#|| because i don't want to cast veterans or abuse victims in a bad light.

[nogoawaytism]

My second thingy for Nitpick November, because I'm not gonna do this consistently the way God intended.

It's just so... interesting to hear RWBY stans bitch about any sort of criticism regarding how certain male characters are treated. Apparently if any of us commit the unforgiveable sin of saying something like "I wish Sun/Adam/Mercury/Ironwood was treated better by the narrative + explored the unique themes that are a part of their identity as characters." rwby stans freak the fuck out and start whining about how RWDE only wants a show about a white male character. And I'm like

*looks at the vast majority of the cast, especially the heroes*

*looks at V9*

It's just so... interesting how these double standards work, because I guess a white male character getting the spotlight is ok when it's Miles's self-insert.

Meanwhile, Sun has a Chinese allusion despite being a blonde, Ironwood was modeled after Jason Rose who is half Asian (Oh wait, I bet we don't count mixed people). Interesting.

Also, Sun is an established, in-universe minority, an abuse victim thanks to Blake, which is frequently downplayed because Blake is a girl and a main character, and is therefore perfect, and Sun is evil because he isn't psychic, and expressed attraction to a main character. How evil.

Also, Ironwood is a veteran with PTSD facing a horrible situation, a triple amputee, and the only one of the cast who actually has a feasible plan. Oh wait, losing his arm made him lose his humanity, what an evil bastard. He probably lost over half his body on purpose.

Also, Adam is an established, in-universe minority, a former child slave, who has the SCHNEE FUCKING DUST COMPANY logo burned onto his fucking face. Adam should be a good faunus, and not complain at all about faunus oppression, otherwise he's a fucking nazi.

Also, Mercury was trained for an extremely dangerous job as a young child, and abused so badly to the point where he LOST BOTH LEGS. Man, white men really do be the worst.

Yes, two of these characters are villains, and yes, we should hold people accountable for their actions instead of inborn characteristics. Oh wait, y'all already did that when you bitched about them being "white men", while almost every important non-white character has been presented as a villain at some point, and the two non-white characters in our main cast, Ren and Oscar get treated so poorly compared to the other heroes. Sure, complain about how RWDE "wants to center white men" while Ren's mental state and feelings are invalidated at every turn. Sure, complain about how RWDE "wants to center white men" while Oscar the literal child that got dragged into this war is constantly the one bearing the brunt of physical abuse that we haven't seen our other characters experience + half of that physical abuse is by characters who ARE heroes and by Hazel who got the last-minute redemption treatment. Sure, complain about how RWDE "wants to center white men" while y'all treat this show like the best shit to happen to media since Charles Dickens when *checks notes* it's written by white men, which isn't inherently bad in my opinion, but in this case they write every fucking issue in this show in such an insensitive light, and are still horrible xenophobic people. Miles and Kerry ARE stereotypical horrible white men, but y'all still defend their stupid writing while bitching about white men abused by the narrative.

Oh, and might I add: the fuckers saying this stan Coco. I wonder what her allusion is.

So you mean to tell me, that expressing just a little bit of tact about Adam being a branded child slave, or Ironwood losing three limbs and being traumatized, or Mercury being abused and losing his legs, is super duper evil, but this Nazi insert is an absolute slay queen. Y'all really made a doodoo with this one, whoopsies!

Anyway, take the historic moment before Mercury rightfully whooped this Discord light mode-looking mf who's also a Nazi:

[skloomdumpster]

How do you imagine Isobel and Darcy Daniels? Who do you imagine them interacting with the most? Apart from Beatrix.

I had time to think of this, like truly.

I want them to be triplets. Yes, it'll make the casting people's life harder yeah, but idc. Triplets, but not identical.

I imagine that if Bea was from Aster Dell and Rosalind did indeed save her and place her in Andreas' arms, it wouldn't make sense for Isobel and Darcy to be not have been saved in the same manner. So to me that implies they were not in Aster Dell when the explosion happened.

Whatever reason it may be (and if there's any ftws writer out there, I do think the simplest explanation would be best, they were simply out of town with one of the parents, Bea stayed bc her powers were acting up maybe?) I think them being out of the town implies a living parent/guardian too.

As far as they're concerned, Beatrix died in the blast. I'd like for it to be the mom who survived, simply because Beatrix grew up with just a dad, so to me it's a nice symmetry if the other two grew up with just a mom.

Isobel's got a light brown hair, but she dyes it platinum blonde. She's got Beatrix round eyes that can read into your soul. She's quiet and she's rational. Often too cold, Isobel (or Icy, i guess they're gonna call her. I don't like it) comes across as the mean twin, but she is not.

Darcy is the talkative one, she's got dark brown hair and Beatrix's round delicate face and a big, bright smile. She talks a lot and she's charming. Where Icy gives off all the wrong vibes, Darcy is warm and inviting and she lures you in and in.

Isobel, Darcy and Beatrix are the children of a blood witch and an air fairy. Beatrix and Isobel were born with "normal" powers, Bea is air and Icy is water. Darcy is a blood witch.

And Darcy is evil. She's got Beatrix's thirst for blood, but unlike Beatrix who got her own version of love - hand me down and a little twisted, passed down by a traumatized veteran with a bad moral compass, but love nonetheless - Icy and Darcy didn't. Their mom, the blood witch, spiraled badly right after Aster Dell and the supposed loss of her husband and third daughter. She's an extremist, she sided with Sebastian's quest for a while, but she's so extremist that her little group ended up detaching themselves from Sebastian Jr, because he simply wasn't as insane as his father. He wasn't willing to kill all fairies or to torture and murder at whim, just enough to achieve his goal.

Momma Trix wasn't there for that lukewarm garbage and she raised Icy and Darcy in the same mindset.

Icy's water powers, fairy powers, made for a fairy who had to hide her powers a lot in the middle of extremist people. Either they got weaponized (frequently) or just shunned and submitted to bigotry, sometimes from their own mother. Darcy was viciously protective of Icy, but as children who grow up in abuse, they both thought of each other having it easy. Darcy shouldered most of the expectations from Momma Trix and Icy most of the neglect.

One the introvert with the water powers and who learns really soon how to use it to harm targets her extremist people deems necessary, the other a blood witch with a thirst for cruelty that's unquenchable.

Icy sighing "Darcy... Again?" as she's got yet another doe eyed human standing in their living room, frozen in place as Darcy plays. Darcy's got a thing for figuring out what hurts, "tell me how much it hurts," she tells her victim, who can't move.

Icy cleaning up after Darcy, getting most of the bad reputation herself and don't think for a second her lack of excitement for murder makes her less deadly. She simply has different motivations, her sister being the central one.

And then in steps Stella, the princess of fucking Solaria. Stella, letter in hand with Isobel and Darcy Daniels written in it, who says she knew their sister, who's a fairy, who's the princess of Solaria, the crown that's blaming blood witches for Rosalind's murder.

Darcy widens her eyes, tearful and filled with hope (and hunger, but Stella doesn't see that), "you knew... You knew our sister? But how...? Beatrix died in Aster Dell when we were babies", Darcy who invites her in the house. Darcy, offering Stella tea and eagerly wanting to see pictures of Beatrix. Darcy who likes to play with her food.

Icy, leaning against the fridge, arms crossed to her chest, who not for a second wants Stella in their house, because she's the princess of bloody Solaria. She's bad news, wherever the princess goes, guards are surely to follow and they have skeletons in the closet. Icy, who makes the whole kitchen freezing cold and who's saying "You should leave, I don't believe you. You have some fucking nerve showing up here to use our dead sister to get to us," Icy who's a bad minute away from drowning Stella in her own tea, all the while Darcy glares at her sister.

"Icy, but she's got pictures, come look. Look at how Bea looks like us," she sounds so hopeful, she's got a hand open on Stella's back.

These are the Isobel and Darcy I want.

[ciircumserpent]

on a more serious / ic note, that therapist + pickle rick video that’s becoming popular now is such a snake v. big boss mood. like listen when i say that i don’t think that big boss is inherently evil, and if we’re going to talk about long-standing themes in metal gear and the cycle of abuse ( which is beating a dead horse at this point with how many posts there are on it, mine included ), then we need to acknowledge that big boss’s status as a villain is caused by the fact that he was a good person who had inexplicable things happen to him, terrible things, things he didn’t know how to cope with, and though he tried a few times to deal with it, those awful circumstances continued to crop up and eventually he stopped trying to fight it and let it make him bitter. he adapted in an unhealthy but unfortunately common way to his trauma -- by enacting it on others; by taking control of what had controlled him to ensure that he would never be hurt again, because of the power he attributed to the people who had harmed him.

the idea that someone is so self-obsessed or detached from their own humanity that they use their ‘heightened’ experience to justify their behavior / their refusal to do the mental and emotional work that it takes to be a relatively healthy person who does not harm others is pretty relevant to this character. you can get into semantics and societal expectations, but the fact of the matter is that some behavior is poisonous, both to the person perpetuating it and to others. big boss remains trapped in a narcissist’s nightmare, constantly afraid of being used and asserting himself as a savior so that he can hear approval echoed back at him from those he ‘rescues’, simultaneously dragging them down with him. 

he’s an incredibly tragic character and a large part of this tragedy stems from the fact that he will not put in the work to fix himself. and he could. we know that he can put on a facade and appear well put together; he ran foxhound for years this way. the majority of his allies and enemies don’t think he’s crazy ( that kaz, the one who knew him best, does, says something about big boss, but kaz has his own issues that affect that ). if he put the work in to make that his daily life instead of faking it to achieve his ends, he could probably ‘recover’ -- as much as any soldier could in his situation. and that’s important, that kojima’s scenario is so steeped in realism. for some people it is more comforting to distance themselves from civilian society because what they have seen is so alien and overwhelming that belonging in the ‘normal’ world becomes nightmarishly difficult. it’s why you have veteran hospitals ( most of which are poorly run in this country ) and support groups made up of other soldiers; because if you don’t have someone who understands where you are coming from and knows what you’ve experienced, you can feel isolated or ‘broken’. big boss’s situation isn’t unrealistic in theory, it’s just taken to an extreme for the sake of the other parts of the story.

and we can acknowledge, based off of big boss’s dialogue, that he did attempt to leave his life as a soldier. he tried being an environmental instructor. he tried settling down. he even continued to support naomi even after giving up, as if to maintain that tenuous connection to organized civilization. is it any surprise that he’s not that willing to talk to a therapist, when his negative opinion of ‘two-bit journalists’ suggests that his attempts to open up about his feelings have been blown out of proportion and monetized? big boss is a legend; he is public domain. his thoughts and feelings are a source of inspiration and entertainment to others. he is so bombarded by the concept that he is an idol that i can’t imagine him ever thinking to sit down and sort himself out. he cashes in on this the only way he knows how: he uses it to keep himself afloat, to rope more soldiers into his waxing and waning army, and to perpetuate warfare so that he always knows his place. 

because doing that work to be healthy is petrifying. being a man instead of an ideal, what he apparently wanted all along but acted against, would probably feel like a waste of over half his life; he would essentially become a different person entirely. so his motivations, while understandable, while sympathetic ( remember that we’re talking about a fictional character with exaggerated traits and this analysis is not something i would ever presume to apply to living veterans as it’s not my place ), prevent him from healing and moving forwards and not hurting others.

then there’s snake, the deconstruction of the espionage action hero. he is not james bond. he is not indiana jones. he faces the mental repercussions of his missions, sometimes for years at a time, and he acknowledges more than once that it would be so easy to be like big boss, or liquid, or solidus, or all the others who opted out of coping because the benefits of justifying their actions outweighed the cons of putting in the work to recover. snake starts out mgs1 this way, and he tries very hard to be that person, but it’s as much an act as big boss’s collected persona. in the end, he is someone who wants to put in the work, and he does. it’s slow and happens in shuffling steps and is a very visceral depiction of recovery. 

by the end, we don’t even know if he has fully recovered -- he still has plenty of problems, in the personal and social spheres. but he’s tried, he’s conceded that he can’t just be a soldier, and no matter how many times he says otherwise, he keeps fighting to be worthy of the life he’s been given by making life better for others. his issues don’t go away; he tends to hold humanity at arm’s length and has trouble forming close relationships, and some of his coping methods are unhealthy. he’s still an ass, he still offends the people around him, but the point is that he apologizes, and he tries to be better, and he goes out of his way to help when he can. he does everything in his power for sunny, for otacon, for campbell, for raiden, and even for meryl. you can watch it play out in mgs1 or you can see the subtle shifts in his character throughout the series as a whole, but it’s clear that he’s putting in the time and trying to change his perspective. and it’s not easy for him, and he relapses, but he wants it, and he’ll sweat and bleed for it. he will not consent to just being a bad person because he could justify it.

it’s the division between victimization and acceptance and breaking that abusive cycle. if you are a victim in your own mind, then you have no control over your actions, and it will always be somebody else’s fault. and it’s okay to label yourself a victim if you have been hurt, but remaining in that mindset forever is unhealthy, because it can prevent you from accepting responsibility for the things you do. acknowledging that you have been hurt but not relinquishing your own autonomy is difficult, especially when somebody else still has power over you. i won’t deny that, it’s hard as hell and extremely tiring and relapses are to be expected. but it is a way to prevent what happened to you from happening to others.

‘the only truly unapproachable concept for you is that it’s your mind within your control, you chose to come here, you chose to talk to belittle my vocation [...] you are the master of your universe [...] i have no doubt that you would be bored senseless by therapy, the same way i am bored when i brush my teeth and wipe my ass, because the thing about repairing, maintaining and cleaning is: it’s not an adventure. there’s no way to do it so wrong you might die. it’s just work. and the bottom line is: some people are ok going to work and some people, well some people would rather die. each of us gets to choose.’