ending for She-Ra: Near the end of season 5, Adora suddenly finds out she’s Horde Prime’s long-lost granddaughter. After calling him out for treating her/her parents badly, he finally regrets that part of his actions and promises to leave Etheria alone so Adora and her friends can live there in peace. However, he’s still going to conquer and destroy the rest of the universe and keep Hordak and the other clones mind-controlled. Adora is fine with this and you see her and Horde Prime laughing together in the end. Catra and all the other people Horde Prime chipped and tortured are seen being okay with him now because as long as Adora, the main character, is happy all the hurt Horde Prime caused anyone else doesn’t matter. When the Star Siblings show up on Etheria while fleeing from the Horde army, the fact that they’re scared of Horde Prime is played for laughs. The End.

… Sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it? I’m glad SPOP had the guts to just let Adora kill Horde Prime instead. Because some people are not redeemable, and that’s an important lesson, too.

Anyways, I’ve been rambling for too long. The bottom line is: The Diamonds are way more comparable to Horde Prime than to Catra. The scale of their actions is the same as that of Horde Prime, their motivations are never explained, we never get any reasons to sympathize with them, the main characters have all been victims of their regime, their redemption arc is nonexistent, they never get called out for their actions and the way their story is concluded is just badly written and leaves way too many factors unaddressed. They get forgiven without ever even being sorry and the Crystal Gems never get a moment to shine and stand up to them. So yes, I consider them irredeemable and was disappointed the show didn’t end with them getting imprisoned at least. (I was kind of hoping for a Homeworld revolution where everyone finally stands up to them, but… *sigh*.) If the show was going to redeem them, they should have at least done it properly by actually showing them have a change of heart and making them try to make up for their actions, instead of letting us assume that all happened off-screen.

Catra on the other hand gets presented as someone to root for from the beginning. She’s only in the Horde due to unfortunate circumstances, got abused and mistreated her whole life, is motivated by a desperate attempt to prove herself and make sure she doesn’t get hurt again, and never committed crimes on the same scale as the Diamonds. Her change of heart is believable and what her arc has been building up to for 4 seasons, she makes great personal sacrifices for Glimmer and Adora, gets held accountable for her actions, helps save the entire universe and is a character who has already suffered her entire life – so yes, I strongly believe that she deserves to live a happy, free, and peaceful life after the show.

#spop #Catra #SU critical #redemption arcs #writing #... do I really dare to post in the 'su critical' tag again? yeah let's do it #just to be clear again - this is CRITICISM not hate #long post #... wow this really got long #replies to people #noideahowtocallmyblog

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kitkatopinions · 4 years ago

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LyricAnon🎶

Look I am forever going to love “Hero” even with its problems. But my newest on (well actually an old on I’m just bringing it up now) is the reference to Ironwood’s semblance.

In the song we get this line “Mettle I'll deploy”

Mettle holds the championship belt for worst semblance ever but it shouldn’t be in this song.

The way it’s stated makes it sound we should know what his semblance is and be excited that he’s going to use like if Yang or Ruby’s semblance is mentioned in song. In this sounds like the actual definition for mettle: a person's ability to cope well with difficulties or to face a demanding situation in a spirited and resilient way. Which, btw CRWBY, doesn’t sound as negative as they want it to sound

They mess up or rather fail to describe Mettle’s presence in correctly (shocker). Ironwood doesn’t have a willing option in regard to his semblance and it’s such a damaging one in its execution. It’s passive and questionably more dangerous than Qrow’s. But we wouldn’t know because it goes 100% unaddressed in universe. One reason...the main reason being are the writers being lazy hacks; and two it would make Ironwood look more sympathetic (to in bias viewers) cause his semblance is basically invisible background brainwashing and would call fault into how he is treated.

Last; and this is more of a...low defense of the Mettle ordeal. Given how semblances occurs I can kinda get that Ironwood got his late in life. Like probably after the Fall of Beacon giving the conversation the inner circle where having during volumes 2 and 3

Agfdeheafh the semblance that the show writers wrote for James is the worst one in the show to date and that’s not to say that it was a horrible idea, but rather that it was a horrible idea for what they did with it. Which is nothing.

Ironwood’s semblance has some strong elements of horror in it, and could leave James with a sort of imposter syndrome. The semblance could launch very interesting narratives and continue on with the (horribly bungled imo) themes of choice, redemption, autonomy, trust, love, bravery, hope, not letting a part of you control you, the importance of a support system and sharing the load and relying on others... Honestly, the fact that James had this semblance and it wasn’t used to redeem him is so so so weird based on the groundwork they did give James and their own freaking morals we were supposed to get out of the story!

You’re right about how weird that song’s framing is. The wide disconnect and miscommunication between all players is just... At this point, it’s kind of destructive towards them. ‘The songs aren’t canon, we didn’t make Jeff Williams write that’ is what they said when fans thought the BMBLB song was queer baiting. So we know already that the song isn’t canon to James, but that’s an excuse imo. They clearly didn’t properly explain Ironwood’s semblance to Jeff Williams if that’s how he uses it in the song, like something Ironwood can turn on at will and is going to use, when it’s passive. And side note, you’re totally right that the CRWBY writers villainizing traits like ‘the ability to cope’ and ‘being resilient’ is really strange. It reminds me of how they’re villainizing feeling fear and taking precautions and then praising recklessness and being brash.

But, back on track, now we have things like the voice actor for James not knowing about Ironwood’s semblance until a fan told him. Extra communication could go a long way. I mean, that would be like Alan Rickman not knowing that Snape was meant to be a spy until someone told him during the filming of the Half-Blood Prince. This is something so freaking important to the character of Ironwood and they just forgot to mention it to the man supposed to bring life to the role. That is beyond weird.

Honestly, I think there are three reasons why Ironwood’s semblance was invented, but not put into practice in the actual show.

A. The first one you mentioned. I think the writers made ‘Mettle’ as a lazy excuse to rush ahead his ‘fall to villainy’ and using it to insist that they didn’t make an inconsistent character, they didn’t make a non convincing arc, fans just needed to do the extra homework and hear about Ironwood’s semblance that explains the whole thing. Them assassinating Ironwood’s character is easily hand waved now as the affects of his passive semblance at work, that the audience was supposed to view as some sort of easter egg that they can use to justify the story, and fill in the blanks the writers seemingly purposefully just left.

B. The second one you mentioned. They wanted Ironwood to be viewed as evil by the general fandom (and, well, they succeeded,) and knew that putting the semblance in the actual show would make him much much more sympathetic. You know, since he was at least partially seemingly mind controlled into his actions. Honestly, the way they just made Ironwood’s entire personality ‘evil for the sake of evil stupid manipulator who will bomb for no reason’ seems... Vindictive. It feels like they finished volume 7, started hearing fans complain that Ironwood shooting Oscar was out of character, took that as a personal insult, and then decided to get back at their critics by turning their favorite character into a monster. That’s just how it feels, though. There’s always a strong possibility that the writers just liked the idea in the moment, and didn’t care about the previous character, just wanted ‘Ironwood opposes Team RWBY,’ and plowed through it whether or not it made sense. I mean, that’s what they did when they gave lines originally meant for Nora to Yang when she argued with Ren, that’s what they did when they changed the focus of the Nora-Ren conflict from ‘Nora is trying to force a relationship that Ren isn’t currently ready for’ into ‘Nora is getting swallowed by a relationship she isn’t currently ready for,’ and that’s what they did when they had Cinder act like she’d never worked with a team before during the Cindy-Neo-Watts team up, and that’s what they did when they had Winter spout lines that misrepresented her character and stances during V7 and the first half of V8. Ironwood is just this on a larger scale imo. It didn’t matter at all what Ironwood was even up to last season, the writers were writing him in a bubble, based on whatever the hell happened to sound big and sort of cool in the moment. And they wanted us to see him as evil this season, so they couldn’t put his semblance into the narrative.

C. I honestly think it’s a partially a commitment issue. Currently, I can’t get this out of my head.

This is Ironwood’s VA, teasing a possible V9 return for Ironwood. They left his death open ended and ambiguous and they’ve done ‘oh they’re definitely dead’ things at the end of a season only to reveal in the next season that the villain we all thought had died was actually still alive and kicking before.

There’s every possibility that Ironwood will return, and I think it’s possible that they specifically left his semblance out of V8 not only because they wanted Ironwood to be evil this season and wanted Ruby to be an indisputable hero (failed but I think that was their intention) but also because they wanted to one hundred percent convince their audience that he is fully evil... Even if they don’t want him to be. If they want to, they can use his semblance to ‘redeem’ him and subvert expectations in V9. Or they might want to keep him a villain. So they couldn’t bring up his semblance in V8 at all if they didn’t know where they were going with this character. Is he dead? Will they redeem him? Will they keep him a villain? All of those three are options and it’s very possible that they specifically kept any mention of his semblance from the season so they could have the possibility of doing any of the above options if they wanted to. This is obviously really frustrating to me and I already am itching to get to V9 because I just have to see if they bring James back and if they actually do go into his semblance and try to redeem him and if that could maybe lead to Ironqrow moments. But yeah, this wound up being yet another long reply because I am so long winded, but I just wanted to hit on your last note there...

It is possible that Ironwood’s semblance was one he got in V3. That’s interesting and I never heard that theory before. It makes sense, but it does just make me want to groan, just because if Ironwood had gotten a semblance during that time of trauma, why didn’t so many other characters? My dislike for soft magic systems, my dislike for ill defined magic systems, and my dislike for sporadically used magic systems all come together to make RWBY my ultimate foil. XD

#rwde #rwby criticism #rwby bashing #anti rwby #anti crwby #anti-rwby #pro ironwood #ironwood defense #pro James ironwood #warning this post contains rwby bashing

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aurora-313 · 4 years ago

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Rift Soul Ryou - AU Proposal

Here’s an idea that I’ve been playing with for the last few weeks. And thanks @bbtree for being a kind ear and listening to my whacky idea that I’m trying (and failing) to turn into a fanfiction one-shot or cross-reality story.

We all know the absolute dumpster fire that was the Operation Kuron storyline. However, I would like to put a few preconditions onto this AU before we delve too deeply in.

Full disclosure: I have not watched season 8 but I am aware of its general plot beats. Also this is a mix of AU lore and drabble.

Condition #1 - the reason for the formation of the Galra empire 10 000 years ago was Zarkon’s response to a massive invasion from the inter-reality rift creatures that existed in the Quintessence field. The same creatures Honerva/Haggar was studying. It functionally serves as a dark shadow to the current era’s Voltron Coallition, had the Black Paladin’s virtues descended into vices.

Condition #2 - Haggar’s experiments on the gladiators, and Shiro in particular, over the eons was an attempt to find Quintessence resistant individuals to combat the impending Trans-Reality invasion of the Quintessence creatures. Shiro himself showing particular resistance to it - insert something about the same genetic strand that caused his disease also grants heightened resistance here.

Condition #3 - Both driven mad by exposure to that radiation, Zarkon signed off on the research and was attempting to create was effectively a massive meat-shield army to stall the Quintessence beasts until they could permanently scourge Quintessence from the galaxy. His end game goal of that project was to have Haggar create suitable, unfailingly loyal cloned pilots for the Voltron Lions, and using Voltron itself as the key to destroy the source of all Quintessence, effectively erasing the galaxy as well. Zarkon’s plan basically boiling down to a mutual annihilation.

Bare in mind - these people are mad, hence the doom’s day plans. Okay, backstory out of the way.

Where does Kuron come into this?

Well, Haggar tried and failed to clone Shiro multiple hundreds of time, trying to keep that genetic abnormality while eliminating the nasty ‘terminal illness’ side effect. But even when she succeeded, she had little more than blank living dolls.

No will, no drive, no spark of life to propel them forward.

And of course not. The soul that is Takashi Shirogane is safely nestled inside the consciousness of the Black Lion, and Blackie ain’t releasing her grip any time soon. So, however does Haggar solve this problem? Why - but the cruel irony of capturing an enemy and making it fight for the Galra empire.

She captured a rift creature, tortured it into insanity, implanted it inside a fully programmed Shiro clone body - et Viola. We have our first sentient clone in poor Kuron. And the first thing he does, believing he is Shiro, is YEET THE HELL outta dodge before Haggar and her druids can capitalize on this success or replicate it. This also goes to show part of the reason why Black refused to let Kuron pilot her until literal hell was at their door, because she could sense what Kuron’s soul really was and Black (Voltron in general) was specifically made to fight Quintessence beasts.

The seasons proceed much as they did before, but the hat trick is Season 6′s finale when Shiro’s consciousness is revived in Kuron’s body.

In this AU, I shall now call Rift Soul Ryou, Kuron’s body isn’t rejecting Shiro’s consciousness. In fact, Kuron - once again aware of his true nature - talks to Shiro and surrenders the body freely by way of apology and atonement before leaving.

As Shiro’s compassion boarders on the messianic, Shiro tries to convince Kuron to stay and help, understanding that he truly loved the family he found with the Paladins. They recognize and sympathize with each other as fellow victims of Haggar’s brutal manipulations and come to an understanding based on that commonality. And, shock horror, Shiro defends the clone whenever the other Paladins get too antsy at Kuron.

Touched, but undeterred, Kuron still opts to leave and allow Shiro to reunite with his friends and family.

Tears are shed, hugs and bear hugs are dolled out like candy and The Paladins are headed home. Meanwhile, in the depths of one of Haggar’s cloning facilities - a seemingly failed clone jerks to live, promptly wrecks the facility and escapes into the great beyond.

Sometime down the line, back on Earth and the steady rebuilding effort, Shiro is observing some work while the Paladins are recuperating with their families... and then a prosthetic hand claps on his metal shoulder.

“You know, I don’t mind the floaty arm - I just don’t understand the floaty arm. Digging the white hair though. Makes it easier to tell the difference between the two of us, I’d say.”

Shiro spun, only to be confronted identical face staring back at him with a crooked smirk. The same scar across the bridge of his nose, the same greyed eyes, but the hair dyed back to its natural black. “I don’t think we ever actually introduced ourselves properly.”

“I don’t think so, no.” Shiro laughed, unable to do much else. “I suppose I should ask your name. Something other than ‘Kuron’ I hope.”

The clone shrugs, “I’ve been going by Ryou. Thanks.”

“Ryou, it is then,” Shiro nods with approval and offers his hand out, “I suppose you and me have a lot to talk about.”

Ryou shakes it with a smile of his own ,“That we do.”

TL; DR - Haggar couldn’t replicate Shiro’s soul, so she kidnapped a Quintessence entity, brainwashed it into serving as a replacement soul. Kuron doesn’t die, because as an energy being, he can literally possess another empty shell and continue living his own life.

#takashi shirogane #shiro #voltron #Voltron legendary defender #my au #Kuron #Operation Kuron #Kuron Deserved Better #Galra Empire #headcanon #fix it #Rift Soul Ryou #Kuron becomes Ryou #Ryou Shirogane

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travllingbunny · 5 years ago

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The 100: 7x05 Welcome to Bardo

Here’s finally my belated review of 7x05. I was too busy last week (with actual work) so I couldn’t write it before 7x06 aired. Then I got a bit distracted with my Dark rewatch and Dark season 3 dropping. But I’m taking a break from it to finally post this review and then, hopefully, 7x06 not long after. It’s good that I did a couple of rewatches because I could notice more details. (The review was already halfway over a week ago, so I added some remarks in italics that are things I only think now after seeing 7x06.)

This was an episode I was looking forward to and I enjoyed it, because it finally brought us to Bardo, in the belly of the beast so to speak (note: I wrote this sentence before I saw 7x06, and now I want to keep it because it’s just too funny that 7x06 put Clarke and co. in the literal belly of the beast), where the main action is likely to be, advanced the main plot of season 7 quite a lot, tied a few storylines and showed us Octavia in the present for the first time this season, and - not gonna lie - the highlight of the episode, 1 minute appearance of Bellamy, the first one since the first scenes of the season premiere.

However, I have to say that I wasn’t really impressed with the part of the episode that should have been the most interesting - Octavia’s flashbacks showing what happened to her when she was first taken to Bardo. It served its purpose by filling in the blanks, or rather confirming what I had already figured out, but for one thing, I didn’t get too much character focus in this episode, except for a touching Octavia-Hope scene and Echo’s disturbing actions in the end, which made for a pretty strong scene. And this time I was really bothered by the sloppiness of the details: from just how inconsistent the time dilation rules (rules? what rules?) seem at this point (already a problem before, but this episode made it even worse, especially since it focused on the timeline so much) to the messy selection of flashbacks in the Memory Capture scenes (while the timeline is the writers’ fault, this was obviously a case of the editor being really lazy). Maybe this is just nitpicking, but I find it really annoying when I can’t analyze details to come up theories because I have no idea which detail is a part of the plan and which is just a screw-up.

:Like everyone have some theories, including those about what really happened to Bellamy after his “death”. (At least they’re not even trying to make us believe Bellamy is dead on social media and in Inside the Episode features, like they tried last season with Clarke.)

This is why it ended up being an episode I liked less on rewatch, and I rank it behind 7x02, 7x04 and 7x01, although ahead of 7x03 (and, it turns out, 7x06). Even though the Sanctum portion of the episode was really strong and interesting this time.

Prepare for a lot of nitpicking of plot holes, and me about to incur the wrath of many t100 fans by explaining why I really dislike like the idea of an Octavia/Levitt endgame romance (it’s mostly because of their interactions in this episode).

This was the second episode this season where Marie said “Previously on” (I’m curious how many different cast members do it this season) and I think it’s the first time we saw the opening titles that were released before the S7 trailer, the ones that start with the Bardo Stone Room.

Sanctum

The deluded brainwashed folks in Sanctum who still worship the Primes have a name they have given themselves - the Faithful. And it seems that they call the people who aren’t brainwashed ‘the Fallen’. Has the show ever had such an annoying character as Trey, their leader?

I must say I related to Murphy when he suggested that maybe they should just let them burn themselves if that’s what they want, instead of letting them exert control that way. Yes, I know it’s bad. But that’s one of the things Murphy is good for, to sometimes say things that we all kind of think but would feel ashamed of saying aloud - at least if it was real life. However, Murphy - and I’m sure everyone - changed his mind when he saw they were going to burn children. And the father of the child who was about to be sacrificed (who we now know is called Jeremiah) looked confused and terrified. Maybe it’s just Trey and a couple of other fanatical people influencing and manipulating the others. Unfortunately, real life examples of people doing horrible things - even to their own children - in the name of what they believe in, to make me hesitate to call this too extreme to be plausible. But what is going on in the heads of these people? At least before, when the people of Sanctum were sacrificing their children or other loved ones or themselves, they believed it meant living forever and being one with the gods, but this?

Nelson is becoming quite a likable character even though he has only had a brief scene or two here and there. (And then the show goes and does... whatever the hell they’re doing with him in 7x06.) Like this time, when he was the only one who tried to save the Faithful woman who set herself on fire, explaining that the people of Sanctum are still their people, even the Faithful. (Now this is a much nicer face of the Children of Gabriel. Where was he when CoG were killing Nightblood people/potential hosts, even though that’s not the most efficient way to stop the Primes - as opposed to killing the Primes and destroying their mind drives?)

Great little character moment for Emori when she asked Nelson: “Even though they cast you out?” He probably doesn’t even know how much that resonates with her. Is this foreshadowing her storyline this season? Will she have to interact with or do something for the Grounders - or even specifically her clan, Sangedakru (which also happens to be the clan where Sheidheda was from - and the most likely to follow him if/when they find out who he is, since they seem to consider him their “greatest champion’)? (The latter seems slightly less likely now that Indra seems to have made them respect her authority... but I doubt it’s going to be that easy...)

BTW, speaking of Emori. let me just address the speculation that she’s pregnant - apparently based on the fact she threw up?! She threw up because she got radiation poisoning, FFS. If she were pregnant, the fetus would at least be in huge danger of not surviving. Maybe the writers of The 100 didn’t know or didn’t expect the audience to know about the effects of radiation, but come on, they must be aware that everyone has seen Chernobyl.) And Jackson, a doctor, examined her right there.

Murphy being snarky: “I’m tired of being a hero”. Hmm... when was the last time, Murphy, you were a hero without someone roping you in first, or without you following Emori’s lead or making a last moment decision? However, while Murphy likes to claim he doesn’t want to be a hero, Bellamy told him in 5x01 that Murphy’s problem on the Ring was that he actually wanted to be a hero and felt useless because he didn’t have the opportunity. Still, he’s come a long way since season 1, when he wasn’t exactly that protective of children.... Granted, Charlotte was not an innocent, but she was still a child. And he was 17 at the time, now he’s an adult.

I’m enjoying watching Indra in her new leadership role and her stand-offs with RussHeda. It’s very fortunate that Adina is not busy with AHS anymore, and JR Bourne makes for a fantastic villain - in a completely different way than Russell was. Russell was soft and emotional while also pompous and hypocritical and seemed to believe his own BS, which made him all the more annoying. Sheidheda is much smarter and has no delusions about being a good guy. He’s scary and dark but he also knows how to turn the situation to his benefit and has very rational remarks about how ridiculous the Faithful are with their tactic. He clearly has nothing but contempt for them. “My, my, what foolish little lambs you are.” (Which ties into this season’s themes of Shepherd and the flock.)

We learn more about Indra’s backstory, and this is the most I’ve been interested in Grounder history since... ever?

It’s also quite dark how she manipulates Jackson with his desire for revenge, by keeping the truth from him that RussHeda is not Russell. But Jackson’s dark side of his thirst for revenge for Abby has made him the most interesting that he’s ever been as a character.

I think that this storyline will eventually somehow tie with the main storyline. If nothing else then because Sheidheda and Madi are connected to the knowledge from the Flame, which is connected to Becca and ALIE and events from the prequel. Especially since it increasingly seems like the “great war” that’s being talked about may have something to do with AIs...

Bardo

Timeline and time dilation

Let me get this off my chest first... The timeline of this episode was confusing for some viewers in terms of the sequence of events. That isn’t the case for me - the problem is that the amount of time that was supposed to pass makes the time dilation seem really inconsistent.

So, chronologically, things happened like this:

in 6x08 (some 4 or 5 Sanctum days ago): Diyoza goes into the Anomaly; ends up on Skyring

Octavia goes into the Anomaly 6 seconds later, ends up on Skyring, 3 months (Skyring time) after Diyoza arrived. she gives birth.

Octavia and Diyoza spend 10 years there raising Hope.

Octavia sends a message to Bellamy in a bottle, not realizing the bottle ended up on Bardo (apparently, the default setting of the Anomaly, is: you go from Sanctum to Skyring and from Skyring to Bardo). Disciples capture her and Diyoza and take them to Bardo.

While Hope spends 10 more years on Skyring with Dev, before jumping to Bardo, Octavia is taken to Bardo, tried to run away, then is taken to Memory Capture. This is 45 (Bardo) days ago. She resists at first, but 34 Bardo days ago, she allows Levitt access to her memories and he starts watching them in a more coherent and chronological manner. 31 Bardo days ago, after he’s seen her memories up to the season 3 finale, Hope comes to rescue her.

Levitt helps them and Octavia is sent back to Sanctum, losing her memories, and runs back into Gabriel’s arms (no, I don’t mean it like that and I don’t ship them) - 10 Sanctum seconds after she ran into the Anomaly! (This is still 6x08)

7 Bardo days ago (which is some 2 days ago on Sanctum) or 6x13, Hope (who had probably been immediately captured when trying to save her mother - I guess she and the Disciples spent 24 days waiting for Octavia to enter Hope’s mind code into the Anomaly Stone...) is sucked into Sanctum, stabs Octavia with the tag which pulls her to Bardo. Octavia is brought to MCap again, and apparently Levitt talks to her and then she is brought to the Stone Room to talk Bellamy down. Something happens to Bellamy and Octavia is made to believe he’s dead.

in the present, Hope, Echo and Gabriel (after spending 5 years on Skyring, which was somehow 2 days on Sanctum (?)) jump to Bardo, kill some people, pretend to be DIsciples and listen to Anders’ speech, find Octavia, and see the memory of whatever happened or did not happen to Bellamy.

Now this means that the time differentials between planets have been like this:

Sanctum: 6 seconds = Skyring: 3 months

Sanctum:10 seconds = Skyring: over 20 years (because Hope spent 20 years on Skying and at least a few hours on Bardo, all in those 10 Sanctum seconds)

Sanctum: a few seconds (under 10 seconds, probably a lot less) = Bardo: 14 days (from “45 days ago” to “31 days ago”)

Sanctum: about 2 or 3 days = Bardo: 24 days

Sanctum: 2 days = Bardo: 7 days

Sanctum: a little over 1 day = Skyring: 5 years

See the problem here?

@justbecauseyoubelievesomething pointed out before that the time differentials may vary a lot because of planets orbiting their suns (and Sanctum orbiting its planet and the suns) in elliptic orbits, so distances from the black hole change. However, the problem with this is that 1) they haven’t said that on the show and instead keep talking about the time differentials as if they are at least roughly the same or similar all the time, and 2) these fluctuations vary way too much for it to make any sense? If it was just 1:3 and then 1:7, for instance, OK - but how the heck does the time differential between Sanctum and Bardo go from 1:200,000 to 1:3?

How is this supposed to work? Do people on Bardo go:

“We’re sending a team to Sanctum!”

“Understood! We will need just an hour to retrieve the target!” “But Sir... they’ll return in 20 years! We have to wait till next week, then an hour will be just 7 hours here!”

“All right, we have to wait for the next week then!”

And do these fluctuations happen just between Sanctum and Bardo or Sanctum and Skyring, or also between Bardo and Skyring? The latter would make their prison system quite complicated and tricky!

A couple of other pieces of info -

Levitt put the “Trust Bellamy” note in Hope’s arm during his MCap session (because he knew what Bellamy was to Octavia), but Anders apparently did not realize why Hope was bleeding or that it had something to do with Levitt, though he was the only one who could’ve had any contact with her?

One thing I don’t get is the part where Anders says: “it’s why you’re a prisoner dressed like a savage so you can get close to Aunty O”. Why did they have to dress Hope in Grounder-like clothes, exactly?

We also see that Meredith’s team was told to go to Sanctum and find Clarke - though it’s unclear why they waited so long to send them. Or why Meredith’s team waited about a day and a half to contact Clarke. We see Anders telling Meredith: “Because of the time dilation, no one will come for you if you fail” - and I have no idea that’s supposed to mean, especially since I don’t know what time differential it was supposed to be at the time.

Octavia in Memory Capture

...And I’m gonna nitpick some more.

Maybe it’s not a big deal that many of the scenes we saw as Octavia’s memories didn’t make sense, because they were either scenes she wasn’t present for or scenes from the future (relative to the moment when she was on Bardo the first time), but I expected better, after the wonderful attention to detail in last season’s Nevermind and Matryoshka, where neither the prop masters nor editors and sound editors made any mistakes with what we saw and heard of Clarke’s memories.

So, 45 days ago, when Octavia was first brought to Bardo, and Anders and Levitt were seeing random memories against her will, the first thing she’s told is to imagine someone holding out a hand to her to help her, and we see brief flashes of various memories (aka scenes from the previous seasons) before her mind settles of many different images of Bellamy:

Aurora with baby Octavia

Lincoln, just before his death

Indra - when Octavia finds her and talks to Clarke and Lexa (3x05) - of course this is there because of Indra, but I don’t know if Clarke is also supposed to be one of the people O thinks of: we see her quite clearly as she’s saying she must talk to Bellamy to save their people

and then a bunch of images of Bellamy - which is where things start not making sense, because while we see him

in the Pilot on the dropship (that makes sense)

in season 5 when he argued with Octavia (also makes sense)

but we also see him dressed Gabriel’s cardigan, which he only wore after reuniting with Octavia in 6x10, after she came back from Bardo, and one of the images is definitely from 6x13 when Hope came from the Anomaly (future scenes!)l

we also see the scene where Bellamy was looking for Octavia and talked to Clarke in 1x06 (where Octavia was obviously not present for! It’s also the scene right after the Aurora flashback - the editor were obviously being super lazy)

and Bellamy in an anti-radiation suit in 4x13 when he had to leave Clarke (the only way Octavia could remember that is if she had a telepathic link to her brother!)

Other memories include Murphy in Pike’s class (clearly just as a cool transition from a Murphy scene in Sanctum), but it was really funny how horrified Octavia seemed when Levitt asked her if he was her lover. ;) Levitt clearly got a bunch of images of her friends - including Raven, Clarke (from the Pilot!) and Indra, whose images we see on screen in addition to Bellamy - and he finally sees a bunch of memories of Hope on Skyring, which is what she was trying to hide the most.

At this point, Octavia desperately tries to make a deal with Levitt - he doesn’t mention Hope in his report, and lets her go later, and she’ll let him into her memories. Just before Levitt starts watching her memories in the chronological order, we hear some more of Octavia’s memories in her head (they aren’t showing on the screen, where the same flashbacks as before are playing):

banishing Echo in 4x11

Bellamy deciding to leave her in 6x03 (“Are you out of your mind? You didn’t need to kill anyone!”)

Miller saying “Blodreina gave that honor to me!”

Octavia yelling “You’re dead to me!” to Bellamy (in that disturbing scene in 3x10) and...

Hallucination!Pike telling her she caused a world to be destroyed and herself yelling she wanted “REDEMPTION!” - which is another inconsistency, because comes from a red toxin hallucination that she’ll only have after she returns to Sanctum (in 6x09)! At least you could say this was already in her subconsciousness, but these were supposed to her memories!

When she starts cooperating, Levitt basically binges the first 3 seasons of The 100 - or rather, a version of it where Octavia is the main character and everything is only from her POV - ending with 3x16, which is probably pretty significant, as they showed several moments right before Clarke destroyed the City of Light and the moments after she came back. We see Bellamy telling everyone what to do as they were fighting chipped people to protect Clarke, Clarke on the throne in the City of Light, Pike fighting chipped!Jaha, Pike saving Octavia, and, and after the destruction of the COL, Murphy and Emori hugging, and finally - Octavia stabbing Pike.

This is where Levitt goes “Yes!” - which makes me (and Octavia) feel real tonal dissonance. He reveals himself to be a true Octavia stan, the kind who thinks their favorite character simply cannot go wrong and who doesn’t just defend her and have an understanding and empathy for her motives and emotional states (which is great), but cheers even the bad things she did (which is not great). Now, if Levitt is meant to be a representation of a typical stan, that’s great. The show has, this season in particular (and even in S6 to a point - through Jordan) been dealing with the idea of Clarke, Octavia and other main characters as living legends. And a lot of t100 fans - including every single YouTube reactor I’ve seen - always cheers and says they’re happy when she kills Pike. I didn’t feel that way, so there’s that. And sure, some of that is because I didn’t hate Pike. But what’s more important is: that moment was never portrayed as a triumphant one. (It it was meant to be, it would have been Octavia killing Pike in a battle, or something similar to the scene where Lincoln killed Cage Wallace in 2x16, not Octavia stabbing Pike when he didn’t expect it, after they had fought together and right after he had saved her life. It wouldn’t have shown Bellamy and Clarke worried about Octavia, or made it her ‘start of darkness’ moment that led to her becoming a murder-obsessed assassin in season 4. And 6x09 made a point that Octavia herself saw this act as a wrong one - that she thinks she didn’t have the right to murder someone in cold blood even though she had legitimate reasons to hate him. The show generally doesn’t portray revenge-murder as a good thing. And that is true in this scene, too: we see flashbacks of Pike at his most heroic (fighting chipped Jaha and Pike right after he saved Octavia’s life) before the scene of her stabbing him, and while Levitt is like “YES!”, Octavia seems upset to see that moment again and a tear is falling from her eyes.

So why, then, is the show apparently portraying Levitt’s uncritical stanning of everything Octavia does as a great thing, and why are so many fans and reviewers convinced that Levitt is a great new love interest for Octavia, possibly her endgame love interest, because of his adoration of her and the praise her gives her? (And 7x06 has made me think that, yes, the show is definitely portraying him as a potential love interest.) Yes, I agree that Octavia needs someone to help boost her self-esteem and tell her she’s not a monster, that she’s a good person at heart, that she’s worthy of love. But it would mean so much more if it came from someone who was able to relate to her as an equal and also acknowledge her dark side and be critical of the bad things she did. “I understand why you did this and it doesn’t make you a terrible person” is different from “Everything you did is right and awesome.” I liked what he said about her as a child, how she was even then being responsible and protecting her mother and brother and not just herself by hiding. But it’s absurd to tell someone “You’re not a killer, you’re a warrior” right after you’ve seen them murder someone out of revenge in what most definitely wasn’t a battle or a fight. The fact is that Octavia is both a warrior and a killer. They all are - she, Clarke, Bellamy, all of them. Having a good heart and understandable motives doesn’t change that fact.

If Levitt is supposed to just be a Disciple with a crush that makes him help Octavia, fine, but I can’t see a potential romance there - it would be like a relationship between a celebrity and an obsessive fan.

World-building

This episode was full of world-building info, probably what I liked about it the most:

Levitt seemed particularly interested in Clarke and the fact she was in the City of Light, which makes me think that the reason why she is ‘the key’ in the eyes of the Disciples has something to do with Becca’s tech and ALIE in particular, and that the enemy they’re afraid of may be some sort of an AI.

We finally saw Bardo. Not that it was surprising since we already knew from the opening titles and 7x04 that the compound was underground and that it was a dome with artificial atmosphere and that it included an arboretum, Stone Room, which is on the way to the cells, etc. I checked to see if it matched the layout drawn by Orlando. I had assumed that the numbers were levels in the structure, but while Orlando put Arboretum as 1, it is on level 2.

It seems that all the Disciples were either black or white clothes. (Fits with the black and white way of thinking.) From what we’ve seen so far, it seems that the military, so to speak (fighters/those who jump to other planets) wear black, while the Stone Conductors, people who do the Memory Capture, other scientists, as well as other personnel (like janitors or gardeners/groundskeepers) wear white. Anders himself, the First Disciple, wears white, so I suppose he is one of the “civilians’.

Anders claims that the Disciples have risen above “lesser emotions” and learned to value the collective rather than the individuals. But from what we’ve seen of other Disciples, that’s BS. That may be their ideology, but in fact, they’re just the same as anyone else and just as prone to developing feelings of love and bonds of friendship as anyone else.

Levitt is Level 11! Which makes you wonder how hard the Disciples really check how ‘devout’ the Disciples are. But maybe he’s just too important as an expert,

We see the MCap technology at work. But we also see that it’s not easy to extract memories from an unwilling subject. Levitt has apparently mostly done this to the Disciples themselves (you’d think most of them would be willing, but obviously some were not, since they sound like they already have experience with unwilling subjects.) Levitt tries to get Octavia to comply because he’s a Good Cop by telling her that they may get his colleague instead, who will “burn right through” her brain. (But as we see from the Diyoza flashback in 7x06, that’s not true - the other guy, Kirsch, doesn’t do that when Diyoza is uncooperative. I don’t think they are actually able to do that.)

The Disciples usually send teams every 30 minutes (but these 30 minutes are drastically different on Sanctum and on Skyring!)

More about how the Anomaly Stones work: while Dev told Hope that all you need to do Is think where you want to go and the helmet will do the rest, it’s not actually that magical - in fact, you actually need someone (normally the Conductor) to push the buttons on the Anomaly Stone.

According to Levitt, pulling someone from another planet through the Anomaly is “ safe 8 out of 10 times". What happens the other 20% of times? Is it really being “turned inside out” as Hope said in 7x02?

It’s also confirmed that people lose their memories if they travel without the helmets from a faster to a slower time dilated planet (which I had already figured out based on the fact that the danger only seemed to exist when travelling from Skyring/Bardo to Sanctum and from Skyring to Bardo, but not the other way round).

When Hope was about to leave to save her mother, Levitt tried to tell her: “They have helmets, too, that means that…” – what? That they can see her? Meredith’s team didn’t see Raven, so it can’t be that. But do they have some other way of communicating? Do you have to be actively thinking for them to detect you? Whatever it is, she should’ve listened as she quickly got caught.

Eyes are important as it’s through them that the biometric signature/mind code is made. And the Disciples have a very quick way of painting/tattooing the code on someone’s back.

What exactly is the problem with the atmosphere on Bardo? There is a biohazard alert as Octavia is brought in and she’s checked for some sort of an infection (“she’s clean”). It seems that the problem is with some kind of a disease (especially with what we hear from Levitt in 7x06).

In the category of revelations that weren’t a surprise at all since the fandom has figured them out weeks ago, Gabriel realizes that there is a Stone on Earth (as we saw in 7x04 and in the opening titles - it’s the offline planet), by listening to Anders’ speech where he mentions that the Shepherd delivered them by a stone. (Confirming the theory that Disciples are Second Dawn even before that was technically confirmed in 7x06 and that Cadogan led them through the Anomaly some time after the Apocalypse and after burning Becca. I suppose they disconnected the Stone so unbelievers could not follow them.)

There’s a ton of new info about the history of Bardo. According to the Disciples, the compound was built by “Native Bardoans”, who went extinct before the Disciples got there. And they were supposedly giants, but were turned by something called “Gen9″ into “crystal giants”?! Levitt says that the whole min code could fit on a Bardoan’s arm? (How does he know that?) I call BS on that. The rooms and doors in the compound are tall, but wide enough just for a human-sized person to pass through. (And there are plenty of human buildings with very tall doors and ceilings.) The retinal scans are fitted to the human eye, all the technology is human-sized, and, most importantly, the keys on the Anomaly Stone are the size of a human finger. The whole thing reminds of many legends that various big ancient buildings were built by giants. I still think Eligius III people were the ones who built the compound. We still haven’t heard anything of them and where they fit. And with the time dilation, they could’ve been on Bardo for decades or centuries before Second Dawn arrived a few Earth years later.

What is Gen9? I assume it’s a disease (especially with all the mentions of the polluted atmosphere on the surface), but it’s also been suggested it may be a computer program, which would fit with the idea of the enemy being an AI or connected to AIs. I like the theory that it’s not short from “Generation 9″ but “Genesis 9″, which would fit with the religious themes (the Disciples mix and match a lot of pseudo-Christian and pseudo-Buddhist ideas). Genesis 9 is the chapter about God’s Covenant with Noah, where God tells him that humans should go and multiple and feed on plants and animals, but they mustn’t eat what has lifeblood in it still, and they mustn’t shed the blood of another human being. “I will demand an accounting for the life of another human being.“

These are the transcripts of all the prayers and speeches of the Disciples from this episode, as much as I was able to hear them:

[prayer] “In the light of the Shepherd, for all mankind. He will save us from the war to end all wars”

[female speaker] "The Shepherd brings us wisdom. The Shepherd brings us love, for all mankind. (...) Humanity (...) (final days)… burned, (...) as bombs launched, your ancestors chose a different path. There will soon be time when we will be tested to a man, and we will be victorious. For all mankind!"

[male introducing Anders]“And now, it is my greatest honor to present the esteemed First Disciple, who will lead us through today’s lesson on the Book of Allness.”

Anders: “Thank you, Emilio. In the light of the Shepherd, for all mankind!

Let’s first take a moment to acknowledge our newest class of Level 9s. You’ve each demonstrated impressive devotion to the Shepherd. Our predecessors on this planet did not share that faith. Like our ancestors on Earth, they destroyed their world. Even before they were wiped out by Gen 9 and turned into crystal giants, their atmosphere was so polluted they were forced to build forests underground in order to breathe. Even the rain that should fall from the sky, falls instead by their technology. For that, we thank them. But where are they now? We know that by the time the Shepherd delivered us with the stone, the Bardoans were gone, extinct. Why is that? [Someone from the crowd: “They didn’t have the Shepherd!” Everyone laughs. Oh, Disciple humor... ] No, they didn’t, did they? They [unintelligible, Gabriel speaks over this part]… they lost their last great war. That same enemy is coming after us now. But, in the light of the Shepherd, we will not lose. [crowd cheers] We’re close now. We’ve located the key. After hundreds of years it has returned to us. Ours is the generation that will win the last war! Our Shepherd will rise [unintelligible] and we will win (?) this fight, for all mankind!”

Hi, Bellamy! Bye, Bellamy! See ya later!

And for the most important thing in this episode: yes, we were blessed with a rare and joyous moment,, a sighting of Bellamy Blake on screen (and not in MCap but in an actual new scene), as occurrence as rare this season as (probably) the Disciples seeing the Shepherd.

While absolutely no one is buying the fake-out death (about as convincing as Clarke’s in 6x04 or Octavia’s in 6x13, though I now wonder if leaving Bellamy out of the poster and Bob out of the Countdown was a part of the fake-out they committed to), there have been many different theories about what really happened there, if the whole scene was staged or if it even happened or was an implanted memory. (The glitch effects between scenes may have contributed to that theory, but the glitch effect occurred at random points, e.g. when Hope remembered her conversation with Anders, and I don’t see why that would be a false memory.)

For a moment, I even wondered if Levitt talking to Octavia was her hallucination (seeing a comforting figure) because it seemed quite implausible that Anders and the others had only then started to figure out that he got too close to her, and that they were still letting her come anywhere near her. But 7x06 proved I was wrong. Well, maybe Anders has realized Levitt had helped Octavia and Hope and it’s all some elaborate trap where he is using Levitt as an unwitting pawn, though that seems a bit convoluted... or maybe Anders just isn’t actually that smart as we assume he should be.

I’ve never believed in the ‘implanted memory’ theory, and people have since pointed out that there’s a sign of damage from the blast in the Stone Room.

The other prevalent theory is that the whole scene was staged by the Disciples and that Bellamy himself was in on it because he’s been brainwashed. The arguments are - it’s unlikely that Bellamy managed to overpower a few Disciples after being captured unconscious, and that there’s supposedly something “off” about him in that scene because he had been crying just before that. I don’t think there’s anything “off”, and he had learned that Octavia was alive, so why do people expect him to be crying rather than fighting to save her? As for it being unlikely that he killed a couple of Disciples immediately, overpowered another and captured the Conductor - I’m sorry, but have you seen the Disciples this season? They are being killed by pretty much every main character. And maybe some fans see Bellamy as a soft sweet teddy bear of a man and think that only women on t100 are allowed to be good fighters, but canon Bellamy is pretty damn badass and really good at fighting. What would be actually hard to believe is that Bellamy could get brainwashed over the course of a few hours. I’m sorry, but no.

People also said the fact that Bellamy asked what the heck Octavia was talking about when she used the opportunity to tell him that Disciples wanted Clarke (”I’ll tell them everything, even about Clarke”) was a sign he had lost his memories or been brainwashed and that he didn’t know who Clarke was - which is a really convoluted argument. The simplest and most obvious answer is that he was surprised and wanted to know what they wanted with Clarke.

There was actually something odd about that scene - but it was Anders’ behavior. after Octavia said that line about Clarke and after Bellamy reacted to it, he got a very strange look on his face, and the camera was focusing on him. The second odd thing is that the Conductor got very upset at that moment and started begging Anders: “Sir, please, no”, before Anders shut him up - which seemed like an overreaction to the possibility of... what? Letting a prisoner go? This makes me think that the Disciple on the floor detonating a grenade was a part of the ploy by Anders. He certainly was never going to send Bellamy to Sanctum - I have an idea where he actually sent him - but what if he was also signalling something to the Disciple - that he should detonate the grenade? Which would be a smoke screen so Octavia, Levitt and others wouldn’t know what really happened to Bellamy and would think he was dead.

But why would Anders want Octavia to think he was dead? It’s certainly not to make her cooperate, because that was only ever likely to have the opposite effect. But also - why would the Disciples focus on making Octavia tell them more about Clarke, when they could try to use Bellamy for the same purpose? From Octavia’s memories, they must have known how close Bellamy and Clarke are. (Or did Levitt tell Anders that? If he did not, that was an additional reason to suspect Levitt and hide information from him. If Anders was only starting to realize there’s a connection between Clarke and Bellamy, that could have changed his plans.) And they could do more with Bellamy than just try to get his memories. They could use him (his life, his safety) to draw in Clarke, the “key”. If Anders has sent Bellamy somewhere and wanted to hide his whereabouts and make people on Bardo think he’s dead for the time being, the blast could be a good distraction, before he plays that card. (All of this, of course, assuming Anders is actually smart.)

Now, where is Bellamy? He certainly wasn’t sent back to Sanctum, and Anders had no reason to send him to Skyring or Nakara (if he needs him alive and under his control, that would defeat the purpose), And there’s no indication that it’s possible for the Anomaly Stone to send a person to another location on the same planet. So, I believe Bellamy has been sent to Etherea. That would be the reason to finally go to the only planet of the 6 that we haven’t seen yet. I’ve also had the theory that Etherea is the slowest of all the planets - because, if you’re using time dilation as a plot point, why wouldn’t you milk it for its worth? And if that’s the case - good news is that Bellamy won’t get almost any older, but the bad news is that he’s lost all his memories. But not too bad of a news, since he’d get them back as soon as he gets to a faster planet.

This would open some juicy story possibilities...

An Echo of Finn (and Octavia?)

This episode continued the trend we’ve already seen in 7x04 - Hope is becoming more of a killer after her first kill on Skyring, Echo is reverting to her identity as as ruthless spy and killer (and occasionally murderer, as at the of this episode), in her 5-year single-minded mission to save Bellamy and now as a result of believing that Bellamy is dead and her mission was for nothing. And Gabriel is getting more and more frustrated with both of them, especially Echo, and constantly going “will you stop killing people, please?” (Well, not in those words.) (And I’m wondering how close he really got to the others, since they spent 5 years together and were preparing to jump to Bardo, but Hope never told Gabriel about Levitt?! )

There was some irony earlier in the episode when Hope seemed almost ready to attack Anders in front of hundreds of Disciples (she really hates him - I guess because she knew they were torturing her mother), and Echo told her to “pull herself together”, since it was Echo later that lost it, murdered Kirsch the memory capture guy in a particularly brutal way, and blew their chances of using him to get to Diyoza, which would’ve been a terrible blow to Hope if Diyoza hadn’t freed herself anyway, as we see in 7x06.

(Kudos to Tasya for being really good in that scene, she made Echo look genuinely scary. I’ve often criticized her acting, but this time she was really on point.)

So let’s talk about this moment and Echo’s arc this season.

Some people say that this is just a normal reaction to “losing the love of your life” and that everyone would react the same. But we’ve seen other characters lose people they deeply loved, and they did not react the same way. We’ve seen Bellamy react to Octavia’s “death” in S4 and Clarke’s “death” in S6. We’ve seen Clarke react to many of her loved ones’ deaths, most recently to her mother’s. Her grief over her mother was shown in detail over several episodes, and we saw her explode in the end, but while she beat up Russell, she stopped herself from killing him (and Russell was the actual person who murdered her mother and had previously tried to murder Clarke herself and stole her body for his daughter). In S6, Bellamy wanted to kill Russell (again, the actual person responsible for Clarke’s death) and burn the Sanctum down, but he stopped himself. In this very episode, we see Octavia react to her brother’s “death”. which she sees as very real, but she hasn’t started going around and killing anyone she gets her hands on.

Now, Octavia of the past, S3 Octavia, was different, far less mature, more violent, and she did react violently to Lincoln’s death, including becoming a murderer - now, the person she murdered was the one directly responsible for Lincoln’s death, but she also went on to become an assassin and became rather murder-happy, before stopping herself just as she was about to kill Ilian the same way Pike killed Lincoln.

Another obvious parallel is to Finn and the way he was losing control and becoming more violent, ruthless and selfish, from murdering a Grounder prisoner, to wanting to leave Mel literally hanging from a cliff because she was unimportant in his eyes compared to his goal of finding and “saving” Clarke (who, it turned out, didn’t even need saving and had saved herself), to completely losing it and killing a bunch of completely innocent people. The guy Echo killed here wasn’t really innocent, but he wasn’t responsible for Bellamy’s “death”, either, and Echo’s behavior on her quest to save Bellamy has been increasingly violent throughout the season. And, while we knew Clarke was alive and well, we don’t know where Bellamy is but he is still alive and will probably eventually meet Echo again, just like Clarke reunited with Finn.

(Mind you: I don’t think Echo’s killing spree is the reason why Becho will fall apart. The relationship was already disintegrating in S6, if you pay any attention. This is more about Echo herself and where she finds herself without that relationship. Finn’s killing spree wasn’t the reason why Flarke fell apart, either. Clarke still had feelings for Finn, but she had rejected him for other reasons, i.e. his earlier behavior. )

What do all these actions have in common? They weren’t romantic, they were f*cking unhealthy. When Finn told Clarke that he killed all those people for her, she was horrified, and I was really angry at him for telling her something that terrible.

In Finn’s case, he may have been suffering from PTSD, and his feelings for Clarke were turning into an obsession and made him look almost like a stalker. In Echo’s case, she has serious identity issues and her childhood trauma and conditioning by Queen Nia. But the show is, in this case, more open about the fact that, for Echo, it’s not all about romantic love. or love in general. She has lost her purpose. Bellamy is not just her boyfriend, he’s her King, like Nia and Roan before him. Echo’s own subconsciousness has been telling her that this is a problem, and that her relationship with Bellamy is very unbalanced. “Without Bellamy, who will you follow? Without someone to follow, who are you?” It also told her that she has remained the same as before she became a part of the Spacekru and his girlfriend: “Once a killer, always a killer.” ““The honorless spy who would do anything for her queen, even betray the man she now claims to love?” In S5 and S6, Bellamy was trying to not “make the same mistakes”, and “do better”, and was always rejecting Echo’s more ruthless suggestions of how to deal with any potential enemies, and she always fell in line as he was the leader/ Without him, she is reverting to her old patterns.

It’s not romantic or a sign of soulmate love to wrap your whole identity over one person. It’s really unhealthy. It was also unhealthy when Octavia said she didn’t have a home and didn’t belong anywhere after Lincoln’s death because he was “her home”. She had to grow out of that. Maybe she could offer some advice to Echo now. Will it work or not? I don’t know.

What I’m sure of is that Becho is doomed, but the writing on the wall has been there at least throughout season 6, if not already in season 5. What I don’t know is how Echo’s own arc this season will end. She will have to forge a new identity, but what will it be? Will she start following someone else? (That would be a pretty depressing arc.) Become independent, but still a ruthless killer? Will she start thinking about the morality of her actions as most other o the major characters do? Will she fail to find any solution and will die? Not every character on the show gets to have an uplifting arc where they solve their issues. Her arc is different from Finn’s because his dark arc was a completely new and shocking development, while Echo is reverting to who she used to be. But I think it’s more likely that she gets a more positive ending than Finn, because the show has been paralleling storylines in seasons 6-7 to storylines of early seasons (like Sanctum-Mount Weather) but with a more positive outcome.

Best moments/lines

While Bellamy’s 1-minute appearance was undoubtedly the highlight of the episode, my favorite scenes were Octavia’s reunion and goodbye with Hope (even with Hope being an adult now, Octavia talks to her as a surrogate aunt: “I love you, little one, don’t you ever forget it”), the scenes with Murphy and the kids and the battle of wills between Indra and Sheidheda.

The best line by far was Hope’s reply to Anders:

“This is what happens when you value individuals above the collective”

Hope: “It’s called love, you son of a bitch,”

Body count:

One Faithful burned herself.

another fanatical suicide: a Disciple who detonated the grenade (at Anders’ orders?) in the flashback scene with Bellamy

a bunch of Disciples killed, again. For a group that’s supposed to be so badass and scary, they really failing to be that, since they’re constantly getting their asses kicked. OK, they are not all Level 12, and Orlando was both Level 12 and a teacher of fighting skills. And yes, Echo and Hope (and Gabriel, who hasn’t killed anyone so far) have had almost 5 years of training by Orlando, while Octavia and Bellamy (and Diyoza, of course) are incredibly badass even without it. But you can’t keep them getting killed so easily and expect me to take them seriously. This time, Bellamy killed a couple in the flashback, and Hope and Echo killed a few, including a particularly sadistic murder of Kirsch the Memory Cap guy.

Rating: 7.5/10

#the 100 #the 100 season 7 #the 100 7x05 #welcome to bardo #octavia blake #bellamy blake #indra kom trikru #indra #sheidheda #john murphy #echo kom azgeda #hope diyoza #gabriel santiago #cadogan #the disciples #bardo #time dilation #the anomaly

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