#that being evil was simply something specific to her? that her counterpart didn’t need some huge redemption arc? or being faced with her

[holydramon]

I see one eqg thing on my dash and the eqg hyperfixation consumes me once again

[ganymedesclock]

Ooh ooh ooh, how about your version of Sonic for the powers thing?

You see, Sonic is fast, because if he doesn't keep ahead of his problems, he'll have to actually think about them, and then he'll have a crisis.

This is partially a fun opener joke and it's also not. I'll let you decide how much of each it is. In the meantime, I'm going to talk about what my reads of various canons inspire in me, and how that informs Worlds AU, a bit more than talking about Worlds AU itself.

So Sonic in the initial game canon, started out with an extremely simple conceit. You can see this mirrored across all of the non-Amy classic characters: Sonic runs, that's his thing; Tails flies, Knuckles punches, Eggman makes robots and also problems, which sort of condenses into one thing considering the role robots have in the classic games.

(that damn caterkiller has cost me SO many attempts at a chaos emerald...)

This sort of got to be a problem as the games advanced. In particular, the Sonic game I started on was Sonic Adventure 2, which pitted Sonic very prominently off of Shadow. At this point, character concepts are no longer about simple capabilities, and every other member of the cast has grown up. (even Amy... though not too much. sorry Amy). Tails is now building robots to go with how his flight allows him to reach unconventional 'tricky' routes; Knuckles is now more of an adventurer, explorer, and even a mystic given his history and relationship with the emeralds. This earthly pugilist sense grounds him in a more versatile skill-set.

Sonic... basically his gimmick was remaining true to the classic formula- he was still the one going fast, popping those shuttle loops, and tumbling through a chaotic universe. Yes, they absolutely polished this and put flourishes on it- now he's grinding rails and flipping on poles, this sense of street-smart parkour that carries him cheekily through any environment...

But he's played off Shadow, where the thing about Shadow, especially in the first game, is Shadow is a person who suppresses most of his personality for his context. Not in an inorganic or badly written sense, mind- but he outright says to Rouge at one point that it doesn't matter if anything he remembers is fake- in essence, that it's more real than he is, and a dead person's wish is more important than his life.

Shadow is a soldier, is an alien, is a bioweapon, is a teleporter and he shoots lasers. We are beyond the days of simple conceits; if he was conceived in the classic era, he'd have probably been either only a jet-skater or a teleporter, and that one conceit about how he moved through the world would've been through everything.

Sonic picks up the chaos control from Shadow- in direct reaction to Shadow- and this is commented on. In this scene, Sonic not only rejects Shadow's unhealthy obsession with context- that where he came from was everything- but mirrors it with an attitude that, frankly, to me, rings just as unbalanced- Sonic basically denies having a backstory whatsoever.

"What you see is what you get!" he says.

And that flew in the classic era. We didn't really have a consistent or strongly-drawn backstory over why Sonic was fast. Most continuities around that era point it to either an accident or a happenstance synergy with an outside force. But we didn't really need a story over why Tails can fly or why Knuckles had spurs on his fists.

But in the modern era... there's context. Many characters have superpowers. And more and more, there was a sense that those superpowers had context and history, whether the outright spelled, like Shadow (he was engineered to be capable of this; if you look at him, he has most of the abilities you'd expect of a boss fight in Resident Evil, minus the squelchy, infectious sorts and the Black Arms imply he could well have those and just not use them)

...or the simply alluded, such as Blaze's ominous comment that her flames are the reason she was always alone.

Sonic... clearly has powers. He's been reframed to keep up with he setting as it changes. But that exchange between him and Shadow- where Shadow looks at what Sonic is capable of, looks at him, and asks, verbatim, "what are you," and Sonic delivers a non-answer so naked and so certain that there's not really anything to say to that.

To this end, while I think it's highly intuitive that they picked the wind as the motif to spice Sonic up to- with its sense of freedom, and with its association with speed- I think there's also something about air in general that connects to Sonic.

Air is... omnipresent. It has an extremely complex seething system high overhead. Enormous paths and belts and spirals of wind curl over us all the time, pushing clouds the size of entire states around like it's nothing. When you look at the sky, it looks stationary. But wait, squint- it's actually moving. It's actually moving really fast.

One of my absolute favorite characterizing moments of Sonic is in Archie Comics, specifically the post-reboot series. To keep context minimal, Tails confides in Sonic that he's losing his memory of a certain incident that affected both of them, and he's worried; Sonic reassures him, typical hero big brother best friend, and gives him a big hug. The scene is warmly lit.

The very next panel is literally in the shadows, over Tails' shoulder and behind his back. And Sonic's expression is... troubled. Telling. We immediately understand from that alone he just lied, and has no ability to 'just remember for Tails'.

Sonic is not a vacuous person. He's not empty, he's not innocent, and he's certainly not just your same good nostalgic friend who never changed or got complicated so you don't have to reevaluate all of those things- the guy you can always count on, just like the sky is always there- but he sure pretends to be all of those things, and tries to keep the stormy weather as far away from other people as possible.

This is given another heroic-sounding-but-actually-concerning context in Sonic Unleashed, one of several games in which Sonic shows a maybe suspicious but profound aptitude for darkness where he guzzles and serves as a very powerful conduit for the energy of Dark Gaia, who is strongly connoted with rage, despair, denial, and other states considered bad for your health.

Sonic asks Chip- who he's just found out is Dark Gaia's counterpart- if it was his protection that kept him from losing his mind the entire time. Chip denies this, and states instead it's that "you never let the darkness win."

The thing is... anger and sadness are actually pretty important to feel. And it's actually not true that Sonic as a character doesn't feel anger- there's a few rather notable scenes in which he really loses his cool, some of them within Sonic Unleashed itself (he actually scares Eggman at the culmination of the Egg Dragoon fight) and in the game Sonic and the Secret Rings he actually achieves a super form powered by negative emotions- and that game also ends on a surprisingly melancholy note, where Shahra, when leaving Sonic, specifically gives him a bunch of tissues, a nod to how they met, and specifically "So you can cry as much as you need to."

Sonic is a good person. But Sonic is also... kind of a liar. He has this powerful connection to these highly destructive and dangerous entities- Dark Gaia, Chaos- and this is a thing he, pointedly, doesn't wonder about. And it's not arrogance, or an inability to consider the possibilities- in Sonic Colors he is very real with himself that he can't outrun a black hole, but only admits that once Tails is out of earshot on the one safe ride away from it- and while gearing up to try to do so anyway.

Wind is a contradictory thing. In the sky, we consider the possibility of ultimate freedom; flight and wings are often depicted as symbols of enormous power and efficacy because the very notion of being able to go wherever you want to captivates us.

On the other hand, though, a state of freefall is terrifying. In the unparalleled freedom of the sky, absolutely nothing can catch you if you fall.

(you know, except Tails, if you're fighting Eggman in Marble Garden- I'll leave)

We can talk about a bolt from the blue, a sudden storm or a just-as-sudden clear blue sky... the mechanisms of the air around us are often very hard to perceive for their superficial simplicity. And on sunny days when the wind lazes slowly through the leaves, it's hard to think of it as capable of hurricane forces.

I guess the note I want to leave this on is, it's pretty interesting how Sonic genuinely likes running, but he also tends to either outrun or fight anything that stresses him out- and "what he is" and "what he's capable of" is something he really doesn't like talking about even if he's happy to show or compete it.

[clarenecessities]

As my followers may have picked up from my long, spiraling rants, I’ve undertaken a new research project, courtesy of the death grip She-Ra has on my brain. And guess what? It’s finally at Disseminate Information Stage! So I’m going to lay out all of the gods, demigods, and godbeasts of the Masters of the Universe. With sources!

This table is more of a cheat sheet. We’re gonna tackle this god by god, with a section on Actual Lore & a meta section to help you decide how valid you think they are, because frankly some canons are more canon than others.

Asklepia, Benevolent Snake Goddess

Lore: Asklepia is one of two snake goddesses, the benevolent twin sister of Serpentia. We know very little about her abilities, but the Snake Clan (a clan of human warriors) were said to worship her, and they were famed for their architecture and healing. She had the ability to curse and deform people--to what extent is uncertain, but she’s known to have condemned a fallen priest named Ka, whose disfigured likeness now adorns Snake Mountain.

Behind the Scenes: First appearing in the 1987 comic “Il Nero Cristallo Del Potere“, Asklepia remained nameless for over 30 years, until Masters of the Universe Classics (MOTUC) released a few choice bios. For the unfamiliar, MOTUC seeks to reconcile the often contradictory canons into one overarching narrative, which is great in theory, but in practice is kind of like putting ice cream on a hot dog. And calling it a Chilly Dog ® as if that makes it taste better. But I digress. In 2019 they released a bio for the Staff of Ka which finally put a name to the less-evil Snake Goddess, in an obvious nod to Asclepius and the asklepian (that staff+snake icon people put on medical stuff).

Sharella, the Green Goddess and/or “Avatar” of Asklepia

Lore: Contradictory

Long Version: Okay I’ve put avatar in quotes because it is... contentious. Basically, and you’ll see here why I felt the need to make this post instead of relying blindly on the wikis, Sharella was introduced (in the ‘87 licensing guide) as a tribal leader who had joint custody of Gray, the original name of He-Ro’s alter ego, while he was growing up. This was further developed by Emiliano Santalucia’s concept work, wherein she was the leader of the Green Tiger Tribe (GTT) specifically. While the comic concept was not run through licensing & is thus not “canon”, the idea of her leading the GTT persisted. This teeny tiny image of her from Tytus and Megator’s 1987 Italian box art was all we had until 2008, when one of He-Man’s accessories described her as the “warrior woman ally” of Queen Veena, “who had been changed into the immortal green-skinned avatar of the Goddess Asklepia”. In 2009, MOTUC released a figure for The Goddess, apparently forgetting they’d done that shit the year before because the packaging did say “K’yrulla” was her real name. They had to cover it up with a sticker. 

So who’s The Goddess? Way back in the days before Mattel solidified any of the lore around MOTU, there were mini-comics released with the toys. Initially, the Goddess served a similar function to the Sorceress in the cartoon, and was in fact sometimes called the Sorceress. She facilitated He-Man’s transformations, gave him missions, was generally magical and mysterious, etc. If you know who the Sorceress is, and you can picture Teela, but green? That’s about it.

Back to Sharella, though. The Third Ultimate Battleground rolled around in 2015, and for the first time since some packaging in the 80s, we saw Sharella in action! She was shot through the heart with a poison arrow. Yeah. But don’t worry, she received a blood transfusion from Moss Man (who we’ll get to later), and was transformed into the Green Goddess! She’s immortal now. How Asklepia figures in here is sort of unclear, which is weird since this is still part of the MOTUC line, but whatever. Whatever! Queen Grayskull (the aforementioned Veena) received a bio in 2015 as well, which described Sharella as her apprentice who became “The Goddess”.

Horokoth, Aspect of the Mother Goddess

Lore: DC went a little batshit (pun intended) with the lore for the Eternity War. Here the Goddess is three combined aspects, “Serpos” (Serpentia) for the Snake Men, Zoar for the human “Eternians”, and a third, invented deity called Horokoth, who represents the Horde. Horokoth is “the coming destroyer. The darkness at the end of days.” and is represented by a bat.

Behind the Scenes: That last link has a clearer picture of her, it just didn’t crop well. Also, I confess I couldn’t bring myself to read Eternity War. As thrilling as the prospect of a cohesive narrative is, if I wanted to see Adora slit her brother’s throat there’s the edgier side of deviantArt to peruse. Therefore I know little of Horokoth outside of a few still images of Hordak. The bat was almost certainly selected for the Horde’s vespertilian emblem.

Hordeous, God-Beast of Horokoth

Lore: A “primordial”, bat-like godbeast of Horokoth, created in response to the god Saz’s feline races. Their face was “forever infused“ on the surface of Horde World by Horde Lord (Hordak and Horde Prime’s father in the MOTUC canon) to grant their family power and immortality.

Behind the Scenes: Yes they’ve used some words wrong, but they’ve got the spirit, right? Hordeous was (allegedly, this is secondhand) an invention of the MOTUC crew in answer to Horokoth. Now, the Horde Supreme bio predates Horokoth’s introduction by about 3 years, but obviously the comics were in production already. There’s an undated sketch of Horokoth Hordak from an undated interview (thanks for nothing you useless website) but in that same gallery there’s an orko sketch labeled 2012 so. We’re good right? That makes sense, timeline-wise. Anyway the comics slam dunked Horde Prime out of existence and combined him with Horde Lord so it’s contradictory anyway. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Serpentia, Malevolent Snake Goddess

Lore: The evil counterpart of Asklepia, Serpentia is the goddess of the Snake Men. The priest Ka of the Snake Clan forsook Asklepia in her favor, destroying Asklepia’s sacred orb and stealing the Serpent Ring (an artefact capable of transforming humans into Snake Men) from the Ophidian Spire with King Hsss. In DC’s triune interpretation of the Goddess, Serpentia (here ‘Serpos’) is blood, passion, and desire. A primal and primordial force appearing to the Snake Men in their own image.

Behind the Scenes: Okay yes I’ve reused the Asklepia pic but in my defense they are twins and this is the easiest one to crop. So here’s the thing about Serpentia: we only got a name for her in 2019. We knew there was a snake goddess, and she was pretty evil, or at least hostile towards mammalian life (see: the source of the pic I chose for her). Where Asklepia references the asklepian, ‘Serpentia’ is a much more heavy-handed snake reference, even though Anguis was right there. Those Masters Mondays came through for us, though, with the shield and staff of Ka, Ssssylph, and of course MOTUC’s Dark Despot Skeletor, which is. something. Though only recently named, Serpentia has been a shadow over Eternia since the Snake Men’s introduction in 1985 (or, depending on how much of the presented backstory you accept, even sooner in the form of Skeletor’s lair, Snake Mountain).

Serpos/Sarcedon, God-Beast of Snake Mountain

Lore: Contradictory, but the gist of it is he’s a very large snake with elemental magic and a grudge, that was turned to stone and became Snake Mountain.

Long Version: Snake Mountain was conceived of towards the end of 1982, but wasn’t revealed to the public until September of 1983, with the debut of the Filmation cartoon. For another year, the snake coiled around its summit was simply a carving, its mouth hollowed out for Skeletor to stand in and loom. But in 1984 the Snake Mountain toy was released, completely discarding the Filmation design in favor of the hewn face of the figure we now call Ka. Instead of a snake carving winding its way up the peak, the Mattel toy featured a ‘striking serpent’, alive and attached to the mountain itself. From there, it was an easy leap to make to ‘this carving comes alive’. So easy, in fact, that they did it twice!

First attempted in 1985 in the newspaper storyline “Vengeance of the Viper King”, the snake was here called Sarcedon, the World Destroyer. At the dawn of time, he was said to crush Eternia within his deadly coils. He burrowed deep into the ground, causing fearsome storms that nearly destroyed the planet. Only a fearless hero (implied to be He-Ro) could defeat and imprison Sarcedon. Using a macguffin called a Mirror of History, He-Man forced Sarcedon to behold his own reflection in a reference to the Medusa myth that kind of missed the point of it being reflective. Sarcedon was sent back in time, Snake Mountain was restored, the good guys win, blah blah blah.

That was the last of it until the MYP cartoon in 2004. Serpos as a name was actually first invoked by Mer-Man in a 1982 minicomic, but like it probably wasn’t about the snake. Anyway in the MYP cartoon the Snake Men get this thing called the Medallion of Serpos that lets them un-petrify the snake around Snake Mountain, grow two more heads, and unleash his godly wrath. He breathes fire, trashes Eternos, beats up He-Man, then turns his attention on Castle Grayskull to consume the Orb of Power (containing the strength and wisdom of the Elders, who had first trapped him in stone). He-Man cuts off Serpos’s extra heads with a sword upgrade, the Elders are somehow magically restored to life, and they re-petrify him. Snake Mountain is restored, the good guys win, blah blah blah.

Zoar, the Fighting Falcon

Lore: Contradictory, but it sure is a bird!

Long Version: While Sharella’s backstory is fraught because of the comics couldn’t decide what they wanted her to be, Zoar was similarly tangled up by the toyline. Initially male, he went through several color schemes, some prettier than others. Though there was a vague association with the Sorceress before the cartoon (recall that pre-Filmation, the Sorceress was just the Goddess), Filmation made them literally inseperable by designating Zoar as the Sorceress’s falcon form, to which she was confined when leaving Castle Grayskull.

Some of the comics and Golden books showed Zoar as being flipping enormous & ridden into battle as a steed by Teela and Man-at-Arms. Pre-Filmation, Zoar was always referred to as male, but post-Filmation, always female, as an incarnation of the Sorceress.

The Eternity Wars comics describe Zoar as the third aspect of the Goddess, the ‘Great Preserver’ whose light would shine through the universe for eternity. They pull off a sort of tripartite priestess thing where it’s Serpos/Zoar/Horokoth represented by Teela-Na (the Sorceress)/Teela/Evil-Lyn.

MOTUC, of course, had to reconcile all of these contradictory canons. How’d they do it? “In the folklore of Eternia, the golden falcon symbolized the godhead Zoar, a powerful deity of Preternia. As a god, Zoar could appear in both male and female guises and while the blue-tipped female falcon was associated with the Sorceress of Grayskull, the golden falcon represented Zoar's masculine nature.” So Zoar is genderfluid now, and the Sorceress is merely borrowing their form when transforming into a falcon. This bio also established that Zoar had anointed the first Sorceress, Veena (Queen Grayskull), which explains why she has wings for no apparent reason.

Also it’s not offically MOTUC but the scultors of the line, Four Horsemen, made a single anthro Zoar for Power-Con 2013. In case you need that for some reason.

Glorybird, Emissary of Zoar

Lore: Many millennia ago, there were three siblings, who were very poor and mistreated by their stepmother, but had hearts filled with kindness and love. Zoar, recognizing their resilience and desire to help people, sent an emissary named Glorybird. Glorybird bestowed upon each sibling a divine gift, but as they used their new powers to fight for good, their stepmother revealed herself to be a Celestial Witch & attempted to sacrifice them to Zoar’s “greatest enemy”, Horokoth.  

Backstory: Okay, so the Star Sisters (and Glorybird) were in exactly one episode of She-Ra, primarily to set them up as new toy designs. While prototypes were made for these, the figures weren’t actually produced until MOTUC released figures for them in 2012. Though they were referenced in Princess Prom, and we saw a brief cameo in a background, Glorybird was absent until the introduction of the Star Siblings in Season Five.

That’s right! This bird is a god, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Saz, God of All Felines

Lore: One of the “Gods of the Multiverse” (he is the only member named explicitly), Saz was a blue-furred, feline deity responsible for the creation of all cats, humanoid or otherwise. He transformed himself into an enormous cat-beast to defeat Serpos and Hordeous, whose progenitors created them in envy of his children. Though Serpos was defeated, Hordeous escaped into the cosmos, and Saz himself vanished mysteriously.

Behind the Scenes: “By the whiskers of Saz!” is a fun pseudo-swear made by various cat races throughout MOTU, first in He-Man’s “The Cat and the Spider” and later in She-Ra’s “Magicats”. That was the only real mention of him until... okay, so MOTUC bios aren’t always attached to the product. Starting in 2018, they did this thing called Masters Mondays where they put unposted bios on the org forums. So while we’ve had the sword since 2010, we didn’t get the background on it until March of 2020. And then a couple weeks later, the Cat Mask of Catra bio referred to him as a “mystical being” instead of a god, but the mask was from 2011 so. He may not have been a god yet. It really depends on when the bios were actually written.

Saz wielded a blade probably best described as a falchion, whose quillon & langet formed a vaguely triangular shape around a deep red gem. I want to be clear that while it looks totally rad, this sword would be very impractical and have poor structural integrity were it not made by a literal god. Do not make swords like this. Also it’s almost certainly riffing on the Sword of Omens from Thundercats (affectionate).

Sabe-Or, Son of Saz

Lore: A green-furred, orange-striped paladin, Sabe-Or is one of the only named Ancients. He inherited his father’s blade upon Saz’s mysterious disappearance, and lived for centuries more. Upon his death, he transferred his “heroic essence” into a group of Eternian tigers, forever transforming them into the Green Tiger Tribe, whence both Granger (steed of King Grayskull), and Cringer, steed of Prince Adam.

Behind the Scenes: So “Battle Cat Man” is a concept that’s existed since they decided to make their hero ride a wicked tiger into battle. If you show a kid a superhero, and a supertiger, apparently the natural inclination of most children in the 80s was to combine the two. There are so many custom action figures. So, so many. Sabe-Or is visually a clear reference to this concept, and canonically seems to be the closest we’re going to get outside of the Thundercats crossover, unless you count Cowarros from 4H’s Mythic Legions line (I do, because it means Purrrplor is also canon and I fucking love calling him that).

Moss Man, Ancient Eternian Nature God

Lore: An ally of King Grayskull, Moss Man was something of an Eternian cryptid in the centuries leading up to He-Man Times. He has control over all plant life, the ability to meld with plants, and apparently can imbue sentience to said plants.

Behind the Scenes: Moss Man wasn’t featured in many episodes, because he’s a little... incredibly over-powered. He’s literally Bigfoot from 5000 years ago with magic powers. And like, since I don’t think the writers appreciate how long 5000 years is, you know what happened 5000 years ago? Stonehenge. This bitch is Stonehenge-old. But sure, you can trace a direct line of descent from his contemporary. smh. Anyway according to MOTUC his real name is Kreann’Ot N’Norosh so make of that what you will. Also his toys were pine-scented. I just love that.

Evil Seed, Rebellious Creation of Moss Man

Lore: Created by Moss Man to help fight in the Great Wars, Evil Seed betrayed his master and turned to evil (who could have foreseen this...), finding joy in corrupting all forms of plant life for his own amusement. Moss Man imprisoned him in enchanted chains, keeping him restrained for many millennia.

Behind the Scenes: According to MOTUC, his real name is Sero Malustro, clumsy New Latin for “(to) plant evil-burnt“. Why his name is New Latin and Moss Man’s is... whatever that is, I have no idea. As you can see from the image I included, he originally had an artichoke head, which was upgraded for the Mike Young Productions (MYP) cartoon. Personally I think the artichoke rules.

Volcana, the Fire Goddess

Lore: Canonically, she’s a fire goddess, and the mother of the Volcano Magus. Together, they are a rising force that seeks to conquer Etheria in the wake of Hordak’s defeat.

Backstory: Volcana has taken a long a twisted journey, but was first revealed to fans at Power-Con 2016 in a panel revealing previously unseen concepts and characters. After the first wave of She-Ra toys, a second wave was planned with a snow focus, to bring more attention the Filmation-neglected Frosta. This began with the introduction of a fire villain, an “evil lady that glows with heat” who would attempt to melt Castle Chill. That concept actually refers to a character named Amber (not Ember, as one might assume) who was reworked into a benevolent counterpart, Volcana’s twin sister.

Volcana was later fleshed out to be a Fire Goddess with flame-red hair, x-ray vision, and arms sculpted with flames. Her cape flew up with flame detail that rose up to control the volcano (of Volcanica, a proposed toyset that seems to have been reworked into the Crystal Falls). She was emphasized by Mattel to not start fires, which, honestly, is probably why they scrapped the character. He-Man couldn’t use his sword as a sword; a woman made of fire was basically doomed.

Now, though, we’re several decades in and lines made for collecters that are largely in their 30s and 40s can say whatever they want! So she’s canon, even if Amber isn’t. Yes there’s only one mention of her. Amber technically was mentioned in an unproduced episode titled “Amber Waves of Flame”, but as it was unproduced, it’s noncanonical.

Volcano Magus, Sinister Son of Volcana

Lore: Living within a dormant volcano, the Volcano Magus of the German audio plays was the source of most of Catra’s power and all of her evil intent. He supplied her with magic for spells and schemes with which to assail the Crystal Castle, but neither she nor Clawdeen were aware of the dark influence he held over them.

In the MOTUC canon, he’s specified as the son of Volcana, a demigod from the “Region of Volcanoes” who craved the nature magic of the Whispering Woods. When he learned the Twiggets were inextricably linked to that magic, he used his powers to petrify the former Rebels (this was after the Horde's defeat) and kidnap three Twiggets to drain the magic from their souls. Twiggets, for the uninitiated, are like purple tree-elf things. According to MOTUC, Razz is a Twigget, though the ‘real’ name they assigned her doesn’t fit their naming convention. She is purple, I guess.

Kowl, who avoided petrification, read Razz's spellbooks to find a way to save his friends, and learned of an Entrapment Gem that she hid in a shoe, for some reason. He confronted the Volcano Magus, spoke in the ancient tongue of the First Ones, and sucked him into the Gem.

Backstory: Admittedly this stuff is second hand, as I don’t speak German & they only have transcriptions/translations for the He-Man tapes anyway, but if anybody can find me an audio file I will do my best to verify. The MOTUC stuff at least I can confirm 100% because it’s from 2019 & I do speak English, for better or worse.

Oak, the Jackal God

Lore: Oak was the terrible Jackal God worshiped by the denizens of Zhar, an ancient civilization that once existed in a remote, forested region of Eternia. Long ago, Oak was imprisoned within a statue which could be found within the Temple of the Jackal. When Skeletor removed the statue from the temple, Oak broke free of the enchantment which imprisoned him and wreaked havoc on Eternia. Although the Jackal God was immensely powerful, he could be weakened by the elements of nature and was ultimately foiled by a rainstorm conjured by the combined powers of He-Man's sword and the magic of the temple's guardian priest.

Backstory: I have lifted this from a He-Man guide word for word as I cannot for the life of me find a copy of the Brazilian Editora Abril comic he came from, O Templo Do Chacal (1986). The description is like, suspiciously similar to the plot of the He-Man episode The Cat and the Spider, except the Grimalkin was never described as a god. The rest of it--statue, Skeletor, storm defeat--plays out almost the same. True pity I can’t find the original source, but I do trust this guidebook. You may be interested in Ceres from the UK comics--another dog-slash-statue who frankly might as well be a god himself, but as he’s not called one in canon he’s not going on the list.

The Bitter Rose Goddess

Lore: As Man-at-Arms told the legend, “Every day, a woman climbed Rose Mountain to look for her husband to return from the war. Alas, he never came back. Her tears poured from her cheek and entered the ground. One day she disappeared, but where she stood was a single, solitary rose. It’s the only thing that grows on Rose Mountain.”

The Insect People, who lived at the base of Rose Mountain, believed that the Bitter Rose is all that held the mountain together (and when it was picked, they were proved right). After the flower was restored, it transformed into the Bitter Rose Goddess herself, who explained that she had been a prisoner of her love's sorrow, so bitter that she refused to allow anything else to grow on Rose Mountain. She blessed the surrounding area, blanketing the jagged peaks with roses, and disappeared.

Backstory: She’s kind of... barely a god. She showed up in one episode and no other media & has objectively less power than like, every single demon they ever brought in. I almost didn’t put her on this list.

Mask-Ra, Goddess of Masks

Lore: A goddess who created the magical Masks of Power.

Backstory: Mask-Ra was first mentioned in 2019 and like, look, I’m gonna be real. I don’t respect her. She’s an invention of MOTUC (unless they were drawing on this concept art of Maska-Ra, which I doubt bc he was a Man-E-Faces precursor) and they retconned her into having created Catra’s mask, which is kind of redundant given the entire episode Magicats. This mask did not need two bios. There are no other mentions of her in any canon.

Potential other Masks of Power: The Deemos and Tyrella masks from the He-Man episode “Masks of Power”, lizard and canine masks from the mini-comic “Masks of Power”, Lord Masque’s Demon Mask from the He-Man episode “House of Shokoti, Part 1″, and whatever the hell Red Shadow has going on.

Procrustus, Giant Guardian of Magic

Lore: During the creation of the various dimensions (5 in MOTUC canon but demonstratably higher everywhere else), the gods installed the four-armed, immortal giant Procrustus to guard their secrets at the heart of Eternia. There lay the Starseed, from which the entire dimension was created. It still held immeasurable power, and could be used to conquer entire universes. Hordak, in an attempt to access the Starseed, cracked Eternia in two with the Spell of Separation. Though he was (mostly) thwarted, from then on Procrustus was forced to hold the two halves of Eternia together from within, lest the planet break apart and the Starseed be exposed.

Backstory: First appearing in the mini-comic “The Magic Stealer!”, Procrustus is a lot more tangible than most gods. We know where he is, at all times, and he seems confined to one size. His powers appear to be largely physical, as he had to burrow out of the ground to investigate in the mini-comic instead of teleporting or like, magicking the dirt away. This was his only appearance until MOTUC released a figure for him in 2012. He also showed up in the Subternia map the next year, holding Eternia together.

Standor, Cosmic Creator of Power

Lore: “Before time began, the great Gods of the multiverse convened in the Hall of Power to create all that was and all that will ever be. Head architect of this great task was Standor. A cosmic being of unlimited imagination, Standor helped lead his fellow deities by fueling their energies with raw creative force.”

Backstory: Released for Comikaze 2013 to celebrate the partnership of Mattel and Pow! Entertainment, Standor is literally just Stan Lee But a God. The prototype was called Standar--idk why they changed it, but I think it’s because it’s too easy to confuse with “Standard”. They made a bio for his sunglasses. I don’t want to talk about it.

Bash-Or, Slain Mystic God-Beast

Lore: Very little is known of Bash-Or, the Ram. His last remnant was sealed within the Ram Stone by the ancient sorceror kings of Zalesia, imbuing it with his divine power to overcome any barrier, magical or otherwise.

Backstory: Bash-Or was revealed in the bio for the Ram Stone, September of 2020, but his spirit (previously referred to as ‘the Spirit of the Ram Stone’) was twice utilized by Skeletor in the MYP cartoon, to great effect, before the stone was destroyed.

[rabble-dabble]

The Cancer King's Court ~ The Humans

Dave Strider, Rose Lalonde, and Jade Harley/The Crimson Defender, The Lady Clairvoyant, and The Witch Scientist.

This version of Dave Strider came very close to becoming Davesprite in his timeline. Up until his final conversation with Rose. 

Dave can’t stand the thought of leaving Rose to die all alone by herself. He’d grown close to her after spending so long with her in a doomed timeline. He couldn’t bare to lose her. So, he gets an idea.

If he goes God-Tier, he could potentially bring Rose back in time with him. So, Dave puts off time traveling back in exchange for reaching his quest bed. Upon going God-Tier, Dave brings Rose with him back in time to save her life, seeing how he can now just fly over to her planet and pick her up.

The two explain their situation to their doppelgangers, causing them both to pester John to try and stop him from following Terezi’s advice. Like in canon, John reconsiders and manages to avoid dying. God-Tier Dave is now able to steamroll the challenges of LOHAC with ease, guiding everyone and their counterparts to their quest beds so that they can reach God-Tier as well. Ultimately, this seems like the best case scenario…. until everyone discovers the timeline is now doomed.

Simply put, Dave was supposed to become Davesprite and Rose was supposed to be left behind. Because that didn’t happen, Paradox Space judged the session to be void.

This effects Dave more than he lets on, since it was his decision to take Rose with him in the first place. Both Roses are able to sus this out pretty easily, even as he tries to bottle it up, and they motivate John, Jade, and Other Dave to comfort him. The Roses conclude that the Horrorterrors may be able to help them, so they go to them for guidance. 

The Horrorterrors remember a similar situation with one of their “chosen”, so they inform The Invincible Heir of the situation. Equius gets Karkat to bring him and Nepeta in to investigate. After seeing how well they’ve managed to ace their session, the Meowrails decide it would be a good idea to get some of them to join the Court. 

Equius approaches the Roses first, believing them to be “human highbloods of proper breeding and stature” that he can easily approach. While they mistake his mannerisms for humility at first, they quickly put the pieces together and explain, no, humans don’t have a caste system. Nepeta takes Equius aside so he can recuperate and the two come back after a moment. They explain that they may have a means of salvaging their doomed timeline. However, it would require some morally dubious actions.

While the moirails do preface the info with the knowledge that all these atrocities will be undone, the Roses are still pretty horrified. They meet up with humans to discuss this and, at first, it seems like everyone is in favor of rejecting the offer outright. Until Dave speaks up. He and Rose came from a doomed timeline because John was manipulated. They ended up landing right in another one because Dave trying to save his only remaining friend was arbitrarily declared a mistake. Who’s to say that this isn’t happening to thosands of other versions of them across the multiverse?

Rose recognizes he’s only saying this to vent out his guilt and counters that they have no way of knowing if the offer is legitimate. Equius and Nepeta’s explanation sounded almost cultish from their perspective, after all. Dave immediately concedes and almost finds himself confessing how much all of this is weighing on him.

Then John and Jade raise their points. If these guys are willing to kill thousands of people, what will they do to them if they refuse the offer? A doubly valid point, seeing how the Court specifically targets God-Tiers.

Silence reigns over the humans. Equius and Nepeta had been so polite that they hadn’t even considered how pressed up against the wall they were.

So, they change gears into figuring out a plan to beat the Cancer King’s Court.

Dave, Rose, and Jade decide to go undercover. Pretending to agree to the offer so that they could find intel to Other Dave, Other Rose, and John. After all, the Court would probably be interested in having a Time Player, a Space Player, and a Seer on their team. The home team would still have two of those advantages at least, so their not losing much.

Dave, Rose, and Jade meet up with the moirails and say that they agree, on the sole condition that Other Dave, Other Rose, and John are spared. Equius and Nepeta agree and the three and inducted in.

Karkat doesn’t buy this for a second.

From what he remembers, the humans are a lot more intolerant of morally dubious actions. So, he decides to test their loyalty. He sends the three of them to gather up a bunch of God-Tiers for him to absorb, sending Gamzee with them so he can poke and prod at their minds all the while. Gamzee reports back that they’re spies after reading their minds and asks permission to kill them. Karkat shuts that down and chews him out for it. He instead takes the humans aside so he can convince them.

Firstly, he proves his intentions to them by  making a big show of reviving a timeline left destroyed by Lord English in front of the whole Court, instructing them to act like this is a normal thing. He allows the destoyed civilizations within to rebuild and guides them to prosper. Then, he shows them what The Condescension is capable of with her current power, letting them witness how she bends fate to her will. If he has that power, he could not only fix their doomed timelines, but save all doomed timelines everywhere.

He leaves them to think things over and immediately begins indoctrinating the revived timeline into his army. Another pawn towards his end game. They are indebted to their King, after all.

From the humans perspective, however, he made incredibly valid points. He revived an entire timeline, showing that his good intentions are genuine. Plus, the Condescension shows just what kind of horrific evil he’s up against and the kind of power he’ll have by the end of it. That last note leaves Rose hesitant. Power corrupts, after all. Dave and Jade are a lot more trusting, out of desperation and naivety respectively. 

But, all the same, they know their friends probably won’t accept this. Rose elects to be the one to give the intel. They all agree, she’s the only one capable of lying to them. Even if it hurts like hell.

The Humans play the same role in the Court as Tavros does. People are more inclinded to trust them, so they’re good for gathering up God-Tiers. And, if they need to drag those God-Tiers in by force, a Time Player and a Space Player are hard to beat.

The Humans get along well with the trolls, all things considered. It helps that they couldn’t spend much time with them and are going in with a mostly clean slate.

The sole exception is Dave and Terezi. After all, Terezi is the whole reason Dave’s timeline was doomed. Terezi is willing to accept full responsibility, however, and apologizes for what her counterpart did in his timeline.

The two are able to get past that eventually, but Terezi soon starts asking some uncomfortable questions. 

“JOHN’S TRUST 1N YOU S4V3D H1S L1F3. DON’T YOU F33L… D1RTY B3TR4Y1NG H1M L1K3 TH1S?”

“ok but like i’m not though. he’ll understand that. …he has to.”

How much of that is The Hung Jury and how much is Main Terezi, I’ll leave up to you.

Conversations between Rose and Kanaya are awkward here. Their romance was a bit of a boil. Rose barely knows this Kanaya, which throws her through a loop given they’re narried married in this timeline. The whole thing is rather surreal for both of them.

Ironically, the troll Rose spends most of her time with is Gamzee. Gamzee insists on having “smart sister poke around in this thinkpan of mine”. While Rose enjoys psycho analyzing him, that’s not what he’s there for. In truth, he’s planting thoughts into her head psionically. Making her side with the King more. He knows she’s the weak link in the human’s loyalty, so he’s going to keep her on lock.

Conversely, Jade spends most of her time with Tavros. They bond over a shared love of animals and over their timelines getting screwed for actions well outside their control. It helps that Tav is still nursing his crush on her. She’s lucky Gamzee hasn’t noticed.

To the King, the humans are among him most effective enforcers. If only their friends could see them now…

OKAY THE HUMANS BEING SMART IN THE BEGINNING AND THINKING LIKE “But what happens to us if we don’t go along” I LOVE I VERY MUCH LOVE THANKS

also I’m torn at the thought that dave is just thinking he fucked up because he wanted to save everyone even the doomed ones and he believes it’s his fault for making this doomed timeline I'm ;0;

AND THEN THE LYING LIKE I MIGHT CRY

also i’d like to think that john, double rose and double dave definitely knows somethings the Fuck Up (or at least rose and dave, john on the sense that he knows his friends are definitely more antsy around them now) and also that they hang out and converse a lot just being “left alone” in that timeline while their friends go obey king karkat’s orders. i mean they wouldn’t just SIT there, not dave or especially rose, so I bet they’d also kinda go out in the furthest ring in their timeline to try and find some info on cancer king while their friends are away. and then they might become a threat....

JSAHDFKASHDJ IM GOING TOO LONGER HERE’S YA ART!!

i mixed the three into kinda “team uniforms” because i’d imagine as being humans and having a very bad relationship with trolls in general (hello john almost dying called?? they want their timeline back) and when they first joined it kinda inforced on them that they’re a team collecting info for their friends back in the other timeline and looking like BFF gang with their stupid cool hoodies and jeans (lol!)

[aion-rsa]

10 Injustice Characters the DC Animated Movie Needs to Get Right

https://ift.tt/3fCncB7

As we wait an announcement pertaining to the existence of NetherRealm Studios’ Injustice 3, we at least know that Warner Bros. is set to adapt the games into a DC animated movie.

Ever since its release in 2013, the Injustice franchise has not only become a staple of NetherRealm’s roster, but the comic spinoffs have made it a beloved part of the DC multiverse. The plot revolves around a reality where the Joker was able to mess with Superman so badly that the Man of Steel gradually became a mass-murdering dictator, with the support of several members of the Justice League. Left without any other option, Batman brought in counterparts of the Justice League from the “mainstream” universe to help him fight a civil war against his former friend. It was a story that merged the Justice Lords two-parter from the Justice League cartoon with Marvel’s original Squadron Supreme comic series.

A popular prequel series was released, mostly written by Tom Taylor, that explained the five years in-between Superman killing the Joker in cold blood and Batman’s last stand. Sometime later, the game’s story was adapted into the comic Injustice: Ground Zero. And the Injustice universe has only continued to grow since then.

As snazzy as NetherRealm’s story modes are, they are going to have to make some changes to the narrative for the animated movie. It’s not like every character is going to stumble into exactly four best-two-out-of-three fights in a row before someone else is the focus. Knowing that there will be alterations, some characters are really going to need some tender love and care.

Superman (Both of Them)

Injustice: Gods Among Us didn’t invent the idea of an evil Superman, but things are a bit over-saturated these days. Face it, “Dark Superman” has been done to death, what with Brightburn, The Boys, Invincible, and everything Zack Snyder intended with his Justice League movies.

It’s important that the animated movie really get into the WHY of what turned Superman evil instead of the Joker just getting a tragic win over him. The Injustice comic nudged him over and over again with multiple betrayals and manipulations before he finally snapped and angrily broke every bone in Green Arrow’s body. Hit all that, or at least enough of it.

More importantly, Injustice is a story of two different Supermen. The mainstream Superman has to ring true. He has to be the beacon of hope and positivity that pop culture has been missing for the past decade.

Ultimately, as long as they don’t do that minigame where Superman blows up cars and the people in them with his eye-lasers, we’re cool.

Batman

In this DC take of Marvel’s Civil War, Batman is by default the better person when compared to Superman. He has a line he won’t cross and that means no murder and no tyranny. That said, he still needs to be portrayed as a flawed hero. He may be competent, but he still behaves like a total douche at times and deserves to take one to the chin every now and then.

Being a paranoid futurist who buries himself in contingency plans means alienating allies, friends, and even family members. There’s a great moment in the Injustice comic where he reveals that he infected Cyborg with a virus within a week of meeting (you know, just in case), which Killer Croc says is outright sinister. It’s this kind of behavior that led to Superman’s fall to darkness, because even if Bruce wasn’t behind any of the horrors, he still chose coldness and paranoia over being there for a friend who was going through some serious shit.

Harley Quinn

A hype trailer for Harley painted her as a major protagonist in the first game but the game’s story mode just didn’t measure up. The comics did a better job and the Ground Zero volume was specifically about telling the game’s story from Harley’s perspective. I’m not saying that she should be joined by her team of BFF henchmen from Ground Zero, but she should definitely be a prominent hero.

Similar to the Mark Waid comic series Irredeemable and Incorruptible (also about an evil take on Superman), Harley’s turn to heroism is the universe’s response to Superman’s actions. She’s done some horrible things and may never make up for her actions under the Joker’s thumb, but she’ll keep fighting to stop Superman’s atrocities.

Wonder Woman

While Batman did a bad job trying to pull Superman from the darkness, Wonder Woman succeeded in pushing him in. It’s noted here and there, but this Wonder Woman was also altered by tragedy. In this timeline, Steve Trevor turned out to be a Nazi traitor. His betrayal left Diana feeling much less optimistic and hopeful than her mainstream self.

Wonder Woman’s villainy isn’t as pronounced as Superman’s, but she’s definitely the friendly face who eggs him on and wants him to stand over all mankind. As Superman uses her to fill the void left from Lois Lane’s death, the power couple become very good at bringing out the worst in each other.

Damian Wayne

The Injustice game did Damian a little dirty, revealing deep into the story that the Nightwing fighting on Superman’s side was not Dick Grayson, but Damian. According to Batman, Damian murdered Dick. The comics dove deeper into that and made it more of a freak accident brought on by Damian being an impulsive and angry child. Still, Bruce and his son were unable to make amends due to their shared lack of warmth.

Later stories, and even Injustice 2, added more depth to Damian. It always made sense that he’d join Superman’s Regime, but there was a soul in there who would eventually see that this wasn’t the right path. In the comic Injustice vs. Masters of the Universe, which was treated as a sequel to Injustice 2’s dark ending, Damian took up the mantle of Batman to oppose Superman and even grew a long-missing sense of humor in the process.

Lex Luthor

The great tragedy of the DC multiverse is that Superman and Lex Luthor just can’t get along. They will always be at odds no matter what Earth they come from. The Injustice universe was the one exception, as Luthor was portrayed as fairly warm and altruistic. Much like Batman, he has contingency plans up the wazoo, but they don’t come off as creepy.

Seeing him there as Superman’s longtime friend who sadly has to stab him in the back brings back that multiversal truth about the duo. Just because this is a world where Superman kills and things get very bleak doesn’t mean it’s the worst world and that it isn’t worth saving. The mainstream Cyborg is reluctant to come to terms with this heroic Luthor, but he ultimately accepts the miracle that this universe created a Luthor worth befriending and even looking up to.

Hal Jordan

Maybe it’s just me, but I was never a fan of how Geoff Johns retconned Hal’s past and gave him deniability for everything he did as Parallax. I liked that a boring hero dude like Hal snapped, did some bad stuff, and then had to accept his failures in an attempt to be better. With Injustice, they gave us that exact Hal.

Read more

Games

Injustice Beat Zack Snyder’s Justice League to the Punch

By Matthew Byrd

Comics

Injustice: Year Zero Brings the Justice Society to DC Alternate Universe

By Jim Dandy

Overflowing with willpower and being an otherwise competent space cop, Hal is still something of a dunce at times, and he’s susceptible to manipulation in the right situation. He’s already following Superman’s lead, but having Sinestro pop in to indoctrinate him into the Sinestro Corps makes him actually interesting. Let Hal be the worst version of himself here so he can double back on it in the sequel and beg Guy Gardner’s ghost for forgiveness.

Shazam

Injustice may be the B-side to Mortal Kombat, but the game itself is fairly tame on the violence. Joker’s death isn’t actually shown on screen, Luthor’s end is fairly clean, and Grodd taking a trident to the torso is relatively tame.

But what we absolutely, positively have to see in the animated movie is Shazam’s death scene to really give an idea of how far gone Superman is. It’s bloodless from our point of view, but it’s grisly as hell and made worse when you remember that Shazam is a literal child under all the mystical power.

Batgirl

The Barbara Gordon version of Batgirl was one of the first DLC characters added to Injustice, but it’s unfortunate that she’s not in the main story mode — something the animated movie could fix by giving her a more prominent role in the fight against the Regime. Her ending gives her a kickass backstory where she returns to the cowl after her father dies at Superman’s hands. The comics go deeper into this, even making it so that Superman doesn’t directly kill Commissioner Gordon.

In this continuity, she was already wheelchair-bound as Oracle. She had to go under a very dangerous procedure under Luthor’s care in order to walk again. This is one of the storylines that could make for a captivating arc in the movie.

Alfred Pennyworth

Alfred isn’t in either Injustice game. He’s already dead by the start of the first game. But I don’t care. Alfred needs to be in the animated movie because he is the heart and soul of the Injustice comics. While others bow to Superman, follow him, or even try to reason with him, Alfred Pennyworth doesn’t play those games. He will straight-up verbally clown Superman for his actions without flinching. He is not afraid of the Kryptonian, no matter how red his glowing eyes get.

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This comes to a head in the comics when Alfred takes a pill that gives him Kryptonian strength and he kicks the absolute shit out of Superman for ruining his family. I know I’m asking for a lot, but I simply need to see Alfred stomp a mudhole in Superman so hard that his own shoe explodes from the impact.

The post 10 Injustice Characters the DC Animated Movie Needs to Get Right appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[aboveallarescuer]

Dany considering, threatening to take and/or taking violent measures

As I was rereading ASOIAF, I made it my goal to compile all* the book passages demonstrating either certain key attributes of Daenerys Targaryen (e.g. that she's compassionate and smart) or aspects of hers that are usually overstated (e.g. that she's ambitious and prophecy-driven).  Doing such a task may seem exaggerated, but I'd argue it's not, for many, many misconceptions about Dany have become widespread in light of the show's final season's events (and even before).

It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take. (and that's not even considering the double standards and the contradictions with what had been shown from show!Dany up until then, but that's obviously out of the scope of these lists)

Another objection to the purpose of these lists is that Game of Thrones is different from A Song of Ice and Fire and should be analyzed on its own, which is a fair point. However, the show is also an adaptation of these books, which begs the questions: why did they change Dany's character? Why did they overfocus on negative traits of hers or depicted them as negative when they weren't supposed to be or gave her negative traits that were never hers to begin with? Another fact that undermines the show=/=books argument is that most people think that the show's ending will be the books', albeit only in broad strokes and in different circumstances. As a result, people's perception of Dany is inevitably influenced by the show, which is a shame.

I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend (or even simply explore different facets of) Dany's character in metas or conversations.

*Well, at least all the passages that I could find in her chapters, which is no guarantee that the effort was perfectly executed, but I did my best.

Also, people could interpret certain passages differently and then come up with a different collection of passages if they ever attempted to make one, so I'm not saying that this list is completely objective (nor that there could ever be one).

Also, some passages have been cut short according to whether they were, IMO, relevant to the specific topic of the list they're in, so the context surrounding them may not always be clear (always read the books and use asearchoficeandfire). Many of them appear in different lists, sometimes fully referenced, sometimes not.

I listed the passages back to front because I felt doing so highlighted Dany's evolution better.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To justify the existence of this list, let's see examples of widespread opinions that I feel misrepresent Daenerys Targaryen:

It's just time that we acknowledge that Daenerys' behavior over the past few seasons has been more of someone with an overinflated ego and an limitless sense of entitlement than that of a ruler with the well-being of their subjects and land in mind. If I can really spill the tea, she's acting a lot like the Mad King as well as Cersei, who's currently acting all type of the fool on the Iron Throne. Violence may be a necessary evil, but like...do we really have to burn everybody alive? Is that really what we want for Westeros? (x)

~

[S]he’d rather slaughter her enemies than use them to her advantage. Sure, sometimes you need a good slaughter, but you have to be willing to try diplomacy, too. (x)

~

The issue isn’t whether it’s better if the slave cities remained slave cities — it goes without saying, that’s reprehensible. But her most striking moments ruling Meereen are quite sadistic in nature. In season four, when the Meereenese crucify slave children as a threat to Dany, she responds by crucifying an equal number of noblemen once she takes over the city, despite Ser Barristan’s pleas for mercy; “I will answer injustice with justice,” she coolly responds. Revisiting that scene, it’s pretty disturbing. What starts out as a moment of joyous liberation — and the slaves chanting “Mhysa!” her way — ends with the anguished screams of the newly crucified Meereenese across the city.

Fast forward to season five, when Ser Barristan is unceremoniously murdered in an alley by the Sons of the Harpy, Dany rounds up Meereen’s elected leaders to interrogate them and find out who among them could be a secret Harpy. To establish she’s not fucking around, she picks one of them at random to be burned alive and subsequently eaten by two of her dragons. She’s not just content with her decision; despite not getting any answers, Dany’s entranced by the sight of her dragons and the burning fire.

Dany’s fascination with fire — not to mention her nonchalant attitude toward violence — bears an uncomfortable resemblance to her father, the “Mad King” Aerys Targaryen. (x)

Are Dany's acts of violence supposed to make you wonder if she's going to "burn everybody alive"? Are her acts of violence "quite sadistic in nature"? Does she feel "entranced by the sight of her dragons and the burning fire" and has a "fascination with fire"?

I would argue GRRM has written a character who only chooses violence either for humanitarian reasons or for political goals (which are often intertwined), and even in the latter case, she seeks to avoid collateral damage (ASOS Dany III, ASOS Dany IV). She's not immune to acting on vengeance, but so far it's always been motivated by the injustices perpetrated upon others (ASOS Dany VI, ADWD Dany II); you can argue that "harsh justice", as she puts it, is not justice, but you can't argue that she's doing it for them. The one exception to this is her burning of Mirri Maz Duur, but even then, it is not because she is "sadistic", she explicitly recognizes the futility of vengeance. She kills her because she needs her life for the ritual that culminates with the birth of the dragons. You could argue Mirri didn't deserve it, but Mirri also killed her child and left Drogo in a comatose state. And she lives in a society that largely normalizes violence. Dany's entire characterization must be taken into consideration.

With that in mind, there is no textual evidence to suggest she will decide to burn every noncombatant she can find because she was unhappy about their reception. None. She fights to be queen because she wants to protect the ones who can't protect themselves and it is her duty towards her lost family. She carries unbearable guilt over her mistakes (or ramifications that had nothing to do with her). She treats her achievements and inheritances as a duty rather than as something that elevates her beyond others. She wants a home for herself and peace for everyone.

I should also add that the list about the moments showcasing her empathy and compassion is more than four times bigger than this one. One can argue I'm being biased, but it says something that passages showing instances when she does take violent measures would not fill a whole list. I also had to look for moments when she considers or threatens to in order to fill this one. And even then, her positive aspects greatly surpass her "negative" ones. Why would GRRM focus so much more on her sympathy towards others rather than on her ruthlessness? Must be because Daenerys Targaryen is ultimately meant to be a sympathetic character who is not supposed to turn into a mass murderer of her own volition, ever.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys VIII

The hall rang to Yunkish laughter, Yunkish songs, Yunkish prayers. Dancers danced; musicians played queer tunes with bells and squeaks and bladders; singers sang ancient love songs in the incomprehensible tongue of Old Ghis. Wine flowed—not the thin pale stuff of Slaver’s Bay but rich sweet vintages from the Arbor and dreamwine from Qarth, flavored with strange spices. The Yunkai’i had come at King Hizdahr’s invitation, to sign the peace and witness the rebirth of Meereen’s far-famed fighting pits. Her noble husband had opened the Great Pyramid to fete them.

I hate this, thought Daenerys Targaryen. How did this happen, that I am drinking and smiling with men I’d sooner flay?

~

“You don’t never want to trust a sellsword, m’lady.”

“I have learned that much. One day I must be sure to thank you for the lesson.”

~

“Is there some man in the Second Sons who might be persuaded to … remove … Brown Ben?”

“As Daario Naharis once removed the other captains of the Stormcrows?” The old knight looked uncomfortable. “Perhaps. I would not know, Your Grace.”

No, she thought, you are too honest and too honorable. “If not, the Yunkai’i employ three other companies.”

“Rogues and cutthroats, scum of a hundred battlefields,” Ser Barristan warned, “with captains full as treacherous as Plumm.”

“I am only a young girl and know little of such things, but it seems to me that we want them to be treacherous. Once, you’ll recall, I convinced the Second Sons and Stormcrows to join us.”

“If Your Grace wishes a privy word with Gylo Rhegan or the Tattered Prince, I could bring them up to your apartments.”

“This is not the time. Too many eyes, too many ears. Their absence would be noted even if you could separate them discreetly from the Yunkai’i. We must find some quieter way of reaching out to them … not tonight, but soon.”

“As you command. Though I fear this is not a task for which I am well suited. In King’s Landing work of this sort was left to Lord Littlefinger or the Spider. We old knights are simple men, only good for fighting.” He patted his sword hilt.

“Our prisoners,” suggested Dany. “The Westerosi who came over from the Windblown with the three Dornishmen. We still have them in cells, do we not? Use them.”

“Free them, you mean? Is that wise? They were sent here to worm their way into your trust, so they might betray Your Grace at the first chance.”

“Then they failed. I do not trust them. I will never trust them.” If truth be told, Dany was forgetting how to trust. “We can still use them. One was a woman. Meris. Send her back, as a … a gesture of my regard. If their captain is a clever man, he will understand.”

“The woman is the worst of all.”

“All the better.” Dany considered a moment. “We should sound out the Long Lances too. And the Company of the Cat.”

“Bloodbeard.” Ser Barristan’s frown deepened. “If it please Your Grace, we want no part of him. Your Grace is too young to remember the Ninepenny Kings, but this Bloodbeard is cut from the same savage cloth. There is no honor in him, only hunger … for gold, for glory, for blood.”

“You know more of such men than me, ser.” If Bloodbeard might be truly the most dishonorable and greedy of the sellswords, he might be the easiest to sway, but she was loath to go against Ser Barristan’s counsel in such matters. “Do as you think best. But do it soon. If Hizdahr’s peace should break, I want to be ready. I do not trust the slavers.” I do not trust my husband. “They will turn on us at the first sign of weakness.”

“The Yunkai’i grow weaker as well. The bloody flux has taken hold amongst the Tolosi, it is said, and spread across the river to the third Ghiscari legion.”

The pale mare. Daenerys sighed. Quaithe warned me of the pale mare’s coming. She told me of the Dornish prince as well, the sun’s son. She told me much and more, but all in riddles. “I cannot rely on plague to save me from my enemies. Set Pretty Meris free. At once.”

ADWD Daenerys VI

“If we should wed by Westerosi rites …”

“The gods of Ghis would deem it no true union.” Galazza Galare’s face was hidden behind a veil of green silk. Only her eyes showed, green and wise and sad. “In the eyes of the city you would be the noble Hizdahr’s concubine, not his lawful wedded wife. Your children would be bastards. Your Worship must marry Hizdahr in the Temple of the Graces, with all the nobility of Meereen on hand to bear witness to your union.”

Get the heads of all the noble houses out of their pyramids on some pretext, Daario had said. The dragon’s words are fire and blood. Dany pushed the thought aside. It was not worthy of her. “As you wish,” she sighed.

~

Dany filled his wine cup again, wanting nothing so much as to pour the flagon over his head and drown his complacent smile.

~

She wanted to scream, to gnash her teeth and tear her clothes and beat upon the floor. Instead she said, “Close the gates. Will you make me say it thrice?” They were her children, but she could not help them now.

ADWD Daenerys IV

“The Shavepate has ways of finding the truth.”

“I do not doubt that Skahaz would soon have me confessing. A day with him, and I will be one of the Harpy’s Sons. Two days, and I will be the Harpy. Three, and it will turn out I slew your father too, back in the Sunset Kingdoms when I was yet a boy. Then he will impale me on a stake and you can watch me die … but afterward the killings will go on.”

ADWD Daenerys III

“The Wise Masters should follow their example. I spared Yunkai before, but I will not make that mistake again. If they should dare attack me, this time I shall raze their Yellow City to the ground.”

~

“Have you forgotten? I have dragons.” [...]

“My dragons have grown, my shoulders have not. They range far afield, hunting.” Hazzea, forgive me. She wondered how much Xaro knew, what whispers he had heard. “Ask the Good Masters of Astapor about my dragons if you doubt them.” I saw a slaver’s eyes melt and go running down his cheeks.

~

Westeros. Home. But if she left, what would happen to her city? Meereen was never your city, her brother’s voice seemed to whisper. Your cities are across the sea. Your Seven Kingdoms, where your enemies await you. You were born to serve them blood and fire.

~

“Xaro Xhoan Daxos does not threaten. He promises.”

Her sadness turned to fury. “And I promise you that if you are not gone before the sun comes up, we will learn how well a liar’s tears can quench dragonfire. Leave me, Xaro. Quickly.”

ADWD Daenerys II

Mercy, thought Dany. They will have the dragon’s mercy. “Skahaz, I have changed my mind. Question the man sharply.”

“I could. Or I could question the daughters sharply whilst the father looks on. That will wring some names from him.”

“Do as you think best, but bring me names.” Her fury was a fire in her belly.

~

She was the blood of the dragon. She could kill the Sons of the Harpy, and the sons of the sons, and the sons of the sons of the sons. But a dragon could not feed a hungry child nor help a dying woman’s pain. And who would ever dare to love a dragon?

~

She sniffed suspiciously at Reznak mo Reznak. I could command the Shavepate to arrest him and put him to the question. Would that forestall the prophecy? Or would some other betrayer take his place?

ADWD Daenerys I

Dany said a silent prayer that somewhere one of the Harpy’s Sons was dying even now, clutching at his belly and writhing in pain.

~

Daenerys pushed her hair back. “Find these cowards for me. Find them, so that I might teach the Harpy’s Sons what it means to wake the dragon.”

~

She had not forgotten the slave children the Great Masters had nailed up along the road from Yunkai. They had numbered one hundred sixty-three, a child every mile, nailed to mileposts with one arm outstretched to point her way. After Meereen had fallen, Dany had nailed up a like number of Great Masters. Swarms of flies had attended their slow dying, and the stench had lingered long in the plaza. Yet some days she feared that she had not gone far enough. These Meereenese were a sly and stubborn people who resisted her at every turn.

~

“...Women do not forget. Women do not forgive.”

No, Dany thought, and the Usurper’s dogs will learn that, when I return to Westeros.

~

There were times when Dany wondered if that razor might not be better saved for Reznak’s throat. He was a useful man, but she liked him little and trusted him less. The Undying of Qarth had told her she would be thrice betrayed. Mirri Maz Duur had been the first, Ser Jorah the second. Would Reznak be the third? The Shavepate? Daario? Or will it be someone I would never suspect, Ser Barristan or Grey Worm or Missandei?

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

“I want your leaders,” Dany told them. “Give them up, and the rest of you shall be spared.”

“How many?” one old woman had asked, sobbing. “How many must you have to spare us?”

“One hundred and sixty-three,” she answered.

She had them nailed to wooden posts around the plaza, each man pointing at the next. The anger was fierce and hot inside her when she gave the command; it made her feel like an avenging dragon. But later, when she passed the men dying on the posts, when she heard their moans and smelled their bowels and blood ...

Dany put the glass aside, frowning. It was just. It was. I did it for the children.

~

Dany remembered the horror she had felt when she had seen the Plaza of Punishment in Astapor. I made a horror just as great, but surely they deserved it. Harsh justice is still justice.

~

“Do not ever presume to touch me again, or to speak my name. You have until dawn to collect your things and leave this city. If you’re found in Meereen past break of day, I will have Strong Belwas twist your head off. I will. Believe that.”

ASOS Daenerys V

Worst of all, they had nailed a slave child up on every milepost along the coast road from Yunkai, nailed them up still living with their entrails hanging out and one arm always outstretched to point the way to Meereen. [...] “I will see them,” she said. “I will see every one, and count them, and look upon their faces. And I will remember.”

ASOS Daenerys IV

“I say, you are mad.”

“Am I?” Dany shrugged, and said, “Dracarys.”

The dragons answered. Rhaegal hissed and smoked, Viserion snapped, and Drogon spat swirling red-black flame. It touched the drape of Grazdan’s tokar, and the silk caught in half a heartbeat. Golden marks spilled across the carpets as the envoy stumbled over the chest, shouting curses and beating at his arm until Whitebeard flung a flagon of water over him to douse the flames. “You swore I should have safe conduct! “ the Yunkish envoy wailed.

“Do all the Yunkai’i whine so over a singed tokar? I shall buy you a new one ... if you deliver up your slaves within three days. Elsewise, Drogon shall give you a warmer kiss.”

ASOS Daenerys III

“He will not come,” Kraznys said.

“There is a reason. A dragon is no slave.” And Dany swept the lash down as hard as she could across the slaver’s face. Kraznys screamed and staggered back, the blood running red down his cheeks into his perfumed beard. The harpy’s fingers had torn his features half to pieces with one slash, but she did not pause to contemplate the ruin. “Drogon,” she sang out loudly, sweetly, all her fear forgotten. “Dracarys.”

The black dragon spread his wings and roared.

[...] “Unsullied!” Dany galloped before them, her silver-gold braid flying behind her, her bell chiming with every stride. “Slay the Good Masters, slay the soldiers, slay every man who wears a tokar or holds a whip, but harm no child under twelve, and strike the chains off every slave you see.” She raised the harpy’s fingers in the air ... and then she flung the scourge aside. “Freedom!” she sang out. “Dracarys! Dracarys!”

“Dracarys!” they shouted back, the sweetest word she’d ever heard. “Dracarys! Dracarys!” And all around them slavers ran and sobbed and begged and died, and the dusty air was filled with spears and fire.

ASOS Daenerys I

[“]The warlocks said the second treason would be for gold. What does Illyrio Mopatis love more than gold?”

“His skin.” Across the cabin Drogon stirred restlessly, steam rising from his snout. “Mirri Maz Duur betrayed me. I burned her for it.”

A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys III

“I mean to sail to Westeros, and drink the wine of vengeance from the skull of the Usurper.”

[...] “Will nothing turn you from this madness?”

“Nothing,” she said, wishing she was as certain as she sounded.

A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys X

“I am tired of the maegi’s braying,” Dany told Jhogo. He took his whip to her, and after that the godswife kept silent.

~

As she climbed down off the pyre, she noticed Mirri Maz Duur watching her. “You are mad,” the godswife said hoarsely.

“Is it so far from madness to wisdom?” Dany asked. “Ser Jorah, take this maegi and bind her to the pyre.”

“To the ... my queen, no, hear me ...”

“Do as I say.” Still he hesitated, until her anger flared. “You swore to obey me, whatever might come. Rakharo, help him.”

[...] “I thank you, Mirri Maz Duur,” she said, “for the lessons you have taught me.”

“You will not hear me scream,” Mirri responded as the oil dripped from her hair and soaked her clothing.

“I will,” Dany said, “but it is not your screams I want, only your life. I remember what you told me. Only death can pay for life.”

AGOT Daenerys IX

“Eroeh?” asked Dany, remembering the frightened child she had saved outside the city of the Lamb Men.

“Mago seized her, who is Khal Jhaqo’s bloodrider now,” said Jhogo. “He mounted her high and low and gave her to his khal, and Jhaqo gave her to his other bloodriders. They were six. When they were done with her, they cut her throat.”

“It was her fate, Khaleesi,” said Aggo.


If I look back I am lost. “It was a cruel fate,” Dany said, “yet not so cruel as Mago’s will be. I promise you that, by the old gods and the new, by the lamb god and the horse god and every god that lives. I swear it by the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. Before I am done with them, Mago and Ko Jhaqo will plead for the mercy they showed Eroeh.”

The Dothraki exchanged uncertain glances. “Khaleesi,” the handmaid Irri explained, as if to a child, “Jhaqo is a khal now, with twenty thousand riders at his back.”

She lifted her head. “And I am Daenerys Stormhorn, Daenerys of House Targaryen, of the blood of Aegon the Conqueror and Maegor the Cruel and old Valyria before them. I am the dragon’s daughter, and I swear to you, these men will die screaming. Now bring me to Khal Drogo.”

~

Dany called out for the men of her khas and bid them take Mirri Maz Duur and bind her hand and foot, but the maegi smiled at her as they carried her off, as if they shared a secret. A word, and Dany could have her head off ... yet then what would she have? A head? If life was worthless, what was death?

AGOT Daenerys VIII

“You do not command me, Khaleesi,” Qotho said.

“Find Mirri Maz Duur,” she told him. The godswife would be walking among the other Lamb Men, in the long column of slaves. “Bring her to me, with her chest.”

Qotho glared down at her, his eyes hard as flint. “The maegi.” He spat. “This I will not do.”

“You will,” Dany said, “or when Drogo wakes, he will hear why you defied me.”

~

Eroeh stared fearfully at Drogo where he lay. “He dies,” she whispered.

Dany slapped her. “The khal cannot die. He is the father of the stallion who mounts the world. His hair has never been cut. He still wears the bells his father gave him.”

“Khaleesi,” Jhiqui said, “he fell from his horse.”

Trembling, her eyes full of sudden tears, Dany turned away from them.

~

Only a horse, Dany thought. If she could buy Drogo’s life with the death of a horse, she would pay a thousand times over.

~

She caught him by the shoulder, but Qotho shoved her aside. Dany fell to her knees, crossing her arms over her belly to protect the child within. “Stop him,” she commanded her khas, “kill him.”

AGOT Daenerys VII

“I will not have her harmed,” Dany said. “I claim her. Do as I command you, or Khal Drogo will know the reason why.”

AGOT Daenerys VI

“You will drink,” Dany said, cold as ice. “Empty the cup, or I will tell them to hold you down while Ser Jorah pours the whole cask down your throat.”

~

His khalasar left Vaes Dothrak two days later, striking south and west across the plains. Khal Drogo led them on his great red stallion, with Daenerys beside him on her silver. The wineseller hurried behind them, naked, on foot, chained at throat and wrists. His chains were fastened to the halter of Dany’s silver. As she rode, he ran after her, barefoot and stumbling. No harm would come to him ... so long as he kept up.

AGOT Daenerys IV

“I am the Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, not some grass-stained savage with bells in his hair,” Viserys spat back at her. He grabbed her arm. “You forget yourself, slut. Do you think that big belly will protect you if you wake the dragon?”

His fingers dug into her arm painfully and for an instant Dany felt like a child again, quailing in the face of his rage. She reached out with her other hand and grabbed the first thing she touched, the belt she’d hoped to give him, a heavy chain of ornate bronze medallions. She swung it with all her strength.

It caught him full in the face. Viserys let go of her. Blood ran down his cheek where the edge of one of the medallions had sliced it open. “You are the one who forgets himself,” Dany said to him. “Didn’t you learn anything that day in the grass? Leave me now, before I summon my khas to drag you out. And pray that Khal Drogo does not hear of this, or he will cut open your belly and feed you your own entrails.”

[ograndebatata]

Thoughts on ‘The Lightning Warrior’

Well... I’m well aware that I don’t usually do these episode reviews of sorts... but I’ve been looking forward to this episode for an awfully long time, and ultimately enjoyed it enough that I felt I should share my thoughts here.

Disclaimer: Any thoughts presented below are purely my own opinion. Some of those opinions will be drawn from scenes that take place in series, or my own personal interpretations on what may or may not have gone on behind the scenes, but they are still only my opinions.

Also, one part of this review will delve into VERY DARK elements and implications, so if you’d rather not see them, please, DO NOT click the read more. 

I apologize about it, but... well... it’s just related to a conclusion I came to regarding the episode, and I didn’t want to lie about my thoughts on this matter.

I’m sorry.

With that said, here they come.

First of all, in general terms, I just simply loved the episode. Seriously, it was great. I simply loved seeing Victor and Carla again, and I found that the whole plot point of them needing to help Elena was a logical path to take, and was executed really well. There were funny moments, Victor and Carla recognized their own wrongs, we got more fun characters to add to the EverRealm’s universe, and we got to see believable positive developments in their dynamics with Elena. 

Granted, some might say that Elena went a bit too far with her aggressiveness towards them, but as much as I am a fan of Victor and Carla, I don’t fault her for being so suspicious, given everything they did to her in the past. And Elena herself admitted that she was wrong, so that’s a plus. 

Also, their song? Absolutely precious.

And the squad pose in the ending scene? Looks epic.

Now... breaking things down a bit more into some specific subcategories... 

THE GREAT

- The partial return to way back when

Well... as I said earlier on, I simply loved seeing Victor and Carla return. I will admit, they didn’t exactly become my favorite characters from their first appearance, but I slowly grew to care more for them as time went on. Then Snow Place Like Home came out with that wonderful display of their bond and my feels for them suddenly got a huge boost, which only grew in the following episodes with them both. They all came to a head in The Magic Within, where Victor was petrified and Carla was left completely alone for the first time in her life and, I won’t lie, I genuinely got afraid they would be leaving the series that way, Victor petrified and forgotten, and Carla left to rot in the dungeon. 

I understand that they both were villains for a long time, but they just never seemed cruel enough to deserve such a fate, and even if they had been... well... some things are too bad to happen to anyone. 

Fortunately, this wasn’t the case here. We got to see them return. We got to see them be together again. We got to see more of their bond, which is just beyond pure and precious, We got to see them singing a wonderful song together about better times. We got to see them actually showcasing the change in their ways. And we got to see them receive a second chance and making good use of it. 

The stand-out elements would have to be Victor’s reminsicing about the past and the way he and Carla were willing to help with Ash... but really, every last bit of it was wonderful.

- Close parallels and steps to a new chance

While I went on about Victor and Carla’s development, I liked how we got to see more of this from Elena’s end. As harsh as she may have been at points (not unjustifiably so) and how it took her time to accept that Victor and Carla were being sincere in their attempt at changing, she still shows her empathy when joining into Victor and Carla’s song, and conveys how she can relate to them by longing for a time when things were simpler.

Yes, she still took time to fully give it, but given what they did to her, it’s understandable she’d be resistant to it. I do think there’s one point where she went too far, which I’ll further discuss down below, but at least she showed once more she’s willing to realize the error of her own ways. Which is one of the great things about her. 

- A hero and former villains duet 

I’m not kidding here. Way Back When seriously already made its way into my top favorites. Like, between the sweet music and lyrics, the sheer longing for the simpler times that Victor and Carla - and later Elena - all share, getting to see younger!Victor with child!Carla in those flashbacks... seriously, I just found it great. 

- A shockingly hilarious title character.

Ixlan was priceless. That’s all I can say. 

That over-the-top deadpan and stoic personality, that brutal honesty, the way she thinks with her fists... well, it just makes for a combination that I found hilarious. 

That said, beyond the humor, I liked how she has actual depth to her, most notably when she can see past first impressions and comes to admit Elena is a good leader, and her dedication to protecting the place where her home used to be.

- Monstro’s Maruvian counterpart

The Moyaku was yet another great. I liked her design - while seemingly being a shout-out to Monstro, she was distinctive enough in her own right, and had a really interesting design. I liked the way it and the general adventure with her reminded me of Pinocchio and the escape he and Geppetto made from Monstro (down to the sneezing) while still being its own thing, and it certainly was a relief to see that the Moyaku seems to have much less of a temper and can admit defeat. 

I also liked the way escaping her insides involved both a throwback to the cooking scene and Elena putting her trust in Victor and Carla.

- Naomi’s character development

It was a subtle thing, but I liked how Naomi, like Elena, actually proved she can change her mindset and actually learn to give people a chance.

Also, she was hilarious in that scene involving the dish Victor and Carla cooked.

That’s all.

THE TROUBLESOME

- The pseudo-corpse that stayed there

Well... to give another disclaimer here, I’m NOT one of those people who believes Elena is a heartless monster, or that she’s somehow on the path to becoming evil.

That said, I did find it problematic how she moved Victor to the dungeon, and to top it off, how she seemed to have no intention of ever depetrifying him until Quita Moz said it would take malvagos to break the spell entrapping Ixlan.

I’m not trying to deny that Victor was a villain, and I’m not trying to deny that he endangered Elena. It’s just... there are limits, and leaving Victor petrified and in the dungeon crosses two.

For one, the fact that Carla basically had to deal with seeing what might as well be her father’s corpse every day for who knew how long. Granted, it’s not actually a corpse, but still, when you think about it, it’s beyond disturbing. The only way I could accept her having done that is if Carla somehow asked for him to be there. Because otherwise, even if Elena wanted to move him out of the garden to keep the statue safer, she looks like she has a big enough palace to put him somewhere else. I mean, we even see she even had spare dungeon cells. Honestly, this is just... well, problematic. Especially because Elena said she’d deal with Carla later way back in The Magic Within... and yet, if this episode is anything to go by, she wouldn’t have done anything about this whole situation if she hadn’t needed Victor and Carla.

It just... It just doesn’t look good, I feel.

For another... well... at the risk of sounding dark... there’s the fact that, in this universe, petrification can be seen as potentially worse than death.

If this sounds like it doesn’t make sense, let me explain why I have this opinon. We know that an afterlife exists in this universe. We know that people move on there when they die. And we know that people who get petrified have no awareness of anything until they get depetrified, which was visible with Fiero in Rise of the Sorceress and Victor in this very episode. So, if Victor had stayed petrified, he would have been separated from Carla for all eternity. At least Elena will get to reunite with her parents when she dies, if not before then. If Victor hadn’t been depetrified, Carla would never have seen him again. 

Again, I’m not saying Elena is a monster who was deliberately torturing Carla with that. She possibly - even likely - may not have thought this through. But still.. I just can’t help but see it as problematic.

- Isolation is not a joke

Well... this one is something may just resonate too personally a bit too much, but I will confess I didn’t like the way Elena just automatically sent Victor and Carla off to Soledad Island, and how Carla just joked about it, on two fronts.

First, after the overwhelming isolation she appears to have endured, I’m not sure it’s in-character for her to make that kind of joke.

Second, after what happened in recent months, and to a degree is still going on today, I got to experience first-hand what even much less severe social isolation can do.

I will cut this one quite a lot of slack, because the episode was made before the Coronavirus Pandemic became a thing, and this is still a show for children, but still... it feels genuinely off to see isolation played for laughs so much when I know from personal experience how even less severe one can be damaging. And it similarly feels the same way when looking back at certain characters’ previous fates, like  the Chiki-Chiki in The Last Laugh.

Hopefully later shows will learn from this. I do understand why they would want to keep a measure of ‘downplayed realistic elements’ for the sake of storytelling, but still, I hope they learn this lesson from this era.

THE DIVISIVE

- Changes in magic brand

Well... again, I will partially admit I may be biased here, especially given the path I took in my fanfic AU... but honestly, looking at actual canon, I think that Victor and Carla ceasing to be malvagos was not a good idea.

First of all, the episode just showed how useful it was to have malvagos on the good side. Without that, Ixlan would presumably have stayed imprisoned for eternity. It doesn’t make sense to throw that way, especially because now there will be no one to undo Ash’s evil spells if she uses something comparable to what trapped Ixlan. 

Second... we never actually get to see a proper reason that would justify them wanting to learn good magic. Despite there being a few differences, malvago and wizard magic seem to largely overlap. And there was no in-universe reference or explanation that being a malvago by itself is somehow psychologically damaging. Victor and Carla had their personalities stay the same even though they were malvagos for around a year, so there’s no sign of it ‘bringing about issues’.

Third... well... this is just my general opinion, but I confess I’m one of those who just thinks it would be more ‘narratively interesting’ and would ‘further set them apart’ if Victor and Carla had stayed malvagos (whether they wanted to change back or not) and ended up learning to use dark magic for better purposes - which well, this very episode proved it can be done, even if only in rare circunstances. And again, for the most part, dark and light magic seems to overalp. 

But this is just me. 

THE CONCLUSION

A great episode. It had a few ‘iffier’ spots, but overall, it was still a great episode. If all the episodes that will still come are as good as this one, the series will have a great ending indeed. 

[thelawyerthatwaspromised]

Jon Studied Jorah to Learn How to Deal with Daenerys

Jon’s eyes were a grey so dark they seemed almost black, but there was little they did not see.

- Bran I, A Game of Thrones

Jon Snow went to Dragonstone to convince Daenerys Targaryen to join the North in fighting the Night King. That was his stated goal. Everything about Political Jon is built upon that one single purpose.

His process changed along the way but Jon learned and adapted his approach based on what others around him were doing when it came to interacting with Daenerys. Oddly, after encountering Jorah, Jon Snow copied his approach the most obviously. Jon learned that in order to win her affection, he had to go to the greatest extremes.

But Jon’s trip came in stages. The first meeting? Did not go as planned.

This is contemptuous Jon, one of the greatest Jons.

THIS NEXT SCENE WITH JON AND TYRION IS KEY

Tyrion unwittingly sows the seeds of Political Jon. He also left himself at a political disadvantage in dealing with Jon and Daenerys’ dynamic due to misreading Jon.

Jon is brooding on the cliffs of Dragonstone. Utterly disgusted with himself for not listening to Sansa. He doesn’t know what to do next. 

Tyrion also uses some words that Jon will later echo to Daenerys. About Daenerys protecting people.

Tyrion also makes it very obvious that Jon will not be able to “reason” Daenerys into supporting the North. Talking King to Queen as reasonable people will be fruitless if the objective is to get Daenerys and her dragons North.

Tyrion actually is probably the character that gave Jon the thought of changing his approach with Daenerys. And Tyrion even told him HOW.

You might consider asking some of the people here what they think of the Mad King’s daughter.

After Tyrion says what he says, Jon begins to leave. Tyrion acts confused. He thought this was Jon giving up. I contend this was Jon leaving with a purpose. Tyrion quizzes him when he begins to leave about what he wants...so you’re led to believe Jon was leaving aimlessly. But why would he leave? That is the spot he purposefully picked to THINK ABOUT NOTHING. Tyrion misread Jon dramatically.

Jon begins prodding people close to Daenerys, like Missandei. He thinks about the terms Daenerys used in describing herself like in her infamous “Faith in Daenerys Targaryen” scene. The scenes after this are Jon trying these different angles.

JON ON THE BEACH AT DRAGONSTONE

I actually think the cave scene was important in that Jon stepped up his “game” the first notch but it didn’t work. For the sake of relative brevity, I’m skipping to the beach when Daenerys is deciding whether to kill everybody in King’s Landing. Something you don’t really want to have to debate with someone who fancies themselves a Queen. But I digress.

Over time, Jon learns the key: Daenerys absolutely has to think of herself as extraordinary and can’t stand the thought of being like everybody else.

As a result, she listens ONLY to those that dress up their advice as “you’re special and not like the Mad King - you see the Mad King would burn castles and people but you’re wonderful and nothing like that!”

It’s absolutely a tactic that Jon identified and adopted. Here are multiple examples of his applications.

Almost all of these gifs are focusing on Jon and Jon’s reactions:

Jon just heard Daenerys berating Tyrion for not wanting to hurt his family. Besides thinking “dafuq?” Jon is then put on the spot by Daenerys asking for war advice. JON GIVES HER NO WAR ADVICE. HE ONLY TELLS HER NOT TO COMMIT ATROCITIES AND DRESSES IT UP IN GENTLE LANGUAGE.

Daenerys herself touted her achievements to Jon. They didn’t impress him then. All of the sudden he seems so impressed. Why? Is he speaking only to express his admiration? C’mon, you know better than that. He is attempting to keep her from burning a city of a million (give or take) people to the ground. But Jon knows that Tyrion and Missandei both go on about her accomplishing things no one else ever has. So he uses that. He knows only a few people have influence with her...so he tries to act like those people in dealing with her.

Then he uses a phrase that visibly hurts Daenerys. He didn’t say she’d be evil. He didn’t say she’d be the Mad Queen. As far as insults go, on a scale of 1 to 10 this is about a 0.001. And seems to have wounded her pretty deeply, the insinuation that if she’s willing to use her dragons, then she’s not different. Not special. Not unique. I actually believe this had the opposite effect Jon intended. He doesn’t yet know that she feels like she can ONLY be different if she uses her dragons.

This part really did stun me. You know what it reminded me of most?

Loki being faced with the prospect that strength alone does not make him special.

Jon is beginning to learn what Daenerys cares about. She cares about being special. About glory. About being revered. That makes sense. She was used as a pawn, she was traded multiple times, she was abused. She told Jon all of these things personally. Proving her strength to spite those that wronged her. That’s what moves her. 

But guess what? That type of motivation as makes her a terrible ruler. What happens when there is no more to conquer? She is motivated essentially to prove people wrong. She is motivated to show the world it was wrong to make her feel small and weak. She’s there to fight “bad guys”. That’s the easy part. What happens when there are no more obvious “bad guys”? It’s why she can identify with a slave that wishes to break free from their master. But it’s also why she CAN’T identify with a former slave that still wants to work for their former master. Or why she CAN’T identify with a person who doesn’t take joy in killing...because everyone she kills, she views as an easy necessary decision against a “bad guy”. 

That isn’t her experience so how can it be anyone else’s?

She is completely internally focused on her quest to be extraordinary.

So Jon knows what “moves” Daenerys. He’s already started to alter how he chooses his words. He still screws up though.

He smirks when she uses ‘beautiful’ to describe her dragons. He accidentally lets Real!Jon appear for a bit but very quickly tries to correct himself.

Then, Poor Jon makes it even worse. Calls the dragons beasts. You know how Daenerys views her dragons as her children? How they’re the only thing that make her special?

But this is how Jon really feels about the dragons. They’re dangerous beasts to him. He already told her using the dragons made her like everyone else. HER STRENGTH DOES NOT MAKE HER SPECIAL TO HIM.

So Jon still doesn’t really have a great example of how to interact with Daenerys. I think it was very purposefully done that in the very scene that shows how incompatible Jon and Daenerys are, Jon gets to observe someone who HAS shown he knows how to “get through” to Daenerys:

Jorah Mormont

Jon is initially confused when he hears Jorah’s name. 

“That’s the guy who sold people into slavery, isn’t it? Now he’s with the ‘Breaker of Chains’, huh? The one that confiscated my ship and is holding me prisoner? Neat.”

-Jon, internally, probably

But then Jon starts watching how they interact. He sees how Jorah is 1000000% subservient to Daenerys. How he always addresses her formally and with admiration. Jorah and Missandei put Daenerys on a pedestal more than any other characters - and she treats them better than she treats any other characters. 

Some people theorized Jon was jealous of Jorah here. No, he was observing.

If the explanation for why Jon fell for Daenerys is that he saw her courage when she saved everyone beyond the Wall, then there is not yet any jealousy on Jon’s part. If there is jealousy on Jon’s part, why did he never show it towards Jorah when they went beyond the Wall? Jorah sees Jon as an immediate romantic threat. Jorah is also wrong about Jon. Jon simply is trying to learn how to deal with Daenerys.

What’s my evidence?

Jorah sees Jon approaching as they are preparing to depart from Dragonstone.

He makes a deliberate show of affection for Daenerys.

If Jon sees a romantic counterpart...surely he comes up with some grand gesture as he has the last shot at a “goodbye” before they leave.

Except...

“I wish you good fortune in the wars to come. Peace.”

So Now Jon’s Learned

He’s gotten everything he needs to deal with Daenerys. He knows what motivates her. He knows what language pleases her. He knows that she enjoys assertive physical contact.

How non-specific is his justification when she asks him why he’s now willing to bend the knee? This is so value-neutral that if he actually is not attempting to manipulate her without feeling like human garbage, I can’t believe the writers would use such couched terms. He’s telling her absolutely nothing actually positive here. 

D: Why did you pick chocolate ice cream over vanilla ice cream, Jon?

J: Because chocolate ice cream certainly is ice cream, my Queen.

-Jon and Daenerys, deleted scene, Beyond the Wall

Here’s the thing: he still actually does feel like garbage about this.

“Ok, I’ve bent the knee. It’s starting to work now, but gahhhh I wish I didn’t have to do this. But just maybe I’ve gotten her to forget about the Throne for a bit.”

The Dragonpit or the Crescendo of Political Jon

There is where Jon realizes he MUST initiate a physical relationship.

I see someone utterly unenthused about what he’s had to do so far. But in his mind, if he gains Daenerys as an ally, it’s what he must do. 

Here’s Daenerys lamenting the fact that the dragons were locked in the dragonpit and lose their power. She sees this as tragic. Not because she cares about the dragons. She doesn’t say “poor babies suffered” or anything like that. No, something else makes her sad thinking about chained dragons...

- Here’s why -

Her greatest fear. Being ordinary. Being average. Not being special.

Sidebar time - There are two really good parallels / reveals about this little speech by Daenerys.

1.) What did Jon just get done hearing while on the way to the Dragonpit?

From the mouth of Jorah Mormont. Do you think Jon thinks unchained dragons are a good idea?

They are just beasts to Jon. Tools. Weapons of mass destruction.

2.) How antithetical can Jon be from Daenerys?

He needs to be told he’s a good ruler.

He doesn’t care how he’s addressed.

He is visibly uncomfortable with the thought of people calling him a god.

END OF SIDEBAR

So we pick back up...Daenerys just reinforced her fear of normalcy with Captain Normal whom we are supposed to believe is in love with Ms. HasToFeelSpecial.

You’re so special, babe. You’re different. I’m not going to go into detail on exactly how because there’s just SO MUCH. Just understand that you’re definitely extraordinary.

- Jon Snow, deleted scene, The Dragon and the Wolf

This is not language coming from Jon. These are words spoken by other characters being plagiarized by Jon.

And STILL...

Holy shit, Dany. You are so dense. You are going to get everybody killed over a chair. You have no business calling yourself a Queen, let alone my Queen. This sucks that I have to play this stupid game with you. Do you not learn!?!? Seriously, did they replace your brain with napalm? Why are you so obsessed with dragons and your terribly uncomfortable chair?

-Jon, internally, probably

Of course Jon sleeps with Daenerys after this. Jon knows Cersei is untrustworthy. He knows he’s tried literally everything except sex with Daenerys leading up to this. And STILL, Daenerys is one betrayal (by a person who can literally not help but betray) from getting every person on Westeros killed.

HE HAS TO HAVE HER AS A RELIABLE ALLY.

The tragedy yet to come is that his own identity as someone with an extraordinary name is going to cause his entire plan to collapse.

[argotmagazine-blog]

Envisioning a New World: Restorative Justice in Activist Communities

Content Warning: Sexual Assault

A pale person with wavy red hair and cranberry lipstick, dressed in all black, spoke in front of a circle of people sitting in metal folding chairs.

“We’re thinking about activities we agree to do or not do. That comes up often when we’re organizing, whether we’re organizing events, whether we’re trying to get people to come to our direct actions, we want people to wheatpaste with us or whatever your anarchy flavor is,” they said, adding quickly, “Or not not anarchy. I don’t know how you identify.”

The person in black is Anna Kark, a social justice and harm reduction educator who brought a consent workshop to a DC church. They worked with an organization called Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS). The church was full of people who do anti-oppression work, Kark told me. The International Workers of the World and No Justice No Pride worked with CASS to teach activists how to incorporate consent into every part of their lives, from consenting to specific organizing to consenting to sex. This included antiracist organizing, organizing your workplace, antifascist work, and more.

“I don't think there will ever be a cohesive definition or understanding of the DC left. It's probably very complicated and about how capitalism crushes our ability to organize with each other. But for whatever value of self-identification there is, that is who I selected to be apart of this workshop,” Kark said.

Anna Kark is a DC activist who has experienced sexual assault within their own activism community. They were the survivor in an accountability process, which means that they and their community tried to hold the person who assaulted them accountable and educate the person as a response to the assault.

The person was not pushed out of the community, but regularly asked to acknowledge what they did wrong and take steps to learn how to be better. An accountability process is just one of many ways activists in these networks are trying to make their spaces safe for everyone. Activists are also trying to hold each other accountable for other ways people push each other’s boundaries, learn bystander intervention techniques, and build mechanisms to ensure activists who refuse to accept what they did wrong and change can’t simply move on to other activism circles.

Why activists want transformative justice

The accountability process is not supposed to be a panacea for harassment and assault, Kark points out. It’s just one tool. But activists want alternatives to involving police officers and meting out justice through what some might call “carceral feminism,” or relying on the justice system for solutions to violence that is usually carried out by men on women. For activists who acknowledge that police often brutalize people of color and are responsible for sexual violence themselves and as people who fight for prison abolition, it’s necessary to have alternatives. However, Kark said that doesn’t mean activists try to dissuade survivors from reporting to police. Activists are also focused on looking at the entire community and systems of oppression that contributed to sexual violence, not simply one individual who carried out the violence.

This a necessary step, since media often seems transfixed with the personality of serial sexual abusers, and how to armchair diagnose them, usually to let them off the hook. As a society, we’re obsessed with going over the details of the assault in question to determine exactly what we think the victim should have done to avoid assault and sometimes, because people derive some form of enjoyment from their pain. Like so-called “poverty porn” which media creators claim is about exposing the damage of poverty, many unnecessarily detailed descriptions of sexual assault are often more about exploitation of someone’s pain for the purpose of spectacle.

As we saw last fall during the avalanche of sexual assault stories in the news, numerous people of all genders enabled these perpetrators. By demanding that we consider an entire community’s responsibility, we are moving away from those unhealthy tendencies and are working to reduce the likelihood of future harm.

I have experienced sexual violence and harassment, like many women, and some of that violence came from people who belong to marginalized communities that are targeted by police. I also do not trust police to address sexual assault survivors in a responsible way, knowing how police themselves target and retraumatize sexual assault survivors. I don’t trust employers to address sexual harassment. Employers see the primary purpose of sexual harassment training and human resources responses as legal protection for themselves, assuming they don’t circumvent the process entirely to protect a perpetrator they consider less disposable than the victim. That means I’m not going to get what I need out of the process and neither will the person who harassed me.

I see why this approach would be preferable for many survivors. It isn’t necessarily a flawless practice or above criticism and personal biases against marginalized groups are still present, but I one would argue the justice system’s response is usually far worse. The justice system puts survivors’ emotional needs second, punishes men of color to a very different degree compared to their white counterparts and, sometimes, wrongly imprisons them. It counts on the threat of incarceration and incarceration itself to prevent or change a person’s behavior, which simply doesn't work. It nourishes the idea that victims must be white women and women who perform femininity correctly in order to deserve the justice system’s protection. The stakes are incredibly high, and when you lose, as many marginalized groups do, you lose big.

The justice system requires that in order for perpetrators to receive some form of accountability, they must be cruel evil men who have never been loved or supported by their families and communities; men who don’t really exist. Additionally, officers who were supposed to help survivors at their most vulnerable have subjected them to more violence. When it’s working, the accountability process also demands that communities look at the environment that allowed violence and harassment to happen, not simply an individual person. It demands that survivors needs are considered paramount and that communities acknowledge the humanity of perpetrators through education.

Kark said by having a community behind them, people aren’t asked to process what happened to them alone. This is particularly important for people who are experiencing poverty or financial precarity.

“I started a community accountability practice [last] spring when I was raped,” Kark said. “It is very difficult to do because all of the functions of capitalism prevent you from being able to do that work, right? You’ve got police state telling you conflict can only be mediated by a court of law, which is untrue. You’ve got poverty, which prevents people from people able to seek appropriate resources from their community because they have to focus on immediate material consequences within their lives.”

Kark said their anarchism makes it difficult for them personally to turn to “disposing of people as a first response.” This language about not disposing of people and healing from harm in a way that excludes punishment is consistent in anarchism. Cindy Milstein writes in her book, Anarchism and Its Aspirations, “... anarchism serves unflinchingly as a philosophy of freedom, as the nagging conscience that people and their communities can always be better.”

How the process works

Akosua Johnson, who has been involved in these processes before, said that the first step in an accountability process is to be open about the harm that the perpetrator committed. But the survivor gets to tell activists what they are comfortable with the community knowing. Then activists who are part of the process, usually activists who have participated and conducted this process before, gather information about what happened and how the person was harmed so that perpetrator understands what they did wrong. Activists acknowledge that some people may not know what they did wrong because we have all grown up in a society that normalizes sexual violence as a “natural” expression of masculinity.

Johnson said the next step is to educate the person who harmed the survivor. Then people close to the perpetrator need to make it clear to them that they need to be held accountable for their actions. The perpetrator also needs to fully understand what they did harmed someone else.

“That makes it more meaningful and more effective as opposed to some stranger coming up to the perp and saying, ‘You did something bad!’” Johnson said.

Activists need to ensure that the perpetrator and surrounding community prevent anything like that from happening again, Johnson said, but it’s important to look at the entire community’s role in what happened. Enablers and people who simply didn’t notice how this person’s behavior affected others have to sit with their own actions and learn how to hold themselves accountable for that.

“This is not simply an individual acting in a vacuum. It’s the community around that person that allows those ideas and actions to occur, so you spread it out in terms of educating in a ripple out from perpetrator,” Johnson said. “You’re making sure there is accountability not just for the perpetrator but people in the perpetrator’s life who may have excused or allowed behavior that is harmful or violent.”

Sometimes that starts with enforcement of boundaries in all activism practices, to build a culture of consent. For example, that means not putting fellow activists on the spot when determining who will do what for an event or protest, such as becoming a street medic or bringing food to an event. People in the activism community need to ask people if they want to put in a Signal group and be clear about how long a training will take. During the consent workshop, people took turns to be the person asking for things and the person saying no in response, to normalize the process of asking for consent and enforcing boundaries. It felt good to practice saying “No” to requests for information I didn’t want to give, as benign as those requests were, such as “Where did you get your shoes?” because I’ve been socialized to give reasons for saying no. In this space, it was clear that we didn’t need a reason and that it isn’t rude not to give one. People were learning to accept a no and not be personally offended by it, Kark explained.

Jen Deerinwater, a community organizer and freelance journalist and Citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, said that until activist communities respect femmes in all contexts, including meetings and inclusion in leadership, harassment and sexual violence will be a problem. In queer activism spaces, queer people can also be “misogynistic and chauvinistic,” Deerinwater added. “There is definitely an idea that for those of us who are more feminine, we have to do all of the caregiving work. We’re not as respected as those who are more masculine of center.”

A common complaint from women and nonbinary people in the movement is that men aren’t doing enough to address sexual violence and provide other forms of care that are considered traditionally feminine.

Although folks should get training to avoid asking questions that enforce rape myths, Belinda Rodriguez, an activist whose organizing focuses on climate, racial, and economic justice, said that  starting with a sincere commitment to care for another person’s wellbeing goes a long way. She said the most common response she sees is a “deer in headlights” response where people don’t know how to react and ending up doing nothing rather than risk giving the wrong response.

“People are afraid to deal with the situation and so they don't do anything,” she said. “That’s why it’s important for people to read about this stuff in advance and have conversations with each other about what kind of response they would like to see before shit hits the fan. I think that's really important so that trust is already there when something goes down because inevitably, at some point it does, and we will all have a friend who is in a shitty situation or we’ll be in a shitty situation.”

Kark said that they’ve seen other activists become more aware of harassment as well as behavior that can be labeled “boundary-crossing.” For example, they were recently street harassed while a few of their male activist friends watched and did nothing to intervene. But months later, after talking to a partner about what happened, one of those men reached out to talk to Kark about what they should have done differently.

On another occasion, two activists had a difficult time working together because another kept pushing their boundaries, such as touching the person without asking. The activist who wasn’t comfortable being hugged and otherwise touched told the person to receive education and talk to someone in their community about how to be better about understanding people’s boundaries. The person did seek out that education and now they have a healthier relationship, with the person whose boundaries they crossed, Kark said.

“The person who was on receiving end of harm wanted that relationship to continue and believed in that person’s capacity to change,” they said.

Within an entirely punitive and faceless justice system, you don’t really get to ask the person who harmed you to consider what they did and take steps to change in any meaningful way. Any relationship with the person who harmed you can be used against you as evidence that you weren’t actually harmed. It isn’t very realistic to expect people who faced harassment or violence from someone close to them, someone in whom they’ve seen sparks of kindness, to end all contact if they want to seek accountability. And the people who have harmed us are usually people we know.

That doesn’t mean the person who was responsible for that harm is going to be interested in being held accountable, however. Some activists have gone as far as to offer to pay for someone’s therapy if it would help them process what they did and change their behavior. But they don’t always accept that help, Chris, who does antiracist and anticapitalist activism work in DC, explained.

“I’ve had long-term friendships end over trying to hold someone accountable.” he said.

In one case, over a few months, it became clear to Chris and other activists that the perpetrator of the sexual violence wouldn’t take those steps. At first, the person seemed willing to participate and then it became apparent to Chris that their actions were only performative. Soon, he only responded to him on social media. But one day he ran into him on the street.

“I just knew the last time I saw him, he cried in my arms and said, ‘I’ve done terrible things,’” he said. “I said, ‘We’ve all done terrible things.’ And he wouldn't go any further on that.”

Sometimes survivors don’t want to move forward with an accountability process either, and fellow activists have to respect that, Chris said, even if others in the community would like to move forward. The priority is with the survivor's needs. And there are good reasons not to stick with a one-size-fits-all approach, BR explained. A survivor could be living with the perpetrator or share an employer and it’s important to be sensitive to their needs across these different circumstances.

In an accountability process, when survivors do move forward with the process and perpetrators won’t respond to the community's requests, Kark said they aren’t forced to leave but rather decide to leave because their friends won’t stop asking them to take steps to change. They gave one example.

“The process of being asked about that was so difficult for him that he voluntarily left and I think that happens a lot. Being accountable is a lot harder than being punished.”

When that a serial abuser leaves, however, they can go to another activism community where people don’t know what they did, which activists are concerned about. Johnson said this happens often and that they repeat the same behavior. They said they are working on developing a larger accountability communication network with other activists in DC to prevent this from happening.

Power differences

Still, that decision of how to respond -- whether or not to alert other communities, tell someone they can’t continue being in a space with the person they harmed so the survivor’s activism isn’t hindered, or welcome them back into certain spaces -- has to be weighed carefully.

Rodriguez said the specific harm by the perpetrator took, the risk of future harm, and the power differences on all sides need to be considered in crafting a response. Rodriguez noted an example where a young man of color was  shunned from a predominantly white space without being given the chance to understand what he did wrong, where a white man was allowed to stay indefinitely, despite displaying repeated harmful behavior and showing no interest in accountability.

“This kid seemed very disposable in a way that a white dude in the same circle was not,” she said. “I have seen white men consistently be really problematic and manipulative and people tolerate them. I definitely have seen abusive behavior. But they were tolerated because they had more access to power and people were more afraid to push them out as opposed to this kid who became completely disposable, even though he was trying to be accountable and didn’t seem like he posed a risk of causing future harm.”

Often, people with more access to power are allowed to get away with bad behavior unchecked, and Rodriguez explained that she has seen movement organizations give prominent leaders a pass at egregiously mishandling situations, because they don’t want to sever their ties with someone who is high profile.

Deerinwater said that when there is violence within any activist community, there is a concern that it will provide ammunition for the government.

“There is this feeling that women and whoever is being assaulted just need to shut up and take it out of fear it will hurt the movement. Not everyone feels that way. I personally don't. I feel like that has hurt our movement already,” Deerinwater said.

There are challenges, however, since activists will try to insist that the community can’t afford to lose their support. Akosua Johnson, an activist who has worked on accountability processes for the DC activist community, said there is a tendency for people to try to leverage their cause to discourage people from holding them accountable.

“They get agitated and angry and they get into a regression. I don't know if you’ve heard this before, but ‘If you're not nice to me, I’m not going to help your cause,’” they said.

Activism communities face many barriers to tackling power differences within networks when sexual violence and harassment occurs, ensuring that efforts to handle accountability processes and care for survivors are spread evenly, and that people are prepared to handle accountability thoughtfully. But by talking about consent in all contexts, not just sexuality, activists are fostering an entire culture of consent where sexual violence is less likely to thrive. By turning attention to the community as a whole when sexual assault happens, activists are less likely to pretend that you only need to get rid of one person to make a space safe for all activists. And when we don’t see violation of consent as something only monsters do, but as something everyone is capable of, it becomes something everyone must watch out for and prevent. Our justice system and other institutions often fail us because, by their very design, they aren’t supposed to accomplish these things.

“I want to live in a world where someone can hurt me and then they can apologize and actually take responsibility for their actions,” Kark said. “In order for us to be able to get to that world, we have a long way to go.”

Casey Quinlan is a policy reporter for ThinkProgress who writes about education, labor, and criminal justice issues. Her work has appeared publications such as Bustle, The Establishment, The Guardian, In These Times, Glamour, Autostraddle, Dame Magazine, and The Crime Report.

[demilillith]

Some extra about my OC’s so I’m on track with organization and such:

Demi:

Lives in an apartment with his best friend who pops in time to time to help him on, both are going through their own things, but don’t hesitate to help each other out. @beowulf-fang-fist​‘s OC Olliver happens to be this roommate/bestie!

Demi is interested in tattoos, but because he has never gotten one, he likes Henna a lot more since it’s temporary and allows him to change it if he doesn’t like the outcome

Has a scar from slashes he had when fighting off rouge demons, or, so he says...

Can become a werewolf if he so chose from spells he learned as well as wearing the pelt of the dead wolf that he had befriended. He claims that being one is like “being renewed and together in one furry package.”

While he’s a stripper, Demi’s demure attitude and more “professionalism” makes him very popular in the clubs: The “don’t speak, show” attitude he goes about things leaves most patrons to imagination of his real personality.

When Demi dances, he loses his ambitions and becomes a completely different person.

Demi wants to emulate Sailor moon and other characters he’s seen through finding manga that’s been tossed down into the Underground, but it’s mainly one off mangas / episodes on tapes that he sees that he models a lot of his actions to. You won’t notice though, his cheerfulness and positivity knows no bounds anyhow.

Demi does have a pure demon form, however, he doesn't have much control over it and doesn’t know how to bring it out aside from what’s called a “Trance” where his emotions push him over the edge and forces him to become a full incubus in order to “preserve himself”

If Demi wants to, he can mimic other demons and such through spells and contracts, for example: With ifrit, Demi’s horns become more similar to the beast of flame and he becomes much more beastial. With Parvati Demi is himself, but, the two wear matching outfits in order to perform a dance together OR the two ravage whomever is in front of them with two tridents or “trishulas” in Hindi. 

Demi has a knack for picking people out with his observations that come off both innocent though much more sharper, but he chalks it up to being a people person

He has a tramp stamp (TB-Drawn, I need ideas / inspirations but thinking of having a star / heart)

Blowjob Lips™

Works as a stripper, an on and off model / fitness shop clerk, and at times Ifrit’s personal assistant when need be. He has many jobs, but, he somehow finds a way to do it all without much thought.

Has the ability to Pictomance, meaning if he draws on himself, the henna will be able to be manipulated to bring out actual spells from it, as well as make magic through his own art. Demi’s more of a henna enthusiast though, but his art is something he holds to himself.

His tarot card is the Fool arcana Fimbulvetr:

Despite being a forest guardian, he looks at himself like a soldier who survived a war and is the only who one has come back. Most of his birth and his “future” frightens him and makes him to cling to affection believing that he won’t get that the next day.

His mastery over the spear is amazing but, Fimb is much more like a fencer the way he uses Gungnir. He wants to use a rapier one day, but thinks it’s best to use the tools he was given.

Despite being a great warrior / strong person in general, Fimb suffers still from bad self esteem that makes him push himself harder to be the best: When he doesn’t realize he’s fine the way he is, demon infested or not.

Nordic names / old English comes second nature to him, though he’s still learning to read “modern” languages, Fimb has a distinct knack for being able to read runes and see them appear in places near nonsensical without much knowledge as to why.

Likes having his hair brushed, but always is conscious about his hair length, if it’s too long, maybe he should cut it...

While Fimb gives nicknames to everyone he meets, they are very few who are called by name in his book: Be wary, there’s a REASON he does so, whether he doesn’t like them or because he shows them true respect (In which he will always refer to them as “Sir” or “Ma’am”.)

Once thought Demi was some outlandish prince so had to break out of the habit of calling him “Milord”

While he loves that Demi reads him stories and tomes he has, Fimb’s favorite story is the “wizard of oz” because he personally sees himself as the Scarecrow of the story.

Oddly despite being so young in terms of chronological years, Fimb has an amazing span of memory / understanding of history and myths as it stands, so much so Demi and him have debates on the purpose of the Aesir and the fall of Babylon.

Can whisper and talk to the trees by placing his hand on them, when hunting this becomes a valuable asset as he can track others through the “trees’ eyes”

Gungnir can pierce and expel demons / heal if Fimb chooses, however, Gungnir is rumored to have it’s own conscience that Fimb can speak to, and Fimb alone.

As his hat is also “alive” due to being possessed by a demon that came out of Fimb’s eyepatch when he made the mistake of opening it, it has stuck with him since despite badmouthing that he will “leave and cause chaos” because it knows that if he tries to, Fimb can easily destroy him. He now takes the form of a sense of a “guide” to Fimb similar to how Morgana from P5 follows the protagonist and makes their own assumptions or observations.

His arcana is considered the Hierophant

Parvati:

While she’s a powerful goddess and mother in her own right, Parvati suffers from the worry that she’s not “needed” in the world and she’ll fade away like “the other pantheons” because while she is inherent as “Shakti” (Female energy of the universe that manifests in creation and other aspects in life alongside the male counterpart as Bhraman), Parvati as an identity can “fade” if people do not believe in her, just like other “gods”. Belief is power, and without it, she has none.

Parvati comes across similar to Saeko / Ms. Smith from Persona 1 as well as Aradia from Nocturne: Without her power, Parvati is without any way to protect or help others, she can only provide hope. However, it is this hope that may actually spur others to action, and Parvati looks at this as her special skill. A mother may know best, but a friend can be the difference between a war and peace.

Wistfully thinks of her husband Shiva, and won’t say where he “is”. It’s assumed that because Demi has Parvati “connected to him” and has lost all of his memories, Parvati’s left with a fragmented space to be in since her contract stipulates that she will always be with him, but is meant to be with her husband as well. As Demi doesn’t know Shiva, she cannot return to him. This is one of the reasons she plots to steer Demi to “becoming himself again” in order to go back to what things were before

She has danced / taught Demi holy dances in order to better protect himself as well as shown him how to summon demons in the form of allowing her to call her via a dance or by burning seals. Demi is able to calm beasts and other creatures through his dances, but depending on the dance, also changes the outcome of the dance he performs: I.E: A simple routine can bring forth fire or even heal, but an actual routine can cleanse and expel demons. This process takes a lot out of Demi depending on the intensity but he’s been known to go into what’s called a “Trance” and immediately shift into an actual demon and perform a dance that can completely demolish things in his way. (Parvati herself is able to do this, though depending on her emotions / intensity she can become Durga or Kali like in the legends of her backstory. Kali being a terrifying goddess who wears the skulls of her enemies as a garland and a skirt of arms while Durga is the embodiment of Parvati’s righteous anger. Both are extremely powerful but she loses all thought as Kali)

Ideally she tries to help Demi with his boy problems, but, she’s more so the type of parent who asks, “So, do you think he’ll make a good husband? I want you happy!” But she means well, she also makes sure to ask Demi for his boundaries now that he’s far more vulnerable than how he was before.

She’s VERY much like Starfire from Teen Titans, the Hindu traditions she participates in is something she takes very seriously, however sometimes the practices seems very outlandish to Demi as... Well... A boy’s gotta eat meat to get the beef and Parvati is known to fast the most out of all the deities because she is a goddess of the family, marriage, and orphans. The fasting is meant to bring forth good fortune, and tries to put this on Demi who she sees as her son, but we all know Demi’s habit of having meat everywhere.

Her Arcana is considered the High Priestess Persephone:

Her “appearance” is never the same, and I look at her like Rupaul / a drag queen who consistently pulls off so many looks that you simply cannot leave her in one specific portrait or outfit.

Because she is a trans woman, her development is more so towards “This is who I am, and I love every minute of it.” and she’s meant to invoke that in her walks, her way of dress, her attitude and her ideals

She is professional with Demi, as he’s her best dancer, but, she sometimes overworks him under the basis of his “work” of weeding out rogue demons and saving humans in the Underground is work for the benefit of the entire District.

Persephone is the queen of the underworld in that Hades is her husband and while this IS true, and she doesn’t deny or agree that she IS the real Persephone; She has gemstones upon gemstones that demons under her power wear them on their person. Demi wears an opal choker to “bring out” his true form, which Persephone knows would transform him into a demon, but WHAT demon, she didn’t know.

“Good and evil are concepts in the way that men whose hearts are not strong enough must argue. We all know what is good and evil in our hearts, and those change over time and in our ideals. Think about who you are, as a person, before attempting to label others.”

Despite being someone so reserved and so... “Mysterious”, Persephone is meant to drag on the question of “Who is the person you want to portray yourself as?” And I think her character is the best way to do so, the way she interferes with Demon’s ploys but all for the sake of the District, she may come across as unfeeling or rather more uptight, but she knows well and means well after living so long

Hades stole her away when she was being abused by her father and allowed her to “be herself” in the Underground. She doesn’t talk about the events, but, Hades wears white gloves in order to respect her boundaries on touching and reclines as her “shadow.” Hades himself is more akin to her “servant” and has passed on leadership of the District to her in his stead many years ago.

Her favorite accessories are long nails and she enjoys spas/manicures and other beautification past times

She personally oversees her club and makes sure her workers are well cared for as well as given a chance to use their talents to the fullest (I.E, her way of saying “Do what you like, but the minute you hoe it up it better be away from my club.”)

Her club is named La Pomme de Grenade, bonus points if you learn the translation, but, she’s very big on the club itself, sometimes singing blues while Hades plays the piano. Her songs have stricken the hearts of demons and beasts, leaving them weeping as she belts out a tune that sings to the soul.

Her arcana is the Empress

Ifrit:

He has taken up residence in a penthouse that Demi frequently visits to maintain their “contract”

It’s rumored that when he was once a warrior, a certain summoner he knew died due to his carelessness as a beast. It’s unknown why, but he feels a familiarity towards Demi and unfortunately, places this same overprotectiveness on him to make up for the mistake he had long ago.

He doesn’t know how to deal with the loss he had had, and so attempts to use Demi to fill the guilt in him, if he protects and serves Demi, then he is fixing the mistake he had.

Tries very hard to change/control the environment he is in, but doesn't realize this may hurt others, and I want this to be a big dynamic with Demi, while Demi is his summoner / he’s his sugar daddy, Ifrit tries much too hard to make things “better” for Demi and his own demons under him. This gets him much respect from the denizens working under him, as well as fear from his enemies as a pseudo mafia boss. 

He enjoys the idea of being a “King” and if you were to call him “My liege” or “Sir” you get +3 affection / kink

+3 affection / kink if you have the balls to try and be dominant with him.

Money and business are now his game, and when it comes down to it, he will show up to facilitate deals. If such is the case, broken knees and body parts are common, as he sees it as a way to train.

Ifrit is a complex character that brings out the sexualized aspect of Demi, in terms of being his sugar daddy and part of his demonic contract is that Demi is to give him affection / intimacy / attention and Ifrit will grant him power, money, and well, whatever he’d like to eat afterwards.

Thiddies out™ was a look made by him.

Someone really asked to see Ifrit break their head / melon with his thighs and canonically now Ifrit can do that, his kink though is displaying strength so you’re only making him stronger y’all

“Nuh-uh, I don’t have a death wish.” “But you can handle it! Yes it’s much bigger than--” “I’m not ready to die today Ifrit.” “What if I sit--” “You’re trying to kill me, I don’t even have life insurance.”

If you ever need to know about what Ifrit wears to his “private” gym, know that it’s one of those 80′s shorts that gives you the perfect shot of that fire elemental ass and boots. He likes the idea of being “prepared” to fight with little to wear just like when he squares up when summoned.

Once nearly spent a fortune to buy a vintage Digigar game to play on console. Demi had to hear what Digigar evolutions many digigars had for an entire month.

When he first met Demi, he whispered huskily in his ear for a private dance and after taking him home, Demi found himself treated out to breakfast in bed by servants at hand and foot. It was this event that spurred Ifrit to create a contract when he realized how much Demi “needed to be cared for”. (In reality, Demi isn’t used to such treatment, so when he comes to ifrit thanking him repeatedly, it simply makes Ifrit’s ego bolster into the idea that he’s taking care of him.)

“Call me... Daddy, my little prince.” “Is that all? I thought you were gonna tell me not to call you Big Guy.”

Wants Demi to be exclusive with him, but, in terms of having a job with him and him alone: He can’t, however, because of Persephone having right over him as Demi’s “boss”.

Grab his horns and suddenly you’ll have a more intoxicated and energized Ifrit on your hands. He’s truly the ride or die of your life if you try him.

When ifrit is summoned, his clothes are burned off and his beard grows on fire. The design is similar to the retro final fantasy Ifrit, but rather, Ifrit’s taste in clothing still has him in very skimpy outfits to retain SOME modesty rather than none.

Grappler Dad™

“Come at me, with your full strength if you dare!” “It was funny the last 7 times but now you need to turn yourself around so I can come.” “Oh...” “..Fine. FIE, MILORD, I AM READY TO BE TESTED.” 

He’s a soft man please don’t hurt him he already has to worry about his summoner being a stripper / witch like he doesn’t need more issues at this point lmfao

The type to softly rub his thumb over your mouth and call you beautiful as he probably raws the fuck out of you like this is how I Stan my man.

He has tired eyes from so many things he had to do and witness, but the minute his eyes go sharp, your life is going to be obliterated.

Has bought Demi things to wear, but, gets flustered at the idea of wearing similar things in his own right.

Was once given the opportunity to strip in the club for once, but the idea was simply Persephone musing out of jest with “an old friend”

Likes to trace Demi’s henna with his fingers

He’s very dominating, liking to be hands on and very very husky in his words and word choice

While he’s a goofball and soft, he’s still very much a sharp and disciplined individual who simply wants to be validated for doing his best and give love to people to make up for the love he feels he didn’t deserve.

Scruff his beard and he groWS STRONGER HEED THE WARNING SHEEPLE.

His arcana is the Emperor

Venus:

She doesn’t like sweets, but does love ice cream and will try her best to eat some everyday (”I eat ice cream whenever I feel like I wanna treat myself!” “You eat it everyday” *Eats ice cream gawking at the person*)

Based off a cousin who was mocked for her weight, Venus is the epitome of beauty and show business, and is currently on the DL to making her comeback

Demi inspired her to comeback after living in a life of boredom and excess believing that the business stole her creativity and she personally covers for him like a mother hen, though, he’s still pretty star struck his favorite celebrity speaks to him so casually

She doesn’t openly display “magic” rather, her songs and singing are the key to her siren like call. She’s still pretty upset about how music has “changed” so far and wishes the new idols would get some sensibility in their songs and dances.

The “Birth of Venus” was her greatest song and a ballad for the lost woman above ground who somehow made her way to the place where the demons cherished her when the humans reviled her.

When waking up in the morning, she looks in the mirror and struts for good luck.

Thinks of having a talk show to spill the tea and the gossip on the regular... but, can’t help but feel most of the celebrities are fake people with nothing interesting about them besides sex appeal in Eros.

Can incite others with passionate speeches about love and life

“Baby baby don’t you cry, tomorrow’s gonna be a better day...”

She’s best described as someone who KNOWS she was fake before, in her smile, in her actions, and she’s now renewed to find purpose and meaning in her life, through Demi’s interaction with her while incognito

She was forced to choose a lifestyle / major in highschool she didn’t like, and then was going to be forced into a marriage with a man who did not love her that ended up causing her to stumble into the Underground with a mysterious train ride.

She’s probably one of the few humans to ever survive being in the underground without fading away and turning into a wisp of a soul to be eaten by demons; at this point she doesn’t think she’s still human, but now she’s Venus, once more reborn

Likes to lay in bed thinking about what to do tomorrow, but can’t help but want to just stay in retirement and relax as much as she liked

You couldn't go past a newsstand without seeing Venus’ beach catalog with her pictures on the front cover

Entire District is here for her performance

“BODY LIKE WOW, PUSSY ABOUT TO END THIS DROUGHT.”

“Newsflash, asshat, I’ve never liked fat phobia, I love my body big or small.”

Has squared up with Ifrit despite knowing he’s Demi’s sugar daddy, the two have a... “special” relationship in that they would never work together unless the situation calls for it. An intense situation.  Venus straight up would square up with Ifrit on a random whim like people don’t realize beyond the public eye they’re not on the best terms. The reason being Ifrit doesn’t take her seriously and 

Her special “magical skill” is called Love Handles, a song that refreshes and reminds people they’ll be alright in the end, even after the worst things happened.

“Don’t just trust someone else because they were in power, we can learn things and do things without the need of others handing it to us! Fight! Strive for the things you worked so hard for in life and take it!”

She advises people on love and other areas of life with her social media pages and blogs!

If you know media, you know Venus, no excuses.

EDNA MODE IS HER GREATEST INVENTION

Her arcana is Temperance

[lestvt]

me: people need to stop over-analyzing every single detail of [insert title here]

also me: *spends 2 hours writing a 1.5k essay on why i hate when people compare Light Yagami to Lelouch from Code Geass*

Light vs. Lelouch

As someone who thrives on over-analyzing the shit out of tiny details in media, I consider myself to be pretty well versed in the ways of character study. And as much as I am an anime-loving time-waster, I’m also an extremely opinionated anime-loving time-waster. So, as an extremely opinionated anime-loving, time-wasting, story-consumer/teller, I really must stress that I absolutely despise the commonplace comparison between Light Yagami of Death Note and Lelouch vi Britannia of Code Geass. Since you now know that I’m a nerd, I can also tell you two more facts about me: 1. Code Geass has been my favorite anime since I was 13, and I have rewatched it in full about 5 times. And 2. Death Note was one my other favorites… until it became mainstream and the movies started happening and I was completely repulsed by how edgy everyone thought they were for enjoying it… and then 7 years later (like a few weeks ago) I rewatched it and remembered that I really adore Light’s characterization.

Although, I really can’t say I blame people for comparing Light to Lelouch. They are, in essence, very similar characters. Both of their stories are based around the question of whether or not the ends justify the means. They both do some morally questionable things, AKA killing people. They both have a counterpart who disagrees with their methods and actively opposes them. And, most importantly, they both laugh like fucking lunatics on several occasions. I’m not arguing with any of that, in fact I’d readily agree if you were to say “they are more alike than they are different.”

Here’s the thing though, Light Yagami is a narcissistic, sociopath who would kill his own sister to achieve his goals and Lelouch vi Britannia/Lamperouge IS LITERALLY THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF THAT. Though their actions may be similarly questionable, the key different between Light and Lelouch is the context of those actions. And, believe me, context matters.  

I’m going to start by talking about Light, because overall his reasoning is simpler than Lelouch’s. Light is a jaded, egotistical pessimist who got fucking seduced by a book that exists solely for murdering people. Let me just say, I love Light; he is one of my favorite anime characters of all time. But if you know anything about me as a person (*waves at my friends*), then you know this means he’s a Terrible Person™. (Disclaimer: Lelouch is not my favorite character from Code Geass [Suzaku is, but that’s a horror story of moral perplexities for another day]).

I think a lot of people like to romanticize this idea of Light being a good person who was saddled with the curse of the Death Note, but that’s simply not true. Even before finding the Death Note, Light was bored and disgusted with life. He was literally the top student in Japan, junior tennis champ –the sport he quit after becoming the best at – and a straight up liar. I mean, no wonder he thought he was better than everyone, in a way he was. I wrote a whole character study on Light a while back that I never posted. In it I talked about why I think the Death Note didn’t make him evil, so much as it allowed him the chance to try to be.

Of course, we know that Light justified his actions by killing only criminals at first, but we also know that he eventually purposefully murdered a number of innocent people who threatened his capture (L, Raye Penber, Naomi Misora, etc.). We also know he killed someone who was literally on his side (Kiyomi Takada), and that he considered killing his sister to keep possession of the Death Note. And we know he then strategically planned to have a breakdown during his father’s last moments alive so he could get him to write Mello’s real name in the Death Note. Yeah, that’s right. He didn’t actually have a breakdown over his father’s death. He pretended to so he could kill somebody trying to oppose him (which didn’t work by the way). I feel like anyone who argues that Light was in the right must’ve stopped watching after L died, because I don’t know how you can think his intentions are honestly pure while knowing these things.

Okay, here’s my totally real breakdown of things; Light is a sociopath who doesn’t want a better world so much as to be worshiped as a God. He does not care about the lives of his family members as much his own, if at all, and literally does not care about anyone else in the slightest. He justifies his actions by saying it’s for the betterment of the world, and he avoids guilt by adopting a God-complex that plays on his already inflated ego, something he’s only able to do because of the “power” of the Death Note. He’s been lying constantly throughout his life, pretending to be the perfect son, student, citizen, and overall person – always polite to your face even though he thinks he’s better than you. He’s the type of guy to compliment you to your face while mentally insulting you in his head.  So basically, Light Yagami is NOT a good guy. He’s a childish genius who tricked himself into believing his own lies. He pretended to be the perfect person so well for so long, that now even he thinks it’s true.      

Lelouch isn’t like that. Lelouch would never allow the people he cares about to die without putting up a fight, even if it means his own downfall. He proves this multiple times. He may have caused the deaths of innocent people, but you must also keep in mind that Lelouch was fighting a war for the independence of a country. Death in war is expected, we all know this. The only lives that were lost by Lelouch’s hand that weren’t soldiers’ (or just overall bad people’s) lives were accidental.

Like Light, Lelouch is an effortless genius and aware of it, but unlike Light, he does not think he is without fault because of this. Also unlike Light, Lelouch cares about people other than himself. Take their family relationships for example. Light has a younger sister, Sayu. As previously mentioned, he considers killing her to keep the Death Note, as she is being held hostage in exchange for it. By comparison, Lelouch’s younger sister, Nunnally, is his sole purpose for living. She is the reason he wants to make the world a kinder place. And he doesn’t want to do this by enforcing a moral code on everyone like Light. He wants to take down an oppressive monarchy led by his own father. Lelouch would – and does – throw all caution to the wind to protect his little sister, often putting himself at risk. Nunnally isn’t the only one Lelouch risks himself for either. He does so for Suzaku, his best friend, as well. What’s more, he does this even though Suzaku is the one actively opposing him and his greatest threat. However, unlike Light, Lelouch’s biggest concern isn’t his “cause,” it’s the people he’s fighting for. He wants Nunnally, Suzaku, and all his other friends to live in a kinder world. And he’s willing to sacrifice himself to achieve that.

That’s another key different between Light and Lelouch though. Lelouch knows that some of the things he has done are inexcusable, but he prioritizes the betterment of the world over himself. Not to give out spoilers for a show that ended a decade ago or anything, but Lelouch plans his own death specifically for that reason. He has no intention of asking for forgiveness for what he’s done or trying to justify it. He’s happy to die a villain if it means the world is a kinder place. Meanwhile, Light’s cause ends with him. Sure, there was a cult following left behind for Kira. But Light’s plans failed with his death, because, as he said himself, he planned to rule over his “utopia” for a long time. Maybe initially he cared about the betterment of the world, but eventually that ideal was lost in the fog of his fucking God-complex. He was more like a cult leader than a God though. There’s no doubt in my mind he’d eventually kill people just for questioning or speaking out against Kira. After all, he’s perfect and good, and therefore anyone who opposes him is evil apparently. He didn’t make the world better, he scared the bad people into hiding. And once the threat of Kira was gone for good, there’s no doubt in my mind they all came out again anyway.  

The comparison between Lelouch and Light is kind of laughable with this in mind. They may both be the morally questionable protagonists of shows that came out around the same time (though the Death Note manga is older than Code Geass). However, while Light is just a plain piece of shit person with an extremely fucking inflated ego – a true villain really – Lelouch is more of an anti-hero. Though both have done terrible things and caused many people’s deaths, it’s important to consider the context of their actions. And stop saying they’re the fucking same. Please.        

[void-tiger]

Writer Nonnie and I feel I need to say this. I wanna write the Queen of Hearts as this deeply troubled individual lashing out but has occasions of being awareness. The Bojack scene where his mom recognizes him comes to mind specifically. But I'm hesitant because the fucking second the Queen is shown acting like this I'd be burned at the stake for some bullshit. Not from men, but from this site specifically. One second "YAASS QUEEN SLAY" the next "sexist stereotype". I wanna self indulge.

...so, this is just my opinion, so feel free to take this with a grain (or mound) of salt if you disagree.

The reality is, whether it’s fair or not, is that writing female antagonists is walking a tightrope. If she’s Brutal, she’s criticized much harsher than a male counterpart with the same core personality and methods. More manipulative female characters risk becoming “seductive temptresses”.

This isn’t to say you can’t have a female antagonist or villain. But that the backlash is often there because for literally milennia women were either Ugly Wicked Witches or Evil Tempresses or Damseled Crystal Madonnas.

Generally a way around this that seems to work is to have More Female Characters. If one queen’s evil, have a just queen as a foil. Honestly why Tim Burton’s White Queen in his Alice Films just didn’t bother me as much. (Then in the second film we got backstory on both of them, and hints about the White Queen also being a bit of a brat (or at least Favored) when the girls were young in the first film.) It was a genius move and gave Red Queen more fascets to her character. They’re both at a similar power dynamic (so it negates That Bitch associated with Red Queen simply for being a female in a position of power and leadership. She’s simply Nasty and loves being Nasty and does some pretty horrific things from her position.)

We all loved Haggar (and Bellatrix) as characters because they Loved To Be Bad. (And personally I was waiting for a Final Showdown between Allura amd Haggar.) Hell, we even liked Honerva in s3 where she’s unapologetically pushing her research forward regardless of ethics. She was already becoming a mad scientist in her backstory well before she was Quintessence Zombie Haggar. But where VeeLaDee crashed and burned was that EVERY female in power was either Evil TM or Demoted as part of their redeption (and in Allura’s case...just demoted and killed off, and told a counterpart from another reality became an Evil Queen). So...just having More Female Characters/Female Leaders just doesn’t always cut it. There’s still that trope of That Bitch (and having that thrown up whenever a female tries advancing in her career or run for any sort of political office or leadership position—by both men and women. Worse if she does screw up or does turn out to be Not Nice. (Seriously. The commentary is so much worse when the person in question is a woman vs a man.)

-

As for the wardrobe?

Plunging Necklines and Dropped Backs and hell even Strappless or One Shoulder or Off Shoulder are freaking inconvenient. Breasts just aren’t perky and look “dumpy” without support, especially the larger the breast. And these garnments just aren’t Bra Friendly (or, say, corset friendly sometimes.) Especially Dropped Back and Necklines that plunge betweem the breasts and lower. The less fabric there is, the less solutions there are for The Breasts Problem (including built-in cups...which honestly just do not do much more than keep nipples from poking through the fabric, and are only ever sized at a B or C cup. Sucks to be smaller or larger than that...) Also...breasts sweat. Having sweatstains ain’t flattering, and they show up more when there isn’t a “barrier” between the breasts and actual garnment. It ain’t pretty and sometimes smells like Funk. (And depending on climate and size...yeah good luck. You’re just gonna Sweat no matter what you do (and wearing dark colors to “hide it” is only gonna make you sweat even more and risk getting dehydrated or overheated. Not fun.)

BUT, she’s a Queen in a Magical Land. She has the affluence to toss at the tailor to have things custom made to her specific measurements (and, hell. Even have Breasts Defying Gravity And Being Pretty Shapes enchantments and potions). And many women do like flaunting their bodies.

Hell. She’d even have the luxury of something for the Boob Sweat.

The rub is... Male Gaze, and Evil Seductress tropes.

(Which is where you’ll have a female audience rolling their eyes: “that ain’t realistic...even for a fantasy setting” and “oh great. The only sexily dressed female is Evil.” (And the risk of Good Adult Women Dressed Sexy: “yay. Women only sexy. Greeeaaaat...”)

So... adult female background characters from different social-economic backgrounds in varied dress. It then implies it’s the Character’s Choice vs just a fetish.

But in general...I personally roll my eyes more at Metal Bikinis&Corsets (and fitted to their boobs vs ribcages) while...men have full armor. Liiiike, if it’s gonna have Sculpted Boobs then the men better have Metal Abs??

(Or, if she’s having her midriff exposed, then that better fit like a sports bra vs a Too Small Bra she’s literally falling out of. And her male counterpart better be barechested or in a croptop, too xD)

-

TL;DR

“Fair or Not”, these things unfortunately have IRL Baggage and Sexist Tropes attached to them. It’s not that you can’t play with them, but Tread Carefully in that you’re also finding ways to subvert those tropes.

Also accept that you’re still going to upset someone no matter how much effort you put into it, and it may or may not have anything to do with “purity culture” (but if they type up hateful comments, they’re being maladaptive. Especially over a fanfic.)

[mikunology]

Headcanon Ramble: Superhero Elements in Vocal Android

I had to make a post about this sooner or later, right?

As everyone probably knows unless you’re new, a major part of the Vocal Android fanverse is the fact that the characters are actually part-time superheroes along with being singers. I’ve talked some about it in the past but I thought I might as well be more descriptive here, especially since I’ve had some new ideas on where this part of the story goes and how the characters feel about it.

Info under the cut! This is VERY long because I get carried away.

To expand on a post I made around last week, the funny thing about the group becoming superheroes is that Miku, Rin, Len and later Luka have wildly different views on the responsibility.

See, while they were officially declared heroes in Sapporo for their saving the city from being destroyed by Rin’s berserk road roller, they expected it to be a one-time thing. It was just something that happened--it was certainly bizarre that it did happen, as that chip that they found causing the problem was not placed in there by any of them, but it wasn’t such a big mystery that they felt the need to follow up on it. I mean, whatever, right? The day was saved, Rin’s road roller was brought back to normal, they got some nice rewards for helping the town. All’s well that ends well, right?

But then...more haywire machines started to show up. Even more mysteriously, all courtesy of the same kind of microchip that was in Rin’s road roller.

And of course, this comes into play when Miku and friends first start going to high school.

Like mentioned in the said previous post I made, Miku honestly did NOT want to be a superhero. She’s a fun-loving girl, and she loves adventure, but she honestly was quite content with “adventure” only extending to “going on quirky trips across the globe singing with her best pals”. Not “having to save the world every week from murderous out-of-control robots while also having to figure out the cause of said murderous robots”. I mean, doesn’t she have enough on her plate? As she continuously suggested, why not get the actual authorities to do something instead of asking her? Especially since fighting isn’t something she particularly enjoys doing, nor is it even her forte?

Well, a couple of reasons. Due to already having the mark of saving the city from giant robot threats, everyone naturally expected Miku to help out again, and she crumbles under peer pressure. Two, she does have superpowers, all things considered--that alone makes her much more qualified to destroy rogues than any human. And also, she’s a robot herself, so she should know everything about shutting down other ones!

Naturally, Miku disagrees with all of the above. But, albeit very, very clumsily, she manages to save her school, and soon, the occurrences become more common, meaning Miku and the team finds themselves frequently saving Sapporo from threat after threat. And they slowly but surely gain footing while doing so; with Gumi’s scientific knowledge supplementing Meiko and Kaito’s, Gakupo’s backup, and Luka’s later addition to the squad, they begin to get pretty good at this hero thing. What’s more, they end up encountering more than a few rogue machines--Zatsune and Kageito show up, Tei and Mayu show up, it gets crazy pretty quick.

And soon, it gets even crazier: while fighting off evil clones and counterparts while shooing off minor antagonists such as Neru or Ling, the team gets noticed by bigger people: more specifically, the secret agency YAMAHA. Being recruited as agents additionally puts them in the midst of more serious crime scenarios, such as the dark mysteries of the Honne and Macne Corporations, and the group gets busy as the new Cyber Detective Brigade. But as they get stronger and more well-known, their battles extend from corrupt executives and killer robots to the plain supernatural, such as a certain hostile alien race...but I should probably stop there.

As for how the others feel about all this?

Well, Len mostly sides with Miku on this one (at least before she grows into the role) although for different reasons. Len thinks the idea of being a fighter very cool to think about, but very dangerous in actual practice, and therefore objects mostly due to that. In other words, he’s most concerned about his sister and the others getting hurt or reckless, rather than because he objects to the actual job. This belief of his does become somewhat of a grounding force, though, Len always was the truly practical one.

Rin, on the other hand, is the complete opposite of Miku--she jumped at the call. She loves being a superhero, and is quite vocal about it. Rin usually is the one rushing out the door to go save the day when the group is called upon, and gets the utmost thrill out of beating bad guys and going on hyper scifi adventures. As you can guess, she very much tends to ignore that great power comes great responsibility. Although as time goes on, she slowly stops thinking of the job as an opportunity to be cool and powerful and more as a chance to help the city, and she calms down a little as a result.

Luka? Luka is strictly the neutral of the neutral--as long as she’s being helpful somehow to her fans and to her creators, she’s all for the crazy adventuring and mystery. Although, she partly shares Len’s view on the job being dangerous, but instead of advising against the job she simply takes it upon herself to be the team’s source of protection. Gotta keep those crazy kids safe.

And Meiko and Kaito? Well, they definitely are proud of the kids for their trying to help, but believe me, they worry. They worry a lot. After all, they feel like parents to the other four--it’s only natural for them to want them to be safe. So that in mind, Meiko and Kaito are often just as involved in the adventure as everyone else; they usually provide backup and support, or stay as mission control, so to speak. Meiko in particular gets caught up in the action a lot, and while Kaito prefers to stay behind in the sidelines, he grows to become a lot more eager to join the battle.

Now, all of this said? This is still the relative B-plot to Vocal Android, as it’s still a silly comedy alongside as a scifi-fantasy. But sometimes this B-plot will switch to an A-plot, so I wanted to be a bit clearer on my plans for this.

Anyway, I rambled for a long time, didn’t I? Sorry. I get excited. Once again, will probably elaborate further as we go along. 

[kendrixtermina]

Baby Reacts To “Wonderwoman”

There’s a lot about this movie that has been said  - 

already mostly about the lack of male gaze lens both in character designs (in which “hot/pretty/idealized” is just another factor ingredient alongside cool, funny, consistent, epic, wise etc and scenes were just let be without infusing Stock Femenine Roles into everything. We saw people’s wrinkles and thigh fat when it made sense for it to be there. A mentor looks weathered and experienced, for experienced.  ) and in simply being a superhero movie that was everything a superhero movie should be (cool fight scenes! aesthetics! brief meditations on the point of fighting evil) rather than the “chick superhero”

There’s one point where I did not see what the common critics’s perception seems to be that hail this as the ultimate reconstruction of the idealistic superhero movie and go on aboout how “kind and pure” this version of the character was like she was a genderflipped classic superman but done right which is perhaps what Comic!Diana is when done right. 

in my eyes she was a “fierce proud opinionated supernatural lady”, except they managed to do that without making her arrogant or over the top hostile/aggressive. (as if to “prove” while still not taking her power and violence seriously... because if I man did it he would seem unhinged and it would be adressed as such, because it is actual agression, not a trope or gimmick.) - instead she was simply outspoken and heroic as a simple admirable quality and when it could spill into seeing things too simple or butting in it was aknowledged. She was simply the sort of person who’d be a hero. 

By which I mean, the above perception seems to miss the crux:

You know this thing that exemplifies very bad derivative works? The one where they just take the windowdressing & names without understanding the essence what made the original liked and force characters full of unique potential into trite generic plots?

Think Metriod Other M, which aimed to fill out a Silent Player Character but instead of logically considering what an armored, genetically engineered space bounty hunter would probably be like and what would appeal to fans of such a game, tried to shoehorn a  “mentor figure loyalty conflict” and “facing your fears” plot that wasn’t even done well when they had a character who was raised by aliens away from humanity, had a She Who Fights Monsters dynamic going on and by all accounts regulariry kicks space pirate ass on solitary space voyages. 

Or the star trek reboot that was more action than conceptual sci fi and gave us a generic rebel teen playboy MC when they could have had James Tiberius Kirk instead, a complex character whose psyche was frequently analyzed to bits in the original series. 

Well, this movie was the exact opposite of that. 

They understood the essence of why people like an “amazon super hero” without needing a preachy angry gimmick -  the simple idea of a fierce yet elegant,  warrior tribe a la Elves, and in its modern positive spin the fantasy of a society where sexist socialization doesn’t exist and wouldn’t stunt people. All of that was very much in the movie free of its common misunderstandings & oversimplifications.

Even more, You can tell the makers thought long and hard about who this character specifically is what that means and how it would impact everything, and what her PoV would be, and that was present and expressed in every single scene.

They looked at her backstory and character traits and had a clear concept of what makes her herserlf and what makes her a hero, and built the whole movie around that - including the narrative cast and villain. 

She’s an outsider from an in some ways more idyllic alien society who fights because she wants to help and feels evil must be opposed. In every scene they think about how she would think and act based on this, how her reactions and priorities would be, wether that is to be curious, fascinated, oblivious or to speak out unhesitatingly where others would be conditioned to see barriers or intimidation. 

She always acts like it would make sense for her to act given her background and motivation, with the eras attitudes or the local’s reactions as simply a backdrop that invited drawing your own conclusions. Nothing is being sold here, but at the same time the authors thought of all the ways her specific backstory and motivations would impact her actions - that which we call “exploring a character’s potential”.

Her outsider’s PoV lets her see the world as something new and intriguing, and allow allows her to see the world’s flaws as something that doesn’t have to be or be taken for granted - if something is wrong, why allow it? She cannot accept it as a simple fact of life. At the same time that same nature makes her all the more repulsed and affected by the bad things she sees - if it doesn’t have to happen then why does it?

The very setting plays into it by first presenting the usual heroic WWI narrative typical to USA movies like it’s merely a boringer prequel of the second when it was really modernity’s original clusterfuck cause of all chain reactions that was somehow simultaneously an inevitable result of long boiling tensions and toxic 19th century ideals of superiority,  and spectacular short-term confluences of bad luck and ineptitude that could have been easily averted 20 times over, resulting in aristocratic dipshits going at each other with technology they didn’t understand until they’d burnt up their whole countries like small children given knives and matches. 

And then not only showing the untold unprecedented crapsack devastation that made it unlike the premodern wars of old but fleshing out the setting and a fuller picture including traumaized folks and a reminder that the britain at the time was itself a nasty superior colonial power etc.a cast that ha Done and Seen some shit everything leading up to the villain reveal (whom the actor carried out superbly) and surprisingly deep point that there isn’t always a clear root of all evil that can be torn out because humans are flawed. 

But they havethe potential for good, too and because that is worth preserving, so constructive efforts beat keeping exact tallies, that it’s not a question of deserving or impeccable purity but of working toward what should be because it’s worthwile.

And though this version’s Ares has very little to do with his original greek counterparts the authors get that a god is not just a character but an embodyment and an archetype - He IS jaded cynism about humans destroying each other and against that stands the archetype of the hero who tries to do what they can. 

[daughterofthechaos]

The Blue Fairy vs. The Black Fairy

It’s very interesting that the sword that can kill Emma and was already shown to also be capable of killing Evil Doppelgangers was forged by the Blue Fairy, isn’t it? So this got me thinking… If the Black Fairy really is her other half, then it is possible that the Blue Fairy created the sword with the purpose to vanquish her evil self once and for all? But obviously something happened and she failed miserably at doing so?

(Emma’s face here never ceases to amaze me XD What a worried wife).

That being said, I’m not a big fan of the Blue Fairy and her hideous dress. I never trusted her and I’m always in the waiting for her to reveal herself as the big villain of the story. I still believe she manipulated Rumple into thinking the only possible way to travel to the world without magic was casting the Dark Curse. 

I mean, she was being deliberately obtuse in that conversation. She’s the one to plant the seed in his head and in the second season it was confirmed that you could still find magical beans, they were just really rare (you can’t say to me that a bunch of pirates got their hands… or hooks on a magical bean and a FAIRY didn’t have access to more. No, I don’t buy it). We are always led to believe Rumplestiltskin is/was the master manipulator behind everything, but for me, the Blue Fairy was always the one actually pulling everyone’s strings. She’s weirdly connected with all the important events that caused the curse (I’m pretty sure there’s a theory somewhere talking about this specific shadiness of the Blue Fairy).

OK, but what she possibly would win with all this? Why would she want the curse to be cast?

Let’s go back in time a little (a lot) and give our imagination a pair of wings, shall we? So take a seat, drink some water because it’s story time!

Once Upon a Time (HA, see what I did there? Not funny? Okay…), the fairies had a kingdom of their own and the only way to provide to this kingdom, to keep it alive, was through the humans’ belief in the fairies. The more they helped people, the more their kingdom would grow. However, the fairies were extremely biased with whom they choose to help and more than once they would ignore someone really in need, a desperate soul if you may, just because they didn’t meet their criteria of good or were already stained with the first drops of darkness.

Someday, a fairy tried to defy the system, maybe save one of those souls to show the other ones that redemption was possible and such things as absolute evil and absolute goodness didn’t exist. Obviously, the fairies’ council was not pleased with her rebellion. How could one of them dare to think like that!? Perhaps, the fairies were spending too much time in the human world if they were beginning to think like them. So it was decided to reduce their participation in humans’ affairs, just a fairy godmother to a family here, a fairy godmother to another family there. No more, no less. 

The problem wasn’t completely solved, though… What would they do to the fairy that had already been corrupted? Banish her? Punish her? Well, they’re not savages (who, the good old fairies!? Of course they aren’t! Why would you think that?) thus they simply settled to rip off the part of her that was responsible for the bad behavior. Her good half was kept and her evil half was banished to another realm, a ‘Phantom Zone’? Yep.

Time passed and the fairy was trying really hard to follow the rules imposed on her, in fact, she was becoming quite respected amongst the others and she even would push for order in an attempt to save her sisters from the same fate she had endured. 

However, there was a feeling she couldn’t shake, something that lured her to once again take a leap into the world, into the darkness, and… she couldn’t have that, could she? No, she simply couldn’t. She knew that if she went against her superiors one more time, she would pay dearly for it and they wouldn’t be so benevolent and merciful again.

What she was going to do, then? Why she still felt compelled to do bad things even without her worse self? Maybe it was because she was still alive in another realm? She would not be really free if her other half was still out there, tempting her at every turn? She had to finish this somehow.

The evil half, on the other hand, had created a kingdom of her own. She took her misery and turned it into an empire, powered by all the bad in the world. Where the fairies brought hope, she would bring desperation. She took children from their homes and filled their hearts with hopelessness, made them believe more in her capacity to bring them pain than in the possibility of fairies coming to their aid because she knew the human world was weak. They needed the fairies’ magic as much as the fairies needed their belief to survive and she would make all of them perish. They would all suffer for what was done to her.

And that way, the two halves went to battle.

In the end, though, none of them claimed victory. They were both too strong, too determined and… they couldn’t really hurt each other. Yet, the Blue Fairy still managed to get the upper hand by taking away the wand of the Black Fairy. If she couldn’t defeat her completely, she at least would make her weaker. She believed that this would be enough to stop The Black Fairy and she kept believing it for a long time…

Despite the pull of her other half still been felt, it was slowly fading day by day. It was finally over, wasn’t it? She could finally mind her own business and grow as the Blue Fairy, the most powerful of the good fairies?

Not so fast. The Black Fairy liked to play the long game. In the ‘Phantom Zone’, she had all the means to plan her next move, after all, that place was timeless, she could wait and not wait at all. Nevertheless, there was a pressing matter bothering her, something that she had to solve in order to move forward: her invisible connection to her good half that no matter how hard she had tried to vanquish it, continued to be there, mocking her. She had to cut loose all her ties with the Blue Fairy, disentangle their fates. (Are you seeing where I’m going with this? Exactly, if those lovely golden Shears of Fate came to your mind, then you are absolutely right).

Not feeling her counterpart was not exactly as pleasant as the Blue Fairy thought it would be. She didn’t know what was going on, what the other would do next. It was terrifying. Worse. Fairies’ magic was weakening… The fairies were increasingly more dependent of fairy dust and these were becoming a rare item the more they used it. Their magic was dying and she was powerless to do anything about it now that she couldn’t face the Black Fairy anymore. They were forever apart. 

The entire magical world would forever remain out of balance. 

You are probably wondering where I got the idea that magic in FTL was fading, at least, the ‘good’ one. Well, I always thought that the fairies were kind of limited in what they could and couldn’t do… The wardrobe is only able to transport two. I’ll give you freedom, but do you mind being a cricket? Among other things, like the Blue Fairy being really strict about fairy dust, maybe that’s one of the reasons why she was so protective of it. 

So a weapon was needed. Something that could kill the Black Fairy without killing herself in the process. A sword, embedded in the magic within the Blue Fairy, powerful stuff. That would do the work, but… she still couldn’t use it against the Black Fairy, not when their fates were magically cut apart. How would she solve this tiny little problem?

What if the only way to save their world was to transport it elsewhere? To another world where the rules were fairer, a perfect even ground for their final battle? To the only world where it’s actually possible to beat fate?  What if, in order to save magic they needed to gave it up first? This is beginning to sound like a plan…

But the Blue Fairy wasn’t powerful enough to do such great feat and given the circumstances, dark magic would be required and who better than the Dark One to do the dirty work?

He would not listen to her, though… Not her of all people, so she did what her other half was better at doing. She manipulated the Dark One’s son and the man himself and made sure that everyone was set in their right places.

And the Black Fairy? She likes to play the long game and now? Now, in 6B, we are going to watch her plan unfold. I’m really excited to see what she has in store.

I would love to know how Peter Pan ended up in this mess and why she abandoned Rumple for real too… Perhaps the Blue Fairy’s rogue days were when she met Pan, then I imagine her story would parallel the one of Nova and Dreamy a.k.a. Grumpy and that would explain why she reacted so badly to their relationship. She once was forced into giving up love too and as a consequence of that, she had to abandon her son as well. This and the fact that magic was fading and she couldn’t really afford to lose two important pieces, a fairy and a dwarf, in the manufacture of fairy dust, but this is just me being extra.

Also, I am still thinking about Gideon’s role in all this. One part of me believes he’s really trying to save everyone trapped in the ‘Phantom Zone’, be their hero, but the other part of me believes he’s working with the Black Fairy (Oh my, am I being divided into two halves now?). And there’s the possibility he’s doing both things. He could be working for her just to betray her and they are using each other for their own goals…

Anyway, this got out of hand XD Feel free to add your own thoughts! I would love to know what you all think.