#also II is still fundamentally a children’s show
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deadsquidstudios · 3 months ago
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today in web animation
mephone needs a hug, cobs needs to be shot, and everyone in Solarballs is also traumatized for unrelated reasons
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wishesofeternity · 2 years ago
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“You toil still in service to men. Your father, your husband, your son. You desire not to be free, but to make a window in the wall of your prison. Have you never imagined yourself on the Iron Throne?”
A couple of things:
1)  Alicent is a queen consort and is a Hightower by birth, so no, she cannot imagine herself on the Iron Throne, because Targaryen succession does not work like that. This is basic knowledge that 5-year-olds would presumably be expected to know, and I am astounded and embarrassed that Rhaenys, with her age and experience, lacks this fundamental bit of common sense.
2) Alicent has been the functional regent of Westeros for the past six years. In the previous episode, we see her actively governing the realm and overseeing all royal matters (while Rhaenyra sits on her ass with her loser husband in Dragonstone). We also literally hear Vaemond tell Rhaenys “It’s not a king who sits the Iron Throne these days, good sister. It’s the queen”, so I can assure you, Rhaenys, that Alicent has physically sat on the Iron Throne just fine. She lacks authority, obviously, as she is the consort and not the king, but she certainly did not and does not lack power, to say nothing about influence. This ridiculous show, however, does not seem to be able to differentiate these terms.
3) Does this show not understand that Alicent installing her son as King is not just beneficial to him (which the show acknowledges) but also directly beneficial to her? This is a patriarchal and patrimony-inclined world; Alicent’s son being King would not only mean immense prestige for her family; it would also mean the ultimate peak of power and influence for her (which we see her unapologetically wield in the books). In Westeros, we see Visenya Targaryen supporting her brother and her son’s kingship rather than angling for the throne in her own right, and wielding absolute power in their reigns. Historically, Empress Matilda (the female claimant to the throne in the Anarchy, the war this story is based off) relinquished her claim in favor of her son, Henry II, presumably because she recognized he stood a better chance at gaining the throne (which he did) and continuing her legacy. Yet according to this show’s logic, every single woman who has fought for their fathers and brothers and husbands and sons subscribes to internalized misogyny rather than, idk, supporting their families and gaining power, security and status for themselves as well in the process. Not to mention, Alicent relinquishing her children’s claim and stepping aside would not only be utterly humiliating and degrading for her from a political and personal standpoint, but also legitimately life-threatening for her children and her family. More competent writers would understand that she did not have much of a choice.
4) “You desire not to be free but make a window in the wall of your prison” is the MOST SICKENING PIECE OF VICTIM-BLAMING BULLSHIT I have ever heard in a long, long time. Alicent was a teenager when she had to marry the much-older King (her best friend’s own father) because of his desire for her. He repeatedly raped her and forced at least four pregnancies on her that she did not want. She was utterly isolated at court after her marriage, lacking comfort and friends (including Rhaenyra, who abandoned Alicent for three years after learning that she was being made to marry her father and, based on the comments she made, did not even stop to consider the awfulness of Alicent’s predicament). She had to endure the humiliation of her father being fired and made to leave court, leaving her even more alone than she previously was. She had to endure her husband constantly favoring his firstborn and his grandchildren by his firstborn rather than Alicent’s children who were a direct result of her rape by him. Her son was maimed and bleeding and her husband chose to defend his firstborn’s moronic decisions rather than bring him justice.  She is not a Targaryen, she does not and cannot ride a dragon. WHAT WAS ALICENT SUPPOSED TO EXCEPT TRY AND SURVIVE? HOW ON EARTH IS SHE BEING JUDGED FOR IT?
(And this ridiculously condescending comment is coming from Rhaenys of all people, lmao. A dragon-riding Targaryen who was an actual claimant to the Iron Throne, unlike Alicent. So, what was stopping HER from seizing power, pray tell? After all, she even has the Velaryon forces to back her claim. Instead, in her own words, she made peace with her own exclusion. She constantly disagreed with her husband’s ambition regarding her claim and her family’s power. She volunteered her 12-year-old daughter as a child bride for her own aging cousin. The hypocrisy and double standards here is pathetic, and the lack of self-awareness on the part of the show is even worse)
Alicent was legitimately terrified for her children and her family’s lives, and she was entirely justified in doing so: if Rhaenyra ascended the throne, Alicent’s children would inevitably become threats to her whether or not they directly opposed her. This is unavoidable. Look up any historical usurpation, and that’s the inescapable result - and that’s not even going into the fact that Rhaenyra and Daemon are people who are reckless, cruel and indifferent to violence, and would not hesitate to kill any opposition to their reign. The show’s so-called claim that Alicent is upholding the patriarchy falls apart when you consider the fact that this is the only solution that guarantees the security of her children and herself. How is Alicent’s perfectly understandable motivation written as internalized misogyny? 
And moreover, from a writing perspective ... why give her this arc at all? Fire & Blood was badly written, but it doesn’t change the fact that they looked at an ambitious woman who wanted to enhance her power and improve her family’s standing, who directly defied her husband’s wishes in terms of succession in favor of her own, and rewrote this choice into one borne from internalized misogyny. They wrote her as a child bride, a rape victim, an abuse victim and a teen mother and then used this backstory to say that she was conditioned to become the so-called agent of patriarchy (which they do not support with believable evidence) who opposes their so-called feminist protagonist (whose primary enabler is Alicent’s rapist and abuser, btw, not that his abuse is acknowledged nearly enough by the narrative considering how heavily he was romanticized in the last few episodes) It’s a heinous, disrespectful, absolutely terrible writing choice, and I cannot emphasize this nearly enough.
(Oh, and speaking of Rhaenyra, let’s talk about how her queenship solidifies Viserys’s claim over Rhaenys’s. Let’s talk about if she truly cared about women inheriting the Iron Throne - as opposed to just herself - she would have considered this. Let’s talk about how she disregarded the claims of Baela and Rhaena in favour of her son when it came to Driftmark. Rhaenyra is not challenging the patriarchy, her ascension to the Iron Throne will not change anything for anyone except for herself, do not make me laugh by claiming otherwise)
ON TOP OF THIS, the show can’t even decide on a consistent motivation or characterization for Alicent. They repeatedly show us her visceral and justified fear for her children’s lives, which is somehow forgotten in episode eight in favor of her saying that Rhaenyra will be a good queen. Her desire to see her son crowned and thus ensure her children’s safety is disregarded in favor of her actually wanting to fulfil Viserys’s half-baked wishes on his deathbed. They have her say that everyone knows Aegon will be king, and then act surprised when the Green council plots to install him as King. They do not care about Alicent’s personhood and individual character; what they care about is her position as a foil and antagonist to Rhaenyra.
In conclusion: this show sucks. It shows absolutely no understanding regarding the politics of its own world and our medieval history and is a parody and a travesty of respectful storytelling. It has inconsistent and baffling character motivations and downright misogynistic writing, and this is not acknowledged nearly enough by the fandom.
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warwickroyals · 7 months ago
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Sunderland's Royal Jewel Vault (32/∞) ♛
↬ The Trethewey Wreath Tiara
One of the few wreath tiaras in the royal vault, the Trethewey tiara remains one of the most notable tiaras of Queen Katherine (née Lady Katherine Rothman), despite not being seen since the 1950s. The tiara is named after Katherine’s family, holders of the once powerful and influential Trethewey Earldom. The daughter of the Earl and Countess of Trethewey, Katherine’s charmed life was cut short during the Great Depression. In 1931, Katherine’s family moved from their sprawling country estate into a modest three-storey townhouse. The family retained only a cook and the Countess’s lady’s maid, and for the first time in her life Katherine had to do her own chores. A new home also meant a new school, as Katherine’s parents could no longer afford a private tutor. Friends and relatives noted that the once boisterous girl became withdrawn and prone to tears almost overnight. Further tragedy struck when Katherine’s only sibling, big brother Clarence, was killed during World War Two. At the time, Sunderland was constrained by a non-aggression act it passed a year earlier, but many Sunderlandians still volunteered to fight under the Allied forces. Clarence, called Red Clarence for his socialist views, was adamantly against Sunderland’s non-interventionist stance. Despite the pleas of his parents and sister, Clarence volunteered with the United Kingdom’s Territorial Army. Following Clarence’s death, Katherine recalled becoming mad, downright neurotic. By 1941, Katherine’s behaviour reached a fever pitch, I thought I should be institutionalized and that’s what I wanted. To be put away, as they say. So I acted out more and more. My parents saw through me, I think. During this time, Katherine’s favourite exploit came in the form of Prince James, the second son of King George II and an old childhood friend. The two had begun a tryst years earlier, but after Katherine’s brother died James asked Katherine to marry him. I laughed because I thought he was joking, but he didn’t even smile. Said that he’d seen how much I’d suffered and that he wanted to save me. When Katherine rejected James he only became more and more insistent.
He went to Daddy. And then Mommy. Both insisted that it was my choice. He showed up at all sorts of crazy hours. Wouldn’t leave me alone. Every time he saw me, he would throw himself at my feet and cry: “Marry me, Kitty! I’ll make you smile again.” It devastated me; royal life was a terrifying prospect. At the time I’d wanted to fold into myself, become invisible. Now James wanted to put me in a bell jar.
In 1942, Prince James enlisted the help of his mother Queen Anne. Anne had some reservations about Katherine’s suitability for royal life, but she was also firm in her belief that each of her children should marry for love. That spring, Katherine and her mother were called to Chester Palace. Her Majesty sat me down and told me Jim would never love another girl as much as he loved me. Katherine agreed to marry James that summer. I told him to ask that same ol’ question, because I’ll respond the way he wants this time. Upon Katherine’s marriage, the fortune of her parents increased greatly. Their daughter was now the Duchess of Woodbine, the third lady of the land behind the Queen and the Princess of Danforth. Ahead of the wedding, the Earl and Countess gifted their daughter a diamond wreath tiara, featuring diamond laurel leaves between sprays of cabochon rubies. It came with a note about how proud they were and how much they loved me. I cried myself to sleep that night. It was as if something fundamental had shifted, all at once it came to me that I was no longer theirs. In the early years of her marriage, Katherine wore the tiara for her first official portraits as the Duchess of Woodbine. Images of the duchess in this tiara were displayed on stamps, posters, and even cigarette packages. Katherine disliked the publicity, but it was just a taste of what was yet to come in the years ahead. In late 1943, Katherine’s brother-in-law George, the Prince of Danforth, was assassinated. In 1944, Prince James was formally declared heir apparent. One year later, Katherine was pregnant with her first child. By 1956, King James II and Queen Katherine sought romantic comfort from other people. The Trethewey wreath tiara hasn’t been worn since.
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fishyfishyfishtimes · 10 months ago
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hi!! really liked reading your merfolk post!! if you're okay with questions, i have some for you: is there one merfolk culture, or multiple? you said they have celebrations on things like the harvest, what sorts of stuff do they harvest or farm? also, how do they feel about fish... is it like how humans feel about apes or monkeys, like something fairly similar to us, or is it like how humans feel about fish, nice to watch but also... edible. or some other perspective of fish?
OMG
Thank you so much anon!! I would love to answer, so I will!
There are multiple merfolk cultures, all as varied as terrestrial human cultures! This is because the great big event that made them happened all around the planet, and not just to a single population of humans. It is perhaps misleading to refer to all of them as just "merfolk" when they have very different ways of life... but they do still share many biological features and the same sorts of limitations, so I'm still going to lmao. As it is, most of my merfolk worldbuilding focuses on the merfolk of the Baltic Sea Kingdom, Osmeri, and Finland, since I am Finnish myself and most of my characters are too. Plus, explaining how aquatic humans can survive long cold harsh winters in the freezing water takes some more work than explaining how aquatic humans survive in a tropic ocean where food and warmth is plentiful year round!
Closest to our terrestrial harvest, coastal and inland merfolk tend to harvest fruit, which they get from trees that grow near the water! Important vitamins and all that. Merfolk also grow their own crops, but I've yet to figure out what those crops are — I am not a botanist but I know in my heart that humans will be humans and that if we had to go aquatic, we'd find some way to domesticate the aquatic plantlife through the course of thousands of years. Now on-the-spot thinking about harvest, I think harvest would be celebrated in tandem with terrestrial humans too, the merfolk could trade aquatic goods with them and then they'd have one big party of abundance 🤔
Merfolk feel about "fish" as we feel about "mammals", that is, a wide spectrum that goes from worship to disdain, appreciation to annoyance, material gain to value just from existing. Different species of fishes are their livestock, their pets, their wildlife, the neighbourhood "pests"! It must depend on culture, what's with every merson's tail looking exactly like an existing species of animal (the creation stories of merfolk must be wild) but all in all merfolk recognise that the aquatic life around them is fundamentally different from them, though they look similar.
Though I explained it in words, this is a wonderful opportunity to show a comic I made to answer this very question in 2022! It is a tad outdated, what's with Ahti II admitting that he's from Osmeri, but no matter. The children (me) yearn for the mines (to show my art):
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...Too cruel? Not to worry, the domestic pikes that Ahti II is familiar with as pets and companions are a different breed from wild pikes! I'm sure they cleared that up immediately after the events of this comic.
Thanks for the questions! :]
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thedawningofthehour · 9 months ago
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I was raised Catholic too, Fai, you won't be able to use this one.
When Bambi was on the topic of whether the Yokai would allow more violence in children's content all I could think of was that here in Latin America many kids including me and my uncles grew up with this.
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Back in the 80s the local TV stations needed content for kids, however American cartoon licenses were very expensive so they had to use anime, which was cheaper at that time. They did the dubbing with professional actors and censored almost nothing.
That also reminds me that when I was in catechism, once they played the Passion of the Christ, you know, the one that is rated R. We were in elementary school and I was the only one who was uncomfortable about it, and by uncomfortable I mean that I went to cry in a corner, which surprised no one because I was the crybaby of the class.
When I found out about all the changes they made in the English dubbing of several classic anime I immediately thought it was sacrilege and that American kids were pussies.
What, you guys never had assignments to invent new grotesque and detailed tortures to punish sinners in hell? You never had to write your own obituary detailing the saintly events of your life? Every Friday during Lent, you didn't listen to some tape of a woman reading off how Jesus's flesh was stripped off and going into detail about what happens to someone's lungs when they're crucified, while the teacher turned the lights off and made you all sit on the floor alone so you could 'reflect' better?
My elementary school actually didn't like The Passion of the Christ when it came out. Which is weird, considering it was weirdly fundamental for the area we live in. (my mom attended meetings where they discussed whether it was okay for the kids to read Harry Potter and Chronicles of Narnia and she thought it was the dumbest shit ever) The only thing I can think of that might explain that is that the Pope didn't like it. (You were kind of young when he died but people were like...obsessed with John Paul II)
Yeah, I grew up in a very liberal area and my parents weren't really religious so I'll think it didn't really affect me, but then I remember shit like that and go "what the fuck?"
I also remember crying after our principal (who was such a religious nut that even at my elementary school he was forced out of the position after a year) told my class that animals didn't have souls and would never get into heaven. I was upset not only because I didn't want to go to heaven without my pets, (I think this was after we got Angel, but I had another bird before him as well) but my grandfather was a notorious animal lover so I wanted to believe that he had all his pets and then some up there. This guy basically berated me in front of the class for being so childish and stupid to even want that, and told me that my birds didn't actually love me because they didn't have souls and therefore couldn't love. Which-what the fuck? Once I grew up and actually did my own reading I realized that I wasn't being childish at all, this is actually a point of contention with a lot of Christians-Roald Dahl famously became disillusioned with the church after he was told that his daughter Olivia, who died at seven from measles, would not be joined in heaven by her beloved dog. And you know, I still picture my grandpa up in heaven with his arms full of animals, taking care of the pets my family and my cousins' family have lost, fat and laughing in joy with his dozens of pets.
(man, this got off-track)
I mean, some of the censorship made sense. A major thing that was edited out in a lot of shows was guns, and that was because guns are tightly controlled in Japan and there's little chance of Japanese children getting their hands on any. American children, however, most likely have guns in their houses or knew someone who did. There's little risk of a Japanese kid getting their hands on a gun and acting out something they saw on TV, but that isn't true in the US.
It can end up kind of funny though. Like when the edited the guns out of people's hands in Yugioh but just...left them holding invisible guns.
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But yeah, the editing out of violence and blood, that was some real 'the sound of children screaming has been removed' bullshit. And I know at least for Yugioh, they edited out a lot of 'occult' stuff to appeal to American Christian sensibilities.
Trust me, we thought it was bullshit too. There would be tons of playground rumors about what happened in the original Japanese cut.
And we all realized that the rice ball wasn't actually a jelly donut.
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deaconwords · 1 year ago
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Whose Son is He?
In today’s gospel lesson Jesus asks the Pharisees a question. “Whose son is the Messiah?”
The Pharisees are quick to answer, “The Messiah is the son of David.”
Jesus then analyzes King David’s own words as offered in Psalm 110. They read: (This is David speaking) “The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.”
Now, this “Lord” to whom David refers was commonly accepted as being the Messiah, the promised one of God who would lead Israel to conquer all its enemies. So, Jesus asks the Pharisees, how can David’s hereditary son also be his “Lord?”
This question silences the Pharisees. They have no answer and don’t even seem to want to consider the question.
Why is this? What would be so difficult in saying that a son is greater than his father? Yet, it was, and perhaps still is, unusual for a father to relinquish authority and power to his child. Even today many parents don’t expect, or perhaps hope, that their children will outshine them.
As a youth I played high school football. I was the son of a man who had played semi-professionally in Chicago, back in the days before they even wore face masks. I recall making a comment to him one day about how I was sure that every father wants his children to accomplish more in their lives than he had in his. And I noticed that what I said caused him to pause, to grow silent. He couldn’t readily affirm my statement. Sure, he wanted a better life for his children than the one he had lived through, what with troubles like The Great Depression and World War II, but to eclipse his accomplishments with their own? Therein lies the rub.
Perhaps it was this rub that bothered the Pharisees when Jesus suggested the son to be greater than the father. They could see where this thinking could lead. It meant abandoning their commitment to David, and perhaps even Moses, should the Messiah really appear. His appearance might shake things up, might demand a radical change in their current level of authority.
Isn’t this the fundamental difference between the haves and the have nots?
The haves strive to maintain the hierarchy of the social order. They are on top and that is where they want to stay. The havenots hope for a savior, one who will possess greater authority to bring about real justice and real peace.
I was talking to Cathe about the war between Israel and Hamas. I thoughtlessly asked, “Why would anyone living in poverty-stricken Gaza have children? Gaza has been dangerous for years and years, yet it has more children living in it than any other age group. Insane,” I said.
She was gentle in her reply. “The poor,” she said, “often live in dangerous places. That is their norm and it has no effect on their plans for a family. They were called upon to care for aging parents and the children they give birth to will, one day, care for them.”
“Yes,” I thought. “The poor live at the bottom of the social hierarchy. They need their children as much as their children need them.”
Privileged folks have no needs. They refrain from granting authority to others, even at the end of their lives, while the underprivileged count on their children to provide for them when they can no longer provide for themselves. And this humble reality is to their spiritual advantage.
For you see, the privileged Pharisees cling to the worldly possessions granted them because of their social status, while the poor await expectantly the coming of the one through whom salvation will arise. The Pharisees hold to a stagnant world order that is doomed to die, while the poor have hope that a child will prove itself greater than its father and life will become more than it now is.
The Pharisees and the poor show clearly the difference between faithlessness and faithfulness. It is summed up in Jesus’s sermon on the plain when he says:
“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
And I would add, blessed are you who can see the child as greater than its parents, for to such belongs the hope of salvation.
Whose child is the Messiah? He or she is our own. Amen.
—Offered at St. George’s Episcopal Church on 10-29-2023. Dedicated to my humanist chaplain friend, Jack Mong
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modernwizard · 2 years ago
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Why I love the Spymaster #81: His retrospection!
Find my full series under the HELP I WUVS HIM tag.
#81: His retrospection!
The Spymaster is always reminiscing and comparing the present to the past. Let's look at some examples:
Example 1: In Spyfall I, he describes his use of the TCE on the real O as "classic."
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In Spyfall II, he calls Thirteen's telepathic connection with him "old school:"
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Example 2: In The Timeless Children, he reminisces about schooldays with the Doctor [H/T @themastergifs ]:
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Example 3: In The Power of the Doctor, he uses the phrase "old school" again, this time talking about his forced regeneration of Thirteen:
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In general, the Spymaster also hearkens back to his first incarnation [Delgado] and second incarnation [Ainley] in not just his words, but also his actions. His reliance on the tissue compression eliminator itself [#62: He likes dolls!] ties him back to Delgado and Ainley, who favored it as a weapon [#26: His Delgadesco flourishes!]. The Spymaster's affection for and admiration of Yaz [#36: Self-deprecating flirting with Yaz! and #59: Still not killing companions!] recall Delgado Master's warmth toward Three's companion Jo. He talks about the past all the time and in some ways embodies it. And there's also the little matter of the entire Matrix -- the entire history of the Time Dorks -- downloaded into his head.
The Spymaster's deep links to the past indicate his fundamental nostalgia. Just look at his approving label of the TCE as "classic," implying something strong, powerful, worthy of respect because it has withstood the test of time. As much as he reviles Time Dork culture and arrogant hierarchy, he also describes his reuse of forced regeneration as "a tribute to our elders," signaling that, on some level, he still appreciates the old ways. He refers to the past so frequently because he thinks that things were better back then.
More specifically, he thinks that he was better back then. The TCE signifies his Delgado and Ainley incarnations, which were marked by a neater, more self-controlled self-presentation [Delgado] and more gleeful destruction than self-reflection [Ainley]. He had his shit together back then. Now, feeling at loose ends, he uses his old equipment to regain that old sense of master.
He also thinks that his relationship with the Doctor was better in the past. The bit in The Timeless Children -- "We had some fun there" -- reminds him that, at some point, the Doctor and the Master both enjoyed each other's company. His call for Thirteen to join him in his trip down memory lane -- "Eh?" -- and his twice looking back at her show how much he wants her to join him. They don't have much fun with each other now, but he wishes that they could.
The Spymaster's obsession with the past shows the depth of his unhappiness. He's so unhappy with his present self that he's constantly trying to travel out of it by remembering, talking about, and acting like the way he used to be. Perhaps the incorporation of the Matrix and the Cyberium in his head allow him to escape into the minds and pasts of others so that he doesn't have to remain in the excruciating now.
@themastergifs @natalunasans @timeladyjamie @rowanthestrange
@whovianuncle @sclfmastery
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shortnotsweet · 4 years ago
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Bakudeku: A Non-Comprehensive Dissection of the Exploitation of Working Bodies, the Murder of Annoying Children, and a Rivals-to-Lovers Complex
I. Bakudeku in Canon, And Why Anti’s Need to Calm the Fuck Down
II. Power is Power: the Brain-Melting Process of Normalization and Toxic Masculinity
III. How to Kill Middle Schoolers, and Why We Should
IV. Parallels in Abuse, EnemiesRivals-to-Lovers, and the Necessity of Redemption ft. ATLA’s Zuko
V. Give it to Me Straight. It’s Homophobic.
VI. Love in Perspective, from the East v. West
VII. Stuck in the Sludge, the Past, and Season One
Disclaimer
It needs to be said that there is definitely a place for disagreement, discourse, debate, and analysis: that is a sign of an active fandom that’s heavily invested, and not inherently a bad thing at all. Considering the amount of source material we do have (from the manga, to the anime, to the movies, to the light novels, to the official art), there are going to be warring interpretations, and that’s inevitable.
I started watching and reading MHA pretty recently, and just got into the fandom. I was weary for a reason, and honestly, based on what I’ve seen, I’m still weary now. I’ve seen a lot of anti posts, and these are basically my thoughts. This entire thing is in no way comprehensive, and it’s my own opinion, so take it with a grain of salt. If I wanted to be thorough about this, I would’ve included manga panels, excerpts from the light novel, shots from the anime, links to other posts/essays/metas that have inspired this, etc. but I’m tired and not about that life right now, so, this is what it is. This is poorly organized, but maybe I’ll return to fix it.
Let’s begin.
Bakudeku in Canon, And Why Anti’s Need to Calm the Fuck Down
There are a lot of different reasons, that can be trivial as you like, to ship or not to ship two (or more) characters. It could be based purely off of character design, proximity, aversion to another ship, or hypotheticals. And I do think that it’s totally valid if someone dislikes the ship or can’t get on board with his character because to them, it does come across as abuse, and the implications make them uncomfortable or, or it just feels unhealthy. If that is your takeaway, and you are going to stick to your guns, the more power to you.
But Bakudeku’s relationship has canonically progressed to the point where it’s not the emotionally (or physically) abusive clusterfuck some people portray it to be, and it’s cheap to assume that it would be, based off of their characterizations as middle schoolers. Izuku intentionally opens the story as a naive little kid who views the lens of the Hero society through rose colored glasses and arguably wants nothing more than assimilation into that society; Bakugou is a privileged little snot who embodies the worst and most hypocritical beliefs of this system. Both of them are intentionally proven wrong. Both are brainwashed, as many little children are, by the propaganda and societal norms that they are exposed to. Both of their arcs include unlearning crucial aspects of the Hero ideology in order to become true heroes.
I will personally never simp for Bakugou because for the longest time, I couldn't help but think of him as a little kid on the playground screaming at the top of his lungs because someone else is on the swingset. He’s red in the face, there are probably veins popping out of his neck, he’s losing it. It’s easy to see why people would prefer Tododeku to Bakudeku.
Even now, seeing him differently, I still personally wouldn’t date Bakugou, especially if I had other options. Why? I probably wouldn’t want to date any of the guys who bullied me, especially because I think that schoolyard bullying, even in middle school, affected me largely in a negative way and created a lot of complexes I’m still trying to work through. I haven’t built a better relationship with them, and I’m not obligated to. Still, I associate them with the kind of soft trauma that they inflicted upon me, and while to them it was probably impersonal, to me, it was an intimate sort of attack that still affects me. That being said, that is me. Those are my personal experiences, and while they could undoubtedly influence how I interpret relationships, I do not want to project and hinder my own interpretation of Deku.
The reality is that Deku himself has an innate understanding of Bakugou that no one else does; I mention later that he seems to understand his language, implicitly, and I do stand by that. He understands what it is he’s actually trying to say, often why he’s saying it, and while others may see him as wimpy or unable to stand up for himself, that’s simply not true. Part of Deku’s characterization is that he is uncommonly observant and empathetic; I’m not denying that Bakugou caused harm or inflicted damage, but infantilizing Deku and preaching about trauma that’s not backed by canon and then assuming random people online excuse abuse is just...the leap of leaps, and an actual toxic thing to do. I’ve read fan works where Bakugou is a bully, and that’s all, and has caused an intimate degree of emotional, mental, and physical insecurity from their middle school years that prevents their relationship from changing, and that’s for the better. I’m not going to argue and say that it’s not an interesting take, or not valid, or has no basis, because it does. Its basis is the character that Bakugou was in middle school, and the person he was when he entered UA.
Not only is Bakugou — the current Bakugou, the one who has accumulated memories and experiences and development — not the same person he was at the beginning of the story, but Deku is not the same person, either. Maybe who they are fundamentally, at their core, stays the same, but at the beginning and end of any story, or even their arcs within the story, the point is that characters will undergo change, and that the reader will gain perspective.
“You wanna be a hero so bad? I’ve got a time-saving idea for you. If you think you’ll have a quirk in your next life...go take a swan dive off the roof!”
Yes. That is a horrible thing to tell someone, even if you are a child, even if you don’t understand the implications, even if you don’t mean what it is you are saying. Had someone told me that in middle school, especially given our history and the context of our interactions, I don’t know if I would ever have forgiven them.
Here’s the thing: I’m not Deku. Neither is anyone reading this. Deku is a fictional character, and everyone we know about him is extrapolated from source material, and his response to this event follows:
“Idiot! If I really jumped, you’d be charged with bullying me into suicide! Think before you speak!”
I think it’s unfair to apply our own projections as a universal rather than an interpersonal interpretation; that’s not to say that the interpretation of Bakudeku being abusive or having unbalanced power dynamics isn’t valid, or unfounded, but rather it’s not a universal interpretation, and it’s not canon. Deku is much more of a verbal thinker; in comparison, Bakugou is a visual one, at least in the format of the manga, and as such, we get various panels demonstrating his guilt, and how deep it runs. His dialogue and rapport with Deku has undeniably shifted, and it’s very clear that the way they treat each other has changed from when they were younger. Part of Bakugou’s growth is him gaining self awareness, and eventually, the strength to wield that. He knows what a fucked up little kid he was, and he carries the weight of that.
“At that moment, there were no thoughts in my head. My body just moved on its own.”
There’s a part of me that really, really disliked Bakugou going into it, partially because of what I’d seen and what I’d heard from a limited, outside perspective. I felt like Bakugou embodied the toxic masculinity (and to an extent, I still believe that) and if he won in some way, that felt like the patriarchy winning, so I couldn't help but want to muzzle and leash him before releasing him into the wild.
The reality, however, of his character in canon is that it isn’t very accurate to assume that he would be an abusive partner in the future, or that Midoryia has not forgiven him to some extent already, that the two do not care about each other or are singularly important, that they respect each other, or that the narrative has forgotten any of this.
Don’t mistake me for a Bakugou simp or apologist. I’m not, but while I definitely could also see Tododeku (and I have a soft spot for them, too, their dynamic is totally different and unique, and Todoroki is arguably treated as the tritagonist) and I’m ambivalent about Izuocha (which is written as cannoncially romantic) I do believe that canonically, Bakugou and Deku are framed as soulmates/character foils, Sasuke + Naruto, Kageyama + Hinata style. Their relationship is arguably the focus of the series. That’s not to undermine the importance or impact of Deku’s relationships with other characters, and theirs with him, but in terms of which one takes priority, and which one this all hinges on?
The manga is about a lot of things, yes, but if it were to be distilled into one relationship, buckle up, because it’s the Bakudeku show.
Power is Power: the Brain-Melting Process of Normalization and Toxic Masculinity
One of the ways in which the biopolitical prioritization of Quirks is exemplified within Hero society is through Quirk marriages. Endeavor partially rationalizes the abuse of his family through the creation of a child with the perfect quirk, a child who can be molded into the perfect Hero. People with powerful, or useful abilities, are ranked high on the hierarchy of power and privilege, and with a powerful ability, the more opportunities and avenues for success are available to them.
For the most part, Bakugou is a super spoiled, privileged little rich kid who is born talented but is enabled for his aggressive behavior and, as a child, cannot move past his many internalized complexes, treats his peers like shit, and gets away with it because the hero society he lives in either has this “boys will be boys” mentality, or it’s an example of the way that power, or Power, is systematically prioritized in this society. The hero system enables and fosters abusers, people who want power and publicity, and people who are genetically predisposed to have advantages over others. There are plenty of good people who believe in and participate in this system, who want to be good, and who do good, but that doesn’t change the way that the hero society is structured, the ethical ambiguity of the Hero Commission, and the way that Heroes are but pawns, idols with machine guns, used to sell merch to the public, to install faith in the government, or the current status quo, and reinforce capitalist propaganda. Even All Might, the epitome of everything a Hero should be, is drained over the years, and exists as a concept or idea, when in reality he is a hollow shell with an entire person inside, struggling to survive. Hero society is functionally dependent on illusion.
In Marxist terms: There is no truth, there is only power.
Although Bakugou does change, and I think that while he regrets his actions, what is long overdue is him verbally expressing his remorse, both to himself and Deku. One might argue that he’s tried to do it in ways that are compatible with his limited emotional range of expression, and Deku seems to understand this language implicitly.
I am of the opinion that the narrative is building up to a verbal acknowledgement, confrontation, and subsequent apology that only speaks what has gone unspoken.
That being said, Bakugou is a great example of the way that figures of authority (parents, teachers, adults) and institutions both in the real world and this fictional universe reward violent behavior while also leaving mental and emotional health — both his own and of the people Bakugou hurts — unchecked, and part of the way he lashes out at others is because he was never taught otherwise.
And by that, I’m referring to the ways that are to me, genuinely disturbing. For example, yelling at his friends is chill. But telling someone to kill themselves, even casually and without intent and then misinterpreting everything they do as a ploy to make you feel weak because you're projecting? And having no teachers stop and intervene, either because they are afraid of you or because they value the weight that your Quirk can benefit society over the safety of children? That, to me, is both real and disturbing.
Not only that, but his parents (at least, Mitsuki), respond to his outbursts with more outbursts, and while this is likely the culture of their home and I hesitate to call it abusive, I do think that it contributed to the way that he approaches things. Bakugou as a character is very complex, but I think that he is primarily an example of the way that the Hero System fails people.
I don’t think we can write off the things he’s done, especially using the line of reasoning that “He didn’t mean it that way”, because in real life, children who hurt others rarely mean it like that either, but that doesn’t change the effect it has on the people who are victimized, but to be absolutely fair, I don’t think that the majority of Bakudeku shippers, at least now, do use that line of reasoning. Most of them seem to have a handle on exactly how fucked up the Hero society is, and exactly why it fucks up the people embedded within that society.
The characters are positioned in this way for a reason, and the discoveries made and the development that these characters undergo are meant to reveal more about the fictional world — and, perhaps, our world — as the narrative progresses.
The world of the Hero society is dependent, to some degree, on biopolitics. I don’t think we have enough evidence to suggest that people with Quirks or Quirkless people place enough identity or placement within society to become equivalent to marginalized groups, exactly, but we can draw parallels to the way that Deku and by extent Quirkless people are viewed as weak, a deviation, or disabled in some way. Deviants, or non-productive bodies, are shunned for their inability to perform ideal labor. While it is suggested to Deku that he could become a police officer or pursue some other occupation to help people, he believes that he can do the most positive good as a Hero. In order to be a Hero, however, in the sense of a career, one needs to have Power.
Deviation from the norm will be punished or policed unless it is exploitable; in order to become integrated into society, a deviant must undergo a process of normalization and become a working, exploitable body. It is only through gaining power from All Might that Deku is allowed to assimilate from the margins and into the upper ranks of society; the manga and the anime give the reader enough perspective, context, and examples to allow us to critique and deconstruct the society that is solely reliant on power.
Through his societal privileges, interpersonal biases, internalized complexes, and his subsequent unlearning of these ideologies, Bakugou provides examples of the way that the system simultaneously fails and indoctrinates those who are targeted, neglected, enabled by, believe in, and participate within the system.
Bakudeku are two sides of the same coin. We are shown visually that the crucial turning point and fracture in their relationship is when Bakugou refuses to take Deku’s outstretched hand; the idea of Deku offering him help messes with his adolescent perspective in that Power creates a hierarchy that must be obeyed, and to be helped is to be weak is to be made a loser.
Largely, their character flaws in terms of understanding the hero society are defined and entangled within the concept of power. Bakugou has power, or privilege, but does not have the moral character to use it as a hero, and believes that Power, or winning, is the only way in which to view life. Izuku has a much better grasp on the way in which heroes wield power (their ideologies can, at first, be differentiated as winning vs. saving), and is a worthy successor because of this understanding, and of circumstance. However, in order to become a Hero, our hero must first gain the Power that he lacks, and learn to wield it.
As the characters change, they bridge the gaps of their character deficiencies, and are brought closer together through character parallelism.
Two sides of the same coin, an outstretched hand.
They are better together.
How to Kill Middle Schoolers, and Why We Should
I think it’s fitting that in the manga, a critical part of Bakugou’s arc explicitly alludes to killing the middle school version of himself in order to progress into a young adult. In the alternative covers Horikoshi released, one of them was a close up of Bakugou in his middle school uniform, being stabbed/impaled, with blood rolling out of his mouth. Clearly this references the scene in which he sacrifices himself to save Deku, on a near-instinctual level.
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To me, this only cements Horikoshi’s intent that middle school Bakugou must be debunked, killed, discarded, or destroyed in order for Bakugou the hero to emerge, which is why people who do actually excuse his actions or believe that those actions define him into young adulthood don’t really understand the necessity for change, because they seem to imply that he doesn’t need/cannot reach further growth, and there doesn’t need to be a separation between the Bakugou who is, at heart, volatile and repressed the angry, and the Bakugou who sacrifices himself, a hero who saves people.
Plot twist: there does need to be a difference. Further plot twist: there is a difference.
In sacrificing himself for Deku, Bakugou himself doesn't die, but the injury is fatal in the sense that it could've killed him physically and yet symbolizes the selfish, childish part of him that refused to accept Deku, himself, and the inevitability of change. In killing those selfish remnants, he could actually become the kind of hero that we the reader understand to be the true kind.
That’s why I think that a lot of the people who stress his actions as a child without acknowledging the ways he has changed, grown, and tried to fix what he has broken don’t really get it, because it was always part of his character arc to change and purposely become something different and better. If the effects of his worst and his most childish self stick with you more, and linger despite that, that’s okay. But distilling his character down to the wrong elements doesn’t get you the bare essentials; what it gets you is a skewed and shallow version of a person. If you’re okay with that version, that is also fine.
But you can’t condemn others who aren’t fine with that incomplete version, and to become enraged that others do not see him as you do is childish.
Bakugou’s change and the emphasis on that change is canon.
Parallels in Abuse, EnemiesRivals-to-Lovers, and the Necessity of Redemption ft. ATLA’s Zuko
In real life, the idea that “oh, he must bully you because he likes you” is often used as a way to brush aside or to excuse the action of bullying itself, as if a ‘secret crush’ somehow negates the effects of bullying on the victim or the inability of the bully to properly process and manifest their emotions in certain ways. It doesn’t. It often enables young boys to hurt others, and provides figures of authority to overlook the real source of schoolyard bullying or peer review. The “secret crush”, in real life, is used to undermine abuse, justify toxic masculinity, and is essentially used as a non-solution solution.
A common accusation is that Bakudeku shippers jump on the pairing because they romanticize pairing a bully and a victim together, or believe that the only way for Bakugou to atone for his past would be to date Midoryia in the future. This may be true for some people, in which case, that’s their own preference, but based on my experience and what I’ve witnessed, that’s not the case for most.
The difference being is that as these are characters, we as readers or viewers are meant to analyze them. Not to justify them, or to excuse their actions, but we are given the advantage of the outsider perspective to piece their characters together in context, understand why they are how they are, and witness them change; maybe I just haven’t been exposed to enough of the fandom, but no one (I’ve witnessed) treats the idea that “maybe Bakugou has feelings he can’t process or understand and so they manifest in aggressive and unchecked ways'' as a solution to his inability to communicate or process in a healthy way, rather it is just part of the explanation of his character, something is needs to — and is — working through. The solution to his middle school self is not the revelation of a “teehee, secret crush”, but self-reflection, remorse, and actively working to better oneself, which I do believe is canonically reflected, especially as of recently.
In canon, they are written to be partners, better together than apart, and I genuinely believe that one can like the Bakudeku dynamic not by route of romanticization but by observation.
I do think we are meant to see parallels between him and Endeavor; Endeavor is a high profile abuser who embodies the flaws and hypocrisy of the hero system. Bakugou is a schoolyard bully who emulates and internalizes the flaws of this system as a child, likely due to the structure of the society and the way that children will absorb the propaganda they are exposed to; the idea that Quirks, or power, define the inherent value of the individual, their ability to contribute to society, and subsequently their fundamental human worth. The difference between them is the fact that Endeavor is the literal adult who is fully and knowingly active within a toxic, corrupt system who forces his family to undergo a terrifying amount of trauma and abuse while facing little to no consequences because he knows that his status and the values of their society will protect him from those consequences. In other words, Endeavor is the threat of what Bakugou could have, and would have, become without intervention or genuine change.
Comparisons between characters, as parallels or foils, are tricky in that they imply but cannot confirm sameness. Having parallels with someone does not make them the same, by the way, but can serve to illustrate contrasts, or warnings. Harry Potter, for example, is meant to have obvious parallels with Tom Riddle, with similar abilities, and tragic upbringings. That doesn’t mean Harry grows up to become Lord Voldemort, but rather he helps lead a cross-generational movement to overthrow the facist regime. Harry is offered love, compassion, and friends, and does not embrace the darkness within or around him. As far as moldy old snake men are concerned, they do not deserve a redemption arc because they do not wish for one, and the truest of change only occurs when you actively try to change.
To be frank, either way, Bakugou was probably going to become a good Hero, in the sense that Endeavor is a ‘good’ Hero. Hero capitalized, as in a pro Hero, in the sense that it is a career, an occupation, and a status. Because of his strong Quirk, determination, skill, and work ethic, Bakugou would have made a good Hero. Due to his lack of character, however, he was not on the path to become a hero; defender of the weak, someone who saves people to save people, who is willing to make sacrifices detrimental to themselves, who saves people out of love.
It is necessary for him to undergo both a redemption arc and a symbolic death and rebirth in order for him to follow the path of a hero, having been inspired and prompted by Deku.
I personally don’t really like Endeavor’s little redemption arc, not because I don’t believe that people can change or that they shouldn't at least try to atone for the atrocities they have committed, but because within any narrative, a good redemption arc is important if it matters; what also matters is the context of that arc, and whether or not it was needed. For example, in ATLA, Zuko’s redemption arc is widely regarded as one of the best arcs in television history, something incredible. And it is. That shit fucks. In a good way.
It was confirmed that Azula was also going to get a redemption arc, had Volume 4 gone on as planned, and it was tentatively approached in the comics, which are considered canon. She is an undeniably bad person (who is willing to kill, threaten, exploit, and colonize), but she is also a child, and as viewers, we witness and recognize the factors that contributed to her (debatable) sociopathy, and the way that the system she was raised in failed her. Her family failed her; even Uncle Iroh, the wise mentor who helps guide Zuko to see the light, is willing to give up on her immediately, saying that she’s “crazy” and needs to be “put down”. Yes, it’s comedic, and yes, it’s pragmatic, but Azula is fourteen years old. Her mother is banished, her father is a psychopath, and her older brother, from her perspective, betrayed and abandoned her. She doesn’t have the emotional support that Zuko does; she exploits and controls her friends because it’s all she’s been taught to do; she says herself, her “own mother thought [she] was a monster; she was right, of course, but it still [hurts]”. A parent who does not believe in you, or a parent that uses you and will hurt you, is a genuine indicator of trauma.
The writers understood that both Zuko and Azula deserved redemption arcs. One was arguably further gone than the other, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are both children, products of their environment, who have the time, motive, and reason to change.
In contrast, you know who wouldn’t have deserved a redemption arc? Ozai. That simply would not have been interesting, wouldn’t have served the narrative well, and honestly, is not needed, thematically or otherwise. Am I comparing Ozai to Endeavor? Basically, yes. Fuck those guys. I don’t see a point in Endeavor’s little “I want to be a good dad now” arc, and I think that we don’t need to sympathize with characters in order to understand them or be interested in them. I want Touya/Dabi to expose his abuse, for his career to crumble, and then for him to die.
If they are not challenging the system that we the viewer are meant to question, and there is no thematic relevance to their redemption, is it even needed?
On that note, am I saying that Bakugou is the equivalent to Zuko? No, lmao. Definitely not. They are different characters with different progressions and different pressures. What I am saying is that good redemption arcs shouldn’t be handed out like candy to babies; it is the quality, rather than the quantity, that makes a redemption arc good. In terms of the commentary of the narrative, who needs a redemption arc, who is deserving, and who does it make sense to give one to?
In this case, Bakugou checks those boxes. It was always in the cards for him to change, and he has. In fact, he’s still changing.
Give it to Me Straight. It’s Homophobic.
There does seem to be an urge to obsessively gender either Bakugou or Deku, in making Deku the ultra-feminine, stereotypically hyper-sexualized “woman” of the relationship, with Bakugou becoming similarly sexualized but depicted as the hyper-masculine bodice ripper. On some level, that feels vaguely homophobic if not straight up misogynistic, in that in a gay relationship there’s an urge to compel them to conform under heteronormative stereotypes in order to be interpreted as real or functional. On one hand, I will say that in a lot of cases it feels like more of an expression of a kink, or fetishization and subsequent expression of internalized misogyny, at least, rather than a genuine exploration of the complexity and power imbalances of gender dynamics, expression, and boundaries.
That being said, I don’t think that that problematic aspect of shipping is unique to Bakudeku, or even to the fandom in general. We’ve all read fan work or see fanart of most gay ships in a similiar manner, and I think it’s a broader issue to be addressed than blaming it on a singular ship and calling it a day.
One interpretation of Bakugou’s character is his repression and the way his character functions under toxic masculinity, in a society’s egregious disregard for mental and emotional health (much like in the real world), the horrifying ways in which rage is rationalized or excused due to the concept of masculinity, and the way that characteristics that are associated with femininity — intellect, empathy, anxiety, kindness, hesitation, softness — are seen as stereotypically “weak”, and in men, traditionally emasculating. In terms of the way that the fictional universe is largely about societal priority and power dynamics between individuals and the way that extends to institutions, it’s not a total stretch to guess that gender as a construct is a relevant topic to expand on or at least keep in mind for comparison.
I think that the way in which characters are gendered and the extent to which that is a result of invasive heteronormativity and fetishization is a really important conversation to have, but using it as a case-by-case evolution of a ship used to condemn people isn’t conductive, and at that point, it’s treated as less of a real concern but an issue narrowly weaponised.
Love in Perspective, from the East v. West
Another thing I think could be elaborated on and written about in great detail is the way that the Eastern part of the fandom and the Western part of the fandom have such different perspectives on Bakudeku in particular. I am not going to go in depth with this, and there are many other people who could go into specifics, but just as an overview:
The manga and the anime are created for and targeted at a certain audience; our take on it will differ based on cultural norms, decisions in translation, understanding of the genre, and our own region-specific socialization. This includes the way in which we interpret certain relationships, the way they resonate with us, and what we do and do not find to be acceptable. Of course, this is not a case-by-case basis, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who hold differing beliefs within one area, but speaking generally, there is a reason that Bakudeku is not regarded as nearly as problematic in the East.
Had this been written by a Western creator, marketed primarily to and within the West (for reference, while I am Chinese, but I have lived in the USA for most of my life, so my own perspective is undoubtedly westernized), I would’ve immediately jumped to make comparisons between the Hero System and the American police system, in that a corrupt, or bastardized system is made no less corrupt for the people who do legitimately want to do good and help people, when that system disproportionately values and targets others while relying on propaganda that society must be reliant on that system in order to create safe communities when in reality it perpetuates just as many issues as it appears to solve, not to mention the way it attracts and rewards violent and power-hungry people who are enabled to abuse their power. I think comparisons can still be made, but in terms of analysis, it should be kept in mind that the police system in other parts of the world do not have the same history, place, and context as it does in America, and the police system in Japan, for example, probably wasn’t the basis for the Hero System.
As much as I do believe in the Death of the Author in most cases, the intent of the author does matter when it comes to content like this, if merely on the basis that it provides context that we may be missing as foreign viewers.
As far as the intent of the author goes, Bakugou is on a route of redemption.
He deserves it. It is unavoidable. That, of course, may depend on where you’re reading this.
Stuck in the Sludge, the Past, and Season One
If there’s one thing, to me, that epitomizes middle school Bakugou, it’s him being trapped in a sludge monster, rescued by his Quirkless childhood friend, and unable to believe his eyes. He clings to the ideology he always has, that Quirkless means weak, that there’s no way that Deku could have grown to be strong, or had the capacity to be strong all along. Bakugou is wrong about this, and continuously proven wrong. It is only when he accepts that he is wrong, and that Deku is someone to follow, that he starts his real path to heroics.
If Bakudeku’s relationship does not appeal to someone for whatever reason, there’s nothing wrong with that. They can write all they want about why they don’t ship it, or why it bothers them, or why they think it’s problematic. If it is legitimately triggering to you, then by all means, avoid it, point it out, etc. but do not undermine the reality of abuse simply to point fingers, just because you don’t like a ship. People who intentionally use the anti tag knowing it’ll show up in the main tag, go after people who are literally minding their own business, and accuse people of supporting abuse are the ones looking for a fight, and they’re annoying as hell because they don’t bring anything to the table. No evidence, no analysis, just repeated projection.
To clarify, I’m referring to a specific kind of shipper, not someone who just doesn’t like a ship, but who is so aggressive about it for absolutely no reason. There are plenty of very lovely people in this fandom, who mind their own business, multipship, or just don’t care.
Calling shippers dumb or braindead or toxic (to clarify, this isn’t targeting any one person I’ve seen, but a collective) based on projections and generalizations that come entirely from your own impression of the ship rather than observation is...really biased to me, and comes across as uneducated and trigger happy, rather than constructive or helpful in any way.
I’m not saying someone has to ship anything, or like it, in order to be a ‘good’ participant. But inserting derogatory material into a main tag, and dropping buzzwords with the same tired backing behind it without seeming to understand the implications of those words or acknowledging the development, pacing, and intentional change to the characters within the plot is just...I don’t know, it comes across as redundant, to me at least, and very childish. Aggressive. Toxic. Problematic. Maybe the real toxic shippers were the ones who bitched and moaned along the way. They’re like little kids, stuck in the past, unable to visualize or recognize change, and I think that’s a real shame because it’s preventing them from appreciating the story or its characters as it is, in canon.
But that’s okay, really. To each their own. Interpretations will vary, preferences differ, perspectives are not uniform. There is no one truth. There are five seasons of the show, a feature film, and like, thirty volumes as of this year.
All I’m saying is that if you want to stay stuck in the first season of each character, then that’s what you’re going to get. That’s up to you.
This may be edited or revised.
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jimintomystery · 4 years ago
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The Search for Noah's Ark
Many ancient cultures had accounts of a hero surviving a divine flood by building a giant boat, but the story of Noah (Genesis 6-9) stands out, since it is included in the canon of the Abrahamic religions. For centuries, it was not unusual for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers to report that Noah's Ark was still sitting on the mountain where it came to rest at the end of the story. But it wasn't until the 20th century that a documented expedition went to look for it.
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[Above: A man stands between Mount Ararat, where explorers typically look for Noah's Ark, and a sign for Noah's Ark National Park, the official location of the ship according to the Turkish government.]
The Bible says Noah's Ark landed in "the mountains of Ararat," without any clear indication where that would be. A 4th century Latin edition translated "Ararat" as "Armenia," popularizing that association in Western Christianity. The Armenians themselves used Greek or Syriac bibles, so they only learned of the Ararat-Armenia connection centuries later, from visiting crusaders. Thereafter, the sacred Armenian mountain Masis has been known as "Mount Ararat." Since the 1920s, the mountain has been a part of Turkey, which calls it Ağrı Dağı ("mountain of pain").
After the first confirmed ascent of Mount Ararat in 1829, it became more plausible that someone might go up there and look for Noah's Ark. But the idea wasn't taken seriously until the 1940s, when an article circulated about a Russian pilot spotting a giant wooden boat on Ararat during World War I. Supposedly, the czar ordered a thorough exploration of the structure, but then those no-good godless commies took over and suppressed the findings. The story was ultimately discredited, but not before it stoked the imaginations of American Christians that were eager to prove that the Bible was literally true.
Fascinated by the Russia story, realtor Eryl Cummings and his wife Violet devoted the rest of their lives to tracking down stories about Ark sightings. These tales typically involved American soldiers who said someone showed them a photo of the Ark during World War II, or old Armenian immigrants who supposedly visited the Ark as children. "Ark fever" heated up, though, when a sighting was reported from Turkey. In 1948, Eryl was invited to lead an Ararat expedition planned by retired missionary Aaron J. Smith. Cummings declined, however, and Smith ultimately led the trip himself the following year.
The 1949 expedition is instructive, because it sets the tone for all subsequent attempts to visit Ararat in search of the Ark. Upon arrival, Smith was beset with bureaucratic delays. Permits needed to be paid for, and local authorities rejected clearances that had been granted at the federal level. Reading between the lines, its clear to me that Ark-seekers would pay anything to achieve their dreams, and corrupt Turkish officials took full advantage of that. The team quickly depleted their funds, and didn't get to the mountain until the end of the climbing season.
It's also telling that there hasn't been a lot written about Smith's mission, not even by the Ark hunters who followed in his footsteps. It's much easier to find stories about the Fernand Navarra controversy in the '50s and '60s, or people who couldn't even prove they'd been to the mountain. And it's Eryl Cummings, not Aaron J. Smith, who came to be seen as the father of the movement. There's a simple reason for that: Smith put in the work, but he didn't find anything. Cummings, on the other hand, accumulated all of the tantalizing stories of people who might have found something, which could become a useful lead for the next expedition.
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[Above: Reconciling descriptions from two purported eyewitnesses, Elfred Lee illustrates the collapse of Noah's Ark into Ahora Gorge. The gorge was formed in 1840 by a powerful earthquake, which happens to precede the earliest alleged sightings in modern times. Violet Cummings suggested that the quake was divinely ordained to reveal the Ark and usher in the Apocalypse.]
The 1970s saw a wave of books about the search, most of which derived their information from the work of Mr. and Mrs. Cummings. Violet and other writers cast the quest in an apocalyptic light, suggesting that God had hidden the Ark all this time only to reveal it as a sign that the End Times were imminent. The implication was that Noah's Ark could not be discovered until the appointed hour but, paradoxically, Judgement Day will be stalled unless believers find the ship as soon as possible.
"Arkeology" arguably peaked in the 1980s, when astronaut Jim Irwin took up the search. By that point Turkey was wary of letting amateur climbers wander around so close to their border with Iran and the Soviet Union. But the eighth person to walk on the Moon was able to open some doors and, more crucially, cut through some red tape. However, Irwin still had to deal with the punishing conditions of Mount Ararat itself. His adventures there are best remembered for the injuries he sustained, and the heart issues that made it increasingly unwise for him to return year after year.
Jim Irwin no doubt inspired a new generation of Ark-seekers, but by the late 1990s the community was bitterly divided about where to look. For thousands of years, legends suggested that the ship was in plain sight for anyone who dared to climb up and find it. But fifty years of aerial reconnaissance, satellite photography, and boots on the ground had proven otherwise. Debate intensified about whether Ararat was even the right mountain, and about the validity of other possible sites, forcing people to re-evaluate the established lore surrounding the quest. So you end up with one "arkeologist" attacking the reasoning of another, often with logic that could be extended to dismiss the entire search.
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[Above: In 2010 Noah's Ark Ministries International released photos like this one, purportedly taken inside a massive wooden structure on Mount Ararat. NAMI refused to reveal the location for independent verification, citing security concerns. Within days of the announcement, former associates of NAMI came forward accusing them of staging the whole thing.]
That background of in-fighting put a damper on a 2010 press event claiming that a Hong Kong evangelical group had found the Ark on Ararat. You'd think video footage of this discovery would delight Ark hunters. On the contrary, many were as skeptical as mainstream scientists. The feuding over which Ark theories were right or wrong had left them wary, because if some flaky story captured the public imagination, it might discredit the entire movement. Which is ironic, considering that the movement wouldn't exist at all if not for an urban legend about a Russian cover-up.
At a glance, it may seem like "Ark fever" is part and parcel with religious fundamentalism, or maybe just a specific flavor of Christian anti-intellectualism. However, even some influential creationists have debunked the search for Noah's Ark. There's no scriptural basis for assuming that God arranged for the Ark to remain intact until modern times, or that it was meant to be rediscovered, or that locating it would have any bearing on the end of the world. The entire rationale for the search is that dozens of unconfirmed reports can't all be wrong, which isn't a solid foundation for an archaeology project.
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princesssarisa · 4 years ago
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A defense of the ending of “Wuthering Heights"
@astrangechoiceoffavourites, @theheightsthatwuthered, @wuthering-valleys, @heightsandmoors, @incorrectwutheringheightsquotes
 I’ve been reading other people’s opinions on Wuthering Heights this past year, I’ve noticed a small recurring theme.
It’s the idea that the ending feels out of place; tacked on; anti-climactic; too tame compared to the rest of the book. That it feels wrong for Heathcliff to simply lose interest in his revenge and then lose the will to live, or for the surviving characters to have any kind of happy or hopeful ending after so much brutality.
One book I read excerpts from on Google Books (I don’t remember the title or the author) suggested that maybe Emily Brontë originally wrote a very different, more brutal and Gothic ending, now lost. The author proposed that the final ending was probably the result of Anne and/or Charlotte urging Emily to tone down the book’s “immorality.” Of course this is pure conjecture. This same author also speculated that in the novel’s first draft, Heathcliff was explicitly Mr. Earnshaw’s illegitimate son, but that Anne and/or Charlotte persuaded Emily to change it. I’m not at all convinced by that theory, since @astrangechoiceoffavourites has argued very eloquently that to make Heathcliff and Cathy’s love forbidden because of the incest taboo rather than because of social class and race would go against the plot’s main themes and make nonsense of Heathcliff’s revenge on the Lintons and Earnshaws.
Still, this theorist isn’t the only person to think the ending (and possibly the whole second generation storyline) feels like the work of a different author than the rest of the book. Just recently I read a comment on Facebook arguing that a more cohesive, consistent Wuthering Heights would have had “a much darker and more explosive ending.” I assume a similar mindset is why some theorize that Branwell wrote the novel’s first half and Emily wrote the second. (I think I hate that theory even more than I hate the theory that Branwell wrote it all – “He didn’t write the whole book, but he did write the part everyone likes best.”) And if we compare the various adaptations’ endings to the ending of the book, there’s definitely a trend of giving Heathcliff a more brutal death.
I understand all of this. The ending of the book is ironic. Heathcliff himself knows it’s ironic: “It is a poor conclusion, is it not?” he asks Nelly, “an absurd termination to my violent exertions?” We don’t expect a towering, terrifying yet fascinating Byronic anti-hero like Heathcliff to become apathetic and ineffectual in the end and then die quietly (albeit mysteriously and eerily) in bed. We’d sooner expect him to freeze to death chasing Cathy’s ghost through a blizzard, or to be shot by his worst enemy, or to be lured by Cathy’s ghost to commit suicide by gunshot.
But I know I’m not the only person who thinks the entire book is fully cohesive and who sees nothing wrong with the ending whatsoever.
As far as I’m concerned, Heathcliff’s “absurd” end is more interesting than anything “darker and more explosive” would have been, precisely because it’s unexpected and yet makes perfect sense. Revenge never makes Heathcliff truly happy or brings him peace of mind: we know that all along. It might distract him from his pain, but it can’t cure it. While initially surprising, in hindsight it’s not surprising at all that, with no out-of-character repentance or remorse, he eventually loses the will to seek any more revenge. At heart it was never what he really wanted most; his real greatest desire is and always has been to be with Cathy.
Then there’s the strongest factor in his loss of his will for revenge: his grudging empathy for Hareton. Again, as far as I’m concerned, this is fascinating irony. Heathcliff has purposefully set out to shape Hareton into a copy of himself. Ultimately, that scheme “goes horribly right,” because he sees too much of his younger self in Hareton to hate him as much as he wants to, or to have the will to separate him from Cathy II the way he himself was separated from Cathy I. Then there’s Hareton’s resemblance to his aunt, Cathy I; even though Heathcliff’s passion for Cathy has been the motive for all his revenge on the two families that separated them, in the end it’s what makes him unable to ruin the lives of her lookalike nephew and her daughter, even though they’re also the children of the two men most responsible for taking Cathy from him. Again, it works because it’s handled delicately and without sentimentality. He still shows no remorse or regret for his past actions, and never shows any real kindness or fondness to Hareton or Cathy II, but despises the conflicted feelings they stir in him. But the fact remains that, despite all his efforts to be a monster over the years, he’s still a human being, capable of some empathy for people in whom he sees aspects of himself and of his beloved Cathy. I think it’s fascinating that this humanity, and not his monstrous actions, is what undoes him in the end.
Also, as some critics have pointed out, the very fact that Heathcliff receives no punishment for his sins (apart from his inner torment) makes the ending subversive by Victorian standards. If he had died a brutal death, it could easily have been viewed as his comeuppance, demonstrating God’s justice. From a moral and religious perspective, it might be all the more disturbing that instead he gets to die as close to a peaceful death as his character allows, with a devilish smile on his face.
Moving beyond Heathcliff’s death, I don’t see anything wrong with Hareton and Cathy II′s ending either.
First of all, it isn’t necessarily a straightforward happy ending. It’s definitely bittersweet if we have any sympathy for Heathcliff, and not just because he dies. This penniless, abused, disdained orphan of color defied the classism and racism of his society by clawing his way to wealth and status and by bringing down the two families who once oppressed him, but in the end, it’s all for nothing. Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange go back to the Earnshaw and Linton heirs and the only trace left of Heathcliff is a single name and death date on a tombstone. He’s just as much of a “nobody” in death as he was as a homeless child. Of course it’s tempting to cheer for this fact because of his cruelty and because Cathy II and Hareton are sympathetic, basically innocent young people whom he unfairly punished for their parents’ sins. But in a way at least, especially in Marxist readings of the book (which I don’t fully agree with but do see validity in), the ending can be viewed as the triumph of the classist and racist status quo.
Nor, as some critics have argued, is it guaranteed that Cathy II and Hareton will live happily ever after. First of all, the fact remains that Hareton loved and loyally served Heathcliff to the end, and to please Hareton, Cathy had to stop speaking out against Heathcliff even though he had horribly abused her. There’s also the fact that Hareton once hit Cathy himself; only once, and before they were even friends, let alone lovers, but in the real world it rarely bodes well for a woman to marry a man who once slapped her. A few critics have wondered if Hareton is really permanently “tamed” in the end, or will eventually revert to the roughness Heathcliff bred in him and abuse his new power and status the same way Heathcliff did. On the flip side, there’s the fact that apart from her conceding not to criticize Heathcliff, Cathy seems to rule over Hareton almost as much as her mother did over Heathcliff when they were children. She educates him, he craves her esteem and does her bidding, and in his lessons she meets his mistakes and inattention (however playfully) with “smart slaps” and threats of hair-pulling. Some critics have wondered if we should view these as red flags; if Cathy II is destined to be an emotional abuser like her mother was.
But even if you don’t subscribe to those darker interpretations of the ending... even if you view Cathy and Hareton as fundamentally good people who genuinely grow and change for the better, find a healthy balance between the worlds of Thrushcross Grange and Wuthering Heights, and will be truly happy together... well, what’s wrong with that?
Is it really so impossible to believe that sometimes the cycle of abuse can be broken, or so “out of place” to show it being broken at the end of a book that shows its horrors? Is it just naïve delusion to hope that, with effort, children can avoid repeating their parents’ mistakes and opposing social structures like the Heights and the Grange can be reconciled? That at least one young couple might manage to combine the good aspects of both worlds while discarding the bad, rather than combining the worst of both worlds the way Heathcliff did? Just because the book is dark as a whole, do we really need to be so cynical when reading it that we can’t allow it to end on a note of hope?
Besides, I’ve written before about the mirror-image character arcs of the two Cathys. Cathy I is born and raised at Wuthering Heights, but eventually leaves it for Thrushcross Grange when she marries the latter household’s heir; she initially loves the rugged dark-haired Heathcliff and wanders the moors with him, but then gains snobbery, treats Heathcliff with increasing disdain, and shifts her attentions to the prissy blond-haired Edgar, whom she marries; as a result, her life ends in misery. Cathy II is born and raised at Thushcross Grange, but eventually she leaves it for Wuthering Heights when she marries the latter household’s heir; she initially loves the prissy blond-haired Linton, whom she marries, and treats the rugged dark-haired Hareton with disdain, but eventually she loses her snobbery, learns to love Hareton, and wanders the moors with him. In no way is Cathy II’s positive ending “tacked on” – her entire character arc is structured to be the opposite of her mother’s tragedy.
I understand why some people don’t care for the ending and think it feels anti-climactic or out of place. But as far as I’m concerned, it’s a thoroughly effective ending and fully consistent with what came before.
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weavingthetapestry · 4 years ago
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19th March 1286: “A Strong Wind Will Be Heard in Scotland”
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(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)
On 19th March 1286, a body was discovered on a Fife beach, not far from the royal burgh of Kinghorn. The corpse was that of a 44-year-old man, and the cause of death was later diversely reported as either a broken neck or some other severe injury consistent with a fall from a horse at some point during the previous night. It is not known exactly when this body was found, nor do we know who discovered it. But we do know that the dead man was soon identified, with much dismay, as the King of Scots himself, Alexander III.
The late king had no surviving children, only a young widow who was not yet known to be pregnant, and an infant granddaughter in the kingdom of Norway. Despite this, Alexander III’s untimely death did not cause any immediate civil strife, although it did set in motion a chain of events which eventually led to the Scottish Wars of Independence. This conflict would forever alter the relationship between the kingdoms of Scotland and England, as well as the wider course of European history.
Although Alexander III was a moderately successful monarch, he had been unfortunate over the last ten years. His first wife, Margaret of England, had died in 1275 and Alexander initially showed no immediate interest in remarriage. At first the succession seemed secure: Margaret had left behind two sons and a daughter. However the death of the couple’s younger son David c.1281, may have prompted the king’s decision to arrange the marriages of his two surviving children over the next few years. In the summer of 1281, the twenty-year-old Princess Margaret set sail for Bergen, where she was to marry King Eirik II of Norway. Her brother Alexander, the eighteen-year-old heir to the throne, married the Count of Flanders’ daughter in November 1282. Neither marriage lasted long. The queen of Norway died in spring 1283, possibly during childbirth, while her younger brother succumbed to illness in January 1284. Within a few years, a series of unforeseen tragedies had destroyed Alexander III’s family and hopes, and the outlook for the kingdom seemed equally bleak...
All was not lost however. The king was in good health and believed he could count on the support of the realm’s leading men. Steps were swiftly taken to ensure their compliance with his plans for the succession. On 5th February 1284, a few weeks after Prince Alexander’s death, an impressive number of Scottish nobles* set their seals to an agreement at Scone. In the event of the king of Scotland’s death without any surviving legitimate children, they obliged themselves and their heirs to accept as monarch the heir at law. This was currently a baby named Margaret, the only surviving child of Alexander III’s daughter the queen of Norway.
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(Drawing based on a seal belonging to Yolande of Dreux, Alexander III’s second queen. She later became Countess of Montfort and, by marriage, Duchess of Brittany. Source: Wikimedia Commons)
Although the bishops of Scotland were to censure anyone who broke this oath, the prospect of the crown being inherited by an infant girl on the other side of the North Sea was obviously not ideal. Her grandfather struck an optimistic note in a letter to his brother-in-law Edward I of England, writing that in spite of his recent “intolerable” trials, “the child of his dearest daughter” still lived and hoping that “much good may yet be in store”. But the king would not leave everything up to chance and in October 1285, at the age of 43, he married the French noblewoman Yolande of Dreux. As the year drew to a close, Alexander might have hoped that his misfortunes were behind him. He still had his kingdom and his health, and now, with a new queen, there was every chance that he could father another son.
In fact, the king had less than six months to live. The exact circumstances of Alexander’s death are shrouded in mystery, although most sources agree on the fundamental details. Only the Chronicle of Lanercost gives a detailed account, although much cannot be corroborated, and its author had a habit of providing moral explanations for historical events. He was convinced that the calamities which befell the Scottish royal house in the 1280s were punishment for Alexander III’s personal sins. The chronicler never explicitly names these sins, but he does hint at a conflict between the king and the monks of Durham (allowing Alexander’s death to be attributed to a vengeful St Cuthbert). The chronicler also included salacious stories of Alexander’s private life, claiming:
“he used never to forbear on account of season or storm, nor for perils of flood or rocky cliffs, but would visit, not too creditably, matrons and nuns, virgins and widows, by day or by night as the fancy seized him, sometimes in disguise, often accompanied by a single follower.”
Although this does seem to back up the king’s habit of making reckless journeys, alone and in bad weather, the chronicle’s biases are nonetheless fairly obvious. On the other hand, the man who probably compiled the chronicle up to the year 1297 does appear to have had many contacts in Scotland. These included the confessors of the late Queen Margaret and her son Prince Alexander, as well as the latter’s tutor, the clergy of Haddington and Berwick, and the earl of Dunbar. It is unclear how he acquired information about Alexander III’s death, but the chronicle’s narrative is at least plausible and correct in its essentials. Although some of the anecdotes are a little too detailed and didactic to be entirely truthful, the narrative provides some interesting insights into contemporary behaviour, such as the way medieval Scots felt entitled to address their kings. In the absence of alternative narratives, and without necessarily subscribing to the chronicler’s moral views, it is therefore perhaps worth following Lanercost to begin with, supplementing this with additional information where possible.
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(The northern half of a map of Britain, drawn by the thirteenth century English chronicler Matthew Paris. Matthew Paris was based in the south of England and was not overly familiar with Scottish geography, but his depiction of Scotland as split over two islands and joined only at the bridge of Stirling, is nonetheless enlightening. The map is now in the public domain and has been made available by the British Libary (x))
On the evening of 18th March 1286, Alexander III is reported to have been in good spirits. This was in spite of the weather, which the author of the Chronicle of Lanercost described as being so foul, “that to me and most men, it seemed disagreeable to expose one’s face to the north wind, rain and snow”. The king of Scots was then dining at Edinburgh, attended by many of his nobles, who were preparing a response to the king of England’s ambassadors regarding the aged prisoner Thomas of Galloway. However when the court had finished dinner King Alexander was not at all anxious to retire early. Instead, not in the least deterred by the wind and rain lashing the windows, he announced his intention of spending the night with his new wife. Since Queen Yolande was then staying at Kinghorn in Fife, travelling there from Edinburgh would not only involve riding over twenty miles in the dark, but would also mean crossing the choppy waters of the Firth of Forth. Unsurprisingly, the king’s councillors tried to dissuade him. However Alexander was determined, and eventually he set off with only a few attendants, leaving his courtiers wringing their hands behind him.
The first part of the journey passed without incident and soon the king and his companions arrived at the Queen’s Ferry, by the shores of the Forth. This popular crossing point was named after Alexander’s famous ancestress St Margaret, who had established accommodation and transport for pilgrims there two hundred years earlier. But when the king himself sought passage, the ferryman pointed out that it would be very dangerous to attempt the crossing in such conditions. Alexander, undeterred, asked him if he was scared, to which the ferryman is said to have stoutly replied, “By no means, it would be a great honour to share the fate of your father’s son.” So the king and his attendants boarded the ferry and, notwithstanding the storm, the boat soon reached the shores of Fife in safety. As the king and his squires rode away from the ferry port, intending to complete the last eleven or so miles of their journey that night, they passed through the royal burgh of Inverkeithing. There, despite the evening gloom, the king’s voice was recognised by the manager of his saltpans, who was also one of the baillies of the town.** The burgess called out to the king and reprimanded him for his habit of riding abroad at night, inviting Alexander to stay with him until morning. But, laughing, Alexander dismissed his concerns and, asking only for some local serfs to act as guides, he rode off into the night.
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(South Queensferry, as drawn by the eighteenth century artist John Clerk and made available for public use by the National Galleries of Scotland. Obviously the Queen’s Ferry changed a lot between the 1280s and the 1700s, but at least during this period the ferry was still the main mode of transportation across the Forth.)
By now darkness had set in and, despite the local knowledge of their guides, it was not long before every member of the king’s party became completely lost. Although they had become separated, the king’s squires eventually found the road again. However at some point they must have realised that they had a new problem: the king was nowhere to be found.
In the early fifteenth century, local tradition held that Alexander was at least heading in the right direction when he became separated from his companions. Although he too had lost sight of the main road, the king followed the shoreline, his horse carrying him swiftly over the sands towards Kinghorn. It was there, only a couple of miles from his destination, that the king’s luck finally ran out. Since there were no known witnesses to Alexander III’s death, it is unlikely that we will ever know for certain what happened that night. However most sources agree that the king’s horse probably stumbled and threw its rider. Alexander tumbled to the ground and snapped his neck and, at a stroke, the dynasty which had ruled Scotland for over two hundred years came to an end.
It is not known precisely how long the king’s body lay on the beach, alone under the moon while the waves crashed on the shore and confusion reigned among his squires and guides. However his corpse was discovered the next day and was swiftly conveyed to nearby Dunfermline. Ten days later, on 29th March 1286, the kingdom’s ruling elite gathered to see the last King Alexander buried near the high altar of the abbey kirk, in the company of his ancestors. Near the spot where the king’s body was allegedly found, a stone cross was later erected beside the road, which could still be seen by travellers over a hundred years later. The modern belief that Alexander III died when either he or his horse fell from a cliff*** (a tradition which is not supported by any mediaeval sources so far as I am aware) may stem from the position of this old cross, which possibly occupied the same spot as that of the Victorian Alexander III monument. This monument can now be seen at the side of the modern A921 road between Burntisland and Kinghorn, a permanent reminder of the role this seemingly nondescript location once played in the history of Scotland.
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(The Alexander III monument near Kinghorn. Source: Wikimedia Commons- the photo was taken by Kim Traynor who has kindly made the image available for reuse under the  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).
The impact of Alexander’s death on a small mediaeval kingdom like Scotland, conditioned to look to its monarch for leadership, must have been great. Even the Lanercost chronicler admitted that the general populace was observed “bewailing his sudden death as deeply as the desolation of the realm.” However it is important not to exaggerate the scale of the crisis. Popular views of Alexander III’s death are inescapably informed by the accounts of fourteenth and fifteenth century writers, who depicted it as the root of all of Scotland’s later ills.
Writing in the aftermath of a century dominated by war, plague, famine, and climate change, it is perhaps unsurprising that many late mediaeval chroniclers looked back on Alexander III’s reign as comparatively peaceful. As the author of the fourteenth century “Gesta Annalia II” explained, “How worthy of tears and how hurtful his death was to the kingdom of Scotland is plainly shown forth by the evils of after times.” Meanwhile, in his “Orygynale Cronykil of Scotland” completed c.1420, Andrew Wyntoun portrayed Alexander’s reign as a Golden Age of peace and justice (when, just as importantly, oats only cost fourpence a boll). He incorporated an old song into his chronicle, perhaps written in the years following the king’s accident, which neatly encapsulates later views of the event and its impact:
“Quhen Alysandyr oure Kyng wes dede 
That Scotland led in luẅe and lé, 
Away wes sons off ale and brede, 
Off wyne and wax, off gamyn and glé: 
Oure gold wes changyd in to lede. 
Cryste borne in to Vyrgynyté, 
Succoure Scotland and remede, 
That stad [is in] perplexyté.”
Wyntoun’s younger contemporary Walter Bower, author of the “Scotichronicon”, also lamented Alexander’s premature death and even rolled out a legend about Scotland’s famous seer, Thomas the Rhymer, to reinforce his point. On 18th March 1286, he claimed, the earl of Dunbar “half-jesting” asked the Rhymer for the next day’s weather forecast. True Thomas answered gloomily:
“Alas for tomorrow, a day of calamity and misery! Because before the stroke of twelve a strong wind will be heard in Scotland, the like of which has not been known since long ago. Indeed its blast will dumbfound the nations and render senseless those who hear it, it will humble what is lofty and raze what is unbending to the ground.”
The next morning came and went without any gales, so the earl decided that Thomas had gone mad- until a messenger arrived at precisely midday with news of the king’s death. Although Bower may have been attempting to bolster Thomas of Erceldoune’s reputation as a prophet (in response to English propagandic use of Merlin’s prophecies), the anecdote reveals the significance he attached to Alexander III’s death. Similarly for John Barbour, author of the fourteenth century romance “The Bruce”, there was no doubt that the story of his hero’s story began, “Quhen Alexander the king was deid / That Scotland haid to steyr and leid.” Following this, Barbour skips ahead to the selection of John Balliol as king, dismissing the six years in between as a time when the country lay “desolate”. In this way later chroniclers created the impression of an Alexandrian ‘Golden Age’ and that Scotland almost immediately descended into chaos after his death. Though understandable, these late mediaeval interpretations have traditionally hampered analysis of Alexander’s reign and the events of the decade following his death, despite the best efforts of modern historians.
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(The coronation of the young Alexander III at Scone, as depicted in a manuscript version of the fifteenth century “Scotichronicon”, compiled by the Abbot of Incholm, Walter Bower.  Source: Wikimedia Commons)
In reality, while the king’s death was undoubtedly a deep blow, the Scottish political community rallied in the immediate aftermath. In April 1286, parliament assembled at Scone and promised to keep the peace on behalf of the rightful heir to the kingdom. Six ‘Guardians’ were to govern in the meantime- two bishops (William Fraser of St Andrews and Robert Wishart of Glasgow), two earls (Alexander Comyn, earl of Buchan and Duncan, earl of Fife), and two barons (John Comyn of Badenoch and James the Steward). Despite the oaths sworn to Margaret of Norway two years earlier, there may have been some doubt as to who the “rightful heir” actually was. Certain sources claim that Alexander III’s widow Yolande of Dreux was pregnant and the political community waited anxiously for several months before the queen gave birth in November 1286. However no male heir materialised**** and by the end of the year it seems to have been generally acknowledged that the three-year-old Maid of Norway was the rightful “Lady of Scotland”. She was destined never to set foot in Scotland, but, despite her age, gender, and absence from the realm, the country did not descend into complete anarchy in the four years when she was the accepted heir to the throne. Undoubtedly there were people who had reservations about her reign: the Bruces, for example, seem to have attempted a short-lived rebellion, though the situation was soon defused by the Guardians. By 1289 the cracks were perhaps beginning to show, with the death of the earl of Buchan and the murder of the earl of Fife removing two Guardians, who were not replaced. Nonetheless, the authority of the Guardians was recognised in the absence of an adult ruler and they generally attempted to govern competently in the four years between Alexander III’s accident and the Maid of Norway’s own death in 1290.
Having received news of this second tragedy, the Guardians again acted cautiously, deciding that rival claims for the kingship should be judged in an official court chaired by a respected and powerful arbitrator. Thus they appealed to Scotland’s formidable neighbour, Edward I of England. Despite later allegations of foul play, the English king’s eventual judgement in favour of John Balliol does appear to have been consistent with the law of primogeniture and due process. It would take years of steady deterioration before war finally broke out in 1296. By then Alexander III had been dead for a decade, and though the crisis may have indirectly grown out of his demise, it was not necessarily the immediate cause of Scotland’s late mediaeval woes. Nonetheless the events of that dark night in March 1286 would leave their mark on the popular imagination for centuries, shaping Scottish history down to the present day.
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(An imprint of the Great Seal used by the Guardians of Scotland following Alexander III’s death. Reproduced in the “History of Scottish seals from the eleventh to the seventeenth century”, by Walter de Gray Birch, now out of copyright and available on internet archive)
Additional Notes:
*The assembled magnates included the earls of Buchan, Dunbar, Strathearn, Atholl, Lennox, Carrick, Mar, Angus, Menteith, Ross, Sutherland, and two other earls whose titles are illegible but who may have been Caithness and Fife.  The barons included Robert de Brus the elder (father of the earl of Carrick and grandfather of the future Robert I), James Stewart, John Balliol (the future king), John Comyn of Badenoch, William de Soules, Enguerrand de Coucy (Alexander III’s maternal cousin), William Murray, Reginald le Cheyne, William de St Clair, Richard Siward, William of Brechin, Nicholas de Hay, Henry de Graham, Ingelram de Balliol, Alan the son of the earl, Reginald Cheyne the younger, (John?) de Lindsay, Simon Fraser, Alexander MacDougall of Argyll, Angus MacDonald, and Alan MacRuairi, among others. 
** The historian G.W.S. Barrow identified this figure as Alexander the saucier the master of the royal sauce kitchen and one of the baillies of Inverkeithing. 
*** There are some variations on this local tradition too- in 1794, the minister who wrote the entry for Kinghorn parish in the Old Statistical Account claimed that the ‘King’s Wood-end’ near the site of the current Alexander III monument was where the king liked to hunt and that he fell from his horse while on a hunting trip. 
****The Guardians and other nobles may have assembled at Clackmannan for the birth. Several modern historians have accepted Walter Bower’s statement that the queen’s baby was stillborn, despite the Chronicle of Lanercost’s somewhat fantastic tale of a fake pregnancy, with Yolande being caught conspiring to smuggle an actor’s son into Stirling Castle.
Selected Bibliography: 
- “The Chronicle of Lanercost”, as translated by Sir Herbert Maxwell 
- “Calendar of Documents Relating to Scotland, Preserved Among the Public Records of England”, Volume 2, ed. Joseph Bain 
- Rymer’s “Foedera…”, Volume 1 part 1 
- “Documents Illustrative of the History of Scotland”, vol 1., ed. Joseph Stevenson 
- “Scottish Annals From English Chroniclers”, ed. A.O. Anderson (especially Annals of Worcester; Thomas Wykes; Chronicles in Annales Monastici) 
- “Early Sources of Scottish History”, ed. A.O. Anderson (esp. Chronicle of Holyrood, various continuations of the Chronicle of the Kings of Scotland; John of Evenden; Nicholas Trivet) 
- “The Flowers of History… as Collected by Mathew of Westminster”, ed. C.D. Yonge - Gesta Annalia II (formerly attributed to John of Fordun) in “John of Fordun’s Chronicle of the Scottish Nation”, ed. W. F. Skene 
- John Barbour’s “The Brus”, ed. A.A.M. Duncan 
- “The Orygynale Cronikil of the Scotland”, vol.2., by Andrew Wyntoun, ed. David Laing 
- “A History Book for Scots: Selections from the Scotichronicon”, ed. D.E.R. Watt 
- “The Authorship of the Lanercost Chronicle”, by A.G. Little in the English Historical Review, vol. 31 no. 122, p. 269-279 
- “The Kingship of the Scots”, A.A.M. Duncan 
- “Robert Bruce and the Community of the Realm of Scotland”, G.W.S. Barrow 
- “The Wars of Scotland, 1230-1371”, Michael Brown
I have extensive notes so if anyone needs a reference for a specific detail please let me know.
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greatworldwar2 · 4 years ago
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• Duško Popov
Dušan "Duško" Popov OBE was a Serbian triple agent who served as part of the MI6 and Abwehr during World War II, and passed off disinformation to Germany as part of the Double-Cross System and working also as agent for the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London.
Dušan "Duško" Popov was born to a Serb family in Titel, Austria-Hungary on July 10th, 1912. His parents were Milorad and Zora Popov. He had an older brother named Ivan ("Ivo") and a younger brother named Vladan. The family was exceedingly wealthy and owed its fortune to Popov's paternal grandfather, Omer, a wealthy banker and industrialist who founded a number of factories, mines, and retail businesses. Records from as early as 1773 describe them as the most affluent family there. Popov's father expanded the family's business interests to include real estate dealings. When Popov was an infant, the family left Titel and permanently relocated to their summer residence in Dubrovnik, which was their home for much of the year. They also had a manor in Belgrade, where they spent the winter months. Popov's childhood coincided with a series of monumental political changes in the Balkans. In November 1918, Austria-Hungary disintegrated into a number of smaller states, and its Balkan possessions were incorporated into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (renamed Yugoslavia in 1929). The newly established, Serb-led state was plagued by political infighting among its various constitutive ethnic groups, particularly Serbs and Croats, but also Hungarians and Germans. The young Popov and his family enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle and were far removed from the political turmoil in the country. They boasted a sizeable collection of villas and yachts, and were attended by servants, even on their travels. Popov's father indulged his sons, building a spacious villa by the sea for their exclusive use where they could entertain their friends and host expensive parties. He was also insistent that they receive a quality education. Apart from his native Serbian, Popov was fluent in Italian, German and French by his teenage years. Between the ages of 12 and 16, he attended a lycée in Paris.
In 1929, Popov's father enrolled him into Ewell Castle, a prestigious preparatory school in Surrey. Popov's stint at the school proved to be short lived. After only four months, he was expelled following an altercation with a teacher. He had previously endured a caning at the teacher's hands after being caught smoking a cigarette. Another caning was adjudicated after Popov missed a detention, and so as to evade further corporal punishment, Popov grabbed the teacher's cane and snapped it in two before his classmates. Popov's father subsequently enrolled him at Lycée Hoche, a secondary institution in Versailles, which he attended for the following two years. At the age of 18, Popov enrolled in the University of Belgrade, seeking an undergraduate degree in law. Over the next four years, he became a familiar face in Belgrade's cafes and nightclubs, and had the reputation of a ladies' man. In 1934, Popov enrolled in the University of Freiburg, intent on securing a doctorate in law. Germany had only recently come under the rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, but at the time, Popov paid little regard to politics. He had chosen Freiburg because it was relatively close to his native country and he was eager to improve his German-language skills. Germany was already the site of mass book burnings, the first concentration camps had been established and the systematic persecution of Jews had commenced.
Popov began his studies at the University of Freiburg in the autumn of 1935, and in subsequent months, began showing greater interest in politics and voiced his political opinions more vigorously. Around the same time, he befriended a fellow student, Johnny Jebsen, the son of a German shipping magnate. The two grew close, largely due to their raucous lifestyle and a shared interest in sports vehicles. In 1937, Popov began participating in debates at the Ausländer Club, which were held every other Friday evening. He was disappointed that many foreign students appeared to be swayed by the pro-Nazi arguments espoused there. Popov discovered that the German debaters were all hand-picked party members who chose the subject of each debate beforehand and vigorously rehearsed Nazi talking points. He persuaded Jebsen, then the president of the club, to inform him of the debate topics in advance and passed this information along to the British and American debaters. Popov himself delivered two speeches at the club, arguing in favour of democracy. He also wrote several articles for the Belgrade daily Politika, ridiculing the Nazis. In the summer of 1937, Popov completed his doctoral thesis, and decided to celebrate by embarking on a trip to Paris. Before he could leave, he was arrested by the Gestapo, who accused him of being a communist. His movements had been tracked by undercover agents beforehand and his acquaintances questioned. Popov was incarcerated at the Freiburg prison without formal proceedings. When Jebsen received news of his friend's arrest, he called Popov's father and informed him of what had occurred. Popov's father contacted Yugoslav Prime Minister Milan Stojadinović, who raised the issue with Hermann Göring, and after eight days in captivity, Popov was released. He was ordered to leave Germany within 24 hours, and upon collecting his belongings, boarded a train for Switzerland.
He soon arrived in Basel and found Jebsen waiting for him on the station platform. Jebsen informed Popov of the role he played in securing his release. Popov expressed gratitude and told Jebsen that if he was ever in need of any assistance he needed only ask. Upon his return to Dubrovnik in the fall of 1937, Popov began practicing law. In February 1940, he received a message from Jebsen, asking to meet him at the Hotel Serbian King in Belgrade. Popov was shocked to find Jebsen a nervous wreck, chain smoking and drinking exorbitantly. He told Popov that he had joined his family's shipping business after graduating from Freiburg and explained that he needed a Yugoslav shipping license to evade the Allied naval blockade at Trieste. Popov agreed to help Jebsen, and the latter travelled back to Berlin to collect the required documentation. Two weeks later, Jebsen returned to Belgrade, and informed Popov that he had joined the Abwehr, German's military intelligence service. Jebsen's ability to travel across Europe on business trips would remain unimpeded so long as he submitted reports detailing the information he had received from his business contacts. He told Popov he joined the Abwehr to avoid being conscripted into the Wehrmacht. Jebsen said military service was not an option because he suffered from varicose veins. The news came as a surprise to Popov, as his friend had previously expressed anti-Nazi views.
Popov informed Clement Hope, a passport control officer at the British legation in Yugoslavia. Hope enrolled Popov as a double agent with the codename Scoot (he was later known to his handler as Tricycle), and advised him to cooperate with Jebsen. Once accepted as a double agent, Popov moved to London. His international business activities in an import-export business provided cover for visits to neutral Portugal; its capital, Lisbon, was linked to the UK by a weekly civilian air service for most of the war. Popov used his cover position to report periodically to his Abwehr handlers in Portugal. Popov fed enough MI6-approved information to the Germans to keep them happy and unaware of his actions, and was well-paid for his services. The assignments given to him were of great value to the British in assessing enemy plans and thinking. His most important deception was convincing the Germans that the D-Day landings would be in Calais, not Normandy, and was able to report back to MI6 that they fell for this deception, which corroborated Bletchley Park's decryption of Lorenz cipher machine messages. Popov was famous for his playboy lifestyle, while carrying out perilous wartime missions for the British.
In 1944, Popov became a key part of the deception operation codenamed Fortitude. At the time of the operation, he was staying in Portugal. He stayed in Estoril once again, at the Hotel Palácio, between March 31st and April 12th, 1944. When Jebsen was arrested by the Gestapo in Lisbon, the British feared Popov had been compromised and ceased giving him critical information to pass along to the Germans. It was later discovered that the Abwehr still regarded Popov as an asset and he was brought back into use by the British. Jebsen's death at the hands of the Nazis had a profound emotional impact on Popov.
In 1972, John Cecil Masterman published The Double Cross System in the War of 1939 to 1945, an intimate account of wartime British military deception. Before its publication, Popov had no intention of revealing his wartime activities, believing that the MI6 would not allow it. Masterman's book convinced Popov that it was time to make his exploits public. In 1974, Popov published an autobiography titled Spy/Counterspy, "a racy account of his adventures that read like a James Bond novel." Miller describes it as "fundamentally accurate, if occasionally embellished". Several of the events described in the book were either entirely fictional, such as a fistfight Popov claimed to have had with a German agent, exaggerated for dramatic effect, or could not be substantiated through subsequently declassified intelligence records. Popov's wife and children were apparently unaware of his past until the book's publication. By the early 1980s, years of chain smoking and heavy drinking had taken a toll on Popov's health. He died in Opio on August 10th, 1981, aged 69. His family said his death came after a long illness. He was predeceased by his brother Ivo, who died in 1980. Popov was the subject of a one-hour television documentary produced by Starz Inc. and Cinenova, titled True Bond, which aired in June 2007. Two other documentaries recounting Popov's exploits, The Real Life James Bond: Dusko Popov and Double Agent Dusko Popov: Inspiration for James Bond, have also been produced.
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gondorosi · 5 years ago
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The gradual separation of show!Jon from book!Jon - Part II
Magic
The showrunners deciding that magic is an unimportant part of the saga and to be relegated to the background is utter horseshit. There’s a bloody REASON direwolves and dragons reappeared in the world when they did, more or less at the same time. There’s a fucking reason why in Martin’s version Dany’s fireproof nature was a one-time thing, the dormant magic in her reawakening as needed BECAUSE dragons needed to be brought back into the world. Dany, Jon and Bran are the three most magic-sensitive characters in the whole story - and only one of them have anything to do with it in a significant manner (though significant might be stretching it). With Dany, her magical nature is only sporadically referred to (the dragons are the be all and end all) and Jon has nothing.
Show!Jon is a mortal man on every level, without a drop of magic in him. Book!Jon is no Bran, but there are three fundamental factors which show how deeply he is connected to the land.
Ghost: Removing Ghost's importance to Jon is akin to removing part of his soul. He isn't just 'big, white fluffy doggo'. Ghost is part of him, his familiar. Ghost is the physical personification of the magic running in Jon's blood, the proof of the Old Gods awareness running through Stark children's veins. Direwolves have a deeper, subtler and less apparent magic than dragons, but no less potent, and no less essential to Jon than her dragons are to Dany. Out of all the Stark siblings, Jon’s connection with Ghost and Bran’s connection with Summer seem to be the most symbiotic. All the siblings have strong bonds with their direwolves, molded to their own personality - Arya’s connection with Nymeria persists even across the sea in Essos, all legends of Robb in battle are accompanied by legends of Grey Wind and poor Rickon becomes so enmeshed in Shaggydog’s mind that there’s little to distinguish between boy and beast. However, perhaps due to the nature of their POVs and story arcs, none of the Starks save Bran and Jon have their journeys so closely aligned to their wolves. Which is why it’s nigh impossible to even consider Jon’s story moving forward without Ghost, especially post resurrection. The show omitted the obvious implication that Jon warged into Ghost before he died, had no role for him in the BoB, completely erased him in S7 and relegated him to a damn stray in S8. On the other hand, the show AMPED up the Dragon Queen part of Dany to the detriment of all other aspects of her character.
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Warging: In a universe where Martin has tried his best to weave in strong magic with actual medieval politics, concentrating all Northern magic into one single character (whose surface they barely scratched) is utterly lazy storytelling. Jon's warging abilities are mighty and second perhaps only to Bran, though I hold the belief Arya is as powerful a warg. But unlike both of them, Jon seems to actively resist exploring his warging possibilities. Some of the resistance may be explained by his environment - with both the NW and the Freefolk considering warging to be something of a ‘black’ art or dark magic. Sure, the Free Folk are more open about it, with Varamyr envying Jon’s gift with Ghost in his thoughts:
“He had known what Snow was the moment he saw that great white direwolf stalking silent at his side. One skinchanger can always sense another. Mance should have let me take the direwolf. There would be a second life worthy of a king. He could have done it, he did not doubt. The gift was strong in Snow, but the youth was untaught, still fighting his nature when he should have gloried in it.”
The show makes NO mention of it. Jon being considered a warg is a major reason behind half the NW hating and fearing him. I don’t remember the show ever bringing up the fact that Jon was feared - they seemed to make Thorne and Slynt’s animosity out of sheer spite and disgust at his bastardy. 
The Lord Commander's Raven: This is a favourite obsession of mine. Old Mormont’s raven pops out at Jon at seemingly random moments, but for the reader bursting with conspiracy theories, the raven is just another nod to the fact that Jon has a far greater role to play in the story than is visible to the eye. There's a popular theory that Bloodraven wargs him from time to time, since Jon is the secondary piece on his chessboard. The raven has come to Jon’s aid atleast twice that I can remember:
When Mormont is attacked by the wight:
Jon tried to shout, but his voice was gone. Staggering to his feet, he kicked the arm away and snatched the lamp from the Old Bear's fingers. The flame flickered and almost died. "Burn!" the raven cawed. "Burn, burn, burn!"
Spinning, Jon saw the drapes he'd ripped from the window. He flung the lamp into the puddled cloth with both hands.
During the election for Lord Commander when Mormont’s raven flying to his shoulder is used as a sign by Sam to argue for Mormont’s approval of Jon as the choice.
Bastardy
Jon's entire sense of self is centered around two things:
Ned Stark is his father
He's a bastard
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His entire character arc is trying live up to one of those and distance himself from the connotations of the other. His bastardy is the formative lodestone of his character and moral compass but in the EXACT opposite of how Catelyn and Westerosi society as a whole expect it to be.
However, there's a twist to that. Jon's inner desire is EXACTLY what Catelyn feared. He DOES want to be Lord of Winterfell. He DOES harbour resentment that Robb (seemingly) has everything handed to him while the best Jon can hope for is to die at his post, unknown and unsung. He DOES want glory and power and to exact some kind of revenge on a society which deemed him vile and detestable for no fault of his. All the elements for him to become the Starks' own Daemon Blackfyre is already present.
But there's one difference - Ned Stark is no Aegon the Unworthy. Even more than all of the above heart's desires, Jon wants to be like his father. He wants to do what is right. He wants his father to be proud of him. He wants to be nothing like the greedy, vengeful and lusty creature he's always been told he is. He wants to help people and stand up for the weak because that's who he is. At the very heart of it, he just wants to be loved by Ned as much as his trueborn sons. And thus he takes Tyrion's words to heart and wears his bastardy like impenetrable armour.
In show!Jon, ALL of this inner struggle is lost. Jon's bastardy is rarely affixed other than as a side. Show!Jon is a 'good' man. Yes, undoubtedly. But what makes book!Jon a great man is that he masters his baser desires to focus on what's more important. THAT'S what Jeor, Mance and Stannis all saw in him. That's why the Free Folk follow him. That's why half the NW will die for him (yes I know the other half will kill him).
When you have spent most of the show without anywhere referencing how vital the armour of bastardy, and being Ned Stark’s son is to Jon's psyche and sense of self, even the best directors will not be able to depict WHY the news of his parentage will have ripped out the ground from under him. Dany's quest for the throne is out there glaring at us thus atleast on paper making sense that having her undeniable right threatened will rattle her (I personally hate hate HATE the creative decision that Dany's immediate reaction to find out Jon's a Targaryen will be paranoia and concern for HER throne but I digress).
Intelligence, ability and cunning
Up until S4 and most of S5, show!Jon and book!Jon exhibited similar levels of intelligence and cunning. One of my favourite scenes is Sam trying to stop Jon from marching into Mance's camp to try and assassinate him. Jon gets in his face with his frustration and despair boiling and asks if he has any better ideas. At this point he's done a superb job commanding the defence of Castle Black but has also just lost Ygritte, Pyp and Grenn all in one night, a significant portion of the meagre Castle Black forces and is fully aware that they cannot survive another charge. He's beyond desperate and aware that his efforts are likely suicidal but he can't just retreat, lick his wounds and do nothing. 
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The show labours under the popular delusion that truly good guys can't be really smart, as being smart means preserving yourself and truly good guys will always jump into danger first to protect other people. Politics is bad so if you're a good strategist then you can't be a good person. 
Both book and show characterizations of Jon have been criticized for being examples of the ‘Chosen One’ the ‘reluctant hero’ who turns out to be the right man for the job, and for painting ambition and the quest for power as negative pursuits. In the book however, Jon’s ambitions never really had a chance to form. He’s prideful enough in his abilities to believe he would be an immediate select into the elite Ranger ranks and is devastated when that doesn’t work out. By the time he’s come to terms with the fact that being Mormont’s steward means being groomed for command, the truth of the White Walkers is in front of him and that becomes his sole consideration.
To many readers, Jon’s election to Lord Commander was ‘contrived’ though I do believe Sam played the long political game as he believed his friend being in a position of power would lead to an easier path for him. However, Jon doesn’t crumple under the weight of the responsibility - his actions as Lord Commander are revolutionary enough to completely destabilize his support. The show entirely omits all the strategic parts of his negotiations with both Stannis and the Freefolk. Unlike show!Jon, book!Jon does not allow the Freefolk through the Wall only on the account of goodwill and the fear of a common enemy. He takes their children hostage to ensure compliance. He negotiates with the Iron Bank for a loan to stave off starvation come winter. He repopulates the Gift with Free Folk. He shelters, counsels and aids Stannis. He addresses almost every logistical and material issue he can think except for the most fundamental - his people. 
On the other hand, there’s no strategic and political angle to Show!Jon in S6 and S7, instead being posited only as warrior extraordinaire.
'The greatest swordsman in the North' - but too naive to not keep the sister who tricked him almost to his death at arm's length. Brave, loyal and courageous beyond belief - but completely befuddled by politicking. Immediately trusting a sister he’s never been close to and who has been Littlefinger’s pupil for a considerable time. 
Book!Jon's abilities as a leader are sorely underappreciated, especially considering that his tenure as Lord Commander saw the status quo of almost every aspect of NW life upended. The previous LC is killed in a mutiny. The Wildling army launch an attack. The Others finally rise. A King/King Claimant FINALLY takes the NW's warnings seriously. The Wildlings are brought south of the Wall.
Despite being a new beginning for all recruits, the Night's Watch is the one order in Westeros whose traditions and rules have not changed in millennia. Understaffed, under-resourced and facing a threat the likes of which people would struggle to comprehend, Jon does the best he can. His major mistake is one most young leaders make, and that is assume all of those under automatically understand his reasons for doing what he does. 
Relationships
Brother:
If there's one role Jon takes more seriously than 'Ned Stark's son, it's that of brother. Book!Jon is pretty much the pinnacle of brotherly love - Robb's right hand, Arya's champion and dutiful protector to both Bran and Rickon. There's a subtle tragedy in this too - despite how much his siblings love him, all of them, including Arya, have othered him. He's brother, but only half. Snow, not a Stark. The last in the list. 'The last brother left to me' - as felt by both Robb and Sansa.
Book!Jon and Show!Jon are both shown to be loving, dutiful brothers but once again the show is incapable of portraying more than one character at a time in a certain way. Thus all of Jon's brotherly love is concentrated on Sansa, the sibling he was least close to. Show!Jon never mentions Robb after his death mentions Arya not at all when book!Jon never stops thinking about the two of them.
Maybe, maybe if the show had bothered to flesh out Jon Snow's emotional attachment to his home and siblings, his dilemma between his family and Dany wouldn't have been so shoddy.
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Friend:
Book!Jon, despite his aloof demeanour attracts fast friends. His staunchest supporters in the NW are those who he befriended when he first stepped within the gates. He's the only one to ever have stood up for many of them. And it's his NW friends who do become truly brothers, as they see and stand beside him during his rise to leadership.
Show!Jon is no different - he's got his loyal friends but there was no apparent discord after him being elected LC. Which is surprising considering that this is the moment that Jon effectively decides to ‘Kill the boy.’ The Gilly baby switch storyline is completely done away with, probably because it is the one decision that very clearly paints Jon as grey. The book Sam struggles to understand this decision - in his mind his best friend would never have done that. Maester Aemon is the one who sets him straight - Jon is no longer just a brother of the Watch, he’s the Lord Commander now. He can no longer be taking decisions just as Sam’s friend.
The show never really dwelt on the chasm Jon’s position as a leader would have created with his brothers who till them were his equals. Book!Jon knowingly starts distancing himself and this is a flaw that comes back to stab him in the chest - again a misstep in one raised to leadership at a young age.
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Lover:
This part will be a bit of a cop-out since at this point the only common love interest between the books and the show is Ygritte. The show axed Val, who’s one of my favourite secondary characters and my main preference for a Jon pairing pre-Dany. And of course, there’s far too much plot to cover before Jon and Dany even meet in the book (if they’re ever finished).
There are factions of the fandom who don’t think the Jon and Dany romance in S7 was set up convincingly. Admittedly that’s going to be hard for me to judge fairly as I’ve been in the Jonerys camp ever since ADWD made it clear how Jon was growing as a leader and as a magical touchstone in direct parallels to Dany. It definitely helped that Kit’s portrayal of Jon had FINALLY started to appeal to me once The Watchers of the Wall aired. I’d been one of the many fans who had been waiting for these two to meet on the show - and though I personally found the Jon-Dany relationship progression to be one of the few good things about S7, I can perhaps get why many neutral fans (i.e not commited to any rival ships for either Jon or Dany) think its out of character for them to be so involved so soon.
There are plenty of popular assumptions perpetuated by the show which have no backup in the original material - one of them is ‘dumb, lovable idiot’ Jon paired with the ‘awkward and oblivious as fuck with women’ Jon. Now, I’ll not deny that the latter portrayal works QUITE well with show!Jon (Kit’s face is the perfect cast for this characterization) but I just don’t see it working with book!Jon. The boy isn’t seeking out women but its not like he’s not around them. Alys Karstark was quite obviously taken with him, and I doubt Jon missed it, but there were far greater things of import to consider for both of them - I saw no awkwardness in the text. Jon dislikes Selyse and manages to be both cordial and deferential as required. Melisandre makes no secret of her fascination with him - there’s no bumbling awkwardness there either. And Val - he’s quite smitten and there’s some awkwardness there, sure but its hardly the bumbling variety.
As for Dany - considering that at this point the 7 seasons of the show is all we will ever have, I somehow think the softer show!Jon makes a much better pairing with the more hardened show!Dany. Its as if certain aspects of their personalities were flipped in the show - book!Dany is definitely much softer and gentle without her power and strength being diminished, whereas book!Jon is far more calculated and ruthless without compromising on his honour and integrity. 
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radramblog · 3 years ago
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Album Discussion: The Suburbs
Last week I felt like I didn’t have much time to pump an album review out. Was going to be in the lab all day, had work in the night, wanted to cover something quick. Then I finished really early, and had plenty of time in the afternoon to finish things off. This week I am in the same situation as far as scheduling, but someone’s bloody using equipment I need, so I’ve got a bit of extra time now. Time to talk about a >1hr 16 track record!
Also last week, I covered an album that I felt was more interesting from a meta level than it is musically. This week I’m talking about an album that I know nothing of the meta for.
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The Suburbs I was reminded of recently. Mostly because I ran into the person who bought me the CD for the first time in like a year. I understand Arcade Fire have A Reputation as far as bands go, but the thing is: I have no idea what it is. I haven’t followed them at all, I don’t know whether they’re considered good or not, I haven’t even seen any of the music videos. I have never deliberately listened to an Arcade Fire song outside of this album.
But I do like this album. So.
Okay the one thing I do know is what the album is about. It’s about growing up in the suburbs of…I think Texas somewhere. I could look this up, but I refuse. The result of this is that the whole thing is intensely nostalgic, full of reminiscence and wistfulness, childhood innocence and what growing up is like. It’s one of those, you know? That does, however, make it fairly easy to like, because I think a lot of people are nostalgic for their childhoods.
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(yeah so the only music videos for this one are at the very start and very end. this is going to be a bit of a wall of words.)
This is characterised by the opening track, which is also the album’s title track: The Suburbs. It’s opening with a very folksy acoustic guitar and piano, and longing for that childhood is its modus operandi. It is, however, tinged by the anxieties of that era- growing up in the shadow of the cold war is going to leave an impact on anyone, and that cultural climate is also going to be running through the album. I think the most poignant section of the song lyrically is the start of the third verse- wishing to become a parent, so they can live vicariously through their child, show them their childhood world before the reality and the memory are completely lost. Okay that’s kinda heavy moving on- the track is pretty much built around that piano/acoustic bit, sounding relatively upbeat but coloured by these lonesome strings running through the background. It’s very effective of conveying the feeling- which is something that comes up quite a bit over the course of the album. The Suburbs is one of my favourite tracks on this album, and having it come right at the front makes it a very solid stage-setter.
Track two is Ready to Start, a faster, rockier track with this grimy bassline running through the verses contrasting the relatively bright instrumentation of the chorus. Considering the themes of the song, about working for the man, dude, and trying to escape that sort of life, it’s fairly fitting, though it’s a very different sort of nostalgia than the previous track. The instrumentation gives the whole thing this sense urgency, which is enhanced by some of the lyrics- I mean the track is called Ready to Start, isn’t it. I feel like this song would be great to try and hype yourself up for something you don’t really want to do, and I’m not sure how many songs we have specifically for that feeling.
Our next song is called Modern Man, and it feels like tumbling through a confusing life. God, I’m really getting pensive today. I feel like this is a lot because this album resonates a lot more emotionally for me than musically. I’m someone with a very weird sense of nostalgia, seeing as my childhood is pretty effectively defined into three segments, and I tend to fixate on one of them because it’s The Weird One. I’m nostalgic for high school which is when I was nostalgic for living abroad which is when I was nostalgic for when I still lived in Perth, which I do now, but I don’t know anyone from back then, so there’s a whole sense of longing, and it’s something I’ve always had, and that’s funky. And I’m still young, this isn’t going to change, it’s going to get worse, and eghhhh I’m supposed to be talking about music. I don’t really have much to say about Modern Man, I guess. It’s aight, the previous two were better, but here I am 800 words into an album discussion, and I’ve gone through all of 3 songs on a 16 track album, so maybe expect this to be a slog.
Rococo at least makes an impact real quick, with fuckin psychotic strings right at the start that’s kind of a shock to the system, especially compared to the relatively mild instrumentation the rest of the song provides. I think that’s a fairly appropriate tone for a song about looking at #thecoolkids, bemusement tinged with utter stark bewilderment. I think I’m too young to really get this, I guess. The song’s title regards an art movement that sounds extremely pretentious and fake deep, frankly, but considering the point of the song is that you don’t bloody know what Rococo means, that’s probably also fitting. I kinda wish the strings were more present throughout the song than they were, they add this existential dread to the track that I do think the later sections are missing somewhat.
Speaking of strings, Empty Room is up next, and it’s one of my favourite tracks as well. It opens with the strings but they’re fast and energetic and they’re going to blow right past you. I thought this track was in like the second half of the album, but nope, here it is. This is also where the album’s second vocalist takes the lead for a bit (she only does for like 3 scattered tracks) and she’s genuinely great here. The songs chugs like an old train, in a way that reminds me a lot of other songs; in particular, the bit between the chorus and second verse (and chorus/outro) reminds me a lot of Teach me About Dying by Holy Holy- I can’t unhear “teach me about dying, teach me about dying-dying” over that instrumental. Despite its desolate lyricism, this song’s energy is genuinely excellent, and it carries really well through the whole thing. I can’t think of a lot of songs that start on this sort of tempo and have it run the whole way through- not to keep referencing other songs, but it’s very Go with the Flow by Queens of the Stone Age. And that’s like in the top 3 QotSA songs for me, so.
It’s only just struck me how much track 6, City With no Children, reminds me of There There by Radiohead. Its mostly the percussion, I think. That’s fucking high praise, but it’s also about as far as the comparison goes. The song is pretty okay outside of that, this theme of a town left lifeless by the commercialism and capitalism of the ultra-rich and what that does to people. Maybe that’s just my reading of it, I do have a bias for this sort of thing, but I challenge you to find another one. Looking on Genius is cheating. I do like the riff the track is built around, but it gets old eventually, since it doesn’t develop at all as the track progresses- lost potential, I suppose.
The next song is the first part of the album’s first of two two-parters, Half Light I, because apparently this one is trying to be a long-running drama show now. With that said, this ballad is kinda gorgeous, and yet also kinda extremely boring? Which is a frustrating place to be, frankly. I get the feeling this is an opinion that would get me crucified, but aside from those strings what fuck, the song just isn’t doing anything for me. Maybe it’s because it’s kinda almost the halfway point and I’m just getting tired, maybe it’s just a generational and cultural divide between America/Australia and 90s-00s/00s-10s and I don’t Get It. But I’m afraid to say this one doesn’t land.
Half Light II (No Celebration), for the record, is one I enjoy much more. The instrumentation is a lot more fun, the tone is a lot more pained (and y’all know I love me some angst), as the rose-tinted lenses of the previous half are replaced by the jade of someone growing up through the GFC (and just, in general). Despite being a two-part song, the halves are very different, a deliberate dichotomy representing two facets of that same look backwards. I feel like this isn’t like other two-part songs I’ve heard before, in that you can kinda appreciate the halves separately- or, in my case, one and not the other.
Track 9, and welcome more officially to the Second Half, with Suburban War. It’s very much about reminiscing about old friends, and I think I’m going to wax personal for a bit, because I have very little to say about the song musically. I mentioned earlier that I basically don’t know anyone from back when I was a kid, and that’s kind of a product of what my childhood looked like. It’s hard to have a “childhood friend” that you still keep up with when you spend 5 extremely crucial, defining years somewhere away from where all of them are. When you leave at 7 years old and don’t come back until you’re almost a teenager. People change so quickly at that age, and I’m no exception, and so I just didn’t have the ability to relate to those same people that long afterwards, even if I could find them. I don’t resent the experience of growing up in such a fractured manner, but it means I have a fundamentally different experience to that discussed in this album. At the same time, as I listen to the closing moments of this song, with the line repeated, “All my old friends, they don’t know me now”, I can’t help but notice the similarity. The writer’s friends don’t know them because they’ve grown up, changed fundamentally as people, whereas I don’t know my old friends in a much more literal sense.
Our next song is a bit more fun. Month of May is unequivocally a rock song, as opposed to the..indie? folk? of most of its surrounds. Much like Empty Room, it’s driven by its tempo and instrumentation, but it’s a bit less dour than that one, almost a bit oldie in its rock and roll swagger. The song isn’t so utterly different that it wouldn’t fit on the album, the traces of The Suburbs still roll through the whole thing, the same guitar and percussion tones driven up a couple notches on the ol’ Mohs scale. Quite solid, ultimately, in my opinion.
Track 11 is Wasted Hours. I think it’s a kind of appropriate title, not because it’s a waste of time, but because it just kinda feels like a nothing song as part of the album. Like, it is unquestionably Part Of The Album, sonically and thematically, but I deadass would not notice if it was missing from the record. Sorry if this one is your favourite, but this one isn’t for me.
Deep Blue, on the other hand, is the song that got me into the album. There’s really something about this track, this sense of discomfort with the passage of time, that really wormed its way into me. It’s a shockingly cold song for this acoustic instrumentation that’s usually associated with quite the opposite. The piano feels desperate, the guitars grim, and there’s actual synths hiding in here- the song relates to technology, after all. It’s concern for the future of humanity, of the youth, and for, well, the Suburbs, through the lens of watching that match between chess Grandmaster Kasparov and the A.I. Deep Blue in 1996. Go watch the Down the Rabbit Hole on that if you haven’t already (and have a few hours), by the way, it’s utterly excellent.
I can’t really describe how Deep Blue makes me feel. There’s just something about it. I feel like if I hear this song again in 10 years, it would genuinely bring me to tears- it feels like loss in a way, and not the meme.
We Used to Wait has a fun instrumentation, glittery piano and that funky guitar noodling in the background, but unfortunately the chorus kinda lets it down for me. I just do not care for it, it’s really built on a vocal line that really doesn’t track for me personally. Like, I’m just young enough that a lot of the theme of the track is utterly unrelatable to me- I hail from an era that is post- the change the track is referring to. I’m focussing a lot this time around about how the songs make me feel personally, but I think that’s kind of the appropriate tack for this album in particular- like the idea of nostalgic reminiscence is so inexorably tied to your own personal experiences that there’s no way around those experiences clouding your perception of this album, and with that, how well you end up liking it. I bet this whole thing hits way harder for someone born in the same couple years as this band.
We’re up to the second two-parter, Sprawl I (Flatland), kind of the finale for the whole thing. I mean, in I’s case, it’s certainly that emotionally. The song is so utterly down, it’s lost in the urban sprawl the title and lyrics describe, and with that comes a very quiet track. Moody strings and guitar, that eventually build during the fourth verse (there is no chorus and they’re short). It does eventually resolve on a more positive note, at least, one that’s hopefully relatable to many of us- eventually, we find our emotional home is, and it’s often not where we grew up.
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Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains) is quite the different perspective. It’s got that other lead vocalist (I could look up her name but I won’t), it’s got a pulsing beat, and it has much more energy to work with. There are synths on this track that are absent from almost the entire rest of the album, but their introduction here, right at the end, is extremely cool. They’re cool, they’re clear, and they’re thematically relevant! I just really like the vibe of this track, and the way it trails off is similarly very good. Would recommend.
But of course there is one final track. Kind of. The Suburbs (continued) is basically a dark reprise of the album’s opener, shaded with more regret than that track is, more strings-y and whispered. It’s very short, but it acts as an appropriate closer for the whole thing.
And of course, that’s The Suburbs. In retrospect, I have a bit more mixed thoughts about this than I thought. There’s some really high highs, and some things that are just kind of bleh, but any album of this length is bound to have some misses. While I was browsing Genius to make sure I had the lyrics right for some tracks, I saw this record described as a Masterpiece, but I’m not sure that shoe fits- at least, not for me. The personal nature of this album, and anyone’s theoretical relationship with it, are such that I don’t think it can be given such a broad, universal title. I like the album as a whole quite a bit, but I personally wouldn’t call it a masterpiece.
It also doesn’t inspire me to go after more Arcade Fire. I’m actually perfectly content having them in my mind as this solitary piece, complete in its own way. Oh, they have like four other albums, but to me, Arcade Fire is The Suburbs. I don’t know why I’ve decided this, but it just works for me. So I’m sorry to any massive AF fans, but I did just dedicated 2.7k words to this album, so I’m sure you’re all satisfied.
God, next time I am going to have to cover something shorter, for my own sanity if nothing else.
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besanii · 5 years ago
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I've just started getting into period c-dramas and I see you reblogging about a few of them. And I was wondering if you had some recs? Thanks, I love SM and DH. it's okay if you don't answers this I know this may not be the purpose of your blog.
Hi nonny!
Period cdramas are my jam!!! I love period cdramas (and fantasy/wuxia/xianxia), although I used to watch primarily HK ones and only in recent years started to watch mainland ones. I’m going to assume you’ve watched The Untamed (陈情令) since you came to me and my blog is like...90% CQL lol, so I’ll leave that off this list XD
I’ll be providing YouTube links where I can, but please note that the subs on YouTube are not...the greatest. I don’t usually watch cdramas with subs, so I’m not sure which places to recommend. Sorry in advance!
Nirvana In Fire (琅琊榜)
I think everyone recs this at some point, but it’s just THAT GOOD. It’s set around the Northern and Southern Dynasties era and is primarily a political drama, but also has elements of wuxia (martial arts) mixed in. My favourite part of this drama was the intricate plot and also the wealth of interesting side characters that give the whole drama extra depth. There’s not much romance, but the individual characters and the plot is gripping enough without it.
(I tried to watch the sequel Nirvana in Fire II: The Wind Blows in Changlin (琅琊榜之风起长林), but I never really got into it? I should really try again, but at that point I was still really attached to the first one and wasn’t ready to let go lol. I’ve heard it’s good too!)
Legend of Ruyi (如懿传)
Okay I just finished watching this the other day and I really enjoyed it. It’s set in the Qing dynasty, during the rule of the Qianlong Emperor, and is about the life of Ulanara the Step Empress. I loved the strong female friendships in this (it’s rare in a Palace drama), and the complex dynamics between concubines of different ranks. The progression of Ruyi and Qianlong’s relationship feels very organic and (if you’re familiar with the history) is like a reverse-slowburn where you’re just really rooting for her to get out and when she finally stands up for herself it’s like \o/
(also cameo by everyone’s favourite shijie, Xuan Lu!)
The Story of Yanxi Palace ( 延禧攻略)
This is also set in the reign of the Qianlong Emperor, but the story is completely different. It’s about the Imperial Noble Consort Weigiya and her rise from a palace maid to the Emperor’s favourite consort. It’s funnier and more light-hearted than Ruyi, but it still has its fair share of dramas. The main character is a ‘non-traditional’ woman in that she’s outspoken, brazen and can be quite cruel when dealing with her opponents, but she’s still fundamentally a good person so you really root for her throughout the show.
I personally wouldn’t recommend watching this and Ruyi together or back-to-back because you’ll probably get whiplash from how different the characters are portrayed and how differently the history is interpreted, but it really highlights how much we don’t know about the palace women throughout Chinese history.
The Story of Ming Lan (知否知否应是绿肥红瘦)
NOT a palace drama this time! But it still explores the very complex family dynamics in China between wives and concubines and their respective children, about marriage and social hierarchy and how an unfavoured, illegitimate daughter of a low-ranking imperial official rises to become the wife of a powerful Marquis in the Song Dynasty. I’m a massive fan of Zhao Liying, the main actress, and her husband on the show is her husband IRL and they are the CUTEST HECKING COUPLE I swear to god. Their chemistry is OFF THE CHARTS.
Three Lives, Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms (三生三世十里桃花)
Xianxia (fantasy/martial arts) drama about an immortal Fox Spirit and her love story with the Crown Prince of the Nine Heavens that spans over three “lives”. There’s magic, sword fighting, questionable CGI and a lot of typical romance drama stuff like pining, misunderstandings, miscommunication and jealousy etc. I found this drama more compelling than its sequel Three Lives, Three Worlds, The Pillow Book (三生三世枕上书) because the characters were better fleshed out (although a lot of the same characters appear in both), and it was easier to get emotionally invested in them. Also I find Bai Qian a lot less...annoying than Fengjiu (who is so cute, but oh my god can be quite irritating sometimes).
Love and Destiny (三生三世宸汐缘)
Apparently this is meant to be set in a similar universe to Peach Blossoms, but it’s quite different. This is the love story between a young bird spirit and the God of War, which also spans over three lives. I found it a lot darker than Peach Blossoms, and a lot more tragic, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I had expected to when I first heard about it. I really liked the main character (Lingxi) here (she’s a good mix of Bai Qian and Fengjiu), and although I wasn’t quite sold on the development of her relationship with Jiu Chen at first, they won me over with some really heart-wrenching story lines.
(I don’t know if the playlist above is Eng subbed though, sorry!)
Other dramas that I liked are:
Empresses in the Palace (甄嬛传) - it got really messy in the end, but I really like Li Sun so I kept watching. It’s meant to be a prequel to Legend of Ruyi (above), set in the reign of the Yongzheng Emperor (Qianlong Emperor’s father). Don’t watch it on Netflix though, they really messed it up by trying to condense the story and it doesn’t work.
Legend of Fuyao (扶摇) - xianxia drama about a slave girl who was cursed as a child and sets off to collect magical artifacts to lift it. I got up to about Episode 20 and then life got in the way, so I didn’t finish it, but I’ve been meaning to get back to it one of these days. It stars Yang Mi, who plays Bai Qian in Peach Blossoms.
Princess Agents (特工皇妃楚乔传) - I really liked this drama, but it gets really dark and touches on some darker themes like rape, murder and torture, and the story gets quite messy and it ends on a cliffhanger (there was talk of a sequel a couple of years ago, but nothing’s come of it). Stars Zhao Liying (from Story of Ming Lan), who is so badass in action roles.
Noble Aspirations: The Legend of Chusen (青云志) - another xianxia drama about an orphan boy Zhang Xiaofan who joins the Qingyun Sect after the massacre of his village and falls in love with the daughter of the leader of the Ghost King (an enemy of the “righteous” sects). It starts off quite slow, took me about 5 eps to really get into it, but I enjoyed it for the most part. There’s a season 2 that kind of ends on a cliffhanger, and there’s been rumours of season 3 for years but nothing has ever come of it so it was quite disappointing. Stars Zhao Liying (again, I’m a massive fan haha), and is based on the same novel as Xiao Zhan’s movie Jade Dynasty (which I haven’t watched yet).
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stillness-in-green · 4 years ago
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MLAWeek Coda: The Lore Post
Sorry this is a few days late!  To the surprise of absolutely no one who has read some of my longer meta posts, I just don’t know how to shut the F up.  (Spoilers: this post is only a few hundred words away from being as long as everything else I wrote for the week put together.)  
Anyway, hit the jump for, in order:
A quick breakdown of the Liberation Army’s general structure.
A list of members, broken down by broad generation, including the ones we have gotten explicitly IDed in canon, the ones I based on figures we see in canon, and the ones I completely made up.
The basic tenets of the MLA and some discussion about their views on quirk supremacy. (feat. fandom salt)
An overview of the way the Advent shook up the political landscape in Japan and the Hearts & Minds Party’s place in that landscape.  Pretty much the same material Trumpet’s victory speech from Day 4 covers, but modestly more in-depth, removed from the need to play well to a crowd, and with some added explanation about the structure of the Diet for readers who are less familiar with it than Trumpet’s audience would be.
A timeline (with only moderately arbitrary dates!) covering the birth of the glowing baby up to the first year of the manga.  Mostly concerned with detailing the events the MLA would care about, but with a few other points of reference to contextualize things for the rest of us.
Bonus Fun Facts: discussion of the considerations that went into the timeline, a look at All For One’s actions re: the MLA, and some miscellaneous blurbs on terminology, worldbuilding and characterization.
A smattering of asides in the form of footnotes.
Note that while this material is based in and accurate to canon as much as I could remember at the time that I was doing my notes on my fills for the week, there’s a lot in here that is based entirely on supposition, interpretation and, at times, just plain-old guessing.  
Thanks to @codenamesazanka and @robotlesbianjavert for their assistance in naming, brainstorming, and just generally putting up with me while the Liberation Army was completely devouring my attention.
@red-the-omnic Somewhat belatedly, here’s that list of MLA members you asked for back during the middle of the week.  Sorry to make you wait so long! 
Enjoy!  
———–      ———–      ———–      ———–
ORGANIZATION
Grand Commander: Destro and Destro’s line of descendants.
The First Families: Those who fought at Destro’s side and escaped to continue the fight, and their descendants.  Veritably all high-ranked within the MLA, their tie to the original incarnation of the Army marks them as elites, whether or not their quirks would do so otherwise. The elders of the First Families do a certain amount of collective decision-making when and if the Grand Commander is unable to do so and has left orders otherwise.
Sanctum: “Sanctum” is a special position in the Army.  The name denotes the person who’s tasked with remembering the MLA’s history, practices and lore—the position is considered contiguous, so even when someone is new to the name, they’re still considered “the longest-serving member of the Liberation Army.”.  When they’re getting on in years, they select an appropriate protégé, to whom the name will pass upon their death/capture.  The name must always go to a member of the First Families (though in truth, they’re only on their third one, so it’s more of a pattern so far than a hard rule).
Commanders & Lieutenants: People in charge of major operations, liberated districts, etc. Frequently, though not always, members of the First Families.  Have discretion over their own assignments, but may not have much influence in the Army’s operations on the whole, depending on who they’re connected to otherwise.
Advisors: This title denotes those who are specifically tapped to give advice and aid to the MLA leadership.  Levels of authority vary depending on who they’re advising.  Advisors of lieutenants, if any, are a step above the rank and file, advisors of commanders are about on par with lieutenants, and advisors to the Grand Commander are considered commanders in their own right, regardless of any other rank they may hold.
Rank and File: Pretty much everyone else.
———–      
KNOWN MEMBERS [1]
The original MLA—
Destro: Yotsubashi Chikara.  Established the Meta Liberation Army in his mid-30s in response to the development of what he felt were overly restrictive laws on the usage of meta-abilities. Having observed evidence that meta-abilities grew stronger generationally, he was particularly concerned that no oppressive laws could be enforced by the generation that established them because the next generation would always be more powerful.  Thus, he believed that establishing the use of meta-abilities as a fundamental right was the only way for society to avoid indefinite intergenerational strife.  He was particularly incensed by the government co-opting the message that got his mother murdered to put a pretty, self-congratulatory sheen on laws that did the exact opposite of what she wished for.  Allegedly committed suicide after some months in prison.  The MLA is highly suspicious of this claim—they’re correct to be, but not for the reasons they think.              His quirk, which his entire line would inherit, turns a key emotion into enhanced strength and resilience in the form of a characteristic ink-blot marking.  While it would develop over time, the basic nature of the quirk remained the same. Chikara’s driving emotion was resolve.
Fathom: Destro’s lover, she dedicated a decade of her life after his capture to building up the survivors he’d left behind.  It’s said her son got his drive from Destro, but his anger from Fathom.  Had a large hand in raising her son to be the sort of man he was, particularly in her decision to commit what many considered to be suicide-by-hero when he was in his teens.  A large part of that choice was wrapped up in her never-fully-assuaged grief over Destro’s loss (and, she believed to the end, his murder), but there was also a cold calculation to it—her making a big show of it would lead the police to believe that her attack was the last gasp of the Liberation Army, ending their investigations into MLA activities.  It would also stoke the fires of her son’s rage, honing him into a stronger weapon against their enemies.  Her judgement in both cases proved broadly on-point, though her death did serve to make her son more cautious than she might have hoped.              Meta-Ability: Antennae.  A pair of insectile feelers emerging from her forehead that give her a passel of sensory boosts, particularly in the taste and smell categories, and which also make her able to detect shifts in the air from quite some distance.)
Cascade: A man whose meta-ability lets him turn body parts into loosely controllable masses of water.  Can’t transform fully.  A quick-thinking type able to make hard calls.
Sweeper: A woman with a radio-scanning quirk.  Caught by police in the same fight as Destro.
Sanctum I: The first bearer of the codename.  Had a protective ability of some sort.
Sanctum II’s father: The same quirk as his daughter; see below.  Known for getting some eight people safely out of a police raid by carrying them all out at once despite not actually having superhuman strength of any kind.  (Probably tore several muscles in the process, but adrenaline is a hell of a thing.)
The Second Generation—
Destro’s son: Raised to deeply resent heroes and the government that put them in place, but he was also very cautious of them.  He was profoundly aware that his death would mean the end of the dream that his father had begun and his mother had cultivated, so he was very meticulous in spreading the MLA’s influence underground, rebuilding their numbers before he even began to consider starting to make attacks again.  Destro’s army had been a guerilla force; his son’s would be something much more dangerous.  His driving emotion was anger, and he had two children before being killed by a cerebral aneurysm at 43.  Was able to use his power to make his body larger.
Sanctum II: A woman with an unusual fondness for the traditional Japanese arts, particularly tea ceremony.  Meta-ability: Stride.  Teleport to any location she can directly see by taking a single step forward.   Can take whoever she can carry under her own power. (First Families lineage)
Anchor: An advisor to Destro’s son.  Prominent bull horns.  Meta-ability: Immobilize.  Similar to Lock Rock’s Lockdown quirk, except it only works on his own body.  Very good at wrestling holds (and holding his breath), he tends to fight with backup that can deliver finishing blows to opponents once he has them pinned down.  (First Families lineage)
The Third Generation—
Yotsubashi Kyouyuki: The elder child of Destro’s son.  Deemed an unsuitable Grand Commander for his driving emotion of joy.  Always presented a façade of being cheerful and upbeat, but the ever-present rhetoric that the MLA pushes about the ongoing suppression of quirks and the misery and injustice it leads to left Kyou always struggling with guilt.  In college, it finally got so bad that he resolved to run away, enlisting the help of a friend with a swap-based teleport quirk to get him out of a party undetected. His fate thereafter is a secret that’s been taken to the grave by the MLA members involved in it, but given the typical reactions of illegal underground cults to members wanting to leave, it’s unlikely that he’s living somewhere in happy anonymity.  (Name means Unyielding Happiness, following in his grandfather and nephew's patterns of having characters in their names meaning power/strength.)
Yotsubashi Yukie: The younger child of Destro’s son, and Rikiya’s mother.  With a driving emotion of sorrow, and having been steadily losing family her entire life, Yukie wrestled with depression for most of her life. The presumptive heir to the title of Re-Destro, she spent considerably more time in training than her older brother, but she never much had the temperament for it.  When her father died only a few scant years after Kyouyuki’s disappearance, she expressed her fears that she was incapable of being the leader the Army needed.  This led to her becoming a mother at a relatively young age, continuing the bloodline rather than picking up the banner.  For all her struggles with her grief, Yukie was very determined to at least be there for the son on whom the weight of leadership would fall.  The world of My Hero Academia is a dangerous one, however, particularly before All Might established himself as Japan’s pillar, and Yukie was a casualty of the chaos of a villain attack when Rikiya was ten.  (Name means Glittering Conqueror, ditto the note above about the family pattern for name kanji.)
Rampart: Guardian and general caretaker for Rikiya in his younger years.  Hand-picked for the role by Yukie, who had considered him a close friend since their school days.  Meta-Ability: An earth manipulation power akin to Pixie-Bob’s, though less powerful.  (First Families lineage)
Shinseigi: Trumpet’s uncle, unspecified code name.  Also in politics, though of a more local variety.  Meta-ability: His speaking voice makes listeners suggestible.  (The phonetic pronunciation of his name sounds like “New Justice,” but the kanji are “Sleeping Voice Technique.”)
The Fourth Generation—
Yotsubashi Rikiya: The current Re-Destro (42); CEO and President of Detnerat.  He took up the former title when he was only 6 years old. With the succession of losses that were his uncle, grandfather and mother, the MLA has been fairly careful with him, grooming him with care and rarely leaving him without some form of supervision, be it Rampart when he was young or Trumpet in college.  An extremely dutiful child grown into an urbane man whose good humor disguises a morose—and occasionally volatile—inner character.  Always under a lot of stress (his MRIs are clear so far, though, haha!), but there’s only so much effort dedicated to mitigating that, since stress is his key emotion.  The first in the family line to be able to separate his power from his own body, in the form of his Stress Bomb attack.
Trumpet: Hanabata Koku (44).  One of Rikiya’s advisors and party leader of the Hearts & Minds Party (see below); has known Rikiya since their preteen years.  The Hanabatas were a political family of old, but largely saw those fortunes crash and burn when they started manifesting quirks a few generations into the Advent.  They’ve been clawing their way back into politics ever since and were an early target for the MLA’s project to infiltrate and/or start their own political party.  It was decided very early on that Koku’s quirk and his family connections made him a good choice to groom for leadership of the HMP, so he and Rikiya bonded over their similar positions.  They would go on to attend the same university, during which time they became romantically involved.  In truth, Koku’s university was functionally chosen for him on the basis of which one Rikiya would be attending; the First Families were not about to lose another Yotsubashi to college life.  Koku is more aware of this particular fact than Rikiya.  Still a little wistful about their college days, his opinions regarding Re-Destro’s big starstruck crush on Shigaraki are borderline unprintable.
Sanctum III: Twice’s No. 1 advisor, the dude with the big imperial handlebar moustache and what looks an awful lot like a dress uniform for the Japanese navy.  A few years older than Trumpet.  (First Families lineage)
Curious: Kizuki Chitose (36).  RD advisor and Shoowaysha Publishing Executive Vice President.[2]  From a relatively small liberated district up near Sendai; the MLA connections plus her own profound ambition got her moving very quickly up the MLA chain of command. Daughter of a wlw couple; got her blue skin from her bio mom.  One younger sibling, a sister.  Masterminded the dinners we see the group having in Chapter 218, originally to make sure Rikiya was getting at least one well-apportioned meal a week and a chance to socialize with the closest thing he has to peers, but also because it proved to be an invaluable opportunity to swap information and rumors.
Skeptic: Chikazoku Tomoyasu (31).  RD advisor and Feel Good Inc. board member.  On the bottom end of the generation age-wise, a prodigy in every sense save his broadly terrible people skills.  Recognizes Rikiya’s stress tells because he shares several of them himself, and is also the only person of Rikiya’s generation with the confidence to verbally push him around a bit.  It’s regarded as borderline scandalous by their elders, but Rikiya himself finds it bracing, and anyway, Skeptic’s ability to organize a schedule for maximum efficiency is nothing less than miraculous.  Got Rikiya onto fidget toys.
Toryu:  Toryu is the family name of Galvanize (aka Taser Face aka Kaminari’s Dad).  Mr. Compress’s No. 1, the dude who strolls out onto the lawn after Cementoss rips the hotel a new one and immediately gets his smarm repackaged and returned to sender by Kaminari and Edgeshot.  Great for morale before that, though!  In Rikiya’s age group, his mother’s side of the family (from which he gets the electricity powers) has been in the Army for at least as far back as her school days. (The name comes from the characters for leaping/rising and current/flow.)
Slidin’ Go: Tokoname Tatsuyuki (37).  He’s Slidin’ Go!  Skeptic’s No. 2, possibly because Slidin’ Go strongly resembles the puppets Skeptic is so used to barking orders at and there’s comfort in familiarity.
Aozono: Family name for another of Rikiya’s childhood peers, nothing is known but that green skin runs in the family as far back as her father.  May or may not be related to Curious’s family.
The Fifth Generation—
Geten: Real name unknown.  Family status unknown.  Age unknown, but I’d peg him in the 18-23 area.  Seems to be allowed to attend the weekly dinners without contributing anything but his incredibly terrible table manners.  Can talk an impassioned game about the Liberation Army’s goals (though he pushes the quirk supremacy line a good deal harder than anyone else in the Army is shown to; it’s not even close), but it’s fairly clear that he’s more personally dedicated to Re-Destro than he is the MLA’s cause in and of itself.  I’ll be honest; I have no idea what Geten’s deal is. My tentative headcanon is that he’s an orphan—the English meaning of his name, Apocrypha, refers to sacred writings of uncertain authorship/authenticity—who’s in some kind of Batman-and-Robin guardian-and-ward situation with Re-Destro, but I didn’t wind up writing enough about him to come up with much beyond that.
Nimble: Spinner’s No. 1, the woman with the weird paper-strip-esque hair who doesn’t seem to be in possession of a nose or mouth.  (She absorbs air through her skin like a frog, which is why no one has ever seen her with that sweater covering both of her shoulders.)  Nimble is a friendly sort, though she regards her outgoing good cheer as being a simple matter of social networking.  Ambitious, but sensible about it.                Meta-ability: Sky Write.  Allows her to project letters and pictures into the air around her, giving her a way to communicate she would have otherwise lacked.  She can create words in air she can’t see, but it takes some concentration, and the closer the better.
Scarecrow: Spinner’s No. 2, 21 years old.  Born with amelia (see link in Day Two’s author’s notes) that disfigured his face and severed his arms in the womb.  His quirk-based forelegs—a pair of spider legs emerging from his shoulders—can do a certain amount of basic object manipulation, but it tends to wig people out, so they push him to use his prosthetics like he’s “supposed” to (see Stray Notes section for more on this).  He was viciously angry about it even as a kid, and his parents were frustrated, making them easy pickings for cult indoctrination.  A family friend recommended that they look into Detnerat, where it wasn’t long before Re-Destro himself took an interest in their situation (or at least in making a good impression on them).  Scarecrow joined the Army as quickly as he was allowed to—16.              Meta-ability: Webbing.  The bug legs can project silk like a webspinner (the insect on which he’s based), allowing him to do anything you might broadly understand Spider-Man to be able to do with his webbing, though he certainly lacks Spider-Man’s strength.
Red: Named in passing in the manga, he’s the laid-back dude with the fluffy hair who serves as Skeptic’s No. 1 post-merger.  Probably invaluable in helping Skeptic maintain what bare vestiges of chill he can muster.  (First Families lineage)
The Sixth Generation—
Every child currently under the age of 10 being raised in MLA households with a picture of Destro over the mantle.  It’s not a small number, representing a group that neither the fandom nor the Hero Commission seem to have even realized exist.
———–      
CORE TENETS & THE MATTER OF QUIRK SUPREMACY
Re-Destro is not (contrary to popular fandom belief) in favor of full-throated, might-makes-right, survival of the fittest Quirk Darwinism.[3]  Destro’s will was for people to be able to use their meta-abilities as they saw fit to the extent that that freedom did not interfere with the freedoms of others. He was against the regulation of meta-abilities, but he was not—to the best of our knowledge—against the regulation of crime.  His belief was that one murderer with a fire ability killing people did not justify barring everyone else with fire abilities from using those powers to fire clay, start campfires, engage in fire-themed performance art, use fire to char wood in artistic patterns for money, help park rangers set and direct controlled burns, coordinate explosions for the movie industry, light cigarettes in public, or any other of dozens of possible uses for a fire ability that don’t involve burning people alive.
The MLA do believe that meta-abilities have an impact on one’s personality, but they also believe that that’s okay; that it should be understood and accepted, not feared and repressed—Curious would not have wanted to turn Toga into a tragedy about the consequences of repression if she didn’t think that a spree of bloodletting murders was a tragedy.  Their belief as an organization is that people should be free to use their powers as they see fit in the same way that they would any other natural talent or cultivated skill.  They believe that people will, if free to do so, naturally gravitate to ways of improving their own lot in life via use of their meta-abilities.
Freedom from regulation and freedom from discrimination—these are the core tenets that the vast majority of the rank and file hold to.  A great many of them are laborers, blue collar types who just want to be able to better support themselves and their families.  Many others are those who suffered discrimination because of their quirks and want better for both themselves and their children.  Of course, the further back their connections go, the more likely they are to both be higher-ranked in the cult (with attendant greater resources) and to have grown up soaking in generations’ worth of resentment, groupthink, and radicalism.
Geten, a particularly virulent and single-minded MLA attack dog, has parsed the tenets to mean that people with strong, well-trained meta-abilities will naturally be able to use their powers to do more and raise their status in the MLA’s ideal society, and thus that those who can’t or don’t choose to will not be able to live lives that Geten personally thinks are worth living.  Likewise, Trumpet doesn’t fault Spinner only for his weak ability, but also for his anti-social tendencies.  Of course a politician who’s deeply invested in a narrative of people uniting to throw off their chains and better themselves would be disdainful of someone who locked himself in his bedroom for years and emerged only to violently lash out at society.  (Spinner’s right to call Trumpet a huge hypocrite on this, mind; terrorist cult members have no business lecturing other terrorists about the correct way to violently reform society.)
The MLA does have a problem with quirk supremacy, but it’s not quite the problem fandom thinks they do, and it’s certainly more nuanced than fandom thinks.[4]  Frankly, I could write a whole post dissecting this, but rather than analyzing the canon at length in a post intending to be about my fanon for a series of slice-of-life MLA fics, let me just lay out some issues I think the MLA have.  Note that these opinions may vary member to member, particularly as you work your way up the chain of command.
Many in the MLA believe that people with poor quirks are less capable of asserting their will and becoming whatever they want to be.  They are not, notably, alone in that that sentiment—we hear versions of it not only from villains like Trumpet and All for One, but from the paralleled parents of Midoriya Inko and Shimura Kotarou, the would-be hero Bakugou, and even the iconic hero paragon All Might.  While it’s not universal, My Hero Academia’s Japan is full of people who believe to some extent or another that people with weak or no quirks are inherently less capable of making their mark on the world.  The MLA is just more blatant about it than most.
The MLA are, as a group, not concerned about the fate of the quirkless.  My suspicion is that this is because they think quirklessness as a trait is on its way out—that the touted 20% of the world population that’s quirkless is hugely weighted towards the elderly, those who are from generations when quirklessness was more common.  Think about it: 20% is two out of every ten people.  Statistically speaking, that’s a huge portion!  You only have to look at Deku’s middle school classroom in Chapter 1—thirty kids, exactly one of whom is quirkless—to begin to suspect that there’s something a bit off with the 20% figure.
Further, the MLA follows Destro’s beliefs, and we know from Destro’s manifesto that he believed meta-abilities were growing stronger over time.  So to their mind, not only is quirklessness becoming a thing of the past, but so are weak quirks in general.  While their clear disdain for both is damning—and certainly discredits them as a group suited to decide how society should be structured!—please understand that, “We’re not very concerned with the rights of the quirkless because we think that there won’t be any such thing as quirkless people within a few more generations,” is not the same statement as, “We are A-OK with 20% of the world’s population being second-class citizens for the entire rest of human history,” and it is really not the same statement as, “People with no quirks, or bodies that can’t handle their quirks, need to be proactively removed from the gene pool and we are actively advocating for a systemic, organized culling.”
That said, their disdain, if blown out to society at large, would absolutely lead to discrimination and, undoubtedly, incidents of the same sort of violence that the MLA themselves were forged from.  That they haven’t thought or don’t care about this is one of many things that make them villains.
Further, there is an ugly strain within the MLA that still recognizes quirk marriages.  Because the MLA values freedom, they’re not as ubiquitous as you might think (at least if you think the MLA is a bunch of quirk supremacists with no other goals or values)—“freedom” does nominally include the freedom to marry who you want rather than let your own meta-ability trap you in a life you hate. However, it’s equally true that in a group that believes very strongly in the value of quirks, the power of quirks in the future, and the necessity of fighting a war to bring about that future, there will obviously be members who support the practice.  There are absolutely men and women who have been bullied and guilted by their families into loveless marriages for the sole purpose of producing children with powerful, desirable quirks.  How likely this is in any given location mostly depends on the commander’s opinion on it, though it’s a very rare one indeed who would go so far as discouraging it entirely.
———–      
THE HEARTS & MINDS PARTY
(Considerations on Japan’s political landscape.)
The current monolith of the Diet, the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, managed to hold onto power for a full century after the Advent, but their grasp grew shakier and shakier over time.  Initial measures to bar meta-humans from voting proved increasingly unpopular as the percentage of the population with meta-abilities grew both larger and older.  People with easily-concealed powers gained office, sometimes being outed, sometimes not, but on the whole, decades of oppression and violence led to an ever-more-popular opinion that the LDP had mishandled the whole mess.  They lost their supermajority in the Diet when their longstanding alliance with the Komeito party splintered, regained it again for a few electoral cycles, lost it again when Komeito itself fractured, and so on, their once implacable numbers shrinking year by year.  Still, they managed to hold onto a coalition majority right up until Saneki Yuuichi was elected to the House of Representatives.
Saneki headed up a small party based almost entirely on the issue of meta-human basic rights.  Like many meta-humans of the period, he believed that the best way for meta-humans to attain those rights was to live like so-called “normal humans,” to show that meta-humans were just like everyone else. His party advanced the ideology that meta-humans should only use their powers to help others or better society, not to advance their own self-interest.  They pushed stringently for metas to be allowed equal recognition under the law as any Japanese citizen, but also supported measures such as requiring licenses for the use of meta-abilities and limiting those licenses to those actively engaged in assisting police.  Deeply tied to respectability politics, Saneki’s party contained virtually all emitters, a scant number of transformers, and no heteromorphs, who the party felt were an impediment to reaching their legislative goals, but whose particular needs could be brought back up at a later, more receptive time.
Saneki’s politics gained him many supporters, but also drove many into the arms of the Meta Liberation Army, who vocally loathed him and everything he stood for.  The confluence of public dissatisfaction with the spike in violence represented by the MLA, Saneki’s coalition gathering popular support among both metas and non-metas, and the rise of named, organized hate groups trying to roll back what few advances had been gained in meta-human rights finally spelled the end of the LDP’s majority.
The LDP falling apart prompted a scramble for power that would stretch on for nearly half a century. Old alliances whose only common ground had been opposing the LDP found themselves free to seek groups with more compatible goals.  Young single- or dual-issue parties leapt at the chance to address their issues with more fervor.  New parties sprung up across the country.  Not only meta-humans, but minority groups of all kinds saw new avenues to press for substantive positive changes that had been dead in the water under the LDP.  Voting numbers surged as they had not for decades.
The old, conservative elements of the Diet were not gone, of course—they remained a substantial powerhouse!—but no longer could they muster the undefeatable veto-proof numbers that they had once enjoyed.
Like everyone else, the remnants of the MLA saw opportunity in the new, ever-shifting status quo.  With the place of metas secured for the time being, there was no longer a need for metas to form coalitions in the Diet merely to get their basic needs addressed.  A single-issue party from its inception thirty years prior, Saneki Yuuichi’s party was fragmenting, unable to decide on a single direction now that their uniting issue had been resolved to their satisfaction.  In recognition of meta-humans reaching population parity, the MLA launched a project to begin seeding the ideals of Liberation at the highest levels yet—the Hearts & Minds Party.
Beginning as a local party in a prefecture in which the MLA had gained significant underground support, the HMP campaigned on a platform championing individual freedoms and a wide range of improvements to Japan’s battered and overworked social safety nets.  They made an effort to showcase diverse representation in their leadership and gave impassioned speeches promising to reach across party aisles in searching for nuanced solutions to the various difficulties facing the country.
It’s impossible to say exactly how large the Hearts & Minds Party is compared to the Meta Liberation Army, which is claimed by Re-Destro to have 116,000 action-ready warriors (the “warriors lying in wait, ready to rise to action” description presumably indicating that his count does not include uninducted children).
On the one hand, one can presume that everyone who’s a member of the MLA is voting for the HMP on every ticket they can, but not every member of the MLA—who induct combat-ready warriors as young as 16—is old enough to vote, and many probably live in districts or prefectures where the HMP has yet to establish a campaign-ready foothold. On the other hand, while the HMP certainly serves to funnel people towards the MLA, it doesn’t require membership—indeed, it’s far better for their goals for them not to do so.  Therefore, it’s also probable that the Hearts & Minds Party has many supporters who are not (yet) counted among the Liberation Army’s number.  Thus, for the purposes of ballparking estimates, I opted to simply suppose that the two areas lacking overlap (MLA members who can’t vote for the HMP and HMP supporters who aren’t members of the MLA) are relatively equal.
That established, we’re working with a party that has 116K voters/supporters/members.  The closest thing to that number that I could find numbers for is the Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which counted 300K members as of 2017.  Using their total membership compared to their representation in the Diet (as well as a willingness to viciously bastardize anything resembling reliable political math), I plugged in my estimate for the HMP’s membership and wound up with the Hearts & Minds Party holding four seats in the House of Representatives, five seats in the House of Councillors, and sixty-odd assembly members in various prefectural positions.
For some context to those numbers, the House of Representatives (more powerful, but more vulnerable to sudden electoral shifts) has 465 members, 233 of which are required for a majority, and 310 of which are required to override vetoes imposed by the House of Counsillors. The House of Counsillors (less powerful, but serving longer terms and unable to be dissolved for general elections like the House of Representatives can be) has 245 members, with 123 required for a majority.
As you can see, the HMP holding a handful of seats isn’t going to tilt the My Hero Academia world on its axis.  Still, it’s more seats than any number of real-life Japanese political parties hold, and right up until the one-two punch of Shigaraki taking over the MLA and Hawks outing Trumpet’s allegiances to the Hero Commission, the Hearts & Minds Party was well on-track to continue growing its power and influence.
———–      
TIMELINE
(For ease of calculation, most dates are rounded to the nearest five years.)
1980: A glowing baby is born in Qing Qing City, China, heralding the Advent of the Age of the Extraordinary.  For almost two decades, meta-abilities remain rare and poorly understood—incidents are widespread and show huge variance, so most people write them off as anomalies or hoaxes.  As the years go on, however, meta-abilities become more widespread, moving out of the realm of the odd headline that many people think is an elaborate hoax into an alarmed spotlight as it gradually becomes apparent that this is a thing that all humanity is undergoing.  Most major technological development pivots to trying to understand, undo, document or control this new phenomenon.
2030: The child who will become All for One is born.  By this time, society is breaking down into chaos. Across the globe, measures from outlawing all meta-ability use to internment are seen.  Eugenics laws are discussed or put in place.  Communities attempt to run out metas and, in response, groups of metas attempt to form their own communities.  Infanticide rates are rising alarmingly.
2060: Yotsubashi Chikara and Ujiko (original name unknown) are born.  Japan is in complete disarray, awash in mob violence, with organized groups of both metas and non-metas attacking victims indiscriminately.  Developing an ability can get you disowned.  Divisions among the meta minority are developing a noticeable strain of respectability politics rhetoric.
2065: AFO forces an ability on his younger brother, unintentionally creating One for All.  Chikara’s mother is murdered by an anti-meta mob for attempting to speak out in defense of the normalcy of her child’s ability.
2085-2090: Saneki Yuuichi becomes the first meta-human to attain a seat in the Diet. Despite nearly a century of violence, meta-humans are becoming a larger and larger percentage of the population, and the people of Japan are tired.  The prevailing sense is that it’s time to make peace; however, the peace that is being forged involves laws sharply restricting the use of meta-abilities for those who haven’t been formally licensed.  These restrictions see markedly mixed reactions from metas.  Chikara rallies the most vehement dissenters to create the Meta Liberation Army, calling himself Destro.              Disagreement over how to handle the MLA finally finishing the job of rattling the Diet free of the death-grip of the LDP.  Many years of fractious elections will follow as new coalitions form to try and seize majority power.
2095: Japan signs an international accord acknowledging the fundamental rights of meta-humans.  This gesture begins to splinter both internal support and public sympathy for the MLA.
2097: Destro is captured by police and their newly designated Quirk Unit.  Other surviving members of the MLA are hunted down or go into hiding.
2100: The term “Hero” is formally adopted, having been casually in use for some time.  A Hero is one who is licensed to use their power to fight quirk-based crime in accordance with local and federal laws, assisting the police when requested.  The Hero Commission is established as an agency with oversight in the licensing and regulation of Heros.              Destro dies in prison.  Though the matter is questioned, no proof of foul play is ever brought forward, and the death is ruled a suicide.
2110: Ujiko presents his paper on the Paranormal [5] Singularity Theory.  The paper suggests that the power of quirks is continuing to grow with each generation and will, in time, become more powerful than the human body can control.  His evidence is inconclusive, however, and his citation of some of Destro’s observations on the phenomenon becomes a particular sticking point.  In a country that is finally beginning to get its feet back under it, no one wants to see another widespread panic.  Ujiko is stripped of his position; having been living on campus at the time, he’s left functionally homeless and is approached by All for One not long after.
2120: The population of those with quirks and those without reaches parity in Japan. Seeing an opportunity, the MLA launches the Hearts & Minds Party as a local political party, intending to grow it over time.
(2125: Yagi Toshinori is born.)
2138: Yotsubashi Rikiya is born.
(2148: Debut of All Might.)
(2165: Shimura family tragedy.)
(2174: All Might “defeats” AFO.)
2175: Hanabata Koku is elected to the House of Representatives.  He’s not the youngest party leader in the Diet, but he’s close.
2180: The events of Deku’s freshman year at UA lead the MLA to turn their attention to the League of Villains.
———–      
STRAY FACTS
Why 1980/2180?—
It’s an even number for ease of calculation, triangulated between a few considerations.
Firstly, tasers are mentioned in the One for All dream, so the events of the dream (which themselves are happening far enough into the Advent that society’s had time to slide into all-out chaos) must post-date the invention of the taser, which was in 1993.
Secondly, Spider-Man’s silhouette is seen amongst the group of characters who represent the “fantasy” that became reality.  If we assume that those media properties existed in-universe (since the narration is delivered by Midoriya) and were assumed to be fantastical at the time, they must predate the Advent—Spider-Man is the newest of them and his first appearance was in 1962, his material being translated into Japanese by the 1970s.
Lastly, technological and societal development crashed to a halt with the Advent.  The world of My Hero Academia generally reflects a modern-ish Japan, so I wanted modern technology—and modern social reforms—to still feel modern to the characters.  Thus, the point at which society stopped developing needed to predate the Digital Revolution, which really began to hit its stride in the mid-80s.  Hence, 1980.
The opening period is, admittedly, fairly generous on my part, and does assume a certain amount of modern advances were probably underway, but then were lost, sidelined or rolled back as the chaos spread.  You could probably trim off twenty years by stepping up how quickly quirks begin to appear and spread, but the very beginning is the best window to do so.  I’d still peg the Advent at 1980 based on the calculations above (again, it has to fall somewhere between the mid-70s and 1993) but, for example, maybe All for One is from that first generation, and society only takes 30 years to reach the lowest point of its collapse instead of 80.
As to the 2180, the older characters introduce several requirements for the post-Advent timeline.  Ujiko was 50 at the time that society was beginning to stabilize, while AFO dates to its days of utmost chaos.  AFO also needs to be running on at least one anti-aging quirk prior to meeting Ujiko; if the only one he were running on was Ujiko’s own, then based on his appearance and the mechanics of Ujiko’s quirk, I’d peg AFO at merely 85, and he needs to be not only over 100, but far enough over 100 that he’s described that way rather than as “a century-old evil” or something to that effect.
Meanwhile, All Might can’t really be any younger than 50, and seven generations of OFA bearer predated him, even if they did all die relatively young.  Destro’s mother was killed in those early chaotic days, while Re-Destro (himself no spring chicken) is told as a child that the MLA has been in hiding for generations.  “Generations” implies at least two; I further suppose that Rikiya needs to be at least the original Chikara’s great-grandson for him to describe himself simply as Destro’s descendant, rather than use a more specific relationship term.  All of this points to a fairly lengthy stretch of time, much more than is glossed over by Midoriya’s series-opening narration.
AFO and the MLA—
I mention in the very first story of this series that the MLA’s contacts all go “mysteriously missing” after the capture of Destro.  While the police certainly did their own measure of work in tracking down the Liberation Army’s members and allies, there was another figure with a significant hand in the MLA’s downfall.
All for One, then in his early sixties, had watched the rise of the MLA in some interest.  On a personal level, he admired Yotsubashi’s charisma and resolve, and, of course, he wholly supported the free use of quirks (well, his own free use of quirks, anyway)!  On the other hand, All for One also sought to restore order to society, albeit order as he himself envisioned it.  While he was confident that there was no one who could stand up to him no matter whose ideals won out, Saneki Yuuichi’s way promised a more stable society, and bribable and/or blackmailable bureaucrats seemed easier to manipulate than ideal-driven zealots ready to give their lives for the cause.  Thus, AFO decided to help the police a bit behind the scenes, offering a few tip-offs and hints to guide their efforts to end the threat of the Liberation Army.
Of course, as long as Destro was alive, the cause of Liberation still had its focal point. And AFO was still a bit curious to meet this man, who’d inspired so very many loyal followers.  It was an easy thing to arrange.  An interesting man, and an interesting quirk.
Destro did commit suicide in prison.  A man who had always embraced his meta-ability for motivation, and whose ability transformed that motivation into power in turn, AFO stripped him of in the same moment. Isolation from other contact, separation from his lover, his friends and allies, and his cause, a gap in his psyche like no pain he’d ever experienced--all of these piled up on one another into a fatal despair.  After AFO’s visit, there was no need for anyone to arrange a convenient death for Destro.
(And if in later years, the monstrous Noumu, who are driven entirely by pre-programmed, single-minded resolve, are flint-skinned from head-to-toe, well—who would ever even think to connect those dots?)
The Mother of Quirks—
An interesting thing I observed from Re-Destro’s confrontation with Clone!Shigaraki is that, based on their exchange, it doesn’t seem to be common knowledge that the Mother of Quirks is the mother of the Meta Liberation Army’s leader?  Re-Destro’s apology for assuming Shigaraki wouldn’t recognize the story suggests that it’s a matter of fairly basic historical education, but he then goes on to explain her connection to Destro at some length—if that connection were taught at the same time her story was, surely he’d see no need to do this? Clone-a-raki’s response backs this up—unlike the general existence of the Mother of Quirks, which was such basic knowledge that he was insulted that Re-Destro thought he wouldn’t know about it, her connection to Destro was unknown to him.
Re-Destro describes the connection as “an inconvenient truth.”  This, in turn, suggests that the connection has been actively obscured.  The MLA’s place in history is taught; the originator of the term “quirk” is taught, but the two are not connected to each other. Kids in school aren’t taught that the very child whose mother was murdered for her words hated what his country was using those words, that message, to do.  It’s naked appropriation that continues to this day, and it’s no wonder that the MLA is furious about it.
The Quirk Unit—
An early term for the group that would, in relatively short order after their formation, officially be dubbed Heroes.  Composed of both meta-humans already on the police force and vigilantes willing to remit themselves to legal oversight, they fought quirk-based crime in many forms, from the common mugger to the terrorists of the MLA, and even former allies in vigilantism.  Well-regarded by history thanks to their efforts in reining in crime and disorder, but quite a controversial group in their early years.
MLA Age of Induction—
Being raised in the MLA means being raised with the goal of eventually being assigned a codename and tasked with supporting the Great Cause in whatever fashion your superiors think you best suited.  The minimum age for this is 16, though 18, being the age at which students graduate from high school, is more common.  At no point is there really a safe way to leave once you’re involved; they are, after all, a secret army.  There’s no aging out of the MLA—it’s a lifetime tour—but disability, injury or general decrepitude can get you assigned to work that generally won’t expect you to see open combat.  The Army is composed of a great many lifetime-of-service families, after all, which means they need teachers and caretakers; another option is dedicated work for the Hearts & Minds Party, who always have room for community organizers.
Liberated Districts—
Settlements that are at least 85% MLA-inducted.  At their largest, they’re small towns; rural villages are far more common.  Without exception, they’re isolated or out of the way.  Tend to have unusually good access to city services compared to similarly-sized settlements.  Deika was one of the largest districts the Army had, chosen for the Revival Celebration due to its combination of a sizable population and a particularly closed-off location.  The MLA knew they’d need many warriors to fight the League of Villains, but they also needed a site that was not merely remote, but that had controllable points of access.
It can take well over a decade to hit the 85% saturation mark in even small villages; Deika and the MLA’s handful of other full-fledged towns are the work of generations.  They begin by moving people into an area and setting up gatherings on some useful pretext or another, enthusiastically welcoming newcomers and very, very gradually indoctrinating people further into the ideology.  Financial support, an accepting environment for difficult quirks or those with patchy legal histories, the odd homeless shelter or food kitchen, a robust presence in the foster care network—the MLA is very, very good at making themselves a warm, sincere, reliable presence in peoples’ lives, a group that encourages everyone under their banner to be their best selves. They think everyone deserves that kind of support!
They are also willing to shed quite a lot of blood to make sure that everyone can get it.
On the Intersection of Disability and Quirk Suppression—
There are a few factors contributing to why Scarecrow can’t use his quirk to do things others would.  First, his quirk is the kind of off-putting that gets Gang Orca ranked third-most villainous-looking hero and leads Shoji to wear a mask because his face disturbs people.  So Scarecrow’s quirk is already the kind of visible that makes people look at him askance.  Compounding this, his prosthetics are obvious, visible to any old person, and people have a very ugly tendency towards bootstrap, “you can do it if you try” mentalities around people with disabilities.  These two factors mean that people who are disturbed by his creepy articulate bug legs would much prefer that he use his significantly less-creepy prosthetics, to the degree that they’re willing to suggest that he’s being lazy if he doesn’t.  They cite the quirk-use laws as a deflection tactic, but Scarecrow—whose pattern recognition functions just fine, thanks—is keenly aware of the underlying mindset.
Nimble is in much the same boat—she literally can’t talk without falling back on a visual representation of some kind (sign-language, a text-to-speech reader, etc), and why on earth shouldn’t she be able to use the fastest and most convenient one without people getting up her ass about it?
None of this is the kind of thing that would likely get either of them arrested (though Scarecrow’s creepy enough that the odds are higher for him, “villain quirk” bias being what it is), but the laws-as-written, nonetheless, are discriminatory, and that makes people justly angry.  Angry people are easier to radicalize, and the Liberation Army has been working that angle since their very inception.
Re-Destro and Trumpet’s College Days—
RD’s an Engineering major with a focus in Manufacturing; Trumpet’s in PoliSci.  They’re two grades apart, with Koku being the older.  Those two years of greater experience shift the power balance between them significantly when Rikiya arrives for his freshman year, facing a new place, a new workload, an entirely new rhythm to his life.  For the first time, Koku is not merely a friend in similar circumstances who is still—as they’re both reminded near-constantly—subordinate to Rikiya’s every word.  Rather, he’s a senpai, someone with specific experience in every aspect of this new stage of life—and someone who’s had two years to become more eloquent, more well-studied, more confident, more mature.
Removed from the immediate supervision of the First Families for the first time in his life, Rikiya allows himself to lean on Koku in ways he never would have back home. Koku, for his part, has had his responsibilities here impressed on him by the First Families at some length, and has spent his entire life being groomed to devote himself to his Grand Commander.  Having said Grand Commander looking to him with such glowing esteem in his eyes—well, there’s no denying that it’s pretty enticing.  The two of them enter a romantic relationship that will endure for several years until Rikiya gets his head back around the idea that Koku’s ability to say no to him is fundamentally compromised.
The Bindi Connection—
I had no reason to develop them any, and thus I don’t have names to assign, but it seems that Twice’s No. 3, the smiling old woman with the gingham dress and the rough-and-ready attitude to combat, and Geten’s No. 2, the short-haired woman whose face is being devoured by her out-of-control sweater neck, are related.  Note the bindi on both of them, as well as the similar hair color, particularly in the page introducing all the advisors.  Mutual connection to Dabi’s No. 3, the guy who got into a fight with a hole punch and lost, is uncertain but possible based on the confronting-the-heroes page spread in which Hole Punch dude’s hand lays familiarly on Grandma Bindi’s back while Big Sis Bindi turns partly towards him as if to whisper some sarcastic observation about how lame Cementoss’s ponytail is.
———–      
FOOTNOTES
1: Regarding codenames, the first generation of the MLA tended to have names that reflected their meta-ability in some way.  From the second generation on, at the behest of Destro’s son, the codenames have become less literal, and thus less revealing.
2: Viz renders the job tile “Executive Director,” but having checked the raw, the Japanese term, senmu, is associated with a fairly specific level of executive authority, and it’s lower than I would peg “Executive Director,” which to my ear sounds synonymous or slightly below Chief Executive Officer.  Executive Vice President is wikipedia’s translation; Google returns Senior Managing Director.  In any case, she’s near the top, but not at the top.
3: At least, he wasn’t prior to meeting Shigaraki.  Now he’s pretty much in favor of a very organized and coherent belief structure that can be summarized as, “Watch Shigaraki tear down the world ‘cause he’s beautiful and I love him,” and honestly, mood.
4: I’ll just come out and say it: fandom blew Geten’s words way out of proportion because a bunch of people got mad that he was being mean to Everyone’s Favorite Serial Killer Dabi.
5: An archaic term by this period.  Even “meta-human” saw more use in academic parlance, while the term “quirk” had become much more widespread among the general population since its official adoption during the period of legislation twenty years prior.
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