#and by evil I mean have 0 empathy and no sense of morality and are that way because of trauma

[vulgarcunt]

No one ever wants to talk about the persecutor alters who are ‘evil’.

[sskurwysyn]

GOOD DAD DRAXUM AU GOOD DAD DRAXUM AU!!!! + Villain turtles (?)

So basically, what if Lou Jitsu didn't manage to snatch the turtles and they were raised by Baron Draxum

He's very very bad at parenting at first (he has exactly 0 knowledge on handling children)

Munnin and Huggin to the rescue!! (They don't know anything about parenting either but they do have something Barry lacks - common f-cking sense)

He was so happy his experiment worked out, he forgot to plan a bit ahead. In his mad scientist haze, he disregarded the fact he actually had to raise the specimens he made...

Actually their sentience was an accident! Draxum wanted mindless weapons (i physically cringed at that lol lfls gave me trauma), maybe pets, def not children. So at first he wasn't too happy with the outcome. But after realizing the possibilities their sentience opened, he was ecstatic, bragging to everyone that his experiment worked even better than planned.

He reads a lot of parenting books 👍

Barry has troubles with empathy, but he makes it up with a deep understanding of psychology and biology. He strives to bring out the most out of every turtle, so he tries to choose those training methods, that would actually WORK.

He read somewhere that children need physical touch at least four times a day to develop properly. He doesn't know what a hug is, so four times a day he just. Picks his children weapons up and holds them for a minute awkwardly. He eventually learned to be more casual when picking them up, but it took a while.

When the tots were still in their baby form, Draxum carried them on his shoulders instead of the gargoyles.

The tots really liked to sleep in the dog bed 🥺🥺 /bc of the fireplace/ Munnin and Huggin didn't mind, they either tried to squeeze themselves next to the turtles, or they just slept hanging upside down from something (like bats), keeping an eye on them.

They reclaim their bed happily when Draxum builds the tots a terrarium though.

Honestly those two go from evil henchmen to fulltime nannies in the matter of days and they enjoy it a lot, surpisingly.

The turtles enjoy Lou Jitsu movies very much, and they compare themselves to him all the time. He's basically their idol and they dream of meeting their DNA-dad. They idolize Lou even more than in canon, since they know that he's related to them from the get go.

Mike painted him on a cardboard. Now they have real life sized Lou Jitsu cardboard cutout just vibing around the house.

Draxum deems art an useless skill and a waste of time. So he and Mikey get into fights about it all the time.

Draxum may be emotionally distant, but he's much more interested in the boys' lives than Splinter ever was. Which, okay, it's good for the most part, but it shows to be problematic if his ideals don't align with the turtle's actions.

Donnie is his least favorite, only because he sees himself in the softshell too much and it makes him uncomfortable.

Mikey is his favorite, actually (because of the EXTREME potential he's hiding) but that just means he gets the most shit from Draxum, honestly.

The boys are muchhh much more rebellious and uh... morally questionable than in canon.

Remember lair games? Yeah. Remember when Leo accidentally caused Don to twist his ankle? Yeah. Let's just say, it wouldn't exactly be accidental in this AU.

Turtles have a deep dislike of humans, mostly caused by Draxum's views on them. They stick to the Undercity for the most part, unless they sneak out to NYC to cause some chaos. That's how they meet April, actually.

Yeah, they're not friends in this AU. Arch nemesis would be more accurate. Especially with Donnie. They hate each other with a burning passion.

"Stop mutating innocent citizens!!!" "Make me, hummie! (sfx: madman laugh)"

Yes turtles are personally involved in mutation of the villains from the show. I will not be elaborating.

Usagi and Gen are very important figures in this AU :DD probably as important as April and Splinter, honestly. (And i may or may not bring Jei into it as well... Still thinking about it)

I have more ideas but then this post would be insufferably long i mean its pretty long as it is

[amethystroselily]

(This was originally written on Twitter and that’s why it’s so bad. (Now with unnecessary censoring!!!) I don’t go on tumblr enough to know the general consensus on Geto here. This might only apply to Twitter. I don’t know)

I don’t know why everyone on Twitter thinks none of Geto’s actions were his fault or even immoral. He was a deeply flawed person who made terrible decisions and that’s what makes him such a good character.

EVERYONE at jujutsu high was in similar traumatic situations as him, he’s the only one who decided to lead a r*cist m*rder c*lt. And while I understand why he did it, it definitely wasn’t a GOOD or honorable decision.

And his daughters. He loved them, but he also literally raised them in a c*lt. I’ve heard ppl say he wouldn’t have cared if they didn’t end up following his ideology, but, like, he did attack an institution full of ppl he was once very close with for that reason, so while I Don’t think he would have killed them or anything, I do think he would have been p*ssed. So I think he tried very hard to instill his ideology into them. We know he was doing that to other people, bc y’know, c*lt leader, so why wouldn’t he be willing to teach that to his kids? Even ppl who are usually against forcing their beliefs on people, instill their beliefs In their kids. So why wouldn’t a guy who thinks he’s SO right that he thinks EVERYONE should follow his beliefs also instill those beliefs in people he raised? He would have thought it right and moral thing to do, and that’s the problem. I think ppl tend to think he’s a “good person�� bc he can explain his thought process in a way most people can empathize with, but that doesn’t mean he’s a good person it just means he’s a good character.

Him being right isn’t about whether his emotions were valid or not, it’s about how he handled those feelings and whether he helped more than he hurt. And he definitely did more of the latter. While he did tend to rationalize things as a way to help humanity, he was more driven by anger, bitterness, and self righteousness than his desire to help people. I think that’s why he never actually accomplished anything. He seemed fixated on revenge and ki/ling people, and a lot of his plans were about kil/ling non-sorcerers, rather than saving sorcerers from them. I think he let his hatred get in the way of his original goal of saving people. I don’t even think it was about saving sorcerers by the end there. He was completely willing to kil/l sorcerers just so he could kil/l non-sorcerers, and I think that takes away a lot of the validity of the reasoning he pretends he has. By then he’d spent a decade in his little echo chamber of hate, so at that point maybe even he would acknowledge it was no longer about saving people.

Also can we talk about how stupid his plan in vol 0 was? It’s kind of unrelated, but he is not the genius some of you think he is. (Affectionate, this time) The man was running on pure self-righteousness at that point (probably the result of only surrounding himself with ppl Who worship him for the last ten years) Maybe Kenjaku’s kind of blurring ppl’s perception of Geto? He does seem to be using Geto’s cursed technique much more efficiently than Geto was. But that’s probably bc he’s ancient and knows a lot of information Geto didn’t.

Anyway, back to my original point, his ideology was blatantly flawed, he’s just charismatic and really good at deflecting, so it seems like it makes more sense than it does. Bc it does make sense to him, and ppl like him, they want to agree with him bc he’s charming, and likable, And Tragic tm, so they do (both his cu/lt and readers) , but like, his ideas are pretty flawed (and borderline eug/enics-y?) and the narrative doesn’t want you to agree with him, it just wants you to understand why he’s the way he is. I guess Gege did really well at writing a cu/lt leader at least. Bc I swear some of you genuinely agree with him.

Like how happy did he think everyone was going to be when the vast majority of the population was de-ad??? Including a bunch of their loved ones? What was he going to when someone had a baby who was a non-sorcerer? Ki1l it? What was he going to do if ppl revolted bc he murd/ered all their loved ones? Kil1 them too? There’s only going to be like ten people left on the planet. I refuse to believe this b1tch thought that through.

I actually think KENJAKU’S plan may actually be more ethical. At least their end goal isn’t literally to k1ll people, and allows far more people to survive than Geto’s. Ppl dy/ing just happens to be part of the process rather than the actual goal. And oh my god, that’s such a LOW bar. Kenjaku may actually be helping ppl more than Geto, which isn’t much, but like I said low bar. He’s just less motivated by emotion and doesn’t have a tragic backstory (YET) so he comes of as more ~EVIL~. But it’s actually hilarious that people see Kenjaku as so much worse than Geto when they’re about on the same level. Kenjaku is considerably less outspokenly m*rderous and Geto is a better friend, so it evens out I guess? I would say it’s bc Kenjaku’s trying to ki1l the mcs and Geto wasn’t, but that’s not even true. Geto literally tried to kil1 all of the second years, and Kenjaku couldn’t care less about whether anyone lives or di*s, he’s just just trying to “evolve” ppl. He took Tsumiki h*stage But as far as he knows or cares she could win the culling game, Geto would have literally kil1ed her for being a non-sorcerer. (He attacked a elementary school, he wouldn’t care that she’s a kid, don’t lie to yourself)

And, yes, a lot of Geto’s traits could make him a good person, but those same traits are the ones that make him such a bad person. (Passion, charisma, even empathy at times, bc he empathizes so much with select ppl that when non-sorcerers (who he no longer deems ppl) hurt them He feels wronged and lashes out at the things he deems not worthy of sympathy)

Anyway it’s ok to acknowledge his flaws, or even feel neutral on him, he doesn’t have to be perfect for you to like him. (This isn’t a Kenjaku defense post, btw, it’s just funny that that’s true) I’ve seen way too many posts claiming the only bad thing Geto’s ever done is hurting Maki, and like, that’s nearly objectively false. And like half of them were completely unironic. A sympathetic villain isn’t the same thing as a hero.

This isn’t even Geto hate, I LIKE him, but the widespread perception of him being completely justified just feels so wrong. Why do so many people feel SO protective of him? Is his c-ult leader charisma just that effective?

I actually think pretending none of his flaws exist takes away SO much from his character. It strips away his agency and turns him into this tragic can-do-no-wrong figure that he just isn’t. He’s someone who couldn’t handle their own tr*uma and decided to take it out on the world. The way he decided to handle that is no one’s fault but his own.

[archivistsammy]

"What, you really haven't heard of us? What kind of angel are you, we're- we're the freaking Winchesters."

In my last post, I looked at how I felt Castiel embodied the energy of the tarot card the Fool, card #0. Today I want to continue the tarot conversation by looking at the next card in line, the Magician. There are a lot of characters who fit this archetype, including Rowena, Lucifer, maybe even Gabriel or Jack. But for me, the real Magician is Sam.

I mentioned the Magician comes right after the Fool, our official card #1. Some people see the major arcana as a journey the Fool takes, taking different roles as the journey progresses, and some people see the figures that follow the Fool as characters that he encounters. Regardless, the Magician represents the same things, especially in relation to the Fool. Where the Fool indicates potential, faith, and naivety, the Magician indicates intention and direction. 

The card is usually depicted with a figure pointing one finger to the heavens and one to the earth, a table laid out with each of the four suits (or elements). The figure holds a magician’s wand, and bears an infinity symbol above their head. The imagery suggests access to resources and the infinite possibility for combining and using them. There’s a sense of manifestation, action, and willpower, but there’s no moral imperative for what kind of action is taken. This is why Bakara Wintner talks about the Magician as someone who "toes the line between the true miracle-worker and the trickster."

Sam has this resourcefulness. How many times has Sam tried something in the moment, based on previous knowledge and experience, and had it work out. Directing Dean to park on the hallowed ground of a fallen church in “Route 666.″ Painting their faces in blood to mask that they’re alive when Samhain is raised in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Sam Winchester.” His impulsive—but successful—reverse-exorcism in “What’s Up, Tiger Mommy.” 

I think one of the key aspects of Sam’s resourcefulness is his confidence. He believes in the power of past experience to inform the present, and he trusts in his instincts. This is also part of being a Magician. I love how Melissa Cynova talks about the power of the Magician in a reading, how the card “represents self-love, self-awareness, and confidence. It's one thing to know for certain that you're going to do something. It's something altogether different to know for certain that you're going to succeed.” When I brought this up with Katharine, she brought up Sam’s response to Alistair in the final act of “On the Head of a Pin” when Sam cockily dismisses Alistair’s comment about Sam sending him back to Hell. “I’m stronger than that now,” Sam says with a smile. “Now I can kill.” And he does. 

Confidence, of course, doesn’t have to mean cockiness or arrogance. It doesn’t have to mean domination. And for Sam, his confidence is usually of a much softer sort. Katharine, our resident Sam-Whisperer, reminded me of this when she also brought up Sam’s words in “It’s a Terrible Life” regarding his life and hunting. "All I know is, I got this feeling in my gut. And I know—I know that deep down, you gotta be feeling it too. We're supposed to be something else." Sam’s sense of self is unshakeable, and his confidence in his own instincts in this moment is powerful. 

Then we have the quote I used to open this post. I was sort of iffy on using it—it falls a little back into that arrogant category that demon-blood-bender Sam really lives in. But the more I think about Sam stating what, in all honesty, I’m shocked neither Winchester says more often, the more I like it. Because Sam asking Metatron in “The Great Escapist” incredulously if he really hasn’t heard of them gets at the inherent Magician-ness of both Winchesters pretty neatly. We’ve stopped the Apocalypse, Sam seems to be saying. Defeated the Mother of All Evil, saved the world from Leviathans, survived Purgatory and Hell! What haven’t the brothers achieved? What magic haven’t they worked to still be standing after the horrors that they’ve faced? Sam has a right to wonder why the scribe of God has somehow missed the memo on God’s most chosen of children. 

Thinking of confidence and sense of self also makes me think about Benebell Wen’s take on the Magician. “To wield the intensity of concentration needed for omnipotent power, one must be strong in both spirituality and character,” she writes. “Thus, the Magician card often appears in spreads for those who are strong in spirituality and character. It is the card of individuality.” “Strong in both spirituality and character” alongside “the card of individuality” really calls Sam to my mind. Sam’s faith in those early seasons, his willingness to believe God may be talking to him even in season 11 after God has proven time and time again to be largely uninvested. Sam wanting to be a lawyer, wanting to help people. Taking charge and guiding the folks of Apocalypse World. Sam forging his own way after loss, after grief, after anguish. That is all evidence of his strength in spirit. That is strength of character. Sam maintains up until the final episodes of the final season that he and Dean’s righteous positions will find purchase, even when they are challenging God himself. Of the two brothers, Sam is ever the optimist, always willing to find a way to make a situation work. He will use what resources he has, what willpower he can still muster, and he will make something work or die trying. He’s both trickster, and miracle-worker, and his heart is always in the right place.

I want to close out this post by thinking of the Magician and Sam one final way, and that’s as a “vessel,” as Rachel Pollack sees the Magician. 

He is not casting spells or conjuring demons. He simply stands with one hand raised to heaven and the other pointed to the green earth. He is a lightning rod. By opening himself up to the spirit he draws it down into himself, and then that downward hand, like a lightning rod buried in the ground, runs the energy into the earth. Into reality.

She’s talking about the imagery of the card, and informing those of us who read tarot that, as the Magician is a conduit for spirit, so too are tarot readers. Through use of these tools, we become conduits to whatever is sending us the messages. This can be contested, of course, and isn’t a universal belief re: tarot. But it is, quite literally, the truth when it comes to Sam*. 

Sam is Lucifer’s vessel; he is a literal conduit or channel for divine intervention. He has the potential within him for great feats of power and violence, and with his past brushes with demon blood, this is a potential he is hyper-aware of and anxious about. Sam’s role as “lightning rod,” so to speak, is a lot of what drives his cultivation of spirit and character. Sam wants to do good, and wants to believe he is good, and he makes choices as the series goes on to live up to those desires. Sam’s worries about himself are aligned with the reversed energies of this card, such as the potential for manipulation, the misallocation of resources, and a lack of empathy. Essentially, the Sam we meet when he is soulless. 

Luckily for us and the others on the show, Sam largely lives in the role of the Magician defined by Melissa Cynova and Benebell Wen. He’s driven to do good and help people, putting his resourcefulness to work in the best possible way, the lore as his tools of his metaphysical trade. And, of course, by the close of the show, he’s also a bonafide witch, a literal magician on top of his Magician-like qualities. And we always love to see it.

*Also Sam is literally a witch. So. Jot that down. 

[somnilogical]

like the evil people at cfar & affiliates have no philosophical leg to stand on and they know it. all they can do is violate their wistleblower policy, try and make a narrative where they see which transfem they can dismiss as crazy / rapist / brainwashed. trying tentative exploratory lies in each direction. then when challenged being like "ah no i didnt mean it like that!! i love trans women!" and then doing it again.

ive documented so many of them. a lot of the lies were calculated such that it would be mortifying to repeat them even to correct them. like elle benjamin saying emma thought torturing children was hot. thats a lie. or kelsey piper saying emma was indistinguishable from a rapist.

but the correct response at these tentative tries at defamation is to repost them in full and drive straight against the expectation that you wouldnt want to repeat these lies aimed to eliminate people who could disrupt the social order.

here's kelsey piper comparing emma to brent dill, saying they are indistinguishable from a rapist for talking about philosophy on the internet:

https://pastebin.com/tje4hN33

heres emmas parse of it:

<<actual lintamande quotes simplified:

glass said [they tried to do what a] person really endorsedly wanted [...] even if the person claimed they wanted something different

[they may have been seeking social] proof that we didn't really have an ethical injunction against it

and part of my main concern about glass, etc. is that their priors seem really really off to me?

so if they say they'll use their social priors to decide when it's appropriate to violate peoples' preferences, I am more scared than if someone whose social priors seem sensible to me says that

combination of two things. one is that, yes, people's "this person is manipulating me and coercing me" detectors ping, at glass in particular, and asking people to turn down their 'this person is manipulating me and coercing me' detectors is a big ask and not always good for them

with comments interspersed about Brent so that people would associate me with him>>

lex (trans) noted this pattern about the chatroom:

<<[11:19] alexander: they’re like... kiiiinda incapable of criticizing the ethical positions of a trans woman without lowkey calling her a rapist. which is like all cis people ever but i’m not happy with it>>

heres elle benjamin choosing to "believe" the lie that emma thought child abuse was hot:

(emma was never let in the "feminist" group to...talk about their experience of being abused.)

heres elle benjamin talking about how much she loves trans women and has empathy for emma being abused. while lying about emma thinking child abuse was hot and lying about them having been violent and banning them from the "rationalist feminist" group they mod. (using the same excuse kingsley did when he said that he chose to believe the lie that anna salamon, president of cfar, wasnt involved in hiring at cfar. "oh someone else told me this." as if that shunts responsibility on to someone else for you believing obvious lies. (it doesnt. someone telling you stereotyped lies about minorities doesnt abdicate responsibility for joining in with the mob.)):

its all so deeply evil what these people are doing. but all they have is "for vague unspecified reasons its Deeply Wise not to listen to what these people say" *sage nod* "they are infohazards, glitches in the matrix, we should all agree on a social norm of ignoring these people." because they are actually wrong and will lose in a debate if they have to justify, say, why they are saying OpenAI and DeepMind have 'alignment teams' when they know thats not true. or why 0 trans women have ever been hired by cfar. or why miri lied about what happened to the fundraiser. or why who is baked in to an fai as morally relevant is determined by a political process, excluding those who have died and nonhuman sentience. or 1000 other questions they can not answer.

these exploratory tendrils of "what lies based on nothing can we get away with?" they also did this with somni and ziz and gwen, the lies they try have a pattern of being blatantly transmisogynistic. for instance patrick sensa lavictoire after sinking a marginal 71,000$ into a failed fundraiser, tried the lie of [ziz is a "gross uncle" style abuser like brent]. https://pastebin.com/TUZ7EThz

there are a lot of avenues people tried that i have catalogued. pete michaud (listed on the cfar staff page) tried saying that ziz was tall and anna was a ~small vulnerable cis woman~. one of these people is the president of a large organization.

<<I'll preface by saying outright that what follows is a full throated, shameless defense of Anna, my friend and colleague, against untrue and ungrounded accusations.

[…]

1. An accusation of Anna that might actually land is that she is a little fast to feel threatened in social situations. She is a woman who is unusually small and has dealt with minor physical disabilities from childhood. She is a full-grown, competent person who navigates life fine (probably better than most, frankly), but the sense of physical vulnerability has deep roots, and she carries it into her social interactions.

2. The context with Ziz is long, and importantly begins prior to Ziz's gender transition. Anna's perspective on a lot of their early interactions is as a small, socially-vulnerable woman, interacting with a male-presenting person who towers over her, and has a penetrating social presence and quite unusual mannerisms that are a combination of low-affect and extremely direct (a combination easy to interpret as aggressive or depersoning).>>

https://pastebin.com/Y5E8d29D

pastel (trans) commented: <<pete michaud's post is invalid

you don't have to read ziz's blog to understand that he is doing bullshit stereotypy

"full-throated defense" suck anna's cock a little deeper, buddy

"anarchists are scary and evil, they throw bombs and wear black">>

pete is a sycophant and probably since he hangs around anna is used to an environment where you can just be this transmisogynistic. anna certainly expected the strat pete is trying to work on ziz.

<<At WAISS, my intent to not be net negative was partially consumed by the intent of Anna Salamon to prevent whistleblowing, and by her timeless gambit that trans women must know our place as inferior to not be “dangerous”.>>

there are a lot more. all playing on transmisogynistic stereotypes, all not true or not relevant. probably the easiest coordination mechanism for ostracism these people could locate.

fortunately for the fate of sentient life in the multiverse, transfems have been talking with each other and know the metagame so when cfar affiliates push the button that activates the trapdoor to flush transfems out im just levitating above empty space.

they could have read the metagame too, but i guess all they would have chosen to see was painful infohazardous static. frying their brain, making their eyes bleed. which honestly is pretty metal. credit to porpentine for neurotype stenography. i know way more about their strategy than they do.

[ronanivarsson]

“I WAS BORN FOR SOMETHING GREATER THAN I WAS--AND GREATER I WOULD BECOME.” | MARY SHELLEY 

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME: Ronan Ivarsson

MEANING:

RONAN ( IRISH ) - “LITTLE SEAL” 

IVARSSON ( SWEDISH ) - “SON OF IVAR” 

NICKNAME(S): Ronan has never had a nickname, and would never allow someone to call him by a nickname. He’s only ever been Ronan, even to both of his parents. The only acceptation would be if someone called him by his last name. 

PREFERRED NAME(S): Ronan

BIRTH DATE: December 13th, 1980

AGE: 39

ZODIAC: Sagittarius 

GENDER: Male

PRONOUNS: He / His

ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Biromantic

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Bisexual 

NATIONALITY: Italian

ETHNICITY: Swedish 

CURRENT LOCATION: Verona, Italy 

LIVING CONDITIONS: Ronan lives in an expensive top floor penthouse near the center of Verona, which is furnished exactly to his tastes--dark wood, sleek metals, dark leather. He bought it shortly after being married to Lucien, but his husband rarely ever stays for more than a couple of days or weeks, which means that most of the time Ronan lives alone. It is also outfitted to be more accessible for him. 

TITLE(S): Richard III, The Vice, Councilman 

BACKGROUND

BIRTHPLACE / HOMETOWN: Stockholm, Sweden / Verona, Italy 

SOCIAL CLASS: Ronan was born into a wealthy, upper class family, and his wealth has only increased since he became the sole bearer of that family name. He considers himself to be among Verona’s elite, though in the end he holds no love for that title--in his own mind, he is better than everyone in Verona. 

EDUCATION LEVEL: Ronan graduated university with a degree in political science. 

FATHER: Magnus Ivarsson

MOTHER: Joanna Ivarsson. 

SIBLING(S): None as far as he knows, but his parents cheated on each other throughout their marriage, and his mother could have very well had other children without telling him. 

CHILDREN: None

PET(S): None

OTHER IMPORTANT RELATIVES: All of Ronan’s other relatives are back in Sweden, and he does not communicate with them. (No brothers or nephews to do anything horrible to--yet!) 

PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS:

Caleb Tallmadge: An intern at the American embassy, who was Ronan’s first serious boyfriend right out of college. 

Rafaella Capulet: The love of his life, his soulmate as far as he’s concerned. Their relationship deteriorated when he became a member of the Montagues, and with the exception of one night after Ronan became engaged to Lucien, they have not spoken since. 

Lucien Ivarsson: Ronan’s husband, who he met shortly after things with Rafaella fell apart. Ronan fell out of love with him quickly, and their relationship is barely functional at the present--they appear in public together before going their separate ways, with the exception of rare moments where they fall together violently. 

Renzo Carozza: A distraction bordering on an addiction. 

ARRESTS?: None.

PRISON TIME?: None. 

OCCUPATION + HOME

PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME: Ronan is an elected councilman in the city of Verona, and his family has several investments that he manages. 

SECONDARY SOURCE OF INCOME: His salary as a Montague Soldato--a trifle in comparison to what he already has, however, he isn’t interested in earning money from the position. 

CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB (OR LACK THERE OF)?: Ronan loves being the center of attention, and the power that he commands as a politician. His ambition extends far beyond his current office however, and he’d like to eventually run for more prestigious positions. 

PAST JOB(S): Ronan interned with the mayor’s office right out of college, and steadily worked his way to his current position. He has only ever worked in politics. 

SPENDING HABITS: Ronan felt like an outsider growing up, so he uses his money to purchase the life he feels like he deserves, the life he always wanted. As long as he has money, and lots of it, he feels safe--it’s as much an armor as the designer suits he puts on every day. He’s always aware of exactly how much he has, and ways that he could obtain more. 

MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION: A first edition of Frankenstein, his favorite novel. He bought it right after his mother died and he became the sole heir of the Ivarsson fortune. 

SKILLS + ABILITIES

PHYSICAL STRENGTH: 4/10

Ronan was born with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, which means that the muscles of his arms and legs are very weak. He does what he can to stay as good of shape as possible, and he is capable of doing the bare minimum required of a Montague soldier. 

OFFENSE: 4/10

Ronan would prefer not to get into a physical altercation, but he knows the bare minimum of fighting techniques. He can throw a punch with accuracy, that would hurt reasonably. His strength is his ability to see other people’s weaknesses fairly quickly, and fight cleverly. 

DEFENSE: 5/10

Defense requires less physical exertion, which means Ronan is stronger in that area. 

SPEED: 0/10 

Ronan walks with a cane, and isn’t really capable of running. 

INTELLIGENCE: 10/10

Because he can’t fight with his fists, Ronan made his mind into a weapon. He’s well read, he attended one of the finest universities where he attained excellent grades, and he is well studied in the arts of manipulation. He can read people’s facial expressions with astounding accuracy, he is excellent at verbally manipulating people into action, and more than anything, he is capable of inspiring great loyalty in people through deception, though words, through the weaknesses they were so certain they could hide. Its the same principle as your other senses heightening when one is deprived--Ronan couldn’t fight physically, so he made sure every other power he possessed worked at maximum capacity. 

ACCURACY: 5/10 

The muscles in Ronan’s arms and shoulders are weak, but he can sustain the position necessary to fire a gun long enough to be average with it. 

AGILITY: 0/10

Ronan is not agile at all--his muscles are too weak to allow him to do anything agile. 

STAMINA: 7/10

Ronan is used to pain--his spine and his shoulders, his legs, all cause him pain on a regular basis. His daily life requires an amount of stamina that the average person doesn’t have to exert. 

TEAMWORK: 0/10

He allows others to think they’re working with him, that they’re part of a team with him, but he’s always looking out for himself and his own designs first and foremost. Other people are merely pieces he can move around, or discard, as they present themselves as useful to him. 

TALENTS: Ronan is excellent at public speaking, and his public persona is very magnetic. He is skilled at manipulating people, at reading their faces, at ferreting out their weaknesses. He played the violin growing up and still plays occasionally when he needs to clear his mind, and he enjoys playing chess. 

SHORTCOMINGS: Ronan is incredibly narcissistic, with little to no empathy for anyone. He cares exclusively for himself and the things that he wants, and he doesn’t care who he has to hurt, whatever he has to do, in order to get them. He is also incredibly greedy, and one of his primary interests is getting more money for himself. 

LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN: Italian, Swedish, Latin, English 

DRIVE?: No, he’s always had a driver. 

JUMP-START A CAR?: No, that’s what mechanics or new cars are for. 

CHANGE A FLAT TIRE?: No. 

RIDE A BICYCLE?: No, he physically can’t. 

SWIM?: Yes. 

PLAY AN INSTRUMENT?: Yes, he plays the violin on occasion. 

PLAY CHESS?: Yes, and at a high level.

BRAID HAIR?: No. 

TIE A TIE?: Absolutely, a nice tie can make or break an outfit. 

PICK A LOCK?: Yes. 

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE + CHARACTERISTICS

FACE CLAIM: Joel Kinnaman 

EYE COLOR: Brown

HAIR COLOR: Blonde 

HAIR TYPE/STYLE: He likes to stay pretty trendy--his current haircut is short on the sides and long on top, slicked back. 

GLASSES/CONTACTS?: None. 

DOMINANT HAND: Right

HEIGHT: 6′2 at his full height, but he usually is hunched over to varying degrees, rendering him about 5′10-6′0 to the eye. 

WEIGHT: 165

BUILD: He has a solid build, keeps what muscle he’s able to gain. 

EXERCISE HABITS: Swimming, lifting weights, physical therapy. 

SKIN TONE: Pale, but he tans pretty easily. 

TATTOOS: None, mostly because of his physical condition--but that could change if he found a person he trusted to give him one ;) 

PIERCINGS: None.

MARKS/SCARS: He has various scars from his work as a Montague soldier, and a few from when his mother was feeling particularly vindictive. 

NOTABLE FEATURES: Keen and sharp eyes, a mouth that seems to always be smirking to some degree, a sharp jawline. 

USUAL EXPRESSION: Pensive, like he’s looking for a weakness in your armor you didn’t even know you had, like he can see straight through you. 

CLOTHING STYLE: Designer suits, designer t-shirts and jeans, luxurious fabrics that feel nice against his back and shoulders, expensive watches, silk ties, all neutral and dark colors. Even his casual is dressed up from the average person. He also has several different canes with different heads on them. 

JEWELRY: He has a weakness for a nice watch, and if he’s in public he’s probably wearing his wedding ring. He also considers a cane as an accessory, and changes which one he uses depending on what he’s wearing.  

MAKEUP: None. 

ALLERGIES: None. 

DIET: He never had to cook for himself, so he generally orders out from Verona’s nicer restaurants. He drinks socially, and doesn’t really indulge in sugar that often. If Lucien is there and feels like cooking, he’ll eat whatever his husband makes. 

PHYSICAL AILMENTS: Ronan was born with limb-girdle muscular dystrophy, which means the muscles in his arms, shoulders, and legs are weakened. His lower back is curved, and the bones of his shoulders protrude in something called “scapular winging”. He wears a back brace most of the time to prevent a pronounced hunch and to lessen the pain in his spine, and he attends physical therapy anywhere from once to three times a week to deal with it.  

PSYCHOLOGY

JUNG TYPE: ENTP 

ENNEAGRAM TYPE: Type 3, The Achiever. The success-oriented, pragmatic type: adaptable, excelling, driven, and image conscious. 

MORAL ALIGNMENT: Lawful Evil

TEMPERAMENT: Choleric 

ELEMENT: Fire

PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE TYPE: Intra-personal Intelligence. 

MENTAL CONDITIONS/DISORDERS: None officially diagnosed--a case could probably be made for narcissistic personality disorder. 

SOCIABILITY: Ronan is very sociable--after being forced to the shadows throughout his entire childhood, he loves nothing more than commanding a room, than being the center of everyone’s attention. He doesn’t care about people on a deeper level than that, but he likes being around them--he’d be a terrible politician if he wasn’t able to make people believe that they liked him, that he had their best interests at heart. Again I quote Les Miserables, “He was a charming young man, capable of being terrible.”  

EMOTIONAL STABILITY: Ronan doesn’t allow his emotion to get the better of him most of the time--he believes that emotion gets in the way of logic, prevents people from making the best, most rational decisions. He’d like to be cold and unfeeling, but more often than not his heart has a habit of getting in the way. He genuinely fell in love with Rafaella, it genuinely hurt when she left him, etc. He has a temper, but he’s worked very hard on keeping it under control. 

OBSESSION(S): power and money, being understood. 

COMPULSION(S): He doesn’t feel compelled to do anything--he refuses to be compelled to do anything. He is always in control. 

PHOBIA(S): Failure, Irrelevance. 

ADDICTION(S): Ronan isn’t addicted to anything. 

DRUG USE: Nothing recreationally.

ALCOHOL USE: He drinks socially, but he likes to be fully in control, fully able to observe everyone and everything going on around him. 

PRONE TO VIOLENCE?: Absolutely, violence is the quickest way to come to solutions, or to prove that you’re more powerful than your opponent. Violence is necessary if you want to get anywhere in Verona. 

MANNERISMS

SPEECH STYLE: Clear, properly enunciated, verbose. 

ACCENT: Italian

QUIRKS: Twisting his wedding ring, tapping his fingers against a nearby surface, never quite smiling, rubbing his hand over the juncture between his neck and shoulder. 

HOBBIES: Reading, playing chess, playing the violin, occasionally strolling through art galleries. He doesn’t have a lot of leisure time, and prefers to be actively doing something useful. 

NERVOUS TICKS: Twisting his wedding ring primarily, other than that he doesn’t like to show weakness, and has trained himself out of having a lot of ticks. 

DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS: Ronan was cast aside the minute he was born, told repeatedly that he was monstrous simply because of a twist of fate that he had no control over. He wants to prove just how monstrous he truly is, and that he is capable of so much more than anyone ever thought he would be--he wants to see the faces of everyone in Verona when the monster they created comes to his throne to lead them. He wants control of the Montagues, the Capulets, and he wants control of Verona. 

FEARS: failure, being alone, becoming anything like either of his parents. 

POSITIVE TRAITS: intelligent, charismatic, perceptive. 

NEGATIVE TRAITS: manipulative, cruel, self-centered

SENSE OF HUMOR: dry, sarcastic, often at the expense of whoever he’s talking to. 

DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?: Not really, he thinks it betrays a lack of intelligence. But if he feels like the person he’s talking to will respond better to it, he’ll let something slip. 

FAVORITES

ACTIVITY: Working, visiting Renzo at The Dark Lady, scheming. 

ANIMAL: He compares himself to a wolf, or to a snake--vicious, hungry, frightening creatures. 

BEVERAGE: Vodka Martini 

BOOK: Frankenstein, Il Principe, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Memoirs of Hadrian, The Art of War, Wuthering Heights

COLOR: Navy Blue

DESIGNER: Yves St. Laurent, Burberry, Gucci

FOOD: Food isn’t really something he enjoys--its an annoyance he has to put up with in order to survive. 

FLOWER: Hellebore

GEM: Sapphire 

HOLIDAY: Ronan thinks holidays are trivial, and generally ignores them. 

MOVIE: Todd Browning’s 1931 adaptation of Dracula, Andrea Arnold’s 2011 adaptation of Wuthering Heights, Lawrence of Arabia 

QUOTE/SAYING:

“beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict.” 

-MARY SHELLEY, FRANKENSTEIN 

SCENT: Amouage--Jubilation XXV Man 

SPORT: None. 

TELEVISION SHOW: Hannibal, Game of Thrones, The Tudors

WEATHER: Dark and stormy. 

VACATION DESTINATION: His family owns property in Sweden that he has a few vaguely fond memories of. He also owns a place in Rome that he likes to go to when he needs space. 

ATTITUDES

GREATEST DREAM: To basically fashion himself a kind of king in Verona. He may be named after Richard III, who tried to do the same thing, but Ronan vows that he will be successful where is namesake failed. 

MOST AT EASE WHEN: He’s by himself and doesn’t have to wear any kind of mask--the only person he can fully trust is himself, therefore in private he puts forward the least amount of effort to disguise himself. 

LEAST AT EASE WHEN: His family is mentioned--particularly anything having to do with their deaths. He used to be at ease whenever Lucien was around, but in the present he feels like he has to be on his guard, whenever his husband decides to show his face. 

WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN: Someone manages to outplay him, to reveal his machinations and get him killed. 

BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT: Being elected to the Verona city council, taking his family fortune for himself, becoming bigger than the abuse his parents hurled at him. 

BIGGEST REGRET: Letting Rafaella walk away from him, marrying Lucien in an effort to fill the hole that she left. 

TOP PRIORITIES: Ascending in the ranks, eliminating anyone who he sees as a potential threat, gathering allies to himself. 

[w34rdk1dc0r3]

Why Killed Markiplier EXPLAINED (notes)

Hi these are my notes- they’re very sparatic and hard to understand but I figured y’all might want them. They were made while watching Markiplier’s latest stream—the time stamps are for DAMIEN and when Mark paused to explain. I don’t have the time stamps for where he explained everything though!! Sorry!

TLDR; this is me frantically taking notes on whatever Mark said related to DAMIEN. :)) these are unedited, so take the spelling errors and stuff with a grain of salt.

WKM notes:

-0:57 (Go Back to Sleep reference) “oh these are parallels - yeah you’re right these are parallels”. Opening shot of Damien from 0:04 of GBTS. Go back to sleep = wanted to make Damien. “This is the mood I want”. DIRECT PARALLEL.

-Opening, establishing, environment. THIS IS JUST HOW FAR DAMIEN WENT EVERY DAY; HE HAD TO GO THIS FAR JUST TO GET WOOD. VERY LONG WALK.

-1:05 Celine is an observer, waiting for him to come back.

-2:11 Wanted to flesh our Celine as a character. Celine = Unknown. “I am not a perfect writer, I’m not a great writer; I’m better than I was.” Celine introduced as not a perf character: motivations UNKNOWN/never determined. “Don’t trust the seer” =\= don’t know what she does/represents. Damien brother/sister canon; had something to care for. THERE TO PROTECT HER BROTHER!!!!! Damien has simple job.

-3:22 “mostly like- I wanted to write dialogue to establish relationship” Celine = overprotective controlling older sibling. Nice dynamic/friendly/showcase flower is not normal. THINGS ARE LOOPING; Celine stops “did u really see a flower?”; strange. SQUISHED. “Starting to sound like mom”

-3:30ish Damien SUDDENLY GETS TIRED. On a LOOP. Winter will be over soon. Trees covering hills = every day he goes to cut a tree. Endless trees. Living SAME EXACT DAY. Celine goes out at night to do business/job. NUMBER OF TREES NOT THE POINT. PURGATORY. FLOWER = FIRST CHBGE.

-4:40 flower: PINK!!!!! dialogue EXACT LINES from WMLWS. Winter -> spring, leaving purgatory. Flower = warfstache peeling back layers covering up world/crack code of matrix/starting to spread out. Flower just a result of warfstache coming to terms with what’s happening and where it’s going. Time is wishy washy. Time has no start or finish of it. Exists = always existed. Everything unified space, someone breaking rules over HERE spills out and effects others in that place. Rules change = rules change for everyone. Dialogue saying that THIS is a RESULT of warfstache, not!!! a conscious choice.

-5:21 pattern!!!!! established

-6:52 something is definitely changing and Celine is worried. Celine goes out to HUNT FOR ACTOR!MARK, NOT TO GUARD. GONNA KILL ACTOR!MARK. Go back to sleep/wake up: duality of two characters having to share a body. Celine made THIS place for broken things(Damien!!). Celine made mistakes in WKM; misjudged actor capabilities. Celine always tries to protect Damien!!!’ she would do LITERALLY ANYTHING to protect Damien. “YOU NEED SLEEP”-damien can stay “alive” only because he sleeps. Not getting enough sleep= you absolutely need to sleep while Celine is out bc you can only be yourself if that is so.

-7:45 bc warfstache is unintentionally breaking universe they’re in, actor!mark can take advantage of it. NOT deception. This day is important because change started NOW—everything before was looping. Damien cutting wood/useless task = Celine’s stuff in an endless loop too (finding mark). SOME control, not IN control. No one is IN CONTROL. Matter of them both being in purgatory until warfstache comes to term with his place in the world.

-8:32 can see shadow of figure in ice.

-9:33Damien’s led to believe Celine is in the water lol. Door of cabin locked from outside. (Flower)= no meaning. “Everything is very plain. With this, it is similar. Everything is very plain.” Too focuses on the details. Winter = seems like purgatory.

-10:02 voices - wanted something to fill the spaces of everything. Auditoría Kay engaging. Hearing things behind the scenes. “Why are you hearing voices?” Not abt what the voices are saying.

-10:13 Actor!Mark; very hard to voice 2 diff characters and have them sound remotely different.

-11:01 Wilford/A!Mark same line. Convey two different people who both (at this time of story) were saying apologies. TWO confrontations happen = similar (detective warfstache/Damien Mark). Similar convos, different people. Things happen in different ways because who they are. Will actually says an apology, actor mark NEVER apologizes.

-12:07 very first conversation we have with the actor. ONLY SAID ONE LINE “welcome welcome one and all, etc.” If something is not ON THE SCREEN or implied in some way, it isn’t 100% proven. Going through summary is PROOF of his crime. “Plans weren’t exactly properly executed”. What he wanted only happened 50%

-13:01 “Celine needed to have motivation to have a character/drive”. Can’t just say actor wanted revenge without painting the kind of person he is. He can’t imagine other people not loving that; thinks he’s doing Damien a favor. HES A NARCISSIST. “Nobody is fully evil or fully good”. Reason he thinks he’s the hero is bc if his perspective, he IS; everyone else is the villain/did him wrong.

-13:43 “oh yeah Wilford STOLE Celine from me lol” STUPID AND NARCISSISM WACK. His career tanked after she left. “It’s her fault bc he lost everything”. “I’m gracious because I decided to move on”.

-14:28 Damien starting to remember but doesn’t understand everything; big dummy softy. Doesn’t realize he’s KINDA dead. Rotten corpse = his reflection.

-14:59 actor wants MORE characters in his story; he wants a villain. Confusion of what you’re supposed to do- represents Damien’s confliction “when do I have a CHOICE??”

-15:30 for so long Wilford/actor have been “If Celine even saw me she would rip my heart out”; “Celine is a FUCKISBNG badass.”

-16:18 Damien just wants to make a choice “life is ours to CHOOSE”. Fire going out = Damien feels dead. Cold, dead.

-17:07 music=wanted to carry on emotional connection. Celine: “I’m tired” she has never slept; watching, hunting, NOT RESTING. Celine is a creature of willpower that she powers through it. Damien: “Am I dead?” Celine: “NO!!” Not on my watch; wall cracking-> sanctuary crumbling. “...no” :(( “I’m so tired”. Celine both starts to admit defeat, but then she picks herself back up. Damien cares so much about her and is very protective about her. Shared line: “just be careful/I can take care of myself (I don’t need help, especially from you.” If she keeps going down this path, she’ll never get out of it (same thing with Abe). Damien/Will want to help.

-17:23 “I know you can’t take care of me forever”; Damien making a choice, IMPORTANT. He trusts that Celine is trying to do the best for him; knows whatever she’s doing/her motives are, at the end of the day, she’s his sister and he wants to help. Whether or not that means things will change for him. Damien’s one moral: This is a story about coming to terms that life throws at you. About someone that didn’t choose things to happen to them, but (In mark’s mind) it’s not about what happens, it’s about how you respond. The choices you make when that happens; it may not always work out but those choices define who you are as a person. At the end of it all, Damien doesn’t understand but he knows Celine can’t do “this” alone.

-17:54 Damien knows he can’t go back to the life he had, and he’s okay with that. “He’s OK that Celine tried to fix, but trying to fix him will get her killed. And he’s okay with him not being fixed”.

-19:49 Celine has been doing everything herself; Damien is offering help. CELINE ISNT DEAD HECK YEAH. “This isn’t a place of the mind-“ fake water. SHE IS SLEEPING UWU UWU. MARKIPLIER TV INSTANTLY AFTER THIS.

-EXTRAS:

•Overarching meaning/story: “These are stories.” In the universe, the world they live in after WKM is stories. They’re acting our scripts/videos because they are characters in stories. It doesn’t matter what was said, it matters why. Celine/Damien live in that story because she made up a narrative for them. Nothing happening in DAMIEN is truly real. Actor wants the ideas of hero’s/villains, he wants to imagine and play pretend. The house is just an analogy for Mark’s imagination/head. CANON that there are plot holes.

EX Detective Abe: (WMLWS) He is going to be the detective in every story. Whatever detective role he needs to be. Doesn’t know why he has to hunt Will down. Hasn’t lived “The Detective”’s life, so he doesn’t know the details, doesn’t have the script. Wilford is acting out of the script because he isn’t IN the script; he’s having FUN.

•Damien: empathy / Warfstahce: insanity, zany, doesn’t always make sense, goofy, fun!!! / ACTOR: Narcissistic part of Mark.

•In “this universe” (the Masson/mark’s Brain), characters act out their lives-> transformed where life doesn’t make sense.

•Not all characters are a part of MARKIPLIERS personality. Characters not representing mark were before actually mark. Went in the mansion ->they were trapped there, the mind (of another Mark?).

•The viewer is, under those terms (an observer), right there, behind the class. They’re the viewer.

•After WKM, we’re watching everything unfold. We’re forced to be an observer -> we can’t change or do anything, only watch. We aren’t trapped with the characters.

•In CANON, Damien -> Markiplier TV.

•A Date with Markiplier doesn’t wrap in with this. Everything happens AFTER WKM.

•Actor SPIRALED bc he couldn’t accept that he lost roles/his wife left him. His choice was to create a situation that tore his entire friendship/ppl that cared abt him apart. He killed/destroyed lives/did terrible things bc that’s how he replied.

•Warfstache was thrown into situation where former friend contrived a situation that took everything away from him. Justification was madness; things didn’t make sense to him so he choose to role with it and enjoy things while they were there. Temporary nature of life is why it’s so precious. Lives in the NOW, the MOMENT.

•Damien has no choice of what was happening. Didn’t understand why his friends tore themselves apart/Will didn’t care/Mark dead/sister suddenly there performing occult things. He was robbed and had things stolen from him; he’s the kind of person that wants to help, he also wants revenge. But the point is: the choices that led him to where he was were choices that helped the ppl he cares abt.

•Who is the character in this universe that is the opposite of Mark (what he said abt darkiplier)?

[faiakishi]

Well Delilah was a child when all the horrors happened to her. I don't think she was upset that it happened to her, just that people allowed it to happen. and suddenly she is supposed to care about the same people who built the world she suffered in. Fat chance. If you have been never taught empathy, you will never learn to show it.

Okay, back the fuck up. I wasn’t really planning to go on My Delilah Rant tonight, but I guess this is going down.

Shit’s under the cut because I know this is going to be long.

“Well, these horrible things happened to Delilah as a child” You’re absolutely right. It is horrible. You want to know who else had a shitty childhood? Oh, about half the people in the game.

Let’s look at Daud, for instance. Daud canonically A) is a product of rape, which resulted in B) his mother literally murdered his father, (justifiably, but still) and raised him as a single parent in a foreign country where she was treated like dirt, likely didn’t even know the language, and had to be brutal just to get by, which ended when C) he was kidnapped as a child by a man who exploited him and likely abused him, and it’s implied that Daud ended up snapping and killing him before being unleashed onto the world. Yeah. Not really great formative years. Not a whole lot of teaching him empathy and personal responsibility, was there?

Or Billie Lurk. The child of two broke drunks who didn’t give a shit about her. Her mother physically abused her and her biological father isn’t even mentioned aside from one line from the Heart, so Billie quite possibly may not even know who he was. She was a hungry, homeless kid who at fifteen watched as her first love was brutally murdered by an aristocrat for-what? Annoying them with her presence? They literally killed her because they fucking felt like it and laughed about it. And when Billie retaliated-because she knew they wouldn’t face any repercussions for killing a street girl, people like her were disposable, those boys were supposed to be her betters-she was hunted down like a dog and spent a year on the run, completely alone, because she’d be brought to face ‘justice’ for doing to Radanis Abele what he did to Deirdre. She was taken in by a man who taught her she had to cut throats and be merciless in order to get ahead, and that lagging behind would mean a knife in the ribs for people like them. She learned she had to be terrible if she wanted to survive. Also not great for learning how to be empathetic, but she sure still managed it.

“Oh but those are the bad guys” Yep. That’s intentional. I purposely did not mention the ‘good guys’ to give this comparison a more even contrast. Billie and Daud both did terrible, awful things. What sets them apart from Delilah is that they don’t try and excuse it with ‘my childhood!’ Their brutal childhoods definitely played a part in their formation but ultimately, they accept that they are responsible for the choices they made and understand that their actions had a negative impact. And they care about that. They feel guilty. They both refer to themselves as evil people and see themselves as beyond redemption, but still try to make up for their sins not because they want to feel better about themselves but because they feel like they should. They still have a functioning fucking moral compass, despite the ‘bad childhood’ experience. They aren’t trying to say ‘my actions were okay because x’. (and likewise, nobody in the fandom really should either-their actions weren’t excusable, that’s the point) They still have a sense of empathy. That doesn’t make them good people or even redeemable, but it makes them understandable.

Now let’s look at Delilah. For starters-Delilah is a narcissist. She literally meets every criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. (She’s also very obviously a sociopath and is probably host to multiple other mental disorders, but I’m just going to focus on the first one)Narcissists have, at best, a very warped sense of history, and are at worst delusional.

There’s absolutely 0 proof that Delilah is Euhorn Kaldwin’s daughter, for one. In fact, there’s evidence against it. She didn’t come forward to take the throne during the first game, the ideal time to come out as Euhorn’s long-lost second daughter-she doesn’t even say she’s Euhorn’s daughter until DH2! Her story is inconsistent. And she gets her father’s hair color wrong, which is weird; it’s kind of flimsy evidence but I’m pointing it out anyway.

But let’s assume that she is a Kaldwin, to make things simpler. That Euhorn Kaldwin knew she was his daughter, treated her like so and promised her shit, and that it all ended when she got in trouble for breaking a decoration and that was the sole reason her mother was fired and Euhorn Kaldwin decided to conveniently ignore the fact that his daughter and mistress were living on the streets. (yeah, there’s more to that story) At what point was that Jessamine’s fault? Jessamine was a literal fucking child. She didn’t lie with the intent of making Delilah homeless and getting her mother killed. She shouldn’t have lied, yeah, but she was a kid and didn’t understand. Delilah’s hatred of Jessamine is so strong that she plans to remove her daughter’s soul-her daughter, someone who wasn’t even born at the time and had nothing to do with it-and inhabit her body, and would have likely arranged to have Jessamine and Corvo murdered if Burrows hadn’t done so. She defaces her memorial and still rants about her even in the last mission of DH2-you know, after Jessamine is at peace. She’s been dead for fifteen years and has literally faded from existence, and Delilah still can’t get over her anger at her. For telling a lie. About forty years ago.

(also, I just want to point out, NPD on the level that Delilah displays it does not freaking happen overnight. Delilah was likely a child narcissist. So the whole “Daddy I pwoooomise I’ll be a good girl, wHaT dId I DooOOoO’ act-yeah, no, that’s complete bullshit, it did not happen like that. If it happened at all, she was using it as a manipulation tactic. I can tell you what I suspect happened but I know if I do someone will scream ‘you’re just making shit up’ and use it to discount my entire argument, so I’m just going to leave that bit out)

Alright, so we got that established. Delilah went through some shit. She’s angry about it. And that’s 100% understandable! Anyone would be mad!

The problem is what she did with that anger.

Delilah focused 100% on enacting pain to ‘make up’ for what happened to her as a kid. This included people like Jessamine, who her retribution against doesn’t, you know, really match the crime. But it also included people like Emily and Corvo, who had nothing to do with that. Included people like Billie and Daud, who were already fucked over by those same circumstances that fucked her over. Included the lower class who were actively being fucked over by those circumstances. They didn’t ‘build the world that made her suffer’. The world is making them suffer too!

I could understand if Delilah’s plan was ‘fire and brimstone to this because it caused me so much grief’, and then worked to build a better society where people like her didn’t get fucked over. I could understand if that was Delilah’s motivation to take the throne.

But it wasn’t. Delilah wanted the throne because it was hers. She’s the rightful Empress, she’s perfect and wonderful, she’s a literal god, don’t you see?! Why aren’t you worshipping her?!!

She did not give a single shit that this system existed. She did not care about all the people it crushed under its boot. She was angry because she was better than those people, and how dare they act like she isn’t!

“Buh-but she was never taught empathy!” We’ve already established that Delilah has no excuse not to have a sense of morality. People who survived much worse conditions managed to form one. And even if no one ever showed her kindness, it would only take a scrap of self-awareness to realize that she was making others suffer just as others made her. She just didn’t give a shit.

Now, let’s move onto Delilah as a ruler. She lets her coven run wild. They murder indiscriminately-rich folk, guards, peasants, doesn’t matter. They torment and kill because they enjoy it. She encourages Luca Abele to treat Serkonos as his personal piggyback and playground. She thinks it’s funny how he fucks people over. She never sees the irony of that. She’s incapable of seeing it because those people are just her subjects. Not even in the monarchic sense, she literally sees them as just objects to serve her.

The only person, by the way, that she doesn’t treat like a disposable commodity is Breanna Ashworth. She’s the only one Delilah seems to have any genuine respect and love for. (she still gets over her death quite quickly, which plays into her sociopathy, but that’s another argument) Even Luca Abele, she sees more as a pet than a lover and partner. She shows her coven some moderate respect, because they worship her indiscriminately, but even them she doesn’t seem to care about too terribly much. Her allies are nothing to her. She turns Ramsey to stone because-why? They let him out of the saferoom and his first action wasn’t to prostrate himself and thank her for gracing him with her attention? She does this to literally anyone who annoys her.

So all those people screaming “well Emily wasn’t a perfect Empress either” well, you don’t have to worry about the Empress daydreaming during court because Delilah had Parliament torched! Court isn’t held! Delilah kills anyone who ever even suggests she do her job, because Delilah has no actual interest in ruling. She just wants to take from Jessamine and be worshipped as the god she knows she is.

When Delilah got crushed under the boot of the Empire, she was not mad that it happened. She was mad because she wasn’t the one doing the crushing.

This all, by the way, isn’t me saying that Delilah is bad as a character. On the contrary, I think Delilah is a beautifully written character! It’s just that not every character is meant to be redeemable. That’s not a requirement of being a well-written villain. And that, ultimately, is my problem with Delilah’s depiction in DH2 and a lot of the fandom’s response to her. Because she isn’t redeemable. Trying to throw a sympathetic backstory at her in order to justify her actions just comes off as cheap, because it does not explain why she does what she did. It basically says she just did it all out of anger and hate, which is not really a sympathetic standpoint.

She’s an awful person who took joy in hurting others, not out of her own pain but because she enjoyed having the ability to cause it. She has no excuse for any of it. She doesn’t care to excuse it. In her mind, this is how things should be. She’s the god. Everyone else are just objects to orbit her. It’s a fantasy incompatible with reality. And in trying to make it a reality, she becomes the oppressor she always railed against. She never sees the irony of that.

That is why Delilah is a Bad Person.

[bramblepaws]

meat uhh part 3. where dirk Starts Talking A Lot

ughhhh i already don’t like this lol

but i’m going to... try to accept evil dirk into my heart or whatever. just.. what is the purpose of this? to create an unreliable narrator? to make us question even the canon timeline? or to believe that dirk is controlling everything for a certain purpose, rather than the narrative, therefore making the Purpose more ambiguous in both what it’s going to be and its morality? because dirk is a “the ends justify the means” kind of guy, from what i’ve seen, and i Really don’t want this to be. that kind of story. although i guess it already is, what with the ghosts and the kids getting just Absolutely Brutally Obliterated. 

it is interesting to have this happen after i completed the candy route, though the more i read of Meat the more i think i was probably supposed to do Meat first. not-jade’s big exposition on narrative was incredibly interesting, but completely out of context and strange until This. 

but applying that conversation to this narrative shift is interesting. because now my personal biases against Dirk are coming into play. i Don’t trust him to have the other characters’ best interests at heart, whereas I DID trust the original narrator in that sense. Or at least I trusted the original narrator to Try. i expect Dirk is just going to shuffle his pawns around because he’s distanced himself from them so much & trusts his own definition of their best interests, without taking any input from them. 

but the main question i have is..... is Dirk orchestrating this timeline? or is he simply telling it? he is implying a level of control over the narrative that’s all-encompassing (sans roxy, apparently). so... i dunno. i’ll read more. but i’m finding this change annoying rather than intriguing at the moment, Entirely because i don’t trust Dirk to provide satisfying arcs for the other characters. 

anyways

Hell Yea

roxy continues 2 b the most relatable character in homestuck 4 me, even in the epilogues, Nice,

dirk if you’re literally writing this you can go back. and backspace. and replace the words. u focking Idiot. this is in a written format and you KNOW that, Fool

jade’s fuckin CUTE

also Dirk’s perspective on her flitting from couch to couch and person to person because she was alone for so long is interesting. it’s funny, because i would absolutely see her actions as being in-character if i looked at it on paper? like... Character lives by herself on an island for a long time, Character is raised literally by a dog and has 0 human interaction for the first 13 years of her life. Character then goes through a long traumatic experience where she has to fight for her life and sees a lot of people die. Character ends up in a place where all of her friends are concentrated in a single area. Character now has no social etiquette skills, and wants to spend time with EVERYONE, so flits from couch to couch and sleeps around a lot. THAT ALL IS LIKE... VALID? 

but for Some Reason “character then tries to enter a poly relationship with her two best friends who are clearly uncomfortable with the concept” doesn’t fit anywhere in there. and the angle at which it’s been happening doesn’t.. make sense? with jade? it’s too. surface level. there’s no indication that she feels any sort of weirdness about it, or any sort of confusion about what she’s supposed to be doing, which WOULD fit. people don’t just throw themselves into such a huge change without any internal feelings. but there’s no evidence of them! and THAT is why she feels so OOC in this whole thing, in both universes. 

her being blind to social norms would be fine, but she wouldn’t be blind To The Fact that she doesn’t know them. she’d be super hyperaware of that! it’s not like she doesn’t have EMPATHY, she can SEE when other people are exhibiting the same signs of discomfort she would. her not knowing how to react to that would be fair, but she WOULD notice. she’s so smart! and humans are like... hard-wired to At Least Notice. 

anyways long story short: hussie give my girl Emotions. why are half of the women characters coming across as flat in this epilogue. bitch

oh nice i love davekat

I Also Love Kanaya

the fact that dave canonically is A Huge Dork and that multiple characters have made fun of him for it is great

this made me smile i love these kids. er. adults

also im thinkin that my pervasive thought of this read-through is proobabblyy gonna be “shut up dirk” because i’ve thought it at least 5 times already

this is my favorite line in all of homestuck

also 16-year-old-me is trying to rise up out of the inner workings of my brain and take note of alien biology facts that dave is talking about and i keep having to beat her back with a stick. I REFUSE!!

precious....

also i can’t tell if dirk is being.. like. facetious about the timing shit? or if he is actually beholden to the timeline. 

hey kanaya i love you

[luriashrine]

kabsks you’re gonna hate me bUT I KINDA WANNA KNOW THE ANSWERS TO ALL QUESTIONS FOR CELIA (and maybe Fai if u want!) except maybe number 5 bc i dunno if it fits, you decide!! INFO DUMP ME!!!!

NOW HOW CAN I HATE YOU FOR ALLOWING ME TO INFO DUMP AS MUCH AS I COULD?!  Be prepared for some weird errors, I’m heading back out and I tried to finish this in the little time I have at the moment ;0; 

1. What would completely break your character.

Here’s the sad thing, Celia is already broken. For a large part of her childhood to adolescent to late teenage years, she had to endure so much shit. It doesn’t help one bit that The Lich makes damn sure to live through her trauma each and every day during her training. For three long years, she had to witness her family dying over and over again just so that she can learn to desensitize herself (it’s best to think of her training in The Box as though she was trapped in a time loop with different outcomes depending on her choices or what The Lich wants to throw at her).

Aside from total failure in completing her end of the contract, nothing can break Celia but even that is debatable since some of her actions throughout ATEW suggests otherwise (there are times in the story where Celia tries to goad Adrian into killing her in order to stop but he seriously couldn’t in the beginning).

2. What was the best thing in your character’s life?

Her family, more importantly, Marcel and Remei. But they’re gone now and for a long while she had nothing she considered important. Until she finally opens up to Fai and later on Nessie. Seeing Phoebe’s kingdom come crumbling down would be another great thing in her life…

3. What was the worst thing in your character’s life?

Fai and Celia did not get off on the right foot. At first Fai thought that protecting a sociopathic brat like Celia was the worst thing ever, especially since she’s someone who is fine with getting her hands dirty which consequently means that she always jumps headfirst into danger(hRM DOESN’T THAT SOUND FAMILIAR YOU BUTT ADJNAKS seriously though, he does the same at times but to him when Celia did it was annoying). Eventually, through time they do bond and now the worst thing in Fai’s life is how much he’s in love with her despite knowing what will happen once she completes her contract.

Still… Celia’s recklessness and overconfidence in herself scare him nowadays…

4. What seemingly insignificant memories stuck with your character.

The first time she ever had paella after a kindly couple (Kyrie and Santiago) took her in for a couple of weeks… it’s extremely insignificant but the impact of the event meant so much to her and there are times where she could still taste the fluffy, sunny-colored rice and the multitude of spices after spending a couple of years in shitty orphanages eating moldy bread (bread that she would have to steal from other children due to food rations), watery soup and this bland grey mush that had the proper nutrients in it but very little substance to it. Kyrie had prepared that dish out on a whim one day, after he had fed her so many other wonderful dishes ever since he took her in but all of the flavoring in the paella stuck out the most to her. Much to her embarrassment, she cried after eating the dish. She wasn’t crying just because she was having good food but because for the first time in a long time she was eating dinner with a family once more and that revelation struck Celia so hard she was overwhelmed with emotion.  

I wrote a drabble but for Fai, Celia showing Fai that sweet fairy poo. Her laugh was the most magical thing on the planet. SHE ALSO HAS THE CUTEST DIMPLES WHEN SHE LEGIT SMILES AND THAT DESTROYS HIM YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!!

5. I’M SORRY, I REALLY TRIED BUT I CAN’T ANSWER!! CELIA’S JOB IS TO KILL AND SHE DOESN’T REALLY ENJOY KILLING ALL THAT MUCH, SURE SHE’S GROWN DEATTACHED AND HAS NO PROBLEM WITH IT BUT… YEAH!

6. what is your character reluctant to tell people.

Celia has a lot to hide which is understandable given her circumstances meanwhile Fai is too reluctant with telling anyone else that he’s in love with Celia this is mostly because Shadows aren’t really supposed to have any feelings and falling in love with a human is considered… strange to say the least.

7. How does your character feel about sex?

I’LL TRY TO BE A MATURE ADULT WITH TALKING ABOUT THIS BUT IDK I STILL FEEL WEIRD TALKING NSFW WITH MY OCS, not uncomfortable just jadksbldns. But anyway!!! 

Celia and her very unabashed view, as well as the immense pleasure she takes in it, ties into a lot of things such as her self-worth as well as her nasty habit of smothering herself in more risky behaviors whenever she’s going through a mania episode since sex is just one of many self-destructive behaviors. On top of all those things, for a short time she had a slight fear of emotional attachment before meeting with Fai, having sex with no strings attached was ideal for Celia. This doesn’t mean that she’s thirsty.txt 24/7 just because she’s shameless and has sexual confidence, sex is not always on her mind… but she’s not one to say no to whoever offers to have sex with her either.

Fai on the other hand… he is very much a thot when it comes to his lovers. SO UH!!! 

8. how many friends does your character have?

WEEPS!!!! I’ve said time and time again that Celia is a true neutral, she has a grey moral outlook with little to no regard for a lot of things since as rules and the like… however, so many people will regard her as cruel or even evil due to her many actions in both a meta sense and in the story sense as well. So, yeah… she doesn’t really have many friends because of this aspect of her and has tons of enemies. After she opens up to Fai she later does befriend Nessie and makes an attempt to at the very least try to bond with her resistance members since they are doing all of the heavy hard work and she appreciates their loyalty to her.

9. how many friends does your character want?

This is the question that upsets me the most. It’s a bit of a mixed bag here since there is a large part of Celia that years for companionship but because of all of the events she had to go through during ATEW (most of which she almost died in) she has a natural distrust of everyone and her paranoia convinces Celia that everyone is out to get her. She honest to god hates being alone with her thoughts since she has to relive her trauma. She prefers the company of others not only to satisfy her needs for social interaction and attention too but to distract from her mind. 

10. What would your character make a scene in public about?

She doesn’t really like making scenes in public, Celia is someone who works in from the shadows of the slums first and foremost due to the many people who are out to get her whether they be human, spirits she’s upset or the gods there is a price for her head for all of the crime she’s committed. As such, she doesn’t really like making any scenes of any sorts but there is an extremely rare expectation to that face and that expectation is that if she’s feeling highly emotionally. Once again, this plays into her mania episodes of her manic depression and on top of that, years of just bottling away her trauma, anger and a plethora of many other emotions she tries to shut down through dissociation. After having an emotional breakdown she will feel pretty shitty with some sense of catharsis.

11. For what would your character give their life?

If losing her life has some value in completing whatever goals she has, then she would gladly give up her life for that sake with no hesitance. Later on, where Celia actually develops and makes a legit human connection with other people she would find that she has no problem with giving up her life for them if it’s worth it in the end. Fai is well aware of both facts and he always cries silently to himself.

Fai risks his life mostly for glory and being an actual adrenaline junkie. Nothing noble behind his actions.

12. what are your character’s major flaws.

I’ve already talked about it with Celia but her major, major flaw would have to be her envy and how much it blinds her, the fact that she has little empathy, is prideful/arrogant, suffers from a superiority/inferiority complex etc. etc.

I’d like to talk about Fai though! He’s apparent frivolous nature is a huge, huge flaw of his as he sometimes underestimates his opponents in battle and constantly undermines himself as well because he doesn’t really use all of his powers when fighting. He’s too carefree/playful and that’s his greatest trait about him but also his worst. I don’t really need to go too much in depth about how much his recklessness gets him in trouble or all of the weird mess he would get himself into lol… the dragon fighting is suffice enough. 

13. what does your character pretend or try to care about?

Omg… I can’t help but think of this with Celia whenever someone finds out about her lies, she would act so deadpan once she’s caught in the act because chances are you already have a bullet through your head lol!!!! Her paranoia and overall perfectionist attitude won’t allow for her to let a silly mistake like that live for long.

Fai tries to pretend that he cares about The Lich and to his credit he almost follows their orders. Make what you will out of that.

14. how does the image your character tries to project differ from the image they actually project.

Celia has well over 3439203023 different personas since she’s very meticulous in how she wants to present herself to others in order to seem all the more appealing to them. As we all know, her acting is a crock of shit!! I wouldn’t go as far as to say that the real Celia is a terrible person and leave it at that, it takes away so much of her character because there’s so much more to her than her terrible life choices and actions.  

With Fai, aside from his poker face that he wears when on duty, what you see is what you get because of how much of a shit he doesn’t give when it comes to presentation.

15. what is your character afraid of?

Blood. Ironic, isn’t it? For all of the lives that Celia takes and all of the blood she’s shed for the sake of her goal, just a mere glance at it and she relives through the night of her trauma all over again. She hates the sight, the smell and overall feel of it hence why she prefers to use long ranged weapons combined with her magic in order to not see blood spill from her victims. I think I’ve mentioned this before but Celia hates bleeding out not just because of her fear towards blood but because of how shitty her body is, it tends to take a while for a wound to clot and close up so she can bleed for hours on end with no signs of stopping (I’m not even touching on the fact how she suffers from minor internal bleeding either hence the high number of bruises she sometimes sports). I suppose getting caught by the military or Phoebe’s powers would be legitimate fears as well.

[hogwartswelcomesyou]

The Mods Discuss: Severus Snape

Tory: Okay, so first off, I would start with this contention – Snape is a prick, but he’s done some noble things. And more importantly, those traits do not have to be mutually exclusive. 

Star: To me, you can like a character, and still loathe them as a person. Snape in the real world would make me really angry, and he is completely evil, but as a character, he is incredibly well written, super complex and very flawed, but also has a lot of strengths. He’s done some very awful things, but he has also done some good. To me though, the bad outweighs the good.

Tory: Me personally, I wouldn’t say he’s evil – just completely and totally selfish. He has a very narrow and shallow world-view, and that means that he has an underdeveloped sense of empathy for others. I’ve known people like that, and they can definitely be frustrating. I guess it comes down to the question: is a good action done for a bad reason still good?

Star: bullying loads of students and exposing Lupin as a lycanthrope isn’t evil to you? Lupin was never able to find a job after that, and his assigning the paper on werewolves meant Lupin had to read essays from his students describing how to kill him, and he was likely overrun with panic of a student working it out. He also told Voldemort he didn’t care about Harry or James, so long as Lily lived, which is giving Voldy PERMISSION to kill a toddler, who has done nothing to him. As awful as it is, I can kind of understand his willingness to give up James, seeing James was awful to him at least the one time, but LETTING SOMEONE MURDER A BABY? And to answer you Tory, I don’t think so. If there is 0 other option and you absolutely must do something bad to achieve a good end, it’s not as bad, but if you do it out of laziness or inability to think ahead, then no.

Tory: Well, admittedly, the only one who actually finished the werewolf essay was Hermione, but that’s beside the point. I guess for me I personally have difficulty labeling someone as “evil” unless they are beyond redemption or any shred of goodness. Voldemort is evil. Bellatrix is evil. Umbridge is evil. Snape is a piss-poor excuse of a human being, capable of great cruelty and spite, but he also had the ability to love and was capable of great courage and selflessness. I guess for me I just see “evil” as an all-black term, with no potential for moral grayness – and Snape I do see as a gray character. 

Star: okay, so he’s not quite on the level of Umbridge or Voldy, but I still think he’s a gutless person. The fact that Neville is more scared of Snape than Bellatrix (the woman who tortured his parents into insanity!!), says a lot to me. And when it comes to Snape and Lily, i think for him it was more obsession and idolization of a person, I really don’t think it was love. And even if only ONE student completed the essay, he still had to read his best student who could have worked it out and turned him in, explaining how best to kill him, which would scare me silly. 

Tori: I’m also not comfortable labeling someone as evil, but for different reasons. ‘Evil’ is a subjective term that people can manipulate to fit their desires. In everyone’s eyes, the other person is evil. I do understand that there are characters, such as Voldemort, who are written to be the embodiment of evil. However, there were also circumstances that were beyond his control in the first place. (Ex: he had no capability to love.) To me, Snape is not an evil character. He certainly is not good, as we see him time and time again be emotionally abusive to students. I also agree with Star, I don’t think he actually loved Lily, but rather was infatuated with her. Love is an active choice, and Snape actively turned his back on Lily, the people she cared for, and the things that mattered to her. It was only until he realized that his choices were going to lead to her death that he felt remorse. Snape is not a good guy; he’s a jerk with some childish grudges that he needs to learn to let go. He’s also not completely bad either; he’s able to see the error of his ways. I think we as a fandom should stop trying to paint him as absolutely heroic or demonic, and just let him be the multi-faceted complex character that he was. He was man who made very bad decisions, and attempted to atone for them. 

Jinxy: I agree with Tori and Tory. I think that Snape definitely is a morally gray character who truly isn’t evil, but isn’t really good either. He does some awful things, he does some not-so-awful things. He recognizes that he did some bad things, but he was also the person who decided to make those decisions in the first place. He was very cruel to Harry for most of the series, and he’s driven heavily by his feud with James and feelings(?) for Lily. He does some seriously not okay stuff, but we do slowly see him try to correct his wrongdoings. I don’t like Snape as a person, he truly is cruel and mean, no matter what he does to try and fix it. But, as a character, he is one of the most intriguing, complex, characters that I have seen, which is something that I think that the fandom needs to recognize more. Someone can be a terrible person, and still be an interesting, complex character!

MoMo: Snape will always drive me insane. I was never a huge fan of him. He was rude and let his emotions control him and that’s not something I can find myself admiring. However, I’ve seen many arguments supporting his actions due to his past, and not just based upon his desire for Lily; he was abused, and everyone copes with abuse differently. On top of that, he’s sometimes interpreted as a creep, because of how he felt for Lily, but is it really so unreasonable? When she said she didn’t have romantic feelings for him and asked for him to back off, that’s exactly what he did. All he wanted was a friend, and that’s exactly what he never got. I’d be bitter too.

Boudica: Snape…..I definitely have no love for the man. While I support the efforts that where made for the Order where great. Overwhelming it’s a hard no. Everyone who’s ever been abused has a choice to make. How will I move on from my own trauma? Will I break the cycle or continue it? At nearly every point where he could have he didn’t. Color me not impressed.

Tori: I think we’ve come to an agreement that Snape definitely isn’t a good guy. I suppose it boils down to your interpretation of evil. 

Tory: I think that’s fair. To change gears slightly, I actually find the debate about whether or not Snape loved Lily quite compelling. I personally am in the middle – he definitely did not always put Lily’s feelings first, but he did still put a lot on the line solely out of devotion to her and her cause. Coming from someone who has people in my family who love me despite also consistently being self-centered and completely ignorant about my wishes, I could believe that someone can love another person while also not fully understanding everything love entails. And I could also believe that one’s definition of love can change. As an example, Darth Vader tries at first to coax Luke to the Dark Side so they can “rule the galaxy together as father and son” – I would argue in Vader’s self-focused, Dark-Side-corrupted head, he is showing love for his son, because he wants them on the same side, rather than as enemies. Later, however, he learns the true meaning of love when he sacrifices himself to save Luke. Even my own father has tried to pressure me into certain career paths out of misguided love. So I do feel like love can be expressed badly or not always fully understood.

Squish: Hm…Honestly I think everyone has these stages when it comes to Harry Potter (about Snape). The first stage would be hating him because you’ve only read some of the books and you may think he’s evil. The second, would be thinking he’s the hero of the whole thing, which may be true in some way (barely but okay). Finally, realizing that even though he did some good towards the end, he was a total creep who never got over his childhood crush. He even went so far to abuse her son because he reminded Snape of the man she truly loved. I’m sorry if I’m being harsh, but I really don’t like Snape as a character. It’s been brought to my attention of what it might’ve been like if Harry was a female, maybe looking more like Lily. I’m not saying that he would’ve gone as far as what you may be thinking now, but like… imagine. Me personally, think Snape is very messed up as a whole. He even only really helped when he was dying, by the way.

Tori: I think you can definitely care about someone without loving them. Love is not a feeling, it’s a choice, and I think one thing JK Rowling definitely did was challenge the notion of love, and make us analyze whether or not the relationships in Harry Potter were OK. Yes, I think Snape cared about Lily, but he didn’t love her because he never respected her. Respect is the key of any relationship. If you don’t have it, it’s not healthy. 

Jinxy: Maybe it wasn’t love but more of a lust? Desire? Obsession? Long after she dies, he still brings her up. He never really moves on from her, and I think that that’s really unhealthy, both for him and his mental health and for their relationship. I’ll wrap this up by pointing towards that one famous quote: “If you love something, let it go […]” Snape really doesn't do that, does he?

What are your thoughts on Snape? Tell us below! And feel free to let us know if there are other things in the HP universe that you would like to see us discuss! 

[wu-mo]

A version of Godard and Trinh Minh-Ha discussing filming the last story of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

Godard: So here we are. Adapting a story written by a U.S. fictionist. Never saw this day coming.

Trinh: Then I suppose it’s a good thing that none of this is real. Let’s just start. I want to talk a little about the story first. And I don’t mean its fatty Wallacian syntax and moral gymnastics. Just what it is, as a piece of lit. There’s no denying that it’s a devastatingly beautiful and unsettling… thing that practically gives itself up to many interpretations, cinematic or not. What sort of bothered me, initially, was the absolute, merciless lack of a female voice: our Ms. Granola Cruncher, the heart of this story, only exists in the semi-confession of the anonymous “hideous man”. We don’t know what happened to her in the end, but at this point I’m pretty sure it was something terrible. Also, I believe it can be gathered from the totality of these Brief Interviews that our interviewer, whose questions are not even presented, is also female—in fact, in John Krasinski’s earlier adaption of this book, the interviewer becomes the main character, Sara Quinn, a doctoral candidate in anthropology…

G: Adorable.

T: Well… I suppose adorable is one thing you can call it. Anyway, like I said, the lack of female voice bothered me for a while, and then I realized something: the Cranola Cruncher in B.I. #20 is not simply the moral parallel bars like many other faceless women in these interviews. Her anonymity throughout the story—and the disappearance of her entire personhood at the end of the horrifying rape—serves an essential purpose. And I don’t think we can begin filming anything without figuring out what that is.

G: I believe it’s rather simple what it is, no? Or, what she is. The absence of personhood, as you put it—I don’t think it’s to serve anything, I think it is the final goal.

T: I agree. Although it does result in certain consequences—it’s through her abandonment of selfhood that—here I’m just going to write this down—

      It’s through her abandonment of selfhood:

1. that we as viewers of the story achieve empathy for the narrator, then the girl, then somewhat for the killer, then in the end towards some sort of sad mixture. Whatever it is, it’s our immediate response towards the story as literature. Through the hypodiegetic.

2. that the narrator guy achieves two different kinds of empathy: one for the girl and, eventually and horribly, the other for the serial killer, and that further results in his “becoming” of the killer. Whether literally or not. This is the intradiegetic level.

3. that the Granola Cruncher, the supposed victim of the story, miraculously achieves the third and highest kind of empathy, the total supreme demolition of the self, her becoming the world and everything… But really, this “becoming” itself is the sole purpose and I think it transcends the literal diegesis. How to convey “the couvade” that is not just between the characters but also between the story and us, reality and us. That is the true porousness of boarders. It opens up everything else.

G: Yes, yes. Expansion of the self, force field of awareness and focus… Sounds good. Who doesn’t love that? But if we were to adapt a story that is by definition written in spoken language, how would you break the picture theory of meaning?

T: How do you mean?

G: I mean the theory that the relation between reality and language is only referential, which means image of you and me, image of this fake conversation we’re having, image of the Cruncher are merely representatives of the “real stuff”. This piece is the author’s inner responsible philosopher at work, no? Sadly this narrator’s hyper-awareness is only of his own language, he is all but obsessed with how he sounds, how he appears, and so he generates this horrible field of consciousness around him. It’s the opposite of the girl’s, which seems to be of the real thing—but we have no way to imagine that realness through anything but the guy’s words. The tragic loop closes. Through his narrative all I can say for sure is that he cannot handle this level of focus and the real, outside image, outside language, the real thing. I think it destroys him as a person. I don’t know if it’s the sadness or the love or the horror that destroys him. And I don’t know if he hurts her or now in the end. I have no intention for a narrative ending anyway. Or a narrative in general. It’s not what’s important here. If there’s anything in this story that matters to me it’s—can I have a look at what you just wrote?—what matters is how the spectator makes meaning outside the illusion of this relation between image or language, and make a choice within (0) based on the intertextuality of (1) and (2).

T: I agree with most of what you said. We share similar intention when it comes to the representation or rather, dissolvement of diegesis to some degree, on both literal and cinematic levels. Because the story contains an extreme setup, even by American standards. And all is retold to us by a guy who at the beginning believes none of this. Interpersonal porousness is the obvious crux here, though I for one would not entirely abandon the plot—not all narrative is evil. So maybe now is a good time for us to get into the specifics. My question is what is the “intertextuality” and how do you plan to achieve it? Would you do another “collage” of a film?

G: Why don’t you start by telling me some of your plans?

T: So far the least of my concern is the placement—or even the existence—of any ana/prolepsis. I don’t really care what is told before what once I get past the beginning. I think the shots will find their own places. But I will say that I want to start with this scene, simply because it’s my favorite:

Nor would I even begin to try to describe what she looks like as she’s telling the story, reliving it, she’s naked, hair spilling all down her back, sitting meditatively cross-legged amid the wrecked bedding and smoking ultralight Merits from which she keeps removing the filters because she claims they’re full of additives and unsafe—unsafe as she’s sitting there chain-smoking, which was so patently irrational that I couldn’t even bring—yes and some kind of blister on her Achilles tendon, from the sandals, leaning with her upper body to follow the oscillation of the fan so she’s moving in and out of a wash of moon from the window whose angle of incidence itself alters as the moon moves up and across the window[…]

In “When The Eye Frames Red”, an interview with Akira Mizuta Lippit, I have mentioned that the spaces between image, sound and text remain spaces of generative multiplicity, in which the function of each is not to serve nor to rule over the other, but to expose, in their tight interactions, each other’s limit […] Something that seems recognizable in my work and can only be realized intuitively with each film, is this tendency in pushing the limits, to lead the work, just when its structure emerges, to the very edge where its potential to return to nothing also becomes tangible. I believe in the porous boards between arts, though in this case I don’t think I can add anything textual—scripted—to Wallace’s writing. It has a distinctive fluidity of its own. Whenever the mind is attracted to a specific still, whenever a thing begins to take form, he immediately shifts your attention to the next, the structure of the scene is formed by not the specific shapes but the process of “coming into”. When we employ the similar philosophies in filming I think it’s important to start visualizing form as an instance of formlessness.

G: And formlessness as an instance of form.

T: Exactly. On that note, I’d start the scene fading-in on the silhouette of her sitting on the blanket. In total silence, we see her gesturing and her mouth moving. Oh and I should probably have mentioned this earlier: there will not be a shot of the girl’s face in its entirety. Nor will we ever hear her voice, even if this is a scene of her telling the story. I will only present fragments of her features… Anyway, total silence, in which I'd introduce close-ups of her removing the filter, then the fan oscillating. Now this is his gaze. I wouldn’t say it’s much sexual—at this point the narrator’s just about to be completely captivated, and I think at the moment his gaze is somewhere between Scopophilia and the extreme focus. A gaze that’s about to transcend onto another plane. He is not simply viewing her as an object, that part of their relation has just ended and now she’s about to destroy him with a trueness that he can’t possibly fathom. Still, we can sense from the narrative that he is still romanticizing her physicality, there is a gross tenderness to his tone. So in the very beginning of the film, what I present is still essentially the man as the bearer of the look of the spectator, as Mulvey mentioned in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. The semi-erotic look on what he once believed was “a strictly one-night objective.” But the illusion of omnipotence will soon shatter as I introduce the next shots.

G: So, no voice-over narration in all of this?

T: Of the guy? No—no so far I don’t plan to introduce any kind of voice narration, at least not in the first half of the film. Maybe in the end, when the narrator’s power has been completely neutralized—

G: You mean obliterated.

T: Maybe. Yes. So his actual voice—if ever heard—is to be placed in contrast with his helplessness and hopelessness in the end. Meanwhile, following her "protofeminine contraposto", I introduce objects under subjective treatment—we’re still seeing through his gaze—“the toile skirt, hair that nearly reached the blanket, the blanket dark green with yellow filigree and a kind of nauseous purple fringe, a linen singlet and vest of false buckskin, sandals in her rattan bag, bare feet with phenomenally dirty soles, dirty beyond belief, their nails like the nails of a laborer’s hands.”

G: And this was… right before he confesses, “Have you ever heard of the couvade?”

T: Yes, a key moment that pretty much defines the story. His focus on her telling of the story—that impossible level of attention on her image—of her own focus of every little detail during the rape. In accordance I’d accentuate the color of the interior—then of the blanket—yellow, green and purple and the dirtiness of her soles and nails… these are extremely detailed, structured, you can say, within the narrative and I think it’s appropriate to dramatize texture and light with artificial saturation like I did in A Tale of Love—in which the space is also fabricated with this almost humming tension, I want the viewer to acknowledge the untrueness through what Deleuze calls hapticity—between vision and tactility, the visual becomes “felt”. And hopefully through the “felt” the viewer will sense that truth is about to be addressed in the next scene, which is from the girl’s perspective. But between the two scenes I’d like to include an aural bridge of “stridulating crickets” and the largo tick of the cooling auto”.

G: So I gather you’re about to shift to her “almost hallucinatory accentuation of detail”?

T: Yes, the noises are abrupt; so are the cuts. Now onto the next scene:

She could decoct from the smell of the gravel in her face the dank verdure of the spring soil beneath the gravel and distinguish the press and shape of each piece of gravel against her face and large breasts through the leotard’s top, the angle of the sun on the top of her spine and the slight swirl in the intermittent breeze that blew from left to right across the light film of sweat on her neck. … She could hear the largo tick of the cooling auto and bees and bluebottle flies and stridulating crickets at the distant treeline, the same volute breeze in those trees she could feel at her back, and birds—imagine the temptation to despair in the sound of carefree birds and insects only yards from where you lay trussed for the gambrel—of tentative steps and breathing amid the clank of implements whose very shapes could be envisioned from the sounds they made against one another when stirred by a conflicted hand. The cotton of her dirndl skirt that light sheer unrefined cotton that’s almost gauze.

Some of these are visual but some are very anti-image. How to convey the tactical and the aural? Because in the middle of all this, her being able to sense this vital and verdant beauty of the nature in the middle of this brutal crime can only be explained as "the L world at function". The sublime and the mystical lie in the portraits of the world becoming almost molecular for her. A simple close-up of fingers-on-grass would include tactility, temperature, and even smell. I’ve talked about this unmaking in another interview, “Shifting The Borders of The Other” with Marina Grzinic: The self-in-displacement or the self-in-creation is one through which changes and discontinuities are accounted for in the making and unmaking of identity, and for which one needs specific, but mobile boundaries. It is a question of shifting them as soon as they tend to become ending lines. Back then I was talking within a cultural context, but I think it applies here also. The sensations are no longer images perceived outside of her body. I wouldn’t focus on each shot for too long and would cut the ambient noise somewhere during the scene, right about the viewer is about to get familiar with this synesthetic cinematic sensation. Now for a moment I was thinking about including close-ups of eyeballs, then there’s the whole thing “round phallism”. So maybe not. Anyway, this is just a simple example of how I’d represent the porousness between two scenes.

G: I see. Thank you for sharing.

T: And what about you? Feels like I’ve been talking for quite a while now.

G: Hmm… these are just off the top of my head, more intentionality than execution… I’m thinking about having multiple actresses to play Ms. Granola Cruncher.

T: Excuse me?

G: Like I said before, by the time this guy does this interview he is deeply trapped in language. A pathetic mess. I don’t see how he is in anyway reliable. I need to show that.

T: OK.

G: His voice is preoccupied with the relationship between his own image and reality; this further prevents him from recognizing his hideousness. He claims a similar transcendence—he dares to call it love and sadness—as the same kind the girl experiences. I don’t see it. I think he is simply a monster whom Wallace uses as one of his many surrogates to express deep fears for hypocrisy and post-modernist traps. Loud and clear is the message “None of this is to be trusted!” So why shouldn’t the audience know that?

T: And how do you plan to reveal it?

G: His hideousness is rather self-explanatory. I'm not worried once this character opens his mouth. Now I’ll see if I can find footage of the author reading this story himself. Maybe I’ll insert clips of Wallace doing that interview with Charlie Rose… Perhaps some audition clips for the characters, where I also ask actors to fill in the blank “Q”s themselves. Maybe I’ll do this one in 3D, too, explore more editing software with Fabrice Aragno… Or maybe, with your permission of course, I’ll include this conversation we’re having—I put a camera in the corner of this room when I walked in.

T: Oh… there it is. Okay… But how is any of this related to the story?

G: I’ll do scenes from the story, too, probably. If the audience is curious about the plot they can just go buy the book. Look, I don’t deny the story’s values as literature. It’s beautifully constructed. Almost too beautiful. But eventually we’re talking about its cinematic value, which to me seems very little. It piles images together but only for the purpose to destroy them. So what’s to be filmed? Everything that should be done has already been done. Besides, at this point I’m also no longer interested in the representational properties of image. It’s more of a disclosing event than an aesthetic for me. Wallace expresses a large concern for solipsism; his ideal is that language is and must be dependent on interpersonal relationships, dependent on, excuse me, “how to being a fucking human being”. That’s his message and it’s great. I’d film that. and I trust the viewer to recognize the differentiation between images to be a tableau rusting silently in its place. Let them investigate the causation themselves.

T: So you think showing how this film is made is a stronger message to send than presenting the porosity within the story?

G: You can put it that way. Earlier you mentioned gaze a lot, but I think it’s time to destroy the gaze instead of analyzing it to death. I think true porosity lies rather in these conversations, our responses to the dissolvement of narrative boarders, and I think this is how Wallace would have wanted it in the first place. I used this Monet quote in Adieu au Langage, and I will end with it, “Paint not what we see, for we see nothing, but paint that we don’t see.”

[lawrence9gold]

Humanoid Self-Gratification Laid Naked: The Morlocks and the Eloi

As a possibility, it's available . . . as an actuality, it requires moderation -- which is, "modulation" according to the circumstances: Self-Gratification. The intention of this writing is to appeal to your imagination to attract your attention and get you to remember things. Having done that -- and I mean this to be very important -- to dissolve the substance of it all by means I have provided at the end -- a lifesaver. Persons and things consist of both form and substance, "both" because form and substance compose the same one thing, "compose" consisting of two syllables:  "com" (with) and pose (position). The same one thing they together compose is kept in existence by changing:  "vibrating", "resonating", "moving", "interacting". People confuse "the form" with "the substance." The substance of something is its intensity, its duration through time. The form is its felt meaning, its quality, its direction of development. People think the substance is the form and go for the substance, That is the basis of materialism, that is, Consumerism an attempted solution to the distresses of life. If that escapes you, listen to this: Two behaviors that involve self-gratification are the affliction of the world: immature self-gratification and insane self-gratification

IMMATURE SELF-GRATIFICATION abandons sensibility (intelligence) -- or never had it

Immature Self-Gratification wants things before it has created them or earned them.  It wants more before it feels it has earned it -- but it rationalizes that it deserves it. It wants it, now.  It confuses imagining something in a vague sort of way with imagining it with such completeness and integrity that it can benefit others. It wants the "owning" but hasn't the capacity to sustain having what it wants because it hasn't developed, enough. It hasn't borne its fruit, but it wants the fruit brought forth by others. Already.  It's a Consumer.  Infantile and childish behavior doesn't know it's infantile or childish. Nonetheless, it wants its gratification  -- and devotees of Insane Self-Gratification will give it.

INSANE SELF-GRATIFICATION abandons conscience (integrity) for self-gratification -- or never had it

Insane Self-Gratification gets gratification from choosing The Unwholesome.

It accepts displeasure as part of its pleasure.

It chooses the things of its own pleasure and takes the pleasure despite the displeasure it afflicts -- and then tries to control the displeasure that comes with it, like taking a drug to counter the side-effects of other drugs.

Knowingly choosing what is unwholesome is the definition of, evil. It's also kind-of stupid.

It is the basis of Consumerism as a paradigm of marketing -- programming people to want things they don't already want, beyond what is beneficial, programming people to acquire meager (even if expensive), temporary (even if durable goods), or questionable (even if popular) pleasures in exchange for long-term displeasure -- the displeasure of being in debt beyond their means, owing and not being able to pay, or the let-down of the thing acquired not fulfilling the dream portrayed in the marketing -- pleasures portrayed to lastingly exceed the long-term displeasure of debt -- acquisitions depicted to make the displeasure worth it -- the tacit rationale for war, crime, and predation of all kinds.

One of the attitudes it holds is, " Businesses should be protected from interference simply because they are profit centers" -- a very simple-minded attitude. Don't you agree? 

Insane Self-Gratification is the arrested development or magnification of immature behaviors --  the desire to suckle at the breast -- Immature Self-Gratification "gone 'Godzilla at Tokyo', 'Dracula in London". Insane Self-Gratification is as Thirsty as Dracula and as Big as Godzilla -- bigger, if the truth be told. It's appetite is commensurably more ravenous -- and it can't distinguish between good and evil -- the Legal Insanity Defense -- or simply won't -- the definition of guilty. However, like Immature Self-Gratification, it feels, It deserves it.

Insane Self-Gratification preys upon Immature Self-Gratification. It feeds off of unnecessary Consumerism in its own Super Consumerism. It's "The Consumer of Consumers -- The BIG Consumer" and Immature Self-Gratification is the source of its food. 

Immature Self-Gratification is The Way of life of The Eloi. ("the 99.9%")

Insane Self-Gratification is The Way of Life of The Morlocks. ("the .1%")

in H.G. Welles', The Time Machine

What happens to the vampire's host after the orgasm of Blood Feast?

A Civilization dies when it collapses -- either because of environmental calamity or, more commonly, because of Immature Self-Gratification wanting more than it can sustain and Insane Self-Gratification not caring, as long as it can feed on Immature Self-Gratification.

But for either, it's not enough.

Both want, "MORE" -- one of them, with good reason. But the mood of, "MORE", they have in common.  It's just that one is predator and the other is prey.

In Consumerism, the Consumer is Consumed by credit-debt.

In Consumerism, those who control the wealth skim wealth from the flow of money from the productivity of the producer in virtually all of its channels, while producing nothing but rationalizations. They are involved with getting the Consumer to consume more and different things, unnecessarily or excessively, to exercise power toward the accumulation of wealth, and through wealth, control, for Insane Self-Gratification. That's Never Enough.

The Displeasure of Never Enough triggers the idea in them that "More Would Be Enough" -- and on they go, choosing the pleasures of their undeserving life, oblivious or inured or desensitized or perversely cherishing the displeasures of their actions that make all they have, always, "Not Enough".

It's been said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

I think that's stupidity. It never learns.

I think that insanity is "going for what is, and feels, unwholesome" as if it were wholesome.

That leaves the psychopaths, who override the feelings of people for the sake of their "one-channel mind" results. They, also, choose self-gratification. But just as they don't feel the feelings of other people, they also don't feel their own feelings. Those feelings are overridden by the tenacity of the logic in them, that They Are Doing Things Right. They are selectively perceptive, one-channel (wealth-and-power-and-material-pleasures) minds incapable of or unwilling to take in more criteria than, "Money Excuses Everything". A one channel-mind is another version of, underdeveloped -- a "one-trick pony" mind.

It's not that "money excuses" (although it's well known that the wealthy and powerful get away with murder), but that people excuse them, abandoning their intelligence and integrity for the hope of themselves (Immature Self-Gratification) becoming like the wealthy and powerful (Insane Self-Gratification).

What a stupid game -- both are forms of Humanoid Self-Gratification

How about this:

Immature Self-Gratification: Educate yourself. Mature into becoming more fully human. Develop your interests into abilities. Produce benefit so that people will be glad to give to you. Get your self-esteem from living up to your own potential, not from others' social or political approval (which isn't self-esteem, but "other esteem" -- which doesn't really suffice, anyway). Exercise truthfulness to self, patience, persistence and creativity. Exercise creativity that embodies and advances well-being. AWAKEN AND DEVELOP YOUR INTENDING, IMAGINING, ATTENDING AND REMEMBERING faculties of intelligence. Get your intelligences on-line and connected.

Earn what you get within your capacity to maintain it. "By not advancing himself, he stays ahead of himself." (Lao Tsuh)

Overcome the indoctrination of Insane Self-Gratification. Deprogram yourself. Exercise your intelligence.

Insane Self-Gratification: You've seen that wealth, power, and consumerism are Never Enough, yet you haven't learned the lesson. You're the personification of stupid -- never learns -- and insane -- going for what is unwholesome. You're smart in a one-channel-mind sort of way, but you create more detriment than you do, benefit by preying upon Immature Self-Gratification instead of Nurturing it because, "being in business, you deserve it," a slick rationalization if I ever heard one -- and one you have sold to Immature Self-Gratification to open and direct the font of wealth in your direction.

You think this is a "top-down control" culture, but fail to recognize that the foundation of your wealth are those on whom you prey -- and that their well-being funds your own.

Get your "Enough" from the "Enough" of others who had, "Not Enough".

Overcome the indoctrination of "More will be Enough". Wake up and redirect.

~~~~~~~~~~

But understand -- psychopaths are emotionally underdeveloped and/or emotionally dissociated (albeit cleverly manipulative and intellect-dominant) humanoids with one-channel minds some of whose "incoming information" channels (e.g., moral intelligence, empathy, and sense of integrity) are unawakened or clogged with dysfunctional programming from who-knows-where, and so, distorted and so, only humanoid. There's something humanoid about their brain functioning. Their, "Never Enough" conditioning sucks hard on the "wealth and power" channel, and may suck it with enthusiasm to the point of killing the host -- and harming themselves, in the process -- but that may not seem to matter, to them, because their moral intelligence is limited. Dinosaurs.

There is a way to bring on-line and balance the intelligences -- but you've got to want to. You've got to see bringing your intelligences on-line as an advantage.

"At no time in the world will a man who is sane overreach himself, overspend himself, overrate himself." (Lao Tsuh)

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