#other real people: presumably they can’t become characters?? (if they can or can’t I don’t want to be spoiled)

[clownsnake]

I’m on episode 71 of the orv webtoon. so he’s literally just been dissociating this whole time huh

[nightlilly0110]

This is literally a villain death tally for BNHA. Spoilers, obviously. I…hate this. I absolutely hate this. I knew some of them would die and I know that character deaths don’t necessarily have to have meaning, they could just be casualties, but the way this played out, it just seems to fit into a neat little box of “the bad guys are not allowed to have a happy ending.” Which. Goes against the entirety of the premise of Deku’s reasoning to become a hero of “I want to save people.” The only named character I can think of that he saved was Eri (not counting rescuing Bakugou from the League, Iida from Stain because they’re not civilians, feel free to tell me any others I missed) and she fits the stereotypical Perfect Victim trope. She’s just a child. Anything bad she did (rewinding people out of existence) it was done by accident, because she didn’t know any better. She has the chance to be rehabilitated into society without any of the bitterness that the League carry with them.

I really don’t like that there’s a subsection of this fandom that’s like “well they got what they asked for.” And yeah. Don’t use whatever issues you have going on as an excuse for your shitty behaviour (read: don’t be like “well the villains are abused so they have a right to kill people”) but also maybe think before saying “I think it’s good that the guy who got abused and manipulated as a child and groomed into being a mass murderer died. I think killing the murderer instead of addressing the societal problems that made him that way will fixeverything.” Your “they got what they asked for” also falls a little tone deaf with “what they asked for” boils down to “don’t be treated like shit” and the narrative of the manga has always been “we should save people.”

I also think these deaths are in bad faith when you have the hero side critically injured every five seconds and coming back from that (with the exception of Midnight, don’t get me started with that I hate that she was the only named casualty of that arc other than the racist guy) with Bakugou literally having his heart stop especially, and then with the villains it’s like “well can’t do anything about that, bye loser.”

So yeah, here’s what we know about the villains with the last three-ish chapters pending and a bit as to why I’m more than pissed about how this turned out, keeping the above sentiments in mind.

TLDR They died in vain. They accomplished nothing, no one bothered to listen to their message, and they died.

Magne - died protecting her friends from Overhaul. Body not recovered because it was cut in half (top half exploded) and only her legs remained. Might be reading into this a bit too much but a little weird that the trans woman was the first death we had in the series. Also weird that her motivations to join the League was presumably her horrible treatment for being trans but we don’t get that context until the circumstances surrounding her death. We know very little about her backstory.

Twice - Literally stabbed in the back while trying to flee. Body left in an active war zone, assumably recovered by the Hero Commission/whoever is responsible for cleanup. Mild closure in the fact that he did find out that he was the real copy of himself but not really because we still have people, years after this death, saying that it was “justified” and “a necessity” because Twice was resisting arrest trying to flee while being a non-combatant. I cannot stress enough that he was unarmed while he was running, ran past Hawks and did not attack him, and the “help” Hawks was offering him was throwing him in jail and never letting him see the light of day again. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

Toga - Sacrificed herself to save Uraraka (semi-implied she might have been in love with Uraraka). Only Uraraka knows of her sacrifice. Has to endure in death people saying that she was nothing more than a villain, same as in life. Nothing changes for her - she’s still considered creepy, a freak, a villain. Body assumably left in an active war zone recovered by Hero Commission.

Mr. Compress - Arrested and in prison. We still don’t know why he joined the League. (Thank you @themattress for correcting me in this, glad he’s not dead but damn.)

Kurogiri - MIA. Assumed dead. Not mentioned in the final act and without closure as to his identity, only that he is still loyal to the League.

Spinner - Hospitalized. Says he’s going to preach about Shigaraki’s message. Honestly, it’s a good sentiment, but he’s clearly going out into a society that is a) hostile to people with mutant quirks like him b) hostile to villains c) canonically resistant to change and resistant to anything related to Shigaraki if those TV interviews were anything to go by. It’s a lost cause.

Dabi - Alive, but barely. He’s restrained and being kept alive by medics equipment but it’s clear his life will be short and in pain. I saw someone say that it’s “ironic justice” because he always wanted Endeavour to watch him and now he has no choice in that his family is going to be (in Dabi’s words) “gawking at him like a tourist attraction.” He’s miserable, he’s going to die, and he doesn’t even get the freedom that he wanted while his abuser walks off without punishment and still adored by society. This isn’t justice, it’s cruel, especially when we know it’s possible for him to be properly put back together (since that’s what happened after he “died” as a teenager).

Shigaraki - Dead, turned to dust after being possessed and used as a puppet by AFO after being his puppet and manipulated by him for years. Was not saved despite the fact that the entirety of the last arc was propped up by the sentiment that Deku was trying to reach out to him and save him, specifically Tenko, the spirit of a little boy who wanted to be a hero. I don’t believe in redemption through death. People calling this a redemption arc is an insult. It wasn’t a sacrifice - he was killed. He had no agency in his life and didn’t even get to choose his own death. Deku tells him to his face that his death is his own fault (what happened to saving him?!). He died hoping his friends would be able to carry on and something about hero society changed. His friends are dead, dying, or have lost everything, and society stayed exactly the same as it was at the start of all of this.

[luulapants]

“I don’t use cannabis. How do I write characters that do?”

This long-criminalized psychoactive drug is having a renaissance in the US these days, now legal for recreational use in 21 states. That means there are even more ways that people use cannabis. It’s still illegal in most of the world, and I will be writing primarily about use in the US, where my experience is.

What should I call it?

Ganja. The Devil’s Lettuce. Dank. Mary Jane. There are endless epithets for this drug, and most of them will make you sound absolutely ridiculous unless used as a joke. The use of the Spanish name, marijuana, is traced to efforts to use American xenophobia to demonize it. Cannabis is the technical English term you would hear in, say, a police report. Your average Joe on the street, though, will say either “weed” or “pot.”

Who’s using cannabis?

More people than you might think! Stereotypes once painted this as the drug of racial minorities, hippies, burnouts, and teenagers. These days, anyone you could imagine with a glass of wine at the end of the day could be going home to a cannabis gummy. People use cannabis to deal with chronic health issues like pain, insomnia, or anxiety. Some partake as a rare indulgence, like a cigar on a special occasion. The vast majority of people who use cannabis do so in moderation.

Habitual users are easier to spot - people who make pot a huge part of their lifestyle. They might talk about it incessantly. They might be stoned at inappropriate times or wake ‘n’ bake (getting stoned first thing in the morning and, presumably, staying stoned all day). Cannabis is not physically addictive, but for people self-medicating other issues, it can be psychologically addictive the same way as shopping or gambling. People can become dependent on it to help them fall asleep or regulate their moods, in absence of other coping mechanisms. Just as with alcohol, someone who frequently uses cannabis alone is at higher risk of dependence than someone who uses occasionally or only in social situations.

Where do they get it?

Depending local laws, a person might have access to a medical or recreational cannabis dispensary. Recreational dispensaries can serve anyone who is above the legal age. Medical dispensaries require a prescription. These are really easy to get, and the dispensary may even have someone on site that can diagnose you (with pain or anxiety usually) and write a scrip. In addition to many forms of cannabis, they may sell glassware, vapes, or other paraphernalia.

A dispensary is like any retail location with a couple of differences: Most merchandise will be locked in cases or behind the counter, due to the regulated nature of the substances they’re selling. They may have extra security measures, like a security guard or bulletproof dividers at the counter. This is because dispensaries are cash only and usually have large amounts of cash on location, because conflicts with federal law mean banks can’t work with them.

Not having legal access to a dispensary isn’t the only reason someone might skip it, though. Dispensaries, due to overhead, liability, and very high taxes, are super expensive. If your character can’t get to a dispensary or has strapped finances, they will probably turn to a street dealer.

The local dealer or weed man is never a normal person. If you are depicting a weed man in your story, please keep this in mind. They are weird in different ways, but they’re all weird. You find them through personal connections, and a friend usually has to vouch for you before you can meet them. You might go to their place or they might come to yours. They may have a public meet-up location (park next to me in the McDonald’s parking lot after midnight). If you’re nice and the dealer likes you, they may smoke you out, meaning you smoke a bowl together from their personal stash, free of charge. One stereotype is a dealer who doesn’t have any real friends and makes it difficult to leave the drug deal because he wants to hang out. You then have to tactfully (without offending/losing your dealer) engineer an escape.

Otherwise, you might buy from friends, reimburse them for a buy they made, or throw down some cash when someone shares their weed with you.

Are there different types?

Yes! There are lots of different strains and crossbreeds of cannabis, most with lofty or whimsical names (purple unicorn kush, hazy sunrise sativa). If you go to a dispensary, a sales person will give you extensive “high profiles” of how different strains make you feel: “This one won’t make you as paranoid.” “This one is a very mellow high.”

Honestly, (and I might get assassinated for saying this) most of it is bullshit. Different strains have different chemical compositions and will act differently, but each person’s individual physiology is going to have a much larger impact, so Mr. X and Ms. Y will react more differently to strain A than the difference between how Mr. X reacts to strains A or B. And the dude at the dispensary is entirely unqualified to tell you how a strain will impact you, personally. Your expectation of its effects and how much you consume are also major factors.

One scientifically proven difference is the impact of different THC and CBD content. THC is the psychoactive component and CBD is responsible for more physical effects. The two major variants: Indicas are high in CBD, more sedative, and better at pain reduction and appetite increase. Sativas are high in THC, more stimulating, uplifting, and can help with creativity.

Whether your character knows anything about different strains will more about them than what strains they choose: whether they pay top dollar for designer weed strains or if they’re just buying whatever the local weed man has. The weed man may talk a big game about the strain they’re selling, and some of it might even be true. But usually, their stuff is not top shelf and, aside from low-budget weed aficionados, most of their customers don’t care.

Edibles

Edibles are foods with THC and/or CBD. Edibles might suggest a character who’s more health conscious, not wanting to inhale smoke, or who is more secretive about their cannabis use - edibles won’t leave a smell behind. People who only started using after it was legalized might be comfortable with eating a gummy even if they still have negative criminal connotations with smoking.

THC and CBD are fat-soluble, so edibles are usually made by infusing butter (for baked goods) or oil (for other products) with cannabis. If your character is into cooking, they might make their own weed butter, keep it in the fridge, and bake brownies or cookies with it. Usually, you can’t really taste the difference. If they’re looking for something portable or easy to hide, gummies or other candies are the way to go.

Dosage is important with edibles because it takes longer for your body to process them, so the onset of the high is significantly delayed. Whoever made the edible should tell you how many milligrams are in each item. How much you should eat depends on your body weight, tolerance, and how stoned you want to get. You can’t overdose, but you can have a really, really bad time if you get too high. The classic joke is that someone will be warned not to eat too much, have half an edible, say, “These edibles ain’t shit,” eat the rest, and then when it finally does kick in, they’re on-the-moon high.

Smoking

Let’s clear one thing up: smoking anything is bad for your lungs. That said, people do be smoking weed! Unlike edibles, smoking has near-immediate effects. The whole high doesn’t hit you at once, but someone with a low tolerance will feel something by the time they exhale that first puff. Unlike cigarettes, when a person smokes weed (takes a hit), they are supposed to inhale deeply and hold the smoke in their lungs for as long as they can before exhaling.

Before your character smokes out of anything, the first step is to grind up the weed. The part of the plant which is smoked are the buds: dense, greenish clumps which are ideally sticky to the touch. (Old, shitty weed will be dry and brownish.) These are placed in a grinder, a metal contraption which is twisted to move metal teeth inside and break the buds into small pieces. Ground-up weed will dry up faster, so it’s best not to grind until you’re ready to smoke.

Joints are made by taking a small piece of rolling paper, sprinkling a line of weed into them, then rolling it up. The edge is licked to seal it and both ends twisted closed. They’re smoked like a cigarette. If you add tobacco, it’s called a spliff. Most adults will add in a filter or roach on the mouth-end so the smoke is less harsh, and leaving it out speaks to being un-fussy. Like a burrito, you ideally want a nice, fat joint, but hubris can lead you to an overfilled, falling-apart mess. Joint rolling is a skill developed with practice, so your character’s ability to do so successfully or unsuccessfully will speak to their experience. Joints are cheap and portable, so good for tight budgets or someone on the move.

Blunts are similar to joints but made with tobacco paper - the brown paper that cigars are wrapped in. You can buy tobacco paper on its own, but more commonly, they’re made by buying cheap, sometimes flavored, cigars (like swisher sweets), cutting them open, dumping out the tobacco, and stuffing them full of weed. They’re bigger, so there’s a lot more weed in them, and they’re also wider than a joint, so each hit delivers more cannabis. Blunts are associated with urban Black culture.

Glassware includes pipes, bongs, chillums, bubblers, and other smoking vessels made of glass. These can be simple or beautifully decorative. A simple pipe might cost $10-15. A huge, artistic bong could cost upwards of a thousand. Glass is the most popular material for smoking vessels. All of these consist of a bowl where the weed is packed (”pack a bowl”) connected to an end where your mouth goes. The smoker places their mouth on the end, then holds a lighter flame over the weed in the bowl. They inhale, which draws the flame down into the bowl and causes the weed to smolder (not catch fire). The weed may continue to smolder enough for the next hit or the lighter may need to be used again. When the bowl is all burned, it’s cashed.

A pipe has a simple tube from the bowl and a small hole for the mouth, plus a carb hole on the side of the bowl, which must be covered while inhaling. The carb allows air into the bowl when not smoking, so the weed doesn’t burn too quickly between hits. The longer the stem, the less harsh the hit will be, because the smoke has time to cool off. Pipes are less harsh than joints and blunts but still pretty rough. A pipe can be made of many different materials. DIY pipes carved out of apples are a classic “no other options” stand-in. A chillum is a type of pipe that is straight, with the bowl facing outwards instead of upwards with no carb. A pipe with a very small bowl is called a one-hitter, since you can only fit one hit in it. A character might choose a pipe for portability, ease of hiding, or price.

A bubbler is a water pipe that uses water to cool and condense the smoke. The hole leading from the bowl descends into a small, enclosed compartment of water. The smoke goes into the water, then rises up a second tube to the small hole for the mouth. Like a dry pipe, it has a carb next to the bowl. They’re about two to three times the size of a dry pipe, not as portable, and more expensive. They are much less harsh than a pipe, though, and a good compromise between a pipe and a bong.

A bong is a long tube with a large water vessel at the bottom, usually like an Erlenmeyer flask with a really long neck The top has an opening which fits around the smoker’s mouth. The bowl is not connected but is shaped like a funnel with a stem that fits into a long tube that descends into the water vessel. Instead of a hit, smoking from a bong is called a rip. The smoke goes into the water, where it’s cooled and condensed, then continues to cool as it moves up the long neck to the smoker’s mouth. The bong will fill with smoke as long as there is suction between your mouth and the smoldering bowl. To end the suction, the stem is removed so clean air can replace the smoke as you inhale it. In order to not waste smoke, you should know how much you can inhale compared to the volume of the bong. Bongs can be filled with ice to cool the smoke further or have multiple chambers and twisty necks. They are much easier on the lungs than pipes or bubblers. They are also large, cumbersome, easy to break, hard to hide, and can be expensive. A character that owns a bong is a dedicated weed smoker with their own space where they don’t need to hide it, and the quality or lavishness of the bong will say a lot. Broke characters could improvise a bong by cutting a hole in a plastic bottle and inserting a tin foil funnel. That is janky as hell.

Finally, vaping cannabis took off in popularity at the same time as vaping tobacco. Cannabis oil cartridges are installed into a small vape pen, which can then be smoked somewhat discretely (less smelly than smoke, but it still smells!) with supposedly less damage to the lungs.

Effects

Different people react differently, much of which is based on their physiology and their mental state. Anxious people may become more anxious. Depressed people may become more lethargic. Affectionate people might get cuddly. Here’s some key elements:

Stoned/Faded: Reaction times slow. Memory becomes worse. Time perception is altered. You might repeat the same conversation over and over. The body feels heavy. Everything seems funny. You might become hyperfocused on something very specific or become intensely immersed in a story or TV show. Imagination and creative thinking improve. You may feel sleepy or serene.

Paranoia: Paradoxically, cannabis can create anxious paranoia, usually related to worrying that everyone can tell you’re high. The world looks very different to you, so it’s hard to imagine that you don’t look different to it. Slow reaction times mean that you might not notice someone moving until they already have, which can be startling and make you jump.

The Munchies: Cannabis is useful for people with appetite or nausea issues because it does cause cravings and the urge to eat. It doesn’t cause hunger, just intense craving. The intense focus of being stoned lets you focus on flavors more, which means food usually tastes better.

Baked: This term is synonymous with ‘stoned’ but it also implies some unpleasant side effects, like dry or bloodshot eyes, smoke-rough throats and voices, and an oppressive laziness that makes it hard to do things.

Second Stoning: Happens to some people, not all. Because THC bonds with fats, if you consume fats while you’re stoned, it will become bonded with those fats as they’re stored in your body. Your body fat works on a first-in-last-out system, so if you burn fat the day after toking up, the THC will be released into your system, causing you to get high again.

Is there anything I missed? Let me know!

[rainbow-femme]

So obviously I love just how much LGBTQ+ media exists now, and how much media has LGBTQ+ characters in it, but something Gen Z and later generations will never experience is being so desperate for anything that you end up finding the weirdest gay indie movies imaginable, watching them once at 2 am and then never seeing them again, and being haunted by the half remembered plots because you cannot for the life of you track them down again

So I would like to give you that experience vicariously through two of the ones I watched over a decade ago. If you recognize these please let me know I would love to track them down

The first was about this French gay dude in America who was marrying a lesbian friend to get a green card, and his boyfriend is like

“Hey babe my sibling is coming to town and going to stay with us.”

And the French guy goes “That seems like a bad idea, on account of you telling me that every time they come into town they become super toxic and make you the worst version of yourself and ruin your life.”

And the boyfriend is like “Ok but what are the odds that would happen again.”

The sibling I’m going to use they/them for because in an example of wonderful handling of trans characters, this person continually changes their mind about their gender, which is fine, except they keep managing to get full sex change surgeries every time it happens which is absolutely wild to me because it’s implied they have fully transitioned multiple times. They come into town having had a full MTF transition to the point of both top and bottom surgery and hormones but they’ve decided they’re a man again so they want a place to crash while they have a full FTM transition and I feel like I vividly remember them saying something about finding a doctor who can make them a pair of testicles. Like, specifically testicles was what they brought up, no other bits, this doctor apparently only made and attached artificial testicles and this character decided to start there

So naturally they start isolating the boyfriend from everyone by convincing him that everyone is out to get him and his French boyfriend sucks and is holding him back to the point that the boyfriend I’m pretty sure starts physically abusing the French guy along with other emotional abuse

And the story culminates in the two of them tipping off immigration about the green card marriage and literally get this dude deported, like he is handcuffed and put into a car and taken away, and also probably screwing over the lesbian friend who had agreed to marry him after the boyfriend had asked her to do it to help them

And as the car is driving away the boyfriend looks at the sibling and gives a “Nuh uh, I’m done with you” head shake and starts chasing after the car the French dude is in only to be hit by a different car and presumably killed

And that’s it, that’s the movie

The second is probably my favorite half remembered middle of the night gay movie

It’s about two lesbian friends who seem to be trying out dating each other to see if the relationship would work, and they end up meeting a group of BDSM lesbians who go “Uh, didn’t anyone tell you that lesbians don’t do monogamy anymore? We’re all polyamorous and have BDSM subculture personalities that we live in 24/7, that’s the only way to be a lesbian”

(Side note I don’t think this movie is actually bad about BDSM or polyamory stuff, it’s more about how people just coming out can easily get sucked into doing what they think they should and end up unhappy and over their heads in order to fit what a “real [X] person” looks or acts like. The characters who legitimately enjoy the lifestyle seem to be written in a good way based off my 10+ year old memory of my single viewing)

So the two lesbians decide that one is going to full time be a Daddy personality and the other will be a Little Girl personality, and they can sleep with whoever they want except the Daddy one can’t sleep with a different Little Girl or vice versa because that’s cheating

And this movie was so good because these two had 100% no knowledge of what they were actually supposed to do in BDSM situations and just kept acting like they did and the people in the scenes were like “… Ok, I guess I’ll trust you’re going somewhere with this?” and they never were, they were always just stalling for time

The best example is when the Little Girl one met a butch sub who was a Little Boy, I guess, and she wanted to do a three way with the Little Boy and the Daddy, and again they take things pretty literally so in the scene they’re like “ok you’re my dad and this is my son so that means you’re his grandpa.” And the Daddy one again has no idea what to do when genuinely faced with an experienced sub so she goes “Um, let’s make him sit in a box?” so they get a comically small box and make the sub squat down in it but again they have no idea what to do next and it culminates in the Little Girl saying she’s being drawn between the Daddy one she had been into before all of this and the Little Boy one she just met which pisses off the Daddy one so she leaves, fully confusing the Little Boy sub who thought that was all part of the scene

And then the Daddy one decides if the other is gonna have a new person she will too and she finds a super experienced femme domme and tries to flirt by pretending to be a dog and bringing her something in her mouth and the femme domme is just like “Ok A. I know you’re not actually into this so I’m not going to do anything to you because you wouldn’t like it, but also B. Even if you were I am so far above your experience level you would not be able to take it. So WTF is your problem cut it out.”

And there’s like a BDSM spin the bottle where you kiss or smack or lick the boot of whoever you land on and the Daddy one kisses a different Little Girl which pisses of the original Little Girl so she storms off so the Daddy One fully sleeps with the second one, and then gets in a fight with the original one over how one cheated because she got with the same archetype as the other but the other also cheated because she actually got feelings for someone else

And somehow they resolve everything and the story ends with them turning this into a performance art piece. You don’t see the actual performance art, probably because the writers wanted them to get wild applause but couldn’t think of a performance art piece based on this that would actually earn wild applause so you just see them being applauded while wearing a bunch of ties and jackets and scarves and stuff to I guess symbolize them trying to be things they weren’t

And then you see the butch sub getting whipped or spanked or something by the femme domme to show that everyone got their happily ever after

Heartstopper is great and all but they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore

[mxmaneater]

How do you see Gortash as queer coded?

Oh, it would be my genuine delight to explain.

Alright, so I have several lines of reasoning, so I’ll start with the low-hanging fruit first.  

Gortash’s obsession with his appearance

Okay, so we all know about Gortash’s eccentricities when it comes to the way he looks.  He wears an ostentatious villain coat, bedecked with golden bits and bobs, matching pants, and a matching shirt (that he wears provocatively low and can’t seem to ever lace properly).  He also clearly styles his hair, which given its length, takes a non-significant amount of time each morning. 

Now.  Am I saying these things on their own make him queer?  No, of course not.  The assumption that gay men take more care with their appearance is a stereotype, though I would argue that there is a subset of people for which this is true.  However, stereotypes also form the context for which we interpret characters and situations, and that social context is very real (even in cases when a stereotype is not), which is why I don’t discount these details either.  

Additionally, when it comes to the Netherstone, Gortash could have easily stuck it in the middle of a suit of armor like Ketheric and called it a day.  But as a politician (and someone who likely doesn’t see a lot of combat), I get that a suit of armor wouldn’t be his first choice.  Nonetheless, the option he goes with (and presumably takes the time and effort to craft and construct himself) is the pair of gauntlets, which are essentially ornate jewelry.  Jewelry that’s functional and dangerous, yes - but also needlessly beautiful.  And he really only needed one of them, but - again - his attention to detail with appearances drove him to build a matching set to become part of his Signature Look. 

Cool.  So let’s move on to:

Gortash’s political career

Alright, so I like to view Faerun as a fairly equitable place in terms of gender distribution in positions of power (at least compared to reality).  From what I can find on forgotten realms sources, it seems like the Council of Four was composed of 2 men and 2 women (at least until Stelmane is murdered); therefore, I think it’s not a stretch to assume that power is pretty evenly divided.  Great - love that for Baldur’s Gate.  Which it was true out here as well.

Even still, that means that 50% of the high-ranking government officials and patriars that Gortash is charming and manipulating as part of his rise to power are men.  As a devout follower of the God of Tyranny, I find it hard to believe that he would just pass up on the opportunity to use sex as a form of manipulation with men, when we have canon evidence that he uses this tactic to gain power with women (hello Lady Jannath).  Why would he - someone who views ascending in power as a holy mission - suddenly be squeamish when it comes to seducing (both literally and metaphorically) the other 50% of his targets?  

Also, like I mentioned earlier, although Faerun may be a veritable gender utopia, the social contexts that influence us in reality don’t suddenly go away when we boot up bg3.  The writers of the game as well as the consumers - us - are very much bound by the social contexts within which we operate, meaning that certain character traits can be queer-coded for us, even if they wouldn’t necessarily look that way to someone who lives in the world of the game (if they suddenly became sentient and engaged in discourse).  

What does that mean?  Okay, so we live in a society that is highly patriarchal and run by men (read: politicians as well as all other highly influential positions of power).  Within these circles, men are forced into “compulsory relationships” with other men (because remember, women don’t hold the clout they desire, and therefore don’t matter) in order to exert and obtain power; relationships such as “male friendship, mentorship, admiring identification, bureaucratic subordination, and heterosexual rivalry” (Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet) characterize these spaces.  Now, as Sedgwick - one of the mainstays of queer literary theory - explains, men enter into these “male homosocial” relationships because they must if they wish to gain power and ascend the ranks; however, the very necessity of these close, male relationships (to the exclusion of, or in superiority to relationships with women) also puts men in the dangerous social position of making it easy to become too close with other men and therefore jeopardizing their access to the very power they sought.  This is the foundation of her argument about forces that keep men in the proverbial “closet.” 

Okay.  So back to Gortash.  Gortash is not driven by fear of stepping over that line - he seems utterly unbothered by professing his connections to whoever he views as influential, regardless of gender (see: default Durge, which I’ll get to later).  He is not scared of stepping beyond this larger, societal “closet” that most men get defensive about in order to protect their relative power.  Sure Faerun is less homophobic than our reality, but again, the coding of these characters doesn’t change drastically based on the in-game setting, because it is ultimately people in our reality who are interpreting and interacting with the game and its characters.  

Also, I make a distinction between Gortash being “queer-coded” and not “gay-coded”; if anything, examples from the game would have me characterize Gortash as bisexual - if he even conceives of sex as an identity factor and not just a means of gaining power over someone, which is a big assumption.  I definitely view him as someone who thinks more along the lines of the latter - and wouldn’t it benefit him, in that case, to be an equal-opportunity manipulator?

This is getting long, so I’ll jump to my final point: 

Gortash’s devotion to the Dark Urge

Whether you read the past relationship between Gortash and the Dark Urge as sexual/romantic or purely a business dealing, the fact remains that Durge is the one character Gortash views as his equal.  And yes, you can customize Durge’s appearance and gender, etc, but the default origin character is male, so a certain amount of “canon”, I believe, can assume at least the possibility of a male Durge.  Gortash - the Chosen of Bane, who loves nothing more than domineering over others - wants to willingly share his Empire with Durge, once he’s conquered the city; that is not a level of devotion that you could expect Gortash to hold for anyone but his “nearest and dearest.”  

And from the letters you can find, it’s apparent that Gortash specifically sought Durge out - tempting him with information about Bhaalist artifacts that had been “stolen” and displayed in a museum in order to form a connection.  This, combined with his desperation to regain Durge as a partner in Act 3 (to the point he’s weirdly forgiving of insult and refusal), offer queer subtext, if not text-text, confirming his particular interest in Durge as a person.  After all, he only “tolerates” Orin, who, despite her own eccentricities, is only trying to accomplish the will of Bhaal, just like Durge presumably was as well.  In fact, most of the characters dismiss Orin as just some “crazy bitch”, which I find hard to believe isn’t rooted, at least partially, in sexism - especially since people forgive Durge very easily for similar crimes.  (I could write my own dissertation about Orin, but I’ll save that for another time).  

In conclusion, there is enough queer-coding between Gortash’s appearance, habits, career, known manipulation tactics, and special relationship with the Dark Urge to at least make the case that he isn’t super straight.  Even without the letter in which he wrote his penpal Franc that he loved him for bringing “wet, slithering malice” into the world.

[alicefromwhichplanet]

So I’ve seen so many times that people speculate sexual orientations of transformers, especially Optimus and Megatron. Their logic is: since Optimus has romantic involvements with Elita-1 in canon, and has suspicious tendencies to develop romantic relationships with several other characters portrayed as male (Megatron, Prowl, etc), he is bisexual. And since Megatron is only shipped with male characters (like Optimus, Starscream), he is gay.

I cannot tell how bizarre I felt the first time I saw judgements like this. Now I understand. It’s the weird compulsion to label things that made me uncomfortable. Not to mention the shifting allegiance to the canon and fanon in this conclusion.

Talking about the allegiance first. I mean, actually in all the “relationships” used as evidence for the said transformers’ sexual orientations, only one is confirmed in canon as an established romance, rather than a ship promoted by the fandom— that is Oplita. So if you’re following the official narrative, Optimus is not bi, or gay, but heterosexual. Because the only relationship he has is with a girlfriend. And if you admit all the fandom ships are true, why do you even care about the canonical heterosexual relationship of Optimus and the canonical “lack of heterosexual relationships” of Megatron?

Actually, I want to stress again that from the logic and worldview of transformers, there should really be no distinction of sex. And therefore the distinction of sexual orientation becomes quite unnecessary. The logic goes like this:

They don’t reproduce sexually —> they don’t have sexual organs/ everyone has the same set of energy transmission system resembling sexual organs (“spike and valve” as we already see in fandom) —> sex (biologically “male” and “female”) doesn’t exist —> sex is not a decisive factor in finding a partner —> there’s actually no such thing as sexual orientation, and it really doesn’t matter .

So analyzing transformers sexual orientation is really meaningless work for me. Why would you constrain your imagination in such a weird way? Why would you presume their sexuality when they don’t really need to be assigned to a binary sex? Why can’t they just be completely flexible in who they date and how they want to express themselves?

It feels like trying to label the sky “blue” because you happen to see sunny days more often. But the sky can also be orange or yellow or pink sometimes. And by the end of the day the sky doesn’t really have any color. The color you see is only how light is reflected into your eyes.

The only reason I can think of for people to insist on labeling these alien robots is because—worst case scenario— they’re trying to ship the said characters with some characters they love, but they don’t care to explain why.

E.g.“Since he’s bisexual, he could be dating my favorite character and another character at the same time!”

But you know, in reality, bisexual people don’t click on with every single person they meet. It’s quite a stigmatizing impression. You fall in love with a certain someone because this person feels special. They attracts you as a whole: their personality, hobbies, the way they looks or talks, etc. So you wanna make your ship real? Tell us something more. You can’t explain love by prescribing the character’s sexuality. Plus, it’s really sick to put labels on everything, sicker to label gender-fluid alien robots.

If you think I’m trying to say “I don’t want Optimus to be bi”or “I don’t want Megatron to be gay”, that’s not even close to what I mean.

[wisecrackingeric-2]

talk about the warrior cats AU that was MY SHIT back in elementary school for real

EEEEEERMMMMMM HEY HI HELLO IM SORRY THIS TOOK ME SO LONG TO GET TO. I. MIGHTVE GONE OVERBOARD. SO YKNOW. THERE IS A L O T OF TEXT UNDER THE CUT. But I hope you like it either way I am OBSESSED w this dumb au!!!!!!!!!!!

Also none of it is proofread at ALL this is ALL word vomit I’m sorry BXNSHENEJENDJ

Character allegiances just so people don’t get confused;

Smokesun- Luis (Ex-Windclan Medicine Cat)

Lionfur- Leon (Thunderclan Warrior)

Badgerheart- Rebecca (Thunderclan Medicine Cat)

Ashpaw- Ashley (Thunderclan Apprentice)

Ada (Rogue)

Note before I start: I’m making this take place in the old forest territories from arc 1 because this is basically just a copy of the second arc HXNSHSNSJSJ and it’d make more sense for their long journey to the ocean to take multiple months rather than just a few days like it would if they were in the new lake territories, so alas, no Skyclan in this AU- Only Thunderclan, Windclan, Shadowclan and Riverclan

OK ok so this AU starts BEFORE the actual story starts with Smokesun (Luis); Windclans only medicine cat. He is, obviously, very well-liked amongst his clanmates and he’s got a particularly strong bond with Starclan and receives pretty clear visions from them as a result (Starclan is like Cat Heaven and Cat Gods and Medicine cats are the only cats who can communicate with them)

So when Smokepaw (he’s still an apprentice at this point) receives a VERY SCARY vision from Starclan telling him that a sickness is cursed to ravish their clan, he obviously panics and tells everyone, and IMMEDIATELY begins working on a cure with guidance from Starclan

,,,,,,,,Only that cure DOES NOT work and in fact makes them become sicker EVEN FASTER. Some cats question whether he was even getting visions from Starclan in the first place or whether he was receiving them from the Dark Forest (evil cat hell where Bad Cats go)

SO when Smokepaw/sun starts getting punishing visions from Starclan so horrible to the point they have him physically coiling on the ground the clans like. Yep!! He fucked up!!!! He needs to be punished!!!!!

And ofc Smokesun does NOT wanna be punished and he also wants to escape Starclans visions so he. Runs away from Windclan off into the wilderness never to be seen again (If a med cat goes outside of clan territories they loose their connection to starclan and can’t receive visions from them)

So with their only medicine cat gone and their clan slowly dying from a mysterious illness, Windclan shut themselves off from the rest of the clans and don’t ask anyone for help (because this is Warrior Cats babey!!!!) and the other clans just go. Oh ok. They’re probably plotting a war or something. Let’s leave them alone.

And it’s against the code for other Medicine Cats to talk about insider Medicine Cat stuff with the rest of their clan so even though the other clans med cats notice Smokesun is missing, they’re not allowed to say anything

That is until Badgerpaw, Thunderclans medicine cat, (our beloved Rebecca Chambers) spills the beans to Thunderclans leader (presumably President Graham in this AU AGABSGEBEYDNSHXJ) that oooOoOoOoO a spOoooOoOoOoky evil medicine cat cursed Windclan and that’s why they’re sick!!!!! But because this is warrior cats the leader doesn’t say anything so moons pass and nothing really happens

Then we FINALLY cut to where like, the ‘main story’ starts- Lionfur (Leon) isn’t Thunderclans DEPUTY but he’s definitely a high-ranking warrior and as such mr leader president Grahamstar tells him first that his daughter, Ashpaw, has come down with a mysterious illness oOoOoOoOooOOoooo and Badgerheart (now a full medicine cat) suspects that it’s the same illness Windclan got from that super scary super evil medicine cat.

This is all obviously FRESH NEWS to Lionfur cuz the leader hasn’t told ANYONE abt this and it’s ESPECIALLY WORRYING cuz Ashpaw is more like a lil sibling to Lionfur in this AU (just for the sake of making the au make sense please don’t spin this BXBHSSNS) so he’s a liiiiiiil more understanding when the leaders like “ok. Now I need you to go outside clan territories and travel for MIIIIIIIIIIIILES to find a cure and reach the ocean and find that evil medicine cat. May starclan light your path lmao. Oh also Badgerheart got a vision that the ocean is where you’ll find the cure and we need to bring that evil medicine cat back so that they can repent but Badgerheart has to stay here so there aren’t any plot holes lmao”

So Lionfur is about to set off to god knows where on a god knows how dangerous mission when Ashpaw is like “:DDDDDD hey hi hello I’m coming with you!!!!!!!” And Lionfurs like “??????WTF NO YOU'RE NOT YOU'RE SICK????????” But It’s already too late so he begrudgingly let’s her tag along

Along the way after they’ve made it past clan territories, they somehow stumble across a mysterious cat who understands their clan language!!!!! He introduces himself as Smokesun and he knows an oddly large amount of knowledge about herbs and medicine and the territories outside of the clans and he’s also just so handsome and so charming and hey he’s a sweetheart to Ashpaw and I mean shucks they need somebody with proper herb knowledge to join them anyways so he tags along!!!! (Lionfur probably wouldn’t recognise him cuz Smokesun was only an apprentice when he left and also Medicine cats from other clans don’t usually interact with other clan cats)

So the three of them go on wild and whacky adventures together and I imagine if this was a warriors book this is where the main story would take place!!!!!!!!!!! I don’t have anything in mind but I imagine they’d probably have to fight against rogue groups (maybe a stand in for so Illuminados idk they’re not really relevant in this au) or giant dogs (again maybe Krauser) all while laughing and having fun and growing closer and oh god is Lionfur falling in love with this total looser from the middle nowhere he knows nothing about?????? He totally is!!!!!!!!!!!

But along their journey, Lionfur starts to notice some,,,,,,, weird stuff happening. Like, Smokesun will randomly double over and claw at his head but then sit up a few seconds later saying he’s totally fine (he’s not my boy is cursed with The Visions still!!!!!!!!! He’s being forced by starclan to feel what his Windclan clan mates are feeling!!!) and Ashley’s only getting sicker and sicker so they need to REALLY get a move on and reach the ocean sooner or later and find this damn mysterious evil medicine cat!!!!

Also I’m not sure where else to slot this in but Ada’s important to this au too ofc!!!!!!!!! When Smokesun first left Windclan he had no clue how to fend for himself and Ada managed to find him almost half mangled so she picked him up and helped him but they kept accidentally crossing paths and every single time Smokesun looked worse and worse (those damn visions amirite) so she taught him how to find specific herbs thatd help and he realised oh!!!!! I can make a suppressant from these!!!!!!!!!! So he dedicated ALL of his time to making a proper suppressant for Windclan (all the while. Y’know. Experimenting on himself and clawing his chest open and giving himself god knows what. Y’know. Classic Luis body horror shit amirite)

But he was too afraid to go back to the clans and give it to them himself so Ada would trot over there and drop them off for him and leave before anyone could see her (they probably thought it was a gift from starclan or something BDNEHWNEJSJ)

And that’s basically how Ashpaw didn’t just straight up die throughout their journey cuz Smokesun knew where to find herbs to make the suppressants- also in a similar vein to the actual game, Ada kinda follows them around like a shadow and helps them before they can get in TOO much trouble (ie, scaring away dogs, knocking over dams etc etc)

ALSO also again idk where else to put it but I think it’s funny to note that Ada’s not a clan cat- she’s a rogue and thus she doesn’t believe in Starclan so she’s not ENTIRELY convinced Smokesun isn’t just. Slowly going insane ANSNHDNEHSNS

Everytime he gets a migraine and starts shouting about the dead cats in his head she’s just like “oh my GOD dude PLEASE just GO TO A V E T GODDAMNIT”

Anyways after a LONG while the three of them FINALLY get to the ocean but. There’s no magical starclan-guided cure there. And even worse????? Lionfur has come down with the same illness so ALL tensions are high at this point.

And Smokesun is SO FULL OF GUILT because he’s under the impression that he’s been cursed by starclan and so it’s HIS PRESENCE that’s making Starclans cure not show up but he can’t just. Run away from his problems and from Lionfur and Ashpaw like he normally does. Cuz y’know. They’re sick and he’s the only one who knows how to make a suppressant.

So he has to very woefully admit to Lionfur that HES the mysterious evil medicine cat they’ve been looking for and he’s the one that “cursed” them. And obviously. Lionfur is PIIIIIIISSSEDD. But Ashpaw sick and so is he and none of them can leave the ocean so they all just kinda. Have to sit in a cave and talk about their emotions.

Lionfur and Smokesun have a Heart to heart and wowie just like in the base game Lionfur forgives Smokesun for his actions because he’s clearly so full of guilt and is doing everything in his power to save them yadda yadda yadda we all know how this goes anyways they kiss and make up and tell each other that they love each other but now they’ve got a NEW dhilemma cuz cats from seperate clans can’t be in a relationship and medicine cats are forbidden to be in a relationship but honestly?????? Lionfurs kinda considering just,,,,, not going back to the clans (after they drop Ashpaw home ofc)

Also hilarious to note that Ada is still hanging around watching all this go down like that scene in Brokeback mountain and she still delivers suppressants and herbs to the clans but every now and then she’ll poke her head up and be like “oh btw the warrior you sent out and your daughter are doing fine lmao” and the cats will be like???????? Wtf???????? Who are you?????????????? I can also imagine Badgerheart and Ada form a lil friendship over this too BXBDBNSBDSND

Anyways Smokesun realises EURIKA I CAN MAKE MEDICINE FROM THE SALT IN THE OCEAN (hey if a new prophecy did that plot point so can I) so he gathers up the medicine and makes it and voila!!!!!!! It works!!!!!!!!!!!! He’s not cursed after all Starclan are just cruel omnipotent gods!!!!!!!! So with Ada’s help they all race back to the clans and give them all the medicine and Ashpaw back everything is happy as Larry Wahoo

But. Y’know. Theres still the problem of. Smokesun. He doesn’t wanna go back to Windclan even after they’ve been healed for obvious reasons, and Lionfur realized he finds a whole lot more fulfillment in going on crazy adventures with Lionfur and by god he’s in love with that dumb cat too. So they all say their teary goodbyes to Ashpaw (and watch as she gets her Warrior status and her new name, Ashsun after Smokesun :,,,) ) and Smokesun and Lionfur run Off into the sunset never to be seen by the clans again but always in love and living their best gay kitty cat lives the end :))))))))

Lastly I think it would be HILARIOUS if Ada became the medicine cat of Windclan after Smokesun. Because she does NOT believe in starclan so whenever they’re like “OH NOOOOO THR CLOUDS ARE COVERING THE MOON WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!” She can shove poppy seeds in their mouths and tell them to shut the fuck up HDNHENEEJDJCUXJ

[mandyzoe]

waitttt youre so real for being a bully fan + orbit… if u associate that yeojin pic w lola which of the moon girls would u assign to the other girlies… :3c

HI SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG TO ANSWER i kinda fell off tumblr for a while i can’t lieee… but i love this question and i love you for asking it and it made my autism fire off on all cylinders so hope you don’t mind a response that is way longer than it has any right to be HEHE

im actually gonna take this ask in a different direction than you maybe originally meant it in so i apologize for that however i think my interpretations work best if i specifically use the loonaverse versions of the members because for 1 it just fits together a little better in my head if i connect these fictional characters to the fictionalized versions of these irl people, if that makes sense. and 2 im also just very autistic about the loonaverse. sorry

ok so despite the fact that i associate lola w that specific pic of yj, i find her more in line with yves, narratively speaking. because, well. yves is a fucking player. sneaking out to go on dates with vivi, stringing along chuu to make her partake of the fruit, recruiting her to convince gowon to do the same, fucking hyeju over, and THEN after hyeju had her little angry moment, yves just flashed her a smile and a wave to make her forgive her???? she has everyone wrapped around her finger. it’s crazy. two little baddie rulebreakers who WILL get what they want through love and/or war. love them

as for pinky, i debated on this one a bit. on one had there’s the undeniable rich girl swag of haseul. on the other, the princess-like charms of gowon were tempting. but ultimately? she’s a yeojin girl. her debut concept was so cute and quirky, but still with a distinct attitude to it that very much gives spoiled youngest and/or only child. she also has that same princess vibe, but a little more bright and youthful compared to gowon’s darker/more somber side of it. beyond debut, yeojin’s persona develops to lean more into that sassier vibe with the cuter aspects becoming more of an undertone which is very pinky to me

mandy… this one is flexible for me as well, between heejin or jinsoul. ppl usually say this about hyeju, but i actually think heej and soul have more “two sides of the same coin” qualities which kinda makes me wanna use them as a pair? like a duality if that makes sense. they’re both kinda morally ambiguous, heejin leaning more towards good and jinsoul more neutral/possibly evil, and also seem to have a lot more like. knowledge about the universe they’re in. like they’re very Aware of things and both attempt to exercise control over their surroundings a lot. jinsoul’s methods (allegedly!) are more Morally Questionable which is kinda where mandy leans, but i think the conflict between the two (as seen in not friends) can represent her change in how she views people and approaches relationships after… everything. they’re also both super gay

for beatrice i think maybe vivi? it’s mostly vibes based here. but vivi being an android is shown to be something that alienates her from her peers and makes her insecure in herself, despite the fact that she’s probably smarter and more talented than most if not all of them because of it. she still just wants to fit in and be a normal girl with friends who like her. later on, vivi’s android powers are shown to be more of an asset that can help her and her friends when they need it. i mean she literally piloted a space ship by herself for presumably several years to help them jump timelines or something. i think beatrice would appreciate that. plus, i think the edily concept can represent her more girly and romantic side. real yearner girl hours

now for zoe. hyeju. she’s hyeju. no debate really. they’re both initially characterized by their anger, having been hurt and betrayed and feeling really alone and isolated. hyeju is kinda viewed as a villain or a bad person because of her anger and craving for revenge, and while she can be volatile, at the end of the day she’s kinda just. a kid who was hurt. and yeah maybe she isn’t the “perfect victim”, she’s rude and angry and lashes out at people whether they deserve it or not. but she still didn’t deserve to be hurt the way she was. and she very much IS capable of love and forgiveness and she can eventually mend what was broken if she accepts the help offered to her. it just might take her a little extra time and some people willing to give her a chance. and also forgive some possible alleged murders but that’s not important

ok im gonna stop with just the clique girls cause this would get way too long HAHAHA but thank u for this ask and i hope u found my interpretations of these characters and this silly kpop lore at least somewhat interesting or accurate :P also hope ur enjoying the comeback hype as much as i am YIPPEEEE

[elliepassmore]

The Ones We Burn review

4/5 stars Recommended if you like: magic, fantasy, witches, healing stories, enemies to lovers, Twin Crowns I don't really think it's possible to write a review of this book without addressing the 'reverse racist fantasy' and antisemitic claims. The two reviews I link below go into detail breaking them down and I recommend looking at those if you're interested: Review 1 Review 2 I liked the plague plotline in the story. It makes the book less about the witch-human conflict and overthrowing the throne and more about medicine and saving lives and realizing who your family is. I liked the bits where Ranka and co. go into the city to try and figure out what's going on. I like the parts where they discuss different strategies for fighting the disease and try to figure out how it's spreading. I wish we'd gotten a bit more details about that, even if the plague is vaguely zombie-like. I also thought the plotline with the Hands of Solomei was interesting. It's one of those things where you want to scream that they've got it wrong, but of course they can't hear you and of course some of their complaints are legitimate, it's just been twisted in the wrong hands (pun intended, lol). I definitely thought it was an interesting look at how people's genuine concerns and criticisms can so easily be turned into something nasty and even violent when a charismatic leader decides to make that their calling. I liked that it showed a splintering of the group as well, with some people taking a decidedly less radical approach than others, especially since I think that reflects real life. There's also a lot of complicated morality to go around. The witches are upset because the treaty said they could have Witchik but the land is being encroached upon and the witches hunted and starved out. That's a good reason to be upset. The humans in the borderlands are upset because the witches are stealing from them and sometimes there are skirmishes that result in people being killed. Also a good reason to be upset. The people in other areas of the country are also facing a failing crop yield and poverty because the teenage king is undertrained in his magic and can't bring much-needed rain, meaning they are both starving, poor, and overtaxed. Another very good reason to be upset. But just because everyone has a good reason for being upset doesn't mean they have good responses to it. That is how things end up so messy and the witches end up so angry at the royals and other humans, and vice versa (though the royals aren't actually upset at the witches, it turns out). This whole situation also explains why the Hands of Solomei become such a big movement and are able to wreak so much havoc. It's complicated, but I like the layers to it. That being said, this book definitely feels very similar to Twin Crowns to me. Both involve an MC who is a witch, in a country where witches are hunted, infiltrating the aristocracy with the goal of overthrowing the current power structure to instead favor the witches. Likewise, both books have a vaguely-grandmother figure who is abusive, the MC realizing it, and then attempting to stop what's coming a bit too late. Oh, and there's a ball that the witches end up attending. There are some differences, with the magic and the fact that the twins in Twin Crowns are the MCs and the twins in this book aren't, plus the disease that's happening in this book. Ranka is the main character of the story and is a blood witch. Her main interest is in living a quiet life, but she's fiercely loyal, and so when her friend/adoptive sister goes missing, presumably taken by humans as a stand-in for Ranka, Ranka decides to take up the title of Bloodwinn and go to the palace, saving her friend, and bringing down the monarchy in the process. Things aren't what they seem though, and Ranka quickly learns that everything she's been taught about the royal siblings seem to be false and, in fact, they're actively working to try and help witches. She not only battles with her own beliefs about her magic, but also with the beliefs she's been taught about herself, the world, and her family. A big part of the book is about deciding who your family is and another big part is about the mistakes you make and how you can correct them. Aramis is the princess and is immediately suspicious of Ranka. The two grow a tentative alliance about the plague though, and we get to see more of Aramis' soft side. She's immersed herself in books and science, but she's also got the mind of a political leader. She was raised to be queen, but the succession shifted after it was revealed she doesn't have magic and so her brother will be king. Aramis actually seems to be okay with this and is mostly interested in making sure her brother is safe and in protecting him from the things that would break his heart. Aramis is another character who puts loyalty pretty high up in terms of values, which is something she and Ranka can agree upon once they start getting along. The relationship between Ranka and Aramis is definitely slow. Neither trusts the other, but as they spend more time together, first training Ranka on her magic, then trying to figure out the solution to the plague, they slowly being to trust, then like one another. They have their ups and their downs, and there are definitely times when it seems like they won't make it, but they're both stubborn, and as mentioned above, loyal, so it's hard for them to stay apart for too long once they've decided to be loyal to each other. Galen is also a pretty soft character, just in a different way than Aramis. Where Aramis is sharp words and quick wit, Galen is more gentle spoken and inclined toward heartbreak. He genuinely wants to do what's best for everyone and struggles with the fact that he isn't as magically powerful as his father. Unfortunately, due to his softness, characters tend to try and coddle him, which more than once ends up making things worse rather than better. But Galen proves to be someone who is both soft and powerful, and frankly he is one of the few characters who consistently makes good decisions throughout the book. Percy is the last MC (or MC-like) character. He's from an island nation and is the ambassador (or something) to the country Aramis and Galen run. Like Aramis, he relies a lot on his intellect and wits, but like Ranka he can fight well and has made some pretty major mistakes in his life. Percy definitely provides the comic relief in the story, and he's frequently quipping about one thing or another. I actually love the dynamic between Percy and Ranka because he's such a good foil to Ranka and understands both where she's coming from and the place she'll end up if she follows through. Despite knowing what's likely going down, he lets Ranka figure things out for herself, though he does try and subtly let her know that things will turn out poorly if she does what the Skra want her to do. Percy is also pretty quick to forgive Ranka when she messes up because he's been in the same situation. Overall, I enjoyed this book and thought the plot was interesting. There's a lot of complicated morality in the book, which I always like, and I enjoyed how each group played against each other as well as how each of the characters handled it in different ways.

[randomidiocyncrazies]

Gwitch ep 6 initial thoughts

okay i’m travelling, but i did catch ep 6 of Gwitch. As usual, messy thoughts under the cut

on the one hand: there’s a lot of plot popping off, so that’s great—i wonder what the ‘real’ Elan’s relation is to the Peil CEOs, and whether the doubles are ‘found’ (poor children taken in by Peil subsidaries and later converted) or made from scratch. The ‘real’ Elan did say something like “your face will be returned to you” to Elan (Number 4), so presumably the Elan clones did have their own appearances before?

it’s cool we get some more info on how the members of the dueling committee are selected: it looks like the head of the Big Three dorms are automatically part of the committee, which makes sense. However, I'm not sure about the allegiance of Secelia and Rouji—I don’t think they’re part of the Big Three, and I think they’re also in the same dorm? it suggests that there’s a 4th party that may be specifically involved in dueling logistics (since they have 2 members on the committee). I’m not sure if there are supposed to be more dueling committee members, or if the Big Three dorm heads + Secilia + Rouji are all of the members. It’d be kinda cool if all the dorm heads are technically part of the dueling committee, but most of them just don’t bother with those duties bc everyone knows the Big Three calls the shots. (Also... so far we’ve only seen Secilia and Rouji perform support duties—we haven’t seen Shaddiq duel yet either, but we know he had dueled others before from the convo in ep 3. Just what is Secilia and Rouji’s deal, and which dorm do they belong to???)

Speaking of dorms, it’s really funny that Guel is just chilling in a tent after he’s kicked out. Now that both he and Miorine are technically squatters when it comes to their living situations, i wonder if it’s something they grudgingly bond over later on, since it’s pretty clear that Guel is probably going to ally with Suletta and co. eventually. I’m glad he didn’t interact with our girls this episode though, since imo they need more time to set up what his goals are now that he’s kicked out and how those may intersect/interfere with Suletta and Miorine’s. And honestly if he’s going to ally with Suletta + Miorine, I need him to earn it.

As for the other stuff... I can’t quite decide whether it’s brilliant or annoying that Elan (Number 4) is basically made to be interesting, just in time to be secretly terminated(?) by Peil Tech. On the one hand, he is dehumanized not just by Peil Tech, but kinda by the narrative as well—he’s a walking plot device made to introduce narrative hooks (”I was already cursed” okay so there’s more plot re: Enhanced People, not to mention the implications of him having had his own face and birthday before becoming the ‘real’ Elan’s double, him seeing Aerial’s AI/Gund-bit take the form of a child etc) and left unable to enact his own will, but... the gruesome extent to which he is dehumanized is the entire point of this character, so him being a plot device makes sense. However, I’m not really looking forward to all the mistaken identity stuff when the new Elan gets to school and interacts with Suletta; identity mishaps can be done really well or really poorly, there’s no in-between lol

Also I just gotta say... Prospera/Elnora is very well informed; she knows about Jeturk Sr. trying to assassinate Delling, and she knows about Peil Tech manufacturing multiple Enhanced Humans to pursue Gundam research—I assumed the “witch” is referring to her old colleague, but honestly... who knows. Her ex-colleague also mentions a Mysterious Revenge-Worthy Event that happened 21 years ago—Suletta is 17, but I can’t imagine Prospera wanting to get revenge for something that happened 4 years before the annihilation of Ochs Earth. So I think the theory that Ericht is Aerial’s AI and Suletta is a clone/created by Elnora makes the most sense from the info we’re given so far, especially when it’s implied Aerial’s AI takes on the form of a child. (It’s worth noting that 4 is going to be an arc number going forward: Eri was 4 when the Ochs Earth Massacre happened; there are 4 years between whatever Mysterious Event Prospera and her ex-colleague were talking about and Suletta’s birth; the Elan that we’ve spent time with so far is Peil’s 4th Enhanced Person etc... is it just Four Is Death at play, or is there some other significance to the number?)

I just hope there’s more corporate drama soon because the Pharact is so obviously a gundam, with Elan (Number 4)’s data storm level exceeding acceptable limits during the duel—imo it’s a premise-breaking mistake if they don’t show how the Benerit Group reacted (esp Delling & Grasseley Defense, who are shown to the most anti-Gundam.) Since next episode is called "Shall We Gundam" I think it'll follow up on the corporate side of things

[ilgaksu]

Oohhh if you're still doing these: 🤲 and 🧠 (for Hei Xiazi)

Good luck with work proposal things, or if I'm late: I hope it went well!

i am absolutely still doing these!!! i'll keep doing them as long as people keep asking them <3

from these fic writer asks

🤲 Would you please share a snippet of a wip?

(from in me is where the horror is, a wip fic with gender dysphoria, smut, and cohen's 7 monster theses as they apply to xie yuchen)

Look at him, he wouldn’t know what to do with a dick if he was given a diagram, he heard one mercenary say, pure as the driven fucking snow or some shit, and that was safer, among this sort of company, not to correct the assumption: to be viewed as hermeneutically sealed. Honestly, Xie Yuchen sort of found it funny. When the same man died the next day, Xie Yuchen simply stepped over the body and kept going onwards towards the real goal. 

Recently, at least he’s been able to sit next to Hei Xiazi while listening to the bragging of some minor asshole about some girl in some city somewhere, and been able to tell in the rising corner of Hei Xiazi’s mouth that they both heard the exaggerations. 

“Bet you fifty yuan he can’t find a clitoris with a map,” Hei Xiazi murmurs, or something along those lines, every time, his whole body a comforting press along Xie Yuchen’s side; and then he laughs, delightedly, when Xie Yuchen hands him the money on the spot. 

“Don’t be absurd, Xiazi,” he replies, low in his ear. “He’d have to believe it was real.” 

🧠 Pick a character, and I’ll tell you my favorite headcanon for them.

Ohhh, I mean, I think the obvious favourite headcanon of mine is Hei Xiazi as a medical student in Weimar Republic Germany. When I first started in the fandom, I hadn't seen any ideas really situating him there in English, and I actually do very little historical research for it - 1920s Europe is already an interest, so I know a lot of it by heart. I also lived in Germany very briefly. I think the upheaval and insecurity of Weimar Germany really fit with Hei Xiazi's sense of being dragged forward through eras and forced, like the Roman curse, to live in interesting times. I don't consider Mongolian Hei Xiazi a headcanon, because it is canon, but I am also very partial to my headcanon that he is the son of a concubine or second wife, and so grew up in a household answering to his own biological mother and to the first wife of his father.

I also think it's worth noting that I consciously chose to diverge from canon and have him going blind as the result of a then-unknown eye condition before he becomes immortal. He's already Hei Xiazi in mine, down to being blind, by the time immortality comes to get him. That was important to me. I don't dispute authorial choices and I don't presume to know the intent behind them, but honestly, as a reader and creator, I'm tired of disability in media being the result of something mystical or otherworldly. Disability is the most ordinary thing in the world; it's the biggest minority in the world, which anyone can join at any point in their lives, and if they're lucky to live a long life likely will. (I have a lot of other feelings about why I picked this so if you ever want to know, you can always ask, I just don't want to go off on my finely-crafted Hei Xiazi and Disability soapbox for too long unprompted.)

However, I'm going to pick something smaller: the headcanon that Hei Xiazi was 36 when he had his first sexual experience with another man is my favourite for him, especially when you remember that I write him as having been sexually active, on and off, from the age of 17. It's important for me to honour the queer experience as one that can feel like you're racing to make up for lost time, or one with a delayed start, but also for a character who I conceive of as so fiercely and unashamedly queer by the point we meet him in canon to have had an implied period of self-reckoning. For me, Hei Xiazi is a character who wants to appear effortless and yet all of it is very, very earned, and this for me was both a first hint of that to readers in my work and also a first hint of that to Xie Yuchen.

[morganaspendragonss]

lost at sea, swimming back to shore

written with my beloved @tarlos-spain warning for brief graphic descriptions of a body (imagined), presumed (incorrectly) character death and suicidal thoughts ao3 | 2.6k

Carlos doesn’t know what to do when the ship finally docks in Ensenada. It’s almost evening, hours after they were supposed to have arrived due to them searching for TK, but Carlos hasn’t really been aware of time for a while. The same can’t be said for the other passengers, who, though mostly sympathetic, clearly aren’t thrilled at their vacation being interrupted. One woman even starts to chew him out over it, before she’s led away by her embarrassed and apologetic companion.

It’s fine, he tells the man as he pulls her towards the deck.

It’s the only thing that is fine.

He’s on the ship, then he’s in the back of a cruiser, then he’s sat in front of a police sergeant and the coastguard, and he doesn’t remember anything about the steps in between. He just… There’s so much that needs to be done, but none of it is real. Just a few days ago, he’d held TK on their wedding night, telling him how beautiful he was and admiring the way his ring looked on his finger.

Carlos looks now at his own ring, lightly brushing it with the tip of his finger. Even that slight contact makes him shudder, and Carlos has to look away and swallow as bile rises in his throat.

He’s had this ring for a week. It can’t be the end already.

“Señor Reyes?” the sergeant says. “Señor Reyes, did you hear that?” He speaks in Spanish, heavily-accented English abandoned once he found out Carlos could understand him.

Carlos blinks, his brain taking a second to process the question through the fog that’s lain over it since last night. “No, I’m sorry,” he replies eventually. “Would you mind repeating that?”

“Claro. We have put out an alert with your husband’s picture and information and we have the coastguard out searching the shore and surrounding waters. However, I’m sorry to say that there’s little else we can do. We will, of course, keep you in the loop with any new developments.”

Carlos simply nods; part of him wants to beg them to do anything, to do more, but the bigger part right now is consumed by the emptiness created by TK’s absence and by the possibility of that absence becoming permanent. He doesn’t want to think it, but he looks into the eyes of the men sitting in front of him, and, though their mouths don’t move, Carlos hears it clear as day.

We’re sorry for your loss.

We’re sorry for your loss.

We’re sorry—

*

His hands shake as he listens to the dial tone on the other end of the phone. His throat burns from spending hours crying, and there’s barely any strength left in his body for anything else. He’s not even sure that he has enough for when—

“Carlitos, what a surprise!” Andrea says. “I thought we wouldn’t hear from you until you came back. Not that I’m complaining, mind. How is the honeymoon? How’s married life?”

“Mom…”

“That tone… Have you and TK argued already? Well, it’s normal; now that the wedding nerves have gone, I’m sure you’re talking about important things and…”

“Mom, I think TK’s dead.”

Silence fell. Carlos hears his dad’s voice in the background and he can imagine the look on his mother’s face, how pale she must have gone and how wide her eyes wide be. His dad will be worried.

“Mijo, what did you say? I don’t think I understood you correctly.”

Carlos falls to the floor, breaking down in tears. He’s in the middle of the hotel, surrounded by people, but he doesn’t care; their gazes don’t matter, nor what they’re saying or that a couple of idiots are filming him.

“It was… There was a storm… TK wanted to stay above on the deck, he was… I don’t know, I didn’t ask him…I should have asked him, I should have stayed with him and then none of this would have happened.”

“Wait, Carlos, espera, I don’t understand,” Andrea says, with Gabriel behind her asking what was going on. “Carlos, what has happened to TK?”

“He fell overboard in the middle of the storm last night. We’ve docked now, I’m here in…fuck, I don’t remember where I am. They say that they’re searching for him, but—”

“What do you mean he fell overboard?” his mother shouts.

A second later, Carlos hears his father’s voice. “Carlos, son, I need to know where you are. If they’re searching for TK, they’ll find him, I’m sure, but tell us where you are. We’ll be there.”

“It doesn’t make sense, Dad. They say that finding someone who fell into the ocean alive is… It’s hopeless, and after forty-eight hours they’ll give him up for dead and I won’t have anything else to do here.”

“What do you mean? There are lots of things you can do, son. We’re officers of the law, we know about looking for a missing person—”

“Dad… TK isn’t lost in a city or in the desert and he hasn’t been kidnapped. He fell into the sea in the middle of nowhere during a storm at night. The chances he’s still alive are…”

“Is that what you’re telling yourself to make it less painful to think about the possibility he could be dead?”

Carlos doesn’t say anything, but his father is right; he can’t help but believe that there’s still hope. He’s sure TK will come back to him because he always has before. He always comes back, even when the odds are stacked against him. This isn’t going to be the exception.

“Tell us where you are, cariño,” Andrea says.

“I’ll send you the address.”

He says a quick goodbye to his parents and fires off the address, but without his mother’s calming voice there to soothe him, his fears waste no time in returning. He feels like he could drown in them, and maybe that would be better, because if TK can be gone so soon after they promised each other forever, then what is Carlos even supposed to do anymore?

He’s never felt so useless. He’s a cop; he should be able to help with the investigation, but it’s like he told his dad. This isn’t a missing persons case where they would search the victim’s house, question the friends and family, run licence plates and CCTV checks.

This is TK, somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, all alone and probably hurt. And that’s one of the best case scenarios.

Carlos doesn’t want to believe that TK’s dead. He doesn’t want to even think it, but logic dictates that his body is somewhere out there right now, never to be found. Or washed up somewhere, perhaps, cold and bloated, unseeing eyes staring at the sky. He wants to hope, at least, that it was peaceful, but he knows that’s probably a lie too. He’s heard the stories of people who get caught in storms like that, who breathe in a mouthful of water, and then another, and another, panicking as their lungs fill with water and they slowly, agonisingly drown. 

He imagines that happening to TK, the vision overpowering him until he, too, is choking, saltwater flooding onto his tongue, down his throat, and he can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t—

Carlos comes to in a darkened room. He’s flat on his back and his heart is beating like he’s just run a marathon, his breathing agitated as it tries to keep up. He doesn’t know how he got here or what happened. He remembers being on the phone with his mom, telling her about…about TK, but beyond that, it’s a blank. He struggles to sit up, but a gentle hand on his shoulder stops him.

“Tranquilo,” a woman’s voice says. Her face comes into view above him, smiling, but clearly worried. Then, in halting English, “You must rest. You…how do you say…freak out.”

She presses a little harder on his shoulder and Carlos acquiesces with a groan, closing his eyes and bringing a hand up to his forehead. Vague images flash behind his closed eyelids, going by too quickly for Carlos to latch onto, which something deep inside tells him is probably a good thing.

“Very well, sir,” the woman says. “Rest.”

Carlos cracks his eyes open and squints at her. She doesn’t look like a nurse, but she is in a uniform of some kind, and Carlos’s gaze quickly finds the logo of the hotel emblazoned on her chest. On the other side, a shiny silver badge gleams, and after a moment, he manages to make out the letters of her name: Jimena.

“Hablo español,” he says, and Jimena smiles again, looking relieved.

“You collapsed in the lobby,” she explains, having switched to Spanish. “You were crying and screaming; it scared the other guests, so we moved you here.”

“How long has it been?”

“About thirty minutes, sir.”

Carlos groans again and once more goes to sit up. Jimena lets him this time, though she keeps a cautious hand out in case he falls. 

“We’re very sorry, sir,” she says once he’s sitting more or less stable. Carlos frowns at her, and she bites her lip, expression turning unbearably sympathetic. “They told us what happened to your husband. We’re all very sorry.”

The mention of TK turns Carlos’s stomach, and he brings a hand up to his mouth and breathes deep, trying to keep the nausea at bay. He vaguely hears Jimena asking if he’s okay, but he doesn’t reply; an itchiness has filled his bones, begging him to do something that will help alleviate this pain.

And Carlos can’t find TK, so he does the next best thing.

He stumbles to his feet and brushes past Jimena, mumbling a “Gracias” as he goes, and heads to the nearest bar.

The rest of the day, which may have only been an hour, goes by in a second. The bar is half-empty, and fortunately they haven’t yet heard the news of the missing tourist and his poor, inconsolable husband. No-one knows him, no-one looks at him, and no-one tells him how sorry they are. He asks for a drink and is given one; he asks for a second and he gets it, then he asks for a third and he’s told to pay first. But he has plenty of money — it was supposed to be money for the cruise, for the room at a five-star hotel they were going to book on the final day, just one more night alone before going back to normal life.

He’s going to burn that money on alcohol until there’s nothing left inside him to make him cry. He wants to forget… No, he doesn’t want to forget TK, he knows that he will be there for every second of the rest of Carlos’s life, watching over him and asking him to stop hurting himself. It’s like he can hear him know, but Carlos needs him to be quiet; he’s not ready yet to listen to his dead husband’s voice.

If he listens to TK, he’ll also have to listen to his own voice telling him that he deserves to die because he lost everything and it’s all his fault. He can’t do that either, so he drowns out TK’s voice, drowns out his own voice, and he would give anything to be able to drown himself.

He laughs; the idea of drowning himself is almost funny, because at least then his end would be like his husband’s. Though, drowning in drink, unconscious or in an alcohol-induced coma sounds much easier than what he fears TK got.

So Carlos keeps drinking until his forehead hits the bar and the bartender tells him that he can’t give him anything else. “You’ve had enough, amigo.”

“I’m still alive…it’s not enough.”

“I’m not going to scoop you off the floor to get you out of here, so you can leave now and call someone to get you, or they’ll end up calling 911.”

Carlos laughs again; the bartender doesn’t know how badly those words hurt. What would a stranger know?

But then he realises that, though he called his own parents, he still hasn’t told Owen. “Fuck…” The very idea that Owen might see it on the news and find out about his son’s death like that destroys him inside.

Telling him now, in the middle of a bender, isn’t the best idea, but there’s no easy way to say this and Carlos knows he can’t do it sober.

The dial tone rings and he almost thinks he’s lucky enough that his father-in-law won’t answer and he won’t have to say it.

But then Owen picks up.

“Carlos, what’s up? I wasn’t expecting…”

“Yeah, yeah, my dad already said that you weren’t expecting us to call because we should be making out on a beach.” He barely notices how crude he’s being, unaware of anything but the guillotine ready to fall on Owen’s neck.

“Has something happened, son? You sound…”

“I sound exactly how I am, drunk off my face, about to fall over, and I might have pissed myself already…but I’m lucky enough to be alive and talking.”

“Carlos, what’s going on?”

He already knows; Carlos is sure Owen has figured out something has happened to his son. Or maybe he thinks that they’ve fought and TK ran out. But he certainly won’t be thinking that his son is dead.

“It’s my fault, Owen… I shouldn’t have left him alone on the deck. Fuck…it was a fucking huge boat…nothing had to happen…nothing happens to people on cruises. Why did something have to happen to him?

“Wait, wait, go back a second, I don’t understand and you’ve drunk too much.” It must be a surprise because Carlos doesn’t drink — at least, not to the point where he loses his senses. Owen already knows that something very, very serious has happened. “Start at the beginning.”

“The beginning doesn’t matter, Owen, it only matters that TK…that TK probably drowned in the ocean and now he’s dead.”

Silence falls on the other end and for a moment Carlos thinks his father-in-law has hung up on him. He imagines him dropping the phone, that Owen is having a heart attack and that, too, will be Carlos’s fault. But then he hears him breathe.

“Owen.”

“What… What happened?”

“Honestly…” Carlos sobs and almost falls to the ground. “I don’t know because I wasn’t with him. TK… God, Owen, I don’t know, they said he fell over the edge of the boat, and I promise that he wasn’t on board because I looked everywhere, he wasn’t there. We were in the middle of the ocean and TK wasn’t anywhere.”

“You’re not being serious,” Owen says, his voice flat, without anger or sadness or desperation. “Carlos, tell me you’re not being serious.”

“TK is dead, Owen. He fell overboard in the middle of the ocean and I promise that he didn’t survive.”

“Carlos, a thousand things could have happened.”

“TK is dead, for fuck’s sake! Believe it. My husband, your son, probably drowned and you know better than I do how awful it must have been for him.”

A beat, then Carlos hears Owen sob. He’s broken the heart of one of the most important people in his life. Owen will never forgive him, but he’s not the only one — he’s never going to forgive himself either.

“I… Owen, it’s all my fault and… Shit, I have to go.”

He’s going to throw up and his head feels like it’s about to explode… But the pain is good, the pain is the best thing he can do without throwing himself into the ocean and joining TK.

[frogsndogs]

So recently I watched this pilot short: Epilogue of endings. It’s about 12 minutes long, created by a group of animation students over a single summer. I had never heard of the project before it showed up in my youtube recommended.

It changed my brain chemistry. I watched it 9 days ago and I can’t stop thinking about it to save my life. The music? Spectacular. The voice acting? Perfect. The art? astounding. The characters? I’m already emotionally attached. Hotel? Trivago.

Listen, I don’t tend to watch of a lot of things anymore unless I’m with other people, and I have this weird thing about engaging in new media, I think because a lot of what I’ve been watching recently has been kinda disappointing, or very… I don’t know… it’s hard to describe. It just feels like a lot of studios are making characters shallower, relationships strained, and half-assing their world building. A lot of media that I’ve taken in recently is trying very hard to make itself seem edgy and serious and that’s not what I want right now and definitely not what I need.

But this 12 minute pilot? This is everything I never knew I needed. The characters feel like real people, with complex motivations and interpersonal relationships. They’re flawed, but they’re trying their best with the situation that they have. They have things, other people that they care about and would fight for, they have motivations and backstories that you can see the breadcrumbs of, but have not been revealed yet, and the breadcrumbs are so good you can’t wait for the whole loaf. The world-building is exquisite, built up enough that you can see the beginning, but still drawing you in with more questions. 

I have a more detailed review under the cut, with SPOILERS, but I highly recommend that you go watch the pilot. It’s 12 minutes of time well spent in my opinion.

So the first scene. We’re introduced to Lucy, Blu and CG. I think Blu is already my fav, lol. In this scene, we see the three characters playing eye-spy while walking through a forest. It’s a pretty innocuous scene if we didn’t pan up to the sky and see the sun having broken open and Lucy becoming emotional over having to leave town, and presumably the rest of her life behind. Blu doesn’t answer her.

So Lucy clearly doesn’t know what’s going on, and I’m wondering if Blu has limited information himself. Maybe even Blu doesn’t know why or how any of this is happening. Maybe Blu literally can’t answer her question because he doesn’t have the answers. Maybe it hurts, being so helpless and out of control, so he’s in denial to a certain extent, trying to pretend that everything is fine. He’s trying to keep this little girl, happy and safe and alive, while also presumably dealing with his own shit, and no he’s not doing it perfectly, he’s flawed, as people and characters should be, but he’s trying and so far she is alive and safe to a certain extent so way to go Blu! I think this will probably cause some tension between the two down the road, but for now they just keep walking.

I wonder where they’re going, if anywhere specific? Why did they leave town specifically, we see there’s lots of danger pretty much everywhere, did something happen?

Anyways, then we get to this scene of someone fixing what appears to be a subway train. He stops, pulls out a journal and we get some exposition stuff. We find out that the world ended, and how. And WOW. This whole thing was gut-punchingly realistic I feel. People blowing up the competition trying to race off into space when it’s announced that the sun is going to die out? That’s something that unfortunately I can see people doing. I wonder/hope that this will become a plot point again later on, and we’ll find out what happened to all those people. But anyways that’s not even the craziest part; the fact the sun broke open and released a whole bunch of eldritch horror monsters??? Yep here we go. And then the next thing hurts. Like a lot. Because the narrator says that ‘people who hoped to live out their last days in normalcy quickly found out that their life-style was no longer sustainable’. That shit made me want to cry. The want for a peaceful death, a calm death, a painless death, but having even that ripped away from you. This setting that these characters are in is awful and very terrifying, and we can see how it is hurting them, torturing them, but I got to give props to the world building. It’s good writing. They set up the plot, the problem, what’s been going on the past couple yrs, some mysteries, to both the viewers and the characters, and in doing so give us some idea of the characters that we do have. Because the characters that we do have are trapped. The characters that we do have are abandoned. The characters that we do have are survivors. 

And then we pan out to see the narrator having an interaction with one of the Monarchs. And this scene? Gave me chills, man. I was so creeped out by this. Acedia’s ‘I do not like that response,’ Mole’s utter helplessness to do anything, his clear, potent fear of the creature, the way that it just lightly touches him and he flinches. Then the frustration that we see on his face after it leaves, the anger that turns into tiredness and then hopelessness? Someone needs to wrap this man in a blanket stat.

And this is where I’m starting to think that Blu doesn’t really know the full extent of what’s going on. There’s a good chance that Mole knows about the Monarchs because he’s being held prisoner by one. It’s possible that Mole is seeing the world collapse before his very eyes, while Blu is just seeing the aftermath and not knowing why and I can’t say which is more terrifying.

The ‘I have influence?’ line is peak. I love it so much, I can’t even say why. That whole little interaction with Lucy saying that she takes after Blu, Blu being so genuinely touched and CG being low-key offended is perfect and I love it. It shows how close they are, how much they care about each other.

The the… zombie ppl??? I love the detail of how unlike a lot of teenage protagonists, Lucy listens to Blu, and gets out of danger. She trusts him to handle the situation on his own, and knows that the best thing that she can do right now is get to safety. There’s an implicit trust there, in spite of her clear issues with Blu not telling her things, and this is what I’m talking about when I say the character relationships are complex.

Oh fuck. The transitions? The way that it cuts from one character to another, each unintentionally completing one another’s scentences, and unknowingly engaging in conversation. It’s amazing storytelling, an amazing presentation and for some reason it just confirms to me that these characters are family. They fit together like puzzle pieces. I don’t know what else to say.

We get more info on our mysterious narrator, Mole, who is an amnesiac, and clearly going through it. During this scene we see a crumpled newspaper of what seems to be a younger version of him, winning an award for his dedication at being a subway motorman. His name is crossed out in black ink, so we can’t see it. Which makes me question, did he do this to himself? Is his amnesia a trauma response to everything he’s going through? Did something happen to the point that his brain decided shutting down and forgetting everything was better than remembering this one thing? And it hurts, because in the picture in the newspaper he looks so happy. So young. So alive. It’s a stark contrast to the man we see with bags under his eyes, talking to himself and becoming increasingly distressed. I read through the article, and again, props to the team, some other people might have just did random letters or whatever but they put in a whole ass-story, giving the viewers more info about Mole than even he has. We know he was a dedicated subway motorman. We know he was inspired by his father. We know he had a sister. But these answers only serve to bring up more questions? What happened to his sister? Was his father still alive at the time of he end of the world and what was their relationship like? Because there’s a chance that their relationship was really good, and that’s why he went on to become a subway motorman, but there is also the possibility that he was pressured into doing so, and the way that he complains about being on a train when the world ended makes me kinda lean towards that option.

Then we see CG and Lucy walking around the underground tunnels and we get more info on them. We find out that CG was created by Lucy’s mom, which begs the question of where is Lucy’s mom???? What happened to her? Is there a chance that she’s still alive? Does Lucy know what happened to her mother?? Or is this just another thing that Blu is keeping her in the dark about? Does Blu know what happened to Lucy’s mother???? Or— as you can see I am totally normal about this woman. Anyways.

CG is a fun character, optimistic and bringing a lighter atmosphere to the show, but there is just something… off about her in this scene. The disregard for the danger, the naiveté, the joyful voice in such a horrible situation, feels so wrong to me. I wonder though if CG chose to be like this, or a certain amount of it is her programming? Does CG know what happened to Lucy’s mom? I think CG was created to be take care of Lucy but it seems to be the other way around here, why is that? 

And then we get info on Blu. Blu was a solider during the war when ppl were trying to get all the resources to race off into space. I wonder if Blu had believed that he would be granted a place on one of these ships. (If he managed to survive of course.) Or had he been in the military prior to all this, and was just pulled along? This makes me want to know more about his belief system before and after the end of the world. Also it is implied by CG that Blu is carrying a lot of pressure, and I wonder how that will be dealt with later on… hmm… 

Also the music that plays when Blu uses his arms to pull down the wall? Amazing, I love it, I love the scene, I love the fact that he’s a cyborg, I am so invested in these characters already it’s killing me.

Then we see Mole almost (accidentally) kill Lucy and CG. He’s out of it, he’s the only person running the trains, he didn’t expect to have to watch out for anyone, I think that we can give him a pass on this. Blu doesn’t think so obviously.

(Sidenote: the way that Lucy curls into Blu, as he protectively shields her is so cute, my heart, help)

Blu is pissed. His tone doesn’t change too much, it’s light, but there’s this threatening undertone there that kinda creeps me out. Mole tells them he doesn’t have a name, before Blu forces him to tell them that its Mole. Wait… is he called that bc Moles live underground? Anyways, Blu wants to leave him to die there, which shows an interesting side of his character. Prior to this we’ve seen him take a protective, fun role as Lucy’s guardian but here we see this apathy towards someone who is obviously not doing so well. A lot of other people would be excited to find another living person in the apocalypse, but he’s fine just walking away. Is this just because he almost killed Lucy? Or is there something more going on here? In Blu’s bio on the rainbott instagram, it says that Blu was ‘left to die in a mysterious incident’ and it’s interesting that he feels fine leaving someone else to die in such horrible conditions. Again - complex character writing, props to the team.

But Lucy doesn’t want to leave him. This shows her compassion and maybe too her want for connection with other people. Blu resists; ‘Lucy that is the most unimpressive man I have ever seen,’ this line has no right to be so funny, esp with Mole just staring at him in the background. Did he hear that or is he too far away, too out of it? Then he relents, perhaps solely because of Lucy, or maybe also because of his own want to do the right thing. He doesn’t like Mole, he makes that obvious, but if Lucy want’s to adopt this strange hobo man, fine, if it makes her happy. He’ll do whatever it takes to make Lucy a little more happy.

Mole’s ‘it doesn’t want me to leave’ scares the shit out of me, and the way that he just freezes up when Acedia shows up… 

The scene when it talks about humans really creeps me out, and makes me worried even more about Mole. Calling him ‘entertaining’ and saying that he ‘belongs’ to them. It sounds like it sees him as a toy at best, and reminds me of the way that Mole said earlier that the Monarchs had the power to ‘turn Earth into their own personal sandbox’. Did Acedia get rid of Mole's memories for that purpose? So that he would 'belong' only to them. I wonder though, why Mole, and if there were others, if Mole had to watch those around him die, or worse when they gave an answer that it didn’t like. I wonder what Mole has had to do to scrape by and survive, what he’s been through. But Blu pulls him along anyways, kind of against Mole’s will. Like obviously being with Blu, Lucy and CG is better than being with a horrifying shadow monster, but aforesaid horrifying shadow monster is going to be pissed at him. I wonder how he’s going to react to that, if he’ll lash out at Blu or worse, Lucy for rescuing him because now it’s gonna be angry and he’s gonna have to be the one to deal with the fallout of that.

Then the scene where Blu pretends to buy tickets to appease CG? It’s for comedic relief, but again it makes me think about Blu. Is he doing it because he knows CG will be annoying if he doesn’t? Or does he genuinely not want her to be hurt? I’m not sure. 

Then the campfire scene. Lucy looks away when Blu removes his mask, Mole tries to lean in to see what’s behind it. Blu doesn’t like this, I assume it’s a sensitive subject, but Mole is again, kind of out of it. Mole is scared of Blu and Blu clearly knows this, even kinda uses it to freak him out. I’m looking forwards to see that relationship developing, maybe one that contrasts Mole’s relationship with Acedia, I dunno, someone who cares about him in this really twisted way that hurts him, and someone who at first doesn’t care at all(at first), but still takes care of him in spite of it. I dunno… just vibes.

And Lucy’s little ‘what if we tell ghost stories around the fire’ breaks my heart. It’s like she too, is in denial to a certain extent. This is just a fun camping trip not the end of the world. Everything is fine. Everything will be fine.

Then the post-credit scene. There’s presumably, something left of the government that is working to try and deal with the Monarchs, which gives me hope that there might be a way to stop them, a way to stop all this death and destruction. I am curious about what’s left of this order, what the gov was like during the war, and how they’re operating now. Also the way the commander calls the droid C21, and the way that CG is called CG, and the way that he says ‘find the girl’ and C21 frowns and does this have something to do with Lucy’s mom??????? What does any of this have to do with Lucy? Does she know more than she’s letting on, or does not even she know what she knows??? Help I need answers.

Also all the characters in the credits. I desperately hope that they find the main cast and all become friends pls.

CG’s little song is beautiful and I think that it embodies the heart of the show. Like I said earlier a lot of the stuff I’ve watched recently tries very hard to be dark and edgy and a dystopian show where all the characters have been trapped and abandoned and tortured is the perfect setup for some grim and gritty TV. But it’s… not. The characters are funny and lighthearted and smiling in spite of all the shit that’s going on around them. The characters are trying to be nice, to be good. They are connected, they are a family. It is a dystopian setting for sure, but I think that the story is about family, about love and caring for each other. The story is about Blu, Lucy and CG playing eye-spy. The story is about Lucy smiling when she tells Blu her mom said he was a bad influence. The story is about CG wanting Blu to get some rest and take a break. The story is about Mole’s desperate panic at trying to stop the train before it hits Lucy, and Lucy not wanting to leave him to die. The story is about four people sitting around a fire, listening to music.

I really love this story, and I hope to see more of it one day. It’s really beautiful.

[29-12-2011]

jayce and viktor league of legends biography comparison

done by yours truly in like june this year way before arcane was released posted almost verbatim from a thread i did because i don’t want to look at it again enjoy

Alright!! So this post isn’t meant to extensively cover all the intricacies of both of their lores, since we’re just looking at their biographies and neglecting other essential texts (such as their colour stories, Blitzcrank’s lore, etc.). What I want to accomplish today with this thread is to hopefully(??) kind of highlight the insights that can be gleaned from a comparison of their lores, as well as how both of them function as unreliable narrators and what this could mean for their characters :3 I suggest reading their biographies for yourself first since I’ll probably forget to give a general description of what’s happening, plus it’ll also help you come to your own conclusions.

Viktor’s Biography

Jayce’s Biography

Disclaimer: I’m not a “loremaster”, nor do I have a “degree” in “anything”, so take everything I say with a generous helping of salt.

But before we really look at the biographies, there are some things which have to be understood (=｀ω´=)

We must recognise that their biographies are tinted by their biases and personal perspectives of their situation, though it is not a direct transcription of their thoughts and views. In essence, what we see is what they presume is happening.

HOWEVER, the second essential realisation is that because of this, Viktor and Jayce are unreliable narrators. This becomes obvious once you’ve really compared both accounts to each other. One of the scenes where this is more apparent would be their confrontation in Zaun, with the crystal.

So now that you hopefully believe me in this regard, let’s go in!!

Since this is a comparison, I’ll kind of just neglect the first few paragraphs introducing them. I suppose the only significant things you’d catch by comparing the introductions before their meeting would be their respective reactions to recognition and prestige.

Viktor’s “surprised” and “thrilled to be singled out” vs. Jayce being “utterly unsurprised” – although both of them are remarkably unsociable people, with Viktor being preoccupied with his work and Jayce being Jayce, Viktor has a lot of… hm, pride isn’t the right word, Jayce has that too. Viktor likes recognition and praise, then, while Jayce is probably immune to its effects (though it is still important to him), growing up as he did.

Here’s how they introduce each other:

It’s apparent that there’s this tragic dissonance between how Viktor views their relationship and how Jayce views their relationship as can be seen from Viktor’s “insufferable genius”, “flamboyant and arrogant” and “never truly became friends” vs. Jayce introducing Viktor as the only person who was his equal, and that he “expanded Jayce’s intellectual horizons”. This is a recurring trend throughout both biographies, which I’ll talk about once I cover more of everything.

Now we move onto Blitzcrank! More specifically, the theft of him.

Okay so like there’s Quite A Bit to Unpack Here. First of all I think we have to assume that in general Blitzcrank is… not around for this? I can’t glean any insights on this from Blitzcrank’s lore because that side does not mention Stanwick at all. In fact, out of the three champions mentioned here, Viktor’s bio is the only one to contain a recount of this event, which is really irritating but does reveal some things in the way that negative space highlights the subject of a painting, which sounds really pretentious but you know.

Before I talk about Jayce’s omission, there’s something fun here– “further widening the rift between them.” The thing is that prior to this there is no real mention of any sort of “rift” or disagreement, apart from in Viktor’s introduction of Jayce where Viktor denounces him as, in short, an arrogant piece of shit, so I can only take this “rift” to refer to either their inherent disconnect as Piltovan v. Zaunite, or as “logical and thorough” vs. “flamboyant and arrogant.” Either way, it’s important to Viktor that you understand that he and Jayce are separate, and are not friends. Can’t say much on Jayce “refus[ing]” to speak up, again because only Viktor’s lore mentions this event, so we only have his (biased) perspective.

Anyway, I know it’s common to theorise that Jayce just didn’t speak up because something something you can’t beat the system, and that theory has some merit to it, but looking at the lack of anything my judgement is that most likely Jayce just… did not think much of it? Like he has no reason to really find it significant because it doesn’t impact him that much, and probably didn’t realise how much it impacted Viktor as he only develops non-hypothetical empathy later in his bio. He was probably busy doing something that day instead of refusing out of malice. Doesn’t hurt Viktor any less though.

Alright so here’s a very obvious example of how their personal biases affect their narration. Viktor’s presentation of his reasoning makes his decision sound almost reasonable (though still unethical, but  this thread isn’t about that) while Jayce completely omits the entire backstory, tl;dr-ing it into “construction accidents” which makes mind control sound like a total overreaction. Again, note Viktor’s formality (“collaboration”) and usage of “reluctant” as compared to Jayce’s more friendly description of “working together” (though this is also a general feature of how they speak). Viktor Wants You To Know He Doesn’t Like Jayce At All (And Never Did), and I can’t blame him since this segment is just him talking about how Jayce got him Fricking Expelled. [personally i think it is very adorable for your instinct to hallucinations to be mind control. in a fictional setting, of course. i hate elon musk.] 

There’s also something to be said about the diction here. “Jayce warned” sounds a lot milder and less like a snitch than “Jayce reported”, which does shed some light on Jayce’s intentions. In Jayce’s perspective, he seems to have just wanted to mention it in a very by-the-way manner, and didn’t realise the consequences would be so severe? But also “ostracized from Piltover’s scientific community” is a lot milder than Viktor Got Expelled (though it is characteristic for Jayce to say everything in a very nonchalant matter, see: “preventing them from getting tired, panicking, or disobeying instructions from their superiors.” Many of the lines in his bio are meant to affect the manner of the witty cool hero-type, which, I suppose, he is.) Still, he hardly villainises Viktor here, only condemning it as “immoral”.

I sincerely doubt Jayce intended to have “the closest thing [he] had ever really had to a friend” expelled; it’s more likely that he was unaware that the consequences would have been so harsh. And honestly, if it were someone other than Viktor (say, any other Piltovan student) that probably would have been the case. From Viktor’s biography we already know he was on thin ice with the rest of the Academy (that wasn’t Jayce (although he still didn’t like Jayce (their friendliness is entirely from Jayce’s POV))) and we are all familiar with the disdain Piltovans have for Zaunites. 

[though if you are not convinced by my words and haven’t really checked out the entire thing with PnZ, check out janna’s colour story which covers it rather well.]

In fact Jayce’s own biography confirms this attitude with one of the beginning throwaway lines.

So with Viktor having an already tenuous relationship with the administration after the Blitzcrank fiasco and his personal beliefs, with being from Zaun on top of all of that, the higher-ups were probably waiting for a reason to expel Viktor. And Jayce remains unaware of all of this.

BUT… SOMETHING INCREDIBLY HILARIOUS I NEED TO BRING UP HERE BECAUSE I JUST NOTICED IT… JAYCE NEVER INTRODUCES VIKTOR AS A ZAUNITE OR REFERS TO HIS ZAUNITE HERITAGE. DOES JAYCE EVEN KNOW THAT VIKTOR IS FROM ZAUN? IT MIGHT NOT EVEN BE A CASE OF JAYCE THINKING OF HIM AS “ONE OF THE GOOD ONES” JAYCE MIGHT JUST GENUINELY NOT HAVE REALISED THIS AT ALL.

Okay I’m back after laughing that off. God. Anyway, Viktor’s significance to Jayce is really quite obvious in his biography, what with the “the closest thing [he] had ever really had to a friend” statement and the becoming worse. He doesn’t hate Viktor, he just thinks his morals and goals are a little… questionable. Another thing I want to note here now that we’re looking at the impact of Viktor’s expulsion on Jayce is that if you really look closely, Jayce is a lot lonelier than Viktor. Jayce is introduced as just one of the students Viktor had worked with during his time in Piltover (though he is quite a bit more special than the others, though Viktor never overtly highlights this, and would probably die before doing so).

Viktor doesn’t really lose much with regard to his relationship with Jayce, seeing as from his point of view, he didn’t really have one beyond the professional capacity. There is no kind of despair at not being able to work with Jayce anymore. After the establishment of his glorious evolution, he clearly has some degree of closeness with his Legends of Runeterra followers (Armed Gearhead’s “H-Hey, it’s the boss man!” can be recalled here, though LoR is typically considered to be more “soft canon” and in some cases, not at all).

Meanwhile, for Jayce, he has just lost the only person who ever understood him. Everyone else hates his guts. Viktor might also hate his guts (though he doesn’t actually seem to realise this). Again, the dissonance in impact and impression. It reads less like two sides of the same coin and more like two iterations of some vaguely defined fairytale, where one is from D*sney and one is from the Grimm Brothers. This divergent stream continues throughout the timeline, so we’ll just move on.

Here are some of my favourite lines from the transition period to the Big Event, whether because I find them extremely funny (1, 2, and 4), or extremely #deep (3).

(side note: one feature of Jayce’s bio i like (because i am prone to doing it myself, which makes writing Jayce in a comedic casual setting very easy (i say, referring to writing no one has ever seen)) is the short and simple set-up and punchline sentences which occur frequently throughout his internal narration. probably because he was written in the archetype of the genius arrogant isolated asshole. the t*ny stark of league... but i like him better!)

Anyway, the boys are back together!

So let’s compare their descriptions. Strangely Viktor puts himself in a much more uncharitable light than Jayce does, though that seems to be a consequence of glossing over the details. Note how he does (once again) express his actions to be reasonable in how he describes himself to have no other option “but to take it by force”. (“people– in a manner of speaking” is a little Lol, Haha.) And at the end we have the “I am So Emotionless” line of “had [he] retained more than a fragment of his humanity” and “allow[ing] himself” “the barest hint of a smile”.

[BY THE WAY THIS PISSES ME OFF SO MUCH BECAUSE IT JUST FURTHER EXACERBATES THE INCONSISTENCY BETWEEN VIKTOR AND BLITZCRANK BIOS WHICH YOU’LL REALISE WHEN YOU READ THEM AND WHICH I WON’T TALK ABOUT HERE BECAUSE I AM P. O-ED, AS THE KIDS SAY.]

It’s interesting here that Jayce still calls Viktor his “old friend” (again with the one-sided friendship), and still doesn’t reduce Viktor to a tl;dr. (Though, to be fair… you could read this here as Viktor referring to his own monologue as a “simple proposition” but that lacks evidence and is mostly stemming from my understanding of their characters which should be based on the analysis of this biography and not vice versa? So.) 

I laughed at the first two lines but it is also very late while I am typing this up. Anyway. I like how Jayce notes that Viktor “had long grown tired of [his] rudeness”... there’d be more to say about Jayce’s acknowledgement of others’ attitudes towards him if I looked at the colour stories as well but I don’t want this thread to get too long. Jayce has this concurrent idea of Viktor as “friend” and Viktor as “lacking morals” (as seen in how he deduces that the GE “probably didn't have a lot of respect for the free will of others”) which makes Jayce’s standards for friendship quite questionable, but we’ll put it to his lack of experience in that department. 

Now here’s where the narrators get really unreliable! Viktor’s description of Jayce here really shows a lot of his bias, with words like “vengeful” and “arrogant fool” being thrown around. He doesn’t even mention the apology. Again we get the vibe of “no other option” with how he presents his decision to kill Jayce. The fact that he speeds past what happens also helps in getting you to ignore that he is for some reason able to order around the bodies meant for the people he’s saving, but you know how it is. Anyway, for once, we have two actual descriptions of a critical event!

Things from Jayce’s perspective really do highlight to you how much Viktor obscures in his descriptions (and vice versa, of course). For one, we get to understand where Jayce is coming from (corpses! with their skulls cut open!) and where Viktor is coming from (this guy got me expelled! and now he’s back to ruin things again! goddamnit you piltie!).

But one of the lines that really stands out is “For the first time, it occurred to Jayce that he might have to kill his old friend.” Even now, standing in the midst of this mess, Jayce still thinks of Viktor as an old friend. He hadn’t even considered the possibility that he’d have to kill Viktor, and seems reluctant to do so. Viktor is still quite important to Jayce, though this facet seems(!!) awfully one-sided given the ease with which Viktor gives the order to kill Jayce (or so Viktor says).

I could talk about Jayce’s kind of enlightenment regarding progress in the earlier parts I did not screenshot which just go “something something progress” which contextualises the significance of the line “the progress they fought for in their youths” but in my opinion it would end up sounding like “something something progress” so.

But! Also important! In direct contrast to all of Viktor’s “yadda yadda NO EMOTIONS ALLOWED”, Jayce’s descriptions paint Viktor as an emotive person, who can, in fact, feel things such as “surprise” and “sadness”, and even have human reactions such as “sigh[ing]” and “cr[ying] out in horror”. Given that we have no third account to rely on, I am inclined to put a little more weight on Jayce’s description seeing that most of his untruths come from a lack of understanding rather than an overt desire to manipulate your impression. Also, though Viktor’s voicelines for LoR are more for humour than anything, they do evolve a lot of emotion. But that’s a personal opinion, really.

It is also of note how Jayce describes Viktor’s thought process… clearly Jayce doesn’t believe Viktor has “ensured humanity’s future” so this line comes from what he (or the narrator of his biography, at least) thinks Viktor would think? Also how he describes himself as Viktor’s old friend, which Viktor would have qualms with given, well, everything on Jayce in Viktor’s biography.

An important thing to consider is that throughout his bio, Viktor never actually tells you in subject-verb-object form how he feels about Jayce. We don’t ever read “Viktor hated Jayce”, no. We just get countless descriptions of arrogance and all the wrong Jayce has done him. Let’s look at this line here.

Jayce is celebrated for killing Zaunites! It’s only reasonable, then, for you to form the image of Jayce as someone in the wrong and Viktor as someone who has been wronged in this facet. There is clearly resentment here, but nothing that he says out loud. It's characteristic of Viktor to present things factually and allow the reader to come to the “obvious” conclusion, while his hands remain clean of the “emotional impulses” like “hatred” which he so markedly detests. And really, that’s the whole essence of Viktor’s biography. He seeks endlessly to convince you through logic that what he is doing is entirely backed by reason, and on further reading, you’ll realise that at some parts, that is very very debatable. His omission of Jayce’s apology further contributes to that image of Jayce as a complete asshole.

I’ll briefly cover the endings before we re-look at everything as a whole.

Again we have the “this is very reasonable” type of explanation. Also the “Viktor thought no more of Jayce.” which I adore.

Yup, so we have this contrast of Jayce just waiting for Viktor to do something, and Viktor continuing to scheme without a single care for Jayce. This is in line with the entirety of both their biographies, with Jayce holding Viktor up and Viktor viewing Jayce with a clinical distaste at best, complete indifference at worst. It feels like after doing a(n amateur) comparison of both their biographies, what we have in our hands regarding their relationship is just a past tragic one-sided friendship, and a current tragic one-sided rivalry.

But we know that both Jayce and Viktor are terribly unreliable narrators. Furthermore, there IS a difference in how Viktor is an unreliable narrator as compared to how Jayce is an unreliable narrator.

With Viktor… he has a personal interest in how you read his biography, how you understand his character. We can tell that Viktor(’s biography) seeks to convince the reader of two (2) things:

First, that he is a sane, reasonable, rational person of great logic and little emotion.

Second, that what he is doing is the best possible option, and is noble and just. (Though this thread isn’t really meant to debate the morality of either side, it is good to recognise that this is what Viktor wants you to think.)

At least one of these things is false. The biography seems to want you to understand this as well, with phrases such as “Viktor told himself” and “in his eyes” that signpost a purposeful alter of the narrative.

Whereas for Jayce... Hm. In my personal opinion he doesn’t have that much interest in showing you a heroic side of him. (God knows he’s not interested in being anyone’s idol.) Half his biography expounds on how much of an absolute asshole he is. Really, anything he omits is most likely something he does not find personally significant or something he genuinely didn’t know, such as Blitzcrank and Viktor’s saving of the Zaunites respectively.

Back to Viktor. You must remember, and this is where I’m going to sound really insane, that it has already become apparent to us that Viktor will, very often, lie. A lot. Whether it is through changing the phrasing of events to make his actions seem completely logical, or completely disfiguring information, you are not receiving the full story. And if I were trying to convince someone that I am a rational and reasonable person, who relies on logic and ignores emotion, I would thus never admit to having these emotional responses. I would never admit to having an emotional connection with someone. I would never admit to having something as pitiful, something as grossly human, as a friend I held close to my heart, and I sure as hell would never talk about the feelings of betrayal after said friend separates me from one of the best places I can express my passion. No, instead I would tell you that he’s an abhorrent person, and I had no qualms with deciding to kill him when it was necessary.

What I’m saying is: it is not entirely out of the realm of reason that, despite everything, the Machine Herald is unable to truly divorce himself of his "weak, ineffective" feelings. Perhaps, Viktor had cared for Jayce more than he’d ever let anyone know. That maybe, just maybe, Jayce was someone important to him, and someone who had hurt to lose.

But on the other hand, it is equally possible that all of these descriptions of emotion from Viktor are the symptoms of Jayce’s own wistful hope that Viktor cares for him, or is still human enough to feel. And that’s a whole other can of worms right there!

Anyway I don’t think I’ll ever talk about the colour stories like this. It might kill me. My only words on those for now is that I find the plotline of “you break into a very nice man’s house and he offers you some very nice cocaine” and these lines below to be very, very funny.

[soft voice] but there’s something to be said, under the humour, of Jayce’s self-awareness in believing that he disappoints people constantly and how that could relate to what he did to Viktor in their university days and–[is k-worded by someone who loves me very much]

[fullmetalpotterhead]

Cha asked me for my thoughts HC’s character development so I spent 30 minutes in a Hualian haze and thought I’d share

Hong’er is a child who is very obviously not taken good care of and made to feel like the cause of tragedies in his life. I’m guessing he probably feels responsible for the death of his mother, was possibly even accused point blank of it being his fault. He’s young. He’s been through a lot. Very little of it has been good and because he is a child acting out, he wants to hurt others the way they have always hurt him because Hong’er is old enough to know he isn’t doing these things on purpose but he’s also old enough to realize these misfortunes are following him and since everyone in his life has told him it’s his fault, he fully believes it, he’s just angry about it.

Anger is what keeps HC together when he is younger, which we don’t actually see a lot of in his older self. But anger can be a really healthy emotion sometimes. If you feel out of control and wronged, your going to either A) be sad or B) be mad. Anger is a productive way to regain control and keep yourself from falling apart if used correctly, and that’s exactly what little Hong’er is doing. He can’t afford to be sad about these things because life will run him over. So he gets mad because if he’s angry about things, it gives him at least some control in the situation.

And then he meets XL. XL who holds him gently and lets him be sad. And that’s so important. Anger can totally be a productive emotion but you can’t just run on it forever. When XL held Hong’er and told him he wasn’t cursed and soothed him while he sobbed, he let Hong’er have the catharsis that sadness can bring. And HC found a way to go on beyond anger: love.

Now we move onto the little soldier. He’s tapped down his anger a lot, despite being in the midst of all his hormonal puberty times. Partially I think this is because of the fact we’re only seeing him around XL, partially I think he feels _more in control_ than he did when he was younger. HC is still a child. But now he’s a soldier which means he 1) gets to see his god 2) presumably lived in the barracks and got rations 3) was fighting for a cause he believed in. Soldier HC has a reason to live and is making steps in the direction he chose. He’s pretty much still like this as Wuming so I’m going to merge these analysises.

Soldier Hong’er and Wuming are subservient to XL, polite in a way that creates distance, and clearly hold themselves as a pawn for XL to use. But they are not blindly following every order XL gives.

Soldier Hong’er follows XL after being told not to. Wuming kills before being asked and continues to address XL by title. HC at this stage holds his god above all others, but he maintains his autonomy still. His goal is the safety (physical AND mental) of XL and if he feels he must do something he wasn’t order to (or was directly ordered NOT to do) then he’ll do it, because he is less than XL in terms of worth. He’s locked up a lot of his “cursed child” complex and is at a point where he’s just not addressing it, at least in front of XL, because he only wants to present as capable of service to XL, to the point where he hides his own personality because he just doesn’t think XL would be especially interested in him I think.

Then HC has 800 years alone. 800 years with love being his driving factor for staying. 800 years of not knowing if his most important person is okay. 800 years of learning how it feels to finally have real control. HC becomes powerful. He rules ghost city, he’s feared by gods, he makes bets that sway the lives of mortals. So HC has gotten comfortable with not hiding himself. He’s very much putting on a persona, yeah, but it’s less “he’s faking it” and more “he’s playing up what people assume about him”. HC is new money and he shows it off. HC is well read and well trained with skills in shapeshifting and yeah he probably started those things for XL, but he continued them and became as good as he was, in my opinion, because he enjoys them. It’s so clear to me that shapeshifting in particular is very much a “for him” thing. XL liked his true self a lot. But HC continues to shapeshift throughout the book the same way you or I would change outfits. He never bothers acting when he’s disguise, HC doesn’t like acting, he likes dress up. And HC gets used to being able to act freely in a lot of ways. He probably doesn’t have anyone he feels comfortable opening up about his “cursed child” complex, he’s probably deeply upset about not being able to find XL, but he also learns things he likes. He finds things to protect. He purposely makes himself louder so people have no choice but to look at him. In a way I think he is dealing with his “cursed child” complex during this period by leaning into it. “You think I’m evil and cruel? Fine, I’ll say it first!” He’s reclaiming what they’ve said about him. He’s reclaiming parts of his memory of his mother with how he dresses. This is the period where HC has the space to really explore who he is and by the time he meets XL again he’s lived longer acting as he pleases than he hasn’t, so it’s hard to reign in at times, and then he quickly learns XL doesn’t really want him too.

More and more as he gets to know XL, he learns the great extent to which XL doesn’t want him to change at all. HC never really pretends to be someone he’s not around XL, it’s more like he’s shoving the parts he thinks are more difficult to swallow in a closet so XL doesn’t have to see them. He’s very genuine around XL, and the fact XL is the object of this love that’s kept him alive for centuries allows him to also tap into this other side of him that he simply hadn’t been close enough with anyone to do all this time. HC is soft around him, not because he’s masking or because he’s not genuinely also capable of great harshness and cruelty, but because he wants to be soft around XL.

And XL continues to encourage him with every bit of himself he shares, expresses great interest in HC as a person, asks that HC not put himself in danger because the thought of him hurt is upsetting. So HC opens up more and more.

And XL accepts and returns his feelings. XL gives in to his silly teasing until he’s “spoiled rotten” and HC is finally in a space where he can actually unpack and unlearn that “cursed child” mindset. His way of handling it wasn’t bad, I think it was very good of him to just reclaim it, but Hualian really create this space for each other to be vulnerable and once again HC gets to learn the catharsis of vulnerability and be stronger and happier for it.

[skadren]

How do you usually characterize Sephiroth's upbringing and pre-nibelheim Being? I know I see so much of the fandom have him fairly submissive and aware of himself as "abused property" or something, and while that makes sense to an extent in terms of Shinra controlling his life, it's never made sense to me in terms of how he stays BEFORE Nibelheim because he's supposed to have only learned of his experimental origins and fear of his monsterhood THERE, and so wouldn't it be strange for him to be SO under the thumb when he's so aware of his high position prior? Wouldn't Shinra want to keep him "happy?" Idk if this makes sense but maybe you know what i mean?

I do think a lot of that 🥺 for lack of a better term is a fandom projection on a character who was on some level never meant to be more than a hero fallen from grace in his madness over what he learns is a lie about his entire supposedly heroic life (made in every aspect) and thus vying for revenge and purpose vs hero risen from nothing but scorn coming out of what everyone made of him and that clash of becoming each other’s purposes

the woobification of sephiroth is unfortunately a very very real thing

but you’re right, it doesn’t make sense for sephiroth to think of himself as “less than human” or “just an experiment” before nibelheim. he explicitly says that he’d always known he was special but not like this

he may have been dehumanized but he was always glorified. that’s why when the realization of his inhumanity breaks him, he spirals in the direction of assuming godhood, because that’s safe. that’s what he’s been told all his life, that he’s meant to be better than everyone else

gast was in charge of raising sephiroth for a while so presumably that’s what helped him be so uhhh emotionally well-adjusted throughout most of cc. a lot of fanon likes to portray him as a lab rat who knows absolutely nothing about How To People but that’s objectively non-compliant with how he acts before nibelheim. sure you could argue that it’s genesis and angeal’s influence but i don’t think it’s likely that so much change could be entirely due to them

the thing about sephiroth's childhood is that we don't actually see any of it, only spoken about through the perspective of cc sephiroth himself or vaguely mentioned by hojo and both are obviously very unreliable

in terms of his relationship with hojo though we get this interesting contradiction where in nibelheim sephiroth says his mother died after childbirth but laughs and says it doesn't matter when he mentions his father which implies he knows at least something is up (and the fandom has assumed means he knows his father is hojo) vs hojo saying in midgar that sephiroth doesn't know and would presumably be upset to find out because he's "always looking down" on hojo

so there’s a clear disconnect here between them. whether in communication or just that hojo doesn’t know sephiroth as well as he thinks he does or sephiroth thinks of hojo as his father anyways even without direct confirmation because he’s the only father figure he has (other than gast, but gast is a whole other can of worms)

but the thing is in midgar we also see that hojo cares about sephiroth in his own fucked up way-- whether as his son or as an experiment that represents the pinnacle of his life's work, he wants to see him succeed and actively tries to help him. maybe this is jenova's influence on some level because he's injected himself at this point, but i think this mentality was likely always there even when sephiroth was a kid

hojo might perform vigorous and painful tests on sephiroth and be extremely controlling over sephiroth's life, but always with intent in helping him (or forcing him to) improve. he can’t treat him carelessly because he’s never been able to replicate his results with sephiroth; even in the most detached of ways, sephiroth is not disposable. hojo wouldn't be actively malicious in his treatment the same way he'd be towards, say, vincent

honestly, i've always seen sephiroth as the kind of person who was a very obedient child to his parents. even if said parent was very harsh and had high expectations and almost never showed approval, it would always be justified by having sephiroth's best interests in mind and wanting to see him succeed. the thing is, in the sort of situation where you can't even fathom the idea of leaving (sephiroth's job, life, and friends are all at shinra, and he can't possibly cut ties because that's just not what you do) sephiroth would likely be aware he is shinra's property and obedience is an ingrained default. but he would not see himself as being abused or the victim in this case, even if he is shamed and berated for anything less than perfect and as a result is terrified of falling short of hojo’s expectations

and the thing is sephiroth is good enough to reach those expectations. someone who performs just a bit less perfectly might grow disillusioned and give up on pleasing their parents because it will never happen. but not sephiroth; he has to constantly be on edge and maintain his performance to continue to reach expectations that likely are higher and higher every time

this kind of parent-child relationship is extremely common in east asian culture (esp. well-educated and newly-wealthy diaspora bc there’s that extra element of “we worked so hard, we sacrificed everything for you and you’re squandering it all”) so i'm kind of drawing on my own experiences here, but it would go very far in explaining exactly why sephiroth is so firmly under shinra's control and although he resents hojo he doesn’t break away. it often takes years and years of personal growth and self-reflection (which sephiroth obviously doesn't have) and a lot of people never realize it was unhealthy at all

and tbh i think that's where the disconnect in western fandom is, most people can't really comprehend this kind of unquestioning obedience to a parental authority that actively harms you without it being extreme levels of whump + victimization, but it absolutely happens. hojo cares intensely about sephiroth and his success and hurts him because of it. sephiroth has always craved hojo's approval but resents him for hurting him and imposing his own desires on his life.

you know your parents love you; you hate them for it. but you still care.