#This post probably makes him more so seem like a morally gray character and all | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

httpsserene · 8 months ago

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Gosh please please please can you write something daniel x reader maybe inspired by too sweet by hozier when he thinks(some internal turmoil cuz he can't stay away from her) she's too sweet/innocent for him or something like but it turns out to be further from the truth?? I love love love your writing, i think about please's and thank you's at least three times a day since i read it. You're so immensely talented!!!

I'd really really appreciate it.

(i don't mind age gap(like up to 10years), some kinky smut or even a bit of morally grey characters as long as there are no explicit mentions of past relationships or cheating and etc., happy ending plss, and I won't mind if you add a pinch of "who did this to you")

Ly ly ly

𝖍𝖙𝖙𝖕𝖘𝖘𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖓𝖊'𝖘 2𝕶 𝕾𝖕𝖊𝖈𝖎𝖆𝖑 | 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕯𝖆𝖓𝖎𝖊𝖑 𝕽𝖎𝖈𝖈𝖎𝖆𝖗𝖉𝖔 𝕰𝖉𝖎𝖙𝖎𝖔𝖓

𝐄𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐝𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐯𝐞: 𝐓𝐒𝐀

Summary: She’s too pure for him. She hasn’t been damaged by life like he has and he hopes you never will be. So, that’s why Daniel can never allow himself to be with her. He knows she’s convinced herself that she can fix him, but he knows that the longer he sticks around, the more he’s ruining her. He finds it cynical: their relationship (or lack of a relationship) reads like one of the books she’s obsessed with: right person wrong time or forbidden love. Daniel learns that it might be a little darker of a trope—like one of her books that she never allows him to see a page of. Content Warning: 18+ only. mdni. implied sexual content. mild!yandere!reader. stalking. sabotage. angst with a happy ending. lando and max are here. not edited at all. mentioned alcoholism. pov switch. fights? idk danny gets his ass beat. possessive!reader. can you find the hozier inspo in here? probably. Pairing: daniel ricciardo x fem!reader (black-coded? but not mentioned in the fic, i think) Word Count: 2.7k words.

Author’s Notes: okay! this is past me (6/11) hoping that the tumblr queue doesn’t do me dirty! this should be posted on thursday, because i won’t be able to manually post it on my own as i’ll be hiking in san diego the whole day :p

this was formatted on mobile so please ignore how ugly it looks :( and also ignore the ugly writing i’ve never written dark/morally gray characters so i’m pretty sure i did your request like terribly LMAO. um also i couldn’t find a way to write smut into it? so again i apologize for that :/

anyways, please bare with me. i’ll make it pretty when i get back to my computer…on sunday 🥴

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Daniel meets you in the elevator. At first, he thought you were a Formula One fan who snuck into the condo trying to get a glimpse of your favorite driver (himself, obviously) but, he learned that you’re his new next-door neighbor. It was awkward; he accused you of following him to his room and felt like the world’s worst person when you—dressed in the cutest pink dress and matching flowy bow tied in your hair—stared at him terrified, before you unlocked the door to your flat and slammed the door behind you quickly without a word.

He sent you a bouquet of pink orchids the next morning, along with a hand written card apologizing for his rude behavior and that he hoped the two of you could become good neighbors and friends. It seemed all was fixed, as the next time he ran into you, you greeted him softly, like nothing had happened. It was 5 A.M: you were starting your day and Daniel was ending his night.

Daniel was on his third drunken attempt of shoving his key vaguely in the direction of his lock on the door, when you exited your flat with a yoga mat over your shoulder and a water bottle that was comically large. With a hushed ‘good morning,’ you kindly helped Daniel into his apartment, telling him to drink a big glass of water and have pain killers ready when he wakes up; there was no judgment in your wide brown eyes, only tenderness, and a slight hint of worry. He woke up after twelve at the sound of a knock, his head pulsing with pressure and his sight slightly blurry from not quite sleeping all the drunk away.

He eventually made it to his front door and found that you ordered him lunch: a chicken wrap and sweet potato chips, from one of his favorite brunch cafés—Daniel figured you have good taste, as he doesn’t recall ever telling you about this meal in either of the two interactions you’ve had. So, he ate, drank plenty of water, freshened up, and debated if he should go over and express his gratitude, or whatever. He decided he will, and found himself putting on a nice watch and a few too many sprays of his expensive smelling cologne. Daniel didn’t let any thoughts of why he was prettying himself up cross his mind; he’s simply thanking you; a girl far too young, and probably far too sweet for his tastes.

You brushed off his thanks shyly, hidden behind your door with a blush strong enough Daniel saw it paint your dimpled cheeks and he knew he wouldn’t be able to stay away. Thinking quick enough to rival his reflexes, he offered to exchange phone numbers so the two of you could meet up and he could buy you a coffee. You entered your name in his phone with a yellow heart next to it.

The coffee meet-up had to wait due to Daniel’s hectic schedule, yet the texting flourished. He initiated the beginning of your text thread the next day, mindlessly texting you about how he overheard Emilio (another neighbor) arguing with his wife on the phone; Daniel said she’s probably going to mail him divorce papers within the next week. You replied that it was mean to eavesdrop and gossip. Daniel followed up saying it’s not eavesdropping if said person was screaming into his phone in the hallway, and he wasn’t gossiping, he’s merely keeping you informed.

Daniel laughed in the middle of his motorhome listening to the voice message you sent four days later, eagerly telling him about how you saw Emilio in the lobby with a couple boxes and without a wedding ring on his finger.

It was a warm morning, when you and Daniel finally managed to meet for coffee. You scrunched your nose in distaste when he ordered plain black coffee; Daniel did the same when you ordered a drink that was mainly milk and sugar. Daniel chuckled when you claimed the amount of coffee in your drink had you wired for the rest of the day. He decided to let you believe that, and not inform you that it was most likely the sugar content that had you crashing hours later.

Daniel invited you over for burgers one night and you comment that his home looks like a mix of a “mojo dojo casa house” and a “minimalistic hell.” You gifted him a throw blanket and a potted plant the next day, and continued to text him reminders about watering it.

Around 10 P.M. on another night, he’s yelling at Max for cheating at fifa. Max laughed around the lip of his beer bottle before the two of them paused at the sound of a knock. Daniel checked the door and opened it to see you: fuzzy slippers, eye-mask on your forehead, bonnet, matching pajama set, and pout on your lips with a sleepy tilt to your eyebrows. He apologized for the noise and promised to quiet down. Daniel threatened to kick the Dutchman out when he teased him for having a “crush.” He doesn’t get crushes, he’s a grown man.

Daniel spends less time in night clubs and more time with you. You took him to sip and paint nights, pottery classes, hiking, even bookstores. You order him to not open any of the books he’s holding for you; Daniel tries to take a peek when you scan through one and you slam the book shut, saying it’s too dark for your liking. He doesn’t comment when you end up getting it (Daniel paid).

He kissed you in your apartment, halfway through Howl’s Moving Castle. He proceeded to tell you it was a mistake. You teared up when he said you were too pure for him, arguing back that you weren’t a child. The tears fell when Daniel claimed he’s too old for you, that he’d only hurt you. He returned to his apartment, figurative tail tucked between his legs, and heard you crying through the wall. He fell asleep hating himself.

Daniel distanced himself from you; he misses your shared adventures and condo gossip, but he never forgets to water your potted plant, even without your texts. He fell back into the clubs, bringing home various women but never manages to get them in bed due to various things going wrong. He gets stuck in the elevator with Stephanie who happened to claustrophobic for hours, locked in the stairwell with Sofia who sprains her ankle in five-inch heels, the fire-alarm interrupts him and Kiana just as he unlocks the door, and his kitchen sink burst when he lifted Laura on the counter.

He tries to console Laura, who runs from his flat in drenched clothes, and sees you staring at her in confusion from your doorway as she rushes past. Daniel apologizes for waking you again, and you shrug, ignoring his words, murmuring that he should call maintenance before he floods the entire floor and shutting your door in his face.

Your potted plant starts to wilt, no matter if Daniel moves it in or out of direct sunlight, if he waters it less or more, or if he changes the soil, or adds fertilizer. The universe has it out for Daniel.

He finds himself in an ultra-private lounge, dim-lighting, sultry piano, and dark decor enhancing his dramatics as he reveals how he ruined his life to Max, Lando, and the bartender who will be tipped handsomely for pretending to care. The piano fades to the end of the piece just as Daniel wraps up his lament.

“It sounds like you deserve it, honestly,” Max stated bluntly, Lando nodding agreeably at his side.

Daniel groans into his hands, lifting his head to say that he’s already aware of that, but freezes when he sees you rise from the seat of the piano. Your figure is snug within a floor length, backless, black dress, complemented with gold jewelry, and makeup that opposes your angelic nature. You bow your head slightly in the direction of the tables clapping at your performance, stumbling briefly when your eyes meet Daniel’s. You smile softly and begin to make your way over to him.

“Oh, fuck,” Daniel shrinks into his seat, as the other two drivers stare at him in confusion.

“Hi, neighbor,” you start airily, before turning to smile at Lando and Max, “Hello.”

“You didn’t tell me you worked here,” Daniel mentions.

“You never asked,” you narrow your eyes at him, before relaxing, “I also don’t work here—this is my brother’s bar. The pianist suddenly fell sick and I offered to fill in.”

“Oh,” Daniel hums, “This doesn’t seem like your type of scene.”

You snort, rolling your eyes, “You should know better than to tell me where, what, or who I do or do not belong with.”

“Okay!” Lando claps, kicking Daniel’s shin under the table, everyone ignores his muffled groan of pain, “Sit with us for a minute, if you can take a break. Danny is seriously obsessed with you.”

You take the offered chair next to Max and sigh, “Really? I couldn’t tell,” all three men wince at your dig, but you continue, “Did he tell you that he almost flooded the entire floor last week?”

Daniel watches as you charm his friends, the three of you chattering happily over his demise, and ignoring him as you do so. He can’t find it in himself to be annoyed, only thankful, as this is the first time in weeks that you’ve been in his presence for more than five minutes. You smell so good. Is that weird of Daniel to think?

Unfortunately, the four of you are interrupted far too soon. Your brother calls you over from behind the bar; his expression is less than pleased, jaw tensed with irritation, and Daniel thinks the look in his eyes has a hint of crazy. He wonders if you told your brother about him. Hopefully not—the man looks like he could fold Daniel like a lawn chair without breaking a sweat. The three men watch as you argue with your brother; it doesn’t seem like it’s going in your favor.

Lando calls Daniel’s name, “Mate—she’s good for you.”

“Nah, mate. I’ll only ruin her.”

“Daniel,” Max scolds, “The few months you were ditching us for her were the happiest I’ve seen you. I wasn’t worried that you would be passed out in a random club or yacht after giving yourself alcohol poisoning.”

“She’s sweet, Danny. I think she’s exactly what you need,” Lando adds, “You've convinced yourself that you don’t deserve anything good. She’s trying to prove you wrong and you need to let her.”

He doesn’t answer verbally, he chooses to shake his head and remain silent. You make your way over to the table again and stand in front of them with a pout.

“It’s past my bedtime, apparently,” you huff, turning your head to glare at your brother, “Don’t worry about paying tonight, it’s on the house.” You exchange polite goodbyes with Lando and Max, Daniel gets a soft smile. He watches you leave the bar with a sad tilt to his lips, then orders a shot of whiskey.

You’re sat on your couch, freshly showered and ready for bed. It’s 1 A.M. and Daniel usually doesn’t end his nights out for another hour. So, it makes sense for you to be worried when you see his location nearing your shared condo building an hour early. Did you sneakily (his phone password is his birthday, it wasn’t that hard) use his phone and share his own location with you? Yes. But, you did it with good intentions. You worry about him when he’s not with you.

You decide to go down to the lobby and pretend to ask if you received any packages in hopes of intercepting Daniel when he walks in. You don’t manage to step out of the elevator when you suddenly have an armful of a bruised-up Australian. His lip is busted and you can see a bruise blooming high on his right cheekbone. You start to shake with anger.

Furiously pressing the button of your floor and slamming the ‘close door’ button, you frantically question Daniel, “What the hell? I left you not even two hours ago, and you look like a mess. Did you get into a fight, did you get mugged, did you—“

“Did your brother beat my ass for hurting you?” Daniel groans, not fighting your motions as you tug him out of the elevator and into your flat, “Yes, he did.”

You pause and grumble angrily, forcing Daniel to take a seat on your couch. You rush into your kitchen for ice, then to the bathroom for a first aid kit. He doesn’t fight when you order him to ice his cheek, and lets you hold his face to tilt his head at every angle possible, as if it’ll expose any more damage. Eventually, you end up looking into his eyes, pretending that you have the knowledge to know what a possible concussion looks like, even though you really just wanted an excuse to look at him.

Unconsciously, your thumb rubs soothingly along his temple, Daniel leans further into your hand. His tongue flicks out for a brief second, and he flinches when it disturbs the cut on his bottom lip. Blinking rapidly, you clear the haze from your eyes and frown as you turn to rifle through the first aid kit.

“I can’t believe he put his hands on you,” you bite out angrily, finding a disinfectant cloth to clean his lip, “I don’t know why I tell him anything anymore.”

Daniel winces at the sting of alcohol, remaining quiet as he watches the focus that covers your expression.

“I apologize for him,” you mumble, “He doesn’t think clearly when it comes to me, he thinks he’s like my guard dog or something,” you dispose of the wipe and grab an ointment, “I promise you I told him that the only thing you did was waste my time and hurt my feelings,” Daniel deflates under your hands, “It’s not like you physically hurt me…or anything. He’s just an idiot. I’ll kill him.”

At that, Daniel laughs quietly, dropping the ice from his cheek so you can clean that too, “Don’t say that. You’re such a sweetheart, you couldn’t hurt your own brother. Also—I’m not sure if he hoped this would make me stay away from you, because if you keep rubbing my face like that, I might fall in love.”

You hum, pleased you have him eating out of the palm of your hand, “Have some decorum, Daniel. You sound desperate. Also, he knows that I don’t like people touching what’s mine.”

“Oh? You’re possessive,” Daniel teases, “Is it bad if I kinda like that?”

Your heart flutters, he’s really the best for you. He doesn’t need to know about the lengths you went to ensure any of the girls he tried to bring home didn't make it into his bed. It's a shame Sofia sprained her ankle; that was not intentional on your part.

You shrug lightly, “No, it’s not bad. I think it makes you perfect for me. As long as you don’t mind a little crazy. And—don’t think you’re off the hook. You still have to apologize for making me cry.”

Daniel nods seriously, “I’ll fall to my knees and beg right now, if that’s what it takes.”

Sticking a plaster over his cheek, you stand and gesture for him to do so too, “Okay. Kneel.”

“Huh,” he chokes, eyes wide with disbelief, “You’re serious?”

“If you beg well enough, I’ll let you eat me out.”

The sound of his knees hitting the floor echoes.

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#serene’s chapters.#httpss :// 2k special #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #f1 x female reader #daniel ricciardo x reader #daniel ricciardo smut #daniel ricciardo x you #daniel ricciardo fic #f1 x black!reader #formula 1 x black!reader #formula 1 x reader #♡ ༘*.ﾟ love interest: dr.

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theamityelf · 4 months ago

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I am once again thinking about Shuichi flirting with Makoto via talking about book characters

(YES.) (Follow-up to this post.)

"Yeah, he's my favorite character," Shuichi is saying.

They're sitting on nice, sunlit benches out on the school grounds. His hat is askew; he always turns it to the side, when he's reading, so the shadow cast by the bill of the cap doesn't block light from hitting the page.

It makes it easier to see his face, when he wears his hat like that. To see the shades of blue in his hair and the gold of his eyes. (Silver, in some light, but right now gold. When asked, Shuichi just says they're gray.) He's blushing a little; Makoto supposes that talking a lot makes him shy. He doesn't seem to be as shy with his classmates. In fact, Makoto has overheard him arguing with some of them, or correcting others, plenty of times. But talking to one's own class is different than talking to upperclassmen. Makoto himself isn't really all that intimidating at all, which is probably why Shuichi's been talking to him more. He's glad. Makoto always looks forward to hearing what Shuichi thinks about the book they've been reading.

The fact that one of the book's most boring characters is apparently his favorite is just another example of Shuichi having a fascinating take on things. "Really? What do you like about him?"

Shuichi glances up at Makoto, from the page, and his blush deepens. His gaze drops again. Shy. But he answers, with a smile, "I really love that he's always helping the other characters and listening to them talk about their problems, and...I know the author mostly uses his character to contrast with how interesting all the other characters are, but I think if the story focused on him more, we'd find out he's really interesting, too."

"Wow. That's a cool way to think about it. Even if he's not working for a top secret spy network like the others, he might be just as interesting if we could see the story from his perspective."

"Or even just spent enough time with him. As a character, I mean. If the main characters talked about him more, instead of just bouncing their problems off him or asking him for favors or hiding behind him when things go wrong..."

Makoto watches Shuichi get into the discussion, intrigued by the passion he's directing toward the open book in his lap. The last time he saw that trace of indignation interrupt Shuichi's shy disposition was when he heard about Kyoko inviting Makoto to a crime scene to introduce him to a few people he later found out were murder suspects. (Apparently, she wanted to see how they acted toward Makoto, since he was within the demographic of people the murderers most liked to kill.) Or the time he found out about Mondo inviting Makoto to a "bros night out" that turned out to just be a night out for Mondo and his gang while Makoto stayed behind at Mondo's house and answered the door when the cops came knocking and then Mondo snuck in through the back window and the cops asked if Mondo had been home all night and- Well, Shuichi just has a somewhat rigid moral compass. Makoto counts himself lucky he's never found fault with anything Makoto's done, so far.

"You really like that character," he observes, amazed.

Shuichi's intense look relaxes into a sheepish smile. "Yeah, I...I do."

"It would be a different kind of story, if it were about him," Makoto muses. "Do you wish we were reading a different book?"

"No, I like the story a lot. I just...The story is better because he's in it, and I feel like the characters and even the writer don't know that."

"I'm sure the writer does. How could they make a character that you like so much and not know it?"

"Sometimes...people don't notice that kind of thing."

Makoto turns that thought over for a second. "So, what would it look like if the writer did know how great the character was?"

Shuichi meets his eyes. "Someone might say something, maybe?"

"One of the characters? I guess that makes sense."

For a second, Shuichi presses his lips together, seeming to decide whether or not to say what he's thinking. Then he opines, "I think he and the investigator should spend more time together. I mean, the investigator is different around him than he is with any other character. He's softer, like maybe he feels differently about him than he feels about his partners or...his classmates...at the spy academy..."

Makoto has to smile at the timid but determined way Shuichi approaches his point. "So, you ship them? That's shipping, right? Hifumi taught me that word."

"Y-Yeah, I...I ship them."

"They could be good together. I mean, they've only talked to each other twice in the book, but they were good conversations. The investigator was willing to tell him about his dead wife; that's not something he told anyone else."

"Exactly! And...I think they could...take care of each other."

"Have you ever thought about writing fanfiction?"

"Huh?" Shuichi looks slightly startled by the question, like he's been woken from a dream.

"Fanfiction. Hifumi writes it, and I think you might enjoy it if you tried. You clearly have a lot of thoughts about the characters and...Hey, you don't have to be embarrassed! Did I say something wrong?"

Shuichi is hiding his blushing face behind the book, almost knocking his cap off his head. "No," he says into the spine. "I just, uh, didn't mean to get so into it."

"But it's cool to be so passionate about things. That's one of my favorite things about you."

Shuichi lowers the book just enough to peek at Makoto's face, then hastily hides behind it again and stands up. "Okay, I think I've got to go. I just remembered I owe Kokichi ten thousand yen." He runs off.

"Bye," Makoto calls after him, half-fond and half-confused. Why do so many of their book discussions end with Shuichi running off like that?

#danganronpa #naehara #makoto naegi #shuichi saihara #class 79 au #naehara book club

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luckykittysshowerthoughts · 1 year ago

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I wonder why micheal keeps getting portrayed as abusive (specifically in simeon, lucifer and mammon based fics) especially when you consider that his canon self isn't that?? I know it's probably something of a scapegoat since it's easy to pin the character we know the least about as the most villainous but I'm curious about your thoughts

Personally, I think there's a few things at play. One of them is recognizing the shades of gray. Humans by nature have a tendency to sort things into black and white when they really shouldn't be, and I think this is an example of that.

Because, there is some truth to what they say. Michael can be downright creepy at times- from sneaking into Lucifer's room without permission being a clear sign of an unhealthy obsession, to the flat-out psychologically damaging stunt he pulled in Nightbringer. And don't even get me started on the angel event from the OG; I was pissed about that for a long time. He also clearly has a very prejudiced, derogatory view of demons, and is likely where Luke got it from. He's certainly not innocent.

BUT, I think people carry it too far. Yes, he's creepy, and yes he can be a colossal asshole. But he also displays clear, genuine care&compassion for others, especially his brothers, and seems to be trying his best to do good.

Such as with Simeon and Luke- he clearly genuinely cares about their wellbeing. As revealed in one of the Hard Mode chapters of Nightbringer, he was worried sick about sending them down to the Devildom, showering them with care packages and wanting constant reports to make sure they were alright. In the OG game, when he cast Simeon out, he didn't just leave him out to dry; he coordinated with the Devildom- which he's always hated- to ensure Simeon's safety, and sent his right-hand man down to protect him. He's implied to have angsted over the very idea too, having told MC in S3, "and of course, I have Simeon to think about." Both of these points will probably be their own posts eventually, because I have a lot to say about them.

And, for all his harassment of Lucifer, he seems to genuinely care about his wellbeing too. For example- saving MC's life in Nightbringer just because he recognized that they were important to Lucifer. This wasn't even because it got him closer to seeing Lucifer again; Lucifer had no way of knowing about this little favor. He did it just to make his brother happy.

There's also him cooperating with the exchange program in the first place. There was no reason Michael had to do that. In fact, considering the Celestial Realm's very traditional and conservative views, it would've been very likely for them to just say no. They didn't have to send anyone down. And yet Michael did. Not only that, but he hand-picked who to send. He clearly cares about and has stakes in this program. It seems that he's trying to change; he at the very least cooperates with those who believe there should be change.

Ultimately, he's a very flawed individual, trying to do his best by others through a lens warped by celestial propaganda and unhealthy coping mechanisms. He's a very morally gray character, and I think sometimes the internet has a hard time reconciling with that.

Especially since we don't have a face to put to Michael. That's the other issue. People are a lot less likely to sympathize with a faceless persona than they would be with their favorite hot demon boy. The brothers and even the side characters can get away with a lot more because we see and regularly interact with them. Because of Michael's secretive nature, often times you have to read between the lines to really understand the nuance of his character- it isn't spoon-fed to you through direct interaction like with many of the other characters. Because he obscures himself so much, it's a lot harder to humanize him, and to get a grasp on his motivations.

I also think a lot of people are looking for a "villain" in a story where there was never meant to be one. People seem to get this idea where every story needs to have a villain, and if they can't find one they make one. Obey Me was never about good guys and bad guys, heroes and villains. It's always been about highly flawed and dysfunctional individuals just doing their best. Plenty of drama and meaningful plot can be made from that alone. We don't need a clear villain, and it doesn't need to be Michael. I think a lot of people don't get that.

#obey me analysis #obey me michael #obey me angels #obey me character analysis

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charrfie · 5 months ago

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Ok, still salty over Two Realms (it SUCKED) so gotta ask you, how would YOU have done a third drawn to life game (I've kinda wanted one with wilfre seemingly being the antagonist at first before him either being dethroned or he was actually trying to help and fumbling it BADLY)

Ohhh I'm just so excited that people are so interested in my thoughts to the point I keep getting asks related to the topic!!!!! ^_^ Thank you it's very exciting to be able to talk to everyone like this. I don't often publicly interact with the fandom because of some bad experiences I've had in it some years ago but it seems like the environment of it has changed a lot... maybe I should be more vocal about my interest in the series? Everyone who's being so nice about it has been such a big help. That's unrelated to your question, I just wanted to express appreciation!

Now, to actually answer you lol.. I put this under a read more again since it's a little lengthy, but not NEARLY as long as my previous ask

Fellow two realms hater �� It was just such a letdown idk where I would even start. The glaringly obvious answer is the actual gameplay itself what with the level design/lack of stylus being how it was but I think my personal biggest problem was the story itself. It seemed to retcon or at least gloss over a lot of the plot from previous games which not only felt clunky but overall lowered the stakes to such a degree... it made me not care about the character drama nearly as much. Which is such a shame! Drawn to life and drawn to life: the next chapter are genuinely my #1 most favorite video games to ever exist. I mean this with no exaggeration. Even if they're kind of bad. Lol. But!!! The potential that the story and characters have in the original two games completely reels me back in!!! There's SO much there, even if it's not put together with the most grace. The subject matter is so serious and something so rarely talked about, ESPECIALLY for the age demographic it was aimed towards. These characters feel so real!!! So fleshed out!!!! It's endlessly compelling!!!!!!!!

All this being said, I think what I would do is make dtl:tr a lot more character/story driven since thats such a major appeal for me in previous entries. While it's even more evident in two realms, both dtl and dtl:tnc do have levels that tend to be a big of a slog to get through in comparison to the 10 seconds of story the player might get as a reward; there would need to be more balance.

As for what this story would actually contain.... I'm a little conflicted. While I'm not the biggest fan of aldark as a villain (he kind of came out of nowhere just to fill a necessary role of "evil"), I *do* like the idea of wilfre being replaced rather than coming back again, and I REALLY REALLY REALLY like the concept of the shadow that controlled wilfre garnering the strength to present itself as a physical manifestation rather than a conduit. I don't even mind if it functions as a solely evil entity! There's something to be said for that just as there's something to be said for wilfre being more morally gray anti-hero than pointlessly evil villain. I'd love to do something in this vein, though probably leave the human world out of it? Or at least keep it very vague. The raposa world gives us as the viewers enough plausible deniability to accept ridiculous/strange events without question.... it's only because the human world is so painfully realistic that the ending of dtl:tnc has the effect it does. So needless to say that's a no on keeping it as the main storyline.

I really like your idea of wilfre trying to help and then fumbling. That's similar to what I wished for when two realms was first announced actually! I sooooo badly wanted to see him trying and failing to adjust to normalcy again post him being freed of the shadow's influence, which I talked about VERY briefly here following the games announcement. I'd love to see him trying to make amends with those he had hurt (a la "ice king apology tour" from the marcy & simon comics), rediscovering who he even is as an individual again, or parsing through what his relationship with the creator has become. It opens up for some pretty interesting conversations. Especially considering how much shit other raposa might give him when he fails to help in the way they expect him to. At the same time, I'd love to get some more dialogue on where jowee and mari are at in their lives. How mari handles leadership (as she actively struggled with it in dtl and dtl:tnc), if jowee has allowed himself to exist outside of the scope of others and their judgement/expectations, etc. The fact that those two get married at the end of two realms threw me for such a loop.... because even when nothing was actively threatening them in dtl:tr they still bickered so much? I'd really like to delve into how people can naturally grow apart as they age and come to understand they may not be right for those they grew up with, as painful as that realization may be. A remake of two realms could also be a cool way of having circi introduced into official canon since she's way too interesting of a character to be constainte to the non-canon wii game.

These are all the story changes I know for a fact I'd like. But it's hard to say definitively what the plot would be other than designating an antagonist concept and the general themes which would be at play. I'm not quite sure what or how a manifested shadow antagonist would again threaten the safety of the raposa world! I figure any retconning necessary for the raposa world to even exist in the first place could be as simple as "oh I knew we could trust the creator to establish a new world for us," which would also heavily contribute to wilfre's character struggles in a very interesting way. So that's not too big of a problem. Drawn to life has bullshitted more complicated things away than just that. I'll have to keep thinking! Maybe I can work up a proper dtl:tr rewritten au alongside the other two aus I have.

I'd love to hear other thoughts about a potential remake of two realms if anyone has them!

#drawn to life #dtl #its so freeing to talk about this series so openly again!!!!!! its insurmountably dear to me #laika answers

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flamebringer0 · 1 year ago

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About the Ending of Darkness of Dragons

Everyone has a take about this, right? Well, here's mine. I'm kind of late to the party since I was forcibly inducted into the Wings of Fire fandom just last Thursday, but that's fine. This will probably be kind of long and rambling and maybe not even that interesting to anyone but me. Sorry about that, but I'm really writing it more to work through my thoughts than anything else.

I find Darkstalker to be a very compelling character. I'm not going to bother trying to explain why I find him interesting, because it's irrelevant and would also be longer than this entire post. I feel like I have to clarify, though, that it's not because I think he's a good guy. He's obviously a pretty awful guy. I mean, I thought it was obvious, but I guess there's actually a significant contingent of people who say Darkstalker did nothing wrong. Apparently many people see him as some kind of misunderstood heroic figure, or at least a morally gray one. I find that to be a fully silly and indefensible position. You can talk all day about how abusive Arctic was, but you can't pile a tower of mitigating circumstances high enough to explain away genocide.

Anyway, he's my favorite character in Wings of Fire. He's one of my favorite characters period. And I really would have liked it if my favorite character had had a satisfying narrative arc, with a climax that appropriately, uh... that is to say, a climax that was appropriate in any way. For example, it would have been pretty good if Kinkajou had killed him.

But in fact she did not kill him; she forcibly polymorphed him into a baby. As noted by everyone who has ever read the books, this is a stunningly odd thing to have your hero do at the end of a quintet of novels whose most consistent theme is that it's wrong to force someone to be something they aren't. I'm sure this is well-trodden ground at this point, but I just-- I can't figure it out. The narrative is very clear up until this point that this is a very bad thing to do. In fact, I think mind controlling someone is all-but-explicitly presented by the books as a worse thing to do than killing them. That's probably a questionable position in and of itself, but I swear it is the position taken by the text.

In Moon Rising, Moonwatcher finds out that Darkstalker killed Arctic, and she's still willing to hear him out about how that might have been justified and maybe it would be fine to let him out of the ground. But in Escaping Peril she finds out he also mind controlled Arctic, and her reaction is much more severe. She's in tears, she declares it "the cruelest thing I’ve ever read", and she decides she can never let him out. Nothing else has changed about Moon's knowledge of Darkstalker and Arctic's relationship; the only new information she has is that Darkstalker used mind control. The narrative never seems to treat this like a contradiction or a weird quirk of Moon's personality, so I think it's a belief the author also holds coming through in her writing. Mind control is worse than killing. And then suddenly it isn't, and erasing Darkstalker's mind and turning him into an entirely different dragon is presented as a happy ending for everyone, including Darkstalker.

The only explanation I can come up with for this is that she wrote herself into a corner by making her villain omnipotent and invincible, and therefore impossible to stop without comprehensively incapacitating him. I surmise that the only way she could come up with to do that was to turn him into someone else, and so that's what she had to have happen, even though it clashed violently with the theme. But I have a better idea: just kill him. He's terrible! He deserves it!! It would have been satisfying to see him die after everything he did, and it wouldn't have dropped this bizarre dissonant note at the end of five books of consistent messaging.

It turns out the difficult part there is actually the "he deserves it" bit. Because, astonishingly, it seems the author of Wings of Fire is also in the category of people who think Darkstalker wasn't so bad after all. Apparently, Tui T Sutherland said at a release event for The Lost Continent, "I didn’t want to kill Darkstalker, because he didn’t deserve it [...]". This is a very interesting way to put it. She didn't say that nobody deserves to be killed. Apparently there's some bar he could have cleared to deserve death, and he didn't. But what can one actually do to merit death if genocide isn't enough? Well... I just don't know. I wasn't hatched in the light of a full moon, so I can't read her mind and tell you the answer. I'm just going to have to move on. Here's the full quote I excerpted above, along with the question that prompted it:

There is a theme across Arc 2 of Wings of Fire that seems to suggest forcing dragons to become something else via magic is wrong (Peril, Hailstorm/Pyrite, Anemone forcing Kinkajou to love Turtle, etc). However, the second arc ended with Kinkajou forcing Darkstalker to become Peacemaker against his will. How did you feel about writing that, since it seems to clash with your theme? I didn’t want to kill Darkstalker, because he didn’t deserve it and that felt like a cop out (plus, it was supposed to be impossible). I wanted a surprising and authentic end for these characters. One of the main themes I wanted to emphasize was that most dragons, like Peril, deserve a second chance at becoming a better dragon. Darkstalker needed to have everything erased in order to get that second chance. I did think a lot about how the theme was subverted by this ending though, and it’s very valid to be concerned about that. But, there was no other way to ‘save’ him.

(source)

There's something else that's weird to me about this quote, which is... do we really think that what happened to Darkstalker was not death? His mind was completely and permanently wiped by magic. He had "everything erased", word of god. Peacemaker apparently doesn't share any of Darkstalker's memories, personality, feelings or opinions. In what sense is Darkstalker not dead, then? Is it his soul? Whenever the word soul comes up in Wings of Fire it seems to be metaphorical. It's not clear that Darkstalker had a soul in a literal sense, let alone that Kinkajou didn't erase that too. Animus magic is apparently of infinite power, there's no reason to think it can't rewrite someone's soul. I guess his body still exists, sort of, but if that's enough to say that Darkstalker is still around, I think you could make a pretty strong argument that anyone who has ever eaten a steak is in fact a cow.

I think this gets at the heart of what bothers me so much about the ending. Darkstalker... actually did die, just like I wanted him to. Which is fine, actually. Contrary to what the author thinks, he completely deserved it. But what makes it ridiculous and unsatisfying is that it happens via this weird magical get out of jail free card where they kill him without "killing" him. Aren't there moral complexities to killing someone, no matter how much they deserve it or how much better it makes everything? Shouldn't we... talk about that? Well, apparently we don't need to talk about it, or think about it. We can just use magic to change the name of what we're doing away from "killing", without substantially changing its nature.

And it drives me even crazier that the more I think about it, even this nonsensical juke of an ending feels so ripe with interesting questions of its own, which are just glossed over. Isn't it interesting that Moon killed her first friend, that Hope killed her own son, and that neither of them ever have to face the fact that that's what they did? Do they even know? Do they suspect it? Isn't it interesting that Peacemaker came into the world as some kind of magical quasi-dragon whose only reason to exist is to make sure someone else can't? Did anyone stop to think what it would be like for him to grow up like that? How will he deal with the fact that he's surrounded by dragons who half think that one day he might pull off his face and let Darkstalker out again? Does Darkstalker still have loyalists who want that to happen? Wouldn't it be interesting to hear Hailstorm's thoughts on this? What about Ruby's? Fierceteeth's? Isn't it interesting that Darkstalker sat under the mountain trying to convince Qibli that it was better to use magic to change a dragon against their will than to kill them, and Qibli said "no, no, no" and then turned around and did just that? How would Winter feel about the fact that after he bared his heart to Qibli and Moon about how awful it was to ever do something like that, they did it without a second thought? How can they call themselves Winter's friends while they're keeping something like that from him??

Maybe I'm the only one who thinks those are interesting questions. Tui T Sutherland certainly doesn't seem to. It would seem that she wants us to believe that Darkstalker is now going to have a wonderful life in the rainforest as Peacemaker, magically shorn of everything that makes him himself. And that's good, because Darkstalker can be forgiven for committing genocide, and so he didn't actually deserve to die. He just deserved to have his entire self obliterated by infinite magic, which is different from dying. Different in a way that was all-but-explicitly stated to be worse, until it was better. And this will never cause any problems for anyone.

I don't know what else to say. It almost makes me dizzy to think about it. I wish I knew how to write this story.

#this one isn't really a headcanon #not sure what else to tag it though #wings of fire #wof #wof darkstalker #darkstalker #wof peacemaker #peacemaker

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nyxshadowhawk · 2 years ago

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Art and Hedonism

Dorian Gray Weekly is over, so it’s finally time for me to post my analysis of my favorite gothic novel!

On the surface, The Picture of Dorian Gray seems to be a tragedy about what happens when you give yourself over to self-indulgence and sin. Dorian has been granted eternal youth so as to live out all his passions, and he spends his life becoming progressively more depraved until his conscience weighs upon him to the point of madness, and he destroys his own horcrux. Hedonism is bad, right? But it’s a little counter-intuitive for such a moral to come from Oscar Wilde. Why would Oscar Wilde, of all people, write a story that seems to condemn hedonism? Well… I don’t think he does. The book just doesn’t read that way. It’s a luxuriously self-indulgent, sensual book! I wouldn’t like it so much if it boiled down to “hedonism is bad.”

I think that this book is a metatextual critique of Wilde’s own philosophy. The Picture of Dorian Gray is not really about beauty, or pleasure, or sin. It is about art. It is about the nature of art and it’s relationship to the artist, and to the audience. It is a cautionary tale not about the dangers of hedonism, but the dangers of taking art too seriously. At least, that seems to be what it is according to its author. I’m not saying that I know definitively what the author’s intentions were, or that authors’ interpretations of their work are the only true and correct ones. Ultimately, an author’s interpretation of his or her own work is just one interpretation among many, and any true piece of art can be interpreted many different ways. But, looking at Dorian Gray through the lens of its own author might be the best way to answer this question. So, I am going to analyze that. For fun!

At first glance, Wilde’s preface doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the story. It’s a really short philosophical argument. Actually, it reads more like a pretentious internet comment, by making a bunch of beautifully-worded controversial claims and then sitting back and waiting for you to respond to them, almost as if it’s daring you to argue.

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

[…]

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.

There’s a lot more philosophical rambling that I cut out, but the short of it is this — art exists for its own sake. It exists to be admired, to be enjoyed. It exists to be beautiful, and that’s it. Anything that anyone else gets from it is simply what they get from it, and it says more about them than it does about the art. Creating art for any other primary purpose misses the point, if it isn’t outright dangerous.

Now, generally in literary analysis it’s a faux pas to psychoanalyze the author based on their work (which Wilde would probably agree with, since he writes that art should “conceal the artist”). There’s a lot of weird philosophy in this book, mostly put forth by the character of Lord Henry Wotton. Although Wilde identifies Lord Henry as something of a caricature of himself, we cannot say whether anything Lord Henry says is what Wilde really thinks. But this? The preface is written without the voice of a character or the context of a story. This is the author speaking as himself, in his own words, and therefore we can conclude that this is what he really thinks. That means that the only thing we can really say about Wilde and his philosophy based on this book alone comes from this preface.

Why is this preface even here? Why is it attached to this book? It might just be a futile attempt to cover his own ass, since he says things like “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book” and “Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.” That’s basically facing down the inevitable controversy that this book generated and saying, “don’t look at me, it’s just a story. It’s your fault for taking it seriously.” But, we could also use it as a framework within which to interpret the following story. Or, actually, wait, we’re not supposed to interpret it because it exists for its own sake, right? But why else would the this be the preface to Dorian Gray, if the story wasn’t meant to prove the preface’s point?

One more bit of metatextual content I want to bring up: Wilde said this about his characters:

Basil Hallward is what I think I am: Lord Henry what the world thinks me: Dorian what I would like to be — in other ages, perhaps.

(I am way too proud of this outdated meme.)

So, all three of Dorian Gray’s main characters are meant to represent the author himself from various perspectives. Basil, the innocent and lovelorn painter, is how Wilde perceives himself. Lord Henry is how society perceives Wilde; he smoothly makes controversial philosophical statements about hedonism and beauty and whatnot, but doesn’t actually believe most of what he’s saying. And what a cryptic thing to say about Dorian, the naive-boy-turned-corrupt libertine. I guess I could interpret that as Wilde saying that he’d theoretically like to have the sheer daring and shamelessness needed to actually live out all of Henry’s philosophies. So… if that’s the case, then that puts a big question mark over Dorian’s entire character. If the message of the book is “hedonism is bad,” then why would Wilde want to be Dorian, even hypothetically? Dorian’s depravity is clearly a bad thing, right? Why would Wilde write him that way, then?

Because the book’s moral isn’t about hedonism, it’s about art.

Wilde warns the reader, “All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.” But… that’s exactly what I plan to do. Sorry, Oscar.

So, let’s actually talk about the story now.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a weirdly paradoxical work for the reasons I just spelled out — it seems like it should be condemning hedonism, but it doesn’t quite. It seems like it is a story about a man whose life steadily ruined by pleasure-seeking at the expense of all else, and yet… it’s just so decadent, this book. It’s full of philosophy about hedonism and the nature of good and evil, and it’s hard to tell just how much is espoused by its author and how much is condemned. Often the philosophy comes through Lord Henry, but sometimes it’s just there in the narration. And I love this book for that reason. I love thinking about stuff like that, so much. I love that this book practically smells like opium and tastes like rich chocolate.

The reason why I’m so interested in Wilde’s relationship to his own work here is because I agree with a lot of the philosophy presented in it. I know that Dorian Gray is being corrupted by Lord Henry’s influence, and I can see how that happens. But… still. This book is interesting to me because it seems to simultaneously espouse and decry the philosophy presented in it, which is why I think it’s a critique. “Let’s let this philosophy play a bit, and see what it does.” What if someone really did live the kind of life that Wilde himself was accused of living? When is hedonism healthy, and when is it not? Where are the limits?

Henry is Wilde’s caricature of himself. A lot of readers hate him for just how infuriating he is. All Lord Henry really does is spout controversial and kind of offensive statements. I’m sure we all know at least one person like that on the internet. Henry’s like the super intellectual version of a troll; he just says stuff to make people deeply uncomfortable and see how they’ll react. But he’s also persuasive — he’s a Mephistophelian character with a “low, musical” voice. He views Dorian almost like a science experiment. He admits that influence is evil, but then actively goes after an impressionable and naive boy to turn him into… well, whatever that portrait looked like in the last chapter. In chapter 2, he makes a long speech about how a man should “live out his life fully and completely […] give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream.” In short, screw Victorian morality. Life is to be experienced, so drink deeply of all it has to offer instead of wasting it constraining yourself. His best line, in my opinion, is:

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

—Chapter 2

I kind of agree with this. Kind of. I do think that temptation is impossible to resist. The more you attempt to repress your desires, the more intensely you feel those desires. The best thing to do to avoid being tempted by genuinely dangerous things is to either satisfy the temptation using some safer outlet (or otherwise redirect it), or to avoid potential temptations altogether. The second line of this quote makes it clear that what Henry is really saying here is, “don’t let society’s stupid restrictions keep you from living your best life.”

And… yeah. If society shames you for being gay, whip out the rainbow colors! A lot of things (especially “sexual deviancy”) are only “temptations” because society and culture says that they’re wrong, not because they’re actually morally wrong. That’s an important distinction. We’ll get back to that. I believe that the difference between a temptation and a desire is that you can only be tempted by something dangerous and forbidden. If feeling lust as a young woman or man is considered morally wrong, then sex is a “temptation” — as soon as it’s considered a normal part of existing as a human, then it’s suddenly not a “temptation,” it’s just desire, and is a lot easier to deal with. You can find a safe outlet for it without feeling any shame, and without making any dumb mistakes out of sheer desperation.

Another thing Harry says is,

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one’s nature perfectly — that is what each of us is here for.

—Chapter 2

Yes! I have no argument here. None at all. However, reading between the lines, it seems as though Harry’s definition of “realizing one’s nature perfectly” is just experiencing everything in life and living it to its fullest, literally without distinguishing between good and bad experiences, or good and evil deeds. “Every experience is of value,” he says at one point. I don’t define self-development this way. My definition is complete self-awareness. If you’re self-aware, then you can be as self-indulgent as you want because you know where your limits are. Drinking at a party is fine, but you have to know your alcohol tolerance.

Dorian buys into this philosophy pretty hard. By chapter 11, his whole life has become one of pleasure, and… I’m still not disagreeing with a lot of the philosophy put forth by this novel:

The worship of the senses has often, and with much justice, been decried, men feeling a natural instinct of terror about passions and sensations that seem stranger than themselves […] But it appeared to Dorian Gray that the true nature of the senses had never been understood, and that they had remained savage and animal merely because the world had sought to starve them into submission or to kill them by pain, instead of aiming at making them elements of a new spirituality, of which a fine instinct for beauty was to be the dominant characteristic.

—Chapter 11

This is why I love this novel. I agree with this too. I have a fine instinct for beauty myself. Here, Dorian considers that maybe people in his society consider sensuality to be animalistic and savage only because they haven’t engaged with it at all, so it appears strange and dangerous. I also think that sensuality has been unfairly demonized for far too long, sometimes to the point where enjoying anything is sinful. I think it’s important to confront one’s passions (i.e. desires and emotions) and find a way to deal with them that’s both safe and satisfying. Like Dorian, I don’t have much patience for asceticism, or at least for the notion that it’s the most moral and spiritual way to live one’s life. Dorian attends church sometimes just out of curiosity, just becuase he finds it enjoyable or interesting, and he jumps around between different spiritualities the same way he collects jewels, textiles, and perfume:

But he [Dorian] never fell into the error of arresting his intellectual development by any formal acceptance of creed or system […] no theory of life seemed to him to be of any importance compared with life itself. […] He knew that the senses, no less than the soul, have their spiritual mysteries to reveal.

—Chapter 11

I feel called out by this. This concept of jumping around between different belief systems, using belief as a tool… that’s basically Chaos Magic in a nutshell. “Nothing is true, everything is permitted” definitely sounds like something Lord Henry would say. And I certainly don’t think that sensuality and spirituality are mutually exclusive, in fact, I think that the former can be a means of experiencing the latter. I worship Dionysus, for crying out loud. Often, the answer I give when someone on the internet asks me why I believe in magic or gods or anything else without evidence is “it’s fun,” i.e. pleasure.

And yet… my life could not be more different from Dorian’s. Perhaps the darkest part of my mind is something like Dorian, but in real life, I look like a stereotypical Victorian ingenue who’s always the first to die in a gothic novel like this one, and I’m quite pure and unsullied. I don’t do anything but sit in my dorm room and write on the internet all day. At parties, I freeze up and don’t speak to anyone. I’m still not much of a drinker, despite having been legally allowed to drink for several years now. My only real vice is sugar. I have no love life or sex life. I value pleasure becuase I can’t enjoy myself for the life of me, because I worry about everything all the time and waste energy on it. I’m not Dorian, and that’s probably why I can get away with hedonism.

Here’s the thing about our protagonist: he takes Harry much more seriously than he should. Harry doesn’t actually believe what he’s saying. He just says stuff, to be controversial and shocking. That’s what he does. But Dorian buys it, hard. Harry’s waxing lyrical about how there’s nothing in the world but youth and Dorian has the whole world at his fingertips because he’s pretty, makes Dorian obsessively concerned with his appearance. He barters his soul on a whim. And, then he proceeds to live the kind of lifestyle that Harry advocates for but doesn’t have the balls to actually commit to. Dorian is beautiful, rich, and able to do whatever he likes, which he often does. He has it all, but the truth is, he’s not really getting anything out of any experience. He goes through life like a passive spectator. This is probably because of the hedonism paradox, but it could also be because Dorian uses hedonism and collecting beautiful things as a means of escapism:

For these treasures, and everything that he collected in his lovely house, were to be to him a means of forgetfulness, modes by which he could escape, for a season, from the fear that seemed to him at times to be almost too great to bear.

— Chapter 11

Congratulations, Dorian, you ruined it for yourself.

I like beautiful things. I have more resin statues than I have space for. I have more perfumes than I actually wear. I spend a lot of my free time scrolling through artwork on Pinterest. I genuinely like museums and ballets and operas. I like dressing up in fancy Goth outfits even without an occasion. I like soft blankets. I like neoclassical music. I like decorating for holidays and making elaborate table displays and giving everything a distinctive theme. I deeply appreciate beauty. I don’t think it poisons me. I collect all these things because they make me happy, and that’s all. I think that happiness or pleasure is a worthy goal for its own sake.

But it has to be for its own sake, not for the sake of avoiding your problems, or to ignore the feeling of your sins crawling on your back. It’s like the difference between having a few drinks at a party for the fun of it, and becoming an alcoholic because you can’t come to terms with your psychological issues. Collect beautiful things because they make you happy, not because you hope they might fill the gaping void in your soul left behind by a portrait. Dorian definitely isn’t happy:

I have never searched for happiness. Who wants happiness? I have searched for pleasure.

—Chapter 18

Dorian’s whole life has been what I call “empty pleasure,” pleasure that is ultimately unfulfilling because it’s covering up a problem instead of being enjoyed for its own sake. If you indulge for the sake of avoiding something, you’re not enjoying the thing for what it is, you’re just desperately trying to take your mind off the thing you want to avoid nagging at the back of your brain, and the result is that you can’t really enjoy anything. Another example is gorging yourself on a delicious feast because it’s delicious, as opposed to binge eating. Or having sex with several people that you feel genuine affection for, as opposed to people you can’t even remember the names of. “Empty pleasure” is bad for the soul, but pleasure itself is not. The threat of “empty pleasure” is what has caused pleasure itself to be demonized for so long. It’s not the pleasure that’s bad, it’s the avoidance. Pleasure can’t be spiritual at all if its so superficial. Dorian’s hedonism is hollow and meaningless, so it corrupts his soul.

Confront your damn problems, don’t lock them in your attic! Once you’ve done that, you can really get the most out of life.

Thank you for allowing me all of that gratuitous philosophizing. Where was I? Oh, right — this book is a warning about art. Right.

Lord Henry’s last real contribution to Dorian’s corruption is giving him the mysterious “yellow book.” The “yellow book” is often speculated to be À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans. The book itself doesn’t really matter; what matters is the effect that it has on Dorian in-universe. It cements his hedonistic philosophy that had already been implanted by Lord Henry, and it seems to really drive him over the edge.

Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through which he could realize his conception of beauty.

— Chapter 11

So, there is no good and evil, only beauty. Dorian doesn’t really have a concept of good and evil anymore, just experiences in life, just whether things are beautiful or not. This is another pretty big problem with Dorian’s approach towards hedonism — he has no moral compass.

This idea that the book is “poisonous” seems to directly contradict the point that Wilde makes in the preface. “There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.” Why the contradiction? Dorian has made the mistake of taking art too seriously. The yellow book is “poisonous” not because of anything about the book itself, but because of how Dorian responds to it — because he takes it too seriously. The book wouldn’t be immoral if he just enjoyed it at face-value and didn’t take it to heart, would it? The fact that he becomes so obsessed with it is another nail in his coffin.

The first nail in the coffin comes much earlier. The scene where Dorian dumps Sibyl is critical. First, there’s Sibyl’s explanation of her perspective on her art:

The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came — oh, by beautiful love! — and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality really is. The stillness of the empty pageant in which I had always played. […] You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. You had made me understand what love really is. My love! My love! Prince Charming! Prince of life! I have grown sick of shadows. You are more to me than all art can ever be.

— Chapter 7

Until she met Dorian, Sibyl had been living through her plays. She quite literally “became” Juliet or Ophelia or whoever she was playing inside her mind, completely suspending her disbelief, because she just didn’t have much of a life outside of her acting. This made her a phenomenal actress, because watching an actor who’s that immersed in their role is also immersive for the audience. But when she met Dorian, life suddenly became more real to her and more meaningful to her than art. Sibyl completely lost that suspension of disbelief, and her acting skills along with it.

Dorian dumps her for saying so, in the most brutal way possible:

…you have killed my love. You used to stir my imagination, Now you don’t even stir my curiosity. You simply produce no effect. I loved you because you were marvellous, because you had genius and intellect, because you realized the dreams of great poets and gave shape and substance to the shadows of art. You have thrown it all away. You are shallow and stupid. My God! how mad I was to love you! What a fool I have been! You mean nothing to me now. I will never see you again. I will never think of you. […] Without your art, you are nothing. […] A third-rate actress with a pretty face.

Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here. Both Sibyl and Dorian have made the fatal mistake of taking art too seriously. On Sybil’s end, she’s been living through her art in a way that’s unhealthy. She doesn’t have a life or an identity beyond the persona that she adopts on stage. It’s like if your entire life was online, and the only people you’ve ever been in love with are fictional characters, and you didn’t have any life to speak of beyond that — oh. Okay, well, at least I have a sense of myself. Sibyl doesn’t have an identity of her own, so she borrows her identity from Shakespeare characters. Dorian, meanwhile, has fallen in love with this false identity. He doesn’t actually care about the person Sibyl actually is, because there’s nothing really there. When Sibyl feels like she’s finally found herself and become a person, Dorian is disgusted with her because she can no longer act, and she’s no longer interesting to him. Sibyl became an art piece and Dorian loved that art piece, not the person beneath.

This scene is so often misrepresented in adaptations. In most adaptations, the breakup is Harry’s fault, usually through giving him bad romance advice and teaching him to devalue women. For example, in the 2009 adaptation, Harry tempts Dorian to go to a brothel instead of seeing Sibyl perform, and Sibyl is concerned that she’s just another whore to Dorian. That becomes the focus of their breakup. Blaming the breakup on Harry makes it about hedonism; Sibyl feeling like Dorian is exploiting her for sex makes it about hedonism. It’s not about hedonism, it’s about art, which relates back to the preface. In the book, the breakup is entirely Dorian’s fault. It’s also the first time we see any real cruelty out of Dorian, which is then reflected by the portrait. Because this has nothing to do with Harry’s influence, I consider it proof that Dorian was never really that good of a person to begin with. He completely lacks empathy for Sibyl.

This is what results in tragedy. Sibyl commits suicide because she’s the pretty and innocent blond ingenue who’s always the first to die in a gothic novel, and Dorian officially begins his downward slide. Sibyl’s death is absolutely Dorian’s fault in every way. He doesn’t dive headfirst into hedonism until after that happens, and his hedonism is “empty” because he’s trying to numb the pain of Sibyl’s death. And it’s all downhill from there.

When Basil finally comes to see Dorian again, he’s appalled by Dorian’s reputation. Apparently, everything Dorian touches rots from the inside, so to speak. Sibyl becomes the first of many. Every person he’s involved with ends up too ashamed to show themselves in public, if they don’t commit suicide.

“…you were a man whom no pure-minded girl should be allowed to know, and whom no chaste woman should sit in the same room with. […] Why is your friendship so fatal to young men?” [Basil proceeds to describe several men whom Dorian was “inseparable” with who then ended up with disgraced reputations.] They say that you corrupt everyone with whom you become intimate.”

— Chapter 12

Dorian’s reputation is so sordid that all of the young women and men who become intimate with Dorian (interesting word choice) all end up ruined in some way or another. The same is said of Alan Campbell, the young chemist Dorian blackmails into deposing of Basil’s body. Apparently, they were “almost inseparable, indeed. Then the intimacy had come suddenly to an end.” Do I really need to spell this out? What does Dorian blackmail Allan with? We don’t know. It’s never said. But it’s heavily implied to be something about the very gay stuff that they almost definitely did together.

But — and this is one of the things that made the book so scandalous for its time — Dorian isn’t depraved because he’s bi. He’s just a bad person, and all of the poor young people who become involved with him suffer for it. Other characters in the story who are implied to be queer are not depicted as being evil. Basil, the most unambiguously gay character in the novel, is also one of the most innocent and the most undeserving of Dorian’s cruelty. Alan, too, is an innocent victim of Dorian, whatever he and Dorian might have done together in the past. During the scene in which Dorian blackmails Alan, his behavior implies that he is abusive as a partner, even outside the extraordinary circumstance of covering up a murder. Specifically, the “you made me do this” lines that he keeps throwing at Alan:

I tried to spare you. You will do me the justice to admit that. You were stern, harsh, offensive. You treated me as no man has ever dared to treat me—no living man, at any rate. I bore it all. Now it is for me to dictate terms.

— Chapter 14

How many other people has Dorian treated like this? How many of his lovers has he gaslit into believing that his abuse is their fault? How many people has he threatened with social ruin if they don’t do what he wants? (His own reputation can’t get any worse, after all.) He gives Alan a “look of pity,” as if to say, “this will hurt you way more than it hurts me.” Until the very end, Dorian seems completely oblivious (perhaps willingly so) to the effect that his actions have on other people, or worse, he actively enjoys it.

So, that brings me to Basil Hallward. Poor, poor Basil.

Basil knows his fatal flaw, and here we come back to taking art too seriously:

Dorian, from the moment I met you, your personality had the most extraordinary influence over me. I was dominated, soul, brain, and power, by you. You became to me the visible incarnation of that unseen ideal whose memory haunts us like an exquisite dream. I worshipped you. […] I was only happy when I was with you. When you were away from me, you were still present in my art…. […] One day, a fatal day I sometimes think, I determined to paint a wonderful portrait of you as you actually are, not in the costume of dead ages, but in your own dress and your own time. […] …I know that as I worked on it, every flake and film of colour seemed to me to reveal my secret. I grew afraid that others would know of my idolatry. I felt, Dorian, that I had told too much, that I had put too much of myself into it. […] Well, after a few days the thing left my studio, and as soon as I had gotten rid of the intolerable fascination of its presence, it seemed to me that I had been foolish in imagining that I had seen anything in it, more than that you were extremely good-looking and that I could paint. Even now I cannot help feeling that it is a mistake to think that the passion one feels in creation is ever really shown in the work that one creates. Art is always more abstract than we fancy. Form and colour tell us of form and colour — that is all. It often seems to me that art conceals the artist far more than it reveals him.

— Chapter 9

This is all one paragraph, by the way, and the whole thing spans an entire page. It is probably the gayest paragraph of the entire body of Victorian literature. Basil is clearly infatuated. He becomes so obsessed with Dorian that it’s almost unhealthy. This anguished declaration of love obviously echoes the preface, which is to be expected if Wilde sees Basil as a representation of himself. “To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim.” Basil is afraid that the portrait doesn’t reveal Dorian as he is, instead revealing Basil’s salacious crush on Dorian. But he ultimately comes to the same conclusion as the preface — that art conceals the artist and simply exists for its own sake. Anyone is able to project onto art and see anything they want in it, but art simply is what it is, and taking it too seriously results in peril. Perhaps the true tragic figure of this book isn’t Dorian, it’s Basil, for having invested so much in this portrait. He doesn’t paint it for the sake of creating a beautiful thing, but for the sake of glorifying his crush. He treated Dorian like a god, and could not see past his projection of perfection to see that Dorian was becoming a monster until it was much too late. When Basil sees what has become of the portrait, he acknowledges that this is the only thing anyone is punished for in this novel: “I worshipped you too much. I am punished for it. You worshipped yourself too much. We are both punished.”

Dorian himself kind of becomes an art piece. He literally switches places with the portrait. The portrait shows the corruption of Dorian’s soul, and Dorian himself becomes a projection of both Harry “poisonous” philosophy and Basil’s unhealthy projection. He is admired intensely. He exists just to be beautiful, like an art piece, and no one can really see past his beauty. The novel’s premise is based around the idea that people’s sins are written across their face, and that beauty equals goodness. No one can believe anything bad about Dorian when they see him because he just looks so innocent and angelic. Before he learns the truth, Basil is disturbed by Dorian’s reputation but just can’t believe it: “But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth—I can’t believe anything against you.” Similar comments are made by other characters. Dorian is just too pretty to be as evil as he is. The subversiveness of the book comes from that premise. How often are beautiful people able to get away with anything in society, just because people tend to assume they’re innocent? It’s no wonder that Dorian is completely narcissistic.

Even Harry is incredulous when Dorian all but admits to having murdered Basil, thinking that he’s not capable of murder: “Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders […] I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.” Comparing crime to art is really interesting, to say the least. Most people would say that there’s nothing artistic about crime, but Harry isn’t most people, he’s a troll. And the only reason he gets off scot-free in this book is because he never commits the sin of taking art too seriously! Apparently, according to him, Dorian cannot commit a crime because he’s basically an art piece, and he just doesn’t have any need to kill someone. There’s another comment that Harry makes towards the end that suggests that he views Dorian as an art piece:

I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets.

—Chapter 19

This echoes an earlier comment that he made about Basil being boring because everything that’s interesting about him, he puts into his art. Dorian’s life is vibrant because he directs all that same creative energy into living instead of into an art piece. Dorian himself is an art piece. And yet, while Harry is saying this, Dorian is feeling Basil’s murder weighing upon him.

The title refers not to Dorian himself, but to the portrait — a piece of art. The portrait drives the story, and even Dorian himself realizes this. Dorian’s undoing is that he can’t live with the guilt of his reckless murder and probably all his other sins, especially when he has a literal conscience staring back at him. He would have gotten away with murder just for being pretty, if he didn’t have a conscience. It’s far too late for him to redeem himself, so he decides to destroy the conscience. And… we know how that turns out.

The true “moral” of this book is really hard to parse out, which is maybe why we shouldn’t attempt to read the symbol and just take the whole book at face-value, right? There’s a lot going on here. There’s the inability to face up to one’s problems and deal with them in a way that’s healthy, resulting in any form of enjoyment being “empty.” There’s the idolization of beauty, always assuming the best of beautiful people even when they’re really quite awful. And there’s art — treating art like life or life like art is always going to come back to bite you in the end. That would make this a cautionary tale about what happens when art isn’t appreciated for its own sake, and is projected on so much that one confuses it with life, or sought as a source of morality. Art is not moral, it just is — reading (or writing!) a book from the perspective of a serial killer will not make you a bad person. This book is not a bad influence, it just is.

Even after having written all of that, I’m still not really sure what Wilde was trying to say about hedonism, so let’s ask him. According to Wilde himself, the moral of The Picture of Dorian Gray is, “All excess, as well as all renunciation, brings its own punishment.”

Both extremes are bad. Indulge in life, but make sure you do so with empathy, and for the right reasons! Find some middle ground. And most of all, don’t be afraid of your own portrait.

#dorian gray #the picture of dorian gray #dorian gray weekly #oscar wilde #literary analysis #gothic literature #gothic lit #art #hedonism #tpodg

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bookstoreaders · 1 year ago

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*Spoilers for both of these books*

I had found out about CS Pacat while searching for art work inspiration for my own story and that's how I found the Captive Prince Series and then I saw Dark Rise in books a million and I was instantly caught by the cover. I love any story with darker morally complex (not gray: I could and will make a post on that) characters.

I put off reading it for while because I'm very much a mood reader and this past week I decided you know what let's dive in.

So I'm going to go through each character and what I think of them because I am 100% a character reader. This will be for both books Dark Rise and Dark Heir (also please note i did audio book so I may spell things wrong)

Let's start with our main boy:

Will:

I find Will so interesting and complex. It's hard to tell if what he is doing is because he truly doesn't want to be like Sacien or if this is all apart of Sacien's "will". I find it very interesting that Will's name is well, Will. At the same time it's seems to me that Will is trying so hard to NOT be who he was in his past life. At the end of Dark Heir when he gets outed and he thinks James is the one person who actually accepts him and finds out he has the collar on (I have thoughts on that but I will get to theories later on) it's devastating. I think for both Will and James they want to not be judged for the choices their past selves made.

On that note James:

James is probably my favorite character.

He is snarky and smart and brave and everyone treats him terribly except for Will. He is either treated like a wh***, a weapon (though Will is guilty of this), or a traitor. He's something to be owned, to be possessed. He is paying for the actions of a past he can't even remember (until the very end) when the collar was put back on him i was so upset, but knew it wouldn't work the way St. Claire wanted.

Violet:

I liked Violet more in book one. Im.curious about her inpending "fight" with Tom and if and when that will go down. I was hoping she would be the one to stick behind Will and not judge him. (Though i feel she's going to be the first to go back, if Will really is trying to be "good")

Cyprian:

Cyp Cyp... I really didn't like him.at first. But.now I do. However, I find him complex as well. I love his dedication to his believes and his loyalty and obvious love for Violet. I hate his judgement of James, that he blames him for Marcus and the other Stewart's and doesn't think about why James might have left. (Their father tried to kill him when they found out he was a reborn) ... on a different note him drinking from the cup, wrestling the shadow, jumping down that whole and breaking the "staff" and dragging Will back up like he was a sack was pretty bad ass.

Katherine/Visander

Let's start with Katherine: I wish we'd had more time with her. I didn't feel very connected to her so when she died i wasnt that upset. Visander seems so one sided in his goals and thoughts. It's like has blinders on. He doesn't think that maybe Devon has changed in 1000+ years or that things might have changed. He is stuck in the past. His relationship with Philip is interesting especially with him being in Katherine's body (which is very weird and im not sure how I feel about it)

Elizabeth: she can be annoying but she is.also 10 years old. For her age she is a very smart and brave young lady and im excited to see where her story goes.

Tom:

I feel like I am grappling at straws for more information on Tom. I want more. How much does he truely know? Is he niave? What does being a "lion" mean. He clearly loves Violet

Devon: he interests me more than anyone. His story is tragic and sad. Hunted and having his horn cut off... they say it was by humans but I have thoughts (theories later) and then living through all those years alone. It's pretty tragic. He seems to have a very loving and trusting relationship with Tom from what I can tell (I do hope I'm reading that correctly)

So thoughts and theories and all that and there's no Rhyme or Reason to any of this:

I am starting to wonder who the real bad guys are: I don't think it was really Sacien. I wonder if it might actually be the Sun King or whatever he's called. I wonder in book 3 of with James remembering the past if we won't learn the truth. Because something is up.

I despise Will's mother. She raises this child, ties him to beds, tries to kill him. All for the supposed mistakes of a past life he can't recall... yeah f**ck her.

I think the Stewart's are sus. Did they hunt down Devon and saw off his horn? If not how did they end up it?

What exactly is the white death and if it's evil how did Visander come back if he is good?

What's up with Grace?

I'm firmly convinced that Sacien/Anharian Will/James is like a "You have to have shadows with light" James is the Light and Will is the Shadow they are supposed to compliment each other. I think someone fucked with history but we will see.

Basically, I really enjoyed these two books, and I am desperate for any news on book 3

#darkrise #darkheir #cs pacat #will and james #devon and Tom

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theokapuco · 10 months ago

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I actually did this drawing a while ago but when I finished I didnt like it so I didnt end up posting it but now looking back, I still don't like it but I spent a long time on it soooo, here's Thomas as a Siren and below is some Info dump about this Au I made

Since I am also a sleepy bois inc fan, I got inspired by dark sbi mermaid fanfics and decided to test it out on the Maze Runner and see what it leads me to. So, just a heads up, the Maze Runner characters in this Au are more morally gray because they follow their animalistic side more than their human side.

In this Au, they in a hierarchy and every mermaid lives in their own pod (a community)

Hierarchy goes like; Leaders, Sirens, Children, Protectors, and Hunters/Gatherers

It is not a requirement to have a Siren in the Pod but it does make the pod seem stronger if they do have one

There tends to be only one siren in each pod because in this AU they are cannibals and are not afraid of eating another siren from their own pod or a different one

The color of a siren represents what types of power their voice holds, Thomas in particular has the ability to manipulate people’s sadness and grief, he can make others see hallucinations of loved dead ones or intensify someone's state of sadness/depression/loneliness. The jewelry around his neck is a symbol of his status and showing how important his voice is.

Short plotline; Thomas is a lone siren who does not have a pod. He gets invited to join the Gladers pod by Alby but problems arise when Thomas realizes that they already have a siren in their pod, Ben. At first they would stay far away from each other, with Ben always hanging in the front of the Pod and Thomas in the back but one day Ben does end up attacking Thomas and Thomas ends up killing him.

Since they run more on instincts and animalistic feelings, Thomas did not really feel bad at first because he did it in order to survive but he soon realizes how sad the pod is since he can feel their sadness. He decides to permanently stay in their pod and promises to protect them as a way to make amends

In the beginning, Thomas does not have a good relationship with anyone in the Pod except for Chuck and Alby. With him and Chuck having a brotherly relationship and him and Alby having more of a stable one. Gally and him absolutely hated each other but over time they warmed up to each other. Newt, Minho, and Thomas had a distant relationship until Thomas ended up saving Minho from mermaid hunters, which caused him to earn trust from Minho, Newt, Frypan, and Winston.

Sirens are very different from normal mermaids. They age the same but mature mentally faster than Mermaids. Their diets are very different with them being mostly carnivores while mermaids are omnivores. Mermaids are sort of okay with humans, they especially have soft spots for the human kids but Sirens won’t hesitate to kill one. They are more private about their species and do not let any humans near them unless a human somehow manages to earn their trust. Aris, Teresa, and Rachel are humans that Thomas tolerates but he doesn’t like it when they get too close. Mermaids can not survive without a Pod but Sirens can and they choose willily to join one if they want to, they just tend to do things on their own in the Pod and sometimes listen to the leader which is why it’s important they have a great relationship

The characters do all act the same as they do in the book and movies, but with just a slight readjustment with their bio instincts. Thomas is still curious and oblivious but now he just has a little bit of animal instincts added to him, this applies to the rest of the characters

Free fee to add in your own headcanons or even make your own story of this. I probably won’t talk about this Au again unless someone asks me too and don’t mind the big ass among us, I just like adding them in my drawings sometimes.

(p.s. Sorry for any spelling errors or if I just straight up don't make sense. I have dyslexia and I try my best to correct my errors)

#art #my art #the maze runner #fanart #the maze runner thomas #the maze runner fanart #thomas the maze runner #tmr thomas #Tmr #The maze runner Au #Am so tired #theokapuco #Alternate universe #digital art

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moongothic · 1 year ago

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Don’t think it find with the current timeline BUT have been playing around with the idea Dragon and Crocodile fell apart over gender identity revelations and sexuality but in the other direction and more morally gray

The revolutionaries are all about freedom and dignity and justice and other related ideas right? And ivankov both seems capable of discerning someone’s gender or inner struggle perhaps before they even have words for it (as seems to be the case) as well as seeming to serve as a sort of guide or mentor to other queers who rither serve under him or seek him out. Pope for the gays.

So some point into dating fair lady crocodile Ivankov taps his friend Dragon on the shoulder and let’s him know that he’s been getting clear man signals from crocodile for a while and dragon should make his peace. But neither tells crocodile because they both decide thst the most respectful thing to do is let him figure it out himself eventually

…ecvept when he dors and he tellls his boyfriend and dragon turns around and admits he had known for however long before of Iva’s powerd Crocodile is PISSED becsuse he sees all the time he was living as a woman and trting to figure this all out as unnecessary suffering now that he knows others KNEW and could jave TOLD him sooner

Sentimentality vs pragmatism

So normally when I get asks I really want to come up with something to say in response to post it (to the point sometimes I will derail an ask just so I can think of something to say). And if I can't think of anything to say in response, I just leave the ask in my inbox.

But this one.

Like I feel like this probably wouldn't work in canon, at least not in my mind (though that admittedly could be just me being delulu in how convinced I am of my own headcanons being accurate lmao), and that's the thing I'm usually obsessed with, the canon compliancy, could that work with the canon characterization and would the actions make sense, etc etc.

But this is such an interesting concept on its own, that like. I dunno I don't want to leave this collecting dust in my inbox, it's too interesting. It could make for an interesting character study/an AU

#Moon posting #Asks #OP Meta #So yeah I got nothing to say except. That's an interesting idea. A fun thought experiment.#It makes me go [thinking emoji]#Sorry I took 13 days to give such a non-response but considdering I normally wouldn't have even published this ask it's better than nothing

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acidrcins · 1 year ago

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did you hear the latest scoop ? we’ve got a new student joining us ! a little birdie told me that they’re called CHAE SEORI, but they kinda remind me of BAE SUZY — don’t ‘cha think ? you’re probably thinkin’ they’re just another TWENTY-SEVEN year old in their FIRST year of some MASTER'S DEGREE IN BIOCHEMISTRY , but wait ‘till you hear about their POISON GENERATION ! nifty, huh ? they’re pretty PRINCIPLED on nullivi, but you should watch out for their VINDICTIVE just in case ! anyway — if you wanna check them out, i heard they’re staying at the YELLOW HALL. oops ! you didn’t hear that one from me ! ༊*·˚

hello, i'm liv and v excited to b here! im a sl*t for anything superpower related and im also still off that gen v high so very excited to be here! all i can offer is this intro post, which i hope covers all the Key Aspects of miss chae seori. if i may summarize, shes just trying her best to be a good person while making questionable decisions and internalizing everything bad that her family has ever said abt her ‪♡‬ a cate dunlap wanda maximoff dupe rly

do like this post if u would like to plot because i would LOVE to and i much prefer d*scord hehe

also tw for mentions of nausea

𖥸 ─ basics

chae seori (often seen with gloves and a mask)

scorpio sun, pisces moon, scorpio rising

born 12 november 1996 in a small town in the outskirts of seoul

currently a first year masters student, studying biochemistry & living in yellow hall

makes poison out of her fingertips & can infect those through physical contact or through air (if in close proximity)

there have been rumours going around that seori is able to give a kiss of death but she would like to debunk those rumors! her lips are harmless really its just the air around her

big on wearing patches but she wont tell you. will make u guess whether she has one or not. (justifies by saying shes just having fun)

𖥸 ─ personality

tl;dr morally grey girl, who's trying to prove herself as a good person (but it's hard when your powers are literal poison). a little bit of a manic pixie dream girl too

positive: principled, collected, intuitive, charming, inquisitive

negative: reticent, elusive, vindictive, temperamental, self-centered

alignment: chaotic neutral (the only principles she follows are the ones she sets for herself)

character inspirations: heavily inspired by gen v's cate dunlap, the hunger games' finnick odair, mcu's wanda maximoff, looking for alaska's alaska young, yellowjackets' natalie

archetypes: the vixen, the philophobic, the antihero

associated aesthetics: shades of gray, smiles that don't seem to reach your eyes, making questionable decisions but finding ways to justify them to yourself, dark eyes and darker nights, flirtatious touches with a hint of danger, red lipstick, unexplained headaches and waves of nausea

in control of her emotions but has tendencies to lash out. she is working really hard to be a good person!!! (by her standards) (she is thisclose to just saying fuck it and just embracing that she is a Villain tho pls someone enable her)

but she can get very resentful lmfao (example A: in her most recent biochemistry class, she told herself urself it was ok that the guy in class just mansplained a concept that she had already understood in middle school but then also gave him a wave of nausea once class ended because he was so fucking rude and deserved it)

keeps up a facade of being coquettish and flirtatious ( i never watched doona but that was the vibe i got from her gifs lmfao ) i think she can be quite charming tbh the queen of breadcrumbing ‪♡‬ keep them close enough, but never enough to touch. it's sort of a coping mechanism. safe space where no one can see what a shit person she really is and how she doesnt really deserve love

no one really knows much abt her and she intends to keep it that way

heavily motivated by wanting to know more! generally the kind of person who would conduct wild ass experiments or "would you love me if i were a worm" i kinda picture it like how finnick in catching fire is like he's paid with secrets!! same vibe with seori :D

𖥸 ─ background

pretty ordinary life growing up. parents are not particularly rich but they don't struggle either. happy small town family ‪:)

shit hits the fan when shes twelve and her brother is fourteen and they find out hes an anomaly. superhuman strength and speed. finds out after he saves a dog from getting hit by a car

if it had been anyone else, perhaps, they would've been the town's outcast but because it's her older brother, all conventional good looks with conventionally lauded powers, they worship him. he becomes the town's superman, girls come up and take pictures with him, he even gets featured in the town parade and seori is just there in the shadows

it gets even worse two years later when she finds out shes also anomaly! but unlike her brother, seori causes an incident of projectile vomiting after a particularly envious moment where her family forgets her birthday and instead, spends the day with her brother. it is messy and disgusting and it happens in the town center. no one forgets. and seori is no longer there in the shadows, she's actively cast out, whispers about why she cant be more like her brother and this is why anomalies should not be given rights

it takes seori some time to figure out her powers but she gets the hang out of it. not that it matters lol shes the black sheep, the 'villain' because goddamn shes literal poison. even her family treats her that way

she doesn't believe those words until one day she gets into a heated argument with her family. tells her mum that shes a person too and wails her father that no one has called her by her name in years and she's nothing but a stain in their family. they don't deny it and in a fit of rage and hurt and anger, she manages to cause irreversible brain damage to her brother

and that is the moment seori realizes she is the villain everyone talks about and she is the monster (doesnt help that her pupils are dark and her veins are black) !!! not a pretty look (think the monsters in sweet home before they transform kind of vibe) and so she runs

runs and runs and runs to seoul where she gets by on illegal means. she is ashamed of the things she has done (e.g., disrupting the storeowners vision long enough to get food to eat, sent someone into unconsciousness and pretended to be their granddaughter caring for them to get a house to stay, batting doe-eyes to boys who will buy her a pack of ramen) and since then shes actively working on being a better person

swears to keep her feelings in control, only uses her powers when justified (although her moral compass is cracked)

𖥸 ─ wanted connections

thank you if you made it this far! ‪♡‬ ‪♡‬ mwah mwah i appreciate u also i love plotting and just brainstorming so here are some rough ideas but OFC always open to talk !!

friends ! or better yet, friends who only meet late at night and you talk about the stars and your feelings and in the morning you pretend you have no other who the other is

someone who's immune to her....

fellow individuals in #STEM

ok this is really specific BUT what if.. our muses were enemies... and they kissed... and seori's feeling INTENSE emotions and accidentally fucks ur muses' vision up and gives them a headache and she has to pretend like it didnt excite her

she doesnt believe she deserves to be loved, so i would LOVE an angsty first love breakup thing. bonus points if she broke ur muses heart

she accidentally poisons u (she swears its an accident)

u catch her doing some immoral shit and tell her shes not a good person

a sam/cate situation. someone enable her to just fuck it youre not a good person so embrace it!!!

i love angst and antagonism so lets beef (ic)

#✦ ・ ooc.

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arse-blathanna · 2 years ago

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(Did some minor changes because the wording was messy. Like I said answer only if you feel like it. Don't force yourself.)

I replayed the games recently, and now I'm thinking if Roche is actually an evil person as most of the fanbase are framing him to be.

His character is just so weird?? and I don't know if it's just CDPR's problem with their all over the place writing, or he's just having a crisis moment. It's hard to label him as a good person because he's for sure is FAR from that, but it's hard to label him as a bad person either. And I also don't think CDPR intended to make Roche too much of an asshole, especially since he's on the wrong side of the conflict and it would be too dumb to just give a choice to side with an evil racist moron. That would also make his friendship with Geralt zero sense. I'm saying that...but also I remember that Bloody B*ron 'my wife who I beated to shit and gave her trauma is also guilty because she cheated on me and you should feel bad for me' and Tr*ss 'raping is okay' exist.

There's just so much about Vernon that makes my brain explode. At first glance he's just a basic ass rude soldier man who's whole trait is just 'i'm a patriot and I love my king', but the more you know about him and analyse him he's just??? a really complicated traumatized man?? I don't wanna get too far with my "delusions", but there's a lot of rotating questions in my head. Does he ever show a remorse for his crimes? Does he ever wishes to undo them? Is he loyal to Foltest for the sake of being loyal or only because he saved him and gave him a purpose to live? Is he just an asshole who loves to hurt and kill people, or a man who thinks the goal justifies the means? Does he care more about something/someone more than his country/king? Is he racist or an idealist who protects his country from terrorists and thinks there's no other way? There's just SO many thoughts and they hurt my brain a lot.

I HATE HIM I LOVE HIM HE CAN'T GET OUT OF MY HEAD FREE ME!!

Anyways, I'm not trying to sound like every one if Roche's crimes can be justified, but (BUT) I think his motivation to why he does that can determine if he's redeemable, can he move on, or is he morally gray. And I feel like he starts becoming better(?) in TW3 by trying to help his people to live in internally self-ruled independent Temeria.

So, YEAH...I want to talk about his character as a whole basically.

I HATE HIM I LOVE HIM HE CAN'T GET OUT OF MY HEAD FREE ME!!

The way that this excerpt so perfectly sums up my feelings towards this awful little man with his awful little hat and his horrible little moral compass. I love him, he's fascinating and nuanced, I'd punch him in the face in real life, I want to tuck him into bed, I want to put him in a blender and set it to the highest setting and see him get pulped.

Anyways, for the actual analysis part of this post, since I finally have the spoons for a minute. This got long so it's going under a cut so I don't destroy people's dashboards.

I don't think that Roche is in any way a "good guy" morally. The thing that I disagree with is the interpretation that Roche does his things out of a sense of personal racism. He's absolutely complicit and a part of the attempt to wipe out the elves, but his personal feelings towards elves are never really expanded upon. We only know what Roche feels about the Scoia'tael, who are treated in-universe as terrorists who have a history of gruesomely torturing their enemies.

Is it possible he's personally racist towards elves? Yes, absolutely. But the character we're presented doesn't seem personally concerned with the elves at all beyond what's important for Temeria's sake of security. Compare to characters like Loredo, Radovid, and Caleb Menge who are absolutely anti-nonhuman in general, and Roche feels like an odd fit. He's complicit. He does horrible things. We don't know the full story about the Mahakam Foothills, we probably never will know, but we can extrapolate that it was mostly likely Roche quashing a rebellion which threatened Foltest's claim as ruler in a particularly brutal fashion. What he went in facing, we just don't know. The one person who does talk about this is Iorveth, who has his own set of biases attached to him and may not be the most reliable source of information (and we don't want to ignore the shit parts of his character either. He can be oppressed but also do horrible shit too. He's not some angel compared to Roche, they're two sides of the same coin.)

His character is just so weird?? and I don't know if its just CDPR's problem with their all over the place writing, or if he's just having a crisis moment.

CDPR's writing can be really all over the place, but I don't feel that's the case with Roche. We have almost never seen his character outside of a crisis moment. I don't know that Roche knows what it's like to NOT be in a crisis at all times, given his background. But from the very first moment we meet him, Roche isn't exactly doing well. And a lot of that just comes down to the way that Roche talks about Foltest even in that first moment. He doesn't view Foltest as just a boss or just a king. He views Foltest as a mixture between a savior and his father figure. That's an… extremely loaded cocktail of feelings before you even get into Roche having his patriotism as his core trait.

Which leads me to his main motivation in the Witcher 2. He says it's Temeria, but I don't think it ever is, not really. It's revenge, through and through. He wants Iorveth to pay for his part in killing Foltest. He wants Letho's head. He wants justice for what to him is a monumental loss and only has one way to get it, which is through violence. When he loses the Stripes in his path and Ves is raped, his vengeance is directed towards Henselt instead (and keep in mind, the player has the option to let Roche become exactly what he starts off fighting-- a regicide.)

But he's always able to couch that vengeance in patriotism. He's going after the scoia'tael because they killed his king and destablized Temeria. He's trying to topple Henselt as a part of an old operation he was doing for Foltest. He's torturing an Aedirnian informant to death because he was part of the deal with sell out Flotsam. He's killing and torturing (arguably hatecriming, CDPR why did you write that scene the way you did) Dethmold because Dethmold is the one holding Foltest's sole remaining heir captive (keep in mind, whether Adda is alive depends on the outcome of the player choices in the Witcher 1 and her status isn't guaranteed or treated as such, nor is she considered a valid heir if she is alive due to The Incest Thing.)

The one time Vernon Roche does what Vernon Roche wants in the Witcher 2, everything else be damned, is when the Blue Stripes are killed and Ves is assaulted by Henselt. If he goes through with it and murders Henselt, we're told that this is one of the core destabilizing acts which allows Nilfgaard to storm through the North. Geralt takes the blame for that regicide, but it's a stain which Roche can't wash off.

Which leads us to his role in the Witcher 3, clawing back Temeria with every scrap of power that he can muster. The murder of Henselt isn't really addressed super directly in the Witcher 3, but if you take it to be canon and apply that information to Roche it changes the shade of his actions a bit. Is he still trying to win back Temeria, save his people, maintain the kingdom's sovereignty? Yes, absolutely.

But if you apply the death of Henselt as being at Roche's hands it changes the shade of his actions. Is he doing this because he's a patriot who wants what's best for Temeria? Or because he feels guilt for enabling Nilfgaard to take the majority of the Northern Kingdoms? Is he brokering a deal with Nilfgaard for Temeria's questionable sovereignty because he wants to see his country free and thriving, or because he's trying to unfuck a situation which he single-handedly helped create? We Just Don't Know, and the game just... doesn't ask those questions because the way that Witcher 2's choices were integrated with Witcher 3 is dubious as all hell. But I think it's reasonable to approach them as potential background noise.

Does he ever show remorse for his actions? No, I don't think so. Not the character we're given in canon at least. When we refer to his 'crimes' I think that's it's worth keeping in mind that when it comes to the Scoia'tael he doesn't see killing them as a crime so much as it's protecting Temeria. If he does feel guilt, it's not expanded on in any significant way.

Does he care more about something/someone more than his country/king?

I'd argue that Roche's greatest loyalty isn't to Temeria so much as it is to people. It's the way that losing his king isn't just losing his king, it's his someone he views as family (the daddy issues, my god they are STRONG). It's the way that the Stripes being killed is able to completely destabilize him. It's the way that he's desperate to see Ves safe at all costs. It's the way that he'll drop everything to help Geralt protect a girl he's never even met because it's Geralt that's come asking (though there's a quid-pro-quo element to that whole interaction.

Like everyone else in the Witcher, he's morally grey. How people choose to view them is their choice, and if someone doesn't want to see him as redeemable, that's fine. That's their thing. But he's interesting to explore, with a lot of layers that make him the disgusting onion of a man that he is.

Whether he's redeemable in canon, we don't, and likely won't, ever know the answer. How Witcher 3 ends depends too much on player choice. The outcome where Roche gets what he wants and Temeria is restored as a vassal to Nilfgaard? We don't know what happens after (the only real variable we know of here is depending on whether Ciri becomes Empress of Nilfgaard.). In the Dijkstra ending, Roche dies just inches from the finish line and Temeria is swallowed up by a Dijkstra-ruled Redania. If you don't play Reason of State, Radovid lives and is able to continue his reign of terror.

But even just looking at Radovid and the choice to kill him. Is Roche doing it for Temeria? Is it because Radovid has reneged on promises to aid Temeria? Is it because he recognizes how dangerous Radovid has become as a ruler? Is it another in a string of revenges? Does helping end the reign of someone who is committing a genocide "count" as a form of redemption for someone who was himself complicit in genocide? Only the player can judge the answer. We just don't know. There just isn't an answer.

I don't think he's a good guy. But I still find him and the mess of a person that he is to be sympathetic because his story is ultimately one of someone who becomes what he hates and needs to find ways to justify that to himself. The hypocrisy is baked in and I'd argue, that's the whole point. He's no better than the people he hates, and he never has been. He's as much looking out for his people as the Scoia'tael are looking out for theirs, just the power dynamic is different because of which side he's on.

#anon #anonymous #ask #meta analysis #feel free to disagree this is just where i am with this #im a dipshit don't take this too seriously i'm just going off of vibes and extrapolation mostly #the witcher #the witcher games #vernon roche #cw: rape

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