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dracotheocracy · 1 year

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Bond. James Bond.

Plz give me all the info you've got on hand!

i am so glad you asked. fair warning: i will have nothing good to say about james bond.

now this wouldn't be a mars ask if i didn't set up dubiously necessary context before getting into it: i have a relatively well-documented history of being hooked into medias that are like watching car crashes (e.g., the irregular at magic high school, white collar). as it tends to happen in trash fire fiction i have seen some really problematic shit- irregular's main ship, for example, is an incest ship that's pushed by the narrative to the point where i think it isn't inaccurate to call its narrative somewhat pro-incest, and white collar is a police drama produced in 2010 which i think tells you most of what you need to know about the narrative it pushes about justice. all this, especially when compounded by some legitimately terrible writing, scratches a certain itch in the part of my brain that likes to tear shit apart.

the james bond novels will quickly become my latest victim, as i have to read From Russia, with Love for a course on spy fiction i'm taking this semester. i will likely have this tumblr post pulled up during the discussion we have about it in about 9 hours as what's under the cut is essentially a close-ish reading of the first 10 chapters of the novel.

tw misogyny, queerphobia, racism, sexual violence, demonization of mental illness

i have watched my fair share of james bond movies. they do not fucking prepare you for how bad the novels are. i am 10 out of 38 chapters into this novel (one of 14 novels!) and i have developed something of a hatred for ian fleming.

in 10 chapters the plot is only just beginning to get rolling, so in terms of actual writing quality i can give no judgements beyond "well i can sort of tell that by the end i am going to think 'hm this was not that good.'" now the bond franchise was never meant to be a literary masterpiece so it doesn't actually have to be all that good, it just has to be entertaining, and because my idea of entertainment is looking on in horror as some aspect of the writing finds a way to get worse somehow, by god has it been delivering thus far

what i CAN tell you is that ian fleming is teaching a masterclass on how to write with the male gaze. three female characters have been introduced in these first 10 chapters- a nameless masseuse who's really just there to make sure the opening of the novel is suitably erotic, rosa klebb, and tatiana romanov.

he has made a point of mentioning all of their breasts within give or take 3 paragraphs of their introductions, dear lord i might even be giving him too much credit. the nameless masseuse took her shirt off and was just tits out for most of the scene she was in actually, but that didn't really matter as much relative to the other glaring issue with that scene that i will be getting to later. he's also referred to his female characters as women as opposed to calling them girls maybe, once per character, so far. maybe that's a quirk of british english in the 1950s that nobody would think anything of, but it's something that adds up to the point that it's very much worth noticing to me- all of these women are grown adults and while i find myself unable to articulate exactly why it feels wrong to me that they're repeatedly called girls. it could be because i find it infantilizing, maybe, i feel like the word usage here diminishes their agency

the nameless masseuse doesn't really get a lot dedicated to her appearance relative to the named women, and the opening scene happens mostly in her point of view. there is also a man in this scene who i will be getting to in full later, but for now i will point your attention towards two quotes:

"[S]he wondered why she loathed this splendid body, and once again she vaguely tried to analyse her revulsion. Perhaps this time she would get rid of feelings which she felt guiltily certain were much more unprofessional than the sexual desire some of her patients awoke in her." "Now was the time when many of her patients, particularly the young ones on the football team, would start joking with her. Then, if she was not very careful, the suggestions would come. Sometimes she could silence these by digging sharply down towards the sciatic nerve. At other times, and particularly if she found the man attractive, there would be giggling arguments, a brief wrestling-match and a quick, delicious surrender."

this scene is written from her perspective and it's here to introduce the male character in it. but who cares about that, what is it telling us about the masseuse? well. she thinks her patients are hot and has sex with them sometimes. that's really about it, i think her portrayal in the scene as a whole would indicate that she's plain or a little dumb but there isn't much character to discern because ian is far more concerned with talking about the man in this scene in a way that's pretty sexually charged while also establishing the first bits of information you get about him as the reader. the only purpose of a female POV in this scene is to make it more erotic, i think it's pretty clear he doesn't really care about this character's anything beyond the inherent sex appeal she gets by being female and the ability to write a somewhat erotic description of a male character without it coming off as weird and homosexual.

our next female character is rosa klebb. i will be getting back to something more important about her later, for now i'd like to focus on how fleming, from a male character's perspective, describes her.

"She was short, about five foot four, and squat, and her dumpy arms and short neck, and the calves of the thick legs in the drab khaki stockings, were very strong for a woman. The devil knows, thought Kronsteen, what her breasts were like, but the bulge of uniform that rested on the table-top looked like a badly packed sandbag, and in general her figure, with its big pear-shaped hips, could only be likened to a 'cello."

i'll be honest this is an excuse to show off one of the titty quotes and rosa klebb is a pretty big offender. a lot of the impression we get of her in the beginning is done less to give us an impression of her and more to establish the kind of character our current POV man, kronsteen, has. kronsteen is an emotionally detached, manipulative, and insightful (in the dnd insight skill way) chess master who works for the MGB. he's the criminal mastermind smart guy who makes all the plans. now i suspect the purpose of rosa's physical description doesn't have much to do with showing anything particularly notable about kronsteen's character, there's a paragraph dedicated to the rules he uses to read/judge people that tells you far more about him than this does even if you try to analyze it, mostly because this is also how ian talks about women in the absence of a POV character

which brings us to tatiana romanov! who has her physical appearance described in a scene that is set in her POV:

"One of her early boy-friends had said she looked like the young Greta Garbo. What nonsense! And yet tonight she did look rather well. ... She smiled at herself in the mirror. Yes, it was wide; but then so had Garbo's been. At least the lips were full and finely etched. There was the hint of a smile at the corners. No one could say it was a cold mouth! And the oval of her face. Was that too long? Was her chin a shade too sharp? She swung her head sideways to see it in profile. The heavy curtain of hair swung forward and across her right eye so that she had to brush it back. Well, the chin was pointed, but at least it wasn't sharp."

"In fact Corporal Tatiana Romanova was a very beautiful girl indeed. Apart from her face, the tall, firm body moved particularly well. ... Her arms and breasts were faultless. A purist would have disapproved of her behind. Its muscles were so hardened with exercise that it had lost the smooth downward feminine sweep, and now, round at the back and flat and hard at the sides, it jutted like a man's."

wild guess. shot in the dark. she's this novel's bond girl. ian gives a glowing description of her features during which he establishes that she thinks a lot about her appearance and is perhaps somewhat insecure about it, but still believes herself to be beautiful. the stuff i took out and replaced with the ellipsis is really much of the same as what follows the ellipsis. the second quote is switching briefly from romanova's POV to that of the narrator, and of course it ends on a description of her tits and ass because, well, why not. now i will give some amount of grace in that romanova does have, like, a personality, but much like the masseuse she's, bland might not be the correct way to describe it, but she has this very gentle, [in a sarcastic tone of voice] divine feminine quality to her. to quote the next chapter, "This was a beautiful, guileless, innocent girl." i admit reluctantly that ian did a decent job of showing us this before telling us- her demeanor when she gets a call from a superior officer in the MGB betrays as much with her immediate panic over what she might've done to get a call at unusual hours from her superiors and pretty meek acceptance of what she probably sees as certain death, and her concern with her appearance in the parts i quote might come across as a bit superficial but the insecurity, the way she appraises herself, paints her less as vain and more as a shy beauty (to be conquered by bond later of course)

we return back to the scene with the masseuse, this time to talk about donovan grant, or granitsky. he is a major villain.

"Donovan Grant was the result of a midnight union between a German professional weight-lifter and a Southern Irish waitress. The union lasted for a quarter of an hour on the damp grass behind a circus tent outside Belfast."

i am genuinely curious why ian thought it necessary to mention that his parents fucked for 15 minutes in the sex that conceived him. we must note the nationalities of his parents because with the prior james bond knowledge that dr. no, a major villain from earlier in the bond timeline, has a german father and a chinese mother, makes me suspect there might be a pattern in what heritages ian likes to give his antagonists. (READ: GERMAN AND [INSERT OPPRESSED NATIONALITY HERE]). it should be noted that granitsky's father immediately fucks right off and he's raised in southern ireland. dr. no, i'm fairly certain, was also raised in china as his father was a german missionary if memory serves. ian throughout the first couple chapters establishes that communist spies are pretty culturally and racially diverse, which would be cool i guess if the communists weren't evil in this setting. later in his exposition about granitsky's backstory he describes the spy school he attended in leningrad, specifically its makeup: "Germans, Czechs, Poles, Balts, Chinese and Negroes..." (about the use of the word Negro, the bond novels were written in the 50s. for clarity). there's a mention in a later chapter of a particularly accomplished black soviet agent. i will update this post if there's any racial diversity on the MI6 side of things but... somehow i doubt it...... anyway, i point this out just to make a note that the side we're rooting for here is the side of the white englishman where his villains tend to come from less privileged cultural backgrounds

i'm not done with donovan. he gets worse. his character says a lot about society and particularly how little ian fleming thinks about like, anything. donovan grant is a high ranking assassin in the MGB. he's a boxer that defected from british armed forces oh also he's a serial killer

"It was about this time that his body began to feel strange and violent compulsions around the time of the full moon. When, in October of his sixteenth year, he first got 'The Feelings' as he called them to himself, he went out and strangled a cat. This made him 'feel better' for a whole month. ... Often he had to go very far to find what he wanted and, after two months of having to satisfy himself with geese and chickens, he took a chance and cut the throat of a sleeping tramp."

grant is diagnosed 2 chapters later with manic depression that flares up once a month. he has to go out and kill people or drink his urges away once a month because he has manic depression that is explicitly stated. it's almost 1am so i'm not going to dignify this with an especially winded explanation of what's wrong with this scene. that's a wildly inaccurate portrayal of what we now understand as bipolar depressive disorder and a demonizing one at that, because, you know, evidently manic episodes make you go out and kill people right that's definitely accurate and based in verifiable fact right. he was diagnosed as a narcissist also while we're on the topic of demonizing portrayals of already very stigmatized mental illnesses

"When he killed the occasional girl he did not 'interfere' with her in any way. That side of things, which he had heard talked about, was quite incomprehensible to him. It was only the wonderful act of killing that made him 'feel better'. Nothing else."

so as an aro/ace myself i dig into this one particularly hard. there is one hell of an implication here about an asexual's capacity for love, compassion, you know, emotions, the things many people argue make us human. it's just incredible to me, really, that ian decides to introduce this character's asexuality by saying "he doesn't rape the women he kills because he does not experience sexual desire." it's very, very clearly not something that's supposed to reflect positively on donovan, which is just insane because you'd figure this would be a "well at least he doesn't rape women he only kills them :|" but instead it's "he doesn't rape the women he kills how awful and weird!"

the train of logic there is relatively easy for me to piece together i think. if someone is okay with murder, that is, on the sliding scale of evil actions, generally placed above being ok with sexual violence. at least i suspect this is reliably true in the 50s when this novel was written. the intended takeaway from this as a result is probably something along the lines of, "well, this person already has something deeply wrong with him. someone who would commit such a grave sin as killing another human being shouldn't have any qualms with crimes that are of a lesser magnitude, ergo if he's killing the woman why does he not rape her as well? it must be because he has no sexuality!" which is going to be treated as a bad thing. this is james bond. this is a series that deals heavily with sexuality, the bond girl is a known staple of the series for a reason, right, and the stance ian takes is that sexual desire is part of what makes us in some respects human, and that something is wrong with you if you don't experience it.

grant is not the only queer character in From Russia, with Love, check this out:

"It was said that Rosa Klebb would let no torturing take place without her." "For, or so they whispered, she would take the camp-stool and draw it up close below the face of the man or woman that hung down over the edge of the interrogation table. Then she would squat down on the stool and look into the face and quietly say 'No1' or 'No10' or 'No25' and the inquisitors would know what she meant and they would begin. And she would watch the eyes in the face a few inches away from hers and breathe in the screams as if they were perfume."

"Rosa Klebb undoubtedly belonged to the rarest of all sexual types. She was a neuter. ... The stories of men and, yes, of women, were too circumstantial to be doubted. She might enjoy the act physically, but the instrument was of no importance. For her, sex was nothing more than an itch. And this psychological and physiological neutrality of hers at once relieved her of so many human emotions and sentiments and desires... She was a lone operator, but never a lonely one, because the warmth of company was unnecessary to her."

there is so much wrong with this. she's rumored to be a neuter i.e having non-functional sex organs in this context, i think. i do believe ian is trying to indicate that she might be intersex here. she fucks both men and women, maybe she's bisexual, and she does not get any emotional fulfillment out of relationships and sex to her is "nothing more than an itch." sex is often described as the ultimate form of intimacy and i do think there's an argument to be made for an aro/ace reading of this if what we're being told here is, essentially, that she gets no emotional fulfillment from sex and it's merely a pleasurable act. regardless there's something to be said about the only two characters thus far with unusual sexual identities being a serial killer and a torturer. they're both portrayed as incredibly cruel and incapable of forming meaningful relationships with other people and the fact it happens twice in the same book i think is indicative of a pattern in how ian (and his time period more broadly) views queer identities.

um yeah so that's my review of the first 10 chapters of From Russia, with Love by ian fleming like and subscribe for more

#but maaarrrsss!#trashfire media containment breach

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300iqprower · 2 years

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I don't know how to explain it—I'm sure someone else made a longer better post about how I feel but....

I really like Patxi. Five Lostbelts in and I still like Patxi. Maybe its the fact that unlike 2,3,4 and possibly 5—they use Patxi (a grown man) as a device to show how horrific the Lostbelts are (or how they've been conditioned to think its normal) the children in the LBs are used as a device to show how bad it is but it feels like they're pandering?

Liek they're using the kids as a way to gain sympathy (multiple dialogue choices and characters mention them being children) and that's all well and dandy but it gets real repetitive when you come across the third kid—Ajai was there but he wasn't at the forefront I'd definitely relate to a man wanting to protect his daughter from getting wiped from existence by excessive praying than the child not understanding why (probably should've worded that better) mostly bc my parent made a lot of sacrifices to make me happy.

Lostbelt 3 didn't even give the kid a name which is something I think is fucked up despite them being a minor character.

I also like Patxi as a person because he's a pos towards cast but slowly warms up to them when they do for him—which is extremely natural given his situation and the fact that we're basically staying in his house for the time being.

I also like his CE because its basically "f*ck you, I'm a Wolfman with a gun!" And it has some utility compared to the CEs you gain from the other LBs (they stopped giving out servants for some reason)

I swear I'm not a furry.

I'M FINALLY READY TO ANSWER THIS. OBVIOUS SPOILERS ARE OBVIOUS UP THROUGH THE END OF ATLANTIS.

POINT 1.

PATXI IS THE SINGLE BEST WRITTEN CHARACTER IN THE SERIES. PERIOD.

Like I know i say that's Goredolf, but i mean that in the sense of Goredolf is the best in terms of ongoing character development. As far as fully written characters go, who have had their big moment, and we've seen it all play out for them? From Solomon to Gilgamesh to Arash to Opehlia to Meltryllis to Jason to Jalter to Orion to Moriarty to Napoleon to Ivan to Salieri to Avicebron to even my beloved Asterios....none of them are as well written as Patxi.

And to explain why, I need to start with why, as you pointed out, the other lostbelt NPCs don't even compare, even when they're also well written.

Let's start with the nameless LB3 kid because I find myself typically playing devil's advocate with that one; I'd argue he's the second best of the lostbelt npcs after Patxi. People are, understandably, quick to think of the kid as throwaway given they're never even named, but I always say who I will refer to as "Kid" being nameless as a representation of what life was like in LB3. In SIN, all life is deemed valueless compared to Qin Shi Huang. They bear the "burden" of being the only "true human" and in the name of that all other humans are seen as meant to live short, productive, content lives of never wanting for anything but never achieving anything. Kid is nameless, but not faceless. Unlike most nameless NPCs, he still has a face and varying expressions. He has a role in the story, accompanying us throughout a lot of it and forming an explicit connection to us, particularly Spartacus. And at the end of the lostbelt, when Qin Shi Huang wanders his dissolving world, who should he meet but Kid, a nameless boy reciting a poem he learned from the emperor's greatest enemy, standing side by side with the "True human", the two brought down to the same level as they both dissolve into nothing. To sum it up, Kid both gives us exposition about the world like the rest of the lostbelt NPCs, but crucially gives us insight into what life is like there. He never had any ambition towards anything until we came along, until Spartacus taught him what it meant to have hopes and dreams, and by the end of the chapter that "nameless nobody" is just as much a person both in the mind of the audience and the context of the world as the "True human" emperor who believed that he was carrying a burden for his people.

Now contrast this with another one I see get treated as a throwaway nobody but I would argue gives us important insight: Timi. Whose name you probably dont even recognize and I sure as hell had to look up. The kid from Lb5.1 who had an almost comically small role and a DEFINITELY (probably unintentionally) comical demise, if only for the looney tunes style "Heel-turn realization followed by atomization". But regardless it establishes what Kid did in the opposite sense. The crux of LB5's obligatory "world destruction guilt trip moral conundrum" thing is that not only is this world devoid of suffering like LB3, but on top of that seems to have the genuinely fulfilling lives that LB3 lacked; these people still have hopes and dreams...But that ends up thoroughly disproven when we realize what those hopes are. We see these established people, a named character and everything, unquestioningly throw their life away for a cultish desire to be so much as noticed by higher beings. In the same way Kid having no name emphasized they are still their own individual, Timi's fully established identity and motivations show us how hollow their "fully realized" existence truly is.

Of course now is the one that's....divisive, to say the least. Or at least that's the case from everything I've seen on Asha. I'm kinda in both camps. On the one hand, they're overly reliant on her being an "innocent child" type character, on the other hand though she's genuinely the most emotionally impactful lostbelt NPC after Patxi IMO, and a fantastic reminder of why no matter how much it may feel like cruelty to kill these worlds, leaving them to continue with their fundamentally warped existence would be an even greater cruelty. That said, her Ajay was underutilized in the name of that "feel bad for the child" schtick and so Asha's writing flip flops between heartfelt/impactful and saccharine/pandering, but that's more a core issue of the scenario's two lead writers than a character-specific issue (just another example of how Lostbelt 4 has everyone's strengths AND everyone's weaknesses from how basically everyone pitched in). At the very least though, she fulfills her role of informing us and getting us attached to the world she inhabits, and providing a new and meaningful perspective when its end comes that reflects why we must keep pushing forward. Yes there's the annoying pitiful child thing, but it's far from just taking the easy way out or skipping on the role that's meant to be filled by the character.

...That'd be Gerda. I really don't think I need to go over why Gerda does not work but I will. Gerda's entire character is "look how cute and innocent I am UwU don't you feel bad about me???" and she tells us nothing intrinsic about the world in which she lives. She's EXACTLY the kind of character I would expect from Sakurai not having any pre-existing material to work off of. Her dialogue is entirely redundant at best, with all her exposition dumps being repeated or told in more detail by Ophelia, NotSkadi, or NotSitonai. In the case of that first one they are flat out told in a far more meaningful way because we actually see Ophelia's traumatized perspective on the whole "Sunday" thing. Then, at the end of it all, Gerda doesn't even really give us insight to what the world fading is like, instead giving the only example thus far of the post-tree scene telling us nothing new and not showing us any consequence to our action, instead simply having it all vanish like a dream with no direct relevance to Gerda herself. Her role is supposed to be showing the naïve and transient life the stragglers of humanity live out under NotSkadi, but the contrast between that perspective and the reality in which they live in is never explored; it's simply stated to be bad as if the reason is self-demonstrating in a way that would not even required Gerda to exist to be conveyed. All of this isn't even getting into her sheer lack of characterization beyond "child." From start to finish Gerda tells us nothing unique about the world in which she lives, and there is no role she has that another character does not fill more effectively.

And it's for all those reasons that Gerda is the exact opposite of Patxi.

Patxi is unique from the rest of the major lostbelt NPCs in multiple ways. He's the only non-human. He's the only non-child. Most importantly, [of the first 5 lostbelts] he's the only one who opposes us at any point. Like you said, whereas the other ones are all children and that makes it feel pandering, Patxi being just some guy eliminates that and makes him feel a lot more real, and that's amplified by once again like you said him being the only one who ever acts antagonistic towards us. A big part of all this ties into why Lostbelt 1 is the perfect execution of a "first lostbelt", how it perfectly sets up the premise and moral dilemma as well as set an incredible standard for what a Lostbelt should even be, and I don't wanna be here for eternity going over all of that so I'm going to hone in on the stuff specific to Patxi. Unlike all of the other Lostbelt NPCs, Patxi is set up and treated as his own character. He's named, has unique portraits, we see his POV frequently, he's fully characterized with his own goals, he plays a major role in the lostbelt's events, and he's given even more focus than most of the mainstays who joined in the same chapter (Goredolf, Chihuahua, etc). None of the other lostbelt NPCs fulfill all those things, heck even if we axe that last and most notable qualifier, Patxi is still unique in that list. Kid has no name and was not present for the latter part of the chapter. Asha had no unique role in the story and existed only to give us a perspective rather than to do something specific. Timi's entire purpose is to be killed off frighteningly quick with no actual role. This isn't to say I think they're all bad - I've outlined why I think all three of them are effective enough characters...but they still very much pale in comparison to Patxi, because Patxi was treated as his own individual who was important to the story. Who is important to the story, because he's the one Ritsuka made a promise to that they still need to keep.

The restate the point of the lostbelt NPCs, they are there to give us insight into the world we're destroying, and conveying that in order for our world to survive, other worlds with people just like us must die. They're there to make the worlds feel alive; Rituska is constantly cautioned against forming attachments because of these reasons, but by their nature Ritsuka inevitably finds people they want to help even if only in the moment. Where this diverges is how most of the lostbelts try to make you care. I say most because one of the many failings of Lostbelt 2 is its inability to make up its mind on this. Lostbelt 3 shows you a stagnant world where people live meaningless but happy lives. Lostbelt 4 emphasizes that it's a world where (supposedly) suffering is systematically erased. Lostbelt 5 is presented as a utopia. Lostbelt 1 is different. There's no unravelling why "this is bad actually." It's shown from the word Go to be a cruel and uncaring world with nothing to live for but another day of survival. There's no attempt to make you care on the grounds on "People seem happy here" and instead a wholehearted commitment to showing you something far more direct: These are people too. The reason you care that people might seem happy in the other lostbelts is that same reason, because they're people too. Rather than just imply that though, or focus on one specific thing wrong with the world, through Patxi we're shown all of it. We're shown what a miserable existence that world is, we're shown why they want to continue living regardless, we're shown how the yaga are people just like us, and we're shown how they came to believe that their life which seems so unbearable to us is still one worth living to them.

"Gerda" could be a thousand other people in fiction There’s only one "Patxi"

#fgo #fate grand order #long post #wall of text #literal essay #lostbelt 1 #lostbelt spoilers #writing analysis #patxi #character analysis #probably has a ton of typos but eh too tired. Post.#never thought i'd get an ask

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neodarkdark · 1 year

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SVERN CHARACTER INSPIRATIONS + INFLUENCES

Here's a read more because wow paragraphs.

Team Dim Sun Admin - Pokémon Ranger: Shadows of Almia

Classic. This should be self-explanatory and I'm quite sure you can tell with a glance that this is the origin point for Svern's design. His hair may have been changed up a bit, and the eye colour, but it's still pretty obvious. Svern began his life as a Team Dim Sun admin, those nameless guys who broke the fourth wall to complain about their namelessness... in terms of his main story relevance, that's still what he is. Just another guy in the villain gang.

...Keep thinking that.

Dazai Osamu - Bungou Stray Dogs

BSD has a Thing going with stupid smart characters, eccentric characters, characters with Specific kinds of vibes and behaviours, and mixing action and silly nonsense with philosophical twists. Probably in large part because it's heavily inspired by the works of the authors the cast is named after.

Dazai is no exception. He's full of lies and clown behaviour, under which he hides an absolute crapton of stuff. He's also Extremely stupid smart and is constantly playing godtier 4D chess games (with BSD's other stupid smart characters, there are several so they balance each other out).

I cannot possibly explain all of what's going on with Dazai to those not already familiar with BSD in a way that won't sound absurd so I won't try. Finally, he also struggles to see the value in living (he is heavily soaked in suicide themes). Lots of these relate to Svern in some way. Lying liar? Yep. Silly guy with way too much more going on below the surface? Yep. Issues with feeling detached from the rest of the world? Also yep.

This is no surprise; I got into BSD around a similar time I was working on the current interation of Svern (you may remember I've said I got into BSD because of Svern). So I truthfully don't know how much was already there and how much Svern has taken from Dazai.

Nakahara Chuuya - Bungou Stray Dogs

THIS GUY is the reason I got into BSD. I was looking for a faceclaim for Svern and nailing the right vibes with both appearance and expression was really annoying and then boom there was Chuuya.

Chuuya and Svern are massively different in personality, I can't think of much they have in common. Where influence from Chuuya has crept over is in Svern's physical abilities. Chuuya's very active/combat-oriented; which rubbed off on Svern's physical skills getting a buff that wasn't in his original concept, and being more readily involved in physical situations vs just being a big brain. It's honestly a huge improvement and Svern's a lot more fun this way. Chuuya would still absolutely wreck him in a fight though.

I think some of Chuuya's aggressive/angry vibe rubbed off on Svern as well (the anger is mostly underneath the surface in Svern's case though, and Chuuya isn't the only place that it's come from).

Dimentio - Super Paper Mario

This hecking dude. He's a silly clown minion of the main bad guy for most of the game, but you get hints dropped throughout the story that there's more going on with him. Turns out he was plotting behind the back of his boss all along and was only working under him to take advantage of the Cursed Item that his boss unleashed. You have to fight him as the twist final antagonist. Dimentio is on nobody's side but his own and is playing everyone else. He talks like... heeheehoo silly guy dialogue.

I only realised recently that this possibly carried over into some of Svern's manner. As for the role of minor bad guy who turns out to be major bad guy, yeah that works. This one was accidental and probably because SPM is thoroughly embedded in younger me's subconscious.

Obi - Akagami no Shirayukihime

Another one who has a silly guy thing going on. Admittedly it's been a while since I watched AnS or kept up with the manga (I'll get back to it someday), but still relevant nonetheless. If Svern was in a fantasy type verse he'd probably be even more similar to Obi.

Obi's manner and body language are often pretty similar to what Svern's ended up with and although Obi's again, probably more skilled in combat than Svern is, the physical skills do carry over too.

Obi's also referred to like a cat. So. Make of that whatever I guess.

#this post was inspired by locke #there were more characters on the original meme i did but i realised those might actually just be #characters who happen to have things going on that look similar but aren't necessarily influences or inspirations #i will shoutout to shibusawa bsd for being Bored though #boredom is so terrible like a dread disease (headcanon)

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rat-lurker · 6 months

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Rat gang

Very excited to rant about this group bc I adore them. The rat gang is a group of typically rodent-like jellis, lead by Tips.

(art and design by Seedsly on th) He started the group in good faith, after seeing Andromeda turn evil from his bulling (I'll talk about him at a later point, all you need to know is that he's a villain). He was disturbed by the fact nobody came to help the poor kid, so the group was created, along with his few buddies, as an ''anti-bullying'' group. The group grew a bit bigger over time since, and by present day, they've expanded to helping anyone they come across during their laps around the island. They're well known by the locals, and are welcomed into any village they enter into. Tho ofc when they started, most saw them as a group of trouble makers. They ran into issues with every village's guards, but sorted things out just fine. They still cause trouble for the guards, but at this point they even don't bother with the group as its only a waste of time (ex. they'll trespass to clean up litter or fetch smth that someone dropped; cause a bit of property damage to help if need be, ect). Also the only reason the group is called ''the rat gang'' is because that was what the locals started to call it, they just went around as a nameless group before then. With the group mostly consisting of rat noodles and rat like jellis, it was bound to end up with that name. Below is a link to all the members

#LuckyTheRatLore #LuckyTheRatRant #jellinu #oc #ocs

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spines-tvo · 1 year

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Very personal stuff incoming

This is less to entertain others and more for me to just talk about this world that I greatly enjoy developing. So, if you don't care, just leave now.

So; Lemonland! An island that occupies the space in between universes. It grows and shrinks to fit the population, so you never have to worry about food or housing. How did it come to be? Well, over time, universes have tears build up in their fabric, letting things sort of drip through to Lemonland. (Our universe connects through the Bermuda triangle because it's neat.) While, yes, there are humans and human-like creatures, the number of them is smaller than other types of creatures. The island itself is kind of a utopia, however, with all these people and creatures occupying the same space, there are a lot of problems that crop up, whether those are personal or interpersonal. There are few to no rules that say who or what an occupant can be, so magic-wielders can live in the same house as literal war robots. Why is it called Lemonland? When it was first discovered, all the occupants had to eat were lemons from the lemon trees that dotted the landscape. The strange thing about these lemons is that if an individual eats a large number of them, certain parts (Normally hair or eye color) would change to a bright yellow, similar to flamingos when they eat shrimp. (This is mostly used as a way to differentiate different versions of the same character, however, some characters dye their hair to hide their identity.) Now, why would you need to differentiate when there's only one version of the character? Well, there are a lot more than just the one, actually. There are places that parallel Lemonland, such as Limeland (Similar except for one character's choices.) and Pumkinplace (Basically a Halloween-styled Lemonland.) Characters often jump to and from different Lemonlands, so you may have two or more versions of the same person in one place at the same time.

So... Who lives in Lemonland? (Right now, I'll stick to the primary Lemonland.) Timothan and his family. Timothan is an extreme optimist. Some people might even consider it toxic how optimistic he is. Thanks to the "Lemondyeing" of his hair, he looks like any other blonde haired, blue eyed white boy. He doesn't really think things over, and he expects everything to always work out. Since it actually does always work out, he doesn't really learn from his mistakes. He has one sister, Timothania, who travels across the multiverse in a small boat, and a dad named Deero who sticks around and helps out when he can. His mother disappeared when he was young, and nobody seems to know where she is or why she vanished.

Next is Namothy, a version of Timothan from Limeland who is occupying Lemonland because of a serious mistake he made that turned everyone he knew against him. He's almost exactly like Timothan, except he's more unhinged.

Then's Namie (Short for "the nameless one") who is a being of personified negative human emotions. They were created, destroyed the lab they were created in, got transported to Lemonland in order to prevent their entire home planet getting destroyed. And then's when they changed. Since they were based on humanity, they started to think like a human. So they got tired of being negative. And that's when they found Timothan. He's the closest thing to a being of pure positive emotions, so they sort of latched onto him (metaphorically) so he could teach them to be happier.

Bean Man. Yep. You read that right. Bean Man. He's an all-powerful deity that nobody seems to know. He sits at the top of a mountain in a gas station. And he looks like a bean with arms and legs. He's so powerful that when Timothan drinks from a goblet that Bean Man recently also drank from, Bean Man's saliva gave Timothan the power to restructure whatever universe he is currently in. Namothy also has this power, along with most other versions of Timothan, however, it was gained from Limeland's version of Bean Man.

Sorry this was so long and potentially confusing, I just really like talking about my stuff.

#personal #writing #lemonland #fantasy #sci-fi

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cottelini · 1 year

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This time we'll be focusing on Grian ((he/him))~ <3

. . . . .

Are any of your characters missing fingers?

nope! tho i do play around with one of the main characters missing a leg...

Does your character know how to tie different kinds of knots?

probably!!! Grain loves to work around the house-- building fences, tending to the garden, and such. he's quite handy!

How much does your character giggle?

just a little haha~ he does more of a chuckle tho

Are any of your characters nameless? (In that there is no legal record of them existing, they just don’t have names in canon, or history remembers them but not their name?)

...technically Sky?? but not really. they don't know their birth-name, since nobody knows about their time before they were kidnapped (<- yeah that's a whole story lmao), but everybody calls them Sky regardless

How independent was your character as a teen?

oh, Grian WANTED to be independent-- and he did have some secret rebellious moments-- but he mostly stuck to his parents' rules. and since they were very focused on "obedience" Grian didnt get much fresh air :-( he's always been rather timid so it was easy to keep him in line as a youngster

How much does your character care about their appearance?

a fair amount!! Grian loves to dress up and has a really specific style he adheres to (bohemian wizard vibes!!!). he also pays a lot of attention to how "masculine" he looks on any given day, so there's that anxiety there as well.

Do you have any characters who are twins?

!!! Giran is a twin!! he had a twin sister named Constance <3

Does your character like math? How good are they at it?

mmm i'd say he likes it a fair amount, and is quite good at it, but he prefers science/alchemy

Do any of your characters collect sea-shells or wear shell jewelry?

some later characters do, but that's spoilers ;-) I'm sure Grian would love collecting shells-- he is quite the collector (tho some may call him a hoarder owo;;;)

Naptime, yes or no?

yes <333 especially if it's a sunbath~ Grian LOVES to bask in the sun! Clementine says it's bad for his skin, but he doesn't care; "what's the point in living if i can't feel the warm sun on my skin? i'd rather look old knowing i embraced the warmth of a summer day rather than look young knowing i never let the sun embrace my skin."

Would your character prefer to sit around and chill or be up and moving and doing something?

both lol. Grian loves slow mornings staring at the horizon just as much as he loves tinkering away at a new project

Did any of your characters have a fever they almost died from as a child?

Sky is very very sick at the beginning of the story. they're a teen by then but it's a big enough plot point that i felt it worth mentioning. speaking of Grian, he was the more sickly out of the twins as a young child. he grew out of it after a few years tho and now he doesn't get sick often at all!! he can go nearly a decade without getting ill!!!!

Does your character worry about breaking the rules and getting in trouble?

not... really? Grian respects and follows the laws and rules set before him in any scenario. that being said... he has had rare moments that he felt the rules were less important or even a hindrance to the "greater good".

he isn't afraid of the law/rules and teaches others the importance of such systems. however, if Giran does go against these set systems he isn't afraid of the consequences as he has already made up his mind that he has made the best possible choice for everyone involved.

(i acutally like to think that this is how Guardian of the Sky starts! with Giran getting in trouble for breaking the rules because he found something more important to protect, or someone~)

Do any of your characters have the responsibilities of an adult despite being a child, or did they when they were?

Sherrie had to fend for herself a lot as a young child, but otherwise i can't think of too many OCs that have this theme. Grian was obedient and often not allowed to act "childish", but i wouldn't say he was forced to act as an adult.

If a loved one died, how long would they stay in mourning?

a very long time i'm afraid. Grian's greatest joy in life are the relationships around him. losing someone isn't something Grian takes well. he keeps it in so he can comfort others. it's a very quiet and painful grief-- one that he doesn't truly every mourn properly.

Do other people around your character dictate their life or do they get to choose for themselves?

Grian's parents were true dictators in his young life but once he moved out he was rid of them forever. they died not long after anyways. the only true tyrant in Grian's life now is himself-- for better or worse.

Did/do any of your characters have an arranged marriage?

Giran and his sister, Constance, had some suitors that they were set up with from a young age. Grian took a liking to one of his suitors, Elliot, and they had a really wonderful relationship for a long time. however, Constance (ever the rebel) always hated the entire arrangement process. She later married a farmer boy and had a daughter, Camilla <3

Do you have any widows/widower characters?

yes </3 but it's kinda spoilers owo;;; maybe??

Are any of your characters overshadowed by other siblings? Or have parents who clearly have a favorite? (ex: Boromir and Faramir)

mmm Grian was preferred by his parents because he was well-mannered and obedient, unlike his rebellious and outspoken twin sister. still, i wouldn't call it "favoritism". Grian and Constance were born for one reason; to continue on a legacy and reputation cemented by their parents.

their parents liked the idea of having kids and what benefits they would bring... they just forgot that kids need more from you than you'll ever receive from them.

Would your character kill someone to get what they want?

no. Grian would cry if he stepped on a snail. he may come to feel deep hatred one day, but the thought of harming someone would never even enter his mind.

Does your character prefer to lead or follow?

probably leading-- he's a teacher at heart <3 but power and all that doesn't matter to him

Has your character ever stolen anything?

just some hearts <3333333

Are any of your characters apprentices?

Sky is technically Grian's apprentice!! Grian teaches them all about the world, fae, and alchemy.

Are any of your characters certified Bird Nerds ™?

not in this story but i wouldn't be surprised if some of Fern's family was into that stuff. they're quite bohemian and into nature~ i'm sure Grian picked up a bird identification book at some point and now it's in a dusty pile somewhere lol

Are any of your characters Good Dads ™?

look no further than Grian himself <3333 also Sherrie's dads are hella cool!!!

#character meme #grian

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j-a-smiths-blog · 2 years

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2040 19July22: Nameless still.

Partially frustrated mostly at this "Hampton Roads Film Industry"

There are two sides to every story. 2022 has delivered almost all bad views at me in regards to the film industry around here. Everyone is "cliques" and kind of stubborn to work with if they do venture into different groups. Nobody really wants to collaborate and make magic happen but everyone wants recognition.

At the end of the day I want to film but I don't think I want to bend over backwards for anyone any more in this area.

Here it is Tuesday. Saturday is suppose to be film day and I have yet to hear back from the actress if the times are good. I have done a bunch of behind the scenes work to prepare this project and my messages have gone unseen since July 7th.

I have written a script just for her to gain experience and get her name associated with a film as well as begin making a reel for her future acting career but now I am starting to think she is just a talker and not a doer.

This is why I feel like I need to bring my character alive and go rogue filming my own short series... but it begins with do it.

NAME: Elijah Madison

The world will soon change for Mr. Madison as he studies the world around him before setting out on his own adventure.

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feralthoughtdump · 3 years

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Only Angel

Part Two of Kiss With A Fist

On the way to Madripoor, Bucky and his acquaintance talk about names.

Word Count: 5.5K

CW: violence, talk of killing people, TFATWS ep. 3 spoilers, stitching wounds, smut, unprotected sex, sub!bucky, technically a reader x bucky but he gives her a new name.

“So, we’re headed to Madripoor?” She questions, adjusting the straps of her harness.

Bucky adverts his eyes as she unbuttons her jeans, not answering her question, but she doesn’t seem to notice. They were standing in the back of the jet, a curtain obscuring the two of them from Sam and Zemo.

“Help me really quick. I have a holster in my bag.”

He reaches into her light blue duffle back, rifling through the articles of clothing and various weapons until his finger wraps around the leather.

“Thanks, you’re a godsend.” She chuckles. “Tell me about this mission of ours. I need to know what I should wear.”

“We’re going undercover. Zemo is just… Zemo, Sam’s going as some big shot, and I’m… well-“

“The Winter Soldier?”

He silently nods.

“You scared?”

She buckles the holster around her thigh, tightening it so it slightly squeezes at the flesh.

“Not sure.” He grumbles. “I’m worried, you know, I might end up..” his words trail off.

“Relapsing?”

“You can say that.”

She pulls her jeans down past her ankle and places them into her bag.

He clears his throat and looks away, unsure if she’s okay with him looking.

“Oh, don’t be shy, Buck.” She hymns, reaching into her bag. “What do you think? Shorts or a dress?”

He looks back up, eyeing the black slip dress in one hand, and the leather shorts in the other.

“Shorts I guess. Easy mobility.”

“Smart.”

As she’s pulling the shorts up past her waist, Bucky stares out the plane window.

“Do you still go by Angel of Death?” He asks.

She looks up at him.

“I never chose to go by that name, you know? The public did.” Her hands dig into the bag, pulling out a gun and a few knives. “Angels of death are serial killers in caregiver positions and I have nobody under my care. But they gave me that name because they saw me as some vigilante, someone who took down bad people.”

“Do you like the name?”

“I don’t really care. It’s factually incorrect but names don’t matter when you have to kill the person standing in the way of a paycheck.”

“Is that how you see them? Just another person you have to kill so you can go buy a fancy handbag?” He scoffs.

“You have no idea who those people are do you? Those people are corrupt. Evil. People who have no regard for the lives of innocent people.”

“And you think you’re any better?”

His tone is less accusing, rather it’s more curious.

“Maybe not, but at the end of the day, it’s my job. And if my job means I’m killing morally corrupt people, then I really don’t care. And if I’m as bad as them, then maybe you had a right to kill me ten years ago.”

Bucky shifts on his feet.

“You know my mission wasn’t to kill you.” He confesses.

“Then why did you stab me?”

“I think for the first time, I felt scared. I was confused and I panicked.”

“Fair enough.” She takes out a dark red trench coat. One made of soft crushed velvet. Bucky runs his flesh hand over it, taking in the feeling of the soft fabric.

“I was supposed to take you away, hand you over to HYDRA. I think they wanted you to work for them.”

She snorts, humored by his words.

“So they wanted me to be a weapon, huh. Fry my brain until all my free will is gone and come up with a few words in Russian to make sure I’ll do their bidding.”

“Most likely.” He crosses his arms. “You’re good at your job. You’ve wracked up kills in the hundreds, and I thought I was the one with the high body count.”

“Do you know why I’m good at my job?” She laughs, pulling her hair into a tight bun and securing it with a gold hairpin. “Do you know why I’m one of the best female assassins in Europe?”

Bucky shrugs his shoulders.

“Every time I’m assigned a job, I’m walking into a life or death situation. I need to be prepared for any type of outcome so I won’t get caught off guard.” She pulls a black, satin, dress shirt over her shoulders. “But do you know the real reason as to why I’m the best?”

Bucky parts his lips.

“Tell me.”

“It’s because I never let my feelings get in the way.”

“But you have to feel at least something.”

“No. I don’t think I really feel anything.” She tucks the hem into the shorts. “I haven’t felt anything in a very long time.”

He doesn’t know what to say. As he observes her concealing weapons within her outfit, he thinks about the past few decades of his life. One mission after another. He thinks about the bloodshed. He thinks about Yori and his son. Did he feel anything when he put a bullet in that boy? Not at the time. But now? All he feels is guilt. Shame. But here she stands in front of him, dressed to the nines, hidden weapons strapped to her body. I haven’t felt anything in a really long time. No guilt, no shame, no emotions. The silence hangs over them like a thick, heavy fog.

His mind wanders to their first interaction. Though he can’t remember much, he often revisits it in his dreams.

Don’t you want to know my name?

The question she asked him before he plunged the knife into her abdomen.

“Ten years ago, you asked if I wanted to know your name.”

“I did.”

“Were you ever going to tell me?”

“No. I would’ve just given you a fake one.”

She sits down on the leather seat and stuffs her feet into a pair of heeled boots. Bucky takes a seat next to her.

“What name would you have given me?”

“I was reading Anna Karenina at the time so probably Kitty.”

“Do you have a name?”

“I have many names.”

“No, a real name.”

She zips up her left boot.

“I do. Well, I did.” She sighs, moving her fingers to zip up the right. “I don’t remember it anymore.”

Bucky frowns.

“Do you want to remember?”

Her head falls onto his shoulders and she nuzzles her nose into his neck.

“Not really. Sometimes I think it’s better that I’m nameless.”

Bucky doesn’t want to say he pities her, but he does. Maybe it isn’t pitying, rather sympathizing.

“Can I give you a new one?”

She smiles, relishing in the feeling of his stubble against her skin.

“Sure.”

“I’d like to call you Angel.”

A hum of content passes her lips and she presses a soft kiss on his skin.

“I’d like that too.” She whispers. “I’ll be your angel.”

They sit together for a good five minutes, syncing their breathing together, enjoying each other’s company.

“We should go back to your friends.” She mutters, grabbing the coat.

“We probably should.”

Sam gives the two of them as they walk past the curtain. Bucky sits across from him and he watches with a slightly annoyed eye as she takes the seat across from Zemo.

“How do you two know each other?” Sam queries.

“Oh. Bucky stabbed me ten years ago.” She bluntly states.

A humored smile crosses her face as Sam’s eyes widen and darts between the two.

“He stabbed you?”

“Hey, I wasn’t really myself back then.” Bucky quickly defends himself. “Plus, she tried to kill me a few hours ago.”

“In her defense,” Zemo interjects “being stabbed isn’t something you can just forgive and forget.”

“Oh, and you know everything about forgiving and forgetting.” Sam shoots back.

Sensing oncoming tension, she quickly changes the subject.

“Bucky told me you three needed a tour guide. Someone who knows the place well.”

“I’d consider myself-“

“Oh Baron,” she laughs “after everything you did in 2017, I doubt it’s easy for them to trust you.”

Zemo’s eyes widened.

“You know who I am?”

“Of course I do. I’ve been to Sokovia before.”

Sam furrowed his brows.

“What led you to Sokovia?”

“Business meetings.”

“Jesus, Bucky, who is this girl?”

“Oh, yeah, I never actually introduced myself. I’m Angel.” Bucky smiles at the use of her name, affection blooming in his chest. “I work for a small company based in Europe. We mostly sell cosmetics.”

Bucky’s impressed by her ability to spit out a convincing story with no hesitation.

Sam doesn’t seem to buy it, but he lets it go.

“Anyways, what role do you three want me to play?”

“Well,” Zemo shifts in his seat, “I was thinking you could be my date-“

“No. No” Bucky grouses, a deep frown cutting across his face. “Absolutely not.”

“Relax, James. I won’t try anything with her. I know you two are… close.”

Bucky scrambles out of his seat to wrap a hand around Zemo’s neck but he steps away at the feeling of Angel’s gentle hand on his bicep.

“Calm down, Bucky. Everything’s going to be fine.” She looks at Zemo with an amused grin. “Alright. I’ll play the part, but I have a few rules.” She points her thumb up. “One, no kissing.” Then her pointer. “No silly pet names. I don’t want to hear you calling me baby or kitten. It’s patronizing.” Finally her middle. “And three, I don’t drink. My tolerance is low.”

Zemo and Sam nod in agreement and eventually so does Bucky, but the anger in his eyes refuses to fade away.

It’s nighttime when they arrive, but the bright, neon lights illuminate the city.

Loud music seeps out from the clubs and the air smells of smoke and booze. They’re surrounded by crime, and Angel smiles at the familiarity. She can spot a few familiar faces, but she never bothers to say hi. It’s best she stays faceless, unknown, invisible.

Zemo wraps an arm around her waist and Bucky side eyes him. She can read his annoyance. His jealousy. Yet, his cold, emotionless expression doesn't change. He’s fallen into character and he’s doing a damn good job of it.

Whispers of ‘is that the Winter Soldier?’ pour around them as they enter the bar, but they all do their best to pay no attention.

“Wasn’t expecting you, Smiling Tiger.” The bartender nods towards Sam.

“His plans changed. We have business to do with Selby.” Zemo interjects.

Selby.

Angel remembers that name. She’s heard it in whispers on the streets.

Angel takes a seat on Zemo’s lap, leaning her head against the fur on his coat.

“Who’s the girl?”

“Close friend of mine,” Zemo smirks.

“I’m Moria.” She extends a hand and the bartender politely shakes it.

Bucky glances down at his fingers. Of course, her name here would be fake.

“The usual?” The bartender asks.

Sam and Zemo reply with a nod.

The four of them watch as he pulls a snake out of a jar, cutting its organs out and placing them in a shot glass. He moves on to pour out a shot of vodka for Zemo.

She grins and runs a hand from the fur collar of his coat to his chest. A soft, flirtatious giggle slips past her lips. Oh, Bucky wanted to take Zemo’s shot glass and throw it at the wall but he can’t. Not when the stakes are so high.

She suppresses a giggle as she watches Sam struggle to down the shot.

“Got word from on high,” A man approaches Zemo. “You ain’t welcome here.”

“I have no business with the Power Broker. But if he insists, he can either talk to me…”

He gestures towards Bucky.

Angel surveys the bar, observing the patrons around them. Most of them are staring at the four, suspicious eyes being thrown their way.

Her concentration is broken when Zemo speaks.

“Winter Soldier” He orders in Russian.

She remembers Bucky’s words on the plane. He’s afraid of relapsing.

“Attack.”

Compassion, something she hasn’t felt for a long time, floods her body and before he can strike, she finds herself twisting the man’s fingers. Another approaches them and Bucky takes the lead, kicking the man to the ground. Men charge towards them and she fights along with him. He’s throwing kicks, punches, a sight that Angel is all too familiar with. Bucky takes hold of a man thrown his way, slamming him down onto the table, metal arm wrapped around his neck.

They freeze at the sound of weapons around them. Her eyes dart around the room, seeing the guns trained on them. Slowly, she reaches under her shirt, feeling the knives she has strapped to her body.

Sam places a hand on Bucky’s arm and Zemo quickly stops him.

“Stay in character or the entire bar turns on us.”

They all stand as the bartender turns to them.

“Selby will see you now.”

She looks at Bucky, then Sam, then Zemo who opens his arms, beckoning her towards him. She lets him place a hand on her hip as the four of them walk away.

“You should know Baron,” Selby’s voice rings through her ears. “People don’t just come into my bar and make demands.”

“Not a demand, an offer.” Zemo replies.

“Well, a lot has changed since you were last here. By the way, I thought you were rotting away in a German prison. How did you escape?”

“People like us always find a way, don’t we?” He chuckles. Zemo releases his hand on her.

“You’re taller than I heard, Smiling Tiger.” She purrs at Sam, who glances away. “What’s the offer? The girl?”

“No. Something better.”

He walks over to Bucky.

“Tell me what you know about the super-soldier serum and I’ll hand him over.” Fingers trace over his face, from his cheekbones down to his chin. “Along with the code words to control him. He will do whatever you want.”

A Cheshire cat smile cuts across Selby’s face.

“Now that’s the Zemo I know.” She settles into her couch. “Yeah, you were right to come to me. Arrogant but right. The serum is here in Madripoor. Dr. Wilfred Nagel is the man you want to thank… or condemn.” She shrugs. “Whatever side you’re on.”

“Is Nagel still in Madripoor?” Zemo inquires.

Selby stands.

“The breadcrumbs, you can have for free, but the bakery’s going to cost you.” She sighs. “Your arm candy, Baron, she’s extraordinary. There’s no way a little bird” Selby points her finger up and down at Angel “can fight like that without years of training. Come here, darling.” She beckons her over. Angel turns to Zemo, and then to Bucky, a worried expression on her face. Zemo falters for a second and releases his hand on her shoulder.

“Go ahead, darling.”

She stands and walks over the Selby, who looks her over with an inquisitive eye. Selby runs a manicured finger along the collar of Angel’s coat.

“I’ll tell you what,” Selby decides. “You hand both of them over to me, and I’ll tell you everything about Nagel.” She grins, pulling back the strap of Angel’s thigh holster and snapping it back onto her skin.

“Don’t touch me.” She snarls.

Selby cocks her head, an amused smirk on her face.

“I have to say, she’s quite the fiery one. I’d like to call her my little firebird. Have her sing for me.”

“A firebird and the Winter Soldier.” Zemo seethes. “Clever.”

Their attention turns to Sam when his phone rings.

Selby saunters over to him.

“Answer it.” She demands. “On speaker.”

Angel bites the inside of her cheek, waiting with bated breath as Sam speaks to Sarah. He rambles on about money laundering and having a banker killed until Sarah calls him Sam.

Her blood runs cold.

“Sam?” Selby questions, voice laced with accusation. “Who’s Sam? Kill them!”

Without hesitation, Angel pulls the gun out of her holster and unloads a bullet in the woman.

“We need to get out of here.” She yells, stuffing her gun back in place.

One of Selby’s bodyguards cocks his gun and Angel sends a throwing knife into his head, Bucky takes down the other, knocking him out with his fist.

“Jesus Christ, Angel!” Sam yells.

“We don’t have time to unpack that.” she pants, ripping the knife out of the bodyguard’s head. “The second people get word that she’s dead, we’ll have a million-dollar price tag on our heads.” She shoves the knife into a pocket on her holster and bolts to the door.

The four sprint out of the exit and onto the streets, laying low, trying not to get noticed. They walk at a brisk pace, shoulder forward, eyes straight.

The sound of rapid gunfire sends them scrambling.

“I can’t run in these heels!” Sam yells.

“Oh, tell me about it!” She replies. The shock from her boots meeting the pavement sends pain up her calves. “I’ve been running in heels for years and it still sucks.”

“That’s not humanly possible. How do you do that?” He pants.

“I got used to it.”

Angel grabs her gun and cocks it. She one bullet after another and when the wind blows back her coat, Bucky can spot another pistol tucked in the waistband of her shorts.

Motorcycles start to barrel towards them and they pick up their speed. A bounty hunter throws a dagger, slicing at the skin of her thigh. Despite the gash, she can’t feel the pain. Not with the adrenaline coursing through her veins.

They cut to a halt when they find themselves in an alleyway, surrounded.

Gunshots ring through the air saving them from impending death.

“Looks like we have a guardian angel.” Zemo notes, his run slowing down into a walk.

They look around, catching their breath.

“Well, this is too perfect.” The four turn to see a blonde walking towards them, gun pointed in Zemo’s direction. “Drop it, Zemo.”

“Sharon?” Bucky inquires. She rolls her eyes and turns to Angel.

“Nice to finally meet you, Angel of Death.”

“What? How do you know her?” Sam asks.

“I was investigating a politician’s death a few years ago. I managed to get my hands on her picture but Bucky over here caused a bit of a stir.”

She chuckles. “Nice to meet you too, Agent Carter.

“I used to be an agent, not anymore.” Sharon states.

“What are you doing here?” Bucky asks.

“I stole Steve’s shield, remember?” Her words, laced with bitterness. She points her gun at Sam “I also took your wings” then to Bucky, “so you could save his ass” finally, to Zemo “from his ass. Unlike you, I didn’t have the Avengers to back me up.”

Angel stands by, watching Bucky ask for Sharon’s help, paying no attention to the cut on her leg. Unfortunately, the adrenaline finally wears off, sending pain up her leg. Her hands press on the bleeding wound, covering her fingers with blood. She hisses in pain, causing Sharon to turn to her, brows raised.

“This isn’t over.” She spits at them and makes her way over to Angel.

“You might need some stitches for that.” She sighs, handing her a tissue. “I have a place in High Town. You’ll be safe there.”

…

Bucky takes a seat next to Angel, who is tending to her wound on Sharon’s couch, legs propped up on a glass coffee table.

“She’s stitching herself up.” Sharon smiles. “Best you don’t distract her.”

“I’ll be fine.” Angel murmurs, eyes trained on the needle piercing her skin. “Thanks for the suture kit by the way. I left mine on Zemo’s jet.”

“No problem. I got myself some first aid supplies when I was on the run. Figured they would come in handy.”

“My calves hurt. You have anything for that?” She grumbles, carefully knotting the thread.

“There’s probably some ibuprofen in there.” Sharon chuckles. “Those heels are gorgeous but damn, they look painful.”

Bucky gently wraps his fingers around her ankle and looks at her.

“May I?”

“Such a gentleman. Of course.”

She places her legs on his thighs and sighs with relief as he massages the sore muscles of her calves.

“Does it hurt?”

“My calves? Or cut on my thigh.”

“Your thigh.”

She shrugs, pulling the thread.

“Not too much. It’s nothing Advil can’t fix.”

Sharon throws them an amused look.

“So, what’s going on between the two of you?”

“James seems to have formed a little bond with her. In more ways than one.” Zemo smiles at them over a glass of whisky.

“I’ll knock that drink right out of your hands.” Angel barks.

“I have to say, it’s quite ironic. James, you swore that you’d leave your assassin roots behind, yet you’ve taken up the company of one of the most prolific hitwomen in Europe.”

“He’s got a point,” Sharon says, rifling through racks of clothing. “The irony part, I mean. When I was working the Death Angel case, both the FBI and the CIA profiled you as a psychopath. Someone unable to form proper emotional bonds with others-“

“Sociopath.” Angel interrupted with a roll of her eyes. “Not a psychopath. Psychopaths have no moral compass. But I’d say I do. Sociopaths are still able to discern right from wrong.”

Sam walks into the room, shrugging a jacket onto his shoulders.

“So why’d you become a hitwoman?”

Though he asks out of curiosity, Bucky still notes the way her eyes narrow, the way her lips twist into a frown.

“I was getting paid. Plus, they aren’t the type of people you’d like to have dinner with.”

“Let’s drop this, yeah?” Bucky grumbles. “I don’t think Angel wants to continue this conversation.”

Angel. She still hasn’t gotten used to that new name, but she likes it.

It was nothing like the names the authorities and the public had slapped on her. Killer, psychopath, evil, monster.

The hardened shell she had built around her has started to crack, but only for Bucky.

For the first time, she wonders what it would be like. To be free from the title of an assassin.

Maybe she’d live in a quiet Parisian apartment or a sun-filled home in northern Italy. Maybe she’d be alone. She’d be okay with that. Maybe she’ll be with someone else. Maybe with Bucky. She’d be more than okay with that.

She envied him, even if she shouldn’t. She didn’t go through what he went through. Being taken away, stripped of any control, and then having to live in a world he knew nothing of.

However, Bucky had something she didn’t have. He had good within himself.

She’s pulled from her thoughts when Sharon hands her a small pile of clothing.

“Here, these seem to be your style. I know some higher-ups so I’ll ask about Nagel. So, while I’m at it, enjoy the party.”

“Thanks, Sharon.”

“I’ll let you get changed.” Zemo stands and walks away, offering her privacy.

Sam and Sharon nod, leaving the room, but Bucky stayed behind.

“Are you okay?” He quietly asks.

“Yeah. I’m okay.” She curtly nods.

Bucky reaches for a pad of gauze and presses it to the closed wound.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. You don’t need to worry about me.”

He holds the gauze in place while she tapes it down.

“You’re really good at that.”

“Thanks.” She huffs. “YouTube has some great tutorials on bandaging.”

The music from the party downstairs echoes through Sharon’s home, bleeding into the room.

“Alright.” Angel stands and grabs the clothing that Sharon gave her. “I’ll change and we can head downstairs.”

She walks into the bathroom and shuts the door.

Bucky cleans up the used suture supplies and throws them in the small trash can in the corner while waiting for Angel to finish.

He wonders what would have happened if he had successfully completed his Berlin mission in 2013. What would have become of her? Everything she does, she does it with a flair. From the way she dresses, to how she acts, even in the way she kills. She was spirited, creative, and clever. He can’t bear the thought of anyone, not just HYDRA, taking that away from her.

“Hey, Buck?” She walks out of the bathroom, holding her hands across her chest. “Can you help button me up?”

His mouth goes dry when he sees her. She’s ethereal, not of this world. The forest green satin of her dress compliments her gold jewelry, illuminated by the soft lights of Sharon’s home.

“Um,” he swallows. “Sure.”

She walks over to him and turns around so he can hook the buttons through the loops.

“Pretty isn’t it. Sharon has great taste.”

“Yeah.” He breathes.

“Do you like it?”

“I guess so.”

She turns to face him with a mischievous grin.

“What do you mean ‘you guess so’?”

“I was born in 1917, I know nothing about modern fashion. You look beautiful, though.”

Bucky sits back down and she crawls into his lap. “You’re so sweet to me. Maybe too sweet.” She giggles.

“Oh, by the way.” Her hands rest on his shoulders. “I never returned the favor from this morning.”

She leans in and presses her mouth against his, kissing him with fervor.

Bucky tucks her lower lip between his teeth and bites, smiling at her little yelp. He reaches up to cup her face in his hands, rubbing his thumb over her soft skin. She deepens the kiss, letting her tongue brush against his lips.

A whine leaves his lips as she pulls back and stands.

He pouts and reaches his arms towards her, hands making a grabbing motion.

“Another kiss. Please?”

“Oh, Bucky,” She giggles, lowering herself onto her knees. “You’re too cute.”

Her hands reach for his belt, undoing the buckle. She pulls his jeans down, letting them pile around his feet. He stops her hands right as they reach for his briefs.

“Wait, I-” He stutters. “I haven’t done this in a long time.” Blushing in embarrassment.

“If you don’t want to, we can stop.” She says sweetly.

“I want to.” He lets go of her wrist and lets his hand rest in her hair. “I just forgot how it feels.”

“If you want, I can take control for a little bit.” She rests her head on his thigh. “Make you feel good.”

Bucky blinks owlishly and nods.

“Yeah. I’d like that a lot.”

That was the green light. She pulls his briefs down and Bucky kicks them aside along with the jeans. He grins as he watches her eyes widen.

“You-” She gasps. “Oh, wow, you’re big.”

“Yeah?” He chuckles, reaching down to stroke himself. “You think you can take me?”

“I can try.”

She spits on her hand and wraps it around his cock. He sucks in a sharp breath when she thumbs over the tip.

“Oh.” He gasps when she licks the underside. “Oh!”

“Feels good?” She presses a kiss on his thigh.

“Yeah, really good.”

Her lips wrap around his cock, saliva dripping past her tongue and onto his skin.

He lets his head fall back, a quiet groan slipping past his lips.

“Oh, Angel, you’re amazing.”

She flutters her lashes and looks up at him.

It’s a beautiful sight, he thinks, the way she’s all doe-eyed and blushy.

He grabs a fist full of her hair and pulls her closer, letting his cock hit the back of her throat.

She gags around him and tears prick at her eyes, yet she doesn’t pull away. She bobs her head back and forth, sending electricity through his veins.

Spit dribbles down her chin and Bucky tightens his grip on her hair. He lets his other hand cup her cheek.

“Relax for me, love.” He murmurs. He holds her head still and pushes his hips forward. She squeezes her eyes shut and grabs onto his thighs. Bucky hisses at the feeling of her nails digging into his skin but the pain is overshadowed by pleasure. Her mouth is so wet, so warm around him and he can’t get enough.

He’s only had his cock in her mouth for a few minutes but he can already feel himself getting closer.

“Wait, wait!” He gasps.

Angel pulls off, eyes wide with worry.

“Are you alright? Did I hurt you?” She asks.

“No,” He caresses her face. “You were perfect. I just- I’m gonna cum soon and I want you to feel good too.”

She smiles affectionately.

“Oh, baby, you’re too good to me.”

As she moves to straddle him, Bucky takes hold of her waist and pushes her onto the couch so she’s lying underneath him.

“Don’t want you hurting yourself.” He kisses her nose. “Your wound is still healing.”

His hands push up the hem of her dress, the satin pooling around her waist, exposing the soft skin of her tummy and the scar he left her. He leans down to press a gentle kiss on the scar and he playfully nips at her skin.

“No biting, puppy.”

He whines at the name. It makes him feel all soft like he wants to give all of himself to her. His head rests on her tummy and he blinks at her with soft eyes.

“You wanted me to take control, so I’m taking control.” She coos, running a hand through his hair. “Give me a kiss, baby.”

He kisses up her body and when his lips meet hers, she takes this as an opportunity to roll themselves over.

She straddles his hips, letting her cunt rub against his cock. Her eyes close and she sighs in pleasure.

“You want to fuck me, baby?” She giggles.

“Yes.” He groans. “Oh god, yes.”

“What do you say?” she taunts, voice laced with authority.

“Please.” Bucky pants. “Can I please fuck you?”

“Mmm. Asking so nicely.” She muses. “Of course you can.”

His eyes roll back, chest heaving. His mouth drops open but she presses a hand against his mouth.

“Gotta stay quiet. Don’t want everyone hearing you do we?”

Bucky nods, biting down on his lip.

“Good boy.” She leans down and kisses his forehead. “So good.”

She lifts her hips and presses his cock against her entrance.

Bucky rests a hand on her hips but she intertwines their fingers and presses his hand onto the couch cushions.

“No touching.”

Unfair. She’s being unfair.

As she lowers herself onto him, Bucky squeezes his eyes shut, trying not to moan.

“Beautiful.” She whispers, eyes hooded and lips parted. “You’re beautiful.”

He thinks he could cum right then and there.

“Am I making you feel good?” She whispers.

Bucky nods, quiet moans on the tip of his tongue.

She gasps and tightens around him. Bucky bites down on his lip. Hard.

“M-move.” He whimpers. “Please.”

She replies by moving her hips back and forth.

“You feel so good, sweet thing.”

Bucky hums in content.

“Thank you.”

With every movement she makes, with every sound that leaves her lips, Bucky’s convinced she’s going to kill him.

“Do you know what la petite mort means, baby?” She asks him.

“Mhm.” Bucky opens his eyes. “It’s French. It means a little death.”

They’re nose to nose, both gasping into each other’s mouths. The gold necklaces she’s wearing dangles in his face and he bites down on a chain with a smile.

“It means more than that, baby. La petit mort refers to an orgasm. And from the looks of it,” She teases, “I think you’re coming close.”

Bucky groans, letting go of the chain.

“You’re gonna be the death of me.”

“Are you close, baby? Are you gonna cum?”

“Yes.” He whimpers with desperation. “Can I cum? Can I cum for you?”

“Tell me I’m your angel.” She whispers into his ear.

“You’re my angel. Can I please cum?” He begs.

“No, not yet.” She laves her tongue over the shell of his ear. “Tell me I’m your only angel.”

“You’re my angel. My only angel.”

She squeezes around him and quickens her movements. Her hands press down on his chest as she lifts her hips and sinks back down onto him.

She’s an angel. His angel. In this moment, he’d do anything for her. Anything for his angel.

“I’m gonna- fuck.” He groans.

“Gonna cum?” She asks, voice silvery and low. “Gonna cum for me baby?”

All he can do is nod.

“Alright.”

She lifts herself off of him and before he can protest, she’s got her lips wrapped around him. He bucks his hips forward and empties himself into her mouth.

He watches in awe, chest heaving post-orgasm, as she swallows him down and pulls off of him. With a quick swipe of her hand across she smiles.

She crawls up his body and places a gentle kiss on his cheek.

“So good. You were so good for me.”

#bucky barnes #bucky x reader #bucky fanfic #tfatws #fanfic

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magnificent-nerd · 3 years

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Why Naqib in The Boys sucked

Image description: fictional character Naqib in Amazon Prime’s show The Boys.

(Is the fire in the background an excuse to use racist Yellow Filter to show how exotic he is? Hmm.)

I first posted this on my blog in Dec 2020, and since nothing in superhero media has changed for the better at this time (September 5th, 2021), I’m going to keep talking about it.

Because nobody else does. So, without further ado:

WHY NAQIB SUCKS.

I was a big fan of The Boys season 1; I love superheroes, I love deconstructing a genre. Sure, it has its problems, but overall I enjoyed season 1 and thought the show had potential.

(That’ll learn me for being hopeful!)

When season 1 ended with this big build up of mostly nameless brown and background characters as Muslim terrorists (deep sigh) we the audience are left thinking this one Muslim character (Naqib) whose superpower is to blow himself up repeatedly (insert another long deep sigh here) is going to be The Big Bad of season 2.

I had my misgivings about that direction. Firstly, as you can see from the image of Naqib, he is highly exoticised and is walking around bare chested with Arabic writing on his chest. He looks more like a generic western media depiction of a genie than he does a supervillain.

And yet he's the first prominent Muslim character in superhero media I've seen in YEARS.

(See my post about MENA and Muslim character good guys, including Joe played by Marwan Kenzari in The Old Guard, which is technically a comic book movie but it’s not what I’d call ‘caped and costumed’ superheroes so it’s more... superhero adjacent.)

I follow superhero content closely and as far as I'm aware the last time we saw any named Muslim characters in superhero movies WITH SPEAKING LINES was:

Instance 1) Iron Man 1 back in 2008 with The Ten Rings in Afghanistan, showing multiple Muslim characters as baddies/terrorists, but only two of them as a named character and with any meaningful lines to say. And despite one of them, Yinsen (actor Shaun Toub), being a good guy he still dies! Which is common in western media for Muslim and MENA characters.

Note: Fellow Iron Man 1 castmate, actor Sayed Badreya, makes an important point in this GQ article: "I die in Iron Man, I die in Executive Decision. I get shot by everyone. George Clooney kills me in Three Kings. Arnold blows me up in True Lies…" (x)

Instance 2) A more recent instalment in Batman V. Superman in 2016, with some unnamed 'General' character and mercenaries/terrorists in Nairomi, Africa, referred to only as "the desert" throughout the movie. All reference to the General's actual name are available in an extended/deleted scene only, so a very poor and vague depiction in the final cut.

Instance 3) The generic and badly written ‘bad guys’ in Wonder Woman 1984 (2020 movie), which was honestly such a racist depiction of Arabs and Muslims that many critics pointed out we hadn’t seen a depiction this terrible since 1994′s True Lies. (At least most critics were in agreement that WW84 movie was generally terrible, so there’s that.)

And that's it, those are the only major instances showing any Muslim actors or characters in a caped and costumed superhero movie.

Some other fleeting glimpses of Muslims onscreen:

Glimpse 1) I spotted a girl wearing a hijab among the nameless and unspeaking background characters of Peter Parker's class in Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). A first for Marvel movies, apparently.

Glimpse 2) Disney Plus show Falcon and Winter Soldier (2021) had two nameless Muslim characters walk by in a scene that’s supposed to be Tunisia (using Yellow Filter), and ‘thank’ the present American Air Force (eye-roll).

Glimpse 3) Netflix show Jupiter’s Legacy (2021) had a nameless Muslim sailor conversing with one of the main characters in a scene, with meaningful dialogue about racism. (WOW. Really good.) Bonus: no yellow filter. It’s a pity he’s a nameless background character because this brief instance is the least problematic MENA rep I’ve seen in ages, but it is very brief.

I just wrote about Glimpses 2 and 3, and how the Netflix show outdid Disney when it comes to these nameless walk-on Muslim characters.

This is pretty pathetic overall, these small crumbs, especially compared to better rep and probably the only instance of legit MENA superheroes in a ‘costumes and capes’ style superhero show, the Tarazi siblings on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

Anyway, now I’ve listed what crumbs are available across the live action superhero genre, back to The Boys.

I was intrigued about how season 2 would handle Naqib and any characters relating to him, and what storyline they'd use.

Was I excited at the possibility of seeing Muslim supers onscreen? Damn straight I was. Did I mind that they were baddies? Well, yes and no. When you only ever get crumbs or no crumbs at all, you tend to get excited over one stale old crumb.

After the build up for season 2, I eagerly sat down to watch the first episode, only to have the first five minutes of episode 1 Trigon him.

Note: who's Trigon, you ask? Well if you didn't watch the DCEU's Titans show, Trigon was The Big Bad who was hyped up throughout season 1, introduced in the season 1 cliff-hanger episode as this big 'oh shit!' moment for the cast of heroes, only for him to fizzle out like a wet fart in the first episode of season 2 while the show pivots wildly in another direction.

Exactly what happened to Naqib in the first five minutes of The Boys season 2.

Erm, so, Naqib. Farewell, I guess? As a character you briefly appeared in 2 episodes, portrayed by a different actor in each (Krishan Dutt, and Samer Salem). It seems the writers used you as a plot device when they needed a cheap cliff-hanger for a direction that ultimately went nowhere.

Am I disappointed? Yeah, I am. Overall I thought season 2 of The Boys was weaker than season 1, but I'm not here to talk about the whole season: I want to talk about Naqib and this missed opportunity.

The Boys and its showrunners sell the show as being a satire of recent and well known superhero content, of all the big movies and TV shows. There's been a lot of patting themselves on the back for calling out overused tropes in superhero media (and sometimes they've done this satire well: see the LGBT marketing scene with Queen Maeve in season 2), but my issue with the show on their Muslim rep, or should I say lack thereof, is if your show has even less Muslim character rep than the content you're trying to parody, how is this a win for satire?

Naqib and that whole angle came across as a lazy, half-assed swing from the writer's room. Sure, perhaps a lot of the non-Muslim and non-MENA audience won't even notice, as we've been ignored by western media or made into nameless, generic, vacuous baddies for decades now. Non-Muslims and non-MENA just accept that we're always the baddies for no particular reason at all (which feeds into Islamophobia, by the way) and The Boys' writers could say they are simply satirising the tropes already present in media...

But, and this is a big but, the media that The Boys is satirising has already made a step toward better inclusion and representation: Ms. Marvel (Kamala Khan), Marvel comics' first Muslim superhero, is entering the MCU as a lead character in her own Disney Plus show, debuting in 2022.

Ms. Marvel/Kamala Khan is also cited to appear in upcoming Captain Marvel sequel, The Marvels (2022), which will be a major movie.

The MCU has also cast a Muslim actor (Mahershala Ali) as the lead in a reboot of Blade. That's going to be big news when it starts filming.

So to the showrunners on The Boys, I say this: now you've done this small angle of 'all Muslim characters are terrorists, yuckity-yuck!' like we've seen in major superhero movies thus far, and you've brushed that aside in favor of focusing on other whiter villains, my question is will you come back to Muslim and MENA characters again? Or is that all you got?

Because if that was ALL, then the current score is Disney/MCU:02, Netflix:02, DCEU:02, and The Boys: a big ZERO as far as Muslim and MENA rep goes.

Originally posted on my blog, magnificently nerdy.

If you, like me, are always on the lookout for onscreen Muslim and MENA characters in superhero media, and have spotted any characters in superhero TV shows I haven’t watched yet, let me know about them!

Here is my post on good guys, featuring Old Guard’s Joe, and Blindspot’s Rich Dotcom.

Here’s my post about the Tarazi siblings on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow TV show.

And, if Marvels’ Eternals gets released on schedule for 2021, we will have a MENA actor portraying a supporting character. I just hope Marvel gives him a name.

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daily-douma · 4 years

Text

Demon With No Name

An analysis on Upper Moon Two: Douma

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba spoilers!!

Hello! ❤ I wanted to discuss the significance on Douma’s real name never being revealed to us in the KNY story.

I'd love it if you guys could share your thoughts on this with me please!

Before I start:

Disclaimer: I do not speak Japanese at all, I’m basing all quotes off of the first manga site i could find. Translations may vary depending on the source. Also I may not be aware of alternate meanings of words that may have been lost in translation for the most important quotes! So please forgive me if I misinterpret something!!

A lot of the demons in KNY’s story are either nameless, or go by an alias that isn’t their real name. Examples of the former include most minor demons, such as the Temple Demon, Swamp Demon, Older brother/sister, Mother, and Father Spider demons, etc. Examples of the latter are mostly are more relevant Upper moon demons-- Daki, Akaza, and Kokushibou, whose real names are Ume, Hakuji, and Michikatsu respectively. The other upper moons, Nakime, Gyokko, and Hantengu, however, don’t have their human names revealed, along with Douma. However, these 3, did not hold as much story significance as Douma.

Then in addition to that, there are some demons who go by their human names still, such as Rui and Kaigaku. I assume it is because they are young enough relative to other demons age that they haven’t forgotten it (or maybe they just like their human names lol).

(I don’t know if Gyutaro’s name is his actual name or a fake name and, if it is a fake name, I don’t remember if his real name is actually given, which is weird because his sister’s was. But that’s a topic for another day.)

However, Douma, who holds the rank of Upper Moon 2, is one of the most relevant demons in the story, yet his real name is never disclosed. Even in the Kimetsu Acadmeny chapter extras, is stated that his AU version’s real name is unknown.

So, why is that? Douma even said so himself that he has great memory. He remembered many details of his life but he failed to ever disclose to us his name. Was that one thing he did forget? Was it not important to him? Did he simply not have a real name before becoming a demon? (Maybe his parents thought he was above having a normal human name?) And most importantly, was this intentionally done by Kyoharu Gotouge?

Before I continue, first we should know the meaning behind Douma’s name. His name is officially 童磨. According to the Kimetsu no Yaiba wiki, 童 ( dō ) means “child,” and 磨 (ma) which can mean “polishe,” “grind,” or “improve.” (Someone also said it can mean magic but I don’t have the source im sorry :( ) Based on these, Douma’s name has a meaning somewhere along the lines of “magical child” or “polished child.” This is most likely to reference how his parents thought he had divine powers at his birth.

For most people, your name is one of the most significant aspect of one’s identity. It’s the first bit of information you to give to anybody upon introduction. However, Douma’s unknown name is a demonstration of his own lack of personal identity.

If we take a look back at Douma’s childhood, he’s been put on as the figurehead of the Eternal Paradise cult from the day he could even sit up. His entire life he was put on a pedestal for an identity he did not make for himself, but one manufactured and forced onto him by his parents. In chapter 142, Douma admits that he can’t speak to the Gods or have any spiritual connections that his parents believe he has. In fact, he doesn’t even believe in any of it. If that’s the case, why does he seem so fixated on the idea of bringing his troubled followers to “paradise” as his sole reason for being born?

Earlier I mentioned that one large aspect of identity is our name. However, another important aspect in defining our identity is the personal relationships we have around us. Who we value and surround ourselves will shape our own individual perceptions of ourselves. However, Douma, who has admitted to having limited capability in feeling emotions, is unable to form meaningful bonds with people around him. Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is story where most, if not all, the main themes revolve around love, family, and friendship being the main motivators to drive characters in the pursuit of goals. However, here we have a character who serves as a direct antithesis to of all these themes. He has nobody he loves and nobody who loves him.

In chapter 157, Kanao calls out Douma in their fight, telling him she can see through the fake persona he puts on. She then proceeds to question him: “Why were you even born?” (damn....) Douma gave clearly visible cues that he was not pleased with what she had to say. The important observation to take from this scene is Douma’s reaction. The man who was just revealed to not feel any emotions, who is usually unbothered by harsh words thrown at him from demon slayers and other members of the upper moons alike, showed an emotional response to the cutting words of a child questioning his existence.

Based on this reaction, I think there is reason to believe Douma has an innate dissatisfaction with his own identity, or moreso his lack of identity. From his childhood, he’s been more than aware of how he cannot feel emotions the same as others. Even in his dying thoughts in chapter 163, he thinks back on how he was “always been this way.” He thinks about how human emotions to him were nothing more than “mere dreams.”

I think should we take a close look at the word choice used here. He could have simply said something along the lines of “I’ve never felt emotions;” however Gotouge specifically phrased it as a metaphor comparing it to dreams. This word choice conveys a sense of longing associated with the idea of being able to experience emotion. This suggests that there is a chance he did wish for a better understanding of emotions. After all, like Kanao said, what’s the point of living if one can’t truly indulge in all of life’s pleasures associated with the emotional bonds we build with one another?

However, what does all this of this have to do with Douma not having a name? Douma not having a name is symbolic of his entire character. He is a man with no true identity of his own. He was unable to maintain any close, meaningful, interpersonal relationships with anyone around him in the hundreds of years he lived. He lived every day with a false persona knowing deep down inside of him knowing he was different from everyone else around him, but not in the “spiritual way” that was expected of him. And in his own Nihilistic opinion, he felt his own life was pointless. But as a direct contradiction to those beliefs, he continues to lie to himself, telling himself the people need him to save them. It’s ironic--Douma, the man who mocked demon slayers’ efforts to do whatever they can to achieve their goals, is doing the most to do whatever he can to mask the emptiness he feels inside. His boastfulness of his cult, his over-acting of emotions, and his insistence of friendly and polite conversation even in the face of insults and attacks from opponents all demonstrate this. While he may not be able to process and understand emotions like most people, there is one thing that Douma appears to have in common with many people: wanting a sense of purpose and meaningfulness in life.

While Douma’s reason for becoming a demon is never explicitly disclosed in the manga, I think we have reason to suspect him of becoming a demon for the purpose of finding an identity to call his own. Muzan Kibutsuji is notorious for taking advantage of humans who are at their lowest points in their life. They have lost everything that mattered to them and have no one else to turn to. However, it was a different case with Douma--a man with no loved ones, no purpose, no real identity--already had nothing to lose to in the first place.

Despite all Douma thought he though he “dedicated [...] to people and made contributions to the world,” in the end, his choice to become a demon never brought him the sense of identity and purpose he sought out by the time of his death. Unlike even other demons, who had family members they could happily reunite with in death, he would simply be forgotten from the rest of the world. Sure, maybe the demon slayers will remember him as Douma, one of the strongest demons. However,there was not a single person who knew the real Douma, the real name behind the man who served as Upper Moon 2 under Muzan. He will just continue to remain nameless even in death. A cruel reminder of how any way Muzan’s involvement in any other demon’s life did nothing to improve any of their lives, if not worsen it.

I don’t think I worded this well but I hope it still makes sense to everyone 🥺

#Douma #dōma #kny #kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #character analysis

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certifiedceraunophile · 3 years

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Hiya!! Caroline Forbes for the character game, if you would be so inclined.

I am so so sorry I'm so late to this ask, but I'm hoping better late than never :) [like seriously I’m answering this a month late I am sooooo sorry!!]

First impression

My first impression of Caroline was during that scene at the grill, when she was drunk and like "I try so hard and nobody goes for me, nobody wants me, everything is a competition and I try so hard and NEVER win" to bonnie, and honestly calling myself out here, but I hated her in that moment simply bc I could see wayyyyy too much of myself in her, and I felt sort of vulnerable seeing such a blatant reflection of my deepest insecurities just sitting there in front of my eyes, but at that moment I wasnt looking to self reflect or read into it too deeply [I was there for mindless cheap entertainment] so my first basic impression I believe was to absolutely scoff at her, and I was like, I already dont like this chick, but also I was expecting her to be sort of a watered down regina george character, bc that's how they introduced her in terms of how she behaves w elena, she was supposed to be the shallow passive aggressive vapid bitch who's friendship is performative at best and toxic at worst, the way she treats Bonnie as a convenient sound board and replaceable company did not go unnoticed by me, these parts I can say I did not relate to, however I saw them for what they are, which is the makings of a headbitch mean girl who's imminent “untimely” death will not be mourned so much as alluded to constantly as a warning call and/or a cautionary tale for all the nameless dangers that are lurking in their godforsaken town, basically I expected her to die as a plot-pusher and then her death + the aftermath would've served as a convenient point of mild conflict between stelena to you know add to the "forbideness" of their relationship, so at this point all my first impressions were exactly what the writer's intended and honestly I was just waiting for her to die since it was clearly just a matter of time before that happened, but at the same time, I might not have been completely aware of this during that period of time, but the grill scene struck a chord with me and stayed with me quietly for a very long time, months later after reading several ffs and metas I can pinpoint that I was basically stuck between finding solidarity w Caroline in having the same insecurities as the character, and hating the fact that I had those insecurities at all to begin w and how vividly they were shown to me through Caroline without any restraint or cushioning.

So yeah you could say her character itself left me both vulnerable and seen at the same time so it was an odd mix of finding comfort and empathizing with this fictional character, but predominantly I was feeling.....agitated and hiding away from the truth that she represented to me; these two opposing feelings conflicted with one another constantly leaving me in a place where I mostly did not know if I liked her at all and if I didnt like her was it because she was written to be a mildly irritating side character [that I couldnt be bothered to emotionally invest in] or just because I saw too much of myself, especially the parts of me I dont particularly care for, in her to ever like her.

So yeah on one side I could say I wasnt deeply bothered [in a good or a bad way] by her, and only in passing acknowledged her to be the plot-convenient side character she was in the very beginning, but on the other hand, I somehow latently knew that it was so much more than that, and I am so so glad it was in fact the latter of the two that was true.

Impression now

Listen my impression of her now, cannot be encapsulated into a well thought out explanation of why I think so and so of her and how it affects me, but I think personally right now if you ask me what I think of Caroline, I would say I see her and I think,

Oh I....know you, I see you everyday when I think about the kind of growth I want to have, I see myself in your past and while you may have grown I havent, but I can see it’s possible, however fictional and non-existent you are, if it’s possible for you, it’s possible for me.

[Also I just wanna add here, that in no way am I, at this moment, referring to canon!caroline directly but I am strictly thinking of the Caroline I have built in my head and the growth I projected onto her when I saw her transition from vapid blonde shallow bitchy human [and here’s the thing she wasnt vapid or shallow even in her human days but the insecurities still made her feel that way] to confident, painfully real, optimistic, loyal and so overflowingly full of love-vampire who has forgiven her past self but also loves her past self because no one thought she was worth that but Caroline Forbes thinks 16 year old Human Caroline Forbes deserves just as much love as Vampire Caroline Forbes and if no one else is brave enough, real enough to give that to her she will give it to her herself, Which to me is beautiful and resonates so deeply with me and that is exactly what I would say is my current impression of her; A girl so full of love and light, even her own shadow self cannot escape it.]

Favorite moment

Every moment she beats up a guy is my favourite moment and every time she insults Klaus with a smile on her face is also my favourite moment.

Idea for a story

Ok so I’ve had this idea brewing in my head for a while and I’m really excited to make it into an extensive multichap work when I do get the time, but you know how in Legacies [gag] there’s this episode where in an alternative universe where Hope doesnt exist at all, Caroline and Klaus are the cutest Enemies of the State couple to ever exist and they both are basically fucking shit up to the point where the humans wanna end the supernatural world as they know it, in legacies the reason behind the supernatural uprising was something unnecessarily sordid and stupid but I am basically thinking of something else but will lead to the same alternate universe we see in legacies, the basic premise rn is that Klaus and Caroline are the Supreme leaders of the supernatural community and are leading them against the humans in this war that has broken out all over the world in a bid to end the supernatural world altogether, and I kind of have it outlined to take them from However Long it Takes my Last Love to let’s discuss our next strategy to over throw all opposing world governments on this table and then proceed to fuck on it.

So yeah I kinda wanna say stay tuned for that, but I wont cuz seriously I have no faith in myself lmao.

Unpopular opinion

As much as I love to criticize other characters [mostly Elena] for being hypocritical twats regarding Caroline’s choices, Caroline herself is a hypocrite multiple times through out canon, but I myself find that I am ok with that, since I never expected her to be perfect and her hypocrisy only makes her more real in my eyes since every time she is a hypocrite she is called out on it and made to face her own double standard.

Favorite relationship

I wanna say Klaus, like seriously I really really do, but for me personally the relationship my Vampire!Caroline has with her past human self will always be the most beautiful enriching and hope giving thing.

That and also her relationship with her mom and how it finds this transformation from a place where they constantly hurt each other and are estranged from each other to a place where they try so hard to understand and love each other and finding the other to be an unmovable pillar in their life that strengthens and holds them up also resonates with me deeply.

Favorite headcanon

This one

#anon asks #I am soooo sorry for getting so late to this anon #But I'm hoping the fact that I quite frankly cracked myself open and raw in some of these parts makes up for it :))))

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xaibaugrove · 4 years

Text

An Analysis of Ellie

In honor of The Last Of Us Day, I’m finally gonna drag out this headcanon I’ve had in my drafts forever. If you choose to read this, good luck because it’s a long time.

Of course, SPOILERS AHEAD.

So, this all started with me thinking about how Ellie has suffered from survivor’s guilt ever since she discovered her immunity, when she was meant to die with her girlfriend/best friend Riley.

In that moment, Ellie had already embraced death and wanted to share it with her loved one, but that was robbed from her. She continued to live while forced to watch who might have been the first person she ever loved turn from infection. Ellie had no explanation for why that gift of immunity had been given to her. She had that gift thrust upon her by forces outside of her control. Ellie had to contend with her new existence as someone immune to the infection that had torn apart Earth’s reality, trapped in a paradox as a young teenage girl in a post apocalyptic world, until Marlene relieved her of that pressure by giving her life meaning, by giving purpose to her immunity and bestowing an important identity upon her: the savior of the human race.

Before all that, Ellie had always been just a number. She was just an orphan kid in a sea of other faceless, nameless kids in a military boarding school, without a future or special kind of destiny in a bleak world without any real meaning. Suddenly, she was a savior for all humanity and tasked with the tremendous responsibility of staying alive. She had to contend with her life having more value than others, seeing people sacrificing themselves over and over again, for her, when she had lived as a nobody for all her life until that point when everything changed.

I can imagine that that was a lot for Ellie to deal with as a teenager, a key developmental time in her life when she is just learning who she is as a person. A lot of her identity was based on not having an identity. Being trained and destined to be a nameless soldier. So when that identity was called into question, when she was smacked in the face with immunity to a virus that killed her best friend and numerous people on the planet, she needed the absurdity of her existence to be reigned in by her new title of savior of the human race.

During her journey with Joel, while the player mostly experienced the story and struggle of Joel, Ellie was struggling with her own internal issues as the secondary character. She mainly dealt with the loss of her innocence but she also still carried within her a crippling survivor’s guilt. This is very apparent after the death of Tess. In that pivotal scene in Part 1, Tess made it abundantly clear that the only reason why she was sacrificing herself was because of Ellie’s immunity, to the point of physically grabbing Ellie by the arm and pointing to the point of infection, relegating Ellie to just her immunity. Of course it wasn’t Tess’s intention to do that, but one can only wonder how Ellie absorbed that moment, another moment that helped her in defining herself. Tess wasn’t risking her life to save Ellie the person. She sacrificed herself for the immunity, the potential cure Ellie carried within her.

This assisted Ellie in defining herself by her immunity. Instead of thinking about herself and how she related to the world around her with all the contradictions of her childhood, and the relationships she formed with Joel and Sam, the people in that world, it was easier to just soldier through life with the sole goal of fulfilling her destiny. Saving the human race.

Then came the turning point in her life, when her identity was stripped from her by the very person she had come to trust and love the most.

In a way, Ellie had her autonomy taken from her by Joel and had to come to grips with that, the fact that Joel loved her and yet, hurt her deeply as a result of that love, without truly acknowledging it. In making this ultimate decision about her life for her, Joel triggered her survivor’s guilt and Ellie had no way of expressing it, 1. Because Joel lied to her about the situation and forced the conversation to be buried in that lie, and 2. Because even if she gathered the courage to confront him about the lie, she didn’t really have the cognitive ability at the time to express herself fully, to tell him exactly what was wrong with it. And maybe on some level, she didn’t really want to have the conversation and finally clarify the unspoken truth. If she did initiate the conversation, how could she be angry at him when his defense is that he did what he did out of love? What defense would an average teenager have against a parent making that statement in one of many common situations that could occur in normal settings?

Because of the decision that Joel made, he was able to be content with his surrogate daughter, living his best life in a way, while Ellie was devastated in the aftermath. And if he did notice her inner turmoil, he never addressed it. She was probably subtly carrying around that guilt with her for years. It might have even bothered her or made her hesitant to indulge in the many positive aspects of being alive: developing friendships, romantic relationships, normal childhood things. It wasn’t until Ellie was allowed to stew on it, contemplate everything and allow the guilt to fester within her that she was able to finally muster up the courage to have that difficult conversation with Joel.

In yet another pivotal scene, this time in Part 2, she gave him another chance to confess to what she suspected was a lie for multiple years when she was met with another trigger of her survivor’s guilt, during the reluctant excursion she embarked upon with Joel in search of strings for the guitar he made for her. In that scene, she questions him, counters his excuses and challenges him. Ellie gave Joel the chance to be honest with her. And his choice was to dig his heels in deeper, lying to her face once again. When watching Ellie’s expressions after Joel silenced her protests, so much can be seen in the way she looks at him for a moment.

She looks at him and thinks of how many things he has done to make her happy, out of love for her, and the immense contradiction she feels with those acts of love when compared to the greatest pain he inadvertently inflicted on her as well as the continuation of that pain through him perpetuating the lie. She gave him another chance and he betrayed her trust again. When Ellie looks away from Joel, her expression then reveals her innermost thoughts. Her eyes search the void between them to see that Joel will never admit to the lie and the only way for her to reinforce what she believes is the real truth is for her to seek out the answers herself. So she does.

When he did finally confess to everything, it broke her with not only how indifferent he was to it, but how he had destroyed any chance she could have of fulfilling her purpose. It possibly even reaffirmed the suspicions in the back of her mind that questioned his love for her due to how much he had hurt her without apologizing even once for it and how much he had taken from her in the process. The validity of all their past interactions were suddenly called into question as well, because although Joel did those things to make Ellie happy, every happy moment was always undercut by the tremendous amount of guilt she carried that outweighed the happier moments for her as her entire life was worthless to her, from the moment Joel removed her from that hospital.

After that revelation, her sense of self was thrown into limbo. Ellie severed her relationship with Joel and went back to Jackson with no idea of how to truly carry on with her life and live with herself after that. In order to appease herself in some way, she regained some type of control in navigating their relationship from that point on. Before, their relationship hinged entirely on how Joel wanted to interact with her, with him approaching her to progress their father-daughter relationship after he removed her agency by making choices for her. Post their argument at St. Mary’s, it’s important to note that Ellie assumed control and eliminated that progression entirely. A consolation prize, a reclamation of her agency in life. But it was never enough.

Regardless, things continued on like that for some time, but then something happened that shifted the trajectory of Joel and Ellie’s relationship. On a night when Ellie attended a party, she happened to find herself possibly feeling grateful for being alive when her longtime best friend expressed interest in her and made an advance toward her.

After Joel intervened in a conflict between her and a dumbass bigot, she angrily went to confront him. She continued to exercise her control in their relationship by coming down hard on him. Her anger about everything was very apparent during their confrontation later that night and one can see that she still felt like her life was technically meaningless without her death for the sake of a cure for the salvation of the human race. During that scene she finally expresses exactly how she feels, what she hadn’t been able to articulate for years.

It’s important to note that before she says any of that, Joel disarms her. Joel asked her about the simplest of things, if Dina was her girlfriend. Then he placed an importance on her existence, by saying that Dina would be lucky to have her, which I believe Ellie thought about for a split second. She ruminated on her feelings, on how a potential romantic relationship with Dina made her feel happy to be alive, as it wouldn’t have been possible if she had died in the hospital. And this thought, that Joel could have been right to save her, that she could possibly agree with him, caused her survivor’s guilt to spiral and she lashed out at him with all the emotions she felt since he first agreed to smuggle her across the country years ago.

Then, in a turning point in their dynamic, Joel is finally forthright with her when he responds to her frustration by stating that he would do it all over again. As a result, for the first time ever, Ellie feels as though she can finally understand his motivations and the validity of his love for her. In his honesty, he tells her that her life does have value to him, even if she can’t see that herself. And although she will never forgive him for his transgression or fully understand it because she doesn’t see her own value as a person aside from the potential cure she carries within herself along with her immunity, she realizes that she can’t stop herself from wanting... From wanting to live, from wanting to experience the joys of life, wanting to just be human. Joel introduces a new purpose to her life, to simply exist without purpose and be herself and find value in her life as just a person living it. She can’t erase the past and change Joel’s choices that directly affected her in the end, but she can choose to try his suggestion. To live life, despite her guilt and despite how afraid she feels to do it. This late night moment of vulnerability between a father and daughter opens the door to them possibly repairing what was broken 4 years ago.

Her entire world is then shattered when Abby slams that door shut by killing Joel. Just when Ellie was setting down the path of finding the strength to move on and repair their relationship. Her survivor’s guilt was triggered and sent into overdrive by this event, because once she discovered that the people who killed Joel were ex-Fireflies, she came to the conclusion that Abby killed Joel in retaliation to him removing Ellie from the hospital and killing any hopes of a cure, along with all the Fireflies in the hospital. This essentially caused Ellie to believe that Joel was killed because of her in a roundabout way, as he would have still been alive if he hadn’t saved her, further enforcing her belief that her ultimate destiny in life was to die in that hospital. In Ellie’s mind, Joel died for a pointless reason, because she viewed herself as worthless.

Since she and Joel were the only ones who carried the secret of what really happened at St. Mary’s, there was no one else who could blame her or punish her for his death. Abby punished someone who didn’t deserve the blame and let Ellie go, leaving her to deal with the aftermath and that survivor’s guilt. In Ellie’s mind, it should have been her, but there was no way for her to have swapped herself in Joel’s place. So she punished herself in a different way. This sends her down her path of addiction to self-destruction.

Ellie had no way of punishing herself for her immunity for all those years, for surviving while others died for her. Abby provided an outlet for this desire. Ellie pursued Abby under the guise of getting justice for Joel but more can be ascertained from her constant push to find Abby, in her constantly doing things that go against her better nature, committing horrible acts and torturing people, debasing herself and pushing away those who love her or even putting them in danger while simultaneously traumatizing herself all at once. With every murder she committed, with every wound she sustained, she was punishing herself for being alive.

Each wound she suffered during that pursuit was like a high for her, an adrenaline rush. Each time she damaged her mental state even further with a new murder of one of Abby’s friends, she reinforced the belief that she deserved all of this for surviving. She deserved all the pain for being the cure, for being immune and benefiting from it while the world and everyone in it suffered. This is why Ellie can’t let go, even after her first encounter with Abby.

It was easy for Ellie to spiral in that self-destructive cycle. She punished herself for Joel’s death by pursuing Abby, which caused her closest friends to suffer because they were connected to her hunt for justice. Even when it all seemed to be over and Ellie tried to change. Tommy nearly died and wound up crippled and separated from his wife because of her and even JJ wound up without a father due to Jesse dying while helping her in her pursuit of Abby. This all contributed to her revisiting the same destructive path when Tommy accused her of not following through after all he had lost for her. Tommy started her self-punishment with that accusation. And once Ellie had the chance to think it all over, it was easy for her to return to the same bad habits. This is why she leaves and continues to pursue Abby, steeling herself against a near-fatal abdominal injury, doing whatever it takes to get to her, lying to herself this time, by telling herself all the while that it is in service of Joel. To repay his life that was taken from him. To even out the injustice.

Ellie realizes this lie when she is mere seconds away from exacting her revenge by drowning Abby in the ocean. Joel’s face flashes across her mind, of him during that night when he told her that her life had value. She realizes in that moment that killing Abby will not bring her peace, because the motivation behind the act is a lie. It will not give her life value or meaning, or purpose. Because her life already has value. Outside of a cure, outside of her immunity, outside of her saving humankind. Her life has value because of who she is, not what she can give to the world. And Ellie finally realizes that she must accept this to be whole. Killing Abby won’t help her do this...so she lets her go. She watches the boat leave as she sits in the ocean tides ebbing and flowing around her, thinking of how broken she is, how much she has lost and if she can bring herself back from the brink to find value in the meaningless existence she believed her life was for so long.

When she revisits the farm and contemplates all this while holding a guitar that she’ll never be able to play again, she recalls that memory, when Joel reminded her of her value. In that final scene, she realized that Joel was the first person in her life who didn’t see her for her immunity. Joel saw Ellie for who she was and saw value in her as a person. To such a degree that he was willing to risk all of humanity to keep her alive. She was then able to forgive him and know that he truly did love her for her, something no one else had ever done before him. And if he could love her for her, maybe she could learn to do the same.

#the last of us day #the last of us #tlou #the last of us part 2 #tlou2 #ellie tlou #joel tlou #riley tlou #dina tlou #headcanon

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yamayuandadu · 3 years

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For the character breakdown, I’d love to see hadad, anat, shapash, yam, mot, athtar, kothkar and khasis... really any of the ugaritic pantheon, of course you don’t have to do all of them >.<, I’d just love to see your hot takes

I shall rise up to the challenge! I’m the only person on this site obsessed with Ugarit as far as I can tell... I covered everyone you asked for plus Ashtart and Yarikh. As much as I like burrowing through jstor and academia edu and persee and so on, I kind of wish there were more people approaching Ugaritic, Mesopotamian, Hittite etc. myths the way many do with Greek ones tbh - sometimes i’d just like to see which figures people think would be into gossiping and so on or which tacky modern fashion they think suits them equally as much as I want to find out if Yarikh’s portrayal in Ugaritic poetry owes more to Nanna/Sin or to the Hittite moon god. ALSO as far as this sort of light hearted takes go, there are two japanese artists on twitter who draw Baal cycle fanart: here and here.

Hadad: How I feel about this character: one of my fave mythical protagonist. I think I genuinely only like Inanna more. Going from a very relatable desire to get his own house to triumph over death is quite the journey. The relative powerlessness many interpreters point out is interesting, too - the fact he mostly gets somewhere because of allies and because even if El was the king of gods, Hadad’s attributes made him the king of people’s hearts arguably, so he has to win against overwheming odds. All the people I ship romantically with this character: Anat, Ashtart/Astarte/however we transcribe her name this week... Kothar? My non-romantic OTP for this character: given the Seth-Baal equation in Egypt and the uncertaininty over whether Astarte papyrus is about Seth or Baal under Seth’s name it’s funny to imagine them as friends. Also I’ll talk about it more underneath but since Dagan was a god with similar purposes further inland (and is attested earlier iirc) and Ugaritic texts - even though they rarely feature him - call him Hadad’s father - it would be cute to assume he also taught Hadad everything. My unpopular opinion about this character: I’m a Dagan parentage truther against all odds. It was the norm outside Ugarit! I think “Dagan isn’t in Ugaritic myths because they take place in Ugarit but people thought Dagan lives further inland in Tuttul based on prayers etc.” is enough to explain his absence from myths, and also note that in the epic Baal is “Dagan’s son” even when he’s at a low point (ex. when Yam demands he gives up his freedom or when he’s dead) and only El’s and Asherah’s son when he’s victorious for the most part (ex. during palace construction) - imo this makes it plausible that Dagan is his real dad and El and Athirat are only his parents in the way vassal rulers called emperors fathers. Likewise I think any references to siblings can be interpreted in the light of ex. kings of Ugarit calling kings of Carchemish or Alashiya brothers. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I really like how corny the Hittite/Hurrian storm god cycle is with Kumarbi constaly raising new challengers to attack Kummiya and dethrone Teshub/Tarhunna, I actually wish the Ugaritic one was longer too via a similar plot device. Also I wish Dagan actually appeared in myths alongside his son - Noga Ayali-Darshan had a theory he was in some oral tradition predating Baal cycle as the god announcing Yam demands a tribute since in Hurrian “Song of the sea” and in Egyptian “Astarte papyrus” a grain deity does this but a possible reconstruction isn’t much... Anat How I feel about this character: well, she’s not Inanna, but she’s still pretty good. I mostly like the parts of the Baal narrative which show her unpredictable character, like her probable parents being afraid of her, listing various never shown enemies she vanquished, or Mot’s death. Aqhat myth doesn’t interest me much. That myth fragment where she and Ashtart pity Yarikh because other gods treat him poorly is interesting, too. All the people I ship romantically with this character: Baal, Ashtart, that’s it I think. My non-romantic OTP for this character: she seems to get along really well with Shapash during the segment of the Baal cycle where Baal is dead. My unpopular opinion about this character: I really hate the speculation popular among bible scholars which amounts to making her, Ashtart and Athirat interchangeable to justify her irrelevance in the iron age. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: honestly? I wish an “Anat cycle” existed. She pretty clearly had a fair share of own adventures considering Baal enlists her help on the account of past accomplishments. Yam How I feel about this character: out of all antagonists in the basic middle eastern “storm god vs sea” narratives I think he has the most fun personality - Hedammu is barely a “character” and Tiamat lacks the more human dimension Yam has. All the people I ship romantically with this character: nobody, he has to move past the Astarte papyrus characterization and learn some respect for that smh My non-romantic OTP for this character: his nameless rude messenger who refused to bow down when speaking to the assembly of the gods My unpopular opinion about this character: contary to what this (very good) paper says, the Yam battle is more thrilling than the Mot one - the strength of the Mot part of the narrative comes from the visceral descriptions of Anat’s emotions but Mot is a flat villain compared to Yam. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: he had a seemingly positive role in cult and there are 13 known people with Yam theophoric names (out of 6000 or so people from Ugarit known by name) so I sort of wonder if there’s some lost myth where he’s the hero or something. Mot How I feel about this character: if nothing else, feeling offended by being offered bread and wine instead of corpses is pretty funny and a great introduction. And the pathetic attempt at a comeback shut down by Shapash is All the people I ship romantically with this character: unshippable by design tbh. My non-romantic OTP for this character: if the theory about Horon - the god from the “anti-snakebite text” and the “may horon crack your skull” curse - being a cthtonic god too - just a generally benign one - is true I think they could have a lot of comedic potential. My unpopular opinion about this character: I don’t understand where the idea of a nonexistent myth about Mot kidnapping Shapash and Yarikh comes from and I wish it wasn’t all over the place online. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: some more detailed description of the afterlife - Mot, rephaim, Horon if he really lives there - would be useful... Shapash How I feel about this character: she seems severly... underrated? There are maybe two papers about her (and one underlines the fact there isn’t much research on her) and yet she’s the second most prominent goddess in the Baal cycle AND has her own narrative in the anti-snakebite texts! She might actually be more remarkable than her Mesopotamian counterpart - with all due respect for Utu/Shamash, in myths he’s the boring sibling between himself and Inanna/Ishtar... All the people I ship romantically with this character: I don’t have any real ideas, some papers assume she and Horon were a thing but this is disputable and Horon is pretty nebulous himself... My non-romantic OTP for this character: “Kothar - your close friend!” from that one hymn has that covered. Since she’s basically a divine herald perhaps they travel together? My unpopular opinion about this character: I suspect the reason why she isn’t studied more is because many researchers are stuck with some sort of false “good mother goddess - evil sex goddess” dichotomy of ancient middle eastern religion and while you can force Athirat, Anat and Ashtart into these roles, Shapash with her aura of a divine equivalent of a mundane earthly official doesn’t fit into it and as such is ignored. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I said I hate the false Mot myth spreading online but I actually do wish there was a myth or at least a cult text of some sort showing what sort of relation existed between her and Yarikh - safe to say it didn’t mirror Shamash and Sin... Kothar-wa-Khasis How I feel about this character: huge fan of artisan gods and he seems genuinely nice. One of my Ugaritic b-list favorites. I like that he’s a reneissance man - armorer, architect, even a musician... The theory that he was developed based on Ptah since Memphis had a large foreign population is great. All the people I ship romantically with this character: Baal sort of? I imagine Baal is actually relatively knowledgeable about architecture given the length of the window debate in the Baal cycle... My non-romantic OTP for this character: Shapash, as I said earlier. My unpopular opinion about this character: based on the tale of King Keret some researchers argue he’s meant to be ugly like Greek Haephestus, but since I like the Ptah theory and his appearance isn’t described elsewhere AND King Keret might be satire where everyone is their worst self possible, I prefer to imagine him as handsome One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: supposedly from Caphtor and yet we never see Caphtor (Crete) in Ugaritic myths... come on, ancient scribes, surely someone went there? Maybe even recorded some proper Minoan myths? Ashtart How I feel about this character: she’s my favorite Ugaritic figure of limited relevance. An Ishtar/Inanna equivalent who seemingly curses other gods and presides over political pacts is a pretty solid premise! And it’s funny she rebukes Baal seemingly for insufficient dedication in battle. I wonder if the Egyptian fragment which implies Yam acted lecherous towards her is a factor in this tbh. Perhaps an earlier oral tradition had both these elements...? All the people I ship romantically with this character: Baal (her title is “face of baal”/”of the name of baal”, c’mon...), Anat (almost always listed together!) My non-romantic OTP for this character: Keret curses his son with a formula invoking both Horon and her so perhaps that’s who she’s learning curses from. My unpopular opinion about this character: I hate that “Astarte is Asherah” is widespread just because people want to defend the historicity of the biblical Jezebel narrative which probably even the biblical compilersdidn’t view as historical. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I wish she didn’t vanish from the Baal cycle after Yam’s defeat :C Attar How I feel about this character: this sure is... a guy. He’s so pathetic in the Baal cycle it’s hard to even see him as an antagonist - sorry, Handbook of Ugaritic Studies... All the people I ship romantically with this character: nobody, Shapash points out he’s single as the reason why he can’t rule and i don’t think that changes in any subsequent texts? But then Marriage of Nikkal and Yarikh iirc mentions he has a daughter... My non-romantic OTP for this character: again, nobody. My unpopular opinion about this character: he’s actually a pretty vital part of the Baal cycle and the fact he gives up on own accord makes him more interesting than the other “failed god” in a similar narrative, Ashtabi. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: a god with the same name was prominent in present day Yemen so I guess finding some direct connection would be nice - it fits with him leaving to “rule elsewhere” in the myth! Yarikh How I feel about this character: he’s so pitiful in the fragment which compares him to a dog begging for scraps... His main myth is pretty good too, tbh it’s the best middle eastern marriage myth imo - I actually don’t care for Dumuzi much, but Yarikh is cool. All the people I ship romantically with this character: only Nikkal-wa-Ib My non-romantic OTP for this character: given his mistreatment and Nikkal’s father(?) saying he could be a son in law of Baal I assume that in some unknown texts they must have been allies. Note that the Hittite storm god has the sun and moon gods acting as his metaphorical eyes warning him against Kumarbi’s new plots in song of Ullikummi. Also I assume Anat and Ashtart must consider him a friend given how they help him when nobody else does? All around he feels like a god in Baal’s orbit even though we have 0 direct proof for it. My unpopular opinion about this character: I think trying to correct him to Nanna is a doomed endeavor tbh. Their wives have similar names but Yarikh doesn’t give the impression of a “Father of gods” type deity in what little we know about him. One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: more myths. None we know show him as the moon even though it’s literally his name! I am afraid I don’t have anything interesting to say about El and Athirat. Handbook of Ugaritic Studies has an amazing El summary that I generally stick to, I can post a cap if you are interested.

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