#When he goes to look for him his story is framed as more heroic

[amoritasart]

No one talks about how much more disturbing the Wittebros story would be if Philip was the older brother.

[dalgomii]

۪ ݁ 이마크 — the anatomy of 'home'.

• SYNOPSIS .. neither of you have all that much to your name. but, here, in the small sanctuary of your brand new—and still very vacanct—apartment, with a mattress for bed, a small kitchenette yet waiting to filled with the smell of home and living off of takeout to your heart's content, you just might have the most priceless thing in the world: happiness.

♡ WORD COUNT .. 2.5k

☆ NOTES .. established relationship. you and mark talking through the night over a pizza picnic, that's the story. got way too poetic and in my feels at the ending and then fumbled it lol. happy first tumblr post to me, yay! :)

Lately the pep in his steps have been noticeable. Even the mundane task of picking up delivery and climbing five flights of stairs because the elevator still hasn't been installed in the building couldn't dampen his mood. Mark walks in through the front door, practically skipping, two boxes of pizza in his hand.

Inside is like a sea of knicknacks yet to find their rightful place in the one bedroom apartment tucked into the heart of a bustling metropolis.

You smile up at him from where you are sitting, unboxing the things your mothers had insisted on buying in the name of home decor. "Done chatting up the delivery guy?"

Mark rolls his eyes, setting the food on the kitchen counter which was overflowing with utensils left to be stowed away. His gaze stops at your Harry Potter mug, one of the few things finally freed from your incessant overdone packing with the wrapping paper to make sure nothing broke during transit.

If the cogs of his brain cleared from the fog of bliss long enough, he would vividly recall the story of winning it at a fun fair — a mere consolation prize as opposed to the big pygmy puff plushie he'd originally promised you. Still, no matter your carefully hidden disappointment he'd assume, you had kept the mug, taking it out every morning for it to enable your insane caffeine consumption.

Perhaps it's the fact he'd seen it with you so many times, warming your hands on a cold morning or staining the corners of the Sunday newspaper acting as paperweight, Mark had forgotten it was his to begin with.

"For your information, I was getting the scoop on the local restaurants. So when you come home too tired to cook, I can swoop in to save the day."

"So heroic, my knight in shining... takeout boxes? You know all this could be avoided if you just learnt to cook?" Your sarcasm is met with bubbling laughter, making you beam up at him. "Come here for a sec. How does this look?"

Raising a brow, Mark goes to stand right behind you, narrowing his eyes at the wall of cat pictures and movie posters framed above a white table that held up a shimmering and ridiculously fragile glass vase.

He frowned at a couple things he thought had long since lost, in his childhood home or the studio apartment he used to shared with three others which looked like it was struck by a hurricane on a good day, hung up on the tiny bit of space by his bookshelf.

Specifically a Wham! vinyl.

The one you'd bought Mark on his first birthday that you spent together as a couple. The effect of the years passed is visible on the not-so-shiny black surface marred with misplaced dents and scratches. Yet the 'I know you've wanted this for a long time. Happy Birthday, rockstar' written in black sharpie onto the center label is still as fresh as his memory of receiving it.

"It's pretty," he states finally, genuinely, and hopes to God he played it cool enough. But who was he kidding? Five years of desperately trying to be nonchalant wouldn't have been comparable to a second spent being yours. Mark adds as an afterthought, "Let's hope it stays that way if we stumble into it."

You can't help a snort, "If? More like 'when'. Your foot eye coordination is whack in the morning."

Mark lets out a scandalized gasp, pointing at you, "Take that back right now".

And you, being the responsible, independent, tax-paying adult, stick your tongue out at him making him shake his head before looking back at the picturesque nook in your new residence.

"We need to get some flowers for the vase, huh?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah", you smile over a stifled yawn, pretty and serene, stretching your hand up to your boyfriend. He takes it as cue to pull you up from the ground. His hand remains twined with yours even after you're standing. "Peace lilies. And maybe chrysanthemums for a pop of color?"

Mark finds himself grinning at your hopeful gaze, bringing your joined hands to his lips. "Anything you want. We can go first thing in the morning."

He feels his eyes widen when you cross the small distance between you, pressing a kiss to his jaw. "Thank you, you're the best," you whisper, brushing a few strands of his fringe away from his forehead before you moved away, leaving Mark standing there frozen like a statue. A very red in the face statue.

He thinks you know exactly how to make him weak in the knees.

You stand in the middle of the clustered living room, every inch of space on the floor filled with cardboard boxes and your belongings packed with bubble wrap. "I don't think we can finish this today. Plus, it's getting late. Let's just eat and go to bed, yeah?"

But everything you say goes in one ear and out the other. It's baffling how many times Mark would get stuck in his head over the smallest thing about you.

It's more of a habit he'd developed – or so his friends insist – back when he first met you at orientation on campus.

No, you weren't a wide-eyed freshmen and he wasn't one either. Yet, somehow the friend-of-the-world music major had managed to stumble upon the live art workshop your department had set up.

From then on, it was only ever "Did you see how beautiful her eyes are? It's like the whole galaxy is mapped in them!" or "She's so recklessly kind, dude! Today she ran into traffic to save this one old lady's cat! How much more perfect can she be?"

Mark Lee isn't a stranger to waxing poetics– hell, he does that for a living, writing lyrics with the power to make people laugh out loud, be a metaphorical shoulder for people to cry on, to feel so intensely with just words alone.

But then every syllable fails him when it comes to you, a soul so beyond the realm of letters and alphabets that nothing he could ever scrap together feels enough.

It's like the universe had decided from the very first moment you both locked eyes that this was it for him.

Mark knew it when you waved at him with amusement threaded into your expression from behind the stand you were running and he reciprocated shyly after looking around to make sure at least twenty times that it was indeed him you were waving at.

When Mark asked for your number after finishing a basketball game as state level champions because the adrenaline high of the win and the elation in having spotted you cheering him on as he nailed the deciding shot from halfway across the court turned him into his most confident self — only to be reduced to a stuttering mess when you saved his contact on your phone, blowing him a flying kiss goodbye before walking off alongside your giggling friends.

When his idea of a perfect first date to a fancy rooftop restaurant got rained on, and just when Mark was considering to never show you his face ever again, you both ended up in the backseat of his car on a McDonald's parking lot, talking and laughing and he found out that you were just as much of a rambler as him.

When a houseparty his friend Jaemin was throwing in their new shared apartment landed you on his bed, your lips like a safe haven, searing affection and praises onto his skin. That night Mark had been afraid to so much as go to sleep, scared that he would wake up to an empty room, and perhaps a half-assed note saying if he was a good fuck.

So he had stayed up till the wisps of dawn graced the city, holding you close and kissing your forehead over and over again. When you woke up, you had caught him in his bluff immediately, coming over that afternoon just to make sure he actually slept for more than an hour.

Mark thought love was a frightening emotion, too large for fickle mortal lives, too complex to fully comprehend.

And maybe he wouldn't really ever understand love in it's entirety, but he did see a version of it in you — one that was tailored for him and him only.

Mark knew it especially when after an entire year of flirty back and forths, holding each other through your biggest wins and losses, learning to be so well-versed in each other that it surpassed rationale, he asked you out.

You hadn't been particularly ecstatic, claiming you were going to ask him first but just as quick, your arms coiled around him in a tight embrace under the stars painted across the vast expanse of the universe witnessing that one deserted beach at exactly midnight.

Mark Lee fell in love with your smile but he kept falling over and over again for your heart. A heart that is irrefutably made of gold.

And he knew that if given the chance, he would remind you just how precious you are and how precious whatever it is you share is, over and over again till the sky falls.

It took Mark a while to bring you down from the pedestal he'd put you on, to accept that your love for him is as real as the existence of the world. Perhaps a speck of cosmic dust in the grand scheme of things but, to you, it is life.

That when you said "I want you to try hard, but try hard to be the best self of you. Mark, you're the sweetest, most hard-working person I have ever gotten the chance to know. So, please, don't take him away from me", you had meant every word.

It takes you snapping your fingers in front of his face to bring him out of his thoughts. You stand before him in a baggy t-shirt — one of his that you'd stolen ("permanently borrowed", you'd correct him) saying his detergent smelled better than your own — and your hair an untamed mess. You're the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

"Mark?" You whine again, cradling his face in your palms. "Baby, don't zone out again. Food?"

Huffing a laugh, Mark pulls you towards the kitchen island with a hand around your waist, "I'm here, I promise. Where do you wanna eat?"

You survey the living room that had turned into your temporary storehouse in dismay. "Dinner in bed?"

"Minus the bedframe, you mean?" Mark muses making you wail.

"Oh my God, for the last time, I'm sorry I didn't check the delivery date was so far away. Please forgive me, good sir!"

Mark clicks his tongue in faux contemplation, biting back a smile at your dramatics. "I'll think about it."

Pouting, you help Mark set the pizza boxes down by the matress in the middle of the bedroom floor, dragging him down to sit beside you. "What will it take for you to forgive me?"

"Hmm... A few kisses and maybe something else?" He smirks, wriggling his eyebrows and causing you to smack his chest.

"You're such a man," you hiss and then with a coy look, push him down to lay on his back as your straddle his waist. "Though, that can be arranged," you whisper low and sweet, but right as Mark's hands grip your hips, you roll away towards the food, "After we eat. I'm starving!"

"A minx, that's what you are!" Groaning, Mark drags you back into him, tickling your sides till you are begging to be freed.

Dinner goes on without either of you bothering to put something on the background. The T.V. isn't installed yet and though you have your laptops, the comfortable silence and occasional sparks of conversation are more than welcome.

"You think we were meant to meet?" You ask out of the blue, when the moon is high in the sky. There are empty pizza boxes crushed into the trashcan and two half-empty beer bottles rest by your feet. Your fingers trace mindless patterns on Mark's chest, nuzzling into his side while he leans against the wall as though it's a makeshift headboard. “Like there’s a huge, incomprehensible divine plan that we’re just... following?”

"Yeah," Mark says simply. Though you would loath to admit it, you admire Mark’s easy belief in his own convictions. "I think that people have, like, agency and responsibility and stuff, like – okay, so we met, but me asking for your number after that game, or asking you to move in with me was on me. The big stuff, that’s fate, or the plan, or whatever you wanna call it. But we can still choose where we go from there."

"So me and you — that’s the big stuff?" You ask teasingly, and nudge Mark with your shoulder.

He sputters comically, well-practiced indignation clear on his face, "Shut up, I’m trying to have a philosophical debate here.” But his pink ears betray him, a pretty flush creeping towards his neck.

"I kinda like the idea that it’s all random, though," you say. "Like, if everything’s a coincidence. If everything leading to this moment was just a lucky series of accidents. Don’t you think that makes it special?"

"I guess." Mark looks up at the clear doors leading to the balcony, one of the deciding factors in you settling for this building complex. The stars linger in the night like paint splattered on a dark canvas.

Back in his small shared rental, sitting out on his balcony at 3am smoking with his friends, he could count them on one hand.

The city is a graveyard of these stars, he has learned. Millions of wishes and dreams burdened onto the ones that make it past the blanket of smog just to be seen.

It takes him back to that small secluded beach in Busan, on a fleeting night amongst so many other insignificant ones. Two people, barely learning their place in the word, so utterly wrapped up in each other.

There, away from the glow of 10 million or so human lives, the stars were endless and shining in a way the city never lets them.

"It makes me feel like my life is really worth something," you continue, quieter, "If I’m here by accident, and I’m the product of so many billions of years of accidents. It makes me feel lucky. And it makes me grateful for the chance. To, you know, make something of that."

That night five years ago, maybe you both were different people, not at all the souls that remain in your body today. But if there's one secret of existence Mark had started to figure out, it would be that any version of him that came to be since you crossed paths, each one of them was utterly and irrevocably taken by the versions of you which followed.

And destiny may as well be a glorified lie crafted by people to make sense of this larger than life magnitude of adoration they can hold for another.

But Mark hopes, with everything he has, that destiny has led every variant of you and him across the universe into each others arms. Home.

©DALGOMII, 2024

[dalekofchaos]

Fixing Insomniac's Venom

I loved Insomniac's Spider-Man 2 and if I'm being honest it was all great until Venom became a mustache twirling villain.

Venom has a great appearance, the fight was good, but his motivations was bad. Wanting world domination and pulling Web of Shadows and just the personality of a brick.

So here is how I would've changed Harry as Venom

TLDR;Dive into Harry wanting the power and feeling like Peter is stealing everything from him, the suit, his fathers love, any chance of survival. Have Harry's motivation then to take everything from him convinced that was what Peter wanted to do to him.

Have the game build up that Harry pretty much gets addicted to the suit doing heroics with Peter and Miles as “agent venom“

When Peter gets the suit, Harry slowly descends into jealousy with him having not just his cure, but his new method of really healing the world

Side note. I would've added Eddie Brock into the story. He's Peter's old rival at the Bugle and now has it out for MJ. He's a really skeevy and shady Fox News/Freddie Lounds type reporter. We help MJ prove he's a fraud and get Brock fired from the bugle. Then in the fight against Kraven or The Lizard, we destroy Brock's house and later his girlfriend leaves him. Eddie hates Spider-Man, MJ and Peter Parker and this leads him to the ending where the symbiote falls on him in the end.

Once the whole shit show of Peter going insane happens and is done with the symbiotes back at oscorp

Norman and everyone won’t let Harry near the thing anymore

But this time he goes to Harry noticing that he’s with the Symbiot and it’s like containment unit

He is also dying himself and gives him a little speech about they shouldn’t let us just with away. They should let us have all the strength that we can

To be The best version of ourselves

He released the symbiote and let Harry bond with it and tell him to meet him at Times square to fulfil his last wish

To fight the ultimate predator

Venom is born

The whole thing happens in Oscorp, but it’s not security that you’re fighting. It’s just hunters.

Venom kills kraven

This time Harry goes back to Oscorp looking normal

He pretty much tells Peter to go to hell and Norman is too occupied with the fact that is so in his healthy and the suit isn’t corrupting him from what he’s seeing

Harry then makes a speech outside of the Emily May foundation in the next days

He now declares that he is agent venom and then uses the footage of himself killing kraven and frames Peter for being this monster

This is way more personal venom that also ties in with the themes of addiction and Harry’s goal of healing the world

Instead of it being an invasion, force of aliens

It’s the symbiote and Harry using their combined hatred of Peter and desire to be a hero that they want to be a better Spider-Man

Then obviously later down this rabbit hole Harry will fight Peter and Miles as the normal venom behind closed curtains and eventually when he is outed in the public

So to sum it up. Harry gets addicted to being hero. Starts to resent Peter. Set up agent venom persona as the new hero. Uses his monstrous venom form to frame Peter. Eventually is outed, defeated and add a scene of the Venom symbiote falling on somebody else(obviously Eddie Brock to set up the Venom game)

[super-paper]

A bit of a vent, if that's okay; I think one of the most frustrating things regarding this chapter has been the overall behavior from the fandom, and this sort of mandatory love for anything from the manga. I get it, when we love something we can't bear other people talking bad about it (I'm the same way with some things), but it's annoying how a lot of us haven't been allowed to criticize or show any anger/disappointment about the chapter. It's upsetting, especially as an Izuku stan, to see other accounts (famous accounts too) claim that if we're disappointed with Izuku then we hate his character. That we're too stupid and cynical to think Izuku did anything wrong at all and wasn't allowed to defend himself. That we can't read if we think Izuku and Bakugo killed Kurogiri, or that Izuku wasn't able to save Shigaraki because after all he did free him from his abuser and made him recognize that he was in fact a crying child. And to each their own I suppose; but putting interpretations of arcs and narratives aside, this overall superiority of "there's nothing wrong with this chapter, you just don't get it so shut up" and the undermining of how a lot of fans feel is seriously infuriating. (Maybe this is how people felt when I'd argue that Armored Might wasn't character assassination lol). I'm just tired of getting called every name in the book for having my own criticisms, and getting accused of hating Izuku, or seeing Shigaraki stans undermined as if they weren't aloud to feel sad about it. Because it's exactly why people loved those characters and arcs so much that they feel such a strong reaction to 423. I'm upset with the weird ooc behavior and lack of introspection from Izuku because I love his character so much. And I'm upset with this chapter because I love this manga and wanna see a well written conclusion for the characters and story.

Nah, I definitely feel the same. So many fans have been taking the words of upset Tenko and Izuku fans out of context (or even outright twisting their words around) and using it as an excuse to be bullies. I'm sorry if folks have been harassing you.

At any rate, I think you have every right to criticize the chapter. Like, I'm very much a silver-lining-look-on-the-bright-side type of guy-- and even I'm having trouble finding anything to like about it lmao 😭. Basically, I liked AFO's conclusion... on the surface, at least. But then my mind goes right back to thinking about Tenko and how AFO's conclusion/treatment is yet another thing that ultimately contributed to his death, and I get mad all over again lmao. Like, an ending where Tenko gets turned into a "cautionary tale" that "everyone learns from" is pretty much the last thing I wanted for his character. It's basically ~*~building a better society~*~ on top of his corpse. And what exactly is his life/death cautioning against exactly? Grooming?? Stranger danger??? Being kidnapped by literally the worst guy alive when you're five years old and getting brainwashed into believing you were born evil???? LARPing????? Like.... it just feels like all of Tenko's suffering was ultimately just used as a stepping stone in order to finally rid the world of AFO-- and like, rationally, I know this isn't the case and I'm oversimplifying things, but like.. the way the rain stops and the sun starts shining as Tenko evaporates... uuuuoohhhgh---

*cough* Anyway! I'm also a staunch Iron Might defender, but like. In that particular case it was very obvious to me why Iron Might was necessary + a fitting end to Toshinori's arc. In Izuku's case, I simply cannot see how chapters 420-423 ultimately do right by his character. Since chapter 1, Izuku becoming "a great hero"/"more heroic than anyone else" was always tied to his drive to save when no one else is able (or willing) to. So these chapters being framed as the "climax/finale' of his character arc-- these chapters where he doesn't stop to think about saving Tenko at all and just focuses on wiping AFO out-- betray the very core of his character while also betraying the very premise of the series. Like. This is bad. This is bad bad and I sincerely, honestly want to believe Hori has something up his sleeve that'll somehow fix things. 😭But even if it is a fake out, and even if Hori reveals Izuku had some sort of plan all along... I don't think it'll undo the damage to the readers' trust atp, sadly.

(Like...! So many of Izuku's defining moments involve him standing up to abusers on behalf of their victims. The moments that define him as a hero have him encouraging those victims to fight back and reclaim agency over their bodies/powers-- but even though Tenko ultimately did fight back, it feels disingenuous to give Izuku any sort of actual credit in this situation bc, again, Izuku wasn't thinking of Tenko at all while he was beating Tenko's body AFO into dust lmao. Like I've been saying, so much of 423 is just indefensibly bad writing and Izuku and Tenko's characters deserved better than this).

[firstroseofspring]

i didn't want to leave a wall of text on that muse post by @marxistgnome but i love it so much and this is going to be so rushed but i could go on and on and on about b'elanna and storytelling and narratives. this got really long and so under the cut it goes

it all really ties into that post i once saw about this consistency with b'elanna episodes where they reveal more about her as a person through her interior life- her thoughts and dreams and visions... what she does when she's alone. and muse really gives us this close up look at the way she sees things and what she cares about through kelis - the stories she tells him and the way she interacts with him- because he gives this good intimate portait of the world as b'elanna sees it- as she's described it to him (almost makes you wonder what she was considering there- whether she thought she should tell someone their stories because they're stuck in another quadrant and might not make it home, or if she thought she wasn't going to get off that planet and might not make it back to voyager)

and of course he's crafting a play so there's room for his own creativity but b'elanna tells him their story really well and she cares about it and you can tell. she cares a lot.

we get another really good look at this in barge of the dead like famously- and it's so consistent in that episode too because she's on the barge and she recognizes kortar from the stories her mom told her as a child and he directly acknowledges that. he says she believes in grethor and in him and she believes because her mother told her the story after she nearly drowned in the sea of gatan. remember prophecy? she's recounting the whole heroic battle with the borg to the klingon generation ship that think baby miral is their savior and the whole scene is framed like (at least it felt this way to me) that for all she says about not being familiar with klingon culture in any respect, the way she interacts with storytelling especially reveals the depth of her understanding of it- shes telling the story and she's telling it really well according to klingon custom and the first thing the visiting klingons do after she tells it is compliment that ability. and its sooo much.

when her and harry are going back and forth at the end of muse and she just goes harry have you ever inspired somebody? when he asks why she even cares so much about the ending of kelis' play. there's just like this klingon belief about living a life that's worthy of being shared with others- like when in day of honor the hologram is evaluating whether she's spent her year honorably and asks her what she's done with her life that's worth celebrating and she can't answer and he tells her that she's giving him excuses. and the direct parallel that could be drawn about how she feels about that with the janeway vision in barge of the dead where she's being condemned and the whole reason is that she's done nothing worthy of glory- 'nothing worthy of song and story.' my goodness

even when she convinces janeway to let her go back to the barge- janeway says it's not real, that she won't let her risk her life for something that she only thinks she experienced- but b'elanna tells her it doesn't even matter if she thinks it was real- that it was real to her and she cares about what her mother thinks of her and she doesn't want her to die thinking badly of her.

we see this with worf, of course the angle we're given is honor and truth and duty- but how you're remembered and talked about is important, even from generation to generation- disgrace in his family is disgrace for him. when they accuse his father of being a traitor at khitomer, it's important to him that his father be remembered as he was - truthfully, honorably, as someone to remember well (even the titles and names they give themselves being little retellings of their lives and the members of their family- on memory alpha worf isn't just worf, he's worf, son of mogh, of the human family rozhenko, mate to k'ehleyr, father to alexander, husband of jadzia, bane of the house of duras, slayer of gowron etc etc.)

((sidenote but b'elanna never in her life introduces herself as b'elanna daughter of miral always as b'elanna torres but on the barge of the dead kortar calls her miral's daughter immediately. and if she's partially from this culture where naming and titles are so important in that respect and b'elanna thinks her mother is. not what she wants to be known by not what she wants to be identified as it's soo relevant to what she calls herself. roxann dawson said that b'elanna wanted to be 'human and perfect' like her father and so she's not ' b'elanna daughter of miral' anymore because she doesn't want miral to be a part of her story, how she's remembered. so it's belanna torres.))

anyway this same- dedication to truth we get from worf and his father's memory we see even with b'elanna in 'remember' where she gets those telepathic dreams/visions from the alien woman about what really happened with that group of people they oppressed. the crew discover that the dreams are starting to affect her health- and so they offer to suppress them, take them away and b'elanna just refuses. because how else will she know what happens to them? who's going to tell their story? and she shares that story once she has it with anybody who will listen because its worth telling.

i'm going a little crazy but klingons and writing and literature and song and stories and living memory its all so. it's ridiculously important culturally. and how that translates back to b'elanna is so fascinating

[miriamundertale]

im going to be utterly deranged and spoiler heavy for monogatari and call of the night (specifically the manga) here but thats your warning

see the thing is that like. mahiru and kiku's arc is like such a weird perfect foil to koyomi and kiss-shot/shinobu's arc. both are a vampire who wants to die, and a human who inexplicably comes and to the vampire appears to fulfill their wish, but the human chooses to disregard the vampires opinion in order to meet their own desire. kiku just wanted to actually truly die. kiss-shot was looking to finally die. they both found their human through chance, either unexpectedly fulfilling plans or readjusting them for a better path. the real core of what makes them different, is the humans, specifically in how they subvert the desires of the vampire theyve met.

kiss-shot's death specifically in reguards to koyomi serves as a direct parallel to his own moral code. kiss shot doesn't want to die any old way, the second she really starts to be near death at the start of kizu she's desparate for koyomi to save her. kiss shot wants to be a martyr. kiss shot chooses to die as a "heroic sacrifice" for koyomi to regain his humanity. sadly for her, koyomi does the exact same back to her, and sacrifices his shot at humanity again to "save" her. kiss-shot's death is undone by the nature that she tried to inflict on someone else.

kiku and mahiru arent as perfectly connected the way koyomi and kiss-shot are, partially due to a large part of call of the night being pretty clearly on the fly narrative writing done by kotoyama (please season 3 confirmation too, itamura is so good at improving the rough edges of early cotn's narrative i cannot wait for an anime adaptation of the kiku arc), and more largely due to the fact that kotoyama is Not Nisio Isin. even so, they both are in a sense, saviors to each other, more explicitly through love. which. yknow. is unsuprising considering call of the night has from chapter 1 been kinda obsessed with weird angles on it but. not to tangent much. mahiru essentially gains his only way of handling his mothers mistreatment of him through not just meeting kiku as a teenager, but meeting her as a child after the loss of his brother and gaining a frame to process the world that works for him. i think the obvious angle with kiku wanting to die and mahiru being a real shot for her finally is pretty clear, but i think the process that a vampire falling in love with a human goes through is just as interesting of an angle to explore for this. her heart starts beating again. she loses vampiric powers. she becomes human again through mahiru. of course, like koyomi, mahiru ends up essentially "betraying" her wants on from the two of them, but in an entirely different way. she desparately wants him to live after, gives him guides to stay safe, teaches him how to destroy every single personal posession so nothing could be used against him once he turns and she's not there to protect him. the tragedy is that kiku is as inexperienced as every single other person in the story when it comes to love. why would mahiru want to live afterwards? when given the option of living without one of the 3 people in the world that made anything worth living, or dying, he chose death.

i think theres probably a lot more to say, i love that they both pose the question "what would you choose, either you living and your partner dying or you both dying" and mahiru answers honestly with both dying while koyomi scribbles both answers out to go "what if we both... half die?"

sorry for all of that im going to go explode now

[ksfoxwald]

Fire and Hemlock Readalong: Part 2 Chapter 3

Another quiet chapter in which not much seems to happen - Polly even comments on it in the text - but a lot of things are set in motion.

Polly goes to visit Tom again, and he asks her to find Tan Coul's companions in a photo of the orchestra. It's he who asks "could Tan Audel be a woman?" and Polly is hugely embarrassed that she had never considered the possibility. Thus far the women in the Nowhere stories have been the female stock characters in most heroic stories - Edna, who is awful, and Hero, who is pretending to be a boy. Once again, women in the real world prove to be more interesting and complex than in stories, but now Polly is becoming consciously aware of it.

This chapter is also full of Polly's growing awareness of sexuality. Note that it is awareness, but not understanding. David Bragge gives her money in exchange for something she does not quite understand - her silence after seeing him with another woman, though the significance is lost on her. On the train back from London, Seb is very interested in talking to her - or talking at her, really, since Seb is one of those guys. - and she does not understand why. But she's starting to be aware that there is something happening that she does not understand, rather than simply not noticing things. Encountering Carla the Landlady again:

Polly asked, feeling rather mature, "Is Carla a one-parent family?" "No," Mr. Lynn said. "I think there are several Mr. Carlas. It's rather confusing. "Oh," said Polly, and felt childish after all."

Polly is in that very messy part of growing up where one is constantly bouncing between feeling too old for things and too young for things and being hugely embarrassed about both. Diana is so good at capturing that teenage awkwardness in ways I don't really see anymore. Part of why I think Diana Wynne Jones might have been ace is because the way she writes about teenagers becoming aware of sexuality makes sense to me more than 99% of modern YA novels where people are having feelings, recognizing what those feelings are, and acting on them, among a group of peers who are all having similar feelings. Does the world really work like that? I don't think I have enough of a frame of reference to know which is more typical.

Other things to note: Polly is still working mostly working on instinct in dealing with the Perry Leroys.

She knew she had broken the rules by seeing Mr. Lynn, which was what allowed Mr. Leroy his revenge.

In a way that's also a metaphor for growing up; you find yourself in a world of strange and shifting rules that no one has quite explained to you and no one wants to explain to you, but you get punished severely for breaking them.

The chapter ends when Tom convinces Polly to gives fairy tales another try - another way she is bouncing between the "too old" and "too young" - and she dutifully picks up "East of the Sun and West of the Moon." The title is another Nowhere reference; the content is an extremely obvious clue that Polly doesn't quite get. She is "too old" for fairy tales, but too young yet to realize that "well if I were her I would simply not have looked, rip you but I'm different" is not really the main takeaway.

To paraphrase that one tumblr post about Orpheus and Eurydice (which is another variant of East of the Sun): Of course it's a metaphor for grief, and who among us has not looked back in grief?

In Polly's case, it's a metaphor for knowledge, and maybe other things too. And actually, she has no right to judge the girl in East of the Sun, because she's doing the same thing. The Leroys are telling her to stay away from Tom or else, and she continues to see him anyway.

[editing to add bc I am v tired and forgot: The Obah Cypt! We have our first mention of the Obah Cypt! We don't know what it is - possibly a container, but no idea what is inside - but we are searching for it, because all good heroes need a quest.]

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | The Corruptor (Foley, 1999)

I understand this doesn't have the greatest reputation, but I think one thing it deserves credit for is that it treats Chow Yun-Fat like a real actor. I think if you compare this to other moves in that wave of Hong Kong stars trying to break into American cinema, you can see how they're often forced to tone down their essence or put into roles ill fitting for their kind of charisma. If we're going the buddy cop route, you have Jackie Chan at maybe 60% in Rush Hour and Jet Li being stone faced in Lethal Weapon 4, and even going back a few decades earlier. Here, Chow is allowed to retain his immense magnetism, allowed to exist in shades of grey, neither too heroic nor too unrepentantly corrupt, and allowed to essentially power the movie forward and have agency. I don't know how things went down behind the scenes, I'd like to think that James Foley, with his background in directing dramas, was able to grasp why this guy was such a great star and was able to do justice to those qualities. So if you're a Chow fan, as everyone should be, this is worth a look.

I'm even going to go to bat for Mark Walhberg. I see a lot of reviews bringing up the part where he puts on glasses to look smart, and... fair enough. And I don't think that he's able to sell his character's moral grappling, no matter how many brooding faces he puts on. (More evidence of what a great actor Chow is: he's able to almost singlehandedly sell these discussions and make Wahlberg sporadically look like a good actor. When the characters discuss their inevitable corruption in this environment, Chow sells not just his own internal conflict, but by extension Wahlberg's as well.) But I think Wahlberg's best roles (Boogie Nights, Three Kings, Pain and Gain) show him squirming as he's out of his element and unable to hide behind an alpha male facade, so I can appreciate the thinking behind his casting. I should also note that his performance here could have been a lot more offensive. Imagine this movie made a few years later, where he goes full bozo mode and spends the entire movie shouting and being a colossal prick. He could have been like a white Chris Tucker in Rush Hour 2. Think about how horrifying that movie would have been, and appreciate how his inoffensive performance here helps the movie dodge that bullet.

So you got a really good Chow performance, and a better than it could have been Wahlberg performance, and you got Foley directing this thing like an actual crime drama with some very nice cinematography giving it a nice and gritty mood. And you even have some not terrible action scenes, which are basically a watered down approximation of John Woo's style (lots of slow motion, arresting lighting choices, bodies being hurled, but cut faster and framed tighter than the real thing) and therefore automatically better than 90% of action scenes today. But I do think that's where the movie starts to fumble, as the action elements feel perfunctory and cause the story to be neglected. This obviously takes Year of the Dragon as a model with its cops vs triads plot and consideration of morally compromised tactics in such an environment, but this lacks that one's attention to detail (the triad scenes here feel brushed over and are mostly sold by Ric Young's performance as an ambitious underboss, while the other movie went to pains to sketch out the mechanics of the operation and the interpersonal dynamics between the leaders) and its willingness to be unlikable (without giving away too much, punches are definitely pulled in how the movie wants us to feel about these characters, whereas Mickey Rourke's character is allowed to be magnetic and ugly in ways that challenge the viewer almost to the end). And where that movie's action scenes played with a certain hysteria that felt like the movie and its hero kicking into high gear, the ones here feel like they're trotted out in the service of studio quotas. And even worse, when they're mixed with the moody aesthetic of the rest of the movie, the resulting chemical reaction produces something resembling the nu metal sheen that would be popular in the early 2000s.

So not great, but maybe worth a look for that Chow performance.

[17yearslatewithlattes]

I did not expect the demons to be trying to stoke resentment in Sam for having to look after Dean, the way they have in Bedtime Stories and Sin City, but it is a potentially interesting angle. I mean, it feels like a bit of a slap on the fact on account of the whole of their childhoods going *checks notes* not like that! But perhaps there is something in it about cycles of trauma, and the way a that, say, a legal guardian or older sibling may shield their child/sibling from trauma by absorbing it themself, but inevitably end up traumatized in ways that affect the person they were protecting.

Then again, some of the points the demons are focusing on are so disconnected from the reality of their dynamic.

(this got long so the rest is under the cut)

Granted the (unnamed) crossroads demon makes a jab at Dean being controlling, and in fact my last post was specifically about that, so I'll allow it (up to a point). Definitely get Sam's frustration there.

Other jabs are uncharitably framed, but have some measure of truth—she describes Dean as having a 'broken psyche' and being 'desperate' and 'needy'. I'll resist the urge pick through reframe and push back on all that and just say that what's most striking with these, and particularly the 'broken psyche' comment, is less that they are categorically untrue and more the way they are framed as exclusive to Dean, within the suggestion that Sam sees Dean as the only one who has been damaged by their lives to a truly detrimental extent, while Sam is some paragon of psychological stability (hint: he is not <3). If Sam does believe this to some extent, it feels very much like a partial reversion to Sam's mindset in s1.

But the dig at Dean that really stood out is the one forwarded by both the crossroads demon in Bedtime Stories and Reverand Gil in Sin City. The crossroad demon calls Dean 'sloppy', refers to Sam always having to 'clean up his messes,' while Gil twists Sam's words into a complaint that he's always having to get Dean out of trouble. Which—huh?

Just taking the two episodes these comments are made in. In the first, yes, Dean gets captured by a demon while going on his own to try to rescue a friend. Meanwhile, Sam heroically breaks into what turns out to be the house of two normal-ass people unconnected to the case. Then with great care and precision goes to rescue Dean via recruiting the local pastor, who ooops! is a demon. Which was en route to getting him killed if Bobby hadn't swanned in just then with the colt. Then in Bedtime Stories it's all pretty even-handed, no particular messes made on either end.

Point being: Dean wears a persona of distraction and henonism and recklessness, while Sam likes to be seen as focused and smart and even-keeled. But while Dean can be distractible to a point, on cases he is always lasered-in—often throughout these first 2.3 season he will pretend to be distracted by the promise of pleasure, only to prove later that he never deviated from the job. And as for recklessness, in fact he is extremely tuned in to the danger posed to every party, with the only (albeit rather gigantic) trouble being that he considers himself acceptable collatoral damage.

At the end of the day, they both make their fair share of mistakes and do plenty of yanking one another out of the fire, but the degree of mess doesn't originate disporportionately from either.

Now, if Sam buys into this part of the demon's narrative, where he's always pulling Dean out of fires, I think it's mostly due to that last bit—Dean's propensity to jump in front of bullets would give a brother plenty of heart palpitations. Not to mention, you know, the part where his soul has been sold to Hell, and he's being very unhelpful when it comes to digging himself out of that particular pit.

I would be curious though, given the generalized accusations of sloppiness from the demons, whether at this stage Sam recognizes that Dean's recklessness tends toward putting only himself at risk and is resentful precisely because of this, or if this is another reversion to mistaking Dean's performance of distractible recklessness for the reality of who he is. I'm not sure what I think here—it's been a long time since they did that dreadful s1 thing where without discussion it was assumed Dean would play bait. But also in Bedtime Stories, when they have to split up, Dean puts himself in the path of the, er, Big Bad Wolf, and sends Sam to talk to the nice Dad. Granted it's a dreadful conversation with the nice Dad, but it isn't dangerous. So is that Dean preferring activity over a horrid conversation, or again ensuring that he's the one in the line of fire? I'm not sure, but I'd love to know what Sam thinks at this stage

Wow this got long! For what its worth, I don't mean the all of that as a callout post for Sam. Even assuming these are things Sam feels on some level and not just words the demons are putting in his mouth, their lives are wierd and hard and deeply intertwined, and certain resentments taking root amidst the care and love is inevitable. All the way back in Skin some of Dean's resentments towards Sam were unearthed. Those too were truly felt, and in many ways unfair, and did not negate the far greater love. It's just been a minute since we've really dug into one of their psyches over the complexities of their feelings about each other beyond who's allowed to sacrifice what for who. And it's interesting!!

[spacedhead]

homestuck reread #13 act 6 p4

still in these conversations where the kids reveal their true feelings about each other except not TO each other but to someone else. this dirk one is so true though roxy has been the goat of their session and the one fucking thing holding them all together. god i love roxy

wow so cool they all ascended at the same time! surely nothing bad will happen immediately after

theyre finally arriving. holy shit . theyre COMING THROUGH THE WINDOW. JOHN AND JADE

yeah ok so jade showed up and her and jane immediately got turned evil

DAVE AND KARKAT HIIII

this is a CLASSIC dave/karkat mess around. if you know, you KNOW . shit had me ROFLing.

holy davesprite . i havent seen this mf since like RIGHT AFTER cascade. literally its been eons

TRUEE i think its a strider lalonde thing they looove to go on and on about random bullshit

hey its these bozos what up yall

waitt theyre being friendly to each other? breath players CAN get along!!! this is huge news. especially for me.

this actually would be a hard ass shirt fr i need that shit

this is the reaction i get when i bring up minestuck to my friends... and im like guys please its actually fun i promise... .(im lying)

yo its the fan trolls what uppppp

okay nice meeting you

this is all very silly :D

OH GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU. WHY DO YOUHAVE EYES.... WHAT THE FUCK I DONT LIKE IT I DONT LIKE IT I ACTUALLY HATE IT GET IT OFF GET IT OFF

YES!!!!!!!! OKAYYYY TAVROS!!! stand up for yourself girl you are serving like crazy right now. i think maybe this is more meaningful than when he tried to kill her, cause that was just a too little too late type of thing where he wouldnt have actually accomplished anything by succeeding, and also had no chance of doing so. BUT realizing his CONFIDENCE and his FREEDOM actually is meaningful and it will accomplish things later on!!! :D YAY TAVROS

insane behavior

i think i agree with john here, i dont think it is out of line for him to hesitate in giving you the life ring. you dont have to be a good person to be a hero. but you do have to do... heroic things? like, ever? maybe once in your fucking life? when is the last time ANYTHING you did could be considered "heroic?" when you were alive, all you did was make everyone around you suffer. they had to kill you just to make sure you didnt doom them all. when youre dead, sure youre hunting down a weapon to kill the big bad monster, but you dont even seem to care about the millions of troll lives you are mind controlling against their will to be bait for your big mission. who the hell are you trying to save? the heroes that are alive in this story literally NEVER encounter the version of the villain that you are trying to stop. whats more, this big plan to use the your ghost army FAILS because the one who was doing basically ALL the legwork mind controlling most of the ghosts ditches you, and the only reason you still have an army by the end is because the guy you fucking bullied the whole time when you were alive (and a lot of the time you were dead) BAILS you out by ACTUALLY being a hero and a genuinely good person that doesnt need to MIND CONTROL PEOPLE to get them to follow him. look. i understand everything you are saying. about not having time to deal with the morals and ethics of what you are trying to accomplish. because the ends justify the means. but the thing is that NONE of it matters. YOUR PLAN FAILS. YOU GIVE UP and have an actual SATISFYING character arc. then it gets retconned and the main version of you goes back to being Worse. and then her plan...? succeeds? i guess? if succeeding means literally EVERY ghost in the army gets obliterated, the secret weapon deploying the four beta kids who are almost all killed by LE, and randomly davepeta being the one to throw him as well as themself into a blackhole. i guess if that counts as success, then congrats. you didnt even get to see that happen though, because you got ejected from the fight frame one. HOPE IT WAS WORTH IT!

anyway... what was i doing. oh yeah look at this. this is a bit sad

okay this is pretty real. even if it is nonsensical, and maybe a little bit problematic?

me talking about myself three images ago

i like this panel. poor john cannot find his friends

this is a very cool panel as well

FAWK

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO worlds most epic meetup

my worst nightmare

fucking scary ass motherfucker please get a grip. also brown contacts .

GOD. ROXY IS SO FUCKING REAL AND TRUE. THEYRE ACTUALLY MY GOAT ITS SO FUCKING INSANE HOW MUCH I LOVE ROXY

well. things are pretty bad right now! jade is evil jane is evil everyone is on random planets with no memory of how they got there john is missing. if i didnt know any better this might seem like the beginning of something really bad . but what do i know. anyway catch you on the next one. or catch me? joff i will see you next time. ok joff bye joff

[decepti-thots]

#man even jro’s Optimus sucks if you read between the lines#the whole ‘mass arresting homeless people in the dead end and throwing them in jail because OP had a bad day’ that was Jro’s OP#the narrative presents his actions as heroic or badass action star tho so its less inclined to examine itself#unlike Barber’s work which does that rigorously

With the necessary context that I am happy to acknowledge that Barber did a lot of the most reflective stuff later, in phase three, with a benefit of hindsight Roberts did not have in 2012 or whenever, and that I do not even slightly think that Roberts would write that stuff the same in 2024... yeah, 100%. A lot of pre-war Optimus that we see is in fact being an asshole, but the comic presents it as otherwise, which is profoundly different to me than Barber making Optimus an asshole as a deliberate decision about his arc and narrative.

One of the things I think is also worth discussing re: MTMTE and cops is where Whirl fits into this. Whirl is the unambiguously 'bad' cop, whose brutality is never justified and whose arbitrary abuse of power is correctly seen as, well, awful. He's also the one character who is forced into being a cop against his will, and serves as an extension of the story about the senate's abuse of power via functionism. The clear takeaway here is that the powers-that-be abusing the system to force it to be violent and cruel is the problem, but that if left to the people who Want To Be There who are on the ground, things would be better. (Optimus or even Prowl, who IMO Roberts writes as explictly ennobled by his being a cop in a way Barber uhhh really doesn't IMO, are the good cops, who want to correct things, the story tells us. Prowl in Shadowplay is being ironically contrasted with how much he'll morally fall later and the fact the audience knows this. It's... striking! Anyway I'm off topic.)

But Whirl doesn't really... do much Optimus doesn't, to be honest. I mean. I guess Optimus never beats anyone up in their cell! But as you say, he has a bad day and goes and arrests everyone he can call a criminal (so: everyone) in the Dead End and locks them up; the difference is that this is framed as mildly amusing and unambiguously a Good Guy Action by the comic. The distinction is drawn not between what cops do but their motivations for doing it; Whirl's motivations are bad and he's doing it to The Wrong Person, so it's of course wrong. If only he had good motivations, and was harranguing real Evil Criminals, right? Whirl doesn't refute the 'MTMTE is fine with cops' thing as much as he exists as a contrast against which the rest can be judged as better, IMO! That's why he works under Optimus, who reprimands him; it's his role, to be the one stood next to Optimus making him look principled.

All of this is completely mainstream and par for the course in basically any piece of popular fiction, to be clear; this is completely unexceptional logic in pop culture. My point is more that people in fandom present MTMTE as being in some way anti-cop when not only is it not that, it's quite fascinated at times with what it sees as The Good Cops. (Roberts' first pitch was, remember, for a procedural series that was reused for the Prowl-Chromedome segments of Shadowplay! It's no surprise. The structure of the series he originally pitched is one that traditionally, well. Is about cops.)

Anyway, if fandom could come to grips with this element of the comic, it opens up a lot of opportunities to read against the grain and do something more transformative and critical with those elements, IMO, and refusing to do so because it feels kind of awkward to acknowledge only holds that possibility back. Rant over, sorry.

☕️ wild card (whatever you wanna talk about!)

It really annoys me that a whole segment of fandom treats Roberts' take on OP as 'the real one' compared to everything else in IDW1. I don't inherently dislike that he would choose to look at the inconsistent and bad writing OP got in phase one and go. Hm. Well. Let's quietly ignore that. I do in fact think choosing to ignore whatever the fuck Costa thought he was doing when Costa himself did not give a shit about his own work, for example, is what any reasonable writer would find themselves inclined to do, lmao.

But at the end of the day, in phases two and three, Barber wrote the bulk of Optimus' story, and took the reins on the character basically 100% outside some prequel flashback stuff. And he did not do what Roberts did. He chose to try and work the prior stuff into a characterization that re-contextualised it into something more coherent and self-aware of what a dick OP came across as a lot of the time. People will look at the super conventionally Heroic And Corrrect take Roberts did in a couple of (pre-canon!) stories, assume Barber must ALSO be doing this, see Barber do something different, and insist this proves Barber is an idiot with no understanding that his Optimus is frequently in the wrong. It's incredibly annoying, lol.

ALSO, why do so few people seem to grasp that the cop backstory was introduced in Chaos by Roberts..?? That was not Furman, Costa or Barber, all of whom I see it attributed to for some reason. Whenever people are like 'UGH I hate coptimus' but then are like 'I guess he was OK when JRo wrote him though' I'm just. Throws my hands up! THAT WAS FROM CHAOS. HE DID THAT. I suspect admitting this would complicate people's 'MTMTE is universally the most socially progressive IDW1 thing, everything else sucks and never does even One Thing as well or better' dichotomy some people are stuck in, or something. (And frankly, MTMTE is very happy in Shadowplay to run with the Good Cops Fighting Corruption stock storyline, which Barber would later on complicate a lot in the OP ongoing.)

tl;dr Roberts wrote an Optimus that was more in line with people's concept of G1 Optimus, but that doesn't mean his is the sole real 'correct' one in IDW1, next to all the takes that... draw on prior IDW1 stuff. Stop getting mad Barber didn't run with the way Roberts wrote him in a couple flashbacks, it's disingenuous.

[admirableadmiranda]

Something that annoys me about this “if you say this character is evil, you’re reading MDZS wrong” is that MXTX didn’t actually mean to write this “oh we’re all grey” story. She openly dislikes JGY, and she thought of JC as WWX’s crazy ex shidi with deep problems. Like, they aren’t there for you to justify their actions (god knows they did it a lot of times already) or to try to make them look good by putting them in the same bag as the protagonists just because “they’re all well fleshed and complex characters that are morally grey and flawed”.

What a way to miss MDZS’s actual message. It saddens me because WWX’s hero journey is as tragic as it is beautiful. I wish I was as brave as him, to oppose injustice even if I am alone against the world.

Yeah I totally get you anon! I’m not sure why it’s so hard for people especially in MDZS to figure out (though I have seen it for her other two works too, but not to the same extent), but she’s actually pretty clear in her work on who’s admirable and who’s not. Even when she’s deliberately using framing to get you to question what you’re hearing versus what you’re seeing, it’s pretty clear who you’re supposed to doubt the narrative about and who you’re not. Jin Guangyao is revealed as the main villain less than halfway through the book, after all!

There are works where that would be an appropriate reaction. Sometimes the heroes can too, be deeply flawed, negative people. But that’s not where MXTX is writing from and from what danmei/xianxia I’ve consumed so far, she has some of the least morally gray characters scattered through her works. She’s clearly very big on the idea that people can and will choose to do good if they want, and also that while it certainly doesn’t exempt them from flaws, that also flaws do not have to be hero killers.

Wei Wuxian is killed not because he is occasionally a little tactless and also keeps people at a distance because it is a very slow journey to trust them enough, but because his morals and willingness to stand up for them are inconvenient to the people in power. He is a flawed, well rounded character, but that’s not why he was hated or why he died. Similarly Jiang Cheng having sympathetic backstory and losses does not exempt him from being a shitty person because as we see in the novel, he’s not the only person who loses everything in his life, but he’s the one who decided to stew in it.

MXTX is so big on your choices define who you are, not your position or history. What matters most is what you do in the shadows and the light. That’s why Wei Wuxian is so heroic, he is always willing to stand by his morals even to the bitter end. It is tragic, but also it’s so full of hope, even! Look at what he has in the end of the story, it is so solidified that his choices and sacrifices did make a difference! Lan Sizhui is alive, well raised and cared for, because Wei Wuxian made that sacrifice for him. Mianmian is out living her best life with Mr. Mianmian and Mini Mianmian because she chose to follow Wei Wuxian’s bravery and has never regretted it. Jin Ling is blossoming under his patient guidance into a wonderful young man who can hold his head high with pride. It may be tragic, but so much good came from it too even if in the immediate moment it was hard to see.

And you know what, anon? We can be that too. Maybe not as far as he goes, but we can still shine bright and make the choices that have positive impacts down the road. We can be Mianmian, inspired by him to do the same that he did on the scales that we can.

The world may be a big thing to save, but we can always save little pieces of it here and there and the more of us that there are, the more powerful it becomes.

[mattzerella-sticks]

Now that all three episodes are done... I've got some thoughts about the main mystery of Soldier Boy.

First off, not only will they be tackling the toxic masculinity at the core of Soldier Boy's personality (and I think we'll be seeing other characters grappling with it like Billy, Hughie, Homelander, etc.) but with him I also think we're getting into the beginning of the systemic brutality supes introduced by patrolling the streets to stop crime - a reference to the systemic brutality that persists in the real world, especially against minorities; which the show has hinted at in earlier seasons and progressively ramped up with every new season.

I mean it's at the heart of Marvin's issue with Soldier Boy - the very reason his family fell apart was because of him in ways we don't know yet. It dealt with the lawsuit, yes, but I can't remember what the lawsuit was about if they ever mentioned it. Just that it was against Vought. I had a feeling there was going to be something between Marvin and Soldier Boy, like they had a conflict wholly different from the main beef between the boys and the supes. Mainly from social media, it seemed like they were doing more together and had a closer bond than a few of the others. Hell, a source of the conflict might be Soldier Boy siding with the Boys against Vought - which rubs Marvin the wrong way because of the pain Soldier Boy caused his family, and others through his negligent and excessive actions.

And not to scapegoat him because what Soldier Boy did was inexcusable, but a way they will probably try and frame it within the story, as touched upon in interviews with Jensen, is his excessiveness in the battlefield is unresolved trauma from the war. I think this is clear when we see Soldier Boy going in on that guy with his shield and, even though we know they're toast, Soilder Boy hammers away. I think he sets himself on autopilot and goes at it until the episode runs its course. It worked during the war. The only problem is super heroics isn't war. Vought never should have sent him out in cities. Though Soldier Boy is still at fault here for not wanting to retire, which I think will tie in to both Homelander and Billy's arcs surmised by Homelander perfectly of people trying to make them retire, but they don't want to.

Soldier Boy didn't think there was anything wrong with him. And, given his prejudices we know he has due to Jensen telling us he's the most cancellable man on Earth, he probably didn't see anything wrong with the collateral damage he caused nor the people who were hurt in the crossfire or, like the man Blue Falcon killed, were mistakenly accused of wrongdoing.

Which I think is also why brutality by supes (which, at this point I'll say is supposed to reflect police brutality) will be a major conflict within A-Train's season storyline and explains why he is doing a Kendall Jenner-esque Pepsi commercial in his new suit. It also ties into recurring themes of corporations creating inauthenticity when pursuing real social issues through a capitalistic lens. It's also refreshing to see the supe lens turned inwards because for all of season 1 and most of season 2, with supes in the military whatnot, we got the metaphor of the supes being a representation of the American aggression overseas and how easily killing indiscriminately can be covered up when you are fighting an 'enemy', when you have the resources to cover your ass and "make sure nothing ever changes". But we also know Vought and the government do it here, too. We were introduced to it. And it was the major driving force of both Hughie and Billy's arcs in the first season. However this season we're getting a look at truly how pervasive this issue is, spanning decades and throughout the superhero community. So it makes sense that Hughie turned to a scorched Earth strategy because in this world the bad guy, Edgar, really has thought ten steps ahead on EVERYTHING.

Like, the Victoria reveal alone showed him how far down the line he's been planning what I think was his ultimate end goal from before Homelander - which was to get rid of supes once and for all.

He pushed to have supes in the military because he knew how disastrous it would be. He had someone on the inside pushing his second interest, which was to make sure supes never get in the military. His company perfects the V24 formula after rigorous testing and, like Bob Singer said, makes bank for the rest of his life off a government contract. I bet he came up with this plan after dealing with the ultimate diva superhero - Soldier Boy himself.

Which is why I think he might join with the Boys against Vought. Because he took down Soldier Boy.

I think bringing them down to Nicaragua was just an excuse to have the Russians 'kill' Soldier Boy and Vought would ferry him away so he can't bother anyone ever again. I think they did it - Edgar did it - because after all these years Soldier Boy started becoming too wildly than even they could control. Which is why he's so calm when dealing with Homelander, because he must have something to take care of him with. I mean, sure, Victoria would probably blow him to ashes. But also something else. This man does not go into anything without ten back-up plans.

However even the most prepared man can be caught off guard, and it's usually when whoever he's up against makes a choice against their nature, or one that is too risky. He's so safe and logical, he thinks everyone - at the end of the day - will make the same choices. He didn't expect Billy to finally show mercy on a supe, and give up any chance of being with his wife. He didn't expect Homelander to blow up like that at his birthday celebration. He didn't expect Stormfront's nazi past to ever see the light of day.

So I think them freeing Soldier Boy will be an ace up their sleeve in the fight against Vought, even if he goes back to work for the very same company. At least it might unsettle Edgar enough he'll be distracted. It might have him on edge if it's revealed he had a part to play in Soldier Boy's disappearance.

There's more I could say but don't see how I can make it tie-in so I'll snippet it in this paragraph. Soldier Boy's past being tied with Black Noir's in a way I hope we get from Black Noir's pov because I'm sure Soldier Boy had something to do with why he ended up scarred, even if it was Noir being in the wrong place wrong time. Marvin and Monique's divorce and the fact that her new beau might be drinking the kool-aid from Homelander. MORE OF FRENCHIE'S BACKSTORY (he's a little Dean-coded, too, no?) Kimiko working towards pushing past the trauma that keeps her from speaking, and what that means for the musical finale. How we're peeling back the layers on Soldier Boy and Vought's past before even meeting him in person, and what that means for the solid gold dancers bts photo that was shared (was it in the present or in the past?) How Marvin's shirt had NWA on it and, as Laz said, Marvin's shirts hint at plot points in the episode and I think the plot point was Fuck the Police.

I think I'll wrap this up and say Soldier Boy really adds an extra and much needed angle that the Boys were missing. I think this season we've seen Hughie and Billy go through their arcs and now they're in the free fall between arcs where they don't know what to do or who they are. I think we are going to see major developments with Marvin, Frenchie, and Kimiko (which I am EXCITED for). I think that Edgar is right, and that there shouldn't be any more superhero teams because it just leads to mess after mess. And even though that's how it might end, Homelander won't go down without a fight and will make good on his promise of scorched earth.

I still think (and hope) we get some gay Soldier Boy. Villainous dicks can still suck some dick lol.

Also it'd be very funny if Crimson Countess really fell into the trap of loving someone who wasn't into her (even though that might still be the case, I would personally prefer it being because he likes men more than women; but will also accept him saying she's gotten too old for him with a side of him being in a three-way with another man). Plus it would mirror the situation between Deep and Cassandra perfectly.

There's still more that will be revealed throughout the season, but these three episodes really laid the groundwork for everything I'm betting the show will tackle in the rest of the season.

[lucianalight]

Loki can scream and cry his motivation out loud yet so many people still don't get it

You know it's really interesting(poetic? ironic? downright weird) that the way Loki is seen in-universe is also mirrored by so many people out-universe, specially when you consider that this perception of Loki parallels myth Loki who is known as the scapegoat of the gods.

And in-universe Loki is the scapegoat, not only in his family but in his society.

"The scapegoat doesn't get picked randomly or by accident. Usually they are either sensitive, unhappy, vulnerable, ill and/or the outspoken child or whistleblower. In other words, the scapegoat is the child who refuses to look content or stay silent in the unbearable atmosphere created in the family home."

- Glynis Sherwood

And Loki was that child. He confronted Odin on his lies, racism and his favoritism and got no answer. He confronted Frigga and got excuses and he screamed that he never wanted a throne, all he ever wanted was to be Thor's equal, and he wasn't heard. He practically begged for Odin's love and acceptance on the verge of falling to his death and he was rejected.

And the tragedy is that he was never understood, and his pain was never validated. He told he had imagined slights. His uncharacteristic behavior during the invasion was never questioned by his family. They just assumed the worst of him and that he wanted a throne. Odin told him that should have been grateful that he was saved as baby because his birthright was to die and then sentenced him to solitary confinement for life, one of the worst forms of torture. And Frigga tried to excuse Odin's actions, tried to put the blame solely on Loki and manipulate him into accepting Odin.

"Controllers, abusers, and manipulative people don't question themselves. They don't ask themselves if the problem is them. They always say the problems is someone else."

- Darlene Ouimet

And then MCU decided to retcon the character, to portray Loki instead of someone who had rightful grievances but committed wrong actions, as a narcissistic slimy betrayer. And since he was villain coded and the other characters were hero coded, people easily accepted that retcon.

"For scapegoating to occur, a community must agree on a target who can be blamed for anything that goes wrong. Sometimes a community just needs someone to BE wrong all the time, so they can know they are right. It really doesn’t matter if the person is actually guilty or wrong, as long as everyone agrees on it. That agreement allows the community to act against the scapegoat and feel justified. They can hate, abuse, ridicule, neglect, expel, wound or kill the scapegoat and actually experience feelings of joy and well-being afterward."

- Raven Foundation

And people prefer to see Loki that way, to blame him for everything, to scapegoat him because then it's easy to look at all the terrible things that happen to Loki in the story, all the mocking, humiliation, beatings and abuse that he goes through and laugh at him because in their opinion he is the bad guy and deserve all that.

What's ironic though is that despite the narrative efforts to frame Loki as a selfish narcissistic power hungry jerk, he still comes off as more relatable, empathetic and even heroic than the hero coded characters when you analyze the events objectively and don't let the narrative tells you how to think. Sth that yet again fits the definition of a vilified scapegoat.

[twistedtummies2]

Good & Evil - Twist Heroes

Welcome to the final entry of Good & Evil: A Study of Heroes & Villains. I’ve been discussing different forms of heroic and villainous characters, different types of protagonists and antagonists, and providing examples of them each from various sources. To finish off this fourteen-part madness - in inevitable fashion - we turn to the polar opposite of our previous entry. Last time I talked about Twist Villains…so, to conclude this special series, let’s discuss Twist Heroes. Twist Heroes usually don’t get as much attention as Twist Villains, but they’ve been around at least as long as their mirror images. Twist Heroes work the exact same way, but in reverse format: they are characters who are seemingly evil for a good chunk of the story, only for it to eventually be revealed they are actually the good guys. While almost never the main protagonist (because if they were, the twist would be ruined almost inevitably), they are nevertheless a fascinating archetype, and they have a decided place in fiction.

One of the greatest family movies of all time is also home to perhaps the quintessential example of a Twist Hero: “Slugworth,” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In the original book (as well as most other adaptations of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” by Roald Dahl), this character did not exist, but in the 1971 film adaptation, it was decided to include a special antagonistic figure who would sort of tie the film together. Slugworth is a perfect example of how Twist Heroes function: when we first meet him, we know the name Slugworth belongs to Wonka’s arch-nemesis and chief business rival, an unscrupulous candy maker who constantly strives to be better than the master chocolatier, and will go to any lengths to get that recognition. The man who calls himself by that name certainly seems to fit the bill: an imposing, scarfaced figure dressed all in black, with a slimy demeanor and an unsettling sort of quality to his voice, always framed in intimidating lighting and angles. In the end, however, this creepy, nasty fellow is revealed to not actually be Slugworth at all, but a human employee of Wonka’s called “Mr. Wilkinson,” whose whole purpose was to test the integrity of Charlie Bucket and the other Golden Ticket winners. While Slugworth/Wilkinson is not a major character in the story, on the whole, the impact he has on the tale, and the twist of his true identity, is one of the most memorable portions of the film.

A much older example is found in Alfred Hitchock’s silent adaptation of “The Lodger.” In the original novel of the same title, the titular character is a mysterious man who is heavily implied to be Jack the Ripper. Later screen versions of the story would remove the implications and make it blatantly clear that the Lodger is the infamous serial killer. However, in Hitchcock’s rendition, the story is changed in a different way: when the Lodger first appears, he certainly looks the part of a sinister villain, dressed up like he’s on his way to audition for a role in “The Shadow,” moving and speaking in a highly suspicious manner. And as the story goes on, his strange activities and actions only seem to incriminate him further. However, it’s eventually revealed the Lodger is NOT the killer…far from it, in fact! He’s actually an innocent man trying to CATCH the killer, and is unfairly persecuted by suspicious people.

A more recent example is Sirius Black from “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.” At the start of the story, everybody believes that Sirius Black is a traitor and a blackguard, his name almost as feared and reviled as that of Lord Voldemort himself. The popular belief is that Black was a spy working for Voldemort, and betrayed Harry Potter’s family to the evil wizard, leading to their destruction. Not only that, but he is believed to have completely disintegrated the person who many believe tried to stop him, Peter Pettigrew, leaving nothing but his finger behind. After spending years locked up in Azkaban - quite possibly the worst prison in the history of fiction - Black has gone half-mad with simmering hatred and a lust for revenge…but towards the end of the story, it’s revealed these negative desires aren’t for the reasons one might expect. It turns out that Black NEVER betrayed the Potters, and NEVER harmed Peter Pettigrew. Indeed, Pettigrew turns out to be the REAL traitor, and it was Sirius who tried to stop him, not the other way around. Pettigrew then faked his death, which led to Black being framed. Once the reality of Black’s loyalty is unveiled, he ends up becoming a major ally to Harry and his friends for the next two books/films.

Not all Twist Heroes are as overtly “villainous” as the preceding examples. The Boss from Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater is a much more unusual breed, for instance. The Boss, at the start of the game, is Naked Snake’s closest friend and most cherished mentor. Early on, however, it’s revealed she is apparently a traitor, working for the very enemy both are sworn to fight, and has apparently been on their side for a good long time. Even after this evidently villainous reveal, however, the Boss remains a sympathetic antagonist right up until her final defeat. The Twist comes when, after said defeat, Snake learns the truth behind the Boss’ apparent defection from their sides. Both he and the players quickly realize that the Boss was never actually the villain at all, and died just as good a woman as she started out to be. The mystery of the Boss, therefore, becomes less about the surprising reveal of a good person presumed to be bad, and more about the shocking truth behind what made her the hero she really was: it’s about her inner motives rather than anything superficial.

All of these examples so far had to wait till near the end of the story for the Twist to be unveiled, but this isn’t always the case. Especially in longer forms of media, such as television, the Twist Hero can still be surprising and pop up much sooner than one would expect. A favorite example of this for me is the character of Van Hohenheim from “FullMetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.” At the start of the show, Van Hohenheim is presumed to be the Big Bad of the series. Considering the main villain of the series, simply known as “Father,” looks and sounds exactly like him - not to mention the fact he’s apparently a deadbeat dad who abandoned his own children, our main protagonists, and may or may not be partially responsible for the death of his wife - you can forgive one for believing that. However, Van Hohenheim is only suspected of being the bad guy in the show for the first season or two; it doesn’t take too long before the truth is revealed. It turns out that “Father” is sort of an evil twin character (sort of, it’s…VERY complicated), and the actual Van Hohenheim is a tender-hearted and caring person who loves his family a great deal. Every evil thing he was believed to have done was, in fact, simply him trying to protect that family, as well as the world itself.

In many ways, the Twist Hero can almost be seen as a subset of the Misunderstood Villain archetype. The two can collide, but they are not necessarily the same thing. Misunderstood Villains aren’t necessarily heroes in disguise, so to speak, they’re simply characters who are not as evil as they at first appear. Indeed, Misunderstood Villains, by definition, don’t have to be “heroes” at all. Twist Heroes, either by choice or by the whims of fate, have their true selves hidden, and the moment when their real goodness comes to the surface is a major part of the plot. In the end, however, both of these archetypes teach us the exact same lesson: one shouldn’t judge a book by their cover. Sometimes people who seem to be wicked and treacherous are really good people. They just either have a strange way of going about their business, or they have to pretend to be worse than they really are for the greater good. The Twist Hero shows us that good people can come from all kinds of different places. Like all heroic archetypes, they represent Hope: the kind that can flourish in the darkest places. Beacons of light, hidden in the shadows.

With that, we come to the end of this series. So, what have we learned from all this analysis of the fourteen different archetypes I’ve looked into?

While we’ve learned the differences between these various different types of characters, I think it’s fair to say that in doing so, a universal truth has also come to light. That universal truth is what Heroic characters and Villainous characters actually represent. As I said, Heroic Archetypes - regardless of what they are (and this includes Redeemed Villains, who are essentially bad guys turning good) - are symbols of hope. In some form or another, they all act as optimistic ideals, and tell us that the world and the people in it can be better than they currently are. Villainous Archetypes (including Fallen Heroes; good guys going bad) are cynical cautionary tales: they warn the audience of what can happen if one puts their trust in the wrong people, or in the wrong ideals. Like I said a while back, it boils down to a basic argument: all Heroic Archetypes universally stand up and declare, “There is good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.” All Villainous Archetypes stand up and reply, “Don’t be so sure.” Take that information how you will. Thank you all for joining me, and I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride!

[overthinkingfandom]

Cards on the Table - Breaking down the tactics in L'manburg Independence

/rp /dsmp

Much has been said in the fandom about L'manburg's independence. It is, after all, arguably the most important moment in DSMP's history, as the rest of the story wouldn't have existed without it. 

In light of the recent anniversary of it, yes I know I’m late, I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and add something to the discussion surrounding it. However, as the morality of the situation has been discussed to death I'll be taking a slightly different approach to it. 

Due to the nature of the DSMP's medium, the story has many unique quirks. One of those quirks is how realistic the tactics used in the story's portrayal of politics are. The independence conflict is a great example of it. While on the surface things seem to be rather simplistic in nature, there's a lot more going on that’s less obvious.

Both Wilbur and Dream are brilliant politicians who get to show both their strengths and weaknesses in dealing with an equally skilled opponent in this encounter. There’s actually quite a bit to go into, despite their interactions being so short.

When most people think about the L'manburg's independence, they think about the moment the declaration has been written up and the subsequent declaration of war. While this moment is certainly iconic, it's not really all that impactful in the grand scheme of things. Both declarations are the culmination of decisions that have been made beforehand. It's the moment when those decisions were made that really influenced things.

Conveniently, Wilbur and Dream only hold a single conversation about L'manburg before the declarations are drawn up, so we don’t need to look far in order to figure out where those decisions were formed. 

Wilbur has been working on L’manburg, collecting materials and building the wall surrounding it, for almost an hour when he spots Dream lurking. “Get [Dream] into the VC, I need to talk with him. He’s the leader of the other nation, I think we need to have a congress.” (52:44)

Dream: “Hello?”

Wilbur: “Hello Dream. Welcome to our great nation of L’manburg.”

Dream: “L’manburg?”

Wilbur: “Yes. We are seceding from Dream SMP. This is our own server now. This area, just this part [between the walls of L’manburg], is our server.”

Wilbur doesn’t waste any time before getting right down to business and talking about the matter at hand. However, the way he speaks about it here and in the rest of the conversation is fairly interesting. Wilbur is talking about L’manburg as if it’s something which already exists. They are seceding. This is their land. This conversation is merely a courtesy to give Dream a formal notice of their separation.

Yet, a bit later Wilbur shows he knows they need Dream’s acknowledgement in order for L’manburg to be its own entity. Independence is not a concrete thing that can just be taken or created on one person’s whim, after all. It only exists when the people with power agree it exists. 

Wilbur: “Dream, basically all we want from you is just acknowledgement that we are an independent nation now. That’s all we need.” (56:20)

So if Wilbur knows they aren’t independent yet, why is he talking like that? 

It’s because he’s using a salesman technique called an Assumptive Close. Instead of posing it as a question and putting the choice of agreeing or disagreeing in Dream’s hands, Wilbur acts as if it’s already true and leaves the burden of challenging his claims on Dream’s shoulders. He even moves on to ask secondary questions on how Dream feels about having embassies in his land (and notably he frames it as a question, unlike how he frames the topic of L’manburg’s independence) as if L’manburg is already a political entity. 

Wilbur: “Dream, I’ve got a proposition for you. How do you feel about having Tommy’s land being an embassy? Like it’s an enclave in your own land.” (59:01)

Wilbur’s use of this technique has an interesting side effect in that it signals to Dream Wilbur is taking a non-compromising position in this negotiation. In essence saying “L’manburg is independent, take it or leave it.” 

A non-compromising position is the game theory term for when someone goes, "I'm going to do that, this is going to happen and nothing can dissuade me from this course of action." It's a strong tactic which forces everyone to react to that person's position, reducing the others' options into a binary of either accepting that position or rejecting it. 

This is a very common tactic and various manifestations of it can be seen all over history and media. From Martin Luther who refused to recant or compromise with his famous words of “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise” to groups who cultivate a "with us or against us" mentality to heroic characters who say they would die before giving in to whatever Evil the story focuses on.

This is the situation Dream is facing here. He can either accept Wilbur's assertion that L'manburg is an independent entity by either encouraging them or even doing nothing, or he can reject Wilbur's assertion by acting against it.

As we all know, he ended up choosing the second option but what were his considerations for doing so?

For that we would need to know what his goal was here, something we don't really get a sense of from his conversation with Wilbur. However, he ends up stating what it was in a later conversation with Skeppy. 

(Emphasis added by me and wasn’t part of the original dialogue.)

“Everyone can build wherever they want. [L’manburg] just decided to say that they get to determine where they can build and we can’t and we said well no, you can’t do that. And that’s what the whole war was over.” (31:44)

“[L’manburg] can’t tell us that we can’t go in their land. That’s all we wanted to say. That they’re not independent, they are a part of the Dream Team SMP. They’re just a delusional, small part." (34:26)

Dream lies a lot, so just because he says something doesn't mean it's necessarily true. However, this seems to be genuine. Dream has no problem telling Skeppy “we burned down their houses and blew up the whole land.” (32:36) later on in the conversation, so we can rule out that he's trying to paint himself in a better light, and there aren't really any other reasons for him to lie to Skeppy here about this. 

When looking at Dream's options with his goal we can see the choice is pretty much a no-brainer. 

Accepting is a total lose scenario for him. Not only will it fail to fulfill his goals, it would actively encourage the sort of behavior he doesn't want to happen, as Wilbur would set a precedent that so long as someone insisted hard enough and implied Dream is a bad person he would fold in negotiations and give them what they want.

Rejecting gets him far closer to his goal of railing against L’manburg’s exclusion. Going to war means he has to invest much more effort and resources into his reaction than if he just accepted as well as deal with the risks any war has, however the sheer difference in ability between Dream's side and Wilbur's side make the risk minimal. 

Going to a war he’s pretty sure he can win VS encouraging the sort of thing he disapproves of, isn’t really a hard choice.

This is actually the result of a mistake on Wilbur's part. CC!Wilbur called his character naive (37:49) and he's not wrong. Wilbur has a tendency to act as he wishes and not take into account that people might disagree or retaliate. We see it with him saying they could just ignore the Americans (1:51:17) or during the elections when he told Quackity his scheme and got blindsided by Quackity deciding to run against him. 

Historically, non-compromising positions worked best when the person who used it made sure rejection would be more costly than acceptance in one way or the other. In essence, narrowing down the options for others even more and leaving them only with acceptance. 

Wilbur may have managed to wipe off the table all other options and put pressure on Dream to accept with his use of Assumptive Close, but he didn't do anything to prevent Dream from rejecting. In fact, it seems like Wilbur didn't even consider it as a valid possibility as he outright dismissed it when Dream brought it up as an option.

Dream: “What happens if the rest of the server decides to take over your land?”

Wilbur: “They can’t. It’s literally not how servers- Dream you’re supposed to be smart man, that’s not how servers work. You can’t just take over another person’s server.” (54:33)

But, you may be asking, if it was better for Dream to go to war against L'manburg rather than grant them independence, why did he end up giving into their desire for independence in the war? Wouldn't it have been better if he just saved everyone the trouble and gave it to them when they asked for it the first time? Or maybe Dream’s obsession with Tommy and his discs is just that strong?

We can find the answer to all those questions at Punz’ video where he shows the behind the scenes of the independence war, including some of the planning which went into it from the Dream Team’s side of the war. Specifically, this quote:

Dream: “[The L’manburgians] are never gonna give up. So then in the end the resolution will probably just be, we won but they can think whatever they want, we’re just going to ignore them because they’re essentially like- You want to think you’re independent? You’re not, you’re still part of the SMP, but if you want to think you’re independent, you can.” (9:04)

“They’re never gonna give up.”

Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter, as this is what Dream thinks and so this is what dictates his actions. Perhaps he’s overestimating his opponents here, or maybe he’s talking about how even if L’manburg is defeated this time they would try again for independence in the future. In either case, it’s clear Dream thinks the best case scenario for him - completely preventing people from fighting for L'manburg's independence - is impossible. 

So, he tries for the second best case. If he can’t prevent L’manburg, he’s going to allow it but only under Dream’s terms. That’s what his “they can think whatever they want” line is all about. He intends on giving them token independence here, something which would satisfy them but wouldn't pose a real threat. Which is exactly what he ends up offering them during the bow duel.

Dream: “Let me just clarify: if you win, we grant L’Manburg independence.”

Tommy: “Alright.”

Dream: “But we recognize it still as a part of the Dream Team SMP.”

Wilbur: “That’s fine, that’s a fine condition.” (40:54)

The token independence thing didn’t work out so well for him. L'manburg quickly grew to be seen as an entity separate from Greater Dream SMP by everyone, and so Dream was forced to concede and treat it as one as well. 

However, despite this part of his plan failing, overall the independence war was a glowing success for Dream. 

By giving L'manburg independence after winning the war, Dream sent a very clear message. L'manburg only gets to be independent so long as they stay on Dream's good side. If they don't adhere to the terms Dream sets out for them? He can and will kick their asses, as the war so aptly demonstrated.

This message is received loud and clear. During his entire presidency Wilbur went out of his way to treat Dream with respect and try not to piss him off. Something he clearly demonstrates a number of times, like when he asked if he should call Dream “king Dream” (59:08) or during the railway skirmish (24:16).

In fact, it can be argued that this message lasted all the way up to Tubbo's presidency. Unlike Quackity, who was perfectly fine with starting a fight with Dream, Tubbo knew first hand what a war against Dream looks like. He knew that they could not win a war against him, especially in their weakened state at the time, and that influenced his decision. 

As Dream once said: "L'manburg can be independent but it can't be free."