#Morals do not matter to him if the outcome is more favourable.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

The musical episode.

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[actual-changeling]

Crowley, Aziraphale, and the art of boundaries.

Look. They love and care about each other, but they are also the only two celestial beings on earth and thus each other's only option when it comes to friendship and relationships. Humans die very quickly by their standards, and if they do not want to be alone for six millennia, well, they only have one person to ask for company.

From the get-go, this dynamic is everything but ideal. It automatically creates a certain emotional dependence since you go to one person with all your emotional and social needs, and no matter how much you love someone, you cannot fulfil all their needs - and you shouldn't have to try!

They are individuals and have their own life separate from the other for the first couple centuries, but after Job at the latest, their lives become incredibly intertwined. When they agree on the arrangement, they only deepen that dependence, and now they have the additional pressure of needing to keep the other safe from both sides.

Crowley quite literally orbits Aziraphale, all the while trying to help him realize that heaven is using him and not what he thinks it is, yet he knows if he pushes too much, he will not just be alone but lonely.

Aziraphale is a stable centre of gravity for Crowley and himself, but he takes Crowley's presence and their push-pull dynamic for granted. He does not want to be lonely either, but he is so good at creating an internal system of cognitive dissonance and compartmentalization that he can hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time. This leads to him refusing to listen to Crowley on any matters related to their respective sides or morality, while also believing that Crowley is fundamentally good and should not have been cast out.

Crowley pushes, Aziraphale steps back, Crowley pushes some more until Aziraphale either finds some twisted internal logic that allows him to do the thing or he lets out his frustration of not being able to do the thing on Crowley, blaming it all on him "tempting" Aziraphale into it in the first place.

This game works when the subject does not matter too much, when it's about food or drinking together or small favours as part of the arrangement. It's not super healthy, but largely without consequence when it is mostly playful.

However, and here is the "but", it stops working when the subject IS important.

When it is about their safety, about humanity's or a few specific human's safety, when it's such an important topic that the outcome will affect both their lives forever - like the apocalypse or Jimbriel.

Crowley wants to keep Aziraphale out of harm's way first and foremost, and for that he needs to be helping him with whatever is threatening him. The problem is that whenever he disagrees with Aziraphale, the angel turns into a five-year-old and starts either manipulating Crowley into agreeing with him or goes off to sulk.

Crowley cannot risk that, not when it's important. So what does he do? The only thing he CAN do, which is ignore his boundaries, ignore his ideals and wants and needs, and do what Aziraphale wants.

Over and over and over and over again.

Aziraphale does not care about that. He does not care about what Crowley wants or doesn't want when he thinks that HIS wants are the correct and more important ones.

The most obvious proof for that is Aziraphale calling Crowley kind/nice.

"Don't call me that," is what Crowley has been telling him LITERALLY since fucking Eden. A demon can get into a lot of trouble for doing the right thing. Aziraphale knows hell punishes him for good deeds, but does that stop him? NO.

"Don't call me that," he says, every. single. time.

And every single time, Aziraphale decides that no, he wants to tell him that so he will, fuck what Crowley wants, my desire is more important.

Fuck that he hates to hear about forgiveness, I want to tell him that sentence so I will.

Fuck that he told me over and over that he hates being compared to the angel he was, I will keep doing it because I want to; I will keep bringing up the fact that he is an evil, bad demon and I am a pure, good, kindhearted angel.

Fuck that Crowley has never lied to me once, I want to lie to him, to his face, so I will.

Fuck our friendship, I will say disgusting, vile, and hurtful things to his face and then never apologize; instead I will wait for him to crawl back to me and say sorry because he always does.

Fuck the fact that I am the one who screwed up, I will pressure Crowley into doing the apology dance because I cannot admit that I'm wrong, fuck what he thinks.

Fuck that he told me he doesn't want to let me drive the Bentley, I will pressure and manipulate him until he gives me the keys and then change the car without permission and then throw a pity party when he asks me to change it back.

Fuck that Crowley is terrified of Gabriel, memory loss or not, I will make fun of his concern and then force him to babysit him.

Fuck Crowley's idea for getting Nina and Maggie together, I will ignore him and instead force a bunch of humans into a non-consensual roleplay because I say so.

Fuck whatever Crowley suggests, I want to do it my way and I expect him to follow me without question.

Fuck that Crowley wants to tell me something important and asked me to listen, I will ignore every single verbal and non verbal sign of discomfort and make decisions for him without asking what HE wants.

Fuck Crowley - unless he does what I want.

I do not believe that Aziraphale does it out of malice, a lot of it is a trauma response, but he still CHOOSES to do it. He still CHOOSES to behave that way, to treat Crowley like that, and unless he starts holding himself accountable, they will not get anywhere, love or no love.

Crowley's choices are either going along with Aziraphale and ignoring his boundaries, or being alone on earth for the rest of his infinite existence. Those are his choices, and the second one isn't really a choice, is it? It's fucked up and horrible, so yeah, going along with him is the only thing he can realistically do.

So, no. I do not want Crowley to take him back. For the first time in their existence, Crowley has set a boundary, put himself first, and refuses to cross it for anyone, including Aziraphale. He had the RIGHT to do that. It was this or being destroyed by heaven. Those were his options, and he chose what he wants, what he needs - not what Aziraphale wants, who is still not fucking listening to him.

What I want is for Aziraphale to realize how horribly he has been treating Crowley for centuries, apologize, and then shut up. What I want is for Crowley to learn that his wants and needs are important, that he is allowed to put himself first, and that allowing Aziraphale to walk all over him has damaged their relationship, not improved it. That he CAN expect Aziraphale to respect him, and if he doesn't, then it is his right to not want to be around him.

I want Aziraphale to get out of heaven's claws and start recovering, and I want Crowley to keep recovering.

I want both of them to get to a point where they can have a healthy relationship with boundaries and mutual respect; it is not a fairy tale ending, and I don't want it to be one.

Love is not enough. Love is never enough.

I want them to be happy, healthy, and together, and to get there, they both need to grow separately for a while. They're both complex, deeply flawed characters, neither of them is good or evil, and that's the point.

That has always been the point.

[tarotlogy]

THE KING OF SWORDS – THE COMMUNICATOR

KEYWORDS

Mature Male Air, Intellectual, Analytical, Articulate, Power, Authority, Honest, Truth, Principles, Standards, Morals, Ethics, Manners, Communication, Conversation, Debate, Spokesperson, Opinions, Mental Discipline, Reason, Logic, Discerning, Mind-over-matter, Head not heart, Unbiased, Impartial, Detached, Impersonal, Clinical, Severe, Stern, Severing, Objective, Aloof, Conservative, Dry, Formal, Fair, Justice, Law, Legal Matters, Courtrooms, Contracts, Rules, Regulation, Order, Control Freak, Disciplinarian, Formidable, Punishment, Meticulous, Methodical, Facts, Black & White, Detail, Scrutiny, Clarity, Ideas, Concepts, Strategies, Advisor, Privacy, Space, Denial of Personal Happiness, Quiet, Reading, Writing, Education, Classical, Languages, Military, Surgeon, Judge, Bachelor

MESSAGES

Use your head in this situation,  Don’t let your feelings get in the way, Listen to both sides of the argument,  Don’t get sucked into all the emotion around you at present, keep your head and remain impartial, Make your decisions when you are in possession of all the facts,  Clearly define your position, This is a serious situation, Come up with a well thought out plan, Exert some mental discipline in order to get the job done,  Seek out the advice of the professionals, Scrutinise all documents before signing, Someone is giving you good sound advice, Deal with things in a fair and just manner, Legal issues surround you at present,  The Legal outcome will be in your favour, If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime,  The will be consequences to pay for your actions, The truth will come out, Honesty is always the best policy, Be the one to speak out if something is wrong, Be the spokesperson,  Communicate your needs, Enter into the debate, Medical issues, hospitals, consultant or surgeons may be involved,  Don’t be so serious, Write that book, Put your thoughts down on paper.

Now explore the personality of the King of Swords below. If he has turned up in your reading it means his energies have special meaning for you at this time.

You must ask yourself:  Who is he?  Who does he remind me of?  Is he having a positive or negative influence in my life?  Am I exerting discipline in the proper areas of my life? How can I embrace or avoid his energy?  What is he trying to tell me?  Is this how I am behaving?  Is this how others perceive me?  Do I like him or not? Do I want to be more like him? How can I be more like him, If he is not a person then what is his energy trying to tell me? How would this King handle my situation? Which part of this King am I trying to deny?

PERSONALITY PROFILE

The King of Swords combines the outward focus of a King with the positive intellectual, analytical and just qualities of Air.  He uses Earth to Ground his energy so that he may be of use in his world.

Dark and sombre looking the King of Swords sits on a structure which appears more like a pillar or column than a regal throne.  We cannot see the top of the throne so we are left to wonder as to whether it soars right up to the sky or even into outer space.  This symbolises this Kings connection to the element of Air and his ability to rise above any situation or crisis so that he can view it in a detached and objective manner.  The throne is adorned with carvings of butterflies and Air Sylphs which further connect this man to his governing element.  The butterflies also stand for metamorphosis and transformation.  The mind and intellect are a powerful force and when put to their most positive use can change the way we view our self and the world around us.  What the mind dwells upon it tends to adopt.  So if we dwell on the negative too often then our life will begin to mirror those negative thoughts.  By thinking positively, we can attract positive experiences into our life.  Our thoughts are energy and each thought-form whether positive or negative is exactly the same energy.  It depends on how much energy we put into either our positive or negative attitudes that ultimately determines what manifests in and around us.   Change or transform our thoughts and we can change our life.  However, we need mental discipline to achieve this and it is easier said than done.  The King of Swords is the master of Mental Discipline.  He will teach you his ways should you have enough stamina to follow them through.

The King of Swords sits upright and rigid on his throne.  He appears to face us, but if we look closely, it is obvious that his direct stare is slightly off.   Does this King not want to look us in the eye?  Is it fear or shyness that prevents him or is it something else?  Well, it is certainly not fear or shyness so it must be something else.  Could it be that this King chooses not to make eye contact because in doing so, he immediately becomes emotionally involved.  The King of Swords is the Earthy part of Air and so uses mental discipline to exert control over his life and those he has a duty to govern.  He represents the intellect in its purest form.  Therefore this man can separate his head from his heart in all areas of his life.  By not looking directly at us, he is saved from seeing any pain or sadness in us.  He is thereby better placed to act in a clinical and sterile manner.  The King of Swords cannot afford to feel deeply for he is relied upon to administer decisions and judgements in a fair and unbiased manner.   This King in a reading may be telling you that you must use your head in this situation and not let your emotions cloud your good judgement.  Detaching the heart from the head is always easy as our emotions exert such a force over us.  However, when this King appears he suggests that your present situation calls on you to do so.  If you can achieve this then you will be able to think clearly and form a plan.

The King of Sword’s throne sits as if on the top of a mountain.  We see a small bit of the green Earth element his is influenced by and a few trees in the background.  Other than that the sky dominates.  At the top of the mountain the air is clear and fresh.  On a clear day one can see for miles around and take in everything that is going on below.  Maybe, that is what the King of Swords is doing.  As he sits strong and proud on his throne, his eyes as keen as the birds that soar over head, he watches over us, observing our comings and goings, ensuring we stay within the confines of the laws he has set down for us.

He wears a gown of pale bluish grey suggesting his element of Air and a sombre personality. Above the gown he is shown with two cloaks; one of orange and one of purple.  The orange cloak he wears close to his gown symbolises the warmth and positive attitude that this King has the ability to display when he so chooses.  He would only ever reveal this side of his personality to those he trusts and is most comfortable with so you won’t see it too often.  A man of his position would be in danger of appearing a pushover to many if he showed his softer side.  The orange cloak also reminds us that this King can feel enthusiastic and excited about life or projects he is involved in even though he approaches them in a serious and methodical manner.  His outer cloak is of Royal Purple symbolising this Kings utmost authority and power.  In ancient times the ruler, be it King or Queen held the supreme position of determining the laws of the land and the subsequent punishment for those who broke them.  This King does too.

The King of Swords stands for the Law and the enforcement of it.  He presides over the courts, the police force and forensics.  He is determined to bring matters to a just and fair conclusion by dealing with the ultimate facts laid bare before him regardless of people’s feelings or dramatic displays of emotions.  For him to achieve this it is imperative that he remains impartial to the human elements involved in his decision-making process.  The King of Swords appearing in a reading especially if the Justice card accompanies it can represent legal issues surrounding you or decisions being made. Solicitors, lawyers, courtrooms and legal documents may be relevant.  When upright his appearance suggests that the outcome will be in your favour or that it will be fair and balanced.

The King of Swords is a mine of information and this card can suggest that someone is giving you clear, sound advice. This cards demands of you to use clear thinking and honesty in whatever the situation involves. He does not get involved with emotional matters so would be suggesting to you that you may have to let your head rule in this instance and not your heart. You will need a clear workable plan in order for you to succeed. If you are putting plans and ideas together for a project or business plan the King of Swords turning up would suggest that your ideas are sound. If in doubt about anything use your logic to figure a way out or a solution to your problem and remember to keep your head in a crisis. If you do not have the information yourself that he would suggest you seek out the advice of the professionals.

The King of Swords also represents the Military where he comes into his own when using his powerful, clear and razor-sharp mind to formulate military strategies, control armies and face the enemy.  It takes someone with a steely grip and unflinching nerve when giving or carrying out orders of such significance and major consequence.

The King of Swords crown depicts a winged spirit again connecting this man to the element of Air and his ability to rise above any issue or event that comes his way.  Beneath, his long flowing gown peeps one foot.  His shoe or boot is red in colour but we can see very little of it.  The red shoe suggests that this King is either lacking in deep passion or that he disguises it very well.  Again, he may only reveal it to a certain few.

The sky is generally clear except for a few clouds floating by, the bulk of which seem to be far away in the background.  This may suggest that this King, even though he has clarity of thought, may have some troublesome issues in his past or a time when he did not think so clearly, a time when his judgement was clouded.  This may reflect back to his days as a Knight when he was always in a hurry, running here and there.  He moved quickly back in those days and spent little time thinking of what he was doing or planning his next step.  Instead he was full of Fire and rushed into situations too hastily.  He should have stopped and contemplated his moves instead of making them up as he went along.  Yes, he had made some mistakes in the past and learned the error of his ways.  He realised that he achieved very little during those years and had often gotten into terrible arguments with other people just because he could not hold his tongue.

Thankfully, he eventually matured into the King and those wild days are long behind him.  Looking at him now, no one would ever suspect that he had been so manic at one stage.  The King had to learn to control his thoughts and his speech.  He had to learn not to be so reactive in situations and that whereas he was entitled to his opinion, so too were other people.   He has turned the often reckless actions of his Knighthood days into a fearless and courageous nature that is called upon when the situation demands.

The King holds his Sword at a slight angle.  Could this mean that this King has the potential to bend the law should he see fit or maybe it represents his amazing flexible mind and how it can bend in any direction to view all aspects of a situation?  The slightly bent sword does certainly take on another meaning when this King reverses.

Along with the Star card of the Major Arcana, this King can represent Aquarius, Libra when it appears with the Justice and Empress Card and Gemini when he appears with the Lovers.

The King of Swords overriding personality trait is his powerfully disciplined and high intellect.  From this stems an authoritative, stern and formidable character.  One of the important roles this King plays is in decision-making processes. He bases all his decisions on logic and hard cold facts.  His deals with issues in a fair and impartial manner which may sometimes appear as clinical to those involved.  The King of Swords lives in a world of order, rules and regulation, most which he has made or set himself.  A man of extremely high principles and standards he does not believe in bending the rules for anyone.   He is not open to coercion or bribery.

This King likes to be in charge and is a fearless leader.  He is intelligent, highly qualified and much experienced.  He is the true Professional and has much advice to offer.  If you need some honest and impartial advice then this King is the man to turn to.  He will need to know all the facts and details surrounding your issue so make sure you are well prepared in advance.  He will listen closely and will question deeply.  Don’t bore him with the trivia of the situation for it is of no interest to him.  He will weigh up all the facts carefully and apply his agile mind to cut through any confusion so that his advice is clear and precise.  The King of Swords is aware of his skill in this area. His advice is worth its weight in gold and should not be taken lightly. He will tell you once and once only as he does not see the need see the need to repeat himself.  The King of Swords will expect you to take on board all he recommends.  Indeed this King will not look on you favourably should you ignore it.    He may not be too eager to assist you again if you don’t.  If you have a complicated or serious issue, it may be wise to seek professional help.  The King of Swords is the man to turn to.

The King of Swords faces situations head on and does not flinch.  He is not daunted by the size or extent of a situation.   Analytical, methodical and observant he scrutinises all that is brought before him.  He rapidly sizes up a situation to find where the problems exist before applying a workable solution for all.   His searchlight mind and eyes miss nothing.  Any error, mistakes or underhand dealings will be clearly exposed under his gaze.  His presence in a reading may suggest that you need to be observant; read all the small print, dissect contracts or legal papers as you may miss something of great importance.

He operates on a level of clear well thought out ideas and plans which he will have tried and tested on many occasions.

Articulate and inquisitive, this King enjoys conversation and debate.  However, it must intellectually stimulate him.  He has a great interest in the world around him and is an avid reader.  His mind is like a sponge as it soaks up every last bit of information, storing it away for when it will be one day put to use. A master of languages and the spoken word, education is extremely important to him.  He is often to be found passing on his knowledge to others in this realm.   He makes an excellent College Lecturer or Professor who students will view as stern yet fascinating.  He has a great way with words and can explain himself or a situation in a clear and concise manner so that all can understand.

His strong principles, morals and ethics will find him speak out against injustice, corruption or discrimination.  He makes an excellent spokesperson who will speak on the behalf of others who need their case presented in a professional and honourable manner.  He has impeccable high standards and will demand the same of you.

Like his female counterpart, the Queen of Swords, the King of Swords is capable of depriving himself of someone or something due to principles or personal standards.  Because he has the ability to detach the head from the heart, he can sever any connections that are considered unnecessary even if it entails a personal sacrifice.   He lives by the standards he sets for everyone else.  He self-counsels and can arrive at harsh personal decisions after logically and objectively reviewing the situation.  Regardless of the associated personal loss his decision may entail, he goes ahead with it on the basis of logical conclusion and what is best all round.  This may come as a total surprise and shock to a potential partner who is dumped after the first argument or a much-needed member of staff who is let go after breaking one of the codes of conduct.  Once trust is broken with him it is hard to re-establish so he would rather make a clean-cut rather than prolong an awkward situation.

In relationships, the King of Swords is a cool customer.  Known for neither romance nor great passion he chooses a partner in the same manner he makes every other decision in his life.  His standards are high when it comes to relationships and like the Queen of Swords, will quite happily live on his own rather than put up with another just for the sake of company.  In fact the King of Swords quite enjoys his own company and space for he enjoys privacy and quiet.  His mind is more than enough to occupy him and really he wants for very little else.  He does not like overbearing or demanding women and is quite cautious about who he gives his telephone number to.  Neither will he appreciate a new partner turning up on his doorstep without a prior invitation.  He sets strict rules when it comes to his personal life.

When he does venture into the dating arena, he will be drawn to women on the basis of their cool intellect and how they conduct themselves in public.  A pretty face is useless unless there is something going on between the two ears.  He finds intelligence and accents far sexier than pouting lips and fluttering eyelashes.  He usually prefers his women classic looking and sophisticated; their style of dress well-tailored and understated.   Not a huge fan of make-up it is what is under it that he finds most appealing.  He likes women to feel comfortable in their own space but becomes irritated by incessant chatter and babble.

As a partner the King of Swords will hardly blow your mind with excitement, passion or romance but he will be steady, practical and organised.  He keeps his house immaculate and orderly.  He has daily routines that he rigorously adheres to; a place for everything and everything in its place.  A control freak to say the least, his partner best be mindful of his finicky ways as it will intensely annoy him to find anything disturbed or out-of-place.   He has a sedate style of dress but all his clothes will be of the highest quality and extremely well made.  He uses the same tailor and shoe-maker year in year out where they fully understand his standards and requirements.  Although he likes to spend money on quality items you won’t find this King with a houseful of gadgets or trendy furniture.  He prefers the traditional approach and may still choose to listen to his music collections on an old style record player rather than by digital technology.

When he takes his partner out, it will be to dinner in a fine long-established restaurant where diners are not prone to rowdy behaviour or guffaws of laughter.  Although he enjoys a good vintage wine, you will not find this King drunk at the dinner table as he exerts strict control over every aspect of his behaviour.  Drunkenness in his partner will be a terrible turn off for him and a big no, no which may result in instant dismissal.  He will feel uncomfortable with a partner who cannot be relied on to control herself at all times.   He enjoys the theatre and being a great fan of classical music is a regular at the concert hall.  He likes to attend book launches and art exhibitions with his partner where he will find like- minded intellectual people.

This King’s mind is constantly active and he can drive his partner to distraction with over analysing everything she says and does.  An unfortunate aspect of this King is his highly critical nature.  He can pick fault with his partner over the slightest thing and with the briefest of words cut her off at the knees without even stopping to glance up from his dinner plate.  The King of Swords does not deal very well with emotion and may not be sensitive to her hurt feelings.  He needs a strong steely woman who can give as good as she gets.  A woman who acts as he does and can engage in verbal warfare without losing her cool.  A woman who is control of herself and not prone to bouts of hysteria or melodrama.

If Desperate Housewives, the Soaps or Reality Programmes are your thing then give this King a wide berth when searching for a potential partner. The only television programmes allowed will be those of political interest or current affairs such as Politic Questions and Answers, Prime Time and Election analysis etc. You will also find it very hard to find one fictional novel or rag mag in his house let alone any modern music. Newspapers will be the Irish Times, Business Post, Financial Times and all the serious Sunday Papers with business supplements.   Generally this King will be seen as quite boring and severe by many but this is because they do not understand him.  He will settle with a like-minded woman who shares his mental understanding of life.

We must remember that the King of Swords does have the ability to happily remain a bachelor till the end of his days but if he finds the right partner who maintains his interest while giving him the quiet space he needs than their union can be a great success.  He also has the powerful ability to clinically sever a relationship that he deems is unsuitable.  He can be brutal and final in his actions when dealing with partners who have out-stayed their welcome.  When it is over with this King of Swords, it is definitely over.

All said and done, the King of Swords will put companionship before passion in relationships. Finding a friend in his partner is far preferable to having an active sex life.

When it comes to careers, the King of Swords is the archetypal professional.  He is an expert in all fields of law, business, education and science.  He has learned about life the hard way and now as a mature man rarely uses his mind for anything other than sensible business.

The King of Swords strongly represents the law and legal system so he can be found as the stern but fair judge in a court of law or as the hard-hitting barrister defending your case and your honour.   This King is involved in every aspect of law keeping so he will also be found as the relentless detective who will leave no stone unturned until the culprit is found and brought to justice.  We also find him in the forensic lab where he will spend hours searching for one tiny minuscule fibre that will link the suspected killer to the victim.  His believe is that the truth is always out there if we are prepared to look long and hard for it.

This King is often drawn to the field of Medicine and his presence in a reading can sometimes suggest encounters with the medical profession, especially where hospitals and surgery are concerned.  He is the  Consultant, Professor or Surgeon.  You will find him walking the corridors of hospitals followed by his team of Interns, Senior House Officers and Registrars who are in awe of him and hang on to his every word, hoping that even a small percentage of this man’s medical knowledge will rub off on them.  He is to be seen  scubbing-up before entering theatre to perform life-saving surgery brain surgery or as the State Pathologist carrying out post mortems to determine the cause of death for those who no longer have a voice to tell.  The King of Swords is also the Scientist and areas of research would be appealing

With his powerful mind we will naturally find this man entering a career in politics or business where he will naturally sit in a position of authority and expertise.  He is not necessarily charismatic enough to be the Prime Minister or Taoiseach but you will certainly find him working closely with them as one of their chief advisors.

Of Course, a career in the military will settle very nicely with him.  He likes order, control and discipline so this is an ideal area for him.  He will train his soldiers to be mentally disciplined, sharp and to think their way out of dangerous situations.  He will be behind the formation of all military strategies and manoeuvres. This man is also drawn to a career in flying so may very well combine it with love of military life by joining the Air Force.  He may prefer instead to be a pilot for an airline with the responsibility of transporting passengers safely from one destination to another.

The King of Swords is a keen writer and can cut out a very successful career for himself in this field.  His vast amount of knowledge, articulacy, attention to detail and mental discipline facilitate the requirements that are essential if one wishes to become a successful author.

With his high principles and strong morals, this King could find himself drawn to entering a religious order to become a member of the clergy.

Other professions for him might include:  Computer Analyst, Statistics, Diplomat or Logistics.

As a father the King of Swords is stern and believes in discipline and punishments that will always be carried out.  He can be cold, clinical and sterile in his dealings with his children.   His household is run on rules and orders with very little room for negotiation.  He expects his orders to be carried out without question.  His children know this and will rarely step out of line.  He runs can run his home like a military barracks as he does not have time for fun and games.  The thing is that this King loves his children but believes that they must be brought up under strict control.  Bad manners or emotional outbursts in public will not be tolerated.  Unless there is a softer mother in the background who can temper her partner’s severity the children will grow up with a fearful respect for their father.  Each time the King must carry out a punishment he reminds them that it is for their own good and that one day they will thank him.  He has a strange way of showing how much he cares.

The ring on the Saturn finger of his left hand suggests that this King may have unresolved issues with his own father. In palmistry the ring can suggest a father who was absent or very restrictive during their son’s early years.  This King may not have been exposed to the kind of love and affection that children need during the early years.  There is a chance that he has grown up just like his father, treating his children in the same manner he was or he is trying to be the father that he never had.  One way or another, his manner is stiff and formal with his children even though he may love them deeply.

He can be a bit of a control freak and a perfectionist with his children and will impose harsh curfews on his children as they get older.  His children will either turn out like him or rebel totally and leave home once they are old enough. He does have their best interests at heart though sets out to run a well-ordered household.   Like the Queen of Swords, this will not be the home where you can easily bring a gang of friend in unannounced.  The King of Swords does not like his peace disturbed so any visits will be by prior arrangement and strictly controlled.

Education is incredibly important to this King and he will wish his children to get the best that he can afford.  He particularly likes the idea of Boarding Schools where the whole day can be worked around learning in one form or another.  He has no problem sending his children to them from an early age as he considers they are then in the right environment for the sort of education he insists on.  His love of languages may even find him sending his children to overseas schools if he considers it necessary.

Not a huge fan of sport himself, he won’t be push his kids into either.  Sports will largely be replaced by other forms of discipline such as music usually where instruments like clarinets, violins or pianos are concerned.

The King of Swords will always be there for his family but should any of his children get in trouble or bring scandal to the front door he will not let them forget it.  He may throw them out or refuse to talk to them for months.  It could take a long time for the frost to melt.

When the King of Swords takes his family on holidays, it will not be on a package deal where the parents sit at the bar while their offspring run wild.  His holidays will be more subdued and destinations will be chosen on the basis of ability to broaden mind, historical interest or for improving language.  He is not the man to become laid back at any time and holidays are no exception.

The King of Swords however, enjoy heading up the mountains for long walks.  He marvels at the bird’s eye view from the summit and breathes in the pure clear air of his element.  This is when the King of Swords finds peace. He also like is enjoys the challenge of cryptic crosswords and puzzles.

[perriwinklesblog]

Depending on the source and interpretation, depends on what God Harpocrates is.

The most common associated we have nowadays is the God of Silence.

However, they also have links to Horus as the Greeks adapted them from their mythology. And even in the Greek mythology and modern mythology this God  links to Egypt too.

In some modern occultist groups Harpocrates is known as being a trickster God. Others believe them to be a higher being above others

They have also been described as the embodiment of hope. 

Harpocrates is also referred to as the God of Secrets and Confidentiality. 

They’re often associated with roses apparently.

So depending on what route route they go down with the link my main candidates are;

Callahan. 

Foolish 

Hannah

Dream

Captain Puffy

Callahan

When we think of silence, we think of Callahan. He has been around on this server since it’s beginning and often watches the destruction and chaos from the background. Recently, he was there during the Community house confrontation and he watched silently as L’Manburg blew up. 

Perhaps, he’s had enough of the corruption on the server. Perhaps Doomsday was the last straw. He may be the God of Silence but perhaps he does not want to sit back and be silent anymore. He has watched the server move from an equal group of people, building a home together, to a hierarchal nation with citizens hellbent on being the most power they destroy the things they claim they love. 

Since Callahan watches so much it would make sense that he has picked up a few secrets along the way linking into that.

If Callahan wanted to join in on the lore, this would probably be the way that makes the most sense. It’d also be interesting how this would play out for him. 

Reasons why it’s unlikely...

Callahan doesn’t seem to involve himself often. He prefers to watch and chill on the server so it is highly unlikely he would be apart of the lore. No matter how much we beg. 

If anything, he’ll show up to whatever chaos happens as a result of the Syndicate. 

Likeliness Score: 2/10

Foolish

Whilst Callahan is my personal favourite. This one is one of the most likely to me. 

Foolish has his secrets. He’s older than he seems. Seems to know things we don’t. Always dropping hints. He even has secrets underneath his statues. Whilst not necessarily a direct to silence, he has been withdrawn from the egg plot and now recently deciding to take a stand. This could be interpreted as being silent no more. 

The involvement in the egg plot is also another reason why this could be him. He admitted to needing to find people to help him take the Egg down. 

Harpocrates also has many ties to Egypt and Foolish’s summer home is quite Egyptian. 

He’s becoming more involved in the lore and I think this could be a good way to introduce more into the heavy, heavy stuff. 

Reasons why it’s unlikely...

Whilst he’s getting more involved in plot, its not necessarily this plot. Also he’s not that fussed about governments. He’s friendly with Tubbo and Tommy and lives in Snowchester. 

If he’s already joined the Syndicate, it’d be highly unlikely that Techno hadn’t already known and checked Snowchester out. So the fact that he didn’t, suggests he’s not joined the Syndicate. However, that doesn’t mean he won’t in the future. 

Likeliness Score: 8/10

Hannah

HERE ME OUT. 

A symbol associated with is the rose! And who is the person on this server strongly associated with roses? HANNAH.

I don’t know much about Hannah and I’ve not seen much of her in the current main plots. She seems to bee involved with a few pranks which ties in with the trickster god aspect of Harpocrates. 

Is this how to becomes more involved with heavy lore?

Reasons why it’s unlikely...

I don’t know much about Hannah so i don’t know about her opinions on lore on the server. Many like to chill and vibe on the server, which is equally as valid as the lore so perhaps she’d rather not be involved in the chaos of plots and storylines. 

Whilst I think it’d be an interesting choice, and bring in some fresh blood into the plot, I am unsure of how likely this outcome will be. 

Likeliness Score: 5/10 (could go either way)

Dream

I’ve seen this one being floated about. 

He would fit the description for secretive, trickster and definitely believe himself to be above others (especially with the current power he’s holding). Bizarrely theres also an argument for hope. 

We know Dream can be secretive and we know he can trick people. We know those reasons. But why hope? Why have i chosen to associate him with hope? 

Well, once Tommy has been let out of Pandora’s Vault (and he will), Dream will be all thats left. And I know. I know. this take on the myth of pandora is very surface level etc but come one guys, if they were to play on any trope of Pandora, this would be it. We have so many ways in which this whole hope thing could play out and perhaps this scenario is one. 

It is bizarre to associate him with hope and very unlikely. But it’s tinfoil hat time people. No stone left unturned. 

Technoblade owes him a favour. He, apart from Puffy, is the only one that has a current link with Techno so it would make sense that he might be apart of the Syndicate. 

Reasons why it’s unlikely...

Y’all. We focus too much on that favour. I know I do. But so do all of you. 

Why the fuck, would Dream, someone who wants to be the most powerful and essentially created the hierarchies on the server, join an anarchist group? 

The only reason there was a team up before was because their motive aligned for a moment. That’s it. 

Their basic morals do not align. They don’t. Not at all. If it turns out to be Dream I will scream. 

What I truly believe will happen is Dream will ask the Syndicate to help him and due to the favour, Technoblade will feel obliged. The others will be like hell no, it’ll cause conflict within the syndicate and Techno will once again feel betrayed. Thats my predication for any involvement involving Dream. 

Likeliness Score: -2/10

Captain Puffy

She’s a trickster. She is a symbol of hope in a lot of the storylines and for us due to her sticking up for those who cannot. She is a knight afterall. 

I won’t lie, I’m unsure of why this is a popular theory other than the fact her and Techno have kinda sided together against the egg. 

Reasons why it’s unlikely...

She’s a knight. She’s Erets knight. She is technically an active part in a hierarchical society. 

She may be allied with him on the egg but that doesn’t mean she’s part of the Syndicate. She doesn’t even believe in the Anarchists beliefs. She’s very clear that the reason she wanted Techno on side was to help destroy the egg. She’s very clear that it’s due to the need of man power.

I just, I’m struggling guys. I’m struggling. I see the reasoning for teaming up but I do not see the reasons for her joining the club and I do not see the strong connections with this name. 

Likeliness Score: 5/10 (I could be missing something)

EDIT: I’ve been informed that Puffy isn’t a knight anymore and has gone rogue... I still don’t think she’s a full time member of the Syndicate. It doesn’t seem quite correct. Especially the way in which she acts about the rest of the SMP. She’s never outright said she’s an anarchist as far as I’ve seen but she has said she needed his help. There is a different in requesting help and joining an organisation.

And because many have suggested I’ll add this on for the end...

Fundy

A trickster yes, but he has said he’s stepping back from lore, only being a part of it when asked or needed. This storyline has been ready for a bit so I don’t think Fundy is a part of it otherwise he wouldn’t have made that lore announcement. 

Also Techno and Philza dislike Fundy. Like theres a lot of bad blood between them. There is no trust and a big part of the Syndicate is trust. So whether he was still actively participating in lore or not, it’s unlikely he’d be apart of it. 

I know we’re starved of Fundy lore and a bit sad that he’s taking a step back, I am sad too. but it’s very unlikely he would be joining the Syndicate. 

Likeliness Score: -10/10

Final Thoughts. 

Personally, my favourite would be Callahan but I know that’s unlikely. I feel like Foolish might be the best one for being a member. 

These are just some of my theories and reasons why. As I say with all my theories and stuff, I am am more often wrong than not. The creators on this server are brilliant at red herrings and twists that you’ll think one thing and be sure of it and then BAM. Something else. It’ll be interesting to see who it is and I’m excited to see where this storyline is headed as this is just the beginning. 

[dwellordream]

“…The ideas that animate Harlequin romance novels, Game of Thrones, and Disney movies alike can be traced back to the nineteenth century. Look at the paintings of the Pre-Raphaelites and others influenced by them—works like John William Waterhouse’s “Lady of Shalott” (1888) and Frederic William Burton’s “The Meeting on the Turret Stairs” (1864)—and you’ll see some very familiar figures.

These canvases reflect popular Victorian understandings of medieval ladies: passive, slender, aristocratic, the objects of knightly devotion. These women have never laboured in the fields with sunburned necks or callused hands. Their clothing and flowing hairstyles are eclectic, designed more to make nineteenth-century audiences think about a distant, misty, heroic past than to accurately reproduce any given moment in the Middle Ages. And, they are, invariably, white.

Art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. These paintings were produced when European imperialism was at its zenith; when Darwinian theories of evolution were twisted to justify colonialism and social hierarchies based on race; and when a supposed early-medieval “Teutonic”—or Germanic—ancestry for the white Protestant populations of Britain and North America was claimed to be the reason for the explosive economic growth of those regions.

They were also painted at the same time that white people in Europe and the Americas were enjoying steadily increasing standards of living—in large part thanks to the backbreaking, and often coerced, labour of those in colonised places. Black and brown women helped to shape history, but Victorian society excluded them from the category of “lady” because of the colour of their skin.

Nineteenth-century thinkers drew on the medieval past in order to justify racial and class inequities, or burgeoning notions of nationalism. These thinkers racialised the medieval lady. They idealised her as white, passive, and unsuited to manual labour. In doing so, they made her into a rationale as to why her elite, white, female descendants could sip tea in parlours while brown and black women toiled in the fields—or in their houses—to bring them that tea. The status quo was given such a venerable heritage that it was made to seem natural, even inevitable. Such ideas were then, and are now, pervasive and insidious. They were absorbed by white women, by Disney animators, by the makers of Halloween costumes, and even by those who write histories.

But what happens if we take the medieval lady off her pedestal? What kind of woman do we see inhabiting the Middle Ages if we try to peel off the Victorian veneer of chivalry and politesse? Does looking at what medieval people actually did in the past tell us something about our own assumptions concerning race and gender? In part, this is a process where we have to reconsider the language we use. What do we mean by “lady”? What did medieval people mean by the term? Or, rather, since most texts produced in western Europe in the Middle Ages were written in Latin, what were the connotations which they associated with the word domina?

The first key difference is that the modern English word “lady” simply doesn’t have the aura of power which the Latin word domina did in the Middle Ages. A domina was a woman with authority and moral rectitude in her own right, not simply the consort or complement to a dominus (lord). A domina (and holders of other Latin titles applied to women in medieval records, like comitissa, vicedomina or legedocta) administered estates and adjudicated legal disputes. It did not matter whether she held her title by inheritance or through marriage. Those who held titles in their own right, or those who were widowed, could exercise significant power over fiefs and vassals.

For example, when Matilda, countess of Tuscany (1046-1115), was referred to as domina, it was because she controlled a large swathe of northern Italy. She was the mediator during the famous meeting between Pope Gregory VII and the German emperor Henry IV at her great fortress of Canossa. In doing so, she influenced the outcome of a major medieval power struggle. On his accession to the throne in 1199, King John of England installed his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine (ca. 1122-1204), as domina of the French territory of Poitou and gave her authority in all of his lands—a tacit acknowledgement of her political skill.

Eleanor even managed to expand queenly authority in some ways. She seems to be the first queen of England after the Norman Conquest to have regularly collected the “queen’s gold”, a one-tenth share of some of the legal fines paid to the king. This gave her a valuable (and somewhat independent) source of revenue—and with money comes power. As a more modest example, one contemporary of Matilda of Tuscany’s was a woman named Mahild of Alluyes, domina of a far smaller territory in northern France. She wasn’t a player in papal or imperial politics. Yet as wife and widow, she oversaw the affairs of her vassals and witnessed charters which they drew up in the chapter house of the nearby abbey of Marmoutier, which gave her considerable influence over their lives. And there are many, many more dominae in the sources.

Medieval aristocratic women were sometimes seen as passive by their male contemporaries; those with power who broke this mould were sometimes described in plainly misogynistic terms. But equally, their deeds could be lauded. For example, one of the great chroniclers of the early twelfth century, the Anglo-Norman Orderic Vitalis, wrote that the French noblewoman Isabel of Conches was “lovable and estimable to those around her.” He complimentarily said that she “rode armed as a knight among the knights”, and compared her favourably with Amazon queens.

Matilda of Boulogne (ca. 1105-1152), queen of King Stephen of England, was one of her husband’s most capable partisans during the Anarchy—the period of civil war that tore twelfth-century England apart. Not only did she head the government during her husband’s captivity, but proved herself a capable military commander. She directed troops into battle at the so-called Rout of Winchester and arranged for her husband’s release when he was captured.

A generation or so later, the English countess Petronella of Leicester (ca. 1145-1212) participated alongside her husband in the Revolt of 1173-74; she gave her husband military advice, rode armed onto the battlefield, and was even wearing armour when captured. These actions may not have been normal behaviour for a domina—administration and adjudication were more usual. But they were still within the bounds of possible behaviour for a medieval woman without endangering her status as a “lady.”

The Matildas, Mahild, Eleanor, Isabel, and Petronella: it is hard to imagine any of these dominae as the subject of a Waterhouse painting or the centrepiece of a Disney movie. They weren’t always victorious or virtuous; they could be ambitious and high-handed and hold ideas which most people today would find distasteful. And yet, whether medieval chroniclers approved or disapproved of these women individually, they didn’t think the very fact that they were active, decisive, and opinionated was out of the ordinary. Neither should you.

Nor would the colour of their skin have been thought a defining aspect of their status as a lady. There was certainly prejudice about skin colour in the Middle Ages. The relatively small number of non-white people in northern Europe means that we can’t definitively point to a woman of colour exercising political power there. But things were slightly different in southern Europe, in areas like Iberia—modern Spain and Portugal—which was long home to Christian, Jewish, and Muslim populations of multi-ethnic heritage.

While there were religious prohibitions against Muslim women marrying non-Muslim men, there are some scattered examples of intermarriages between dynasties in the early Middle Ages: Muslim women of north African or Arab descent marrying into northern, Christian royal families. For instance, Uriyah, a daughter of the prominent Banū Qasī dynasty, married a son of the king of the northern Spanish kingdom of Navarre; Fruela II, king of Asturias, married another Banū Qasī woman called Urraca. Their ancestry doesn’t seem to have posed a barrier.

Western Europeans may have only rarely had direct contact with non-white female rulers further afield—like the powerful Arwa bint Asma, queen of Yemen (r. 1067-1138)—but when they did, it could be in dramatic fashion. Shajar al-Durr, sultana of Egypt (d. 1257), famously captured Louis IX of France during the Seventh Crusade and ransomed him for an eye-wateringly large sum.

While historical examples of women of colour exercising prominent roles in Europe during the Middle Ages are few in number, skin colour didn’t limit the imaginations of white medieval Europeans. Medieval people often had clear anxieties about skin colour and blackness, but despite this racism they could still envision a brown- or black-skinned woman as a member of the upper classes, just as they did the white-skinned Mahild or Isabel.

For example, the early thirteenth-century German epic poem Parzival centres on the eponymous hero and his quest for the Holy Grail. Parzival has a half-brother, the knight Feirefiz, who is mixed-race. His mother, Belacane, is the black queen of the fictional African kingdoms of Zazamanc and Azagouc; the narrative praises her beauty and her regal bearing. As another example, a Middle Dutch poem written about the same time, Morien, recounts the story of the handsome, noble knight Morien, “black of face and of limb,” whose father Sir Aglovale fell in love with his “lady mother,” a Moorish princess.

However, the most vivid example is provided by medieval depictions of the biblical Queen of Sheba. Scholars think the historical Sheba likely lay somewhere in southwestern Arabia; other traditions place the kingdom in east Africa. Regardless of the queen’s historicity, various traditions grew up around her in the Middle Ages. Some of the most popular of these claimed that she had a son by the biblical king Solomon. She frequently appears alongside him in art, in elegantly draped garb as on the late twelfth-century Verdun Altar, or accompanied by courtiers as in an early fourteenth-century German illustrated bible: a beautiful black woman and a regal queen. When you think of a medieval “lady”—you could do worse than to think of her.

All of this should prompt us to look again, to reconsider how racialized Victorian ideals of womanhood still impact us—both in contemporary popular culture and also in our understandings of the medieval past. When we think about the Middle Ages, we should consider the impact of race, and especially whiteness, on how we think about it. That is not necessarily because our medieval forebears did so, but because our nineteenth- and early twentieth-century ones did so very much.

The idea of the “lady” was one of the useful fictions which they and others employed, glorifying white, upper-class womanhood as an apex of western achievement. This helped to make existing racial and imperial hierarchies seem like they had such a long history that they must be innate, biological: a simple fact of life. But it was a fiction, and a harmful one. If we are to better understand the medieval past, it is one we must set aside.”

- Yvonne Seale, “My Fair Lady? How We Think About Medieval Women.”

[vfig]

the knowledge of the player that the story isnt real and the knowledge of the characters within it that their world isnt real is two sides of the same coin (or perhaps, as the saying goes, the same side of two coins):

for the player, the piece calling attention to its own fictionality right from the beginning (as both p1 and p2 do in different ways)—the defamiliarization—is operating aesthetically, of course, but is much more importantly a moral challenge: "this is all just a story/play/game: your doctor role is not real; the people are not real; the disease is not real; their deaths are not real. i want you to care about them anyway, to strive to save them (and yourself) as if they were."

but this metanarrative is equitably minded: it lays the same challenge before its characters. they all have at least some hint that they and their world are not real and immediate; for a few, such as aglaya, this knowledge is explicit and a crucial motivator. but they are all challenged in the same way to take the existence of themselves and those around them as valuable and meaningful, even as this existence is inevitably curtailed by the boundaries of the narrative.

(as an aside, i will note that the unusual seriousness with which pathologic treats its characters—and especially its children—and the agency it gives them within the story relates to this: the player's mechanically favoured position in the game is narratively deemphasised, on purpose, and the other characters elevated. so that each of the other characters can honestly view themself as the "main character" in their world. this is a very rare approach in computer games, which mostly treat their characters mechanically, instrumentally, as tools or playthings for someone else, somewhat akin to the infantilization with which adults in our real world culture tend to treat children—and not just in our real world, as khan complains.)

it is perfectly possible, as a player, to play pathologic without rising to this challenge; to play it as "just a video game", chasing after merely mechanical rewards of achievements or "zero deaths", savescumming to attain an aesthetically or mechanically perfect outcome. that is the same moral infraction as a character who decides that what they do doesnt matter because "nothing is real" (hi p2 grief!). they are expected to act in character during the play as much as the player is.

(note that when i say "moral infraction" it is not to pass judgement on the moral character of the player, but to point out that they are then engaging the game using only their aesthetic sense, and not their moral sense.)

however, there is a fundamental difference for the characters within the game: whether they rise to the challenge or not is preordained by how the game is written and programmed: "The Law", as the characters call it. this lack of free will is only two-thirds applied to the bachelor/haruspex/changeling characters, of course, as they each get their own chance to be the actual agent (and yet still constrained, by both The Law and the puppeteering by the player who inhabits them). even when not inhabited by the player, they too recognise the challenge given to them: witness the conversation, after meeting The Powers That Be, with clara—the "you knew?!?!" moment in hbomberguys video—where she makes this case more or less explicitly. of course for clara there is an added challenge with the twin situation in not being sure if she herself is even real within the "real world" as it exists for her!

(another aside: the kaleidoscopic nature extends beyond just the moral aspects of the story and its framing, but pervades everything: you climb the staircases to heaven and hear sounds from the "outer realities" at the top. the taboo against digging the earth and cutting bodies is not only because they are sacred and valuable, but because it might reveal the floorboards of the stage or the stuffing within the dolls. you kill a man or cure him, and hear children crying or applauding as you do so. you die and the theatre director gives you a quick debrief before sending you out to act the role again.)

is this all a mess? yes. it couldnt be otherwise. its not laying out a thesis statement on any of these matters, but weaving a complicated tapestry where threads go back and forth from one edge to the other, and from the front to the back, and back to the front again. and when you look at it hanging on the wall, you can never be quite sure if you have it upside down or not, or if what you are looking at is the front or the back of it all.

A bit on postmodernism

I understand why Ice-Pick Lodge added the postmodernist performative layers to Pathologic, if only from the purely gamist perspective - for starters, to explain the save/load mechanics and multiple deaths.

I enjoy some of the meta plot elements such as the Haruspex meeting the next actor assigned for his role, or Murky's Haruspex doll, or Aglaya's doomed rebellion, or the pantomimes in the theater.

(The text in the image reads: non-pantomimity).

Yet still I feel that layer devalues the player characters' (and thus, the player's) achievements a lot. If a healer saves real lives in a real city, that's meaningful. If a healer plays a role in a community theater play, better or worse, a lot of that meaning disappears, much less if said play and said community theater are themselves a game played by children.

That is particularly apparent when thinking about the events after the games - for instance, writing post-ending fanfics. Essentially, either the setting is treated as "real", and then the postmodernist elements have to be danced around somehow, or the whole endeavour becomes meaningless from the start - or, at least, devolves entirely into further purely postmodernist play.

[cherryfi]

Blame it on the Bokbunja: Epilogue

Plot: You and San finally have enough evidence to take Jinyoung down but, the outcome is not what you expected and to add insult to injury it’s made clear that San doesn’t trust you.

Part 1 

A/N: I’m really not sure how I feel about this ending lol, I’m a little disappointed but, enjoy!! Let me know what you think! 

REQUEST ARE OPEN!!

You never thought you’d be back here.

Stepping out of the car, you give one last look to San in the driver’s seat, he gives you a half smile and you wave before closing the door.

“I’ll see you when you’re done.” You nod and walk up the steps to the building. To the place where you used to work. The air is still tense between you and San (well you and Ateez, actually) but, you were working on it.

Maybe this mission wold prove to them how dedicated to your new position you really were. Maybe it would show the other members how much you really cared for San.

From the outside, the corporation was like any other government building. It was non-descript.

It was a large red-bricked building, comprised of some 10 storeys, with the country’s flag deposited outside at full-mast. From the outside, it looked quiet but, you knew the inside was bustling with activity.

Especially since you’d gone AWOL.

Your breath catches in your throat as you take the final steps, wondering if it really is the best idea to follow through with this course of action. Once Jinyoung had you in his clutches, it was more than likely that you were dead.

You’ve been burned, after all so, your being here could only spell trouble.

And it does.

But surely, he wouldn’t have me killed on Corporation soil? He’s a lot of things but, rash isn’t one of them.

Jinyoung would never make a move without having all the cards in his hands, you knew that from years of debriefing with him.

You turn to look over your shoulder once more at San, who smiles at you, it’s clear he was watching you the whole time.

Maybe he’s waiting for you to make a run for it?

You take a deep breath and swagger into the building, trying to create an air of confidence, even though you feel terrified.  

 You stifle the smirk that wants to break out onto your face as the front of desk clerk looks at you in shock but, he quickly catches himself and buzzes you in.

“Mr Kim called and said to send you straight to his office. Please follow the guard, he’ll take you there.” You thank him for your day pass and follow security as they take you to the lift.

Jinyoung’s office was in the centre of the Corp’s building on the 7th floor but, needed security access to get to it, this trip was nothing new  but, this time you had power.

You’d always panicked when you were called into his office but, you’d still respected him. Respected him for his hard work  and morals. You’d been inspired by his ‘underdog’ story.

Kim Jinyoung had been the head of the Corporation for 15 years; he’s made his way up from the head of security position that he’d been granted upon his entry into the company. Jinyoung was a well decorated soldier, quickly rising to general’s rank and it was his hard work and ingenuity that made him the perfect candidate for the Corporation.

But more than that, you’d respected Jinyoung because he could have ended up like Choi Jisung, he knew Jisung but, avoided all attempts to join, instead choosing to remain on the straight and narrow.

Kim Jinyoung had grown up a street child, you knew little about his upbringing, other than the fact that he and San’s father had grown up in the same children’s home but where Jisung decided to create his own ‘army’, Jinyoung joined the national one instead.

He’d successfully avoided a life of crime and made a respectable name for himself, despite the hardships that came from growing up in a run-down boys’ home.

But his military service had been fraught with criminal activity. From drug smuggling to murder, he’d done it all and his position in the Corporation was bought with bribery and blackmail.

Jinyoung was no better than the people he claimed to hate, his hands were just as dirty and stained. He’d done things that were unforgivable – of course, you didn’t know this until San burst your bubble.

So here you were, about to burst his.

The security guard walked you into his office, bowing politely when he was dismissed before closing the door.

As confident as you’d been before, the door clicking shut, diminished it all, leaving you on edge but, you weren’t going to let Jinyoung know that.

You quietly took a seat across from his desk and tried to appear as nonchalant as possible; you looked around the room silently, waiting for him to make the first move.

Jinyoung’s office hadn’t changed since you’d last been there.

His office was made of cherry wood, the walls and panels facing inward towards the rest of the floor were lined with the stained wood, giving it a rustic and almost homely vibe. Floor to ceiling windows overlooked the city below, giving a beautiful view of bustling metropolitan centre. Behind you was a bookshelf complete with various books and files that he’d collected over the years and behind him, he’d hung his awards on the wall.

In contrast to the rustic room, his desk was glass and bare. It only had a potted plant: a winter cactus, and one photo of his family. You remembered this picture; it was from that he’d taken to Egypt with his wife and kids.

Would it ruin his wife to know what kind of man she’d married?

That wasn’t your problem, it was his for being so deplorable but, it didn’t stop you from thinking about she’d take it if she were ever to find out that her highly decorated, Army General husband was really a war criminal.

 “What brings you here Y/N? I thought you’d be somewhere in Aruba with your mouth firmly attached to San’s dick.” You raise your eyebrows at the harsh tone that he used.

Obviously, I’m not the only one who’s lost respect for the other.

You only smirk in response.

“Why would it have to be Aruba?” He gives a short, humourless laugh. You know why but, you want to goad him.

You want him to snap.

“Because I expected you to be on the run, as far away from here as possible. I expected that your boyfriend would have in hiding, we gave you a deadline and you didn’t follow through, you know what that means. Tell me Y/N, how does it feel to be so easily swayed from your job by a pretty smile? I always thought you were capable of running this place but, obviously didn’t have what it takes. ” You laugh heartily at that and he just blinks in response.

Him threatening your life was an unwise decision especially with all the dirt you had on him.

You were about to ruin this man’s entire career.

“I have no need to run, you and I both know that you can’t touch me. If you could, both San and I would be dead already. No, I’m not running. I actually just came to do you one last favour Jinyoung; let’s call it a parting gift from me to you huh?” You dip down into your bag and pull out the manila dossier, thick with evidence, from your bag and slam it down onto the table.

The picture of his family wobbles and topples over.

How fitting.

“And you’re right, I don’t have what it takes to run this place, if your track record is anything to go by.”

Jinyoung sits downs at his desk finally, opening the folder and leafing through the pictures.

He goes pale as a grin slowly takes over your face.

Gotcha.

“I suppose you’re wondering what this is huh? Now I know that you’ve always dreamed of being in politics and given the progression of your career it’s only right that you make it there but, and I’m sure you’ll agree, only honourable people deserve to be in politics. There are far too many rats running the country and it’s high time someone flushed them out.” He glances up at you, his hand on a photo of him snorting cocaine off a woman’s chest.

“What is this?”  His voice is deceptively calm but  it clear that he’s livid, he’s practically frothing at the mouth

Jinyoung is panicking.

“It’s a collection of memories Jinyoung, a little scrapbook of your memories. Can’t you tell? My favourite is the one where you’re accepting bribes from Lee Taeyong.”

“Get out! Get out of my office, right now!” You laugh as you stand up and smooth down your outfit.

“With pleasure, I’ll leave these here for you to think about, San has plenty more copies, if you need to take a closer look. I just find it so funny how you were more than happy to see so many operatives die trying to catch a man that you claimed was a menace to society, when really, you were just scared of the intel he had on you.” Jinyoung gapes and it only makes you angrier.

You think about all the pressure they put on you to succeed and how easy it would have been for San to kill you, all because Jinyoung couldn’t keep his nose clean.

“You’re no better than me. In fact, you’re no better than San’s father. You spent all that time saying that you wished he’d relied on you instead of turning to a life of crime but really, he would have ended up in the same position. You’re a monster and a murderer, you’re nothing like the hero that you portray yourself to be. I hope when you go to sleep at night that this haunts you.”

“These are doctored and you’re a fool for trusting someone like Choi San, he’ll take what he wants from you and when it’s all over, he’ll leave you dead in a ditch. You’ll be nothing more than a notch on his designer belt.” He spits the words venomously, the vein in his forehead throbbing but, it doesn’t matter because you can see the fear in his eyes.

You add salt to the wounds.

“It’s funny you should mention San. You see, I thought it was more than enough to just scare you with these images, maybe even get you off his back but, there’s something about trying to kill someone that makes them want to obliterate you. San sent these to a few of your ‘friends’. I didn’t know that you had a boss but, according to him there is someone you have to answer to and they’re not going to be happy when they see these pictures.” You shrug lightly, picking up your bag and heading to the door, you only stop when Jinyoung calls out to you.

It’s his feeble attempt to garner some support.

“What happened to you Y/N? Does he have you so hypnotised that you believe every word he’s said? I thought you were better than that. I had such high hopes for you. Hell, I even introduced you to my family; think about what this will do to them.”

“Everything San has said, he’s backed up with evidence and all you can do is try to manipulate me. You should have thought about what this would to your family when you were doing it, that’s not my problem.”

You release a breath you didn’t realise you’d been holding as you slam the door. The journey back down to the lobby is quiet… and lonely.

It gives you time to ponder his words – Would San really get rid of you when you stopped being useful?

You can’t help the butterflies when you that he’s waiting for you outside, in the car, exactly in the same spot you left him.

“That was quicker than I thought it would be, did they give you any trouble?” You shrug as you put on your seatbelt.

“Not really. What could he really do anyway? The evidence is right there.” Sensing your slight discomfort, he only nods, reaching for your hand while he changes the subject.

“How about we go for dinner? There’s a new place that I want to try.”

  It’s not until the next morning that things take a turn.

You’re at home with San.

He’s in the dining room, with the other members as you’re sat in the kitchen.

You’ve been kept separate from all Ateez meetings.  

Even though you’d proven that you were trustworthy, the other members were still uncomfortable letting you be around their work, lest this was another ploy to take them down.

Although to be frank, San didn’t trust you either. He’d kept you under house arrest, under the watchful eyes of his staff, who rarely let you out of their sight. It was uncomfortable but, necessary.

If this was the only was to get San to trust you, then you’d do whatever it took.

You quietly sip your coffee when Wooyoung walks in, carrying a laptop, the other members follow in behind him.

“I need you to read this new story.” His face is stoic, not giving away any emotion and you look at San for confirmation.

“Read the article.” Although quiet, his voice carries command and you do at told. The title reads: “Head of Secret Service Agency Jinyoung Kim found dead in his office; investigation to follow.”

You gasp and look up the members, they’re watching you closely, gauging your reaction.

You read on.

‘The head of secret service agency ‘the Corporation’ Kim Jinyoung has been found dead by apparent suicide in his office.

Officers were called into the government building, this morning at 5:45am by office cleaners who found him sitting at his office desk, dead. The cleaner, who’s name has not been released, found Kim after they entered the office to enquire about taking out his garbage. When he had been unresponsive to their knocks, they opened the door and were greeted by the grizzly sight.

Officers have yet to release further details although it has been made clear that there is an ongoing investigation into what could have caused this sudden turn of events; for a man who had hopes of entering politics.

There is much speculation about how he died with one source stating, that it was a single bullet wound to the head. A suicide note was found but, its contents have yet to be released.

Speaking to reporters at Atiny news a source close to the family has said that his wife is devastated: “She never expected this to happen, he was in good spirits when he left for work yesterday morning, it didn’t seem like anything was wrong. She’s really in shock.”

You stop reading the article, shocked into silence.

“Why are you showing me this?” Wooyoung looks at you, his expression still unreadable.

“We thought you’d want to know.” Wooyoung smiles at you sadly.

San wraps his arms around you from behind, his head on your shoulder.

“How are you?” You sigh as he whispers in your ear.

“I’m shocked I guess. I didn’t pull the trigger but, I might as well have.” The others sit around the island as Hongjoong scoffs.

“The man’s a snake; don’t feel sorry for him. You think he’d care if you’d been killed? He would’ve just sent someone else in after you.” The others nod in agreement.

“I don’t but, I feel sorry for his wife and kids, they don’t deserve this, if it comes out that he was dirty, she won’t get his retirement fund and you know how people are; they’ll destroy her too.” You place your head in your hands as Jongho speaks up.

“He should’ve thought of that before he nailed his coffin. Think of all the people’s lives he’s ruined. His wife will be fine; she’s got a good support system around her.”

They all file out after that, leaving you alone with San, they’re faces showing clear signs that they didn’t like your response.

“They don’t trust me.”

“Can you blame them?” He doesn’t bat an eyelid, rebutting your statement with ease.

It leaves you floored.

San places his hand under your chin, making you look him in the eye.

“Y/N, I know you mean well, and the others do too but, it hasn’t been long enough for us to trust you with the intricacies of this job. Even you talking to your boss yesterday. You could have easily been a double spy. What would we do if you were only using us to give your boss more information or to buy yourself time? What would I do then? There’s a lot on the line.” Even though what he says is reasonable, you can’t help the surge of anger that rushes through you.

“What about me isn’t trustworthy San? I told you everything that I knew about the Corporation, if it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have been able to get to Jinyoung. There’s no way you could walk in there and not get arrested or killed!” You throw your hands up and push San’s hand away, ready to dramatically storm out of the kitchen.

You know the other members are nearby and can probably hear everything that you’re saying (they’ve gone right back to making sure you’re barely alone with San, even at home) but, you don’t care.

“Do you know how my father died?” His voice is hushed but urgent, his eyes showing a vulnerability that you never thought you’d see from such a staunch man.

He was pleading, without words, for you to understand.

“I read about it in your file.” San scoffs.

“Of course you did.” Your previous job was still a point of contention across all of Ateez, who couldn’t understand why San would still want you around.

It was a point of contention among the members, founding and otherwise: What would stop you from double-crossing them the same way you did your bosses.

San sighs.

“He was double-crossed by someone he trusted, and he’d known that man for years. For most of the time I’ve known you, you were plotting to kill me. That’s the reality of it. I love you but, I don’t trust you; not yet.” His face is solemn but, he isn’t budging.

You get it.

“I get it. If a man that your father considered a friend could betray after years of friendship, then what’s to say I won’t do the same? I understand that San, I do but, how am I supposed to prove that I’m trustworthy? Haven’t I shown you all that enough?” You hear a distant ‘yeah right’ and several noises of agreement, from the dining room but, you ignore it.

If San heard he makes no show of it, his face remaining unchanged.

“The short answer is no. Trust is hard-earned, and in this business? Even more so. It’s going to take time before I trust with more than just my house-key.” He leaves the kitchen after that, leaving no room for argument.

You can only mull over his words.

He was right.

If you hadn’t fallen for him, wouldn’t you have killed him?

How different were you really from the man who killed his father?

In the minds of Ateez, you were just as bad, if not worse and it would take time before they looked at you as anything other than the enemy.

It was clear that you were on their watch-list but, it didn’t matter, you would do whatever it took to get back in their good graces.

New mission: make Ateez trust you again.

[evabellasworld]

I Give You My Heart

Chapter 3

AO3 Link | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

13+ and above for cursing and mild violence

——————————————————————————————

Summary:  When Riyo Chuchi’s life was threatened, Commander Fox and Jedi Knight Ava Lira and Eva Bella Young are assigned to bring the senator back to her home planet Pantora, where she will be safe from harm. But when the assassin knows her whereabouts, it’s up to Fox, Lira, Eva, and Riyo to work together and stop the assassin.

————————————————————————————-

Scratching below her chin, Riyo stared at the checkerboard as Fox glanced at her, tapping his fingers on the lamp table. She moved her eyes around the board and focused on his chess piece, which the queen. According to her knowledge, the queen is the most powerful piece in chess and could eliminate hers if she’s not careful.

Chess has always been a favourite game, especially when she’s playing with her parents. Her mother, who was descended from nobles, would emphasize the importance of playing chess and how it is applicable in life, especially law and politics.

“In your career, you must learn to study your opponents in order to push yourself to success,” Riyo recalled her advice. “If you give away your position, they will take advantage of you and pounce on you like feral dogs when they see the chance. That is the first rule of law and politics, never open up your vulnerabilities to others, no matter how nice they seem.”

It was ironic, really, because Riyo finds herself opening up to Commander Fox, despite her mother’s warning when she delved into politics. He was no politician, only a soldier bred for war. He doesn’t take bribes or cheat or even tell a lie just for his personal reasons. No, that’s not Commander Fox that Riyo knows. The Commander Fox that she knows was honourable, brave, and honest, and right now, he’s waiting for her next move in the game.

“Are you going to move or what?” Fox groaned, resting his face on his palms. “I’ve been sitting here for hours, waiting for you to move your chess piece.”

“My apologies for keeping you waiting, Fox,” Riyo let out a chuckle as she moved her pawn sideways, taking the queen out of the game. Fox’s eyes widened as he watched Riyo placing his chess piece beside her on the lamp table, with the other pieces that she had taken from the board.

He grunted as he desperately counted his chess piece that was left on the board, with only his king, his knight, his bishop, and his rook spared, for now. Since this was the first time he’s playing this game with someone else, it’s no surprise to him that he would lose to a senator, who was born at the rice farm and was formally educated at a prestigious law school.

Despite that, Fox is determined to win this game, even when the outcome is not in favour of him. He closed his eyes for a brief moment and took a deep breath as he pushed his rook forward, pushing away one of her pawns. “Your turn, senator,” he reminded her, giving her a cocky grin.

Riyo could only let out a mischievous grin as she moved her queen sideways, facing his king. “Checkmate,” she declared, making Fox’s smile disappear. “You should move your king to a safer place.”

Fox blinked and sighed sheepishly as he moved his king one step away from the queen, only for Riyo to gestured her head at his chess piece. “My rook is a few steps away from you.”

“Goddammit,” he whined as he moved his king to his right, only to notice her knight, that could ambush him in an L-shaped. Fox felt a drip of sweat on his forehead. With nowhere for his king to move on the board, the only thing he could do now was to admit defeat towards his opponent, who he also finds intelligent, something that most senators, besides Senator Amidala and Senator Organa. “Alright, Riyo, you won. Congratulations on your victory in chess.”

“Why thank you, kind sir,” she smiled to herself, as she placed the board away, adjusting her legs that are buried underneath a thin blanket. “You were good too, just need a bit more practice, yeah?”

“I guess you're right,” he got up, helping her to pack the board game for her since she needed plenty of rest from the blasts. “Anyways, how are you holding up so far? Good, bad, or neutral?”

“More on the bad side, unfortunately,” Riyo sighed. “I can't help but worry about my friends, especially Bibi. I want to wish that she was alright, but at the same time, I feel like she may not be able to make it through, considering the blast was...well, intense.”

Fox tightened his lips as he sat beside her and squeezed her hand, much to her delight. “I understand where you are coming from, Riyo, but worrying too much won't do any good to you. You need to relax if you want to get better as soon as possible.”

“I know, Fox,” she squeezed his hands back. “But I can't help it, especially since it was rather unexpected.”

“Yeah, it was. I didn't think that the assassin would be smart enough to put a bomb in the Senate building, especially if it's a tripwire, you know. We're trying to figure out how did that person snuck in, or how did they set the bomb, but so far, there was nothing.”

“It's a shame, huh? There are people willing to let go of their morals just to gain some credits, even when they know they are in the wrong.”

“Yeah, it is. I guess assassins and politicians are no different, except for their willingness to get their hands dirty. While bounty hunters and assassins would openly admit that they killed someone, senators cower when things don't go their way, no offense to you, Riyo.”

“None was taken, actually,” Riyo chuckled. “You have a good point there. It is unfortunate that those same senators who swore to serve their people are the ones who won't hesitate when they accept luxury gifts in exchange for selling off their soul.”

With all the talks of negativity between the both of them, Riyo felt like changing the subject instead just to ease her worries about Bibi, whom she heard she's in a critical condition from one of the nurses that served her with kindness. “Anyways, how are you and your siblings? I heard from Lip that your duty as a Coruscant Guard has expanded. Is that true?”

“Yeah, it has,” he nodded. “The Chancellor wanted us to take most of the Senate Guards' duty since there was a spread of corruption within their ranks.”

“I hope you are getting yourself a good rest, Fox,” she advised him. “Yves told me that she caught you dozing off in your office a few nights ago. Are you alright?”

“Well, the Chancellor gave me a massive pile of paperwork yesterday for me to complete them by this week. I ended up dozing while I was doing half of them, and then Yves woke me up.”

“Oh dear, please don’t overwork yourself, Fox. You need to rest if you want to perform well in your job.”

“I just can’t help it, Ri. If I don’t get all of my paperwork done, then I have to deal with the consequences of the Chancellor himself, and you know how he is.”

“He is particular in every paperwork we sent,” she sighed. “And if it's not perfect, he'll ask us to do it again, until he is satisfied with his answer. But he won't say it directly to your face, though, he would be-”

“Subtle about it,” he finished her sentence, letting out a chuckle. “Yeah, I know how things work when it comes to the Chancellor.”

“At least he's tolerable, unlike most senators I've worked with.”

Fox doubted Riyo's words, but then again, she is a sentient being. The Chancellor puts on a charade and acts all nice to the senators and the Jedi, but when it comes to the Corrie Guards, well, things could have been worse for him and his siblings.

Before he could utter a word, his comlink beeped, prompting him to pick it up. “Lip, anything so far?”

“Sir, you have to get Senator Chuchi out of here,” the trooper warned him. “There is an assassin in his hospital.”

“What the-” Fox exclaimed, springing out from his seat. “Where is he?”

In a moment, there was a red dot pointed on Riyo's chest, prompting him to shield the senator in his embrace. The windows shattered as the wall was shot with a sniper rifle.

Riyo finds her breathing turning rapidly as she holds her grasps around Fox's arms, praying that she doesn't get hit by her killer-for-hire.

It felt like a second to be discovered and almost get her own life taken away. She could do nothing but to get herself to safety and hope for the best. But at the same time, she worries about Fox.

What if Fox gets himself killed while he catches the killer? She thought as she saw the nurses rushing inside her ward, wondering whether she is alright.

“The killer is in Level 39 of the Enterprise Tower,” Fox commed his troops. “All squad, set your weapon to stun and reprimand this suspect immediately.”

“What about you, Commander?” Riyo asked, addressing him by his rank.

“I'll be taking you to safety, Senator, now come on.”

[theangrypokemaniac]

Ma and Pa James's Second Biggest Fan (we plough a lonely furrow) continues to find Ma Jess's appeal mystifying, since everything about her is negative:

1. Signing up for Team Rocket suggests someone of a morally dubious character to start with, but the truth lies in the clothing, and she's in black!

Black!

It's code for her personality:

• Jessie wears white:

Pure, beautiful, innocent, sweet-natured, not really bad, dealt a severe hand in life but a fighter.

• Cassidy wears black:

EVIL!!! EVIL, EVIL, EEEEEEVUL!!! FOUL SIRENIC TEMPTRESS!!! EVIL HEARTLESS BITCH STEALING JAMES'S NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN WEEPINBELL!!!

Speaking of which:

2. She was Madame Boss's best agent.

You don't get there being kind.

To reach that standing requires hundreds of successful heists, and we aren't talking nicking gold bars. It's living things.

How many Pokémon do you imagine she stole with merciless efficiency?

How many children did she set upon, pinching every animal they had?

How many innocent lives did she ruin by depriving kids of the pets they loved, never to see them again, eaten away with the not-knowing and the false hope?

The glory of her reign ran on the fuel of blood and tears.

What fate do you envision awaited those Pokémon? It's not exchanging one master for another, it's entering slavery.

Jessie and James aren't the epitome of Team Rocket. They are minnows on the outskirts, despised and mocked by most of their fellow members. The actual group isn't particularly famous for prioritizing Pokémon welfare.

The preferable outcome is being handed out to agents to help catch other victims. Otherwise it's transformation into a war machine, forced to fight on and on to the point of exhaustion and death, no doubt tortured and tested on to boot.

What happens if they don't come up to scratch or are pushed for years until too aged and broken to be of any use? Are Team Rocket ready to pension them off to animal sanctuary?

As if. It's euthanasia or on to the streets to waste away, if not fed to the strongest first.

Ma Jess knew this and worse occurred thanks to her, yet paid it no mind, and felt not a single twinge of guilt in that time of service, then met her end trying to draw another Pokémon into imprisonment.

Some might say it was a case of what goes around, comes around. As her behaviour led to God knows how many Pokémon dying alone, leaving their loved ones to wonder and grieve, so in turn did she die alone in the snow, and Jessie had to carry on without her.

I'm not against Ma Jess, I neither feel like or dislike, but I don't understand how so many fans can happily overlook her murky past of inflicting pain, instead elevating her to a semi-divine tragic heroine, yet apparently Ma and Pa's heinous offences of not stealing and treating Pokémon well are beyond forgiveness.

3. It's the Red Ribbon Army! Save yourselves!

Jessie joined Team Rocket to follow in Ma's footsteps. James went with her. Both moved (upwardly in scale, downwardly in morals) from Sunny Town's gang of petty thief kids to a complex Mafia organisation stretching its wriggling tentacles around the world to crush the air from its lungs.

Why? Ma Jess's baleful influence led the two down that path.

Of course Jessie wants to copy Ma, how and where else can she feel close to her?

There's not even a grave to visit!

Rising in the ranks and Giovanni's favour is both to strike it rich and take her place, becoming Ma in essence. That would make her proud, which is all Jessie ever wanted.

What alternative is there? Stay with Chopper and Tyra forever, ekeing an existence pickpocketing and shoplifting, until mortality comes calling sooner than is welcome, or get loaded quickly and retire early?

James theoretically could've gone home at this point, but when it came to which angry redhead he preferred to beat him up, he chose Jessie.

He was henceforth obliged to go whenever she led, even if it meant following the ghost of her mother into the jaws of evil.

They have an excuse, but what was Ma's for getting involved?

However much they boast and revel in their wickedness, the motto proves the couple still believe themselves on a noble quest, despite everything to the contrary, and why?

Jessie isn't about to accept that Ma Jess, whom she's probably idolized as one of few people to love her and a role model of how a woman should be, was nasty or unpleasant. If she was in Team Rocket, it must be good, whatever the outer appearance.

Except Jessie and James are bad at being bad. They are not master criminals. All their plans fail, rendering them poor and starving in consequence. The inner circle of Team Rocket will always be barred to them because they lack the inner darkness it requires.

The joke is they flourish in any other occupation, whether that be Salon Rocquet, reporters, or flogging merchandise and food at the League. If employed elsewhere they'd be better off, but they have to stay because Jessie can't let go, or bear the thought she might be a disappointment to her mother's name. A different career looks unworthy by comparison.

What, so Ma and Pa have got no son because of Ma Jess? They just wanted him to be a gentleman!

If she hadn't set such a terrible example to her daughter she might have an increased quality of life, but then had she done so Ma wouldn't be dead in the first place.

4. Can't pick 'em can she?

What was it that first attracted Ma to Windy Miller? Does she go for the rustic charm, or the promise of a lifetime's supply of bread to feed the abundance of babies planned?

Don't do it, Ma! He's an alky!

Some birds are like that you see. It's the maternal instinct gone haywire. They find a local reprobate and somehow decide he's really a damaged soul crying out for love, the scapegoat of a cruel society.

He's not evil, he's just misunderstood!

This is why you get nutters wanting to marry the Yorkshire Ripper: they put his 'mischief' down to bad women mistreating his gentle heart, but they of course are devoted to his happiness. They can change him.

You don't know him like I do!

In their fantasy, under the influence of a 'proper' woman he'll transform in to a flower-picking hippie, but not too much, they still like him to be dangerously 'manly' (keeps 'em on their toes), then they can feel smugly superior and more truly female than the 'lesser' breed who failed to tame his sexy pashuns.

And if there's one thing Windy has in abundance, it's raw animal magnetism.

Stop it, Ma! You can't help those who don't want helping!

She put up with the boozing, the flour dust and his somewhat limited communication skills, but what really let him down was the company he kept.

Ever after she would insist Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub led him astray. That's firemen for yer.

Cuthbert? That name's died out.

Sure enough, some point after Ma Jess was stuffed up the spout, old Windy legged it back to Camberwick Green, like the rascal he is, and not a sweet penny piece did she receive in maintenance, the bastard.

At least Ma James got pregnant by a man who stood by her.

She wasn't married to Windy Miller!

Oh, you mean they were living over the brush? I see.

It's all in your head!

Do it my way, and we have Pa Jess. Do it yours, and we're back to a cavernous emptiness. Unless you can supply a picture of the 'real' (pffft) Pa Jess, this is the best available.

Anyway, 'Jessie Miller' just sounds right.

Coincidence? I think not.

5. She went to look for Mew dressed like this.

I could forgive it had she gone in her normal uniform, that's just whimsy, but to have made some effort emphasises that it's not enough!

Some part of her understood a mountain might be a bit parky out, but this was deemed sufficient coverage!

What happened?

She bloody died didn't she?!

6. Ma Boss points the way to doom.

Ma Jess was at least loyal to the mistress she served, but it was a wasted dedication. She squandered her life obeying a heartless virago who could cast aside apparently valued staff without a qualm, whatever thanks she owed them.

The millions Ma Jess accumulated for Madame are probably uncountable, yet she was so worthless that, when dispatched to the mountain, on her own, expected to catch a Legendary Pokémon, by herself, which many doubted even existed, and wasn't likely to come quietly, or put up with orders, but then didn't come back, Madame Boss allowed her only child to sink into poverty and the infamous 'care' of the State.

Everyone knows what goes on there. Entering a home has replaced the workhouse as the place of dread.

Jessie might have been killed or attacked and it didn't remotely concern Madame Boss, unwilling to spare a meagre fraction of her massive fortune to give the girl she made an orphan any comfort or security.

What did she matter? Her mother failed. Why reward that?

In her turn, Jessie became just as obsequious to an undeserving master, who went further than his mama and actively tried to murder her, and still she suffers to please him.

Team Rocket devoured her mother, and now it's swallowed her.

Oh, and Madame Boss got her way upon discovering Mew's fossil, so Ma Jess died for nothing.

7. This.

I'm not surprised Mew wouldn't go with Ma. She probably sensed the vivisection awaiting, and didn't give a toss about the avalanche in revenge.

Mew hasn't got where she is today falling for any old shallow promises from a stranger, thank you.

Suppose the mission had worked, with Mew caught and gift wrapped for Madame's delectation: what then?

Perhaps Mew's power, proving so impressive, would've pushed any cloning scheme aside, leaving Mewtwo unborn and Mew as the mightiest weapon. Or in greed Madame Boss demands more, and in arrogance the scientists promise the earth, the seas and the heavens.

Mew I could see subjected to some non-lethal form of dissection, just to understand how she ticked, that is if they could build the cage to hold her.

As they couldn't, and catching Mew was never a possibility, then Ma Jess's sacrificed herself on a fool's errand, which was obviously one from the outset. If Mew was easy to handle she'd have been captured long before now.

Either Ma dies, Mew's safe, but Madame Boss starts the cloning scheme anyway, or Ma's victorious, Mew is a tool of Team Rocket and the scientists have more sample to experiment upon. Mewtwo is still made, alongside short-lived creations and dozens of unseen freakish abominations preceding.

Now Mewtwo isn't what you call at peace with himself, nor has he received a particularly wholesome experience. One could think Ma indirectly caused that. Her branch of the project may have fizzled to cinders but she still played her role.

What would her legacy have been but to help bring forth the being that wiped out mankind? Where's the future for Jessie when there isn't one?

It's not her fault, but she died in the name of cloning a biological disaster, the creation of synthetic life leading to the destruction of it all.

8. Let's have a gander at Ma in the anime:

• Can afford rent.

• Can afford a tray.

• Can afford crockery.

• Can afford condiments to add flavour to food.

• Can't afford any actual food.

Something's wrong there.

I intended to include affording clothes too, but now I'm not so sure.

I never took Ma to be a brown-all-over kind of woman. At least she gave the fancy stuff to Jessie.

For years I've assumed she wore a brightly coloured jacket, but now I suspect it's a red one heavily patched up, because buying a replacement isn't an option.

Really old clothes are being mended with whatever can be salvaged from even more worn-out clobber.

Best agent Madame Boss has and she's practically living in her own filth.

Team Rocket takes care of its own, eh?

Oh no, let's not get a proper job, one that allows me to provide for my daughter and doesn't ask for my life. Let's stay in this one!

9. Look at Jessie's face!

By her own admission, being tricked into eating snow is the best thing that ever happened to her during an 'otherwise wretched childhood', to the extent she doesn't know it was wrong!

I don't hear Ma and Pa doing that. The only ice James got was an ice-cream sandwich.

What kind of infancy did Ma Jess give the girl for her to be nostalgic about almost dying of malnutrition?

If we say that's a foster mother as in the sub, it means Jessie's fondest memory is after Ma died, which is too brutal for me.

Yeah, thank goodness she's snuffed it.

You think Ma might have taught her not to eat snow! She left her so ill-prepared!

Consequently the sub version makes Ma Jess an awful creature, although I don't see why that Jessie would so desire to mimic a mom she apparently doesn't care about.

10. She's not even bloody here!

I have no picture to signify absence, therefore I must show whom she left behind.

Ma Jess is Pokémon's answer to Bobba Fett: background figure, barely involved, no information, dies early, yet became a fan favourite nevertheless.

If nothing really exists, what is there to like? Why are you contented weaving smoke?

When Rocketshippers put forward the manga as proof, the Anti-Ships used to insist that it 'didn't count' for being set in a 'separate universe'.

If that still goes, and only the contents of the anime apply to the anime, well then it's bye-bye to Ma Jess and Madame Boss, because they aren't real either.

I sometimes think that's true. However traumatic, would Jessie not have acknowledged her mother by now otherwise?

We grasp the characters all had two parents in a nebulous fashion, although not being real people means they don't 'technically' need them, but Ma Jess is the only one who vanished to be granted a face. Why is she then ignored?

She's briefly glimpsed in a passing scene of a single episode of the first series and is never seen or referenced again. The sub doesn't even have that. Where was the use in creating her if only to leave that thread of the tale billowing in the breeze?

We may decide her actions affect Jessie's but we're only imprinting assumptions. She might as well have remained unwritten for all that's made of her.

What we can glean doesn't bode well, irrespective of things left unmentioned.

Her one redeeming deed was dying, thus at least she didn't choose to abandon Jessie. We may presume she'd have stayed with her girl given the chance.

By my reckoning that puts her as Fifth-Best Mother Of Pokémon, behind Ma Brock, Ma James, Dame Ketchum and Ma Boss, in that order.

Then they're those who claim she never died, so she just pissed off like everyone else, rendering her devoid of a single positive quality.

This is the woman you sigh and agonise over for decades.

Ma and Pa are right there, man! Show 'em some love!

[spyder-m]

Shumako Week 2020, Day Three: Stay With Me

@shumakoweek​ Day Three:  Arsene&Johanna / Metaverse.

AO3 / FF.net

Summary: Between recent backlash against the Phantom Thieves, the discovery of her sister's Palace, Akechi's plot to capture Ren and their plans to thwart it; there was a lot weighing on Makoto's mind. A seemingly routine trip to Mementos uncovers just how much of a toll it was taking. 

.

There had been a lot weighing on Makoto’s mind over the last few weeks.

It had started with the discovery of Sae’s palace.

Makoto had suspected something may have been amiss from the way sis had been behaving lately, growing increasingly tense; blinded by her drive to excel and lashing out at those who stood in her way.

She had wanted to brush it off as a product of the pressure her workload was putting her sister through. Though, after what she had seen, what she had learnt of the Metaverse, she could no longer delude herself.

The woman who raised her following their father’s death; the only family she had left; was a shadow of her former self, distorted beyond recognition.

Not long after, they had learnt of Akechi’s plot to have Ren arrested, to lead him into the underground interrogation room and ultimately...

She and the rest of the Phantom Thieves had carefully plotted a countermeasure. Yet, for every variable, every potential outcome they had considered, Makoto couldn’t help but worry that there was something they had overlooked.

That, despite their best efforts, Ren would be led to his death.

It wasn't unlikely, given everything that they had to keep their minds on. Their usual deadline, the recent backlash against the Phantom Thieves, the other Metaverse user, Akechi's scheme... It was overwhelming.

There were more issues than they could keep track of, let alone devote adequate attention to resolving. Even divided up amongst all eight of the Phantom Thieves.

With time, the pressure was smothering Makoto. Yet she shrouded it beneath a brave face. As the group's advisor, they relied on her for guidance. She couldn't let them know that she was worried. That would only shake the group's morale further. The doubt would spread.

Makoto was thankful for the trip they had taken into Mementos, even if it was only a routine stop to clear out weaker shadows.

Joker had suggested they take the time to work with Akechi. In the hopes they would meld together more effectively as a unit in the palace, up against deadlier opponents.

Though, in truth, she suspected it was for her benefit. That he had noticed her distress.

Normally, such a detour would see Makoto chastising the rest of the team for not using their time wisely; particularly when planning to a face target of such pressing urgency.

Though, at this point, anything to drive her focus away from Sae's palace was welcome. As must as she wanted to save her sister, the reality of her distorted heart was, at times, too much for Makoto endure.

It was certainly much easier to alleviate the tension she felt, when she was throttling shadows with practiced ease.

Not since awakening Johanna for the first time, had Makoto expended so much energy fighting in the Metaverse. Sweat beaded from her pores as she landed the killing blow on the last of their enemies. She closed her eyes, concentrating on each depleting droplet; as if it were every last ounce of stress seeping away from her body.

Makoto hadn't been relying on her Persona much throughout their fights, but instead focusing on close combat. With all that was plaguing her mind, she wasn't sure she could handle the mental exertion of using Johanna, and kept her fists raised.

She had always favoured a more aggressive fighting style in the Metaverse, an inverse of the obedient honour student image tied to her outside. Yet, today her movements were particularly wild and erratic, fuelled more by adrenaline than technique.

She wasn’t taking the time to analyse enemies or exploiting their weakness as might normally be expected. She stepped forward without a second thought. At times, even seeking out battles with enemies that could have been avoided.

It was oddly careless of her, a habit they couldn’t afford to fall into the Casino. If it wasn’t for the sheer strength advantage they possessed over their opponents, any mistake she made could have been fatal.

It hadn't gone unnoticed by Joker, who quickly pulled her from the party, calling on Noir to replace her.

Once Makoto had stepped back, with nothing else to do, nothing left but her thoughts, she began analysing their enemies, offering her teammates advice to capitalise on as normal.

The task was menial, a momentary distraction for her. She could take comfort in what was familiar, pretending that there weren't larger, more terrifying problems outside of what she was focused on.

They made even the depths of Mementos seem much smaller.

When the group dispersed for the evening, a chattering Futaba and Morgana making their way towards the Yongen-Jaya line, Ren lingered behind, watching her closely.

Tension cramped Makoto’s muscles, overtly conscious of his line of sight weighing upon her. She wanted nothing more than to slip away without a word, but his concern was too palpable to believably ignore.

“Ren? Is something the matter?”

Shouldering his bag, Ren's head nodded towards the train station, motioning for her to follow.

"Come on."

.

There was something about the attic in Leblanc that could always set Makoto’s mind at ease.

From the onset, she had been welcomed into the cafe eagerly. Never shielded away by low, whispered voices, or sharp glares.

There was a quaint familiarity about the room. Something liberating in the scattered, empty chairs and cluttered desk; knowing it was here that they, the Phantom Thieves, had gathered to take down some of the city's most powerful criminals.

It was a fitting stage. Somewhere neglected and shut out. Judged on a cursory glance, without any care taken to recognise closely what was held within.

It was there that Makoto had finally felt in touch with herself. As though she finally had the power to exert control in her life. Not someone looked down upon or coerced in to doing favours.

It was soft curls of hair, the spices lingering in his breath. It was textbooks and study notes piled up amongst infiltration tools. It was shy stolen kisses on a worn couch, warm caresses and softly whispered words.

The same couch where they had learnt so much of one another, was where he sat now; arms open and beckoning her forward.

Suddenly conscious of how tired she felt, Makoto accepted the offer. She nestled in beside Ren, fitting comfortably into the plains of his chest. Exhaling lowly, his hand shifted to sift through her hair. Lazy, drugging caresses.

The temptation pulled at her, to simply snuggle up and forget the rest of the world; to let time to fade into nothing.

But, she couldn't.

Makoto knew that Ren was leading her on gently. That at any moment he would find the words to lay out everything she was trying to bury. This was just a means of lowering her defences.

In anticipation she spoke first.

“You don’t need to worry about me.” Makoto broke after a moment, her head shifting from its cushion against his body. “There are much more important matters at hand-”

The words faltered on her lips as Ren rose his hand.

“Makoto.” Ren instructed firmly. “Look at me.”

Makoto glanced down, tentatively. Unnerved by the prospect of meeting Ren’s gaze. It was disarming how easily he could read her, as though the mask she covered herself with was useless.

The Third Eye.

Ren was well-versed in discerning between what was real and what was not. It was an ability that had been an integral part in toppling many of the palaces they'd ventured before.

In such close proximity, avoiding his gaze was difficult. It was a deliberate, conscious effort, one that would only reveal she had something to hide.

Regardless of her action, she was trapped.

It would be foolish of her to think that she could deceive the leader of the Phantom Thieves.

That feeling of defeat and helplessness was becoming painfully familiar to Makoto as she eventually relented, eyes lifting to catch his own. Though, the soft pools awaiting her reflected sincerity and compassion, her momentary dread abating.

“It's important to me.” Ren insisted. "With what we're about to do, I need to know that you're in your right mind. You're our advisor, after all."

Makoto's glance trailed downward again, sagging further under the burden she shouldered. His hand lingered there, squeezing gently, the pressure seeming to alleviate the load.

“I know Queen. She’s proud, and strong, and always sure of herself. She’s not someone who is easily shaken." Ren's own gaze lifted, bashfully, as he spoke so fondly of her. The love and admiration he felt apparent.

"You can't lose your way like that in Mementos and pretend carry on as if everything is fine.”

Makoto's head dipped, a reluctant nod.

No matter the hardships facing them in the real world, how scared they may have felt, they rarely affected them with the same intensity into the Metaverse. If anything, they; along with their Persona, determination and will to rebel; imbued them with the courage and strength to fight.

For the power they lacked, they possessed infallible strength of heart.

For her to carry doubts into the Metaverse, it would be a detriment not only to herself, but the entire team. Joker had recognised as such and pulled her out of the fight. He had stayed behind, wanting to take the time to check on her.

“If something's troubling you, you shouldn't keep it from the rest of us. I know things are stressful right now, but you need to stop burdening yourself."

Ren's fingers collected each side of her face, gently coaxing her towards him. Bangs over their foreheads tangling; their eyes a deep, earnest link.  

"We're all in this together.” He reassured softly, breath mingling with hers. “We’ve done everything we can. We’re going to save Niijima-san.”

"That's... That's not all I'm worried about though.” She answered, voice similarly lowering “What about you?"

"About me?" Ren blinked; blank expression etched across his face. Makoto sighed. For all the care and selflessness he extended towards the others, he rarely considered his own well-being.  

"You heard what Akechi said. What if we haven't prepared enough?"

“Makoto... I'm sure it will all work out. I trust you. All of you. I am comfortable putting my life in your hands. You’ve never led me astray before."

"You're not going to get rid of me that easily." He smirked. "Who'd lead the Phantom Thieves without me? Morgana?"

Laughter peeled from her throat, imaging the boost to proud thief’s ego such power would bring; relishing in the opportunity to order Ryuji around.

The feeling was pleasant, carefree.

"Ren?" Makoto whispered, after a moment, her head dipping back beneath his shoulder. "Can I stay here? Just a little bit longer? Sis won't be coming home again tonight, and I..."

Even when her voice had already been faint, Makoto trailed off, afraid to put words to the fear eating at her insides.

In that place, she would be alone. Trapped, steadily engulfed by thoughts of her sister, slaving away on a case that was slowly plaguing her heart.

“Of course." Ren answered, cupping the back of her head. "Stay as long as you want.”

[twentytwo0one]

Yautaung

The Yautaung are a cephalopod-like species originating from the planet Yau in the Minoan Wasteland. They maintain an embassy in the Confederation, but are generally uninvolved in galactic matters.

Appearance

Yautaung look very similar to the cephalopods of earth such as squid or octopi, their “body” is comprised of thick tentacles fused together to form a torso and limbs, with the large head on top and running the length of the back being the converging point for these tentacles, and the housing structure for most of the internal organs. Two or more eyes sit on either side of the head, and the spider-like mouth is constantly hidden by 6-8 tentacles protruding around it. Yautaung have limited chromatophores which allow them to change colour, but only in spectrums most other species cannot see. Otherwise they may appear gray blue or purple. Their DNA is extremely diverse, and one Yautaung may not look anything like another, with small spines, extra tentacles, spots or patterns, and other such differences.

Biology

The Yautaung evolved from other mammal-cephalopods like beings that lived and dwelled in the shallow seas close to land on Yau. To escape the very large predators living in the deep oceans of their home, the Yautaung eventually evolved in order to thrive on land, and adopted the convergent, bipedal form that most sapient spacefaring species possess as well.

Yautaung are invertebrates, their entire bodies comprised of flexible boneless tentacles that they use to walk and manipulate objects. The head, which contains all of the major organs, is very large and extends along the “back” of the yautaung to form the dorsal organ cavity. Most of the primary organs lie in the dorsal cavity, which can be actively protected due to their positioning, but are vulnerable from behind. The “body” which consists purely of fused tentacles, is anatomically referred to as the false torso. The muscles in the tentacles that make up the false torso need to be able to support the individual without bones, out of water, and in an upright bipedal position, and thus are incredibly dense. Despite their flexibility, a yautaung tentacle would feel as solid as wood to the touch, which is mirrored by their innate physical strength; most adult yautaung can crush a human femur to powder simply by squeezing it.

Because most of their bodies are muscle, the Yautaung require very powerful circulatory and respiratory systems. To breathe, a yautaung has hundreds of small spiracles lining the edge of the dorsal cavity where it meets the false torso. These spiracles contract and expand to force air/water in and out over a series of and thus possess five hearts. Four brachial hearts compliment the systemic heart - itself large in comparison to those of most other sentients – and are positioned in pairs along the lower and upper portions of the body, acting as boosters and therefore relieving significant stress off the systemic heart.

Yautaung eyes are each trinocular, seeing three different images separately, and six when combined. They also detect fourteen colour wavelengths. While it is difficult for Yautaung eyes to decipher colours that a human can see, they are the only eyes that can see the colours that their chromatophores can output. While to other species would simply see a yautaung as being grey, another yautaung might see another as any one of a number of alien and unknowable colours. On at least one occasion an individual has had their eyes surgically or cybernetically altered to be able to see these yautaung colours; however, as the brain cannot yet be altered in a way that would allow it to process these new colours, the subject would suffer dementia and at worst permanent psychosis.

DNA of a Yautaung is the most diverse of any recorded species, and results in Yautaung looking severely different from one another. Rarely will one encounter one whose tentacles fuse in the same direction as another. Secondary eyes, spines, webbing and a plethora of other features numbering so many that splitting the yautaung into subspecies would be effectively impossible. The most extreme variances could be the presence of an additional pair of arms, or a lack of individual legs in favour of a single column, that can grind across the ground using muscle contractions. The yautaung genome seems to be highly mutative, and even parents with similar features may not have a child that bears significant resemblance to them.

Yautaung reproduce via females generating unfertilized eggs after puberty. Once an egg is developed, a female lays it’s egg which is coated in powerful pheromones, which (prehistorically) drew a male to the egg. Eggs do not have a hard shell, and need to be laid in water. If the male is unimpressive, the female may turn him away and wait for another. The female may also choose not to lay an egg at all, causing it to be broken down inside and used for nutrients. If the male is suitable, the male swallows the egg through a special canal near the mouth, which brings it into a chamberin the upper chest where it is inseminated, the male will then carry it until it hatches. They usually mate for life and are very social, usually living in groups of several families. A Yautaung separated from its own kind will take to frequenting social abodes, similar to primitive shoaling.

Homeworld

Yau is a world 90% coated in shallow seas and deep ocean, orbiting an energetic white star, resulting in a permanent, but thin blanket of clouds. The only land masses are found in tropical archipelagos along the equator. Fossilized land-based fauna found on the bottom of the seas and a massive crater on the southern hemisphere suggests that this was not always the case and that Yau was once a topographically diverse world with many biospheres like Earth.

Science suggests that while Earth-like once, it was considerably colder and it’s poles were significantly larger, until it was struck by a cosmic body with such force that it was released from stable orbit, knocking it closer to its very active star. The chaos of this event wiped out any advanced life on the planet and warmed Yau enough to melt it’s poles completely, flooding all but the tallest mountain ranges. This occurred approximately five hundred million years ago. Life started over on Yau, evolving into massive creatures not limited by space like land-based animals.

Almost uniquely, Yau’s oceans apparently contain trace amounts of vehementium particles. While slight vehementum concentrations in seas and landmasses is not uncommon on worlds with confirmed progenitor ruins, Yau possesses no such remains, though the deepest areas of it’s seas are as of yet unmapped. Yau’s vehementum contamination is slight compared to the sheer volume of it’s oceans, so the presence of the radically contrary element does not appear to have altered the growth of the local fauna, at least not in any way that can be better justified by other zoologic foundations such as abyssal gigantism.

The Minoan wasteland in which Yau resides is in fact named after it’s evident lack of significant progenitor sites. Whether the area does not contain such relics or if they have simply not been discovered yet is subject to interpretation, but the sector receives little attention from the archeological community, as there are many other unexplored reaches of space with much more promising hints to their contents.

Culture and Government

As the first species the Yautaung encountered were the Ashiik, and considering their social demeanor, many Ashiik cultural traits have rubbed off into that of the Yautaung, particularly in fields where there was little before, like the military.

The yautaung government is officially referred to as the Courts of Yau. They follow the recommendations of Elders, each representing a different island on Yau. The Elders decide all proceedings in any given situation on Yau, and due to their conservative nature, their government is very stable. Any actions taken have been analyzed, discussed, and then analyzed again. This innate caution is reflected by their nature of keeping backups and records, a repository of which is kept in a grand library in the capital. The true downside to their governing methods is that if enough research is done, their methods and outcomes will become somewhat predictable.

Outside the courts, Yautaung live in tightly-knit groups each in control of their own island. While they generally mind their own business, they are almost always welcoming to outsiders. Yautaung are not seen particularly often outside their space or off their colonies. Many have difficulty with the prospect of living in areas where there may be very few or no other Yautaung.

While their economy is relatively small, being only about the general size of that of the Humans, it is far better developed. They do not rush developments and frequently make lengthy, century long development plans. Also, they only ever trade in finished goods, having colonies rich in the resources they need to support themselves. This makes any attempt to embargo their space a fruitless endeavor.

The Yautaung as a collective are extremely talented geneticists, having accomplished much even before being introduced into the galactic community. The genetic diversity shared by them and the animal life native to Yau allowed for experimentation and developments not possible for many other species. This aptitude has inevitably carried over to medicine, and Yautaung founded corporations are responsible for many of the galaxy’s most cutting edge medical tech. This applies to both sides of the moral spectrum, an infamous example of which is GenEx Industries, who created the potential for clones to inherit the memories of their hosts. Splicing together specific Yautaung genes allowed for their genetic memory trait to carry over. How GenEx developed this technology would most likely have been through extensive (and illegal) experiments, and there are no public records on the development of this cloning technology. In addition to the taboo nature of cloning, the process of introducing yautaung genes into any clone is an unstable one due to the radical diversity of their species, and will inevitably cause medical complications later in a clone’s life. (Note that the cloning of sentients is not currently possible)

Religion

The polytheistic mainstream Yautaung religion is Zindro, which teaches the Yautaung that they have souls separate from their bodies. When death occurs, the soul leaves the body through the eyes, and it departs for Zeymah, the great underwater city; the body is not prepared in any special way, unless the eyes have been damaged and the soul cannot escape, in which case it is burned instead. Zeymah – the city of the dead – supposedly lies in the deepest, fathomless depths of the global ocean, and is extremely hard to get to as it is guarded by evil monsters. The religion contains at least thirty two deities including Bahlok, the god of land, time, communication, mercy, and funeral rites, Vaal god of destruction, change, revolution and ambition, and Maatim goddess of the sky, rain, love and sadness. It is also host to countless other minor beings such as Meibelmok the soul eater; a beast whose sphere is storms, the unknown, forbidden knowledge, secrets and fear.

While a great many Yautaung are religious, since encountering other space faring species many older ways have begin to die out as younger generations turn to other ways to interpret their place in the universe.

War Doctrine

The Yautaung as a body rarely if not never engage in active combat, and instead prefer to keep to diplomacy. This does not mean however that they are incapable warriors, as they have suffered assaults from organized crime groups, hoping to gain access to their medical technologies or considerable supply of unrefined resources.  The Yautaung keep their own small military force, mostly comprised of atmospheric combat vessels –of which they have a considerable preference - and planetary troops. Their space fleets are quite small, and mostly rely on the neighbouring Ashiik for support in that field. The Ashiik will aid the Yautaung in any war they may find themselves in, and the Yautaung will do the same for the Ashiik. They have only ever produced one warship - the Tuanuk - that while the only ship of it’s class, is remarkably well armed. It’s broadside cannons and main gun are all MHD-U and MHD-O beams respectively, and it probably is the most powerful individual ship of its kind to date.

The Yautaung method of organizing their military strongly resembles that of the Ashiik, units are organized not unlike tribal bands organized by locals. The more populous the area, the more well equipped and sizeable the unit will be. Their military is still not an irregular militia however, and again like the Ashiik, those who serve are full time professionals. There is no uniform standardized for troops either, as Yautaung biodiversity would make distribution of one similar suit a difficult undertaking.

Yautaung ground and space forces are generally very limited, relying heavily on the ashiik for support; where they excel however is in the atmosphere. They prefer airpower when dealing with threats, and maintain several flotillas capable of combat in any atmosphere, deployable from carriers in space. Their atmospheric forces are alone capable of defending their homeworld from most threats that get close enough, as the lack of solid land gives them a significant advantage.

Because of their reliance on allies for combat, most technologies used by the Yautaung are utilitarian in nature, and ships are usually designed for support roles next to larger, more front-line capable vessels. The most often used technologies in vessels include fusion thrusters and reactors, radar sensor, weak linear shielding, carbide composite armour plating and almost exclusive reliance on MHD beams for offense.

History

[momoyomaki]

Could Five realistically be autistic based solely on what we see on the show?

I stumbled across the theory that Five is autistic, and as someone with autism I find that very interesting. I’m not yet convinced he does have autism, but I’m not convinced he doesn’t either.

So let’s take this apart. :cracks knuckles:

First off, a couple things to keep in mind:

-No two autistic people are exactly the same.

-I am drawing on my own experience living with autism, and what I’ve witnessed from my sister and the kids I work with.

-Disabilities that affect the brain overlap. Many different things can affect the same areas of the brain, and we just categorize things for ease of assigning coping mechanisms. For example, if you were to take a brain scan of my brother who has PTSD, my sister who has brain damage from childhood trauma, and myself with autism, the scans would look very similar.

-Whether or not Five has autism, he most definitely has PTSD.

-Please chime in with your own theories and experiences, I’d love to open this TED talk up.

Ok here we go:

Klaus calls Five addicted to the apocalypse and he’s not wrong. Through an autistic lens, obsessing and hyper-fixating is like our bread and butter. My hyper-fixations have driven me to all sorts of extremes, like staying up for 24 hours, and giving myself heatstroke by hyper-fixating while outside. Whether Five is autistic or not he can obviously relate. His obsession with stopping the apocalypse drives him for 40+ years. He carries an eyeball around the entire time. His fixation on returning to his family keeps him going through his career as a hitman, something he makes clear he didn’t enjoy. On that note, he spent an episode walking around with a goddamn bullet wound. Talk about mind over matter, and also another tick in the hyper-fixation column. Again, when he checks on Klaus after he time travels to the Vietnam War, he’s clearly concerned for him, but gets sidetracked once again by his need to stop the apocalypse. Which is honestly valid, I mean, it’s the apocalypse.

Dolores. Anybody whose seen a decent therapist will probably have been told “yeah I know it sounds crazy, but try talking to yourself.” Being your own sounding board is a very healthy thing believe it or not, and Five uses Dolores for this purpose. Those with autism in my experience have crazy good imaginations. If I try hard enough I can fabricate fake memories to the point where I can’t quite remember it’s not true. I think this has a lot to do with the way autism thinks in pictures. Imaginary friend anyone? So Five finding Dolores and talking with her as if she were real for so long that he actually sees and hears her as a person? Totally believable and something I could see having happened to myself under the right circumstances. That being said, I feel he’s probably perfectly aware that she is, in fact, a mannequin. Dolores can be seen as a sign of Five having snapped or as a brilliant way of keeping his sanity while isolated for decades.

Coffee. Five’s caffeine addiction is probably not related to autism in anyway whatsoever, but boy can I relate. Coffee is my holy grail because it calms my personal blend of brain chemicals down enough for me to focus on things like driving. Of course that’s my ADHD talking. It’s not uncommon for those with autism to also have ADHD, but that’s a whole other post. So let’s just say Five’s relatable and leave it at that.

Sarcasm and Snark. Possibly the most common coping mechanism ever for any problem in existence. Probably just a part of Five’s glorious personality, but let’s say he developed it the way I did. As a way of taking on the world, sarcasm makes everything more bearable. It’s also a form of humor and nothing is as good as humor to cover social missteps. It takes you from being a weird outcast to being the Funny/Sarcastic Friend™️.

Five and routine. The first thing Five does when returning to the past is make his signature sandwich. Here he is, back with his family after all this time, and he doesn’t allow himself to bask in that, because the count down to the apocalypse has started. There’s no way he isn’t thrown off though, come on. 13 years old again with his family alive. When feeling shaken, most people with autism will absolutely fall back into routines even if they’re old ones. And who wants to bet he drove past at least one other perfectly serviceable shop with coffee on his way to Griddy’s and ignored them in favour of familiarity? And of course he works to get Dolores back right off the bat. When upset over the lab getting blown up he returns to what we can assume was home during the apocalypse; the library.

Five and his ability to take people at face value despite his overactive paranoia. From my experience working with those with autism, autistic people are some of the most forgiving people you will ever meet. This doesn’t have to come from a place of kindness. It’s more our black and white nature. Something used to be this way, and now it’s that way. We tend to just accept it where others might have a million questions. This goes hand in hand with our people sense. Oh we suck at reading social cues, but our instincts in regards to a persons trustworthiness are generally bang on. You see this in Five’s chat with Hazel. He doesn’t seem to have a problem buying what Hazel’s selling. Same with Klaus, who he acknowledges more then his other siblings even if it’s in a snarky manner. (He didn’t shoot Klaus down when he talked about conjuring their dad unlike Luther, and despite his angry reaction he took Klaus’ point about being addicted to the apocalypse seriously.) He gets angry when Vanya doesn’t believe him about the apocalypse but when it becomes clear that her disbelief is not malicious he doesn’t take it out on her. In contrast he doesn’t buy the Handler’s bullshit. To sum it up, Five is a practical people person, with good instincts but an outdated copy of Social Cues for Dummies. Is this autism or an effect of 40+ years alone? Both?

Five, the pragmatist. As the Handler says, Five is a first rate pragmatist which fits how a lot of those on the spectrum are very blunt, black and white thinkers. Where my family can debate politics for hours, my opinion is always the straightest path to whatever outcome I’m arguing for.

Five and clothes. Those on the spectrum tend to be hypersensitive, and clothing can be a Thing™️ for us. Certain materials feel like they're made of needles as opposed to just itchy, jeans are too tight, turtlenecks feel like a noose, etc. This is common, but sometimes it’s less about comfy sweatpants and more about familiarity. I have an undercut and if I don’t have time to get it shaved at the usual point, I get panicky. My hair feels slightly different, it looks slightly different, and it all just doesn't feel right. Five grew up wearing the academy uniform, and while he didn’t have the luxury of a suit and tie in the apocalypse, wearing a suit was clearly important to him during his time with the Commission. Even the Handler took notice, and gifted him a suit. And the second thing he does after making a sandwich in the past is find a suit that fits him. Ok, he didn’t have any options, but he didn’t have to wear the whole outfit. He could have mixed and matched. He could have stolen something from the department store. But no, he’s got to wear a suit jacket and tie. He even grabbed his tie off the guy he strangled at Griddy’s before he took care of the last dude. (Badass power move btw.) So I find it believable that the uniform was partially about appearances and partially about Five’s comfort zone, physically speaking.

(But wait, I hear you say, how can you throw in hypersensitivity when back up this post you claimed Five could have ignored his bullet wound via hyper-fixation? Here’s the thing, hyper-fixation basically mutes the notifications our bodies send us. We can be uncontrollably hypersensitive and still not clue into our bodies screaming at us while we fixate on something. But boy, we sure notice when we snap out of it.)

Five is all or nothing, ride or die. Oh boy is he ever. And most autistic people are too. We put our all into everything we do. Doesn’t always translate to doing it well, but we definitely give it our all. (In fact, we tend to over do things and need some serious recouping time after.) This can cover things already in the hyper-fixation section, like his obsession with the apocalypse. But going all in for something is different from the magnetic pull of hyper-fixation. It’s a conscious decision for one thing. The biggest example for Five is his commitment to his family. The Hargreeves are a dysfunctional family, and Five didn’t escape this by jumping to the future. He’s hardly the perfect brother but he’s the most invested in his siblings nonetheless. He became a killer for them, threw morals out the window for the slim chance he might be able to save them. And as is established pretty quickly, he put his all into being a hitman, becoming the best there ever was. That fight scene in the diner speaks for itself. And slicing up his own arm to get at the tracker? Well, it’s pretty clear that when Five commits to something he doesn’t mess around.

Five and math. Here we hit a stereotype about autistic people and their ‘special interests.’ Yeah, it’s really common, but what most people don’t know is that the majority of those on the spectrum are not math geniuses, or geniuses of any other kind. My sister’s ‘special interest’ is still relatively useful, being science, but she’s not a genius. Mine is ‘stories.’ Books, movies, theatre, music, etc. I can devour fiction forever. It’s basically useless to society though, because I’m picky af. But okay, Five fits the stereotype and is a math genius, or at least where it applies to time travel. We see this in the flashback already. Ok, time travelling didn’t work out as he’d hoped, but he managed it at 13 when even Reginald didn’t think he could. This makes me think that his tendency to spend hours working out equations didn’t start in the apocalypse.

Does Five stim? If so, we don’t really see it. That doesn’t rule out autism though, because, well, it’s a spectrum. I only stimmed as a toddler. Some people don’t stim at all.

Vanya. Another theory I’ve seen thrown around is that Vanya is autistic. I’m not going to address that here, but I do want to say that if she is, that wouldn't affect whether or not Five is autistic. Autism is not personality after all, and they are very different people. Again, autism is a spectrum and nobody displays all the same traits. If you’re thinking it would be unrealistic for Reginald. To have adopted two kids with autism, think again. That one autistic sister of mine? Adopted as a baby before we had any idea that she was a mini me.

Five doesn’t appear obviously autistic. What most people don’t realize is that autism is at the end of the day an invisible disability. Most people will know someone at some point on the spectrum and never even realize it. Because sure, sometimes you’ll see us rocking under the table or otherwise displaying what movies have stereotyped as autistic behaviour, but most of the time you won’t notice. We’re the slightly overly bright cashier at Walmart, the quiet bookworm at school, your favourite author that writes emotions so well, the person at comic con who can recite their favourite movie line for line, that kid that gets along best with those older or younger then them. If Five is autistic we may never know, because he’s perfectly functional, but that's hardly and argument against autism either.

And finally; people relate. Nobody knows autism better then those with autism themselves, so I’m inclined to take all the posts I’ve seen about Autistic!Five as a pretty big point on the autism column.

To summarize; none of these points taken alone indicate autism, but together well.... it’s an option at least.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, I will now open the stage to audience input before this monster grows any longer.

[watchingcutscene]

The Legacy of Earl Grey Tea

Pairing: Levi x Reader

The abrasive, vulgar, and indifferent man was humanity's strongest. Rather uncharacteristic of his occupation as a soldier, he was a clean freak; and despite how he seemed, Levi had a side of morality and empathy. He valued the life of his comrades more than most would think. No one had ever overtly acknowledged his aberrant compassion, but the soldiers in his squadron all knew. Behind unuttered words and his constant look of dismay, the man was more caring than he gave himself credit for. Levi despised the Jaeger brat. His temper and rash desire for revenge was eventually going to become his own undoing. Between the two of them, Levi saw an uncanny resemblance, and every time he was forced to confront this hot-tempered kid, guilt would flood his senses. That was why he despised him. In his early days of service, Levi was consumed by the death of his two friends. The guilt and anger resulted from his loss led him to resort to the most reckless of decisions. He cared about nothing other than slaughtering titans, not even his own life. In fact, recalling the scene when those titans devoured his friends like livestock, he might as well have died too. Levi was nowhere the calm and rational man the Survey Corps had known him to be today. Breaking formation, running off on his own, utterly ignoring the mission of expeditions to slaughter every titan in sight was what he was known for. His comrades died trying to protect him, but there was a fire that burned his lungs that could not be settled because every time he looked in the mirror, he saw a gaping hole in his chest that no amount of revenge could fill. But he forged on ahead, one titan at a time, even at the cost of his comrades. Returning from every expedition, the captain of his squadron would scold him, but he had no ear for that. Overtime, Levi became trapped in his isolation, convincing himself that no one was ever capable of understanding his pain. But no one’s misery was ever theirs alone. Levi’s life was not void of blessings. He was just too consumed by his grief to see it. The leader of his squadron was a Corporal, about the same age as he. She made an effort to end his solitude. In the evenings when he skipped his meals, she’d stop by his room with bread and tea. The offering was first subjected to blunt rejection. He coldly declared that he “didn’t want it”, and shut the door before she could even utter a word. When Levi took his 2 am strolls during those sleepless nights, he would catch her in her office, door open to let in the breeze, catching up on paperwork. At first they would at most exchange glances when he passed, but soon, she began inviting him in. Those sleepless nights turned into regular visits to her office, where she would brew earl grey. Levi sat rather defensively between the cushions on her couch, not moving an inch. Between her paperwork, she would look up and urge for him to drink the tea, “it won’t taste good when it’s cold”, was a phrase that frequented her lips. When Levi finally accepted her offering of dinner brought to his room, she began their first real conversation. “You can’t always go out in expeditions breaking formations recklessly like that,” she said calmly, getting straight to the point, a ghost of a smile playing upon her lips. Levi immediately began regretting his decision of letting her in. It turned out, she was just the same as everyone else. He paused for a long time before replying, “It’s our jobs to kill titans. I’m not going to stay in formation and run away from titans like the rest of those cowards.” She looked up at him, her (eye colour) eyes into his grey ones, firm and unyielding, “It’s our job to go outside the walls, complete the mission, and come back alive.” He stared at her, his anger written all over his handsome features. “Everyone here has lost someone,” she said, pouring him a cup of her tea. Seeing his silence, she continued, “you can’t let your past haunt you forever.” Her casual tone set off Levi. His steely eyes were cold when he barked at her, “what do you know about my past?” This woman that was no older than he had a maturity almost unfitting for her age, “I know what it feels like to lose friends,” she paused, watching the expression on his face skew with anger, “I lost my squad, my friends, one by one, out there, because of you.” Levi froze. The expression on her face remained calm, like all the late nights in her office, the smell of earl grey never ceasing. “Human lives are fragile,” she said with a tenderness that made Levi subconsciously relax his features, “the only thing we can do is protect what we still have.” She stood up to leave. “By the way,” she turned to meet his gaze, the ghost of a smile never leaving her visage, “your room is a mess. You need to clean up after yourself.” When she opened the wooden door, a breeze that was the declaration of spring embraced her. The loose hairs of her pony tail fluttered, and for the first time, the gaping hole in Levi’s chest found a piece of itself in the ineffable sorrow that existed in her smile She was a girl who had a way with words. The saying opposites attract had proven itself in the case of Levi and (y/n). While Levi’s words were a scarcity saved for only special occasions, she did not spare him of much silence. “Drink your tea before it gets cold.” “When was the last time you washed your sheets? They smell disgusting.” “Do you have the formation memorized?” “The dust in your room is as thick the Military Police’s skulls.” But somehow, Levi found solace and liberation in her nagging. There never had been anyone who cared enough for him to spare words of such quantity. There were little things Levi had noticed and grown attached to. She was tender and kind, qualities unfit for a soldier, but her glare was strong an unyielding, just like her fists during combat training. She had an affinity for cleaning, claiming it made her feel calm, which made it all the more annoying when she entered Levi’s quarters as he seemingly was “incapable of cleaning up after himself”. Her finger tips were always a little cold because she was anemic due to a previous injury. And should there ever be a shortage of earl grey tea in her office, she would enter a state of distress, muttering “the legacy of earl grey tea cannot end yet” while frantically searching for another stash. They began appearing as a pair. Somewhere along the line, their comrades had probably started gossiping about their relationship, but neither he nor she were the kind to keep up with gossip. Being with her was a constant process of finding pieces of himself. In her nagging, in her tea, in her fingers, and in her ghostly smile. It was as if he was waiting for the final piece to fill that gaping hole before he could return the favour and utter for her three words that might become a turning point in their lives. But that turning point had a slight variation in outcome. In the midst of that summer was the 38th expedition. It was also her last. Before leaving, she repeated to him again and again “don’t break formation”, “follow my orders”, “if you see a titan, ignore it unless otherwise commanded”, until Levi interrupted. “I understand, (y/n),” staring directly into her (eye colour) orbs, a rare smile played upon his lips. She paused, processing his smile, and returned a toothy grin of her own. Of all the things that could have went wrong, it was Levi. Half way through the expedition, the Squadron ahead was attacked by four titans. (y/n) commanded to not break formation, and to follow Erwin’s orders, which was to avoid any contact with titans by all means necessary. She led the squad East of the original path, hoping to move around the titans. Not long into their detour, they caught sight of two titans trailing the squad. They were abnormal ones. The team continued forward, hoping to outrun them, but slowly, they were closing in. “There’s no way we can outrun them,” Levi called out to (y/n), catching up beside her. “We have to,” she said, eyes focused ahead, “there’s no way the five of us can take out two abnormal 15 meters.” “We have no choice!” Levi shouted. (y/n) did not respond. Her brows were drawn into a frown and her lips pursed into a thin line. Seeing her inaction, Levi declared, “I’ll go distract them and slow them down. You guys keep going, I’ll catch up,” and slowed his horse. “Levi!” (y/n) screamed, but he was already far behind them, heading to the opposite direction. “There’s no way he can stopped them on his own!” a member of her squad called out, “we need to go help him!” She hesitated, features twisted in a way they never have before. The kind and tender girl was gone. “I’ll go,” she announced, “you guys go on full speed to the meeting place. Don’t send reinforcements back to help us. I want to minimize the casualties. We’ll meet up with you in an hour, and if we don’t…” she swallowed, “continue following Erwin’s orders,” and before anyone could protest, she turned her horse and followed Levi’s trail. When she almost caught up to him, she called his name. His expression when he turned to see her was the most she had ever seen on his face. It was of shock and disappointment. “Why are you here?” he screamed above the sound of sprinting horses. “For you!” she shouted back. His expression became more intense, “are you insane?!” he roared, much unlike the indifferent soldier she had grown to know and love. “No,” she replied, “but you are!” The exchange was interrupted by the thumping of the two giant’s footsteps. The titans were less than a mile away and the Corporal and her soldier prepared their maneuver gear. They both knew these were unfavourable circumstances. Two soldiers, no matter how skilled, simply could not take down two 15 meter abnormal titans in a flat area with no trees. He only wanted to buy time for the rest of the team to escape, and she wanted to be there with him because she didn’t want to be the one left behind. And she wasn’t. He was. Levi had always been skilled. He took out the first titan with considerable ease. When (y/n) latched on to the second titan’s left shoulder with her gear, it grabbed the wire with its right arm, yanking her off her horse. Abnormal titans were always hard to deal with, but she reacted quickly and bounced off of its arm. Giving it a second try, she swung around to the backside, attempting to slash its nape, but the titan still had a grip on her wire, which it pulled. The force took her by surprise, and she found herself hanging by one wire as the titan lifted her to its mouth. The humid wind gushing out from its mouth became a sign of the end. At some point she heard Levi cry out for her, but her eyes were closed shut. The titan opened its jaws and lowered her into it, and behind her shut lids she could sense the light fading form the world. The adrenaline never ceased, so when its jaws closed, she did not feel pain. She felt herself free falling. Then something – someone – caught her. When she dared to open her eyes she was in Levi’s arms as he rushed toward the abandoned horses. The titans behind them were on the ground with smoke evaporating from their limp bodies. Her eyes focused on his visage, and there was blood. Everywhere. She panicked. “Are you –” her lips were dry and her voice raspy, “are you bleeding?” They had reached the horses by then, and he lifted her up first before getting on himself, still cradling her in his arms. He rode the horse at full speed before sparing her a glance. On his face she saw the most amount of sadness she had ever seen on him. Like a child, helpless and defenceless. “It’s you,” his voice was raspier than hers, almost as if he was going to cry, “it’s your blood…” By then, the adrenaline had started to wear down. And as she examined her blood-stained body, she found, accompanied by an increasingly vivid pain, the absence of her left arm. She did not panic. “I’ll treat it,” Levi’s voice was urgent. His grip on the harness a little tighter than it should have been, and his lips quivered. “I’ll stop the blood as soon as we get to somewhere safe.” It was late in the afternoon. The sun had begun its retirement. She grew increasingly cold and attempted to draw herself closer to him. His usual scent was overwhelmed by the metallic smell of blood. In these last moments of amity, she struggled to find traces of the one she loved. They managed to reach the meeting place, where the other squadrons had already arrived. The rest of their team rushed forward upon seeing the blood covered Levi and the tiny ball curled up in his arms. She could only register selected chunks of time at this point. “Get a medic!” someone had screamed. She felt Levi’s warmth leave her as she was lowered to the ground. Levi watched her half-hooded eyes flutter open and shut. Her expression changed with her varying states of consciousness. The medic roughly wrapped the stub that was her arm. Blood immediately soaked through the bandages. “That’s all we can do right now,” the medic turned to him, “the blood should stop soon. If there’s no delay, we can get back inside the walls before it’s too late.” “It will be too late,” his jaw was clenched, “isn’t there something we can do now? She won’t make it to the walls!” his voice made the young medic shutter, a deep roar that held more emotion than he was ever able to express to her. “Our medicine cart was lost with one of the squadrons that got attacked,” the medic became defensive, “she will make it to the walls, she won’t lose that much blood that quick!” Levi took a sharp inhale of air. A pounding doom finally lowered onto his shoulders. When he spoke, he found his words shaking and barely audible, the moisture finally overturning his vision, “she’s anemic…it’ll be too late”. This became their turning point. He lowered his head and let out all the demons he guarded with his stone-cold features. Tears rained down like an April shower. For a second, in his blurred vision of her fading existence, he saw the complete truth of this world, the cold relentless cycle of death. Somewhere, a longing was born into this god forsaken world, never to be answered never to be fulfilled. He cursed again and again under his breath that they were all damned and cursed and how he wished his heart were stone. This rage was only interrupted when he felt a cold hand placed on his. When he opened his eyes as more tears poured out, she was there. For a second, he thought everything was going to be okay, but when she signaled for him to lean in, and her words were barely fathomed into a full breath, he was reminded that this was all real. “Don’t give up okay?” she breathed into his ear, “you can’t give up. I won’t let you.” “How?” his voice was a mess of out of tune sounds, “You all leave one after another, I don’t even have anything to give up on.” “You do,” she said, exhausting laboured breaths in between words, “yourself.” His eyes rained harder. He suddenly couldn’t even remember why he forced his composure for all this time. What would have happened if he didn’t run off and break formation? What would have happened if he took her orders? She had a way with words. In the end, it was she who saved his life “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” In his early days of service, Levi was consumed by the death of his two friends. He was nowhere the calm and rational man the Survey Corps had known him to be today. It took a Corporal with an obsession with tea, one who had a way with words, to make a soldier out of him. She filled the gaping hole in his chest with little pieces of amity but decided to take one with her before she completed him in the end. When he took over her job, he lived up to her title. He cleaned his office more often than necessary. He became cool and level headed and learned to take orders. He had a soft spot that was compassion for his comrades and utter disgust for impulsive decisions and sacrifice. All in the name of carrying forth the legacy of her earl grey tea.

[ardenttheories]

Would you mind talking about the Hope aspect in detail? you should really make aspects in detail posts, like expanded upon versions of the extended zodiac so we can see your own interpretations of aspects in the comic + in reality

I can definitely try!

From the Extended Zodiac, we get told this about the Hope aspect:

Those bound to the aspect of Hope are driven first and foremost by their convictions. They do right for right’s sake, and are quick to come to the aid of anyone they deem to be experiencing injustice. That said, their views of the world can be quite black and white, so what they see as the “right” thing may not always be the universally accepted view. They put great value in the power of the imagination, the ability to dream up a better and more beautiful future. If anyone could dream a better world into existence, it would be one of the Hope-bound. They may sound like all sunshine and rainbows, but they aren’t adverse to a little destruction, especially if they think they can replace it with something better and more just. At their best, Hope-bound are positive, caring, and warm. At their worst they can be narrow-minded and selfish. 

Which I initially have a few issues with. There is an incredible emphasis on what is “just”, which isn’t really what we see at all within the comic. Justice tends to lie heavily with the Mind players, justifying every action they take as the one that leads to the most beneficial outcome for the greater good, the bigger picture. To imply that a Hope player focuses so significantly on justice as a concept completely rejects the main reason behind their actions. 

Hope players are inherently swayed by emotion. They are heavily opinionated - usually towards the positive - and the idea that they see black and white is very true; a Hope player will not see that there are shades of grey in any circumstance, only the most positive and the most negative, to which they naturally gravitate towards the positive (or negative, if they’re a destructive player). When it comes to the concept of “being just”, what we’re actually seeing is the Hope player’s pure emotions about any one thing; what they do may not actually be very just, and what they’re trying to achieve with it may not be very just, either. This is how we get a certain level of destructiveness with Hope players. They’re the sort of people who hear that someone may be a bit of a villain and dive in head first without recognising that the person is, in fact, completely innocent. 

The idea that Hope players put value into imagination is definitely true. They are natural dreamers, open to many sort of concepts and usually more likely to take on the more occult side of things, usually in a more positive context than, for instance, Rose’s Horrorterrors; Hope players may be invested in a religion, fully believing in the concept of each action guiding you towards a brilliant reward, or may dabble in various forms of witchcraft revolving around healing and the boosting of various aspects within a person (think crystal healing, how each crystal can improve an emotion or cleanse something negative within a person). In general, they are ambitious people, determined to change the world for the better in the way they see best - regardless of what a more logical person may say about their ideas. 

Hope players may be naive, simply because of their positive outlook and straightforward beliefs; whereas some might see a situation as dull and bland, a Hope player will see the parts of it that hold some positivity, or will always believe that something good will come of the bad. They bolster the morale, essentially, of other people, encouraging them not to give in and to keep up the fervent energy Hope players are known for. 

The destructive nature of a Hope player may also come in the form of outright breaks of tradition and faith. If a Hope player doesn’t believe in something, then they just don’t believe in it; nothing will sway them on the matter. Likewise, if they believe in something, you’ll never be able to convince them that it’s not true. They’re definitely disruptive in this sense, and this can quickly go into destructive if they try to set into action the things that they think and feel - you can imagine, for instance, how well a Hope player with “radical” modern ideas would completely trash the comfortable living of a conservative town. They fight tooth and nail for what they believe in, regardless of the effects this may have on other people - and yes, that can be good in some instances, but it can also lead to the Hope player seeming insensitive, blunt, or even outright oblivious. 

For instance, if a Hope player doesn’t believe in your religion, they might not have the tact to realise that they can’t just say “that’s not real, this is real instead”. They might not always recognise when someone is Hopeful about something, and might end up saying something that completely breaks that person’s Hopes. Worse, and this is true above all else, they really can be selfish. Hope doesn’t need to be shared; it can be carefully guarded, too. It doesn’t take much for a happy, eager, warm Hope player to transform into something selfish and snappy. If they want to believe that a situation will be fine no matter what they say or do, then they might make - for instance - relationship issues they’re going through far worse, simply because they won’t sit down and talk the issues out (perhaps because they don’t want to, or perhaps because they don’t see the point because “everything will go away and it’ll be good again soon enough”). 

Sadly, all of the Hope players we see in the comic ghost Rage in some way: Eridan is very much a representative of what Rage can become, with his belief in magic allowing him to turn Grimdark and unleash his Rage on his friends; Cronus is so thickly laid in his negative thoughts and feelings that he destroys his own Hope, completely entrenched in the Failed Bard’s tendencies of trying to create Hope in the wrong ways; and even Jake is initially a much more negative character and influence, as being a Page he tends to overdo the more positive aspects of Hope and ends up coming across as an oblivious, insensitive idiot. 

It’s only later in the journey that we see what Hope players are able to do: Jake physically creates an image of Dirk based on his own knowledge of the guy and remnants a Dirk splinter, one with his actual powers and every right to be classified as a copy of Dirk just because he thinks, “yes, this is real”. In a power sense, you can see how Hope players have the ability to completely play with reality. They are not confined to or restricted by what is “real” and what is “unreal”; Hope players define “reality” and “unreality” completely to their own accord, and you truly just have to hope that whatever they create is beneficial to you and your team in some way. 

This does, also, include outcomes. If a Hope player truly believes an outcome will be favourable, then it is going to be favourable, no matter how high the odds are stacked against them. If they believe in a person’s powers, then those powers are going to be real, regardless of whether or not that particular player actually has those powers. 

Back to a more real world sense, this would translate as a Hope player convincing people of things that they believe work, or believing in things so much that they actually come true. It works in much the same way as a placebo does; Hope players believe to such an extent that reality warps to make it happen. Which, yes, still sounds a bit SBURB-y, but I’m sure just about everyone can think of that one person who always manages to pass their exams with just a good attitude, or who happens to have a really good day just because they think good things are going to happen. They’re even the sort of people who manage to get things like sigils, past life memory recall, and spells to work for them without flaw - the sort of people who make you pause and question if those things most people brush off as silly and impossible are actually real. 

Ironically, they’re the sort of people who might make you believe in magic again. 

As a general rule, destructive Hope players tend to destroy their own Hope, only branching out into destroying the Hopes of others much later in their lives or under duress (particularly if they’re a Prince), whereas constructive Hope players tend to focus Hope around other people, building up the more positive aspects of a person and enhancing the belief or power a thing has. More selfish Hope players tend to focus on themselves, and enhancing only what is inherently relevant to themselves (sometimes to the degree of leaving Rage in their wake). 

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Your blog is my favorite, thank you for all the posts and research you do. I would like to ask what, in your opinion, you think Noda has planned for Ogata? I lose hope sometimes but I also feel afraid to hope for him! He is still so mysterious so it is hard to make theories, but I would love to read your opinions.

*blush* Thank you so much for apprecciating my blog and for your ask!

Hum... please, correct me if I’m wrong but I think what you’d like to know is if there will be a redemption path for him or not?

In this regard the story can go three ways:

1) The story will decide Ogata is simply too ruined and jaded for Asirpa’s kindness to make a difference. Sure, he might have apprecciated it but it’s just like a drop of water in the sea. She’s just ONE young girl giving him some small consideration and niceness but, of course, she’s not devoting her life to fix him (and she shouldn’t). The rest of the world wasn’t so kind to him and there’s plenty of things he has done by now he simply can’t take back. In short being kind with someone when that person is far too gone is useless. It won’t change anything for the person being nice or the person receiving niceness. You could spare yourself the effort as that person was already doomed. Generally when a character is considered doomed he either dies or meet up with a very bad ending (jail or worse). The underlining moral is that if you do evil, you’re evil and you’ll be punished for it.

2) The story will decide Asirpa’s kindness will affect Ogata enough to change him in regard to her but not enough to change him into a good person. She’ll be a person for whom he’ll have a soft spot, and whom he might be willing to help. Everyone else though can just drop dead and if it can’t he can help with it. Basically the story will decide to reward Asirpa for her kindness and show what she did wasn’t a waste of time. It might not have changed Ogata radically but it will affect him and Asirpa will be the one reaping the benefits for it. When the story goes for this path is harder to predict the fate of the character. The story at this point has two possible paths:

2A) it might decide for an open ending in this regard, letting him go so as to leave open the possibility he could improve further either on his own or due to more positive influence. The underlining message is that kindness will hopefully produce more kindness but won’t try to support the idea that kindness will SURELY produce a completely positive outcome. It prduced a better outcome and more kindness might help improving things... or the starting kindness might help a person on a journey of self redemption but this will be left up to the reader’s speculation so, if the reader prefers for redemption ultimately not to come or a punishment to be dished out... well he can picture it in his mind.

2A) The story can also decide to kill him off as it has proved that kindness affects people but didn’t feel like moving further than this in fear if punishment isn’t dished out it can look like sins are washed out too easily. The character might be given a heroic death, just to confirm he was affected in a relevant manner by the kindness received but doesn’t really get to... step up the game. The story doesn’t really want him to spend his life redeeming himself (as in change his life and start living now to make up for all he did wrong in his life), it just wants to prove kindness is rewarded but, at the same time, confirm evil-doing is punished. Maybe view in an heroic death an absolution to sins, many don’t think it’s enough but hey, everyone in this way can decide for himself if the character is redeemed or not.

3) The story might decide Asirpa’s kindness will affect Ogata enough it’ll radically change his lifestyle. It won’t be quick as some hope, he won’t abruptly turn from how he is now to a good samaritan who only does what’s right and pure but, by the end of the manga he’ll be supposed to pile up genuine regret and good deeds enough to be considered a different person and a person that will keep on improving and never go back to how he was. Now actually some tales, after getting to this point still kill off the character but I don’t think that will be the case.

So what is Golden Kamuy really storing for Ogata?

As Noda had shown Ogata has some moral sense (no killing old women who remind him of his grandmother, saving Nikaido and, possibly, returning Sugimoto’s favour by saving him from a fake Ainu) and Asirpa has influenced him a little the idea seems to be he’s not so jaded he can’t be affected.

Actually, since there’s something decent in him, if you don’t want to call him good, Asirpa’s kindness should imporve it, otherwise the message would be again that kindness affect nothing or worse, that it makes matters worse.

So we should go for path 2 or 3.

In addition to this Ogata’s personal backstory started as pretty pitiful and not his fault at all.

He can’t be accounted responsible for his parents’ actions or his mother’s madness and while it would be considered an acceptable punishment for him to be mistreated due to him murdering his mother (even if it was probably a pity killing done by a kid who didn’t really understand well the situation), he was actually laughed over for something he had no involvement at all, how his mother was accused to be a whore... which she probably wasn’t.

In such circumstances many narrations don’t like to press too much on the issue of unredeemable because they end up on promoting prejudice, in short proving the bullying Ogata received was valid because his army mates all called him yamaneko due to his mom and, guess what? He became a yamaneko ultimately so they were right in doing so even when he actually hadn’t done anything because they knew he would so people with a birth like Ogata shouldn’t be given chances, it’s only fair to taunt them, ultimately they’ll reveal themselves for the jerks/failure/yamaneko they were meant to be. As you can see this is a message a story might be not too keen on promoting.

In order to criticize Ogata’s father’s actions as well as the ones of Ogata’s Army classmates he needs to be given chances which can equate the mistreatment that was tossed against him and that would prove if he had been handled in a different way he would have turned into a different person.

In short the kindness Asirpa showed toward him has to become a seed that will give some fruits.

Of course seeds take a lot of time into turning into trees and then giving fruits and, sometimes, fruits are just scarce.

So what I expect is for Ogata to do something good due to Asirpa showing him kindness. It might not be here and now, maybe it’ll happen much farther in the future and it might not be enough to save the day or to redeem him but it has to be enough to allow Asirpa to reap what she sow and prove that kindness isn’t unnecessary, that mistreating a person for things that aren’t even his fault or due to prejudice is never right.

As said before it doesn’t necessarily have to mean he’ll fully redeem himself. Nor it means Asirpa has to devote her life to take care of him or forgive him for what he did or anything.

It just means her kindness has to be repaid with kindness for the message that kindness is always a good thing to work.

Of course, as everyone else had not been kind to him, quite the opposite, often for petty reasons, they also should theoretically reap what they sow. In a way the bullet to Sugimoto’s head can very well represent this... but it also becomes an obstance in a possible redemption path.

If Ogata is busy in ‘an eye for an eye’ quest, although he might be willing to return Asirpa’s kindness... well, things for him won’t change much and he and Sugimoto might as well end up self destroying in attempt to ‘get even’.

Golden Kamuy hadn’t been a manga willing to support personal revenge so far after all.

So the only thing I feel confident enough as of now is that Ogata will likely end up on returning Asirpa’s kindness or trying to in future (no, no idea if it’ll be now).

It gets harder through, to predict the rest.

A redemption path implies regret for his past actions but it would be rather weird if he were to feel sorry for killing that monster that his father was or betraying Tsurumi who was using him or killing Wilk who clearly didn’t impress him positively as a model of a father or Sugimoto who was mostly a jerk with him through all the time they spent together (honestly, I love Sugimoto but he’d been a jerk to Ogata, no excuses... though I’m not sure if Sugimoto fully realized it but this is a discussion for another post).

Anyway at most Ogata might sorry for the pain he caused to Asirpa as he probably didn’t mean to hurt her that badly and spending time with her might have only persuaded him she didn’t deserve to be hurt.

This is however not enough to insure his character path will turn into a full redemption path although it’s enough to strongly point he’ll have a personal improvement path.

We can only wait and see how the situation will evolve though.

I don’t think Golden Kamuy will end anytime soon and while of course Noda might decide to kill off Ogata at any moment it looks like an unlikely choice at this point in time. A possible choice, of course, but unlikely as it’ll be weird if his role in the story were to end now (though I’m biased and therefore I’m not fully reliable on this).

Anyway I think Ogata still has a lot of time to evolve and, possibly, change for the better.

While it would be possible to kill him and reveal his true goals and his involvement in many plot points later or as he’s dying Golden Kamuy doesn’t seem to be in a rush for this sort of things. Here and there we still discover new things about the main characters even though they had been with us for such a long time. If the story were to cram everything in a chapter or reveal it while Ogata isn’t around I’m not sure it would work that well.

But well, we can only wait and see.

Thank you for asking about my opinion and giving me the chance to discuss about this intriguing topic!

[interspersus]

Comparing Moral Views: Utilitarianism and Kantianism: Mob Rule?

By Jade Gracie December 25, 2018 (Reposted for debate)

Sheriff Case Study

It is 1873 in the Wild West of America. The sheriff of a small remote town has arrested a man suspected of murdering a child. A mob gathers outside the courthouse and they threaten to break in and lynch the suspect without trial. If they don’t get their way they will riot and many people will be killed including the sheriff and his deputies. The sheriff ponders what to do as the first gunshot shatters a courthouse window.

Intro

Both Utilitarianism and Kantianism are complex and neither have definitive answers to how you should react to situations. For each of these moral views there are various possibilities depending on which kind of stance you take. In Utilitarianism there are many principles which on occasion appear to contradict one another. Attempts have been made to rank these ideas but still there is no certainty about what is rated the most important. There are also Act and Rule utilitarianism to take into account; Act looking at each situation separately and examining the consequences of each possible course of action, Rule believing there are set rules of general conduct to follow which tend to produce good consequences. It is similar for Kantianism as there also appears to be many conflicting ideas in it. However, within Kantianism there are certain rules which are thought to be negative and which Kantians attempt to abstain from at all times whether they are considered to produce good consequences or not.

John Stuart Mill

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism dates back to early Greek philosophers however the philosophers most famously associated with it are Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism is primarily concerned with providing a mechanism for deciding what to do in given situations. The consequentialist principle is the first factor to be considered in the utilitarian point of view. This is when the moral rightness of an act is determined by the consequences. This means that the sheriff should do what he thinks will have the best results. He could therefore do whatever he thought would save the most people which would mean handing over the accused man to the mob. If it is a certainty that the mob will riot the in giving the man up the sheriff is also preventing the death of many rather than only the death of one. He could also though judge the best results to be those which prevented the mob from killing a possibly innocent man and so his handing the man over on the basis of this principle would rely on whether the sheriff was certain of the mans guilt or not. If the man is handed over and was in fact innocent it would mean that a murderer is still on the loose who may not be found because the people would think they had already lynched him. The second of these principles is the hedonic principle. Hedonism refers to the view that pleasure or happiness is the only thing worth valuing. Although hedonism usually refers to people who like to spend their time eating, drinking, partying and being generally indulgent in pleasure, philosophers would term hedonism in a broader sense. In this term hedonism is not only in reference to bodily pleasures but also to intellectual and aesthetic pleasures such as reading and admiring art. Based on this the sheriff must do what he thinks would generate the greatest happiness; this would probably be handing the man over to the mob. This would result in the happiness of the mob who have got what they wanted in lynching the man and as they are the majority their entire happiness could be considered to exceed that of the accused man. The death of only the accused man would also save the grieving of more families especially if the accused man were to be found guilty and hanged anyway.

Jeremy Bentham

Bentham's Hedonic calculus

Bentham’s hedonic calculus attempts to make it easy to rate and compare conflicting pleasures. They are rated in terms of intensity - how intense the pleasure will be; duration - how long the pleasure will last; certainty - how likely the pleasure is to happen; Propinquity - how immediate or remote the pleasure is; fecundity - how common the experience is; Purity - how likely is it to be followed with pain; Extent - how many people will experience the pleasure. In this case the hedonic principle would be used to compare the pain of the accused man dying with the pleasure of the mob killing him. The mob lynching the accused man is certain to end in pain but, other than in the case of purity, it seems the other criteria are in favour of giving into the mob. Measuring the purity would though only result in not handing the man over if he were innocent and if not too many would die as a result of the mob and the attempts to allow him to go to trial. So in certain instances even this could favour handing the man over.

Act and Rule Utilitarianism

Within utilitarianism there are two lines of thought; act and rule. An act utilitarian would be more likely to hand over the accused man because this would be the best result after looking at all possible consequences. A rule utilitarian though would be less inclined to hand over the accused man to the mob because it may contradict rules followed by a rule utilitarian. One of these rules would be doing what is best to save a life and so the sheriff may see handing over the accused man as disobeying this rule despite the fact that it could result in more deaths. The other deaths which would result from a riot could not be certain as a consequence to the sheriffs actions and are not him own direct doing like handing the man over would be. Thus, he may think that it would be best to attempt to save the life he is certain is at risk rather than saving the lives which may not be in danger, at least not to his certain knowledge. This though would depend on whether he would be taking a hard of soft position. A hard line would be to say that rules must never be broken through fear of undermining the practice. A softer line would be to allow deviation from the fixed rules on special occasions when you know that the results may not be desirable; this would include saving a life so long as no one would be adversely affected. The hard line can seem severe at times but if you consider that the soft line has to take into account the individual case and setting aside the rule due to this surely it has become an act utilitarian view, to a degree at least. Thus, Utilitarians generally usually appear to favour handing the man over for the greatest happiness, least pain and because the resulting number of deaths is more certain. There are though some stances which would mean that the man would not be handed over by the sheriff.

Utilitarianism Problems

There are though many problems with Utilitarianism. It is difficult to measure the happiness generated from an action. Although Bentham’s calculus attempts to make it easier to compare pleasures it is not clear what of the criteria is most important or what answer should result in the greater units of pleasure. There is also the factor that some people find pleasure in pain; such as masochists. Also, people seem to enjoy vices such as smoking, drinking, gorging ourselves with food etc. but these pleasures could not be described as morally good as they have negative consequences. Utilitarianism being based on the consequences of an action also has many issues. An action may be taken based on the predicted outcome of happiness and in fact the results are negative consequences; is it fair to say the actions were entirely wrong if there were good intentions? It is also unclear if we should look more at the short or long term consequences or the local or global consequences. For both of these one consequence has to be favoured but which one is unknown. It is also possible that under utilitarian ideals justice and rights could be taken away from the people as tyranny from the majority could occur for the greatest happiness. Due to the idea of happiness of the majority the minority could be ignored. Mill though says in his book ‘On Liberty’ that liberty and freedom of speech are notions supported by utilitarianism as otherwise we would become lazy about defending our own views and it would prevent open discussion which is essential for enlightened social progress. Special obligations toward certain people such as friends and family is not an idea which is supported by utilitarianism but this may not be fair as this idea undermines the human nature of love and friendship. Finally, there is the idea that unrealistic moral demands are imposed by utilitarianism. It requires us to take many things into consideration and to always strive for the highest possible good. This means that we are confronted with an infinite amount of empirical data which must be collected and evaluated before a course of action is taken. Also, in taking the most favourable course of action we may find that we have to act in a way disadvantageous to ourselves.

Immanuel Kant

Kantianism

Kantianism is a normative moral theory by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant’s deontological stance begins with the sovereignty of reason. Kant was trying to uncover a moral system based purely on reason in the hope it would produce a moral philosophy that is objectively true and universally valid. Kant thought it was important to base our actions on a reason because that is the only way to ensure that our morality is objective and in no way selfish. So Kantians would argue that the sheriff should not let the mob have the man. Handing the man over is against the universal moral duties and rules when he has not been proven to have murdered the child and so he could be innocent. The good will sector of Kantianism states the goodness of an act doesn’t come from its consequences but from goodwill which is intrinsic to the act itself and which must always be good no matter the results. Thus, any deaths resulting from the mobs actions are not the fault of the sheriff whos actions will remain intrinsically good. Courage, power, and intelligence are irrelevant to Kantians as these things can be qualities of both good and evil deeds but goodwill is only a quality of a good deed. The endangering of his men though brings the goodwill into question. Is it fair to say his intentions were entirely good if he was putting other at risk in doing it? Duty is the only motive a Kantian believes to be good. Kantians believe that to act from duty is to do so because it is the right thing to do and not for any other reason. The duty of the sheriff would be to protect the accused man until he was found guilty and sentenced to a punishment and so he should protect him and not give him up to the mob no matter what the consequences as Kantianism looks at the motives and so the sheriff should follow and obey his duties. His duty could also be to protect the people of the town and his men on staff all of whom he could be putting at risk by not handing the man over. It is a question of which duty if most important. Again though, the actions of the mob are less the sheriffs responsibility so long as he has acted out of goodwill his actions are justified for Kantianism. However, if the man was guilty and especially if the sheriff could be sure of this it could arguably be a different matter. According to Kant those who do wrong should be punished and so if he was guilty and his punishment would be the death penalty anyway then perhaps the sheriff’s duty may lie primarily in the protection of his men. But, the categorical imperative would overrule this idea; the sheriff must protect the man and have him punished as he is sentenced to be not as the mob decides. The categorical imperative is, Kant believes, one basic test for identifying morally praiseworthy maxims of actions that require duty alone. Maxims are general rules of behaviour which can be applied to particular situations such as ‘never lie’ and ‘never kill’. The categorical imperative portion of Kantianism has 3 further parts to it; universal law formulation, end in itself formulation, and kingdom of ends formulation. The universal law formulation states that a categorical imperative must, in principle, be capable of being applied to any human being in the same circumstances and not just the individual being judged. In this case it would be fair to say the categorical imperative could be ‘protect those in your prison’ but not ‘protect those in your prison unless there is a mob who wants to lynch them and will kill you to do so’. End in itself formulation is the idea that you should never use people to suit your own need and you should treat them as individuals who need respect. This would mean that the sheriff should not hand over the accused man just so that he could protect himself or others. The accused man has equal rights to everybody else; at least until he is found guilty. The kingdom of ends formulation says that we must both act as though we are enforcers and abiders of the moral law, thus creating a community in which everyone is treated as an end and never simply as a means. It seems that generally Kantianism favours protecting the man although not necessarily always.

Kantianism Problems

Obviously though there are problems with Kantianism as well as utilitarianism. Is it entirely fair to have lesser consequences in favour of a person acting within the rules of Kant’s praiseworthy motives? He also ignores human nature and the motives we naturally have such as compassion. Kant states that duty is the only praiseworthy motive for an action but ignoring these other motives is unfair towards human nature and it is inhuman to assume these motives can be ignored. Kantianism thus totally ignores the consequences of actions and looks only at the motives of duty. The maxims also come under scrutiny as he appears to say that they are sometimes logically inconceivable and at other times conceivable but that no rational person would want to rely upon them. Other times they seem to be proposed as practically difficult to carry out or that they are self-defeating of their own aim. Some maxims are only relatively moral and don’t seem as though they should be conceived as universal such as ‘always eat healthy’. Although this could become a universal imperative can it truly be considered a moral principle? It is arguable that this is one of many maxims which is not worthy of becoming part of Kant’s moral law. Duties are a problem as they occasionally conflict. There is no guide about what to do when we are presented with a choice between two moral acts or between two immoral acts. Kantianism also ignores motives other than duty such as doing something because you loved someone; under Kant’s theory this is deemed selfish. Kant’s final problem is that it is left possible that somebody could act within the realms of a morally acceptable action just because the intentions were sound; even when they are causing great problems or working under misguided perceptions of duty. But this could be considered better than judging actions based on unpredictable results.

Summary

Thus, Kantianism would urge the sheriff to protect the accused man as it is his duty to do so while utilitarianism would allow the sheriff to hand him over to the mob in order to bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number. The consequences of the action would be the death of a possibly innocent man but the survival of himself, his deputies and possibly others. When weighing up the accused mans life with many more it seems obvious to a utilitarian that the sheriff should hand him over to protect others. Kantianism though looks at the motives of an action and states that an action must never be selfish and must only be committed out of duty. The sheriff has a duty towards the prisoner to protect him until he has had a trial and been found guilty or innocent. After the trial the sheriff had the duty to ensure any sentence placed upon the man is carried out as desired by the judge. If he was to hand the man over he would be acting selfishly as he would be treating the accused man as an object which he could exchange for his own life rather than treating him as a human being with equal rights to the mob until his trial. Both moral stances have problems but both also have great merits. It is just very difficult to follow moral rules rigidly in all situations.

Comments

Jade Gracie (author) from United Kingdom on November 16, 2018:

Utilitarianism would also support other methods of solving the problem. There is no logical need to jump to torture to solve that. Gentle methods of finding the answers exist too. Its just people assuming anger solves problems quicker. There is no guarantee that torture would work so why would that be the assumed best way of finding the answer? If it doesn’t work then its not justified so should really begin there...

Larry Allen Brown from Brattleboro Vermont on September 22, 2018:

A bomb is set to go off in Time's Square and a suspect is caught and brought to a room for interrogation; Trump style, and that means torture. But his 3 year old daughter is brought in with him and placed in a chair right in front of him. Right behind her stands a man with a pruning clipper and he spreads the girls fingers ready to lop off one at a time until the suspect talks.. The argument made about torture is a utilitarian argument based on consequentialist moral reasoning. Do we cut off the girls fingers one by one to save the lives of hundreds or even thousands in Times Square? If torture works, then that is all that's needed to know. The age and the gender of the victim is irrelevant to the logic of using torture to stop the bomb from going off. So do we cut off the little girls fingers to save hundreds of people? Oh and after cutting off her fingers, we can waterboard her too. Waterboarding a 3 year old whos fingers are cut off. That's pretty ugly....but maybe we stop the bomb. The utilitarian argument would say yes. Can you do that? Can anybody claim that the actions taken were moral and just? Can we really morally justify that action?

Kant would say no. Under no circumstances would you allow that.

Larry Allen Brown from Brattleboro Vermont on July 08, 2012:

"Even when two peoples influences seem to be almost identical the person may hve very different understandings themselves"

When the axe entered the forest, the trees said the handle is one of us.

Jade Gracie (author) from United Kingdom on July 07, 2012:

Ye, objectivity does seem almost impossible in terms of human examples. We are all open to interpreting our influences differently. Even when two peoples influences seem to be almost identical the person may have very different understandings themselves. Symbols can have infinitely different connotations to people and are rarely actually found to be understood in exactly the same way by any number of people. Objectivity is hard to find, we can't ever really understand what it is like to be anyone else but ourselves with our understandings of the world around us.

Jivan36 from Doylestown, PA. USA on July 07, 2012:

Of course not! Even when I learn things that may not be the happiest or most awe inspiring things ever, I still feel better for being "in the know", to use a contemporary expression. And even then, as the point of some of my own writings has been: that like beauty, happiness, inspiration, or really anything for that matter, is definitely in the "Mind's Eye" of the beholder. What an original thought, huh? (haha) That eye may be opened or closed to various degrees in accordance with the individual's susceptibility or imperviousness to the socio-cultural (and political, if any) pressures of his daily life. Such pressure can definitely affect even the most seemingly independent person to act in either a very self-serving manner, or for want of popularity, by appeasing those who they perceive the pressure emanating from. Perhaps that is why such Philosophies that are etched more firmly in a code or set of rules were adopted in many places; to neutralize any one single person's propensity for manifesting their own very polarized ideas or morals into misguided action. There seems to be little escape from subjectivism in many philosophies however, since man can always choose to interpret rules, codes or circumstances as he likes. So where are we then as the human race when it comes to recognizing any real concept of objectivity in anything?

Larry Allen Brown from Brattleboro Vermont on July 07, 2012:

What we're talking about here is "variations on a theme". We all share the same amount of difference. The longer you study this, the more you'll absorb and the broader your outlook will be. Your mind is opened and there’s no turning back. And would you want to if you could?

Jade Gracie (author) from United Kingdom on July 07, 2012:

thanks for your very comprehensive comment. Ye, I study anthropology and its fascinating the variation of societies. The morals and expectations of them all are so different yet usually can fall into similar categories like religion and politeness and common expectations. Each equal ad valid yet s different, its curious when you are only accustomed to one, and can only ever really fully understand the one society you grow up in.

Jivan36 from Doylestown, PA. USA on July 07, 2012:

Yes, very well done! Whether we always necessarily know or recall the specific formulative aspects of an "established" Philosophical viewpoint, we realize when we read about them that they involve basic, common themes that most humans live and struggle with every day. Across geographical and cultural boundaries, there may be some baseline similarities regarding the existence of justice and moral rightness, though one of my previous commentators makes the salient point that no two societies or cultures can be counted upon, nor expected to have, the same subjective ideas of what those concepts mean for them....and even among one society, there can be obvious derivations that occur within it due to any number of external conditions of their lives or traditionally held beliefs based on ancestral religion or mythology. I suppose my point is that is amazing how complex mankind is in it's capacity and inclination towards the drawing out of these different moral philosophies, of which you have examined just two, and yet they can all very much be based on, or revolve around, generally similar principles, but with completely different outcomes as a result of how they define themselves, both individually and as a collective consciousness.

Jade Gracie (author) from United Kingdom on July 06, 2012:

definitely, especially cross culturally, what applies here probably wont apply in South Africa. Humans seem totally variable depending on their surroundings and social upbringing. If only it was so easy.

Larry Allen Brown from Brattleboro Vermont on July 06, 2012:

That's exactly the problem. People aren't quite that simple, and trying to cram something as complex as human psychology into a cookie cutter solution is like driving a square peg into a round hole. One size fits all.

Jade Gracie (author) from United Kingdom on July 06, 2012:

wow, thanks for the comment. Never really appreciated the simplicity of Bentham's theory as a means of assessing all of humanity's drives. It is fairly good as far as simple generalised theories go. The problem really is that we aren't quite as simple as that, unfortunately i guess. His ideas though do seem to apply to most people in most situations. thanks for the comment

Larry Allen Brown from Brattleboro Vermont on July 05, 2012:

A very strong well written Hub on Bentham and Kant. When I first studied Bentham I was immediately looking at this very question that you pointed out: "Although Bentham’s calculus attempts to make it easier to compare pleasures it is not clear what of the criteria is most important or what answer should result in the greater units of pleasure. There is also the factor that some people find pleasure in pain; such as masochists. Also, people seem to enjoy vices such as smoking, drinking, gorging ourselves with food etc. but these pleasures could not be described as morally good as they have negative consequences." I thought of Jeffrey Dahmer.

One of the interesting things or the helpful things about Bentham is that he reduces his whole doctrine to a single paragraph, and he puts that paragraph right at the front of his Introduction to The Principles of Morals and Legislation. He says that, "Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do." Again...I have to look at Dahmer as just one of many examples of people deriving pleasure out of pain, either theirs in a masochistic way, or others in a sadistic way.

That is, in a nutshell, Bentham's theory; very bold unequivocal statement. He's saying if you want to understand human beings in a causal explanatory sense all you have to know about them is that they're going to seek pleasure and avoid pain. And if you want to think about what ought to happen in the design of institutions they should be designed around that fact, to accommodate that fact. And he's going to develop a system of laws, a system of government that takes into account and is built upon this assumption about human nature, as he would have called it; human psychology, as we would call it today.

You've posted a really good Hub. Excellent work.

________

BY JADE GRACIE