#a lack of agency

[celestialscarlet]

Alicent misunderstanding Viserys…. Aemond not meaning to kill Lucerys…. Daemon not actually telling B&C to go after Helena and the kids….

[gibsalotdoodles]

so john has complete control of arthur’s left hand, yeah?

[katabay]

someone’s hands have always been inside of you

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app / tip jar!

[theriverbeyond]

also ive been rotating how Gideon absolutely considered Wake to be her MOTHER before having that fantasy ripped away from her and like, that experience of learning the bedrock of your existence is a lie and the person who made you did not love you and did not want you and what do you do with that when you did not ask to be born. and also of course Wake's own experience as someone who likely never saw herself as a mother and whose only claim to the title is the result of a hail mary pass so desperate that it wasn't even a choice at all. something about directly contradicting agencies creating a tangle of tragedy...... Gideon cannot have a mother who loves her because Wake was not a mother but at the same time Wake can never escape the fact that Gideon is a child that she created

[wardensantoineandevka]

this is relevant to a lot of fanspaces, but I'm feeling it most with CritRole C3 right now, though it applies to a lot of other works too: I feel like a lot of fans mistake "the work had the potential to expound on XYZ themes and tell a narrative about such-and-such with these particular building blocks" for the work actually telling that narrative and working with those themes

the building blocks merely existing in a text does not necessarily mean that the text has that particular narrative at all, let alone is telling that narrative well. a lot of the time, a text has the potential for it but is not using those elements to actually tell that story and is just plain ol' missed opportunity

[swordsonnet]

three specific kinds of terror, jacob geller / working for the knife, mitski / the magnus archives, ep. 92 "nothing beside remains"

[pandorem]

Fascinating to me that Hunter in the owl house not only fills the “child soldier of the villain who switches sides” archetype but if we are going through the tropes of fairy tales that The Owl House likes to play with, is a little bit the princess in the tower??

[goldensunset]

i’ve said it three million times but i will always be obsessed with ‘ventus’ on @projectdestati ‘s darkness album bc of the way the drum improv section in the second half of the track makes it sound like a march. like that’s one of my favorite things about ventus- he’s a victim of horrible circumstances, for sure, but also he’s always been notable for how much agency he has in the face of all this

ven chooses to stand up to the darkness that used him and to absorb it once more, he chooses to take down vanitas even if it means taking himself down too, etc. ven marches headfirst into the tragedies that befall him. he repeatedly willingly volunteers himself as a sacrificial lamb. his story is sad, bittersweet like a lullaby, and his original theme reflects that really well. but this arrangement being split into two parts- one more like the tragic original, and one reflecting the moment he gets up to make a resolute decision- more fully captures his character i think. he is so strong and so brave and so determined AUURHHGH i love him

[stardustdiiving]

Me explaining in terms of strictly how I read canon I think Nahida not severely punishing the Sages is just meant to convey that Nahida, even when wronged, is not a very vengeful or harsh person and makes the choice to be kind instead, but in my mind I have this idea of a Nahida interpretation which elaborates on that where her self punishing tendencies extend to her being someone who internally downplays her own experiences constantly, and as a result has a hard time feeling she’s allowed or justified in placing a lot of blame on the Sages for what they did to her So while she is following her own philosophies regarding teaching lessons/wisdom/etc in how to handle the Sages and genuinely doesn’t want to be really angry or punishing because of who she is as a person, her decision is also influenced by the fact she’s basically blocked herself out of grappling with how to handle people who hurt her by blaming herself for said hurt instead as a coping mechanism. And like this is all just me being insane about Nahida Trauma and not something explicitly implied in canon but also I really do think this isn’t a far stretch from her canon characterization especially when my vision isn’t to conclude that Nahida needs to be angry and vengeful but she should extend the kindness she shows others to herself and also every day I get tormented thinking about she was the mental equivalent of an average human child when the Sages found her and how they basically specifically discarded her for being a child and the idea of how Nahida would pick up on + internalize that and eventually need time to unlearn it

[amaranthdahlia]

its the wright anything agency gang eyy

[thevoicefromthestars]

twisters (2024) is a rom com in disaster movie drag the way that the mummy (1999) is a rom com in horror movie drag and you can't change my mind

[holisticpippin]

todd's cowboy drawing will always occupy part of my mind. I might make a better quality version later

[backpackingspace]

Psst want some some angst?

Odysseus with flowers woven into his hair, around his wrist, his ankles/ his neck/. Odysseus with his hair oiled and his skin scrubbed clean.

Calypso forces him into the bath. Forces him into clean clothes makes it so that he cannot move protest or breath while she brushes his hair. The flowers won't come off, even when he claws at his skin making himself bleed, even when he yanks chunks of his hair out trying to dislodge the pretty blossoms. Calypso heals him anyway makes his skin flawless, regrows his hair. She likes him looking pretty, likes him looking like he's loving life. Won't allow anything from the outside world to touch them, even if that's odysseus himself.

After all, she can't have anyone thinking she doesn't look after her beloved mortal. She's heard how the other gods treats their pets, how rough they are. But she's different. See how well odysseus is taken care of? And why would he even want to think about anything else when /shes/ right here. So what if he's a little resistant to the idea right now? Odysseus, the poor thing, is battered and traumatized it's natural that he'd be a little confused. One day he'll snap out of it and thank her. She just knows it.

[akechi-stole-my-heart]

akechi's "i do not regret with my choices i'm rather proud" line in no more what ifs is so widely misunderstood it drives me nuts. it's a coping mechanism guys. it's a lie.*

(*that has an element of truth to it, as most of akechi's lies do.)

like. there's this trend to take the line at face value. he doesn't regret what he did for shido. he doesn't feel bad or think he did anything wrong. he has zero remorse. but you shouldn't take anything akechi says at face value, and regret and remorse are two very different things.

there's a lot to unpack here, so bear with me as i try to break it all down.

so okay, the source of this whole misunderstanding--the line in no more what ifs. i've gotten into this before in my analysis of the song, but the context of it is specifically in maruki's reality. goro is looking back on his life and thinking about where he ended up because of his choices. he's thinking, was i a fool? did i mess up? was there a better way? this line of thinking is reflected within the game itself when he explicitly says in the engine room that he wishes he met akira sooner, but that it doesn't matter what he wants because it's impossible to change what happened.

but here's the thing--that impossible wish he made in the engine room, where things were different and he and akira could be friends? it's no longer impossible. it's literally right in front of him. but it has a catch. accepting the reality of his impossible dream comes at the cost of being himself. all his choices and agency will be stolen, including the choices he made in the past that got him here. so he's left with one last choice--accept maruki's reality, give into his desires, and lose himself. or accept the choices he made for himself, and the consequences that came with them.

so, his conclusion in the song is that any what if's and regrets are pointless. he cannot afford to regret. he must be proud of what he did and who he is. goro is terrified of losing himself and being forced into becoming another puppet like he was for shido. (and notice--him acknowledging that he was a subservient puppet before, as he does on 2/2, requires that he's aware that the choices he is so apparently proud of weren't entirely his own. he was pushed there by someone else. he still blames himself for being manipulated, but a part of him knows that what he did for shido was wrong, and that he shouldn't have done it. doesn't sound like someone completely without regrets to me.) so he has to hold onto his choices and be proud of them. he can't let himself be tempted. the price he'd pay for them is far too high.

so, yeah. it's a coping mechanism. he's forced into that conclusion by his circumstances. akechi does regret where life has brought him and how he got there and the choices he's made, but regret is pointless, because he can't change the past and he can't accept maruki's future. so he chooses not to regret. people like him can't let themselves regret.

but of course, that's not all. in a post-canon world where he lives, goro isn't going to suddenly break down and be filled with remorse. because like i said, his feelings are complicated, and he still has his pride. akechi doesn't want to admit his faults or his weaknesses, and he does still think the people he targeted deserved it. so is he remorseful? yes and no. he is aware what he did was wrong, and that it was all for absolutely nothing. but he still doesn't view the world as something worthy of saving or protecting. to him people are all still inherently evil, save perhaps for akira, so what he did was both deserved and negligible, because the people he hurt were on the path of destruction regardless of him anyway.

so feeling for his victims and experiencing true remorse is going to be a process of recovery. at the same time, akechi still has the innocent child who wanted to be a hero hidden inside him. part of him does care, it's just been so neglected he isn't aware of it most of the time. that part of him began to be reawakened with akira and would continue to be as he makes connections, especially with the people he hurt like the phantom thieves.

which is part of why i think akechi befriending and reconciling with the thieves is so important! he needs to face the consequences of his actions and realize what he did didn't just hurt evil people, but innocents too. he needs to learn to see people as beings who can change, who are redeemable and are good. that people can love him even if he's done horrible things. and as he realizes these things about himself, he will eventually start to realize that it's true about the rest of the world, too.

goro wants to believe in the world, and in people. he doesn't anymore, but he wants to. when he starts to believe in people again, that's when he'll be able to finally be honest about his past mistakes, and feel true remorse for his actions and mistakes, and be able to start to make amends. the parts of the detective prince that reflected the little boy who believed in truth and justice are still in him somewhere, he just needs a lot of time, self reflection, recovery, and help to rediscover those parts of himself.

another aspect of this is how akechi voluntarily turns himself in. i do think there are ulterior motives here, mainly that he can be the one to help convict shido. it's also self-destructive, a way to sort of end his life when literally doing that didn't work. it's the path of least resistance, where he never has to truly look back on his crimes and self reflect because well, he's paying for his crimes anyway, so who cares. it's the easy out. but it also shows that he is aware what he did was wrong and that it's right for him to try to make amends. goro isn't totally without remorse or regret. his remorse and regret literally pushed him into trying to kill himself. he's just very, very bad at coping with them, and so chooses instead to repress those emotions like he has been for years.

okay, so, conclusion. stop forcing in lines in comics and fic where akechi is like "I don't regret!" without also portraying the nuance lying beneath that line. how in third sem it's a coping mechanism, and otherwise it's a shield keeping him from being honest with himself about his past and his ruined dreams of being a hero. remorse ≠ regret, and goro feels both but to different extents and different reasons. he hates his victims, but he's deluding himself about their guilt, and once that delusion crashes down and he sees that he's hurt innocents, he's going to have to deal with a lot of intense feelings like his already existing self hatred.

akechi isn't some heartless killer who feels nothing for his victims. he's only using that idea of himself as a coping mechanism. he forced himself to become that by repressing the parts of him that care until he can barely feel them anymore. he isn't just the black mask, he is also the detective prince. he's both. akechi is and always will be both sides of himself, even when he tries so hard to shut one of those sides down and ignore it as an aspect of the truth. you can't write akechi well until you understand that. akechi is always both.

so, does akechi regret? well...it's complicated.

[wynandcore]

The cycle of loss

[starscourgc]

promised consort.