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itsclydebitches · 7 months

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Zevlor: An Angsty Character Analysis

Hey, Zevlor simps. Can I interest anyone in 4,000 words about our favorite disaster tiefling? 💀

“We can’t stay, but we’ll be slaughtered if we leave—we’re no fighters.”

Back during my first play-through this is the line that turned Zevlor from another dime-a-dozen, exposition spouting NPC to a character I was legitimately interested in. “We’re no fighters.” My DnD ignorance abounds, but even I could see that wasn’t an accurate statement. Here’s a mountain of a man sporting fancier armor than my level 2 Tav knows exists yet, having wrecked half the goblin hoard with his crossbow and, if you let him, he'll happily turn to punching as a solution to verbal disagreements. Plus, he’s clearly the one giving the orders, so what do you mean you’re not a fighter?

Having explored the Grove a bit I chalked it up to a generalized assessment of the refugees as a whole. They’re mostly kids, civilians, and would-be protectors who only look the part of fighters in cobbled-together armor. One woman is grappling with the guilt of killing someone for the first time, even an enemy. Lakrissa is sure they’re all going to get slaughtered and is willing to put money on that fact. Meanwhile, the couple you meet are more concerned with what pet they’ll get when they somehow, someway, make it to the city. Don't worry about how that'll happen. You learn later that even those like Ronan are small potatoes compared to most of the baddies you’ll face. On paper he looks and sounds like the real deal—dressed in robes, talking up an apprenticeship with the famous Lorroakan—but scenes like the celebration light show and his own fury at needing to be saved, again, highlight how far he still has to go. The point is that Zevlor is right: these aren’t fighters and he at 18 strength, paladin, former commander, is definitely the exception.

However, BG3 is the sort of detail-heavy game where I’d expect them to include that exception in the dialogue. “We can’t stay, but we’ll be slaughtered if we leave—these people aren’t fighters.” Zevlor’s inclusion of himself in this assessment continued to nag at me and it didn’t start to make sense until I delved into his tag here on tumblr, with more patient players than myself posting everything there is to know about the tiefling. (Thanks, all.) Zevlor is fascinating to me in part because he has this contradictory nature, one example of which is that he’s a very talented fighter who desperately doesn’t want to be a fighter anymore.

…but also he totally does.

We overhear in his dialogue to Tilses that Zevlor is adamant about shedding the titles he’s earned through combat: Hellrider, Commander, Sir. He insists that they’re just civilians now and it’s not like he’s being disingenuous here—note that he introduces himself as just “Zevlor” to Tav. Zevlor means what he says to Tilses and we can see that he’s trying to both reinforce his point and lesson the blow by referring to her as “Tilly.” The nickname is a sweet one, hinting at their close bond in just a single word, reminding her that he’s not saying this to hurt her, he cares for her… but the nickname is simultaneously something he never would have used as her commander. The intimacy meant to comfort is also a hard blow to weather. They're now people who use nicknames inappropriate for the hierarchy of battle.

So Zevlor means what he says here, means it enough that Tilses is convinced and drops her use of “Commander,” but there’s definitely a hint of bitterness in his voice. At least, I’ve always heard it. Zevlor is steadfast in his conviction here, even going so far as to say, “I’m done soldiering, Tilly” when discussing what will come next at Baldur’s Gate. Yet for all of that his tone conveys (understandable) anger and disappointment that it’s come to this. Zevlor doesn’t act like someone who truly wants this change, but rather someone who’s been forced to accept it.

Is it outside forces unwillingly influencing him then? Did Avernus truly change things irrevocably? No, not really. At least, not in the way Zevlor likes to claim. Tilses herself states that being a Hellrider is for life; nothing can take away that title. You lost your post? Your whole city? Most of the people under your protection? Doesn’t matter! You’re a Hellrider forever, no matter the circumstances. I can easily picture a time in Zevlor's life where he would have agreed with Tilses wholeheartedly. They are Hellriders, dammit, and so long as there’s one person looking for their help they will wield that title alongside their blades. And right now, Zevlor has a lot more than just one person in need of his assistance.

So it’s not that Avernus truly stripped them of that identity. Nothing can do that. Zevlor is not rejecting titles and planning retirement because the mechanisms of fate are forcing him to.

He’s doing all that because he’s lost confidence in himself.

Even as someone with a shaky understanding of DnD classes, I love the parallel between a broken oath and the rejection of a lifelong title. If Zevlor can fail in his oath—or in his faith entirely, according to the memories stemming from his pod—why-ever would he think that any other ‘permanent’ part of his identity was worth fighting for? If you can loose the very thing you’ve built your entire life around, every important aspect of yourself, tied to your very soul… what’s a bestowed title compared to that? Zevlor doesn’t believe himself worthy of being a Hellrider anymore, but I think that goes deeper than a string of horrific circumstances making him feel incompetent. As an Oathbreaker, Zevlor likely believes that if he couldn’t uphold that, he can’t uphold anything. Calling himself a Hellrider would be a lie. A fiction. A pathetic, dangerous, insulting fiction at that. It’s like calling yourself the “Hero” while continually failing those around you. Sure, others might insist it’s a title you’ve earned, one you will always carry with you, but you don’t believe them anymore and at a certain point calling yourself that feels worse than embracing the title of “Villain." You don’t want to be the villain… but you want to pretend you’re the hero even less. Pretending is exhausting.

We see this struggle in the many ways that Zevlor fails, or almost fails, to uphold the ideals that originally guided him. I use the term “villain” above deliberately because Zevlor is not merely a former hero-type who’s self confidence has been shattered, or who has been reduced to a civilian, or who thinks themselves useless; he’s actively fighting against temptations that, under less stressful situations, he’d never even consider. I don’t think he is a villain, I think he’s a flawed, struggling victim who sees his own, inevitable mistakes as villainous—and the longer that warped perspective continues the easier it is to fall into bad behaviors. This cycle is perfectly summarized in the autobiography Zevlor keeps by his bed:

“When every passer-by thinks you a thief and a heretic, it is deeply tempting to become one.”

We don’t know if this is Zevlor’s autobiography (as far as I’m aware, anyway) but even if it’s not the words have clearly resonated enough for him to keep them nearby. This particular line paints a pretty clear picture of Zevlor’s struggle. If everyone you meet says you’re devil-kin, vermin, or would-be criminal, isn’t it easier to just give them what they want? If you can’t persuade them otherwise, why put in the effort of trying? If he can’t be Faithful to his God, why have faith in anything at all? If he can’t save these people—setback after setback, mistake after mistake—why is he even making the effort?

Zevlor obviously is trying, very, very hard, which is why such thoughts are merely temptations rather than actual, questionable actions. Still, the Grove gives us numerous examples of the precipice he’s balanced on—and the ways Tav can tip him in one direction or another. You can talk Zevlor down from his anger and get him to acknowledge his disgust in nearly sinking to Aradin’s level. You can also let him boil over and punch the human at a time when the last thing anyone needs is more violence. You can convince Zevlor that there are peaceful ways of stopping Kagha's ritual, or you can help him in pursuing the darker temptation to kill her. It’s a “low” thought, but at his own admission he hasn’t been above entertaining it. Zevlor’s requests for help, though always polite and humble, carry a spark of manipulation in them too. He’s not above leveraging your previously selfless good deed to his advantage—"She owes you for saving this grove"—and if you approach him before speaking with Kagha he’ll claim that the ritual will “be trouble—for all of us.” Except, no? Not really? Tav can make it clear that they’re just here for a healer, they’re only passing through, and as a fighter they are not beholden to the Grove’s sanctuary as the teiflings are. It’s not trouble for everyone involved, yet Zevlor frames it as such in the hopes that (unnecessary) self-interest may motivate you if selflessness fails. Finally, if Zevlor dies in your play-through and you use Speak the Dead on him, he will admit to having “plenty” of secrets, none of which he’ll share. Admittedly, this may be the result of cut content, specifically a story-line in which Zevlor knowingly betrays the tieflings rather than being tricked by the Absolute. Still, the game as it stands is the story we have and within it we’re given a man who is both fighting against these dark urges (ha) and has a past riddled with secrets. If Zevlor is anything, it’s blunt when it comes to his own failings, accurate and otherwise. So how terrible must these secrets be that he outright refuses to divulge them when, generally speaking, most corpses speak freely in death?

However, out of all of this the struggle I’m most intrigued by is the one surrounding the gate. Zevlor represents the tieflings: persecuted refugees, vulnerable civilians, people seeking to survive through cooperation, specifically by joining a community. Kagha represents the druids (or at least a vocal subset of them in Halsin’s absence): bigoted individuals, powerful fighters, people seeking to survive by giving in to their fears, specifically by keeping themselves isolated. This is the moral dichotomy of the Grove and it is symbolized through the gate. Zevlor wants to open it to everyone whereas Kagha wants to close it, permanently.

So isn’t it odd that Zevlor is the one ordering it shut?

When the scene first starts Kanon shouts down that no, he won’t open the gate. Zevlor said that no one is allowed in. Notably, he’s saying this to Aradin and his crew, people that the Grove is at least passingly familiar with, given that Halsin left with them to search the temple. It’s also notable that Zevlor isn’t expecting goblins to attack the Grove. He’s shocked that this is suddenly a problem, brought about by Aradin’s decision—“You lead them here?”— and the entire point of staying at the Grove is that it’s at least comparatively safe. Yes, there have been more attacks lately, but Zevlor seems to be relying on the Grove’s relatively unknown location, as well as the fact that goblins are normally disorganized. The safety is only compromised because Aradin brought a hunting party back, so Zevlor has no reason to expect any visitors, let alone ones that would be a threat.

More importantly, he should welcome such visitors even if he did expect them. After all, that’s precisely what the tieflings are: strangers with no ulterior motives other than to survive. Broadly speaking it makes perfect sense why he'd shut the gates. Zevlor’s first priority is to his people, so anything that keeps them safe is, theoretically, a good thing. But through the lens of his specific characterization and this specific, moral dilemma, it’s an awfully hypocritical decision. Based on everything we’ve seen, our party would not have been welcomed by Zevlor if we’d arrived without danger on our heels and a rescue to endear him to us. So his people should be welcomed, trusted, kept safe, given the benefit of the doubt… but Zevlor isn’t necessarily willing to extend that same trust to others. At the end of the day, he and Kagha want a version of the same thing: safety for those they deem are worthy of it.

It’s precisely these flaws and temptations that make Zevlor such a great character to me, even before he’s tricked by the Absolute. The fandom has leaned hard into Zevlor’s self-loathing and let me tell you, I love it (kisses, hugs, and cookies for you all), but canonically I think he has more reason to fear himself than we tend to portray in the H/C fics. I’m not saying he’s a bad person. Rather, it’s precisely because Zevlor is such a good person that he has the capacity to fall so far. It’s his all-consuming desire to protect his family that leads Zevlor to do and consider so much that a paladin would normally balk at. Denying others the safety you’ve been granted. Subtly manipulating others to do your dirty work. Considering murder.

Zevlor is someone torn between doing the Right Thing and the thing he believes will help those under his care survive. Importantly, when we first meet him he considers these to be two separate courses of action. So can you imagine what goes through his head when he first sees Tav saving everyone and doing so righteously? I think it’s integral to Zevlor’s characterization that the game all but forces you to play the Good Guy in that initial encounter. A cut scene starts, you’re thrown into combat immediately afterwards, and unless you plan to start attacking the Grove members alongside the goblins (which the mechanics discourage through the coloring that distinguishes enemies from allies) you will always finish this fight as Zevlor’s hero. Sure, you can be an asshole afterwards and demand payment. You could already be plotting your betrayal and the slaughter of all the refugees. But in this moment you are nothing but a miracle made flesh in his eyes. Right from the start Tav is succeeding in all the ways Zevlor feels like he's failed. You're the hero.

More specifically, you’re an Every-Man Hero. We might have epic backstories for our Tavs, but within confines of the game you’re largely a nobody when not playing an Origin character. How powerful must that have been to witness then? A total stranger, someone who has no ties to the tieflings or even, depending on your class, any sworn reason to help others, putting their life on the line to save what is most precious to Zevlor? I think a lot about the fact that he never asks Wyll to step in and try to change Kagha’s mind. She owes him just as much as she does Tav—Wyll is an equal participant in that fight and, if your shoddy play style is anything like mine, he likely did more damage—and Wyll is clearly invested in the tiefling’s survival, training the kids as he is. Now, obviously Zevlor’s reticence is largely a question of assigned roles (we need to be the one engaging with Kagha because we’re the protagonist/player) but, like Zevlor’s choice to include himself in the Not a Fighter group, it would have been all too easy to explain this away within the narrative. One comment about how Wyll already tried and failed, or how Kagha doesn’t trust Warlocks, or hell, maybe you don’t meet Wyll in the Grove at all. It’s an easy thing to accomplish and though this is edging more into the realm of headcanon than anything else, I can’t help but think that Wyll isn’t the kind of person that Zevlor could turn to for help right now. Because he’s a folk hero. The Blade of Frontiers, known far and wide for his impressive, selfless deeds. Zevlor is struggling so hard to keep the tieflings safe, tempted by all the unsavory solutions that might achieve that, drowning in self-hatred as his past and current failings catch up with him, wanting nothing more than to be his peoples’ protector:

“I would be a paladin again—with a god’s purpose, a god’s power. Everything I needed to protect my people. And all the while, the cult tortured them. They fought, and ran, and died around me, while I imagined myself their savior.”

Three of the things Zevlor mutters while trapped in the pod are “Hellrider… for… life…,” “Trust… in me…,” and “Children… look away… look at me…” He wants to be the protector, the one children look to for reassurance, he wants his words to Tilly to be a lie and he wants a way to prove that he is a Hellrider for life… but he’s not. At least, Zevlor doesn’t believe it. He lost his titles while Wyll still proudly bears his. Wyll trains the children to fight while Zevlor can only get swept up in anger at them being threatened. The people trust Wyll, adore him, he’s the hero and Zevlor… is not. Not anymore.

It’s too painful to approach Wyll and admit all that. That would be a hell of a blow to Zevlor's pride. But Tav? A stranger? A nobody? The Every-man who had no reason to help or reputation pressuring them, saving them anyway? That’s inspiring. Someone like Tav could be the answer and even, perhaps, the proof that Zevlor could redeem himself. Neither of them are folk heroes, untouchable in their assumed perfection. Tav is a living, breathing example of how the flawed, everyday adventurer can be everything Zevlor strives for.

No wonder he won’t shut up about them in the Shadowlands.

All of this is why it’s so tragic that Zevlor wasn’t given a redemption arc. Sure, you can recruit him for the final battle against the Netherbrain, but there’s no quest to change the cast’s opinion of him—or change Zevlor’s opinion of himself. All his content at the end of Act 2 and Act 3 reinforces that self-hatred.

Let’s make a list, shall we?

Nearly every line of his reunion with Tav has Zevlor painting himself in the worst light possible, from “a lie kinder than the truth” to his refusal to join you because he believes he’ll stab you in the back. You cannot convince him of the Absolute’s manipulation and there’s no response to his belief that such horrors start within the person like, “Of course it does! Because we’re all flawed and equally capable of good and evil deeds! That potential doesn’t make you irredeemable, Zevlor, it makes you mortal!!”

He’s utterly failed as his peoples’ champion and he’s also deemed “unworthy” of being a True Soul. Obviously not being chosen by the Absolute is a good thing, but for a man drowning in self-loathing that’s one hell of a complicated rejection.

Nearly all the tieflings hate him now, all those people he’s been sacrificing his soul to keep safe. I found it particularly devastating that this is one of the rare occasions where nailing a persuasion check doesn’t change the person’s mind. There’s at least one tiefling at Moonrise (I’m drawing a blank on her name) who will believe you when you explain how the Absolute influenced Zevlor, but that doesn’t lead to forgiveness.

Zevlor is deemed unimportant on a literal, narrative level. He is very easy to miss in the pods (I nearly did on my first play-through) and the game does incredibly little to dissuade you from that mistake. Putting aside for a moment that obviously an Origin companion is more significant than a minor NPC, compare this to Shadowheart screaming from her own pod, the game making it abundantly clear that this is someone in need of help—someone worth rescuing. She’ll even say later that you could have run past, more concerned with your own survival and the big picture heroics to bother with her. How must it feel then, if Zevlor ever learns that Tav was there and never stopped for him?

If you do miss Zevlor… oh boy. We’ve probably all seen at least a recording of Orin’s so-called gift. There are plenty of characters who can meet untimely and devastating ends, but very few go through this level of horror. Zevlor—after being held captive, remember—is tortured by God’s Favorite Torturer. He is stripped of his personhood and reduced to a mere “message,” a “pet.” Zevlor is further humiliated in death by being literally stripped of his armor—not just vulnerable in his nakedness, but denied the last symbol of his faith, his status, his power—and it’s always struck me that this is the closest we see to him 'enjoying' an intimate moment, this parody in Orin’s painting. Zevlor is one of the NPC’s most in need of physical comfort and instead he’s forced into this torturous mockery of a sex scene. It also hits hard that when Tav first spots his body the narration says that Zevlor “might almost be sleeping.” Undoubtedly this is a man who isn’t taking good care of himself. He needs a good night’s rest, yet this horrifying trick is all he gets.

As if all this weren’t enough, most of your companion are VERY critical of Zevlor while commenting on his demise. It’s one thing for the tieflings to believe the worst given their ignorance and the fact that they are the ones who suffered from Zevlor’s failure, but your company understands the Absolute and the ways that she gets her hooks in people. Still, Astarion calls him a “wet rag” even if he did deserve better than this. Shadowheart wouldn’t have wished this on him either, but she can’t help but slip in a “no matter his failings.” Lae’zel, often the most blunt, straight up says that he was “always destined to fail his people—and to fail us.” Wyll shakes his head and intones that “even good intentions can lead us down deadly paths.” Only Gale and Karlach stick to mourning the dead rather than airing his shortcomings.

When I spoke to my allies before the final battle Zevlor didn’t have a cut scene. It became clear to me later that this must have been a bug in my play-through, but at the time it only reinforced my feelings that his story was incomplete. Looking on Youtube I’ve found recordings of him saying that he is a Hellrider once more and he would “die a proud man if [he] were to die this day”… but that rings as terribly hollow given where we left him. Last we were together, Zevlor was saying in no uncertain terms that he could not be trusted, he would fail again, he was unworthy of forgiveness. Where did this change of heart come from? It makes perfect sense that he would help Tav in this moment—he begs to be of some use after getting free—but not that he would present himself with such confidence. Within the story as it’s been told this feels… fake. Like Zevlor is putting on a mask to fit the mood of this lively, optimistic party. Which, in turn, gives the “I would die a proud man” line a terrifying implication to me. Does Zevlor expect to die this day? Does he intend to? What would persuade him not to lay down his life here and now? His mission is complete. The tieflings are safe—though not by his hand. There's no hero's welcome waiting for him after this battle. They hate him. He hates himself, and by his own admission the one thing that could still make him proud would be to die at Tav’s side, trying to do one last bit of good. If someone said that to me after everything Zevlor has been through I would keep them far away from the front lines.

(I did, for the record lol.)

I’m not saying anything new then when I go, “Larian, PLEASE add more to his story.” Give us a Zevlor side-quest to renew his oath. Let us invite him to our camp. Something to link the broken man mid-game and the confident fighter at the end so that the latter doesn’t feel like an alarm bell with two legs and a tail. I mean yeah, I get hooked on minor characters so 75% of this is simply me wanting more content of a fave, but I also I do legitimately believe that BG3’s story would benefit from tying up loose ends like this.

Zevlor is a fantastic character, someone who contains an astounding amount of complexity for so little screen time. You have to follow up on that complexity though. If he’s meant to be a purely tragic figure, okay, fine, that’s the ending you get with Orin. But one where he joins you with a smile and reclaims a title he's previously rejected with such fervor requires more work in the middle; a through-line that explains how someone with so much self-loathing learns to think of himself as the hero again.

Because it does all come down to Zevlor’s perception of himself. He was always a hero, flaws and all. He always was and always will be a Hellrider.

The UI knows what's up :)

#BG3 #Zevlor #bg3 Zevlor #wow this took forever #someone cry over this wet cat of a tiefling with me #mymetas

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punkascas · 5 months

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okay, so i don't want to, like, Start Something or whatever so we're doing a barely-tagged, separate post. i also realise this is mostly pointless because others have already said what i'm going to say, and did it better, with far more grace, and sound less like an asshole than i do.

but jesus louise helen christ, the weird fucked up ideas people have around abuse and personal responsibility and the effect of trauma. like as an abuse and csa survivor, it genuinely alarms me to read posts that use arguments i remember my dad making. like, i'm assuming most of this rhetoric comes from gen z — maybe that's inaccurate; maybe that's unfair. but right now i'm very much Having A Moment Here that the kids aren't alright.

no 22-year-old should be repeating the same awful, manipulative, logically and morally bankrupt justifications for violence and torture my dad says. like literally what's in the first two episodes of ofmd s2 is torture.

i love ed; he's an amazing character. taika is hella wowza top marks acting him. but like.

like.

torture, my dude. physical and psychological. trauma. harassment. that we see the lasting effects of through s2.

just. i. what??

so here we go, okay. have too many, zealously highlighted screenshots so i can dig into details.

cut to save your dashes. content warning for discussions of abuse and trauma (if that wasn't obvious), as well as spoilers for ofmd s2.

re: ed knew what he was doing was wrong and felt guilty about it at the time:

we have no on-screen, textual examples of this. not in the dialogue; not in the acting; not in the blocking; not in the cinematography or music. nothing.

knowing the crew are overworked and kind of traumatised by all the violence, ed bribes them with cake. because, as we know, cake like tea fixes everything. only ed wasn't even with them to share in the eating of the cake. he made izzy responsible for that. he doesn't give the crew a break; he doesn't choose less ethically-fraught prizes to hunt. there is not one scene of ed talking directly to the crew — until he points a gun at each of them.

we see ed crying (and drinking, and rhino horn-ing [way to help further extinction, man]) but it's always paired with shots or flashbacks that reference stede. ed is still all up in his feelings about stede, and ed confirms this when he tells frenchie the myth about albatrosses never needing to return to land. ed cannot go back, does not want to go back, because he was rejected. (like, stede is literally landed gentry, come on!) all he wants to do instead is stay at sea committing to this unhinged version of unstable, sadistic piracy.

but okay, okay. say we ignore all of that. let's say ed does feel sorry and guilty and ashamed of his actions. he knows what he's doing is wrong and unfair and cruel. that it's harming others. that it's particularly harming the dude that ed has, for better or worse, basically spent his life with (izzy; i mean izzy). ed… still continues to do the things! how far off are we at this point from the definition of malicious? you know action x hurts person b and then you do it anyway. is that honestly a better, happier, more ethically defensible reading of the character?

re: the crew didn't mutiny because they love ed despite his violent, sadistic actions.

mutinies were a thing, yes. but both historically and in the world rules established by the show, mutiny is disincentivised through threats, distraction via extra work, and corporeal punishment. we see both ed and izzy use all three of these to try to prevent the crew from disobeying orders. they didn't wait until the storm and izzy shooting ed to mutiny because they understood or sympathised with ed; they took the chance to kill him then because that was the first real opportunity they'd had. the reward finally out-weighed the risk given that ed was going to kill them all that night anyway.

again, we have no scenes, no dialogue, no visual or audio cues to tell us that the crew understands or loves ed — excluding izzy, obviously. fang could also be on that list, if you take into account his personality and his behaviour both in s1 and later in s2 in the fishing boat scene. but in the first two episodes, we only see the crew show trauma responses around ed. they talk about him but almost never to him. and when they do have a direct conversation with ed, it is either confrontation or head down, submissive, "of course, blackbeard; anything you say" placating. i'm so baffled where the show points to any sign of love from the crew towards ed before his "death".

re: ed can't be held responsible because he was suicidal.

uhm. no. hard no. a harder no than stede's brazilian cherry wood mast. fucked up people do fucked up things but part of being an adult is owning your fucked-upped-ness and not fucking up others while you work on unfucking yourself. children, children are not fully responsible for the impact of their actions on others when they're deep in their feelings, especially if they're feeling their feelings as a trauma response. this is because literally their brain cannot do that kind of control. it doesn't have that software pack installed yet. ed does have all the adult updates installed, even if he isn't running them at that moment. he has no right to take out his feelings on other people: to maim them, to psychologically torture them, to abuse them, to work them to exhaustion. to kill them. he does not get a free pass to do suicide by abused employees. (like suicide by cop but more indirect and passive and harmful.) talk about passive aggressive.

secondly, ed is not just passively suicidal and happy to find new risks that might end his life. he is very purposefully taking izzy with him (see: literally removing the bits of izzy that would help let him walk away from ed; the fact that ed becomes actively suicidal only once he thinks izzy is dead; the whole keeping izzy's corpse in front of his and stede's beach shack i mean inn — the codependence, she runs deep). ed is also putting the crew through the same risks, the same isolation, the same danger. both stede and izzy agreed that ed had gone full scorched earth policy. you don't get forgiven for the murder part of a murder-suicide pact just because of the suicide part. not to mention that no one (once again, you could potentially argue izzy as an exception) was good on a murder-suicide pact with blackbeard.

and then to say the crew felt guilty? i assume i'm misreading that. the crew. felt guilty. for ed's actions. that is, if not victim blaming and if not darvo, a very close inbred cousin of them. like hapsburg jaw inbred close.

re: ed healing and his view of himself as a monster.

to heal means, in part, to accept responsibility for the harm you've caused, whether it was intentional or not. it means making amends. it means building or rebuilding relationships where possible. it means putting the other person or persons' feelings and boundaries and need for safety above your desire for absolution or forgiveness. it means working through your own guilt and shame and anger (or whatever drove you to act the way you did) in a separate space, not with the people you hurt, but someone who can be a step removed, more impersonal and objective to help you reflect and face hard truths as needed. i say this as both someone involved in activism and community reparations and as an abuse survivor who has done nearly 30 years of therapy learning this in order to not hurt people. it's not ed's fault he's fucked up just like it isn't my fault i am. but it is on me, like it is on anyone, to make sure i limited as much as possible the harm i can cause to others because i learned some awful but very effective tricks at a young age to survive.

ed does not really do any of the above. he doesn't say "sorry". he speaks in generalised language. he complains about the cat bell (which he seems to wear only for one day, given the implied timeline with lucius and pete's engagement). i have a model ship on a stand that says "this is a safe space ship" as a joke because i work for the government and have written press releases that sound just like ed's "apology". where you take no responsibility and encourage "the culture" to move on.

so, really, my question becomes: ed sees himself as a monster. in s1, we had enough balance between ed's current actions and his referenced past actions to see this belief as likely untrue. in s2 though — i mean, is it? is that an unfair or inaccurate belief? i can understand how carrying that belief can get in the way of ed's growth and eventual healing but like. from an outside perspective of ed-the-fictional-character. he's not a "good" person. he's capable of and has done and continued to do horrible, cruel things. ethically, can you argue with that statement about him?

re: ed trying to destroy relationships because of his self-worth issues and instead the consequences of his actions proving that he's loved.

this is the point that made me go: right, no, i need to respond. i need to say my piece about this. izzy and the crew suffering ed's violent tyranny and then sticking around on the revenge anyway afterwards is not a sign of love. it is not showing love to bear pain for someone. it not showing love to let someone mistreat you, threaten you, hurt you, maim you. their actions are selfish and done to give them feelings of power and control over you. lying back and thinking of england to get through it is not love. it is absolutely a survival technique. but it is not love when you do it at the expense of yourself or others.

i also disagree that ed was trying to push people away or break his relationships with others. we know from s1 that ed is fairly blasé about whether crew members die. again, we don't see any friendly or intimate exchanges between ed and any of the crew to imply any kind of relationship there beyond "tools who accomplish ed's goals". the one exception, as always, is izzy. and as previously stated, ed seems bound and determined, in a very conscious way, to bring izzy into death with him. ed does everything in his power to make izzy want to kill ed, or at least agree that it's best if ed dies, and to want to kill himself so ed doesn't have to die alone. that isn't ed breaking that relationship; it's making it permanent in a really fucked up shakespearian way. the only relationship we see ed waffle between wanting to keep and wanting to push away is stede. after his corporate "apology" and the fishing trip with fang, all of ed's dialogue is with stede and a little bit with zheng until izzy's death scene. the crew loving ed just isn't a thing, at least not one we're shown. not from either side. ed's relationships are with stede and kind of, sort of with izzy (because he does manage to, if not fully break, do some major damage to that).

love did not save ed. ed wanting to live, because stede came back, because he didn't want to jump off hornigold's cliff in the first place, saved ed. izzy saved everyone else.

so yeah: that's it; that's the post. the rhetoric that abuse is love or that abuse can be "cured" with love or that trauma isn't lasting and serious and has impacts on people's daily lives is just. wild. wild.

and terrifying.

my dad was born in the 40s. why is anyone born in the 80s or later still defending this mindset? it honestly, truly freaks me out.

guess it's good i have a fucking therapy appointment on monday.

#ofmd critical #ptsd problems

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fixyourwritinghabits · 5 months

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hello! regarding the post about writing mlm or wlw scenes and pronoun usage, i wanted to ask if you'd be able to clarify anything for characters who use they/them pronouns or multiple sets of pronouns, like she/they or he/they.

in my head, i feel that it may be necessary for the narration to include one set of pronouns to avoid confusion, while the characters in dialogue refer to the character with multiple pronouns with either or. that's just my thought though, and i wanted to ask for your insight.

thank you in advance!

This one you're going to need to wrap your head around. Who is the POV character, the person with multiple pronouns or someone else? How is your story told (first person, third, etc)? When do pronouns come up, and how does the person they belong to feel about them?

One example I could use is someone who presents very feminine but personally prefers to lean toward 'they' most of the time. The option of 'she/they' may be something they lean into to make others more comfortable (when dealing with clients they won't know well, in social situations, etc). If the story is from their perspective, they could explain this in the narrative - the same goes for if they're a friend of the main character. If they're a minor character, a quick "I'm okay with both" to explain a name tag or introduce themselves is probably your best bet.

If you have a character who is neutral on both or prefers to switch, you'll have to make the decision depending on their importance to the story - if their the main character, noting that switch in the text ("I prefer he today") will help orientate your reader. When in doubt, spell it out, and you can clean it up in post.

Your biggest concern is clarity (though again, don't sweat too much on the first draft). I've seen this done poorly by people I know meant well, but keep in mind that your audience needs a little guidance. You always want to make it clear who is talking - feel free to stick with names in dialogue tags, with pronouns used to describe actions. If your character switches pronoun use in the middle of a scene or chapter, it's better to highlight that switch, especially if you have other characters in the scene. You can also rely on context clues (changing clothes or settings, how they feel in the moment) to highlight why your character is using a particular pronoun.

Third, consider your audience. Are you writing for your fellows who won't blink an eye? Don't sweat it so much. Do you anticipate a larger cis audience who might be very new to the idea? Give them (and yourself) some grace in making sure it's clear who the character is no matter what pronoun they use.

(Check out sci fi and fantasy books with multiple pronoun usage, by the way. You'll find a lot of great examples to study!)

#writing advice #pronouns #that's a tough one to tackle but you can do it!

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gutsfics · 5 months

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can you give specific examples of what happened to help people understand what happened

this is non-extensive, just the ones i think are the most egregious of what shes done and said

i'm not sure how much of this is stuff she's deleted, as these are all from screenshots i already had on hand, but i would like to say that deleting a post doesn't necessarily mean you no longer agree with what was said in it, especially if you double down on what was said when you're called out for it. which she has done Plenty of times

and for the record, this is not something i enjoy doing. part of the reason this took me a few days to post is because this is stressing me the fuck out and ive been trying to spend as little brainpower on this as possible

First point: queerphobia in the form of homophobic jokes, sharing panphobic rhetoric, and talking for transgender people on a topic she (as far as i am aware) has no

the pelicansexual "joke" was told at the expense of Ethan and Tobias during the "Ethan Bisexuality Canonity" argument she & i got into in June (which btw i would like to apologize for starting that up, i was frustrated w pb's coddling of the cishet part of the fandom & i was having difficulty phrasing it bc of how upset i was w it. i did not mean to attack the fandom specifically but intent doesn't cover for outcome)

the pelicansexual joke was a since-deleted tag on one of her posts which went something along the lines of "my Ethan and Tobias are now pelicansexuals, which means they have to break up with [her characters] as they are not pelicans". i dont have a screenshot of this unfortunately, but i do have a screenshot of her response to an anon calling her out on it.

in case you don't understand why her "joke" was homophobic, before gay marriage was legalized in the US in 2015, a common anti-homosexuality talking point was "homosexuality being legalized is a slippery slope to bestiality being legalized". while it is good she deleted her "joke", its frankly worrying to me that when called out on it she doubled down on how she was joking when she said it, instead of listening and learning. her bisexuality and queer activism do not mean that she is incapable of saying and doing homophobic things.

the panphobic rhetoric & her talking for transgender people are, if i remember correctly, both part of the same incident wherein she reblogged something panphobic and then, when called out for it, said something that something that most trans people consider transphobic isn't actually transphobic at all

screenshot 1: bisexuality and pansexuality are two very similar sexualities, with the main difference between the two coming down to personal preference for what term you feel like best. while bisexuality does mean "sexual attraction to two or more genders", some people prefer a term that focuses on the "or more" part. neither sexuality excludes transgender people. pitting queer people against each other because theyre not the "right" kind of queer does nothing but damage the queer community as a whole

screenshot 2: agreeing to delete the post, but doubling down on what she said and refusing to listen to anon simply because they're anonymous

screenshot 3: the highlighted part is what we're focusing on here. "We don't consider cis gay men who only date the same to be anti-trans". hi, I'm a trans gay man. Yes We Fucking Do. i don't understand why she thinks she has the authority to speak on this. what "we" is she referring to here?

Second point: lack of respect or understanding of boundaries in fandom spaces, including both blocks and simply not wanting to interact with someone

i'll be honest, i'm a bit unsure if the above paragraph is the right way of describing what i mean, but she has a bit of a history of being.... openly weird about people who have blocked her for "no reason", and not only that has stated she thinks that not wanting to take place in an event run by someone you are uncomfortable with is childish

i believe the first one is about my friend Jay, who has her blocked for similar reasons that i do. while it is perfectly fine for her to assume whatever she wants about the reasoning for a block, her phrasing of "all i ever did was be supportive" in a public post about it allows her to victimize herself over a boundary being placed. speaking of Jay, Elsa has, knowing full well that she's been blocked by xim on the "peonyblossom" blog- which, again, is a boundary that has been placed- decided to message xim on the choicespride blog xe runs

the second one is specifically about a tumblr user who i do not know personally and do not wish to drag them into this as they have left the open heart fandom. she was sent an anon about this user blocking her which, yeah, is really weird and suspicious. but this isn't about that, this is about her response to learning she's been blocked. she refers to herself as this users "biggest fan" and says that it "isn't normal" to block your biggest fan. once again she is victimizing herself over a boundary someone else has placed, only this time she has done it in a post talking about a person with their username in it. when you have a blog as big as hers, people are bound to go after someone in the name of defending the person they feel was slighted

& here's her essentially calling people childish bc they might not want to interact with someone who causes them harm. iirc this was either about certain event blogs in the fandom not disclosing who's running them bc they know full well that some people might not be comfortable interacting with them (hiding ur identity will not help with that) or about people choosing not to participate because they know that the person running the event is someone they don't want to interact with. this ones just bizarre to me. no one has to interact with anyone ever, and calling them childish for it is, frankly, childish

Third point: her callout post for Jeremy and her non-apology

to get it out of the way: i'm friends with Jeremy. i'll try to keep this as unbiased as possible, but i am deeply deeply upset and frustrated with everything thats happened to rain. also, just so yall know, Jeremy gave me permission to talk about this. i'm not just dredging up old drama for drama's sake here.

first- the callout post

the thing that started this was a post to the playchoicesconfessions blog where an anonymous user said- and i'm copy/pasting it here- "Ethan said he and Tobias were like brothers. Weird how many people in the fandom want to get with their brothers.’" essentially, this anonymous user accused people who ship Ethias as being into irl incest which..... we will not be getting into all the ways thats problematic here.

(as an aside, Elsa did at some point reblog and then delete this post, but her commentary was focused squarely on "ship and let ship" which is a sentiment i agree with but she completely ignored the blatant homophobia in this post. here's a version someone reblogged from her in case you're curious as to what she said)

Jeremy reblogged this confession post and added "i genuinely hope this person and others who think like this eat a fucking bullet holy shit" specifically in reference to the anon insinuating incest. in turn, anons on rain's blog assumed rai was referring to people who don't ship Ethais and sent rain nasty messages, which rai would respond to and get more anons who saw the latest response and again assume rai was talking about not shipping a ship they ship and not the actual genuine fucking homophobia from the original confession post.

one of these anons sent screenshots of rain's posts to Elsa, without the context, and told her rai was talking about her. rai was not. not until the post where rai (rightfully, ihmo) called both Elsa and another blogger (this one who also got a similar ask about being blocked by the user i mentioned earlier but who decided to put it in the open heart tags instead of keep it on their blog the way Elsa did. that's the only props i'll give to her in regards of that- yes it was shitty she posted it in the first place but at least she didn't tag it) for complaining about and villainizing someone who blocked them.

tldr version is- Jeremy was venting about anons that were being homophobic to rain, another anon sent screenshots of those posts to Elsa without the context who who rai was talking about and said they were about her, and Elsa, without bothering to verify in any way, decided the best course of action would be to publicly call rai out, painting rain as a bully who has been targeting her specifically and once again victimizing herself. on her blog with a bunch of followers. many of whom also chose not to verify, and instead just heaped more hatred onto Jeremy's blog.

this went on until September, when they talked to each other at first with a third party go-between, and eventually person-to-person. Jeremy explained the context of the vent posts, Elsa explained that she was getting the screenshots with no context from an anon and admitted she should have verified them herself instead of going full nuclear, and they both agreed to apologize publicly

all good, end of story, right?

no.

while in Jeremy's post, rai took accountability for their side of what happened in this awful game of telephone and apologized for rains part in the whole thing. if you want to read it, here is a version of it.

Elsa, on the other hand.... well she apologized, but to be honest I'm not quite sure what for.

she says there's been misunderstandings on both parts led on by one or more anonymous sources (no arguments here), says she understands that the posts that were sent to her were not actually about her (okay good) and says that its a tough world and that she's deleted her posts.

okay.... but that doesn't specify what she did at all to need the apology. which was publicly call out Jeremy on her blog with.... well, i'm not sure how many followers she has, but i do know that she's got the most well known blog in the choices fandom. by publicly calling out Jeremy in the way that she did, she (whether intentional or not) set her followers out to attack rains blog. she did not apologize for this. asking people to stop sending hate to rains blog is not the same as taking accountability for sending those people to rains blog in the first place

so. yeah.

again, non-extensive list, but i dont wanna mention things she's done without having screenshots or links to show proof that she did it, and i dont feel like finding more of her bullshit bc this just. really fucking stressed me out.

also this isn't me saying "shes a terrible person forever and i hate her and nobody should like her ever" this is me saying "hey, shes done/said some hurtful things in the past and it sure would be cool if she acknowledged any of it" but i think coolsville sucks or whatever.

also also most importantly: its possible for queer people to say and do things that are queerphobic. being queer yourself does not give you a shield from people calling you out for that. neither does real life activism. its great that she's done real life activism! but pointing back to things you've done in the past, or for a different group of people than the one youre in does not exempt you from the harm youre causing today, to the people you're interacting with.

i dont have a proper ending to this

thanks for reading i guess

#once again i am apologizing to my mutuals from my main blog who are following me here & not apart of this fandom #sorry yall have to witness me slowly tearing off my own face and eating it every few months

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thecardinalsims · 3 months

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A Fool’s Journey in Self-Taught Modding / Pt 1

Coming up on a thousand posts between MTS and NRaas in the space of a year, I sometimes figure my lack of uploads weighs negatively upon whether it seems like I know what I’m talking about.

So, it's time to start a devlog. If you were tagged, don't feel obliged to read it- just wanted to credit the names and faces behind this rabbithole I've gone down.

Tiny blips of my work are floating about out there- I made the geostates for @twinsimming's default replacement tree, cracked some of the mysteries of decrypting TS3 Store worlds, and I’ve shot a number of small CC items and tuning packages from the hip as needed for individuals in both forums.

Over a couple of days, I learned geostates from scratch to make the sprout and sapling.

I’ve also ended up with the shiny orange username at MTS thanks to contributing a few tutorials, which did wonders for my confidence. Said tutorials are quickly decaying as I outgrow my own methods, but I promise to revisit them when time and health allows.

Making GIF examples was a highlight of working on the tutorials, so far.

In truth, I’m always working on bigger things. Much bigger things. Half of the answers I give are ones I work out on the spot for the purpose of answering- and then I squirrel away what I learned into my growing reference pile. I’m happy to chip away at a hundred little problems, because I come away with a hundred little skills.

I’m just too stubborn to let my first public release be one of those small successes. It simply has to be the most ambitious project on my plate- the one made of months of work and half a dozen restarts from scratch.

What started as a simple 'find hairs to use as default replacements' project has turned into a 'repurpose mesh pieces into new hairs from scratch' project.

The truth about learning to mod any game is that a fair bit of it will (or rather, should) have nothing to do with the game itself. Being competent with Blender and XML in general- and familiarising myself with S3PE so thoroughly I could manually do anything that usually is automated by other tools- was the greatest favour I could have done for myself.

I started wanting to write a devlog- or whatever is appropriate to call this when it won’t involve programming for quite some time- to try and encourage this sentiment in others. Learning to make a specific creation vs learning to create is very similar to the proverb of being given a fish vs being taught to fish. The sooner you unlearn relying on for-purpose knowledge and dive into all-purpose knowledge, the better.

If you want to be a prolific creator of hair CC, I wouldn’t even recommend starting with my tutorials on making them for TS3. I’d encourage you to learn to create and edit meshes, work with morphs and bone assignments, so on- all concepts that neither The Sims nor EA invented, but if you are introduced to them for the first time through modding you may fall into the trap of believing a modder is the best person to teach you. The remaining jump to then get that work into the game is smaller than you think.

Manual bone assignments are the most recent trick I've put up my sleeve, and one of the reasons for another soft-restart of my project.

EA didn’t provide a single modding resource outside of CaW for The Sims 3, so I empathise with the DIY nature of the tutorials that exist. The familiar names of the 2009-2010 modding scene pulled the game apart themselves, wrote their own programs, and carried the community on their back with the effort of sharing what they learned.

Over a decade later, creators are less often programmers, computer engineers, and 3D artists and more often hobbyists following in their footsteps with no prior knowledge of these fields. You will lose sanity if you have big CC plans and try to learn all of it from a video tutorial recorded on an overheating laptop that didn’t edit out any of the times TSRW crashed or the person making the tutorial coughed directly into their mic- I can tell you that much.

The first thing I made was actually a skill for TS4, which I crunched through with Sims4Studio and a lot of squinting at @icemunmun-spicy-scalpel's Candle Making skill, and is where I first spat out the name CardinalSims for the sake of filling in the creator name box. Which, for the record, is supposed to be a pun on Cardinal Sins and not that I consider myself the cardinal of sims.

I'll come back around to release this one day if someone doesn't beat me to it, hopefully with compatibility for BrazenLotus' mods.

For that reason, a lot of TS4 creators are my largest inspiration even if I see myself focusing on TS3. Icemunmun and @brazenlotus are my meshing and modding role models- custom food is my passion despite my current workload, so when I finally get some of these projects out that is where I’d like to settle most. Preferably churning out hundreds of recipes and harvestables for the rest of my days.

After messing around with hair recolours, eye textures, and asymmetrical dog ears, I flipped back to TS3 (the far more intimidating of the two to work with) and haven’t stopped piling projects onto that plate ever since. Hair became the somewhat dominant topic of my expertise, but believe it or not it all started with a plate of scrambled eggs.

3D scrambled eggs, intended as a replacer for @echoweaver's recipe. All it's missing is a half-eaten state, but I got a tiny bit distracted: read, it has been ten months.

It’s not really a devlog until I go over what I’m working on, though, is it?

No matter how many things I try to juggle, I can promise that the first release will be a large something called BGHR. Which involves somewhere in the range of 45 hairs, give or take.

The first 'BGH' Redux I made + the most recent one- have fun puzzling over that acronym until release. I blame it on the fact I modded Skyrim for a long time before this.

Which is not including the dozens of variants and age/gender conversions I end up with along the way, which I export to a mesh dump that I’ll come back to later:

Once that floodgate is open, I will be prioritising releasing the smaller projects quite quickly- likely the 3D scrambled eggs and the default harvestable plant + vine to match the tree that have been sitting 99% complete in my project folder.

Thank you for reading, if you made it this far. I'm out of breath and I didn't even have to say all of this outloud.

Next devlog should be more focused on a singular topic.

#did i write a devlog or a journalistic article on the nature of modding itself #who can tell #ts3 #ts3cc #a fools journey devlog #the tarot references will only get worse from here on #simblr #the sims 3

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deancasforcutie · 1 year

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hi, I’ve just seen your posts about references to queer cinema in spn and I would absolutely DIE to hear you talk more about that- and also maybe explain some of the ones in the posts bc there’s a few I couldn’t catch. hope ur doing well! toodles

(In reference to these two posts)

First of all, thanks for the interest; I feel like I owe a lot of influence to prominent meta writers who've discussed this over the years, which I've reblogged in the #dean is bi and #spn is queer tags, so I feel honored to be asked about this.

It just so happens I'm about to do a full series rewatch and hopefully come out with a long (much more coherent) meta series later this year. The basic thesis: Supernatural's queer narrative emerged both organically as a result of the early seasons' genre influences and deliberately on the part of writers constantly commenting on/transforming the series' foundations. The early seasons started as a critique of toxic masculinity, the nuclear family, and the American Dream, which invariably involves a critique of heteronormativity, but due to their tragic structure never fully proposed solutions to these problems; later seasons, through the writers' good-faith groundwork designed to circumvent and comment on their own external constraints, specifically situated the solutions in queer love and found family.

I'll argue that much of the queer coding and subtext of Kripke era was not so much "accidental" as a result of the series' genre heritage. Being influenced by the Gothic, a genre all about unveiling counternarratives to master-narratives like the American Dream, queerness emerges in the text implicitly as something outside of that paradigm; look at episodes like 4.05 Monster Movie and 4.14 Sex and Violence for some examples of old-school cinematic queer coding. Then you have Dean as a bisexual character, which essentially started with his inspiration from On the Road's Dean Moriarty (likely also James Dean and other figures that reveal the disillusioned American "bad boy" archetype was always more queer than initially advertised). Later seasons, in actively, deliberately queering this text, both transformed it and revealed/made explicit what was already there. And -as exercises in audiovisual audacity like 15.07 Last Call and 15.10 The Heroes' Journey attest- they consciously leaned into well-codified queer cinematic conventions to reveal (and subvert!) how they were made to literally tapdance around it. What results is a critique of heteronormativity that requires the audience to jump through hoops to maintain it as a critical lens, scathingly lampoons their choice to do so, and situates queerness as "what about all this is real" - "[happiness is] in just being", and in queer ways of seeing/reading.

I really enjoy it, in case that's not clear.

Not sure which examples in my posts to highlight, so here are some links to further reading:

Pink Flamingos: x, x, x

Porky's II: x, x

Thelma and Louise: x, x

Rebel Without a Cause: x, x

My Own Private Idaho: x

Ben-Hur: x

Rent: x, x

Reservoir Dogs: x

Brokeback Mountain: x, x, x

Lost Boys: x

Project Runway: x, x

Sesame Street: x, x

On the Road: x, x

Will & Grace: x

Halt & Catch Fire: x

Freddie Mercury: x, x, x

Orange is the New Black: x

The Sandman: x

Hellblazer: x

"Let's Misbehave": x, x, x, x

Thanks again for the ask! I hope this answers your question; I look forward to exploring this in much more depth in the future.

#no joke this series gave me a crash course in queer media second only to Celluloid Closet. and guess which fandom taught me about that #supernatural #spn #spn meta #dean is bi #spn is queer #mine

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striving-artist · 7 months

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okay, its This Post if you want to go look, but I'm not going to reply on the thread cause I have writing to do tonight and, like I said, yelling at a brick wall does no good. But I WILL take the opportunity to point out a couple things that are common mistakes online during discourse and how you can manipulate a response.

Under a cut because most people don't find examining fallacy and post analysis interesting.

To start, here's all responses of the thread in a simplified form:

Post about voting against Trump

Post from Ohsalome supporting OP with a reference to a commonly heard complaint about Biden (that he is supporting Israel)

Post supporting OP, with a reference to a statement from Trump about creating a dictatorship.

Post supporting OP, talking about the dangers of Trump globally.

Post about the use of Russian misinfo in 2016, discouraging voting and dividing progressives from more moderate dems. Also that it is visible today about Gaza.

Me, supporting OP, and #5, acknowledging the existence of nuance, and adding reminders of Trump being awful.

Quote of someone's tags in support of people voting

Arabian Knight shifts tone and topic, sounding more like Trump, and throws out a lot of directionless insults at the rest of the thread.

Arabian Knight again, misquoting #2, turning a statement into a scare quote that they use to expand on their insults.

Anathema comes in, loudly outraged by the quote Arabian Knight presented in #9, claiming it came from Ohsalome in #2

Wet Paint arguing for people to vote in a primary against Biden (there is no primary btw, this is not an option) and then tagging me and my quote, to claim that I think American lives are worth more than Palestinian lives.

So. That's an excellent example of how fast online conversation can be derailed by one person, and how misquotes and misrepresentations can invent a new conversation and scandal.

Fast analysis version: Arabian Knights changed the quote - maliciously or not - Anathema only reacted to the last post, with the false quote. Now in an emotionally charged setting, Wet Paint responded emotionally, colored by the anger of Anathema and Arabian Knight's posts.

Slower version:

High in the thread is Ohsalome who (Im not tagging folks in, do not do so for me) references a hypothetical argument against Biden. They don't say a specific source, bc its a simplified version of the hyperbolic complaint that shows up on a lot of posts lately. "he is murdering palestinian babies" Many progressives are rightly horrified by Biden supporting Israel, and don't know how to square that with voting for him. To me, that's a fairly clear and obvious generalization by Ohsalome, ymmv. Highlighted below.

In response to Ohsalome, Arabian Knight abbreviates the hypothetical quote, reducing it to just the phrase Palestinian Babies, and places quotes around only those two words. Yes, those are words that Ohsalome said, but you should basically never trust a tiny quote if someone is hinging an argument on it. That change turns it from a hypothetical quote from someone talking about why you wouldn't vote for Biden, and implies that Ohsalome themself was using scare quotes and doubting the existence of Palestinian Babies killed in the attacks on Gaza. That is not what it says or implies. It is a manipulation by Arabian Knight (statistically, this wasn't intentional manipulation, just tumblr's reading comprehension fails) But by putting that cherry picked phrase in quotes, it shifted the meaning and tone of the entire thread.

Then they bring in the accusations - and to be fair if Ohsalome DID claim that the dead in Palestine were fake, that would be super fucked up - and Anathema jumps in to back them up, responding exclusively to a misrepresented quote, not the original, and not the context of the original. They're specifically mad about quotation marks implying that there are no dead Palestinian babies, which - Again - were placed as scare quotes by Arabian Knight, not Ohsalome.

Anathema then takes another step to move the argument into emotions and morals by citing their own reaction to images they have seen.

See how fast it's turned into emotions? You already know that pivoting into emotions is a super effective way to manipulate someone. In this case, it took a post about hey, we really gotta prevent Trump winning, and made it into whether those people therefore, personally support murdering babies. You make that jump with emotion. Anything else, and people notice it.

Now.

I got tagged into this despite getting skipped by the misquote kefuffle. Here's what the new contender, Wet Paint, said, and the grab of what I'd said in my response.

This time, its not a misquote or a modification of a quote. Props for that. Yeah, it skips the context of the rest of the comment, but that's the nature of pulling quotes. Which is why you have to get in the habit of going back to the source to check context. I know its obnoxious, especially in the age of paywalls, but. do it anyway.

What Wet Paint does instead is create a false dichotomy. If I thought it was done intentionally, I'd almost be proud, because my post IS talking about a dichotomy... but not the one they are. I was talking about how its going to be Trump or Biden. A dichotomy.

They remade it into a zero sum scenario where it is Biden or Palestine. They've added the assumption that by saving American lives, you are killing Palestinians. There are times when that situation exists, so, this can easily sound like something you should stop and consider. And honestly? Do that. Pause, consider, and when you do, go chase down the source and see if you're missing something.

If a situation is as clean cut as 1 for 1 exchange of life, holy fuck, grab a pitchfork and give me a call so I can grab mine.

I'm not repeating my statements from that post. That's not the point right now. I just wanted to talk about how arguments get shaped and twisted online.

If I was a russian actor, and I wanted to manipulate this conversation to divide voters and increase Trump's odds of winning, the above is a really good starting point for how to do it.

#oh tumblr #analysis #instead of getting into a fight #I decided to write an essay on debate and distraction tactics #but this really is a clear example #if I wanted to divide Biden supporters #this is how I'd do it for sure #I'd use fewer random insults though bc that throws more people off #principles - Strife

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kazoosandfannypacks · 1 year

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"Road Less Traveled" by kazoosandfannypacks

Chapter 9/12: Something New Pairing: Beauty and the Puppet (Belle/August) [with hints of CaptainSwan] Rating: General Word Count: (649/8K) Summary: [Mid Season 4 Canon Divergence.] After becoming a man again to help the heroes track down the author, August stops by the library- only to realize he now has a crush on the librarian, who's working through some complicated feelings of her own. Chapter Summary: While on their date, August and Belle talk about literature. Tags: season 4, canon divergent, fluff, beauty and the puppet, captain swan, anti-rumbelle, Author's notes: The problem with writing characters smarter than you is that sometimes you have to do research before you can write a conversation between them. The highlight of writing smart characters though is you can infodump vicariously through them. Taglist: @zahara @kmomof4 @jonesfandomfanatic @booksteaandtoomuchtv @jrob64 @tiganasummertree @anmylica @teamhook @undercaffinatednightmare @gingerchangeling @lonelyspectator @caught-in-the-filter @ultraluckycatnd @cs-rylie @silver-the-phoenix @kanerallels @accidental-spice @poptart-cat-78 @kingofbr00klyn [if you’d like to be added to or removed from this list, hmu in my dms or askbox!] Also on AO3!

"I haven't had such a good time in a while." Belle thought, August holding both of her hands as they talked about favorite authors and stories. They'd gotten started talking about literature about halfway through dinner, and the conversation was still going strong an hour and a half after they'd finished.

"Favorite American short story?" Belle asked.

"Ooh." August smiled. "Unsettling or parabolic?"

"Both, if you can."

August looked up at the ceiling for a moment, as if thinking very hard, then smiled as he came up with a response. "'Dr. Heidegger's Experiment' by…"

"Nathaniel Hawthorne." They both said in unison.

"You're familiar with Hawthorne's works?" August asked.

"Quite." Belle said. "My favorite American short story is 'The Birth-Mark.'"

"The earliest example of a modern mad scientist story." August nodded with approval. "What are your thoughts on it?"

"A striking reminder," Belle said, "a man who strives to achieve perfection, to have it all- and in the process, he loses the thing he holds most dear, the love of his life, all because he's so intent on bottling perfection."

"He's so intent on achieving perfection that he ignores the fact that he's got the closest thing to it." August said.

"Exactly." Belle shook her head. "I always felt bad for Georgiana- she was everything she could possibly be and more- and she still wasn't enough for him."

Belle didn't just know that story- she'd lived it with Rumple.

"I always felt she deserved better." August squeezed one of her hands, apparently having noticed Belle's unease and attempting to comfort her.

"Me too." Not willing to cast a pall on the conversation, she changed the subject. "What were your thoughts on 'Dr. Heidegger's Experiment?'"

"People with a checkered past drink from the fountain of youth, hoping to undo their mistakes, then go back to their former adulthood at the end." August shook his head. "Hits a lot closer to home than it used to, given recent events."

"I can imagine." Belle agreed.

"The characters in that story thought that, by becoming young again, they could be someone new, someone less flawed- but it didn't change who they were inside. They hoped an external transformation could make them better people- when, in reality, it's an inward change that makes your transformation evident. The easy street doesn't lead to the person you want to become."

"Interesting." Belle knew all about that too, knowing that Rumples had clearly had the opposite philosophy. "And yet it seems easy street is the road most traveled."

"Ah," August smiled. "I take it you've read some of Frost's works as well."

"'And that has made all the difference.'"

August laughed at her literary reference, and she laughed as well, just because his laugh felt so welcoming.

"Nobody else in here would've gotten that reference." Belle thought. "They all probably think we're crazy." But she glanced around and quickly realized there was no one else in the room to think they're crazy- except for Ashley, who was wiping down a nearby table, the diner was empty.

"What time do they close here?" Belle asked August. He glanced down at his wrist, which did not have a watch on it.

"Ten minutes ago." Ashley interjected.

"Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry." Belle said. She quickly let go of August's hands and they both began hurriedly stacking their dishes together. "We'll be on our way out."

"No need to rush." Ashley smiled. "Just make sure you're out in the next couple hours, or my ride home's gonna turn into a pumpkin."

Belle laughed a little as she got up and grabbed her purse, and August slid a few dollars under the stack of plates before standing up as well.

"Don't worry, we'll get out of your hair." August told Ashley, then held his hand out to Belle.

Belle took his hand and smiled, and they walked out of Granny's together.

#once upon a time #once upon a time fanfic #beauty and the puppet #august booth #belle french #ouat #belle x august #beautiful liar #once upon a time season 4 #kazzy writes #anti rumbelle #captain swan #salt and light #road less traveled #otp: road less traveled

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everythingmaxriemelt · 1 year

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Max talks to Peter Claus in a radio interview on rbb Kultur - Der Tag programme - highlights Part 2:

Claus: Do you know where we come from, what shaped you most of all?

Max: Yes, I think I'm getting to know or find out more what that was. And that's exactly what this job does, that I'm always talking about certain subjects, like right now, or working on them. For example, I had a project called “Bonn” and I played an agent from the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. It's a subject that we didn't learn in school, and for me, that is a dark spot in Germany's past. So much for identity, in terms of democracy, in terms of our beliefs, and things like that are not dealt with properly, or is one-sided and glorified. And it was only through this job that I got to know these facts and dealt with them more intensively. And that's how you keep learning more and more.

Claus: And pass it on. You have a teenage daughter?

Max: Yes, well, she's starting to get interested in it too, and that's exactly how we can talk about it together. And to have a reference where you really have a personal connection, that is of course the best.

Claus: This Matthias character is not a likeable character. The first thing I said was oh god, such an advertising-dude. And what's interesting is his transformation, which you don't use big words or big dialogues, but with your face, with your physicality. There are a few moments when your character seems to introspect and sink into himself. I found that very exciting to watch. And not for the first time from you. To me, you're the kind of actor who can create the illusion that I am watching a character think and pause. How do you do that?

Max: Yeah, I don't think there's much to do there. It's not a specific technique. I think we approached the subject matter in a documentary way, so we really got to know the people on site and they got to know me. And there were moments when we just talked to each other and forgot the camera was there. So it created this effect that you're just completely natural and not just acting well for the camera. I think that's what interests me the most. So when I'm acting, it's not at all about being sensational, not to make the audience be crazy about the story, but rather to build an emotional bridge. So perhaps, the audience could identify with it and forget that he is watching a film, and doesn't necessarily have to like it either. Like at the beginning of the story, the character isn’t sympathetic, but rather someone who has his beliefs and then learns to re-examine his beliefs. And gets to know himself in a completely different way. And I did this journey as well. We actually proceeded chronologically, travelled the entire route and I got to know these people, which probably also creates this closeness that you can feel as an audience.

*gif is mine

#max riemelt #ernesto’s island #agree with the interviewer re Max’s acting #rbb kultur #max german interview

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archive2394934 · 2 years

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Thank you for your response to the "henry creel is nazi coded" post. Im jewish and that post made me so uncomfortable because I think you're right about the fact that Henry/Vecna's backstory is representative of people who suffered abuse/oppression. The fact he was imprisoned, abused, experimented on and treated as less than human for two decades does actually align more with the expereinces of holocaust survivors than with the agendas and actions of the nazi party. Its really tone deaf to think that he would sympathize with their views and goals as someone who literally suffered similar things that victims of their regime did. It makes a lot more sense that he wanted to empower and uplift people who are "different" like himself.

I'm sorry you had to see that post anon. I'm literally sorry we all had to see that post. I didn't want to think the OP meant harm by it but given they've been a total fucking asshole about criticism toward it, I'm really not feeling any shame in speaking out about it. Like, normally, I just cringe and ignore bad fandom takes - and, normally, I wouldn't feel comfy making a stink about someone's posts and opinions because, yeah; like I said I don't like to imagine people intend any harm right off the bat, but it's a little suss to sit there and acknowledge you're opening a very, very sensitive can of worms by saying something like that and then dismiss, mock and ridicule anyone who might present any criticism toward it, partic with evidence for why its almost certainly not an accurate read of canon.

I'm particularly annoyed about how the only response them and their friends chose to highlight and "discuss" is one from someone who was talking about their struggle with mental illness and abuse and their relation to Henry, purely to mock and dismiss that person. But they didn't once actually make any attempt to respond to my additions to the post. They mostly ignored/avoided them, actually. I think all I really got was the OP stomping their feet about me being a non-moot and putting my two cents worth in, as if it wasn't posted in the whole public tag for everyone to see and fully intended to grab the public's attention. Also the "ew why would you apologize for Henry Creel" like, bitch, I just explained why, lmao. I could say a real lot about the way they've been kind of misusing the concept of the "cycle of abuse" to validate their feelings, in how the "cycle of abuse" is typically and appropriately used to refer to harmful behaviors and ideas that pop up within personal relationships, typically those between spouses, parents and children and siblings and doesn't actually apply that much to the relationships between minorities and oppressors or bigoted societies.

The cycle of abuse is used to describe things like when men grow up watching their father's abusing their mothers and then go on to act similarly toward their wives/girlfriends. Billy Hargrove is actually a perfect canon example of the "cycle of abuse" in motion. So, obviously, this is a bit removed from the oppressed lashing out at people who subscribe to, represent or enforce bigoted systems of power and the concepts of those systems as a whole. Not to mention all the very not lowkey racism and belligerence that is now popping up toward Kali after these people became semi aware that yes, Kali and Henry stand for the same things: They are products of systematic oppression and are literally fighting for their rights to exist in a political and social environment that is geared against them and other people like them. But man at the end of the day and the point is, like, its perfectly okay if you DON'T like a character or you're uncomfortable with them for any reason, particularly if they are in fact an antagonist like Henry is, as he's meant to inspire a sense of caution, even if he is understandable and sympathetic, but its different to go on a deranged smear campaign toward said character with INCREDIBLLY sensitive and harmful accusations, as charged and heavy as literally claiming they're a n*zi sympathizer. Fuck off. Oh, and as a side note any psychologist, or anyone with half a brain really, can tell you that when it comes to victims of abuse who are perpetuating their abuse toward others, the worst and wrong approach is to condemn and demonize them. Shame, invalidation and silence are all massively contributing factors in why victims may abuse others or may continue to be abused themselves. These are the kind of people who viciously condemn Billy Hargrove because he was a teenaged abuse victim in the 80s that said something with a vaguely racist undertone, and they feel strangely assured that canon intended to display him as a monster when the actual reality of canon is he was a victim struggling against what he was going through and his own behaviors as a result, but he ultimately died "heroically" (like, the reason Max takes comfort in Running up that hill is clearly because she relates it to Billy. I've even straight up seen his actor explain this stuff. ) And like, look if you're mad you think Billy was an unrepentant, inexcusable racist, ok but it becomes weird when you're also sitting here grown in 2022 platforming really suspicious aggression and demonization toward a woman of color who is suddenly being seen as the most 'terrifying character' and a 'monster' for doing what? Oh, she killed someone who abducted, abused and tortured her. She said capitalism sucks. She's a lefty. Very evil, incomprehensible stuff! *sarcasm* Literally, what the actual fuck, make it make sense at least.

#henry creel #vecna #001 #kali prasad #billy hargrove #stranger things analysis #discourse cw #tbf i was like ok i kind of understand not getting it with henry bc his thing is kind of 'invisible'#and I assumed good faith with this fandom saying wild things about him because of that #but now the kali hate is jumping out again now theyre seeing henry and kali are related #and there is no fucking way theyre not understanding what kali represents when she is literally #explicitly a woman of color who was abducted tortured and dehumanized who #openly speaks against capitalism and the oppression of people who are mentally ill nd of colour etc #there is no WAY that is sailing over their heads theyre actively ducking it and being suss freaks about it

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