#and then try to do a meta of sorts

[mohntilyet]

i have to be so real. sometimes you have to outright not give a shit what the author thinks. i’m not saying to disregard how a character is portrayed and give into fanon characterisations but sometimes i will see fans be like “(head writer) omggg do you think this character is a good person?” “how would this character react if xyz happened?” as though that’s not a question you can and have to answer for yourself.! any character can contain multitudes and if you keep limiting your perception of them solely on word of god its not fun for the writer or even yourself anymore. THINK FOR YOURSELF. INVENT NEW WAYS TO FUCK YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS OVER

[basket-of-radiants]

Why were you so disappointed by Rhythm of War?

This has been sitting in my askbox for years. I've taken several cracks at answering, only to get frustrated with the subject matter and burn myself out every time. I didn't like Rhythm of War. More than that, I didn't like it in a way that tainted my enjoyment of the entire series. And despite what it may seem, I don't actually enjoy discussing things which I don't like. I always want to talk from a place of good faith. Which is why now that my feelings towards the series are a little more positive, I think I can finally answer this.

I'm going to try to stay away from specific plotpoints and story beats for this post, because my goal isn't to nitpick (if for no other reason than it would take a week to write this post), I'm just looking to talk about my overall impressions. I think that might mean the only spoilers here will be structural? idk, if you haven't read Rhythm of War yourself then you should probably do that before looking for other people's opinions anyway. 

I liked Way of Kings when I first read it. I didn't love it at the time, but I liked it. Certainly enough to keep reading once I'd finished. One thing that made me a bit uncomfy, however, was the war against the Parshendi. They were this unknowable enemy which the book was not interested in knowing. An inhuman army. Their main purpose was to kill Kaladin's friends, or else be killed by Dalinar's armies. And yet the Parshendi, and the parshmen in the form of Shen, did show hints of personhood. And so it bothered me how Dalinar spoke so casually about how the Alethi had decimated their numbers, how the others used the war as a means to amass wealth and power. (It didn't bother me in a "this is a bad book" way but in a "these characters are bad people" way.)

One of my foibles as a reader is that when a book is very clearly treating one side of a conflict with more humanity, I tend to be a bit predisposed towards the other to account for that. And with the Alethi clearly being the invading party and superior military force, there was also some underdog favoritism. I didn't really like how the book treated the Parshendi. This is to say that going forward, the singers would be more important to me than any other through line.

So imagine my delight at reading Words of Radiance and meeting Eshonai, one of the Parshendi, who even gets her own point of view sections! They were no longer being treated as a faceless mass, we were getting to see things from their perspective as well. And it became plain to see the damage the Alethi had done to them. I couldn't really bring myself to root for Dalinar or really any of the humans against the listeners. I couldn't even bring myself to like most of these characters. I still enjoyed the book but once it became clear there wouldn't be a peaceful conclusion, let's just say that I wouldn't have wept for Dalinar and Adolin if Szeth had managed to off them. Like everyone in the book, I assumed that going forward all the parshmen would be turned into evil voidbringers in the everstorm and that the listeners were mostly dead. Except for Rlain, and Eshonai because I'd read or been told that book 4 would be Eshonai's book and thus had assumed she was fine. (Oathbringer spoilers, she was not fine.) So ultimately it was still a bit of a downer way to end the book. 

So imagine my delight at reading Oathbringer, where for the first time singers were being treated as people, full and real people, and where the human characters could no longer ignore or dismiss them. We met Khen and the others, common singers who were sympathetic and just wanted freedom from bondage. We see Venli grapple with the loss of her home. We see Leshwi and Moash connecting with and understanding one another. We learn of a history where singers were the original inhabitants of the planet. Parallel to this, Dalinar is having a truly excellent character arc about confronting one's past actions and acknowledging them to move forward and do better. I loved Oathbringer, for some years it was my favorite book, and I was excited as hell to see what came next. At the time, it seemed to me that there is a clear direction the story is going. Two books about needless war, and then a third where the main cast is forced to acknowledge the personhood of their enemies. This was so cool, all of my feelings from the previous installments were being validated, the characters were going to have to face what they've done in the past and outgrow their militaristic mindsets, I was so sure of that.

Imagine my disappointment when that does not even remotely resemble the direction the story went in Rhythm of War. RoW presented a clear, straightforward “us vs. them" narrative, where every character was totally fine with killing singers. Characters aligned with the singers were either flattened into wholly evil versions of themselves (Moash) or were expected to turn on their side in favor of the humans (Venli.) Because clearly there was no reason good people would be on the side that's all former slaves trying to stay free. Maybe there's some sort of accord or understanding between Navani and Raboniel that I might have found meaningful if the seeds of mutual understanding weren't already there in Oathbringer and then apparently ignored for a year by all the characters.

I have a lot of issues with how the listeners are handled in these books. (Here's some elaboration.) Following OB, I had thought that all my concerns were going to be addressed. Following RoW, I knew they never would be. 

Which is my main complaint, because that's the thread that matters most to me in this series.

I have a lot of other Things as well. Gonna just talk about a few big ones. 

One outsized source of disappointment that may seem a little petty, and which probably is, is that I felt mislead by the premise of the book. It had been announced that this book would center Venli and Eshonai, and I was unbelievably hyped for that. That did not really turn out to be the case. The purpose for their backstory chapters felt less about exploring them as people and contextualizing their arcs, and more about filling in gaps of world history. In the main plot, Venli was a POV character and she certainly played a role, but honestly not a very important one overall. To me she felt like a side character in her own book. I don't think it's controversial to say that the main character of RoW was Navani. A lot of people really like Navani and are happy about that. Unfortunately I'm not one of those people, and I found it all the more difficult to enjoy her when it felt like it was coming at the expense of some of my favorite characters. 

This particular gripe somewhat comes down to preference, obviously everyone prefers to read about characters they like more than those they don't, and it can go both ways. (For instance, on a craft/technical level RoW is probably the superior book to W&T, but I liked the latter a lot more because of my stupidly outsized attachment to Szeth and Nale.) But I do think there's something of a real criticism in how the book would rather focus on the feelings of a queen rather than those of a genocide survivor, and how the former's are given significantly more weight and import. It ties in with my main criticism, I think. 

And then there's how human/human racism had also been wholly cast aside as a plot point. Jasnah fixed slavery so that's resolved, and the only person who still cares about structural racism is the evil bad bad evil villain Moash/Vyre, who is now wholly irredeemable and who you're allowed to totally write off because he's sold his soul to Odium. I've already talked a lot about this. Other people have already talked about this, probably better than me. The writing was actually on the wall for me in OB, but again, RoW was when I fully accepted that this was never going to be addressed. 

There's something else that probably deserves its own discussion rather than being quickly tacked on at the end here, but here we are. This book changed how the series approaches war. 

In WoK, war was very clearly portrayed as a bad and inglorious thing. It was brutal, it was painful, those at the bottom died cruelly and unceremoniously and pointlessly while those at the top turned a profit. Every day was a new horror. The enemy were never evil, they were always just more people forced to go through the same thing. Through the next couple books, it felt to me that even if the characters had accepted war as necessary, there was still a tragedy to it. Conversely, in RoW (and W&T) war is basically a series of boss battles, in between which our protagonists can kill dozens of footsoldiers with barely a thought in the same way WoK had criticized.

Final note on all this, it sucks how we have no perspectives from the former-slaves-singers demographic. Those guys are really thrown under the bus, and seemingly get no self-determination now or ever. It was a glaring problem to me in RoW. Conscripted and enslaved humans and singers probably have just as much ground to form mutual understanding as a fused and a queen. (In fact they already had. In Oathbringer.)

In essence, RoW disappointed me because it left me with the distinct impression that none of the series's most important through lines (well, most important to me) were going to be resolved well. I liked W&T, but I haven't revised my opinion very much about the overall handling of these topics across the series. Maybe one of the reasons I was able to enjoy W&T so much more was because I no longer had such high expectations.

[gen-is-gone]

This is perhaps bitchy and uncharitable and certainly almost a year late to really be complaining about but fuck it, we complain anyway.

Yes, I am still unreasonably upset about Sutekh clinging to the side of the TARDIS since The Pyramids of Mars, and upset because I was sort of foolishly hoping we might get some actual characterization fallout from that addressed properly this series, which of course isn't going to happen. And the reason I'm upset about it while it seems fairly few people care all that much is because it's a litmus test for the degree to which any given person sees the TARDIS as a character in her own right. And it's fairly obvious now that rtd doesn't, or at least, only does when it suits him.

Because the thing is, if the TARDIS is a character, is a person, then the manner in which Sutekh uses and usurps her, and the ambiguity in whether it was consensual ('seduction' vs 'coercion') becomes extremely important to the Doctor and the TARDIS's relationship, and the TARDIS's characterization as a whole, both going forward and echoing back. Like bearing in mind that what actually happened is so ambiguous, what Sutekh being 'there the whole time' even fucking means, that trying to pull a point out of it is almost an exercise in futility from the jump, but to borrow some wildly inadequate or perhaps even inappropriate language, it's the difference between whether the TARDIS has been cheating on the Doctor for more than half the length of their entire relationship, or whether she'd been being (sorry) raped that whole time and the Doctor just hadn't noticed.

And yeah, evidently it was too much for me to hope that there would ever be any kind of real emotional or plot-relevant followup about that, because, again, that requires you to see the TARDIS as a character whose choices and emotions and relationships matter beyond their immediate relevance to the plot. And this isn't new by any goddamn means. This isn't actually the usual split between the traditionalist and the avant-garde camps. The TARDIS's sapience and autonomy do not begin with The Doctor's Wife; this is established (more or less) in The Edge of Destruction, the third ever serial in the history of the show, all the way back in nineteen sixty-fucking-four.

And y'know, yes, it would still be a big deal if Sutekh jumped on in Wild Blue Yonder (as would make way more logical sense) rather than Pyramids; the ambiguity of consent that the show either doesn't care or lacks the stomach to address would still be a blow, but it wouldn't have the unutilized capacity to fundamentally alter the relationship between the two longest-running characters in the franchise if it was the span of a season, rather than thousands of years in-universe and nearly five decades in real life. And not to be conspiratorial or assume categorical bad faith on rtd's part, but yeah, it's hard not see that particular unnecessary detail as a petty response to Moffat and Chibnall's own continuity-and-paradigm-altering retcons, and an attempt to get his own shot in.

And it's just. Never gonna get talked about, huh. 'Cause it doesn't actually matter, right? 'Cause it's not like the TARDIS is really a person, right?

[vintagerobin]

Obviously the new DCAMU has a lot of issues but one that's really interesting to me is the lack of Robins besides Dick and Damian and how this changes the context of relationships in a way that the dialogue doesn't seem to account for.

The most glaring example that comes to mind is Dick's speech to Bruce in Bad Blood, where he's trying to break Bruce out of mind control by reminding him of everything that he's done for them - but who is "them"? When Dick says "we needed you" - who is "we"? There's only ever been Dick, until Damian, whose experiences and needs don't match what Dick is describing. Dick should be saying "I needed you." Is that too personal? To the point that they'd rather draw attention to the lack of these other characters by having Dick say something that doesn't quite make sense?

[whetstonefires]

#4 please !

Now see this could be tricky, because generally if I don't get some key elements written down very quickly the idea flows away again and the 'yet' disappears, even if I remember generally what it was about, but I have one this time! I am still just enough plagued by this vision that it's not out of the question I'll go for the capture, but so far nada.

Idea was basically a Jiang family character study by way of modern au. (So tw canonical abuse.) I started from the reflection, in a modern au very high chance the Jiangs are divorced, because being a divorcee wouldn't necessarily ruin Yu Ziyuan in the modern world, as long as she was allowed to control the narrative enough that she didn’t look at fault, so it might be on the table.

Especially because modern views on child abuse are such that while she'd hold back more than she already does in terms of physical chastisement, Jiang Fengmian would also be under less societal pressure to not interfere in her disciplinary system too much, and both these factors mean he’s more likely to put his foot down.

So, concept: Jiang Fengmian, when his son is eight and his daughter thirteen, forces the issue of taking in his best friends' abused orphan child whom he’s just managed to track down in a nightmarish group home, probably leveraging the fact that wherever their money comes from it's mostly his, something he usually doesn't do, but she has always known he could, and been fucked up about it (reasonable) and hated him a little (less so) and hates him so much more now (understandable but still fucked up).

They were obviously still both pressured into this marriage by their families, because I literally cannot imagine them choosing one another of their own free will, and if they did that would be an au in an even more dramatic way than being modern, and no longer work as a character or relationship study as far as I'm concerned. I mean or it’s a cql-based au, but that’s not the version of this toxic marriage I find compelling.

Situation subsequently deteriorates to the point that when the boys are around twelve some outside party observes and is repulsed or otherwise upset by Yu Ziyuan's treatment of Wei Wuxian specifically--she's emotionally abusive to everyone in the family, canonically, and it harms Jiang Cheng significantly more than Wei Wuxian, which I think is also pretty explicit on the page, but she's more openly antagonistic about going after wwx because he's basically a proxy for her husband, whom she doesn't consider to be someone she's capable of harming.

And ofc in a modern family scenario, being abusive to your foster kid is more plainly personal misconduct than being unfair in how you discipline one of your husband's many students, even if it is his favorite. Which means she's very unlikely to chase him around with a whip, but whatever she does do will sting that much more emotionally.

Anyway the outside judgement provokes a more explicit confrontation than the last four years of maneuver and attempting to balance all the competing needs according to two very different standards. And the upshot is that by the time wwx is 13, the Jiangs are divorced. To avoid making a humiliating spectacle of themselves they present a weirdly united front in court and have a very smooth uncontested proceding, although the closed meetings with their respective lawyers involved a lot of vitriol.

Yu Ziyuan, despite having a smallish trust fund and probably a job of some kind, though one that's more prestigious than profitable like uh. Olympic fencing coach. Idk what they make but it's probably not enormous. She and Cangse Sanren probably competed in the same events back in the day.

Anyway she gets a solid chunk of alimony, the house, and primary custody of both her children, although Jiang Yanli is almost 18 at this point so mostly she just gets Jiang Cheng. Everyone thinks Jiang Cheng wants it that way, including sort of Jiang Cheng; he has this idea that if he has his mom to himself they'll finally have a good relationship, even though he's also terrified of being left all alone with her. He's complicated. Families are complicated.

Also she would never have forgiven him if he hadn't concurred that he wanted to stay with his mother because she was the only one On His Side.

Jiang Yanli ofc does not move out right away when she comes of age, in part because her brother needs her, but she probably does go to college, so she's only around part-time.

Jiang Fengmian, meanwhile, keeps most of his financial assets and Wei Wuxian, and gets his kids on the weekends.

So that's all setup for how you have this situation where Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng are entering high school--probably the same school, together, but no longer sharing the commute except maybe Monday mornings--and Wei Wuxian's primary residence is Jiang Cheng's dad's apartment.

It’s really chill. They get a cleaning service in once a week and eat a lot of delivery food, but they do cook at least once a week. The canonical thing where they largely agree about what’s funny and what’s right-or-wrong, and so forth, on the one hand really pops when there’s mostly no external conflict disrupting it, but also probably gains more complexity now that it’s not a thread of positivity fighting for its life against a background of drama. They get to know each other better than they ever had a chance to in canon.

Some of that isn't all that positive, because now they have the space to discover the places where they do actually have the capacity for friction, but both of them are very good at dispersing tension (I do tend to suspect jfm's dad was abusive he sure acts like it), and on the whole it's a good thing.

Jiang Cheng is going to have such a mental health crisis, and Jiang Fengmian is going to handle it so badly. Because of course when his son starts replicating his ex-wife's toxic attitudes and behaviors more now that she has primary custody, he’s going to feel guilty and like it’s His Fault, but he’s going to feel like it’s his fault that Jiang Cheng is growing up to be a shitty abusive person.

And even if he’d never say that the subtext would come through, in the assumptions he made when framing communications and so forth, as in canon, so the thing where Jiang Cheng’s father loves Wei Wuxian more than him, or at any rate likes him better and thinks he’s a better person and prefers his company, would wind up feeding into a self-reinforcing loop.

(Jin Zixuan's nasty public remark about Jiang Fengmian treating Wei Wuxian better than his own children hits Jiang Cheng significantly harder in this scenario, where he's being Tormented by the feeling that all his peers know his dad walked out on him for another son. Wei Wuxian's punch is therefore even more clearly primarily for Jiang Cheng's sake, although Jiang Cheng is probably more inclined to see it as being for his dad's. Jin Zixuan is about halfway between the Jiang kids' ages here, so he's a senior saying this shit to a sophomore.)

So that cycle builds to the point where Jiang Cheng would eventually have one of those rare moments where he resorts to actual violence, because his poisoned feelings are choking him so bad his rationality deserts him.

He’s not going to be nearly as close to actually murdering Wei Wuxian as he was in canon the night the Jiang Sect was massacred, because it’s a less extreme situation, but he still goes for the neck. So Jiang Fengmian is in his home office one Saturday about a year and a half into this new normal, and realizes the boys are fighting. He hears through the wall the accusation you stole my dad. He says to himself, well that’s terrible but interjecting myself into this situation would definitely make it worse.

Then he hears sounds of violence, and then an ominous abrupt silence, and updates that analysis.

And when he opens the door to the boys’ room, Wei Wuxian is being strangled. He’s not really resisting, which is because he’s made the call that that’s way more likely to get Jiang Cheng to snap out of it, and thinks it might make Jiang Cheng feel better to get it out of his system (because he does sort of feel like what Jiang Cheng is going through is all his fault, or at any rate is much worse as a result of decisions made for his sake) and is severely underestimating the dangers of choking, but looks to a third party like he’s already passed out and Jiang Cheng is still at it. Which is to say, it looks like a serious murder attempt on the brink of success.

So that sure made that situation worse!

So yeah that's my idea that I probably won't write but it sure has its teeth in me.

[shadelorde]

Waava and Yangvik: an Analysis

So! I have reread the Yangchen novels (and understood far better what was happening the second time) so here is a brief analysis on the parallels between Yangvik (Yangchen and Kavik) and Waava (Raava and Wan).

Right away, I noticed several similarities between Yangchen and Raava in particular. One could even argue that Yangchen is the avatar, apart from Wan, that is closest to Raava spiritually, with the boundary between herself and her past lives shown to be far more blurred than in other avatars. Their struggles I find to be similar too - both Yangchen and Raava struggle between two aspects of their identity, the part that is meant to be peaceful and spiritual, and the part that must make sacrifices in order to maintain balance. I would argue that both of them have the capacity for manipulation and less savory tactics to get what they need, and both have caused great amounts of harm in order to achieve a greater goal.

But their most recurring struggle that they have in common is their attitude towards humanity. Both Raava and Yangchen carry a certain level of disdain towards humans, and a level of anger that they are expected to compensate for the incompetence and irresponsibility of other people.

"I'm so tired of fighting on their behalf. Human beings choose their own misery, over and over again. Tell me why humanity deserves an Avatar, Mesose. I could handle the blame, the finger-pointing, if I just knew why." Yangchen says this to Kavik while experiencing the life of Avatar Gun, and this is a theme that occurs repeatedly throughout her novels. (While this is Avatar Gun's words, it's triggered by Yangchen's experiences.)

Raava says similarly. "Ancient one, why would I do that for a human? Especially one who's caused so much trouble?" and "Most humans think only of themselves, no matter how many others are around."

This parallel between the two becomes almost explicit when Yangchen enters the Avatar State, drawing upon the power of her past lives and Raava herself.

From inside the whirling sphere of air, the elements obeyed her; everything obeyed her. Only the humans remained stubbornly wayward. Why were they so special? She examined the villagers scurrying below her feet, and yes, the Airbenders as well. Look what I can do without them. Look at how weak they are without me.

And both of them, at the end, make the decision to go back, to start or continue the cycle of helping humanity, either hopelessly or in reassurance. Raava said "We will be together for all your lifetimes, and we will never give up." And Yangchen decided, at the end of her first novel, to continue that cycle.

Yangchen could pretend all she wanted but it was no use. She would remain the instrument of her own suffering. She'd keep fighting, keep struggling, just like she'd commanded the unconscious woman to do in the hospital. It was her fate to make the same choice over and over again, as generations of Avatars had done before her. To know the past was to know the future.

Even F.C. Yee comments on how each avatar has proven to love humanity, even if they struggled through it initially, and how it connects to Raava's initial choice. "Avatars have proven throughout the franchise that they possess an unshakeable love for humanity. They might express it in different ways, but once they gather their inner strength and come to understand who they are, they'll do what it takes to help the rest of us recover from our stumbles and find the right path. If you subscribe to the theory that Raava chooses, then I like to believe that she chooses well." (found in the interview in the back of The Legacy of Yangchen). While all avatars, by nature, parallel Raava and deal with struggles that repeat throughout the cycle, Yangchen's own struggle and conclusion with her feelings towards the rest of humanity mimic Raava the most closely out of any avatar we've seen.

And then there's Kavik and Wan. Both of them are essential to their partners' character developments, and they spend a good part of their time being distrusted by their partner. Even though they regret their actions (Wan more openly than Kavik, I would argue), they spend most of their stories having to work to build or regain that bond of trust. And yet, in the end, Raava and Yangchen choose to stay.

"We will be together for all your lifetimes, and we will never give up."

"Stay with me. I need you by my side. There's so much work to do, and I want you with me until it's finished."

Initially, Kavik is far more reluctant to help Yangchen than Wan is to help Raava. Kavik is much more driven, initially, by his family and getting them out of Bin-Er and reuniting with Kalyaan, while Wan has no human family to speak of and was actually orphaned (ironically compared to Kavik, who lied about being orphaned.) However, at the end, both of them are driven by their care towards Yangchen and Raava.

"No," She said, shaking her head. "You still feel indebted, I'm calling it off-"

"Spitting spirits, you are so annoying! I want to help you because you deserve it! Do I have to tattoo the message across your skull?"

The ending to both of their partnerships are generally seem as ambiguous - although romantic interpretations can easily be prescribed to the pairings, the most important parts that we see are their devotion to one another and the obstacles they overcame to become close, regardless of the label you might choose to put on the relationship itself.

Overall, I think it would have been very cool to see Raava and Wan's relationship develop over the course of longer than a single episode (because really, we hardly see Raava in Beginnings: Part 1) and I think that their relationship has very similar roots to Yangvik.

[sanjarka]

this is not meant to be petty i promise but i find it interesting how from the beginning of being in a fandom space, from the beginning of being a part of some sort of community, even if it was just rebloging gifsets at 13, it was kind of a given that i couldn't do it in my native language or within the frame of my own culture? idk if i'm explaining it right but i just wonder how does it feel to share a language with your favorite fictional character and to talk about them in it too.

[labarch]

Threshold of Humanity: so about those demons huh?

Today, I conclude that the way Qifrey stands in doorways is the strongest proof we’ve had so far that Qifrey is, in fact, not human, but an artificial being born of forbidden magic. Or, as the witch society seems to name them, a “demon”.

Lots of images and spoilers up to chapter 69 under the cut!

On the outside looking in

Let’s start by saying that in this chapter, Qifrey is back to his old habit of looking as suspicious as humanely possible. The first page is the only one where we briefly see his eye, with a look I want to describe as sorrowful, bitter and knowing. For the rest of the scene his face will stay partially hidden, and he never looks full on at the castle guard he is speaking to. His demeanor is distant, in contrast to the guard’s confusion and panic. In fact, it is a little funny how dodgy he is acting, given that he does nothing but noble deeds this entire chapter – bringing an escaped criminal back into custody, taking his apprentice to safety, safeguarding the medical tower against further attacks with a layer of salt.

So far, this looks like Qifrey’s classic brand of guilt-ridden self-sabotage, but the framing of the scene provides extra context. The threshold to Ezrest’s castle acts as a physical barrier separating Qifrey from the other man. During those three pages, they are both often shown framed by that doorway: the guard safe within the walls, contrasting Qifrey the outsider. The first page has a gust of wind pushing his robes around him, like an invisible force keeping him back. And we do know, because Qifrey emphasises this again for us, that this castle does indeed possess a natural repulsive force that keeps out monsters.

We are told in chapter 47 that, not only drawing magic within Ezrest castle won’t function, but that the castle’s walls repels all magical artefacts. It is because of that property that, when Coco notices that the leeches have not approached the castles’ walls, Qifrey immediately concludes that their current monstrous form is the result of a magical experiment.

Of course, “demons” are not the only beings who would be unable to enter the castle: any active spell should be repelled, meaning that Olruggio, for instance, can’t enter with his beautifying mask. Coco, with the bracelet stuck around her wrist, technically shouldn’t be able to enter at all, and the same goes for the characters with active magic drawn directy on their skin, like Coustas, Dagda and Eunie. In fact, even if he were perfectly human, it would be only natural for Qifrey to not step inside, since he couldn’t go in without taking off his glasses, which contain spells both to hide his scar and to protect him from harsh light.

And yet. I can’t help but see a very pointed parallel between Qifrey’s confidence that the castle will repel monsters, and the way the castle’s entrance seems to subtly repel him. In particular because it adds on to a long series of scenes featuring Qifrey’s anxieties around unnatural, magically created beings. This is at least the third time Qifrey brings up the creation of monsters in the days before the pact, which he calls “terrifying” and “a disgusting form of magic”. If the illustrations for those scenes are a glimpse into his mind, then it’s a mind full of nightmares. During their fight, the rogue Sage Engendil also lampshades how curiously familiar Qifrey seems to be with demons. Qifrey furthermore muses that he knows demons haven’t gone extinct, and in fact are still being created by witches to this day.

The demon in human skin

In short, my opinion is that chapters 68 and 69 together strongly hint at us that Qifrey is, or perceives himself as a demon. Now the question is: what new information would this reveal give us about him, his quest, and the way he has behaved so far?

First, we need to try and actually define what does and doesn’t count as a demon in that universe. Qifrey’s first halting description is “a monster, created with magic and by the hands of a witch”. A distinction is also made between magically altered animals that have adapted to their ecosystems and are useful or at least harmless to humans, and ferocious, uncontrollable beasts. So a demon is a new lifeform, artificially created through magic, that is inherently dangerous. The petty criminal from chapter 49 that got turned into a mindless and violent mass of giant leeches ticks all those boxes. Going by that logic, Coustas and Eunie wouldn’t fall into that category despite not being able to enter the Ezrest castle: modifying some of your body parts, or being turned into an existing animal wouldn’t count. Even Sasaran from the second test doesn’t seem to count as a demon: despite being hybridized with an animal, his consciousness hasn’t been affected and so he can’t be described as an “uncontrollable beast”, just a very heavily modified human.

One other interesting tidbit: “demon” is actually name dropped in chapter 59, a while before Qifrey’s fight with Engendil, when Beldaruit muses that a king who could use magic to gain power over life and death would become a “demon king”, someone capable of creating new lifeforms at will. This ties in the concept of demons to the other themes of the recent volumes, the dilemna of healing magic and resurection magic. What this could imply is that bringing someone back from certain death through magic carries the risk of altering them to the point where they would basically become a new lifeform, which has worrying implications for Dagda.  

Going back to Qifrey though, there are three things we know for sure about him: 1) he has been experimented on with a type of magic never attempted before; 2) he looks and acts perfectly human, and 3) despite this, he is convinced that this new magic is dangerous, and must not only be destroyed but also kept secret at all costs. Finally, we know that those experiments left no visible trace on his body, because the Knights Moralis would have inspected him when they rescued him from the Brimhats (and would have soundly kicked him out of the Great Hall had they found anything). Barring other special characteristics we might not know about, what makes him unique as a demon is that he is undistinguishable from a normal human.

And that’s already more than enough to explain why he is freaking out so much.

What I like about this demon framework is that it can apply to several of the existing theories around Qifrey’s origin: whether he is a rescucitated corpse from Slistas, a silvertree turned human (I am still firmly standing behind that one), or a homonculus created from nothing by the Brimhats. In all three cases, whatever weird symptoms or powers he might have as a result of his creation, the very fact that he cannot be told apart from a human is what makes him truly dangerous. Because it shakes the very foundation of magical society.

We remember the central law of the Pointed Hats: the integrity of the human body is sacred, and therefore magic cast on the human body is taboo. A demon with a human appearance is a mockery of that principle, and a walking dilemna for the Pointed Hats. Demons used to be killed by heroes, and forbidden magical artefacts must be destroyed, but what do you do when that magical artefact is a living, breathing person?

(Speaking of, I have been wondering for a while what the Knights Moralis even do with people who have had spells tattooed on them, and especially those whose bodies have been altered. They can’t let them wander around, even with their memories gone, their very appearance would give the secret away. Do they keep them hidden in some prison or on an island, like the brainwashed witches? Asking for Eunie and Coustas, I’m worried about these kids)

From that perspective, Qifrey’s secrecy makes complete sense. The existence of demons with human faces not only raises all kinds of existential questions, but in the short term it risks making witch society even more repressive than it currently is. The Knights Moralis are already merciless to anyone seen with a tattooed spell or other evidence of having been involved with forbidden magic. Can you imagine how paranoid they would become if they literally couldn’t tell apart a demon from a human? Anyone could be a demon, pretty much.

In particular, this scenario explains why Qifrey is keeping the truth from those who might be tempted to help or protect him. After all, where would it leave Olruggio if he sided with a demon against his own society? Where would it leave Qifrey, if the only solution to erase that dangerous new magic were to destroy himself, but Olruggio wouldn’t let him? It also gives context to his line in chapter 40 “You want me to stay as Professor Qifrey? I would also like that, if it were possible”, and his description of his life at the atelier as something almost like a dream. Professor Qifrey doesn’t exist, and he has no right to live that peaceful life.

Anger and hope

A final bit of character musing I want to add to this: this theory of Qifrey as a demon, and the way he wrestles with that knowledge, also sheds some light on his more erratic actions and mood swings so far. What makes his motivations difficult to follow is that he always seems tugged between two extremes: destructive anger and fervent hope. Both are actually coping strategies that he tries to use to protect himself against paralysing guilt.  

His anger at the Brimhats allows him to redirect his self-disgust towards those who made him. The true demons are those who willingly create monsters, he tells Engendil during their fight. These moments where he faces the Brimhats bring out a very different side of him, one that is confident, indignant and spiteful. Then, rather than being blinded by anger into chasing senseless revenge, he is calling on that anger to steel his resolve. He is using that indignation as a motivator to right a wrong done against both himself and witch society as a whole, even if he has to destroy himself in order to do so.

On the other hand, he seems to hold onto some hope that he might, somehow, erase the magic that created him but still miraculously keep himself alive. That is the side of him that fervently believes in the miracles of magic and in the power of creativity, inspired in him by Beldaruit, and passed along to Coco. His stance seems to be that he needs to dive into the ugly core of those experiments, and that maybe, just maybe, a way to save himself will occur to him just in the nick of time. It’s an interesting coincidence, by the way, that he is staring down the maws of water-dwelling demons while having those thoughts.

And on that note, hold on to indignation and hope when the going gets tough (but don’t brainwash your friends), and thank you for reading!

[phoenixcatch7]

Wild how I never see anyone talking about that moment in the mdzs anime (donghua?) during the wen chaos torture scene, where wwx fights wzl and cores the man like an apple.

Not even that!! Not even that!!! He instantaneously removes a fully intact golden core with the skill and precision of a two day surgery bare handed. In battle.

I don't know if it was part of the book, or if it made it into the live action as well, but it was always a huge moment for me. I mean - he'd just lost his own core in a surgery meant to give someone else it, the volunteer victim taking implanting cores from theory to reality. All those months in the burial mounds were a matter of survival - learn or die. Learn or abandon the last pieces of his family. He mastered demonic cultivation, because there was no other path forward. He had no other option.

But in that moment, he's holding a perfectly intact (decently strong) golden core, just after escaping. He could have tucked it away, got his revenge, and gone back to wq to get it implanted in him. He could have kept it somewhere in stasis for however long while she worked on it, I don't know. He'd clearly developed the ability in the mounds, he'd clearly been thinking about it a lot.

He had that choice. He had the ability to put his demonic cultivation down and rejoin that well paved road, and no one would think twice. He could have rejoined the cultivation world with nary a blip. Lwj and jc would certainly have covered for him, even if they didn't understand.

But he didn't.

He held that little swirling core in his hand, looked at its glow of qi, its shining potential. And crushed it.

That, I've felt, is the true moment he committed to his path. Not in the mounds, not when he decided to hunt down and brutally torture the wen. Not when he decided to sacrifice his own core. That moment where he was granted this potential path out, a way back, a possible escape route. And he turns away.

Breaks it.

I wonder why it's never come up in fics or art or anything. Like, that's just such a visceral moment!! It was like 'oh he's serious serious'. And it has such angsty potential!! Wwx can just destroy the cultivation of anyone he pleases!! During the war everyone was petrified of wzl. There's no reason to think they'd be anything less than mortally terrified of wwx if it ever got out he could do the exact same thing. And he's even stronger! He crushed wzl like an ant!!! But who knows, it could have weird, fringe life saving uses like wq theorised.

But can you imagine all the possibilities!! Core assassin wwx. Chief cultivators husband wwx who gets called in for the worst criminals. Ylp wwx who cores a whole scouting group as a warning, leaving everyone too scared to touch him, letting him and the remnants live in semi peace. Time travel wwx who defangs the worst enemies in disguise, becoming the boogeyman of the jianghu. Lwjs core getting damaged or corrupted and wwx being forced or volunteering to remove it to save his life without subjecting him to the horrific surgery, revealing his secret. There's so many possibilities!!!

[emwallas176]

Cannot get over the duality of Smallville. In my mind, Clark and Lex are the leads of two very different shows. I’m only on season one right now but it’s so fascinating how everything that comes later is already baked in from the beginning. You can see the tragedy of their friendship even before the first crack forms because at the heart of it all, there’s always going to be a lack of understanding between Clark and Lex. It’s just who they are, how the both of them were raised.

Because on one side you have Clark. He’s an alien. He feels alone in the world, like he has to hide himself. This feeling becomes an instinct where even though he is an open and honest person there’s a part of himself that never really gets to see the light of day.

And then you have Lex who barely even knows the meaning of the word trust. He was raised in business and politics (most of it not even above board). And that’s not even mentioning the influence his father specifically had on him. He’s been taught to lie and keep secrets and ultimately restrain from divulging any part of himself without some serious teeth pulling. In fact, Lex usually won’t give up a lie until he’s been caught outright. He’s always dealing in half-truths and lying by omission so that he can stay ten steps ahead of everyone else because he was taught by his dad and has learned over and over again through experience until it was practically hardwired into his brain that sharing information with other people is a losing move and usually just puts another bullet in the gun someone’s already got aimed at your chest.

So what do you get out of that? Well, you get two people from two complete different spheres (two houses both alike in dignity and all that) who make the choice to be friends, not knowing that the choice is an impossible one. Because neither can ever be fully honest with the other (they don’t know how to be fully honest with anyone) and eventually the lies pile up between them. The misunderstandings become more than just circumstantial. They become delusion and obsession and mistrust and bad faith. They can talk and try to fight it all they want but at the end of the day their constant miscommunication leads to what was always their ultimate destiny—the end of their friendship and the start of something worse.

[aphel1on]

Rereading this part of mdzs for no particular reason (😇) and laughing so hard bc

- Ppl really overstate the degree to which post-rez wwx is just a silly goofy innocent twink like. here he is spouting off a yllz style torture fantasy in his head unprompted. BRO'S STILL GOT IT

- he hated xue yang SO much from the moment he heard about him lmfao!! the diff between his attitude on XY vs his attitude on any other antagonist he meets post-rez is always interesting to me. i mean the first thing wwx heard of him is "oh yeah people somewhat blame you for his evil acts bc he was using the techniques you developed also oh yeah he rebuilt your doomsday weapon that you thought you destroyed and no one had to worry about anymore". tbh i do think wwx felt somewhat responsible

- "this little punk is out here doing disproportionate retribution on people >:( what if I did disproportionate retribution on HIM" ok, not getting into debate on the jianghu's opinion on the morality of torture, or whether it can be considered proportionate to anything. from MY perspective it's rly funny

- "Rip to people who don't run off in singleminded bloody revenge on the ppl who hurt their family out of consideration of their remaining family, but I'm different." + specifically referring to this as "dragging an opponent down with you". Never considered it from this angle before but wwx is pretty clearly reminded of the massacre of the Jiangs while empathizing with Chang Ping here. The subconscious(?) recognition from wwx that his revenge was destructive to himself and his loved ones I also find really interesting

[necrotic-nephilim]

-debby ryans at you- how are you feeling about that thunderbolts* trailer, snookums. your old blog is trying to crawl from its grave.

you are an unhinged rat for sending me this ask i hope you know <3 you already knew that but i'm telling you anyway bc you're a rat bc now i have to explain myself-

this is from @eebuckley my partner <3 i've alluded to it in the tags of this blog but i used to be a semi-popular MCU blogger from like 2018 to 2020. (semi-popular for the ship i wrote, anyway) and since like, probably Infinity War/Endgame i have been slowly more and more disillusioned by the MCU ranging from only passively being interested in projects to outright despising them if i saw them. which sort of sucks, given how much i loved the MCU at it's height. i was like. aggressively into it. like a "i had asthma attacks watching trailers bc i got so excited" level of into it. maybe cringey in hindsight, honestly but yk. whatever brings you joy, ig.

and anyway- my partner witnessed my very real and normal reaction to the Thunderbolts* trailer and now i'm *mad* bc i'm actually excited about it. it made me feel about the MCU a way i haven't felt in years, especially after a lot of announcements that rlly pissed me off.

cannot believe it looks like we might actually get a comics-accurate Yelena and a comics-accurate Bucky. i'm such a sucker for Bucky Barnes, he's one of the only Marvel characters i actually read Marve comics for and i'm forever bitter how badly he got screwed over. if that movie is good i'm going to end up writing fanfiction. probably crossover fanfiction bc over my dead body will i write just plain MCU fanfic. and i'm a Jason Todd/Bucky shipper anyway so i could make it work, i think-

anyway TLDR is i'm excited and i'm mad about it and how dare yo expose me for being an MCU fan on THIS blog. you coulda send this ask to my MCU blog that still exists and i have occasionally used. but instead you *exposed* my ass on my refined DC blog as a filthy Marvel fan. i will be divorcing you again. ty gn ily

[pynkhues]

I've loved SDCC every year the IWTV cast has done it, last year was lovely with those three, but I am so so so happy that Jacob and Sam will be here again. I agree, it feels special for them to be there together again and get to enjoy it together (and yes I hope for spoilery comments and jam comments from Eric lol). And then the thought of getting a song or getting GABRIELLE FINALLY, I haven't even read the books but I'm so curious who is going to play her.

I can totally see them wanting to keep Akasha's announcement separate since that does seem like it might get a lot of attention.

(x)

Me too, anon! Last year was so fun with Sam, Assad and Delainey, but I'm like you, and honestly delighted that Jacob and Sam will get to be there together again too. Especially Jacob actually, both for the interviews, and for the fact that he really, really seems to love ComicCon, as Sam said in the MTV interview last year, haha. I love that he's kind of an old hand with it too having done so many of the Game of Thrones panels back when that was airing.

And God, YEAH! I'm so happy you're so excited for her too not having read the books! I don't really know what the fandom is going to make of her, especially non-book readers, but I love her, and I love that everyone involved in the show seems to love her and be so excited to bring her to the screen. She's actually in The Queen of the Damned (and plays an important role!), but the film adaptation chose to write her out (one of its many, many flaws), so it feels even more important to me personally that she finally gets to actually make it onto the screen in the show.

I hope they announce Akasha separately too for that reason. Again, Gabrielle deserves her moment.

Also this show desperately needs more terrible, complicated, fucked up and wildly compelling women, and I just can't wait to see what they do with her.

[ceramicbeetle]

not to blaspheme (i guess) against the tenets of a faith i don’t share but catholics did kind of go off when it comes to the proliferation of all kinds of little talismans of crazy people. the angle im holding my head at is probably perceived as disrespectful but at the right angle i Can almost perceive them as a kind of guardian spirit like you Almost have a point

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

these might be a bit unusual questions but i still want to ask them

how self-aware do you think you are of your own biases when it comes to the bugs? and what do you consider to be your weaknesses and strengths?

hi anon! you're right these questions are unusual but they're very interesting :)

I do think of myself as rather self-aware, because when I'm thinking about the Beatles and like forming some kind of headcanon about them, pretty quickly some voice in my head shows up going "what are you basing this on? did you make this up? is this just what you want to be true?"

Strengths:

I think I have a pretty good perspective on quotes and historical accounts. I try to do some baseline source analysis (does the person saying this know what they're talking about? what are their likely motivations or biases?) and bear in mind the context (why was this said and to whom?)

I think I'm reasonably good at steelmanning positions I'm inclined to disagree with. I like trying to understand why someone thinks the way they do.

If someone challenges me on something I've said, I'm pretty open to reconsidering.

I kind of think not having a pronounced preference for either Paul or John is a pluspoint in terms of analysing their conflicts. I may be a bit less well equipped when it comes to either of them vs. George though.

I'd say I'm good at also clarifying between what I think and what I know when communicating my takes to people.

Weaknesses:

I think, like anyone who gets in any way invested in the history, I find myself drawn to the narratives I personally find compelling, which might be a problem and lead me to dismiss stuff I don't like (which is usually the saddest version of events).

I can be avoidant of certain topics I find depressing, though I generally get better at it with time. Like, if I discover some new shocking bit of history, I might need some time to process it and fully face it, but I'll get there. (Funnily, when I first started out in the fandom I was like this about almost the entire breakup era. I only really came to like the late-stage Beatles when Get Back came out, I think. It forced me to really look at them.)

TBH I can get overly dismissive of some things which may or may not be "pure coincidences". there's stuff I kneejerk reject as evidence, but I also wouldn't die on the hill that it isn't evidence, and I can let my snarky side get the best of me when interacting with it.

This was fun and I feel like I could say more but it's sort of a really broad topic. If you have any follow-up thoughts, or wanna share your own strengths and weaknesses and maybe compare them with mine, or any other questions, I'd be very happy to answer!

[goldbiz]

🔥🦁

prompt: my experience in the roleplaying community, @fablelike

🦁 my favorite ships

blue and gold. ted kord and michael jon carter are lovers and the writers over at DC keep gay baiting with them. i am also a huge fan of the idea of shipping booster with other like minded indviduals. hal jordans, any guy gardners. / other green lanterns. i also really like the idea of him with unexpected choices like zatanna. ect just because she is such a cool character??? but overall i think booster gold is a pretty hard character to ship with. there are lots of layers of insecurity and withstanding bravado people would have to go through before they are considered worthy enough for him to be his true authentic self, because most of the time michael will just be engaging with people as booster gold and booster in comparison to michael is less filtered, always trying to look cool / do stupid things to impress someone else, less grounded in the plains of reality. booster will usually flirt with anyone he deems pretty, hot, cool, badass but it's about being truly authentic and honest with someone that's gonna be hard to come by. this blog however is multi-ship / crossover friendly so it's really all about exploring which characters would click with him.