#and i think dialogue wise there’s some stuff with the speech itself that might not be super well suited as writing choices

[shorthaltsjester]

re the first three tlovm s3 episode title teaser fr. vex getting [redacted] while standing in front of percy . i will undoubtedly have Thoughts about plot n adaption once the whole season is out but i will say people acting like vex potentially dying again is a betrayal of the arc is . i say this politely. ridiculous. vex’s most common habit aside from haggling and flirting in campaign 1 was being knocked unconscious. she required full ass resurrection spells on four separate occasions. we currently have no idea what the shape of any arc in season 3 will look like beyond broad strokes and teasing shots. if they end up wanting to incorporate the exandrian magic lore of it’s harder to come back each time you die, vex seems like the obvious opportunity to do so. please at the very least save the panic posting for when you actually have something to panic about .

[zagreuses-toast]

I come from a place of sheer curiousity and I just wanna ask genuinely- you say that you're a fan of 13s/ the chibnall era. Why? Doctor who is my favourite show and I've connected with every incarnation deeply and immediately, but have never been able to "click" with 13, despite my best efforts. What is it that you like about her? What is it that you like about chibnalls writing? I want to know and I want to like her/it too, but as of right now, I just... don't. Obviously you're not obligated to, but can you explain why?

Ok so this ended up being a Long Post, so I'm putting my response under the read more. Also I'm assuming you've actually watched the Chibnall era up to The Power of The Doctor, if you haven't then heads up for spoilers and stuff that might not make much sense without context.

Oh and I'm gonna @ @rearranging-deck-chairs and @ssaalexblake because I see their DW opinions all the time and they're really good and they can probably give more nuanced answers on some things. (Idk how well I did on explaining why I liked some of them, and it really is up to personal preference on some things)

Thirteen herself:

There are a lot of reasons I like Chibnalls era, but one of the biggest ones out the gate is definitely Jodie and her acting in the role of the Doctor. I think the way she balances bouncy gregariousness with the colder more angry and mean aspects of the Doctor is great. She does this thing where she can just make her eyes go dead and then smile like it's a threat, like she's gonna bite, especially when going up against villains. It's great. And Jodie herself is a delightful person.

Beyond just physical acting choices, I find the thirteenth Doctors struggle between her anger and secrecy, vs her desire to connect and her joy at life very very compelling. She keeps this distance that's really interesting I think, where she's genuinely attached to and trying to be a friend to the Fam, but still trying to keep her whole past out of the deal, which doesn't work that well, as we see in s12 and Flux. She's surrounded by death and haunted by the knowledge of how little time she has with her friends, (Grace, and she just came back from bill) but she still wants and needs that connection, and she learns to live in the present a bit. I made a whole post about her final regeneration speech here. I love her arc a lot even if it hurts. Also she's such a horrible hypocrite about so many things, which also makes her a fun character to rotate in my head and study like a bug. I do see it as being on purpose, some people seem to think it's just bad writing that she contradicts herself but imo that's a big part of her character.

Chibnalls writing:

I personally like the timeless child plot because :

There are a lot of stories and ideas in the Chibnall era I like, and a lot more I find very compelling. Whatever your opinions on the writing (and I definitely have had a lot of critique for some bits), there were a lot of ideas introduced that were fun and interesting. One of the weaker points of the era IMO is having so much fun stuff set up, but only shallowly or quickly exploring it, and then adding more stuff on top.

A lot of things didn't get the exploration/screen time I thought they deserved (especially characterization and interaction/dialogue wise). But that just gives my brain more to chew on at the end of the day, and I do love what was done during the seasons itself, not just all the potential stuff.

1) I can connect with it, I know Chibnall was coming at it from a place of being an adoptee, but as a native person the story of a kid taken and raised into an imperial/colonial society, who had their history stolen and their body exploited to further that societies ends, hits very close to home.

And 2) I have a "everything is true at once" approach to canon and I think the more origin stories we make for the Doctor the funnier it is.

This era had a lot of repeating themes, ideas that showed up and we're explored in a lot of different circumstances, often with a rule of 3 aspect to it. One is themes of Empire and Exploitation. Particularly through the stenza in s11 (empire using up planets, introduced to us basically doing foxhunts for clout, but with People instead of foxes), the dalek specials, the Cybermen in s12, and Division/the timelords in flux (as well as the sontarans &co).

Within that there's the repeating motif of how by exploiting people or their beliefs for power the imperial power/bad guys sew the seeds of their destruction. From Tzim Sha using the Ux and them turning against him, to the Division being destroyed by the Ravagers, who they tried to use to get rid of the Doctor/the old universe (and the doctor and even the master going rogue in the first place). Hell even Kerblam! (I know I know) Has a version, where the AI system being used to do terrible things is the one to call the doctor for help!

Another standout are themes of breaking cycles, Ryan is estranged from his dad and was distancing himself from Graham, but they both put in the work and grow extremely close over their two seasons. He also chooses to leave the TARDIS when he realizes he's absent from his friend's lives and wants to be present. And the Doctor gets to break the cycle of exploitation that Tecteun started, when she meets a vulnerable being with mysterious power (the energy being from TPOTD) she helps it free itself, on a way she wasn't helped.

Individual character stuff:

Going again into more individual character stuff I love, I've gotta give it to Sacha Dhawan for being a fucking superb Master. His acting is bonkers amazing and he does a great job portraying the sorta huge personal crisis the master is going through, and externalizing via evil schemes. At the end of Twelves run we saw Missy try to be like the doctor, to get her friend back (and even succeed a bit) but end up dying for it. Now we come back to a master who died trying to be like the person they see as their only equal, and has discovered (wrongly) that they were never equal to begin with, that the doctor is so much more than them. So he tries to make her like him instead, and If she won't become like him and kill them both along with the rest of gallifrey, then he will become her properly this time (by body snatching), ruin her legacy, and die with her eventually (overtaking her in the same way his whole existance has now been caused/overtaken by the doctor in his eyes, because of her being the source of regeneration)

Also can we talk about the Yaz?? I've been dying to talk about Yaz!!! I love her a lot and I find her fascinating, shes probably my favorite companion based on just sheer amount of time spent Thinking about her. Her doctorification/character arc is so good

Yaz is into the travelling and saving the day lifestyle the Doctor gives her for the responsibility of it all, for feeling useful and capable and good. Her early characterization Monet's include her complaining about not having more interesting jobs as a cop because she wants responsibility, she wanted to be important and helpful (that's the entire reason she became a cop, to help people like she was helped when she was in a dark place, and she finds a better way of doing that with the Doctor). And she GETS THERE, narratively and on a character level, she spends three years on earth with her own companions! She co-pilots the TARDIS and can fly her herself! She saves the day when the master steals the doctors body! And most of all SHES EXTREMELY SAD AT THE END BECAUSE THE PERSON SHE LOVES DIED BEFORE HER!! JUST LIKE THE DOCTOR !! (ugly crying) (I could write a whole other post about thasmin, good and bad, but a lot of people have put it better than me)

Also, I'm a big TARDIS girlie, she has somehow ended up being one of my favorite characters in doctor who, and the chinball era does so much fun stuff with the TARDIS!! Different writers take different approaches to the TARDIS, and how alive vs inanimate, or how active vs passive she is. I think the Chinball era had something special in terms of the way the TARDIS was depicted, and I loved it a lot. We never really get to see past the control room but it's a gorgeous control room! And throughout the era the TARDIS just feels so alive, it's always humming and beeping and chirping, I especially love the moments when the lights change color to match the doctors mood (mostly to blue, for sadness, sometimes red to yell at that dalek that one time). And speaking of the doctor, starting with ghost monument thirteen has a bunch of sweet moments of banter or just ~emotions~ with the TARDIS. I genuinely teared up a bit when she entrusted the timeless child memories to the TARDIS,and before her regeneration speech when she asked the TARDIS to look after her. Because who can she trust with her past AND her future except her oldest truest friend.

I could add a lot more of specific things from the era I love (solitract my beloved) but I think this is getting long enough as is lol.

[vroenis]

Part 2

This is part 1.

Can you tell how tired I was getting by the end? This is life under meds, but given the other benefits (I think?), I’ll take it for now.

When I woke up the next morning, I had a whole lot I was thinking about and it’s stuff I want to say given I said a lot, but didn’t cover this stuff. I’m still happy with part 1, I think that’s just how I write, moving from subject to subject more or less organically and it does show me to more unstructured even if there is a vague plan for how I want the piece to go.

Anyway let’s get going.

As always, mild spoilers for well, everything. If you haven’t seen this stuff and are mildly interested in watching them then ah, you may have a lot of catching up to do. I don’t think I’ll drop any real hard spoilers for anything but you never know.

Ghost In The Shell is an Outsider story

There are whole stacks of lore you could dive into with Stand Alone Complex in particular, with Motoko having been in an aircraft accident and getting her first shell (cyber-body) at a very early age, what that means, the thing with Kuze (avoiding spoilers here), and the extended cast - not that Paz, Boma and even Ishikawa get a whole lot of time anyway - but it’s not really that important.

Looking at just Mamoru Oshii’s 1995 film, and even more-so his 2004 film Innocence (not really a sequel but usually regarded as such), the narratives cast the characters very much as Outsiders. In the first film, Section 9 is already at odds with the government in general and while it’s subtle, Aramaki as a department head is certainly different from his contemporaries, even if we don’t see much of it - again, so much more of this in Stand Alone Complex. Motoko’s early conversation with Togusa in the first film is probably the most telling as far as playing it loud. She speaks in pragmatic terms to why he’s there, but this is a precursor to what will ultimately transpire for herself at the conclusion of the film, something very intentionally written into the film. Batou is also an Outsider in more ways than one, not only in the role he plays in the department but in the very clear personal boundary between him and Motoko. There are boundaries between Batou and everyone and they become more apparent in the second film. Togusa is easy pickings so I’ll leave him alone, suffice to say if the film needs one, he’s the audience’s window of ignorance which is why he’s discarded so willingly half way in. He gets his time in the spotlight in Stand Alone Complex and it’s pretty amazing.

As for Motoko... I admit it is difficult separating my understanding of her character from Stand Alone Complex and attempting to just isolate what’s shown of her in the first film but I’ll try.

I mentioned the film’s centrepiece montage in my previous journal, in which we might say Motoko is the centrepiece but if so, she probably shares it with the city itself, and I feel much more is being said about the two together rather than separated simultaneously. This would be one of the first indications of Motoko’s sense of identity, of otherness, isolation, questioning. Again the scene that plays it most loud would be diving on the boat and her speech to Batou. There are other moments tho; single frames of her face, looks, movements that are lingered on, I feel like Oshii is constantly telling us about her and what she’s going to do, but more important than that, why she’s going to do it and how she feels.

Ghost in the Shell is a film about great emotion, and not like I’d know because it’s been a long time since I’ve looked into the discourse around it, but I suspect no-one really talks about it as a film about feelings.

I realise these days I talk more and more about moods and art being mood pieces. I labelled my Instagram account as being “A catalogue of moods” and I’m very fond of the use of the word in vernacular. It might seem flippant but it’s immensely empowered, especially for me as an individual when I understand my moods and can translate them into, via and thru art. I do appreciate many struggle with Oshii’s cinematic language as it can appear cold and detached and that’s fine, but it’s anything but for me - it’s immensely emotionally charged, it just appears differently to what audiences are perhaps accustomed to seeing. It’s a different language that perhaps takes time to learn, but it’s all there.

This couldn’t become more evident than in Innocence (the Ghost in the Shell 2 moniker I think was a western addendum). Batou takes centre stage and is  immediately presented as bluntly as possible as an Outsider, reaffirmed later by Aramaki who also cements Togusa’s position in limbo.

I should pause and say that within the GitS canon, I feel Togusa is definitely embraced by Section 9, so he’s not wholly an Outsider to the department, but for obvious reasons, he doesn’t fully share all of their daily or philosophical concerns - hence not wholly. He would also definitely be an Outsider to most other members of the force after joining Section 9, but unfortunately I’m not here to love Togusa, poor guy - I feel like he’s always a bit unloved. Someone write a giant essay in service to his greatness. He actually is great.

But I adore Batou in Innocence. I love his story, his struggle, his emotion. I love how present Motoko is without ever appearing on screen and then when she does, the impact she has on everything, especially with the lines she delivers, one of which I quoted to open the last journal. Batou is in many ways a shadow of what Motoko was and is/has become, just in physical form, mirroring her in a real world manifestation with the natural physical limitations that comes with.

For some reason I feel like I need to inject a comment about Batou putting the jacket/vest on Motoko’s body. I don’t know if people perceive this as an act of masculine modesty but it’s not how I read it. I did stumble on this action for years but as I began to interpret the films as Outsider stories, I realised that he does this as an act of inclusion, and that Motoko consents, permits him to and doesn’t immediately react with violence or technological recourse we know she is well capable of, indicates it’s mutual. Their inclusion isn’t just about the boundaries of the Section 9 department but extends beyond that, an inner circle that may only contain the two of them - inside which there are still boundaries between them Batou can never cross. Those boundaries become infinitely more apparent after the final events of the first film, and the second film effectively is all about how he feels about them. He is an ultimate Outsider, but so is Motoko in the state she now is in.

Section 9 is a department of stray dogs. Individuals who haven’t quite fit in where they belong, and found belonging with one another. Then, after a time, one of them moves on - at the conclusion of the first film, and then another feels an almost permanent and ultimate sense of separation - more or less the duration of the second film.

Ghost in the Shell isn’t about technology and sentience and hacking and corporations at all. It’s about loneliness and belonging and acceptance and affection. It’s about how that feels.

I’m Not Sure Why People Struggle With David Lynch Films

I need to stop talking about anime. Honestly I looked at the list at the start of the last journal and thought hell yea Sky Crawlers, Jin-Roh, Haibane Renmei and Lain let’s unpack some shit! but honestly I’ll run out of time and I should really draw from a variety of mediums and sources.

OK I’m not being facetious when I say Lynch’s films are fairly straight-forward narrative-wise. Again, it’s hard for me to position myself in a place where I’m not into the stuff I’m into and maybe that’s what gives me the cinematic language familiarity to parse them but that just sounds like wanker bullshit to me. I don’t mind if folks don’t like Lynch films, that’s fine. But they aren’t difficult.

So in the context of everything else, even on that short list on the last journal, plus how I keep trying to shift the discussion of works from the pragmatic reading of them to an emotional reading of them from a mood perspective, I feel as tho the same process can be applied to Lynch. So much about his films are about how they make you feel, or I’ll say - how they make *me* feel. It might be grandiose to assume I’m feeling the correct emotion, that these are the moods that David Lynch himself is attempting to create and evoke and thus, I am interpreting them correctly but hey - I enjoy the hell out of the films, feel I understand them and watch them over and over again so that’s all I’m basing it on.

That’s not to say there are things I dismiss as meaningless or that I don’t understand in his films, it’s just that I don’t have to parse them immediately at first watch and perhaps that’s the audience’s problem. I don’t know if reverse-diagnosis is appropriate but looking at how much hand-holding there is in other directors’ films might be just as telling. I mean I saw Nolan’s Tenet and was about the least confusing thing I’d ever seen in my life but apparently *that* confused people, and you know hey that’s fair I guess, but I mean Nolan did a whooooole lot of audience hand-holding in that film, I mean, the dialogue was terrible. There was so much unnecessary exposition, which I generally find in all of his films, so if an audience can’t follow that then OK sure, Lynch is going to be a problem.

The thing is popcorn cinema is totally OK. I watch it. I really love it, I’ve written about it before, it’s good Industry. There’s a lot of great creativity in popular cinema, I don’t at all think poorly of it and I love seeing a really well produced, Hollywood picture... but I guess if that’s all you consume, and I guess if folks’ short-format episodic media (aka series - think Netflix, HVO etc.) is more or less to the same standard, then it begins to make sense that anything outside of that isn’t going to make sense.

Long story short - Lynch films tell simple stories where the feeling of the film is as important as the narrative of the film. To understand the story, you have to understand the feeling, and vice-versa.

Surprise surprise, it turns out independent and deemed “fringe” film-makers... aka Outsiders... make films about Outsiders.

Now I wouldn’t know if any of the Marvel films thematically are about Outsiders or Outsider culture, they probably are and very loudly at that, but the reason I’ve never included one in my catalogue of moods is they all read the same way. Not only are Marvel films mostly indistinct from one other to me, they’re also mostly indistinct from much of popular culture in general. That doesn’t make them bad, some of them still have some pretty awesome stunts, visfx, even parts of the narratives, funny jokes etc. in them, but on the whole they’re not useful to me as things I deem truly valuable in the long-term.

It’s OK, I’m not at all going to lament the proliferation of Marvel films, a lot of them have been pretty cool and they keep people in work. Meow meow meow “the death of cinema” mate, sure - I find it more difficult to find the sorts of films I like but that’s always been the case. Humans will do what they do, it’s not a read on cinema, it’s about being an Outsider and what that’s all about. True, maybe weird shit like Lynch and Noe might be more difficult to make, but the weird-indie corner was also dominated by white men and that needs to change, so who knows what the future holds.

Can you detect the point at which I took my meds and started getting tired?

Ghost in the Shell // Innocence // What We Want // What We’re Left With

Growing up as an Outsider, I feel as tho the first Ghost in the Shell film carries the weight of isolation, questions of identity and belonging, ultimately of acceptance, empowerment and liberation. Then Innocence brings to bear very similar moods but states that things may not necessarily change for the better, they simply change state. I love that in both narratives, the main texts of hacking or corrupt corporations, crime etc. are the least common denominators and barely relevant to heart of the films. I think about the theme of icons in Innocence, icons operatively being the dolls throughout the film, and the final image of Togusa’s daughter’s gift. As humans we assume we’re to take the position of biological humanity as representative of sentience, taking moral priority over all other beings. Earlier in the film we think Togusa is in limbo, but  at the conclusion Motoko asks the question, or perhaps states that perhaps we’re all in limbo together.

I think that’s a significant part of what growing up as and being an Outsider is like, what it feels like. Christians have this saying about “living in the world but not of the world” (derived from a bible verse) and honestly I don’t think they know what it means because they just operate like a cult, but I think queers and folks with long term mental health conditions have a better idea. We are pushed out to the fringes of our social groups from an early age, long before we know or understand what’s different about us. Our peers and the adults around us do this to us because their social behaviours are so well hard-coded, even they may not even know precisely what’s different about us, they just do - and they’re right. We are different. And they don’t accept us.

Maybe I am starting to get a little more upset that weird/different art is becoming more difficult to fund and make, because it’s for us, for me. It speaks to me. You already have so much, and representation and inclusion is so important. I don’t just need queer cinema, I need weird cinema, I need moods. I need quiet, introspective, pensive, reflective, Outsider moods.

I still feel like an Outsider. I have a few people who understand more about me, but I don’t think I have a place, not in a real sense. I have never felt that. Art is one of the few places I feel any connection with anything, and connecting with people is a very odd thing to consider - honestly, I actually would really like to connect with people but the unique combination of being queer *and* autistic comorbid with bipolar makes it really tough, more difficult the older I get. And now all you want to do is fund Marvel movies. I can’t feed off of that.

I’m getting tired, I’m not making any sense. It’s time for bed.

[cometsweepandleonidsfly]

David Sims: “ As a fan of the TV show, I felt battered into submission. This season has been the same story over and over again: a lot of tin-eared writing trying to justify some of the most drastic story developments imaginable, as quickly as possible....[T]ime and time again in recent years, Benioff and Weiss have opted for grand cinematic gestures over granular world building, and Drogon burning the Throne to sludge was their last big mic drop.

Spencer Kornhaber: The penultimate episode of Game of Thrones gave us one of the most dramatic reversals in TV history, with the once-good queen going genocidal. The finale gave us yet another historic reversal, in that this drama turned into a sitcom. Not a slick HBO sitcom either, but a cheapo network affair, or maybe even a webisode of outtakes from one. Tonally odd, logically strained, and emotionally thin, “The Iron Throne” felt like the first draft of a finale.

When Dany torched King’s Landing last week, viewers were incensed, but I’d argue it was less because the onetime hero went bad than because it wasn’t clearwhy she did. Long-simmering madness? Sudden emotional break? Tough-minded strategy? A desire to implement an innovative new city grid? The answer to this would seem to help answer some of the show’s most fundamental inquiries about might and right, little people and greater goods, noble nature and cruel nurture. Thrones has been shaky quality-wise for some time now, but surely the show would be competent enough to hinge the finale around the mystery of Dany’s decision.

Nope. The first parts of the episode loaded up on ponderous scenes of the characters whose horror at the razing of King’s Landing had been made plenty clear during the course of the razing. Tyrion speculated a bit to Jon about what had happened—Dany truly believed she was out to save the world and could thus justify any means on the way to messianic ends—but it was, truly, just speculation. When Jon and Dany met up, he raged at her, and she gave some tyrannical talk knowing what “the good world” would need (shades of “I alone can fix it,” no?). But whether her total firebombing was premeditated, tactical, or a tantrum remained unclear. Whether she was always this deranged or just now became so determines what story Thrones was telling all along, and Benioff and Weiss have left it to be argued about in Facebook threads.

The Dany speechifying that we did get in this episode was, notably, not in the common tongue. Though conducted in Dothraki and Valaryian and not German, her victory rally was clearly meant to evoke Hitler in Triumph of the Will. It also visually recalled the white-cloaked Saruman rallying the orc armies in The Two Towers, another queasy echo. People talk about George R. R. Martin “subverting” Tolkien, but on the diciest element of Lord of the Rings—the capacity for it to be seen as a racist allegory, with Sauron’s horde of exotic brutes bearing down on an idyllic kingdom—this episode simply took the subtext and made it text. With the Northmen sitting out the march, the Dothraki and Unsullied were cast as bloodthirsty others eager to massacre a continent. Given all the baggage around Dany’s white-savior narrative from the start, going so heavy on the hooting and barking was a telling sign of the clumsiness to come.

Jon’s kiss-and-kill with Dany led to the one moment of sharp emotion—terror—I felt over the course of this bizarrely inert episode. That emotion came not from the assassination itself but rather from the suspense about what Drogon would do about it. For the dragon to roast the slayer of his mother would have been a fittingly awful but logical turn. Instead, Drogon turned his geyser toward the Iron Throne. Whether Aegon’s thousand swords were just a coincidental casualty of a dragon’s mourning or, rather, the chosen target of a beast with a higher purpose—R’hllor take the wheel?—is another key thing fans will be left to argue about.

Then came the epilogue, a parade of oofs. David, you say you were satisfied by where this finale moved all its game pieces, and if I step back … well, no, I’m not satisfied with Arya showing a sudden new interest in seafaring, but maybe I can be argued into it. What I can’t budge on is the parody-worthy crumminess of the execution. Take the council that decides the fate of Westeros. It appears that various lords gathered to force a confrontation with the Unsullied about the prisoners Tyrion and Jon Snow and the status of King’s Landing. But then one of those prisoners suggests they pick a ruler for the realm. They then … do just that. Right there and then. Huh?

It really undoes much of what we’ve learned about Westeros as a land of ruthlessly competing interests to see a group of far-flung factions unanimously agree to give the crown to the literal opposite of a “people person.” Yes, the council is dominated by protagonist types whom we know to be good-hearted and tired of war. But surely someone—hello, new prince of Dorne! What’s up, noted screamer Robin Arryn?—would make more of a case for another candidate than poor Edmure Tully did. Rather than hashing out the intrigue of it all as Thrones once would have done, we got Sam bringing up the concept of democracy and getting laughed down. The joke relied on the worst kind of anachronistic humor—breaking the fourth wall that had been so carefully mortared up over all these years—and much of the rest of the episode would coast on similarly wack moments.

It’s “nice” to see beloved characters ride off into various sunsets, but I balk at the notion that these endings even count as fan service. What true fan of Thronesthinks this show existed to deliver wish fulfillment? I’m not saying I wanted everyone to get gobbled up by a rogue zombie flank in the show’s final moments. Yet rather than honoring the complication and tough rules that made Thrones’ world so strangely lovable, Benioff and Weiss waved a wand and zapped away tension and consequence. You see this, for example, in the baffling arc of Bronn over the course of Season 8. What was the point of having him nearly kill Jaime and Tyrion if he was going to just be yada-yadaed onto the small council at the end?

One thing I can’t complain about: the hint that clean water will soon be coming to Westeros. Hopefully, someone will use it to give Ghost a bath. As the doggy and his dad rode north of the Wall with a band of men, women, and children, the message seemed to be that where death once ruled, life could begin. Winter Is Leaving. It’d seem like a hopeful takeaway for our own world, except that it’s not clear, even now, exactly how and why the realm of Thrones arrived at this happy outcome.

Lenika Cruz: Do I have answers? Who do you think I am—Bran the Broken? Before I get into this episode, I need to acknowledge how unfortunate it is that Tyrion decided to give the new ruler of the Six Kingdoms a name as horrifyingly ableist as Bran the Broken. You could, of course, argue that the moniker was intended as a reclamation of a slur or as a poignant callback to Season 1’s “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things,” when Tyrion and Bran first bonded. But given the “parade of oofs” this finale provided—including the troubling optics of Dany’s big speech—it’s hard to make excuses for the show.

Now that we’ve gotten our “the real Game of Thrones/Iron Throne/Song of Ice and Fire was the friends we made along the way” jokes out of our system, where to begin? I basically agree with Spencer’s scorched-earth take on “The Iron Throne.” I was already expecting the finale to be a disappointment, but I didn’t foresee the tonal and narrative whiplash that I experienced here. At one point during the small-council meeting, my mind stopped processing the dialogue because I was in such disbelief about the several enormous things that had happened within the span of 15 minutes: Jon stabs Dany. Instead of roasting Jon, Drogon symbolically melts the Iron Throne and carries the limp body of his mother off in his talons. A conclave of lords and ladies of Westeros is convened, and Tyrion is brought before them in chains, and they know Dany was murdered, and Tyrion argues for an entirely new system of government while being held prisoner by the Master of War of the person he just conspired to assassinate. Excuse me? (The way that Grey Worm huffed, “Make your choice, then,” at those assembled reminded me of an impatient father waiting for his children to pick which ice-cream flavor they want.)

David, Spencer—of the three of us, I’ve been the most stubborn about thinking this final season is bad and holding that badness against the show. I don’t fault viewers who’ve become inured to the shoddy writing and plotting, and who’ve been grading each episode on a curve as a result. But I personally haven’t been able to get into a mind-set where I can watch an episode and enjoy it for everything except stuff like pacing issues, rushed character development, tonal dissonance, the lack of attention to detail, unexplained reversals, and weak dialogue. All of those problems absolutely make the show less enjoyable for me, and I haven’t learned to compartmentalize them—even though I know how hard it must have been for Benioff and Weiss to piece together an airtight final act solely from Martin’s book notes.

...Much like with last week’s episode, I can actually see myself being on board with many of the plot points in the finale—if only they had been built up to properly and given the right sort of connective tissue. For all the episode’s earnest exhortations about the power of stories, “The Iron Throne” itself didn’t do much to model that value.

For example, I can’t be the only one who was let down, and at a loss for a larger takeaway, after seeing a high-stakes contest between two ambitious female rulers devolve after both became unhinged and got themselves killed. After all the intense discussion about gender politics that Thrones has spurred, and after seeing characters such as Sansa, Brienne, Cersei, Daenerys, and Yara reshape the patriarchal structures of Westeros, we’ve ended up with a male ruler (who once said, “I will never be lord of anything”) installed on the charismatic recommendation of another man and served by a small council composed almost entirely of … men.

Perhaps there’s no deeper meaning to any of this. Or perhaps this state of affairs is a commentary on the frustrating realities of incrementalism. I am, of course, beyond pleased that Sansa Stark has at least become the Queen in the North—a title that she, frankly, deserved from the beginning. But I haven’t forgotten that this show only recently had her articulate the silver lining of being raped and tortured. Nor am I waving away the fact that Brienne spent some of her last moments on-screen writing a fond tribute to a man who betrayed her and all but undid his entire character arc in one swoop. My sense is that the show’s writers didn’t think about Thrones resetting to the rule of men much at all, and that they were instead relishing having a gaggle of former misfits sitting on the small council. See? the show seemed to cry. Change!

At times, Thrones gestured more clearly to the ways in which the story was going a more circular route; this was especially true of the Starks. Jon headed up to Castle Black and became a kind of successor to Mance Rayder—someone leading not because of his last name or bloodline but because of the loyalty he’s earned. Arya’s seafaring didn’t feel out of character to me—it fit with her sense of adventure and reminded me of her voyage across the Narrow Sea to Braavos all those years ago. Sansa became Queen in the North in a scene that recalled the debut of “Dark Sansa” in the Vale, but that felt like a true acknowledgment of how much her character has transformed. I’ll admit, the crosscutting of the scenes showing the Starks finding their own, separate ways forward was beautifully done. It made me wish the episode as a whole had been more cohesive, less rushed, and more emotionally resonant.

Spencer, I think you smartly diagnosed so many of the big-picture problems with the finale—the sitcommy feel, the yada-yadaing of major points, the many attempts at fan service. So rather than elaborate even more, I’ll end this review by saying something sort of obvious: Viewers are perfectly entitled to feel about the ending of Game of Thrones however they want to. After eight seasons, they have earned the right to be as wrathful or blissed-out on this finale as they want; it’s been a long and stressful ride for us all. I’m genuinely happy that there are folks who don’t feel as though the hours and hours they’ve devoted to this show have been wasted. I know there are many others who wish they could say the same thing.” 

[harmonic-psyche]

The Finalysis: @askgiegueandcrew

Hey y’all! Here is my first post in The Finalysis. Below, I analyze the personalities of 26 characters from @askgiegueandcrew and @bunchofaliens​, in alphabetical order. Here are a few summary charts:

“Holy heck there’s a lot of characters right now.” -M

Without further ado, here are my explanations for why I put those characters where I did — and why I excluded the characters that I did.

Bala: Probably ESFP.

“Rather over the top and exaggerated,” Kalpana’s husband “has a more serious side, too, but it's very hard to get him to show it.” Being extra indicates extraversion and a high Feeling function, since if it was lower then he would not be so open with his emotions. A lack of seriousness is most common in E__P types. A love of explosions often comes from Se’s visceral love of intense sensory experience, and boy does he love explosions. His only line in the @askgiegueandcrew​ narrative is “I’m going to blast all this out of the way!” (not counting his one line on @bunchofaliens​ discussing his family tree) with a scarily huge wide-eyed grin to match.

Captain Deepsea ("Malarky"): Seems like an INFJ.

Despite being funkiest disco-loving robot in the solar system, Captain Deepsea comes across as more of a wise father figure than a wild partier. He is "very, very patient" and warmhearted towards his crew. This kindness combines with his curiosity to produce an unusual amount of leniency. Contrast the rigid, strict rule enforcement of the predominantly ISTJ gieeg and Starman leadership — particularly as displayed by Alum, Giegue, and Henry Killjoy. Unlike any other Starman Army leader save Niiue, "the word most folks would use to describe Deepsea" is "[e]ccentric." Malarky's voice carries a tone of "calm authority," and he gains respect from his subordinates not by explicitly demanding it but earning it implicitly through socialization, as one would expect from a Fe rather than Te user. He keeps his cape for sentimental reasons, again implying F over T. While not obvious, Ni seems implicit in his love of learning and his humor style of playing with language. For the latter, consider his in-game speech to Alin and co: "I knew you'd come after the *whirr* Apple ... [but] if you fell me, more take my place ... So how do you like them apples?"

I am not entirely confident calling Malarky Ni-dominant, though, because he “Likes following orders,” rarely questions them, and fully swallowed Giegue's Kool-Aid (e.g. when he said in CogDis that "the might of the Transcendent One is approaching infinity itself"). I would have expected that, at some point, the gieegs' orders would conflict with an INFJ's idealism (contrast Istic, Hahu, and Harod). The Captain seems chill about everything, whereas an INFJ often has Very Lofty and Serious Ideals. Still, Malarky does not seem to show Fi's fiery individualism, Ti's blunt lack of social tact, Si's rigid standards, or Se's impulsivity in his dominant function. I could see him as a high Ne-user, but even ignoring his obedience, that would imply either high Ti or high Fi. INFJ it is, I guess.

Crazy-Eyes: No clue.

The only things that I know about this mysterious character are that 1) they have crazy eyes, 2) Origen thinks they are "very talented," and 3) they dislike anons bursting into their lab. At this point, I cannot even venture a guess.

Emmet: Probably ESFJ, maybe ISFJ.

Despite being a fairly simple "music dork" who only wants to play his guitar, I found Emmet difficult to figure out. At first I considered him an introvert because he is generally passive and indifferent, letting things happen to him without much agency. But even though Vivek thinks that Emmet is a jerk, Emmet shows dominant Fe. Showing affection to random anons is no problem for him.

More importantly, he is loyal to his friends (Fe) and then to authority (Si) in that order. When helping the protagonists steal an Apple piece from Giegue, he thought primarily about how it would make his friends feel. While he called Col. Saturn "real great" for "explainin' all this stuff to me" because it "[m]akes it feel a lot less like I’m breakin’ too many rules!," he felt bad about disappointing Malars. Despite his treason, Emmet is very obedient. He betrayed Giegue only because his friends asked. Afterwards, Emmet had no problem deciding to turn himself in. Even though losing his guitar devastated him, he still prioritized completing his work. When asked by Harod, he did not even understand the concept of questioning authority. These show high Si, and thus ESFJ.

Euclid: Seems like an ESFJ, maybe ENFP.

An enthusiastically creative, determined kid with a goal-oriented mindset, a positive attitude, and a lot of respect for authority figures. Positivity and enthusiasm support E_F_. Determination and respect for authority support high Si. While his occasional randomness and righteously indignant sass make ENFP also seem likely — especially since he does not seem to care about being messy — his strong work-related principles imply strong Si. I considered that an ENFJ typing could reconcile those traits, but they still seem Ne/Si and I have seen no evidence of Ni or Se. I do not think I have seen enough of Euclid to type him precisely.

Giegue: Definitely ISTJ.

See his and Niiue's analysis via @cogdisblogging​, or his (revised-ish) analysis via Starmen.NET, for details.

Giselle: Seems like an ESFP, maybe ESTP.

"No number of yesterdays are more important than today. That's where you gotta focus." This “short description” of Giselle shows Se’s focus on living in the present, without planning for the future or dwelling on the past. Her “occupation” is a “Sled Expert and Life Enjoyer” and she is “[a]lways looking for excitement and fun things to do,” showing that she prioritizes new experiences (Se) and happiness (Fi) over practical matters (Te) or long-term goals (Ni). As is most common for E_F_ types, her “personality” is “[b]right and chipper!” and she “talks fast ... like a hurricane.” The latter shows how, in contrast to I__J types, she takes life at a fast pace. Inferior Ni is evident not only in her ignorance of long term goals, but in that she “dislikes ... books” and wants “noooo, no, no reading.” Her “bad habits” include “[p]ushing on ahead no matter what without stopping to think about things,” again showing that the long-term planning function Ni is inferior. Her “sworn enemy” is “[s]ocietal constraints,” showing Se’s love of freedom and Fi’s prioritization of personal passion over politeness and social norms.

I found no posts about Giselle on Tumblr, so I based my conclusion entirely on her Charahub. Since I have not seen any dialogue or social interactions including her, I cannot claim much confidence in assigning her a personality type even though the Charahub description strongly indicates Se-dominance. She could also potentially be an ESTP: although I have seen no evidence of Ti, I have seen nothing to rule it out either.

Kalpana: Probably ESFJ.

The loving mother of Vivek and Mips, Kalpana tries to help others and take care of their needs. "She tries to be very positive and loves to help out[;] is outgoing among small groups, but closes up a lot in crowds[; and] is rather dreamy." Fe-dominants disproportionately radiate positivity and love to help others. It is somewhat surprising that she closes up in crowds and is rather dreamy, as those would be more expected for an I, N, and/or P type. Still, her "patience level" is "[v]ery high with everyone who isn't Malik or Nila," so in other words, she automatically extends patience to everyone who is not rude. That shows dominant Fe because of the expectation of reciprocal kindness in social behavior. The "deadly sin that best represents" her is "wrath," which would be difficult to explain in an I_FJ. The "most important person in [her] life" is "everyone in her family," which coheres well with SFJs' tendency to value family more than other types. 

Working as a "spiritual healer/housewife" shows her Fe-based desire to nurture. She seems to have a penchant for giving gifts to others, which demonstrates the wide-ranging generosity of dominant Fe. In Niiue's mind, her manifestation asked if he'd had enough to eat, showing that she is a Mom Friend even to others besides her children. She is still very strong-willed and can be very blunt, as shown by her badass/sassy response to Porky and repulsion to Malik, making an I_F_ type unlikely. Together, these imply ESFJ.

Keter: Seems like an INFP.

Similar to her brother Euclid, but less likely to take initiative and more likely to enjoy solitary activities like reading. I thought she was ISFJ at first, but she does not seem to show the typical ISFJ nervousness — at least as much as someone like Mips. She is also much more of a daydreamer than most Si-dominants. Her hopeless-romantic attitude supports an INFP typing, as does the possibly Ne-based randomness she shares with her brother. Like her brother, I have not seen enough of her to be sure.

Koru: No clue.

I have found no information about her personality, including on her Charahub page and the two posts that she appeared in on @askgiegueandcrew.

Lilac: No clue.

I have not seen enough content to guess Ano’s and Ore’s mother’s type. While her Charahub calls her “[v]ery, very bitter and very, very troubled” and notes that she “can seem very threatening when she wants to be,” these are insufficient for me to hazard a decent guess — especially since the latter is probably situational: “She was put under house arrest because she wouldn't help the government convince her mate to cooperate.” Her demeanor sounds like it might be an INTJ’s, but I have only stereotypes to use there.

Lochan: Probably an ISTP.

"Spooks' perpetually grumpy dad" has precisely the opposite attitude as his daughter: where she is eternally upbeat and optimistic, Lochan "comes off as really grumpy and really ill-tempered." A grumpy attitude often implies I_T_, since introverts are less likely to enjoy social interaction and Thinkers are less likely to care about appearing friendly. As another factor explaining his grumpiness, "he just isn't the best at showing how he feels about others," showing inferior Fe. The "most appropriate TV Trope(s)" to describe him include "[s]our outside sad inside" and "Silly rabbit idealism is for kids," again showing the lack of Fe's warmth and idealism. I_T_ types are probably most likely to frequently call others idiots, as he evidently does.

Lochan's "bad habits" include "[t]alking without thinking things through," showing Se's impulsivity. When asked his age, he dismissed the question as irrelevant, showing the STP impatience for the impractical. The hair-trigger argumentative temper evident in his "strong opinions" and tendency to yell about them also indicates Se rather than Ne (compare Zarbol and contrast Ano), since ESTPs often become angry in arguments whereas ENTPs simply like to troll. If he had high Ne, he would probably show mischievous (contrast Ano and Static) or eccentric (contrast Niiue and Origen) behavior, but he shows neither.

Loris: Seems like an INFP.

This “standard blue starman” is “[f]airly straight forward,” but “can get a bit too curious and nosy about things” and is. A bit. Gullible.” Curiosity is most common in high Ne-users, and NF types are often gullible because they lack ST-types’ realistic (S) skepticism (T). Loris’s “patience” is “high,” unlike high Se-users. The limited dialogue that Loris gives shows the same kind of eccentric strangeness as Origen (INTP): “[T]his one is a wobblebot, look at it go! Wobble wobble, wobble wobble!” As a “Wide-eyed Idealist,” Loris lacks the cynicism one would expect from an I_T_ type. His “bad habits” include “[w]andering after his friends,” often right behind them: “[L]oris is really annoying and follows his friends around places,” showing a lack of the social awareness that one would expect from a high Fe-user.

Manjula ("Jula"): Probably ENFJ, maybe ESFJ.

This “too precious” child practically radiates dominant Fe. Blatantly kind, caring, “full of love,” and empathetic, she generally tries to help everyone. Friendship is one of her strongest values. Her voice is "[s]oft and kind," and conveys sincere interest in others. She has a special talent for "[o]rganizing groups together and encouraging teamwork." Manjula is a "responsible child who has a good amount of bravery and intuition about getting others to work together well," which shows Fe-dominance because auxiliary Fe would be much more passive. Frankly, if she is not Fe-dominant, I will eat a hat. Perhaps Manjula and Iso should have a fight to the death to see who better exemplifies the wholesome sweetness of dominant Fe, if either could ever be convinced to fight.

I am less sure that Manjula has Ni instead of Si, but her dialogue often seems to carry Ni's undertone of wisdom beyond her years.

Max: No clue.

I have not seen enough content to make a guess. I only know that he "do[es] not want to fight" and that he was scrapped, but those say little about his personality type.

Mips: Definitely ISFJ.

Cute nervous cinnamon roll who likes to take things slowly instead of acting on impulse. His reclusive tendencies show introversion. Likewise, his politeness, sensitivity, and desire to help others too much show high Fe. When asked, Mips was happy to share a long list of people he loves and the whole thing is adorably cheesy, showing his eagerness to openly discuss feelings. For Mips and many other Si-users, security entails comfort and vice versa: one of the reasons he loves Larice is that the Starman "makes me feel like I have a solid foundation to stand on" (compare Ambrosios). Conversely, he is known as a "scaredy mook" who struggles with paranoia and distrusting others due to inferior Ne. The inferior function is usually not trusted, and Ne holds many possibilities at once, so Mips fears the possibilities he sees.

Speaking of Mips the "scaredy mook," this actually happened (as of 2018-06-11):

I think that speaks for itself.

Nik: Probably ESFJ, maybe ENFP.

This "very up-beat and chatty" mook is "[p]retty social and ready to talk," showing extraversion and a high Feeling function. Love is "really important and not somethin' to give up on" to Nik, showing the sappy emotional idealism of Fe-dominance. His "bad habits" include "[b]eing too stuck in his ways" and "not hearing new points of view." Similarly, his "pet peeves" include "[h]aving his beliefs challenged." Both show the stubbornness of an immature high-Si-user, unwilling to consider alternative possibilities through Ne. Nik's "personal problem" of "not wanting to give up on the past" also shows high Si, since Si often focuses on the past. While Nik has a "chaotic good" alignment and is a "ditz," which would cohere better with an ENFP typing than ESFJ, typing based on alignments is often unreliable. Plus, it is far easier to imagine a ditzy ESFJ than an ideologically stubborn ENFP stuck in their ways who refuses to give up on the past.

Nila: Almost certainly ISTP.

"The goddamn doctor around here" is a grumpalumpagus like Malik — reclusive, practical, and tough, among other ISTP qualities. She has no patience, is best represented by the deadly sin of Sloth, and has personal problems with "being too apathetic at times" and consequently lacking motivation. In other words, she is almost certainly not a Si- or Te-dominant. Her tone with others tends to be very blunt and gruff, making her "not all that pleasant to deal with," and she dislikes impractical socialization. All of those show inferior Fe. After healing Ambrosios, for example, she told him to "git, get up, you're fine now ... 'n learn to use your healin' and life-up PSI, you're a mook, dammit." When Iso asked to become her apprentice, Nila asked the butterfly to "Tell me why this won’t be a waste of my time," and Nila has (endearingly, I think hope) referred to Saral the ISFJ as a "nice and borin'" "idiot" and a "git." Insensitive apathy implies high Ti, and her down-to-earth straightforwardness implies that she is not an INTP.

Behind her demeanor, though, Nila seems to be unusually driven by Fe. Her inferior Fe motivates her career as a healer. Apparently she even gives others therapy to help heal minds as well as bodies. She makes a nice contrast with Iso the ENFJ, and each helps the other with their weaknesses: unlike Nila, Iso is uncomfortable dealing with gore, but on the other hand, Iso has used her social skills to help compensate for Nila's lack thereof.

Origanum Vulgare ("Ore"): Almost certainly ISTJ.

Ore is a HUGE nerd and somewhat of an ISTJ stereotype, although a different kind than Alum. Emotional expression, or emotional anything, is not his strong suit. Friendship is a foreign concept to Ore. Due to his dominant Si, Ore has been highly obedient since his childhood. He obsesses over the details and minutia of his special interest — plants — to the exclusion of everything else, storing it all in memory. As Euclid eloquently put it, flowers "are one of his reasons for being." Intensive memory for concrete details is a hallmark of high Si. Not only does he consider endlessly studying mooks fun, but he considers it "illogical" to receive appreciation when he has yet to publish his research findings. Regarding mooks, academic study is even how he expresses romantic feelings unless that Elmadan x Ore fic is non-canon, in which case lol whoops.

I also consider INTP a serious possibility due to his occasional problem of forgetting that the outside world exists. However, an INTP typing cannot explain his obedience ("It's like he can do no wrong or something"), his intensive focus on one concrete subject, his "addiction [to] work," or his diametric contrast with Ano — and with Static, for that matter. He may show the "absentminded professor" stereotype common to INTPs, but he is not the same type as Origen.

Origen: Definitely INTP.

See full analysis for details.

Pelly: Almost certainly ESFJ.

This happy gieeg's expressive optimism, desire to help others, high patience level, and Lawful Good alignment exemplify dominant Fe. Her unwavering loyalty to her friends, family, and superiors shows strong Si. She felt angriest when people try to bully her brother or Alum, and hates bullies in general, which shows Fe's desire to protect others and Si's family loyalty. One might expect her protective instincts to impede her profession as a soldier, but she copes by reminding herself that she does everything to help her loved ones and "[tries] to keep my morals, even on the battlefield." After all, she believes that "[y]ou can kill without being a bully." If not for that belief, the cognitive dissonance between her moral feelings and her duty as a soldier would probably tear her apart.

Pia: Definitely ISFJ.

Pia's absolute loyalty and obedience to the orders of his "master(s)," to the extent that he is very frequently called a loyal dog as a joke, display dominant Si. When told that extreme obedience might cause his death, he said, "That's...ok." Like Pelly's, his unwaveringly compassionate and protective behavior — especially towards children — shows high Fe. The contrast between Pia's Fe and Giegue's Te is evident in that Pia thinks they are friends but Giegue does not (but for the record, Pia is probably right). Pia's inability to understand metaphors, puns, colloquialisms, or abstractions in general shows inferior Ne combined with low intelligence. A less intelligent person with high Ne may understand abstraction but not understand reality (contrast Patrick Star the INTP). Pia is a stereotypical ISFJ in almost every way, except that he is not (usually, with exceptions) visibly nervous (at least compared to e.g. Mips).

Pimpinella Anisum ("Ano"): Definitely ENTP.

See full analysis for details. Also, I really should have included this gem in her analysis: "Personality: Wow, what a bitch."

Rigby: Probably ESTP.

This shady character “has the kind of voice you instinctively don't want to trust,” perhaps because he exudes sketchiness and is the kind of salesman who is a bit too eager. The contrast between outer friendliness and salesmanlike insincerity is especially common among E_TPs, who use their Fe to project a friendly demeanor despite that it rarely gives them altruistic motivations (compare Ariana). Rigby’s technical skills (”He's actually really good with gadgets and inventing”) and love of “tinkering” show that he loves working with concrete yet logical systems due to Ti (compare Ayjo and Malik). Specifically, he loves “making explosives” since Se’s craving for sensory intensity makes him viscerally love fire (compare Bala and Zicca).

Like many STPs and few SJs, he “dislikes ... the law” because it imposes seemingly arbitrary rules on his freedom, making him willing to conduct (despite his insistence otherwise) legally dubious sales. Similarly, he would probably rather not “get married, ... have kids, [or] raise a family.” The aversion to commitment shows low Feeling and no Si. Rigby even shows the characteristic crude and slang-filled Se-dominant speaking style (compare Boson and Juice). While it may be dangerous to assume that only Se-dominants use it, so far that heuristic has seemed fairly reliable.

Saral: Definitely ISFJ.

See full analysis for details.

Sprita ("Spooks"): Definitely ENFP.

Above all, Spooks is "excitable and cheerful!" This "Wide-eyed Idealist" with a "Sunny sunflower disposition" has a "bright and bubbly" voice, and the element which best represents her is "sunshine." Her excessively friendly demeanor shows extraversion and Feeling, while her playful spontaneity points to Ne or Se dominance. Her romanticism suggests _NF_. When asked about how to biologically classify mooks, she replied, "I like thinkin[g that] we're like works of art, beautiful and unique!" which is one of the most violently ENFP sentences that I have ever read. It upheld romantic, happy idealism while notably providing zero concrete scientific details. Spooks is also known as "the Supreme Ribbon Noodle" because she wears cute ribbons and gives others cute ribbons and is a cute ribbon. She constantly calls stuff "cute," but maybe she is merely projecting. After all, she is "very determined" to be adorable, and her determination is obviously paying off (EEEEEEE, she’s so cute!). Like certain other ENFPs that I could mention, Spooks is a Motor Mouth who excitedly "goes on and on" and doesn't shut up while talking —especially about feelings, since she "is here to talk about feelings." Unlike Beams, Spooks fully embraces that she is Delightfully Squooshy. Spooks is basically the same as ViHart, another ENFP.

Tonic: Probably INFJ, maybe ISFJ.

This small friend "is mild-mannered, but determined," and a "bit withdrawn around strangers, but she warms up to others after a bit." Like Yi, the contrast between her warmth and her reclusive shyness shows introversion and auxiliary Fe. A mild-mannered attitude generally indicates I_F_, as does a "[s]oft and sweet" voice. " "She stays as positive as she can," showing the optimism of high Fe. The idea of killing someone repulses her, even Elmadan when he shut down Bowfest. Ni-dominance makes her "seem very reliable" and “determined” with a "[h]igh" patience level. Yet Ni also gives her the "personal problem" that she "isn't outgoing and doesn't know how to reach out and get what she wants on her own." Ni generally takes things slowly, avoiding impulsive action. Fe prefers to act polite instead of blunt to maintain social harmony. Both make it difficult to act assertively and take social risks. When nervous, she "pretend[s] she isn't in the ship and just go[es] quiet," since as an introvert she generally feels more comfortable out of the spotlight. Then, she lets her extravert brother do the talking — although she sometimes discourages that when the conversation enters, ah, unwholesome territory. When talking to Iso, Tonic is very flattering and encouraging, almost like a tonic to the nerves — GEDDIT???

ISFJ is also a possibility, since Si could also explain her shyness and determination. However, she shows no signs of low Ne's nervousness (contrast her brother, as well as Flux and Mips). I though INFJ unlikely because she lacks some grand vision, but when Elmadan cancelled Bowfest, she decided to lead the resistance. It may not be as obvious or overarching as e.g. Harod's or Penini's dream to explore the stars, but still shows a strong-willed resistance to existing authority which is less likely in a Si-dominant.

Yi: Probably ISFJ, maybe INFJ.

Very polite, well-meaning, and cultured, Yi exemplifies the well-developed tact of auxiliary Fe. Despite his genuine friendliness — in that he likes hugs and "gets along well with most everyone" — he is "just not a terribly social person," showing the paradoxical combination of high Fe warmth and introverted reclusiveness. Politeness is so second nature to him that he even let enemies rest at a hotel before fighting them.

For a long time I considered Yi an INFJ, reasoning first that Ni-dominance explains his fascination with Earth culture and second that inferior Se explains his detachment from physical reality and indecisiveness. Strong Se-users are generally much more aware and decisive (contrast Yi with Ly, Zarbol, or Zicca), after all. However, Yi's detachment and indecisiveness can be explained reasonably well with an ISFJ typing too. Yi's main interest (guns) is more detail-oriented than I would usually expect from an INFJ, although Harod's gembloom interest is notably similar. Si explains other parts of his personality slightly better than Ni as well, e.g. that his “hobbies” include “[o]rganizing things.” Also, while INFJs and ISFJs both care for others, Yi tries to attend to Zannie’s immediate practical needs, which NFJs (like Zannie) often accidentally ignore.

My most significant reasons to call Yi an ISFJ instead of INFJ are his lack of righteous indignation (e.g. at the gieegs' regime) and his lack of a lofty idealized vision or dream (contrast Harod, Istic, and Penini). If I saw his righteous indignation or lofty vision, then I would consider INFJ probable, but he gets up early and "appreciates getting a good night's sleep" and i can't relate so therefore he can't be my type. /jk 

Alright, that was my first Finalysis post! :D I hope that y’all enjoyed it. The charts are far messier than I intended, but I figured that they looked better that way than if I had tried to stuff six ESFJs into a single box on a traditional MBTI chart while leaving three boxes empty. While this post includes about a third of the total characters in my Finalysis so far, I intend to make one of these for every RP/ask blog with CogDis-related characters  — so if you have one, then stay tuned!

[decepti-thots]

OK, now i've had a few hours to think, time for my spoiler-y and more in depth LBS #2 thoughts!

as i said in my tags, this issue felt MUCH denser than the first. that's a neutral observation btw- i really liked that #1 was willing to take its time and not feel obligated to rush to what might be assumed to be 'the good stuff', and it was interesting seeing a somewhat less dense comic in terms of scripting from roche (relatively speaking anyway), who definitely leans heavily towards both dialogue and panel density in all the work of his i've read.

…but #2 feels a LOT more like his other work in this regard, haha. VERY dense dialogue. the letterer is working overtime here, bless them. (it helps a lot that multiple types of speech bubbles are used, though with the 'visitors' often talking among themselves, with their own specific style of speech bubble, it sometimes gets harder to parse than when it's them talking to others.)

i feel like i was 100% justified in my assessment of #1 as setting this series up as 'takes some inspiration from westerns-as-genre, but does not really structure itself as 'a western' in that way'. this issue felt even less like one genre-wise, and again, i am not unhappy about that, tbqh.

i'm VERY interested in the threads it's setting up about Just What Happened Here. i'm not gonna try and guess bc i have a sneaking suspicion i would just be setting myself up to have the rug pulled out from under me, haha. but i am interested in if anyone else DOES have immediate theories… i'm really not even sure who to guess the "veteran" is. bc i'm assuming it won't be some obvious pick or whatever.

obviously this side of fandom has picked out the two IDW references, and i do really like that the LL one doesn't overstay its welcome and the thunderclash joke is like. funny, not maudlin. the G1 mavrel refs being a bunch of furmanisms is a pet peeve of mine but like i GET it i DO i think it's kinda overdone at this stage but i get it. it's The Way You Reference Marvel in the UK fandom. fair. i'm sure non-idw fans rolled their eyes at the LL namedrop or w/e haha.

it continues to amuse me that roche has been very 'no really, it's a FUN comic, i promise' and he's not WRONG, this comic in particular has real levity and humour, but like. it brings in the violence JUST like usual. lmao. the chipper way the "visitors" talk about eating people. it's a great underplayed thing which is creepy as hell. i love it.

also i love and would die for moon. i wanna know what his form is a 'tribute' to that he mentions. lmaoooo. god i am very much enjoying this series as of this issue, it got to the weirder sci-fi vibes REAL quick.

LBS #2 spoilers under the cut.

oh, i know it's an obvious swing, but I'm having an emotion, don't look at me ;-;

but also:

LMAOOOOO

[gurguliare]

notes on the valar’s debate re: finwë and miriel because whatever i guess i’m a tolkien blog again suddenly

valar present: all the aratar minus oromë and varda, but plus vairë. apparent difficulty of getting all the valar in a room is very touchingly + frighteningly provisional government. i’m not surprised oromë skipped, mildly interested in varda’s absence since varda hallows the silmarils and that’s like, the most we see her interact with an elf ever, but apparently she wasn’t as concerned with fëanor’s parents. someone write me fëanor + varda fic that isn’t primarily or exclusively about how hallowing another person’s family jewels is Illegal, thank you.

Things I Am Interested In About The Debate Itself:

aulë argues that miriel’s death (or as he wants to frame it, fëanor’s birth) was direct action on eru’s part, and that it’s therefore a mistake to talk about it as connected to the marring of arda. i love aulë’s shitty partisan tunnel vision. characterization-wise my goal for him is always to invent a melkor parallel, so, uh, belief in absolute creative control, i guess? god can always tweak his machine.

ulmo shoots back that miriel’s death CAN’T be a [thing apart from the marring] because miriel’s death has had shitty, ruinous consequences of its own, namely, it made people sad, and eru “doth not of his prime motion impose grief upon them.” ulmo acknowledges that eru is the ultimate source of all crap, grief included, but basically rejects aulë’s concept of eru acting without intermediary in a way that causes deep harm. as always, ulmo + numenor depresses me, albeit i guess not many people were left alive to grieve. between ulmo’s stance here and his speech to tuor in “of the coming of tuor to gondolin,” i think we can go past “ulmo is a rogue agent” and say that ulmo is invested in an ideal eru who may not be the same as the eru who presently exists (or, atemporally, may not be the same as... every eru who exists?); ulmo in a pinch will guilt trip god, or to take sides when god contradicts itself---not, “the contradiction must also be eru’s will and it’s our limited perspective that makes it seem evil,” but “the things i know to be right in eru are the substance of eru that i accept; the rest is a wall to be broken down, not a burden we rationalize or reconcile ourselves to.” HEAL GOD HEAL GOD HEAL GOD ulmo is, of course, jewish.*

*caveat: i have no idea what i’m talking about

yavanna backs up ulmo, which is neat---yavanna compared to ulmo is less touchy-feely, less involved with humanoids in general, so it’s not an instant association for me, but yavanna ofc also makes one of the iconic appeals-on-behalf-of-creation, which reveals a possible flaw in the design and gets a special accommodation granted: ents! here her focus is more technical (aman isn’t beyond the reach of the marring generally, and who would know better than her; everything made of matter is affected by melkor), but in a way that reveals the solid grounding for her brand of protective ardor; she’s also an engineer, though one long since resigned to the messy randomness of creation and its collaborative basis.

nienna similarly goes pretty in-depth with a consideration of psychological as well as physical frailty; despite my jokes about nienna the neural network, she lays out a lot of theory here. ulmo gets shirty about, uh, weighting temporal creatures’ in-the-moment understanding of their own abilities above their real potential to endure; in passing he touches on the fact that the valar’s interference deffos made things worse (because miriel, given an ultimatum, of course doubled down on her decision). vairë says, no, miriel is just pigheaded. in my memory of the debate i had attributed some of nienna’s stuff to vairë---i actually don’t quite know what to make of vairë’s position, or rather, of what it adds, except that she takes nienna’s relatively external + patronizing take on fallible minds and argues instead for a kind of terrible accuracy of perception between elf souls that the valar can have no frame of reference for. (vairë and mandos in different ways both strike me as bizarrely prone to, idk, taking elves seriously---see also “If thraldom it be, thou canst not escape it,” which is brutal! but which accepts feanor’s skewed model in order to enter a dialogue with him, rather than talking over his head about how his perspective is delusional.)

i haven’t touched on manwë’s and mandos’s comments in the debate because both are interesting but fairly self-explanatory. “everything else you wrote here was self-explanatory” shh. AND NOW, onto my favorite parts of this stupid essay:

1) nienna gets the bright idea to just, stuff miriel back into her corpse, and takes it to mandos privately as though no one else needs to be consulted about this and as though all the prior objections to miriel’s reincarnation just Stopped Existing because LOOK, the body’s FINE, and i HAD THIS IDEA

2) after the rebellion they do exactly that. they just pop her back in.

Then the fëa of Míriel was released and came before Manwë and received his blessing; and she went then to Lorien and re-entered her body, and awoke again, as one that cometh out of a deep sleep; and she arose and her body was refreshed. But after she had stood in the twilight of Lorien a long while in thought, remembering her former life, and all the tidings that she had learned, her heart was still sad, and she had no desire to return to her own people. Therefore she went to the doors of the House of Vairë and prayed to be admitted; and this prayer was granted, although in that House none of the Living dwelt nor have others ever entered it in the body.

i love it. i love it so much. i love miriel standing and thinking, i love that having already had a kind of ecstatic ghost turnaround after talking to finwe, where she’s like, i will! i will come back to life!---coming back to life is still hard. she sobers up and her understanding changes again once she’s returned to the world; she gets so many pivots in two pages and it doesn’t feel silly or trivial, it feels amazing, because this is the woman who vairë thought would stay dead until the end of the world---i guess that’s the other big function of vairë’s bit, is it lets us take seriously the idea that miriel COULD have. she was feanor’s mother. and yet by some chance she relented, and it wasn’t like, break the old resolve, form a new one, follow that just as doggedly, it’s that she breaks the old resolve and ends up in this totally new, thoughtful, responsive mindset, In The Twilight Of Lorien, she has the freedom to find out and follow her own impulses at last, and if the impulse runs out she abandons it

and she gets what she wants!! although in that house none of the living dwelt nor have others ever entered it in body!

also, from when she’s still talking stuff over with finwë:

And when she learned of Finwë all that had befallen since her departure (for she had given no heed to, nor asked tidings, until then) she was greatly moved; and she said to Finwë in thought: ‘I erred in leaving thee and our son, or at least in not soon returning after brief repose; for had I done so he might have grown wiser. But the children of Indis shall redress his errors and therefore I am glad that they should have being, and Indis hath my love. How should I bear grudge against one who received what I rejected and cherished what I abandoned?’

so, 1) i suspect that ghosts’ mental processing is not exactly like living people’s, because regardless of how seriously depressed míriel was when she died, ‘had given no heed to, nor asked tidings’ is real hardcore, also i just want ghosts to not be very much like living people 2) GOD the thing about indis’s kids... i love....... the fucked up blowup of an ideal sibling relationship of mutual correction and help into this continent-wide, fairly miserable chase sequence. cleaning up after the dead. and yet miriel with the wide-angle view can’t help but see in it the seeds of what should have been and also something to be grateful for

living handmaiden miriel/ghost finwë who hovers over her shoulder while she’s weaving and asks “is that anime”/embittered single mom indis is the BEST THREESOME, qed*

*i proved nothing

[jasonfry]

Notes: Rebel in the Ranks, Pt. 1

WARNING: These notes will completely spoil Servants of the Empire: Rebel in the Ranks. If you haven’t read it, stop and go here.

(Here are notes for the first book in the series, Edge of the Galaxy.)

On the surface, Rebel in the Ranks seemed like an easier project than its Servants of the Empire predecessor, Edge of the Galaxy. With the first book, I’d had to introduce Zare Leonis and his family and show how an Imperial poster boy was plagued by doubts and finally decided to resist the Empire. Rebel seemed like an easier lift – that work had been done, and about a third of the new book would be based on “Breaking Ranks,” the Star Wars: Rebels episode that introduced Zare.

I was wrong about the easier part, I think because Rebel was a larger story that needed to incorporate an adaptation. I had to work up to moments in “Breaking Ranks” that the show used as starting points, explain some things that worked on TV but not on the page, and figure out how to go beyond an adaptation without drifting into filler.

I learned a lot and it was a lot of fun. But not without some nervous moments.

Prologue: The Intake

The prologue’s main purpose was to catch the reader up on what had happened in Edge of the Galaxy: we get a quick review of Dhara Leonis’s disappearance, Zare attending Lothal’s Imperial Academy under false pretenses, and that Zare’s girlfriend, Merei Spanjaf, is helping him.

Exposition is the bitter medicine of storytelling, so you want to cover the taste with a little sugar. One technique is to deliver the exposition through dialogue, ideally as part of a conversation that has some other purpose and its own tension. I couldn’t do that everywhere here, as Zare has to keep secrets from Sergeant Currahee. But it works because Zare is essentially having a conversation with himself even as he’s answering Currahee’s questions.

The section also spins up the wheels for what's to come -- the most effective scenes do more than one thing. The reader meets Currahee, who’s straight out of central casting as the tough-as-nails drill instructor. And both Zare and the reader are tantalized by the possibility that the truth about what happened to Dhara is close at hand, maybe even displayed on the datapad that Currahee can see but Zare cannot.

We also get something new: a question that Zare, the reader and Currahee herself didn’t expect. Currahee asks if Zare ever dreams about his lost sister. What could that mean? We’re not going to find out, though – at least not yet. Currahee welcomes Zare to the Empire, and off we go.

Currahee’s name is an homage to Band of Brothers – it’s the name of the first episode, and an actual mountain in Stephens County, Ga., that paratroopers from Camp Toccoa had to run up and down.

Part 1: Orientation

Merei and Zare’s stories necessarily unfolded in parallel, as Zare is stuck at the Academy – a limitation that worked fine in Rebel but would nearly be the death of me in the third book, Imperial Justice. Fortunately for both books and the overall series, Merei had evolved from a supporting character to a main one who could hold her own with Zare – a happy accident I discussed in the notes for Edge of the Galaxy.

My starting point for this section was Ezra Bridger, AKA Dev Morgan. When we see "Dev” in “Breaking Ranks” it’s clear that he’s a new cadet. Maybe the Rebels producers intended the exercise in “Breaking Ranks” to be the first day of orientation, but it didn’t feel that way to me. But if Dev was a newcomer to the ranks, whose slot had he taken?

The answer to that question became Part 1, with Zare assigned to Unit Aurek with three other cadets: Jai Kell, Nazhros Oleg and Pandak Symes.

Jai’s role in the story was a straight line to the events of “Breaking Ranks” – he’s a talented, happy-go-lucky cadet who believes in the Empire but has no idea he’s Force-sensitive. Basically, he’s what Dhara was before she suffered the fate Jai must now avoid.

Oleg was a more interesting nut to crack. In “Breaking Ranks” he’s literally a faceless villain – we never see him with his faceplate open, undoubtedly to avoid stretching the animation budget. 

“Oleg” sounds like a first name, but the forms of address used in “Breaking Ranks” made it clear it was a last name, so I called him “Nazhros.” I suspect the starting point for Nazhros was “nauseous.” In creating names, I like taking words that get at something fundamental about the character, then fuzzing up those words. I learned that from George Lucas himself, who once explained how “Darth Vader” emerged from blending “Death Father” and “Dark Water.” (The Secret History of Star Wars found a high-school classmate of Lucas’s named Vader, but that’s not necessarily a contradiction – we subconsciously channel stuff all the time.)

I crafted a bit of a backstory for Oleg to set up a payoff in Imperial Justice and to give the character a bit of shading. Oleg is basically an abandoned child who’s been left in the indifferent care of his uncles. I intentionally didn’t go too far beyond that – the world is full of antisocial jerks whose stories of how they got to be antisocial jerks are depressingly simple. I also wanted to be true to the show – doing more with Oleg helped my story, but doing too much more with him might have wound up feeling like an inversion of the episode.

That left Pandak Symes. Pandak arrived “pre-doomed,” fated to be replaced by an undercover Ezra. But in that I saw a story to tell. The Zare we meet in Edge of the Galaxy is a natural leader who inspires, instructs and cajoles his grav-ball teammates into becoming league champions. His instincts would be to do the same as an Imperial cadet, and he’d try to help Pandak through his struggles.

That gave me not one but two obstacles for Zare. The first was obvious – the physical and mental rigors of boot camp, which would show Zare gaining strength and discipline and demonstrating his gift for leadership. But there was another wrinkle: boot camp was designed to turn out officers for the very Empire that Zare had sworn to defeat.

That put Zare’s instincts in collision with his goals, which was a dilemma not just for him but also for the reader. Zare helps his fellow cadets because of a basic decency that makes the reader root for him, but that same decency drives him to work against the Empire. There’s a queasy tension there for both character and reader.

My other major character was created to heighten that tension. Lieutenant Chiron is “the good Imperial,” a capable leader and mentor for Zare and other cadets. (In Greek mythology, Chiron is the wise centaur who tutors Heracles, Achilles, Jason and other heroes.) Chiron’s good qualities are real, but undermined by a fatal flaw: his inability to see that the system he supports is evil and cannot be reformed. From the beginning I knew that Chiron would be part of the series’ endgame, so I got to work early.

Quick notes on Part 1:

The book’s working title was The Rogue Cadet. I liked that, but Rebel in the Ranks tied in nicely with “Breaking Ranks.”

Merei’s alarm is a song she hates -- a treacly ballad called “With You Among the Stars.” I thought that was a revealing and funny character moment for her. The song is by Plexo-33, a band mentioned way back in HoloNet News. Heavy isotope was mentioned in the first Medstar book.

Chiron’s speech about “every morning in the Emperor’s service” was a goof on Sergeant Apone’s oorah call-to-arms in Aliens. Which, of course, was itself an homage to innumerable boot-camp stories. Currahee yelling at Pandak about his shower shoes, on the other hand, was a nod to Bull Durham, my favorite baseball movie.

I needed to map out the Academy system a bit here, and drew on The Essential Guide to Warfare. Lothal isn’t the same kind of academy Luke wants to attend in A New Hope – Zare is only 15. Rather, Lothal is a one-year junior academy, with those who do well going on to a regional senior academy. The course of study at a regional senior academy would typically last three years, with top cadets graduating to specialized service academies for officer training within a branch of the Imperial military. I kept all this a bit vague to avoid tying future storytellers’ hands. 

Chiron and Currahee transferred to Lothal over the summer from the Imperial Academy on Marleyvane. That meant there was no way they could have been involved in Dhara’s disappearance, increasing the tension as Zare tries to reconcile the idea that there might be “good” Imperials with their support of an evil system.

Note Unit Forn is all-female. We don’t see female cadets in “Breaking Ranks,” but we know they exist – Dhara was one, after all. And female officers and stormtroopers are increasingly common in Star Wars storytelling – something I explored in Warfare.

I turned to the cutaway view of a stormtrooper helmet in The Complete Visual Dictionary to figure out the positioning of the atmosphere intake and the suit-air intake, then checked it approximately 8,000 times to make sure I hadn’t reversed them in my mind. Just checked it again, even though it’s years too late. Make that 8,001.

There’s a quick reference to seatroopers -- a stormtrooper class introduced in Legends -- helping the cadets. I described them sparingly to give future storytellers as much flexibility as possible.

In the obstacle course, Zare directs his unit to switch between wedge and file formation. I read up on the relevant tactics for scenes in Rebel in the Ranks and Imperial Justice, but didn’t go beyond the basics here to avoid slowing things down. That happens a lot as an author – you do a bunch of research that winds up getting boiled down to a sentence or two. But if that makes that sentence ring true, it’s worth it.

Zare’s sports experience comes up a couple of times in this section. He describes his tactics in the obstacle course as a weak-side carry, and accepts Pandak’s departure after Chiron compares the cadet’s weakness to a grav-ball teammate not making plays.

Next up: Naming confusion and the mechanics of a successful computer hack. 

[bastardsunlight]

RANT AHEAD!! ❤

Friendly reminder: Ulfric invited the dark elves into Windhelm after Vvardenfell threw a shit-fit and displaced a fucklot of ‘em—and he’s not been on the throne of Windhelm long--maybe fourteen years. That bit is important. One of the dark elves you speak to in Windhelm (one of the well-off ones) says that it’s basically due to the dark elves’ lack of willingness to actually engage in the Skyrim way of life (clinging to their Morrowind ways of living—not culture, they’re obviously free to worship whomst the fuck ever in Windhelm) that keeps them impoverished.

 There are TWO nords in Windhelm who’re shitheads at the dunmer and, confirmed by a dunmer NPC, all they do is get shitfaced and stumble through the gray quarter at night, yellin’ crap—rude, but honestly, the Dragonborn can beat one of ‘em down and they lay tf off. They might be representative of Windhelm nords, but then the dark elf who is well off should also count as representative of how to be successful in a new country. He left the gray quarter and made a life for himself, which any of them can do, because it isn't actually confirmed to be a law that the dark elves have to stay in the gray quarter. One elf says “they won’t let us live outside that slum” but another elf, who lives outside the slum, says that the dark elves who live there are essentially oppressing themselves--much like the subject of this rant, every citizen of Skyrim will have a different perspective. 

Galmar Stone-fist, Ulfric’s right hand, is the one who tells the DB this, saying something along the lines of “he invited them here, but I wish he’d asked the rest of us first”. Meaning Ulfric DID defy some potential racism in order to offer asylum and shelter to the dark elves (I say potential, because ofc it could just be that life in Windhelm is tough enough without opening its gates to refugees). He stuck his neck out for elves. That’s a canon truth. The fact that you, a DB of ANY race, can literally join the Stormcloaks and rise in the ranks without a problem sort of negates the “racism” argument, if you are using in-game facts and mechanics. “Oh, but the player character has to be able to join either side” yeah that’s true--a lot of stuff in the game is set up for the PC. All the Stormcloak soldiers are human, but hey guess what? So are the Imperial soldiers. 

So miss me with that “ulfric is a racist” thing. That’s so simple, so very very simple and a really shallow interpretation of Ulfric’s character. Has he done no wrong? PFF fuck no. He killed a man in an argument over ideals and what a proper Skyrim should BE. Elisif is a widow ‘cause Torygg couldn’t best Ulfric, but the fight itself was fair, according to canon—members of Elisif's own court (which she doesn't rule, btw, Falk Firebeard does) confirm it. So riddle me this:

Is it wrong to desire liberation from a small, centralized government, who is under the thumb of an even more removed dominion of some folks who are slowly but surely killing all religious dissidents in your country because one of your gods makes them squirmy? [cue crusade banners]

The aldmeri dominion (and thence, the thalmor) are racist motherfuckers. The idea of Tiber Septim becoming a god is anathema, not only because he is mortal, but because he’s a HUMAN. Lorkhan et. Al. are elven gods, elven concepts, elven ideas—the other eight divines are Aedra, which were of the same nature as the Daedra ‘til they created Nirn. Now, could it be that the Aldmeri Dominion would balk against an ELF becoming a god? I can’t answer that. But the blessings of Talos work. They confer healing and shit on you, so I hate to break it to ya, elves, Talos is a god. [cue Heimskr’s speech “WE ARE BUT MAGGOTS, WRITHING IN THE FILTH OF OUR OWN CORRUPTION]

Engaging in religious oppression is the overarching theme of the Aldmeri Dominion. Conquering the Empire allows them to keep suppressing the worship of Talos. Talos is a human who became god--he was a nord, in fact, and the FOUNDER of the empire. He is a legitimate god whose presence upsets the elves because he was mortal. Is that racism? If they’re pissed because he was man rather than mer? Yes. If they just find the idea of an ascendant mortal anathema, still a tentative yes. Oppressing the beliefs of a people is a from of racism. 

The Nords came to Skyrim from Atmora thousands of years ago and they got along fine with the snow elves ‘til they unearthed an artifact in Saarthal. It was at that time the falmer felt they had no choice but to attack. Ysgramor lost his son(s?) and thus mounted a counterattack, driving the falmer to retreat into the waiting arms of the frankly shady dwarves, who promised asylum, but enslaved them. This is NOT a metaphor for the oppression of native peoples in the United States, so don’t like, try and make it one. The falmer struck first, the humans won and thus the Nord people are the oldest native residents of Skyrim--we’re talking millennia, here, people, not a century, but literal thousands of years that Skyrim has been human, specifically Nord, land. 

I mean, Tullius is kind of racist if you really feel the need to go there (I don’t, but see Imperial side dialogue before you kill Ulfric “wherever you people go when you die” in which Legate Rikke, a Nord herself, reminds him “Sovngarde, sir.”). That’s how racism works. People will say shit that disrespects your culture or way of life, but if you’re close to ‘em, they don’t see it as a problem, because they don’t see you as “like all the other ____.” Now, Tullius doesn’t justify himself to Rikke because he is her superior officer, but it just goes to show that, for being the imperial rep in Skyrim, he gives very few fucks about the culture. Now, is this most likely because he is tired and does not want to be there? Yep. Does that excuse him? Only if Ulfric’s belief in his own cause excuses him. The empire is a puppet for the Thalmor, thus Tullius is a puppet of the thalmor as well and if you don’t think that destroys his pride as an imperial soldier (same as Ulfric?????), well, maybe it’s time for another study in human nature.

Yes, it’s true that Tullius prioritizes the safety of the citizenry at Helgen. Ulfric doesn’t. 1. Ulfric is prolly a little pissed, 2. He’s just been arrested for beating a dude in a fair fight, 3. He has NO troops, and 4. He’s trained with the Greybeards; he understands what a dragon can do WAY more intimately than Tullius and he knows better than to get in the way of that fire. Skyrim is a rough fuckin’ place and the addition of dragons doesn’t help. Neither man backs down from the civil war, either, so don’t bother with that angle. “Oh Ulfric didn’t stop civil warring to fight dragons” yeah nor did Tullius. Methinks being the commander of an army is not so simple as “okay guys let’s stop fighting and be bffs”. Tullius is there on orders he doesn’t want to follow, but Ulfric also doesn’t seem like he WANTS to tear Skyrim up--he feels it is necessary, same as Tullius feels quelling the rebellion is necessary. It’s all in your perspective--and yes, I’ve played the Imperial questline; I was a high elf and it made sense, story-wise.

Aligning with the Empire means aligning with the Thalmor. Aligning with the Stormcloaks also means aligning with the Thalmor. No matter what, you’re either directly serving them or their interests. If this bothers you, you understand the desire for an independent, sovereign Skyrim. 

Ulfric does what he does because he just spent however the fuck many years fighting against the aldmeri dominion (after, mind you, leaving the training of the greybeards to stand up for an ideal), fighting FOR THE EMPIRE, hoping to keep the lands of men a separate, sovereign land unto themselves, with their various provinces and governments under the empire. He was NOT opposed to the empire until they bowed to the white-gold concordat, an agreement which promised peace (a good thing yes?) in exchange for dropping the ninth divine, Talos, Tiber Septim-become-god (religious persecution, and please recall this isn’t just “take down all shrines of talos”—this is literally hunt down and root out talos worshippers in their own homes [markarth quest]). While Ulfric is being tortured by the Thalmor, his countrymen are being forced to bow the knee to the Summerset isles and a people who have no real idea how life, commerce, and politics in Skyrim should and do work, all because they’re opposed to the worship of the LEGITIMATE GOD Talos.

The Thalmor convinced Ulfric that the information he FINALLY gave them after being tortured actually helped them take the Imperial capitol. It didn’t, of course, the capitol had already fallen, but he carries that guilt. That’s canon, too. He carries the guilt of thinking it’s his fault the Empire lost the imperial city (the first time--they took it back during the battle of the red ring like one or two years later) which, btw, the Aldmeri dominon started, for the record.

Lemme remind you that many of the citizens of Skyrim thought Torygg was a bit of a weakling, as well, that he was content to bow to the empire’s wishes, the wishes of the aldmeri dominion, without seeking a better position in trade, taxes, etc. for Skyrim. Is that a reason to kill someone? Well probably the fuck not. But you know what? These are fantasy politics and it wasn’t as if Torygg was caught off guard. They were dueling. [cue Yu-Gi-Oh! opening]. So the empire captures Ulfric and is gunne behead him—and well y’all played the opening.

I’m only saying this because I cannot cruise the Ulfric Stormcloak tag without seein’ this garbagio and it’s killin’ me. Is he a sweet cinnamon roll who can do no wrong? No. Are the stormcloak’s skyrim’s third reich? Also fucking no??? It is just my own observations and interpretations of the events and dialogues in-game which lead me to this conclusion. Skyrim has a right to secede from the Empire which serves the Aldmeri Dominion more than it serves its own people. Don’t forget that the Aldmeri dominion is engaged in active oppression of a legitimate faith. Don’t forget that Skyrim staying allied with the Empire doesn’t strengthen the Empire for some speculative, future uprising. Don’t forget that it’s unwise to apply real world politics to a fantasy world with such completeness that you cannot recall the actual details and parameters OF that fantasy world.

I mean at the end of the day, it’s a videogame, right? So… grain o’ salt.