#PERSONHOOD IS A LIE!!!

[bigfatbreak]

Birds of a Feather previous / next

[morganmnemonic]

I can't stop thinking about the relationship between Jon and Helen as perhaps one of the most important ones in the entire show. They are narrative parallels for each other, and they both know it. They've both known it from the very start!

Helen walks into the Archives, paranoid, unsure of who to trust, and Jon sees himself in her. And he thinks "If i can help her, maybe there's hope for me too." Then he can't save her. The next time they meet, she's a monster. They're both monsters. There was never any other way their stories could have gone, their fates entwined from the very start.

And Helen answers his original thought with one of her own: "Maybe if we can help each other, there's hope for us both." But Jon looks at her and sees everything that he fears becoming, and so he turns her away, and refuses to accept that their stories are still one and the same.

Helen went to the last person who was ever kind to her, the only person who both knew her as a human and had the context to understand what she'd become, and he hated her. He hated her because he liked Helen, and told her that she couldn't be Helen.

So she stopped trying to be Helen, and embraced being a monster. Reveled in it even. Then Jon wakes up from a six month coma, more monster than person, and tries so hard to cling to the things that mattered to him when he was human. Even with no support, even with the entire archives staff against him, he chooses humanity and compassion over and over again.

And this is a direct threat to Helen's world view. Their stories are entwined. If Jon can continue to be a person even after everything he's been through, then she could have clung to her humanity too, if only she'd tried a little harder. And that terrifies her! She wants to conceptualize herself as someone who was completely overwhelmed by forces beyond her control, who never had a choice but to become a monster. She want's to be an innocent victim. But Jon argues with his actions that they'd both had choices.

And, Jon, in turn, holds out hope that she might make better choices until the very end.

This is the conflict between them for all of season 4 and 5. Jon wants to prove that they can both be decent people, and Helen wants to prove that they were never going to be anything but monsters. This is why she's so devoted to trying to goad Jon into enjoying his newfound godhood. She knows that they are the same, and wants that to mean that he has a spark of evil inside of him, and not that she was always capable of doing good.

When Jon kills her, she loses her life, but wins the argument. Helen is nothing but a dangerous monster who needs to be killed for the good of everyone, and in the moment he decides that, Jon dooms himself to the same fate. Their stories are one and the same. "If i can help her, maybe there's hope for me too." he thought. But he couldn't help her, refused to, even, in the one moment when it actually mattered. And thus, there was never hope for him.

[kick-a-long]

three things can be true at the same time. 1, christian (and ex-christian) arab, muslim, etc cultures are all deeply steeped in antisemitism. 2, muslims, christians etc who do fight antisemitism come from that same culture but are some of the loudest and most cherished allies. 3, there are tons of christians and muslims who aren't antisemitic, don't give two shits about jews neither hate nor love, full stop, and treating all christians and muslims as suspect is racist as hell.

antisemites are not subtle, smart, ethical, truthful or just "misspeaking"/"well meaning" when they cover their antisemitism with antizionist talk. they tell you who they are in a million different ways and treating large groups like they are all antisemites for being born is as wrong as hating all woman, men, blacks, whites, etc for the same.

idk. i just don't want to end up funneling my anger at the media and the amsterdam pogrom and the many many attacks against jews around the world into bigotry. i have to periodically remind myself that most people are normal and the jew hatred I'm constantly exposed to is done by people who mean to do it and want me funneled into the same bigoted bullshit that they are steeped in. i never want to abandon my humanity to become a racist like that, especially not because racists attack me.

[angelofthemornings]

I feel like Finn's opinion of Rufus is that he knows Rufus can see right through him, completely, and you'd think this would upset Finn considerably but instead he feels more like "oh god I can finally rest"

[theoriginalbylergod]

Should I write a little analysis explaining all the reasons Will loves Mike and why it makes sense that he loves Mike and why Mike is deserving of that love and how Mike's individuality and character depth is what will make byler endgame a satisfying conclusion for both Will and Mike

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[metanarrates]

rambling again abt sensationalization of cults because this comes up whenever i discuss the fact that I was raised in one, but... like many other forms of abuse, i think there ends up being a popularly conveyed idea of an "outside world" where there's going to be unambiguous freedom. and don't get me wrong, being outside a cult or any other abusive environment is way better than being inside one, but you get outside and if you have eyes you notice the ways that society is abusive and coercive. you notice the ways your personhood gets curtailed by things by school & work & government. the idea of the cult being a sensational, unique outlier is at best a comforting lie told by people who don't want to notice parallels, and at worst, I can't help but see it as an intentional scapegoating of cults and of abusers to distance broader society from being implicated in having caused similar harm. don't fall for it. a cult is an intensifier of patterns that already exist. abuse is an intensifier of patterns that already exist. it is absolutely not unique lol!

[underwaterspiderbird]

i disagree wholeheartedly. rest in piss to sol, jecki, yord, and every other pearl-clutching narcissist jedi out there. its not a genocide when it's a system of evangelical psychopaths who point unnatural at anything they don't understand. sure palpatine was an absolute nutcase and who wiped his ass with the legacy of the actually sensible sith & maligned the sith to the surface galaxy, but that doesn't erase the truth of the matter that the jedi, as a system, are an evangelical cult who starve for systemic supremacy, rip children away from their families under the illusion of choice (see anyone that the jedi want who tell them no if u dont believe me), tell them the very things that make them who they are are bad and wrong, "unnatural and corrupting", then they throw them away like trash when their worldview & view of the force doesn't align with theirs. just like the catholics.

the jedi had it fucking coming. i don't care about the younglings or jedha or palpatine's empire, that dude's actions are his own. from an indigenous sith who has never agreed with the jedi, never thought they were the good guys they said they are, and always saw all of the evangelical evil of the world in the jedi, fuck the jedi. even the younglings. they were so brainwashed & disconnected from existence at that point that they might as well have been considered dead before Anakin skewered them & clones swiss-cheesed them. i'm not sorry, fuck the jedi. rest in piss.

I think one of the things I've found most frustrating about sections of Star Wars fandom since being more active in it (rather than just being a Star Wars appreciator) is that some folks are constantly looking for a reason that the Jedi "caused" or worse "deserved" what was coming to them with Order 66. It's hard and horrible to watch the Jedi get slaughtered in Revenge of the Sith, so people search for a reason that it was, in some sense, justified. But that's not what genocide is. No group can "bring a genocide on themselves." It doesn't matter WHAT mistakes they may make. The whole point of the Clone Wars all the way down to destroying Jedha City in Rogue One was to wipe out not only the Jedi themselves, but the memory of them, so that the empire can fully take root.

And this is why the end of the Acolyte finale felt so so so bad to me. It was meant to be, or so I believed, a show about how the Sith were getting closer to their goal of getting rid of the Jedi as we close in on the century before The Phantom Menace. I sat there, I waited for the narrative intention to set in, and that narrative intention surprised me by saying "ah yes, well, some Jedi made mistakes and it was fine for one to be murdered HORRIBLY as a result, and the subsequent cover up of all of it is just the Jedi wanting to avoid senate knowledge of what really happened because the Jedi are too powerful." It's like, nevermind that the SENATE is the power here, and the Jedi long-ago agreed to help them out but are being shouldered with more and more and more and they may have the Force but they are still only people (which the High Republic books show REALLY well). It's like, nevermind that Star Wars is about redemption and always trying to be a better person and learning from our mistakes! It wasn't a situation, when Osha kills Sol in a nasty and cruel way, where you see a person going corrupt and know the narrative behind it is like "oh shit, this is a bad turn for them!" It felt like the narrative was saying she was justified (at least to me) and that's just. Sad? Bleak? The end of the finale felt to me like "hey, some Jedi made some mistakes while trying their best once, and that's why these Sith get to do whatever and that's why the Jedi walked right into their own demise."

When the scene with the senator happened, I thought, oh, interesting, we're going to see the prejudice against Force-sensitives here that leads to the senate clapping in the face of genocide. That leads to the safehouse in Kenobi where we see Force-sensitives carving messages of hope into the wall while they're being hunted down and killed. But that's ... not what happened. In the end, it felt like the narrative said, "yep that guy is right, the Jedi are a power-grabbing cult." It just felt bad, man. I thought this was going to be a story about the lineage leading up to Plagueis and Palpatine and I thought, interesting, I'd love to see that, but it just ended up being this messy thing with clunky writing and a bunch of loose ends that teased me with Jedi characters and then said "eh, these guys deserved it."

We got to see a kyber crystal bleeding for the first time in live action, and I can't even be excited about it! Did we ever really find out how Osha and Mae were created and what weird stuff the witches were up to? Nope! Just woah disappointing as far as even learning new stuff about how the dark side corrupts the Force, and that was one thing I was interested in as the show started to go downhill for me in later episodes.

(RIP Sol, Jecki, and Yord. You deserved better than that, and Vernestra, so did you)

[bellamontwasright]

I decided that I liked the idea of the Blackreach AU being written with a handler-as-the-LDB better. Suna's a lovely dude but I think the story would probably make more sense with the chosen one™ being at the very most bottom of the totem pole.

[nomaishuttle]

tbh probably a good thing tumblr freaked iut when i tried to post the post i just wrote bc i think i spiralled a lot in the tags

[hawkepockets]

1 of my da:v opinions is that. ok. “eldest daughter/people pleaser raised in a land strange to her people” is an awesome core character concept. it’s just not at all who i thought harding was based on her inquisition dialogue? in veilguard, harding talks abt how she learned to butter people up and take up less space after being harrassed as a little dwarven girl in ferelden; in da:i, she said the same experiences taught her to be rough-and-tumble and to aim for the balls. even her minstrel song is about the vindictive glee she feels in battle while “cutting men down to size.” it calls her the “inquisition’s bloody prize.” she’s a violent person! violent enough to inspire ballads! by fereldan standards!

it’s not that she couldn’t have learned both behavior patterns, but since we don’t rly see them contrasted in harding’s da:v characterization, it feels more like an overwrite to say she’s gentle now.

she’s also just never been a people pleaser! her role in da:i was straight talker! she was one of the few npcs the inquisitor could trust to give a blunt report on the terrain and political situation in a new map. in “jaws of hakkon,” she had the clearest, frankest, most compassionate but also harshest insight about how their personhood was being eclipsed by their reputation and titles—

she’s forthright, without illusions, and also one of the most uncompromised & uncompromising believers in the inquisition’s cause. NOT one of the many followers courting the inquisitor’s favor & backing for their own agenda. absolutely not a pushover or a kissass.

and what’s the significance of calling harding an “eldest daughter” with implied negativity when her ma doesn’t appear in the game and their relationship is drawn as wholly positive?

so i think maybe harding & taash could’ve switched roles, with harding being the clear eyes of the party who tends toward the blunt, crass, and fanatical but will never lie or fawn, and taash being the heart, the people-pleasing eldest first gen immigrant daughter who gets in touch with their masculinity, individuality and fire during the story—while still retaining harding’s warm, naturalistic speaking voice & taash’s clipped commentary, and the contrast between their personalities that attracts them to each other.

the addition of younger siblings, whose relationship with shathann is not strained in the same way taash’s is since they are neither adaari nor the children shathann left the qun for, could also add depth & complexity to taash’s questline, more cultural ties for them to untangle (or - my preference - to realize don’t need untangled) and another contrast with only child harding, whose heavy responsibilities are all taken on by choice and not inherited… or so she thinks until her own personal quest.

maybe taash could even have another mom, who isn’t fridged?

just a notion!

[mikansei]

we know jade's cornerstone can read people's desires, and there's no visual indicator on her person that gives away when she's using it. it only makes sense she'd use it to interrogate the suspect in the egyhazo case, especially since she was asking into his motive. her cornerstone would give her a way to either verify he was truthful or catch him in a lie.

(she ended this interaction by telling him "may your schemes be forever concealed," by the way.)

point being, she had the means to know - really know - his deepest desires.

egyhazo was an elaborate scheme to land himself in front of someone powerful, to wager his life in exchange for a chance. he said as much. he even said why: to ask for a measly 30 tanbas, and use that symbolic pittance to rise to even greater heights. what he didn't say is that he didn't want wealth and power and status for its own sake - even if it wasn't a full-fledged plan at the time, everything he wagered, everything he gained, he wanted to use to help the avgins. to repay their faith in him. to lead them to prosperity like he was supposed to.

and jade had to have known what he wanted - what he desired - too.

jade gave him the chance. she took him under her wing, guiding him through the corporate ranks all the way to missions like iymanika, the test for obtaining his own cornerstone. it had to have been some time between the interrogation and iymanika - between being a prisoner in rags with nothing to his name, not even personhood, and sending a warlord into financial ruin and subsequently pulling off the double indemnity gambit with jade - all the while aiming for the status being a stoneheart would grant him to save his people.

but he found out from jade that the avgins were gone only after he'd been given the aventurine stone.

all that time, jade knew they were gone - and deliberately hadn't told him so.

after all, if he'd known beforehand that his goal was unachievable, he might not have wanted to become a stoneheart anymore - and then her investment in him would never pay off.

is it any wonder his voiceline about jade is "be careful, her kindness always comes with a price"?

[strangesmallbard]

hmm i think it’s a mistake to take helena eagan at her word that she’s the head boss at lumon. we’ve been showed multiple times that she’s definitely not the head boss of lumon. she’s afforded a semblance of personhood when it suits lumon and it’s taken at a whim. what’s interesting here is that she wants mark to believe she’s the boss at lumon; what’s interesting here is that she also believes she’s the boss at lumon. she believes she’s always afforded personhood—that helly is a murderous horrible creature grafted to her body, but is neither a person by her own right or Actually Helena. whatever she actually thinks about kier, she believes in the virtues of severance. helena is in charge, helly obeys and must accept the pain she goes through.

but: helena says she’s ashamed of who she is outside. i still don’t believe that’s a lie. helena is jealous of helly; she wanted helly’s life even as she dehumanized helly and all her friends. (similar to the roy kids in succession, helena holds herself at a higher level than everyone around her, outtie and innie). but we know that the love and the pain bleeds through severance. we know that outties and innies are not as separate as lumon wants us to believe they are. we know that helly was willing to kill herself to kill helena, that helly’s first thought upon waking up is “I GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE.” somewhere inside helena is a person who wants to burn lumon down.

and the thing is!! even though helena isn’t the big boss of lumon, she’s not physically trapped there like gemma is. or is she? helly r is certainly trapped there. if/when helena reintegrates, she’ll have all the experiences of someone who was physically trapped on the severed floor.

and yet. helena also has the experience of swimming laps in a closed pool, back and forth, back and forth, before donning a dress she might never have chosen for herself (the one time we’ve seen helena dress casually, she wears pants, a jacket, and neutral tones), then eating breakfast with her father. who lives in that house and watches her eat every tiny bite. the door is open to her, but jame has access to all the keys.

tl;dr. hellyna kill your dad

[the-sun-the-moon-and-thalia]

Season 3 episode 9 Thoughts and Theories

Of all the ways to lose someone, death is the kindest. Fighting to survive in this world means giving up your humanity and losing yourself. It is better to die yourself than live with what you’ve done. Where is the line between survival and identity death? How far will you go to survive only to be unable to live with the consequences as a completely different person than when you started?

Almost every single one of these wilderness deaths comes as a direct result of the person choosing morals and humanity over survival, which is the antithesis of the wilderness. 

Laura Lee risks her life to take the plane because she is a good person who would rather everyone live. It’s dangerous and not likely to succeed, but she puts hope and goodness first, refusing to become selfish in her survival. She dies because of it. 

 Jackie sleeps outside because she would rather stay true to herself and her position than do the survival thing of sucking it up and sleeping inside (a running theme with Jackie, who would rather continue to be herself than adapt and become hardened by the wilderness.) 

Crystal immediately disagrees with Misty, arguing with her and blaming her for the black box. She refuses to go along with Misty’s delusion, something most people disagree with her over. Like, girl, be quiet and let Misty think you’re on her side until you get away from that damn cliff. But crucially, she doesn’t she does not lie. She is right morally, and she doesn’t give up her side of the argument. She dies for this choice. 

Javi only falls into the lake because he was trying to save Nat making him a target instead. 

Coach Ben refuses to try to survive by eating human flesh, which is ultimately why he chooses to leave the group and signs his death warrant. You could also say his letting Mari go is also an example; he lets her go, which is the morally correct decision when killing her to keep her quiet would promote his own survival. 

Natalie protects Lisa and takes the hit for choosing Lisa’s survival over her own. Van refuses to kill Melissa, which she thinks may count as a sacrifice to the wilderness, which would ensure her survival and then Melissa kills her for it. 

The surviving characters, time and time again, have chosen their own survival over their humanity or morals. The most obvious example is in cannibalism. We see them partake in something that they do out of a deep, perverse desire to survive (not something I am judging them for) but goes against their morals. They have sacrificed people to the wilderness, “it’s what it wants,” but they have also sacrificed their identity and humanity.

We see this most acutely with Shauna and Tai. Shauna, who has had every bad personality trait magnified, every awful urge indulged, has become a rotten, hateful shell of her former self and has lost almost everything because of it. When she eventually does make it out of her survival situation she has very little to come back to. This is one of the many reasons she takes on Jackie's presumed identity, she marries Jeff, she has another baby she lives Jackie's life. She has no identity no personhood left to her she gave it up when she lost Jackie. We saw brief glimpses when she had her baby of the Shauna she used to be but it was gone as quick as it came. In keeping herself alive, she has consumed Jackie, she has beaten Lottie almost to death, she chased Natalie and carved up Javi. Things she HAD to do to survive. But was it worth it? To come back to nothing to live a life filled with nothing with shadows of the things you lost, a husband that reminds you of your best friend, and a daughter that reminds you of your baby.

Tai has literally created another person so we see this idea most literally with her. The other Tai is the one who survives; the other Tai is the one who kills, sacrifices and consumes. It is a survival mechanism but one that causes her to completely lose her sense of self, morals, and humanity. She doesn't remember (some of) the things she had to do to survive. Because she can not be Taissa and do those things, they can not both exist. Unlike Shauna, who, when faced with this, gives up her humanity, or Van, who confronts and accepts it, Tai is in denial. She creates this other side of her/opens herself up to some evil shit to do the things that are necessary for her to survive. Tai is rational, she is calm she is clever she is realistic.

The cave dream sequence and the slap bracelet also exemplify this. Jackie and Akilah remain unharmed. Van gets a cut, and Shauna gets murked. While Akilah may have eaten flesh, she hasn’t done anything specifically to sacrifice her sense of identity. She hasn’t lost herself yet. As the quote on the board says, of all the ways to lose yourself, death is the kindest. Van has done some bad things. She has rigged the card draw (confirmed by Tai in episode 9) and may have started the cabin fire/covered up for Tai. She gets slightly cut as she has maintained herself despite what she needs to do to survive. Shauna has lost herself completely. She has died and been reborn in the wilderness. This identity death is symbolised through the slap bracelet literally killing her. She has survived so much, and it has warped her horribly. Jackie and her baby died, having to carve up Javi. She has survived through it all, but who she was and what she is now are not the same. (DISCLAIMER: this is definitely not the only way to read the dream sequence. This is just one of many interpretations, but I thought it all linked together quite well.)

Lottie also aligns with this really clearly (interesting that these are the three who choose to stay behind). She is giving in to these instincts and ideas she’s feeling real (from trauma) or from the wilderness (supernatural). She has lost who she used to be completely and has given herself over to these survival-based instincts entirely. The Lottie Matthews from pre-crash is dead well and truly, and Tai and Shauna at least become shadows of their former selves. Lottie has become ruthless for her own survival but also that of the group. Lottie, however, is not doing this intentionally, which I think is one of the reasons she has died this season. Lottie genuinely thinks she is doing this to help everyone, i.e., staying true to her morals. She is, however, sacrificing her humanity to do it, i.e., becoming more in touch with the wilderness/her trauma; take your pick. It’s a self-sacrificing role but one for the survival of the group and herself. I think this is why she is the teacher in the dream sequence, removed from everyone but not completely apart. 

I think at some point early on in the season, she comes to terms with this and begins to reclaim herself and choose humanity over survival, but this will mean her death. If you couldn’t tell, Lottie is my favourite character, and I love her so much that she is so deeply misunderstood.

Hannah's decision to kill Kodi is something that is so obviously done out of the desire to survive "the things people will do to survive another day", cements her as part of the team. It's a fucked up out of left field decision for someone like her as she has decided she willing to sacrifice everything to make it out alive.

Lottie and Travis’s deaths fit into this the least. Obviously, we don’t know how Lottie died, and we only know Lottie’s account of how Travis died, so if anyone has any good thoughts on how their deaths might fit in with the theme, let me know. 

The show is ultimately and always has been about survival and identity.

[valtsv]

while i'm still on my bullshit about VAL siltverses can we talk about the body horror of being a saint that she bears. like okay it's not the cronenbergian videodrome-esque transformations of human into conduit of godly power undergone by the majority of other saints, but it's still a massive violation of her autonomy and personhood. she tells us that her skin is branded with marks overlapping marks that shift and spread with each new lie she tells. the implied double meaning of "branded" in a world like the silt verses, where corporate gods are the most ubiquitous kind, only further emphasises the indignity of what was done to her. if she were ever to question what she is, who she is, she would find herself undefinable by nature of her very existence as the embodiment of a liar's god. and she's retained self-awareness enough to question her personhood in the first place. her body is not her own, but that of the woman who was tortured to death to create her. what would she see if she looked into a mirror? would she even be able to recognise her own reflection?

[moiderahart]

The Fires of Raven, or Why I Side-eye anyone who claims it's the "good ending".

I keep on seeing takes about how the Fires of Raven ending is the Actual Good Ending and not gonna lie it makes me kind of sick. Partially because "Wow do you literally just believe the first thing people tell you? No wonder propaganda works as well as it does."

The other is that as far as I'm concerned, Coral is a People. Not human by any means but personhood is hardly the kind of thing that's exclusive to humanity. If it can communicate, if it has a culture, if it has agency and emotion, then it is a people. It's basically the concept of a nonhuman person. Coral is depicted as having clear sentience. And at that point I think it's essentially just a people.

It's why I think the idea of AI becoming self aware is one that we're not prepared for, not because of paperclip factories or skynet (which is an inane fear as far as I'm concerned) but because we will have made a person, and we're not ready for that ethical question. Not by a longshot.

The initial Fires of Ibis weren't a spontaneous Coral event. It was a deliberate act; it's why Walter brings up the story in Chapter 4. The story of the man who burned it all who, as we come to learn in the logs, was Professor Nagai. Coral Collapse is a consequence with a scary name but it's one that is not defined; we don't know what Coral Collapse actually entails.

This isn't a mistake on Fromsoft's part; it's a deliberate choice. That ambiguity is part of the point. The lack of a known quantity to Coral Collapse is a big driver of the fear behind it. It's a fear great enough to cause Nagai to burn the stars, in favor of the world that is.

And yet the world that is was also the one that lobotomized C4 621.

The world that is has a company like Arquebus wage war against civilians. Send them to re-education camps which, if you know anything about real world re-education camps, you would know that they are an abomination, and there is no exception on Rubicon.

This is a world that saw Rubicon, a planet of endless possibility and natural beauty, and built towering, continent-sized oil rigs to suck it dry.

Coral was allowed to live for eons before Humanity fucking colonized it. Coral was allowed to grow, to exist, to evolve into its current form until humanity began to shove it into a container.

And Coral was allowed to live before one of the colonizers decided a people was too dangerous to let live based on a chance.

This sounds like an excuse that I have seen too many times.