#I don't think there's a 1:1 comparison

[blood-orange-juice]

Pushing my "Childe is inspired by Uther Doul" agenda.

I wrote about how everything that he does contains a contradiction and we discussed with Cricket how Canotila's quest implies that the Abyss might not be just a place with monsters and dead forgotten gods, but rather a place where things randomly flicker in and out of existence or change to random other things.

And a huge part of my fascination with Childe is how three years after the start of the story I still can't figure him out. Human psyche doesn't bend at this angles, his combination of traits is not supposed to exist in one person (nor it can be imitated).

Yet, somehow it doesn't feel like ooc or bad writing, I have a very clear sense of what would be childelike and unchildelike, it just doesn't feel like anything that can exist inside a human brain, unless I resort to a very weird theory.

*

The theory.

China Mieville's "The Scar" has a concept called "possibility mining", certain places and certain magic/technology being able to conjure all the possible versions of a person or an object at once. It can be navigated to some extent.

There's a character called Uther Doul, a warrior-scholar, the pirate city rulers' bodyguard and overall a charming fellow. He's consistently described as someone changing the direction of his actions too quickly and unpredictably or having traits that shouldn't coexist in one person.

(he also wears grey, is proficient in most kinds of weapons and is generally polite and soft spoken. do you see my vision?)

First meeting:

  “Surrender,” he said quietly to the man before him, who looked up in terror and sobbed, fumbled idiotically for his knife.    The grey-clad man spun instantly in the air, his arms and legs bent. He twirled as if he were dancing and stamped out quickly, the bottom of his foot slamming into the fallen man’s face and smashing him back. The sailor sprawled, bleeding, unconscious or dead. As the man in grey landed he was instantly still. It was as if he had not moved.

A fight at a city arena (mostly quoting this for the reaction of other people to him):

It was only when the frenzy spread to her own boat that she realized it was a word. “Doul.” It came from all around her. “Doul, Doul, Doul.” A name. “What are they saying?” she hissed to Silas. “They’re calling for someone,” he said, his eyes scanning the surrounds. “They want a display. They’re demanding a fight from Uther Doul.” He gave her a quick, cold smile. “You’ll recognize him,” he said. “You’ll know him when you see him.” [...] Uther Doul did not seem to live in the same time as anyone else. He seemed like some visitor to a world much more gross and sluggish than his own. Despite the bulk of his body, he moved with such speed that even gravity seemed to operate more quickly for him.

The heroine contemplating after (I don't think need to comment):

They left and walked the winding nightlit pathways of Thee-And-Thine toward Shaddler, and Garwater and the Chromolith. Neither spoke. At the end of Doul’s fight, Bellis had seen something that had brought her up short and made her afraid. As he had turned, his hands clawed, his chest taut and heaving, she had seen his face. It was stretched tight, every muscle straining, into a glare of feral savagery unlike anything she had ever seen on a human being. Then a second later, with his bout won, he had turned to acknowledge the crowd and had looked once more like a contemplative priest. Bellis could imagine some fatuous warrior code, some mysticism that abstracted the violence of combat and allowed one to fight like a holy man. And equally she could imagine tapping into savagery, letting atavistic viciousness take over in a berserker fugue. But Doul’s combination stunned her. She thought of it later, as she lay in her bed, listening to light rain. He had readied and recovered himself like a monk, fought like a machine, and seemed to feel it like a predatory beast. That tension frightened her, much more than the combat skills he had shown. Those could be learned.

Uther explaining lore:

   Uther quoted something like a singer. “ ‘We have scarred this mild world with prospects, wounded it massively, broken it, made our mark on its most remote land and stretching for thousands of leagues across its sea. And what we break we may reshape, and that which fails might still succeed. We have found rich deposits of chance, and we will dig them out.’    “They meant all that literally,” he said. “It wasn’t an abstract crow of triumph. They had scarred, they had broken the world. And, in doing so, they set free forces that they were able to tap. Forces that allowed them to reshape things, to fail and succeed simultaneously-because they mined for possibilities. A cataclysm like that, shattering a world, the rupture left behind: it opens up a rich seam of potentialities.    “And they knew how to pick at the might-have-beens and pull out the best of them, use them to shape the world. For every action, there’s an infinity of outcomes. Countless trillions are possible, many milliards are likely, millions might be considered probable, several occur as possibilities to us as observers-and one comes true.    “But the Ghosthead knew how to tap some of those that might have been. To give them a kind of life. To use them, to push them into the reality that in its very existence denied theirs, which is defined by what happened and by the denial of what did not. Tapped by possibility machines, outcomes that didn’t quite make it to actuality were boosted, and made real.

Fun detail: he also wields what's called a "possible sword", it takes the shape currently preferred by the owner.

If I recall that correctly, it's never actually stated explicitly or explained why does Uther have such a weird combination of traits and fans argue a lot about which side was real.

I think all of them were. He just switched constantly between all the different versions of himself. And I think so does Childe. Not just in "he compartmentalizes" way (although that probably too) but in reality-shifting way.

I also think that's the real reason why Childe wasn't in Sumeru. His thought process itself is probably a massive spoiler. Also Nahida would have probably speedrun a corruption arc with a pace inconceivable both to King Deshret and Rukkhadevata if she tried to peek into his head.

*

It gets weirder and even more fun when you see the drops from the 4.2 boss, but I'll wait for the patch to drop to draw parallels. For now I'll just say that it involves a whale and a music instrument.

[egophiliac]

still absolutely losing my mind over Lilia

[greencarnation]

eleven is fascinating to me because he came right off the back of tens horrible traumatic breakdown after he lost everything and he immediately tried to establish himself as the opposite of that. he is funny and goofy and almost childlike, and he bulldozes on in his adventures with amy like nothing happened at all. but then something happens and his masks slips and it's like oh! the core of this man is still anger. he is so so angry all of the time and this façade is the only thing stopping him from being consumed by it. he isn't over any of it and he hasn't moved on. he is wearing a fez and laughing but under that all that exists is age old anger and grief and it is going to consume him

[corseque]

I honestly just wanted one single plot step that I could not predict given the 10 year wait. More behind the cut, I talk about Emet too, and I'm comparing his writing favorably to Solas' writing and why it worked better for me personally, but I am just talking about the writing skill that went into the games and not the dudes themselves, I love them both dearly of course. idk this is a mess and I am not going to edit it for clarity

For me, the game was a series of me saying

"ok I knew that. cool."

"oh yeah, I knew that. I guess it's good that the larger fandom knows about that now."

"nice, but yeah I already knew that too"

"that was something we've been talking about a lot for years"

"this thing they are acting like is a huge enormous reveal that the characters could not possibly have deduced through simply thinking about it in depth over the 10 years... the fans easily figured out by thinking about it in depth 10 years ago. So you would think his girlfriend would be able to figure it out more easily than we did. Like, why couldn't the game have been like 'oh lavellan already figured that out a while ago' it would have cost them nothing"

"this is something I've been thinking about for years, and now that it's being revealed, the companions' reactions to it are very irritating and jarring and unnecessary and I really dislike the experience I'm having right now, in this, the hour of my greatest triumph"

"this thing that is happening on my screen right now is something that I wrote an essay about 2 years ago describing how it would be a letdown if it happened without the correct setup"

"this way that they're characterizing Solas makes him less likable and less interesting than I have been finding him for all these years, and I have had people tell me 'no, he's simpler than you think' for years but I guess I was wrong, he really is simpler than I thought, so that fucking sucks. I wish I could take that information out of my brain."

"this thing is a retcon of information I have been thinking about for 10 years, and so I don't know how to follow along with this new direction, and I'm not sure if I even want to because it's not particularly interesting anyway"

"aw that was sweet"

"why is it like, so very impossible to have an honest back-and-forth with my favorite character about the dilemma that was most interesting to me about the previous game"

and then, as soon as, like, the other fans had caught up to the Solas lore that was really obvious from the other games, the game was.... over without anything surprising happening, or introducing a new element or plot point or perspective, or a real true twist (or two, or three) for those of us who have thought about it too hard for too long. It was very simple and easy, much, much, much, much easier than I was imagining. It all felt sort of like that Nicholson quote:

The thing was, the whole story was so interesting to think about because in 10 years, I couldn't figure out a good solution to it!!!!! It's why I was never able to write post-game fanfic about it. So I was stoked to find out some reveal we never knew about, some new information, in maybe a SERIES of steps of new information, that made the situation more complicated but also something that could be navigated by everyone involved. I know it was asking for a lot, but they had TEN YEARS, and they seemingly had set up the things they did in DAI on purpose, so surely they had some idea of a complex and satisfying narrative that would reconcile everyone.

The reason why I was expecting this is because FFXIV did a very similar story arc, which was started AND concluded WITHIN those 10 years (so it took the FFXIV team far less time to deliver as well). And the conclusion to the story in FFXIV did what I was expecting Dragon Age to do. So I thought, "holy shit, if this is the FFXIV version of this plot, how much more complicated is DA4 going to be!?!?" The DA devs also PLAYED FFXIV so they were completely aware, several years ago, of a satisfying story ending that was pretty darn similar.

People are probably going to think "oh, well Chelsea was disappointed because she spent too much time building it up in her head" but that's exactly it - I actually speculated and thought about FFXIV's story IN DEPTH NONSTOP for a year+ before its ending came out, and the ending absolutely blew me away. FFXIV Endwalker managed to introduce information and new story elements that I was not able to figure out in the YEAR I spent speculating on the ending of FFXIV's story. It took a complicated situation and revealed several several more facets to it that I was not able to predict, but were very interesting and thematically compelling, and took us all to surprising and climactic places that we could not have predicted.

Endwalker ("end" is in the title on purpose) too, was written to be THE ULTIMATE SATISFYING ENDING for a very long-running story in the exactly way that Veilguard SHOULD HAVE for Dragon Age, so while this complexity is being explored, FFXIV also gave catharsis to many different plot threads that have been built up through the previous expansions, until finally it ends with a bang. The story is desperately good to me, I loved it, it gave me closure for Dragon Age long before Veilguard was even revealed, and going back and looking at its story has made this whole thing far less painful for me.

So, I actually did not have a picture in my mind for how things SHOULD go. I just had the thought "I hope it's complicated and there are points of view or facts that we haven't before been exposed to, and the situation is resolved respectfully for Solas, not making him look like a fucking idiot (lol, the only thing I asked for). I don't even care what happens to Solas and Lavellan, I just need the story to be complicated and interesting to think about. Please, god, don't let it be "solas is wrong and he just needs to be convinced" because that's like the simplest story you could tell with this setup"

(btw they managed to tell Emet-Selch's story without making him seem like he's being an idiot on purpose or can never get anything right, and in fact the more the story goes on, the more you think of him as smart and capable and cool, so it is possible to write.... I wasn't asking for the entire moon)

And I played it and... yeah. Most of the story beats were more simple than I wanted them to be, a lot of them didn't make sense in my heart given the writing from Inquisition. (This is another essay, but if Solas' thematic story arc was always about him needing to let go of regrets, why was his personal quest the way it was? After that quest, doesn't he end up regretting not doing more....? Why did he never really talk about regret during Inquisition? If he was so trapped by regret, why was he able to do so many actions? It doesn't mesh well to me. The whole regret thing was very quarter-baked to me, I don't even like thinking about it.) His story never seemed like one that was as simple as being about one man's regrets, but then, I guess, it was always just about one man's regrets.

Emet-Selch's personal storyline (and the way it interacts with and affects the larger story) is very similar but much more cohesive and satisfying to me. It would be difficult to explain why without the aforementioned 5-hour essay. Emet-Selch's story IS about grief and anguish on a world-shaping scale in a similar way that Solas' was apparently always about letting go of regret, but Emet's story was also very pointedly and beautifully about that one theme for the entirety of his story from every tiny detail, from beginning to end - meanwhile, it seemed to me that they tried to introduce 'regret' as the main thrust of Solas' story only in the short story with the Regret demon onward.

From Inquisition just by itself, the closest I personally could get to a story theme for Solas was his inability to trust others hurting him and the world, but his trusting others in DA4 wasn't really addressed to my satisfaction. He is never required to trust anyone before the ending, he never opens up or makes himself vulnerable at all. People find out information about him, he never really dynamically opens himself. So the personal story I thought he had was never addressed at all, while a new one about regret was introduced that never made a ton of sense to me. And I don't think this is just because of my expectations - my reaction to FFXIV proves that I am able to meet good writing where it goes in surprising directions, as long as it's interesting and thoughtful and clear.

And I think this might be part of what people felt was off about the ending - Solas is sort of uninvolved in the revelations that are about him, and doesn't do much to be part of his own ending. Part of what I loved about Solas in Inquisition is that he is not controlled by you in any way, and so he feels like his own person with a very strong sense of character.

Anyway, Emet-Selch, in a very comparable and arguably more extreme plot position, is very involved in the revelations about himself, he always feels like a very strong character who cannot be affected by the player, and the whole situation is handled with deft emotion and care and delicacy. The story is comparatively very uninterested in litigating Emet-Selch or putting him on trial - the story allows you to simply feel the way that you feel in an organic way, and Emet's story spends that energy instead actually exploring his thematic material about grief and legacy, and the larger story theme of existentialism instead, in a way that is very refreshing and interesting. I've seen a lot of western stories tie themselves in knots over "redemption" and frankly it's almost never been interesting at all. Who cares about any of that. lol

(Now, I guess this is a matter of preference, because some people really like being able to shape a character's story, but idk I rewatched the ending of FFXIV and even though there wasn't a choice with Emet, because it isn't a branching story, his story felt more satisfying to me, maybe because there isn't a patronizing choice to be made for him. He is who he is, and he fulfills a very beautiful narrative role and purpose that no other character could in the story.)

I don't know how this could have been improved to me and still allowed players to choose Solas' ending for him, but I can actually think of a few different methods, none of which involve Rook condescendingly and patronizingly lecturing Solas as if Solas had never thought about a single aspect of this horrible situation he's in before that very moment that Rook lectures him lmfao.

All this to say... idk I'm writing this and I am not going back to edit it so it's stream-of-consciousness. But yeah

I just wanted the story to be complicated on a few more levels than I could have predicted. I genuinely don't care what happened, but I thought of a few twists like the Veil coming down and yeah, I was expecting A Single Twist or reveal to happen. In a Dragon Age game.

I wanted Solas to seem cool and capable and noble and smart, and actually feel like he was as old and experienced as he is.

I wanted a clear theme I could sink my teeth into

Like notice I didn't even say anything about Solavellan. Like I never in 100 years thought they were getting a happy ending where they were both alive in bodies, and I like that we got that, but I would honestly trade it for a more complicated story. To me, if a story is sad you can always write fanfic, but if a story isn't COMPLICATED, that's a much more urgent issue.

These 3 things DA4 didn't give me in a way that satisfied me but FFXIV did. anyway idk the way my hyperfixations work, I completely switch to a new subject so talking about Dragon Age is actually hard for me right now.

[project-sekai-facts]

Kanade's another cut for the Twilight Light 3DMV is a direct reference to her untrained The Dream I Saw Will One Day 4* card.

Screencap source

[miss0atae]

They went to the same flirting school.

Let's see if Hill will be better at sharing his feeling than Phum.

[astralleywright]

Marisha's comment about how Relvin is one of those parents who ended up with a child they didn't know what to do with really gets to the heart of it, i think, and is such a good way to tie the fantasy element of Imogen's powers into things more tangible. because there are really a lot of parents like Relvin in real life, who have a child with the person they're happily married to and never expect to be left alone with the kid. or who expect a ""normal"" (read: cisgender and heterosexual, able-bodied, relatively neurotypical and obedient, etc.) child and end up with one who's ""difficult"", who demands more or different of them than what they believe they signed up for. and that's not entirely entitlement on a parent's part- many cultures' common frameworks of parenthood and child-rearing do not include space for these children. it makes sense that Relvin was unprepared. raising any child is difficult, and raising a child whose needs you were never taught how to accommodate, who the world is so cruel to, is even more challenging.

and yet. and yet, the person who bears the brunt of the harm in these situations will always be the child. they're the ones who have to live every moment of how the world treats them, without the support that their parent is supposed to provide them. and when asked to care for his child even when she turned out to be ""difficult"", Relvin couldn't. for entirely sympathetic reasons, of course. he tried, in his own way. i don't think he's a bad guy. but he's let his own broken heart bleed onto his daughter. he hasn't been able to give her much else.

[firestorm09890]

FUCK what I said about the majority of significant changes to dialogue in Re:CoM being to adjust Axel's characterization, the most egregious change is actually this

(GBA CoM)

(Re:CoM)

if I had to guess, the reason for this change was because in GBA CoM, The Superior was a spooky, unknown being at the head of this Organization we had very little knowledge on, and for Vexen, the guy who runs his mouth constantly about how much better he is than the others, to be terrified of him, he must be some pretty scary dude. But then after kh2 we know him, it's Xemnas, he's very dramatic, he likes to talk to the moon, and the effect of your mind filling in the gaps about what "The Superior" must be like is gone. So it wasn't really necessary anymore, right?

(rest under cut because it's long)

Except... the way they changed it is so weird. In the GBA version, what's happening is pretty clear:

Marluxia tells Vexen that his project is a failure

Vexen demonstrates that he does not give a shit about Marluxia's opinion

he does care very much about The Superior's opinion, though, and Marluxia uses this to blackmail him into eliminating Sora- an action which is nonsensical, as the entire point of what they're doing needs Sora alive, making it clear to everyone in the room that he is deliberately sending Vexen to die

and then after that, when Vexen shows up to fight Sora, he goes "if you want to fight me for real you've gotta do it in the memories from the other side of your heart lol bye" and Sora goes "huh? other side?" and then it cuts to a scene on the top floor:

and then this gets more into subtext but here, Vexen has realized he's totally fucked and his only hope is to mess directly with Marluxia's plans (well, they were the Organization's plans, but it's pretty obvious by now Marluxia's abusing his power for his own purposes) by giving Sora more information than he should know. This does get the traitor gang worried enough to send Axel to go kill him (as opposed to just letting Sora take care of him, which was presumably the original plan)- he very specifically cuts Vexen off to keep him from saying too much (this is retained between the original and the remake)

Anyway, what happens in Re:CoM sort of follows the same order of events, but everything is changed slightly in a way that just makes things more confusing.

Marluxia tells Vexen his project is a failure and Vexen demonstrates that he doesn't give a shit about Marluxia's opinion, as before

Marluxia threatens Vexen with a weapon, rather than threatening to tell the Superior

this, notably, does not seem to faze Vexen very much. he continues to run his mouth while having the scythe pointed at him.

Xemnas is still leveraged- Marluxia points out it was the Superior who entrusted him with the castle

...even though reasonably Vexen would already be aware of this, and has still demonstrated that he has zero respect for Marluxia despite it

the lines about betraying the Organization being a capital crime are retained, probably because it's super relevant later, but then that line of thinking is abandoned in favor of Marluxia and Larxene just taunting Vexen instead

The part where Marluxia says "do it. you won't" could be seen as a sort of threat... if not for Axel's line: "You give a challenge like that to Vexen and he'll seriously want to eliminate Sora." It frames it all as though Vexen went to fight Sora out of some sort of pride.

And look, Vexen may have a temper and a superiority complex, but he's not stupid. They're obviously baiting him. Plus, what happened to him seeing himself as above the others and countering things he doesn't like with "well actually I'm higher ranked than you and also you're an idiot"? Is he that insecure in his fighting capabilities? I could deal with characterization changes doing him dirty if it didn't also make no sense in the context of the plot.

So now we have Vexen going to try to kill Sora, something that really makes no sense to do, out of pride. What was the purpose of sending Sora to Twilight Town? Also pride, over the fact that he managed to get that information? Giving the writing the benefit of the doubt, I could say that these nonsensical actions can be explained as evidence that Nobodies can have hearts and people with hearts do strange and rash things, but that just feels like a reach, which is bad because what they had in GBA CoM worked perfectly fine and made sense without any reaching for the "idk emotions make you do strange things" explanation.

It continues. After Vexen gives Sora the Twilight Town card in Re:CoM and Sora wonders about what the "other side" means, this is that version of the conversation the top floor members have:

...what? "If Sora disappears, that would mess up the Organization's plans"? what are you worried about? the only reason Sora would disappear is if Vexen killed him. there's no way they think Vexen being in Twilight Town would give him an advantage, right? they know he's a pathetic fighter. "Vexen has clearly committed a treasonous act against the Organization" HOW? HOW IS IT CLEAR? they don't express any worry about Sora learning too much, up until Axel says "I came to stop you from talking too much" when killing Vexen- and that being there makes it seem like they were worried about Sora learning to much, but if that's the case, why would they replace the perfectly serviceable lines in the above scene? it's just... baffling that they would want to lean into the narrative that Vexen going to kill Sora (which he'd been goaded into doing) is the problem here, because it just makes so little sense compared to what it was originally.

once again giving them the benefit of the doubt: Marluxia's real plan was to take over the Organization, and he saw an easy way to pick off one of the members, so he took it. the motive for stopping Vexen doesn't actually matter.

buuuuut it's the same as with Vexen earlier. Marluxia may be too self-absorbed and power-hungry to notice Axel is scheming against him, but he, too, is an intelligent man. he's plotted for a while, getting into Xemnas's good graces in order to be put in charge of the Castle. this is incredibly sloppy for him. I guess it could be said that getting so close to his goal would make him sloppy, but again, if they'd just left things the way they were in GBA CoM, I wouldn't even have to be saying this

in conclusion: GBA Chain of Memories' intra-Organization strife subplot is so tightly woven with calculated moves on all sides that Re:CoM changing certain things without taking into consideration the consequences makes certain parts of the plot fall flat and become far more confusing than in the original story

[sukibenders]

"Why did they make Michael into Michaela? They took away one of the hottest men in Bridgeton now!" Okay, now it's one of the hottest women in the show. What's the issue now? Still got Francesca and Michael, in a way.

"Francesca's infertility plotline is ruined now! It was so important in the books!" Why can't she still have this particular plot, while still being with Michaela? Why is that suddenly erased now that Michael is a woman? Do you not believe that sapphic woman can't also struggle with infertility? There are multiple ways that the show can still incorporate this.

"Why are they making everyone gay now? It was fine when it was just Benedict but now-" I'm going to stop you right there. What's wrong with having more than one queer character? There are multiple straight people in the show, and in most forms of media, but you draw the line at having more than one gay/queer person? Imagine what it's like for other queer people to not be represented or to only have that one person be a vessel for the entire community. Doesn't sound very fair right? Another thing, because I see a lot of people who say this call themselves "allies", it doesn't sound very supportive when you say things like this. It doesn't instill confidence in your support for the queer community when you can't even fathom the possibility of more than one queer person on your screen without complaint. It's okay to be a little bummed out about the change, but to use rhetoric like above feels very...it leaves a sour taste in the mouth personally.

[thepunkpanther]

RAY KOWALSKI & RAY VECCHIO in DUE SOUTH (1994-1999)

[wonder-worker]

"It is too easy to dismiss [Leonor of Navarre] as an overambitious schemer who would do anything to obtain a crown, shedding the blood of her own siblings and her subjects in order to attain the throne. However, a deeper investigation of her long lieutenancy and ephemeral reign shows a woman who fought tenaciously to preserve her place but also worked tirelessly to administer a realm which was crippled by internal conflict and the center of the political schemes of France, Aragon, and Castile. She tried to broker peace, fight off those who opposed her, repair the wounds caused by conflict, protect the sovereignty of the realm, and keep the wheels of governance turning. Leonor was not always successful in achieving all of these aims but given the background of conflict and the lack of cooperation she received from all of her family members, bar her loyal husband, it is a huge achievement that she survived to wear the crown at all. Many writers have argued that Leonor deserved the troubled lieutenancy, personal tragedies, an ephemeral reign, and a blackened reputation, basing their assumption that she committed a crime that cannot be [conclusively] proven. However, a more fitting description of her would be that of a resolute ruler who successfully overcame a multitude of challenges in order to survive in a difficult political landscape and gain a hard-fought throne.”

— Elena Woodacre, "Leonor of Navarre: The Price of Ambition", Queenship, Gender and Reputation in the Medieval and Early Modern West, 1060-1600 (Edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz)

[monstermoviedean]

"it's the same in other countries" no the fuck it is not. "yeah in my entirely different field it's exactly the same" no the fuck it is not. literally any anecdote i tell about my (limited!) teaching experience gets me a starbucks drive thru meme response. it is NOT the same. you do not fucking get it.

[fredoesque]

ok so yesterday i saw this post about the wedding imagery in hickey's trial scene and left a tag about iphigenia at aulis. and in the time since that comparison has spiraled entirely out of control

i was initially just referring to the way the play draws parallels between the rituals of a wedding and those of sacrifice/death and the way the two start to overlap throughout

but then i started thinking about how iphigenia's sacrifice serves both as an illustration of the violence of war turned inwards and simultaneously as the catalyst for said violence turned outwards. killing iphigenia highlights the actual human cost of war by exacting it on a familiar insider, not just a nameless enemy. but her death is also the only reason the war can take place at all--the chorus even calls her the destroyer of troy near the end

and that reminded me of hickey and his unique relationship with the violence of the british navy; of the british characters he is undeniably the one that suffers most at its hands, yet he is also a driving force in perpetuating violence--in general, but also specifically towards the inuit

and i know i'm not the first person to point out that hickey is both a victim and a perpetrator of the violence of the empire, but i find it fascinating to approach that dichotomy through the lens of (ritual) sacrifice. it adds a new dimension to not just the trial, but basically all his scenes that are concerned with said violence. his own death (during a botched ritual no less) is actually a great example; it doubles as the final nail in tuunbaq's coffin. he dies not just for or because of the empire's interests; it's the very act of him dying that causes said interests to be furthered

anyway all that to say hickey thinks he's christ and he's wrong but that doesn't mean he's not a lamb on the altar

[neutral-towards-mindmaps]

the 3-step laura bailey dnd romance strategy:

step 1: create a character that's impossible not to fall in love with

step 2: find a player who has deemed their character inherently unromanceable

step 3: profit

[funkytoesart]

you can always tell the people who give social media advice who are naturally or conventionally attractive even without even having to look at a photo of them cause they're always the ones that recommend showing your face in reels or videos to promote your art and it's like,,, talk about pretty/skinny privilege lol

[rotisseries]

inspired by elli's poll lol cause this seems fun actually but if you guys have bad answers I'll kill myself on your doorstep or smth