#and take away all agency and complexity and humanity from her

[shorthaltsjester]

free my complex female character, she did the same thing as complex male characters but the fandom takes Any analysis of her actions/choices/motivations that doesn’t strip her of all of her agency in bad faith and claims that only misogynists would dare to critique the things that they’ve noticed in her character because she’s a woman, completely ignoring the over-presence of discourse about similarly traited male characters in their fandom.

[pirateshelly]

One thing that really fascinates me about interview with the vampire (the show) is this sort of tension between power and powerlessness in all of the characters. Because it doesn't present becoming a vampire as something that just gives you power and magically makes you completely detached from all human concerns and struggles.

And that seems to be something Lestat does very much want to believe, and he's in enough of a position of privilege that he's able to convince himself it's true, and it's a fundamental area where he just cannot understand Louis because Louis CAN'T pretend even if he wants to. (And of course Lestat cannot ACTUALLY separate himself from "human troubles" the way he likes to think he can, he just has an easier time pretending than most). Because as much as becoming a vampire grants these characters supernatural power it doesn't just magically take away the very tangible human ways that they were previously vulnerable or powerless.

Becoming a vampire doesn't negate Louis' struggles with racism; in some ways it amplifies them with how he is alienated from his own family and community; his closest connection becomes Lestat. He loses his economic independence and becomes socially dependent on Lestat in a way he wasn't to anyone as a human because in some ways becoming a vampire made him MORE vulnerable, despite granting him physical strength/speed/etc. The promise of freedom in vampirism Lestat presents to Louis (that I do think he does genuinely mean, but "freedom" means very different things to Louis than it does to Lestat) is never fulfilled.

Likewise Claudia learns the hard way with Bruce and later with the coven that she may be a vampire but the world still looks at her and sees a vulnerable young black girl and that will always put her in danger.

Claudia rescues Madeleine then turns her into a vampire, but rather than protect her from future harm the "crime" of turning her becomes the very thing that gets her killed by yet another angry mob.

And 514 years as a vampire will never be enough for Armand to truly trust or believe in his own power. Because the first 200 or so years of his life he was literally never once allowed any agency at all over his own identity or his own body (child slave sold to a brothel, sold to an abusive master, captured and violently indoctrinated into a vampire cult for centuries). No amount of material strength and power is going to undo the psychological effects of that. (And I know some people like to read his frequently passive demeanor as simply manipulation and a way of catching people off guard (because how could someone so old and powerful possibly feel a genuine sense of fear/vulnerability/etc 🙄) but to me that's an incredibly disingenuous reading of him. But that's a different rant for another time!). Being a vampire does not save him from being horrifically abused, nor does it save him from the lasting emotional effects of that abuse.

And I think there's something interesting to be said about the way that, in order to survive safely, they have to feed on the most vulnerable members of society (people undesirable and therefore least likely to arouse suspicion) in order to go unnoticed. If they want to live they have to prey on those vulnerable in possibly the same ways they themselves once were (and in many ways still are).

There's a frequent argument I dislike that we shouldn't be viewing any of these characters through too human of a lense because they're literal monsters (to be honest it's an argument I see most often made when people simply don't want to talk about the show's complex depiction of racism/misogyny/abuse/etc and used to dismiss those as issues "too human" to be relevant to a story about a bunch of monsters with a supposedly alien sense of morality), but I think the show itself makes a huge argument that for these characters there is no escaping or separating themselves from the very human struggles and vulnerabilities that marked them before they ever became vampires. It's like a sort deconstructed power fantasy.

[jevilowo]

TEAM ASCENDED FORTRESS 2

An AU by me in which the mercs ascend to their ultimate forms

Oh God tumblr wrecked the quality-

More about the AU under the cut!

WOKE SCOUT: she started taking estrogen and instead of fixing her it made her worse. She gets into fights on twitter about neopronouns and has successfully cancelled everyone she doesn't like at least once. However, as cancel culture isn't real, this only lasted about three seconds for each. She managed to pull Ms Pauling also which is pretty cool.

SOLDIERSUNE MIKU: the ghost of Shakespearicles told him to dress as Miku and redo the salem witch trials. Only knowing one witch (Merasmus), he finished this quickly and now roams the country with Zhanna (who is now Zhannagane Miku after Mikus metal counterpart) spreading malice and wonder through the power of AMERICAN SONG COVERS. He uses a wig for the Miku effect, but is working on growing his hair out also.

MITOSIS: Pyro and Engie were shagging one time and they came so hard they did mitosis. Now theres 23 babey Pyros (count em) and Engineer is a single dad. There's a lot of Pyro Mitosis Lore™ in my head, but the basics are that they evolve into either humanoid, beastial, demonic or celestial Pyros eventually.

TAVISH, KING OF THE LOCH NESS: he did it he blew up that bloody sea monster and now he is king of Loch Ness. The self loathing has died down a lot which is great for him but his body is still a scrumpty distillery which is eh. Still, he has funky water powers and his partners Soldiersune and Zhannagane come to visit often.

KEEPER OF TIME AND SPACE GUY: Heavy was mad, he knew he'd been had so he shot at the sun with a gun. Instead of being a show off like that bitch Juno, he had a nice philosophical conversation and chess match with Time and impressed Time so much he was appointed as the guardian of Time and Time's partner, Space. His guns (the six angel thingies pictured) can turn into celestial weapons which helps in the protecting but people don't shoot at the sun so often so its a relaxing enough gig really.

GODDAMMIT ENGIE: after realising how much more efficient Gunslinger was than a lame ass human hand, Engie succumbed to his hubris and eventually replaced all his body parts with robot parts. Including his dick which led to the Mitosis Incident. Anyway. His chest is a dispenser which makes projects pretty convenient and he has a mini-sentry attached to each arm and leg, making him a walking weapon. This did not help with the god complex, but it helps with the single father thing.

THE INFERNAL DOCTOR: Medic kept attaching more souls to his own and selling them to Satan for power. Satan got so sick of this eventually he attempted to beat the shit out of Medic. By now Medic was slightly more powerful than Satan so this ended with Medic absorbing Satan's powers and basically taking his place. Somehow, his relationship with the guy who is now a celestial being was unaffected by this. If they really tried they could probably ascend even further. To godhood, perhaps. In any case, Medic becoming The Devil from The Bible did nothing for the god complex.

???: Sniper just kind of fucked off into the woods one day god knows what happened to him but Scout's convinced she saw him for like three seconds a week ago and "YOU GUYS HE HAD ANTLERS I SWEAR-"

RETIRED AND BECAME A FUNCTIONING MEMBER OF SOCIETY SPY: yeah. He's very happy with Scout's Mother (Maureen), and he's letting his roots grow out (his spy agency made him dye his hair black). He's even making an effort to be a good parent to Scout, bought her the trans flag ipad cover and everything, but she just keeps trying to cancel him. Maureen's sure they'll work it out between themselves eventually, but until then she has to keep finding more secure hiding places for the ipad (the best so far was the time she buried it under a tree a mile away, took Scout at least four hours to find and retrieve it that time)

There's also YURI MS PAULING, in which she pulled a whole polycule of beautiful women, but I'll cover her in another post.

Also TERFS DNI please. Woke Scout is just Scout being Scout (which is to say a bit stupid), and assuming all trans women are like that would be ridiculous. So fuck off.

[wickmitz]

SEDGEWICK SABLE & MITZI MAY : an overall study, part one .

discussing their individual characters, their relationship, their respective scenes, and a plethora of details found in-between.

this question is a good one! though i’m going to prematurely apologize for the length of my response to it, since this requires some extensive analysis. mostly because i feel like fans are prone to misreading and misinterpreting mitzi’s and wick’s relationship a lot in general, but also due to the fact there’s a lot of outside elements that are currently affecting their relationship as we see it in the comic. so to even begin to understand their mindset on the date, we have to rehash previous events and actually understand what’s happening within those moments. after all, like most good character writing, there’s a lot being said without actively telling the reader every little thing! it’s also important to note that this romantic relationship is very complex, with both parties involved being extremely human in nature ; prone to messing up and feeding impulses that, while understandable, aren’t exactly wise or good natured. for example, you will see some rather heavy miscommunication in this dynamic! but to start off with this beast of an analysis, let me discuss some statements i’ve seen made in regards to wick and mitzi, which are not only extremely biased in wick’s favor, but are factually untrue. these topics will come into play later! and will help establish some key elements i’ll mention again when recounting the events of the comic.

some opinions i’ve seen thrown around that are treated as canonical fact are a combination of ‘mitzi’s been setting out to use wick from the start / she isn’t actually interested in him / is merciless when taking advantage of him, and etc etc.’ -- and in order to properly begin this analysis and what’s really going on, you have to cast these ideas aside! i, personally, don’t think any of these views are true and serve as an extremely simplistic explanation for mitzi’s behavior, while also robbing wick of any actual agency he may have. he is not some helpless victim led astray by mitzi’s tempting offers and curves, and has even been stated to not be as morally righteous as he claims by tracy on occasion. he, like mitzi and everyone else in lackadaisy, is a heavily flawed individual! and that’s important to keep in mind as i go through and a.) debunk these misconceptions and b.) actually discuss the events of the comic, including the in-between we weren’t privy to as readers. i also don’t think i need to clarify this, but just in case someone out there is thinking it in passing : i cannot make it clear enough that mitzi is just as flawed as wick, if not more so! she is not an innocent party in the events, and i won’t shy away from discussing the morally ambiguous things she does either. however, it’s undeniable that she gets more hate than wick, or any other man in lackadaisy, thus i find it prominent to disprove the cartoonishly villainous reads of her character. i might defend her more than wick here, or approach her with more sympathy, but this doesn’t ever negate her wrongs and i know this. but with all these disclaimers, preamble, and topic starters out of the way, i’m going to go through these points one by one ( alongside their scenes together ) and discuss them as i see fit.

the first time we see mitzi and wick together is in the comic page introduction three : where they’re photographed together with some other noticeable faces, with a date of ‘5-21-1927’ dated in the corner. the two are beside one another and are leaning into each other’s space, an action that seems commonplace for them given how they’re depicted in the phantom bootlegger as well. it’s also worth noting that despite the rather tragic circumstances surrounding them, the two still appear to be in high spirits -- both donning a smile while flashing an almost coy look at the camera. they look as though nothing is amiss about the situation at all, honestly, and given their proximity, it appears they’re close. i’ve offhandedly mentioned to others that i wouldn’t be surprised if wick were standing in atlas’s ‘spot’, so to speak ; since he’s always shown standing to her left. it gives couple vibes! something that’s rather unremarkable since we know from wick’s own mouth that he’s been interested in mitzi since her days as atlas’s wife, as well as the implied affection at first sight in the side comic limestone. but i’ll note it nonetheless, because if this photo was taken before the proceeding events ( a likely story, since freckle is absent in the photo ), then this implies a closeness between wick and mitzi. they are comfortable around each other and are rather pleased to be in each other’s presence well before acting upon any feelings in a romantic light, unabashedly friendly before the other lackadaisy crew as well as not minding being posed so closely while being photographed together. they are on good terms and have likely stayed that way since they’ve known one another -- i feel like people act as though wick and mitzi had no genuine bond prior to the events of the comic, when it seems rather implied they were at least friends before. this also very weakly discredits claims of planned manipulation from the start as well as mitzi not liking wick outside of his money. the only thing up for debate, in my eyes, is how close they were, not if they were close at all … though now we reach actual canon events, most notably pages such as : formaldehyde, overtime, hallelujah, overture, caveat, and rendezvous respectively. these are pages that i’ll be talking about in length, since i see them as necessary reading ( and rereading ) for these two before volume two’s events.

formaldehyde, overtime, and overture are sort of bundled together for what they reveal where it concerns mitzi’s plans with wick as a person in her life. i think it’s easy to view her joy upon seeing sedgewick in the paper as an opportunistic lightbulb ; ‘good news’ that she can exploit and a balm applied to her financial troubles that had her looking at the obituaries for some levity. but i’d argue she is genuinely happy for wick too, with both selfless and selfish intent. while actually celebrating his success isn’t her main concern, i see some part of her proud of him nonetheless -- even if it’s an unspoken congratulations. though what’s more pressing is that it’s here that we see her intentions as clear as day, which is that she plans to schmooze wick’s investor friends in order to keep the lackadaisy afloat. emphasis on the investors here! her letter to wick shows her priorities clear as day, sending extra club pins and drawing attention to the desire for extra company, and not just wick’s own. when wick swindles the rather bored crowd the lackadaisy’s way, we see how mitzi leaps into action ; giving the men her full attention and chatting them up, making her motives clear as day to them while maintaining some business coyness. the real apple of her eye here is edmund church, who is poised to appear as the leading man where the investors are concerned, and even her body language is attentive towards the man. facing him directly, leaning the full weight of her body towards him …

but while doing so, she is visually turning herself away from wick. back practically turned to him and his presence all but ignored. it’s clear he’s not her schmoozing target, which implies she’s not searching for an investment from wick himself ; as though this is a line she doesn’t wish to cross, and would rather find her money elsewhere despite her mounting desperation. we also know that before these events that mitzi has sold everything she could in order to make things work, including rather sentimental items like wedding china and not limited to whatever mansion her and atlas previously lived in. to me, this shows that mitzi was never planning to use wick at all, really, and in fact was so against the notion that she’d rather manipulate his friends than the very easy target beside her. while she’s arguably a selfish character, people seem to not grasp how hard she tried to keep wick from becoming more than a loyal patron to the lackadaisy. it’s only when all other avenues have been exhausted that she attempts to use him -- and we’ll talk in depth about this decision later, since it wasn’t an easy choice, much less something she decided to do without some inner turmoil in her heart. and while yes, her exploiting wick’s investors is her using him to a degree, it’s worth noting that ( and i cannot stress this enough ) wick was more than well aware of her intentions and brought the men along anyway. he feeds these men to this lady he fancies, something church will call him out for in caveat and something borderline confirmed in overture itself. wick is hardly the idiot people make him out to be! he may be prone to obliviousness, but he’s no toddler who fails to understand even the most obvious social cues. at this point in the comic he trusts mitzi completely ; unfazed by the rumors she killed atlas and believing her incapable of violence due to how long he’s known her. he thinks her kind, he thinks her graceful, and his fondness for the widow is palpable in most of their early scenes … and even somewhat during the time in which their bond is strained.

in fact, the first time mitzi acknowledges wick’s presence beside her is when wick pipes up to offer her advice on how to win church over. not only is he aware of what she’s doing, he is now actively encouraging it by offering up tips and tidbits he probably learned himself when securing church’s investment, all while he smiles and leans towards her, a flirtatious and admiring nature about him.

sedgewick sable may be one of the kindest men in lackadaisy, but he’s still a capitalist at his core, someone who knows how important money is and is used to the give and take society he’s a part of. and while he’s still helping mitzi here, there’s also little denying the fact that he’s doing this to garner brownie points with her … there is some self interest he’s serving here, even if he’s rather sweet about it. as church so eloquently puts it, wick essentially tried to “charge in with ( his ) group of shareholders in a great display of concern for the lady.” and while wick vaguely denies this claim, i think it’s more than obvious that’s exactly what he tried to do here, especially given how quickly he admits it’s “difficult to resist a damsel in distress,” while adorning a rather sly look. what happened here is wick was bluntly called out for his readiness to use the investors so he could get in good with mitzi, appease her and impress her in some way, and he seems rather shameless about this intent thus far. many fans misinterpret this scene, due to being fiercely protective of wick and quick to sense church’s antagonistic role. and just to be clear, when i say antagonistic, i mean that he is the voice of opposition against something that wick’s arc is all about ( i.e. being in a relationship with mitzi ). because of this, fans are inclined to dismiss everything that church says as patently untrue. however, i find it pertinent to reassess church’s specific wording. when he speaks to mitzi in overture, he calls her business ‘criminal reputations’, and though mitzi is able to win him over enough that he stops complaining, he goes right back to his original opinion come caveat, where he states that ‘there’s no reason any of us should have an interest in illegitimate business’. what church says next, however, is curious ; he brings up both mitzi’s reputation and wick’s, pointing out just how incongruous they are, and spells out for him that if he’d like to associate with criminals, then he is in the wrong career. at no point does church tell wick not to have feelings for mitzi nor to pursue them -- what i believe church is essentially reminding wick of is that people will notice his associations with the lackadaisy if he decides to mix business and pleasure like he did tonight. after all, what wick has done, in the simplest of terms, is try to goad his investors into making an objectively harmful business decision so that he could get in good with a woman he fancies. the problem is hardly that wick goes to the lackadaisy ( after all, church and the other investors do go to speakeasies! ), or even that he has a clear interest in mitzi may. rather, church is warning wick against letting his personal feelings guide him into making poor decisions in his business.

it’s not shown how wick reacts to church’s advice, but seems to initially dismiss it, as he spends the rest of his time ushering them away and paying for viktor’s medical bills, an action he does partly due to wanting to look good in front of mitzi once again. while i believe wick would’ve paid them anyway ( he couldn’t ever just let viktor die ) i still find it interesting how the comic highlights ivy using mitzi against him and this working effortlessly. he stops asking questions and stops debating about the ethics of taking viktor to the hospital and merely pays the doctor when quackenbush gets there … before scrambling off to make himself useful at the little daisy.

all of this is to say that wick is hardly some helpless victim who was being used against his will here. he had something to gain from this too and helped these events unfold, completely aware of mitzi’s desire to win over his investors for her own needs. wick’s knowledge of this will come back into play soon enough, although we’re going to talk about mitzi real quick, as well as the comic page rendezvous.

after the events of killjoy, mitzi’s already dire situation takes a turn for the worse due to unseen circumstances, with many things falling at her feet at once. the last vestiges of their reputation has been tarnished alongside what was a golden opportunity, the lackadaisy is trashed and destroyed, she finds out that mordecai has taken all their arsenal, viktor is shot to hell, and had it not been for the presence of a stranger, the likelihood of her, rocky, and zib kicking the bucket was too likely to be comfortable. naturally, mitzi seems composed during these stressful events, keeping her cool as best she can and acting unfazed by what was imminent danger ; to a degree, this show of apathy is genuine, in the sense that mitzi is unafraid of death and physical harm. she made the choice to stay in the lackadaisy despite knowing she’d be safer on the other side of those doors, and in loggerhead she even implies she’d rather take the risks and die because allowing the lackadaisy to fade out of existence is a ‘sadder fate’ in her eyes. i don’t think i need to talk in length about how unhealthy this mindset is or how much this demonstrates mitzi’s obsession -- her selfishness to cling onto her husband’s ruinous legacy is so severe that she would even be happier perishing in its place, an almost passive suicidality mindset that i don’t see touched upon often. but for all her nonchalance about shootouts, there’s this worsening tiredness and despair that clings to her eyes and gestures when the pig farmers are slain. forced to do nothing else but accept the grim reality of such a brutal aftermath and see viktor’s awful state for herself, another blow she gets to see up close. they could’ve lost everything here, and they almost did! it’s a devastating end to a once hopeful evening, one that has her aimless and with no real plans for a future. i don’t think mitzi even thought to use wick even upon hearing about his offered charity, yet i believe we see the exact moment when such a thought crosses her mind ; maybe not for the first time, but here is when the idea becomes too tantalizing to ignore. she’s out of options and wick is there, like always, and mitzi’s desperation ( her grief ) eclipses any care she has for wick in a singular moment that changes their dynamic completely.

we’re finally at rendezvous, which is probably the most important page ( or at least one of the most integral pages ) to wick and mitzi’s relationship. a lot happens here between these two characters despite the simplicity of their actions, after all, chatting for a little and then kissing isn’t much to sneeze at plot wise. but what’s pressing here is the visuals and the dialogue rather than their actions. we start off with mitzi entering the little daisy cafe and catching wick tidying up the mess rocky and freckle created when they ran through the building ; he’s obviously waiting around to hear of viktor’s condition and doing something useful with his hands in the meantime, having been interrupted from where he’d been staring at atlas’ picture on the wall. miss may makes light of his ‘raiding’ and says she could’ve just made him something to eat if he really wants and wick responds in kind, sarcasm and banter exchanged briefly before they touch upon the events unfolding around them. mitzi expresses her gratitude and ensures she’ll pay wick back ( something she says without being prompted to ) before telling a curious wick about viktor’s condition. unable to help himself further, he asks mitzi what happened tonight, to which she remains silent -- wick realizes he’s better off not knowing and relents with a smile, to which we get this line from mitzi.

there’s a properness to this, where she goes as far as to stop using his nickname to address him as sedgewick instead. her paw reaches up to begin fiddling with her necklace ( something she does whenever thinking or reminded of atlas ) and before she can finish her thought, her attention is forced from wick onto the very picture he’d been staring at previously. my opinion on this scene is that, for all intents and purposes, this reads like some sort of formal rejection ; flavoring in ‘you’re so kind’s and ‘such a swell man, you are!’s before ending with your resounding no, so to speak. i think in this moment, mitzi was going to be honest with wick instinctively, especially after he saved her some trouble despite not having to. ”and i would hate to …” use him? lead him on? seemingly promise something she’s incapable of delivering upon? maybe she suspects he paid for viktor’s bills to win her over ( a semi correct assumption ) and wants to clear the air on that. say that while she’s thankful and while wick is an amazing person, he won’t be ‘getting’ anything out of this from her … not right now. i’ll talk more about how i believe mitzi views wick in a moment, but all in all i struggle to see what else she would’ve been trying to say here if not some kind of soft rejection. values his loyalty and kindness too much to lead him on in that way, or take advantage of him -- until she isn’t, which just happens to be obvious in this next scene. i need it on record that visually this is one of the most compelling scenes in all of lackadaisy to me! there is something so disturbing about it, somber, an eerie feeling that something is amiss and that mitzi’s state of mind is undeniably poor. that her view of things is clouded and warped, and this will overshadow any of her true thoughts or feelings due to this skewing of priorities.

and here we have this brief moment, a single panel of silence that doesn’t last more than a second perhaps, before mitzi ultimately kisses wick. what we see visually is wide, doll eyes staring at atlas -- her husband framed in time and sat at the little daisy cafe, surrounded by men who admired and feared him in equal measure, successful, and ‘looking’ down at her. seeing him renders her speechless, only roused from this heavy stare down when wick replaces atlas with his own face ; confused and worried, not at all similar to the emotionless expression she was taken by, but it’s interesting nonetheless. it’s only then that mitzi pushes into wick and kisses him! and i think this very scene is when mitzi not only thought to use wick, but was far gone enough to actually do so as well. there’s a lot of things to be potentially dissected from this scene! mitzi’s obsession with atlas, how she’s far gone enough to ruin a friendship just for his sake ( and for her own as well ) … or the fact wick seems to be her new direction, shallowly filling what space atlas has left behind, perhaps easing her loneliness and money woes all the while. this scene is never discussed and it’s criminal it isn’t, when there’s so much being said here in the silence of it all. she is haunted and tormented and all she can see is atlas, and after everything that’s happened to her and the lackadaisy, wick becomes an avenue and a tool for the sake of it. it’s not a kiss she seems to even enjoy and it looks as though it’s entirely impulsive and forced on her end.

with comics, it’s finicky to decipher what happens between panels, but what’s obvious here is that wick doesn’t respond to her advance immediately, which causes mitzi to pull back. she apologizes vaguely, giving a dismissive ‘i do that sometimes,’ something that’s probably not even true given how valiantly mitzi loathes feeling like a ‘harlot’, so to speak. she’s obviously trying to brush this incident aside ; either having come to her senses and being rightfully embarrassed or taking his unresponsive nature as her having read him wrong. feigns aloofness when wick asks what she does so often exactly, still distant by all means, and had it not been for the olives and their forced proximity, she might’ve made her leave. as quickly as the impulse came, it had left, and i don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibility to think mitzi quickly regretted her actions here due to how emotionally driven they were. but instead she lingers and stays, and then ( in my eyes, given the composition of the pose ) wick yanks her into another kiss now that the surprise has worn off. after all, he did want this! she had caught him off guard is all. it’s worth noting she looks more at ease with this kiss, knowing it’s reciprocated and enjoying it as a passionate thing led by wick rather than herself. maybe she can excuse it now, her attempt to use him, since he’s ‘leading’ so to speak. regardless, this is where rendezvous ends … however, i want to address one more thing before i move on completely.

there’s no true way of telling what happened after this comic page due to the morning timeskip we experience. all we know is that wick eventually went home, after being out ‘later than usual’, which could imply he stayed for a lengthy period of time after or could simply be referring to the fact he didn’t leave with bix at first. i’d argue the earlier assumption based on the fact wick technically ‘left early’ anyway due to the raid, but that’s besides the point. people seem to believe that mitzi selfishly dropped this investment deal onto wick, that it was solely her idea, yet we see multiple times in volume two that this isn’t the case at all -- and that wick not only agreed to meet with her, but seemingly for the purpose of talking about his potential investment. here we have wick acknowledging he made last minute plans in grindstone, as well as mitzi heavily implying wick was very much into the idea of investing in her business last night in doublet :

wick never refutes these claims and the narrative does nothing to disprove this either. so it’s safe to assume that either during their necking or thereafter, one of them brought up the idea of wick investing and they both seemed eager about the prospect, enough so to agree upon meeting later in order to discuss the actual details. once again, wick is well aware of mitzi’s intention during the events of her date, an intention she barely bothers hiding because they’ve agreed to talk about it, and we’ll put a pin in that for later. now that we’ve actually concluded the canon events leading up to volume two ( as well as some moments in between ) i’ll briefly talk about mitzi’s and wick’s feelings during this time.

one of the biggest problems they’re facing currently, and one that will worsen over time, is that neither of them are on the same wavelength here. there is undoubtedly mutual attraction between them as well as affection, but how they view and understand these emotions is where they stay divided. we have sedgewick sable who’s well aware of his feelings ( or, in time, thought he was anyway ), has been since meeting mitzi for the first time, and is so bold in his fondness that he lingered inside her circle despite her marital status. he knows he wants mitzi romantically or at the very least casually … everyone around him can tell this too. it’s not some secret or taboo sin wick is prone to shying away from! he doesn’t even care about the rumors or her widow status -- or how bad it would look to be public with her given the mysterious and illegal circumstances she’s surrounded in. he desires to impress and woo her on top of being helplessly smitten.

where they seem to differ is that while wick is keenly aware of his attraction, mitzi is not. or, more accurately, has no clarity to which she can view it and understand it for what it is. during the events of the comic, she’s long since rewritten her memories of atlas and has painted them in this golden picture of pure happiness and true love and joy … she’s romanticized her past with him, purposefully forgetting things in order to maintain this ‘i had a fairytale life when i was married to atlas’ viewpoint. we see how this perspective affects even the most major of things, like the way mitzi casually spits in the face of her old life with the band, now adamant about the fact she was miserable then and felt just oh so disgusting while performing. while i believe some of those feelings are true, i also believe that mitzi is inherently devaluing things that aren’t related to atlas due to a mixture of obsession and grief she’s not looking in the eye. when you lose someone you love or loved, the sudden hit of loss makes it very easy to morph the person in your mind into someone perfect and godly. mordecai has likely done the same thing. it’s simple to deal with heartbreak in that way, to better love someone when they’re dead and gone with only memories and photos and feelings left behind as evidence they were ever there at all. in many ways, mitzi can’t comprehend atlas anymore, and has channeled her wounds into this constant conflicting fixation instead of something to heal. so, naturally, she is not thinking about herself -- her desires, her wants, her thoughts, or her feelings ; it's a chorus of atlas and the lackadaisy instead. mitzi isn’t in the space of mind to inspect her feelings towards wick and figure out whether she likes him or not … not when all she cares about is her priority. it also doesn’t help that zib, the person who arguably knew her best ( but doesn’t know her anymore despite how they both pretend otherwise ), immediately accuses her of using wick at the very beginning of volume one.

again, zib isn’t wrong and it turns out his fears are more than valid! but it’s worth saying that mitzi’s clouded mind is already having the notion of ‘you don’t care for wick like that, you’re just using him’ shoved into her brain as evident fact from someone who’s important to her. while she fancies him and would, in another world, be more than eager to engage in frivolous courting and romantic inclinations, i don’t think she herself knows that. but if she did take a moment and examine what she’s doing and how she feels now, she’d probably dismiss all that and be more than convinced that she’s manipulating wick, utilizing his attraction to her while having none of her own in order to steal some much needed money from his pockets. like i mentioned in this post, mitzi likely believes atlas was her one true love and that she’d never love again, furthering this notion of her accidentally puppeting her own emotions to be more understandable in her eyes. this ( coupled with guilt for using wick so brutally ) is also why she appears to almost avoid romance entirely during their ‘date,’ only ever resorting to such overt flirtation when desperately trying to get wick to talk to her about what she needs to talk to him about. her methods and actions during those events are more calculated, as was her initial kiss in rendezvous. it’s also worth noting the next time we see mitzi is while she’s getting ready, sat at her vanity and looking particularly small and numb. it’s giving some levels of dissociation! this is not the expression of someone who’s remembering the events of last night fondly, which sadly includes the kiss between her and wick.

but still, we as the audience know she likes him subconsciously. we cannot always trust her perspective and instead need to analyze and look at the little things to infer if her views and genuine feelings align. her constant fondness for wick shows itself even during moments where mitzi believes she is uncaring. she is usually smiling at the mention of wick or from being around him, will casually touch him affectionately, and is visibly enjoying the act of posing with him in photomajig. everything i’ve previously said more than proves she cares for him to a rather utmost degree too. like most of their relationship and respective characters, these two extremes can coexist in their own unique way, and i wholeheartedly believe they do. i’ll also acknowledge that i haven’t talked about wick much, but don’t worry! we will get there in volume two soon enough, which i will now be covering and analyzing in detail as well.

as mentioned previously, the next time we see mitzi is after the events of last night, likely sometime in the afternoon given later events. she is putting in her earrings while sat at her vanity, surrounded by a seemingly endless supply of photos ( another metaphor for the past and how it never really leaves her alone ) as she looks on with an apathetic sort of misery. she gets up and totes around a tommy gun which she then shows off to the portrait of atlas in her ( still his ) office ; giving him a rather generous debriefing that leaves out some integral details, like viktor being shot, before harping more on mordecai and how she needs to deal with him so things won’t get worse. the only mention of wick here is her telling atlas that it ‘wasn’t a total loss,’ though her rather kicked expression, as well as how quickly she brushes past the details of that, implies she isn’t satisfied with the state of things. i also find it interesting how little she admits to the deterioration of things here, before the portrait of her dead husband, because while this can be seen as tracy not wanting to recount all the events we’ve just seen, i think there’s a level of avoidance here too. mitzi isn’t keen on vocally admitting to how bad things are, how much was lost last night -- perhaps due to the fact she’ll be forced to confront the actual helplessness of her situation, and realize that things aren’t exactly fixable as it stands. there’s actually very few instances where she willingly shares her feelings or talks about the state of the lackadaisy to anyone, and the few times she actually does so, it’s either a.) a weapon to utilize against someone else, like some kind of guilt trip, or b.) it bursts out of her like a dam. she is extremely private and reserved where it concerns her emotions, always wishing to appear competent and above things, and in my opinion, it’s something worth noting. after this, she decides to call the maribel hotel and confront asa about his and mordecai’s involvement in last night’s tragedy.

the phone call itself plays out, in the most simplistic of terms, with mitzi’s desire to discuss things being disregarded as asa avoids her through various means. he questions why she’s bothering with such low quality hooch, and upon mitzi trying to bring the conversation back to the original topic ( aka why asa would do this ), he then pries about the lackadaisy’s desolate state before telling her to quit before things worsen. mitzi expresses confusion, but once again isn’t able to form an entire sentence due to asa abruptly ending the call after deciding for her that they’ll just discuss this over lunch. all in all, it’s an extremely rude and frustrating exchange. and sadly this won’t be the only time today where mitzi tries to talk to someone about a rather pressing topic, one very important to her and the wellbeing of her establishment, only to be dismissed at almost every turn until the very end of things.

in the next page, mitzi is depicted silently stewing in a chair much too big for her, glaring daggers at nothing in particular, more than angry at her failure of a phone call. she is unresponsive to rocky’s rambling, including the potential hiring of freckle, and only rouses herself out of her irritation when realizing she can bring the two boys along in some sort of display of power. it’s a rather weak and grasping attempt at maintaining some level of control, especially when she outright tells asa why rocky and freckle are there : “you see, my circumstance isn’t quite as hopeless as you -- ” it’s a very obvious posturing, a weak show with nothing really backing it. neither asa or mordecai are impressed or swayed by this at all, with mordecai even calling out that rocky is some band member rather than some gun for hire. his insults rub salt into mitzi’s wounds ( which is why she believes asa brought mordecai at all ) and only then does she discuss viktor’s awful state, a hasty guilt trip that quickly loses its shine the longer she drags it along. while i may view mitzi through a more sympathetic lens than most and hardly believe her major flaw to be manipulation, she is still capable of it and will stoop so low when it may benefit her, or perhaps whenever it makes her feel a bit better. and this brief interaction with mordecai is one such case.

the overall contents of the lunch and the car scene thereafter proves rather irrelevant to my topic, so instead of summarizing how it goes ( poorly, it goes poorly! ) i’ll be talking about certain events that will matter later, or will help us understand where mitzi is at mentally by the time she actually meets wick for their planned visit. the major components being how asa treats mitzi during this impromptu meeting and the state mordecai leaves her in after they discuss atlas.

to touch upon asa’s treatment of mitzi, even from as early as the phone call we see that mitzi is forced to have a conversation with asa on his terms rather than her own terms. mitzi sets out with a clear goal in mind -- learning why asa sweet would attack the lackadaisy in the way that he did -- and she's repeatedly talked over and threatened, with her questions remaining unanswered. it’s very clear very quickly that asa doesn’t respect mitzi nor view her as someone worthy of his time like atlas was, and almost appears to approach her in a misogynistic manner. he demeans something as simple as her ukulele as a ‘teeny little guitar’ and acts as though mitzi’s tears would be bothersome to him, some sort of burden he’d be forced to deal with rather than a valid emotional response to threats, degradation, and the likes. while asa is by no means wrong with some of his observations, he’s certainly rude and uncaring with how he goes about it. when he tells mitzi that he’s here to suggest that she step down, because he so generously has her interests in mind, she doesn’t buy it ; once again bringing up last nights events, where asa willingly armed the pig farmers with the lackadaisy’s arsenal and sent them over her way without so much as a warning. asa dismisses this coldly, once again dodging any fault and claiming it was ‘happenstance’ and entirely mitzi’s own doing. even now, when he’s actively threatening her and making it clear they won’t stay friendly if she keeps trying to make it in this business, he still won’t fully admit to any sort of responsibility for the disastrous night he helped put her through. while this seems rather typical of asa given his disrespectful streak ( something even mordecai, as valued and as useful as he is, suffers because of ) it’s worth noting that this side of him is new to mitzi and not one she was at all expecting. she even says as much here, in heartstrings :

we also know that mitzi only met atlas due to her performing at the marigold speakeasy first, and it’s likely asa was rather present in her life due to his bond with her now husband. asa even admits that mitzi may be confused because they’ve ’managed a friendly coexistence for so long,’ once again hammering home this idea that up until this point, asa was indeed kind to mitzi, or at the very least cordial. but with atlas out of the picture and mitzi trying to take his position, suddenly asa is more than okay with getting her killed or taking all she has left -- even his plan is nothing short of apathetic and cold, an afterthought, expecting her to give up something important to her and only offering a one time offer to play at the marigold room ‘sometime’ with that ‘old band of hers.’ i’ve actually seen some people claim this was a valid out for mitzi to take, which i can’t disagree more with, since a.) her band days are not something mitzi is interested in anymore and b.) she’s sold basically everything to keep the lackadaisy afloat, meaning she’d be more than poor if she gave that up. playing once or maybe twice at the marigold room wouldn’t save her financially! it wouldn’t do anything for her at all, besides giving mitzi some sort of last hurrah in her mata hari dress, something that doesn’t even fit her anymore. while it’s clear to anyone that she needs to let go of the past in order to be happy, accepting this poor excuse of a deal from asa is just her trading one past in for another one. this is also why zib’s out, while certainly better, isn’t something good for mitzi either. but that’s another post on its own, so i’ll leave it alone for the time being. what’s important here is that mitzi is ruthlessly betrayed by a man who used to like her and is treated as a lesser thing due to his view that she’s too incompetent to run a rumrunning business. he also brings up atlas to, in mitzi’s eyes, ‘intimidate ( her ) into agreeing with him,’ and towards the end of the lunch, she looks particularly kicked and undoubtedly hurt. she leaves this meeting that could’ve stayed a phone call with a potential enemy made and with the world on her shoulders, now more determined than ever to be someone people like asa would be forced to respect. instead of being dissuaded, she’s been encouraged, and it’s not hard to realize why.

her scene with mordecai leaves her in a similar predicament after their very brief truce is broken, with him perpetuating asa’s threats as well as saying, “as though you could bring the remains of atlas’ estate to anything but further disgrace,” before promptly leaving. these words, plus the subject matter and who said them, leaves mitzi staring out the car window and actually brings her to literal tears. her eyes are suddenly watery, and when rocky tries to make her feel better, we see one paw hastily wipe at one eye in particular -- already having spilled a tear or two by the time her hires have made their way back into the car. i cannot stress enough that throughout the entirety of this brief arc, mitzi has been constantly ridiculed and told she is not good enough at this job to be doing it, on top of the extremely sensitive subject of her husband being brought up twice over, which only served as one more jab to be made at mitzi’s expense. she desperately wanted the lackadaisy to work before, some sort of memento to atlas that she could keep going, and being told to let go of it in such a harsh way isn’t going to have the intended outcome. most people become vindictive and determined when told something is ‘impossible’ or that they won’t ever be able to accomplish what they want because they’re too incompetent to do it, they see this as a challenge, they get angry, and they start fighting harder for the goal in question. it’s rather human : to be fueled by wounded pride and to want so badly to prove others wrong, to taste the victory of accomplishing something deemed impossible, to warrant the respect of your peers … mitzi is all that and then some, since she’s gripped by an obsessive grief that refuses to let her go.

she wants to do this for atlas, she needs to do it for atlas, and there is no life or goal outside of the one in front of her. again, as mentioned paragraphs before, she’s made it clear she’d rather die than see the lackadaisy wither away into nothing. asa’s and mordecai’s threats, their insults, were never going to do anything except push mitzi further down the path she’s already on. and with the added bonus of mitzi now being in an extremely fragile emotional state ( one she hasn’t had a single break from since last night ), this then causes her decision making skills to be finicky ; more likely to make rash calls and to act desperately, rather than thinking clearly and with her head. mitzi does her best to sweep her fraying mental state under the rug for the sake of business, with the comic page haggersnash providing the visual of her reapplying her makeup near the traitorous eye and she even goes as far as to change her clothes, though there’s no denying the perpetual state of misery clinging to her character moving forward. and like we’ll see in wick later, mitzi probably also didn’t get much sleep last night herself. that paired with the nonstop events that refuse to work in her favor, and the occasional mental breakdown, is more than enough to reiterate for a final time that she is not well, despite how good she is at appearing so.

shutting the door on mitzi and her no good very bad day, we then shift back into wick in the second and final part of this essay.

[kobitoshiningneedle]

I think the tumblr Ace Attorney fandom has a weird stance on Dahlia Hawthorne. Even more so, on her culpability, to the point that some people claim that she was justified in killing Terry Fawles and even Valerie

First of all, we need to consider the main message of the games first and our personal sense of justice second, because Dahlia, as much as any other AA character, operates within the games' own narrative, and has consequences according to it. And Ace Attorney makes it quite clear that any human life is valuable and no one has a right to take it (illegally). This message was accentuated in TGAA mostly, but even in the trilogy we have Edgeworth who says "everyone deserves a fair trial"

And (I think I need to say before someone throws tomatoes at me) I'm not here to defend Terry Fawles and say that he didn't do anything wrong. He pretty much did, and the fact that he started to date his young pupil is pretty horrible and brow-raising, even if it's unclear who initiated it. It's also possible that Valerie was a neglectful sister, and that Dahlia's whole family was abusive and insufferable to her. The most important thing to understand here is that even if Terry and Valerie were all-round terrible people, killing Valerie and manipulating Fawles made Dahlia a criminal. Objectively.

The second point I see people miss is how disastrous was the collateral damage Dahlia caused in her attempts to cover herself. Poisoning Diego. Killing Doug. Attempting to kill Phoenix. Attempting to kill Maya. And the question is: in what way did any of these people do Dahlia injustice? What is their fault?

They didn't have any. By the time of T&T timeline she was pretty much a person poisoned by her hatred and fear. The main tragedy of her character is that she spiraled down from a mistreated schoolgirl who wanted to run away to a malicious woman who would stoop to crime whenever she needs to. I think this is a solid example of an anti-arc, in which Dahlia's fate was indeed shaped by her unfortunate circumstances in many ways, but! She still had agency in her actions, and having agency means having responsibility

To clarify: I don't hate hate Dahlia, even though my disagreement with the fandom lies in the amount of her hateability. I think she's fascinating and is a good foil to Mia. She pretty much IS a tragic character, and we actually have a good insight into her via Iris' recollections before the final trial segment - the person who probably understood Dahlia the most. Realizing that Dahlia was yet another victim of Fey family drama, much like our Maya (even if in other ways) adds some sympathy points to her. But I have a firm opinion that she wasn't exactly redeemable at the end of her criminal path

So, do I think Dahlia's character goes beyond the crazy-psycho femme fatale? Yes, even if the game wasn't really forthcoming about her childhood misfortunes as much as we would want to. Do I think Dahlia deserved condemnation in the end of BTTT? Yes, and I personally didn't expect Phoenix or Mia to pat her head after being responsible for the deaths of 4 people and (the other important part that adds to her hateability) feeling absolutely no remorse towards people that had nothing to do with her tragedy. Having complexity doesn't necessarily mean Dahlia is secretly better as a person, and understanding why a character became the way they are doesn't mean we should sympathize with or forgive them

[rovingotter]

Hollow

SPOILER WARNING FOR SCAVENGERS REIGN.

Many people have remarked on the parallels between Levi and Hollow. One is a human creation changed and given sentience by the planet, the other is a native of the planet altered by her experiences with a human. Both have a connection to Fiona: Levi because Fiona programmed them, Hollow because memories/visions of Fiona are the primary way she communicates with Kamen.

From the get-go, Levi is established as a character with agency. One of their first on-screen actions is to troll Azi by burying her wrench, and when Azi asks why, Levi replies, "I don't know. I was curious about how you'd react." Levi is bipedal and verbal, things we associate with humanity, so even setting aside their quirky behavior, we are already primed to see them as human-like, if kinda weird. Throughout the show Levi continues to perform autonomous actions, to be motivated by curiosity and wonder, and eventually to assert their own personhood, establish boundaries, and form a meaningful relationship with Azi. They have goals, they have motives, they have an arch. Before this, Levi was just a machine. They are uplifted by the planet.

Hollow, on the other hand, often comes across less as a character and more like a blank slate onto which the viewer is invited to project metaphors: metaphors about Kamen's psychological dysfunction/moral failings, metaphors about the corrupting influence of humans on the natural world, metaphors about avarice or addiction or any number of things, none of them good. Even the name (never spoken but present in subtitles) implies an empty vessel. In contrast to Levi, Hollow is non-verbal (she uses psychic projections to communicate, but has no voice of her own), small, and quadrupedal. We are primed to see her first and foremost as an animal: an innocent, living in (from our outsider human perspective, at least) harmony with nature. A little creepy, a little cute. But also a being lacking in any real self-awareness or moral agency. This, though, is presented as her ideal state. Her growing power and agency, throughout the narrative, is framed as a downgrade, as borrowed, inauthentic, and destructive...and is ultimately ripped away.

True, Hollow is given a bit of characterization when we first meet her. She is being bullied/intimidated by a larger member of her species, and she appears discouraged by this. But for the most part her motives and choices are either impenetrably alien or presented ambiguously. Maybe she decides to adopt Kamen as her thrall, despite his alien nature, because she feels frustrated and powerless and has decided to take a risk on something new...or perhaps even sees him as a kindred spirit, a fellow outcast. Or maybe she just happens across him and is reacting to her environment in the stimulus-response, amoral kind of way we associate with less complex animals.

All her choices after that feel similarly ambiguous. When Kamen first gives her fresh meat and she eats it, it feels like crossing a boundary. She's obviously an omnivore or she wouldn't be able to digest it, but this moment has an almost Original Sin type of vibe, Hollow the Adam of her planet and Kamen as her Eve offering the forbidden fruit...or is she just eating whatever her human puts in front of her, like a Golden Retriever? Does the blame lie with her "owner"?

From there it's a spiral. More and more meat, then experimenting with cannibalism, then becoming increasingly ruthless with her thrall as a means of pushing him to hunt larger prey. Is that her, or is that Kamen's greed and insecurity leaking into her? Is it both?

When Kamen remembers his wife's death and pleads with Hollow to take away the pain and she straight-up unbirths him and bids him sleep, is she doing this out of empathy for him, or is she (again) simply responding in a stimulus-response way to the alien emotions seeping into her? Her face gives few clues; a slight narrowing of the eyes, an implacable blankness.

And yet there are indications that her species has human or near-human intelligence. The ability to psychically manipulate a codependent thrall, to present him with narratives laden with emotional cues that push him to respond in certain ways, is a skill that feels ethically dubious by its nature and therefore linked with personhood. As humans, we are defined by our narratives, by our capacity to manipulate each other through them. She becomes the model of a person she has never met inside another person's head. Does it feel like writing a character?

And she does not merely pick and choose memories, she speaks through them. When Kamen is about to flee the safety of the cave and blunder out into a storm that will likely kill him, Hollow becomes Fiona and reminds him of the time he took the canoe out and nearly drowned. "Remember? You were so helpless," she says. Did Fiona ever speak those words to him? Is it like replaying a recording? Or is Hollow RPing her?

When Hollow found Fiona's corpse, what did she think? What did she feel?

In the end, Levi rips away Hollow's physical strength and power, reducing her to what she was before any of this happened. We are left to assume she will return to the forest, go back to her vegan diet and her pre-verbal ways: human notions of purity. The nobility of beasts.

But she looks back.

I don't think she's forgotten. I don't think Levi, the uplifted being who was so very afraid of losing the ways in which they had changed, would have made her forget.

[st-whalefall]

I’m taking a big ol’ swing with this one so everyone please keep your limbs inside the vehicle until we reach our destination (let me cook)

So, what happened here? For this to go from-

Goofy ass grin <3

Summer: “Trust me..”

To this-

Raven: “The creatures of Grimm have a master named Salem. She can’t be stopped, she can’t be reasoned with, and she will not rest until humanity crumbles at her feet.”

Raven: To Ruby with disdain, “You sound just like your mother.”

Let me lay some of my cards on the table. I’m in the “Summer is still alive” camp and I got thoughts on: if Summer is still alive, why has she not been in Yang and Ruby’s life?

Not even a peep? For 14 years?

Something BIG had to have happened to her to keep her away from them.

Now, a lot of folks will go straight to where Ruby jumped to: Summer got Grimm hound-ed by Salem

But I think that’s takes a lot of agency away from Summer and the building revelation of her character and the purpose she serves in the narrative.

If Summer has been grimmified, I posit it was by her own doing, by choice. And her choice alone.

Qrow: “You’re special the same way your mom was…The creatures of Grimm were afraid of those silver eyed warriors.”

Salem: “Do you feel it? Don’t fight it girl. It can sense your trepidation. You must make it dread you.”

How does Salem illustrate the melding of Cinders flesh with the Grimm arm and mastery over it?

In the few instances we get, how are silver eyes described in their effect on Grimm? Obliteration, yes. Resistance to their influence? Possibly (see Ruby & the apathy). But command over them? Let’s explore that.

We are working with a pretty small dataset here, so you’ll forgive me for mostly drawing from Cinder for this (separate post I think the hound is a reanimated corpse and so different from true living hybrids like Cinder (& hypothetically Summer)).

Grimm evolve and Grimm hybrids, like Cinder, adapt.

From vol4 to vol8, Cinder’s Grimm arm grows. It spreads. And she becomes more comfortable with it as time progresses.

Cinders Grimm arm has become an integral part of her and, side note, I dislike theories that revolve her hypothetical redemption around her being purified of evil (Grimm) by silver eyes.

[But that’s just me, I want the monstrous to stay monstrous rather than erased or watered down for easy digestion. Let the monster stay a monster in its appearance and still be worthy of love, and so on and so forth.]

So, we come back to Summer Rose.

Summer confronted Salem, learned something earth shattering, destroyed Raven’s faith and trust in her, and did something that prevented her from returning to her daughters for more than a decade.

What did Summer do? Agency, we’re thinking strong choices here.

Choices that are radical but in line for a character with strong convictions, an alluded to pedestal she stands upon and all the complexes that comes with, perhaps a little self destructive, and a big heart. Big enough to sympathize with the devil and do something about it.

The thing that could be preventing Summer from returning home could be as simple as:

After she learned the truth about Oz’s shadow war, she joined Salem’s side, and won’t return until she’s seen it through to the end.

But I want to put some spice on there because what if:

After learning whatever it was Salem told Summer, that turned her world upside down, Summer looked down into the pools of black and took the plunge

To understand Salem on a molecular level

To be Grimm as Salem is Grimm

To be a world changer

In the world of Remnant, that’s what the Grimm are. A force of destructive change, like hurricanes and wildfires, they shape the world through calamity. Disaster doesn’t feel any one way about you, it just is. It is devastating, but it doesn’t hate you. And it doesn’t love you either.

So, what would that make Summer?

How do you think that’s changed her, fundamentally?

Bloody evolution indeed.

And that’s why she stayed away. Summer changed, and now she looks a little more on the outside how she feels on the inside. But to the rest of the world, she is something horrifying. Unspeakable.

She didn’t want to give her girls nightmares.

Yeah, Summer was the inspiration for the Hound, and Cinder’s Grimm arm. But not in the way Ruby thinks.

[rey-jake-therapist]

[x.com/tropbrainstorm/status/1856982969434706313] I really can't follow this theory/parallel. According to them, Sauron somehow became aware of Galadriel's existence when she touched Finrods dagger and took up his vow to find Sauron, thus he planted the seed of obsession in her that eventually consumes her in her quest to find him. I really don't understand why some ppl can't accept that Galadriel was never pure and wholly good and noble before ever meeting Sauron or even losing her brother. This twt has some decent theories but it's very obvious they're only basing everything they know on the show, and have never touched the books (or not read it very well).

I guess making Sauron out to be this one dimensional omipresent villain and Galadriel this 100% naive, innocent victim who only did bad things like indiscrimantly kill because she sees no humanity in uruks, and drag her party across the dark tundra, and turn down Valinor, and bring Sauron back because he made it so, makes for an interesting multi faceted villain and an interesting story? So that thanks to this darkness she has because of Sauron, she can be saved and all traces of her darkness will be purified by her savior husband and that is the role these theories predict for him to have? Because damsel in distress galadriel is really the main kind of vibe I'm getting from some of those theories where sauron is presented as being the one behind everything all along.

I mean Sauron himself said he couldn't see all the paths. He can't predict the future, only put some things in place so the future turns in his favor. That's literally what we saw him do in season 1 and 2.

There's no indication, in the books or the shows, that Sauron knew Galadriel before he met her. He probably vaguely heard of her because of her hair that inspired Fëanor and the creation of the Silmarils, but that's it ? If I'm not wrong Sauron didn't even care about the Silmarils himself, it was Morgoth's obsession, so why would have Sauron been obsessed with Galadriel before meeting her ?

Also how he could he know that Galadriel would inherit Finrod's dagger ? He didn't even know who he had caught, let alone who his sister was !

I just hate those theories that take all agency off Galadriel. "It wasn't her being drawn to darkness, it was Sauron all along". Yeah sure. Way to infantilize a grown woman, she's not responsible for any of her actions, it was the big bad guy ! And I'll say the same about Celebrimbor: people who reduce Celebrimbor and Galadriel as no more than victims of Sauron understand it all backwards imho. It takes away all the complexity of the story and of all the characters involved, and makes the Elves pass for flawless saints while it's not at all how Tolkien described them.

Sauron plants seeds yes, but he does it in a ground he knows to be fertile. He knew Celebrimbor had the ambition to make his own Silmarils, to outmatch Fëanor, so he just had to pull a few strings to convince Celebrimbor to work with him so he could reach that goal. Celebrimbor always had this ambition, but I guess Sauron planted that too ? C'mon... Celebrimbor himself admitted to Galadriel that he always knew Annatar wasn't who he claimed to be, and Galadriel admitted as much, so why do we keep seeing these discourses now ?

Making Sauron this genius evil mastermind who can predict everything and control everyone from a distance, even without meeting them would be very lazy, boring storytelling. And that's just not Tolkien.

[murfpersonalblog]

Hello! I have been engaging in your analysis recently and I am satisfied by how thorough and sourced they are. I have been thinking about the possible parallel between Gabrielle and Louis of late and I was wondering if you think anything about it being possibly explored in the show. Gabrielle is masc presenting so I wonder if Louis' feminity will also be explored. There's so much I'm wondering!

Omg thanks so much for asking, and thanks for liking my stuff @timotheeronan! Tuck yourself in for a long AF post, cuz I've been wanting to get things off my chest about Gabrielle for a while (X X).

I FULLY expect S3 to make parallels between Gabrielle & Louis, yes. Their complex power dynamics with Lestat as Mother/Son, Fledgling/Maker are interwoven with their roles as spouses: Gabrielle as the Marquis' literal unhappy housewife AND Les' temporary Blood Spouse; and Louis as Lestat's metaphorical "unhappy housewife" and endgame Blood Spouse; and the ways they BOTH broke away from this to forge their own identities separate/free from him; "I'm companion enough for myself now."

On top of this, there's the CRUCIAL exploration of gender expression Gabrielle goes through. Gabrielle is so iconic, as someone I've seen over the decades labelled as everything from a feminist icon to masc presenting to GNC to nonbinary to trans to etc etc. It HAS to happen, I'd be shocked & appalled if it doesn't. Esp. considering how Les reacts (both positively AND negatively), wrt those aforementioned socio-gendered power dynamics & roles.

Cuz like I've BEEN stressing wrt Les' Matador pjs & Mardi Gras dress (X X); and Louis' power suits & cardigans: clothes are just ONE aspect of a larger societal framework these characters are operating under (x x x x). There's a "visual hierarchy of power" Carol Cutshall describes, where clothes reflect MORE than just gender expression, but also reflect power: agency/autonomy/freedom, or the lack thereof. Gab's masculine presentation goes farther than just her outward appearance on the surface. Deeper, there's what it says about how she felt about her her immediate relationship with Lestat, and her broader treatment & place in her family, and the world at large. Clothes can be a form of resistance; a power move.

So if S3's take on TVL goes the direction I hope/think it will, Lestat's Redemption Tour will be part defensive/reflective, as he deals with his repressed traumas and the many wrongs done to him; but also the many wrongs he's done to others: Louis & Gabrielle (and ofc Claudia & Nicki).

Cuz contrary to what braindead fans/stans lead people to believe, AMC's adaptation is 100% about the cycles of abuse & trauma; and how power imbalances between vampires are merely a reflection of IRL social inequality due to things like class, race, and gender; which vampires just DELUDE themselves into thinking they're above; but meanwhile can't help but perpetuate--cuz they ARE still human.

Whatever this "documentary/tour" manifests as, Les is gonna have to be confronted with the ways that his actions in the past impacted his actions in the present; so that Les realizes he needs to course-correct in the future, to become a better person/monster/vampire "WORTHY of Louis' love" and forgiveness.

But he also has to reconcile with his mother; when Gabrielle finally reappears after ~200 years of deliberate radio silence (x x). She follows him on his tour when he pisses off the vampires of the world & they try to kill him (& Lou) for blabbing about their secrets.

In QotD, Les, Lou & Gabe share close quarters with one another for Les' tour. When he's is kidnapped by Akasha, Lou & Gab team up together as they grieve his absence & wait/hope for Les' return, forming their own bond.

So I'd bet Monopoly dollars that AMC's take on TVL & QotD will be an effing circus full of funhouse mirrors being held up to their faces, as they all see aspects of themselves (reflections of the past repeating itself) in each other. It's gonna bring up uncomfortable truths; but help them all better understand/realize WHY Les is drawn to Gab & Lou and loves them so much, but also where he went wrong with both of them; and where they went wrong with him, too.

And it all boils down to Family vs Freedom.

Les' oppressive nature come from his overwhelming outpouring of love. Lovebombing is his love language; overcompensating for how he felt insecure & inadequate & ashamed. He wants what's best for his loves, but he also thinks he KNOWS what's best for them, too. He hated being poor country-nobility, broke as a joke in that crumbling chateau. He was ashamed. When faced with the horrific reality of his mother dying, his grief's wrapped up in wondering about the things she'd wanted, & fantasizing about the all things he'd wanted for her.

Cuz their relationship, as strained as it was, was marked with "grand and loving gestures" of GIFT-giving.

Les saved both Gab & Lou's life when he Turned them. Lou was suicidal (& no doubt careening towards alcohol poisoning); while Gab was dying of consumption. The Dark Gift is his ultimate show of love for those Les turns, his way of saying: I love you, I want you to live forever, and I wanna live WITH you forever, "be my companion;" we can keep each other company forever. But because vampirism is damned/cursed, the gift comes at the price of him potentially losing them anyway--cuz vampirism gives them power, and ultimately: freedom. (Hence: Les' abandonment issues.)

For Gabrielle, an 18th-century woman trapped in that awful chateau with that awful abusive husband raising awful abusive sons, books were her escape from reality; and her library was her nest/shelter.

We don't get much of Gab's POV/thoughts, but Anne Rice talked at length about how books & stories & writing were her outlet/escape; her Dreamworld when she was lonely/depressed/grieving/etc.

"Sometime in that year when seven-year-old Alice was gone for hours every day, my personal dreamworld was born, the detailed and complex paracosm in which I started to live the major portion of every day with my own secretly imagined characters. I know for certain that the dreamworld was in full swing by the time I was eight, and had been with me “forever.” And several of the characters who peopled that dreamworld then in 1949 are still with me today in a vivid cast of thousands.".... "Now and then I abandon the ancient dreamworld. But I have never since 2005 abandoned the primal dreamworld, the most important one, the one born to me when I was a little girl, the one that existed from the 1940s up through the early 1990s without interruption, and that is with me now every day. I myself am not in this dreamworld. There is no place in it for someone like me. I’ve had fantasies of actually discovering it, or being somehow transported to it, but I play no role in it whatsoever. I watch and listen and inhabit its various characters individually, just as I do characters in my books.... "Before I draw the obvious comparison between this dreamworld and the world of the Vampire Chronicles, I want to make several specific points about the dreamworld...." -- Anne Rice: Alphabettery

Gabrielle H A T E D being jailed/cooped up that chateau as much as Les did--heck, she likely hated it even MORE; cuz unlike her son (a MAN free to go out and hunt & act & preach--if his father let him, ofc), a WOMAN/"tradwife" was to be seen not heard.

Some of the only times she really makes herself heard--exerting her limited agency/autonomy/freedom--is when she's FIGHTING Les' FATHER the Marquis, to DEFEND HER CHILD's agency/autonomy/freedom (the Mama Bear to Lou's Papa Bear with Claudia (x x)).

Cuz ironically, SHE was the breadwinner in the family--it was HER dowry money that financed everything, when the shiftless de Lioncourts went broke generations ago. (And we see the same family dynamic with Louis' family, where Papa DPDL ran the estate into bankruptcy, and Levi Freniere mooched off of Grace--how "tradwives" had to become independent & self-sustaining & break social norms & become the surrogate head of the household when the patriarch let them down; and how that affected Lou's struggle for self-worth when it was left to him to become the (reluctant) man of the family--it's a VERY familiar scene fort Les, and another reason why he felt akin to Louis. But (as usual) Lou FAILS where Gabrielle succeeds--he loses the Azalea, and becomes a cripple after getting dropped 2km from the sky; so Claudia becomes HIS mother, defending him from THEIR p.o.s. patriarch, Lestat; exerting her own limited agency--but pressuring Lou to do the same (the Murder Plot).)

She squirrels her jewels under her pillows, withholding her money so the Marquis & her sons don't BLOW it all; withholds her knowledge/literacy cuz they don't value/respect it; withholds her affections cuz they HAVE blown it. Gab's outnumbered in that medieval castle stuffed to the gills with toxic masculinity; she hates her husband; pumps out sons he raised to disrespect & ignore her; is isolated in the middle-of-nowhere Auvergne; & depressed AF. She resented her life; and comforted herself with books. She loved Les the most, but she kept him at arms length too. Les loved his mother the most, but he resented her, too.

I see so many posts about how "selfish" Gab is, and I'm like this is the same exact nasty AF attitude people have against AMC!Lou. They're DEPRESSED, ffs! The same women online who go on & on about feminism & misogyny & female autonomy/agency & how men don't understand/respect postpartum depression and battered-wife syndrome; and then look at Gabrielle AND Louis like they've got two heads just cuz they don't kiss blorbo Lestat's arse 24/7, like wtF????

YES, depression can express itself as petty spite & meanness/coldness & resentful hostility. Gab never taught Les how to read, cuz the books were her comfort/escape FROM motherhood/reality; just like Lou's books were his comfort/escape FROM vampirism/reality (read: violence/homosexuality/marriage/Lestat). It's an ANNE RICE self-insert about her lifelong "Dreamworld"--ALL of her characters represent parts of herself at different times in her life.

They're UNHAPPY, and only find pleasure in the fantasy of stories--ofc Gab wouldn't want Les intruding on her Me Time by teaching him how to read--esp. when Les could be sent to the church to learn instead--which he was. (Unfortunately, his father only wanted him there long enough to learn the basics, not to commit himself to the church as a priest.)

Art imitates life--fantasy tv shows about vampires included. Les' behavior is PATENTLY familiar, and I fully expect S3 will mirror plenty of celebrity scandals involving IPV--Chris Brown's Apology Tour to the press immediately comes to mind, after he beat the breaks off of Rihanna. There are countless IRL cases where battered/abused/depressed women are negligent to their kids; and those kids grow up to be abusive to their own partners & families:

"Rocky was...high-strung, jittery. Energetic. (His family describes him slightly differently, as quiet and sometimes devious, also on the shy side.) Before he shot himself [and his wife Michelle Monson Mosure, and their 3 kids in 2001]...he’d written a message on his arms. No one was meant to see it, and no one can exactly remember what it said. Something like 'I deserve to go to hell.'" "Rocky was quiet...troubled, rebellious, but he loved the outdoors. Fishing, camping...the outdoor stuff, the quiet, even his real name, Gordon, he shared with his father. The nickname had come from his dad when Rocky was a baby, a tribute to the boxer Rocky Marciano. Gordon and his first wife, Linda, had three kids, of whom Rocky was the eldest.... When they divorced, Linda gave him full custody of all three kids.... [Gordon] had met someone at work pretty quickly after he and Linda separated: Sarah.... Although the kids had always had some trouble with school, after the move Gordon and Sarah discovered the kids were further behind than they’d realized, and though they hired tutors, the kids remained behind. None of them wound up graduating. Gordon claims that Linda planted the kids in front of the television or dragged them around with her wherever she went during the day, shopping or whatever. “Instead of teaching them ABCs and all this, they hadn’t gotten any of that,” Gordon says. When I spoke with Linda she remembered things differently, of course.... Rocky was in trouble after the move almost immediately.... By seventh grade, Sarah and Gordon knew Rocky needed help. They sent him to Pine Hills, the home for troubled boys.... In a family counseling session once, the therapist asked Rocky if he was sad his mother had left, and he said...'Yeah, it was better after she was gone because then we got to hang out with [Dad] more, but not have the big fighting between them.'" -- No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us, by Rachel Louise Snyder

-- Letellier & Island: Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them: Battered Gay Men and Domestic Violence

Lestans keep acting like he's called an abuser out of thin frikkin air; that there are no parallels b/t Loustat's dynamic and IRL cases; and that Les's above censure just cuz he's nicer in the later books. Yeah he gets better--cuz he got REJECTED by Gabrielle/Nicki/Louis, BESTED by Claudia, HUMBLED by Akasha, DUPED by Raglan, TORTURED by Memnoch, and CHALLENGED by Rhoshamandes! Les LITERALLY went to Hell, for crissakes!

(x x)

Les pulled ish on Lou that he would NEVER pull on Gab, specifically BECAUSE she's his MOTHER. Les had a HARD time divorcing that image from his mind, even when he reveled in the power vampirism gave them to be free, and live the lives they'd always dreamed of back at the chateau.

Even when he knew she was The Vampire Gabrielle, and he was her Maker/companion/paramour, he held onto that image of her as his mother--"my mother's boy, my mother's man" (a la the pilot script).

The Vampire Gabrielle fully embraced her new identity; being an apex predator (better than even Les did; she's a BAMF), shedding all human attachments & trivialities (the social constructs of long hair & dresses; morals & mores alike). But that came at the cost of her shedding her her motherly role too. She was finally TRIUMPHANT: POWERFUL & FREE, and she dressed accordingly: as a man, with all of the societal affordances, liberties & freedoms that entailed.

(Gabrielle & Nicki & Louis are even tied together through Paris' Ile Saint Louis, where Nickistat lived & loved; and where Les turned Gabrielle.)

Patriarchal male privilege and vampiric gendered liberation for Gab works similarly but differently/separate but equal than it does for AMC!Louis, not just cuz of his sexuality, but esp. cuz of his race. As usual, Gab triumphs where Lou fails. Although he IS a man, he's a gay BLACK man, which put him even lower on the racist/sexist social hierarchical pyramid than a white woman (Gab included). From slavery times (Gab) to Jim Crow (Lou) down to the Civil Rights Movement, the youngest white girl (called "Miss") had more rights than the oldest Black man (called "boy"). For all Les' promises that he & his fledglings would be "equals in the quiet dark," white male Les was the ONLY one with rights over BOTH of them--as such, they're both on similar levels in Coven Master Lestat's household; even when they tried to exert their own autonomy. (The same holds true for Lou & Claudia, ALSO put on the same level.)

Les was just as conflicted with book!Gab's newfound freedom & choice of victims as he was with AMC!Lou's, for opposite but similar reasons, all boiling down to how HE thought his fledglings should act. On one hand he encouraged embracing vampiric nature, while on the other hand wanting to curb their killing to fit human laws he swore didn't matter anymore, like wtf--am I a lion(court) or a housecat? He was a pisspoor teacher to Gab AND Lou (and yet people wanna point the finger at Gab & Lou for leaving him, or blame megaladon!Armand for taking advantage of Lou' & Claudia's ignorance, like HUH?!?)

[EDITED TO ADD:] Lou & Gab are both oppressed by societal/gendered expectations. For Gabrielle, tradwife domesticity/femininity was her performance, her CAGE/JAIL. The masculine ideal for her was being someone like Wolfkiller Lestat: a macho hunter, slaying dangerous animals in the wilderness, dressed in men's clothes with her hair cropped short; not being called "Mother" anymore or having to raise kids & deal with her psycho husband.

[EDITED TO ADD:] But that macho-masculinity was performance for Lou ("Did I WANT to pull a knife on my brother? NO."). He was a "rougher thing, then," passing as straight, and it made him miserable. He wanted a completely opposite life (the domesticity of being boo'd up at home with his man, always dressed in cardigans, "smothering" his daughter Claudia, and just being a homemaker)--but what is the opposite of masculinity but femininity? What's the opposite of a businessman but a tradwife (the feminine ideal pre-feminism)? How can his pride/life as a Black man tryna be respected in a white world survive without nosey white women like Antoinette & homophobic white cops always asking about his 1 bed upstairs? For Lou, domesticity/"femininity" was FREEDOM--until Les took advantage of Lou's vulnerability and the townhouse became his CAGE/JAIL; and he became just as miserable as Gabrielle was--cycles cycling.

And unlike Gabrielle de Lioncourt, who had the honor of being Les' biological mother/maker/creator (the one who knew everything about him), with the almost sacred idea(l) of her in his head as his childhood champion/savior that allowed him to defer to her and accept her wanting to do & go her own way, even as he clung to the idea(l) of his "Mother" that made him resent her abandoning him (again); Louis had no such privilege.

Les was HIS Maker--"I put you on this earth." "I chose you!" Lou was CREATED to be Les' person: his bespoke companion; groomed & Vegas Married to not know a thing about Les' past/nature that Les didn't want him to know; seduced to love the monster first (not the man). Les expected Lou to be happy; not reject Les/vampirism & read books at home rather than go on sexcapades & killing sprees; ashamed of his true nature full of "self-loathing" he projected at Les.

Even when Lou was too weak & hungry to have sex, he still spent his time reading; and cuz Les can't read his mind, it's the best way to shut out everything and focus on his fantasy rather than his body's needs, let alone Les' emotional needs. He gets so much worse during the Great Depression, when Claudia's gone & he's given up all pretenses that he's anything but the "unhappy housewife;" and Les gives up the pretenses of not resenting Lou for "not honoring the Blood [read: ME] as he should." Hence: Ep5; "crushing what you cannot own;" and Les pissing all over Lou's name & reputation in the Trial; as abusers often blame their victims, or outright lie to make them seem crazy, evil, or abusive.

Thankfully, Les has already come face to face with how effed up the Trial was, and how badly his participation in the Trial/smear campaign hurt Lou's feelings; "Come to Me!? Those were HIS words! F-- you!"

So while I fully expect S3 Les to emphasize his own childhood traumas & abuse, and while I fear Gabrielle will carry the lion's share of censure in Les' POV (and in the fandom) for abandoning him, hopefully Les doesn't do what many abusers do and make it all about him and his man-pain. Hopefully he's candid about how Gab was wronged too (by his p.o.s. dad & brothers, AND he himself); and that his resentments towards Gabrielle bled into his resentments towards Louis. But I ALSO expect Les to still have self-improvement to do--TVL/QotD is NOT where he pivots from being an a-hole to a saint; he does some ATROCIOUS stuff in those books, and in TotBT.

The Prince Lestat trilogy is Les's final redemption arc, his pride humbled & then rewarded--and even then he's still a work-in-progress ("I'm, a lot, I'm not perfect").

Lou (& Claudia) emancipated themselves from Massa Lestat after the Murder Plot (or at least, Lou tries to--Loustat canonical endgame, after all). But they only get back together after a long period of on/off stints, as Les gradually figured out how to be a normal effing person for once; and how to respect Lou's agency/autonomy/freedom.

Likewise, his relationship with Gabrielle also vastly "improves," as she, like Lou in PLAtRoA, finally decides to live with Les at the renovated Chateau de Lioncourt; letting go of the past to build something new.

But he STILL can't help but revert to treating her like his bride/wife, doll, and mother, all in one (until she gets sick of it, ofc, LOL).

At Prince Les' celebratory Winter Solstice fete in BC, Gab dresses to the nines as the belle of the ball to please him, as Queen Mother of his Vampire Court; just as Lou's his Prince Consort/Blood Spouse. Les gets everything he ever wanted, his happily ever after, and AR tries to make you feel he "earned" their forgiveness, but YMMV.

TL;DR:

Regardless of what Gab presents as externally, or the way she WANTS to be treated; the way Lestat TREATS her is consistent with the way HE thinks it is appropriate for her to be treated BY him--same with Louis. Gender/sexuality/race be darned--Les "wins" by virtue of being the white cis male protagonist & hero of TVC. 🙄

So yeah, I expect/hope S3 will show a lot of subtle/nuanced parallels & even explicit intersections b/t Gabrielle & Lou. But I don't expect them to dump it on us all at once, cuz this process of accountability, forgiveness & acceptance is protracted over the entire length of TVC, all the way to the very last book.

Hope my long AF rambling & tangents answered your question even a little bit, omfg. 🤦😅

[theparacosmologist]

in the aftermath of the daisy Jones finale I've seen a lot of posts where people are complaining that billy has changed from a character you root for in the book to a character you don't in the show, and I have to say I don't agree at all.

when I read the book I didn't empathise with Billy all too much, and felt that he was the most unreliable narrator when it came to his depiction of himself. supposedly, in the book, he stays completely clean after his initial time in rehab, and never cheats on Camilla with daisy at all because their relationships is that of 'twin flames' and not at all physical. the show has him relapse instead and kiss daisy multiple times. I actually found that this made him more easy to empathise with because it made him seem more like a real, deeply flawed human being. the idea that relapsing or morally wrong actions makes you 'shallow' or unsympathetic is harmful.people who struggle with addiction are not less than complex human beings because of that struggle, and should be empathized with more, not less. additionally, he and daisy having a more overt physical relationship in the show doesn't at all take away from the twin flames nature of their relationship. I think it enhances their individual weaknesses and failing points. they are at their most self destructive when they're working against one another, and at their best when they're caring for each other. they make each other better, as Karen said. I think the physicality of their relationship just worked to further demonstrate their destructive tendencies. daisy telling billy to go to Camilla was a natural progression in her arc to being a better person, because by caring for billy she is, in turn, beginning to heal herself.

I've also seen an abundance of complaints about the depiction of Camilla in the show, particularly people either stating that she's less sympathetic because we can see her flaws and mistakes now, or that the changes to billy and Daisy's storyline are unfair to her. on the contrary, I found the show was more fair to her because she was allowed to be a person with flaws, and we were able to see ehow hurt she was by what happened. in the book she's an angel, and is completely robbed of agency and a certain degree of complexity because she never gets to speak for herself. her side of the story is told by the people who love her most, the people who, given that she is dead before the interviews in the book begin, look back on her as perfect. choosing to have her tell her own story was one of the best decisions the show made, because it made her a fully formed human being, as opposed to a saint amongst 'sinners'.

all in all I think the show was a masterful adaption of an already great book, and I believe that a lot of the complaints going around are both unwarranted and coming from a place of expectation that an adaption must be a one to one copy of it's source. daisy Jones and the six, the tv show, is a different story to daisy Jones and the six, the book, and that's one of it's greatest strengths.

[joons]

barbie is a fun, clever, visual feast with some lovely moments that i am happy to see resonate with people. the movie is definitely worth seeing. but i would only give the film a 3.5/5.

i am now going to talk at length about my thoughts on the film, most of which will be an attempt to understand what is being said here.

i think barbie's acceptance of the gender wars as inevitable and perpetual ends up being more regressive than a lot of what it's trying to critique. it mostly ends in a healthier place, but along the way, it has little ability to make meaning outside of that frame. i loved the interactions barbie had with older women, particularly ruth, and i think there's a wonderful message there about girls needing both aspirational role models and grounded older mentors who can help them manage any obstacles they find. what a wonderful theme, and one that is given subtle, genuine weight, which i prefer over the more overt, "telling" moments the film does throughout. but a lot of the story gets sidetracked in assuming women's role is tricking men (a role foisted on them as a reaction to the patriarchy, so don't blame them) and that any true reconciliation or mutual support between men and women is only based on pity. i think the film could have landed better as a reflection on womanhood if it actually dared to be about ... women. if it could imagine women as more. if it truly tried to show the complex roller-coaster of emotions instead of staying stuck in one gear.

i have seen people say how ironic it is that ken is the best part of a barbie film, but it's true, on even deeper levels than people realize. why is ken the only one with true agency, whose feelings are true to himself and not a reflection of someone playing with him? where is the boy playing with his sister's dolls and desperately trying to understand why he feels so inadequate? why are those questions never asked in a film that generates endless questions and observations about human frailty? none of the barbies are capable of doing anything for themselves; they are easily brainwashed by the kens, and all it takes to shake them out of it is a speech about how "complex" women are. kens just have to accept themselves as they are to be happy; barbies have to believe they are doing something productive and worthwhile. except main barbie, who feels like she can't do anything meaningful, because this movie thinks the different barbies are genuinely incapable of doing something if they don't have an outfit to go with it. if the point is that she feels less than because she has seen the real world and feels unprepared for it, well, none of the other barbies would have fared better. astronaut barbie couldn't get a job at nasa, just like beach ken can't get a job at beach. the one time we see barbie make a choice for herself, unprompted by others, unburdened from her anxieties, is to ... go to the gynecologist. um. empowering. i guess.

(i think the ken/barbie plot would have worked better if they were "packaged" together. there's no real reason this ken has the crisis, why barbie feels any special responsibility for him.)

the fact that barbie begins to feel angst and anxiety as a result of real women's insecurities is fascinating; in being the avatar of girls' hopes, she also becomes their "competition," a symbol of all their grief and all their inadequacies. maybe you can see how kens get off easy here; they are not evolved enough; they will never be chosen by the gods as friends or idols or objects of hatred. that could have been explored more, especially through the mother-daughter relationship. why do teenagers begin pulling away from their mothers? perhaps for the same reason they grow out of barbie, because they want to be something beyond the touchstones of femininity they have. they want to be their own person and have to separate themselves, but the girls their age are obsessed with tearing each other down and taking their insecurities out on each other because they feel broken. barbie was experiencing that rejection for the first time. the film could have had something to say about how women can be cruel to one another as they struggle to find their own paths, but it's understandable and part of learning to identify what feels real and true to you. but none of the human characters have enough screentime to address any of this.

i liked the point that women dolls are saddled with the same impossible standards that many women feel. they're blamed in society for women's insecurities and also become totemic, like, "we gave you barbie, what more do you want?" i get that, i get the frustration that animates some of the plot, but i couldn't relate to it all that much. but it does ring true for me that b a r b i e as a concept, a company, a doll, is not the problem or the solution. she's just cool.

("why not make barbies that are relatable and normal?" the movie suggests. oh my god....... 💀 💀 💀 what year is this?)

i think allan (almost inadvertently, or at least subtly) makes the movie's best point: the lack of expectations can be an incredible gift. without them, you are free to become your own person on your own time instead of feeling less than because you're comparing yourself to others. we must all be allan. allan is our friend.

there are honestly so many smart concepts and sly commentary here that feel buried in Telling Not Showing; like the ken war was SO funny, and it would have hit hard if we saw the barbies struggling to find a way to understand and interact with the kens ... and they decide to play nice before realizing jealousy and competition seem to motivate the kens ... and then the kens do the most ken thing and do a normandy reenactment to gain women's attention. that's so archetypal, such a funny nod to the cyclical weirdness of human history, to the idea that women (and men) work within the system that is created for or against them, using the tools they have, living up to the gender roles/models they've been taught! but because the characters are like "i know what we will do. we will manipulate them and then they will go to war because they are men!" it's like ... ugh. it messes up the pacing of that whole sequence. it kills the surprise and delight of watching it unfold, so all we can react to are the sight gags (giving mouth to mouth to the horse lmaoooo) and the juxtoposition of war film and gene kelly musical. but the actual gender role commentary is stated so explicitly, afraid to question itself, afraid to say anything surprising or insightful, that it amounts to putting everyone right back in their box. the film tries to balance this at the end, pitying patriarchy as a cope against death, trying to empower the kens to be themselves, but it refuses to imagine any true healing or change, anything beyond "well, kids need to imagine barbieland as a matriarchal utopia, even though we have established that doing so leaves them unprepared for a world of unfair standards they can't control." all women can expect to do is fight for a land of dreams, but always know that the most that land can achieve is creating an image that will be sold back to them as empowerment. genuinely, what the FUCK is the point of this film. oh, it's too hard to say that imagination is what makes us human and that ultimately means more than the object. again, the film will outright state some version of this idea ("I want to do the imagining, I don't want to be the idea"), but every other part of the plot undercuts it with its own failure to imagine women as more than reactive.

and it had the chance to let women be real characters! (hell, does this movie even remember that barbie has Lore, a Family, a Last Name, that she hasn't been "just a doll" in a long, long time?) but the film seems to set up plots that would have given us organic interactions and fully realized characters. i got so excited when america's character, gloria, showed up, because okay, we're going to be able to explore womanhood through the eyes of a real person, we're going to see the push and pull between idealized utopias and dreams and real-world survival and hope and despair by learning more about her. but no. gloria is there to give a speech that doesn't sum up her life and her passions but all women in very generic terms. it's not experiential, it's definitional (and it's a definition built on what a woman is not -- not this, not this, can't be that). it is relying on the audience to point and say, "i recognize that," instead of building gloria as a person we love and know and laugh and cry with. you are building a wall between the story and your audience; if they never had "complicated feelings" about barbie, if they aren't sure why gloria cares so much about the doll while her daughter has such a negative reaction, then it is not going to let them in and explain that. it is going to say, "if you don't get it, you are brainwashed, probably, or a man, and you don't want to see it, and i am not going to open it up to you because it is an exclusive club, intentionally, because it is the only club we have, and i am not going to open it up to further ridicule or commentary, even though that is what this entire movie is doing." gah! tell a story! tell a STORY! surprise me! why are we just pointing at things?

i'm telling you, when barbie sits on that bench and has an interaction with an older lady, who is totally at ease in her own skin, who is un-selfconscious and not angry and peaceful, it brought immediate tears to my eyes. it was such a breath of fresh air. a real person, reacting in a way that surprises and moves you. what was her story. who is she. what is her secret to confidence and balance, and how can women share that with one another. no no no, go go go, take on capitalism and patriarchy until you're too tired to remember how to laugh, this is healthy and good. @~@

ultimately i am talking about the themes i wish were there or wish were more emphasized because the messages that are there feel contradictory. for instance, the kens' patriarchy is shallow and cartoonish, both in barbieland and the real world (that mattel executives were just as stupid and pointless as TOY PEOPLE was so INTERESTING to me; like what does it mean that men can still "play," and get paid enormously for it? but it's kind of just "isn't this dumb"), and the barbies are more than happy to manipulate their kens' emotions to get what they want. america ferrera tells barbie she is justified to feel mad at ken for what he did to her and her friends. but in the next scene, barbie comforts ken and connects to his feelings of vulnerability. it feels like the movie is rolling its eyes through the scene, when it could have been a really beautiful, sweet moment where humanity is recognized as universal, a true "man was not meant to be alone" moment of meaning, turned inside out and shaken and reconfigured as complementary and supportive, where barbie and ken realize community is crucial to weathering their own insecurities and flawed emotional responses, and maybe you can need someone without making it your whole personality. maybe the fear of connection is something all girls start to struggle with as they become teenagers, and they need that world where men don't want anything from them, and they want to cling to it a little longer than necessary. but because it's been bookended with "of course he's going to cry about it, don't give in, it's not your job to support him," the emotional core of the scene is undercut by shallower stuff. the scene genuinely reads like "placating men is important and you should do it," which is INSANE to me, but that's what is coming across with the wild whiplash between rage and sweetness, denying kens any humanity the whole film and trying to patch it up right at the end. barbie's ennui stems from the fact that a weary mother is playing with her, but the rest of the barbies - and the film as a whole - feel puppeted by the surly teenager who has not moved beyond rage-filled one-liners. i don't like that this is the case because those moments of human connection (barbie with the older woman on the bench, the mother-daughter relationship, even ken trying to understand why he cares so much what other people think of him) are so great. we're just supposed to ... not apply compassion to characters the film doesn't like. and we are supposed to like the characters we do like not because we are experiencing their lives with them but because they are saying The Right Things Loudly.

(and don't you love how the film even has a prepackaged response to being criticized? wanting men to be real people is brainwashed behavior. wanting women to have thoughts that go beyond regurgitated feminism 101 catchphrases is asking too much of a plastic toy. it's just a reflection or reality, see, but it's also exaggerated satire. i think the glib tone just crept into everything and made for some wild subtext that i don't even think the film recognizes.)

greta gerwig is more successful at dealing with the tension between made "things" and real life in little women. jo, as a stand-in for louisa may alcott, is resistant to getting jo "married off" and only caves in to get the book published. but the life and joy still sing in the scene where she reunites with bhaer, even when the audience is already primed to see it as artificial and cynical. the play between what jo says she wants and what jo indulges in is obvious; we can find joy and light even in the things that feel like a compromise of our principles. sometimes they are better than life, better than what we could imagine, they take on lives of their own, they become little women who exist off the page and no longer have to carry the burden of being "The One Narrative For Women" because they spark thousands of other stories and hopes and longings that the author doesn't have to be responsible for. as much as i waffle on whether i like the ending of gerwig's little women, it's clear that part of greta is throwing up her hands, in a "but what do i know?" gesture ... indulgent romance might just be the little antidote we need to stave off the lonely feelings we get sometimes. it's not weak, it's not a compromise, it's just cool.

for whatever reason, she doesn't bring that same verve or ambiguity to this film; she can't infuse barbie with meaning beyond what her critics say about her. barbies, like women, have to be perfect, but they can't be. they can't be totems, but they are. we must get away from them, but we can't. they are creations of men, but women can't think their way out of the box. barbie is an immortal ideal, but none of what she symbolizes has any impact.

"that's the point. it's complicated," greta says to me. "my job here is done."

"but declaring things complicated is not a point of view!" i yell back. "you didn't do anything!"

maybe i am too invested in barbie to even recognize that people have such negative feelings about her. maybe i have seen this premise done better in the lego movie, teen beach movie, barbie: life in the dreamhouse! (all of which genuinely love toys and kids/teen media and are not using them to sort out their own disgruntled feelings — and have a genuine belief that even flawed media bankrolled into existence can be real art, something gerwig seems so skeptical about that she lets her ambivalence about taking on this particular directorial gig become the driving tension in the story. how ... relatable?) maybe i have unresolved issues with greta's themes from little women and am now realizing how little she seems to get the things that matter to me, and we just need to part ways.

as anthony lane writes in the new yorker, "maybe the movie is for greta gerwig. and, by extension, for anyone as super-smart as her—former barbiephiles, preferably, who have wised up and put away childish things."

to that, i'd put a quote from c.s. lewis, whose work greta will soon try to get her hands around: "when i became a man i put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." the soul shudders at a narnia, a barbieland, a march family home, that are only notable for how "complicated" our feelings about them are supposed to be, and i think that puts my thoughts on greta's work into words.

now ... proust barbie, i would buy.

[gold-rhine]

Out of curiosity, how would you go about writing a neuvi/furina fic? I agree that there is a lot of potential for really good fics but for some reason the fandom waters it down (pun not intended but cyno would be proud). However, I've noticed that with other ships in the fandom too. They have interesting potential but then I'll look for good food and get morsels 😭 of what I'm looking for. Like I have had to comb through some alhaitham/kaveh fics that were uh very different from canon characterization. And it's like I JUST WANT GOOD FOOD PLS.

hmm. i personally would be really interested not in shipping them, but in like. snippets of interactions throughout the ages, from establishing roles to settling in a routine to then how these respective roles are getting in a way of genuine contact. bc like there are points where they try to reach out, but it fails in a mundanely tragic way. like. in furina's note, she says she told him thousand times to go out and interact with "our" ppl. like she clearly was well intentioned and tried to be nice. but like. it didnt work! he never did go out and interact with humans until post AQ, when in lantern rite he says he was just indifferent before. bc like, from his perspective its not "his" people, and also its his boss, whose also his colonizer, being like "haha you should get out more lol!" ofc he was like "idk what she's even thinking about", which is what he says about her note. but furina both didn't know the vishap context and was kept in constraints of self-absorbed goddess role, so the way she tried to be nice would never work like that.

i think ppl focus too much on how furina suffered more than jesus and forget why, which is bc she had to play the role of an entitled asshole and she had to interact with others thru that role, despite being mortified at how horrible she sounds. this is why she now thinks he hates her and all her coworkers too. she never had luxury of being kind or nice to ppl before, and if you take that away, her character loses a lot of complexity.

i think itd be interesting to explore her trying to be good to ppl while trapped in an asshole attitude, and sadly fail.

if i was paid like 100 bucks to write them romantically, i think id write the retrospective i was talking before for early chapters, but then take one of two options:

either keep canon story and explore them interacting thru excrutiating awkwardness post AQ

or as more interesting option, id re-write AQ a bit to add their interactions and let some of these interactions actually connect. i'd also let furina find out the truth about sovereign and what it means in relation to archons stealing his power. also, i'd restructure canon confrontation so that neuvi takes focal point instead of traveler. and then i'd go ham with drama on that archon trial, but also re-do meeting with focalors bc gurl. talk to your humansona pls.

btw i strongly dislike fandom being like oh, furina\rizzley was the reason neuvi saved humanity, like nooo its missing entire point. he saved humans without any selfish reason to do so, in fact, against his motivation for revenge, making that decision about a single human ruins neuvi's character. so in this furina\neuvi case i'd make conflict like. they don't know if she's gonna survive is focalors dies, bc then choosing to save fontain becomes the-nonselfish choice for him again and she gets to be the one with agency to decide to risk it

[zalrb]

Your opinion on Claudia and Claudia and Lestat?Apart from her early years and the arc of her depression after killing her first boyfriend, Claudia seems very well adjusted. It doesn't seem to me that she indulges in any more murderous sprees and her emotional "outbursts" don't even seem to be due to her state of "adolescent angst."

There is still a horror in the fact that she is a woman forever trapped in the appearance of a child, but Claudia's worst traits seem to be learned from her coexistence with Lestat and not the consequences of converting someone "too young".

It's funny because while Louis is the father she loved the most, it is Lestat that she imitates and resembles well.I think at some point she loved him and it's because of how betrayed she felt by Charlie's death that she started to hate him so hard, but I don't think Lestat ever cared about her beyond her role as the band-aid and then the poison in his relationship with Louis.

To be completely honest, it's difficult for me to talk about IWTV like this because I don't think they deliver on what they say they do and on what fans/viewers tell me they do.

Like this:

There is still a horror in the fact that she is a woman forever trapped in the appearance of a child,

She doesn't appear like a child, though, she appears like a young woman

That takes away so much of the "horror" for me, I can't take her arc seriously. To me, Claudia is still Kirsten Dunst who conveyed the madness and the cruelty and the weirdness of being a child vampire wonderfully

Lestat is still Tom Cruise

Her complex relationships with Lestat and Louis respectively,

when I think of them, still comes from the movie if not the book

so this

Claudia's worst traits seem to be learned from her coexistence with Lestat and not the consequences of converting someone "too young".

I mean, what are we talking about here? Do you mean her excitement with regards to hunting? Do you mean her coldness when she "murders" Lestat i.e. writing his name down in his own blood? This is cruelty she's learned from Lestat? Is it particularly cruel in the context of vampirism in this world or is it cruel in the context of Louis' morality when Louis murdered an innocent human hallucinating Lestat and let a woman get decapitated because he doesn't get involved with "human affairs"? Why is it coexistence with Lestat that shaped her and not what she had to suffer with Bruce?

It's funny because while Louis is the father she loved the most, it is Lestat that she imitates and resembles well

I mean, I guess? Again, with the show, I'm not really sure who these characters are with the exception of I suppose Louis, although the point is meant to be that who tells the story gets to shape the personalities/motives/behaviours of the characters so Armand's Lestat is supposed to be very different from Louis' Lestat but I didn't think there was much of a difference so I kind of just shrug at that and then when it comes to Claudia, really what I get the most is that she's searching for a vampire community for whatever reason (which ... OK, and Lestat wanted a companion so I guess that's similar) and then it becomes about how she wants to be taken seriously, which is like ... OK? I think it would make more sense for her to want to reclaim agency in her life since she was turned against her will, held captive by Lestat when she tries to leave, then is held captive by Bruce when she does leave so she wants some control over her life but the EPs went with "being taken seriously".

I don't know, I'm ranting. My point being, I think it's all flimsy and superficial.

[slavicafire]

Dear Żmija, I have just finished Inquisition that my dear friend that got me into DA is very fond of, and I just couldn’t explain to her why… it just doesn’t right with me. I loved Trespasser and ESPECIALLY the Solas romance but making Inquisitor a Mary Sue and overall focusing on her role in Thedas too much (as well as Corypheus being the villain… bleh) just felt like such a waste. What are your thoughts on the game? Because I remember you calling it „catholic”. (i’ll welcome a rant. Also hope you are well!)

ah. I have cast them away but alas, here come all my dragon age brain worms, happily returning to the fold like dozens upon dozens of prodigal sons.

quick foreword: i always play as humans, and i always play as warriors - I have played dai as a mage just once. so, in theory, I should be the one type of player the game caters to the most, lore-wise. alas.

inquisition is absolutely the weakest link in the da games - and it takes, for the lack of a more polite word, a giant shit on the lore and atmosphere set up by origins and expanded/played with by II.

and don't get me wrong, the first two games blundered and made a lot of mistakes, contained a lot of inconsistencies, contradicted their own set up plenty of times - but the expectation was (very much so) that inquisition would not only avoid fucking up in the same way but also! would fix some of those mistakes. add both proper gravitas to the story of the world - and allow for the return of the fascinating, genre-appropriate - again, for the lack of a more polite word - whimsy. it was supposed to be more comprehensive, more complex, more creative. heavy, again, yet funny. meaningful.

instead, inquisition made sure to make everyone bland, rather catholic and centrist in their convictions and beliefs - which, in a setting so fueled by the absolute injustice enacted on entire subgroups of people, simply means it made most characters bland conservatives, on the in-universe axis regarding chantry, mages, circles, elves, slavery, dwarves, the qun, and basically anything else you can think of. even characters who are supposed to be Hardcore Believers in whatever it is their convictions are end up being kind of undecided or confused about it all - see sera (love her as i might) or cassandra (no comment), or even bull when talking about the qun (which we are supposed to approach from a more liberal perspective now, diminishing its actual depth). don't even get me started on cullen, wannabe war criminal creep, who had a chance to become something interesting at the end of da II and then instead got wattpadded into the game as your trusty sidekick to prank instead of, you know, asking about how fucked up places starting with k get when he's there.

and then the game doesn't allow you to actually take a stance yourself - it just lets you choose the tone of expressing the one or two stances picked for you. you can't actually play as a meaningful character with proper agency - you must play as someone whose goal is to uphold the andrastian approach (not even faith, but approach), enjoy being the head of a giant religious militia, subdue mages at least partially, yield to accepting the apparent non-issue the grey warden order becomes, and then also give even less of a shit about elves and slavery than the previous games did.

I believe the only way to actually play the inquisitor without megatons of meta roleplaying in your head is to be kind of an evil cunt - and I don't mean choosing the asshole options in dialogue and missions, I simply mean accepting the fact that no matter what you do or what you say, you can't do or say anything all that meaningful. or good. nothing revolutionary, for sure.

the companions and advisors won't mind too much either way, after all.

[the-badger-mole]

A is for Ambition

I was having a conversation with a friend on the discord server I'm on about Azula, and this point came up about the sexism surrounding the way she was treated both by the canon reducing her actions to mental illness and by fandom tropes reducing her actions to her traumas. While I strongly believe that both her mental health and her past traumas had a hand in Azula's development, I think a lot of her character and actions (most of them, in fact) can also be attributed to her genuine ambition.

Ambition isn't bad in and of itself, and I think there is a version of Azula that could have used that ambition productively. But she didn't, and narratively speaking, that should be okay. What bothers me most about the idea of a redemption for Azula- and I know I've talked about this before- is that it doesn't take all of her motives for the choices she made into consideration. I don't like the way that dismissing her actions as the result of mental illness and abuse robs her of agency and reduces her to being a puppet. If there was one thing Azula was not, it was a puppet. Frankly, the dismissal of Azula's actions as a result of her mental state and upbringing smacks really strongly of misogyny. As if Azula in her natural state would be devoid of the ambition that made her so deadly. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I think all or even most of the people who want to redeem Azula and use her mental health and relationship with Ozai as an easy way to do it are misogynist, but I think the fact that those were presented as reasons to factory reset her and make her a loving supportive sister for Zuko did come from a misogynistic place. And it didn't start withing the fandom.

As a society, we have a problem letting women be villains without explaining it away somehow. There are scores and scores of stories of women who turned evil (or more accurately turned anti-hero) because she was scorned by a man, or abused, or otherwise hurt, usually by a man. Or she turned evil as a result of something happening to her child (obviously not the case here). Then there are the genre of women who turn evil because they feel threatened by another woman. There isn't a whole lot of space for a woman who wants to do evil things simply because they benefit her or because she enjoys them. The best example of a female villain who was in it for the love of the game that I can think of is the original Maleficent, and then they decided that making her more complex meant giving her a tragic backstory a la a very thinly veiled date rape allegory. There isn't a lot of space for a female villain who cursed a baby because she needed to remind these uppity humans who they were dealing with.

Azula was almost definitely abused by Ozai- and possibly even physically abused- but that wasn't all of her motivation. I would go as far as to say that wasn't even most of her motivation. Azula was a ruthless, cunning, ambitious girl, who enjoyed what she did. If there is going to be any redemption of her, that needs to be acknowledged first. But really, does she need to be redeemed?

[makima-s-most-smile]

Trigun Ultimate 2 (Part 1) The extras

Again, late. But better than never! My thoughts while enjoying my read of Trigun Ultimate 2!

Trigun Ultimate: 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.4 Trigun Maximum: 1.1, 1.2, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, 6.2, 7.1, 7.2, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 9.1, 9.2, 10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5

Trigun Ultimate 2

Extra: Day in, day out

Fucking mood, my dude!

Wait? He’s hanging from the wall?!

Jokes aside, again this stresses how much of Vash’s strength comes from him training and working hard. Damn, guy, you depressed and able to do that?

Vash often parties or drinks with Wolfwood in the later volumes… Does that mean he doesn’t need much sleep? Or does his workout regiment falter?

Two things: I love how easily Vash slips into the townlife as if he has been there the whole time. He easily connects with people, he just has his walls up, so people cannot connect with him! 

Vash is always attentive. Even when he is playfighting! Look, how quickly his mask dropped when the danger came around!

Well deserved. But Vash, honey, you really think you never killed anyone? That could have easily killed him. :/ I am pretty sure there were a few corpses on your path by your own doing…

I also love how assertive the waitress?/owner? of the bar was! It is respectable and so is she! We stan a strong woman!

Extra: Pilot

Vash against all the graves is haunting. Did he cause them? Or did he just bury them?

Edit: Nope, just seeing them when walking into the city. But when contrasting it with the news talking about Vash on the same page, you get the feeling that Vash has some skeletons in his closet. Foreshadowing, my friend!

I really like this shot. I love those glasses. Why didn’t he keep them? D; We know by now that Vash is very attentive. No way he accidently walked into the hostage situation!

‘98 Vash! Go away with your creepo behaviour!

And here is Vash again, being more in control of the situation than you think!

That… is not the Vash we see in the main manga! Manga Vash would interfere. Pilot Vash is more passive and gives the humans around him all the agency for their actions, for the better or for the worse! His beliefs are not above their agency. I like it! I am also sure that this Vash would be much less scarred!

He is right about telling the woman about the pain that was caused by her father and that she shouldn't look away. Her father is much more complex than she thought, being doting and kind to her, but a gruesome killer to others.

Pilot Vash is angy! But doesn’t kill. His own believes at work! Surely, Vash despises bullies who take advantage of others plight to gain power.