#I’m way too cis to tackle that theme with the respect it deserves

[bad-artist-kira]

My headcanons/musings about Caleb, his role as the One that Binds and adjacent stuff:

After defeating Tchernobog, Caleb not only inherited his powers, but also His memories. All of them, starting from the time He first emerged aeons ago. Caleb is afraid that Tchernobog’s essence and memories will overwhelm his own and he will lose himself, becoming merely one of His “masks”. To cope with this Caleb goes into full denial, refusing to use his new powers or acknowledging he has them for a hundred years and lets the world fall apart around him.

There seems to be some sort of condition that needs to be fulfilled for Tchernobog to possess someone, thus the need for a dedicated group of people to choose a new vessel from and the whole dumbass “make your strongest and most loyal follower hate you and make him even stronger” plan. Tchernobog’s skeleton form from the first game might also be a result of a failed attempt to make a more sturdy vessel for His essence, a meat mecha so to speak. It’s also mentioned that some incarnations have altered His personality. It specifically says “altered” and “colored”, not “overwrote” like Caleb did.

My hc for that all the previous incarnations voluntarily let themselves be possessed, preparing themselves for this role for a long time; sometimes the traces of their personalities remained, but it was never enough to completely supersede the One that Binds.

Caleb, on the other hand, absolutely did not want to be possessed. He wanted his old god dead, so he was able to resist the initial flood of Tchernobog’s memories and avoid complete possession, but now he has billions of years worth of memories compared to which his own life is less than a blip, so now he’s not quite sure who he is now and whether he ever was “Caleb” to begin with, or is he Tchernobog that deluded himself into thinking he’s Caleb.

I think that’s how Revelations(Blood 2’s thankfully cancelled expansion) could work: instead of Caleb being possessed the whole time he slowly succumbs to the possession, and by the end his will and personality get entirely overwritten by Tchernobog’s(or he accepts that he is Tchernobog and sheds his “Caleb” identity), maybe have him show cracks as early as the base second game(maybe have a conflict between his desire to just keep doing whatever he was doing for a century in the world that’s falling apart and Tchernobog’s goal to take over the world like He originally intended to).

The whole theme of identity and memories could even be expanded to the other Chosen: Ophelia’s sorority girl memory might be from the body she ended up in, for example, Gabriella is reborn as a woman so the connection is obvious. Not sure how Ishmael ties into it tho.

Thanks for reading my “trying to fix Blood 2 #2837484847” post

[calliecat93]

ST: TNG S5 Watchthrough Episodes 14-17

(Trigger Warning: The episode Ethics contains the theme of suicide. While I will try to not go too in-depth, as it is part of the episode I will be discussing it. If this topic makes you uncomfortable or is triggering to you even in the slightest, please skip the section of the watchthrough. Thank you)

Conundrum: So we have us an amnesia episode. Who’s the poor individual who gets hit with it? Everyone! Yes, some weird scan thingy causes everyone to lose their memories. They still know how to perform their jobs and all that, but otherwise, they remember zilch. I’m kind of mixed on how they did it. Overall, they are intelligent and calm about the situation, which on the one hand feels unrealistic. You’d expect far more panic and tension if you suddenly found yourself on a ship among people you don’t know. On the other hand at this point even without their memories, they’re probably used to weirdness like this (the S4 episode Clues had a similar thing happen) and it’s kind of refreshing to see people handle a situation without becoming paranoid assholes. Also… they make some kind of awkward Troi/Riker/Ro love triangle. Troi has some familiarity with Riker due to their past, which makes sense… but why add Ro to the mix? The only time they really interacted outside this episode was Ro’s intro, where Riker was a hypocritical asshole who made her take her earring off. They really don’t seem to agree and I guess the writers went ‘well they argue… so it must be love’! Which… no, going with this with Ro makes zero sense and it really makes it feel like Riker is playing both women, which both feel OOC for him, and even taking amnesia into account makes him look worst. Why does S5 want me to hate Riker? Otherwise, it was fine. Just kind of eh. Again we kinda sorta did this plot already (differently but still) and it doesn’t become hard to figure out who the one behind this is when you realize that they’re the only one getting prominent screentime who isn’t a pre-established character. Still, it’s just alright, but yeah that love triangle nonsense, while by no means the worst I’ve ever seen, really was unnecessary. 2.5/5.

Power Play: In this one, Troi, Data, and O’Brein get posessed on an Away Mission (Riker almost did as well, but it flew away before it could posess him). They take Ten-Forward hostage which includes Worf and Keiko, and later Picard. This had to be fun for Marina Sirtis, Brent Spiner, and Colm Meaney since they ge to act all evil… though Spiner’s already done it with Lore, but still XD So it was fine. It was tense and had some disturbing moments like Posessed!O’Brein forcing himself on Keiko. Dear God I hope the Enteprise has a counselor (aside from Troi since she was partially involved in this) cause neither of them deserved that. It was also scary to see Data acting like… well, Lore pretty much. Seeing Riker, Crusher, Geordi, and Ro trying to figure out how to save them without anyone getting killed was also interesting, it’s the first time we’ve seen a hostage situation like this in a ST show (Space Seed in TOS kinda counts, but that was an entirely different scenario and was more ‘hostile takeover’ than ‘hostage situation’). That’s honestly all I’ve got/ IDK, S5 has just been painfully average thus far where none of the episodes have been particularly bad, but only like… three so far (Ensign Ro, Disaster, Unification) have kept me interested. Maybe that’ll change here soon bu it’s just like ‘…it’s fine but I feel nothing otherwise’. 3/5.

Ethics: I again point to the trigger warning above. The episode contains the theme of suicide (though it is NOT carried out) so if this topic at all is uncomfortable/triggery, please skip this section. So what happened? An accident has left Worf paralyzed. Crusher has called in a neurologist while Worf, believing that he can no longer be a warrior in his condition, wants to be killed. Needless to say, we’re dealing with some heavy stuff in this one. We kind of have a similar thing going on as in Half a Life where Worf wants to die as according to his Klingon beliefs, his life is over since he is paralyzed. He asks Riker to help commit it as he’s his friend and naturally Riker is appalled at this. Picard breaks it down for Riker and that while we don’t understand it we should respect it… but again we’re talking about assisted suicide. I get what Picard is saying but just… no. The episode makes it clear that we’re supposed to be conflicted, however, and in the end, Worf decides against it due to both an experimental procedure and because Riker uncovered that Alexander would be the one who’d have to assist in the suicide if Worf did it. Needless to say, Worf ain’t letting that happen. It does make Worf’s feelings clear, however. His anger, his fear, it’s very hard to watch Worf in such a state. The neurologist, Dr. Russell, offers him a procedure that may work… but it’s a procedure that is still in the experimental stage and turned down by Starfleet Medical. Needless to say, Crusher’s not exactly happy with the idea of using a medically untested procedure on one of her patients… but to be fair, Worf has refused all other treatment and the use of implants and with suicide the only other option, I can see why Russell would be willing to offer. But at the same time, it does come across her just using this as an excuse to use said treatment which also has plenty of risks on said patients life/further well-being, and Crusher telling her off repeatedly is very satisfying especially at the end when Worf almost died due to her, and she seemed more concerned with noting it than what her actions caused and said that Crusher was jealous. Yeah, Russell sucks. It does bring up a lot of medically ethical questions, however: is it right to use an experimental procedure on a patient when all other options have been turned away or are available? Especially when said patient is suicidal or when it comes to said patient's beliefs? I side with Crusher at the end of the day especially since Worf is very lucky to have survived/recovered his mobility afterward, but the questions are still ones to point out. Then there’s poor Alexander whose on the verge of losing his father and Worf not wanting him to see him like he is and… God yeah. Just as I complain about the lack of impactful episodes, this one comes in. It’s a very tough episode with everything going on with Worf, the theme of medical ethics, and it’s heavy on the emotions. IDK how well I can say that the episode portrays it, but it certainly hit hard and brings up a lot of questions for the viewers. It certainly reaffirms how much I love Crusher XD 4/5.

The Outcast: /sighs/ Okay… how to go about talking about this one? In this episode, we meet a species of aliens that don’t use gender identity, and if they show signs of identifying as male or female, they undergo ‘treatment’. One of these individuals is Soren, who identifies as female and falls in love with Riker. So… there are many things that this can be associated with, but this was made as a gay rights episode. Now… let us remember when this was made. S5 was airing during the early ’90s. This was not a good time for gay individuals. We were very much anti-LGBT+ in those times and the AIDS epidemic where they were scapegoated as a public menace still being rampant didn’t help. In many ways, doing this episode was a bold move and I can respect them for at least is trying to tackle the topic seriously. If there’s any franchise that you’d expect to tackle these kinds of issues it would be this one. But the question is does it hold up 30 years later? Well… unfortunately, no. First, if they really wanted to get the gay rights message across… why was Soren played by a female actress? Maybe it was the only way they would have been allowed to do this, but because of it, it keeps a heterosexual angle that causes the message to be lost. We also don’t have any regular/reccuring characters as queer which would be pretty important to have in this episode. Considering that TOS took the risk with making PoC equal to white people at a time it wasn’t at all welcomed, TNG not doing so with LGBT+ individuals is rather unfortunate to put it nicely. Not to mention it sticking to standard male/female stereotypes as the norm when breaking them down to Soren, as well as Worf’s sexist/bigoted comments. That’s no even going into other identities such as transgender and non-binary. I’d really like to know what they think of this one considering the themes. As I am a bi/demisexual cis woman and this was meant to be a gay rights episode I will look at it as such and from that POV, the episode does not at all look great in a modern light.

Maybe I’m just far too nice and should be harsher on this, and I’m not gonna lie I’m horrible at addressing these things so I apologize if any of this came out wrong. But between this and The Host, it’s clear that the show was ill-equipped to handle LGBT+ topics. But at the same time, back then even considering addressing the topics in any way would have been risky. I do believe that there was a good faith effort and maybe in some ways, it helped when we improved later. It’s always hard to say if people should tackle topics they don’t understand or not. Naturally, it’s rage-inducing when they get it wrong, but it can also open the door to getting people to learn and to improve. Maybe this was needed in the ’90s and they did it the best way that they could, and maybe the fact that we can look at it and go ‘we know better’ is a sign that we’re better than when we were 30 years ago… or again, I am far too nice/too much of a doormat and I give the benefit of the doubt way too much. People who are more knowledgeable/know how to address this far better than I have here have likely done so and I’d encourage others to read more into those perspectives. Regardless, the episode overall is okay I guess. I certainly felt horrible for Soren at the end as she’s taken to undergo ‘treatment’ and Riker trying to help her get out of it. Her speech, wanting to just be treated as a person and not be treated as horrible due to who she is during the trial did really hit me and is why I think that the show did mean well. If she wanted to identify as female and be with Riker, she should be free to and then how she was forced to conform to her society’s views at the end when Riker tried to save her, it’s just... hard to watch. I wish that the ending was more optimistic/hopeful but I can’t say that the message wasn’t loud and clear. It very much reflected society at that time, and in many ways it’s still relevant today concerning how society treats those deemed outside the norm. But it also has issues due to the execution as I already mentioned, and I can only hope that Modern Trek (Discovery, Picard, soon SNW) and whatever they do in the future are/will be better at handling these kinds of themes because there’s no excuse to get it wrong in today’s time. 2.5/5.

I hope that I addressed things properly concerning the last episode. But it’s now done. We have nine more to go for the season. Let's see how it turns out.