#so therefore he’s trying to destroy The Narrative in revenge for making him a part of it…

[starbuck]

okay so. the whale is The Narrative.

[mongeese]

Okay it's time for another wolf 359 meta post but hopefully this one will be relatively short. I've been thinking about Maxwell lately -- specifically, why she died instead of Jacobi. There's a few reasons that come to mind:

First, it's the only way the narrative would work as written. Having a linguistic expert and an AI expert on board would have dramatically changed the way they communicated with the Dear Listeners, and it would have dramatically changed the events of the finale. Maxwell and Pryce are probably on similar levels, technologically speaking, and she may have been able to take back control from her. Plus, Jacobi's role of getting beat to shit is probably not something Maxwell would sign up for so willingly. She's not nearly as dependent on brute force as he is, and would most likely want to find another alternative. So TLDR; she had to die for the plot to go the way the creators wanted it to.

Second, I think it gives Minkowski's action (killing her) more weight because it's Maxwell. At this point, she was much more sympathetic and likeable than Jacobi was. She had basically saved Hera's life. Although we are still aware that she's a villain -- she does take away Hera's autonomy that same episode to put down the og crew's rebellion -- there's a lot of nuance there, more so than Jacobi. So the fact that Minkowski killed her is an act that is less justifiable and much more severe than just killing Jacobi. It's contrasted with the SI-5 killing Hilbert, who is the "worst" of the main crew. I think that's designed to show that the death of Hilbert and the death of Maxwell are on the exact same level, morally speaking. Neither is more justified than the other. Wolf 359 is very clear about its disapproval of capital punishment, and this moment is no exception. By having Minkowski kill the more sympathetic of the SI-5 members, they're emphasizing the fact that she was not in the right. It's a moment where her morals falter because of her anger and grief, and though understandable it is not justified.

I want to say that I'm not trying to demonize Minkowski here. Her reaction was understandable: she was angry, and shocked, and in a panic over how to keep her people safe. She needed Kepler to take her seriously in that moment, and the way she thought to do that was by shooting Maxwell. I do also think it was probably in part for revenge, after he killed Hilbert, but mostly not. It was an impossible situation to be in and I don't blame her for what she did, but that doesn't mean what she did was right. It's another example of how Wolf 359 addresses complicated moral questions, and remains adamant about its basic answers. The "good" guys do not get a free pass to always be in the moral right just because they're the protagonists. Everyone is treated the same in that way.

Crucially, this is a different situation from when Minkowski kills Cutter. In that case, it was done primarily to prevent him from harming other people. Though it isn't good he had to die, it was necessary to stop him from basically destroying humanity, so Minkowski shooting him was justified. Morals in Wolf 359 are typically about trying to help the people around you, trying to make things better in the situation you're in. At that point, the best way to help people and make things better was to kill Cutter. So she did (and it was rad as hell). With Maxwell this wasn't the case, not really. Maxwell wasn't planning to destroy humanity. She might not have continued to hurt people. She could have helped them, maybe. Minkowski killed her because she needed to get her way in that moment (again, understandable). Therefore it is not justified

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

i saw your post about Charles and what his personality past and part in the story line so i was wondering if u could do the same for vlad? :)

Ah, well, I can at least let you know what I’ve seen so far? I haven’t delved too far into Vlad, and some of his general impressions can be confusing, so I’ll do my best to make it sensible and unbiased! Here you go lovely <33333

Fair warning, there will be mentions of a lot of JPN app content since Vlad and his boys aren’t around much in the ENG app yet.

My general sense of Vlad is basically discount vampire Sasuke Uchiha.

What I mean by this is to say–according to what I’ve read so far–his clan/family were murdered by vampire hunters in cold blood when he was just a young boy. Presumably as a result of that traumatic event, he harbors a sizable enmity towards humanity and kind of lashes out on them in weirdly specific moments of violence. Another aspect of his motivation is something that’s mentioned within Comte’s route; which is that Vlad went through the timespace door on his own one day and allegedly saw a devastated future, where nothing remains of life on earth more or less.

I guess the reason I find him to be so perplexing is that he speaks about his actions in terms of efficiency, while most of the things he does just feel like unhappy outbursts (v often a product of unresolved trauma symptoms, I’d wager.) I also say this because he appears to have no larger pattern to his fury beyond the original event of his loss. Most of the human beings he attacks aren’t much of a threat to him and hurting them really doesn’t bring him any dividends beyond revenge.

For instance, he insists his disdain for humanity and insistence on controlling them is for the sake of ensuring they do not destroy the future–the horrifying wasteland he witnessed when he traveled through the timespace door. However, I’m not really sure how his current movements really speak to that goal? I mean sure, maybe he’s relying on Faust to create an immortal human so that humans will be forced to care because it will be their future too, but he doesn’t allow Faust to draw his pureblood blood for experimenting. (One can most certainly argue this was more about a lack of trust, and perhaps for plenty reason: Faust is vindictive enough to try to turn the tables and exert control over Vlad, or act on his own whims with his findings.) But if that’s the solution he’s waiting on, turning the rivals of the men in the mansion doesn’t really bring him any closer to that vision either? I mean, what good does it do to bring back Gilles de Rais–a prominent French serial killer? How would unleashing him on the populace help humanity “realize the error of it’s short-sighted and wasteful ways” and move to a brighter future?

Can’t help it, I ask these questions as I read.

In Comte’s main story, Comte hammers home that Vlad is not somebody to be taken lightly. One day when MC goes out to buy flowers, Vlad poses as a human florist to sell them to her–which is how Comte finds out he’s in France, and that he’s made contact with MC. When prompted, Comte describes him in a very particular way; and I think people really overlook this when they talk about their relationship. He says that Vlad is frighteningly pure in terms of the way he thinks and acts. The way I understood his description (given what I’ve seen of Vlad) is that Comte really does mean it point blank: Vlad is very simple in terms of why and how he does things. The issue with this is that nuance and context are lost on Vlad as well–and that’s where the problems start to flood in. Vlad is angry at humanity for what they’ve done to him. Baseline? That’s fair, they killed his damn family. However, Vlad thinks that by extension he has the right to decimate the general public and attack people completely uninvolved in his hurt.

And that isn’t right either–it’s ignoring so many factors here. He’s ignoring how much vampires use and toy with humans as pawns, it’s ignoring the massive power imbalance between him and his victims (this really isn’t a case of self-defense most of the time, nobody but Comte/Leo is a sizable threat to him), and he’s ignoring whether or not a person even did anything to deserve his retributive violence. While murder is never okay, it is perhaps more understandable when we see Jeanne’s frenzied and violent belligerence in response to a man who murders a boy’s mother for the sake of his own amusement/convenience. Vlad literally sees almost every single one of the rivals he created begin to heal/improve and murders them in cold blood because they are no longer of any use to him. That’s uh……..that’s a little messed, not gonna lie to you chief.

While part of me understands the efficiency here–he doesn’t want to leave any traces of his involvement, he doesn’t want any loose ends–it’s also just kind of foolish and cruel ultimately. From my understanding of the narrative, all the people he turned had some visible sign that indicated their origin to Comte. So even if he claims it was for the sake of concealment, it was more likely about his personal convenience. Which…..also yikes.

[Comte clearly does not trust Vlad to be reasonable, and I think there’s plenty of good reason enumerated above, but I actually don’t sense quite so much hatred? I think he’s just given up on the idea of Vlad growing up, even if he doesn’t like giving up on people. And considering Vlad’s behavior, I think it’s overkill to say that Comte just abandons him because he doesn’t care lmao. Even when Comte expresses real anger at the end of his own route, it was more because Vlad was fine with endangering MC’s life just to get back at him. I think Comte’s unhappiness with Vlad has more to do with Vlad’s treatment of human life as meaningless and worthless. It’s fascinating but also kind of sad? Vlad’s traumatic experience results in behavior that is a direct exacerbation of Comte’s trauma, and as such--no matter their potentially fond history--they can’t stomach each other.]

In Comte’s route, Vlad also has Shakespeare abduct MC and take her to the cathedral. Later on in the castle, we see an immediate display of Vlad’s shocking powers: he has the ability to manipulate people’s desires/thoughts. I’m not exactly sure how this works, but he is able to give MC visions of the mansion and Comte coming on to her–which shocks her into realizing it’s all just a dream. It’s not reality; it’s all manufactured by Vlad.

After that...weird introductory note...Vlad gives MC the rundown on his life together with Comte, which as always is subject to a question of bias. My assumption is that he did not lie, only because he was trying to convince MC that he was “right.” Furthermore, he does not omit the most damning evidence of his erroneous judgement, which suggests a continued inability for him to see where he went wrong.

We get a series of three flashbacks. The first is them as young kids. I don’t know if Vlad had already experienced the horrors of his family being destroyed, but this particular flashback focuses on Comte. His parents, in an effort to teach him that vampires and humans have no ability to co-exist, send away all of his teachers/mentors/nannies/the servants--pretty much everyone and anyone he was closely bonded to. Think about it this way: we can see that Comte is very sociable and affectionate by nature. He was living in a house full of people, all of whom cared about him and looked after him in their own way. Now the house is entirely empty. Naturally Comte is very very upset, and Vlad appears to try to cheer him up with little success. 

[When I look back on this scene I don’t think I initially registered the sheer dissonance of Vlad’s reaction, versus Comte’s catatonic misery. There was a very solemn feeling to that memory, and the correct choice in terms of extending comfort is to hold his hand believe it or not. There is a sense that he feels very alone. When young boy Vlad enters one can argue that it was the proper thing to do; he was trying to cheer up his playmate and friend. But at the same time, I think I need to double check. Because I’m beginning to wonder if I was wrong. What if Vlad was happy to see someone as alone as him, and that joy is accordingly dissonant for that reason? He can’t see what Comte needs or how he’s hurting because he’s so glad he isn’t alone anymore in a way.]

The second flashback is the war nurse scene that I have spoken at length about. The important thing to focus on here is Vlad’s surprise that Comte would opt out of turning her out of respect for her wishes. The way Vlad frames the situation is starkly different from Comte’s. Comte sees himself as an outsider, somebody who invaded her life as a result of the timespace door and therefore has no right to suddenly change the course of her fate. He had no idea if she even wanted to live (considering the horrors she’d have to cope with and remember) or leave that time period at all, for that matter (considering the only thing keeping her going was helping the wounded/victims). Comte really was listening to everything she had to say, and he was taking her concerns and motivations seriously. 

Vlad simply says: if you want her, take her. It’s as simple as that for him. And in one way that’s not entirely wrong--assuming Comte would have every intention of looking after her and actually cares a lot about her. But what’s being ignored here is her agency and the fact that they really don’t know each other that well? Something like that could begin and be rocky, if it doesn’t end in complete disaster. Worse, I get the feeling Vlad is perfectly fine with the notion of turning her and if things don’t work out, just kill her or get rid of her. Again, the simplistic thinking comes into play here: it ultimately comes down to Vlad being self-centered. He’s thinking only in terms of satisfying his needs, he doesn’t seem to have any concept of a larger pair or group feeling. There’s an inability to bend/be flexible for the sake of maintaining a greater harmonious feeling. 

[For the record, I don’t think this makes him irredeemable? Only that it makes it very hard to live with him or love him, probably. There’s an inability to live at a joint pace? It’s always answering to what he wants without room for anything else most of the time, which to me is not living and it’s not love ;;;;]

Following their escape back to their own time, Vlad explains how he wants to use the door to turn geniuses and control humanity. He eventually wants to create a surveillance state, which would mean everyone is forced to move with his explicit approval, more or less. (He almost reminds me of Louis XIV, can’t tell if that’s what they were going for.) I have my doubts that his abilities could extend that far, but human history shows us that we are plenty susceptible to fascist and totalitarian rhetoric. In a shocking display of anger, Comte draws the line at controlling humanity and forcing them into a regime in which, and this is Vlad’s description not mine, “we (purebloods) would be like kings.” There’s definitely a concept of evolutionary superiority at play here, which echoes what I mentioned earlier; vampires seem to have this awareness that they’re apex predators in a sense, and enjoy the power that comes with that. Unfortunately, that probably makes for a fairly toxic/uncomfortable larger species culture, which is exactly what Comte and Leo hate lmao.

Vlad does not seem to find any issue with this sort of outlook, and asks MC to decide which of them--Vlad or Comte--is right. Who is more realistic, who best understands the future? As expected the MC replies that it's Comte, and Vlad goes from beseeching to big mad at record speed. He's p much that gif of the teddy bear that smacks its head down on the tables and then has the angry eyebrows.

This is where Comte intervenes, firing a warning shot that grazes Vlad's cheek and demanding he let MC go. In response, Vlad shoves MC into the turbulent timespace door--p much guaranteeing MC's death. (Essentially timespace is a void of sorts, a human being could never survive in that environment for long. Vlad fully knew this, and yeeted her anyway.)

So uh, yeah. Disagreement? Death. Moving on? Death. Nuanced approach to reality? Death. Beginning to think he doesn't really have a lot of patience or open-mindedness or any other kind of problem-solving approach. 

He raises flowers and gardens like a fiend, and he openly plucks any single flower with a blemished leaf. Even if a single petal is slightly damaged, it will be removed and destroyed. So one could argue his extremism reflects a kind of perfectionism as well. No room for errors or troublesome dissent. No ugliness of any kind. I mean in all of his interactions with Faust and Charles this is the overt undertone. Don't ask more of me than I'm willing to give. Behave like good children, mommy's busy. Is that insubordination? boss music begins

One thing I actually don't understand very well is his decision making in Dazai's route. Dazai finds out about what Vlad's doing in a nanosecond when he senses MC is in danger, and yet Vlad makes absolutely no move to eliminate Dazai? He just watches from the shadows. Even when Dazai grills Charles about his loyalty to Vlad, no retribution.

My best guess for this specific situation is that Vlad does derive some level of satisfaction thwarting the future of human beings/former humans. Dazai--being somebody with no great desire to live, no rivals to speak of as far as we can tell, and no larger aspirations--is a life that is easily extinguished. There's no satisfaction in it. When Vlad's clan was murdered and he saw the future decimated, it could be that he felt humans had invaded and eradicated every potentiality that was important to him. Where he might have lived happily with his family, that future was ripped from his grasp. Where he might enjoy his flowers and the creation of an immortal for the rest of conceivable time, that too was ripped from his grasp with a desolate future. 

So much about who Vlad is is about control, so it's very possible his lashing out is an extension of that. Dazai does not awaken any of the disdain he feels, and he does not succeed in overthrowing Vlad's control over Charles, so Vlad simply lurks in silence.

And last but not least, I've seen the preview to Vlad's newest birthday event story. The contents are incredibly revealing, in that MC wishing him a happy birthday and offering him a gift has him saying that it was "the best birthday ever." Granted idk if that’s sweet or just...beyond sad, but here we are. It’s only compounding my curiosity about the wound on his chest--I really do wonder if he was attacked and locked away by vampire hunters or hostile human beings or something. I say that only because that line speaks to a lot of isolation, and given how little he seems to care about turning people/subjecting them to his whims it feels odd. Why the isolation or lack of people who care about him? Is it a perceived lack where his actions alienated all the people who wanted to be close to him, or is it a more involuntary lack?

When she says let’s celebrate again next year, he seems a pleasantly shocked by the notion, and remarks “Ah yes, it’s a promise c:”. The preview was also mega horny: “You make me feel so loved, I don’t think I can be gentle with you tonight. If you enjoy it so much, then I won’t stop. I want to see you completely lost for me. I’ll teach your body what it means to be loved by a pureblood.” Aaaaaand pretty sure the CG was alluding to him licking the good stuff from her basement, though not entirely sure given it was only the preview. 

The brief POV they give us is also very revealing:

“You always keep your promises, and I think I underestimate all the time how much you saved me. You are good, only you are good in this world.”

“Will we continue to make promises to each other in the future? Well in that case--you will always, always be mine, my vampire.”

Tbh he’s...v sweet? In his own way? Honestly he feels like a crabapple that is just so sick of the world and wants softe wife to take comfort in. While granted that’s not really my thing, I know a fanbase appeal exists for these types--so if that’s your thing, have at it!

So now that we have reached the end of my ridiculously long analysis (when am I ever brief, I’m so sorry. If you made it all the way here you deserve a cookie at the very least, if not the right to chase me with a bat) perhaps it’s more clear why I said discount vampire Sasuke Uchiha? “My clan is gone, every other second I’m going to be in retraumatization insanity, when I’m not I’ll be seeking power/hobbies, planning the demise of people who wanted the best for me, building a team to my advantage and unquestioned control, and eventually settling for a lifelong love who sees the best in me despite my more difficult moments and perceived hollowing loneliness. Not the most ideal comparison, but I will say if Vlad was not already named the historical figure, would have pointed and yelled Uchiha.

That’s all from me folks, hopefully this was a fun way to get introduced to him? And again, hope I didn’t alienate--I fully respect what people do and don’t enjoy o7

[professorxsmokesweed]

erik in the dofp scene where trask and raven are in the same room makes me crazy specifically i just talked about it with my twitter moot and it’s just so.

im so mad that we live in the society we live in cause we will never get a true version of eriks politics (in a mainstream movie at least i dont know whats happening comics wise) freed from “dangers of radicalism!!!” propaganda like i will argue to defend him in the movies knowing he sometimes does stupid shit but his stupid shit is undercut by the knowledge that in most situations he’s gonna be thrown into the villain role and therefore always do something extreme and ridiculous!!! i want to see him do stupid shit cause he as a character is doing stupid shit not because the writers are making him do something so the audience will side with the chosen preferred narrative (that charles is often the transportation for! i know he doesn’t honestly believe trask going to jail will suddenly fix the trask problem!!! i know he doesn’t!!!!)

back to dofp he tries to kill raven when trask, who is the one ACTUALLY responsible for the mutant killing robots is standing Right There in The Same Room you cannot tell me he would hold raven, his mutant ally, more responsible/dangerous in that situation than the actual guy who wants to do and planning the mass murder???? he didnt try to kill trask even a little bit he went straight for raven now i DO think he would try to kill raven to prevent a mutant mass murder but why the fuck wouldnt he try to kill trask first

if they wanted to show erik going after raven, which AGAIN, is something i honestly and really do believe he would do, trask shouldn’t have also been in the room. and in the good xmen that lives in my head he wasnt! erik is not going to ignore the mutant mass murderer to kill the mutant he used to commit mass murder!

he was yelling about how his mutant brothers and sisters are dead literally idk how many scenes earlier and he’s not going to go after trask for that first? knowing that trask was the one who carved them up? when he has specific trauma regarding all of that?

i know he takes control of the robots later but???? honestly this brings up the question of how much he actually knew before paris i can’t actually remember which might make this entire thing invalid if he didn’t know about trask being responsible??? and the argument is the murder of trask made them realize how dangerous mutants are or whatever do you really think erik would buy into that. you really think he would care? erik already believes that mutants are going to be feared and attempted to be destroyed no matter what. raven is also super necessary for the sentinels and her being the one that murdered trask and then getting caught immediately after is what caused the problems not trask himself dying look me in the eye and tell me that erik wouldn’t go and try to wipe the entire program out as part of his “stopping it before it starts” plan. yes he would go after raven if he’s getting nervous about it since another holocaust is his biggest fear but really?? he’s not gonna go after the mutant haters first???

additionally some of the language in dofp used to describe the entire raven vs trask situation is so gross?? yes she fucking shot the dude but it is not her fault she was tortured and used to create weapons that killed everyone else she was upset that her friends were also brutally tortured and torn apart i feel like that point is undersold in the movie.

also: trask was going to kill mutants anyways raven not going after him would change nothing in that regard i want to know what the plan would be if raven actually did drop the revenge mission and erik didn’t pull some wild shit. because trask was not going to suddenly stop and the idea that raven murdering trask made people nervous enough to kill all mutants is fucking ridiculous that’s not ravens fault. it is the fault of the people who, i don’t know, decided to do mass murder?

marvel/hollywood has known ties to the military!! erik’s ideas are never truly truly going to be explored in a movie! charles himself is chained to dumb ideas through this!!! and despite that sony got away with way more than anything the mcu would give us and thats why i live in fear of the mcu reboot!!

tdlr: i think its stupid that erik would hold raven accountable for the trask thing over trask himself

disclaimers: my last dofp rewatch was in like. october so i dont have specific-specific moments memorized. yes i believe erik has flaws as a character i am not trying to claim he is right about everything he does. i actually love the erik trying to shoot raven plot point its just that trask was also There. Right There. i think attempted murder makes for good character conflict!!!! restating what i said earlier but i gonna say this again because this is tumblr: in my head erik tries to kill trask with raven and it goes wrong trask escapes or they catch up to raven before she gets close to trask and eriks like “raven i am sorry to do this but we need to make sure that trask can never do anything i promise after this i will burn down the entirety of trask industries and will remember your sacrifice” or some shit and then we continue on with the plot

i am also tired and dont even know if this is coherent i kinda just let emotion possess me sorry folks xx

@stuck--on-you was the person i was talking this over with!!

[caroline-nighthunter]

The Ending Of The 3rd Arc

I said I would go on and rant about it, didn’t I?

Now, even though this is a kids game (13+ may I add) the 3rd arc especially touches on some heavy topics and if you’re not comfortable with that I’d advice to skip this one. Otherwise, let’s take this ending apart, shall we?

The Backstory

Ok so first things first, lets talk about the backstory that let to the happenings of arc three.

I.

KI really thought they could get away with this, huh? And they nearly did.

The Spirals lore was retconned to fit the dispute between Spider and Raven. Bold move KI, bold move.

You see, at the beginning of the game it was established that Bartleby sang the Titans into the world. Not Spider or Raven.

The titans were Bartleby’s children, but I guess the writers of the 3rd arc forgot about that.

II.

Retconning aside, let us look at the reason of the dispute between Raven and Spider.

The core issue of the dispute is that the Titans, who were “the children” of Raven and Spider, destroyed the first world by fighting against each other.

Raven blamed Spider for the happenings, due to his “chaotic influence” on the Titans. She began a bitter fight with Spider and ended it by locking him away in the black hole in Khrysalis.

The first world still lied in shambles, but out of ashes there must rise something new. So she and Bartleby created the Spiral or tried to. 

Yet without chaos there cannot be order and thus the spiral couldn’t properly exist. Raven realized that and therefore stole Spiders heart to ensure the stability of the Spiral.

This puts Raven in a questionable light, because it’s never fully told what the cause of the fight between the titans is and we cannot trust Ravens narrative, for she does not tell the story in a neutral standing.

The Ending

So, after centuries of being heartbroken and bottled up hatred, Spider is finally at the point of regaining his stolen heart again and destroy the Spiral. Until the Wizard and his (not so) merry band and Raven come along to stop him, but then the Storm Titan appears and crashes the party, just to get kicked by the Wizard. After that there is some talking between Spider, Raven and Bartleby and suddenly Raven and Spider are a couple and everyone gets their nice Happy Ending.

(Video if you want to see that ending for yourself: Link)

And yeah if I sound a little pissed, that is because I am.

You can’t tell me that this:

Is an acceptable apology after all that Raven did to Spider.

And I don’t think that the writers were aware of how wrong this sounds:

If you look at it from a different angle.

What angle you ask? Let’s find out in the next part.

If You Take It, You Gotta Take It All

KI always made their stories have dark and mature undertones, while wrapping it up in some lighthearted dark humor, but as you venture into the dark realm, you also gotta prepare for it or you’ll end up in unfavorable places.

Malistaire’s story was the one of a person who went mad because he couldn’t handle the grief of losing his wife.

Morganthe’s story was the one of an overly ambitious person, who didn’t know to have boundaries and lost everything to her blindness.

And Spider was the story of someone who got subjected to abuse and decided to take revenge.

Now I know abuse is a very touchy subject, where the lines aren't cut so clear, but locking someone you "love" up and ripping their heart out for your own convenience is pretty much abuse? Or at least a hardly forgiveable offence. And something that should take more this:

To be forgiven.

The Problem Of The Implication

With the abuse in mind the ending of Empyrea is something hard to cheer about. I don’t think that the writers intended the ending to have this undertone, because I believe that higher ups went down to the writing department and said: “Guys, you gotta end the arc, we’re going to have a different story for the next one, oh and Grandmother Raven is not a bad guy! And you have a week for it.” (Now I’m not sure if it was only a week, but they definitely hadn’t enough time for proper proof reading, otherwise I don’t think we would be here today.) Just like they probably did with Pirate’s book 15.

My problem is, that in my opinion, Spiders suffering gets brushed under the rug with this ending. He suffered for centuries under Ravens hand and somehow he forgets it all, just because he saw her again. I don’t want to say that it’s unbelievable writing, in fact I do understand his decision too good. 

He loves her too much to actually hate her, even if it the betrayal was crippling, he cannot get over her. Deep down he wishes that things were back to old times, when everything was “right”, so when Raven gives him the offer, he takes it. And that’s the thing, he shouldn’t take it. Because nothing is what it was anymore, you can’t erase what has happened. And would you really want to spend the rest of your days with someone who tried to kill you? The answer is no.

On top of that the ending tries to forcefully paint a good picture onto Raven, weakly justifying her actions, by guilt tripping the audience that it was “for the sake of the Spiral”, like Bartleby somehow said, even though she tried to kill him too:

My man, as your scion can I have a personal word with you?

Not to mention her last words:

It seems as if the writers knew that people would not buy into it...

An Alternative

Of course we cannot have Spider destroying the Spiral either. Not only would that mean that you fail to be the saviour of the Spiral, it would also mean that he would lose his fight against Raven in another way. He’d let the bitterness consume him and maybe, just maybe regret what he has done.

So, what would be the best ending?

To me the best ending would be the middle path. Let Spider and Raven settle their disputes without terminal outcome, but let them go parted ways after it. Spider could go and travel the spiral and take it in as something more than the creation of Raven. (This could make a nice questline too you know, showing him around everywhere.) While Raven continues to deal with the matters of the Arcanum and the impending dooms of the spiral and try to make up with Mellori, after all she kinda owes her that.

[carewyncromwell]

Welcome back to the POTC AU! Sorry for the day-long delay -- I was out and away from my computer almost all of yesterday, so I wasn’t able to finish this up until today! XD; But yeah, moving on to the notes...

The information about the Chest and its locking mechanisms, honestly, was all stuff I had to kind of surmise and research, since to my utter shock, there were just about no sources I could find online discussing the process of designing the original Dead Man’s Chest for the Pirates films. There is concept art for it, showing some possible decorative designs for the outside, and there are prop replicas showing the different angles and the inside of the lid -- but there is NO discussion made about the Chest’s construction/locking mechanism or what kind of 18th century or earlier chests may have inspired it. And that kind of blows me away as -- for all of the films’ flaws -- I have to applaud them on taking a lot of historical influences for things, especially in the costume and prop design. I apologize in advance if any of my research on 18th century locks and lock-picking is flawed or incomplete, but I did try my best. XD;

The song “Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest” was originally featured in the book Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, which was written in the late 1800′s, over a hundred years after the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, but it has since become entwined with the idea of pirates in pop culture, to the extent that it’s also referenced in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, where it’s sung by Joshamee Gibbs and of course it inspired the core concept that the movie is named after. The original song was likely about Blackbeard or a similar pirate marooning a bunch of his crewmates, but I changed the meaning slightly to better fit with this narrative.

This version of Davy Jones, who is in truth an AU!Finn McGarry, belongs to @theguythatdraws Ican’twaittotrydrawinghimsoon, while Juliette “Jules” Farrier-Weasley belongs to @cursebreakerfarrier...and the previous part of this AU is here, while the entire tag is here! Hope you all enjoy! xoxo

x~x~x~x

Cutler Beckett did turn out to be just as unpleasant as Skye and Orion had suggested. Pretty quickly Carewyn could suss out that this so-called “businessman” had no loyalty to or caring for anyone or anything besides himself and his vested interests, namely his own wealth and status.

Unfortunately Percy was not as quick to catch onto that, presumably because of Beckett’s stated interest in supposedly bringing all pirates to justice and (Carewyn suspected) the fact that Beckett had spoken on Percy’s behalf before he was named a Captain himself. Part of Carewyn wanted to chastise Percy for letting himself be blinded by Beckett’s attempt to manipulate him, but she knew she couldn’t risk doing so. Not only would it make Percy and therefore Beckett suspicious that she was more sympathetic to their enemies (namely, Orion, Bill, and other pirates), but she also didn’t want to come down too hard on Percy. She knew that Percy, being the youngest Weasley brother in the Navy, had a lot to prove, especially considering that his “older brother” (namely, Carewyn) was a well-respected Commodore and war hero. Even his real older brothers had gotten their fair share of glory while they were enlisted in the Navy and now were seen as wanted criminals...so it was little wonder that Percy was determined to stand apart from them, not just as great in his own right, but ultimately better because he didn’t “fall from grace” like they did.

Cutler Beckett stayed at Governor Farrier’s mansion for the next week and visited the fort just about every day in that time. Whenever he was there, he pretty frequently sought Carewyn out, engaging her in conversation and asking her about her experiences fighting the Spanish and in escaping from the crew of the Revenge. Carewyn didn’t enjoy his rather pointed attention, but she hid her discomfort and mistrust as best as she was able. As much as she really found herself disliking the man, she knew that Beckett trying to get to know her better could give her the opportunity to get some information on him too. And ultimately, her polite, charming affect did help her learn a few things.

“From there, it was simply a matter of applying the proper pressure to the cylinder with one of the hat pins, while pushing the pins into the proper alignment with the other,” Carewyn explained. “Once the padlock on my chains was properly unlocked, I was then able to adjust enough to still look like I was locked up, wait for one of the enemy soldiers to enter my cell, and then overpower him so I could take his uniform, weapons, and keys and escape.”

“You truly are quite an escape artist, Commodore,” said Beckett, his eyebrows raising approvingly. “I’m impressed.”

Carewyn offered a casual smile. “Thank you -- but I only learned those things out of necessity, Lord Beckett.”

‘Jacob and I knew we’d both have to know how to pick locks, if we ever had to escape the Revenge’s brig. And even before that, it helped keep Grandfather happy, for us to be able to open chests of loot we didn’t have keys for.’

“It’s not a skill set I like to use if I can help it, considering I’d much prefer to be the one locking others up, not vice-versa.”

“Yes,” said Beckett, “I suppose for one with such a strong moral compass as yours, it would be only natural for you to wish to enforce justice, rather than fight against it.”

“Just as I’d say it’s only natural for a gentleman such as yourself to work toward the protection of our realm and interests -- am I right?”

“Of course,” said Beckett airily. “Someone has to make sure that people get what they pay for and that business remains profitable -- make sure the world turns properly, as it were.”

“A difficult proposition for any one man to do,” said Carewyn lowly, “considering this wild, untamed world we live in.”

Beckett smiled -- unlike Carewyn’s, however, there was no warmth in it at all.

“Fortunately, Commodore, the world we’ve been saddled with will soon be a thing of the past.”

He and Carewyn looked out over the wall of the fort. Down below, at the western dock, several rows of newly arrived red-garbed militia were disembarking from a Man o’ War and marching into Port Royal.

“As the map is filled in, our hold around this world becomes better defined,” said Beckett. “Its treasures are collected, its value assessed...and with that, a new sense of order begins to take hold.”

Carewyn looked down at the Man o’ War, her eyes narrowing slightly. She hadn’t seen such a strong military presence in Port Royal since the War against the Spanish -- and yet, here they were, being used not against foreign countries, but against individual people -- some of them even British citizens. As much as she knew that there were plenty of pirates that weren’t as goodhearted as Orion, it still seemed bizarre to her to unload all this firepower to destroy and kill, as opposed to capturing.

“And hopefully, peace,” said the Commodore softly.

Beckett glanced at Carewyn with a discerning eye. “Indeed. Peace and order do go hand-in-hand, wouldn’t you say?”

‘Not if the order is being instilled by a tyrant,’ she thought, as Charles Cromwell rippled over her mind.

“Definitely,” she lied instead.

Carewyn glanced at Beckett out the side of her eye, before turning her gaze out to the ocean.

“...I only profess as much knowledge to this matter as one can acquire, fighting against the likes of Orion Amari and being in the captivity of a pirate crew like the Revenge’s,” she said in the hardest, least sympathetic voice she could, “but it seems to me that pirates know their existence is unsustainable. Regardless of how renown they are and how much they can terrify merchant sailors, they’re still only men, facing off against Empires and kings. And as the world is plotted out -- as you yourself pointed out, Lord Beckett -- there will soon be less and less havens where such criminals can hide...”

She then looked at Beckett with a cold look in her eye.

“...From the way things stand...it seems to me that it would be in their best interest to stand down while they still can.”

'It would be, if there was any true justice for those who turned themselves in.’

Beckett’s lips spread into a slightly wider, cold smile as he inclined his head in agreement. “Well said. There could always be clemency, for those who embrace that wisdom -- it’s just good business.”

With this conversation, Carewyn had gotten a proper fix on Beckett, and it made her feel more disconcerted. It only got worse when later that week, both she and Percy were summoned into Carewyn’s own office at the fort for a meeting with Beckett. Some might have been offended at the idea of someone coming in and stealing their office just to demand a meeting with the office’s owner, but Carewyn honestly couldn’t make herself care too much about that. She couldn’t help but think that Beckett being so forceful could only be a bad thing, and when she arrived in her office, Percy right behind her dressed in his shiny new Captain’s uniform and powdered white wig, she immediately got the feeling she was right.

Beckett had already made himself very at home in Carewyn’s office. A crystal decanter filled with red wine and several glasses had been laid out and an entire map complete with tiny soldier pieces plotted in different positions covered nearly all of Carewyn’s desk. There was also an even larger map that had been applied to the back wall, which an employee was currently adding more details onto with his paintbrush. Standing in front of Carewyn’s desk across from Beckett was a middle-aged woman with hair as ginger red as Percy and Carewyn’s -- when the two officers first entered the room, her sharp-lidded dark blue eyes ran over both of them, lingering on Carewyn critically.

“Ah,” said Cutler Beckett, his lips spreading into a smile as his eyes narrowed upon Carewyn, “Commodore and Captain Weasley. Good of you to come.”

Carewyn and Percy both saluted.

“Lord Beckett,” Carewyn greeted formally.

She glanced at the older woman out the side of her eye, to find that she was likewise still looking her over with narrowed eyes. Carewyn couldn’t help but look at her suspiciously in return -- Percy had said Beckett had a female associate...and, if Charles Cromwell was to believed, then this woman had to be  --

“Allow me to introduce my associate, Patricia Rakepick,” said Beckett smoothly. “Madam Rakepick -- this is Captain Percy Weasley, and his elder brother, Commodore Carey Weasley.”

Carewyn’s blood ran cold. Being face-to-face with the woman who tried to kill Jacob was like a dose of cold, shuddering poison to her system. It took everything in her to not look at Rakepick with wrathful, vengeful hatred -- instead, she tried to hide the bile she felt by bowing respectfully, her head slightly bowed to obscure her expression.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Madam,” she said softly. Somehow her voice came out levelly, despite the rage pulsing through her blood.

Rakepick’s eyes narrowed a bit more on Carewyn’s face.

“The pleasure’s all mine, Commodore,” she said, but she didn’t sound quite so convincing -- she almost immediately turned back to Beckett, looking noticeably impatient, “Lord Beckett, you can’t think that these -- ”

Beckett held up a hand to silence her and turned to the employee working on the map. “One moment -- Mr. Elliot, you may stop there, for today. On your way, now.”

The employee bowed his head respectfully, before descending from his ladder and quickly leaving the office. The door shut with a SNAP behind him.

“Now then,” said Beckett, as he rose to his feet, “Commodore...Captain...I invited you here to request a favor of you. Madam Rakepick has recently uncovered a rather unique and valuable artifact.”

Carewyn’s eyebrows furrowed. Even Percy looked startled.

“What artifact is that, your Lordship?” he asked.

Beckett poured some red wine and offered a glass to Carewyn. She accepted it to be polite, but did not drink it. He then similarly offered a glass to Percy, who took a sip, even if he still looked a bit confused.

“How familiar are you both with the legend of Davy Jones?” asked Beckett.

Carewyn’s eyes narrowed slightly. “The captain of the Flying Dutchman?”

“Well, I’ve...heard the stories, of course,” said Percy, glancing at Carewyn uncertainly. “We both have -- the silly things the soldiers would pass around, at sea...ghost stories, you know...”

Rakepick scoffed, crossing her arms. “‘Ghost stories’ -- and these two are supposed to be sailors? Any sailor worth their salt knows that these things are hardly just stories -- ”

“Madam, please,” Beckett cut her off very coolly, as Percy frowned deeply, clearly offended. “I’m afraid the stories are indeed real. We now have the Chest to prove it.”

He reached under his desk and placed an intricately carved iron treasure chest on top of Carewyn’s desk.

It looked older than anything Carewyn had ever seen, and yet also oddly beautiful -- the inset lock framed by the moon’s phases and stylized flames, and iron tentacles clutched at the lid as if keeping it shut.

Carewyn immediately put down her full wine glass on a side table so as to walk up to the chest, trailing a hand along the heart-shaped lock.

“This is the Dead Man’s Chest?” she whispered.

Percy glanced at Carewyn. “The Dead Man’s Chest? Like in the song?”

Carewyn shook her head. “‘Fifteen Men on a Dead Man’s Chest’ was about this Chest, Perce. It’s said that Jones was so determined that no one know where he buried this treasure chest that he abandoned the entire crew who knew of its existence on that island with nothing but a bottle of rum to sustain them.”

“Leaving them to take the secret of its location to their graves,” said Beckett. He was idly playing with a silver piece of eight in his right hand as he spoke, his eyes resting on Carewyn. “Alas, it seems that the key needed to open the Chest may be in a location we cannot reach -- ”

He shot a cool look at Rakepick, who looked very affronted and opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t before Beckett spoke again.

“ -- so I’d like to ask for your expertise on the matter, Commodore. Can this Chest be opened, without its key?”

Carewyn looked from Beckett to down at the Chest, unable to hide the trepidation completely from her face.

“...I can’t say for sure,” she said slowly. Her mind was working very fast as she regarded Beckett with a cautious look. “Were it an ordinary chest, I daresay it’d be easy enough to find a way to open it...but if there were any kind of curse placed on it or, more importantly, the treasure inside it...it might not be wise to try to break it open.”

“Curse?” repeated Percy disbelievingly. “Carey, you can’t be serious -- ”

“I saw the curse of Isle de Muerta with my own eyes, Percy,” she reminded him sharply. “If the Dead Man’s Chest has such a curse on it, it would not be worth the risk to open it, no matter how valuable its treasure is.”

Percy immediately quieted, looking a bit uncomfortable. Rakepick once again looked Carewyn over with a critical eye, even as she gave another light sniff.

“The treasure inside is not magical, so it would have no chance of hurting us, that is for certain,” said Rakepick dryly. “And from all the evidence I’ve gathered, I found nothing hinting that Finn McGarry -- pardon, Davy Jones -- was particularly adept at curses. All of the abilities he has now were a result of the role bestowed upon him by Calypso, as ferryman of the damned.”

Her face then turned much more serious.

“I will agree with the Commodore on one thing, though: Jones’s Chest will be too strong for the likes of a single man to break open. Look at the lid -- there are dead bolt locks around the entire Chest. The only way we’ll be able to unlock it is if I fetch the key from Jones myself -- ”

“And yet the Commodore thinks it’d be easy enough, to find a way to open the Chest without that key,” said Beckett rather coolly, raising his eyebrows as he once again shifted his gaze to Carewyn. “Commodore -- if you would?”

Carewyn looked from the Dead Man’s Chest to Beckett again, before glancing back at Percy. Percy gave her an encouraging nod, but it didn’t make Carewyn feel any better. She wished beyond reason that Charlie or Bill had been there instead -- they’d understand why she was so hesitant to help someone like Cutler Beckett.

But at the same time...she couldn’t refuse. She was put in the position that she had to open the Chest, if she wanted to stay on Beckett’s good side and keep the position that allowed her to protect Bill, Jules, Charlie, Jacob, and Orion. Even if she did refuse to open the Chest, then Beckett would no doubt find someone else who would...and would also likely not trust Carewyn enough to let her overhear any more information that could help her protect the others.

'If the treasure inside isn’t cursed, then there isn’t much reason to refuse,’ she thought grimly. ‘And lining Beckett’s pockets with a bit more gold would only help me help the others that bit more, by earning his trust.’

And so, swallowing back the ball of fear in her throat, Carewyn started looking over the Chest. She turned it around a few times, examining the hinges and the dead-bolts lining the base of the lid.

“What do you think, Carey?” asked Percy anxiously.

Carewyn’s eyes narrowed upon the Chest as she ran a hand over the top and pushed down on each of the iron tentacles one at a time.

“Its construction most resembles an armada chest -- some of the Spanish captains used them to hold their valuables during the War, and I’ve seen some pirates use them too, to hold their loot,” she murmured to him, though she could feel Rakepick hovering over her other shoulder as she worked. “On armada chests, the locking mechanism is actually built into the inside of the lid -- that explains the dead bolts around the edges. It also would prevent you from just unscrewing the hinges on the back of the chest and opening it from the back, like you can on a lot of wooden chests. But armada chests usually have a false keyhole on the front, with the real keyhole being hidden under a flap on the lid. This one does not. Judging by the construction of the keyhole, there looks to be a double cylinder design -- one that requires pressure on both sides of the keyhole, as well as the pins inside both cylinders to be in the proper position...”

She looked up at Beckett.

“...It’s easily the most complicated locking system I’ve ever seen on any chest,” she said grimly.

“Can you open it?” asked Beckett.

Carewyn steadied her jaw, her face blanching slightly as she inclined her head in a short nod.

“I think so.”

Beckett got Carewyn the tools she needed. Due to the two-sided nature of the keyhole, she enlisted Percy to help her -- he had far less experience with opening locks, but he followed Carewyn’s directions as closely as he could.

After almost an hour, there was a loud, booming CLICK as all twelve of the dead bolts around the lid popped out and the lid opened a crack, letting off a small gasp of dust.

“You did it!” said Rakepick.

Despite the seriousness of her expression, there was a slight echo of excitement and awe at the back of her voice. She was clearly impressed.

Carewyn stared at the slightly open Chest. Her heart was slamming up against her rib cage anxiously.

Nothing had happened, when she’d opened it -- so had the Chest not been cursed, after all? That was a relief. And Rakepick had said the treasure inside wasn’t cursed, so...

Tentatively Carewyn reached out a hand and slowly eased the lid open.

When she saw what was inside, though, she couldn’t hold back a sharp intake of breath.

The Dead Man’s Chest was devoid of any of the gold or jewels she’d envisioned. Instead, all it held was a slimy, reddish, pulsing, thumping thing about the side of a coconut.

It was a human heart, still beating lowly despite no blood rushing through it.

Percy squeezed Carewyn’s shoulder as he looked down at it too, visibly taken aback.

“Is...that...?”

“The heart of Davy Jones,” finished Rakepick darkly, “first cut out when he was named captain of the Flying Dutchman -- for the Dutchman must always have a captain who’s left his heart behind in the world of the living. Only then can he truly be a subjective judge of the dead and dying at sea...and thus the souls of the damned will not haunt the seas and terrorize all those who sail it.”

Carewyn’s eyes were very wide. ‘Then...the treasure Jones locked away was his own heart?’

Rakepick’s dark blue eyes flickered down to the heart rather pitilessly.

“Not that Jones hasn’t done a fine job of terrorizing those who sail those seas all on his own, over the years,” she added very dryly.

“All the more reason for us to bring Jones into our enterprise.”

Beckett rose from his desk again. Taking a sip from his own glass of red wine, he came around to purposefully take a step between Percy and Carewyn and look down at the heart himself. His lips curled up in a dark smile as he reached out a hand and picked up the heart to get a better look at it.

“Whoever controls the heart of Davy Jones...controls the sea,” said Beckett.

He gave it a rather tight squeeze. Carewyn couldn’t stop herself from flinching.

‘If that thing is still beating,’ she couldn’t help but think, ‘then does that mean that it’s the only thing keeping Davy Jones alive? If so...’

She felt like her own chest was being squeezed.

‘...Beckett’s holding Davy Jones’s life in the palm of his hand.’

For all of the terrifying stories Carewyn had heard about Davy Jones over the years, both on the Revenge and in the Navy, she found herself feeling nothing but righteous anger and pain at this thought. What a disgusting, terrible thing to do to anyone -- no matter how awful a person they were...

There was a loud splash outside the window of Carewyn’s office.

Carewyn, Percy, Rakepick, and Beckett all looked up, to see a giant, terrifying ship erupting out of the waves just outside the fort. It was a sickly gray with torn sails and a bow cut into a set of massive, jagged jaws like a crocodile.

“The Flying Dutchman,” breathed Carewyn, hardly daring to believe it.

Beckett’s smile broadened, actually showing some teeth. “A rather fine addition to the fleet -- especially considering that it can go just about anywhere and travel in record time...”

Rakepick turned to Beckett sharply.

“If that’s the case, the first thing we should do is have him hunt down Black Jack Roberts. I know he made a deal with Jones -- he’ll have a way to track him down and kill him once and for all -- ”

Carewyn’s heart spasmed in horror, but fortunately no one else in the room noticed the fear flashing through her face.

“Didn’t you say you already destroyed the Tower Raven?” said Beckett coolly. “One can hardly see a pirate with no ship as a real threat.”

“Don’t underestimate Black Jack Roberts,” said Rakepick lowly. “By all accounts, he should’ve died, and he would have, if he hadn’t somehow managed to recruit a merman to his crew -- ”

Percy sputtered in disbelief. “‘Merman’ -- you mean, like mermaids? Those are real too?”

“Afraid so,” said Carewyn.

Her mind and heart were both racing, but she tried desperately to keep her cool. She couldn’t let them go after Jacob...or Duncan, either, if he was the merman who’d helped him like she suspected. Now that she knew the true power Beckett now had, thanks to her opening that Chest for him, she couldn’t stand by and let him use it to hurt her brother --

“...I can’t say I know much about Black Jack Roberts, aside from him being captain of the Tower Raven...” she said slowly, “...but it seems to me that attacking one man would be a poor way to use the weapon we’ve acquired.”

All three of the others looked at her. Beckett raised his eyebrows in keen interest.

“And what would you say would be a better way to use it, Commodore?” he asked, sounding intrigued.

Carewyn’s eyes drifted away from the others as she walked up to the window of her office and looked out, her arms crossed behind her back as she went. She tried to keep her face as stoic as possible, even with how scared she truly felt.

‘In order to pass up the chance to hunt down and kill one of the most wanted pirates in the world,’ she thought, ‘I have to offer an even more enticing option...’

The idea forming in her mind made her feel ill.

‘It’s been over two weeks since I saw Jules, Bill, and Charlie,’ she thought very quickly. ‘That’s more than enough time to have made the repairs to the Revolution and get some new crew members, especially if Orion and the crew of the Artemis is helping them. And...whether they’re just leaving or have already left...this way, they’ll know the true extent of the danger. All pirates will know what the Navy’s new weapon is...and can prepare for it.’

She closed her eyes solemnly.

“...I say we send a message to all pirates -- one that makes them tremble in their boots, the way they’ve made merchant sailors tremble at the sight of their black flags...by attacking them where they’ve always felt most safe. By arresting them somewhere they all gather together, in one place.”

She opened her eyes again, her gaze blazing as she turned back to Beckett.

“I say...we sack Tortuga.”

[linkspooky]

Zenin Maki: Family or Strength

Zenin Maki is one of the most complex characters in the story of Jujutsu Kaisen, she’s also one whose motivations we know a great deal about already due to her being featured in the prequel, and her continued development in the main series. In her character she represents one of the main themes of the series, the conflict between defining yourself individually (by who you are and what standards you set) or by defining yourself by the people around you (conforming or going with the expectations of other people). Maki’s struggles to be an indivudual in a world that has already written her off as a failure is pretty central to the themes of the story. MORE UNDER THE CUT. 

Maki is caught in a pretty classic Want/Need conflict. All stories are rooted in a character’s conflict. Maki’s conflict is with herself as much as it is with the Zenin clan. 

 A want is at its simplest, the Thing Your Characters Wants is the plot goal.  [...] Whereas the Want is a direct equivalent of the plot goal, the Thing the Character Needs is a direct correlative of the thematic value. Whatever Truth your story is positing about reality, that is the ultimate Thing the Character Needs.  [x]. 

A want is oftentimes something the character defines for themself. It’s what motivates them to move forward. Whereas, the need is what the story itself says they need in order to grow. 

You don’t make a character change by giving them exactly what they want, which is why the want and need are often in conflict with one another. In most cases a character grows over the course of the story to realize their need in the end. The want motivates them, the need is their resolution. 

What Maki wants is to be recognized as an individual. She wants to prove her family wrong. Her family has already defined her as a failure. Just like how Getou sees her, because she has no natural talent for jujutsu sorcery her own family has denied that she’s even a person. She’s constantly dehumanized by them. If she’s not useful for Jujutsu Sorcery, then she’s nothing at all. For Maki, being her own person, and living for herself, her own amibtions, is an act of rebellion against her family who want to deny her everything. 

Maki’s want is an almost childish sense of revenge. An “I Told You So”. She wants to prove the people that dismissed her wrong, by proving she’s better than them. She wants to make the Zenin clan bow their heads to her. 

Wants are not bad things. They are what motivates the character to move forward. Maki’s spiteful amibtion, the fact that what she wants is basically no better than revenge, is neither a good nor bad thing in the context of the story. It’s her driving force. Maki is allwoed to be spiteful and angry at the way herfamily treated her. Yuta, who is basically one of the most soft-hearted and understanding characters in the prequel completely approves of her ambitions. 

The fact that she’s selfishly motivated. The fact that she wants to do all these things for herself. Her strong sense of individuality are not bad things. They are just the things that make Maki, Maki. In fact rebelling is basically the only way Maki can be an individual. Her urge to destroy her family is not presented to us as a bad thing, but rather something necessary for Maki to truly grow and be herself. 

However, once again a want is not the entire answer. You don’t make characters change by giving them what they want. 

Moron, this only works if I’m doing it by myself. 

Maki wanting to be stronger than anyone in her family. Her focus on individual strength above all else. None of these are bad, however it’s not entirely what she needs either. Look at what she says don’t go feeling like you got accepted. 

It’s almost like some part of Maki is afraid of those feelings of acceptance. She feels like family is something she has to throw away in order to be strong. 

I do not mean in a sense that Maki will not work with people on her team. She clearly has the ability to form connections with people as friends, get along with others, and even cooperate owith them as a team and care for her comrades. However, she never lets her feelings go any deeper than that. She’s gone so long without unconditional love and acceptance that she feels like she has to destroy her own need for such a thing. 

1. Maki vs Mai

Maki has two significant foils in the series who share this same conflict, choosing between your individual development and strength, and also your need to be accepted by the people around you. 

Mai is presented to us first as someone who looks down on Maki like the rest of her family. This makes sense because at the time the story was telling it from Maki’s perspective mainly. Maki tends to see her whole family, even her own twin sister, as the other. 

However, we’re presented with two different narratives. That of Maki who left the family and began to develop as her own person. That of Mai who stayed behind with the family, and had to continue living inside of an abusive household. The narrative becomes one of not Maki or Mai being the better sibling, but rather two siblings reacting to an abusive household in different ways. 

Mai has never once thought her sister was weak. She’s just parroting what the rest of the clan says about Maki in order to get Maki’s attention after Maki left her. Mai has always thought Maki was the stronger one between the two of them, but the thing is Mai doesn’t care about strength at all.

What Mai wanted was a personal connection with her sister. That’s why she mentions not telling her who her first crush is. In order to become her own person Maki has distanced herself from everyone, but that also means as a consequence Maki has shut Mai out. 

It’s clear Mai reads Maki’s declaration and decision to leave the family, to leave her behind in an absuive household to also mean that she’s rejecting her sister, the one family member who loves her for her. 

Once again neither sister is wrong. Maki wanting to run away from an abusive household when she’s a teenager and can’t really take care of her sister, or maybe even did not have the ability to bring her sister with her is not something that should bee expected fo a cihld. Mai turning against Maki for bieng left behind in an abusive environment, and not knowing a healthy way to reach out to her sister is also what’s to be expected fo a child. It’s not Mai and Maki who started this conflict, it’s the adults that pitted them against each other.

Mai is not trying to put Maki down because she sees herself as superior or anything like that, she literally has always thought Maki was much better than her. It’s a pretty basic cry for attention. 

Both sisters want and chose different things. Maki wanted to be herself, Mai wanted a family. Neiter of their desires are wrong or better than the other. Mai is not wrong for wanting a normal life, Maki is not wrong for wanting to be a Jujutsu Sorcerer.

However, because Maki has to draw such a clear line between herself and other people. She can’t accept or understand Mai’s feelings. The conflict between the two of them goes completely unresolved. Because, Maki doesn’t have to leave those connections of unconditional love and acceptance behind to be an individual, she just thinks she does. That is the point where her want clashes with her need. 

2. Maki vs Toji

Maki and Fushigoro Toji were both born into the Zenin clan, and both suffer from the same inability to see cursed spirits. While at first the comparison may look like a positive one for Maki, Maki is choosing to stay inside the system and work to prove herself better than what her family told her she was then going completely rogue and living as a mercenary for money like Toji did. 

However, eseentially both of them made the same choice. They chose power, and their own personal ambitions over their family. The first thing we learn about Toji in story is that he left his son behind, and practically forgot about him. 

While Maki is not responsible for her twin sister the same way that Toji is responsible for his son, they still both believe they have to throw away those kind of family connections in order to survive as an individual. They don’t allow themselves to feel that connection. 

Toji seems to live entirely for himself, and to prove others wrong about him. He has the same want as as Maki, to be stronger that the Jujutsu Sorcerers who dismissed him. They just chose different paths, Maki works from inside, whereas Megumi this late in his life has gone completely outside of the system. 

Toji s a lot more spiteful than Maki towards talented people. Maki’s more self directed and doesn’t blame everybody around her for her circumstances, so much. She’s a lot more focused on herself and her own sense of self improvement. However, both of them have an extreme amount of self awareness and use that to push themselves to develop their bodies to their absolute limit.

Toji is someone who is incredibly aware of his own limits, and rather than that making him unmotivated it causes him to be an extremely strategic thinker, and also push his body beyond even what most Jujutsu sorcerers are capable of. He makes excuses for his own violent behavior because he’s nothing but a reject and a monkey, but he doesn’t let other people’s talents be an excuse for him to be weak. When he sees Gojou fighting him at full power, he doesn’t hesitate or run away, he literally approaches the situation with an extreme amount of determination that believing he can overcome it. 

As a person he’s practically a disaster, always eating fast food, gambling, leaving his son behind, and acting immature and irresponsible with his business partner. Whereas Maki is much more cold and composed. However, this behavior stems from the fact that Toji, like Maki, has focused his entire life around fighting and therefore everywhere else he’s underdeveloped as a person. He’s the extreme result of Maki’s belief that if she’s stronger than her family, that will somehow fix what is missing inside of her. 

Toji even says he believed the only way to go against his family and continue being himself, was to twist his personality like this. That he had no choice but to become this way in order to deny what his family said about him. 

However, what Toji regrets as he’s dying is not that he wasn’t strong enough. He doesn’t even regret becoming a crimminal, or rebelling against the Jujutsu world. What he regrets is that he threw away his family in the process. 

What he wanted was to be strong. What he needed was a family. Maki and Toji are not exactly the same, but Toji is a cautionary tale that shows us that Maki’s choice to reject understanding and acceptance is unhealthy behavior. It’s what she wants and not what she needs. And these things are not mutually exclusive, Maki can both pursue her own individual strength and at the same time accept others around her. The manga has always advocated finding a balance, and a reconciliation between the two, rather than one as being more important than the other. Just like her conflict with her sister, beating her sister in a fight proves nothing. What Maki needs is reconciliation, the ability to understand her sister’s feelings and also have her sister be able to understand her own. 

She needs those connections to be an individual. We are defined by ourselves, we are defined by the people around us. It’s not either or, it’s both at the same time. Maki’s choice isn’t even a choice she necessarily needs to make, she’s allowed to choose both. 

[moistvonlipwig]

Angel’s Redemption Arc

I think it’s interesting that in the Buffyverse fandom, which often concerns itself with debating and discussing redemption arcs, I don’t see much airtime devoted to the one that’s foundational to Angel as a show, namely Angel’s own redemption arc. Part of this is probably because Angel’s redemption arc is non-traditional in the sense that it has arguably begun even before Episode 1 of Buffy; part of it is probably because fandom has a tendency to dismiss Angel as “boring” and unworthy of time and energy that they could instead devote to talking about Willow or Spike or Faith. But I actually think Angel’s redemption arc is one of the best and most interesting in the pair of shows; IMO in terms of how well it’s executed it’s right up there at the top with Darla’s.

Now, when we talk about redemption arcs, it’s first important to establish what it is that the character is actually seeking redemption for. In the case of someone like Angel, it’s tempting to guess that the answer is “pretty much everything he’s ever done”. But ultimately Angel is a character in a narrative, and not everything he does, good or bad, is given equal narrative importance. Redemption arcs often focus on redeeming a character for what the narrative frames as their primary sin. So what does the narrative consider to be Angel’s primary sin? Again, it’s tempting to answer “everything”. But is the narrative of Angel really all that hung up on, for example, the time Angel nailed a puppy to the ceiling? Certainly as viewers we may squirm to hear that, especially if we’re dog-lovers, but it’s brought up maybe twice in the entirety of both shows. And while Angel has killed a ton of people, most of his victims died off-screen, years before Buffy began, and remain unnamed and unseen by the audience. Angel no doubt feels bad about killing them, but is the narrative of his show really all that concerned with them?

I would argue that the narrative of Angel does not consider Angel’s primary sin to be any of his actual murders at all. If you think about it, Angel’s problem can’t be that he kills people because that’s every vampire’s problem. That’s like saying a human character’s problem is that they don’t always drive exactly at the speed limit. It’s not technically wrong, it’s just not specific. What’s specific about Angel is that he doesn’t just kill people. He takes the time to psychologically destroy them. And often those people go on to do terrible things themselves, either because Angel sires them (see Drusilla) or because Angel’s actions beget a cycle of abuse that they perpetuate (see Holtz). Angel’s problem, therefore, is not that he’s a monster. It’s that he makes monsters of other people.

Examples of this can be seen throughout both shows. As mentioned above, there’s Drusilla, possibly the ur-example of this behavior pattern from Angel: she was a good person and he tortured her, traumatized her, killed her, and turned her into a vampire, both figuratively and literally turning her into a monster. There’s Spike; Angel didn’t actually turn him personally, but Spike refers to Angel as his Yoda and blames Angel for being the one to truly make a monster of him, which given what we see of their interactions in ye olden days is probably more or less true. There’s Sam Lawson, the vampire from “Why We Fight”, left physically and metaphorically adrift after Angel turned him, who turns to killing because it’s the only thing he can think of to do. There’s also Penn, the vampire from “Somnambulist” who, while not the most important to the overall narrative of the show, does say some things that I think are important to understanding Angel’s character arc; more on that later. And on a less vampiric note, there’s Holtz: Angel killed his family and, importantly, forced Holtz to kill his own vampirized child (again, more on this later). In turn, Holtz becomes so intent on revenge that he kidnaps, manipulates, and abuses Angel’s child right up until (and including) the moment Holtz dies. Holtz, like Drusilla, is symbolic of this behavior pattern of Angel’s; there’s a reason that both of them play such significant roles in Angel.

So, we’ve figured out what Angel’s primary sin is, according to the narrative presented by Buffy and Angel: he turns people into monsters. The next question that naturally presents itself is: how can he redeem himself from that? It seems fairly logical to say that one of the best ways someone can redeem themselves is to undo what they have done. Unfortunately, on a literal level, this is impossible for Angel: he cannot unmake the monsters he has created. But perhaps on a figurative level, this is possible. Angel may not be able to make it so that he never turned people into monsters. But he can try to turn monstrous people back into good ones. Angel thus commits himself to trying not just to redeem himself but to redeem other people. Along the way, he has successes (Faith being his most significant one) and failures (Lindsey, among others). But he always tries. He even offers Jasmine a second chance to become a better person, which says a lot about Angel and his commitment to his mission to make better people out of monsters, given how deeply and profoundly Jasmine ruined his life and the lives of his loved ones.

That’s all well and good. But this discussion is still missing a piece, and that’s Connor. How, you may be thinking, does Connor possibly fit into all of this? To understand that, we have to return to Penn and what he had to say about Angel in “Somnambulist”. Penn doesn’t just accuse Angel of making him a monster like Spike does, although that is probably the meaning behind his words. What Penn actually says is that he has spent his unlife trying to get back at his father, but he realizes now that all that was in vain, because Angel is his real father. The implication is that, when Angel engages in monster-making, he is also engaging in person-making, in an act of creation, in fatherhood. Angel doesn’t just make monsters, he fathers them. That, therefore, is Angel’s real problem: he’s a bad father.

Why did he become a bad father, I hear you ask? Well, like most bad fathers, he had a bad father of his own. In “The Prodigal”, we flash back to Liam’s interactions with his own father. His father is controlling and disparaging, and makes him feel worthless. Ultimately, the newly-sired Angel kills his father. But Darla warns him that this is not truly a victory, because it only lasted moments, while his father’s defeat of him will last his whole life. This clearly sticks with Angel, and he basically spends the rest of his time as a soulless vampire trying to recreate what his father did to him by doing it to others: defeating them not for a moment, but for the rest of their lives.

And, indeed, he succeeds in this mission. Not only does he make more monsters, but he even makes more bad parents. Holtz, a shining example of Angel’s work, is an abysmal father. Angel prompts his first arguably monstrous act as a father, namely the killing of his own daughter, which depending how you view vampires in the Buffyverse was either a terrible thing or a mercy, but regardless was not an action a parent should ever have to take. Later, Holtz kidnaps an infant Connor, emotionally and physically abuses him in a hell dimension for eighteen years, and in a final act of parental monstrosity, deliberately manipulates him through his own suicide.

Drusilla (who, I should note, frequently refers to Angel as “Daddy”) also becomes a bad “mummy” to Darla in “The Trial”, when she turns her as Angel looks on, completing the cycle that Angel and Darla started when they turned her. Significantly, Drusilla does this just as Darla, with Angel’s help, has come to a realization about her past actions and has decided she wants to try to atone for them despite knowing she can’t. In other words, Drusilla is directly interfering with one of Angel’s most important attempts at redeeming someone else’s soul. One of Angel’s own monster ‘children’ is the one to snatch away his ability to help create or ‘father’ a good person, and instead claim the mantle of parenthood for themselves. Angel’s actions thus are ultimately self-defeating, usually in a poignantly ironic way. But he does accomplish his goal of inflicting on others a worse version of what his father inflicted on him.

Ironically, however, every time he does this, he only succumbs further and further to his father’s defeat. His father is the one who made him a monster, just like Angel ends up doing to his victims, and thus with every monstrous action he takes, he only solidifies his father’s victory. Angel’s quest to control and corrupt his victims, aka his metaphorical children, stems from a desire to defeat his father by outdoing him at his own game. But in the end it only replicates and affirms his father’s defeat of him. To truly defeat his father, he needs to stop playing his game altogether and break free of the cycle.

Enter Connor. At first glance it may appear a somewhat random choice to give Angel a human son partway through his show. But if you look at Angel’s arc through the lens of him being a bad father, Connor’s narrative reason for existing is illuminated. As Darla puts it right before she stakes herself, Connor is the only good thing that she and Angel ever created together. In other words, he is Angel’s opportunity to truly (and literally) be a good father.

But Angel has had years of practice at being a bad one, and he doesn’t get it right on his first try. For one thing, Holtz obstructs his efforts to raise his son well by kidnapping him and taking him to Quor’toth. Again, we see one of Angel’s metaphorical ‘children’ denying Angel the opportunity to properly father a good person, only this time it’s more literal as it’s his actual child that gets taken from him. As always, Angel’s actions are cyclical and self-defeating.

But Connor does come back eventually. When he does, Angel tries his best but ultimately pushes him farther away, by lying to him (qv “Benediction”), denying him forgiveness (qv “Deep Down”), isolating him by kicking him out of the hotel (qv “Deep Down”, “Habeas Corpses”) and letting his jealousy influence his treatment of him (qv a good chunk of Season 4). (For the record: I am not trying to cast judgment on Angel for these choices, some of which were perfectly justifiable and some of which were less so. I am merely saying that they were not the ideal choices for Connor’s well-being.) These choices, combined with the abuse Connor suffered at Holtz’s hands (which wasn’t Angel’s fault, but which did ultimately spring from Angel’s actions) and Team Angel’s general dislike and distrust of Connor, make Connor susceptible to Jasmine’s manipulations, which ultimately lead to his emotional and psychological breakdown at the end of Season 4.

If there’s a common thread we can pick out between all of Angel’s choices regarding Connor after Connor returns from Quor’toth, I think it’s that Angel, for all that he loves Connor, also ultimately wants Connor to be what Angel wants him to be. This is more common among parents than most would ever admit. And it isn’t always a bad thing! Most parents, including Angel, want the best for their children. But they don’t always know what that actually is. And Angel’s desire for Connor to be happy and well-adjusted and, above all, a good person frequently expresses itself as Angel attempting to control Connor. Not for the same reasons he tried to control his prior ‘children’, but with unfortunately similar results. Angel lies to Connor because he wants Connor to think of him a certain way; he wants to control Connor’s perception of him. He kicks Connor out of the hotel because he wants Connor to learn a lesson; he wants to control Connor’s behavior. He disparages and tries to impede Connor’s relationship with a Jasmine-possessed Cordelia; he wants to control Connor’s relationships and feelings. (Again: not saying these actions were all unjustified, just that they were taken with Angel’s feelings in mind, not Connor’s.) In the end, although Angel is not trying to replicate his father’s treatment of him in his parenting of Connor, he ends up doing so regardless. His desire to do the opposite of what he normally does, to make a good person out of Connor, drives him to try to control Connor when Connor seems to go against that objective, which only further primes Connor to be more easily molded into a monster.

Thus the defining moment of Angel’s redemption arc is when Angel finally lets go of his need to define and control his child, who is now a sort of symbol for all his children, literal and metaphorical. I am speaking, of course, of the moment when Angel makes the deal with Wolfram & Hart to alter reality and wipe Connor’s memories. Ethics of memory-wiping aside, this is perhaps the greatest thing Angel could ever do for Connor, and it is the moment when Angel finally achieves victory over his own father, not by winning at his game, but by acknowledging he has lost and refusing to play any longer. In Angel, realizing you are wrong and have done wrong to others is often portrayed as one of the most crucial parts of the journey to redemption, and is usually a turning point for the characters who reach it. (See: Faith in “Five by Five”, Darla in “The Trial” and “Lullaby”, Spike in “Damage”, etc.) I believe Angel’s moment of realization is here in “Home”. This is when he understands that he has failed as a father, and that he cannot succeed just by continuing to try to control Connor’s behavior. To truly be a good father to Connor, Angel has to cede control entirely and give him over to a family who will do right by him. He has to stop playing any variant of his father’s game, and accept that the price of Connor being happy is that Angel cannot influence him for life -- for good or for evil -- the way his own father influenced him.

So that’s exactly what Angel does. He ‘kills’ Connor, and it is a terrible irony that the false prophecy Wesley feared so much, that the father would kill the son, comes true not as Angel’s lowest point or greatest failure, but as a moment of spiritual victory and redemption for Angel. In fact, it is a moment of freedom, for both him and Connor: freedom from the cycle of fathers and sons, like Liam’s father and Angel and Holtz and Connor, inflicting harm on each other ad infinitum. The power of the prophecy “the father will kill the son” lies not just in the emotional specificity of Angel and Connor’s own situation, but in its applicability to the general field of fathers and sons everywhere. In the world of Angel, every father, in some way or another, kills his son. Sometimes literally, often metaphorically; sometimes purposefully, often unintentionally. But always, the father kills the son. That’s part of why Wesley is so willing to believe the prophecy; he knows all too well that fathers are perfectly capable of killing their sons. Ironically, it is only by taking the prophecy to its most literal and logical conclusion and killing Connor (as we know him) outright that Angel is able to defy it, and end the cycle of fathers killing sons for good.

Now, all of this is not to say that Angel “wins” or achieves some kind of redemption badge that means he’s suddenly forgiven and cool now. Angel can’t win; that’s the point. He can’t win against Wolfram & Hart and wipe out evil forever; he tries that and fails, and when Jasmine tries and succeeds, he sees that such a victory is in a way its own kind of evil, and rebels against her. He can’t win against the weight of his crimes and become a human with a clean slate; in fact he gives up two different opportunities to do so on two separate occasions, because he too knows it’s just a fantasy and not real redemption. And he definitely can’t win against his father in the great game of child-rearing; he doesn’t get to raise his son at all, and children aren’t game pieces anyway. No, as much as he may try, Angel can never win. But if he accepts that, if he lets go of his need to win, he can do someone a great kindness. He can help someone like Faith be better; he can forgive someone like Judy who has done him wrong; he can set someone like Connor free from a seemingly endless cycle of abuse that he himself once perpetuated. Angel can be kind. And that, perhaps, is more precious than winning could ever be.

[gildalilli]

Fics that are good

by ‘good’ i mean ‘i like them and have unquestionable taste, therefore they are good.’ sorted arbitrarily into nonsense categories that only make sense to me because it’s what aziraphale would have wanted.

Wide range of interests and plots! All very feel good! Even if it is tagged as angst, I have an extremely low angst threshold which means it was handled in a graceful way in the fic. If I already follow the tumblr of an author, I have tagged them. Please let me know of anyone else I need to tag.

Below the cut!* 

Part 2 Here

(*rip to app users who that doesn’t work for.)

KEY

+ = favourite % = just friends in this one, possibly with romantic tension ^ = pre 2019, based on book

Dabbling In The Occult Is A Fun Way To Spend A Family Evening: Fics that involve humans playing with occult forces. Zira and Crowley end up entangled in their antics. 

Lot Thirty Seven - The Vault (15347 words) by AceOfShadows Whump, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort - PG -  +, % Heaven and hell want the ineffable idiots to find and destroy occult objects that find their way into human hands. [Spoiler] Zira is taken hostage by the collector as the ultimate occult object. [/spoiler] After shenanigans at a dodgy auction house specializing in such objects, Crowley takes revenge and saves the day after Zira goes missing.

I’m not an angst loving gal, but all of the angst in this fic is perfectly balanced in the form of narrative tension rather than just hurting both audience and characters for the sake of suffering. A+ antagonist oc, I couldn’t put this one down.

One Golden Glance (it's a kind of magic) (3255 words) by Chrononautical Fluff and Humor - G Zira bursts in heroically to save Crowley only to find him drinking with the college students who were dicking around with summoning circles. They’re married in this one.

The Devil Went Down to Georgia (8445 words) by ImprobableDreams900 Historical - G - %^ Now Crowley went down to Georgia, he was looking for a soul to steal, cause he was in a bind and way behind and he was willing to make a deal.

About time Zira saves Crowley’s ass and not the other way around.

Silly In A Good Way

Blame It on the Goose (19434 words) by almaasi Fluff, Feel-good - G + Untitled Goose Game Human AU. Ex-criminal Crowley moves to quiet village next to Aziraphale, a retired principal. After Crowley finds himself nude in Aziraphale’s house due to his clothes being stolen, they team up to catch the culprit who is wreaking havoc all over town. It also serves as a good excuse to spend time together.

Getting A Wiggle On (7293 words) By @kedreeva​ Fluff, Feel-good (G) + Based on that text post about Crowley trying to prank Aziraphale with fake snake eggs but it backfiring when Zira miracles them into real ones.

Acts of Service (3072 words) by die_traumerei Fluff (T) Everyone thinks that Aziraphale is Crowley’s sugar daddy.

Something So Precious (4276  words) by freyjawriter24 Fluff - (G) Anolther one based on a post.  “Aziraphale and Crowley are both adopted by two different groups of little old ladies who bake and knit together. Eventually the groups come together and realise their 'lovely young men' know each other, so they conspire to get the two together. “

Pining Artists

These two fics coincidentally have the same plot but from different POV. They complement each other perfectly in terms of being able to ask “But what if it was the other way around??” Highly recommend reading them both!

Plot: Over the years, one ineffable husband has taken to expressing their yearning/seemingly unrequited love through a creative outlet. After one ineffable husband leaves the south downs cottage for a brief period to run errands in London, the huge backlog of art is discovered when curiosity gets the better of the one at home. Cue awkward confessions of discovery and passionate unions when the other returns.

Aziraphale the poet: Foolish Principality by Seashadows and WikdSushi (6686 words) Rated M, + The imagery and poetry is stunning in this I cannot recommend it enough.

Crowley the artist: Secret About a Secret by theheartbelieves (5898 words) Rated M It gets sexy; strap in fellas.

Venice

I just like venice fics. If you know more please tell me.

Sticks and Stones (26369 words) by LieutenantLiv / @justkeeptrekkin​ Fluff and Angst, Slow Burn - T - +

The Casanova crossover we all wanted after David Tennant starred in the BBC miniseries. At the request of Casanova himself, Crowley impersonates Casanova to try and get over his feelings for Aziraphale but finds himself in too deep after tiring of the charade. Zira shows up and helps him get out of the sticky situation.

That Time In Venice (6603 words) by @chamyl​ Straight Up Pornography (With Feelings)  (Also, I will say if your taste in smut is ‘sweet but sexy’ any of their fics hit the spot.) “Crowley comes to Aziraphale’s rescue, helping him get into his costume before the masquerade. Except he’ll end up helping with a little more than that.”

[rwbyconversations]

The weaknesses of Volume 6

As someone who had sub-zero expectations going in, Volume 6 was overall a really good season of RWBY- in fact I’d called it the best overall Volume since Volume 3, if not overall, the best season we’ve had so far. Everything seemed to come together for this season, and most of the fandom has agreed that the opening salvo of episodes was the best the show had, and that the season hadn’t had a dud episode until the group reached Argus. I know some parts of the fandom don’t love the Argus episodes but I found something good in nearly all of them so I can’t say it was a complete waste of time. 

But, every cloud has a silver lining, and while Volume 6 was unmistakably a huge improvement over the previous Maya seasons, especially Volume 5, there are still several areas the show can seek to improve on as the show moves to the chilly frozen north of Atlas. So in this essay, I’m going to highlight the (ultimately small but notable enough to warrant talking about them) weaknesses I found in Volume 6. 

1) The show needs to more efficiently handle its villains (and why Cinder and Neo’s plot was a drag)

Weird that I’m saying this in the season that gave its longest episode to exploring Salem’s origin story, but Volume 6 had a lot of difficulty managing the pacing of its villains, and the largest subject of its focus arguably didn’t need to be in this Volume. I’m talking of course about Cinder and Neo’s plot this volume.

Now on paper, giving Cinder more spotlight should be what I want. After all, I wrote an essay last year detailing why parts of the fanbase weren’t fond of Cinder, so giving her focus should ideally be able to remedy those problems, right? 

Well, that’s the problem. In that essay, I talked about how Cinder’s two biggest flaws as a character were that she was very boring, and how her lack of backstory made it difficult to really care about her as a character. Cinder has effectively been the same character for six volumes in a row and much like Volume 4, the show has a golden opportunity to finally change that and give her a new narrative arc only to waste it.

Volume 6 should have been a drastic wake-up call for Cinder. Unlike at Beacon, where she lost due to Ruby’s sudden intervention and the awakening of her Silver Eyes, Cinder lost at Haven entirely thanks to her own failings. Raven beat her handily in straight combat and goaded her into the entire train-wreck of an operation to begin with, which for a power-focused individual like Cinder, should have really been an igniting spark to get her to begin seeking some introspection on why she’s lost twice in a row in failing to burn down the Academies. But sadly, just like in Volume 4, right as Cinder appears to be getting an arc about her recovering from her loss at Haven, she just ignores it and goes right back on her murder-Ruby train, as if she’s stuck in a Groundhog Day loop. 

Cinder’s refusal to move on from a basic arc of “Plan to destroy an academy, enact the plan, get slaughtered, blame Ruby, rinse and repeat” has made her easily the least interesting villain in the entire show. At this point we’re six years in and barring a few contextual clues, Cinder has no backstory, no sympathetic traits, not even any character development to differentiate her from her Volume 1 self. And this after the season where she dominates the villain screen-time until the final third when Adam hijacks the plot.  

Cinder’s plot in Volume 6 is therefore largely just setup for Volume 7, in that it explains how Cinder survived Haven and how she reaches Atlas. Along the way, she encounters the in case of bad season break glass button Neo, whose out for revenge and gets a really cool fight scene that’s ultimately just there for fanservice. 

Let me repeat. Good fight, really liked it. Let me also repeat- just there for fan-service. This is not an inherently bad thing, but it does have weaknesses. 

Neo was always coming back to the show and part of me feels like she was always being held in reserve in the event of a really bad season, so that the next one could have her return and generate some hype since her fan-base are that loyal. And sure enough, Neo’s return did see a notable collection of fans who had dropped the show after 4 and 5 coming back to see their ice cream queen return in a non-Chibi format. I won’t fault the crew for using a plan that worked. Where I take umbrage is that this fight was not necessary. It was a good fight, but I’d have much rather taken a Cinder scene of her actually recovering from Haven and thinking about why she lost again. Instead, Cinder and Neo effectively hijack all the villain screen-time for the rest of the season. And as someone who doesn’t adore Neo like her fans, this made their arc very tiresome, especially when the hints we got of the other villains were far more intriguing. I could talk a lot about the symbolism and thematic choices of the Mercury/Emerald scene in Chapter 9 but I’d struggle to find a lot to say about Cinder’s plot that wasn’t just “Setup for Volume 7.” 

The other problem of course is that the rest of Team WTCH are sorely underdeveloped. Hazel at least is interesting again now that he’s several miles away from Ozpin, Tyrian came back and was a delight and I loved seeing him all-but-begging Merc and Em to run so he could hunt them, but Watts remains crucially underdeveloped. He really needs to step up in agency in Atlas because his sardonic wit can only carry him so far, and the man’s voiced by Christopher Sabat, what more reason do you have to give him more to do? The man made the virus that Cinder used to cause the Fall of Beacon, can he be given some agency now please? 

Ultimately, Cinder’s plot didn’t need to be the focus for the villains and yet again, the fragments of focus they got showed how much more interesting they were as antagonists. While ultimately Volume 6 did finally give Mercury and Emerald more screentime than Volumes 4 and 5 combined and reminded the audience why you should be paying more attention to them, the rest of Team WTCH desperately needs development, Watts in particular. Cinder remains the worst villain in the entire show in my opinion, and it’s a shame that she’s almost guaranteed to be the one that makes it to the end of the show. I can only hope in Atlas she finally gets time devoted to what makes her tick, but at this point I’m almost at the point of not caring. It’s been six years, I won’t start caring for Cinder now if the show finally remembers to tell us why she joined Salem.  

... also I just think Cinder’s new costume sucks and I’d rather Em and Merc get new ones over Cinder and Neo buying extensions for their wardrobes.

2) Cordovin was a joke and she really shouldn’t have been

Show of hands, who actually took Cordovin seriously? Yeah, me neither. 

Even during the fight scene, the heroes don’t take it seriously. Having a fight the characters aren’t taking seriously isn’t an inherent flaw but it does mean you can’t expect us to turn around and take it seriously five minutes later.

Cordovin was a wasted character, and one that the show shouldn’t have undershot in all of her scenes by making her the punchline of nearly every joke. Her long-winded rant at the gate scene in Dead End is a huge factor in why a lot of fans, myself included, consider it the weakest episode of Volume 6 despite picking up in the back half. It just drags on for so long that Cordovin outstays her welcome from her first scene. 

Additionally, the show not taking her seriously steals a lot of gravitas from the mech battle, and plays a large role in why I think the mech fight failed to really excite a lot of fans outside of key moments like Ruby’s missile run and canon shot. Being alongside Adam’s confrontation with Blake and Yang didn’t help but even on its own, the mech battle drags. Not quite to the same extent as Haven dragged, but on rewatches I was making liberal application of the skip button. That lack of gravitas itself goes on to hamper Cordovin’s serious moment in the season finale where she realizes that her ego allowed the Leviathan a straight shot on Argus and undergoes a soft redemption to let team RWBY leave the city. However, this moment of taking Caroline seriously comes after the plot has made it clear that the entire reason the Grimm attacked Argus was because of Caroline over-reacting to Maria and breaking out her mech instead of scrambling fighters as Qrow predicts they will. Caroline is solely at fault for the Leviathan getting as close to destroying Argus as it did, so it’s difficult to care when she pulls her head out of her ass to do her job. 

A lack of investment also means a lack of emotional dedication, which I think showed in the lack of fanart Caroline has generated since her reveal. Her design being very drab and militaristic doesn’t help matters but unlike say, the Yang/Adam rematch where the stakes were present on an emotional and thematic level, Caroline failed to excite the audience beyond a few funny memes. 

The additional problem with lacking in emotional dedication/investment is, again, we don’t have enough interest in Caroline to take her seriously, she goes in one episode from the Kooky Racist Grandma to someone we’re expected to sympathize with. And additionally, asking the fans to sympathize with a character whose opening scene includes a not-too-subtle dig at her Faunus traits was asking a lot of the fandom, especially after the previous years showed that the show’s handling of the Faunus racism plot was... varied in quality. 

In short, Cordovin basically took a shotgun to her own foot in her first scene. Establishing her as an over the top comic relief character before expecting the audience to care when she broke out a walking advertisement for gen;LOCK was an extensive reach for the writers to try and unfortunately they fell flat. Trying to make the audience care for the problem she herself created is a similar long-reach. Hopefully this extended comedy sequence depiction of the Atlas military will be left behind as Volume 7 heads into the heart of darkness itself. 

3) Oscar desperately needs limelight

Oscar’s been in the show now for three volumes. He spent much of Volume 4 on his own, much of Volume 5 as Ozpin’s meat-sack, and now in Volume 6 he finally gets to... get some clothes. I like them, but they’re not suitable compensation for the character development that he clearly had stolen from him.

Oscar is easily the most underdeveloped main hero right now, and it’s a problem that’s haunted the series since Volume 4. Oscar wants to be a hero much like Ruby herself did as a child, but this sole fragment of backstory is never used to make a connection to Ruby. Aaron Dismuke, bless his heart, is giving this show his all and his impression of Shannon McCormack’s tones must be applauded, but much like Cordovin he’s not given much to work with. In a way, he’s almost the hero’s version of Cinder- a character who keeps finding themselves in situations where they should realistically develop as a consequence... only for each time they do, it either gets shuffled into the next volume or relegated to offscreen happenings. 

Volume 6 really should have had Oscar undergoing some kind of arc, be it his fear at being persecuted by Team RWBY and Qrow due to harboring Ozpin, his fear as his days as himself become more and more numbered, his acceptance of the fight against Salem or, most glaringly, his running off while the team is in Argus. But every time, Oscar just powers through these circumstances and never gets to develop from them. He never holds it over Qrow that he attacked a child, that Yang indirectly called him a bastard, he never thanks Ruby for having his back after the train crash, and he brushes off Jaune’s apology for smashing him into a wall and alleging he’s Ozpin masquerading himself as Oscar. 

Argus is really where Oscar should have stepped into his own. I was looking forward to him going solo and having to fend for himself for a short while, maybe have a scene where he forces Ozpin to come out and talk or gets to chat with Ozma himself about his place in the war against Salem. Have him be scared of losing his personality and just becoming another body for Oz to inhibit, have him be angry that his dreams of being a hero have been cruelly dashed on the rocks for some agenda he never signed up to. Oscar should be an emotional hurricane and instead he’s just a gust of wind. 

Seriously show, you had a golden opportunity for an Ozma and Oscar scene since we know Oz can speak to his past selves, and you know Arron has enough range to do both roles at once, why do you spite my farmboi. 

But he got a coat now so I guess that’s technically development. Kerry admitted in the Rewind for Volume 6′s finale that some parts of the season got pushed to the next one as they usually do, and I can only hope that Oscar finally expressing emotion was one such scene because Christ alive, he needs it after all the times he just got over crap offscreen this year. I want to like Oscar, he could easily have one of the most tragic arcs of the entire show if they went with it, but the show really needs to give me something to like about him in the first place. Or else he really will become the heroic Cinder, trapped forever in a nightmarish world of never getting to properly develop in spite of countless opportunities being handed to them on a silver platter.

... I still think Oscar lifted Qrow’s wallet for that costume btw. 

4) The reaction to Jinn’s story felt lockstep

I don’t have as much to say on this point but I find it rather saddening that all of the characters have much the same reaction to the truth of Ozma’s past- “Salem can’t be killed, you were leading us on for nothing”- when the weeks around the Ozma reveal had the fandom reacting to the story in a far more diverse way. Even in the hiatus we still have arguments over whether Ozpin was truly in the right or if the story was painting Salem as the true innocent party, to say nothing of the takes that Salem and Ozma’s relationship could be seen as an early iteration of Arkos or even Taruadonna with Salem as the abuser. 

The fandom had such a diverse range of reactions to Jinn’s story, with everyone seeming to have their own take on the episode and the truth wherein. Some people even used this to ponder if Summer Rose had learned the truth during her time and tied it in with Red Like Roses 2, where she laments having made a necessary sacrifice, to ask if Summer had learned the truth and bitterly signed on to the war against Salem in the hopes that she’d be able to turn the tide thanks to her Silver Eyes. 

“Just because I have to give you this origin story doesn’t mean you’re gonna take the right lessons from it.” 

Some idiots even decided that this meant Oz was the main villain now, but I’ve learned to drown those people out. 

But the show itself has a very flat range of reactions, with nearly everyone in-universe only taking away from the story that Salem cannot be conventionally killed and that therefore their entire journey is pointless. Everyone had the same reaction, with the only levels of variance being how angry they were at Ozpin and Oscar, ranging from Ruby’s “ask first if they have a plan and then be angry at Oz specifically” to Qrow and Jaune’s “physically assaulting a fourteen year old child.”  

It almost makes me wonder, if the characters themselves didn’t take anything from the lesson barring Maria connecting the Silver Eyes to the God of Light and that “SALEM CAN’T BE KILLED,” why should the fans? No one took this and went “OK so we can’t stop Salem with force, maybe try talking her down?” Their minds all immediately went to not just being able to shoot her.

Jinn’s story was great, but the reaction to it in universe felt very lacking and I only worry that the more people are told about it, the more chances we’ll get to hear a variant of “Salem can’t be killed.” It’s a shame that such a morally gray out of universe debate has been stripped to its raw components in-universe. 

Conclusion

Volume 6 was really good, I really liked a lot of it and it still warms my heart that I can say that about a season of RWBY post Volume 5. But there’s still a lot of work that can be done behind the scenes to fix up the flaws remaining. I chose three big flaws here but there are a few more I could bring up for quick points (mostly: Weiss getting shafted entirely in V6 feels like an overly corrective backlash to her constantly getting slaughtered in V5, Ruby’s agency does not substitute for a character arc and she still needs one, the introduction of the Faunus in Ozma’s flashbacks felt very contrived, Ren and Nora continue to feel useless to the wider plot but at least this time Ren wasn’t getting bodied every fight, so on and so forth), but ultimately we got more good than bad, and you don’t throw out an entire batch of apples just because of one rotten one near the top. I can forgive a lot more when the overall product is good, and Volume 6 certainly was a good season. Hopefully with these smaller problems fixed, which mostly just extends to “Give Cinder and Oscar onscreen development,” Volume 7 and onwards can keep the show moving forward into a brighter future and a better tomorrow.

[tortoisesshells]

Top Five Emotionally Stunted Fictional Men. ;)

plot twist - they’re all emotionally stunted because Western society discourages men from gaining any sort of emotional fluency, and thus teaches them to outsource all of their emotional labor onto their significant others and/or women. in this essay, i will … 

- Henry Hopkins (Mercy Street) Perhaps not the original, but definitely the man of the hour. Bonus points for actually apparently being good at his job, which has a lot to do with managing or helping with other people’s emotions! I relate, on a deep and spiritual level, to characters who are good at giving advice but completely unable to take a dose of their own medicine. (don’t you say a word, @theonlyredcar)

- Horatio Hornblower (the Hornblower series) I go back and forth on this. Is Hornblower emotionally stunted? Or has he just buried any sort of emotions and willingness to deal with them in a responsible fashion so deep that it’s functionally the same thing to the people around him? I think the thing that frustrates me so much with Hornblower as a character is that he has a truly amazing insight, at times: like in Hotspur, when he dives across the deck and bats out the fuse on a shell before it can go off and obliterate the ship, he has this moment where, iirc, he worries about the hole he burned in his mittens because they came from the wife he admits he doesn’t love (and therefor cannot possibly care about her in any fashion whatsoever), realizes everyone is staring at him, realizes everyone on the ship thinks that he’s a hero for having almost literally throwing himself on the shell, and then gets incredibly irritated with them because - he tells himself - the only reason he did it was because he was afraid he’d be blown to jelly. I think he goes on to yell at Bush for some reason. bless u, horatio.

- Craig Boone (Fallout: New Vegas) The living - pixelated? - embodiment of that John Mulaney bit: “I’ll keep all my emotions right here…and then one day I’ll die.”  An excellent deconstruction of the cool sniper archetype: a monosyllabic retired member of an elite military unit, easily the, uh, most combat-effective companion character, who is revealed to have somewhat-inadvertently participated in a massacre, mercy-killed his wife rather than let her be kidnapped into slavery and worse, willing to shoot first and ask questions later in the matter of revenge, who’s emotionally destroyed by all of the above and pretty obviously suicidal. As a character quest, he knows he can never have absolution, but he can try to make amends. I suppose he’s a top 5 for me because the narrative never excuses him, or makes his flaws seem admirable. Boone’s deeply messed up, and it’s clear he has a lot of work to do. Emotionally speaking.

- James Norrington (PotC): could not express an emotion if his life depended on it. Instead of telling Elizabeth he appreciates her as a person, he tells her in such a way that makes her think he only cares about her status. Instead of dealing with rejection, stress, and uncertainty like a normal person, he goes Ahab. Instead of trying to reckon with the mess he made of his life, he goes for death by bar fight or cirrhosis. Did, actually admit to real ~Feelings~ for Elizabeth before dying heroically, which is progress. one thinks.

- Mark MacPherson (Laura) a wiseass detective who drinks heavily to avoid even thinking about the fact he’s falling in love with the murder victim, and, when asked about if he’s ever been in love before, says (only partly joking) “A doll in Washington Heights once got a fox fur outta me.” AN ICON. A mess of a human being whose heart is, ultimately, in the right place, even if you have to dig down a few dozen feet to find it.

& bonus, because they’re both played by Dana Andrews, who I will continue to argue is criminally underrated as an actor:

- Fred Derry (The Best Years of Our Lives) I honestly can’t make any jokes about this. Derry’s a bombardier coming back from WWII with a lot of ribbons, no marketable skills, a wife he barely knows, and PTSD he’s never going to get any meaningful help to deal with. There’s parts of the movie where he’s falling apart in a way that’s immediately obvious to the characters around him and the viewer, but the worst parts are (for me), the look of quiet hopelessness he gets from time to time. The other two returning vets in the movie - Al Stephenson & Homer Parrish are traumatised in their own ways, but they, ultimately have families. Derry has no one. (and on a note unrelated to Derry’s emotional trauma, he does punch an American Nazi sympathizer in the face. You go, Derry.)

[trinuviel]

The Rose of Highgarden. On Margaery Tyrell (part 1)

Unlike many of the main characters in Game of Thrones, Margaery Tyrell is one of characters where the adaptation has expanded the character, making her more interesting than in the books where she’s a bit of a cipher. Portrayed by Natalie Dormer, the show presents Margaery as a clever, cunning and ambitious woman. She is first introduced in season 2 where we meet a woman that is not only ambitious but also politically astute and quite pragmatic.

A CLEVER PRAGMATIST

On the purely visual level, the audience is first introduced to Margaery as the consort to Renly Baratheon, seated to the left of her husband who is wearing crown. This visual set-up presents Margaery to the audience as a woman whose social status is defined by her relation to a man. However, this is to some extent a misleading image because Margaery is so much more than just a politically convenient consort to a royal pretender. She is a political player in her own right and - as we soon learn - a much better one than either her husband or her brother.

When we first see Margaery and Renly, they are presiding over a tourney - raised on a dais - and the image they present echoes the image of Robert Baratheon and Cersei Lannister at the Hand’s Tourney in season 1. 

This introduction also serves to highlight that Renly is a political lightweight who prioritizes the wrong things at the wrong time. As Catelyn Stark rightly points out, Renly and his knights are playing at war while Robb Stark is fighting an actual war. 

Margaery is not really the focus of this scene but we do learn a few things about her here. Firstly, with its plunging neckline her costume presents an image of a woman who is daring at the sartorial level while it also hints at the way she weaponizes her femininity and her sexuality later in the narrative. Secondly, we also learn that she’s fiercely loyal to her brother Loras. When he scores a point in combat she jumps to her feet, yells loudly and she shows her joy with her entire body, not very ladylike. 

It is amusing to see how free Margaery is in her expression here since she otherwise is extremely guarded when it comes to showing what she really thinks and feels about things when she’s in a public setting.

The real introduction of Margaery comes in an intimate scene where she attempts to have conjugal relations with her husband. This a tricky thing since Renly isn’t attracted to women. However, Margaery knows the situation, she knows about his relationship with her brother and she is a pragmatic woman with great ambitions (she knows that this marriage is about politics and not love). She’s also very bold sexually - she’s the one who makes the first move.  

She undresses before him and then goes straight to kissing and touching but  her actions don’t produce the result she had hoped for. She isn’t disappointed by the fact that Renly isn’t attracted to her but she does worry about the political consequences if he doesn’t bed her - since an unconsummated marriage is vulnerable to annullment. She’s a pragmatist and she’s willing to do what needs to be done to achieve her goal: getting pregnant with a Baratheon heir and thus solidifying the Tyrell-Baratheon alliance. 

Interestingly enough, it is Renly who is the squeamish one. Renly’s homo-sexuality is the elephant in the room. Margaery knows about his sexuality, which shows that she’s close with her brother. However, Renly doesn’t know that Margaery knows about his relationship with Loras, which is interesting and it shows that he hasn’t really gotten to know her very well. It really is very amusing how shocked Renly is when it comes to the fact that Margaery is extremely upfront and pragmatic about the nature of their relationship. When Renly fails to “rise” to the occasion, Margaery suggests that he might need some help.

Margaery: Do you want my brother to come in and help?

Margaery: He could get you started. I know he wouldn’t mind. Or I can turn over and you can pretend I’m him.

Renly: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Margaery: There’s no need for us to play games. Save your lies for court. You’re going to need a lot of them.

She remains partially naked throughout this exchange. Of course, this has probably more to do with the show catering to the male gaze but character-wise, this shows that Margaery is comfortable in her own skin. Whilst I do find the male-gazey aspect of the scene annoying, I do love how much the scene reveals about Margaery - about her honesty and her pragmatism. 

Margaery: Your enemies aren’t happy about us. They want to tear us apart. And the best way to stop them is to put your baby in my belly. We can try again later.

Margaery: You decide how you want to do it, with me, with me and Loras, however else you like. Whatever you need to do. You are a king.

This exchange also shows that she knows the value of teamwork and trust between partners. It doesn’t matter to her that Renly is in love with her brother. She knows that theirs is a political marriage with the potential for great power and influence for her if their gamble pays off and Renly wins the throne. She knows the stakes are high, she knows what is needed and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish her goal. In this case: getting pregnant with Renly’s heir. However, her willingness to do whatever it takes to get what she wants is a trait that we will come to see again and again.

A SKILLED COURTIER

Margaery is a politically astute woman and she knows how to navigate political conversations, even those who seem quite innocent on the surface. There’s an interesting scene between Margaery and Petyr Baelish where they engage in a bit of verbal sparring as Margaery conducts Baelish to his tent. In this scene, Baelish is quite unsubtly hinting at Renly’s homosexuality, his relationship with Loras and the unconsummated state of Margaery’s marriage. He’s testing the waters as to how secure this alliance between the Tyrells and Renly really is.

Baelish: And on the night of your wedding, who was by the king’s side then?

Margaery: You seem quite interested in our marriage.

Baelish: Your marriage is quite interesting. Not only to me, but to the realm. The marriage of a wealthy girl always breed interest, if nothing else.

Let’s try to break down what is going on here. What is text and what is subtext? Baelish is implying that Renly didn’t bed Margaery on their wedding night. That their wedding is unconsummated and that her husband was in her brother’s bed. Why would he do that? Margaery’s marriage will always be political because she belongs to a wealthy and powerful house. This he states outright. However, the subtext of this exchange is Baelish subtly letting Margaery know that she has other matrimonial options since her marriage to Renly is unconsummated and therefore void. Baelish is not just in Renly’s camp to deliver Ned’s bones to Catelyn Stark or to suck up to Renly Baratheon. Baelish has a special interest in Sansa Stark and he seeks to have her removed as Joffrey’s future bride. Sansa being Joffrey’s wife doesn’t fit into his plans. Furthermore, if he could destroy the Tyrell-Baratheon alliance, he could neutralize a threat towards the Lannisters with whom he is (temporarily) aligned. However, Margaery knows what Baelish is about and she seeks an opening to shut him down:

Margaery: You’ve never married.

Baelish: I have been unlucky in my affections, sadly.

Margaery: That is sad but perhaps it is for the best. The whole notion of marriage seems to confuse you, so allow me to explain. My husband is my king and my king is my husband.

This is Margaery putting Baelish in his place. “My husband is my king and my king is my husband” = she is declaring her allegiance to the Tyrell-Baratheon alliance and she’s reminding Baelish that she can have Renly punish him for his insinuations - especially if Renly wins the Iron Throne. This is a scene between to seasoned players, feeling each other out – all without speaking directly about the issue they are dancing around. Baelish and Margaery are both skilled courtiers who master the art of oblique discourse.

“I WANT TO BE THE QUEEN”

Margaery and House Tyrell played a dangerous game by entering into an alliance with Renly Baratheon and supporting his bid for the Iron Throne. Their gamble didn’t pay off and after the assassination of Renly they find themselves in an incredibly dangerous position since they’ve angered both Stannis Baratheon and the Lannisters who hold the Iron Throne.

Margaery is acutely aware of this and when she and Loras face the reality of Renly’s death she stresses that they need to go home to Highgarden (in order to prepare to defend themselves against the wrath of their enemies). The way the show highlights the differences between Margaery’s and Loras’ reactions to Renly’d death sheds a light on how different the the two siblings’ relationships with Renly was - and how their priorities have temporarily diverged. 

Loras is absolutely devastated and angry. He loved Renly deeply and he wants revenge. Margaery’s relationship with Renly was much more superficial and politically motivated. Whereas Loras is submerged in his grief, his sister is acutely aware of just how dangerous their situation has become. They made a gamble and it blew up in their face. What are they to do now? Fortunately for them, Petyr Baelish arrives with a neat solution that promises to give both of them want they want. He starts out by stressing exactly how great their danger is - and then he goes to work on Loras.

Baelish: Tell me Ser Loras, what do you desire most in the world?

Loras: Revenge.

Baelirsh skillfully manipulates Loras but he treats Margaery differently. He treats her as a seasoned political player - with a direct pragmatism when she offers him an opening.

Margaery: He was very handsome.

Baelish: He was, Your Grace.

Margaery: “Your Grace”. Calling yourself a king doesn’t make you one. And if Renly wasn’t a king, I wasn’t a queen.

Baelish: Do you want to be a queen?

Margaery: No. I want to be THE queen.

While Loras wants revenge on Stannis, Margaery wants more. She’s ambitious, she wants to be queen. I must admit that I’ve been a bit puzzled about her reply that she wants to be THE queen, not a queen. What does she mean? I hardly think that she wants to be a ruling queen. She’s smart enough to know that cannot happen – her best bet is to become the queen consort. So what does her reply mean? I think it means that she wants to ensure that she becomes queen in terms of real power – Renly was a pretender, he didn’t hold the Iron Throne. It would be different if she weds Joffrey since he not only holds the Iron Throne, he has also been crowned and recognized as King in the light of the Seven - that is something that is incredibly important within a medievalesque society! With Renly was she the consort of a pretender, but with Joffrey she’ll be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

COURTLY PERFORMANCE

The Tyrells accept Baelish’s offer of a Lannister alliance and their forces ensure a Lannister victory at the Battle of the Blackwater when Stannis lays siege to King’s Landing. After the battle, Joffrey grants a public audience to the Tyrells where her thanks House Tyrell for coming to the aid of the throne and offers them a boon.

Loras wastes to no time in telling Joffrey that his sister Margaery is both a widow and a virgin - thus implying that her marriage to Renly was no true marriage in order to erase the stain of their involvement with Renly’s rebellion. Loras then goes on to propose a marriage alliance between the Joffrey and Margaery. What follows is a pretty piece of theatre.

Joffrey: Is that what you want My Lady?

(Margaery moves forward, towards the centre of the room, right before the throne)

Margaery: With all my heart, Your Grace. I have come to love you from afar. Tales of your courage and wisdom have never been far from my ears. And those tales have taken root…. Deep inside of me.

Joffrey: I, too, have heard tales of your beauty and grace. The tales do not do you justice My Lady. It would be an honour to return your love.

(Margaery lifts her gaze to look at Joffrey)

Joffrey: But I am promised to another. A king must keep his word.

It is at this point in the conversation that first Cersei and then Pycelle intervene in the discussiont o assure Joffrey that it is perfectly acceptable to break his betrothal and set Sansa Stark aside, thus making a marriage to Margaery possible.

Joffrey: The gods are good. I’m free to heed my heart! Ser Loras I will gladly wed your sweet sister.

Joffrey (to Margaery): You will be my queen. And I will love you from this day until my last day.

(The hall erupts in loud applause while Margaery smiles)

This entire scene is an elaborate pretty piece of courtly theatre, scripted beforehand with the intent to make both Joffrey and the Tyrells look good. Margaery was originally married to a pretender and now a new alliance has been negotiated where Tyrell aid will excuse their former treason while the alliance will be sealed with a marriage. It is the pragmatic cynicism of the political game. But it doesn’t make the players look particularly good in terms of public opinion. Hence this piece of theatre where the language of Courtly Love is used to make the whole thing seem more palatable. 

I’ve previously written about how the language of Courtly Love is used differently by Joffrey and Sansa (here and here). Whilst Sansa uses this kind of conven-tional language in good faith, Joffrey employs it in bad faith. In this scene, however, both parties uses the conventions of Courtly Love in a strategic sense. Joffrey performs the role of the Gracious King whilst Margaery performs the role of the Bashful Maid.

I find Natalie Dormer’s acting choices rather interesting in this particular scene. During the entire conversation between Joffrey, Loras and Margaery, she utilizes a specific kind of performative femininity, i.e. she tailors her courtly performance so it conforms to a very specific ideal of femininity: the bashful and innocent maid. Notice how she initially keeps her gaze lowered, signalling meek sub-mission. When Joffrey professes his admiration of her, she lifts her gaze and bats her eyes at him, which is a very calculated move. This is very noticeable if we view the scene in slow motion.

This performance is in direct contrast to her boldness in the tent scene with Renly, where she is the one that makes all the sexual advances. I also find it rather ironic that she performs her act of the bashful, innocent maid whilst wearing a rather daring dress with a plunging neckline and a necklace with her house sigil (the rose) that draws visual attention to her physical charms in a very sexualized manner.

This entire performance is not just directed at Joffrey but also at the people who witness this. The target audience of the Tyrells and the Lannisters are the general audience of the court since their alliance has already been negotiated beforehand - as evidenced by the fact that Baelish is awarded Harrenhal before Joffrey grants the Tyrells a boon for their military aid. The court is a stage - and they all know how to play. However, some of the players know how to perform better than others. Joffrey often lets his mask slip because of his sadism whereas Margaery never drops her performance in public.

The royal court is a stage and Margaery knows how to play to her audience.

To be continued...

(GIFs not mine)

[misssingingintherain]

The Tragedy of General Leia the Feminist Icon: AKA Leia Organa (and Carrie Fisher) Deserve Better

This is essentially my play-by-play (or rather movie-by-movie) analysis of how Star Wars failed Carrie Fisher/Leia Organa and how it can begin to make things right.

Perhaps the greatest failing of the Original Star Wars Trilogy is its treatment of Leia Organa (and, by extension, Carrie Fisher). Though a feminist icon and one of the great female characters of the Saga, Leia was never given much focus or a defined arc over the first three movies.

A New Hope’s portrayal of Leia is still lauded as revolutionary, and I am inclined to agree. While she does kiss Luke twice and has sexual tension with Han, their relationships are mostly based on friendship and her main goal is always the rebellion, with her being a representation of what Luke aspires to be in the rebellion: wise, courageous, clever, selfless, and a symbol of hope. Many Star Wars story leaders and fans also cite Leia as being the whole reason the saga started, with her being the reason the plans/R2 got to Luke and Obi-Wan. However, despite seeing her planet destroyed in front of her, no time whatsoever is spent on her emotional trauma and instead has her comforting Luke over Obi-Wan’s death and Han’s leaving and she is a relatively passive figure in the climax, not taking part in the planning nor the assault on the Death Star.

Empire Strikes Back is arguably the best of the bunch, though that isn’t saying much. This is the movie in which Leia has the closest thing to an arc, but even then it’s mostly a ‘defrosting ice-queen’ arc, with hints of the typical rom-com arc of “growing to love a man being the most important thing in life.” The Leia/Han romance is also peppered with predatory undertones, as outlined by Pop Culture Detective (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWoP8VpbpYI).

Which brings us to the worst of the worst: Return of the Jedi. I could go on for a millennium about everything wrong with the gold bikini, from how it was used to silence both Carrie and Leia to how it poisoned relations between Star Wars and its female fans for years to come by attempting to brand it a boy’s story. But perhaps the worst part is how, after Luke got focus in Empire and Han got his arc in A New Hope, Return of the Jedi should have been Leia’s movie;. She should have been leading the charge to get Han back, she should have been the General in charge the assault on the shield generator (there are implications in the new Canon that she was essentially a General at this point but this is not shown in the text), and most importantly, she should have had some reaction to Darth Vader being her father, as she arguably has spent more time with him than Luke; @commander-burnham goes into greater detail about it here (http://commander-burnham.tumblr.com/post/136549235712/could-you-please-elaborate-on-how-rotj-should-have).

After the Original Trilogy, there came the period of Retroactive Recognition for Leia. Revenge of the Sith showed that Leia was so strong in the Force, she could remember her mother’s face minutes after being born. They also showed she was more similar to her father than mother personality wise; though Leia is similar to Padme in looks and profession, she obviously gets her rage and sense of justice from her Jedi father. This is an interesting dynamic, as it explains why she may have been more likely to turn to the Dark Side than Luke and also shows how much power she wields.

The Expanded Universe (now Legends) had degrees of this, playing into both feminist and sexist aspects of the Original Trilogy. Leia’s force sensitivity was more fully developed to the point of her and her children becoming fully fledged Jedi Knights, lightsabers and all. However, she also was frequently kidnapped by everyone from Hutts to the Emperor’s imposter son to Han Solo (again, leading to predatory undertones).

This era of Retroactive Recognition has also carried over into the current Disney era, with Forces of Destiny, novels, and comics like Princess Leia and Vader Down expanding on Leia’s off-screen narrative and showing what kind of growth she went through off-screen. Star Wars: Infinities goes so far as to have Leia replace/join Luke as the Chosen One. I especially appreciate the Forces of Destiny as, while action-oriented, it also serves to emphasize Leia’s devotion to diplomacy and justice. Rogue One had this to some degree, putting Leia and her ship in the heart of the battle (though I maintain Leia would have been at the door of the ship, ready to shoot Vader to get those plans if need be).

Leia only one of main trio to appear in Star Wars: Rebels, showing how much she was doing for both the Rebellion and the Galaxy at a very young age. However, even here, she does not act very much like a fourteen year-old girl, but a shorter, younger version of A New Hope’s Leia, therefore negating any chance for an arc.

That brings us to the Sequel Trilogy; in The Force Awakens, Leia is the subject of almost all the deleted scenes, meaning we don’t get to see Leia being a General until the third act. Even then, a good portion of her character is still based around her relationships with men, whether it be a sister trying to bring her brother home, a wife trying to repair her relationship with her husband, or a mother trying to save her son. All worthy pursuits, but also somewhat unsatisfying from a feminist perspective, especially for someone who started out as independent and focused on the fight as A New Hope Leia.

The Last Jedi does have Leia using the Force and being a General, as well as a major symbol of hope for the Resistance, but also has her sidelined (metaphorically and physically) by her more famous brother and then a coma, leaving Admiral Holdo to take her place. While an interesting character, the dynamic between Holdo and Poe may have been somewhat more complicated if it had been Leia he had been questioning and defying. And once again, she is not allowed to deal with the trauma of losing her husband at the hand of her son, but is instead once again helping others through their issues instead.

Episode IX would have supposedly rectified some of these issues, having been set to be Leia-centric as VII was for Han and VIII was for Luke. However, with Carrie Fisher’s death, those plans have since been scrapped and it is unknown how exactly the story will handle the passing of our Princess.

So how can Star Wars / Disney continue to right the wrongs of their treatment of Leia Organa?

I have a few suggestions:

1. A Leia Anthology movie about her early days in the rebellion. Leia, Princess of Alderaan, Rebels, Rogue One, and even the Han Solo movie have already laid the groundwork for this to work. This would be a difficult one, as it almost feels blasphemous to continue Leia’s story after Carrie’s death, since the two are in many ways a “Möbius striptease” as Fisher once said; however, as this would be a prequel exploring Leia before she became the Rebel Princess and General we know and love, it could work as a look into how she found that strength and sense of justice. As an almost political spy thriller reminiscent of Padme Amidala’s episodes in The Clone Wars, it could have Leia struggling with her rebel idealism and the harsh reality of Imperial politics, with a potential cast of side characters like Tarkin, Darth Vader, and (Future Vice Admiral) Amilyn Holdo either helping or hindering her navigation of it. There have already been fan poster of Millie Bobby Brown that are absolutely spectacular and Fisher’s family has expressed a desire for her to remain a vital part of the franchise. This could be that way.

However, if it is deemed too soon, an alternative could also be:

2. A fictional documentary on the life of General Leia Organa, with in-character interviews from the sequel and original movies’ casts. It could serve to tie in more of the Retroactive Recognition found in the comics and novels into the movie canon. If not as a movie, it could work as a Netflix documentary or an exclusive feature on the future Disney streaming service. This could pay tribute to both Carrie and Leia in one fell swoop.

3. Another Star Wars: Infinities comic series, this time for what Episode IX would have been like if Carrie Fisher had lived. Obviously, this would have to come out after Episode IX to avoid spoilers, but that would give writers and artists time to capture Carrie’s witty writing and unique portrayal of the character to the best of their ability.

4. More supplementary material, whether comics, novels, or cartoons, exploring Leia’s Force sensitivity, so the audience may know how powerful she was and/or could have been had she been trained.

5. Tackle issues that Carrie did in life; bring in more women (especially older ones otherwise neglected by Hollywood), tackle issues like mental health, addiction, body image. Do not wait to tell these stories about minorities and incredible, as like Carrie Fisher herself, while their spirits may live on in us and the Force forever, their physical forms may not.

[pooja-r-bi]

April: Fourth Week

Finally we came up with story and an idea for our opening sequence. Since our team can’t meet face to face to plan our pre-production we decided to use technology in our favour, and as a result we arranged zoom meeting and conference calls to share our ideas and finalized a story. 

Story

A girl named Akansha who has social anxiety, schizophrenia OCD, her only family is her stepbrother whom she’s really close to. She is a 20 years old fine arts and theatre artist.

During her theatre rehearsals she’s meet a guy named Aarav, who’s handsome, polite and humble. She madly falls in love with him which slowly starts turning into obsession and tries to be her best version around him, as she’s extremely comfortable with him. As she has schizophrenia she starts believing that Aarav too has feelings for her. then another girl named Idaya also joins Akansha and Aarav’s theatre group. Idaya too is of the same age as Aakansha, she good at socializing, gets comfortable with everyone easily an is very pretty, Aarav eventually falls for her which makes Akansha jealous and disturbed. Then while sharing her feelings with her brother she tells him about how much she hates her, its strikes to her brother that he could take an unfair advantage of the situation. As her brother goes in a debt of millions and has no money left with him, the only way to save himself for him is to use his late father’s wealth which he left for Akansha only according to the will. So he slowly starts drugging her heavily without her knowledge, makes her believe in her delusional fantasies of Aarav and guides her towards murdering Idaya which would lead to her going into prison and all of the wealth would be his.She soon an becomes an addict, due to which growing closeness between Aarav and Idaya disturb her more. Her brother then convinces Akansha to kidnap Aarav’s girlfriend so that she gets to spend more time with him and eventually he will forget about his girlfriend.

 However, Aarav suspects that something is wrong. While high on drugs Akansha threatens Idaya (girlfriend) that she will kill her but Idaya tries to escape and during that attempt Akansha tries to stop her but instead she ends up killing her. After the murder Akanksha is caught red-handed sent to prison and re-hab center where she finds out that she was being drugged but her brother is not caught. 

After Akansha is sent to the prison Aarav is shattered and goes at her home to collect the guitar he gave her, where he finds out the truth, then he saves Akansha and after she’s free he leaves for Boston to start a new chapter of his life. In the end, Akansha is back at her studio trying to accept the reality and that her actions were a result of her delusions, her brother goes to the prison and Aarav too pursues a new journey. 

Since we finalized the story, so now we have to create the screenplay, shot division and master break down for our opening sequence. Our director is going to create the screenplay using celtx. But to design the master breakdown we needed to visit our location to visualize our screenplay. We didn't have flexibility to choose the desired location due to pandemic so we marked school as location as it would be convenient for everyone to be present there. We shortlisted our art room, Dance room, music room and parking lot as our key locations for the shoot.  We scheduled a 2 days visit to the school with our teacher to finalize everything for the upcoming week.

Below is the screenplay

Going through the storyline we remembered that we didn’t pre planned on what genre we are going to write our story, besides we already wrote the story. Although this was our second time planning the pre production we still made this blunder. Now that we already wrote the story we mentally tried to match the elements of our story with different genres and we came to the conclusion that it is a hybrid of Crime/Drama/thriller.

Then we researched the codes and conventions of the same

What is a Crime Thriller? 

• A crime thriller usually consists of a battle between a protagonist character and an antagonist character, normally when there is a disruption in the equilibrium. The storyline then normally shows a chain of bad events that usually build up tension and suspense for the audience. The aim for the protagonist is to restore justice and peace to the community whereas the antagonist seeks to destroy the peace.

Conventions of a Crime Thriller 

• Low key lighting 

• Quick cuts 

• Shadows 

• Tense music 

• Changes in the angles of shots 

• Diegetic sounds of heavy breathing 

• Black and white shots 

• Montage of shots 

• Protagonist 

• Antagonist

Characters 

• Protagonist The protagonist is often a brave individual male who tends to seek to restore the equilibrium. 

• Antagonist The antagonist will usually have a hidden identity from the audience and will be uncovered as the film progresses. Often the antagonist seeks out revenge from a pervious past event.

Themes of a Crime Thriller 

The storyline will be designed so that the audience will think that it can happen to them, this will make them feel scared which is what the producers want. 

Cinematography of a Crime Thriller 

• There will normally be a lot of close ups and extreme close ups of the protagonist character, it is often to show the characters emotions, also it can be used to focus on props to aid the narrative 

• The shots of the antagonist character will be quickly cut and normally will aim to hide the identity of them, for example a shot of the back of the character or a low key shot/shadow. 

Editing of a Crime Thriller 

• The director will include lots of jump cuts because there will be things happening that the audience will most likely be unaware of but this is an essential part of the film to make sense. Cross cutting is a key point in editing, this is because it is used to build suspense which is essential in a crime thriller. Continuous editing is used to help the audience understand the film in a better way.

Sound of a Crime Thriller 

• Music is an essential part of any film, it allows the target audience to understand the mood of the characters and hint main parts within the film. In crime thriller films the sound will often start slowly and build up, this will add tension and make the shots seem more dramatic than they need to be for the audience. Generally start with a slow tempo and relatively quiet› Eerie music to create suspense› Music that keeps the audience guessing to what could potentially happen› Silence  Creates tension and panic3. ›› 

Mise-en-scene 

• The location of a crime thriller film is important for the film because it helps the audience establish the theme.  Typically it would be a dimly lit warehouse, even a dark alley, cities etc. Using claustrophobic spaces to portray the ‘entrapment’ in the characters mind.

• Lighting in a crime thriller is often low key.  Different levels of low key lighting that creates suspense or a mysterious atmosphere. Low level lighting creates shadows. Creates fear and tension› Black and white coloring increases the effectiveness of shadows. Title of film could be written/colored in specific ways to portray the film. Color is a direct link to emotions and thought so dark greys are used.

• Costumes- antagonist will be in dark clothing so the audience cannot see them compared to the protagonist will be in ordinary clothes.  Naturalistic costume and make-up to make it more believable as how we present the characters is how the audience will perceive them.

• Theme-In plots about crime, thriller films focus less on the criminal or the detective and more on generating suspense. Common themes include, terrorism, political conspiracy, pursuit and romantic triangles leading to murder.

• Make up-Lack of make-up can make the characters seem more natural and normal like an everyday person. To show fear in a woman for example, smudged eye make-up can suggest that she has been crying displaying her emotions.

• Film stroke (Black and white or colour) black would go with confusion and uncertainty.

This week we also learned about video nasties and video recording act 1984.

When video recorders were first introduced in the UK in 1978, there was no legislation governing what could be released on video or to whom video recordings could be supplied. Because of the lack of legislation, small distributors who produced low budget horror and pornography sought to release their films that had previously been refused classification or cut by the BBFC. Some of the films released contained scenes that contravened UK laws on animal cruelty and obscenity, and were available to children of any age.

After public and political concern, the BBFC introduced a voluntary scheme for rating video recordings. Although the major companies submitted their titles for age rating, there was no obligation for smaller companies to do so and therefore the problem still remained. In response, The Director of Public Prosecutions issued a list of videos that he believed to be in breach of the Obscene Publications Act. This came to be known as the ‘video nasties’ list. However, a work could only be prosecuted once it had been released and so many copies of these ‘video nasties’ were already circulating peoples’ homes.

Following the ineffective prosecution of the ‘video nasties’ list and the reluctance of the smaller companies to submit their works for classification voluntarily, Parliament passed the Video Recordings Act in 1984. This act required that all video works (including laserdiscs and DVDs) must be rated – and, if necessary, cut or rejected – by an authority designated by the Home Secretary. From 1985, all video works released in the UK would be submitted to the BBFC and be rated at an appropriate category. The supply of age-restricted videos to persons under the age stated on the certificate would become illegal and the supply of unrated videos would also become a criminal offence.

[rmildner46]

Leadership by Twitter:  Lesson One

Over the past several days President-Elect Trump has intensified his twitter war on the U.S intelligence apparatus that has apparently determined that Russia initiated the hack of the DNC and John Podesta’s emails that WikiLeaks then provided to the media in the final months of the campaign.  These leaks fed out systematically over the final months of the campaign frequently dominated the daily news cycle and played into Trump’s closing arguments about the corruptness of the system.  Trump is now intent on discrediting the reports, recognizing that they could threaten the legitimacy of his presidency before it even begins. However, in discrediting the intelligence agencies behind the reports, Trump runs the risk of opening a Pandora’s Box that could not only destroy his presidency, but also open his constituents to serious existential threats.  

George W Bush (yes I do miss him now!) initiated the invasion of Iraq on the basis of intelligence that was later found to be incorrect  and the disastrous war that resulted lasted longer than any other conflict in our history.  Trump now blames these intelligence agencies for that war and claims that they therefore cannot be trusted.  And he is right.  If the President of the United States communicates to our intelligence agencies that he already knows the answer, they will find evidence in pieces of intelligence supporting that view.  Not all of them mind you, but enough of them for the President to build a case to support a conclusion he has already reached.  This is the ultimate lesson of the G.W. Bush presidency.  The neocons had decided even before 9/11 that a regime change in Iraq was necessary.  Following the destruction of the twin towers, our intelligence community was instructed not to find out who was responsible, but to find evidence of Iraq’s participation. Failing that, they seized upon very flimsy evidence of weapons of mass destruction to justify an invasion.  This is how thin the evidence was.  Some 25 years removed from my service as a cryptologic officer in the Navy Security Group, I looked at the evidence and decided that it didn’t prove anything conclusively, but I personally supported the invasion because I thought that to be as certain as they are, they must have other evidence that they could not release publicly without compromising an important covert source.  Of course we now know that there was no other source and we entered into the most foolish war we have ever fought based on made up intelligence tailored to preconceived conclusions.

Enter Donald Trump. He has a brain.  He is smart.  He knows more than the generals.  He also knows that that the intelligence supporting Russian interference in our elections is wrong.  He hasn’t seen it mind you, but he knows that it is wrong. Not just because it is inconvenient for him but because it poses a threat to his presidency.

For much of Obama’s presidency, Trump tried mightily to be a thorn in his side with his support of the “birther movement” The point of the birther movement was to question the legitimacy of his presidency.  He can’t really be our President, he wasn’t born here.  And therefore his policies can’t be good for us.  Now I don’t for a moment believe that Trump actually thought that Obama was not born in the U.S.   That requires too extreme a level of mental deficiency.  No, the movement provided him with an opportunity to appear relevant and be heard. He found a group of people and got in front of them.  He was the publicly acknowledged leader of the birther movement.  Not much of a job, but a leadership position nonetheless.

Now Trump claims that he has received a mandate.  He bases this claim on his overwhelming majority in the Electoral College and the fact that the Republican Party also controls both houses of Congress.  The facts tell a different story.  Trump’s margin of victory in the Electoral College at 56.5% places him 46th out of 56 presidential elections.  He of course lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 2.9 million votes, which is more than the winning margin in all but 19 elections.  On the eve of his inauguration he is still not considered qualified to be President by almost 60% of the public.  Hardly the stuff of the “overwhelming mandate” he has claimed.  But he needs a mandate to justify dismantling major parts of the federal government.  The reports on Russian hacking are the final nail in the mandate coffin. That is why the report on Russian hacking must be discredited.

Having lived through 6 years of Trump’s birther movement nonsense, Obama finally has the opportunity to exact revenge, in fact, disproportionate revenge.  The intelligence community report on Russian hacking has the ability to de-legitimize a presidency in a way that the birther movement never really could.  If its findings are credible and based on solid intelligence, Trump will be remembered as the President elected by the Russian intelligence services. Well played Obama!  

Judging from his reaction, Trump is assuming that the report is based on solid evidence.  That is why he has unleashed his twitter war against it. It follows his normal pattern of using a torrent of tweets to question the credibility of inconvenient truths. Now he has taken an even more drastic step to try to influence the content of the report.  His staff announced that he is planning a “significant overhaul” of the intelligence apparatus, including the elimination of the office of the Director of National Intelligence.  Coincidence?  Not a chance! This announcement is an unsubtle reminder to the intelligence community that that they serve at the pleasure of the President.  And the President-Elect is not pleased.  Trump now runs the risk of de-stabilizing his presidency and putting the U.S. in harm’s way.

Three times during my career in naval intelligence, as a junior officer I was inexplicably given choice temporary assignments.  The first even required an out of sequence promotion.  All three were directed at finding evidence in Russian interference, the first in the war in Vietnam, the second in the Middle East and then finally in East Africa.  In all three cases, the intelligence community had already looked at the evidence and determined that Russian interference was limited and consisted at most of typical low level mischief making.  The Nixon, and later Ford administrations believed otherwise and initiated efforts to find proof.  When I was on my way out of the Navy, my commanding officer finally told me why I had been selected over more qualified senior officers.  Since it was well known that I would not be making the Navy a career, it had been decided that I was the perfect team leader to write the report that would find what they all knew to be true, and my career prospects would not thereby be damaged.  This is the subtle way that pressure from above works in the intelligence community.

It is a delicate balance. Senior intelligence analysts are taught that intelligence is best digested critically and without bias. Conclusions must be supported by multiple sources. Conflicting information and interpretations must be disproved, not dismissed.  Leaders must prevent themselves from interfering in the objective sorting of information. It is right to question, wrong to direct.  Presidents ignore this precept at their peril.  But it is too tempting.  George W. Bush, famously failed to do so and entered into a conflict that cost us thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, and de-stabilized the Middle East in the process.  Even President Obama couldn’t resist.  The tragedy in Benghazi, while not the fault of any one person, and certainly not Hillary Clinton, ran against the President’s re-election narrative.  The event was air brushed, and that arguably cost Hillary the election.

Now we have a newly elected President who appears to say that he intends that the intelligence community will toe the line.  He will determine what the intelligence says.  If this is the case, history tells us that he will find enough support in the community to make it happen.  If he does persist speaking power to truth, the very existence of our democracy will be at risk.  A little humility would be more appropriate under the circumstances.

��

[josephlrushing]

10 Things That Make the Old Star Wars Expanded Universe Better Than the Sequel Trilogy

Last week the final entry in the Skywalker Saga – Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker – arrived on BluRay in stores (it has been out for digital purchase for a few weeks), and I thought it might be worthwhile to look back at the Sequel Trilogy and compare it to the original Star Wars Expanded Universe (EU) that was ‘purged from canon’ when Disney took over the franchise.

I have a long history of loving Star Wars that goes back to seeing the original movie more than a dozen times in theaters mostly using paper route money, but I am going to be blunt here: The Rise of Skywalker ‘broke’ Star Wars for me. This is the first movie I have not bought as soon as it was released — dating all the way back to the initial 1990 VHS offerings of the original trilogy.

I forgave the Prequel Trilogy many sins due to the strengths of several characters, the intricate look at the fall of the Jedi, and of course the amazing lightsaber choreography – and I count Revenge of the Sith as my third favorite Star Wars movie. In 2015 I was hyped to ride along with the sequels, being right there in Star Wars shirts for the opening night showings – and once again, I forgave The Force Awakens for the same-ness and fan service and rejection of ideas forged and honed across decades because I saw promise in the new characters and actually liked some of the ideas plucked from the expanded universe.

Similarly, I forgave The Last Jedi for its treatment of many characters, lack of cohesive motion in the larger arc and overt desire to be different at any price, simply because I did enjoy a few things and continued to care about the central characters. And even while watching the in-your-face spectacle of The Rise of Skywalker I had very positive feelings … which began to fade rapidly the moment I left the theater and started thinking about the film. The final movie betrayed the characters, the four decades of history built across movies and extended lore, the fans who had brought the franchise such success, and by revealing that there was no ‘master plan’ and that things done in one movie could simply be undone in the next at the whim of the director, they betrayed Star Wars.

So rather than giving time and more money to re-watching The Rise of Skywalker, I have been reading old books and re-playing old computer games, and have been reminded at how incredibly rich the Expanded Universe once was before being trashed by Disney. The good news? You can still read these books and play these games – and I recommend that you do!

Here are 10 things from the Expanded Universe that are better than the Sequel Trilogy.

1. Kyle Katarn – one of the strongest characters in all of Star Wars … and that includes the main movie characters. Katarn sought an education, and therefore ended up at the Imperial Academy, but during a mission began to experience Force visions and encountered and spared Jan Ors and others, but his leadership set him up as a decorated Imperial Officer once he graduated the academy. Just before he graduated, he learned his father had been killed – he was told it was Rebels, but a later encounter with Jan Ors revealed it was actually an Imperial assassination. This leaves him with a lack of trust of both the Empire and Rebellion – but he sees the good in taking on those who killed his father while thwarting Imperial plans. His conflict has him constantly struggling between the Light and Dark sides of the force. He is a richly developed and complex character with a natural arc and a series of relationships that are allowed to grow throughout the games. And sorry to say… HE stole the Death Star plans!

2. Luke’s New Jedi Academy – in The Force Awakens, Luke has a new Jedi Academy, and then, something goes wrong and there is mass destruction and Luke quits. In the EU, having a ‘rogue student’ happened enough that it was practically a trope – yet the reason it happened made perfect sense: training older force-sensitive people without a dedicated master-apprentice relationship could easily lead to unpredictable ends. But it is the depth and breadth of students, their struggles, and stories and how they interact with all of the main characters that make this burgeoning new Jedi Order so intriguing

3. Grand Admiral Thrawn – a blue Chiss Imperial military officer who started out as part of the Chiss Ascendency before rising to be a key leader during the reign of the emperor, Thrawn (full name Mitth’raw’nuruodo) took ships into command into hiding after the Battle of Endor. Years later he returned and brought together the remnants of the Empire to threaten the very existence of the fledgling New Republic at a time when it was struggling to gain the confidence and respect of star systems. Thrawn is a great strategist and an intriguing character far beyond anything we saw in the sequels.

4. Mara Jade – she started out as the Emperor’s Hand, a skilled and trusted assassin, set on destroying Luke Skywalker for killing the Emperor. We first met her as the dangerous protege of smuggler Talon Karrde, in the ‘Heir to the Empire’ novel that also introduced Thrawn. She was the first really strong and complex female character in the Star Wars universe aside from Leia – and indeed it was Leia who initially placed trust in Mara. She quickly became a fan favorite, and her inherent Force sensitivity naturally put her on a collision course with Luke. In the end, she and Luke get married and have a child together before she is tragically killed trying to protect her son Ben from Han and Leia’s son Jacen who had become a Sith apprentice. She replaced Kyle Katarn as the primary character for the Mysteries of the Sith stand-alone expansion to Jedi Knight in 1998 and is responsible for saving him from his fall to the Dark Side at the end of that game.

5. The Dark Forces / Jedi Knight series – the mid-1990s were pretty much the birth of the first-person shooter computer/video game. id Software released Wolfenstein 3D in mid-1992, with the juggernaut Doom releasing at the end of 1993 and dominating the gaming world of 1994. As a result, there was a glut of ‘Doom clones’ released from 1994 – 1997, most of which were mediocre and forgettable, but others such as Heretic, HeXen, Blood, Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem 3D became classics. Perhaps the best of all of these was Dark Forces in 1995 – it had missions rather than just levels, which made sense for the mercenary Kyle Katarn. And like ‘real’ missions, you either succeeded or failed the entire thing, without the ability to save along the way. The story was cohesive and engaging, and for the first time, you were dropped into the Star Wars universe in an immersive way. Improving upon this milestone was 1997’s Jedi Knight, complete with FMV (full motion video) cutscenes and deep characters and … lightsaber combat! While Dark Forces introduced the third dimension to levels, in Jedi Knight we got a new level of scale and scope with massive sprawling levels of staggering height and innovation. Kyle and Mara Jade returned in 1998 for Mysteries of the Sith, and then in 2002 Raven Software took over with the Quake III engine based Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, featuring a huge leap in narrative development and incredible lightsaber combat. 2003 brought Jedi Academy and a return to the mission structure of Dark Forces (but with choice of mission order), and Jedi Knight’s customizable Force Power allocation. Jedi Academy refined the lightsaber combat – and remains the best lightsaber combat system to this day (sorry Jedi Fallen Order!). Alas, NONE of the characters or events are part of the new canon.

6. Han & Leia’s Relationship – from the earliest Expanded Universe novels, the relationship between Han and Leia has been central to pretty much everything. And for good reason – pretty much half of what propels Empire Strikes Back to be such a great movie is the growth of that relationship which fully forms in Return of the Jedi. And as expected after those events Han and Leia get married and have children – but there is so much else happening that things are never so simple. In books such as the Jedi Academy trilogy, we see the Solo children return from their exile to begin integration into Jedi training and life with their family. At the same time, we see that Leia struggles to balance life as a Jedi Apprentice, leader of the New Republic, mother, and wife. She is drawn to diplomacy and leadership … and Han bristles at all the formality and often struggles at feeling like Leia’s arm-candy. He embraces opportunities to leave Coruscant on diplomatic missions, though Leia seldom trusts his motives and occasionally fears for him falling back into his scoundrel ways. It is a complex relationship built by two complex characters – and they never simply fall apart due to the struggles or failings of their children.

7. New Republic – one of the biggest complaints I have with the Sequels is how they immediately splintered the Republic and Rebellion against the overwhelming First Order. In the Expanded Universe, we saw the New Republic quickly gain popular support but at the same time, those who saw financial or power gains under the Empire were slow to come on board and would harbor former Imperial leaders and assist the Imperial Remnant in strikes against the New Republic. Others appreciated the key role Luke and the Force played in toppling the Empire, didn’t trust the Jedi to be leaders and so there was another point of conflict as the Jedi Academy grew – of course, having the occasional powerful Dark Jedi or Sith cause havoc fed into this distrust! But the point is, in the Expanded Universe things moved forward in a way that made more sense, was ugly and messy and full of power-plays and distrust associated with all politics, rather than a convenient splinter that allowed us to get back to the ‘pitiful rebellion’ status for the Skywalker-Solo gang.

8. The Solo & Skywalker Children – in the Sequel Trilogy we get only Ben, but in the Expanded Universe we have four main children: the Solos have the twins Jacen and Jaina as well as younger son Anakin, and the Skywalkers have a son Ben several years later. All are Force-sensitive and have many adventures through the years, becoming integral parts of the New Jedi Order as well as carrying many elements of all of their ancestors and parents. The ability to blend a variety of character traits and present them with different scenarios provided for a wealth of stories and relationship building.

9. Dark Jedi – the Prequel trilogy showed us the possibilities of ‘gray Jedi’, ones who rebelled against the blind dogma of the Jedi but were not interested in the ways of the Sith. Qui Gon Jinn was one such Jedi, and it seems that Count Dooku was also such a Jedi. Other books and games took the concept further – Jedi who embraced the Dark Side without adopting the ‘Rule of Two’ or other Sith traditions. Often they were Fallen Jedi such as Exar Kun or Ajunta Pall from the Old Republic, and Jerec from the Empire. But other times they were simply untrained Force users who were swayed by power to become thugs or tools of Dark Jedi, or like the Reborn Warriors were infused with the Force Powers of other and became twisted with rage and hate. Wherever they came from or how they chose to pursue power, they made for interesting stories beyond the ‘good vs. evil’ tropes of the main Star Wars movies.

10. Knights of the Old Republic – not just one of the greatest role-playing video games of all time, this is the embodiment of a series of comics, novels and tabletop games depicting a period of galactic history thousands of years before the events in the films. This is a rich period of history before the Sith Order adopted the ‘rule of two’, where the Republic and Sith Empire battled for control and Mandalorians and others were major forces. This period featured legendary Jedi and Sith with names we’d never heard before, allowing for incredible character and plot developments.

I could mention others such as Rogue Squadron, or the super-weapon Sun-Crusher that was dumped into a black hole, and other great characters such as scoundrel-hero Dash Rendar from ‘Shadows of the Empire’, Talon Karrde, Corran Horn, Admiral Daala, and many more. OK, maybe Rendar is a throwaway stand-in for Han Solo – but it is definitely better than the sudden reveal of Poe as a smuggler-scoundrel-turned-hero with a heart of gold. There are so many fun characters and ideas – even in some poorly written books – that it is a great look into the myriad ways we all envision this galaxy far, far away!

What about you – what are your thoughts about the Sequels in general, and ‘Rise of Skywalker’ specifically after a few months have gone by? Are you a fan of the old Expanded Universe? What are your favorite and least favorite parts?

from Joseph Rushing https://geardiary.com/2020/04/07/10-things-that-make-the-old-star-wars-expanded-universe-better-than-the-sequel-trilogy/