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davekat-sucks · 1 month

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I voted for Bro in the “who is the worst poll” because I assumed it is who is the worst “person” not who is the worst character or who is the character we hate the most (I can’t stand Cronus or Calliope. If you would have put Ult. calliope I would have jumped on that shit.) I voted Bro because of things Dave said throughout the story. One being Dave seems too into incest.

And there was something Dave said during Act 6 to Dirk directly. One of them being the “he shouldn’t have been around children” line. Then they added to the epilogue that Dave had respect that Dirk choose to end his life because Dave saw it as Dirk not wanting to be the person Dave warned him he could become and John undoing that choice would deny Dirk “his personal autonomy.” Even though I mostly ignore what the epilogue chose to do, I still think it had some relation to the original story. There’s even more things in the story that make me think Dirk is a predator too but I don’t want to draw this out any more. I still think it’s a strong possibility (I’m like 80-90% sure of this) that part of the story is that Bro diddled Dave before he turned 13.

Interesting. People had always thought of Bro to be a pedo. There's even an implication he had used Dave in smut filming with his puppets. Nobody ever thinks Dirk would have much predator traits. Probably because he is the same age as Jake and the others. At best, his actions at best seem more destructive (fitting for the Prince of Heart) than predatory. Some may think Lil HAL fits more in line with the predatory nature since the AI was also there to help execute and orchestrate the plans, even behind Dirk's own back. Would have love to put in Calliope or Ultimate Calliope, but I doubt she would get any decent amount of high votes considering the fanbase still believes she reps the "good fandom". Some even don't mind Ult Calliope taking over Jade's body. That's how much they hate Jade in general too. So then, may I ask this question. Why did Bro slice the meteor in half to save Dave when he needed to enter the game? Was it really just a moment in the flash to make him look cool? To save himself? Would Dave have entered the game after the egg breaks when the meteor struck?

Secondly, how did Davesprite escaped from Jack Noir after Bec got prototyped? Bro got killed by Jack after said prototype. Davesprite got wounded, but managed to escape. How? The likely answer was that Bro was able to protect him, even if Davesprite had sustained injuries. Which follows up on this.... Why? Why did he save Davesprite? What reason did he have to if he's not technically his brother from this timeline? And if one says that Davesprite ran away after getting hurt to leave Bro behind, why isn't cowardice or something like vengeance mentioned from Davesprite in the narrative by the time he joins with John and Dave in the ship? There nothing that hints of this even with Davepetasprite^2. Remember. Everything from Act 1 to Act 5 pre-Cascade, happened all the same. From John not getting the other present in Dad's car, Vriska creating the inevitable Jack Noir, Dad and Mom still dying, Murderstuck... everything still happened the same in both pre and Post Retcon. So Bro doing stuff like slicing the meteor and fighting Jack happened regardless of Retcon. Some also see Dave being a bit unfair towards Dirk when they meet during that speech. Dave is basically telling Dirk that it is likely every version of his Bro would become a bad person no matter what. That even if he and Bro are offshoots from each other, a version of Dirk will become that monster. He does not know what life Dirk had trying to grow up alone and trying to base Alpha Bros' actions and personality through the ironic movies. We barely even know if Alpha Bro himself was a good person too. Alpha Bro knew about The Condesce's plans and actions to take over the world. But all that guy did was make movies with subliminal messages saying how bad Betty Crocker, made money off it, and then when shit really hit the fan, he finally decided to join with Alpha Rose Mom to kill ICP and then dying To Condesce. Doesn't it question on why didn't Alpha Dave Bro kill The Condesce sooner since people on Earth had already adored him for his movies? Was there reasons for him not being able to approach Sea Hitler as she is, even with his own training to be as stealthy and fast like how Bro was? It's not like The Condesce can mind control humans. It has been shown and stated that even something like Vriska's powers, she can't control humans. Was part of him making so much money was to secure Dirk a good living condition since he would be rich? That can't be because the world has gone to shit and Dirk had to defend himself from The Condesce's army. Maybe it's because I am on the side that doesn't think Bro was that much of an abuser and that anything within Act 6, especially by Post Retcon, is shit that I cannot take seriously. But it still makes me wonder about Bro's last appearance in the timeline as well as what Alpha Dave was like past his achievements and demise. And if Dave really need to go on like that to Dirk.

#homestuck #Bro Strider #Dirk Strider #Dave Strider #Davesprite #Alpha Bro Dave #Alpha Dave #Homestuck fandom

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cloakedsparrow · 1 year

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“Don’t worry, you still got me. I guess nothing’s changed” & “I heard you became an agent” aka another Resident Evil headcanon/rant

Damnation is my favorite Resident Evil film. Not just because it’s awesome but also because I feel like we get the most insight into Leon as a character in it.

He’s usually ‘on’ in some way when we see him. He’s usually either protecting someone, keeping a civilian (or fake civilian) calm/safe, or with people he can’t really trust (like Benford) or doesn’t know if he can trust yet (like Helena). But his interactions with Hunnigan, JD, and Buddy/Sasha in that film are different. He’s very raw and open. And hurt. And tired. And hungry. He really lets them (and us) know how he feels about everything. It might just be the best characterization we get from any character in this franchise.

As part of this unusual expression of feelings, he makes the title quote before hanging up on Hunnigan at the end of the film. He seems upset. He starts to storm out of the hotel room he’s in before taking a breath and walking out with a little more control. Considering that he’s on furlough during that film and then part of the DSO in the next game, I always figured the ‘I guess nothing’s changed’ line meant that Benford pulled his shit again, using something to make Leon feel he had to join the DSO. Initially, I figured it was something to do with Buddy/Sasha. After all, we do see him returning to his life as a teacher at the end, despite having kidnapped and nearly murdered a US citizen during the film.

But then In RE6 we learn that Sherry Birkin is a DSO agent who answers directly to Simmons. This strikes me as weird for several reasons.

He’s her adopted father. Wouldn’t there be a conflict of interests to him being her CO?

As unlikely as it would be irl, we keep being told that the DSO answers directly to the president, so why is she an exception?

She’s a BOW who has been kept very sheltered/protected up to this point. When, where, and how was she safely trained?

Then I thought of that part of Damnation.

What if making Sherry an agent was what got Leon to sign on? As the most experienced agent with the most successful BOW related cases under his belt, Leon would be the natural choice for all the really crazy/dangerous assignments after joining the DSO. If he were to refuse to join though, then an agent with no experience but the ability to heal rapidly would probably be a top contender for such assignments. Leon taking the position would mean protecting her all over again and that’s something Benford knows works.

I’ve never subscribed to the fan-theory that Sherry is basically Leon’s daughter. I’ve always seen it as more of an unbalanced brother-sister relationship. Leon gave everything to protect her (from Umbrella, from the US government, from a life as a lab rat, from foster care) but he was nine years older than her and busy saving the world. She specifically refers to him as the person who saved her in Raccoon City rather than just someone she can trust or has known over half her life when Jake questions her about trusting Leon in RE6. She ultimately trusts him over her adopted father, so they definitely know each other still, but it doesn’t seem like they’ve spent lot of time together.

There’s also the way he says he heard she became an agent. It’s very...stilted. Like he’s trying not to give away too much or is maybe not too happy about that but knows it’s not his place to say anything. It’s all very much like a big brother who went off to live his life when a much younger sibling was still growing up at home. There’s trust, respect, and caring there, but only one seems caught up with the other’s life.

About that ‘not giving away to much’ thought: Leon is caring and initially trusting, but he’s also smart and has seen some serious shit. He wouldn’t have signed away his freedom to guarantee Sherry’s safety without wanting some sort of evidence that she was truly being taken care of in exchange. He’s probably been given regular reports on her, both from Simmons and from Claire. He probably has files of childhood photos and drawings, copies of medical reports/report cards, and random reports on her interests going back to when she was twelve. He probably has video of her home ballet pageants or piano recitals or whatever she was into at any given point in her childhood.

But would Sherry know about any of that? She knows who Leon is, of course. She remembers him saving her in Raccoon City and has probably heard about him from Claire, just like she heard all about Chris from her. However, no one knows how Benford ‘recruited’ Leon. Would it have been more beneficial to Benford to let Leon see her or to keep them separated so his only way of learning about her was through Benford? And what about Simmons? He agreed to take responsibility for Sherry, would he have wanted Leon potentially butting in while he saw to that responsibility?

I’d like to think Leon made sure he got to see her sometimes, but it sounds like such visitations would have been rare. With Claire able to verify whatever the reports said about Sherry, would Leon feel the need to push to see her all that often? If he was given the choice of him being able to see Sherry or Claire, I would bet he’d let Claire see her.

That means Leon would have to say something like ‘I heard you became an agent’ because at this point, they don’t have time for a full explanation, assuming he’d even be comfortable giving one. Without context, it might seem odd or even creepy for her to find out just how much he’s been keeping track of her life if she doesn’t know she was basically a hostage used to guarantee his service for years.

It kind of makes me wish we’d gotten that version of RE7 with Leon and Sherry working together. Maybe they’ll use it for a future game, like a Revelations type title that takes place in-between existing games/films. It would be interesting to see what their relationship is now that Benford isn’t around anymore.

TLDR: Headcanon that Benford let Sherry apply to be an agent of the DSO in order to force Leon to join after Damnation. Simmons probably agreed under the condition that Sherry reports to him instead of Benford. Leon has been getting reports on his surrogate little sister/instrument of coercion for years but she doesn’t know that.

#Resident Evil #headcanons #rant #theory #thoughts #observations #Leon S Kennedy #Sherry Birkin #Adam Benford #Damnation #RE6 #DSO #video games #tldr at end #surrogate siblings

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attiredpan · 4 months

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Okay so I added You’ll Play Your Part to my Nog Playlist and I’m gonna ramble about the lyrics and stuff cause holy fuck that’s a Nog Song™️ if I’ve ever heard one.

Content Warnings for discussion of depression and suicidal ideation in relation to It’s Only A Paper Moon.

Okay so starting with Twilight's verse in application to Nog’s storyline, I have two or three spots where I feel it’s most relevant; directly after Heart Of Stone/Facets and directly after It’s Only A Paper Moon.

Both leave him resolute to move forward but undoubtedly uncertain, whether for one reason or another. On one hand, you have him breaking away from something he had been raised with his whole life, that he’s watched his family try to fit themselves into and fail, miserably. And even after getting that confirmation from Sisko that yeah, he’s been recommended to the Academy, there’s still so much uncertainty in whether or not he’ll make it.

Not even mentioning how much Quark is being an absolute ass about it, going as far as to attempting sabotage on Nog’s entrance exams to keep him from getting in. But thanks to Rom being one of the best dads on the station, he does get in. He’s found that purpose, he is making those contributions, and he is part of the plan.

And with post-Paper Moon the ‘future that I can’t see’ line has a lot more weight to it, as for a majority of the episode we see him coming to terms with his disability and the trauma that comes with it, going through what I see as a major depressive episode and passively suicidal ideation.

And as someone who’s been through a similar situation(ie. a major depressive episode with all the suicidal ideation that comes with it) in moving forward from it, the future feels nonexistent because you never thought you’d make it this far. And then you do and you’re stuck the thought of ‘Now What?’ and you’re not entirely sure of what to do.

In Nog’s case though, he had something to return to, and goals to move forward towards, which I feel might’ve made the adjustment post-Paper Moon a little easier. Still difficult as all hell, but a little easier.

Now moving on to the other princesses and who I feel takes those roles in both spots.

With the Heart of Stone/Facets portion, I feel like Sisko, Rom, and Jadzia take up these spots. Sisko as Celestia, Jadzia as Luna, and Rom as Cadence.

In MLP, Celestia is the one who sends Twilight off to Ponyville, just as Sisko is equivalently sending Nog off to the Academy via that recommendation letter. And in watching Facets we get a sense of how hard Jadzia worked to earn the right of being a joined Trill and I feel like she’d recognize that sort of stubborn endurance in Nog and understand why it’s so important to him.

And while Cadence is Twilight’s older-sister-figure-turned-sister-in-law, the way she reassures Twilight in this song very much reminds me of how Rom acts as a father towards Nog and stands up to Quark and allows Nog to both apply and go to Starfleet despite Quarks saying otherwise.

Moving on to the Paper Moon part of this; Vic takes up Sisko’s place as Celestia, Rom takes up Jadzia’s place as Luna, and Jake takes up Rom’s place as Cadence.

“Your destiny is uncertain, and sometimes that’s hard to take’, is quite literally the synopsis of Vic’s little speech to Nog before he finally leaves the holosuite. There’s no telling what’s gonna happen to him if he leaves and as hard as that is, he has to face that.

And I will stand by this for as long as I live but Rom and Nog had some of the best character development out of any of the secondary cast of characters, development that can rival even the main cast. (heh, mane cast(plz laugh))

Rom has gone from being the antsy not even second hand under Quark to being a major player not just on the station but in the war effort against the Dominion. In reflection, I can see him recognizing that same want for something more than what Ferengi society expects of him that Nog has, that Nog inspires in him.

And oh my fucking god I’m gonna lose it about Jake/Jake and Nog’s friendship for a hot minute because watching your best friend go from the local troublemaker aside from yourself to not only a respected officer in one of the major military forces in the quadrant, the same one that your own father is a part of, but also a victim of war that you also are is going to be fucking rough.

That the two of you have come so far from when you first met, ending up so far from where expectations put the two of you. That while both of you have witnessed the horrors of war, you got out with only a few scrapes, being able to move on from it because someone was there and experienced it with you and told you that your feelings were warranted and that you didn’t have to be ashamed of being scared, your best friend, on the other hand, lost a fucking limb, has felt like his problems with phantom pain were chalked up to just something in his head. That he’s just crazy. Your friend is now isolating (in one of the CMO’s holosuite programs no less) from everything and everyone and no one knows how to help him.

And the one time you try to visit him you end up getting socked in the jaw. Every attempt made just seems to push him further away. And then like a month or so later, on top of the three he’s already spent in intensive physical and mental therapy, he comes back out and moves back in with you.

I see it as initially being very tense. Both of them just trying to go about their days in the aftermath and move forward, not knowing how to acknowledge or begin to talk about what happened. And when they do finally sit down and talk about it, it’s probably just as gut-wrenching as when the news of Nog’s injury first reached Jake.

In cliche archetypes/dynamics, I’ve always thought of Jake and Nog as Sun/Moon, the position of who’s which switching. Prior to Nog going into Starfleet, I had Jake pegged as the Moon and Nog as the Sun, but afterward, it switched; Jake is now the Sun and Nog is now the Moon.

Either way, one can’t fully shine without the other.

They’re a packaged deal and to separate them just feels wrong. They love each other. They’ve stuck by each other through so much, I can’t see them just not trying to fix things after Paper Moon. It’s hard, but damnit if they’re not gonna try.

Rewatching The Emissary, you know it’s gonna be a while coming but his time will come soon.

As the Sun rises, so does the Moon

As love finds a place in every heart

He’ll be a captain, he’ll play his part

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streets-in-paradise · 1 year

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Fate - Chucky (2021) Oneshot

Word Count 1.8 K

Characters: Junior Wheeler, Jake Wheeler, Chucky/Charles Lee Ray.

Warnings: References to greek tragedies.

Summary: Chucky is stucked on a literature class of Junior and Jake. He hopes to get a good chance of reading them both together and evaluate the most fitting candidate for his plans, but some things he didn't sign for emerge through it.

Tags: @losersclubisms

The hyperfocusing on sports that Logan demanded of his son had some consequences on the academic balance. The exigences of competition would take a lot of time from Junior and it wasn’t weird to see a parade of personal teachers coming to help him prepare for some exams. His literature teacher was particularly nice with Jake as well, even when he wasn’t her student. Coming back after his tragically circunstancial move to his uncle’s house showed her a situation that made her worried for both kids. Caring for them was part of the work of any good teacher, she couldn’t and wouldn’t be a mere reciter of curricular content.

“ Do you want to join us?” She asked directly to the boy at one time she saw him passing by when her class was about to start. “ You have to take the test as well, it’s good for both.”

Junior wasn’t very fond of that plan, but he wouldn’t complain. If she would comment on that with her father he would get in trouble for making him look bad. Jake stayed, but sat away from him placing Chucky in the middle like a divisory line.

It was a strange attitude that the teacher noticed, he sat the doll as if he would be a third student.

“ As I was saying, we are going to follow the thread that connects the pre and post trojan war related tragedies together. It’s important for me that you understand things in context and it will make it way easier for you on the test. Greek tragedies are a chain of events that follow families through generations. Self fulfilled curses tied one with another in deliciously cruel ironies. “

“ I’m not going to get lost, I read the Percy Jackson books as a kid.” Junior interrupted. “ I know enough about the gods and some about a few mortals.”

“ Riordan is to greek classics what Disney is to the Grimm Brothers: kid friendly versions that serve as a great startpoint to get little ones familiarized and invested. “ She kindly corrected, trying to show she was not being demeaning of his contribution. “ Those books wash out a lot of darker details that can be hard to swallow for our modern tastes. You will see it in our first play for today, ‘ Iphigenia in Aulis’. It tells the story of how the greeks managed to sail to Troy after a long wait in the port of Aulis because of bad weather. The huge army gathered was growing impatient because many days were passing and the winds wouldn’t blow, so their leaders consulted a seer and he had terrible news for their commander in chief, King Agamemnon of Mycenae.”

“ …The goddess of hunting was angry at him because he killed a sacred deer.” Jake followed, recuperating scratches of the few things he got to hear in class during his short span of attention. “ She was stopping the winds to paralyze the ships and the seer said that she would only let them leave if the king would sacrifice his daughter.”

“ … His favorite daughter, princess Iphigenia.” She continued, then smiled in approbation before getting into the more proper explanation. “ She was the eldest of her house, around your age when the play takes place. The argument focuses on the trick that leads to her sacrifice.”

Junior was deeply disturbed, surprisingly even more than his cousin.

“ Wait… Did he kill his daughter?”

“ In some versions he gives the deathly strike by his own hand, but Euripides says that the goddess had mercy on her at the last hour and took her away before she could be killed.”

“ Is there any version where the king thinks ‘ Well, maybe I will not kill my daughter to save my ass’?”

“ It’s his reputation, Junior.” She corrected, trying to help him challenge what she thought was just a modern bias. “ He was the King of Kings among greeks, he would have lost everything if he would have refused to give Iphigenia when all the other parents were giving their sons for the war. A war that he and his brother cared about the most, since they gathered all the greek forces through an old oath.”

“ Well, I think Agamemnon should have killed himself before making his girl die for his pride. He could have offered Artemis his own life, sacrifice himself and leave his brother to lead the army, but I bet he didn’t do that because he liked the power. A good father would have died for her, not sacrificed her to his ambition.”

“ Woow, woow, woow. Slow down, Achilles.” She stopped him with a subtle mock. “ I have to play devil’s advocate on Agamemnon because you have to get all the viewpoints if you want to understand what’s next. Queen Clytemnestra, the girl’s mother, never forgave her husband and that wound sealed the fate of the entire family. “

Junior was too invested in the story because he couldn’t help feeling identified with Iphigenia, seeing in both of her parents his own. The descriptions of the bond between the queen and her princess during the Aulis events reminded him of the special bond he had with his own mother. In Agamemnon he would see Logan killing a little bit of him every single day for the sake of his wishes. A child sentenced to death for the achievement of the father’s goals, the perfect son he was forced to be in sacrifice of his truest self to please him.

When the narration and discussion advanced another argument started because, on the topic of Clytemnestra’s revenge and its consequences, Jake showed understandment of Electra and Orestes. As if the cousins could never possibly agree on anything, they exposed their points to one another in a pretty heated tone that showed too much investment for a simple literature lesson.

“ The queen abandoned her other two children for the one she lost. They were her siblings, they had lost Iphigenia too, but she only cared for her pain over her one dead daughter.” Jake was attempting to correct one of Junior’s interventions. “ Her grief made her abusive, Electra and Orestes needed a mother but she could only be Iphigenia’s. For the love of her memory she made their lives miserable.”

He was thinking of his father, projecting into the characters the situation he faced with him after his mother died. Lucas focused too much on his pain of husband, abandoning himself to grief and neglecting him in every possible way. Junior was indignant to hear that the younger siblings sided with the father, the killer of their sister, but he had no idea of what living alone for years with a parent consumed by grief was.

“ Agamemnon manipulated his children from beyond his grave to kill their mother… How was it even possible? Clytemnestra did nothing wrong, she avenged their sister and released them from their prick of a father who would have killed any of them if their names would have been on the list. if I was Orestes, I would have killed him.”

Chucky observed the situation very carefully, so fortunate for his planning that he was barely able to believe his luck. Murder was being discussed and both kids were opening crossed point views, Junior being the surprise of the evening.

He wasn’t expecting the self satisfaction to end in the way your explanation almost killed it.

“ Agamemnon is for them the absent father. In absence he is idealized, Electra was barely a little girl the last time she saw him and Orestes practically a baby boy. Their dad left on a killing spree for ten years, a time in which they knew nothing about him.”

It hitted too close to home to not get an involuntary reaction. If the kids were thinking of their parents, Chucky got reminded of his children and the void he left with his absence.To some extent, he wondered if they had fabricated any idealized images of him that he could appeal to in case of need. Surprisingly, the class was giving him a lot to think about.

The doll moved his head and blinked his eyes to the teacher, who wondered if it was somehow broken.

" Is that normal?"

" I like to imagine that, when he does that, it means he is getting invested. " Jake lied carefully. " It gets activated too easily, most people find it creepy."

She did find it disturbing, but wouldn't want to admit it.

" We can leave the topic of the children for later. Commiting either parricide or matricide is the breaking of a fundamental law on greek lore, to the eyes of ancient greeks that makes you a monster. Things get more complicated for Orestes after that, but there are other aspects you have to understand first. Let's get into some character analysis of a very important player on Agamemnon's downfall. He didn't come back alone from his victory in Troy, he had Cassandra."

" The girl who was taken for crazy because she told the truth. '' Junior added, commenting from his bits of overall knowledge. " Nobody believed her and she ended up the only survivor of her whole family. "

" The cursed seer, exactly. " She confirmed. " During the fall of Troy she was raped by Ajax the lesser, but Agamemnon took definitive possesion of her. She arrives in Mycenae as a slave, her will and body belong to the man who slaughtered everyone she cared about. The ironic point here is that Agamemnon has no idea that, from the moment he crosses his gates with her, his fate is sealed. "

" Life is short... hahaha" the recording voice of the doll called.

Chucky couldn't help thinking of Nica, who he possessed ríght after finding her pervert doctor on the act. Whose entire family he killed, who he pushed to be seen as crazy.

" Well, little buddy. In that you are ríght. Life was, indeed, short for Agamemnon after that. " She continued in a mock, marveling at how on point was the strange recorded catchphrase of the doll. " The interesting thing I find here is how, in his lack of self awareness, Agamemnon puts two women he wronged deeply in the way of each other to indirectly fulfill that dark fate. Cassandra knows that he is going to die and her warning triggers everything. For the first time ever she can weaponize her curse and she does it even though she knows it's going to bring her death too. Clytemnestra is her enemy, her eventual killer, but there is a silent complicity in wanting that man dead that goes beyond that. "

" She has nothing left to live for, he took everything from her and when he ran out of things he took her. " Jake followed. " That's devastating, she is not a person anymore at that point, but a thing. "

" Nothing left to live, nothing left to lose." Junior concluded. " Agamemnon you dumb asshole, how could you think that was going to work? "

Chucky's mind was circumstantially tangled in paranoia, feeling as if her words were direct warnings to him. It couldn't be, she was just giving the damn class to the kids.

Whatever that was, it saved her life. He could have pulled on her a deathly trick as soon as she would be alone exactly like when he killed the housekeeper, but he was too haunted by the moment to try anything.

#chucky #chucky fanfiction #junior wheeler #jake wheeler #charles lee ray

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jynxeddraca · 1 year

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Avatar, The Way of Water

My Uncle and his fiance wanted to go watch it so I got to see it in IMAX 3D. I didn’t actually like the first one, this one was pretty good. However, there are a couple parts I want to fuss about so major spoilers under the cut.

Okay, first of fucking all, wasn’t Grace buried at the end of the first movie? How the ever loving fuck would they have known she was pregnant? She was buried and in the ground. I swear she was buried. And even if they didn’t show her being buried like I apparently thought they did, why wouldn’t they bury her????? She was fucking dead.

Also, when they do the flash back of the past decade or so, the order that they show things happening in is Neytiri being pregnant with her firstborn, then them introducing that baby to the clan, and then it’s like “Oh yeah, by the way, Grace’s Avatar body is in incubation and somehow she’s pregnant”. It’s weird and while I’m convinced it’s an immaculate conception via the consciousness transfer through Eywa, the timing is really weird.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like Kitty’s character. I thought she was interesting. But the fact still remains that I really thought they had buried Grace and it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever that apparently not only that they didn’t, but they instead decided to incubate her avatar corpse??? For reasons????

The other thing that really bothers me about that whole plot point is that they have two of Kitty’s “brothers” (neither are related to her) poking fun and cracking jokes about who her dad is and it gives me major ick because it’s like they’re casually insinuating that something happened between Grace’s avatar body and one of the scientists. And it made me really uncomfortable.

Just, what the actual fuck man?

Additionally, I have a whole issue with the whole reason the family went to live at the reef clan in general. The Bad Guy™ is back (I’m not mad at the way the he’s back. That was standard sci-fi techno reincarnation) and wants revenge on Jake Sully now chief of his clan.

Okay, so far with you.

Jake’s clan start doing raids on the Sky People military shit and his older sons are with him. Still with you.

Then they realize the Bad Guy™ is back and has no problems kidnapping and hurting kids, and so he takes his family away to “protect” the whole clan, even though the whole clan has been doing raids and is actively putting themselves in danger to get the Sky People to go away. The whole clan also is very aware that the Bad Guy™ has a special hatred for Jake and his family but knows how to deal with both avatars and the military. So of course the logical thing for Jake to do is fake his death, take his family, and leave everything his family has ever known to disappear and not be involved with the war efforts anymore.

Oh, and move to a clan of nearly fully aquatic (and kinda pacifist) Na’vi and makes his wife and kids learn how to be like them, which nearly gets them drowned several times in the movie.

I kinda get his reasoning. Bad guy is hunting him. Bad guy will hurt his kids. Bad guy has no moral compass and will hurt others to get to him.

SO HE FAKES HIS DEATH AND GOES TO FUCKING PACIFISTS?!?! TO HIDE???

Like, that is the dumbest thing. He is actively being hunted, his two oldest sons have already been involved with the war raids, he’s leaving his clan at a disadvantage, he knows this isn’t going to totally fool the Bad Guy™, and he is totally fucking aware that the people who he joins aren’t involved and that his presence might get people killed. Shock and awe, that’s exactly what fucking happens.

And I realize the Metkayina clan are not total pacifists but they don’t want anything to do with what’s happening with the Sky People. And Jake directly puts clans that aren’t even aware of who he is or where he is in serious danger. And they like, acknowledge this in the movie. They’re aware of what their presence means. Him and Neytiri have a whole fight about it.

It’s the most major of plot points in the movie, and it only kinda makes sense on the surface. Because he was okay with his kids involved in the fighting, until Bad Guy™ shows up, and then suddenly “we must protect the childrens” and they need to disappear into the ocean. And there’s 4 more movies planned in this series.

#avatar #The way of the water #spoilers

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asharkapologist · 2 years

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Corine Myers Analysis (with a bit of comparison to Jake Rogers)

Heads up: this is a LONG analysis--in my Google docs, this is over 2100 words lol

So, after reading @naancypants really good Jake Rogers analysis (sidenote--I’ll probably make one, too at some point when I get the energy to write another long post), I was reminded of another often-overlooked evil genius character--Corine Myers. I thought I’d be fun to analyze Corine and also compare and contrast her with Jake.

So, Corine Myers. She’s got one of my favorite, most relatable, in a way, motivations out of any Nancy Drew culprits (technically, she has three motivations: find Poe’s manuscript, get the scholarship, and, at the very least subconsciously retaliate against her classmates). The game isn’t clear if she was planning on selling Poe’s manuscript or not (I have a feeling she would either keep it to herself or sell/give it to the school in order to increase her reputation with the faculty and garner some respect with her classmates, but she definitely wouldn’t, like, drop it on eBay). All three of her motivations tied nicely into each other--if she got rid of the competition to be valedictorian, she could retaliate against all of the people who treated her poorly, and the less people around, the easier it would be to find the manuscript.

It’s the scholarship and retaliation motivations that I really want to talk about. We’ve had (very boring) culprits whose motivations are “money,” but, like I said, I think Corine would be very selective with who she’d be willing to sell the manuscript to, and would probably only consider Waverly itself. But a culprit who’s also somewhat motivated by wanting scholarship money? I think that’s a unique twist on the cliche money motivation of other culprits (and is another game that once again shows how expensive college is). But even with this unique twist on the “greed” motivation, that’s not even her primary motivation, either. The following is an exchange between Nancy and Ned:

Nancy: I think she’s real bitter about how the kids here treat her, and is doing all this Black Cat stuff to get even with them.

Ned: What about being valedictorian?

Nancy: I think that’s just another reason she’s bitter. I think she thinks she’s got being valedictorian in the bag, and she resents being compared to kids she feels are clearly inferior to her.

Nancy is right. Corine is very proud of her intelligence. When Nancy asks if she got in on a legacy, Corine says, “I earned my way into this place. I was accepted because I was the most deserving applicant like ever.” And she makes it very clear that she thinks that she’s the only one who will actually get the spot of valedictorian, even if she isn’t as popular as Leela and Izzy. (Sidenote: Waverly’s faculty is absolutely terrible, but that is a post for another day). Becoming valedictorian would be amazing for her: she’d finally get respect, her political aspirations would benefit greatly from such an honor, and she’d be getting revenge on her classmates who treated her poorly (especially Izzy, who is equally as confident that she will become valedictorian). This leads right into her third motivation, which Nancy calls her “subconscious desire to retaliate against her classmates.”

This is where I think it’s interesting to compare and contrast Corine with the franchise’s other high school senior evil genius with a penchant for blackmailing people, Jake Rogers.

Corine was smarter than Jake, in my opinion. Even if it took astute observation to stalk/observe his classmates enough to discover their secrets and intelligence to leave around a bunch of clues nudging along whoever he hoped would solve his murder and/or bring his classmates to justice, Jake ended up biting off more than he could chew and paid with it for his life. He also directly went to people and blackmailed them, while Corine hid behind her threats, and her two blackmail victims didn’t even know it was her blackmailing her, since she never directly approached them and always used a different email to contact them (contrasted with Jake, who directly approached people to blackmail them and, in the Remastered version, literally gave the professional criminals he was trying to blackmail his name and phone number…bit stupid there, Jake). Jake’s also described throughout both versions of Secrets Can Kill as lazy (most likely primarily academically, since works enough at his job at Maxines in the Remastered version to avoid getting fired). Compare him to Corine, who is swamped with work but is determined to graduate at the top of her class, and is very confident that she’ll get the scholarship (though she does make you do her homework on one occasion, so I guess she was lazy in that one instance and that was definitely cheating, though if we reported all the cheating going on in the game all of the valedictorians save Leela and Mel would be out of the race). Corine also survives the game (though with a ruined academic career and not much of a future) while Jake gets himself tossed down some stairs. I guess both are pretty bad and not ideal but…I don’t feel too bad for getting her expelled, since by the end of the game, she’d tried to kill two innocent people and deeply traumatized another person.

Oh yeah, she tried to kill two of her classmates. While an argument could be made whether or not she was intending to kill Megan or not, since Megan says she’s been to the hospital several times on account of her allergies and eventually recovered, she was CERTAINLY trying to kill Nancy/get Nancy killed in the endgame. Even Jake didn’t go that far.

In a way, Corine is also a lesson regarding the potentially negative consequences of bullying, because as you play the game, it is impossible to not pity her. She’s a bit awkward and lacks a filter, which she hastily tries to cover up, and she openly admits to being insecure. It’s also just depressing when talking to her about Izzy and, conversely, Izzy about Corine, because Izzy was just horrible and, in my opinion, one of the cruelest non-culprits in the franchise. But…wow, the hatred Corine ended up having for her classmates was alarming, and, as sympathetic her motivation was, by the end of the game, her actions were beyond justifying.

Another contrast: Jake is described by Hal to be a bully. Conversely, Corine was obviously being bullied and, unlike Jake, was NOT excluding herself by choice. The nicest emotion characters have is ambivalence towards her. Mel and Rachel/Kim aren't popular either, but they’re content with this, and thus are more respected by their classmates, unlike Corine. While Jake was a loner/outcast by choice, who didn’t seem to care that everyone hated him and was introverted to the point that in the Remastered version, his goal for the rest of his life was to literally move away from everyone and live in solitary luxury (sometimes I feel that, not gonna lie), Corine was very, very clearly lonely and wanted to belong, she wanted her reputation to improve, she wanted people to like her. But when she discovers through her research that the manuscript was hidden in the school, and that she REALLY wanted to find it and needed everyone gone in order to most efficiently do so, she realized this would be the perfect opportunity for revenge.

I don’t think we as a fandom recognize how twisted the things she did was, and how observant she must have been, and, like Jake, the technical accomplishments she’d have to do to carry out some of her sabotage (and she was planning on majoring in English, good on her for having some STEM knowledge, too, couldn’t relate…). She targeted people perfectly, and, while Megan’s allergies were and Danielle’s claustrophobia likely was common knowledge to everyone, she somehow (and I do mean somehow, since the game gives no explanation as to how she found out), discovered Rachel was, in fact, two different people. And she was patient, too--unlike Jake, who seemed to have immediately jumped into blackmail once he found out his classmates’ secrets, Corine discovered the twins’ secrets months before the start of the game, but then waited until she had something that the twins could do to her--be her backup, leave the notes, so that they could take the fall if something went wrong. Jake was kind of a chaotic evil since he didn’t seem to have a grand overall plan except “buy this island,” Corine’s blackmailing did tie into her grand scheme. She was more careful and methodical than he was.

And later, she successfully reformats Izzy’s hard drive to wipe away any trace of her essay. Maybe that’s common knowledge or easy to do or something, I wouldn’t know, I suck at tech-y stuff. But I certainly didn’t know how to do that as a high school senior. Though I think that’s more cruel than we realize, since, while Megan was rushed to a hospital but able to recover, Izzy had to watch a semesters worth of material get wiped away and be forced to realize that becoming the valedictorian was no longer possible. She likely couldn’t get any accommodations, since she wasn’t in the hospital like Megan. So…I doubt Izzy became valedictorian. (My personal headcanon is that Leela became valedictorian, but that’s a post for some other time, too).

Something that I think is interesting is that the people she targeted the most viciously--the twins, Danielle, and Megan--weren’t even her primary bullies, Izzy was. In fact, the twins were social outcasts themselves, and Megan hated Izzy, too. And don’t get me wrong, reformatting someone’s hard drive is a very malicious thing to do, as said above, but pales in comparison to trying to kill someone via spiking their food or taking advantage of someone’s fears to psychologically torture them. All of this was very opportunistic, and if you ask me, not necessarily an effort to target the people who had made her suffer the most, and was more of an effort to exercise control over people, and retaliate the social environment that had wronged her.

Corine has much more sympathetic motivations than Jake. While Jake’s ultimate goal was to buy an island and he was a bully himself, Corine was being bullied. I think part of us can all find something relatable in Corine if we’ve ever been mocked, excluded, or even bullied. And yet, by the end of the game, she completely lost her humanity and sunk to violent lows that, as I said, Jake never did. She tried to kill Megan and, at the end of the game, Nancy. I do believe that eventually, finding the manuscript while important to her, became less important, or at least, having control over the people that had treated her poorly, making them scared of her, rather than the other way around, and having their lives in their hands, became just as important, and why she was on a power high and willing to kill Nancy, who had treated her well throughout the game, in order to preserve her secrets. I feel like we don’t recognize how twisted the line, “You’re pretty smart. But are you smart enough to live to tell the tale? I don’t think so” is when it’s coming from a SEVENTEEN/EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL. Like Nancy/us are used to being threatened by middle-aged adults, but by a high school senior? Yikes.

Corine was proud of being the Black Cat; at the very beginning of the game, she’s the one who initially brings it up to Nancy. Now, she was bullying people, she had their lives, in Megan’s case, social and academic reputation, in Rachel and Kim’s case, and grades, in Izzy’s case, in her hands. And she would kill someone in order to keep that power and control over Waverly Academy. She’d find the manuscript, perhaps give it to the school, and destroy everyone else in order to become valedictorian, and show them exactly what she was capable of, despite the years of bullying and exclusion she’d suffered at their hands. But, like a lot of tragic villains, in my opinion, she had some morals--she never hurt Mel, who she considered to be the only person kind to her, her only true friend, since the plagiarism issue was likely orchestrated by Izzy, since there’s no indication Corine knew who Jacob was, and would have had little sway over him to frame Mel for plagiarism. And that kind of villain--one who does horrible, despicable things, but still has some sort of moral compass and feels like everyone around them deserves what’s happening to them, because they never did anything to help them when they needed it the most--that is a well-written villain.

Corine was an incredibly smart, calculated, cruel, yet tragic villain. She knew how to play her cards and should definitely be recognized as one of the best, most intelligent villains of the franchise.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #corine myers #jake rogers #warnings at waverly academy #secrets can kill #secrets can kill remastered #wac #sck #sck:r #izzy romero #wow this was a long one #but very fun

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autumnblogs · 3 years

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Aside Glance: The Palpable Absence of the Dubiously Canonical

So you might have noticed throughout my writings that I have at the same time avoided directly talking about any of the expanded universe material while also occasionally alluding to it just enough to make it noticeable. At least, probably.

So to nobody’s surprise, let me say;

I don’t like the Homestuck Epilogues.

Before I dig into why, I wanna dig out what I think I actually do like about the Homestuck Epilogues. CW: for mentions of suicide, sexual violence, fascism, genocide, etc. Spoiler Warning for the Homestuck Epilogues, although if you haven’t read them by now, good; don’t. Keep reading for my thoughts on the Epilogues.

I do like that the Homestuck Epilogues say quite loudly and clearly that Fascism Is Terrible, and that Neo-Liberals are often Discount Fascists at best in terms of the material effects they have on the world that we have to share with them. They can often end up being interchangeable, and events can cause someone with a temperament predisposed toward Neo-liberalism down the path of bloody reactionary sentiment the way it did with Jane.

Homestuck has always been a pretty soundly anti-authoritarian work, and pretty aggressively contemporary work, so it makes sense that Homestuck^2 would reflect an internet culture rabidly obsessing about the politics of the Trump-Era United States, cast its villains as parallels to the Trump Administration, the grody religious movements it catered to, and the hyper-rich dingalings who benefited from it.

I do like that the Homestuck Epilogues develop the theme of criticizing the author and continues to call attention to its narrators, this time by explicitly casting them as villainous, and morally ambiguous/incomprehensible respectively. A central idea in Homestuck is the relationship between Author, Audience, and Characters, and the blending of the lines between them.

I like that it calls attention not just to the idea that a story’s narrator is an agent themselves, but also to the reality that the narrator may not have the best interests of either their readers, or their characters in mind. I like that the authorial powers of these characters are represented as overtly dangerous and evil when they are addressed at all.

I also like that the Homestuck Epilogues are rather brutally honest about the fact that sometimes, the people that you grew up with - your close friends - grow apart from you, and turn into kind of bad people. I’ve watched that happen in real time, and have had to stop hanging out with people because they just kind of... turned evil. That’s something that needs to be discussed more in fiction, and more honestly than the usual way. When the most visible example of like, someone you knew and loved turning into a bad person is like, Anakin Skywalker, maybe the world needs more stories about that.

So good, that’s what we’ve got for things I think were good to say. Well done.

What don’t I like about the Homestuck Epilogues?

In a word, I think, they are cruel. Relentlessly cruel. Even actively malicious.

Homestuck has, of course, always been rather mean-spirited and adversarial, pretty much since page one. And really, so has Andrew’s writing in general, since the days when he ran the site Team Special Olympics. His humor walks a fine line between and outrageous and genuinely offensive, as he dares you to say, “That’s fucked up!” so he can respond “it was just a joke, where’s your sense of humor?”

But the Epilogues transcend the usual sardonic envelope-pushing we can usually count on Andrew for, and instead opt to sink their teeth into the readers in an assault on the senses, and on the sensibilities. Reading the Epilogues is a brutal experience to endure emotionally, and in a lot of places, morally offensive.

And they are this way practically from the first page; our very first impression of the Homestuck Epilogues is a content warning that presents itself in such a way as to be almost unmistakably parodic. The stylization as an AO3 work, particularly in the context of Homestuck, where these sorts of overzealous content warning pages are associated with preachy jerks like Kankri, it comes across as a direct challenge to the viewer, and by a challenge, I really mean an attack. It is a mean-spirited joke at the expense of people who have a desire to curate their media experience - and then the authors have the gall to say that the one of the goals of the Epilogues is to challenge people to curate their media more.

Every time a character could conceivably make a bad decision, or become a more ill-conceived version of themselves, they somehow manage it, which becomes all the more unbearable because of the identification of character and audience that has been the case throughout all of Homestuck. If Homestuck introduces us to this entire cast and says, this is you, the Epilogues seem to follow up with and there is nothing good about you. Jade Harley somehow transforms into a grotesque caricature of a trans-woman, a girl who is sexually incontinent and predatory in a way that is directly tied to her having a dog penis - a state of being which the text variously slut-shames her for in Meat, or alternatively uses to blame her for ruining Dave and Karkat’s relationship in Candy.

John Egbert is severely depressed and dysfunctional, and this leads him either to go off and kill Lord English to chase the thrill of adventure and his own sense of purpose (in direct opposition to the all-but-explicitly-stated takeaway from Homestuck which Dave gives us, that the better option is to just leave the story alone altogether - explicitly the worst decision he could make according to the rules of Homestuck) or descend into decades of nihilistic solipsism while the world disintegrates around him.

Dirk’s worst natures take over him and transform him into a person who can only conceivably be satisfied either by becoming an arch-villain, or by murdering himself.

The Epilogues are aggressively cruel to Jake English, choosing to double down on the lack of emotional resolution he suffered from at the end of Homestuck, and squarely placing the blame for his own misery on his own shoulders, in a way which is pretty hard to read around, which is part and parcel of the general malice which Homestuck has historically treated mentally ill characters with. Nearly all the kids in Homestuck have suffered incomprehensible levels of mental and physical abuse, and the text expects them to simply overcome it sheerly by force of will. Sure, Jake is miserable but it’s his own fault, the text seems to say; if he’d just get his act together, like Dave, maybe he could get on with his life without being mind-broken by Dirk, or raped and whipped by Jane.

This isn’t even to delve into the flagship reveal of Homestuck 2, that Rose and Jade in the Candy Timeline have not only had a daughter of their own (without telling Kanaya), but that furthermore they have replicated their own trauma in her. Rose and Jade’s daughter has grown up completely emotionally alone, in the care of her Moms’ archenemy.

The point in all of this is not that the Epilogues have made everyone behave out of character or anything like that - I think it’s clear after a re-read especially that all of this is a conceivable direction that these characters could have taken. Rather, the Epilogues reliably choose to believe the worst of the characters of Homestuck in terms of their writing decisions. Everyone always makes the worst decision that they could make, or at the very least, nearly the worst. And because of the identification of reader and character, we can’t help but take away from that a sense that this is what the authors think of us as well.

And in case it wasn’t stated explicitly enough, a running theme throughout the Epilogues is that all this conflict and badness taking place is, to some extent or another, because we the audience are looking at it. As Andrew stated in relation to the Epilogues, there’s a kind of Happily Ever After possibility bubble around the characters that intrinsically collapses into conflict the moment we observe the events again - in other words, by participating in a story, we the audience members are somehow complicit in the characters’ suffering. Yet not all stories must be driven by conflict - and who triumphs and who fails in that conflict says a lot about what a story has to say about real life.

The Epilogues engage in a kind of voyeuristic cruelty, a kind of pessimism and cynicism, a kind of relentless ugliness that I have seldom seen, and to what end? The whole thing seems to me an attack on the audience.

Aside from general, abstracted claims toward authorial intent (which I think is there), I also want to say that, I can’t emotionally engage with the Epilogues, for a personal reason; as somebody who has struggled with almost daily suicidal ideation for most of my adult life, the way that the Epilogues deal with that subject goes from troubling to malicious and hostile in its treatment of Dirk’s suicide.

And staying personal, while I haven’t had to deal with some of the other sensitive topics that the Epilogues handle recklessly, handle them recklessly they do - Jake is serially raped by Jane, and in a way that he serves as a vehicle to move the plot forward, rather than with any kind of compassion for Jake’s condition. The possibility that Tavros Crocker might be being molested by Gamzee is brought up flippantly in one scene and played off as a joke.

The Homestuck Epilogues play at maturity through handling dark themes and sensitive topics, and reveal a profound immaturity in their authors because of the ways in which they are cruelly, insensitively handled over and over again.

I guess I’ll close with the least egregious thing. The Homestuck Epilogues just aren’t funny. Even at its bleakest, Homestuck has always been funny. In their relentless pursuit of cruelty, and the shared misery of their audience and characters, the Homestuck Epilogues forgo even this most basic element of Homestuck, which Andrew has always described as being basically a comedy.

Anyway; I will not be doing a thorough analysis of the Epilogues. I hate them too much and they suck.

#The Homestuck Epilogues #rape mention #suicide mention #fascism

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darkasagrowl · 4 years

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Understanding Wesker’s motivations

I’m not claiming to be an expert on character analysis, but I sure as heck am tired of seeing every RE head canon I come across making this guy seem like he does what he does just for laughs, or because he is “just evil”, or emotionally unattached. Like seriously?

Here I list 3 major points about his character. Some are speculation but most of it is based on information that we have been given throughout the games.

Let me know what you think:

1. Emotionally detached - I can't believe people pull this one up on him constantly. We have more than enough evidence that this couldn't be farther from the truth. First of all, we have Birkin as one proof that he can develop and maintain deep and meaningful connections with other people. We can also go back to re6 and argue that maybe he also had a relationship with Jake's mom, but we don't have enough evidence of that (that I'm aware). Ultimately, we can refer to how he lets his anger control him in re5, if nothing else. He might be incredibly intelligent, but he isn't as rational as he likes to make people believe.

2. Concerned for Alex? - in re5 there is a list of which of the Wesker children are alive, but in rev2 we see a picture of both Alex and Albert together. He seems to be wearing the same clothes from re4, which could mean the picture dates from around the same time. If this is true, maybe this is around the same time that Alex started her own experiments at that island and they lost touch. Wesker could be using that list and info about the children to try and track her down and find out what she's up to, and maybe he himself gave her the uroboros sample she ended up working on.

3. Superiority complex - I argue that he has in fact the opposite. Wesker has an inferiority complex and it is only enhanced further the more he interacts with Chris. I think Wesker is a bit jealous of him, and also, hates that Chris got such an accurate read of him. So this one's a little long:

Wesker has lived his whole life thinking all he had ever accomplished was on him. He believed he was smarter and generally better at everything than everyone else. This boosted his ego from a very young age. He finally discovers that everything he has ever done, everything he had ever thought or discovered or whomever he'd manipulated to get what and to where he wanted could actually not be due to his free will, but because he was being controlled by Spencer and Umbrella and even his existence was, as he put it, "manufactured". He was manufactured to act that way; to think that way - he was manufactured to be this next step in human evolution that he had always thought he was. But he was actually a thing, not an actual person; no better that those experiments he had trifled with his entire life. This realization, I believe, broke him. Just think about it, what would you do if you found out suddenly that your every action or thought might never have been your own; that they might have been imposed on you? Well I certainly know what I would try to do: prove to myself and to whoever is still watching that I can, in fact, make my own decisions; act according to my own free will.

And that's what he did. The whole "God" thing, I think, was him trying to make his actions big, and by big, I mean meaningful. I mean, can you imagine being someone that has been involved in how the world is being shaped, in how different societies are developing solely because of your own advancements and meddling in either science or political relations around the globe (due to selling and enforcing the use of chemical warfare and terrorism)? Can you imagine, after all that, something that would really have an impact in your life and prove to you and everyone around you that you are your own person; that what you are doing, you are doing it of your own accord and, again, free will? I mean, it HAS to be something BIG.

Que Redfield. Like I said before, Chris had Wesker all figured out immediately at the end of re1 (tyrant scene). It's obvious how his laugh affects Wesker. But I believe Wesker is visibly confused by this, and not angered per se. See, I think this is the point in which he has one of his first realizations as "himself" and not as an Umbrella/Spencer project. I think he did think the same thing as Chris: what he was doing, and the way he was acting at that moment, WAS pitiful. But the thing is, although he knew that, he couldn’t understand why. I mean, that was what he had been working on for a long time, and he was finally about to see it in action, but it still felt lacking; and what happened next proves it to him (being stabbed by it meant that thing he was so proud of, so enamored by, wasn't perfect -but he was - so it made no sense to see himself in such a thing; such a “failure” as Chris puts it, or did it?). This started his hatred for Redfield. Before this, we can argue that maybe, during their time together at STARS, their interactions made Wesker see how different his life could have been. Seeing how carefree Chris was in his younger years made him realize how repressed he must have felt when he was his age (and maybe at that time as well), but there isn't much information about this time, except the novels, but I'm not sure about how canon they are, so let's leave this part at that.

Even in re5, when Chris asked if he always takes his ideas from comic book villains, he got it right. I know this one sounds far-fetched, but bear with me here. What if he did? What if the only thing he could think about was to a simpler time in his life, when Umbrella didn't feed him their intentions 24/7? I believe that, when he was a child, his life must have been relatively normal, to a certain extent so he must have had hobbies; things kids like to do growing up. And what is something kids enjoy? Reading comics. I know, this doesn't make much sense, that I'm making this part up or whatever, but we don't know about this part in his life. Maybe, when he found out about his origin and felt the need to reject it, his mind shot back to a simpler time; to when he felt safe and as normal as everyone else. It makes sense to me. But you can disregard this part if you want.

Back to Chris, in re5 we can see more closely how Wesker is jealous of Chris. He's had numerous chances in the past to either let him die or directly kill him, although he always opted for the option of "toying" with him. In re5 this is no different. He could have easily killed Chris (and Sheva) in the first fight they have, but opts to "play" for 7 minutes. The second fight he could have finished the job, but he wanted to make it last and was defeated, which led to him being temporarily weakened and presumably dying at the volcano.

The way he says his name, the way he yells for him; it's always Chris, even though others have thwarted his plans and machinations, Wesker always seems to have Chris in his mind; it doesn't matter who else is around, Chris is always there - it's always him, even when it isn't. It feels as though Wesker wants to prove to either Chris or himself (or maybe both) that he is better than Chris, but always ends up failing.

And ultimately, I think it's because Chris has the life Wesker always wanted to have. This hatred developed from earlier in their lives, to seeing how he has a family that cares enough about him to risk their own lives for him (Claire in both re2 and code Veronica), close friends and a seemingly easy ability to befriend people (something that his cold and controlled demeanor prevents him from, achieving little more than a relationship of authority towards most people *and also, can we talk about his sunglasses? He's been wearing them since before his eyes mutated. Was this on purpose to create even more distance from people and make developing any form of connection impossible?*) and finally, a purpose. Yes, a purpose. He's always had something up his sleeve during his time at Umbrella and after, but their accomplishment was never enough; it never satisfied him. And after speaking with Spencer about his origin, it finally made sense. Those were never his goals. They were the designs of other people whom, at the end of it all, failed; which could also be something that affects him, knowing that, to top it all off, he failed - his existence is summed up to be just a failed experiment.

Idk man, if that were me, I'd also be poppin' off.

#resident evil #wesker #albert wesker #chris redfield #capcom #I know I may be missing some major points #such as how Wesker exposed Umbrella and Spencer #but maybe it was a little act of rebeliousness?#and furthermore #his friendship with birkin?#he might have also realized that he wasnt really his friend #but was acting the part because of umbrella #maybe!#can you imagine what that must have felt #that your only friend wasnt realy your firend at all?#dude has very questionable morals #but he also had a tough life #head canon

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aenochianwardingstuff · 4 years

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Where’s the angel?

He definitely wasn't on set.

I wasn’t going to post anymore about this but as more is conformed the angrier I become. I know its just a tv show, that honestly I haven’t enjoyed in a few years. But it was important to me for a long time and I had hoped that I would be able to go back and watch the show again. I have only watched each episode once, I have the DVDs and was planning to rewatch it all once the show was done, but I don’t think I can look back and enjoy the show now knowing where its going. I also know that the episodes haven’t aired yet, so I shouldn’t jump to conclusions. I honestly didn’t care how it ended. I was ok with characters dying if it felt earned it was in service of something. That was except with Cas he has died 4 times in service of the plot. That is not a fitting end for him, it is a predictable boring rehash of something that has been done again and again and again, its not even original.

The reason I’m going on about this now, before we have seen the episodes it because what difference dose it make making a statement after the show is done. They aren’t going to care. They will have had the ratings and that's all they care about. Also I know that nothing is going to change by speaking up now. I just feel that its important to make it very clear that a significant percentage of viewers are not happy with what the ending seems to be. That we are not just going to accept any crap they give us.

If you are not already angry about Misha not being there on the last day of filming, and the last 2 episodes, this might make you. Remember the happy birthday video. Where Jensen had the lovely idea of singing it as dirge. A funeral song. Knowing full well that Cas was very clearly killed in the last episode and that he wont he back to film anymore EVER. Who dose that to a friend. How did he think that was a good idea. On Misha’s birthday, the First birthday in over a decade that he was not on set filming, he thought it was good idea to remind him that a character he spent 12 years playing died, that he would never play him again. That filming was going on without him, that he wasn’t a part of the ending. The is a incredibly cruel thing to do to anyone. Especially someone that is meant to be a friend. I don’t care if he thought Misha would find it funny, that he would laugh about. I’m sure that it still would have really hurt even if he didn’t show it.

Also Jake then makes a video teasing the fans about Misha not being there, because they asked where his chair was. Of course they asked. He is the 3rd main character, has been in over 100 episodes of course they expected him to be there.

I am asking all of the Cas fans, destiel shippers. those that have been lead on by the writers and showrunners. who have kept Cas around to keep them watching, but given him nothing and lessened his characters to make the Winchester's look better, to STOP WATCHING.

Don’t watch the show when it airs on tv

I know some of you may still want to watch, to finish what you started, finish Cas’s story, to hope it will be good. If you have to watch (Good luck) then please, please don’t watch it live. Don’t add to the ratings. Watch it on catch up or form a pirate site, just do not watch live on the cw. This is the clearest way to be seen.

Don’t interact with the CW promotion

This means liking or rebloging any promo videos or pictures that comes from the CW. This doesn’t meant ignoring the actors, just the office promotional material. This is show a loss in interest in the show. You can of course watch, see the promo stuff just don’t add to the spread of it.

Get the #wherestheangel trending

Use this # anytime you post about the show. It would be great if we could have this # trending right up till the end of the show, but the main time to be trending is after 15x18. The fandom has had 2 # trending in the last week, I know we can do this. Use this tag for anything you post related to the show. Use it as a tag to discus, celebrate Cas/Misha. The impact they have had. because honestly Misha is the one that interacts with the spnfamily the most, he is the one that made us a family. He brought us together to affect positive change in the world. so lets show some positivity to wards him and the character he created.

#thankyoucas #thankyoumisha trending 18th September

For Cas’s last birthday, his last. I think it is important to show how much this character has meant to a lot of people by thanking him and his actor on his birthday. Lets drown out the dirge birthday song.

Lastly please, please reblog this

I am a nobody on here, and don’t have twitter, so I am begging you to please reblog this. Every like makes me very happy, but if you agree with the post then it is so very important to spread the world.

This is not in anyway meant to be used to hate on the cast or the crew that work year round to make the show happen. Any criticism that comes form this is directed directly at those that deserve it. The writers and showrunners. Those that have kept you watching by keeping a character you love around, hinting that he will be important but never letting him archive anything. Taking away any important relationships be may have and giving it to the Winchesters. those that drop hints that they see your ship, that he understand it. Then turning round and laughing at you when you read into it want to they want you to see.

Thank you.

Please reblog #wherestheangel

#wherestheangel #castiel #Misha Collins #Supernatural Finale #supernatural family #Jensen Ackles #jake abel #Destiel

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

My house is blissfully quiet, but my ears are still ringing.

The first presidential debate of 2020 was unlike anything we have seen before. CNN’s Jake Tapper said: "That was a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck." "He was his own tweets come to life." “We’ll talk about who won the debate, who lost the debate ... One thing for sure, the American people lost.” Conservative pundit William Kristol called it “a spectacle… an embarrassment… a disgrace… because of the behavior of one man, Donald Trump. The interrupting and the bullying, the absence of both decency and dignity—those were Donald Trump’s distinctive contributions to the evening, and they gave the affair the rare and sickening character of a national humiliation.”

Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?

In a normal presidential debate, both candidates try to explain their policy proposals, jab at their opponent, and convince undecided voters to move in their direction. If this had been a normal presidential debate, its weight would have fallen on Trump, who is significantly behind Biden, to win voters. Biden’s goal would simply have been not to lose anyone.

If we were calling this like a normal presidential debate, Trump lost. He did not move the needle in his direction. Biden won; he did not lose anyone.

But this was not a normal presidential debate.

Trump long ago gave up the pretense that he wanted to win a majority of voters. For months now, he has made no effort to reach outside of his base. Instead he has focused on solidifying and radicalizing it. As his trade war with China and the coronavirus has weakened his support, he has given massive grants to farmers, promised checks to 33 million elderly to help pay for prescriptions, splashed transportation grants around, and recently even offered grants to lobstermen who have lost business because of the trade war.

Trump set out tonight not to convince undecided voters to support him, but rather to harden his supporters and encourage them to disrupt the election so he can contest the results until the solution goes to the Supreme Court where he hopes a majority will rule in his favor. He laid it all out tonight.

His performance was no accident. He came out determined to dominate the debate in much the same way as Fox News Channel personalities or talk radio hosts dominate their shows. He interrupted, argued, lied, and generally sucked the oxygen out of the room. He cheated, refusing to follow the rules that he had agreed to, thus demonstrating that he would not be bound by the rules everyone else had to live by. He bullied moderator Chris Wallace of the Fox News Channel into repeatedly appeasing him by saying, for example, “Mr. President you’re going to be very happy, because we’re going to talk about law and order,” and “Let me ask — sir, you’ll be happy, I’m about to pick up on one of your points to ask the vice president.” Trump was attempting to demonstrate his dominance.

He went on to echo the grievances and lies that his supporters have come to believe. Ignoring the more than 200,000 Americans dead of Covid-19, he insisted he was the victim of Democrats’ lies about the disease. When Wallace tried to rein him in, he attacked him for being unfair, although Wallace never once fact-checked Trump’s lies.

If Trump had a strategy at all that involved voters, it was to try to keep them from backing Biden. Trump kept yelling at him about “Law & Order,” as he likes to tweet, and kept trying to drive a wedge between Biden and the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party, finally saying to him: “You just lost the left.”

Trump tipped his hand, though, when Wallace asked: "Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down?” Trump demanded names of such groups, and Wallace named, among others, the Proud Boys, the hate group that helped to organize the riot in Charlottesville, Virginia. After hedging, Trump finally answered: "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by! But I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left." "That's my president," the head of the Proud Boys posted on the social media chair that will still host them. Within an hour the group had new shoulder patches designed with the words “Stand Back and Stand By.”

Trump called for his supporters to act as poll watchers to prevent a fraudulent vote. He is losing badly in Pennsylvania, a state he needs, and tonight he lied that Philadelphia election officials refused to permit his poll watchers to observe voting. “Bad things happen in Philadelphia,” he said, “bad things.” The truth is that seven satellite offices where voters can register and apply to vote, complete, and drop off mail in ballots opened in Philadelphia. Poll watchers are not allowed because there is no polling taking place. Trump’s calls for poll watchers are pretty clearly calls for voter intimidation.

Tonight, again, Trump refused to commit to accepting a Biden victory, saying that he could not agree to fraudulent results. He suggested the election could take months to solve, and that he “definitely” wants the Supreme Court, including his new nominee Amy Coney Barrett, to “look at the ballots.” (Democrats have said Barrett should recuse herself from any election-related cases; Republicans say that is “absurd.”)

It was a performance designed to show a strong man who is calling out his armed supporters to enable him to seize an election he cannot win freely.

But Trump performed as he did because it’s all he’s got. He has no policies, no platform, no plans that he can sell to the American people, and no attention span either to govern or to explain how he wants to govern. So his only option is to dominate. Even he knows that ploy is a desperate one. Tonight’s tell was actually in his dominance play itself: overt bullying like he displayed tonight is actually a sign of weakness and abuse, not of true power.

The bar for Biden going into this debate was low: since he is so far ahead, he simply needed not to lose votes. But he did well. First of all, he managed to retain his train of thought, which was no easy thing with Trump interrupting and lying and yelling, clearly trying to derail him and, at the very least, bring out his stutter. He put to rest Trump’s insistence that he is failing mentally.

Despite Trump, Biden also managed to explain some of his policies, too, as well as pointing out that more than 200,000 Americans have died on Trump’s watch, and that he has done the economy no favors. Under Trump, he said, America has become “weaker, sicker, poorer, more divided and more violent.”

But Biden’s strongest moments were ones Trump teed up. When Biden defended our troops from Trump’s “losers” and “suckers” comments, citing his son, Beau, who died of cancer after his service in Iraq, Trump missed the opportunity to acknowledge Biden’s loss, and instead repeatedly attacked Biden’s son Hunter, who struggled with substance abuse. Trump insisted—incorrectly—that Hunter was dishonorably discharged from the Navy (in fact, he was administratively discharged), and tried to smear him. Biden looked directly at Trump to say that Hunter had a drug addiction he is managing, and Biden is proud of him. While Biden spoke as a father defending his son, his message will resonate with the 20 million Americans who are battling addiction.

Most important, though, Biden made the debate about the country and the American people, not about Trump. While Trump listed his own grievances, Biden spoke to the camera, asking Americans what they needed, what they think. He promised that we can accomplish anything if only we work together. He urged people to ignore the chaos and vote. “Vote whatever way is the best way for you,” he said. “Because he will not be able to stop you from determining the outcome of this election.”

Biden also refused to be scared off by Trump’s threats not to honor the election results. He brushed them off, saying “I will accept it, and he will, too. You know why? Because once the winner is declared once all the ballots are counted, that’ll be the end of it.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

Heather Cox Richardson

#political #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #dumpster fire #election 2020 #debates

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onetwistedmiracle · 4 years

Quote

Heather Cox Richardson September 29, 2020 (Tuesday) My house is blissfully quiet, but my ears are still ringing. The first presidential debate of 2020 was unlike anything we have seen before. CNN’s Jake Tapper said: "That was a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck." "He was his own tweets come to life." “We’ll talk about who won the debate, who lost the debate ... One thing for sure, the American people lost.” Conservative pundit William Kristol called it “a spectacle… an embarrassment… a disgrace… because of the behavior of one man, Donald Trump. The interrupting and the bullying, the absence of both decency and dignity—those were Donald Trump’s distinctive contributions to the evening, and they gave the affair the rare and sickening character of a national humiliation.” Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? In a normal presidential debate, both candidates try to explain their policy proposals, jab at their opponent, and convince undecided voters to move in their direction. If this had been a normal presidential debate, its weight would have fallen on Trump, who is significantly behind Biden, to win voters. Biden’s goal would simply have been not to lose anyone. If we were calling this like a normal presidential debate, Trump lost. He did not move the needle in his direction. Biden won; he did not lose anyone. But this was not a normal presidential debate. Trump long ago gave up the pretense that he wanted to win a majority of voters. For months now, he has made no effort to reach outside of his base. Instead he has focused on solidifying and radicalizing it. As his trade war with China and the coronavirus has weakened his support, he has given massive grants to farmers, promised checks to 33 million elderly to help pay for prescriptions, splashed transportation grants around, and recently even offered grants to lobstermen who have lost business because of the trade war. Trump set out tonight not to convince undecided voters to support him, but rather to harden his supporters and encourage them to disrupt the election so he can contest the results until the solution goes to the Supreme Court where he hopes a majority will rule in his favor. He laid it all out tonight. His performance was no accident. He came out determined to dominate the debate in much the same way as Fox News Channel personalities or talk radio hosts dominate their shows. He interrupted, argued, lied, and generally sucked the oxygen out of the room. He cheated, refusing to follow the rules that he had agreed to, thus demonstrating that he would not be bound by the rules everyone else had to live by. He bullied moderator Chris Wallace of the Fox News Channel into repeatedly appeasing him by saying, for example, “Mr. President you’re going to be very happy, because we’re going to talk about law and order,” and “Let me ask — sir, you’ll be happy, I’m about to pick up on one of your points to ask the vice president.” Trump was attempting to demonstrate his dominance. He went on to echo the grievances and lies that his supporters have come to believe. Ignoring the more than 200,000 Americans dead of Covid-19, he insisted he was the victim of Democrats' lies about the disease. When Wallace tried to rein him in, he attacked him for being unfair, although Wallace never once fact-checked Trump’s lies. If Trump had a strategy at all that involved voters, it was to try to keep them from backing Biden. Trump kept yelling at him about “Law & Order,” as he likes to tweet, and kept trying to drive a wedge between Biden and the more progressive wing of the Democratic Party, finally saying to him: “You just lost the left.” Trump tipped his hand, though, when Wallace asked: "Are you willing, tonight, to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and to say that they need to stand down?” Trump demanded names of such groups, and Wallace named, among others, the Proud Boys, the hate group that helped to organize the riot in Charlottesville, Virginia. After hedging, Trump finally answered: "Proud Boys, stand back and stand by! But I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about antifa and the left." "That's my president," the head of the Proud Boys posted on the social media chair that will still host them. Within an hour the group had new shoulder patches designed with the words “Stand Back and Stand By.” Trump called for his supporters to act as poll watchers to prevent a fraudulent vote. He is losing badly in Pennsylvania, a state he needs, and tonight he lied that Philadelphia election officials refused to permit his poll watchers to observe voting. “Bad things happen in Philadelphia,” he said, “bad things.” The truth is that seven satellite offices where voters can register and apply to vote, complete, and drop off mail in ballots opened in Philadelphia. Poll watchers are not allowed because there is no polling taking place. Trump’s calls for poll watchers are pretty clearly calls for voter intimidation. Tonight, again, Trump refused to commit to accepting a Biden victory, saying that he could not agree to fraudulent results. He suggested the election could take months to solve, and that he “definitely” wants the Supreme Court, including his new nominee Amy Coney Barrett, to “look at the ballots.” (Democrats have said Barrett should recuse herself from any election-related cases; Republicans say that is “absurd.”) It was a performance designed to show a strong man who is calling out his armed supporters to enable him to seize an election he cannot win freely. But Trump performed as he did because it’s all he’s got. He has no policies, no platform, no plans that he can sell to the American people, and no attention span either to govern or to explain how he wants to govern. So his only option is to dominate. Even he knows that ploy is a desperate one. Tonight’s tell was actually in his dominance play itself: overt bullying like he displayed tonight is actually a sign of weakness and abuse, not of true power. The bar for Biden going into this debate was low: since he is so far ahead, he simply needed not to lose votes. But he did well. First of all, he managed to retain his train of thought, which was no easy thing with Trump interrupting and lying and yelling, clearly trying to derail him and, at the very least, bring out his stutter. He put to rest Trump’s insistence that he is failing mentally. Despite Trump, Biden also managed to explain some of his policies, too, as well as pointing out that more than 200,000 Americans have died on Trump’s watch, and that he has done the economy no favors. Under Trump, he said, America has become “weaker, sicker, poorer, more divided and more violent.” But Biden’s strongest moments were ones Trump teed up. When Biden defended our troops from Trump’s “losers” and “suckers” comments, citing his son, Beau, who died of cancer after his service in Iraq, Trump missed the opportunity to acknowledge Biden’s loss, and instead repeatedly attacked Biden’s son Hunter, who struggled with substance abuse. Trump insisted—incorrectly—that Hunter was dishonorably discharged from the Navy (in fact, he was administratively discharged), and tried to smear him. Biden looked directly at Trump to say that Hunter had a drug addiction he is managing, and Biden is proud of him. While Biden spoke as a father defending his son, his message will resonate with the 20 million Americans who are battling addiction. Most important, though, Biden made the debate about the country and the American people, not about Trump. While Trump listed his own grievances, Biden spoke to the camera, asking Americans what they needed, what they think. He promised that we can accomplish anything if only we work together. He urged people to ignore the chaos and vote. “Vote whatever way is the best way for you,” he said. “Because he will not be able to stop you from determining the outcome of this election.” Biden also refused to be scared off by Trump’s threats not to honor the election results. He brushed them off, saying “I will accept it, and he will, too. You know why? Because once the winner is declared once all the ballots are counted, that’ll be the end of it.”

Heather Cox Richardson‘s facebook page

#Heather Cox Richardson #commentary #2020 #dumpster fire #other than that mrs lincoln how was the play #vote #votevotevote #please all american citizens reading this make a plan to vote safely

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popculturebuffet · 4 years

Text

Jake Reviews Stuff: Steven Universe: The Answer

Happy pride everyone and naturally, it just wouldn’t feel like a celebration of pride in animation without one of the frontrunners of LBGTQ represintation in Children’s television, as well as quality in storytelling in general: Steven Universe. Since your seeing this you probably know the gist but as my idol peter parker would say let’s do this one last time: The story of Steven, a 14 year old, though he dosen’t look it, boy with a boundless amount of love, compassion and empathy, lives in beach city with his borderline homeless dad , surrogate moms and surrogate until we find out they actually are kinda related sister: Garnet, a fusion of two gems in love and thus the sum total of both them and their feelings, Peal, an emotional but loving gem who grew from a servant to Rose’s right hand, sometimes lover, and confidant, and Amythest, a gem born long after the war that brought everyone else here who acts like a 20 something or teenager half the time. Steven soon finds himself fighting alongside themt o protect earth both from the monsters caused by the final battle of the war his mother fought to save earth from distruction and let her army live life how they choose, and the gem homeworld as it starts to take an intrest in earth again. And as the fight goes on Steven also starts to see just how flawed his family is and how much they haven’t moved on from his moms death and finds himself forced to help them past it while grappling with his mom’s terrible and complicated legacy, everyone expecitng him to basically be her, and what it means to be a being that’s truly one of a kind. I absolutley love the show: it’s not without flaws; Characters tend to be ingnored for seasons or episodes at a time,some arcs are really weirdly paced and the slice of life episodes can be jammed in the weirdest places. But the show’s strength: a devotion to having emotional resolution be even more important, and sometimes just as powerful animated and framed, than fighting, though the show’s fight scene’s are incredible, incredibly deep characters with fully fleshed out arcs and growth, and a love for tackling deep, heavy subjects through metaphor or even directly, taking on things such as gender identity, societal conformity, ptsd, grief, gender identity and many many more with grace and weight and helping kids with them in the process. The show is also the frontrunner for LBGTQ+ representation in cartoons in the 2010′s. While other shows had bits nad pieces, series creator Rebecca Sugar was the one responsible for making Marcline and Princess Bubblegum ex-lovers and making it obvious as possible without saying it because standards were bullshit, Steven Unvierse decided to say fuck subtley and thus had PLENTY OF gay content: Garnet is a fusion of two women and the embodiment of their love and relationship, and when the two show up their very affectionate with one another to the point of bullcrap censorship in less tolerant countries such as india and russia, while Pearl out and out had a CENTURIES LONG romantic relationship with Steven’s mother who was explictly pansexual, and that’s just the main cast! But I genuinely believe that it’s thanks to Steven Universe that children’s animation is as LBGTQ+ positive as it is now. SU wasn’t the first to have gay leads but it was one of the few kids shows with the balls and, at least in the us, network support to explictily have gay characters as some of the main cast, and I feel the show’s success softend execs at CN and other companies to let more representation too. Since SU”s airing, most CN shows have had gay content great and small, Nick has had gay parents and a bisexual lead, not to mention the korra ending kicking it all off, and Netflix has said hold my beer, having not only multiple gay main characters, but having the finale of she ra be built on a decleration of love between two women saving the universe and being the climax of the entire series. Not that those crews likely still didn’t have to FIGHT for most of that, i’m not bilind and NOelle Stevenson has outright admitted she had to be sneaky about catradora for season 1 as to not get it shut down, but I feel SU”s sucess and Rebecca and crew’s own likely fights put the various studio goon’s reflector shields down and got more representation into children’s media. And that’s a wonderful thing. So naturally the show was a lock for this month and for coverage here.. i’ts just given the show’s heavily seralized nature and the fact it dosen’t really have any long romantic story arcs. Sure ther’es plenty of romance, but it’s mostly either in the past or between an already married couple that’s also a person. The show’s arcs were more focused on worldbuilding and character building, which I do prefer and will be doing one in July. But it did make it tricky to find an episode to spotlight the character I wanted to spotlight: Garnet Garnet is easily my faviorite character, with pearl a very close second: she has a great dynamic, is a decent if flawed mother and leader, and is also damn funny with her deadpanned reactions to things being utterly divine. As well as whatever the hell this is.

youtube

The problem is I also wanted to spotlight the parts making up her: Ruby and Sapphire, their relationship etc as they themselves are fantastic and i’m 100% convinced were the inspriation for one mr mc skat kat and one paula abdul’s magnum opus in steven’s unvierse

youtube

The problem is most rupphire episodes are tangled in bigger arcs. They debuted at the end of the invasion arc, they had the baseball episdoe together shortly after another arc, and their wedding is tied up in the reveal rose was pink diamond and the reception is crashed by the climactic battle with Yellow and Blue that sets up the final arc of the whole series. But thankfully season two gave us The Answer to my problem.. ironically named the Answer, basically Garnet Year One as Garnet tells steven how she came to be, a story so beauitful they made a storybook out of it.. and it’s my honor to present it here after the cut.

We open at the Barn... as a refresher at this point the Gems and Steven have been staying at Greg’s old family farm in order to have the space and suplies to build a drill to stop the cluster from hatching and destroying earth, with Peridot reluctantly working with them. So as such Steven’s sleeping there when Garnet wakes her.. and in a notable departure for her it’s san’s shade, which shows her adorable excitment as she wakes Steven. Turns out it’s his birthday! And.. I don’t really begrudge the show for takin ga break for two episodes to celebrate it: besides being the only time steven went up a year, on screen, it was a nice break from the peridot/cluster storyline for a second, and this and the following episode are pretty great and both add a lot to the world as a whole. It’s why i don’t MIND when SU takes a break from the plot, as long as they do it for good reason.

IN a great callback steven asks if garent’s going to tell him she’s a fusion, as Jailbreak revealed the reason she hadn’t yet is she was saving it for his birthday, which is a good joke and a great callback. Garnet cheerfully tells him know but has clearly found a backup: While steven knows she’s a fusion now.. she never told him how she came to be and how ruby and sapphire met after all. So we journey back about 5000 years to, as we’d learn much later with the pink diamond reveal, the start of the gem war. Earth was to be the next great colony, as we’d learn next season for pink diamond, but something was in the way: The rebel rose quartz and her brutal right hand pearl were causing tons of distruption, so the rest of the diamonds had come to snuff out the rebellion personally. So that’s where Ruby and Sapphire came in. Sapphire is a higher class gem, and befiting her caste is a precog, with Sapphires brought in to tell the diamonds the future so they can either make sure it happens or change it’s course. Garnet neaturally has this ablility too but vastly improved to see multiple timelines. She’s proper and distant. Ruby meanwhile is a shy, if more intellgent then her peers grunt soldier. Rubies as we learned here are basically made in groups to fuse. To homeworld, Fusion is simply a tactic to create a slightly stronger gem out of three other gems, and basically creates one giant person. In Contrast up to this point the series has shown fusion as something important to the crystal gems and requriing more work: It requires all parties to be in sync to even happen much less stay together, and requires an emotional connection; Freindship, romance, kinship... whatever it is it’s needed to hold the fusion together. It’s part of what MAKES garnet so impressive: Garnet is a permafusion, only unfusing either when her two halves are needed. or when thier personal conflict is so great they CAN’T stay fused. It also means due to said emotional resonance and combining the best traits of two gems rather than creating just one big gem, that the crystal fusions we’ve seen are vastly more powerful and versitale.. evne if they dont’ speak much because Rebecca made the mistake of getting big artist to do the role and apparently refused to just you know.. recast? It’s something that always baffled me. There’s no shortage of talented poc performers who can sing out there. Anyways, that’s part of what makes this intresting: up till now, we’d only seen one form of fusion.. we hadn’t seen what homeworld thought of it and used it for, and to the show’s credit it was hinted back during the return arc when Jasper called fusion a “tactic for making weak gems stronger”, since as far as homeworld used it, that’s what it was and it’s a stark contrast to the crystal gems harder to maintain but much more intresting and unique fusions.

We’ll get more into this later. The two front rubies argue about whose going to punch people whie our ruby just points out the obvious: Their just going to fuse into a really big ruby and punch together. This gets her shoved into sapphire, which despite not being her fault gets gasps and monocle pops from the gems around them. And it’s about time I dug into the episodes unique animation style: instead of the usual, only a handful of characters, the rubies, sapphire, and later rose and pearl, are animated normally and even then, at least for the first half, are brightly lit in their primary colors, while the rest of the gems present are just barely animated sytlistic shadows. It’s a really intresting choice and a clever way to save on budget, while still looking gorgeous.

Sapphire, while refusing Ruby’s help getting up, is understanding if monotone, but as w’eve seen in the present, tha’ts mostly just a side effect from seeing where everything’s going, and likely the reason garnet’s own emotional process is much like that; Stoic but willing to emote when necessary. Sapphire however has a reason for brushing her ruby off: the reason she was called here.. Blue Diamond. This is intresting as it’s not only the first time we HEARD of blue, as before this we only heard of Yellow, who’d make her proper debut at the end of this season, but the first time we saw a diamond in any way shape of form. Sure we had murals and such, but given the lack of info about the diamonds this early on it was impossible to tell whow as who and the only giveway there was more than was diamond was the symbols: the era 1 symbols in temples and at the arena showing all 4, hinting at pink, and the modern one shown in jailbreak that was a triforce. We do only see Blue in a hood, covered by her palquin and her voice done by Garnet, but it’s still the first tiem we’d see any of the diamonds in any onscreen form. The Garnet voice is also notcable as every other voice in the flashabck, including characters who aren’t either part of garnet or the same gem type as part of her, is normal.. it’s only blue Garnet does a voice for.. and a clever way of covering for the fact they likely hadn’t cast her voice actress yet. It’s also notable for the introduction of Blue Pearl, who silently stands by her Diamond teh whole time.. it’s weird thinking back to the fact that this was the first time we’d really SEEN other versions of our main cast: other rubies and another pearl. Sure we knew they were all part of one type or another with the obvious exception of garnet.. but this episode is notable, and weird to think about giiven how many variants we see as the series goes on, for being the FIRST time we see this on screen.

Sapphire reveals that while she, and two of her rubies, will poof the rebllion will end here, and Blue is releaved to here this, thanks sapphire and dismisses her. As Garnet explains, Sapphire had no issue with this as she simply saw her life as one straight line: No choice no, option: Fate would just come as it may. Sapphire also muses to Our Ruby on the fact that she finds this planet a wonderful place for a colony.. and that she wishes she could’ve seen more of it. While Our Ruby says theirs more time, Sapphire, while appricating the sentiment gently shoots it down. This little moment is interuptted however as Rose shouts out, signaling her and Pearl’s arrival. The battle has begun. And I do like the clever use of storytelling here.. not in presetnation but in what we’d learn muchhhh later with the big reveal: To a first time watcher, we just thought that it was only rose and pearl for story purposes or it was a small attack. After all the rest of the characters we’d seen were just shadows, so I, and I presume many others just assumed the rest were off screen or failing that this was just a small strike. As we’d learn once we got the full story of Pink Diamond becoming rose.. it was indeed JUST them, and only them at the time. it’s probably why in the future sapphire saw the rebellion ended her: Pink while powerful had to reign it in as not to be found out and pearl, while as we see her is already utterly badass and an ace with a sword as she mows down Quartz soldiers, is still one gem going up against a literal army. Another noticable thing, that hints at when this takes place is the fact that when Rose takes down the fused rubies, poofing two of them and leaving ours to flump to the ground.. she uses her fists. At this point her iconic sword is well established and it’s assumed it was just left out for artistic purpose.. but since we meet who made it next season with Bismuth, it’s another clever hint this is before there was a proper army. Bismuth wasn’t a gem yet so Rose/Pink just had her natural strength and shield to protect her, which wasn’t nothing, but the sword probably made it far easier to hold back.

And thus we come to the moment of truth: Pearl has come back and is about to mow down sapphire.. when Ruby realizes just waht Sapphire meant and waht she’s about to do and thus.. the future changed. Ruby tackles her out of the way. And Garnet is born.

I absolutley love Garnet’s cotton candy design, both as a sensible evolution, as this is a garnet formed in a moment of passion and accidently versus the one we see in the present or even in flashbacks: a person formed by choice and love and thus having a more stable form. Naturally, Rose and Pearl are baffled by this.. and it’s even more understandable.. as the above mentioned pink diamond origin episode explained.. they had never SEEN this kind of fusion before. While i’m sure this isn’t the first time this happend in gem history, any others were likely killed as soon as it were over or went into hiding as we saw with the off colors. And Pink being sheltered and Pearl being created for her, probalby simply never thought of something like this existing. But they also realize this never before seen to them miracle is their cue to skidoo and book it out of there. Naturally Blue is pissed and the court are disgusted as the two defuse and both have about the same reacation.

Before Blue can murder Ruby for you know, doing her fucking job, Sapphire ttakes her by the hand and books it off the sky arena and the two plummet to earth while ruby screams no a lot. The foundation of any good relationship.

They float down to earth.. because she’s Mary Poppins Ya’ll. Ruby reveals why she’s upset: Because as she sees it, there’s dozens of her. She’s not WORTH this. Sapphire has no reaction because for the first time, she has no idea what the future brings, what it means and the future she saw was just shattered. She’s frozen.

Jokes aside I really love that pun. Ruby worries and quickly scoops her up bridal carry style and quickly finds the two a cave. In the cave the two light that flame get that and Ruby continues to freak out over what happened, upset with her self that she’s supposed to save sapphire.. with Sapphire gently reassuring her “you already did.” It’s also intresting as it shows even garnet, or at least half of her, had to go through what peridot did.. it went down a bit easier since exile happened right away, but Ruby still had to shake off the homeworld conceived notion that she was WRONG for saving sapphire simply because it lost them the fight and got them fused and all that. It’s also a nice metaphor for someone whose been told, for a nightmarish rainbow assortment of bullshit resaons, that being gay is wrong only to discover they are and having to realize there’s nothing wrong with who they are.

After a breif flash the two finally talk about their fusion, with Sapphire being suprised considering she figured fusion wasn’t anything like they experinced.. only for Ruby to chime in that sh’es RIGHT: Their fusion wasn’t anything like Ruby’s normal “me but bigger’ fusion.. they lost htemselves.. and both clearly enjoyed it, expressing it through having a third eye for ruby and more than one for sapphi

We then get the utterly adorable musical number: “Something Entirely New”Which takes the so far mildly subtle “This is like two people who had sex with the oppsite gender for the first time “ metaphor.. and just makes it texual as the song basically screams of two people talking over an unfamiliar sexual experince, but in a cute, well done, and intentionally awkward way that’s still approraite for the kids. it’s a real beautiful song and also shows the burgoning couple bond on earth. This is important as a previous episode had garent and out and out say that love takes time and work, accurate and that love at first sight simply dosen’t exist.. and we also see she practices waht she preaches as the montage does show some time past and even before that the two genuiely bonded. Sure they FUSED on the spur of the moment.. but actually loving each other took time and bonding.

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As the song ends, the two dance romantically,deciding to be Garnet for good as we get some nice callbacks to jailbreak: the two hum the tune to stronger than you, now revealed to be their song and spin similarilty to the way they have when they’ve fused, a nice callback that also add’s weight to those previous moments.. and thus two become one and Garnet is reborn.

Garnet narrates as her past self gets used to her strange new form.. and just as she does she falls down a ditch. Eh could’ve been worse.

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Garnet finds herself face to sword with Pearl. Pearl backs off a bit once she realizes who their dealing with, and Garnet panickedly offers to unfuse.. only for Rose to enter. Garnet narrates them as Rose Quartz and her terrifying renegade pearl.

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Truly a force to be reckoned with. Rose dosen’t care about her own feelings though “What you feel is bound to be more intresting” It’s a good moment both because Garnet , up to this point hasn’t had to think about what they are or how they feel.. but more notably... no one but the two gems makingthem up ever cared, not before they were garnet and after all the homeworld gems wanted was to kill her. We also get a great line from garnet: “Why am I sure that i’d rather be this than anything else and that i’d rather do this than anything else i’m supposed to do? “ Rose’s response.. to give a giant grin while saying welcome to earth. As Garnet continues to question things, Rose tells her to never question this, never question what you are... which is a damn good message for a kids show to give out. The metaphor is crystal clear: no matter where you are on that beautiful lbgtq+ rainbow: NEVER be ashamed of who you are, never question it.. just enjoy it. Be who your meant to be and love that person. It’s a damn good message and one badly needed in a medium that for way too fucking long was SCARED to tell messages like this: Of sponsors, of foreign markets, and of idiots like one million moms. it took people like rebecca and her crew to say “fuck that”, to say that queer kids NEED these kinds of stories to know they aren’t alone, they are beautiful how they are. They shoudln’t have to wait to find out what they are.. is okay. And that’s beautiful.

As Rose Tells Garnet that she is the answer, and as we cut back to the present, Steven asks what the answer is. Garnet simply answers: Love. And we close on one great exchange Steven: I knew it Garnet; (wistfully) So did I.

Final Thoughts: While I remembered the episode being good, hence part of the reason I choose it I forgot just HOW great this episode was, especially post reveal. The art direction is goregous, shot like a fairy tail and rightfully so since this episode is told as one, the story is heartwarming and erica and charlene really act their hearts out as ruby and sapphire while Estelle kills it as both present garnet narrating and past garnet, a garnet ENTIRELY diffrent from what we’ve seen but acted beautifully. It’s espcially noticable since unlike the other two lead gems, we obviously wouldn’t see more garnets like we would amythests and pearls, so unlike her contepraries estelle really didn’t get to flex her vocal range as much playing alternate versions as the seasons went on, with this being the closest she got. The episode is beautiful, has a wonderful message, and is just utterly charming and is agian why I DON’T mind that every su episode dosen’t advance the plot: Sometimes it dosen’t need to. And even so this one ended up being WAY more important than I remembered, introducing blue diamond and turning out to be MASSIVELY important once the reveal kicked it: For it was Garnet, and the love dthat forged her that changed Pink’s direction. Before the rebellion was simply a way to stop the occupation of earth and would’ve been snuffed out if not for ruby’s actions.. but seeing garnet, seeing how earth and being free from homeworld’s restraints could positvely impact someone.. it changed rose. Besides bringing her and Pearl together, it also made her realize just what her rebellion could bring to people and what a gem could be and even more how precious her future home was. By forming in an act of Love, garnet changed the entire future of gemkind. By staying that way she did so once more. And that’s beautifully. overall an underated, even by me, little masterwork with once again a damn fine message. We’ll get back to SU soon enough, as I plan to cover the series first full arc as we meet peridot, and see into the souls of our heroines. But first Pride isn’t over yet, and I have one last card on the table as we todd it up a bit with my first look at bojack horseman. Like this if you enjoyed it, comments subscirbe etc etc and don’t be afraid to comission a review for 3 bucks, and until we meet agian, later days.

#steven universe #garnet #ruby #sapphire #rupphire #pearl #rose quartz #pink diamond #blue diamond #the answer #fusion #review #lbtqia #lbtq+#lbtqa #pride month #pride #reviews

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sambergscott · 5 years

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i’m gomez you’re morticia i feel so happy when i’m witcha (the addams family wedding rap origin story)

written for @outofinspo for the @b99fandomevents Fall 2019 Fic Exchange. you gave me the prompt of a couple’s halloween costume and this is not... quite that but still i hope you enjoy :)

also shoutout to @amyscascadingtabs for helping me!!

(set a few months after Amy joins the nine-nine)

Jake prides himself on being the self-confessed best detective in the Nine-Nine. His arrest numbers are off the charts. He holds the precinct record for quickest time to get a signed confession out of someone. And just last week he beat Rosa at an intense final showdown of rollerchair derby. Yet for some reason he can’t figure out what Santiago is planning on wearing to Boyle’s Halloween party.

T-minus two hours to go and it’s driving him a little crazy.

“Sexy librarian?” He guesses, scrolling through a Google Image search of ladies Halloween costumes. “Sexy superhero? Sexy zombie cheerleader?”

She rolls her eyes. “Not every Halloween costume has to be sexy, Peralta.”

“The good ones do,” he says with a wink.

“Gross.” She throws her pen at him.

“I guess your costume is just gonna be super lame, Santiago,” he goads, knowing it will get a reaction out of her. She’s so competitive, it’s practically in her DNA to rise to a challenge.

“Your costume will be the costume that is lame,” she fires back. So predictable. And so adorable.

“Sick burn,” he teases. “Anyway my costume is dope.”

“Are you going as yourself? Because that’s terrifying.”

“Ha-ha,” he deadpans, throwing back her pen. He misses her head by a inch. “I’ll have you know, detective, I’m going as a super awesome movie character that you’ll never be able to guess-.”

Right off of the bat, she says John McClane.

Which, to be fair, is a pretty good shout. He has mentioned John McClane being his hero pretty much every day since the day they met. But, alas, he went as John McClane last year. And Jake Peralta is no outfit repeater. Not on Halloween.

“007?”

“Nope.” He grins. “Last guess.”

She drums her fingers on her desk and bites her lip as she flicks through a mental rolodex of iconic movie characters. It’s kind of distracting how hot she looks biting her lip like that and he’s totally not listening when she speaks again. She rounds their desks and has to wave her hand directly in front of his face to snap him out of it.

“Sorry.” He blushes wildly. He’s been having a lot of those thoughts lately. About how pretty her hair looks when she wears it down. About how good she looks when she wears semi-decent clothes to Shaw’s instead of her usual grey pantsuits. About how much he loves making her laugh. Sometimes he thinks he’s developing a crush on her but then he remembers she’s his annoying, nerdy partner and thoroughly quashes any thoughts of liking her romantic-stylez. “What were you saying?”

“Superman,” she responds. “My final guess is Superman.”

He makes a loud buzzer noise. “While I am thrilled that you think I could save the planet, detective, you are incorrect. Again. I thought you were supposed to be the smart out of the two of us!”

“I am smart.”

“Not smart enough,” he retorts. “Clearly.”

“Hey, it’s hard! You like a lot of movies! And, besides, you’ve been guessing all morning and you’ve still yet to get mine.” She smiles smugly, folding her arms across her chest.

“OK,” he responds, rubbing his hands together eagerly. “Gimme another clue.”

“I am also going as a movie character.”

“Holly Gennaro!” He guesses immediately.

She rolls her eyes. “No. Stop being so obsessed with Die Hard.”

“I’m not obsessed with Die Hard, I just know all the words and have seen all of them a thousand times.”

“Sounds pretty obsessed to me,” she nudges his shoulder. “Die Hard’s not the only movie out there, you know. There are other movies. Better movies.”

He gasps and recoils like Scully when he poured hot coffee all over himself. “Take that back! Die Hard is the greatest movie of all time!”

“Wrong. Ignorant and wrong. The Lion King’s a great movie.”

“Never seen it.” He shrugs.

“You’ve never seen The Lion King? But it’s a classic. We watched it all the time when I was a kid.”

“I was alone a lot,” he explains, “single mom who worked, absentee father. I just watched sports and Die Hard.”

“Oh,” she whispers, making this sad, frowny face. “Wanna watch it together some time?”

“Uh, ye, yeah,” he stutters, a little taken aback at the invitation. He thought she found him childish and annoying.

“I still think you’re annoying,” she says as she returns to her desk, like she can read his mind.

“Ditto,” he grins.

He’s the first one to arrive.

While he normally insists on showing up at crime scenes/morning briefings/family events fashionably late, this time Boyle specifically asked him to come early and it’s his duty as The Best Friend™️ to resolve all Rosa-is-coming-to-his-party-related meltdowns.

“Smell my breath,” Boyle demands, getting real close.

“OK. Personal space, Charles. We talked about this, remember?”

“Of course,” he nods, taking a few steps back. “I just don’t want Rosa to think I have bad breath when we make out.”

Jake grimaces, relieved when there’s a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” he excuses himself before Boyle sticks his mouth in front of his face again.

He opens the door and stares at the other early bird in silence.

It’s Amy. Of course it’s Amy. She’s always early. Even after drinks at Shaw’s, hungover, she’ll get to work forty-five minutes before she has to. It’s not surprising that she’s early, it’s what she’s wearing that has him speechless.

In a long black dress with a long black wig, she is unmistakably Morticia Addams. Not as iconic as Holly Gennaro, he has to admit, but still. She’s rocking it.

The only issue?

He’s dressed as Gomez, the patriarch of the Addams family, Morticia’s husband.

They’re matching.

They’re wearing matching Halloween costumes!

Amy blushes beneath her heavy make-up. “Um. Nice suit.”

“Nice dress,” he responds, equally flustered.

“This is weird, right?” They say at the exact same time before dissolving into giggles.

Jake scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. “I guess we’ve been spending a lot of time together the last few months. I must have telepathically given you the idea.”

“Unless I thought of it first.” She raises one eyebrow, challenging him. Before he can come up with response, Boyle appears behind them, incredibly excited about their accidental costume situation.

“It’s nothing,” Jake brushes it off.

“Yeah,” Amy agrees, still standing in the doorway. “The Addams Family are just popular Halloween costumes. That’s all.”

“It definitely means something,” he insinuates in his super high-pitched, annoying insinuating voice. “It means that you’re soulmates.”

Jake rolls his eyes. First the wedding bells comment on Amy’s first day, then the constant questions about whether she’s seeing anyone, now this. He gets that his best friend is just trying to be a good wingman or whatever but it’s A Lot. Even if he did like Amy, nothing would ever happen because she’s obviously uncomfortable about the whole thing. She is the most professional person he’s ever met and would never do anything to jeopardise her integrity at work, especially not something as scandalous as a workplace romance!

Not that anything would ever happen anyway. They’re just friends. Co-workers. Portners. He doesn’t even like her in a romantical way.

Sometimes, for example later in the evening when she steals his last slice of pizza, he doesn’t like her at all.

But then he tells a dumb joke and she’s the only one in Charles’ ex-wife’s, new boyfriend’s basement who laughs and he thinks that maybe Charles is right. Maybe he does have a crush on her. A little one. Tiny.

Not that it matters anyway. Someone like Amy would never date someone like him. They’re just too different. He’s the Gomez to her Morticia, the Detective Peralta to her Detective Santiago, and that’s all it’s ever going to be.

(Eight years later, it’s only fitting that they end their wedding day with him performing his Addams Family themed wedding vows rap in just his boxers. There’s no beat boxer and he’s horribly out of time and he’s forgotten most of the lyrics, but it’s perfect. And Charles was right after all -- they are soulmates, just like Gomez and Morticia).

#my writing #jake x amy #b99 fall 2019 fic exchange #b99fandomevents #b99 fics

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bellamygateoldblog · 4 years

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rate best to worst parental figures of the 100

worst → best (I tend to ramble throughout this, sorry!)

19 — Nia : I mean I don’t think an explanation is needed here lol. She burned Echo’s parents alive, it’s implied she then renamed her Ash, before forcing her into the identity of another child and filling her life with assassination and espionage. Mother Of The Year?

18 — Aurora : so firstly we have Octavia- who’s existence shouldn’t be. It was so incredibly irresponsible and selfish to subject her child to this life. If the ark hadn’t been dying and Octavia never caught, would she had been expected to grow old and die under the floor? Would Bellamy have spent his life, even after Aurora was long dead, being nothing more than his sister’s keeper?

And Bellamy- to manipulate your six year old son into believing it’s his responsbility to protect and care for his sister, so engrained into his mind and sense of self that he still lives by this mantra well into his 20s, to treat Bellamy being Octavia’s whole world as normal, having him go through his life with this small girl attached to him, entirely dependent on him, placing such a heavy weight onto a child- it’s UGH. No words, just a grunt.

He gave up his education and his personal life and he became a father when he was six years old. She took his life away.

This early family dynamic is at the root of ALL of Octavia and Bellamy’s major character traits, struggles and flaws, it drives them still, it’s effects are still felt and reinforced. BOO.

17 — Raven’s unnamed mother : And here is where I go off on a rant criticising the writing more than the actual mother. Just like Octavia, Raven was raised by another child, except in this case her mother is emotionally absent and said child is the same age as her (or younger) and thus i expect their experience and maturity levels are matched through their lives. Could this have bourne some co-dependency? Perhaps, but it’s never talked about i think because Raven’s backstory is practically a Schrödinger’s cat scenario with all the retconning that goes on. Like here- we recieved some more information in season six that directly contradicts what was already established of their mother-daughter relationship: “she never used me.”

*deadpan narrator voice* She did, however, use her.

That’s if we choose to accept this one as canon and not that one, god this writing is atrocious. Raven’s mother was neglectful, so much so that the only way she ate is through a boy sharing his own rations with her. Raven believes “she only had [her] so she could trade [Raven’s] rations for moonshine.” SHE DID USE HER DAUGHTER.

Furthermore, in season one she defended her mother (context: when a remark was made about selling sex in exchange for supplies), she tells her not to “dare talk about [her] mother that way” and i get the impression she at least respected her, but in season six she straight up calls her “a drunk who sold herself for booze.” In fact in season six she goes from being deluded one second- “she never used me”- to being scarily desensitised by a harsh reality the next, the same way she was in early seasons, speaking casually of her mother’s alcoholism. WHAT IS THE TRUTH? None of what we know of Raven’s family and backstory can coexist and yet here we are, talking about Raven’s family and backstory as if the writers ever cared enough to make it actually coherent.

16 — Murphy’s unnamed mother : did love him once, very much so, but let her grief poison her and turn her against her son. Another alcoholic/addict mother to add to the collection. We don’t have a lot of details about her, but the knowledge that she blamed her vulnerable little boy who had no control over his own health for the death of her husband who made his own conscious choice is enough for me to place her down here. The source of Murphy’s lack of self worth, *implied* intrusive thoughts, and difficulty connecting with others, and just in general sometimes being a total jackass. Yeah, it’s all her fault.

15 — Clarke : like mother, like daughter. She electrocuted her child, but what I find to be remarkably horrific about this is the simple fact the device is the same one used to torture her in the beginning of the season, the same one used by the so-called ‘villains’. She felt and endured the pain herself, and then decided subjecting her own daughter to that same treatment was an acceptable and necessary choice- before leaving that decision completely redundant later by switching allegiance and having Madi lead the army afterall. Madi was dependent on Clarke, the silent agreement is trust and respect, and this one singular action showed Clarke violating everything it means to be a guardian and protector. Also, she never apologised to Madi for this, nor did their relationship experience strain as a result when both of those things absolutely should’ve happened. That’s my main gripe with the relationship, the other being that it’s bourne of the same strain of co-dependancy as the Blakes.

Something about Madi wanting to go to school and be a regular child and Clarke responding to that with an ultimatum doesn’t sit right with me. At this point nobody cares about the Commander. Nobody- literally every single grounder is asleep- and, as her mother, Clarke has the right and the power to have Madi take out that damn flame to preserve her safety and youth and she doesn’t. She continues to let Gaia train her 12 year old for a dead position. Clarke is just as much culpable for the Sheidheda fiasco as Spacekru are for putting the flame into Madi’s head in the first place. That thing should’ve been removed as soon as it was no longer necessary. Clarke’s young, she had a child practically sprung upon her, and i want to give her the benefit of the doubt- but I won’t.

14 — Abby : I had no idea where to put Abby on this list and I think i’m being too generous but she’s a tricky one because I don’t think she’s necessarily a bad mother, not compared to the others on this list anyway, but the harsher aspects of her personality along with the high-stakes environment leads to the natural break down of her relationship with her daughter. I got the impression they were once close; Clarke is seen reaching out for her mother for comfort and validation multiple times during the first couple of seasons and she’s devastated and betrayed at the knowledge of what was Abby’s culpability in Jake’s death. Over time this falls apart. Abby never harms her biological daughter, but does have a very weird rival-like relationship with her, imo this being because they’re so similar. I can see so much Abby in Clarke and vice-versa. And they clash because of it, and Abby just doesn’t have any authority over Clarke, and over time their relationship distances to a point it lacks emotional value and other characteristics that make mother-daughter dynamics unique and meaningful. They love each other, no doubt about that, Abby’s been prepared to throw others to the wolves for her daughter a few times, just as Clarke does later in life. But the relationship between Abby and her daughter is strained from the beginning of the series, which makes her position as Clarke’s mother complicated.

Upon meeting Abby, Raven instantly viewed her through an almost idolistic lens- “relax, it’s a compliment, Abby’s a badass”- making me believe she latched onto this idea of The Mother She Never Had, and Abby’s first thoughts when encountering Raven were literally that she reminded her of her own daughter- “reminds me of someone.” This dynamic is absolutely intended as mother-daughter. While a mother-figure to Raven, though, Abby has directly and intentionally caused her harm. She’s electrocuted her, she;s then tried to avoid acknowledging her wrongness for that action- Raven in this moment of torture is as betrayed as Madi was by Clarke- she’s also hit her and while in a systematically higher position than her no less. These instances automatically make me wince away from the relationship because in no way does it come across as comfortable and safe for Raven. On the other hand, they’ve had a bunch of heartfelt moments even though they’re disguised as harsh jabs taken at one another. They’ve expressed the hard truth when nobody else will in times of the other’s vulnerability.

There is a stark contrast though between how she treats Clarke and how she treats Raven and the lack of biological relation, i think, is a buffer for Abby. IMHO i think her care for Raven is conditional, but unconditional for Clarke.

I don’t know what i should be feeling about her motherly-ness.

13 — Kane : I didn’t pay much attention to Kane’s dynamics, honestly, because I just didn’t like him, but as far as I’m aware he tried to do well by Octavia, Bellamy and Clarke, somewhat self-righteously and blaming, but trying is trying and he is always framed as in the right and morally superior so I guess that’s gotta count for something. This was all ruined during season five, though, with him attempting to have every one of them killed among other things. He didn’t appear concerned or reluctant- or anything about any of them.

12 — Hannah : I think it’s safe to assume Monty had a good relationship with both of his parents pre-show. Hannah came across as misguided and manipulative towards Monty often, though, which i think came from both a place of love and desire to protect, but also, at points of most controlling, from a place of desperation and fear having already lost her husband. Honestly all I remember is not liking her very much so i’m placing her here in the middle/neutral area with Indra and Jaha.

11 — Indra : I place her here because we don’t actually have a lot of information about her relationship with Gaia. And I view her relationship with Octavia as mentor-mentee and eventually friends. They’ve had some sweet heart-to-heart moments, but i’ve always struggled to see the maternal connection. Octavia might be the daughter Gaia never was to Indra (I think Gaia might’ve even said this in the actual show?) but such a fond and pronounced memory of Aurora still exists within Octavia and with her very narrow-minded vision I don’t see her prepared to replace her or at the very least share that position with other people in her life. Indra is a stoic character, but it’s almost as if her emotional expression is reserved for Octavia. This speaks something of the closeness of their bond, but also tells us the climate between her and Gaia is more distant and troubled. There’s love there though- she was, afterall, planning to die so Gaia could live. Is this the only intended motherly sacrifice we’ve seen on the show?

The Blodreina of it all, while on one hand strengthened one dynamic, shattered the other. Indra is someone Octavia respected, trusted and listened to. I have to believe she was in the position to guide and advice her through the entireity of the time jump, but instead we saw her stand by and let Octavia slip further and further into her own darkness before turning on her in the most critical moment. And she might’ve tried and nothing worked, but really? You want me to try to make sense of this myself? The writers were on a quest to villainise Octavia and the fall of this relationship was a product rather than an intention.

10 — Jaha : he created a treasure, i’ll give him that. Admittedly we don’t know an awful lot about Wells or about his relationship with his father, but we do know he risked his own life to take care of Clarke, similar to Bellamy and to Raven who both also came to Earth to protect someone they loved. Both of those examples had terrible parents, so Wells’ goodness doesn’t necessarily mean we can credit Jaha, and as far as i can remember Wells never actually defended his father against the angry delinquents. Does him choosing to follow Clarke over staying with his father in space mean he must really love Clarke, or could it ellude to a certain father-son relationship not being as comfortable as it could be? When Jaha’s handed another child later on, he stops Kane giving him extra food because of something along the lines of: ‘he needs to learn the world’ so I think his parenting style may be more of the tough love and respect type. Wells is practical and strives to maintain order and squash rebelliousness thus his butting heads with the rest of the delinquents, but he has people’s best interests at heart (letting Clarke hate him rather than Abby, for example) and those are very Jaha characteristics i can see he inherited/observed and imitated.

9 — Monty and Harper : we only have a handful of information on this. Jordan has fond memories of them, but so does Octavia and Bellamy about their mother and we all know the truth about that one. Jordan is a backwards Octavia. Monty and Harper were all he had growing up, he wasn’t forced into hiding, but I can’t imagine it was a fun existence for him to grow up in isolation- watching the faces of other children behind the glass and never being able to wake them up to play. BUT his childhood is different to Octavia’s in a few ways that make a big difference and land them further up the list: 1) he’s clearly educated, 2) he has two loving parents even if they are all he has, 3) he has knowledge about the Earth, it’s story and the people from it so has a much stronger and more complex understanding of morality, meaning he’s less judgemental, and he’s also better prepared to interact with others by the time this oppurtunity arises.

They get points for leaving him in Bellamy’s hands, but are automatically relegated a few places for making Clarke his god mother.

8 — Bellamy : yes Bellamy is on this list because yes he is Octavia’s father and nothing you say matters. So every child he’s ever ‘adopted’ has died, but he tries his best to think of these children when nobody else was ever doing that. Octavia’s damaged and her more toxic traits have a tendancy to become amplified in times of high emotion, especially in the vicinity of her brother, but he was just as much a victim in all of this as she was and Aurora is entirely to blame for the disaster that is the Blake sibling relationship (I mean neither of them even had a frame of reference of what siblings look like, how were they to know how to relate to one another?).

He tries. He’s more equipped to and committed than most on this show to helping vulnerable people, he’s proven time and time again he’s willing to do whatever it takes to protect and love his sister, he gets it wrong sometimes, his efforts can be misguided and recieved differently than he might’ve intended them to be. But the facts are: he understands what it means to be a parent, he knows what it’s like to lose their child, he knows what it’s like to pour himself into someone else and hope for the best of them.

7 — Luna : she founded a clan and those people were, in a sense, her children. She kept them safe for years, it was peaceful, life was simple and fulfilling. Clarke observed her interactions with the actual children that lived there and they loved her, she was good with them. Her people respected her.

6 — Monty’s father : yet another heroic father to add to this fucking collectio-

5 — Ginger dad : in one of the most heartbreaking scenes on this show to date, he does the David Miller thing, or i guess David Miller does The Ginger Dad Thing, and sacrifices his own life to pump more air into his child’s lungs.

4 — Murphy’s unnamed father : in a place you’ll be executed for petty crime, risking it all and stealing something as valuable as medicine just to give your son a chance at more life is commendable. He loved his son (literally) to death. It’s his memory and his sacrifice, like with Raven and Clarke, that pushes him to survive.

3 — Jake : I think the show has demonstrated quite nicely that Clarke is a daddy’s girl. Jake The Good Engineer, Jake The Good Father, Jake The Hero. He inspires Clarke so much she goes to prison for it. And, like Sinclair-Raven, Clarke’s consciousness dreams him up whenever she’s in an intensely stressful situation and/or feeling hopeless about life and void of direction in general. This was a comfortable and secure bond, and his death marked the beginnings of Clarke’s entire story.

2 — David : easily one of the best fathers on the show, i mean he gave up the oppurtunity of claiming a spot in the bunker just so he could give his son better odds of surviving, he gave up the possibility of being in the bunker with his son. Another fatherly sacrifice for the collection. He loves Miller unconditionally, even when Miller himself feels like a disappointment.

1 — Sinclair : this was an obvious retcon, but still good as long as I don’t think about it. A cute father-figure, the mentor that took a chance on her, the first (or second) person to pick her. Everything about this relationship is sweet and healthy, a nice diversion from the usually exhaustingly complex dynamics. Their relationship was so meaningful, in fact, that it was him who Raven’s dying mind manifested to encourage her to go on living. 10/10.

(and don’t think i don’t peep that bad/cruel mothers, good/heroic fathers pattern here. These writers WACK…)

#the 100 #rosie tag: share with the group #the 100: we ask we answer

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shadowofthelamp · 4 years

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Fandom Trades: Tips and Tricks

I’ve been running a secret santa for five years now, and a few people expressed interest in a sort of ‘guide’. It does take some elbow grease to get things up and running, but it’s very rewarding and gets easier as you go. Click the ‘read more’ for some stuff I’ve picked up over the years! It’s a bit general to try and cover anything, but if you have any questions, you can ask! (And if you’ve run one yourself, feel free to add on!)

FAQ: Something that’s a really good idea to have. Here’s the most important stuff on it that would probably be applicable to most trades:

-Basic summary of what the trade will be- some could be fic-only or art-only, or even specific-ship-only. Mine’s general to ‘all sonic sfw content’, but setting guidelines so people know what they’re getting into is a good idea so you won’t have to answer the same question over and over.

-Deadlines. Make them clear. Mine’s easy (Christmas Eve) but depending on what size the gift is expected to be, the time frame can be adjusted.

-Related, set up rules for if people need to drop out. It happens, so be prepared. (This is why I ask now if people are alright giving a second gift.)

-Any particular rules for your trade- is it sfw or is nsfw acceptable? (In that case, set age limits.) Are there ships that will or won’t be allowed? Is there a punishment for violating the rules or turning things in late, like not being allowed to participate in the trade again?

PROMOTION:

A promo image is a good idea! I’ve been using the same one for a few years that was put together by a friend no longer on tumblr, but images catch people’s eyes faster than a text dump. Make something that’s easy to understand but gets the point across, and the text below should have enough information without overwhelming the casual scroller.

Space paragraphs often to make it less intimidating. Include links to the FAQ, the sample entry, and the submit box right in the post, as well as a way to contact you- you want things to be as easy as possible for anyone interested. Here’s my promo post.

You also want to start promotion early- I start posting and reblogging my promo a full month before the entry deadline, to give as many people the chance to see it as possible. Any earlier, and they might not care- (who wants to see a Christmas trade post in October when you’re hyped for Halloween?) and any later and you might not get as many participants as you could have. A month-ish is a good time frame. (I also have a tag for the promo post, so people can blacklist it if they aren’t interested and don’t want to see it 15 times.)

SAMPLE ENTRIES:

Also something that’s good to have. Having a template for what you want entries to look like will make sorting easier for you. Here’s mine. It’s a good idea to scout around for other trades to find out what would work for you.

MAKING ASSIGNMENTS:

Next, setting up how to arrange who gets assigned to who. I personally use google spreadsheets. These are the categories I use, feel free to steal them: Username, medium (art, writing, amvs, ect), whether they’ll work with fan characters, what they’d like to receive, what they won’t do (one year I even added ‘if there’s anyone you won’t work with’ so if it’s a fandom with drama, that one might be good), who they’re gifting to, who they’re receiving from, if they’ve submitted their piece yet, if their piece is in the queue, and if they’re alright with doing backup.

I also had a category for if they’ve confirmed they’re still in once assignments were sent out. (Boy, was that one nerve-wracking during the whole tumblr purge debacle of last year- I didn’t know if anybody had just quit tumblr mid-month.)

You will run into people who only want two or three things nobody else wrote on their sheet. If you can’t find even one match, then just put them with someone who had a wide variety on theirs, or who doesn’t have anything on their ‘won’t do’ list. Trying to match with multiple likes is a better bet, though, so encouraging longer lists of what people want makes things easier for you in the long run!

I personally just went in a line- I picked one person, found who they would give a gift to, and then found who THAT person would give a gift to. Rinse and repeat down the list, and it’ll end with everyone paired. I ended up making a closed loop and then sorting the last 8 or so, which was fine. An easy way to check that you didn’t double-classify anyone is control-f and searching names. If their name pops up 3 times, you did it right.

SENDING OUT ASSIGNMENTS:

Just copy-pasting the part of the entry that includes the person’s name and their likes makes this way easier for you over trying to type them out individually. Ask for confirmation that people got their assignments so you don’t have to worry if they missed it.

HOW TO KEEP THINGS ORGANIZED:

My system is this: I’ve mentioned it before, but I utilize a combination of my spreadsheet and the queue function. Let’s say Sally’s making a gift for Jake, Jake’s making a gift for Taylor, and Taylor’s making a gift for Sally. Sally submits her piece of art for Jake. I mark that off on the sheet, so when Taylor submits the gift for Sally, that gift will go in the queue to be posted whenever the deadline is up because she turned hers in already.

This keeps people motivated to complete their parts of the trade, since they won’t get their gifts until they do. If someone drops out, tell the person making the gift for them- if you’re lucky, they can rework what they have for the person that the drop-out was supposed to make something for, but if not, bring in someone who didn’t mind making a second gift. Person making the gift for the dropout can choose if they want to continue making it or not- if it’s mostly done and not a fan-character, they can just post it on their own blog unrelated to the trade.

It’s also a good idea to have a ‘hub’ where things are posted. If it’s a fic trade, ao3 has a function specifically for this, but I’ve found having things submitted directly to you makes it a million times easier to keep track of who’s finished their pieces, as well as keeping things ‘secret’ until the big day. (People have gotten confused or excited and posted early before.)

If people want to post elsewhere after it’s posted on the main hub, set your own rules- I say it’s fine as long as it links back to the blog and links the giftee, particularly if it involves fancharacters. You make your own judgement.

BE PATIENT:

This is one that’s very important. Some people don’t check the FAQ, and some people are going to be new, asking questions that you swear you’ve answered before or thought would be obvious. They generally just want to know, so take a deep breath. They don’t know they’re the fifth person to ask that question. Answer politely, or steer them towards the FAQ. (Running the same event year after year, you run into this a lot- they’re just new, be nice!)

Don’t start an event that you expect to have plenty of people participating if you aren’t prepared to hear the same questions a couple of times. Things might get a little annoying- take a step back for a few minutes, cool off, but try to remain professional. You signed up for this. For me, it’s always worth it to see how happy people are about their gifts, but know yourself and your limits- running a themed week where people post art at their own pace is less hassle, so you could try that if you don’t feel up to organizing a full trade!

If you can have a friend to bounce things off of, that can help too, but don’t use them as just a dumping ground. Tumblr allows multiple ‘mods’ on a blogs, so splitting work can make things easier, particularly if it’s your first run doing something like this. I had a friend who helped me the first few years before leaving tumblr. Be sure you trust the person, though! They’ll be able to edit posts and delete submissions, so if any drama happens, beware. (This never happened to me, but it doesn’t hurt to be careful.)

TAGGING:

Add tags to the submission box. I don’t know why this took me four years to think of, but it saved me a lot of time last year. If it’s a trade that covers an entire fandom and dozens of ships, you can add the shipping tags as they come in, but adding the ten or so most popular character tags helps a lot. If it’s going to involve potentially triggering content, common trigger tags are a good idea too. (A Halloween trade might need this, for example, or one that involves nsfw content.)

PEOPLE TURNING THINGS IN LAST MINUTE:

It’s going to happen. I think one year I was panicking on the 23rd because I only had half the gifts, and all but one had been turned in by the time I went to bed on the 24th. People procrastinate- if you get in most of the gifts ahead of time, you can thank your lucky stars. Try not to stress over it, but feel free to post reminders in the week before/days leading up to the deadline. My family travels around the holidays a lot, and I managed to get everything queued up properly through airport and hotel wifi more than one year, so you’ll be just fine if you try and stay calm.

OTHER/GENERAL:

It’s absolutely worth it, in my opinion- I’ve been doing this for years for a reason. My favorite thing is knowing I’ve done something that made others happy. Going through all the excited responses Christmas morning is equal or above getting presents from my family, because I know it’s on some level because of me facilitating the trade in the first place. I hear over and over this is something people look forward to, and it genuinely warms my heart.

It might take a few years to get established, but if you find a niche (there was a blog called sonic secret santa, but it hadn’t been updated in years) you might be surprised how fast you can gather people! I like seeing people show up year after year, it’s how I know I’m doing something right.

It is definitely work, and there is stress involved, (especially if people drop out or don’t send in their gifts on time) but the benefits outweigh the negatives, I say. People are generally understanding if there’s a problem, as long as you make it known you’re working on it.

You have to commit to the responsibility if you do this- people who are making gifts are putting their trust in you that you’ll keep things organized and they’ll get something for the gift they’re giving. You can’t guarantee everything will run exactly as planned, but you can be as transparent as possible when you hit a bump- ‘I’m sorry, but your person said they’ll be late because they were having internet problems/personal life issues and is doing their best’ is going to get a lot better of a response than radio silence. Be sympathetic, but be firm on the rules if need be.

I hope this helped a bit, and thanks for reading!

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