#It’s gotten worse actually

[kristhekrispy]

listening to a song called “The Zone” and immediately thought of PAFL. This is so. Fun.

[clouvu]

yknow what. *undooms your yuri again*

[starcurtain]

Some Evidence in Favor of Jade

One thing I've constantly seen in Jade hate posts is the idea that she's trapping good and innocent people like Aventurine and Topaz and chaining them down to the IPC.

But I actually think it's this act--choosing Aventurine and Topaz to be her proteges--that tells us a lot about whether Jade is a fundamentally bad person or not.

First, it's key to understand that Jade is in a significant position of power within the Stonehearts. When Diamond chooses not to appear, it's often Jade who goes in his place and acts as his voice. When it comes to making administrative decisions on who will get to join the Stonehearts, Jade had a direct hand in supporting Topaz's ascension (by accepting recommendations) and an even more direct role in Aventurine's ascension, choosing and testing him for the job herself.

So Jade is a character with enough power to have a strong say in who gets to become a leader in the IPC. She possesses enough authority and trust from Diamond to catapult a wanted murderer like Kakavasha straight up 45 ranks in the Star Rail universe's single most powerful corporate entity. She helps to decide who rules.

And who has she picked with that power?

Aventurine and Topaz are both good people. Although they'll do whatever is needed to advance the IPC's aims, they're both essentially kind-hearted and unwilling to put others at unnecessary risk. They both deeply value friendship and exhibit many of the other positive traits one associates with heroes--loyalty, generosity, gentleness, and honesty. Topaz takes a hit to her own reputation and rank to protect Belobog. Aventurine, infamous for high-stakes gambles, specifically spells out that he absolutely refuses to cheat his way to victory.

In an organization that is otherwise known for the literal colonization and extermination of civilizations--in an organization that puts wealth and material value above anything but their own god--in an organization with people like Obsidian who literally want to turn things into a bloodbath--Jade's top picks are both quintessentially good characters.

She is extracting value from them. She is profiting from their work for the IPC.

But Jade had the power to promote complete monsters into the Stonehearts. She could have picked heartless, profit-driven villains who would have forwarded the IPC's goals at the expense of the human element entirely. She could have promoted more evil into an already evil organization. But she did not. Jade chose to support two disadvantaged young people who had clawed their way up from the bottom while still maintaining their principles. At least two of the Ten Stonehearts are people the Trailblazer can associate with without extreme moral guilt, thanks in part to Jade.

The people that Jade chooses to throw her support behind mean something. Topaz and Aventurine's presence in the Stonehearts indicates that Jade is capable of not only recognizing goodness--but has actively chosen to elevate (at least relatively) moral people into positions of authority. This act, choosing to promote and support inherently decent human beings, speaks greatly to Jade's sense of who deserves power--and, from there, to her own sense of justice.

Just something worth thinking about, I feel.

[xxfaylinnxx]

Why is it always the irredeemable monster I fall in love with

[roses-luckride-art]

[honeypleasejustkillme]

with how life has been going this year, i’m contemplating suicide more than ever before

[spitinsideme]

lottie and laura lee at their wedding when they were younger !! they have always and will comtinue to be so in love

[froschli96]

You know what, fuck it, I have to speak my truth! (this is gonna be a rant, so anyone who actually likes assassin's creed revelations and/or the secret crusade, be warned or maybe don't read this at all)

remember how altaïr talks to king richard at the end of ac1, and richard is like "[humans] come into the world kicking and screaming, violent and unstable. it is what we are. we cannot help ourselves."? and how altaïr answers "no. we are what we choose to be." and how that ACTUALLY has meaning bc he himself was "violent and unstable" at the beginning of the game but he has learned and is now CHOOSING to be a better person who cares about others and humanity at large? remember how his calmness and gentleness was something that he ACQUIRED over the course of the story?

and remember how in revelations they then suddenly had a PRE-AC1 altaïr say about the first of his targets "no man should pass from this world without knowing some kindness." and be all wise and calm and collected during a nice little chat with al mualim, who suddenly acts all fatherly? (like, this is suddenly supposed to be a positive relationship? what??)

also, during the confession the target says to altair: "you put too much faith in the hearts of men, altaïr. [...] humans are weak, base, and petty." and altaïr answers: "no. our creed is evidence to the contrary." KJASJFJDKL???? like, it’s almost insulting how close this exchange is to the one with richard. you know, the one that was actually earned after a whole game of character development. like WTF??? cool congrats now that development means nothing. like, apparently that was just altaïr reverting BACK to being the exemplary assassin who understands and believes in the creed that he was apparently just born as. (i also hate how having a young inexperienced altaïr saying this implies that altaïr's faith in humanity is a sign of naivete instead of a sign of the wisdom he has gained after being confronted with counter arguments for a whole game, and also something that distinguishes the assassins from the templars who use humanity's supposed wickedness to justify controlling them like in AC1, but whatever)

altaïr’s development in AC1 mattered BECAUSE he is not NATURALLY a good person, it actually said something about humanity's capacity for both bad AND good and how humans don't have to be forced to be good through mind control bc they can by their own free will choose to be better when taught how and when allowed the freedom to grow. but no. apparently altaïr has just always been calm, wise and gentle. and he just sort of forgot about that during AC1 bc…. ? bc of adha?? bc of abbas???

oh don’t get me started on the whole abbas thing. (it doesnt even make sense that abbas is so hung up about his father and "his family’s honor", like what about the whole point of al mualim not allowing parents to be close to their children bc it would make them weak? like, my dude, you’re not supposed to HAVE any family aside from the brotherhood)

they used the throwaway character that had like 5 lines and made him into altaïr’s main antagonist in revelations… like, abbas wasn’t supposed to be this ONE dude who had personal beef with altaïr, he was just supposed to show how while altaïr’s revered by many, a lot of his brothers also hate him, bc 1) altaïr is a shitty person at this point and 2) bc there’s no real feeling of community and family in this version of the brotherhood, but just a pervasive sense of competition and jealousy — these assassins don’t care about their goal of safeguarding humanity bc they’re too hung up on petty squabbles and divided by rivalries (you know, the things that made malik hate altaïr even before solomon’s temple and that he overcomes in the end which enables him to forgive and to reconcile with altaïr so they can work together and stop al mualim? (you ever just think about "we are one. as we share the glory of our victories, so too should we share the pain of our defeat. in this way we grow closer. we grow stronger." and cry? bc i do. all the time. malik, the man that you are))

and now abbas is altaïr’s childhood best friend turned lifelong enemy?? like, bowden bent over backwards to come up with an explanation for why altaïr is an arrogant ass at the beginning of AC1, when the explanation is right there: he was raised to kill without asking questions and was constantly praised for how good he is at murder, which resulted in him becoming arrogant and disregarding human life. like, it doesn’t have to be some shakespearean family feud type shit. and guess what, this "simple" explanation actually plays into the story’s themes, who’da thunk!

(like, abbas might not have been a "fleshed out" character in AC1, but he had a specific function and now that function is gone. mr bowden, mr mcdevitt, you know characters are allowed to simply exist to tell us something about their worlds and the systems they live in and sometimes that’s more important and also more interesting than having every single character have a detailed backstory to explain all their behaviors, right?)

with all of this revelations loses all nuance in regards to the levantine brotherhood and also the creed in general. like, altaïr being a master assassin at the beginning despite being a terrible person and not actually understanding the creed is a criticism of the brotherhood and the creed itself. like, it said something about the order that someone like altaïr was able to get that high in rank, simply bc he's good at killing, which also tells us what is considered important in the al mualim era assassin order. when you make altaïr’s arrogance the result of his personal conflicts instead of how we was raised by a brotherhood that only valued one's ability to kill, you lose that characterization of the assassin order itself!

and by suddenly making al mualim a semi good "father figure" you also downplay his manipulation of not only altaïr but all those under his care. (altaïr says something about al mualim being "as a father" to him exactly twice in the codex, but he doesn’t mean by that that he WAS a father to him, what he means is that he was the CLOSEST THING he had bc HE DID NOT HAVE PARENTS, not because his mother died in childbirth and his father was executed when he was young btw, BUT BECAUSE IT WASN’T ALLOWED, like his parents actually lived but weren’t allowed to be close to him, he says he came to view al mualim’s "weak and dishonest" love as enough and even better BECAUSE HE HAD NOTHING ELSE, BECAUSE AL MUALIM ISOLATED HIS ASSASSINS FROM THEIR FAMILIES. al mualim "loved" him bc he was good at killing people for him! hm, i wonder if this could be trying to say anything about cults and indoctrination and the inherent contradiction in fighting for peace and free will by taking children away from their parents and raising them to become killers?? like, altaïr wasn't ~the special orphan boy~ taken in by al mualim bc his father died a hero's death, it was "the way of the order" to have al mualim be the closest thing to a parental figure for everyone to ensure absolute loyalty! altaïr saying al mualim was like his father is not supposed to make you go "oh, he must have actually been a good guy for altaïr to consider him a father", it should make you go "oh that's kinda fucked up that he considers the dude who made him into a killing machine and who manipulated him a sort of father figure"!)

and then in revelations they suddenly portray that relationship as positive and healthy??? like, it would be one thing to give it some nuance by delving into the psychology behind al mualim’s "love" and maybe showing how al mualim did care about altair in a complicated, fraught sort of way (like, you know, there’s a lot of interesting things you could say about al mualim at several points addressing altaïr as "my child" in AC1 and how that parallels Garnier referring to the people he drugged and abused as his "children", and what that says about how the templars view the people who they say they want to save and in whose best interests they supposedly act (in any case, al mualim doesn’t use that phrase because he has any real parental feelings but rather to patronize and to invalidate any objections, like in a "mother knows best" way))

but they even fucking DARE to parallel that relationship with that of altaïr and darim in revelations, by having the reflection in the puddle of darim hugging altaïr showing altaïr hugging al mualim…. like their relationship wasn’t inherently abusive but just tragically cut short because al mualim was just "corrupted by the apple"… like WHAT???? so it’s not the very real problems like grooming, manipulation and indoctrination and the hierarchical structure of the brotherhood itself (all of which are antithetical to the assassin ideology), it was just the evil apple all along. great. that’s DEFINITELY a lot more interesting.

god im sorry i really dont want to spread negativity but this is driving me INSANE. like, somebody please tell me im not crazy bc i feel like somehow most of the fandom is in agreement that revelations and the secret crusade have better storytelling and characterization than ac1.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, can we talk about how, even IF we completely ignore AC1 and treat revelations altaïr as his own character…. the narrative still doesn’t really work?

basically, the whole point of his story in rev is that "he gave his whole life to the brotherhood", this obsession led to him not using his time with his family which has him ending up dying alone in a dark library and this in turn makes ezio reevaluate his life choices…. except. he doesn’t? neglect? his family? or whatever? like, his devotion to the assassins is sort of painted as this tragic flaw that leads to a lonely death bc it supposedly comes at the cost of his family, but… his wife has joined the assassins, (at least) one of his sons is in the brotherhood and even when he goes to protect the assassins against the mongols, he takes his family with him (except for the son who stays behind bc he has a family of his own and who, ironically, ends up dying bc of that)… like, you can’t describe altaïr as a good husband and father in the database and have his son tell him that "everything that is good in me began with you, father" when they say goodbye, and then want to make us believe that he put his family behind the brotherhood and that that is a character flaw that leads to his tragedy.

because you HAVE to have a character’s tragedy be the result of a character flaw. like. that is how tragedies work. otherwise it just becomes tragedy for the sake of tragedy which is… boring bc it has no purpose. and we know it is SUPPOSED to have purpose bc ezIO FUCKING QUITS BEING AN ASSASSIN AFTER WITNESSING IT!

it’s like they want to have their cake and eat it, too — they didn’t want to actually make altaïr a bad husband/father, but still wanted to make his life a tragedy where he loses his family which is why instead they outsource all responsibility to abbas who now has to be the reason for ALL the deaths.

like, they try to make at least maria’s death kind of sort of the result of altaïr’s rashness or whatever but like… these guys KILLED THEIR SON and TOLD HIM THAT ALTAÏR HAD ORDERED HIS DEATH. like, altaïr losing it in response to that is not rash, it’s fucking logical and justified! if anything the scene made me angry at maria for trying to stop him. like, GIRL, he was YOUR son too??? but god forbid we give female characters actual real emotions, she has to fill the role of "voice of reason who dies for altaïr’s man pain" i fucking guess.

like, it’s this weird mix where his tragedy is simultaneously painted as his own fault but also not really bc abbas is the one responsible for all the shit that happens. it just… it just doesn’t really go together.

the only way to make his story make sense narratively and to give it actual purpose is by looking at it in the context of ezio’s story, bc the things he sees in altaïr’s memories are supposed to be a revelation (ha!) to ezio specifically. and i guess that’s maybe the crux of it all — altaïr’s story in revelations was conceived of first and foremost to support ezio’s story and development. which is probably also why many people maybe don’t notice bc, having skipped ac1 and started with ac2, the majority of people mostly care only about ezio and only really appreciate altaïr’s story in as far as it serves to push ezio forward. (tho i’ve also seen a few people say that ezio is also written kind of weird in rev, but i’ve never really been an ezio girly myself so i can’t speak to the truth of that)

like, altaïr dying alone in the library doesn’t really have to make sense for his character, i guess, bc it’s only really supposed to be a cautionary tale for ezio.

so, i guess, for once, they actually had a MAN dying for another man’s character development, which is pretty woke actually. ubisoft, i take everything back jksdsfjhgdsahfhsdhfghfdsgjhsdgjh

[seraphsfire]

any other spoonies or people with fibro/chronic fatigue/myalgic encephalomyletis/adhd/etc start just *trying* to think of the steps to a complex mental task have an immediate brain shutdown and get sleepy/fatigued/feel drugg/ed and physically exhausted immediately after doing so bc i feel like im going crazy and googling/duckduckgo-ing yeilded only like, mayo clinic articles defining chronic fatigue so. lol

[papanorth]

Oh btw. Just cause I feel like it and I'm in a great mood. A lot of you may remember me being a real Struggler back in the day - I'm actually doing pretty awesome now! Which I genuinely used to think was impossible, but look at that! The self preservation won out in the end and I'm glad it did

[uncanny-tranny]

I know other adults like to joke about how much pain they're in, but genuinely, please try to get your pain checked out if you're an adult experiencing it, or at least adapt your life in whatever way lessens your pain.

Your pain deserves to be addressed. Please don't "let" it get worse because you've been told that to grow older is to suffer. No, you aren't being needy or selfish or annoying. Ultimately, you are the one who suffers the most from the state of your health, and it's entirely reasonable to want your health to be up to your standards.

[msnihilist]

So, I wasn't going to say anything about this because responding to anon hate doesn't accomplish anything, but this one I got this morning stuck out to me, and it's just because of one line.

"...someone you hurt is gonna expose you for every single evil thing you've done."

It's just such an interesting thing to say to someone you don't know and never will know.

I mean, I'm a normal person. Raised by parents who loved me and tried their best. Participated in middle school plays. Had high school drama. Tried an instrument for a year. Juggled college and a job. Lost some people. Y'know, ordinary life experiences for someone my age.

I haven't done anything "evil," believe it or not. I'm a good boy who obeys laws and I don't enjoy hurting people.

If you talked to old friends who ended it on bad terms with me, I'm sure they'd have a whole list of my bad qualities. Off-color jokes that I made, selfish decisions, accidents that snowballed.

But that's just... Normal? I'm sure this anon has done bad things, too. That's just life.

When I was five, I punched my little brother so hard that he got a bloody nose. Is that "evil"?

When I was nine, I stole some loose change from a friend of mine. Is that "evil"?

When I was fifteen, my friend told me that she was planning to commit suicide in December, and I was scared so I told her parents even though she expressly did not want them to know. Is that "evil"?

Fandom antis are so fascinating. The use of the word "evil" says all that I need to know about how this person thinks; enough that anything else they think is automatically worthless to me.

People can't be split into good and evil and, even if they could be, you can't tell that about someone just because of what art they create.

Would it make you feel better if I was "evil," anon? Would you feel vindicated if I hurt people, if I caused suffering in the world, if people had their lives ruined by me, all because I write about the "wrong" fictional characters kissing? That's pathetic, and sad.

I hope you find happiness in your life, anon. Seems like you need it.

[mollysunder]

We don't really talk about how on Jinx's artbook she's crossed out Vi, Sevika, and Ekko's eyes out like they're dead.

First we've got Vi. We can tell it's Vi because of the bangs and "Fat Hands" moniker right below. The ponytail threw me off at first, but now it's been confirmed that Vi will grow out her hair throughout s2 so it falls together.

Then we've got Sevika looking like an "ogre", as Jinx would call her. You can even make out Sevika's new bob cut, it's around the eyes, and darkened at the left side and top. (Why does Jinx always have to take a shot at Sevika? *sigh*)

Finally there's Ekko, which doesn't need justification thankfully. Ekko looks kind of angry (a little offended) in a funny way, the context is probably not not going to be funny at all.

I can't say for sure that all the crossed out eyes really means that Vi, Ekko, and Sevika will die, it's just that the only characters depicted from Jinx's perspective with eyes like that are either dead, inanimate, or both.

The crossed out eyes could mean that Jinx gets to a point with all these characters where instead of hearing them she's projected her own inner voice onto them, permanently coloring her perspective on their relationships. Or maybe they're just dead to her, metaphorically speaking. There's a lot of options.

[dentpx]

Oh my god playing DE with a high “esprit de corps” stat and understanding the Jean hype. The poor man. You have a weird toxic codependent relationship with your police partner for like 10+ years and you’re maybe in love with him and then he gets amnesia and finds a new best friend. God.

[cluescorner]

Tim Drake has a weird fucking function

The thing about Tim that I find unique is that his life became SO MUCH WORSE after joining the heroing thing. Everybody else had a mid-to-shit life before becoming a hero/living with Bruce and mostly everybody (except Jason who LITERALLY DIED) had their life improved by being a hero/being Bruce's kid (or at least it is typically portrayed as such.

Tim had the exact opposite trajectory. His life wasn't perfect before he became Robin, but like...multi-millionaire/billionaire (canon is unclear, but he's within Gotham's upper-strata) kid with both natural intelligence + charisma and a bright future ahead of him and parents who were emotionally neglectful but nothing really beyond that (which is also a form of trauma, but all of the info we have indicates that the Drakes were no Arthur Brown or David Cain) and he still had other people he could rely on outside of them. He went to boarding school, which could be something horrible OR something amazing depending on your own thoughts/experiences. I grew up having a commute where we'd drive past a really pretty and rich af boarding school that literally everybody in our area DREAMED of going to, so to me the idea of going to boarding school sounds incredible but mileage may vary. Tim seems like the type of kid who would thrive in that though. Based on what we know in canon atm, his pre-robin life was fucking amazing.

And then he starts being the sidekick and working towards becoming Robin. His parents immediately get kidnapped and poison themselves through drinking tainted water; his mom dies and his dad is in a coma. This is not the fault of Robin, but Tim himself muses about the idea that Robin and dead parents are linked: to become Robin completely, you must lose your parents. And with how fate/destiny/canon events can operate in comics universes, maybe he isn't that far off. Once his dad wakes up, their relationship becomes strained as the man grieves the loss of his wife and realizes that his son has been doing vigilantism as a hobby. It is unclear exactly how good of a parent Jack was before the incident, but the results of Tim's involvement with the Robin mantle has definitely made things worse between father and son. Jack will also die within quick succession of 2 of Tim's best friends, his girlfriend, and his other father. He will also effectively lose like 1/2 his loved ones in the fallout of all of that mess including: his older brother, his other friends (both civilian and superhero), and the stepmother with whom he shared what I would argue is his best parent-child relationship (Dana also may have died, but it's left unclear). He has stopped pursuing higher education (the moment he even applied for college he 'died', and it seems he hasn't made another attempt since) and if he wasn’t a major focus of the media before he sure is now. He tries to quit briefly (in fact he initially was planning on quitting once someone more suited came along) and cannot bring himself to do so. Even when he does manage to get away for a while, his superhero life impacts the pre-robin life he is trying to go back to. Leaving is an impossibility, this is all there is for him now. He also isn’t allowed to make mistakes anymore, not when lives hang in the balance. The one who enforces that impossible standard the most (besides Bruce depending on who's writing) is himself. He’s got TRAUMA now and people want to hurt him constantly. He is constantly questioning his own sanity and morality and place in the world. He almost dies like every month. Tim grows colder and less grounded, he is becoming both a better and a worse version of himself at the same time. He’s saving lives in the same few issues as he’s setting up a Saw movie plot for the man who killed his father. He is haunted by the ghosts of his past and the looming figure of his future. His life becomes SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE after he becomes Robin. Some of it is the fault of others, some is the fault of circumstance, and some of it is due to his own actions. But basically all of Tim's worst traumas and life-changing moments are either tied to or caused by Robin. Dick's parents would still be dead, Jason would still be living on the streets, Stephanie would still have Arthur Brown for a father and a lot of other things that deserve their own posts/IDK if they've been retconned, and Damian would still have been raised in the eco-cult where death is a constant. Those are life circumstances that occur without the involvement of Robin, the only one who even needs Bruce involved at all in their series of events is Damian. But Tim? All of what is considered his 'worst' moments occur after he assumes the role.

This idea is what I find the coolest and most fascinating about Tim as a character. Being a hero is usually portrayed as either an outright awesome thing or a righteous duty that one must fulfill or (maybe in a grimmer and/or more grounded story) a sacrifice to your interpersonal relationships/mental health that is made for the greater good. For Tim, being a superhero actively ruined his life (both because of the general circumstances surrounding being a kid vigilante and the choices he made as part of that role). It's never portrayed that way in canon because we need to come out of issues going 'wow being a superhero is so cool! I'm gonna buy the next issue!', but when you just look at Tim's life literally everything really bad that we know of occurred after he became Robin.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

whiteboard dragons <3 it's dragon appreciation day!