#(and because I needed something to do that was positive and unconnected to the real world RN thus how much I've rambled)

[sycamoretrees]

wrestling 2024 tag meme

inspired by the ShuPro awards and my struggle to remember what I've actually I've watched this year, I thought it would be cool to have a year-end wrestling round-up.

I would love for anyone else to also do this! Everyone's experience of wrestling is so unique and I'd love to read about everyone's different wrestling ~journeys in 2024. You do not need to write this much lol. Tagging with no pressure @benchwarming @thistledropkick @yoshihashismattebum @wrestleish but forreal anyone who wants to do this consider yourself tagged!

MVP/Wrestler of the Year

Match of the Year

Favourite Feud

Favourite Tag Team/Faction

Favourite Show

Breakout (ish) Star

Horniest Moment

Most Anticipated in 2025

[NB - I'm more interested in recording my specific experience of wrestling this year rather than the actual chronological wrestling year of 2024, so if I saw a match for the first time this year, or got to know someone new, I'm counting them. Confusing? Yes! You do you.]

MVP/Wrestler of the Year

El Desperado (NJPW). This was tough. My rationale was - who was I consistently excited to see on any card and can I think of multiple specific great matches they had off the top of my head (my recall for specific matches is very bad). From Wrestle Kingdom with Hiromu, to his Super Juniors match with Fujita, to the Despe Invi, to his DDT match with Chris Brookes, Despe has been my number one guy in 2024. Runners Up: Konosuke Takeshita, Gabe Kidd

Match(es) of the Year

In no particular order: Shibata vs Okada (NJPW Sakura Genesis 2017) - obviously this is an 8 year old match now, but I watched it for the first time this year, and it is not at all overrated. Unreal.

Hiromu Takahashi & Jun Kasai vs Minoru Suzuki & Takayuki Ueki (NJPW Despe Invitacional) - an absolutely perfect comedy hardcore match.

El Desperado vs Chris Brookes (DDT Wrestle Peter Pan) - the storytelling they manage to pack into this match is incredible. Intensely romantic, erotic, funny, a visual delight.

Gabe Kidd vs Kenny Omega (NJPW/AEW Wrestle Dynasty) - recency bias perhaps, but contextually one of the most interesting and impactful matches of the year (I'm counting it for 2024 don't @ me).

Hirooki Goto vs David Finlay (NJPW King of Pro-Wrestling) - kind of a wildcard pick but I remember having a fucking blast. Finlay is my favourite guy to watch get flung into barricades, and his 'I didn't win the G1 and it only exacerbated my crushing insecurity because I know I'm not as good as Jay White so I'm gonna go after a bunch of easy wins to try to feel like a big man' tour peaked for me with this match.

Favourite Feud

Toni Storm and Mariah May (AEW) - easily the best women's feud AEW have ever done, for me one of the best storylines period. Toni Storm's character work this year was exquisite, and she and Mariah (and Mina Shirakawa) absolutely killed this narrative arc. In a promotion that increasingly felt like it wasn't For Me this year, this feud was For Me.

Favourite Tag Team/Faction

The Bang Bang Gang (AEW). Look, the Bang Bang Gang profoundly overdeliver in almost all regards, they are consistently entertaining and they commit to the bit. Also NJPW is having a such a weird faction time rn and I'm just not really a tag team person.

Favourite Show

Despe Invitacional (NJPW). A truly joyful show from start to finish, warm and fun and excited and exciting. Runner up: Beer Garden Fight in Shinjuku Day 2, the show that made me fall in love with DDT.

Special Mention: AEW Grand Slam, the most fun I had watching a show because I went to see it live with @benchwarming.

Breakout (ish) Star

Yuki Ueno (DDT). Ueno is obviously not any kind of rookie, but I only became really familiar with him this year, and to me (and ZSJ) he's the most exciting young wrestler in Japan. I can't get over how good he is at, well, everything. Runners up: Taichi (took me a minute but I realised just how good Taichi is this year, his pre-G1 matches were incredible), Takeshi Masada, Yuya Uemura

Horniest Moment

GIF by schadentekkers

i mean. This wasn't a tough call. The first time I saw this match (El Desperado vs Chris Brookes, DDT Wrestle Peter Pan) I had to pause it and yell inside my own t shirt for several moments, and it hasn't become any less insane after the third rewatch. And like, I'm not even counting the Just Straight Up Kink nipple stuff after this, but uh also that!!

Most Anticipated In 2025

Gabe Kidd was one my standouts when I started watching NJPW with the 2023 G1, and it's been a delight to watch him progress and develop. Obviously he's poised to step up even more in 2025... I'm here for it.

Taichi vs Sanada is coming and I'm so fucking seated.

The NJPW junior heavyweight division has a bunch of super talented guys and exciting stories right now, and if everyone can just stop getting injured I think there's a ton of fun to be had there.

And then IDK if 'anticipation' is the word but - I'm very curious to see what happens with Shota Umino. Been kind of a brutal year for him, and I personally feel like there MUST be some kind of change coming? Either way, I have no idea where he'll sit in the NJPW landscape this time next year.

Oh also I really fucked my own enjoyment of the G1 this year between getting obsessed with Walker's terrible commentary and getting stressed about the G1 art project I decided to do 'for fun' (hence no G1 matches included in my favourites even though I remember several of them being very good) so uh would love to enjoy the G1 this year.

[rockofeye]

"STRAIGHT FROM PAPA LOKO"

and tell me dear random person on the internet how the fuck you got that kind of authority

They are definitely targeting Black Americans who want to connect with something but have little to no info. Especially using actual terms to make themselves sound legit but anyone who knows anything about spirituality would be able to call them out on it.

Ok maybe not anyone because w/ccans and a lot people who work with Greek/Celtic/ other western pantheons love making up nonsense and not consulting anyone on anything.

I think you hit on something important that you didn't say outright: the place of personal revelation.

All houngans and manbos hear things from their lwa, but that doesn't mean that they are to be applied universally or that they mean anything for anyone who is not them. Even for lineage heads, things that are communicated are felt out and tested before being applied if they are applied at all.

Lots of times, things are told to us for our benefit only and part of how we figure that is by engaging with things thoughtfully. Sometimes it's by sitting and waiting and watching. Sometimes it's by sitting with our elders and discussing and listening. Sometimes it's by doing nothing at all.

Now, do I think this person is really hearing from Loko that he needs to revise all of Haitian Vodou? Absolutely not. Anyone who insists on a savior position is going to be a fraud, in that 'if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him' kind of way. It's a great way to hook people who don't have a base of knowledge to draw from and manipulate emotional reactions, particularly by using apocalyptic style declarations.

It's also telling that he and folks who buy into his junk talk about how he is 'creolizing' Haitian Vodou for Black Americans, which is positively WILD to me. Like, what a backhanded insult to say that Black Americans need a dumbed down version of Haitian Vodou, as if people cannot navigate cultural contexts that are not their own. Additionally, that communicates a real dislike for Haiti, Haitians, and Haitian culture which is sadly unsurprising...too many folks who get involved in Vodou want to separate it from Haiti, Haitians, and Haitian culture.

But, yeah. Broadly, personal revelation is personal for a reason. When lwa want change, it happens in broad ways that not controlled by human expression. Like, a particular spirit will show up in a variety of temples that are unconnected to each other and they'll teach the same song each time or ask for the same drink. It is never up to one person to change a communal religion. No one is that important.

[jeremycollinsstan]

in defense of emily's move last night

okay so basically i had the night to think abt it and tbh i rly should be studying and doing work for finals but i can't move on until i've said my comprehensive piece on this.

note: my opinions r not all original as i've watched the know-it-alls and have been occasionally checking the reddit but here are my thoughts:

bruce. emily knows bruce is a polarizing and erratic player. at the start of the episode, she vocalized that its very very hard to make a move with the belos because they are such a fractured group, specifically with bruce being the core of that rupture within belo. it would be completely out of character for her to say something so logical at the top of the episode then, later, do something completely contradictory.

katurah. at the sanctuary, she watched katurah throw bruce under the bus and immediately reveal his lie about the idol. while i don't necessarily fault katurah for doing that, it also showed emily that katurah and bruce were simply never going to work together. if they can't even pull together to tell a single lie, why would she move forward with such an unconnected pair?

women. she keeps the women in the game. side note, i know a lot of people have hated on emily for ratting out the all-womens alliance in the kellie boot episode but in kellie's exit press with rob c, she said that the women's alliance was basically a non-factor and almost no one, at that time, thought it was real so...take that how you will. anyway, this point is mostly speculation on my part and, in all honesty, is likely to be completely disproven in the next episode but there has been a lot of focus on drew + austin + emily as the trio she's most tightly entangled with. however, at the sanctuary, there was a lot of talk about a woman winning the game and big bonding moments between the women. i'm a bit of a edgic tin hatter but why would they keep that in the show if a woman wasn't going to win or if the women don't come together in some way? maybe, because of the reward, emily is now seeing a path forward with dee + julie or even katurah. by eliminating bruce, she keeps the women's numbers up against the mens. **NOTE: this is pure speculation and i'm going to be hella embarrassed when that doesn't happen next week but, hey, a girl can dream, i guess. so much of my survivor watching experience is pure delusion!**

jury management. emily has been jury managing her ASS off. she is leveraging her position as the sole lulu left to disseminate information to people on the bottom and i LOVE it. stephen pointed out that her brutal honesty really worked with jake in last nights episode. she basically told him the information he needed to hear about drew targeting him (which, in turn, strengthened her relationship with jake as he had been desiring both a human and game connection) while also not being the one to make a move either way. she said "i'm in a good position right now so i can't." if anyone else had said that, jake probably would've gotten pissed at them but he understood where emily was coming from as she is the lone lulu left the game. furthermore, it seems from the edit that the jury is giving her sole credit for the bruce move (deserved, honestly) which bruce will probably only echo when he gets to ponderosa as she, seemingly, had been the one to convince him not to play his idol. i think she's been using the adam klein brutal honesty strategy to great effect. shes probably doing it better than adam did it, honestly lmfao. it may blow up in her face if drew and jake come together to compare notes but right now it seems to be working well.

finally, timing. i think that if she pulled trigger on the julie move, it would've been way too early. by getting rid of julie this round, she would open herself up as a target to dee + drew + austin, who probably all see katurah and jake as more of a goat than they see her to be. she would've revealed herself to a) be against reba (which dee is staunchly and vindictively against) and b) the most strategic person of the last three non-reba remaining. if she pulled the move against julie then, at best, for the next round, she could force a tie with katurah and jake but honestly they seem more interested in being the fifth reba than working against the power alliance so that wouldn't be ideal either. i think that by holding back, she's hoping to find and exploit a crack later in the very endgame. whether there even will be a crack remains to be seen.

tldr; i can't say with 100% confidence that financial analyst emily flippen will win the game but i think her move last night to vote out bruce is being way over-hated and i can honestly see a lot of merit and her thinking behind it. she's a logical player and, given the cards she has, i think it was a pretty logical move.

[littleapocalypsekitten]

Okay, there is something I've wanted to get off my chest for a few days now... and my therapist has already heard it all. Warning: This is political. Warning: This will unveil a part of the Shadsie Lore that may make some of you unfollow me or even block me. I do not care. I thought "I shouldn't talk about this on the Internet, even on a place unconnected to my real name" until this article just slapped me in the face and told me that I needed to talk about it:

Ex-Felons Responding to the Trump Verdict I spent a chunk of my high school years visiting my brother in prison, where he served just shy of 4 years for an incident that he is lucky to have survived - he's white, he was arrested by sleepy-desert-town country cops who like the guards of Whiterun in Skyrim mostly deal with drunken brawls and petty thievery and weren't as trigger-happy as the city-cops. Knowing his stories, I know that the American prison system needs reformation badly, as it doesn't rehabilitate people so much as just give them a lot of trauma and, in some cases, makes them worse. And then... came time... Crime Time... for me. *Sad, scared little squeak talking about this.*

So, I did something that I am not proud of damn near 20 years ago. I will not elaborate save to say that: 1. A single felony and associated misdemeanours 2. No one was (physically) harmed 3. It was related to my mental health and how I got a diagnosis. 4. I served no time. 5. I was railroaded into a plea deal - I was contrite and fully confessed to the misdemeanours, but thought that the more serious charge that the DA wanted to pin on me was going overboard. 6. I felt like I couldn't win if it went to trial with only a public defender in my corner and so pleaded to the greater charge in exchange for serving probation. 7. I served 2 years of probation and it amuses me to this day that they gave me an officer who was pregnant. She had to give me over to another officer when she went to have her baby. I asked how she and the baby were and like to joke that I must have been one of the county's nicest criminals for them to give me a probation officer in a delicate condition. 8. This happened almost 20 years ago and it messes up my life to this day. It kept me from getting a job I wanted. (Thankfully I recently got a job with a company that doesn't look further than 7 years back). 9. Having had my record brought to my attention, I researched pardoning and gathered materials and sent off a package to petition my governor. At the speed of bureaucracy I expect to hear back about the initial filing process, let alone getting a hearing, *looks at watch and taps foot* oh, about when Pangea Ultima forms and the world has been taken over by the descendants of squids. Anyway, I've had mixed feelings all this week. On one hand, I'm elated - for once, the GREASED HOG HAS BEEN CAUGHT ON SOMETHING! Always nice to see the rich and powerful get some kind of censure, if not full justice. On the other hand, I see a lot of people online talking about felons not having rights and not having dignity and so forth - you know, the stigmas. Personally, I am never going to run for President, I do not think I would do well with a position of power and have no desire for it. In fact, I am skeptical of the morals of anyone who wants a lot of power. I am an anxious type who'd constantly worry about messing up people's lives on accident. I certainly could not do the President-thing of ordering war-actions (because my personal hero is Vash the Stampede... "thou shall not kill"). And, despite my favorite anime being Trigun and my love of playing Fallout... I don't want anything to do with guns in real life, so no worries on the gun-ownership thing. I live in a state that allows ex-felons to vote so long as they've served their time/probation. I may want to move to a state in the future where I am not sure that is allowed to be with family (One of my reasons for seeking a pardon). Between my brother and me, I am VERY concerned with the human rights and civil rights of repentant ex-cons and of those people in the prison / legal system. That said: Mr. Trump is NOT "one of us." He is a rich (or at least bluffs his way) and powerful and is being treated with the softest of kid gloves. (If I had pulled the threats and outbursts that he had in the courtroom during my hearings, I would have been jailed). I was silent, spoke only when spoken to. He'll never want for a job or money as even if he's more broke than he lets on, he has his slathering minions who send him millions of dollars in a day. He'll never have to rely on a public defender (as passionate and dedicated as they are, they are overloaded and not well listened to in the court system) - he'll always have excellent monied lawyers. I enjoy the HELL out of the idea that he's going to have a probation officer, but I do not think it will humble him. Covid, after all, didn't give him the impression of being a mere mortal man. If anything, this trial, even this conviction, highlights the disparities in the American legal system for me.

[nymph-bitch]

Honestly, I just needed a notepad and decided to share my bullshit with the 3 people who will read it.

idk triggers for religion and racism and child abuse. It's not a fun post don't come to me for fun ever.

Text blogging on tumblr, I'm out of culture, it is what it is.

This is gonna sound... like the ramblings of someone suffering from psychosis. Maybe.

I don't think I'm suffering from psychosis. But I'm going to DIARY out to the internet. Because I'm basically doing it every day in comment sections with my real name, and that seems way more risky.

I'm also cutting out friends left and right and I need to. Get this down. Get this out. Think about it. Talk about it. Express myself.

It's a little stream of consciousness. It's a little unconnected. I want to think as hard as I want to think about a subject and no more.

This is all to say, you can judge me if you'd like, but keep your demeaning holier than thou opinions to yourself, I do not care about them

I did a tarot reading today, and that's where I really want to focus my attentions. This is something I'm TRYING to do regularly, kind of as a therapeutic technique. I'm not great at Tarot, it's a lot of looking things up for me and making interpretations I'm sure no one else would. But as something thats a little validating and helps me get unstuck for the day? I'm pretty good at it.

I do a 4 card pull;

the present situation: the star - hope, faith, purpose renewal spirituality

past influences: The hierophant - Spiritual wisdom, religious beliefs, conformity, tradition, institutions

take into consideration:  The Empress- Femininity, beauty, nature, nurturing, abundance

possible futures: Temperance - balance, moderation, patience, purpose

This pull just feels like my fucking life honestly. It's funny that this is when I decided to start recording, and to share, because this pull begins at the beginning and ends in the place I want to be.

I was born into a fundamentalist Christian family. The kind of people who hate the gays and think black people come from the Biblical tribes of Ham, and therefore are cursed by God and deserving of their punishments. Women are to be obedient to their husbands and wear skirts, and if they hadn't insisted on having autonomy and entering the workforce, the economy never would have crashed. Muslims are literal nazis. Children are to be seen and not heard and that (and this was explicitly told to me, yes) the point of having children is to have people to help with chores, so that the mother doesn't have to work.

Hey, how old were you when you realized that your white grandma treated you like a slave while your cousins played outside?

Hey how old were you when you realized you were a live in nanny for your aunt and they gave someone else credit for teaching her kid to walk?

Hey how old were you when your aunt told you you deserved to be enslaved because your family was cursed?

Hey how old were you when your mother yelled at you for calling your family members racist?

Hey how old were you when your cousin texted you threatening to beat you up because you hugged his mother and told you you loved her before leaving when she wouldn't shut the fuck up about how that murdered black kid deserved it?

So mixed kid rant there.

ANYWAY today, in the present situation, I'm becoming something new. I'm renewing. I'm figuring out who I am outside of the bigoted religious traditions of my mothers, and exactly how MUCH of who I am is a side effect of the beliefs they passed on.

I like that it asks me to question the Empress. She's a bunch of traditional gender roles, right? Traditional Christian conformity tradition white patriarchy bullshit, or at least she could be. It's interesting that it's SPECIFICALLY this beacon of femininity, because that was heavily plowed into me and I never gave a shit. I outright rejected feminity, because it was CLEARLY the inferior position in the world, and the things that WOMEN did were very obviously undesirable.

I started doing my makeup recently, but I use it to paint my face instead of to look pretty. And now I like it.

There's all this femininity and blackness that I completely turned my back on, because my shitty family wanted to me to suppress them. And I submitted.

But I like taking care of people. I like being pretty. I like being black, even if other black people hate me as much as everyone else. And I like the things about me that my family stifled because they associated it with blackness.

It feels good. It feels like I'm embracing these things I've always been ashamed of. It feels like I'm completely alone in the universe, but it always felt like that. Having people around doesn't make you not alone.

It's also interesting because I'm autistic. I am not good at traditional female roles like caretaking or empathy. That's not to say I don't care, I do, deeply, but my expressions of care often go... misinterpreted. or unwanted. Who's to say. It also really doesn't encourage people in black communities, who really don't seem to understand how I am both so smart and so stupid, to get to know me.

It's also funny to pull temperance, which is just a deeply religious sentiment in my mind. And a deeply feminine one.

Temperance is the movement we had, pushed by Christian women, to ban alcohol. The Temperance movement. As a future, it's kind of ironic. It seems like the meaning is about more of a balance. Being spiritual in nature is so fitting.

In the past, I was traumatized by religion. The people meant to teach me spirituality and how to grow and develop did everything they could to stunt me and deter me from becoming who I am.

I'm a lonely asshole right now, because I'm willing to make mistakes for the first time and discover who I am and what I'm about. I'm yelling at people who I used to not know I hated. I'm realizing just exactly how low of a bar I have for what I consider love, and how little (and somehow at the same time MUCH) I expect from people. I need to consider femininity and what of it applies to me and what parts of it I CAN and WANT TO bring with me into the future and these friendships. How much I want to nurture them to my own detriment. How much I want to manage peoples emotions and keep the peace and to exactly what extent it is worth it to me to sit still and look pretty. Stop trying to be this perfect kind calm patient graceful size 6 icon with The Good Hair.

I need to find the balance. The balance between an African Queen and an English Lunatic.

I kinda like that.

And the Star, let's talk about the star, a naked grounded woman with lots of know how. She's vulnerable, but she has everything she needs inside of her.

Like yeah hello hi I've been cultivating my spirituality thank you for noticing.

Let's figure out what we need from the hierophants and move forward to find some balance. But we gotta move forward.

Like I get so triggered so hard by racism for the same reason I'm sure a lot of gay people get triggered by homophobia. And that's not something I think a lot of people can say.

I left my family because of racism. I had a panic attack because of racism last time I went to visit my mother. I drove 6 hours to see her. Stayed the night. And then had to leave the next MORNING.

There were people wearing trump hats in her home who wouldn't stop talking to me, and when I asked them to leave me alone, they threw a temper tantrum.

So I had an autistic melt down.

My mother said she must have never made me feel like I belonged. I said yeah she didnt. She said I just want to make sure you're ok

Later that night she sent me tons of video messages screaming at me for calling her Jo Bro boyfriend racist and telling me that I don't love her and I never even wanted to be a part of this family.

And I was like you know what

you're fucking right

thanks for pointing that out

because you assholes have abused and terrified me into stifling my own emotions until I'm having meltdowns constantly and the only way I know how to cope is by finding a new shitty white supremacist man to save me, because thats what I was taught.

Obviously I said none of that, but she was fucking right. They didn't want me if I wasn't like them, and I don't like them.

I am culturally completely unaligned with who I am, not only because of a color issue, but because I grew up in a weird racist family that believes insane and mean stuff that I hate.

It takes a lot of time to unlearn insane and mean stuff that you hate.

I saw a video on tiktok by Vanna.moo yesterday and I think the last time I melted down so hard was the last time I saw my mom that wasn't her showing up uninvited to my home after I blocked her number and never told her my new address

Am I unhinged? Yes, I think so. I think the way I think is so different that people will think I'm crazy, and that's cool. I'd rather be crazy than go back.

[missmentelle]

Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

If you’ve been paying attention for the last couple of years, you might have noticed that the world has a bit of a misinformation problem. 

The problem isn’t just with the recent election conspiracies, either. The last couple of years has brought us the rise (and occasionally fall) of misinformation-based movements like:

Sandy Hook conspiracies

Gamergate

Pizzagate

The MRA/incel/MGTOW movements

anti-vaxxers

flat-earthers

the birther movement

the Illuminati 

climate change denial

Spygate

Holocaust denial 

COVID-19 denial 

5G panic 

QAnon 

But why do people believe this stuff?

It would be easy - too easy - to say that people fall for this stuff because they’re stupid. We all want to believe that smart people like us are immune from being taken in by deranged conspiracies. But it’s just not that simple. People from all walks of life are going down these rabbit holes - people with degrees and professional careers and rich lives have fallen for these theories, leaving their loved ones baffled. Decades-long relationships have splintered this year, as the number of people flocking to these conspiracies out of nowhere reaches a fever pitch. 

So why do smart people start believing some incredibly stupid things? It’s because:

Our brains are built to identify patterns. 

Our brains fucking love puzzles and patterns. This is a well-known phenomenon called apophenia, and at one point, it was probably helpful for our survival - the prehistoric human who noticed patterns in things like animal migration, plant life cycles and the movement of the stars was probably a lot more likely to survive than the human who couldn’t figure out how to use natural clues to navigate or find food. 

The problem, though, is that we can’t really turn this off. Even when we’re presented with completely random data, we’ll see patterns. We see patterns in everything, even when there’s no pattern there. This is why people see Jesus in a burnt piece of toast or get superstitious about hockey playoffs or insist on always playing at a certain slot machine - our brains look for patterns in the constant barrage of random information in our daily lives, and insist that those patterns are really there, even when they’re completely imagined. 

A lot of conspiracy theories have their roots in people making connections between things that aren’t really connected. The belief that “vaccines cause autism” was bolstered by the fact that the first recognizable symptoms of autism happen to appear at roughly the same time that children receive one of their rounds of childhood immunizations - the two things are completely unconnected, but our brains have a hard time letting go of the pattern they see there. Likewise, many people were quick to latch on to the fact that early maps of COVID infections were extremely similar to maps of 5G coverage -  the fact that there’s a reasonable explanation for this (major cities are more likely to have both high COVID cases AND 5G networks) doesn’t change the fact that our brains just really, really want to see a connection there. 

Our brains love proportionality. 

Specifically, our brains like effects to be directly proportional to their causes - in other words, we like it when big events have big causes, and small causes only lead to small events. It’s uncomfortable for us when the reverse is true. And so anytime we feel like a “big” event (celebrity death, global pandemic, your precious child is diagnosed with autism) has a small or unsatisfying cause (car accident, pandemics just sort of happen every few decades, people just get autism sometimes), we sometimes feel the need to start looking around for the bigger, more sinister, “true” cause of that event. 

Consider, for instance, the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot four times by a Turkish member of a known Italian paramilitary secret society who’d recently escaped from prison - on the surface, it seems like the sort of thing conspiracy theorists salivate over, seeing how it was an actual multinational conspiracy. But they never had much interest in the assassination attempt. Why? Because the Pope didn’t die. He recovered from his injuries and went right back to Pope-ing. The event didn’t have a serious outcome, and so people are content with the idea that one extremist carried it out. The death of Princess Diana, however, has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories; even though a woman dying in a car accident is less weird than a man being shot four times by a paid political assassin, her death has attracted more conspiracy theories because it had a bigger outcome. A princess dying in a car accident doesn’t feel big enough. It’s unsatisfying. We want such a monumentous moment in history to have a bigger, more interesting cause. 

These theories prey on pre-existing fear and anger. 

Are you a terrified new parent who wants the best for their child and feels anxious about having them injected with a substance you don’t totally understand? Congrats, you’re a prime target for the anti-vaccine movement. Are you a young white male who doesn’t like seeing more and more games aimed at women and minorities, and is worried that “your” gaming culture is being stolen from you? You might have been very interested in something called Gamergate. Are you a right-wing white person who worries that “your” country and way of life is being stolen by immigrants, non-Christians and coastal liberals? You’re going to love the “all left-wingers are Satantic pedo baby-eaters” messaging of QAnon. 

Misinformation and conspiracy theories are often aimed strategically at the anxieties and fears that people are already experiencing. No one likes being told that their fears are insane or irrational; it’s not hard to see why people gravitate towards communities that say “yes, you were right all along, and everyone who told you that you were nuts to be worried about this is just a dumb sheep. We believe you, and we have evidence that you were right along, right here.” Fear is a powerful motivator, and you can make people believe and do some pretty extreme things if you just keep telling them “yes, that thing you’re afraid of is true, but also it’s way worse than you could have ever imagined.”

Real information is often complicated, hard to understand, and inherently unsatisfying. 

The information that comes from the scientific community is often very frustrating for a layperson; we want science to have hard-and-fast answers, but it doesn’t. The closest you get to a straight answer is often “it depends” or “we don’t know, but we think X might be likely”. Understanding the results of a scientific study with any confidence requires knowing about sampling practices, error types, effect sizes, confidence intervals and publishing biases. Even asking a simple question like “is X bad for my child” will usually get you a complicated, uncertain answer - in most cases, it really just depends. Not understanding complex topics makes people afraid - it makes it hard to trust that they’re being given the right information, and that they’re making the right choices. 

Conspiracy theories and misinformation, on the other hand, are often simple, and they are certain. Vaccines bad. Natural things good. 5G bad. Organic food good. The reason girls won’t date you isn’t a complex combination of your social skills, hygiene, appearance, projected values, personal circumstances, degree of extroversion, luck and life phase - girls won’t date you because feminism is bad, and if we got rid of feminism you’d have a girlfriend. The reason Donald Trump was an unpopular president wasn’t a complex combination of his public bigotry, lack of decorum, lack of qualifications, open incompetence, nepotism, corruption, loss of soft power, refusal to uphold the basic responsibilities of his position or his constant lying - they hated him because he was fighting a secret sex cult and they’re all in it. 

Instead of making you feel stupid because you’re overwhelmed with complex information, expert opinions and uncertain advice, conspiracy theories make you feel smart - smarter, in fact, than everyone who doesn’t believe in them. And that’s a powerful thing for people living in a credential-heavy world. 

Many conspiracy theories are unfalsifiable. 

It is very difficult to prove a negative. If I tell you, for instance, that there’s no such thing as a purple swan, it would be very difficult for me to actually prove that to you - I could spend the rest of my life photographing swans and looking for swans and talking to people who know a lot about swans, and yet the slim possibility would still exist that there was a purple swan out there somewhere that I just hadn’t found yet. That’s why, in most circumstances, the burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim - if you tell me that purple swans exist, we should continue to assume that they don’t until you actually produce a purple swan. 

Conspiracy theories, however, are built so that it’s nearly impossible to “prove” them wrong. Is there any proof that the world’s top-ranking politicians and celebrities are all in a giant child sex trafficking cult? No. But can you prove that they aren’t in a child sex-trafficking cult? No, not really. Even if I, again, spent the rest of my life investigating celebrities and following celebrities and talking to people who know celebrities, I still couldn’t definitely prove that this cult doesn’t exist - there’s always a chance that the specific celebrities I’ve investigated just aren’t in the cult (but other ones are!) or that they’re hiding evidence of the cult even better than we think. Lack of evidence for a conspiracy theory is always treated as more evidence for the theory - we can’t find anything because this goes even higher up than we think! They’re even more sophisticated at hiding this than we thought! People deeply entrenched in these theories don’t even realize that they are stuck in a circular loop where everything seems to prove their theory right - they just see a mountain of “evidence” for their side. 

Our brains are very attached to information that we “learned” by ourselves.

Learning accurate information is not a particularly interactive or exciting experience. An expert or reliable source just presents the information to you in its entirety, you read or watch the information, and that’s the end of it. You can look for more information or look for clarification of something, but it’s a one-way street - the information is just laid out for you, you take what you need, end of story. 

Conspiracy theories, on the other hand, almost never show their hand all at once. They drop little breadcrumbs of information that slowly lead you where they want you to go. This is why conspiracy theorists are forever telling you to “do your research” - they know that if they tell you everything at once, you won’t believe them. Instead, they want you to indoctrinate yourself slowly over time, by taking the little hints they give you and running off to find or invent evidence that matches that clue. If I tell you that celebrities often wear symbols that identify them as part of a cult and that you should “do your research” about it, you can absolutely find evidence that substantiates my claim - there are literally millions of photos of celebrities out there, and anyone who looks hard enough is guaranteed to find common shapes, poses and themes that might just mean something (they don’t - eyes and triangles are incredibly common design elements, and if I took enough pictures of you, I could also “prove” that you also clearly display symbols that signal you’re in the cult). 

The fact that you “found” the evidence on your own, however, makes it more meaningful to you. We trust ourselves, and we trust that the patterns we uncover by ourselves are true. It doesn’t feel like you’re being fed misinformation - it feels like you’ve discovered an important truth that “they” didn’t want you to find, and you’ll hang onto that for dear life. 

Older people have not learned to be media-literate in a digital world. 

Fifty years ago, not just anyone could access popular media. All of this stuff had a huge barrier to entry - if you wanted to be on TV or be in the papers or have a radio show, you had to be a professional affiliated with a major media brand. Consumers didn’t have easy access to niche communities or alternative information - your sources of information were basically your local paper, the nightly news, and your morning radio show, and they all more or less agreed on the same set of facts. For decades, if it looked official and it appeared in print, you could probably trust that it was true. 

Of course, we live in a very different world today - today, any asshole can accumulate an audience of millions, even if they have no credentials and nothing they say is actually true (like “The Food Babe”, a blogger with no credentials in medicine, nutrition, health sciences, biology or chemistry who peddles health misinformation to the 3 million people who visit her blog every month). It’s very tough for older people (and some younger people) to get their heads around the fact that it’s very easy to create an “official-looking” news source, and that they can’t necessarily trust everything they find on the internet. When you combine that with a tendency toward “clickbait headlines” that often misrepresent the information in the article, you have a generation struggling to determine who they can trust in a media landscape that doesn’t at all resemble the media landscape they once knew. 

These beliefs become a part of someone’s identity. 

A person doesn’t tell you that they believe in anti-vaxx information - they tell you that they ARE an anti-vaxxer. Likewise, people will tell you that they ARE a flat-earther, a birther, or a Gamergater. By design, these beliefs are not meant to be something you have a casual relationship with, like your opinion of pizza toppings or how much you trust local weather forecasts - they are meant to form a core part of your identity. 

And once something becomes a core part of your identity, trying to make you stop believing it becomes almost impossible. Once we’ve formed an initial impression of something, facts just don’t change our minds. If you identify as an antivaxxer and I present evidence that disproves your beliefs, in your mind, I’m not correcting inaccurate information - I am launching a very personal attack against a core part of who you are. In fact, the more evidence I present, the more you will burrow down into your antivaxx beliefs, more confident than ever that you are right. Admitting that you are wrong about something that is important to you is painful, and your brain would prefer to simply deflect conflicting information rather than subject you to that pain.

We can see this at work with something called the confirmation bias. Simply put, once we believe something, our brains hold on to all evidence that that belief is true, and ignore evidence that it’s false. If I show you 100 articles that disprove your pet theory and 3 articles that confirm it, you’ll cling to those 3 articles and forget about the rest. Even if I show you nothing but articles that disprove your theory, you’ll likely go through them and pick out any ambiguous or conflicting information as evidence for “your side”, even if the conclusion of the article shows that you are wrong - our brains simply care about feeling right more than they care about what is actually true.  

There is a strong community aspect to these theories. 

There is no one quite as supportive or as understanding as a conspiracy theorist - provided, of course, that you believe in the same conspiracy theories that they do. People who start looking into these conspiracy theories are told that they aren’t crazy, and that their fears are totally valid. They’re told that the people in their lives who doubted them were just brainwashed sheep, but that they’ve finally found a community of people who get where they’re coming from. Whenever they report back to the group with the “evidence” they’ve found or the new elaborations on the conspiracy theory that they’ve been thinking of (“what if it’s even worse than we thought??”), they are given praise for their valuable contributions. These conspiracy groups often become important parts of people’s social networks - they can spend hours every day talking with like-minded people from these communities and sharing their ideas. 

Of course, the flipside of this is that anyone who starts to doubt or move away from the conspiracy immediately loses that community and social support. People who have broken away from antivaxx and QAnon often say that the hardest part of leaving was losing the community and friendships they’d built - not necessarily giving up on the theory itself. Many people are rejected by their real-life friends and family once they start to get entrenched in conspiracy theories; the friendships they build online in the course of researching these theories often become the only social supports they have left, and losing those supports means having no one to turn to at all. This is by design - the threat of losing your community has kept people trapped in abusive religious sects and cults for as long as those things have existed. 

[metvmorqhoses]

i have a headcannon that voldemort never really “punishes” bella when she does something wrong, but his punishments to other death eaters are way way worse & so she’s obligated to act as if vold has given her a worse punishment than he actually has. not that she does a lot of things wrong as his “most faithful” though. i’m talking about the occasional slip up like the department of mysteries thing. had that been someone else, he probably would’ve harmed them more, let alone wouldn’t save then from some witch statue holding them down.

this is very true, anon. so true, in fact, i actually consider this much more a canon fact than mere speculation.

sorry if this is very long, but for every thousand of anti-bellamort idiots there must be a very precise bellamort’s defense attorney lol

correct me if i am wrong, but to my knowledge not once in the books a physical punishment coming from voldemort is ever mentioned in relation to bellatrix - and even if, let's be real, after his "rebirth" she became involved in literally the majority of the most crucial errors, the worst happenings ever, that ultimately brought to no less than his very downfall.

and yet, still, she came out of it all not only unscathed, but treated very specially.

even to a lazy reader, this should at least come across as peculiar.

let’s take the primary example of what i am saying, the battle of the department of mysteries.

just freed from azkaban and after being showered in honors and recognition, the first pivotal mission bellatrix was entrusted with was a damning fiasco.

true, it was not entirely her fault, lucius was in fact “in charge” of it, but let’s be real, do you really think voldemort sent his literal general with that malfoy dandy, his pupil, his most trusted and powerful lieutenant, just for company? just as a henchman? as i have always interpreted it, bellatrix was there to keep an eye on lucius, whose silver tongue was famously more apt to political plotting than to field missions.

voldemort wasn’t trusting lucius with the prophecy that had literally already meant almost death to him once, it would have been madness to. you can say anything about voldemort, but certainly not that he was an idiot.

i actually don’t think he ever trusted lucius at all. lucius had renounced him after his fall and didn’t manage to paint the fact as pragmatically as snape did, the cowardly aftertaste of his betrayal blatant and thoroughly disgusting on voldemort’s tongue. lucius’ status, family name, relations and wealth were just very useful for the movement and likely the only things that kept him in the high ranks of the regime (or alive at all) even before the fiasco, along with his marriage to bellatrix’s sister.

i am positive voldemort was in fact trusting bella to see the prophecy retrieved.

he probably didn’t officially put her in charge because she was still recovering from azkaban and therefore not completely stable or/and already with child (even if i tend to exclude the latter option, since she would have been still entirely too weak for a pregnancy to even take).

still, she was the one with the highest military rank there, not to mention the highest degree of closeness to voldemort, so you can bet she was the one that bore also the highest degree of moral obligation in that delicate situation. and she failed.

knowing voldemort, you would have expected to see killing curses flying left and right. had bellatrix been literally anyone else, she could have easily returned home to a murdered family and a pending death penalty.

instead, you see a voldemort that walks into the ministry of magic. you see a voldemort that, even already knowing the prophecy lost forever, renounces his every advantage and reveals himself once again to the wizarding world, moreover having to fight at the same time his very nemesis (nemesis that the mission should have helped him understand better and therefore defeat), dumbledore (the greatest wizard alive besides him) and soon the entirety of the aurors of britain.

what was exactly the reason that compelled him to enter such a nest of vipers, when he had been unwilling to do so in secrecy and surely in a highest degree of safety before and to retrieve the prophecy himself? to kill harry potter?

the very reason of the mission tells us he wasn’t sure about what to do with his potter dilemma and had therefore decided to have a more cautious, academical approach regarding the matter. he wanted to know the whole prophecy before trying again. he was frustrated and puzzled about harry’s absurd invincibility and insolent luck. do you really think he had decided to go for the hardest battle of his life unprepared and with dumbledore present of all people (whom he didn’t even directly kill afterwards) and possibly hundreds more on the way?

had voldemort suddenly turned from cold strategist to hotheaded kamikaze?

the only plausible answer is that voldemort had purposefully entered the ministry, risking capture and possibly his very life (or at least his newly created body, since at this point the horcruxes are still intact and a secret) and not knowing what exactly was there waiting for him, as a rather valiant rescue attempt and quite an unexpected one too.

bellatrix herself just moments before had laughed at the absurdity of the possibility of voldemort ever entering the place in response to harry’s questioning:

“Get it himself?” shrieked Bellatrix on a cackle of mad laughter. “The Dark Lord, walk into the Ministry of Magic, when they are so sweetly ignoring his return? The Dark Lord, reveal himself to the Aurors, when at the moment they are wasting their time on my dear cousin?”

bellatrix herself believed it an impossible and ludicrous thought and yet, less than half an hour later and her life in jeopardy, there voldemort surely appeared.

you could speculate he wanted to save his most valuable, just freed death eaters and then couldn’t, but there’s no evidence of it in the chapter whatsoever. the only evidence points out to the fact he was focused only on saving bellatrix.

this is in fact what lucius tells his hunting party while harry and co are trying to escape the ambush:

Harry put his ear close to the door to listen and heard Lucius Malfoy roar: “Leave Nott, leave him, I say, the Dark Lord will not care for Nott’s injuries as much as losing that prophecy — Jugson, come back here, we need to organize! We’ll split into pairs and search, and don’t forget, be gentle with Potter until we’ve got the prophecy, you can kill the others if necessary — Bellatrix, Rodolphus, you take the left, Crabbe, Rabastan, go right — Jugson, Dolohov, the door straight ahead — Macnair and Avery, through here — Rookwood, over there — Mulciber, come with me!”

so, la crème de la crème of his high ranks is there and everyone is positive the only thing that voldemort would care about is the prophecy, even above captures and fatalities.

rabastan and rodolphus are also there and yet he doesn’t go for them.

he appeared when harry told bellatrix the prophecy was gone, specifically when bellatrix began to have a manic fit because of it, alone in the ministry’s atrium with harry.

“Potter, I am going to give you one chance!” shouted Bellatrix. “Give me the prophecy — roll it out toward me now — and I may spare your life!”

“Well, you’re going to have to kill me, because it’s gone!” Harry roared — and as he shouted it, pain seared across his forehead. His scar was on fire again, and he felt a surge of fury that was quite unconnected with his own rage.

“And he knows!” said Harry with a mad laugh to match Bellatrix’s own. “Your dear old mate Voldemort knows it’s gone! He’s not going to be happy with you, is he?”

“What? What do you mean?” she cried, and for the first time there was fear in her voice.

“The prophecy smashed when I was trying to get Neville up the steps! What do you think Voldemort’ll say about that, then?”

His scar seared and burned. . . . The pain of it was making his eyes stream. . . .

“LIAR!” she shrieked, but he could hear the terror behind the anger now. “YOU’VE GOT IT, POTTER, AND YOU WILL GIVE IT TO ME — Accio Prophecy! ACCIO PROPHECY !”

Harry laughed again because he knew it would incense her, the pain building in his head so badly he thought his skull might burst. He waved his empty hand from behind the one-eared goblin and withdrew it quickly as she sent another jet of green light flying at him. “Nothing there!” he shouted. “Nothing to summon! It smashed and nobody heard what it said, tell your boss that —”

“No!” she screamed. “It isn’t true, you’re lying — MASTER, I TRIED, I TRIED — DO NOT PUNISH ME —”

“Don’t waste your breath!” yelled Harry, his eyes screwed up against the pain in his scar, now more terrible than ever.

“He can’t hear you from here!”

“Can’t I, Potter?” said a high, cold voice.

specifically, he appears behind bella when she starts to maniacally invoke him, almost as if they had a special mean of communication with each other even from considerable distance.

(here bella is afraid voldemort would punish her and i find the manner of it very interesting, we will come back to it later on)

voldemort was obviously furious the prophecy was lost, but again why risking his own life on top of it? was he perhaps concerned of bella’s mental state now that she knew she had failed and therefore her ability to flee/fight his very nemesis, dumbledore and the aurors?

normally, we would have expected voldemort to stay away and deal with the surviving death eaters later, leaving them to their deserved destiny (as he did with literally everyone else who was there).

instead we have:

“So you smashed my prophecy?” said Voldemort softly, staring at Harry with those pitiless red eyes. “No, Bella, he is not lying. . . . I see the truth looking at me from within his worthless mind. . . . Months of preparation, months of effort . . . and my Death Eaters have let Harry Potter thwart me again. . . .”

“Master, I am sorry, I knew not, I was fighting the Animagus Black!” sobbed Bellatrix, flinging herself down at Voldemort’s feet as he paced slowly nearer.

“Master, you should know —”

“Be quiet, Bella,” said Voldemort dangerously. “I shall deal with you in a moment. Do you think I have entered the Ministry of Magic to hear your sniveling apologies?”

“But Master — he is here — he is below —”

Voldemort paid no attention.

“I have nothing more to say to you, Potter,” he said quietly. “You have irked me too often, for too long. AVADA KEDAVRA!”

even when she literally has just lost his one mean to achieve his every goal of a lifetime, she is “bella”. even when we would expect him to tear her to pieces then and there, he had come to stand between her and harry.

the only reprimand she receives is a scowling “be quiet bella, i shall deal with you in a moment”, as you would speak in public with someone who is very close to you and you are very mad at, who shouldn’t let that closeness slip in public, especially now that she’s making you risk a lot to save her sorry ass.

i find this scene very comic, on top of everything else. voldemort is clearly so done and yet there he is, come to save his sobbing mess nevertheless.

the scene proceeds with dumbledore’s arrival, the duel and bellatrix trapped under the statue. during the duel and just after having trapped bella, we see a really curious exchange:

“You do not seek to kill me, Dumbledore?” called Voldemort, his scarlet eyes narrowed over the top of the shield. “Above such brutality, are you?”

“We both know that there are other ways of destroying a man, Tom,”

Dumbledore said calmly, continuing to walk toward Voldemort as though he had not a fear in the world, as though nothing had happened to interrupt his stroll up the hall. “Merely taking your life would not satisfy me, I admit —”

“There is nothing worse than death, Dumbledore!” snarled Voldemort.

“You are quite wrong,” said Dumbledore, still closing in upon Voldemort and speaking as lightly as though they were discussing the matter over drinks.

(...)

"Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness —”

what is this fate “worse than death”, these “other ways to destroy a man” that dumbledore wants for voldemort? we know how it all ended - with voldemort’s literal death, his very disintegration (after bellatrix’s very own). what was this all about then? this one i’ll let you decide for yourself. it’s certainly peculiar, considered the context.

voldemort doesn’t respond to this, he in fact seems very provoked and sends a killing curse at him.

at the end of the duel he disappears and everyone thinks he fled, bellatrix included, who cries out his name sobbing from under the statue.

he in fact, at that, goes straight to possess harry.

And then Harry’s scar burst open. He knew he was dead: it was pain beyond imagining, pain past endurance —

He was gone from the hall, he was locked in the coils of a creature with red eyes, so tightly bound that Harry did not know where his body ended and the creature’s began. They were fused together, bound by pain, and there was no escape — And when the creature spoke, it used Harry’s mouth, so that in his agony he felt his jaw move. . . .

“Kill me now, Dumbledore. . . .” Blinded and dying, every part of him screaming for release, Harry felt the creature use him again. . . .

“If death is nothing, Dumbledore, kill the boy. . . .”

Let the pain stop, thought Harry.

Let him kill us. . . . End it, Dumbledore. . . . Death is nothing compared to this. . . .

And as Harry’s heart filled with emotion, the creature’s coils loosened, the pain was gone, Harry was lying facedown on the floor, his glasses gone, shivering as though he lay upon ice, not wood. . . .

And there were voices echoing through the hall, more voices than there should have been (...)

“...where’s Voldemort, where — who are all these — what’s —”

The Atrium was full of people. The floor was reflecting emerald- green flames that had burst into life in all the fireplaces along one wall, and a stream of witches and wizards was emerging from them. As Dumbledore pulled him back to his feet, Harry saw the tiny gold statues of the house-elf and the goblin leading a stunned-looking Cornelius Fudge forward.

“He was there!” shouted a scarlet-robed man with a ponytail, who was pointing at a pile of golden rubble on the other side of the hall, where Bellatrix had lain trapped moments before. “I saw him, Mr. Fudge, I swear, it was You-Know-Who, he grabbed a woman and Disapparated!”

“I know, Williamson, I know, I saw him too!”

this passage is ever so interesting to me, because dumbledore’s words appear to have somehow made voldemort “emotional”. they provoked him somehow. he didn’t laugh at them. he linked them to the worst pain imaginable and almost killed harry with it, posing a philosophical dilemma - if such pain is worse than death, if my life is worse than death, why don’t you put this boy out of his misery?

there’s no doubt in my mind “that pain” is voldemort’s pain. a pain intrinsically love-related. voldemort’s problems to accept/understand/feel love are the crux of the saga, his every villainy and pain. it’s so interesting that in this whole scene the train of events and thought have ultimately reached this topic (even in the movie love is mentioned here, harry literally fights the possession telling him he shall never have it).

voldemort was furious with bellatrix, feared for his plans and life and went to save her anyway. he is enraged beyond belief but puts himself between her and harry and dumbledore. while they duel, dumbledore traps bellatrix and lectures him about “other ways to destroy a man” and “worse things than death”. he absolutely hits a nerve. voldemort completely feels what he’s meaning, so much he wants to retaliate and mercilessly - he never wants to be forced to face such things, such emotions. i don’t think he’s trying to kill harry there, he’s trying to prove a point, to make them both understand how it feels to be him, how the whole concept of love feels to him. and the matter is addressed in a scene entirely built around bellatrix. in fact, finally he then grabs her, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves, and flees. he effectively saves her and her only.

to me this whole passage is directly linked to the famous scream at bellatrix’s death, and to the way the events leading to voldemort’s own death unfolded. that scream might very well be that “fate worse than death”. jkr loves parallels and to me this one is perhaps the most beautiful of the series.

this really proves, in my opinion, at what depth their relationship stands, absurdly perhaps much more abysmal on voldemort’s part than on bella’s.

anyways, i took the time to analyze this particular episode because it’s emblematic of their relationship and his way to deal with her disasters.

lucius would carry on his face the signs of this fiasco literally for the rest of the entire series. the malfoys would fall from grace because of it, probably alive only because of bella’s intercession. half of the death eaters who were present at the ministry would end up back in azkaban.

voldemort would end up defeated, furious and destined to die.

bellatrix would come out of it not only physically unscathed, but with voldemort’s child.

even when she again loses the trio at malfoy’s manor (along with the sword), everyone ends up physically tortured but her. she says she fears for her life if voldemort was to know she lost the sword, but it seems more a metaphor than an actual possibility. when the cup is stolen from her vault, he makes her leave the room before murdering everyone in it. she’s not present at dumbledore’s assasination, and that’s because she wasn’t disposable.

i don’t think physical punishments are involved in their relationship, or if they are they are very rare, and i don’t think voldemort’s reactions to her transgressions/wrongdoings are in tune with the way he reacts to everyone else’s.

bella can more than anyone with him and never really loses this status of utter closeness, no matter what she does.

this obviously doesn’t mean that voldemort is a saint with her or that he doesn’t occasionally punish her. this doesn’t mean she isn’t rightfully afraid of him.

yet, the main way i see him actually hurting bella is psychological torture and silent treatment.

and here we come back at what bella was sobbing at the ministry, her desperate “MASTER, I TRIED, I TRIED — DO NOT PUNISH ME —”.

i don’t think a warrior, a general, a woman who remarkably survived 14 years at azkaban, would ever react this way to the mere fear of physical punishment, no matter how cruciatus curses hurt. i think she would have taken it as stoically as possible. thought she deserved it, even.

no, voldemort’s punishments must be unbearable to her, impossible to even fathom, because they involve falling from his graces, from the closeness she lives for. voldemort can serve bellatrix the cold, silent, disappointed treatment of a mentor and a lover, and have bellatrix literally rotting away because of it.

this is truly the worst thing he can do to her and the thing that had her sobbing and having a fit before harry at the mere idea of it.

this is also somehow confirmed when hermione, transformed in bellatrix, meets a death eater (i don’t remember who he was) before entering the gringott. he wasn’t surprised to see bella, well, alive and physically well, he was surprised to see her out of malfoy manor, where she was supposed to be confined.

so yes, definitely the way voldemort deals with bellatrix regarding punishments is special. everything regarding his way of treating bellatrix is, to be honest.

their relationship is written in such a subtle, beautifully twisted way. i adore it. the only problem is that because of it virtually no one ever connects the dots.

[beccasissy69]

Goddess wanted me to do a write up for the end of “Love Month”. This is trickier than my usual post because it’s very internal and almost completely focused on what I’ve been feeling so hopefully it won’t read too much like a lot of unconnected thoughts 🤞. 

First up the easier part, some of my sessions have been incredible! The BBC/chocolates one, the c*mshot/squirting dildo and deep lesbian kissing really stand out (oh and the twink.guy married couple too). They hit me so deep and hard (😂 innuendo not intended!), as I mentioned in the write ups they ran late and I had to take time to recover after them before I did anything else. 

When Goddess told me it was Love Month, as it’s February, I had some expectations of what it would be like. Less sexual content and more romance, maybe some romcoms and romance novels? But very near the start it was clear that it focused more on loving myself (again, no innuendo!).

The first time this really hit me was the session where I was watching lezdom videos, playing with a toy and had a mirror next to my screen so I could see myself. I never really see myself like that and I’m not even used to thinking about myself in that kind of position either.

Seeing it, seeing myself react and how natural it all was really made me feel more in touch with myself. A big part of it was the feedback, where my face doesn’t match what I’m feeling, so I smile more or try and look sluttier. 

It’s a good lesson to learn because if I’m on my own I’ll have a tendency to focus on what’s inside but this helped me to ground things more and makes it more real.  

For most of the sessions, when Goddess has been talking to me about them beforehand she also took some time to explain how the theme applies to the  session. So as an example, when she was telling me about the super deep lesbian kissing and using a dildo, she spent a few minutes talking about how if someone is kissing you like that, it means that you are worth being kissed like that! 

Reading it back, it seems an obvious point but it would never have occurred to me to look at it from that perspective and when I was doing it, it felt like it made a huge difference. Like I was worthy of what I was watching.  

Even I could see how it applied to some of them, so the “guys helping crossdressers” galleries I looked through is pretty clear but even here, Goddess pointed out that it also helps me to get comfortable with feeling that guys won’t be scared seeing me as me (and getting to watch some tender JAV crossdressing videos afterwards didn’t hurt 😄).

I had a chat with Goddess after my last session of the month and she was talking about how at some point, it becomes about needing more than just hookups and that seeing a couple holding hands or lightly kissing will be enough stimulation for me. She’s mentioned this kind of thing before a few times in passing and I’m long past the stage where I really doubt her when she says things like this, but when we were chatting it struck me how big the difference is between believing something and starting to feel it happen.

Like when she would talk about it previously, I’d kind of nervously giggle but this time when she talks about a guy wrapping his arms around me I could feel the blood rushing to my face and I’m like OMG, I need this. 

It’s seems quite weird to say things feel more grounded and real and also more fantastical and far reaching but here we are!

[strandedcrow]

thoughts on the glass animals album dreamland? (info dump welcome)

YES hi hello thank you

I talked like,, a lot so I’m sparing y'all with a cut

The album itself is just so well organized and executed it’s insane. The entire album just captures the feeling of taking a nostalgic trip through your own life and the way that it ends up forgotten in a way, sickly sweet and vague, subdued, and so easy to get completely lost in. And part of what makes it so well done is the pure authenticity it’s completely drenched in. The album itself didn’t exist until quarantine hit, they had been taking a break after a band member was injured and had to recover, and that isolation had that same impact on them as it did on most of us, and the result was this extremely genuine album embodying nostalgia itself.

As a band they’ve always done such an incredible job of maintaining a theme throughout their album that is consistent without becoming repetitive. The song Dreamland does such a perfect job of pulling you into the album, easing you into a subdued album, fuzzy around the edges but clear once you can hone in on the details, on what’s being said, perfectly reflective of the theme it’s introducing you to. While it’s doing that it’s also providing a smooth shift from the last song on the album before it, HTBAHB. Agnes leaves that album off on such an extremely a somber, desperate, and lost note, which Dreamland picks up, just as lost in itself, taking off so beautifully from Agnes’ “You’re gone but you’re on my mind, I’m lost but I don’t know why,” and getting into the why. But it does so by warning you first, “You see in kodachrome, you see in pink and gold.” This album is distorted, it’s not right, the colors are wrong and everything is sweeter than it should be. At the same time, it sets up for the songs to follow, like “That worst thing you said” for It’s All So Incredibly Loud and “You were ten years old, holding hands in the classroom, he had a gun on the first day of high school” for Space Ghost Coast to Coast.It’s those vague, unconnected memories that you haven't quite grasped onto yet in full, but you know you’re going to get lost in them once you do. You’re stepping back from the overload of information and action today to visit who you used to be and what made you who you are now.

Right after it, Tangerine does something that Life Itself did for HTBAHB, it smoothened the general sound’s transition between albums. Just as Life Itself, with its beat similar to the album before its own could have fit into ZABA with no issue, Tangerine could have been on HTBAHB without disrupting the album. The “retro” vibe, the themes revolving around both the nostalgia of Dreamland and those of past relationships deteriorating because of missed opportunities and growing apart fits so well into both albums, it’s such a great transition from the past album to the current. The “I’m begging, hands knees please, tangerine” is also a common expression used (often as a double entendre) by them, again like in Life Itself, with its chorus being “Come back down to my knees, gotta get back, gotta get free, come back down to my knees, lean back now, lean back and breathe,” which just sets up for a really smooth callback to previous songs and album. Something else that Tangerine establishes is something that’s been a running theme with Glass Animals since ZABA: fruit. There is a lot of fruit here. It used to be a running joke that Glass Animals wasn’t actually a band, but a cryptic pineapple worshipping cult (no amount of music made will fool me, this is definitely a pineapple cult). This album uses fruit to remind you of the sugary sweetness of nostalgia, but there’s more history and, well, fan specific nostalgia that goes with that metaphor, too.

Hot Sugar is similar to a later song, Waterfalls Coming Out Your mouth, in that it’s about someone who is so cool that they aren’t actually cool. The person isn’t genuine, the idea of them isn’t actually them, but this was someone that you still want to be anyways, because who wouldn’t want to be that cool? The song doesn’t have much deeper meaning underlying it compared to some other’s because that depth doesn’t exist here, with this person. You know they’re “faking it,” but it doesn’t really matter beyond deciding if you actually like them or if you just want to be them, and the answer is the latter. This song is also similar to another, later song, Tokyo Drifting, introducing the listener to this person that he wants to be like, referencing “Hot rubber on the tar,” and setting the stage for the later song to tell you more about what he wanted to be like. Also, once again, through a mention of watermelon, fruit continues to be a recurring theme in the earlier tracks on this album, when the trip through nostalgic memories is still more sweet than bitter.

Right after we get introduced to this idea of who he wanted to be, we move onto what became of someone he knew closely, shared a lot with, and very suddenly lost touch with through Space Ghost Coast to Coast. The music itself is reminiscent of the music he listened to at the time. This song, being a telling of something that actually happened, is so authentic and raw in how it ends up, all still told through the layer of confusion, hurt, and again, that sweetness of nostalgia, with “You look bizarre in the apricot” establishing a deceptively sweet but confused tone over something heavy through yet another fruit metaphor. This song also manages to hit on other songs from the album when he tries to delve into why his friend did what he did, “Were you bored of gender norms,” matching with Dreamland’s “Go ask your questions like “What makes a man?”,” “… of being alone,” matching Heat Waves’ “I don’t wanna be alone, you know it hurts me too,” and “… no mama home, a bad divorce” matching pretty much the entirety of Domestic Bliss. Like Hot Sugar, this song sets up for Tokyo Drifting, with his idea of who he wants to be but isn’t, with “Remember when you stole mom’s old Geo Metro, you wore her old bathrobe, too small to see the road.” There’s also more blatant references being made to both past shooters (Black cap back with a trench coat, ay) and the arguments afterwards of what motivated them (Playing too much of that GTA, playing too much of that Dr. Dre). While he still wants to understand his old friend, and what happened for him to change so abruptly and dangerously, he does not want anything to do with him anymore. It’s a song about a loss of innocence and the understanding that sometimes you just won’t understand why someone does something. It’s just a complete banger in general.

Which then takes us to Tokyo Drifting, which absolutely slaps. The song itself revolves around what he wanted to be like, singing from a new persona rather than his own (Cane Suga from HTBAHB was done through the same persona). It breaks the pattern of referencing to fruit, instead focusing on drugs and alcohol, dropping the sickly sweet lens of nostalgia for something more fitting of the song’s specific theme. Don’t worry, though, dragonfruit was used extremely heavily in this songs promotion as a single, so the fruit is still there, just not directly, and that lack of directly referring to a fruit in the song itself fits with the way that the song breaks from nostalgia of things that have happened and people he knew into something that was never real. There is no rose colored glasses needed for something that never even happened. I don’t have much else to say on it, it just goes hard, this was my most listened to song two years in a row lmao.

Melon and the Coconut is just sheer Glass Animals. It’s weird, it’s fun, and it sounds great. It cleanly splits the album in half, splitting the POV’s straight down the middle while making a reference to its own position in the album, “Sometimes B-sides are the best songs.” Needless to say, there are some super subtle references to fruit in Melon and the Coconut, the song about two fruit.

Then, the second half of the album kicks off with Your Love (Deja Vu), a song extremely similar in theme to previous songs about missed timing, like ZABA’s Pools and HTBAHB’s Pork Soda. Instead of fruit, “juice” is mentioned in this song. It takes the turn from thinking about people you were friends with, what you wanted to be like, to people that you were with, and things that just didn’t work out.

And then there’s Waterfalls Coming Out Your Mouth. It’s such a clean parallel to looking back on things with nostalgia and seeing them through the fake sweetness that time brings, with this song being about the rose colored glasses that were present in the moment, the time when you start getting to know someone but you aren’t actually getting to know them, you’re getting to know this other, more impressive version of them instead, and they get the exact same experience of you on their own end. He’s letting this other person have their own version of him while he has his own version of them in his head, and he knows their version of him is wrong, so he also knows whatever he thinks of them is going to be wrong, too. He knows them, but at the same time he doesn’t. He’s realizing here, that this person, like the Hot Sugar person, is too cool, and they aren’t real, it’s all just talk, and it’s all fake like the “chemical warfare, red lips and television eyewear, raspberry soda hair, in the pool with a blow up gummy bear.” It’s sweet, sure, but it’s also fake. “Chat shit but where’s the real you? Never seen The Price Is Right, I’m a liar been on that shit since ’99. You make me look like a clown, clap clap, you’re a clever clever cookie now” has no right go that hard, and yet it Does.

Then, abruptly, we get to It’s All So Incredibly Loud. The song itself is subdued, it’s that point in your trip through your own memories where you remember why things went wrong. You get shaken from your train of thought and lose your place in it, because you aren’t there anymore, you’re here and you can’t go back, you can’t fix anything, all that’s left for you to do now is mourn the wrongs and accept them, even though its painful. This is remembering what Dreamland meant by “That worst thing you said,” the realization that you have to break someone else’s heart, and how much that hurts.

((home movie: rockets)) is the longest home movie audio in the album, and creates a smooth transition back into childhood, journeying back through a sound similar to that of their first album, ZABA, on the way there for the album to transition into Domestic Bliss. This time, with someone else entirely’s perspective falling back onto knees, but this time under an entirely different tone, “Fight for me. We can leave I’m begging, please, on my on my knees.” These two songs back to back continue the downward spiral that too much nostalgia can leave you falling into, the wrongs, the regrets, this trip down memory lane has lasted too long, now.

Which drops us off at Heat Waves, which returns back to his own perspective after Domestic Bliss focused on a friend of his. It fits the bittersweet feeling in nostalgia, the understanding and acceptance that you can’t go back, you just have to keep going forward and separate instead for everyone’s sake, a followup less to the tangent in thought that is Domestic Bliss, and more to It’s All So Incredibly Loud. It also wraps up those previous album’s songs, Pools and Pork Soda in a way, bringing a sense of closure to the nostalgic feelings, as well as to the entire album.

And finally Helium, the bookend opposite to Dreamland. This song flawlessly embodies that feeling of when you realize you’ve just been sitting and staring at a photo album for an hour now, and you finally take a look around you, feeling the air conditioning on your skin, hearing the sounds of the world around you, snapping back out of your train of thought and into real life again. Things didn’t work the way that you used to think they would, but that’s a good thing. It is such a perfect ending to the nostalgic journey that is this entire album. Fading back into the melody that started this journey of sickly sweet memories of people you looked up to, when you learned for the first time that people can change and you might not ever understand why, ideas of who you once wanted to be, finding something light that you can laugh about, realizing how similar so many things in your life have been to each other, the realization that the people you used to look up to might not have actually been that impressive the whole time, your regrets, times you wish you could have done more, and the understanding that sometimes you shouldn’t have done so much.

I love this album so much man

[vaguely-concerned]

okay so there’s something that’s been going through my head about the way the baby has been positioned at the start of the season, I need to write this out. 

they’re carefully building up tension around the baby -- in the first episode he’s basically irrelevant, neither a help nor a burden except in the ever-present background way that din is forced to take him with him into dangerous places where you shouldn’t bring a child. (which tbh is a theme we always have in this show because ‘this is no place for a child’ is right, but what the fuck else is din supposed to do, leave the baby back on the ship and run the risk that if he gets taken by someone while he’s away he’ll have no idea where he should even start searching?? we see in chapter 7 that even entrusted to someone worthy of that trust and responsibility the baby isn’t safe when separated from din and it puts others in danger (kuiil we miss you :’(). this will always be a thing as long as din is alone the way he is, it’s an unsolvable conflict as it stands, you need something new to come in and change that equation before you can have a different story. many of the things that make din uniquely capable of protecting the baby from a hostile world -- like being alone and unconnected to anything so they can travel fast (’moving fast is the only thing keeping me safe’ huh) -- are also things that bring in dangers all their own to his safety. there’s no real right answer here yet, he’ll have to find better ones as they go.) 

we also get comparatively little baby and dad interaction in this ep, they’re often on screen together but without much interplay. there’s a slight sense of disconnect.  

and then in the second episode there is a LOT of interaction, but the baby is basically an obstacle to every goal din has lol, his presence is actively making things much harder than they would be without him. he does things that are alien and off-putting and amoral in the way only a baby can because hey his brain is the size of like a tangerine, he doesn’t get good and evil yet he gets ‘hungy’. he needs and needs and needs, more than poor frazzled din knows how to give him yet. (and btw it does something good to my heart that this never makes din stop loving and protecting him just the same as when he’s a ‘perfect’ cute baby who doesn’t demand anything from you and is just a sweet passive vessel for you to pour your affection into. can you feel the unconditional parental love tonight????) this is making people quite uncomfortable, and it’s probably meant to!

all this to say that I think they’re building to a resolution of that tension, that the connection is being slightly strained and tested so that we get a moment of deepened love and trust and attachment when the bond survives it and heals even stronger than before. (listen, they’re not making baby yoda, the embodiment of like hope and din’s inner child and the future in this show, an irrevocable monster child lol. they did this same balance of light and dark in the baby in ep 7, if you’ll remember, and that episode comes down very heavily on saying that he has infinite capacity for both)

anyway in loving the baby when he’s not ‘useful’, when he’s difficult and strange and a hassle, din is showing that he’s worthy of the (magic, remember) baby’s help and protection when it does provide it and the joy in their relationship. thank you for coming to my ted talk etc. haha

[welcometomy20s]

January 10th, 2021

Action Button Review

Review

Tim Rogers reminds me of Hank Green. They are about the same age, they look about the same age which is a combination of young and old that feel eternal. They also have the same length of experience in writing in online spaces, interest in Japanese media, and apparently have Crohn’s disease? In summary, he might be the closest equivalent to Dave Green that exists in the real world. Well, I guess Dave Green is not apt, as Dave Green is not special in a way, while Tim Rogers is special, but his speciality comes from his failures rather than his counterparts' success.

Tim Rogers is a hypothetical Green brother who did not decide to publish that book. He’s a hypothetical Green brother who went to Japan instead of Alabama or Florida. Whose project crashed and burned rather than a surprise success. He’s forged in fire while the Green brothers are eroded by water. Both are wonderful people, but with a different ground of intensity and differing wealth of wisdom.

I encountered this series because I found a twitter post about a six hour review of Tokimeki Memorial, and a white middle-aged man talking about a dating sim for six hours with laudatory blurbs would always pique my interest, but since I didn’t know the guy, I went ahead and looked if he made other videos, and found he has four other review that were all about three hours or more. Now I knew that I had to watch all the reviews to prepare myself for this six hour review of Tokimeki Memorial.

Now, I wasn’t a stranger to three hour reviews of video games. I watched Joseph Anderson, Raycevick, Whitelight, matthewmatosis, and Noah Gervais-Caldwell. In fact, in the comments below Action Button Reviews, many people talked about a comparison to Noah Gervais-Caldwell (and Brian David Gilbert) and that was quite funny since I actually watched a recent Noah Gervais-Caldwell video.

His first two reviews were perfunctory, him opening himself up and trying out new things and polishing his review style, as he went through the Final Fantasy VII remake and The Last of Us. While I watched The Last of Us, I distinctly remembered and contrasted Noah’s The Last of Us Part 2 review with Tim Roger’s The Last of Us review. I liked Tim Roger’s defense of interactive movies (although he denies it!) contrasted with more cynical but ultimately positive connotation in Noah’s review. And Noah’s thesis pairs nicely with Tim’s observation that Ellie was the main protagonist all along. That fact makes Part 2 much more understandable, even the bad parts.

When I finished watch his first two reviews, I went ahead and also watched several of Tim’s videos on Kotaku, which were slightly shorter, the longest being just over an hour, which is a review of the best games in 1994, and does contain a short segment about Tokimeki Memorial, which his six hour review was my destination. To put in context, Tokimeki Memorial was #3. #1 was Earthbound, #2 was Final Fantasy VI, and #4 was Super Metroid. And I just watched a playthrough of Super Metroid basically on a whim, because it’s a monumental and a great game to play and watch.

And while the segment of the games that I knew to be great and monumental in my absorption of knowing video games was deeply personal and rightly claimed its stake that it deserved its spot, his segment of Tokimeki Memorial never got there. It was almost as if he was deliberately hiding behind something. In the end of 1994 review, Tim pitched an idea about a three hour Earthbound review, which probably was Tim’s idea of floating a departure from Kotaku, which would happen two months later, and I wonder if he was trying to deliberately throw a curveball by making a video of Tokimeki Memorial instead of the promised Earthbound review. This may be a far leap, I admit.

I went back and watched the video about Doom. It was much better in quality and in darkness. I was reminded of Film Crit Hulk’s writing of The World’s End and James Bond, another very long essay that was deeply personal and chapter for easier consumption. Few commenters noticed that Tim Rogers was just doing a dramatic reading of his written reviews on Kotaku and Action Button dot net, and how they liked that approach, and I found myself liking that approach as well. You might believe a video review needs more than just reading an essay out loud, but just the act of reading an essay out loud in the correct intonation and inflection adds ton to experience. And Tim Rogers sounds like he has decades worth of experience to present a dramatic reading of his essay very effectively, much like Hank Green.

I continued scaling the mountain to my goal. I went through his review of Pac-Man and was delighted by his reading of Namco games, and was impressed by the opening sequence, and just generally enjoyed it. I was getting excited to set a day aside and let the six hour review of Tokimeki Memorial watch over me and reduce me to dust.

And it sure did. That six hours was a harrowing experience. What Tim Rogers is best at is telling a story, and so to go through a let’s play was a wish I never made, fulfilled. In the end, I was left with nothing and everything. It was like finishing a really good book.

I wanted to watch it again, then again I never wanted to watch it again. It was almost a traumatic experience. Tim talked about there being endless variation of love, and the love Tim Rogers went through was not the fluffy yet melancholic one that I craved, but one akin to a devotion of an eldritch god. Love made in justification for one’s efforts in attending and maintaining a relationship. A love stronger than most kinds of love, but most draining and taxing as well. Tim Roger’s synopsis of Tennis Monster reminded me of Asking for It by Louise O’Neill, which is also about empathizing a quite hateable character because we kind of have to. Apparently one person knows the full plot because Tim Rogers rambled on about it as he was couch surfing in his house, and unbelieve as it usually is, I fully trust that the commenter is telling the truth.

I was like a heroin addict, who really wanted a different hit, like talking to friends or hiking, my mother wanted me to go hiking with her, and I didn’t because, after the pandemic started, all I wanted to be was inside. Outside felt diseased. The air outside felt contaminated to me, hard to breathe. I was stuck in this place.

Tim Rogers is an exceptional figure. He seems to be a movie protagonist, he reminds me of The Librarian, played by Noah Wyle. Tim has eidetic memory, as he has access every single autobiographical memory formed, but not other types of memory. We know that those types of memory are different because of people like Tim and people who are opposite of Tim, someone who has no memories of autobiographical memory but otherwise fine. These people tend to have very few emotions and have a hard time deciding things. Lack of emotions is correlated with difficulty in decision making.

So Tim is the opposite of that, Tim is full of emotions, complex emotions and he can make decisions and carry it out in a snap. He would be good at school, and he was, but he would be too focused on his grandeur to be under some authority, which is how he became who he was. His anti-authoritarian nature rings throughout his reviews, highlight the general Generation X vibe that Tim exudes but also the modern socialistic movement of Generation Z, which adds to this odd mix of old and new.

Not only does Tim have eidetic memory and intense work ethic that he never seems to move away from, therefore making a three hour video masterpiece at a clip that seems unbelievable for a seasoned viewer, he also has exceptional skills in fast math and language, he seems to be at least familiar with dozens of languages, and of course Tim’s experience is bounded by his decade of living in Japan.

I think this is why Tim naturally gravitates towards video games. When Tim says ‘welcome to video games’ there’s a natural supposition that Tim Rogers is the protagonist of video games, and I think he is. Tim wants to be in video games, because he needs to be in video games, instead of some almighty god cruelly deciding to plop him into a real life. He should be an video game adaptation of The Librarian and go on world-spanning adventure and romance impossibly beautiful girls instead of toiling the grime of what real life portends to. His life is dramatic, but impossibly mundane as well. It’s a simulacrum of a movie or a video game, which is pretty cool on its own.

But of course Tim Rogers isn’t the only part of Action Button Reviews. In the ensuing five videos, Tim Rogers tries to do something. Video games are a wide net. There is so much to video games, something like Gone Home and Geometry Dash are included alongside Wolfenstein The New Colossus and Farmville. What makes a video game? Actually, the more interesting question is, why do we have the term ‘video games’? Why do we put all of this mess into a single category, as if there is some throughline.

Tim Rogers starts to do that. Tim Rogers boldly states that things like Doom and Tokimeki Memorial are intimately connected to each other. And that all video games are in conversation with each other, through deep and complex meta-narratives. Tim Rogers is a cartographer, trying to map out how video games are made whole.

I’ve always strived to be that kind of a cartographer, to showcase the weave of reality, of connecting two seemingly unconnected parts, and showing to a profound implication both existing, instead of one or the other. If you don’t know, I have been trying to write something out of my current obsession with Virtual YouTubers, and mostly Hololive, and while I think I stumbled upon the six hour video review of Tokimeki Memorial outside of my interest in virtual YouTubers, this video, as I expected in the back of my head, gave me plenty of thoughts about Hololive. Its rumination of cyberpunk and idol culture is so directly connected with the peculiarities of Hololive that I was quite astounded.

From the very beginning, I wonder how Tim Rogers thinks about Hololive, especially after he has done that six hour review. I’m sure he will have a lot of interesting thoughts about the prospect. I want to get in contact with him, maybe work under him. But then I don’t want to hang out with him. I want to be near him as he talks to a crowd at a party, but I don’t feel safe to be near him when there’s less than ten people nearby. I think below ten, I would be swept in some danger that I won’t be prepared for.

Tim Rogers and Action Button Review is a fascinating review series and if you have the time, I suggest you should take the journey. It’s well worth it, just to get a different perspective on video games and the world around it.

[dangermousie]

So, I think the real Baek Hee Sung is the accomplice

1. The ragged nails Hae Soo saw in the flashback. First of all they scream stress to me and math wunderkind with unloving father and crazy mother Baek Hee Sung fits that. Second, we haven’t seen anyone with those screwed up nails so far. But if BHS had them back then, he’s been in coma for years in which case they would have grown out and been trimmed into normalcy by the caretaker.

2. The wrist band from unfather’s hospital put together with the fact that the accomplice bawled and bawled at the funeral. It means it’s someone connected to the hospital and thus unfather, but I cannot possibly have enough suspension of disbelief that unfather could squeeze out one tear if the world was ending - lizard people are not capable of crying, after all. OTOH, Hee Sung appears emotional - granted, it could be his coming out of coma and all that - but at least he’s capable of having a breakdown. I suppose it could be a random hospital person but that would be bad storytelling to bring in a random character we never met and go “yeah, that’s the accomplice.”

3. To tie in to (2), clearly BHS had a father who paid zero attention to him and it bothered him. Just as clearly, serial killer really wanted to have a junior partner in crime - look at him grooming Hyun Soo. And also clearly and horrifyingly, serial killer viewed those animal torture sessions with Hyun Soo as a bonding activity. So I can see someone unstable, deprived of paternal affection and closeness, and into murder idolize someone who pays attention to him and shows him the ropes. I mean, Hyun Soo, being a normal human being, hates them; his father is abusing him by making him do this and a lot of the reason he shoves his emotions down down down is to cope with that (and then the useless shrink puts in the nail in that coffin by telling him he has a disorder where he cannot feel emotions and empathy; of course he believes it - she’s an adult in a position of authority and unconnected to his family. If even she thinks he’s like that then he internalizes it as gospel to such a degree that all these years later he cannot understand that his actions are driven by emotion, that he has empathy aplenty - he decides to rescue the trafficking victims precisely because he puts himself in Ji Won’s shoes. He can’t even figure out what his panic attacks mean, poor man, his head has been so screwed with. OK, sorry, digression.) But anyway, to get back to the topic, if BHS is a murderous psychopath himself though, then for him it’s an equivalent of fatherly care in teaching needed life skills. No wonder he’d miss and cry for his mentor.

4. Human trafficker mentioning that accomplice and Do Min Seok were super tight but he hasn’t seen him in a long time. Well - coma. Also, I don’t think serial killers tend to quit cold turkey so it would have to be some event that would stop the steak.

5. The phone number that accomplice wrote on Hae Soo’s arm looks like the same phone number unfather has. My theory is that it’s the human traffickers’ number. I wonder if unfather used to clean up after his kid’s mess. (I think he’s also going to order a hit on DHS through this number. His ��goodbye’ was ominous. Though how he thinks this will work I have no idea - he’d have to take out Ji Won and do you really want to take out a cop? That’s not going to reverberate or anything...)

6. BHS’ convo with his mother about whether the mute maid knows anything. Why would he ask if there wasn’t something shady going on beside his identity being used - because if that came out, that’s no harm to him, he’s a victim.  Plus during that convo he is staring at that place in the garden - hmmm - is it where Mi Sook is buried?

7. The woman he mentions he was going to see - is it the human trafficker lady? Hae Soo to get rid of as a witness (the flashback shows the accomplice memorizing features) though if that is the case, why didn’t he get rid of her earlier?

8. They cast Kim Ji Hoon. He’s not a random no-name actor. He’s had plenty of lead or second lead roles in successful dramas. For him to do a random minor role that’s not even a special appearance is odd. If he is however narratively important and also it’s very different from his usual repertoire, I could see why he went with it. (PS I really wish he was a bigger star. His character in Wish Upon a Star is one of my all-time drama crushes. I kind of want a rewatch now.)

Anyway, watch me be proven wrong next week...this drama keeps surprising me! Tbh, i would put up with random extra n3 being accomplice or w/e, as long and Hyun Soo and Ji Won get a happy ending - they deserve it so!

[stillness-in-green]

If it's any consolation, I'm sure that the Advisors and the rest of the MLA (Re-Destro, Trumpet, Geten) will show back up sooner than the final arc, just because we're going into Year 2 and the students would find great 1 on 1 or team opponents with the Advisors. Re-Destro and Geten are heavy hitters (and Geten could be tied to Dabi, Shoto and all that somehow) and they were locked up with Mr. Compress and Machia, but who do you want to see first from the Advisors?

Thanks, anon; I certainly do hope we'll get to see more of them.  Admittedly, my main concern is that I so liked what was going on with the Paranormal Liberation Front that even if we do see all of the MLA types again, if it's only in the context of speedbump battles for the students, that's still going to be a letdown.  Better than nothing, to be sure, but I really do want them to join back up with the League, even a League that's confused and out of sorts under All For One's hand.  I love RD's big spiritual-awakening-flavored crush on Shigaraki, the cross-organization tensions and relationships, just as much as I love the depth the MLA brings to the world outside of just what's going on with the heroes.

I'm fairly frustrated with how the MLA fared during and after the raid, largely because it's awfully hard not to conclude that, if what we have right now is all the erstwhile-MLA are ever going to come to, Shigaraki would have been significantly better off if he'd just killed them all and shacked up with Ujiko for four months.  And that would be such a waste!  The end of My Villain Academia was such an enormous triumph for Shigaraki! I want his victory to amount to something more than what we've seen, something that shows that both his strength and his mercy will pay off for him in the long-term, will be a concrete benefit to him rather than, with the benefit of hindsight, the reason everything went so wrong.

Particularly with Re-Destro, since Horikoshi saw fit to have Dark Shadow all but one-shot the man, and Edgeshot defeat him off-panel, it's really not going to mean much to me for him to have a big fight with students unconnected to anything else.  The drama's rather gone out of it at this point.  That's particularly the case since, if he's no longer connected to Shigaraki's plot, it's that much easier for him to just be off-paneled and forgotten about.  But, if Rikiya gets looped back in with the League, if his gratitude and admiration of Shigaraki mean he still has a role to play in Shigaraki's arc, that makes it much easier to get invested in any fights that role will lead him to. Ditto the MLA more broadly; it's categorically ridiculous to present that organization with the kinds of numbers, breadth of influence and legitimate grievances they have, only to try to sweep them back under the rug exactly like Shigaraki accuses heroes of doing with everyone they can't save. 

To say the least, I'm pretty invested.  But I appreciate your consolations and am trying to hold out hope that we'll get some good stuff with them yet!

My anxieties aside, and to hit the other portion of your ask--who would I like to see first among the Advisors?--hit the jump:

(All nicknames and shorthand are taken from this post.) 

Well, it'd be nice if they could all get at least as much to do as the Eight Bullets back during the Hassaikai arc, seeing as they got a similar splash page spread introducing all their faces.  There are considerably more than eight of them, of course, but even if they never get more attention than e.g. Galvanize or the hose-faced guy who iced Midnight did, at least then we'd have some idea of their power sets and at least one angle on their personality.

Assuming we aren’t going to get full breakdowns on every single one of them, there are still four things I'd really like to see happen with the MLA/the Advisors: the student fights we're expecting, the jailbreaks we're being told about, the reunion with the League I'm praying for, and for literally anyone in the in-world media to try and get their side of the story.

Student Fights: Seeing the guy who killed Midnight again is as sure a bet as any of these get.  Momo is an important enough character, with enough sustained arc, that she will have to get something else to do before the series is over.  Taking command of a group battle against real opponents--ones with more responsiveness and agency than Gigantomachia--would be in-line with what she's been moving towards so far.  I would, however, love it if that fight would be more challenging than a straightforward battle of tactics.

I headcanon Hose Face and Scarecrow as, respectively, an ex-con and a dude with physical disabilities--both people who have ample reason to want to change the series' status quo irt human rights abuses in prison and overly restrictive quirk use laws.  I'm not expecting the canon to validate me on what amount to wild guesses, of course, but I want those Advisors in particular to have motivations more nuanced than, "They're quirk supremacists; who cares why they're willing to put their lives on the line over this?"

A feel-good revenge match in which a bunch of teenagers lay the smack down on characters whose humanity the audience is asked neither to know nor care about would be lazy, and counterproductive to the series' current thematic concerns. Give Momo her victory, by all means, but don't give it to her easy.  A confrontation like this would be a good way for the less central Class A students to begin wrestling with the question of who, exactly, heroes "save" and what it is that people need to be saved from, exactly the way Deku and Uraraka and Shouto are now wrestling with these questions.

As far as other fights go, I'd also love to see Brand and The Question pop up again. They're probably the two I'm most curious about purely in terms of what their quirks are.  Why does The Question wear a mask, and what's he like that he wound up in Mr. Compress's chain of command?  And with Brand, what kind of quirk does he have that's powerful enough to land him a ranked position in the Guerilla Warfare Regiment but indirect enough that he fights with a sword?

Prison Breaks: I wouldn't expect this to be particularly involved, probably more of an aside than anything, but I want the Bindi Ladies to spring Hole Punch Face, thus getting us an angle on what's going on with that particular trio.  Aviator Teeth can come too because I want at least some hints about what his deal is.

I'd also love to watch Horikoshi even attempt to retroactively justify some of the logistics of the single-day capture and subsequent detention of 17,000 super-powered, combat-trained people.*  I mean, I don't think there are any feasible explanations for that, but I'd be curious to see what he'd come up with, especially if every possible answer just makes Hero Society look worse! We have only ever seen Tartarus as an example of the prison conditions in this country; I'd love to hear more, and an MLA-focused jailbreak would be a great way to show it.

PLF Reunion: Of course, my number one thing to see with a reunion is Re-Destro being just as dismayed as Spinner is over Tomura's possession.  I crave more serious attention being paid to Rikiya's profound awe over Shigaraki's freedom, and would love to see his reaction to Shigaraki apparently losing that freedom.

Aside from the obvious, though, if the PLF does start piecing itself back together, I expect to see Sanctum again, given the attention he's gotten so far, and the fact that he's now the highest-ranked member of the Tactics Regiment.  It'd be great to get some explanation for how he can possibly be "the longest-serving member of the Liberation Army," given that the Army was generations old already when Re-Destro was just a child.  (If we do get that information, I imagine my own explanation will be jossed hugely, so I would also be happy to take time with Sanctum that doesn't explain the discrepancy but also doesn't invalidate my headcanon.)  

In the context of the regiments reforming, I'd also like to see Nimble and Aster, both because this manga needs more women, and because I'd like to see more of how Spinner and Toga interact with the people they were nominally commanding.

Media Attention: Trumpet's my number one hope here--the lack of any look into the state of the government in HeroAca Japan has been a total let-down since his introduction**, but I was particularly annoyed that the last time we saw him he was smiling (albeit in a fairly haggard way), giving me hope that we might next see him doing his part to portray all of this in a light that would sway public opinion.  And then literally one chapter later, we get prison guards talking about how the Hearts & Minds Party, a perfectly legitimized political party with representation on the national level, has been perfunctorily dissolved less than twelve hours from when the raid started.  How is there even an argument that the system heroes were upholding desperately needs to change?

I'm very tired of the media in BNHA only ever showing up to beg for/demand that heroes tell them what’s going on, particularly those damn press conferences. Journalists do investigative work! Newspapers employ reporters to actively seek out news!  Reporters in free countries don't just sit around waiting for the government or heads of major industries to graciously hand them press releases!  For heaven's sake, Trumpet was the head of a major political party.  People should be foaming at the mouth trying to get a statement from him!  

Especially with public trust in heroes breaking down, there should absolutely be intrepid reporters out there looking to get to the bottom of any of the layered conspiracies the public's just been hit with and told to just write-off as a bump in the road on the return to normalcy.

Anyway, Trumpet's the obvious choice, but if I could be sure the manga would validate my headcanons about Nimble and Scarecrow's disabilities, I'd be happy to put them in this position, too.  Trucker Toad would be another good candidate, if there's any basis to my idea that he is or used to be a transport driver who's seen a lot of the country outside the areas e.g. the Top Ten Heroes are patrolling.  He's obviously a good candidate for getting back to that idea of anti-heteromorph bias, too.  But really, I'd take anyone who can give a cogent explanation of the MLA's position on self-determination and the various ways Hero Society has exacerbated quirk-based discrimination.

Anyway, that's about where my thoughts are on where I hope the MLA people are and what we might see of them.  Thanks for the ask!

--------------

*Or as many as 100,000 more than that, depending on how through the statement, "Their bases around the country were also attacked, and their supporters rounded up," was meant to be.  An influx of 116K people, incidentally, would triple Japan's current carceral population.

**Why! Why would you introduce a politician and then never even glance at your setting's political situation??

[bigskydreaming]

Okay, so reposted version of my take on how Titans treat Dick vs how the Batfam treats Dick, which can become a very easy ‘trap’ to fall into per se, off of my posts as much as anyone’s, given how critical I am of the Batfam in specific....but the danger there, IMO, is that relativity is never quite the solution it often appears to be, when we’re just looking for ‘better than what exists elsewhere’ but from the perspective of the END results, rather than the root of the issue causing things to...exist badly anywhere.

For instance, I’m fully in agreement with others that in terms of FREQUENCY this happens far less with the Titans than it does with the Batfam, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still issues with how the Titans have been written interacting with Dick at his lowest. And this is why I think its always, always, always a self-defeating trap just even IN GENERAL, to fall into comparison/contrast paradigms when analyzing things like problematic behavior patterns: it ultimately does no good to examine whether or not another group is ‘better’ or ‘more frequently’ better at interacting with Dick in ways that aren’t as detrimental to him….not if they still DO have times where they interact with Dick in ways that are very much detrimental to him.

The real question, imo, is simply: what’s at the root of how and why characters interact with him in ways that are to his detriment? Because nothing ultimately gets addressed or dealt with when its simply made an issue of contention between two parties who AREN’T Dick themselves…..it simply creates an arbitrary ‘bar’ wherein anything ‘above’ this bar is okay because at least its not as bad as the behavior that fails to reach the bar elsewhere.

One specific word got me thinking along these lines in general, not even anything to do with any actual stated point, but rather purely just a circumstantial thing, as it jumpstarted a chain reaction of thoughts purely from the presence of that word choice. And that word was ‘coddling’ - again, if for no other reason than the fact I think it makes for a good segue to something we have a problem with as a society in general. I think a ton of us have a reluctance to give up on the idea that tough love is the be-all and end-all its so often deemed to be….because there’s this fixation on it that’s been kinda battered into most of us, largely just as a direct result of a kind of societal belief we have that anything LESS than tough love can often be construed as ‘coddling,’ ie indulgent. Enabling weakness. Validating someone’s self-expression that they DESERVE love and care rather than forceful ‘get over it’s’ with, well…..dismissal of that.

In Dick’s case in particular, I want to point out how insidiously this can end up pairing with the extremely pervasive takes we have throughout fandom, that Dick is exceptionally stubborn and prideful - where his insistence on independence and self-determination are so often turned into a flaw and a manifestation of ego rather than something he’s actually justified in leaning so heavily into.

Because this I believe is at the heart of the relative lack of sympathy fandom displays for Dick’s position even in the takes where he WAS originally fired from Robin, rather than quitting and leaving on his own. And here I want to bring things back to where I initially said it can be so dangerous to make analysis of problems with emotional interactions a matter of relativity, of ranking, rather than just examining the problem purely from an analytical focus on Dick himself, and what he NEEDS versus what he so often GETS.

Because our tendency in life and society to make things a matter of relativity, usually because that’s FUNCTIONALLY an ‘easier’ (or at least quicker) way to address issues….I think that’s the same thing that results in how many people view Dick as being just as much at fault for the estrangement between himself and Bruce in his early Nightwing years, if not more.

See, it goes like this:

Break the problem down into its bare components there:

Bruce and Dick are at odds and estranged due to Dick no longer being Robin.

Now, let’s go purely with a take where its 100% Bruce’s fault….let’s just say there’s no nuance here whatsoever - not actually in the interests of demonizing Bruce, lol, but purely in the name of spotlighting what a problem the thing I’m talking about here is.

Okay, so take one of the takes where Bruce fired Dick from a role and mantle Dick himself created from personal reasons largely unconnected from/uninspired by Bruce, that Bruce himself had ZERO rights over. And where then this was compounded by Bruce refusing to demonstrate any emotional vulnerability by asking Dick to stay or remain in his life despite what he’d done. As well as the injury he’d caused by doing something he had no right to and by overstepping ironically by doing the very same thing people usually offer up as his reason for NOT forging more definitive personal bonds between himself and Dick….inserting himself between Dick and his memorial tribute to his first family, and appropriating control of the Robin mantle as though it’d become something he had more rights to by mere virtue of Robin being Batman’s partner. And then add to that the insult added to injury by offering his new son Jason BOTH the one thing he’d never offered Dick - adoption - AND the one thing he’d TAKEN from Dick - Robin. All without ever a word of apology or a single attempt made to be the one reaching out to try and bridge the chasm HE’D created by his own actions and no one else’s.

Pretty definitively Bruce’s fault, right? There’s no way, shape or form any of that is actually Dick’s fault, those are all entirely Bruce’s actions and Bruce’s actions alone.

So we go back to the broken down problem:

Bruce and Dick are at odds and estranged due to Dick no longer being Robin.

And now we want to create a solution to that problem. How do you fix or even come close to fixing that? Well, the only possible way to fix a problem is by addressing the root of the problem….which in this case, is unilaterally, Bruce’s choices and decisions, and his lack of apology or accountability.

But here’s where most people swerve. For various reasons, whether its personal character preference or bias, or just an inability to imagine a scenario wherein Bruce DOES step up to fix things by MAKING an apology or ACCEPTING accountability, perhaps due to seeing that as unrealistic or hard to script in character, due to BRUCE’S innate pride and stubbornness….

For one reason or another, people shy away from ACTUALLY defaulting to this view of things in order to fix what Bruce broke, EVEN IN takes where Bruce definitively and 100% was the party responsible for breaking trust.

And instead, they become preoccupied with a DIFFERENT problem:

Bruce is unlikely or hard to imagine making that apology or accepting that blame….

Making that an ‘impossible’ fix to a problem that still needs fixing….Bruce and Dick at odds and estranged.

So suddenly, by sheer virtue of there only being two parties involved here, and one of them considered ‘useless’ in terms of ACTUALLY fixing that problem….attention gets shifted to Dick.

And now, because similarly the attention is also just on ‘how do we fix this’ and not ‘why does this need fixing’….Dick is offered up as a sacrificial solution. If he just ACCEPTS that he’s never going to get the apology and acknowledgment of accountability from Bruce that he deserves…..then voila, we still have a fix to the problem. So long as he just ‘gets over that’ or any need for that, and ends the estrangement regardless of never getting that….the problem still gets ‘fixed.’

And thus, with just a few mental moves, one problem has been entirely swapped out for another one, that’s literally only been CREATED because people refused to address the actual root of the problem.

Now, the new problem is that Dick is too stubborn, too prideful to just get over this and end the estrangement himself….because people prioritized the SOLUTION over the PROBLEM, and then decided that between the two, Bruce and Dick, Bruce is the LESS likely to ever be of use in acquiring some kind of solution or addressing the actual problem…..meaning that now, the onus for obtaining that desired solution falls upon the RELATIVELY MORE likely avenue for obtaining it….Dick just caving and accepting he’s never going to get this apology. And which in turn means that as long as Dick DOESN’T do this, or the longer it took Dick to do this…..the more the newly shifted blame lands on his shoulders and his alone….

Even though he never did anything wrong and his want/need there was always valid.

In essence, people have created a problem entirely from scratch, in order to explain the existence of an actual problem….that they refused to lay at the feet of the actual source of it…..wholly because they deemed that useless in ever ‘realistically’ obtaining a solution to that problem.

People put the burden of fixing a problem not on the source of it, but on the person they deemed more capable of fixing things…..and then blamed him for simply not wanting to do that because it was never his place or job or responsibility….to fix what he was himself the victim of.

And all of that comes about solely from prioritizing obtaining a solution over acknowledging a problem, and falling back on arbitrary parameters of relativity to obtain said solution.

So now bringing this back to the Titans AND the Batfam AND pretty much most other characters to revolve in and out of Dick’s life and storylines…..we often end up presented with characters written enacting the ‘solution’ of ‘tough love’ to a problem that….never really existed in the first place. Because so often the tough love gets trotted out in direct response to addressing ‘how stubborn/prideful/prone to digging his heels in’ Dick is, because there’s a tendency with people to approach the issues of problems Dick’s having….as though Dick himself is the problem. As if only he weren’t just so…him, so insistent on BEING ‘him’….the problem wouldn’t exist in the first place. Ergo, its his stubbornness that NEEDS addressing. That demands he not be coddled.

But the second we stop looking at Dick and what HE’S doing as the problem that needs fixing - ie being stubborn about something…..and we look at this behavior as his ATTEMPT at a SOLUTION to the actual problem HE’S facing…..someone or something trying to do something that Dick doesn’t want to go along with or doesn’t want them to do…..we shift the focus BACK. To that ACTUAL problem. The someone or something that’s trying to do something that Dick doesn’t want.

And here’s where we get to where as I’ve talked about before - I believe Dick DOES have control freak issues, absolutely….but that his reasons for having them differ dramatically from Bruce’s and other characters who have superficially similar tendencies. And in Dick’s case, those tendencies stem from his attempts to SOLVE the problem that is….him so rarely being allowed to have control over his own actual life.  

Dick being stubborn isn’t the source of his issues. The source of his issues are his rapes, his repeated experiences being brainwashed and mind controlled and fucked with, the lack of power he’s afforded in his personal dynamics with even his own family and how often he’s just completely overruled or invalidated by even them…..

Ironically, for all that Dick IS an acknowledged control freak….this is not the actual problem. This is just a badly attempted solution that can not ever really address the problem….that is….his lack of control over so much of his life.

Because much like the only way you can really ever address or FIX the problem that is “Bruce and Dick are estranged because of what happened with Robin” by addressing the PROBLEM as being “Bruce’s actions and choices that created that estrangement, and his failure to act to end it”…..

You can similarly only ever really address or FIX the problem that is “Dick so rarely has control over his own life”….by….giving him more control over that.

Except of course, this is pretty much the exact opposite of what most people try and do whenever Dick is in crisis or struggling with personal issues. Part of the major central PROBLEMS in Dick’s life and narratives is the fact that going hand in hand with how rarely he has control over his own life….is how often others want to have control INSTEAD of him. Even many of the people closest to him, with the best of intentions, have these beliefs or images in their heads of what he NEEDS, what’s best for him….because they’re so rarely asking WHY independence and self-determination are SO important to him, WHAT the problem is that he so often and so readily trots those out as his go-to attempted solution or fix for. 

They’re innately undervaluing the importance of this to him and the WHY of that importance, because it just doesn’t match up to the view they already have installed in their head of who he is, what that looks and acts like, and what his problems MIGHT be…..and the less they listen to what he’s actually saying and asking for by assuming it to be CONTRARY to what he actually ‘needs’ or signs of some kind of flaw on his part or even self-destructive…..all they’re doing is feeding back into that same central issue of prioritizing THEIR view of him and what he needs and what he should be acting like over his OWN view of all that.

With this only being compounded by the reality that….how could they POSSIBLY ever really know what he needs in the first place when….most of them don’t even know what the myriad traumas he’s struggling with are….ironically, because he’s been taught throughout his life to keep most of that to himself, because every time he DOES open up about stuff, peoples’ response is never to ASK what he needs from them or patiently wait for him to figure that out for himself, its just to….DECIDE they know now what the requisite solution is.

With this FURTHER compounded by the fact that so many of Dick’s traumas happen to exist as data points in a repeating pattern. His greatest hits keep hitting, over and over again. Even if he opens up about one rape, there’s more to tell. Even if he opens up about one time being mind controlled, there’s more to tell. Even if he opens up about one time he felt abandoned or rejected by family, there’s more to tell. So even when he STARTS to genuinely open up to people and turn to them for help…..any progress that might result in tends to get nipped in the bud the second a character hears about the FIRST issue and immediately thinks ah-hah, okay, NOW I get it, NOW I see what the problem is….and NOW I know what needs to be done….even though again, they just wind up right back where they started….where how could they POSSIBLY know what Dick actually needs when even now, they still only know one third of it or whatever, because they jumped the gun and couldn’t be patient with him or with letting him take the lead in determining what he NEEDED in order to fix or address his problems.

And round and round and round it goes.

Of course, this then begs the question of how then can they ever truly know what Dick needs, when Dick himself might not know it because he’s long since become an unreliable narrator of his own traumas and various issues?

The answer, IMO, comes from going back to the singular recurring root of so MANY of his traumas and problems….the lack of control, the refusal to allow him to self-determinate. I think its safe to call this his central issue by virtue of the fact its the issue that throughout the decades of his most consistent characterizations….its the issue he most frequently is shown pushing back against with his own personal attempt at finding a fix for what he views as his biggest problems. Dick’s biggest central theme in his life, his one big ask that he keeps asking for over and over from everyone he knows….is just to be allowed to be in charge of his own life. To be believed when he says HE knows what he wants to be, wants to do, what’s ACTUALLY best for him.

Because when you accept that as his biggest issue, and prioritize HIS preferred solution to it as the most pressing NEED of his that needs fulfilling…..suddenly it becomes a lot clearer how to address so many of his other issues. Because he’s already provided the blueprint for doing that, even when he otherwise is a temporarily unreliable narrator of his own issues and needs.

And that’s in who he is and how he treats OTHERS….when he’s at his best. His best being defined by ‘himself when granted fullest control over who he is and how he acts’….because if his central recurring issue is people getting in the WAY of this, people trying to superimpose their OWN view of him over this….then how can himself when at his most successful in addressing THIS real root issue be anything OTHER than himself, when….most ‘himself’?

And the thing is…..how we treat others when we’re EACH at our best….as in, when we have a full drawer of spoons available to us, when we aren’t being hindered or blocked by any personal issues or unknowing biases, when we’re treating people we care about in the way that to us is most IDEAL, while in a position and state of mind where we’re capable of acting upon our personally most idealized behavior….

How we treat people THEN, at THAT point….tends to bear a direct and distinct correlation to how we ideally want others to treat us at our WORST. As in, when we’re MOST in need or want of THEIR best or most idealized behavior or treatment of others.

So the answer to ‘what does Dick REALLY need when he’s struggling with various things or even self-destructive behavior’ IMO is never anything approaching tough love, but neither is it coddling….its simply…..to be treated by the people he cares about the same way he prioritizes treating the people he cares about when he’s at his most capable and most uninhindered on that front.

He basically draws people a map to it.

And yet….so rarely do we see anything remotely close to people treating Dick the way even some of his loudest detractors EXPECT him to consistently treat their own faves.

None of the sensitivity they take for granted when demanding it of his character, given that they’ll hold even one single insensitive thing said by him against him for years. None of the compassion and understanding that they demand he display towards others’ issues, even when they’re lashing out or reacting badly from a place of frustration or loss of control or self-destructive tendencies. Etc, etc.

Its no coincidence in my mind that the times Dick seems BEST capable of and willing to accept help from others, or MOST benefiting from others’ help….are the all too rare occasions when the help others offer him prioritizes letting HIM take the wheel in what happens and when….as well as consistently displaying the same kind of treatment Dick doles out to others in need of help when HE’S at his best and the one providing it. 

But yeah, at the end of the day, for all my own ventposts about the Batfam of late, and all my own personal preferences for the Titans’ interactions with Dick….it can’t go unacknowledged IMO that there is unfortunately still a huge trend or history of them being written very poorly in this respect as well.

Which to me makes the most pressing question not WHO has the best track record of treating Dick better than others….

But why is there barely any track record at ALL, of even Dick’s closest friends and family treating him in the specific ways he’s expected to treat each of them at pretty much all times, regardless of what’s going on with him and his own issues of the moment?

The only way to truly address the problem of Dick having so little control over his own life…is to give him back control.

The only way to truly address the problem of so many people in Dick’s life having an agenda when it comes to him, even if that agenda is just getting him back to being or acting like the version of himself they’re most comfortable with….is to have no agenda other than just BEING there for him, whatever HE wants that to look like.

The only way to truly address the problem of so many people prioritizing their OWN view of what he should want or act like or think like or be like…..is to simply prioritize HIS OWN view of what he should want or act like or think like or be like.

And if the problem is what’s the best way for characters to interact with Dick when he’s going through his worst moments, when he might not even know what he needs or wants at that particular time…..IMO the only way to address this problem is to look at the problem as Dick not being able to be at his best……and prioritize treating Dick the same way he treats others when he IS at that point….rather than….unfortunately just often treating Dick the way OTHERS already tend to treat him that….so often results in him being at his worst….aka The King of Tough Love’s too-often approach to ‘helping’ his eldest in various ways.

Etc, etc.

[aion-rsa]

Mythic Quest Season 2 Pulls Off Another Standout Flashback Episode

https://ift.tt/3g6iVGE

This article contains spoilers for Mythic Quest season 2 episode 6.

According to co-creator and lead actor Rob McElhenney, the Mythic Quest team didn’t go into the show’s second season on Apple TV+ with a plan to recapture the energy of season 1’s infamous flashback episode, “A Dark Quiet Death. But they ended up doing so all the same.

“We’re always trying to just stretch and do something different,” McElhenney tells Den of Geek. “It’s never a function of like, ‘Oh, that flashback episode worked, so let’s do another flashback episode.’ It’s more like, ‘Well there are no rules.’” 

In Mythic Quest season 1, the desire to operate under no set storytelling rules led to the stunning fifth episode “A Dark Quiet Death.” That installment was a flashback to the mid ‘90s in which two game developers, “Doc” (Jake Johnson) and “Bean” (Christin Milioti), met, fell in love, made some art, then sold out and fell out. The half-hour was seemingly unconnected to anything else in the Mythic Quest mythos, save for a scene at episode’s end when McElhenney’s lead game designer Ian Grimm purchased the cavernous studio that Doc and Bean once used to make their indie titles.

The episode was a thematic companion to Mythic Quest’s main storyline and an exploration of the insidious interplay between art, commerce, and human ego. Now, season 2’s sixth episode, “Backstory!” explores some similar themes via an extended flashback that actually involves a character the show’s audience is already familiar with.

As played by Oscar-winning actor F. Murray Abraham, Mythic Quest lead writer C.W. Longbottom is equal parts caricature of an aging blowhard sci-fi writer and a realistically tender depiction of a man intent on finding story wherever it might lurk. “Backstory!” takes things back to Los Angeles in 1971 when “Carl” Longbottom is fresh off the bus from Clear Lake, Iowa, and eager to begin his junior copy editing job at famous sci-fi magazine Amazing Tales Publishing. 

Playing the young C.W. with equal parts wide-eyed wonder and bitter creative disappointment is Josh Brener, who most audiences likely know as Nelson “Big Head” Bigetti on HBO’s Silicon Valley. 

“I was worried at first because, you know, it’s somebody else portraying you, so you’re kind of in their hands,” Abraham says. “It was a treat though. I got in touch with the actor to let him know how much I admire his work and how good he made me look. He had soul and heart and I think that’s essentially what C.W. is. You actually love this guy. You want him to win in the end and I think he does.”

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TV

Mythic Quest: Everlight Ushers in the Post-Pandemic TV Era

By Alec Bojalad

The plot of the episode surrounds Carl’s relationship with his new copy editing peers Peter Cromwell (Michael Cassidy) and A.E. Goldsmith (Shelley Hennig). The trio begin as allies (or a “tripod” like the aliens in their beloved H.G. Wells’ creation) and attempt to get one another’s work published by Amazing Tales. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that A.E. and Peter’s fiction is much more suitable for public consumption than Carl’s strange, illogical hard sci-fi. 

“Carl, it’s not enough to propose a future where things are different. They have to be inevitable and unexpected at the same time,” A.E. tells the young writer, trying to help him. 

Unfortunately Carl is in no position to hear her. Sure, it makes no sense that humans in the future would have flesh packs on their back when backpacks would work just fine. But Carl wants humans to have flesh packs on their back because that’s how his imagination wants them to carry things.

Eventually, after A.E. and Peter find creative and professional success, Carl resorts to a soft form of plagiarism when he adopts all of the extensive notes that none other than Isaac Asimov provided on his manuscript and publishes them as his own. That’s enough for Carl to take home a Nebula Award, but A.E. understands precisely what happened. 

Carl, however, does find some semblance of real success in the form of an eerily accurate prediction. At his lowest, after Asimov essentially rewrote his story, Carl drunkenly takes off down the street in an uncharacteristic Southern California downpour. While walking, he sees a game of Atari Pong running on a model television in a storefront window. His eyes light up with the possibility of future storytelling. He then tells his peers that one day stories won’t be linear, but rather bolts of lightning. 

“The inevitable march of technology will not be stemmed. Enough iridescent geometry to create an entire world…no, worlds. We will give birth to creatures the likes of which have never been seen! Naturally, none of these worlds will mean anything on their own. They’ll need to be infused with story.”

And infused with story they’ll one day be, as Ian Grimm and Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao) track the aged C.W. down at a renaissance fair to write the story for their new Mythic Quest game. 

“Backstory” was written by special guest writer Craig Mazin, a prolific and powerful Hollywood presence who is now best known for creating HBO’s classic Chernobyl miniseries. This is Mazin’s first time penning a script for Mythic Quest but he did guest star in several of season 1’s episodes as the highly inappropriate games tester Lou.

Mazin also appears in this episode as Sol Green, the publisher of Amazing Tales. Mazin and McElhenney gave Sol the same last name as Lou to suggest that one is a grandfather of the other. But McElhenney is not discounting the canonical possibility that Craig Mazin is simply just an eternal force of nature.

“Again, there are no rules, so who gives a shit? Lou could be a character who has existed since the beginning of time,” McElhenney says. “To me, it’s the spirit of Mazin that lives on throughout the millennia. He’s like that in real life. I mean, that really is what he’s like.”

In addition to the presence of the writer of Chernobyl as a potentially immortal being, “Backstory!” differs from its “A Dark Quiet Death” flashback predecessor in one major way. This isn’t the end of the Carl Longbottom story. Next week’s episode, “Peter,” will continue the tale of C.W. Longbottom’s sci-fi writer life, this time in the present. And playing his friend-turned-rival Peter will be yet another actor of note.

“We essentially do a play between two Oscar winners: William Hurt and F. Abraham Murray,” McElhenney says. 

It looks like Carl was right: stories don’t have to be linear. They can be bolts of lightning too.

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New episodes of Mythic Quest season 2 premiere Fridays on Apple TV+.

The post Mythic Quest Season 2 Pulls Off Another Standout Flashback Episode appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3fOJCk8

[theangrypokemaniac]

Since I rant enough about the wizening Ma and Pa received in Sinnoh it's only right to wreak bloody rhetorical vengeance elsewhere:

However harsh it may be, I'm glad Takeshi Shudo isn't alive to witness the hateful desecration of his legacy.

...

In a universe where no one's allowed to age, why are the modern Jessie and James so withered and decrepit?

Dragon Ball has been on for more than three decades. Its stars were permitted to grow up, because the head can cope with the opportunities this offers.

Yet Goku, Krillin, Bulma et al bear a greater similarity to their younger selves than these gurning invertebrates do to Team Rocket, wearing a papery approximation of their skin.

Akira Toriyama is actually concerned about his life's work, still coming up with interesting concepts, brand-new characters, and most importantly, values his audience by keeping to the established canon.

If a Dragon Ball fan reads this, I am so jealous of you.

Consider yourselves fortunate not to have seen the thing you loved the most pulverised and the resulting glutinous mass moulded back into makeshift sloppy cadavers.

Look at the state of that man! That's a good picture these days!

Why have the eyelid lines turned into upside down bags?

And why has she collected her lashes for this particular screen shot?

On eyes with a strangely feline slant...

Has she had a face lift?

Get yer money back on that one, love.

And why has he marks under his eyes and round his flapping gob to add the hint of exhaustion?

And why don't her lips reach the edge of her mouth anymore?

And why must he display Beaver Toof, as if he's only got six pegs left?

Giving it to him but not her implies she's lost the lot, needing to gum objects for a result.

And why do her low-slung ears consist only of lobe?

And why can you see his featureless lugs? Why does his barnet stand outwards in tentacles like he's taken to wearing a floppy Starmie?

What's that's meant to be, purple dreadlocks?

And why is her hairline curved and absolutely straight, like a bad wig, apart from the perfunctory bits to the side, which I guarantee won't alter their position throughout the run?

Hair used to move about, now by law there's a set pattern which cannot change. Stamp that life out immediately.

And what's that flaccid growth between his weary peepers? Is that meant to be fringe?

PFFFT!!!

And why are her digits just as thick and oblong as his?

It ain't fingers. It's trotters.

And why's he got a back to his throat, but she hasn't?

And why are we forced to witness it? You can see all the way to his dangler!

The great gaping pink cave looks like the end of Looney Tunes when Porky Pig pops up and stammers: "That's all folks!"

Remember a lack of Beaver Toof? And triangular mouths?

Remember when Meowth was a cheeky, spirited little cat, not a middle-aged human midget, an emaciated wreck bored of it all?

Remember when it wasn't deemed necessary to expose us to internal organs?

And when James was a handsome, hysterically camp dandy, not a creepy, snot-ridden science dweeb?

And when Jessie was a beautiful, stylish young girl, hot-tempered but loyal, not a sullen, cold, reptilian, Botoxed-to-the-gills gorgon?

Remember when Team Rocket were fun? And attractive?

Remember when they had joy in their hearts in spite of their poverty? And vim? And hope?

Remember them acting with flair and imagination?

Remember when their schemes had variety?

Remember when they had more than a single disguise per era?

Remember when they had many occupations? And were good at them?

Remember when they'd have a go at everything and weren't reduced to flipping condemned meat in a grotty burger van FOR THREE YEARS?!

Remember when those in charge didn't despise them, when they got happy endings?

Remember split screens? And face faults? And background tones? And purple streaks down your cheeks?

Remember big, bright open eyes, not shrunken, sagging and empty holes afflicted by glaucoma?

Remember when Jessie had eyelashes?

Remember when Pokémon was an anime?

And when James had a fringe, not a bent swelling like a balloon animal?

And when the artist could be arsed to draw Meowth's Charm properly?

Remember when the voices weren't nails down a blackboard?

When Meowth didn't sound like a wedge of coal grinding beneath an oil-deprived door?

When Jessie's dulcet tones had a wider range that just screechy, and weren't reminiscent of a cacophonous banshee clawing her way from a bog, using her own mug as a shovel?

When James speaking didn't suggest he was at best, suffering sinus difficulties, and at worst, constantly battling to swallow his own sick from looking at her?

Mind you, I'm grateful the 4Kids cast are no longer here. They deserve better, and their presence would only validate the crude bastardisations.

Every time the guttural howls reach my poor ears a chill runs through my system, and reminds me of The Pokémon Company sacking the real dub crew in preference for a job done on the cheap.

Remember speed lines? And Pokéball-throwing animation?

Remember a new motto performance in each installment, not the same stock footage reused again and again?

Remember when it rhymed?

It shows.

Remember remembering it?

Remember when Team Rocket would walk down the street in their uniforms and no one took a blind bit of notice despite the organisation operating there?

And they didn't fanny about in one scabby polyester costume every minute they were travelling, even when NO ONE KNOWS WHO THEY ARE?

Since Unova, whilst confronting Ash and this era's soon-to-be-forgotten companions, you get this exchange:

Moron-Of-The-Week: "Who are Team Rocket?"

Ash: "They're bad guys who steal other people's Pokémon."

EVERY SINGLE BLOODY TIME!!!

WORD-FOR-WORD IDENTICAL!!!

The writers have such deep appreciation for their work they're sending in cut-and-paste scripts.

Remember blasting off when something blew up, not an explosion from nowhere, or giving it the slip with a jet pack, or abduction by a Care Bear?

Remember when the eyebrows matched the hair?

Remember when he wore it long?

Remember blue shock? And sweat drop? And hammerspace? And comedy violence?

Remember her jagged hairline? And it being RED!!!

Remember proper highlights to it, rather than the odd white lump now and again, as if sweating like a pig, or their heads are infested with giant space ticks?

Remember when they were in all the episodes? And were main characters? And on the introduction sequence?

Remember when Jessie and James used to hug? And hold hands?

And bicker as only a couple can, but you knew they'd never cope alone?

Remember when they'd fly into each other's arms under the flimsiest pretext?

Remember when they meant more to one another than just being a pair of unconnected and disembodied wraiths coincidentally walking down the same road?

And they had more than civil interactions?

Remember when she loved him as much as he loved her?

And no one else could ever take his place?

And canon wasn't infected with the ruinous depiction of her as a hard, heartless bitch barely tolerating him until someone 'better' came along, at which point she'd fuck off without a backwards glance?

'Better', as in a scabby, satchel-mouthed, gormless cretin, just to add surly insult to merciless injury.

Never has such a life-long and hardcore defender of the faith flipped into an ardent Rumishipper as I did after that episode, once I'd swept up the fragments of my soul.

Remember when they were sympathetic?

Remember when they showed human warmth?

Remember when they cared about each other?

Remember when they weren't just a jangling, distorted mess of half-recollected traits?

Remember when they weren't really evil?

Remember Rocketshipping? That was a thing once, believe it or not.

Remember when they had a conscience?

Remember when actually wicked characters turned up, and Team Rocket ALWAYS sided with Ash, rather than the nauseating spectacle of suddenly being best buds with the Boss?

Remember when they had contact with the Twerps?

Remember when Team Rocket and the Twerps loved each other in secret and would endanger themselves to save their 'enemies'?

Everything that was once good and winning about them was sucked out, degree by degree, to leave the corpse, hollow and dead, strung up on wires as a grim marionette.

I'm sure most who see this will vehemently disagree, that I'm completely wrong, that THEY like them.

Yes, you like this three, but you don't like Team Rocket. This is not them. You have yours, and I have mine, but let's not pretend they are the same.

Why, if there is no difference, would I be so hostile, when they meant so much too me?

Did you ever wonder where the original fans went, why they all departed en masse? It's not because they 'moved on' or 'matured'.

They didn't leave Pokémon. Pokémon left them.

As the makers rely so heavily on repetition (sorry, nostalgia) they arrogantly expect us to still be here, having blithely welcomed our memories minced and our canon ripped up or ripped off, apparently.

We're intended to put up with watching them lay waste to ťhe series's body, clinging on for when a rotting bone is pulled up now and again and waved at us, before they chuck it aside to continue the dismemberment.

It's been eaten from the inside out, explaining the facial collapse. Behold the beauty on show:

You see what I mean, don't you?

Don't you? No, because otherwise you'd say the same.

How anyone feels able to describe three deformed freaks as 'hot' or 'cute' I will never comprehend.

The uniform collar protrudes like a solid pipe, emphasising the pencil necks.

It gives the impression of wrinkled, leathery tortoises peering out of their shells to secure a tasty lettuce treat.

Is that pretty? No.

Is it so surprising I don't care for my favourites to resemble melted waxwork skeletons of their own dæmonic counterparts?

S&M is a most fitting name, for this is torture.

In the film Death Becomes Her, Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn vie for the attention of Bruce Willis, both taking a serum giving everlasting youth and slimness.

The catch is it confers immortality, but not invulnerability, so when pushed down the stairs Meryl survives but is dead, her neck broken, thus she's zipped up in the morgue fridge.

When Goldie is shot with a canon she too rises, internal organs blown out.

The rest of the adventure involves the pair losing the war against time, patching up and painting over peeling grey skin, holding onto loose limbs as their bodies fall apart.

This obviously is the case here. The trio lapped the potion up at the close of Sinnoh, experienced a fatal accident and are now steadily crumbling to mush before us.

According to grave-diggers the head always goes first, so there you are then.

I have a suspicion that Giovanni lured all three to his crypt, experimenting on them to engineer his ultimate super soldier, which explains their flat, plastic appearance. Those since Unova began are the cyborgs, the real ones locked in his cellar.

You may notice I have about the lowest opinion possible of the current writing team, as they deserve.

Why should I have any respect for vindictive halfwits like this, who hate Team Rocket so much they're going out of their way to distort and uglify them, expressing the resentment in celluloid?

Jessie, James and Meowth lost their only defender in Takeshi Shudo. From that point they descended from loveable, hapless tragic figures to self-parodies (Hoenn) whiney, irritating divs dumping one another at every interval (Sinnoh), robotic, amoral scum (Unova and Kalos) and now physically repulsive minor additions (Alola and Galar). Is that trajectory all accidental?

It not that it's a new 'style' (for want of a better word), as were that the case, this hideousness would apply to the entire cast, but it's only done to Team Rocket. How could that be unless motivated by malice?

Given the sub thesps are obliged to prostrate themselves in the dust, begging fans to make their appreciation known, it smacks of desperation.

They wouldn't need to ask that were the trio treated as an integral component. They must sense the objections and are thus drumming up support to avoid the dole queue.

Are those in charge so resentful of their presence it manifests in mutilating them, keen to do anything that may alienate the fanbase, so at the first sign of a dip in popularity they can leap upon it as the perfect excuse to write Team Rocket out?

Why be surprised? These are imbeciles who reject their own canon at the close of every generation, so why care about someone else's?

If people have to harangue the writers with grovelling praise of their retcons, rehashes and all-round twatting about, butter 'em up sufficiently, with the implied threat of deserting the franchise should Team Rocket be ejected, taking their purses too, all so the smug, avaricious berks deign to put the trio in the next generation, that proves they don't want them, so how can what they write for their characters be objectively of any worth?

Team Rocket would've departed by now, were there not a palpable worry their absence might ring the death knell of the whole thing, turning off the financial tap, which is what matters.

Therefore they are retained, grudgingly, and only so long as the clamour continues at its current decibel level. If that drops it's over, and don't expect a romantic resolution. Why should pleasing you be a concern when you're to leave with them?

Ask yourself: how much of your devotion is based on what they are right now, and how much is from who they used to be?

How long can they live off past glories?

The offences done in Unova and Kalos were bad enough, but remarkably Game Freak found further depths to plumb, therefore it can only get worse.

I have of course retained the loveliest for last:

Be still, my beating heart.

No, really, be still. Stop infact. 

Planet of the Apes.