#and having these other two examples i think shows how he truly views it

[altruistic-meme]

ok i was going to put this in the tags but the more i thought about it, the more i wanted to say so i'm just going to add it as a reblog <3

op you are soooo right with this, and some more: he does the same thing (or something very similar, at least) with Gabriel!

in episode 5 when Crowley brings him hot chocolate, Gabriel - as Jim, who doesn't have any memories of Heaven or it's teachings - says "Thank you. You're really nice." to which Crowley replies "Don't thank me. And I'm not. Oh, nobody would believe you anyway."

he denies it, and unlike with Mrs. Sandwich he doesn't say thank you or anything, but it's said very softly. denying it is more like habit than a negative reaction. he doesn't like Gabriel, and i have no doubt that he would've been much more reactive had it been The Supreme Archangel Gabriel saying it to him, but he knows that that Gabriel is far from who he is talking to. "Jim" is much more human than angel right now, and his ideas of morality and good/bad are very basic but still more nuanced than Heaven's.

Crowley knows that Gabriel-as-Jim calling him nice is not the same as Archangel-Gabriel saying it, and he doesn't really mind it as much.

crowley visibly cringes and rejects aziraphale when aziraphale calls him good, calls him nice. he doesn’t want to be considered good or nice by (what he thinks is) aziraphale’s (heaven’s) definition of good or nice. not just bc he’s scared of hell’s retribution, but because he knows heaven’s definition of good and nice is wrong, is black and white.

when mrs sandwich calls him good, he doesn’t cringe. his rejection of “i’m not, actually,” is half-assed and cheeky at best, is his automatic response.

but then he says “thank you.”

crowley appreciates being called good by a human. he knows that humanity’s definition of good is nuanced and complicated. when a human calls him good, he sees it for what it is–a genuine compliment to his character and his actions, but not a divine declaration about his being as a whole. he reveres the morals of humanity more than he’s ever revered the morals of heaven and hell.

[yannisdesk]

On Arcane & Antivillains

One thing I really enjoy about Arcane is how it handles antivillains.

For one, most of the characters (main ones) would actually fall into the category of antivillain at one point, or in the case of our two protagonists, become one. Arcane is arguably ripe with them.

An antivillain is essentially the opposite of an antihero. Simplified, antiheros do good things out of selfish or questionable motives, antivillains do things that are objectively bad or evil, but for noble reasons or for a greater cause. Another term for them is "sympathetic villain" however that term is too vague (there are villains out there who are sympathetic, but are none the less traditionally evil and therefore do not qualify as antivillains), and "antivillain" is a much better term mirror to "antihero." A common thread I've noticed among antivillain characters is some level of a Machiavellian approach to achieving their goals - the ends justify the means type of philosophy is something you'll always find characters that fit this category. At the very least, they dabble with it. In their eyes their actions are always justified because they're fighting for a good cause.

To put things into perspective, I'll use two examples. Harley Quinn shifts around, but she is frequently an antihero, take her depiction in both Suicide Squad movies. She does take down bad guys, however she's not doing so out of a sense of altruism, but to get a reduced prison sentence. Very cut-and-dry example of antiheroism.

On the flip side you have Magneto. Now from what I've seen (I've dabbled in the comics, but haven't dived in all the way) in the comics he gets very dark with the antihuman action. But in the Xmen movies, he definitely does some down right villainous stuff, but his intention remains the same - he wants mutants to live in a world free of bigotry and he's willing to do anything necessary to achieve that, including committing atrocities.

Now if this sounds very confusing to you and you swear you've heard these terms interchangeably or that you can think of several characters that are labeled as type A when they should be type B or vice versa, that's pretty normal. These aren't archetypical heroes and villains we're talking about, so it can be hard to categorize them, and honestly most characters in general will go back and forth or shift at one point or another, so all you need to know is that those definitions are the ones we're working with in this post.

Here are the characters from Arcane that I think suit this label, and others that I think will.

Disclaimer: this is not me hating on the characters. I love all of these characters for this layer to their character. This is not a "oh, look, this character is bad actually," post. If anything, consider it a celebration of their gray morality and how well its explored in the show.

Silco

Duh. Silco is objectively pretty evil. Setting up a drug empire that destroys your own people, getting in-cahoots with corrupt cops, killing kids, and aiding in destroying a young girl's mental health is multiple levels of foul. However, for him, all of this was part of an elaborate plan to liberate Zaun, which is being aggressively oppressed by Piltover. They were necessary sacrifices made to the cause, and worth it because it will bring forth better days for him and his people. Now obviously, a lot of his actions definitely have to do with his own ego, however the only time Zaun isn't prioritized is when it comes to Jinx, who is like a daughter to him, and even that realization comes to smack in the face late in his arc.

Sevika

I'd argue she's even more noble than most since she truly is rooted in the cause for Zaun. Not only is she willing to do some pretty bad things for the "greater-good", she's even willing to betray people who she views as unfit or incompetent. And what's even more telling is that she doesn't do this for power (which is arguably a part of Silco's prerogative). Sure, she's his #2, but he doesn't exactly show any favoritism. And Sevika seemingly isn't even trying to become the new leader of Zaun after Silco's death from the season 2 clips, but will support Jinx, despite the fact that she probably could dethrone her. She's no true blue hero, but she's not a megalomaniac either.

The Entire Council of Piltover (Minus Mel & Jayce)

As obnoxious as they are, none of them are mustache-twirling villains. As we see with characters like Sheriff Grayson (not a council member, but they share the same sentiment), they legitimately think they're protecting the city with their neglectful leadership and oppression of Zaunites. Yes, this includes Heimerdinger, who seemingly only started caring about Zaun once he was booted out of the council, so that places him firmly in antihero territory in my opinion.

Why did I exclude Mel and Jayce? Their plots are actually upward in terms of morality, especially Jayce who by the end is closer to being a traditional hero by prioritizing peace and progress over the status quo or war, and actively makes the first move of trying to right Piltover's wrongs. Mel's arc has also moved this direction as well, as she went from arguing that Jayce and Viktor should build Hextech weapons in case of war with the Zaunites, to fully embracing peace. You could argue that Mel wanting the weapons means she was at some point an antivillain, and I might agree, but as it stands, she's firmly in the clear.

So, why are the rest of the council still considered antivillains? Honestly, we just don't know much about their motivations to say. They ultimately did a good deed in voting for peace, but you know, one good deed doesn't wash-out the bad and vice versa. They're not even on thin ice for me, they're still fighting for the surface.

Marcus

Questioning your actions does not mean you can't be an antivillain, and Marcus is a good example of that. He's is kind of like Caitlyn if she were way less compassionate and very incompetent. Marcus does not think his actions are evil, according to show runners he only places Vi in Stillwater to protect her from Silco; he gets involved with Silco because he wants justice for the building explosion and it goes out of hand. That said, he also threw a child into a dangerous prison with no charges and with the intention of keeping her there for life, and worked with a kingpin who was actively antagonizing his own people while reaping benefits from an abusive system. So yeah, Marcus falls more into being an antivillain than full-blown villain, he's still firmly an antagonist though.

Ambessa

I know it's very popular in the fandom to call Ambessa a traditional bad-guy type of villain, but she is actually very nuanced. For one - she does not see her actions as evil, nor are her motivations behind doing them rooted in it. Ambessa, as she states in Mel's flashback, was raised in the Noxian way. Her grandfather literally made her search the dead bodies of the people they massacred when she was a youth, and she was indoctrinated to believe that this was in the best interest of her family and the Noxian people. By showing strength and ruthlessness, she's telling the rest of the world: "Stay away from House Medarda and Noxus." Hence, why Kino's death wrecks her, because she values herself over how effective she is at warding people off from messing with her family. Her main reason for getting involved with the war between Piltover and Zaun will 100% be because Mel's life was nearly lost due to Jinx's bomb, and this is coming straight off of her son's death mind you. So, while Ambessa may definitely be one of the most ruthless people on this list, she is not at Palpatine levels of evil yet, not by a long shot.

Jinx

You guys saw this coming, right? This barely needs an explanation. Jinx grew up in the Lanes, was a victim of Piltover's oppression multiple times throughout her youth, was willing to fight for their freedom as seen in episode 2, and in the end, that desire, along with her being adopted by Silco, manifested in her doing multiple acts of violence, including terrorism against Piltover, which frequently hurt people who weren't guilty of anything. (No, blowing up the building in episode 3 doesn't count as one of her evil deeds because it was an accident.) We understand completely why Jinx does what she does, even though it hurts to see her slip farther and farther into this mindset.

Vi

Way more subtle (for now) but I'd argue she's there come episodes 8 and 9. Hell, you could argue that her arc is about her sense of morality breaking down due to realizing how impossible the situation between Zaun and Piltover is, and embracing an "ends justifies the means" type mindset that Vander tried to sway her against back in episode 2. Wanting to stop a kingpin from using this new dangerous drug to destroy your city and sister? A noble cause, indeed. Not really caring that (or being passive over the fact that) children die in process because of their approximation to said bad guy? Yikes. [EDIT: Since we're on this topic: here's a link to where I explored this aspect of her character. I did this a while ago, but I thought it best to include it here too for added context). Now, I know what some of you are going to say - how is this any different from, say, Steve Rogers telling Wanda Maximoff that sometimes there's collateral damage when doing hero work? The difference is that Steve didn't argue that those people had it coming because they're associated with the bad guys/or in their way, which Vi does. That's some dangerous conviction right there, and we'll probably see that elaborated on in season 2 given that she's becoming an Enforcer which is a position that lends itself to abuse of power (and if it goes anyway like things do with her game counterpart, she will engage in police brutality and not see an issue with it, but given that Arcane's Vi is way more well, nuanced, than her game counterpart I don't think it will go on for long). While we're on the topic of Vi, according to her prison records, she had a notorious reputation while doing time to the point that I find it funny Silco didn't put 2-and-2 together that the girl with short pink hair beating the shit out of and attempting to murder all of his goons that went to Stillwater was possibly the same girl that wiped the floor with those same goons the night Vander died.

Potential Antivillains of Season 2:

These are characters that I predict will become antivillains at some point during season 2 based off of where their season 1 arc left and clues from season 2 teasers and clips. This is not me saying for sure this will happen, only a prediction. But if it does come true, I will gladly collect $5 per accurate plot point.

Viktor

Two words: glorious evolution.

We all love Viktor. We all love good-guy Viktor, and we will also more than likely love not-so-good-guy Viktor due to how complex that arc will be. If it will go anything like his game-lore (which I suspect it will) his noble intentions will never leave him, just simply evolve to include some less-than-heroic actions and justifications. He still wants to improve the undercity, and well, humanity overall, with hextech, motivated by the injustices he's been put through his own life and his illness, but he will go about it in some very unorthodox ways, and his arc in Arcane is about him confronting if he wants to "evolve" his morality for the sake of his ultimate goal, which is progress. Viktor would definitely agree with the sentiment expressed by Gloria Steinem (character depiction, not a real quote) in Mrs. America - "Revolutions are messy, people get left behind."

Caitlyn

I'm pretty sure she actually will become apart of the antivillain roster in season 2, but noting is for certain. Caitlyn is perhaps the saddest version of this there is, because we see where she starts out. She doesn't want to be like everyone else in her circle, she tries to break free and be better. She wants to do good by both Piltover and Zaun. She has hope, gentleness, and doesn't place herself above even those who occupy the lowest levels of Zaun. She puts herself, her status, and her life on the line to discover the truth, and comes out her time with Vi steadfast in wanting to help heal Zaun. She can be a little naive and ignorant, but she never does so with malicious or ill intent. She is the kindest person in Arcane.

But, given that her mother was killed in a terrorist attack set off by the new Head Zaunite in Charge, things will change. As we see, Caitlyn becomes a sheriff on the Enforcer squad, and now her goal is no longer to sow peace between Zaun and Piltover, it's to avenge her mother by assassinating Jinx. Of course, this will be due in part that Caitlyn thinks snuffing Jinx out will solve the problem, which will be ironic and hypocritical because she told Ekko that getting revenge on Silco won't solve anything in Zaun, but now that she's in the same predicament, the tables have turned and now diplomacy is off the table. She still has that hero-complex, as she lives by the lessons of Sheriff Grayson, but now it's with a twist. The idealistic Caitlyn who believed in giving peace a chance through reform is gone, and she now believes that there's little to no cost too great for her to achieve this, even if that (possibly - again season 2 hasn't come out yet, so we shall see) means hurting innocent Zaunites. And what's scary is that Caitlyn has the intelligence, dedication, talent, and efficiency to pull it off. Truthfully, I believe we won't just be getting Sheriff Caitlyn in season 2, but also Dictator Caitlyn.

[randomness-is-my-order]

another thing that always struck me about jiang cheng and wei wuxian’s relationship is how little jc actually seems to understand wwx and where he was coming from and this is not just an empathy problem (though that is entirely present, too) but also the lack of effort to truly open up to wei wuxian’s pov and seek it from the source himself.

this is possibly the randomest example i can give but during their chat in the burial mounds, jc comments on the situation with the food and whether crops would even grow in the burial mounds and whether people could even live there and it’s just...even if he’s not sure about wwx spending months in the burial mounds, he KNOWS wwx lived in the streets in his early childhood and nothing gives people the mentality of “survival before all else” than that but jc had either never bothered to learn about wwx’s past before he came to lotus pier in all the years he’d known him or he did know and never bothered to contexualise things so he didn’t have to wonder whether a comfortable lifestyle was truly a valid concern for wwx. here’s the passage if anyone wants to read the exact phrasing:

Jiang Cheng was incredulous. “You’re planting things on a mountain made of corpses? Will anything that grows even be edible?” “Trust me. Anything is edible when you’re hungry enough.” “Do you really plan on settling here for the long-term?” Jiang Cheng asked. “Can people even live in a hellish place like this?” “I lived here for three months before,” Wei Wuxian stated.

now, ik jc’s headspace at the time was focussed on detracting wwx’s resolve to live in the burial mounds but my point is moreso that jc actually did not comprehend who wwx was as a person in the books, ever. he literally never came close. and this isn’t even about the missing information like the golden core transplant or the true circumstances of wwx’s three months disappearance. it’s jiang cheng thinking wwx always wanted to show off, linking his actions to a hero complex, thinking wwx was needlessly arrogant, not understanding why wwx would stick his neck out for the wens. it’s the way jiang cheng rarely, if ever, gave wei wuxian any grace in his reading of his actions–always looking at wei wuxian through a lens that was inherently unfavourable and thereby, never allowed him to truly view wwx for who he is.

in contrast, wei wuxian always understood jiang cheng in a way i don’t think jc knew he did. the way he knew where jc’s cutting words originated from, the way he could read jc’s insecurities, the way he could empathise with his grief and anger, even after everything went to absolute hell between the two. i’m not claiming wei wuxian understood jiang cheng like no other or had some uniquely profound insight into his mindset but there is enough content in the books that makes it clear that wei wuxian saw jiang cheng for the person that he was and gave him more grace (than he deserved, imo) and that this understanding was not at all present in jiang cheng’s perspective of wei wuxian.

which brings me to another observation: jiang cheng may or may not have loved wei wuxian but he sure as hell never respected him. because when you respect someone (and i’d argue there is no real love without respect), you try to get to know the person, try to see their side of things, try to assemble your opinion of them after informing yourself about their life. jiang cheng, for me, never exhibited the interest to go even slightly out of his way and gain a better understanding of wwx. wei wuxian wasn’t someone he wanted to spend that kind of time on – be it because jc had internalised the social hierarchy separating them, had never liked wwx for being better than him in various fields or because he was simply not the kind of person who would be emotionally even a little generous in his relationships. it doesn’t matter.

the point for me is that this give-and-take was never balanced. it was always wei wuxian over-extending his internal resources while jc never realised or refused to. some say their relationship only became worse/toxic after the wen remnants were rescued but the seeds were there since their childhoods. their circumstances exacerbated the issue tenfold, yes, most definitely, but that issue was always present and would blow up their relationship sooner or later, as long as jiang cheng didn’t have substantial growth. jiang cheng continuing to live was worth the sacrifice for wei wuxian (be it from a source of affection, obligation, duty, anything) but staying by wei wuxian’s side after the shift to burial mounds was not worth the trouble for jiang cheng. and yes their personalities have alot to do with their individual decisions in these pressing matters but i’m sure that were it jiang yanli who had taken wei wuxian’s spot, jiang cheng’s actions would be far different but do the switch with jiang cheng, and wei wuxian would still make the same choice. because jiang cheng’s relationship with wei wuxian was undeniably unbalanced to begin with. he never did consider wwx his equal and so, never tried to put in the same effort that wwx did. it’s as simple as that.

[remcycl333]

STEP 1 - CHANGE WHAT YOU’RE AWARE OF

notes from “the creative use of imagination” by neville goddard 🤍

step 0 is to decide what you want. maybe you want money, or a new place to live, or an sp, or physical appearance changes.

step 1: begin to observe those thoughts and reactions towards the thing you want to manifest.

“to arrive at a certain definition of self, you must begin by uncritically observing your automatic reaction to an event, for your reaction defines your state” -NG

throughout this post, I will use the example of physical appearance change.

maybe throughout your day, you see pictures of other people on social media that you view as more attractive as you, and your reaction to that is “I wish I looked like them, this isn’t fair why am i not as attractive as them, what do I need to do to look like them” etc.

or maybe you see yourself in the mirror and you think “god why do i look like that, why am i not attractive? why hasn’t my face changed yet?” Etc

if you were in the state of having your desired physical appearance, would you be reacting that way to your 3D?

the first step to changing our state is to first learn the way our old state behaves and reacts to things. it is our current dwelling state that is reflecting in our 3d right now, and when you stop and observe your reactions to things, it becomes glaringly obvious how they’re creating your 3d. if you’re ruminating on how ugly you think you are all day long, you cannot be surprised when you look in the mirror and are dissatisfied with what you see.

“If you react to that which is being objectified, you bind yourself to a certain level of awareness, but if you refuse to react, the thread is broken.” -NG

“Only by observing your reactions to life can you find yourself.” -NG

how are you supposed to know what state you are in if you don’t observe your reactions? And once you begin to observe your reactions, Neville says you will be shocked by how deceitful you truly are. but he always urges the importance of uncritical observation. you should not shame yourself for what you find, or even feel bad. these observations are simply meant to show you your current state, and the ins and outs of it so you are able to change it more easily.

“always examine yourself uncritically, for the moment you become critical, you automatically justify your reactions and associate yourself with the thing observed.” -NG

once you begin to observe your reactions, you will become more aware of them when they happen. they’ll grow to become uncomfortable and glaring. they will feel like they don’t fit you anymore. maybe before they were just knee-jerk, unconscious reactions, but now you will feel them take up the space in your head whenever they arrive. and because of this, you will be able to shift your awareness to what you really want your 3d to reflect. you will be able to let go of the parts of yourself you no longer wish to identify with.

“be transformed by the renewing of your mind by changing the ideas planted there, for you cannot change your thinking until you change the ideas from which your thoughts flow.” -NG

your state creates your thoughts, not the other way around. it is critical to understand this if you wish to change your dwelling state. your thoughts are not your enemies. if you constantly battle against your thoughts, without ever paying mine to your state, you will not have much success.

“accept an idea as true. identify yourself with it and it will out-picture itself in your world. but if you do not accept the thought and identify yourself with it through feeling, you are free from its results. you must become very selective and learn not to associate yourself with unlovely thoughts.” -NG

this is not to confused with the term “mental diet.” when you react negatively to something, you have two options. 1) beat the thought down and panic and tell yourself the opposite without believing it to be true, or 2) choosing not to identify with it. remind yourself that this thought is just a thought. it has no power over you, and if you don’t want it to be manifested into your reality, it will not. Neville says if you do not consent to a thought as true, it will not manifest into your world. if you don’t associate your inner being with that thought, it will not come to pass in your 3D.

“start now to consent only to lovely thoughts of fulfilled desires prior to their confirmation by your senses, and give up the animal instinct of suffering and bathing yourself in the feelings of hurt and self-pity.” -NG

ruminating in unpleasant thoughts where your desire remain unfulfilled can be comfortable, and even habitual, but at the end of the day it is a choice. a choice that you have to stop making if you truly want better for yourself. this is something I struggled with a lot at the beginning of my manifestation journey. there was some twisted pleasure and comfort found in picking at scabs in my mind, and feeling sorry for myself, and imagining what would happen if my desire was never realized in my 3d. but eventually I had to choose better for myself, and I had to choose to stop giving so much attention to mental conversations like that.

“control your imagination with steady attention and dare to stand and be heard.” -NG

YOU create the happenings of your imagination, and your imagination creates your reality. do not feel silly or foolish deciding better for yourself in your own imagination. and do not let the logical restrictions of the 3d to tell you what you can and can not give yourself in imagination. give yourself what you want in imagination and stand firm in that, even if your 3d shows the opposite. stop silencing yourself in your own imagination!

this is my thoughts and notes only on the first two chapters of “the creative use of imagination” so more may come as I continue my re-read! 🤍 just wanted to share this :)

[maximumqueer]

I've recently been thinking a lot about Luffy in the early chapters of Wano, and how he expressed his anger in those chapters. Because while early Wano is probably the angriest we seen Luffy post-ts, it is also (up until his confrontation with Kaido) the quietest we've seen his anger. And I think him forming a sibling-like relationship with Tama, as well as the context in which he met her, plays a big role in that.

The first interaction the two of them have is Tama raising her hands into the air and shouting to him that she surrenders. She in that moment clearly views Luffy as a potential threat, and is trying to mitigate any further harm that could potentially be done to her. Obviously Luffy wouldn't hurt Tama in any way, but I do think that being their first interaction shapes the way Luffy behaves around Tama in terms of anger and violence. Because while Luffy didn't see Tama get kidnapped by the men he beat up, or hear their threats of selling her to the red light district, it is clear that through that further interaction with Tama, his conversation with Hitetsu (the masked man who acted as Tama's sometimes guardian), as well as just his ability to read people well, he realizes that Tama has been on the receiving end of adults (particularly men's) anger and violence. For us the audience, this is further confirmed with our intro to Tama, where in her attempt to stand up for herself, she is kidnapped, threatened, and stuffed into a bag to be sold into slavery.

As such, when Luffy does express his anger when Tama is present, is is always when their is physical distance between them or when Tama cannot hear/see him. This panel

is an example of that. Luffy waited to vocally express his anger and frustration at Tama not being able to get food with any regularity until she is asleep.

And this isn't to say that Luffy is coddling Tama or walking on eggshells around her in a way that would be out of character for him. He is still very blunt in telling her about Ace's death, but when it comes to his anger and violence, he is very mindful of how he shows both when he is around Tama.

Later, when she is once again taken by Kaido's men, and Luffy rescues her from Kamijiro (the man with the lion on his stomach) and he realizes that he hurt Tama, he drops her, creating space between them as he goes to fight Kamijiro out of anger.

Part of this is obviously for Tama's safety. But I truly believe that the other part is him wanting to make sure that Tama knows that his anger in this moment and the acts of violence he is committing, are in no way directed at her, but instead done FOR her, and directed at the man who harmed her.

This is a side of Luffy we almost never see. Because he is not just being protective of Tama in regards to outside forces, but also as it relates to his own behavior. How for a young kid who has known not much else than indifference, anger, and violence at the hands of the adults in her life, Luffy has sworn to only show her kindness (in his own very Luffy way) and support.

And I think nothing else shows his dedication to kindness toward Tama than his promise to make Wano a place where she can eat her fill every day. Because to Luffy, giving food is the ultimate act of kindness, of care that a person can do for another. It's why his philosophy about heroes is so heavily reliant on food and the act of sharing it. Because to Luffy, heroes are the kind and selfless people who give food to others. And even though he does not view himself as selfness, that he stated that he doesn't want to be a hero, he will for Tama. He will give her food so that she will know and understand that he will not be like Kaido's men, or the hundreds of people who walked past her without second glance as she sold her hats in the street. That he will care for her, and that he will help to make Wano a place where she knows far more kindness that hatred.

[mxtxfanatic]

3rd POV: A Tale of Two Novels

Sometimes I think about how expansive writing is even when using the same technique. Take for example the usage of 3rd POV in mdzs vs. 2ha.

In mdzs, 3rd POV is used to show readers what general society thinks about characters—who are the heroes, who are the villains, what gossip do we know, what are the tales people tell their children at night, etc.—as well as get into the heads of the actual characters to show us what they think of each other and themselves—the tales of Jiang Cheng's heroics vs. Jiang Cheng fantasizing about kidnapping people to torture; the tales of Wei Wuxian's "demonic nature" vs. his constant care for and willingness to teach those around him. In this way, even though we are usually sticking closely to Wei Wuxian and his story, we as readers are given the opportunity to piece together the truth behind these intertwining tales connected through gossip and myth-making for ourselves in the moments where the narration either zooms out slightly to expose a large picture or even completely falls into another character's orbit to reveal a glimpse of their true self to us. Therefore, by the time we get to the final arcs of the story, readers should be able to listen to a lay-person discuss a major character or event and accurately understand what of the things being said is true, what is unsubstantiated speculation, and what is maliciously-spread rumor.

2ha uses 3rd POV completely differently. On the surface, the 3rd-person narration serves to show us exactly how, though the beginning of Mo Ran's life was rough, he and those around him are actually well-meaning enough to change for the better and form healthy, loving bonds with each other. Similar to its usage on mdzs, the narration zooms out to show us that hey, maybe this event didn't go the way a character perceived it or hey, maybe Character A thinks this way because they misunderstood what Character B meant, and we know what Character B meant because we got to see inside their head briefly, as if it is softening up some of the characters in order to make way for redemption/repairing of relationships. Because of how the narration zooms in and out and flits back and forth between characters as we would expect with a 3rd POV, this completely blindsides us to how much Mo Ran being cursed with the Flower of Everlasting Hatred has actually completely tainted the whole of the narrative.

For any Adventure Time fan who's watched the Season 6 finale, that is what the curse is doing to the narration. For anyone who hasn't watched it, let me explain: in the paired episodes Hot Diggity Doom and The Comet, a comet is flying towards Earth, and slowly but surely, the color scheme is being saturated by purple. However, the transition is soooooooo sloooooooow that you don't realize that "wow, everything is purple now???" until suddenly the characters find themselves indoors and the color scheme snaps back to normal. The 3rd POV narration, in 2ha's case, is the color scheme. The curse is the comet washing everything purple. The difference with 2ha, though, is that it's actually in reverse: instead of things getting gradually more and more purple/corrupted, the narration begins to slowly but surely reveal the truth of everyone's characters and motivations until the purple completely melts away with the destruction of the last of the curse's effects, giving way for Mo Ran 2.0. However, the most diabolical part of this whole process is that without knowledge of the existence of the curse, we as readers wouldn't even have known that we had been seeing in purple the entire time! And this is where the 3rd POV truly shines in 2ha: because the story relies so much on the revisiting of flashbacks from different perspectives and reflections in an almost cyclical pattern, when we revisit certain "known truths" about the characters in the Mo Ran 2.0 section, we suddenly find ourselves going from normal view to looking at a mess of purple and going "wait, was this purple the whole time???" thus forcing us to re-evaluate everything that we were ever told about the story all the way back to the very beginning of it. 2ha uses the 3rd POV to trick readers into accepting a heavily skewed narrative as "objective truth." Because why wouldn't we see the 3rd POV as objective? That's what it's for! (Isn't it?)

In conclusion, both Meatbun and MXTX utilize 3rd POV as a reflection of what their novels are doing and how they want readers to approach these stories. Mdzs is a story about investigating the truth for yourself rather than relying on the word of others and reputation. Thus, the 3rd POV narration hands you multiple different tales and tells you to investigate to arrive at the truth behind the misdirections. 2ha, however, is about the inability to solve a problem or save yourself if you don't even know something is wrong to begin with. Taxian-jun takes his "defectiveness" as objective fact, as does the narration taking his cue, and thus do we. Mo Ran 0.5 takes his second chance to change things, and through his transition into Mo Ran 2.0, slowly redeems himself... until all of his past crimes come back to haunt him, anyways. It is only upon the discovery of the existence of the flower, the understanding that Mo Ran was cursed with it, and the realization that our 3rd POV narrative was only telling us what Mo Ran believed and remembered through the effects of the curse, that readers are finally given a glimpse of the truth of the story, and the characters—coming to the same conclusions—are finally able to save themselves.

[perfectfangirl]

notes after rewatching fallout s1 ep4

• cooper and lucy wandering the desert and mans starts coughin', somethin' settin' in • whoa i just realized you could hear roger roaring from outside • roger was at a clinic, probably trying to find something to help him ☹️ • i wrote a whole entire post on this scene but anyways can i say we see full blown uncooked cannibalism hardly ten minutes into episode four like is everyone ok • the fact this scene is presented with a lot of tension, like a horror film and truly it's just a guy named roger fighting to stay not feral • i wonder how cooper met him? ghouls tend to know each other after a while [on account of the discrimination], i'm sure he was checking with this man every now and then tbh. perhaps. a friend. • cooper asks roger how he's feeling and he says "you know... it's hard out here. dang smoothies can be so unkind" and i just 😞 • "i see you got a smoothie of your own" ding ding ding ghoulcy this one's for you • you know what's particularly sad about ghoulification is for example that roger has had to isolate himself from others, even ghouls, because he was turning • roger asking for a vial and cooper looking at lucy [cooper, you botched the using lucy for bait, come on] • firmly in the camp that if cooper had vials left, he would give one to roger. cooper has shown himself to be crude and cruel seeming at times but i just know he went there with purpose • roger accepting he's turning and telling cooper and lucy to leave as a warning, roger seemed so nice, why and how did he get like this

• "i did ok" 😞 • going from standard human to turning into a feral ghoul in less than twenty eight years in the fallout universe is insane and idk if there's a lot of lore on why someone could end up like this and someone like cooper not • the difference in cooper's and roger's symptoms are pretty stark--- not entirely sold on him coughing and passing out is from ferality and more inclined to think chem withdrawals but i digress • "say, you remember how good food use to taste?" post war life is so bad, nobody in the wasteland remembers when food use to food 😭

• because roger is really nice and having a conversation, roger turns, speaking to lucy. cooper using this as an opportunity to kill roger seems so sudden and a betrayal until • look at cooper's eyes and his reaction after pulling the trigger--- not exactly the expression of someone who is in it "for the love of the game", in fact, i have come to view this act as a mercy kill • which is ironic of course because as we've all come to see, lucy does the exact thing for her own mother four episodes later • once feral, ghouls roam the wasteland operating on two instincts alone: hunger and defense. they are a threat to all those around them and i don't recall much on reversal. that's no life. roger would've turned feral and harmed them or others, it is sad • cooper mercy killing roger was in some ways compassionate, he had a sweet conversation with roger giving his last thoughts something warm and nice. cooper then going on to butcher and consume his flesh was an uh choice 💀

• and lucy immediately confused was like "wait?, why'd you do that? he was sick." i don't know if she entirely understands ghoulification, seems she thought maybe he could be helped • lucy is basically confused, begging cooper to not like, eat this guy 😭 • i'm gonna have to agree that he didn't have to eat roger, radroaches is everywhere and for free, still pondering if he did this to fuck with her or because some reason i am missing • cooper asking lucy what her name was [hold on, why he care about that?" and lucy so nearly coming this close to finding out what hank did and who cooper is [since she didn't ask his name] • "sometimes a fella's got to eat a fella" is my all time favourite quote in season one of this show lmao • cooper be funny as fuck for no reason like this man's brain is cooked • i would personally like to ask walton whose idea it was to go "mmm. mmm." while eating irradiated human flesh like that, like why is the pre war actor cooper howard like this • lucy is incomprehensibly disgusted but then goes on a thing [a vulnerable thing] about vault 32 starving [in the great plague of '77] and that she lost her mother during this time and that her father never resorted to cannibalism. there's some time and memory discrepancies here • "well there's what people say they did and what they really did" i wanted cooper to be wrong so bad here when he went on to clown hank by saying "i'll bet your daddy was first in line at the cookout. i bet he had a bib with a drawing of his neighbour's ass on it" • lmao they gave all the best lines to cooper, i'm sick, he was right • lucy, having had enough and not finding cooper's humour being used as a way to cope like this asks this disturbed little man • "how do you live like this? why keep going?" and for the briefest moment, and i do mean brief, cooper feels the crushing weight of who he is when lucy confronts him like this • of course he shakes off a moral inquiry and transfers it to another as he asks "why the fuck am i doing all the work?... ass jerky don't make itself." and forces lucy to do it instead • twice now this man has talked about ass in less than ten minutes and for everyone's sake i'll move along 💀

• woody basically trying to interrogate the raider prisoners and getting nothing, meanwhile--- i think they already starting to be poisoned • ooo ok but betty telling norm he's the last standing maclean in the vault so his words carry and people listen. it occurred to me maybe he inadvertently inspired the poisonings of the raiders but it's also occurring to me that because they couldn't just all be shot outright, being poisoned was the best follow through method, nobody notices until it's already too late. now who is sneaky enough for that? • "when clever boys like you are angry, you're lucky not to have seen where that can lead." so... was betty present for shady sands? hmm • betty asking norm to tread lightly is very... not a threat, but she's watching him, right

• ok! we have that second water scene. it's confirmed here cooper is fetching water from an irradiated source [hence why denying lucy any makes sense] he puts it in his canteen and drinks it just fine. lucy is obviously mindlessly thirsty because she defeatedly drops down to drink the murky, stagnant irradiated water. it's so irradiated, her pip boy is going crazy, she literally gags in the scene • "now you're getting it. how does this golden rule jibe with what's going through your head now?" well i mean we knew cooper been fucking with her the whole time and showing her the wasteland streets but it is also unlikely she would have found a clean water source where they are, i guess her getting radiation sickness may have been inevitable but cooper denying her water kept her from being sick • after another insane string of sentences from this centuries old movie star, lucy finally asks "what are you?" and it's more like "what the fuck is wrong with you?" • "oh i'm you, sweetie, you just give it a little time" is majorly menacing after everybody just drank stagnant rad water like it's koolaid • cooper felt so smug then was zapped with karma again because he has a coughing fit directly after telling lucy this lmao • walton has such a good old man cough ❤️ • lucy takes cooper coughing up a lung as an opportunity to run [where i don't know but] • cooper uses his lasso skills he used to use at kid's parties to pull lucy back and then says some shit like "where you think you going? you ain't going nowhere."

• so we have arrived at the infamous and intriguing finger biting off scene--- can i just say she bit his finger off with such ease and then! cooper doesn't even act like it hurt, he seems... pleased he got that kind of reaction out of lucy. he's like into it 💀 • "there you are, you little killer" i'll keep this pg13 and say cooper really wanted to get a rise out of lucy, to bring the dog out of her, huh • he... then proceeds to cut her [corresponding hand's] finger off. ironically applying the "do unto others as you would have done unto you" tit for tat, if you will • i was surprised he did this because like ok, she spat it out? pick it up and reattach it, fella 😭 but there's more under the surface here because • cooper says "now that right there is the closest thing we've had to an honest exchange so far." and he's being framed in a close up so close, you can see his dainty eyelashes, sun shining in the background, his hazel eyes sparkling--- this is not on accident ☝️ gdgkdkfd • there's a lot of symbolism to be had but for now, i'll save that for next episode notes when cooper does the thing • ah chet! and steph. i kinda am of the idea she strategically got with him but anyways! who wouldn't! chet hot as fuck! and steph look like an assassin • bert's shoes so small gldgldfl • steph is definitely angry and sad dealing with bert's death in her own special way [trying to fuck chet] • excuse me but why they turned an almost sex scene into a birthing scene 😭💀 • lucy been walking the wasteland without a shoe, how she do it 😭 • i did not pick up on cooper bartering lucy for two months' worth of vials [thanks subtitles] • "mint condition" [looks at a bloody stump on hand] "near mint condition" now who fault is this?? lmao • "you got problems out here too, sweetheart" like, shut up 😭 • cooper every time he interacts with a mr. handy is one of the only few places he gets to hear a voice of this old friend • "best you try your luck behind that door" well at least he untied her • this is like the third time he's gotten instant karma with lucy because either he pretended to keep it together until she went in or genuinely didn't know he was going to pass out but • went through the five stages of grief trying to figure who he sold her to because i deadass was thinking the same thing lucy was 😭 • lucy being given the finger of like, a corpse or something because it's grey 😭 forever changed by the wasteland, always carrying a little bleakness and death with her ❤️ • lucy never experiencing real cotton [or maybe only rarely] • lucy calling cooper a creature 😭 • "he put a leash around my neck and made me drink from puddle water that i'm pretty sure was some kind of animal pee" sending 😭 she talking to this evil mr. handy like it's a person • her recounting her captivity with cooper like he was simply being mean to her is just • "and i thought i was here to be a sex slave." "what?! no! what a disgusting idea. i'm simply going to harvest your organs." damn, fallout which one is worse, like fuck---

• hope the jello cake veronica got wasn't poisoned... • "what are you looking at?" "a murderer in a cage, paying the price for what you did to us. for what you did to the innocent people in vault 32" and norm gets circumstantial evidence from a raider by accidentally cross examining one of them with it being more than anything woody could coax out of them • one thing about the macleans, they smart • i also think it's excellent writing that intrigue was spurred like this by a raider saying vault 32 wasn't innocent because they were running an experiment like all the vaults did, everything isn't so black and white • norm reads every situation correctly because why he read chet by saying chet came along to investigate because norm reminds him of lucy fkdgkdkg • still piecing together the full extent of vaults 31, 32, 33 together but at first i couldn't understand why it looked like so many took their own lives--- apparently them discovering what vault 31 was about started a rebellion but two years seemed so recent to me. curious how this overlaps with shady sands if it does • they showed the spooky ass rat utopia experiment still playing on the tvs in there but i wasn't sure if this was explicit about that being vault 32's experiment

• lucy being prompted to continue on because of a flashback from her mom upon awakening 🥲 • "lucy sweetie what are you doing out here?" and those were her memories on the surface [nevermind cooper calling her [[condescendingly]] "sweetheart"] • i did not realize the ghouls were being kept in the freezers but it looks like they either only sell ghouls or keep the ghouls "on ice" [not unlike how dom pedro would keep cooper and cut pieces off of him] and collect the organs of standard people right then and there • "sir, you can't do this. please, i need my organs" lucy, it's just a robot bulter, he's not a real guy 😭 • the way lucy got out of this pickle quick, almost got snip snipped but short circuited the murderbot • lucy putting her murdercap on and putting drano in the murderbot's syringes, clever girl • it was so "star wars" of her to treat mr. handy like a person and then the guys running the organ trafficking scheme going "you might as well be holding an air conditioner hostage" 😭 • the organ traffickers running the super duper mart ring are so dull and banal evil types, it's so satire

• i just registered those two organ trafficker guys got a camera and can see cooper laid out in front of the store • lucy freeing the ghouls 🥲and one even thanking her [even the feral ones 💀] • poor martha, i peep how we see lucy's grey finger and it being shown used to defend herself against martha in her feral state • organ traffickers got ate up bless • nothing lucy did besides shoot was going to honestly stop martha, sometimes your pacifist playthrough doesn't go as planned • the pip boys still being on and running on the not alive people in vault 32 • "death to management" and it's directly the reference to vault 31's experiment, right there

• lucy walking out of there with mismatched shoes but two shoes nonetheless ☝️ • i guess lucy sincerely did not comprehend cooper is a ghoul or ghoulification, i suppose most vault dwellers literally would never know, that's post war history, wow • lucy asking cooper about if the vials keep him from going feral and he cannot even speak, he can only nod, from a prone position, on the ground--- the power/framing trade off is excellent • lucy bends down, briefly rolls the gun in her hand, while cooper lies helpless, she delivers a fatal line • "i may end up looking like you. but i'll never be like you" harbouring not enough ill will against him despite mistreatment, she gives cooper several vials, directly near his hand. didn't have to do none of that shit! • if i was cooper, i'd be scared as hell of this lady, she took down an organ trafficking ring in a grocery store ran by two armed guys, a murderbot, with some feral ghoul hostages, all of the bad and dangerous people fucking died • she really could've ended cooper right then and there, his devotion in season two gone be unmatched lmao

• i truly think he had a hint of a smile on his face after she helped [save his life] by anyways • lucy walks into the proverbial sunset meanwhile this man shambles into super duper mart about to go on the biggest bender the wasteland has seen since the bombs dropped • cooper gets so fucked up, i lost count how many things he ingested, king said all of 'em • cooper is so goddamn famous, his film "the man from deadhorse" is just sitting next to a tv • you could say here is where cooper has a crisis of conscience whereupon he holds the tape in his hand but truly we know already he had that centuries ago when he filmed "the man from deadhorse"

• cooper watching the scene, the very moment in his life where things started to shift--- he tries to cock an invisible fun, being unable as he remembers his trigger finger is gone [neutral, disarmed, here's where i think he decides he wants to sew on lucy's finger to his hand] it's like he's starting over, a moral rebirth but with his trigger finger • they really made cooper say "you commie son of a bitch" in a western, just ugly propaganda • let's examine "feo, fuerte, y formal" again! "ugly, strong, dignity" does post war cooper have two out of three on that front? is this his step into regaining dignity again? • cooper was always playing characters, it was expected of him and he got paid for it. it feels like a wall is being torn down, something is being shed here. and maybe it's this character he's masquerading as • cooper and lucy both having revelations in the super duper mart--- lucy realising you can't always reason and logic out of a situation and cooper being confronted with the fact you can keep your morality and sense of self intact and a horrible place and situation doesn't have to change you

[agalychnisspranneusroseus]

I don't like complaining about S3 too much, it's kind of a bummer to focus on what I don't like when there's so much I love, but one thing that I can't help but feel disappointed by is how we never got to see the new Marcy.

We got to see the new Sasha all through S3, who is completely different from S1 and S2 Sasha, and she's such a wonderful and loveable person, you can't help but adore her. Peak girlfriend material. It makes her oddly homoerotic friendship with Anne so sweet! And Anne herself, as the literal star of the show, had her development front and center from day 1. All of S1 was about her growth, and while she still had some work to do in S2, by then she had already changed a lot. Much like Sasha, she goes from being a selfish little shit to becoming a noble, honorable young woman, driven by love and responsability, with the emotional intelligence necessary to face any challenges coming her way.

Marcy... doesn't get that chance. The content of her arc is fine - she realizes she was selfish and self-centered, she understands how that's wrong and she decides to be a better person. But when Sasha (and I'm comparing her to Sasha because Anne, as THE protagonist, is not a fair comparison) had like... all of season 2 to change and develop, and half of S3 to truly shine as her new, improved self, Marcy... well, she did get some development in S2, true - the First Temple and New Wartwood are important moments that come to mind, but...

Okay, so, we knew everything about Sasha's situation from the start. She's lying to the other characters but not to the audience, so everything she goes through in Toadcatches, Barrel's Warhammer, the Dinner, Battle of the Bands and True Colors is very visible to us. We see her going up and down and we always understand what's up with her. We get a very clear view into her mind. We know Sasha. Marcy, on the other hand, has been lying to the audience up until True Colors, so everything we knew about her prior to that has to be recontextualized given the new information, and what we inevitably conclude is that nothing she learned was enough to make her question her plan. She understood the concepts, but she didn't apply it to her particular situation. That's not a bad thing! She's just halfway through her arc - accepting the Truth without letting go of the Lie. But when so much of her arc is hidden from the audience and further recontextualized through more flashbacks near the finale, what we get is a very mysterious Marcy who tells us "everything you thought you knew is more complicated that it seemed", and given that this is the season finale, that set-up inevitably promises a deeper exploration of the REAL Marcy in S3. No more scheeming and lying and manipulating, just Marcy in real time, with no need for flashbacks to recontextualize things again.

But S3 gives us very few chances to see Marcy in Real Time. We see her in Olivia and Yunan, All In and The Hardest Thing. Three episodes. I'm not gonna complain about that because I think we all feel the same way. There's no need. But I will insist that a good solution would have been to have at least two or three episodes about Marcy inside the Core. The King and the Core should have been about Marcy uncovering that ancient information in Aldrich's memory without him noticing, for example. This would have been an improvement in several ways:

More Marcy screentime and development

More exploration on the nature of the Core

We have a present day character knowing all about the Box's lore, and it's not just Andrias randomly thinking about in with a vintage filter on.

Marcy having more agency inside the Core in general would have allowed her to fight back in some way, which would be necessary for another change I'd like to suggest below.

Other episodes could be about her "bonding" with Aldrich and slowly realizing he's delulu, her learning about some old Olm lore, and unlocking a secret that will help them later with like, Anne's powers or the Moon or something, and just... her thinking and realizing she fucked up. If the Core knows her memories, it could recreate a more prolongued scenario with Anne and Sasha, maybe a sleepover? In general, I think Marcy would need someone in there to bounce off of, whether it is a bad guy like Aldrich or lifeless projections of Anne and Sasha, or even someone in there that's actually on her side, sick of living forever in this fantasy, maybe.

She needs time to define her new, changed self after learning her lesson, just like Sasha got to do. Because we barely see who Marcy has become after the events of Amphibia. We got like... TWO scenes to tell us ANYTHING about it.

"No! Only a coward would hide away in this place! Well, I reject this sick fantasy, and I reject you!"

"Even if your friends win, your parents will still tear the three of you apart."

"I started this whole mess because I wanted to escape that reality, but I won't run away from it anymore!"

And later near the end:

"I came to this world thinking only of myself. It was wrong of me, and I wish I'd gotten to know you both better"

These are like... the only indicator of the person Marcy became in Amphibia. They're not worthless - she learned to be more aware of the people around her, and to be stronger in the face of change. Her final scene with Aldrich is her most confrontational scene in the show, and certainly her most angry one. Before, she'd only been like... mildly annoyed one time because Anne was being too overprotective, and she glared at Andrias for like two seconds during O&Y but didn't actually say anything. Marcy is not an angry person, and she does seem to be scared of conflict, so to slap Aldrich's hand away, call him a coward, and proudly raise her fist and declare she's done running makes her look much stronger, and I appreciate that. And she does pretty much declare she refuses to be a coward. But this isn't nearly enough. If I want to write fanfic about Marcy post-Amphibia, I shouldn't have to sit down to analyze these two moments to extrapolate what her characterization would have been like. It should be like with Sasha. We know exactly who the new Sasha is, but we never get to see the new Marcy shine. I think that's why her arc feels so rushed in comparison to Sasha, whose beginning of her arc arguably took up one 11 minutes episode, and the rest happened mostly off-screen: the new Sasha was radiant in S3B, even if we didn't see much of the transition.

I know that, due to structural reasons, Marcy wasn't going to have much screentime so they had to rush her arc quite a bit, and while my suggestion to give her more time inside the Core stands, I think that's not enough either. I think she needs time to interact with Anne and Sasha, and also King Andrias, her Amphibia friend. It's hard to think of a solution to this problem given the way the finale is structured, but my first idea is to make it longer: The Beginning of the End stays the same, All In stays the same except for the way Marcy is released: instead of just, cutting a cable, Sasha needs to reach her with the Power of Friendship. Think something like the Running Up That Hill scene from Stranger Things, or the Toothless Found scene from HTTYD2

Because we can't miss a chance to develop Sasha and Marcy's relationship here. AND since they both share the roles of the Betrayer, the Liar, the Manipulator, of Anne's toxic friend in the path of redemption, it's poetic that Sasha, who has held Marcy under her thumb for years, is the one to help her break free, not through brute force like in canon, but by actually putting into practice what she's learned. Kinda like how, in AtLA S3, Zuko is playing the role of group therapist to the rest of the Gaang. Sasha figured things out first, now she wants to help Marcy find redemption too. Make it a callback to Anne's little speech from TBOTE

"It's not easy. Forgiveness is hard, and it can take time. But believe me: it's worth it. I mean, just look at what you and I have now."

Because redemption isn't easy. It's hard, and it can take time. But you still need to show up, even when you think they don't want you, even when you think you ruined everything. Getting up to so the right thing is always worth it.

Of course, if we want Sasha to save Marcy, a little bit of previous development wouldn't hurt. What if we add a little episode in S3A about the girls all thinking about each other? Anne finding a copy of War of the Warlocks that Marcy forgot in her house, Sasha being reminded of Marcy while helping Maddie with curses for the resistance, and Marcy just... thinking about them, in general, while in the Core. A simple 11 minutes segment, 3 minutes and a half of screentime for each of them. You don't need much, just a moment for them to explore their conflicting feelings for each other.

But then... then, we still need to see Marcy - the new Marcy - interact with her friends, so let's add one or two more episodes to the finale, between All In and The Hardest Thing. Maybe we can shift the Olms storyline here? Would that mess with the pacing too much? Tbh the writers did put themselves in a predicament with Marcy, so it's hard to find a perfect solution. I guess we can keep the tension if the moon is falling veeeeeery slowly, giving our girls just enough time for one more quick adventure together while not making it feel like they're taking their sweet time. So we have one or two extra episodes, and what do we do here?

We challenge Marcy. Just like how Sasha was challenged in Commander Anne, Marcy has to prove she's changed too. Tempt her with her past self-centeredness, her possessive instincts, the easy way in which she lies to herself, her impulse to plan around Anne and Sasha and not with them, hiding important information. Her fear of change. She knows what she needs to do, and she's ready to sit with the uncomfortable feeling of change instead of rejecting it immediately. Maybe she has to let Joe Sparrow go, for example, to be with other sparrows or something, idk. Whatever it is, it needs to be an opportunity to show her newfound emotional maturity. Show how, just like Anne and Sasha before her, she became a more noble person, one who, from now on, is honest, selfless and brave. One who embraces change, and who may even seek it out, because she understands this is how you grow.

Anyway. Yeah, that. I guess I'm just disappointed we never got to see the person Marcy became, but at least it's not hard to extrapolate it from what little the show gave us. We're not 100% in the dark. Though it's not nearly enough. If they ever give us more Amphibia, it would be awesome to see more of this new Marcy, but until then, we have a beautiful community here of galaxy brained people to put the pieces together 🥰

[sandyferal]

LET’S GO Perirep “play” vs. real dynamic essay. And I’m going to actually go in depth on this. Like actually. It’s going to be long. With references to other media and shit. (I’m gonna be real there’s like a few paragraphs talking about Megamind but I promise it’s VERY RELEVANT.) Only read if you’re interested in that!!

But anyway uh. Very opinions, don’t take this as me trying to make an objective statement. Cause it’s really not. Please Perirep fandom don’t get mad at me for trying to dictate their dynamic I’m really not trying to do that especially since I’m mostly talking about my au

It also very much states things I’m trying to convey more subtlety in my fanfic so if you don’t like that don’t read 👍

NOW. To start off, what is a play dynamic? It’s entirely possible there’s an established word/phrase describing what I mean, but if there is, I’m unaware. So for now that’s what I’ll call it. And what a play dynamic is, is a performative dynamic between two characters that does not reflect how they would interact genuinely, or how they really feel. You could think of bedroom roleplay/dynamics as an example, but it definitely applies in non-sexual settings. Case in point! The movie Megamind.

Now, in the movie, Megamind has two relevant play dynamics. His interactions with Metro Man, and his interactions with Roxanne. His interactions with MetroMan are relevant when talking about Perirep for the rivalry aspect, and for how it affects the “villain’s” sense of identity. His interactions with Roxanne are relevant when talking about how it affects the development of romantic relationships.

First off, Megamind defined his own identity through his rivalry with Metroman. This is extremely relevant to Irep! From young ages they were presented with a “good guy” who was more loved and more successful than them. And for the majority (or all in Irep’s case) of their lives, the only goal they strived towards was “defeating” that enemy. But I think Megamind shows that in reality, accomplishing that goal would eventually leave Irep somewhat depressed and empty. Because that’s not how he really feels. And because he doesn’t truly know who he is outside of his rival. So that play dynamic isn’t something that can work if played out to its natural conclusion.

Then there’s Megamind’s dynamic with Roxanne. Many people have noticed that even when Roxanne was the “damsel” and Megamind the “villain” there was a little bit of banter. Maybe even flirty banter. Or tension. Because that can often arise from play dynamics. But in reality, that dynamic was performance. It’s implied Megamind was not used to her being so unaffected, meaning she may have played along in the past, but it’s clear that she had gotten used to it a long time ago. No real danger. And even being tied up, there barely even felt like a true power imbalance.

Despite all this, their romantic relationship only really worked when they moved past that dynamic. Truthfully, they couldn’t have created a real relationship with that play dynamic, because it didn’t reflect the reality of who they were, and because Roxanne clearly did not want Megamind when she viewed his villainy as a genuine threat. And I think Perirep is very similar.

At the beginning of my au, Peri and Irep haven’t gotten past their play dynamic. They were in this performative mindset of “scary evil domineering anti-fairy” and “soft goody two shoes fairy” that only truly existed for public perception. They have some sort of real feelings for each other, but they’re so so so buried that there was no possible way they would be acted upon genuinely. So the way their feelings eventually came out was through sexual tension via their play dynamic. And that’s how the pregnancy happened.

That causes a layer of insincerity and awkwardness, specifically on Peri’s part. Because their relationship was started because of that play dynamic. Something that Peri understands is performative and not accurate to who they really are. In which case he questions whether they are capable of a real relationship, because he doesn’t know what their genuine relationship is at all, or if they even have one. Meanwhile, Irep literally defines himself through it. It’s how he sees himself, and all he’s ever been told to be.

In reality, Peri is not soft. He’s irritable, and tired and sassy. He’s occasionally sweet or anxious or pathetic or over-dramatically upset, but he’s not truly vulnerable to Irep. And in reality, Irep is not that domineering. He’s failed almost constantly from birth, and has never actually overpowered Peri. He’s a silly little over dramatic loser who tries too hard.

Does that mean he isn’t possessive or protective? No. Irep is those things I think. Or he tries to be. But there’s not a definitive power imbalance in his favor. At least not once they’re in a relationship. No matter how many times he says Peri is “his” or “belongs to him,” Peri could easily leave. Any time. Not even an issue. And Irep would be sobbing and wailing and begging him to come back.

Now do neither of them enjoy or play into the play dynamic? I don’t think so. I personally think they find it kinda fun. And Peri can get flustered by it (although sometimes Irep is too lol). But they have to realize how performative it is if they want to stay together. Because in my mind, if Irep takes his act too seriously and tries to genuinely enforce that dynamic on Peri in a romantic relationship… Peri would straight up just leave. Like no he would not take that.

In regards to what I think their genuine dynamic would be like. I think Peri struggles to be affectionate and express his feelings. Sometimes he will get anxious or flustered or be a little pathetic. He can also be very confident, stubborn, and independent in the relationship. He wants to have the assurance that he’s capable without Irep. He can get a bit distant or snappy at times, but deep down he cares a lot.

Irep on the other hand can get very needy and clingy. Things can set him off, making him insecure, possessive and jealous. He’s very protective during the pregnancy but less so afterwards. Deep down though, I think he wants someone he can be mushy and sappy with. To the point that he might develop codependency issues. Over time he starts to think of himself as scary and evil and powerful like a dog does. In the sense that he likes it when Peri pats him on the head and tells him he is.

Now!!! All of this is very much my personal opinion! I will clarify, this is obviously not the only way to think about their dynamics. This is how I write them but ppl who write them differently are super cool and awesome!! I just. Think of them like this myself. As a reminder, I am also writing them for an au! So I expect them to not be fully canon accurate. Especially since I’m pretty sure their canon rivalry is meant to be genuine to some degree.

[tsutsumi-kurose]

I find it interesting that Tsukasa reached for Nene without hesitation. It was probably because he needs her to fulfill his goals but I wanna be delusional and say he has a heart and cares for her / people

lol it is very hard to tell with tsukasa!! but he definitely does have a heart it’s just….selective lol.

and i think the fact that it's so hard to tell how tsukasa feels about people makes him and nene such good complements to each other!! nene is so expressive and open, and tsukasa is such a mystery to the audience and especially to amane, the person closest to him. these differences play off of each other beautifully. it's nene's openness and persistence and open-book optimism that gets us so many glimpses into tsukasa's feelings and past and world view and the different attitudes he's capable of embodying and expressing. and i personally think this moment is an example of that!

i think tsukasa catching nene was a very instinctive action he took!! i don't think he gave it any thought:

i loveeee this moment and these two pages like... he makes the decision so quickly that the panel of nene falling doesn't even have time to complete!! tsukasa physically breaks into the panel of nene falling, that's how fast and split second his decision is!! it's such a beautiful use of the space on the page. and tsukasa looks surprised by himself on the next page!! tsukasa is a very calucated person who usually has the upper hand, and in this moment he realizes he has truly given that upper hand and that foresight and that planning up, that he needs to resort to the last resort of calling amane for help. he resorts to what he sees as the impossible!! so i really don't think catching her was just part of the plan. there was definitely an emotional element involved there!!

i also think nene really has a knack for bringing out new sides of tsukasa. she's the reason he revealed that he's called for hanako before with no response!! she challenges him in ways he hasn't been challenged before!! she constantly surprises him and makes things interesting for him. i think she is definitely a very unique relationship in his life, and given all the reactions she gets out of him, i would say he definitely has at least some level of emotional investment in her as a person.

you are right though, that this doesn't necessarily mean he cares about her... but i don't think it's delusional for us to hope that it means something along those lines!! after all, they've spent a lot of time together leading up to this moment, and thanks to time travel, who knows how many interactions they've had that only tsukasa has experienced at this point? there's so much we don't know about tsukasa, constantly!! and i think the way he feels about nene is one of the more confounding mysteries about him.

i think it's very possible he has a soft spot for nene at this point! or at least is developing one. I’d believe it!! after all, if nene falls to her death who will listen to tsukasa talk about amane for four hours straight??

also look at them here:

serious analysis on pause they're best friends here. they are consulting they are looking to each other they are silently communicating!!! where do we go from here!!! nene said :0!!!!! tsukasa said O_O!!!!!

okay back to more text based analysis lol: from a different angle, you could also argue tsukasa's end goal with all of this is extending nene's life, as he's working to grant amane's wish, which, to his knowledge from the conversation in ch91, would be to extend nene's lifespan. so indirectly, but still supposedly his goal in a way!! which is a way to interpret his motivations in this moment as well.

and on the topic of tsukasa's goals, i think they show his heart!! yes, he's got an agenda, but overall his agenda has really just been to grant amane's wish. and it's an agenda he does his best to fulfill, which is a way of showing heart!! he thinks this is how amane can get whatever he wants. so in a way, even if this moment was just about needing nene as a means to an end, the end and the means of getting there are all motivated by his heart!!

but yeah in summary i definitely think there's a lot of depth to this relationship and to this interaction in particular. it haunts me constantly!! i love tsukasa i love nene i love the ways they play off of each other so much!! yes i'm biased because i would steal the moon from the sky for tsukasa and nene, but i really do think she makes him feel a lot!! whether that results in affection for her i think is beautifully complicated and unclear, and i can't wait to see their relationship progress throughout the rest of the manga!!

so i am with you in your delusions anon!! keep the faith!! i certainly will!! <3

[lestappenforever]

this is directed to you social-psychological anon (my goat <3)!!

you’re so right. max literally cares soooo much about what charles thinks of him. when anyone has anything bad to say about max, he doesn’t really care, has a short and cold response to it, or just laughs it off (if it’s someone he knows doesn’t mean it, like lando joking “max ruins everything”). point is he doesn’t really care that much. however, a few years ago an interviewer asked charles what was annoying about max and they made max respond to it, which is so weird but we roll anyways lol. charles goes “annoying? i don’t know. i guess he can say weird things to the media. but that’s okay, he has personality. personality is important.” (this isn’t an exact quote but it’s along the lines of what he said!). he barely even says anything bad, and he immediately compliments max right after. however, max got so upset about it. he immediately goes “I DON’T CARE WHAT HE THINKS!! >:(“ he took it much deeper than he usually does about not great comments toward him. whole country booing him? he doesn’t give a fuck. charles says a barely insulting (not even) comment? he takes that shot so personally 😭 it just shows how important charles’ opinion is to him. fascinating….

Social-psychological anon, another admirerer who shares their own wonderful insight to this analysis. ❤️

And I'd like to throw in my own two cents here, because there is absolutely something truly marvellous about how Max could not give less of a fuck about what other people think of him, no matter who it is. But with Charles? There is some deeprooted urge within him, a desperate desire for Charles' approval, that just gives him a whole other response to anything that may even be slightly interpreted as negative if it comes from Charles.

Your example with that video of Charles being asked if Max is annoying, and Max's clearly bothered response is excellent. Had that been anyone else — a reporter, another driver, literally anyone who is not Charles Marc Harvé Perceval Leclerc — he wouldn't even have batted an eye. Hell, he probably would have grinned as if whoever it was had just given him a massive compliment. But because it was Charles, and because Max for some reason decided that Charles was sort of insulting him (even when he absolutely was not — quite the contrary, the way I personally view it), just gives away just how much Charles' opinion of him means to him. And that is a huge deal, given how Max Emilian Verstappen is very well-known for not giving a flying fuck about what other people think of him.

I think a lot of this boils down to the fact that it's Charles. The guy Max has fought against for most of his racing life, the boy who grew up alongside him in karting, the guy his own father believed was predestined to fight him on track forever, even in F1. (Which is high fucking praise from Jos Verstappen.) Max and Charles have been tied together for as long as Max can remember, and for as long as they're both competing in the same league, Max will think of Charles as the rival to beat. He will think of Charles as the one driver on the grid with the biggest chance of giving him a proper fight, even when he so clearly can't.

Take this season, for example. We haven't gotten to see many battles between Max and Charles for obvious reasons (Ferrari being absolutely abysmal for most of the season), but the few times we have gotten to see it? Max will go fucking wheel-to-wheel with Charles as if they're both in the running of winning the WDC and the winner will be decided based on who comes out victorious out of that particular turn. It doesn't matter that Max knows that he's going to get past Charles. It doesn't matter that Max knows that Charles won't actually be able to fight him for a race win unless Max is starting from far back on the grid and Charles isn't. It doesn't matter that Max knows the car Charles is driving and the strategies his own team are throwing at him aren't up to par. None of that matters, because fighting Charles Leclerc and seeing him as his biggest rival is so deeply ingrained into Max's entire racing identity that he will treat every battle he gets against Charles as if it's a battle that will decide the title even if it fucking kills him.

And that right there? That deep-rooted respect and admiration for Charles? The same kind of deep-rooted respect and admiration Charles has for him? That connection that has taken them from "hating" each other in karting, to civil colleagues in F1, to an actual, genuine friendship that they so clearly both treasure incredibly dearly, as proven by the blatant shift in the vibe between them recently? That's the reason as to why Max, despite clearly not giving a flying fuck about what anyone else thinks of him, will always care about what Charles thinks of him. That's why Max goes to such extreme lengths to behave differently around Charles than he does with any of the other drivers, and why he treats Charles so differently from everyone else. Because not only does Max know and respect Charles' boundaries and his preferred way of being treated, but he wants to do it right. He wants to exist within the same space as Charles and do it well. He wants Charles to enjoy and look forward to their interactions as much as Max himself does. And to this day he craves that approval from Charles as much as he probably did when they were kids, but back then he was too hot-headed and stubborn to realize that the "hate" he felt towards Charles was actually nothing more than the excitement and slight fear of seeing such a massive part of yourself reflected in someone else — someone you were supposed to hate.

I've seen it mentioned so many times in different posts on Tumblr, but it's absolutely true what they say: Max is so much softer around Charles than he is around anyone else, and treats Charles with a sense of care I am yet to see with any of the other drivers. Which, to me, is such a testament to just how much he values Charles' opinion of him.

[sorcerous-caress]

Hihi! I just wanted to leave a message letting you know how much I enjoy the stuff you've written. Your human kink tag is probably one of my favorites on this website to be honest, I've read through it so many times (its hard to pick a favorite, but i think mine my be the one with Halsin and the human tav/companions), and i adore the way you write for karlach and shadowheart as well (shadowhearts not even really one of my favorites, but you write her in such a way i think she ended up getting bumped up my list of favorites). Just wanted to say thanks for all that ig!! 🍒

Halsin is one of my fav when it comes human kink because you can tell the man is humanity's number one cheerleader.

"The average elf sleeps with 10 humans a year," factoid actually just statistical error. The average elf sleeps with 0 humans per year. XxHumanzlover69xX Archdruid Halsin, who lives in a cave & sleeps with 10,000 humans each day, is an outlier and should not have been counted

The average elf also consumes 0 human porn per year. Meluidil, the goonerbrained high elf, is personally responsible of 90% of the high forest traffic to human porn sites.

Halsin screams human kink. While wood elves have the least degrading view on the homosapiens amongst all other elf kins who view us as less than bugs, they still remain pretentious in their own way of patting us on the head for not burning down our forests...this year.

Take Kagha, for example. She'd be damned if she let a mere human direct her ways. In comparison to her venom filled fangs, we are mere deer fawns, clumisly still learning how to walk without tripping over our own feet.

But Halsin? Our "pathetic nature" brings out the protective instincts in him whilst making him crave us insatiably. He wants a cute human or a dozen to take under his wings and show them the ways of the natural order. Properly teach them about harmony and the various pleasures the oak father blessed his creatures with.

Humans categorize themselves as animals after all, don't they? Halsin would find that notion too silly and adorable of us. Yet he can see it in our graceless ways, primal hormones, and short-sighted nature. Its makes him pity how we can't truly connect with nature like he does, since if we're a part of the gaint picture that is nature, we simply can't step away to view it whole like elves can. We merely live in our veiled and narrow corner of the painting.

Or this is all just elf propaganda. Tales Corellon spinned to make his children believe they're inherently superior so they don't go making half elves left and right and therefore make him lose his domain. Who knows?

It's just that Halsin took the "humans are lesser than you" message a little too personally, and now he sees it as his duty to care and protect humanity.

It doesn't hurt that we are very easy on the eyes and easy to coax to bed. Elves have all these courting rituals that take years at a time just for a kiss, it's so refreshing to just walk to a human and make his intentions known in a poetic line or two that has them sliding onto his lap and touching his pointy ears all curious and wide eyed.

It's not every day that you meet a big, strong elf that shatters your painted glass view of delicate elves. That makes your human hunger for knowledge and cat-like curiosity go haywire as you tiptoe around the subject to get information from him.

He thanks his orc ancestor every night for the many cute humans asking to touch his muscles after a drink or two.

Humans are new, refreshing and constantly inconsistent. From the most primal cutthroat ones that wrestle the control from Halsin to the softest adorable ones that sit on his lap and let him do all the work. We are as cunning as we are dumb.

It's the most intoxicating drug he has had. The more he sleeps with humans, the more he wants more. No two are the same.

Nothing gets him going than watching two humans drown in the pleasure with each other, bodies glistening with sweat as they chase after one another's mouth. Hungry and impatient, Clearly frustrated with their lungs' burning for air as they are forced to break the kiss. Watch a human make another bend over under them, a struggle of power filled with possessive bites, moans and curses. Like their own emptions and desires are too intese for their human brain to process so they need more, melting in greed as they push their bodies past their limit just to scratch the itch.

He wants to watch two humans exhaust each other into oblivion before he takes over. Be gentle and guide them through one more orgasm just for him, experiencing first hand just how unbreakable the human spirit truly is as they stubbornly refuse to stop and keep demanding more.

Followed by providing aftercare for the two of them as they cuddle against him. Looking so Innocent with their soft features as they sleep, trusting him to watch over and protect them.

Halsin's other top fantasy is having a human druid be his disciple. Clearly new in the ways of Oak father and yet so passionate and determined. Halsin would show blatant favouritism as he takes them personally on quests with him, have them tend to the plants in his chambers just before he gently lays them over his bed and claim them.

On another note, poly Halsin with human Tav who's with Gale, Wyll or Minsc is literally his wettest dream. He wants to take you and your human lover on dates before fucking you both to sleep.

He enjoys hanging around in a full party of humans and laughing at their adorable antics while tending to their every whim. Poor human forgot their food? Halsin has some berries in his pocket, open wide, and he'll feed them to you

Your legs are tired? Come here and he'll carry you, don't worry about his wandering hand squeezing your thighs and waist, marveling at how squishy the human body is in comparison to elves.

Bored? Sad? Anxious? He will turn into a cat and be your best friend for the rest of the day. Watch you squeel at how fluffy his fur is as you pet and coddle him, a complete 180 to how you were before, especially if you happened to be closed off to him.

He does find it hilarious how humans who are shy around him or suspicious immediately change their attitude when he wildshapes into an animal they deem cute. He knows they know it's still him inside but their instincts to cuddle everything fluffy wins over their pride and they throw themselves at him.

-

Thank you so much. I haven't written or posted on this blog in a long while, so most people who read my stuff just come and go silently while leaving likes. It's discouraging to know the author is absent when leaving a comment because they think we might never see it, but I promise we do. Yours made me very happy, and I'm grateful for it <3

[lemonhemlock]

The episode where Rhaenys busts through the floor and murders countless smallfolk and it having absolutely no narrative consequences on the story or condemnation of Rhaenys' character, and the episode where Aegon murders the ratcatchers causing Otto to crash out have this whole monlogue about Aegon being The Worst being written by the same writer really tells you all you need to know about HOTD. And before you ask, yes, they were both written by Sara Hess lmao.

Yeah, I know there was discourse a while ago, because this dissatisfaction regressed into racist and misogynistic attacks directed at Sara Hess. Obviously, that's vile and people should, first of all, rid themselves of this despicable framework of viewing the world (because, as always, this is absolutely just another opportunity to dunk on a woman - these people don't care about good storytelling) and, secondly, learn how to actually formulate an argument that doesn't sound like the ramblings of a basement-dweller.

That being said, she is categorically not a good writer, there's no other way to put it. She can come up with some good ideas (or, at least, a glimmer of good ideas - for example, the daemyra argument in S02E02 was good - one of the season's highlights, actually) and her line-level writing is... adequate. But, on the whole, her record on House of the Dragon is littered with inaccuracies and logical fallacies. I haven't seen her other shows, but I decidedly have no desire to and will be actively avoiding if I see her name. And I am including Ryan Condal in this mess, too, because he has the ultimate say-so on how the scripts look. These two together truly are the blind leading the deaf.

I think the ratcatcher pity party was, in a way, a reaction to all the backlash she received for the Meleys dragonpit scene. But, instead of fixing her mistake and making it work in the context of what she had already written, she made some absolutely abysmal storytelling choices that defy common sense and contradict her own text. A very easy fix to this would have been to show the population of King's Landing become very anti- Meleys, Rhaenys and, by extension, Rhaenyra. But, of course, the wider narrative set by her genius colleagues was that KL couldn't possible have any negative feelings towards Rhaenyra, so it's completely swept under the rug and the commoners are made to consider Meleys' death a bad omen.

But, naturally, they had to do something about all the criticisms that they are not focusing on the negative effects this war has on the population. However, instead of showing that in a balanced way, they decided to pile all these evils on the greens again. Rhaenyra faces no backlash from the low-born for any of her actions. She does sacrifice them to Vermithor, essentially, by preventing their exit and it's framed as the beginning of her moral compromises and falling into self-aggrandizing behaviour. Yes. But where are the consequences to this? There are no consequences. These dragonseeds don't seem to have any family who are asking questions about them or blaming Rhaenyra for setting them on fire, basically. Not even one noble person hears of this and goes "hmmm that's kind of fucked up actually". Larys, the literal Master of Spies, who might have reasonably be shown to have found out this inside information via his network of spies, might have had some lines informing the green council about this awful thing Rhaenyra has done. Might have even informed the population, in order to turn them against her. But no, of course not, we can't have anyone actually be anti-Rhaenyra.

Meanwhile, we have close-ups of the fucking dog longing for the ratcatcher who literally kicked it in a previous scene. How do you even qualify the framing decision to invite the audience to feel sorry for a child-murderer? To feel more sorry for him than for the actual mother of said murdered child? We have Otto, of all people, lecturing Aegon about how over-the-top he is acting, because he executed a couple of ratcatchers. Otto, who, by the way, is shown in S01E09 to be executing people because they would not bend the knee to Aegon. Otto does not value commoner lives more than noble-borns (last season, he refuses to outlaw child pit fighting and, even in the previous episode, he gets annoyed by Aegon ruling too much in the smallfolk's favour), but he grows a temporary conscience for the purpose of this one scene, because we have to engineer another situation in which Aegon looks cruel or stupid (or both, preferably). Alicent's entire household was purged by Larys for supposedly being Mysaria's spies, the brothel was even set on fire and she gave zero fucks about that, but Aegon's ratcatcher execution is somehow one step too far.

I have said this before, but just thinking "civilians don't matter" in the ASOIAF universe betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the themes and message. Can you ultimately be anything other than a "bad" writer if you miss the point to such a degree? And you can tell that's her true opinion about all this, because she can't write a storyline in which civilians do matter to save her life. The suffering of the lower classes only matters in her stories just as far as she can instrumentalize it to demonize the greens. She's not interested in any kind of systemic exploration, because that would also involve the blacks and it would interfere with Rhaenyra's hero framing. Like Ryan Condal, she doesn't have the chops to write beyond the hero-villain binary, hence all the flip-flopping and the retconning and the logical fallacies. And, at the end of the day, I can just watch a Marvel movie for that, you know?

[johanna-swann]

maybe Bucks bisexuality will turn out to be some "gay for you" bad habit is able to kick. yk, since now his same sex relationship gets likend to a drug he "craves" and is running the risk of "relapsing" into? this show is running so fast down the shitter it´s truly amazing to behold. maybe we are lucky and Tim will not return to OG for the second half and will instead focus fully on the spin off. With Brad in it.

I don't think they'll actually retcon Buck's sexuality and I am still holding out hope that at some point 911 will get its shit together again. Maybe they'll fix some of the issues around Buck's coming out arc then too.

Also a lot of the "biphobia" that's being called out is taken out of context or a bad faith interpretations of quotes and interviews. And don't get me wrong, there were some things there that also had me go "Hold up, what are you even saying?"

The relapse thing for example - I don't think it's meant to have a deeper meaning, it's just supposed to show that Buck still thinks about Tommy a lot and it's worded like that because somebody thought it would be a funny quip. Of course the connotations are questionable. The comparison of a very normal and healthy relationship between two consenting adults to a physically and mentally harmful addiction is there between the lines and that kinda sucks. But it could just as easily mean that calling and texting Tommy is a habit that Buck has trouble quitting. I still think it's an... interesting approach to framing Buck's view on that relationship post-break-up. But all in all it is relatively harmless and we don't know yet how that storyline ends.

Buck having an entire ass coming out arc on the other hand that stretches over two seasons without him ever acknowledging with words that he's queer? That's a fact. A very, very obvious fact to everyone who's watching the show. And I'm beginning to wonder why we had time for Eddie to come out as straight, but no one ever bothered to write a line for Buck saying "I'm queer/bi/whatever" in the 15 episodes we've had since they introduced this arc.

[zhaohuis-lost-walnut]

Shen Zechuan’s Softness

[mild spoilers for all qjj]

In the final chapter, there’s a lil snippet where Shen Zechuan thinks he only shows his softness to Xiao Chiye. While I’m aware the softness he refers to in that moment is the completely unguarded, walls down, crazy balls to walls obsessing. But it made me think once again about how negatively Shen Zechuan views himself and how soft and thoughtful he truly is.

In a recent post where I scream about Yao Wenyu and Shen Zechuan’s friendship, I mentioned the renovations Shen Zechuan had made to his residence so Yao Wenyu could get around easier. No one told him to do that. He noticed a inconvenience, and addressed it. Shen Zechuan is perceptive and tends to give people a helpful nudge. There are so many examples of him doing such in a way that makes me feel like he just can’t help himself.

When he notices Gao Zhongxiong isn’t wearing proper Winter attire, the first question he has is if his salary isn’t sufficient since it makes no sense for a single employed guy to not be able to afford a Winter coat. When Gao Zhongxiong brushes him off and time passes, Shen Zechuan takes initiative, buys clothes for him, and has them delivered to his house 🥺

When Li Xiong is first brought to Cizhou and everyone is trying to hold him back, Shen Zechuan is the first to point out that he’s just a child. While they don’t have many on page interactions, there are things that make it clear that Shen Zechuan has a soft spot for the guy 🥹

This extends to Ding Tao as well in the way he lets those two get away with a lot 🤣 He let’s them eat all the candy they want and doesn’t mind when they play noisily. He’s like a sweet older brother~

And don’t even get me started on when he was handing out porridge outside Chazhou 😭 His guards trying to get him to rest but Shen Zechuan refusing so he can talk to the refugees 🥺 It’s shown time and time again how he really cares about people. Not for his own ego or purely to achieve his goals. He REALLY cares.

While I’m not sure if this is entirely the same, Shen Zechuan was seemingly the only person willing to give Huo Lingyun a chance after his capture. Everyone was, understandably, disturbed by the murders he facilitated. But unlike the others, Shen Zechuan clocked that Huo Lingyun wasn’t just a sadistic maniac and wasn’t completely hostile towards him.

While these are only a few examples, all of them highlight a trait of his that I adore: the way he sees his himself in others and goes on to treat them how he was treated by those he loves or better than he was by those who didn’t. He takes care of Yao Wenyu, he treasures the children’s youthful joy, he saw the human beneath their pain in Huo Lingyun, he didn’t ask questions and supported Gao Zhongxiong, and much much more.

I often joke to myself about how cezhou is literally two of the scariest people in Dazhou dating. But I think it’s also funny how, while they’re both scary in their own right, as long as you don’t piss Shen Zechuan off (which takes a lot btw) he’s such a chill guy.

Shen Zechuan is one of my favorite characters ever. Gonna go shove him in my pocket✨

[spxdyr]

i can't sleep and i keep seeing people angry at gerrards "redemption" so i just wanna talk about redemptions again for funsies.

i genuinely don't think what gerrard did should be considered a redemption because it wasn't. gerrard didn't save the day, bobby and the rest of the 118 saved the day, gerrard was simply a pawn. he was the person who could realistically get close enough to ortiz to get her to let her guard down without raising any alarm bells.

gerrard only agreed because he would get something out of it. and i truly believe it isn't the what that makes a redemption but the why.

i'm gonna use prince zukos redemption arc from atla as my example/comparison genuinely i genuinely believe its one of the strongest redemption arcs in all of television history. i'm also going to use negans from the walking dead because its a very divisive redemption arc that i also believe is one the greatest in tv history because of what it isn't.

first, i want to emphasize that i wholly believe that redemption isn't up to the narrative its up to the audience. the narrative can try to convince you of anything but if the audience doesn't buy it, it doesn't mean shit.

but onto the actual point. gerrard did a good thing, he is not a good person. bad people do good things all the time because two things can be true at once.

the reason zuko has such a strong redemption arc isn't because he did a couple good things. its because we as the audience saw him go through genuine introspection and come to the realization that he wasn't a bad person doing bad things. he was a good person influenced by the people around him to do bad things.

but it also so good because we saw the episodes watching him not only ask for the Gaangs forgiveness but also the audiences. we as the audience were forced to sit down with zuko and decide whether or not we would be able to redeem his actions. and character by character we as the audience found ourselves forgiving him.

it also helped that zuko had a character in the show who was the mirror of his redemption. iroh was also a good person who did bad things but we are immediately forgiving of those bad things because we are constantly showed his goodness through zuko.

gerrard didn't have any of that. in fact the only characters that are still presented in the narrative that might mirror gerrard come in the form of tommy. who also didn't get actual redemption. he was granted forgiveness by passage of time. which as an audience member doesn't change how i view him.

zuko got redemption from both the narrative, the characters, and the audience because he earned it. gerrard didn't get redemption from either, he just did a good thing for personal gain.

on to negans redemption. i want to preface this by saying im a negan defender until the day i die so if you hate negan, disregard this i guess.

negan was offered a redemption by the narrative, the characters, and the audience, and technically he didn't take it.

the thing with the walking dead is that technically there's no heros or villains. there's just people trying to survive, the hero is whoever's story you're following the most and in this case it's rick and friends. there are however, people who are objectively worse than others (ie the guy who tried to sa a 12 year old carl).

negan wasn't a villain he was an antagonist. he was the very thing in the way of rick and friends' main goal, survival.

and he was a good at it. he was so good at it he killed two main characters in one episode, then about 2-3 more over the course of his run as the primary antagonist. then he lost. and spent years in jail for it.

and at no point during that jail time was he offered, nor did he ask for, redemption. because at the end of the day he did what he thought he had to, to survive. and to his people he was a hero.

negans redemption doesn't actually start until years after his arrest. and it happens through judith. a character who wasn't there for negans big performance but was directly effected by it. judith saw negan for what he was, a man trying to survive. and a man who was at the very least good enough that her brother wanted him not be be killed as his dying wish.

negan didn't ask for judiths redemption, she's just a child. but judith, in her childlike optimism, could see the "good" in him.

and objectively, negan was "good." he had his rules that made him better than a lot of other antagonists in the show. rules like no hurting kids, no sa, etc.

when the narrative did finally ask the audience and the characters to see things from negans perspective it wasn't forcing us (or the characters) to forgive him. but inevitably, many characters saw negan for who he was a person who did bad things to survive. and the audience could choose what they wanted to do with that.

in fact, there's a character who, much like much of the audience, refused to forgive negan. maggie was the most affected by negans little performance as it killed her husband in front of her while she was pregnant. and negan never asks her forgiveness, he never expects it. negan doesn't want to be redeemed by anyone let alone maggie. he is only good to maggie as a debt to be repaid. one that he also agrees will likely cost his life.

negan is the perfect example of how redemption isn't just a part of the narrative. a character's redemption doesn't come from the story, or even just the characters in the story. redemption comes from the audience AND the characters agreeing to redeem that character. and the audience and characters don't have to agree on the redemption.

but the thing about gerrard is that he wasn't redeemed by anything. he wasn't redeemed by the narrative because the story was telling us that bobby came up with a plan and gerrard agreed because it suited his interest. he wasn't redeemed by the the characters because it was still pretty clear (at least to me) that the 118 still don't like or forgive gerrard just because he did one good thing, for his own interests. and he wasn't redeemed by the audience because as far as the audience ive interacted with have told me, they still hate that man.

the narrative can't force the audience to redeem someone. that's why the audience is there. the audience is as much a character in the show as the actual characters. especially in the age of social media. so if you hate gerrard still, good you're supposed to.

nothing about gerrard changed so why would we consider one good action a redemption arc? was buck suddenly a villain for filling the lawsuit? no. was eddie suddenly a villain for hurting chris? no. was hen suddenly a villain for cheating on karen? no. was chim suddenly a villain for punching buck? no. then gerrard wasn't suddenly a hero for turning on his body cam and egging on ortiz.

storytelling isn't the place for black and white thinking. there's so much nuance in it. if the show was constantly telling you exactly what to think it would be bad tv. gerrard wasn't redeemed in the same way the buckley parents weren't redeemed, in the same way the diaz parents weren't redeemed, in the same way tommy wasn't redeemed.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.