#and it does not put him into the pretty side of the moral specter

[unnamed-atlas]

Pspspsp info dump 👀

Ok so in season 1 of Mianite there's this place called Ianarea which is basically a kingdom dedicated to the goddess Ianite. There's a part of the kingdom that's in the end and seems to be actually ruled by Ianite and then there's a small area in the overworld and the lore for all of it is really vague from what I remember so I decided to rework all of it. So in the AU there's still the part in the end ruled by ianite, but then there’s an overworld kingdom by the same name that is not ruled by Ianite but in dedication to her, so most of the people living there are followers of Ianite. She spends a lot of her time in the overworld in this kingdom.

Phil, Tubbo, Tommy, Wilbur, Techno, Niki, and Eret all live in this kingdom. Phil, Tubbo, Tommy, Wil, and Techno all live together, Phil being the head of the household having taken the other four under his care at varying ages.

Phil is an inventor who’s most well known for his invention of the elytra, makeshift wings that can be used by humans for limited flight. He owns a shop where he sells his inventions and he’s well regarded in the community as the type of person you can come to for help with any problem. When he’s not working in the shop he’s either hanging out at the library with Tubbo to do research for his new inventions or bailing Wilbur, Techno, and Tommy out of trouble. 

Tubbo works as an archivist at the kingdom’s library. He works closely with Ianite and the royal family to record and preserve the history of the kingdom and of the gods, as well as to take care of the library and its other contents. 

Techno is a young anarchist who used to travel the world by himself before being forcibly adopted as Wilbur’s friend when he was passing through Ianarea. He’s well known around the kingdom for his habit of sneaking both himself and occasionally Tommy and/or Wilbur into the kingdom’s political meetings to cause problems on purpose. He also has a tendency to screw around with the royal guard members who patrol the streets of the kingdom during the day, often distracting them by departing them about political philosophy while Wilbur and Tommy cause problems on purpose. After traveling for so long he’s gotten really good at fighting and teaches Tommy and occasionally Tubbo combat and self defense. When he’s not causing problems on purpose he’s usually helping Phil around the shop.

Wilbur has a similar rebellious streak to Techno, though he does it more for the aesthetic and fun of it than for any actual political philosophy. He has a habit of stealing things just to see what he can get away with and he’s become a fairly good pickpocket, though Phil’s been trying to get him to stop. He has a love for the ocean, having grown up in the area of the kingdom near the harbor, and had even wanted to be a pirate when he was younger, much to Phils chagrin, but he never learned to swim and so became put off by the idea. He instead works as a musician now, playing at local taverns and restaurants. 

Tommy picked up Techno and Wilbur’s want for rebellion, but Tubbo’s strong moral compass has also rubbed off on him over the years, so after learning how to steal stuff from Wilbur he became a bit of a robinhood type figure around the kingdom, stealing for the good of the people. Of course he does also tend to participate in Wilbur and Techno’s mischief just for the fun of it as well. He’s gotten into countless fights with business owners and the royal guard and more often than not ends up having to be bailed out by Techno and Wilbur. When he’s not causing problems on purpose he’s known to spend his time keeping Tubbo company at the library.

Niki is one of Wil's childhood friends. She owns a bakery and volunteers at the library alongside Tubbo in her free time. She’s honestly most of Wilbur’s impulse control besides Phil. The boys all spend a lot of time hanging out in her bakery, and more than a few times she’s had to hide them from the royal guard.

Eret is another one of Wil and Niki's childhood friends who grew up to join the royal guards. Wilbur and Tommy aren't exactly thrilled at this development and tend to avoid him after he joins. Techno still thinks he's chill though and always makes a point when he's messing with the guards to stop by and visit with Eret at his post. He sometimes gets posted at the library and so he and Tubbo chat pretty often and are on friendly terms. He and Niki are close so he visits her in the bakery fairly often, and he tends to go to Phil for advice when he needs it since he grew up around Phil being Wilbur's friend. Honestly him vouching for Techno, Wilbur, and Tommy is probably most of the reason the three of them have gotten away with as much as they have.

One of the big inciting incidents of Mianite s1 is that Ianite is captured by her brother Dianite. The actual timing of it all is really vague in the series itself but I generally assume that this took place before the beginning of the series. So. AU plot pre Mianite s1: Ianite invites Tubbo to travel with her to Mianite where she’s meant to meet with Mianite to discuss some things regarding recent events and changes they’re thinking of making to their realms and such so that Tubbo can record the events of the meeting to be filed in the library of Ianarea. They shouldn’t be gone for a month or two since Mianite isn’t too far away, so Phil allows Tubbo to go on the trip. He travels with Ianite to Mianite, meets Mianite, Declan and Champwan, and the Wizards, and records the events of the trip and of the two gods meeting, and it’s going great. Then the whole thing with Ianite being captured by Dianite happens and basically Tubbo ends up captured alongside her.

And so the plot of Mianite s1 starts. Everyone starts arriving in Mianite. Tom, Tucker, Sonja, Jordan, The Modesteps, Nadeshot, the gangs all here! And they start picking their sides as followers of Dianite or Mianite, and Jordan does his whole “haha i’m on my own team i’m team Ianite” without realizing Ianite is actually a real goddess, and the next morning he wakes up and there’s this fucking ghost in his house. Except it’s not actually a ghost, it’s Tubbo! Because they're still aware of what’s happening in Mianite while having been captured by Dianite, Ianite basically saw Jordan declare himself her champion and went, “well, okay, he’s our best bet here.” and used what powers she could still access to tether Tubbo’s soul to Jordan and sends him to go look after Jordan and do his best to keep him safe and kind of lead him in the right direction towards saving the two of them.

So Tubbo and Jordan are stuck together. Tubbo doesn’t really tell Jordan much at first, he does even give him his name, just kinda hangs out, gives him advice, leads him towards the right decisions and such. And it goes on like this for a while, because no one else can see Tubbo, except, it turns out, Mianite and Dianite. Mianite basically just doesn’t acknowledge it. But Dianite’s definitely a bit pissed off when he sees Tubbo with Jordan for the first time. 

Eventually though, Techno, Wilbur, Phil, and Tommy show up on the shores of Mianite! They came all this way looking for Tubbo since he had never come back home like he was supposed to. They meet up with Jordan, Sonja, and Tucker, who are fairly weary of the travels considering the last unexpected visitors to arrive in Mianite unexpectedly had been the pirates. So the boys explain why they’re there, tell them about Tubbo, and Jordan hears these guy’s description of their friend, looks to Tubbo beside him, who had seemed uncomfortable since Phil, Tommy, Techno and Wil had arrived, and has this whole moment of just “oh shit” as he realizes the kid they're looking for is the specter that’s been following him around for months.

Tubbo all but demands that Jordan does not tell them about him. And this is the point in the story, when Jordan returns to his base after talking to SBI, the Tubbo and Jordan finally have a heart to heart and they actually start being productive.

    This is most of what I have figured out for the AU, at this point, but I do have a few one-off ideas for later on in the story. At one point in Mianite Ianarea is destroyed by Dianite and the Mianite gang discovers this upon traveling there. At this point Eret and Niki will end up going back to Mianite with the Mianite gang + SBI. I know, at one point, that I want to have the wizards do something that makes it so that everyone can see Tubbo again, maybe for a limited period of time, maybe for the rest of the story, but yeah, sappy reunion time there. I’m thinking about maybe adding a few other people to the Ianarea gang, like Fundy, Quackity, maybe Scott, but we’ll have to see about that cause I won’t do that if I can’t do it in a way that works naturally for the AU.

What I do know for sure is that there will be a happy ending, Tubbo will be saved alongside Ianite and be reunited with his friends and no I will not tolerate any alternatives.

Anyways yeah this is literally three pages long. Anon you asked for an info dump and you got one :) I’d love to hear what y’all think or any ideas you might have since this au is definitely a big wip

[bindi-the-skunk]

Night is day and day is night In a world that's lost its mind! Chapter 2

"Deep breaths...deep breaths..." Robert encouraged well rubbing the back of his hyperventilating mate who did not react well to finding a disembodied hand in the cellar, not that the alpha could blame him, he had hoped to slowly explain things to him, too late, of course, his father had to leave a big mess!

Honestly, his father always stressed the importance of a clean image, too bad that did not extend to his other business! He took that a little lighter than Robert liked! Took his mother's special bleach blend and even then the whole stain did not come out of the carpet from the last one! He kept telling him to use a tarp!

He knew mother was just as tired of the constant mess as he was, though the tendency towards mess did nothing to lend itself to a more jolly personality...

"I thought you said he was on our side in this?" The elder Lanyon nearly growled, arms crossed in disapproval, if this was how his son's mate reacted to one severed hand there was going to be a problem...and that was another thing! His son had lied straight to his face that he was done with his attempt at a relationship with Doctor Jekyll!

He liked the omega fine, hard-working, and all that, but he was not what he had wanted for his son, too wiry and breakable, did not possess the iron core, some omega's could develop one with time, but still, not a good fit for their little family tradition...his wife had taken it all in stride and done her initiation ceremony flawlessly and without a moment's hesitation, he had been ready to call a preacher or a soul specialist right there as she stood tall, white ceremonial robes covered in blood and chocolate eyes burning with fire as she finished off her first, a child killer.

He wanted to go kiss her right now just thinking about her conviction! Now that was a mate! It only took a few words from her when Robert had nearly dropped out halfway through, then afterward he had thrown up and nearly made a fool out of himself in front of his grandparents...but that had not been her fault and nothing some ginger tea could not fix and he was much better later on.

She was just as skilled with an ice pick as with her knitting needles, he was somewhat disappointed she moved onto knives after her ice pick broke...too uninspired for her skill set and kept meaning to get her a new one.

"He is, I told you, but even I would not exactly be dancing about the room if I stepped in body parts!" Robert argued, he had hoped this would go smoothly, but it obviously was not, oh well, he just needed a verbal blessing in front of a witness so they could get officially married, that was all he wanted, soul bonds were not against the law, but the difference was sort of like being married by a justice of the peace and married by a preacher, some people did get picky when it came to those things and he wanted things to be perfect and leave no doubt.

He was just honestly glad it was something like this, as much as he was not a huge fan of Hyde's unsubtle ways, it was better than forcing his father to consent to their marriage via knocking his mate up, not that they did much to prevent that one...if it happened it happened, but this was a much cleaner method and showed his father that Henry could handle their secrets.

A little panic attack was expected, it was a lot for Henry to bite off in one go! Robert himself was still reeling from the night's events.

Oh! He would need to pick out the perfect person for his love's first time...he would worry about it later, right now he had more important things to do.

Henry's mind was in a jumble of emotions, his mate was a serial killer! Or at least his father was and Robert knew about it! What should he do? Demand the soul severance that he thought was going to be forced onto him? No, he still loved Robert and knew it would kill him to do that...he just...had to ..calm down...perhaps there was a rational explanation?

"Father, could you leave us alone for a moment? I will explain things to him, I think you are making him more nervous" Robert requested and was glad when all he got was a mild huff before his father disappeared down the hallway.

"R-Robert...I don't...understand..." Jekyll managed to get out, hoping it did not make the ..oh goodness...murderer...mad, just a few weeks ago they had taken two weeks off from their work at Roberts house so they could have the other to themselves, the alpha lying to his father he was on a business trip so there would be no disturbances.

What horrors unknowingly laid under Henry's feet the whole time? Did Robert also have a torture cellar? Or did everything take place in the Lanyon family home? Would he get mad if Henry did not agree with something?

Robert just smiled softly and put his warm hands over Henry's clammy ones "My father and I are working on ridding the world of a few...stains, we do not go after innocent people, that hand you saw in the cellar belonged to a serial rapist, he was even stepping up to murder when he was caught and captured, he had a knife to this young woman, no more than sixteens throat, he confessed a lot under...insistence...and was unapologetic for his crimes and even called those he assaulted, garbage, we have dealt with others like him and worse, Henry, you can help us, four is better than three! Mother adores you already and I will be right there with you when you do your initiation, father was very pushy during mine...but you can take your time...figure out what works for you"

He made it sound as if they were signing up for a dance class! But it was killing...Hyde made threats certainly...and the incident with Moreau...the man died from his injuries...but that was not...it was different! The fire did most of the damage, it was most certainly different...

Or was it?

Moreau did horrible things to animals...slicing them up well alive...sewing them back together well they cried out in agony...the worst kind of mad scientist...while the Lodgers still had a working moral compass, he abandoned his long ago and who was to say if given the chance he would not have moved onto people? Innocent men, women, and children yanked off the streets to be chopped up and sewn back together with nothing to dull their pain but death...and who was to say he had not tried it before? People whose families still wondered what happened to those they loved...

But Robert and himself were doctors! They were meant to heal people...innocent people...the same skills that lent themselves so well to saving lives, could just as easily take it away...

Henry did feel guilt over Moreau's death, the specter that had taken his form spoke to that, but should he honestly feel all that bad? He was going to hurt the Lodgers...take Creature and do God knows what to it...

A sixteen-year-old girl...was almost raped and killed...would that man have left her body there for the police to find? Discarded like the trash as Robert said he thought of his victims as? Or would he have disposed of her corpse, never to be seen again? No one ever knowing...her family laying awake every night, wondering where their precious baby was, or being forced to go down to some random morgue to confirm it was her violated corpse?

He had so many omega's in his society, and both Virginia and Rachel were pretty female alpha's he knew many of the scum in the black market would jump at the chance to try and take...young Jasper would not survive in the underbelly of the world...he would become a broken core...Henry would kill if someone tried to hurt any of his rogue scientists...that had been proven via Hyde's actions.

Would helping Robert in his quest really be that bad? He already was a murderer, and his mate made a good point, so many people who did horrible things just because it brought them sick pleasure...get rid of as many monsters as they could...but then they would be the only monsters left...

Did he want to become a monster?

He already was a monster...what was going a little bit further now?

"I'll do it...for the benefit of the world...and for you," Jekyll said, glad his voice did not waver too much at the statement.

Robert grinned and clapped his hands together and stood up "Excellent, now follow me!"

Henry just nodded and got to his own feet, wondering what on earth could be in store for him now.

The two headed down another hallway and Henry could not help but feel a coil of dread in his stomach as acid built up in the back of his throat at the idea of a tied-up person being on the other end of one of those doors... was he going to do this...initiation now?

"Do I have to....the ceremony...tonight?"

"Of course not, we have to make preparations! It's all more complicated than needed, but oh well...most ceremony does tend to have more intricateness than required...no need to worry about it, now, your night has been hard enough and you need to get cleaned up and into some better fitting clothing, I want you to relax, go in here and take a hot ba- FATHER! Get the severed head out of the bathtub! People live in this house!"

Welcome to crazy-Ville! Everyone gets a severed head hood ornament!

[janiedean]

jaime, pia and perceived ideals of knighthood vs effective knightly deeds

for jaime lannister week, day seven: free choice [in this case: META DAY? APPARENTLY.]

so, for the occasion I figured I’d rant about a specific instance in jaime’s asos/affc arc that might be a tad overlooked as it features a minor character but that I think is really important to his arc/his character evolution, as in: how his subplot concerning pia in both books actually shows that while he thinks he turned into the smiling knight, for someone he’s been arthur dayne all along and how actually pia is about the one person to whom he’s never not been anyone or anything else else, which should in turn suggest that he’s been arthur dayne deep down for way longer than he himself thinks.

first of all, I would like to go into the canon instances on which jaime himself reflects on the issue:

The world was simpler in those days, Jaime thought, and men as well as swords were made of finer steel. Or was it only that he had been fifteen? They were all in their graves now, the Sword of the Morning and the Smiling Knight, the White Bull and Prince Lewyn, Ser Oswell Whent with his black humor, earnest Jon Darry, Simon Toyne and his Kingswood Brotherhood, bluff old Sumner Crakehall. And me, that boy I was . . . when did he die, I wonder? When I donned the white cloak? When I opened Aerys's throat? That boy had wanted to be Ser Arthur Dayne, but someplace along the way he had become the Smiling Knight instead.  ASOS, Jaime VIII

"When I was a squire I told myself I'd be the man to slay the Smiling Knight."

"The Smiling Knight?" She sounded lost. "Who was that?"

The Mountain of my boyhood. Half as big but twice as mad. AFFC, Jaime IV

"You could kill Lord Beric, Ser Jaime. You slew the Smiley Knight. Please, my lord, I beg you, stay and help us with Lord Beric and the Hound." Her pale fingers caressed his golden ones.

Does she think that I can feel that? "The Sword of the Morning slew the Smiling Knight, my lady. Ser Arthur Dayne, a better knight than me." AFFC, Jaime IV

now, there are a few things we can deduce from these (there’s more on the arthur subject, but the crux here is the contraposition):

jaime has a very idealized view of his squiring period, obviously, because it’s the one time in which he was doing what he felt like he was born to do (being a knight) and in which he was part of an heroic quest/deed (slaying the smiling knight) that he carried out with his role model (arthur dayne);

the smiling knight himself is compared to gregor clegane, ie the worst person we could think of in these series;

in jaime’s head there’s a definite dichotomy in between arthur (extreme good) and the smiling knight (extreme bad);

jaime wanted to be like arthur (which he has no problem admitting now post hand-loss) but thinks that he turned into the smiling knight ie the worst possible other end of the specter, so he’a actually making himself look worse than he actually is as nothing he’s done in canon until that point is comparable to what gregor did if we stand by that comparison;

jaime *told himself he would slay the smiling knight* ie he dreamed of being the person who’d carry out that quest - it earned him the knighthood and he took part in it but he didn’t exactly do it as he points out later, as he says that arthur was a better knight than he was.

now, while we could discuss for ages about how jaime’s extremely idealized view of arthur and the rest of aerys’s KG doesn’t necessarily match up with reality (I mean, we don’t know much about what arthur was up to during the rebellion and we’ll never know until we get a direct account of what happened at the tower of joy but the man died trying to prevent ned from reaching his dying sister after his side lost the war, after rhaegar died and so on, which doesn’t look exactly knightly to me or at least it’s fairly morally gray/shady from the elements that we have), but the point I want to make here is that the way jaime sees it, he completely failed to uphold knightly vows, hasn’t measured up to his role model, turned into the kind of monster that he was dreaming of slaying when he was young and ponders when exactly that switch happened. and he mentions as possibilities a) when he went into the KG, b) when he killed aerys.

before I move on to the actual point, though, I’d like to point out one moment what is actually the oath knights swear when being anointed, as per ASOS and The Hedge Knight:

[..], do you swear before the eyes of gods and men to defend those who cannot defend themselves, to protect all women and children, to obey your captains, your liege lord, and your king, to fight bravely when needed and do such other tasks as are laid upon you, however hard or humble or dangerous they may be?

+

In the name of the Warrior I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother I charge you to defend the young and innocent. In the name of the Maid I charge you to protect all women....

so, very shortly and not counting the ones about obeying one’s commander or liege lord, the crux is protecting innocent/weaker people including women and children who can’t defend themselves any better.

so, jaime thinks he’s done nothing of that and that he’s not doing anything of that. fair enough. follow-up under the cut for length.

now, on to pia: before going on to how she matters in his arc, we should keep in mind that from what we know from arya’s chapters in a clash of kings:

Arya heard all sorts of secrets just by keeping her ears open as she went about her duties. Pretty Pia from the buttery was a slut who was working her way through every knight in the castle. Hot Pie was kneading bread, his arms floured up to his elbows. "Pia saw something in the buttery last night." Arya made a rude noise. Pia was always seeing things in the buttery. Usually they were men. Tothmure had been sent to the axe for dispatching birds to Casterly Rock and King's Landing the night Harrenhal had fallen, Lucan the armorer for making weapons for the Lannisters, Goodwife Harra for telling Lady Whent's household to serve them, the steward for giving Lord Tywin the keys to the treasure vault. The cook was spared (some said because he'd made the weasel soup), but stocks were hammered together for pretty Pia and the other women who'd shared their favors with Lannister soldiers. Stripped and shaved, they were left in the middle ward beside the bear pit, free for the use of any man who wanted them.

so: we know that she’s a serving hand (so she’s a woman of low birth who has virtually no protection whatsoever), that she’s good-looking and that she most likely enjoys having sex (nothing bad about that)… but that people shame her for it (see the first quote). we also can deduce that she was willing in her enjoyment of sex and so on… but the last that we know from arya’s chapters, when roose conquers it, she’s stripped and shaved and left free for use for having slept with lannister soldiers, so we can add that on top of that she most likely was raped and we can deduce that not many people would have considered it such after because of her previous reputation for promiscuity.

now, what happens after is that qyburn sends her to jaime figuring that he’d appreciate it:

“I understand you had a visitor last night,” said Qyburn. “I trust that you enjoyed her?”

Jaime gave him a cool look. “She did not say who sent her.”

The maester smiled modestly. “Your fever was largely gone, and I thought you might enjoy a bit of exercise. Pia is quite skilled, would you not agree? And so . . . willing.”

what we can deduce here is that qyburn sent her to jaime after the whole part where she was put up for *free use* by any man who wanted her and he still says she’s willing, which is actually true but more on that later, but to qyburn it really doesn’t matter most likely because of her previous fame. also he talks about her as if she’s not a person with feelings (she’s skilled, you enjoyed her etc.), while jaime does not sleep with her out of faithfulness towards cersei, but what’s interesting is how pia said she saw the entire thing:

“She had been that, certainly. She had slipped in his door and out of her clothes so quickly that Jaime had thought he was still dreaming.

It hadn’t been until the woman slid in under his blankets and put his good hand on her breast that he roused. She was a pretty little thing, too. “I was a slip of a girl when you came for Lord Whent’s tourney and the king gave you your cloak,” she confessed. “You were so handsome all in white, and everyone said what a brave knight you were. Sometimes when I’m with some man, I close my eyes and pretend it’s you on top of me, with your smooth skin and gold curls. I never truly thought I’d have you, though.”

Sending her away had not been easy after that, but Jaime had done it all the same. I have a woman, he reminded himself. “Do you send girls to everyone you leech?” he asked Qyburn.

“More often Lord Vargo sends them to me. He likes me to examine them, before . . . well, suffice it to say that once he loved unwisely, and he has no wish to do so again. But have no fear, Pia is quite healthy. As is your maid of Tarth.”

Jaime gave him a sharp look. “Brienne?”

now, never mind that the entire exchange ends up with jaime finding out that brienne is in danger and it’s just before his dream and the bear pit as in, his Extremely Knightly Moment in asos which is also relevant as that episode (while not the first knightly thing he does after losing the hand since saving brienne from being raped while on their road trip would count) is the first major gesture of the kind he does: we know that after she was most likely raped repeatedly, she got sent to *him*, and we find out that she’s actually been thinking of him in extremely knightly terms all along since she saw him getting knighted. now she says she was a slip of a girl so she most likely was around four or five and she still remembers that he looked handsome and brave (knightly virtues) and that when she’s with other people she pretends it’s jaime making love to her, to the point that she can’t believe her luck that she’d actually end up with him. now, he refuses (even if he finds it hard), but he’s most likely one of the few people (if not the only one) who would have done that and he also doesn’t appreciate qyburn basically whoring her out, so at least he’s giving her some basic respect… but the point here is that to pia he sounds/looks like the embodiment of everything he thinks he’s not (brave/knightly) and she’s been thinking that since he went into the kingsguard ie one of the two moments that in the above quote he thought might have been when he turned from arthur into the smiling knight, which therefore would *not* match her idea of him as a splendid example of knightly valor… in theory.

now, at this point, regardless of what happened in between arya leaving harrenhal and jaime getting there, pia still seems to not having undergone through massive changes since what we saw in acok - she’s still pretty, she enjoys sex and she definitely is willing at least when it comes to the one man she’s been having an idealized crush on for years and that she thinks of when having sex with other men.

then jaime goes back to harrenhal in affc before heading for riverrun and he meets her again:

Any hopes he might have nursed of finding Shagwell, Pyg, or Zollo languishing in the dungeons were sadly disappointed. The Brave Companions had abandoned Vargo Hoat to a man, it would seem. Of Lady Whent's people, only three remained—the cook who had opened the postern gate for Ser Gregor, a bent-back armorer called Ben Blackthumb, and a girl named Pia, who was not near as pretty as she had been when Jaime saw her last. Someone had broken her nose and knocked out half her teeth. The girl fell at Jaime's feet when she saw him, sobbing and clinging to his leg with hysterical strength till Strongboar pulled her off. "No one will hurt you now," he told her, but that only made her sob the louder. +

“Take the whore as well," Ser Bonifer urged. "You know the one. The girl from the dungeons."

"Pia." The last time he had been here, Qyburn had sent the girl to his bed, thinking that would please him. But the Pia they had brought up from the dungeons was a different creature from the sweet, simple, giggly creature who'd crawled beneath his blankets. She had made the mistake of speaking when Ser Gregor wanted quiet, so the Mountain had smashed her teeth to splinters with a mailed fist and broken her pretty little nose as well. He would have done worse, no doubt, if Cersei had not called him down to King's Landing to face the Red Viper's spear. Jaime would not mourn him.

"Pia was born in this castle," he told Ser Bonifer. "It is the only home she has ever known."

"She is a font of corruption," said Ser Bonifer. "I won't have her near my men, flaunting her . . . parts."

so, what happens is that when gregor (as in, the person jaime compared the smiling knight with before) was in harrenhal he smashed her teeth with a mailed first because she spoke out of turn and as per what the next quote says, she’s also been repeatedly raped again, and she’s definitely way traumatized and in a position of absolute helplessness… and she throws herself at jaime’s feet most likely seeing him as a possible savior - let’s remember that she’s idealized him as a brave knight all along, and he does promise she won’t be hurt, which is what he technically should do per his knightly vows. now, when he tries to argue for her staying in harrenhal, ser bonifer ie the person appointed to mind the castle in his absence says he doesn’t want her around because she’s a supposed whore regardless of how bad off she is right now. he could have ignored the issue, but he doesn’t and takes her as a washerwoman in his own army, and with that he already removes her from a place where she would have been even less safe than usual, but the important thing is in the next part:

Pia listened as solemnly as a girl of five being lessoned by her septa. That's all she is, a little girl in a woman's body, scarred and scared. Peck was taken with her, though. Jaime suspected that the boy had never known a woman, and Pia was still pretty enough, so long as she kept her mouth closed. There's no harm in him bedding her, I suppose, so long as she's willing.

One of the Mountain's men had tried to rape the girl at Harrenhal, and had seemed honestly perplexed when Jaime commanded Ilyn Payne to take his head off. "I had her before, a hunnerd times," he kept saying as they forced him to his knees. "A hunnerd times, m'lord. We all had her." When Ser Ilyn presented Pia with his head, she had smiled through her ruined teeth.

now: never mind that jaime (who as we all know is not the kind of person who reacts with a shrug when hearing/knowing someone has been raped or he wouldn’t be feeling guilty about his inaction with rhaella nor he’d have risked his hide to save brienne from it thrice two of which were post-hand loss and in one of those he wasn’t even able to stand by himself) always thinks that if she has to bed someone the important thing is that she’s *willing* nor thinks less of her for he promiscuity, which for westeros is fairly progressive all things considered… but he gives her the head of the guy who tried to rape her and by his own admission did it before *a hundred times* same as other soldiers in his group, and… she smiles through ruined teeth ie she doesn’t even care about hiding it, when later she takes care to cover her mouth when she speaks around other nobles. also, we can discuss that when she and peck start sleeping together jaime tells them to use his bed and:

The squire turned beet red.

"If she'll have you, take her. She'll teach you a few things you'll find useful on your wedding night, I don't doubt, and you're not like to get a bastard by her." Pia had spread her legs for half his father's army and never quickened; most like the girl was barren. "If you bed her, though, be kind to her."

"Kind, my lord? How . . . how would I . . . ?"

"Sweet words. Gentle touches. You don't want to wed her, but so long as you're abed treat her as you would your bride."

now: obviously he can’t tell his squire (who is still noble) that he should marry a woman who is a commoner, most likely barren and way older than he is, but he tells him that he still should treat her *as if she was* until they sleep together, and his standard for how you’d treat your bride is sweet words and gentle touches which most likely is not what pia’s gotten until this point much if ever, and throughout the entire thing while he is attracted to her and he doesn’t deny it to himself he still doesn’t act on it. and meanwhile since she’s still traveling with his army of which he’s in command she’s in a position of relative safety, never mind that if people know that he ordered beheaded the guy who tried to touch her when she wasn’t willing she definitely isn’t under that risk right now.

back to the beginning, what are the knightly vows again? protecting innocent/weaker people including women and children who can’t defend themselves any better. what has jaime done with pia on her end? he didn’t sleep with her nor treated her as a commodity, he has quite literally protected her taking her into his service when she was in danger, he’s made sure that she wouldn’t have to sleep with anyone she didn’t want to, has respected her agency and gave her the head of at least one of the guys who raped her, which considering that the person hurting her was *gregor clegane* ie the man he’s roundabout compared *himself* to in asos if we go by the smiling knight = gregor comparison… it’s kind of the entire opposite thing and absolutely counts as fulfilling every single knightly vow he made since he protected/saved/avenged a woman in a position of absolute helplessness about whose agency no one cares because everyone decided that since she likes sex then she must always want it.

the thing that’s important though is that by doing that… he’s pretty much proved her right, in the sense that if she’s always imagined him as the brave handsome knight since she was a little girl and he had just been anointed and she always idealized him to the point where she’d think about him when being with other people because obviously his idealized self would be everything she might want then he about went and proved her right regardless of any other shortcoming of his or regardless of any horrible thing he might have done before or after, because to her he most likely would be a knight out of songs since he did waltz in, promised no one would hurt her after it happened to her and actually delivered on it in spades.

but, while for *her* it’s definitely the case, jaime himself doesn’t think of it in very knightly terms, at most we have:

“Ser Harwyn says those tales are lies." Lady Amerei wound a braid around her finger. "He has promised me Lord Beric's head. He's very gallant." She was blushing beneath her tears.

Jaime thought back on the head he'd given to Pia. He could almost hear his little brother chuckle. Whatever became of giving women flowers? Tyrion might have asked. He would have had a few choice words for Harwyn Plumm as well, though gallant would not have been one of them. 

now, he’s thinking of it in the context of a romantic gesture since it was described as one before, but then he says gallant wouldn’t be one of those words and he doesn’t really register what he did as *gallant* or knightly while most likely pia would. also, he’s comparing himself to both the smiling knight and gregor (in another quote later he dreams of punching in the teeth one of cersei’s lovers the way gregor did while he’s still working through how betrayed that made him feel, but thing is, he doesn’t act on that at any point except when he punches ronnet for brienne and it’s nowhere near as bad as what he describes himself as) but he behaves in the entire opposite way since at least in pia’s case gregor about ruined her life and he avenged it/helped her/did what he could for her which is about more than most likely anyone ever did, and to her certainly everything he did would indeed look as knightly as it goes.

but like the entire point is that jaime doesn’t think of the knightly deeds he actually pulls off as such - he doesn’t think that of saving brienne’s life at the bear pit/saving her from being raped/giving her oathkeeper when brienne herself definitely sees them as such as in her affc chapters she keeps on thinking about both instances as proof that he’s Definitely A Honorable Person, he doesn’t think that of what he does with pia nor of anything else positive he’s ever done/does, which ties with the overall arc he has in which he has to realize that he can still be the person he wanted to be. in asos he thinks he turned into the smiling knight when he’s never been all along, in both asos and affc he does behave following the code when he can and hates not being able to when he can’t/when he’s forced to (see having to take riverrun when he says he has sworn to not raise arms against the tullys and he hates it) but he still doesn’t seem to have taken the leap and realized that he actually behaves in entirely different ways than he thinks (see that he thinks he’s the same as cersei when most of the things he does/he cares about are the entire contrary), so the subplot with pia shows that he’s actually doing that without realizing it… with the twist that, going back to the beginning:

he thinks he turned into the smiling knight (= gregor) sometime along the way when he wanted to be arthur dayne, then he’s the literal knight in shining armor to a girl who was hurt by gregor and his father’s men who always thought he was pretty much the embodiment of the institution same as jaime thought arthur dayne was, and it’s a girl who has no idea of anything else he might have done other than killing aerys and she obviously doesn’t care since she doesn’t mention it when she goes to his bed the first time. so there is someone to whom he was an arthur dayne all along, and the moment he could do something for her, he actually delivered and definitely was arthur dayne to her, not the smiling knight, and she’d know since she was hurt by the man jaime himself compared to him first. now, it’s important because everyone else that has had a chance to know that jaime actually does have that potential is people with whom he has an actual rship/who have seen him at his worst/with whom he has unresolved Issues To Solve ASAP (I’m meaning mostly brienne and tyrion - brienne didn’t like him whatsoever in the beginning and with tyrion there’s the whole matter of the tysha backstory which obviously ruined the high opinion tyrion had of him even if I think it’s salvageable) but in this case pia already thought she was arthur dayne As A Paragon Of Knightly Virtues (not as how arthur actually was which is as stated an entire other issue in itself) and he lived up to it without even realizing he was doing it, but he doesn’t even think once about whether he shouldn’t help her or he shouldn’t give her the time of the day. like, he doesn’t really consider doing otherwise or not giving a shit about what happens to her regardless. which should also automatically suggest that it’s actually in his nature to do the right thing/follow the basics of his vows. obviously he didn’t realize that but as finding out he has it in himself to be the person he wanted to be when he was young and that he didn’t turn into a gregor stand-in is I think one of the main themes in his arc, I also think this specific subplot really underlines how he’s still in the middle of figuring it out while also stressing that regardless of what he thinks about what he is or what he became, he can be arthur dayne As A Paragon and that he can deliver on that/be what he always dreamed he could be for someone who already saw him as that paragon and whom he hasn’t disappointed in any other way.

in short: by helping someone who exactly meets all the criteria for ‘category he swore to protect when taking his vows’ when this person already saw him as a paragon, he’s actually contradicting his own assessment of his morality/honor or lack thereof, because while he thinks he wanted to be arthur dayne and turned into the contrary, to other people he always was arthur dayne and when he could show them that he could be, he delivered on those expectations, differently from what most others did to him, and I find it quite a beautiful if heartbreaking parallel and also definitely a not so small hint that his overall storyline is going towards realize that he, in fact, isn’t the smiling knight at all and never actually has been.

[idexstuck]

LBTW’s current outline under the cut. suffer with me

1.0 - the letterbomb initiative

1.1 - ceaseless flight (RnR)

1.1.1 - ruth awakens to find rich has gone missing, seemingly voluntarily. after going about his daily routine, he gets a dispatch from verne to kill mysthuntonium. after assuming that

1.1.2 - the party agrees to lay off accelerating for a while, so ruth spends a good deal of time looking around the dimension he accelerated into. while doing a solo search, he comes across a temple that's seemingly taken the place of where he and his boyfriend used to live. inside, he finds a scrap of paper with standard galactic on it.

1.1.3 - at solar edge, johanna and emerson have a surprisingly civil conversation (only because reese and ruth are there to keep johanna from getting charged with murder). emerson does ruth a favor, translating the SGA on the paper into english. it says 'NOCTURNE.'

1.1.4 - with this, ruth is determined to accelerate further. the party advises against it for his own health, but after insisting he's survived worse, ruth and reese accelerate while johanna says she'll tag along later. she has some choice words with emerson, but follows the party to their next destination. led only by the paper scrap, ruth returns to the site of the temple with reese and finds nothing. after consolidations, ruth's resolve to find his boyf is restored.

1.1.5 - in all of her wisdom, verne has done some extraneous scouting for ruth, and says that- in uncertain terms- rich is alive and well. ruth is relieved, but unsatisfied with the answer; verne says that this NOCTURNE is a threat that bears immediate neutralization. his goals slightly shifted, ruth asks emerson for more help. emerson makes it a 'date,' of course, but he does disclose that NOCTURNE isn't connected to the wireframe at all.

1.1.6 - armed with new information, ruth begins devising new severance patterns to break through the wireframe and neutralize NOCTURNE. johanna and reese say he's jumping the gun, and after hours of failed attempts, johanna invites him to deal with things her way. her methods are questionable, but ruth does relax a little, and promises to stop putting himself in jeopardy.

1.1.7 - it's been a week since accelerating into the current dimension, and despite it being the middle of october, the weather is strangely warm. johanna and emerson have an entirely UN-civil chat, and reality starts falling apart.

1.1.8 - entirely unaffected by the strange happenings, ruth damn-near works himself to death conducting tests on the wireframe with severance patterns. emerson pays him a visit, somehow, and his true colors start to show. instead of watching ruth scramble to destroy the wireframe, emerson gives ruth the pattern that leads to NOCTURNE- but just before things start going xiang-liu levels of haywire.

1.1.8.1 - rich, entrapped by the NOCTURNE, reminisces on his time alone.

1.1.9 - ruth falls into the space outside the wireframe. encompassed by a wintry landscape on all sides, he begins his trek, and is quickly interrupted by a catatonic rich and what he can assume is the NOCTURNE, who appears now as a specter instead of its real form. ruth severs rich from the nocturne- or, at least, repels the nocturne, and they have a very cute and tearful reunite. the outside destabilizes without the NOCTURNE at full power, and ruth and rich fall into the septenary gardens. ruth delivers his letter, and the two of them make their way back to the nearest dimension.

1.0.10 - normalcy has, for the most part, returned- ruth gets his pay, rich gets sick leave for almost dying, and johanna and reese treat the main party to drinks on the house (emerson uninvited). even verne shows up!

1.2 - gridley and the septenary gardens (ruth)

1.2.1 - gridley zimmerman, on the brink of death from NOCTURNE, makes a 'tether' with one of the seven fundamental rules of reality: the septenary clocktower of consciousness. through her extreme faith in the goddess, she's granted theodora von ennekern's personal blade, forged with the purpose of being able to cleave anything in twain. training montage!

1.2.2 - gridley is getting used to her new powers, and tries to create an illusion in which her home was never destroyed. it ends badly, and, consumed with rage, she accidentally cleaves an entire timeline apart.

1.2.3 - focused entirely on vengeance, gridley travels around a few dimensions- one still engulfed by the mirror war, one archaic (theo cameo!), and one close to the present.

1.2.4 - ruth gets a notification from verne that a new threat is on the loose. he nicknames it neptuniomega-237. meanwhile, gridley is pulled back into the septenary gardens after a choice incident with 209 (not shown). while at solar edge, she talks to ruth one-on-one, and says something to the effect of 'i know who you are, and i know what you do, but stay out of my way.' ruth figures this is his target.

1.2.5 -

- show off the clocktowers

- gridleys out to find nocturne right? but like shes mad so shes destroying everything in her path (she doesnt know emerson is doing the exact same thing lol)

1.1.x - within the collapsing sixth clocktower, gridley and ruth have their final confrontation

1.3 - miranda and phoebe (reese)

1.3.1 - while mulling over a drink he can't consume, reese is approached by miranda cassidy and phoebe francis with a deal: he can go back in time and get a do-over of the incident that nearly ended his life- no strings attached.

1.3.2 - at the discretion of even emerson, reese accepts M&P's deal- in his eyes, he's got nothing to lose but his life for the second time. he meets up with M&P at phoebe's bar, and after tasting some of phoebe's house mix (bad idea), miranda and phoebe send him back a week before the incident.

1.3.3 - reese, restored to his old organic form, quickly remembers how the week before the incident played out, and begins to retrace his steps at the dis-advisement of phoebe and miranda (acting as the devil and angel on his shoulder in a sense). on wednesday- the seventh day before the accident- he tampers with the strange purple section of the wireframe he encountered earlier.

1.3.4 - thurs

1.3.5 - fri

1.3.6 - sat

1.3.7 - sun

1.3.8 - mon

1.3.9 - tues

1.3.10 - wed

1.4 - emerson (johanna)

1.4.1 - emerson and reese go on a 'date,' and when reese gets back to solar edge, he's nearly killed by johanna. johanna finally admits why emerson makes her so mad, but in vague terms at best. reese, determined to know why, presses further, but she avoids the topic by getting hammered and refusing to answer any more questions.

1.4.2 - while trying to visit an old friend in gracetown's hospital, johanna is stopped by emerson, and, constrained by social order, they catch up with each other. emerson is as slippery as ever when it comes to goals and motives, but johanna makes it 100% clear that her next move is ending his life.

1.4.3 - johanna asks ruth to help her in severing things from the wireframe. we get a lesson on wireframe mechanics, and a nice bonding bit between johanna and ruth. johanna is surprisingly competent, and ruth is a surprisingly good teacher.

1.4.x - within the wireframe, the party confronts 210, johanna leading the charge. in a final attempt to eliminate the neutralizers, emerson consumes the prime material plane. through sheer force of will, johanna survives, and severs emerson's connection to the wireframe, essentially killing him. his body collapses, and johanna is thrown into a (all things considered) pretty normal version of gracetown.

1.4.x - johanna and emerson (somehow still alive), have a chat about morals and stuff.

1.5 - reverse actor (RnR)

2.0 - catch you on the flip-side

2.1 - unit 12 & mirror stuff (reese)

2.1.1 - through a hole in the septenary gardens, the party finds themself on the flip-side, a mirror dimension from which the mirrors originate. they meet johanna's flip-side variant, and begin to explore this weird version of the world.

2.1.2 - while coming back from a scouting dispatch by verne, ruth is stopped by a strange man named unit twelve, who claims to be something called an observant. he says that ruth has tipped the cosmic scale of good and evil too far in the "good" direction, and before ruth can ask why that's a bad thing, U12 makes it clear that he's out to eliminate the neutralizers for good.

Unit Twelve Healing Chapter where he learns how to bake and Heals

do it like in HCDND i beg of you- u12 is concoting some runic shit to contact the nocturne directly and gain its favor- like, backstory then, etc etc

2.2 - marcia (main three)

2.2.1 - the main party wakes up in a gaudy ballroom, golden and clean, but inhabited by nobody. they quickly meet marcia, who has been alive and well this whole time, albeit under the dominion of the NOCTURNE. while showing them about the place, NOCTURNE sees it as a chance to strike. the group splits up- ruth with marcia, johanna with gridley, and reese with rich.

2.2.2.1 - ruth, while hiding from the NOCTURNE, gets some answers from marcia about NOCTURNE and the flip-side.

2.2.2.2 - johanna and gridley have found some kind of supply closet to hide in, and they find out that they're more similar than they thought.

2.2.2.3 - reese and rich share relationship advice (and cooking skills).

2.2.2 -

2.3 - nocturne (main three)

2.3.1 - the party regroups after sneaking around the NOCTURNE's shadow, and finally shows itself in its true form- a body double of ruth. it lets itself be 'defeated' by the party, but not before ruth is shown an illusion in which he becomes one of NOCTURNE's lackeys. afterwards, the ballroom returns to normal, and marcia seems mildly disappointed at the outcome of the battle. she offers to treat them to dinner, but specifically reese refuses, and they head back to flip-side solar edge.

2.3.2 - ruth and rich commiserate about missing home.

2.3.3 - over dinner, the party discusses just how they plan on getting home. verne contacts them with a call and ensures that she can and will bring them home- but the hurdles won't stop after that.

3.0 - zero mercy; red string

3.1 - the helena effect & more on the red string theorem (mercy)

3.1.1 - verne leads ruth and rich on a duo mission towards a woman named mercy helena, who is trying to deduce whether or not soulmates exist. through extensive testing, the answer seems to be no- but in a final gambit, she tests her experiments on ruth and rich. as it turns out, testing for the red string means that she has to sift through the entire story of how they met.

3.1.2 - turns out, ruth and rich met at solar edge!

3.1.3 - ruth takes a dispatch mission from verne, and runs into rich along the way. ruth comes clean about his true occupation, but rich seems to not mind.

3.1.4 - while on break, rich and emerson share relationship advice.

3.1.5 - ruth and rich go out, officially, at a nearby restaurant.

3.1.6 - after a particularly dangerous dispatch, rich patches up ruth in the med-bay. this is our first look at rich's healing magic!

3.1.7 - after another stressful day of dispatches, ruth and rich go out at solar edge.

3.1.8 - a few weeks after moving in with rich, ruth notices his boyfriend is acting a little on-edge as of late. when he tries to ask what's wrong, rich clams up and refuses to answer.

3.1.9 - rich, unable to sleep, makes tea and observes late-night gracetown. ruth, also unable to sleep, plays some tunes on his ol' guitar (gin blossoms, of course). rich simply requests that ruth stays with him instead of trying to fix his problems. ruth insists that rich's problems are his own, but rich is having none of it. the next day, ruth finds that rich has voluntarily gone missing.

3.1.10 - after intense calculations, helena determines that rich and ruth are indeed soulmates- and the whole backstory thing was just a tiny part of what she needed. as it turns out, the two of them are tethered to the zeroth and most enigmatic clocktower- that of which helena theorizes is human bonds.

3.2 - xiao lei and the zero

3.2.1 - a psychic woman named xiao lei asks gridley for help on her own time, and not because of a verne dispatch. gridley agrees to help, but for some reason, xiao lei can't be mind-read like anyone else normally can. she introduces gridley to the idea of the zero- a place beyond any '-side' that exists- the very edge of unobservable reality.

3.3 - anti-freeze

3.3.1 - in a strange twist of fate, ruth is the one that goes missing this time. he awakens in a strange laboratory, accompanied by a woman who calls herself "five" and claims to be part of an "anti-freeze initiative." they chat, and as it turns out, five has never heard of the clocktowers, and comes from an awfully odd place.

3.4 - macy and valentine's day

3.5 - vivian

- theo's whole thing

- alter-egos (main three)

- 209 proper (main three)

- who is R.Z. (RnR)

- astraea (theo)

- vernes backstory (verne)

- angelica (rich)

- vivian and more about the outside (main three)

- em alter (johanna and em)

- diagammathetium

- Girls' Frontline Healing Chapter Except It's Letterbomb! A Whole Part of Fluff!

- phoebe gets in lots of trouble for fucking w cosmic waste

- septenary clocktowers except its mirror temple b-side from celeste

- cass (oldie)

[softgrungeprophet]

Okay, I’ve decided I don’t want my Official Writing Blog ™ to get bogged down by negative posts or negative reviews, or things I’m not ssssuuuuuper feeling strong on (of which this piece is both), so...

I’m gonna put this post I made about my qualms with Eddie’s line from issue #10 about being white (and thus privileged)... right here:

----------------------

This post contains spoilers for the plot of the current Venom series (Cates/Stegman), as well as Web of Venom: Carnage Born (Cates/Beyruth).

----------------------

I was going to write a long post about my criticisms of the current Venom run, written by Donny Cates, and how I feel the story and pacing fall short.

It turns out, it's difficult to do that when you have a problem with almost every aspect of a story.

So I wrote this post instead, which is much shorter and less about why it feels disconnected as a Venom comic, and more about an underlying problem in the comics industry.

In issue #10 of Venom (Cates/Stegman), Eddie Brock mentions that he benefits from white privilege—"I was young, white, and the son of a rich and powerful man in the community... what do you think happened?"

(Context: as of Venom (2018) issue #10, Eddie's backstory has been retconned so that he killed a child in a drunk driving incident as a teenager.)

For the purposes of practicality and honesty, we will treat this as not just white privilege, but the privilege specifically of a white male.

On the surface this comes off as an innocuous little aside, a neat explanation rooted in truth; and for Eddie Brock to say it doesn't seem entirely out of place. It's not incorrect; it's not even entirely out of character despite Eddie's tendency, historically, to shift blame onto others... but it immediately dug under my skin to bother me in a way I could not place—until, of course, I realized...

To include such a line in a comic which has so far only featured the phantasm of a female character, retconned out of existence into some kind of specter of Eddie Brock's delusions...

To include such a line in a comic which has so far included two characters of color; one of whom is Miles Morales and thus untouchable by the narrative in any meaningful way...

Well, there's a certain irony, there.

(The other character of color in question is Rex Strickland, an old African-American man and a veteran. Rex is actually a pretty interesting character, but in the end... he dies. Not just that, it turns out he had actually died long ago and this Rex, this singular black character other than Miles, is in fact not even a human being. So the original Rex was already dead, and this Klyntar facsimile of Rex is now also dead.)

So, thus far our track record is: One female character mentioned only so she can be erased from existence, and two black characters, both male, one of whom Cates managed to shelve not once but twice without even bringing him back from the dead first.

Not to mention the Web of Venom: Carnage Born (Cates/Beyruth) tie-in, in which Tanis Nieves, a prominent female medical professional and host to the Scorn symbiote...

Wait for it...

She dies.

I don't know about you, but that doesn't sit right with me.

But look, this line about his white privilege! Isn't this so perceptive? In this story focusing on the masculine agony of this blue eyed, white man and his... blue eyed white brother-or-son... and his abusive white male father... and the antics of... another white man... (The Maker) Not to mention Cletus Kasady's prominence as, supposedly, an upcoming villain (yet another white man). Oh and Knull, while not technically human, sure looks like a white man to me.

Hmmm...

Perceptive...

From a white male author, on a book made in an industry heavily dominated by white male authors—in a series which, if I go off the top of my head, has not had a female creative lead working on a main-series comic in roughly twenty-five years (Ann Nocenti, of The Madness (1994) infamy)...

I'll hazard a guess based on common sense and the history of the comics industry and say that there aren't many more creatives of color working on main-series Venom comics, either. That the majority of Venom writers, pencillers, and inkers, have probably been white men, with a few exceptions here and there for creators like Larry Hama. But the thing about race is that, even more than gender, you cannot tell by looking and you cannot tell by names. So I'm not going to pretend as if I really, truly know.

Let me rewind a little bit.

There has not been a single female author working on a main Venom series in over two full decades, and if my suspicions are right, it's been around the same amount of time since an author of color penned a main-series Venom comic as well (that being Larry Hama, in the mid-90's).

In this context, the single line about Eddie's privilege as the white son of a wealthy white man, in a single issue of a run with disappointing representation compared to the fairly diverse series of the previous, oh... six years?

It doesn't do a lot for me.  

But of course, even those diverse series fall short in that they still lack women and people of color in the writers' seats, the artists' seats... in the seats calling the shots.

As much as I enjoyed 2016's Carnage (Conway/Perkins) I do find it telling that the only characters to die were characters of color, and while I enjoyed Venom: Space Knight (Thompson/Olivetti) a great deal, I do believe that Robbie Thompson is doing the bare minimum in his writing—he is one of the few male authors I feel does really well, but even then... That should be normal, and expected, and does not change the overwhelmingly white, male history of Venom creators.

There are side stories with much more varied creators; spin-offs and tie-ins that are either considered non-canonical or are often unrelated to the main series at all... They can be fantastic. They can do amazing things. But I find it telling that this is where the female authors, the authors of color, the queer authors, are so often relegated.

It is only here where we find occasional drift, toward creators who are often otherwise excluded—writers such as Nnedi Okorafor and Saladin Ahmed, artist duo Gurihiru (Chifuyu Sasaki and Naoko Kawano)...

It is sparse. It reminds me that many of us are not welcome in this space. Never in the serious, important series. Always in the comics for children, the side-stories, the alternate universes.

Is this Donny Cates' fault? Something he has control over?

No, of course not.

Could he use his privilege to uplift others? To offer one of his multiple seats to someone else?

Perhaps.

Regardless, the result is that Cates' line, spoken through Eddie as his vessel, comes across as tone-deaf and insincere at best, considering his own privileges in a series so dominated by others just like him, and considering his poor track record with female characters, characters of color, and a textually queer relationship.

  You can read more of my writing on aforementioned writing blog, including my piece on the stellar artwork of Venom (2018) #9: link

Have a nice day!

[lizord-lord]

That’s the Spirit -character information.

(I have never written out character facts like this before, forgive me if it seems to want to be a story cause it does)

Logan Veritas-aka “Specter”

Background:

-Grew up in a boring and average suburban town, only child, both parents, etc.

-Basically a child prodigy-photographic memory and a thirst for learning

-This led to his parents pushing him to excel in everything-school, taekwondo, impressing their friends..

-He gobbled it up for a while, but when middle school hit, he noticed how shitty some other kids had it

-Kids of color who had to deal with weird questions, girls who had to deal with words like ‘sissy’ and ‘bitch’ and ‘bossy’, gay kids who had to deal with slurs or invalidation, trans kids who got shoved into the wrong places, powered kids who were almost ignored as if they weren’t there..

-He’d ask his parents about it, but they just gave him that ‘everyone has equal rights now so it’s fine!’ speech and left it at that

-He also noticed kids who got to bring cake to school, kids who smiled when the got picked up, kids who joked about their families or babbled about birthday parties

-His parents said they were spoiled

-Logan stopped asking after that

-When he was twelve, he tripped over his chair and fell through the desk as if it wasn’t there

-He said nothing

-When he was fourteen, he developed a crush on a boy named Enrique

-When he was fifteen, he muttered out an awkward, overly-wordy confession

-He never told his parents about his boyfriend either

-He didn’t tell them when Enrique disappeared. Or when he received that single text

-“Border Patrol”

-They probably didn’t even notice he was quieter than usual

-Logan grew up sour and spiteful, towards a society that denied what it did, that forced children into positions they should never be in, that was twisted, unfair, and cruel.

-He put his education to use and became a professor of chemical engineering at the same college he had gone to-out of town and out of state.

-He also put that spite to use, and became a vigilante

-But it wasn’t enough. The people who deserved punishment barely ever got it from the police, from anyone, they got off because of ‘reasons’ and the problems persisted

-Logan changed his angle. He stopped caring about ‘morals’ and ‘the law’, he was practically a ghost, they couldn’t catch him.

-He’d lock people underground in solitary confinement with only reminders of their crimes, shutting off their senses until they nearly went crazy.

-He’d rant and lecture people for hours, give them hallucinogens, torture them into obedience.

-They deserved it.

-He didn’t care about his ‘villain’ label.

-He’d been doing this for a few years, then got a better job offer from Jasmine University in the much larger city of Alium

-He took the job offer, moved..and continued his escapades.

-This is where he met the hero Polaris, who was rightly shocked and angered when Specter both met him in wit, and avoided all attacks.

Other information

-His main ability is Intangibility-the ability to pass through things,, but this also allows him to store things in solid objects and sink things into the ground, along with move inside solid objects like walls or even the ground.

-However, he cannot phase through flesh and bone, as there is a high chance his own molecules will get confused, and he will leave some of himself behind

-Has a rather nasty scar on the side of his right wrist because of this

-He also may flicker uncontrollably between states of tangible and intangible when exhausted

-Still susceptible to fall damage-if he tried to phase his way out of it he’d never be able to catch himself and would end up falling through the planet.

-Believes doors are a social construct basically

-As his supervillain persona Specter, he speaks in a British accent to disguise his voice-and he’s been doing it for so long you can’t really tell if it’s real or fake anymore.

-His visor is actually pretty limited techwise-he’s only a chemical engineer-but it has night vision, but the coolest feature is the outside display. The green line is programmed to respond to certain facial expressions, so usually it will follow his eyebrows.

-You’d be surprised to hear it, but he is actually very inexperienced in fights. His old town had one hero and a lot of villains, she was good, but couldn’t be in three places at once.

-His fighting skills are limited to childhood martial arts, so he usually just runs away once he has what he needs or uses chemical warfare to his advantage.

-He isn’t sure if both, neither, or only one (in that case which one) of his other differences are caused by his ability-he has both a photographic memory and asperger’s, both of which he is incredibly used to being exploited.

-Touch starved. Horribly so. And yet can’t remedy it, since, after living with neglectful parents who only touched him if they were angry, and no friends-along with flesh being the only thing he can’t phase through-his brain learned to associate touch with captivity and punishment. Even though he still craves it.

-Has had 2 relationships since Enrique and neither of them were that great or really lasted. Lowkey convinced it’s his fault, at this point he just sleeps around because Hell, when he’s that distracted he isn’t thinking about being trapped.

Tags: @childhood-wishes-and-dreams, @why-things-go-boom, @altruistic-skittles, @poisonedapples, @the-incedible-sulk, @notveryglittery, @ierindoodles, @adoratato, @impatentpending, @ultimate-queen-of-fandoms2, @mirror2thespirit, @mariniacipher, @justanotherpurplebutterfly @phlying-squirrel @cyberpunkjinx @randomfanderfriend @typical-torii @daughterofsomnus

[akiharashizuka]

Yu-Gi-Oh VRAINS episode 6 thoughts

(Looks like I’m able to write this sooner than usual)

Idol!! Blue Angel

The title just happened to pop up when Akira was watching so focused his sister’s duel. Not much might be happening, but in episode 3 (if I remember correctly), some duelists were stopped from surfing the Data Storm because it’s too dangerous. That must have changed in the meantime, since it seems to be used freely now.

And one of the duelists who started using it is Blue Angel. I gotta give her credit for willing to try it and actually master it. She’s surfing with no sign of fear, which can mean that she practiced enough.

That was surprisingly fast. It was revealed in the preview for this episode as well, but I didn’t expect Kusanagi to figure it out in the first 4-5 minutes of the episode. 

And the surprised don’t end here. It turns out that Aoi is Akira’s sister-in-law. I’ve listened to the part a few times and I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. Not something to make fuss about, but it makes their background even more mysterious. I mean, them being in-laws means, most likely, that Aoi’s sister married Akira at some point, but something must have happened as to why she or her parents aren’t around. As for why they share the family name, it can be because of adoption. This situation, and actually the interactions between the Zaizens remind me so much of Byakuya and Rukia Kuchiki from Bleach.

I can give a few details about that, without revealing anything too significant for the plot , but if you don’t want to be spoiled, feel free to skip this paragraph. So, Rukia and her older sister, Hisana were pretty much by themselves in a rather deprived environment. At one point, Hisana ended up abandoning Rukia. Eventually, she married Byakuya (who is the next head of a distinguished household), but she regretted abandoning her sister and started searching for her. Hisana unfortunately died from an illness, without being able to find Rukia. Byakuya continued the search and managed to find her, so he adopted her as his younger sister, thus fulfilling his deceased wife’s wish (though not much is revealed, Byakuya and Hisana seemed to have had a loving relationship). As to why the Zaizens remind me so much of this, it’s because Byakuya was very cold and strict with Rukia. Heck, she was about to be executed right in front of his eyes, with him fully accepting that (there were some issues there, but better not get into too many details).

Sure, this is a complete different anime, so I don’t expect the writers to go the exact same route.

Now on more positive things, it so hilarious hearing Kusanagi and Ignis teasing Yūsaku about not being able to talk with girl xD

Still, he’s doing it in the end. I like how he’s just sitting there, while Ignis is doing the hard work.

But, following her around like that doesn’t sound like the best idea to me. I’m surprised no one mistook him for a stalker xD Guess Yūsaku is good at being stealthy.

I laughed so much when Yūsaku forgot who Shima was xD I know this is a common occurrence in anime, but it fits with his personality way too well.

Hmm, I wonder if he was acting like he didn’t know it was the Duel Club room...I mean, it’s written right on the door in a very visible place. Yep, definitely acting.

Pfff xD I didn’t know Ignis could imitate other people’s voices.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Yūsaku is formally introducing himself to the club member and is having a normal conversation with them.

Hmm, so they got the new model Duel Disks because of Aoi’s brother. I didn’t think he would do something like that. But I liked that Aoi sent him a glare when he said that. It didn’t look particularly frightening to me, but Shima shut up in fear, so it’s fine.

I kinda panicked when Aoi requested to see his deck, especially with that discussion about both Yūsaku and Playmaker using the old model. But of course, Yūsaku is smart so he has a spare.

Ok, I didn’t find Aoi asking to see his deck rude. She was polite enough in my opinion. But Shima on the other hand >_> He just snatched it and made fun of it. Ok, not many cards were shown, so he might have a point, but still. One of the cards shown, Black Pendant is actually pretty good in my opinion it’s a personal favorite). The Monster equipped with it gets 500 ATK. And, if it gets destroyed, the opponent receives 500 damage. Now I want to see him lose because of that effect xD

Anyway, I kinda like the club president. When he first appeared, I thought he might be either too serious, or somewhat like Shima, but is neither. I like how he keeps the other members in check and everyone listens to him. 

Well, not long ago the robot said that Akira will be late because he is working extra hours, but he actually made time to give her a call.

So, the fact that Aoi is Blue Angel isn’t that much of a secret here. And Akira seems completely against this. 

Hmm, aside from being acknowledged by her brother, I think there’s something more as to why she became a Charisma Duelist.

Ugh...if that expression was only in this scene, I would have let it be, but she kept it even when she logged in. It creeps me out for some reason.

This episode cracks me up way too much xD I mean, Aoi is challenging Playmaker, while he is just standing there calmly, eating a hot dog and just not caring xD

Wow. When I read the summary, I thought Specter might use some psychological tricks to convince Aoi to join their side, or just give very convincing reasons and make use of her naivety. However, it turns out that she isn’t naive at all. In fact, she was very smart to figure out that Specter isn’t her fan and that he actually is a Knight of Hanoi.

And, her kind of working for Hanoi is the result of this card, named Dark Angel. 

I’m not sure how does exactly work, but I can speculate something. Let’s not forget that the Knights of Hanoi are hackers. Also, cards are in digital format and Aoi’s Duel Disk has an AI. So, that Dark Angel card might be some kind of virus that corrupted the AI, and probably the account itself got affected. That might be why she was so confused after this.

I think my speculation might be right, mainly because Ignis noticed something wrong with the AI. And, I must say, it’s quite a change in personality there. Aoi seems like always though.

That conversation was interesting. People only approach Aoi in order to get the new Duel Disk or get a job at SOL, which is rather sad. No one cares about her, only her connection to SOL. Now that I think about it, Yūsaku also approached her to get info on his past and Kusanagi’s brother, which is not that different. It’s true that his goal isn’t that shallow, but still...Well, Yūsaku has his own morals, so I think finding this out might have an effect on him.

I’ve been debating a bit which screenshot to use for this part and I decided to go with this little troll. It was brilliant how, at the same time, he took revenge on Yūsaku and also informed him that the Knights of Hanoi are behind her. Sort of.

That face though xD 

Ok, there’s no doubt about it now. I’ve found my favorite VRAINS character. It’s not the type of character I usually fall for, so even I am surprised. But I’ve warmed up to Kusanagi quite a bit. And, I believe there is way more to him that has to be revealed.

I’d like to talk about how Aoi’s personality changes completely when she becomes Blue Angel. Sure, it’s a facade, since she acts like an idol. However, when the crowd started cheering and she displayed that big smile, I started thinking that it’s not just her pretending to be someone else. 

How do I explain this...her smile seemed genuine to me. Like, she really enjoys people cheering her on. I’m thinking that the Blue Angel persona is something she worked hard at building. Plus, she is a competent duelist, so she must have put some effort into polishing her skills. So, seeing that her hard work is widely appreciated must truly make her happy and that’s why she continues to be Blue Angel. It’s only a speculation, but I think I’m on to something here.

In the next episode we’ll see how the duel plays out. I’m a bit interested in Aoi’s deck. Usually, I’m not interested in Light fairy-type archetypes, but seeing that they are focused on dealing effect damage makes it a bit more unique. 

[hellofastestnewsfan]

A series of tough sentencing laws in the 1970s and 1980s sent incarceration rates soaring. Congress imposed mandatory minimum sentences for federal crimes including drug offenses, leaving aging offenders serving life terms as the federal prison population swelled from 25,000 in 1980 to 210,000 three decades later. Though federal incarceration rates grew more quickly than state rates, states hold most of the country’s 2.3 million total inmates.

In recent years, a coalition of liberal and conservative reformers have pushed for changes with arguments both moral and fiscal. Some success came during the Obama years, such as reducing the sentencing disparity between forms of cocaine. Despite President Donald Trump’s “tough on crime” campaign rhetoric, there seemed to be an opening for significant reform this year in a rare act of bipartisan cooperation. The window of opportunity is closing quickly.

The First Step Act, a package of prisoner-reentry reforms, passed the GOP-controlled House of Representatives by a 360–59 margin, with almost every Republican in favor. Trump endorsed the bill after the midterm elections, giving momentum to an effort pushed by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, whose father spent a year in federal prison for tax evasion and illegal campaign contributions.

[Read: Sentencing: the judge’s problem]

The bill would let some federal inmates participating in “evidence-based recidivism reduction programs” earn credit to leave prison more quickly; the sentencing reform added in the Senate trims future mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes and lets prisoners sentenced under the old crack-cocaine rules petition for a reduced sentence in line with the recent reforms.

On Friday, Trump tweeted that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should allow a vote on the “extremely popular” package.

Top GOP senators predict that it would get 25 or 30 Republican votes in their chamber and pass with a bipartisan supermajority. But now McConnell has refused to bring it up in the current lame-duck session, and supporters fear for the bill’s future in next year’s divided Congress.

“I’ve got this much time,” McConnell said this week at a Wall Street Journal event, holding his hands close together. He said such a bill requires a week or ten days to consider, while there are only two weeks left before the planned holiday recess and budget bills that must be passed before then; advocates argue that it would only take a few days, with a cloture vote capping debate at 30 hours. McConnell acknowledged support on both sides of the aisle but called the legislation “extremely divisive inside the Senate Republican conference,” with more members undecided or opposed than in favor.

“That’s his calling card, protecting his conference,” said Kevin Ring, the president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums and a leading reform advocate who spent more than a year in federal prison for his role in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. While past majority leaders like Lyndon Johnson might have strong-armed their members, McConnell waits for near-unanimity among Senate Republicans. “I think he’s not just looking for 60 votes,” said Brett Tolman, the former top federal prosecutor in Utah who also worked as a GOP Senate staffer and now advocates for criminal-justice reform. “He’s looking for a majority of Republicans.” That seemed more likely as Senator Ted Cruz, a former skeptic of the bill, came out in favor of it Friday afternoon after the sponsors accepted his minor amendments; his support could lead more conservative Republicans to join him.

Above all, Ring said in an interview last week, McConnell wants to avoid GOP infighting and protect his senators in their reelection fights. There’s the specter of anti-reform senators like Tom Cotton of Arkansas calling other Republicans “soft on crime,” despite endorsements from Trump and law-enforcement organizations like the Fraternal Order of Police. Cotton charges that if the bill becomes law, “thousands of federal offenders, including violent felons and sex offenders, will be released earlier than they would be under current law.” Supporters say that Cotton is misleading the public by ignoring the required risk assessment that would screen out high-risk inmates, even if the law does not exclude their crimes specifically.

Then there’s the possibility of GOP primary challengers attacking incumbents. Lukewarm senators might be asking McConnell to spare them the vote, Ring said. “For every Republican senator who’s saying, ‘I have problems with this,’ my sense is that there’s another one saying to McConnell, ‘I’d rather not have to vote on this.’”

There’s also the question of McConnell’s personal opinion. “He doesn’t like the bill,” the GOP donor and White House ally Doug Deason told the Post. He compared the majority leader to the hard-line former attorney general: “He’s a Jeff Sessions–style, lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key kind of guy.” However, Tolman said that when he met with McConnell, the senator indicated he was “not really putting his finger on the scale one way or another.”

If not this year, how about in 2019?

“I’m pretty confident, given the broad support that it has, that it would pass next year,” McConnell predicted at the Wall Street Journal event. Supporters disagree. “This really does need to get done this year,” Senator Mike Lee, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Utah who backs the reforms, told The Journal last month. “Saying that we’ll do it next year is tantamount to saying this just isn’t going to get done.”

The two advocates agreed. “You start all over again,” Ring said. “You’re back to square zero,” Tolman said. The politics will change with Democrats taking control in the House. Progressives, especially new representatives who ran on social-justice platforms, could push for more dramatic reforms. Most House opposition was among Democrats who thought the original bill without sentencing reforms did not do enough. In May, with opposition from former Attorney General Eric Holder and others on the left, 57 of the 59 “no” votes came from Democrats.

[Read: Democrats split over Trump’s prison pitch]

More generous policies could exceed Trump’s tolerance; if he withdrew his endorsement, Republicans on the fence would lose their cover with the party’s base. In the Senate, Ring said, the bill would lose supporters like the retiring Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, and GOP newcomers seem likely to oppose the legislation. The bipartisan consensus of the past four years could evaporate, leaving a partisan fight in which reform goes nowhere.

When asked about the bill’s odds during the lame-duck session, Tolman put them at 50–50 but sounded an optimistic note: “I was in the Senate, and we passed things that had worse odds than this. I think it’s very possible.” Ring took several breaths before answering. “I’ve always been pessimistic,” he said. “I worked on the Hill. I was a lobbyist. I know that it’s easier to kill things than pass things.”

from The Atlantic https://ift.tt/2B2hy7a